But there were three of them in that room, and he was alone.
He felt it first as heat.A white coal buried in the small of his back, driving through and out from his belly.The point of a shortsword protruded there.Raw iron, smoking where it burned his flesh and blood.
His legs buckled as he made one more step, one final attempt to strike.Limp-wristed.All his strength and might had bled away.He collapsed.Heard, distantly, over the roaring in his ears and the din of battle, a voice screaming his name.And wondered—for a few slowing heartbeats—what had become of the mother who had given him away.
Virtue in War
YC 1189
The Virtue of Courage demands this—that we stand ever ready to shed blood in defence of mortalkind and the bright future we would build.
Wari the Younger, Pedagogue of the Mortal Church,First Declarations,YC768
‘Llewyn!’the fae girl screamed from the battlement, her voice thunderous, echoing, pealing with a grief that would become unimaginable horror.
History is fickle.Both the truth of it, and its telling.The fog between the present and the past, between memory and the story we tell ourselves, makes difficult an accurate accounting of our choices—to say nothing of an honest one.Time occludes the chain of causality from one moment to the next.It falls to us to explain our world, and ourselves as part of that world, to ourselves.Something that can only be done at the end of the chain.Or in a moment, partway through, of reflection.
Torin would face such a moment as what transpired in Parwys took a sudden, terrible turn.One he ought to have foreseen, perhaps.Poor assumptions, even those made in good faith, can twist our understanding awry.
He would reflect on these things, later, as he fled back to Castle Parwys.
Anwe muttered a curse, glared at Orn—she had been enjoying the duel, but in Torin’s opinion Orn had saved her from an excess of courage—and drove her blade through the thrall’s chest, cutting the last, fraying thread of his life.
Beyond the shattered window, the fae girl collapsed to her knees.Her voice split, became as two voices screaming at once.One the girl’s, full of pain.The second deeper, bestial, rasping, like the cry of a raven.That scream became a wind that roared out from her, tearing tiles from the rooftop.Above her the clouds turned black, as though dipped in ink, and a great eye, as yellow as the harvest moon, opened.
Animal terror scoured away any satisfaction Torin might have felt in victory.Anwe’s grin nearly split her face.
‘Here we are, at last,’ she snarled, tearing her sword from the dead thrall.‘Let’s get this done and leave this backward bloody place behind.’
The girl staggered to her feet as Anwe ducked through the ruined window.Her eyes burned like pale stars, feverish and jaundiced.Their pupils, as black as night, fixed on Anwe.
YOU.
The voice issued from the air, from the wind itself.
YOU HAVE TAKEN EVERYTHING.
The girl stepped forward and stretched out a thin, pale arm.A boy with goat’s horns appeared on the battlement behind her, a gleaming sword in his hand.He shouted something incomprehensible, drowned as it was by the howl of the wind.
Anwe took another stride, raising her sword.The wind pushed against her.Her tabard whipped about her frame.The cloth gathered and scrunched, as though seized by an invisible hand.
A hand that became visible, coalescing from the air, formed of bones black as deepest shadow.
‘Anwe, run!’Orn screamed, and dashed forward, his sword held ready.
Another hand appeared, caught the young Knight of Stillness by the throat, and twisted.
Armour of raw iron should have protected him.The invocation of the Agion should have been his shield.It had been, before, when last he had confronted these fae devils—or so Torin had believed.Or perhaps that had been a mercy.One no longer extended.
Orn’s legs gave out and he fell.All his budding virtue, all his strength of character, amounted to nothing.His spine unfurled, stretching to the fullness of its length.He lay there, a serpentine mockery of the young man he had been, neck bruised, eyes bulging.
Anwe froze on the rooftop, her sword poised and dripping viscous blood.The hands pulled at her, seeking purchase to make of her what they had of Orn.Her eyes rolled, trying to follow the movements of the wraiths.She roared and lashed out wildly as terror overwhelmed her—her bravado breaking against horror.
Torin stepped through the window, keeping wide of her flailing blade, and stretched out his own hand.He screamed the Invocation of Raj.Justice burned at his fingertips and reached for the fae girl.
Something struck between his wrist and elbow.The force of it numbed the arm, the shoulder, half his torso, and shattered his concentration.There was no pain, at first.Only surprise.Until he looked at the wound and saw the shaft of an arrow as thick as two fingers, its head nearly as wide as his hand.One of the bones of his arm had been shattered.Splinters of it lay in the pooling blood at his feet.The arm itself dangled, half-severed, useless.
And then the pain flowed in.
