Declan took in the wereyn before him quickly. There were a good number of them, maybe two dozen in all, but they generally looked to be the worse of the abandoned, dragged to the middle of the ruined town to feed and regain some of their lost strength.

  He grit his teeth, feeling the firestone in his left hand blaze with an intensity he doubted he could have managed in any calmer state of mind.

  “Don’t worry about us,” he told the dragon over his shoulder. “Go.”

  In answer there was a crunch of shifting stone and earth, then Declan and Ester both were buffeted forward a full step under the whooshing gale of Ryn’s beating wings as the dragon got himself airborne again. They didn’t watch him depart, the entirety of their attention set on the beasts before them, many of the wereyn appearing to find their senses as what they must have perceived to be the greater threat left the scene.

  The firestone throbbed once again in Declan’s hand, and he would have felt sorry for the few creatures who started limping towards them with howls of glee had he not been so horrendously, bottomlessly angry.

  He discovered, in that moment, that he and Ester required no words to find their rhythm. The thrum of the woman’s bow sang twice, downing two of the closest creatures with pinpoint accuracy. She shifted then to take up a position at his back, the bow ringing again and again as she sighted on what must have been more of the foul beasts coming up behind them. By the time Declan made out the slipping sound of her saber being drawn from its sheath, the slower of their forward opponents had reached him.

  He made sure it was known to each and every one of them that the absent dragon was only part of the retribution that had fallen upon them that day.

  Declan moved more now as he fought than he had just two weeks prior. Without his knife in his off-hand, defending attacks from multiple sides was made difficult, and as a result his fighting became more of a dance than it ever had before. He kept close to Ester’s back all the same, twisting and turning and lunging this way and that while still shielding her rear from his share of their enemies. The Iron Wind bastard sword cut left and right, up and down in ringing strikes that fell in single, deliberate sweeps and thrusts. He saw, in those exchanges, the true improvements the hard efforts of the last fortnight had wrought on his blade-play. He had noted minor changes during the smaller skirmishes they’d overcome on their way north, but their victories in those exchanges had always been quick and absolute, made swift usually by Bonner’s overwhelming power, or Ryn’s oversized blade. Now, faced with his own pool of enemies and challenged in truth for the first time since battling the wights, Declan witnessed his improvement.

  Particularly—and to his own amazement—in the control of his own small magics.

  The knuckles of his left hand thudded into the exposed gut of a stag-headed creature whose rusted sword he’d ducked under, the fist he’d made around the firestone erupting with red and orange flames as he willed his built-up weave outward. There was a whoom of distorted air, and in an eruption of rippling heat the wereyn flew backwards into a pair of its own kind, dead as stone, the flesh of its chest and stomach charred to a crackling black. Not allowing his focus to falter, Declan brought his blade up to cleave into the throat of another opponent, flicking his left hand out in the opposite direction as he adjusted the spell into a more solid form. He was far from being able to conjure anything remotely like the jet of all-consuming fire Bonner could summon up with a thought, but the firestone responded to his desire in a spray of molten, clinging flames, like lit alcohol cast from a bottle. It rained down over an unfortunate trio of wereyn who’d been attempting to skulk around his left, going for Ester’s open flank. As one they recoiled with agonized screams, weapons tumbling from their hands as they swiped and clawed at the molten fire that clung to the fur of their chests, shoulders, and faces.

  Serves them right, Declan thought, already whirling to deflect a thrusted knife, willing himself to stay focused, to stay present.

  Willing himself not let the horrible outline of what lay in the center of the square, silhouetted against the fires all around them, pull him away from the task at hand.

  Between the pair of them, Declan and Ester ripped through the assaulting wereyn with stunning efficiency. They never exchanged a word as they fought, the matching sounds of their blades cutting and thrusting through skin and flesh speaking enough of each other’s continued wellbeing, which was all either needed to know. Five had died to the half-elf’s arrows before the fight had so much as begun, and more than another dozen fell too in the first minutes of the engagement, nine or so to Declan’s flames and steel, five or six to Ester’s saber. They had the distasteful task, after that, of chasing down the beasts who made an attempt to turn and flee, and one or two would indeed have escaped into the smoldering ruins of the town had the woman not tossed Declan her sword and unshouldered her bow in a blink.

  It would have been hard even if the wereyn hadn't been injured to outrun the arrows that took them in rapid succession between the shoulder blades.

  It was almost hard, finally, to stalk down the handful of beastmen who had been the more grievously wounded of the group, those who hadn't been able to gain their feet and attack in the first place. Declan took no pleasure, after handing Ester back her saber, in pacing after the crawling forms of the half-dozen such creatures who were desperately trying to make their escape from the square. Then again, nor did he feel much pity for them as he cut each down one after the other, straddling them from behind and slitting their throats even as they squealed and shrieked in panic.

  The anger was still there, after all, and when the last of the wereyn finally lay dying in a pool of its own blood, Declan finally allowed himself to look, to take in the sight of what lay in the center of the square.

  There had been no mercy for the people of Elghen, he saw. No quarter offered. No kindness given. He couldn’t fathom why he would have imagined there might have been, given the nature he had come to know of the wereyn, but just the same the slaughter before him seemed cruel even by the standards of the wildest of animals. There was hardly a whole body among those piled into the side of the hill that he could see. The corpses of the women, children, and men of the town looked like they had been fought over, ripped into for whatever choicest parts had been taken by what must have been the greater body of the horde, long departed. They were broken, tattered pieces of what once had been life, a nightmarish mound piled eight feet high, the wereyn having stacked their food all in one place for easy access. In the center of the square, away from the heat of the fires, frost had built up over the topmost layer of bodies, the grisly details of the limp hands and wide, frozen eyes outlined in icy white. The grim colors of the coming winter melted when one’s eyes fell, vanishing into black and red where the remaining beasts had torn into the side of the hill to feast. Looking now, Declan could make out the dragging, crimson streaks that marked the paths along which the bodies had been hauled. Even the cobblestone around the base of the hill was hard to look at, sketched in black by spidering veins of long-dried blood…

  Ester’s shaking breath told him the half-elf had joined him in his observance, and he was grateful for her comforting warmth when he felt her reach out and loop her arm into his, pulling herself close against him as they took in the horror together.

  He began a silent prayer to the Mother and Her Graces, unable to tell if the shivering he felt in the woman’s touch was hers, his, or theirs both to share.

  How long they stayed like that, Declan didn’t know. Horror and grief transfixed them both, equally muddled by the sight before them and the heavy weight of wondering. Could they have helped? Could they have done anything to stop it? They couldn’t, they both knew, but it was an awareness as empty in its existence as it might have been in its absence.

  That was how Ryn found them, sometime later, when his own hunt had come to an end. The sheer power of his attendance in his natural form was the only thing that finally managed to break their trance, the two of them looking away together to take in the dragon’s colossal frame when he descended as delicately as his bulk allowed some dozen feet to their right. They didn’t notice the frozen tracks on their cheeks, cutting lines through the blood and ashen dust that had built up during and after their fight, and Ryn made no mention of it. Instead, he, too, took his moment of vigil, tyrannical features dark and still, golden eyes on the gathered mound of desecrated dead. Declan felt a piercing pain in his heart as he registered, then, that the dragon had known what they would find within the wreckage of the town, had witnessed this very sight through his mind’s eye long before he or Ester had been forced to face it.

  Power at a price, he thought to himself numbly.

  After a long moment in which neither Declan nor Ester made any move to interrupt whatever entreaty the dragon might have been casting into the wind, Ryn finally stirred again. He looked to the pair of them, indicating with his head a heavy shelving of wall that still stood erect a ways behind them.

  Get to cover. I’ll see to their rest.

  Neither Declan nor the woman said anything in response, turning together to do as the dragon suggested. They didn’t even break apart from each other, their shared touch an anchor to the understanding that the world was not an utterly abyssal place, that there was more to their existence than the black evil over which Ryn now towered alone. Declan allowed himself a peek over the wall after he and Ester had settled firmly behind it, but looked away quickly again when he saw that the dragon was swelling, taking in the massive, heaving breath that precluded the foreboding glow of brilliant white light building in his maw. Declan hunkered down, pulling himself over Ester instinctively as the thundering roar of the dragonfire ripped through the more subdued sound of the slower flames still eating at what was left of Elghen around them.

  When they looked over the wall again, together this time, Ryn was standing, great head bowed in silent misery, over the massive, ashen stain that was the only rest he’d been able to offer the broken dead.

  It took several hours—once Ryn assured them that the wereyn had been eradicated—for the three of them to salvage the supplies they’d come for, food and gear and clothing they would have all preferred to have the opportunity to purchase. The dragon’s senses proved indispensable to the endeavor, discerning the minute details of what lay beneath the ruin and rubble the beastmen had made of the town, but all the same it was heavy work digging through the mess to haul out what they could find. Declan didn’t mind. The labor gave him the opportunity to lose himself in the strain and sweat. He was even conscientious to take every opportunity to enforce his will over the smaller fires they came across, doing his utmost to nullify their heat by attempting to draw their energies into the firestone he kept palmed in one hand.

  Still, even when he succeeded—thus making their work a little bit easier—Declan was unable to feel anything more than a mute sort of satisfaction, overhung by the black mood of their slow parade through the still, soot-covered streets.

  They managed eventually, though. Provisions were the easiest, as they discovered an ample supply of salted meats the wereyn appeared to have disregarded in favor of fresher sources in a butcher’s shop that miraculously had been left mostly standing. They found sacks of nuts and grains in a few homes Ryn pointed them towards, and even a small bushel of potatoes that somehow hadn’t been spoiled in the heat of the fires. Next came clothing, which they gathered piecemeal, over the course of the early afternoon collecting a heavy winter cloak and gloves for Declan and Ester both, as well as new, thicker boots they were lucky enough to salvage from the ruins of a tanner’s shop. Ryn—returned to his dragonling’s form—also gathered several long straps of leather he found buried under a drying rack, muttering something about a carrying harness for the warg.

  In that vein, the half-elf also took the time to find several spools of thick thread and matching needles. It gave Declan the opportunity to look out upon the town again, absent the distraction of foraging now that they had practically everything they needed to attempt their foolish journey. He felt his heart still, felt it falter and sink, upon looking out over the smoking destruction, the blank, lifeless ruin that was all that remained of what must have been a bustling haven of quiet existence not a few days before. He wondered, helplessly, if the townspeople had been forewarned of their impending doom, if they had even had time to mount what small defenses might have been gathered, or they had simply been fallen upon in the night, like the Vigil patrol from near two-weeks prior.

  “Declan.”

  Declan started, brought back to earth from his empty wanderings. Ester and Ryn were waiting for him, both loaded down with their salvaged things, looking as though they had been making their way north up the road when they’d realized he wasn’t following them. He thought they must have called for him and he hadn't heard, because they were both watching him with wretched understanding. He realized, then, the wetness that stung at his vision, and he turned away long enough to wipe his eyes on the wrist of one dusty sleeve before joining them.

  They found Bonner twenty minutes later, waiting for them outside of town, just short of the tree line that continued to sweep north. He was sitting quietly on an old stump, whistling a tune that was too cheerful for the threesomes’ shared mood while watching Orsik and Eyera playing a bloody game of tug of war with the furred torso of what must have once been a wereyn of exceptional size. The warg quit their roughhousing upon Declan, Ester, and Ryn’s approach, wet, crimson muzzles lifting to sniff in their direction. For the first time the animals showed no interest in threats or growls, but their sudden shift in attention had the old man glancing around.

  “Ah, there you are!” he called out, jumping to his feet and lifting a hand in greeting as he started to jog towards them. Their things, they saw, were already gathered beside the stump. “Another ten minutes and I was about to come looking myself. Did you find everything? What took you so—?”

  His questions faltered upon getting closer. The mage must have registered the trio’s shared expressions, because his own face fell, and he looked to Ryn. “That bad?”

  That bad, the dragon confirmed with a dull dip of his head. We could have used you, I think. I wasn’t able to give them much of a proper burial.

  Bonner’s shoulders sagged briefly. “I’m sorry. It took us longer than I would have liked to see to all the foragers. A few of the warg were in fair health, and one group must have made it halfway to the Tears before Orsik managed to catch them and bring the beasts down. Apparently there’s not much love shared even among their own kind. I’m starting to think these two might have been siblings, or perhaps a mated pair…”

  Declan barely heard anything the old man had to say. At the mention of the mountains, his eyes had lifted, looking up, over the canopy of the forest that waited for them not far away.

  For two weeks now the heavy overhang of thick evergreens had done much to hide the sky from view. Now, though, standing in the cut clearing the settlers of Elghen had tended for however many decades or centuries their families had been residents of the valley town, the heavens opened up to them.

  And there, lingering over the horizon Declan still couldn’t see, the Mother’s Tears loomed with like a cold, hulking threat, a hundred snow-tipped blades thrust up into the blue of the sky to scrape at the clouds themselves.

  It wasn’t the first time Declan had laid eyes on the ranges, and even then, he’d always disliked the look of those peaks. Somehow, however, they were different on this occasion. There was a solidity to their presence, a weightiness to the towering heights he hadn't been conscious of before. They felt… absolute. Like a wall, raised at the edge of the world, marking the place beyond which no being of mortal flesh had the right to venture. He felt his breath catch in his throat, taking in their wide, stabbing outlines, the serrated edge of a single massive blade that seemed intent, somehow, on seeing him cut in two…

  “I suppose we’re really doing this…”

  The hesitant statement was offered to him so quietly, it took a second for Declan to discern Ester’s voice from his own thoughts. When he did, he brought his eyes down to where she had come to stand beside him, finding the woman’s attention transfixed—as his had been—on the distant caps of the ranges. There was a tension in her face, an excitement melded with fear, that he understood well.

  He himself was experiencing it in kind.

  “Seems like it, doesn’t it?” he answered under his breath, lifting his gaze again so that they could look together on the peaks. “Madness… I feel like the Mother and all Her Graces aren’t going to be enough to watch our backs in those cliffs…”

  “Then we’ll just have to watch each other’s, I suppose.”

  For the second time that day, he felt Ester’s arm slip into his. He might have flushed, might at least have given Bonner a sheepish grin if he’d caught the mage’s smug glance in their direction, but Declan’s awareness was limited to nothing more than the pressure of the half-elf’s touch through his new cloak, and the comfort it offered him. He again felt the world stabilize, if only just a little, and the overbearing resonance of the far-off mountains retreated the slightest bit.

  When Ryn called for them to get moving, Declan was able to do so with nothing more than a clench of his jaw and a quick prayer as they stepped back into the last breadth of woodland that separated them from the edge of the only world he’d ever known.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  It is only natural to fear the end of one’s existence. Death is a concept beyond even the most brilliant of minds, a state of nothingness existing far past all we—as living beings—could ever know so long as we still draw breath.

  Of course, there are many who would claim an understanding of what lies beyond the veil of ends, who would claim to have glimpsed the other side. Priests of “the Mother”, who preach of a better place waiting for those living in virtue and consideration, are most common in this nation of ours, but you will hear ravings of equally wanting intellectual value muttered by not a few of the drunkards and addled beggars of the slums of any sizable city. Even if there should be a god of any shape and form, who are we to profess so much as the slightest understanding of what awaits us on the other side, to allege a grasp of Their intention for us once we shed flesh and pass into “the beyond”?