Kross glared at me across the wide floor. His gauntlet clicked as he tightened his grip on his longsword.

“Alken…” He spoke with cold anger. “You have destroyed yourself. What is this madness?”

I didn’t reply at once, running my gaze over the clerics. Some were terrified, others defiant. Most seemed to have gained some steel in their spines from the knight confessor’s presence.

My voice, though hoarse from the shock of violence down below, crackled with aura. “This is not a matter for Orkael.”

I lifted my axe.

“Not a matter for…” Kross bared his teeth in a silent snarl. “Fool! My presence here is exactly why this is happening. You think his actions otherwise would matter at all?”

Behind him, the Grand Prior watched in silence, his aged face serene as a saint’s.

“Leonis Chancer had no devil on his shoulder,” I told him calmly.

Horace’s face lost some color. Vicar’s own angry features darkened further, his sword whistling as it cut the air. He took a guard.

I began to walk forward, quickening my pace with each step. Golden flames flickered and faded around me, forming an irregular rhythm along with the slow drumbeat of metal and leather.

“Don’t step any closer!” Kross aimed the tip of his blade at my chest. A hint of orange touched the gray of his eyes. Around him, wings of ghostly ice spread, each feather sharp as steel. The vicious eyes of the Zosite glared at me over the false knight’s shoulder.

The watching clericons gasped at the sight. Many began to sing prayers of gratitude, or chastised me with invocations against evil.

Oh, the irony.

I didn’t slow, didn’t stop. I rested my axe on one shoulder, touching the split roots at the base of the oaken handle with the fingers of my left hand.

“Sign it, Horace!” Vicar snapped, his eyes furious. He adjusted his posture a fraction, prepared to meet my rush.

The podium in front of the Grand Prior had a length of parchment resting on it. I realized the old man held a quill. Wild as I’d used my magic, my vision had become touched with more abstraction. To my sight, the material exuded sickly yellow flames.

I wouldn’t allow him. I did not know what the consequences of that thing were, how the Zosite could make use of a pillar of the Church under their explicit charge. I didn’t care to know.

I closed on Kross. He readied his sword, holding his blade up at an angle, one steeled hand resting lightly on the disk that formed the pommel. Above him, the seraph’s arms began to split and duplicate.

Just before we closed, I leant down and swiped Faen Orgis in an arc across the floor. In this tower room, the floor had been crafted from wooden boards rather than stone. I cut through them, leaving a furrow, and amber fire erupted from the scar.

The curtain of flame caught Kross off guard. He’d prepared for a bull rush, and instead found himself stumbling back with one hand raised against the conflagration. His guardian seraph, no more immune to the blessed fire than any other otherworldly thing, also recoiled from it. The crowfriar growled, the noise full of frustration and hate.

I had no fear of the aureflame — it was in me — and I went through it.

It is impossible to form multiple phantasms at once. A very skilled and powerful practitioner can layer their Art into complex forms, but even one of the Magi must let their soul take a single shape before reconfiguring it into the next. It takes time, and even seconds can lose a fight.

I used the curtain of golden fire to cover the formation of my next Art. Shimmering horns of white-gold glass burst from my shoulders, even as a hidden wind propelled me forward. I slammed into Kross through the fire. Two prongs of phantasmal antler punched through his armor, the barbs of the Eardeking’s Lance hard and sharp as any war spear.

I carried him with me, nearly twenty feet, leaving a trail of golden fire behind us. At the end of the line, I let out a savage roar and hurled him upward, the proverbial stag bucking violently.

Kross clattered to the ground behind me, rolling several feet before coming to a stop in a tangle of gray cloak. His sword clattered some distance away.

I didn’t turn, didn’t stop. My boots slammed against the wooden boards as I advanced on the Grand Prior. The old man’s brow beaded with sweat. The quill in his hand dripped with his own blood, rather than ink.

He made to sign the infernal parchment.

Too far, I realized. I won’t make it.

The old cleric hesitated. I saw it. It only lasted an instant, a breath, a pair of heartbeats.

But he hesitated before signing, his eyes going down to the contract, his lips pressing tight.

A moment of doubt.

I leapt over the podium, slammed a boot down onto the accursed page, the wooden stand splintering as I struck it.

“NO!” Kross screamed.

My axe parted the air in a blurring line of embers. Several feet away, something thumped against the floor. The head rolled into the foot of an old Priory clericon, who tripped over his own red robes as he stumbled back, falling in a gibbering heap.

The body remained standing a moment, quill poised, before tilting. Prior Horace had been a small man, even without age withering him. The carcass made very little noise as it struck the floor.

I heard Kross stand by the clink of his armor. I hopped down from the podium, landing in a half crouch, before turning to face the man.

He stared hollow eyed at the corpse. In a dead voice he said, “What have you done?”

I rested the faerie axe on my palms, studying the blood on it a moment. It didn’t take long for the amber fire to burn the residue of death away. I ignored the knight confessor, instead addressing the gathered priests.

“This was the Choir’s will.” My voice boomed in the chapel, hollow and inhuman to my own ears. “Horace Laudner intended to sell all of you out to the Infernal Realm. He has been punished for it.”

I pointed my finger then, not at Kross directly but at the being lurking on his shoulder. “You are not welcome in this land, devil.”

“Devil?” One of the clericons stumbled forward. I recognized her as the old woman who’d been preaching on the streets the day the Inquisition had taken me prisoner. Prior Diana. She lifted a trembling finger toward me, her eyes livid with fury and shining with tears.

“Murderer!” She screeched. “Heretic! Blackguard!”

“Kill him, Kross!” One of the other priests roared.

Others were silent, mostly from shock. I recognized another face, that of Brother Caslin, an aged monk I’d believed to be a retired soldier. He studied the corpse, his lips pressed tight. What thoughts ran through his head, I couldn’t say.

“None of them know, do they?” I tilted my head as I turned my attention back to the false knight. “What you are? Only Horace did.”

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Kross took a deep breath, then raised his sword. “You have only delayed the inevitable. This land cries out for change. We would have brought order.”

“We are the true faithful!” A weeping preacher wailed.

They heard Vicar’s words, and interpreted them all wrong. I began to see how the missionaries of Hell had embedded themselves so deep in the west.

We both took our stances.

I had only needed Horace’s head. But I would be lying if I said I would grieve for Renuart Kross.

The crowfriar, in the guise of a holy knight, aimed the tip of his sword at the floor. I felt a shudder of power in the air — it didn’t come from the half real angel on his shoulder. It came from him.

Kross, who was also Vicar of the Credo Ferrum, had once been a mortal man. He had his own aura, his own awakened soul. He burned it.

I tasted iron, and a burnt smell filled the air. As though from a far distance, I heard the sound of cruel mechanisms slamming into place, of rattling chains, of screeching metal.

Kross’s sword burst alight with sulfurous yellow fire. So similar to my own.

“You should have taken my offer,” he snarled. “You are bound for the flames one way or another.”

We began to circle, both watching the other intently. I kept some of my focus on the surrounding clerics, wary of a blade in the back, or of Art.

But they had faith in their champion, false though he was.

“Perhaps I’ll put you in the pit that holds your former lover,” The crowfriar said in a low voice only I could hear, a cruel smile marring his lips. “Succubi might wear fair faces, but they can be very creative in their hate. I wonder if you will still resemble anything human by the time you go mad?”

My own flame roared to life around the axe’s bit. I said nothing.

“You already hear it, don’t you?” Kross had lost his smile. “Its voice in your dreams? The demon put a piece of itself in that medal I gave you. Did I not mention it?”

“She’s been with me since the day I met her,” I told him honestly.

Kross’s face twisted with contempt. “You are truly pitiful, Alken Hewer.”

Perhaps. I’d given pieces of myself to beautiful monsters. To a dark queen, to a hungering spirit, and to a dead woman who longed for warmth.

Did I regret it? I regretted many things. Yet, there had been times I’d felt something like happiness.

“Why?” Kross demanded, his eyes searching. “Why do it this way? What do you believe comes after? The entire city will know of this come morning. You have declared war against the Church, against the realms."

“No.” I stopped my prowling steps. “I am not an assassin.”

The man’s lip curled again. Before he could say anything, I continued. “I am not a thief in the night, or an avenging wraith. I am not a tool for kings, or priests, or elves.” I took a deep breath. “I am an executioner.”

Headsmen do their work in front of the eyes of the realm, beneath the sun.

No more hiding.

“Fool.” Kross turned sidelong, placing his fingertips against the blade of his burning sword without fear of the angry heat it exuded. He bared his teeth, which had taken on a gray pallor. His eyes glowed like hot metal in a forge.

I felt the shift in energies. He formed an Art. I prepared my own defense.

The attack came in two parts, both timed together with beautiful precision. Shimmering like crystalized frost in cold moonlight, the seraph manifested a great bow with many splitting wings and six strings like steel wire. The arrow was phantasm, yet strong as any steel.

It fired. A breath later, Kross thrust forward. A lance of cinderous fire shot from the tip of his sword, aimed directly at my heart.

I stood my ground — the Aureate Repulsion would break into useless unreality if my feet shifted so much as a hair’s width.

The Zosite’s arrow struck the golden mirror, shaped like a kite shield, which burst into existence before my outstretched hand. The Art riposted, sending gilt violence straight back at the infernal angel in furious repudiation. The seraph made no sound as it burned, though its beautiful face writhed in agony.

Kross’s attack did strike me. I am not immune to fire, though I have some resistance from my magic’s aspect. Without that, and without the faerie iron of my hauberk, I would have died. Even so, the bolt of hellfire slammed into me like an ogre’s fist, hurling me back near a dozen paces. I rolled into the fall.

Even as I came up on a knee, propping myself up with my axe, the pain settled into my muscles. I grit my teeth against it, growling. Heat and pressure built through my chest. A smoldering red glow crawled across my armor, terrifyingly close to my heart.

My flayed left arm dripped blood onto the floorboards. My aura was fading, physical and spiritual exhaustion taking their toll. I wouldn’t last much longer.

Hold on, I ordered myself. Not done yet.

This meant nothing if it only ended in Horace’s death. I still had work to do.

I’d been pushed into the watching clericons. I heard steel slide against leather, and caught movement in the corner of my vision. One of the red robes had drawn a richly made stiletto, a wealthy man’s sidearm with a jeweled hilt, and came at me with a prayer on his lips.

I met his eyes with the full weight of my golden gaze. He froze, sweating, prayer dying on lips that puckered like a fish. He fell to his knees, the blade clattering to the floor.

Ignoring him, I pushed forward even as Kross came at me. His perfect fencing form held the hilt of his sword near his collarbone to thrust.

Hellfire gave him the same explosive speed aureflame gave me. With the scent of sunlit meadows fighting for dominance against sulfur, we slammed into one another. I turned Kross’s thrust, which transitioned into a whirling upward cut. I turned, letting his blade miss my ear by a finger’s width. My flesh charred from the wave of heat his blade exuded. I bit back the pain.

I raked my axe across his midsection, taking advantage of his overcommitment. I traced a golden line along the white steel of his breastplate. He grunted from the force of impact, stumbling back.

His seraph, wounded but intact, batted at me with its four phantasmal wings. The attack came with a blast of boreal cold, the same maneuver it had used to subdue me the last time.

Already diminished, the aureflame withered. I felt a creeping cold, and the exhaustive agony of my injuries slammed into my senses. I let out a dry gasp.

Seeing my weakness, Kross brought his sword up high, an executioner’s stance. Hell’s fire wreathed his blade, a serpent length of it twining up in a cruel spiral. His eyes blazed like embers, his expression set with triumphant wrath.

Perhaps…

Perhaps if we’d had this confrontation a month ago, or a year ago, I would have accepted that cut. Let the dark take me wherever it would, into torment or oblivion.

I had more to lose now. I had reasons to keep fighting.

With a roar, with every ounce of strength both physical and spiritual I could muster, I swung my axe overhand with a single arm. It shone a bright, brilliant gold as it connected with Kross’s — with Vicar’s — burning blade.

The blade shattered. Heated metal cascaded in a hateful rain across the room, embedding into wood, into the watching clericons. One sliced a gash across the edge of my neck, another my temple. One caught Brother Caslin in the skull, killing him instantly, and another took Prior Diana across the cheek, slicing her from lip to ear.

The gilt thunderbolt of the smite cracked into the crowfriar, through him and the devil who rode him. He fell to his knees, his broken sword falling, his armored hands twisted, mangled, and smoking.

Breathing hard, I rose to my full height. Vicar’s eyes, glassy with disbelief, rose to look at me. His mouth opened — to speak, to shout? The priests cried out, in pain or prayer, but I had eyes only for my enemy.

The Zosite hurled itself at me. Not much larger than a child save for its enormous wings and misting hair, it came with claws like shards of ice and silver eyes wide with fury, burnt but dangerous still.

I caught the infernal spirit by its neck. It scraped and clawed at me, eerie in its silent hate. Its wings batted, slamming me with waves of cold, Irn Raya’s armor emitting banshee shrieks as claws of half real iron scored it.

“Go back to Hell,” I snarled. Then I poured aureflame through my hand, the same method I’d once used to heal wounds.

And the devil erupted in amber fire. I held it as it burned, until its struggles weakened, its shape dissipating from material existence. The banishing flames of the Alder sent that angel of cold iron back to its realm of pits and demons and pain.

Silence fell. As the phantasmal fires faded, the room became darker, until only the moonlit mist and candle touched shadows remained.

Vicar blinked at the spot where his councilor had been. I could read no emotion in his face. It was as though all emotion, all humanity, had left him.

But I had become well familiar with the empty despair of failure. I recognized it.

“You have chosen the wrong side,” he said in a strained voice.

I stepped forward to stand sidelong to him, taking my axe in both hands. I had not been ordered to execute the leader of the crowfriars, but I doubted Umareon would mind.

I lifted the axe to take Vicar’s head. A cold wind blew in from the broken window. More mist had spilled into the room, drifting in coiling eddies around our ankles. The Priory clerics watched the scene, silent and horrified.

I swung.

A black staff interposed itself between me and the crowfriar, blocking my strike. It caught into the inner hook of the axe, redirecting it and nearly jerking it out of my hands.

I held my grip with gritted teeth, mostly on instinct and training. I didn’t understand what had happened at first. I thought perhaps one of the priorguard had stepped forward to defend their knight confessor.

Growling, I jerked the weapon up and prepared to slam myself into whoever had stopped me. My eyes lifted to see a thin figure in blue-black robes chased with red and silver, a long and regal cape of midnight blue draped over the shoulders. Part of their form still congealed out of the mist — they had formed from it.

A pale green eye watched me calmly as the ebony staff, which I realized had a long iron nail embedded into its head, forced my own weapon up. The man who’d saved Vicar’s life held the staff in two hands, straining with effort against my strength but holding.

The man’s other eye was a ruby gem embedded into an empty socket.

I did not understand. My confusion came out in a single word.

“Lias?”

The wizard gave me a sad smile. “Sorry, Alken. I can’t let you kill him.”

image [https://i.imgur.com/IY3fv7W.jpeg]

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