I did dream, just as I’d known I would. The forest waited for me, and once my exhausted mind finally succumbed, it dragged me in.

“Look at him,” Leonis sneered as I stumbled through the tangled undergrowth. “Thinks he’s some big hero.”

“They’ll have you poisoned within the year!” Emery roared, hooting with laughter.

“Or the month,” Irene added, smiling her sweet, ghoulish smile.

“The gods didn’t want you to be recognized, you goring idiot.” Rhan bared his teeth at me, bloodshot eyes wide with fury. “You’ve missed the whole point!”

“They’ll punish you!” Irene sang.

“Abandon you,” Leonis spat.

“They’ll all abandon you.”

“Die around you!”

“You will fail them again.”

“Damned,” the dead accused.

“Damned. DAMNED!”

“We are all damned!”

Their gnashing teeth and bloodshot eyes surrounded me as I shuffled forward. My cloak, drenched with blood, caught at every root and twig, weighing me down.

The newest head stared at me from a tangled mass of tangled limbs on the path ahead. Old, weathered, bookish. The priest sighed heavily. The branches had grown into his flesh.

“Where does this end?” He asked. “What is the point? You changed nothing by killing me.”

“I changed everything,” I muttered, more to myself than him. Everything for me, anyway.

Besides, I didn’t regret taking that life. I could still see Oraise’s dead eyes in my memory, still hear desperate cries for mercy in the priorguard dungeons. I could still remember the empty village in the countryside.

I passed beneath the dead prior, searching the woods. There. I narrowed my eyes, seeing a flitting shadow in the deeper forest. The distant light had grown very faint, now. I’d gone deep into this wilderness.

“Don’t!” One of the heads cried out.

“You’ll regret it!” Another shrieked.

“He’s addicted to regret,” Rhan hissed. “A sick masochist, masquerading as a warrior.”

The heads called out, demanding I turn back. I ignored them, stumbling deeper into the dark.

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“Alken? Are you paying attention?”

I blinked, lifting my head. I stood by the room’s small window, one shutter open. Morning sunlight and birdsong came through.

“Sorry,” I said. “Must have dozed off.”

Sister Fidei smiled, lacing her fingers over the desk she sat at. She’d been copying historical texts, and reading to me from them as she worked.

“Does any knight truly stand vigil through a whole day and night?” The holy scribe asked, quirking a light brown eyebrow. “Or do you just get very good at sleeping while standing up?”

I scoffed, rubbing at my eyes. “I bet some do. Anyway, where were we?”

Fidei sighed, pushing her chair back. “I think I’ve had enough of this drivel today. Walk with me?”

I nodded, glad to be out of the study session. Some things she read to me I liked, and others made me want to dig my eyes out with a dirk.

We moved out into the hall. The monastery where the Cenocaste nuns plied their scholarly work was a beautiful edifice, even by the standards of Seydis. Many storied, with hidden gardens and walkways crossing over interior atriums, its towers seemed like some artful flower unfolding within the depths of the city’s expansive parks.

Somewhere, I heard lay sisters singing in chorus. Fidei grimaced.

“What?” I asked, biting down on my amusement. “Aren’t you literally a choir girl?”

I’d meant to tease her, but the nun just pursed her lips. “I dislike singing. Listening to it I can tolerate, but I despise doing anything in unison with others. I find it… demeaning.”

“You have to admit the result is kind on the ears?” I reached through one of the walkway’s windows and plucked an apple, tossing it idly as we walked.

Fidei plucked the apple from the air in the fourth toss, studying it critically. “Perhaps.”

She bit into the fruit, her gray eyes fixed forward as red juice ran down her chin. I resisted the urge to reach out and wipe it away. That couldn’t be proper, and I buried the thought.

I heard voices in the garden below. I leaned down, curious, but Fidei directed my attention back to her with a tug on my cape.

“I want to show you something,” she said.

I hesitated. Down in the atrium, I hadn’t seen anyone. But someone had been speaking.

“This way, my knight. Daylight is wasting.”

More curious of what Fidei wanted to show me than what lay sisters were gossiping about, I followed her. We descended down an outer tower, arriving at a winding path cut between scattered ponds. Birds flitted through the trees, their music as fair in its own way as the monastic choir.

Fidei seemed unimpressed. Then again, she listened to this every day. She glided through the ponds, her black cape and shawl fluttering behind her like a shroud of shadow. My own green-and-gold cape rippled along the path as I followed a step behind, sometimes blending with bands of sunlight or green-tinted shadow — the very things it had been woven from, so I understood.

A group of nuns passed us, giggling when they saw me and hiding their faces. I caught a flash of bright white eyes and small teeth beneath their veils. My escort smiled and nodded to them as they spoke in perfect unison.

“Good day, sister! Ser Knight.” They hid their faces from me, giggling.

“Good day, sisters.” Fidei’s smile was sweet as the bird song, though it faded as soon as we passed the trio. I quirked an eyebrow at her annoyed expression.

“They see a man once or twice a month in passing,” she groused, “and suddenly they’re like kynedeer in heat. So much for all their talk of abstinence.”

“I imagine it gets frustrating, looking at books all day.” I kept my tone neutral. Something about the laughter of those nuns had seemed off. They’d all had the same voice.

“I quite like books,” Fidei noted with a shrug. “Even when the author lies to you, there is truth to be found in it. Did you read yours?”

I frowned. “What book?” Had she leant me something I’d forgotten?

I caught a flash of her gray-green eye beneath her wimple, before she turned her head. “Nevermind.”

We passed through the gardens, arriving in a tall wood. It wasn’t just eardetrees which grew in the Blessed Country, though I understood any tree could become an earde with enough time. Here, they were towering redwoods of the kind which dominated across Urn’s eastern coasts. We’d passed beyond the bounds of the monastery, and the city.

The holy scribe stopped when we reached a wide open space between the enormous trees. Lifting a hand from the layered folds of her monastic garments, causing one black sleeve to unfold like a dark wing, she pointed.

“There. You see it?”

I turned, squinting into the distant woods. A light mist hung low over the forest floor, growing denser at the base of the conifers. It obscured the distant scenery, but I thought…

“I see it,” I confirmed, taking a step towards the vague shape. “What is it?”

“Can’t you tell?” Fidei had a pensive note in her voice. “I would think you’d know it anywhere.”

I took another step forward. In the mist, glinting as a sun ray caught it…

I took a breath, my heart thumping in my chest all the sudden. Rammed into the trunk of a tree, with blood burbling from the wound in the bark, was a sword.

My sword.

I reached down to my belt, and sure enough didn’t find the blade there. My scabbard was empty.

“How did…”

Rustling cloth drew my attention. When I turned, Fidei wasn’t standing there.

“Dei?” I asked. Only, I hadn’t started calling her that until much later.

I took a deep breath, clenched my hand into a fist, and trudged toward the sword. It took a full minute to get my hand to stop shaking. When it did, I drew the weapon out. The rotted trunk gushed blood, and something like pus, as I freed the blade.

I turned from it, lifting the claymos. The redwood forest had vanished, the towering trunks replaced by enormous pillars of deep blue stone reaching up into distant, cavernous gloom. Very like trees, as they’d been fashioned to resemble them. Phantasmal lights clung to the stone, like in the woodland estate of Irn Bale.

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I knew this place, too.

I began to walk, my Alder armor clinking softly with each step, my elven cape dragging behind me. I held my sword out before me like a torch, aiming it into the dark.

“Enough of these games,” I said aloud. The ancient columns sent my words back at me even as the cavernous dark swallowed them, forming an eerie cycle. “I’m over it, Dei.”

“Liar,” the darkness whispered back.

I grit my teeth. “You keep showing me our past, then doing this.”

I waved to the place familiar to both of us, to my blessed sword. “If you want to talk, then let’s talk.” I took a steadying breath. “It’s not like I can stop these dreams, anyway.”

A piece of darkness detached itself. I caught sight of the same shape I had in the Forest of Heads — feminine, almost liquid, with flowing hair and two curling horns. Almost unreal red eyes, the whites stark within the shadowed visage, peered at me as sharp claws grated at the stone of a pillar.

“Do you remember this place?” The demon asked.

I looked around, and set my jaw. “Yes.”

“This is where you drove that through my heart.”

I looked down at the sword. Bright, clean, the hilt engraved with painfully beautiful designs of leaf and vine. Elven work, done to restore the brutalized war blade I’d carried as Rosanna’s champion. Sacred aura clung to it, giving the once gray steel a brassy sheen.

“And it’s where you scarred me,” I said, running a thumb along the marks over my left eye. Then I shook my head. “No. It’s where she scarred me.”

The shadow’s eyes narrowed.

I looked around, taking in the scenery. We were beneath the Archon’s palace, in the deep vaults he’d kept there. In my past, Fidei had brought me here. Then…

“What’s the point of all this?” I asked her. “To drive me mad?”

The red-eyed shadow watched me, silent. Something rolled out of the darkness. I realized it was the red fruit she’d stolen from me before.

A wrinkled face grew out of the apple’s red flesh. It mewled softly, the wound her teeth had made weeping blood onto the stone. Inside, tiny organs pumped.

I grit my teeth in disgust and kicked it away.

“The dead will do that without my help,” the shadow hissed. A leathery wing flexed, then the horned shape retreated deeper into the darkness.

Frustrated, and — no point denying it — very afraid, I followed it. My heart thumped in my chest, a drumbeat in my blood. A line of sweat made its way down my temple.

Things moved in the darkness. I heard whispering voices. Pleas. A deep, rhythmic thumping sound like some alchemical engine drummed through the gloom. Though, I’d heard its like before, and there had been nothing artificial about it.

In the foggy light drifting like wraith-lit mist between the towering columns, I caught sight of a long-legged, feminine shape. It had its back to one of the pillars. I walked around to see her better, my sword held ready. I heard a moan.

The woman was naked, comely, and writhing in something between ecstasy and agony. Something coiled around one bare leg, the shape traveling up, up…

The face belonged to one of the giggling nuns from earlier, blank eyed and noseless, with too many teeth. She grinned at me, then let out a gasp as the serpent moved below.

I tore my eyes away in disgust. “Stop taunting me."

The demon shadow kept its silence, though I felt its eyes on me. The darkness breathed malice.

I’d wake up soon. I just had to outlast this.

“You cannot outlast this,” the shadow told me. “I am in your every thought, my knight. Your every dream. I did not need to reach forth from Hell for that to be true.”

I paused, my armor clicking as it settled. “Perhaps. But Dei…” I shook my head. “Shyora is in Hell. You’re just her shadow, split off and put into my knight’s mark. You’re not really her.”

Just a curse she’d put on me. The only vengeance she could enact, besides my scars.

“I could be.”

I froze, then turned sharply with my blade up.

And she was there. She didn’t wear her nun’s habit, but a flowing dress like an elf maid. Her pale yellow hair, near white in the eerie gloom of the temple, fell loose around her shoulders. Her gray eyes watched me, calm, inviting.

She was beautiful. So much it hurt. It wasn’t like Rosanna’s beauty, which made me feel pride and nostalgic regret in equal measure. It wasn’t like Catrin’s inviting imperfections. Fidei had always lingered in my mind long after leaving my vision. In those days, I'd tried to keep her face in my thoughts for hours, but details had always eluded me. It had made me eager to see her again, and refresh the image.

I saw it now, all exactly as it had been. Pale hair, eyes that shifted between gray and green, patient and intelligent. Her features were soft, almost delicate, with a slim, slightly convex nose that gave the pretty face a more scholarly aspect and light brown eyebrows lifted in calm bemusement.

Now I realized part of my struggle to remember that face wasn’t just time. It had been her design — a succubus’s seduction, turning my interest into burgeoning obsession. Part of it, I think, also might have been my paladin senses trying to break the glamour. She’d somehow used even that to her advantage.

Even knowing this… the sharp pang of regret, and yearning, that went through me then almost made me stagger.

“This isn’t you,” I told her, angry. “This is just camouflage. A glamour.”

She looked up at me. Her long, thin fingers — a musician’s fingers — wrapped around the sharp blade of the blessed sword.

“Then break it,” she whispered, placing the tip of the blade to her breast.

I shook my head. “Stop this.”

Slowly, calm as stone, she began to pull. The tip of the sword sliced through thin cloth, then bit into flesh.

“Stop,” I begged her, my voice cracking.

“You’ve done it before,” she breathed, her brow furrowing as the sword went another inch. She stepped forward. I stepped back. She took a firmer step, and I felt something give. One of her ribs had broken. She let out a sound very much like the ones the woman with the serpent made in the near distance.

I tried to drop the sword, but it had fused to my hand.

Slow and merciless, she made me kill her again. She took pleasure in it, and in the horror in my eyes.

When she’d drawn close enough for me to feel her breath on my face, she smiled. Her skin cracked like dry clay. When she spoke, blood fell in rivulets from her mouth.

“Try to climb up into the light all you like, my knight. You know where your heart truly resides. It is not with your angels. They won’t have you, no matter how many corpses you stack to reach them.”

Somewhere nearby, I heard the false nun with the snake moan. The walls beat with that thumping rhythm. In the further distance, I heard the cruel voices in the forest cursing me. Somewhere lost in the columns, the half-eaten fruit called out for help.

I’d already admitted as much to myself. Even still…

“I hate you,” I told her, half believing it.

The Shadow tutted. “You long for me. When you wake and see that blood drinker lying next to you, you will feel the cold creeping back in. When you stand among that council of petty warlords, you will remember all the times you confessed feeling like a fraud. You’ve made it true, you foolish man.”

Of all the demons I’d slain, this shadow had to be among the weakest. Just a spell Pernicious Shyora had cast. A phantasm.

And yet, I feared it even more than the lion.

Fidei rose up on her toes, whispering into my ear. The motion drove the sword deeper, sending dark blood cascading over my arm. The fingers of her right hand traced my scars, sending lines of burning agony through them.

“I will see you again when next you sleep, my knight.”

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I woke covered in cold sweat. The room lay dark. Rain pattered against the roof, almost loud enough to drown out my panicked heart, my shallow breathing.

A shape stirred next to me. I stiffened, instinctively reaching for a blade. When a familiar voice murmured, I remembered.

Cat. I was in that quiet little inn with her again.

The dhampir slept at my side, naked and content. Once I’d managed to get my blood to stop beating in my veins, I sighed heavily. Leaning down, I adjusted the blanket and kissed Catrin on her brow. She mumbled an incoherent protest and weakly batted at me.

I watched her a moment as my eyes adjusted to the dark. A different sort of pain clenched at my heart, not born of fear or hurt, but relieved warmth. And regret.

I can’t be your lady wife, Al. I’m sorry.

God, I wish I could heal this hole in you. I want to, but…

“You don’t owe me anything,” I whispered to her, brushing at her tangled hair. “This is enough.”

She slept, breathing softly, very alive in that moment. I’d let her feed on me a bit, even though she hadn’t really needed it.

When I felt certain sleep wouldn’t reach out to drag me back into that terrible place again, I slipped out of the bed as quietly as I could. Naked and cold, I lit a candle and found the small desk near the window. I pulled up a chair, shuffled through my belongings, and found the small black journal Lias had given me.

I stared at it a while. Slim, innocuous, it had no labeling on its binds. I ran my fingers over it. Then, holding it up, I moved it toward the candle.

I paused just before making the choice, cursed, and placed it back down. Damn it, Li.

With a steadying breath, I opened the journal. I found the wizard’s manic scratching on the first page. Holding the candle close as I dared, I began to read.

Al,

I imagine the contents of these notes may be distressing for you. I understand you were quite enamored with the subject, or at least the guise it took. Understand, I do not wish to be callous. However, I have always firmly believed that all malady can be balmed with knowledge. Understanding that which causes us pain, or hardship, or confusion is, in my opinion, always preferable to willful ignorance.

Even still, I do sympathize with your situation. Betrayal is never an easy thorn to pry out of the flesh. Rose would likely instruct me to be tactful, but we all know I am not much for tact. Your situation is quite dangerous, and I would much prefer to arm you with knowledge. With truth.

So here is truth. The being who has caused you such woes has done it before, many times, and is quite adept at it. You are not the first, and I dare say won’t be the last, to fall to its wiles. That may not comfort you, but know that you are no great fool for succumbing. I dare say, you got off better than most.

Within this record are various findings I have collected over the years. Some of them I acquired before the war, though I did not realize they would become significant until later. The rest I gathered in the belief it might be needful — after all, demons have escaped the Pits of Orkael before.

I snorted. Just like Li, to capitalize something like “Pits.” Had I picked up that habit from him?

I imagine this does little to make amends for my neglect since you joined the Table. I understand things became difficult for you after we started distancing ourselves from one another. Know that we are brothers, you and I, just as Rosanna is as a sister to me. I love you both, even if I may seem the cold and wicked sorcerer at times. Forgive me my nature, if you can.

Li

I checked the date he’d added with the note. Eight years ago. He’d started writing this after the war, then, or perhaps even during it. I drummed my fingers against the desk.

I considered destroying it. Did I really want to know?

I needed to. I flipped the page. Behind me, Catrin stirred in the bed and mumbled something. I wanted to crawl back in with her, let all my problems wait for sunrise.

I made myself focus on the book. Lias’s scrawl continued here, more impersonal than the last time. I knew, by the shift in language, this was something he’d copied from another text, though he’d added his personal thoughts and musings here and there. I recognized the chaos of his style. He’d taught me cyphers with it.

This being goes by many names, as most of the more active Abyssals do. It is probable other civilizations less known to us might have more. Here are a few.

She Who Listens. Bather In Blood. Pernicious Shyora. Tormentsister. Heart-thief. Tutor of Malice. Redwidow. Lady Wurmwing. The Venal One. One Who Beheld The Burning.

Note that this last name is shared among many of the Abgrüdai who participated in the sack of Onsolem. This would indicate the subject has been active in our histories for at least eleven centuries, and—

I closed the book, my heart beating loud in my chest. This had been a mistake. What had I expected to find? Something that made me feel right with all this? Had he believed this would ease my heartache?

Damn you, Lias. It didn’t work like that.

I sat a while with that evil little tome lying under my hand and the scent of candle wax in the air. My bare skin prickled with goosebumps. Catrin’s skin wouldn’t help much with that, but the blanket would, and I liked lying next to her. Even if I didn’t go back to sleep, I could listen to her murmur and rustle through the night.

But…

The wizard had been right on one point. Ignorance wouldn’t help anything. I had many enemies, and one held more power over me than any other. I couldn’t fight a war, for that was what I did — a quiet, ugly one though it might be — if I couldn’t face the demons in my own past, literal and figurative.

I had let nostalgia and misplaced trust pull a veil over my eyes, and it had led to Lias signing that contract right in front of me. It had pushed me to accept Rosanna’s hospitality and protection, even though I had known it put her in danger, and would ultimately drive a rift between us both.

It had made me playact the noble paladin, when being the blackguard was more honest, not to mention more practical.

And it had made me quietly long for my dreams, for all the horrors in them.

I steeled myself, and opened the book that would tell me who the woman I had loved truly was.

End of Arc 4

image [https://i.imgur.com/kBgN7fG.jpeg]

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