Embers of a Broken Throne by Terry C. Simpson

with three portents. Sight. Sense. Smell.
    The signs sent an icy prickle down Ancel’s neck. He cast his senses out to encompass the white blanket below.
    Normally the essences were colorful, definitive patterns, swirling in the air or making up every surface. With the first sign they manifested as a chaotic, undecipherable jumble. As an accomplished Matus, he understood each essence at his disposal and their corresponding element. He could control them at will. They were a part of him, belonged to him, and him to them. Each followed a certain order, pebbles dropped into a still pond, the ripples travelling outward.
    All but shade and sela essences.
    Those two were chaos. The first black and unfathomable; the second mired in grays, supposedly representative of death and life. Nothing about sela seemed as if it belonged to the living. Sela felt dead, dirty, and proved useless in Forges. He’d tried. In every attempt it slipped his grasp like a man trying to prevent water from leaking between his fingers. Knowing he ingested it naturally to replenish his power and keep his sanity did little to make him feel clean or comfortable.
    Something was off about the essence. About all the essences. Of that he was certain. He clung to what he knew. Certainty kept men alive. Doubt killed.
    Deep in the Eye with his emotions roiling outside, he allowed his Matersense to roam. He ignored the voices murmuring in his head. They had no hold over him, nor would he give them one, but for the task at hand he required the connection to their power.
    The second warning arrived moments later. This one was a sense of danger. Wrongness. The threat lingered in the air, thick, cloying, like the aftertaste of a foul dish.
    A choked human cry and an animal snarl reached him.
    Closing his eyes he searched out the echo, the break in the rainbow tapestry the essences drew in the air, the disruption that marked where the threat had crossed the Planes.
    Back the way we came .
    A gust carried the third portent. Blood. Rot. Death.
    Rather than accept the power the voices of Mater offered, he gathered light through the Etchings that covered his body in sporadic areas, populating the entirety of his sword arm and chest on the right side before they branched out to the rest of him. Each Etching reminded him of an intricate tattoo, displaying various scenes, animals, celestial bodies, every one a representation of the essences of light. With their power he Shimmered to the location that had drawn him, disappearing from where he’d stood upon the ledge overlooking his people to appear near the pass they’d used to enter this valley in the Cogal Drin Mountains. Shimmering felt as if he was ripped from one spot and transported to another instantaneously.
    Below him, near the cabin they passed earlier, four grogs were making a mess of the hunters that had directed him and his people to the pass. The shadelings were much the same as the first time he encountered them at the town a month ago, black and snake-like, skittering on legs like a spider.
    He made to leap down among the creatures but drew up short at a sudden chill. A chill he shouldn’t feel as much, not since gaining the full Etchings of light. Something moved in his periphery, a distortion, an indistinct, towering shape. Ever since Aldazhar, he’d seen the recurring haze, and he’d concluded it originated from the corrupted shade. Now it seemed to be more.
    Squinting, he peered from left to right, but saw nothing. The wind gusted, kicking up snow. An odd sensation niggled at him, a prickle along his skin that said he was being watched. For what seemed an eternity he continued to stare at the spot. Still nothing. He remained motionless, holding his breath. The feeling dwindled. A grog’s screech snapped his attention to the scene below.
    He frowned. One of the hunters was missing. Their young leader, Kester.
    The sound of beating hooves drew Ancel’s attention. Farther down the mountainside, along the