Lance stood above me. The square was deathly silent. The tinkle of steel shocked the air as a watching knight shifted and the plates of his armor jangled together. A collective breath was being held. My friends and companions, from Balathazar to Magnebalde, watched my moment of choice. My lover stared on, her manacled hands pressed to her chest. The traitorous knights and turncoat soldiers waited, the anticipation real. The two golems were silent statues, their featureless heads observing without feeling.

  They all waited to see the fate of the blood prince. The butcher, blood butcher, doom-slayer. He had built a legend in one short year. He had been a nobody, the lowest expected contestant in the choosing. He had ascended, winning the Sword of Boston despite the odds. Then he had grown. He’d stumbled, yes, in the early days of his first Falling. But the result had been a campaign that might not have ended with the Griid-Crown, but had resulted in winning many Flows, including a locked orb. He’d won a war, storming his own Tower to free it and airdropping the enemy tower to seize it. He’d slain Julia Rosegold, though few knew it, and Danefer Ma’at Ra, a legend out of time. He’d slaved a Tower. He’d done more in a year than almost any suit could imagine achieving in a lifetime.

  And now he lay on his back, a sword poised above him, a choice laid out.

  I glanced to Racquel again. Her hands were coiled at the base of her throat. When she saw me look her way, she again gestured for me to flee with those shooing motions. If only I could. If I could escape this moment I could return prepared. I’d entered the square with no concept of how much power F’ael had bestowed upon Lance.

  Lance hissed, “If you do something about those damned Clans Folk I might even let you have one last night with the Skaal bitch.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  He growled, “Those Burghsmen bastards that you dressed up like knights. Holding the top of the Tower. If you call them off I’ll let them leave. They can go back to their animal wives and rut away the rest of their lives. You can have one more go with that northern slut before you die. Sounds like a fair deal to me. Just put your wrists out. It’s better than dying today and never drawing another breath, isn’t it?”

  I said, “Dirk?”

  He snapped, “Yes! The Jaxwulf. It’s pathetic. I’ve heard the chants they make.” He made a mewling, mocking noise, “Bloodwulves! Bloodwulves! You do like a soundbite, don’t you, shopkeeper? They’ll be ours eventually, they can’t hold off. But call them down now and you’ll have one more fuck before you die.”

  “They’ve taken the top of the tower?”

  “That’s what I fucking said.”

  My mind considered this. “You don’t have any Griidlords. It’s just you. You’re the only suit left on your side. Strong as you are, you won’t risk assaulting a couple hundred knights—”

  “They’re not bloody knights!”

  I shook my head. “They might as well be. Burghsmen warriors kitted with relics, power weapons and the best armor. You can’t go up there. One misstep and everything you’ve sacrificed for would be ruined…”

  “We’ll starve them out!”

  I said, “That takes time. And there’s resistance out there. You said it yourself. Your pa and the others are pitching battles. It’s not as clean as you made it out to be…”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Lance leaned in, the ruddy eyes staring into me. “It’s clean enough.”

  I glanced over to Racquel. She was shooing me again. She might not have known I’d used DOOR to go to Castle Bloodsword. My heart throbbed at the thought. The work on the castle had been erased. Months of progress smashed and burned away. Harold slain, lost to me forever.

  Lance snarled, “I’m losing patience, shopkeeper. Don’t forget, please, that I’d like nothing better than to spear you with my sword and be done with it. This offer is a mercy.”

  Racquel gestured again, shoving the air with her hands.

  Then I remembered. I’d levelled when I’d destroyed the most recent Golem. My cooldowns had reset.

  It was bitter. It was humiliating. No small part of me would have preferred to be martyred right there at the end of his sword. I didn’t want Racquel to see me flee. I didn’t want to give Lance the satisfaction of seeing me run from him. But this could not stand, and I could do nothing for them, for myself or for Boston if I let him run me through.

  I spoke simply and flatly, “I’ll kill you, Lance.”

  He laughed, the red eyes staring and mocking.

  Then I opened DOOR beneath my back, a white rectangle springing to life on the ground beneath me.

  I fell through, gravity whipping me away from him. I had an instant to see his eyes blaze with surprise. The surprise morphed into rage as I fell into the ground, falling into nothingness. His mouth opened into a screaming curse, but I never heard it. I fell into the DOOR and blinked from one part of reality into another.

  The rectangle of light formed a few feet above the grassy ground. It spat me out like an unwanted morsel. I fell to the ground with a whoosh, the breath driving from me as I struck the earth.

  I gasped for air, winded by the fall. My knee throbbed as it hit the ground, the scrape across my chest burning brighter for a moment as I landed.

  I lay there for a moment, processing, absorbing what had happened.

  Then I swore. “DAMMIT!”

  I slammed my fist into the ground. I hammered the dirt. All the immense power of my suit, my level 48 griid-suit, directed itself to destroying the earth itself. I thumped the ground, smashing it, compacting the clay, tearing the soil, shredding the grass.

  “FUUUCK!” I roared into the earth. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  How could it all have gone so wrong. I burned with the humiliation of fleeing. Later, in the cold light of logic, I would see it was the right choice. It gave me a chance and staying gave me none. But still it devoured me. I was chewed up and digested by the bitterness.

  “Racquel…” I breathed into the ruined blades of grass.

  They were captive. All of them, my brothers and sisters in the Griid-suit, Balthazar. Dirk and the Bloodwolfs were trapped in the highest reaches of the Tower. I couldn’t imagine how they had taken the initiative to move from the rooftops to the tower. But they would be starved out or destroyed. Harold was already dead and soon everyone else I called friend or lover would meet the same fate.

  And it hurt so badly to be lying there on the grass in safety. It wounded me to be free of the threat of imminent destruction while the others I cared about were captives awaiting the noose.

  I felt like the traitor in that instance.

  I rolled to my back. I couldn’t even remember where I’d asked the DOOR to take me. It had been an instinctive move. As I rolled to my back and the sky rotated into view I found that part of my view was obscured by tall stone walls. I saw the moss and ivy coating them. I found myself fixated by the contours of the stone.

  Where was I? I could have looked around, but the intensity of my self-loathing weighed on my chest, pressing me down like a physical pressure. There was the sky, there were the stone walls. I hardly cared where I had sent myself.

  A shadow passed across me. Lazily I turned my head towards it. At first all I could see was the silhouette of a human figure against the bright blue of the sky.

  “Ti?”

  It was a female voice. It was a voice I knew.

  I propped myself up on my elbows and looked.

  Katya’s face looked back down at mine. She said, “Where’d you come from, soldier?”

  I stammered, struggling for words. “I… I left them…”

  She screwed up her eyebrows as she was wont to do. There was a life in her that I hadn’t seen since Lauren had died. Something had animated her. She was the old Katya again, all energy and aloofness, weird and wonderful.

  She said, “Who’d you leave? Actually, don’t worry about that a minute. It’s good you’re here.”

  I heard myself say, “Good? Wh… why?”

  She leaned down and placed a hand on my chest, her small fingers tracing the contours of the scar Lance’s sword had left on my chest.

  She fixed me with that intense gaze that I had once thought myself in love with.

  “Because we have an army. And we need someone to lead it.”