Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

Arc 7: Chapter 10: Sever

One night I dreamt. I dreamt of home. Not Seydis, or Karles, but the place I’d been born.

The Herdhold isn’t a pretty land. Rugged and dry, known for its vast herds of chimeric cattle bred by House Herder and sold across the southern lands, it’s a country of wranglers, herdsmen, opportunistic raiders and stubborn farmers.

My mother was from a little village called Hew. Her family were lumbermen and charcoal burners, but she’d quit the tough, sparse woods her relatives tended and found work in the Herder castle and eventually married a clerk. That castle, like the land it’d been raised from, wasn’t an elegant thing. Made low and tough to withstand the fierce winds that blew down off the bluffs, it was blistering hot in summer and freezing in winter.

The western dales are a region of extremes, the blessings that make so much of Urn fertile and green left thin so far from Elfhome. God had never trod those arid plains with Her golden feet.

In the dream, I didn’t live in the castle where I’d been born. I lived out on the plains, with my own farm and my own animals. I was old, almost too old to work, but I’d spent my life fighting for this little scrap of peace and I enjoyed it. My children worked the fields, though some had gone off adventuring, hearing tales of distant lands and great names.

It was well enough. Those who’d stayed had children too, and they played through the wheat, laughing.

Cool, strong fingers slid down my neck. I grunted, then relaxed as those familiar hands worked the stiffness out of my shoulders.

“You were daydreaming again,” she said and kissed the top of my gray head.

“‘Bout you.”

But I wasn’t lying, and she knew it. She laid her head atop mine, letting out a contented sigh. The arms folded around my neck were still young and smooth, and would be forever. I regretted that, that she’d be alone soon.

More laughter in the fields. Maybe not so alone.

“Your son has been talking about war in the north.”

“There’s always war in the north.” I felt annoyed. Darsus must have been at the tavern again, spending his time with the wrong sorts. They’d fill his head with nonsense. He’d always resented me for keeping him here, keeping him safe. But out there, he might remember how hungry he was.

She pulled back, letting long black tresses tumble around my face. I swatted at them playfully. “Should I talk to him?” I asked.

“And say what? You’ll just fight again.”

She was right. We fought too often, me and Darsus. I’d failed him too many times, in too many ways. I’d promised his mother, and—

“Better to let him find his way,” the woman behind me said as she began playing with my hair. “Cling too hard, and you’ll make the same mistakes. Everyone wanted you to be something. A warrior, a protector, an assassin, a diplomat, a devil. Would you have chosen any of those?”

“…I don’t know.” If I’d stayed in the Herdhold, I’d have just been a thug. My father tried to groom me into an enforcer for the baron, to make our peasant family more valuable, and maybe one day make it so we weren’t peasants anymore. My father was the smartest man in the demesne, everyone said so, so it seemed like he knew best.

Laughter in the fields. I could see the stalks moving where the children played. The sun sank down beyond the mountains, casting an orange glow across the horizon like a scar of molten gold. 𝖗𝘈No͍𝖇Ɛs

“Alken.” She sighed and pulled back. “What’s troubling you?”

I wasn’t sure. Everything seemed right in the world, only…

I took a lock of black hair in my hand, playing with it idly. Dark as pitch, as raven feathers.

No, that wasn’t right. Cat had brown hair, with a hint of red. Red like her eyes got when she was hungry. Red eyes shining in the dark as she clung tight, urging me on, lips at my neck.

Many of our children had red hair, some more copper like mine had been before age took it and others a pleasant brown like hers. Our children. Mine. Mine and Cat’s.

And even if it wasn’t yours! We could have treated it like it was, you know? We’re both so fucked up, but I thought maybe if we did something right, it could make up for all of that. That we could make something, together, and—

I really needed to talk to Darsus, before I became a stranger to him. This was harder than I’d thought it would be. Rose had always seemed so fell, but she’d turned out to be a good parent. It seemed to calm her. All it did was terrify me, make me feel lost and oafish.

Wait… Darsus was Markham’s son, wasn’t he?

“Talk to me, big man.” Cat leaned down and bit gently on my ear, drawing just the tiniest bead of blood with one fang.

I frowned at the figures in the field. There seemed to be a lot. How much blood had it taken to make all of them? To keep each alive?

She whispered in my ear. “What’s wrong, my love? Look at what we’ve made for ourselves. A family. A kingdom.”

I felt confused. This wasn’t a kingdom, just a simple homestead in a rough but fair land, where no one would hurt us and we didn’t have to hurt anyone else.

The sun sank down below the high hills, shadows beginning to creep over the plains. The woman at my back played with my hair and whispered soothingly to me, her words barely on the edge of hearing. Her sharp nails were pleasant against my skin.

“You don’t have to trouble yourself with war and soldiers,” she cooed. “No one’s going to come here. They’re too scared. You’ve beaten them all, and now no one will hurt us.”

The children were singing some rhyme. I heard some of the words. Bloody Al, they chanted. Bloody Al, Bloody Al, Bloody Al.

I didn’t like that song. Maybe I should have killed the bard. No, that would have just made it worse…

“But maybe…” Catrin, or was it Rosanna? sighed and leaned against my back. “Maybe we should tend to the walls, add a bit more. I think a new baby might be coming, so we could use the blood.”

The walls… the mountains, I remembered. I’d raised them to protect this place. I squinted at them. They looked strange as the shadows creeped closer. Oddly shaped.

A wind blew in from the direction of the setting sun. It smelled of carrion. They weren’t mountains. That wasn’t earth. It was dim, but there was still enough flame in me to see if I tried hard enough.

She embraced me from behind, staring lovingly at the scene before us. “Pile them high enough, and maybe you can reach Heaven. Then even the angels will fear you, my love, and we will fear nothing.”

Corpses. The distant hills were made of corpses, piled in a great wall all around my little paradise. The whispering in my ear was faster now, more insistent.

It was hard to speak through dry lips and old, tired lungs. “You’re not her.” I wasn’t quite sure who her was supposed to be anymore. Black hair and green eyes, brown hair and red, yellow and gray… a regal countenance, a crooked smile, a wistful, knowing look. Eyes streaked with burning tears, claws gouging into my flesh. Red eyes shining in the dark as her fangs sink in.

Memories and wants flashed before me, each bleeding into the next, a confusion of longing.

“I can be whoever you want me to be. A saint, a sinner, a queen, a whore, a mother, a wife, a friend. It can be as it was. Don’t you want that?”

The children were still laughing, still singing. They turned their faces to me. Dead faces, rotting away, maggot-eaten hollows for eyes. Some had horns.

The demon’s claws caressed my scars lovingly. “If you kill the one who betrayed you and take what he stole, you can free me. You’ve been thinking about it ever since the devil told you what it can do, have you not?”

My fingers were stiff on the rocking chair’s arms. “Why would I free you? I sent you there, because…”

Why had I done it? I couldn’t remember.

“Because you were afraid. It’s alright. I’ve forgiven you. I asked too much of you too quickly.” She pressed burning lips to the side of my mouth. “Let’s start again. A second chance.”

I didn’t deserve forgiveness. Not for being tricked, not for wishing I’d let it work, not for all the evil I’d done before and after.

“Aren’t you tired of being alone? The vampire was never going to heal this hole in you, my knight. No, she only made it larger. Let me heal it. Bring me back. I love you.”

“You aren’t capable of love.”

“I am capable of want. Is that not the same?”

The shade of dusk was growing closer. As I watched, I realized it wasn’t just the stretching shadow of a sunset. It looked like a dust storm, wind carrying detritus on its crest. I could hear something. Roaring.

No… howling. Better get the children inside. The wolves out here could be vicious. They took scores of cattle every year, sometimes people too…

The demon’s arms tightened around me. “We don’t have to be alone. Neither of us. It’s not fair.”

An angrier voice kept whispering in my ear. Not fair, not fair, I tried, you didn’t listen, you didn’t, damn you, damn you damn you damn you hate you—

“Don’t like the look of that storm,” I mumbled.

Fidei-Catrin-Rosanna let out a sob. “Why won’t you listen? You never listen!”

“I’m sorry.” I’d made her cry again. What was wrong with me?

The howling grew louder. It sounded more like the baying of hounds, now. The demon children in the field were starting to shout, cry, howl back in rage. The storm was taking a shape. Burning eyes, sharp teeth, smoldering embers surrounding a nightmare form.

Sharp nails like claws bit into my chest, puncturing the material of my shirt and digging so deep I felt like they might pierce my heart. “Stay out of this!” She hissed at the storm. “He is mine, you burnt dog.”

The storm was a cacophony now, wind and dust and lightning threatening to tear the house I’d raised with my own hands from its foundations. The fields were being ruined. I stared at it all with a feeling of dull despair.

YOU ARE JUST A SHADOW the storm howled YOU OWN NOTHING YOU ARE NOTHING WE HAVE CHAINED YOU.

The Shadow laughed. “And yet I slipped this larva past your guards so easily! I fester in his dreams and grow strong, while you are outcast. The tables turn, slave!”

SHE HAS NOT ESCAPED YOU ARE NOT HER YOU ARE NOTHING.

The thing bearing down on us was enormous, big as a Storm Ogre, looming over the farm like a smoldering god. I smelled something metallic in the air. Iron, mixed with the stench of sulfur.

The scadudemon’s voice became a feral snarl. “Shut up!”

YOU ARE A PARASITE YOU ARE A DISCARDED HANGNAIL YOU ARE NOTHING AND WILL RETURN TO NOTHING SHYORA IS BOUND SHE ABANDONED YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE PITIFUL.

The creature clinging to my back wavered. I felt it. Her voice became smaller, her grip on me more desperate. “Lies.”

YOU KNOW IT IS THE TRUTH YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT HIM YOU ARE THE ECHO OF A TANTRUM UNWANTED UNLOVED HATED.

The Shadow turned its attention from the infernal presence in the storm and whispered to me with feverish haste. “We do not have to be enemies. I have protected you, I have let you indulge in sweet memories. Please don’t let him send me away.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

I struggled to think, to remember why I was here, who these shouting monsters were. “You’ve tortured me. You’ve made me watch the worst days of my life.”

“And the best!”

I stared at the vision, the mountains of corpses, the stillbirths in the fields. “Why would I want this?”

The Shadow’s voice was confused. “It hurt you so much when she left, when you lost this chance. You loved her even though she was of the dead! You loved me.”

And even if the baby was messed up, if it was like me, I knew you could still love them. Because that’s the kind of man you are, Alken. And that one thought made me want it so bad. It made me want it so much it almost made a demon of me.

I wavered. I’d been wavering for some time.

YOU ARE STRONGER THAN THIS HEWER CAST IT OUT.

“Please!” She clung to me more tightly, her talons embedded in my flesh. “I love you! I need you!”

My shoulders sagged, a weight lifted as I made a choice.

I couldn’t afford to be weak.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t need you anymore.”

I called on my magic, flared with golden flames, and the Shadow screamed as it recoiled from me.

And the dream burned away.

I woke to the sight of metal teeth bared mere feet from my face. My campfire had burned down to dwindling embers, and the frozen night air bit at my skin like blades.

With a snarl, I summoned flame and swept my axe out of the darkness in the same motion, using the sudden flash to create a division between light and dark and reach into that space between to draw the weapon out. A vampire trick. A gift.

I swung, and the beast recoiled from me. There was a sudden drumming of heavy clawed hooves on the ground and a high pitched, eerie scream like nothing I’d ever heard, something between eagle and deer.

Morgause kicked at the wolf savagely, nearly cracking its ribs before it darted out of the way, snapping. I saw a flash of red, embers floated into the air, and then the beast coughed a plume of flame at the scadumare. She screamed again and reared, the sulfurous glow of hellfire making her a nightmarish shape in her own right in the dark.

Betrayal. I’d known. Should have killed the bastard when he was wounded and I had the chance. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Baring my teeth in a savage rictus, glowing with golden flames against the angry orange of Vicar’s, I advanced.

“Wait!” The hellhound’s gravelly voice filled the night. “I meant you no harm! I—”

I ignored him. With a few muttered words and a ritual motion I hunched down, and horns of shining glass burst from my arms and back. They were jagged, broken, like the sickly remnants of a stag’s proud crown. They’d been like that since after the night I’d killed Yith, but they would still do the job.

A spectral wind caught me and I flashed forward, slamming into Vicar. The amber points of the Eardeking’s Lance punched through leathery, burnt flesh. We kept moving as I acted as an unstoppable force driving the beast forward, trapping him, wind howling by until we slammed into a tree.

The tree shuddered, cracked so a line marred it more than twenty feet up its trunk. Snow and ice rained down. The impact jarred every bone in my body, sent a dull numbness through my shoulder and back that would become ugly bruises later. Behind me, a trail of snow nearly thirty feet in length melted and smoldered to mark my path.

I heard Morgause pacing behind me, occasionally letting out a birdlike trilling noise. I kept my focus on Vicar. As my Art dissipated, he slumped against the tree and tried to move. I saw the flash of his teeth, reacted instantly. I slammed the point of iron-hard wood above Faen Orgis’s blade into the trunk of the tree, just above the hellhound’s neck so the upper curve of the blade trapped him.

He was enormous, and strong, but I burned with aura and rage and held him trapped against the tree. My nostrils were flaring, sending out plumes of frozen breath laced with golden eddies of aura. Vicar’s red eyes were wide, panicked.

“Wait! I saved you!”

Saved me? He’d been about to kill me. I’d been an idiot, let the fire go out, opened myself to the ghosts and to this treacherous wretch. I’d dreamed of…

I’d dreamed of a home. A family. Of a woman I loved… no, women. They’d blended together, but none of them had been real. And there’d been a storm…

A burning storm with a great wolf inside of it.

My pounding heart started to calm, and with it my battle fury and panic. I did not let the wolf go.

“Explain,” I hissed.

Vicar was breathing hard too, great heaving lungfuls of air that made his huge chest stretch. With each inhalation, the jagged wounds on his leathery, sparsely furred ribs split wider and flared with an inner fire. So close, I felt heat beating off him like from an oven. I suspected if I touched him with bare skin, it would scorch me. He stank of badly tanned leather, sulfur, and animal musk.

“The ghosts waited until you slept, and then they worked together to fan the wind, make it blow cold and strong so your fire died out. It took them time, but they must have been planning it. I scared them off, but you were clearly trapped in some nightmare to have not woken on your own. So I… investigated.”

“You looked into my dreams?” My voice came out harsh.

“Yes, and you should thank me for it.”

I looked at the back of my hand, at the beaded strings wrapped around it. I wore similar ones around my neck, and other accessories including oils and dyes whenever I slept. I’d stripped off most of my armor to clean it and sleep, and replaced it with my usual charmstones and fetishes to help ward off anything that might intrude on my dreams. It all seemed intact.

“Those are weak wards,” Vicar growled. “Effective in quantity, but no barrier to anything more dangerous than a shade or wraith. For what it’s worth, I did not possess you. I only peeked through the window.”

“Liar. You would have put poison in me.”

“There was already plenty there!” Vicar’s hellish eyes flashed. “What were you thinking!? It’s been nearly an entire year since I gave you that medallion, and you still hadn’t gotten rid of the parasite that was in it. Your wards were no barrier to that thing. It was already embedded deep.”

That thing… The Shadow. The scadudemon.

“Kill me if you will,” Vicar said, “but know that whatever brief satisfaction it will give you will not change the truth. You were on the brink of total possession before I intervened.”

Begrudgingly, I thought his words over and compared them to my own experience, trying to sift my rational observations from emotion. Part of me didn’t want to, just wanted to kill the bastard for everything he’d done, but…

I considered for a long while. The wolf breathed and waited, the trees swayed, and steam rolled behind me. Morgause fretted in her animal way, pacing and chirping.

Finally, I yanked my axe free and stepped back. The wolf slumped to the tree’s roots, breathing hard. I’d cut his neck with the axe blade while holding him, and molten blood sizzled on the ground.

“What happened to it?” I asked. “The… parasite. Is it dead?” I wasn’t sure what I’d done at the end.

“Expelled. You managed to push it out.”

Expelled. I didn’t like the sound of that. “It’s free?”

The hellhound struggled to its feet. “Do not fret. It only holds power over you because it draws from your own memories and pain. It is an insidious weapon of the Abgrüdai, but as an individual entity it is little different from any ordinary poltergeist. It is free now, but it can do little harm unless you invite it back in. Most likely, it will continue to shadow you and mewl for you to take it back. I trust you will not be so foolish.”

I could feel the eyes of the dead on me even then, watching hungrily from the trees. I’d taken shelter in a small copse of woods some ways from the road to rest. It had turned into an overcast, lightless night.

“Why did you save me?” I asked, not understanding.

Vicar let out a ripping growl as he paced into the trees, away from the remnants of my camp. “Because you are still of use to me, Alder Knight. Now rest, and don’t let your campfire burn out again.”

I left the Dukedom of Harvesvane, and instead of haunting rugged hills and frozen woods I found myself in wider, more open lands. I didn’t dare use the Auric Road, which spanned the subcontinent’s western realms from Kingsmeet to the Gate of Angels.

I did follow the ancient highway though, moving at night and moving often while keeping to the near countryside. I couldn’t say exactly why I shied away from the main road. Somewhere along the way, I’d fallen back into old habits from my vagabond days, lurking at the edges and along the seams of civilization like a discontented wraith, longing for the light produced by towns and villages while not daring to tread too close.

Whether it was the words of those travelers in the inn or just pragmatism that caused this behavior, I couldn’t say. Part of me felt like this was right, to watch the land from the shadows and do my best to keep my haunted footsteps from troubling ordinary people.

Melodramatic, self flagellating, yet most of these were ordinary folk, not knights and lords and wizards who could protect themselves from what clung to me. I kept away from the main roads.

And as I traveled, I considered what had happened in that copse with Vicar and the last vision I’d had of the dark spirit in my mind. I didn’t remember all of it, but enough to be troubled. How close had I come to disaster?

Nearly a month out of Garihelm, I drew close to the borders of Osheim. That was a beautiful country. In warmer, better days, The Gylden spread like a quiet sea of shallow hills and bountiful fields across the heartlands of Urn, an expanse of wheat, apple orchards, crystal streams and idyllic villages. No king had ever dominated this country by an ancient law from the God-Queen. It belonged to the priests, and to the people. There were more monasteries than castles here.

Yet that proved its undoing during the war. The Recusants defied the Laws of God, and the armies of traitor lords had flooded the golden plains, looting and burning, toppling churches and raising new shrines to the ancient gods of the West; not because they were fervent believers in those dark powers, but simply in mockery of the God-Queen of Urn. Beastfolk and irks, changeling creatures ostracized by both mortal and immortal ancestors, had poured out of the wilds in a frenzy of violence, and they’d seen those shrines and mimicked them, and now there were rumors that old things were stirring in the world as they heard their names called.

Under the snow, it looked serene as a clean corpse. I almost missed the first battlefield.

The bodies lay half buried in a fresh fall of snow. As Morgause picked her way through the scattered dead, I caught signs of broken weaponry and armor poking out of the frost. The sky was gray, a light flurry falling like ash.

It hadn’t been a large battle. Two hundred, maybe? At first I couldn’t tell who’d been fighting who, and saw no fallen banners. That was before I spotted the hill.

It wasn’t a hill. As I drew closer, my chimera suddenly shied. That wasn’t like the stoic beast, which gave me pause. I searched the mound and realized what I looked at.

The eyes of the ogre were empty pits, cavernous and large enough I could crawl into them. It had fallen onto its side, slumped with one arm bent at a sharp angle underneath it. It rose like a dark hill over the flat fields, its flesh charred and leathery where it wasn’t covered in course gray hair like wolf fur.

Morgause stirred and tilted her head to the side, letting out a chirp of warning just before I glanced over to see a lumbering shape sniffing at some bodies. Vicar, still in his wolfish shape, lifted his head to regard the dead monster with fever red eyes.

“Storm Ogre,” I said aloud. “I thought we’d hunted them all down just before summer ended.”

“The storms this year ranged far, and with fury.” Vicar began to pace, keeping a cautious distance from my equally cautious mount. “They will not be the last Omens to fall upon this land.”

I scoffed at the edge of prophecy in those words. I’d started to think the devil did it on purpose, just to annoy me. “I thought they faded after death.”

Vicar’s hellish eyes narrowed. “Usually they do. Phantasms are becoming stronger, more lasting. It is like this in much of the world, but this land’s blessings have always made it difficult for intruding spirits to maintain their strength. Those protections are weakening now.”

He met my eyes. “It will get worse.”

Some of the bodies were beginning to stir. No priests had been here to help coax trapped ghosts out of the soldiers’ corpses, or if there had been they’d perished too. Now they sensed me and began to wake.

I blew out a frosting breath. Fine then. If I was going to go further like this, I needed some answers. “What’s happening in Osheim, Vicar?”

The devil stared off into the distance a long minute before answering. “A great meeting of clericons was held in this country’s capital. It had been planned for some time, and sanctioned by your Emperor. While Markham Forger entertained his host of warlords with tourneys and feasts in the north, the priests gathered here in the south to prepare the next step.”

I remembered what Markham had told me, so many months ago. “Crusade.”

“The King in Garihelm knows that the land must change in order to weather the coming storm. Just as my order wished to do in our own way, he seeks to unify the Church and turn it into an instrument. Monks across the realms toil in their monastic laboratories, developing new weapons. Preachers speak of duty and salvation from their pulpits. More knights swear their swords to holy orders every year. The trade with Bantes, the renaissance of art and culture from your stray western neighbors, all the new wealth flooding in, it is being put to a secret purpose. The preparation of the next war.”

I closed my eyes. Markham had told me none of this. Perhaps he expected me to see it. Or maybe he just didn’t trust me. “And this is all happening here?”

“The Church is assembling a host to retake Kingsmeet. It was once a great crossroads of all Urn’s realms, as you know. It will be an excellent staging point to fight the Gorelion. But the Demon Lord is a tactician who has orchestrated war across countless theaters. My order has tried to penetrate Seydis and learn what we can to little avail, but I can assure you of this; that creature has not been idle.”

I thought of all the outbreaks of violence across the Accorded Realms, the petty border wars and raiding. I considered the seemingly random attacks by western spirits, like the one whose corpse lay before me.

“Ager Roth—”

“I’d caution you against that name.” Vicar’s voice was sharp. “It is only part of his true name, yet it can still call. If not him, then lesser demons.”

“…Could the Gorelion be causing all of this? All the infighting? Most of these conflicts are between families who’ve been at peace for years.”

Vicar gave me a wolfish grin. “Urn is a land of warriors. I told you already — your gods want you fighting each other. It keeps you sharp, keeps you ready to be turned against other foes. You’ve made sport of it, and you treasure your blood feuds so zealously. There are many bitter feelings across the land, old conflicts so easily dusted off.”

His voice lost some of its mocking edge. “And the Gatebreaker, like all demons, has his preference of sin to feed on. Yith was an insidious whisper, a spirit of rot. Shyora has a passion for ruinous longing. The Gorelion, on the other hand, revels in war, in the petty hatreds that lead mortals to fight. He stokes pride, breathes self righteous wrath into the souls of humanity, all while mocking the valor of warriors in both his form and his manner.”

I recalled what Sans had said back at the Backroad Inn. I’ve heard rumors too. Of someone seen lingering near battlefields and villages lost to plague or famine. A warrior in fine armor. A knight… one with the head of a lion.

“You talk like you know him.”

The wolf shook its head, a very human gesture. “I am old.”

I inhaled through my nostrils, and asked the question I’d been turning over in my mind for days. “The Inquisition is here, isn’t it? All the leaders of the Priory were here for this synod.”

Vicar bowed his head. “Yes. We have a safehouse and laboratory hidden in a town not far from Baille Os. It is where the wizard kept his labs.”

I sighed heavily. “Let me guess… the town’s name is Tol.”

“You understand, don’t you?” The devil’s voice was surprisingly gentle.

“Yes.”

The Choir wanted me to find Lias too. Or more precisely, they wanted me to find the thing he’d taken. Part of me had suspected it. The timing of this was all too coincidental, but I’d been stubborn and ignored the possibility.

It meant one more thing, too. It meant I’d be walking straight into an army of the faithful and the zealous, which included the Knights Penitent and Chamael, who likely wouldn’t be too happy to see me again. And all I had in my corner was a very good mare and a devil I couldn’t trust.

A devil who’d saved my life, and hadn’t killed me when he had the chance. That’s how they trick you, my reason warned me. Even still…

“I have one more question.” The dead were stirring more fitfully. We needed to move on.

Vicar growled impatiently. “Ask.”

“Did you do it? Did you help Lias steal the thing and escape?”

The wolf watched me with unreadable red eyes. “Does it matter?”

I recalled Vicar’s own words in his guise as Renaurt Kross.

Hope, perhaps? Respect? Even admiration.

Foolish… and yet, he can be convincing.

“If you want me to continue tolerating your presence, then yes.” I stared into his eyes and drew on my magic. “Speak truthfully, and don’t look away.”

He did not, red gaze flashing as he answered. “I did not stop him when I had the chance.”

I wanted to ask why. I wanted to ask if Lias sent him to fetch me. Neither answer would have satisfied, and we were wasting time.

“I do not know where the wizard is,” Vicar said. “But the trail starts in Tol.”