Chapter 4

The Kids Are Not All Right

Beneath the ravenous gaze of a New England sun Samuel Burtwhistle, a probably-dying pegasus, and two weird kids stood befuddled at the mouth of a ruined village. What should have been a bustling Massachusetts whistle-stop full of carriages, butchers, rogues, and trappers was now just a mangled pile of nothing. Vines slithered over charred timber. Felled trees split the rotting husks of homes. In the distance, a raccoon scuttled across a fractured roof beam, careful not to upset the balance of the wood’s decay.

“You said there was a town here,” Lily snarked, gawking at the various collapsed buildings quietly returning to the forest. With a huff she plopped to the ground and rubbed her bare feet.

Though the gang had only been walking for three hours, it already felt like eternity. Nursing a raging hangover and trying very hard not to wine-shit himself, Samuel insisted he ride the pegasus all the way to Boston, which was where he’d decided to dump the children before continuing to New York alone. He told them, still harnessing his persona of a man of the cloth, that as God’s instrument he needed his strength to confront whatever evils lay ahead. The food they carried was for his belly. The water, for his gullet. There would be plenty of towns to acquire provisions, he promised the children. Shoes for Lily. Fresh clothes for Corn. He said the road to Boston was ladened with hamlets, too many to count. Just have faith in Father Fousto.

“We’re lost, aren’t we?” Corn said, absentmindedly petting the mangy feathers of the pegasus which twitched at his touch.

“Yep,” Lily huffed.

Samuel slapped flies from his face and unfolded a crinkled map covered in whiskey stains. He slid a finger south along a single line leading from New Hampshire to Boston. It was an easy road. A straight shot to the garrisoned city. They just had to get there.

“What town is this?” Corn asked.

“I’m figuring that out,” Samuel replied.

“Haven’t you been up this way before?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m from Maine.”

“… Why?”

Samuel glared at the boy. The boy quieted.

Returning to the map he ran his finger up to Cherrytown, then east a little to a small dot with the words Glover’s Rest beside it. Grunting in agreement with the silent squiggles, he slid his finger just a little more eastward to another dot that read Breecher Hills. He lowered the map.

“This is definitely Glover’s Rest,” Samuel said, folding the parchment back into his vestments. “Then it’s just one more town before the main road.”

“What’s all the holes from?” Corn asked, pointing down the obliterated hamlet’s main street where dozens of scattered craters spewed weeds, reeds and the occasional frog croak.

“Cannon balls,” Lily replied, plucking a splinter from her pinky toe and grimacing.

Samuel kicked the protruding ribs of the pegasus, lurching the beast forward into the ruins. “I’m stopping at that church on the hill to take a shit,” he said.

“In a church?” Lily replied, standing.

“I’m God’s instrument,” Samuel said, his voice echoing across the ruins and weeds.

Corn turned to Lily.

“What if there’s bandits in there?” he said, watching Samuel trot away. “Or bears?”

Lily shrugged and entered the ruined village, her bare feet swishing lazily through chickweed and dandelion sprouting amongst the memories of a cobbled road. Yet Corn hesitated to follow. He turned to study the road at his heels and the winding path back to Cherrytown. There was an unsettling darkness to the woods now, as if sunlight could no longer penetrate the forest canopy. Tree branches bent into the roadway like clawing hands. No leaves rustled. No critters darted. Staring deeper into that stillness the boy swore he saw hints of red pulsing in the dirt—crimson veins throbbing rhythmically leading back to that eerie, empty hamlet. Suddenly, a crow squawked from a tree branch above him, making him jump. He reflexively turned to the bird and squawked back before shuffling into the ruins after Lily.

The surrounding forest had enveloped the battered town, as if an ocean wave of green crashed through it spreading honeysuckle, bramble, thickets and weeds in every hole and corner. Thorny bushes lined what remained of the main road. Thick trees reached high into the sky, clawing at the sun. Every charred beam was richly slathered in moss and mushrooms. In the town’s center was a four lane crossroad. The main street was somewhat clear, its cobblestones fighting back the earth with diligence, yet the side roads had all but disappeared. In the center of the intersection, beside a bombed out church just up a hill, Samuel fell off Oats and leaked a fart amidst a swirl of dust and flies. He clawed at the soil, clutched his rear. He clumsily rushed over rubble and brick, splashing through a crater pond before ascending jagged stone steps leading to the husk of the holy temple.

Further down the road the kids ambled toward him.

“Tie up the horse!” Samuel shouted.

Lily waved in acknowledgement and watched the man gallop on all fours up the ruined sanctuary’s steps before throwing himself through a vacant doorway, disappearing into a mess of fallen stones and ivy.

“What’s his name, again?” asked Corn, having just caught up with Lily.

“Father Fausto,” Lily replied.

“Fow… stow…” Corn said, drawing out the syllables. “FaoOww-stohw… What is that? German?”

“Italian, I think.”

“Huh… He said he was from Maine though. Was he always your town priest? We always had the same one in my town.”

“No,” she said, glaring at the boy who’d found a stick on the ground and was now whacking at tall weeds as they walked. The whoosh of it made Lily nervous. He was clumsy and tripped through half of his swings.

“When’d he come around?” Corn asked.

“I don’t know,” Lily replied, “… I was sick for a while.”

“Sick with what?”

“Mumps,” Lily lied. Corn swished the stick again and barely missed the brim of Lily’s nose. “Can you stop?”

“Sorry,” Corn said. He tossed the stick into the ruins of a home.

Across the street from the church was the husk of a general store. Its facade, surprisingly still intact, cast a long, welcoming shadow over the sunbaked intersection. Half-rotten steps lead to a half-rotten porch. In the center of the porch stood a doorframe with a sign above it reading, Dolan’s Durables. Beyond the vacant doorframe was a considerable drop into wildberry bushes and honeysuckle. The kids entered the shade.

Oats had already moseyed to a nearby cannon crater filled with a murky puddle. It snorted as it lapped up water. A frog glared at the creature, croaked, then jumped from its lily pad bobbing in the wake. As it drank in the cool of Dolan’s shadow, the horsebird ruffled its matted wings, extending one far enough away from its body so that the kids caught a glimpse of scars where feathers should have been.

“I thought pegasuses—is it pegasuses? Pegusi?” Corn said.

“Pegasuses, I think,”Lily replied.

“I thought pegasooses healed quickly? That’s why they live so long.”

“Maybe this one’s old.”

Corn studied the creature and shrugged. “Could be.”

Lily approached the horsebird. It eyed the girl as its tongue lapped puddle murk. She ran her hand gently over its wings, finding its silver feathers brittle and dry.

“Why were you riding it?” she asked. “Why don’t you have a normal house?”

“No idea,” Corn replied. “Heralds aren’t given horses.”

“So you don’t remember anything while you were under the spell?”

“Nope.”

“Why were you a Herald, anyway?”

“My dad sold me to a newspaper.”

“…”

“He’s a cobbler in Tampa.”

“Where’s that?”

“Florida.”

She stared at the boy and shook her head a little.

“… The only Carthaginian colony in the New World… I’m basically Carthaginian. I mean I was born in Jersey, and my parents are Welsh, but I’m basically Carthaginian.”

“I didn’t know Carthage had colonies here.”

“They got it from Spain after the Seven Years War. It’s way south though. Probably as far south as you can go.”

“Huh.”

Corn hoisted himself onto the lip of a charred wagon. It creaked and sagged against his weight but didn’t buckle.

“So why’d your dad… sell you?”

“To pay off debt, really. I’m his only child, so that’s all he could do.”

“You don’t seem mad about it.”

“I just want to go home, really.”

“How long have you been away?”

“Oh gosh… well, what year is it?”

“… What?”

“It’s not 1802 still, is it?”

“It’s 1805.”

Corn whistled.

Lily’s eyebrows raised. “So you don’t remember three whole years?”

“Not a lick,” Corn said. “Dad sold me and they put the spell on me right after.”

Lily watched the boy’s head lower after saying that and decided not to press him more. She turned her attention to satchels hitched to Oats’ saddle. She untied a lid and rummaged inside.

“Hungry?” she asked.

“Starving,” Corn said.

She pulled out a carrot and presented it to Oats. The pegasus sniffed it, huffed, then returned to the puddle. “Picky, aren’t we?” She said, sliding the carrot back into a bag. As she searched for more satchels, she turned to Corn.

“You grabbed me, you know.”

Corn’s eyes widened. “Grabbed you!?”

“Back in town. You said I needed to join the warfront”

“Did I hurt you?”

“Not really. You shouted a lot though. My ears are still ringing.”

“You should have hit me.”

“Your grip was too tight.”

She pulled two apples from a bag and tossed one to Corn who reached to catch it but missed. The hard fruit thunked into his cheek and plopped into his lap. Lily stifled a laugh.

“You’re pretty clumsy,” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”

Corn wiped dirt from his apple and replied, “Sorry.”

The girl chuckled. “It’s like your body’s too big for your brain.”

The boy crossed his legs beneath him, causing the wagon to groan and sag a little more.

“I was ten when they bound me,” he said. “I guess I’m not used to being tall.”

He stared at the apple in his hand then quickly pushed it much further into his mouth than anyone normally would, taking half the fruit in one bite. He chewed with his mouth open. Apple bits fell to the ground.

“So you can cast spells in Florida?” Lily asked.

“Yep,” he said with his mouth full. “Just like in Carthage. It’s really the only empire in the world that lets normal people do it.”

“I’ve never seen spells cast before,” Lily said. She tossed the boy a large slice of jerky.

“Really?” Corn said. He caught the beef with both hands and tore half of it off with his teeth.

Lily shook her head. “It’s forbidden up here.”

She pulled a foxskin bladder from the saddle and popped its lid. She tilted it to her mouth, downed half its contents, sighed with relief, then handed the bladder to Corn.

“How do they work?” Lily asked.

“Spells?” Corn said. He sipped from the foxskin, ripped off another hunk of jerky with his teeth, then swilled another swig of water. “Dunno. Kids aren’t allowed to cast them, but most adults I know used laḥaš.”

“La... kash?”

“Laḥaš, yeah. That’s what Carthage calls spells, enchantments, all that stuff. I think most of the world calls it that too? I’ve only heard laḥaš, at least. Dunno what else you’d say.”

He gulped more water, but missed his mouth slightly so that it splashed awkwardly over his chin and down his shirt. He glanced at Lily, hoping she didn’t notice (she did) as he corked the bottle and set it beside him in the wagon.

“What I’ve heard,” he continued, “Is that the words are important. Like how you say the spells. It matters. Like you can’t just say, blah, blah—”

“Blah, blah?” Lily said, smiling. “That’s a spell?”

“No, no, they say spells in this weird language. I don’t know.”

“The blah, blah language.”

“We’ll call it that. Anyway, you’ve gotta mean it when you say, blah, blah. Which I don’t get.”

“Did your dad use spells?”

“Sometimes, yeah. But only basic cants. I want to be a thaumaturge when I grow up. They cast the cool stuff.”

“Thaw-mah—?”

“Battle wizards, basically, but also philosophers. They’re really powerful.” Then he cocked his head at her. “Why don’t you know anything?”

Lily ripped a piece of jerky with her teeth and said, “They didn’t let kids leave town.”

“Why not?”

Lily waved her hand slowly through the air, gesturing at the ruins.

Corn nodded. “Well, then, what do you know?”

“I know blah, blah.”

The boy smiled. “Oh, and Paladins. They can cast spells too.”

“What’s Paladins?”

Corn stared at her and shook his head. “Jesus, I would have thought—”

From the church up the hill, Samuel shouted, “Language!”

The kids quickly turned toward his voice but saw only the stone husk of the steeple radiating in the sun.

“Is he talking to us?” Corn whispered.

Lily whispered back, “Can he hear us?”

“I’m God’s instrument!” Samuel shouted again, loud enough to frighten birds and send them screeching to the sky.

Lily turned back to Corn. “So what’s Paladins?”

“They’re these ancient knights,” Corn replied. “They used to just fight nightlings… you know what—”

“Yes, vampires, and werewolves, all that.”

“Okay, good. But yeah, they fought nightlings since the Crusades, but there aren’t many left now because of the war. Or at least here in the colonies. A bunch died in battle and stuff, or became mercenaries.”

Lily tossed her apple core toward Oats. The horsebird coughed, slowly turned to it, then tongued it into its craggy mouth before swallowing the thing whole. Corn sighed and stared at the clouds slowly drifting overhead.

“The thing that made me do whatever I did to you,” Corn said, “The spell. I’d never mean to hurt you—anyone.”

“I get it,” Lily said, nodding and knowing full well what it’s like to lose control and not remember. “Don’t worry about it.”

She left Oats’s side and sat closer to Corn on the overgrown cobblestones. She picked at weeds, twirled them around her fingers. A breeze fluttered by and she didn’t know if the stink she smelled was her, the boy, Oats, or a combination.

“It’s scary,” Corn said. “Not being in control.”

Lily nodded again, then looked up at the boy and smiled.

“At least you’re ok now?” She said, Their eyes lingered for a moment before a shout gripped their attention. They turned back to the church.

Samuel stumbled down the sanctuary’s fractured stone steps.

“I told you to tie up the horse-thing,” he said while bobbling down the stairwell.

“It’s not going anywhere,” Lily said.

Samuel gruffed, then stopped at a cannon crater and knelt into its puddle.

“Oats drank from that,” Lily said.

Samuel ignored her and splashed murky water across his face.

“There’s a little water left in the foxskin,” Corn said.

Suddenly, Samuel whipped up from the puddle, flushed with fury. “You got in the food bag?”

Corn, stammering, said, “Uh, Lily did.” She glared at the boy.

Samuel shot up. The kids couldn’t tell if his face was red from anger, the sun, or whatever struggles had befallen him in the church. He began wrenching the satchels open, checking each one.

“Don’t you ever open these bags again,” he said, “you hear me!?” The kids frantically nodded. He patted the bag with the tome inside it, thankful it hadn’t been touched. “These are my things,” he continued. “If you get hungry you can eat grass.”

“Grass?” Lily piped.

“Or bark, then. This is my food. I am the overlord of the jerky, and apples, and all that. You eat if I let you eat, understand?”

He stared at them. Drool dribbled down his chin. The kids nodded. He wiped his mouth.

Samuel climbed onto Oats. He kicked its ribs and it lurched forward. The kids followed without a word, neither looking at the other. Cicadas screamed unseen. Birds chirped from leafy shade. Lily turned as the church and its ruined steeple grew distant, wondering what it looked like before it burned. Then, in the bushes between them and the sanctuary, she noticed a glint of sunlight, then another, like bouncing off metal.

“There’s something—”

“There were bones in there,” Samuel said, interrupting her because he felt guilty now about his outburst and didn’t want to leave this place on a low note. “If you’re wondering.”

“People’s bones?” Corn asked, quite intrigued.

“Bones everywhere,” Samuel added. “My hunch is they locked people in there and burned the place down.”

“God,” Lily said.

“Language,” said Samuel.

Suddenly, a whizz cracked the air.

“Did you hear that?” Corn said.

Samuel hushed them.

Another whizz, this time followed by a meaty thunk. Samuel cried out, clutching his left shoulder. The kids ducked and shouted.

“Get behind something!” Samuel growled, pulling on his reigns without a budge from the pegasus.

The kids frantically turned left, then, right. “Where??” they cried in unison.

“There’s a ditch over there!” Samunel shouted, pointing behind the kids.

Corn and Lily ran from the road and jumped into a trench by the road, screaming as their feet smashed through an enormous mess of bones and frayed clothes.

“Keep low!” Samuel shouted.

Another whizz. Another crack. The pegasus reared and kicked the air, sending satchels, pots, pans, and a bag of apples crashing to the cobblestones. Samuel flew backward, crashing hard onto the road. Oats turned and galloped full speed into the woods, disappearing.

“Now you fucking run!?” Samuel yelled to the beast as he pulled himself off the stones. Shouts surrounded him. He counted the voices of two men, three, no, five? He turned to the kids in the ditch.

“Is there anything down there?” he said. “Like a dagger or something?”

“What!?” Corn shouted back.

“Pointy, shiney fucking things!” Samuel replied, his hands cupped over his mouth for volume. “Anything!”

Lily and Corn both gagged as they riffled through bones. More whizzes and cracks spilled around them. The shouting grew louder. A glint caught Lily’s eye beneath a rib cage. She made the sign of the holy cross before plunging her hands into the bone pile. After a moment of coughing and dry heaving, she dragged a rusty broadsword from the mess. Corn helped her lift the hilt and together they flung the sword onto the road beside Samuel. A bullet smacked the dirt beside them. They ducked once more into the trench.

Samuel hobbled over to the sword, clutching his stomach.

“Gonna shit my fucking pants,” he grumbled, pulling the sword up with his right hand.

He leveled the blade in the direction of the coming shouts.

He flicked the fingers of his left hand, forming different symbols in rapid succession.

He whispered, “ina qereb šadî u kīma––”

A glyph illuminated in his bloodying palm, catching the crimson seeping from his shoulder wound. The kids pulled themselves up cautiously, their eyes just over the crest of the trench, watching.

Samuel continued whispering, “mê balāṭam… shit… u dannū… fuck, Christ!”

The clank of metal grew louder around the bend of the road. The shouts drew nearer.

“mê balāṭam…” Samuel continued amidst more whizzes and pops, “um, u dannūtam… and… ulabbir!”

Samuel flickered, then disappeared.

The kids blinked.

“Did he just leave!?” Corn hissed. Lily shushed him, but fear filled her as they were suddenly alone.

Three men, garbed in a hodgepodge of rusty chainmail and illfitting armor plates, finally rounded the road’s bend, slowing to a trot. Slung behind two of their backs were multi-barreled muskets still smoking. The third was tall and muscley, covered in discolored and multi-styled metal plating. His chest was gold, his legs were silver, his gauntlets were black, and his helmet, complete with an iron faceplate, seemed to be polished silver. Behind him in the wind flapped a brilliant red cape with silver trim.

“That’s a Paladin knight’s cape,” Corn whispered. Lily turned to him and stared into his soul so harshly, willing his entire essence to be quiet, that Corn figured he might never speak to this girl ever again.

The knight’s sidekicks unsheathed shortswords. All three glanced around, confused, but so far didn’t notice the kids in the trench. They mumbled to each other, cursed a bit, yet Lily couldn’t make out what they said.

Suddenly, she felt a sharp tug on the back of her shirt and quickly rose into the air.

“A fucking girl!” A massive man with rotting teeth shouted while pulling Lily up from the trench. She dangled from his grip like a caught fish.

Corn lunged to grab her, but stumbled and tripped over the bones beneath him. A man appeared beside Lily and quickly shoved a bayonet through the right side of Corn’s chest, just below his shoulder. Lily screamed and kicked at her captor, punching him in his rusted chainmail so that hissed relentlessly. Corn fell back into the bone trench. The rifleman who stabbed him leveled his musket at the boy.

“Anyone see where that pegasus went?” the man in the cape said.

“Filthy fucker, wan’t it?” the man holding Lily remarked.

“Still worth plenty,” the rifleman beside him said. Then he nodded to the knight and grinned. “Oyi, there’s a boy down er’.”

“How old?” the caped man asked.

The rifleman studied Corn.

“Must be thirteen?”

“He already sticked him, though,” said the man holding Lily. She screamed, yet was muffled through his dirty hand now which he’d placed over her mouth.

“Fuck him,” said the caped man. “Don’t need another mouth to feed.”

“Aye,” the rifleman replied.

He raised his gun again at the boy. Lily screamed and kicked, shaking the man holding her, yet his grip didn’t budge. Corn held up his hands as he stared down the barrel above him. He felt wet running down his trousers. Felt his body numb. Time slowed. He tried to crawl backward, but there was only bone and dirt. He mouthed please as his throat closed up. He shut his eyes when, suddenly, liquid sprayed over him, wet and sticky—yet he didn’t hear a gunshot. Confused, he slowly opened his eyes.

A huge, rusty, blade point stuck out from the belly of the rifleman, extending several feet. The stabbed man’s eyes widened. The others turned to him as the floating sword quickly carved upward, spilling guts and lungs up, up, up through the middle of the man’s throat and further still until his head split in two. Samuel, his vestments now fully drenched in blood, flickered back into view just behind the rifleman who fell in two flappy pieces, squishing onto the grassy cobblestones. Samuel stared at the slop on the ground for a moment, panting. He flicked his left hand’s fingers again. His palm illuminated. He vanished.

Lily screamed as the man holding her let go. Skulls and femurs shattered beneath her as she fell back into the trench. She rushed to Corn who lay against the curved dirt walls. His face was pale as the moon, but he reassured her he was fine.

Lily’s captor unsheathed a dagger from his belt and lunged in the direction Samuel had just disappeared. Hitting air, he lunged again, swiped, shouted, swiped again, then a splash of blood spilled across his blade. He grinned, continuing to swipe and lunge until he felt an immense pain explode from his hip and was thrown to the ground. Writhing on the road, pleading for his companions to help him, he screamed as his back snapped from a second, invisible blow to his pelvis. A third hit finally tore through his flesh, severed his spine, and split him clean in two in an explosion of wet, sloppy innards. The three remaining men quickly stepped backward as the half-man on the ground crawled toward them, pleading breathlessly.

“Close in!” the knight shouted. The three huddled close. “Swipe at the whoring air!”

The three men swished their swords frantically. They shouted and screamed. If Lily hadn’t been so terrified, she’d have laughed at the trio. But instead she shrieked as Samuel’s foot reappeared in front of her and she found him standing above her by the trench, doubled over. A breeze blew downwind of him and she got a sudden whiff of hot shit.

Samuel vomited onto the corpse of the vertically split man.

“Fuck me,” Samuel mumbled. He wiped his mouth, then readied the heavy blade again, quivering. The glyph in his palm pulsed violently. He flickered, disappeared, then reappeared. He stumbled forward.

The knight’s sidekicks shouted and lunged. Samuel stumbled backward. Together the men swiped at him. He parried the first attacks, spilling sparks into the wind, then ducked and dodged the next two attempts. He flickered and disappeared just as the men thrust with their third strike. One stumbled, then suddenly flipped into the air screaming as both of his legs flew from his body, severed at the knees. He thunked to the ground face first, scattering bloody teeth all over the road. Barely conscious, he writhed in pain, clutching his gushing stumps. Samuel flickered again, dodged an attack by the other man, then shrieked as the man’s sword swiped his chest, tearing a long gash in his vestments. Clenching his glyph fist, he charged at the man who thrust once more at him. This time, Samuel opened his glowing hand and aimed his palm at the man’s sword hand. Wind rushed behind Samuel. Leaves, blood, dirt and teeth lifted from the ground and swirled around his arm before exploding forward in a blast of air, straight for the sword. The man’s arm snapped in half and dangled. He screamed as Samuel then crashed his broadsword into his sternum, shoving him backward several feet into a tree and pinning him to the trunk. Samuel slid the sword away, and the man collapsed onto the ground motionless.

“Goddammit,” he grumbled. He looked behind him to see that Lily was peeking over the trench, watching. She glanced down, he assumed updating Corn each time he ripped a human being in two. He pressed his hand to his sliced chest and found the wound wasn’t deep, but blood was certainly cascading down his body. Then he heard clanking growing louder behind him.

“Father Fausto!” Lily cried.

He turned and swung his broadsword, parrying the knight’s sword with a shower of sparks. But the enormous man then gripped him by the throat and threw him further down the road, away from the kids. He smashed into the cobble stones and rolled. Coughing and wheezing he flickered, but didn’t disappear.

In the trench, Corn wrestled with the rifleman’s dropped musket.

“It’s got powder in it,” he said, lifting the weapon.

“But can you shoot it?” Lily asked.

“I don’t know. Help me up.”

Lily pulled Corn to his feet, clanking bones beneath them.

“Cock it for me?” He asked.

Lily pointed at a metal lever at the top of the gun.

“This?” She asked.

“Yeah, pull it back. It’s hard, you might need two hands.”

She pulled it back with one hand and heard a click.

“Help me lift it just over the trench.”

They both carried the musket over the trench so that Corn was resting the barrel against the dirt edge of the hole. His finger danced around the trigger. He squinted down the sights, aiming at the man who seemed to be talking to Samuel still on the ground. It was a clean shot, but then he glanced at Lily.

“Get out from under it!” he hissed.

“Sorry!” Lily crawled away, crunching over bones.

Corn breathed deep, aimed at the massive, shiny brute, exhaled, then pulled the trigger. The thrust of the gun threw him back into a pile of skulls, but the bullet pierced the man’s plateless lower back, who stumbled and cried out. It was enough of a distraction for Samuel to pull himself up again. He slid his sword off the ground with a metallic hiss, lifted it in the air, and brought it down toward the knight as he righted himself. But Samuel’s blade was met with a clang as the knight quickly met Samuel’s sword with his own. The two swiped at each other, fending off blow after blow. The knight kicked Samuel in his bleeding chest, flinging him backward as he then swung his sword. Samuel recovered and parried and the two men held firmly in place: Samuel feral, covered in blood and growling; the knight cracking his own teeth as he clenched his jaw and fought against his opponent’s strength. Then Samuel’s blade shattered to pieces.

They both fell from the release of tension, stumbling in opposite directions. The knight turned and thrust his blade at Samuel who now just held the hilt of his sword. He dodged a strike, ducked away from another. With heavy thunks of metal boots, the knight closed the distance. Samuel met his sword with his glowing palm, batting it away like a bug. Each time the sword swung he hit with his palm, each bounce away it echoed throughout the ruins like a mallet hitting a hollowed tree stump. After several strikes, the two had backed their way again toward the Lily and Corn’s trench.

Finally, Samuel gripped the blade rather than batting it away. He held the sword in the air as the knight put all his weight on it. Slowly, the blade sank closer to Samuel’s head. The light in his palm flickered. Red seeped down his arm as the sword began to cut his skin. Finally, Samuel flipped around the hilt of his broken blade and bashed it against the knight’s faceplate. The enormous man stumbled backward as Samuel lunged again, smashing the plate again, then again, and again. The brute fell backward, crashing to the ground like an enormous sack of meat covered in pots. Samuel leapt on top of him. He bashed him in the faceplate over and over as the kids watched horrified from the trench. Blood erupted from the knight’s metal eye slits as the faceplate bent inward more and more. Samuel heard the man’s teeth crack, heard his cheek and jaw bones shatter. The metal plate bent ever-inward. The man screamed and batted at Samuel with thick, iron gloves. Suddenly, the knight wrenched a knife from his hip and stabbed Samuel in the ass cheek. Samuel howled and grabbed the man’s clenched dagger hand. He yanked the blade from his flesh then, with palm pulsing violently, crushed every bone in the man’s hand as he continued to smash the hilt into the visor with the other hand. The man wailed and cried and blood spilled from every little opening of his brutalized helmet. Finally, after what felt like eternity, the knight’s arm went limp in Samuel’s grip. His screams ceased. His muscles slacked and shit spilled out beneath him. Samuel tossed the crimson-drenched hilt to the ground and rolled over off him, panting as he stared at quiet clouds.

Around him lay the butchered remains of the bandits—severed limbs, torsos, teeth and brains. Blood soaked the cobblestones. The children, standing in the bone trench, stared in horror at the surrounding carnage. Then Samuel, eyes still fixed on the sky, shouted between gasps of air.

“Can someone go find that fucking horse!?”