“Where?”

  Mika hesitated just for a moment, his eyes unfocused, before they sharpened and he nodded to himself.

  “In the bakery, him and a woman.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “How could I not be?” Mika said, his voice sad. “Guy has the longest hair I’ve ever seen.”

  Carefully, I poked my head out of the alcove to peer through the green stained-glass window of the bakery. Mika was right, John and a woman stood off to the side chatting while they waited. I pulled back, concealing myself with Mika again

  “What’s the plan, ambush, trail them?” I asked, a subtle push to get Mika more used to command. Something my trainers did with those of us chosen for command.

  “Do you think we could take them? We’ve got no idea what John is capable of.” He replied.

  He was right, Divines did we ever under plan for this. Still, I didn’t see this as big a failure as I would have with my old squad. With them, we all had each other figured out and could play to each other’s strengths without thought.

  While I was good with combat tactics and adjustments, I’d never been superb at planning. That was always Andrea’s role. But that was no excuse for how lax I’d been since I left the forest. I no longer had the support and structure of the Cult; or my squad with me all the time and had to act like it.

  Even with all that, I still thought we could take the pair. Ambushes were far and away the deadliest kind of encounter. Combined with the fact that neither of the targets knew we hunted them and I thought we had a good chance of taking them both down if we were fast.

  “I think we can take them, so long as we get an ambush off.”

  Mika looked at me for a moment. I kept my eyes focused on his forehead and refused to even look at his pupils for fear of what would happen. He studied me further, searching, I think, for any sign of doubt in my posture. When he didn’t find any, it was like something in him snapped and some of the tension in his shoulders fell away. Though his expression never lightened.

  Mika undid a few straps and put down his pack between us in the limited space.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Getting my golems out, you go into the alley on the other side of the bakery. Whoever they pass by will lead the ambush.”

  I smiled at him. It was a decent plan for as little as we knew, and with his golems, he could use numbers to keep any melee combatants away from him until I could provide backup.

  In the ten minutes it took the pair to leave the bakery, paper sacs filled with leftover bread stuffed under each of their arms, I had donned all of my armor and strapped my shield to my wrist. Across from me, Mika had all of his golems activated and ready to use.

  They ended up walking towards Mika, John in front and the woman a couple of steps behind.

  Iona Black Hand. Witness me. I dedicate these deaths to you; may the souls of the dead ever fuel the Howling Winds.

  Common practice amongst every member of the Black Hands is to ask for Iona to witness our deeds in common. When she does so, if she views the challenge as worthy, she places her hand upon us. In some treatises I’ve read, the feeling of having her touch purely your body is like adrenaline. Nowhere I’ve ever read has described what it is like to have Iona touch your soul.

  It started at the back of my neck. I could feel each finger wrap around the muscles and veins in my neck and squeeze. Slowly, she drew my heat into her hand. With my spine a chimney, the heat flows into that touch. My heart and breathing slowed, my breath became the winter winds, shaking hands stilled.

  With my physical heat drained, a new sensation begins behind my eyes. A slight tug and the heat of my emotions joined the tide of heat to my neck. Iona does not have the power to remove emotions and, as such, they never disappear; they are simply frozen. The heat that gives emotion power gone until Iona releases a Black Hand from her frozen touch.

  With steady breaths and a calm heart, I watch Mika jump the wagon and launch his golems at John before the man even reaches the alcove. His three remaining golems, the two beautiful statues and the depiction of the jolly fat man slash at John’s legs.

  The claws on the golems just clip his shins and a line of blood sprays out to the side. Rather than climb the man like he’d done with the dead tusk, Mika directs his golems to continue on John’s legs. Their stone claws and fists graze and clip him, but Mika never gets close enough to cripple him.

  With a cry, John dropped his bags and pulled a staff from his shoulder. The woman behind him was quick to notice the plight of her friend and, with a curse, dropped her own bags to rush forward. The golems were too close to John for him to get a good enough leverage behind a swing to damage the creations, but he still held them back.

  John clearly depended on help to arrive from his friend, and was stalling until she could. The golems landed their first real slash, and he cried out again, blood painted the golem’s face and must have interrupted something because it pulled up short before it moved again. And even when it did, it was slower than it had started out. As quietly as I could, I sprinted out from behind the wall, my chain mail veil removed to limit the noise I made as I ran.

  Before I could get to her, she’d already cast several spells. Her hands a blur as they formed complex patterns and spell forms. A small shield visible only through the heat haze raw mana gave off kept one of Mika’s golems away from John. She twisted her fingers and a small mana bolt shot forward, punching an egg sized hole in the golem's head shaped like a beautiful woman.

  Whoever this woman was, she was a talented [Mage] and left to her own devices, she could destroy all of Mika’s golems before he even finished breaking John’s legs.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  It was luck that in the chaos and commotion she hadn’t heard me coming. Emotions frozen to inaction and Iona’s grip on my neck firm I let thought fall away and training take over. Since the time I took my first steps, I trained to be an elite soldier in the War of the Divine Siblings. Life in the forest gave me the skills to hunt beasts, but my trade was the killing of the enlightened. I was born to end the lives of the enemies of the Cult of Weeping Grace and I did my duty.

  The spike of my hammer disappeared into the crook of her neck and her collarbone snapped as the rest of the head followed. The sound of bone breaking echoed off the walls of the narrow street and cut through the sounds of John and Mika’s fight.

  The woman collapsed to the paving stones like a broken doll. The spike of my hammer had impacted against her spine. Shock and terror filled her eyes, and she ineffectively tried to cover the inches wide hole in her neck. She was dead; her body just didn’t know it yet.

  I cast my eyes back to John, only to find him facing away from a pair of inactive golems with his staff pointed at me.

  I snapped into a crouch and brought my shield up to cover as much of me as possible. I needn’t have bothered. Underneath the rim of my shield, I saw a faint golden glow surround the wound on the woman’s neck and slowly work to patch together the flesh.

  John’s healing wouldn’t be enough, but it had prolonged the woman’s suffering. The neck had too many vital functions, and I’d destroyed too many for her to survive. The Howling Winds screamed inside my mind as some emotion tried to rise and was frozen.

  Blood splattered across my shield and helmet as I ended to woman’s suffering and stood.

  The broken wail of an animal filled the street and reverberated through my chest. Half sunken to his knees and tears in his eyes, John screamed, a cry of agony and loss. His distraction should have killed him. His grief provided the perfect moment for Mika to kill the man.

  With my shield still raised, I looked to the golems, but they had frozen too, locked in motion their puppeteer away from the strings. His absence forced me to assume the worst, and that he was somehow hurt or killed. I needed to end John as fast as possible and check on Mika.

  I fell back into the Willow’s Wrath and rushed him. Coated in mana, the metal caps of his staff left trails through the air as he whirled the long bamboo rod. There was no technique or style behind his attacks, just raw animal rage and grief.

  It’d been my experience that people lost to their grief as John was were always at their most dangerous during the first pass, when they were full of energy and with nothing to lose. His strikes banged against my shield. The wooden boards groaned with each strike, and chips of paint flaked off. John cast a mana bolt against my shield that forced me to block and then whipped his staff against my exposed rib.

  Again, the Howling Winds scoured away the pain. The heat absorbed by Iona before it could register. John swung his staff overhead and brought it down.

  The bamboo rang off the rim of my shield and I forced it down and past me. The momentum of the swing brought John forward and into reach. Step, pivot, strike. My hammer descends onto John’s unarmored back and I feel it as his ribs break.

  John gasped a broken breath and stumbled forward. Injured and slowed, I rushed past him to check on the alcove where I left Mika. He’s pale, his thick black hair plastered to his face with sweat, but a check scan reveals no visible injuries.

  I would have checked further, but John remained a threat, even injured, so I spun back to the fight and raised my shield.

  Stood over the corpse of the woman, John wept. His breath came in full and ragged sobs. He must have cast another healing spell on himself, because his ribs no longer sound broken. Slowly the man peered over his shoulder, tears flowed freely down his cheeks in rivers.

  “Why?” He croaked; voice hoarse with grief.

  Iona’s grip on my neck tightened. Winter heart suffuses me, sapping any pity I might have felt for the man. He gets no answer. I close the distance in seconds.

  I led with an overhead feint meant to force him to dodge away from the tripping hazard at our feet. With nimble steps, John leapt over the corpse and, in a clever bit of staff work, used my shield to gain further distance between us. The way his eyes darted to the street behind us, and the people scurrying into their homes and down side streets, I thought he might run.

  Following common practice, I step on and over the corpse, a tactic used to goad our enemies. Rage flared in his eyes and he charged. I smacked away his first sweep with my shield and used it to hold the staff away from me. The wind from my hammer rustles the man’s hair. Briefly, his eyes flick back to the distraction. In that moment of hesitation, I swept my shield out in a high arc. I expected him to dodge back, but he opted to trade blows.

  The metal cap of his staff slammed into my side and I felt the mana coating it exploded into my flesh. Unaspected, the mana did little more than send a deeper shockwave through my hip. I knew the blow would leave a bruise patterned after my scale mail, and perhaps a minor fracture, but I felt no pain. The Howling Winds scoured all of it before it could even register in my brain.

  John traded that blow to have the steel rim of my shield break his jaw. Chips of white flew from the spray of red and before he could even collapse, I brought five pounds of steel around and crushed the side of his skull.

  Bone fragments, blood, and grey matter scattered everywhere across the walls, street, and me. I wiped some of the gore from my eyes before I rushed to check on Mika, now that the last threat was gone.

  As I ran, Iona loosened her grip on my neck, and like an ember given flame, I could feel the heat of my emotions and pain slowly alight. I passed the woman’s corpse and faintly noticed she had already turned blue, her lips frozen and purple. Iona always took her due.

  I slid to a halt in front of Mika and forced down a wince as revived pain in my hips and ribs awoke. Mika’s eyes were unfocused and unseeing. An anxiety about head wounds I could not feel earlier spiked and I snapped my fingers in front of his eyes. Small droplets of blood flicked off my gauntlets and landed on Mika, but he didn’t react.

  As gently as I could, I cupped his chin to keep his neck steady and probed his head for blood or wounds.

  Mika didn’t notice my touch at first, but the more I poked at his head, the more he came back to himself. Slowly his eyes gained focus, but when he looked at me, and truly saw that I was the one touching him, he flinched back so hard he slammed into the wall behind him, dust and chips of grout falling to land in his hair.

  His eyes were wild and frightened, like a horse startled by a bear. His eyes flicked about frantically first they landed on the body of the woman; they flicked back to his own golems, still suspended in motion. His gaze lingered on the claws of his golems, white stone soaked and stained pink, first with the blood of beasts and now with John’s. His eyes went back to the corpses and locked finally back on my hammer. Which still had gore coating both sides of the head.

  There was no warning. One moment Mika stared at the hammer and the next he was bent over vomiting. It came out in a torrent, bits of dinner like rafts in a lake of bile. When Mika finally stopped, he was heaving, his breath ragged and hot. I thought that might be the end, but he made the mistake of looking back at the bodies and vomited again.

  Back pressed against the wall, Mika sunk down onto his heels, put his head between his knees and sobbed. Violent cries wracked his whole body. No longer concerned with injury, I crouched down beside him; uncaring of the vomit at our feet.

  I wanted to comfort him and went to place my hand on his back, but stopped when I saw my gauntlet still covered in gore. Instead, I spoke small, comforting words. Reassurances that he was safe, that he’d be okay. Mika said nothing and just cried harder.

  I knew what was happening as soon as I watched his eyes roam between everything. I reacted the same way to my first as well.

  ~~~***~~~

  I’d been a kid barely older than ten. Even then I was big, five foot eight and a hundred and eighty pounds. Myself and some of the other standouts from my year were brought along for a cattle raid with the kids two years older than us against a recently erected hamlet.

  Our trainers only approved the mission for training because the hamlet was too new to have any robust defenses yet. It was supposed to be simplicity itself for us to sneak in and steal a few cows and equarrel. Meant more to teach us about woodcraft than actually harm the invaders.

  Things went awry when a villager spotted Andrea while she snuck across a clearing. He’d been barely older than sixteen, a man just into his First Tier. I hadn’t wanted to kill him; we weren’t even supposed to inflict any casualties this raid. He’d been about to alert the entire hamlet to our presence. It would have been a slaughter. With his back turned to me, I caved in the back of his skull, and along with my squad mates, we dragged his body back into the forest.

  Somehow, I’d kept my composure all the way back to Twin Oak. I tried so desperately to be strong, to be graceful in the way returning [Warriors] are supposed to be. I’d almost managed it, too. Yet, when I heard Iona, who’d overseen the whole thing, brag to my mom about how brave it’d been to kill that man, I lost it.

  I sank to my knees in front of her and wept, my fingers locked in a death grip on my mother’s skirts. Unlike Mika, I had someone to comfort me. Even though I’d been as tall as her and heavier, she lifted me as if I was as light as a father and carried me home like I was a boy, exhausted from a long day of training.

  I slept next to her that night. Throughout it all, whenever I woke in a panic, she coaxed me back to sleep. When I entered the kitchen, the next morning, the avatar of Ylena sat at our small breakfast nook.

  It’s one of seven times I have seen her avatar in the flesh. It is my eternal shame that rather than display grace, courage, or dignity before my goddess, I fell to my knees and wept. I wailed about my failure; I cried about my inability to kill with grace. I’d dishonored not only myself and the Cult, but also the man I killed by breaking down. His Stagnation fueled my Renewal and Growth, yet I had cried over his corpse like a coward. Before my goddess, and one of the fourteen divine siblings, I wept for my gracelessness.

  I expected her to lash out. I expected pain, perhaps even the cane, like my trainers used for serious mistakes. Instead, Ylena knelt before me and put her forehead to mine. She cupped my cheeks and wiped my eyes of tears. She spoke small, kind words and held me until I was calm.

  I spent the next two hours in her arms as she reassured me I’d done no wrong. By killing that man, I’d spared an entire hamlet from the sword.

  We spoke of the nature of death and sacrifice, about its role in the larger Cycle that animated the world. When Ylena finally had to part from our breakfast nook, it was with a last message ‘it is only when one finds euphoria in the Stagnation do they become graceless.’