King Cahaya paced around his palace, deep in thought. The war was not going well.

The early push against the rebel forces had gone well. Bolstered by support from the Ayamerahn Princedom, forces loyal to the King had seized control of the rebel-controlled southern coastline and the areas around it, cutting them off from the forces in the north and quickly extracting a surrender. But up north, numerous difficulties had halted any advance from the Suhendran troops. For one, the terrain was far more mountainous, lending itself to hit-and-run tactics employed by the rebels that weakened any large military movements. The naval advantage, too, was far less prevalent, as the less-traveled waters around the northern coast put the Suhendran and Ayamerahn navies on a lesser footing that the smaller but more knowledgeable rebel ships.

Then, there were the supply shortages. Most of the rich copper mines on the island were in territories now controlled by rebel forces, causing the Kingdom to rely on its stockpiles for weapons creation. At first this seemed fine - all believed the war would be over in short order, and the stockpiles were nearly overflowing with copper. But three years in, and those once-overflowing stockpiles were now beginning to run thin. Cahaya attempted to remedy this situation, and moved to assert control over the islands to the north inhabited by refugees from the destruction of Sarawak and the civil war, which were said to contain copper. They did, but not much - most of the rocks they mined were a strange blue color, which while good for pigment were not good for weapons.

His men were still loyal, but the populous was beginning to waver - they did love him, but more than anything they wanted to return to a time of peace, when brother was not killing brother, when trade was safe from a newly-risen pirate threat, and when their biggest worry were the cultists that had gone worryingly silent during the civil war. King Cahaya knew that if he hoped to come out of this war on top, he would need to seek the counsel of the Gods themselves.

He would need to visit the Oracle.

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Throughout the Civil War, both sides had tacitly agreed to avoid fighting near the site of former Sarawak, and so construction on the new town - and the home of the Oracle of Sarawak - continued unabated. By this time, a large compound had been constructed inside the Vüolt of Teç that housed the Priests and Priestesses of Mykara, and it had already entertained visitors from across Doebi and Ayamerah. A visit from the King, however, was a special occasion, and Cahaya was met with great fanfare from the holy men and women that resided there. He was quickly led into the Chamber of Prophecy and told to take a seat - the Oracle would be with him shortly.

After a moment of waiting, doors in the back of the room opened. Smoke and vapors flowed into the room, and with them came the Oracle. The King watched her slender, beautiful figure enter the room, covered by nothing but a thin layer of some white powder from head to toe. Her hair flowed with streaks of red and blue, and her eyes were framed with a dark coloring. All in all, she looked otherworldly as she took a seat on a pillow-covered rug in the center of the room.

"So, Great King," she began, "what knowledge do you seek from the Almighty Gods?"

Cahaya gulped. "Oh Great Oracle, I seek to know my future, and the future of my people. Are we able to defeat the threat posed by these rebels? Am I able to reunite the Kingdom?"

The Oracle smiled. "You have pushed against these agents of Chaos for many years, and in many different forms. These will not stop with the end of these dissenters. But they will find an end at your hand, and your gaze will shift to the Lady of Chaos in one of her other guises, ready and waiting."

The King peaked up, this was the best news he had heard all day. He would win the war! "How will I finally be able to defeat them?" he continued. "I have fought them for so long, and it continues to seem futile!"

The Oracle closed her eyes, and took in a deep breath of the smoky vapors. "Victory you shall find in your hands only when the lifeblood of the Ayamerah and Vüolt are one. In this you will find renewed strength that Chaos cannot shatter. Then, and only then, will you be able to sever the head of the beast, and in doing so destroy the body that supports it."

Cahaya furrowed his brow, confused by the answer. He opened his mouth to ask more, but before he could speak the Oracle rose, and the room filled with steamy vapors that obscured all vision. By the time the King had cleared the air in front of him, she was gone. That would be all he had to work with.

Later that evening, he spoke with his advisers to try and decipher the riddle of words given to him as prophecy. It was decided that the "lifeblood of the Ayamerah and Vüolt becoming one" meant a marriage between one of Cahaya's children, and a child of the Ayamerahn Princess; that the "renewed strength that Chaos cannot shatter" would be a renewed vigor within the troops that would survive the attacks of the rebels; and that "severing the head of the beast" meant slaying a great monster, probably the Giant that the rebel troops were said to sometimes summon into battle with them. Content with this prophecy, the King sped home to Kuching, and quickly wrote to the Ayamerhan Princess, inquiring into her eligible offspring.

Within a month one of Cahaya's sons had married a daughter of Batari Darawan, and within a year they had produced a healthy baby boy. But while Cahaya was renewed in resolve upon seeing his grandson, the tide of the war did not seem to turn. If anything, the rebels seemed to be making up ground in the north. The King was dumbfounded - why was the prophecy failing? And if the Gods had abandoned him, what hope did he have?

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Elsewhere, Jinpang was also not having a good day.

"I said, put your hands in the air!"

A former warriror who had served in the Anti-Cult division of the military, he had retired to a life of smithing to provide for his family in a much safer fashion. He was one of the few smiths trusted with, and paid for, smelting stockpiled Suhendran copper into ingots, and making those ingots into weapons to fight against the rebel forces. As the stockpile had dwindled, however, he was given less and less to make the same weapons, giving him very little room for error. This same shortage, of course, had also made copper nearly as valuable as silver and gold, which made his smithy a very popular target for bandit and pirate raids. So he was less surprised, and more disappointed, to look up from his work to see four men pointing spears, arrows, and large daggers at him, yelling at him to put his hands in the air. He looked around to his guards, only to find them dead on the ground.

"I am only going to ask you one more time - put. Your hands. In the air. Understand?"

Jinpang nodded, and slowly raised his hands above his head in response to the spear point half an inch from his nose. He quickly took in the men surrounding him - the man in front was armed with a short copper spear, the man behind had the point of his long dagger in Jinpang's back, the man to his left stood back with a notched arrow in his bow, and the man to his right carried a spear and curved Ayamerhan shield. He took a deep breath. This, he thought, would be fun.

Jinpang looked at the man in front of him, briefly feigning fear, before bringing his hands down quickly on the shaft of the spear and gripping it tightly. The bandit, surprised by this, went to thrust the spear forward, but Jinpang was expecting this, and pulled it forward as well, using their combined force to move the spear past him and into the torso of the man with his dagger to Jinpang's back. Before the bandit even had a chance to scream, Jinpang ducked down to avoid the arrow he expected to be flying his way. He was right, and the arrow soared just over his head, and buried itself in the shield of the bandit to his right. Before the archer could notch another arrow, Jinpang grabbed the small knife strapped to his lower leg, came up, and threw it at him, hitting the bandit right in the neck and sending him to the ground.

Jinpang turned around just in time to see the man whose spear he had appropriated earlier charging at him again, the point of his spear still dripping with the blood of his fellow bandit. Jinpang spun to the side, narrowly avoiding the spear, and swept his leg, sending the charging bandit tumbling over and his spear into the air. He grabbed it and brought the point down hard into the man's back, driving it through his spine and into the ground below him.

Jinpang turned to the last of the four men, who looked in horror at the bloodbath that this smith had brought upon his friends over the course of just twenty seconds. The bandit instinctively looked towards Jinpang's workshop, which Jinpang noticed, and allowed himself a quick glance over as well. That's when he saw the four other men, arms full of copper ore and ingots, staring back at him, before turning and rushing towards the shoreline.

Jinpang swore, he did not have time for this. Looking back to the bandit with the shield, he yanked the spear out of the ground, and rushed forward with it, bringing the end of the shaft up from the ground and knocking his shield out of his hands, before bringing the shaft back down over his head, knocking him unconscious. He turned towards the other running bandits, and chased after them, but they had too much of a head-start. He gripped the spear and attempted to throw it at the fleeing men, but it was not built for throwing, and so just grazed one of the men instead of sticking in their back. They made it back to their ship, and Jinpang had to retreat to avoid the flurry of arrow fire that met him. He cursed the bandits that had so ruined his day, and returned to his workshop to inspect the damage and deal with the dead men.

Tallying up the remaining supplies, he counted at least a dozen missing copper ingots, and a good chunk of ore missing as well. All in all, he had lost roughly 30% of the copper entrusted to him by the King from his personal stockpile. Regardless of the reason, or his former rank, this would NOT go over well with Cahaya. He thought to his wife and two daughters - if he was imprisoned or killed, they would suffer too. He had to find a way to make up for the lost material.

That's when he saw it - a pile of tin len and jari in the corner. Before the war, he had been paid for a bunch of copper spear-tips by the Ayamerahns, but had not found a way to spend all the tin they have paid him with. Now, he figured, they could at least serve to bolster the copper he had left. Maybe the king wouldn't notice his weapons being a bit lighter in color. So, mixing in the tin rings and armbands with the remaining copper ingots and ore, he began to forge spear-tips and long daggers with this new mix...

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The King noticed.

Cahaya usually expected deception and cheating from people below him - paranoia was a common side effect of fighting-an-unexpected-civil-war-itis. But he never expected to be cheated with inferior weapons by one of his most trusted smiths.

"My Lord, you don't understand, there were bandits..."

Cahaya sighed. "I entrusted you with much of the remaining stockpile of copper, with the expectation that you would be able to adequately protect it and use it for our weapons. Clearly this was a mistake, because not only did you fail to do so, but then you made some mixture with the rest of the copper, turning it lighter and clearly inferior in quality and wasting the good material you still had."

"I am so sorry my King, please have mercy..."

The King sighed. "I will tell you what, seeing as how you stand by all of your creations, then I will give you the opportunity to defend yourself with them." He beckoned forward one of his guards, who unsheathed a long dagger. "This man will get one clean slash at your neck, which you will block with only one of these... special daggers you have made. If they are of the quality that you claim to put out, then you will have nothing to fear, and you will be fine. But," he paused for dramatic effect, "if they are as of inferior quality as they seem, well, at least you won't live to see how disappointed your children are of you."

Jinpang gulped, and nodded. He held up a long dagger, said a quick prayer to the Gods, and closed his eyes as the copper dagger sliced towards him...

ＣＬＡＮＧ

The sound of metal on metal rang throughout the palace, and all look in complete amazement as the copper dagger shattered into a dozen pieces. Jinpang opened his eyes, and looked in shock at his weapon. It was completely unscathed.

Cahaya looked at Jinpang, impressed. "What mixture, exactly did you use for these weapons?"

"Tin, my Lord, I added tin."

That is when Cahaya thought back to the prophecy given to him by the Oracle of Sarawak.

"Victory you shall find in your hands only when the lifeblood of the Ayamerah and Vüolt are one. In this you will find renewed strength that Chaos cannot shatter. Then, and only then, will you be able to sever the head of the beast, and in doing so destroy the body that supports it."

He had been wrong. The lifeblood of the Ayamerah and Vüolt wasn't a child between them - it was a mixing of tin (Ayamerahn lifeblood) and Copper (Vüolt lifeblood). And the strength was not in their resolve - it was weapons made from this mixture, which were far stronger than the copper weapons used by the rebels! Then he thought to the final part of the prophecy - severing the head of the beast. The first two parts had been like metaphors, so this third part should be as well. And if it wasn't the giant that had to be beheaded... it was the rebellion! The rebels were fighting for themselves, sure, but they truly rallied around their pretender King, Baligion. If Baligion was slain, then the rebellion would fall apart.

Cahaya smiled. This he felt good about. He beckoned Jinpang before him.

"Whatever this mixture is, I want you to make more of it. Lots more. Melt down our existing weapons if you have to, I want the entire army equipped with this material. I will give you access to the rest of the copper stockpile, and make sure that not only is enough tin shipped your way, but that you have more than adequate protection to prevent any more raids."

"Thank you, my King..."

"What are you still here for? Get going!"

Jinpang stood quickly, and rushed out of the palace.

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With the introduction of weapons made with bronze, or gangsa as it was called, the tide quickly turned in favor of the loyalist armies. With a large force sent north to draw out the rebel forces, a combined Ayamerahn and Vüolt force snuck around the south of the island, landing outside the rebel capital of Bontang. Not expecting such a brazen attack, the rebel guard was quickly outnumbered, and Cahaya himself strode into the throne room, beheading Baligion himself. Word of this defeat quickly spread among the rebels who, not sure who they were really fighting for, surrendered.

Within a few years of the end of the rebellion, King Cahaya had moved to consolidate former rebel territory to prevent it from rising against him again. Loyal families were given large amounts of land there to own, soldiers were encouraged to move there with land grants and pay as well, and resource mines in those areas were subsidized. This seemed to work, and the Kingdom was more productive, peaceful, and successful than ever. Cahaya smiled, he had done it.

But despite his success, his mind kept coming back to the words of the Oracle. "They will find an end at your hand, and your gaze will shift to the Lady of Chaos in one of her other guises, ready and waiting." His nights would remain restless, and he would keep his men ever vigilant, ready and waiting for the next test of the Gods against the forces of Good.