I awoke to agony.

I choked, flipped over, and retched.

An ocean of red and black exited me in one revolting wave, great clumps of congealed blood heaving themselves spasmodically up from where they never should have been, up through my throat and out through my mouth and nostrils, the stench alone so repugnant it made me sick anew.

I disgorged damn near every bit of me, and felt only the worse for it.

My actions, unavoidable though they were, all the same caused hundreds of wounds, internal and external, to flare angrily. I tried to shift, but felt my muscles tear in myriad places, tried to raise myself and sensed organs squelch horrifically as I did. When at last my breath arrived, it did so in anemic, aching rasps. I could barely move, barely breathe, barely think.

I was barely alive.

I collapsed back to the ground, flat in a puddle of my own blood and vomit. I scarcely felt a soft presence place itself upon the small of my back.

“…easy, there,” Aldwyn soothed, voice thick with emotion, but just that, and no more.

I lay there, in abject agony, eyes squint shut and muscles constantly tensing, simply attempting to ride out the pain somehow, and my father figure said not a word.

But he never removed his hand from me, either.

And so I simply waited.

“…Priest…alive, lad,” he breathed, eventually, hesitantly, his palm shaking but still pressed against me.

Then, softer.

“Half thought you to be dead.”

Shakingly, I examined myself, and found that I couldn’t fault the headsman his words.

By rights, I should have been dead.

My entire body was one massive, mottled bruise. Roughly treated cuts crisscrossed my flesh, making me appear more bandage than man. The mimics had flensed my skin raw, and the song had pulped what lay beneath. I could feel the shorn fibrils, the string-thin tendons. Even my bones were brittle.

“I’m…sorry, lad. I did…what I could…” I heard my old friend tremble.

Painfully, I glanced upwards.

Aldwyn didn’t look much better.

Though lacking my own patchwork skin, he still sported a massive gash along his left leg, and right cheek, the latter so deep his teeth were almost visible. One of his arms hung limply by his side.

“I’m a poor physic,” he went on, grimacing, “most our supplies were spoilt by the melee.”

Somehow, I managed to eke out a reply.

“How…lo–”

“Not long,” he replied, shortly. Sharply. “Few hours. No more. Least, near as I can tell. No clocks in here, after all.”

His jape didn’t reach his eyes.

I tried to swallow. My throat felt like it was squeezing sand. Noticing, Aldwyn reached for his waterskin, gently hydrating my parched tongue in small drams. His provenance was both ecstasy and agony anew, as the life-giving droplets nourished weary nerve-endings about my mouth and throat, priming them to scream once more.

“How many…left?” I snarled through tight-grit teeth.

Aldwyn’s palm flinched off me in a terrible way, his face an empty mask. He said nothing, merely shaking his head. I let out a low, tremulous moan, forcing myself onto hands and knees, that I might survey our handiwork.

The giant room had become a horror scene.

Blood coated it near entirely. Guts, fangs, and gore were spattered every which way, turning the ground from solid, flat surface into marsh of vile viscera. Most was purple, but every here and there I caught a glimpse of the rust-red, not quite fresh, substance that had once belonged to those I’d known for years.

I clamped my eyes shut tight.

I bit my tongue, struggling to trap the tears within. It was my fault. I knew something was amiss. I knew, and I said nothing. Damn the circumstances. I could’ve stopped them. I could’ve saved them. I could have saved them all.

But it would do no good to cry. Not now. Not anymore.

“What happened?” I croaked.

For a moment, there was silence.

“…you know what happened,” Aldwyn then replied, but quietly, and with a caution, and an apprehension that made my stomach churn all over again.

Did he fear me?

I didn’t know. This wasn’t right, none of it. He wasn’t right, not entirely. I remembered bits and pieces from after the ambush, bits and pieces only. I remembered the song…filling me, in a way I never had before, a way I hadn’t even known was possible. I remembered it singing through me, suffusing me, using me, a manic melody, breathing in until it suffocated me, my every crack and crevice, every orifice, until I was no more and only it remained.

A power. A Blessing. Mine at last.

But a cursed one.

Perhaps taking my silence as reticence, Aldwyn elected to continue. Quietly, tentatively, as if he treated with a beast.

“In the beginning, ‘twas chaos, only,” he began. “Damn things swarmed us, swaddled…choked us. Ten to a man, at least. No chance, we’d no chance. No…perhaps, if we’d respite to form a line, then…”

He trailed off, one good arm clenching and unclenching his battered spear in languid rhythm.

“Leathers, brigandine…useless, all, they just…just…

“In the end, I was alone.”

He coughed up a laugh, a grim one, like the last, and shook his armament at me hollowly.

“Spear’s not much good against foes that small, that many,” he chuckled. “Ewan would’a taught you that, I reckon.”

He nodded, eyes drifting off of me, far away.

“Thought it spell the end for me, too, I did,” he mused, still nodding. “But, then they started running. Running. The shits. Seemed a miracle, at first, I tell you. But ‘tweren’t.”

His distracted gaze snapped right back towards me, locking eyes with me. He looked right at me with an expression I couldn’t place, some mixture of fear and awe. It made me uncomfortable.

“‘Tweren’t a miracle, aye? It wasn’t. Was it?” He asked, serious as sin.

“It was you.

“All of ‘em, running t’wards you. All of ‘em. The lot. Surrounding you. A sea of white…”

His iron gaze worried momentarily, flickering towards the center of the room, where the greatest concentration of monster offal lay.

“All of ‘em…and still…still, you cut ‘em down,” he muttered. “Like…like nothing. Like ‘tweren’t a challenge, even. You moved…the way you moved…”

Aldwyn trailed off, muttering.

I whined pitifully as he did so, wrenching myself upwards, squishing flesh and grinding bone into a roughly sitting position. Sat miserably there, weak as a babe and in awful pain, I met Aldwyn in the eyes.

And he crumpled.

“Oh, lad,” the headsman whimpered. “I’m…so sorry. This was my fault, all mine…I should’ve…I should’ve never…

“I should’ve listened to Ewan,” he whispered, miserably. “This was my dream…and I got you all, all…caught up in it.”

I swallowed, grunting in pain as the water made its way down my throat. I opened my mouth to tell Aldwyn that he was wrong, that it was my dream too, that he should never–

“You know, when I was a younger man…never mind how long ago, precisely…I thought myself quite fit for service,” he muttered, idly. “Saw ‘bout it that I might off myself to war…”

“To the Frontlines…”

My words caught in my throat.

“What?” He returned my shock, smirking, a hint of old mischief dancing in his eyes. “Don’t believe me, lad? Don’t think me capable, aye? Didn’t think of me the type?”

That was to put it mildly.

I shook my head, slow.

“Mmmm, well,” he acknowledged, evenly. “Well, aye. You’ve right, enough. Thought just as much myself, I reckon. Reared right here, in Uther’s cradle, I was. Far, from the Spawn. Far, from the Stain.

“Aye, but y’know how youth is,” he smiled, sadly. “One wishes to make something…well, I wished…that is…and, t’weren’t good enough by half for the SODs, so…

“So, the Spawn,” he finished, good hand clenching distractedly about the spear he yet held firm. “To war. To the Frontlines.”

His visage darkened.

“To Cell Syn.”

He turned to face me.

“A bad lot, Syn,” he cursed, a low croak. “Bad news.”

I didn’t doubt him for a second.

“Bad news. Even for Aristocrats, bad news. Kind you smell, miles…miles away. Bandits. Brigands. Highwaymen. Murderers, by so many other names.”

He nodded, assured.

“Seen it, too, my first day. Fella’d lost his ruck. Misplaced it. No fault a’ his, that I guarantee. I used those rucks. Shits were falling apart, I tell you. And the ‘seers, sometimes, they’d steal ‘em from you. For fun.”

He shook his head, brogue coming in stronger now, such as I’d not heard in a long, long time.

“Didn’t matter, a’ course. Course not. No exceptions. Took the man’s head off, right there. Right, front a’ everyone. Like ‘tweren’t nothin’ at all. Lost a bunch a’ my illusions, then. But still, I wanted to fight.

“Then I met Ewan.”

His eyes grew distant once more. Glassy.

“Remember it like ‘twas yesterday,” he assured me, murmuring. “I’ll never forget. Four months into my program and not a day more. I’d the good part of a year left ‘till I saw real combat. The Bastards overseen’ us…

Aldwyn stopped, and smirked.

“That’s what they called ‘em, you know? The official designation. And Gods, weren’t it true. True as the sky above. True as anything. They took us apart daily. Broke bones, mangled flesh. Anything they could. Tried not to leave us lastin’, though. Sons–that’s us–didn’t get Blessed healing. They didn’t wanta’ ruin the meat too bad. They gave us exercises, sure, pitted brother ‘gainst brother in melee. Preppin’ us to fight Spawn, they said. But, all they really taught me was mundies can’t fight Blessed, ‘matter how hard they try.”

I was rapt.

The pain remained, an ever-present undertone, but softened, somewhat. For all its brutish temerity, this was precisely the manner of tale I’d always wanted to hear, the kind Mom consistently and habitually refused to grace me.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Aldwyn paused, blinking.

“Or, so I thought,” he sighed, for once allowing his arms to rest, laying down his spear flat on the ground to itch at his salt-and-pepper hair and stroke drearily at his deeply-wrinkled brow. “Anyways…four months, was I? Four months. Aye. Well…

“Four months in, one of us talks back,” he explained. “Slave Son, most like. Here ‘gainst his will. Nothin’ exceptional. ‘Cept, ‘spose the Bastard what hears him’s in a bad mood, that day. Beats the Son bloody, blinds ‘im. Both eyes burst. Still, he forbids healing. Says, ‘Bastard deserved it,’ he says. Funny, that.”

And he laughed at it, too, but this laugh was much like his prior one, grim and grey and twisting at the edges, souring itself into something deeply distressing.

“Funny, now,” he muttered. “Not so funny, then. Not to me. Not to ‘tothers, neither. Never. One of us walks forward. Not me. Too craven for that, ‘spose. Short guy, skinny guy, greyish hair. Not impressive.”

His eyes flickered my way, and he produced a single word.

“Ewan.”

Something in my chest tightened.

“Gods,” Aldwyn half-choked, half-snorted, “but your master had spirit then, lad. Calls out the officer, he does. Bastard asks if he wants some, too. Ewan doesn’t even blink. Says, real, real quiet-like…

“If you can land one hit on me, Bastard, I’ll put my eyes out, myself.”

Now, it was my turn to choke. But Aldwyn just grinned at me, a good deal more genuinely, this time, yet immersed, as he was, in the memory.

“Incredible. Just…incredible, lad. Innit? I thought so. We all did. Never…never before had…”

He shook his head.

“Still, it gets me. To this day, it does. The Bastard, he’s livid. Absolutely, positively fuming.” He held up a finger. “Thing is, though–there’s a crowd, now. Buncha’ Sons in it, true, but a whole buncha’ overseers, too. Bastard can’t just have Ewan killed, can’t abide it. So they fight.”

Aldwyn’s eyes were wide. He whistled.

“Let me tell you, lad, ‘twere a sight to behold.”

He licked his lips.

“Ewan’s as good as his word. Better. Bastard’s power, he can make these…these whip things. Chains, what come outta his arms. Lay ya’ up good, real good. Took ‘em myself, once or twice. Knew ‘em, well. Wicked strong. Wicked fast. Heal slow, too. Tough as they come. ‘Course, that all doesn’t bother Ewan. Not one bit.”

Aldwyn chuckled, then, nostalgically. For the third time. At this point, he’d done it enough, this laugh of his, that it was starting to take shape proper in my mind.

It wasn’t the warm laugh I’d heard in my youth, as we played heroes together. Most certainly, it wasn’t that gentle sound I remembered. It was the laugh of the doomed, the damned, the wailing of widows and the sneering of widowers, the ghastly sklish-sklish that steel made in you as it entered and exited violently, again, and again, and again. It was foreign, for it was the laugh of a man I didn’t know, one who’d been carefully kept from me, the echo of drums and the haunting jingle of armor over the horizon.

It was the lockstep laugh of war.

“Ewan lays the Bastard out,” Aldwyn snarled.

“Lays him right out, rigid,” he jeered, even after what had to be decades. “Movin’ in all these weird, weird ways. Movin’ like I never seen nobody move. Doesn’t let a chain hit him, even one. Closer, closer, then–WHAM! One punch, lad, one punch! Fight’s over, seconds, musta’ been.

“The yard erupts in cheers,” he exulted, and I almost did, with him, forcing out a tender grin as I experienced Ewan’s victory secondhand. But the headsman’s smile was an all-too-ephemeral thing, dissolving quickly, youth’s bottomless vigor usurped by the magnificent world-weariness of a much, much older soul.

“Oh…,” he breathed, “if’n only it could’a…could’a ended there…”

The foul, twisting scowl returned.

“But this is Bet,” he spat. “How…how could…why did I forget it? How could I…? No happy endings, here. No good stories. Everyone fails. Everyone dies.”

The grim, gleeful twinkle in his amber eyes was replaced by a dark foreboding.

“We’re cheerin’,” he said, “but the Bastards ain’t. No. Ain’t cheerin’, ain’t jeerin’, ain’t smilin’. Ain’t sayin’ a word. They’re lookin’ down. Eyes on the ground.”

His voice was a whisper.

“They start to chant.”

Slowly, frightfully, he shook his head backwards and forth.

“Can’t hear what they’re sayin’. Not quite. Not at first. But, slowly, they get louder. The chant comes clear. Plain as day. One word.

“War.”

“They chant it. They chant it. They chant it over and over, and over again. But they don’t look up. And, from the middle of them, he emerges. The Chief Officer, the Head Bastard, secondborn of the Vaultkeeper, himself.

“Elias Syn.”

Aldwyn’s eyes were wide white as he spoke. Like back before, when I’d held him by the brigandine, poised to cut him down. They weren’t fixed on me, though. They drifted.

His free, good hand scrabbled for his lain-down spear, gripping tight upon it, once more, as a babe might its mother’s breast.

“Don’t look like much, tell it true,” he muttered, faintly. “Don’t look like ‘twhat you’d imagine, I suppose. Tall guy, though. Big. Almost naked. All he’s wearin’s a pair a’ breeches. Still, walks like he owns the world.

“Walks right up to the laid-out Bastard, he does. His own man, his own…poor sod’s just moaning on the ground. Plants his foot on the Bastard’s head, right–right between his eyes, he does…he…and he…”

A great shiver cascaded about Aldwyn’s battered frame, passing smoothly from tip to toe and tip again.

“Still…still see it, a’times,” he breathed. “When I close my eyes. Like…like an overripe tomato. Little bits a’…a’ blood and…and bone and brain and…coverin’ his toes…

Finally, he glanced my way.

“None of us are cheering,” he promised. “Not anymore.”

I didn’t doubt him.

“War turns to Ewan, then. Beckons.

“Didn’t know the man, a’ course. Not back then. Still, didn’t need to. Seen’t it, on his face. We all did. No ego, this time. No surety. Everyone knows who’s gonna win’. Ewan gives it a go, t’be fair to him. A fair go. Circles War, carefully. Makes his way in.

“But War, he don’t move. He don’t budge. Not an inch. Just…just stares at Ewan.

“Eventually, your master attacks. Lands a coupla’ hits, a coupla’ good hits. War don’t move, still, just lets Ewan whale on ‘im. Ain’t speakin’. Ain’t sneerin’.

“Finally, he’s had enough. Catches Ewan by the arm, he does. Holds him firm. Like a twig. Smiles at him, all polite. Nods.

“And then War, he starts squeezin’”

Aldwyn began to shake.

“Gods, it’s…awful, just…swear, I can hear the bones break. Hear ‘em splinter. Shatter. Ewan screams. ‘Sa terrible sound. And War, he’s still smilin’, all polite-like. All sickly, like.

“Like a mad dog.

“Draws Ewan in close, he does. Rears back.

“And hits him.

“Just once.

Aldwyn closed his eyes, and said nothing for a while. His palm remained, firm and bloodless, fixed upon his battered spear.

Seemed as if he was waiting for the tremors to subside.

After a time, a considerable time, in which I’d no personal choice but to content myself with the measuring of my own wheezing gasps, and some vain efforts to benumb the lightning in my limbs, my old friend managed to recollect himself.

He was changed, now. In more ways than one. I’d fully wager what little likely remained of my life that I was the first soul he’d ever told of this tale, start to finish. And, though the horror had gone in him, and a measure of maturity he’d recapitulated, to me, he would never truly be the headsman I’d once known.

Never again.

“I don’t see what happens next,” he said, when at last he saw fit to persevere in speaking. “Too slow for it. Only, next thing I know, your master’s lyin’ there, ‘tother side a’ the yard. Apace from death. War dusts ‘imself off, all casual, and the moment’s over.

“The rest, they’re too scared to help the guy. Too risky. But, not me. Somehow. Figure, I can’t just leave him lyin’ there. Not after what he did. So I go over. Pick ‘im up. It’s like carrying a wet noodle. A bag full’a sticks. Bring him back, to the infirmary.

“Turns out, War broke every bone in his body. I mean it. Every. One. Not a single other part of him damaged. Can you imagine, kinda’ power it takes to do that? Kinda’ control?

“Stayed with him, I did. Watched him over, each chance I got. Took the man six months to recover enough to speak. When he did, he told me his name.”

Aldwyn laid a palm upon his forehead, clutching it. Cradling it.

“Well, y’know the story, now,” he muttered. “Rest’s not excitin’. Moment that he could walk, we left. Left until we found a place far, far from Syn. Far from Blessed. Never looked back.”

Aldwyn nodded for a while.

“But we never…never really forgot it, neither,” he muttered, his brogue following the reverie in train, drifting gently into the background. “Not really. We left something behind, there, in Syn. The both of us. For Ewan…well, might’a been his pride. Good for him.”

A great pain wallowed behind Aldwyn’s eyes.

“But for me, it was my dream.

“I abandoned it, back there, back then. But I still felt it, missing. Aching. That’s…that’s why…”

“But, I was wrong,” he declared, with all the certainty in all the world. “I was wrong to dream. This is no tale, lad. No mummer’s farce. This is Bet, and on Bet there are people, and places, and the two always fit themselves together. Ewan knew that, always knew that. And I did, too, and…still I…I just thought…”

He scowled.

“And you did, too,” he accused, suddenly and startlingly rounding on me. “Oh, don’t deny it. Don’t you dare. I know you well, lad. More than well enough. You dream aplenty, too. Well, look where that landed us.”

He spread his arms out, wide.

“You dreamed of this, Taiven,” he said, seriously. “Of Blessing and adventure, and now you’ve gotten both. Tell me, lad, does it feel just how you imagined it?”

His accost caught me by surprise.

“I don’t–” I rasped, struggling through the razors in my throat, “I’m not Blessed, I don’t…it’s just, the song isn’t–”

“I don’t care,” Aldwyn interrupted, slicing down an arm. “What you did, it’s Blessing enough. I promise you that. I swear it. It’s polluted you, hasn’t it? Can’t you see? A curse, like all Blessings are. I swear it.”

He grimaced, frustrated.

“Want to know why I told you that story, boy?” He pressed. “It wasn’t just to pass the time. It’s not one I enjoy recounting.

“I told you because watching you fight those things, those fucking…monsters…reminded me of Ewan and War. But you weren’t Ewan, lad. Aye, that…that idol, a’ yours? That bold ‘un, standin’ tall, against impossible odds? That’s not what you reminded me of.”

His eyes were alight with a long-repressed fury, a High Priest passing judgment on those who besmirched his name.

“You reminded me of War,” he impugned, acidly. “The way you snarled when you fought those things…the way you smiled as you tore them apart…Ewan’s cold when he fights, unfeeling, practical, but you, you…you enjoyed that.”

I just looked down, saying nothing.

He was right, and he was not.

The song had taken over me, controlled me, overridden my will. But, in a way, it had only given me what it thought I wanted. I wanted to be free. I wanted to be strong. I was willing to sacrifice near anything to achieve it. And, in a way, I had enjoyed it.

For a mere moment, I’d felt Blessed.

Aldwyn awaited my response, but I refused him.

Eventually, he sighed.

“I can’t force you to agree with me, lad,” he muttered. “Can’t make you see things my way. Priest knows it took a lifetime, and more, for me to…to, finally…but, I’ll tell you this.

“People…all act like Blessings are a gift. The ultimate gift. I know. I know well you’re one of ‘em. That’s all you’ve ever wanted, since you were a little boy, barely came up to my waist, that’s all you’ve ever…well, you want to know what I think? I think the word’s a damn joke. I think Blessings are a poison.”

He shook his head at me, sadly.

“That much power, it’s, it’s…too much. Too much for one man. Too much to bear. Too much to take. You give a person that kind of power, you take away their limits like that…”

He hesitated, gesticulating, searching for the right words.

“Well, they start pushing. Trying to find new limits. To see what they can get away with, no one there to stop ‘em.”

Aldwyn looked at me, pleadingly.

“It’s not something you should chase, lad. You’re a good kid. Don’t push yourself into becoming something you’re not. Don’t sacrifice your self for power.” He closes his eyes, exhaling deeply, before one last entreaty.

“Please, Taiven, this path you’ve chosen, it leads…it leads to War. Please, don’t follow it.”

For a while, we sat in silence like that, Aldwyn’s plea hanging in the air.

“We should get moving,” he murmured, eventually, glancing over me with a critical eye. “Can you stand?” He asked, with little sympathy.

Could I?

The outright agony I’d suffered immediately upon waking had mellowed somewhat, but quite staunchly remained a gnawing companion. And indeed, by way of the significant slurring in my speech and muddying in my thoughts, I quite afeared this gradual respite was no manner of healing; rather, a prelude of my swift-encroaching end.

Gritting my teeth so hard I felt them start to crack in places and still emitting a wretched moan, I jerked, wrenched, and wobbled myself to two feet, nearly tumbling back down before Aldwyn caught me.

“…can you fight?” He asked, a good deal more delicately this time.

I almost snorted.

Forget combat, I was scarcely conscious. I seriously doubted my now-macerated frame could accommodate within it even a whiff of errant song, never mind the fact I’d no idea at all how it was I might enter such state a second time.

So I simply frowned at him in disbelief.

“Thought as much,” he chuckled gravely, then hefting aloft his spear in non-dominant arm. “‘Spose we’d better hope there aren’t too many of the fuckers left, hmm? Never practiced with just the one arm, before.”

He pursed his lips, thinking, narrowing his gaze upon me.

“Before the creatures attacked,” he recollected, “you tried to warn me. How?”

His query was hardly that, but I took its meaning well enough.

“The painting,” I murmured.

He quirked his head in confusion.

“Back downstairs, on the hidden door, there was a painting,” I explained, achingly. “A knight who found a treasure chest. Just before he opened it, it turned into a monster and tried to eat him. A mimic.”

Aldwyn nodded slowly, considering.

“So, you think the rest of the house…?” He prompted.

“Impossible to say,” I replied, frustrated. “The rules, they’re…unclear. The pillows were, but the bed itself clearly isn’t. Too little to go off, really–there’s no other furniture in this room. Could be random, or there could be a theme to it. Size. Texture. Color. Truly. I don’t know.”

“Makes our options clear, at least,” he muttered. “Only way to find out’s outside this room.” He shuffled through his now considerably ragged leathers until finally extracting the rusted, but still entirely undamaged key.

“And our way out this hell,” he continued, “‘Sthrough the main hall.”

We opened the bedroom door, and walked through it.