Within the swirling Mist (IC) > Biographies
Outsider - Zachary Dalensbane.
Nemesis 24:
The camp was quiet.
Never silent. The Vistani who lived there were never completely at rest, as it were. Though they spoke in measured tones, their voices carried, as though to let one know that this was, indeed, a place for living, banishing the mists that surrounded them with song, laughter and conversation, as much as a ward against that which lurked as the flames. The tent they had set at a respectful distance for paying travellers hung just at the edge of their firelight, and it was here that a man sat. With one leg bent and being used as rest for his notebook, into which he wrote by the light of a single oil lantern.
He was tall, but not unnaturally so, and his armoured frame bespoke a customisation to the use of metal in both war and in everyday life, hardened by its use and by circumstances. And yet his expression was open, his brow furrowed in concentration of both habit and memory, as he cast pencil to worn, dog eared page, the faded parchment of each page rough and crude, the leather encasing them well worn and faded, stained by sweat, weather, and a firm grip.
The light from the lantern cast a shadow upon his features nevertheless. Having sat himself in such a way as to gain the most light from its feeble glare, it cast an obscuring shade upon his own visage, making his countenance indistinct and threatening – the jaw hard and strong, and villainously marked with stubble from a lack of shaving for several days. The dark blonde hair messy and ragged as it fell here and there, tousled by the rigors of living a life from day to day without a solid point to call home. But though his mouth was turned into a firm, downturned line, the eyes were a dark but honest blue, and to even the most casual of glances, somehow innocent. They were concentrating on the page, observing each letter as it was painstakingly formed, written with the precision of someone who, while skilled enough to form their lettering correctly and fluently, lacked the expertise to do so with speed, and thus, turned towards doing so with care rather than with haste.
Zachary, for that was his name to the few that knew him, wrote slowly. Much of it was simply notes, annotations of simple drawings. Maps of roads, of streets. Things to look for, to avoid. And sometimes drawings fantastical and terrible, though crude and with simple, small notes – usually along the lines of a mark at a certain point and the annotation that this, perhaps, was a weak point – and a target. But for now he turned a page, blank, unadorned and awaiting the touch of the pencil – barely a stub left by this point – and paused.
Finally he frowned, and then, began slowly, to write. To gather thoughts to page and to turn the events he’d endured into some manner of sanity, rather than the chaos that collected and sprawled across his consciousness. To make sense of it all, one word at a time.
It has been a month, more or less, since as the people here say, the Mists took me. And still I wonder as to the meaning of it. The purpose of it, and all of this place, a mystery I cannot understand. And least of all, my place in it.
I am weaker here. The surety that drove my arm has faded in light of these events, and my strength waned. When I first woke up, in the field surrounded by the shadows of the evening, my first realisation was that the world smelled different to what it was before – the air thicker, and colder. Bringing with it the faintest scents of things long dead, masked over by spices and dew upon grass. But I can still taste it on my tongue, every day and every night. A mask lies upon this land, obscuring so much from me that I fear I should be never able to understand, and in truth, with what I have seen thus far, I am not sure I wish to.
It has been difficult to hold on to myself, at times. This place is not my home and is far from being like it, but it holds enough similarities as to create a sense of unease. At times I encounter something that makes sense, that feels like something I know, until it changes in just the right way to make me realise that is not what I know and never will be. The people are like that too. I speak to them, and our conversation is oft times pleasant, teaching me and instructing me upon matters to be aware of in this dangerous land, but then a question or thought arises, and I realise that in many ways, if not every way, my way of thought and life is not at all conducive with their own.
It is a jarring experience, each and every time, and each makes me feel ever more alone in this place. I have not known such solitude since- and here a pause, a momentary break, where the eyes drifted, and the hand that held the pen tightened somewhat, before pushing on – that first day, that set me upon the path I walk now.
Again a pause, as the young man shifted, his armour clinking in the gloom of the tent, muffled by the cushions propping him up. The chill was creeping in, even as a loud raucous laugh echoed from the camp. Wrapping his cloak a little tighter around himself, he continued on.
I have asked many questions. I have countless more, but I grow wary, lest those who have been kind enough to answer them grow weary both of them and of me. My skill with sword and shield is still lacking, and my training has, at times, felt like it has abandoned me. I have been supported by people kind enough to give me both guidance and instruction, but as has been made abundantly clear to me in recent days, I am not their friend. I will never be – not as I am, an outsider, in both fact and behaviour. My beliefs are not as others believe. My hopes are not as others hope. In a land where survival is a thing of day to day, and tragedy lurks in shadows overhead every soul I yet meet, there is no time nor inclination to assuage my fears and console my doubts. And, in truth, there should not be. I did not choose this path because it was easy.
[/b]
It occurs to me, as it has before, that this is my test. I am not so blinded by arrogance as to believe my presence here is to change things in this land. It has a darkness that is not just pervasive, but nigh absolute, and each night here is darker than any I have ever known in the world I knew before this. I could not turn this tide, as much as I might wish otherwise – but long it has been since I learned that wishes do not change the world. Only action. Only deeds. And I can but hope that some small measure of mine might make a difference here. Not to change the world, but to in some way make the lives of those who live here a bit easier. There are families here. Good people who persevere even if favour does not shine on them. People who have faced adversity and fear with all their lives and pushed on. How could I not do as they do? How could I not offer what help I could to those that endure such hardship? Here I stand, here and now, and never shall I come this way again. But while I stand here, I shall stand as straight as I am able, and I will lend my hand and my will to those that need it. Without reservation. Without pause. And though it will cost me my life, I will offer it up if it means one more step upon the right path.
For that is my burden. That is my test. That is my admonition. For I lived, when I should not have. And though it will be fraught with pain as I have not yet known, I shall endure it.
Another pause, as the pencil paused on the page once again. Then, carried on.
My teachers words become my own, so it seems. But then, still if their lessons were ones I heeded so well because I already knew them in my heart, or if because they were the finest such imparters of knowledge I had known. Mayhap a little of both. But I am reminded of words spoken to me by them, by a man who had much reason to listen to them. That we are not what we are born as, nor are we what we say we are, or described to be. We are who we choose to be, and who we choose to be is by our actions dictated. And so, even though this land is strange to me, even though I stand in solitude within it, an outsider and never a part of it, it is of no moment. I am not here to be a part of it.
I am here to make a difference in it.
The oil lamp was burning low. Rather than refilling it, the young man gazed up at the flames for a long moment, his expression hard to read. The writing may have helped him, it may not have. It was hard to tell, but in any case, he was done with it. And thus, with a faint wince, barely noticeable, he released the pencil from tightly clenched fingers, and taking the book, closed it firmly and putting it back in his small pack and wrapping his cloak in tight around him – sword and shield, as always, close at hand – he closed his eyes, and sought once more the troubled embrace of sleep.
Nemesis 24:
This place is starting to affect me more than I might like. Each step I take forward is dragged back by weights at my feet that I cannot free myself from, like chains around my ankles, rooted to the rock of the world and pulling me into an abyss. And I have but begun to face the difficulties this place has to offer.
Tired. That is how I feel. This place is burning away at me. It is difficult to put into words, but I feel circumstances eating at me and I am frustrated by my inability to change them. My place, and my position, demands compromise, and the tenants of what I belief espouse diplomacy, understanding, and forgiveness. It was easier to believe, and to understand, before I came here.
Each time I see something that violates the very fabric of what I believe, I cannot help but feel a surge of anger well in me, a demand that I act, that I stop it, that I defy it. But each time I try to temper it. I must. If I strike without knowing, without fully understanding, I am no better than those who presume to know, who believe their actions justified not because they are right, but because they are the ones who do it. I do not want to be like that. I must not be. I can see how an individual would turn to it however. It is difficult to withstand the mockery – my life is a point of amusement to most. The ridiculous outlander, without clue as to how things actually are, trying to make a difference, and failing utterly. A joke.
It makes me angry at first. Angry not at them, but at myself. I need to try harder. I must. If I am to make the difference I am determined to do, then I must learn to be better. As it stands, I am less than nothing. I am well aware of this. It does not sit well with me.
When I tried to help the lady Eleora, all my efforts failed. The curse upon her would not be lifted. I offered what comfort I could, helped her with her whatever means I had at my disposal. In the end, a madwoman gave up her soul – and almost included all of us with her wretched madness – to a fiend, blind to any and all demands that she cease. Defied it, we did, but in the end it meant little. The Halfling girl was cured, but at what cost? What evil did it create, and what will we have to face?
And then there is Marlo.
I do not begin to understand Marlo. But I am trying, and in my efforts hope to steer him in a different direction. But his reluctance to even consider such a proposal means I fear we are doomed to be on opposite sides. And after his actions of late? I should send him to judgement. I should. But I will at least give him a chance. Everyone deserves a second chance. Except, perhaps, for me.
Valenya.
Even now her pendant, her sign of her faith which she chose to surrender, lies around my neck, with all else that I treasure, that I hold for another.. Even now, I doubt and question what I should have done. Should I have given her false hope? Should have I have let her feel that something would come of our friendship? Should I have been as cruel as I was in trying to stop her affections before they began, and thus taken away all the hope she had?
I was cruel. But it was one cruelty or the other. It is not that I do not care for her. She is, like very few I have met here, a good person with a fine heart. And I was the one to finally break it. But what choice did I have?
I had no choice. I am not ready to move on. It is weak, and it is painful, and every time I dream of that which I lost I wake up and I feel like I have broken all over again. And every time I see Valenya she looks at me with contempt. She believed I was everything I wish I could be, but know I am not. I am not strong enough. I do not think I ever will be. And every choice I make, every compromise I make, her judgement of me grows, along with her contempt.
I do care for her. She believes I will forget her, that I already have. But she is wrong. I will give her back this pendant one day. One way or another it will go back to her, when she either asks for it or believes she is ready for it. I hold it only until she desires it back.
And yet it feels like a millstone around my neck. One more memory of failure, pulling me down to the cold earth.
No, I must not give in. This is surrendering to despair. I know it well enough to know it is not my friend and never will be.
I have to keep going. There is nothing behind me but my failure. One day I will be strong enough to bear these burdens. I have to be. There are so many here, that need someone to help them. So many who need someone to help them carry what they bear. I would not be so arrogant, so ego driven to believe that no one else but I can help them - I am not nearly strong enough to do anything close to that. But I can do something, and because I can, I must. It is what I am. It is who I am.
This is not the end. It is but the path. I must learn to keep my feet to it – and not stumble.
But I wish she did not despise me.
Nemesis 24:
So much has changed since last I wrote in this diary. I forgot the purpose of it after the world turned around on me, and became something I did not recognise. Things were chaotic, for the longest time. Until I forced myself to learn what mattered once again – but not without help.
I’ve made many mistakes leading up to this moment. Perhaps it is my nature to continually stumble and make errors. Perhaps it is my burden to hope – to believe – that people can be better. So I put my trust in those that others advise me to avoid. And I have paid for it, in doubt and in pain. But I would not change my steps - not now. Not even though I stand alone and the one I thought I loved has left me, even as I tend to the sapling that she inspired me to grow. Not even though I stand with companions, but without friends. I am, in this place, even as I shall one day finally die. Forgotten and alone.
Each day I wake with that realisation. Each time I do I feel a little colder within my heart. But though I am haunted by despair I will not give in to it. There is too much that needs to be done. There are just too many I need to help. Even if I fail so many of them.
Henri. One more light that withered in the dark, that I could do nothing to help. Nothing of any meaning anyway.
Henri. You were a good man. A brave man. Unhindered by the fears and the doubts that plague one such as me, and stoic in the face of your burdens. You deserved better than the end you found. You deserved to have a friend who could have helped you. You listened to me in my doubt, but in the end all I had to offer you were but words. And they could not save you. I wonder now if they could save anyone. If they are nothing more than empty motes upon the air, drowned out in the tumult. Lost in the great roaring of the abyss that yawns perpetual beneath the feet of everyone who dwells here, so much so that it makes all of us blind to all else but that awful realisation of what awaits us all.
The life I lead is chaotic here, and far more violent than I would like. People commit horrific acts around me and are contemptuous of efforts made to stop them. The authorities act either corruptly or violently, perpetuating the cycle of hatred and pain. There are no shining lights, no bright beacons of hope. Those that try to shine outwards flicker and fail as the darkness that surrounds them swallows them up.
I keep finding myself caught up in the struggle, and forced to make choices that I cannot reconcile myself towards. I’m forced to turn to my sword time and time again, rather than words, even if those words are in the end meaningless. I cannot sit and try and talk to the people who struggle desperately to simply survive, to try and offer them some measure of an alternative. And even if I did, for the most part they would laugh in my face and call me a naive, stupid fool, as they stand so blinded by bloodshed that they cannot see how deeply they are caught in the mire of their own making.
I find my heart turns to anger quicker than it ever has before. I see the betrayals, the violence, the callous disregard for others and my heart, my blood burns with the weight of my own shame that I cannot change it. I feel torn between trying to stop the cycle of violence and diving into it, to drown myself in the tide of bloodshed so I might no longer suffer the agony of not knowing what choice is right.
Either that, or throw my life away in a helpless, futile struggle against a foe I cannot overcome, a gesture that gives nothing except my foes an opportunity to mock my foolishness – and yet, I feel in my heart it is what I should do at times, even if it is my death to do so. I’ve allowed myself to be talked out of such a reckless action more than once. It would be pointless, wasteful, and change nothing. But it is also cowardice to stand by and do nothing. The shame of it gnaws at my soul, and tells me, time and time again, that I simply play at what I claim to be. That I am nothing more than a failure masquerading as a man of faith.
And yet despite it all, despite every despair that claws at my soul, there is hope. And it is this hope that I cling to. Not a hope of my faith, of my God who I cannot hear in this awful place, though I still hold to his message. No, this is a hope borne of people. Some of whom are rough around the edges, some of whom are judged unfairly for what has happened to them in their lives. But despite that judgement and that cruelty, they strive ever onwards. And not just to simply survive, either.
The Silver Wardens, though I fear they may have become a target for threats beyond them, is one such group of individuals. Fellow warriors of faith from my homeland, though I do not deign myself worthy of their number after all I’ve been through. But I worry for them – I know many things I should tell them, but I hesitate to do so, for fear of damaging their zeal and bravery with the awful knowledge of the truth.
Despite that, they took into their group a brave young caliban called Razvan – a man whom I would like to speak to again. His example, of being more than what he was born to be, is what I have fought and yearned to see in this blackened land. He’s braver and perhaps more important than he realises, and I would help him in his trials if I could. I am not yet sure as to his motivations - what drives him to be who he is, one who would give of himself to others, even if they despise him for it – but he may well be the first snowflakes that cause an avalanche.
And then there is Monica.
We’ve had our differences, she and I. Many of them. And to call her rough around the edges is an almost terminal understatement. She’s made enemies and foes and caused immense damage to many. A time there was when she’d have cut me in half, and she may well do so yet.
But she is also a mother to a child who was taken from her. She has suffered more horrible acts of cruelty than anyone could ever deserve. That she is who she is, after all she has gone through, and is still unbowed is a testament to her strength, and her bravery, that goes above and beyond that of nearly any other. When I remember how I have behaved to her in the past, how I have spoken to her, I am ashamed. Through her actions she may indeed be judged, but the things done to her that created those actions could perhaps have created no one else.
Monica Belmonte is a personification as much as she is a person. She is a symbol of what this awful place does to people. How it preys upon the heart and twists it, turns it to towards terrible ends, and torments you for it, giving you impossible choices and cruelly punishing you for choosing wrong when there was no way of choosing right. I wish I could help her more. I wish I could talk to her, but words are cheap in her case, and with good reason. What good would words be now, after all she’s gone through? What words would change her heart, or more importantly, give it a measure of peace? I doubt that there is any combination in any context that could do so, and offer her solace. Despite that, I wish I knew them.
I held her daughter, missing an arm, small and silent and removed from herself, as Monica stormed Krofburg and returned a mothers wrath on those who had maimed the daughter she had struggled for years to find. A child who seems so lost from life that she may never find it again. I could not condone her actions in that place, but I understood them. As I looked into that child’s eyes – dull, not reflecting the fire that burned the Bellegarde building – I saw a reflection of what this place is, and what it does to people like Monica. Like Henri. Like Razvan. Like me.
We are, all of us, the enduring. We break and are broken. And yet we endure. Though the shards of ourselves grind against one another, though the weight of our failures turns our bones to shattered splinters and our hearts to the sorrow of regret, we shall endure. For to live is to endure, to strive, to find a way, and though this place seeks to rob us of all our ways that we can do that, we will find a way to do so, all of us. We, each of us, have lost something. Some of us have lost things that are beyond what others can bear, like Monica has. But it is by their example of pushing ever onwards that we ourselves can push on. We are all of us in this together.
I want to help these people more. I want my life and inevitable ending to mean something to someone, to help someone else in their struggle onwards. I hope that in my life I can help others endure. And I hope that in my death, that though it may be standing alone and bereft, that it will not be unwitnessed.
Ilmater, please hear me. Please. Hear this one prayer, among all the others, this one plea that I have in this dark, cold place.
Let me leave this land a little brighter, a little better, than I found it. Let my life mean that much.
It will be enough.
Nemesis 24:
//This one got away from me, but it was one I think that needed telling. So here it is.
The sewer was dark, and quiet, and cold. There was not much to hear, save the steady drip of water on stone, the gurgle of refuse and filth ridden water, and the chattering call of the rats that scurried and crawled through the refuse and foulness, looking for the next meal and avoiding becoming one.
And amidst that dark, slumped face down, was a figure, barely seen in the shadows, save for the glimmer of light that danced off the dank stones.
He was still, his armoured frame almost unnoticeable in the near total gloom. A sword lay at his side, fallen and neglected, and at his other flank a shield. One hand was outstretched, the fingers slightly curled, the face resting against the cold, grimy stone, blue eyes staring at nothing. Reaching out to yesterday, and before that to another life and another world, even as blood pooled beneath him to the floor. The dark ooze spreading like oil over the stones, gleaming black in the darkness, breath coming slower than the laboured heartbeat that beat in ears with the force of a desperate drum, echoing through the world and making the world listen to the power of its beat.
The bright blue eyes, vague and staring as the rats rustled in the dark, blinked once. Slow as the world turning, ending the universe in darkness and bringing it back again with infinite beauty, every glint of light on wet stone a star dying and being born again.
The world changes when you are bleeding to death. Zachary had been here before, and in an abstract fashion he marvelled on the similarity. The first time he'd been laying just like this, except the wounds were in his side and his chest, not his throat. Dagger blade and arrows, not a pair of slender sharp fangs, girded by bright red lips. But it was with an almost clinical air that he took in the similarities. Just like that time in the muddy road, the world dropped away and became distant, absent. Back then, he couldn't hear the crude laughter, or the screams of the merchants wife. He could not feel pain either, a fact he'd marvelled over when a booted foot caught him solidly in the side. He could observe things with stark clarity but not understand them. Back then it had been the charging horsemen who came to save him and those he himself had tried to save. This time it was the rats who nipped in a testing manner at his armoured hand, shying at the metal beneath their gnawing teeth. Vaguely he understood he was dying, in this dark place without hope and with nothing but the rats to
keep him company. No one was coming to save the fool that'd had believed in hope and trust in this ghastly place.
A cold place. A dark place. Alone. Just as he'd told himself he would die, so it had come to pass at last.
In a way it was a relief. The tension flowed out of him even as his blood did, the flow warming his cheek.
He closed his eyes slowly. And just like always, she was there again.
Starkly beautiful, with a hint of mischief. Bright green eyes and dark black hair, lustrous as night and an invitation in every errant curl. A smile that cut right through you and left you wondering, hoping, but never knowing. A heart that had been so great it had reached out and swallowed him whole, and left him complete thereafter. Sara'lissa. His wife, if only for a moment. A moment, but it was worth it all for that one instant.
Dying in the dark, his eyes closed and afraid to open again, Zachary let go of the world, and faded into memory.
'Now remember, my son. This is the baron's house. We are here by invitation, but that does not mean we have the right to misbehave in his presence. You won't do anything to embarrass me, will you?'
Zachary's father loomed over him, titanic and tall. The small boy stared up at the figure as they stepped off the simple carriage that they'd taken to get to the grand seeming house. Mighty and imposing, it reared up even more terrible than his father, but the seven year old boy looked up to that towering figure and simply nodded shyly. And then the big man had relented, and ruffled his son's sandy coloured hair with one huge callused hand, and everything was all right again.
Even at such a young age, Zachary could see his father was nervous. And why would he not be? The baron was the most powerful man in the lands hereabouts, and owned nearly all of it besides. The Grey Vales were his domain, but truth be told he was a fair man to his subjects. Especially Callum Dalensbane, a man well respected by his peers and neighbours. Zachary often wondered why men would tip their brow to his father, and buy him drinks when he stopped by the local inn to chat, and what the fine sword above the fireplace back home was there for. He wasn't a noble, that much was clear. A strong man, and a brave one, and a fine father and farmer. But to Zachary, he was simply Da, and the stern eyed woman at his side who smiled secretly and seemingly only for him was Ma. While there were questions aplenty, those two facts were the ones that he was most sure of, and that knowledge was a great comfort to him.
But today was a special day, and so they'd come to the manor. And though they'd dressed in their best, it was surely not enough. Even the footman that came to the door made the trio who'd come to the door seem out of place. Trying not to stare, the child Zachary gawked regardless at the fine stone and woodwork of the manor, even as the footman, affronted that this peasant family had not chosen the tradesman entrance, were escorted through the halls, to the rear gardens of the house, where the slightly built baron had greeted Zachary's father as an old friend, clasping his hand warmly, and gesturing for the pair of them to sit.
Zachary could scarce pay attention to it. The baron asked questions, a great many of them, and Zachary's father answered them, each time carefully deliberating over the questions before answering, even as young Zachary fidgeted, struggling with words and conversations he did not understand. Sometimes his mother spoke as well, her voice firm as she spoke of such vague things as tribes in the mountains and forests, and the state of the fields. Seeing the child was restless, he was eventually permitted to wander free - but not too far, and not beyond the sound of the voice of his parents.
But, children being what they are, and the wonders of that garden being what they were, young Zachary found himself wandering a bit further afield than he should have done, and so it was that he came at last to the spreading oak tree which would change his life forever. The tree was a magnificent specimen, tall and widespread, reaching as far into the earth as above it. It shaded a vast amount of ground, standing splendid and alone with a summer foliage of rich, dark green, and it was to this tree that Zachary felt himself drawn, to stand in the cool dark shade it offered, and in so doing become a perfectly positioned target.
She announced her presence in a manner that would become customary, but he remembered that first time. The unexpected thunk and sting of an acorn, hurled with skill and precision, catching him just behind the ear. It made him yelp, in a thoroughly undignified way, and he turned, mystified, and seeing nothing. The entire matter was nearly a mystery to him, until a soft giggle above caused him to raise his head.
She was no older than he was. Free as a bird amongst the tree despite her undoubtedly fine clothing, seated demurely upon a branch like it was a throne, idly tossing a second acorn up and down with a thoughtful air. She grinned at him, green eyes sparkling through a mess of raven dark hair, then drew herself up like a queen, and spoke in an imperious tone.
'Who comes to my kingdom? Hmm? You there! Are you friend or foe? Speak up!'
Her voice rang through the midday air, as he blinked in surprise. And then, surprising himself most of all, he spoke without his voice shaking. 'I'm Zachary, miss. I'm no one's foe.'
She grinned then, and sprang to her feet easily, one hand holding on to a branch to steady herself as she gazed down at him. 'Defeated them all have you? You must be a knight.'
He swallowed, his gaze lowering. 'I'm no knight miss.' He sounded embarrassed and a bit lost, and a bit confused. This girl was fierce, and strong, and fearless. He'd met few other children in his life, with life on the farm and no brothers or sisters, but this one was different.
She made a fairly undignified but still dainty huff, and stamped her foot. 'That's no good. All brave men are supposed to be knights.'
His gaze looked back up to her, his voice as puzzled as his expression. 'Brave? How would I know if I'm brave?'
She tossed her acorn up and down a few more times as her face scrunched up to consider it for a few long moments, then she grinned again, quick and swift and razor sharp. 'Can you climb trees?'
He swallowed, and shook his head. 'No. I mean... ' He trailed off, awkwardly. Truth be told, he had once, two years ago, and broken his arm. After that he'd been forbidden.
She laughed then, and nodded firmly, before speaking once again in a ringing tone. 'If you can climb up after me and reach me, I'll give you this!' And with that she waved the acorn she carried like a precious jewel. 'And then you can be my knight, and everyone will have to call you sir. What do you think of that?'
He swallowed, looking down, and fidgeted, staring at his feet, unable to answer. The admonition if he was caught rung heavily in his mind, until her voice, considerably softer, drifted down to him.
'Hey there.' He looked up again, nervous, but that tension faded as he caught the slight smile on her face. 'You can do it. I know you can.' And then she grinned wide again, and scampered up through the branches into the depths of the tree, nimble as a squirrel.
It was a simple phrase. A gentle encouragement. And before he knew it he was climbing that sturdy trunk, pulling himself up hand over foot, slipping but never letting go, pulling himself up into the dark green depths, until he found her, seated sedately on a huge flat branch, with the sun shining upon her through a break in the branches. A queen she was there, in her little court. She had grinned that brilliant grin, given him his acorn, and told him her name.
And that was how he met Sara'lissa. And though if someone had told him, then and there, that his heart would never know peace again for as long as he lived, he would never have done any different in that moment or all the moments after.
The world turned, and things within it changed as the press of time bore upon them, inevitable. And so Zachary and Sara'lissa grew.
Chance and circumstance made their paths cross, again and again, as the years went by. Each of them happening to bump into the other and then, when that was not enough, seeking each other out, by means of boldness and subterfuge. And so it was that she became his first teacher. She taught him her lessons after she herself had memorised them - tales of history and legend, how to read and to write. And he wondered constantly what she saw in him, a country boy without a title. And ever she had laughed when he asked, and bade him remember the acorn with which she had made him her knight. And he had grinned and bowed to the Queen in Green, and she would look for an acorn to throw at him.
The world had darkened then, turned to shadow. For one evening, as the skies were filled with storm and fury, the carriage upon which the parents of Zachary rode was swept from a high mountain pass by falling stone, and though they had promised otherwise, they never returned home again. And thus at the age of fourteen, Zachary was alone in the world, with a farm to look after that he was not able to manage in his grief.
Sara'lissa, or Sara as she preferred to be called, was there that very day. She ignored the protests of her father, the surprised looks it earned them, as she simply moved in. Zachary had not argued. He did not know how to, at that point. His parents were gone and he did, for a while, forget how to function, how to think, as he was buried in his grief. But, in time, he learned. He remembered. And so it was that the farmers son and the barons daughter shared a roof, despite all efforts to change it.
To this day, Zachary did not know how she managed it. At age fourteen, she was able to outmanoeuvre the wishes of her father, avoid his efforts to bring her home, and finally convince him to let her remain. And though she continued her studies, she remained with her friend, as he buried his parents and tried to remember all his father had taught him, while trying not to remember what he had sounded and looked like as he had done so.
She was sixteen when she made at last, her demand. Fire had filled her eyes and the wind had risen at the sound of her voice, as she demanded, nay, ordered the young man to ask for her hand, lest she strike him down in wrath and depart forevermore. And at last his eyes had opened and he realised what she had known for so long already - that the sweet affection between them had become so much more, despite his inability to see it. A nobleborn and a commoner? Not unheard of, but he would never have imagined it. And in that moment, he knew he did indeed love her, and always had. From the first moment to this one, and all the moments after. Who could he love but her? How could he, when she had taken his heart when she had taken his service? The acorn knight, and the lady of green fire they called each other. And now they would call each other beloved, as he made his pledge to her, and she had for once been unable to tease him - and with eyes full of tears and a grin full of love, she had accepted.
Despite his blindness in seeing it, once it was known, Zachary still acted with dignity. And so he had gone to the baron, who by this point despaired to ever see his daughter again and feared her lost. With all the skill he could muster, Zachary begged his suit, and the baron relented, on one condition - that they were to each wait until they were eighteen years of age, at which point he would permit them to wed, if they still loved one another.
It was a long two years to wait. And though temptation had called to them time and again, they had resisted. Knowing a child born out of wedlock would disgrace them both, they had both of them checked their hearts, but it was, despite all that, a very, very long two years. But they held true and to each other, and though they might have yelled at each other from time to time, though there was frustration, there's was a love too great to shake loose, and they had been through too much already. They were friends before they were lovers, and friends after, and then even as before, they were there for each other, through thick and thin, and grew all the stronger for it. And time passed, and grew easier, and the promise of fulfilment drew near, where they could be together at last.
Fate however, is not always as kind as we deserve.
Her birthday was not yet a week away when it happened.
The disease had struck the lands a month ago. Savage and sudden, it had raged through town, infecting with but a touch it seemed, dreadfully potent. Ravaging the body, weakening it, wasting it away until it failed, burning the flesh with fever that raged unabated and swift.
She was in the garden, and he was watching from the window as she suddenly stopped, and stumbled, on her way to the well. And then fell, even as the pan he'd been cleaning was ringing on the floor where he'd dropped it.
The disease had torn into her. Burned her skin like fire, drenched her in sweat and ice, turned her eyes sightless and staring as fever became delirium. And even as Zachary began to feel the first flickering of the ache of the disease himself, he had not left her side nor slept. He remained, cooling her brow where he could, holding her hand when she struggled, letting her know he was there, and that nothing could pull him away from her. And still she slipped, the disease determined, relentless, though no one could have fought any harder, as each of them clung to the other, in the hope of that which they'd dreamed of for so long.
Most people succumbed by the second day of the fever. A rare few made it as far as the third. Sara'lissa lived for five.
Zachary would always remember the fifth day. Perfectly, as though it were carved from crystal and preserved for all time, unchanged, unchangeable. The way that the sun streamed through the small, coloured glass window beside the bed, the room sweet with the smell of dried lavender, that only barely managed to mask the sour scent of rank sweat beneath it. How the room was silent, without any wind to stir it, as the world hung still for that moment.
He was shivering, and the lights were so bright that they hurt his eyes. And yet despite the ache and the chill, his body was burning up, his joints aching and his heart stuttering in his chest. And then he looked to her, even as she opened her eyes and for the first time since the second day, she saw him.
It stopped him, then and there, cold and shaken. It cut through all his illness and held him, a sign from heaven and whatever Gods might be watching. That clear eyed gaze, and with it, that gentle smile. The fierceness was gone from it, the fire and strength and passion - it was a tired smile, a soothing smile, that reached out and kissed his soul and held him close even as he held her hand. She looked perfect. The sickness, the disease, all of it and all the ravaging it had made of her body and spirit left her in that moment, leaving her glowing in the light of the rising sun, perfect beyond words. She squeezed his hand, and spoke to him then, in a voice that was a barest whisper, the words that broke his heart even as it swelled, the jagged pieces of it cutting into his chest, a pain into his very soul.
'Marry me, Zachary. Make me your wife.' Her hand squeezed his. 'Please.'
The swelling agony in his chest reached his dry, aching throat, and took his words with it. What could he have said? What could any have said, in that moment, in that place, to those words, feeling what they felt, as those two did? And so he nodded. And so he kissed her brow. And so he brought forth the plain steel rings of his mother and father, and found his voice again to make his vow to her.
They were words for her, and no other. Words that showed her what she meant to him - all the world, and all the things beyond it. Words that would have broken heaven and rebuilt it greater than before. Simple words, but delivered with the honest heart of a loving man, even as he placed the ring on her finger with gentle care, his fingers barely trembling. As he did so, she gently returned her vow to him, words that bound him with fire, even as her ring made its way onto his finger in kind.
'For all our lives, and for the next.' They spoke together at the end, even as she closed her eyes, her expression one of gentle joy, blissful, and at peace. And in that moment, he lowered his lips to hers, and as husband and wife, they at last kissed.
When he at last raised his lips away, she was gone.
The memory from that moment was a fractured thing. He remembered sitting numbly. The disease that had taken her life now began to overwhelm his own, and his time running out with it. And so it was that he'd first cleaned the room. Removing the dirty sheets and setting new ones, making sure Sara was comfortable. And then he had sat with her, as her pale features had remained still, and though his body screamed at him in the midst of the disease, he paid it no heed.
He did not remember when he started to prepare it, but he remembered the fire. The lantern oil that he'd splashed on the walls and floors. How he'd surrounded her bed in logs and laid the dried lavender about her. How he'd dropped the brand and walked clear of the house through the flames themselves as the fire swelled and roared, hearing nothing but the same dull buzzing sound that he'd been hearing since she'd been taken away.
He'd stumbled, even as the house blazed, burning, destroying her body and all the hopes and dreams he'd ever dared to have. And so, crawling beneath the oak tree he'd planted with that very first acorn atop the hill outside his home, Zachary had curled up on the ground and waited to die.
'But you did not die Zachary. Not then. Nor after, when you tried to save the merchant, though you were weak. Nor after again, when through that deed the order took you in and broke you, to remake you, again and again and again. And nor after again, when the mist took you from all you knew and have ever known. You did not die when you came to this place. What has changed?'
The voice was soft, and gentle, and it dragged the world back into focus. A world that wasn't the one of memory but not the one where he was bleeding to death either - but it was closer to that than the former. He was still laying on the ground, still bleeding, in this moment between moments. In that instant of clear focus, he saw that despite the eternity of remembering a lifetime lived, not a heartbeat had yet passed.
His gaze tilted upwards then. And there she was. There and not there, a memory and a vision. Knelt beside him, Sara smiled at him, her smile tinged with sorrow and pity.
She was not really there. He knew it. He had to know it. She had died and he had burned her to ashes after. Her ring of blackened steel hung around his neck along with his own. And yet his heart wrenched inside his chest to see her now.
His ruined throat worked, then spasmed, as he tried to speak, finally forcing the words out in anguish. 'I am... so tired, Sara. I keep hoping... I keep trying... and it seems so... so...' The words finally failed him, his voice dull in his own head. The world grew dark once more. The chill of the sewer stones, the lost blood, started crawling back as the blackness slithered back in and became overwhelming.
And then her hand took his, gently, and in that moment everything cleared again, a light returned, as he opened his eyes once more, and looked up, even as she smiled and wept and he wept with her.
'You can do it.' So long ago. The Lady in Green and the Acorn Knight, in the court of the tree. 'I know you can.'
And then she was gone.
His hand reached, desperately, fast as a striking snake and closed around a fury body that spasmed in terror before that armoured hand crushed inwards and broke its neck with a muffled high pitched squeak. Zachary stared at the rat he held, then tossed it away even as the other rats scattered at the sight of one of their fellows being killed by what they thought to be a meal.
His hand moved then, and clinked against a bottle in the gloom. Grasping it, he stared at it dumbly, still laying on his side. Even in that dim light, he could see it glowed faintly green. He didn't remember leaving it there. The bottle itself was unfamiliar.
Dumbly, he realised he was still bleeding, the torn wound in his throat still oozing blood to the floor and down his body. Had she left it for him? He remembered, before the... attack. She had asked him, no, had begged in a voice near to tears, not to hate her.
He moved. Like a mountain rising from the firmament. A storm gathering at sea with the wrath of a god. He pushed himself upright, ignoring the weakness and agony of his body, ignoring the ache of his throat and how it hurt to breathe. He opened and drained the elixir swiftly, the ache lessening somewhat as he kneeled in the dark, staring into darkness, chest heaving, even as he tried to stem the flow of blood at his throat.
It was cold. It was dark. And he was alone.
But it would not be here. Gathering his sword and shield, dragging himself step by step, Zachary stumbled towards the waiting sun.
This was not a tale that was for ending here.
Nemesis 24:
It was a cold night.
A bitter cold, an aching cold. The sort of cold that bit through clothing, through skin, through flesh and into the bones beneath. That clawed at the edge of firelight and warmth, waiting for the light to fail before it dragged itself into reach. The cold of the Barovian winter, that hunted for the unwary and pulled them into the frozen embrace of ice and pain.
The landscape was etched in stark, glittering white and deep, absolute black. The sky above was clear, the starts hanging in the sky with the brilliance of diamonds upon velvet, the moon full and heavy, bright and forbidding. The pale white glow magnified as it bounced off the snow and frost that coated all the world below.
There was no wind. The air was almost completely still, and the occasional thump of snow falling from the pines was loud and precise, an exclamation of sound that ended abruptly without echo. But buried amidst the oppressive stillness, the stark white brilliance of the cold moonlight, there was movement.
An armoured figure walked the night. He wore a thick cloak, lined with sheepskin, dyed a pale grey. His armour, silver and black, with red in the undercoat, glinted in the light of the full moon, the occasional clink of steel on steel or the grind of a stretched leather buckle louder than his steaming breath. At his back was a large, embossed shield, heavy and reinforced, slung over the cloak, and at his belt was his sword, the hilt finely wrought and silvered. Armed and armoured, he nevertheless moved with the careful step of one who knew that some would not view such preparations as a warning, and with the strange grace of one who has grown used to wearing heavy armour day after day.
Zachary's steps crunched over the snow as he moved, the white powder grinding beneath his armoured boots as he pushed his way through the tree line. His hood was pulled low, and his face covered by a cloth mask below his eyes, and frost clung to the metal of his armour in places. He had been walking all night, but it was the dull glow of a distant fire that had pulled him off the road.
Firelight, and silence. As he neared the weakened blaze, he noted the silence more and more. Heavy, oppressive. It dulled and muted the creak of leather and armour, the scrunch of snow and the muffled snap of buried branches beneath the white layer. The silence covered it all, the absence of sound where there should have been sound, even if it was nothing more than the snoring of people and the snorting of horses. There was nothing, save for the sounds he made himself, save for the echoes of his own movements.
It was the blood he found first. Scattered amidst the snow, some twelve feet from the fire itself. Pitch black in this world of stark black and white lights, a dark oil on pristine white. Glistening and frosting over already in the bitter, numbing chill. He sidestepped it carefully, his eyes on the ground. It was not hard to find where it had come from. Upon the snow, bent at the elbow slightly and all over splattered with that black oil that was blood was an arm, severed just below the shoulder. It still wore the sleeve of a thick coat. The hand was open in a relaxed position, lightly resting on the snow, a ring of dark metal on the ring finger. The hand of a man, with calluses on the outstretched thumb. Already it was wearing a coat of frost, as Zachary crouched over it for a moment, steam of his breath billowing out from his hood as he looked over the severed limb, no sound echoing over the camp except for the slight crackle of dying embers.
The wound that had severed the limb was ragged, ripped and torn. Not a sword or axe stroke. Something had ripped it clear and away. The air was spiked with the scent of blood, snow, and worse - coppery, metallic scents mixed with the swell of other scents, foul and undignified. The scent of ruptured bowels and the newly dead. And another scent, stronger than the others, foul and smoking and a dreadful promise. This was a place now of death, of violent, ugly, brutal death. Whatever beauty might have been found here was now gone, made eerie and horrific. An act that would stain its very stones with its dreadful nature, and haunt the dreams of the one who now stood amongst it.
Taking a deep breath, Zachary pushed on the few more steps needed to get to the firelight. It was dying, barely lit, a faint dull light that glimmered over the stones as he drew closer to the fireplace, but it was enough to take the black and white starkness of the scene and paint it in a semblance of the ghastly hues that it would have come morning light.
There were four of them. Two had never made it clear of their bedrolls before whatever it was had fallen upon the group. One was beneath a tree, and the last was at the very edge of the firelight, face down. It was this one that the arm had come from, but that was the most dignified of the injuries the corpse bore.
No horses. Zachary noted that clinically and immediately. Aside from the fact he hadn't seen hoof marks or dung, horses would have warned them perhaps with their nervousness and fear. On a night like this, an intruders scent would have carried - but not far, with no breeze. But a good watch would have noted it.
Had they heard it? Had they heard the crunch of snow crushed beneath the predators footstep, growing louder and louder as it lurked outside the edge of the firelight? Had they known in terror that there was something out there that did not fear them, and saw them as nothing but prey? Or had it been a complete surprise, shocking and unexpected? Zachary was not skilled enough to know.
The ground was trampled. Blood and viscera had been stamped into the snow and earth, crushed down by heavy feet. Zachary crouched amidst the blood beside the fire, noting some scattered embers and chunks of firewood.
The first victim he inspected was the worst of them. Mangled, bloodied and torn. Whatever had fallen upon them had ripped apart the bedroll to get at them, ripping flesh and bone apart in a frenzied, ferocious attack that spoke of terrible strength and an insane savagery. There was evidence that this victim had either tried to hide in the bedroll or hadn't been able to get clear of it at all - but intuition gave credence to the former. This one was closest to the firelight, and amidst the layer of gore that coated the corpse, he saw a shock of white hair, untouched by the blood that pooled around the corpse, as of yet unfrozen while the fire still kept it warm. A single arm rested in the fire itself, burning, cooking, the flesh peeling away and oozing black smoke as the fat beneath the skin roasted and split, charcoaling as red flesh poked through the cracks. With an almost distant, clinical air, Zachary reached down and pulled the arm clear of the flames with one armoured hand, ignoring the bite of heat.
It was impossible to determine the victims age, and gender was not easy to understand either. The face was torn away, crushed and ripped as though between the jaws of a beast, shards of bone poking out of the ruin of gore and brain matter. A single eye half popped out of the carnage, staring at nothing, glazed and dull amidst the ghastly mess. The torso had been pulled apart - the ribcage was wrenched open, the bones poking through flesh and the innards ripped asunder. The heart was missing, the corpse torn by savage, long claw marks. A dark red horror of sticky gore, the innermost secrets of the flesh laid bare, wrenched free, dignity stolen away and forgotten as what was once human was instead made a lump of ripped, bloodied flesh. Blood was scattered around the corpse as well, amidst lumps of torn gobbets of meat - the signs of frenzied, savage feeding.
Zachary lifted his gaze at last from the mangled corpse, and rose to inspect each of the others. Further away from the fire, they were already starting to freeze over. Layers of frost forming over the black pools, the torn muscle and skin. The man beneath a tree had been struck a terrific blow that had ripped them open and half severed the head, the entire front of their body drenched in blood and a pool of it spread out beneath them. Zachary touched the pool - cold, freezing cold, but then it wouldn't take long in this aching chill. He looked to the tree itself - blood marks of splatter on the tree, and broken bark. This one had been struck once, but powerfully. It had struck them so hard that force had carried them into this tree, and they had then slumped down to the ground, laying in this curled wreck, some six feet from the fire itself. The blow that had killed them had launched them through the air - there were no footsteps across the snow leading to the tree, but a thin line of blood splatter showed that the initial impact had been a bloody one. Looking left, he saw a glint of metal - a sword, half buried in the snow, where it had landed after being flung from the hand. The torn corpse was wearing hard leather as well, which hadn't protected them - it seemed that they were the guard of the group, as they were the only one who showed any sign of armament, or of putting up a fight. They sat with head bowed, frost forming on the thick beard, face obscured. Bowed as though in failure and despair. Zachary did not disturb them. He did not wish to see the black, lifeless emptiness that he knew those dead eyes would hold.
The next was half way out of the bedroll before whatever it was had fallen upon them. The back of the skull was crushed like an eggshell, a splatter radiating outwards to show that the blow had taken place while the victim was laying on the ground. A red rent was in the back as well, and a half extracted spinal column snapped in half, and from the hideous wounds one would almost think that it had been ripped out of the body. Moving from one to the next, Zachary knelt beside the last of them, the man at the edge of the firelight, missing the arm. The blow that had torn the arm clear had ripped into the torso as well, shredding the side and tearing open the ribcage. The viscera of the lung was exposed through the gaping wound.
Four victims. One tried to fight. Two tried to flee. The last, the oldest, had been frozen in panic in their bedroll. And this one had, for their terror, been torn apart and devoured while still alive, mutilated and consumed. Sadistic, with cruelty, making sure that the victim knew what was coming. One single attacker, powerful and massive in size - much larger than a man. Who left footprints, from what Zachary himself could clearly see, much like that of a wolf or hound - except much larger. A lycanthrope. A werewolf. Somewhere close, in the dark, on this cold Barovian winter night.
He remained where he was, kneeling beside the bodies, his thoughts almost absent. He couldn't tell if they were natives of the area - most natives wouldn't dare go out at night in Barovia. They knew better. They especially would not light a fire on a clear night under the full moon. But on a night as cold as this, when there was a chance of freezing to death - desperation could drive some to make terrible mistakes. But he knew what the native Barovians would say, if any encountered them. That they should not have gone into the night, into the dark. Zachary would have said the same thing.
But why then, was he here? The thoughts came almost unbidden, as did the answer, mixed with the memory.
Because we must go where the light is not.
******
The duelling hall was a thing of energy, and movement, and even desperation. The last day of the month, the day of the proving. Where the initiates of the Order of the Bloodied Rose would be judged. Zachary already knew what the result of that judgement would be, and fear seized his weakened muscles, dread as he knew that which was coming no matter what happened here. But still he fought, still he strove, trying to remember the steps, the movements, the pivot and swing, the timing. He could not wipe the sweat from his brow in that moment, as he struggled to move in the heavy armour he wore. Every shift of his body hurt - the heavy metal casing that he wore rubbed him raw in places, the unyielding steel biting through the padded underclothes to claw at his skin and flesh. And that was not the worst of it.
He could hardly breathe, his lungs still not recovered, his movements dragging. His steps were sluggish, his arms heavy as lead. And yet he still came on, still tried to fight, though he could barely see through the gap of his visor, trying to focus on the similarly garbed opponent before him, who nevertheless moved with a far more sure step, shield and sword raised evenly and without any sign of fatigue.
The blow he attempted was clumsy, and slow, and out of step. His opponent saw through it easily and sidestepped nimbly, the armour affecting his movements hardly at all as he weaved to one side and brought around the practice sword in a punishing arc. Zachary heard rather than felt the ringing explosion in his ears, then the crash as his armoured frame struck the ground as he lay there gasping, struggling to keep a hold of sword and shield and though he wasn't even sure of where he was, he tried to push himself back up, his body shaking as he attempted to lever his dazed form back to his feet.
He eventually registered the pressure at the nape of his neck, and blinked slowly, half kneeling, as a voice spoke quietly above him. 'Yield, Zachary. You can barely stand as it is. Fighting further won't change what is to come next.'
The voice was steady, almost detached, but there was a note of sympathy, even regret to it. It stung, more than the old wounds, more than the strikes from the practice blade, a deep ache that caused him to shrug the blade away, roll, attempt to surge to his feet and then-
The blow came out of nowhere, or so it felt. And this time, when Zachary hit the ground, he did not stir or get up.
When he came to again, either moments or hours later, he was sitting with his back to the wall. Beside him, at rigid attention, was the student who had put him down and out of the fight. The rest of the initiates into the Order were standing against the walls, all facing inwards to the centre of the square, and to the powerful, tall and terrifyingly imposing figure who stood in full, beautifully wrought armour standing there, hands clasped at his back, a shining figure of silver, white, red and black. His helmet was off, his gray hair glinting in the sunlight flooding in through the skylight above, his stern expression impassive as he spoke. While his voice was not loud, it carried resonantly to every corner of the room, commanding attention and respect with its every syllable, impossible to ignore. Commander Siegfried Du Amaris, master of the Halls of The Bloodied Rose.
'What we do, as knights of this holy order, is what others cannot do. What others "will" not do. What is it that we do, Initiate Rauvia?'
A figure he was not facing spoke from behind her helmet in a quiet but firm voice. 'We go where the light is not, Commander Siegfried.'
The grey haired knight held up one hand without turning his head, a metal clad finger pointing to the roof. 'Indeed. And what do we bring to that place where there is no light to be found?'
'We bring the light to it, Commander Siegfried. We take the light to the dark so that it may no longer be shadowed.'
It was the initiate beside Zachary who spoke, the one who had struck him down. Zachary stared dully at the man, and then started to push himself, still dazed, to his feet. A hand reached out to steady him, and help him up, as he took his place amongst the others – no one paid much heed. This was something they had gotten used to in the hall.
Again Siegfried raised one armoured hand. 'And what is the light, Initiates? Do you yet remember your lesson?' His voice was still soft, but cutting, searing the air as he spoke, his form as unbending and as rigid as a mountain.
Around Zachary, the initiates all spoke as one. Zachary faltered at first, but he soon caught up, his words slightly dull as they fell from his lips, his ears still ringing from the beating he'd taken, his vision still blurring.
'Light is mercy. Light is redemption. Light is hope. Light is compassion. It is forgiveness and understanding. It is the blade that stills, and the ender of pain, and the protection of the innocent.'
The chant soon faded, as the towering knight lowered his hand once again and turned his head, sweeping his gaze over the group and resting his eye upon Zachary as he continued on, his voice detached.
'It is all these things. All these things and one more. The most important of them all, and the lesson we must all learn. The light of knowledge.'
Those grey eyes held Zachary as the young man struggled to stand, unblinking. He tried to meet that impassive, unyielding stare, blinking sweat out of his eyes. It was still so hard to breathe, his body a weary, ravaged ruin, still suffering from injury and illness that had robbed him of all his strength and health. Each breath had a wet, ragged sound to it in his ears, the sensation of ribs swelling painful. And here he stood in armour too heavy for him to carry and holding a sword he could not lift, and tried to meet his teachers eyes, wobbling and unsteady, while the rest of the initiates stood rigid and unyielding.
Shame lanced through him, and he blinked back tears then rather than sweat. He was not good enough. He would never be good enough. He should not even be here, except by some awful twist of fate-
His thoughts cut off as Siegfried went on. 'It is through knowing, not guessing, not doubting, but through knowing that the skills we learn in this hall come to bear. For we, more than others who fight as we fight, must know better than any other when we should draw the sword. If a blade is lifted in anger, we take away hope of redemption. Each life we cut down is a life that is wasted, each and every one of them. Each life lost to our swords can only go on to the next life without having a chance to atone, to undo what they have done.'
Finally he turned away from Zachary, his gaze turning to the others. 'And yet, knowing that, we must know that we must act, time and time again. That the blood of the unrighteous must sometimes be shed to protect the blood of the innocent. And for that we must be strong. We must be forthright. We must be bold and we must be, above all, without fear. Without doubt. We must be the ones who know. We must be the ones who make the choice. And we must know what comes, if we are wrong - or if we fail.'
He turned back to Zachary then, watching him for a long moment. And then he took a slow breath, his expression wooden. 'Initiate Zachary. This past month, you have scored the lowest for physical aptitude, and study lessons both. As such, the punishment must fall to you, and it shall do so here and now.' His voice was steady, and measured, and his expression did not change. His expression flickered to the other initiates on each side of the struggling young man. 'Strip him of his armour. Thaddeus.' He called to another initiate. 'Bring me the whip.'
Zachary felt his knees go weak. He knew it was coming, but he hoped it was not regardless. He'd put in all the effort he could possibly give, but it was never enough. His body just wasn't strong to do it.
He felt an arm on his shoulder helping him keep upright, and turned to look into the sympathetic face of the initiate who brought him down. Quietly, the young man spoke. 'I'm so sorry brother. You know none of us want it this way.' His voice was subdued, and gentle, and the regret on his face palpable.
Zachary took a deep breath - as deep as his ravaged lungs would let him - and nodded, offering a brave but pale half smile to his fellow. 'It's all right, brother Thaddeus.' He spoke just as quietly, as he started to struggle with the straps holding on the heavy armour, fingers shaking from weariness and fear as he worked to remove the buckles. Thaddeus and the other initiate helped him with careful fingers, removing the armour piece by piece until Zachary was naked from the waist up.
As the undercoat was removed, it became immediately apparent why Zachary was struggling. Why he was weak in the armour. Why he could hardly breathe and why he could hardly move. The numerous stab wounds in his right side had not yet fully healed, from where a dagger had been plunged through his ribs, the chest partly sunken. The wounds were closed over, but they were still purple and raw looking, the skin bearing an unhealthy pallor. There were star like scars, in the abdomen as well - marks of arrows, two of them. And across the back, the raw red lines of the whip. A dozen of them, lined over one another. For the second month he had failed the tests. For the second month he had scored lowest amongst the Initiates. At least this time he hadn't fainted in the midst of the melee.
This time he would not cry out. This time he would not pass out from the blows. This time he would hold his pain. This time he would endure.
He stepped forward, his steps slow and his shoulders slumped. Again he cursed his wounded, ruined body. His arms were bony, his ribs sticking out on his chest. When he arrived, born upon the back of a wagon and wounded unto death, he had been bed ridden for weeks. But the trials would not wait forever and he had cast himself into the crucible. But still his body would not properly heal.
Commander Siegfried watched him as the tall but painfully sickly looking Zachary stepped forward, drenched in sweat, his broad shoulders slack and without muscle and definition. He held the whip coiled in both hands, as the young Zachary reached him, who then inclined his head, turned his back, and knelt. Taking a deep breath, he raised his hands, fingers open, and spread his arms out to each side like wings, bowed his head and waited. Doing so exposed his palms - and the dark burns, perfectly circular rings, set in each palm, seared into the flesh and only barely healed. A tapestry of pain and wounds that told a haunting story of agony already known.
Siegfried let the whip uncoil as he spoke on, his voice quietly. 'We each of us must understand the price of what happens if we fail. We are the knights of Ilmater. He who suffers, so that others may not. The crying god. We are the ones who endure, who remain, who continue on. We are the brothers and sisters of mercy, but we are the shield that protects the innocent. And if we fail, then others will feel pain instead. If we fail, in faith or in action, we are lost.'
Zachary struggled to keep his breathing even, his hands shaking as he kept his arms out, his eyes tightly shut as Siegfried went on, that cold, hard voice unyielding. 'This, then, is the price of failure. We walk the Path of the Five Agonies, the five sufferings, that which we must understand so that we can help others endure. Through our failure we invite the agony we must endure to afflict others we could otherwise protect. Initiates. What is the fourth agony?'
He asked the question calmly, evenly, but it hung in the air, heavier than the dust motes that hovered in the bright sunlight cast through the windows, even as Zachary continued to kneel, his jaw clamped shut. His lungs hurt. His head hurt. Everything already was swimming in pain and he knew it was just the beginning.
Finally a voice spoke quietly, hesitantly, from somewhere to his left. 'The fourth agony is pain, Commander Siegfried. Pain of the body.'
A sigh then. A sound of regret, the only sign that the figure who stood behind Zachary bore no particular pleasure for what he was about to do. And then that impassive voice spoke again. 'Correct, Initiate Kellyn. Through pain of the body may we purify the soul, and with that done, our body may become stronger. Through our failure, we must learn the consequence of our failure, and it shall become the one - and only - thing that we fear.'
He went quiet then, and when next he spoke, his voice was quieter, more level, the question almost gently spoken. 'Initiate Zachary. Are you without fear?'
He opened his eyes, still kneeling with arms outstretched, and stared at the ground before him as sweat dripped from his brow. The naked skin of his back felt cold as ice, vulnerable and exposed. He finally spoke in a voice that he tried to keep steady. 'No, Commander. I... I am not.'
Another sigh. 'You will be.'
The first lash fell. Ice turned to fire. The world went white. And to his shame, he cried out.
Again and again the whip fell, in a searing, blazing arc, ripping into skin as the young man fought against the instinct of his body, to curl up, to roll away, to beg, to scream, to plead. The burning pain bloomed brighter as the whip struck each time, and Zachary bit down on his tongue so fiercely that blood flowed from between his teeth in his torment.
It felt like an eternity, a lifetime of pain, compressed into a dozen strokes. This time it hurt even more than the first, where he'd passed out in his agony. This time he remained awake, but his vision swam and blurred and stars danced in his eyes, the room spinning. He barely felt the last stroke, but that was simply because his body could register no more pain, no more torment, and he could no longer move.
The whip fell down to the ground beside him, as his arms lowered. He had to force them down - the muscles, held so tightly, had locked as though they had turned to stone. There was a long moment of silence, and then, in a voice that was both cold and regretful, but even, without anger, the imperious man behind him spoke.
'There is a lesson yet here. And none of you have learned it.' Quietly, steadily spoken, before Zachary felt an armoured hand rest on his shoulder, gentle, sorrowful. 'Initiate Zachary has been purged of his failure. Once again he knows what it means to falter.' His voice lowered. 'And I truly hope he does not need to be taught again. Class dismissed.' He removed his hand, turned, and walked from the room, speaking briefly over his shoulder. 'Get him to the clerics. And do it quickly, before he passes out.'
******
Back in the cold, back in the snow, Zachary paused, and looked once more about the camp. He frowned as something tugged on his thoughts, and he counted. Four bodies, torn apart, one not so much devoured as much as they were rent apart. Four bedrolls - no. Five. And five packs.
There was one more who was missing from this picture.
Instantly he straightened, and started to walk away from the fire, circling the camp, eyes on the ground, cloak fluttering behind him as he watched the ground with a steady gaze. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the bright moonlight, but he found what he was looking for before long, down a snow covered slope that began just a little ways from the camp and descended downwards into thicker forest. Footprints in the snow, deep, but not as deep as those of a man. Smaller too, and without boot marks - the clear shape of a heel and toes could be seen. A woman? No, smaller. A child, wearing only their socks, having sprinted clear in his panic.
There was something else too. Overlaid the smaller footprints were the massive paw prints of the beast. It had scented the child here. And then set off in pursuit.
Zachary's eye lifted to gaze down a descending slope. The path of the child was easy to follow, but the trail of the beast was even easier. It had thrashed its way on all fours through the snow, scattering snowdrifts and showing a great obvious trail down the hillside towards the forest. Somewhere out there was a fifth traveller - and he had no way of knowing if they were still alive.
There was no pause. No hesitation. No asking questions of whether it was pointless or not. There was a chance, and a chance was all that was needed. A chance is all that one could ever ask for. And so, Zachary set off in pursuit, drawing his sword but keeping his shield on his back as he stormed down the hill, his armoured frame having no chance of doing anything except storm through the snow. Stronger now than he'd been during his days in the initiate, he shoved snow from his path and pressed onwards, striving, straining, puffs of snow flung in all directions as his breath steamed from his hood, trailing along after him, vanishing before he had gone half a step further.
Down the hill he surged, into the trees below. He had to search for a moment amongst the pines, but it did not take long. The snowfall had been heavy enough that even in the thick trees, he was able to follow it.
The steps were blindly panicking, sprinting. At one point Zachary noted that the shoeless foot had come down on a branch through the snow, scoring into the flesh, wounding the underside of the foot, and leaving a trail of blood in each step thereafter. The pace continued unabated, and Zachary wondered if by that point, the cold had set in so deeply that the child could not feel the injury.
He pictured it in his mind, despite his best efforts not to. A child, panicked and terrified, freezing in their clothes, sprinting through the snow away from the horror that had set them running. Struggling through foot deep snow, each step a battle in of itself. And then the thing that had killed their family, their companions, had howled, and come down after them, still stained red with the blood of the other victims... and with every step the running child took the beast would take three, or four, long, powerful strides as it came for them, relentless and snarling...
A sound of running water came from up ahead. Continuing onwards, Zachary halted as he pushed through the pine branches in his path - tellingly without snow clinging to them, as someone had already pushed past them and dislodged all the clinging white cold. There were broken branches as well - something had plunged through the trees here, something enormous that had leapt and pounced.
The stream in front of him was frozen over. But unevenly. The ice has broken through recently directly in front of him about halfway out from the bank to the opposite shore, but it was already freezing over again. The opposite bank itself was an awful mess of churned mud and snow, and the broken edge of the fractured ice was rent with claw marks, over an inch across, as something had fallen through the ice and then ripped its way out of freezing water in enraged desperation.
He paused, turning his head, and looked further upstream a moment. Not trusting the broken ice, he made his way to a spot which was a little further uphill - where broken rocks protruded in sullen lumps out of the icy layering, to cross the stream. To fall through would have consequences that he could not bear to think about - and yet despite that he took great care to cross over slowly. The frozen rocks were encased in frost, slippery and treacherous, and Zachary stumbled and fell face first just as he made it across as one stone proved too treacherous, dumping him into a bank layered in snow.
The curse was muffled on his lips as he pushed himself upright, a numb ache in his hands where he had tried to stop himself hitting the ground entirely, his heavy armour making the already difficult task all the harder. Levering himself back to his feet, he made his way back down to the spot where the ice had broken.
It was not hard to put the picture together. The child had been running across the stream - no pausing, as fast as they could, in the most direct route to assuage their panic - but the beast had leapt through the tree line. Perhaps the child had slipped, or slid, as they turned their head to see that monstrous visage coming towards them, and the beast had missed - but had broken the ice with their bulk, putting both of them into the water.
The child had been near the bank. Only a few feet, but it would have made little difference. They would have been soaked through - drenched to the skin on a freezing cold night. Nevertheless, even with that chill settling into their bones, the child had continued on, while the beast had floundered in the ice cold water.
He could not have gone far. He turned his head deeper into the forest - and almost immediately saw it. The trail indicated that the child agreed as well.
The oak was enormous, the branches high and spreading. It stood alone atop a ridge, towering towards the sky, quite separate from the pines that otherwise dominated the wood. Its branches spread out wide, a maze of stark spears and talons, but high up amongst them, even from here, Zachary could see a shape. A small figure, in a nightshirt and simple leggings, laying lengthways on a thick branch about two thirds up the trunk, which was still taller than all the nearby pines.
He surged forward, the weariness of running in full armour forgotten, letting his shield fall from his back as he reached the base of the tree. The bark of the trunk was shredded by five fingered hands, set with deep, deep talons that carved into that hard wood as though it were but butter, thick sap welling from the tears. But whatever it was that had clawed at the massive trunk, it had not been able to climb it. The twisted limbs of the creature and its sheer weight itself probably making the task too difficult, where a much lighter child with sufficient adrenaline could manage it.
He didn't waste time on words. Letting the shield lay where it fell, he found a branch - broken, as though something had tried to use it and found the weight too great. He hesitated a moment, fearing he'd have the same problem, and then pulled off his backpack, as he remembered - rope, and a grappling hook, kept from when he had joined the Hounds in their effort to rescue one of their own from a dark, dark place.
'I'm coming! Just hold on!' He called it out to the immobile form above. He could barely see in the dark but he could make out a small figure, clinging to a branch, still and silent, gripping the branch tightly as though in terror. There was no response, and so he worked more frantically, before he flung the hook and rope upwards. The first attempt didn't catch, nor the second or third, but the fourth held, just enough. He dragged himself upwards, his jaw clenched tight, his hood falling back from his head, the lower part of his face still obscured by the mask to ward off the chill of the frost, blue eyes intent as he pulled his armoured frame up the trunk, using the thicker branches as he went, getting himself up. 'I'm coming! You're safe!' He gasped out as he drew nearer. The small figure did not move. Did not react. And in that stillness, a gnawing sense of dread grew, a premonition of what waited for him on that lonely branch, high above the world, in the freezing cold, so far from the world.
As he drew alongside the figure, he reached out, opening his mouth to speak, before all went silent. All went cold, and he held his hand, inches away from the shoulder of the still figure.
It was a boy, no older than twelve years. Almost a man's age in this place, where men were old by the time they turned thirty, and usually dead before they turned fifty. His eyes were staring straight at Zachary, glassy and empty, unblinking. His skin was already blue, his clothes frozen to his body. His arms, frozen in rigor mortis, clinging to the branch as he stared into Zachary and into eternity beyond that.
He had frozen to death. Probably no more than half an hour at most from when he had reached this spot. The water that had soaked him through, that had stopped the lycanthrope from killing him on the frozen stream, had killed him in the end. The thin clothing he wore not enough to ward off that chill but enough to soak the water into his flesh. Ice had formed on his hair, on his body, white icicles forming amongst the dark brown hair. The expression was blank, almost numb, and held in it not surprise, not terror, but a dull realisation that was somehow worse than both. The aching realisation of death approaching, a knowledge that only came from seeing so much of it to recognise it in one self. And in a child who was too young to even consider shaving yet.
Gently, his breathing slowing, Zachary reached out to the still figure, his armoured hand brushing back the hair from the child's face and then, after a moment, carefully closing the eyes, though with the eyelids stiff from the cold it took more effort than he would have liked, pressing on the eyes themselves with some force. 'I am sorry.' He said it without thinking, quietly, then he paused as he stared at the small figure, still and cold and lifeless. And said it again, but this time, with an ache to the words that spoke of all the regrets that lurked behind them, heavy as a millstone around his neck. 'I am sorry.'
A welter of thoughts flowed in then, in that numb silence as the weight of failure once more hammered home. Familiar voices, admonitions, and agonies, all ringing together, crawling through the back of his mind as he turned away from the corpse and sat on a thick branch, rubbing his eyes with thumb and forefinger as regrets washed over him.
You're useless, Dalensbane. Always have been, always will be. Useless and worthless. A fiery violet eyed gaze, a voice loaded with disgust and contempt. You can't even do a simple thing right. All your good for is dying - if you'd only get on with doing it.
You're wasting your time with these stupid beliefs of yours. No one gives a damn and you shouldn't either. A lumbering half orc, tusked mouth twisted in disdain. Why bother with any of it? No one will care when you are gone anyway. This isn't your world, and it doesn't want any part of you.
I can take your pain away. Soft, seductive, and soothing, gentle and against his ear, cold, slender and strong arms wrapping around him. A vibrant gaze of power, yearning and hunger, pale white features and dark, dark hair. A red lipped smile that veiled long, bright fangs, a promise and a plea blended together. Make it all stop hurting. Make you perfect. The shadows of the evening suddenly deepened, took on a liquid quality, crawling towards him over the ground at the corner of his eye.
Make you mine. Make you mine, forever, whether you want it or not. A memory then, of those perfect lips parting before the fangs sank home, and the aching darkness that came with it that woke him in a freezing sweat night after night as it swallowed him up even in his dreams. He shuddered, a chill passing through him that was of terror and yearning both that tore into his heart with frozen, beautiful talons.
He shook his head, then clutched at it with both hands, grinding his palms into his temples, gritting his jaw and screwing his eyes shut as the last whisper haunted his thoughts, the last voice, the last face - and the first.
Why can you not come back to me? Why can you not come home, my love? My husband? I'm still waiting for you.
I will always wait for you. But will you wait for me?
He forced it back, down, wrenching himself to the present, trying to forget the litany of his many failures. Why had he taken so long? Why couldn't he have gotten here sooner? Maybe a minute would have been enough, maybe ten. If only he could have-
******
'You are going to fail, Zachary. That is not the question. The question is, what will you do after that?'
The question had pulled him up. The third month of his training had passed, and the sting of the lash was once again strong on his back, making each and every movement painful, a tortured sensation with each shift and stretching of his skin. It felt like his back was on fire, but - and he had to keep reminding himself of this - he had endured worse than this.
He deserved worse than this, too.
He had come to Siegfried and even now, stood on the parapet with him, overlooking the fortress monastery that was his home. A home he had not yet gotten used to, that he had not yet fully come to accept as his home, though he spent not just the three previous months, but four more before that, convalescing from the injuries that had brought him to this place. The sun was setting on the scene, and the blazing sunset gave even the harsh environs of the monastery a pleasant, peaceful air even as the grey stones, damp with rainfall, were set ablaze in the light of the falling sun.
He had come to apologise. To ask for forgiveness for his poor performance in the duelling chambers. Though his marks had improved in theological and philosophical studies and debate, his wasted body was simply not strong enough for such brutal physicality as was demanded. And try though he might, though his fitness was improving, those who he fought against were ahead of him at every opportunity, able to practice better, and harder, growing stronger than him in leaps and bounds. He had tried to tell Siegfried he would not fail again, to give him another chance, before the grey haired, steely eyed man cut him off.
And now he was watching him, those grey eyes hard, impassive, and patient. Zachary stood tongue tied, his carefully prepared and thought out attempt to try and redeem himself, a proposal to change how things were going to go, dying on his lips. He met that level stare that saw through everything he could bring to mind for a full dozen rapid heartbeats before his gaze lowered as his cheeks flushed.
Siegfried continued to watch him for a few moments, then turned his gaze back to the glory of the setting sun.
'We follow the path of Ilmater, Zachary.' His voice was quieter then, and with distinctly less iron in it than normal, as the stern figure went on. 'And in so doing, in so being, we are a contradiction. We are warriors of a god of peace - of pacifism. In a way, you could say we've already failed before we've begun, if we are to be brutally honest about it.' He shrugged then, turning away from the sunset. 'But we are also something more. We are the ones who know. We know not just what happens when we raise a sword, but what happens afterwards. We know the cost. And we feel that cost, with every fibre of our being.'
'Each of us is the sum of our actions. Of our successes and our failures. Tell me Zachary, do you know what it is to fail?'
The young man's gaze lowered then, to look at the stones beneath his feet. And he nodded. 'Yes, Commander. I do.'
'Explain.' It was not a request. The tone of the elderly knight was clipped and hard.
Zachary thought about it for a long moment, his brow furrowing, as he considered his words. 'To fail is to allow others to suffer because you did not act, or acted but were not able to prevent something happening. To fail is to see the result of your own weakness and know you made the wrong choice.' He paused a moment. 'To fail is to lose everything you hold dear, and in that failure... we become meaningless.'
The towering figure did not respond for a while at that, before he spoke again, his voice oddly subdued, the emotion in it somehow muted, or contained. Soft, but steady. 'That is what you may believe, but that does not make it true.' He stood straight backed as he spoke, shoulders set and posture straight. There was not, however any sign of tension in his stance. It was the standing of a man who was so used to standing in such an unyielding position that the act of doing so no longer created any tension or stiffness. It was as natural to the knight as breathing, as the beat of his heart.
'What failure is, is a lesson.' He said it quietly. 'It is when we are given the opportunity to learn what it is, who it is, that we are. Who we choose to be in the moment of our failure is what defines us, not what we do when we succeed. And when we do succeed, our victories are a monument to the lessons we have already learned.' He paused a moment, his gaze dropping. 'I never asked you, Zachary, what drove you to act the day I found you.' He lifted that hard gaze to Zachary, who stood shamefaced and quiet, unable to look his teacher in the eye. 'All I know is that I found a boy bleeding and dying in the mud, with the family that he had saved. And even defeated, I can tell you one thing - that day, no matter what you might feel about it yourself, that day, you did not fail.' He continued to watch the young man. 'If you can do something, no matter how small, and it is something you know you should do - then you should do it. Even if you hesitate, you should try. Whether you succeed at that point is irrelevant. The others have yet to learn that. But not you. That is a lesson you've already learned.'
He went quiet again, and turned away. Zachary was silent, and more than a little embarrassed. It was the closest thing he had yet known to praise from the steely eyed man before him. Even as he watched, Siegfried shook his head. 'Go now, Initiate, and get yourself some rest. But remember this conversation. Be at peace.'
******
Back in the present, Zachary took a deep, slow breath, the warm air escaping his lungs as he exhaled drifting away in the still air into a cloud of fog, drifting away and fading into the night. He looked back at the still, silent body of the child, as the thoughts that tormented him drifted clear. Breathe, his thoughts, his training told him. Breathe, and think. This is not yet over.
He closed his eyes, took a breath, and counted to ten, before letting it out again, his hands clasping together before himself, the fingers intertwining, the ache of the chill night air fading back for a moment as he tried to regather his wits, tried to step away from the voices and memories that haunted him.
Then something twinged at the edge of his awareness, and his eyes opened again, looking out over the horizon, staring blankly at something distant, through the trees. A flicker. Orange light, shining through the trees. Away from the campfire where the massacre had taken place.
Another fire. Faint and distant, obscured by the trees, but it was there. In this night, in this searing dark, even the faintest of flames stood out stark and brilliant as a lonely star. Maybe a mile away, maybe two, but it was there. A camp? No. A homestead. A cottage, back towards the road.
There was a moment of pause, and then Zachary felt an ice cold realisation slip down his spine, a nail of ice in his thoughts, clear and definite as it was sudden. The beast had seen it too.
And it was not done, either. The fact it had chased the child spoke of a gnawing hunger, and a vile, murderous wrath. It had attacked in a frenzy, not to feed, but to kill. A blood mad fury that would not be assuaged by the deaths it had already caused. Out there was a beacon, a signal to its fury, and it would hunt it down to snuff it out.
The howl that echoed through the woods then was deep, and rumbling, and had in it a note of wrath. It flowed through the night air, laden with menace, seeming to come from all around. Zachary could not tell where it was or what it signalled, but he knew the call when he heard it. Just as he had when he had first heard the call come to him, he knew. Get to the house. Stop it before it kills again.
He moved without thinking. He clambered down, grasped the rope. Holding it one hand he threw himself out of the tree, his cloak flying out behind him as the rope whined in his grip from the rapid descent, a hissing sound of hemp ripping through leather. Even through the gauntlet he felt the searing heat of friction, but he did not heed it, hitting the ground running, and picking up the shield as he moved.
When it calls to you, you must listen. You must trust it.
He did not pause to get his bearings. His feet knew the way before his waking mind did, before reason did. Like an arrow fired from a bow, he set off. Clearing snow drifts and fallen trees, clearing a path with his shield. A kind of fluid ferocity as he tore through the snow smothered woods, he did not stumble, did not slow, and he did not pause.
******
'Why do you hesitate? You know what you have to do to succeed.'
It was the duelling hall. The fourth month. And for the first time, Zachary stood on the edge of triumph. Not the highest score of the class - he never dared to hope for such a thing - but not last either. He had done well in his debates, in his theology, in his studies. His body had recovered enough from the injuries that had left him bedridden for so long that he no longer felt weakened by physical activity. His strength was enough that he could stand and hold his own and learn from the duels. If he could score but a few strikes in the duels, he would be able to avoid falling into last place yet again. For the first time, someone else would suffer the weight of failure. For the first time, he could face the new month without the searing pain the lash would leave him.
But in his enthusiasm, his blow had been too strong, and his opponent, young Kellyn, two years younger than Zachary, had over extended his own attack. The stroke of the weighted practice sword had struck the forearm in just the right way as to break the boys sword arm, causing him drop the blade and cry out in agony and anguish both as he fell to his knees. Zachary had stood over him, shocked at what he had done, frozen and holding the practice sword in surprise, before the voice behind him had cut through his awareness.
He turned, and there stood Commander Siegfried, his expression hard and flinty, his eyes boring into Zachary as he stood with both hands clasped behind his back.
'Your blow was poorly timed but effective. However, if you do not continue the duel, then you will both have to forfeit. In so doing, Zachary, you know full well what will happen to you. So.' He stepped forward to stand to one side of the pair as the rest of the hall stopped in their duels to watch the exchange in growing silence. 'Initiate Kellyn, switch to your left hand. Initiate Zachary, attack Initiate Kellyn.' His tone was flat, without inflection of any kind. He might as well have been talking about the weather.
Zachary stared down at Kellyn, who was white faced with pain, and fear. Zachary could see the look in the young man's face - Kellyn might have done well enough in his other lessons, but if he was unable to fight here, then he would be facing the lash instead of Zachary. Worse, Zachary would have to make him suffer through the duel with the excruciating pain of a broken arm. He hesitated. His blade fell lower even as the white faced Kellyn, blinking back tears of agony, tried to push himself to his feet, cradling his broken arm to his chest.
'Initiate Zachary?' There was a definite edge now in Siegfried's voice. 'You've been given your orders. You have failed these last three months to perform better than any other initiate of this order. Will you fail again or will you instead stop disgracing yourself, and show what you are capable of?'
Zachary barely heard him. He was staring at the now clearly frightened Kellyn, the words of Siegfried searing his consciousness. If he attacked now, Kellyn would be unable to defend himself. He would score points easily, and avoid the whip, but at the expense of the young man before him. For a moment, his grip tightened on the hilt. It would be so much easier. It would be so simple and he would not have to suffer himself.
And it would be wrong, in so many ways, more than he could care to contemplate.
There is a difference between what is right, and what is easy.
He heard it, in his head, as clear as daylight. A thought and feeling merged, his and yet not, and it was as it was on the day he had set foot on this path the first time. As it was then, so it was now. He knew exactly what he had to do, and in that knowing, the doubt, the worry, the fear, all faded into the background as the choice became crystal clear.
He stared at the young man before him for a long moment more, then, slowly, numbly, he shook his head, while lowering the practice sword. 'I cannot. I cannot do it.'
The room was silent. No one dared to breathe.
Siegfried did not move, did not blink. He watched Zachary with a fierce, cold intensity, and everything about him seemed too wrought tight and tense, a rippling torsion that threatened to make that stoic poise rip itself apart. 'Cannot?' His voice was flatter now, but with an undercurrent of harshness that was undeniable.
Zachary hesitated, and straightened. And without looking at Siegfried, he shook his head. 'No. It is not that I cannot. I will not.'
******
He did not know how long he ran, but it felt like an eternity and an instant all at once, a blur that lacked realisation and focus, while it dragged on and on. Even in the heavy steel armour that encased his body, he did not pause, and he was not slowed. In that moment of desperation, the heavy steel was as gossamer upon his frame, the training and the constant carrying of all the metal making it so much like a second skin, even as it gave power and strength to his muscles.
The howl was ahead of him. Other sounds came through the pounding in his ears, the sound of splintering wood, and then of frightened screams, cries of pain, and brutal, savage snarling coming from enormous lungs, getting louder and louder as he drew ever closer. He could see it now, the homestead, through the trees. A woodsman's cottage, or so it seemed.
He burst through the trees, spraying snow in every direction, staring at the scene before him.
The house was of stone, but the front door had not been, ripped open by a vastly powerful blow that had splintered the oak door, spraying splinters and shards. Flames from the hearth lit the interior, and Zachary ran towards it, still hearing the muffled screaming. There was a crashing sound from inside, a ground shaking roar echoing forth that made the roof shake even as he drew closer.
He stumbled to the threshold, and looked inside. The place was well made, and tidy, with a hardwood floor and a large table of sturdy oak. The meal upon it however was scattered, and even as Zachary opened his mouth, a huge shape flickered past the doorway of a room deeper inside, a crashing sound of destruction and louder screams coming from the other side of the building following shortly after.
He spun, gasping for air still, and drew his sword, pulling his shield off his back as he charged around to the left, in the direction the shape had moved towards. And as he rounded the corner, he saw the scene.
The family had fled up the hill behind the homestead, but there was nowhere to run. A tall tree stood at the top of the hill, and even as he watched a woman was urging her two children - a boy and a girl, into the branches. Past the tree was a sheer drop that then became a steep slope, down towards a frozen lake, the scene stark and clear, the moon and ink black sky stark and clear behind the scene, illuminating the long dark and bedraggled hair of the woman. A little before her stood a man, holding a woodcutters axe, barefoot and desperate, and standing against a terror out of the darkest night.
The werewolf was enormous. Easily eight feet tall at its full height, with a massive chest and huge, gnarled limbs, thick with corded muscles. The huge head and muzzle was coated in frozen blood, and it steamed with heat and fury as it clawed up the hill towards the family, ripping through the snow in great leaping bounds, its eyes ablaze with hunger and hate. A true monster, a blood mad lycanthrope, called by the full moon to drown all the world it could in the blood of its victims.
Zachary hesitated, for but a moment, and then, his heart about to burst with the sudden realisation he was already too late, he charged anyway, tearing through the snow, shouting as he went, a wordless cry trying to get the frenzied beasts attention.
It paid him no heed. Whether it was caught in its frenzy or his near breathless voice wasn't enough for it consider him, it plunged on, sending up great sprays of snow as it charged towards the woodsman and his family.
Time slowed down in that moment. Zachary ran, just out of range, just a bit too far, just not quick enough. He saw the man look at him, and saw the impossible light of hope come across his heavy, weathered features, before he realised in an instant the difference of distance.
Zachary saw it, even as the next shout died on his lips, as his steps felt like they were taking a thousand years. Saw the man realise that the approaching warrior would never make it in time, and that he was the only thing standing between the beast and his family. The look of despair was brief, so brief that it was gone before it was really manifested, and then the man raised his axe, and charged the beast with a shout of helpless defiance.
The beast did not slow, slavering bloody spittle as it leapt, howling in triumph, some five hundred pounds of savage beast and man, made monster manifest. Claws as long and sharp as steel daggers cut through the air even as the beast simply ignored the axe stroke - that heavy iron axe head struck the ensorcelled flesh and bounced clear, leaving hardly a mark and not slowing the monster at all.
The claws ripped home. The spray of blood was coupled with a scream of agony and horror, as the woman saw her husband torn apart, innards ripped from the wound and sent in a glistening arc with the force of the blow as the woodsman was near torn in half. The huge muzzle opened wide, yellowed fangs dripping saliva as they crunched on the man's shoulder and neck before he could fall and lifted him up bodily in its jaws, shaking its head furiously before twisting its head and hurling him to one side. Zachary was forced to duck as the dead man sailed past, and charged on, even as the frenzied beast closed in on the woman now and the screaming, terrified children who had just seen their father ripped to bloodied pieces.
Zachary charged on. Ten yards now. The armour had no weight but each step felt like it took all his life to take.
The beast closed in, fresh gore falling from its matted, twisted fur as it plunged onwards, howling in triumph and fury, rearing upwards on its rear legs, its overlong arms propelling it upwards, towering on the very precipice of the cliff top beneath the tree that was the only salvation the family felt they had.
Zachary charged on. Five yards, four. Three. The children saw the warrior and stared at him in mute terror and confusion and sheer disbelief as Zachary charged. He could see the look in their eyes, the unthinking shock at having seen their father killed in a heartbeat by an act of vilest savagery. The woman was transfixed, staring at the death that was rearing high above her, raising one huge hand with blood drenched talons, a snarl that shook snow from the trees rising in its chest.
And then another sound drowned it out. A roar loud and enraged enough that it caused the beast to pause. Caused it to turn its head and freeze for a moment, just a moment.
Zachary. Quiet, shy Zachary, who tried not to raise his voice. Who kept to himself and held his tongue around others. The roar from his lungs sounded like it came from a stranger even to his own ears as he charged on, and leapt with fury and violence, bearing his shield before him like a battering ram.
Even as he charged, he heard the words.
If you can do something, then you should. No matter what it might cost you.
-Continue to Part 2-
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