“It didn’t have to be this way, Lusin,” Vone said, through the settling rubble and suffocating clouds of dust, “Our world could have known only abundance and peace; your friend Kima would still be alive; and your heroic act of plummeting this city of Yunla into the earth to stop me and my army would have only existed in childrens’ nightmares. If only you had chosen the sensible path and let the Plague Bringer fulfill its purpose all those years ago, perhaps, Joone wouldn’t also lay lifeless at your side. Another needless victim of your naive sense of justice.” Vone emerged from across the clearing where the city's center once stood, his dark cloak blowing and unable to hide the black veins spreading up his neck, his skeletal hand of the dead ever present, gripping his bone-laden staff. Lusin looked around at the thousands of defeated undead with a cold numbness, matching the feeling of his tired limbs. He looked to Joone at his side and balled hard fists, shaking, as he thought Vone may be right. “What, nothing to say?” Vone called out again. His skeletal hand leaked darkness, initiating a hex of symbols at his feet that drifted into the air around him. “My army will return in a minute’s time and your whole act of sacrifice will have been for nothing. I’ve waited to kill you for what you’ve done – for what you would continue to do. Our world would never heal.” “You’re wrong,” Lusin finally said, his voice hoarse from the hours of battle that left him kneeled and breathless on the shattered ground, “we can fix the warring factions, we can solve the famines that ravish our world. Millions need not die to save our future.” Vone looked at Lusin with deep disgrace escaping his eyes, “You’re a damned fool, not a hero. A hero does what is needed for the greater good, like me and the six necromancers that saw the path our world was on ten years ago. I will take great pleasure in killing the Winds’ finest wizard if our world’s most notorious farce falls with him. Justice calls for us all.” Vone slammed his great staff into the ground causing the hex to sizzle underneath. A rush of energy gathered within it and pulsed, rumbling through the cracks of the ground. Lusin’s stomach warped seeing the bodies of undead snap and hiss as they started to move once more. But his urge to keep fighting beat deeply in his heart, for all those he lost, for all those who will die if he chooses death. “How long will you fight your futile cause, Son of Winds. You’ve lost your city, your friends, your lover. Who do you fight for now?” “‘Until my last hopeful breath,” Lusin muttered, “for everyone. . . for always.” A vortex of wind swirled at Lusin’s feet, growing above the clouds themselves and into the painted orange sky. Vone braced behind his sunken staff and faced it all. Where Lusin was kneeled it was calm as flowers swaying in the breeze, but his surroundings thrashed with winds that tore down any of what remained of the ruined city. He could see the undead swirling around him fighting the gusts, letting out virulent screams. Others clawed by the cracks and inched closer to him as he held with all his strength. Luzon saw Vone’s dark veins spread further up into his cheek as he seemed to falter in his stance. “You can’t win!” Vone boomed, a distorted gargle of his voice projecting from the hundreds of undead around Lusin, “Even if you kill me, our world is bound for more death and violence in my absence. You’ve already become what I am in your pursuit to destroy it.” Lusin’s body ached with energy and pain, and the undead slowly clawed nearer; there were so many that they used each other as shields against the winds. Lusin knew whatever time he had was running out. Lusin looked at Joone's still body as he fought the growing fog in his mind, her deep blue eyes still gleaming as beautifully as the day he met her. He always said hope swam beneath them, and she would say, “It's the hope I keep for us.” His heart swelled with anguish and love, guilt and forgiveness, causing the storm to whip faster. A pile of horrors was swept up in its raging current. The still grounded creatures closed in mere feet away and Lusin reached out to squeeze Joone’s in his, his emotions pouring out into the surrounding storms, nevering wavering with her hand He closed his eyes as the groans of undead cleared the outer vortex, and he only thought of the hope in Joone’s eyes as his mind faded out. The undead clawed the dirt at his knees. “I have hope for us,” he said, and accepted his fate. But a pulse rippled through the air and blue light poured out of Joone, flooding Lusin with its hot energy, turning his winds into blinding streaks. A sizzling roared in his ears and undead screams turned to silence. In a moment, his bright storm calmed and Lusin saw the last of the undead fleck to dust in the breeze. Vone was kneeled on the ground, clutching onto his staff as if he’d fade to dust as well if he dared let go. Lusin walked to him, dagger unsheathed, prepared to be the hero Vone wanted him to be, but a gentle voice froze his every thought and spoke. He turned back to see Joone’s body was no longer there. “Hope in us means hope in us all, my love,” she said, echoing. Lusin’s eyes welled with tears and his blade dropped to dirt. He grasped Vone’s head, energy surging from Lusin like lightning into the necromancer’s being. Vone’s darkened veins cured away, and his hand of the dead turned to flesh and blood. He looked up at Lusin in disbelief, his eyes a gleaming blue. “Why. . . how have you?. . .” “Hope,” Lusin said, extending a hand, “it’s the only path our world can take.”