[Quiet Man Cometh]

Cor pumped his wing once, disengaging from the battle and sailing into the trees. Yaric and Sir Roderick pursued. Cor steadied his grip on Aldur. “Forgive me.” He planted his boots into the ground and twisted sharply, powering the blade through a massive trunk in an explosion of splinters as the tree jumped free of its roots and toppled towards the two warriors. Roderick darted to the left, Yaric to the right, but the tree bounced erratically off standing trunks and the horseman was buried under a net of torn and broken branches. Roderick lost sight of him past the fallen monolith.

“Why do you do this?!” He shouted at Cor. “Bringing back the old gods!”

Cor looked curiously at Roderick.

“They will tear this world to pieces if you set them free!”

“The old ones? They’re as worthless as their children. They have nothing to do with this.” Cor stood next to the sheared tree stump and held Aldur upright. He ran an admiring hand up the flat of one of the blades. “I intend to bring back their grandfather, Mother’s first son.”

“What?”

“You knew him once; born from the thoughts of the first sentient creature to realize the inevitability of its own death, but you have forgotten.” Cor’s face became fierce. “You heap your woes on lazy gods, content in servitude for their bleak promise of eternal life! Mother hasn’t forgotten you but you ignore her to pander her ungrateful heirs!”

“And you would kill us all instead?”

“I would give you life back: the potential you used to have.” Cor took two steps away from the splintered trunk, to an opening in the trees. “The gods know this and are afraid of me, afraid of dying.” Scorn flooded his face. “It wasn’t for your sake that they sent you.”

Roderick jerked at the words. “Blasphemy,” he whispered, but his grip loosened on his blade. Instinctively his hand reached for the pendant, blood squeezing from his arm as he clenched it. ‘Hope that Valorus guides you well.’

Behind him, branches groaned and snapped as Yaric freed himself from the heavy tangle of boughs, growling curses at the one-winged man. “Enough holy gibberish, you will die now!” Standing upright he pushed himself from a standing tree and propelled towards Cor.

Yaric fought like a wolverine; swinging his longsword maddeningly in savage cuts; ears ringing with the din of vicious blows; indifferent to the notion that the blood hissing on Aldur’s metal was his own.

Through Aldur’s twin blades Cor smiled at the horseman. “Remembrance to you, friend.” He swung the immense blade in a low arc, its tip carving a furrow in the ground and casting up dirt as it lifted towards the horseman. Yaric’s face was locked in determination even as he fell.

Roderick clutched tightly at the pendent at his breast, feeling only a light breeze on his cheek when Yaric ran past. He only watched as the horseman engaged the misshapen angel, barely comprehending when thin metal shards spread like a fire-blossom and Yaric’s severed body hit the ground. He was numb except for the sticky blood and cold piercing metal. ‘It wasn’t for your sake that they sent you’. His vision tunnelled on Cor and his single black wing. He released his pendant, now marked with his blood, and charged.

Cor was a black shadow before his eyes, a cloud of doubt. He raised his sword and chopped at the taunting black feathers encircling him. “Blasphemy!” he howled. The wing cut across his vision and he slashed through it in a rain of black quills. Cor’s face was there, framed by his black feathers. Aldur was leveled between them. Roderick’s armour was curved in where the blade punched through, and Cor gently eased his body to the ground.