Torch gripped the hilt of their longsword in its scabbard, mask staring blankly at the back of the torn headrest in front of them.

Kuravaan scratched the back of his head, almost certain that Torch could see him through the four inches of stained polyester.

Suleman bounced his leg up and down and stared out of the window at the wasteland to the side of the convoy, trying to remember the last time he had seen the color green.

The driver of the SUV looked ahead at the rear headlights of the next car in the convoy. When she blinked, the dim red lights were just as visible as when their eyes were open.

Torch’s hooded head moved, looking down at Suleman’s twitching leg. “Stop that.”

Suleman swallowed and stopped moving.

The driver noticed an arm reach out of the side window of the vehicle ahead and give a short wave. They sighed, reached their own hand out of the window, repeated the gesture, and came to a stop a half-second after the car ahead did the same.

Torch remained as still as a statue. “Why?”

“Why’d we stop?” The driver shrugged. “Sorry, Ma– S– Torch, you’ll have to get out and ask the folks in fr–”

Torch opened the car door and stepped into the freezing cold.

“…Okay.”

Kuravaan opened his own door. “We’ll do the same. See what the fuss is about.”

“Alright, man,” said the driver. “Not worth me going out there, personally. Hey, you’re dressed pretty light to be going ou–”

“Very well.” Kuravaan shut the door behind him and hurried to catch up to Torch.

Torch slung their sword’s scabbard as their cloaked silhouette approached the front of the convoy, where the column of SUVs seemed to have fanned out in a small arc. Torch identified the convoy’s designated lead navigator and drifted toward him. “Explain the reason for stopping.”

The navigator gestured towards the front of the column, pointing towards a rust-covered RV with a snowplow attached to the front. “Uh, Torch, hey, sorry. We met a few folks heading the way we came. We’re stopping for ten, maybe fifteen minutes to give them directions to San Fran, and so that they can catch us up on anything we might need to go around or deal with if we’re going north. And don’t worry, they’re with us.”

Kuravaan came up next to Torch. “Well, erm, we don’t expect any of this to be too bad of an idea, then, so perhaps, Torch, it might be good for us to take a quick break from travel and learn the lay of this wasteland.”

“Correct.” Torch looked at the Servants gathered around the RV. “I expect us to continue on our previous course as soon as possible.”

“Of course, yeah.” The navigator nodded hastily and stuffed his hands in his armpits. “But if it turns out that some piece of highway up ahead is blocked up, this may save us some time in the long run. It’s worth doing, I promise.”

“I expect us to continue on our previous course as soon as possible,” repeated Torch, before moving past the navigator and towards the cluster of Servants ahead.

One of the southbound travelers, seeming the leader of the group of six or seven, was consulting with a small group of navigators, holding a flashlight over a creased map. The other bundled-up travelers were walking around the front of the convoy, marveling at the dozens of well-maintained SUVs.

Kuravaan folded his arms and looked at the group of people, blinking as patches of reflective material on jackets and hats lit up in the light of headlights. “Alright, yes. This is a perfectly inoffensive gathering of people who all have something useful to offer each other, and–”

“And I will not act in a hostile manner towards adequate subordinates,” said Torch. “There are courses of action present that you will find equally as productive and significantly more enjoyable than passive-aggressively attempting to cow me out of an action that I have no intention of making, mister Kuravaan.”

“I… Yes.” Kuravaan moved forward to better hear what the people gathered around the map were talking about.

One of the travelers, a woman in her early-to-mid twenties covered in expansive jackets and sweaters, noticed Torch’s silhouette in front of one of the SUV’s headlights. She blinked in surprise. “Oh, um… Hi! I– Yeah, I’d heard something about Torch being part of this whole… thing of yours, and… I mean, you look about like how people say they look.” She gave a friendly if sheepish smile. “You, uh, you the one and only?”

Torch’s pearlescent mask, the only patch of brightness in the wall of their black cloak, stared at the woman. “Correct.”

“Oh, well, what d’you know!” The woman scurried towards Torch, strained breath forming a cloud of steam in front of her face. “Yeah, I… I’m sure you get this kind of thing a lot, but– Actually, um, hi.” She extended a gloved hand towards Torch. “I’m Anne. Figured I oughta at least give you my name before anything else.”

Torch did not acknowledge the hand. “You are already aware of my identity.”

“Uh… Well, yeah, I am.” Anne lowered her hand and laughed nervously. “Sorry, it’s just… I’m really just so relieved that you were able to bring your whole sort of, uh, message to this part of the world. I mean, for the past few years now, it’s just been me and my family out here, doing our best to survive. But now with the Servants around, we’ve been able to bring back our scavenging surplus to an actual town, and, y’know, trade it with other people for things that we couldn’t find ourselves! It’s like the world barely even ended, y’know?”

“I am aware of the effects of a combined front with which humanity can eradicate the Primus threat,” said Torch.

“Oh, right, and the Primoi!” Anne grinned from ear to ear. “I mean, this whole time it felt like the whole world had just stopped making sense, a–and we were all just waiting to die, but now with you and the Huntsmen, here in America? It’s like we all finally get the chance to turn this back around and make things the way they were! I… I lost my sister in a riot, right before everything went nuclear, but my mom? My brother? Thanks to you, I might finally be able to see them again one day!”

Something cooed within the depths of Anne’s jackets. She blushed and suppressed a chuckle. “And there I go again, talking too loud. Stacy here’s gonna wake up if I keep up the gushing.” She unzipped the outermost three jackets and pulled them aside to reveal an infant buried in a blanket that had been tied around Anne’s shoulder like a hammock.

Anne zipped the jackets back up. “And to think, when I had her, I had no way of knowing that you would–”

“You have a child,” said Torch.

Anne blinked. “Oh, um, yeah. I’ve been in a relationship with Brian over there since–”

“Given its apparent age, it had to have been conceived no less than two years into the nuclear apocalypse.”

Anne pursed her lips and looked Torch up and down. “Yeah, I mean, the two of us just thought that if we–”

“You have been experiencing a growing shortage of supplies since you were forced to begin scavenging, yes?”

“Well, sure,” said Anne, “everyone has. Nobody’s making any more food, after all, so–”

“Then why did you have it?” asked Torch.

Concern grew on Anne’s face. She hugged her jackets and the bundle within close to her chest. “W–W–What’re you–?”

“It has only been four years since major production of common goods ground to a halt,” said Torch, “and yet all remaining reserved worldwide have been nearly entirely depleted. There will no longer be enough food or clean water to consistently support any significant quantity of humans by less than one year from now.”

Anne took a step away from Torch and put a hand between the two of them. “Tha–that would nev–!”

Torch took two steps towards Anne. “Regardless of how much you delay the inevitable, my point nevertheless stands: It is highly unlikely that the infant will not be provided with enough resources to reach a developmental stage where it is capable of walking.”

“A–Alright,” stammered Anne, “but aren’t the–?”

“Indeed,” continued Torch, “by creating such a strain on both yourself and your group, you have doubtlessly hastened the deaths of all eight individuals. A higher requirement of food and drinkable water per day increases the likelihood of encountering periods of inadequate sustenance, as well as further decreasing local resources.”

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

“Y–You know,” said Anne, “I’ve always wondered wha– what your name means, like, is it a title, or is Torch your–?”

“It is an impressive feat by itself that you were able to carry the infant for nine months and deliver it with minimal permanent complications. And the infant has now been delivered, and it will barely exist in this world before something kills it. Thinking to bear the infant would be one of the most short-sighted, unintelligent decisions I could conceive of, and I have been presented with an individual who seems either unwilling to comprehend or incapable of comprehending the ramifications of such a decision.”

Anne’s eyes flitted to the cluster of people maybe fifty feet away. “Well, sure, it m–might be a bad place to have a kid all, um, all the way out here, but that’s why we’ve started moving south! We, uh, we heard that San Francisco’s become–”

“Kill it.”

Anne’s eyes widened. “…Excuse me?!”

“I have already laid out the consequences of your decision,” said Torch. “If you continue to support the infant, it will lead to the hastened deaths of itself, along with the rest of your group.”

Anne stared at Torch in shock. “But–but tha– You’re supposed to be–!”

“I understand that you do not have the mental constitution to perform such an action violently. Abandoning it in the snow would be much less conspicuous, and much less graphic.”

“Stacy doesn’t deser–!”

“The infant deserves nothing,” continued Torch. “Sentimentality and maternal instinct are impeding your judgment. This may not be an action that you are psychologically capable of making. If so, I will make it for you.”

Anne was visibly calculating her chances of making it to the rest of the group. “If you’re saying what I think you’re–”

“Kill it,” said Torch, “or, for the sake of prolonging the existences of several times more people, I will kill you.”

“I…” Anne struggled to maintain solid footing in the snow. “You can’t be–”

“There is an obvious, objectively correct answer to this situation,” said Torch. “I am almost being rhetorical by presenting you with a choice. Either the infant dies, or you both die. I am struggling to comprehend why this is so difficult for you, when there is not so much as a tradeoff involved.”

Anne clutched at her jacket. “You’re asking me to kill my–”

“I am not asking anything,” said Torch. “You evidently do not have the presence of mind to act of your own volition, so I, as an authority figure, am commanding you to remove a burden.”

“Stacy isn’t a–!”

Traces of instability began to enter Torch’s voice. “You do not have the position to challenge me. You have proven that you do not understand what we are discussing. Stop acting as though you know better than I do, and do as you are told. You will come to thank me when you begin to experience the lessened strain on yourself.”

A shape interposed itself between Torch and Anne. Torch’s mask tilted upwards as they saw the twin orbs of glowing red light at the top of the massive silhouette. “Servants are present in the vicinity, mister Kuravaan. I would recommend you step aside and resume your human form.”

Anne staggered away from the new arrival. “Wha–What in the…?”

“We heard what you were talking about,” hissed Kuravaan. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

“I have been civilly assisting this Servant in her current issues regarding a growing lack of–”

“We know what you were doing,” interrupted Kuravaan. “What we meant was, how could you possibly think that this was an understandable thing to discuss?”

Behind Kuravaan, Anne managed to regain her composure. “Look, uh, m–mister, I don’t know what’s going on with your, with your eyes there, but I think T– uh, Torch here might be…” A glare from Torch’s pearlescent mask shut her up.

Torch took a shuddering breath behind their mask, as if gathering themself, and stepped to the side so that they were roughly equidistant from Anne and Kuravaan. “Mister Kuravaan, I am certain that you would understand the rhetoric behind my attempts at explaining this Servant’s predicament, given the identical nature of your previous decisions while under my supervision.”

Kuravaan’s eyes narrowed. “Tha–That was not identical. We were–”

“Correct,” said Torch. “You sacrificed fifty-two lives for the sake of extending the life expectancy of an additional ninety-seven. Presently, I am sacrificing two lives, maximum, for the sake of preserving an additional six, minimum. The ratio is considerably more favorable in this circumstance, compared to yours.”

“I was protecting my Domain!” shouted Kuravaan.

“Are you insinuating that your decisions are justified in that they are made in service of your relatives specifically?” Torch’s mask moved from Kuravaan’s face down to Anne’s, before returning to Kuravaan. “Such reasoning is... In the long term, the preservation of your Domain will be of as little consequence as the brief survival of the infant. I would recommend you step aside and resume your human form.”

Kuravaan looked past Torch, at the cluster of Servants from either convoy. Some of them were beginning to look their way. His eyes were just barely dim enough to not be visible through the surrounding headlights.

Torch briefly tracked Kuravaan’s gaze. “I would like to remind you, mister Kuravaan, that you and your Domain have largely outlived your usefulness regarding the long-term accomplishment of the Servants’ objectives. If your reckless, unnecessary disregard for my directives of subtlety results in negative attention from other Servants, I will revoke your Domain’s privilege of sanctuary. I would recommend you step aside and resume your human form.”

Kuravaan stared down at Torch for a moment, bowed his head, and shut his eyes. He shrank by a full foot, and when his eyes opened, the burning red had dimmed and retreated to his irises.

“I…I knew it,” mumbled Anne. “W–We’re… You’re protecting them…”

Kuravaan grimaced and looked judgingly at Torch. “I suppose, then you intend to kill this girl anyway, but now for ‘knowing too much’, yes?”

“It is highly unlikely that a single Servant would be able to draw any significant attention to your Domain,” said Torch, “especially one who understands the potential ramifications of attempting to do so. And in either case, this one in particular has yet to confirm her ability to understand the ramifications of a particular question.”

Anne’s wide-eyed gaze moved sporadically between Kuravaan and Torch. “You… you came here to stop the Primoi…”

“You are attempting to evade the current matter,” said Torch, “as you have attempted to do before. Your infant has not yet been removed, as it will invariably be within a matter of months. Do so, or I will remove you both.”

“Whe–When you came here,” stammered Anne, “you said you were here to stop all this! T–To kill the Primoi and bring everyone back, to make us stop having to worry about all this. I thought I could finally stop thinking about my daught–!”

“Irrelevant,” said Torch. “Your deaths are inevitable, and the arrival of some volunteers with shotguns will not change that. Accep–”

Anne stepped forward and glared at Torch. “Then what was any of this for!?”

Torch raised their hands. As their fingers twitched, hundreds of minute sigils on the fabric lit up with pale blue light. Similar symbols drew themselves into existence in the air around Anne, forming a cylinder that illuminated her from all sides as if she was in the beam of a spotlight.

Anne barely had the time to look around in terrified confusion before the glyphs in the air pulsed with light and vanished. The puddle of water that had once been Anne fell to the ground, freezing on the snow in a matter of seconds without a trace.

Torch’s gloves dimmed back into mundanity and their arms retreated back into the depths of their cloak. “Do not interrupt me.”

Kuravaan stepped back and tried to maintain composure. Spots of color remained imprinted on his vision where the glyphs had flashed in the air in front of him.

Torch glanced to the side and looked at Kuravaan. The Primus suddenly felt like a rodent trapped under the wings of a vulture.

“Tell the Servants communicating with these passers-by that any information they have so far gained will be sufficient for future progress. I expect our convoy to continue moving within the next three minutes.”

Kuravaan struggled to force out a single sound. “I…”

“Do you require further clarification, mister Kuravaan?”

“…No.” Kuravaan turned around and made for the cluster of Servants within the illumination of the headlights. “We will see to it.”

“Correct.” Torch turned and headed back towards their car, their cloak leaving a slight depression in the snow as they walked through it.

As they traveled along the length of the convoy, their head tilted to examine one of the vehicles ahead of theirs. A double quad truck sat motionless on the freshly-cleared snow, a combined fifty feet in length. On its trailer, falling snow sizzled and evaporated a few seconds after landing on the metal roof, a monotonous buzzing noise humming through the trailer’s walls.

Torch returned to their travel. Through the gaps between trucks and SUVs, they spotted Kuravaan moving on the other side of the convoy, in the same direction as them.

The two of them arrived back in the SUV. Kuravaan sat in the passenger seat, Torch in the right-hand seat in the rear. The same as before.

The driver breathed a sigh of relief when Torch and Kuravaan reentered the car. “So, you sort out whatever was going on up ahead.”

“The vanguard encountered a group of fellow Servants moving south,” said Torch. “We have exchanged information about our upcoming route, and you will receive the go-ahead gesture from the driver in front of us in a matter of seconds.”

“Cool,” said the driver. “Sounds like there wasn’t much need for you to go out there in–”

“Look ahead,” said Torch. “You may miss the gesture otherwise.”

“Right, yeah.” The driver remained quiet.

“…If I can speak,” began Suleman, “I would just like to ask if anything interesting came up in that exchange.”

“Nothing worth noting by a non-navigator such as yourself,” said Torch.

The driver in front waved out their window and Torch’s driver restarted the ignition while repeating the gesture. It took a couple seconds of sputtering before the engine managed to come to life, but the SUV was ready to move a couple seconds before the vehicle ahead began to drive forwards once more.

“Are… Are you sure, Torch?” asked Suleman. “You… seem agitated.”

“Incorrect,” said Torch. “There is nothing to be agitated about. Indeed, I am moderately perplexed as to how you would draw such a conclusion, mister Suleman.”

Hesitantly, Suleman pointed towards Torch’s right arm. Torch looked down to see what the issue was.

The plastic handle of the car door had bent and cracked under Torch’s grip, forming a spiderweb of dark spikes that marred an appreciable fraction of the car door’s interior.

Torch released the mangled remains of the handle, which crackled slightly at the release of pressure, and rested their hand on their lap, laying the scabbard of their sword over it. “I see. That action was not intentional. Pay it no mind.”

“They’re right,” said Kuravaan, looking over his shoulder at Suleman. “Nothing worth you knowing about.”

Suleman glanced down at Torch’s sword. He turned and looked out his window as the convoy passed by a parked RV, around which half a dozen people peered into the surrounding darkness, as if looking for something. “…Alright.”