RIMNI

The first thing Rimni noticed when he opened his eyes was that the city was quiet, or at least all the noise was in the distance. Well of course it was like that, everyone was trying to evacuate. It took a while for him to remember why but when his brain caught up he leaped to his feet and screamed. He wanted to curse too but he couldn't think of one that was good enough. They'd done it again. They'd left him. They'd gone out to fight and left him behind.

“I'm not a child damnit!” He roared, kicking at the rubble. “I'm a knight! Just like all of you! I've got a right to fight too!”

Once he'd screamed and kicked a few stones he felt...not better, but calmer. Calm enough to decide what to do next. They were notgoing to keep him out of this battle. If they'd won already there would be people here to fix everything up right? They wouldn't still be evacuating. Okay. Now all he had to do was figure out where the battle was going on. He forced himself to be calm and extended his Rat Sense as far as it would go around him.

And felt two familiar presences, very close by. One was under a fallen slab of solid stone, and after a few seconds of consideration he decided there was nothing he could do about that. The otherwas underneath rubble, and rats knew all about rubble. He pulled aside the stones that felt safe and wriggled between the stones that didn't until he he reached Tyram, lying unconscious at the bottom of the rubble. The rubble hadn't actually landed directly on him, slabs leaning against each other to catch Tyram within a small space. His regalia had faded when he was knocked unconscious, but he didn't look too badly hurt.

“I guess all three of us got left behind,” Rimni said sadly. “I'm sorry. If I'd known you and Andry were there we could have gotten you out. We thought you'd both gone after Balthazar. I didn't even think to try my Rat Sense to see if you guys were around. Of course even if I had they probably wouldn't have listened to me. They all treat me like a little kid. You do too. And Andry. Well I'm not. I'm not a little kid. I'm a knight. A real knight, and I'm getting really sick of you being asleep when I'm talking to you!”

He punched Tyram in the face and the Dragon Knight jerked awake.

“What?” he said. “What happened? Where...oh, right. Balthazar Nodd.”

“Yeah,” Rimni nodded. “Balthazar. I guess he beat you both too, huh?

“Where is everyone?” Tyram said. “Are they okay?”

“I don't know,” Rimni said. “You got left behind by accident. Andry too. They knocked me out. I'm not a little kid.”

“Right,” Tyram said, a tone to his voice that made the Rat Knight's blood boil. “Do you have to stand on my chest like that?”

“There isn't a lot of room in here,” Rimni said.

“I suppose that's true,” Tyram said with a deep, fatalistic sigh. “Alright. Alright I guess we have to go. And fight again.”

“No,” Rimni told him.

“What?” Tyram said. “Come on, get off me!”

“I said no,” Rimni said. “J'vann told us what's wrong with you, what's going on in your head. And if you go into battle all sad and messed up like that all you're going to do is die. You fought him too. Balthazar is strong. Really really strong. I didn't even dream there were guys as strong as him. Maybe he really is the strongest man in the universe, or at least he used to be before he got so old. And when we fight him we're going to win. We can't lose. We can't. We'll win because we're the heroes. But you're not being a hero right now.”

“Rimni,” Andry said. “You've been in battles. It's not like that in real life, the fairy tales are just...”

Rimni punched him in jaw. For real this time. Tyram gasped in pain, his head still reeling when Rimni grabbed him by the collar.

“God damn it I'm not a little kid!” He screamed in Andry's face. “Don't you dare. Don't you dare talk to me about fairy tales. Do you think I don't know? Do you think I'm like you, with my head all full of fluffy clouds and stupid? Do you know where I'm from, Tyram? Kogora. I was born and raised on Kogora.”

Tyram blanched. He knew there had to be something in Rimni's past, but he never thought it would lead back to the legendary hellworld. The stories were all different, and all bad, but the things they all agreed on was that Kogora was hell, and that the Red Tyrant took pleasure in struggle and suffering.

“Do you have any idea how many people I've seen die!?” Rimni demanded. “Do you have any idea how many people I killed? Do you know what they do to you in the slave pits, if you can't work anymore? They hang you over a low fire and they skin you. Slow. Strip by strip, so your blood splashes onto the fire and makes it smoke. They did it to my mother. In front of me. And at least I know why she died. My best friend just disappeared one day, and I found half his head in an alley!

“And it's hall happening right now, Tyram. Don't you get it? It's happening all the time. You just got to pretend it wasn't most of your life. Well I didn't, and right now there's somebody out there hanging over a fire, crying and begging for their life, while a torturer peels off pieces as slow as he can.

“The old Rat Knight found me in the pits, and he told me about Knights. And I'd seen it Andry, I'd seen how some of the stronger ones who were kind could make life better. Just a littlebetter, for everyone in the pit. He taught me about heroes, and honor, and truth, and fairness and justice and all that stuff that people say is silly and for fairy tales but it's not, I know it's not because I've seen what happens someplace when all that goes away. It's real, and it's important.

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“And do you think keeping it alive is supposed to be easy? That you don't have to sacrifice a part of yourself? You always do. You've gotta give a piece of yourself up to do anything. And don't think you'll get it back because you stop now, you'll just never find what you need to replace that hole you made. Sometimes it's awful, and sometimes we've got to just live through it, because the only way things get better is if we get through the awful and focus on that stuff. The honor and the justice and the fairness and the truth, because that's the only thing we've got to make the awful things stop. And the worse it gets the sillier everyone says they are, but they're not. I've seen.

“And you're really good at that stuff Andry! All that honor and truth stuff! And you're strong. The strongest fighter out of all of us, I'm pretty sure. If you came and fought Balthazar it could really help. But I need you to stop being a fucking coward, because it matters who's strong! And if you decide not to be, if you decide it isn't really worth what it costs, that all that fairy tale stuff isn't really worth it, than what you're doing is making yourself weaker and someone evil out there who's strong stronger, and I need you stop it right now and start being a fucking knight!!!”

Tyram's head reeled, memories surfacing. The undefinable strength he'd seen in Chaddim. That he'd even seen in the other knights. How he'd felt when he beat Jalgoz, and Birger. The moment he'd decided that it was worth it, that the pain was worth it, that the blood was worth it, just for a moment. And he thought about his grandfather, another kind old man, and the unbreakable bedrock he'd seen inside him.

For a second there, your face looked like the captain's.

You lost your grit, boy.

He'd thought it was a quality he simply lacked. It had never occurred to him it was at least half a choice. That he'd been tested, and he wasn't too weak to handle it, he hadn't broken in the battle. So all that was left was for him to decide. Would he wither, recede, fade away into uselessness because the opposition was powerful and he was unwilling to pay the cost?

No. Because down that road was death. Because if he gave up on Balthazar, he'd start giving up when the other storms came, the lesser storms. Because he'd always grit his teeth and made himself do what needed to be done, and if he stepped back now all that was for nothing. If he stepped back now none of it mattered, and the person he had been his entire life would be dead, just his weak and withered husk going through the motions until the wind picked up and blew it away.

And in Tyram's soul something that had been jarred loose the moment he killed Jarlo at long last snapped back into place.

“Thanks Rimni,” he said. “You can get off my chest now. You're right, I was being an idiot. Everyone's still fighting right? We'd better catch up to them.”

“And you promise you won't be a coward anymore?” Rimni said.

“I promise,” Tyram said. “Let me up. Do you know where my sword is? Looks like my scabbard is empty.”

“Oh yeah!” Rimni said. “Lemme get out of the way, I don't wanna get crushed by a rock.”

Rimni wriggled back out from under the pile of rubble and Tyram summoned his regalia. Auram flowed to his limbs and he pushed his way out of the rocks like a child kicking their way out of a pile of blankets. Rimni ran up and handed him his sword, hilt first.

“Wait!” Rimni said. “Is it safe for you to just grab that? It's not gonna explode?”

“Yeah,” Tyram grinned. “It's safe. Actually, I think I've got a better idea on how to use it now, thanks to the fight with Balthazar. I think I finally get what happened when I fought Jalgoz.”

He took it without incident and slid the blade back into his scabbard.

“You said Andry was around here?” He asked, looking around the square.

“Yeah,” Rimni pointed to an enormous block of stone. “He's under that. Doesn't seem like he's hurt, but...I don't think we're getting him out from under there.”

Andry himself lay in a crack in the ground formed by Balthazar's stomping attack when he first fought the knights. He had plenty of air, and he hadn't been crushed. But lying over that crack was an entire corner of a three story building. Not only was it nearly solid stone, the parts that weren't stone were thick metal girders.

“Alright,” Tyram cracked his knuckles and approached the enormous slab of rubble. “This looks like as good a test as any.”

“Seriously Tyram don't!” Rimni said. “You'll sprain something! It sucks, Andry's kinda strong too but we gotta get to the fight and...” Ignoring him, Tyram bent his knees and gripped the bottom of the slab. In one smooth motion he stood, lifting it into the air.

“Hey,” Tyram said, letting go with his left hand and holding it by the edge. “That worked even better than I thought! This thing feels like it barely weighs anything!”

“Woah,” Rimni said. “Since when could you do that?”

“Since always I think,” Tyram smiled. “I just figured out the trick to it.”

He tossed the rubble casually aside like it was made of styrofoam. It left a crater in the ground when it landed. Just the force of the vibration was enough to jar awake the unconscious Andry.

“What happened?” He shot up. “Where's Balthazar? My sister?”

“Gone,” Tyram said. “The others are off somewhere fighting him.”

“We have to get there!” Andry shot to his feet. “We have to...what's up with you? You look different. Better.”

“Nothing,” Tyram said. “The kid just smacked some sense in to me, is all. He punches kinda hard too.”

“I told you not to call me a kid!” Rimni said.

“No you didn't,” Tyram pointed out.

“It was implied!”

“Huh,” Andry said. “If I knew we could just annoy you better I'd have sicked the squirt on you in the first place.”

“Hey!” Rimni shouted.

“Guys!” Tyram said. “If we're gonna catch up with everyone we need an air car. Preferably one with a radio, so we can ask Ms. Fadden where to go. And I think I hear an air car coming, so maybe we can...”

The air car flew over their heads, but turned once it spotted them and gently descended to the ground beside him. The door opened to reveal literally the exact last person they expected to see.

“Aurina!” Andry said. “You're alright! The others got you away from Balthazar!”

“Yes,” Aurina said, her face red with fury, despite Chari cuddling up to her and making soothing noises. “Yes, yes they did. And then they put me in this air car—didn't bother to wake me up first, by the way—and sent it off to the evacuation center without even asking if I wanted to stay and fight with everybody.”

“Yeah I know,” Rimny said, leaning back with his hands behind his head. “It gets really annoying, right?”

“So did they ditch you both too?” Aurina asked. “Or are you just late for the battle?”

“We're uh,” Andry struggled to find his footing. “We're the late one.”

“And we could really use a ride,” Tyram said. “There room in the car?”

“Get in,” Aurina said. “I know where they were fighting before, we can be there in a few minutes. And then if Balthazar hasn't killed them yet, I will. If he has killed them all then I'm going to kill them twice. Just watch me.”

“Yes ma'am,” Tyram said, climbing into the air car.

“Is she like this a lot of the time?” Rimni hissed at Andry.

“Nah,” Andry said. “Last time I remember her being this mad I stole her stuffed bunny and it got ripped. She was four years old.”

Rimni looked at the back of Aurina's head as the air car flew off towards the battlefield. Her ears were so red he thought smoke was going to come pouring out of them.

“Must have been saving it up this whole time,” Rimni mumbled.