Collin woke up to a body in open rebellion, and not for the first time. He was used to the residual agonies of a fight, having spent years being subjected to them, but the pain assailing him now was different somehow. Stronger, angrier, and sustaining itself no matter how or where he moved. It was like a thing of magic, and his mind screamed at it futilely.

When he lay on his back, lances of misery ran along his spine. On his side it was his ribs and guts that threatened to come apart with the sensation. His stomach was no choice at all, in that position his shoulders and neck somehow twisted and writhed like nothing else. Rivers of magma, rains of acid, mists of deadly, choking toxin to leave a man thrashing as his tongue swelled and jutted dumbly from his lips. It was beyond description, his pain, and it took minutes to finally diminish itself.

Minutes didn’t sound like much, Collin had tolerated minutes of agony more times than he could count. Minutes of this, though, made him want to die. Minutes of this were enough to leave him fearing ever experiencing a single second of it again.

“It is phantom pain.” A voice rang out, cold and clinical, as if Collin’s convulsive torment were merely an interesting fact to be observed, explained and then put aside with no relevance beyond understanding the mechanics behind it. Collin glanced up, half-wincing in anticipation of more pain, and saw Silenos Shaiagrazni seated at one wall.

He frowned at that, realising this was not his bedroom, and looked around further. High ceiling, thick walls, everything smooth and clean, everything easily maintained and functional. This was a medical room, a private one originally built to hold the wounded aristocracy without training their sores with working class pain.

“I was hurt.” Collin mumbled, finding the memories coming back, now, as a steady stream. It was remarkable how much easier thought became when one’s body didn’t feel as if the blood was trying to escape.

“You were.” Shaiagrazni confirmed. “Physically you are fine, though you may experience some whispers of phantom torment for a day or two, and I would recommend you spend a while training to adjust. I had to strengthen your body to help you survive your injuries, and that strength, that speed, will have affected the timing of your movements. Best to re-master that when not swinging your weapons in anger.”

It was a lot, to be told that his own limbs were now lacking in control, but Collin found it hard to be moved. He remembered the feeling of steel through his guts, now, and after suffering a wound like that even having control of his limbs left at all was good news. He nodded.

Shaiagrazni eyed him, quiet, seemingly waiting for something.

It was the most disconcerting stare Collin had ever been on the receiving end of, not human, and somehow not even an animal’s either. He imagined it was how a jar of mercury found itself studied by the alchemist planning on using it. Purely cerebral, purely cognitive, without a trace of room made for emotion or any of the other little irrationalities that made people people. He shivered, starting, with a grunt, as he tried to emerge from his bed.

“Would’ve expected my father to be waiting for me.” He grinned. “But I suppose that grumpy old bastard will be bogged down and busy, right? What’s the state of the city?”

Shaiagrazni was not grim, exactly, but there was a definitively dark twist to his scientist’s stare as Collin said that. It gave him pause, had him staring in silent question, mouth suddenly dry.

“Your father is dead.” The caster said, describing the impossible as if it were some ordinary affair.

Collin blinked, made stupid by his surprise, slow by his disbelief.

“That’s not funny.” He growled, confusion turning to anger as hot water did mist.

“It is not a joke.” The caster replied. His eyes still didn’t change, his face still didn’t move. He might have been explaining the loss of family to a chicken, for all his apparent cares for the matter. “Your father died in his sleep, while you were unconscious. A magical complication from a wound he took defending the city.” He explained. “I am sorry for your loss.”

That last phrase almost sounded comical. How could a man with eyes as empty as that claim to be sorry for anything? It made Collin angry, furious. Made his hands curl into bunched fists, made his blood run hot, his lips pull back in a feral snarl. He wanted to kill something, and not cleanly. To fall on it with flailing fists and thrashing teeth, ripping out chunks and spitting them back into gaping eyes. He wanted to fucking vent his fury out with a war cry.

A tear came down his cheek, and then more followed. In the end, Collin vented his fury out with a long period of crying, instead.

Most men were awkward when they saw such a display, unsure of how to respond, what to say- whether anything ought to be said at all. Not Silenos Shaiagrazni. He simply looked on with a face so consistently unmoving as to make a statue seem dynamic. He could not, Collin thought, have physically cared less about the matter of his grief. Collin broke the silence himself after taking a minute to master himself.

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“How did he fight?” He croaked, not quite sure why he even asked himself.

“Well.” Shaiagrazni explained. “He cut down perhaps fifty orcs himself, and a Fomori. Had he not been present on the walls they’d have fallen without question before reinforcements arrived, it was like watching some heroic myth acted out.”

Collin nodded, and felt nothing. His father hated fighting, hated it. He hated the dying, the killing, hated what it turned men into .Animals, he said. Less than animals even. There was a monster living in the heart of every man, and it came out to play when he found himself in battle.

“Not to be insensitive,” Shaiagrazni pressed, sounding about as sensitive as a boulder, “But there is the matter of your father’s duties. As Governor of Kaltan, as leader of its defence. I am not aware of what succession he had-”

-”My father had no succession.” Collin snarled. “We were going to turn this city into one led by its people, with leaders decided on by popular vote. Like some village community, scaled up and legislated to hold it together.”

Why did he speak with such fire? Perhaps Collin simply didn’t want his father to be remembered for his killing, rather than his building. Shaiagrazni didn’t appear to care one way or the other.

“That being the case, I imagine you realise why your father remained in power himself during this particular time.”

Collin hesitated, then swore. Of course he did. More voices being heard meant slower decision-making, which could be fatal when one was fighting the Dark fucking Lord of all people.

“What are you getting at?” He growled, finding himself overcome by an unspeakable weariness. He just wanted the conversation to be over. Just wanted everything to be over.

“I am speaking of you, Collin Baird. I believe you would be the rather obvious choice as successor to your father, no?”

He stared at the caster.

“What gave you that idea?” Collin asked, feeling as if he’d just been punched in the head.

“You were trained from your earliest years to exceed him in every way, and have much of his talent, no?”

“No!” Collin snapped. “He’s been fighting and warring for decades, ruling for almost as long, I have a few years as an officer and I’ve never commanded more than a thousand men. Put me in charge of an army, let alone a city, and it’ll be a bloody disaster.”

Shaiagrazni shrugged.

“I disagree, I have seen stupider commanders perform passable jobs with less relevant experience. Do not underestimate yourself, it is immoral.”

Collin was still blinking and reeling from that fucking bizarre response when Shaiagrazni continued.

“Years of battle experience, knowledge of units as large as a thousand men, and a youthful, malleable intellect of considerable magnitude. I have examined the history of other potential choices, and not one has struck me as being half so practical or you. Unless you know of some veteran Rangers or generals who may have slipped my notice?”

The walls were getting closer together, Collin thought, and the ceiling lower down. He wanted to vomit, wanted to roll around screaming and kicking and crying about how unfair everything was. Wanted to ask his father for advice, except he couldn’t do that. Could never do that again.

His father was dead. It sunk in, then, finally, truly and properly. His father was dead, and he would never again be anything but dead. The world would keep moving, its people keep living, but they’d be down one grimy, grumpy, clever old bastard with a soul made of tough boot leather and a heart made of gold.

Collin felt the tears coming back, but they were different now. Cold instead of hot, terribly, terrible cold. He felt himself sharpening, his wits growing quick and cruel like the barbed tips of arrows. His father was fucking dead, and the Dark Lord’s bastards had killed him.

“I’ll do it.” Collin croaked, hearing his own voice as a distant, disconnected thing. “I’ll take the mantle, if they’ll have me.”

Silenos Shaiagrazni studied him, taking a moment, then asking a calm, simple question.

“What will your first acts be, Governor Baird?”

Collin looked up at him with a start. What sort of question was that? The answer was so obvious.

“We’re going to kill every single fucking one of them.” He breathed, fighting a smile that threatened to spread at the very suggestion.

There was a monster living in the heart of every man, and Collin needed his to come out.

----------------------------------------

Sphera the Necromancer was happy. Not just smiling, not just smug, but happy. That was a dangerous sight, Arion knew. The last time she’d been at all happy, Ensharia had gotten captured.

His Master was still yet to return, in the wake of the Governor’s death he’d taken it upon himself to speak with Collin Baird. Probably he was finding out some way to get what he wanted from the boy, push him up into his father’s position and use him as a tool for controlling the city’s defence. Probably he’d manage it, Silenos Shaiagrazni rarely permitted failure in his endeavours.

It was all to be expected, all mundane, uneventful. And so why was it, then, that the Necromancer sat smiling with such sincerity? What did she know that Arion didn’t?

Perhaps he was being manipulated, perhaps this was simply some new elaborate torture, or a trick to gain freedom. Perhaps. Or perhaps there was more to things than he’d caught on.

Arion didn’t take long to make his decision, it was rather an easy one to be made. Magi did not sit idle and roll around in their ignorance, if there was something they didn’t know, they fixed the fact.

He mastered himself, and spoke.

“What are you grinning at?” He growled, affixing the Necromancer with what he hoped was, if not intimidating, a stare that conveyed he was not to be pushed around.

“Oh, nothing much. Just pleased to find out that I was right. And that I’m less likely to be killed and reanimated, though being honest that’s not really more fearsome a thought for me than simple death.”

Arion frowned.

“Right about what?”

She’d dropped that hint deliberately, to lure him into asking, to keep herself ahead of the conversation and ensure he continued following after her for crumbs of information. But that was just the way of it, right now she knew something he didn’t, and that gave her all the power. Better to focus on getting what he could rather than futilely try to turn around a hopeless imbalance.

“About your Master.” She beamed, sweetly. “Good thinking, on his part, with Finlay. Damned good thinking.”

Arion froze. She hadn’t said Baird.