CHAPTER 30

The closet was barely wide and deep enough for her to sit in, shadowy and dusty with the odor of disuse. Her gun lay on a folded cloth in front of her. Gared eyed her from the doorway as he hung the censers on the inside walls of the closet.

"It could be dangerous. Sometimes the trance can last for days." He advised quietly. "I’m not wholly certain I will be able to keep you in this world." He advised, and gave her a lopsided smile. "Sorry."

"Any other advice?" Katarina asked reluctantly.

"Keep focused on your gun. That’s the whole point of this, right?" He asked rhetorically. "To induce a proper meditative state, we use the incense. To maintain it, we use prayer and music. Is there a particular instrument you are comfortable listening to?" He asked, and she thought for a moment. "Piano, I think." She replied.

He sighed. "No way for that to happen. No piano here, and you can’t do this in the main chapel. You’ll have to make do with me beating a drum." Katarina nodded.

"Good luck." he offered, and then closed the door, leaving her in darkness.

The incense filled up the closet quickly with its thick, rich scent of strange spices and perfumes. Breathing it in, Katarina was immediately dizzied. She picked up her gun and cradled it in her lap. The metal seemed to gleam, though there was no light to reflect off the Truesteel barrels. The golden script along the barrels seemed to pulse with its own inner light. It was written in the old language, the gothic script Angland had used a thousand years ago. Katarina knew the words by heart for each scripture.

"Ego sum illa furoris. Ego sum et patientiam. Ego sum misericordia." seemed to pulse from the barrels. I am her fury. I am her patience. I am her mercy.

The gold script suddenly unraveled, forming rows of strange characters that flowed and pulsed and flexed. Katarina sat transfixed as the squiggles pulsed with their own golden light.

She took a breath and nearly choked; strangely, her lungs felt heavy and yet somehow smooth; if she took long, slow breaths, she felt as if she could breathe anything and her lungs wouldn’t object. There was the idle thought to test the experiment underwater and just as easily the idea unraveled.

A warmth grew in her chest; she recognized the feeling as the same from when she was bonded to her gun the first time. She licked her lips as the world reeled around her. The holy scriptures suddenly turned into puffs of golden smoke, and trembling, began to form into strange, jagged symbols.

Icewater cascaded across her heart and adrenaline surged in her veins as realization struck. She struggled with her whirling consciousness to bring meaning to them. Those symbols were the divine language, the forbidden language. The legendary Words of Creation, the first language as spoken by the Golden Lady when she made the world.

All of the artifacts that contained even the smallest fragment of her power were locked by such language. No one not consecrated to the Golden Lady would be permitted to use them. There was a second or an eternity spent in baffled contemplation. Her gun was a powerful weapon to be sure, crafted by master smiths at the peak of their skill, but ultimately it was a tool of men, not a divine artifact, a tool that should not have divine locks.

These first characters were a warning, a bar against trespassers. It was only in this state that she could be asked in this language and be able to answer, but it was also in this state that she was the most compromised. The incense was intoxicating, making her disoriented and intoxicated. Her thoughts were slow and ponderous.

She would have to pronounce each word carefully, perfectly. The slightest mispronunciation meant obliteration or worse, and even if she got it wholly and completely right, there was always a price to pay for a mortal to invoke the Divine Language, which was not meant to be spoken by human lips. The words and symbols were meant for the Chorus Celestial, humans were only capable of speaking each syllable in the most base and crude form.

There was simply no time to prepare. She had to speak. Her head felt heavy and pounded with her heartbeat. Her tongue felt thick and swollen and dry against the roof of her mouth.

"OL VINU OD ZACAR ELASA." She spoke each word carefully, her voice thick, her throat heavy. The symbols flared in recognition and a thrill went through her. She’d passed the first test.

The symbols swirled into smoke. Katarina’s head reeled.

BAGILE BOLAPE ELASA

She struggled to think of the correct answer in the language it would understand. The closet, dark already, seemed to grow even darker. It had been warm, cramped and confined and rapidly filling with her body heat and the heat from the censers; she could feel the beads of sodden bands of sweat under her arms, between her breasts across the back of her neck and between her shoulderblades.

Despite this, the darkness yawned, gaping, limitless, eternal. The darkness was filled with an endless cold that froze the blood in her veins, turned her marrow to jelly and her bones into brittle, fragile things. The warning was clear: If she couldn’t answer, and answer correctly, she would be consigned to the Void of oblivion, the endless nothingness that awaited all who trespassed against the Golden Lady.

She forced her numb lips and chattering teeth into action, took a breath and warmed it with her breast, and shouted her answer:

"OL BOLAPE NAPEA! OL BOLAPE VIME! OL IOLCAM A OKADA DE SACH!"

I am her sword, I am her wrath, I bring the mercy of angels. It was the only answer she had. The Void retreated and Katarina gasped with relief. Tears sprang to her eyes as her heart suddenly seemed to start beating in her chest again, throbbing madly, painfully.

She’d done it. She’d passed the first test and she’d successfully invoked her authorities. She could once again invoke the bond between her and her gun; the way was clear. Gathering up her courage, she addressed the glowing cloud of golden smoke.

"OL BOLAPE A AUAUAGO DE ZOMDV ULS!"

Darkness rolled over her with frightening ease.

==========================

Araya didn’t like being out of her room, and it wasn’t just the painful brightness of the lamps and candles and chandeliers. There was always a stiffening, a turning away from the people she was meant to serve. A reluctance to be near her. There was a fearful fog that shrouded even the most accepting of the Golden Lady’s faithful. It was perfectly natural for them to behave like that, but it still hurt, even after decades of the same thing.

Still, she descended the stairs carefully, her mother's admonitions for grace and poise ringing in the back of her mind. How long had it been since she was near someone that wasn’t, in some way, afraid of her?

Not very long at all, her mind supplied. Katarina seemed to harbor no fear of Araya in her heart and mind. Katarina had practically been bred to subsume fear into action. There were old fears, old terrors that lurked in the woman’s mind, but no fear of Araya herself.

When she was younger, and her power had been fresh, it had been hard for Araya to separate her "current" sense of someone with her "future" sense of what they would be, but that had changed with time. Katarina was a delightfully uncomplicated woman, but bereft of a fundamental part of humanity: the ability to connect with others. Oh, she could dance with kings and shoot the breeze with farmers without a slip in either instance, but she counted no one a friend, confided in no one, loved no one, trusted no one. She knew Katarina needed to regain these things, and she prayed to the Golden Lady that Katarina would succeed.

She entered the small chapel that was reserved for the fighting arm of the Church of Angland’s forces, and was impressed by its sheer simplicity. No ornate statues, murals, or ornamentation. At the head of the chapel was a statue of the Golden Defender much like the one on her table; a woman covered from head to toe in full plate, her shield propped in front of her, two swords sheathed on the back of the shield itself. The Golden Lady in the Defender Aspect, the Golden Warrior of the Dawn that stood to protect the tides of humanity against the terror of the darkness.

Gared stood up from one of the benches, and Araya immediately understood why Katarina was attracted to him. It wasn’t his body, which was scarred and roped with muscle, it wasn’t his face, which was lumpy and bristly, it wasn’t even his overall conformation, which was short and somewhat wide; it was the atmosphere he carried; so similar to Katarina’s first master.

"Ah, the Diviner." he called. "What brings you to the Temple of the Sword?" He asked curiously. His voice was like old rocks breaking.

"How is she?" She asked simply. He compressed his lips together.

"I have no idea." He finally admitted. "I thought I heard her say something ten or so hours ago, but..." he trailed off. "Do you know? Is she..." He left the sentence unfinished. Araya felt a flash of irritation.

"Would I have asked you if I knew already?" She replied, and she heard him bark a no-nonsense laugh in her mind, but he only nodded. "As I thought." He replied.

She probed deeper into his mind, and he frowned at her.

"Did you need something?" He asked harshly, and she felt herself unceremoniously pushed out of his mind. Interesting.

She considered what to say, and as usual, she reflexively chose her words from the tides of fate.

"I had hoped she would come back to us." She replied simply.

"I’ve seen this sort of meditation before." he remarked dismissively. "With a paladin. It took four days." he added.

"Let us hope it does not take her that long." She heard herself replying, but her mind was elsewhere, scanning the tides of the future. She blinked a few times.

"What has become of..." She trailed off and her eyes widened in shock. "Where’s Timmen?" She demanded, and Gared’s eyes narrowed.

"Who told you?" he grated at her, hand going to his belt reflexively, and she raised an eyebrow at him. "I am a Diviner, Gared." She replied archly. He subsided reluctantly, his mind a blank, impassive wall.

"He’s safe." Gared replied evasively.

Araya shook her head. "We play no games, here. Either you tell me, or I divine it another way. The result is the same." She demanded.

"He’s in a cell." Gared replied grudgingly. "Before you ask, neither divine or magical healing has been able to help him."

There was never a point that she wondered of that, because the threads of the future had shown her he would volunteer that without impetus.

"What happened to him?" She asked instead. There was a null spot in what she could seek through the threads of the past. She could see the acolyte pushing a broom through the transept of the Arm of the Sword, down the walk to the Hall of Confessions, and there he disappeared, only later to reappear some point later in a lower cell.

Gared shook his head, but Araya wouldn’t be detracted. "Tell me." She insisted. He shook his head again. "I don’t know. He can’t tell us. He’s been struck dumb."

Araya rolled her eyes. "Surely he can write." She replied caustically. He shook his head and let out a sigh. In that moment his mind became clear to her and she raised a hand to her chest in shock. "I see." She breathed, and cast ahead in the threads of the future and grimaced.

"I believe he may recover some of his faculties, but I won’t be able to tell without seeing the young man." She advised Gared, who stared at her, baffled.

"I cannot Divine his fate without meeting him, Gared." She explained. "There are impressions that his blindness and deafness may fade, but I cannot tell you if that will actually happen unless you permit me to see him."

"How do you do that?" He muttered in a strange voice, filled with frustration and petulance. She smiled. "It is not a gift I would wish upon anyone." She replied simply.

"So? Have you Divined Katarina?" He asked, adjusting the laces on his bracer. "Is she all right?"

Araya shook her head. "Some things are hidden from me." She replied simply. Katarina should have received her next assignment this evening, but somehow she had sidestepped that fate. Had Darnell somehow anticipated that Katarina would need these services? Had Gared alerted them via the Sanctioned?

No matter how she searched the ebb and flow of the past that bled into the present and flowed into the future, she could not see the cause. She did sense that Lissa was looking for her. Her eyes widened. Lissa carried Katarina’s next assignment, and had spitefully not delivered it, in the hopes that it would somehow grievously affect Katarina somehow.

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"If you will excuse me, Chaplain, I find that I have responsibilities elsewhere." She stated smoothly, coming back to herself. Gared nodded. "And do tell me if anything should change." She added, and bowed respectfully before making her exit.

==========================

Awareness seemed to seep in at the edges, gradually filling her vision with detail. She was sitting in an overstuffed desk chair that tugged at the memory of familiarity. She lifted her hand off the armrest, confused.

For a moment, her hands were the same as always, shapely and long-fingered, scarred with nicks and cuts and scratches, and then then they blurred, becoming young and youthful, smooth and unblemished.

"What are you doing, Katarina?" A familiar voice asked, and her blood ran cold. "We’re not finished yet."

Her head jerked up in shock, the details of the room crystallizing in her eye as realization slammed into her. She was in her old instructor’s room, back in Darnell. She was back in his room; the capering monster that plagued her nightmares.

A moment of disconnection assailed her with a wave of disorientation. Was she sixteen, freshly returned from the month-long survival exercise that all Witch Hunters had to endure? Was she twenty-six, a veteran hunter of Witches? Was she yet eleven, a knock-kneed girl receiving discipline?

Devon rose from his desk, a knowing leer spread across his face. His gimlet eyes twinkled.

"We’re not finished, you and I. We’ve got a lot to do." He promised.

"This isn’t real." Katarina whispered in a rush as he eased around the desk.

"Oh, I’m afraid it’s very real." He promised, caressing the front of his trousers obscenely. "And I’m going to do to you what I’ve always wanted to do to you, Katarina, and you’re not going to stop me."

She tried to rise to her feet, and to her numbing horror, she realized she was as powerless as she had been that time, so long ago. No!

Devon had some power of suggestion, some power of the mind that he had used to manipulate others around him, herself included.

"I killed you." She whispered, and he stopped suddenly, uncertainty flickering across his face.

"Yes you did." He agreed finally. His malignant grin resurfaced. "You killed me, but you did not defeat me." He slid closer to her.

"What’re you talking about?" She argued, and he laughed in her face. "I put a bullet through your skull the moment I had the opportunity!" She spat.

He nodded solemnly. "This is true. But my mark is still upon you, Kat." He replied. "And now here we are again, you and I, and this time, you are the only one that can die."

"You never touched me." She replied, still struggling in her chair. There had to be some way she could move. "And don’t call me that." She spat savagely.

"My poison is in you anyway, Kat." he sneered, writhing maggots seething between his teeth. "How many lovers have you taken? How many friends can you claim?" He grinned malignantly at her. "You belong to me, now and forever, eternal and always."

Katarina shook her head frantically, struggling to free herself from the chair.

"I’m in your guts and you’ll never be free!" He shouted, and lunged towards her, his figure elongating, his face running like melting wax, hands stretching like taffy. She felt him slam into her like a doughy sticky mass of half-melted wax, suffocating her, oozing in her nostrils, pushing between her lips, slipping through the gaps in her teeth. It was suffocating, choking her. Revoltingly, she could feel him sliding between her eye and her skull, oozing into the dark secret corners of her body. Her vision went dark.

==========================

"You stupid bint." The voice was rough, harsh, caustic. Katarina’s eyes opened wide at that voice. She hadn’t heard that voice in years.

The sun blazed from a cloudless sky that was so brilliantly blue it hurt to stare at. She lay on a bed of grass and moss on a lumpy embankment, a low rise that seemed familiar. She somehow knew if she turned her head she would see stands of old pine and further back, the old hut she had made the last time she’d spoken with him. She turned her head, and the forest was there, exactly as she remembered it. Deep in the shadowy gloom, she could see the rounded edge of the hut she’d built. Further up she could see the cliffsides that edged this valley. This was where she’d first met him, a lifetime ago.

"What’re you waiting for?" He cursed harshly. "Get your ass up." He ordered, and Katarina scrambled to her feet. There was a moment of disconnection and confusion; it felt for a moment that she was in her sixteen-year old body. She stood up and was bemused by the realization that he still towered over her, though not nearly as much as he had. When she’d met him at the age of sixteen, he’d seemed megalithic.

His face was tanned leather, seamed and runneled with age and scars. He had a long moustache that trailed down the sides of his mouth and hung down from his chin, as bone white as his hair.

"Look at you. Some great cow of a girl and yet still an idiot." he mocked caustically. "Have you learned nothing?" he remarked amazedly, spreading his arms wide and shaking his head.

"Wh-what?" She asked, confused.

"Oh, by the Goddess." he cursed, and clamped his mouth shut. He took a step forward and a split second before he moved, Katarina knew he was going to hit her. She could have done what she liked to stop it had she wanted; instead she let it happen. His slap was like a thunderbolt, knocking her to the ground, arms and legs akimbo. Her face flamed, and something in her stomach writhed.

"I asked you a question, Witch Hunter." He sneered at her angrily.

A thousand questions of her own flooded her mind as she struggled to regain her footing.

"I’ve learned a lot, Master." She replied simply. He shook his head.

"Bullshit. Horse shit. All I see is a stupid bint that’s fucked off on her own because she’s too stupid to see what’s in front of her face." he sneered, real anger in his voice.

Now Katarina felt her own anger rising up and let it happen.

"You’re supposed to be dead." She accused, and he affected a look of mock surprise and waved it away.

"What was the first lesson you learned when you returned to Darnell, Katarina?" He demanded angrily. "It was painful as fuck, right? Surely you haven’t forgotten?"

"There were a lot of painful lessons, Master." She replied. He stopped for a moment and pushed his hat back with a finger. Her hat, she corrected. She’d taken his hat and coat when he died. It made sense that he would be wearing them again, but they weren’t his anymore, they were hers.

"Yes." he replied simply. "There were a lot of painful lessons. The one I’m talking about though is the one I’m most concerned with: Why have you not trained yourself properly? Devon was able to enter your mind and manipulate you because you didn’t know how to guard your mind from him." He informed her, tapping his own head with a gloved finger. "Here you are, ten years later, and your mind is just as vulnerable. That’s why you conked out so quickly. If you just had some fucking discipline, you wouldn’t have had so much trouble with the Guardian."

Guardian? She wondered, and then she remembered: the golden smoke.

"So am I dead?" She asked, and he rubbed his moustache with a fingertip for a moment. "Not yet. We’ll get to that. First, get up. I wanna get a look at you."

She rose to her feet, and his eyes lit up. "By the Goddess you’re a beauty." he remarked simply. "No homemaker, you. You’ve carried the gun for the past ten years." It wasn’t a question, but Katarina nodded anyway.

"Ten years." He mused, and she nodded again.

He punched his fist into his other hand anticipatorily and gave her a sharp look.

"Well, come on, we haven’t got all day." He offered, and turned away and began walking down the slope.

"Are you really... real?" She asked instead, and he turned back to look at her.

"Goddess, you’re stupid." He complained. "Tell me, idiot child, how would you be able to tell the difference between the real me and an illusion of me that was crafted from the memories that are in your heart?" he asked, and then flapped his hand to show that it didn’t matter. "Don’t strain your stupid goat brain looking for the answer: there’s only one answer to that question." he added.

"I can’t." She replied, and he nodded. "Just so." he gestured in front of him. "Let’s go. We’ve got a long way to go and I want to get this over with. I’m old, I’m tired, and frankly you piss me off with that stupid sheeps’ expression you get on your face whenever I ask you a question."

Katarina nodded and followed after her old Master, dead these ten years.

They walked. As they walked, the daylight deepened into dusk, into twilight, into the black of night.

"Listen, Katarina. The Goddess loves and watches over us all." He advised, and she nodded. Everyone knew this simple fact from birth. "You know the Kyrie eleison, right?" He added, but she shook her head.

He burst into laughter. "Ahhh, right. You will, though. But before all that-" he cut himself off. "Ahh, this is frustrating. Like teaching a simpleton." he groaned.

"I’m not a simpleton." She replied warningly. "Neither am I the girl you once knew in these woods ten years gone."

"You might as well be." He replied caustically. "You’ve traveled from Darnell to Begierde, from Begierde to Higgenfal, you’ve traveled across half a goddamn continent killing Witches in the name of the Goddess, but..." He paused. "Who in the world counts you as a friend?" He asked simply. "Who have you embraced to keep the chill of winter at bay?" He asked, a note of pleading concern in his voice. "Ten years, Katarina. Ten. Ten years walking the land, and none to miss you when you pass."

"I have the Goddess to keep the loneliness at bay." She replied stubbornly, feeling queasy.

He shook his head. "It was for the love of my friends and my wife and my children that I took up my gun, Kat." He replied simply. "Oh, aye, I served the Golden lady in thought, word, and deed. But it was my friends that welcomed me into their homes as I traveled. It was my wife’s sweet smile that brought me peace. It was my children- well, the few times I saw them- that kept me moving forward."

He fixed her with one baleful blue eye. "I hunted the Witches so that they would be safe and free. I died for them. I died for you. I died for Her." He added, jerking his thumb up to the sky. "But I didn’t do it for duty, or for honor, or for accolades. I did it for love." He finished.

"I’m sorry, Master. I don’t understand." She replied, and he sighed. "Stubborn stupid." he cursed. "And there’s that stupid face again." he cursed, and then shockingly he bleated at her like a sheep.

"I tried to teach you before, when I was alive: The Church teaches duty. Diligence. Adherence to the law. But we’re Witch Hunters. We follow the heart of the law, not the letter of the law."

"But I’ve done that." She objected, and her stomach churned again. Was she going to vomit?

He shook his head in disappointment. "You’ve just been a real bitch to everyone." He replied. "When you die, who would mourn you?" he asked. "Who would wail and cry?" He prodded.

She shook her head proudly. "No one. And I never needed them to." She replied fiercely.

He barked a laugh and slapped her again, knocking her off her feet.

"Well then, who would celebrate?!" he shouted down at her. "Who would take delight in the passing of an obnoxious bitch that arbitrarily trampled over their lives in the pursuit of duty?" He shouted down at her. Numbing horror stole over her.

"Oh yes. I know all about that too." he replied. "You’re all locked tight, Katarina."

"The Diviner told me that already." she argued shakily.

"Devon is dead, Katarina." He replied with a note of finality.

"Of course he is!" She yelled. "I sent him to his death!" She shouted angrily, hot tears splashing her cheeks. "I blew out my eardrums when I sent him to his death. It took magical healing before I could hear again." She argued.

"He’s been dead ten years." The Wolf of Alastor replied in a simple, quiet voice. "He’s been dead ten years and still you allow him to torment you. There’s nothing left, even for the worms, and yet you still cling to that poison he’s left in you." He spoke calmly, meditatively.

"I don’t have to listen to this." She denied hotly. "I don’t know how I came to be here, but I’m supposed to- I’m supposed to ... fix my gun, not listen to you lecture me!" She shouted angrily. Her chest heaved, and she bit back a sob. She hadn’t cried since she was a child and she wasn’t about to now, in front of her Master.

"My gun." he began, and let out a tired chuckle, "Your gun carries within it a tiny sliver of mithral, did you know that? It’s not much." he added apologetically, rolling his eyes. "A fingernail’s worth. It’s under the orichalcum inlay. It’s something I found in Osk. No bigger than a kitten’s tooth. I don’t know where it came from, but I know that it’s sacred. It carries the touch of the Goddess, Kat." He advised simply.

"It..." he trailed off. "It is what has judged you." he squatted down in front of her as dawn peeked over the horizon.

"The gun wants to be carried by someone worthy of it. You passed the first tests ten years ago. Your power has grown. Your own strength and will have grown, but that will is now working at cross-purposes to the will of the Goddess." He advised simply. "You have fallen from the path and so it refuses to be used by you." He stated heavily.

"Wh-what?" She blurted, and he laughed so hard he fell on his ass as the sun rose to noonday heights.

"The Goddess loves, Katarina. The Goddess wants you to love." He added, and touched her cheek lightly. "When you love, the Goddess loves you." He urged gently. "You’ve been a complete idiot, but a tolerable one for the longest time, but you fell from the path when you decided to lecture that Yamato girl."

"What? Sasaki?" Katarina asked, baffled. The sun burned high overhead as clouds raced across the sky.

"She was reaching out to you in her own way, and instead of Goddesses’ offering of love, you instead lectured her on doctrine." He shook his head at her, baffled and furious. "Where was your heart then?" He half-raised his hands and then shook his head and let them fall.

"When was the last time you heard Her words in your heart?" He asked quietly. "When was the last time She sang you to sleep? When you felt the warm embrace of Her love as you woke to face the day?" He inquired kindly. "You remember we talked about that here, in this very valley." he encouraged, and stood, offering his hands to lift her to her feet.

"I remember, Master." She replied quietly. "Back then it was easy. Devon..." She trailed off and made herself say it. "Devon loved me. I loved him, too. And Frederika. She was a sister to me." He nodded to show he understood.

She looked him in the eye. "And I loved you too, Master." she finished. He snorted at that. "I was a righteous ass to you." He replied, but she shook her head.

"And now?" he asked gently. "Who is it that warms the heart of Katarina?" He asked. "Who do you love?" He repeated, and she shook her head. "I don’t have anyone, anymore." She answered quietly.

"Devon is dead and gone." he held up a finger. "And so am I." He held up a second finger. "What of Frederika?" he asked, and she shook her head. "I haven’t spoken to her in ten years, Master."

He sighed. "I haven’t been your master in ten years, Kat." he replied. "I have a name. You’re a Justicar- no, you’re a Witch Hunter in your own right. You don’t need to call me ‘master’ anymore."

She shook her head. "You’re eternally my master, and you can’t change that." She argued gently, and he laughed.

"Just because you’re apart, do you think you stop loving them?" he asked curiously. "I bet you could strike your camp and head to ..." He trailed off, and then poked her head with a gloved fingertip. With his touch there was horrifying sensation, a feeling of a thousand, ten thousand scampering fingers running through her mind like mice. "Landeck." He finished. "I’m certain she would welcome you just as warmly as she used to." he reassured her. "My little jaunt through your mind turned up other names: What of Gared? Araya? Sasaki? Harmony? Have they not earned the right to dwell in your heart as loved and cherished people?" He asked curiously as dusk faded into night.

"I don’t know." She replied reluctantly. "I suppose." She offered. He rolled his eyes.

"Stop thinking with your head. You’re a Witch Hunter. You live and thrive off your feelings, your instincts. Your training. Stop letting the lectures of duty cloud your judgement." he added. "Stop fucking around and live, Katarina."

"Does this mean I can use my gun again?" She asked, and he fixed her with a glare that was cold and hard and yet filled with the yawning gulfs of eternity, and for the first moment she realized it wasn’t her master she was with. The shadows grew, elongating, the darkness of night swallowing everything around her until there was nothing but.