Get up!

A woman’s voice reached Wyn’s mind, distant, as if carried to him by the wind, but somehow powerful. He didn’t recognize it, but it sounded…familiar, like the voice of an old friend long forgotten. It snapped him out of his memories, returning him to the present.

He could only watch as the monsters closed in on the shelter, he could hear the acute crying of a child. Wyn cried out, but it came out as more of a wail, a retching, pathetic cry as he begged someone, anyone, Elder Terris, Corrin, even the spirit knight from all those years ago.

Someone… please save them.

Get up Wyn! Fight! The voice cried out.

He couldn’t. He was too weak. History would repeat itself, and he would lose everything again.

This time, the voice in his head was his own. You promised. You promised you’d protect them.

Wyn’s fist closed, tearing through the dirt as he grit his teeth. He. Had. Promised. He couldn’t fail. So long as he could draw breath, he would use it. So long as every bone hadn’t broken, he would fight. His sword was gone, but a wooden spear, hardly a sharpened stick, left from a fallen warrior lay only a few feet away from him. He reached for it, but the pile atop him refused to let him up, pressing him into the dirt, determined to hold him fast.

No.

Wyn pushed, forcing strength he didn’t know he had into his arms as he struggled agonizingly to his feet. His body screamed, his bones shook, and his vision swam, but the pile gave way, and he slipped out from under it. Wyn’s fingers closed around the wooden shaft of the spear, clenching it so tightly he worried it would snap, using it as a crutch to get to his feet. He took a single step, then another, moving slowly at first, as though his feet were stuck to the ground. The hellhound slunk past the elk and into the garrison, smoke curling around its jaws.

No!

Wyn forced his body to move faster, limping, staggering with the spear until somehow, he found the strength to run.

“NO!”

The rain, the darkness, even his fear all fell away as time seemed to slow before his eyes. In this compressed sliver of eternity, this thousandth of a second between breaths, Wyn reached inside himself for strength: anything, any speck of skill, training, or knowledge that would save them. There was no one else here, no one but him. He was answered by a spark, a small ember deep within his chest. An ember which glowed a brilliant purple.

The voice spoke to him. What is it you want Wyn?

I want to protect this town.

It grew louder. What is your dream?

To save my family!

The voice cried out in his head, desperate. Wyn! What is your dream?

Wyn jumped into the air, determined to use the weight of his fall rather than the failing strength of his arm. But some instinct drew him back to the flame. He wanted to protect his family, that wasn’t a lie. But… it wasn’t his dream either, was it?

It had started so long ago: that day in the forest when his world had changed. No, it had been even before that, with his mother’s voice at night, telling him the stories of heroes. The spirit knight had shown him it could be real, that there was a path he could take. And he had wanted to follow it more than anything. But he’d buried those feelings deep, telling himself he’d changed, that he didn’t need them any longer.

So then why? Why wouldn’t they ever go away? Why wouldn’t they ever leave his mind? He didn’t care about such a childish dream anymore!

Ah, Wyn thought to himself, that’s a lie, isn’t it?

Be more selfish Wyn. Think more selfishly.

What terrible advice.

Then, like a newborn taking its first breath, he willed the spark to grow. The spark responded instantly, swelling in size until it became a warmth which filled his whole chest, spreading eagerly to each of his limbs. Wherever the flame touched the black venom of the snake, the venom was burned away, leaving the numbness gone from his limbs. The pain, which had wracked his entire body, evaporated like mist on a summer day as every trace of fatigue fled his system. The spirit song roared in his ears as ghostly purple flames erupted from him, washing over the room of huddled onlookers as he drilled his spear into the back of the surprised hellhound, driving it into the ground.

The flame raced up the length of the spear, enveloping the demon-spawn as its eyes went dim. Moments later, the flame had reduced it to ash, leaving only its core behind.

Finally, the voice was quiet. What is your dream Wyn?

“I want… to become a spirit knight. I want to become a hero.” He whispered. With those words, the true admittance, he felt a shift within himself. Something changed, something important.

Wyn slowly stood from his knelt position, staring out over the crowd. The flames had seemingly left them untouched, looking to him in awe as the fire settled onto the ground around him. It didn’t spread, it merely waited, flickering in the dim light of the garrison. In that moment, Wyn found he knew exactly what he had done—the power that had been granted to him, though he’d never known it before.

The blessing of Spirit Fire.

Back through the doorway, the elk and snake began to slowly back away from him, or rather, from the flame. Each of their movements was jerky and uncertain, as if they couldn’t decide whether to run or not. Wyn would give them no such choice.

“Wyn?” A voice called out from behind him, Khaeli’s, “Is that really you?”

Wyn turned his head, picking her out in the mass of people in the shelter. “Yeah, it’s me.” He paused, smiling, it felt so good to really smile. “Corrin’s on his way back Khaeli, it’d be embarrassing if I let the village down while he was gone.” And then he was gone, rushing out the door and back into the downpour.

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He rushed towards the elk, the venom gone, his mind focused. He didn’t find himself to be much faster than normal, but he felt like he was in top form, his mind and body working in harmony, like he’d just gotten a full night’s rest.

He whirled the flaming spear around, dodging just under the antlers of the elk and piercing its side. The wound was non-fatal, but it would—

Spirit fire spread from the spear to the wound, racing along the body of the elk, devouring it. The beast didn’t cry out in pain, but its body seized up and fell to the ground, unmoving as the flame continued to burn away its form.

The snake was on Wyn a moment later, not giving him time to think. But compared to earlier, its movement seemed dull. He’d felt this every now and then, like when he went through a kata he’d practiced a thousand times. There was no need to think, his body knew what to do, and did it perfectly. He didn’t dodge as the snake lunged, there was no need. He simply stabbed forward with his spear, driving it into the monster’s mouth. Its body was given to the flames, dissolving around him, not even ash left outside the garrison.

Ok. First things first, the safety of the shelter.

Wyn took off to the nearest sounds of fighting, and only a street over he saw a group of men battling a pair of stone-back tigers. They were winning, but it was taking too long. Wyn charged past their line and stabbed towards one of the beasts. Stone-backs had thick, tough skin, but his spear, wreathed in spirit fire, pierced it like it wasn’t even there, and a moment later, he had dispatched both.

The leader of the group, a guardsman Wyn recognized stepped forwards, “How did you—”

“I need you to report back to the garrison,” Wyn interrupted, “The door has been destroyed and there’s no one currently there. Don’t worry, I don’t intend to let a single one through anymore.”

“But... I—” The man shook his head, “Understood, we’ll keep them safe.”

Wyn nodded and watched for a moment as the men turned to go to the shelter. That was good, with it taken care of, he didn’t have to worry at all. His focus turned to the rest of the battlefield, and Wyn took off towards the outskirts of Straetum, heading in the direction where the fighting sounded the worst.

That marked the turning point of it all. As the spirit flame raged inside them, Wyn burned through the monsters like fire through a field of wheat. Any cut imbued with spirit fire, no matter how minor, seemed lethal to all but the strongest of the monsters present. Anything from the first and second floor was instantly purged.

When he reached the thickest area of fighting, Wyn leapt over the defensive line into the sea of chaos, sweeping out with his spear in a circle, igniting the monsters around him. A rallying cry went up among the villagers, and he raised his spear, glowing with ethereal flames into the sky.

Wyn fell into a rhythm, his sweeping strikes brought release to every creature that dared come near him, leaving a wake of purple as he mowed his way along the outskirts of the village. Finally, following his lead, the villagers began to make headway against the endless horde. Stronger monsters swarmed up from the back of the swarm as he cut his way deeper and deeper. They too fell before the power of the flame, though for some of the deeper floor monsters it took more than a single strike.

Everything was going well, and Wyn could feel the momentum of the battle shifting in their favor, in only a few more minutes, the victory would be theirs to claim.

A roar shook the air, so loud the shock had Wyn grinding to a halt. From somewhere in the darkness, lost in the rain, he heard screaming—both men and monster—cut short as the sounds of slaughter echoed out from ahead. The ground shook slightly as an inhuman, metallic growling sound cut through the drumming of the rain, turning the blood in Wyn’s veins to ice.

From the dark, an enormous figure emerged. It was the size of a house, with dark scales covered in blackened blood. Its hunched back was topped by a jagged spine composed of razor-sharp spikes, and its elongated limbs were equipped with sharp, serrated claws which glimmered silver in the faint light. The leviathan had a long, muscular tail with two crescent blades on the end, and it had a long, skull-like face with eyes which glowed crimson red.

It growled, a low, guttural hum as it approached, trampling over the lesser monsters in its path, and even with the spirit flame Wyn couldn’t help but tremble. Around him, the men of the village broke ranks and ran, but he stayed in place, his feet transfixed to the ground as he took in the terrible beast.

The leviathan finally came to a stop, a mere twenty feet away. Wyn’s fist clenched tighter around the spear as he hesitantly took a stance, noting a few men who had stayed to fight with him. There was a moment of stillness as even the nearby monsters stopped their fighting in anticipation.

The monstrosity sprang into motion. So fast! Wyn barely had time to think as he dodged a slash of its tail purely on instinct. Two of the other men weren’t so lucky, their upper halves flying several feet before landing in the mud. Wyn twisted, slashing at the tail as it passed in front of him, but the wooden tip merely deflected off the scales of the monster, the spirit fire leaving no more than a faint scorch mark.

Without a second to think, it was on him again, moving much faster than he’d expected from a creature that size. Its clawed hand struck at him, and he met it with his spear. He needn’t have bothered though, as the force of the blow was enough to knock him off his feet, flying through the air before tumbling across the ground for several seconds uncontrollably before finally coming to a stop. Even through the revitalization of spirit fire, he could feel a dull throbbing in his body after that, and he was pretty sure he’d cracked a rib.

The wooden spear had been snapped in half by the force of the blow, and he frantically searched for a new weapon on the ground. His hand seized on a sword, but when he tried to imbue it with spirit fire, it didn’t respond, the flames wouldn’t coalesce on it as they had the wood. He picked the broken halves of the spear back up, and unlike the sword, they reignited without issue. It would have to do for now.

Wyn dove back into the fray, focusing on dodging the devastating strikes of the leviathan, any one of them powerful enough to kill him should they connect. All the while, he tagged it with stray blows over and over, but where the weaker monsters would fall to contact with the flames, such a small amount of spirit fire didn’t seem enough to kill this thing. Each time Wyn struck, the flames would spread for a moment before dying out, leaving only scorch marks around the affected area.

As the fight dragged on, Wyn extended himself further and further trying to protect those men who had stayed with him to fight the monster, taking several more blows than he’d intended. He was certain that without the power of the fire, he would’ve collapsed. Eventually he ordered them to retreat and regroup, as they were only hindering him. Still, his battle thus far had relied on narrowly avoiding blows that would truly kill him, and it was an incredible stroke of luck Wyn had lasted as long as he did.

To make matters worse, the ground had become impossibly muddy from the rain, and he had to fight to avoid slipping in it. As things stood, it was all he could do to stay alive. Unless he found a way to fell the beast, eventually, he would make a mistake, and he would die. The leviathan lifted a hand back, and Wyn prepared to dodge yet again, determined to win a battle of attrition, wearing it down with spirit fire even if it took all night.

Yet… it paused, the creature turned to the north, and Wyn saw it: a shining light, streaking through the storm towards them at an incredible speed. The sight filled Wyn with hope, in a way that seemed all too familiar.

And then, with the force of a falling star, it crashed into the monster, sending it skidding across the ground and nearly toppling it, scattering light like white smoke in every direction.

Wyn looked up at the source of the blinding gleam…and began to laugh. “Took you long enough!”

Atop the body of the beast, a lone figure stood with a blade driven deep into the monster’s back. Light streamed off of him in smoky wisps, illuminating the deep black of the night. Even the rain parted before him, sizzling into mist as it touched the tendrils of power emanating from his body. Like a hero from ancient myth, like one of the five kings themselves, he rose, slowly dragging his blade from the flesh of the stunned beast.

“Slink back to your little pond, wyrm,” Corrin said, his eyes burning with a fierce intensity Wyn had never seen before. “I’m done hiding in that damn crack.”