Crane watched the dark blue canvas of the sky slowly turn into the red as the dawn broke. Above the trees a warm light shined, and he pulled out the diary he was reading to Mefdet before the earthquake and the vision.

Endov and Fennec had taken the first two turns at the night watch, they would do well with an hour more sleep and Crane would do well occupying himself. All night he had been thinking about the children and Arash. He had to find them but going mad as he thought about them while resting wasn’t going to solve his problems.

So, he took the book as a distraction out and opened the broken cover. It had saved his life. First when the cover had blocked Anem’s blow and then when the Dragon attacked. If he had not read about it, he would never be able to think of redirecting the lightning, let alone actually do it.

“He woke up.” Crane silently read the shaky lines with his eyes. It looked as if the hands holding them trembled as the quill traced the paper.

“He thanked me with a smile. Looks like he didn’t recognize me. Does he remember anyone at all? Any of whom he had fought? How dare he comes here after the desolation. After his god dyed our home red? After he turned our hills to dunes, our fertile soil to sand?”

Red dunes, Crane thought as he read. Before the departure, it was hard to imagine a sea of crimson sand covering the entire continent, but now he didn’t need to. He had been there and seen the horrors of it. In the sky or on foot. The place was like hell itself.

“He told me he was looking for a city. Alesia. He told me a treasure lay there and he had to get it. He asked me for help. He shook my hands with the very ones that took your life. I challenged him. I berated him. He apologized. He said that the war ended, and everyone had lost it.

He then again asked for my help, with no shame at all.

I told him that you died in his hands.

He told me that many died, and many killed. He told me that you killed his people too. That he was on his way to Alesia to stop from others dying again. How could he compare the life of a Rae’in’ra and an Eilarî? Does that devil think his life is of any importance? That vermin who crawled out of the depths of the hell.”

“You should read something better.” Endov had woken up and was looking at Crane while still laying on the ground. “Especially if you are reading instead of watching out.”

“It’s good.” Crane nodded, trying to assure Endov. “Actually, it is really good. It’s some sort of a diary. Of a traveller on the red desert.”

“I believe you have enough adventure on your hand as it is.” Endov laughed, pulling his small book out of his robe after sitting closer to Crane. “You’d be better off with this.”

“Maybe sometime.” Crane didn’t reject the idea of reading the book. He would just like to finish the one he had started fist. “There is some revenge going on. I want to know what’s going to happen.”

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

“Alright.” Endov shrugged. “How about you read it out loud ‘till he wakes up?” Endov pointed at Fennec with a glance.

“I drew my sword and struck. The devil struck back.” Crane cleaned his throat and accepted the offer.

“His blows were so swift yet so heavy, so lethal yet so kind. He danced on the crimson sands as he once danced on the corpses of our people.

He disarmed me. Then threw his weapons aside. He reached out to me and asked for help again. Told that he didn’t know the way.

I promise Therialt. I will slit his throat in his sleep this time.”

“The devil here sounds kind.” Endov smiled. “Evil rarely shows mercy in reality.”

“I don’t think he is evil. Or a devil.” Crane stopped reading, closing the book halfway with his thumb in between as a bookmark. “He just sounds… human.”

“Maybe. How about you continue? What did he do next?”

“I am sorry Therialt. I guess Therialt is a loved one? He mentioned her previously. Apparently, this guy killed her.”

“Don’t make comments. You are ruining it.”

“Alright alright.” Crane cleaned his throat again.

I failed you again. I reached him in his sleep and was ready to stab him but then I saw. He was crying in his sleep. Sweating. Shaking. He was having a nightmare. Whispering in his sleep. Apologizing. Calling names. Just like I did. Just like I still do some nights.” The handwriting became harder to read as the words began to look like zig-zags written in a hasty fever.

“Maybe you are right.” Endov’s joyous face slightly soured with nostalgia for a second. “War creates beasts. Beasts that don’t die upon peace. That haunts those who have seen it. I…” He hesitated briefly. “…had a friend. He would be a very old man if he still lived to this day. He was a soldier in the last war, garrisoned in a fort close to Alaz Idreth. One that fell in just a few hours under siege. He would collapse and piss himself just upon hearing the name of the late emperor Aerell. He would wake up in the middle of the night and scream, crying out, thinking the walls would collapse just as they did once under Aerell’s spells, and he was buried alive again.”

Crane didn’t know what to say. He rarely had nightmares. Anem had them sometimes. Once he even burnt their house, which prompted them to build a new one. Unlike other times, Anem did all the work himself. In just a few days, the cabin was mostly rebuilt. Anem knew when to clean his mess. He wasn’t forcing Crane to do everything just because he was lazy, he was trying to teach him some lesson while getting his chores done at the same time. Still, knowing it didn’t make it any less annoying.

“Maybe... maybe he was right.” Crane continued. “Maybe no one won the war, but everyone lost. What right do I have to avenge you when he forfeited his revenge on us? What right do I have to take a mortal life, when Levise the Sinner proudly sits on her throne upon the sky…” Crane raised his head and looked at Endov, surprised. Levise was the one who knew how to deal with the beast. She was the one Anem had sent him for. Sinner? No, that couldn’t be true.

“Stop. That is heresy.” Brows down, upper lip slightly pulled up. Unlike Crane’s surprise, Endov had anger and disgust in his eyes. “If there is only one thing left that is holy and pure, that is Levise. Burn that thing down.”

“…when the children of the Wolf walk amidst the living, warring against the life itself. I have decided to help him. To help him prevent all the battles to come.”

Against the warning, Crane kept on reading, he couldn’t stop after seeing the last part of the sentence. “Wolf”. He thought aloud. Was that thing under the island a wolf? It was like a shadow, without a proper body. Only darkness and eyes glowing with red. Does that thing have children outside? Was the man in my vision one of them?

Fennec smacked his mouth, his lips dry with thirst. He straightened up, then cracked his spine and neck.

“Ouch.” He looked like he got up on the wrong side of the bed. “Yes. Wolves. Scary. We slept with our bare asses on dirt. Should’ve been more afraid at night lad.”