I waited, like the docile, tamed thing I was quickly becoming, for about thirty seconds before I left the kitchen to explore. The last time I had been in the monastery, Alira had wanted me to remain small, quiet, a part of her that she wanted to ignore. I had done as she asked, letting her think she had me under control while I waited. I could watch while she learned things, nudging her in the right direction with a snarky remark when needed. I could still attune to her senses, so I experienced the things she did, but I was a passenger and nothing more.
When she allowed me to help, to animate her body completely, I could feel her relax. I could feel the way she relished in the loss of control and the way I soothed her. It was joy and freedom and the power we had together…
Of course, I could also feel the bonds holding Shadesorrow weaken the longer I merged with her. Unfortunate, to be sure, and ultimately what I had hoped to avoid. But I hadn’t really thought carefully about the consequences when I killed and then reanimated her. Divine pain is as it sounds. It’s god-like in magnitude.
I had been lied to and tricked and made to do such degrading things. And still, when I saw Alira for the first time, I felt the love I had borne for Erin burn brightly again. And as I saw the fierce determination light Alira’s eyes, I was terrified of those bonds of slavery encircling me again. The literal ones and the ones that I didn’t know how to avoid: the bonds that had enslaved my immortal heart.
I admit to acting hastily, to not stopping myself from storming down the destructive path. Much like Divine pain being greater in magnitude, I’ve come to realise that the mistakes the Divine make are also in direct proportion to their powers.
I look back and I see now that Erin’s intention might not have been to guard the soulstones. She bound me there so that Alira would find me. As I held her dead body to me, crying the tears of thousands of years of lost freedom, I could see all that had been done to facilitate Alira and I becoming one. As her blood flowed, her life slipping away, I felt the bonds holding me wither, the slavery I had endured becoming nothing.
But with it, something else was dying too, something that I had never understood until I heard her heart stop and it was slipping from my grasp.
Hope.
I was free to roam now, though, and my curiosity burned. What did the monastery house, besides the monks? Where were the paladins who were not high status? Inquiring minds must know and so I left the warmth of the kitchen, changing my clothes to a monk’s robe. I lifted the hood and entered the hall.
The stone halls were chilled despite the warm summer morning outside and I found that my booted feet were no longer silent, merely muffled and distant. I could hear the deeper, sharper sound of real booted feet and the voices of many grunting in exertion and I followed the sound to the familiar courtyard. It now had two weapon racks set up along the perimeter. One was empty and one housed several long, deadly looking poleaxes. Their bladed heads, long and curved, gleamed in the sunshine. I recognised these weapons as belonging to a long-dead group of humans from the west.
Several men were in the green space, practising some sort of martial art with short, curved swords. Many had removed their shirts, sweat pouring down their hardened bodies as they moved. From the shadows I watched, their movements in complete synchronisation as they flowed through their routine. They were in a formation, one in the front with two rows of three behind him. The first one would move and with a beautiful grace, the others would copy him.
My eyes darted from the weapons to the shirtless men and their powerful motions. I shook myself and strummed the bond to Alira. It strummed back quickly, as though she had been anticipating my contact. The tether felt strong, thinned and hyperextended but still there and strong. Then what was wrong with me?
Because I was clearly unwell if I was watching a group of long dead fanatics practise their warm up routines in the middle of a monastery built to worship the Light. With curiosity burning ever brighter inside me, I faded into the shaded corner and watched.
The one leading the exercise was young looking, richly tanned, lean and average height. He appeared to be roughly the same size as my own human form. His short black hair was sweaty, plastered to his face as he moved. He was clean shaven, like many of the monks I had seen so far. He spun, his sword raised in one hand and as he jabbed forward, he let out his breath in a hiss, directing his focus and energy. Light sizzled along the blade, electricity instead of a steady glow. I melted further into the shadows as I felt the discomfort of that power.
He was wearing his baggy shirt tucked tightly into his form-fitting leather leggings, sweat staining the white material. As he swept low, I saw that he had his ribs bandaged, bound tightly around his chest with a snowy dressing. He had taken a powerful blow to the chest. It had to have been fairly awful if he was unable to use the Light to heal the damage.
He shook his hair out of his face as he spun again, his shout fierce. The group behind him copied, their movements practised and studied. I was impressed as I watched them echo their leader’s movements time and time again with no outward clue as to what movement would come next.
Memories of watching a similar exhibition flooded me.
The group of three men unwound the long scarves from around their head and necks and let them fall to the floor. Their pure white clothes were belted with long cords that ended in tassels and bells. They were barefoot, the cuffs of their pants tight to their ankles.
They bowed to the seated man and woman, dressed in sumptuous fabrics and jewels. I watched with my cat’s eyes and my whiskers twitched as I sat and curled my long orange tail around my legs.
As a single unit, they began their routine. Their movements were so synchronised that they seemed to be joined by one mind. They spun and kicked, their hissing breaths driving their fanatic focus. The middle man, his dark eyes like fire, shouted once and the two broke off and they faced him, two to one.
The sparring was at first bare-handed but after a few minutes of the single man fending off their attacks, the two retreated and brought out the long, bladed staves. The man faced the two and I could see the glimmer of something in his eyes as he reached within himself.
He did not draw power from the Divine. He did not seek favour from Aethra.
Lightning crackled along his form as he fended off the armed opponents.
This was a power of which Shadesorrow had warned my mother. This was the Light and man’s hubris in action.
I brought myself out of my reverie, the memory falling from me as I refocused on the men before me.
Their grace was like a dance, each adjustment to their stance an entrancing display of discipline. As they progressed through their exercises, they all bore the same grim expression of concentration and occasionally I watched a spark of Light dance down the wicked, curved blades. My skin tingled, much like mortal goosebumps, and I cringed further into the shadows.
Finally, their routine ended, the leader turned and bowed to the group behind him.
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“The Light guides and guards,” he said and his voice was bright and firm, slightly accented.
“I am a Blade of Light,” the group replied in a single voice and they relaxed into a casual posture, some of them clapping others on the shoulders, some grinning. The ones who had not done so yet took off their shirts, wiping down their sweaty torsos as they shared a water skin amongst themselves. I noticed that each man had a winged blade tattooed across their backs. The feathered wings appeared to be alive as their leanly muscled backs rippled.
Only the leader did not join in, instead seating himself cross legged on a small backless bench on the outside of the courtyard, his dark eyes watching the men he had led. He drank from his own waterskin, his young, handsome face fierce, dissuading anyone from approaching him. I watched from the shadows, certain that no one had seen me yet.
After a few minutes of rest, the leader stood and picked up a long poleaxe from the weapon rack. The group, watching him, set down their waterskins and stood, swinging their arms and rolling their heads in warmup. Each took up a poleaxe and as each man picked up their weapon, I felt them hone the blade with power, the Light a zing of heat racing down each blade.
They paired off, the leader the only one without a partner. With a loud shout from him, they fell into the first position, their own cries an echo of his. A second bellow from their leader and they began to spar. The leader circled them slowly, dropping his own weapon between a pair to separate them and correct form. He tapped the taller of the two men’s back with the flat of his blade, muttering something quietly. The man adjusted his posture and the leader nodded, unsmiling. He continued to circle the group.
As he drew closer to me, I watched him gracefully make his way around the groups. He moved as though he was an animal, deadly and fluid, flowing over the ground with silence despite his boots. It was a kind of grace that I felt viscerally, that seemed an answer to my own bestial roots.
His hands were long and thin as he clutched the haft of the poleaxe. Every time he moved the weapon, he was aware of where the deadly blade was, using it to instruct as he showed a different pair the error in their stance. He nodded and resumed his inspection.
I eyed the pairs, watching how their fighting styles were clearly from a single origin but varied in personal flair. Some were quick, attacking with sharp bursts, but all of them had the same form. They spun the blades over their heads as they adjusted their positions, some using the long handle of the weapon to stabilise themselves as they evaded an attack. Each shirtless man was soon sporting the same focused expression, Light flickering down their weapons in quick, sharp bursts of electricity as they moved.
One pair, having backed themselves up against a pillar along the edge of the courtyard drew my attention. The shorter of the two had half of his dark hair pulled up atop his head, the messy strands falling into his pale face as he danced backward. The taller one, his dark skin shining with sweat, was completely bald. I watched a bead of sweat drip down his head, catching in his dark eyebrows.
The two were locked together, their focus entirely on their match. I felt the drunken dizziness creep into me as the two ignited, the Light filling them entirely, electric. The leader had noted the same thing that I had and he made his way toward them, his pace unhurried. I felt the Light inside him awaken as he moved, furthering my discomfort.
The long haired one had his back against the pillar. The other monk, his heavily muscled torso shining, was pressing the attack. A wicked scar down his face had given the bald man a permanent look of fierce anger. I could see cold determination in his dark eyes and his own Light was already racing across his skin in tiny pinpricks of sparks. He let the Light dance down his weapon as he swung it.
The long-haired monk ducked and the blade dug into the wood and stuck. He dodged the deadly attack, spun and swung his own weapon, stopping it within a hair of slicing into the other man’s neck. I could see the beaten man’s frustration as he let go of the axe, buried too deep in the wood to pull out with ease. He dropped, kicking out the other’s legs from beneath him and quickly standing back up, catching his opponent’s weapon as he rose.
“Yield,” the monk on the ground said, his hands up. “I yield.”
The bald man advanced anyway, his face glazed in a deadly rage. I watched holy lightning race down the weapon briefly as he spun and raised it over his head. I took a step out of the shadows, panicked, my hand raised and a shout on my lips. The rest of the monks stopped their sparring and watched, their weapons at the ready.
But the leader, unhurried, almost bored, stepped between them and blocked the strike with the handle of his weapon, taking the full brunt of the two-handed overhand swing. The bald monk was over a head taller than the leader, at least double his weight, and was enraged but that did not seem to bother the leader as he leaned into the strike, his left leg behind him. The Light inside him grew in an instant and I felt the dizziness stagger me, my hands clutching my head. I lifted my head back to the scene before me after the wave had passed.
“Yannick!” The leader shouted to his student, and Light crackled across his skin. The small man, gathering his will from that holy strength, pushed back against the much bigger monk and spun his poleaxe over his head, a whirlwind of Light. He stopped it with the butt of the weapon forward, using it to knock the air out of Yannick's gut. With a loud grunt, the bigger man doubled over and dropped his weapon, falling to his knees.
“Yield,” the leader said. The man gasped for breath, trying to get his air back, unable to speak. The leader advanced, spinning his blade again, putting forth the blade this time.
“Yield,” the leader suggested as he raised the weapon. He didn’t wait as he brought it down.
Yannick, his breath failing him, instead threw a hand up and the weapon stopped on a small arc of Light, sparking dangerously. The smaller man countered by pulling the weapon away, turning his body and throwing a hand out toward the fallen man. He clenched his fist and squeezed then yanked his hand closer to himself. The arc of Light that the man held in his hand jumped, abandoning Yannick and slithering down the leader’s arm.
“I yield,” rasped Yannick finally and the leader immediately relaxed, letting his own Light and the Light had stolen from Yannick fizzle around him. It did not fade as he stared down his beaten opponent.
“Mercy is Divine,” the leader said in his stern but young voice.
“The Father grants clemency and so shall I.” Yannick answered through gritted teeth.
“The Light guides and guards,” the leader intoned.
“I am a Blade of Light,” the monks all answered together.
The leader watched, immobile, his weapon planted firmly in the ground before him, as Yannick stood. With a clenched jaw and angered expression, the scarred man held his hand out to the long haired monk who had yielded. His partner took his hand and let him pull him to his feet.
I watched, still in a drunken stupor, as the dark haired monk grinned at his aggressor, slapping him genially on the shoulder. There was something completely disarming in the man’s face.
“Take it down a notch, Yan,” he said, his wide smile playful. “I almost took you seriously.” The bald man merely grunted and turned, replacing his weapon on the rack and bowing to the leader. The rest of the group followed suit, bowing to the small man.
“Dismissed,” the leader said after he had bowed back and the group began to disperse. As the last of them left, I made to take a step backwards, to fade back into the shadows but my clumsy movement drew attention and the leader’s eyes found mine across the courtyard.
I felt a bolt of Light strike me. It crackled, electric, inside my body. It felt nothing like the fire that Therin wielded and it reminded me of the devastating force of nature. It was the Light, but wilder, untamed and sharp. It satisfied something inside me and even as I felt the sharpness scrape against me, hurting me, I welcomed the pure ferocity of this new thing.
I dropped to my knees, the Light-sickness overtaking me and clutched my head again. I writhed for a moment, the sparks of Light like tiny jolts across me. It was so different from the heated fire of Therin’s Light that even as I ached, I marveled at the unique sensation.
Suddenly the Light was gone and my head cleared. Blinking, I opened my eyes and saw the leader’s boots before me. I followed them up his lean, leather-clad legs, past the sweat-stained white shirt to his handsome, unreadable face. He still clutched the poleaxe but no Light infused him.
“What are you?” He asked quietly, and in that single question I knew he could see I was not human.
“Impressed,” I said and offered him a winsome grin. His frown made him look older, a deep scowl that was equal part unimpressed and annoyed.
“My name is Henry,” I said as I stood. I held out my hand and tried to meet his eye. But his entire attention was forced to the thin gold band around my wrist, the Light flaring in response to his presence. He took a half step back, bringing his weapon forward and allowing the deadly power to course down it.
“What are you?” He asked again, his words now filled with commanding Light.
The drunken dizziness washed over me again and I felt myself going limp.
“In trouble,” I slurred and I collapsed.