Clouded pain greeted Dallen as he awoke slowly, as if rising from mud. The blurred image of a wooden ceiling greeted him. He was inside, then. He tried to piece back together what had happened.

He’d turned around and come back. He’d fought a warrior blessed by the Shapeless God. He’d won. But he hadn’t been himself.

The memories halfway through the fight were fuzzy, and felt like they were stained red. Like someone else had been in control, and he only a witness.

Dallen’s head drifted slowly, stiffly over to his right hand. The Maker’s hand. It was contorted now into some twisted shape, its fingers twitching like a dying insect. Dallen forced it to close into a fist, imposed control back over it. The Maker’s hand responded, then relaxed. But Dallen was still left with a pit in his stomach.

Now, his eyes drifted to a table near the cot where he lay. A sword lay there, its guard inlaid with fine gems. It had once been a large weapon, almost a greatsword, but not anymore — for it was split into pieces, its blade laying in shattered fragments on the table. The sight of it only made the pit in his stomach grow deeper.

“You’re awake.”

The voice was soft, muddied, and only slightly disbelieving. Dallen turned and saw a familiar face watching him with tired, green eyes.

He tried to respond to Adelaine, but his voice caught in a dry throat, and he could muster only a cough instead.

She had a wooden cup of water for him at the ready, and helped him drink. Devils, this was a sight to see — the legendary last knight of Callia, famed champion of the Contest of Swords, needing help from a young girl just to lift his head and drink.

“You were in bad shape after the fight,” she said, taking the water away. Dallen shifted himself up in his bed, ignoring the aches. He wasn’t keen to keep feeling so helpless. “I had to use some of the Pattern’s magic to heal you.”

Dallen raised an eyebrow at that, hoping that his expression was calm and level, rather than sickly and wearisome as he felt.

“Really, it was…” He coughed again, slowly regaining his voice. “It was that bad? And Vanteus didn’t stop you?”

Adelaine deflated a little at the mention of that.

“You weren’t at risk of dying, I don’t think. But your bones…you would have never…” She shook her head, and regained some resolve. “As far as I’m concerned, it was bad enough to risk using Pattern magic. And besides…Vanteus hasn’t spoken to me much since that night. Hasn’t spoken much to anyone, not even the people he heals.”

Dallen tried to remember what had happened after the fight. He hadn’t thought about it much. But now, that gap in his memory dragged a slow terror over him.

“Adelaine, that night…” He pushed himself further upright, trying to lean in. His whole torso hurt from the strain of it. “What happened last night? After the fight?” He looked around, trying to figure out what might have happened, but he was on the second floor of the workshop, in the same room where he had slept several nights.

“It wasn’t last night,” Adelaine said, with a small grimace. “You’ve been asleep for a full day.”

Dallen fixed her with the hardest look he could manage. She was avoiding the answer. He understood — he didn’t much want to hear it either. But he needed to.

“What happened?”

Adelaine thought for a moment, and a heavy silence settled upon the room. Even the sounds of bubbling concoctions and ticking instruments seemed to quiet as she thought. But after only that one moment, she set her jaw in further resolve.

“You set something afire in the townsfolk. Something about seeing you fight that monster, even from as far away as we were. Seeing you beat him. They stormed the baron’s keep…with some help from the guards, as well.” That last part was difficult for her to get through, but she pressed on. “They holed up there, and when the bandits came back in the dark of night, they were able to fend them off.”

It might have sounded like good news. But Dallen knew better. When simple townsfolk went against bandits and guards, you didn’t just win. You didn’t get a happy ending.

“How many did we lose?” Dallen asked, cutting straight to the heart of it.

“Half of the townsfolk at least,” Adelaine answered, her voice sounding distant. “Most of the guards.”

Dallen placed a hand on his head. It was ringing now with a dull, growing pain. It swam with all the people he had met, all the people he had foolishly come to know. He didn’t want to know their fates. But he would be a coward if he shied away from it.

Dallen threw the blanket back and swiveled his legs over the side of the bed. They felt all too thin and all too heavy at the same time. But he forced himself up onto his feet. Adelaine tried to stop him at first, then switched to a supportive hand when she realized the first plan wouldn’t work. They shambled over to the window together.

The town looked even more a ruin than it had before. Buildings were burned. Puddles and signs of flooding covered the place. Debris and marks in the mud where buildings had been dragged away. There was barely a door or window that had not been broken. And at the eastern gate, there was a clot- covered pile. Dallen did not need to see beneath the dirty, stained cloth to know what it concealed.

“Orram,” he said. “The blacksmith, did he make it out?”

“He did,” Adelaine responded.

“And Irne? The little one?”

“She holed up here with us in the workshop.”

Dallen wanted to feel more relief than he did at that, but each person saved just felt like another life that had to be traded somewhere else.

“The baron?”

“That bastard is dead. Killed himself before they even reached his chambers.”

“Fucking coward. Good riddance.” Though in truth, he felt no relief from knowing the baron was gone.

Dallen felt himself shaking a bit. Somehow he already knew the fate of the next name he would ask. And not speaking it, just for this short moment, made it less real.

“Bant?” he asked, near a whisper. He could feel Adelaine’s support lessen, could feel her deflate beside him.

“Not him. He didn’t make it.” He felt her squeeze the shoulder that she was gripping to prop him up. It stung the sore muscles, but his whole body hurt. She spoke again, voice stronger but still wavering.

“They said he was the one that let the townsfolk into the keep. That he led the charge into its halls. They wouldn’t have made it without him.” He could hear her fighting to keep her voice steady, to keep tears and despair from taking over. “He died a hero.”

Died a hero. As if that were something to aspire to. Dallen watched out the window at the ruined houses and ruined bodies and ruined lives. This place looked more like a grave than a town.

This was what hope got you.

“I did this,” he said, not thinking. “I should have never come back. I should have convinced you all to run.”

In a flash of movement, Adelaine turned him so that they faced one another. With how unsteady he was, he nearly fell. She dug her fingers into his arms, and looked right into his eyes. Hers were red with sorrow now, but alive and burning.

“No.” She said it with a forcefulness that caught him off guard. “Those bandits — and that thing that you killed — were going to tear this place to the ground, and its people with it. And we were just going to let it happen.” There was a tinge of anger in her eyes. At the townsfolk, or maybe herself.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Some of us survived,” she continued. “I survived. And the others at least went down with a fight. With hope in their hearts. Now our fates are in our own hands, not some monster’s.”

Dallen pulled his gaze away from her and turned toward the window once more. It did not seem like a town where hope had been reignited. It seemed like a town that had discovered that hope alone didn’t keep you alive, or slay your enemies, or fill your stomachs, or rebuild your homes.

But Adelaine had not seemed to learn that. And was that truly so bad? Dallen looked closer to the world outside. There were a few folk moving about. Most had slumped shoulders, heads hung low, the look of defeat about them. But there were a few that seemed to push through. A woman scrubbed purposefully at a washing rack. A pair of men, faces solemn but set with intent, cleared broken lumber from a ruined house. Children still played, somehow, a little ways up the hill.

It wouldn’t do them any good, Dallen knew that. He could not convince himself otherwise. He could not muster hope within himself. The world had drained him of his last little bit of that long ago.

But maybe he could settle for giving it to others. Just this once. Maybe that wasn’t so bad. To try and give them what he could not give himself. Even if it was a lie.

His mother would have said that it was better to die with hope than to live a little longer without it. He tried not to think of Callia, and what had happened to her there. About whether she had died with hope then.

Dallen turned toward Adelaine. Her face was still set with that sorrowful certainty, that hope. It was a foolish thing. But what kind of monster would he be if he stole that from her?

A voice in his head told him that was a cowardly way — to avoid the truth of the world. But he’d rather be a coward than a monster, if only for this moment.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said, voice only a hoarse whisper. He hoped it was convincing. The faintest hint of a smile seemed to show on her face.

Soft footsteps sounded, and Vanteus came around the corner. He looked twice as old as he had the last time Dallen had seen him. His face was creased with deep lines, and he had dark bags under his eyes. Eyes that looked cloudy and distant now seemed to stare right through Dallen.

“Dallen…” The wizard spoke the name as if he hadn’t expected Dallen to be there, and had only just noticed him. Then his face fell a little more. “I see you’re recovered.”

It was subtle, but Dallen thought he could hear a sour twinge in the wizard’s words. Perhaps Vanteus had not done it consciously, but there was some resentment buried under those words.

“Your apprentice helped with that.” Dallen tried to combat the sour note by making his voice a little more upbeat, even though he did not feel it. Vanteus evidently did not, either.

Adelaine’s eyes were on the floor, and her confidence had washed away. Vanteus only nodded, eyes leaving Dallen and looking into the distance.

“Yes, I’m sure she did…I need some clean rags, and sullenroot, and…”

Vanteus was not speaking to either of them, and went through the room as if in a dream, muttering to himself and grabbing various items. He did not spare either a glance as he left.

“He defended us,” Adelaine said, after a moment of silence. Dallen was leaning against the wall now, watching the empty doorway. “That night, when the bandits came. The others don’t know, but I felt it. He called some mighty power, and it felt like the world shook. And the men outside were gone.” A pained look grew on her face. “And it broke him.”

Dallen still watched the empty doorway.

“This world is unforgiving,” he said. “Sometimes, when it tests you, you have to break in order to keep going. Or to keep others going.”

“I know that. But it doesn’t make it easier to see him like this.” She shook her head. “He saved more people in that one act than we both did in the whole last day of healing. But he can’t see that. He can only see the lives he took.”

That was the paradox of fighting. You killed, so that you could save. You traded lives, and decided who died. Like you were the Pattern itself, some grand judge of death and consequence.

“And yet,” Adelaine continued, “he still won’t teach me those magics. The ones I could use to save people, beyond just healing.”

“No…no, I reckon you won’t ever learn them here.”

Her eyes were distant and deep in thought.

“No, I won’t…maybe it’s time to try somewhere else then.”

Dallen looked sideways at her. Some of her previous sureness, her previous hope, was returning.

“Not settled on staying here in Haverren?”

“I’ve stayed and helped through the worst of it. I don’t feel as bad now, leaving.”

And there’s half as many people to look after now.

“Where, then? The academy in Londoria?”

She thought, then shook her head.

“I could learn there. But I wouldn’t be helping people. I wouldn’t be doing much good.”

Dallen studied her. And a thought came upon him. Adelaine believed that he had given Haverren a blessing of hope. But if she stayed here much longer — saw how quickly these people’s inspiration would burn out, saw how little hope got you — she might lose that little bit of optimism that was still burning within her. And for some reason, Dallen wanted to keep that from happening. More than anything in the world, in this brief moment, he wanted to preserve that flame.

Perhaps it was the coward’s way. Running from the truth. But what price was that, to preserve a little of the good left in this miserable world?

“I’m heading westward, when I’m good enough to walk.” He spoke plainly. “You could come with me.”

Her eyes flicked towards him. And down at the Maker’s arm, for just a moment.

“Westward? To the Hills of Tammerach?” There seemed to be a faint glow in her eyes, like a sparkle. “Why westward?”

Dallen wanted to say it was just where he was heading, but he stopped himself. He was not just wandering. He had said westward for a reason. It was the direction in which a distant feeling was tugging him. It was the direction from his dream. And as much as he feared the Dark from which it had been delivered, he could not resist the temptation to know.

We are not yet complete, the voice had said. It was some kind of purpose. Who knew the color of that purpose, but it was something.

Dallen thought about the way Adelaine had looked at the arm, and took a gamble.

“I was visited by a dream,” he said, with solemn slowness. Adelaine’s eyes narrowed.

“A dream,” she repeated. Dallen nodded. “A dream of Dark?” Her reddened eyes seemed to widen with both fear and burning curiosity. Learned folk knew of those types of dreams, and as he had suspected, Adelaine knew about them. Their weight, and their danger.

“Aye. I don’t know what it means. But it’s as good as anything.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“The world is dangerous, Adelaine. And each of the dead gods within it is just as dangerous as the last.” He said that last, but he didn’t quite believe it. He tried to ignore the pit of worry and fear that was now occupying his stomach. He had never been one to lend much truth to dreams and their omens, but this one had left him shaken and unsure.

“A sliver of the Dark Beyond…” Adelaine said, half in awe and half in unease. Then, she turned to the stack of empty books at her desk. And took a long moment to think.

When she turned back to him, her face was as sure as ever.

“When do we depart?”

----------------------------------------

It was a cloudy day, and the wind blew westward as they set off. The cliffs of the Shattered Heights howled a low, distant tone all around them. They pushed forward, cloaks held tight around them, toward the unknown. Toward the tugging of a dream.

Dallen had never lent much truth to dreams. But there was something about the Maker’s arm that he had been ignoring for far too long. Something he had felt all the way back when Jurral had strapped it onto the bloody stump of his shoulder, during Callia’s fall. If this cursed dream would give him even a hint of what that was, it was as good a purpose as any.

The Duke’s sword, broken halfway up the blade, was sheathed at his side. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. Adelaine carried an empty journal in her pack. She hoped to use it, and record what the world after the Final Battle was truly like.

Dallen knew the answer wouldn’t be pretty. But so did Adelaine, as far as he could tell. So there was no reason to state it, just to dampen whatever spirits she might have had. She had been resolute all throughout her departure, even through her final words to Vanteus. He hadn’t put up a fight, or tried to get her to stay. Dallen could tell that had hurt, but Adelaine pushed through it.

The two stopped to look back at Haverren at the top of the last hill before it disappeared.

It looked like a sad, small town. But from this distance, it looked much the same as it had when Dallen had arrived. The wooden wall was still broken. The keep still loomed overhead. The buildings left standing within were still a mix, bent and straight and stout and tall. Faint specks of people moved about.

From this distance, you couldn’t tell that half of the townsfolk were now dead. That the baron had been deposed, and a pack of bandits had been fended off. You couldn’t tell that a Shapeless warrior had been broken, torn, and thrown from the high cliff just outside of town.

But you also couldn’t tell that the townspeople had taken matters into their own hands. That they had finally fought back, and regained control of their own fate, however short lived that had been for some of them. However short lived it would be, for the rest of them.

Dallen had left Haverren broken. But he’d also left it a little more full of hope. Hope that he could never have, but might still be able to give.

And maybe that counted for something. Some little bit of meaning, in what little time he had left. In what little time the world had left.

The two turned westward, and left Haverren with its broken buildings, its corpses, and its little bit of hope.