[ALTARUS:] You must learn to control your spirit-form, Xerxes... for by

mastering the art of traversing the mists you may effortlessly travel to many

places, and many times. Countless secrets will be unlocked for you, and great

enlightenment shall be yours.



[XERXES:] Yes, master... and yet, there is one realm which intrigues me above

all others, one era which occupies my thoughts unceasingly... What of the

clash between the Royal Army of Hyperborea and the Wraiths of the Chaos-Liege?



[ALTARUS:] Ah, yes... command the mists, Xerxes... gaze into their limitless

depths... compel them to show you that martial vista which you so fervently

seek.



[XERXES:] Yes... I see the massing forces, the battle is imminent! How splendid

the Imperial Army looks as it fronts the foe... into the fray they ride!



[Chapter 1: The Bloodying of the King]

[(The Armies of the Hyperborean Empire steadfastly engage the Horde of Wraiths)]



[THE KING:]

Imperial Cavalry... advance! RIDE THEM DOWN!

In to the fray! Demonstrate unforgettably the art of Hyperborean warcraft!

Spearmen, form into Omega Phalanx.

Archers, notch arrows, prepare to loose.

Warriors, stand ready... Sound the clarion!



Hearken, sons of the glorious Empire...

Here we stand upon the Field of Blood...

Though this day we may die,

Our legend shall live forever.



[ALTARUS:] And the armies met upon the Field of Blood which stretched lifeless

before the aeon-veiled citadel which men called the Shrine of A'zura-Kai, a

mysterious and foreboding place steeped in ireful omens and legendary dread...

Aye, the carnage of that first clash was phenomenal. The Hyperborean Cavalry

tore gloriously into the foremost rank of the shadow-warriors, the enchantment

of the Crystal of Mera rendering the squamous pseudo-flesh of the wraiths

fully vulnerable to the steel of the royal legions. The king himself rode at

the forefront of the onslaught, his ensorcelled ebon blade hewing ten to the

left and cleaving ten to the right, his grim eyes gleaming beneath his

shimmering horned and plumed helm. The momentum of that first charge threw the

dark ones into shrieking disarray, and the vanguard of Chaos fell back before

the thundering resolve of the Imperial attack. But the baleful, poisoned

blades of the wraiths took their toll upon the Hyperborean horsemen. Raught by

leprous swords and spears, men and mounts fell screaming to the dusty earth,

where they were mercilessly rent and devoured by the slavering jaws of the

Chaos-Liege's minions. Aye, glorious was the courage of the royal warriors,

admirable was their mettle... for every Imperial Knight felled by the dark

ones, five wraiths met their deaths beneath the slaughterfall of royal steel.

And yet it was not enough. Like a slithering tide, the shadows engulfed the

cavalry, and the bloodied king ordered the Hyperboreans to ride clear and

regroup. Then, with volleys of shafts as their herald, and the Battle-Prayer

of Hyperborea upon their lips, the Imperial Guard marched into the ravening

embrace of the melee, and never in the grim and sanguineous history of battle

was there a clash to rival the slaughterous magnitude of that awesome

engagement...



[THE ARCH-WRAITH:]

Minions of Chaos, rend their flesh, crush their bones, devour their souls!



[Chapter 2: Havoc at the Shrine of A'zura-Kai]



[THE KING:]

Onwards with our spear-heads gleaming,

Meet them with cold steel a'cleaving,

Fall only when our hearts cease beating,

Men of Hyperborea.



[ALTARUS:] At the King's command, the clarion was sounded to move the

battle-hardened veterans of the Seventh Fen-lander Army into a flanking

position to unite with the remnants of the Royal Cavalry. Like a purifying

storm the allied Imperial forces clove into the wraiths to deal righteous

pattern-welded death unto their nighted foe. But at that moment, black terror

descended screaming from the twilight sky... howling swarms of winged fiends,

hurled forth from the malignant bosom of Lord Angsaar, soared razor-taloned

into the fray. Beseiged man-to-fiend upon the field, and harried from above by

the shrieking horrors of the Chaos-Liege, the Hyperborean Army began to

falter, and to fall. And lo, beholding the carnage, the King raised high in

his left hand the ancient Crystal of Mera, and in his right gauntlet he

brandished the Bane of Angsaar, the dread Shadow-Sword once wielded by the

Chaos-Liege's immortal nemesis... and he spoke aloud the terror-fraught and

aeon-swathed words of invocation which he alone had been audience to deep

within the shadow-haunted Mountains of the Dead...



[THE KING:]

By the darkling powers of the Shadow-Sword, I call forth the fury of the storm

to rend the massed legions of Chaos!



[ALTARUS:] And at the sound of his baleful Words of Power, the sky split wide in

fury, and searing tendrils of ruinous lightning lanced inexorably forth from

the heavens to rake and reave the massed hordes of Chaos...



[XERXES:] The fearful spells he had learned from the Mountain... did their

casting win the battle for the King's legions?



[ALTARUS:] The fiends were dealt a staggering blow by the sorcerous

incantations, the power of the spells inexplicably magnified by the

enchantments of the Crystal. The Wraiths were routed soundly by the elder

magics, fleeing the field howling their anathemas and maledictions against the

King, and the winged horrors fell seared and burning from the enraged sky. But

the twisted machinations of insidious Chaos had prepared for the King one

final blow in this dread confrontation... aye, the Chaos-Liege had reserved

his most heinous perpetration 'til the last...



[Chapter 3: The Awakening of Chaos]



[LORD ANGSAAR:]

Fly, my winged sentinel of the night,

Deliver unto me the Ninth Crystal of Power,

That I may at last be free once more...



Come then, mortal! Test that cursed blade of black steel against me if you

dare! O' great king, your pitiful army shall be swept away before my wrath!

'Ere the dawn, ten thousand shall die!



[THE KING:]

For the eternal glory of Hyperborea!



[ALTARUS:] Striking from the swift darkening sky, Angsaar's Arch-Wraith, which

had been watching the battle with gleaming inhuman eyes, leaped to the attack

and smote the King, engulfing him in its ebon wings and driving its

steel-rending talons into his golden armour. And yet it was not the life of

the Royal Scion of Hyperborea which the fiend sought to take on that fateful

eve, but rather that which the King held tight in his gauntleted fist... the

Crystal of Mera. Wrenching the glimmering antediluvian jewel from its keeper,

the Arch-Wraith unfurled its leathern wings and soared into the deepening

gloom with a cacophonous cackle of victory, leaving the King to roar his ire

after the fleeing wraith.



[XERXES:] But what did Angsaar want of the Crystal? I know he battled his

immortal nemesis over possession of the mystic gems many aeons ago... but what

use would just one of the jewels be to him?



[ALTARUS:] After rising from his Chamber of Slumber, the Chaos-Liege's power was

direly depleted... and he was unable to venture beyond the obsidian walls of

his Citadel of Shadows, being compelled to control his wraiths and fiends to

undertake his diseased schemes on his behalf. When he ascertained that the

wizards of the Royal Court of Hyperborea held in their possession the Ninth

Jewel of the Galactic Confederation of Mera, the most powerful of all the

crystalline keys to the Psionic Epsilon Matrix, he began to formulate an

elaborate scheme which would gain him the gem and facilitate his liberation,

sundering his fetters and allowing him free reign to spread his vile influence

across the land once more. Utilizing to its fullest extent the dark art of

sorcerous mind-control. Angsaar succeeded in placing spies and traitors within

the King's Court, and thus set into motion a dark chain of events

treacherously crafted to bring the Armies of Hyperborea to battle at one

carefully predetermined place... the Shrine of A'zura-Kai... an ancient

citadel built over the site where, many thousands of years ago, one of the

Galactic Confederation's galaxy-spanning star-chariots was cast forcibly to

earth by the tempestuous skies of a powerful cosmic witch-storm... a place

where resultantly, the star-born energies of the Prime Crystal would be

magnified tenfold, if wielded in unison with the correct arcane incantations

which Angstaar alone knew...



[XERXES:] Then the battle, the defeat of the wraiths, all that had been merely a

ruse... a scheme implemented by the Chaos-Liege merely to realize his ultimate

ambition of the sundering of the mystic shackles?



[ALTARUS:] Aye... the Shrine would act as a portal, a gateway opened by the

power of the Crystal, a yawning aperture in the dimensional barrier through

which Angsaar could escape the incarceration of his Citadel at last. And as

the Arch-Wraith soared the night-winds on its return journey to its malign

master, the Prime Crystal clutched in its bloodied claws, the King knew as he

watched the Shrine of A'zura-Kai begin to glow with a great and ominous

sidereal luminescence, that he had on that battle-fraught eve defeated one

dreadful menace on the Field of Blood only to unleash an infinitely more

terrifying foe... But the Chaos-Liege had reckoned without the power of the

one thing he feared the most... the one thing which had the merest glimmering

hope of thwarting his dread scheme and restoring order to glorious

Hyperborea...



[XERXES:] Yes, the only chance... the last hope for victory...



[ALTARUS:] The Shadow-Sword. Evident once more was the fearsome

extra-dimensional intelligence linking the sword and the gem, the same

crystalline sentience which had guided the King to the mountainous resting

place of the ebon blade, and had shielded the presence of the sorcerous

immortal weapon from the dark one until it had been brought into play upon the

field of battle, that magical link placed within the Ninth Gem by the Immortal

if ever again the power of the Shadow-Sword should be needed to bring to bear

against Chaos! And with the Arch-Wraith disappearing into the massing dark,

that yard of fearsome black steel spoke once more to the King in the same long

dead tongue it had burned upon his mind deep within the Mountains of the Dead,

the essence of the Immortal mystically encased within the blade instructing

the Scion of Hyperborea to commit himself to one final, cataclysmic deed... a

deed which would end the aspirations of the Chaos-Liege forever, or plunge

Hyperborea and the kingdoms of the world into an endless abyss of eternal

suffering and a ravening maelstrom of limitless carnage and galactic terror...



[XERXES:] What was that deed? What could stop the Chaos-Liege? I must know the

outcome of this confrontation!



[ALTARUS:] The vista begins to darken... the mists once again weave their spell

to withold their timelost secrets. Practice your art, Xerxes... hone your

skills, and the final outcome of this epic tale shall soon be made known to

you...