Silence fell. The deepest silence that Eli had ever heard. No pulse, no heartbeat. No breath. He was dying. He was dead. There was nothing alive inside him ...

Except for his core.

His heart didn't beat but his core beat.

His lungs didn't breathe but his core breathed.

His core and his sparks pulsed together and more appeared. He didn't know how many more. Five? Ten? Twenty? He saw himself from the outside: a broken man being crushed in the two-handed grip of a giant angelbrood with a sword stuck in its back.

He saw blood streaming from the broken man's mouth and nose. Then the world started darkening. His eyes failed but his new sparks circled around behind the angelbrood. And Eli shoved them into the hilt of the sword with every ounce of his desperation and fear and rage and hope.

The blade punched into Four Arms's back--and then through it. The blade speared its massive torso before bursting from the top of its chest, with the sparks still driving it forward.

Eli felt his arm reach out.

The grip of the sword landed in his palm.

The world turned black, but with one last twitch of life Eli plunged the sword into that black-veined face, an instant before Four Arms hurled him away.

***

His sparks faded like stars at sunrise, but the last one showed three moons shining overhead.

White, red, green.

Bone, rust, moss.

Three moons, so far above him. So remote. He couldn't touch them. Nothing human could touch them, but they touched everything human and--

His last spark blinked out.

----------------------------------------

Eli woke on a hard surface beneath the predawn sky.

A bone jutted from his thigh and his neck was at a bad angle. He was hardly bleeding though. And he was surrounded by sparks. More than seven, more than twice that many; he didn't count them, he simply revelled in their presense.

One spark drifted upward and he located himself. He was on a rooftop within the inner wall of the Keep. Not that far from the church. Four Arms had hurled him two or three blocks.

The sparks swirled, filling his mind with new perspectives. He lost himself to a reverie as he healed ...

After a dim stretch of time, his head jerked as his neckbones snapped into place. He heard footsteps while his femur withdrew into the wound, then he heard a door slam open.

A soldier trotted onto the rooftop toward him, yelling, "He's here! Over here!"

Eli rolled onto his back. "Is it dead?"

"Yes," the soldier told him. "Yes, mir. You killed it, praise the Angel. It's dead. They're all dead and look. Sunrise."

"Oh, that's nice," Eli said, then coughed blood for a minute.

When he finished, the soldier knelt beside him. He fed Eli water from a canteen, and wiped his face, and told him that his family had been in the church. His mother and little brother and his cousins. Eli half-listened, feeling stronger every passing minute, until his leg was whole and his fingers stopped tingling.

When more people approached, the soldier stepped away. Eli sent sparks to investigate and saw Lady Pym stepping onto the rooftop with the captain of the guard and a half dozen soldiers.

"Stay back," Pym told the others.

"M'lady," the captain said. "This is deeply unwise. You cannot-"

"You heard me!" she barked. "Stay back. All of you.

"I beg you, my lady--"

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"That's an order!"

The captain scowled but obeyed, and Lady Pym crossed the roof to Eli.

"Can you stand?" she asked him.

"Let's see." He pushed himself to his feet like an aching old man. "Almost."

Pym looked across the Keep grounds. "If you still want to kill me, kill me."

"What?"

"My guard won't stop you. Well, they couldn't. But they won't try. If you want to kill me, do it now. Then walk out of here."

He thought for a second. "Because you owe me?"

"Yes."

"And you're willing to pay for the lives of ... of your people with your own?"

"Yes."

He followed her gaze with his eyes, even though his sparks were already showing him the wreckage of the Keep, the tents of the healers and the trail of survivors returning to their homes. Survivors and mourners, strong and weak, selfish and generous. The little people who mattered most.

"Stay away from the Warding," he told Pym.

She frowned. "What?"

"The western border. The mountains. Keep your people out of them."

"You mean away from trolls?"

"We don't care about the trolls, Pym," he said, to mislead her. "We care about the Warding. Withdraw your units from the mountains and do not return."

"We've lost too many troops to sally into the highlands anyway."

"Even when you recruit more. Keep out."

She frowned again. "Agreed."

"And stay away from Brazinka Savradar, too. She's ours. We'll handle her in our own time."

"Very well."

He drank from the canteen that the soldier had left him, then stood in silence with Pym and watched the sun rise over the far eastern horizon of the valley. A cock crowed somewhere, a bell jingled. They listened for what felt to Eli like a long time, to the sound of a city waking up after a long night. Normal life resuming.

"You're not going to kill me," Pym said. "Why not?"

"There's been too much death. Just, uh ..."

"What?"

"Try to remember that killing is sometimes necessary, but cruelty never is."

She exhaled. "I hope that's true."

"Yeah. Me, too."

"My lady," the captain of the guard called. "You have other duties."

"Coming." She took a step away, then turned back to Eli. "I hope we don't meet again."

He touched the steelsilk at his throat. "You'll want this back."

"Keep it."

"It was your father's?"

"Yes."

That time, Eli frowned. "He wouldn't want me to have it."

"No," Pym said. "But I do."

----------------------------------------

Eli stole one of the mounts of the knights who'd tried to lance the angelbrood. It was an excellent animal, and nearly tireless, especially after he'd removed its armor before he left Rockbridge.

He galloped along the road toward Leotide City and to his dismay didn't find Lara. He was riding twice as fast as any donkey cart, but especially one weighed down by gold. And he knew Lara would be dawdling along, to avoid suspicion.

Still, he didn't come upon her after riding for most of the day.

A knot of worry tightened in his gut. He wheeled his mount and backtracked, trotting carefully through a night illuminated by only a single moon. His sparks showed him everything, of course, but his mount didn't have that advantage.

He'd almost reached Rockbridge when he spotted familiar shape behind a copse of trees: the cart.

He slowed to a walk, dismounted ... and knocked a dart out of the air, two feet from his face.

"It's me, you ridiculous woman!" he called.

Lara squealed happily, danced through the trees, and jumped into his arms.

He hugged her and spun while she laughed.

"Where were you?" he asked, after he set her down.

She wrinkled her nose. "There were angelbrood."

"No. What? Really?"

"Yes, you hedgehead. I hid in one of Chivat Lo's safe houses, until--" She stopped suddenly, eyeing him. "What are you wearing?"

"Oh, just my steelsilk."

She took his hand and led him to the cart. "Tell me everything."

"First, tell me that you have the goods."

"We're rich," she informed him. "From now on, Fern's only eating golden apples."

He patted Fern's flank. "Is that right? Did you miss me, girl?"

Fern snorted at him.

"Well, I missed you," Lara said, tossing Eli a melon from the cart. "Here."

Eli caught the melon in the air with six sparks and kept it hovering there.

"Whoa," Lara said. "That's new. Start talking."

He told her what happened between bites of fruit and cheese. He glossed over a few bits--the danger to the scribes in the archives, jumping off the wall to save Ty's life. But she stopped him every time he tried that, and pestered him for more details. So in the end, he told her everything. And he didn't really mind: from the first time he'd met Lara, he'd confessed everything.

When he finished, they were sitting under a blanket together, leaning against a cartwheel. "... and after I couldn't find you on the road, I headed back."

"How many sparks?" she asked.

"I don't know. Twenty? Twenty-five."

"For now," she said.

"For now."

"Tomorrow we'll count." She closed her eyes. "And you flew across the rooftops, and over the wall."

"I didn't fly. I sort of ... threw myself."

"For now," she repeated, then yawned.

A breeze brushed the leaves overhead, making them shimmy and dance. A night bird spoke from the north and feathery clouds glowed beneath from the bone moon. Lara snuggled her head on Eli's shoulder as he sat with his thoughts. Angelbrood were getting worse, far worse, and this was only the beginning. Nothing but mages could stop them now: mages and him. He needed to help Brazinka unite the valley, he needed to stop the Killweeds. In the end, he needed to defeat the Celestials. That was the only way there'd ever be peace.

"Mm," Lara murmured, on his shoulder. "Meek?"

"Yeah?"

"You did good."

He didn't say anything.

"You saved a lot of lives," she continued. "You should be proud."

"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have done any of this."

"Course not!" she said, sleepily. "I should be proud, too."

He smiled down at the top of her head. "So now you can return to the Glade with your head high?"

"I could, but I won't. I'm in this until the end. We both are."

"Such a bossy dryad," he said.

"I'm right, though."

"Yeah," he said, after she fell asleep. "We're in this to the end."