— Harrence —

They ran ahead of him like hunting dogs, all the children Enclave burned in their quest to stamp out Spirit. Some of them were sullen at their sudden violent deaths, seized and bound without warning, set to burning, their lives destroyed before they learned what they'd be missing. Some of them skipped gleefully, their childish joy inspired by the day's adventures. They flitted among the hedgerows, in and out and through with impunity, sometimes scaring up small animals who could sense them. Who knew that birds were so sensitive to the spirits of the dead? The legends all agreed that birds could see and escort spirits from the living world, but Harrence hadn't thought the stories real.

The dead could not forever linger here. A boy with floppy ears, a sullen one, had disappeared, vanished, into the light. And Harrence knew by instinct this was right, that spirits couldn't stay, and must move on.

It happened after they had found the man responsible for burning down his town. It seemed the populace objected to Defenders of Pure Faith arresting boys to fuel the wicked pyres of twisted faith. The town revolted, killing several men. Responding to their blasphemous attack Antonio, Defender of Pure Faith, decreed the town be razed and set ablaze, and all the townfolk slaughtered in the name of Olyon, starting with the flop-eared boy.

When Ma'Tocha's team arrived they found survivors picking through the wreckage, wailing. Harrence worried they would blame Ma'Tocha and attack her, but they had a peculiar lack of interest in her. Whatever love they had for Enclave lay in ruins with their houses, and they had nothing left to offer to a new church, neither enmity nor loyalty.

It took Ma'Tocha days to find the murderers and chase them up a wooded hill. The defender and his soldiers thought they'd have advantages on higher ground but all they gained was isolation. They would have lived a little longer if they had sought more company. A fortress or a city would have been a better destination than a simple change in elevation. In a moonless hour of the night, the disciple and her band had made short work of the Enclave murderers, leaving yet another blood-soaked skirmish lodged in Harrence's memories.

That was when the nameless boy raised his face and hands to the moonless sky and was bathed in light from nowhere. He signed his thanks to Harrence before departing, but he sulked until the very end. A sudden surge of silent light and the spot was empty, as if the boy had never been.

"What was that?" Ma'Tocha stared at where the sullen boy had vanished.

Harrence didn't know. He couldn't see his girls right then, and for a moment, he was seized by an awful fear. Had they left him, like the boy, and hadn't said goodbye? He cast his gaze all around, turning full circle, and couldn't find them. He knew they couldn't stay. Deep down, in the pit of things he didn't like to think about, he knew. They'd have to leave one day, just like the boy, but they couldn't leave without warning. Not again, like when the soldiers took them. One minute shining with bright promise, another minute dead in violence.

All this killing wasn't like him. In all his life, he'd barely raised a fist to anyone. He would kill an animal for food but even then, he preferred to hunt the birds over mammals, and smaller mammals over larger ones. It was impossible for him to kill a person except to save another person. Even then he needed to convince himself his enemies were less than human, were debased by vilest purpose, and deserved to die.

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Harrence saw the field of skirmish, felt the atlatl in his hand. His bow had broken, a victim of the overwhelming power of holy prayer, so he had learned to throw the javelins. With a sturdy lever, all his strength was brought to bear. In one affray he pierced three men at once. And, worst of all, he had been proud of it.

The spirits of the soldiers began to leave. He could see them now: everyone who died. Most were indistinct, mere whispers of the souls now freed from flesh that caged them. They too were struck by light with no apparent source, though very dimly, and departed in the moments after death. Some of them were eager, vanishing before their bodies hit the ground. Others were reluctant, delaying their departure even when the light had come for them, holding on for minutes. Sometimes hours would pass before the stubborn ones would go.

Then there were the powerful, the spirit-filled: his daughters Brynn and Yara, and all the others Enclaved killed for 'heresy'. Some would follow him for days and wouldn't leave until their murderers were found and killed. He saw them when they wanted to be seen and never when they didn't want to be. A pack of five, including Brynn and Yara, still followed him and helped him hunt the hunters.

And all of them would leave, eventually.

"Harrence," Ma'Tocha called, "are you all right? What do you see?"

Antonio, Defender of Pure Faith, must have had some spirit of his own. He wasn't nearly solid like the other talented, the ones he hunted. But he was lingering beside his corpse, enraged, enrobed with jealous violet flame. How dare the talentless, the heretics, the nobodies, the ignorant, defile the flesh of one ordained to cleanse the world? The malice in that man was tangible, a bow of hatred bent to almost breaking.

Though Harrence couldn't see it, he could sense an awful fate was gathered in that darkness aimed directly at Ma'Tocha's spirit. Injury was sure, the kind that scarred and lamed and made practitioners retire. Antonio sought to force her off the field.

So Harrence did what bulwarks do: protect. He put himself between the dangerous and righteousness and took the blow for her. The curse (he lacked a word more fitting) pounded Harrence, cracked him open like those rocks that merchants always sold at festival, with promises of possibilities.

A customer would buy one as a gift, a little box of crystal mysteries. A smaller sum of coin would buy a blow, a hammer strike upon the rock just so, and crack the geode to its sparkling core. The very best were mostly hollow in their cores, surrounded by a nest of amethyst or golden celestine, needle-thin. But some were solid through and through, at first a disappointment, but when sanded smooth with daily efforts in the odd spare hour, in weeks or months the treasure was revealed: a plane of many layers, brightly colored; Or iridescent fire trapped in stone; Or pure carnelian as red as blood. There were a hundred possibilities.

When Harrence took the hammer blow he cleaved, and all the hidden things inside of him, the secrets only known to his creator, exploded from his flimsy, fleshy self. He battled the defender with a force as alien to him as Spiritual Art. And it was brutally done, protective strength against malevolent intent to kill, without the slightest sign of grace or skill. They hammered at each other, trading blows that wrecked and warped the shape of fighters' souls. Antonio wouldn't leave and had to be demolished into violet threads of ire. The final shreds of malice burned in silver flame, a fire not of Harrence's will.

Antonio, Defender of Pure Faith, was vanquished, exiled, banished to hereafter.

And Harrence, hollowed to his hallowed core and harrowed by his recent trials of grief, embraced his long-awaited, fated death. His used-up shell had nothing left to give and, falling to his knees, consigned himself to God.