The only disappointment of the day was that its end meant Relhan was halfway over. Damian had never experienced such festivity and wonder and wished that it would never end. What she found she wished most for was more time to sleep. The rising sun awakened her every morning and Garrick with his boundless energy kept her busy seeing new things deep into the night. She regretted none of it; even stopping to eat, she feared she would miss some new amazing performance.
The celebration lasted longer that day than previous days, the last performance ending almost halfway through the night. Most of the town was asleep already and many people in the audience had followed suit before the play was finished. It was a little raunchy for Damian's tastes, but when she followed Garrick out into the street after it ended, her cheeks were red only from laughing so hard. She had never seen such a play and had not laughed so much in years.
The streets were deserted and windows dark as she and Garrick ran giggling out from the tavern basement where the play was staged, a horn of ale still in the knight's hand. Down an alley a few blocks from the pub, they came upon one of the smaller, less popular town squares on the edge of the river. When they neared a bench, Garrick turned and collapsed, sitting on the ground with his free arm draped over the seat of the bench. Damian, still trying to catch her breath from laughing so much, took a seat on the bench, wishing she had a drink herself.
"That was unbelievable!" the knight remarked as he wiped a tear from his eye. Damian tried to stop smiling. Her cheeks were sore from it.
"I've never seen a play like that before," she replied.
"You haven't?" he wondered with a grin over his shoulder. "I'll have to take you to more comedies, then. That's one of the best I've seen, though."
"I loved the part where the merchant got his hand caught in the barrel of fish," she commented, only to descend into a fit of snickering again. She could hear Garrick's laugh over her own.
"Or when the hero tripped and ran into the pie seller," he added. Damian howled with laughter, wishing she didn't sound so ridiculous and glad no one else was around to see her.
"Oh, I think I could watch that a hundred times over," she stated, trying to catch her breath. The knight didn't answer. When she recovered enough to glance at Garrick, her smile disappeared. He stared into the sky before them with a frighteningly serious look on his face. She gazed at him, perplexed. Then, the air shimmered over his head and the curved horns and webbed fins she had seen once before on him came into view. She gasped and backed away from him.
"Damian," he began as he stood and deposited his drinking horn on the bench, "find cover." The mirth disappeared entirely from his face and despite the several orders of ale he had downed through the course of the play, he appeared as sober as if it had been water. Quicker than one could draw a sword, he pulled his spear from the harness over his shoulder. Damian stared at the weapon, her breath racing. The blade was a foot and a half of polished steel shaped like a sword blade, designed as much for slashing as for stabbing. An intricate bronze dragon with spread wings held it to the shaft of the spear, the serrated edges to the bottom of the blade making it appear as if the dragon was spewing silver fire. The shaft was a smooth beam of polished mahogany as tall as he was and a long spike attached to the butt of the spear. Finally, she followed his eyes and her heart skipped a beat. Gliding through the air on wings that drank up the shadows were the same pale creatures that attacked Aether.
All the joy, security, and hope she had felt over the past few days were gone in an instant. She felt lost and alone, almost as afraid of the mysterious horned knight beside her as the monsters circling above. Her terror rose as she tried to count all the moonlit creatures flying toward them. It was a group at least as large as that which had followed her from Aether into the surrounding forest. Damian found herself unable to move.
"What are you doing here?" Garrick called out, his voice sharp and commanding. Damian couldn't even gather her voice enough to ask who he was talking to. There was no response. Slowly, the creatures came closer. Damian trembled while Garrick stood stone still, brandishing his spear.
"Look out!" his voice came as he lunged toward her, pulling her away with a shriek. She barely caught a glimpse over his sharp blue-grey spaulder of the pale creature landing on and jumping off the bench she had so recently been occupying. Once she was steady, frozen in fear, Garrick spun, his back to her and his eyes scanning the creatures swarming close. She closed her eyes and shivered, almost feeling them sweeping in, grabbing her, tearing at her flesh and clothes and burning her with their magic so like her own.
"Stop this!" Garrick yelled, snapping her back into reality. He held his spear forward, now assuming a defensive stance, and scanned the creatures as they circled ever closer. "Tell us what you want! We mean you no harm!" She could hear growls and the leathery sound of the creatures' wings as they soared overhead, but there was no other answer.
The bronze dragon flew over her head and she gasped. All she heard was the creature's cry, followed by her own, as it fell to the ground and rolled into the river, a streak of inky blackness flowing down its chest.
"I don't want to hurt you!" Garrick continued. "Just tell us what you want!" Somehow, as she looked straight above her with her heart pounding in her ears, Damian knew what the answer to his question was.
In the blink of an eye, he was past her again, with only a brush from his cloak flowing by to assure her that he had moved. Another inhuman screech rang through the air, sending an icicle of fear up Damian's spine. The creature flapped its wings clumsily as it tried to return to the air, black blood leaking from its leg. More creatures swept down toward her and she knew there was no escaping them this time.
Garrick's voice sounded like an echo from far away as he raced by again, slashing at another creature with his spear. It felt like a dream, even though terror gripped her heart with an iron gauntlet. The knight was one against an army of demons and she was their target. Tears welled hopelessly in her eyes.
"Damian! Get down!" he screamed almost in her ear as he leapt at another pale creature, jolting her back to awareness. With a quick glance around at the empty square, she dove and crawled beneath the bench, quivering in fear. Beyond the meager safety of the bench, Garrick fought the creatures trying to reach her. They glided through the night sky in every direction, swarming like hungry crows above a cache of food. Everywhere she looked, she saw them, brandishing their crude weapons and eyeing her closely. Her lungs tightened.
She tried to focus on the creatures soaring back and forth overhead, but her eyes kept returning to the knight that fought for her. Though he looked no different aside from the horns and fins that now seemingly grew from his head, his armour and posture seemed more dragonlike, and he moved as fluidly as water like no man could. He was quick as a deer, strong as a bear, and seemed to know exactly what every creature was doing at every moment, dodging their attacks faster than they could sling them. The spear blade flashed and the armour sang as he flew through the plaza. He raced across the square and leapt, kicking off from a tree and rising twice his own height into the air before slashing at one of the creatures. The force of his swing sent the creature flying backwards into the path of another, knocking both to the ground. His incredible abilities were mesmerizing and Damian was so transfixed on his movement it didn't even register in her mind that he was running right toward her.
Suddenly, the bench jolted above her with a defeaning rattle. She started and yelped, knocked out of her reverie. Turning, she found Garrick in the air on the other side of the bench, swinging his spear at an enemy approaching from behind. Her eyes widened, awed. His armour glinted in the moonlight, the engraved scales shining like diamonds and his forked cloak billowing behind him like wings. In that moment, she understood why he was called a dragon knight.
Although the knight seemed to be everywhere at once, Damian couldn't help but notice that the creatures still advanced on her. The more Garrick tried to keep at bay, the more approached from the other side of the plaza. Every now and then, she caught a glimpse of yellow eyes gazing into her own before Garrick reappeared. Every time, they seemed closer.
The streets around them remained eerily quiet as the creatures soared above and fought Garrick below. The buildings surrounding the plaza loomed tall and dark and even the flow of the river could be heard clearly behind the leathery flap of wings, the occasional deep growl, and the more obvious clashes of the knight's fighting. Damian could hardly see the creatures that remained in the air. Their bodies were streaks of moonlight and wings and tails were flowing shadows filling the air and blacking out the feathery clouds above. They descended toward Damian, so close she could see almost nothing else. She had lost sight of Garrick.
"Damian!" the knight yelled to her. Halfway across the square from her, he grappled with five of the creatures at once. He ducked, dodged, parried, swiveled, and kicked and remained unharmed, but finding an opening to return to her was difficult. "You have to ward them off! Use your magic!" Her heart caught in her throat as she gazed up through the slats of the bench. Half a dozen creatures circled less than fifteen feet above. Their amber eyes bore into her, deeper than it seemed even she herself could see, and she became afraid to cast magic again. The dagger that Caleb Brown had given her hung around her waist, an unfamiliar weight, but she was too afraid to draw it. All she wanted to do was run, but she was trapped beneath the bench.
"I can't," she whimpered as she watched the creatures land around her. A thousand thoughts ran through her mind. Questions, secrets, fears, denials, and most of all, hundreds of horrible images of what the creatures were going to do with her when they caught her. Fear paralyzed her. Garrick's voice rang out from even farther away than before.
"You have to!" he continued. "It's your only chance!" She glanced through the maze of large, flat feet of pale bluish skin and thin black tails to the knight's distant armoured legs. The creatures could never seem to restrain him, but they continued to push him away, far beyond where he could help her now. Once again, Damian was alone, back in Aether with her father dead and her home engulfed in flames, alone against a swarm of monsters.
The ear-piercing scrape of a claw on stone rang an arm's length from where she crouched. Turning, she found one of the creatures on the other side of the bench, kneeling on the ground and reaching toward her. She shrieked and scrambled away, rising to her feet on the other side of the bench. As soon as she did, a bony hand grasped her arm.
With a yelp, Damian spun, and before she realized what had happened, the creature was blown back by her own hand, fire pulsing through her fingers. She tried to fight it, but another creature grabbed her and it felt her fire as well, and another, and another. They all advanced and they all flew back, not on their own wings. Damian panicked, unable to stop herself from attacking the creatures, as much as she wished only to run. She felt an intense heat surging through her heart, pumping lava through her arteries and flinging death at her enemies. As much as she slung spell after spell at the creatures out of fear, she felt drunk on her own ability to do so, feeding a terrible rage she couldn't feel.
Still the creatures approached, even as a dozen of their comrades lay howling in a circle around her. Halting her spellcasting, she gathered the heat inside her into a fiery supernova. The anger and fear left her and all she knew was fire, growing stronger and stronger within her. When the flames could be contained no longer, she let it erupt in an enormous blast, and it was the last thing she knew.
The first thing Damian realized was that she felt feverish, though it subsided as she began to awaken.
She moaned softly while feeling tingled through her weary body and light filtered red through her closed eyes. Wherever she was, it was quiet, and her body rested on something soft that eased her aching muscles.
Finally, she opened her eyes. A blur of brown met her gaze. Slowly, her vision focused until she found she was looking at a familiar ceiling. Turning her head, she saw the nightstand with her coin pouch, dagger, and belt on it and the window on the wall beside it. Her cloak hung on its peg on the other side of the room. She was back in her room at the Yawning Bear.
Blinking in confusion, she sat up and glanced out the window. The morning was late and the streets were bustling. She could hear music faintly over the low murmur of voices and footfalls. Half-remembered images of black-and-white creatures and metallic dragons flitted across her eyes as she watched the town that looked perfectly normal outside.
Was it a dream? she wondered.
Something stirred in the corner, drawing her attention away from the town beyond her room. She gasped softly when she found Garrick sitting on a chair by the door with his arms folded, still armed and armoured as she had always seen him. Visions of the battle in the empty plaza danced in her mind, but she fought to deny them as he rose yawning and approached the bed she lied on.
"How are you feeling?" the knight asked gently when he stopped beside her. He blinked bloodshot eyes often and she could see the weariness in his posture.
"I..." she attempted. She didn't want that frightening event to be real, but it was the only reason he would be here now. His question faded from her mind as her gaze fell. Then she noticed the bandage wrapped around his left arm beneath bloodstained tears on the inside of his sleeve. Her eyes widened.
"Y-your arm!" she remarked shakily. He only shrugged, not even glancing at the wound.
"Just a scratch," he replied. Damian began to tremble beneath the covers, warm as she was still fully dressed. Memories slowly trickled back from the previous night. Alone in the square, surrounded by those pale creatures, her only protection dragged away from her, and fire, so much fire. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, fear overcoming her.
"Hey," Garrick's voice came softly as he touched his fingers to her bare shoulder. Twitching, she looked up at him. "It's okay. You're safe now." Questions nagged at the corner of her mind. She glanced out the window at the town below. There was no scene of devastation as there had been in Aether, no sign of any damage at all.
"What..." she began, "what happened?"
"That last spell you cast warded them off," he explained. A wave of warmth washed over her like a hot breeze as she recalled the searing heat she last remembered feeling. "You passed out from it, but it hit enough of them that they retreated." Damian shivered with the thought of casting a spell so powerful. She couldn't help but think that her father was right to warn her against using magic.
"The town," she stated. "Was anybody..."
"No one was hurt," Garrick finished for her, shaking his head. "No one else even saw the krolmins." Damian hesitated a moment, considering the term. Was that what those creatures were called? She remembered that she had heard the black-haired guard call them that when Domino was arrested. Garrick's expression grew more serious. "Just us." She didn't understand what he meant at first, but then it hit her like a slap in the face. It was her those creatures wanted. She quivered in fear.
"No," she uttered, tears gathering in her eyes with miserable realization. The nightmare had been real, the only dream was the happy life she had been leading until the previous night, and that was now over. She wanted to creep into the corner, to hide away, to run. Run away from everything.
"Damian," Garrick stated. He kneeled on the floor so he was on eye level with her. She looked over her arm at him, but she felt afraid of him, too. As impressed as she had been with the way he had fought for her, she still felt uneasy around him, a remnant of years of loneliness and a deep-rooted fear of opening up. She didn't know what was going on or who she could trust. All she wanted was her simple life in Aether with her father, but that was long gone.
"Can you think of any reason the krolmins might be after you?" Garrick asked softly. Damian shook her head roughly, her long hair tossing over her back.
"No!" she answered in a weak voice. "I've never seen those things before in my life!" Sobs wracked her heart. More and more, she wanted to run, even though she didn't know what she was running from, or where she would run to. The knight laid a steady hand over her shoulder.
"Then we need to find out what's going on," he replied and stood straight. Damian raised her head slightly and sent him a questioning glance. "We need to speak to a diviner." Her eyebrows rose in confusion.
"A what?" she asked, sniffling.
"A conjuror who can use a magus to find information," Garrick explained.
"What kind of information?"
"Whatever they can find out." Damian sighed, glad for the distraction to take her mind off her fears.
"Where can we find one?" she wondered. The thought that someone could tell her what was happening gave her a faint spark of hope.
"There aren't any mages in Trent," he told. "There's a guild in Dresdin. We'll have to go there." The words made Damian's heart sink. She was afraid of traveling with this stranger and Dresdin was at least as far from Trent as Trent was from Aether, if not farther. And she remembered from her father's trade routes that the coastal city was not nearly so pleasant a place as Trent. It was a frightening thought and she didn't want to leave the sanctuary Trent had become.
"How... how do you know there aren't any mages here?" she asked, desperately hoping she could avoid going to Dresdin. Garrick sent her an apologetic look.
"Magic can be very dangerous in the wrong hands," he stated. "That's why it's closely regulated by the crown. No one may forge a spirit bond or learn how to cast magic without attending schools sanctioned by the kingdom, and practicing mages are closely watched by the archons of the mages' guild. There's no guild in Trent and no practicing mages. Although there could theoretically be a traveling mage somewhere in town, it would be impossible to find them. Going to Dresdin is our easiest option." Damian looked away, tears building behind her eyes again. Traveling to Dresdin was far from easy. Having lost her home in the attack on Aether, she found comfort in certain familiarities in Trent. She didn't want to lose those as well.
"What about those mages in the market?" she stated, remembering some of the performers she had seen in town for Relhan.
"Parlor tricks," Garrick answered, shaking his head. "It's all fire powders, sleight of hand, and ordinary illusions. There's no magic involved."
"But," she argued, "the fortune teller..." Tears welled beneath her eyes at the memory of what the fortune teller had discovered about her.
"Could see with his own two eyes that you had endured hardship recently and made an accurate guess," he responded. "He knew nothing about the krolmins. I know you don't want to leave Trent." He smiled softly. "I don't, either. But if we're going to figure out what's happening, we have to go to Dresdin." Damian looked away. The urge to run grew stronger as she felt trapped here, but as it did, so did the realization that there was nowhere to run. "Are you okay to travel?"
"I..." she began. She knew she had to answer him truthfully, but she couldn't force the words out. Instead, words she thought she could never say spilled out uncontrollably. "I don't want to go to Dresdin! I won't! You can't force me to go!" Her body shook as if she had defied a lord and was facing imprisonment or death for it. In the company of a knight of Faneria, she very well could be. But he only knelt beside the bed again, giving her a remorseful look.
"I'm sorry," he spoke. "I don't mean to make things harder for you. Believe me, that's the last thing I want to do." Damian gazed at the blankets at her feet, not facing the knight. "But we need to find out what the krolmins want with you." She shivered at that. Though she knew in the back of her mind that those creatures had shown a distinct interest in her, and had even snuck into the city to attack her under cover of night, she hadn't wanted to admit to herself that she alone was their target. Suddenly, an even darker realization hit her and she burst into tears, sobbing loudly.
"Damian?" Garrick asked worriedly.
"It's my fault!" she cried. "I'm the reason Aether was attacked! It's because of me that the town was destroyed and my father..." She descended into a fit of sobs, guilt weighing heavily on her shoulders. Garrick sat on the bed beside her and rubbed her back soothingly, but it did nothing to ease her pain.
"It's not your fault," he stated. "After all, you didn't mean for this to happen, did you?" Damian sniffled, trying to gather her voice.
"But if it wasn't for me, none of this would have happened," she argued. She thought of all the people she had known in Aether. Connor, Meris, Andrea, Clyde. She was the cause of their death and suffering. She may as well have lit those fires in Aether herself. And how many others were those creatures willing to hurt to get to her? She caught a glimpse of the bandage around Garrick's arm. Grief and hopelessness overwhelmed her.
"Maybe it would be better if I just let them take me," she remarked between sobs. "I don't deserve to live." The knight's hand slipped off her back. A moment passed while she cried hopelessly. Eventually, Garrick faced her and grasped her shoulders tightly.
"Damian," he stated, deeply serious. She waited for him to continue, but he said nothing more. After a long moment, she raised her tear-stained eyes to him. His grey-green eyes were more solemn than she had ever seen them and his hair glowed blood red in the light.
"Do you know what is the only thing worse than being afraid of dying?" he asked. Damian blinked, uncomprehending. He leaned his head forward slightly.
"Being afraid of living," he told. Damian's eyes widened while her sobs slowly ebbed. Releasing her shoulders, he stood. "I'm not going to force you to do anything. You have to make that decision for yourself." He leaned forward. "Just remember this. No matter what happens, no matter what tragedies may have befallen you or anyone you know, you're still here. You can still change things as long as you're alive." He stood straight and gazed down at her. "You can't help anyone if you're dead." With that, he turned and began walking toward the door. His words were a knife of truth in her heart, the only thing she needed and the last thing she wanted to hear. For a long few seconds, she stared at his retreating form, slowly absorbing what he had told her.
He opened the door.
"Wait!" Damian exclaimed. He stopped in the open doorway and glanced over his shoulder at her. Her heart raced.
"When should we leave?" Garrick smiled.
"Tomorrow morning," he answered. "Rest up, you'll need your strength." He stepped out, leaving Damian alone with her thoughts.