I flew into action without hesitation. I had no banter in me, no witty remarks. I knew that my only chance lay in decisive, brutal action.
So I shaped an Art, feeling warmth bloom in my chest as my aura reworked itself in response to my will. I made my spirit sharp as a keen blade, hard as an iron bough. Amber light bloomed inside Rose Malin, clashing with the island of red concentrated around Kross.
I slammed one boot down on the ground, and the air rippled around it like a mirage of disturbed water. Around me, the phantasm of my Soul Art took shape, forming into the image of gilt antlers, the crown of a charging stag. I lifted my axe up, resting it on one shoulder, and lunged forward.
That single step carried me nearly thirty feet in the blink of an eye. I glided forward more than I ran or leapt, the edges of my bloodred cloak chased with aureflame.
Behind me, a hammer of solid cold slammed down into the spot I’d been standing. I felt it against my back. Had I been even an instant slower, Kross’s Art would have hit me.
Without so much as an eye blink, Kross stood his ground. I felt a shudder in the air, like the whole world trembled a moment with an unsettling thought. An instant before I would have struck him with all the force of a battering ram hurled by a giant’s hand, invisible force slapped me, a backhand so fast and violent my magic shattered into useless gilded glass.
I went flying back, hit the ground once in a painful roll, and managed to slam the sharp wedge on the back of my axe’s blade into the rich mosaic floor. My axe carved a dimly glowing line into the stone for seven feet before I’d managed to slide to a stop.
I glared up at the gray-cloaked man from my crouch, letting out an amber-misted breath.
“Vicar,” I snarled.
“Such anger!” The crowfriar laughed. “That was the Eardeking’s Lance, was it not? I admit, I’ve seen few of the Alder’s techniques in person.”
He slid his plain sword from its sheath then, swiping it to one side. With my aura burning, I began to make out the phantasmal shape of the being who clung to him — a cold angel with four great wings feathered with what looked like icy glass, its arms wrapped around Kross’s unadorned breastplate. It would have been beautiful, only the eyes peering at me over the crowfriar’s shoulder were piercing and cruel.
I didn’t just have the devil monk to contend with, but the Devil itself — a Zosite of the Iron Hell.
“Why are you here, Hewer?” Kross looked perplexed, his head tilted slightly to one side. “What purpose could you possibly…” He let out a huff of laughter and half closed his eyes. “Of course. They really are fools, aren’t they?”
I didn’t know what he meant, and didn’t much care then. “The Inquisition,” I said, my voice cold. “Is it just another crowfriar plot, then?”
Madness. It couldn’t be — they hadn’t been in the subcontinent long enough for anything that grand. Only months ago they’d been poaching outcast nobles in the countryside.
Figure it out later, survive now, I told myself, and tightened my grip on the ancient branch forming my weapon’s handle.
Kross pointed his longsword at me. “Will you surrender quietly?”
In answer, I stood and whispered a prayer in Sidhecant to the axe, nearly brushing my lips against the faerie bronze. It began to glow like molten gold. I swept it down, its shape blurring through the air, then brought it up above my head to grasp in two hands.
“Don’t be foolish, Alken.” Kross’s fatherly voice became harsh. Even still, he took a guard. The dark angel clinging to him folded its wings in protectively, its silver eyes narrowing.
The technique I shaped would hurt even an infernal creature like the knight-exorcist, and possibly his immortal companion as well. I poured every flicker of power I could into Faen Orgis.
“You know the names of my Arts, Renuart?” I glared at him as gilded light solidified around me. “Do you know the Dawn?”
Kross’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t. Not here — you’d never make it out of the city alive.”
High above, thunder rumbled. A flash of lightning lit the church’s beautiful windows scarlet. Chances were I’d shatter them, and split the building from ceiling to foundation in the bargain. Godsven’s Dawn was a High Art, among the mightiest of the Table’s weapons.
An invisible guillotine took shape in the world, a blade which could wound even an angel, the mightiest form of a paladin’s smite.
Kross bared his teeth, all pretense of ease vanishing, and he lifted his sword. His guardian lifted a second pair of arms which seemed to unfold out from the first, the fingers interlocking into a complex arrangement above, forming some kind of rune. The arms split again, so there were six, and the shape become even more complex.
It was casting something of its own to defend its host, or stop me.
Too late. I felt the Zosite’s aura reshaping itself, but I was already done. I brought my hands back behind my head, as though I meant to hurl the axe, and then swung—
Or tried to. Something caught my arms in a grip strong as steel-cable, stopping my swing dead. The power I’d gathered flowed out as the ritual motions stalled, turning to useless amber mist. Struggling, I forced my arms down, teeth clenched with the effort.
Golden strings had wrapped around my arms and the axe. Several lines radiated outward, attached to pillars and other architecture in the church. Each was thinner than a finger, shining softly, and strong as good steel.
The Zosite hadn’t done this. This was mortal aura.
“Ser Renuart!” A voice called out. My eyes shot toward it, and I saw a black-robed priorguard standing beyond the pews. Though her body and face were heavily veiled by the Inquisitorial uniform, the voice was a woman’s. She had her fingers splayed out, and thin golden strings connected them in a complex array, matching the larger strings holding me.
A binding Art. Shit.
Stomping boots filled the church, and more priorguard began to spill into the room. They held iron-capped quarterstaves and cudgels, and every face had a dark rectangle of cloth stitched with the trident of the Inquisition.
Bad to worse. I grit my teeth, focused my will, and jerked hard to one side. The priorguard who’d bound me with the golden strings let out a yelp, and nearly concussed herself against one of the pews as she stumbled. I jerked again, to the other side this time, then brought my axe up and down. The blade sunk into the nave’s mosaic with a flare of glass-bright fire.
Aureflame can burn even spiritual constructs, and there’s a reason I rely on it so heavily. All the threads wrapped around the axe and my arms broke away and scattered into useless od.
The black robed guards began to advance as I stood, burning axe in hand, but Kross snapped out a command. “Stop!” He said, his voice echoing in the room.
The zealots listened to him, quick as any well trained soldiers. Kross kept his eyes on me, all humor gone from him. “He’ll cut half of you down before you subdue him. Let me handle this.”
Murmurs filled the ranks of the priorguard, but they obeyed. The one with the strings of aura had found her balance and paced around the edge of the pews, her gloved fingers working with the dexterity of a spider’s legs as she rearranged her little strings.
I tore my eyes from her, focusing on the bigger threat. Kross’s angel still poised above him, its six arms and outspread wings forming an abstract shape. I sensed a hard coldness around it — whatever defense it had tried to work, it had completed it.
“For trespassing on holy ground under false pretenses, and for crimes committed against the Faith, I am placing you under arrest.” Kross began to advance, his sabatons clapping the stone with metallic echoes. “Surrender, and I will have mercy.”
“Right,” I scoffed, and began to advance as well. My own leather boots and chainmail were quieter than his full plate. “Because your masters are so well known for their mercy.”
Kross’s lips twitched, a ghost of his familiar mocking smirk returning. He knew I wasn’t referring to the Priory.
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Around us, the priorguard murmured behind their anonymous veils.
“Who is that?”
“Don’t you see the axe? It’s him.”
“The one who killed Bishop Leonis.”
“The Headsman himself, Bleeding Gates…”
“Do they all know who you really are?” I asked Kross.
His smile became almost pitying. “Don’t you see, Alken? You are the villain here.” Then in a more conversational tone he asked, “Where is Lady Emma? I’ve been wanting to speak to her again, perhaps put some of the unpleasantness from last fall behind us.”
Instead of answering, I lunged forward. I went low, using a martial technique I’d learned during my tenure as First Sword of Karles, no magic in it. Low Steps the Wolf.
I swept my axe at Kross’s legs, intending to sweep his steel-clad feet out from under him. He answered with a downward arc of his sword, catching the axe’s bit and carrying it upward into the flourish of his parry. His blade kept going even after it had dislodged mine, spinning into a circular riposte.
I never stopped moving either, rising up into a block, then a cut, which he also blocked.
A mistake. I’d put aura into that last swing, and Kross’s granite-colored eyes widened in surprise as the force of my blow nearly took the sword from his hands. Sparks flew, and he went skidding back from me, his steel boots squealing against the smooth floor. He shifted his stance even as he slid. His sword arm formed a bar over his chest, his blade pointing down and his off hand upheld to add its share of steel to his defense.
I recognized the stance — All Gates Are Adamant, a knightly technique.
I’d caught glimpses of it when we’d fought together against Jon Orley before the winter, but I felt certain then. Whatever else he might have been, Renuart Kross was a master swordsman.
I crouched low again, bringing my axe up onto my shoulder, and used the Eardeking’s Lance again. The prongs of golden-white antlers burst forth from my arms and shoulders, and I shot forward to impale Kross with them. At this close range, I hoped to catch him by surprise.
I did, but not his guardian. The Zosite seraph, still six-armed and holding its saintly pose, suddenly swept two of its interlocked hands apart. Like the breaking of a seal, it unleashed a wave of stored power.
A wave of cold. Tundra wind slammed against me, and in the same moment the ghostly angel’s wings beat once. Kross was lifted up and back a fraction of a second before I would have rammed into him, the full momentum of my charge neutered by the blast of wind.
The cold wasn’t purely natural, and the spiritual fire forming my phantasmal spikes withered and died in it. Ice crawled across the floor, made the wooden pews groan, climbed the great pillars supporting the arched ceiling. It clung to my skin, ate into my blood.
I began to shiver. The slender arms the seraph had brought apart faded, leaving it with only four.
And I hadn’t yet managed to get past Kross.
Perhaps I didn’t need to get past him.
“What do you hope to accomplish here?” Kross asked as he alighted lightly on the ground a distance away between the rows. “Even if you manage to overwhelm me, you cannot escape. The city watch has already been alerted.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, feeling a subtle impression of wrongness. When I burned my magic so brightly, my more intrinsic abilities were keener — I knew he lied.
“You haven’t told anyone outside this church,” I said aloud, beginning to walk forward again. “You don’t want anyone to know you’ve caught me.”
Why? My powers could be frustratingly nonspecific. I felt the stink of a lie, but couldn’t guess at his motivations. To prevent Lias from attempting a rescue? Did they even know I cooperated with the spymaster?
“Even still,” Kross said, taking another guard. “You were done as soon as you stepped foot on hallowed ground. Now, Sister Lisette.”
I hadn’t forgotten about the adept with the threads either. I spun, flicked a dagger from my belt, and hurled it. I did it without thought, acting purely on training and instinct.
I missed, and the dagger clanged off the altar. It startled the woman, though, causing her to flinch. Her phantasm faltered half formed, the threads in her fingers breaking apart.
I whirled again, but not toward Kross — instead I dashed toward the mass of priorguard to my left.
Two men shouted warnings, but I was among them in a moment. My axe lashed out, slicing through a black veil and the face beneath, tearing through the joins between lower jaw and skull. He fell back with a wet cough. I caught another’s quarterstaff off the end of that same swing, swept it away, then ripped the axe’s bit across its wielders stomach.
The second priorguard wore no armor beneath the black cloth, and his guts spilled out as if I’d punctured an overfull sack. The blood pouring down Faen Orgis’s handle awakened it, and I felt the ancient branch shift in my hand, growing longer with a series of cracking pops, the buds of tiny branches forming.
I drove the elongated weapon into another priorguard’s sternum, using the sharp point of wood that’d suddenly grown above the head like a spear tip. I lifted him, baring my teeth against his struggles, and hurled him into one of his comrades. They both went into a pew, cracking the bench in half.
My eyes fell on a doorway to the side of the room. Get in narrow corridors, take away their advantage. Get into the city and escape into the alleys. Once I’d gotten out of the Bell Ward, they’d never find me.
I’d been a fool to come here, even if I hadn’t known I’d run into fucking Renuart Kross.
I sprinted for the opening I’d made in the ranks of the priorguard, but one more robed figure moved to stand in my path. Tall and powerfully built, his quarterstaff was capped and studded with iron all along its length so it looked closer to a proper weapon of war.
I recognized his build, and the iron mark dangling below his veil. Garm, the man who’d tried to recruit me.
Had I been lured here? Had he known who I was, or suspected?
I went for an overhead chop, intending to split his skull without stopping my charge, but he spun his staff and batted my blow aside. Enhanced by aureflame as I was, it shocked me when he deflected my strike — I sensed no sorcery in him, only impressive mortal strength.
With three movements, Garm jabbed at my face, missed, knocked my riposte aside, then advanced with a twist and a heavy stomp that turned his whole body. I had to fall back or be taken to the floor, and nearly was even then. I growled in frustration, but the huge man stood his ground, face unreadable behind the dark veil.
And Kross was still behind me. Him and his angel. I heard his sabatons slapping the floor as he approached, unhurried, and heard the flutter of half-real wings.
Deep, boreal cold slammed down on me like the weight of a glacier. Air froze against my skin, covering the floor with ice, creating a glassy shell around my armor. With it came a terrible lethargy, a weight. I fell to one knee, shivering.
The Priorguard in the church watched, waiting, a congregation of shadows with red tridents for eyes.
I grit my teeth, poured every ounce of will into it, and denied that cage. I pressed my soul against the immortal cold of the seraph, beginning to turn. Garm didn’t approach, or his compatriots — none of them were willing to get caught in the seraph’s cold power.
I saw it then, hovering above Kross like his own shadow. Its six arms formed an intricate rune, elbows bent and fingers locked into complex shapes, the lowermost clasped before it as though in prayer.
I needed to move. If I couldn’t escape, I could at least kill the crowfriar and banish his infernal angel back to Hell, where it couldn’t plot and scheme in my homeland.
I did move, though it took every ounce of my strength. I found my feet, and took a single step toward Kross, lifting my axe.
Emma. I needed to warn Emma. If the crowfriars were in the city, and they had the strength of the Priory with them, she was in terrible danger. They would have all manner of ways to force her into their power, to undo everything we’d done in Venturmoor.
I took another step. I’d survived wars. I’d faced nightmares from other realities. I’d survived the angry fire the elves had fused with my spirit, made it my weapon.
I hadn’t yet done enough. I still hadn’t made amends.
“It’s over,” Kross said softly. I almost believed I heard a touch of sympathy in his voice.
He was right. My heart was split too many ways.
The dark seraph’s wings beat once, and again the temperature in the room dropped. Cold deep enough to freeze the sweat to my skin fell upon me, and with it all my strength died.
And, as I collapsed, the adept’s golden threads clapped together, wrapping me in a tightly bound net. Smaller strings caught at my wrists, my fingers, digging into my joints with impossible finesse, even going beneath my armor. My right wrist twisted painfully, and the axe clattered to the ground.
One of the priorguard advanced and drove the iron head of his cudgel into my temple. I went down. I felt a boot slam into my stomach, though my hauberk took the force from the blow. Another Priory bruiser kicked the axe away.
More blows fell, and my armor didn’t save me from all of them.
“Leave him,” Kross murmured, almost bored. “The Presider will want him whole.”
“Yes, Knight-Confessor.”
“Relieve him of the cloak, and any other weapons he might have. Sister Lisette, don’t give him any slack. His magic is stronger than yours, if he has the chance to form it.”
One of the guard took the red cloak from my shoulders, then let out a yelp as it wrapped around him like some predatory amoeba. It took four others to rip it off him, the scene a strange tableau of flapping cloth and grunting, cursing men.
“Fucking wickedness!” The priorguard who’d nearly been smothered cried, voice high with panic. “Devilry!”
Through the mess of my hair, I saw Kross inspect the struggling cloak. Several priorguard had it pinned to the ground. The knight-exorcist stepped forward, judged his aim a moment, then drove his sword into the red cloth. Its struggles ceased.
“Briar magic,” Kross said. “Pay it no heed.”
Soft boots padded near my head, and I glanced up to see the priorguard with the cradle of golden threads between her fingers. I couldn’t see her expression or her features through the veil, but I knew who was behind it.
“Lisette,” I greeted her, my teeth chattering from cold and hoarse from the blows I’d taken. “Where’s Olliard? He decide to go zealot, too?”
It had been more than a year since I’d met the renegade novice and her physiker master. What had happened since, to bring her into the ranks of the Inquisition?
She didn’t answer, instead looking to Kross as he approached. His armor clanked and settled as he sheathed his sword and studied me. One of the priorguard grabbed my hair and forced my head up to meet their leader’s eyes.
“Did they send you?” Kross murmured so only I could hear. “Are you here to kill the Presider?”
I met his gaze, set my jaw, and said nothing.
His voice turned cold and cruel, the lordly baritone fading to be replaced by the rasping hiss of the burn-scarred crowfriar beneath his disguise. “They lost their chance to stop this when Leonis Chancer’s death failed to have the desired result. My order has taken matters into our own hands, and I won’t have you interfering.”
He shouldn’t have looked into my eyes so long. I saw more than he’d wanted, and felt a bloody grin form across my face.
“You crows aren’t the Inquisition’s masters, are you Vicar? You’re here just like me — as an infiltrator. You’re as scared of them as everyone else is.”
I felt relieved. When he’d walked into the room, I’d believed I’d discovered yet another supernatural conspiracy.
Kross scoffed, though I sense I’d hit close to the mark by the narrowing of his gray eyes. “Where your taskmasters see danger to be eradicated, mine see opportunity to be exploited. But there will be time for such talk soon enough.”
He looked to the veiled guards. “Take him below.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/I2Sw1Ml.png]