KNIGHT

With the full might of the First Company on the march, the vast, empty plains of the Irene Desert's threshold had become akin to a chessboard.
We. the small fellowship, at its end, were deployed by Tulote and General Kaelen to solve the deadliest problems before the main army arrived.

Scouts had identified a series of fortified demonic outposts fanned out across our path, watchtowers and garrisoned ruins that served as Dietha's eyes and ears.
To leave them standing would be to invite harassment of our supply lines and give her a clear picture of our advance.
They had to be eliminated.
Swiftly and simultaneously.

"We split into two teams." Tulote declared.

The decision of who went with whom was made not by command, but by a strange, unspoken sense of oneness.
Cassandra, with her mastery of illusion and stealth, naturally paired with Xerta, whose raw direct power was the perfect complement to elven subtlety.
They were assigned a heavily fortified position in a narrow canyon.
As they prepared to depart, Xerta caught my eye and gave me a curt, single nod.
It was a complete conversation in one gesture:
Watch your back. I'll watch theirs. See you on the other side.

When I turned, the Veiled Knight was already standing beside me, her twin blades sheathed, her masked gaze fixed on the western horizon where our own target lay.
There was no discussion.
It was simply understood.
We were a unit.
Tulote looked at us, a flicker of concern in his eyes, but he nodded his assent.
He had witnessed our synergy in the dungeon and on the mountain.
He trusted it, even if he didn't understand it.

Our objective was a lone watchtower, built around the skeletal remains of an ancient oasis.
We walked for hours in a consuming silence.
The silence was a strange thing.
With Tulote, it would have been filled with the comfortable weight of brotherhood.
With Xerta, it would have been a practical, no-nonsense quiet.
With the Veiled Knight, it was a chasm of unspoken questions.
It was like staring into the void.

I found myself studying her, trying to decipher the enigma within the midnight-blue armour.
Her movements were a paradox of demonic speed and a disciplined, almost sorrowful, grace.

As we neared the oasis, my perception of Order reached out, painting a picture of the scene ahead in my mind.

"Twenty of them," I murmured.

"Fifteen lesser guards, four captains at the cardinal points of the tower, and one commander on the top level. The entire structure is warded with a chaotic alarm spell, tied to the commander. If he senses us, the whole desert will know we're here."

She didn't speak, but she drew one of her twin blades and pointed its tip towards a crumbling section of the outer wall, far from the main gate.
The message was clear: We don't use the door.

Our assault was silent.
I led the way, using my perception to guide us through the blind spots in the sentries' patrol patterns.
We reached the crumbling wall she had indicated.
It was still too high to climb easily.
I looked at the loose rocks, at the precarious balance of the ancient stone.
The Veiled Knight placed a gauntleted hand on my shoulder, a silent question.
I nodded.
She understood instantly.

She didn't create a distraction.
She became one.
With a burst of speed, she darted into the open, a flicker of movement on the far side of the oasis.
It was just enough to draw the eyes of the two nearest guards for a single, crucial second.
In that second, I focused my will on the wall.
I didn't destroy it.
I... nudged the threads.
With a low groan, a section of the wall slumped inwards, creating a makeshift ramp.
By the time the guards turned back, I was gone, and the Knight had already melted back into the shadows.

We moved through the outpost like two parts of a single thought.
There was no need for words.
I would glance at a guard on a high walkway, and she was already scaling the wall.
She would point towards a magically sealed door, and I was already there, the Gladius glowing softly as I reached out with my power and unwove the chaotic threads of the lock until it simply fell apart.

The synergy we'd discovered in Dietha's grey wasteland was real.
It was an inexplicable, terrifying and beautiful thing.

We reached the base of the main tower.
The four captains, hulking brutes in thick chitinous armour, stood guard.
A frontal assault was suicide.

The Knight held up two fingers, then pointed to herself and then to me.
She then pointed up, towards the commander at the top of the tower.
You go. I'll handle these.

Before I could protest, she moved.
She didn't charge them.
She slammed the pommel of her blade into a large, clay pot of oil standing nearby.
The pot shattered, spilling its contents across the stone floor.
With a flick of her wrist, she sent a tiny spark of chaotic energy into the oil.
It erupted in a wall of black, choking smoke and brilliant flame, instantly separating two of the captains from the others and throwing the entire area into confusion.

It was the opening I needed.
I sprinted for the stairs, leaving her to face four elite demons alone.

I reached the top level just as the commander, a whip-thin demon with wings of smoke, turned from its survey of the desert, its eyes widening in shock.
Its mouth opened to let out the psychic alarm.

It was too late.
The Gladius was already in motion.
My movements were fluid, precise.
I parried its desperate, flailing strike with an ease that would have been impossible months ago, the blade's song of pure Order harmonising with my own will.
The fight was over in three perfect, economical movements.
A parry, a riposte that disarmed it, and a final, clean thrust that ended it.

As I turned, I felt a surge of chaotic energy from below.
I raced down the stairs, my heart pounding with a sudden, terrible fear.

I found the Veiled Knight standing in a circle of four dissolving demonic corpses.
She had won.
But the cost was becoming terrifyingly clear.

She stood with her back to me, her shoulders heaving slightly.
As I watched, her entire form shimmered violently.
For a full, heart-stopping second, she became translucent, a figure of smoked glass and twilight.
I could see the crumbling stone wall of the tower through her body.
A faint, dark mist, like heat rising from asphalt, seemed to bleed from the seams of her armour.
Then, with a visible effort, she solidified, her form becoming opaque once more.
But she stumbled, her hand going to the wall to steady herself.
It was the first sign of weakness I had ever seen from her.

We rested for an hour amidst the silent ruin of the outpost before moving on, the desert sun beginning its slow descent.
We did not speak of what I had seen.
The silence between us was now stretched taut, filled with my dawning horror and her unbreakable secrecy.

Our second target was a smaller encampment in a narrow box canyon.
The fight was short, brutal and forced her to exert herself again.
She moved to shield me from a powerful, unexpected blast of soul-fire from a hidden demon sorcerer.
She took the full force of the spell on her crossed blades.
The chaotic energy of the blast washed over her, and this time, the fading was worse.
She flickered like a dying candle flame, her form wavering between reality and nothingness for several long seconds before she could pull herself back together
When she solidified, she fell to one knee, a choked, distorted gasp escaping the filter of her helm.

That was the last straw.
That evening, as we made a cold camp in the shelter of the canyon walls, I confronted her.
The twin moons of this world cast long, pale shadows across the sand.

"I saw it," I said, my voice low but firm.

"At Kaelen's Peak, and twice today. You're... fading. Your body becomes like glass. What is happening to you?"

She remained perfectly still, her masked face a void in the moonlight.

I took a step closer, my voice softening with a desperate plea.

"You spoke of a contract, of a cosmic law that Dietha had broken. Is this the price for your own intervention? For saving my children? Are you dying?"

Her silence was my only answer.

"Damn it, talk to me!" I finally snapped.

"Who are you? Why are you doing this? WHY DO I FEEL LIKE I KNOW YOU?!"

My outburst was met with the same stillness.
But then she trembled.
It began as a faint tremor in her gauntleted hands and quickly escalated, her entire armoured form shaking with a violent, uncontrollable shudder.
A thin, dark smoke, like the exhalation of a dying soul, began to seep from the visor of her helm and the joints of her armour.

She collapsed, crying out in a choked, distorted gasp of pure agony as she fell to the sand, her body convulsing.

I rushed to her side, my hands hovering over her, a terrible helplessness washing over me.
I reached out with my power, the restorative light of Order gathering in my palms, but I hesitated.
The one time she had touched Xerta, she had transferred her own chaotic energy.
What would my pure Order do to her?
Would it heal her, or would it be a poison that unmade her from the inside out?

I knelt beside the collapsed, trembling form of my mysterious protector, the woman who had saved my children, who fought with a sorrowful grace, who was now dying before my eyes.

And in the vast, cold, and unforgiving silence of the Irene Desert, I was utterly, completely helpless.