Year 942,

As soon as he regained control of his body after being hit by the shockwave of the explosion, Viryl immediately rushed to Lyndabel and pulled her out of the crater. Holding her hand, he slipped through the Screeching Bats closing in, and brought her back to the battle line, alongside Calgara.

The woman was still in a frenzied state, and with the broad sweeps of her broadsword she had already decapitated thirty elephants. Not even the burst of Lyndabel's spell had managed to distract her.

Lyndabel and Viryl resumed fighting alongside her, trying to force their way through enemy lines.

After a few minutes it became clear that Lyndabel's sortie had not had the desired effect. The enemy troops continued to advance in a compact manner and showed no sign of giving up.

Other knights along the front attempted the same tactic as Lyndabel and made deep area attacks, but it all seemed futile. The pressure of the Suljukian army only kept growing.

Although the losses among the knights were insignificant, after a short period of stalemate they were forced to retreat.

Hour after hour the Infidels continued to strenuously gain ground, and the two miles which separated the Ferlonian force from the walls of Surelekem were reduced to a handful of yards.

By the fourth hour of fighting, fatigue was beginning to take its toll. Calgara was paying the highest price for her exploits at the start of the battle. She was panting and hunched over her greatsword.

Suddenly a Thorned Boar emerged from the throng, charging the three knights. Lyndabel and Viryl leaped aside, thinking that Calgara would do the same. Instead, she raised her greatsword to swing at its head. The boar was quicker than she was, sinking its protruding tusks into Calgara's abdomen and knocking her away with a shake of its head.

Viryl turned to the boar and impaled it with his “Rock Shaping” spell, Lyndabel rushed to Calgara’s aid. She had been disembowelled, her tattered guts hanging out of her armor. Lyndabel bent over her and tried to push the organs back into her abdomen, then raised her visor. Calgara was gritting her teeth and was pale and sweaty.

“Try to drink,” Lyndabel commanded, while with her hands covered in blood she tried to pour the contents of a vial of cerulean infusion between her compressed lips.

Calgara followed her friend's advice and swallowed with difficulty.

The wounds began to heal and the armor reassembled, but Lyndabel knew it wouldn't be enough. The contents of Calgara's perforated intestine had spilled into her peritoneal cavity, and she had replaced the organs with her dirty gloves. Peritonitis was inevitable. She would need surgery as soon as possible.

Calgara tried to get up despite the intense pain, and Lyndabel helped her by putting an arm under her shoulder.

As she supported Calgara, Lyndabel turned toward the walls of Surelekem, now very close. On the battlements and through the slits, grim faces of crusaders could be seen surveying the battlefield. The city was silent, the clamor of the assault had died down.

Lyndabel turned to Viryl, who was unleashing a barrage of armor-piercing bullets on a pack of Black Goitered Mastiffs. “Looks like Surelekem’s fallen now… why don’t they come help us?” She innocently asked.

Viryl grunted, and fired five more shots, “They're fortifying their positions inside the city. They know we'll lose, and they're preparing for the Infidels’ siege.”

“We… can’t hold out much longer.”

“They know very well, that’s why they’re preparing to take the blow. We’re expendable pawns.”

Calgara groaned and took a few steps forward, dragging Lyndabel with her. “Enough of this whining. As long as we breathe, we must fight.”

Viryl looked at her in admiration. Spurred on by her words, he clutched his spear-rifles and charged back into the fray. Lyndabel inserted her dagger into the top edge of her shield, and her weapon transformed into a two-handed greatsword, and Calgara also materialized her ethereal weapon again. They both chased Viryl into the enemy lines.

The next quarter of an hour seemed to last an eternity. The Fuligine Stone was running low, and the spells were losing their bite. The fight against each individual Ferenkelt had become a herculean task. The beasts were tossing the knights around like rag dolls, and the Crusader infantry had been almost completely wiped out.

Just when it seemed the end was inevitable, horns sounded in the south, their tone deep and vigorous, and then blades of light sixty feet high cut across the battlefield. Viryl rose into the air to see what was happening.

The Gregherian cavalry had taken the field.

Those noble fighters, heirs to a centuries-old tradition and at the forefront of land military tactics, were the only knights of the contemporary era who could fully proclaim themselves such. Their fame preceded them and Viryl immediately understood why. They rode ethereal steeds grafted with Symbjorms, a technique that no one on the continent of Boreatica had managed to imitate. Those beasts were unstoppable and the knights on their backs, perfectly synchronized, decimated the enemy ranks, penetrating them like a knife through butter.

In less than five minutes the enemy numbers were reduced by a third, and the panic-stricken Suljukian generals beat a retreat. In their disorderly flight, monsters and humans stumbled over the lines of corpses and mutilated men, then rose up and, covered in dust and blood, ran even faster.

Lyndabel and Calgara remained with their weapons in hand, and tired and perplexed they watched as the Black-Goitered Mastiffs and the Silk Fur Lynxes they had been fighting until a few moments before fled with their tails between their legs.

Viryl came down beside them and announced, “We have won, the Gregherians have arrived.”

Calgara fell to her knees and her ethereal armor crumbled. Her face was white, but her expression was serene. Then she collapsed to the ground.

Lyndabel ran to her and put her hand on her forehead. “She has a bad fever, we must find a doctor immediately!”

*****

In the battle of Surelekem, eight knights of the Royal Order of Ferlonia and about fourteen hundred soldiers perished. It would have taken days to dig mass graves and bury all the corpses scattered across the battlefield. There was a risk of an epidemic spreading, but the generals of the crusader army did not seem particularly concerned about it. As evening fell, all the knights met on the temple plain of Surelekem, and monsignor Jàron celebrated a solemn mass.

At the end of the service there was a ceremony in which the crusaders placed one by one the crosses embroidered on their shoulder pads on the stone parvis of the temple. Then the four generals of the army gave medals to their knights.

When the time came to award the forty-seven knights of the Order of Ferlonia, including those who had arrived with the Gregherians in the very last phase of the battle, the Bishop proclaimed, “This medal goes to the defenders of the Holy Sepulchre, who have given proof of their faith by single-handedly bearing the brunt of the enemy assault, allowing their brothers in Lazul to take the city without caring what was happening behind them. Theirs was an exemplary sacrifice.”

Not the most heroic, not the most courageous, not the most valiant, but those who had been asked to make an exemplary sacrifice.

Exhausted from the prolonged adrenaline rush of battle, but also in a state of total peace and well-being rarely experienced before, Viryl welcomed the piece of metal to his air-filled chest as he stood with his hands clasped behind his back. The title of “defenders of the Holy Sepulchre” was ridiculous but Viryl didn’t linger on it. At that moment, such trifles seemed completely irrelevant to him.

Lyndabel, her eyes clearly consumed with anguish, stood at attention beside Viryl. After Viryl the generals moved toward her and pinned a medal to her chest as well. Then she cupped her hands, and the generals deposited a second medal in her palms. That one she was supposed to take to Kalgara, hoping that tomorrow she would still be alive in the city hospital.

It took a couple of hours to award all the soldiers, and when the ceremony was over the sky was red and the sun was hiding behind the fronds of the date palms that surrounded the temple.

At the generals' order, the knights broke ranks and went to prepare to begin the celebrations.

*****

Around eight o'clock in the evening, mouth-watering odors began to waft through the streets of Surelekem. Although the Crusader army's cooks were short on supplies and found themselves having to use mostly ingredients left by the Infidels in the city's warehouses and hastily requisitioned, they managed to put together a tasty menu, worthy of a royal banquet, consisting of at least twenty courses.

At nine o'clock the bells of the temple, made of bronze covered with a green and crusty patina, were rung in celebration after months of silence.

The entire city, which had almost one hundred thousand inhabitants, including natives and crusader soldiers, poured out into the streets. To curry favor with their new subjects and to reward the troops for their patience and dedication during that long year of hardships, the four generals arranged for food and alcohol to be distributed free of charge to everyone that evening, even to the inhabitants of the working-class neighborhoods, and for music and dancing to be everywhere in the city.

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A more exclusive party, reserved only for the elite, was held in the acropolis of Surelekem in the ancient gardens of the king. There were the nearly five hundred knights, the high officers of the army, Monsignor Jàron and all the prelates who had followed him on the pilgrimage.

On that warm spring evening there was no room for bad mood and melancholy. The knights of some of the most powerful nations of the continent of Boreatica, who would normally only meet on a battlefield on opposing sides, caroused, got drunk, danced together in the exotic gardens of Surelekem, among perfectly groomed hedges and beds of roses and lilies. They tried to speak in Classian, the lingua franca of the Western nations, and joked, often not understanding each other, but then laughed anyway, giving each other cheerful pats on the back.

Lyndabel and Viryl were like fish out of water there. Respectively, the faces of bad mood and melancholy.

The two knights arrived together, walking side by side, and passed under the ivy-covered stone arch that marked the edge of the gardens. They nodded to each other, and Viryl went immediately to a cupbearer to pour a glass of wine. Then Lyndabel watched him disappear into the crowd, toward the stalls that served roast lamb and savory crepes.

She turned away, and saw a desolate low wall. She went and sat down, burying her cheeks in her forearms. The waltzing was making her sick.

A knot of guests had gathered around the dance floor, and Lyndabel saw Camelia and a few of their foreign colleagues chatting at the edges of the crowd. Though some were Avuelites and Gregherians, Lyndabel knew them all. They had studied at the Academy of the Spheres of Lazul, as she had. Every now and then they would glance at her, and then take a sip of the wine in their cups and exchange polite smiles. Lyndabel crossed her legs, and prayed they wouldn’t come to talk to her.

For a while her prayers worked, but eventually Camelia and Anselora, one of her academy classmates who had been staying in their dormitory, broke away from the rest of the group and headed towards her.

There was a brief, awkward moment when Lyndabel knew the two women were about to speak to her, just as they expected Lyndabel to greet them, but they were too far away, and the intrusive notes of the barrel organs and wind instruments would drown out their voices. Lyndabel tried to inhale deeply, but it felt as if her breath was catching in her throat, and she exhaled with a sigh.

Meanwhile Camelia and Anselora continued to approach and, when they were a few feet away from her, Camelia began in a compassionate tone, “Little Lyndabel, are you not hungry this evening?”

“Not at all…” Lyndabel retorted, rubbing the sole of her boot on a patch of grass.

“Are you worried about Calgara? Camelia told me she had a tough time during the battle,” Anselora asked, searching her gaze.

"Well, yeah..."

“Oh, Lyndabel… there’s nothing you can do at the moment, it’s in the hands of the surgeons,” Camelia tried to comfort her, “You should try to enjoy this party: I don’t know if you’ve realized it, but today we conquered Surelekem. The crusade is over.”

“I'm aware of that, but — ”

“There’s something else troubling you, isn’t there?” Camelia speculated, and Lyndabel almost felt as if she were reading her mind.

In fact, it was more complicated than it seemed. Complicated to the point that she couldn't really rationalize and analyze the roots of her malaise. Seeing Calgara's reaction to the loss of Neugena, seeing her decapitate elephants and monsters and scream in despair continuously for almost an hour, seeing her fall eviscerated and get up again and fight with contempt for her own life had had a strange effect on her. In the heat of the battle she hadn't realized it, but in that moment some mechanism inside her had jammed.

She had felt part of her friend's pain. Of her sudden and unexpected loneliness. She had felt compassion for her, that was obvious. But the real problem was that she thought she understood those feelings. She too, as much as she tried to hide it, felt that immense loneliness.

The crusade was over, and she and Viryl would return to Ferlonia. And then what would become of them? Would they remain side by side, hunting beasts for eternity? Would things between them ever get any further than this?

Lyndabel did not want to spend the rest of her life in Corlona.

The capture of Surelekem was a divide between one period of her life and the next, and now a decision had to be made. She had to talk to him and find the strength to open her heart to him.

“Viryl of the White Gale is the problem, isn’t it?” Camelia insisted and Lyndabel blushed.

"What?! Camelia! What kind of ideas — "

Lyndabel tried to protest, but Anselora quickly interjected, “Viryl of the White Gale? That Viryl who studied with us at the academy? He always seemed weird and introverted. Even a little dim-witted. Have you developed a crush on him, Lyndabel?”

“Yes… I mean, no! I don’t have a crush on him! But he’s not dumb, and he’s anything but introverted. He’s just the way he is, he has… antisocial tendencies. He doesn’t like other knights. And yes, he’s definitely a bit weird and rude. But since we’ve been working together, he — ”

“He’s basically a bad boy,” Anselora observed, as if trying to understand her friend’s tastes.

“You know, Lyndabel, I don’t think he feels the same way about you. I’m not saying he doesn’t care about you, but… well, maybe you should look around,” Camelia’s blunt words hit Lyndabel like a stab in the chest.

For a moment Lyndabel considered how best to respond. Dissimulate? Deny? Ironize? Agree? When she finally spoke, the words escaped her control. “You don’t know him, Camelia, you don’t know anything about him, and you know what? You don’t know anything about me either.”

Camelia smiled. She didn’t seem at all annoyed by Lyndabel’s surly attitude. “Yeah, but think about it. Okay?”

After that suggestion, Camelia winked at Lyndabel and twirled back to her friends.

“Listen to her, you know Camelia has always had a good eye for certain things,” Anselora added. Then she said goodbye, and left too.

It was true. Not that Lyndabel had ever asked for her help, but Camelia was the most sought after romantic counselor in the dorm. Somehow she always got it right.

Lyndabel sat there, alone and miserable. An hour passed, or maybe two. Maybe even three. She had lost track of time. Even though she hadn't had a drop of wine, she had started feeling dizzy.

Velrodas approached her at a completely casual moment. He appeared before her with two goblets of wine in his hands, and asked, “Do you mind if I keep you company?”

Actually yes, she minded, but Lyndabel answered him anyway, “You’re welcome.”

"Would you like a glass of wine?"

"No, it's better not. I haven't touched any food tonight."

"Aren't you hungry?"

Lyndabel tried to smile. “You know, you’re the second person to ask me that.”

“I gather you’re not.”

There was a brief pause, and then Velrodas spoke again. His eyes sparkled for a moment in the white moonlight. “Lyndabel, excuse me for being so frank, but… you and Viryl —?”

“No,” Lyndabel said curtly, and hoped Velrodas would stop there. But he didn’t.

“Listen, Lyndabel, do you remember our first mission together?”

“The Voltzreoth in Malabelza Gorge? I don’t think I could ever forget that.”

They both laughed.

“We had a tough time,” Velrodas continued jokingly, “we were still two clueless novice knights. I felt really bad for running away, for not being able to save you.”

“Velrodas, how could you? You only had one standard Exoplion at the time and —” Velrodas motioned for Lyndabel to stop.

“The thing is… I liked you from the moment I saw you, when you ran to the toilet of the shelter because you were about to pee yourself. And I always kept it to myself, because I didn’t feel like I was up to your level. But now that we’ve survived this crusade together, I think I can speak to you with my head held high… Lyndabel, would you do me the honor —”

“Oh, Velrodas…”

“Is that a no?”

“I’m sorry,” Lyndabel murmured, her voice genuinely contrite.

Velrodas sighed. “No, no… don’t be sorry. I understand. You don’t feel for me what I feel for you. How could you? But I had to try, or I would never have forgiven myself. But… but — ”

“But?”

“But know that it’s not over! I won’t give up. I never give up. One day you will return my feelings,” Velrodas burst out, full of energy.

Lyndabel smiled condescendingly at him. No, she didn’t think that would ever happen. He wasn’t really her type. Of course, she kept those thoughts to herself.

Velrodas stood up, holding his two glasses. He was about to pour the wine, and staggered a little. His back was bent over. Lyndabel, watching him go in defeat, thought there was something pathetic about him and she felt instantly guilty for that thought.

You better look around, huh? Did Camelia give her that advice because she sensed Velrodas was about to make an advance on her? Well, she wasn't going to let that snotty asshole tell her what to do. That's exactly what Viryl would have said.

She had to look for him, right away.

If Velrodas had found the courage to talk to her, now she had to find the same courage.

Lyndabel stood up and entered the crowd of guests. The blood alcohol levels were high, and moods were unhinged and disruptive. She wandered through the King's Gardens, and felt anguished because she couldn't figure out where Viryl was. She searched every nook and cranny, and after what seemed like an eternity she managed to find him. Viryl was completely drunk and had dozed off in a flowerbed.

She decided to postpone her love declaration until tomorrow.

Thirty-one years later, third day of Neviticus, 8:42 a.m., Meridania red light district,

Refreshed and relaxed after his long sleep, Melfis ventured into the streets of Meridania's red light district, ready for a new and exhausting day of searching. He was sure that it would be fruitless, and that the hunt for Viryl would last at least a couple more days, before the Grand Master gave up.

He first headed to the inn where the knights had established their base of operations, to ask his colleagues if there had been any new developments during the night. When he reached the inn, the smell of scrambled eggs and freshly baked bread reached his nostrils, and his stomach growled. The place was known for its savory breakfast, and he thought he would take advantage of it before getting to work.

In a certain good mood, Melfis opened the door adorned with a stained glass panel and saw some of his colleagues sitting at a table in the room, who had had the same idea as him. They were Hammerless, Rustball and Boartusk. The three immediately transmitted a negative energy to him. Not only Hammerless with his battered face, but also Rustball and Boartusk seemed to be in a bad mood. They had barely touched their eggs, and they did not speak to each other. They even avoided looking each other in the eye.

Melfis approached and patted Rustball on the shoulder and began, “Aren't you hungry this morning?”

Rustball startled, and Boartusk brought his glass of orange juice to his mouth and pretended to drink while looking down.

“You son of a bitch, you have some nerve to show up here again!” Hammerless began to growl, “I'm really in a bad mood today, go away you old shit or I'll kill you.”

“Hey, you prick, wasn't yesterday enough for you? Do you want me to give you another go-round?” Melfis retorted by slamming his fist on the table. All the plates and silverware clinked.

Hammerless just glared at him, ready to pounce, and Rustball jumped up and tried to pull Melfis away from the table, almost pleading, “Jawbreaker, wait, this is not a good time. The Grand Master just called him to tell us we failed the mission. Please don't rub it in too!”

“Oh. What do you mean we failed the mission?” Melfis asked in shock, immediately regaining his composure.

“That old Ferlonian piece of shit ran right under our noses, attacked the Grand Master, and he killed him with his bare hands. I think we really made a fool of ourselves this time,” Boartusk explained succinctly.

“Well, fuck, that’s a big problem,” Melfis said thoughtfully, stroking his chin, “But he paid us in advance, and he gave us extra. At least we have something to cheer ourselves up about.”

“No! We’ll give him our fee back! We failed!” Hammerless barked.

“Sure, you idiot, and tomorrow the pigs will fly,” Melfis snapped, “He paid us for our service, not for our success.”

“That’s not the case, you dickhead! Rustball, Boartusk, let’s get him and get his share back!” Hammerless screamed, tearing the gag from his uniform collar and rising to his feet.

Melfis stared coldly at the three knights, not saying a word. Boartusk didn’t even dare pull back his chair, and Rustball sat down and picked up his fork again. Hammerless saw his companions backing away and was forced to accept his helplessness and didn’t follow through on his threat.

“Ah, there. As I thought,” Melfis said. Then he turned on his heel, stalked off toward the inn’s exit, and said goodbye. “I’m going to go get breakfast somewhere with fewer morons, because morons ruin my appetite. See you at the headquarters.”