The gates stood shut.

I stood in the carnage I had wrought of the Buffalo knights. The endless force of wind and rain washed me clean of the evidence of the terror I had visited on them. I felt my fists clench. I knew there was a hole in my side where the lance had pierced through, but I could not feel it.

All I could feel was the intensity of what had happened. Hundreds of miles to the east they would be carrying Lauren's body, laying it on a bed or a slab. Katya would be weeping, Cornelius probably trying to dress his face with what dignity he could muster. Other families, those of the knights and men-at-arms who had died by Perdinger's hand, would be discovering that their sons, brothers, fathers had gone to work and come home for the last time.

I paid no attention to the Level 36 that floated before my vision. All those things, the yearning for more power, craving a new skill, seemed meaningless and pointless, sucked away by the gravity of the day.

I took a step toward the walls. My suit's POWER flickered from expenditure, from the trauma of my wound. I seized it, willed it, and the rain around me blazed with light refracted from my visor.

I would tear those walls down. I would pull the gates apart. Nothing would keep me from Perdinger. Not every soul in that city if needs be.

He was inside. He had slipped in. The walls were indistinct through the curtains of rain. No Griidlords strode forth. SIGHT showed no movement among the lazy structures beyond the walls, nor on the ramparts. My crime in destroying the knights was hidden.

They would not see me coming.

I took another step, my boot crushing grass, settling into slick rain-wet soil.

Then a plea, a strained shout. "Tiberius."

I froze. I wrestled with my own body. My soul and heart burned with the desire to assault the walls. Everything intense and passionate in me wanted to show this place what the Blood Prince would do to them. I wanted to punish them for letting Perdinger walk free these last months, for giving him even the briefest shelter.

"Tiberius. Please."

I fought my body to turn and look back. Dirk lay in the dirt, seemingly unable to rise. The rain drenched him, pressing his cloak close like a layer of paint. He had risen slightly, propping himself on an elbow, the same pose he had been in when he threw the knife that had saved my life.

He needed rescue. Whatever he had done to provoke the knights, more would probably come. He was wounded, exposed to the elements. What was the point in killing these men to save him if I would only abandon him to death or recapture.

I roared through the storm. "I can't, Dirk."

His voice was weaker, lost to the elements, barely audible to HEARING. "Tiberius. I'll die or they'll come get me. Why."

Even through the pain he eyed me with confusion. He looked with concern and mystery as I strained toward the walls of the city.

I roared to him. "He killed her."

It was no explanation, but voicing it broke me. My body shuddered. I lost control of breathing in a quaking sob.

The words ran out of me as I took a step closer to him. "He killed her. Dirk, he killed her. She's dead. I can't just… just…"

Dirk strained to rise further, but the pain of a wound I could not see spasmed through him and he fell back into the pooling water and burgeoning mud.

He groaned. "I'll die if yinz don't. I need to get back, my folk."

A tantrum of roiling emotions poured from me. "What were you doing here. You've been playing your own games. She's dead. Am I supposed to let him get away with it because you got caught playing revolutionary. You weren't thinking about your folk when you came here."

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His eyes were strangely pleading for a man so hard. He had no options. His life rested in my hands, in my next decision.

My roars morphed and bled together with my gasping sobs until I was shouting no more, only sagging under the emotion, my words garbled as I choked with sorrow. I staggered closer and fell to my knees alongside him.

"He killed her. I could have stopped him. She's dead, and he's safe in there. Oh, fuck." The last words came as a pained howl. He watched me, his brow furrowed as he tried to interpret what had happened.

He spoke quickly, forcing a calm to his words that he could not have felt, trying to soothe me, steer me. "Listen, yinz can come back. Yinz can tell me all about it. But we need to get out of here. None'll have seen what yinz did here, not if we get gone now. If yinz stay and they find yinz here with all these dead bastards it'll mean war. Get me out of here and I can help yinz figure out what happens next."

I raised my helm to him. He could not see the tears that stained my face, but he probably knew they were there. I croaked, "What if I don't care."

He was so even, so placid. "Yinz mightn't care right now. I know what that's like. I've been there many times. But when the bodies are stacked up and the bill comes due, when there's reparations or war to be had, yinz'll care then. I've been there. Trust me. Revenge doesn't get any less by letting it mature a while. Yinz can go after whoever yinz is after in an hour, a day, a week, just as easy as yinz can do it now. But if yinz can contain it a little bit, yinz can do it better. Rage never made planning any better."

He held my gaze and broke into a pained laugh. "Plus, if yinz go that route, I won't die here."

Something about the way he said it plucked at me. I felt a weak pulse of a smile pull at my mouth, quickly swallowed by the endless chasm of guilt and sorrow that I was only beginning to fully sense. The shock of Lauren's death was fading, revealing the pit of bleakness it had burrowed inside me.

I nodded. I resented it, but I knew I would regret it all the more if I left him here to die.

Dirk said, "Quick now. There could be more any time."

I picked him up as easily as though he was a child. Maybe to lighten my mood, maybe to ease his own sense of emasculation, he put a hand on the side of my helm and affected a shrill tone. "Oh… my hero."

I could not find the humor in it. I had nothing in me but regret. Part of me felt like I was dishonoring Lauren by saving his life. As I grasped the Footfield and started to move away, I felt like the walls of Buffalo were mocking me. The simple fact they still stood branded me a failure and a weakling.

***

The wound in my side grounded me around thirty minutes later. I had pushed as hard as I could to put space between us and Buffalo. I had not feared pursuit from more knights. Moving under the Footfield, there was no possibility of them catching us. But the Griidlords of Buffalo would have been a concern. The way they had attacked Magneblade and Tara that day in the snow, I could not know why, but they had been out for blood that day. In my weakened state, with the wound slowing me, I would have been vulnerable.

We stopped once, after ten minutes of hard dashing, to do what we could with Dirk's wounds. He had lost no small amount of blood himself, but there were no signs of breaks. I did what I could to bandage and tourniquet his wounds with strips torn from his cloak, but I worried he might suffer in the hours it would take to return to Boston.

I pushed on, ignoring the severity of my own injury. My mind was in turmoil, a soup of guilt, sorrow, and disbelief.

I kept finding myself trying to conjure rationalizations for the idea that Lauren might still live. I tried to convince myself that she had only been unconscious. I had not, after all, checked for a pulse or breathing. Katya and I had been in such shock. Could we not have missed something. My imagination painted pictures of medics reviving her, pictures of her waiting, wounded yes, but alive upon my return.

It was madness. The bladed hands of Perdinger had shredded her fleshy human body. I had seen the wounds. I had seen the blood. I had seen the ivory paleness of her skin, the utter motionlessness.

Pushing as I did, I failed to notice that gravity seemed to have flipped on its side. The disorientation overtook me before I could compensate. It was all I could do to release the Footfield as I fell, sparing Dirk and myself from a gruesome combination with the atoms of the ground beneath us.

I hit the ground with a painful exhalation. Dirk's form rolled away from me through the grass. I tumbled, the lance wound screaming at me in protest with each twist and impact.

Then I was sprawled, the bleeding erupting anew. My chest rose and fell rapidly. I could feel my heart fluttering.

I tried to rise but was suddenly too weak to move.

I fell back into the earth and stared up at the black madness of the stormy sky. Chasms of darkness flowed and melted in the clefts between the clouds. They hypnotized me for a moment as my mind drifted away.

I had nowhere to run. I had no quarry to chase. I had no ability to flee to safety with my injured friend. I was still. In that stillness, the reality, the actual realization of what had happened in Castle Oakcrest, came back to me.

With the reality came the real tears. My body was racked with a terrible sob, and I roared at the sky.

Then I felt the humming distortion of an approaching Footfield.

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