The sun is lapping dusk on the sprawling port of Kormaleon, ships docked peacefully in the harbour, the first cressets being lit.

Follow the last rays of dusk into the town. The streets and the folk in them have the same evening tone. One of those making her way is a small, young elfin woman.

She bumps into a large, lumpish man.

Irritated, he turns to her and scowls. She shrugs back with mock innocence.

He continues walking while she leans in the doorway of a tavern, “The Signet Inn.” (The harbour can be seen from the doorway.) She has a mischievous smirk on her face, watching him go, then, flipping the coin she's just pick-pocketed, slips inside the tavern.

Inside, the tavern is dim but not gloomy. Lamps flush a warm yellow. Only a few sit quietly at tables. Behind the counter is the owner, middle-aged at least, portly, bald, but congenial. At the counter, in front of the owner, stands a well-built young man, fair-haired, clothed in the simple style of a stable-lad.

The pick-pocketed coin flips into his tankard.

He turns, but the girl is behind him on his other side.

He turns this way and the girl flips his nose.

Then skips up to sit on the counter and leaning over kisses the owner on the forehead.

The young man makes a playful grab for her. She whips out a knife, not quite so playfully, and holds it ambiguously under his chin.

The moment holds.

She turns away, haughtily, putting the knife back in its thigh sheath. The tavern owner claps a meaty consolatory hand on the young man's shoulder.

She turns back, fishes the pick-pocketed coin out of the tankard, and tosses it onto the counter.

*     *     *
The three are soon seated companionably around a table in the tavern, all holding mugs or tankards. The tavern owner is speaking. His free hand and the intense expression on his face both indicate that he's beginning to tell a story, conjuring watercolour sights...

A piratess, not unlike the elfin woman—taller, older, longer hair, stands proudly on a ship, sword at her side.

A battle between the piratess' crew and another ship crew. The piratess athletically swordfights on a sail crosspiece. She swings across the deck on a rope.

And so on ...

The tavern owner sinks deep into his story. The other two, still nursing tankards, listen ...

Elsewhere on the ship, another young pirate, very like the young man in the tavern but with an eye patch, fights less skilfully than the piratess.

Nevertheless he ripostes a man.

But another slashes the sword from his hand.

He stands surrounded and helpless before numerous sword points.

The piratess swings crashing into the group.

Both, the young man having regained his sword, lay about the attackers. They're doing well, but then the captain of the other pirate ship approaches, massive and carrying two swords. He elbows the young man and sends him crashing. Then engages the piratess. She defends a crushing sword stroke. She parries another, but is staggered back by the force. She falls to the deck.

A fantasy version of the tavern owner, slightly less weighty, bursts 'heroically' from the ship's cabin door.

Back in the tavern: the young man snorts ale back into his tankard. The elfin woman giggles.

Back in the story, the heroic tavern owner bounds forward with talltale vigour between the piratess and the giant and engages him with sword.

The giant presses. The tavern owner backs up implausibly skilfully. The giant has the tavern owner backed against the ship's rail at swordpoint.

Back to deeper, less far-fetched hues: a sly look comes over the tavern keeper's real face.

Back in the talltale the tavern owner, still nonchalantly defending himself, whistles.

A huge passing sea serpent breaks the surface behind him.

The tavern owner leaps onto the serpent's back.

The giant leans over the rail, waving his swords in futile fury.

Back in the tavern: the young man gazes disbelievingly down into his tankard, the elfin pick-pocket has a hand over her face.

From another corner of the tavern two manicured hands applaud.

*     *     *
Meanwhile night has fallen and a ship slips into the nocturned glimmer-pocked harbour.

*     *     *
Back in the tavern a young dark-haired aristocratic man,

lounging arrogantly, begins to stand. He comes over to the other three, still applauding sarcastically. The young fair-haired man

isn't too happy to see him. The elfin woman is.

He sits, looking at the woman—she looks at him.

He takes her tankard. She lets him.

He sips.

She takes the tankard back.

She sips.

They look at each other, the tankard between.

The tankard’s ruby contents are dashed away.

The aristo leaps up and whips out his blade, angry but poised. The fair-haired youth does the same across the table. Boys will be boys.

An even younger boy dashes into the tavern.

The two drawn blades bide their time as he spills out his news.

The elfin stands, interested. Walks between the blades, flipping the fair-haired stable-lad's nose again as she passes. Walks toward the tavern door, reaches it, pauses, and beckons the others with a cock of her head.

*     *     *
A crowd has formed on the dock in front of a newly moored ship.

The elfin, the fair-haired lad, the aristo, and even the tavern owner stand at the back of the whispering mass.

Dock torches beat the night back to chiaroscuro. At the rail of the ship stands a tall handsome man, richly dressed, with a strange, distrait look on his young-old grisaille face. The crew work unobtrusively in the background.

A strangely grave look seeps onto the tavern owner’s face.

Back in the tavern. Hurry! All four now sit around the table, the two young men having put their rivalry and swords away for the moment. The troubled tavern owner unfolds a map on the table, begins another story, but of a different kind ...

Watercolour tableau after tableau: a majestic figure stands behind his two sons—one hand on the shoulder of each.

The king-figure stands on a harbour dock, hand out in farewell, watching two ships sail away in different directions.

An ancient map. The voyage of one of the ships, shown at the starting point, is traced by a dotted line, ending in a question mark. The other ship's voyage is also traced, ending at an isle.

The second ship puts into a bay, reminiscent of another bay.

A finger points to the bay on a map. The wording “Bay of Caprice” names it.

The king's son stands on the beach of the bay.

The king's son, now an old man, stands leaning on a balcony overlooking the port town now built on the bay.

A finger points to a map of the bay with a port built on the bay. The wording “Kormaleon” names it.

Back to the tavern—the owner pointing to the map on the table.

Then notices that the young aristo's chair is empty.

*     *     *
A palace in another part of the town—not outrageously lavish, granted, but a palace nonetheless. Watch the young aristo entering.

Inside. He bows before the king on the throne. See the obvious family resemblance.

Prince and king poring over maps and documents.

The prince's finger points to the top of the royal family tree—to one of two names side by side, and underneath one of them, no line of descent, only the words "the lost brother

*     *     *
The newly arrived ship in the harbour. Look closely at the tall, handsome, young-old figure on the ship—note the family resemblance again—the king and the prince in the palace—and also, chillingly, the two brother princes from the tavern owner’s tale. One especially. The long lost brother. So very long. So very lost.

He takes in the dock with strange oblique eyes. See through them. A royal train of horses escorted by the city guard is approaching.

The elfin pick-pocket, the fair-haired lad, the tavern owner are back with the crowd. The elfin looks around.

The king and prince, astride fine horses, are in the van of the new arrivals.

The prince gestures imperiously and a plank is fed up to the ship.

The king gestures ambiguously to the lost brother of his grand grand countlessly grand sire of an ancestor, to disembark.

The lost brother also holds up a hand.

Another hand, belonging to one of the crew. Look carefully—it's mottled with plague!

Another hand, petite, sleek, belonging to the elfin, jabs at the ship.

The crew begin to swarm down the gangplank, the torchlight flaring bare their demonic plague-raddled expressions.

Mayhem.

In the night-turned-day the city guard engage the plague horde.

A first soldier spits a first sailor with his sword.

The sailor, dying, claws the soldier's face with a diseased misshaped hand.

Other plague crew jump from the ship's rail in their fury to reach the crowd.

Mayhem.

Now swarming for the crowd, one of the sailors lunges at the elfin.

It seems to have her helpless by the throat.

She twists and stabs it with her knife.

She falls into a self-congratulatory posture—while another sailor approaches her unseen.

A sword hilt crashes into its face.

The fair-haired youth finishes the sailor off with the sword's blade.

The elfin woman winks at him.

She prepares for another sailor coming at her, wielding a cutlass.

A hand taps it on the shoulder.

The sailor turns to face the not-to-be-outdone aristo prince, who postures with his blade.

The sailor rushes him, rotting-tooth mouth gaping.

The prince gracefully runs him through.

The fallen sailor's hand clutches his cutlass' hilt.

The prince puts a cavalier arm around the elfin and kisses her.

Then his lips snap into surprise and pain.

The sailor, raised to its knees, has jammed his cutlass into the prince's back.

The king, fighting in another area of the battle, shouts in anguish at the sight.

He gestures for the guard to redouble their efforts.

Mayhem.

Plague soldiers jump, swim and begin climbing back onto their ship.

The king takes his death-wounded son gently out of the arms of the elfin, grabs his captain of guard by the collar of his uniform and speaks to him, returns his full grieving attention to his son.

Two wheeled catapults arrive at the harbour, making their way through the fear-roiled crowd.

The balls cupped in the catapults are set alight by torches.

Loosed.

One of the balls strikes the ship.

It catches fire.

The king, lit by the growing blaze, still cradling his son's body, watches grimly.

At the rail of the ship again stands the long lost revenant brother, still handsome, still richly dressed—the strange, distrait look on his young-old face is ineffably harder now. His crew unobtrusively burn in the background.

The ship burning in the harbour. Inferno of timber, sail, plague, time ... Roaring, crackling, dwining.

The elfin, the fair-haired lad, the tavern owner, standing watching, swashed by the glare of the conflagration, waiting for night to become day.

*     *     *
Dawn over Kormaleon.

Life.

*     *     *
The prince lies in still-lifeless state in the palace. The king looks out from a balcony over the town. Glance over his shoulder. The ship, now a charred and smouldering wreck, can be seen in the harbour.

Telescope down. The lost brother still stands, as if in dream, a blackened corpse portrait, at the rail of his ship.

Look closer. Stare. Then his eyes open. Or perhaps two demilunes of ash fall away.

He raises his arms.

Ash begins to rise from the wreck.

Back to the palace. The king watches the ash rise.

The elfin, in the act of pickpocketing another victim, notices the ash lifting into the sky above the buildings around.

Elsewhere, at a stable, the fair-haired lad looks up from grooming a horse and sees the cobalt scumble of ash above.

The tavern owner, wiping down a table in the tavern, hears a commotion outside. He lumbers to the door and outside inhabitants of the town are beginning to point at the sky and panic.

The sky turns black.

The ash descends over the town, begins to congeal into monstrous shapes. The shapes begin to fall upon the populace.

The people of Kormaleon run and scream.

One of the ash-demons attacks a man.

Another attacks a woman.

A child cowers in the shadow of a third.

*     *     *
In the day-become-night, a line of lanterned wagons climb into the hills above the port.

Focus on one of these, carrying the elfin, the fair-haired youth, and driven by the tavern owner. The younger pair are huddled together, almost child-like, subdued, bereft, looking down at their destroyed, ash-ravaged town.

Take note though: without any other change, the fair-haired lad's hand strays to the elfin's knee.

And without any other change, the elfin's knife is under the lad's chin again.

Looking down at their destroyed, ash-ravaged town.