“Please Val, can’t you ask for lighter hours?”

The microwave whirred as it gradually melted a frozen lasagna into dinner. What would she do without a microwave? The damn assault case had kept her late again. Years in school to write forty pages detailing the daily activities of a curmudgeonly widower with a penchant for punching unwanted solicitors. She hadn’t expected working in a district attorney’s office to be as exciting as a police procedural, but couldn’t they spend time pursuing even a single premeditated crime?

It didn’t help that the seven-person office she worked at was in, as she liked to call it, The Middle of Nowhere County, an hour’s drive from the city. Every day during her commute, traffic jams on the other side of the interstate reminded her that her workplace was the bottom of the rung. Not a person in the office, from the D.A. to the janitor, saw themself there in five years.

Personally, she planned to be frustrated by rush-hour traffic in five years.

All climbing the ladder took was diligence. Paralegals worked in a competitive environment, especially ones in prestigious environments like high-paying law firms or much lower-paying D.A. offices — too draining for all the new hires that left each year — and Valerie thrived in it. Why couldn’t he understand this? They’d both understood what working at a D.A.’s office would mean, even a tiny one out in the boonies. Yes, the job asked a lot for the first few years, and more, if one kept climbing the ladder, but that was the cost of working in a career with a path. Put in the hours, produce results, and countless doors would open for her, for their family.

Today, she’d put in a large number of those hours, and all she wanted was to eat in peace and then go to sleep. Not to slog through this argument for the thousandth time.

“The first couple of years are the worst, but once I prove myself, I can apply to the office in the city. In five years, I could be a manager, or I could go to law school.”

“Valerie, think — ”

The microwaved went off, interrupting Ruben. Valerie retrieved her limp lasagna and moved to the dinner table, with Ruben following and taking the seat beside her. Jack’s seat.

“Valerie, think about the kids. Entire weeks go by without seeing their mother. Sophia especially, she’s a toddler. She needs her mother. And Jack — ”

“What do you think I’m trying to get a raise for? A cocaine addiction? It’s for the kids! Think about it, Ruben. We could move out of this apartment, buy a house. Move to a neighborhood with better schools.”

“Yes, I know you’re thinking of the kids, but there have to be law firms that pay as well and aren’t so demanding. If it’s in the city, you’d have a shorter commute, too.”

Valerie took another bite of the springy, plasticky, tasteless pasta. A perfect match for the soggy, rubbery breaded chicken. At least the sauce tasted fine.

“Do we have to argue about this right now? Can’t we wait till next week?”

“It’s Jack — I think we should see his school counselor, together. Maybe hire a therapist or a child psychologist.”

Valerie put down her fork. Jack, Jack, always getting into trouble. This year, he’d fallen in with a group of boys that were constantly acting up at school. She’d become accustomed to getting calls from the vice-principal about Jack writing profanities on the bathroom stalls with sharpies, or Jack stealing desserts from the cafeteria, or Jack missing class. Well, she was accustomed to Ruben taking the calls and relaying them to her.

“What happened?” Her money was on graffiti. The last call had been about a penis drawn on the stall door. She hoped it wasn’t another fight. In the first one — she hoped it would be the only one — the other kid had only received a few scrapes, and the parents had graciously declined to pursue charges. “Did he graffiti the bathroom again? Do you know how expensive child psychologists are?”

Ruben sucked in his lips and broke eye contact.

“Ruben, what happened?”

“Promise me you won’t get angry.”

A serious incident. So, it was another fight.

“Fine, I won’t get angry.”

Ruben sighed. “Jack stole a lighter from a 7-Eleven.”

“What?” Her voice shot up in pitch, the word cracking like a whip.

“Val, you promised — ”

“He was stealing?”

Playing hooky and stealing food at school were harmless, childish misbehaviors. Combining them to rob a store was something else entirely.

“The cops said they see it all the time,” Ruben explained in a rush, “Kids acting out, pushing the boundaries, curious about what’ll happen. That’s why they took him to the station — they just wanted to scare him a little. He’s not in trouble.”

“Oh, he’s in trouble. Where is he?”

By now, he ought to be asleep. If he wasn’t in his room, he’d better be praying to God for mercy.

“He’s sleeping. I think we should talk with his school counselor, maybe see — Val, let him sleep.” Ruben hastily stood up to match Valerie and tried to block her way. “I already talked to him! Val!”

Valerie pushed by him. “You want him to end up in juvie? In jail?”

Ruben kept with her, a hand on her arm, pulling gently. “Val, you can talk to him tomorrow, when everyone’s calmed down.”

Reaching Jack’s room, she threw open the door. “Jack? Are you awake?”

A curled-up form was fully under the covers; Jack’s head didn’t rest on the pillow, making it obvious that he was, indeed, awake and had heard them coming up the stairs.

“Get out of bed,” Valerie ordered.

“Val,” Ruben said, trying to respond for Jack, “there’s no need.”

“You’re way too lenient with him. He needs to learn there are consequences, he can’t just get away with whatever he wants. I said, GET UP!” Valerie’s shout filled the room.

Trembling, dressed in his dinosaur pajamas, Jack slowly got out of bed, eyes glued to the floor.

“You need to stop babying him.”

Valerie seized the boy by the wrists. Realizing what was going to happen, he struggled but couldn’t escape Valerie’s grip. Maneuvering her body weight on top of him, Valerie wrestled the boy to the ground, face-down, and he started crying under her.

“He’s just a kid, Val!”

“He’s seven years old; he needs to grow up.”

She started spanking.

“Val, stop! Please! Stop!”

Ruben grasped her arms, trying to pull her off Jack. Off balance, her body weight shifted enough for Jack to slip out from under her. Jack scrambled out of the bedroom.

“Val, please, that’s enough. Val, please. Please.”

They were the same height and about the same size — a fact that had never bothered him, and her only at the beginning of their relationship — so it wasn’t hard for her to shove Ruben away. He tripped over the base of the lamp and fell on the floor with a thud.

“Val, wait.”

Valerie walked out of the room. “Jack? Where are you?”

As if the future were a crystal-clear memory, she could see the destination toward which her son’s current trajectory carried him. On the other side of the courtroom for stabbing a man in a crime of passion, waiting for the judge to decide how many years of his life would be taken away. Ruben was right; somewhere along the way, she’d neglected her duties as a mother. She’d rectify that right now.

It didn’t take her long to find him. Down the hall, the bathroom door was closed, and behind it, Jack was sobbing, the hiccupping cries muffled by the door. As she walked toward the bathroom, the door at the end of the hall — Sophia’s room — clicked shut quietly, as if the occupant hoped not to be noticed. Good. Sophia will learn this lesson, too. Valerie turned the bathroom doorknob. It was locked.

“Jack, open up.”

Her fist pounded on the door. The sobbing and hiccupping grew louder.

“Jack, if you don’t open this door right now, you’ll regret it.”

The door remained locked. From Jack’s crying, she could tell he was on the opposite side of the bathroom and hadn’t moved any closer.

“Disobeying me? You’re making things worse.”

The bathroom lock was a privacy lock with a small round hole, easily opened in emergencies. Removing her hand from the doorknob, she went downstairs and returned with a meat skewer. As she jiggled the skewer into the lock, from inside the bathroom rose a clatter of bottles being knocked off shelves.

“Jack, what are you doing?”

She opened the door. No longer in the bathroom, having climbed through the opened window, Jack, still hiccupping, scrabbled on the slate tiles of the roof of the shop next door, trying to climb down.

Had he gone insane? If he slipped on the angled tiles, there was only concrete below.

“Get back here!” Valerie yelled. “That’s dangerous!”

Jack slipped, yelped, and disappeared over the edge of the roof. The sharp crack of bone breaking against concrete.

“Jack?”

Valerie leaned out, but the roof blocked her view of the ground immediately below, letting her see, further out, the pathway leading to the street. No response, and no sign of Jack. Had he managed to run to the street before she’d reached the window? Or had he crept around the building to the back?

“Val, please,” Ruben said, approaching behind her. “Let him out. You’ve — where is he?”

Ruben pushed her aside and ran to the bathroom window.

“Val, what happened? Oh my god. Jack? Jack!”

Ruben ran down the stairs, his footfalls like the beat of a drum.

Damnation. If Jack ran away, they’d have to go out searching. No, they’d have to call the police. A seven-year-old alone in the city at 1 am? Even for a child, he had no sense. A wave of anxiety and exhaustion washed over Valerie. Why tonight? Why did he have to run away tonight?

The lock on the front door clicked open, and Ruben’s feet slapped against the pavement.

“Oh my god.” Ruben voice rose up from beneath the slate tiles, drifting through the bathroom window. “Jack. Oh my god.”

“He’s still here? Jack?”

Overcome with relief, Valerie listened, waiting for Jack to respond. As long as he hadn’t run away. He’d respond when he was ready. The boy was always doing dangerous things, sliding down railings, walking and balancing on anything narrow, running around with his friends. He wouldn’t slip. Or if he slipped, he’d scrape his hands and knees. He’d get right back up and declare he didn’t hurt a bit. But why didn’t he respond? Why was Ruben so worked up?

“Val! Valerie! Call an ambulance. Jack, stay with me. Jack, Jack. Valerie!”

“Is he — ”

“Call a fucking ambulance!”

Jack was injured. Her son was injured. He’d fallen off the roof — Jack would never fall off a roof — and he wasn’t responding. It seemed impossible.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Okay,” Valerie shouted back. She pulled out her phone and dialed 911 as she hurried down the stairs, needing to see whether Jack was really injured. Maybe he was faking it to guilt-trip her.

A woman’s calm and even voice spoke on the other end. “Hello, is this an emergency?”

“Yes, I mean, I think so. 300 West Jefferson Street, Apartment 207. My son . . . ”

When Valerie turned at the bottom of the stairs, Jack, prone, came into view through the wide-open front door, his head and feet visible behind Ruben’s crouching form. Blood. Where did all that blood come from? Ruben’s hands hovered over Jack’s face, wanting to help him but not sure how.

“Are they coming?” Ruben yelled without looking back.

“You said your son . . . ?” the woman on the line prompted.

“My son fell off the roof,” Valerie responded. “It’s — it’s a slate roof, we’re on the second floor, I’m sure he’s climbed on it before … ”

“Hold on.” A moment passed. “An ambulance is on its way. They’ll be there in three minutes.”

“Valerie, he doesn’t have a pulse! There’s no — ”

Instructions from a two-day first-aid course echoed in her mind. “Check his breathing! I’ll get a towel. We need to stop the bleeding.”

“ — pulse! His head, oh my God.”

Valerie dashed back inside to the kitchen, phone held against her ear with one hand, and with the other yanked the hand-drying towel from the door of the refrigerator. She sprinted out and shoved the towel into Ruben’s hands.

“Press this against his head!”

“Where?”

She gingerly touched Jack’s head. It didn’t seem real: Jack, falling and injuring himself; Jack, unconscious. Was he faking it? It wouldn’t be the first — ”

“Where?! Val!”

“Wherever the blood is coming from! I’ll — I’ll start CPR.”

If he truly was — for patients who weren’t breathing, mouth-to-mouth breaths were the more important part, but to open the airway she needed to tilt Jack’s head back. Would that be safe, moving his head, from which so much blood was streaming down into a growing pool on the concrete? As Ruben tried to wrap the towel under Jack’s head, Valerie helped while tilting it back. Then she pinched Jack’s nose, opened his mouth, covered it with hers, and tried to breathe for her son. After three breaths — one extra because she wasn’t sure if she was doing it correctly — she started on chest compressions.

The next three minutes were the longest in Valerie’s life.

The paramedics loaded Jack into the ambulance and blocked a frantic Ruben. Valerie ran inside for her keys, and they drove behind the ambulance to the hospital.

At the hospital, Jack was declared dead on arrival.

The police came shortly afterward. Ruben talked to them. While at school for her paralegal certification and at the D.A.’s office, Valerie had had it seared into her that it never helped to talk to police officers, but she didn’t stop him. The police officers, as it turned out in an odd coincidence, were the same ones who had picked up Jack at the 7-Eleven earlier in the day.

Ruben was defending her, but his eyes were filled with grief, and when they turned toward Valerie, disgust, as if she’d murdered his son.

* * *

The red sun was high overhead, still ineffective at heating the objects of its angry gaze, when Elro and Valerie returned to the temple, which was quiet, the loud knights absent from its halls. After picking up her helm and boots from her room, she reached the main hall where the knights had already gathered. They lounged and chatted in quiet voices as if the shadow of imminent battle against monsters didn’t hang over them.

Just as she took a seat, Paladin Light spoke from the front of the hall.

“Knights, yesterday, we rode from Castia’s gates in a race against darkness. Thousands of lives were saved due to our timely and valiant actions. Today, we’ll ride to as many villages as we can, looking for survivors. You know I do not lie to you. No matter how hard we ride today, terrible scenes await us. While I pray otherwise, few villages have the strength to repel the Twisted. When we reach them, you’ll be frustrated that there are so many we failed to save. I won’t tell you to remember that we’re doing our best, that we can only do so much, that it’s out of our hands. Those words are vain. I will say: focus on the people you’re saving. Think of the refugees last night, and think of those still out there hiding, struggling to live, whom we’re trying to reach. We will find them, and we will bring them back.”

As everyone stood, armor clanking as if in metallic applause, Valerie found her hand on the hilt of her sword, remembering what it had felt like to slice through the Twisted Stalkers in the fields outside the walls. She felt like a guitar whose strings had been strummed and refused to fade. She wanted to hit something, kill something.

Paladin Light led them out of the temple, Valerie on his heels, her steel boots heavy, clanking, and ridiculous, toward a different gate from the one through which they’d entered Castia.

“These’ll be real fights,” Paladin Light said to her after slowing down so they were walking side-by-side, “but I’ll keep you safe. Stay behind me, but don’t stab me, please. When we get a beast on the ground, I’ll signal you to finish it off. For now, I want to get you to Level 5 as fast as possible.”

“Are the gates still closed?” she asked, genuinely curious.

Paladin Light waved his hand dismissively. “I’m on the King’s Council, and I sent a report to Rhine. The king’s permission will arrive soon.”

“We won’t get locked out of the city again?”

“Relgar wouldn’t dare. It’s not a good look when criminals are doing more for the people than the nobles. That’s how rulers get overthrown.”

So, the flying woman from the night before was a criminal? Yet she had the authority to open the gates? Was this city run by the mafia? None of it made sense, which was par for the course.

A crowd of guards was lined up to meet them at the gate, and a similar number armed with crossbows lined the top of the wall. Dented and patched, their breastplates and helms looked like cheap hand-me-downs compared to the polished armor of the Holy Knights, but the guards’ precise formation and identical postures refused to lose that of the Order of Light. Compared to the police she was familiar with, these guards seemed closer to soldiers.

As the knights of the Order of Light approached, a stocky guard stepped forward.

“Paladin Light,” the stocky guard said as he saluted.

“Captain Chelov.” Paladin Light nodded back. “Thank you for your assistance.”

“Look, about the business the other day — ”

“I understand, Captain. We all must follow orders. I saw you had your guards shooting anyway; they saved many lives.”

The Captain nodded, relieved, but Valerie had a hard time believing Paladin Light wasn’t just being magnanimous. Rather, wasn’t that line a load of obvious bullshit, coming from him? No one ordered around the Paladin of Light.

“I didn’t want to leave you out there, but they came from the king himself. They’d have my head for disobeying if I opened the gates on my own. Glad the Crimson Tide saw fit to take action. They’re not bad fellows, the Crimson Tide. Besides the stealing and beatings and such.”

If this bootlicker wanted to make amends for mindlessly following orders, not to mention beating the refugees after they’d been let in, he’d shut up and let the Order go save whoever was left. And refrain from beating the refugees when the Order brought them back.

“Has there been activity?” Paladin Light asked as casually as if he were asking about the weather.

“Too much,” Captain Chelov said quickly. “From the top of the wall, more often than not you can see packs of Stalkers roaming. Haven’t heard any screams, so we’re not sure what they’re doing, just seem to be roaming. We haven’t seen a Horde, but if you run into one, you can fall back to the gate and we’ll cover you. I hope you find some people.”

“Thanks. May light shine on you.”

“‘Course, ‘course, and you, too.” Captain Chelov gave a small bow.

How could Paladin Light finish that conversation with a smile on his face? While this bootlicker was shamelessly brownnosing, those “some people” were hiding or fighting for their lives. If Valerie had been the recipient of the good Captain’s excuses, his butt would’ve been clenched tight enough to shit diamonds.

Once they were through the gate, Paladin Light thanked the Guard Captain again and said his farewells. Then, as though he hadn’t wasted enough time already, the Guard Captain opened his mouth, as he apparently had one more question on his mind.

“Paladin, I have a wife and two daughters in Castia. I keep telling them it’s gonna be all right, that the king’ll levy the knights, but if not, Light forbid, how long do you think we have? With you culling the Twisted?”

“A month,” Paladin Light answered without hesitation. “Perhaps less.”

That threw Valerie off. Were they not safe in the city? Once the refugees had entered the walls, everyone had seemed relieved. The beasts couldn’t climb the walls or knock down the gates, as far as she knew. They roamed outside the walls, but they’d retreated from the walls.

It had to be food. Although the Temple of Light seemed to be unconcerned with the food supply, her brief trip through the market, with the empty stalls and the long lines in the food section, hinted that rationing had begun. The villages that had been destroyed must have provided food for the city, and the farms had been destroyed as well. And it would be too dangerous to farm outside the city until the Twisted were cleared out.

But — a month? Paladin Light could have expected the question and prepared to lie without hesitation. It didn’t matter to Valerie; as long as she stayed with Paladin Light, she’d be safe. She had to focus on the upcoming fight. She wouldn’t embarrass herself. She might not have had training, but she’d killed those monsters without training.

Prove your worth.

With a wave, the guard captain sent them off. “May your way be lit, Paladin.”

Captain Chelov had been right; before the Holy Knights had finished filing through the gate, they caught sight of a Stalker pack loping in the distance. Deciding it would be a waste of energy to chase packs of Stalkers around, they ignored the pack and marched down the road.

They marched at a brisk pace for a quarter of an hour before they were attacked by a pack of Stalkers. Paladin Light ordered Valerie to remain in the center of the group, and the knights cut down all of the beasts except one, which Paladin Light wanted to save for Valerie.

It was embarrassing, approaching the Stalker with all eyes on her. She felt like a baby chick, and Mommy Light was pre-chewing food for her.

Paladin Light darted around the Stalker, slicing its legs as he passed them. After the Stalker collapsed, he pulled back.

“Circle it and try to stab it in the side.” Paladin Light demonstrated a quick thrust with his sword. “Neck is best, abdomen if that’s all you can reach. It’s down, but watch out for the teeth.”

Holding the sword out in front of her, she approached the downed Stalker. Red eyes blinded by rage bored into her. The sight of long, sharp teeth revealed by lips parted by snarling made Valerie’s wounds ache. The wolf tried to lunge at her and snapped its jaws, and Valerie jumped back, but it collapsed without coming close to her.

Focus. Paladin Light was right here; there was no danger. She did it last night. Circle and stab, circle and stab.

Valerie sidestepped to her right, and the Stalker’s head turned with her. It was now or never. With a lunge, the sword plunged into the Stalker’s side. It, attempting to stand up, took Valerie’s thrust lower than she’d intended, in its stomach.

The Stalker yelped, briefly reminding Valerie of a dog — a very large and angry dog — before it resumed snarling and snapping.

“Good,” came Paladin Light’s voice from behind her. “Again.”

Her sword sliced in and out, drawing dripping purple lines in the Stalker until it stopped struggling. She looked to Paladin Light, who nodded in approval, and realized that she was smiling. She was good at this Paladin job.

Once they reached the edge of the evacuation radius, they split into two groups. Paladin Mirror, the large silver knight, continued with the larger group along the road, and Paladin Light took a smaller group off the road in the direction of a village called Melvale, which was near enough that rising smoke was visible on the horizon. The plan was to check Melvale and then catch up with Paladin Mirror afterward.

Minutes later, Paladin Light’s group reached Melvale. What remained of it. Amelia’s village likely looked the same right now. The wooden buildings were blackened ruins, a few foundations visible, most buried in rubble and ash. The stone buildings stood, their walls streaked with soot like so many charcoal murals. Small fires wavered in places, fading memories of the night before. Also, there were corpses. Mauled and burned beyond recognition.

“Looks empty,” a knight said in a low voice.

“Twisted don’t cede ground,” Paladin Light said sharply. “Ready your swords.”

As if on cue, or, perhaps more realistically, alerted by the sound of voices, from several of the still-standing stone residences emerged an assortment of woodland creatures — deer, a couple of Stalkers, rabbits, raccoons, a tide of small rodents, along with a bunch of other animals that Valerie didn’t have the time to recognize — like a twisted Disney movie in which all the animals had rabies.

Now she understood why they’d had her wear the boots.

“Abomination!” The knight’s shout was followed by an ear-piercing shriek. Seventeen helmed heads turned in unison, and seventeen swords pointed at the sound’s source. Behind them, what looked like a patchwork of creatures, the size and vaguely the shape of a cow, with many more than four legs, and two heads with a large number of sharp teeth stepped out of the ruins of a building. Its skin varied between thick black fur like a Gorilla’s, the scales of a reptile, and thick, wrinkled gray skin like a rhinoceros.

“Hold the line!” Paladin Light ordered. “I’ll handle the Abomination.”

Paladin Light motioned for Valerie to go with the rest of the knights. When it came down to it, it seemed he would treat her as an adult. Blood thumping in her ears, she lined up with the other knights in a semicircle, and they advanced in unison toward the area with the greatest number of Twisted.

As they fought, Valerie noticed that the knights were covering for her, the newbie. Each knight had their own personal area that they tended to, stomping on rats and slashing at beasts, pressing forward until they reached the invisible border of their domain, and then they would retreat back to the center of their domain. The knights didn’t assist each other, and they didn’t need assistance — except for Valerie. The knights adjacent to her were clearly covering for her, letting their areas reach all the way to Valerie herself.

She didn’t resent them. Where their swords glided through flesh, Valerie’s caught awkwardly, when they pivoted back and forth between two or three creatures while stomping on rodents, she struggled with a single chittering raccoon. But she killed them. When her sword caught, she kicked the beast and pulled until it was free. If one swing wouldn’t kill it, she hacked again and again. When her sword was knocked from her hands, she punched with her fist and charged after her sword.

She might be new to this, but she was good at it.

“Valerie, get back in line!”

The therapists and psychiatrists had all been a waste of money — a court-ordered waste. Violent exercise was exactly what Valerie needed. To vent her frustration, to grapple with a physical, tangible opponent and beat it bloody. To emerge victorious. If this broken world wanted to drag her here, take away the little bit of support she had left — her medication, her hope of reconnecting with her family — then she’d adapt. She’d slash, punch, kick, and stomp whatever this world threw at her until it lay twitching at her feet.

“Valerie, stop!”

Her foot buzzed, the sole of her boot having struck something hard. Belatedly, she realized it was armor. An armored mouse.

“Valerie, it’s me!’'

Mistaking him for a Twisted creature, she’d tried to stomp on him. Somehow, Elro had repelled her stomp from underneath. He jumped up and seized her boot, his heavy armored body hampering her movement.

A gauntleted hand grabbed her arm and roughly dragged her back to the line of knights, past them, to Paladin Light, who stood over the corpse of the Abomination. She’d made it quite a distance away.

“What were you thinking?” Paladin Light wasn’t even short of breath. “The knights had to break the line to cover you. I can’t be wasting heals on this small of a fight.”

The fight was over. Their swords sheathed, the knights were stomping in circles, rather comically if one ignored the tiny twitching forms darting around their feet and the periodic squelching sounds. The knights were scratched up, bruised in places, but they stood without swaying, and they didn’t have chunks taken out of them.

If he didn’t want to waste healing, then he shouldn’t waste it. The knights were fine.

“Elro, take her back to Castia. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Elro looked at her quizzically, as if asking how hard she would make his task. Valerie shrugged sharply, turning around without picking up the mouse and giving the Paladin of Light a scathing parting glare.

The golden knight, the knight that stood for all that was good and holy, the strongest man in Rhine, protector of the weak, savior of the doomed, the ray of yellow in this world lit by a red sun. The man who wouldn’t chastise a guard captain who stood by while citizens on his doorstep were slaughtered and beat them bloody when they made it to shelter.

Adorable golden Paladin of LIght, don’t you see? Your world is brutal and bloody.

That’s why she’d been brought here. She belonged in this world more than he did.