Guardian

[narrator]

It was cold, very cold. The snow fell in small flakes of white to the ground. Vincent was sitting with his back to the Frozen Fang, a tavern of little reputation save for the amount of people that entered but didn’t leave. He had in his hand something small. A book. This would have surprised any who would have come upon him. He had taken the book from a felled thief who had been stupid enough to try to steal from him. Vincent was sitting on the porch of the Frozen Fang, in the city of Tread, in the country of Ember. Ember was a long way from Rej’ A’kinn. Ember was a long way from anywhere. But Ember was soon to be the center of attention of everywhere.

Rej’ A’kinn was along way from Ember. Linn A’kash Dima knew this, for she had traveled far to get there. But she was ignorant of much. Alone and walking to the city that the sign two miles back had named Tread. Under the word Tread, lightly, had been carved into the wooden sign. Linn did not heed the sign nor did she understand the danger she was in when she stepped into the city. It was luck that Vincent had been sitting outside the Frozen Fang, which happened to be situated just at the end of town. It was luck, or maybe it was fate. But Vincent had no use for such things. He relied upon himself, to rely upon something as unpredictable and irrational as fate was folly, at least that’s what he thought.

Vincent shot up from his position on the wooden porch of the Frozen Fang. His red cloak moved slightly from the wind. His yellow eyes flicked across the town. It was dead or at least it would be for the next ten minutes, or maybe less. He jumped over the railing in one quick and misjudged leap. He adjusted and landed on one knee. Linn backed up quickly and reached into her blue robe and brought out a dull-gray, hollow club of some sort. Vincent approached her quickly and pushed it aside, lucky for him. The club spat stones that hit the Frozen Fang and invariably woke up the entire Tavern.

Vincent snatched away the small device and picked up the girl who was small. He rushed. Quickly getting behind the building opposite the Frozen Fang just as the proprietor and three other men came out brandishing swords. They were shouting and Vincent continued on down the back of the building until he came upon a small shed that he knew to be Red Gargess’s. And Vincent also knew that the man would not be awake until the crack of dusk. He pushed the small girl in there and checked behind him to see if anyone was there. Then he pushed inside and shut the door.

The small girl was looking at him with contempt. Her blue eyes shone with unseen defiance. Her blue robe luckily covered most of her body and had a hood, that was good, Vincent thought. The blue hood of the robe covered long black hair. Vincent grabbed an Ioke root from a pouch on his belt and put it in his mouth chewing the spicy flavor out of it.

“So what is it you wish to do to me?” Asked the girl. Vincent noticed, through her sentence structure that she must be educated. This brought up further questions.

“It’s more of question, little lady, as to what you wish to do to yourself.” Vincent said still chewing.

She gave him a puzzled look. “I don’t understand.”

“Now that’s the real question here. Why would you be travelin’ cross Ember alone, little lady?” Vincent spat the root that had lost flavor out into a pile of firewood in the corner. Its taste would remain in his mouth for hours though.

Her eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment. “Well, I wouldn’t be except for my escorts both got killed.”

Vincent stood up and ran a hand through his ebony hair that was supported by a black bandana that was almost invisible in his hair. “Where pray tell would a lass like you be from?”

“I am Linn A’kash Dima, emissary of Rej’ A’kinn. Seeking aid from the land of Ember against the threat of Rake.” It all sounded like she had been practicing that for weeks, H e was actually wrong it had been four weeks, one month.

“Well, Linn, I wouldn’t count on getting far without a guardian. Rej’ A’kinn must be a long way from Ember.”

“I must reach Ember.” She said.

“And I suppose you were planning on doing it by yourself.” Vincent ran a hand through his hair. “Well, little lady, you’ll soon find that Ember isn’t the most hospitable place on land. And I think your Rej’ A’kinn should know that. How old are you?”

She looked like he had just asked something too personal but glanced at the sword on his back and spoke. “I’ll be Sixteen years in eight months.”

“Fifteen.” Vincent said to himself. “What in the name of God were they thinkin’?” He looked down at the wooden floor for a long time. The room grew edgy in the silence.
She stared at him in silence then broke it. “What is your name?” She asked.

He looked away from her eyes. He saw the pile of tools that were rusted and useless. “Vincent, will do for now,” he said.

“Why, Vincent, are you so concerned about me traveling alone?”

“Little lady, you’ve never been out of the palace before have ya’.”

She brought her hands up and adjusted the belt on her robe. “I’ve read all there is to know about the outside world,” she said still looking down at her robe.

“Well, readin’ and livin’ are two different things. If the world was like the books you read then I’m sure you probably wouldn’t need anyone to protect ya’.” Linn was staring at the large sword slung across the back of his cloak and Vincent knew what she was thinking. Vincent closed his eyes and dreaded what was going to happen next because he knew what he would say.

“Then I ask you to accompany me, Mr. Vincent,” she asked then added. “I will pay you handsomely.”

Vincent smiled, but it was a weak and crooked smile. “I know what I would say and I wish I would change my answer but I just couldn’t live myself if I didn’t.”

He handed her back her stone-shooting device. She took it and placed a hand on his as she did. He tensed too aware of how cold his hands were. “So tell me about this world I’ve read so much about.”


They left quickly as Vincent wanted. Linn was still confused about most of Ember’s ways but she accepted them. She had asked what a guardian was and he tried to explain it best he could.

“Well, I expect that it isn’t like it is here everywhere but I wouldn’t doubt it . . . We’re a fallen race. Unaccepted by ourselves and mistrusted by others. Even the bloodthirsty Rakers no doubt would frown upon Ember’s treatment of women. Or perhaps I should say mistreatment really.

“I don’t know how it happened. I am not that old but I do remember when it was considered heathen and despicable. Now it’s like women are nothing at all but a birth giver. Here’s what I’ll tell ya, little lady, if those men in the Frozen Fang Tavern had seen ya’ first you’da been a slave faster than you could blink. But they’d probably kill half each other tryin’ to get ya’ but they woulda’, even with your little stone-shooter.

“Time is changin’. We’re comin’ full circle, back to the old days. It’ll come back. Time’s a wheel. But now you either got a guardian or ya’ fall into the hands of any man strong enough to take ya’, you get me?”

She said she did.


Red flecks of blood flew from his sword as he brought it out of the man who had tried to surprise them but failed and died for it. Linn stared at the dead man with wide eyes. It was not the first but all she reacted the same to.

“Surprised there’s any men left in the world.” She said not removing her eyes from the man who was still bleeding but quite dead.

“You and me both, little lady,” Vincent said with a grimace as he wiped the blood from his sword with the snowy ground. Vincent stared ahead and listened. He hoped that this one wasn’t part of a tribe.

“Why are you different, Vincent? Why aren’t all of them like you or you all like them.” She said turning her head away from the dead man.

“Suppose it’s just that all men are different. Not all the men that live with the tribe’s want to be there. You gotta know Linn that the people in power determine most of the others actions.” Vincent heard nothing and started to walk on.

Linn stood still for a moment then walked after him. “Vincent?” She called. He was ten paces ahead of her and stopped. “Why are your eyes yellow?” She asked then added. “Is that what determines a good man?”
Vincent half turned his head to her. “What color are your father’s eyes?”

She opened her mouth then stopped. “Green.”

“Was he a good man?”

“Yes,” She said after a long time as though rating him in her mind.

“There’s your answer,” he said and started walking again, leaving her wondering.


Turns out the man, was part of a tribe. Two hours later they met a nasty group of individuals who didn’t look like they wanted directions. Vincent moved quickly stopping at intervals for Linn to catch up. She continued questioning him and all his answers seemed not to suit her. He guessed it was just that life didn’t suit anyone well. It was either too short, in most cases, too long, in some cases. In some it was too tight constricting their lives. Vincent thought all of this talk of life was pointless. You live and die. That was all there was to it. Maybe sometimes you love. But he had loved and lost too many times to lend his heart out again.

Vincent leaped up a hill barely keeping his footing in the snow. Thankfully it was deep and his feet sunk instead of slipping. Linn climbed the same hill slowly grabbing onto small trees to help herself up.

“Ell looky what we got ere?” said a throaty voice from of in the trees. The voice was quite but Vincent caught the words in the air. Vincent turned to Linn who was almost at the top of the hill. He grabbed her arm as she was reaching for a tree to pull herself up. He lifted her up and held her then started to run. He mostly slid down the hill avoiding trees with care. When he reached the bottom he started to run in the snow. An arrow, aimed with care, flew from the trees piercing his side. He continued to run. “Careful, you kill er, I kill you.”

Vincent ran. Trees past by like blurs. Linn had curled into a fetal position in his arms. He bounded up another hill, the arrow bobbing in his side. A voice called out from the woods. “Let the girl go and we’ll let ye live.” Vincent appeared not to have heard. He jumped almost the whole way down the hill catching his feet at the bottom and falling down on his butt and the arrow snapping at the tip as he hit the ground. He pushed up as quickly as he had fallen and ran.

The three members of the Wraith tribe ran after him. Radin the one who had shot Vincent with the bow was also the fastest and he was gaining. The two others behind him, Wren, the one who was talking, and Fatte were behind him. Wren was about three paces behind and Fatte had given up and was resting with his arm on a tree.

Vincent didn’t stop. He ran fast. Radin was faster but he didn’t have the endurance. He stopped after a half mile of sprinting up and down hills. Wren had given up three minutes before him but nonetheless beat Radin with his staff for his failure.

Vincent didn’t stop until he was sure they were gone. He didn’t stop until three miles later and even then as he set Linn down told her they had to keep moving. And so they did until they got to the town of Palls.


Palls was dead. Vincent was glad for this. Palls was not dead in the literal sense but the only inhabitants seemed to frightened and too weak to care about a small girl with a blue robe and a man with yellow eyes walk into town.

Vincent had no trouble finding an inn. When Vincent entered the small inn a gust of heat met him. He heard some whimpering behind a counter. Vincent peered over and saw a small man that had to be the innkeeper. The innkeeper was about to give Vincent everything he had just not to kill him. So when Vincent offered the compromise of a room at his inn the little man was more than happy to oblige.


“You have an arrow in your side.” Said Linn staring at Vincent as he removed his crimson-red cloak.

Vincent stared down at his side looking at the small wood protruding from his right ribcage. He frowned. “I suppose I do.”

“Well you need to see a doctor.” She said reaching into her robe that seemed to carry more than a bag.

“I wouldn’t say so, little lady. No, I think I won’t have to.”

She gaped her mouth at him. “But what about infections, blood loss—,” she stopped and closed her mouth as he yanked it out of his side. It had a good-sized piece of flesh but was suspiciously absent of blood.

“You were wondering why it is that my eyes are the color of topaz.” His eyes moved to Linn in a way that could only be described as insect-like. “As I said before, times are changing. The winds of the east are blowing and some things that should change don’t.” He swallowed.

“I died or should have. Struck down with this very sword.” He lifted the large blade and held it up. “I live, but I do not bleed. I hear but I do not taste. Some things are gone and I remain still. And I do hope I remain long enough to protect you, little lady.”

Linn backed up and sat on the hard mattress behind her. “Are there many like you?” She asked.
“There are or were for that matter. These eyes are a beacon. All those who fear, the ignorant, or just the bloodthirsty keep after me. I have seen many like me burned. Time has fled from my mind. I have no age; I have no need for an age. And I can feel myself slipping away. I will help you but I fear that after that I may be gone.” He grit his teeth. “I suppose it’s for the best.”

Linn sat on the bed motionless looking at him with curious eyes. Vincent blinked then sat down in the center of the room placing the sword across his knees. He smiled at Linn. “You should get some sleep. Tomorrow is a new day and a long way from Ember.”


Vincent didn’t sleep. He had no need for it. He had no use for it. He wasn’t tired. But still he felt the ache in his bones, aching to let go, aching to fall. He looked at the wooden door for a long time, listening to the quiet breaths that Linn gave off.

The sun would rise tomorrow. Tomorrow he would rise. His mind said no. His body said no. But his heart, the lifeless organ in his chest, contended. He had planned to die. He knew it was right to do it. But even in the decay, he knew he had to stay. He knew there was a purpose or at least had to believe there was one. His eyes burned with the absence of years of sleep. But he knew that no matter how long he lay down and tried, sleep would not come. He hadn’t felt that arrow but for some reason he wished he had. That at least would have been different.

Vincent brought his arm up and stared at it. It looked like wax. It was there but it wasn’t alive. No blood flowed. It was a strange thing. His arm burned too. He noticed the slightly grayish color it had started to take in the past few months. Gray like ash, he thought. He sighed, ash. He stared at his arm.

“What are you doing?” Vincent turned and looked at Linn who was sitting on the bed looking at him. He looked behind himself at the window. Light from the sun was creeping over the horizon.

“Nothing,” he said. He stood up and slipped the sword onto his back. “We should go. Time wasted is time lost.” Linn still looked at him with a strange curiosity, for she had been up for an hour and he had been staring at his arm that whole time.


Time slipped by. Vincent turned the corner on the highroad out of Palls and time slipped by. They walked, silent. The ground changed from white to brown, and time slipped by. They stopped and ate or rather Linn did. Vincent chewed on an Ioke root. A root that even the most fearless of eaters stayed away from. People said it burned the mouth like acid. Vincent chewed and time slipped on. They walked again. They walked more passing by the mountains of the Fespre. Mist obscured the peaks that are said to rise into the heavens. People dared to climb it, but those that did rarely returned and those that did never reached the top. They walked past the mountains and time slipped by. It wasn’t even a feeling of fast t Vincent. It just slipped through him, like sand through a sieve, he had no time to feel it or experience it.
Time was as dead to him as he was.

He stopped in the road and stared up at the sky. The sun spread warmth across his face that he felt as a slight tingling. Wind blew pushing his red cloak against his back. He stared up at the sun for a long time, or maybe it was a short time. He’ll never know. But it was a moment a slight passing of age dawned on him. A slight passing of insignificance, hit him like a brick. He savored every second. Then it was gone. The sun was still the same dull yellow that didn’t disturb his eyes in the slightest but somehow he remembered that it had, sometime. The wind was still a brief brush of pressure, nothing more. He was still the same. And time still slipped by.


“Does it bother you to speak of it?” Linn asked as they sat in a small clearing inside a nest of trees, a fire burning in the center.

“Nothing you could do could bother me any more than I bother myself.” Vincent said feeling an uncomfortable tightness in his neck.

“It is odd though.” She said and laid flat on the ground feeling the soft grass and the cool of night that Vincent only registered as a change in temperature not an actual feeling.

Vincent looked over to her from where he sat with his back against a tree. Night had come early. They had better not travel at night he remembered himself saying but it got all screwed up. He couldn’t remember if it actually was tonight or the last or even how long they’d been traveling. He closed his eyes seeing only the muted light the fire gave off and felt only his body trying to escape the confines he had put it in.

“Do you feel the same?” Linn asked still lying on the ground.

Vincent laughed. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed but then again he couldn’t remember a lot of things. The question was just too humorous. It was ironic really. How do I feel? Vincent heard his dry and lifeless in his head and stopped quickly. Do I sound like that? Do I sound that . . . dead?

“Have I upset you?” She asked not realizing that he was laughing, actually interpreting it as a fit of coughing.

“No I’m fine,” Vincent answered. “To answer your question I feel, the same. I feel fine. At least as fine as I remember.” Technically it wasn’t a lie. He did feel the same as yesterday and the yesterday before that. He couldn’t even remember a time when he had felt different. And he really didn’t remember feeling any better than he did now. To tell the truth his memory was now a hurricane. Blowing everything around. He was holding onto the present by a thread, a very thin thread.

“Oh,” Linn said, “Okay.” Then she fell asleep. And Vincent kept his eyes closed until she went through the fraud of waking him.


Vincent smiled as he watched her surge ahead of him at the sign. The sign was large and wooden and very inaccurate. It read: The city of Thaed 12 miles, and under that it read, the city of Ember 50 miles. Vincent hadn’t the heart to tell her the truth that Ember was actually in the area of seventy or eighty miles away. The smile clung to his lips and he tried to hold it but soon he forgot and his face slipped into its usual stoic expression. He followed Linn glancing over his shoulder every few minutes, looking at the lone person behind him walking up the Highroad.


The figure was draped in a long black robe and Vincent instantly thought of death. It was only missing the scythe. Vincent didn’t look back again until they reached Thaed and thankfully then the figure was still the same distance behind them.

Thaed continued to be the hub of activity it had been when Vincent passed through it before, he couldn’t remember exactly when. The small buildings didn’t restrict the people who instead of being cramped inside had decided to build camps outside. A man near where Vincent and Linn stood stumbled along past them out of the city. Another man sat staring at the new arrivals with a slight grin on his face sharpening the blade in his hand.

Vincent brought up Linn’s hood as quick as he could, hoping to God that the man smiling was smiling at something else, anything else. Linn let the hood come up and obscure her face without a word.
Vincent looked across the streets, which were teaming with men even as the sun was fading in the sky. “We will keep this road through Thaed,” Vincent whispered.
“I think I understand,” she said under her breath. She walked on with Vincent by her side turning his yellow eyes on any man who strayed too near.

Vincent glanced over his shoulder seeing the black figure gaining and the hopelessly drunk man stumble toward the black robe.


The black-robed figure walked as it had since it’s beginning. It was close now though, so close. It could feel her through its bones. The man would be a problem though but nothing it hadn’t dealt with before. The dead could die again.

A man either drunk or slow was hobbling toward the black-robe. The black-robed figure picked up its pace figuring it could catch them tonight. Yes tonight, came a whisper in the air.

The black-robed figure walked past the bobbling man, reaching into its robe and bringing out a nasty looking dagger. It flashed the dagger at the man who fell to the ground without a word. The figure wiped the blood onto its robe and the dagger disappeared. Close, the air whispered.


The wooden buildings in Thaed looked about ready to collapse. Years of decay and use had not been dealt with. No repairs had been made or would be. The buildings would be used until collapse and then another would be built. It had been this way since the beginning. It would be this way until the city was burned to the ground. Which was not long in coming for the Rakers were moving searching more blood, more conquest.

Vincent and Linn walked through the city that was like a beehive without a queen. Two men were killed within their site. One man after being run through with a sword continued to move on the ground reaching out into the air. No one grabbed his hand and eventually his movement stopped. It was a good thing that Linn did not have a pack because that would have easily become someone else’s property. But they were new and things like this hardly went unnoticed especially when someone had as nice a sword as Vincent did.


Abadon stared at the man in his room. The man looked uncomfortable, as he should. Abadon looked up at the man with hate. Hate for his blood, hate for his flesh, hate for his eyes, hate for his life but even so the man had his uses, as he was showing now.

“Sir, Deckan said he saw a girl outside a town.” The man said looking down at the dirty-wooden floorboards.

“Did he? Or perhaps he saw a fair male, like before.” Abadon ran his tongue over his teeth filed sharp.

“No sir, at least that’s what I hear.” The man said.

“Just know what it means if he’s wrong.” The man nodded and Abadon sucked into his mouth the blood that was now running from his tongue.

“Let’s meet her.” Abadon started for the door but the man stopped him.

“Sir, Deckan says she’s got a deader with her, like—,” the man was cut short as Abadon shot a dagger from his small cloak at the man who collapsed in a heap. But Abadon could still sense the life in him, could still smell the life in him. Another dagger shot from out of his cloak stopping the breath of the man.

“Just like me.” Abadon finished for the dead man. He looked out the window at the streets. For a moment he caught his own reflection. A pale-faced child with white hair stared at him from the window, and bright yellow eyes that burned in the darkness. He turned and left the room his small boots making muffled sounds in the floorboards.


Vincent could feel things converging now. Things were coming to a zenith. Or perhaps they weren’t and he was feeling what he was long ago. Even his senses had started to slip. It was strange and sometimes not altogether bad experience. He sometimes had great feelings that he wished he could identify but couldn’t remember what to associate it with.

Linn stuck close to Vincent. They were almost halfway through the city traveling along the highroad. People were gawking but not questioning. Vincent was very happy for the robe that Linn wore. He wondered if the men that were with her actually knew what they were doing. He did wonder about how their lives were lost but he figured he ask her about it later.

Then a man wearing a long coat walked out in front of them. He wore an unhealthy grin and some very brown and untrustworthy eyes. He held a long sword in his right hand. “Hello,” he said giving quick glances to Linn with a sick smile that Vincent didn’t care for. “I’m Jarr Gerrison Fret and I think you know why I’m here.”

Vincent felt the breath of the man hit him like waves of the dead, decaying or maybe that was something else—somewhere else. Behind him, came his own toneless voice.
Vincent didn’t wait for the man’s offer or even for another word to crawl out of his mouth. He grabbed the sword on his back and brought it down onto the man’s foot in one swift swing. The man screamed grabbed his knee and fell onto his back. Vincent looked to Linn at his side. “It was for the best, believe me.”

She nodded maybe finally understanding what danger she was in just walking the streets. Vincent put his hand over her shoulder and they pushed on. While Abadon looked on with growing anticipation.


It walked into the town feeling all the life draining slowly out of this cesspool. It was the life of the men being sucked into someone’s mouth, something’s mouth. It moved with the shadows, its silence so powerful that the wind quiets at its approach. It glanced at the men drinking and felt an urgent need to kill all of them but stayed its hand. It had a job. It had a duty. It moved on.

It looked down at a man screaming with one foot in the air and the other half of the foot lying on the ground in front of him. It slipped its dagger out and slipped it into the man’s throat. The man quieted very quickly. It slipped the dagger back out and made it disappear inside its black cloak.

One man crossing the dirt road happened to glance in its direction. The man looked into the hood and felt his eyes open like fountains. Water poured out of the man’s eyes falling onto his shirt. The man turned his head away and ran inside the Tavern directly in front of him. He sat down against the wall once inside feeling the comfort of others. Men were harassing him because of his tears but he didn’t hear or even care to. He was thinking about the face he had seen. He had no words. He had nothing. And when he slept that night he saw the face again in his dreams, just before he died, his heart just about exploding within his chest.


The cities end was within sight. People were quieting down as time pressed on. Vincent’s mind was wandering as he walked. He was thinking about a man named John, such a strange name, but that faded. He was thinking about something called a gun, even stranger he thought he had seen one recently but then it faded. He thought of the darkness he had seen inside caves better left unnamed, but that also faded. He kept his eyes ahead and his head focused. But he was wondering how long it would take for the present to fade also.

An arrow whirred towards him and followed a path into his neck. He pulled it out and tossed it onto the ground, bringing his cloak around Linn and his back to the direction of the arrow. She was silent.

“So it’s true. You are one of us.” A voice said behind him. Vincent could hear the crack of dirt underfoot as someone moved toward them.

Vincent edged on his boots to the relative safety of an alleyway. He pushed Linn against the wall of a building with one arm with his back also to the wall out of the bowman’s sight. Vincent walked out from the alley not fearing what was there but not relishing what he was expecting.

There was nothing or nothing he could see. The dark blue sky was darkening and Vincent clicked his teeth together and sniffed the air. He slid his sword off of his back and held it in one hand. It was too large to be used correctly one-handed, but he walked out into the road holding it with one hand holding the sword and one eye watching Linn. Who had ran behind a stack of firewood and was curled up in a fetal position almost under it.

Vincent knew the wind was coming at him but how hard he really didn’t understand. If he was more focused he might have noticed that the wind had forced most of the men outside to seek shelter indoors. But his eyes were on the kid with the sword who was had slipped out of another ally a block down. The kid’s eyes shone yellow in the darkening day.

Vincent cracked his neck and spat onto the dirt road. Vincent was a man of memory and now it stirred. He knew he had never seen this kid before or had he? Snow, he remembered the snow. This kid was in the snow. Vincent watched him with some interest, and for what reason? The kid had green eyes before, long ago, yes a long time. He approached as the child opened his mouth and smiled showing of his two rows of filed-sharp teeth. Vincent tightened his grip.


Linn saw the eyes burning ahead of her. She knew that they weren’t looking at Vincent. She could feel them on her like fingers, or hands, holding her head. Then it really was holding her head. Cold, and formless, hands pulling her upward. She closed her eyes and still felt it as she rose while she resisted it.

The evening was too dark for her to see the shadowy figure in front of her grabbing her head with it’s colorless, formless hands.

Perfect, the wind howled through the alley. Vincent spun at the sound of the wind and got a sword in his belly but he wasn’t really thinking of that.


Vincent felt the cold steel go into him but it felt no different then the wind that was whipping his cloak in the air. Vincent grabbed onto the sword that was sticking in his stomach, pulled it out and tossed it aside without a glance at the child who now looked more like a child then ever. His yellow eyes glowed behind Vincent, then faded as he saw the black figure that was holding the small girl with one hand by the head.

Vincent ran at it. The figure spun to him, and dropped Linn who it had been holding about two feet off the ground. She hit the ground and started edging backward on her back. Vincent grabbed his sword with both hands and brought it down onto the figure. The robe was dark and maybe he missed but he eyes told him differently. Vincent watched the robe collapse as the sword pushed down onto it. Then it was a puddle on the ground. The robe was on the ground in a heap. An arrow flew out from somewhere behind Vincent and hit him in the back. Vincent swayed forward but that was all.

Abadon had his sword and was looking at the pool of dark robes on the ground. Then it moved, like a shadow, sliding, changing, not moving. Vincent hefted his sword and stabbed at the robe. The wind screamed, and the ground bled. The robe continued moving even as the sword ripped it down the center. A black line followed it as it moved. Vincent looked at his sword. Black liquid was sizzling on the blade. It bleeds, he thought. Then he turned and looked to where Linn was.

The little kid was holding both of Linn’s arms and pulling her with almost as much fear as she had. Vincent looked to her as the kid dragged her toward an alley, then at the robe still crawling on the ground. Vincent stabbed at the robe again, holding it as the pair disappeared around the corner, Linn grabbing the kid’s hands that Vincent knew had more strength in them then a normal child would have.

Then the robe rose up with Vincent’s sword in it. It swallowed Vincent’s sword in the folds of its cloak. The robe showed a formless hand come out from the armhole holding a crooked dagger. Vincent sniffed the air and smelled a darker decay then death, something older. The cloak rippled like water in the wind. Vincent brought his hands up, unarmed.


“Lucky you,” The kid kept saying in her ear. Linn could smell him through her open mouth. It was slightly musty odor like rotting flesh. The kid pulled her into an alley and tossed her to the ground as he looked tentatively around the building at the scene.

Wind gusted through the high road echoing off the walls in a scream. Linn turned to run but found two men staring at her with slightly mad glints in their eyes. She could see what they would do to her reflecting off their eyes as if reflecting their very being. She turned and looked at the kid who had turned his attention back to her. His yellow eyes burned inside his skull. He smiled revealing two rows of teeth, neatly filed to a point. She closed her eyes.

“Lucky you,” he said again in a smooth and slightly childlike voice. “What would you call yourself, madam?”

Linn ground her teeth and stared at him blankly. He looked at her tilting his head as if listening to a soft voice. She waited for him to strike her. He didn’t look like a child despite his appearance. His face was hard instead of the soft as a child should be. His eyes were yellow pits that seemed to glow with intent. She looked down at the ground turning her eyes away from his gaze which seemed to contain all the malice and evil of a society inside it’s yellow stare. Then he smiled and she pulled her gun.

The gun being small and hard to aim should have missed in the speed at which she drew the gun. But luck decided to rear its head as it does in some of the oddest situations. The gun being correctly aimed didn’t strike her intended spot, his small head. It instead ripped into his small chest launching the small frame backward.

The kid fell backward onto the ground and Linn ran into the street. Forgetting the dark black-robed figure that was stabbing at Vincent with caution that seemed to be best saved for someone with a weapon. The figure stood it’s back to Linn advancing on him in quick steps then dropping back with equal speed. Vincent was using his hands to try and fend off the dagger that seemed to almost squirm in the figure’s hand. Linn glanced behind her and saw the two men look at what was happening behind her. Their eyes no longer glinted with dark deeds. Instead they pulled they’re master off the ground and turned around. Linn saw the kid’s eyes open in the darkness like lights flickering on.

Linn turned back to Vincent who was looking at her with eyes a color so distinctly different than the kids that they were really a different color, yellow but a completely different color. She held up the gun in her hand and tried to steady her arm against the wind that was pushing her. She fired at the figure.

It screamed and fell. But it really didn’t, the wind howled into her ears and cold wind pelted her face. Her eyes were closed to it but had they been open as Vincent’s were she would have seen something strange. The figure fell but then it seemed to disperse into the ground like water. Then the wind stopped altogether. And Linn sat on the ground looking at Vincent who was staring at the ground where the figure had been. He looked at her then around the city that seemed suspiciously devoid of life. “We should go.” She pushed up and they started walking. It was not for a long time that he asked about the black figure.


“Do you know what that thing was?” Vincent asked glancing behind himself at Linn who was walking in a dazed manor. She was staring down at the dirt road then slowly raised her head to Vincent.

“His name was Rain Weran.” She continued to walk but turned her head back down to the ground. “Three years ago, I met him. He wasn’t always like that. I think I know why, now. I think I know. He changed.” She stopped walking.

Vincent stopped also. “How?” He asked as he turned around.

“How, I really don’t know. He was a treasure hunter. I met him after he sold my father a cache of artifacts, that this was among.” She pulled the gun out of her robe and held it out to him. Vincent picked it neatly out of her hand and held it up and it glinted in the sun. He handed I back and it disappeared inside her blue robe. “I only spoke to him once. I asked if I could accompany him on one of his excavations but he told me my father wouldn’t take to kindly to it. Then he left.”

Vincent started tapping one finger lightly on his side. “Why would he be coming after you?”

Linn seemed to ponder this for a moment then looked back at the small dot on the horizon that was Thaed. “No I don’t think he was after me.”

Vincent reached into a pouch on his belt and brought out an Ioke root and started to chew on it savoring the small tingle in his mouth. “So you thinkin’ he was after me.”

She clicked her tongue off the rood of her mouth. “ I haven’t been entirely truthful. I did meet him again after the first.”

Vincent looked behind Linn at a flickering movement on the dot that was Thaed. He spat the juices from the root onto the ground to his side, and looked into Linn’s eyes, waiting.

“He did come back,” She continued, then shivered.

“My father hired him to search an area.” She nodded as if to reassure herself. “That’s what he did, search and if he got lucky and found something maybe he’d be famous. Well he did find something. I don’t know what it was but Rain called it a mask of serenity. He said whenever you put it on it just takes your trouble away.

“Well, he tried to sell it to my father for double the price my father had quoted at the beginning of the search. Rain said, ‘Things change, people change and in between all of that someone has got to make some money.’ Rain was not a very pleasant man and made a lasting impression of that unpleasantness on our second encounter. I believe he was unaware that I was my father’s daughter. Either way he did seem to be very drunk at the time. But he kept talking about the mask and how good it felt . . .like he wasn’t human at all but really nothing. He said his friends had to pull it off him or else he’d die wearing it.

“Well, that mask of serenity was what I saw back there on him or it. I don’t know why he was coming after me but back there he seemed like he little to know interest in me.”

Vincent bit down on his lip; it felt like biting into wax. “So why does he want me then?”

Linn looked over her shoulder at the city of Thaed. “You’re dead but you live. Perhaps he wants that. I don’t know but I think we should get going.” The dot over her shoulder appeared to be moving.

Vincent nodded and walked ahead in silence.


It moved faster now.

Got away? How does it get away? Got away. It got away. There was next time. There would always be a next time. It moved.

She had a pistol. It felt the spot where the bullet went through. Next time it would be ready, now it knew. It moved faster.

The dead one was not long to be the real thing. If it could smile it would have but it stared impassively ahead. Death was catching up with it. It needed to catch up. It moved.

The dirt on the road was not kicked up it lay undisturbed on the road. The city behind it was no worse for the wear. Thirteen people died the night it passed through but many people die in a city like Thaed. You could hardly attribute them all to it. It didn’t care though. It moved forward letting the cool wind pass through it.

It moved.


Abadon sat down at his desk the next morning nursing a cup of hot coffee. He glared at anyone who entered his office and had stabbed his desk over a dozen times with his sword. It was by sheer luck that in the next three hours when Abadon was interviewing men for a job that a man named Jacob happened to apply.

Jacob had the unlucky knowledge of carpentry. He first commented on the plank floor and the board ceilings. Then three minutes into the interview he noticed small holes in the desk, after his response to that, Abadon left for the day and ordered his office cleaned up. There was an awful lot of blood.


Vincent looked at the dying sun to his left, gauging in his mind whether they should stop or not. Linn seemed to be keeping pace well enough but all night was a long time to be walking. The hard thing was that Vincent knew that they couldn’t stop, not out here by themselves.

He didn’t say anything about stopping, strangely neither did she. They walked in silence except
for the soft sound of boots against dirt.

Vincent stopped. Behind him something very, very quiet was walking toward them, and getting closer and closer.


Linn walked behind Vincent thinking about her father. He told her that, even darkness is fleeting; a shadow can’t live forever. She remembered his face as he had told her that. He looked scared even as he said it. He told her that they would stop at noting to stop her. Rain was normal. What had happened to him?

Vincent stopped just ahead of her and she nearly walked into him. She looked up at the back of his head. It was moving slowly up and down; then he stopped.

“There’s somebody behind us.” Vincent said and started to walk again. Linn looked back down the road. She didn’t see anything but was inclined to believe that maybe there was something—no not maybe, there was definitely something there.

Ten miles and three hours later, when real night finally kicked in, Linn and Vincent were still walking. Linn glanced back, over her shoulder, at the dark wall that had been constructed behind them in less than three hours. There was nothing you could see in the dense black behind them.


It moved.

Walking became stitched into its being. Reality had broken itself into small gaps of stepping forward. It knew that it had been walking but the length of time was shattered, and it picked up the pieces putting them together to form a general conception of what was happening. Time was moving forward and never back that was the way it was. It knew that no matter how muddled it’s understanding of reality was it knew that the present was the present. The past didn’t much matter.

It moved. The black cloak billowed around it, silently, despite the absence of wind.


The castle of Ember looked depressingly small to Linn. She began to think of the importance of this. She was here to enlist the help of a nation that couldn’t protect their women. She wondered about the condition of their army. She had her doubts.

Vincent hadn’t said anything in a long time. They had been walking for a long time and her bladder seemed very full. She held it inside of herself.

“Vincent,” Linn said.

He didn’t stop or respond.

“Vincent,” she said louder this time.

He stopped dead. Then turned his head to her. “Did you just hear something?” He asked.

Linn was getting nervous. “No.”

The walls were right in front of them now nearly reaching the sky but coming short by a lot from being the height of the castles at Rej A’kinn. But she knew that help was needed. Her father sent her and she’d not let him down. Orren, and Red died for this. It had to produce some kind or worth. It had to accomplish something.


It moved.

Running, now, at them. They couldn’t get into the walls. It knew that if they did, they’d get away. The cloak trailed behind it, moving slower than the rest of it. They were getting closer. It tensed and ran faster.

Then the dead one turned. The yellow eyes glowed and toward the cloaked figure, pulling the large sword off his back.

“Get into the castle.” The dead said. The girl turned to follow his advice then stopped.

It pulled the daggers from its cloak holding them tightly in an indistinguishable grip. The dead one would go down; even now its yellow eyes were dulling. Yes it could do it.

The dead one brought the sword in a downward arc that it blocked with the small dagger. The strike was powerful however and knocked it back a few steps. It let the dagger that hadn’t absorbed the impact fly from its hand and watched it bury itself into the dead. The dead didn’t seem to have felt it. It advanced and swept the sword at the cloaked figure. It dodged it sliding backward.

It looked quickly around taking in it all. The girl had the gun in her hand. The dead one was rushing at him again its eyes glowing brighter. It had to move.

It threw the other dagger aiming for the dead one’s head but it brought its hand up attempting to block it. But the dagger missed his head and the hand blocking it flying wide to his left.

It produced two more daggers before the other came loose from the dead one’s finger. The dead one was quick but it was quicker. The dead one sliced at it coming incredibly close to its midsection, but it faded backward and tossed both daggers at its chest. Both were merely ignored. They pierced into it but it kept rushing. It reached into its cloak and found only one dagger.

Just die, the wind whispered as it picked up.

The sword came down and was deflected by the dagger. The dagger shot out and caught the arm of the dead one. It slipped into the skin smoothly and came out smoothly. But the dead one didn’t feel or notice it.

The wind whipped louder and stronger. Die, the wind screamed.

The sword came across the midsection of it. Tearing through the cloak. The wind stopped. The cloak fell to the ground.


Vincent peered at the pieces of cloth that lay in front of him. It was motionless. He stabbed down again at the rags stabbing into them until the sword slid into the hard earth.

Vincent felt the knives in him. Each was like a separate world of pain, and yet it all seemed far away. The sky was purple now. It was odd, if you weren’t paying attention you didn’t really notice things until after they started.

Linn was next him now. “Is it dead?”

Vincent felt all the pain from the daggers fade away and the pain in his eyes took over. Pain shot from his eyes in sharp pulses digging into his brain. Vincent sat down on the ground. Linn was looking at him with concern. “Are you okay?”

“No, I don’t think I am.” Vincent smiled and lay on his back.

“Come on get up. We gotta go into the castle.” Linn touched his shoulder softly.

“Excuse me, little lady, but you ought to get the hell outta here. You aren’t supposed to be here. Trust me I know.” Vincent said then started pulling the knives out of his stomach, each absent of blood. “Damn stickers.” He trailed off then let his head fall to the ground.


Linn watched as Vincent’s yellow eyes faded to a dark blue. She stared at his body for a long time. The dead can’t die. It was just commons sense. It was—

She knelt and looked at his long face that seemed to be turning a darker gray by the second. She pulled the remaining knife out, with no feeling and held it. It was time to go to Ember.

She walked into the castle of Ember. It was odd though there was no guard at the gate. She walked through the empty streets thinking about death, holding the small dagger to her chest, close to her heart. The dagger was small and sharp and had a thin layer of blood.

The purple sky rose to pink and then to red. Linn was lost. She wasn’t scared though. She turned left at an intersection of houses, her eyes casting a yellow glow onto the ground. A wet raindrop fell and hit her cheek sliding down it like a tear. It was cold, very cold. Or at least it should have been.