Meadow spat on the ground. "You disgust me. Keep your rotten mouth shut. And his name is Rain."

  "What did you say?" He narrowed his eyes in anger but was quickly stopped by one of the others.

  "Guards," the other Master said, motioning toward an edge of the clearing. Three people were approaching, heavy cloaks draped over their bodies to shield them from the chilly night breeze. The Masters were currently hiding in the shade of trees, away from the moonlight, so they weren’t easily visible from the moonlit clearing. Of course, if they allowed this patrol to approach too much, they would be spotted.

  "Kill," hissed Rudy, and, on his command, two people split from their party and moved in the shadows, circling the approaching patrol. Rudy himself crouched down, directly in the patrol’s path, while the others hid.

  The moment the guards stepped out of the clearing and into the shadows, they would be dead.

  The guards approached carefreely, confidently stepping from the light to the shadows. Almost immediately, two thrown daggers appeared at their sides and headed for the throats of two of them, while Rudy himself, wielding his rapier, lunged forth to strike the middle one. In the throat, of course. Wouldn’t want to strike any sort of metal armor and alert the entire camp.

  Got them. Rudy smiled darkly.

  Then he watched the first dagger miss the left guard as if the man had flowed around the attack’s trajectory. He watched the second dagger strike with a dull thud but slide off the right guard as if unable to penetrate his body. He watched as his own rapier homed in on the throat of the middle guard before, swiftly, the guard raised a hand. His rapier struck the armored hand with a loud clang and was deflected.

  What!?

  The sound echoed through the night’s silence like a thunderbolt, and sounds of shuffling and shouting immediately arose from all around them. Rudy paled as fear suddenly took over.

  We’ve been discovered! In the middle of an enemy army!

  He watched in fear as the right guard took off his cloak, revealing green skin, and then began to rise, and rise, and rise, until Rudy had to crane his neck backward to see his green face. It was Otto, who had been crouching unarmed under the heavy cloak to seem of normal height, and his face was twisted in anger.

  Rudy watched in fear as the man right before him raised a hand and tore the cloak away, revealing a face he knew well, the very man they’d come here to kill.

  "Phac!" he couldn’t help but speak, but his word was covered by the enraged roar that came from the third man’s mouth as he dashed to the shadows at unbelievable speed.

  "GET AWAY FROM HER!" Rain shouted angrily. "MEADOW!"

  Meadow!? Rudy’s eyes widened, and only at this point did he realize that the light covering his hands and feet was gone.

  The Crab Fighter grinned, and it was terrifying.

  "Good evening, motherfuckers."

  In Rudy’s mind, the situation was clear. Meadow had betrayed them, alerting the enemies through telepathy. She had betrayed them even though the Guildmaster himself had guaranteed her allegiance. Now, they had to escape. But to escape, they first had to kill these men in front of them. They were only seconds away from being surrounded. They had to move. Now.

  A scream cut through the night, immediately springing everyone into motion. Blades glinted as a host of Dexterity-based Masters unleashed themselves at Phac and Otto from the shadows, and Rudy himself faced off against the Crab Fighter. He had taken the man down before, and he could do it again.

  Or so he thought. However, the Phac he’d fought before and the Phac he now faced were two very different people. Phac grinned.

  At once, an intimidating aura burst forth from Phac and Otto, shrouding the Masters and halting them in their steps. Otto’s aura of razor-sharp mastery, along with Phac’s aura of terrifying killing intent, were a formidable combination.

  At the moment when the Masters were frozen, Otto let out an ear-shattering bellow, and Phac joined him.

  "BOR’GAH!"

  They rushed forth, charging into the ranks of Masters like foxes in a hen house, waving Pincer and fists around with bone-breaking force. Rudy expected this to be easy, but the Crab Fighter had gotten more skilled in combat too, besides faster and stronger. Behind them, Rudy could faintly make out another figure approaching at super-human speed. It was draped in darkness, insanity, and wielded a crimson-tipped spear.

  Ares the Spearman, he thought in fear. All hope was lost.

  "Retreat!" he screamed, running away first. In this original clash, two of their Masters had already been injured. This fight wouldn’t be over quickly. They had to run right fucking now. Even with Phac, Otto, and Ares at their tails, at least the fastest ones would survive.

  Rudy ran. With two Masters down, Merkaba gone, and Meadow turning traitor, there should be six of them left. Why did he only see four?

  Looking back, he saw a clean-shaven man—the one who had been closest to Meadow—was now dead, pinned to a tree by a forearm-sized icicle that ran through his heart. Another was frantically trying to escape, but there was only ice beneath him. He fell to the ground, and Rudy turned his head forward again. That man wouldn’t survive.

  Rudy and the three remaining Masters ran through the camp, blitzing through the route they’d followed before, but pursuers were hot on their tails. Everyone was moving at super-human speeds, figures flickering in the shadows, shooting past droves of weaker soldiers. Rudy didn’t dare look back. They had to make it out of the campsite. In the dense, dark forest, perhaps they could escape.

  A barrier of soldiers appeared in front of them, forming a wall of shields and spear tips at the edge of the camp. They were shivering and confused, just awakened by the shouting, but they stayed in formation. At their front stood a middle-aged man in plate armor, hoisting a large shield with God’s symbol on it. He was a famous man in Salom; Daryll. A fool, by most standards, but loved by the masses nonetheless. It mattered not; he was too weak.

  Rudy’s eyes narrowed. These soldiers would never be able to stop Masters, but they could delay them, and any delay would be deadly.

  The four escaping Masters collided with the wall of soldiers, though calling it a collision was perhaps an overstatement. Of the four, two bounced from tree to tree, hopping over the wall and escaping, while Rudy and a woman simply bet on their dexterity and jumped over the soldiers, not wanting to lose time.

  That wasn’t a good call.

  Spears jutted out of the shield wall’s top, skewering the dark-garbed woman next to Rudy. The gentleman himself dodged the spears, but a single hand reached out and grabbed his ankle.

  Shit.

  "You shall not pass!" roared Daryll, slamming Rudy face-first into the ground.

  Immediately, the rapier-wielding swordsman jumped to his feet and lunged out against the surrounding soldiers, killing a handful in less than a second. These weaklings could never even touch the hem of his clothes, but he had been delayed. Already, he could see Ares darting toward him, carrying death by steel. Rudy knew he could not stand up to the man, and now, he could not escape either.

  The gentleman locked eyes with the priest who had doomed him. Fear was in Daryll’s eyes, along with intoxication from last night’s drinking, and also a snicker. He looked at Rudy as if to say, ‘I got you.’

  Facing death, Rudy had never felt so bitter. He was Rudy Maximus, the Gentleman of Salom, the Pride of the Rapier. He could not die. And he could definitely not die due to a random weak, inferior priest!

  "Fuck you!" he spat out, lunging and running the entire length of his rapier’s blade through Daryll’s throat before the man could raise his shield. At the same time, a crimson-tipped spear fell from above and penetrated Rudy’s chest, ravaging his insides, killing him almost instantly, and pinning him to the ground.

  Daryll remained upright; everything had happened too fast. It was only as everyone looked on in horror that he realized there was a weapon’s handle sticking out of his throat.

  "No…" he tried to say, but only gurgling came out. He couldn’t breathe. He fell to the ground.

  An entire life passed before his eyes, as it often did lately. His youth at the village with his parents. His younger self, full of wanderlust and thirst for adventure, leaving everything behind to explore the world. Then, living a dreamy life, wandering the world freely, when every day was an adventure. He recalled the happiness he felt, and also the pain; traveling alone, with no safe port in sight, was a fulfilling yet difficult life.

  He recalled the miracle that once saved his life and how he began to believe in God’s greatness. How he rose through the clergy, how age slowly caught up to him, how he decided to settle down in Salom.

  How he met Lana, fell in love, and married her. How he had two children, Mav and Pan… Two so, so wonderful children.

  Daryll wasn’t an inexperienced man; he knew what was happening. He was dying, and he didn’t regret it. He fought for what he believed in and died in the process. This was how he always wanted to go. If he’d allowed this man to escape, who knows how many more lives he would have reaped in the coming battle. It was worth it.

  But he had children, and guilt burned hot in Daryll’s chest. He had betrayed them. He would make them so sad, he would force them to grow up without him… They didn’t deserve it. And Lana… She was so beautiful…

  Even up to the point when his heart stopped, Daryll never allowed the dread of death to overcome him. He remained lucid to the end, though he ignored the faces screaming in front of him, telling him to keep on struggling. He wouldn’t make it, and he knew it. God gave him the strength to accept it.

  In the darkness of the night, Daryll closed his eyes with one final thought.

  My God will take me now… Lana, Pan, Mav… I love you all.

  THIRTY

  OLD FRIENDS AND OLD HABITS

  Rain paced back and forth. The ambush had just been repelled, but he didn’t know about this, nor did he care. There was only one thing that mattered, and it stood right in front of him.

  "Why, Meadow?" he asked. "Why did you come back?"

  She had saved their lives. As soon as the infiltrators had approached, she had sent a telepathic message to Rain and warned him. Rain had awoken Phac, and then, the two of them had found Otto as well. They hadn’t let anyone else know to keep things quiet.

  If not for her, this whole event would have unfolded very differently. Of course, there were already people looking for the assassin, Merkaba, but there was little hope he would be found. The man was the best at what he did, and he had probably already escaped.

  The two of them were currently speaking in private, hidden in an empty patch of trees.

  "Rain…" Meadow bit her lip. "I’m sorry—"

  "I don’t care about your sorry!" he shouted. "I don’t understand you, Meadow. Why did you leave m-us? Why did you come back? Why can’t you just make up your damn mind!?"

  "It’s not so simple!" she argued, her voice soft. "It’s… Oh, I don’t know what to do, Rain. I am sorry. It is my fault, all of it. But I just…" Her eyes began to moisten. "I just don’t know anymore!"

  "But you did know," Rain replied harshly. The bitterness he felt was enough to ignore her tears. "You did know what you were doing when you sided with him. When you left me. That’s what you said at the time, wasn’t it? That you know what you’re doing."

  "Rain…" she spoke softly, eyes to the ground, and tears were now flowing down her cheeks. "I’m sorry… Please don’t yell at me. Please."

  Halting his steps in front of her, Rain took a deep breath and realized he was shivering. Not due to the battle that had just transpired or the cold. Not because he’d killed a man. It was nervousness.

  "Explain it to me," he said. "Tell me the truth, and God knows that if you lie to me again, I will—I will—I don’t even know what I’ll do!"

  She did not raise her eyes. "I did some bad things, Rain… Some terrible things."

  "You—" Now Rain was shaken too. "There are some things you can’t return from, Meadow. What did you do?"

  She didn’t reply immediately.

  "I helped him attack the sewers,” she finally said. "When you were there too. I almost caused your death, Rain. I didn’t do anything in the Purging, it was designed before I joined, but I helped them infiltrate this camp tonight. Even the guards here; I could have prevented their deaths, but I was just too afraid."

  "Goddammit, Meadow!" Rain thundered before lowering his voice. "Tell that to their families! Tell that to their children!"

  She didn’t reply; only muffled sobs could be heard, her arms wrapped around herself. Rain’s heart bled watching her, but he wouldn’t soften. As much as it pained him, she deserved to cry.

  "Why did you return?" he asked again, and managing to stifle her sobs, she replied.

  "I believed in their cause, I truly did. It had to be done. But all those people… And his eyes… It was so cruel, Rain. So cold. I just couldn’t do it. Maybe he wasn’t right after all. Maybe all this"—she gestured around—"is just…bad. Maybe cold logic and numbers cannot solve everything. Or maybe I’m just too weak to see it through. I regret everything."

  Rain’s face warped into a scowl, bitterness dripping from his lips. "So, you want to come back now."

  "I don’t know what I want." She shook her head. "I am afraid that I will hurt you. I betrayed you when you trusted me. I betrayed Reginald too; the only reason he allowed me to come was that he trusted me completely.

  “He thought we were alike, and he was so desperate for someone to understand him that he was too afraid to even consider the possibility of my betrayal. Even he has doubts, Rain, and he is terrified of being wrong, of doing all this in vain. I believe he sobs at night, and the only reason he works so hard is that, if he stops for even a moment, he might collapse. He needs someone to support him, to validate him, to reassure him that his path is right, and he thought…that was me.

  “His mind is twisted, but he’s a good man, Rain. And I took advantage of his trust, betrayed him when he needed me the most. I don’t want to do the same to you… Not again."

  Rain took another deep breath, leaning his back against a tree and burying his face in his palms. She began to sob again. Time passed. A few minutes later, Rain raised his head, his voice alternating between weak and strong.

  "What am I supposed to do now, Meadow? Tell me. What do you think I should do?"

  She bit her lip. "I deserve to die."

  "Maybe you do."

  Another moment passed, and just as she was about to speak, he did.

  "Go to my tent and stay there until I tell you. Sleep there. I need to think."

  "Rain!" she suddenly spoke up, louder than before, as resolve entered her voice. "I want to stay with you. I know you don’t trust me, but I will never betray you again. Ever. I swear."

  "Just do as I said," he replied in resignation, turning his face away to gaze at the stars.

  Meadow looked at him, dejected, then turned to leave. However, before she could, his voice echoed again. He was still looking away.

  "Did you sleep with him?"

  She bit her lip until it drew blood. Then, without speaking, she walked off, and the sobs she couldn’t contain were clearly audible in Rain’s ears. Yet he did not turn around, only continued looking at the stars.

  He thought he’d experienced sadness when she first left him. He was wrong. That was nothing compared to now.

  Tears streamed down his face, but he held his own voice in for as long as he could, hoping she was far enough.

  She couldn’t hear him cry.

  It was dawn when Phac finally returned to his tent, only to find Rain waiting outside.

  The ice mage had been waiting for a while, but the words he’d prepared stuck in his throat when he saw Phac’s condition. The man looked haggard, absolutely exhausted. Black circles hung below his eyes, and these same eyes sported a dispirited look of resignation. He was an entirely different person than usual.

  "What happened?" asked Rain.

  "Daryll died."

  "Oh…" He grimaced. "I didn’t know…"

  "You had your own troubles." Phac waved a hand in dismissal. "I delivered the news to his family. It was awful, Rain. War is a terrible thing. His wife, his children..." He shook his head.

  "That’s…" Rain pressed his lips together. "He was a good man. I’m sorry you had to do this yourself, Phac."

  "It’s alright. It was ugly. It still is. I promised them half my rewards in this war, but…I cannot bring Daryll back." Phac looked to the ground before looking up again. "My heart pains me, but there is no time to grieve in war. Let’s not talk about this any longer. Tell me; what happened with Meadow?"

  "She wants to return," replied Rain, and Phac chuckled.

  "Tall dreams."

  "I plan to let her."

  "You what?" Phac’s eyes widened. "You can’t give her another chance. You can’t be seriously considering this."

  "But I will." Rain smiled weakly, and only now did Phac notice that Rain, too, looked like shit. "I don’t know when or if I will forgive her, but I want to give her a second chance. She told me some things, and I thought all night about it. Meadow has betrayed us once already, but she didn’t do much on the other side. The worst thing she did was let the guards tonight die, and she couldn’t have stopped it anyway."

  "And you believe her? She could be lying."

  Rain shook his head. "I don’t think she is. I know Meadow, Phac; she only did what she thought was best. She hates lying."

  "She abandoned you."

  "She chose her own path. It just happened to collide with mine…and she did save me when I was still trapped under the Adventurer Guild. She betrayed the enemy tonight, she saved our lives, and we killed several Masters."

  Phac shook his head. "You are blinded, my friend. That woman is a slave to her delusions of grandeur. Who is to say she won’t change her mind again tomorrow?"

  "She won’t." Rain chuckled weakly. "She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice."

  "You are an open-minded man, Rain. Perhaps too open-minded." He sighed, turning his head to look at Rain’s tent, visible from here.