WARNING: Spoilers abound throughout this section.
- Ashe encounters Corsis in his Lizard guise after he burns the sentient forest Halonir to take the healing sap from its biggest tree. Corsis embroils him in the Game.
- Ashe Stelfire had previously made a deal with the megalomaniacal Nirva for power in exchange for siring a daughter with her and no additional involvement in her life. Corsis, in his Svithe guise, kidnaps the infant Avril from Nirva Iniv, and gives her Avril to the Krians, Celsis Kri’s diminished sect, to be raised by them.
- Ashe slowly loses his fortune-hunting partners, Ricardo Alterv, Jasphir Iniv, and Nunaker, in a series of tragedies directly or indirectly related to Corsis, though he doesn’t yet know that.
- Avril comes of age during the War of No Hope and fights in its last battle against Dread Corps, which decimates her order, and puts her adoptive father, Eric Enzali, into a temporal coma at the hands of a Dread Corps commander, Tempes. Dread Corps also steals the A Pox vial from the Krians’ subterranean vault. It is a sentient virus that decimated the Macro Worlds, and the Dragon Quandric had given to them for safekeeping for reasons on which he never elaborated.
- Avril decides she must revitalize her order by both recovering the A Pox, healing Eric, and freeing Celsis Kri from the ice maze in her extra-dimensional prison of Inparadis. And she needs help to do that. Her father, a renowned pyromancer, has the power to do that. But he’s never met her and thought she’d been killed as an infant.
- Corsis as Svithe approaches her and offers to assist her. She reluctantly accepts his offer. They travel on the Ginj Crier to a remote island of Narath in Sufrinzon, but Svithe leaves without warning before they arrive.
- Within his isolated tower, Ashe is moved by Avril’s request and sees this as an opportunity to do something better with his life.
- But before they can depart Narath, Nirva’s forces attack them. Nirva’s consort, Quar Iniv, stabs Avril through the head with her own harm hexed sword, Nixer, which is taken during the fighting. This should have killed her, but her spirit remains tethered to her body. Assassins gravely wound Ashe in the fighting and Nirva’s consort uses Hrolish on him to negate his pyromancy. Ashe uses a sonic weapon to repel his attackers from him. He slides on his back to a secret panel that contains healing sap he burgled from Halonir, which heals him, and also uses the sap to bring Avril back from death’s door. But she’s seemingly comatose. Ashe vows to do whatever he needs to do to help Avril.
- He enlists the aid of a Sphinx acquaintances, Ramansa and Solneena, in the Underguild’s Cosm pico realm. They inform him that the only way to bring Avril back from her inert state is to recover her Harm Hexed sword from Nirva’s forces. Without his pyromancy, Ashe realizes he must amass a different kind of power if he’s to help his daughter. And one item in particular, an ethereal axe called Retributor will help him greatly in that. He just needs to get Corsis to part with it.
- Avril is not actually comatose. Halonir saved her, but not out of altruism. It wants Ashe to pay for what he did to it, and it plans to use her as leverage against him. Avril must find a way to communicate that she exists as a living ghost, tied to her body and undetectable by those who are alive.
- Ashe finds Corsis in his Lizard guise and agrees to play the archmancer in a chess-like game of Breel with the axe wagered against Ashe’s collection of ethereal items, including the mask he forged from Rithic’s face, his old mentor. Winner take all. Ashe ultimately wins the Breel game and Corsis gives him the axe. Garland, who had witnessed all of this, questions the wisdom of providing such a powerful weapon to Ashe. Corsis can’t argue, but he craves to see what Ashe will do next.
- Ashe convinces Ramansa to add to his power further with a blood transfusion of magic silver liquid derived from Nunaker’s ethereal remains. However, Ramansa has a condition. He has to reclaim the A Pox vial or do whatever he can to stop it if it’s released. He agrees and undergoes the transformation, gaining muscle mass and eerie translucence to show the silver in his veins through his skin on his chest. The axe, while powerful, hasn’t yet adapted to him. He wanted it to duplicate the Harm hex of Avril’s blade to help her, but it hasn’t yet manifested power. He leaves to train with his Murdrake friend, Gnorok, back on the remote island of Narath.
- Avril figures out how to use rudimentary astramancy to enter Solneena’s dream, and the young Sphinx at last perceives her as a living ghost. They also reveal her to Ramansa.
- While training with Gnorok, Ashe realizes he needs to have a detente with Halonir, as any tree limbs in his nearby vicinity reach for him, intending to crush him. He speaks with Halonir’s spirit at a nearby copse of trees and begs to let him help his daughter. Halonir tells him he must repent for the evil he inflicted. The forest will put him on a provisional reprieve from harassment by the woodlands if he convinces ViRauni to leave her forest on the other side of Narath. Her armor’s death energy influence has tainted it. Ashe agrees to the forest’s conditions.
- Ashe and Gnorok reach the center of ViRauni’s forest, where all the woods have wilted. Ashe implores her to depart for the sake of her daughter and to stop the release of the A Pox. After some deliberation, she agrees to leave. With him. She wishes to help him recover her daughter’s sword and the vial containing the fell disease. She takes them through the Shade Lands to Sufrinzon’s Roaq-Alagar super continent, where Nirva has consolidated power in Alagar in the east, and seeks to conquer Roaq in the west. To avoid scrutiny from his enemies, Ashe puts on the ethereal bronze mask. He tells them to call him Repenter when he wears it.
- Ashe and his two friends find their way to a battlefield where they learn that Nirva’s forces have released the A Pox. ViRauni’s death powers can sterilize the immediate area, but she has to kill many others to collect the ethereal energy to do it. Others have joined the assembling force of the Roaq Coalition, designated Brigand Company. It includes Gnorok’s other mercenary comrades: Arwith , Tin Skin, and Thebes. Salatha and Frinton comprise other contingents of the gathering from Darbin. Another uneasy ally also joins them: Frulgrath. He has encountered ViRauni in the past, but neither elaborate on it.
- Ashe and ViRauni leave Gnorok in the rearguard to join an expedition with ViRauni, Arwith, Tin Skin, and Frulgrath. They are protected by shells or other incompatible physiology against the disease. Ashe believes his new silver blood also makes him immune to the virus. He is wrong. The A Pox infects him and whispers incessant taunts in his ear. However, it’s still incubating, and hasn’t yet manifested its telltale black sores.
- He plunges into the battle with hordes of wretches controlled by the A Pox, knowing that he has a limited amount of time to get ViRauni the necessary deaths to reclaim the immediate area. After cleaving through hordes of Nirva’s army, the A Pox manifests in him and it tries to make him its thrall. His axe then adapts to his need and grants him renewed pyromancy powers that he can channel through it. He burns the disease out of his altered body, which makes him keel over with his silver blood bubbling out of every orifice, while ViRauni, Frulgrath, Arwith, and Tin Skin desperately fight to hold their ground where he fell. ViRauni still hasn’t killed enough people to sterilize the A Pox in the local area.
- Avril and the Sphinxes remotely give Ashe a Vigor hex which brings him from the brink of death. Ashe rises and is now truly immune to the A Pox after burning it out of him. He leads Brigand Company in a renewed offensive through the non-infected factions of Nirva’s army until ViRauni at last kills enough to unleash crimson death rays from her dual rings cascading to the horizon. They’ve won the battle. But the A Pox is still out there. They need to kill every last part of the virus. And ViRauni knows of a way to do it. They need to pay a visit to her ex. Durduun, the God of Death.
- Avril and Sphinxes attempt a remote psychic attack on Nirva in the Realm of Thought to get her to relinquish control of the A Pox, but Corsis stops them. He says they broke a Rule of the Game, but he doesn’t elaborate further.
- While Gnorok and the rest of Brigand Company prepare for the worse battle at the foothills of a gargantuan mountain range, ViRauni takes Ashe to the Shade Lands and her old fortress lair. There she reveals she is Mol Granz. He attempts to touch her face with her consent, but his hand passes through her. She cannot touch anything that lives as part of the ViRauni armor’s curse. She uses an old gateway to take them to Durduun’s lair on another remote island of Necron. Durduun gladly meets with them, but insists that they first dine with him before he decides on whether to help them.
- Welt is also present at this meal. He had previously been skulking in transitional scenes with Ramansa, as the two of them figured out alternative plans to deal with the A Pox if Ashe wasn’t able to do it. Welt also knew of Durduun and used a space bend portal to travel to him and parlay.
- Following a tense discussion at a large dinner table, Durduun agrees to help them with a bullet that must be fired into anyone infected with the A Pox, and the Death God’s power will cascade into everything and everyone else with the infection and kill every speck of it.
- Ashe, ViRauni, and Welt return to Gnorok and the others Brigands as the new battle unfolds. Welt fires his pistol into A Pox victim zero at the front of the horde, and all traces of the virus are destroyed within its legions of shuffling wretches, who either flee or keel over. Brigand Company takes the initiative with the disorganized non-infected portions of the army and achieves another victory at the book’s climax.
- The book ends with Ashe heartened that he and his allies have at least taken out the A Pox, but he still needs to recover Avril’s sword. Avril remains a living ghost. And she and the Sphinxes have withdrawn to Ramansa’s private Panic Room pico realm, fearing reprisal following their encounter with Corsis. And Nirva learns fully of the Game from Corsis as Svithe. Her drive to subjugate all of Sufrinzon intensifies.
Want to read more recaps? Tap here for the Book 1.5: Repenter: The Hidden Chapters Recap.
