“I thought you’d betrayed me,” I said as Catrin cleaned ghoul blood from her dagger.

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “No way I was going to stall all those marrow-eaters on my own, big man. I knew you could handle yourself. Just needed to pick my moment.”

She reclined against the edge of a fence lining one of the village gardens. It would go untended now, and already ivy crept from its bounds. She had one ankle crossed beneath her long skirts, an elbow propped on the fence. The image of casual indifference. Her eyes were on the Banemetal blade, distant and aloof.

That aloof mask cracked as I went down on one knee at her side, that neutrality scattering into shock.

“Hey, big man, what are you…” A nervous laugh escaped Catrin’s lips. “I’m flattered, really, but it’s just so sudden!”

“I owe you an apology,” I said, ignoring her jest. I bowed my head, just as I might have done before a great lady in the court of a High House. “I’ve treated you with suspicion and distrust this entire time. Twice I nearly attacked you, and my words and thoughts have been… unkind.” I lifted my face to meet her gaze. “It was not worthy of me. I am sorry.”

Catrin’s cheeks were bright pink. “You don’t have to be so dramatic about it, big man, I forgive you. Bleeding Gates, you really are some shining knight, aren’t you? I’m not one of your high ladies, so there’s no need to…”

I shook my head, voice firm. “Yes. There is a need. I owe you, and you’re the only ally I have in all of this.”

“Well…” Catrin’s expression turned sly. “Tell you what, you do something for me and I’ll call us even.”

I hesitated, my contrition evaporating to be replaced by trepidation. “What?”

Catrin sheathed the dagger at her belt and hopped off the fence. “Call me Cat. Not vampire, or bloodsucker, or malcathe. None of that.” She met my eyes. “Just Cat.” She shrugged. “It’s what I prefer friends call me.”

Friends. When was the last time I had one of those?

I stood and looked down at her. “I’m not sure you want me as a friend. This…” I gestured at all the carnage. Ghoul bodies, smoldering and butchered, lay scattered in front of the village chapel. “This is the world I live in.”

“Al…” Catrin — Cat — sighed and patted my elbow. “Can I call you Al?”

My lips pressed into a thin line. I’m going to regret this, I thought. “I’d rather you—”

“Listen, Al, because this is important.” Catrin pressed her forefinger and thumb together and held them to her lips, which widened into an exaggerated smile. That grin revealed long, needle-sharp canines. “I’m a dhampir, boyo. I drink blood, and more than half the time I like it. You really think all this is going to scare me off?” She waved at the bodies. When she saw my expression she laughed. “Don’t look so glum. I’m sure you were trying for the whole noble sacrifice thing, but save it. You’re stuck with me, least until this mess is done with.”

I turned my back to her, mainly so she couldn’t see the smile threatening the corners of my lips.

How long had it been since I’d smiled at anything, without it being bitter or mocking?

“So…” Catrin coughed and glided to my side. “You looked like a devil coming out of that church, big man. What did you see in there?”

Any thought of smiling was forgotten then. “They killed the villagers,” I said. “All of them, I think.”

Catrin’s face bled what little color it had. “No…” She looked to the chapel, and hate twisted her face. “That bastard,” she spat. “He said he was doing this for them.”

She blinked several times, but a tear still fell.

I recalled, on my first night in the village, she’d been with a local. “You were close with one of them?” I asked softly.

Catrin wiped at her eye with the back of a hand. “Not really. I haven’t been here longer than a few months. Not much time to get close, you know?”

“I remember there was a man,” I said. “That night we first met.”

“Oh.” Catrin let out a shaky laugh. “Just a bit of blood and warmth. I can’t even remember his name.” Her gaze went distant. “That’s awful, isn’t it?”

I shook my head. “It does you credit to weep for those you didn’t know well.” The admission she’d been feeding off the man unsettled me, but I let it go. This wasn’t the time.

“The Baron will be ready for us,” I said. “You should—”

“If you tell me to stay behind, I’m going to bite you.” Catrin glowered at me and bared her sharp teeth. “I’m going. That blueblood prick is going to get Shivers right in his gut.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Shivers?”

The dhampir woman patted her elven blade and flashed a wicked smile. “Your cutter has a fancy name, so mine gets one too. Shivers. Cuz the Banemetal makes the dead shiver, ya’ know?”

I snorted. “Let’s go, then. I’m sure they’re already shivering.”

“Hey! I saved your ass back there, big man, so don’t go making fun.”

Before I could reply, I heard the doors of the church opening. I turned to see Brother Edgar standing there, eyes wide as he surveyed the carnage.

“You…” the young monk’s voice trembled as he pointed a finger at me. “You wield the Heir’s own fire. You…”

I sighed, having encountered enough piety in the past to have a stomach full of it.

However, rather than proclaiming some devout supplication, the monk’s features twisted with rage. “Where were you?” He spat. “Where were you when we needed you? When he was butchering them?” He began to descend the steps, flinging one wide sleeve toward the dead ghouls. “What does all this do now? What’s the point?”

I didn’t know what to tell the young man. I had no words that could assuage his grief. Had I been even half the man I’d wanted to be — a true paladin, a proper knight — I’d have told him something to calm his fears, give purpose to his anger. I would have sworn some noble oath and breathed a bit of light back into that darkness.

But I didn’t have the words, and he was right. I hadn’t done anything for them. If I’d taken Falconer’s life that first night, even at the cost of my own, this wouldn’t have happened.

Instead, hardening my heart against the monk’s despair, I turned to face him fully. “There was an old man who came to the village a few days back,” I said. “He had a young woman with him, a cleric. Were they killed with the rest?”

Brother Edgar gaped at me, his features torn between confusion and anger. “I…” he swallowed, seemed to shake himself, and shook his head. “You speak of Preoster Micah’s friend, the doctor?”

I nodded.

“He did nothing for us either,” Edgar snarled. He hugged himself and a blank, dull nothingness filled his eyes. “I gave him some of the preoster’s maps of the castle. Micah had been at odds with the Baron for years…” he barked a hollow laugh. “I thought him a paranoid old fool chasing after imagined sins.”

“When did you last see him?” I asked. “Do you know where he went?”

“He left the village yesterday morning to warn the new priest of the danger and gain his help,” Edgar said. “Then those soldiers brought the new preacher in and executed him in the square. They must have accosted them outside the village… I never saw Olliard or his apprentice again. They must have died out in the marsh.”

Perhaps he was right. My gut told me the doctor had survived, though, and was lurking about somewhere. What was the old man’s plan?

“What are you thinking?” Catrin asked.

I looked toward the lake. “I’m thinking that the Baron desecrated the church in the worst way he could think of in order to give his demon ally a physical form. I’m also thinking he wanted me to prevent the new preoster from reaching the village because a trained priest could have stopped that sort of ritual cold, especially on holy ground.”

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“He got what he wanted though,” Catrin said. “I just don’t understand what the point in killing all the villagers was. What’s he doing all this for?”

“Revenge,” I said. “He wants to wage war against the Onsolain. Probably, he thought the sacrifice of one village was worth it.”

“Sick fuck,” Catrin spat.

He played me for a fool, I thought. Made me think he was reasonable. Why would a man who wants to fight the gods be reasonable?

“What’s next?” Catrin asked, folding her arms and glancing nervously at the church. Brother Edgar had slumped down on the stairs and buried his head in his hands. I think he was praying. Or weeping.

I closed my eyes, thinking. Orson Falconer had already gotten what he wanted. He had his infernal weapon, attention from the other Recusant factions, and the Church’s presence in his lands expunged. I hadn’t stopped any of his plots or saved anyone.

But I could still kill him.

***

The boat glided across the murky waters of the lake. The overcast sky, and the ever-present mist of Caelfall, cast the world in a dreamlike veil. Quiet, still, and depthless.

Catrin’s eyes were fixed on the shadow of the castle which loomed from the depths of the lake ahead, enthroned within its drowned field of ruined, shattered buildings. She rowed this time, while I watched the depths of the mist, wary of ambush.

“I don’t hear those sentries from before,” I noted. I recalled huge, winged things clinging to the sunken buildings.

“They’re night beasts,” Catrin said. “Might not run into them.” I didn’t miss the hopeful note in her voice.

I glanced in the general direction of the sun — I couldn’t see it through the overcast sky or the thin veil of mist. The castle was a black monolith dominating the lake, a shattered, half sunken beast.

Did the Onsolain really cause all this? I ran my eyes across the ruins. It was hard to believe this had once been the site of a small kingdom in its own right, this stagnant swamp and its marshy surrounds.

It didn’t matter. Orson Falconer had made his own choices, and he’d chosen to be a monster. Nothing justified what I’d seen in the chapel.

Catrin guided the boat into the long tunnel where we’d entered the keep before. As the open sky vanished beneath solid rock, I tightened my grip on my weapon, growing tense.

“You feel that?” Catrin whispered.

“Yes,” I said. We weren’t alone in the tunnel. My aura shivered with apprehension, but it wasn’t just a supernatural sense telling me there was danger ahead. A very real stench filled the cave, overpoweringly foul. It reeked of carrion.

“Alken…” Catrin was tense as a bowstring. “Maybe we should find—”

Something hurled itself at me through the darkness. The depths of the waterlogged tunnel were nearly pitch black — not to me. I saw the shape of the thing, bat-winged and leech-mouthed, and swung on pure reflex. My axe came down in a vertical chop even as I ducked. The axe’s sickle-moon blade clove the fanged nightmare from skull to chest cavity. Its bulk splashed into the water some distance behind us.

“Shit!” Catrin swore, after the moment was already done.

I rested the axe on my shoulder. Its edge glowed slightly, like hot metal. “Keep moving forward,” I ordered, scanning the tunnel ahead.

Catrin did, though her hands shook slightly on the oar.

I sensed more of the enormous bat-things ahead. Some kind of chimera, I guessed. My magic warned me of danger, but not of anything truly profane. Not fiends, but rather ill-formed beasts bound by the Baron’s magic or bred like the war-chimera used by armies across the world.

They had enormous wing-spans, and the tunnel was only wide enough for one to take flight at a time. I had that advantage, but the edges of the cavern walls were well beyond my reach. If they simply waited for me to pass, then swarmed me all at once, they wouldn’t need to take to the air…

Black shapes moved along the walls as Catrin spurred us forward with the oar. I ground my teeth, and decided there was no choice.

“This might be uncomfortable for you,” I told Catrin. I felt her worried eyes on my back. I narrowed my eyes and murmured the words of one of my oaths.

An oath — or I should say an Oath — is the core of a paladin’s power. It is a sort of pact made with the self, sometimes with a supernatural intermediary which can back the vow to make it more potent, as in my case with the Alder Table. It is not always necessary, and there are True Knights in the world whose vows are entirely personal, born of their own convictions, but those are very rare. The rituals involved in the calling are old, and much of the magical might granted to us comes from that long refining.

“The flame is mine aegis,” I whispered, my words causing the very air to shudder. “The flame is my sword. I kindle the flame so the world may know its warmth. Its light is our shelter against the Dark.”

Saying the words aloud was not necessary to draw on my powers, not always. But saying a thing can do much to make it real.

You do not believe me? I am certain you have experienced this yourself. Have you not apologized to someone you’ve hurt, and known even as the words passed your lips you felt genuine contrition? Have you not told someone that you love them, and felt the utter certainty that it is true?

To keep a thing locked inside is to never let it be born into the world.

I felt my aura reshape itself in response, the process fast and smooth. My soul had been restructured by the Table for this very purpose, after all.

I lifted my axe up with one hand so its length was parallel to the water below, as though measuring the width of the tunnel ahead. Dark golden flames flickered across the rough length of uncarved wood that formed its hilt, illuminating the complex patterns etched long the sickle-moon blade. Those flames raced up my arm, my shoulder, enwrapping me until I became a living torch of amber-hued fire.

“Holy shit,” Catrin said.

Indeed.

Light spilled through the tunnel, illuminating the flock of monsters lurking within. They were hideous things, gray-skinned and emaciated, with most of their muscle powering long, avian legs and huge leathery wings. Their heads were like sinuous worms, ending in tiny, sucking mouths lined in needle teeth. They recoiled from the light and screeched, filling the tunnel with tremendous sound.

None attacked. When the boat drew close, they practically fought each other to pull away from the crackling bonfire of aureflame I’d become. Sweat beaded on my face as I maintained the aura, knowing I couldn’t do it for long. I was burning my own spirit away with every second I maintained it.

Catrin whimpered behind me. That was what I’d been worried about — she was only part fiend, but the holy fire was near as repulsive to her as to the Baron’s chimera, born of dark sorcery as they were. I’d suspected as much when she’d refused to enter the chapel.

The tunnel began to widen into a larger cave. I caught sight of the dock ahead, which would lead us up into narrow hallways where these creatures, with their huge wings, wouldn’t be able to follow. “We’re almost there,” I said to my companion. I was beginning to feel cold, and breathing was getting more difficult.

There was a time I could have let that power burn for several minutes without effort, but that was back when the Table was still intact and the elves still ruled their own city. It was like a cracked fountain basin that drained as fast as it filled, now.

“It’s too bright,” Catrin hissed. “It burns. I can’t…”

“I know,” I said. “Just hold on. We’re almost there.”

The dhampir steeled herself and rowed forward. The monsters watched us from the shadows, their eyeless heads chewing at the air.

We passed into the cave. Another half a minute, maybe, and we’d reach the dock. I grit my teeth, fighting to keep the aureflame burning. It had died down somewhat, letting the shadows fill in to half-conceal the hellish swarm around us. In this wide space the chimera could take wing more easily. Several of them cracked their leathery wings in anticipation, as though sensing my strength failing.

We reached the dock. There was barely a flicker of the flame now, wisps of it running across my body so I was more a gently shining figure in the darkness rather than a blazing one.

“Run!” I snapped at Catrin. She shot toward the doorway in the cave wall, faster than any human could have run, bare feet slapping against the dock.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I spun, swung, and carved the wing from a chimera that hadn’t deigned to wait for my Art to fully fade. It crashed into the dock in a flailing, snarling chaos, cracking the wood and nearly upturning the boat. The edges of its wing-arm’s severed stump exuded a molten glow.

I rolled onto the dock. Red heat flared across my left arm — the thing had managed to graze me with its claws. No time to tell how bad the wound was. More screeches and more wingbeats filled the cave.

I ran to the door. As Irn Bale had promised, my new armor didn’t slow me down, the shadowy links of elf-metal like a second skin beneath my red cloak.

Something heavy landed on the dock at my side. I turned, ducked the thing’s head as it snapped at me. Their wrinkled necks could extend incredibly far, I noted. Charming.

I took the chimera’s head off with an upward swing, shouting, my weapon leaving a white-gold blur in the air. The creature fell, its headless body writhing in its death throes. More of its kin beat their wings, and I knew they’d pile on me and bring me down, their leech mouths finding the gaps in my armor as they devoured me alive.

“Alken!” Catrin was at the door, waiting for me. Her dagger was clutched in her hand, but the small weapon was of little use against that hellswarm.

I wouldn’t make it. With a surge of will I made the aureflame aegis burn again, hoping to repel the swarm even for a moment. Most of them balked. One didn’t, its momentum carrying it forward.

The chimera hit me in the back. It was smaller than me, but dense with muscle and heavy enough I was thrown forward through the door. I felt its claws scrabble at my back, tearing my cloak but fouling on the armor. It hissed in rage and — even as its flesh sizzled and burned at the touch of my aura — bit at my neck with its sucking mouth.

I reached back with my wounded left hand — there was a flash of pain as the gouges near my elbow were pulled — and its teeth clamped down on my vambrace. It snarled and shook its head viciously, nearly wrenching my arm from its socket. I couldn’t turn, couldn’t get its weight off my back or bring my weapon to bear.

Catrin saved me, again. Screaming in fury, she hit the thing from the side and stabbed at it with her dagger. It wasn’t undead, and the Banemetal did little to hurt it more than regular steel would have, but neither was it preternatural enough for that to matter. She ripped the blade out, stabbed again, then again. Eventually she found its small brain.

The chimera went still. Catrin helped me get its weight off. As I stood, I saw she was covered in brackish gore. The creatures had purple, almost mossy blood. My eyes flickered to the still open doorway. More of the monsters were advancing on it.

I took a single step froward, swung, and hewed through the membranous flesh of one leech-like head as it darted through the doorway. My weapon hummed musically as it parted the air, where a normal weapon might have only whistled. I kicked the dead thing away to get it clear, then slammed the door closed and latched it. There were several heavy thuds as the creatures slammed against the barrier, but it was a siege door. It held.

It was several minutes before either of us caught our breath.

“Alken…”

I turned. The hallway would have been pitch black, but my axe still glowed dimly to illuminate Catrin. Her brown hair was disheveled, her peasant’s dress ruined with chimera blood.

Her eyes were fixed on my wounded left arm. They burned with a hungry red light.