Light exploded in his brain.

Dalen dug his bony fingers into the meat of Nevin's shoulders, his sour breath reeking of stale wine and rotten teeth. “You think I'm stupid, boy? You think I wouldn't find out?”

The image flickered out of existence, and Nevin found himself face-to-face with the eager soldier.

“Please...let go of me,” he managed, turning his face to avoid eye contact with Vincht.

“Where is it, Nevin? It was the cold, wasn't it? You've run across something far colder than you could explain, something that didn't make sense, something that stuck in your brain.”

He craned his neck, trying to pull his face as far away from Vincht's as he could, but the stalwart window pushed back. The cool glass fogged around his hot skin. He nodded, but only just.

“I almost can't believe it. That old fool was actually telling the truth.” A toothy grin flashed across the man's taut face. “Tell me where, Nevin. Where did you find it? Tell me where and I'll take it and be gone.”

“It's here...” Nevin's hands quivered in the air beside Vincht's, wanting desperately to grab the soldier and pry him off but worried the situation would grow even more physical if he did.

“Here?” He pulled back, jerking his head around the room. “I see nothing but piles of books, discarded herbs, simple furniture. Specifics, Nevin. I need specifics!”

“Please take your hands off of-”

Vincht shoved him against the window. A spiderweb of jagged cracks spread out from the back of his head, threatening to tear the whole panel down, but the window held firm. His vision swam momentarily, and another burst of light overwhelmed his mind.

Dalen caught Nevin across the face with the back of his hand, the sudden blow knocking the younger man off balance and off of his feet. Straw crunched beneath him as he landed flat on his back. He brought a shaky hand to his lip. Blood.

The old drunk wobbled on his feet, tilting his canteen back for a deep swig of yellow wine. Streamers of liquid drooled from his chin and into the dry earth. He wiped his mouth with a stained sleeve and shoved the cork in place, gesturing to Nevin with the canteen.

“I seen where you get off to when I ain't lookin'. You a little sneak, you know that?”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“You still with me?” Vincht tapped him on the cheek. “I asked you a question, Nevin.”

He looked around the disordered study, confused. “What?”

Vincht spun him around and slammed his face into the window. Nevin gasped. Tiny sharp edges ground into the tender flesh of his cheek. The cracks spread wider, but still, the window somehow held.

“I don't want to hurt you, Nevin, but I will if I must,” Vincht began, his mouth mere inches from Nevin's ear. “You're a good looking young man, a rare find amid the inbred cretins infesting this forsaken forest. It did not pain me to visit harm on those who willfully stood between me and my mission here in Elbin. Misfortune comes to us all: rich and poor, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. No one mourns the worm that is crushed beneath the boot. But crush a flower, and the world is lessened by that loss.

“You and I, Nevin? We're the flowers. The worms exist to feed the flowers, to prop them up, to help them bloom so the rest of the world can revel in their beauty and be all the more for it. A flower, Nevin...a flower is worth a thousand worms.”

Nevin struggled against his captor, but Vincht dug his shoulder into his back, grinding his face against the glass. His eyes widened in pain, bringing the whole of the forest outside the cabin into sharp focus.

Surrounded by a darkened halo of wet earth, a pot-bellied man lay face-first atop Ishen's approach. His shoulders spasmed, releasing a burble of fresh blood from a wound in his side with each involuntary jerk.

Nevin's eyes widened further. Gods, is that man going to die!? Will that be me when Vincht gets what he wants?

In the distance, a shadowy figure stepped out from the trees and into view. Its measured, unhurried pace in the midst of all the violence confused him, like whoever it was somehow couldn't see the dying man sprawled out in the dirt or the terrified young man pressed up against the cracked glass window. However, something about the distant figure unnerved him.

In the dark, he couldn't discern who it was or even what it looked like, but he could feel the gaunt figure staring into him.

“I do not want to hurt you, Nevin,” Vincht repeated, unaware the boy had stopped listening. “One can correct ignorance with knowledge, weakness with hardship, poverty with labor. But one cannot correct ugliness. We can cover it up, disguise it, hide it away from the world but no more. We are simply born with beauty, or we are not. Because of this, beauty holds incalculable value and must be preserved if at all possible.”

The soldier spun him back around, this time grabbing a fistful of his shirt and holding him at arm's length.

“I do not want to do to you what I have done to so many others today, but there is no compromising my mission. I will go to any length to find this object, whatever it is, and return it to those I serve. And if that means ripping every flower out of the ground from here all the way back to Comelbough, then that is what I must do.

“So if you do not tell me what I need to know, understand, though it would pain me deeply to do so, I will not hesitate to visit such pain and disfigurement upon your person that even the worms will pity your fate.”

Vincht was so involved with the sound of his own voice that he failed to realize that Nevin's dumbfounded stare was not for him, but for someone that stood behind him. Someone that wasn't there a moment ago.

Someone with blue eyes that shined like torches on a moonless night.

A gravelly voice cut through the tension.

“Maybe you'll have a better opinion of the worms once you spend a little time with them.”