The town seldom held bonfires, and they were always a grand affair.

Well, grand for Burrick, at least.

The village square was converted into a massive fire pit and great pines were felled from the forest to fuel the inferno. Huge wild hogs slow-roasted upon each side, sweet fat dripping from them and falling, sizzling, into the flames below.

The food was plenty, and the mead flowed freely, but I barely ate or drank. I was too distracted for that, too full of anxious anticipation. Instead, and in an effort to ease my nerves, I sat myself upon one of the many wide logs that served as makeshift benches for partygoers, and watched.

I watched the villagers. The old and the young. I watched them laugh and chatter. I watched flagons raise and be toasted. I watched the children play, racing about the pit, followed every which way by their mothers’ hawkish eyes. Celebrations were oft rowdy, but this was something more.

I could almost hear it in the song, despite the noise. It shone from the eyes of each villager, spilled forth from their beaming mouths, present in every animated gesture.

Hope. Something all too rare out here.

A single girl detached herself from the mob and made her way over to me, drink in hand. Her shoulder-length locks were a thick and rich red-orange, so vibrant it almost seemed she’d stolen away a piece of the bonfire itself and wove it seamlessly throughout her mane. A scant few freckles peppered her face, a smile graced her lips, and devilry twinkled behind her eyes.

“Heya, Taiv,” she sang, the words dancing playfully upon her tongue as she offered me her drink.

“Hello Raynie,” I declined.

Pouting slightly, she sat beside me. Raynie was perhaps the only person in the village, aside from Ewan of course, with whom I actually fraternized. We got along well together. For some reason. We’d been friends since both quite young, our first coupling long ago by now. Apart from trysts, though, nothing deep had ever blossomed between us.

My fault, probably.

I didn’t hate Burrick, and certainly not its populace, but the thought of remaining in this town forever left me paralyzed with fear. I seldom found patience for anything, save training. I’d a good idea of what Raynie wanted here, tonight, but no intention at all of indulging her.

We made idle conversation between us for a brief while, then simply sat in silence. Raynie reclined against me, resting her head on my shoulder as we watched the fires dance. I picked up an errant whisper of song from her, a rarity with so many all around, a hint of smoke and roses.

Eventually, though, she tired of my disposition.

With a swift peck from impossibly soft lips, she made her way back out into the crowd, leaving me all alone, once more.

“In another life, disciple, you’d have made a wonderful Aristocrat.”

A gruff, rumbling baritone thrummed forth from the darkness behind me. I leapt to attention the moment I heard it, arms clasped by my back, spine straight as an upturned sword.

“Master,” I greeted, inclining my head his way.

I received only a grunt in return.

Ewan was short, near a full head shorter than I. His scalp was covered by a greying rag of hair cropped short, his face well-shaven, his eyes the color of leaden ash. There was nothing at all remarkable about him. He didn’t even carry a weapon.

But there was a fluidity to him. An economy of his motion that gave one pause. His stance was firm, unassailable, immovable. Thick muscles like cables rippled beneath his skin. His entire body was a coiled spring, ready to be released. Ewan didn’t carry a weapon because he didn’t need one. He was the weapon.

My master frowned.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he snapped, then nodded curtly, in the direction of Raynie’s departing form.

“That girl loves you,” he declared. “I guarantee it. You are aware of this, I assume?”

“Yes, master,” I replied.

“Yes, master,” he parroted, snorting. “And might I inquire, then, as to why you repudiate her advances?”

His tone was dry. But then, it most often was.

“A distraction, master,” I replied. “I must needs be focused. I must needs be ready for the morrow.”

“For the morrow,” he echoed slowly, turning over the words of my answer in his mouth, tasting them as he took seat by my place on the wide, bent log.

He said nothing more, though, and I saw little reason to prompt him, and so for a spell we simply watched the people scurry back and forth as the fire cackled. It was dimming now, roaring pines devolving into glowing embers. A cat, black as the void with a single sea-green stripe in its fur, regarded us lethargically from afar.

“Have you considered, I wonder,” Ewan began, breaking the peace, “what your death will bring about, in her?”

“M…master?” I stuttered slightly, confused. “In…what, in Raynie, you mean?”

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Silently, he nodded.

My brow furrowed momentarily, as I considered his words.

“I do not intend to die, master,” I answered, carefully.

At once, and quite shockingly, Ewan threw back his and roared with mirth. It was a sharp thing, his laughter. Curt and clipped, as a dog’s barking might have been.

“Of course, of course!” He drawled, with a peculiar malice. “Of course, you do not…intend to die. My apologies, my disciple.”

He inclined his head mockingly at me.

“My apologies, milord,” he sneered.

“What would you do, then!?” I snapped back at him, incensed, directing an accusatory digit his way. “Nothing?! Nothing at all?! You’d let such an…such an opportunity simply slip through your fingers?!”

Ewan stared at me, the sarcasm for once abandoning his regard, replaced by some emotion I couldn’t quite divine.

“You really think this is a gift,” he muttered. “Don’t you, boy?”

His words gave me pause. Of course, this was a gift. It was an incredible gift. How could it have been anything else?

“You think this, all, a gift,” he repeated, with a swelling intensity, “I see it in your eyes. You think you’ll go down there and reap reward. Treasures, living weapons, Blessings…yours for the taking.”

His scowl returned with reinforcements.

“You’re such a fool, Taiven,” he muttered.

“What do you know?!” I snarled.

Why would he say such a thing? This was all I’d wanted, all I’d ever wanted, ever since I was but a boy. I’d told him as much, just as much, many a time. How could he mock my dream?

“You’re just upset Aldwyn didn’t let you go,” I impugned, angrily.

Ewan snorted, and shook his head.

“Angry,” he smirked. “You’re a fool, boy. I’m ecstatic.”

He leaned in close to me. The fire’s embers, not quite dead but not far from it, draped unnerving shadows across his face, hard contours of lean muscle making for illusory demons in the near-dark.

“I told Aldwyn not to go,” he whispered, making me draw back in shock.

“I begged him not to,” he went on. “Again, and again, and again, I begged him, and still, he would not hear me. He would not relent.”

His lips curled up, once more, into that foul sneer.

“You all imagine the bounty,” he accused, “but you don’t consider the cost. Never, the cost. You mark my words, disciple. You mark them well. Naught but death, you’ll find in Knossos’s heart.”

He recoiled himself, muttering, his words, still, scarcely above a whisper.

“You imagine the bounty, but you don’t consider the cost. Because you haven’t seen it. Not…not like I have. Death alone couples with Titans, boy. Demons, harbingers. They care naught, but for your corps–”

“What have you seen?” I cut Ewan off, breathlessly. “Master?”

He stopped his muttering, and smiled at me, but it was a humorless thing.

Then he spoke.

“Balmut lights your form aglow,

Lotan pulls you down below.

Simurgh sings from up on high,

Vile makes the fearless cry.

Knossos bleeds those who delve deep,

Sothoth’s spawn, like tumors, creep.

Qet turns holdfast into glade,

Nary heal from Dainsleif’s blade.

None dare stand in Hermes’ way,

And Golem warps your flesh like clay.”

His chant echoed in the dark, empty square, reverberating eerily off the vacant market stands and exposed innards of the dilapidated church to the west.

All had left, by now.

None remained to hear my master’s words, to bear witness his occult hymn. The only ones left here were Ewan, myself, and the black-green cat from before.

The fire’s last embers guttered. I could only make out glimpses of his face.

Ewan stood, and brushed off his breeches.

“You’re a good student, Taiven,” he said. “You’ve a fair hand, a fair hand. Very good. Perhaps, even as good as you think you are.”

He ran a set of thickly-calloused fingers through his coarse, short-cropped hair.

“Given time,” Ewan commented, matter-of-factly, “you’ll be better than me. You’re the kind of talent that comes about but once, in a generation. Before the collapse, you’d have been a savant. Renowned, the whole world across.”

His words were sweet, but they drove in me a tight and gut-wrenching fear.

Ewan had never complimented me before. Not once. Not ever. The most I’d received, the most I’d ever received, upon executing some particular sequence flawlessly, was a subtle, expertly-concealed smile, and the immediate order to do so, again.

“Of course, none of that matters now.”

Ewan glanced down at me. Or, at least, I thought he did. In the pitch-blackness all around, it was difficult to tell.

“Because you’re not Blessed,” he said. “I’ve seen stronger than you, far stronger, delve deep, think themselves immortal, never to return.”

He tutted to himself, once, twice. Three times. There was no humor in his voice, now. No pain, either. No sorrow.

Only steel.

“If you only knew what was good for you, Taiven, you wouldn’t leave with them tomorrow. If you only knew what was good for you, you’d give up the sword, give up all of…of this…You’d go north. You could. You’re a smart kid. You could take Raynie with you, make a fine living in manufacturing. Have a nice life. A long life. A safe life. You’ve just…you’ve no idea the choices you…”

In the deep darkness, I watched Master Ewan’s lips compress themselves into a fine line.

“But you won’t,” he said.

He turned to leave.

“You won’t do that. You won’t do any of that. You’re a smart kid, but you won’t make the smart choice. You’ll go down there tomorrow. You will. And you’ll die. No one will remember you. No progeny, will you leave behind you. Nothing will come of all your effort, all your strife. You’ll be just another casualty. Another corpse on the pile.

“Dead too young, dreaming of glory.”

He nodded, once, and walked away.

“I hope your dreams are sweet, disciple.”

His parting words echoed about the empty square, vanishing, into the endless night.

The black-green cat sniffed, and left with him.