IN WHICH THERE IS A KNIFE.

Do you know what it means, to "trudge"? It means to walk in a direction you wish you weren't going. I trudged back to HIS tower, lightly shackled, fully disarmed. Zephyr was back in the not-red orb, bobbing helplessly above us. Keller was still breathing, but... barely. He had attempted to steal the jewelled object that was binding Zephyr, to HIS severe disapproval. Alaxoria was in iron sarcophagus held by two of the largest beasts, great sweating hulks of meat and clay and tusks. We called them "ogres", even though all the mortal ogres were actually dead. You could still hear her through the metal, snarling a thousand imprecations against HIM and his bloodline. John staggered, his head wrapped in a flowing black miasma, pulled along with a halter held by a trio of creatures. I was the only one that saw the burgeoning industry all along the length of the river, the watercourse that once fed the citadel.

Great barges were paddling down-river, each wallowed beneath the weight of a cauldron the size of a house. Every cauldron was nearly overflowing with vile reagents I didn't want to guess at, dumping different potions by the ton into the churning waters. The river was gradually turning black as it flowed downstream towards the stricken city, until, after hours of churning concoctions, the inky river shone with a foul pearlescence. The river fish all bobbed to the surface belly-up, then sank... then emerged again. A few of the slippery writhing once-fish crept up to our captor, HE gave them a few words, before they slipped away again beneath the turgid waters. I knew exactly how this would go. The horrible creatures would flow into the burning city, squirm up through the wells and cisterns, and travel in-land with the water table. This was a poisoned disaster that would sink a grip all along the river-lands, the region would never be cleansed unless the river was dammed and the land scorched back to bedrock.

Ahead of us, the tower rose. Every tottering step I took through the ashen grit pushed it higher into the sky. I didn't know whether it was day or night, the wind glowed green, wreathed in grey clouds that raced about like mad dogs. Sleep was a cherished memory, and an anchor around my neck. I knew I was the luckiest out of all my friends, but was it really worth it, to be sighted and sane and uninjured at a time like this? To be walking back to the tower, in step with HIM. Even in all that armour, HE walked like a dancer, every step placed. HE never sheathed the black-ice blade, HE never stopped giving orders to a constant stream of crawling soldiers and shambling knights that leaked reddish oil. The tower sketched higher into that stricken sky, draped with the remnants of the earth through which it had clawed, studded with gargoyle perches and weapon emplacements. All were quiescent as HE lead us closer, towards the already-repaired entryway. The statues that lined the central shaft of the tower shivered to life, holding out hands as platforms that rose smoothly skywards, back towards where it had all ended for us, at the topmost peak of HIS war machine. Why had we fought against HIM? It had almost been a way of giving up, to lash out against the armies and spells, to dash ourselves against the rocky shore instead of bailing out for hours more.

The sky opened up around us, the screaming faces silent and ordered, shifting through the wisps of clouds, eyes of hurricanes. The five of us were laid out before him. Only I still stood. John had blindly fallen to his knees as the statues had dragged us up here, and could not bring himself to rise.

And then HE spoke. Not in the noise I couldn't bring myself to hear, not quite. A normal, almost mortal voice. HE now spoke to make sure we could listen, whispered so we would not be able to flee into the ineffable buzz.

"You have done as well as you could've. I have assured myself of that. You have striven as hard as you could, sacrificed as much as you had to spare. Now you have nothing."

(Nothing)

"I let you escape, before, to feel but a fraction of my wrath, and see my designs come to fruition. Your city has fallen. Your people are dying, swiftly or slowly. Mayhaps they will scratch out a bare life between the cracks of my empire, bearing stories of this time. Their children will not repeat those stories, not in the dark. You have lived through an era that will be forgotten. It is over. You are finished."

HE raised HIS sword and HIS sceptre to the silent faces all above us. "See before me! Five foes, fought in their prime, bound together by shame and defeat! The price is paid! The price-"

And then HE fell over. The sound HE made on impact made me jump. The clang of steel on stone, and the squelch of something shifting where it shouldn't. I could see HIM twitching like one of the poisoned fish. HIS sword of ice had scoured a chunk from the stone where HE dropped it, the floor bubbled where the two met.

Then, HE was still. From HIS back, a long handle stuck out, trailing strings of tired leather.

The faces in the sky looked down at us, unflinching.

From between two of the pillars, came a dry little chuckle, that ended at a point. "Hehehehehe."

I recognised the figure as it emerged from where the two shadows met. I had seen him, almost a year ago, as the seasons and the war turned for the worse. We were just arriving at a village that had sent a worrying stream of letters, and I spotted an old man on the trail, hiking back the way we had come. The peasants there tried to feed us poison, and tossed some kind of powder into the flame of Zephyr that sent our wizard mad for a while. I had felt that old man's interfering touch all through our journeys, but never caught a second glimpse, despite endless hours of scrying in the library attics.

"Hehehehe. Master. My lord! Our champion, you have fallen! Let me help you up."

The figure stepped forward, he looked almost the same as when I last saw him, wizened like a forgotten plum, draped in a fresh black cloak and festooned with gold medallions of power and protection and luck. The man carried a knife, an old knife. The blade was pitted and the handle was unravelling into string of tired leather, a handle the wrong shape for a mortal hand. It had room for an extra finger. Carefully, slowly, counting under pointed breath with each measured step forward, the loyal right-hand of HIM on the floor, inverted the knife and held it with two excitable hands, and plunged it down... and back. The knife disappeared, a promise through time fulfilled. A few moments earlier, HE fell over, twitched, and was silent. Now, the right-hand bent down with a quiet delight, and withdrew the ancient blade with a profane veneration from HIS severed spine. "Now. I do believe you must be confused, children. Hehehe. But my master was in the middle of something, of great consequence to all who lie before... me! Me! Yes! I shall be the one! Hear me! Hear me, children of the sky, before me lie five foes, fought in their prime, bound-"

A fist came up through the floor. The betrayer didn't even have time to squeak as the great armoured hand reached up and wrapped around his legs, yanking the old man down to the chamber beneath. There was a gurgle, and the sound of tired bones being ground into shrapnel. I shuffled closer, manacles jangling, step by careful step, peering down into the chamber below. Below was another ogre, bound in riveted plates of bronze affixed to skin and muscle. The betrayer was a smear along the far wall, his protective charms fizzled out and crackling to nothing. Of the knife that had brought HIM down, there was no sign. The ogre looked up at me, I looked down at it, startlingly mortal-looking eyes beneath an inch of bronze plating. Over their massive shoulder I could spy five scuttling figures, armed with long thin knives, silvery flesh-wires and a conspiratorial gleam. A gravelly roar issued up the hole, blowing back my hair a little. "No. No! Clouds, me!" chanted the ogre, voice coming through the blank faceplate of the bronze helmet "Five foes, fought in their prime, give me- what you doing here? No. What. No! Get back to your posts vermin, get back!"

The stone pillars that marched around the edge of the tower shook as great clay fists slammed into walls, floor, ceiling, everything and anything except the gang of creatures that had been precisely designed to kill armoured knights. The ogre had barely collapsed before they started going at each other, every one of them craving the power that HIS ritual would bring them.

And so it went.

The climb back down the tower was slow, easy, frustrating. First, I sat next to HIS dropped blade and ever so delicately melted the shackles between my wrists. The spell-shadow binding John had faded after HIS death, and we used the blade to cut through the latches pinning Alaxoria in her almost-coffin. We were prepared for her emergence, and quickly forgave her for nearly killing us. She was looking rather crestfallen, and scooped up the still unconscious Keller for the trek back through the bowels of HIS tower. The structure rang with steel on bone and yells of rage and fealty. The clouds above looked down upon us, and I couldn't find it in me to meet their eyes.

The trinket binding Zephyr eluded my novice understanding of impossible arcane artefacts, so I just smashed it to pieces with HIS helmet and cut it up a bunch with HIS sword. "Sacrilege," whined Zephyr as the not-red orb melted away from them, "that was likely crafted by the original builders of the fallen-"

They said some more things, but I wasn't paying attention. The tower trembled like a glass of water, all us droplets dancing inside. Zephyr lead the way, keeping us a little appraised of the betrayals and turned-tables, coups and counter-coups, schemes and plots and revenge, all of it frothing about us like reddened white water rapids. Boots stamped hither and yon, blades locked and keys turned, and the five of us limped through it, unmoored.

"Hold. We are near the outermost wall. Give us a moment, let's just," said Zephyr. My teeth ached as magic shone around us. The wall softened, slumped, turned liquid and flowed out, refreezing into spikes of stone that sprinkled down across the barren soil below. The ruthless wind hummed across the new doorway into thin air. "Out we go."

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"Zephyr, you're the only one who can fly." I tried to say, while Alaxoria just jumped and skidded down the length of the tower, Keller held above her head and axe dangling behind.

"Easy, that time! Come," she called from below. "I catch."

I didn't know who to be more upset with.

We all made our way down eventually, mostly intact. Behind us, the tower and all it stood for began to fray. The creatures within squirmed and bubbled, the alliances and armies boiled into and out of existence as easy as dying. Keys were produced for the great vaults, releasing artefacts to only be used in the direst emergencies. Wouldn't you know it, the other side having an artefact seemed to constitute just such an emergency. The great cannons were remounted, turned to fire against the other side of the very same tower. It was like watching three lumberjacks, vicious enemies, sitting in the same tree, cutting it down as quickly as they could before the others could snap a key branch.

We left. Again. What else could we do? John forbade Zephyr from looting the disaster area, Keller awoke and stayed behind to watch it come down, and I.

I just left.

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The road back was fraught with thwarted conquerors. The forest was filled with the backwash of schemes leaking out of the shattered tower, the fallen trees and broken ground the site of a hundred shouted challenges and belligerent diplomacy, and maybe ten brutal strikes that lit up the sky and rinsed the ground with fresh blood. The difficulty came in determining which was which. Zephyr met one of the newly minted champions of evil with the same vivisection curse they had used on the deer. Which- according to the remaining twenty followers, got Zephyr an immediate promotion to the new champion of evil. Next to the piles of magically chopped meat and flayed skin was the partially digested slush pulled from the creatures guts. An unchewed skull rested on top, gazing at me through empty sockets.

"No," said John, in his firm, stern voice that he used when he was dreadfully unsure of himself. "We don't have orders for you. We aren't your-"

"Not. Not g-orders? Follow, follow help yes?" garbled the foremost of their number, a lopsided little creature that looked like a barrel with eyes, in the dark. The other creatures scurried about like overly-friendly beetles, proffering up a shortsword that leaked purple fluid along the edge, and a scroll wrapped in the tail of a lion. Others kicked and spat on the butchered remains of the previous champion of evil, to demonstrate their zeal and safely transferred loyalty. My, they were good at this. One of them came up to me, a crabbing thing with a single great eye, and offered its back as a spot to sit, take the weight off, be ferried about. Zephyr was just about to say a lot of very encouraging things to the bowing, scraping group, when John lit up the remaining half of his sword and started laying about with great autumnal strokes. The creatures fell like reddened grain. Half of them collapsed to their knees, begging to serve, while a few watched which types of creature John was striking, and tried to match his blows.

None of it did them any good.

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The faces wrought of green-grey clouds had drifted away, letting in fragments of confused sunlight. I desperately needed to sleep, Alaxoria offered me one of the tiny flowers that she crushed up and rubbed on her gums to keep alert, but those just made me anxious and easily-startled. The overcast sun seemed unwilling to shed any light on the carnage of last night, preferring to send shadows chasing across the barren hillsides. Smoke rose from the forests beyond the blasted wastelands, less than a wildfire, more than a campfire. Zephyr span up into the blustery air, circling back minutes later: "survivors", and then they were gone again. Zephyr was a blue firefly above the forest, darting back and forth around the thread of smoke, calling down pillars of black flame that utterly obliterated two lurking posses that were watching the survivors, as well as the trees they were hiding behind. We passed through one of the flame-struck glades on the way to meet the survivors, the black flame Zephyr conjured didn't catch or spread, just rotted through the wood of the trees to pulp in an eyeblink. There was no trace of any creatures. Just pungent dust, blowing in the wind. I tried to breath shallow thoughts.

A trio of arrows arced up towards Zephyr from the forest, falling woefully short, but were snatched up with telekinesis anyway and brought back to us. "It seems the people of the citadel are loosing arrows," presented Zephyr along with the arrows, pointing out the distinctive grey fletching. "This hasn't happened to us before." John just stared at the arrow, then around us at the obliterated copse of trees. Behind us, one of the ancient sentinels of the forest had taken the blow just above the roots, and slumped drunkenly against its fellows. It fell all the way, with a cracking crash, sending up a cloud of... dust. I made myself breath again, lightheaded.

"You gave them all a right scare, raining down spells like that," came a voice from the undergrowth, gruff and clipped. "But I suppose we weren't in any danger, were we. If you wanted us dead, I guess that'd be the first and last we knew of it. Right?" out of the undergrowth came a portly, haggard man. He was wearing a well-cut clerks suit, cut to ribbons by thorns and badly scorched along one sleeve. He surveyed us in turn, axes and armour adorned the lot of us, and with Zephyr hovering above. "The five the citadel sent to the tower. Well I'll be..." he scratched his head. "Should I bow? You must forgive my impropriety, it's been a long-"

He looked around, and shrugged, abandoning the sentence. John stepped forward, "Good sir, your arm? Do you need?"

"Oh, no, not this, put it out with my jacket before it got me. No but there's. A lot. People this way though, they need," he threw up his hands. "Everything. Anything."

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"Is this all the survivors?" I scanned across the ragged little band, a hundred, maybe two.

"No, plenty more scattered," said the clerk "Some I met were set towards the Lake Citadel, wouldn't listen to us that knew it was destroyed. We get more every hour, and others wander off however they like."

The centre of the camp was a bonfire, the people clustered about it for the warmth of the flames and each other. I thought back to maps, and the river teeming with dredged horrors. "Zephyr, do a lap, send anyone you find in this direction. We can't defend anyone strewn out like this, I mean, if that's ok," I turned towards the clerk but he put up his hands, ceding the situation to us without another word. "Right, um..." and John stepped up, bless him.

"Alaxoria, food? This group will have scared off the wildlife but, still." She nodded, looked up at the sun. "Dusk." she nodded, and melted away into the undergrowth. John turned to me, "Susan, Keller, stay with them. I'll go check there's nothing left hidden that Zephyr couldn't spot from above."

Keller and I trod carefully towards the bonfire in the centre of the camp. Everywhere was, well, they were alive? Right? That must count for something. All around me, eyes were red from weeping, throats silent from screaming, burns and broken bones left to quietly fester in the daylight. They had the warmth of the fire to sit by. Some of them had what they had been carrying when it had happened. Most had even less than that. I looked over the breathing detritus that had floated up from the devastated citadel, looked upon the remnants of herded townships, looked at scraps that had been rescued from the flames of HIS rise. Tears and bile rose at the magnitude of everything that had been lost.

A little girl stared up at me, eyes blinking in a dirty face, sucking on the arm of a half-shredded woollen bear, cotton fluff leaking out. She had blue eyes, like mine, like the ocean when we had crested the hill and witnessed the citadel-

The girl's mother put her arms around the child, looking up at me with a fear that galloped high with easy practice. Me: clad in fitted armour, belted with blades and strange artefacts, boots bloodied, a warrior gaze. Them: nothing. No wonder. I cracked a smile, and it felt like something cracking. "Hey, it's alright," I called to the girl, meant for the mother. "I won't hurt you. My name is Susan, what's yours?"

Keller put a hand on my shoulder.

"Listen," I continued, crouching down low, "I know a special spell, just for you. Do you want me to help Mr. Bear?"

"Sir Bear." came the voice, muffled behind Sir Bear's wet little arm. "'s name's Sir Bear."

"Well! It looks like Sir Bear has defended you valiantly, hasn't he? Can I see him for a moment? Just see him, it's alright"

The little girl carefully unwound one arm, holding up Sir Bear. His head flopped sideways, attached with a thread, maybe two if he was lucky. I shuffled forward without standing up, staying low and jovial. My other hand jabbed through my badly organised pack until I found a sock missing it's partner. Two fingers pointed towards Sir Bear, a quip to focus the energies "this piece of twine for thee and thine, to give us all a little more time" and the spell took. The sock split into a threads and pieces, squirrelling up my arm, across my shoulders, down the other arm, and flying towards the girl and the stuffed bear. She squealed with fear-to-delight as they fluttered and flittered, pulled the wool back together and patching up a missing spot, scooping the stuffing back in. The toy was very patched, but the heroic sock-scars looked good on him. The little girl swung the toy around, smiling with all her teeth, plenty still growing in, she looked a little like Alaxoria after the fall. She hugged the bear tight, and turned to shine at me. "Can you do the same for my daddy?"

I didn't have time to respond before the mother whisked the little girl away.