Kae had grown up with stories of mystics waging great battles against demons. Battles that reshaped landscapes with each spell cast as the great talents of the world cast down the monsters of the world. What he saw was not quite so great.

  The demon-tainted wolf which he had fought, and had been toying with him in turn, was blown back by a furious gale that came forth from the swing of a staff. It was a simple wooden staff, one of a dozen found in the temple. It was the wielder that made the difference.

  Brother Angin was tall as an old oak, wide across the shoulder, and rippling with muscles, the image of a great warrior. His grey robes fluttered in the swirling zephyrs of his recent attack. Kae had never been so glad to see him. And he suspected he might see his sister if she was foolish enough to get this close to the ensuing melee.

  The demon rose, red light leaking from its maw. The world around it shrivelled up. This was only a minor demon, Kae knew, barely a demon at that, and yet it still damaged the natural world just by existing. It roared out a challenge—

  Brother Angin was on it immediately, blurring so fast he moved, kicking it clear across the jaw. A snap like a tree collapsing mased its sudden yelp. Without slowing, Brother Angin continued his rotation, and swung his staff. Another gale swept across the forest, uprooting grass, undressing trees, and slamming the wolf across the ground. It sprang back up and vines emerged from its back. Just like the ghostly wolf of earlier. It had won that fight.

  Those five vines slammed down in a confusing pattern that seemed inescapable. Brother Angin met that inescapable doom and simply stepped between the blows. He raised his staff and diverted a vine so gracefully that it clearly didn’t register to the wolf, because otherwise why would it let itself be struck in the face by its own attack.

  That blow disrupted its concentration. An obvious gap in its assault that Brother Angin took full advantage of. Wind followed along his staff, a vortex of pure fury that terrified Kae. This was the person he insulted every day of his life. Every day his skull wasn’t cracked open was a miracle.

  Brother Angin was a whirlwind in his advance. A silent force of true destruction.

  When Brother Angin pressed forward, the demon was pushed back by blows that could crack stone. When he stepped back, it was only to reposition for a stronger hit. He swept low and knocked the wolf over.

  It wriggled about and caught the stave between its jaws. Malicious glee marked its grin. Brother Angin jerked back his weapon, which brought the demon into range, and slammed his fist into its snout with a tooth-shattering blow. Shards of fang flew, speckled red with blood.

  The demon’s maw dripped blood. Where that blood touched the ground, it turned to smoke. Kae felt ill just looking at it. The growl that came from it was a whistling, wet sound. With most of its teeth a ruin, the demon did not appear so great a threat. The fear that had pervaded him vanished.

  “Divine Istrava, accept this offering and cleanse the world.”

  With one skull-cracking swing, Brother Angin ended the fight. The demon’s head was pulped like an overripe orange. From the impact pointed, erupted a furious gale in all directions. Where the gale touched, the evil taint of the world was banished.

  Kae watched as the demon turned to motes of light before him. That was… he could barely keep up with that fight. And all he to focus on was the fight. His hand was taken in a familiar grip and he saw his sister crouching beside him.

  “Maybe equivalent to a mortal with twelve attainments. Barely more than an Initiate. It entered the second realm recently. Today, even.”

  There was an accusation in those words. Kae said nothing to this. It wasn’t hard to pretend that he was dazed and confused. He was genuinely in pain.

  “Breathe,” came his sister’s order. “Endure.”

  They were taught a way to breathe in the temple, one that encouraged them to enter a meditative trance during ceremonies and worship. The goal was to do it forever and stay in a state of meditation. Kae doubted anyone could. But as he breathed that deep, slow Temple breath, he found his strength return in part.

  “Why is it whenever something uniquely terrible happens, I find you two at the center of it?”

  “I’ve never done a bad thing in my life.”

  His sister stepped forward. “Why were you here? You’re in the wrong quadrant entirely. Finding you was luck.”

  “Easy enough to sense the violence, even without essence-sight. Demons like this used to be more common during the last war. You two shouldn’t have faced one. Ever. Whatever you were doing was stupid, reckless in a way I only expect from Kae. Now come, we need to deal with Old Selim’s body before it makes for more demons.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Brother Angin threw the staff at Kae. He barely caught it before it smacked him in the face. At least he’d have a walking stick.

  ***

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  The shack had once been vertical, of that Kae was certain. Once, long before he was born, perhaps the one-bedroom dwelling had stood erect, though Kae was increasingly sure the owner had never managed that feat. The planks had gaps between them plugged up by moss and some thick resin. The door had a real hinge at least, one that drew a memory of the blacksmith complaining that some gear was missing. Maybe Kae was making up that memory, but the curtains were a bright red that had to have been stolen. The roof was thatch, at least, and the far side was the same, so maybe the owner wouldn’t have frozen half to death on a cold winter night.

  If Old Selim spent half the time he did insulting Kae on this shack, it might have been something decent. But Old Selim was poison. Nothing he built could be meant to last.

  The shack was built between three old apple trees that had survived together and seemed too spiteful to die at this point. Old trees with thick boughs, a depth to their bark that just seemed a deeper brown than most, green leaves so dark they were almost black in the brightness of noon. He imagined the apples would be so vibrantly red that they would make all the other apple trees jealous enough to gain sentience and chop these ones down. It happened in the stories.

  “Is this a spirit tree?” his sister asked. “Trees? Their root system looks conjoined. I’m taking a few cuttings either way.”

  “Not a spirit tree, no, not yet,” Brother Angin explain, chewing on a bete nut. “But there’s essence trapped in them, that I’m sure of. Explains how Old Selim lived so long if he was sleeping here all the time. Wood can have restorative properties.”

  “This isn’t even his land.”

  “That’s why it took us so long to find him. We searched all his usual haunts, all the rooms in the brothel”—Kae would have done something stupid if not for his sister squeezing his shoulder tight—“but still no sign. Found him when I noticed a hellblossom and followed the path. I laid down a preliminary binding and gave him initial rites to stop anything else being infected. That’s when your sister found me. You’re lucky I was here.”

  Inside the shack, it was surprisingly clean and neatly ordered. Not a thing he’d expected from Old Selim. The blanket he always walked around with, patched a dozen times over so that no one could remember its original pattern, covered his body. Tying it tight were strip of pale leather around the ankles, waist, and shoulder. The leather strips were really just long talismans and the ink upon them had been burned in by the process. Kae was grateful to have never gone through the process. The stink was terrible. Worse than the body’s which was not as awful as he expected. No voided bowels just yet.

  He looked about, finding a few knickknacks and even an old painting unfolded on the wall. No hint of dampness. A good roof, at least. The badly fitted planks were sealed well despite what it looked like on the outside. Begrudgingly, Kae accepted that Old Selim had built something with decent bones. Something entirely against his nature.

  Didn’t mean Kae wasn’t going to pocket his knife just laying there. He dragged Old Selim’s body out to hide his theft and under the dappled sunlight, he pulled back the blankets. Selim hadn’t been dead long, that much was certain. But a shiver ran through him at the corpse’s blank stare.

  “Feel that, can you?”

  “What is it?”

  “Evil, plain and simple. Some priests I know can do it. Those blessed by a divine. Even without any essence-sight, they can still feel the evil in a thing. Useful way to know if you’re being attacked by a regular beast or one tainted by the hells.”

  Brother Angin tore a branch off the apple tree. It was a thin branch, but it was still a casual reminder of how much separated them. He plucked the smaller branches off and handed them to Elkaera who nodded her thanks.

  Then, he turned his attention back to Kae. He realised too late what he meant to do. Instincts kicked in as Angin was suddenly in front of him, swinging down with the branch. Kae remembered the demon’s skull being crushed. Instinct had him raise the staff in defence.

  The thwack rang loudly in the clearing. Kae’s bones shook but ha, he’d done it and—

  With eminent grace, Brother Angin flicked his stick and it was somehow beneath Kae’s hasty guard. He tried to hold on. The force of it was great. The staff was wrenched out of his hands. His shoulders ached at the sudden jolt. Then, Brother Angin brought his apple stick down upon Kae’s head.

  His vision whited. He was on his knees before he knew it. His eyes stung. From the grass, obviously, not pain. He looked up just in time to see Angin catch the staff without looking.

  Brother Angin glared down at him. “Your blessings are wasted on you. A thief of a monk, a waste of our faith. You can claim trophies from battle, not from the innocent dead.”

  “Selim was never innocent and you’re a coward.”

  His mouth, as usual, spoke before his brain. Kae wouldn’t take back those words anyway.

  “My brother is dazed. We’ll handle cleansing the area, Brother Angin. Kae, return the knife.”

  His sister was his better judgement in all cases. She had helped him out more times than he could count. It still rankled to have to give it up. Perhaps why he threw it straight at Brother Angin who caught it between two fingers. Show-off.

  “No, I will handle that. I don’t trust those thieving hands of his. You two return to the temple. Report to Sister Miralia—not Kosta,” he added before Kae could make a snide comment, glaring down at him, “and get cleaned up. Kae, you’ll be helping to prepare his body tomorrow.”

  “As you say. Come, Kay-Kay, try not to say something foolish right this moment.”

  Kae made a rude gesture at Brother Angin’s back and cursed under his breath. He hoped his fellow monk had hearing good enough to hear it. Call him spiteful, petty, insolent, but Kae knew the worst he’d get was a beating. And after that wolf was ready to eat his heart, that was nothing.

  He glared at the sky as fury filled his heart. After everything he’d done, he had come away with bruises and no way to become a mystic. Back to the beginning. Damn it all. This was always how it went. He tried and the world slapped him down. Found a rare treasure, survived a vengeful ghost, and would have been clear until a demon-tainted wolf came for him. Saw to it that his kin were buried like a filial son and his home was stolen.

  His sister closed something around his hand.

  A knife. It was even nicer than the one he’d tried to steal. A nice ivory hilt. A blade gleaming silver in the light, inscribed with a smith’s stamp at the base of the blade.

  “When?”

  “I have my ways.”

  “What if he finds out?”

  “He will do nothing to me. I am valuable. You are not, dear brother.”

  “Spare my feelings for once.”

  “And what would I gain from such an onerous task?” she asked, pitching her voice differently.

  “My love and affection.”

  “I already have that. Always will. If I didn’t, you would be bitter that I left you to fight that demon.”

  “I knew you were getting help. Trusting you’d find help and keep yourself alive is just how it is. If I died, that’d be my deserving. Not really ready to bury anyone else.” He smiled at her, even as she rose with an irritable scowl. “Your talismans helped keep me alive.”

  “You should practise making them. I know your calligraphy is poor, but the effort is worth it.”

  “You can’t let me have one win.”

  “Well, if you hadn’t sold a stack of bad talismans, maybe you’d have gotten a good binding.”

  And Kae had no way to argue against that. A good knife was a decent consolation prize after everything.