First came the magnesium stars. Chunks of burning metal launched by advanced trebuchets. They struck with astonishing accuracy, slamming into watch towers and garrison bases.

  Then came the men. More than she could count, more than the horizon could contain. A thunderclap for each iron footfall.

  She didn’t watch them approach. Her eyes rose far above, to the little white-leafed tree atop the hill that bristled gently beneath the stars. Above the commotion, unaffected by the flame, it stood proudly.

  “Kill her!” A warrior called.

  Ten men charged and ten men died. She didn’t even lift a finger. Flame engulfed them all. An inferno half the size of that which Evara had burst into all those weeks ago. She walked towards it, to its warmth and its light, but it avoided her. It circled and swirled around her, sweeping up warriors by the dozen.

  “Champion!” a familiar voice called from atop a distant building. She peered out through the haze within her mind and saw a dozen eyes peering back at her. Tuyen stood beside old Colu, swirling his hands in delicate flowing motions. Halfway between a falling snowflake and a musical conductor. He shifted left and right, and so did his flame. Eventually, he released control of the inferno and allowed it to spread of its own accord.

  It clung to buildings and men alike. I flooded the streets and burst out into the sky.

  Ash barely noticed. A passing glance reminded her of what she had ordered of the others. She noticed the distant pale keep and imagined the boy lord within.

  Nobody could have heard her slow and unsteady footsteps as she strolled along the battlefield towards the keep. Men flooded in behind and around her, blades thirsting for blood. They clashed like the tide against a stone island. Arrows rained from both sides, but none came near her. No warrior knew to whom she belonged and just allowed her to pass as they battled some more obvious threat.

  “Champion!” Colu called out again. He descended to her side, his blade clashing with some passing enemy. “Champion! Where are the others?”

  Ash answered with a point. The keep, beige stone and three tall towers. Walls within walls within walls. She did not offer to join them, but they saw in her march that she was headed to the one place they needed to follow. They heard in her silence, all orders that mattered. They felt in the heat of battle flame that she needed to find this lordling.

  And so, they marched. Occasionally, they came upon some stray resistance, but between the magician’s explosions, the commander’s sword arm and Ser Stabby’s explosive party trick, nobody seemed to last all that long.

  There could be no telling how long they walked for. Long enough, at least, for a flame to engulf the outer city. The men were efficient. They ignored the battles and focused solely on the grain depots and the food stocks. Most of the civilians were nestled within the keep, but so was most of the stored grain. The keep had to fall, like all the rest.

  Chaos had the outer areas. A large force of archers and quarrellers held the walls, while the Forgelanders had set up an iron tunnel around the gate. No doubt, a battering ram was making a slow journey over.

  “Sir Colu!” Another familiar voice called. Nuk came breathlessly towards them, a snapped arrow shaft in his arm. “Champion!”

  “Lucianuk, where is Ahn?” Colu quickly demanded.

  “She’s okay. She’s holding a position to the East.”

  “Did you find a weak point?” Ash asked, her voice weak and desperate but far from timid.

  “I- No, Champion. I’m sorry, we failed you.”

  “Very well,” Ash sighed. “Then we will go in the front door.”

  “Champion?” Colu choked.

  “People keep saying I am the Champion of War,” Ash thought as she slowly approached the iron barrier, arrows and bolts skirting all around her. One even sliced her cheek, but it didn’t break her focus. “A soft-hearted Champion of War. A meek Champion of War. They’re wrong, aren’t they, Black?”

  She drew ever closer, the arrows blocked out by the erected tunnel.

  “I’m not just the Champion of War; I'm something much harder. I’m the Champion of Mercy. A pointless title during peacetime. After all, it's only during war that mercy can thrive.”

  She placed her steel hand against the barrier with her amethyst eyes sealed shut.

  “I am destined to fight and to kill. But I am more than that. I am more than my destiny. I am she of mercy and she of merciful dreams. I may not be able to do the kindest thing at all times, but I will always try.”

  A handprint burnt into the iron barrier. The static that had been building since the beginning of the day grew all the louder. It lashed out in its tentacled light as she drew back her burning hand and forced it into a shaking fist.

  “Others accept pointless cruelty because they can do nothing about it. They justify malice by saying it is the way of war. I will not be others.”

  She gritted her teeth hard enough to draw blood from her gums. It burst in her eyes and her nose, gushing out as sanguine spit and tears.

  “And if that is not the fate the gods offer me...” She drew one final, screaming breath. “Then fuck the gods!”

  Steel tore through iron. Ripples of power shattered far beyond the gate. A flourish of raw black and purple energy tore down the whole fucking wall. It burst with most of its power pointed directly forwards, carving a tunnel through buildings and men alike. The sheer explosion tore the up ground and made it - for a brief while – into the stars and sky. The light of it darkened the moons and stars for a moment, and blinded any who looked too closely for a moment longer.

  In this little corner of this little nation, the sun had risen in the middle of the night. For it, there was a break in the battle. Awe choked the violence from war and left zealots questioning their own beliefs. Some men fell to the floor in shock, some were pushed by the power of her, the rest... they fell to their knees in holy reverence. Enemies a second past; worshipers for the rest of their days.

  Every ounce of power, every push of will, held her straight up. If she had to focus on anything but standing, she’d have crumbled to the dirt with the rest of them. But, by some sheer miracle of raw human stubbornness, she alone stood in the dust and silence.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  In a tower of stone and silence, a lone little boy watched as a monster came to take him away. Most little boys would fear or hide... Not this one. This boy was right, he was holy, and the gods would protect him.

  All his life, he had been told that; If he was good, and he was holy, the gods would protect him.

  “Lord Mikor,” the villain bowed as she entered his chambers, his own guards escorting her.

  “Sparrow-Knight,” he greeted in kind. Evil or not, his mother had taught him better than to ignore the greetings of a lady.

  “This is over, my lord.” She spoke in a different tone to the one she had worn in their last parley. There was a sincerity that he couldn’t dismiss as the lies of a snake.

  “Not quite.” He turned to face her, and the steel of his father’s breastplate glimmered in the candlelight. It did not fit him at all, but it would have to do.

  “Surrender your keep and let your people leave, my Lord. It is the right thing to do.”

  “My family have ruled this city since it was a single hut over the river. A hundred generations. It is more than my home you ask me to abandon... It is all I have of my family.”

  He drew the blade his grandfather had wielded, and his grandfather before him, and his grandfather before him. It was the blade of a man, not a boy. It simply weighed too much for his little form to heft.

  “You have your memories,” Ash whispered. “You have the feelings that remain.”

  “THATS NOT ENOUGH!” the lordling shouted. “I DESERVE MORE THAN MEMORIES OF THEM.”

  “Yes, you do,” Ash said, kneeling not out of respect but seemingly out of exhaustion. “And so do your people. How many will lose their parents, their children, for this?”

  “That was your decision! My city has done no harm to anybody, yet you chose us for your virgin assault, Heretic.”

  “I know,” she sighed, sinking further into the ground. “It seemed... simple on a map. You weren’t people, just... an objective; a clever plan. I’m- I'm sorry. I know it doesn’t count for much.”

  “You speak as though this ends after I surrender today, but how many will starve tomorrow without my grain? How many cities will fall to this same fiery method? My mother always said that an apology means nothing if the flaw is a repeated one.”

  “I- Don’t know what happens tomorrow. But I do know that you can fight to make it a better day than today, only if you surrender. Please, Lord Mikor.”

  “Do you know what the book of the first says about you, Champion of Black?” Mikor asked as his eyes fell to his borrowed blade.

  “I- Don’t, no.”

  “It says, ‘There shall be a Heretic in thine unspoken name of Black and thine shall swallow the stars. Blessed is he who holds his steel in the face of the unChosen.’ If I waiver now, what would the gods make of me but a coward?”

  “They would make of you, a living boy. In life, you’ll have a thousand chances to be pious. In death, I’ll grant you only a single opportunity to be a fool. Please, just put the blade down.”

  “You look to be injured, Heretic. I think my chances are greater than you portray them.”

  “I am injured,” she groaned, showing him a gush of blood from her hand. “And I don’t know what the gods seek of us, but I don’t think it matters. Frankly, I would rather you kill me than I kill you. I don’t think I’ll enjoy murdering a scared child.”

  “You don’t think the gods matter?” The boy scoffed.

  “No, I know they don’t,” she chuckled painfully.

  “Yet you claim to be their very servant!”

  “Aye, and what a poor slave I make. You’d think after everything, my function and form would be thoroughly broken to purpose. But I walk around, and I can’t tell if my master is guiding me by whip and cane, or if he’s kinder and gentler than that. If he offers me the carrot, should I follow it far enough. I don’t know what reward you’re expecting for all this noble service, kiddo, but all I’ve gotten from the gods is promises of future promises.”

  He stormed up to her, his steel high against her throat. He couldn’t keep it outright for long though, and it quickly fell to the floor with a quiet chink.

  “I won’t hear it,” he spat. “I won’t have you disgrace my gods.”

  “I’m sorry,” she gently said, her voice gravelled with exhaustion. “But the gods don’t decide what happens here, you do.”

  “And what would become of me? What is this preferable fate offered by the Black Heretic?”

  “You would be a royal guest, kept in Raven keep. You may well live better than you do here.”

  “A guest, you call it,” he sneered. “Hostage, more like.”

  “Yes, a hostage, but a royal one.”

  “A gilded cage,” he spat.

  “Is better than a buried coffin.”

  “No, I won’t have it. The gods will judge you, Heretic, as they will judge me. I will not have them scorn me for cowardice. Raise your blade or lose your life.”

  “Please, my lord,” Ash begged, her hands over her face. “Send your people away and slip off with them in disguise.”

  “NO!” he shouted. “Guards!”

  None came to his call. Their shadows loomed beneath the doorway, unshifting but for the flicker of some adjacent candle.

  “COWARDS!” He bellowed, clasping his steel again. He tore it as high as he could and slashed out at her head. She caught the blow with her gauntlet and threw the blade away.

  “She of Steel, grant me strength to fight. She of Gold, grant me the courage to stand. He of Black, grant me mercy in my next life.” He scrambled back towards the blade and struck out at Ash again. She stepped aside, letting the strike hit the floor before punching the boy in the face, smashing his nose in hopes it would pacify him.

  “Jonti, give me breath that I may cry my last. Veytor, give me wrath in the face of falsehood. Taeva, strike my blade true.”

  He struck again, and again he missed, catching a punch to the belly. Ash could feel his rib break under the strike. He cried for pained breaths as he continued.

  “Sjalgreef, show me the path past this day! Taitu, prepare me a meal in the halls of heaven! HEVESTIEL HARDEN MY HEART!”

  He charged again, his vision blocked by tears and blood. Every breath he drew, every step he took, utter agony.

  It was nearly a mercy when the dirk pierced his heart.

  Quick, clean and seconds before he was gone. There might have been pain, but she cradled his head as he slipped away, and he seemed grateful for the warmth.

  “Mother,” was his final, breathless word.

  And so, the Champion of Black had won her first battle. She left the little corpse lying in the middle of the cold stone floor.

  She could say nothing of the boy as he died. He wasn’t a plumb thing like most lords. He lacked a few teeth like all lads his age. She noticed only as his corpse drained of colour, a little cut on his finger. He must have tried to feel the blade and caught himself, but nobody was there to kiss it better. Nobody was there to worry about him. He wasn’t a brother; he wasn’t a son. He might have been the last lord Mikor. But now, because of her, he was nothing but an end to a dynasty.