The two knights of the Royal Order of Ferlonia had no choice but to return to Petratonna in dejection, refresh themselves for the night, and resume their assault the next day. They could only hope that the first snow of the year, which the two had not even remotely anticipated, would not make it impossible to carry out a new sortie.

On the bright side, that expedition had also had positive outcomes: they had confirmed Emia the shepherdess’ theory and they had avoided stirring the fallen knight Viryl of Zelfiria into alarm. Furthermore, having found recent traces of the use of spells along the path, they could be reasonably certain of his presence on the Horn of Morghorou.

All that was left was to begin the descent. First, the two knights returned to Onyx, then they began to walk along the stretch of path dotted with caves, after which they would reach the collapsed section. Unfortunately, they never got there.

They were about halfway through the first section when Onyx gave its warning signal for predators in proximity. There would have been no need, as the two knights had already sensed unmistakable vibrations in the ground coming from behind them.

They turned around and saw that two Vespertine Bears, emerging from one of the caves, had fixed their sights on them. They were little more than cubs, but at the withers they were already almost as tall as Madja. The path was narrow and bordered by a cliff, and the two bears could barely walk side by side.

“Anker, we're a couple of yards from the ravine. Do you feel like jumping?” Madja asked.

“Do we have any other options?” he replied, bringing his hands to his belt.

Madja saw images of Anker smashed at the bottom of the chasm flash before her eyes, and she was sure that Anker was imagining more or less the same outcome. They were both well aware of the limits of his athletic abilities.

So first she took a Fuligine Stone from her pocket and embedded it in the bracelet of the Symbjorm she wore on her left wrist, then she drew her estoc. She had decided to fight. Anker imitated her movements and grasped from his belt a magically triggered pipe armed with steel balls.

The female knight raised her sword to the sky, enchanted it with the spell “devouring flame”, and its tip began to glow with a faint reddish light. She then charged towards the bear that had advanced the most.

Anker moved to the side, took aim at the other bear's head, and visualized a shock wave emanating from the sphere that would shatter everything in its proximity, the “compression-decompression wave” spell.

Then he fired.

At the sound of the explosion, Madja jumped, aiming for the target's back. The bear stood up, and opened its arms and jaws to grab her. Madja changed her target midair, and landed a kick on the bear’s scalp. The bear did not feel the blow at all, but Madja used the support of its sturdy neck to push herself to the ground behind its shoulders and sprung back, taking advantage of the kinetic energy of the rebound to push the sword with all her body into the base of the animal's left ribcage, where the incandescent red blade sank in like butter.

As the bear tried to turn around and grab Madja, she gripped on the beast’s fur with her left hand while she held the hilt of the estoc as tightly as she could and shouted, “Burn!”

A heat of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit instantly dug a tunnel a few inches thick into the beast's back, carbonizing its diaphragm and the back walls of its heart. The beast tried vigorously to shake her off, but Madja didn’t let go, and the hot blood that sprayed from the enemy's back painted her face and uniform red. Within seconds cerebral hypoxia set in, and the bear collapsed to the ground. As it stopped moving, Madja pulled off her blade and with her left glove she cleansed her face of the animal’s blood.

As she turned around, she noticed that the other beast lay dead as well. Anker's shot had embedded itself in the bear’s skull, and the discharge of shockwaves from the steel ball directly in its brain had knocked it out in convulsions.

“Piece of cake,” Anker rejoiced triumphantly, as he put away his weapon and enjoyed the sweet sight of the predators turned prey.

“Anker, watch out! Behind you!” Madja shouted, and rushed towards him with her sword drawn, while Onyx was already running to his master's aid without saying a word.

Mother bear, a specimen almost twice the size of the cubs, large and tall enough to completely block the path with its towering presence, had suddenly emerged from a cave further down the path, closing in on the knights in a pincer movement. Perhaps surprised by the unexpected fate of her young, she had charged Anker with blind rage, and by the time he realized it, a powerful paw was already heading straight to his chest.

Onyx managed to knock him back just in time, but the bear's long claws still lacerated his left shoulder and back. Madja arrived a few tenths of a second later, and thrust her sword right into the bear's throat, but she had not been able to load a new spell and the weapon alone was little more than a toothpick on such a sturdy mass of muscle.

The bear lowered its neck and with a single bite it severed Madja's right arm, which she retracted before she even realized the damage. It didn't take long, however, and Madja, retreating through the gushing blood from the stump, began to scream in pain.

Anker, still on the ground, watched the scene helplessly, as the bear turned all its destructive fury on Onyx, who had remained within reach of another attack. Anker tried to come up with a strategy as quickly as he could, but everything he considered was doomed to fail and he was too panicked to come up with a complex plan. The only solution left was the extreme one, the one he never expected to have to use so soon.

He first babbled inarticulate sounds, then managed to scan: “O... Onyx, self-destruct. Self-destruct and take it down with you…”

As Onyx stiffened and his eyes began to glow a menacing red, Anker found the strength in his legs and wasted no time: he grabbed Madja by her only arm and ran as fast as he could in the direction they had come from. In a lightning-fast move, the automaton grabbed the bear's right hind leg and exploded in a deafening burst. A long section of the path crumbled, and the bear fell into the ravine with a furious roar.

*****

Momentarily safe, Madja found the strength to tear off the hem of her uniform coat and tie it tightly around the stump, in order to drastically slow the bleeding.

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“Damn… damn. We've lost… everything. Onyx and all the supplies he was carrying... my Onnie, all the months, the sleepless nights it took me to shape him, and now — ”

“Anker... Anker, we don't have time... we have to... we have to go back and check the situation... Viryl... surely he heard that bang... please, tell me you have a regeneration potion.”

“I don’t, the healing equipment was all in Onyx's backpack... Madja, forgive me, I never thought we would fall so low... I only have an energizing potion with me…”

“Better than... nothing... give it to me!” Madja grunted, gritting her teeth in pain. Anker handed her the flask, she snatched it from his hand and gulped it down without hesitation. The knight was visibly distraught.

“Anker, pull yourself together. We have to go back down the valley and go up the southern route, now!“ Madja exclaimed.

However, once they returned to the scene of the battle, Madja and Anker realized that the damage was irreparable. Especially given their current physical condition, they had no hope of overcoming the difference in height that the explosion had created between the two ends of the path.

“Damn it, it's over!” Anker shouted, falling to his knees and banging his clenched fists on the edge of the precipice.

“Anker, listen. This is our first mission, and we will not fail it. If we can't go down, we have to find a way to go up,” Madja assessed, with a firm conviction in her voice.

“Huh-huh, and how would you do that?” Anker asked, doubting that the determination of his partner would change anything.

“We can open a breach in the lift tower and hope that the mechanism still works, or we can try to climb the scree: if I remember the map correctly, at the top of the rock face that overlooks this path there should be a plateau that connects to a grove that is crossed by the southern path, and the landslide seems to have started from the northern end of that plateau. Once we reach the southern path, we have to find Viryl's shelter,” Madja explained.

Anker looked around for a few seconds, and then raised his gaze to lock it into hers. He let her continue.

”The first option is certainly simpler, but we don't have time for failed attempts, so we'll go with the second. If we can't climb, we'll try our luck with the lift. Anker, are you ready?“ Madja asked in a tone that did not allow for a no as an answer.

Anker nodded in discouragement.

As the snowfall began to intensify and the outlines of objects began to blur in the darkness, the knights began the climb. It was not particularly long, as the plateau was only a few hundred yards higher, but on more than one occasion the ground gave way beneath their feet and they risked being buried by a new landslide triggered by themselves or rolling down the slope.

Finally, in the gloom, they saw a ledge, but Madja didn't have enough strength in her legs to make a jump that would have been child's play in normal conditions. Anker, on the other hand, did not know any spells that could be useful to him to reach it. A levitation spell cast in such an unstable position would not have allowed him to control the direction of movement, a spell to make the rock sticky would have worked only once he reached the solid spur but as long as he was floundering among the stones it would have been counterproductive, the grappling hook would have risked fragmenting the ledge or breaking off at the best of times... he had no choice but to try to push himself up using all four limbs.

They were painful and breathless attempts, flattened with his stomach on the pile of debris like a lizard, the more Anker tried to climb, the more the gravel slipped between his fingers hurting them, but from time to time a stone would get stuck giving him the grip to climb a few inches higher. Finally he reached the solid rock of the spur and managed to pull himself up to the top of it.

Then Anker secured his monofilament rope to a pine tree that had colonized that solitary boulder and threw it to Madja, shouting at her: “Tie it to your waist and grab it with all your strength, I'll pull you up!”

Madja appreciated the help and Anker lifted her up, surprised at how light she was. Once Madja was next to him, Anker conjured up a glowing orb to light the way and they began to explore the esplanade. Madja's steps had become unsteady and her breathing heavy.

“It's starting to be difficult for me to keep going. Sorry I'm slowing you down, Anker,“ she excused herself.

Anker tried to make light of it, with a questionable result: “Look, I'm the slow one. Without an arm, without a leg, you'll always be faster than me anyway.“

Madja forced herself to smile and added: “Thanks for the potion earlier. Without it, I wouldn't have even been able to get up here.“

Anker knew that the right thing to do would be to keep the conversation going and Madja distracted, but he was starting to feel an oppressive feeling in his chest and his words were drying up in his throat. He could only keep going.

As the spit of land widened, the vegetation increased and it became more difficult to orient oneself. They were roughly heading in the right direction, but that forest offered no reference points, and the snow was starting to accumulate on the ground.

After half an hour, as the effect of the energizing potion had worn out, pale and dizzy because of the anemia, Madja fell to her knees and said: “I can't do it anymore. Go on without me, Anker.”

“No way, get up.”

“I'm not saying you have to leave me here. Find Viryl, you can come back for me later.”

“What the hell are you babbling about?!” Anker shouted. He bent down in front of her and put an arm under her armpit, wrapping his arms around her back. Madja was warm and defenseless like a bird caught in a storm. Then he pulled her up and started carrying her piggyback. “Come on, it's not much further. I'm sure of it, it's not much further,” Anker reassured her, as much as he was trying to reassure himself.

In a sweet and slightly amused voice, Madja sighed in Anker's ear: “You know, I think Viryl of Zelfiria’s Silver Exoplion will end up in your hands after all. I would have never put a finger on it. Congratulations, Anker.“

Madja’s words punched Anker in the gut.

The chivalric code, with its norms, hierarchies, conventions and rules, used to cloak the lust for power of fierce and selfish knights with ideals of nobility and justice, and two comrades-in-arms could only be formally defined as such until the interests of one conflicted with those of the other. Among all the congregations, the Royal Order of the Knights of Ferlonia was certainly no exception.

In all likelihood, that was one the lessons the high echelons at the headquarters in Leapolis intended to teach to the novice knights recruited that year when they threw them in that set of accursed missions. Once the prize would be won from the enemy, if it ever was to be won in the first place, teammates would become rivals. The one to keep the premium Exoplion was to be decided with a fair duel.

A duel that Madja had always been sure to win. A duel for which Anker had been studying tactics since he had known Madja would be his partner on that mission. Sheer talent against unconventional resourcefulness, they would have put up quite a show.

But now, given Madja’s conditions, she was out of the game. All she could do was congratulate Anker honorably.

What an embittering, reproachable victory that would be. Avoiding confrontation by getting your opponent crippled because of your childish decisions and ineptitude in battle. Ashamed, Anker held his mouth shut and let Madja’s words fall in the void.

All he could do was to keep walking on his unsteady legs, with Madja’s burden on his back. Under a dark sky and an unrelentless snowfall. He continued to wander the mountain for another hour, and finally, after passing a mound that blocked his view, he saw a flame burning in the distance.

GLOSSARY

Ferenkelt: A class of beasts that are unable to use magic, that has undergone selective pressure in the “Sanctuaries” where it was forced to live alongside the Fekoro. They usually roam freely on Orbus.

Vespertine Bear: A breed of Ferenkelt. They are similar to regular bears, but they are characterized by a bluish hide and a bigger size. They hunt at nightfall.

Fekoro: A class of beasts that are able to use magic, endemic of the “Sanctuaries”. The blood of Fekoros is processed to obtain Fuligine Stone.

Symbjorm: A very small breed of Fekoro, similar to a black worm, that has been obtained through selective reproduction. It sinks in the skin of the humans and develops a symbiotic relationship with the host, allowing him to use magic.

Symbjorm bracelet: a bracelet that all knights wear on their left arm, that can be used to store Fuligine Stone.

“Devouring flame”: short range spell that conjures a very hot cone of flames, with the capability of melting metal. It can be applied to weapons.

“Compression-decompression Wave”: short range spell that compresses and releases matter within a range of a quarter of a yard, applying a pressure of 10 ATM