We Belong With the Dead

1: A dead fish, a bad start.

How strange it is to be a man of history, you might reflect, a man of consequence, when you cast your gaze a room full of people, tense, militant, and questioning, waiting for you to alter the course of fate for them.

How can it be up to the words of one man to effect history? Everyone hangs on them; they wait to be told what to do. But if you stutter or use a weak word when you meant to use a strong one, say ‘we will end this’ instead of saying ‘today the war will be over, and damn the man who tries to stop us,’ will they still listen? If you say ‘spare him’ instead of ‘leave him to me’ or ‘we must first learn what lead him to do this,’ will they do what you say? Will they be sufficiently inspired and allow you to change history, or will they lose faith and not allow you to? Will they ever realize they’re enacting your will for you, changing fate for you—shouldn’t you want them to realize that?

What if you woke late because of a strange dream and did not eat? Being just a little tired, just a little hungry, just a little bit temperamental is a huge liability, in war or in diplomacy. A second of pause can lose you your life. Poor wording can lose you your allies. The failure to notice hints and signs, the inability to stare down a room of twenty people and spot who is doubting, who certain, who understanding, who has misunderstood—a mistake is a disaster.

Tir could tell you about the most precious ten seconds the Empire ever lost, and they would never know it had happened, and will never know it happened.

The first time he took a human life was on Mt. Seifu, and still, after executions, massacres, and duels, he doesn’t like to wander back there in his mind. She was a young woman with her face covered. He remembers several tight, puckered scars on her skin; wispy, dark hair. Poor cloth made her robes, lovely glass beads glittered on top of them. Cleo shot her in the shoulder and made her stumble. Gremio shoved her to the side to unbalance her and turned his attention to another bandit. She caught her balance, looked up, and met Tir’s eyes.

At first he didn’t even think she was dead. That was the point of learning staff-fighting—acquiring a powerful weapon that is better at incapacitating than killing. But when he saw the split in her skull and the skin slowly sinking in, he knew.

Before he had finished the breath he took in after the exhale of the killing blow, a warm, wet hand tensed around his arm. He jolted and was drug on by the officer of the Empire. Cleo, he recalled, feeling his hand encircle the whole of his bicep, had thought he was creepy. “Hurry up, they’ve seen us.”

“But—” Tir protested.

“Hurry up,” the officer growled, “we can’t let them get away.”

“Every second is their advantage,” he heard Pahn growl, and he was being pushed on.

He ground in his feet for only a second before Gremio was gently beside his other shoulder to steady him. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

Tir shook his head but his jaw wouldn’t unclench. He was several steps behind the rest of the party, and could finally see what they say—movement higher up the mountain, ready to bear down on them; a tactical advantage.

“Gremio—”

“Tir, we have to go,” Cleo insisted, last one up, scurrying from her position. “They’ll jump us.”

He had wanted ten seconds to observe the loss of life. To close her eyes, like he had been told was respectable. To lay her down on her back, instead of sprawled to the side. See her. To at least lay his eyes on her and pray.

As he was grabbed and moved, pushed into line, thrown into the next dead man, he was dully begging, behind a blanket of silence, to know why he couldn’t have a few seconds.

Few things could fill him up with bile like remembering how he did not demand his grief. But they would never know. If they couldn’t appreciate the death of a woman on the slopes of a mountain, flying to her doom against a stronger and better-armed force, lifted by her belief in her cause, they didn’t get to know about it, either. They would all ask him what stupidity or selfishness caused him to turn traitor. They could assume it was politics, that it was teenage rebellion, that it was a misguided sympathy for the plight of low-life tax-dodgers, they could believe it was the death of Odessa that radicalized him, or the plight of Ted, or Victor’s charm and smooth-talking, or the small-minded cruelty of Kraze. They could make their partial assumptions on rumors and borrowed facts and be content they were right; all of those things helped sharpen his conviction.

But if they would not respect it, they did not have the right to know what it really was. They would never treat her memory with dignity.

He would.

-

After Ted’s disappearance and for a span of a few days, all he can remember is a pile of dead soldiers, stretched out across a dozen rocks, steams, and pathways, separated by short hours and miles, some cut, some shot, some beaten.

It is because of the dead bandit that he became a rebel; it is because of the dead soldiers that he agreed to become their leader. Each death hammers the stakes of the monument built in his mind further into the ground of his being; that now there is a pile of the dead inside him and he has a debt beyond reckoning to them.

-

Even though Tir mostly remembered fighting and killing when he recalled those early days in the Liberation Army, he’s inevitably faced with the knowledge that he spent most of that time building. It doesn’t seem true, but the sore and swollen muscles in his arms, legs, back, and stomach remember what his brain won’t so vividly.

As troops flocked slowly to Mathiu’s charming getaway, they were faced with the task of making Mathiu’s charming getaway livable. His was a brilliant plan if he had budgeted on needing years of housework before they began the revolution, but given the flummoxed and offended look Mathiu shot at Toran castle the first time they tried to use the centuries-old plumbing system to pump hot water through the lower levels for a bath and steaming water poured out of every little crevasse in the castle’s massive bulk, flooding the island and killing the spring-green shoots of the vegetables they had just planted for sustenance, Tir felt like Mathiu hadn’t actually thought this shit through.

Luckily they had good hands to begin with—even before Pahn had his adorably slow change of heart, with the combined forces of Tir, Viktor, Cleo, Gremio, Kai, Tai Ho, and LePant—eventually and especially LePant—enough construction gets done that the army practically has an easy time of finishing it once they have an army. Not that they ever get thanked for doing the work of a hundred men as a handful, but there are months of digging, fixing, hauling, stacking, cementing, re-imagining, failures, fixes, and flashes of brilliance that cut up the nightmares of murders, attacks, and defenses that are almost pleasant to recall.

He can remember the young men’s awe as Master Kai, newly recruited, hefted and placed a boulder that Mathiu and the fishermen had been arguing over how to even lift. And he could remember Mathiu trying to clutch that torn sweater around him to hold off the cold spray of Toran Lake in the spring before he finally gave up and went down to shirtsleeves like the rest of them. He remembers Viktor clapping him on the back and telling him he looked almost like a man, too, to Mathiu’s immense displeasure. No one does biting sarcasm like Mathiu, so Tir can’t remember how fantastically he phrased it, but Mathiu immediately replied that Viktor also looked almost like a man these days with all the fur shaved off. Tir believes he complimented him on achieving bipedal movement.

He remembers Tai Ho and Yam Koo refusing to live in the castle they built as more and more women, young people, and young lovers needed rooms of their own, as the only walls with strong rooms, the underground caves, were taken up by blacksmiths, alchemists, and mechanists who needed to know that none of their efforts were taking place in a room that could be easily destroyed. He remembers the half-finished effort to actually shield the walls of the castle, dreamed up by a Mathiu desperate to stop the leaking, before Maas, their first blacksmith, informed them that that was stupid and they should just be reinforcing the walls with natural materials.

He remembers Eileen, baffled, barely able to stand because of how hard she was laughing, as the heavy basket of laundry she carried up and out of the basement, heaving and sweating, was unloaded in a single minute by a dozen embarrassed men who hadn’t realized she had been toiling while they relaxed. Her husband chastised her for working too hard; she spent the rest of the day spotting, adjusting, and fixing their work for them as they broke into the system of copper pipes. Cleo did complicated acrobatics to slip between metal and stone and adjust them.

He remembers Camille racking up her bills higher and higher and Gremio turning paler and paler as she went back and forth to the mainland to pick up nails, cement powder, soap, clothing, tea, groceries, groceries, and more groceries. He remembers hunting down the supplies for alchemists, doctors, farmers, and cooks; the exotic and shady connections they made just for tea, lye, and salt.

Before the day he walked down to find Kirkis next to his death on the docks, he could remember a season of nothing but building, building, building. Viktor took him back and forth to the mainland to follow tips and recruit people he recalled and was convinced he could smooth-talk over to the rebellion; an elevator-builder, a merchant, a sellsword, an information broker, a chef, a thief, a gambler. Anyone at all, from any class, with any standards of respectable behavior; it still seemed like Viktor could win them with a glass of liquor on a cube of ice and a wink and a grin. Tir honestly wasn’t sure if he was attractive, or a good flatterer, or maybe an evil mastermind, or what. He didn’t know why he liked him so much either. Not knowing what he did didn’t change the fact that it worked; their little battalion grew, and grew, and grew; Viktor taking back recruits sooner than they had rooms (or functioning bathrooms) for them and listening to a tirade from Mathiu and Gremio with a smile on his face every time.

And Gremio.

Gremio, too, was eventually induced to take off his heavy cloak and sweater when the sun started rising earlier and bearing down hotter. He wasn’t quite induced to strip half-naked like Viktor or the fishermen, for whom labor in the heat was natural, and giving coy winks to the ladies tittering in the windows was natural too. (Even if those ladies were Marie and Onil, who were just having good fun and cackling like old hens.) No, he kept on an undershirt, at least, short sleeves if he could; still Tir was forced to bear witness to the scars of a hundred years cratering the skin of a twenty-eight-year-old man. He wasn’t the only one who had battle wounds, obviously, but he had the most of them. He had more even than LePant and Kai, though they were both marked sadly by the scourges of sparring and punishment. Gremio had the look not of honorable battle, nor of enslavement, nor even of an accident, but of disaster. The wreck of his flesh made the limp on his leg more apparent, and the cloudiness of his left eye, and the occasional stutter in his voice.

Still he worked for as long as Viktor and LePant and Tai Ho would, and often longer. Because they, Tir finally noticed, retired to drinking, story-telling, laughing, and arguing; Gremio retired to one knee, asking Tir if he would like supper, if he needed anything for his scrapes and bruises, if he would like a bath drawn, if he was feeling okay.

They really made fun of him for it too. Continuing to faithfully serve his master after they defected from the Empire and shattered any bonds of servitude and social status anyone had ever had. They talked about all being equals here; they talked about new order and opportunity for everyone. Gremio seemed a little behind the times, to say the least. And he never said a word about it. He glowered, fumed, and turned up his nose, and went tired back to Tir’s room at night, to ask him if he would like supper, if he needed anything for his scrapes and bruises, if he would like a bath drawn, if he was feeling okay.

A question came to his mind sooner or later, and it was a while before he could find a way to ask it.

-

Even in the afternoon sun, even if his muscles were stinging with work and everyone was pitching in to weed the fields of vegetables, or learn new sword fighting techniques from Kai or LePant or Eileen, or steer a newly born boat through the delta of a southern river, even with the sunlight bearing down on his back, Tir knew a pervasive misery.

Sometimes he remembered Ted, sometimes Odessa, sometimes her, the bandit. Sometimes his father. Sometimes he only remembered the misery itself. Sometimes it did not even feel like his, floating above and around him like a heavy grey sky or a flock of bats, sometimes it was like a ghost, someone else’s mystery misery thrust onto him, sometimes like nothing, the air, the moonlight, the morning fog; and sometimes it was his, distinctly his.

-

But then, of course, he did walk down one bleary morning to find Kirkis half-dead on the docks.

His first thought was not to help him, because Tir thought he was already dead. How sad he thought it was, but how fucking like this place it was, to have dead men float up like red fish on the docks, heavy and thick with drowning. The waters of Toran were, he was told, toxic with the wastes of blacksmiths and alchemists, having made endless weapons of war while on her shores, using her water to cool their machines. That was why they depended on professional fisherman to decide what resilient fish they could eat and what soft ones they would throw back or use for oil.

His second thought was to wonder what it was that had died when he saw the sharp ear poking out of rushes of deep red hair. Slight frame, very small and thin, but mature, evidently; carrying an empty quiver on his back and mottled with bruises and sunburns on incredibly fair skin. He bent down to investigate; he saw him breathe.

“Uncle Tai!” he bellowed down the shoreline as he struggled to heft the waterlogged body into his arms. “Yam Koo!”

He had gotten the elf onto his shoulders and was only a few steps down the dock when Tai Ho, squinting, got a good enough look at him to realize something was wrong. The fishermen were sprinting down the beach, poles shoved into the pebbles, with a gambler and a debt collector, odd company, just on their heels.

“Mother, what’s that?” asked Gasper, quick to catch his breath after a run. Tai Ho was already trying to help him breathe again, pushing on his chest and feeling in his mouth. He had small, round teeth, Tir noticed, and his pink flesh had swollen from swallowing the bitter water. But he was breathing, hoarsely.

“I’ll get Mathiu,” Camille shouted before taking the steps up to the castle three at a time. Tai Ho had gotten the poor creature gasping hard enough to start spouting tiny bursts of water up from his lungs, eyes screwing shut against the pain, in the two minutes it took for her to get the surgeon down the stairs.

Heaving almost as much as the elf from the effort, Mathiu weakly pushed Tai Ho aside and went to listen to the elf’s lungs. He made a growled noise of agitation and shoved at his chest just once. The elf’s eyes flew open as he hacked up a slurry of water, blood, and slime; then he was coughing in recovery, bent over half.

Mathiu directed the men in unfastening the quiver, overshirt, and belt, leaving only the loose underclothing that wasn’t tugging at his skin. Camille grabbed the clothes and folded them anxiously, then said she’d take them to Marie to be cleaned up and dashed away, up walls and through windows. Mathiu directed the stronger men to pick up the creature and bear him safely to his carefully-chosen clinic, above ground, theoretically far away from attackers, and cool, with only north-facing windows.

Tir excused himself to go get food, drink, and medicine for the victim, which, essentially, meant going to get Gremio, telling Gremio what happened, and then watching as Gremio anxiously cooked and concocted.

“I think he’s an elf,” Tir insisted.

“And?”

“So can he take fish oil? Don’t elves just eat vegetables?”

Gremio gave him that look. The one that said ‘are you fucking with me, or are you being dense? Because either is plausible.’ Out loud, he would say something like ‘please don’t joke at a time like this, young Master,’ but his eyes, always sharper than his words, said ‘are you fucking with me, or being dense?’

“I don’t think elves are real.”

“He had pointed ears,” insisted Tir, visually miming the features, “and he was tiny, but he wasn’t a child. He was this big, Gremio.”

“I’m sure you didn’t get a good look at him,” Gremio said, though sounding uncertain. “If he’s waterlogged it’ll help.”

“If he’s waterlogged, I think he’ll want anything but fish oil.”

“Well, he’ll be getting nettle tea to wash down the fish oil and lemon, so he only has to stand it for a minute.” Gremio snapped the kettle off of the stove and onto the stone counter in the same movement as fishing down a knob of gingerroot from the cabinet. He pulled a knife out of his—actually, where did it come from?—and diced like a man administering a sentence. “And soup after that if he can bear it; unless he vomits up the tea, in which case, he gets more tea.”

“Do you want me to bring up something now?...” Tir asked, grinning just a little.

“We’ll… wait for the tea to cool down a minute,” Gremio decided as he spoke. “Mathiu is still working, but the sound of it. He needs to catch his breath if he wants hope of keeping down anything.”

“Why do we have the clinic so close to the kitchen, by the way?”

“We will have to change that eventually,” Gremio agreed, looking with displeasure in the direction of the wet coughing.

Still, he got medicine, tea, and soup ready in remarkably short order. They carried them around the corner and up a set of dark stone stairs, and Gremio knocked on the wall outside the clinic witch knuckles wrapped around a teacup. “Sir,” he called softly, “I have the medicine you wanted. Is it alright to come in?”

“Brace yourselves for a smell,” said Mathiu, sounding dour, “but feel free.”

Tir followed Gremio into the tiny clinic. Just about every room they had was tiny at this point; half of the castle still needed reinforced before they could use it, especially the upper levels, and there was no roof at all. The clinic was one of the most clearly temporary rooms of all of them, with a few makeshift beds, a cabinet with a broken door, some baskets full of linens and bandages, and Mathiu, on a chair. No one had really spent a long time staying in the clinic at this point, Mathiu had only been required to patch up cut shins, thrown backs, sunburns, and one unfortunate case of a snapped wrist in the construction project (Pahn’s). He didn’t seem to be suffering from lack of practice, however. The elf was placed comfortably on a bed, stripped almost bare, and his scrapes were already patched up well, though Mathiu was clearly facing the fact, with gentle touching, that he couldn’t just patch up everything he was looking at. The elf had a vacant expression; he was awake, but Tir would guess he was still dazed, or perhaps had a painful headache.

Gremio went stiff as a board. “Brilliant stars, it is an elf.”

The elf startled in response, trying to shift into a ready position, but just succeeding in hurting his head. His face, made of delicate small parts, like a watch, wound up with pain. Mathiu put his fingers on his knobby shoulders and gently settled him down. “His name is Kirkis,” he said dryly. “And he’s in quite a difficult condition.”

Gremio shrunk a few inches. Tir walked in from behind him, curiously, setting down the teapot and bowl of soup. While Mathiu double-checked the contents of the medication with a humbled Gremio, Tir snuck up closer and closer to the elf, who, seeing him coming, did not stop him, but watched him with wary, blood-shot eyes. To Tir, he looked like a girl; he had soft ginger hair stuck to very pale skin, bright little eyes, and a tapered, skinny waist that, right now, was bejeweled with amethyst bruises. They regarded each other simply, like a cat and a hawk, unsure if or how either would make a move. “You’re Kirkis?” he asked.

Kirkis blinked at him slowly, as if he was still having trouble seeing through the water. “I am,” he said.

“I’m Tir.”

Kirkis nodded, and tried to shake his head, one arm lifting shakily to pull his hair away from his shoulders. “What happened… did I survive? Or is this the Summerlands?”

“Well, this is Toran Castle, and it’s almost autumn,” Tir attempted.

“Toran Castle…” Kirkis blinked more rapidly, driving away the stinging lakewater. “Toran Castle—is this—the Liberation Army?”

“You’re looking at us,” Mathiu admitted, approaching Kirkis with the cup of medicine and the empty teacup. Tir ducked back to where he put down the teapot and produced it for Mathiu, who wasn’t paying attention to him. “Sad though we may appear. Do you come as a friend or a foe, Kirkis?”

Unfortunately, Kirkis was a little more interested in watching Tir try to slowly tip the teapot he was holding into Mathiu’s teacup and fill it up without him noticing, tongue peeking out from the corner of his mouth. “Friend,” he said, startled. “Friend, I hope.”

“If you do not come with orders from the Imperium, you are on track to friendship,” Mathiu reassured him, completely unaware that Tir was slowly, slowly tilting the cup he was loosely holding; “since we have a record of accepting any kind of upstart still able to swear that he’d spit on an imperial guard while swerving drunk. Better if you can still swear sober—“ Trying to gesture with his left arm to show his annoyance, he wrenched his hand out of Tir’s subtle grasp and smacked himself in the face with cold china and hot tea. ”Tir McDohl, what are you doing??”

“Pouring the tea?” Tir asked.

Gremio quickly and quietly removed the cup and the pot from the co-commanders as they began to bicker. Kirkis was handed medicine and tea with no further issue. “As General Silverberg was saying, this is Toran Castle, in Lake Toran, headquarters of the Liberation Army, and no, you’re not dead. What brought you here? Was there a sailing accident?”

“No—” Kirkis murmured, shaking hands pushing back his hair—“no, no, I have—how long has it been? What moon is it?”

Gremio’s eyebrows pinched as he pushed the medicine at Kirkis. “Please, I insist. It’s, ah, we should be not long after the dark moon. Two or three days? I’m not totally certain. It’s the fifth day of the month of the scales by our calendar, so I’m not sure…”

Kirkis downed the medicine like it was a bracing shot of liquor and immediately began coughing like it was. Gremio hastened to offer him tea, which he took without hesitation. “I must—” he swallowed. “I must talk to Lady Odessa, immediately. I must warn her of a dire emergency. Please. Sir.”

Gremio silently turned around to set down the teapot. “You can’t speak to Lady Odessa right now,” he said. “Our present leader is commander Tir.”

“Uh?” said Tir, head whipping around when he heard his name. He had been shoving Mathiu’s stupid woolen scarf in his face; the moment of weakness cost him dearly, because Mathiu, shrieking, was able to slap his hands away and struggle him into a headlock.

“Oh,” said Kirkis.

Gremio put his head in his right hand, closed his eyes, and sighed to himself. “Our present leader is commander Tir,” he repeated, louder.

Tir extracted himself from the headlock as Mathiu stepped backwards sheepishly. “Sorry. I bring out the worst in people, or so I’m told,” Tir introduced himself. He held out his hand for Kirkis to shake with a grin. Gremio watched as if he were watching a tornado crawl up the horizon, unable to stop it.

Kirkis took the pains necessary to grab Tir’s hand and shake it once. “Commander Tir,” he said weakly, with the slightest smile. “I am Kirkis of the Great Forest, hunter among the Toran Elves. I’ve come to beg for your aid.”

“Sure,” said Tir.

“No,” said Mathiu, literally wagging a finger at Tir. “Sir Kirkis, I am Mathiu Silverberg, lead and only strategist of the Liberation Army. What aid do you request?”

“Help,” begged Kirkis, faltering. “The aid of your army. The great General Kwanda Rosman has made an abominable declaration that he will exterminate all elves. No one will help us; no one cares about our lives. Already I have begged the Emperor to soften the hatred of his General and to no avail; no one will listen to me. You’re my last hope. Please. Please lend us the power of the Liberation Army.”

“Yes,” Tir declared.

“No,” Mathiu snapped, “no, we can’t. Tir, we don’t have an army.”

Tir snapped his eyes up to Mathiu, and he was shocked to see a burning hate in him; detestation for being stopped. “General Kwanda is planning to exterminate all elves, Matt. Were you just listening? He wants to kill every single elf.”

“We still don’t have an army, Tir. We—”

“We have to try!” Tir insisted. “We can’t let that happen!”

“We have some bandits, some men from the old, broken Imperial army, fishers and gamblers; we don’t have a tenth of the men we would need to just go fight Kwanda Rosman! Tir, listen—”

“You’re going to let him wipe an entire kind of people off of the face of the earth? Do you even understand what that—”

“That’s why we’re going to send a reconnaissance mission, Tir!” Mathiu barked, holding up a hand. “Of course we can’t allow that to happen. What kind of man do you think I am? But we don’t stand a chance unless we tackle this intelligently. We won’t be helping the elves if we throw ourselves at Kwanda unprepared, we’ll be dead!”

Tir’s suspicious glower slowly smoldered into a pinched, unhappy expression. Taking a deep breath, Mathiu strove to lower his voice.

(Gremio forced himself to put down the teapot he had gripped and pulled back so that he could smash it on Mathiu’s head if he had struck Tir.)

“Out only strength is the hope that people see in us,” Mathiu continued. “That is the only strength liberation has ever had. We must never betray that hope. Or doubt it. Without it, it is just a ruin on an island full of rebels, rejects, thieves, and gamblers.

“We’ll send a small reconnaissance mission to gather intelligence,” he continued, turning away from Tir to shakily rifle through the drawers of his cabinet. “It’s hard for heavily armed imperial troops to move through the forest so we’ll have much more time than they do, especially with a guide. Likely we’ll start by simply moving or hiding the elves… or recruiting them, if they’re amenable. They’re fine archers. And once the elves are mobilized, the predictable Imperial army will be at a great disadvantage.”

“Many could be convinced to join,” Kirkis insisted, quietly. “Some are in denial of the great danger but many are afraid, ready to act. I can take you there. We can make a plan.”

“We’ll help,” Mathiu confirmed to him, turning back around. “I only apologize that we can not, in fact, hurl ourselves at the Imperial army for you. We are too weak.”

Kirkis moved to thank him again, but Tir interrupted. “Who will go on the mission, then?” he asked, voice composed, eyes sharp.

Mathiu rubbed his eyes. “Not me, unfortunately.” Mathiu was not battle-ready any more, they all knew. “You, obviously. Viktor, absolutely. Gremio, to keep you both in line.”

“My pleasure,” Gremio said acerbically.

“After that… Ms. Cleo, I believe, so you have a skilled long-range fighter of your own if things become dicey. A few more people if you choose; but you should keep your numbers small and your troops quiet and agile.”

“You’ve shot quiet with Viktor and agile with Gremio,” Tir replied bluntly, “so I think I’ll stop while we’re behind. Or, no, we’ll bring Pahn, so Cleo doesn’t become depressed again.”

“Fantastic, done,” said Mathiu, palms open. “We’ll wait a few nights for Kirkis to recover, then—”

“No, please,” Kirkis interrupted, “we must go as soon as possible.”

Mathiu shrugged. “We’ll wait a night for Kirkis to regain some of his strength. That should be enough time for everyone to get ready, considering you’re mostly taking the people already used to sailing back to the mainland for recruiting missions. But if you go by water, you’ll want a better sailor.”

“It has to be by land,” said Kirkis. “The water route is held by Imperials.”

“Then it’s settled. Both of you be off and let me finish making sure the poor man’s teeth don’t fall out and his gallbladder won’t rupture; you’ll have plenty of preparing to do on your own side.”

Tir turned on his heel to stalk out of the room. Gremio stood up with more dignity. “Make sure he eats his soup,” he warned Mathiu. To Kirkis, he inclined his head, and said farewell. Kirkis did the same in return.

He had to jog to catch up to Tir, who practically marched away. “Young Master,” he implored.

“What?”

Gremio’s eyebrows pinched again. Not that Tir could see it, but he could practically hear it. “Young Master, is this wise?”

Tir stopped abruptly. “Is this wise?” he repeated, incredulous. “Are you going to tell me we shouldn’t try to stop a genocide too?”

“No, no,” Gremio said, walking until he was by Tir’s side. Tir wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I mean that General Kwanda is a powerful man, and a very skilled warrior. We’re putting ourselves into serious danger, and risking our positions. And—“

“Gremio,” asked Tir, tone unsteady, “do you just… not understand that we’re leading a rebel army that wants to destroy the Empire?”

Gremio fidgeted with his hands. “We don’t want to destroy the Empire.”

“Don’t we?” Tir asked, glaring up at Gremio. He watched him worry the corner of his bottom lip, and his eyes cast about uncertainly. “Because just about everyone in this castle wants to destroy the Empire, and they’ve told you so, in words. Or did you think they were joking? You’re kind of an outlier here.”

“Master—” Gremio’s high cheeks began to turn pink. “You—But—”

“But what?” Tir asked stubbornly.

“How can you justify that kind of thinking with Master Teo’s position as the General?”

Tir glared at Gremio, eye to eye, and waited for him to fold.

Slowly, Gremio lowered his gaze, and his tense posture relaxed. Trying to hide his downward glances, Tir watched his hands, which were grasping at each other, slowly release themselves into a resigned position, palm to palm.

“We’ll just have to make him see things our way,” Tir commanded, and let Gremio go. “We’d better tell Viktor and Cleo; they’ll have stuff to wrap up.”

Gremio spoke, whisper-quiet. “There will be consequences.”

“What?”

“I don’t think it’ll be so easy.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t think it’ll be as easy as you think it will be,” Gremio repeated. “I don’t think it’ll go so well. I think people—you—will get hurt. Master.”

In a moment, a moment far out of its place in a dull day of arguing, injuries, spilled drinks and fumbled connotations, missed connections and mismatched motivations, clarity drifted silently through the window with the light of the setting sun, on its gentle rays. A small clarity, dim as the evening, and a red one. It was this that Tir realized: he had been shouting at a voice in his head rather than the person at his side, and the person at his side had been struck with it. That, moreover, he had assigned a spirit of contention, detached from any real person, whose motivation it was to tear him down, to a person who had nothing to do with it, whose motivation was to protect him, and attacked him for something he had never done. In fact, he realized, as he finally saw Gremio’s downcast green eyes, his shoulders bent low, he hadn’t been talking to Gremio at all. He was about to go to his room remembering a different day than the one Gremio remembered. One that he had made up.

“I’ll be fine,” he hears himself telling Gremio. “Everyone will be fine, okay?”

Gremio nods.

There’s nothing he knows to do except take him along.

-

There’s something that happens the longer he sticks with this misery, the more intimately they get to know each other, through nights alone, bright moon slowly shifting into dark moon and back again. It begins to change him, and change with him; he would never know if he didn’t keep journal entries, fewer and fewer though they came, to read back and not remember, not recognize, not understand. He forgets the causes of the problems he has; he only remembers he has them.

He knows, for instance, that no one here really knows him. He would be exhausted in remembering how he knows that.

He begins, with dark disconcert, to wish that he was not spending all of these nights alone. With the thoughts. With the misery. Alone except for Gremio outside the door; nearby, it seemed, and, it seemed, more and more unreachable.

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2: Truly terrible tea in mass quantities.

The journey to the village of the Elves takes a long time. There’s nothing for it; it might take a week to walk from the shore of Lake Toran to the edge of the Great Forest, but that would be if they were taking the road and not dodging guards, garrisons, and watchful eyes on the way. As such even getting to the forest takes a week, and Kirkis makes it sound like walking to the village of the elves will take longer, because the true way through the hidden paths of the forest is turning and strange; the magic requires it.

Viktor seems to accept that as true, even though it sounds fishy to just about everyone else, so they reluctantly believe it. After a week of alternate marching and dodging they camp on the edge of the forest, its great dark line obscuring the sky. They’re brave enough to make a fire when they’re certain they’ll blend into a dozen such hunting parties brightening the hillsides around.

Tensions haven’t been so high for the past week, Tir reflects, thankfully but doubtfully. Almost everything he remembered was positive attitudes, positive movement, good plans and good procedure—when Viktor was around. When he went to scout or pursue an enemy or even to take a shit, things tended to get quiet fast.

Viktor had a very real effect, Tir considered as he observed him drive a post into the ground with his bare fist so that Kirkis, light on his feet, could drape a tent over it. Viktor had one of those uncountable, unprovable things that Tir was beginning to appreciate; a personality, a force, an effect, a something that he enacted on everyone else, unable to obtain, unable to separate from him, or distill, or transfer; a gift. It was something Tir had too, or so he was told, constantly. If Odessa had said it, after all, he didn’t even have the right to doubt it.

Perhaps he and Viktor were alike.

He watched him, quick, simple, and strong, snap together a campsite with a force that would frighten the average person; except his charm drew you away so fast you hardly noticed. His words were a bracing drink.

His attention was snapped away from Viktor as Gremio laid down his equipment next to him, stifling a sigh when the weight was finally lifted from his back. “We should set up too, young Master, before it gets too dark to see.”

Tir agreed quietly, gaze slowly flickering back to the task at hand. It went without saying that Cleo and Pahn had a tent together; it seemed like they were being polite, because Tir hadn’t heard anything from the tent, but Viktor still mocked them in the mornings. Maybe he was making up having heard anything, Tir thought, embarassed; maybe he just liked making Pahn mad and Cleo roll her eyes.
After that unspoken choice it was known that Gremio and Tir would be sharing space, or that, really Gremio would be taking up guard right outside of Tir’s space. That left Kirkis and Viktor who, though being unable to bond on the basis of being reasonable people, both at least had the fear of the enemy in their hearts, and they came to consensus that they would share a third space in the interest of having someone at their back. How that worked out for Kirkis Tir didn’t know, but he seemed to sleep fine through Viktor’s snoring. Maybe Mathiu had sent medicine that helped him sleep with him, because he was always awake and bright-eyed, at dawn, ready to sprint across the hillsides while the humans lumbered as best they could behind him.

Gremio went to set up the fire while Tir put things down inside their tent by himself. A brazier to keep lit until bed time; a bed of linens and a blue and cream quilt for himself, and a sparser one for Gremio that he will hardly use, if at all. Weapons and equipment between the beds and a knife at the entranceway, a basin and some pots by each bed, tightly bound belongings at the back, where they would stay out of the way. The moonlight lit up the colorful surface of the linen tent from behind, illuminating a violent and golden starmap that blocked out the stars. On rainy nights they used Tir’s quilt to keep out the moisture and dried it in the morning; this night was bright. He lit the lamp to finish his work; everything organized neatly, grass and ferns poking up from between the travel-soft bedrolls and dully glowing armor.

Gremio didn’t look unfamiliar without his armor and his cloak anymore, but he still looked strange.

Tir waited out most of the evening in his tent, writing in his journal, unconnected thoughts and conclusions unsatisfied, sense not quite made of matters he could not quite settle. What had made so many friends into foes? What had made a man who had once been a wonderful, funny dinner guest into a harbinger of genocide? What had turned a childhood friend into a 300-year-old mystery; no, what had turned a 300-year-old mystery into a childhood friend? What, if anything, turned Tir McDohl into Commander Tir—and what, though he did not let it dwell long under thick black lines, turned a familiar face into an unsettled feeling deep in his guts?

Gremio brought him dinner, Gremio took his plate back away, Gremio told him they were going to get clean and left again.

He ended up poking his head out of the tent, feeling alone and strange, when everyone but Cleo was gone.

“You’re missing the boy things,” she said with a grin, spreading around the coals so they would smolder.

“I’m alright with that.” He peered around, eyes squinting. “Where are they all?”

“River. Piercing cold and almost pitch black. I’m sure everyone is having fun.”

“Did they all wait for you to go first?”

Cleo grinned.

“You’re awful,” he accused.

“No, they’re gentlemen,” she said innocently. “Except for Viktor, but the gentleman party outnumbers him.”

He smiled. “Viktor isn’t so bad.”

“I sure wouldn’t let him touch me.”

Tir waited for more, but didn’t get it. “What does that mean?”

Cleo flicked something at him that he couldn’t discern in the darkness. He dodged it like a pro anyway. “It means something you have no business wondering about.”

He groaned. “I’m not a child, Cleo. I know what you’re talking about.”

“Then why’d you have to ask what it means, smart guy?”

“Because you sound like you’re accusing him of something,” Tir claimed haughtily, thinking fast. “Everyone always sounds like they’re accusing him of something. But I haven’t seen him do anything. Except lie all the time. And pickpocket, and steal things that aren’t necessarily in pockets. And… drink like a soldier. And beat people up. For fun. And money. And maybe he jokes around girls sometimes, but he doesn’t, like… make them feel gross, or anything.”

Cleo snorts. “He’s no Kraze, you’re right.” She turned around with an impish grin. “It’s not just girls, though, is the thing. He’s a queer. And it’s not just ‘jokes—‘”

“A what?”

“What?”

“He’s a what?”

“A queer?”

“What?”

Cleo froze. “Shit.”

Tir finally poked more than his head and shoulders out of the tent, oozing in Cleo’s direction. “Cleeeeoooo.”

“Oh Shit. Um. Ask Gremio. No, wait, don’t do that. His head will explode.”

“Cleeeoooo.”

“He’ll kill me. I didn’t say anything?”

“Cleeeeeeoooo.” He poked her shoulder.

“Don’t make me explain this. I’m sorry, Master Teo, wherever you are! I don’t want to corrupt your son!”

“There’s no way I’m letting you go now,” he sang, continuing the barrage of pokes.

“Tiiiiiiir…” she whined.

“If you don’t tell me, I will ask Gremio.”

“Noooo!” She whacked his hands away. “He’ll know it was me! Shit!” She looked around quickly. “Ok! A queer is a man who likes men and women, ok?”

“Like… what?” asked Tir, as honestly confused as he had just been faking.

“Oh fuuuuck,” Cleo groaned, hiding her head in her hands. “No, Tir, please. I repent. Don’t make me do this.”

“What do you meeeean,” asked Tir with suspicious, hooded eyes.

“Nooo. Ok. Alright. I’ll do it. Forgive me, Master Teo,” she pleaded one last time, her hands folded over her mouth.

“If he’s even listening, he has a lot more serious grievances to forgive us for,” Tir reminded her.

“Alright,” declared Cleo, “sit your butt down and listen. Nope, sit your butt down.”

Tir plunked down on the dry grass across from her, chin in his hands, eyes wide.

“You’re what,” asked Cleo, “16 now?”

“Yeah, we literally just had a birthday party.”

“I forgot what year it was!”

“You forgot what year it was?”

“You want me to explain this shit or not?”

“Ok, ok.”

“You’re like 16 now, so, even though you are a baby, you know what I mean when I say ‘a man who likes women.’”

“Y…yes? That seems obvious? Unless you’re talking about something other than?”

“Nope, that’s it.” Cleo waved a hand at him. “Normal guys. They like girls, they want to have lots of sex with them.”

Tir wrinkled his nose and quietly groaned.

“You asked, kid. That’s how it’s supposed to be with a guy, right?”

“I guess?”

“Well, Viktor’s another kind of guy. He’s the kind of guy who wants to have sex with men and women. That’s a queer.”

Tir raised an eyebrow incredulously. “That sounds fake.”

“It’s not fake? Why would I make that up! It’s just weird,” Cleo protested. “Most people aren’t like that. And if they are you usually never know. They just get a wife and sleep with their master of house secretly or something. Or get a wife and don’t do anything at all. It’s mostly guys that didn’t have dads or like… guys that had serious trouble with girls, I think.”

“Not having a dad makes you queer?”

“I dunno, sometimes? I don’t really get how it works. I was told that it was guys who didn’t have dads or who were beat by their moms and don’t like women. I guess that doesn’t really make sense, though, so I don’t know how it happens,” she admitted, flushed, “you got me there. It happens sometimes. Usually to really fucked up guys like Viktor. It’s not common. That’s all the pattern I’ve noticed.”

“How is he ‘fucked up’?”

“What? Nope. I’m drawing the line here,” Cleo stated, jabbing a finger at the ground. “I shouldn’t have to explain this to you. Even look at him if you want to see how he’s fucked up. He does everything he does in a fucked up way.”

“???”

“Are you serious?” She waved her hands around. “His?? Everything he does? How he’s so pushy and creepy about everything? No boundaries? Judges you and makes statements no one should make out loud?”

“???”

“Alright, just watch him, he’ll prove me right,” she concluded stubbornly, crossing her arms.

Tir shook his head. “He’s like… charming? That’s how he—”

Cleo cut him off with a noise of disgust, dragging one hand down her face. “He’s not charming, Tir. He’s a freak. You’re too young for this. I’ve just confused you.”

“I’m not too young for this,” Tir protested, with a spark lighting in his gut. “I know how it works, Cleo. I just don’t know the stuff you’re talking about. And I think you’re wrong about Viktor. He’s pushy and forward and kind of mean, but that’s because he runs an army. What’s he supposed to do, politely ask people to quit burning down elf villages?”

“Uh, you run that army, Tir,” said Cleo, leaning back to pick up her drinking horn, “and I’m pretty sure you are about to ask people politely to stop burning down elf villages, if I know you.”

Tir glowered.

“Don’t give me that face.”

“You’re wrong about Viktor.”

“Alright, I’m wrong about Viktor,” Cleo sighed, “but actually watch him for five minutes, without that rosy-eyed perception you got of him somehow, and may the moon bless me if I know how you did, and you’ll see.”

“Sure,” said Tir, packing as much disbelief as he possibly could into one syllable. “Sure. I’ll give him a good hard stare and see that he’s actually bossy and sleazy, which means actually he likes having sex with men, because he didn’t have a mom or something, and maybe he’s actually a bear in a man suit.”

They only bickered for a little while longer before they heard the men stumbling back to camp in the dark, lit by a spare old lantern. Tir could see Gremio was the one holding it; his pale face was inhuman in the light of the lantern, death-pale, like a ghost coming out of the dark trees.

“Ah shit,” said Cleo, “they asked me to get their drinks ready. Help me pour out a lot of mead.”

“Why are we drinking so much mead anyway?” Tir gripped, springing up to help her.

“It waters down well, heats up well, and stays sterile,” Cleo recited, putting a bit of Gremio’s soft accent in her voice. “Helps you sleep well and gives you energy. And we didn’t exactly have any time to bring any of last year’s wine or beer to Toran Castle, now did we.”

Tir reluctantly poured some mulling spices into the cauldron Cleo was frantically shaking mead into. “Quick,” she said, “fill up the big basket with river water and bring it back. I’ll distract them while you pour it in. Maybe they won’t notice.”

“Totally,” said Tir, picking up the earthware basket. He slung it up onto one shoulder and started sprinting off past the other warriors to the river they just came from. “Hey guys, Cleo forgot about your drinks.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” Kirkis said, straining his head as Tir rushed past him.

“Fuck,” said Viktor.

“Oh, hello, young… Master…” Gremio trailed off as Tir disappeared into the dark.

It wasn’t far to the river, and once his eyes adjusted to being out of the firelight, he could see that the stars were bright and that the leaves and the grass shone silver, faintly, suggesting the wooded world around him. He had always been light on his feet; his nimbleness and agility had really been nourished by Master Kai, the staff-fisghting master who, in retrospect, knew that Tir would never get as big or as tall as most people he would have to fight some day. Kai pushed him to hone quick reflexes, to learn to dodge, duck, and squeeze around obstacles at his top speed, and to have the pride to take small advantages instead of waiting for the perfect strike. Nowadays, with even the faintest vision he could jump around rocks and scattered tree roots without injury and was at the river in a fraction of the amount of time it took everyone else to go there and back.

It was when he was kneeling down by the dark water that he noticed that Soul Eater glowed in the dark.

Elemental runes always lit up, he knew that; so did most battle runes, though not so brightly. He thought Soul Eater had been nothing but black.

“I guess it just takes it being really, really dark to notice,” he said to it, watching his right hand as he tipped it back and forth. It was so faint he thought it might have even been a trick, like watershine, but he could see it in the river’s shimmering reflection, too, a dull, deep red glow, as though his skin were sore around it. When he waved his left hand over it, he could cover the light and watch it shine, dimly, sickly, through his fingers. He flexed his fingers, back and forth, watching the glow dim and heighten; it was like coals, he decided, coals which were almost dead, about to fade out with final smoke. He took off his hand and watched it; and watched it.

“Huh,” he muttered, uneasily, “ok.”

He picked up the basket again and dipped it into the dark river. The waters flowed into it heedlessly, unaware that they couldn’t get back out, eyeless, distressed. He filled it up most of the way, but not entirely; he couldn’t lift it when it was totally full. Not that he was interested in anyone knowing that. He pulled it back into both arms and began walking back to the campsite, which seemed as bright as a star on the earth now that he was outside of it.

The daffodil-yellow light was bordered by the fabric of their tents, violet, blue, and emerald; silver charms and glass whistles glittered on them, shifting back and forth. Their solid walls separated the brightness of the camp from the featureless darkness outside with jagged, corners, an uneven, broken window into a better place. The brass cauldron was settled over the fire, reflecting shimmering golden curves of light around the party; Cleo in an undershirt, waving a stirring spoon at Pahn; Pahn practically undressed as he dried off in the firelight, dark hair let down, using a little glimmering razor to shave his stubble. Next to them was Kirkis, bent over the coals of the fire, shifting and testing; it looked like he was putting out some late-night snacks to heat. His orange hair was pulled backwards and water dripped down from it over his shoulders; he was absurdly pale, bright, his big green eyes like a mirror to the fire. He noticed Tir before anyone else, looked up, and waved briefly. Viktor and Gremio were on the opposite side of the fire, still standing, with their backs to him. Gremio was the person to still be wearing clothing, of course; he even had his hair towel-dried, he assumed, so that he could tie it back like he always did. Viktor had gone the same way as Pahn; he could barely be said to be wearing anything, and water still dripped down his back as if he had just stepped out of the river and shook himself once. He had dark spots on his back, Tir noticed; dark spots and the shining red flesh of scars and burns, and a light covering of dark hair. Was it being 300 pounds of pure muscle? Was that just how mountain people looked? Did he do something to have all that hair? Tir didn’t fucking know.

“Hey, so,” he said, as he got close enough to be in sight range to the humans.

Unfortunately, he said this at the same second that Viktor, apparently sensing a weakness, snaked the heel of his hand down the back of Gremio’s shirt, over his belt, and grabbed his ass. Gremio immediately executed a well-practiced elbow strike to Viktor’s gut, which, though thick, was not quite thick enough to keep the force of Gremio’s frustrated stabbing away from the squishy bits hidden inside. Viktor wheezed and bent over, only for Gremio to crack his heel down on his foot as he snarled, “you fucking sleazy son of a—”

This turned Gremio around just far enough to see Tir standing not far behind him, holding a full basket of water, mouth slightly open, and eyes peeled.

“Young master!” he finished his sentence, flushed red. Viktor, through his wheezing, started chortling.

“You have the water,” noticed Cleo, “neat. Pour it in, the mead’s already heating up and I don’t want it to boil undiluted.”

“Yeeahhh,” said Tir, inching by Gremio, “sure.” He stared at Gremio as he walked, daring him, mentally, to say some shit in his defense.

Gremio said, “let me, uh, help, you, with that.”

Pahn, however, declared he had it, picked up the bowl, fumbled it, and dropped the whole thing into the cauldron. The person who got the worst of the incident was, of course, Kirkis, who was splashed with fire-hot watery honey. As Cleo shrieked and waved a spoon at Pahn, who, to his credit, took it well, Gremio rushed over to Kirkis and began aggressively taking care of him, despite Kirkis’s insistence that he was alright. This was contrary to the evidence that his skin was turning red as an autumn apple in ugly blotches, over areas that were already ugly-colored blotches caused by almost drowning.

Tir walked over to the cauldron, slipped the earthenware bowl out of the cauldron, and began stirring the remaining mead. Thin, but if he put some tea leaves in, they’d have a relaxing bedtime drink.

Viktor wandered up with a mug, fished some mead out, and started drinking. “Not bad, considering.”

Tir gave him something of a stinkeye. “Relax,” said Viktor, putting up a palm, eyes wide, “wasn’t your fault. That honor goes to tall, dark, and stupid over there.”

Tir looked sufferingly over at Pahn, who was now, it seemed, trying to convince Cleo that that wasn’t a capital offense. “Pahn isn’t dumb,” he said, half-heartedly, “he’s just… not smart.”

“An affliction so many of us suffer from,” Viktor agreed, smiling.

Tir only hummed in response, not meeting his eyes.

“Something’s on your mind tonight.”

Tir glanced him over quickly, then bent down to rifle through Gremio’s cooking supplies for tea leaves. “I’m… I’ve been thinking about how everyone was different from how they thought they were, I guess.”

“Oh?”

“I suppose I had it on my mind… that I know Kwanda Rosman, and he isn’t like what Kirkis says,” he admitted. “Or I thought he wasn’t. But that goes for a lot of people. Everywhere we go when we travel from town to town, through the fields, we just see misery, and I’ve known the people who were starving them and killing them my whole life. Dad would dress me up for them and make sure I acted polite. I spend a lot of time having tea with Mr. Oppenheimer. Or Ms. Shulen. Or Mr. Ain Guide. Or… just about anyone else I’ve heard you and Mathiu and the old soldiers snarling about so far.” Tir started telling himself to shut up in his head, but apparently, he wasn’t listening. “It’s not just them too. Gremio. Cleo. My dad. Everyone I grew up with… they’re not who I thought they were. It’s not even that we’re the enemy to everyone else. Though that sucks. I just didn’t know who they were. I wasn’t trusted with it.

“I guess you don’t tell kids the truth,” he finished, trying to make light of it. “Goddammit, where are Gremio’s tea leaves.”

“I don’t know, but I do know you have a fistful of mint right now, which wouldn’t be the worst choice?”

“Mint isn’t tea, Viktor.”

“I know that neither thing is ale,” he griped, taking another reluctant swig of thin nectar. “Nah. You’re right. They were all lying through their teeth.”

“What?”

“They were all lying their asses off. They thought you were a baby and you didn’t need to be told the truth. Confront them about it. Watch them. See if they go running around in circles to excuse their selves or fess up. You grew up with a bad crowd. Most of them only cared about control and having power over you. The sooner you start asking questions about what they told you, the better for you.”

“Uh,” said Tir, “huh?”

Viktor grinned an animal grin over his drink. “You sound like you value honesty. I think your crew is full of horseshit.”

“Except for tall, dark, and stupid?” Tir asked.

“Hell no. especially tall, dark, and stupid. He ate the horseshit they gave him. So to speak, I guess.” Viktor looked off for a minute, as if trying to examine the construction of his metaphor in the darkness, and gave up. “Blondie,” he called over to Gremio, “is he dying, or what’s up?”

“He’s covered in second degree burns, is ‘what’s up,’” Gremio snapped, noticeably disdainful about using Viktor’s slang, “so if you would get me salve and make some mint, I would be much appreciative.”

Tir shrugged and dropped the bundle of mint leaves into the unholy concoction. “Done.”

Gremio and Kirkis watched the quarter-pound of dried mint disappear into the cauldron of hot, watery spiced mead with equal looks of horrified fascination. “That… uh… thank you, sir,” said Gremio weakly.

“I’m fine, really,” Kirkis insisted.

“I’m going to drink all of that fucking abomination,” Viktor stated.

-

Tir excused himself pretty quickly after that. Notably, he did not drink any of that abomination, though he was to be told later that Kirkis, true to character, was a very good sport about it.

Lying down in the dim tent, he opened his journal again and flipped to the pages. He reread, considered, and reviewed.

He put it down with dim visions dancing in his head, far-away times, picnics at the river, being pulled away from beggars, hushed words in the hallways; being brought downstairs for dinner, to a table full of family, kicking his feet in the air as Gremio giggled and fawned. Things collided, tried to mesh, but nothing fit together. The equations of what he knew as opposed to what everyone else already knows; the emotional memory, the images recalled, and the facts lost, all thin, wavering over each other, and pale. Gremio coming to his bed after he had a nightmare, Gremio doing schoolwork with him, Gremio taking the blame for a broken window because Tir had been scared of what his father would say. Gremio quietly helping put up blocks of stone with everyone else to build the castle tower, brow pinched and cheeks pink as he tried to ignore them speaking ill of Teo. Gremio’s neck and shoulder, a thick, old, white scar, like the dead limb of a tree. Viktor’s hand inching down Gremio’s back to—

Tir furrowed his brow, annoyed, and rolled over in bed. He had a lot to think about, but he just—kept thinking about what he saw and heard tonight, with uneasy dissatisfaction. A “fucking queer.” “Fucked up.” Viktor’s hand inching down Gremio’s back to touch his—“pushy and creepy, no boundaries—” “you fucking sleazy son of a—" “full of horseshit.”

It was all so… sad.

He found himself staring at the wavering red light of Soul Eater on his hand.

Eventually, he noticed the light shifting, and his eyes snapped up to see Gremio’s silhouette, blocking the dim firelight. He settled down to sit outside the tent, head bowed down. Tir watched him ruffle and smooth his hair, fix his hair tie; run a hand down his face, heave his shoulders.

He found that he could feel his heart beating as he considered what he was about to do.

“Gremio,” he called, softly, pulling the entrance to the tent back a little.

Gremio turned his head to look at him with one soft green eye. “Young Master, are you well?”

“I’m fine,” he said. He shuffled onto his thighs. “Hey, Gremio, you don’t have to stay outside all night.”

Gremio seemed calculating, Tir thought, as though he were trying to find a test in his words. “I would rather guard,” he protested in a whisper. “It’s more comfortable to me. I don’t like not having one.”

“But you don’t have to spend all night out there,” Tir argued.

Gremio turned around to face him, putting his back to the outside. “I usually don’t. I come in for a little while.”

“Not often.”

“Sometimes I can’t sleep.”

Tir, who had seen him passed out at the kitchen table while he waited for something to finish cooking on the fire, suddenly found that he doubted that. Stars, that had seemed funny at the time. “Well, then you should come inside tonight, so you can try.”

“Young master…”

“If Kirkis is covered in burns he won’t be sleeping,” Tir insisted. “He’ll hear if anything happens.”

Gremio raised an eyebrow. “That’s a little mean of you, young master.”

“I’m being situationally aware.”

Gremio sighed. “I’ll come in if you want me to.”

Tir held open the flap.

Gremio clambered in. He had always been a tall man; Tir occasionally saw him having trouble with short doorways, especially in their own house, which was made in an Eastern style. He carefully settled his axe back at the doorway, then he loosened his cloak so he could roll it up as a pillow. All the while he was preparing for bed, he didn’t say a word.

“You got hurt too,” Tir observed, surprising himself with a dark tone in his voice.

Gremio jumped. “Pardon me?”

“When the hot water splashed. You were right there; you got hurt too.”

“Oh—no. No, I just got some on my clothes, I didn’t feel anything.”

Tir stared at Gremio.

Gremio started shrinking under his stare. “What?”

“Are you lying to me?”

“What?” gasped Gremio.

“You’re lying to me,” Tir hissed. “You were right next to Kirkis. You obviously got hurt too, but you didn’t put anything on your burns.”

“What? No,” Gremio insisted, “I’m fine, Master.”

“Well, show me.”

“What?”

“Take off your clothes and show me you didn’t get any burns.”

“Uh— but—” Gremio started turning pink. “Yes, but— okay.” Tir could see as he began rolling them up that his pants did have sugar stains on them; they looked dark, sticky and incredibly uncomfortable. Gremio realized that his pants weren’t going to roll up as high as they had too, turned red, and started unlacing his boots. Tir watched him set the boots in the corner and go up on his knees to unlace his pants. His eyes followed his hands down as he reluctantly pulled the fabric down off of his hips and thighs—much harder and more toned, he noticed, than they ever looked in the sort of clothing he chose to wear.

But, in the fashion of the northern country he came from, it was very thick, durable clothing. Underneath were nothing but his pale thighs, with old wounds, for sure, and a bruise or two from shoving stones around and knocking into pan handles, but no burns; the skin was slightly pink from being scalded momentarily, but that was all.

“I guess I was a little bit burnt,” Gremio mumbled, “but, um, I hardly felt it. Some of my nerves are dead; I guess that’s my fault. It’s, uh, an old injury… so. I’m sorry, I’ll still, put something on it if you’d like.”

Tir was trying really hard to listen to what Gremio was saying, but it was a little quieter than him mentally screaming at himself to not stare at his. Don’t stare at him. Tir McDohl, you are a noble-raised man of good stock from fine culture. Don’t stare at another man’s.

“I mean, you probably should,” he finally said, turning away. “It’s still not good to be burnt. Uh. Even if you can’t feel it? Let me get your salve stuff.”

Tir turned around and stared at the wall for the process of Gremio taking care of his upper thigh burns, and hated himself. He waited until he heard the noise of Gremio re-clothing himself and felt like the pinnacle of uncomfortable and weird. “Sorry to be… pushy.”

“I…” Gremio swallowed. “I understand it was concern, young master.”

Tir glanced over his shoulder, wishing his face wasn’t burning so much. “You have, uh… a leg injury too?”

“The knee. They’re not the same after they’re hit once,” he said sadly. “It’s a good place to strike if you really hate someone. The bones were… after you get stuck seriously enough some will remain deadened.”

“What, forever?”

Gremio nodded, eyes cast down. “Some people are lucky and recover, but if it’s been several years, you can count on it being gone.”

Tir shuffled over to him, curious. “So—wait, is it just, like, your leg? You can’t feel anything?

“The upper half,” said Gremio, smoothing a palm down from mid-thigh to his knee. “A bit under the knee, but not all of it. Most of my toes, actually.”

Tir placed his hand gently over his knee. “Like, here?”

“The side is alright—it’s down here, and over here.” Gremio guided his hand.

“Oh,” said Tir, looking down at him. “Huh.”

Gremio spoke up with hesitation. “Master, you seem… distressed. Is something wrong?”

When Tir looked up, he met Gremio’s eyes too well. They locked onto each other, strangely fascinated, and looked down to look away.

“Are we friends?”

“What?”

Tir felt his heart pounding, to his own embarrassment. He thought his hand might be shaking, so he curled it back in. It was only that the question had been bouncing around in his head for months, and he kept trying to find time to say it, and now was the dumbest time, but— “Just. Are we friends?”

“Ah,” gaped Gremio, wide-eyed, “well, no.”

Tir felt dizzy.

“You’re my master, obviously,” Gremio continued, dumbfounded. “I… follow you. I serve you. And I’ve raised you, to the best of my ability, though I admit to many faults…” he cast his eyes down again. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Oh.”

“I only mean that we have… I’m not in that position, Sir,” he continued meekly. “I understand why you would be confused. But I’m your servant.”

“Of course,” Tir heard himself say.

Gremio took in a breath, but—didn’t say anything. He clenched and unclenched his hands, then turned around to pick his cloak back up. “I should keep an eye on things tonight,” he said quietly. “Kirkis being out of commission means we need someone with good eyes more, especially so close to the Great Forest.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And with Viktor drinking more than…” he pinched his nose and sighed. “It’s not that important. If there actually is danger he’ll snap up like a trap and I know it.” He muttered something and went to open up the entrance to the tent, one arm reaching down to his axe. “Sleep well, young master. And…” his face turned away, into the gloom of the night. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll take care of myself.”

The wall closed up behind him.

-

Tir wasn’t sure why he kept crying. It’s not like he was surprised. That’s exactly what Gremio fucking would say.

He began to experiment with how bright Soul Eater could shine in the dark. It was very dark in there. How hadn’t he noticed before?

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3: A pyre, a first name.

Tir spent a lot of time with Kirkis during the next few days, the only person on the face of the Earth he wasn’t aggravated with. He learned a lot about elves, actually. Kirkis said they tended to be small and thin because they lived in tall trees, or on mountains, or even in caves, historically. In other words, in places without a lot of good air. That’s also why they had superior night vision and farsight. He learned that almost every elf child starts learning how to shoot arrows once they can stand on their own; a history of being sustenance hunters informed a harsh lifestyle that wasn’t entirely necessary anymore. Kirkis could name any bird in the trees by its whistle; he could hear a storm rumbling by half a day away. He gathered plants he claimed were good food compulsively in his bag, roots Tir would have never known were under his feet and tiny fruits he would not have seen in the leaves. He learned that almost all elves had migrated away from the Empire because of intolerant policies, not just of the current Empire, but because of a long string of historical, even ancient, slights. He learned they tended to live twice the years of a human if they didn’t die in battle or weren’t killed by a beast. Both of these things were suspiciously common. Kirkis had uncles slaughtered by boars, sisters slaughtered by rocs, cousins killed by humans. He recounted these stories smiling; he showed off the handcrafted weavings of dead aunts and the knife of a brother lost long ago. He learned that Kirkis was courting the cheiftain’s daughter, actually; it was hard not to learn when Kirkis dreamily said “Then Sylvina…” or “That was when Sylvina…” or “Sylvina said…” every other sentence.

At nights he settled down to sleep alone, or to try to sleep alone. Gremio sat outside.

The Great Forest fought them. Kirkis’s strange backway through the forest was dangerous. He admitted himself that it seemed to call danger to large parties of people, as though the Forest didn’t want to be intruded upon through a backway. Vines in the trees, ferns at their feet, and flowers sprouting over head would all suddenly weave between them and tighten, open unseen mouths and breathe out pollen, or unfurl their leaves to reveal barbs and glistening stingers. Kirkis would fire on them before anyone else could see them; Cleo would follow his arrows and not her eyesight, throwing flames at the writhing, furious plants.

“They HATE that,” Tir observed for the fifth time, with due respect, as he poked his toes at the ashen remains of what had once been a 12-foot-long and hand’s-breadth wide constricting vine.

“They’re plants,” she said smugly. “Being a murderous, dangerous human doesn’t make you anything but a human. Murderous, dangerous plants aren’t anything but plants.”

They ended up less moving as a party and more moving in concentric circles through the jade lushness of the inner forest, some stalking above on the grey tree branches to look down from above—essentially Tir and Kirkis—some making a heavy trail on the ground through the mulch and yellow fungus to be able to watch for enemies above—mostly Viktor and Pahn, who could better force their way through tangled undergrowth—and Cleo and Gremio both went in midways or far off to the side, following the water, scouting the flanks, trying to pass on top of high tree roots or slip through the lower canopy. Tir made a game of trying to go as high as Kirkis could; Kirkis was an unbelievably good sport about it, and even Tir could tell that he was trying as hard as he could to give him a fighting chance. Yet there wasn’t an ounce in him of annoyance that he was followed or anxiety that he would be outpaced. Kirkis seemed, no matter how carefully Tir watched, to be glad for the company, happy to be able to have an intelligent conversation, and eager to share his knowledge of the Forest he was so desperate to save.

“You’re high-born, are you not?” he asked once, surprising Tir.

Tir carefully steadied his balance on a thin branch, marking how Kirkis had moved up in the winding freshwater tree. “Yeah,” he admitted. “My dad is… a general. How can you tell?”

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you’re from a military family, actually; you’re rather… laissez-faire,” he shrugged. “But you speak high speech, though not all the time.”

“High speech?” asked Tir.

“Yes… I think the concept is something else in your tongue,” Kirkis sighed, squinting as he tried to remember the words. “It’s when you use your language in its most polite and precise mode; speaking as someone who can read and write instead of an illiterate person is usually the most obvious sign. Speaking in sentences ahead of time instead of setting out bits and pieces and wrapping them together eventually. ‘What a pleasure it is to see you today, and how is the lady,’ rather than, ‘oh, hey! Oh, how’s your wife?’” He waved one hand as he approximated, spinning onto a new branch with the other. “I’ve noticed that most humans don’t use it unless they’re high-born; it’s not really too different with elves, it’s just that there’s so few of us that it’s more like everyone can do it, but we only do it at dinner, in front of the chief, and for formal events.”

“Huh,” Tir equivocated. “I don’t really speak like that, though.”

“But you can. I’ve heard you do it before. And you can reply to it. A lot of people are thrown off by high speech and stutter through their reply. You don’t, which is good, because you can speak to the chief with me. He has a low opinion of humans, sadly, and he’ll be grouchy about my proposition unless I can bring someone to him who can at least debate with him… and read.”

“Reading is his minimum requirement?” Tir asked incredulously.

“Yes.”

“That’s… harsh. Most people can’t.”

“All elves can,” Kirkis shrugged. “Older elves like the chief don’t… “ he gestured in circles as he walked backwards down a thinning oak tree branch. “Well, they don’t see things the way I do exactly. They don’t realize that humans are different and have a different culture. They expect everyone to be just like elves and look down on you if you’re not. They don’t realize that Dwarves have outmatched us in arts and technology, Kobolds in military prowess, humans in… power. They’re stuck in the old ways” He trailed off as the branches dwindled to twigs, watching clouds billow up in the west.

Tir followed him quietly for a while. “Will he be upset, then, about you bringing all of us?”

Kirkis winced, screwing up the corner of his mouth. “He’ll be… surly, I think, the way an old man is disappointed by things that are different. But they know, he knows, that it’s time to act. With a military commander with me, and with the warning of the Imperium they’ve already heard, together, we’ll convince him to act. By now they will know we have no choice. The reports of the massive forces gather against us; the sketches of construction projects in the South which we have copied or stolen, the vanishing Kobold villages… I only hope we’re not too late.”

“Villages have been vanishing?” Tir asked.

“Yes. That’s how we know the threat is real. It’s no small feat to just… wipe away a Kobold war band. They’re small, but they have a warrior culture. You have to be serious in your intent and bring many troops with you. That’s how we know this is a serious, long-term project. Humans don’t waste their short time on things they aren’t serious about.”

“Oh, we definitely do,” Tir argued.

“Of course I don’t mean to say that I don’t think you joke around,” Kirkis smiled. “I mean when it comes to your planning, your building—don’t you notice that the rest of us don’t have empires? We don’t have the dire seriousness you have. You swarm like ants, with collective intent, impossible to divert; when you die, a hundred take your place, and several generations wear down ancient strongholds. We aren’t… like that.”

Tir pondered Kirkis’s words at some length. “I don’t think I know enough about the other races,” he said.

“Well,” said Kirkis, a glimmer in his eyes, “what would you like to know?”

-

As it turned out, Kirkis was an amateur historian. He had once been studying old texts to be a loremaster when he became fascinated and infuriated with ancient politics and systems of law instead. In the present day he had a ready dissertation about any battle, kingdom, party, rule, movement, or royal family you could possibly want, and he would go from a cheerful young charmer to a snarling pitbull about it like a gust of wind.

Tir thought it was fun.

Tir also thought it was incredibly important fucking knowledge he maybe should have heard mentioned before, especially when it came to the long list of kingdoms, princedoms, fiefdoms, and city-states the Empire had crushed under their heels and assimilated as their own. These were places that had been crushed, brutalized, murdered; the leftover, twitching limbs, he learned, were still angry. It was the first time he heard a lot of names that he would come to hear again, and again, and again.

And it was when he began to have nightmares of dead, dying bodies. The process of the phrase “tens of thousands slaughtered” begins with hearing it; it does not end there. It never ends. The next step is seeing them.

He found himself jealous, sick, and sick that he was jealous. Kirkis, at least, had seen some of this inhuman horror. Tir was just afraid of it. And until now, he had been living safely, happily inside of it, clutched in its arms, calling it father.

-

All of Kirkis’s effort, study, begging, and belief led to him running his hands through the bones of a hundred dead elves and trying to put the joints back together so they could be buried.

It came to nothing. The chief of elves would not hear their plea; the villagers detested to look upon them. They were put in jail, broken out, sent on the run to the Dwarves, who also disdained to help them. Weeks passed in the mountains as they followed bitter cold streams and forced their way up and down wooded slopes to chilly badlands and dirty valleys.

Possibly the greatest challenge, at first, was to endure the awkward, chilly presence of their newest ally. Almost every one of the travelers was once a respected citizen of the Empire, an Empire-builder, who had flared up and turned traitor. None of them knew how to deal with each other, whether to be suspicious, relived, disdainful, or trusting, and the least of all of them when it came to graceful readjustment was General Valeria. In opposition to the explosive, furious disposition Valeria had when they found her in the elves’ prison, when she was broken up by the hateful response to her selfless, heroic actions, she had flash frozen into moodiness and cynicism once she was on the road, glaring at the grey sky, walking off with no warning to come back with fresh meat, often clobbered. She skinned aggressively and flung bleeding hunks of meat into Gremio’s stewpot with her knife. When she missed, Gremio quietly flicked them into the ashes so that they wouldn’t attract animals. Their path was marked by her bloodstains. This attitude too was in opposition to the Valeria they had all once known, vaguely; a well-dressed, icy, but polite General who was known for putting in the extra hours, taking the rough assignments, and never complaining.

Apparently she had been hiding a lot of baggage. Then again, they had all started lapsing a little without the structure of military days.

“Shit morning,” she would grumble to Tir as they got going. Or, “Hellspawn, I’ll need you to pick up the fucking pace.” “Speak the fuck up,” she would say to Gremio or Pahn if they tried to address her politely. “What’s it to you?” she snapped when Cleo spoke to her in a friendly way. Kirkis she seemed to appreciate, Tir figured, because he was as concerned about the threat to the Forest and the Burning Mirror as she was.

Kirkis, however, was almost more testy than she was; no one said anything, since he was reasonably worried about the impending slaughter of everyone he had ever loved. He was liable to get snappish and aggressive now, a far cry from the vivacious, energetic elf who first demanded they lend his people aid while half-dead himself. He continued to have bad luck, too; animal bites were wrapped up on his legs with ragged cuts from the mountain rock. He wasn’t used to walking where he could not climb, in the open elements; he was, within a few days, sunburnt by the thin light, hobbled by torn-up feet, and dirty from dust in his fine leathers. Still he persisted, determined to save those who did not want him.

Kirkis’s increased emotional strain sort of took the only good thing out of Tir’s life as it was. Not to be dramatic, of course. But he and Gremio were getting, as far as he could tell, icier and icier with each other (well, fine), reducing their relationship to a linear string of meals, outfits, baths, and whatever else Tir needed attended. Cleo and Pahn were continuing to not bother him, exactly, with this couple stuff, but they were keeping him awake with wondering how long this had been happening and how much of their lives he had missed while right there beside them. Viktor was Viktor, but Tir was still mad at him for shit-talking his friends, and even worse, being right about almost everything he said.

The Dwarves, in Tir’s estimation, were only different from the elves in that they did not imprison them. They put them through a hell of a lot more pain, delay, and difficulty, to be sure. He’ll never forget the sight of Valeria losing her already strained grasp on decorum and wailing on a solid rock wall with high kicks and punches because they had spent two hours trying to coax a dwarf-clever door five miles into an underground safe and no amount of tinkering, persuading, or cleverness had made it budge. They eventually got what she made out of the lock out of the wall and the whole thing fell flat with an echoing boom.

After almost starving to death in a vault of endless treasure for several days, Pahn, Viktor, and Tir all picking up some kind of virus from a questionable roasted rabbit and spending a day and a night puking down a mountainside as Kirkis desperately tried to keep them moving at least a little, and Cleo, who should have been well-guarded from almost any attack, suffering a scratch on her skull from a monster-sized bird of prey, the stress of which brought on her womanly cycle, which compelled Valeria into hers, which ruined their remaining stock of bandages before three days were up, they were given the instructions on how to make massive weapons of fiery death from a surly and suspicious dwarf chief. At that point, everyone was pretty charmed by the massive death weapons.

Still, even Tir was aware, with a gradually overbearing feeling, that they had to be too late. It had simply been too much time.

They could see the forest burning down days before they could have possibly travelled there. They had to watch as they straggled on, exhausted, unable physically to run the whole way, terror smoldering into misery and despair, until dirty, callous, and malnourished, they pushed themselves almost beyond endurance to reach a battle that had been lost a week ago, which they had never had a chance of winning.

Most of the tree’s trunk was still standing, black and hollow. There were even reddish coals still eating at the heart of it, which had so recently been wet and living. The branches were dust or hollowed shells, scraped out where they fell after crushing the elves that lost their lives beneath them. The fields around them were scorched or ashen for miles; the livestock rotted where it had suffocated. Their bones were scattered, fractured, and red-black; It was hard to find a whole body because of the heat and smoke they had endured. It was Viktor who started putting pieces back with that looked like their matches, silently, with his brown pinched in bleak frustration. Everyone else rest followed his lead.

It seemed like they were all trying to ignore Kirkis sobbing as he dug through still-warm piles of collapsed, burnt homes to collect the dead, but Tir couldn’t. Maybe he should have, but he couldn’t. “Kirkis,” he whispered, half-stumbling down to him over a set of rib-like rafters, splintered and fire-softened.

Kirkis looked up at him, with impossibly wide eyes, sea-green and rimmed with red, two inhuman mirrors that made Tir’s stomach shudder to look at. “Tir,” he croaked, “my friend.”

Tir knelt down with him. “I’ll pick them up,” he said, “I’ll do it. You can…” he didn’t know what Kirkis could do. “You can go, if you like.”

Kirkis shook his head. “All our efforts were in vain, Master Tir.”

“I know.” Tir’s eyes stayed fixed on his hands, numbly, dreamily picking through blackened lace curtains, shriveled up from the heat, to try to unbury a dried arm, its fingers bent around something that was no longer there.

“Everything I… everything I did, everything I learned…” Kirkis gazed ahead of himself. “The work I did. I betrayed my family, I ran away from battle, I thought… I threw my life away to try to save them! I disgraced myself, wandered barefoot, went without food, I swam through the waves of the sea and it almost took my life; I walked the Empire, I went to the humans, went to the dwarves, went to the kobolds; I begged, stole, did myself dishonor, and pushed it from my mind, and I was abused, mistreated, slandered, spat at, imprisoned, insulted and degraded, and stripped of my place among elves, I left them with their hatred and now—” his waist convulsed, burying his head in his forearms.

Tir let the wind fly between them.

Valeria approached them, holding a basket. She knelt down on the other side of Kirkis. “Elf,” she said.

“Nothing remains,” Kirkis growled, threateningly. “Nothing remains I tried to protect. And they didn’t even want me to. I did it for nothing.”

“Elf, heed me,” she demanded. Though Kirkis stayed still, Tir’s head snapped up at the tone of her voice, and he saw that her face was wet with tears. “This is the work of the Empire, which is evil. Against evil, we people can do little. You did what you could.”

Kirkis turned his head to her. Tir could not see his face. “It didn’t matter,” he said.

“Not this time it didn’t. Next time? We’re setting them on fire.” She stood up again, straining her thighs, which were weak from exertion. “Let up put together a respectable pyre for the dead and make a promise.”

“A promise,” Kirkis echoed. He bent down again. “I do not want to burn them.”

“How do Elves, then, let go of their dead?” asked Valeria, picking up her basket of bones.

“We burn them.”

“Make whatever is fitting to burn them on,” Valeria insisted. “We will do it in the proper way, and then make our promise.”

-

The pyre was hard to build, with so little left unburnt. There were as many bones on top of the wood as there was wood to burn them on. That only meant it was easy to burn it all again; with witnesses, and respect.

When the fire was low, scorching hot, and angry black in its heart, they began.

“So we shall do to your enemies,” Valeria promised.

“I will strike down the ones who did this,” Kirkis whispered.

Viktor bowed low to the bones. “I’m sorry we brought you our war,” he apologized. “That was irresponsible. We’ll end it for you. Sooner or later.”

Gremio was next in line. Awkwardly, he seemed unsure what to say. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “This was wrong.”

Cleo cleared her throat. “Rest in peace,” she said, typical for funerals in the Empire.

“Rest in peace,” Pahn echoed.

Tir watched the bones breaking down in the shimmering red ashes.

“This will never again happen while I am in charge,” he whispered, voice hardly louder than the crackling flames. “Never. Never. I’ll… kill myself first. I’ll kill them. I can’t… I won’t endure this. I won’t lay my eyes on a scene like this ever again.”

His face was burning from bending over the pyre of the dead. He could see, from the side of his vision, Gremio glancing over to him, face screwed up with crying. Tir saw him whisper something, bringing his hadn up to his face, but he couldn’t hear anything. He looked up at Gremio. He met his eyes.

He had never seen such an awful look on his face. It was so horribly miserable, and angry. It was a new person—strange—familiar—not familiar because he had seen it—familiar because—it was how anyone would feel. Yet it was on Gremio’s face, this strange, familiar, horrible thing. This overwhelming, everyday feeling of something beyond us. For a second, Tir forgot where he was.

Kirkis starting fumbling with something in his pocket. Eventually, he pulled it out; a small, glittering object. He knelt down, dangerously close to the flames. Tir could see Viktor tense up. “Sylvina,” Kirkis whispered. “Sylvina, can you hear me? Is your spirit not gone yet?

“I am ashamed that I left you in disgrace… my hasty actions put us both in danger. And now I’ve paid the highest price. My regret… chokes me. The weight of what I’ve done… is beyond bearing. I feel it on my neck.”

“Kirkis,” Viktor warned, kneeling down to get close to him. “Don’t.”

Kirkis tried to shove Viktor off with a weak arm. Viktor grasped him forbiddingly. “Sylvina,” he called again, voiced cracked. “Sylvina, I meant to give this to you… but now you must hate me, for having done what I did; for letting everyone die. Letting you die. For being so weak, so spineless, so stupid. Sylvina, I—I—I—” he sobbed. “I wanted to give this to you, but I can’t. Even now—especially now—I’m not worth it. I can’t.”

“Come on,” Viktor murmured. “Stand back up. You gotta walk away now.”

“Sylvina—”

“Come on now,” he repeated, pulling Kirkis away from the fire gently, but speaking to him harshly. “That won’t help anything. She’s gone. It’s time now.”

When Kirkis broke down, he was plenty light enough for Viktor to pick him up and move away.

Valeria, who was qualified, completed the funeral.

-

Tir was alone when he started crying that night, uselessly.

He had a face to that name now. Hundreds dead. Genocide. War. The battlefield, full of bodies.

That face was what kissed him that night and held him in an unbreakable grip, bone-white face to face. As the moon rose and sank in the sky, grinning, glowering, turning slowly, the bone-white face, he lay transfixed. Death lay next to him, in suffocating silence; with his hand he could reach out to it, and feel its thick, cool cloak. His gorge rose while his skin settled. Horrified, he was comforted. He began to see: death was the terror, but death was the release from it. The dark night was the fear of all, and sleep, slipping into it, was the only comfort. Into death all feared to go; when they were there, they feared no longer. The living were left with pulling unidentifiable skulls out of the wreckage. The living were left to go on with the war and see another massacre. The dead were spared.

Fascinated he reached out, terrified pulled back. Terrified he reached out, fascinated pulled back; somehow, he felt it was going in slow, heavy circle, like an ichorous whirlpool.

He wondered how Odessa would have stopped the massacre, or managed the aftermath. He wondered how Mathiu might have spoken today if he had agreed to take Tir’s place. He wondered how his father would have saved the elves.

He noticed his father didn’t save the elves.

He told himself that he could not let something like this happen again. It was impossible. He would make it impossible. He had to.

He repeated convictions into overwhelming silence.

-

Viktor may have been the guy for the crisis, but he wasn’t the guy for tender care after the fact. Kirkis wasn’t going to snap back to the way he was; he wasn’t even putting on an act of dignity. From what Tir gathered, forcing a cheerful face wasn’t really a part of Elven culture. The person for making sure everyone could move, everyone could eat, everyone had adequate time to rest, that everyone stayed healthy, tended, and were in an atmosphere of something other than abject misery was Gremio. He had always, Tir reflected, been uniquely skilled at making sure people were maintained through rough patches, or perhaps uniquely practiced.

He didn’t push, he didn’t tell Kirkis to smile or cheer up, he didn’t tell him to toughen up or put his battle face on; he told Kirkis to eat, sleep, change his bandages, and please scout ahead of them (so he could spend some time by himself). It wasn’t an easy task. Kirkis didn’t make it easy. He seemed to not care to go on right now, and putting him through the motions definitely didn’t make him more cheerful. Gremio got snapped at and snarled at and told to stop and he barely reacted. He did his most admirable best, tending, fussing, watching without being obvious, and being there without being conspicuous.

Tir hated himself for being jealous. He hated himself very much. He had known, of course, that he would be alone with his new convictions, and yet he wasn’t prepared to be alone with them. He was now determined to be a leader, to be such a leader that he prevented a calamity like this from ever happening again; how did he do that? How would anyone even know he had made that choice? What was he supposed to do about being a grand new leader on the long march back home, with everyone, including him, tired, worn through, hungry, irritable, and dizzy with infection? Should he be inspiring everyone with words, somehow, or supporting them, helping them, maintaining them silently? Like Gremio did?

What Gremio did didn’t make him a leader, though. It still seemed to earn him a lot of affection. Tir noticed that even Viktor acting respectably to him—maybe not kindly, exactly, but he wasn’t antagonizing him like he used to. Maybe he would start again once the atmosphere was gone and they had Kirkis shut off somewhere. Cleo and Pahn, he thought, had always treated Gremio with a lot of deference. Once he thought it was because Gremio had essentially harangued them into respect, but he now saw that that had always been a joke they made about it.

People loved people who cared for them. That’s all. And Gremio managed to care for any bitch he was put in front of, even if he didn’t seem to want to care, and for reasons Tir certainly didn’t know. He really hated himself for being jealous.

Wrapped up as he was in his own concerns about the issue—not that anyone could fault him for being wrapped up in his thoughts about mass murder and how he was going to avoid it through personal intervention—he didn’t quite pick up on how, exactly, everyone else felt at that time, other than miserable. He wasn’t so used to it, after all. He could understand, or comprehend, how Kirkis must have felt at the time. He could assume that Viktor was contemplative and disappointed, having seen tragedies like these before and upset to see them still happening, that Cleo and Pahn must have been having a hard time watching the fruits of their labors as subjects of the Scarlet Moon Empire.

But Gremio? He had been avoiding Gremio. What happened next came to him as a surprise.

It was several days after the funeral. Most everyone had wound down a little; there was less occasional sobbing, less snapping and shoving, more slogging. The tents were set up close together, less out of the fear of attack—who was alive to attack?—but because the trees pressed so closely together that it was the only practical way to make a camp. It was very dark in the Forest now, and very quiet. Besides, Tir, at least, felt better being close, so maybe everyone else did too. Not hemmed in together, not even in rooms together, but close, able to hear the quiet noises of sleep, the soft notes of emotion, able to vaguely see other flickering lamplights like nearby stars, knowing they were not alone.

Tir closed his journal and lowered his light. It wasn’t giving him much peace anyway. His thoughts, though tempestuous, had been spiraling that dark spiraling shape again, getting nowhere, when they were interrupted.

“Master Tir?”

Gremio’s voice was as soft as a raindrop would be to the thunder, but all the storm and noise vanished anyway. Tir jolted. “What?” he whispered.

“Master Tir, are you alright?”

Tir checked his face instinctually; it was dry. “I’m fine,” he whispered, confused.

He saw Gremio’s shadow settle down a little, outside the wall of the tent. His shadow didn’t even seem all dark; he was a deeper blue place in the thin blue water. “I suppose that’s good…” Gremio whispered back, trying, just like Tir was, to be quiet enough that the people not ten feet away, hidden by thin walls, couldn’t hear them. Their attempts were a polite lie; even a whisper could be heard, no matter how quiet. They spoke anyway, as little as possible. They learned how to give each other privacy in their minds, making room, letting each other have what they could, forgetting on purpose what didn’t belong to them. “I suppose I should bid you goodnight.”

Gremio was too obviously reluctant. Something was wrong. “Are you alright?” Tir asked.

The bowed head of the blurred silhouette took a long time to answer. “I know… that no one is alright, Master Tir.”

“No,” Tir agreed. “No. Especially not Kirkis.”

“Especially not Kirkis,” Gremio agreed, “but not anyone. And…” he sighed.

“What is it?” Tir asked. Anxiousness was brewing in him.

“It’s not my place, it’s really not my place,” Gremio sighed, “But I wish it were.”

“What?” Tir whispered. “Gremio. You’re acting strange.”

He shifted around uncomfortably; Tir could assume it more than see it. “I don’t want to upset you any further,” Gremio whispered in the most hushed voice possible, almost losing the definition in his speech. Tir shuffled to get closer, sitting on the other side of the sheet from him. They faced each other, shadow to shadow. “I know I’m being forward, and I know I’m being impertinent. I know that… I should keep to myself. I’m just inserting myself somewhere I don’t deserve to be. And I’m sorry, but I’m… frightened. I’m not sure what else to do.”

Tir could feel his pulse in his wrists and his neck—his guts in his stomach, his tongue in his mouth, uncomfortably physical. “What are you saying?” he asked, not sure if he was staying quiet. But he didn’t hear any rustling or turning.

“I mean that I don’t know what to do; I’m frightened for you, and I don’t know how to help you. Tir;” he gasped, “young master; I was too proud. I thought I knew… I thought that I was doing the right thing for you, but I don’t know if I was. I know you’ve been unhappy. I know this has been too much for you. But I couldn’t tell you not to make this choice. I should have, knowing the cost, but when I saw… your face… how much it meant to you…” Gremio’s tone did something odd, something proud and scared and crackling, and Tir’s guts flipped inside him. He was slowly folding in on himself, compressed with sadness. “I couldn’t stop you from going down the course you’re on. I couldn’t do anything to help you either. It was my responsibility to keep you safe, and I was so weak. And now… you’re so unhappy.

“I have only myself to blame. I’ve failed you. I know I angered you; I’ve been trying to keep my distance, so that I don’t anger you any more… but… but…

“Oh no,” he asked mournfully, “what am I doing?”

Tir wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he lightly touched the wall between them, his fingers shaking. “Gremio… I don’t know…” he didn’t know what to say.

“Well, me either,” Gremio whispered, voice cracking miserably. “I wish I hadn’t said anything… I wish I hadn’t done anything. I know I’m putting myself where I don’t belong. I’m… sorry. I’m trying to control myself, and I can’t. It’s only that I’ve always… well, I’ve always loved you so much. I’ve cared for you. I don’t know what to do, or how to make up for what I’ve done, but please, I know you’ve been unhappy, and—don’t shut me out. Please, don’t shut me out.”

Tir’s head started buzzing, buzzing like he hadn’t been breathing. Maybe he hadn’t been. He was stuck on—well—this wasn’t how—this wasn’t how Gremio spoke. How anyone he knew spoke. They weren’t so—his family, his people, their culture, the Empire, they wouldn’t speak this way. They weren’t so emotional. They stayed circumspect, things weren’t stated so—

So, I’ve always loved you so much.

Tir bowed his own head, flustered. He didn’t know what his stomach was doing. He had to keep a grip on himself. “Gremio. I don’t know what to say.”

Gremio could be seen shaking his head. “Forgive me, please,” he tried to apologize, “I didn’t think I had been drinking this much. Maybe I had. I’ve been irresponsible. Maybe I really shouldn’t have—”

“No, wait, Gremio,” Tir said sternly, hoping he would calm down. He couldn’t listen to this, how he was vomiting self-hatred and abuse, trying to stop himself. “Don’t speak like that. I’m not… mad at you.”

“But, Master…”

“I was a little mad, but I think… well, I think that was unfair,” Tir admitted, flushing at himself. “And I shouldn’t have been so cold to you. I wasn’t trying to punish you or anything. Really. What I wanted…” Tir didn’t know what to say.

“Master Tir?” asked Gremio, under the noise of crickets and cicadas.

“I’ve always loved you too. I guess.”

Gremio visibly startled. Tir found himself… finding it funny, a little. Not funny as if he thought Gremio were funny, though he was, but as though he were himself, and it made him smile. “Ah—”

“I mean that, you’re right, you’ve always been there for me, and I haven’t appreciated it, I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and I’ve felt so… lost,” he admitted. “Leading an army… starting a rebellion… battles, reconnaissance, drafting, even barracks… I don’t really know what to do. Up until just a few days ago, secretly, I was still wishing Mathiu had agreed to do it. But it’s me, and I have to do it. I’m going to do it. After the Village of the Elves, I’ve decided that.” He sighed. “And I wish you were… with me for it. I guess.” He lowered his eyes. “I don’t know. I feel like I should know you. But I don’t even know how you really feel. About any of this.”

There was a long silence. Tir looked up when he could feel another hand, warm pressure, slide up the wall of the tent, find his, and impress, just gently, bending the fabric around their fingers. Quickly, as if he had done it by accident, Gremio pulled back.

“I’m for you,” Gremio whispered, “for everything. That’s my position. That’s how I feel. I’m for you.”

Tir swallowed. He tensed his shoulders. He wiped the hallows of his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Gremio, I…” he had to search for words. I understand, but he didn’t. Thank you, but it wasn’t enough. I love you, but it was too much. Do you mean it, but he didn’t doubt him. But what about dad, but he didn’t want to know. What will we do, but he didn’t want to worry him. “I want… to do… this right,” he said, uncertain if it was.

“I understand,” said Gremio, immediately.

They waited, on either side of a door.

“I’ll watch for you,” Gremio promised. “Get some sleep, young Master.”

“Gremio,” Tir said, teasingly, with the crack of stifled tears in his voice, “for fuck’s sake, my name is Tir.”

Gremio—giggled. “It is, young master.”

“Gremio,” sighed Tir.

“Please get some rest…” Gremio continued. “…Tir.”

Tir’s heart fluttered.

-

Almost not worth mentioning—he had a strange dream that night. He dreamed he was lying down with Gremio, in a bed of white flowers. He could remember him laughing, and he could remember they were lying in a coffin, and little else. Only a noise, unpleasant, thick, and visceral, like thick, pungent water being laboriously sucked down a drain.

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4: An injury, a doctor.

In the morning, there was no time for complicated unpacking, defining, or explaining. If there had been, neither of them would have been remotely equipped for it. He saw Gremio’s smile with the sun rise; brief, made just for him, then hidden again. He went back to cooking up breakfast, focused on the rough day they had ahead of them, the low supplies, the handling of grief, the wounds they would have to keep tended without sacrificing speed.

Luckily, they were about to pass through the ruins of a Kobold village, through which they could scrounge for supplies. Unluckily, and as they were soon to find out, that put them on a crash course with a full two hundred Imperial soldiers. They were surrounded almost before they knew what was going on. Valeria, being her usual self, chose a completely unpredictable course of action—after cursing a streak and punching a wall, she announced to the others that she would turn herself in.

“I’m still wearing my insignia and armor,” she sighed, “and I have my identification on me. They can prove its me; the rest of you they can’t prove. Technically I outrank everyone here, even if I’m a prisoner they’re bound to take my word that you’re nobody. At least, they can’t be punished by anyone for taking me at my word. So,” she snapped, whipping her head around to face the imperials.

Gremio darted past Tir to grab ahold of Valeria’s upper arm. “Are you joking?” he hissed.

Tir wasn’t the only one who jolted at Gremio’s sudden action. “No?” said Valeria.

“You’re about to be charged with high treason,” Gremio reprimanded, “don’t be foolish.”

“They still have to take me at my word before I’m charged,” she insisted.

“I mean that you’ll be put to death.”

Valeria gave him a withering stare. “Oh shit,” she drawled, “put to death? I just hadn’t realized.” She tried to gently pull herself away from Gremio. “Let me go, McDohl.”

She had the habit of giving family servants their family name—it was a polite mode of addressing one, too polite according to many. Gremio even colored when she did it. “You have a job to do.”

“And I’m doing it. McDohl,” she continued, flashing over her gaze to Tir this time, “The Burning Mirror must be destroyed. That can't be done if we all die here. The Liberation Army can't afford to lose its leader. A leader must stay alive.”

Caught between Valeria’s determined face and Gremio’s fear, Tir sucked in his breath for a second. But he fancied, now, that he had an idea of what leadership looked like, whether he liked how it looked or not. He had to live up to it anyway. Valeria had always had the visage of leadership on her, despite her flaws.

“General,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

Valeria nodded. “Me as well,” she admitted, and, as she swept by Tir on her way to the enemy, “though I hope you can be quick enough to save me.”

“We’ll remember you,” Tir replied.

Valeria didn’t show any sign of uncertainty if she even felt it. Tir didn’t know how she couldn’t, but having watched her unbelievable (if sometimes unwilling) determination for several months now, he couldn’t help but believe in her himself. Someone with that conviction in their cause has won already if they go to their death convinced. It only made him feel cheap that he was sure he would never see her again.

Valeria halted not an arm’s reach away from the petty lieutenant that was about to handle her arrest. She had half a head over him and her bearing caused her to tower over him more. She wore glittering imperial armor over dress and skin that were filthy with ash, blood, and dirt, and the reek, hatred, and disdain which poured out of her very nearly made the enemy balk. “I turn myself over to the representatives of the Emperor,” she stated, “confident in their promise they will let these rabble go to live their lowly lives as they will.”

The completely inadequate lieutenant accepted her surrender. His men chained her around her neck, wrists, and waist, pinning her arms behind her as she stared with completely unaffected annoyance. The chains were tested for thoroughness and she was called a ‘good girl’ by a grinning subordinate who touched her jaw. Tir heard, Gremio, obviously horrified, clenching his leather gauntlets around his axe. Viktor gasped an agitated breath when someone ‘accidentally’ knocked her on the back of her skull with his elbow, causing her to flinch.

“Alright, men,” the lieutenant declared, turning Valeria around with a hand on her back, “kill the knife-ears, the dogs, and all rest of these miserable traitors.”

“What?” Valeria barked, seizing as hard as she could against the men who clutched her arms. “You—you son of a snake! You gave your word!”

He smiled. “Words don’t mean anything,” he spat, and smacked her with the back of his hand.

Perhaps he was not betting on her being fast enough to bite him.

By the time the lieutenant was squealing, Viktor was already two steps into his charge against the soldiers, completely unheeding of their numbers. Tir heard weapons being drawn around him, and he, too, had impulsively lowered himself into a defensive stance when he felt the stinging slap on Valeria’s face. He saw her thrust her weight into on of the men holding her; he saw people start to stumble and heard them begin to cry. There was a hundred identical scrapes of imperial swords being drawn from their sheathes. Behind him he heard the archers hurrying to get distance, wooden arrows being knocked and notched. Someone scrambled backward when they realized Viktor was upon them, heaving his zweihander overhead; Tir doubted they survived the downswing.

When blood started flying, he heard Gremio curse by his ear and draw back a half-step, foot scraping the pine needles and packed dirt. He heard the Kobolds begin to bay. He saw the army begin to surge, their glittering arms like a forest lake disturbed by a stone. Unsupervised and unorganized, they mobbed.

The mass pressed in on them.

It began, for Tir, strangely simply. A man ran to him with a sword and swung it at his side. It was a stupid move, one Master Kai had taught him to counter years ago; they must have not seen that he wielded a staff. He deflected it easily and repelled them with his backswing. Then he saw there were many more approaching. He had his right side exposed. He spun his staff, reacting to the dull, blurred commands of his instinct that he could hear just under the din; the staff is the best weapon for defending all of your sides, you have reach, a great range of movement, the ability to flow—the attacks of a dozen identical swords were steps in a dance, and he only had to meet them all. He parried a thrust, launched a sword over his head, jabbed someone in what should have been their liver, struck and felt the give and the bend-- until someone knocked him flat on the head.

For a second, he saw white. His vision fogged.

Then he saw a hundred wavering silver swords; a hundred things that would go wrong.

Desperate, he struck a wild blow. He felt heavy weight buckle under this strike. He heard pain. He struck to the other side without even seeing an enemy and a shout reverberated around him with the waves of his perception as a sword clattered out of reach. He thrusted with his staff and heard armor rattle.

He saw Kirkis diving in and out of sight, under the shoulders of much larger men. Caught in the thick of battle, his quiver was nothing more than extra armor. He had a small knife held in both hands and he was stabbing it, with an archer’s concussive force, into the gaps in the soldier’s armor, some below the belt. He heard howling.

Heat seared his cheeks as fire blazed in an arc to his right. He felt something warm hit his back; he whipped his staff around to try to strike their head. He missed and heard Gremio grunt as he struck his shoulder.

“I’m—” Tir shouted.

Gremio grabbed him and forcibly turned him back around so he was facing the mob. He anchored himself with him. He felt Gremio’s back muscles flex against his shoulders; he felt his whole body pushed and turned as Gremio took a swing with his halberd, landing a hit that splashed them both with bright blood.

“Ah,” he breathed.

There was a soldier upon him. Sideslash; deflected. Forward jab; easy to shove it away and follow up with the other end of the staff. Weaknesses in their moves, their armor, their dependency on bladed weapons; Tir realized without thinking it that he knew everything about how the common Imperial soldier fought. He had seen it rehearsed a thousand times on the other side. There was bitter breath in his face and body heat on him; with Gremio at his back there was no way to flinch back. He struck. A sword at his right, he struck. Gremio’s body moved. He responded. A sword, he deflected it. Heavy flesh shuddered and he felt the body yield under his strike. Snap.

He could hear howling, but it was vanishing, drawing thin, as if he were falling asleep to it. His vision was clearing; there was a body in front of him and he attacked it. He felt the body behind him move; he responded. He turned, he turned with him. There was a sword, he deflected it. Hot flesh in his hand; under his staff, he snapped it. He shoved and deflected. He moved, he was pulled, he felt something hard, and he snapped it.

Then someone fell on him. He was pressed body to body, heat and heat, and he could not move. Bodies surged; bile rose in his throat. There was nothing he could see but red; it was dark and loud and his body did nothing. He pushed. He shoved and fumbled; his staff wasn’t in his hands. He twisted his fingers around the flesh of the soldier and wrenched it. He babbled—“motherfucker—no—please, fuck—Soul Eater—"

There was a bitterly delicious sound, like dark tea on the back of the tongue, like heavy, dirty water being sucked down a drain. The body was gone; he could see. The air burst on his face, his foot scrabbled for his staff and he did not find it. There was a sword at his left.

He curled his right hand into a tiger’s claw and struck at the soldier, clattering on the curve of his armor. It didn’t matter; everything went quiet, and then there was a horrible noise, and then his vision waivered. He heard himself rattling with a gasping breath. Someone cried to his right, he whirled around, palm open, fingers clutched. He saw them hurtle backwards and saw their red mouth wide open. The air glistened around them like the heat of a blistering summer day. Their mouth stretched open, their arms turned around them like the hands of a clock. There was a gurgling, awful sound, a sound like some thick, stinking fluid being pulled—the body turned—as if there was some invisible, insensible whirlpool behind them, some unearthly funnel their whole body was being pulled back into, with skin stretched torturously from muscle, muscle stretched from bone, bones popping apart, and the parts were coming out, and it tore—

The world snapped into place in their absence. There was a mass of men, armored, glittering, with swords. He could feel the boiling heat on his cheeks; his lungs struggled. His eyes were pressing at his skull and his tongue at his throat.

The body behind him shifted. His knees bent. He stumbled.

The ground was cool. The body under him less so. He was staring at someone’s esophagus. Most of it was exposed as the head sagged low to the ground, slowly pulling off of the body. With instinct, he saw the kill and thought, Viktor. He felt light-headed.

Something pounded at his right, he turned around, gritting his teeth, palm outstretched; instinct, Gremio. He snapped it away, and looked up. Gremio was standing over him.

There was a soft breeze made by the brutal swing of his halberd, stirring the heavy air.

He heard a voice that was Kirkis; he felt Gremio reply above him. The words were incomprehensible. Someone saw Gremio’s open back, they saw Tir underneath him. Tir pulled his palm down his face. The soldier convulsed as he was wrenched down the drain.

All he understood next was that everyone was surging to the left. He struggled to get up; Gremio pushed him down with his knee into the dead soldiers. He heard him shout. He knew he was afraid. Tir felt like he shouldn’t be. The number of people increased; he knew something was wrong but he had to pause, collect his head, before he could get an inkling of what.

A different force was crashing into the imperial army. He saw many colors, no distinct uniform, they were some female, some male, they came with glittering waves of magic, unlike the imperials; they routed them in seconds. The army had been panicked by the sudden appearance. They were cut down as they ran, and their screams died off fast.

Slowly Tir could feel himself sucking breaths in and out rapidly. He could feel them in his lungs and they hurt. Feel his hands prickling painfully with needle-stabs. Feel wet, and dirty, and cold. His vision swimming as the water of his head surged.

He was being picked up. The hands were huge, warm; instinct. Viktor. He felt his knees struggle until his feet were solid on the ground. Not a body, ground. He felt Viktor’s hands slowly rub down his arms and come back up, take off his bandana, smooth his hair. Viktor was winter fireside warm. For some reason, he closed his eyes; the blackness was so peaceful. No soldiers, no bodies, no strange people. Viktor felt the curves of his skull, gently, leaving his skin tingling strangely after his hands. He felt his jaw, Tir tilted his head. He patted down his shoulder and made a disappointed noise, then asked him gruffly to turn around. Tir did what he said. Viktor ran a hand down the back of his spine; shuddering, feeling so strangely quiet, Tir felt another hand glance on his shoulder, pull away, and grab again; Gremio. He knew his hands, his uncertain poise, his almost perfect gentle anxiety. Tir opened his eyes and saw his face, very close, tight like stone with pain, concern, worry, and anger. He saw him dripping with blood. Even his fair hair was dark and sticking with it, and his glass-green eyes were glimmering from inside of the dark pool, tear-wet. Tir felt himself smiling at him.

Gremio smiled with pain, beautifully.

“I think he’s concussed,” he heard Viktor say. “I don’t think he has a serious break, or his spine out of place? But he’s got to be bleeding inside. And we’ll have to put that shoulder back.”

“Yes, I know,” Gremio replied.

Tir started giggling.

“Yeah, concussed for sure,” Viktor concluded.

Tir laughed, and swayed with his laughter; rolling his head caused his whole body to slack uneven. Gremio caught him and held him up as he laughed through horrible, horrible throbs of dizzy pain in his head.

“His eyes—” he heard Gremio say.

“Yeah, I saw,” Viktor interrupted, “that’s how I know he’s bleeding. We’ll need him to get attention soon. Luckily, Mathiu—”

“Queen of Heaven,” he heard a wonderfully familiar voice swear. “Commander—”

Gremio gripped Tir’s forearms tightly. Tir fought a dizzying urge to fold into him, and then gave himself up to it. Gremio smelled like blood, was wet with blood, and Tir put his face into it. He was so warm. He was so—solid, he didn’t know, human, living, tangible. He was full of blood too, Tir thought suddenly, blood, pus, bones, slime, skin and shit; just as shatterable as anyone else he had crushed today. A handful of disgusting things that formed a person painfully lovable when miraculously organized. Now that he had seen it, he knew that’s all anyone was, but there was so much unexpected, unasked for, and best of all, completely unnecessary wonder in the disgusting mechanisms of personhood, wonderful despite their nature. And it just seemed so—precious, and nice, and he could wrap his arm around its shoulders, and hold it. And when he did, it smelled sweet, and made him feel good.

How? How did something so disgusting?—

“—got battle madness?” He heard Mathiu’s angry voice. He heard Viktor huff and drop his sword, hazardly, from his shoulder to touch the ground.

“—about his head,” he heard Viktor say. Things were a little muffled by Gremio. He had his body all around him; that’s when Tir realized he was being held back. He was so warm. Tir loved him, he really loved him. He just seemed like such a person, and that seemed so fantastic.

“It’ll be okay,” he realized Gremio was saying. “It’ll be okay.”

“Gremio,” he said.

“I’m here,” Gremio replied, voice tight.

“I’m not scared,” Tir assured him.

“Young master—”

“For fuck’s sake, my—ahhh—” Tir’s complaint was suddenly cut off by a very, very bad feeling in his right shoulder when he tried to hold Gremio more tightly. His dreamy vision became a lot sharper suddenly. “Ahhh, fuck.”

“Hold that with your other arm for now,” Matt instructed, “like this.” He gently pulled Tir’s arms off of Gremio, supporting him with admirable precision, taking a full minute to reposition Tir so that he was cradling his own arm, which, actually, seemed like it was a little far down. “We’re going to have to put it back into place. It’ll hurt a lot. But we have to get you washed over first.”

“But—” Tir argued, staring with confusion at his arm, “it isn’t hurt. I just used it to—”

“Battle adrenaline was keeping you from noticing some serious injuries, but you’re about to notice them,” Matt informed him. “I’m going to bring you somewhere to sit down, you’re going to sit down, and then someone… no, I’m going to go over you with a water rune and we’re going to see what we need to do.”

“You can use runes?”

“I fucking hope so.”

Tir was led, on one side by Matt and on the other by Gremio, on a short walk that got longer with every step. By the time he was collapsing underneath a large ash tree his head was pounding and his arm was burning. The back of his right hand felt a little weird one second and like a live coal the next and he was twitching against it. “Oh,” he said dizzily, “fuck.”

Gremio sat down with him, easing him onto the ground. Mathiu knelt down in front of him, pulling a brightly translucent runestone out of his shoulder bag. It was a good one, Tir could tell; glimmering with potential instead of dull, no flaws, even a slight tint of blue color. Weak runestones were clear, strong ones were distinctive. When Matt pulled it out, he placed it on his own forearm, and Tir saw a blue fire flare up under his sleeve.

“You said you can’t do magic,” he argued.

“I can’t,” Matt growled, “anymore, I haven’t been able to since the final battle of Kalekka, but I’m fucking going to now.”

“You were… in Kalekka? Wait,” and then Tir felt water absolutely pummel him.

It was the most tough love healing magic he had ever felt, and he had felt a lot of healing magic at this point. Mostly Gremio’s. His lungs were full of it for a second; it tore over him like a riptide and rushed away. He could swear he felt pieces of him being pulled with it, but they snapped back tingling. Somehow it was all inside, and he was shocked to find he wasn’t wet when it was gone. He was, however, sore everywhere, wide awake, and pissed. “What the fuck, Matt?”

Matt, for his part, was sweating and out of breath. “Quite,” he agreed, annoyed. “How is your body so fucked up?”

Gremio whined in his ear, clutching his good shoulder. Viktor, who he wasn’t aware was still there, cackled.

Tir looked up to spot him and saw a Liberation Army.

There were so many of them.

They weren’t in uniform. They wore every color, freely, on man and woman, young and old. They carried personal weapons, swords, spears, staves, and bows, and they chattered, laughed, and worked to carry away the dead. Their cheer over the misery was incredible; it was the opposite of the elf village, strong, resilient, and loud. It was—it was victory. They were people he knew and did not know—people strange and foreign, and old friends, Master Kai helping Pahn with a wounded man, Valeria being loosened by a stranger—she looked badly hurt—Lepant and Eileen with a teenage boy he didn’t recognize—a hundred people, some he felt he must know somehow, wearing the symbols that Viktor, Flik, Sanchez, and Humphrey wore. Odessa’s army. There were Imperial soldiers he recognized out of their armor and wearing new insignia—their insignia, Odessa’s signs, his signs—there were the bandits of Mt. Seifu, in greater numbers now, they must have pulled in everyone who had been in hiding, there was the magician girl he sent to join them, looking worried, darting around, carrying bandages, people he’d never known, people he had seen once and never known they were on the side of the rebellion, his side, had been thinking like him all along, and—

“Hey, uh,” he said, as he gritted his teeth against Matt picking up his arm, “is that Kirkis making out with some chick?”

“Huh?” Viktor asked, following his line of sight. “Oh. Yeah. Apparently his ladyfriend escaped the Elf Village Disaster. I’m not sure how?”

“So it’s the same chick?” Tir asked.

Viktor squinted. “Think it’s the same chick.”

“Honestly,” Gremio reprimanded, “yes, it’s the same… woman. Tir, brace yourself.”

“What?”

Tir then experienced the most excruciating pain he had ever felt that wasn’t emotional when Matt snapped his arm back into place. He then smacked him with it, and then was in a lot of pain again.

Tir held onto his throbbing shoulder and hissed while Mathiu gave him a withering stare, wordlessly smoothing back his hair. “As I was saying,” he groused, “you have a concussion and a lot of internal bleeding. Were you hit on your head, or did you fall?”

“Uhm?” Tir gaped, trying to find a mental balance between the five or six competing aches and imbalances in his body asking for his attention at once. “I, uh…” he couldn’t remember being struck at all. “I fell down at one point but I didn’t get knocked down… someone fell into me, but I don’t think he hit my head? Uh, Gremio shoved me down once.”

Everyone stared at him for a second. Then Viktor started whistling a low note as everyone’s eyebrows rose. Mathiu looked over his shoulder to glare at the offender. “Sir.”

“No—” Gremio protested, putting his hands up, “he was—he was already injured and having a hard time standing! I had him under guard!”

“That’s fucked up, man,” sighed Viktor. “You shoved him into the mire?”

“No—” Gremio started flushing. “He was stunned, I was guarding him! I didn’t just knock him down! And besides, he got hit in the head in the beginning of the battle. That’s why I was guarding him!”

“I did?” asked Tir.

Gremio looked at him with his pinched expression. “Yes. When you were fighting alone, a small soldier hit you with the broadside of his sword. You blanched, and looked like you might have been about to fall, so I fought to you to cover your back.”

“But I—oh!” It came back to him. His perception shattering; the world fractured into peaks and valleys of loud noises, bright colors, sensory bursts strong enough to break through the haze. “Oh. I could barely remember—everything gets hard to… understand after that. I couldn’t even remember it happening.”

“Blunt trauma damage,” summarized Mathiu, disappointed. He reached his hands into his hair, searching with his doctor’s precision. “Up here?”

“It’s up there,” Viktor confirmed as Tir nodded. “I felt it too. There’s a—”

“Skull break,” Mathiu finished for him. “Shit. We’ll have to spend some time on that.”

“Skull… break?” Tir repeated weakly.

“Skull break. Well, a crack. If your skull shatters, there’s not much hope for you. You cracked, like a… like a plate that has thread in it from overuse but hasn’t been shattered yet. Unlike a plate, though, your head can heal itself; we just need it to not be hit again. I had it happen to me, and it was much worse than this. Mine DID crack, the pieces just… stayed where they were.”

“Is that what happened?” asked Viktor, with a tone of awed respect. “Did your brain leak out? How are you so smart if your brains leaked out?”

“Viktor, can you use that quick tongue of yours to go tell people to organize a medical station? I have ten times as much work as able-bodied healers and we’ll only keep enough people alive if we can work efficiently.”

“Your word is my command, Oh Demanding One,” Viktor declared with a bow. Turning around, bellowed, with a voice that must have sounded for a mile, “Alright! Who’s still alive, fellow traitorous scum? Show of swords!”

There was a dull roar as people, both standing on two feet and lying braced against trees, lifted swords, knives, spears, hatchets, and bows in response to his call. “Fantastic liveliness, top form!” Viktor congratulated. “Now, everyone who just lifted up a weapon, thank you for volunteering! You’re gonna start lifting bodies for me.”

As Viktor walked away to whip up the tired troops into a workable state, Mathiu turned back to Tir and sighed. “Unbelievable.”

“He’s intolerable,” Gremio groused.

“I meant he’s an unbelievable asset,” Mathiu rebuked him. “Do you want to do the work of organizing a few thousand exhausted soldiers so that we can tend to hundreds of wounded as fast as possible while in an actively malicious forest? Do you think he’s not tired of this too? Take his place if you want. Anyway, this isn’t a life-threatening injury unless it’s agitated, and even if you do split your skull a little in the next few days, we can still salvage you.”

“Because you came back from it,” Tir said.

“Yes, barely, and I’m going to be the person to tell you that you don’t want to go through that. I had years of prolonged suffering and I’m still not the same. I never will be the same.” Mathiu broke off to sort through his bag again.

“That was Kalekka.”

“Astute of you. Yes, the massacre at Kalekka. We had been there for almost a year but got the go-ahead to start mass murdering once the court go tired of paying for a war of attrition. I fought the heartless plan with a few of the advisors and a very few of the lieutenants, but we lost that game of political chess. Humphrey, too, was a vocal dissenter then.”

“He was there?”

“Yes. He had been one of Great General Hasan’s Lieutenants. Hold still, I need to at least try to heal you magically before I get surgical with this.”

Tir did his best to brace himself, sitting up straight and loosening his back muscles. “Humphrey and you have been working together for a long time.”

“Much longer than we’ve been in the Liberation Army. He’s a good man. We weren’t the only people opposed to the plan, but we were some of the only ones to live through the massacre. I found an excuse, though barely, to stay in the medical area during the fighting so that I wouldn’t have to help. At least, I told myself I wasn’t helping. I just helped plan it,” he continued, with deep, dark self-hatred in his voice. Tir could feel a cool stone rest on his forehead, and he forced himself to not grit his teeth against it. “But the citizens of Kalekka were by then very trained in dishonorable combat and ready to take as many of us down with them as they could. Would they have taken more. There was a small but nasty contingent that invaded the hospital with the goal of targeting some important people who were already wounded. Many of their killings were merciful, honestly. Whoever attacked me, and I can’t recall their face, must have assumed I was dead after they split my skull. Reasonable. Be prepared, I’m about to cast.”

Tir couldn’t help wincing, but this one wasn’t so bad. It flooded his head uncomfortably, swirling around in whorls in the places that hurt the most, tickling his inner space. It trickled away less viscously than the last healing spell, pouring back into the stone. “There,” said Matt, with obvious pride. “Perfect. Obviously minimal damage since you were just walking and talking… there’s no break to cast, not even any skin to sew up really, we’ll just have you wait this one out…” he started digging in his bag again.

“What happened then?” Tir asked, watching him shuffle through papers, leaves, jars, and sharp, silver instruments.

“What happened… oh, after the attack on the hospital? I have to take someone else’s word for that. All I know is that the counterattack came fast and a few people were rescued; I’m told I was found because I had been carrying dangerous magical elements that kept bursting and fizzing around my fallen body. It took me quite a while to really regain control of my senses; I wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital in Gregminster for quite some time but when I did, my first act was to resign from military duties. Because of my near-death experience while serving the Empire they were willing to forget my harsh and vociferous criticism of my… of the General’s plan and allow me to resign with honors. I guess they thought I had had enough time to rest since then, however,” he finished sourly.

“…How much time has it been?”

“Since I was allowed to resign? Only about five years,” he continued. “It feels long. There were many things… I never got back. After the war, and that injury. For some time I could not even write like I once had. I could no longer recall people I had met in war. I could not remember many things. I could not do magic, though once, I had been an honored surgeon. It was… hard.”

Mathiu seemed to have forgotten what he was searching in his bag for. His hands were still.

“You can do it now though.”

“It seems I can. Oh, scissors. I have to cut off some of your hair.”

“What??”

“It’s some or all of it. I doubt I need to stitch you up but I do need to sanitize you so you don’t die of an infection. Be reasonable, Tir.”

“But—but—Gremio!” he whined, turning to give Gremio his most wide-eyed, panicked stare.

Gremio pulled back uncomfortably. “Ah—Master—that is—”

“Sir, do you want this young man to die of a malign seizure? Or from an internal infection in his spinal column? Do you know how those feel? Because I have gotten reports as eloquent as ‘claws tearing at me up and down my spine and all over my skin, though I cannot see them.’”

“Young master, please be reasonable with this man,” Gremio whispered.

Though he had been watching the process with morbid curiosity until that point, Tir had to grit his teeth through an uneven patch in the middle of his scalp being shorn. He reminded himself that he usually covered his head and that noblemen didn’t cry.

Mathiu told him some few things about his life after his service and his struggle to regain himself after his injury. Tir was curious about what he knew about the beginning of the Army, and Matt admitted that both Humphrey and Odessa had visited him, at first overjoyed that he was alive, and then incensed that he would not join them in their cause.

“What was I supposed to do? I was useless as a surgeon without the skills I had once had. I was useless as a strategist with a broken mind that dropped words, numbers, facts, and memories into a hole where I couldn’t find them. How could I even write her letters for her when sometimes I picked up a pen and knew what to do and sometimes, I didn’t? Even if they took me on anyway, what then? What could I do for them other than play as a midwife and nurse, which I had never been so good at anyway? And all that assumes I even wanted to go back to war, and…”

“It was much like that for me after my injury,” Gremio muttered at length. “Things were very hard.”

“I did notice your strange limp,” Mathiu admitted.

“What?” asked Tir.

“Hold that thought, I’m about to make you very mad, and I need you to focus on not slapping me again,” Mathiu interrupted.

Tir grit his teeth through his wounds being sanitized, prodded, healed, wrapped up, and secured. He did not, however, stop his wondering. He listened to Matt’s ridiculously extensive instructions for how to rest and not crack his head on anything, but could not seem to focus. “But how did you just… forget how to write and do magic and strategize? And how did you just remember?”

“I did not remember, I forced myself to try to years until it started coming back,” he sighed, “and teaching the basics to the children helped me recall what I couldn’t keep in my head myself.”

“That’s right, you’re a schoolteacher,” Tir gasped, “but you’re not, you’re some kind of… death-defying badass surgeon-advisor-strategist-escape artist who has literally punished Emperor Barbarossa in the face, or something,”

“Fuck no,” Matt spat, without deviating in the least from his dignified tone, “and I will thank you to never say such things about me again. Now, can you get up?”

Gremio helped him stand, but it was unnecessary; his body was tired and his head was still pulsing a little, but it wasn’t a struggle to coordinate himself. “Yes, everything’s fine.”

“Fantastic,” Mathiu said. He even smiled. “I would say you have an hour, maybe two, of post-battle adrenaline before you crash. Hard. You’re going to spend that hour mingling, giving heart to the troops, making sure everyone knows you’re alive and confident and just thrilled to have a battle with Great General Rosman looming on the horizon, but you will NOT help them with their physical labor. You will drop. Sir, you’re staying with him to make sure he doesn’t drop.”

“Sir,” Gremio confirmed, squeezing Tir’s forearm with a nervous grip.

“Once he starts wilting, and I’m sure you’ll be the best judge of that, you’ll engineer a break for food and drink, and get everyone to join, because that’s when they’ll start to notice their hunger anyway. Afterwards you will retire to your rooms to strategize, except you will not strategize, I will. You will take him to his room to sleep and I’ll fill you in in the morning.”

“Matt—”

“And,” said Matt, silencing Tir with a wave, “you’ll see that he rests as best as he’ll able. If he starts turning colors and hyperventilating, come get me, if not, he rests. Absolutely do not let anyone enter his room for several nights.”

“No one enters his room but me,” gasped Gremio, shocked.

“That’s none of my business, but keep it that way. I know you know what to do for an ailing patient, so the rest is up to you.”

“What the fuck, I’m not dying,” Tir protested.

“No, you’re doing the next best thing, even if you don’t feel it right now,” Matt countered, “considering death. We’re going to be creating a thorough and substantial argument against that for the next few days. Alright, march. There’s morale to boost.”

Matt shoved him around with something that was about a hand’s breadth too high to be a lovetap but had the force of one besides. Tir swatted him away and marched with all the dignity he possessed, which, though he wasn’t aware of it, was quite a bit.

-

It was a wonderful evening for about an hour and a half. Tir realized that Mathiu wasn’t exaggerating, there were thousands of people here, and Humphrey, who gave him a bruising fist-bump after seeing him again, had the pride of a father while introducing the major players to Tir. They came from everywhere, spoke strange languages, carried amazingly weird weapons, knew Odessa once, knew his father, remembered Barbarossa from other times, once studied under the Dragon Masters, knew strange arts of battle, were familiar with Master Kai or came to aid the calls of Viktor, Varkas, or LePant, and they were all, to a person, very excited to meet him.

Tir McDohl. You’re his son? Odessa choose you?

I heard you have the what attached to you?

He didn’t stay up long. Gremio had to hide his exhaustion as skillfully as he could and retire him as early as he could manage with a hundred social graces tugging at his sleeves. As Tir lay down, feeling feverish, ashamed to let Gremio take his shoes off and unbutton his shirt for him, this was all he could ask: “What Matt said, that you have a limp… is that why you couldn’t walk, when I was young?”

“Yes, Master; it was an old injury.”

“You couldn’t walk, and then you could sometimes, and now you can… so it was like that?”

“Yes… it was my spine that was injured.”

“Oh.” He thought to himself as Gremio pulled up a blanket for him. “Did it feel like… what… what did he say… a thousand hands tearing up your spine?”

Gremio giggled, but briefly. “Well…” he whispered. “Yes. And then it didn’t feel like anything. While my ability to walk was coming back, it felt very painful.”

“Does it still?”

Gremio shook his head. “Of course not.”

“…At all?”

He cast his eyes down. “A little, I suppose. But not like it did.”

Tir stared up at him, haloed by the dim light of the lamp, in their little world. “It hurt you a lot when I was a child and you had to take care of me,” he reasoned.

Gremio pulled in a breath, but said nothing. His considering eyes searched the floor. “Well,” he whispered, pulling back from Tir to sit at his feet, “You… helped me a lot.”

Tir felt that dizzy buzz in his head; right now, it only caused it to hurt more. Gremio saw him wince. “Young master, it’s time for you to rest,” he admonished. “I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed.”

“By who?” Tir teased.

Gremio gave him that look again. ‘Are you fucking with me, or are you just dense?’ He hadn’t seen it in a while. “By any number of people, right now, now that you’re surrounded by a force of thousands who want your attention and instruction,” he huffed, “so I have my work cut out for me as a guardian.”

“Good luck,” Tir smiled. “And get some sleep yourself, too. I know you were hurt.”

“I was bruised, young Master,” Gremio insisted.

“I was bruised, who?”

“I was only bruised… Tir.” Gremio whispered, eyes soft with a smile. “Be quiet, now.”

He slipped out of his tent. And all things considered, it did not take Tir long to sleep.

-

He had a strange dream that night, almost not worth mentioning. He opened his eyes and saw the tent around him, but he could not move. The walls seemed to shift, they were a palace—a castle—a house—a tent—the open forest above him. As they shifted, they grew teeth, longer and longer fangs, pressing in on him. But he could not move. He swore he could feel Gremio just outside; there was nothing he could do about it.

They grew teeth and his skin prickled and pinched.

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5: Several issues are introduced far ahead of their relevancy.

While having an absolutely surreal breakfast, complete with blurry vision, occasional senses of falling even though he was sitting on a very solid rock, his shoulder feeling like Viktor had personally tried to tear it out, and being cheerfully greeted by a hundred men and women in armor that he did not fucking know, Tir managed to ask one intelligent question: hey, how the hell did Matt know how to bring an army to them in the middle of the great forest?

“IT WAS ME,” snapped a bright, nasal, incredibly close voice.

Tir jumped and snapped his head around, which hurt, but whatever. He was too fucking happy to see what he saw.

“It’s you??” he asked, failing on remembering his name, but certainly not who he was. The blue-haired elf—the fast runner! He had been imprisoned for the same thing as Kirkis, that is, trying to desert the elves on the brink of war, except that Tir got the impression he hadn’t been running to get help.

“I, STALLION!” he continued, thumping one delicate elven hand proudly on his chest. He wore an archer’s armor around his chest, but of the lightest possible leather; his shoes, dangling out of the tree he sat in, were well-worn and many colors, edged with bright metal and patched with dyed leather. He had virtually no camouflage, honestly, between the cyan hair, the bright clothing, and the kicking and occasional bouncing. “I ran when I saw the fire coming—and I took little Sylvina with me, who needed to confide her sorrows to me, the only one who knew where her love had gone! I picked her up and ran her and did not put her down until I reached Toran Castle, where little Kirkis was to be!”

His accent was absolutely fucking delightful. Tir could hear the old warriors, veterans of one or two or three armies though they might be, stifling laughter at his loud voice, soft consonants, and blurred pronunciation. Kirkis, Tir realized, had been speaking human tongue VERY well. “But how did you know where Toran Castle was?” He teased.

“Eh, it was no problem for me, Stallion!” he bragged. “I knew it was in a big lake in the Empire, so I ran the Empire until I found the lake. Then I ran the lake until I found the Toran Castle.”

He said ‘Too-rhan Kee-sel.’ It was adorable. “Bullshit,” Tir said, laughing.

“Is not!” Stallion declared, slipping so lithely out of the tree one couldn’t be sure how he shifted to do it. “Do you want to see how fast I run?”

“Well—”

“You will see how fast I run!”

There was a chorus of whoops and assent from the gathered soldiers. The tall elf turned, braced one foot on a rock, and sprang into the air. Tir was trying to take him lightly, but honestly, it was like he was flying—it was probably twenty feet, maybe more, before his first foot hit the ground. When he landed, he could turn on his heel and change his direction like a cat.

In seconds he was darting back with a squealing elfmaid in his arms. He plunked her down next to Tir. He braced her so that she didn’t jolt on the makeshift wooden benches around the breakfast fire, where they were making sausages, eggs, and oolong. “Here is little Sylvina!” declared Stallion proudly.

“Stallion!!” she squealed, pulling down her nightgown over her legs. Her tiny face was red, but she was grinning.

“What?” Tir laughed, holding Sylvina with one arm to comfort her. “What was that!?”

“Now another!” Stallion hollered. He jumped up as if he could fucking levitate and was gone again—in a few seconds, Kirkis was dumped right next to his girlfriend. Unfortunately, it seems Kirkis hadn’t been as far into the morning as Sylvina had been—screeching, he whacked his fists at Stallion while trying to hide his body with nothing but a bedsheet, because that was all he had around him. The soldiers roared with laughter; Sylvina, though she tried, failed to look offended. She burst into giggles, accepting a terrified Kirkis as Stallion dropped him into her arms.

“Stallion, oh shit,” Tir said. “Wait—”

“ANOTHER!!” he roared.

The unfortunate victims piled in at rapid fire rate. Indeed, he gathered a sizable company in a single minute, proving his boast and making a lot of enemies in record time. Cleo was shocked but not really bothered; Pahn was scores of both. Gremio was absolutely hollering and brandishing his axe like a shieldmaiden; Stallion, who very nearly received a dire wound, had to drop him unceremoniously and dart like a frightened sparrow, shouting “ANOTHER!!” in a high-pitched squeal over his shoulder.

“Good morning, Gremio,” Tir said as he watched him lying flummoxed on his back, giggling.

“Good—morning, young master?” He asked. “What was that?”

Gremio was an early riser—he had been off helping with the washing and tending of wounded, so he was luckily enough to be fully clothed, unlike many of Stallion’s victims. “That was Stallion,” Tir said, “remember him?”

“Ah,” said Gremio, looking with an absolutely stupefied expression at Tir’s laughing, smiling face, “better now than I did.”
That was almost more time than it took for Stallion to arrive with Lorelai, who had been scouting the perimeter probably half a mile away, and drop her down with everyone else. “What?” she asked. “The fuck?”

“How have you been, Lori?” asked Cleo, who was pouring her some tea.

“Busy?”

“ANOTHER!” Stallion bellowed, and was gone.

The skinny teenager that Tir had learned was Lepant’s irresponsible son was next. He, like Kirkis, was practically buck naked, which earned him some whistling that he blushed and preened under. “Uh, good morning, guys,” he said, “is this a drill? Did I fail?”

“No,” said Tir, “but you failed.”

“Ahhhh…” he sighed, “that’s what I get, I guess, for letting my guard down.” He looked about as ashamed as a cat who drank all the cream and got away with it might be.

“Were you hurt?” asked Cleo curiously, poking at the bandages on his midsection and chest, which Tir had never noticed before either.

“Yes,” he sighed, “by the pain… of love.”

“Queen of Heaven.”

This was all the time it took for Stallion to dart back with a screaming bundle of anger, drop it on Tir’s lap, and literally leap over the gigantic breakfast fire, startling attendants and screaming “ANOTHER!!” Tir was left with figuring out how to deal with a furious, and we mean FURIOUS, magical 13-year-old sociopath.

“WHO DOES THAT PRANCING FALSECOLOR SON OF A BITCH THINK HE IS?” Luc screeched, hands clutched into claws that were very close to Tir’s face.

Gremio was trying to pull him off of Tir as he thrashed. “Morning,” said Tir.

“Yeah, good morning!” said Cleo, who was pouring more tea.

“Morning,” Sheena echoed, who had settled onto a log and was sprawled out, still almost naked, enjoying breakfast.

“Aaaa,” whined Kirkis, from his place within a bedsheet on Sylvina’s lap.

“I WILL TEAR HIM APART,” Luc continued.

“You will have to catch him,” huffed Gremio, finally lifting him into the air. Unsure what to do, he just held him aloft, wriggling and thrashing. “Honestly,” he sighed, lost.

Viki arrived with nothing but a heartfelt “Ah, what?” and was immediately given food and drink. Valeria arrived with a less amused “Ah, what?” and had her sword out but was making no slashing or stabbing motions. She, too, was given food and drink, this time by Pahn, who had been whacked on the head and told to help out. Luc was eventually convinced to stop carrying on as a determined Sylvina slowly but with great mental strength pushed a mug of warm tea closer and closer to his hands until he was forced to take it from her, so as not to appear impolite. Then he hung in Gremio’s grip like a scruffed cat, aggravated, embarrassed, and complimenting the working girls on their tea.

Gremio set him down very cautiously and put a hand on his halberd once he was seated. “Are you done, young man?” he asked.

“I am done until the little blue freak runs back in there,” Luc spat with disconcertingly dark intent and a high-pitched, prepubescent voice.

“He’s been a minute, actually,” said Valeria with some concern.

“Yeah, that guy moves like thunder,” said Sheena, straining his neck to look around at the trees. “Where’s he gone? It’s been a good… thirty seconds. Probably.”

“It’s been thirty-six seconds, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,” chanted Viki dreamily.

“Lemme know if you get a sight on him,” added Lorelai, notching an arrow.

“Put that down,” Gremio admonished. “He’s obnoxious and culturally dense, not a threat.”

“He is a threat to the propriety of this army,” Luc argued.

“Literally everyone in this godforsaken camp is a threat to the propriety of this army, including you, squeaky,” Cleo shouted.

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, come at me, baby boy.” she smiled, lifting up a carving knife. Pahn, for the record, did jack nothing about this.

“Hey, uh,” asked Tir, rubbing his head slightly, “does anyone else hear that, or is my skull falling apart?”

Everyone stopped to listen. Faint at first, it got closer, and closer; an incredibly rapping humming noise, like a hummingbird striking a tree.

“What is that?” asked Valeria. “A weapon?”

“Not any I know of,” muttered Lorelai, tapping an arrow against her knee.

“Nor I,” agreed Gremio.

“It is not the dreadful Mirror,” Sylvina interrupted nervously. “It had no sound.”

“But it is getting louder,” Tir continued nervously.

“Maybe it’s like… a horse?” suggested Sheena, shrugging.

“Oh my fucking stars and fucking moon,” sad Cleo, in a voice of awe, eyes wide, “look.”

They followed her gaze. There was a second of silence, and then, immediately, howls of laughter. For just in sight, beyond the line of trees, they could see a familiar blue figure, tugging on an incredible weight; his muscles strained to drag it behind him while his feet made furrows into the ground so fiercely and rapidly that they made a sound like approaching horse hooves. Still, he moved only a little at a time, because with his compact, lithe frame and comparatively weak arms, he was trying to drag Viktor, dressed in his full armor, or what armor he chose to wear, fucking filthy from being dragged through dirt and leaves, with his arms crossed behind his head and a bemused smile on his face. “If you want something, elf,” he called, “you can just ask.”

No one was in a position to break it up as Viktor was dragged into the circle because of their laughter, but dragged he was, unresisting and completely unhelpful the whole way. Even Luc, bitter as he was, couldn’t help but snicker. Stallion got Viktor close enough that it was considered fetching, dropped his arms, and collapsed on the ground. “NO MORE,” he declared.

“Aw, come on,” said Viktor, not making a single effort to move, “I can make it another lap, baby.”

“STALLION IS THE FASTEST,” said the poor, bedraggled creature, “NOT THE STRONGEST.”

“Everyone has their limits, sunshine,” Viktor consoled him.

Tir walked over with a fresh cup of tea. “We’re having breakfast,” he said, setting it on Viktor’s chest.

“Fantastic,” Viktor said. “Captain Killjoy wants to see you when you’re done out here; he stopped Speedy in his tracks with a feather quill and he decided to take his chances with me instead. He says he needs your approval for something.”

“Mr. Silverberg can have him when he’s done eating,” Gremio called from where he was starting to force people to sit down neatly, “which is what everyone here is going to do right now, since he have a long, long day ahead of us on the road. Including you, Sir. Sit down. Mr. Lepant, what are you wearing?”

“Well, nothing,” shrugged Sheena.

Eventually, everyone was induced by Gremio to sit down, calm down, and eat. After all the chaos and laughter, Tir couldn’t help but feel… strange. It felt childish. Alright, they were having a good time, and now that was over. That didn’t mean he should suddenly feel so… bad. But it did, and he did, and he found himself excusing himself to go see what Mathiu needed pretty quickly. Gremio, of course, came with. And so did Viktor, without a word.

-

Mathiu Silverberg made Tir nervous. From the start he had been coming at him from a disadvantage. Being put in the position of having to beg a man to put his life on his line after his sister, and Tir’s previous commander, had died on it, colored his feelings about him for the rest of time. He tried to reason himself out of it but couldn’t. His heart would start beating nervously when he first walked into a room; he felt like he was always asking too much of him, like he was out of his depth with him, behind, and in short, in debt, and he didn’t like it. Even when they developed enough of a familiarity and repertoire to be grappling with each other in conversation he felt indebted and outclassed. And even though he kept learning more about Mathiu lately and noticed areas where he had grown too, or was still rusty, or was just human about things, the feeling of nervous inequality wouldn’t dissipate.

It probably made him more aggressive around him, Tir reflected, as he drew the curtain aside to the ramshackle linen medical wing. That wasn’t good, but considering Mathiu brushed it aside like it didn’t even matter, well, it’s not like it made Tir feel any less nervous, which made him annoyed, which wasn’t good. It was possible that, without his realizing, they had developed a bad relationship.

These thoughts seemed a bit grandiose when was led to Matt and found him sitting by the bedside of a badly wounded man, sewing up the side of his stomach next to small pile of bloody bone shards. They were almost certainly a part of the patient’s ribcage once. Matt covered up his mouth with a bloody hand to stifle a yawn and then stared sadly at all the blood, because he couldn’t well rub the sleep out of his eyes like that. Viktor spun a chair around and plunked his ass down next to him, grinning, and instead of starting, Matt just raised a side eyebrow at him without turning from his work.

Thy both stared at the sleeping man then, whose chest was heaving in pain though he had the weight of magical sleep on him, feeling murky and heavy in the air. Beads of sweat ran down his dark sides, some of them pink. “Is he gonna make it?” Viktor asked cheerfully.

Mathiu shrugged and picked up a cloth, not to wipe down his hands but to clear up the stitches he just made. “I believe so, unless he gets an infection as well, or there was something I didn’t see. Which is possible at this point. I feel like I could cut someone open and not even know what I’m looking at today. I don’t trust myself to positively identify a liver right now. I want a drink. I doubt he’ll be fighting soon, or ever again, if he’s smart, but he should live. Tir, how’s the head?”

“Uh,” said Tir, familiarly off-balance. “It hurts. But I’m standing up, which was hard last night.”

“Good, good. If you’re not having balance issues and not hearing noises, you should be on the mend. Let me take a look at you though. Oh, blood on my hands, lots of blood. Viktor, where’s my…”

“I’ll just get you some new water,” Viktor decided, not liking what he saw in all of the closest bowls. He picked one up and walked off with it, sloshing the mixture of river water, human blood and sweat, and sharp-smelling medical poultices on the dirt just outside the door.

As he walked off, Mathiu slouched down, looking very much like he wanted to put his head in his hands. Then he realized he hadn’t been done with he surgery he was in the middle of before and started putting the patchwork on the ailing soldier. His eyes were hooded low, focused on their task.

Other medics were scattered in the background, one or two finally succumbed to sleep on beds, almost indistinguishable from the wounded. Some of those sighed and groaned or even cried, though softly, some chattered and complained and whistled, depending on how seriously they were hurt. Not to his surprise, knowing the code of honor among medics, Tir saw quite a few people in under-armor from the empire here, their hair shaven short in Imperial fashion. He wouldn’t say that it looked like they were being treated first, exactly, or with the most attention, but they were being treated. Staring at a young man that reminded him of someone his father kept in his guards, he accidentally met his eye. Tir raised an eyebrow, the man looked flushed and turned away.

Mathiu sighed and placed his hands on the wounded man. He looked troubled, his eyes squeezed shut. There was a dim blue light on his fingers, the most simple, energy-conserving healing spell he could possibly cast. Still, he slumped over after it was done.

He tired to pop his neck without touching it. When Gremio noticed what he was doing, he walked over and did it for him. He was weirdly good at popping people’s necks, and Tir had to admit the fact that he was probably good at bare-hands murder. Mathiu sighed and slumped into it, looking like he was going blurry in the head. “Thank you, Sir,” he said, “and how about your cuts? Nothing has turned red or swollen?”

“No,” Gremio replied softly, “one is swollen slightly but I’ve given it as much attention as it can get. I think it’s because of the skin abrasion.”

“The skinswipe on your arm? It looked nasty. Right, I remember it. Probably going to bother you no matter what we do but keep the turmeric on it.”

“I will. Thank you, doctor,” Gremio whispered.

Mathiu sighed. “Don’t start doctoring me now just because I’ve looked at you both with some of your clothes off. Keep it informal. Or else.”

Tir couldn’t help but notice that even though he said that, Mathiu kept it formal with Gremio, calling him Sir, asking him politely for favors, and not taking any liberties in his speech with him. He wondered what was going on there; was Matt putting himself below Gremio on purpose? Why? He didn’t seem afraid of him, at least. Gremio rushed to apologize, who knows for what, and Matt cut him off with a hand, which worked more because it was covered in gristly blood than because of any force behind it. “Unrelated, Sir, but do you know—”

They were interrupted with Viktor, who had fresh water in a basin. “A blessing from Vega,” Mathiu declared with false gravitas, falling on it.

“Oh, you dog, I’m nothing special,” replied Viktor almost noncommittally, and Mathiu didn’t even respond. Viktor slung back down into a chair while Matt scrubbed himself, looking as if he had been given something much more precious than a washbasin. Viktor saw Gremio standing behind Matt, with his hands working around his shoulders, and grinned. “Hey, blondie, you wanna do me too? I hear you’ve got a lot of talent in those hands.”

Gremio huffed and Tir felt a bit of heat crawling up his neck. “You know, I might, if you didn’t say it that way.”

Viktor leaned back, eyebrows raised, and a smile creeping up his face. “Ahhh,” he sighed, “not every approach works with every man.”

While Gremio snubbed him and Mathiu ignored the preceedings entirely, Tir grumbled. “Hey, it might help if you didn’t call him Blondie.”

Viktor gave him a considering glance. “Hm.” He rubbed a hand over his chin, casually glancing back and forth between the man and his boy, seeming to reappraise something. “You’re right,” he said, “it wasn’t meant to be a racial comment. Sorry if you took it that way. I apologize, I was only taken in by the beauty of—”

Gremio snorted and interrupted him, crossing his arms. “I wasn’t taking anything in any way, and won’t be besides,” he snapped, “so don’t worry about it.”

“Oh, shit,” Tir said, on reflex.

Viktor obviously tried not to laugh and obviously failed. “Alright, alright,” he said, putting his hands up. “No more foreplay, I’ve got it. Matt, what are we up to?”

“First,” Mathiu said, standing up out of his chair with a slight wobble, “I’m going to check Tir’s progress, like I said I would. Then we’ll step outside so we can talk logistics.”

“More logistics,” Viktor sighed. “This man is a logistics freak.”

“Logistics is the art of making things happen successfully, which is something I am very interested in,” Mathiu replied blandly. He wiped his hands off on a rag and asked Tir to hold still.

Tir reluctantly took off his bandana and let Matt inspect the shorn down wound. He asked him a few simple questions about the last night and exactly how awake and aware he felt today and then, with no warning, moved to slap him in the face. Tir deflected him easily, since he did not move fast, and jumped backwards, pure betrayal on his features.

“Your reflexes are fine,” he said, with only the barest smile. “Sir, I would thank you to put the chair down.”

Gremio sheepishly put down the chair he had immediately hoisted over his head when he saw Mathiu raise his hand.

“???” Tir asked.

“If you’re able to react like that I have no doubt your brain will heal just fine, though please, take it easy until we have the misfortune of reaching Great General Rosman’s base at Pannu Yakuta… which is what I wanted to talk to you about. Viktor, is there anyone in the meeting room?”

“Shouldn’t be,” Viktor shrugged, “but I’ll go ahead of you.”

Viktor swung himself out of the tent and booked it down the halls of makeshift buildings and around the corner. Mathiu stretched himself stiffly and the other three followed, much more slowly, Tir curiously watching the hoards of people waking up and packing up as they passed by. On the way, Matt tiredly but rapid-firely explained that in his figures it would take the whole army five days to reach Pannu Yakuta, though he had considered the wisdom of pushing it into four days in order to give Rosman, who would know they were coming soon if he did not already, less time to draw forces and prepare. “By my math it would be not impossible though difficult,” he summarized, “because the army is so disorganized, in essence, being several different forces we slapped together with no preparation or warning, I could pretend we wouldn’t end up scattered, stretched, and out-of-line by a strenuous march, but I’d be kidding myself. At the end of the day I think it’s smarter to take an extra day and keep the forces tighter than risk the rear and the supply lines breaking.”

“We have a supply line? Where the hell is it based? Who’s giving us food?” asked Tir, baffled.

“Do you remember doing a lot of boring, strenuous set-up all over the island so that it could be farmed effectively?” asked Matt.

“No shit, it’s already ready?”

“Fuck no. But we’re producing enough that symphasizers are willing to let us borrow the basics if we’re going to repay them. Very, very understanding symphasizers. Now, that’s going to bite us in the ass a few months from now when we have to give away all of our food, especially when we’re out on campaign unable to grow more right now, but I literally have no time to plan that currently and no one to order to do it, so we’ll see about that if we survive until then. Now,”

“Who the hell are these symphasizers? Kalekkans?”

“I wish. Almost every man who made up the standing resistance force in what was once Kalekka is already here, in this army. Sure, they brought their own supplies, but Kalekka is a corpse. We have this kind of help in the western and southwest territories, especially the Antei area, which contains several organized city-states that haven’t been in the Empire long. A lot of them are still chafing and we can get them to let us borrow, even though it’s not in their nature to give. Now—”

“West and southwest,” Tir interrupted, considering. “That’s Milich Oppenheimer’s territory.”

“It’s his protectorate, yes, though territory it isn’t,” Matt equivocated, “not after his parents surrendered to the Empire.”

“Was it that recently?”

“I believe so. I may have my facts not quite straight but the Western territories were independent when my grandfather was working not fifty years ago… mostly they’re subdued these days, especially the more civilized areas that were under the Oppenheimers’ direct rule. No one wants this information spread, but the southwest territories, where the southern warrior cultures are settled historically, are barely subdued by the Empire. Most of those areas were claimed in the last few decades and they don’t consider themselves state territory at all. They hardly ever pay taxes and are more or less put under guard to keep them settled. A lot of military force is wasted pretending nothing is wrong south of Lorimar, and forget the tribes in the mountains.

“Now, the Antei area has been actual civilization for as long as I know of, which is why they have produced food we can borrow reliably, with interest, and stipulations, and so on. But the southwest… they tend to be hunters, not herders or farmers, and they have a more, ah, rustic way of life. So though they might have the sense to know we’re on their side, there’s really not much help to be getting from them aside from troops. Who are also largely too stubbornly independent to know where their bread is buttered, which is why they’re represented by such sorry souls as—”

“But the hold that Milich has in the west…” Tir interrupted. “He was always being congratulated on what he’s done.”

“He’s funneled hundreds of thousands into making model capitals for his ancestral holdings, that’s sure. There’s a bit of a scandal about that, since it almost looks like he’s creating a power base for himself, but they provide the Empire so many troops and so many luxuries that Gregminster doesn’t dare complain. A more stable economy in Antei and Rikon, a more comfortable life in Gregminster. Mutual benefit. His strategy works great in the city parts of the city-states, less great in the state parts. People who aren’t seeing the guards and the horses and pomp every day, people actually living in the places where the food is grown, many of them don’t really see themselves as part of the Empire. And why should they? It barged in only a few generations ago and started making demands. Shoving the ruling family into roles as duchesses and generals didn’t fool them one bit, and they’re starting to scoff at anyone who’s playing their role as sycophants. One mister Oppenheimer is enemy number one in the country even if he’s beloved in Antei. Alright, here we are.”

‘Here’ was just another tent among the tents, simple linen with a marker out front denoting it as the meeting hall. Inside was a wooden table Tir recognized as just one of the hall-tables from the castle, water stains and all. There was one large map on hide stretched across its surface, pinned down in thirty-two compass points, and several papers scattered around it of lists, plans, and more detailed area maps. There was a large ink stain on the ground and half-drunk beers scattered precariously around; Viktor, who was seated in a knife-scarred chair, was holding one, getting a little less sober and he ran his eyes across lists of men, calculating.

“Wait, so if Milich’s parents were independent rulers before they surrendered,” Tir was saying as they walked in.

“—what’s he doing as a trained monkey?” Viktor guessed, looking up from the papers. “Hey, Matt, how’d you start talking about this?”

“Oh, nothing, were you aware that Tir thinks logistics are perfectly interesting topics of conversation, you overgrown child?” Matt asked in the tone of someone offering up a topic for idle small talk.

“Look, I shouldn’t have to explain to you why enjoying three-hour discussions about wheat distribution is weird,” Viktor argued. “Can we have a three-hour discussion about carnage distribution already?”

Mathiu sat down with a huff, gesturing to some chairs across the way for Tir and Gremio. “Who else is coming?” he asked Viktor.

“I made sure to get word to Humphrey, Sanchez, and Lepant, and you’re about to meet a lovely young woman named Valeria,” Viktor said, with a bit of a smile.

“Valeria y Meullefleur, former lieutenant to Kwanda Rosman? I heard,” Mathiu continued smugly, clearing some papers and plates off of the map in front of him. “That should be fun, I only ever saw her in passing since she was only beginning her career when I resigned, but I am relatively, though not entirely, sure that I recall Humphrey going on record for calling her a heartless, blood-thirsty bitch the last time they were in the same place. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Stop… stop doing that,” Viktor complained. “Stop knowing everyone.”

“Humphrey called someone a ‘bitch?’” Tir asked. “He gets angry?”

He didn’t really feel comfortable with the way Mathiu chuckled in response.

That said, you wouldn’t have any idea that something heated had happened between any one of the ten people who quickly filed into the room, because Lepant, obviously, had brought Eileen and Sheena along. Sheena brightened when he saw Tir and sat immediately on his other side, chattering at him; Tir just found himself wondering when he had been put into clothing.

It was hard to pay attention to whatever Sheena was talking about (he barely knew him, what the hell) when there was so much to scan in the room; Lepant and Eileen, both armed as if the battle were today, stately, ready, with smiles on their faces; Tir had to admit he had always been looking for some sort of flaw in their apparent closeness, and still was. Across from Eileen was Sanchez with his books and records, opening a bottle of wine for everyone. No time was too early for him, it seemed. Humphrey sat next to him, also prepared for battle, face focused, examining the map in front of him. Next to him was Matt, inscrutable, eyes heavy with exhaustion. Viktor was leaned back casually, at it seemed he grew more and more casual as the air grew more and more tense. Valeria was seated next to him, one elbow on the table, eyes scanning down the line, sword on her lap. Across from her was Gremio, taught as a bowstring, chair scooted very close to Tir’s.

For people who were willing to sit around a table of war together, he reflected, they had some pretty different reasons for being there. Or did they, really?

“Well, before I begin outlying my plan as it exists now,” Mathiu began, without preamble, accepting a glass of pale grey wine from Sanchez, “are there immediate concerns to bring to the table?”

There was shrugging around the table. “Immediate, I suppose not,” Humphrey said.

“You know this camp is a mess,” Lepant said with concern.

“It… isn’t exactly Imperial standard, and I suppose we should all accept it won’t be,” Mathiu admitted. People chuckled, a wry, disappointed sound.

“It’s going to be hard to move everyone, and to order them, harder,” Valeria complained. “There isn’t even a sense of who to take command from.”

“Tir,” Matt replied instantly.

“Yeah, I know that and you know that,” Valeria continued. “And you can be the one to tell Varkas or Flik or Ronnie that.”

“Ronnie and Flik aren’t here, and Varkas doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” Mathiu summarized, “Done. Everyone else can be transitioned gently since they’ll be used to listening to Humphrey or Viktor in the absence of… anyone else, and Humphrey and Viktor are on board.”

“Damn straight,” Viktor said. Humphrey nodded seriously.

“Yes, it will definitely be that easy,” Valeria continued. When she saw she was getting a few glares, she shrugged. “You brought in an entire force that doesn’t KNOW him. They’re not blind followers if they broke off from the Empire their selves. People will want concrete reasons why Tir is the commander in Odessa’s place and not someone they know.”

“Rest assured, I had not failed to notice this,” said Mathiu. “I know it’s not going to be the easiest sell. A lot of people will be wondering why Odessa made the choice she did. Which is why it’s lucky that this battle is going to be a bit do or die, isn’t it?”

“Not bad, good take, but can you do it again without the creepy smile?”

“Thank you for your input, Viktor,” Matt sighed, still smiling a little. “Seriously.” He leaned forward to spread his fingertips on the map, indicating where they were then and where they were going. He explained his reasoning behind taking a five-day march to reach Pannu Yakuta, with long breaks, and Tir saw people initially with furrowed brows, but eventually nodding. It was concise reasoning, and he had plans for those days far more than merely walking. They would be surveying, organizing, sorting people into a structured line as they went on. Valeria was asked to whip up the banditry in line with Varkas and Sydonia, as Mathiu figured they would respect her harsh demeanor and trust her to make strategic choices as for their place in line. “From everything I’ve heard about you, I would trust you with that, at least. And as you’ll be our only member with a mental map of Pannu Yakuta, it’s best that you’re informing our best infiltrators.”

“Leave it to me.”

“They’re rowdy, and I want your eye on them. Right now they’re only about two hundred strong, which is a small section of the army, but that sort of corps is always important… and easy to lose to desertion. Keep them in line. Humphrey, I’m afraid I have to give you a much rougher job, as usual.”

Humphrey grinned. “Odessa’s boys can be rowdy.”

Matt shook his head. “No, actually. We’ve picked up a lot of imperial runaways, both on the way here and after the last battle. Some are prisoners, some are conversions, some, I’m not sure. You’re going to be making a fighting force out of that.”

Humphrey raised his eyebrows. “How many?”

“Counts have failed me thus far. Maybe three hundred, maybe five hundred, maybe less, maybe more. The trouble was that we ran into a similar battalion as you did on the way here and I made the somewhat risky choice of simply apprehending them all. Some have run off, more keep getting found sneaking about. I’m not sure yet how many are protesting performatively and how many are really waiting to start backstabbing. I think Rosman is having the forest surveyed; I don’t know why else we would be regularly running into large bands of Imperial troops seemingly on patrol hundreds of miles from their home ground. See who can be changed, see who wants to fight, see who can’t be help, and make me something by the time we reach Pannu Yakuta. The rest are hostages.”

Humphrey let out a very expressive sigh. All the same, he replied just like Valeria: “Leave it to me.”

“Lord Lepant, I would have you remain with your troops as they are, though do your best to mingle them and spread their sense of responsibility around to my rabble, would you? I know they’re loyal, so there’s no point testing fine soldiers with a shake-up in command when we have much bigger problems.”

“Naturally,” Lepant replied without hesitation. “My five hundred will be your vanguard if ordered. Leave it to me.”

“For our new allies, the elves and the kobolds, I myself will keep watch on them,” Matt continued. “Both races have cultures of pride and independence, and I would like to start with them having an advisor rather than a commander. Anything else is presumptive and will lose us what could become valuable connections.”

“You’re going to give yourself maybe fifty charges when sticking others with several hundred?” Viktor asked teasingly. “Really, Matt.”

“And you, you feckless miscreant, will be assigned to your own kind. You’ll be seeing what you can make of the core force we took from Toran with us, the recruits from the Kaku, Kouan, Seika, and Garan areas. It’s more people than you may realize by now, maybe 1,500 strong, maybe 1,800.”

Viktor whistled. “What were you doing when I was starving in the mountains for three months? Real work? Take it easy, Matt.”

Mathiu seemed to be hiding a pleased grin. “Nevertheless, they’re new. Many are belligerents, not trained fighters. You’re the one who knows how to make a soldier out of a street fighter with a chip on their shoulder. Make it happen. Tell me where they can be placed in the line. Sort out the warriors from the supporters.”

“Leave it to me,” Viktor declared, picking up his tankard again. “No sweat.”

“And commander,” Matt began, levelling his eyes at Tir. “Odessa’s army was not so great as the Emperor’s, but we still had many numbers. They are devoted and experienced fighters. They loved her and will love you. They were split between several areas at the time of her passing; Flik is still gathering many bodies, but Humphrey had the core with him and brought them here. They are at least 4,000 fighting people. You will command them over then next five days, and ad infinitum. I suppose ad mortem, rather. This will be the body of our army in the upcoming battle and the seasoned fighters that we will be trying to model the rest off of. They are already prepared, so I’m not expecting you to construct an army; I am expecting you to take full command of it.”

How can one describe how Tir felt? It was an impossible task, it seemed, but it was his. Humphrey’s army; wasn’t it a grave insult to reassign it? But no; it was Odessa’s army. Odessa’s people. That didn’t change the fact that he was completely unprepared to lead them; that didn’t change the fact that he had to.

In the brief second he had to reply before he looked hesitant, he thought of two people: his father, whom he had seen in a position of command a hundred times. It was natural to him, and Tir had seen how he did it. HE had already been trying to act Teo’s part, aware of how devoted his father’s troops were to him and how few other successful examples he had.

The other person he thought of was right by his side. He was the one whose care made people love him.

“Leave it to me.”

Mathiu held his stare for a moment. “Sir,” he said, and then returned to addressing the table. “With that, we have command shaken up and the vast majority of the army forced to recognize new commanders, not just the old corps. Within a few days I expect to hear your opinions of how able-bodied your troops are, how well organized, and where you think they should be placed in battle at Pannu Yakuta. Confer with Valeria about the terrain. I expect to hear the truth, not whatever you think I want to hear. If it’s hopeless, I want to know it’s hopeless. Now, let me lay down some possible plans for battle, though they are necessarily sketchy, so you can see what kind of positions I have in mind.”

Mathiu had asked Valeria to draw out a map of the fortress and the surrounding areas. She drew with he same kind of exact, parallel lines and spare geography that Tir’s father always had, marking out towns and territory up and down elevation lines with minimal notes. It looked like Mathiu had had a second artist flesh it out so it was more comprehensible to someone who wasn’t trained by the Imperial army; Tir had little doubt it was Mathiu himself, considering the calligraphic flair the second artist had.

Pannu Yakuta lay in the far south; it was a river fortress among the hills, making approach in what was otherwise a flat land difficult. The brilliance, Valeria explained, was that because of the featureless, indefensible landscape, Rosman could see an army coming from half a day away, theoretically; however, that army would be inevitably slowed and pushed out of line by the hills and rivers around the fort itself, slowing them down and leaving them victims to archers and spellcasters on the high walls. “I can’t imagine sneaking up on the fortress,” she admitted, “the most successful strategy would probably be maintaining a siege, since they’re very far from their suppliers in the Empire, but we don’t have the resources either. I would counsel full force and overwhelming numbers, which we don’t have. In lieu of either of those options, I would expect us to wage underground warfare, which we cannot, because we don’t have the trained troops for espionage. So, strategist,” she said, turning full body to Mathiu, unamused look on her face.

Mathiu gazed down at the maps in front of him. His eyes surveyed, in miniature, the monumental task ahead of them. A very large space to march, unknown territory with unpredictable hostiles, being outnumbered 3:2, at least, and a battle with every possible statistic stacked up against them waiting at the end.

He smiled.

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6: A circle is drawn in the sand.

What did Tir did to gain their trust? He wouldn’t even be aware of what it really was. These are the things he consciously tried to do: he worked to exhaustion to appear stoic, strong, and sensible in front of the troops, like his father always had. He asked simple questions with polite speech, keeping his voice low; a trick that had always done wonders with scared or aggressive soldiers. He went out of his way to not appear aggressive and apologize for any slips, even if he had to do so with his teeth ground and his right hand throbbing. He encouraged seasoned, older soldiers to speak to him and listened on end, even when the talk was dull. They had knowledge he did not, and, after reflecting that he had spent the last battle being guarded, he knew he needed much more knowledge and experience to be able to stand up to the people he was supposed to be commanding. He was acting like a petitioner, not a commander, and he knew it, but after the failures of the past year, his humility was such that he couldn’t imagine doing anything else… and it rankled him, and his temper would flare, but he would suppress it.

It will not surprise the reader to know that it was at this time that there were people who began to occasionally slip into calling him “Commander Teo,” after which they would act as if they had not made a mistake. Their names sounded similar enough.

What he really did to earn such devotion he was not aware of. It was this: his private persona was completely different from his public persona. The catch, of course, was that both were agreeable. While the public persona, despite slips of emotion, was a non-threatening, attentive, and serious young man, the private persona at dinner, or around the fire, or while they were washing clothes, or caught alone outside was passionate, joking, emotional. He was, people quickly decided, the sort of person to ‘say strange things,’ to engage you suddenly in serious conversation, to say without prompting that he was worried about something, or vexed, or unable to sleep because of the days ahead; to confide honestly with strangers and go a bit too far in being candid. He was bad at lying and worthless at keeping secrets. You would get an honest answer with him because he found it impossible to bullshit you. (He had learned from watching Mathiu, Viktor, and Sanchez do it that he was no fucking good at it, at least, not in this point in his life. Each of the lot could have sold bullshit to a bull.) He was not aware of the impression it made. He was not aware that the average adult could not depend on an honest answer or a genuine answer from anyone, but you could expect it from Tir. He meant what he said, and he said what he meant. People felt, in short, that they could go to him. If he couldn’t solve a problem, you could at least depend—and this was a miracle—at being frankly turned down and not left to hope.

And if Tir could know how he made people feel in battle, he would have had a lot more confidence in himself sooner.

-

It was Valeria who decided that she was going to learn the personal fighting strengths of her people by literally fighting them. Since her people were now a ragtag group of filthy bandits, they LOVED it. She suplexed the vast majority of them onto the ground and bellowed at them for being weak; the women came to admire her and the men who could speak tried to stutter out compliments to her beauty and strength. It worked great for Valeria; unfortunately for the rest of the lieutenants, everyone else thought that was an incredible idea.

Humphrey was on board with fighting furious ex-imperials until they started trying to stab him. That said, he earned respect for motherfucking rolling about a dozen of them before they got dirty, and it had a pacifying effect on his new troops. He had a blended fighting style, Tir noticed dizzily, on the night he was woken from his sleep to rush out into midnight firelight and help break up what had turned into a rumble between a few fanatical converts to the cause and a few loyalists; he parried and evaded like a trained duelist, stepping quickly to the side and cleanly deflecting blows, but he hit like a street fighter, ready and willing to forgo swordplay and slam his opponent into the ground with a hilt, a knee, or a fist. Tir was to find out much later that he fought like a Kalekken street fighter, for the most part, combined with what he learned in the Southwest from the warrior tribes. At the time it just looked like he vacillated between neat and respectful empire training and bare-hands murder, and it did great at keeping people off their feet. That said, the time he almost got knifed and Mathiu lost his mind at a soon-to-be prisoner while more and more people stuck their heads out of their tents, gaping, was the day a few new rules were added to the impromptu competitions.

It could no longer happen at any time. People would gather after dinner and before lights out. The challenges were not allowed to go on longer than an hour’s time. Both parties had to agree to a challenge beforehand. If no one could vouch that someone had agreed to a challenge, it was a fault and you were spoken to harshly from that point on. All challenges were one-on-one; if anyone else tried to join the ring, they would be ripped out, excepting the case that the person was a medic or a peacekeeper, each of whom was known.

Initially, what they had to sift through was about five hundred people wanting to challenge Humphrey, Viktor, or Valeria. Tir knew immediately what was really going on; they were incensed about being given new commanders and having their chain of power broken and reforged, and they wanted to make a few complaints, but didn’t feel like they were at liberty to do so. Taking out anger with their swords was the next best thing, and it was no harm, no foul for as long as the three seasoned warriors could take it and keep going. Lepant would get involved as well, but not nearly so often—he was a respectable duelist as well as a hand-to-hand fighter, and from what Tir saw, he was fun to fight. He played by the rules, gave you a fair fight, and congratulated you when it was over. Sure, the challenger would almost certainly lose to him, technically, but no one lost against Lepant or Eileen. He was able to say ‘Lepant or Eileen,’ because after their hysterically goopy showpiece battle with each other, he was aware that he would probably be put facefirst into the dirt by Eileen too, but nicely.

He wasn’t sure how to take the fact that he wasn’t involved in these fights at all. Should he take it as a sign that he looked weak, that no one wanted to embarrass him? Was it a good sign that no one wanted to air out a grudge with him publicly, or was it that he was so inoffensive and so unwilling to push people that he hadn’t made any changes? Were they unwilling to challenge someone in the top position, knowing it was a faux pas? Did they think of him as a child?

He managed to shove these thoughts aside and force himself to get an education while watching fighters with very different styles go at each other. He was no stranger, at this point, to watching Viktor go in with someone, but it was still impressive to watch. When fighting a monster or an enemy, Viktor liked to end the battle as soon as possible, usually with a cleaving attack, and keep pushing forward, through the bloodspray if need be. He got gristly, he got dirty, he was about quick and decisive action. It still flummoxed Tir, a little, to see it, since Viktor had trained himself to react with force quickly, he could be cracking a skull before Tir had the chance to move. At first, it was frightening; maybe just because it was so frightening, he had developed a fascination with it, and couldn’t get enough of watching it. He wanted to be able to do that.

In the ring, however, Viktor liked to play. There wasn’t a better word for it in Tir’s mind. He knew that Viktor was toying with people because he knew how fast he could be decimating them. But he didn’t. He started battle in the ring with a round of teasing, or a round of shit talking, depending on how belligerent his opponent was. And he could be harsh. His usual repertoire involved calling bandits street trash who couldn’t keep wives, former Imperials spineless traitors who couldn’t get a single goddamn hit on the Evil Rebel Leader, hell, you traitors might even like him. He called his own troops worthless rebel scum, usually with a big smile and with laughter in response. They were the same words, but they hit some harder than others. He called Pahn a collared lapdog to rile him up, with an almost sinister smile. Pahn then dislocated his jaw, to his credit, but he didn’t expect Viktor to come back swinging from that, so that one kind of had to be broken up. Kirkis he went out of his way to call weak and powerless, purportedly to convince him to blow off some steam. Whether he bargained on getting bit by a battle-maddened elf, no one knows. Valeria, who actually took him to the ring, had some fucking filthy insults thrown her way, which was alright, because she responded by calling him nothing but Odessa’s callboy and asking him if he was just feeling lonely without his mistress.

She didn’t know, of course, that Odessa wasn’t with them anymore. Viktor walked off a bit worse for wear after that one, and earlier than he usually did.

Tir figured out quickly that he was trying to get his opponent to attack first, because if they did, it was simple for him to use their body weight against them, considering he was likely to weigh twice as much. He could push them off, disarm them, shove them aside; the battle would be finished after that, normally, but he would cheerfully drag them back up or toss back their sword and suggest they try again. That usually made someone mad if the shit-talking hadn’t, which led to Viktor usually taking controlled, even half-steps to the side and around as he deflected furious attacks. He would play for not too long, not so much that someone would be embarrassed, before finishing them with a respectably gut-busting move that they could forfeit after without looking weak; a crack to their shins, an elbow to their kidney, a smack on the side of the head.

If someone managed to keep their cool, which started happening more often once people understood the game, things could get a bit more interesting. Once you got in close with Viktor, you were accepting your defeat, so people tried to skirt around him, keep their steps wide and their posture low, hit him quickly and jump back. Lorelai went on record for holding on the longest against him; not that she was the only one who put the hurt on him or even beat him, but she was the one who kept him running for the longest—until he had more competition later. He was probably expecting an easy fight when she pulled out a bow in close quarters—then she dropped it outside the ring and pulled out a whip.

There were some whistles and catcalls; she stayed focused on Viktor, grinning. He made a dirty crack at her, one of the ones that made Gremio heave next to him and look panicked. (He used to be embarrassed about Viktor trying to phase someone by calling their dicks small or saying their tits were out, but after he noticed how badly Gremio took it, it started to get funny.) She smiled at him and pulled the whip taught.

There were louder, more emphatic catcalls; Viktor turned his sword in his hands, calculating. “Oh, don’t do that,” he said, teasingly, “I’ll just get hot.”

Gremio covered one side of his face with his hand. He was always beside Tir, in the front row, for the shows; he didn’t look like he enjoyed it too often, especially when Viktor or Valeria, both notoriously dirty fighters, were in the ring, but having become one of the designated peacekeepers after the first time he separated a bad fight with the heel of his palm and a glare, it was kind of his job. He loosely held a mostly-empty tankard of cider in an arm that trailed recklessly over the fence, knowing he could move fast if he had to. And anyone moved fast when they saw the commander’s fanatical guard coming.

“Oh no, it’s going to be like that,” Gremio complained.

Tir giggled, and Gremio gave him that look. He liked to see that look anymore. It didn’t feel like he was being a naughty child anymore, it felt like he was… he didn’t know, interacting with Gremio. Making a bad joke and pissing him off, having a normal, human interaction. Joking with him. These days, sometimes, he would even smile afterwards, or shake his head. Right now, though, he seemed pretty embarrassed, so he just huffed. “It’s not exactly dueling as I’m used to,” he defended himself.

“Get as hot as you want, I don’t care,” Lorelai whispered—they could only hear her because she was circling close to them—“you won’t be able to touch me.”

The first few rows hissed and gasped. Everyone else pressed in, trying to hear. Tir, standing on the other side of the ring from Viktor at that moment, had a front-row seat for seeing the initially shocked and then heated expression that came across his face. His eyes were tightly focused, but low-lidded, watching Lorelai as closely as a tracker would watch a snake; he shifted his body subtly, almost imperceivably, and tightened his grip on his sword. Tir literally saw him open his mouth, consider the crowd around him, and rephrase what he was just about to say. “You’re kind of putting me on the spot, Lori,” he complained. “You’re making it a little unclear whether you’re up for a good thrashing or not.”

It was on the line, but a few people still chuckled. Lorelai, who was just circling back into Tir’s vision, smiled venomously. “What’s the matter? You’re backing off just because you think you might not end up on top tonight?”

The reaction of the crowd was less like hollers this time and more like screams. Viktor was even a little flushed. Tir could see him lightly bite his lower lip and let it roll away. His stomach twisted suddenly, very low, like he was seizing with nerves, but it felt…he didn’t know. Viktor didn’t take long to come back. “Let it be known that that doesn’t worry me, sweet Lorelai,” he called to rising laughter, “I’m just worried about your poor, delicate frame being able to take the intensity… of my attack.”

Even Tir flushed a little. Gremio decided it was time to cover his whole face and sigh with disappointment for a while. That said, the couple hundred, or thousand, soldiers looking in just loved it. There were shrieks from the bandits and shieldmaidens for Lorelai to whip him into shape, and a few devoted guard hollering at Viktor to go get it. The excitement was getting a little too intense—the other guys who were there to break up fights that got too rough, and the thin, jumpy young medic who had the guts to run into the ring whenever, stated whispering with themselves.

Lorelai didn’t give a shit about that. She cackled and told him that he didn’t have to be worried about her. He should be worried about how much he can take up the ass before he has to beg mercy.

It was a wildly popular comment. The bandit girls shrieked and a few of them actually started throwing things into the ring. The guards tensed, ready to break it up, but were on the fence about whether this was an emergency, really, or just indecent. At the risk of further cluttering up a perfectly good war story with pointless vulgarity, Tir was potentially the only person close enough, and watching at the right place and time, to see Viktor get a little hard.

He felt a nervous, weird, hungry pull in his stomach—

Viktor decided it was time to act, which was a wise choice, but one the crowd hadn’t predicted. He almost never moved first. He rushed at her, sword swung around to be wielded backward, like a club, aimed at her shoulder. It was too obvious, it was a feint, but Lorelai had to decide to where. She pulled back her whip to strike and made a guess; it was a good one. Viktor swung his sword down low and she feinted in the opposite way on instinct. Her whip cracked in the air behind him, causing him to slide further backwards, leaving them five feet apart again. The crowd was shrieking; both of them had bright, livid eyes, absolutely hooked on the battle.

Lorelai pulled back again with a wide smile and Viktor dropped into a stance. By the time her whip hit, he had his zweihander held in front of him; he sought to wrap the whip around it, but she snapped it back fast enough that all he achieved was getting a bit of recoil in his wrist. Tir didn’t see him wince, instead, he immediately dodged hard and dove for her other side.

It’s impossible to whip someone when they’re a few feet away from your arm holding the whip, so Lorelai had to improvise. She dropped down practically to the ground and kicked; Viktor had to rearrange his rush fast to not end up on his face. Even so he stumbled a little, and Lorelai turned herself like a top, with unbelievable deftness, and lashed her whip at his legs. She caught one and yanked; the consequences for her was that the motion left her on her ass, but she got up more quickly than Viktor did, who landed with a shaking thud. She was on him before he had time to get up, but after he had just enough time to prop himself onto one elbow. He kicked effectively at her shins, and when she dodged the kick perfectly, she was shocked to find a different hand around her ankle.

She went down.

Viktor, however, made a fatal mistake, and he realized it when he scrambled up onto his knees; there was no fucking way he could get on top of her and start wailing after the tone with which they had started the fight. Even if it wasn’t actually a breach of consent, and it might have fucking been, it sure as hell would look like one. Instead he scrambled back to grab his sword, using the free second to arm himself, which was, though not the best possible move in a real fight, a respectful one in a duel. Lorelai took almost less time than he took to pick up a sword to spring onto her feet and then lashed out wildly with her whip, betting on speed rather than precision this time. Unfortunately for Viktor, it worked—he cursed in a bellow when the whip wrapped around his wrist, twisting it painfully and disarming him again. Lorelai came running in with the same motion she used to pull her whip back; Viktor had to dart away.

For over a minute the dodging and feinting went on, Viktor using his weight and force to the best of his ability to make up for the fact that he was a big, slow target, and that was exactly what a whip wanted. Lorelai, for her part, was heaving and sweating with the effort of trying to lash him so many times; after all, a whip is a hard weapon to use correctly. Though she had arm muscles that would make a shieldmaiden feel faint, endless thrashing is hard on anyone, especially with a victim that could take it as well as Viktor. He took a single slash to the forearm and the crowd screamed; Tir watching Viktor gasp, and then bare his teeth, with an animal grin. His heart was beating so hard.

“We gotta—” one of the guards was shouting. They were clearly arguing at this point. Gremio had joined them. Tir was too spellbound by the fight to see what was worrying people about it.

Luckily, the choice was made for them, in the most unpredictable fucking way. Viktor took the hit and immediately started running. A lot of times he depended on people thinking he would be deterred or would stop to take stock of his situation—and he wouldn’t. Lorelai cursed and darted to the side, drawing back as far as she could to pull back her whip again.

She misjudged how far away she was from the wall. She tripped and fell back onto the crowd.

Only her head and shoulders left the ring, but still, that meant she was out. She would have fallen if not backed up by a horde of screaming soldiers. Viktor stopped in his tracks, which, considering the force he was putting into his rush, made him wobble a little, but he managed. The guards and the medic immediately hopped in the ring, including Gremio, and the fight was over.

While the combatants were both being looked over, the medic and Gremio on Viktor’s arm and several people propping up and congratulating Lorelai, the announcer declared a draw. Both the combatants nodded instead of contesting the rule, and so the decision was final. The crowd went apeshit with delight and frustration, screaming for more. Tir heard Gremio insist that they both cool down, though neither of them looked very interested in that. Eventually, under the noise, Lorelai was convinced to go pick up her bow and examine her weapons, which led her away, leaving Viktor getting bound up and chastised by Gremio. He was smiling darkly at him, watching his lips move. Tir was trying very hard to hear what they were saying to each other, but he couldn’t quite.

“Alright, who’s next up?” the announcer asked the guards.

But as one was unrolling a parchment sheet, he heard Viktor bark with laughter and say “Prove it, Blondie. Everyone knows you don’t have the balls.”

He would beg to know what they had been talking about for a long time afterwards and never learned—Gremio never came out with it and after some time, Viktor claimed he forgot. All he knew was that Gremio turned as red as the sun, practically shaking with anger, and then, as one of the other guards came up to steady him, he smacked his hand on his forearm and pushed him away, never taking his eyes off of Viktor.

The next thing he did was unlatch his halberd from his back.

Viktor’s eyes lit up as the crowd picked up the noise again. Even Mathiu, who had been trying to look unconcerned from three rows back, leaned in a little. He could see Cleo’s jaw drop from her position half-way across the ring from him and watch her shout over her shoulder at someone—probably Pahn, sent off to get food. The medic protested and Viktor pushed her away, eyes as tightly locked on Gremio’s as Gremio’s were on his.

Gremio was one of the peacekeepers. What the fuck were they about to say to him?

“May I have it in words,” the announcer shouted, following the script he had invented to let the crowd know shit was about to go down, “that both challengers consent to the fight?”

“You have it,” said Gremio, voice low.

“Hell. Yes,” said Viktor.

Everyone but the two of them and the announcer fucked out of the ring double time. The announcer turned his back and threw up his arms. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, TRAMPS AND TRAITORS, OUTLAWS AND OATHBREAKERS, RABBLE OF THE REBELLION, ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE,” he bellowed, “YOUR REIGNING CHAMPION, LOVE HIM OR HATE HIM, KING OF THE RING, VIKTOR REINBACH!”

Viktor, looking like it was Yule morning and he was an excited five-year-old, got off of the ground and picked up his sword. Normally, he would work up the crowd. Right now, he kept his stare with Gremio.

“AND THE CHALLENGER, FIRST TIME IN THE RING—EXCEPT FOR THE LAST TIME HE HAULED YOUR UNGRATEFUL ASS AWAY FROM A BEATDOWN—GREMIO MCDOHL!”

Even when the announcer got himself out of the ring, they didn’t take their eyes off of each other. They didn’t circle each other, either, as Viktor had with Lorelai. They stared, sizing each other down. Viktor took the time to cool his head and slow his breathing, since he must have been just drowning with the adrenaline in his brain, and Gremio put on his most deadly, dire serious, fuck-did-you-say-about-me game face.

It was a good fucking face.

Slowly, very slowly, silence fell, as people realized this wasn’t changing. Viktor needed the time to collect himself. Gremio was inscrutable to most, who didn’t know him like Tir or Cleo or Pahn did. But they knew what he was doing, and they sent each other ‘oh, fuck me, I didn’t get dinner for a week after I saw that last’ looks across the ring.

He was trembling with fury.

“You got something to say, Blondie?” asked Viktor, in a quiet growl.

“My name is Gremio McDohl.”

Viktor pulled back slightly. He tilted his head, an acknowledgement.

“Got something to say,” Viktor asked, “McDohl?”

Gremio bit his lip and tried not to say anything to him. But, with scorn on his face, he couldn’t stop himself. “I can’t kick the ass of every dirty, traitorous, lawless son of a bitch here,” he whispered, loud enough for no one but Viktor and the very front row to hear anything but the hissed s sounds, “but as a representative example of the worst of the worst, I’m going to love kicking yours.”

Let it not be said that Viktor balked. Viktor definitely braced.

“On guard,” Gremio whispered.

It might be hard to say what happened first. Viktor threw up his sword in front of him to take a blow; Gremio swung his halberd up in a wide arc that practically cleared the arena from his position five feet into it, making the audience scramble backwards, Gremio sprang forward on his heel in a fierce dive attack, one of them, maybe both, shouted. When Gremio’s halberd clashed against Viktor’s sword, Viktor was thrown back to the fucking fence, slammed against a post with the small of his back. He braced well, rolling forward, but Tir definitely saw him shout and his eyes screw tight. He couldn’t hear what either of them shouted over the clash of metal.

Gremio broke backward, bracing himself low and swinging his halberd back over his shoulder. Viktor braced the wrong way. He wasn’t aware of the fact that Gremio could swing that gigantic weight of cold iron over his back, run it over his shoulder blades, grip it backwards, and attack from the other side. To Gremio’s credit he attacked him with the blunt of the axe. He might have taken his head off otherwise. All the same, it hit him with a resounding clatter, and Tir felt himself wincing, convinced that Gremio had just concussed him. In the corner of his eye, he saw Mathiu dragging a hand down his face.

It didn’t hit Viktor as hard as it would have hit almost any other person. He let the blow push him to the side, repositioning himself several feet away. He grimaced as he gripped his sword in a ready position, running over possibilities in his mind, disoriented, off of his game. Gremio wrenched himself backwards, also knocked a little off balance with the force of his blow, and held the halberd in front of him.

It was a good guess, because he was pushing away a crown-splitting strike from a four-foot broadsword in the next second. The push took both of his arms, but seeing as they were both fighting with and defending themselves from heavy weapons, neither of them could recover instantly anyway. Viktor made a risky bet by letting the zweihander fall down to one side in his right hand and lunged at Gremio to grapple him with the other.

It went alright for him. He grabbed Gremio around the waist, making him brace himself, but following suit, Gremio decided to just drop his halberd on Viktor’s head, making him howl. Gremio smiled an honestly ugly sneer before he realized that Viktor had reflexively tightened his grip around him and they were both about to go down.

Gremio made the choice to fall. Viktor was dragged with him, half-willing, which became completely unwilling when he felt cold iron on the back of his neck. Gremio had regripped his axe before it fell; it was pressing him down now, on top of the person he thought he had pinned. Viktor almost pulled back a knee enough to slam Gremio in the gut; before he could, Gremio clocked him with his forehead.

Viktor cursed, and Tir winced despite himself. That was three blows to the head now? Yikes. He found himself wishing he had thought about the fact that Gremio’s preferred weapon was a beheader sooner than this moment. Viktor rolled out of the grip while Gremio was repositioning, acting entirely on instinct, rolled over his sword, grabbed it while he was down, and got the hell back up, panting. The crowd roared as he struggled to get his breath, eyes still fixed on the fanatical guard.

Gremio didn’t take long to get up. He had, so far, not gotten a fraction as much hurt on him as Viktor had. For whatever reason, and Tir couldn’t be sure why, though, he left his halberd on the ground.

Viktor nodded, and dropped his sword.

A hush of disappointment fell over the crowd. Apparently, they weren’t expecting Gremio to bare-hand rush at Viktor with a murderous bellow in the next instant.

They went hand-to-hand and they fucking wailed on each other.

This isn’t to say there was hair-pulling, biting, and scratching. They kept up a sense, however slight, of a duel—they did moves to fucking hurt each other, not to scar or kill. There were punches roughed into the tough parts of their bodies, not the eyes or the throat. Viktor slammed Gremio in the gut, and Gremio responded with smacking his chin up with a clawed hand and trying to get him into a chokehold. Viktor countered, wheeling around, and they grappled, struggling, at the end, to just not fall down. The crowd roared, and anyone who thought they might have, maybe, wanted to stop this from happening, realized they didn’t want to get their wrist broken today.

Tir heard Gremio growl something, but not what. Viktor, to his shock, bellowed in response—“COME THE FUCK ON.”

Gremio was torn off of him and put into a hold that he struggled against. “I’M NOT—” Viktor wheezed as Gremio elbowed him harshly in the stomach, causing him to fall backwards. Gremio came at him again, but blindly, having to turn around, and Viktor grabbed his fists and braced against the slide when he came at him. “I’M NOT YOUR ENEMY!”

Viktor roaring in what was, to all indications, sincere anger, caused a lot of murmuring and balking in the front rows. Behind them, people couldn’t be certain what he said, between the heavy breath and the accent the got thicker when he was agitated. “FEEL FREE TO HATE ME,” he bellowed, suffering to hold Gremio in place, “BUT—”

Gremio knocked him down. Tir wasn’t even sure how; it had to be pure, raw strength. When he landed on him, though, gasping for his own breath, all Gremio did was lay his arm across Viktor’s throat, effectively pinning him to the ground.

They landed right in front of Tir. He could see Gremio’s twisted expression and the agony that had to be building in his throat. He saw bruises just born on his skin. He saw how Viktor was heaving, badly, uncomfortably sprawled in the dirt. He could look down at Viktor and see pain all over his face.

Because of this, being practically above his head, Tir was perhaps the only other person who looked up at him and say “—just don’t hurt anyone else. Just don’t take it out on the Liberation. Don’t sell us out. We’re not trying to ruin your country. For fuck’s sake, we’re trying—we’re trying to help.”

Gremio kept Viktor pinned down, chest spasming, staring wild-eyed at him.

“Think of the kid, man, if nothing else,” Viktor whispered to him, “please.”

Gremio looked a little sick.

He pulled his arms back and dragged them down his face, pulling off sweat. When they were gone, his eyes were tired, half-closed, and fireless.

Viktor pushed his hair away from his own face, and then raised a shaking arm into the air. “UM,” he shouted, loud enough to be heard, “I GIVE.”

There was still a substantial pause before the announcer, shaking his head, jumped into the ring. The medic followed, pulling Gremio off of Viktor and shoving him at someone else. She fell on Viktor, who waved his hand at her, trying to sit up himself. He did, but he looked like he was about to vomit.

The announcer grandiosely indicated Gremio with a wave of his arm. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, GREMIO MCDOHL! WE HAVE ONLY ONE THING TO SAY, AND THAT’S DON’T FUCK WITH HIM.”

Usually, this was when the crowd broke into screeches and whoops. Tonight, they broke into respectful goddamn applause.

Tir braced his elbows on the side of the ring, feeling dizzy himself, and stared at Gremio until he caught his eyes.

His gaze darted away, back, and back again. He held, letting Tir stare back at him, expression exhausted, broken down, and strange.

Tir licked his lips, not sure what to say, not sure if there was anything to say, not sure if Gremio would hear him. He shook his head and raised his eyebrows, then propped his chin on his hands, and he did his very best, oft-practiced though never revealed, imitation of that face Gremio always gave him.

Seriously? Are you fucking with me, or are you that dense?

Gremio smiled at him. He smiled and Tir could see him giggle in the arms of the people who were physically restraining him from going ape again. He wiped the smile off of his face with the back of his hand—well, he tried to.

“Crazy son of a bitch,” Tir whispered. The phrase was recognizable enough to be lip-read.

Gremio, off his fucking head from battle adrenaline, mouthed, I love you.

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7: A broken boundary, a staircase descended.

At that time it was the night before the day when they would reach Pannu Yakuta. It was the last night to be beating each other up and hollering about it, but that’s exactly why it was necessary. Still, Tir found himself wishing Gremio and Viktor hadn’t beat each other up quite so hard. He was going to see what Viktor looked like in the morning; for now, he was the one who had to take care of Gremio, because he certainly wouldn’t let anyone else do it.

Not that he was letting Tir do it. When Tir managed to extract Gremio from the crowd, walk him through the press of people while he was stumbling over his own feet, and plunk him down inside his tent—INSIDE the tent, thank you, Gremio—he was still resisting being cared for. Worse, he was trying to care for Tir, god damn him.

“My head is fine,” Tir insisted, grasping Gremio’s wrists and pushing his hands away. “Gremio.”

“But—”

“I know you’re worried, but—” Tir huffed. “How about this. I’m going to check to see if you’re okay, and then you’re allowed to check to see if I’m okay, alright?”

Gremio chuckled once. “Alright, fine.”

Tir glared at him suspiciously, but when he let Gremio’s wrists go, he just laid them down by his side obediently. Tir raised his eyebrows, scanning him up and down once. Gremio chuckled a little again, and closed his eyes.

“You’re being weird,” Tir huffed. “No, keep your eyes closed. Okay, I’m gonna do it.”

Then Tir immediately had to face the fact that he didn’t know how to make sure someone was okay. He told himself that what he had to do what check the places that Gremio had been hurt, but what was he even supposed to do about them? Make sure they looked alright? What did he do if they didn’t look alright? He didn’t use healing magic and he didn’t even know what the boundary between looking okay and not okay was. If the skin was broken he knew something was wrong; further subtleties, he knew, would be lost on him.

Then he realized Gremio would know what was wrong. He just had to get Gremio to say that something was wrong with him. Alright, natch.

Thinking back to the fight, he knew that most of the serious hits had been landed on Viktor, but he remembered Gremio being pulled down and hitting the ground with his hip and back. He remembered Gremio wincing as he had to use arm strength to push Viktor, or his sword, away several times. He remembered a lot of low hits to his sides and guts when the two of them were grappling. So his hips, his sides, his stomach, his arms. None of those were too hard to examine.

Tir waved a hand over Gremio’s face, and he raised an eyebrow. “Hey, are you peeking?”

“No?”

“Well, good,” said Tir, not even sure why he had closed his eyes, or why he was rolling with it now. He lifted Gremio’s right arm with both hands, and after a moment of resistance, Gremio went with him. He pulled up his sleeve with one hand, watching the pale skin pour out of it. He couldn’t say that it looked good—it looked mottled red and purple, and moved stiffly. He set that arm on his shoulder to keep it still—he doesn’t know, it sounded like a solid idea—and turned on his waist to grab the other one. He did the same thing, paring the fabric off of the flesh, and looking it up and down. It looked… a little pink but not like the right one. He pressed the pads of his fingers into Gremio’s wrist and slip them up the tendon, watching him shudder. “Does that hurt?”

“Not… in particular? You’re just digging in pretty hard.”

“Oh, I see,” said Tir, and then he moved to backhand slap Gremio’s right wrist with his knuckles. Gremio practically jumped out of his skin, reeling back from him and opening his eyes. “But that one hurt.”

“You slapped me!”

“It wouldn’t hurt so badly if it wasn’t obviously injured,” Tir huffed. “What happened? Did you dislocate it?”

Gremio glared while he held his wrist, and then looked down at it reluctantly. “I think I stretched it,” he muttered. “I absorbed a heavy shock… when my grip was uneven. It’s going to be loose and painful for a while.”

“Well, what should you do about that?”

“Probably wear a brace on it… just pinned heavy cloth will do the trick. I want to keep it from moving… or swelling too much.”

Tir raised one eyebrow expectantly at him.

“Okay, okay,” Gremio muttered, trying to turn away.

“Nope,” countered Tir, turning him back to face with a hand on his shoulder, “not yet. We’re not done here. Close your eyes again.”

“But—”

“Close your eyes again.”

“But, young master,”

“Definitely close your eyes again.”

“But—”

“If you’re going to all me Master, you’re going to take commands from me. If you don’t like that, think about what else to do,” Tir reprimanded. “Now close your eyes and sit still again.”

Gremio flushed red as he slowly lowered his arms to his side and closed his eyes again. He was a lot more tense than he was the last time he did it. His fingers were clutched in his palms, his lips were thin, and his back was suspiciously straight, given his long-term spinal problems. Tir stared at him for a bit, making sure he wasn’t moving, and then he put his hands on Gremio’s waist. If he thought he was going to be able to feel anything through his under-armor, he was wrong. Gremio always worse several layers of clothing, obscuring both his build and any damage from sight. It was a good tactic, Tir admitted. But it meant that undressing him was about to be tough.

He slipped his fingers under the hem of his shirt to hitch it upwards; there was another shirt under it. Gremio sat still enough for him pulling up the under-armor, but the undershirt, it seemed, was tucked in to his trousers. Ignoring a weird pounding in his neck and his jaw, a vein of anxiousness, he dipped his fingers into the waist of Gremio’s pants to find the end of all the damn fabric and hike it up. Unfortunately, he hiked the rest of him up too, because the feeling startled Gremio so badly that he jolted away. “Master—” he complained, flushed.

“You got hit in the gut how many times?” Tir argued, wishing he couldn’t feel his face burning up. “You’re obviously injured there and I’m not going to be able to tell through your shirt.”

“You could—you could ask me to take it off!!”

“If you’re going to keep calling me Master, I’m just going to take your clothes off if I like to! Do you have a problem with that?”

“Uh—” Gremio looked as if he had smacked him. His eyes flickered up and down Tir, sizing him up. “Are you serious?” he asked, still panicked, but with a softer panic.

“Are you serious, who?” asked Tir, hands braced on his waist.

Gremio was obviously going through a pretty complicated mental conundrum, if Tir were to judge by his face, which flicked rapidly between states of pinched anxiousness, worrying stresses, and open-eyed curiosity. Had he always been so expressive—or was he really that far out of his depth now? He could see now that Gremio had never liked things changing on him, and preferred to keep things the same, from day to day, time to time, on the hour. The shifting tide didn’t work for him.

“Are you… serious…” Gremio asked, looking up from below, but with a brightness in his eyes, “…Tir?”

Tir smiled a little, and shrugged his shoulders, side to side. “Well, I gotta check to make sure you’re okay, aaaaand your shirt is kind of stopping me. So.”

Gremio worried his lip. “Okay,” he muttered, “alright.” He crossed his arms over his front and pulled off his shirt himself. He distressed his hair when he pulled it over his head, which was already mussed and tangled from fighting, so he had to blow it out of his face and then spend a minute pulling it back from his shoulders and tying it again. “Alright,” he snapped finally, flipping his head back and catching Tir’s eyes. “Uh… alright. What do you want… to… see?”

“Uh,” said Tir. Truth be told, he was actually a bit distressed by how much hurt was piled up on Gremio’s midsection. He peered to one side, and then another, and saw bruises unfolding all around. “Can you stand up?”

“Uh,” said Gremio, glancing up at the low ceiling of the tent, “Probably. These tend to be a bit short for me…”

He managed it all the same, and Tir stood up in front of him, staring down at the pain in Gremio’s guts, seeming to morph in the lamplight. Finally, he put the fingers of his right hand on Gremio’s stomach, and pressed in. “Tir—”

“Bear with me, okay?” Tir asked. Gremio let out a reluctant breath, which came out in shudders on the tips of Tir’s fingers. He felt himself shuddering in response, one heartbeat after; prickles like someone had run a hand down his shoulderblades and the small of his back, making his skin rise. Tir swallowed thickly, and pressed into Gremio’s stomach, on a bad bruise. Gremio’s stomach muscles twitched, trying to absorb the pain, sickly slow from taking all of Viktor’s blows. “Hits like a boar,” Tir muttered.

Gremio whined. “Like a bear, you mean.”

Tir chuckled. “Alright,” he said. Then he began slowly pulling his fingers across Gremio’s midsection, up to another area where it looked bad—he twitched again, but not as hard. He pulled his hand down, and across, hitting discolorations that looked bad but didn’t seem to bother him, and surprised, tenderized patches that made him jolt and grunt. He had to run a hand over his hip heading backwards, knowing Gremio had fallen on it—yeah, he jumped badly at it, and Tir could even feel that it was puffy and soft it wasn’t supposed to be. He clicked his tongue and Gremio sighed shakily, turning his face away.

Tir pushed his fingers down the curve of Gremio’s backside, and yeah, he probably jumped because that was his ass, but he also cursed really, really quietly, sounding almost angry. Tir snorted at him, annoyed. “Yeah, not hurt, sure.”

“I never said I wasn’t hurt,” Gremio protested in a thin, breathy voice. He abruptly snapped back around when Tir put his palm on the small of his back, lifting up slowly to dig his fingers in.

He paused, because he felt like he could feel… something under his palm. He didn’t know what. It was like,,, even though he wasn’t quite touching Gremio, he could feel him there, under his palm, like he pulled something of him back with him. It was strange. Tir flexed his fingers up and down, feeling some nothing push and pull with him.

He resumed his task, pushing just a put too far into the skin, feeling up his back, exploring what didn’t look right, didn’t feel quite like it was supposed to. He paid attention to where Gremio jumped, where he shifted, trying to hide his reactions, where he seemed ready to just swat his hand away. Finally, Tir ended up face to face with him, with his hand slowly pushing its way up his midsection, wondering, with sudden desperation, where someone goes from here.

“So, uh… what are you going to do about that?”

“What?”

Tir shook his head. It seemed so foggy and sticky. “So you’re obviously not okay. How are you going to fix it?”

“Oh—geeze—” Gremio put a hand on his face, turning away. “For the midsection—that’s not an easy fix, uh… if he had burst anything, or cracked a rib, or ruptured an organ, Heavens forbid it, I would already know… I suppose it’s not impossible he did crack a rib on my side,” he admitted, gingerly touching the space on his side he had really hated Tir going over. “Even if he did, there’s still nothing to do but… brace it securely and try not to agitate it, which will be hard tomorrow. Since there are no cuts or abrasions to clean up, seeing as he’s an… admirably clean puncher… I guess I need to… wrap my skin up so that nothing can agitate it, put my shirt back on, and sleep as much as I can.” Then Gremio seemed to realize that he had been tricked into lecturing himself, because he shut his mouth with a huff, and made the most minute attempt to step back away from Tir.

Tir let him, grinning. “Alright,” he said, taking his own step backwards, “hold on, and I’ll get something to wrap you up.”

“Clean it, first,” Gremio muttered, with clear annoyance.

They ended up on their knees, so that they didn’t have to stand for the procedure but Gremio was as straight-backed as possible. Tir bound up his wrist first, to practice on an easier target. It took him a few tries to get the wrap tight enough, since he was trying too hard to not make it too tight, but eventually Gremio nodded, flexing his wrist, and told him to move on. The next part was harder; so many of the blows were enough below the belt that it was impossible to wrap them of, and Gremio clearly would not have him stripping him naked to disinfect them, so it was a matter of dipping the bandages for his stomach as low as they would securely go. Tir wrapped him up with hardly touching him; he only needed to secure the bindings tightly on his side, with capped pins that struggled against his fingers.

“Tir,” Gremio sighed, “you don’t have to fuss so much.”

“I’m just trying to do it right,” Tir muttered, utterly focused on the fastening of a pin.

“it’s really not your problem,” Gremio sighed, looking the other way. “It’s… too strange for me to have to be looked after by you.”

“Keep complaining and I’ll stick you,” Tir grumbled.

“No, I’m—I’m not complaining!” Gremio rushed to correct himself. “I just don’t know… how to take it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean—” Gremio huffed. “I mean I don’t like… you having to look after me. It feels like the wrong way for things to go. It’s my position to look after you, and… if you have to look after me, haven’t I done badly?”

“Hey—”

“I spent the afternoon in an organized brawl—barely organized—getting myself pummeled because I fell for an obvious instigation. Those aren’t the actions of a guard—if I’m getting into my own—arguments—petty fights—how am I supposed to be looking after you?”

Tir at first felt anger rise into his throat, but he closed his eyes against it. Not because he had a good concept of why he shouldn’t chew into Gremio, but because he had gotten so practiced at chewing on his own angry retorts and sense of being patronized over the past few days that he did it on reflex. “Well..” he sighed, not even sure what to say. He pinned up a bandage somewhat aggressively.

Gremio slowly peeked over at him. “Tir?” he asked, quietly.

“I don’t know how to handle you sometimes.”

Gremio turned pink again. He did that a lot, it seemed, once you were on common ground with him. “Ah—you don’t have to—”

“Look, I don’t know—”

They both shut up.

Tir sighed, slowly letting out a hot, frustrated breath. Then, feeling aggravated, ashamed, and tired at once, he let his forehead rest on Gremio’s side with a little bump. “I don’t know how to handle you at all.”

Gremio took a deep breath. Tir felt his lungs filling up with it, and closed his eyes. Skin to skin—that kind of connection, he realized then, was so easy. And as much as he would come to learn how easy it was, miraculously so—how frustrating it was that any other kind of connection was so messy, and so slow. “I’m not sure how I upset you,” Gremio started, voice low.

His speaking was felt on the skin of Tir’s head. He rolled over a little, to peer up at him. “I guess I’m being obtuse,” he said, and looked down again.

Gremio took some speaking breaths in, but didn’t say anything. Tir, feeling a little sick, and like he didn’t want to do this, spoke his mind. “I’ve been going over in my head… how you saved my life, on the battlefield. I didn’t realize it at the time, because everything seemed fine, or like a minor annoyance, at best, but I would have died when the soldiers swarmed us at the Kobold Village. I realized that night, as I was trying to fall asleep; that’s how people die. Suddenly. It doesn’t matter if you think you have it under control or it seems like everything is fine. That’s how the soldiers died, completely unaware that I could kill them and that it was about to happen. I was down on a battlefield. That’s how you die.

“I didn’t, because you were protecting me. You saved my life—how many times? Three? Five? Were you in a state of saving my life for several minutes? Sixty times a minute for as long as I was on the ground—a hundred times? More?”

“Tir—”

“You’re about to tell me it’s your job, and I get it, and I know you think it’s not my job to take care of you, and it feels weird, and like you’re not doing your job, if I do it, but… I don’t know, isn’t that all just stupid?”

“Tir.”

“No, I’ve got to finish this,” Tir continued, before I lose my nerve again. “Thanks for saving my life? It’s not like I’m mad about it or I think you shouldn’t. It’s just… why is it your job?? My dad told you that that’s what you do ten years ago, so now you have to, and I don’t get a say in the manner? Looking out for me isn’t wrong, but… why does it have to be your job?”

“Tir…” Gremio whispered, frozen in place by their strange position. “I…”

“It’s all so… I don’t think you’re doing a bad thing. I think you’re doing a great thing. A lot of great things. But why can’t you just… do that? Why can’t you have my back, and I have yours, and there isn’t all of that bullshit in the way? I’ve been turning it around in my head and feeling guilty and feeling weird, because I should say, ‘thank you for saving my life,’ but I couldn’t because I didn’t want to hear you say ‘it’s just my job.’ Which is stupid and a little selfish of me, because I should thank you, but… maybe you should accept the thanks, asshole.”

“Uh?” said Gremio, voice a little strangled. “I don’t really know what… you’re saying, I think.”

Tir removed his forehead from Gremio’s sweating side, and sighed as he pulled back. He then glared an acrimonious glare at Gremio and said, with bitter venom, “you’re welcome for patching you up, Gremio. That’s what family’s for.”

“Oh—but—uh—you—really shouldn’t.”

“What?” asked Tir, glower deepening. “Why can’t I help you when you’ve helped me? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Isn’t that how family works? Why do you have to be so…” Tir didn’t know what he was. He huffed as a substitution for any real conclusion.

“No…” Gremio whispered, “don’t be upset.”

“What do you mean?” Tir grouched. And then Gremio was smoothing his cheek, and then he felt tears welling up so quickly that he couldn’t stop them. “No, wait—why is this happening?” he asked, at a loss. “No, shit.”

“It’s alright.”

“I’m not even that upset, no, don’t—why is this happening?”

“It’s alright,” Gremio promised him, moving his hands down to gently hold his shoulders. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No don’t—stop it,” he whined. “Don’t get all—don’t—don’t start babying me because this is happening. I’m not—I’m still mad at you!”

Gremio looked down, his eyes softening. Tir felt himself wishing he would just move to hold him—didn’t he used to do that for him? When did he stop?

“Just—” Tir scrubbed at his eyes. “Fuck. No. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. I don’t even know what I’m so mad about. Stop just—don’t you have something to say??”

“Ah—” Gremio looked up at him, eyes wide. “Tir, I—I don’t—oh, no. I don’t know what to do either,” he confessed, stopping short.

“Shit, me either!” Tir growled, rubbing the tears resiliently out of his eyes. “Fuck, you’re able to basically break Viktor’s skull open, but you won’t even say a word to me when I yell at you, and act like an asshole to you, and smack you in the ass? Fucking hell, how do you feel?”

“Ah—” Gremio was bright red again. “What is this—why do you want to know??”

“I don’t want you keeping yourself away from me! If you can be so honest with Viktor, when you hate him so much, why can’t you be honest with me? Why do I have to push you and push you to get an answer out of you? Do you think I’m stupid? Do you not trust me? Do you think I’m still a child?”

Finally, Tir saw a bit of a glimmer enter Gremio’s eyes, an angershine. “Don’t accuse me of—of not caring for you,” he stated. “It’s not true.”

“Then why keep me at arm’s length?” Tir spat, knowing damn well he was being unfair, but feeling hotheaded as hell.

“I won’t have you hurt,” Gremio fired back. “I am your guard. I’m not going to see anything happen to you. I am supposed to literally be an arm’s length in front of you so you don’t have your head cut off by a maniac with a broadsword. That is literally my position.”

“Well, stop doing it when there isn’t a maniac with a broadsword!”

“That’s the best definition of Viktor I have.”

“Well, he’s not here now, is he?? It’s you, and me, and you being deliberately evasive because you think I can’t handle the truth. I can handle the truth! I’m not a—”

“I’m terrified of you!”

Tir froze in his place.

“Huh?”

“I love you very much,” Gremio continued, eyes shimmering, “more than I’ve ever loved anyone. Do you understand? I was rescued by your father and made his servant because I could not pay him back for my life. I deliberately disobeyed him by becoming yours instead. He let me, in his kindness. I’ve loved you while you were a child, as you grew up, and you’re right, you’re not a child anymore. Now you’re grown, and you can see me for what I am. I know… what I am. There isn’t much that’s good. And if you really look into me… I’m terrified of what you’ll see. I’m terrified of what you’ll think of me then.

“I guess I’ve been trying to preserve an old relationship pointlessly… haven’t I?

“And I can’t have you owe me your life… you’ll resent a debt like that. Maybe not today, but you’ll learn sooner or later. You can’t be in debt to me. You just don’t understand…”

Tir was at a loss, again. Gremio had him at a loss, constantly; if he ever thought he sized him up, there was something completely unexpected, hidden in the shade; more shadows, more sides, more strangeness. He had that feeling again, that awe-struck feeling, of something human, and how heavy it was, like a million small things were hidden in the corners of his person, tucked behind the folds of skin, a million trinkets of yesteryears. He was fucking gobsmacked, and feeling humbled made him feel not so fucking raw.

“I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

“Didn’t really want an answer, huh?”

Wow, he sounded so bitter. “No. I did. I have no regrets. I just realized that it was really mean, wasn’t it?”

Gremio lifted his chin. “A little.”

“Should I be sorry?”

He wouldn’t look at him. “Ah,” he considered, “you should definitely be sorry if you push anyone else like that. You’d make a woman cry.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Gremio.”

Gremio bit his lip.

Tir really didn’t know how you came back from this sort of thing. He knew you apologized, but for what? For what he said? For being angry? But he had felt it honestly, and he was glad that he got Gremio to open up, even if it was a little… forceful. What if he didn’t feel sorry about what he did, really, but was sorry it upset Gremio so much? What did he say?

Eventually, Gremio tried to excuse himself to guard the tent. Tir, surprising himself, grabbed his wrist. Gremio jolted, and almost glared at him.

“You’re resting your wounds.”

“Tir—”

“You’re resting your wounds, right here.”

Gremio faltered. “But—“

“You’re lying down and resting, because we’re going to fight Kwanda tomorrow, and I need you there.”

“But—Master—”

“Is that how it is? You’re lying down right here, right now, Gremio.”

Gremio shut up and let the tent flap close, turning around to face Tir. His face was hard to see in the shadow of the lamplight, confused, and shakily drawn; Tir knew he as on thin ice. That they were on thin ice, together, making moves that could cost them both. “You’re laying down right the hell here, Gremio, where I can keep an eye on you, and you can keep an eye on me, and neither of us is going to fuck ourselves up any more for one night.”

Gremio shifted slightly on his thighs, easing slowly back into the tent, with his eyes on Tir. Tir felt nervousness crawl up his neck again, suddenly suffocating. “Well?”

Gremio tilted his head to the side, incredulous and almost suspicious. “Are you sure?”

“Why?”

“You seem like you might rather be alone.”

“No, I wouldn’t rather,” Tir said, feeling himself reddening even though he didn’t want to give away how deeply that statement sunk in his chest. “And the last thing I want to do is be worrying about you. And the last thing you want, apparently, is me worrying about you, so you had better stay in my sight.”

Gremio visibly acquiesced with lowered shoulders and a pinched brow, and then he slowly settled himself down beside Tir, giving him a look. “You’re growing up to be a strange man, Master.”

Tir felt his heart beating a little giddily. Perhaps he was nervous that he wouldn’t really be listened to. Should he be nervous? “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not, what’s it to you?”

Gremio settled slowly down on his back, having to roll down over his wounds. “Because I’m going to have to be stuck with you no matter what, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” said Tir, feeling a bit more heat and anger than he should have at the comment, “you are.”

Gremio gave him another odd look, and Tir glared back at him. Neither wanted to settle down to sleep for a minute; the air as disturbed, shifting restlessly, undiscernible exactly. Tir felt his eyes browsing down Gremio’s chest to the bandages on his torso; the tiny thing, a collection of bruises, a bit of skin, that set him off so badly. The bruises and, as loathe as he was to admit it in the dark, the fist that made them, and the tongue that flared up Gremio’s temper so fast.

He wanted to keep him. He was thrown off of balance, put completely out of joint by the suggestion, as slight as it was, that he might not be able to. That even—maybe, weirdly, possibly even—Gremio might want to go. Might want to not be someone’s servant. But he should feel that way, and Tir wanted him to rebel against the role imposed on him and be his friend instead, but—

He had been glaring at Gremio too long. He made himself lie down, completely dissatisfied, feeling unfulfilled.

They wished each other a good night.

-

Tir had an odd dream that night, almost not worth recounting. It was the sort of insubstantial thing the mind vomits on you, trying to balance its uncertainty, throwing the worst out at your expense. To be plain, and albeit risking distressing the gentle reader, who no doubt will be shocked to hear this but must soldier on, he had his first wet dream in the night.

It would have been impossible, no matter how trusted the councilor, to get him to detail what his relationship to his new-born sexuality was before this time; shaky, ashamed, misunderstood, and left to sit where it was, ignored as best as possible. He had woken up with his body aroused before, and, though he vaguely understood it, he felt fit to ignore it, having been convinced already that the time and place for this sort of thing was in one’s marriage bed and not outside of it. Not too concerned, but not willing to become concerned, he let it go in his head. He had trouble most young men had not and it shoved its way into the space that a young sexuality might have otherwise taken up, but what that meant was that the young sexuality had to squeeze its unstoppable, invasive way into the cracks between.

This was the dream, as much as could be recalled. He was in his father’s home, sitting in a sparse wooden chair that he couldn’t place as his, looking down an empty hallway while voices rose behind him. Father was berating Gremio, who was crying. He didn’t know what they were talking about, but father was being uncharacteristically harsh. He was cursing him. Tir’s guts hurt; he curled up in on himself.

With no thought to how he found himself walking down the stairs at Toran Castle, a hundred sandy steps, skipping and hopping down, and they went on. Weird echoes sounded empty around. A voice made him peek into a corner; Odessa needed him to help her. He didn’t want to do it; something didn’t seem quite right. What was it she needed?

He skipped down the sandy steps, looking for Odessa; he heard a voice down the hollow ways and darted after it. He couldn’t quite see anything; the hallways were long, featureless, and flat. He turned down the west hall, following a winding way, calling for Mathiu. He heard his voice floating around; he tried to chase it like a glimmer on the water. Each one became dissolving echoes.

He thought he saw red hair around the corner, and he skipped after Kirkis, fast and lithe. Help me, help me, sounded around; someone else’s echoes.

“Tir,” said a voice. It was deep and strange, but somehow he was sure it was Gremio. He ran lightly down the halls of the caves under the castle, halls of dark grey stone with thick mist sliding around him. It was as though he were in a snake. The air was heavy. “Tir, Tir.”

“Gremio,” he called out.

An organ opened up in the hallways, stomach of the snake, something slithered over his feet and he stumbled, kicking it away. He had to crawl, and he could see pale skin.

Viktor ran his palms down Gremio’s purple-bruised stomach. It swam in his eyes, violet, red. He smoothed his hands down over his hips in two curving lines and down his thighs, which he lifted up around his hips like they weighed nothing. Gremio’s arms curled around Viktor’s shoulders, grasping at his coarse hair, and it smelled like human hair, soft, herbal, human, ticklish. Viktor was pushing Gremio against the wall and Gremio molded into it, skin against stone, wet and slick and rough. He saw Gremio’s head twist away and is eyes flutter as he exposed his neck. He pushed Viktor’s head up with his grip on his hair to make him kiss his neck, and that felt like teeth, hard, hot, disorienting.

He heard Gremio gasping and wheezing like pain, as he pulled, and grasped, and pulled on Viktor’s hair. Viktor bit his neck and Tir saw underskin blood left behind him. He bit up Gremio’s throat to the base of his chin, contorting Gremio against the wall. Gremio molasses-slowly rubbed his body up against Viktor’s, from his thighs to his collarbone, and Viktor rubbed down; their bodies went even and uneven, hipbone rutting thigh or stomach, and arrhythmic, until they molded together, slowly settling into place. Gremio sighed high-pitched noises when Viktor ground him into the wall, breathy and delirious.

There was no way to look away. His stomach was sickly hot, with a deep, low, swallowed, stifled coal.

Gremio called Viktor something derisive, cruel, and dirty; it fell from his mouth in weird syllables and Tir only felt it in his gut. He tugged so hard on Viktor’s hair that he was pulled back, nearly unbalanced. Gremio decided where Viktor stood and then took his mouth with his, pale, calloused hand rubbing roughly over Viktor’s scarred and stubbly face. He heard Viktor groan, and he felt the thunder-rumble in his lungs. Gremio pushed his thin, beautiful hips against Viktor forcefully, cresting almost slowly, sliding their sexes over each other. Tir could just feel it, hot blood pulsing and swelling.

“What are you doing—” his voice fell off of his tongue and hit the floor. They couldn’t seem to hear him. Gremio told Viktor to do better. Viktor told him he didn’t think he could take it. Gremio was being smashed against the wall, with a burly arm shoving his shoulder backwards, and another one rubbing almost spastically over his hip and clutching at the curves of his ass. Viktor fucked him with his hips, domineering almost—but not quite—as mercilessly as Gremio was commanding. Gremio started panting, and Tir’s throat was dry. For a while, he was saying “Viktor, Viktor;” for a while, he was saying “Tir, Tir, Tir.”

Tir was panting on the ground, his hands scrabbling on the rough stone. For a dizzy minute he was lying wounded, blood underneath him and carrion birds circling above. The sun was hot. He was dripping with sweat. With each breath that he gasped in and out, there was another sickening, satisfying pulse in his sex. “Viktor, Viktor,” he called from the grave.

He was forcing Viktor in-between his legs—his hands were all over his hips, they felt rough, cracked, and hard, the hands of a man. They were so big and warm on him that he was aware how small he really was. He rolled over and felt the cool stone at his back, the blood, the sweat, the body, stuck to the stone. It scraped him painfully. He pushed his hands through Viktor’s hair, felt the slick, dirty sheen, smelled the skin that needed a shower, gross, dirty, musky, he felt so hot. Viktor’s body warmth was almost intolerable and it pressed him entirely down, making him open his thighs catching-wide to take all of him. Viktor’s mouth was on his neck, hot breath curling around him, smoke and fire. It felt bad, it felt painful and stinging and wet, and yet his skin had never felt so fucking satisfied, and awake, and he could feel every inch of his own body. Compared to this, he usually felt so little.

He was hard and he rubbed himself on Viktor, feeling up his hot cock in his trousers, it was unfamiliar, and so easy, and something seemed wrong, and he heard himself laughing a sick, delighted, breathless giggle. Viktor started rutting him and saying his name, and Tir felt his back throbbing with pain as he was pushed against the stone. But there was a demanding and beautiful pulse in-between his legs that felt sticky like honey and hot like fire in the hearth, and all he did was wrench his thighs open farther so that Viktor could thrust at him harder. It was overwhelming. He was sure suddenly he had needed this, bad. This is what a volcano felt like; the fire of aching, about to pour out. He felt faint and like he couldn’t reach his own head. There were hot teeth on his throat and he laughed at how weird it was and then groaned and bucked at him.

He scrabbled with a free hand for something and felt Viktor’s sword clatter away. His head was pressed down to the side, Viktor’s hands rubbed bruising at him, his cock pressed him from his thigh to his stomach; it didn’t seem like that big of a deal, nothing seemed like it was really that much of a problem when all he could think about was the fucking pounding ache--

Metal clattered and rang fucking cacophonically outside. Gremio jolted up and swore under his breath. Tir gazed wild-eyed at the blue ceiling. Life swam in and out. “What?—the?”

“I’ll go find out,” Gremio grumbled darkly, moving to stand up. He grunted when he tried to tense his midsection and was forced to move more cautiously; he rustled through the blankets looking for his shirt, and found it shoved aside. He pulled it over his head and stiffly limped out of the tent, a six-foot-tall glower.

Tir slowly realized he was awake, on the edge of the Great Forest, and about to prepare to march into battle. That bit he usually pretended he didn’t have was as hot as a live coal and pressed against his sticky stomach by a twisted bedsheet.

“Oh fuck,” he wheezed, at no one. He just lied there, for a minute, frozen and terrified. His heart was pounding under his ears. His back hurt and his palm itched something terrible. The skin of his stomach and groin felt hot, tight, and unsatisfied. “What do I do?...”

He put his hands on his face and breathed. Nausea rose in his throat. Eventually he scrambled up and started to get dressed; he knew it would go away. It should go away faster though. It usually went away faster. It wasn’t going away—

He jolted and had to stay turned around when Gremio walked into the tent again. He could fucking feel his own blood.

“Idiots,” Gremio huffed. “They’re just dropping things, young master. If this is how taking down the camp goes, I am loathe to find out how we’re going to sneak up on the fortress. But I doubt either of us is going back to sleep after that…”

“Nope,” muttered Tir, running a comb pointlessly through his already untangled hair.

“We might as well find Mr. Silverberg and Viktor and get ourselves ready for whatever they’ve planned.”

“Right. Let’s do that. Sounds great.”

He could feel Gremio looking at him, though he didn’t dare look around. His stomach twisted in knots; he could feel reddened, excited skin, dark bites on his neck, sweat and blood that wasn’t there, he couldn’t believe it wasn’t there, and Gremio had to see it.

He felt Gremio kneel down right next to him. He cursed himself out to act casual, but he couldn’t do it; he couldn’t even look up at him. He felt that—sense—delusion—of feeling Gremio on him, even though he was a foot away from him, as if he felt him outside his body.

“Oh, master,” said Gremio softly, putting a hand on his forehead, “you had a bad dream.”

Tir surprised himself by feeling like crying. He looked down shamefully.

“It’s alright,” Gremio whispered. “It’s often that way before a battle. That’s why most men don’t sleep, or drink so that they can. It’s nothing to be ashamed of; but don’t tell it to the others. They’ll think it’s a bad omen, because you are the leader.”

Tir nodded minutely, feeling the blush on his cheeks. “I…”

Gremio shook his head. “It’s alright,” he said. “Put it behind you and focus on what’s ahead. If there was a warning, heed it; if there was only terrors, leave them with the night.”

If there was a warning, heed it? He couldn’t imagine of what.

“Alright,” he said shakily, “let’s go see Matt and Vik.”

When it was time to go, he was able to stand; it was enough.

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8: A thief, a treasure.

Sure, the announcer had declared that Viktor lost the fight. When you got a look at him the next morning, however, you really got a sense that he had lost the fucking fight. There wasn’t any bandaging things up for this motherfucker; there wasn’t a way to. When Tir opened up the entrance to the tent, he saw Mathiu lowering a faint blue glow away from Viktor’s forehead, who had his eyes closed tightly. Blue light shimmered over and under the many lines of worry, stress, and fear on his face.

Viktor’s dark eyes caught Tir the second he was visible, and he smiled and leaned back in his chair, flickering a few fingers in a wave. “You’re early, chief. Hyped up for the showdown?”

Tir looked at him as evenly as he could. He couldn’t think about it. No matter what. He needed his guard up around Viktor. “I figured this was the day to take things seriously.”

“It is,” Mathiu agreed, standing up with a couple of cracks and pops and gesturing at the table. “Both of you, sit down.”

Gremio silently pulled out a chair for Tir, who sat down, not looking at him. Gremio quietly sat on his other side. Tir pushed it out of his head for now. “you’ve got the plan finalized?”

“No,” said Mathiu. “I’m not finalizing anything.”

“We’re really doing this?” asked Gremio nervously.

The same debate they had been having carried on, without any of the passion it had been carrying on with. Mathiu had a brilliant plan that almost no one else liked and he wasn’t budging on it. Tir supported it and thought they could pull it off; Valeria and Viktor thought he was being naïve. Gremio wouldn’t make statements like that but he thought it was too dangerous. Humphrey thought it was a bold and brilliant new idea; he thought Mathiu was completely wrong about how to implement it. Lepant wouldn’t speak for or against it, he merely asked for the details of his position in the plan and seemed flummoxed by how few he got. Kirkis, who had started coming to the meetings approximately three hours after Mathiu starting working with him, was in Lepant’s position. Sanchez would write and write and scratch the lines back out, going around the table to pour drinks when too tired of it all. As people filed one by one into the hall, they simply took up their positions of the argument again, tired and worn.

Mathiu listened to the roundtable smackdown as his belligerent coworkers filed in that day, but once everyone was there, he lifted up his hands in a bid for silence. It fell. “It will take about half an hour to get this camp on the move now that everyone is awake,” he began. “Our men work at an admirable speed. We’ll give them their due today by working as well as they do, for once. We’ll have this decided in half an hour and be ready to march.”

Saying it didn’t make it that way. “I’m proud of my men too,” Valeria said, contention in her tone, “and I don’t want to watch them die today.”

Mathiu let himself breathe out. Sanchez got up to start pouring out cold liquor for everyone. “Then we need the best possible plan for the day,” he finally said.

“Give me your command and I’ll follow it,” pronounced Lepant, giving the same ultimatum he had been giving.

“As will I,” added Kirkis, holding out a glass to Sanchez. Tir wasn’t sure why, and he was reluctant to ask, but the elf was the most clearly beat up person at the table. He had been getting into spats with someone. Tir had lost track of him with his responsibilities.

Looking at him, looking at Gremio, trying to hold onto his midsection in a subtle way, at Viktor, who had a black eye, a black forehead, and a catch in his throat, and at Mathiu, whose hands had an awful tremor, Tir came to his decision. “I’ll give you your command,” he interrupted.

Eyes turned to him. Lepant inclined his head respectfully; the rest followed, some more immediately than others. Valeria and Gremio were the outliers by far; she seemed to follow the trend so as to not be insulting, and Gremio did not bow to him at all. He only watched him.

“Mathiu’s plan has sense in it, though it’s hard to see like this,” he began, standing up so he could put his fingers on the map of Pannu Yakuta and the outlying grounds that Valeria had made. He spread out the markers of position, which they had made to signify the major players on the field. They were a few dozen wooden chips cut from one birch branch with inked initials carved on them, written in bright, beautiful colors. T MD was scarlet red, M.S. was silver, V. was umber brown, VyM gold, C. LP and E. LP both sunset orange, H. spring green, K + S lavender, L. dark blue, K. hunter green, a chip with a symbol that belonged to the Bandit’s guild was painted violet, there were many symbols for lieutenants of the army in their own colors, a strange scribble was drawn in teal; chips for Flik, Ronnie, and Odessa all lay off to the side of the map, and there was one that Tir was keeping upside down in front of him. Those of the enemy were all listed in black. Most of them were names only Valeria knew, and she had already arranged them in positions she thought they would start battle in, though she reminded them at every opportunity that things had probably changed in her absence. K. R., in devastating capital letters, stood solitary at the crown.

“What we’re not seeing, and we have to keep this in mind, is an unknown number of troops on the walls of the fortress, all watching us, all completely confident that they outnumber and outmatch us. They have better weapons, better troops, the advantage of the field, and utter confidence that they will win, and we want this.”

Tir’s heart was pounding in his throat. He didn’t know how he was going to pull this off.

It was so strange to be the integral person in this room. So strange to have everyone’s eyes on him, watching him, to know that they would leave this room to either victory or defeat, either confidence or uncertainty, either cohesion or chaos, and the difference was him. Either he would give them a good plan and convince them to follow it or they would follow their own plans and inevitably face death. They were divided, uncertain, they had been tearing at each other—literally—and looking around, he could see it on every single one of them. Even Valeria, composed as a statue, had shadows under her eyes and a subtle binder under her armor. Even Lepant, with a knife-cut on his arm.

He would put it together, or they wouldn’t be put together.

How strange, to be the man of history.

He realized then that it wasn’t his superior courage, character, or training that would make this work. It was knowing that he had to.

He began to place chips evenly in a fan in front of the fortress.

“We want them to be dead certain that they will win and sure that they have nothing to fear from us. That is what will let us even get close enough to the fortress to attack. We have been loud, wild, and obvious in our approach; if they have already seen us coming, and they had to have, they will have drained their troops out of the fortress to meet us on their field. If, for some reason, they are afraid of us, and they have kept everyone inside the fortress and barricaded the walls, we have lost. How could we hope to take down the fortress with our few numbers? We have already detailed that it is impossible. But if they are not afraid, and they have come out to face us, we can bring them their doom.

“They will figure it is their advantage to face us in clean battle rather than shoot us down from their walls because they want to surround us and massacre us. They’re risking the slight possibility of defeat for what they think is a chance at total victory. Kwanda Rosman is inclined to take this chance; both Valeria and I have vouched for his character and we know that he is a man easily tempted by great victory, honors, and spoils. He’ll risk it if he isn’t afraid. And considering our loud approach, and Mathiu’s plan to look like we’re simply approaching the fortress normally, he shouldn’t be.

“As we have already detailed, I will lead the core of the army, several thousand, to his gate, demanding exactly the sort of head-to-head battle he’s used to. He will believe I am like my father and I am expecting a traditional battle, in which two vanguards meet and try to tear into each other’s rearguard. His secret plan will be to outflank us and surround us so he can kill every man but the leaders and capture them to return to his Emperor for the greatest possible glory. We can count on this being his plan.

“He cannot, however, count on our plan. It is new, he is traditional. It is inventive, unpredictable, and yes, a little chaotic, and he is rule-bound. He will be off balance, and after he has already shown his throat by exposing his army.

“Like Matt has detailed, this is how it will be: though it looks like one mass, secretly, our army is divided into about twenty factions, each watching for the signals of a sub-commander. Each faction is mobile and must be willing and ready to change course at a moment’s notice. His army is completely unequipped to be this way; the threats and compulsions the lieutenants and soldiers are under to not deviate from a plan or disobey any command are intense. They cannot change their course without lengthy confirmation from one commander; we can and will be able to switch our courses quickly and efficiently with a dozen sub-commanders, each trusted to have good judgement and enough bravery to make tough calls. When the enemy army presses in on us, even though they will secretly have wings sent out to surround us, we will have ten fingers, each grasping another way, impossible for them to close on.

“Matt wanted us to initially break off in something like a circle pattern, but Valeria, who knows the terrain of Pannu Yakuta, disagreed with his decision. Trusting her inside knowledge I agree with her. She believes that Kwanda will treat the river as a weak point and over-fortify it; I agree with her.” He pulled several chips out from the edge of the map and pulled them farther to the side, detailing a far-flanking position. “We will immediately send extra forces to flank outside of the river and meet them instead of them being overwhelmed. Those will be the forces under the command of Valeria herself, as well as Viktor’s sections two and three, so that they may begin the invasion of the castle early if they find a break in that sensitive area.”

People began to crowd around him to see what he was doing more closely; at first they had been inching over in their seats, but now, people began to stand up and crane their necks to see around him. Tir’s heart was beating harshly, but he began to feel a strange, dizzy elation—they were listening.

“As consequence the left flank will be sparser. This will only be evident once we’ve broken formation, but still, I want my best troops in that area… Which are mine, the veteran Liberation troops. As such I’ll actually organize all my troops to be to the left of me, not directly behind me, so that I can break to their head once the first volley is thrown.” He shoved a half-dozen chips out of the way as he described, leaving himself vulnerable in front. “Humphrey’s new recruits will be the center of the setup since, with our new battle style, the center is actually the least important area. It is the least maneuverable and least able to make snap changes in direction, so if any of the former Imperials want to defect or try to sabotage us, they’re in the worst possible place to do so—under fire and less protected.”

Humphrey was nodding along. Valeria had her eyebrows raised but wasn’t objecting; most of the others had their eyes peeled on the map.

Tir went over some details of what section would be placed where, changing Mathiu’s plan in places where specific lieutenants had argued against his decision. Valeria was closer to the front, like she wanted, and Viktor’s sections were close together instead of scattered about. Tir was liberal with his own sections, because they were more used to him and more versatile. “There is no way that Kwanda will expect this plan, since it has literally never been done before, and if we get him on the ground, he won’t be able to protect himself from it. We will be reacting real-time. The second he makes a command and moves his forces, we will be able to move faster, sooner, and outflank him more effectively because you don’t have to wait for me to cross-check each of your actions or fear dire punishment if I don’t like your choice.

“That should address most of the concerns I have been hearing over the past few days, but,” he continued, holding up his hand when Viktor moved to speak, “I know people have also been concerned about this approach being TOO chaotic. What if someone, who is off to the side and can’t see the flow of battle, makes a choice that is bad? What if someone moves too fast, or two subcommanders unknowingly choose to move away from each other, crating a gap in the lines? How do we fix the mistakes quickly enough?”

Viktor supplied the response with some hesitation, looking over Tir’s shoulder. “We intended to us the runner elf as a signal that someone needed to pull back immediately,” he said, tapping the chip with the weird teal scribble. “If you saw him, you considered what you were about to hear an order. But—”

“Yes, but that wasn’t good enough, as you said yourself,” Tir continued. Viktor was unexpectedly cautious when it came to battle plans. He hated planning risks, as much as he liked taking them. “He’s fast. Weirdly so. But we’re talking about the possibility of dire mistakes that need immediate correction.”

Tir tried to keep himself from grinning, but he couldn’t help it. He was too proud of this one. “We need someone who moves instantly.”

He snapped and pointed at the empty seat across the table from him.

Without a warning, without a noise, without anything but a rustling breeze, Luc appeared in it.

-

Two nights ago, Tir had entered his tent intending to sleep, after the fights and the drinking had gone on later than they should have, to find Luc in his tent, rifling through his belongings.

His initial reaction had been to immediately pull the door shut behind him so no one could see what was going on.

Luc’s immediate reaction had been to freeze in his tracks and stare at the owner of the tent he was robbing, wild-eyed.

They ended up just staring at each other.

Tir slowly lifted a finger to his lips.

Luc lurched to get away, and Tir half-stepped to him, grabbing his wrist. “Gremio,” he hissed.

Luc jolted.

“Gremio will hear you.”

Luc, like everyone else in the army, had seen Gremio rip a belligerent man off of his victim, clock him asleep, and hand his limp body off nonchalantly to a medic. He stiffened at the threat and pulled into himself, rolling through half-plans and panic in his mind.

Then, both of their eyes snapped to the place where Tir’s right hand was holding Luc’s right wrist.

There was a feeling like a snake uncoiling under his skin. It was—not uncomfortable, not overwhelming, but completely alien, like it was the feeling of an inhuman species, happening to him. It was in his skin—in the mind in his skin, not felt but known, curling and uncurling, seeking the light.

They pulled back from each other, with identical gasps. They scoured each other with their eyes, searching for a sign, hunting for weakness, catching each other’s glares and intensifying them.

Like birds that don’t know who has the quicker wing, they drifted, waiting to strike.

Tir curled the fingers of his right hand together, feeling a weird, thrumming energy in their joints. “What are you doing here?” He whispered.

Luc glanced around the room. He had to be looking for an easy exit; it was a tent, so it wouldn’t be hard to find one. He glowered at Tir, refusing to respond.

Tir narrowed his eyes at him. He was a small boy; he couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall, if he even was five feet, since Tir was short as well and he easily crested him. There wasn’t much meat on his bones, either, and there should have been no threat about him. But Tir’s first encounter with him had been a ridiculous display of violent strength, one that Tir hadn’t easily come out on top of, even with the warriors he had helping him. In retrospect, it was an overdone, anxious display of strength, but that only worried Tir more, since he was uncomfortable around people willing to be reckless. He hated that it set him on edge, because it was a mental play that was supposed to set him on edge, but Luc and his big, wild eyes, and tiny frame housing ridiculous displays of recklessness and power, really fucking set him on edge. Especially alone where he wasn’t supposed to be.

“Wait,” he asked, “How are you in here? Gremio was just outside—and I was only gone for a minute…”

Luc made a sudden dart past him, but Tir caught him easily. That sickening feeling—it belonged deep in his gut, but it writhed in his hand. Luc jolted when he caught ahold of him and whined. Tir closed his eyes to the sensation and pulled Luc into him, though he dug in his heels and resisted. “Be quiet. He has good ears.”

“Let go of me,” he growled. Tir pulled him in close until they were barely a few inches apart and gripped his shoulder tightly, hoping the feeling making him sick would have at least half the effect on Luc, though he doubted his thoughts the second he thought them. All the same he turned pale.

“How did you get in here?”

“I teleported,” Luc snarled, eyes full of fury though his body was frozen.

“You teleported?”

“Yes.”

“You can do that??” Tir asked, louder than he intended to.

But though they both glanced to the door, Gremio did nothing. Tir was in the habit of speaking to himself; he likely wouldn’t stir unless he heard someone else’s voice or Tir asking for help. They looked back at each other, more nervous. “You can teleport?”

“Yeah,” Luc continued, cautiously.

“Instantly?”

“Obviously?”

“Magically? Like, with a rune?”

“Yeah.”

“That thing…when you did that on Leknaat’s island… that’s like… not something that happens on the island?? That’s something YOU can do?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Can you do this… like, at any time?”

“Pretty much?”

“How many times a day?”

“Probably… fifty?”

“Fifty??”

“If they’re really long jumps it’s harder,” he admitted. “I mean short jumps.”

“What’s a long jump?”

Luc shrugged awkwardly, considering he was still being manhandled a little, and it was shivery and slippery where they touched. “Over a hundred miles?”

Tir let go of his wrist and plopped down on the floor.

Luc watched him put his head in his hands and then smooth back his hair, shell-shocked. “Can I… go?” he whispered. “Like, am I being detained, or,”

“A hundred miles??”

“Yeah? I could do, like, five of those in a day.”

“The fuck. How far can you go?”

“Uh… any… amount?”

“Any fucking amount?”

“I mean, across the continent I’ve done.”

Tir cursed expressively. Luc shuffled on his feet, left hand rubbing his right wrist, until Tir made a ‘sit down’ gesture emphatically. Luc refused a few times, but Tir kept telling him to sit the fuck down until he did.

They sat cross-legged across from each other, Tir holding his face, looking incredibly vexed at the boy across from him. The boy across from him looked like he was ready to throw down at any fucking moment, and he didn’t care what about.

“You can teleport anywhere, any time, and only ridiculous long distances tax you,” Tir confirmed.

“Yes.”

“Because of your rune, so that’s not something you will ever stop being able to do.”

“No.”

“The same rune that lets you pull golems out of the ground to attack people?”

“Uh… yes?”

“What the fuck else can you do?”

“Uh… hurt people a lot? I mean a lot. Move in their air, like, decently well? ‘Flying’ is kind of an overstatement, it’s more like… not falling. Adjust very small weather patterns? Flip skirts? I don’t?”

“Fuck off, dude, that’s so cool,” said Tir with a tone of misery.

Luc turned a little pink. “So?”

“So,” Tir said, as if what he was about to say didn’t have to be said, “fuck, that’s so cool. So… so a lot of things! Do you know how we can use that? Shit, you can teleport anywhere??”

Luc’s posture relaxed slightly, before he pulled his arms in together and leaned forward. He grinned like a cat. “Yeah, it’s easy. I just need a mental image of what it looks like from above and I can go there. I can even use pictures of a place if they’re good enough.”

“Like a map?”

“Usually… not… they usually don’t give you a clear picture of where you’re going. But a painting, yeah.”

“A painting…” Tir rubbed his chin, looking away to the side. There were a few beats of silence.

“So, am I being detained, or,”

“Hey,” Tir interrupted, snapping his eyes back to Luc.

Luc balked for only a second, then held his gaze. His eyebrows pinched up and he had an intense glare covering him without hardly a shift. “Hey, what?” he asked.

“I won’t tell anyone you came in here. No,” he interrupted himself. “I’ll let you have whatever you were looking for if you agree to do something for me. Some things. Ongoing thing. Open agreement.”

Luc narrowed his glare, tilting his head. “What do you want?” he asked.

“I want you to carry commands for me. Be a messenger. I’ll tell you what to say to someone, you go to them, say what I told you to say, snap back. That’s all. And no one will know you were here and you’ll have whatever you were looking for.”

“Wait, when? For what? For… in what situation? Why?”

“Battle. Like, tell people to do what I say in battle. You go out, you tell them to turn right, push forward, stop the shit they’re doing, pick up the pace, or whatever I say, then come back to me. Several battles. Not just Pannu Yakuta. Whenever we are in open battle with the Empire.”

Luc leaned back, looking away from Tir as he considered the request, tapping two nails together. Tir watched the motion. “That’s a lot of work for one thing.”

“That’s a lot of leniency for finding a thief in your tent when you have a guard right outside your tent.”

Luc snapped his eyes back to Tir’s. “You wouldn’t do it.”

Tir’s gorge rose and fell as he asked himself, honestly, if he would do it. He pulled in a breath.

Suddenly, he found himself diving forward, clasping his hand over Luc’s mouth, and grasping the first thing he could with his left hand—a knee. A light that flared up behind Luc’s glove died again when he grabbed him, and it took Tir a second of processing to realize he had just killed a spell being cast—almost certainly a teleportation spell. He didn’t have a fucking clue what he was doing before then.

“Listen, you little prick,” Tir whispered, feeling the fear rise in him, “I’m being nice. Help me out, I’ll help you out, and things don’t have to get any weirder.”

Luc wrenched his head away from his hand. “Let go of me.”

“If you teleport again I’ll start a fucking manhunt for you.”

“How the fuck will they find me?”

“Why the fuck haven’t you left already?”

Luc glowered at him. Of fucking course they knew how he couldn’t teleport. Somehow, Tir was stopping him, when usually an entire continent of space couldn’t stop him.

Luc chewed on his lower lip and considered. Tir endured a howling fury in his head explain to him, rapid-fire, the many reasons why this plan didn’t work.

“Fine,” Luc said, for reasons Tir couldn’t guess at, “fine. You should be glad I don’t want to cause any trouble for Lady Leknaat.”

“Fine,” Tir repeated. “Jerkface. Whatever you want, you got it. Just help me out a little and I’ll let you do whatever weird shit it is you’re on.”

“Fine, but…” Luc held his eyes, vivid brown almost gold. Tir felt sweat on the back of his neck. “If I’m stuck in an agreement with no foreseeable end date, so are you. If I’m going to keep helping you, you’re going to keep helping me. Not just today. You’re going to keep working on my project with me.”

“Okay…” said Tir, reluctantly, but, though he wouldn’t admit it, more interested than he was calculating. “What do you want?”

Luc let his lower lip go and smiled. Tir glowered a little, absolutely sure he had been played, but not sure how. “I want Soul Eater’s runestone.”

Tir stared at him, then looked away. He reviewed a couple of memories he should have reviewed more closely before this moment. “I… don’t… have it?”

“What?”

“Ted gave me my rune…” he whispered, “while he was dying… he had me agree to take it and transferred it to me by contract. It went from his hand to mine. I never saw a runestone… I never thought about it before now. Of course there should be a runestone but… I don’t have it.” He stared at his hand, shocked. “Wait, how do you know I have Soul Eater?”

Luc turned red as he gaped at Tir. “Are you serious??”

“Yeah. Wow, I should have thought of that before now. Where the hell is the runestone? Weird.”

“You don’t have??” Luc got up, stomped over to the bag the had been searching through, and dumped it out on to the floor. Notebooks, pens, bandages, shirts, coins, leaves, a couple bugs; Luc shifted through everything on the floor and didn’t find what he was looking for. Tir watched him turn through the contents of the tent, as quietly as possible, with a smile on his face, but he knew it wasn’t there. Luc eventually turned on his heels and glared at him, annoyed.

“I don’t have it.”

He walked over to him, sat down—on top of him—and grabbed Tir’s right hand. Tir stiffened but didn’t have much time to react before Luc was tugging the bandages off of his hand. It hurt; Luc didn’t wait to see how they were tied on before he ripped them off. Soul Eater flared to life with rust-red light.

Luc stared at the rune, wide-eyed. He flipped Tir’s hand front and back, as if he was going to find answers in his palm. He slipped his fingers into and out of the spaces between Tir’s, and the slips were followed by sparks, pinches and prickle underneath his skin. He was already trying to pull away when the back of Luc’s hand brushed his as the boy muttered, fast and high-pitched, skin to skin.

They both pulled away from how that felt.

Tir felt the snake barely kept inside him, at his eyes, at his nerves, beneath the skin of his face and throat and chest, and then it trickled back like water, coiling up, around his spine, around his heart, hissing, trickling away.

Luc was breathing heavily, left hand clutching his right.

“What rune do you have?”

“Breath,” he whispered.

“Breath?”

“True Wind,” Luc said. “He’s Breath to me.”

“It’s a true rune?”

“Yes.”

Tir examined him. Luc examined him back. They came to their conclusions separately, and decided, wisely, that they were at an impasse.

“Alright, so,” said Luc eventually, shakily pulling his glove back onto his hand, “let’s go over how you want me to do this messenger boy thing.”

-

“Luc will be right beside me, at all times,” Tir continued, letting his gaze slowly fall back to the map. He picked up the chip that he had set in front of him, flipped it over, and slid it to his position on the table—they clattered off of each other and ended up a centimeter apart.

H.L., scratched into the wood, varnished without color.

Luc settled his elbows onto the table and rested his chin in his hands, grinning.

“He can teleport instantly to any position he can see,” Tir said. They had agreed to purposefully undersell his abilities. “If he shows up while we are actively in battle with a command, it’s a command from me. Mathiu will still give commands if he’s in the position to, but once the factions are split far enough that a shout won’t carry, or if I have to issue a command I don’t want shouted across the battle field, this is how it’ll come from you.

“Valeria, if you would fill him in with the visuals of Pannu Yakuta as best you can ahead of time so he has an idea of where he’s going, that would be appreciated.”

“Yes, Sir,” she said.

“Hopefully that should address most concerns about getting reliable commands or the organization of the army being too chaotic,” said Tir, looking back down toward the map. He was trying not to grin, he really was, but he wasn’t doing well. “Moving on, how we plan to actually take the fortress once we’ve used quick-changing positions to confuse and overcome the enemy’s troops.”

Tir laid out a plan. Everyone agreed to it. Luc vanished before anyone could talk to him and Sanchez silently got up to refill everyone’s glasses with fresh liquor. It took twenty minutes to wrap up the meeting, not thirty.

-

Imagine, if you will: after almost a year since he made the choice to join the Liberation Army, months of preparing, and a week of marching, he was only a few hours away from looking one of the Great Generals, the representation of the Emperor, on the battlefield and declaring war on everything he had ever known. The time had come. And there’s never enough time to prepare. Have the greatest plan in the world, plot all the twists and turns a man can plot, be as impressive as you can possibly be, and you still won’t feel prepared. What can prepare you for the death of thousands? It’s not something we are supposed to experience.

Gremio prepared him for battle.

It was a tense experience. He fitted him into armor; leather, Tir had never grown used to metal and would never be able to wear it unless he changed his battle style. Gremio had insisted on a piece or two of chainmaile that he could fit on him without restricting him. He tied everything tightly, pulling the clasps and knots snug; bending and bowing to check that every part of the outfit was correct. He handed Tir his staff, which he accepted with both hands. He handed him his bags, his knives, his ropes and potions and fire starters; anything he could possibly need to claw his way through. Finally, he untied the bandages on his right hand and fit a leather glove he had had worked onto it instead. One that could be easily taken off.

Gremio then stood in front of him, eyeing him up and down, looking for something that he wouldn’t find.

“I’m ready,” Tir said.

Gremio nodded.

Tir looked down at the floor. What did you say? What would his father have said? Something to reassure him, no doubt. ‘Wait for me,’ perhaps. That’s the sort of thing he used to tell Tir before he left again. Something that sounded so fucking cool. But Tir didn’t know how to do that.

“Hey, have you got something to say?”

No, that definitely wasn’t the coolest thing he could have said.

Gremio sighed. “It’s foolish.”

“No way it’s as dumb as what I just said.”

Gremio chuckled derisively. He looked up, and Tir finally caught his eyes. The night before was ricocheting in his head—Gremio fierce in battle, even vicious, fanatically loyal and fantastically loving, how gentle and miserable he was in private, silent when he was berated, bitterly remorseful when he was provoked into lashing out, suffused with deep convictions and heavy suffering that Tir had never known before. He had had some time to think over it, he could see how being made a servant settled into Gremio’s bones, he could see how he had been pushed in the last ten years of his life. He wasn’t stupid, he could imagine; he had been his own man, and now he wasn’t, and he had to have hated it, once, considering he could talk with revulsion about the hatred of debts; but he loved Tir now, Tir especially, more than his father. He could see it was a lot for one man. He could see it was a heavy weight.

It all seemed like an unfamiliar person, superimposed on the man he knew. But he saw now that it was the same man, and he just hadn’t been trusted with the whole picture. And he could be bitter about that, and he was, with a sharp frustration in his forehead and his gut, but he could also be happy that he was being trusted now, or, perhaps, that he was lucky now, and he was witnessing the upheaval of Gremio’s life, terrifying as it was, and helping him sift the layers of uprooted dirt, and put away the bones.

How could he communicate trust to him—how could he prove it? How could Gremio know he meant it? And yet he was still mad, discontented with the way Gremio had treated him last night, or the way they had treated each other; he was still full of anxiety. What did he even mean, himself?

“I was thinking it wasn’t too late to leave,” Gremio whispered. “I was thinking that, even, now is the last possible time for us to just leave, and not do this.”

Tir sighed. “I… understand how you feel. I don’t fully want to do this either.”

Gremio looked at him with stupid hope.

“But… I still think I’m doing what’s right. And I refuse to do anything but that. And I don’t necessarily like it, always, and I don’t even think I’m very good at it. Actually, I think I suck at it. But I want to do what’s right. I have to. So many people have died already because the Empire has been let to do what’s wrong.”

“People die no matter what you do,” Gremio whispered.

“Well…” Tir said, “they shouldn’t die like that.”

Gremio closed his eyes, and nodded.

“I just don’t know why it should have to be you,” he whispered. “You haven’t done anything to deserve this. You don’t have any sins to atone for. Why should someone who hasn’t done anything wrong be chosen to make up for the crimes their fathers committed? Seeing you today, I was so proud, and so scared. Why does it have to be this way? You are… you’re so young.”

“Gremio, don’t cry.”

Gremio shook his head, eyes twitching with his tears. Tir reached up to wipe them away, and Gremio bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tir waited through his trembling, silent as the grave. “Do you think we’re not doing the right thing?” he asked, frightened.

Gremio shook his head, and it took him a long time to reply. “Don’t ask me that. I don’t have the answer. I don’t know what the right thing is. I just know it wouldn’t be right to let you die here.”

Tir put his hands on his shoulders. He thought about what he was going to say to reassure him, but he just wanted to hold him. And then he felt hot anger about the fact that he couldn’t hold him. Why the hell couldn’t he? Why was it okay to hold Gremio when he was a child but he couldn’t when he was a man?

He held him tightly, as close as they could geared up for battle, his head at his shoulder, and rocked on his heels.

Gremio wrapped his arms around him, and kissed the crown of his head when they let go.

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A horrible beast and a horrible beast.

Imagine, this; only a few hours before Tir was looking his enemy in the eyes.

He had to crane his neck up for it, because his enemy did not come down to the battlefield.

He stood on the battlements, bristling in armor, a tiny black insect on his giant, glaring, burning Mirror, prepared for their arrival.

They were all going to die.

The army was gathered outside of the Fortress, to be certain, they sat around lounging in their thousands, on the ground, on the battlements, in the windows, jeering and laughing. Some weren’t even in armor. They were here to watch them die. They let him march up to shouting range, him and his whole army, and watched.

Gremio was on his right, Cleo right beside him. Kirkis was on his left, with Sylvina and Stallion. Luc was haunting behind him. Mathiu was at his elbow, for now. The rest were at the heads of their factions, waiting for their signals.

The time was now, and he felt nothing but anger.

He was so afraid he would be scared. Maybe he should have been.

“KWANDA ROSMAN,” he bellowed, in a voice that echoed.

The black smear on the mirror knelt down, giving him his attention. Though Tir knew he had a booming voice, from this distance, he could barely hear him. “TEO’S BOY,” Kwanda addressed him, to laughs from his army. “I HEARD THE RUMORS BUT COULDN’T BELIEVE THEM. I DIDN’T THINK YOU’D BE PROMOTED TO GENERAL SO SOON! TEO SURE PULLED SOME STRINGS.”

As if he didn’t fucking expect a taunt like that? His heart burned. “WE ARE THE LIBERATION ARMY, FOLLOWING GENERAL ODESSA SILVERBERG,” he bellowed, letting it ring around him, feeling his army—her army—get ready. “WE WILL MAKE YOU PAY FOR YOUR CRIMES.”

“THE ELVES OF TORAN ARE HERE TO MAKE YOU FEEL WHAT WE FELT,” Kirkis howled next to him, arrow already notched in his bow. “TO MAKE YOU FEEL A HUNDRED DEATHS.”

Kwanda Rosman laughed a laugh that echoed around the hills. It came from the mouths of a thousand soldiers who thought that was fucking funny. “I THINK I’LL ENJOY IT,” he barked. “WHY DON’T WE BEGIN WITH YOU, KNIFE-EARS?”

He raised his hand, nothing but a line on the face of the blinding mirror. There was frantic movement from the battlements, and the sound of grinding gears.

Kirkis pulled back his arrow.

“Remember,” Sylvina whispered fiercely.

“I remember,” Kirkis replied.

Tir made himself watch.

A single arrow flew out of Kirkis’s bow. It did not have far to travel; the mirror wasn’t so high up. But he did have to reach the top. Before the first even hit, he was drawing another arrow of the same color—burnt black.

The first arrow struck the frame of the mirror, above the gigantic face of polished obsidian, dead center.

-

The massive fiery weapons of death were going to take a long time to make. That was the be all and end all of it; being on a time schedule didn’t mean the dwarves would bump their request over their own projects. They didn’t care what happened to human kingdoms as long as it didn’t effect dwarves. This was understandable on one hand and infuriating on another. Besides the timecrunch there was also concern about supply—they were asking for a sheer amount of iron and copper that would take an extra trip to the mines to procure. So it was no go for now.

“Yeah, at your schedule,” Tir recalled Viktor saying blandly, squinting at a chart of dates that the dwarven miner was holding, “we should be aquiring those spears after… we’re all dead. So cheers.”

There was some barking laughter from the dwarves crowded around them. The dwarf chief made a quip to the craftsmen which, though untranslated, clearly meant something like ‘well, we don’t have to worry about making them at all then.’ The men laughed and slapped each other on
the shoulders while Tir shrugged.

“Well, guess it’ll make it easier to not have to pay you, then.”

“Hey, I didn’t say that, boy,” the chief countered, winging around to face him. He walked around the table to him, parting the smoke of the dark, narrow hall. Their halls were all high-ceilinged but thin and narrow; Tir wasn’t sure why, since they were short folk who developed in caves. There were only two short routes around the meeting-table, crowded with charts and tools, and some of the humans were pressed to fit in them. “You’ll be paying, with interest, for the time it’ll take for us to go back and do an extra dig for your iron. Because this has to be iron.”

Tir nodded graciously. “To be sure. My only concern is paying you, again, when I’m dead. Kwanda Rosman has declared his intent to kill us all with the Burning Mirror. We’ve seen he can and I’m sure he will. And humans aren’t dwarves, remember. If he kills us, he and his men will take to our castle and strip it of everything but the garbage. No spoils left, no slaves, not a single coin for you.”

“The human had a mad look in his eye,” the chief recalled, “but he paid up front. Good for us, and good for you. I don’t care what happens to his goods anymore. It’s a beautiful mirror, and I would hate to see it go, but…” he shrugged.

Viktor perked up from across the table. “You know a way to get rid of it.”

“There are a hundred ways to get rid of it. It’s a stone mirror, drop it and it shatters.” He pounded the flat of him palm on the table to make a booming noise in the thin stone hall.

Valeria, who had basically disagreed to enter the tiny room, interrupted from the doorway. “You chose stone as your material?”

“The mirror chose it that way,” the chief argued. “A metal mirror reflects a better picture, but this mirror wasn’t made to reflect a picture. It was made to reflect heat. We needed the best material for reflecting—and withstanding—heat. Heat that could melt tin, copper, or silver. Originally we wanted lead glass, but there was no way to lay a lead glass mirror as flat as we needed; it can’t be carved, and it might not stand up to the fire we needed anyway. No metal, no glass, that left us stone.”

“Obsidian,” said Valeria and Kirkis at about the same time.

The dwarves pounded the table and chortled with pride.

“Obsidian is volcano glass,” Kirkis reasoned. “Of course it can heat up as hot as you need it without shattering or melting.”

“And it’s stone,” Valeria continued. “You don’t have to cast it like you would a silver mirror, and it’s not expensive. You can get a large amount of it and whittle it into shape.”

“It wasn’t easy,” the lead artisan, who had just been pulled in, said with a puffed-out chest. “It’s stone, but no granite. It’s brittle stone, and there were many mistakes, and a week of polishing done by a full guild. The only issue was its low reflectability compared to metal or lead glass, so we poured molten silver under it to make it catch light better and make it easier for bright-eyes to see where it’s going.”

“Don’t be giving away secrets in your pride,” the dwarf chief chastised with a smile. “Aye, but we were all proud of it. Your General, though, he was angry.”

“How so?” asked Tir, refusing to go into a debate about whose general he was or wasn’t.

“It took too long by him,” the artisan groused. “We had a few mistakes and took the time to fix them so that we could give him a quality weapon. We had never made something like this before; there were setbacks. We took our time as proud craftsmen to give him the weapon he asked for and better. And what does he say? ‘Why isn’t it done yet!’”

“Calm yourself, Mastercarver,” a financier groused, trying to pass him a drink.

The artisan refused it. “Too much time, for a one-of-a-kind piece that was going to win him a war, make his fortress unconquerable. What did he say? It was taking too much time! I present him with what would be the crowning life achievement of an average dwarf and he complains about the schedule. So you know what I did?”

“What?” asked Tir, genuinely charmed by the furious artisan.

The artisan grinned. “I took less time.”

All the dwarves burst out laughing. Understanding enough about their craftsmens’ culture of quality and precision from what Kirkis had explained, Tir was pretty sure he knew what he meant. “What corners did you cut?”

The artisan snorted, crossing his arms. “The mirror is a masterwork. The frame is shit.” The dwarves around him chortled and lifted their glasses to his nerve. “The whole massive thing, weighing a hill, is held up by six flimsy clasps. Well, they’d be excellent for a hall door, but they’re shit for holding up something of that size and weight. I wanted to round-clasp the whole thing, but it would have taken so much time.”

As their dwarves carried on their carousing, Tir contemplated. “So we could pop it out of the frame.”

“With a little work,” the artisan confirmed. “Even our bad work is good work, you know. The boys fastened on the bottom clip with good work before I told them to rush it to stick it to the sun-baker. The ones holding it to the mount on the bottom are alright, since it won’t stand up to transportation otherwise. The ones on the top? I’m surprised it hasn’t popped out already.”

“What are the positions of these clasps?” asked Valeria, seeing the gist of it. Gremio was getting out pen and paper and drawing a circle.

The artisan pointed out their positions—three at the bottom, at about five, six, and seven o’clock, and three at the top, eleven, twelve, and one. The three at the bottom were steady, the three at the top were poorly fastened. “Unhinge those and it’s goodbye masterwork mirror; serves you right, bright-eyes.”

Tir wasn’t even sure what the insult meant even though he was certain it was racial. He’d ask Kirkis later. “You’re really willing to help us destroy your work like this?” he asked.

“Do I want to see it go? No. I’m proud of my work, like any man,” he groused. “But the big boy deserves it. I’m glad to help you pull a good trick on him. I’ll even tell you how to do it.”

“Alright,” said Tir, “how? To my knowledge, he has it on a battlement, maybe fifty feet off the ground, and it’ll be impossible for us to reach it up there.”

The artisan fell quiet as he thought. Dwarves began to mutter around the table, in their own tongue. Tir could tell Kirkis wasn’t really following by the way he narrowed his eyes and shook his head. They argued for a time while Tir waited. Finally, the artisan waggled his finger in the air, having hit on an idea.

“Boy,” asked the artisan, gesturing at Kirkis, “how well can your tree-monkey shoot?”

-

The arrows were almost too heavy and too large for Kirkis. He had been practicing with them since he received them, which was no easy feat, because he was paranoid of losing one. He made simulacrums of their size with rocks attacked so they would be just about as heavy; he practiced endlessly, probably giving a few wandering soldiers a few near misses. Sylvina had practiced with them too, just in case. But Tir hadn’t been there for most of that—he had soldiers to get to know, a few thousand of them—and a low-level terrifying teenager to wrangle.

He did, however, have the pleasure of seeing him shred the top-center hinge of the Burning Mirror like it was paper with a single iron arrow.

The second one folded around the offending arrow and trapped it there.

The third one missed.

Tir heard Kirkis swear a storm but he was transfixed. His mind ran with a hundred possibilities in one instant—should he fire a different arrow? Was it time for Cleo to back him up? Could Luc go up there? Would he? What could reach it? Should they charge the army? Did they crack it by chance? Would a crack be enough to disable it? This was the one part of the plan they never debated, the one part that felt so certain. Kwanda wasn’t even supposed to be up there! Could—

The sound of metal tearing filled their ears like scratching claws as the mirror slowly, with the great hesitation of a beast that did not want to fall, wrenched out of its two damaged hinges and began to rotate on its side.

Soldiers scattered out of its way on the battlements of the fortress. He could see Kwanda back up a half-step. The screeching ground to a halt, and the mirror hung unevenly on half its hinges, the ones on the bottom strained and buckling, but holding.

Silence fell.

“Aw, damn,” Cleo said, disappointed. “I mean, it’s broken, but I was sort of hoping for a bigger boom.”

“Could be better,” Luc agreed.

“Come on,” Kirkis sighed, rolling his eyes.

There was the slightest sound like a sword coming out of its sheath. Then there was a flickering, flashing light, which spun and darted.

Tir saw it halfway on its descent, turning and sparkling.

The burning mirror broke over the army on the ground like a glittering wave. The sound was like thunder; the shards shredded the air, bouncing and crashing over the heads of the army packed like cows in a slaughterhouse underneath them. It pushed their bodies out of the way in an awful, red and black wave.

“Holy shit,” he heard someone say.

“Father, mother,” Kirkis whispered, as it fell, “grandmother, grandfather; my friends, my chief, my sisters.”

“Go,” Tir said, dully. “Bright stars. Go. GO!!”

Luc took that as a cue to vanish, even though it wasn’t supposed to be. One section of the army had already jumped ahead—Viktor’s, no doubt. Likely he had already began rushing when he saw the mirror fall, instead of standing there like deer like the rest of them. Everyone got the message quickly enough, even if Luc didn’t dart around haranguing them; this was an advantage they literally couldn’t have hoped to gain. Kwanda’s army was on their knees in front of them.

Tir rushed his horse forward; he didn’t wait to see whether or not Matt could get out. Matt had told him not to, after all. Cleo and Gremio jumped right next to him on their own; Gremio wasn’t a talented horseman, but just about everyone had gotten used to them over the past few months, well enough to stay on. Even the elves did not dig in their heels to try to stay behind, though they would be less useful up front than in back.

The pounding hooves of the horses sounded like an approaching storm, striking down the hills. They swept like a shadow over the sun, swirling clouds stealing the light. Their enemy scrambled into readiness, too slow. The clouds billowed strongest on the edges of the storm, seeking to break on the castle and tear down its walls.

When Tir and his party reach the front lines of the army, they tore them up with the hooves of their horses.

The paltry few lances raised to him, he could knock aside. Their heads were beneath them; he could strike them down with the crack of his staff and feel their skulls fold. Cleo’s fire danced among them and Gremio’s axe bit necks; the horses of the enemy panicked and danced. Tir flashed to the head of his army through the enemy, and they fell under him, score by score. Gremio thundered in his wake. He passed by Humphrey, throwing a soldier over his shoulder on the edge of his sword, roaring to his crew. Luc appeared on his shoulder, hovering; Tir grabbed him and tugged him to the horse. He barely felt the arms wrapping around his midsection as he shot like lightning through battle, burning and splitting on his way there.

The soldiers roared his name when they saw him. Their swords were dancing on the hills; people died like a swarm of flies. The rain trickled slowly down.

It was a massacre.

Yes, better prepared troops swarmed out of the castle after some time, and yes, they put up a better fight. But by the time they came rushing out, so many of their number were already dead that they were faced with a wall of bodies to struggle over to join the battle, bodies and obsidian shards. When their heads crested it, Lorelai, leading the archers, had them struck down. The disappeared. When the survivors made a plan to break through, Viki’s spellcasters, still completely untouched by violence, used the power of their runes to tear them apart, bodies to bloodspray.

Tir’s horse struggled to run on the blood-soaked dirt and broken bodies; Tir jumped off of it, forgetting that Luc was clinging to him. The boy swore and struggled to keep his balance, so Tir gripped his hand and pulled him up, into his chest. They both jolted and shoved at each other—Gremio was on the ground next to him. “MASTER,” he bellowed over the sound of the battle crashing and roaring. “Are you hurt?”

Tir shouted that he was fine. “The horses can’t run on this.”

Gremio nodded severely. He touched Tir’s face briefly, before turning back to the battle, his green eyes burning like witchfire. “There are too many dead,” he agreed. “Now we pick off the survivors—until they want to surrender.”

Tir knew that they would not.

His army, with its grasping fingers, picked them off one by one. Tir struck, and struck, his shoulders going numb. Thousands dead flooded the land. There was no way to look at anything but the dead or the sky. Limbs snapped like fallen tree branches and littered the land, storm-refuse. The fortress was hollow.

“Where did Kwanda go?” He shouted, at anyone.

“Back in his fortress, last I saw, and I thought I was riding your horse with you, you dick,” screamed Luc, who was fending off enemy soldiers with really strong wind.

“Then we’ll go to meet him,” Tir growled. “Go to Valeria, Viktor, Kirkis, Kuromimi; tell them we’re going in; front fucking entrance.”

Luc vanished. Tir looked at Gremio and saw him nod. Then they broke for the front, struggling over piles of the dead. Tir felt light-headed, disgusted, he felt like he wasn’t awake as he tossed and rolled in a sea of dead, like he was in a strange nightmare, a cage of bones. Luc appeared at his shoulder, shouting something, he couldn’t hear him; then he screamed.

The doors of Pannu Yakuta had been thrown open. Out of it burst a mass of flesh and scales, a monster heralded by teeth the size of a man, wrenched open by two massive, bony jaws, and a velvet-red tongue lolling inside. It was as if the great fortress had a mouth of terrible teeth, and blood-colored eyes rolling beneath them. First his head burst out of the doors, but he was stuck by the massiveness of his body, his great scales catching on the hinges of the double doors. He heaved backwards and surged again, squeezing his shoulders through the straining stone archway by wriggling his body around and around, his claws scrabbling on the ground ahead of him. His grasp overturned bodies, ground, and tree roots, pouring destruction around him. After his shoulders burst the body of a snake, large as an ancient oak and writing like a leech, with claws and matted, tangled hair, and flames bursting out of his skin where scales had been snagged off by the narrow walls of his prison. He burst out of the fortress as if it had vomited him from its mouth and he lurched into the sky, churning in the air above the scene of destruction, knocking soldiers off of their horses with his cry.

“DRAGON,” Luc was screaming.

Its eyes had Tir caught.

This wasn’t like the stabled dragons he saw in Gregminster.

A vicious, snarling bellow rose from a throat beside him; before he even know what was going on, his heart stirred in him, and he felt the hot blood of battle begin to flow in him—hot blood not excited by the massacre he had just executed. Gremio surged forward with his halberd, with no clear plan for how to attack the dragon, but sun and moon be willing, he was ready to antagonize it. He roared back at the creature and caught its eye.

It pulled itself around in the air, massive body curling and coiling, turning in on itself in circles. Then, with a rush like a waterfall, it struck.

Gremio stood his ground and swung his halberd at it, but Viktor, coming sprinting from whatever distance he began at, hit it on its way down. With a ripping, painful effort of his shoulders, he swung his sword across his body and into the mouth of the dragon, striking its gums, and tearing down. He practically fell with the sword, ripping a gash in the dragon’s mouth, just at the second Gremio struck at it from the other side. The blade of his halberd reverberated off of the dragon’s cheek, yes, but it howled in agony from the double strike and its course was diverted. It dove at the ground and wrenched itself up at the last minute to avoid crashing. The body of the dragon, hot as fire, seared Tir as it screeched past him, leaving him cold and dazed.

Someone smacked him in the face, but they were at a bad angle and barely grazed him. Tir turned around, indignant, to see Luc grabbing at his hand and tugging at his glove.

The world went into focus again. He was facing down a fucking dragon at the end of what should have been a total victory outside the gates of Kwanda Rosman’s castle, whose whereabouts were unknown. “Stars gone black,” he swore as he swatted Luc away and tugged off his glove himself. She sparkled when let free, vivid red.

The dragon was barreling back toward them, surely incensed at Gremio, or Viktor, for having hurt him. Tir lifted his hand, but then had to curl his fingers back tightly when the dragon’s path was redirected—and elven arrow bouncing off the crest of his eye. He couldn’t see Kirkis in the mob, but he recognized his trickshot. The dragon swerved right around Tir again, and he had to drop his weight to avoid being knocked over by it. Luc dove out of his eyesight; he saw Viktor brace for an onslaught, sword in front of him.

The dragon was blown off course again; Tir felt the assailant behind him rather than saw him. The force of the wind attack gave away its source. The crazy dragon turned its head around, snarling, leaving it open to Viktor, who reangled his sword, took a breath, and plunged the whole damn thing into the dragon’s ear. Judging by the way he braced and how he tightened his grip on the zweihander, he must have meant to go up with the damn thing and play dragonslayer, but it moved too fast for him and was wrenched out of his way. Viktor went wide-eyed and slack-jawed when he saw his sword flying away. Tir saw him shouting in indignation but couldn’t hear what he said. He saw Gremio pull back to take a crack at its scaly side as it swerved to fly away and then jolted when he felt a hand on his arm. Valeria had finally made her way across the battle field. She screamed, and Tir caught half of her words.

“IT’S A DAMN DRAGON??” he replied, not totally sure what her question had been.

She ripped him backwards from the dragon’s path as its body writhed in their direction, dropping them both down low. Then, to Tir’s great admiration, while underneath the bulk of the dragon, she curled her fingers into a panther’s paw and drove a punishing strike into its stomach. The dragon howled above them; incensed, it curled its face around to glare at them, a glare of blood-red terror.

It finally gave Tir a chance to strike.

He shoved Valeria out of the way with his shoulder. It only worked because she was off-balance from her attack. Holding his hand in front of himself, left fingers clutching his right wrist, feet braced on the bloody ground, watching the jaws of the best open slowly like a swinging door, Tir called on Soul Eater.

Her power pounded in his body, nerves ripping open, scaly body sliding through him.

Tir showed the dragon his teeth.

“PAIN.”

The scales of the dragon’s face were torn away from its red flesh. In strings, like a garment being ripped up by angry hands, the flesh underneath was shredded from the bone. The sound of blood and body being sucked away whirled in his ears.

The raw muscles of its jaw, pulsing with bloodspray, opened in a reverberating scream. The tongue, half-eaten, convulsed.

He heard screaming, and he got ready to do it again.

He saw Viktor diving under the writing serpentine body for his sword—Soul had ripped away the muscles holding it to the dragon’s skull. The claws scrabbled convulsively at the air and the ground, acting without sight. An arrow from an implacable elf shot into the gristle of the pulverized thing. A halberd attacked it from the other side. This way, that, the tortured creature reared its gristly head, flinging blood and shredded flesh on anyone foolish enough to be close to it, whipping untied, pulsating muscles around in the air. Cried of agony and terror came from within the heaving throat, bright red tunnel open to the air. The fires of its heart exploded down its bleeding tongue.

It flew blindly toward the one who had done this to it.

It never made it. The moment it lurched forward, Viktor stabbed his sword up into its neck, and unable to change course, see, or even sense what had just hurt it so badly, the dragon simply flew down the blade and cleaved itself in two, from neck to the core of its body. Intestines spilled on either side of the sword as its body was gutted farther open with every foot it flew, until the bloody blade reached its chambered lungs, which fell on either side of it, cloven in twain.

The divided creature fell upon Viktor with an incredible crash.

Soul Eater, who could not have been called back when told to let loose, devoured its exposed back, its steaming entrails, and its heaving lungs, and was, to her own tangible displeasure, the only thing that saved Viktor from being crushed by a dozen tons of dying dragon.

Instead, he was left pressed down by a thin blanket of bleeding muscle, which he could barely see the sky through, studded with veins. After a moment of horror, he regripped his sword, caked with gore, and cut his way through it.

Then he collapsed inside of the corpse.

Tir was left with Valeria and Luc on either side of him, two people he didn’t want to know, for certain, that he was the one who did that, and how. And in front of him, the collapsed skull of a dragon, now twitching with its last throes, teeth clenching open in a final resting place so close he could touch it.

Gremio managed to reach him from the front about the same time Kirkis and Sylvina reached him from the back. The elves were screeching murder in their own tongue, he felt Kirkis’s hand clasp his shoulder. Gremio touched his forehead, cradled the back of his skull.

“Fine,” he heard himself saying. “I’m fine.

“Oh, Bloody Morningstar, Viktor.”

Gremio turned around to where Tir was looking. He gasped with real horror when he saw where Viktor had collapsed. He was the first one to make a dash for him, halberd hefted on his shoulders. Kirkis and Valeria quickly ran after him. Dazed, feeling weak for reasons he didn’t want to find out, Tir lurched toward them, watched Gremio try to wrench the man out of his hole in the center of the steaming corpse, and fail. Valeria tried to help him, and both of them were not enough to pull the stunned man out of the collapsing body of the dragon. When Tir got there Gremio was at work cutting him out of the side with his halberd while Viktor stared at the killing blows raining down.

Tir reached out, bare-handed, to grab for him. A funny look came into Viktor’s eyes when he saw Tir’s hands enter his field of vision—but it as a look of recognition. His dark eyes flickered up, looking for Tir. It seemed too hard for him to lift his hand to meet him, though his shoulders heaved. Gremio’s axe hit the mound of flesh beside him, spilling blood, cracking scales.

Tir’s hands gripped Viktor’s shoulders, and he shook him. Viktor’s eyes snapped up to meet his, bright with terror and fury and life. It was like looking at a wolf, a killing animal. But people, Tir knew, in his delirium, love wolves. And wolves love wolves more.

Viktor bared his teeth and pulled his arms out of the gore, though it clearly caused him pain to move them. Something was very wrong with how they looked. His grimace of agony was awful, and he half-collapsed on Tir once he had a grip on him. His right arm—it couldn’t hold right. Tir braced him, dead to the scent and the sight and the slip of blood all around them. He made Viktor hold his eyes, and imposed on him that they were getting out of this thing, right now.

Viktor squeezed his eyes shut and nodded through his pain.

Tir heaved him backwards out of the corpse, which caused him great pain, honestly, but it worked. Arms lifted up to brace them both, and they were slowly lowered down to the ground. A hand grabbed Viktor’s shaking, pale face; his skull bobbed, and he tried as hard as he could to shove the helpers away.

Then he puked, five times. A lot of it ended up on Tir, since he didn’t know how to let go of him.

He hardly ever felt as close to someone as he did in that repulsive moment. How could it be explained? They had gone beyond the bounds of human ability to seize death and pummel it together. Viktor was someone as much as he himself was; as vicious, as horrible, as animal, as desperate, as caring, as loyal, as fiercely and stupidly devoted to this quest for redemption that they were on. Who the fuck else would enter the stomach of a monster with him?

Then a hand closed around his wrist, wrenching it from Viktor’s shoulder. Tir whipped his head around to face the attacker.

It was Luc.

A red light flared and died on his hand.

Luc caught his eyes. He looked at his hand, looked back. Slowly, he released him, and sat back.

Viktor heaved, and slowly struggled to his knees. He tried to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, but he couldn’t lift it. He called the dragon (or possible himself) an ass-fucking hell-spawned son of a bitch and sat back on his haunches. Tir, in control of himself again, unwrapped his bandana from his head and used it to clean Viktor up.

“What in the fuck,” called a familiar voice from across a battlefield. “What did you do to that thing?? What did you do to you??”

Viktor slowly lifted up his head to regard Mathiu picking his steps laboriously over the piles of the dead, as though he were trying not to get his feet dirty. “Oh, hell,” he sighed.

“What are you doing here?” asked Valeria, sounding almost amused. “Shouldn’t you be… not here?”

“The sound of the underworld breaking open from the womb of the earth made me a bit curious as to how the mass murder was going,” Mathiu groused, kicking someone out of the way as he tromped disdainfully toward them. “Viktor, you broke your collarbone and dislocated your shoulder; that thing’s going to fall off of you if you don’t brace it. You probably broke a bone or two in that arm as well. And you’re sitting on a dead dragon.”

“You’d complain if it were a live dragon,” Viktor bitched.

Gremio knelt down with a roll of bandages to tie Viktor’s arm to his body so it didn’t, apparently, fall off. Viktor called someone a cunting whorefucker, and then assured Gremio that he didn’t mean him. Gremio didn’t bother to respond with anything but saying that it took one to know one, which made Viktor snort with a pained laugh. But he pulled back the ruined shoulder into approximately where it should be and lassoed it well enough for now, just in time for Mathiu to bend down over him.

“Queen of Heaven,” he swore. “How did you fuck up like this?”

Viktor used the strength of an indomitable will to flip Mathiu the bird.

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Hallways and stairways.

"Alright, Vik’s down, but we have shit to finish,” Valeria interrupted, getting to her feet.

“Kwanda will still be in there somewhere,” Kirkis continued, staring at the fortress.

“Assuming he hasn’t split,” Viktor groaned. “Which is probably what the dragon release was a distraction for doing. Y’all should get running if you want to catch him.”

Tir wanted to say that that wasn’t him. That that didn’t sound like the Kwanda he knew. But he hadn’t seen the Kwanda he knew today, and he wanted to see who had been up there himself.

“I agree,” he said. “Gremio, Kirkis, Sylvina, Valeria, Luc, with me. Let’s finish this.”

“Yes, master.”

“Of course.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s do it.”

“Ah, no.”

Tir glared at Luc, then took a long breath to compose himself. “Look. I would REALLY. Appreciate. Your help. You asshole. And also, there will be some incredible, awful, and painful consequences if you do not, the extent and nature of which I will have to decide, when I don’t feel like my brain is about to fall out of my ears.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Luc muttered.

“Where’s Kuromimi?” asked Kirkis, helping Valeria and Sylvina back to their feet. Tir saw they were both shaky, and that Valeria had blood on her dress, but couldn’t immediately see what was wrong. “I promised him he would come with us.”

“Couldn’t find him,” Luc groused, lifting his heels off of the ground with a soft spring-yellow glow. “He’s too small, and the battlefield is too messy.”

“There’s no time,” said Tir, feeling a sinking sensation inside him. He pushed it aside. “Like Viktor said, Kwanda is almost certainly on the run. We’re going now.”

“Don’t fuck around,” Viktor advised him. “Take him down, strip his valuables, and get back out here where we can keep an eye on you, kid.”

Tir nodded at him and ran.

They weren’t far from the entrance to the fortress then, since they hadn’t let the dragon fly out to the majority of the troops. Activity was dying down; with a circular glance around the broken field, Tir saw the apprehension of enemy soldiers, struggling and scuffling, people beginning to sort through the steaming mass graves; it was over. But it wasn’t, not as long as the enemy commander was alive. That’s what he had been taught—take his head, or his army won’t obey you.

Gremio was steadiest on his feet, and Tir spared a glance for him assisting Valeria as the two of them took their positions at point. Something was wrong, but she wasn’t saying what. She was pale. Sylvina had a small wound, but since Kirkis didn’t debate her pulling an arrow out of her quiver and falling in line with him behind the party, Tir ignored it. Luc, fixing his hair, not even a single thread of his robe distressed, hovered grumpily by Tir’s shoulder, like a dissatisfied ghost.

Gremio and Valeria slid into the fortress on either side of the bent and shattered doors, but before they even entered the building, Tir saw them relax. There was nothing in the great hall. When he jumped over scattered stone to step inside, he saw that anything that had been there had been destroyed by the dragon’s flight out. Braziers and candlesticks were scattered, all snuffed out; desks, chairs, and trunks were broken, their contents spilled randomly. The bare-colored stone walls had their tapestries, banners, and ornamental polearms torn off of them, which laid where they had fallen, ruffled by the breeze of activity. Since it was such a close and defensible fortress, the lights being snuffed out meant it was twilight-dim inside, easy for people to hide in the corners. “Where to?” Valeria asked Tir.

“You tell me where to,” Tir replied. “He’s on the run, which way is he going?”

Valeria scanned the far reaches of the room, observing side chambers, right and left corridors, seeing where the hallways ran in her mind. “No good exits but the river exit, unless he made for the back, which opens to a guarded courtyard,” she muttered, “and he may know something I don’t know… the dragon had to be kept…” She closed her eyes and thought fast. Finally, she snapped and pointed to the right. “This way.”

She sprinted around fallen tables toward a curving stone staircase that led up to the second floor. The rest followed her, taking the stairs two at a time, skipping around torn banners and glittering shields. Winging a sharp corner, Valeria lifted her sword to lead them barreling down a short hallway that led to a small room, where a pair of soldiers without their helmets were rifling through a disturbed pile of boxes. They screamed when they saw Valeria; they screamed her name.

“How—”

“How am I alive?” she howled, grabbing one by the collar and lifting him with nothing but arm strength. “How could you think I was dead??”

She turned her head around to the other one with a sneer. “Aedelbert, I knew you’d be thieving.”

With a glance at each other, Tir and Gremio slowly filed into the room behind her, blocking the thieves’ exit. “Storeroom,” Gremio muttered.

Tir nodded. “She guessed someone would be looting?” he whispered.

“I assume.”

“Get on your knees to thank me,” she growled at the offending thief, “because I’m here to offer you a deal today.”

“General—”

“Tell me one thing, and tell me honestly, and I won’t drag you and your catamite back to the rebellion’s headquarters to have you fight lions for dinner entertainment.”

The soldier looked like he was hyperventilating. He glanced wildeyed at the people blocking his exit; Gremio crossed his arms and looked back at him witheringly, while Tir shrugged, with a little smile.

“And if I think you’re not telling the truth,” Valeria hissed, pushing the soldier back into the wall as he squealed. “One question, one answer, and you two can go about your miserable existences as thieving, cheating lowlives.”

Aedelbert nodded his head.

“Where was he keeping the dragon?”

Valeria, Tir considered, hadn’t told him about the dragon. No way in hell would she forget to mention it when they were planning to attack the fortress, therefore, she hadn’t known about it. Since she knew about secret pathways, battle plans, and all the vicissitudes of power in the upper command of the fortress, Tir couldn’t figure she just hadn’t known about it. The dragon was new, having arrived after she left. Something about that was clearly very important to her.

Aedelbert narrowed his eyes. “I don’t—”

“Below,” wheezed the soldier Valeria was choking. “Below!! There is a great chamber—under—”

She released her grip just lightly on his neck, nodding him to go on.

He gasped, spittle foaming on his lips. “Below the war room, several floors. The only entrance we knew was at the top floor meeting-room, secret, behind the table, though there had to be more ways in and out. Never got in—could hear it in the grates—knew it wasn’t something we wanted to tangle with, even with all the gold down there. Kwanda would spend—much time—with the monster—”

“The secret meeting room you had to go through his quarters to get to?” Valeria asked stiffly.

The soldier nodded.

Valeria turned around with him still in one hand and flicked her other hand at Tir and Gremio. “Move,” she commanded.

They looked at each other, shrugged, and moved aside.

Valeria flung the man between the two of them. His armor clattered on the floor as he landed and skid, jostling over cobblestones. He winced but struggled to his feet, flinching in fear when he saw the incredibly unimpressed elves on either side of him.

“Run,” Valeria said to him, popping a kink in her neck. “He’ll kill you for squealing.”

The man looked, terrified, at his friend; what he saw did not reassure him. He turned tail and ran. Luc and Kirkis both raised eyebrows at Valeria, but she waved her hand at the running soldier; let him go.

Someone would almost certainly cut him down as he tried to flee the fortress.

“As for this, then?” asked Gremio, hoisting his halberd.

Valeria looked at him with distaste. Tir didn’t feel that much more charitably inclined, if he was being honest. Valeria shrugged and looked like she was about to let Gremio do his work—then a light came in her eyes.

“Lift him up for me.”

Gremio, curious, picked up the man with little effort. He thrashed, perhaps thinking that the stranger wouldn’t be as much of a threat as Valeria was, but Gremio held him fast. Valeria looked around the room, consideringly, hitting a few of the wooden trunks with the heel of her palm. Finally, she found a solid, double-barred ceadarwood chest that made her smile. “You like treasure, Aedelbert?”

The man knew better than to reply.

Valeria hoisted the heavy chest—heavy enough that she strained, and flipped it upside-down, letting the contents scatter without a thought to them. She put the box back onto the floor, then gestured to Gremio.

He gave her a look, and she held his eyes. He shrugged and dropped the man in the box.

She slammed down the lid on him, shoving the bars through their holders. The man inside the box pounded on the sides and cursed Valeria out. “You can’t be fucking serious,” he screamed. “You can’t be serious, you bitch!”

“You had so many stolen goods on you,” she grinned, leaning down to the box, “I must have mistook you for one. Have fun weasling your way out of that, asshole.”

She spun on her heels to leave the room, whistling, looking a mile better than she did when she entered the fortress.

“ Are you serious?” Tir asked as she passed him by.

“With the things I’ve seen him get out of, he’ll probably be out of this place before we are,” she sighed, “but let me enjoy this for now.”

Tir felt like he didn’t like this, at all, but he also felt like he didn’t have time to argue with Valeria. “So?”

“Top floor, and we have to book it.”

There were only a few floors to Pannu Yakuta. It was much larger than it was tall, being a hill fortress that would be vulnerable if it were higher than the hills. Most of the lung-bursting ten minutes that followed were spent sprinting down long hallways as terrified soldiers ran out of their way. Twice, someone felt ballsy or furious enough to argue with them being there; Valeria changed their minds fast. Every one of them looked like they saw a reaper when they saw her.

“So, Val,” Tir huffed, as they made their way up a final, curving set of dark stone stairs, “what was your exit from Rosman’s army like?”

“Vertical,” she replied cheerfully, “and it ended in the river.”

“You escaped off of the roof??”

“I was thrown off of the roof.”

“By?...”

“You know who by.”

As they wheeled the last corner to the top floor of the castle and began to ran down a final, open room, Tir asked, “because you told him he was wrong?”

“Because I told him I was going to kill him.”

“Why?”

Valeria didn’t respond.

She led them past an open, public meeting hall, devoid of the dozens of lieutenants and sub-commanders who once proudly filled it with laughter, banter, and argument. Cups were still scattered, maps were still curled on the table. It reminded Tir of his, but it was richer. Valeria shoved a tapestry out of the way, pushed on the wall with her shoulder, and burst into a dark, close hallway. It was barely large enough to go two abreast, but the torches still burned here.

The floor was littered with blood-tipped scales.

She ran through the short hallway to an unexpectedly sparse suite of rooms. The walls were still stone, though they were decorated with hangings; the chairs and couches were upholstered, but piled with books, weapons, belongings. The air smelled of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cocoa, a fortune of spices, but there was little on the provided dark-wood shelves and vanities. For the most part, knives, swords, spears, and axes littered the rooms some laid neatly, some in the walls; there was one beautiful, standing map, decorated with pins and papers. Valeria took them left-right-left through a close maze of orderly, rich rooms that didn’t seem aware they were rich; a man in prince’s clothing, acting modest. When she burst a door open into a bedroom, she was met by screaming.

A crying woman hid in the four-poster bed, clutching a knife to her chest.

When she saw Valeria, she turned as white as a sheet.

“Oh, hell,” Valeria muttered.

Gremio and Kirkis both tried to turn away so they were not looking at the lady, and then remembered that they were invading the castle to begin with. Gremio turned pink, looking back and forth at the bed and the door, like he very much wanted to leave. Luc snickered.

“He left you here?” Valeria demanded.

“Valeria,” she squeaked, sounding faint.

“Yes, yes, not dead, hungry for vengeance, and I don’t have a lot of time,” Valeria snapped. “He left you here? What happened?”

“He—He—I—” the poor woman was shaking, trying to hold her knife in front of her. “He ordered me—he said—I can’t let you pass—” Tears gathered in her eyes.

“He ordered you to guard?” asked Valeria, disgusted. “What happened to that man? He was never…”

“I can’t—let you pass—” she repeated, chest heaving.

Gremio sighed miserably.

The woman’s eyes darted to him, but he still wasn’t looking at her. He dropped his ready pose like a heavy pack, standing with his halberd bracing him on one side. He was leaning off of his right leg a little. He held out his hand to her.

“Put down your knife,” Gremio encouraged her.

She only clutched it tighter, looking at him with terror.

“I’m sorry about what’s happened to you,” he said, approaching the bed still without looking at her, eyes respectfully on the floor. He took the time to strap his halberd onto his back, and when he fumbled with a clasp, Tir leaned over to fasten it for him. “I’m not going to hurt you. My name is Gremio, I’m Teo McDohl’s manservant.”

“Teo…” she said faintly. “I… met Teo… Kwanda took me to Gregminster… No one was supposed to realize who I was, I was dressed as a servant, but somehow…”

Gremio smiled faintly. “He is a perceptive man… what’s your name?”

“Naomi.”

“Naomi. Things have gone very badly. We need to get you out of here before the men start looting. Can you stand?”

She shook her head, shaking. “I can’t—I can’t let you—”

“ Ahhseehi diarda ,” called Sylvina from the doorway, “how terrible.” She put a hand on Kirkis’s shoulder when he moved to stop her, walking into the room. “What a shame, when a man is this way,” she sighed, struggling with her grasp on the language. “Too bad. He’s been mean?”

“No—he—” Naomi struggled to hold her eyes. “He was never unkind…”

“Until now, for no reason?” Sylvina sighed and spoke rapidly in Elvish. Kirkis raised his eyebrows, but didn’t move to translate. She walked up to Naomi’s cushioned bed, only standing a foot taller than it. “How it always is. He’s no good now. He’s mean to you.”

Naomi trembled.

“Miss Naomi, the men have go…” she reached for the word, shaking her head. “The men go crazy. We go have some tea.”

She began to slowly pull Naomi off the bed, with a gentle hand on her arm, as the woman started to cry. She acted as though she was not, refusing to wipe her own tears. Sylvina gently put her back on her feet and took the knife away from her. “Gremio, give some tea.”

Gremio quickly took his pack off of his back and began to sort through it for his tea leaves. “Let’s see, I’ve used up a lot of it, and some went bad in the storm a few weeks ago; I’ll still have some green, and I should have a little bit of oolong—where is it?...”

“Gremio, we’re kind of on a time crunch,” Tir reminded him.

He felt weirdly light as he watched Gremio jolt, shove everything back into his bag, and hand the whole thing to Sylvina, who accepted it with a smile. Caring, kind Gremio, ready to drop everything and care for someone in need in the middle of a massacre. He was someone who was bright in the darkness.

“Alright, we have to move,” Valeria snapped. She walked toward the back wall immediately, not waiting to see if anyone was about to follow her.

Gremio bowed his head politely to the ladies and followed. Kirkis stopped to whisper something in Elvish to Sylvina, who shook her head and replied resolutely. He nodded, kissed her cheek, and left. Luc opened his bitch mouth to say something, so Tir grabbed him arm and began walking. Luc was tugged along like a reluctant balloon.

Valeria opened another hidden door and led them into a smaller meeting room. It was a sitting room, really, with drinks in a glass cabinet, silk-upholstered chairs and sitting tables with curiosities on them. It was the most opulent room Tir had seen in the fortress, by far. It also looked like it had recently been ransacked, with drawers askew, glass shattered, and books face-down on the floor. Valeria acted like she didn’t even see the room and crossed it in a few strides to the plain wooden door in the back.

It had three locks on it, but it opened easily.

Inside was a dizzying spiral of stairs leading downward, into impenetrable blackness. Valeria hissed when she saw the close dizziness. “Saw it a dozen times but never saw it opened,” she muttered. “No dragon flew up through here.”

“There’s no way it would fit through this,” Gremio agreed.

“But the thief said it was being kept down there,” Tir continued.

“There must be a secret way I don’t understand,” Valeria sighed, “and I’m sure I never will. Let’s go.”

They descended the stairs much more slowly than anyone liked. They were too narrow and close, and most of them were too big to walk down them easily. Kirkis quickly asked to sprint ahead; Tir let him, but required Luc to go with him. Luc whined like he had been asked to take down the castle for him, then dramatically started sinking down the side of the staircase, spiraling slowly, clothes bunching up on the stone.

“So,” Valeria asked uncomfortably, watching him sink down, “how does he do that?”

Tir shook his head.

They began to descend the stairs again, trying to take them as quickly as they could, Valeria in front, Tir right behind her, and Gremio struggling to keep up behind them. “You knew Miss Naomi, huh?”

Valeria wouldn’t respond.

“Val,” Tir asked darkly, “what the hell is going on in here? I thought you were going to debrief us on the situation we would find.”

“You asked me to debrief you on the military situation.”

“And on any relevant factors that we might have to plan for.”

“Well, I didn’t know about all of these factors. Things have changed here, obviously.”

“I know things have fucking changed,” he snapped. “I knew Kwanda too. He wasn’t a wife-beater.”

“She’s not his wife.”

“Yeah, that? That doesn’t sound like him either.”

“Oh yes? And how well did you know him? Wasn’t he just one of your father’s friends to you? Wouldn’t he put on a nice face for the children?”

It stung.

In his mind, Kwanda was dad’s friend who always visited on Yule Eve, when everyone was in the capital, and everyone was happy and singing songs and the snow was bright in the moonlight. He brought a candle to their house, and dad took it, joking about him being too-old fashioned. Then he gave Tir a present. Some chocolate. Or a little paring knife. Or a toy. He had a friendly, booming laugh, and he and dad would have a drink before he moved on to another house. He would climb the great wall of Kwanda’s back when he wasn’t expecting it; though, of course, he was being let to.

“Look at that, then,” he remembered him laughing, “The next Great General McDohl. You’ll be better than your father.”

“Well,” Tir said, icily, “you’d better tell me what you know, fast.”

There was a shout and a clatter up ahead. All three of them swore and jumped, Gremio higher than the rest of them. In fact, he skipped a step, and Tir had to brace him. “They must have met a guard,” Valeria growled, and booked it down the stairs, as fast as she could.

In another minute, they could see what was happening a few levels below them. Kirkis, red hair bright down below them, had a man with his hands tied behind his back. He was trying to drag him up the stairs. Luc was taking a sit-down, watching.              

“Kirkis,” Tir shouted down at him, pushing Valeria aside so that he could just hop down a level. It stung his ankles, but he ignored it.

“A guard,” Kirkis called, struggling to keep him contained. “But he was alone—”

“Who the hell—” Valeria muttered from above him. “I AM GENERAL VALERIA Y MEULLEFLEUR. IDENTIFY YOURSELF,” she bellowed.

“Oh, shit—Valeria??” called a man’s voice.

“They all just repeat your name,” Tir observed.

“We killed you,” the man argued, struggling against his captor.

“You tried,” Valeria growled.

Just as Tir skipped one more level below, a few steps above where Kirkis and the guard should be, he broke loose. He ran up the stairs but was shocked to see Tir there; Tir, not able to use his staff in the claustrophobic space, kicked at his chest, bracing himself on a higher stair. The man grunted, stumbling. Kirkis was able to run at him from behind while Tir grabbed the collar of his shirt from the front.

“Talk fast,” he growled. “You’re speaking to Tir McDohl, commander of the Liberation Army.”

The man spat at him.

“I’ll let it pass,” Tir said. “Respond to my officer. Identify yourself.”

“She knows who I am,” the man growled.

“VAL, WHO IS HE?” Tir shouted over his shoulder.

“LIEUTENANT OWAIN GYFERDDTH. MY LIEUTENANT. AND HE’S IN FOR A WORLD OF HURT.”

Tir looked the man up and down, singularly unimpressed. He had a rough red beard and dull auburn hair, some marks on his face but far more freckles than marks. He wore simple armor, but was only in piecemaile right then; he had clearly been caught unawares by the battle, or by his flight from it. Tir guessed he was a runner. He was tall, and a little thin, but still very strong. He smelled sweaty and rank. “Alright, Owain,” said Tir, because he really didn’t catch how Valeria had pronounced his surname, “Where’s your leader?”

Owain snarled at him, teeth clenched and mouth shut. He winced when Kirkis shoved the point of a knife at him, but held his ground. “He’s just down there, right?” Tir encouraged him. “That’s what the lady upstairs told us.”

That got a reaction from him. His pupils narrowed, his face turned pale. “Naomi,” he gasped. “What did you do to Naomi?”

“Why was she up there, huh?” Tir asked him. “Shouldn’t she have had a guard?”

The man reddened. “Don’t mock me,” he spat.

“She should have had a guard, and he’s right here,” Valeria huffed, finally turning the corner. Gremio was still struggling to catch up behind her. “Tir, let me at him.”

“I don’t know how to let you past me,” Tir admitted, looking up and down the narrow stairway.

“For fuck’s sake,” Valeria sighed, and shoved her way past him on the wall while basically picking him up and setting him behind her. “You,” she hissed at Owain, drawing her sword, “have a lot of explaining to do.”

He balked to see her in front of him. “You must be a ghost,” he marveled.

“Worse,” she snarled, “I’m very much alive. You thought you killed me when you sold me out to Kwanda so you could get ahead? No. You got everyone else who trusted you killed, but not me.” She pressed him with her sword, laying it on his neck. “And did you stop us from overthrowing him and taking over his fortress? Oh, no. You did much worse than that. I wasn’t going to burn this place down. I was going to clap him up in irons for his madness and misconduct and deliver him to Gregminster. But now I am. Now I am going to burn this place down, and everyone in it.”

“You’ve gone mad,” Owain marveled.

“ He went mad,” Valeria snapped. “ He was going to burn down entire villages with his crazy device, one at a time, and you were all going to let him. He was the one convincing his people that everyone who wasn’t like us was the enemy and we could just burn them all down without feeling a second of conscience. He was the one who started the killing. He was the one who started treating faithful followers like dirt, locking up good men and taking whoever he wanted to his room with him. He was the one who had my troops slaughtered like sheep when I was accused of treason! Kwanda went crazy and I was going to stop him. But you just saw a step up the stairway to your success!” she barked.

“No—”

“ How would you like to see a stairway down ?” she bellowed, grabbing his hair and forcing him to look down the dizzying steps into the darkness. He screamed, trying to shove out of her arms, but she and Kirkis had the advantage on him.

“Please,” he begged, twisting in her grasp. “I did it for Naomi! She begged me!”

“Like I believe that,” Valeria growled.

“When Kwanda began to take a turn for the worse, she needed—“

“Save it.”

“Cousin, please!!”

Valeria shoved him forward with a knee.

Tir heard him hit the ground with a crunch.

“Damn,” marveled Luc, looking down over the edge.

“ Valeria ,” Gremio gasped, shocked.

“Don’t worry, we’re like, only a floor or two above the bottom,” she shrugged. “Or, well, we should be.”

And indeed, as they ran down the stairs, they heard him crying from the cold stone on which he fell. Soon they saw him, landed on his side, his armor smashed into his arm, shoulder, and ribcage, which leaked with blood. The glare he gave them when they approached his mangled body was pure revulsion.                 

“Oh, gracious Queen,” Gremio breathed, and kneeled down to help him. But he had left his bandages in his pack, which he gave to Sylvina. He pawed at the broken metal, unable to release it from the skin it was gripped onto. Kirkis knelt down, his left hand glowing blue. “I’ll help him,” he said, voice low.

“Keep an eye on him until we get back,” Valeria ordered, looking down the single, narrow hallway that led to her destination. “Luckily, he shouldn’t be able to give him trouble.”

“The Great General will take off your head, you raving bitch,” Owain spat at her. Kirkis silently lifted his head to clear his throat of blood.

“The Great General would have been able to,” Valeria conceded. “But I’m not afraid of the monster that took his place.”

Valeria took point. Tir and Luc followed behind, and Gremio took up the rear.

Return to Navigation

Behind the eye.

The passages under Pannu Yakuta were many and dark, and they could have easily gotten confused and turned around on their way except for two things. The first was that the map of the underground reliably followed that of the overground, with hallways, rooms, and staircases in approximately the same places, and the second was the smell. They were clearly going toward the awful smell.

The chamber that held the smell was as difficult to get into as the thieves implied. Or, it would have been, if they were sneaking around and trying to avoid detection. But they were infiltrating with the intent to murder, so when they found the grates enclosing to the chamber, hard-fastened iron grates that let through the light of glittering fire and the smell of shit a floor below, Gremio simply hammered it out of the wall.

Valeria dropped in first, skidding down the stone wall to reach a reasonably painless stop. Tir followed her lead, rolling with the fall much better than she did but still managing to scuff himself up a lot more. He hadn’t counted on the walls being quite so… slimy. Luc reluctantly floated in after them, trying to stay far away from the grimy walls of the chamber, which left Gremio to just… fall. Tir braced him on his way down, but it was still remarkably graceless.

Having made all of that commotion and not being interrupted, they had to conclude that no one was in there watching them. Still, someone had been there recently. A single torch was still guttering on the wall when all the others had long gone out. It lit up the glistening of gold coins, cold armor, and blood; picked-apart corpses with stringy bones, shed scales, and mounds of refuse. Valeria and Gremio both screwed up their noses, trying to look like they weren’t effected by the grave stench. Luc purposefully gagged.

“This is fucked up for several reasons,” Tir commented, “but I’m mostly bothered by the knowledge that anyone chose to spend a lot of time here.”

“We’re looking for a ground-level exit,” Valeria responded in a hush. “Something he was using to get into and out of here, most likely the secret escape he would use to flee the fortress today.”     

They fanned out. Strange things kicked around under their feet; knucklebones, cockroaches, silver keys, golden watches. While Gremio and Valeria studied the walls, Tir scanned the layout of the chamber quickly to find an enclosed area to one side, shut off from the bulk of the room by a wall of iron bars. Each bar went from floor to shaded ceiling but had a lot of space between it and its neighbor, and the wrought iron door was fit almost awkwardly in the center. It was makeshift work, done recently. Inside were a writing-desk and a chair, as well as a wall of wooden cabinets, all reasonably clean and surreally out of place with the rest of the grotesque dungeon. There was even a tea-cup, empty except for a stain, still on the desk. He motioned Luc to join him. He flew to him reluctantly, but his eyes lit up when he saw what Tir had found.

“Can you get through the bars and unlock it?” Tir asked.

“I’m not sure they’ll unlock from the other side,” Luc said doubtfully, “but sure, they’re not very close together. What is this for?”

“Having a space in here that a dragon can’t get to, I assume,” Tir shrugged. “A dragon can’t fit through those bars even if you can. And that’s why it would lock from the other side; because the human is on the other side.”

Luc looked offended, which probably meant that he realized Tir was right. Still, he fit sideways through the bars and dropped down to the height of the lock, floating with his legs curled in to that he wouldn’t accidentally drift into anything. It was a heavy piece of equipment, thick, cold metal clenched by careful filigree, and Tir had his doubts they would be able to force it out.

He heard some banging behind him. Turning his neck, he saw that Valeria had found something in the wall and was testing it. “A door?” he asked her, voice echoing dully, as if pressed down.

“I think so,” she grunted, “I’m not sure. It might be blocked.”

“How can you not be sure if something’s a door?” asked Gremio.

“Come here and look at it, wise guy.”

While Gremio stomped over to try to force the theoretical door, Luc snapped the lock against the bars a few times. It didn’t budge. “Are you sure you can’t squeeze through?” Luc asked. “You’re not that big.”

Tir glowered. “Hey, I’m a grown man. I’m not going to be as small as a child.”

“I’m not a child, assmaster, I’m sixteen.”

“Like hell you are.”

“I like hell am,” Luc insisted. “I stole Breath when I was twelve. I’m the same age as you.”

“Okay…” Tir raised and eyebrow. “Let’s pretend I believe you, and instead ask why you can’t open this door.”

“Do you think I’m a locksmith?? It’s solid metal and we don’t have a key. Everything I’m looking at is fucking cast iron, do you want me to just snap it? Because I can’t.”

The clattering behind him grew intense. Tir looked over his shoulder for a second to see Gremio trying to batter something down with the blunt of his halberd while Valeria went searching, conceivably for a better battering ram. Her turned back to Luc, who was squinting into the mechanism of the lock. “Can you… pick it?”

“How do you think this works, exactly?” Luc sighed. “Have you ever picked a lock? Do you think you just wave a knife at it to menace it, or what do you think happens? Do you think you just jam something in there?”

Tir had never picked a lock and he had no idea how it worked. “Alright, fine. I’ll just try to fit through, then, if you can’t do it.”

“Who said I couldn’t fucking do it?” snapped the person who just said he couldn’t fucking do it. “Here, let me look around. He almost certainly kept the key in this room.”

“Why would he keep the key in the locked room?” Tir bitched.

“Uh, because it’s locked from the inside, not the outside, and he probably never stepped foot into the bigass prison cell you’re standing in? There probably isn’t even a door out there anyway.”

Tir felt like a dumbass. “Holy shit, you’re right. Is there a door in there?”

Luc completely ignored him and stated rifling through the drawers of the desk. However, once he began paging through a stack of loose paper, he began to search more and more slowly, flipping the pages incredulously back and forth. Tir saw his expression fall. “Holy shit,” he muttered.

“What?” asked Tir.

Luc shook his head. “Lemme look for that key,” he said, pulling out drawers and cabinets. Finally, with a triumphant grin, he fished up a long, heavy copper key out of a false back in a drawer. “Easy,” he bragged, tossing it up and down. “It would take a good thief a minute to strip this place.”

“I’m sure he didn’t expect a lot of people to come down here,” Tir argued.

But when Luc tried the key in the lock, it didn’t even kind of fit. It should have been obvious; iron lock, copper key. They weren’t made for each other. “Try to find a door,” Tir insisted, having to speak over the banging and struggling happening on the other side of the room. “That’s probably for the door going outside, and he has the key to the bars on him.”

“Why would he have the keys to the bars on him if he never opens them??” Luc whined, turning around to do what he was asked anyway.

“He does, idiot, to feed the dragon. You think he squeezes those deer through the bars?”

“Why not keep it in the locked room since it’s only useful here, I mean? Why take it with him? And why leave the key for the door to the room inside of—oh, I found it.”

“You found it?” Tir asked, peering through the bars.

“Yeah. Just behind a cabinet. Not a difficult find.” Luc braced his hands on the side of the cabinet and mimed pushing on it. He called a breeze that stirred a horrible smell, but the cabinet scooted away, clattering over stone. “Lighter than I thought,” Luc muttered. “Could have practically lifted it.”

“’Practically?’ You baby.”

Luc fumed. “I am as old. As you are. Asshole.”

“You just look like a baby?”

“Look, I’m just aging slowly! We have an agreement, I can modify what he does! I can take him on and off during—”

The key clicked into the lock, and the little wooden door with the copper handle swung open. Luc interrupted his own diatribe to laugh at the door. “Ha! Got you, bitch.”

Tir smiled too. “Val,” he called, turning his head around, “we found—”

The door that Valeria and Gremio had been struggling with was wide open. Gremio was flat on the ground unconscious, his face in the muck. Valeria was pressed into the wall by a fierce metal grip.

A shadow engulfed Valeria’s throat, pouring out of the hand. She seized, silently, and then went limp. Kwanda dropped her on the ground, metal-shrouded head bent to watch her hit the stone. Almost imperceivably, he shifted to look at Tir and Luc. He was an iron golem in the darkness, unreadable, crowded out by metal.

“Kwanda Rosman,” Tir said, unable to shout.

Slowly, armor squealing, he began to advance. Tir heard the sound of it clattering—clattering he had thought was Gremio fighting with the door—

“Tir McDohl,” he said. It was him. “It took me a while to recall your first name. You were so small when I saw you last. You’re still small now.”

Tir removed his staff from his back and gripped it in front of him. Left hand over, right hand under. Spread your legs, one shoulders’ width apart. Loose. Don’t lock your knees. Bend your head forward. You’re dealing with a much larger, stronger enemy. This will happen often to you. What do you do?    

“It’s a shame to kill someone so young. But it was a shame, what you did, too.”

Tir slipped into a low stance.

A slip of shadow, like candlesmoke, floated around Kwanda’s hand, drifting, haunting. “Your father—”

Luc dropped from the ceiling as deadweight and struck Kwanda’s helmet with his knee. The doubtlessly thunderous ringing made Kwanda howl; from the look on Luc’s face, though, the ill-considered move hurt him more than it hurt Kwanda. It didn’t matter; his head wasn’t his goal. Luc controlled his fall and latched his hands onto Kwanda’s hand, dissipating the smoke with a burst of air.

“What the fuck is this??” Luc shrieked, clawing at the gauntlet.

It would have been fun to just watch Luc happen to someone else, but Tir didn’t have the time. Despite his best efforts, Luc was thrown aside as though he were a nagging mosquito—he would have hit the wall and crunched if he wasn’t able to control himself in the air. Still, he was shaken up on rough wind, slipping. “Tir—” Luc shouted.

Tir was already running at Kwanda.

“A rune—I don’t know it—don’t let him cast again!”

Tir swung his staff over his shoulder at Kwanda’s inner thigh, where the plating of the armor would be weakest. Kwanda dodged much more quickly than Tir could have guessed, considering his slow stride, and gripped the staff in his hand. Metal screamed as Tir struggled to wrench himself away.

“The leader of the Liberation Army, eh?” Kwanda asked. “Well, qualifications like that aren’t nothing. As for me, they once called me Kwanda the Insurmountable…” He lifted up his gauntlet, and the heavy metal hummed with power, as though a swarm was trapped inside. Darkness gathered. “…And I shall again become the wall that protects Emperor Barbarosa. See my strength. See the power of the Black Rune that Lady Windy has given me!”

“Soul Eater,” Tir growled.

Power rattled and snapped between them, furious. 

Tir snapped his staff backwards through his palms and slide away snake-foot, on the defensive. Kwanda also went into a ready pose, gauntlet guarding his face, hesitating.

“We are the Liberation Army. We’re here on the behalf of the elves of Toran,” Tir replied. “On guard.”

Kwanda reflexively lifted up his sword. Tir came in on his side, and Kwanda twisted his arm to block his staff with nothing but the metal of his pauldron. Tir went ringing backwards as Kwanda swept down his sword, nearly striking him in the side, if not for Tir dodging low. The sword rang by him in the air, and Tir wheeled his staff in front of him as a shield to ward off a backstrike that didn’t come down.

“What's the matter?” Kwanda teased him, watching him dodge to the side. “If you don't attack, I will!”

Kwanda only had to shift his feet before his sword could come thundering down on his head. Tir whirred his staff up from behind, striking the sword arm as it swung down. His hit was deflected; metal flashed in his eyes. Kwanda’s arm was suddenly in front of him, unguarded; he pulled himself up and tried to grasp it while the man was off-balance. Recoiling, Kwanda threw him off easily—his size and strength were too great. Tir stumbled backward, quick to catch his feet but slow to think.

“Whoa! Pretty good, Teo's little boy.” Kwanda laughed, rolling his head to catch a kink as he hopped around to face him. “But the next one won't be so easy!”

Kwanda came at him in a rush. There was nowhere to dodge—his great bulk filled up his eyes. Tir swung his staff over his head and used its full reach to strike down—he came up too fast, hitting before Kwanda fully entered his range. Kwanda used his forearm to shove Tir’s staff aside and was on him like a charging bull, there wasn’t time—

His grip spasmed on his staff; he moved without thinking. Tir felt his back hit the stone the second before he felt seizing pain in his side, but he also had his staff pulled inbetween them, lengthwise. The half-second after Kwanda stabbed him he rocked his staff whip-fast, stern and head, first between his legs, then on his forehead. It definitely didn’t not hurt to have the solid wood snap across his own body, and yeah, Kwanda was wearing armor, but it definitely didn’t not hurt him either. He flinched when the staff snapped at the weakest part of his armor and then hit his helmet with so much momentum there was a mark and the slightest dent when it fell away, shewing to the side. The pressure of his body lessened; Tir kicked him and rolled away, free of him for a second.

His hands felt weak around his staff. He gripped it, as hard as he could. Stars, where were his feet? He slipped when he stood, in the horrible slick of the muck. He clattered against old bones.

Kwanda’s steel-grey eyes glared out from under his helmet. Tir watched his curl the tips of his fingers under the eyepiece and wrench it back into place. “Feeling weak?” he asked. “I hope you don’t expect any mercy.”

No defense is invulnerable, Tir realized. This was just going to take good aim.

When Kwanda rushed at him, he held his staff level at his heart, instead of attacking with it. Kwanda moved to deflect it upwards with his opposite arm. Tir fought his strength, feet sliding on the mud as they clashed, and held the staff in line. Kwanda couldn’t turn it away fast enough.

The staff shuddered as it slid in just under the sharp, circular ridge of the eyepiece, almost rejected. But it slipped smooth as butter into his eyesocket.

Tir heaved the staff back to rip the helmet off of his head. It flew free, just as he had intended; the metal was strong but the clasps were not. He watched in disgusted horror as the blood and gel of his eye also popped free, spewing in an arc above his head.

He screamed.

Tir pulled his staff back, circled it in his hand, and stuck the side of the head he had blinded. While Kwanda flinched, beginning to buckle, Tir found his double-handed grip on his staff and struck again, and again. A sword is a one-sided weapon—both sides of the staff attack, and used at its best, it’s meant to spin.

It took four times bludgeoning the stunned man, but Tir felt, rather than heard, a fatal crack. He felt certain he had killed him.

Tir pulled his staff back to his side as Kwanda’s knees buckled and hit the ground. There was an unfamiliar, stomach-churning squish as the pulpy end of his staff squished on the stone. He heard Kwanda keening. His arm lurched up to grasp at his broken skull and missing eye—it scrabbled up and down his face. Then jolted backwards spasming, needing to hold himself together and rejecting himself, as a horrible darkness poured out of his hand. First slowly, steam in the summer sun, then bursting, like lifeblood—dark magic, streaming out of the gauntlet through every crack. It shattered, and he was left with a bare, twitching hand.

Tir watched him as his screaming died down, and he started gasping. His armored hand clutched at his missing eye, the other convulsed in front of him. “The Black Rune—” he cried, “my eye—my arm!!”

“What the fuck is that,” Luc hissed, his voice somewhere behind Tir.

Tir wordlessly shook his head.

“The others—” Luc said. Tir glanced out of the corner of his eye, and his heart leapt; Valeria and Gremio were stirring. He jerked his head at Luc, who didn’t understand or chose to disobey. “Go,” Tir whispered.

Luc stared at him, open-eyed. “What—”

“Go attend to them,” Tir hissed.

Luc obeyed.

Tir turned his attention back to Kwanda.

He looked like he was about to collapse. He struggled to stay upright on his calves. After whatever happened to his rune, he was whimpering; his skin was pale and convulsing. “What happened,” he whined, “what’s happening to me?”

Tir’s heart gave way on him. With cautious steps and his staff gripped tightly, he approached Kwanda. “Kwanda Rosman,” he repeated, “we’re here on behalf of the elves of Toran, to take revenge for what you did to them.”

The man panted, looking up at Tir and then wincing, in pain. His free hand ran to the socket off his eye and rubbed it, trying to reduce the pain. Tir felt nauseous every time he got a glimpse of what laid behind it. “The elves—the—” Kwanda gasped, his one eye searching the floor, bloodshot and frantic. “I—I—understand—you have the right—to—” his face contorted with pain. “To put me down—I—what did I do?” he asked forlornly. “What did I do??”

Fear was crawling in Tir’s gut. Kwanda was shuddering with pain and crying like an animal—the sight of a man reduced like this was not one he had had to endure before.

With sickening suspicion, he asked, “Do you know what happened to you?”

Blearily, he shook his head; the muscles of his neck bulged. Tir saw the rough hole in his skull as he reached up at the crack in his head, blood and pus seeping down his black hair, ground into his fingers. “I lost—control of myself—I lost—I lost—I remember what I did, I don’t remember why—it’s like I can’t touch my own mind.”

The sickening irony of his statement, made as he tried to keep the water of his head from pouring out, was not lost on Tir. Slowly, he knelt down, letting his knees sink into the muck. When he moved, the wound in his side began to pulse. “What happened?”

He heaved. Tir, acting on instinct, braced his shoulder. He didn’t know what he expected—it felt like armor, nothing else. “It was that...” he whispered, looking, with his one eye, at the hand that clutched his bleeding skull.

“That?” Tir asked.

“The black rune…” he continued, blood gaze transfixed. “The rune given to me by Windy, to give me control over monsters—so I could control the dragon—no, it controlled me. I lost my willpower, my honor, that I always—” his face screwed up. “It was given to me to control me. The dragon—the monster—”

He heaved. Tir braced him. “The monster—I was—it was—I was it, he was in me—she was in me—my mind wasn’t mine and yet—and yet I can remember doing it… I can remember liking it…”

Tir waited through his gasping. He was hot and sweating. Fresh blood was starting to ooze, black and slow, out of his head. Something had burst. “She can’t be trusted—the Emperor must know—Teo, please. You must go to him.”

His hollow gaze bore into him.

“I—” Tir’s throat was dry.

“Teo, I beg it of you—we have always—” his body shuddered horribly. “We have always been friends. Let him know the truth. And go to… Constanzia… To Constanzia, Constanzia—”

Tir remembered her. He hadn’t thought of her in years—Constanzia Rosman, a reserved lady, always modest, always quiet. He had thought she was stuffy as a child. People spoke of her with some pity, though he never knew why. She stopped visiting their household years ago, though she still lived in Gregminster, to his knowledge. “Constanzia,” he sobbed, “Naomi, Jaela, Valeria--Constanzia!! Go to her—tell her it wasn’t like this…”

“I will,” said Tir, paralyzed. “I will.”

“Don’t tell her it was like this, Teo… Please. Please, don’t tell her what I did… Don’t let this follow her.”

“Oh, shit,” Tir muttered, watching him shudder and sweat. “Kwanda, you’re going to… we have to do something, we have to… I have someone right outside, with a rune. He’ll… He’ll…”

He shook his head.

“The only thing left for me is to die like a soldier,” Kwanda said, with sudden, startling lucidity, looking hollowly up at him.

“Fuck—”

“Please, Teo,” he begged. “Let me die… like a soldier. Like I still have the honor I once had.”

Tir shook his head, horrified.

Kwanda begged him.

-

Gremio panicked when his eyes focused on Tir’s wound, still bleeding through the bandage. “Master—that’s—”

“Pretty bad,” Tir agreed softly. “I know. But he didn’t pierce anything. We’ll be able to patch it up if we move fast. Kirkis is right outside, remember?”                

Gremio nodded. “He has the flowing rune, but he’s using it on… ah…”

“Knowing Kirkis, he’s not going to overdo it for an enemy soldier,” Tir smiled wryly. “Are you hurt? Can you stand?”

Gremio nodded. “I’m not hurt,” he promised him. “Thank you, young master. I just… need to find my feet… my legs grew weak again…”

Tir reassured him and told him not to worry as he helped him stand up. He was shaking, but it really did look like he hadn’t been hurt. “It must have just been a spell,” Tir muttered.

“Yes, he did something to me with—” Gremio’s eyes widened. “Master, Great General Kwanda, he—” he looked Tir up and down. “…what happened?”

Tir looked down. “It’s over.”           

Gremio nodded.

They heard Valeria find the body.

-

Kirkis was playing Mathiu with Owain when they stumbled back outside, once they had wrapped the dead man’s head up in a cloth and Valeria had accepted the task of carrying it. The elf was trying to wriggle a little bit of broken metal out of the man’s shoulderblade while he thrashed and swore. Seeing his allies emerge from the room, Kirkis’s eyes lit up.

“Commander!! Did you—”

He saw the rust-colored package, its size and weight, and that each of his allies was returning from the basement. He grinned. “Hail to the victorious,” he said, first in his language, then in theirs.

His prisoner saw what they carried too, and his eyes went wide with horror. “You snake,” he spat.

Valeria looked at him coolly. “You’re the one on the floor.”

Tir shook his head sharply at everyone, and hated it, because it was starting to pound horribly again. This hadn’t exactly helped his concussion. “Kirkis, let him be,” he commanded. “It’s over. Sir, you are our prisoner.”

The man struggled with his emotions, but looking around, he knew the truth. “So I am,” he sighed.

“Kirkis, I need help.”

Kirkis hurried to his side. Gremio pried off the clotted bandage so that he could see the stab wound, and Kirkis agreed he did fucking need help. He emptied his mind doing what he could for it; Mathiu had taught everyone the trick of focusing first on the back of the wound, inside the body, and working your way toward the surface, so it was effective enough. Tir felt pressure on his lungs loosen and the pains dull, though they did not stop. “Take the man with us, Valeria,” Tir sighed, “we’ve got to move.”

Valeria gripped her cousin with one arm and her dead commander with the other. They set off to climb the stairs.

-

Kirkis went ahead to tell Sylvina to move Naomi out of the way before they went through, because the sight would disturb her. Tir assumed he did this in elvish so that Naomi would not understand but Sylvina would; he saw none of the three of them as they made their way back through Kwanda’s suite and into Pannu Yakuta again. He led them up a silent stairway up the wing of the fortress, nothing but panting in the air and the sight of the grave flashing through the arrowslits spiraling up.

The roof, once packed with jeering onlookers, was deserted. The wind whisked gently around Tir’s face, cool with the heights, gasping while it split over shards of metal and obsidian. They picked their way carefully over broken machinery to the front of the roof, in full view of the battlefield below.

It was a morgue now. The living crawled over a much vaster number of dead like maggots picking a corpse. They crawled, hefting weight over their shoulders, distributing it into piles in their nest. The dragon, bled out and stiff, sprawled at the head, being bit into by swords hungry for its invulnerable scales. Cries rose when the people below saw them climb to the edge of the roof.

Valeria took point. (Tir and Gremio followed her, Luc declined to advance and this time, Tir let him.) She had one of Kwanda’s most favored men in a hold in one arm and his white-bled head in her other. She did nothing but raise an eyebrow at the scene of carnage, as if she only noticed the smell. With a flick of her wrist she let loose the grave-cloth from the head and let it drift away.

The screams of horror, at first highest when the head was visible to those below, were quickly overcome by shouts of victory, clamor of praise. Seeing her, Tir knew Valeria did not smile or gloat. She gave Kwanda one last, even look, with a flicker of pity, or perhaps, sadness. Then she tensed up the muscles of her arm and back, reeled, and pitched him over the edge of the fortress into the field below.

Success unfolded bitterly below them. A mob swarmed the fallen dead; Owain could not quite hold back angry tears. Gremio turned away from the scene, hand over his eyes, and began to simply walk away. Tir watched the funeral, then observed Valeria.

She, knowing she was being stared at, eventually met his gaze. “What do you think, then?” she asked him.

Tir was surprised he was being asked. “What do you think?” he asked, as dispassionately.

She scanned the battlefield once again. “This was an easy victory. We should be relieved. I am… relieved. It’s over.”

As Tir declined to reply except for nodding, she turned her gaze to him again. “I see you understand now.”

Tir felt he did, but followed the conversation. “Understand what, that is?”

Valeria shrugged. “Battle.” She turned away, tugging the prisoner with her. “It came, it’s done. It was part of this day. We clean up this one now. The next one comes soon. And… it won’t be so hard on you.”

“…What?”

“The next one,” she continued. “It won’t be so hard on you.”

 

-

The clean-up was gristly, macabre, sometimes sickening, sometimes heartening, sometimes sadly funny. Details of the vulturing, butchering, and pill-bugging could be gone over, but as they are tedious and the point has been made, a summary will be provided: Perhaps a thousand of Kwanda’s force were still alive, most of whom had surrendered or had fallen too injured to fight. They were rounded up well by the efforts of Viktor and his forces. Some were resisting, but most had common sense. Tir’s forces almost faced some dead in the crush, but relatively few. The dead were mostly former imperials targeted by forces that had been enraged to see so many traitors, new recruits unprepared for the test of battle, and kobolds, all of whom died under the press of horses’ hooves, which had claimed the most lives. They were too small.

The Liberation Army richer by many captives, some of whom could surely be induced to fight, many shards of sharp, weapons-grade obsidian, a thousand dragon scales and sharp dragon teeth, and almost countless precious goods from the ransacked fortress, including weapons, armor, horses, cloth, sturdy furniture, and most important, grain, livestock, and preserved produce. The cry when the men found the pantries was louder than when they saw the enemy’s head.

Tir, Viktor, Humphrey, and those in their command went to exhaustion ensuring the good treatment of captured women; it was a fool’s errand to try to make sure the captured men were treated with respect, though they at least commanded it done. Tir eventually found himself surrounded by weeping women because at least he fucking knew they were safe when he could physically keep an eye on them, and damn how it looked. They were given particular quarters which he made Cleo the guard of; her and whoever she chose to make sure they were safe. She was thrilled at the notion and thanked Tir somewhat excessively for the new position; Tir was surprised by how much she liked it, but she seemed truly concerned about what might have happened to them otherwise.

They did not set fire to Pannu Yakuta. Valeria’s cousin mocked her with his memory of her angry statement, and she told him that she was of fucking course not setting the gutted building to blaze. It was only stones and now. If they managed to make it catch at all, it would set the wild grasslands around them on fire, a fire that would probably be faster to march than they were. It had been a dry season.

The funeral was conducted en masse, since there was no time to fully sort out fallen enemy and fallen friend from each other in the crushed mass they had been pushed into. The whole field was given its rites and left to the reapers. Ruined castle and murdered land were left behind them; there was just enough time in the night to move everyone a half mile away from the smell before the dark crept in.

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Light intoxicants.

By the time Tir was laid down, literally laid down, by Mathiu and Gremio, who worked a tight operation to excuse him from his soldiers without letting anyone on to the fact that something was wrong, he was sobbing from the pain in his head. Mathiu, like every other healer in camp, was out of magic; he rubbed out kinks in Tir’s neck and shoulders with his bare hands as Gremio, tears in his eyes, brewed a soft-smelling tea inside the tent. Even the fumes relaxed him a little; they relaxed him enough to start crying, and then he heaved and vomited from the pain, stress, and exhaustion. Gremio quietly took out the soiled sheets and found new ones; Mathiu coached him through a painful, nauseating process of drinking tea and swallowing a powder until he was breathing steadily.

“I’ll arrive early tomorrow,” Mathiu muttered to Gremio as Tir leaned back on the clean sheets, sweating. “It’s up to you tonight; you’re not badly hurt, and I congratulate you, but he might be. His injuries will keep compounding each other unless…”

“I know,” Gremio whispered. “I’ll make sure he sleeps. Thank you. Go take care of the others.”

Mathiu left. Tir listened to a few minutes of quiet noise as Gremio rearranged things but did not open his eyes, since it hurt less to keep them closed. Eventually, the pillows pressed down under his head as Gremio knelt down next to him, silently smoothing back his hair from his face. Tir moved into the touch, relishing the feeling of Gremio’s cool hands on his forehead. He usually felt warm, so Tir knew he had to be burning up.

Gremio was whispering quiet comforts, reassurances and apologies. Tir’s breathing began to hush while he wasn’t focusing on it, and he slowly lifted a hand to curl into Gremio’s. His heart and his breath felt lighter and warmer when their fingers laced together, skin to skin.

Gremio slowly lifted him up so he could drink water; he was afraid it would just make him vomit again when he first saw it, but it was cold and comforting. When he eventually had to relax again, since his back and shoulders were straining to hold him up, he was laid into Gremio’s lap, on the rough textile of his leathers, but it felt warm, soft, and gentle that night; inviting as the breast of a beloved one, gentle as the flank of a patient old dog. Gremio continued to stroke his hair for a while, then slowly ceased, hand holding Tir on his lap, face turned away, deep in thought. Tir wondered what he was thinking, but the silence was precious. Eventually, though he had started drifting off to a musty and pain-tinged sleep, Gremio rubbed him on the shoulder and said, in a low and loving voice, “you must try to sleep now, Master.”

“I am,” Tir mumbled, swatting at Gremio’s hand.

Gremio hummed happily, but slowly shuffled his legs out of the way so that Tir’s head rolled off of them. Of course, he steadied it as it fell away so that he could simply rest it in the pillows, cupping his skull in his palms.

Tir still winced as he was gently lowered down.

“I’m sorry,” Gremio whispered.

“Just hurts,” Tir mumbled, readjusting himself into the bed. As Gremio slowly carded his fingernails through the strands of his hair, Tir began to feel discontented; he wanted something, but was too anxious to ask for it. He hefted slowly onto his side to face Gremio and slid his hand up the sheets, searching, until he found Gremio’s hand. Naturally he tensed and tried to pull back at first, but Tir pursued him. His fingers curled between Gremio’s as they flinched away, drawing them back out.

Tir pulled gently on Gremio’s arm, down; Gremio didn’t move. He pulled again, twice more, down, down; Gremio chuckled at him, but that was all. Finally Tir slid open one eye a sliver to see Gremio’s slight smile, quivering through his lashes, like a little lamp in the dark. He crawled his hand further up Gremio’s arm until he could curl it around his wrist, two fingers on either side, and smiled as he pulled him harder.

Gremio ignored requests as part of his personality, and equally so he never disobeyed orders. Tir pulled a hesitating weight at first, but Gremio gave up quickly, and let Tir drag him down so that he was laying beside, half on top of, him. He exhaled with surprise, and a little bit of embarrassment, Tir just giggled and rubbed his hand on Gremio’s forearm again, acting as though nothing was wrong.

Tir stretched out on his back and curved himself a little away from Gremio; it should have been obvious where someone would fit next to him. Gremio was too hesitant; Tir could feel him hovering and making false starts. Tir finally peeked open one eye at him, and raised its eyebrow questioningly.

The little judgement served as enough of an impetus. Carefully as serving on porcelain, Gremio shifted his legs underneath him, moved to take off his heavy overshirt, arms over head. Knowing him he was still probably wearing two shirts underneath it, but he would be warm. He slid conservatively to Tir’s side, curling up close to him but carefully not on top of him, with absolutely no presumptions or liberties taken, nothing asked for, nothing implied. It was a bit too careful, in Tir’s opinion. He rolled over a bit to see him, and found himself looking at Gremio’s eyes, looking at him.

His pupils flared and shrank again. Tir saw their little shades. Gremio’s face screwed up in a fragile and anxious emotion, blurred and indistinct. “You shouldn’t be doing things like this, Master,” he accused. “It makes you look… it puts you in a poor position.”

“I wouldn’t do this anywhere else but in my bed,” Tir replied, amused, “and there’s no one to look at me except you.”

Gremio’s eyes flickered instinctively down Tir’s face to his body, and darted away. “Master…” he sighed. “You should curb that kind of talking before it gets you in trouble.”

Even though he had been so tired, and still was so tired, Tir felt his blood quickening a little. It was funny—his cheeks lit with heat. “I think I can handle a little trouble.”

Gremio sort of laughed, sort of gasped, and shook his head. “Tir for heaven’s sake,” he snorted. “I’m no good with this kind of conversation.”

Tir giggled too, and let him off. “You not dumb, Gremio,” he whispered. “You’re just…” unfortunately, he didn’t have a word come to mind quickly.

“Well, thanks.”

“No, you’re just… like… you’re just kind, Gremio. You don’t have it in you to tease.”

Gremio raised his eyebrows, looked away for a second, and lost a battle. “…is that what you think?” he asked, in a mischievous tone.

Tir tried to get onto his elbow to reply, but he winced when he tried. Gremio hurried to get him back down safely, whispering to him as he did it. Tir ended up with his head on Gremio’s cool hand, slowly slipping away with strands on his hair; his other hand holding him down on his shoulder. He felt—his eyes flickered down Gremio’s body. “Gremio…”

“You have to rest,” Gremio insisted, his mischievous tone gone. “I’ll lie next to you if you like.”

Tir nodded.

Gremio laid down cautiously again; next to him, but not so close. Tir, feeling strange in his heart, like knots tied up inside him, but too exhausted for anything but the feeling, closed his eyes and thought about the warmth. The bright red warmth of a beautiful human, a good soul, beating slower and slower by his side, falling asleep. Thought about feeling his lungs expand and contract, his arm roll a bit over his side, a little bit back; blood washing over muscles like ocean waves on the shore, a living, dreaming miracle.

-

He had a dream that he could hear a grown man’s voice wailing, but could not find his way to him. His knees sunk into a sickening red swamp.

-

Security wasn’t as tight as it was supposed to have been when Tir woke up. He could faintly recall Gremio muttering that there had been some emergency and he was needed sometime around dawn, and Tir had only groaned in response. Mathiu, unbeknownst to him, was still in the depths of exhausted sleep, much later than he intended. As such Tir woke up about half an hour after Gremio disappeared, feeling like something was wrong and that he really had to piss.

His head hissed when he heaved himself onto his elbows, but he ignored it. It had been that way for a week now. He searched for an overshirt and some shoes, throwing them on, but fussing over his uneven hair, which he hid carefully under his bandana. After taking care of himself and adjusting his eyes to the dizzying golden dawn sun, Tir found himself wandering in camp, wondering where the hell anyone was.

The first person he found was Sheena LePant, leaning against a strained bedsheet on a laundry line, barefoot, in his shirtsleeves, and smoking. Even though he was so roguishly dishabille, he had his sword strapped firmly to his side and leather gauntlets on, though the right was doing nothing but gathering ash. He looked so unbelievably nonchalant, with his legs crossed and his feet sinking into the mud, that Tir thought he might have actually fallen asleep smoking until he got close enough to see his cloudy amber eyes half-lidded and trained on nothing. Sheena turned his head to him, exhaling a lungful of grey smoke before he smiled.

“Morning,” he said, sedate. “I was told to go fetch someone to check up on you when you woke up. But I thought, nah.” He paused to take another slow pull on his smoking-stick and let the smoke seep back out. Tir kind of liked the way it looked, though he had always thought of smoking as dirty and oppressive; it reminded him of the dragons, suddenly. “Feeling alright?”

“Feeling alright,” Tir repeated, trying to look as casual as he did, instead of twitching and tapping his feet like he usually did. “Just got up. Kind of a headache. Hey, do you know what—”

“Have some of this,” Sheena interrupted him, reaching out his right hand.

“Uh, what?”

Sheena waved the smoking-stick at him, raising his eyebrows.

Tir mumbled anxiously, dubiously watching the coalfire waver. All the same he accepted the stick, not sure how he would say he had never smoked before, and if he would think that was weird. It wasn’t hot on his fingers, like he thought it would be. The unlit end was wet from being in the other boy’s mouth. That was gross, right? Were people normally okay with that? He could see little indentations from his teeth in the paper and everything. Wait, Sheena used paper to smoke with? What kind of money did these people have??

He hadn’t even gotten around to anxiety about not knowing how to smoke by the time he was making his attempt, and he suffered for it. A glassful of acrid, dry, bitter smoke poured into his lungs, and as much as he tried to breathe it out instead of cough it up, he was completely unprepared for it. He covered his mouth with his arm and hacked while Sheena whumped his back with the heel of his hand.

“Whoa, slow down. I shoulda warned you. It’s not like a pipe; you get a lot of smoke at once.”

“Oh, ha ha, I didn’t know,” said Tir, totally willing to let him believe that he was only unprepared for the medium the smoke came in. “So I should just, like,”

“Just take like, a slow breath in, like you’re preparing to do your kata or something,” Sheena encouraged him. “Let it settle before you breathe it out.”

Tir nodded and tried again. He took one breathe in, open, autumn air, cool and bright. He lifted the smoking-stick to his lips again, deliberately, letting his teeth settle into the grooves Sheena’s had made. He breathed consciously, hearing the dull echo of the words of Master Kai; fill your stomach, empty it. Now he saw that he could feel it—the smoke, first swirling on the wind, then curling down inside him. He still convulsed a little when he pushed it out, but only a fraction as badly as the first time.

Now, being a man of anxious perfectionism, he knew with disappointment in himself that he had to get it right.

Sheena coaxed the two of them into a pattern of passing the stick back and forth, one breath to another, as Tir got used to how it felt inside him and the sun climbed higher. His throat grew dry but his heart pounded slow. Sheena prattled about some shit he had seen the night before; apparently the camp got pretty crazy in the late night, as victory sunk in. A bacchanal unfolded long after he had fallen asleep. Tir made disbelieving noises of shock and horror as Sheena detailed some honestly unbelievable scene of sexual debauchery he ran across in broad moonlight while just trying to piss off all the beer he had drunk at half a night past the witching hour.

“Why in the fuck,” Tir asked, pausing to take another, deeper sigh of smoke, “would anyone do that?”

“I mean,” Sheena shrugged, “It’s just battle-heat, but still, what the fuck.”

“It’s just what?” Tir asked, passing the stick back to Sheena. It was burning low now, but still, Tir thought fuzzily, eyes following the light, it was amazing how long the red-lit end burned. It was different fire; slow fire. The smoke was hazy in his eyes.

Sheena took in his breath, holding up his hand to his face, blowing smoke between his fingers, curls and strands. “Battle-heat,” he repeated. “Battle-fire. How people get crazy hot after a battle, and before sometimes, because they think they’re going to die, or they’re just happy they’re alive, or they’re scared clear out of their brains, and all they want to do is fuck.”                

Tir’s cheeks turned scarlet, which made it pretty hard to act confident and collected. “Why the hell would you want to—to have—sex right before a battle? Shouldn’t that be the one time you’re thinking of something a little more important?”

Sheena waved the smoke away from his face. “I don’t really get it myself? The way it was explained to me is that a lot of people just can’t handle the pressure of what’s coming for them. It’s just too much to take so they turn to something that will distract them and make them feel better. Not consciously, it’s like… the body trying to relieve its stress, I guess.” He gave Tir a look as he passed him the stick, low and flickering.

Tir felt his heart suddenly start pounding as he remembered the night before the battle. Was that why?... “I… guess,” he said, schooling his face. “It’s weird. But I guess it makes sense. That’s just trying to shove the truth away, though.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s brilliant either. People just do what they do, is all. It’s more of an adult thing anyway. Once you’re lost all shame, like Viktor.”

“Wait, how old are you?” Tir asked, paused in the middle of a drag.

“16,” Sheena said, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Why?”

“Me too, the fuck?”

“No way,” Sheena asked, giving Tir a run-down with his eyes. “How are you so small?”

Tir flushed despite his best efforts. “I haven’t… we’re Easterners, we grow slowly,” he muttered. “I haven’t hit my second stretch yet.”

Sheena chuckled stupidly at him, which turned into a cough. Tir decided to withhold the smoke to himself for now. “Awww, that’s so cute,” Sheena teased.

“Shut up.”

“You’re still a little boy!”

“Asshole, what are you then?” Tir countered.

Sheena didn’t get a chance to reply before he saw someone walking up to them. His eyes lit up with anxiety, so Tir assumed it was his father, and turned around to bid him good morning. He got the same look in his eyes, however, when he saw Mathiu stalking up to them. “Uh, Matt,” he stammered.

“Are you smoking?” Matt asked immediately, grabbing for the stick in Tir’s hand. Tir did not resist. “Have you even had a check-up yet? This is awful for your…” he suddenly got the bitter scent of what it was that they were smoking, and his shoulders lowered. “Oh, seven-point leaf? That’s alright, then, it’ll be good for your head. Don’t have a lot of it, though, we still have work to do today, and it still isn’t particularly good for your lungs…”

“What?” asked Tir.

“Yeah, that’s why I gave it to him,” Sheena said, rolling his eyes. “He said he had a headache. And don’t worry, we’ve been sharing that one.”

Mathiu, doing his best, apparently, to scare Tir out of his skin, took a heavy drag off of the stick himself before he handed it back to Sheena. “And I shouldn’t be doing that at all, but I’m going to need something today,” he groused.

Mathiu acting like a human being made Tir feel the same feeling he would have if he walked in on his dad and his girlfriend having sex. (Which he had never done, but he was dead certain he heard it once.) Tir watched him cover his mouth with the back of his hand for a sharp, quick cough, grey eyes scanning the bleak horizon for clouds. “We’re going to have to start our march fast instead of waiting around here,” Mathiu admitted. “Food supplies are more stretched than we’re letting on and the sooner we get back to Toran and get to work on salvaging the harvest, the better. I’m sure that the workers left behind are doing their best, but…”

“We’re going immediately back to Toran, then?” Tir asked.

“It’s still what I think is the best choice. We’ll be mopping Kwanda’s scouting operations on the way back, which will still be hard work because they’ll know we’re coming and likely as not get to surprise us, but we don’t know what the Empire’s plan will be once word of the defeat gets back to them. There’s no way they don’t know our headquarters; unless we move fast I think we can expect to see a blockade around the castle when we finally get there. Yes, part of me is sorely tempted to use our momentum to travel north or west and swipe out a few border checkpoints, but… we’re not that strong yet. Not really. It would tax us and run us out of supplies if we weren’t lucky. We need to get back to our power base.”

Normally, Tir would have been seized with anxiety hearing Mathiu say something like that. Now, he supposed, he was tired enough that he was just not as concerned. “Yeah, better fucking do that then,” he agreed. “Have we already sent order to move out?”

“Not technically,” Mathiu admitted, “I’ve been waiting for command to be collected enough to give the orders, though everyone knows we’re not exactly staying here. Speaking of, time for your exam.”

Tir suffered through Mathiu telling him the same thing he had been telling him for a week—he was getting better but he had to be cautious, especially concerning his head. When Sheena tried to pass Tir the smoke under Matt’s arm the son of a bitch literally grabbed it and used it himself before handing it back to Sheena. Tir couldn’t help but laugh, though he usually avoided laughing in Matt’s face, but he only rolled his eyes. “Alright, boys,” he sighed, and fuck Tir if he didn’t think it was fondly, “I have your respective guardians waiting for you around a war table, to let’s get moving.”

Sheena sighed and Tir giggled, but Matt got them moving. Sheena decided to walk really close to him, almost touching; Tir wasn’t sure why but that made him laugh, too, so he shoved at him with his shoulder. Sheena grinned and shoved back at him, and only Matt following them like a disapproving governess stopped the two of them from getting too rowdy. Tir found himself wondering why he had ever gotten a bad impression of Sheena as he tried to wrestle him into a headlock.

There was quite a bit of flurry and distress in the war-room when they got there, happening all around a few people resolutely packing everything away into boxes so it could be moved again. Tir’s eyes immediately lighted on Gremio, who was arguing with Humphrey and Sanchez. Everyone looked pale and concerned.

“What’s happening?” Tir asked, as Sheena ducked away from under his arm to help his mother and father pack.

“Tir!” Gremio gasped, startled. He turned away from the others to look him over. “I didn’t know you were awake. How do you feel?”

“Fine,” Tir sighed, grasping Gremio’s hands to lower them from his head. Gremio looked at him with shining, confused eyes. “I woke up because it was light; Matt and Sheena got me. But what happened here?”

Gremio shook his head. He slowly pulled his hand away from Tir’s, rubbing tired eyes. “There was a prisoner breakout in the early hours of the morning, after most everyone had gone to bed; there must have been enough people who escaped capture to sneak in and let them out. Remembering that morass of a battlefield, I’d believe anything.”

“Or perhaps there were loyalists still in our camp induced to free them,” said Sanchez, looking at Gremio.

Gremio’s eyes pinched a little, but he didn’t reply. “We got the violence under control, but there have been several reports of people slipping out of camp; we have no way of knowing whether it was just our troops handling private business or Empire troops fleeing. There are almost certainly some escapees for now; it could mean… any number of things…”

Tir found himself more concerned about Gremio’s anxious face than anything he said; unthinking, he reached up a hand to smooth the skin of his cheeks and under his eyes, where tired, purple skin lay soft. Gremio trailed off his sentence when Tir started to touch him, apparently lost for words.

Tir heard the crowd get quieter around him, but still he giggled, taking his hand off of Gremio’s face. “Alright, let’s get moving, then. That just means we need to get back faster, right?”

“Right…” said Gremio, staring foggily.

“Be that as it may…” Humphrey began, in his bitter rumble, but seemed to reconsider his course. “We’re already packing up, just waiting on you for orders to move. We were just debating on the best course of action for catching those responsible.”

“Those responsible? For the breakout?” Tir asked. “Well, it would probably be catching up with them. So let’s move.”

“And what if the cause was spies in the camp?” Sanchez asked.

Tir saw he was still glancing at Gremio, and he didn’t like it at all. “If someone was keeping a good eye on the prisoners, how would we not know who let them go?” he asked, annoyed. He saw Sanchez blanch. “If that’s the problem, then let’s pay attention better.”

-

Tir left the tent feeling a little woozy. Gremio held him with a warm hand on the small of his back; Tir couldn’t help but lean into it.

“Tir—“Gremio whispered, concerned and uncertain, “did you—” he paused as Tir pitched into him a little.

“Huh?” asked Tir, turning his head around to look at him.

“Were—were you smoking seven??”

“Uh?” asked Tir, looking up at him blankly. “I dunno.”

Gremio looked pained for a minute, and then slowly sighed. “You could be doing worse things, I guess.”

Tir didn’t like that he looked disappointed, but, well, he was the one who had smoked something without knowing what it was. “I’m sorry, ‘Mio. I didn’t meant to upset you.”

Gremio flushed scarlet and shook his head at him. The conversation effectively died.

-

The first few hours of that day passed dizzily, with a soft green buzz and a low sourceless song. He found himself laughing when people came up to talk to him and they laughed too. When he looked at Gremio, he wanted to kiss his eyelids, but he felt strangely shy. Things went slowly and then faster and faster.

When his head was darker and colder again, he just felt gross. These were the things he knew: Sheena wasn’t so bad, but he wasn’t going to just accept whatever he was having again.

Return to Navigation

Master, Magician, Mercenaary.

The first person Tir sought out once the war train was on the move again was Master Kai. He had been lurking among the troops they pulled from the Kouan area, though Tir didn’t know him to have any origin in particular. He spoke of masters from many schools in many places but no home school or homeland. He did not ride a horse if it was his choice but trundled along with the horses, patting their noses or distracting them with food while the riders laughed and swatted.

Tir ran up to him, though Kai did not acknowledge him until they were side to side. “Master, how did you fare in the battle?” Tir asked.

“What battle?” Kai asked.

“The battle at Pannu Yakuta.”

“I do not recall it.”

Tir knew he was being led along, and he tried to will himself to drop the conversation and let Kai keep his wisdom, but he was too curious. “It happened yesterday, Master,” he encouraged him. “That was when our army conquered the fortress and killed its master.”

“Ah,” Master Kai said, as if recalling. “I did not like it, and did not engage in it.”

Tir did not immediately speak. He walked with him. His frustration rose in his throat. “I did not like it either,” he said. The world seemed bleaker after saying it.

Mater Kai nodded, eyes on the ground. “And why not?”

Tir had to think. Why not? A slurry of bleeding images told him why. Spliced dragon bones and spilled and dirtied dragon lungs. Viktor collapsed in a broken heap. Piles and piles and piles of the trodden dead. Valeria dumping the head off of the heights. A crying woman clutching a knife for safety in a lavish bed. The feeling of leading his horse into a human body, crushing a man without ever seeing him. Soul Eater tearing into flesh and his mouth filling with blood. The shadow of a murderer on the other side of a great prison with Gremio at his feet. Having to keep female prisoners away from his own troops so they wouldn’t be raped. Locking a thief into a trunk and walking away. Kwanda Rosman begging Teo for his death, and being certain that he would provide it.

“Because I… did not do well. I did not act well.”

Tir took a steadying breath when nervous tears prickled at his eyes. “And I did not fight well either. It was I who fought the master of the castle.”

Kai nodded, with a little more emotion. “That must have been a hard fight. It is respectable that you won it.”

“I—” Tir reconsidered his thoughts. “I… fought hard. It was a hard fight,  and my victory came from fighting intelligently. I suppose I have some reason to be proud. But…” he struggled with his expression. “I fought well enough to win, but barely. I almost saw my death. He had me on the ground underneath him, almost disarmed me, I completely missed a block that should have been easy to make, and if my final blow hadn’t been so uncontrolled—it was sloppy. I never had a handle on the fight.”

“You will never have a handle on the fight. No one ever does,”

“I know,” Tir interrupted, frustrated. “All fights are brutal, sudden, and messy. I know. Your training has saved me in the past week. But I barely lived. Barely. It was training, luck, and having good friends. It’s not enough.”

Kai shook his head. “That is all anyone has.” When Tir groaned, he held up a hand. “But I know what you are saying. You feel as though you could have been better prepared, and now you want to correct that. But you know that you will never feel truly prepared, yes?”

“I know.”

“And why?”

Tir sighed. “No one is ever truly prepared. We will die unprepared.”

“What do we want instead?”

“Self-control.”

Kai smiled and pat him loosely on the shoulder. “If you want to train more, we can start the day your injury no longer pains you. I do not wish to die at the hands of Mathiu Silverberg.”

“Lady of Light, has he personally threatened everyone?”

-

The second person he sought out was Luc, which was much harder. There was no place one could expect to find him; he didn’t stay anywhere in particular that he knew of and there wasn’t anyone in particular who would know where he would be. Now that everyone knew of his ability, he felt free to go from place to place whenever he wanted to, making him hard to track. As he hunted the lines for him, looking for a flash of bright green, Tir questioned his choice of appointing a personal messenger that he literally could not track.

But Luc’s usefulness wasn’t what promoted him, was it?

Tir sat on the beam of a slow-moving carriage that transported dry goods, pulled by cows not driven by a man but following the herd, and pondered the things that Luc had said. The little mysteries in his familiarity with magic, like jewels in velvet, were beginning to entice him—what did Luc know? Did he know the truth of the rune Tir carried? How did he have this knowledge? Was it in his books, or did Lady Leknaat teach it? The barest hints of strange power he slipped were so intriguing—they spoke of a hidden world of stars, vast skies, and great power.

Mulling it in his head, Tir had his idea.

He slipped the bandages off of his right hand, watching the rune shimmer, so faint in the sunlight. This disgusting thing; was she made to do the sort of things he had seen yesterday? Grind up a living body like it was grain, devour it, and leave only the husk? Was she just a weapon, the tool of a murderer? Yet he felt like she was more; like she had and knew so many things he could not guess yet. He saw her glimmering, his skin and not his skin, shifting in a way he could not trace, enacting plots he could not see in places beneath. It was her he had been feeling, wasn’t it? Or was it him? Was it that he had some strange and dark place in him?

“Soul Eater,” he whispered.

She pulsed like a heart. His heart pulsed. The blood in his hand heated and slithered, in his mind he felt his mind, things moving, things awake. All these things and more, happening inside, in what used to just be his body—his body seemed like a great castle now, with many rooms he did not know, deep dungeons, secret passages, strange things. And he felt he was looking for a ghost in it.

“What are you doing?” snarled Luc.

Tir looked up at him with a smile. He had appeared on the beam across from him, staring at him from the other side. “Looking for you.”

“…looking for me?”

Tir grinned as he slowly wrapped the bandages around Soul Eater again, skin itching. “You can feel it when someone activates a rune. How do you do that?”

Luc pulled back. “You activated Soul Eater to get my attention ?”

“And I have it.”

“Oh, no. Fuck no. Absolutely not.”

Tir cocked his head. “You don’t like that. Pretty badly. Why do you not like that this much?”

“You’re training Soul Eater to look for me? I think you can figure out why the fuck I don’t like that.”

“Train her to look for you? Can I do that?”

“NO,” spat Luc, even though he had just said that he could. “You can just teach her to anticipate my arrival by doing exactly what you just did, bringing me to her attention, making me look like a delicious lunch, so, by the way, I’m never responding to that again. And furthermore,”

Tir couldn’t help but snort when he heard tiny, squeaky Luc saying shit like ‘furthermore.’ “Well, then I need a better way to find you.”

“I’ll find you when I need you.”

“Sure, but I need to be able to find you too. The whole deal is that we’re helping each other out. What do I do if I need to find you? Can I learn how to teleport?”

“With Soul Eater? Almost certainly not. I’ve never heard about her having that ability. You’d need a second rune, and she would almost certainly eat a weaker rune that had that power… and never give you the power. You would have to learn the spell independently, and you’re not made out to be a rune-independent magician, keep someone with you who can do it, or find some normal, nonmagical way of contacting me. Which I would vastly prefer.”

“You can do magic without runes?”

“Me, personally? Yes. I’ve known a few others to do it too, but it’s pointlessly complicated, time-consuming, and expensive for the average person, considering most people don’t even have the aptitude to do it in the first place. I’ve known a few. Not many.”

“So you’re trying to say that to contact you, I should probably talk to you.”

“Oh, no, that’s not going to work either. I don’t want to.”

Tir couldn’t help but laugh. Luc was hilarious when he was off-guard. “Alright. How about this. We set up a consistent time, once a day.”

“No.”

“Once a week.”

“For what?”

“Because I need someone to teach me about the runes. And while some others have been able to tell me the basics and teach me about regular runes, everyone seems to be reciting legends when it comes to the True Runes. When it comes to my rune. And that’s because they only have legends to give me, not real experience. You, however…”

Luc obviously understood. “Besides,” Tir continued, “I owe you, right? You’re running messages, and I’m… what am I doing, exactly?”

“Helping me research,” Luc said, reluctantly. “You’re helping me research esoterology.”

“What’s that?”

“The study of how magic works.”

“You mean, like… how this even fucking happens at all?”

Luc sighed and leaned his head back on the wagon. “Yes. The study of how this even fucking happens. At all.”

“Wait, you’re telling me that we don’t know how it works?”

“No. Not really.”

“And you want to find out?”

“Yes.”

“Sign me up.”

“You are signed up.”

Tir reflected on the fact that he had sold himself cheaply here, considering this had all been bargained for the price of getting Luc to do shit he should have been doing anyway AND graciously not letting Gremio snap his neck. “Alright, when?”

“At night,” said Luc immediately. “If we have to do tests, they work better in starlight. And don’t you dare ask me how, you wouldn’t even begin to understand.”

“Aw, what?”

“Night, probably after 11 would be late enough, even in summer, even with the late sunsets down here,” Luc pondered. “On the seventh day. The seventh day is auspicious.”

“It’s the fifth day now, right? So we’ll start two nights from today?”

Luc scanned the sky a he checked his math. “Yeah. Unless it’s raining.”

“Then we’ll just talk,” Tir pressed him. “You have a lot of basics to catch me up on before I can really help you do good research, right?”

Luc lowered his eyes to glare at him, the same burning glare Tir found eerily out of place in his face. His little button nose screwed up and Tir could see he had freckles when his skin went pale. “Technically, I could just set you up in the starlight, tell you nothing, and throw investigative spells at you to examine the results. But it would go more smoothly if you could tell me how uncomfortable it feels in scientific terms.”

“…So, you have a lot to catch me up on until I can help you do good research, like I just said. Good talk.”

Luc didn’t return banter with banter, he just looked annoyed. “…Well, do you actually want to learn?”

“Yes.”

“Seriously? Do you want to understand what you’re doing, or do you want just enough of a beginner’s course to not hurt yourself with your rune?”

“I want to know what I’m doing.”

Luc’s gaze sharpened on him though his wrinkled anger slowly faded. Tir watched him flicker his eyes around him, not budging, not offering information. “I suppose…” Luc said and trailed off. “No, that’s…” Eventually, he waved a hand at Tir. “Wait here.”

Tir was less than amused when Luc vanished, leaving him with the cows and a cold wind, but he crossed his legs and waited, reminding himself he would have to spend a lot of time with the boy in his near future. And would it be so bad? He was fun to tease, unless he really became angry, and Tir had a leg up on him anyway—and he was capable of controlling Soul Eater, which was something Tir needed. He felt—unsafe around Luc, because of his power, and his unpredictable recklessness, but he felt—well, he felt unsafe. He felt like he wasn’t the person to be worried about, for once. He felt like he didn’t have all the boundless, weird, scouring power to himself. He felt a little like he couldn’t absolutely overpower the opposition if it came to it, he felt—not out of control, but… checked. A little dominated.

He found out he was squeezing his right hand as he kicked his legs nervously, scanning the lines of soldiers. He might look bothered. He mustn’t look bothered by Luc. What if someone had been watching him, look confident and unruffled while Luc was there, but wilt and look anxious when he was gone? That wouldn’t do. He needed to keep control. He needed to think about how he looked. He straightened his beck and took his breaths.

Luc appeared with three books, one large and two slim. “Alright,” he stated, “sorry, I forgot I had to get copies in your language at first. So this is going to be your basic guide, it’s what they would give to young, uh, students when I was growing up, anyone who was going to learn magic.” He handed Tir the large book.

Tir flipped through the pages and saw a concerning number of charts, graphs, and tables with numbers, symbols, and strings of signs, as well as maps of the earth and sky… fascinating but befuddling. “This is the beginner’s book?” he said with some doubt.

“Oh, don’t be fooled by all of the charts. Those are… they give a person all the details they could possibly need to times, dates, correspondences, precise locations for spellcasting… you’ll hardly ever need to look at them. The author was more putting the exact numbers down once and for all. It’s really the explanations of the charts in the first half of the book that you’ll need. It’s more like a… reference book?”

“Alright,” Tir said dubiously. “What about the other two?”

Luc handed him the larger of the two small volumes. “This is the account of an ancient sorcerer who studied runes about two thousand years ago,” he said. “He had a scientific mind, way ahead of his time… the way he took to examining how the runes do what they do instead of just taking well-known trigger words and traditional methods for granted was truly extraordinary; you have to understand that in those times…”

Tir watched Luc talk about a long-dead sorcerer with bemusement. His hands were moving; he flickered his fingers and turned them in circles as he explained things that they could not see. He drummed the cover of the book he was still holding; Tir couldn’t help but have his attention drawn to what he saw on the cover.

“Lady Leknaat?”

Luc stopped his speech to look down at the last book. “Oh… yes,” he continued. “This is one of her books… she’s written quite a few. I don’t believe many people read them, because they’re less proper scholarship and more… theorizing. She writes about esoterology in a way that’s very… spiritual, I suppose. Airy. Personal. Hard to catch on to. Her books are basically unheard of where I come from because of that… so it was just chance that I found this one. It had been misplaced in the library, someone pulled it aside but them flung it back on top of the shelf… it… helped me, I suppose.”

Tir held out his hand. Luc hesitated. “I don’t have another copy of this, so be careful, alright?”

Tir nodded.

The Heavenly Way, by Himawari Leknaat. It was a loosely penned copy, in which Tir could really see the scribe’s handwriting, with the occasional fix from a frustrated pen. Its contents were paragraphs of text with some small drawn figures to illustrate them, like a novel rather than a study-book. The cover was black and its writing was silver; the illustration was that of constellations in the winter sky.

Tir did not know how he was so certain that this was Luc’s own copy. It didn’t say. It wasn’t because it looked like an unprofessional job. It was something in his manner, not the book, that said so.

“Right,” said Tir, “what do you want me to read in the next few days?”

-

The third person Tir went to see was Viktor. By the time he made his way back to the medical area it was sunset and they were starting to settle down for the evening. He swerved over and around tired horses being tied onto withered trees and bags and boxes being hauled out of creaking wagons to find a young woman with a bright blue rune glimmering on her forearm testing a very tense man’s jaw. She pointed out a direction for him as she snapped a fractured joint back into place, leaving him to howl as Tir admitted himself into a medical covered wagon.

It had already been laid down on top of hastily-lain bricks, its pale blue linens looped into stakes driven into the ground so that weather could not distress the injured inhabitants. There were some six people set to bed rest inside; it was dark, and there was moaning when he let in the light. He shut the entrance quickly and was left with suddenly complete darkness, the smell of blood and slime, and the sound of harsh breathing. Suddenly paralyzed, he was saved by Viktor’s voice coming as though from the floor.

“I’m going to assume you want me,” he rumbled, tired and worn, but not past his ever-present cynical clarity, “and I’m going to have to ask you to get closer, so I don’t have to speak loudly.”

Tir followed the voice to the bed on the lowest right, practically settled on the floor. Now he could make out Viktor’s shape, solid and soft, the covers thrown off of him in a bunched bundle, his legs half-crossed and his head thrown back on the floor. His posture was still and his breathing was slow and steady; he looked more like a man in musing concentration than a man in great pain. “How are you?” he whispered, kneeling beside him.

Now he could see the whites of his eyes in the dark, open and aware. “Been worse,” Viktor rumbled, a bit amused, “been better. How about you? Lord Gloom was complaining about you getting stabbed.”

Tir smiled. “It wasn’t a bad stabbing. We took care of it.”

Viktor hummed to acknowledge him. Aside from tilting his head only slightly to look at Tir, he saw that he was keeping it unmoved. Tir could only imagine that it hurt. “You’re out and about, which means it must be alright… but they wouldn’t have you bedridden unless it was very serious. Your effect is something to be concerned about.”

“I know,” Tir murmured. “I am concerned about it.”

“Hey, don’t be worried,” Viktor interrupted him, tone lighter and more earnest. “People really like you. It would be hard to go wrong. What I’m saying is we don’t want them to feel weak. And they’ll feel weak easy, with all the fight we’ve got stacked up against us.”

“I wouldn’t know why they like me,” Tir muttered. “I feel…” worrying about his image was foreign to him; it was possible, but it chafed at him, and he tended to buck against it. He supposed actually caring about the effects made the difference from how it was when he lived in his father’s house and wouldn’t bother.

“You’re honest, caring, dedicated, and have all the other marks of being a good person, and almost all of them are natural,” Viktor interrupted him bluntly. “You may have to work on the ‘patience’ bit though, and having an even temper, it’s obvious that that one’s faked.”

Tir flushed. “I’m not—”

“Eh, there it goes again,” Viktor chuckled, through a wet, sticking throat. “Like that. We’re going to have to teach you to not be agitated by provocation. Right now people are being cautious around you, but once they get a feel for you, you can’t treat everyone like Matt or Gremio. Matt’s just relieved to have someone treat him like a human again, and Gremio… we’ll work on him too, poor bird.”

Tir’s heart was pounding hot but there was no fucking way he would lash out when Viktor was making fun of him for lashing out so much. He thought he couldn’t keep his cool? “You’re one to talk,” he complained. “I don’t see you exhibiting rigorous self-control.”

“Yes you do, moron,” Viktor sighed. “What do you think, that I never get angry with the people I command? You think I never lose patience with the backwards bootlickers I’m supposed to call co-commanders? You think I’ve never vividly imagined hauling Matt up by this shorts and swinging him out of a window? Do you think you’ve never pissed me off? Have I ever acted like it? I admit that people get under my skin. Thank Gremio again for the lovely evening of throat-tearing, if you would. I know that the only thing someone in our position cannot do is intimidate their own troops. Oh, it works for Kwanda or Shulen or Barbarossa, for a while. But what happens eventually? What happens when everyone knows their leader is a monster? What happens to you? It’s just how long you wait.”

Something about the end of that speech split off from the room and the time they were in, Tir knew, but he had no way of knowing to what or when. “I’m not sure how I, in particular, can avoid intimidating people,” Tir admitted, “when I have a murder-rune attached to me.”

Viktor’s eyes spared him a short glance in the darkness, before he settled back to the position that was least painful. “Yes, it’s a handicap,” he admitted, “but you can frighten or even disturb people without going the extra mile to intimidate them—using what’s inside of you to scare them, purposefully, with the intent of putting them in line. No. Continue to act like the caring leader they want and they will continue to ignore the prickling feeling inside them. That’s their kindness. It’s different for everyone, obviously. Some want you to be distant, some need to see you be honest and open with them. People want different amounts of personality. You can bend things a little. But you can’t show your teeth because you feel threatened or scared. That proves to everyone that you can’t take it.

“…And, as I’m sure you noticed yesterday, it really doesn’t work to take it out on a girlfriend instead and hope no one notices. They’ll notice. It just makes you look worse. People who choose to be close to you aren’t choosing to make themselves targets for your pent-up aggression. That’s a quicker path to disaster.”

“It seems that way, yes,” Tir agreed, not knowing why Viktor as emphasizing this. “That was… I don’t know. There was a lot of pretty fucked up things happening in there. Some much more bloody, visceral shit. But when I saw Miss Naomi…”

“It sits with you, right?” Viktor agreed. “You would think it would be easy to avoid. You’ve seen the consequences, and you don’t like them, so you say to yourself, I won’t don’t do that. But, when you watch yourself…”

Tir observed him. His eyes were becoming used to the dimness he had to see through, and he could see the pieces of Viktor, faint in the shades, a hundred pinches and stressed lines, dirty and tangled hair, sore muscles that softened when he laid down. Tir felt—and he didn’t know what caused it—compassion, and envy. “Hey, Viktor.”

“Yeah?”

“Could you teach me?”

“Teach you what?”

“What you do. I don’t have a word for it. Being good at… everything? Don’t laugh at me, jerk. I mean, how you know how to treat people. How you know what they want and what they don’t want. How you know how to lead them where you want them to be. Understanding everyone in the room around you and just not… setting them off. Keeping things under control. The art of, like… the art of… not fucking up.”

“Ugh,” said Viktor, sounding disgusted, “politics. Yeah, if you don’t know how to do that, that’s not good.”

“I’m not sure that’s what I meant, exactly.”

“No, that’s what you meant. Politics is looking good no matter what you feel like, and still getting what you want. Even if you’re imagining airing out someone’s intestines while they watch because they’re exasperating and they haven’t shut up in two hours and you haven’t slept since the last time your aging grandmother gave you a good-night kiss twenty fucking years ago.”

“Yes. Exactly. That’s the thing I want to learn.”

“Yeah, we’ll set something up. Talk to me again when I’m sure both arms are firmly attached to my body.”

Tir paused. “Is it too much to ask of you?” he cautioned.

“Did I say yes? Then it’s not too much. Just wait for me to not being negotiating with the reaper every fucking night and we’ll sort it out.”

Tir shook his head. “Alright, Viktor.”

“Alright, Tir.”

-

For the record, Tir found out who staged the breakout less than an hour after the fact. When they returned to their area of the march, they came back to wailing and shrieking in the women’s quarters. (Everyone who called it the ‘women’s prison’ got cuffed by their favorite guard, the big soft darling who didn’t say much.) Tir knocked politely and had the door opened by Pahn, said favorite guard, who gestured silently to Cleo, awkwardly comforting a sobbing Naomi. Some of the other women were, essentially, tearing shit apart and wreaking their wrath on their confines.

Cleo waved.

“What happened?” asked Tir through his great reluctance.

“He left without me,” Naomi sobbed.

“THEY ALL DID,” roared some incredibly ornery bitch.

Owain Gyferddth almost certainly engineered the breakout, if Tir knew anything, bringing a score of the male prisoners from Pannu Yakuta with him. The women were a bit upset about not even being contacted. Valeria was also described as ‘a bit upset’ about the whole issue, and stated that she cursed the man, cursed his bint, cursed his commander’s dishonorable grave, cursed his whole bloody unburnt fortress, cursed the day she agreed to drag his useless drunken ass into civilization with her, and cursed Aunt Kel for having the nerve to ask her to hold the hand of her useless fucking adult child in the first place. So, there was that.

Return to Navigation

Infection, infatuation.

The march back to Toran began. Mathiu was hoping for two weeks, but he admitted the actual time it took to march could be anything. Seasonal storms were staring to surge and the amount of opposition they were going to face was known. The proposition of sending Viki to check on the castle to see whether it was still free was bartered around, but it was decided that her information would be unreliable because of her tenuous grasp on time. Luc too was deemed unreliable, though Tir argued for him as an obvious option. Having no other person who admitted to knowing the advanced and suspicious art of teleportation (as simply knowing it made others suspicious of you) and no line of forces to bring them information, since that would require having active fortresses and stations of their own, it was agreed that Stallion, who had a magical travelling ability of heretofore unknown speed and who could even manage to take a few companions with him, would make a small scouting expedition to go to the castle and the fields, observe their situation, and report back. By calculations based on timing his running compared to the movement speed of the train, and factoring in what they hoped was a reasonable time for resting, it was assumed that his party would meet back up with the troops perhaps three days before they were supposed to reach the shores of Lake Toran themselves. Then the small party would give them warning of any pertinent news just before they ran headlong into it.

Tir realized with more than a little consternation that he was not allowed to be in this scouting party, and that things like that might be bared from him… well, forever, actually. If his presence was important to morale and his attention integral for him keeping command of his troops, there were not many options for where he could be at any time and not much leeway for how long he could be away from them. Already he was making plans to keep both Luc and Stallion much closer to himself; he had been hearing great generals complain that they were kept behind a desk and out of harm’s way all his life. It wasn’t going to happen to him.

They asked Lorelai to go with Stallion, because she was fast, quiet, and dependable, at least dependable enough. The real muscle, who was also the real failsafe, was Humphrey; it was not a great idea of send any of the generals out, especially not the one who had been handling malcontents, but just about everyone else was benched except for the LePants, who said their selves that they would be useless in espionage. Humphrey it was, then, and he had to try his best to not look relieved that he was being sent out adventuring instead of kept back commanding.

This was all—three, no more. They would be moving quickly and quietly, acquiring information, and hopefully not engaging any enemies at all. But unfortunately they were being asked to sweep through territory that had not been cleared yet; everyone knew they could end up very dead. The farewells were heartfelt.

It took the army three weeks to return to Toran Castle. The delays were not because of the military units they expected to fight when walking back through the forest: they were gone. No one chose to fight them. What this meant was yet unknown. The delays were because of two things: the nature of the Great Forest being even more oppressive and disorienting now that the force was larger and carrying discontented prisoners along, and a killing disease.

They brought something back with them from Pannu Yakuta, invisible and vengeful. A few hundred died, almost all of whom were already wounded and weak before they were sick. Such bodies were left behind as soon as they were dead; the corpses would only breed more disease if they kept them. There was a debate as to whether they should simply leave the sick behind as well to reduce the spread of disease, but several generals opposed the proposition viciously. Mathiu’s assertion that the main problems were the uninjured wandering around while carrying the disease and that these were the ones, really, that they should leave under a tree somewhere made the motion finally cease.

Almost everyone caught it eventually. The elves, for whatever reason, seemed immune. The uninjured soldiered through it, feverous and annoyed, though few died. The mildly injured suffered and swore. The badly injured grew infected and mortified. Viktor should have gone. Mathiu overdid it for him. He got more attention than others got or else he would have died like them.

Tir finally caught the disease, after what seemed like days of narrowly avoiding it, while sitting through the night with Viktor. Mathiu needed rest, but he wanted someone to watch and fetch him if Viktor stopped breathing, started vomiting, or grew delirious with fever.

Delirious he grew. He called Tir a woman’s name as Mathiu’s fingers fumbled, trying to catch blue sparks in the dark from a rune he suddenly couldn’t use. Mathiu swore, and shook, and Tir nodded along to whatever Viktor was trying to tell Daisy. He couldn’t make out most of the words. He was complimenting her; told her she grew up to be so kind, and beautiful. He told her where he hid the money and told her to run fast. Run south. Don’t stop for any man. Travel in the sunlight and go up into trees in the night, with your quilt held over your face.

He lost his delirious energy before they managed to wear down his death-fever. Tir let him grasp his hand with burning, sticking fingers and go lax again, almost with every breath, until cold water and feverfew accomplished what magic would have.

When Viktor finally fell asleep, Mathiu left without a word. Tir felt he should have followed him, but he was afraid Viktor was going to die in the night.

-

He was induced to leave in the morning by Valeria taking his watch. He hadn’t seen her often after the victory and hadn’t spoken to her once, but he was not surprised to see her walking into Viktor’s now private cart, looking exhausted and drawn, smelling like blood. Tir knew she was sick too, but not so direly. He never found out how she had been hurt in the battle.

“You’re going to watch him?” he asked, vision swimming when he sat up. He had been frozen in his silent vigil for hour now, lost in his mind.

“Gonna see if he needs anything before we get another medic in here,” she replied gruffly. Tir nodded and slowly stood up. It was such a small cart that even he could make it sway; the soothing herbs drying on the rafters shushed like wind as the wooden wheels pitched.

“He was delirious last night, really bad,” Tir told her. “He didn’t know where he was or who he was talking to. Not violent, just confused. After he cooled down he slept.”

“I’ll let him sleep as long as possible,” Valeria promised. “If we’re lucky, that was the burning sleep.” She squeezed past Tir, patting him on the back as he shuffled away. “Get some rest yourself.”

“Alright,” said Tir, hoping beyond hope that he would be able to sleep. He was dead certain he’d be given something he had to do immediately by one of the people that he supposedly commanded. “You’re going to be alright?”

She waved him off without replying, settling down into a slouch with a large pot of tea clutched in her hands. She didn’t look at Tir leaving, so he was able to linger long enough on the steps, curiously, to see her bend forward, tea curled to her chest like a baby, her other arm reaching forward to slowly smooth back Viktor’s hair from his forehead. She sighed as she leaned laboriously down and rested her head on his, rocking.

…He had thought so.

More than a few things on his mind, he wandered a bit much after he left the medical herd. He should have gone right back to his tent to find Gremio; he made the decision to look for some food instead. Understandable, but a mistake. There were always people where there was food, and people always had some shit for him.

This time, shit began in the form of an elf that Tir didn’t know, which was wild, because he had been pretty sure that he knew all of the elves that weren’t ashes. He must have not, though, because there was a well-built elf with green hair, green armor, and an arm slung around Kirkis’s shoulders, while Kirkis leaned back with his legs crossed and a drink in his hand. On the elf’s other side was Sylvina, legs kicking and waist bent forward as she smiled and chattered.

When Tir walked up to them, grabbing a plate of whatever was being passed around while hardly looking at it, Kirkis caught his eye first. He grinned and got up, tugging the green-haired elf up with him. He let himself go along with it, with a little bit of visual resistance, one eye sliding over to what Krikis was looking at.

Because he had only one eye. One brown eye glittered on his left side, the other was lost in a rift in his face covered only half-way by a richly patterned bandana. It wasn’t a simple stab or a swipe that lost him half of his face; it was concentrated work. From what, he could not tell by looking at him. His immediate guess was fire. He wore mismatched green and brown armor over torn clothes and had a bow and quiver, as they all did. He gave Tir an unforgiving look-down, not introducing himself.

“Tir,” said Kirkis, shrugging his way off of the elf and clasping Tir’s hand with a clap. “This is Rubi, my cousin.”

Rubi tilted his head to acknowledge himself, then looked at Kirkis.

“ Heeh Nat, dhorisse khalat ,” said Kirkis over his shoulder, “Tir, aaetiliisi jiata hi fhailahk .”

Rubi responded in turn and the two continued for a few lines. Kirkis raised an eyebrow, looking patient and amused, as Rubi shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. He gave Tir a scrutinizing look. Eventually, he shrugged, rolling his eye at the tree-tops, and Kirkis laughed.

“Not you, human,” said Rubi, with an unbelievably garbled accent, “Is Kirkis.”

Tir didn’t even manage to say anything before Kirkis interrupted. “He wants to make it clear that he’s not affiliated with the army and he’s fighting by my side, as far as he’s concerned. I’m going to refrain from explaining to him that that’s the same thing, because I don’t want to confuse him.”

“Tell him that’s cool,” said Tir. “He’s welcome no matter what his loyalty is as long as it isn’t to the Scarlet Moon Empire.”

Kirkis translated, and Rubi laughed. He made a motion that he had learned form watching Kirkis and Stallion that was rude among elves; it seemed to be their ‘fuck you’ and mimed an arrow hitting a target with two fingers. At least, that’s what Tir thought it was. “Right on,” he replied. “I can’t help but ask, though, where was he when?...”

“Rubi left the village several years ago,” Kirkis explained. “He wanted to see life outside, but never came back. Which is just as well, because he left in a huff and was banished for talking shit, actually. Turns out he’s been wasting his life on merc work and black market running between the forest and the mountains, like an asshole, so I told him that I found him something better to do,” Kirkis eventually switched to his own language in order to roast Rubi in a tongue he could understand. Rubi responded with what appeared to be much more scalding fire, and the cousins began what must have been a fascinating exchange.

Tir started eating pancakes while he listened to them hiss at each other; elvish was not a great language for explosive anger, since it seemed to turn around soft, airy sounds, ‘h’s and long vowels and short, soft consonants, but it was admirably fine for expressing derision. He felt the heat of someone trying to hand a mug to him; he accepted it and, to his surprise, saw the woman who handled the challenges, Khuluta. She hardly ever came into the ring herself, but stood just outside with a pen and her papers, reorganizing, listing, fencing people who came up to her wanting to challenge or abstain. Tir knew they had picked her up around Seika and he knew she was a good fighter herself, but he was not sure how she came by her position.

She smiled as she handed him the warm tea, and he thanked her briefly. “What’s up today?” he asked.

“Doing good,” she said, unhooking her own horn from her belt. She had been dressed in animal skins and holding implements of bone and horn when he first met her; she had now acquired much more soft fabric and metal buttons and buckles, imperial goods. “Who’s the elf? I think I may know him.”

Interesting. “Introduced to me as Rubi, cousin of Kirkis,” Tir summarized. “I get the impression he’s a scavenger.”

She nodded but did not comment. “We’re opening the ring back up tonight,” she informed him, watching the three elves—Sylvina was involved now—arguing about something intricate.

“Really? When everyone’s still so sick?” Tir asked. “And what about Viktor?”

“Not everyone is sick now. Some people are almost over it. They’re about to get restless. And the promise of scattered troops to hunt down hasn’t been fulfilled. Sooner is better. Viktor, I wish we could have him, but we’ve got challenges without him, we can satisfy the people really itching for blood while we wait. His comeback will be better for it.” Tir noticed now that she had a bit of an accent too. Not like the elves’, he didn’t know it. He didn’t have enough experience with the countries outside his own, so while he could place which of his troops weren’t from here, he never had a useful reference point as to where they were from. It was beginning to frustrate him. “I come to you because you’re on the list.”

That was a surprise. No one had challenged him, no one, and it had been sticking in his side. “Is that so?”

She nodded. “One challenge. Curious. No reason given. Didn’t put down a grievance. Didn’t put down anything but names. Good handwriting.”

“Well, who was it?”

“Sheena Lepant,” she said.

“Sheena?...” Tir thought over the past few days quickly. Why? They had spent the past week with friendly greetings when they saw each other at least, and evenings eating together. Perhaps it was a friendly challenge—but then why put him on the list instead of asking to spar privately? “Hm.”

“Do you want to accept or refuse?” asked Khuluta. “I won’t announce it if you don’t want to do it, and I’ll tell him to be quiet.”

Expecting someone to be quiet about the fact that the commander wouldn’t meet them in the ring sounded unlikely. And Tir had been looking for the chance to get into it without challenging someone himself, since that would be unnecessarily horrifying for whomever he challenged. Something unvoiced in him was telling him there was something wrong with this idea but he didn’t give it time. “I’ll accept. How will you schedule me?”

“At the start, just after the opening fights. Crowd will be alright from the beginning and we may not keep open long with everyone as tired as they are.”

Tir calculated the rime in his head and nodded. “Alright. I’ll be there. Who else have you got lined up?”

Even to him, Khuluta would not spoil most of her surprises. Kirkis perked up when he heard what they were talking about and dragged Rubi up. “Am I up this time?” he asked.

Khuluta explained that there were pending challenges but she was considering holding them, since she hadn’t seen everyone in a while and wasn’t sure who had fallen ill and who hadn’t. “Tomorrow night will be better than tonight, after I see everyone for sure.”

“What is?” asked Rubi. “Is jianti ?”

“ Jianti? T’i jianti, fuukha ?” Kirkis rolled his eyes. Tir was pretty certain he had been told he was an idiot for whatever he just assumed. “ Rissh .”

“Is rissh ?” asked Rubi, brightening up. “I’m in.”

Kirkis sighed an exasperated sigh and began aggressively explaining how things worked to his cousin. It seemed he almost understood how the challenges worked, but not quite. Tir was eager to see how the debate went until he was interrupted by a girl in basic blue half-robes over work trousers jogging into the fire-circle. The medics has somehow acquired the fabric and the time to make uniforms of a sort; simple above-the-waist robes that tied over their shirts and under their arms to give them room to move, fashioned of the brightest blues they could find and cleverly exposing the runes on their forearms. Most had blue bands holding back their hair as well—she had hers tying her black locks into a tail. Tir’s heart sunk when he saw her coming right for him. “Yeah?” he asked.

She held up a finger to ask him to wait as she breathed. “Mathiu asked me to fetch you. And if you could bring some breakfast, actually, that would be great. Wait, I’ll get breakfast, I’m already here.”

Tir pondered this as he immediately moved to pick up as many mugs of tea (well, this one was a tea-base, it seemed to also involve soup base for thickening and whiskey for getting the fuck by) as he could while the girl piled her arms with food. “It’s not about Viktor?” he asked.

“I don’t know about that. He just said to get you.”

“Why is Matt up already? Shouldn’t he still be resting?”

“You know he isn’t,” said the girl succinctly.

As they made their way back to the makeshift medical quarters, Tir found himself annoyed at both the pushing around Matt was doing and the pushing himself. He wouldn’t give himself a break, and Tir couldn’t get a fucking break from him. As they entered the medical wing, the air grew sour and oppressive with the stench of the dying and quiet with their quiet.

Mathiu had settled himself into a small painted house-cart hitched by two horses. It looked like it had once been a wanderer’s house and still had chrysanthemums blooming under the windows, but Mathiu had turned it into one overcrowded office. A ridiculous amount of papers, supplies, rare plants, and clattering rune shards were stored inside, waiting for identification or for meaningful use. Mathiu used the open back porch, not the sheltered inside, to do work. He was seated on one padded chair, legs crossed and notebook perched on top of them, with the door to his junk corridor open behind him. He was rumored to sleep on top of the office. His actual surgery was a literal hop and a jump away, drug by two more horses to his left, the medical halls and medics’ quarters flanked behind him in a slow-drawn fleet. Two more medics were on chairs opposite Mathiu’s as they made notes from his dictations, but they scattered when Tir approached.

On a more personal level, Mathiu looked sicker than most of his patients. His brow was seized with a clench that could not be smoothed and the skin of his face was puffy and pale. He had stripped down most of the modest and ill-fitting worker’s garments he had always worn before they had gone on campaign and was now in his undershirt with a blanket he had given up on thrown over the chair. The necklace that held his empty runestone in a tight clasp lay haphazard on his shoulders. His leg was twitching on his knee and the skin of his exposed arm was pale and pockmarked and sagging with more age than Tir would have guessed. No wonder he hadn’t been able to call on his rune the night before. He was fucking feverous.

“Go back to bed,” Tir snapped when Matt made eye contact.

Matt pinched his eyes closed and his mouth twisted in annoyance. “No. Making the charitable assumption that that was concern you just expressed, I assure you that I know where my limits are and how to heed them. How was Viktor when you left him?”

“Sleeping soundly. And I left him with Valeria, I didn’t just fuck off.”

“I know. She confirmed with me that she’d be taking over with him. Sleeping restfully, or disturbed?”

“Restfully. Val thought he had broken his fever.”

“Good. If he doesn’t break it now, dying will definitely help him with that,” Mathiu groused, putting a few fingers to his forehead. The young medic began to quietly take cups from Tir and carry them away.

“Is that all you needed? Go back to bed.”

“No. Do you have any concept—” Mathiu snarled, not audibly, not very obviously. He took a few slow, wheezing breaths. “It was not my choice to disturb you. I was asked to bring you in because someone else was brought in sick. The request had to go through me because no one else dares disturb you, or has any idea of how to find you, since your only residence is private and you’ve given no other indication of how you should be contacted.”

“Someone else?” Concern barely overcame the sting of being judged. “Who—”

He hadn’t seen Gremio since yesterday. “No.”

“Gremio was brought in by some concerned acquaintances in the early hours. He was resisting aid and all suggestions until he finally agreed to send for you. It took some time to locate you, of course, since I had no idea of where you went after you were done with Viktor.”

Tir’s throat pounded with his heart. “Where is he?”

Mathiu nodded at the medic who had brought him here, making her way quickly back and forth from wagon to wagon, and she bowed her head in response. Mathiu coughed into his elbow and then buried his head back into his notebook as the medic led him away.

-

The medics—two of them, both male and battle-trained—who had taken on the task of handling Gremio were grateful when relieved. The healers didn’t so much let him go in to see him alone as they quietly pushed him to do so. Tir was wholly unsurprised that Gremio was a difficult patient and his heart sank when he remembered how disoriented, confused, and even violent he had seen other victims of this disease become when its grip was strongest. Had he hurt someone?

But Gremio was not striking out in confused fury when Tir parted the heavy curtain that kept the light out. Nor was he lying down in sweaty misery like Viktor had been. He was sitting alone on a chair, bent double over his knee, arms wrapped around himself and shivering. His cape was discarded on the floor, along with the pieces of leather armor he had been gathering up, and they had been replaced with a woolen blanket he was clutching as tightly around himself as he could, white-knuckled. His hair was untied, a bright golden veil cast over his head and shoulders. He glared up to see who had entered, golden red-rimmed eyes.

“Oh—” he startled. Tir could see how heavy the fever was laying on him, he was pale and damp, and his breathing was deep. “Oh, Tir. I—”

“Gremio,” Tir whispered, kneeling down in front of him. “When did you get sick?”

Gremio cast his eyes down. “I was feeling a little shaky yesterday… no, the day before yesterday… I thought I just wasn’t eating enough but when I sat down to rest, it got harder and harder to get up again… suddenly, last night… I didn’t even notice until suddenly I lost sense of my feet and came back to on the ground… Petra and Kyrill brought me in and they’ve been prodding me since… won’t let me sleep.”

Gremio seemed honestly annoyed about the medics’ attention. Besides that, who the hell were Petra and Kyrill? “Gremio…” he sighed.

“Don’t speak to me like that…” Gremio whined, “I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Tir silently leaned his head forward onto Gremio’s knee. Was there nothing he could do? Eventually, Gremio always acted like this, like he was afraid of what Tir would do to him, or like he thought Tir was always annoyed or angry with him. Did he do this? What had he done? What had he not done? “You didn’t disappoint me. I’m disappointed in myself. I didn’t know you were sick.”

“It’s not bad… I just need to rest and it’ll go away… they won’t let me rest.”

Tir didn’t know why that would be. “Well, let’s get you to rest now,” he decided. “I’ll take you back to the tent.”

Honestly, it was less work to convince everyone to let him do that than it should have been, considering how badly off Gremio was; it was likely because he was careful not to go through Mathiu. The medics were tired and seemed sick of managing Gremio anyway, though one did knock him on the shoulder and tell him to take it easy. Gremio shrugged it off and told him to do the same, though he was shaking. Tir figured he knew them through working with them in the challenges, and oh yeah, shit, the challenges.

Tir’s mind was working hard on how he was going to explain this as they shuffled back to his wagon, struggling to keep up with the flow of the caravan on their way to where his tent was set up. They had made a place for themselves before anyone could insist on giving them the best pick once they started using a train of wagons instead of just unrolling tents at the end of the day; they strapped down the tent of blue and purple starry sky they had already been using to bare boards, covering the floor with rushes and making the simplest of shelves for inkbottles and lamplight. It was as cozy as it had always been; now Tir was growing anxious at the thought of being made to sleep in something more reserved, opulent, and empty. The blankets were where he and Gremio had left them two nights ago; the scent of human slumber, oppressive unless its yours, intoxicating if it comes from someone you love, clung heavily to the pillows with the fallen golden hairs woven loosely inside them. Gremio sat down with a long sigh, Tir put away his leathers and his cloak neatly in the trunk.

When he turned back around Gremio was holding his head in one hand, body crumpled but held upright. Outside of uniform he didn’t look small, not even vulnerable, certainly not fragile. He was still built strong, carefully poised with the constant awareness of being watched, still gentle and reserved, still proud. Instead he looked so… normal. So human. Tir had seen it a hundred times now and he wasn’t over it, and he would never get over it. Gremio had been an implacable, irresistible, unstoppable guard, protector, teacher, and parent when Tir was a child, and now that he was a man, Gremio was human. Tir wasn’t sure what fascinated him so much about this little miracle—the kindness of it, he supposed. His father hadn’t held up to adult scrutiny very well. Pahn sure hadn’t, and Cleo… he had been delaying a good look at Cleo. The court, the generals, the many enemies he had grown up nesting with, all had become snakes in the clear eyes of adulthood, not the harmless creatures they had painted themselves as. He was continuously, endlessly disappointed by grown people who held up a façade of goodness and strength until something as simple as fatigue, hunger, pain, or illness turned them into assholes and battle made them raping, murdering monsters.

Gremio was still wonderful, through and through. The common flaws of humanity, anxiety, possessiveness, hotheadedness and shortsightedness, yes, he had seen them in Gremio too. But that was all. Gremio was kind, attentive, protective, and good, really . No matter how close to him he got and no matter how human he became, he looked no other way but face-forward, in his eyes, honest and unwavering. He was still good. Could it be true? Did such miracles as Gremio really occur? 

Tir was prepared to lay him down with force, but when Gremio felt Tir’s hand push his shoulder he gently waved him off and laid down himself. They hadn’t argued about Gremio taking his own rests since the battle, essentially. A bit of insisting here or there, but that was all.

“I’ll get some sleep,” Gremio whispered hazily. “I don’t like to rest during the day…”

“But you didn’t sleep in the night,” Tir agreed, absently smoothing his hand down Gremio’s shoulder and forearm. “Neither did I, but… I have something to do in the evening.”

“Luc?” Gremio asked, with tired discontent. “Oh, well… You do need to learn more about your rune, but that boy…”

“I know, I know.” Tir smiled.

“Very rude,” Gremio grumbled. “Won’t wash his plate.” He vainly tried to smooth his hair away from his face, and ended up getting his fingers tangled. “Shit…”

“Wait, I’ve got it,” Tir said, and twisted around so that he could reach the shelf. Gremio used little clasps to keep his hair back in the day, but they were uncomfortable at night, so he used ties… there was one made of a green and black pattern that had surely once been a lady’s dress that Tir loved. He found it and turned back around to Gremio, who had struggled up onto his elbows. Tir pitched him forward so that he could reach around him into his hair.

Gremio, sick and exhausted, was pliable and permissive. His head rolled unresisting as Tir ran his fingers through the thick golden hair, teasing out knots and straightening his disordered middle part. Tir shuffled his legs so that he was straddling him, unthinking, trying to reach the other side of his face. Gremio didn’t seemed alarmed about it, so it never came into his head. Gremio usually was his control for knowing when he was overstepping his boundaries.

His bangs had to be tucked behind his ear; too much wrestling, being chopped at, and getting caught on things ensured that his hair was no longer one even length like it used to be. He tilted his head as Tir ran his fingers down the side of his skull, behind his ear, lighting off the edge of his jawbone. He could feel Gremio shudder.

It was an easy thing to tie his hair back, a harder thing to make it stay back. It was thick, but uneven, and he retied it three times as he kept finding more locks that had strayed or slipped out of his hands. He remembered growling at a disobedient piece that wanted to pull to the wrong side and Gremio chuckling at him. He had closed his eyes. Tir tied the pretty band around his hair, still too loosely, but it held when his hands slipped away from the knot. “There,” he said. He smoothed Gremio’s bangs away from his face one last time, tilting his head once more to the side.

He… he had a sourceless, sudden, gnawing urge to kiss him.

So he did.

Gremio’s lips were soft and dry, loose and relaxed, unprepared as he was. Their gentle surface was easy to take, gently permissive when he instinctively pushed his own on them, slipping over his top lip. Tir pressed himself on Gremio for only a second, and in that time is heart jumped from his chest to his throat, stuttering. His skin felt dizzy where he touched Gremio’s body, his hands, his thighs, his lips. In the half-second before he pulled back again, Gremio parted his lips slightly; the movement caused a concussive reaction in Tir’s stomach after he had already pulled away, sinking in like a blow, felt in a course down his neck through his spine up again and finally in his head, ringing. They had barely pressed together but his lips were tingling.

Gremio opened his eyes, fluttering blinking, confusion slow to brew on a beautiful, flushed face. Beautiful. Was he this beautiful? Had he always been?

Tir’s hands were on his shoulders. His thighs were parted on either side of his legs. His head was swimming. He felt faint and very awake. “Ah… ha…” Collect yourself, Tir, holy tits. “Get some rest…”

He felt the dire, life-or-death need to play this off somehow but thought of absolutely nothing to do. Gremio tried to slow-blink through what was happening; his eyes flicked down Tir’s body and Tir’s stomach twisted. “Master?...”

Tir hauled himself onto his knees, fighting awful dizziness. He pushed up on Gremio’s shoulders and Gremio down, looking away from his face. “Get some rest. I’ll… see you when I’m done, okay?”

Gremio… Gremio hesitated. Tir didn’t even dare look at his face. But he laid himself down, settling his body on the bedsheets underneath him. Tir knew that he had to fucking move, but seemed to not even know where or how. Gremio stretched his back as he readjusted himself, stretching his long, tight stomach.

               Standing up is a simple fucking thing and you’ve got to do it, he told himself. Queen of Heaven and Lover of All, pretend the dragon of Pannu Yakuta is bearing down its bloody, bone-bare face at you screaming the cries of the tortured dead and MOVE. He moved. He hauled himself onto his feet and got the fuck moving. “Good night,” he said.

“Good night…” Gremio said, arm curled behind his head on the pillow, totally stupefied.

A blank minute later, Tir was standing outside of his wagon, wheels rumbling over rocks and tree roots, cool wind distressing his tingling skin, head slowly coming back to earth as he breathed. Breath comes in, breath goes out. Fill your stomach, empty your stomach. Okay. 

What the fuck did he do that for.

What the fuck did he do that for??

There was nothing in his head. Nothing. He did not fucking know. He couldn’t even the fuck remember. Cause of incident: unknown. The amount of times which he replayed the thirty second leading up to the kiss in his mind was irrelevant to the fact that he did not know why the fuck he did it. His memory jittered: laid him down, beside, on top of, fixing his hair, hands on his shoulders, soft, hot, kiss. Disappointment, anxiety, reassurance, adoration, fulfillment, kiss. Down, beside, on top of, hands in golden hair, a kiss. His pliable lips gently parting underneath his own. He had been. Anxious. Nervous. Reassured. Felt better, let his guard down, and then… Which part was the key? Which mistake or flawed emotion covered up his eyes and let something come out to express itself? Which part of the evening—the whole day—yesterday, a rough day, lots of work to do, arguing with Humphrey’s ex-imperials, trying to read Leknaat’s book for Luc. The others he read already, that one was so difficult. Last night, no sleep, staying awake with Viktor, watching his breaths, how did you know if someone was dying? Was he dying? Breakfast. Kirkis had a living cousin. Sheena put him on the list. Why? Mathiu sent after him, wouldn’t leave him alone for a single fucking day. Uncontactable? What did that mean? Had he done something wrong? Matt was sick. Gremio was sick. Something was really wrong. He took Gremio back home—to the wagon. Something was really wrong. He was so off-balance—how off-balance do you have to be before your body starts doing things without you? Was he too tired? Was he not in his own control?

He couldn’t sleep now.

Tir coughed into his elbow as he staggered off of the steps. He was going to try to read that book again. If he could get into it, it would distract him… he’d just skip the first chapter and start with the second, since he was stuck on the first chapter. No, he couldn’t do that, that was disrespectful to the author. He was tired, he was off-balance, his emotions—the pit of being comforted was so easy to fall into.

He could still feel Gremio’s body, a phantom on his skin, as if he were still right there.

He coughed into his elbow again, feeling crackling and slipping in his throat. He sniffed and steadied himself on a post.

…He was sick.

Shit.

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On the nature of power and its origin in the will.

Luc had explained the basics of magic in this way: all the world is made of will. From thought we came, and only thought creates and forms what we know. From the thought of the Sun came light, from the thought of the Earth came life, from the thought of the Deeps came the ocean.

What bred bred more, as the thoughts of things split and made their own minds. The sun had mind and will and the stars did and the moon also, and the darknesses about them, and the wind that whisks in it; the earth had mind and will, and the grass and the trees, and the animals their children, and the humans theirs, and the fire that burns them all. The oceans had mind and will, and so the rivers, and so the lakes, and so the fishes and sea-monsters, and so the deep cold beneath all. The strongest minds were the oldest and the least divided, the strongest wills were the ones that created. Great willpower like that of the sun or the earth or the ocean works its will in others; first in their creations, second through magic and the runes. The bodies of their descendants do the work in one way, the unchanging power of their runes in another.

Runes are the willpower of things with great minds, and greater wills create greater runes. The Sun’s is perhaps the greatest and none knows its location now. Birth and Change were both runes of great power until they were lost, or perhaps taken back. Order is a great rune still. Even lesser creatures, like beasts and rivers and minor winds, can work their will in minor runes; the humans who accept them do the hunting work of the boar or falcon, the cleaning and sustaining work of the brook or the still lake, the wandering work of the west wind.

“Did humans make runes to work their will?” Tir had asked.

“A great one. It is called Punishment; once it held the power of accusation, restitution, and forgiveness, and was a force of… of honor, I suppose. I don’t know how to say it. They say it has changed but none knows where it is now.”

“So, those of us with true runes…”

Luc lifted up his hand. “This is the willpower of the wind—ancient air, before it was divided into steams. To know its intentions is to know what true air is. I was bound to it, now it works its will through me, and is my protector, and necessarily, my God. For you, it must be Soul Eater.”

Tir shook his head. “And… and what about people who work magic… work their will, that is, without runes?”

“Those people do what the ancient powers did in ancient times—those with great forces of will can make things happen. It’s rare. Do you know what it means to have undivided will? To truly have no doubts or reservations about what you intend to do? Nothing that holds you back or makes you wonder at all? No concern? It is rare, difficult, and still never as strong as a good, ancient rune. I have seen Lady Leknaat do it. I knew one other. And the elf-wife I have seen do it; I don’t think anyone has realized and I hope they don’t figure it out. But elves can do that. They have a different… relationship to magic.”

“This isn’t how I was taught things,” Tir admitted, struggling to keep up. Naturally, he was looking for the place of the Lady of Heaven in Luc’s mythology.

“It isn’t how I was taught things either,” Luc admitted.

That afternoon, finding his way to read Leknaat’s book, he realized who it was that taught the new mythology to Luc. It was her way, and she told it better than he did. Tir could feel himself not understanding everything; he underlined, ear-marked, and wrote notes, but he knew that he only grasped half of what she was saying no matter what he did. Many things he had to leave where he found them, jewels glittering on the dusty shelf, and hope he could pick them up later.

Her concept of the world—she used the word universe—was very large, endless movement of endless creatures and thoughts, minds and hearts and spells blended together from the great distance of godly insight, flowing as gently, harmoniously, and swiftly as they always have, from the beginning of time to the end, together, insensible from inside the stream and mesmerizingly beautiful from the shore.

-

By the time the sun had set and it was time for the challenges to begin, Tir had a dry, clogged throat, a headache from his backed-up nose, a bad cough, and very sore legs. He was fit to fall asleep any fucking moment, he hadn’t been able to eat much, it had just occurred to him that he might technically still not be allowed to fight even though his concussion happened, like, weeks ago, the memory of Gremio’s body made his stomach feel hot and his legs feel weak whenever it intruded on his mind. All things considered, he was ready to thrash Sheena, and damn why it was happening.

Khuluta expected a small crowd for the first night. She got a flood. She and the announcer were delighted; the medics and guards less so, since their number was seriously depleted by Gremio’s absence and the amount of medics that were needed to do their job elsewhere. The guards were wearing red now, dyed leather vests or scarlet scarves, whatever they could find, and the medics had their blue jackets strapped tightly to their arms and backs, ready to get to business fast.

The opening rounds were mostly staged by now, since they were humorous, routine, and served to get everyone warmed up and remember where they were when they left off. There was a duo who were always fighting, and they strove out of the rink, Tir knew, to make up funny dialogue for the last fight; they were incredible that night, having had so much time to prepare. Tir very nearly relaxed. A scrawny, quick rogue challenged whatever burly warrior wanted to prove himself—all they had to do what get close enough to hit him, once. They rarely did. Usually, Viktor did something or other in the opening rounds to get people pumped up—Khuluta replaced him tonight with whatever she found appropriate, a couple of quick-fire friendly rounds between people who weren’t going to waste time, to keep the energy moving. They were well-primed by the time it was Tir’s turn—he idly wondered what both she and Geoffrey, the announcer, were occupied with before they joined the army. He hadn’t asked yet.

Geoffrey announced Sheena with appropriate flair. Tir learned he had had a few challenges before, and had won most of them. He figured based on the reaction that he was either unpopular anyway or loved for being hateable, and he absolutely preened in it. Tir had never seen him fight. The announcer made it clear that Sheena had picked a fucking challenge for himself tonight; care to tell the crowd what the hell you were thinking?

“I just thought,” Sheena explained, voice pitching high as he had to shout, “that we were all interested in seeing someone fight who we hadn’t seen before, right?”

“Well, it’s your funeral,” Geoffrey barked, turning away from the boy to address the crowd, walking the inside of the ring. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY TO MOURN THE UNTIMELY DEMISE OF A YOUNG WARRIOR WHO HAD HIS WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF HIM, AND REFLECT ON THE FOLLIES OF YOUTH; WOULD THAT WE COULD GO BACK AND MAKE BETTER MISTAKES THAN THE ONES WE MADE… AND MUCH BETTER THAN THE ONE THIS FUCKING FOOL IS MAKING RIGHT NOW.”

The crowd laughed. The energy did not disperse; they were curious and excited.

Good.

“AND NOW, TO PUT THIS POOR IDIOT OUT OF HIS MISERY, LET ME INTRODUCE TO YOU A MAN WHO NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION AT ALL: UNSTOPPABLE, UNBREAKABLE, UNBELIEVABLE, THE NIGHTMARE THAT WAKES THE EMPEROR UP SCREAMING: TIR! MC! DOHL!”

They didn’t seem to believe it until he grabbed the fence with his one hand and vaulted over it, landing without a bump on the other side.

As his army screamed, he thought.

They expected him to win. Losing would be ridiculous. He had never seen Sheena fight before, which was a setback. He used a mid-length, curved sword; Tir wasn’t certain about their use. He wanted to beat him instantly and be done, but that was probably not the wise choice of action. He knew he felt brutal right now, he would have to take extra caution to not look brutal. His best course of action would have been coming into this fight in a playful mood, and he was not going to have that. Short, not too short. Thirty seconds. Forty. Not a play-fight, not a beatdown. Give him some time to try to strike you first.

Sheena’s first strike was fucking balls-to-the-wall insane. He charged; he had too, since he used a short-range weapon and Tir used mid. Tir did what should have been a repelling but not a finishing strike at this sword arm; Sheena dove under his staff, slid on his knees, and turned around under him to whip at his heels with the sheath of his sword, clutched in his left hand. Tir had already readjusted his grip on his staff, swung it over his shoulder, and was on the downswing to where Sheena ended up; still he did not fully expect the attack, so he let the sheath push him aside while his staff barely glanced off of Sheena’s shoulder.

Sheena was already in short range of Tir and essentially untouched. His sword was in his dominant hand and he was whirling it back around to the height of Tir’s knee. He had, however, put himself on the ground for the surprise attack; Tir slammed his staff into the soft ground where it fell after bounding off Sheena’s shoulder and used it to vault himself around to Sheena’s left side, immediately out of his reach. He was grounded, he couldn’t move fast; Tir aimed to pull up his staff and whack him broad-side on his exposed back. Punishing, reprimanding, painful, non-debilitating.

He hit like a falling tree branch. Whack. In his periphery he could see people wince and couldn’t help but grin. Sheena folded over; shit, no, he was moving with the force of the blow. He rolled almost out of range; Tir felt a twinge of alarm as he pursued him, having to pursue was never good, but Sheena was still on the ground. How bad could—

He finally got it into his head that Sheena was not bothered by being on the ground when the motherfucker caught the next downstrike of Tir’s staff with his fucking heel, pulled it forward with his foot, compromised Tir’s balance, and kicked the blow aside. Stop attacking him like he’s down. Tir moved with the parry; when he took his next strike at Sheena, he ducked with it. Neither of them were, it seemed, in the least distressed by actually being hit as long as they could roll with it. Sheena danced backwards with the whirling strikes, taking most of them with an air of unaffected nonchalance. Tir did his best overhead cut and he literally shrugged it off. He came at his ribs and he swerved backwards, taking the hilt with his sheath, with his stomach, with his forearm, unfazed, unhalted, as patient as his mother, as tough as his father. Still, he was breathing heavily, and not hitting Tir.

Then the little bastard attempted a heavy, double-handed swing at Tir’s staff while he was holding it at his front. Sheena thought he was going to snap it, or at least nick the wood.

Clever. Fast thinking. Hell no.

Tir pushed his staff up double-handed to deflect the blow, driving into the intended break with more force than Sheena could have possibly put into it. The repulsion called his bluff and sent him into a stagger. Tir followed with his knee instead of his staff and heard the air exploding out of Sheena’s lungs. He hit the ground. He needed a few seconds before he could have possibly collected himself to get back up.

He still would have done great if it weren’t for how fast Tir was. His staff dug into Sheena’s neck, at the exact point of breathing, when he tensed to spring back up. He gagged. Tir smiled and waited. Sheena’s eyes flickered down to his legs to calculate a horsekick to Tir’s shins, or at least a hammerkick to the top of his feet. But Tir was over six feet away, palms braced on the end of his staff, ready to dig it into his throat. And that, a push that would only take him a small amount of effort, would be a killing blow.

He waited patiently for Sheena to put up his hands.

While Geoffrey ragged on and the cheering reached its high note, Tir laid his staff slowly on the ground and leaned forward to give Sheena a hand. He accepted it, nodding his relieved thanks, and let Tir pull him up. He didn’t weigh much, and his agility led to Tir pulling him up like a dancer from the floor, quick, springy, suddenly face-to-face with him. They both smiled.

“Hey,” Tir said, “what’d you do that for, stupid?”

Sheena laughed uncomfortably, rubbing what must have been a very sore back with the heel of his hand. “I, uh… it’s funny, actually. I didn’t fight. In the battle, that is.”

“What?”

“I didn’t fight. I hid behind a wagon. I was scared.” He was still smiling nervously, gazing with intense, stifling panic behind his eyes. “I couldn’t do it. It’s been killing me since. I wanted to—”

Geoffrey was gripping his arm and turning him around. Time to be shown off, apparently.

Sheena was out of the ring before he could stop him, and though he looked for some time, he couldn’t find him after the fact.

-

The dilemma he faced in the darkness, haunting the axle of his own wagon as he waited for his mind to resolve itself, was whether to go inside.

He was exhausted to blackness creeping into the corner of his vision. He had been tired out by dancing in circles around Sheena—around him, mind you, not the other way around—after goddess knows how long awake in the first place. The cough was beginning to rumble badly in his lungs while he breathed. He had to sleep. He was afraid, and anxious, and upset with himself.

Overwrought and overworked, fear that normally paced at a good distance closed in. Could he even control himself? Why did his body do things he didn’t want it to do? Was his mind, the center of this body that was once the crown of control, no longer pure, no longer in total command? What was it inside him that pushed him around like this? How was he casting spells with Soul Eater without meaning to? What power did she have over him? Why did he get so angry and frustrated and hateful all the time? Why couldn’t he let things go? Why did he always lose his temper? How could anyone respect or follow him? Did anyone truly follow him in the first place, or was he just a puppet like his father? Whose? Mathiu’s? Why did he have those dreams? Was that what he truly wanted or just dreamstuff? Was he a queer? Fuck, was he?

Gremio, who was so good, beyond belief—would he ever be good enough for him?

He was pretty upset with himself for crying, but at least he collected himself quickly. Sick of it, he pulled off his robe, rubbed away his face with it, and went inside.

He knew he was making a mistake when he saw Gremio curled up in bed and felt so much better, felt his furnace spark in his stomach, his eyes relax, felt the tears prickling at his eyes again. He knew he fucked up and the longing was so much stronger than his conscience anyway, so much stronger that it completely obliterated it while it was still protesting. It was still screaming at him to make a smarter choice and there was no way he would listen. He wanted Gremio. He had truly fucked up.

He untied his trousers because they were filthy and searched for something else to wear. Nothing was exactly clean, but there was something better. Gremio rustled around as he moved, though he was almost silent, and when he turned back around, Gremio was facing him and his eyes were open, though hazy.

“Hi, Gremio,” Tir whispered.

“Sssffff’llo Tir,” Gremio mumbled indistinctly.

Tir’s mouth turned up, though his eyes still felt wet. “Go to bed, Gremio.”

“Fffffhhhkkkk… ‘ght.” Gremio mumbled, slowly turning to his side so that he could go back to curling himself around a pillow.

Tir felt a pang in his heart as he watched him wrap his arms around no one and hold them tight. Who had he had once? He didn’t want to think about it, but… there had to have been someone. Before his father had taken his life away and made him his slave.

He couldn’t think about the longing in his heart. It was too much to handle; he just wasn’t ready for it. The blackness of ignorance, oblivion, and sleep are all great mercies, all needed and adored until we see them with opened eyes. Then we rail against them, screaming that we can handle things on our own. Still they keep from us what would break us, guard us from everything just outside of our vision, cradling our fragile minds. They are silent and patient, never begrudging, never wavering, holding us throughout the years until we close our eyes and fall into them forever, finally grateful. Her patience with Tir would not wear thin; above all he was precious, a flicking candleflame in the open window, a beautiful rareness that would keep her warm. She thought he might keep light.

Tir was lucky enough to lie down next to Gremio and feel him breathing as he fell asleep. He could have that. It was something small, but he could have it.

—

Original note

I didn't realize these scenes went together as well as they do until they ended up in a short chapter together. I wrote this story scene by scene, there really aren't chapters, I just try to put three-ish scenes in one chapter or whatever makes up a couple thousand words, with half an eye to not separating big arcs too much. But sometimes, coincidentally, scenes that go well together end up together.

Luc's speech is obviously fed by bits of lore from later Suikoden games and the wiki, as well as a heavy dash of made-it-up. I wanted to think of a way someone raised in an authoritarian, almighty-heavenly-father-worshiping culture might view the more polytheistic or even animist rune-creation story. He doesn't have a great background for understanding the push and pull of the elements as harmonious; how has he found out how to understand it? Neither he nor Tir nor Leknaat see it in quite the same way.

I decided to make most people from Toran goddess-worshipers, no reason exactly other than wanting to use swears like 'sweet lady's tits' and wanting a quick way to differentiate them from other nearby cultures. I use the name 'Tara' for the Goddess in some later chapters because something kind of like Guan Yin/Tara was in my head for a lot of the times I mention her. Imagine crossing the compassionate view of Guan Yin with a sort of ample fertility goddess of old Europe, like a summer Demeter or smiling Idunna. IDK exactly. And certainly it's just something I'm making up and will (hopefully) never be that important anyway but I'm one pagan in my own little sandbox having fun here.

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