Savior

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The Sunder Plains whispered at night.

Wind scraped the old desert floor into soft ridges and smooth rivers of sand. Shale spines cut the moonlight, and the night-cry of creatures travelled through the distance. A shadow moved with the gusts, there when the wind wisped past, gone when it dropped - crossing from boulder to boulder toward a belt of ruins lit by campfires and torches.

The encampment had the lazy noise of men at ease. Boots on stone. Dice and cards. People laughing. Orange light wobbled over broken columns and the collapsed ribs of a long-dead hall. Stripes of brightness and shadow pulsed over tents patched with stolen colours.

On the near edge, three sentries worked at staying awake. One rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. Another picked grit from a hinge on his breastplate, and the third stared into the dark.

The shadow stepped out.

No words, no warning - just a man arriving like a decision already made. Bare feet, dust climbing his shins. A dark blood mark sat like a thumbprint at his hairline: the birth sign of a Fruscal. His eyes held still like a hunter eyeing his prey.

His fist went forward once.

Metal caved, leather ripped, and ribs shattered. The blow entered the chestplate with a dull chime and left the back in a red handprint. The sentry looked down at the hole that used to be and met the stranger's gaze. There was no cruelty in it, nothing to bargain with. The man folded as he lost his strength.

The second sentry shouted with an inkling of bravery. The stranger freed his hand with a ripping sound and tossed the body aside like a soaked cloak. He turned on the ball of his left foot. The kick swung high, hooking behind the soldier's head and forcing it into the ground as the man stomped his foot. The soldier's head did not hold up, skull and flesh splitting into fragments. The third soldier tried to backpedal and draw their sword in one motion, but the man had already pivoted from his right foot. The second kick striking him sideways in the temple. The soldier's eyes slipped apart, looking in two directions at once, and the rest of him sunk to the ground.

The noise drew the camp like blood drew flies.

Tents let out men shrugging into harness and grabbing whatever could be used to kill - a ring of thirty, maybe more, grouping in the broken court. They saw his bare feet leaving the stone streaked with blood, saw the gore up his wrist but they saw no weapon. Torches dipped and flared in the drag of their breath.

The stranger was looking past them.

By the main fire, ten people knelt in a chain, wrists snared by iron and rope, clothes slick with dust and old blood. Some were awake and watching with fear. Some were slumped, eyes open and lost. That was where his gaze held, something internal answering.

It was not loud. It was barely even sound. It was a thump in the ground itself, like a wave of energy, an unseen force releasing from the man like a wind. Cups, lantern tongues, lines of blown sand - all of it seemed to shake for a moment. The men shifted and realized their bodies wanted to move along with this rhythm. Movement outside of it became heavy, restricted.

He walked.

Right hand dripping, he did not rush. Shoulders square, head level. The line from him to the chained was a straight path and the world narrowed to its width.

Someone screamed to charge.

The first rush spilt ahead. A sword came in an irregular arc, straining against the rhythm that shook from the stranger, he let it miss, grabbing and crushing a jaw with the same ease a wind blowing out a candle, and stepped through the falling body. A spear darted; he gripped the haft, barely looked, and split the spear in half before swiftly lodging it into the man's throat. A man lifted a mace, His own hands shaking on the upswing as the rhythm resisted it, and had no time to notice how a fist ruptured his throat inwards.

He never hit twice. Hands grabbed faces, ribs, the soft hinges of joints and skulls clapped against the earth and shattered like vases. Two men charged together; their heads met and broke because he made it so. Blood went up with the sparks and came down in a fine, ugly spray. The men collapsed, reformed, collapsed again. He broke a sword with the swing of his arm and did not bleed for it. He swiped a blade past his ribs so that it met air, and the wrist that aimed it was suddenly useless and deformed.

Men fell in sync with the rhythm, every shake collapsing more and feeding blood to the soil, like petals falling off a flower.

Then, as if the camp remembered how time had worked, the rhythm ended and everything returned to normal. The last soldier, raised in the air looked at the man's cold eyes. He tried to speak but only crying slobber escaped his mouth, and what came next was his jaw and throat crushing from the stranger's grasp.

Silence collected in a heap.

The stranger - Heart, for those who looked at him could feel the man's name, stood very still. Pain arrived all at once, like a hammer slamming into his head. It rang in his skull and cut his breath into short lengths. He tensed his body to barely stand. The ache receded like waves retreating to an ocean, leaving a small ache.

He looked down at his feet in the black-red mud and then to the chain at the fire.

The captives shrank, blood stained the man's body, bathed in it like a monster, calm behind his stare. He crouched beside the closest.

"Easy," he said. The voice was steady, a gentle tone that was almost reassuring.

He took the iron at the wrist, fingers closing and it gave in, breaking in halves. He worked down the line, tearing links like twigs, always watching their hands so he wouldn't touch old wounds. A woman started to sob when her hands were free. A boy flinched from the blood, then looked at the person next to him, and hugged him.

"You're free," he said, everyone looking at him with mixed emotions.

Gratitude tumbled out in broken pieces. He nodded at it. "Those who don't know where to go can follow me," he added, eyes lifting past them. "When I finish here."

There was a room left in the ruins that sustained its shape to an extent. Stone laid back into place. A curtain hung from a broken doorway. He pushed through and a man inside leaped with the right amount of fear and the wrong amount of skill, sword skidding toward Heart's neck.

Heart caught the blade. Fingers closed on the flat and edge. The man's arms fought for a moment and then did not. Heart ripped the steel out of his hands and jammed it into the man's throat whilst gripping the blade. It went in smoothly and the man dropped with both hands clawing the metal as if he still had hope. Heart walking past him.

A table waited with a map, stamps, seals. Letters looking important. The symbol repeated - a diamond split into four, squeezed into the shape of a crown. "Golden Disciples," Heart said, his gaze refusing to stray. Rage built up under those words, low, contained but honest.

He examined the map, seeing names of settlements with a cross drawn over them. Folding the map and piling it up along with the letters, he took a candle, and fed the whole pile to fire. On the way out he toppled a torch from its stand and left the curtain to catch. The flame swallowed the room as he walked out.

Back in the court, four figures had not left.

They tried not to look at the bodies. It was difficult not to. One stepped forward: a person with dark red hair, maroon skin, small scarlet studs pierced into one cheekbone and brow. A straight pale scar crossed one eye. His lip had been split and healed badly.

"I am a Merk. My name is Rusik." He gestured to the two who kept close behind him. "These are my sisters, Daska and Tarika." Saying their names hurt him, you could see it. "My tribe was razed to the ground. We have nowhere left to go."

"Follow me," Heart said. "Stay behind me. I will protect you."

He looked to the last man. A Fruscal, older, lean. One leg was braced with a broken spear shaft. The spear smeared in the blood of its previous user. The man kept his gaze on the ground.

Heart's eyes moved southeast. "We're going," he said.

They moved.

The distance was not far, but it was far enough for the hurt. They walked in the sensible silence of people who had used up the day's words. Heart's pace changed to accustom the people following, sometimes moving ahead to hunt for them. He brought down a stone hare with hands and throws. He cleaned them over sand, cooked meat on a flat shale with a quiet patience as those following him quietly muttered, afraid of disturbing him. Water was the trouble but he shared a skin fashioned into a bottle, rationing sips.

Near dawn the land lifted into a shawl of rock east of the Sunder Plains, where the cliffs began their slow climb and shifted into a massive steep drop. The town showed itself only when they were already inside it - some buildings slowly breaking down, paths leading to nowhere, low walls built from the bones of older walls, but it didn't feel cold or empty. People straightened from their work when they saw him, raising their hands to wave. People called out to him, "Heart!" from person to person like a celebrity.

It was not a large place. Restrana in old aprons rinsed seeds in a basin. Veyria beat dust out of bedding. A group of children argued over a game but ultimately were having fun. Someone smoked meat. Someone else painted a door with ground ochre as they chatted with their child.

A broad-shouldered Restrani peeled off from a group lugging a beam. Sweat shone on his nose; his grin wide and almost shiny. "So glad you're back," he said, dropping his hands to his hips to catch a breath. "So - done with what you were doing?"

"No." Heart's answer was simple. "I'll rest. Help them."

"Right." The man laughed as if that was exactly what he expected. He turned to the four with a sense of authority. "I'm Tejas. Let's see about those injuries."

He took one look at the Fruscal's leg and clicked his tongue. "You, sir, are a work order." He pointed toward a low hut painted with herbs and threads hung to dry. "Veyria with good hands. She'll fix you before you can fully rest."

They started in that direction. "What is this place?" the Fruscal asked, leaning on the spear-stick.

Tejas paused, embarrassed at forgetting the first thing. "Oh - manners. This town…" He scratched his neck and looked around, fond. "Doesn't have a name that I know. We're people Heart pulled out of problems. We stay. We work. We don't ask too many questions."

"And if you stay," he added, brightening, "you'll be part of the community!"

"Tejas!" someone called. A Veyria with fox ears strode across the lane, apron dusted with flour. "I need help with the food. Portions are a beast tonight."

"Sorry, dear!" Tejas lifted both hands, laughing. "Heart brought more. I'm settling them."

She stopped beside Rusik and his sisters, hands on hips, eyes quick and assessing. "Please tell me at least one of you knows how to raise a wall. If Heart keeps bringing folk like this, we will run out of roofs."

The older Fruscal straightened against his bad leg. "I have some experience. My name is Palti." He gestured at the splint with a rueful breath. "But I'll need this seen to first."

"Then go," she said, already gentle. "Once you're rested and settled we can talk more about the place."

Tejas dropped into the conversation as they moved. "You probably have questions about him," he said, nodding toward the hut where Heart had already vanished. "We all do... But he doesn't love talking so we don't press. What we do is owe him, and that turns out to be enough." He chuckled.

They crossed the lane toward the healer's door. Behind them, Heart pushed into a hut with a patched roof and a door that barely held up. It wasn't much, but it was where he kept the little that was his.

He closed the door carefully, knowing that it could fall apart at any moment of the day.

The wind came up off the Plains and brushed past the town. Fires burned down to coals and somewhere nearby, a child tried singing a song too high for their throat and finished with giggling. The people sat together, talking and sharing stories, ahead of them stood a lonely hut.

Night kept its long watch and the Sunder Plains breathed. And in that quiet house, Heart sat with his head bowed, staring into something, not just the empty space ahead, but a memory perhaps.