The moment had finally come.
The great city of Bazkatla—the Crown of the Mesas, the Jewel of the Adba Coast—faced the sunset, perched atop the edge of the distant mesa, on stark cliffs abutting the roaring sea. Waves leapt at the sea-cliffs; wind swept the sea-spray over the terraces, stairs, and winding roads that Bazkatla etched into the rock face, linking the city on the plateau to the ports down below.
It had been weeks since ships had last docked in Bazkatla’s ports. Broad, white sails that had once billowed in the winds like gulls’ wings were nowhere to be seen. But this was to be expected. There was no such thing as a war without cost.
For months, the armies of the Second Crusade had traveled up and down the shallow cliffs and rift valleys that marred the lands of northern Jafra, for faith, for Empire, and for glory. But the people of Bazkatla had chosen to stay and fight. Finn Logain could hardly blame them. Even as a youth in a quiet village in the Riscolt Mountains’ winding foothills, Finn had heard tales of the great Maikokan city; of the walls that had never fallen; of the great gate that watched over the riches of the far-flung world. Jade mined from the valleys’ depths tiled the gate in a forest of different greens. From a distance, the gate’s tiles seemed to move, shivering in an unseen wind.
On any other day, Finn would have called it paradise. The Maikokans had turned arid flats into lush farmland. Rich soil and bountiful harvests blessed the irregular landscape, hence the name by which the natives called it: the Footprints of the Gods. Canals scored the earth’s surface, fed by the reservoir that flanked Bazkatla’s walls. The artificial lake was a mirror for the sunset sky, more like a work of God than of Man. To Finn and his friends, the mirror showed their own, damned souls and the sight of the landscape behind them in its slow descent into the jaws of hell. Wooden villages had been shredded by claws and teeth and lit up in flames. Peppers roasted; potatoes blackened in the bloody earth. Dead livestock littered fields and roads with their sun-bleached bones. The air itself bellowed.
Smoke.
The screams of the dying.
The roars of the dead.
“We have to stop him,” Finn said. “The revenants will overrun the land. All the people…”
The dead pagans’ bodies did not stay still for long. Unholy life wriggled through their bones, remaking them into revenants. Revenants scoured the earth like locusts, devouring everything in their path, and the death they sowed in their path reaped a rapid harvest.
They were inhuman monsters.
But, then again, Finn thought, so are we.
Finn turned to face Jak and Lorn. He’d only known them for about a year, but in that year, they might as well have lived a lifetime. Despite their different backgrounds, their hopes had set them down on similar paths. Jak had lived his whole life among the Templars, abandoned to the knightly order as a child. All his life, he’d wanted nothing more than to make Master Edwin proud and live a life of service as noble and selfless as the men that had raised him—to use his God-given strength for a worthy cause. Lorn Brillguard had enlisted for his family’s honor. As the young aristocrat so often told Finn, victory in battle would bring status and the spoils of war—everything that his impoverished family had always dreamed of having.
And Finn, himself? He’d wanted to be a Templar, to be like the heroes of legend.
Finn smiled, but only briefly. All the hours of sparring and swordsmanship, the weeks of marching, the fervent prayer… he’d finally made his wish come true. He was a Templar, through and through; a defender of the faith.
It made his next words so difficult. Too difficult.
“The Second Crusade has to end,” Finn said, “or it will end all of us.”
The knight placed his hand on the insignia emblazoned on the breastplate of his chain mail: the Templar’s sigil, a golden triangle, perfectly symmetric, yet tilted toward the sky—the symbol of valiant faith. Finn had dedicated his life to that symbol and to all it represented: the defense of the faithful—the pilgrims, and the missionaries; the defense of the innocent; the hope for a better tomorrow—and he had failed.
“What was it all for, then?” Jak asked. His words came out in a raspy, lisping growl, “the Beast Blessings? Our conquest?”
The Templar foundling’s body bore the scars of the Blessing, as did his spirit.
Jak of the Knights of the Fang stood twice as tall as Finn and Lorn. His torso was a tower of boulders of muscle. Each of his shoulders was as long as a grown man’s legs. A fully formed third arm grew below his right arm. Half of his face bloated into a snout. A tusk protruded upward from his lower jaw. Wisps of fur grew like weeds from between the joints of his greaves.
“It was all a lie, wasn’t it?” Jak said.
With every life Jak had taken, the light in his eyes had dimmed a little further. Finn had spent many nights just talking with Jak, trying to banish the guilt that filled Jak’s sleep with screams and terrors.
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“We’ll end up losing our minds just like the others—Commander Goneril, Lord Fulheart.” Lorn turned away, facing the reservoir and its placid waters. “I don’t want to become a monster…” Plumes of black fire bubbled up over his lips, between his tusks. It dripped down his chin like saliva.
Lorn had been the first of them to break. He’d used the Blessing far more often than any of them, often for far longer stretches of time, sometimes days at a time. For him, the turning point had been the realization that he would never be able to return home.
Finn remembered the moment like it was yesterday:
“Honor is for commanders, not for their weapons,” he’d said, spitting flames.
Finn lowered his gaze. “I think we were already monsters. We made our choice when we pledged our fealty to Eadric.”
Eadric Athelmarch, One-Hundred Sixty-Ninth Lassedite; the Devil with the Silver Tongue; the Wielder of the Sword of the Angel. Eadric was gifted beyond measure. When he spoke, the world made sense. Even the augur birds stopped to listen to him. His promises alone could feed armies.
“Maybe if we had shown the strength to stand against him…” Finn said, “perhaps that might have spared us. But we didn’t.”
In the beginning, they’d followed Eadric without question. When Eadric ordered the execution of the children at the Benundi temple, Finn had trusted the Lassedite when he’d said it was the right choice to make. When Eadric ordered them to give no quarter in the Siege of Ag Elom… they’d given no quarter.
“We followed blindly,” Finn whispered.
He could still see the ruddy faces of mother and elders, their dark hair matted in sweat and ash, begging for mercy in a language Finn could barely understand.
Only to meet their ends at his hands.
“We have blood on our hands.”
And what did they have to show for it?
Words. Just… words.
The pagans have turned to their false gods, hoping their evil magicks will save them from the Angel’s cleansing Light. They welcome demons into their corpses. They do not care if the creatures kill their own people! If the prize is our defeat, no sacrifice is too great for them. We have to be better than them! We cannot lose sight of our goodness; only it can guide us.
Lassedite Athelmarch’s words still range loud in Finn’s head.
“It never made sense to me,” Finn said, exhaling bitterly. “If the Beast Blessings were a gift from God like Eadric claimed, why would using them drive us to madness?”
Finn blamed himself for doubting his doubts. His mother had raised him to be better than that.
“The changes happen whether we use the powers or not,” Lorn said.
The form of the Beast had bled into Lorn’s body more so than most. From below the waist, he had the body of a massive lion, twice the size of the largest warhorse. A furred dragon’s tail tapered out from behind him, thick and sinuous, its tip was swathed in black flame.
“Soon, we’ll go mad and slaughter friend and foe alike,” Lorn said. “You’d have to be a fool to call this a Blessing. It’s a curse, and one we deserve.” He dug into the ground with all four of his legs, raking his retractable claws across the soil. He rocked back and forth and side-to-side, too nervous to pace.
“I meant what I said, Lorn,” Finn said, looking his friend in the eye. “If you… go… before I do, I promise, I’ll stop you.”
The poor noble looked back at Finn with tears in his eyes. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough to say the same,” he said, shaking his head.
Jak stomped his foot in anger. “No. I don’t want to hear any more of this! I don’t want to think about the end. I want to think about what we can do. There has to be something!” Jak’s agitated breaths rumbled in his cavernous chest.
“But what can we do?” Lorn pleaded, his arms trembling. “Eadric has the Sword. What are we against that kind of power?”
“We’re the last, best hope,” Finn said, looking his friend in the eye.
“Eadric told us these powers were the Angel’s Blessing, a chance to channel a sliver of the Hallowed Beast’s power in the name of righteousness and justice. When Eadric said it, it might have been a lie, but I think we can still make those words ring true.”
Finn hated that he’d let himself go drunk on Eadric’s promises of holy power. Even after Finn’s loyalties had begun wavering, he still blamed Eadric for the loss of his humanity. It had taken time for Finn to realize Eadric hadn’t taken anything from him. Finn had surrendered his humanity to the Crusade long before the fateful spell was cast. The magick merely showed the world the monster that Finn had been all-too-eager to let himself become.
“We’ll be Knights of the Fang one last time,” Finn said. “But true knights, not Eadric’s hounds. We’ll let our consciences lead us, like we always should have.”
I just hope I still have a conscience worth following, he thought.
Finn didn’t need to stare into the reflecting waters to know how much he’d changed. Gone was his blond hair; gone were his soft, green eyes. His head was a crown of bony ridges topped by wicked horns. A furred tail twitched behind him. It was not as large as Lorn’s—at least not yet—but its tip was swathed in the Night’s cursed flames all the same.
The Trentonian Empire was the Angel’s gift to His people. Its unity and its strength were the unity and strength the Angel had promised to his Church, and to all that abided in it. That was the truth Finn had known all his life. But now, that same gift had been turned to evil. The holy Sword’s powers had been abused in the name of the true faith, twisted to serve Athelmarch’s bottomless vainglory.
It was ironic: Eadric had given them a cause worth fighting for, not despite his silver-tongued tales, but because of them. The war had seen him become more than just a Templar. He was a Knight of the Fang, the elite of the Templar order, the epitome of all for which the Templars stood.
Like humanity itself, the Knights had fallen.
But we can rise again, Finn thought. He clenched his hand into a fist.
The promise of the Redeemer remained. The Angel would be with them, even through the darkest Night. That was a cause worth fighting for.
“We can’t let him keep the Sword,” Finn said.
Lorn nodded. “No one should wield that kind of power.”
Jak crossed his third arm over his chest. “Without it, the Second Crusade will collapse,” he said. “The Empire would crumble. The Church itself might fall…”
“If it does, I have faith that God will resurrect it, if He so chooses,” Finn said.
If.
“So… what now?” Lorn asked.
“We fight,” Finn said. He scanned the skies. “We’ve probably used up our lead on Eadric. He should be here any moment.”
“But what’s the plan?” Jak asked.
Finn dared to smile. “I’ll let you know if I come up with one.”
By the light of the setting sun, the knight made the Bond-sign.
Angel, guide me.
Briefly closing his eyes, Finn let his arms go slack at his sides, but not before unsheathing four daggers. He clasped two in each hand. With his eyes closed, the power twitching in his chest grew all the more palpable. The wild rush inside him ricocheted betwixt his spine and ribs, itching to be set free—and Finn did just that.