Arc 2: Chapter 22: Crow

Arc 2: Chapter 22: Crow

I found Emma, as Nath had promised, wandering lost in the woods. She didn’t look amused. Indeed, she’d drawn her fine sword and was in the process of swiping it at Wil-O’ Wisps.

The ghostly spirits, for their part, seemed to be enjoying the game. They swept in and out of Emma’s reach in turns, giggling like children. Sweat beaded on Emma’s face, and she looked very pale — they’d drawn some of her warmth out of her. These had little in common with the small, mostly harmless spirits I’d encountered at the House of Irn Bale. In the Wend, the wisps had grown large and glowed a sickly blue-green, bloated from the stagnant od.

Sighing, I stepped out of the shadows and drew on my aura. “That’s enough,” I said, my words carrying a slight echo of power. “Begone.”

The spirits scattered, vanishing into the forest. I stepped forward, taking a moment to make sure we had no more unwelcome company, then turned my attention on Emma. Winded, she took a moment to catch her breath before glaring at me. “I had it under control.”

I nodded. “No doubt, but we’re on a timetable. If you want to keep practicing swordplay on incorporeal spirits, though, be my guest.”

Scowling, she sheathed her blade and cast a furtive look into the night. “They are malicious things. I’ve been going in circles, and...” she swallowed. “Well, it wasn’t just them. I do not like this place. The air feels foul.” She returned her amber eyes to me. “Where were you?”

“Talking to your benefactor,” I admitted. “Nath wanted a private word.

Emma’s eyes widened at that. “Then... what now?”

“Now...” I sighed. “Now, we talk to your ancestor.”

***

Fresh snow had fallen over the field beyond Orcswell, veiling the signs of the furious battle that had raged there little more than a day before. I could no longer see the patches of burnt ground, the ichorous sludge the hellhounds had dissolved into, the evil rune with which the Scorchknight had scarred the frozen earth.

The tree, however, remained. Like a skeletal black appendage reaching up from clean white surrounds, its jagged, leafless limbs looked especially sharp under the moons, and starkly black.

I took a deep breath of the night air, only mildly tainted still with the stench of sulfur. I steeled myself — not for the tree and the nightmare trapped in it, but for the conversation I needed to have with Emma.

“I need to talk to you about what happens next,” I said to her, stopping a distance away from the tree. “I have a way to end this, but it might put you in even more danger.”

Emma pursed her lips in a slight frown, taking this in. Whatever else might be said about the impetuous young noble, she wasn’t slow. “How so?”

“It will involve more powers,” I said. “Once done... I might not be able to control what happens next. I’ll do everything I can, but you have to understand that I’m tossing a set of dice and seeing what numbers come up. I can’t make you any guarantees.”

I turned on her. Tall for her age and gender, she still had to look up to meet my eyes. We made an odd pair in that snowy field, me tall and garbed in a dull red cloak, frayed by many long miles and strange roads, pointed cowl shadowing my features. Her, clad all in black and velvet, the image of the shadowy aristocrat, almost vampiric under the moonlight.

“I’m here to back you,” I said to her. “Not to make your decisions for you. There are some things about me you should know, other... interests, pulling at me. Nath is just one of them, and I don’t think she has any more control over the outcome here than I do. I can give you knowledge, let you make the choice with open eyes, but I can’t promise you a happy ending.”

Emma chewed on those words a while. She bit her lip in thought, her gaze wandering toward the black tree. Finally, in a quiet voice that hid none of her uncertainty she asked, “can’t it just be your choice? You’ve known what to do until now.”

I realized something then, seeing the indecision on the girl’s face. She’d spent her entire life at the mercy of others, that life dictated by choices people both in the present and the past made. Now I gave her the chance to take some agency back, and it scared her.

I empathized. I’d chosen to give away much of my own agency because of that same fear, and...

I’d regretted it every day since.

“I rarely ever know what to do,” I admitted. “It’s up to you, milady. It’s your life.”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then snapped her attention to me. Standing tall, chin up in aristocratic command she made her choice. “Tell me. All of it.”

And I did.

“I used to be a knight,” I said quietly, eyes drifting away in recollection. “A knight, and a damn good fighter. But I made some bad choices, trusted the wrong people, and ended up getting excommunicated by the Church, stripped of my titles by the Accord. I wanted to make amends, try to fix some of the damage I’d helped cause. I fought for the Accord during the war against the Recusants. For three years after Elfhome burned, I fought. When the war ended, I wandered, adrift, like a ghost. I took to drinking. I was aimless.”

I remembered those days of mead-haze and emotional fugue. I’d been like a living dead man, a wretch. I clenched a hand into a fist against my sternum, hating the memory, ashamed by it. Emma, for her part, only listened intently.

“One day, when I got close to... ending things, Nath’s brethren offered me a road through the new world, which had become so dark in my eyes. I became their blade in the night, their executioner. I’m still tied to what I was, though, and beings like Nath are drawn to that. Not just her, but ghosts, monsters... demons. It’s the light they put in us. It’s like a torch, guiding in moths.”

Emma’s brow furrowed. “Why are you telling me this? What does it have to do with what’s happening here?”

“I’m telling you because what we do next might draw a lot of attention on me, and you. Not all of it pleasant. I want to dispute Orley’s presence here, officially, which means getting immortals involved. I won’t put you in that situation without your consent, and to truly give that you need to know what I am, and that my role in this could... change.”

“Is there an alternative?” Emma asked.

I nodded. “I fight everything that tries to come after you, and hope it buys you time to escape, to hide. I’ll probably die, and you’ll probably still end up getting hunted down, but it might give you a chance.” I shrugged.

Emma’s mouth fell open. “You would do that? For me? Why?”

I inhaled deeply through my nose, feeling strangely calm. “Because the gods can be assholes. I might fight where they tell me to, but I do it my way. And if they’re willing to damn you for your family’s crimes, then they’re not worth following. I’d rather be an oathbreaker than serve that.”

The Priory had gotten involved to avoid inquisition and possible crusade, that was it. They wanted to deal with the situation quietly, so the presence of infernal powers didn’t start religiously motivated panic. That had to be it. Because, if he was anything but what he appeared, and I’d told him all of that, then...

He crushed all of my hopes with brutal, dispassionate bluntness. “I am afraid this farce has run its course. Understand, you did ask for this.”

Feeling that pit in my chest form a hollow place, draining all my emotions into it, I spoke with the same lack of passion he did. “What are you talking about?”

Emma had approached when Kross had made his sudden appearance, casting a confused look between us. “Ser Kross? How did you... what is going on?”

I heard metal grind, and knew Orley had stirred at Emma’s nearness. My attention remained on Kross, who finally directed his gaze on me. His lips twisted into a malformed smile.

“You wish to challenge the right of Orkael to pass judgment on the scion of House Carreon? You understand, Jon Orley is but an iron fist. You must have expected there to be an advocate, just as you no doubt sought your own in that rebel seraph.”

“You fought with us against him!” I took a step forward, unable to contain the bitter emotion that welled up in me, despite my attempt to quench it.

“I had to maintain this cover,” Kross said with lifted eyebrows, unaffected by my anger. “Though, I am certain Orley took satisfaction in wounding me. He hates us nearly as much as the ones who betrayed him. Then again, the armor was perhaps a bit much.” He glanced at the Scorchknight. “I understand it is quite painful.”

“Us?” Emma had no clue what was going on. “What is happening? Explain this, Ser Kross.”

“You’re carrying an angel around on your back!” I couldn’t accept it, couldn’t bring myself to fully admit I’d been so easily duped, so starstruck by the image of a True Knight.

“Alken, Alken...” Kross sighed and lowered his head, shaking it in disappointment. “I thought you knew this lore! As I said in the council, the followers of Zos are kinfolk to the Onsolain, no less holy than they.”

Baring my teeth, I brought my aura to bear and looked, using my paladin powers to see through illusion, cleave through falsity. And I saw...

The same thing I’d seen in the graveyard. Around Kross bloomed a soft light, cold and clean, forming the shape of a winged figure holding his neck in an embrace. It opened its silver-white eyes and met my gaze, and—

I realized my mistake. I'd seen the beauty, and stopped looking there. The being who rode Kross was beautiful, yes, as much as any immortal I’d ever laid eyes on save one. But it had a malice in its gaze, a metallic harshness even Nath did not possess. And Kross himself...

I’d been a fool. The spirit clinging to him masked his own aura. I’d never felt his own presence, not once. How else could he walk freely among the faithful, disguised as a holy warrior?

Kross watched my realization, then chuckled. “Very well. I suppose it is only fair, since you removed your mask for me.”

He bowed his head, and... changed. His gray cloak began to shift like liquid shadow, melting and reforming, coiling about his neck into a high scarf. The armor beneath rippled, softening into robes such a deep gray they were nearly black. The gauntlets became loose sleeves, the steel sabatons roughly made leather boots. The buckled sword belt frayed and wound into a simple rope tied about his waist.

A very different man stood before me a moment later. He looked older, though not by much, and not so tall. He hunched beneath a worn, charcoal gray robe, similar to what a mendicant priest might wear. The garment, layered and badly frayed, soot-stained, looked ancient, and obscured the figure beneath in deep shadow. Still, I could see the eyes beneath the heavy cowl.

They burned like twin embers.

Emma took a step back from the transformed knight. “What sorcery is this?”

“No sorcery,” the cowled monk said. His voice held none of Kross’s warm, paternal airs. Cold, without emotion, with a hint of a throaty growl in it. “Just a glamour. Honestly, I expected at several points your guardian would see through it. The power must be truly faded from you, Alder Knight.”

“Who exactly are you, sir?” Emma drew herself up, responding to uncertainty with haughty demand, an Urnic noble through and through. I failed to say anything, too busy putting together small details, little hints. The way his broken arm had healed so quickly in the middle of the fight with Jon Orley. His knowledge about esoteric lore, the scorn he’d directed toward Brenner’s clericon. He’d practically told us what he was, in the council chamber.

“You may call me Vicar.” The monk bowed his head to Emma, folding his hands into his wide sleeves.

I realized then that I recognized him. “You were in Strekke,” I said. “In Emery Planter’s keep. The monk advising his son.”

“Hm?” Vicar returned his attention to me. I could see very little of the face beneath the cowl — just the impression of a chin and wide mouth, and those two hot-coal eyes, red on black. “Ah. You must be referring to one of my brothers. Yes, Emery Planter was one of ours, or very nearly so. My brother told me about you, Headsman. Quite uncouth of the Choir, to send you to poach his soul before we could lay full claim to it. Still, his son has proved quite cooperative.”

“Who are you?” Emma insisted, exasperated. “What exactly is happening here?”

“He is a Crowfriar of Orkael,” I stated flatly. “A missionary of Hell.”

Emma blinked, then turned back to the creature who’d called itself Renuart Kross. “A missionary?”

“Among other things,” the devil monk said with a slight bow of his hooded head.

I drew my blade. I didn’t think about the action, didn’t care about anything other than that I’d told this man — no, not a man — everything. Nearly everything.

“Oh, it’s too late for that.” Vicar didn’t so much as flinch at the dagger. “Thanks to your little stunt, force of arms will play no part in what happens next. We settle this now by precedent of law, by the Rite of Doom, with Emma Carreon’s fate in the balance. You will speak for the Choir, and as Jon Orley’s handler, I will speak for the Tribunal.” In an amused tone he added, “you invoked this, Alken.”

“Fine then,” I spat. I sheathed the dagger, too angry to be embarrassed. “Let’s get this over with.”

The Devil nodded. “So be it, Headsman.”