Location: The Road to Skarra-Bree
Timeline: Summer to Fall
Are you starting to dislike poor Emcorae? As I write this Apocrypha I hope that’s the case. Don’t let A’H hear me saying this, but I do so love this part of the story – the tragic hero sinks deeper into despair and commits evil acts along the way. And remember this too – as I’ve told you before…
There is none so holy that he can not fall, and none so evil that he can not rise.
Using that logic, there’s still hope for me, I guess…
The Descent
After the murder of Dugan Finch, life became a blur for Emcorae. With the moon casting a bloody face on the land below, Emcoare raced from manor as if the air of Monthaven had turned to acid in his lungs. Returning quickly to his makeshift camp, he bolted into the night with Joanne and the mule, Grom. Following the trail out of the village to the north, he pushed both beasts to the agonizing limits of their endurance. Joanne’s sides soon heaving until her breath came in ragged, whistling gasps that tore through the cold night air. As for Grom, a creature of burden never meant for this kind of pace, he was particularly struggling—the mule braying in desperate, guttural protest, his small hooves hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm against the trail north that would soon merge with the artery of the Great Parkway.
During the remainder of that cruel night, Emcorae’s mind was a kaleidoscope of shattered images. He saw a collage of scenes that flickered like dying embers: the soft memory of Lynsy’s smile; his grandfather Alfranco perched on a stool at the Brandonale, spinning yarns to a room full of patrons; the rhythmic clash of wooden staves during training bouts with Nathily at The Glade of Gazza. And within these heartfelt sights, darker shards pierced through: the terror of his first ride south with El-Janus when the ruffians had foolishly ambushed their camp and paid with their lives; the skeletal, blackened remains of his family’s home; and, with a vividness that made his stomach churn, the sight of Dugan Finch as the light left his eyes, replaced by a terrifying, hollow vacancy.
“I had to,” he whispered to the wind, the words lost in the roar of his own pulse and the thunder of hooves. “It was justice. It was the only way.”
But the memory of what he had done to Dugan with his father’s chisel made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He couldn’t imagine how he had even conceived of such vile deeds, let alone executed them with such cold, clinical precision. He looked down at his hands, gripped white-knuckled around the leather reins. These were hands that had been taught by Alboris and Alfranco to feel the living grain of oak, to find the hidden strength in a joint, to build things that were for good. Instead, he had used those tools to perform the work of a butcher. For a few terrifying hours on the road, Emcorae struggled to breathe, suffocating beneath the weight of the realization that he had acted like the very monsters he claimed to hunt.
He also felt the sudden, crushing vacuum where his future used to be—his path as an Azora, the quiet life he could have lived with Lynsy, the faces of children who would now never be born—all of it traded away for the cold, hollow satisfaction of revenge. And even the pleasure he’d hoped to feel was a bitter lie; at no time did the murder of Dugan give him relief. Like all the toys we evil gods oft dangle before mortals, the act of playing with darkness was deceptive. As Emcorae looked at the horizon, toward the iron-gray skies of the North, he realized he no longer knew the boy his parents had raised.
“It had to be done,” he lied to himself again, trying to bridge the gap between his soul and his actions. “And what’s more, I’ll do it again. I’ll do it to Diked, and to that Myz, and… anyone else who took my life from me.”
Just then, Joanne’s foreleg gave way. She stumbled, her head dipping low. Emcorae nearly flew from the saddle as he struggled to steady his mount. When Joanne recovered, her legs trembling, Emcorae jumped down to check her hooves. Thankfully, the stone had not cracked the wall of the hoof, but as he looked into the mare’s wild, bloodshot eyes, he realized she had exceeded her mortal limits.
“I’m sorry, girl.” He stroked her velvet muzzle, his hand shaking. “Let’s make camp. I’ll take care of you.” When Grom brayed a shattered, exhausted note, he added, “And you too, old boy.”
He led them into a thicket of stunted pines, the needles damp and smelling of old rot. The first thing he did was to unsaddle Joanne and rub her down, realizing as he did so the cruel tortures he had put her through that night and apologizing over and again to her. All that he saw to Grom – the mule was in even worse shape, his head hanging low, too tired even to eat the grain Emcorae placed before him.
That night, Emcoare did not build a fire; he did not want to be seen, or perhaps he simply felt he no longer deserved the warmth. Absently gnawing on some elvin waybread he sat against a fallen log, his katana leaning against his shoulder like an accusing finger. His mind spun away again in a weary, agonizing circle. He thought of the chisel—now hidden deep in his pack—and wondered if the blood had soaked so deep into the metal that it could never be cleaned. He felt the darkness in him spreading like a stain. He wanted to pray, to reach out to Alyssa, to Enok, Mannan, or even the Great Creator, but each time he started the words felt like ash. He knew he had to continue north; he knew more blood was required to obtain the justice his family and Lynsy were due. Yet, a small, flickering part of the boy who had loved running through the fields with his friends screamed in the silence, trying to find a foothold in the slippery blackness of his heart. He was a man holding a guttering candle in a raging wind, realizing that with Dugan’s death, he had not ended a villain—he had merely become one himself.
Finding The Trail
Back in the tangled woods of southeast Monthaven, near the spring of the weeping willows, Nathily clawed her way back to consciousness. It was the day after Dugan Finch’s life had been snuffed out by a carpenter’s chisel, and the sun was already high in the sky. The air hummed with the indifferent, buzzing song of the summer cicadas—a sound that seemed to match the frantic beats of her own heart.
The elfess sat up with a violent gasp, her chest fluttering like a panicked bird. The world felt tilted, the colors of the forest too bright and sharp against her sensitive eyes.
“What happened?” she scrambled to her feet, her eyes darting toward the northern horizon where the silhouette of the Finch manor pierced the tree line. The unnatural lethargy—that thick, cloying sleep that had tasted of Alyssa’s violets—was gone, replaced by a cold dread that pooled in her stomach.
In a panic, she raced toward the estate, her falchia drawn. Her mind was a blur of horrific possibilities; she pictured Emcorae surrounded by guards, his silver mail stained red, or worse – was her friend already…dead? Yet, as she neared the manor walls, she didn’t find the clash of steel or the guarding of any prisoners. Instead, she found a beehive of desperate activity.
The construction effort was utterly abandoned. Scaffolding stood like skeletal remains against the stone, and tools lay dropped in the dirt as if the laborers had fled a sudden plague. Instead, a frantic exodus was underway. Guards had cast aside their spears to hoist heavy trunks; servants and housestaff were shouting over one another, shoving the fine silks, silver services, and gilded possessions of the Finches into wagons and carts.
Why are they running? Nathily wondered, crouching behind a tree on the outside of the walls.
As she watched the pillaging from the safety of the woods, the snap of a twig behind her made her spin. Her falchia was at the ready, a silver arc of lethal intent, as she faced two figures hurrying toward a small, loaded wagon hidden near the orchard. She recognized the girl immediately—the tall one whom Emcorae had spoken with in the shadows of the previous days. She was with a young man who moved with a protective, hurried urgency. Tiffania was weeping openly, her hands shaking so violently she could barely grasp the wooden slats of the cart.
“Stop!” Nathily called out, her voice shaky but still carrying the commanding resonance of her Amora training.
The girl shrieked, clutching the young man’s arm. When she realized it was an elfess standing before her she gasped, her eyes wide. “You! You have to leave! They’ll… someone… Dugan’s men might come after you!”
“Why?” Nathily pressed, her brow furrowing. “Who knows I am here?”
“Oh, don’t you see?” Tiffania stepped closer, her face a mask of grief and terror as she looked into Nathily’s eyes. “You’re Em’s friend—Nathily, right? He told me of you. I’m Tiffania… I was Lynsy’s maid. This is Darril. We were supposed to go with him… to your forest. We were going to be free.” Her voice broke into a fresh sob. “But none of that matters now. The dream is dead. Surely you must know… Em… he did it! He killed Dugan! In his own bed!”
Nathily felt the world grow cold. The news was a physical blow, staggering her spirit. “Where… where is he now?” She gripped the hilt of her blade until her knuckles turned white, her gaze hardening. “Do they have him? Is he in the cellar?”
“No,” Tiffania choked out. “None could capture him. Surely he’s gone north, Nathily. He’s going after the King. He’s going after Diked.”
“He rode out before the sun,” Darril interjected, his face grim as he climbed into the driver’s seat. “I heard the guards talking. They were too afraid to even bar the gate when he left. As for us, we’re fleeing for Sylvania—we’ll take no part in the vengeance that’s coming for this house. Just look at them,” he gestured toward the manor where servants were fighting over silver plates. “Scavengers. Justice will come for the thieves, too. Let’s go, Tiff.”
Nathily let them go. She stood in the long shadows of the trees, watching the people pillage the last remains of Merrill Finch’s legacy. The elfess could feel it now—an evil rot, a thick, oily darkness emanating from the master suite of the manor. She didn’t need to go inside to see what Emcoare had done; she could smell the sulfur of a blackened soul.
Yet, in spite of her hammering heart, Nathily did not succumb to mourning. Her Azora training over—the cold, analytical precision of the hunt. She compartmentalized her grief, locking it away behind a wall of tactical necessity.
“Fubar,” she whispered, her eyes turning toward the iron-gray horizon of the North. “He thinks his only path forward is the one that leads to King Diked’s throat. He is seeking another grave.”
She found his trail at the edge of the ravine. In his manic haste, Emcorae hadn’t bothered to hide it. The deep, gouged tracks of Joanne and the mule, Grom, told a story of a reckless, panicked flight.
“We’ll catch him, Mossflower,” she murmured, leaning low over the silver-grey mare’s neck, her fingers tangling in the mane for comfort.
She rode hard, but with a calculated rhythm. She would not destroy her mount; she was no cruel master, and a lame horse would end her quest before it truly began. Instead, she relied on the fact that it was a long road to the North. She would bridge the gap. She would recover sight of her target.
But as the wind whipped her hair, a single, terrifying thought remained: When I finally see him, will I even recognize the man I am trying to save?
Abandoned
Day followed day for Emcorae as the battle with his conscience continued, a war of attrition where his soul was the besieged fortress and his guilt the relentless ram. Though he was more careful now to rest his horses, mindful of the long distance yet to go, his mind remained in a overdrive.
The journey from the blood-stained sheets of Dugan Finch’s room toward the iron-grey borderlands of northern Pennal was more than a trek; it was a further descent into the dark forces that had taken hold of Emcorae’s soul. The Great Parkway stretched before him like an endless, suffocating ribbon of dust and parched, yellowed grass as the summer burned the land. The lush, vibrant greens of the south—the emerald canopies of Arbola and the rolling hills of the central valleys—were a fading dream. In their place sat the farm lands of the north, a landscape speckled with small villages and isolated hamlets.
These were the lands of the “Pawns.” Peasants here tried to live in the quiet rhythms of the seasons, but all too often they found themselves crushed in the squabbles of the petty kings of fractured Pennal who vied for control of the hilly reaches. They were caught between the secular greed of local lords and the iron-shod zeal of the ‘holy’ knights of the Mannah Faith, who hailed from the white towers of Primcitta to claim this soil for the High God whenever the opportunity arose.
Emcorae avoided them all. Given the skills of concealment he had honed among the Azoras, vanishing into the scrub or the shadows of a ravine was not hard. He was a phantom passing through a world of suffering, indifferent to any pain but his own.
He traveled with a mechanical, dead-eyed intensity. That Summer was a gorgeous one and Gaia produced a masterpiece that year – but Emcorae didn’t see the beautiful sunsets or the picturesque architecture of the clouds; he saw only the shifting distance remaining between his blade and King Diked’s black heart. For her part Joanne moved with a rhythmic, tireless gait, but even her preternatural elven spirit seemed dampened, suppressed by the heavy heart of the man she carried. Behind them, the mule Grom plodded along, his panniers rattling with the provisions—until the rhythm broke.
By the afternoon of the fourth day, the mule finally failed. Grom stumbled on a patch of loose shale, his knees hitting the dusty road with a sickening, wet crack that echoed in the silence of the plains. The beast let out a long, mournful cry that sounded too much like a human scream for Emcorae’s comfort.
As it had been a particularly soul-wrenching day—one where the ghost of Dugan’s dying gaze had haunted every next rise in the road—Emcorae was in no mood to deal with this dilemma. His mind was awash with a toxic hate that was eating him up inside. As a result, he gave almost no effort to nurse the injured animal. Never in his life had he been so cruel; as a carpenter’s son whose family had a small farm like most others, he had always been filled with compassion for the creatures that served him. Yet this was the moment of misery that exceeded the measure of his mercy.
“You’re slowing me down,” he complained, his voice a harsh rasp as he examined the mule’s leg. The beast was lame and would no longer be able to continue. “I’m sorry, old boy, but I can’t do much to help you. You’re going to have to go it alone. Make for one of these farms. I’ll bet any one of them can patch you up.”
Yet they both knew a lame mule on the Parkway was just as likely to end up being found by wolves as he would by a farm hand. Perhaps knowing this the beast continued its braying, a frantic, accusing sound, even as Emcorae worked with a manic energy to at least release the packs on its back. “I’ve just got to go faster. The King is laughing. He’s sitting in Fubar thinking he got away with his crimes. Thinking no one is coming.”
With trembling hands, Emcorae sliced with his knife through the leather cinches that bound the heavy bundles to Grom’s pack. After they fell, he didn’t even bother to unbuckle them. When the weight vanished, the mule hobbled away from his master, staggering backwards toward the high grass on the side of the road, eager to be free of the dark aura that now radiated from the man.
Meanwhile, Emcorae haphazardly sorted through the supplies that were now strewn across the roadway like the entrails of his former life. Leaving most of it behind, he snatched only what was essential for a ghost: a bedroll, a small bag of oats for Joanne, and his Azora gear. He stuffed the extra supplies into his mount’s saddlebags – the unexpected, unbalanced weight made the mare stagger, her ears pinning back in protest.
As for the rest of the gear he’d brought from the forest—the extra food, the trading wares meant to buy information with a long the road, the tools and extra weapons—he left it all. It sat scattered in the dust like the debris of a ransacked caravan.
Grom was already a limping silhouette in the distance when Emcorae swung guiltily back into the saddle atop Joanne. He felt the weight of the abandonment, the “second grave” digging itself a little deeper. In a surge of self-loathing frustration, his heels pressed into Joanne’s flanks with a sharp cruelty he had never before possessed. The mare leaped forward, her hooves kicking up the road grit, and the sight of the broken mule behind them was quickly swallowed by the rising dust of the Parkway.
The Ambush
Day followed day as the Great Parkway unspooled beneath Joanne’s hooves like a dusty, endless ribbon. By now, Emcorae had put leagues of sun-scorched earth between himself and the ghosts of Monthaven, covering the first third of the road that led toward the iron-gray city of Skarra Bree.
The setting had shifted from the lush, temperate greens of his youth to a landscape of golden, wind-swept grasslands and rugged foothills. It was the height of summer, and the land was fat with a bitter irony – while Emcorae’s soul felt like a wasteland, the earth was overflowing with abundance. The roadside orchards bowed under the weight of ripening fruits, and the wheat, corn, and produce of countless farms was everywhere. As a result, although he’d abandoned his own food days prior, Emcorae had no trouble “securing” supplies for he and his horse; he moved through the bounty like a harvester, taking what he needed with an entitled efficiency that would have horrifed his mother.
Though the midday sun beat down with a relentless heat on most days, he kept to the dappled shade of the trees that lined the Parkway. He made good time, and for a fleeting moment, the rhythmic pace and the physical distance from his crime began to lighten his mood. But that peace was but a breath, shattered one afternoon by a another prickle at the base of his neck.
Someone is following me, he thought, his hand instinctively dropping to the hilt of his blade. He didn’t turn his head—the Azora training forbade such obvious tells—but the next time he stopped for water, his eyes scanned back along the horizon through the shimmering heat-haze, searching the crest of the last hill.
He’d had the feeling off and on for over a week, a phantom tether pulling at his awareness. Now that his mind had compartmentalized the “situation” with Dugan—locking that bloody memory in a dark corner of his psyche—he had been able to think with more clarity. He’d fully expected to encounter the human rot of the road; ruffians and footpads were as common as crows in these lawless borderlands. While he knew he was not yet the peerless master El-Janus was, Emcorae was confident that the silver mail beneath his cloak and his training would give him the lethal advantage in any fight he might face. Yet, he was loath to waste the effort. So whenever the least inkling of other travelers appeared—the distant dust of a merchant caravan or the glint of a scout’s helm—he had vanished into the terrain with the effortless invisibility of an elven shadow.
Yet this one is different, he surmised, his jaw tightening. They don’t pass by. They don’t linger at the inns. They’re still there. Constant. Patient.
For most of the last two days, he had engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse, a tactical dance of evasion and counter-tracking he had learned in the emerald Glades of Gazza. He would double back through dry, cracked creek beds that left no scent, weave false trails into the waist-high bunchgrass, or suddenly gallop Joanne for a league only to wheel around and wait in silent ambush behind a granite tor.
Yet, his follower was either preternaturally skilled or maddeningly lucky. They never fell into his traps. They never overextended. They remained a ghost on the very edge of his perception, a whisper in the dry wind that refused to take shape. It was as if this tracker knew his intentions before he formed them; as if they knew the cadence of his thoughts and the elven logic of his movements.
But how? he wondered, a cold knot of curiosity tightening in his chest. Who? Why?
In spite of the mystery, Emcorae felt no fear—that required a value for one’s own life that he had largely discarded. Instead, he felt an irritation at the delay. He wondered if Diked, in his paranoid malice, had caught wind of his intention? If maybe Dugan had fired off another letter whilst Emcorae was in Arbola. Were these men at arms Diked had dispatched to waylay him before he reached the capital? Surely that was it. It had to be multiple pursuers – for no single tracker could continue to wade through all the false trails Emcorae had left behind him.
That night, Emcorae made camp within the skeletal ruins of a roadside waystation, its stone walls tumbled and blackened by some forgotten skirmish. He sat in the center of the roofless room by a tiny, smokeless fire fed by dry scrub. The katana lay across his knees, its black grip a familiar, cold comfort. The mystery of his pursuer had acted like a shroud, dousng the brief sparks of light he had felt earlier in the journey. He fell back into the darkness again, the blackness in his chest expanding to meet the night.
“Tomorrow, I end the game,” he whispered to the tiny flame. “Whether they be the King’s guard or common thugs matters not to me. If it’s a fight they want, I’ll gladly give it to them.”
He began to toy with the idea of the kill, his mind drifting back to the scene in Dugan’s chamber. He imagined his pursuer finally stepping into the circle of his reach—perhaps a scarred thief or a lean Orkney scout—and he felt a dark, perverse thrill at the thought of the katana’s arc.
“It will be my blade’s first taste of human blood.” His eyes narrowed, reflecting the tiny fire until they looked like twin coals. “It’s long overdue.”
As the fates would have it, the former Azora didn’t have to wait until the next day to find a battle.
The attack Emcorae expected did not come from the trail behind him, but from the black silence of his own camp.
A sharp, piercing whistle sliced through the night air, instantly followed by the heavy, rhythmic thud of a countless boots charging through the scrub. From the tall grass and the shadows of the ruins, a band of ruffians erupted. There were twelve, no, fifteen of them—men clad in mismatched boiled leather and rusted iron. These were the hollowed-out refuse of the border wars of the petty kingdoms, wretches who had lost their homes and families and found their bread by murdering helpless travelers in the dark.
“The silver!” their leader shrieked. He was a man with a face like a knotted root and a jagged scar that ran from his ear to his throat. “Strip the boy! Kill the horse! Hurry!”
Yet Emcorae exploded into motion before the words had even left the leader’s mouth. His katana swept a silver arc that severed the arm of the first man to reach the firelight. The bandit didn’t even scream; he simply stared at the stump before the shock claimed him. Meanwhile, Joanne reared, a black specter in the gloom. Her hooves struck out with trained precision, the sickening crunch of a ruffian’s ribs echoing off the stone ruins as he’d tried to snatch her bridle.
At first, it was a one-sided affair. Much to the robbers’ surprise, the prey they had waylaid was not a trembling merchant, but a wolf in silver mail. Emcorae was a blur of fury and steel, his movements dealing death with every heartbeat.
“Come get me, you vultures!” Emcorae roared, his voice echoing with manic energy.
He parried a rusted axe with a shower of sparks and riposted in a single, fluid motion, the point of his blade punching through the wielder’s throat. As that man slumped, Emcorae spun, his elvin cloak snapping like a whip. He dropped low, the katana whistling through the air to slice through the hamstrings of a man lunging from his left. The man hit the dirt with a howl, but Emcorae was already gone, his blade a silver flash weaving a shroud of blood. He caught another attacker’s spear-thrust on the parry, stepped inside the man’s reach, and drove his elbow into the brute’s jaw with a force that shattered bone.
Yet, for all his skills and the growing tally of the dead, the reality was not in his favor: Emcorae was still but an Azora Pupil, and fifteen-to-one were odds, as yet, beyond his ability to sustain.
The bandits were desperate, driven by a gnawing hunger, but they were not stupid. Their leader, seeing five of his men already cooling on the dirt, retreated to gather their wits.
“Form up, you spineless dogs!” the scarred man bellowed, his voice cracking with rage. “He’s just one cub! Circle him! Bleed him from the sides!”
The bandits widened their perimeter, staying just out of the crazed warrior’s reach, poking at him with long, rusted pikes to keep him turning. Yet this only energized the Azora more.
“Is this all you have?” Emcorae taunted. “A dozen of you against a small prey like me? Come one. Get me!”
From the darkness at his left, two men stepped out hauling a heavy net, weighted at the edges with river stones. Emcorae saw the net and a hollow laugh escaped his lips. He thought he could easily avoid it—he had dodged far faster snares in the Glades. But just then a band of three attackers lunged at his right flank, forcing him to commit to a sweeping parry. That’s when the leader gave a sharp command – the net sailed through the air from Emcorae’s blind side. His Azoran instincts screamed a warning and he jumped aside, but his boots skidded on the loose silt and he was an instant too slow.
The weighted mesh tangled around his sword arm, the stones dragging the blade down toward the earth. In that moment of imbalance, he stumbled. The leader seized the opening, lunging forward with a heavy iron-bound cudgel. The blow caught Emcorae just barely across the temple—not enough to crack his skull, but enough to make the world tilt and ring like a struck bell.
“Take him alive!” the henchman barked, stepping over the body of his fallen comrade. “Anyone who can fight like a demon is worth coin in the slave pits of Orkney. Surely some lord will pay for a pet like. Search him—find out who he’s with and where the rest of the gear is hid!”
Time slowed to a crawl for Emcorae as he fell to one knee, the rough grit of the Parkway biting into his skin. The world spun in nauseating shades of red and black. He felt the crushing weight of three men leaping onto his back, their sour stench filling his nostrils as they dragged him down toward the dirt. His fingers slipped from the hilt of his katana.
“So this is it,” Emcorae thought, a bitterness washing over him as his face was pressed into mud. “My quest is over before I ever reached the gates. I haven’t even seen his face. Diked wins…”
There is Another
Inside the ruins, the stench of sweat, the groans of the dying, and the protests of Joanne being subdued rang out. Three men were pinning Emcorae down as the leading henchman approached him. But then, the night itself seemed to tear open.
A piercing cry—a war-shout of the Arbolan Glades sounded like a silver trumpet—shattering the bandits’ plans. It was a sound of ancient, forest-born fury that froze the blood of every ruffian in the camp.
From the overhanging trees above the stone arch of the ruined waystation, a silhouette plummeted down. It was Nathily!
She fell like a star cast out of the heavens and before the bandits could even register the blur of green and silver, her falchia was in motion. She hit the ground in a controlled roll and surged upward in a spinning, lethal circle. Her blade whispered through the air, a sound like tearing silk. In that first, breathtaking heartbeat of violence, three ruffians—those who held Emcore – all fell in her first attack. One lost his head before his scream could leave his throat; the other two were opened from hip to shoulder, their life-blood spraying the dry dust in a crimson mist.
Emcorae, still dazed, fell off to the side and watched through a crimson haze. He had seen Nathily train in the sun-dappled glades of Arbola with wooden staves, but this… this was something else. This was the Amora Path made manifest.
Driven by an protective furry, Nathily didn’t stop. She moved with a preternatural fluidity that defied human physics. As the remaining men recovered from their shock and surged toward her, she was ready for them. Like Emcorae, her training had more than prepared her to fight against less skilled opponents.
“Get the witch!” the scarred leader shrieked, his voice cracking with a sudden terror. “Slay her! Slay them both!”
But the men were hesitant. They were looking at a creature of legend, an elfess whose grace made Emcorae’s earlier fighting look like clumsy. Nathily took on multiple attackers again, her feet barely touching the earth. She ducked under a heavy mace, the wood whistling over her head, and thrust her curved blade upward, the point catching the next man under the chin. As he fell, she used his falling body as a springboard, flipping backward over a spear-thrust to land perfectly between Emcorae and the leader.
“BACK!” she roared. It wasn’t a plea; it was a command that carried the weight of the Great Oak itself.
The ruffians were flabbergasted. “What in the Hells is she?” one whimpered, his knife shaking in his hand. “She moves like the wind!”
“She’s just meat and bone!” the leader bellowed, though he himself was stepping backward. “Kill her or I’ll gut you myself!”
Two more men, spurred by the fear of their captain, rushed her from opposite sides. Nathily met them with a crystalline focus. She parried the first man’s axe so hard the vibrations shattered the wooden handle, then spun on her heel, the falchia’s arc widening to catch the second man across the chest. He collapsed into the campfire, scattering orange sparks into the black sky.
The tide had turned for good. With only the leader and three others still standing, the predatory confidence of the pack broke. They faltered, their eyes darting toward the darkness of the tall grass. But Nathily gave them no quarter. Knowing they’d tried to murder the man she loved, she didn’t wait for them to reconsider. She moved between them like a weaver at a loom, her blade a silver thread that left a trail of red in its wake. In heartbeats, three more were down—one with a punctured lung, two more with deep, incapacitating gashes to their limbs. That left only the henchman himself.
The scarred leader, seeing his entire band dismantled by a single elven girl, let out a high-pitched, animal scream of pure terror. He didn’t even look back at the goods he had coveted. He turned and ran screaming into the night, his frantic footsteps fading into the distance as he disappeared toward the Parkway, howling like a beaten dog.
Silence returned to the ruins, broken only by the crackle of the dying fire and the protests of Joanne trying to escape her bindings. Nathily freed the horse and stood amidst the carnage. The tip of her falchia dripped a steady, rhythmic drip-pat of blood onto the parched earth. She did not look at the dead. Slowly, she turned toward Emcorae.
He on one knee, gasping for air, the red mist of his concussion finally clearing as he tried to stand up.
Thus it was that Emcorae’s pursuer had revealed herself. And as he stood and looked up into the face of the friend he had tried to leave behind in the dust of his own darkness, he saw a legendary warrior who had followed his shadow into the abyss—and come bearing a saving, blinding light.
“Nathily?” he whispered, his voice cracking with a mixture of shame and awe.
“I’m here, Em.” She ran to him, holding him upright. “I’ll always be here.”
The Apocrypha of Azazel 