When first we set foot upon the harsh soil of Krîl-lôc, we were a divided people: Divided in our hearts, divided in our very souls. For some, the ancient ways of our ancestors were their guide and strength still. For others, the younger Roman religion held their beliefs and faith. For most, the old ways had become little more than myths and lost lore, while the Christ on a cross presented unfathomable contradictions. For all, the fell blight that was the Krîll invasion, the pillaging and rape of our world by this implacable horde from across the expanses of Time, this was incomprehensible at every level. But as Celtae, we were joined in our ancestral, our racial memories. It was this bond upon which we Singers built our people’s future in this strange land, by giving them their past.

– The People and Their Song
by Morrigan

It was hot. It was hellishly hot. Alpin dared barely breathe lest the air scorch his lungs. Already, within the first heartbeats of stepping through the nightmare that had been Dael’s portal, his mouth was parched. To merely draw a breath hurt his throat, his chest . . . his teeth! By the gods, he thought, it hurts just to keep my eyes open. They felt dry and scratchy, feverish as if nettles had been brushed across them.

Looking about him, the scout felt his spirit shrivel. Desolation was a verdant garden against what met his pained gaze. As a Roman legionary, a centurion, he had seen his share of deserts, of burnt and desiccated landscapes, but against this, nothing in his experience measured. That this was the home of the Krîll he never doubted, yet, who or what could possibly exist under such straights. As if in answer to his thoughts, a soft scuttling of scales across rock drew his eyes to his left. All he saw was what must have been a tail, mottled dusty gray and nearly invisible against the rock. Only its movement gave it away.

He sensed the first of the Gwynedd scouts behind him, fiana as they called themselves, step out of the awful tunnel and set foot on the hilltop. Heard a sudden intake of air and the shocked gasp that followed.

“Keep moving,” he called out over his shoulder. “There’s some kind of dry wash over there. Spread out and start scouting towards that gap between the two massifs.”

As the men filed past him, easily walking down the hill’s gentle slope, Alpin continued to give orders as more emerged from the portal’s black rent. It ran across the full length of the knoll’s flat summit, appearing to emerge out of the dusty ground to a height of two men standing one atop the other. He walked over to where the gateway ended in a blurred, curving edge and looked behind it. Of the opening and its tunnel there was nothing. Even as he peered intently at it from the side all he saw was the heat shimmered hills rolling away to – he shaded his eyes and glanced up, finding the sun’s orb almost directly overhead – away to the north he decided. Turning to look where the passageway’s tunnel should extend – east – there was no sign of a black, time-spanning vortex, only more bare hills that fell away after a mile. Beyond them the horizon was a flat expanse without so much as a rock to spoil the emptiness. Sweet Mirthra, where has Dael put us?

Turning again, he looked to the west. The shallow hills seemed to roll like waves only to break upon two great massifs of rock shimmering in the heat. Their size made them look close, but Alpin guessed them to be two miles distance. They rose up out of the ground, two vertical walls of gray and ochre stone. The one to the south of the gap was nearly a league in length running north to south. The other marched towards the northern horizon like some mighty behemoth risen from the deep earth.

Looking north again he was startled to see a tall man wearing a mail shirt under a gray wolf pelt appear as if out of the thin air. Taking several steps back towards the west, Alpin again saw the portal’s dark oval as another and then another warrior emerged. He watched while each registered the new environment with pained shock.

“Which clan?” He approached the wolf cloaked fighter.

“The man looked his way, licking his lips as if the heat had already left them chapped and cracked. “Ceredigion,” he answered, shrugging the pelt off. “Where in the Christ’s name are we? This is alike to the hellfire of Hades.”

“Aye,” Alpin grinned. “But it’s Krîl-lôc, our enemies’ home. I see why they prefer ours, heh.”
Pointing to the north he continued, “Have your men scour the hills north of the dry wash to that rock wall and then three points north. Gwynedd is due west to the gap. “I’ll send another warband to your east so expect them.”

“Where will the clans assemble when they emerge?” the man asked.

“Along the wash, west towards the gap there.” Alpin pointed. “Dael says there’s a river and shelter on the other side.”

“God be praised for that.” The fiana leader nodded and spun on his heels. The last of his band was spilling out of the blackness. “Get yourselves settled,” he called out. “We’re to scout north of this dry bed. Follow me.”

It took until the sun hung two hand widths above the ridge’s summit for the last of the fiana to emerge and be disbursed by Alpin to scout and secure the surrounding hills. Then the first of the clans began to pour out of the gateway like flotsam from a storm wracked sea.

Stumbling out from the impenetrable darkness, warriors gazed wearily about them, struggling against the assault the passage had inflicted on their senses only to discover a new force, one of impossible heat and mind-numbing desolation, pressing hard against them. Warned beforehand by Dael they had been, but words alone could only fail when faced with such an inimical reality.

Despite their afflictions, they recovered with a speed born of the past years and the tempering received within the cauldron of the Krîll’s invasion. Those who couldn’t adapt to such sudden onslaughts to mind and body already lay strewn across the plains and forests, rivers and valleys, farmsteads and cities; wherever the Krîll armies had scourged their homeland.

Gwynedd, Ceridigion, Dyfed, Powys, the clans spread out across the scorched sand of the long-dead river, moving slowly to the west as the long line of refugees – nay, of invaders as Dael had made clear to each of them – made their way down the hill’s slope. Behind them the portal boiled with tenebrous power and continued releasing its human trespassers.

Dael led the clans west, through the steep walled gap in the high ridge and then across the shallow and torpid river to its far side. There they entered a maze of nightmarishly twisted rock, sculpted into tunnels and narrow defiles of dark, glass-like stone. When they at last emerged from the shadowed passages a range of soaring heights blocked their way, its bare slopes and stark peaks blurred in the awful heat. Far to the north something burned and smoldered, sending a cloud of dirty, yellow smoke high into the sky where an easterly wind caught and spread its haze over the western horizon. Those within the clans who held to the Christian beliefs declared that indeed, they had stepped out into their god’s hell.

For five days the clans spread along the river’s course, establishing hearths where they could amongst the tunnels and shaded places of fractured volcanic rock that ran beside the river. Dael and Morrigan, along with Alpin, Fia, and Arawn visited each chieftain and their clan during this time, calming, reassuring, and advising as was the need. On the sixth day Dael called a great conclave for that night, a night when both moons, large and small, marched full across the sable sky.

Nine thousand warriors and their families spilled across the slopes that formed a bowl amidst the mountain’s rough and broken feet. In the basin’s center a great fire sent its flames high into the night air, its warm, yellow light competing with the fragile brightness of the smaller of the moons. Just now rising over the soaring shadow that was the mass of rock many were calling ‘Hell’s Ridge’, its luminous disk cast the land in harsh relief – silver and black, moonlight and shadow, with sharp edges between the two that allowed for no grays, no blending, no gentle merging. In this, the night reflected their new home and existence: stark, harsh-edged, extreme.

An expectant hush swept over the gathering as a lone figure stepped forth and approached the fire. Suddenly the dancing flames subsided until they were nothing greater than glowing embers of blue, orange, and red. Dael came to a halt and turned to face the great arc of faces. He saw their expressions: keen with questions, tight with uncertainty, strained with fear, resolute with purpose. They saw a man of medium stature, his hair, now white and shining like burnished silver in the moon’s light, framed a face deeply lined with care and burdens beyond their guessing, a face that yet smiled and radiated a power of ancient lore and shared heritage. But it was through his eyes that blazed the power of his will and purpose. A purpose to save his people; a will to shape the heavens themselves to accomplish this.

“We,” Dael’s spellbound voice carried easily, a firm whisper rather than a shout, “we stand upon this world, stride through Time and the stars to place our will and purpose against those who seek to crush us. We nine clans, hailing from a time and place we call Britannia and Éire, Gwynedd and Mide, Powys and Dyfed, Ceredigion and Gwent, Glywysing, Brycheiníog, and Erging, we have pledged ourselves to a purpose inconceivable but a mere year ago . . . in truth, a mere fortnight ago what we have set forth to perform was not a thing our minds could grasp. Not even our greatest dreams could encompass such as has been done here.

“But this is only the beginning, the start of our quest to eviscerate this evil from our kingdoms, and all kingdoms our world over. Now comes a time when we must prepare ourselves against what we shall face: the authors of this inimical blight that assails our homes and our people. We ready ourselves to sever this foul birth cord that has brought forth such evil into our lives.

“While we teach ourselves how to survive in this hellish, blighted land, the fiana will seek out our enemy. To the east are their kingdoms. When they have found whom I seek, then we shall strike.
“‘Why the wait? Why not use my sorcery to find what I seek?’ you ask. You may be thinking we could strike thus and quickly, returning to our homes before our foe has wracked more death and destruction upon our people.

“I answer you in all truth. I have not the strength yet to strike. Bringing us here required of me such that I need rebuild myself lest I, like an oiled torch, am consumed in a conflagration too quickly and fall short of my purpose.”

Dael paused, allowing his audience to fully absorb what he had just imparted – his limitations, their leader’s limitations. It would be not only false, but dangerous for the clans to believe and overly rely on powers beyond their own.

“My purpose, our purpose, stretches beyond the mere death of our destruction’s author. If that were the extent of it, aye, I believe I could achieve that much. But to what good cause could that suffice? Our world, our homes, our loved ones whom we have left in their hour of direst need would nonetheless face the same fate that we are sworn to turn aside.

“First, the death – and now I shall put a name to this demon sorcerer – the death of Drägorîsh, High Shaman of the Clans of Krîll. Second, refusing the Krîll hordes at the very source of their entry into our world. And third, and this and this alone, will save our homes and people; time itself must be undone. And finally, we return to our own time and an unravished world.Again Dael fell quiet, circling the glowing embers as a susurration of voices swept over the gathering. When he completed his circle and stood once again facing his people, he raised his right hand until silence fell over the moonlit slopes.

“Of the three, as I stand here before you at this moment, I can only perform the first. And now you understand how all three must be gained for our greater purpose, our pledged designs, to be won.

“My promise stands!” His voice suddenly rang out, strong and firm. “My purpose lies clearly before me. My pledge to all who followed me, whose choice was as mine, I renew now before you all.

“A name will I give our promise. A name will I give our purpose, our duty, our oath most sacred. We who have crossed Time and the heavens into a darkness beyond the thoughts of gods and men, we who have chosen the terrors of hell itself that our world may live, we claim to ourselves a name of power from the very fabric of this realm against which we strive. We are the People of the Promise, the Aestrâgor.

Such power did Dael imbue the word with that all who were witness that night felt a great pressure bear down upon them until its very vowels and consonants rang from within their beings, each beat of their hearts, each breath, each sound, smell, and sight accepted and knelt before a new reality binding their souls: They were, had always been, and would so be for all time, Aestrâgor. From Krîl-lôc to their homes across time, a thread was woven, a spiritual twining through which each and every one of them was bound. Their bodies lived and died on Krîl-lôc, but their daemons held firmly to another realm, a place eternally their true home.
As one, each soul present rose; mothers held babes high; fathers lifted their sons and daughters; all cried out in a voice that reverberated high into the surrounding crags, “AESTR GOR! OUR PROMISE! OUR CHOICE! WE AESTR GOR!”

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