Even in the northern lands, near the ice peaked mountains, the sun was hot from its peak in the sky as Urden walked. He had left Dainty tied to a tree in the forest a few miles back; some villages considered the horse an abomination, and the one he was heading for was one of them.

It had been years since he last visited the village, perhaps a decade had gone by. He doubted Arfina would be happy to see him. Fortunately, she wasn’t the reason he was going there. She hadn’t been the reason the last time either, and it had played a part in dulling her mood, or spurring it to rage.

He had left Dainty to proceed on foot at first light, and his pursuers had left their horses to follow him. Nine days they’d been following him. When he had noticed them, he knew they were not the Venin guild. They were Hallowed, for only Hallowed could track him so. And only priests could do it the way they did.

He’d done his best to ensure they hadn’t noticed his awareness. The fact that they continued to follow for so long was proof enough that they hadn’t. But now they had followed him far enough. He had no intentions of leading the seminary to the village. He knew they would strike if they thought he noticed them, and so he had maintained the illusion of ignorance.

Now, he stopped. His nose flared as he sniffed the air around him. He allowed his body grow alert. His muscles stiffened very slightly, his complete focus on his environment. His gaze swiveled to the tree where one of them perched and he took a step forward, meaning to beat a hasty advance. Every single action was honed, practiced, none was instinctual.

And it worked.

The first priest stepped out a few paces in front of him. Father Brolne, the largest priest in the seminary, stood over seven feet. Even his cassock seemed as if it was made from two cassocks. Urden liked the priest and found himself wishing Brolne had been the only one tracking him. He could have escaped a fight with the man without having to kill him.

Two other priests stepped into the open. One stood a few paces behind Urden. The other stood beside Brolne. He recognized the priest behind him. Father Telis. He was a priest of average height, and an evangelist like Brolne. He had also been a younger brother by a year when Urden had been in the seminary. The priest that stood beside Brolne, he couldn’t recognize. He was a smallish man, no doubt quick on his feet, with fast reflexes.

One experienced priest, he could escape without killing. Two priests, he could do the same but it would be pushing it. But three? Somebody was going to have to die. And if he killed one of them, he would have to kill all of them.

Brolne took a step forward.

“Your boy has finally been ordained, brother,” he said, his baritone a perfect match to his size.

Urden shrugged. “Of course he would.”

“You say it like it was expected,” Brolne mused. “He had a few problems along the way. Most thought he wouldn’t make it.”

Urden chuckled. “Of course he was going to struggle,” he replied. “After all, he’s not a Hallowed.”

Brolne shook his head gently. “That’s impossible.”

“He’s not Hallowed the way you people are,” Urden answered, dismissing Brolne’s refusal to believe. “His is different.”

“Guess the class he chose, brother?”

Urden turned to answer Father Telis with a sigh. “Enlighten me.”

“Evangelist.” Telis snorted. “Like his father.”

Urden raised a puzzled brow, looking at Telis as if he was too stupid to begin such a conversation but was unaware of it. “You are aware I only adopted him, are you not? We have no blood relationship. A-dop-ted.”

Telis face contorted in a silent rage. “What are you planning, Urden Antari?!”

Urden sighed. He reached for his Sunders but didn’t unsheathe them. “I don’t believe you people will let me go,” he said. “I have business that I cannot have you observe.”

Telis stepped forward. So did the priest whose name Urden didn’t know.

Urden sighed again, fixing his eyes on Brolne. “I didn’t think so.” It was almost saddening to know that Brolne would have to be the first to die. But such was the way of things.

His Sunders were barely free of their scabbards when he heard the gurgling sound from behind him. An instant later, someone passed him. It was always unbecoming when a Hallowed stepped past a person with the Hallowed step. There was rarely ever a disturbance in the wind nor a cool passing breeze. For those not Hallowed, they rarely ever knew it, and if the Hallowed was skilled enough, the movement would have no effect on the surrounding. But for Urden there was always a wrongness, and he felt it. He didn’t see the person, but he felt them pass.

The air whizzed around the unknown priest as a dark blade cut through the air in a perfect upward arc, dismembering the priest, and bringing him death. Brolne stopped the sword that came at him with both of his, as it came down.

The assailant spun instantly, blue clothing spinning at the helm. Brolne defended the kick that came with his Sunders and Urden saw shock mar the man’s expression when they shattered under the force of the attack, giving way for the leg to connect to his side.

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When the finishing blow came down, Brolne had not recognized it. He dropped like a mountain, his head lolling to the side from the small strip of flesh keeping his neck connected to his shoulders.

Urden watched eyes the black of night turn on him. They were a deep black, blacker than his. He frowned. He hadn’t noticed a fourth tracker.

“Father Urden.”

Urden gave a small but respectful bow. “You of all people know very well that I am no longer of the frock, Abbess Lyniah,” he said.

Not many knew the Abbess was a Hallowed. Even he had discovered entirely by accident.

The Abbess shrugged, her age, absent in the motion. Urden kept his eyes on her, watching, waiting.

She disappeared.

Urden banished his shock the moment it came. His Sunders came free of their scabbards, crossing above his head in defense. Lyniah’s sword came down on them. The impact was loud, wrathful, bearing on him with a great force. It was neither the movement nor the power of a woman her age. Urden scowled as he pushed back. He pushed with as much force as he could muster and it sent her back a few feet away from him.

There was never a person faster than him with the Hallowed step whenever he awoke. He had never met a person whose Hallowed step he could not see. And here, an old woman vanished before his eyes with it. Then again, he knew of only one kind of person capable of such of feat. They were neither Hallowed, Tainted, Scorned nor Broken.

Urden didn’t have the time to ponder on it. His grip tightening around his Sunders as Lyniah disappeared again. He defended a kick to his solar plexus with the flat of his blades. The force pushed him and he slid backwards from the impact, his feet skidding through the dirt.

Lyniah frowned.

When she disappeared again, Urden turned around and parried the slash that came. Metals clanged. This time, Lyniah did not back away. What ensued was a flurry that rounded Urden. It kept him too occupied, turning to parry from all angles. In his frustration his spine tingled. It was a gift, of sorts, that he wasn’t willing to keep on using. Gone were the times when it was limitless. Now, it reduced each time he used it, and one day it would finish. In all his lives walking Vayla, he had never experienced it. If anything, however, it was a sign that he was not wrong about Ezril.

Urden willed his ability and gave it freedom.

The Abbess stepped away from him immediately he did so, creating a space of near twenty strides in one step.

Urden frowned, tempering his anger as knowledge gave life to itself in his mind. He was done defending.

“My turn.”

He stepped forward. His surrounding warped around him, an evolution of the blur that came with the step. When his Sunders came down on Lyniah’s, he watched the shock invade her face as a tear grew in her forearm, staining the sleeve of her blue habit red. She moved from beneath him, creating another distance. This time it was one of near thirty strides.

“How?!” she hissed.

Urden swung his Sunder in an arc, ridding it of the blood on its blade. He smiled. “You really shouldn’t be surprised… Rin.”

Lyniah’s frown morphed into a scowl. “How do you know…?”

“The Abbess is neither that fast nor that strong.” Urden shrugged. “And this is neither my first time facing the vessel of a god nor my first time facing the goddess of war.” He bowed again, mocking. His eyes never left Lyniah.

“Who are you?” she asked, a curiosity in her tone and a skeptic calm returning to her voice. “Berlak?” she mused. “No,” she dismissed the thought. “His reason for descending to this realm would not lead him here. The one he seeks would have no reason to be in these parts. And if you were him, I would know.” She shook her head, seeming to have no apparent answer. “Who are you?” she asked again.

Urden ignored her question. “The question here is,” he pointed a Sunder at her, “is the Abbess a willing vessel? Or is she unaware of what inhabits her from time to time?”

“I said, who are you?!” Lyniah shrieked.

Deities were arrogant beings. Urden knew this all too well. He found he would rather not rile her any further.

“Just one of Vayla’s children,” he answered.

“Impossible,” Lyniah spat. “Vayla’s children are not capable of what you have just done.”

“Your Vessel is weak.”

“Not that weak.”

Urden smiled. “You underestimate us, Rin,” he said, moving the conversation along. “Unlike gods, our potential for evolution is limitless.”

Lyniah’s frown deepened further.

“I know you,” she spat, a realization in her eyes. Urden was beginning to hear Rin’s voice in Lyniah’s now. “You are the mortal that was with the jester.”

Urden’s grip on his Sunders tightened. “He was no jester.”

“Then a fool, I suppose.” She scoffed. “A mortal who thought he could face the gods.”

Urden shook his head, his anger rising. “You gods were simply petty.”

“He should have surrendered. His fate would have been less than what he suffers now. Chance. That’s what he thought himself, was it not?”

“No!” Urden hissed. “That’s what you all thought him. Some kind of luck you did not have. Pitiable gods fearing what they could not understand.”

“Does the immortal seek to return?” she asked. “Does your king seek to wage war with the gods, again?”

Urden could hear the caution in her voice. Dare he say, the fear. He didn’t blame her. The gods had won the war against the immortal back then, but it had cost them gravely. They could no longer descend into this world so easily.

“Go home, Rin,” Urden told her. His grip on his Sunders relaxed. “This is not the day either of us die.”

Lyniah frowned in disgust. “You think yourself more than you are, mortal. Surviving the war does not make you anything more than you are.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But your vessel is weak, and I would rather not kill a friend over what she does not know.”

Lyniah watched Urden, a predator weighing the weight of its prey. Then she disappeared from his sight, leaving him to stare at the bodies of Father Brolne and the priest whose name he would never know. Behind him Telis, too, was no more. With their deaths the seminary would continue to stop at nothing to find him.

The Venin guild was but a buzz to his existence. The seminary was but a discomfort; a prick in his side. They would not hinder his goal. They would not know what it was that he sought, neither could they ever find the village he was heading for.

He sighed.

Regardless of what happened, the seminary would place the priests’ deaths on him. Not that he wouldn’t have killed them had the Abbess not made an appearance. After all, he had killed most of the others who’d chosen the path of seeking him out.

He surveyed his Sunder. The blade had borne the brunt of Lyniah’s kick. It bore no cracks beyond its pattern. It was why he had fashioned them so. At the time he hadn’t known why he thought to forge them in this manner at the seminary’s smithy over three decades ago. But in his thirtieth year he had remembered, and a lot of things had changed. It was not easy living so many lives only to remember at the strike of thirty.

He sheathed his Sunders and, looking to the horizon ahead of him, he sighed again then turned around.

There was the seminary. There was the Venin guild. But it was best not to test a god. And though Rin was the strongest no longer, she still remained the deadliest of them. Deadly enough to have once held Arnesh to a standstill, if he was to believe the words of the Immortal. Though, it was difficult to doubt them. He still remembered the battle between the Immortal and Arnesh.

Arnesh was certainly not a being to be taken lightly. Thus, neither was Rin.