The night had not been easy. Theo had eaten what he could before packing his gear away and stowing it at the foot of the bed he’d claimed in a room near Eisengrim’s. The young bull lay naked in the dark, staring up at the black ceiling as he waited for a sleep he quietly dreaded. He had used the inn’s public bath with some of the other soldiers on the burial detail before coming up here alone, bringing the vivid memories of them with him. He had been so distraught at what had happened, so desperate to feel alive that he had begun to do something incredibly stupid when he and a blonde, bearded fellow had been alone together. Looking back on it now, it seemed a miracle to Theo he had been able to stop himself. He had so desperately wanted to reach out, to feel life and lust pressing against him…

“Dammit,” he muttered in the dark, shutting his eyes. It was almost as bad as the dreams he knew would come. He had been weak and afraid, and it could have cost him his life if he had not heard another’s approach as he did, and held his tongue when he did. Memories of the bulls he had watched killed for wanting what he did slowly slipped to the forefront of Theo’s thoughts. That could have been him, so very easily. He needed to remember himself, and maintain his discipline. He was not in Gozer now. Where he was going, not even his star stone would save him if his will slipped and he was found out.

Theo stared up into the dark. The dreams would come, but before they did the blonde fellow with the beard and thick, wet body returned vividly in his head. The young bull let out a groan of frustration as he felt his loins begin to stir, while his hand slid down his belly to find them.

“Dammit.”

*

“You look terrible,” Klara told him as they regrouped outside the inn. They had gathered their things, and had bid goodbye to a conscious and irritable Eisengrim. Despite both the hour and his injuries, the old bull was dictating a letter intended for his Majesty to a knight who could not stop yawning between his barely legible scribbles.

“I couldn’t sleep,” replied Theo, unable to meet her gaze.

They set out for Eichen’s northern gate with a score of men-at-arms and not another word between them. After leaving the inhabited and heavily secured part of town, it seemed as if they had entered another world entirely. The streets were silent and empty, covered in a layer of dust that made Theo think of the Capital in winter. Their booted feet scrunched into the thin layers of earth that covered the cobbled ground. The only other sound to reach their ears was their breathing as they marched.

“Are you still thinking about leaving?” Klara asked him after they had been walking side by side in silence for some time.

Theo offered a minimal shrug, careful of his shoulder and his ribs now that all he needed to do was walk. He had no idea what to say, and just then lacked the strength to lie.

Klara took his silence as an opening to continue the conversation. “This whole event has made me…think about things,” the Shield continued. She looked as bad as the young bull felt. Would either of them ever have another restful night?

“Like what?” he asked.

“My father’s getting old, Theo. Mother likes to spend the money of our tenants, but doesn’t care about any of the responsibility that comes with that money.”

“That never bothered you before,” he replied. Yes, he was still seriously thinking about leaving the Order. He’d fulfilled the promise he’d made to Siegfried as the prince died in his arms. Had he killed Rahm when he had the chance, had Rahm’s arrow not killed Dietrich, Theo could not truly say if he’d still be taking Eisengrim’s orders. What right did he have to quibble with Klara, if she were looking for a way out too? Good God, Eisengrim might be the only hunter left soon. Were any of us ready for this?

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It was Klara’s turn to shrug, and when she did, the conversation ended. They walked on, and eventually the northern gate lay open and unattended before them. They passed quietly under it, and beheld a wasteland of silenced, crumbling nature.

Klara let out a despairing sigh. Theo could only stare at the branchless, cracked trees. Dead leaves and other detritus of the forest lay piled high about them, some of it spilling out onto the old road. The soldiers had said this devastation reached out nearly two miles as the crow flew. Volkard had done this, in the same way he had butchered his own people. This was the nature of magic, and its price: those who wielded it could change the world...at the cost of every living thing within a certain proximity. The magic Volkard had used to shatter the temple courtyard and devour the duke, his men, and Gerda, had required an appropriate sacrifice. Two weeks ago, though Theo had taken his oath and become a hunter of the Order, the bull hadn’t believed in any of this. Not even Dietrich’s insistence on the reality of magic made it any more real to the minotaur. In the last week and more, in the wake of his visit to Kurt Bauer’s farmstead, it had all become too horribly real to the young bull. Was he a coward for wanting to return to that state of smug ignorance, when this had seemed an easy, cushy job with pay and status he had not really earned?

“Let’s get out of here,” said Klara.

They followed the mostly straight road. Here and there roots had begun to disrupt its dirt surface, rising up like veins in an old person’s arm. Theo stepped on one such vein experimentally. It crumbled to dust under his boot. Ashes to ashes, he thought. He walked quickly to catch up with his friend, walking past men with shields and spears with pale white faces and frightened gaits. No one spoke. The breeze sounded strange out here amid the desolation. The rising run made the trees to their right glow a bloody shade of red. Lances of light created bizarre shapes amid the dead trees. Theo had never believed he could miss the sound of conversation or the singing of birds as much as he did just then.

“We’re nearly there,” Klara said, as if sensing his anxiety. “We’ll soon be on our way.”

But she was wrong. They weren’t going anywhere just yet.

Theo saw the dead man first. His feet were sticking up from a ditch by the road as if he were a drunk that had fallen down and, rather than bothering to rise, had decided to sleep where he had landed. His sword lay a few feet from him on the road. He was in the king’s colours, and some of the men with them identified him as the guard left here to protect the horses. His chest was a wet, ruined mess. The lantern he’d been given lay nearby, crushed neatly flat.

Klara swore and drew her sword. The men readied their spears. Theo slipped on his knuckle dusters with a detached deliberateness. His armour was in his pack, but he had little fear. The man’s flesh was cold to the touch, just like Dietrich and Siegfried’s when he had finally got around to burying them. They proceeded forward.

The camp the men had made was just off the road. They could see where thick ropes had been tied between the trees to give the horses something of a pen as they waited out here amid the woods. They had all been cut. The horses were all gone. A quartet of men lay around a burnt out fire, their necks crushed. The last of the six posted here they found thirty feet deeper into the woods, and Theo could only hope with what had been done to him that the poor fellow had died instantly.

“This must have happened while it was still dark,” he heard Klara saying with awed horror. “How could he have even found them?”

The memories of the day that had brought such destruction rushed to meet Theo, as he stood over the shattered body of the last guard. He had stumbled blind through the storm of dust then, barely able to understand where he was. Rahm, though, had found him as though the air were clear and the sun shining. What had he said that day? Theo struggled to remember, but it had to do with the discoloured eye on that ruined side of his face. What had he said then?

“You burn. Like a lighthouse in the fog. Your hate. Your sadness. They burn.”

“I think he can see in the dark,” Theo offered. He had no other way to explain it. What Rahm had said had not made any sense to him then, but it was disturbing. “I think he can see people, at least in the dark, or through things. I think Volkard did something to him. His face was scarred on one side and that eye looked...unnatural the other day. He didn’t look like that the first time we met him.”

“It doesn’t matter right now,” Klara snarled, looking sharply about the dead men and the ruined camp. “The horses are all gone!” She spied a coffee pot nearby. A vicious kick sent the metal accoutrement bouncing between the trees. “Shit! Shit!”

“Looks like we’re walking,” the Oak sighed.