The King looked around the room - once, twice - and then took off his helmet. For a long moment, he just stood there, looking at the carnage in the room. Dead bodies lay everywhere, with some 50 men cut down by only the King and his three paladins.

He didn't look happy or proud. His eyes were red and strained, as if he had been crying. He moved over to a small body on the floor, and Milthael realized it was Tuale. The boy had been stepped on in the battle. His face was crushed, and his body crumpled from the fight. The King sniffed, and tears could be seen falling from his angry red eyes.

"Sire, should we pursue Cleaver?" One of the Paladins looked out through the huge hole in the side of the barn.

The King didn't look away from his dead son as he answered. "Track him down and bring him to me." The king bent down and picked up his son, then he looked at Milthael.

"What have you done to him?" he asked.

The question rang hollow in Milthael's gut, and he barked out a short laugh. "Done to me?!" He pressed against the chains and snarled, spittle flying out of his mouth. "What have you done to me? What might I have become if you had not stripped me from my family and made me your slave?"

The king tilted his head, and his eyes narrowed. "You will be freed from your service Arthael, by that have no doubt.”

Milthael looked out at the huge crowd of people. There were more people gathered together on the steps than he had ever seen. Were there hundreds? Thousands? The crowd of people seemed to blur into the city itself. The sheer number of people made him feel dizzy. Then he realized what was happening. He was to be a spectacle for the church - and for a moment, his eyes seemed to unfocus as panic began to set in.

He was still trapped by the magic of the king, held to a bar driven through a huge block of white stone. It stood at a man’s height above the ground, in the center of the Palatian square. The crowd was completely silent as it waited for what the king had to say. They all stared at him, wondering what crime he had committed. Underneath him, he could see his king staring out at his people below. He seemed to stretch out the silence, reveling in the intensity of the moment.

The king was no longer wearing his bone armor. Instead, he wore robes of bright blue, trimmed with gold. On his head, a crown full of diamonds glittered in the morning sun, and his white-blond hair was oiled slick into a tight ponytail. There was no sign of fatigue on his face, no sign of distress that the night before he had killed a score of men.

“Last night, we were attacked—attacked by bandits, thieves, and murderers of the worst kind.” The king’s voice rose and rose, and now anger bled into his voice. “Cleaver the butcher was there, and he killed my son.”

The crowd of people before them, once quiet, now became a crowd of whispers. Arthael no longer hated Cleaver, even if he had been seeing wanted posters for the man for years and many missions had failed in an attempt to track him down.

But the child inside them hated him now. The child had feared the man known as Cleaver—and even admired him. But he had gotten his father killed—and that could not be forgiven. Tuale hadn’t needed to die, and Cleaver had signed the warrant for their death with the slice of his knife.

A deep sadness welled in his gut. They had lost another father. That was three. One had been taken, and two unjustly taken in battle. Milnas wondered at why his father had not done more to protect them. Not done more to protect himself. He was supposed to be the most powerful of them, and yet he had been slain as easily as any man.

There was a small commotion as a man in front of the crowd wiggled his way out of sight and hurriedly pushed his way out of the crowd. Milthael only saw his face for a brief instant, but something about the man seemed familiar. He scanned the crowd quickly, but he could no longer find him. Were those green eyes?

“Did he deserve to die? Do any of you deserve to die?” The king spread out his hands. He hummed something softly, so quiet that Milthael almost didn’t hear it, and then his hands began to glow with a soft golden light.

“We wield this power not to hurt, but to heal.” The King held up his hands, and a priest cloaked in blue robes brought a cripple forward in his arms.

"Witness this diseased cripple being healed by the grace of the church!" The king placed his hands on the diseased cripple. The yellow glow in his hands dissipated into his flesh. The rotten flesh seemed to scab, then turn pink, and all traces of the horror that had afflicted his flesh were gone. The King picked up the cripple, and the cripple turned his head and grinned at them.

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Calk was an old man again, but the feverish intensity, and the evil in his eyes was still there. A huge roar went through the mass of people as they witnessed the miracle. The king held him there for a long moment as the people wept in adulation. Then the king turned and set Calk on a chair. Milthael looked away. He didn't want to see the smug look on the mage's face that he knew he would find there.

After a few moments, the people grew quiet again, and a restless energy wormed its way through the crowd when the King didn't turn back to the crowd. Instead, he looked up to the Palace, as if he was admiring it on a fine day. And it was a fine day. Not a cloud in sight in the blue sky. Somehow, that bothered Milthael, as if the weather shouldn't be so indifferent to his death. Finally, a cry shouted out, "What about the paladin? Why is he chained?"

The King turned on his heel, as if he had just been waiting for the question. "You've seen what we can do. You've seen our power and how it can help all of you," the King shouted again, his magnified voice booming and resonating as if they were all in the largest of chambers, instead of outside in the heat of Mildor's midday sun.

The King looked at Milthael as if he was admiring a fine suit of armor. And perhaps that is just what he was to him. "You know how the paladins are created. They are picked and chosen from the people," he spread his hands to encompass the mass before him. "This man here is just a man. He is not royalty. His blood is the same as yours. And we gave him everything. Is it not the ultimate honor? The ultimate reward to be chosen by the church?"

The crowd was quieter now than it had been all day. They hung on the king's words, somehow knowing he wasn't expecting an answer. "It was not his fault. But his soul was corrupted. His very nature was changed." The king walked up to Milthael and looked into his eyes. "This is not the man that once was. This is an abomination who needs to be cleansed.”

The King turned swiftly back to the crowd. "You have witnessed our power to heal. You have seen me cure this poor man," he gestured to Calk and gave him a sympathetic look.

"So today, I have gathered you before me not only to witness the power of our miracles but also to witness the power of our judgment."

The King turned and made a small motion with his hands. Milthael heard movement behind him—the shuffling of heavy feet and the scraping of wood. It was as if someone was pushing something heavy.

Milthael could not turn his head far enough to look, but he smelled burning metal, and an intense heat began to singe the back of his neck. A cold fear entered his gut and made his insides spasm.

"This--thing, will serve as a reminder to what happens to those that seek to corrupt our holy institution!” The king waved his hand again, and then after a small moment, the world became a place of burning.

The boiling liquid cascaded down his hair, burned his scalp, and seeped into his eyes. The pain widened his eyes in shock at its intensity. He gasped, and the thick, burning liquid metal entered his throat. It covered his neck, chest, groin, and legs. He began to cough and spit, struggling against the restraints that held him to the pole.

He had trained his muscles for years--so that they were hard as the toughest stone. His lungs never seemed to empty, and yet he was powerless beneath the pain. The child within them panicked and reached for his magic--but like before, it was just out of their grasp, like the connection had been severed. Thinking became increasingly difficult as the burning consumed him. Both man and child were dying, and the entire city watched in silence as a beloved paladin--the most holy of warriors, was burned alive by more gold than they had ever seen in their lives.

Nothing had come of the child's life, and nothing had come of the man's. The child had spent his first years happily, only to have everything taken away from him. Then, on a journey, he lost the only thing he had gained—his friends.

In a brief moment of solace, the man and child's consciousness mirrored each other, feeling the pain and suffering in the strange parallels of their existence. Arthael had also lost his family and had been forced onto a path without his consent, compelled to serve the church against his will. They had even stolen that in the end.

But he had gained his freedom, and now it was cruelly snatched away, turning him into a mockery in front of the city he had sworn to protect. Maybe the child deserved the consequences of his actions. He had made a choice, even under pressure, but the man never had.

But at that thought, something sprang into existence. In the deepest recesses of his mind, not yet consumed by the madness of the burning pain ravaging his body, a distant memory whispered. His deceased father had told him something. His magic came from the bridge between worlds. It was life that bestowed power upon his magic and shaped his abilities. Hope blossomed as the idea fully formed. Time was running out, with his breath held for too long, and once-familiar thoughts now felt sluggish and dull.

The connection could not be bridged in his current state; he was no longer himself. It was now up to the child. He had always pulled himself into the other realm, drawing its power into himself and channeling its magic into the world.

But now, he understood that he needed to push it away. So he exerted effort to push it away, and it grew more distant. Then, he pushed harder and harder until the connection snapped.

His magic was launched into the air like an arrow, and he could feel its impact on a woman some hundred feet away. She felt nothing, as it was not an event of the world, but of the realm between worlds. A link had been forged, and life had begun anew.