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It was the night before the end of the world. The two armies had gathered on opposite sides of a blasted vale. Once this had been a verdant valley, its wide plain shaped by a wide, meandering stream, its flanking hills blanketed by thick groves of oak, blanchwood, and ironroot. Now these trees were gone; no more than ragged stumps remained, the grass burned away, and the earth beneath packed hard and barren. The stream was a sluggish flow hidden by a thick film of oil, its surface broken only by the shadowy masses of nameless solids. Thick, inky clouds concealed the moons and stars from sight. It had been overcast and cold on Argoth, despite unseasonably warmer weather elsewhere on Terisiare. Both sides in the upcoming battle had taken to torching the forests they found, if only to deny their opponents supplies and support. By day the cloud canopy was a dull gray, a sheet of rolled and unfinished steel. By night it was lit only from below, by the thousands of campfires and foundries that now dotted the landscape. Along the opposite rims of the vale the flames lit by both invading forces glimmered like evil eyes in the darkness. Spanning the shallow stream was a pair of toppled giants, remnants of an earlier battle between one of the invaders and the original inhabitants of this land. One of the fallen giants had been made of living wood, and had been splintered into a thousand shards. Its huge forested head lay on the ground, screaming silently to the uncaring night. It had been the last champion of the natives of Argoth, the avatar of their goddess, and with its death passed away all hope for the island people. The victor in the battle had also been destroyed in the struggle. This huge humanoid monster was made of stone, its joints constructed of massive plates of pitted iron and great brass gears. Its lithic body had been broken and patched a number of times, and great sheets of metal had been bolted to its hide to hold it together. The battle with the living forest beast had overtaxed its pistons and armatures. Its final lunge had splintered its opponent; now it sprawled forward, facedown, a bridge over the tepid stream. One of the stone giant's arms had been ripped loose from the battle and lay a few hundred feet away, its fingers raised to claw the sky. On the back of the granite giant's silent corpse a lone figure waited.
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