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“Headsman.”

The Onsolain’s voice still resounded with a supernatural weight, but no longer tolled like metal thunder in my ears. Even still, the subtle impression that the monolithic tower reverberated with each syllable frayed my nerves.

Fighting against the shivers wracking my body from the grievously cold air — was it air? — I bowed to the angel. “Lord Umareon.”

I hadn’t ever met this particular member of the Choir of Onsolem in person, but I recognized his aspect. Ice cracked as the helmed head tilted to look down on me. The cold sharply increased at the touch of that frozen-star gaze, as did the intensity of my shivering.

“What is the meaning of this?” The Saint of Crusades demanded.

I risked lifting my eyes. I had to fight the urge to drop to my knees — from the cold, from the terrible weight of those alien eyes on me, from the hyperborean anger I felt in them.

“There are events of great consequence occurring in the realms,” I said, on the verge of stuttering. I kept my voice steady, fighting against the tremble I felt building in it. “I haven’t had contact from the Choir in months. I wanted to report what’s been happening. And… I wanted guidance.”

“That ritual is meant for cleansing. You have you suborned our priests.”

I'd known that. Even still, I'd taken the risk. "I used the resources I had at hand," I admitted.

The frozen warrior turned his helmed head to one side, as though listening to something else. He didn’t reply at once. The wait gave me time to feel the cold, and to grapple with the direness of my own situation.

This flat-topped pillar, the constellations, the behemoth bands of ice and other matter wreathing it… I had never seen it before, not from this angle, but I suspected I knew where I stood.

An Empyrean Lamp. I had seen them from a far distance, on the eastern and southern shores where they lay far out to sea. Pillars of rough rock and marble-smooth stone carved in primeval days, stretching up into the furthest heights of the world, perhaps higher. I’d been told once they acted as anchors for the Wending Roads, when they still connected our land to Onsolem and its other vassal realms. I didn't think I'd been transported to any of those. The frozen marble beneath me had a familiar quality.

Phantasm. Some memory of an old structure which had stood where the cathedral now did long ago? I'd been dragged into it.

If I stepped to the edge of the flat surface on which I stood, would I see my own world below? Would I see continents and storms englobed against the emptiness beyond? Would I see the titan eyes of the moons cresting those horizons, lambent in silver?

We were far above the clouds. I saw only starlit darkness above and around, and the quality of the cold…

I felt certain that, if not for the warmth of aureflame in me, I would already have frozen to death.

The crackling of icy armor drew my attention back to Umareon. The Onsolain spoke in a sonorous echo.

“You have overstepped yourself, fallen knight. It is not your role to call out to us for guidance. You are our executioner, by your own choice, your own oath. We give you names, and you give them our doom, our judgment.”

A powerful arm lifted to point a finger encased in frozen iron. It aimed directly at my axe, still lying on the floor before me as it had in the tower.

I blew out a frozen breath. “I haven’t been given any names. There’s only been silence. I haven’t seen Donnelly in—”

“The Herald is otherwise occupied,” Umareon intoned, cutting me off. “You seem to be under the impression that she is your messenger, to be given orders and used at your convenience. Correct this misassumption.”

She. He was referring to the seraph who’d originally been the Choir’s herald, whose spirit had been fused to Donnelly at the moment they’d both died. No matter it was Donnelly who did all their errands, who faced all the risk.

“The Riven Order,” I blurted. “It’s been broken, and there are Crowfriars infiltrating the priesthood. I stopped a scheme of theirs just last fall, and—”

Once again, the Choir warrior cut me off. “We are aware of your involvement with the Carreon heir. We are also aware that you supported Thorned Nath’s scheme at the time as her patsy, and that you have taken the scion of Astraea Carreon under your wing. This, too, is counted among your transgressions.”

“My transgressions?” I repeated, inwardly reeling. “Lord Umareon, I was ordered by the Choir to do Nath’s bidding at the time. I thought she’d rejoined your ranks?”

Again, the angel fell silent. I felt his glare like the weight of a frozen sun on my face.

“She did, didn’t she?” I suddenly felt less sure of everything.

“The fallen handmaiden is not trusted, no matter how many fair words she might spin. Neither are those she has made use of in the past. You are not trusted, Alken Hewer.”

I blinked at the immortal, stunned speechless. I saw no apology or understanding in that face of metal, ice, and light. I felt as though I stared into the face of the firmament itself, devoid of warmth or pity, an avatar of the void.

“I am trying to help,” I croaked. “I’m trying to fix things.”

"Help?"

The frozen knight took a single step forward. When his boot of iron and frost struck the surface of the lamp, it impacted with a spreading radius of ice. He continued to walk, slow and deliberate, each step a hammer blow of dire purpose. With every movement the frozen armor cracked and split.

I could make out glimpses of the form beneath — it shone, and yet gave off no warmth, no comfort.

“You are not our champion,” Umareon rumbled. “You are not a hero to your people. You failed them. We do not exist to be your council. We are not your benefactors or a resource to be used at your whim. We. Are. Your. Judges.”

I did drop then. I couldn’t stop myself. The cold had intensified so horribly, the gravity of the frozen stone and the storm of will pressing down on me too much to bear. I fell to one knee, gasping. I caught myself with one hand. My flesh froze to the pale marble.

The angel came to a stop above me, a towering and terrible presence.

“You have yet to repent for your sin.”

I grit my teeth, feeling a surge of defiance against this cold, cruel being. “I’ve been trying to repent for over ten years!”

“You have yet even to face your sin,” Umareon answered pitilessly. “I see into your heart, mortal. I see your weakness, your want, your perversity.”

“Perversity?” I asked, confused.

“You still lie to yourself,” Umareon scoffed, his immortal voice dripping with scorn. “Like all mortals, you hide your truth behind a veneer of nobility and higher purpose. A twisted truth is no different from a lie.”

I shook my head slowly, fighting through the sensation of freezing, the pain in my hand, the pressure of that place and the Star Knight’s will. “I don’t understand.”

“The treachery of your order was a grievous deed which will never be forgiven,” Umareon said. “The blindness and decadence which led to this act is shared among all of you, even those who did not wield the blades which shed the Archon’s blood. And yet, that is a sin for which your mortal folly can be blamed, and one you may yet find repentance for.”

The greathelm tilted further down, glaring.

“It is not the sin which weighs down your soul, oathbreaker. Your sin is more perverse still, more pitiful to our eyes.”

I grit my teeth, mostly to stop them from chattering. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. If this is about the demon—”

“To be duped by the spawn of Dead Azoth is a failure for which legions can be held to account, both among your kind and my own. This harlot of darkness who turned your eyes… It is shameful that you, who were given the power to see through such deception, did not see the creature for what it was. But that, too, is forgivable.”

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Why was this Choir champion playing games with me? I didn’t understand. I’d come here for help, and to do my duty in warning the Onsolain of impending danger. I hadn’t expected to be put on trial.

“My fate doesn’t matter,” I spat. “It’s Urn I care about, it’s people.”

“More lies.”

“It’s not a lie!” I shouted into the ground, unable to raise my head. “Damn you, just listen to me!"

So much of what had been happening in Garihelm, and elsewhere across the land since Caelfall — even earlier, I suspected — mirrored those unsettled days before Seydis had burned. I felt like I stood in the calm before a brutal storm, and I had a chance to stop it, to keep history from repeating itself.

"The Accord is in danger, there’s a plot, I don’t know all of it, but if we don’t stop it we could have another Fall on our hands. A fucking godling from the continent just landed in the middle of one of your cities!"

Umareon was not impressed.

"It was the negligence of your priesthood and your leaders which broke the Riven Order." I could almost imagine his sneer through the featureless helm. "Your nations were given the duty of upholding that aegis, to keep foulness from this sanctuary. It is a shame that my queen placed so much trust in your kind."

"So you'd forsake us?" I asked him, disbelieving.

"We fulfill our role." Umarean's helm tilted, causing more of the shell around him to break. "We guard what gates are left. We give guidance to those who require it. We watch the Cambion. We do not rule."

Bullshit, I thought. If you don't rule us, then why do you need an executioner?

Aloud I said, "Then at least let me help them."

“You have a role to fulfill, nothing more. It will never be enough to undo the damage your blasphemous order has done. It may not even be enough to save you… Yet you will do it. You agreed to this. You know the price of failure.”

The sacred fire roiled in me as though in response to his words. The constant warmth surged, until I felt like it was trying to escape from the prison of my own flesh. I clutched at my chest with my left hand, taking shallow breaths, but the pain didn’t abate. It rose to my eyes, blinding me. I gasped, and it escaped from between my teeth as amber plumes of flame.

I’d felt this before, after the Archon had died. How I’d escaped the destructive madness of the others, I had no idea.

Would I end up like Maxim, forced to accept the ministrations of the Sidhe while the magic sewn into my aura slowly ate me alive? Or would it come all at once, like it had for most of the others?

“That is one future…” Umareon said thoughtfully. “There are others.”

My eyes were drawn down by a sudden, invisible pull. Beneath me, in the ice, I saw my reflection. Not as it was, clad in the brown of a monk, but encased in scarred black armor. I wore a black cloak with a pointed cowl, the face beneath brutally scarred and burned, the raw lips twisted into a permanent scowl of dull pain. The oak handle of the axe in the reflected image’s hands grew long and twisted, grew into my hands. My hair grew long and filthy, my clothes simple and stained.

And my eyes… They were empty of all pity, all hesitation. Barren.

“The surface of the Lamp shows the truth of things,” Umareon said in a musing voice. “You see it, don’t you? What the Headsman is? Does it look fair to your eyes, Alken Hewer?”

I caught a glimpse of Umareon’s reflection too. I knew, somehow, that I would not keep my sight if I looked at it directly. I avoided doing so.

“Why are you doing this?” I gasped. The hand I used to prop myself up had started to burn from the touch of the pillar’s icy surface.

“Eanor has been too lenient with you. I suppose she would be, given your circumstances. They conform to her sense of aesthetics.”

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t—”

But his voice rolled on inexorably.

I despise untruth. My eyes have seen Heaven burn. I rode at my queen’s side to these shores all the way from Onsolem, and in that time I have seen rot and ruin unbound. I have seen your kind fail us and yourselves in countless ways, countless times.”

“This is what you want from me?” I asked in disbelief, looking at myself arrayed in bloodstained armor, meeting my own empty eyes.

“What I desire is to prepare this land for the trials to come. I have no interest in indulging your vanity, your petty concerns. You have a role to fulfill, and you will do it. Or you will be forsaken. We have no room for charity in this war. There are other mortals more fit to be saviors, and we are preparing them. You, however, should focus on your Penance of Blood.”

He let those words sink into the void around us before continuing.

“We have a name for you.”

I closed my eyes. So that was where this had all been leading. Probably, it was the only reason they’d even answered my attempt at communion in the first place. I let out a frosting breath — the inner fire had abated.

“Who?” I croaked.

“Horace Laudner,” the Onsolain told me.

The cold feeling which crept through me then had nothing to do with the elevation. “The Grand Prior?” I managed to lift my head. “Why?”

“You question?” Umareon asked, a dangerous edge to his voice despite his veneer of calm.

“I do,” I said, hardening my voice. “I want to know why.”

“I would have thought this pleasing to you,” Umareon noted. “Was it not his inquisitors who captured you? Tormented you? Who would have shamed and killed you?”

I chewed on that, knowing he had a point. And yet…

There was a very good reason Rosanna did not simply have the Grand Prior assassinated, despite his repeated attempts to undermine her, discredit her allies, and the dangerous precedents his priorguard set. Prior Horace’s death would make him a martyr, and give the Inquisition an even more unrestrained momentum.

It might put someone like Oraise in charge, which would be much worse.

“I do not believe killing him will change anything for the better,” I said, trying to sound reasonable despite my pounding heart and the pain. “What crimes has he committed, that the Choir would give him this doom?”

“Many,” Umareon replied darkly. “He is a faithless power-monger who subverts our queen’s servants for his own gain. He is vain, short-sighted, and reckless. He is a deviant with tastes unbecoming of a successor to the wise astrologers from which the Church arose.”

The Onsolain paused, then continued in a firmer voice. “But for all of that, it is his dealings with the agents of Orkael for which we would have him slain. He is on the verge of signing himself and his order over to the Iron Tribunal. This, we will not allow.”

More immortal politics. I should have guessed.

I bowed my head. “This is the Choir’s will?”

“It is. Take the Grand Prior’s head.”

“And what of the continental spirits crossing the seas to attack our cities?” I asked. “What of the demon I’ve been hunting, and the allies of Orson Falconer? Am I to ignore all of that?”

“As I said before, there are champions in this new time who can face such evils. We are preparing them.”

It struck me that the three young knights who’d appeared to help fight the storm ogre hadn’t been there by lucky accident after all.

“Focus on your own penance,” Umareon added. “Orkael is a mighty realm, and its influence is more of a threat than any stray demon or recusant. You do not know tyranny, but you shall if the Zosite come to rule this land. They are an order of iron, of flame. Justice and mercy mean nothing to them.”

I remembered poor Jon Orley, trapped in melted armor. Even still I ground my teeth, trying to think of a way to convince him, to get out of this. If I killed the Grand Prior, it would set the city aflame. Rosanna would be blamed somehow, I knew, especially if I got caught.

Maybe, in the long run, fighting the influence of the Iron Hell would be of more benefit to the realms. The Choir looked at the big picture, I knew that. It was why I’d willingly given myself over to their commands — because I couldn’t trust myself to make the right decision, to see the greater consequences of my actions.

And yet…

Rosanna had welcomed me back. Lias needed my help, I felt certain. He delved down a dark path, one I felt intimately familiar with, and he needed someone there for him to keep his head straight, or he’d end up becoming a monster.

In the service of the Empress, I could help Emma get her knighthood, keep her from becoming a renegade. I could give estranged people like Catrin and Parn a voice with the Accord.

I could change things. I could get a life back. I hadn’t ever considered I could do anything of worth again until I’d seen Rose’s sons and agreed to help her.

If I killed the leader of the Priory here in the city, in the middle of a great summit of all the land’s powers…

He deserves it, I thought, remembering the dungeons. I hadn’t been the only one down there. I’d seen what the priorguard had been doing. I remembered an empty village in the countryside with the barbed trident hovering above its abandoned homes. How much worse would it be, if they had the dark angels of Hell backing them officially?

“You hover at its edge again,” Umareon said with near physical scorn. “Your sin.”

I’d had about enough of this cold being’s scorn, and he wasn’t God. “Why don’t you enlighten me?” I spat. “What is my sin?”

In answer, the towering knight knelt on one knee, mirroring my own pose. The helmed visage, warped with surreal patterns like the mottling on old iron, hovered just over my head. The cold sharply intensified.

He looked into my soul. I could feel it. The frozen light behind the warped helm’s visor pierced through my memories and thoughts like rays of daylight through mist.

“You claim to wish to serve the realms,” Umareon murmured to me, and somehow that intimate quiet seemed worlds more threatening than his booming proclamations from before. “You convince yourself you wish to repent for being fooled by a false love and false honors. And yet, you still seek comfort in your dreams with the fair form that hungering creature wore. In the depths of your heart, you wonder what might have been had you accepted its deceits and let it take you, even into the depths of darkness.”

Again, my heart started to beat loud in my chest. I felt a spike of denial, of horror at this thing I’d dared not let myself think being spoken aloud.

“You’re speaking in riddles,” I hissed. “Just let me go back. You’ve given me your orders.”

But the cold angel wasn’t done.

“You do not care about saving kingdoms, Alken Hewer. You do not wish to repent for your crimes. In the pits of your rotted heart, you long for its caress… That creature. You even indulge in a vulgar courtship with a mongrel whose hungers remind you of its own.”

“Catrin has nothing to do with this,” I snapped. “She is not evil.”

“Would you care if she was?” Umareon asked.

Of course I would.

Wouldn’t I?”

I’ve been a monster, Alken. A real one. She’d told me that herself.

“You wish me to speak your sin?” The First Sword of the Heir of Heaven asked. “So be it.”

I didn’t want him to say anything else. I regretted coming here. I needed to go, to get away from this.

I couldn’t get away from myself.

“You still desire the creature who deceived you, and dream of what might have been had you heeded its lies. You are a lonely, wanting thing — you care nothing for honor, you feel no loyalty to God or Men. You simply wish to be warm, to be wanted. Like a base beast, starved and left in the cold.”

The angel leaned closer, merciless.

“You still love that thing. That demon.”

The voice became a bare whisper, which did nothing to disguise its righteous wrath. “For that, fallen paladin, we will never trust you.”

“This audience is over.”

image [https://i.imgur.com/djBcGHm.jpeg]