JALGOZ

The fortress of the Brother's Sloth wasn't an impressive thing from the outside. It might have been a castle, a very small one, covered by a tarp. A low hill of dirt with a hint of a turret shape on one side was a more accurate description. The only sign it was a habitation of any kind was the sunken door, and the circular windows poking out from it.

That was because, like a lot of fortresses in the age of air superiority and orbital strikes, most of it was underground. The brothers had found it ready made—bandits are not known for their building skills or instincts—and moved themselves in. Most of the curving hallways were completely natural cave, with a few chambers cleared out to make rooms.

And at the very bottom sat Jalgoz, Big Brother Sloth, eldest of the Brothers. He was a hulking mountain of a man with long, thick arms. He had a thin mustache and a beard almost as thin growing down from his lower lip to the end of his powerful chin. His regalia inactive he lounged in a simple shirt and pants on a stone chair covered in furs like some ancient barbarian king. There was a lot about his bandit court that gave the same impression, despite the mass produced clothing and rifles belonging to his men.

He took a swig from his cup and eyed the man kneeling on the floor in front of him. It was exactly three and a half hours after the battle.

“And that's it?” he said. “You're sure you saw Jarlo die?”

“I-I'm sure,” the hapless bandit almost whimpered. “No one could survive after bleeding that much. And his eyes...your brother was dead, sir. I swear.”

“You realize if I thought he was still alive when you ran away I'd kill you right?” Jalgoz told him. “For leaving my brother in a battle without trying to help him.”

“I do know that,” the bandit said.

“But I have to ask what you were doing,” Jalgoz continued, “while my brother was fighting. Since you're still alive and he's dead.”

“I was knocked unconscious in the first clash,” the bandit said. “By the time I woke up...it was just in time to see that knight punch a dragon through him. And then, boss nobody else there had any Regalia, except the knights, so...”

“So you ran away,” Jalgoz pressed.

“I knew you would want to be informed as quickly as possible!” the bandit insisted.

“Did you just correct me?”

“N-no sir!” the bandit said. “Never.”

“Cowards,” Jargoz snorted, taking another drink. “You're all cowards. Get up already, you can live. Everyone leave, I need to think about this.”

“Thank you sir,” the bandit said, practically running from the room. The others left the room except for one extremely fat and shirtless man, round bodied and chubby faced and almost completely hairless.

“Oh what is it Jurgo?” Jalgoz snapped at his younger brother. “Leave me alone. We'll avenge Jarlo, don't you worry.”

“He was my twin, don't forget,” Jurgo shook his head. “But it's not about that. Your damn pet is tormenting the Churmegoedon again.”

“And you can't deal with the little hellspawn yourself?” Jalgoz demanded.

“He's your pet,” Jurgo challenged. “You deal with him.”

Jalgoz cursed and climbed off his makeshift throne. Jurgo, like his deceased twin Jarlo, was an enormous man but next to their older brother he looked almost small. Jalgoz's hulking body filled the hall and his gate was reminiscent of a glacier. Slow yes, absolutely, but imponderably heavy and powerful, a relentless force with all the patience in the universe as it rumbled by and carved the world into a different shape around it. Finally he pressed a button and the metallic door slid open, releasing a horrible cacophony of chitters and shrieks and birdlike chirps.

The only three things in the room were a birdcage and two creatures. The one inside the cage was a thing of beauty. In basic form it resembled a rabbit, although it had a pointed muzzle rather than a stubby one. It's fur was a light purple, but every so often it would catch the light and sparkle every shade of the rainbow. Feathers of a lighter purple grew in a ruff around it's neck, in a tuft at the end of its long, thin tail, and on the two sparrowlike wings sprouting from its back. It's eyes were large pure black almonds.

Those eyes were currently widened in—well it was hard to say. Fear, anger, frustration, all of the above. The architect of its discomfort hung from the bars of the cage. It was shaped a little like a monkey, an ugly hairless thing with wrinkled gray skin. Its face had two beady eyes an a beak, and it's unsettlingly human hands ended in wicked claws. It chittered and shrieked at the creature in the cage, while the caged one whistled and warbled back.

“Zgratch!” Jalgoz shouted over the noise in the room. “I know it's fun to torment her, but we still need her alive.”

The beaked thing called Zgratch chittered in disappointment, but hopped off the cage and scampered away. Jalgoz let it go, walking to the cage and peering in.

“You need to keep him away from that thing,” Jurgo said. “The Churmegoedon is our insurance policy. Without that, when Grandfather...”

“I know that!” Jalgoz snapped. “It's my plan, remember? I know exactly how important the little rat is.” He peered through the bars of the cage. “Are you hurt anywhere? Scratched?”

It responded by shifting as far away from him as it could in the cage and chirping viciously at him. It was under no illusion that the question had anything to do with its well being. It didn't know anything about market value, but it knew it wasn't being kept safe for its own welfare.

“No you look fine,” Jalgoz said. “Good. You're going to buy me a ship.”

“Us a ship,” Jurgo cut in.

“My plan, my ship!” Jalgoz snapped back at him. “I should leave you here and see how you make out with Berger and the others.”

“So are we heading out to crush the village?” Jurgo said. “Or not?”

“Not us,” Jalgoz shook his head. “We've got all these men, we should use them. Besides, the government might see it as a sign of weakness if we handle something like this personally. Same time, we can't let things like this fester. And we owe them for Jarlo. Give Kaddo a bunch of men, that should be enough.”

“For a couple of stray knights?” Jurgo grinned. “Sure, that should be enough. We don't even have to do anything.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Jurgo said. “We've got bigger problems than a couple of wannabe heroes right now.”

TYRAM

After just four hours, the village was turning into a fortress.

Walls had been pretty easy to erect. There were people in town who raised entire barns over an afternoon, putting up a ring of walls and fortifying them was child's play. It was also incredible to all the knights besides Tyram, who'd grown up on a farm and knew how quickly farm equipment could be converted to weaponry.

“Is it really so strange?” Tyram laughed at J'vann's stunned expression. “It's been that way forever. They say even the grim reaper himself has a scythe, to cut us down like wheat.”

It should have been a grim thought. In fact it was a grim thought, in Tyram's head. The sight of the hole in Jarlo's torso kept floating back to his mind, but it was fading further and further into the background the more he focused on helping organize the defense, and the mood in the village had gotten almost jovial. There was grimness under the laughter, an iron core to all of it, but to mostly the villagers just seemed relieved. They might all be dead in the morning but at least they weren't waiting for it anymore, weren't sitting there wondering when it would all boil over and burn down their world. It had boiled over now, the flames were licking high, and now it was fight the fire and try to survive.

The mood came not only from the natives of Tragam but the outsiders who had come in. They had come until the town was full to bursting, all of them bringing food and weapons and tools. Chaddim said they'd cleared out the four closest villages to prepare for the battle.

Chaddim wasn't the only veteran of the Ruin Wars. There were a few of them around, hard old men with leftover weapons and serious expressions who suddenly found themselves in charge of planning a defense. They'd tried to give that job to the Knights, but the Knights had pointed out that none of them had ever even been in any kind of large scale battle. They would help where they could, and avoid where they were told not be be when they were in the way. Mostly they hauled and lifted things with their auram-enhanced muscles.

Fann in particular was surprised that such a rural settlement with such limited contact with the rest of the universe could support the large group of bandits Andry described. Again Tyram had been the one to explain. Yes, there wasn't much tech out here but there was a lot more money than someone from a heavily settled world might think. The landing pads dotted through the farm fields might only be for loading cargo, but that cargo went nowhere until it was paid for. If you were willing to do horrible enough things to any village that complained you could do very well collecting tribute, if you did it from enough villages at once. Until, of course, you pushed it too far and the villagers fought back for real. Then your only option was to make an example of everyone who'd fought back, cow the rest of your area of influence into submission, or else wind up losing your own livelihood instead of just taking other peoples.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Which, of course, was exactly where the village of Tragam and the bandits lead by the Brother's Sloth found themselves.

The biggest argument during the fortification concerned Jarlo's snails. One of them, the red and blue one, had completely disappeared. The other had been found hiding in a storehouse when someone tried to stash some of the incoming supplies there.

“We kill it,” Andry said, cracking his knuckles and reaching for a hand shovel. “It's the one part of this whole stupid mess I'm going to enjoy.”

“You can't just kill it!” Aurina said. “It's not his fault his owner was a bastard!”

“And what are we supposed to do with it?” Andry countered. “You've seen how much it eats. You've seen what happened to the crops when Jarlo let it loose in the fields. It'll chew through our supplies in no time, and it can't possibly be of any use. Besides, I could use a little payback for the crops we lost.”

“None of that is his fault!” Aurina said. “Why not let it loose in the fields, like the other one? Sure, they'll eat a lot of the crop, but if we don't have to pay the bandits there's enough left to...”

“Assuming the fields don't get burned down during the fight!” Andry shouted back.

“If I may,” J'vann stepped between them. “A devotee of Yggdrasyl is meant to protect any and all life he can. I believe I might have a solution, if as I suspect the creature is not entirely natural.”

“What do you mean?” Andry asked.

“I have studied all kinds of animals,” J'vann said, stepping up to the snail and prodding its shell near the center of the spiral, carefully avoiding the spikes. “And I think I recognize this species. They are not native to this world, and normally they are not nearly this large. If they have been genetically altered this will not work, but...aha!”

There was a flash of light from the snail and it began to shrink, smaller and smaller until it was just big enough to fit in the palm of a hand.

“It had a Regalia?” Andry gawped.

“Regalia are not limited to humans,” J'vann said, carefully picking up the snail. “A great many living things have them, although I suspect this one was inserted by Jarlo. And was probably created by the powers of his own Snail Regalia. Otherwise the creature would have been able to control it. Most likely it was eating even more of its body weight than usual thanks to the strain of its constantly active Regalia. I will find someplace to put it for now.”

And so that was settled. All in all the work went smoothly, with the greatest looming worry being the arrival of the enemy before they were ready. But by the time it was dark the walls around the town were tall and strong, defended by armed men and women, and boasted a surprising arsenal of weapons positions. Against normal troops of the numbers they were expecting it would be a significant obstacle, and if the other side had no auram users, or even just no Regalia, the battle would have been all but decided.

But the enemy did have auram users, and the enemy didhave Regalia. And dealing with them would come down to the Knights.

Tyram sat near a fire, staring into the flames. Not that he really saw the flickering tongues of fire. All he could see, over and over, was Jarlo's blank eyed face, and the blood spreading out. He felt...he wasn't sure. Emptied out? Hollow? Sick? None of those quite covered it. On the one hand, the man had been a monster. On the other hand...

“What's that you've got?” Aurina asked, walking up to hand him a bowl of stew. He took it, shaken out of his reverie.

“This?” he said, holding up the disc he'd been fiddling in his fingers. It was a flat spiral like the shell of a snail, made out of glittering metal. He hadn't even realized she'd been doing it. “It's a regalia. Jarlo's Snail Regalia.”

“Oh,” Aurina said. “You took it from his body, after. Did you...did you have to cut it out?”

“No,” Tyram shook his head. He pressed his hand against his own shoulder and there was a soft glow around his fingertips. Like a ghost floating through the wall his Dragon Regalia emerged, a metal ring with a snakelike dragon rearing and roaring in the center. “See? It looks solid but it's really just auram, and auram's just energy. Our armor's kind of the same way, that's why it appears and disappears. Only the user can take it in and out of their own body while they're alive, but if they die anyone can take it.”

“Oh,” Aurina said as Tyram replaced his Regalia back into his body in a haze of softly glowing light. “Still, it can't have been much fun having to touch him.”

“It wasn't,” Tyram said a little hoarsely. He cleared his throat and shook his head, as if shaking heavy thoughts loose, before he spoke again. “I was hoping someone with enough auram to handle a regalia would show up and be compatible. But the best we've got is, well, them.”

He gestured to another fire, where a ring of eight burly men in plaid shirts were drinking and laughing. They were, apparently, renowned for their brute strength throughout the region. Everyone seemed to think they'd be a great asset when the fighting started.

“They really are tough,” Aurina said.

“I know,” Tyram nodded. “For some of them that's the problem. Six of them already have nearly completed Regalia forming in their bodies. That kind of thing happens, when you work hard at something for a long time. You can't use two regalia at once—well, normally, there's all kinds of exceptions but as a general rule—and the ones in their bodies aren't fully formed enough to take out.”

“The other two?” Aurina asked.

“We tried,” Tyram shook his head. “They're just not compatible. Anyone can use a Regalia, but not every Regalia can be used by anyone. The only other option would be to stick it in someone who wouldn't be able to fully activate it, which would almost be the same as throwing it away. Maybe if we had an expert on auram mechanics here we could do something but...we don't.”

“But people pass down Regalia all the time,” Aurina said. “I know it happens. Don't you have your grandfather's Regalia, just like Andry has our grandfather's?”

“That,” Sasha said walking up, carrying her own bowl of stew, “is more complicated than it sounds. They either look for someone compatible or give someone special training to handle a specific regalia they're meant to inherit.”

Verro and Rimni walked up behind her, and all five of them sat around the fire. Verro was nodding in agreement.

“If you've already got a Regalia forming inside you,” Verro said, “the only thing to do about is to train that into something serious. None of the partial regalia anyone here has could be removed from the body. It's just a twitch of their natural auram, not a separate thing yet. And no one's lucky enough to be randomly compatible.”

“Oh,” Aurelia said. “I suppose that makes sense. I don't know much about that stuff. That was all Grandfather. And Andry, once upon a time.”

The group lapsed into silence.

“So why were you all meeting up?” Aurina asked, trying to break the silence. “Was it just for your mentor's memories? I overheard you say something about a quest.”

“The quest for the Shield!” Sasha smiled. “That's the idea anyway. Assuming there is a shield.”

“The shield is real,” Rimni said. “I've seen pictures.”

“I think she means assuming it's still findable,” Verro said. “But then what's a quest for, except to do the impossible?”

“Andry and Grandfather mentioned a shield before,” Aurina said, “but I didn't used to be very interested. I don't think I ever really got the backstory.”

“Our masters were all members of a knightly order,” Tyram said. “The Knights of the Alicorn Shield. They disbanded after the Ruin Wars, like a lot of the old orders did. Our masters thought that was wrong, that the collapse of the old Alliance meant we were needed more, not less. So he and his friends found apprentices to train, and met here every ten years to discuss how it was going.”

“The Shield was supposed to be an artifact with an embedded Regalia,” Verro said. “Capable of all kinds of things, if you believe the stories. Whatever powers the shield did or didn't have, it was the artifact they swore their knightly oaths on. Our masters want us to find the Shield and use it as a symbol to reform the order.”

“Your masters were right,” Aurina said quietly. “The universe could use a few more heroes. But how come they didn't know if the shield had powers?”

“Well by the time the Ruin Wars came around...”

“By the time the ruin wars came around,” Andry cut in, standing over the group, “nobody had seen the stupid thing for a hundred and seventy five years.”

“At least,” Verro corrected him. “The incident you're talking about, the Great Fire, is just the most recent time it might have gone missing.”

“How can it go missing more than one time?” Aurina asked.

“Because it was stolen nine hundred years ago,” Tyram said. “And supposedly found, but that might have been a forgery replacement. That's supposed to be about the time it lost its powers too.”

“Seven hundred and sixty years ago the order's headquarters were destroyed in a battle,” Sasha said. “Shield went missing again, found about eight years later...if that wasn't a replica.”

“Five hundred year ago it disappeared after the assassination of the Order's master at the time,” Verro said. “It turned out to have been his twin brother. The murderer and the thief, I mean. They beat him and got it back, but nobody knows if that's the real shield either.”

“And then a couple centuries ago it vanished again,” Tyram finished. “Just vanished.”

“So if any of those shields were replacements...” Aurina rubbed her temples. Tyram recognized the signs, minds tended to boggle when they started working out the logistics of hunting down the Shield. He'd had the same symptoms himself. “Or if all of them were...you could be looking forever!”

“Ah but what is knighthood but an eternal quest for perfection?” Verro said in a lofty voice.

“Typical,” Andry shook his head in disgust. “Going around risking your lives and poking into everyone else's business just to find a glorified serving platter.”

“It's not just a shield,” Rimni said angrily. “It's...”

“I know I know,” Andry said. “I got the speech from my grandfather a million times. It's a symbol, something people could rally around, a real order of knights reforming after the Ruin and bringing chocolate rivers and gumdrop smiles to all the little children. He gave me that speech the day before he went out and got himself murdered by a bandit. I'm not impressed.”

“Andry,” Tyram sighed. “I'm getting kind of sick of you.”

“I don't particularly care,” Andry shrugged.

“But I care,” Aurina said. “We couldn't have kept going the way we were, Andry. We couldn't. You know that.”

“Well...maybe.” Andry said. “I still say we could have bought him off, something like that. And I still say they're more trouble than they're worth. Or they would be, if we didn't need them to save us from what they did.”

“Why not blame me?” Aurina said. “I was the one who said I'd go with Jarlo. And that was before they stepped in.”

“You're my sister,” Andry said.

“Oh good,” Verro said dryly. “A logical argument.”

“And you shut up too,” Andry glared at him. “I'd like to at least pretend you're all taking this seriously.”

“Andry,” Tyram said. “I killed a man today. Alright, it needed doing and he deserved it, but it was the first time I'd ever down that. I tore him apart. I know how serious this is.”

“I killed for the first time today too,” Sasha said. “My first sentient, at least. No one who grows up in the hunter clans on Shadd is a stranger to death but it was...disquieting.”

“Well I actually killed a bunch of people before today,” Verro said. “Don't worry, they all had it coming. But yeah, it stings.”

“Wait,” Andry said. “Wait, wait a second. Neither of you had ever killed anyone before? Have any of you ever been in a real battlebefore? Or even a duel to the death?”

“Well have you?” Rimni asked.

“That's not the point,” Andry said desperately. “All this and you've never even...I can't take this. I have to go. I have to...just...get out for a minute.”

“Andry wait,” Aurina said.

“I'll be fine,” Andry said. “Everyone's gone crazy. I'm just gonna go and think for a bit.”