I woke with a start, unsure at first of what had ripped me from sleep. I thought I was dreaming still, for a moment — as I got my bearings. The left side of my face itched, more than usual. Fire, a molten shade of angry gold, filled my vision, searing my eyes.

Then something flew across the room and crashed against the wall a foot from my head. A decanter of water. It drenched me, but I had no attention to pay a bit of damp. Maxim was up, and he stumbled through the room, gibbering nonsense. His graying hair hung wild around his ravaged face, sweat darkened his night shirt, and his eyes—

They burned. Golden flame filled the old knight’s eyes, spilling out in flickering bursts. I could smell burning flesh, see his skin blistering around the blazing sockets. He turned to me, opened his mouth, and more of that gold flame was in it.

“I did not break faith!” Maxim wailed at me, clawing at the air. His nails were bloody. “I did not! I did not heed him! I would have stopped it, I would have stopped it.”

His words echoed with auratic power. The man’s blazing eyes went to the hearth, and up, alighting on the sword there. He grit his teeth, trapping the fire inside for a moment. When he spoke again, more plumes burst forth like a wyrm’s spit. “I must show them. I will redeem myself.”

He went for the sword. I leapt to my feet and was across the room in an instant, grabbing him. The old man snarled and struck at me, catching me in the teeth. He was hellish strong — even bent with ill health, he’d been near as tall as me and just as strong once. One of my teeth cracked. I hissed in pain, managed to get the man’s arms in my grip, and took him to the ground.

“Enough!” I snapped into his ear. “Enough, captain. The war is over, we’re not in Seydis.”

“I will kill them!” Maxim twisted like an injured beast, spitting gilded flame with every word. “Alicia, Ghislain, Hildebres, Lishan, all of those traitors, those butchers!”

“They’re dead!” I didn’t know if it was true, not for certain, but I shouted the words anyway. “They’re all dead, Maxim! It’s just us.”

“They killed him,” the old man sobbed. His struggles had become less frantic. Molten tears carved wounds into his cheeks. “Queen of Heaven, they killed him. He was so beautiful. I’m so sorry, your majesty. I did not know.”

In that moment, the old man’s memory filled my own vision, overlapping with my own, as the maimed oaths hammered into both our souls flared as one. I could still see it, clear as clean water. A royal elf, crowned in holly and gold, kneeling on a marble floor. A dozen blades ran him through. His blood ran like rivers along the platform’s many depressions, painting the images carved there red.

Ordinary trauma is hell enough, without supernatural trauma to engorge it. I fought against the images, concentrating on the now. It was like wrestling with a solar flare. Even still I fought, asserting my own will, my own reality, over that festering wound carved into the world that bled through me and that other broken knight.

I returned to the cottage, to the old man in my arms. He sobbed, spilling molten gold tears onto the floor. They carved into the wooden floor where they landed, embedding and cooling there. Any priest in all the land would call it a miracle — water turned to gold. I grimaced at the sight.

“Rysanthe.” I didn’t speak loudly, couldn’t. It was all I could do to keep myself grounded, and keep the struggling Maxim in my grasp.

Even still, she heard me. I didn’t even hear the door open. She was just there, a pale lantern in the cottage’s gloom. She knelt, silver-touched hands reaching out toward the knight.

“What’s happening to him?” I asked her, pleading.

The elf’s corpse-pale lips were pressed tight with concern. “His oaths are burning him from within. We need to take him to the pools, or he will come undone.”

She reached out and touched the paladin between his eyebrows with one silver finger. Immediately the amber flames receded, his eyes fluttered, and he fell unconscious. She looked into my eyes, her own gleaming magenta in the dark. “Can you carry him?”

I nodded, and lifted my once-captain as though he were a child. He’d become disturbingly light, his limbs near skeletal. Eaten from within by hunger, age, and that scourging auratic fire.

I carried Maxim down to the shrine with Rysanthe leading. Oraeka met us at the edge of the fountain circle, looking as though she’d been sprinting moments before. She had her spear in hand.

“What’s happening?” She asked the older elf, glancing at me and the unconscious man in my arms. “I saw light up on the hill. Are we under attack?”

Rysanthe shook her head. “It’s Ser Maxim. We’re taking him into the temple, but the aura he burned might have attracted attention from afar. Warn Hezrobog and the cant spiders, and be on guard.”

Oraeka’s brow furrowed, and she cast a worried look at Maxim. Without sparing me a glance, she strode off into the woods.

“Come,” Rysanthe ordered. I followed her into the temple. An open, circular space lay within, dipping toward the middle to form a perfectly centered pool perhaps ten feet across. A matching hole in the roof would have allowed moonlight in, but clouds had rolled over the sky to cast the woods in darkness.

It didn’t impede my sight, or the elf’s. Even still, the dark seemed to press uncomfortably close. Rysanthe went to the pool, knelt, and touched her silver-nailed fingers to the water. Light spread from the point of contact, until the pool gleamed as though lit from beneath by blue flames. She ushered me forward, and I laid Maxim gently in the water. I made sure the edge of the pool supported his head, then let him go.

Rysanthe’s eyes remained fixed on the old knight. “He needs rest. I will watch him until morn.”

I folded my arms, still shaken by my own dream and Maxim’s madness. He’d once been a hero. A champion worthy of any legend. All the Alder had been.

“Why isn’t this happening to me?” I asked her. “I don’t understand this, Rys. When the Table was broken, when our oaths turned on us, I felt the backlash… still do, at times, but never like this.”

The drow’s palms hovered near the pool, as though she were warming herself by a fire. Her expression seemed strained. “You swore a new oath. It helped sew some of those tears back together, even if it’s not as it once was.”

“That came years later,” I said, remembering. “I saw some of the other knights after the Fall. They were just like this… burning from the inside.”

“They were all older,” Rysanthe said. “Especially poor Ser Maxim here — he was among the oldest. The power grows in you with time, just as an elf’s soul does. More than that, he is a believer.”

“You’re saying I’m not?” I asked, half in anger and half in jest. “Hard not to be, with the things I’ve seen.”

“Belief is not the same as faith, Alken.” She didn’t take her eyes off the sleeping paladin. She looked tired, and… not old, precisely, but worn. Most of her silver light had gone into the pool, and she seemed less a creature out of dream and more a young woman, ignoring the pointed ears and too-pale skin. “Do you have faith? In what you were?”

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I took that in, and remained silent a while.

“If the Fane is in danger,” I said at last, “I should support Oraeka. I’ll go get my armor.”

Rysanthe nodded, then held out her palm. My ring lay in it. “This is yours,” she said insistently. “Do not let it stray from you.”

I took the ring. I hesitated a beat, knowing I was looking for an escape from that room and the man I couldn’t help. But I went anyway.

I returned to the cabin, threw on my maille and boots, and strapped my belt and dagger on. I grabbed my red cloak too — you never know, and I owned little else.

I descended the hill again. The looming hulk of Caim waited there, crouched amid the trees like a grim statue.

“Oraeka is at Hezrobog’s bridge,” he told me. “The herald is with them. Someone is approaching the Fane.”

I took that news in for a moment. “Any idea who?”

The smith just shook his head. His asymmetrical features were troubled. “You should go to the bridge. Here — you may need this.”

He held out a hand. My axe rested on his palm, gleaming more brightly than before I’d given it to him. The subtle shine of power served to make the permanent bloodstains stand out starkly. I took it, nodding my thanks, and went without another word.

Huge, scuttling shapes with many legs and many glowing eyes moved through the trees as I made my way down the woodland path. The forest, pretty and peaceful on my arrival, had become sinister in its alertness. Voices, high-pitched and tuned to too-perfect rhythm, whispered in the dark.

A terrible howl ripped through the trees. The shout, brief and furious, echoed long after the breath that’d powered it had been released. I quickened my pace, running the rest of the way to the bridge. There I found the ghostly, subtly shining form of Donnelly standing by Oraeka’s side. The elf held her war spear in hand, and stood tall and grim on the troll bridge’s mossy stone. Hezrobog crouched on the bridge’s first arch, facing the woods. He was sucking in a breath for another scream even as I arrived, his round chest puffing up disturbingly wide as he inhaled. I realized that a fight hadn’t started — that unholy screech had been the troll’s warning shout.

A deep, consuming gloom hung over the woods beyond the Fane’s outer bounds. Even my Alder-blessed sight couldn’t penetrate it, which told me some power lurked beyond the boundary, countering my own.

Moving to stand by Donnelly and Oraeka’s side, I peered into the night. “Can you tell who’s out there?”

“I think what is more accurate,” Donnelly muttered, his gray eyes narrowed. “What do your elf eyes see, Oraeka dear?”

“I’m not your dear,” Oraeka growled. “And…” she shook her head. “There’s someone out there. They’re alone, so far as I can tell. They’re riding a chimera — big one.”

I frowned. “Is it a woman? Long hair, riding a warhorse? The beast would have many blades stuck into it.”

“You think it’s Nath?” Donnelly asked. “Coming to collect you for her errand?”

“They’re not Onsolain,” Oraeka said. I could hear her spear’s handle creaking as she gripped it tighter. “I’d have sensed one of the Starborn. No…” her nostrils flared. “I smell rot, iron… pain.”

“How comforting,” Donnelly put in.

“Whoever they are,” Hezrobog growled above our heads, “they will regret it if they attempt to cross my bridge.”

I heard a sound then. Chains. We all went silent, my tenseness matched by my companions. Something moved in the dark — I could hear heavy limbs padding against the path, guttural breath, and metal clattering against itself. No leaves stirred — the wind had died. A radius of elf-light emanated from the bridge, fading as it stretched into that hungry night. Something detached itself from the darkness, and I saw what approached.

It had been a man, once. A knight, perhaps even a paladin sworn to one of the brethren orders. Now… I struggle to put words to what he’d become.

He wore a full set of armor which I felt certain had once been of beautiful make. I could still make out angelic motifs etched along the blistered steel, where rust hadn’t mottled them away. The right pauldron had been crafted into the shape of an outstretched wing, and the effigy of a beautiful woman had been set over the left, forge-wrought arm slipping under the man’s armpit to rest a hand over his heart. She’d probably been serene once, a maiden-saint. Now her eyes wept black pus, her lips had been melted into a ghastly sob, and the detailed metalwork forming her hair had dented into a tumorous mass around her shoulders.

The knight’s surcoat was tattered and faded, filthy with dried blood and worse. Splits and loose ends marred the chainmail beneath his plate, all of it colored red, brown, and black.

The helm… the helm was the worst part. It had been fused to the knight’s face, parts of it hammered in to conform to the shape of the skull beneath. The faceplate, once an impassive mask framed by a sagely brass beard, had twisted into an implement of torture for the wearer. Fresh blood seeped through the warped seams, as though the armor itself sweated red.

And, over all of him, there grew a twisting tangle of thorned vines.

“A Brother of the Briar,” Donnelly breathed. “Heir of Heaven preserve us, I thought we’d killed them all.”

The Briar Knight spurred his mount forward — a creature not unlike a kynedeer, with cloven hooves and a rack of antlers. However, this beast stared at us with a nearly fleshless skull, the bone beneath mottled as though made of half-melted wax. Its prehensile tail lashed behind it like an angry feline’s. Small vestigial wings with transparent membranes flexed as it inhaled with a wet snort. The chimera was big — bigger than the hyena-things the Mistwalkers had used back in Caelfall.

“Step no closer, Thornsworn.” Donnelly’s voice had a strange quality to it. It echoed subtly with preternatural authority, as mine did when I channeled my powers. He was the Herald of Heavensreach in truth then, not just the rakish pirate he’d been in life.

To my surprise, the Brother of the Briar did halt his mount. He regarded us in eerie silence, then lifted a gauntleted hand to point. The Briar Knight’s crooked finger fixed on me. Worse, he spoke. The voice that emerged from the warped helmet did not at all belong to that nightmare visage — it was light, almost musical.

“You have been promised to the service of my lady,” the Briar Knight said. “The time has come for that duty to be fulfilled.”

I glanced at my companions, seeing the worry on their face — except for Hezrobog, who just looked curmudgeonly at the commotion on his front lawn. I squared my shoulders and stepped forward, stopping at the mouth of the bridge. “You’re here to take me to Nath’s warlock?” I asked, suspicious. I’d spent many long, grim years of my life fighting the Briar. They couldn’t be trusted — they hated everything, and my order had been their antithesis.

The Briar Knight only inclined his head, causing tortured metal to creak. It wasn’t exactly an answer.

I tightened my jaw and let a bit of my own power leak into my voice. “Speak truth, Thornsworn. Did Nath the Fallen send you to escort me to her servant? Can I expect you to provide me safe conduct?”

This time, the voice had no music in it. A hissing rasp emerged from the helm, gravid with resentment. “Yes.”

I let out a breath, not exactly mollified but as sure as I could be the corrupted knight spoke the truth. The Briar were fey, not fiend, and tied to the land by ancient magics just as I was. They could lie and mislead, but breaking oaths would break them.

It was a possibility I couldn’t ignore. I’d need to be on my guard. I turned back to the others. “Rysanthe is with Ser Maxim. We can’t trust the Briar to play nice, not if they know about this place — be on your guard.”

Donnelly nodded, clearly worried, but Oraeka stepped forward with bared teeth. “You’re just going to leave?” She hissed. “With Ser Maxim hurt?”

I squared my jaw and met her eyes. I had to look up to do it, but I didn’t back down. “I’m oathbound, Oraeka. I don’t have a choice.”

The shieldmaiden’s eyes flashed. “You have a choice. You could do the right thing. The honorable thing, not…” she glanced past me to the Briar Knight and hissed her next words. “This is wrong. Nath and the Briar are wicked.”

My emotions were already stretched taut, from the lucid dream I’d had of Seydis and from Maxim’s predicament. I wanted to tell the elf she was being a child, that the world wasn’t so simple as good and evil.

But hadn’t I made just the same argument to Donnelly when he’d told me I’d be working for Nath?

Hadn’t I convinced myself of it ten years ago?

In truth, I didn’t want to go. Maxim might need my help, and leaving the old man to battle with his inner demons alone while I went off on another quest felt irresponsible and wrong. But the consequences of snubbing Nath were dire.

I grabbled with the indecision a moment before quieting my mind. When I met Oraeka’s angry gaze, my voice had become calm. “I have my duty, and you have yours. Protect the Fane. Protect the captain.”

Oraeka’s expression grew remote. “As you will, Headsman,” she said coldly. Only her tight grip on her spear told me she hadn’t fully mastered herself, but I turned my eyes to Donnelly.

“I’m off, then.”

The herald nodded. “Good luck to you. I’ll keep an eye on things around here.” He shrugged, projecting nonchalance. “It’s the least I can do.”

I studied him a moment. He stood tall, confidant as the worldly adventurer he’d once been. Ghost that he was, it could be difficult to read him at times. Yet, I felt certain he wanted to say more. I still felt angry with him, perhaps unfairly so. It wasn’t truly Donnelly I felt anger toward — or at least, not just him. My resentment toward the world, my dull despair, my growing apathy, I’d let it turn to bitterness toward those few people still close to me.

Donnelly had suffered too, much and more. Rysanthe’s words about discarding friends floated in my thoughts.

“Thank you,” I said. It seemed the best thing.

Donnelly nodded, a small smile quirking his ghostly lips. “Go get them, Hewer.”

I nodded, and might have clasped his hand had I not known mine would just pass through. I turned to the fiendish rider and, steeling myself for whatever came next, stepped beyond the bridge.