His Mistress slid from his grip with a wet, metallic sigh. It hit the sand, not with a clang, but with a dull thud. The Knight heard it, though the roar of the battle had faded into a thick, woollen silence. He saw the sky above Yahusalem, a hard, cloudless blue, and the sun was a white-hot coin pinned to it. Blood, warm and insistent, welled up through the broken rings of his mail beneath his left arm where the blade had found its home.
He was on his back. The taste of iron filled his mouth. He tried to turn his head, but the movement sent a hot wire of pain lancing through his chest. He saw his own men, a band of brothers, collapsing like a tower of children’s blocks under a wave of unholy infantry. He saw the saffron banner of the guard fluttering, then falling. Dust rose in golden clouds, and every speck seemed to hang suspended in the heavy air. He thought, incongruously, of the olive groves outside Rome. The Pope, a frail, parchment-skinned man with eyes like chips of flint, had laid a hand on his head. “God has delivered you from bondage, my son,” the old man had whispered. “Now go and deliver His land.”
A bead of sweat blurred his vision . He could not blink it away. He could not move at all. The weight of his own body was an anchor, pulling him down through the bloodied sand, into the cool dark. The silence deepened until he could hear the whisper of his own blood leaving him, a quiet trickle onto thirsty ground. Then, a new sound threaded through the hush: a high, clear note, like glass struck with a silver spoon. It shimmered in the air.
A beam of light, impossibly solid, pierced the battlefield haze a dozen paces from where he lay. It fell upon the trampled earth, upon a broken shield, and from its core, a shadow emerged. For a moment, that was all it was—a silhouette cut from the brilliance of darkness, a human-shaped void. Then his eyes, fighting the blur of approaching death, began to adjust.
Time had not slowed. It had stopped.
The distant, frozen snarl of a charging Mameluke hung in the air, a silent scream. A spray of sand, kicked up by a windless gust, was a permanent golden veil. The woman stood within the circle of light, but untouched by it, a paradox of dark against brighter dark. The knight found he could move his head. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, the agony in his side a distant, irrelevant complaint. The sand beneath his gauntlets was sticky and red.
The figure began to materialise. She wore a long coat of iridescent leather that seemed to drink the light, falling to her boots. A hood was drawn up, and beneath it, a smooth face mask of the same dull colour covered all but the narrowest slit for her eyes. And within that shadow, her eyes were not eyes. They were two points of cold, white light, like the heart of a star seen from a vast, frigid distance. She looked at him, and he felt seen in a way he never had been, not by his slave-masters, not by his pope, not by God Himself. She did not speak. She merely stretched out her hands, palms up, toward him. As she did, the air above each palm shimmered and coalesced into a scene, vivid and silent as a stained-glass window brought to life.
Above her right hand, he saw a sun-drenched courtyard he knew well. The cloisters of St. Peter’s. He saw himself, older, his beard shot with silver, dressed in the simple robes of a papal legate. He was sitting on a stone bench, a heavy tome open on his lap, but he was not reading. He was laughing. A young boy, maybe six years old with unruly black curls, was trying to swing a wooden sword, and the Knight was reaching out to correct his grip with a gentle hand. The boy looked up at him with open adoration. Beyond them, a fountain played, and the light was gentle, and the air was still. There was no sound, but the knight knew the laughter, knew the weight of the summer sun on his shoulders, knew a profound and settled peace. Above her left hand, the vision was one of fire and motion. He saw a different knight, one whose armour was scarred and unadorned, riding not a destrier but a swift desert mare. He was not in a holy city, but in a fiery pass under a bruise-purple twilight. He was not alone. A beast flew beside him, its wings a dark banner in the wind, its eyes fierce. They were steadfast, leaning low over the world beneath them, and ahead of them, beyond the haze, a wide, green valley spread out, untouched by crusade or jihad. Freedom was not a quiet garden here; it was a headlong flight, a shared secret, a future unwritten, wild and unknown.
The visions hung in the air, perfect and complete. The choice was absolute. A life of sanctified peace, purpose, and love given and received. Or a life of raw, uncharted freedom, stolen back from the world, a secret road winding away from all flags and altars. The knight, a freed slave, the adopted son of a Pope, a man who had crossed a sea to spill his blood for a strip of sand, looked from one shimmering promise to the other. He thought of the cool stone of the Vatican, the scent of incense, the weight of a child’s trust. Then he thought of the biting wind of the steppe, the unshackled horizon, the fierce, silent understanding in a stranger’s eyes. His breath hitched, a painful, ragged sound in the timeless void.
He moved. He pushed himself fully upright, his broken armour grinding. He took one step, then another, his boots sinking into the eternal battleground. He did not walk toward the peaceful courtyard or the wild valley. He walked toward the woman. And with a snarl that tore from a place deeper than his wound, a sound born in the dark hold of a slave galley, he reached out his own blood-crusted hand and snatched fiercely at the air above the woman’s palm. He seized the vision, and as his fingers closed around nothing and everything, the silent scene shattered like glass. The woman with the star-eyes gave a single, slow nod. She stepped aside, back into the column of solid light, and gestured for him to enter. There was no judgment in her luminous gaze, only a vast, empty acknowledgement. The knight stumbled forward. His strength was gone, borrowed back only by this frozen moment. As he crossed the final few feet toward the blinding pillar, he felt a strange expansion within him, a pressure behind his ribs. Just as he was about to step into the light, it happened.
From his own feet, his own still form on the sand, shadows burst forth. But they were not one shadow, not a single dark shape cast by the beam. There were thousands. They slithered, leapt, and streamed away in every direction, a sudden explosion of dark possibilities. One shadow was him in cardinal’s robes, kneeling in prayer. Another was him drowning in fire, chains on his wrists. Another was him, old and bent, teaching swordplay to squires in a French castle. Another was him as a grey-haired merchant on a Babylonian galley. They stretched into the frozen battlefield, a vast, rippling shadow fan of all the men he could have been, all the lives that had been winnowed down to this single, stolen choice. He did not look back at them. He fixed his eyes on the core of the light, on the promise of the unknown. He stepped into the beam as she had stepped out.
Nights' boot breached the glowing rim of the portal and found no purchase. Instead of sand, his foot met empty air and a sudden, lurching inversion. The world upended. He was now falling upward, his chainmail tunic pulling against his shoulders, his sword clattering against his leg as he tumbled head over heels into a sky that had become a bottomless pit. Blue and white streaked past the narrow slit of his visor. He fumbled, grasping at nothing, the disorientation a physical nausea in his gut. A shape cut through the chaos, diving with purpose. It resolved into a familiar figure moving with the grace of a stooping hawk.
It was ▣Sarhea, the one who had ordered him through the portal. She streamlined her body, arms tight to her sides, and shot toward him. Night forced his limbs to obey, mimicking her posture. The wild tumbling ceased, replaced by a controlled, terrifying dive. He aligned himself beside her, and together they plunged not toward the heavens, but toward a vast, nebulous expanse of white below. The wind screamed through his helmet, a constant, deafening roar. Then, the white parted. Clouds peeled away like shredded linen, revealing a landscape of impossible simplicity. Below spread an emerald green field, perfectly smooth, like baize on a gaming table. At its centre stood a single, steep hill, and upon its crest, a small, square house with a slate roof. There was nothing else. No trees, no rivers, no other hills. Just the green, the house, and the enveloping white void.
He adjusted his dive. The grassy field rushed up to meet them. At the last possible moment, ▣Sarhea tilted, flaring out of the dive into a rolling landing. Night followed, hitting the ground hard on his shoulder, the impact shuddering through his armour. He rolled and came up in a crouch, sword raised.
His look turned to the cottage. The door burst outward, not off its hinges, but as if made of paper. From the dark rectangle poured a crowd of figures. They were humanoid but indistinct, their forms smudged and moving with a single, jerky purpose. They streamed down the hillside, a mob of perhaps fifty, their collective roar a tiny, distant sound over the wind. He glanced at ▣Sarhea. Something had changed. A thin, incandescent ring, like a halo of molten silver, materialised around the crown of her hood. Where her eyes should be visible under her hood, two pinpricks of baleful red light now glowed. Without a word, she reached over her shoulder and drew her great axe, a weapon with a crescent moon blade that seemed to drink the flat light of this place.
Night unsheathed his Mistress, the familiar weight of the steel grip a fleeting comfort. He readied himself, aiming for a point just ahead of the advancing mob, which was now upon them. They were men, but men of pale, featureless clay, dressed in rough homespun. Their eyes held no intelligence, only a blank, ravenous intent. The first one reached him, swinging a crude wooden axe. Night parried easily, the force of the block shattering the fragile haft, and followed through with a reverse cut that opened the man from shoulder to hip. There was no blood, only a puff of grey dust.
It was easy. Too easy. He moved with the drills of a decade, cutting down attacker after attacker. They fell like wheat before the scythe, each strike meeting little resistance. He butchered ten, then twenty, their forms dissolving into dust around his boots. A glance showed ▣Satun's whirlwind of destruction. Her axe moved in blurring arcs, each swing cleaving through two or three of the clay men's heads at once. She fought without sound, a silent engine of ruin circled by that eerie white ring. Then, the mob’s demeanour shifted. The blankness in their eyes sharpened into a focused malice. Their movements became quicker, more coordinated. Where they had attacked singly, they now came in pairs and trios, using crude flanking manoeuvres. A wood axe slammed into Night's pauldron, not with enough force to pierce, but hard enough to stagger him. A second blow caught him on the helm, a ringing, brain-jarring impact.
Pressure built around him. He was being pushed back, his boots slipping on the grass now slick with a fine, grey powder. He couldn’t fail. Not here, not in front of his new mentor, with her glowing crimson eyes and silent, efficient killing. This was to be his mission of vengeance, a sacred duty. But this… this was not it. This was nonsense. This was a mad cartoon of battle. His distraction cost him. A spear, crude but sharp, found the gap at his knee joint. White-hot pain lanced up his leg. As he stumbled, a hammer-blow from a cudgel connected with his ribs. He heard a crack, felt the air leave his lungs. He fell to one knee, his sword arm heavy. The clay men swarmed over him, a pile of grasping hands and blunt weapons. Darkness encroached at the edges of his vision, not from injury, but from a profound, disorienting wrongness. Gravity seemed to pull at him from every direction at once, stretching him inward.
Through the pain and confusion, he saw ▣Sarhea break from her own combatants. She sprinted toward him, her axe wiped the head off a pursuer. She waded into the pile, grabbing clay men by their necks and hurling them aside like dolls. She reached him, her red eyes boring into his visor. Her gauntleted hand closed around his vambrace. She pulled. Slowly, with a steady, inexorable force, she lifted him from the ground. As he rose, the pain receded. The crack in his ribs knitted with a warm, itching sensation. The gash at his knee sealed itself. He stood whole on shaking legs, the mob momentarily held at bay by ▣Sarhea's presence. She released his arm. In one fluid motion, she slid the great axe into its harness on her back. Then she changed. It was not a transformation he could follow. One moment ▣Sarhea stood there, a warrior woman crowned in light. The next, the light collapsed inward, folding around her into a smooth, ovoid shell of pulsating ivory twice the height of a man. It hovered for a heartbeat.
Then it cracked.
With a sound like shattering crystal, the shell split down the middle. What emerged was not ▣Sarhea. It was a creature of nightmare and childish fancy—a baby of wretched origin. It was the size of a large bull, covered in pebbled, sage-green skin, with a long neck, a tail that lashed the air, and a head full of needle-sharp teeth. It let out a high, chirping squeak that dissolved into a guttural roar. Night stumbled back, horror icing his veins. His mentor was gone, replaced by this… thing. ▣'s beady black eyes fixed on him for a second, and he braced for death. But it turned. It bounded past him on powerful hind legs and launched itself into the remaining mob. It was a massacre of a different order. The creature did not fight; it ravaged. It snapped men in half with its jaws, crushed them under its feet and batted them aside with sweeps of its tail. Grey dust filled the air like a storm. A sense of giddy, hysterical relief washed over Night. He hefted his sword and charged into ▣'s destructive wake.
They fought as a unit, man and beast. Night guarded its flanks, cutting down anything that tried to hamstring it. ▣ cleared paths through the densest packs, its sheer bulk and ferocity turning the tide. They carved a crimson road up the hillside, leaving only dissipating dust in their wake. When they finally reached the crest, the cottage door stood open, a dark maw. The last of the mob was gone. The beast paused. It shook itself, a full-body tremor, and began to shrink. Its form softened, stretched, and re-formed. In moments, ▣Sarhea stood before him again, her green-bottle leather coat pristine, the fiery halo and red eyes back in place. Her face was its usual stern mask, slick with ambiguity. She gave him a curt nod. Before Night could flinch, the ground shook.
The cottage itself seemed to bulge. Then the entire front wall tore away as a giant stepped through. He was three times Night's height, clad in patchwork iron plates, his face a gnarled knot of roots and stone. In his hand, he held a weapon that was part tree-trunk, part anvil, bound with crackling chains of lightning. The air grew thick and heavy. ▣Sarhea and Night recoiled as one. The giant raised its colossal hammer for a crushing blow. There was no strategy for this, no skill that could parry such force. Despair clutched at Night's heart. He looked down at his sword, her blade streaked with ochre dust, nicked and dulled from the endless fighting. She was a toothpick against this monster. In his periphery, he saw ▣Sarhea move. Not to attack, but to gesture. She caught his eye and made a swift, unmistakable motion: a chopping signal with her left hand, then a mirroring one with her right. *Switch hands.* It was madness. He was right-handed. The sword’s balance was forged for that grip. But he had trusted her this far. As the giant’s shadow fell over them, Night transferred the weapon to his left hand.
The change was instantaneous and profound. The sword did not just feel heavier; it *became* heavier, its mass increasing tenfold, yet it became perfectly balanced for his left grip. A light, not a reflection but a fierce inner fire, ignited along the fuller of the blade. It blazed brighter until it shone with the piercing, unbearable brilliance of the sun. A high, keen sound, like a razor drawn across the sky, emanated from it. Waves of heat distorted the air around the steel.
The giant, mid-swing, roared and clutched its face, blinded. ▣Sarhea did not hesitate. She lunged forward, her axe a crescent moon of dark metal against the solar flare of Night's new beloved. The blade met the giant’s thick neck and passed through without a sound. For a second, the head remained. Then it slid, and the massive body crumpled like a felled tower, dissolving into gravel and wisps of fog before it hit the ground. The sword’s radiance faded, but did not vanish entirely. A subdued golden glow still clung to the metal, and it remained a comfortable, powerful weight in his left hand. Above the now-vanished cottage, the sky tore open. Not with clouds, but with a silent rip in reality itself, revealing a circle of pure, calm white light—another portal.
▣Sarhea walked toward it without a backward glance. Night followed, his mind reeling. The sword hummed softly against his leg. Stepping into the white ring felt like being submerged in warm milk. There was pressure, a sense of passage, but no direction, no sound. Night was convinced, with every fibre of his being, that this was the final journey, the descent into whatever hell governed this insane reality.
The pressure popped. Light and sound returned. His foot met a solid, smooth floor. They stood in a lobby. It was breathtaking. The air was perfumed with jasmine and blooming orchids that cascaded from living walls. The floor was veined marble, the columns soaring arches of solid gold. A gentle, sourceless light illuminated everything, and a tangible sweetness, like the memory of honey, lingered on the tongue. Heavenly music, soft and complex, floated from somewhere unseen. Night wondered where he was, the world alien to his eyes. Then he saw the other people. The lobby was spacious, and small clusters of figures moved through it, conversing in low tones. His visor limited his view, but the shapes were unmistakable. In one group of three, he saw a shorter figure in silver plate standing beside a taller one with an axe. In a quartet near a fountain, the same pair stood close together. A party of five passed by, and there they were again at the centre.
He was looking at copies. Slight variations—a different tabard here, a scar there, but it was them. Dozens of them. All the groups he could see had him and her present. And as he watched, he understood the groupings. The other clusters moved with camaraderie, a shared purpose. They glanced over at them, and their body language shifted. A subtle closing of ranks. Averted eyes. They were the only ones like this. Night and the she-thing, set apart. And every other group in this golden, perfumed heaven looked upon them not as comrades, but as interlopers. The realisation was a cold stone in his gut. He had followed her through hell and stranger realms, seeking righteous vengeance. Now he stood in paradise, and he was the monster. He looked at ▣Sarhea, her back straight, her face unreadable as she surveyed the scene. He thought of his burned village, of the oath he had sworn. He thought of the winged abomination and the sun-bright sword. He mourned, then, not for his fallen Mistress but for the simple man he had once been, who believed in clear lines between good and evil, and who had died somewhere between the falling up and the falling apart.