FIRE

The great plains gave way to a landscape of cracked, sun-baked earth and wind-scoured rock.
We had reached the Irene Desert.
 
The air itself felt hostile, a dry, abrasive heat that stole the moisture from your breath and promised no relief.
Even the sky seemed to have its blue bleached, and the sun seemingly white.
It was easy to feel insignificant, us five, against the very best Dietha had to offer, and of herself too.

Behind us, a full day's march away, the vanguard of the First Company was a distant shimmer of steel.

Our days on the march were of discipline.
My mornings were now spent in, dare I say, ritualistic training.
Xerta had taken Silus's gruff advice to heart and had appointed herself my unforgiving tutor.
We would spar as the sun rose, the clang of her hammer against my Gladius was the only sound in the vast stillness.

"You're still thinking like a wizard!" she'd bark.

She'd say all this as her hammer forced me into a desperate block that sent a shockwave up my arm.

"You see the flaw, then you tell your arm to hit it. Too slow! The seeing and the hitting have to be the same thing! Your eyes, your arm, your sword, they're all one!"

It was brutal, but in some weird way, uniquely humbling.

"She's right, you know," Silus said.

"Stop trying to command the blade, you dimwit. Become the blade. Feel the momentum. Let your parry flow into your riposte. It will come eventually boy, it ain't no series of calculations"

What did Cassandra do to our inertly silly SIlus?
Only God he knows.

During these sessions, I could feel the others watching.
Tulote would look on, and shout me advice whenever he wasn't busy coordinating with the armies.
Cassandra would float around with a sort of thoughtful, analytical gaze.
The demoness was just there.

I think Xerta enjoyed beating the ever living crap out of me.

—

On the fifth day of our march, Cassandra, who had been scouting ahead in her shadowy form, coalesced beside us, and she was ANGRY.

"I've found something." she said, ber voice tight. "A forward encampment. But it's not a military outpost, it's a damn slaughterhouse."

We followed her to the crest of a low, sun-blasted mesa.
The sight below was an absolute vision from the deepest circle of hell.
A sprawling, makeshift camp had been erected around a crude, obsidian ziggurat that pulsed with a sickening, chaotic energy.
Hundreds of demons, from hulking brutes to chittering, lesser imps, patrolled the perimeter.
But it was the centre of the camp that stole the breath from our lungs.

Hundreds of men, women, and children from the desert tribes, their faces etched with terror and despair, were caged in pens of sharpened bone.
A procession of them was being led up the steps of the ziggurat by robed, chanting demon-priests.
At the apex, they were sacrificed, and it was as though their life force was being siphoned.
It seemed to be feeding the swirling vortex of pure Chaos that hung above the altar.

"It's a ritual," I breathed.

"They're not just killing them. They're using their souls as fuel."

"To weaken the veil, to create a conduit to draw more of Dietha's raw essence into this word. This is not just murder, my child. This is an act of desecration upon my people."

I looked at my companions.
Cassandra's face was pale white, and she was full of rage.
The demoness's posture was rigid, and I could tell that her gaze was locked on the atrocity.
But it was Tulote who broke.

His legendary composure, the strategic calm that had saved cities and fleets wholeheartedly, disappeared.
His stoic face and its grief, twisted into a visage of pure, unrestrained fury.
The ground around his feet began to crack, and small pebbles floated into the air, held aloft by the sheer force of his rage.

"My parents gave their all to shelter the innocent" he roared.

"They died to protect them from this FILTH."

He drew his Flamma, but it was different.
The blade usually erupted as a controlled flame, but this time it was a raging inferno.

"I will not stand by and watch their legacy be defiled. Not again."

"Tulote, wait!" I called out, reaching for him. "Don't go charging without me!"

"LISTEN HERE, YOU GUYS. The plan is that NONE of them are left standing."

He charged.
There was no strategy, no thought of tactics.
It was a singular, incandescent act of righteous fury.
He flowed down the scree,

"That's my son!" Silus cheered.

For a heartbeat, the others were stunned into inaction.

Then Xerta let out a guttural roar that was almost as loud as Tulote's.

"Well, what are we waiting for?! The big man's started the party!" She bellowed.

She charged after him, her harmer held high.
It felt like something straight out of Skyrim, but nowhere near as buggy.

Cassandra cursed, a sharp, elven oath.

"So much for the scalpel approach. Guess i'll be bashing more heads today!"

She dissolved into the shadows.

The Demoness, or rather the Veiled Knight as I'll start referring to her from now on, was already moving, her twin blades of dark steel unsheathed as she descended.
She headed towards the pens holding the prisoners.

I moved behind them all.
I charged into the fray, with the Gladius Nobellus in hand.
It felt good doing this again, just like in the elven forest.

-

Tulote was magnificant and terrifying.
He showed us all why he was the son of Silus and Usasha that day.
The earth itself seemed to rise to do his bidding.
Great, jagged spikes of granite erupted from the ground, impaling entire squads of demon guards.
He swung Flamma in wide, devastating arcs, and waves of fire incinerated everything in their path.

Xerta fought at his side.
Where Tulote's power was vast and destructive, hers was focused and brutal.
Her hammer rose and fell, shattering demonic shields, caving in armoured heads, and breaking the lines of the guards who tried to form a phalanx against Tulote's onslaught.

Cassandra was a nightmare in of herself, i mean she moved in the shadows for crying out loud.
She moved unseen, a flicker in the corner of the naked eye.
The demon-priests, their attention focused on the ritual, simply collapsed at the altar, their chanting cut short with a wet gurgle.

And I... well I became the swordsman Silus had demanded.

"Don't chase them Arda, let em come to you. Feel the pattern to their attacks. There. The pause between the second and third swing. That's your opening." Silus coached as I fought.

I parried, a circular motion that deflected the demon's blades and spun it off-balance.
I didn't need to look for a flaw in its armour; my sword was already moving, the tip finding the gap beneath its arm with a grace that was not my own, but was becoming mine.
The demon crumpled.

"Good," Silus grunted. "Now again. Faster."

I moved through the battlefield, as a true warrior.
I mixed my perception of Order and my newfound swordsmanship.
I didn't just see the threads of my enemies; I saw the threads of the battle itself.
The lines of attack, the shifting balance of the fight, the moments of opportunity.
The Gladius was no longer just a key.
I used it as it was intended to, as a sword.

At the edge of the battle, the Veiled Knight reached the bone caged.
The guards there were numerous, and they swarmed her.
Her twin blades were as a defensive storm, deflecting, parrying, and only killing when absolutely necessary.
It was as though her entire focus was on one thing.
To protect the innocent.
As a massive, ogre-like demon brought a colossal club down on her, she met the blow with her crossed blades.
The impact was immense, shaking the ground tremendously.

For a fraction of a second, as the chaotic energy of the blow washed over her, the Knight's form seemed to lose its substance.
The edges of her armour, the lines of her blades, became translucent.
I could almost see the dim outline of the setting sun through her form.
Then, just as quickly, she was solid again, and with a powerful shove, she threw the staggering demon into the path of Xerta's hammer.
.

.

The moment was so fleeting, lost in the heat of combat, that no one else seemed to notice.
But I had seen it.
I had seen her begin to fade.

With the priests dead and the guards in disarray, the ritual faltered.
The vortex of chaotic energy above the ziggurat began to collapse.
Enraged, the last of the elite guards, a creature of shadow and flame, lunged at the cages, intending to slaughter the prisons before they could be freed.

The Veiled Knight moved to intercept.
But she was not alone.

I was there, my blade a flash of white light.
Tulote was there, with both the fire in his eyes and on his sowrd, and Xerta was there with her hammer.

We formed a wall of four in front of the cages, a desperate, impromptu shield wall.
The demon was powerful, but against our combined might, it stood no chance.
And to be fair, it was as strong as Abaddon at best.
Xerta shattered its shield, I severed its sword arm, and the Veiled Knight's twin blades plunged into its heart.

"Traitor!" I heard it hiss before it died.

I heard a sort of "tsk" from the Knight.
I'd have to figure out her story sooner than later.

The battle was over.
The surviving demons, their ritual broken and their leaders dead, fled into the desert wastes.

We freed the prisoners.
They were weak, terrified, but they were alive.
They wept, they clung to us, their words of gratitude, really kept our weary souls going.
I saw Xerta gently lift a small crying child into her arms.
Her face softened.

She looked over the child's head and her eyes met mine.
At that moment I felt happy, we understood the terrible weight of what it meant to fight for a family.

As the sun set, casting long, bloody shadows across the plains, we watched the liberated tribes people begin their long journey back to their hidden oasis.
We had saved yet another people.

.

.

.

But as I looked at the Veiled Knight, who stood apart from us, I saw it again.
A faint shimmer at the edges of her form, a slight transparency, as if she were becoming more memory than reality.
The victory felt immense, but it was tainted by this.
One of our own was fading away, and I was the only one who had noticed.