“You’re not the Chosen One,” Orenda told him, “I’m the Chosen One!”

She threw back the lid of the chest and didn’t understand what she saw there. It was mostly empty. Something about the size of her fist had been wrapped in cloth, and she leaned in to pick it up.

But the boy, who before this had mumbled all his words, had spoken so quietly that she could barely hear him, screamed.

“No!” He shrieked.

Orenda turned at the spectacle of it and watched him leap over Anilla and through the barrier. As he crossed it, Orenda saw it flair up- and she knew the spell was checking for something. Orenda gathered that only certain people were allowed in this room- and this boy was either one of them, or, depending on the ward, Xandra now knew they were here.

“Anilla!” Orenda snarled, “What the fuck part of ‘guard the door’ don’t you understand!?”

Now that she could see the boy, Orenda was sure he was just another fighter, just another soldier. He wore their uniform and carried their weapons. Her medallion began to heat as she readied another spell to get rid of him. One more. She… she just had to make it through this one day, and then they could mourn them. Now was not the time.

“Don’t!” Klin warned, with pain in his voice. It had changed, had become a sob in the middle of the word, and tears leaked from his giant, blue eyes.

Orenda paused.

His eyes were the color of a deep crystal lake.

They were not the eyes of an earth elf.

“You… have strange eyes for an earth elf,” Orenda said.

“I take after my mom,” Klin said and wiped his eyes on his sleeve, “Sorry I… I shouldn’t be… it’s been a really long… I’m sorry.” He tried to dry his eyes, and stood staring at Orenda, “You’re kind of short for a fire elf. I bet you take after your mom, too, don’t you? Or your dad? I bet one of your parents wasn’t… they always made fun of me… for my weird eyes.”

“You aren’t a Urillian,” Orenda said, “You’re after the artifact too, aren’t you?”

“No,” Klin shook his head, “No we… I am… a Urillian. I’m a knight in the service of the crown.”

“A knight?” Orenda scoffed, “You’re not a knight. You’re twelve.”

“I’m not a little kid!” Klin said defensively, as if he said it a lot, “Orenda, listen to me, please! Just… just listen to me, and everything will be ok… I just… you don’t want to touch the thing in that chest. I don’t know what you think it is, but- wait, I just realized something… Thesis’s glowing eyes, I’m so stupid! Why am I this stupid? I wish… if I could have one thing… it would be that I had… that I had ever been smart… I wish… it’s so hard to be this stupid.” He began to cry again, with fat tears running down his cheeks, “Because it’s like… she’s not… I don’t think… so much of it is… that they aren’t right! You know? They’re not right, they’re just smart! And you’re… I mean, I… I’m stupid and it’s not fair because… because I can’t tell the difference! I don’t know… I just…”

“Stop crying!” Orenda demanded, and turned to take whatever had been wrapped inside that cloth.

The artifact is yours, master. It was stolen by-

It isn’t stolen. My master took it fairly. He claimed it in a valid battle. It is his right by combat.

“Shut up!” Klin screamed and grabbed his ears, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

“Who said that?” Orenda asked, and from the way Klin had doubled over, had collapsed in on himself she could truly see the hilt of the sword on his back.

It was the same sword in her history books.

It was the same sword the crazy man drew on his fliers.

“I won’t let you hurt her!” Klin was hyperventilating now, and Orenda watched the magic of his soul swirl and grow within his heart. Anilla was right. It was almost like looking at her own. But it was a bright green, so bright it almost hurt to look at him.

“I won’t let you hurt her!” Klin said again, “She’s so young! She’s so pretty and strong and she has her whole life ahead of her! She’s still a child! She’s still a child and I won’t let you hurt her!”

“Klin!” Orenda said with more authority than she felt, “Where did you get that sword?”

He stared up at her with tears in his eyes.

“I got it the same way you got that staff, I reckon,” he said, “I picked it up, and it… it was so easy to do I didn’t even… I didn’t think… and Xandra said they were gonna kill us! And they were! They killed my parents! The house was on fire- and when I got out the wheat was on fire and we were gonna lose everything! We were gonna starve! And they were everywhere, and they shot arrows at us- the arrows were on fire too, so I ran, I ran into the castle behind the walls because it was supposed to be safe, but I couldn’t find my parents, and the voice in my head told me where to go, so I listened to it and… and… He was gonna kill her!” Klin stared up at Orenda, begging with his eyes before he began to beg with his voice, “He was gonna kill her! He was alone, in her room, with a little girl, and I was… I was just a little kid… I didn’t.. I didn’t know, and I was scared- You have to believe me! I didn’t mean for… I just… I had to save the princess!”

“What did you do?” Orenda asked.

“I killed him and he didn’t… he didn’t really fight back, I was… I was so little and I don’t think he thought… I don’t think he knew I… could or… wanted to fight a little kid… I was… I think I was like… nine or ten… and I… He looks… I have dreams and… he looks… like the face on the coin… the painting that used to hang in the grand hall… he looks… I think it was her daddy.”

Klin fell to his knees and held his face with his left hand, and his left wrist with his right. Orenda saw a wedding ring peeking out from under his fingerless leather gloves, and thought she recognized the stone there, cut into the shape of an open rose.

“You’re the prince?” She asked.

Klin was chanting something, under his breath, and clawing at his face; his accent was so thick that Orenda could barely understand him, but it sounded like, “Stay down, stay down, stay down.”

“Answer me!” Orenda demanded.

“We went… she wanted… to leave… it wasn’t safe… we went… to the temple…” Klin said instead of answering, “And I… I don’t know how they… the bad people, with the fire… they were going… they burned the crops they… they were going to kill her! But they were dressed in green and… in my dreams I think I… I don’t… I don’t know what happened I… she told me to get the sword… and they told me to stop… not to touch the princess… and I wasn’t… I wasn’t supposed to touch the princess… I… I… I was a peasant I… we weren’t even… we were migrants and… we didn’t even own… I’m nothing I’m… I’m just… the thing that holds the sword, you know? And that… that position was filled… for centuries… by a fucking rock!”

His left hand twitched and he grabbed it more fiercely with his right.

“I can’t I… I just… Morgan said… we can’t… I…” He closed his eyes and began repeating his mantra again, “Stay down stay down stay down.”

“Well this is all very interesting,” Orenda said, “But I don’t have time for it.”

She bent at the waist and scooped the cloth from the bottom of the chest.

“No!” Klin shrieked, “No! Please! Listen! Listen! Put that back! Don’t touch it! If you touch it, it’ll be inside of you! You have to listen to me! I know I’m not making sense, but it’s so much and it’s so much worse than you can possibly imagine! It’ll… It takes you into the nothing and you become nothing and then it… it changes you it becomes you and you can’t do anything! It… It… I’m a fucking monster! You’ll be… I can’t… I can’t let you! Put it back! Please, let me save you! And you… you can’t get it out! You can’t even carve it out because it’s not your body anymore, and they won’t let you and ‘I will allow no harm to come to my vessel’ and you can’t even get a tattoo or… it’s not your body anymore! And you… they get into your head and there’s so many voices with the stone and the sword and Xandra that you don’t know who you are because you never were anything and I wish to god, wish so badly, that I had ever, once in my life, been smart! They chose me because I was stupid! Because I was easy to manipulate!”

That isn’t true master. We chose you because you were strong, because you were special, because you were powerful.

“Shut up!” Klin shrieked. “Shut up! Stay down. Stay down. Stay down.”

The boy before her did not look strong or powerful. Orenda thought of the staff, of how it had told her to kill Anilla, of how it had told her to slay the soldiers who were only trying to do their jobs, of how it had brought her here, to this castle, with the Emerald Knight and the Empress. The thing she was holding in her hands could not be a part of the staff, it wasn’t the right size to attach to it anywhere. The staff didn’t even look broken.

Klin pulled himself to his feet, and Orenda saw that his eyes were green.

“Put that back,” he said with far more authority than he had said anything so far. “Put that back. Now. I won’t let them hurt you. You would rather die than touch the fire stone. I carved that stone from the heart of the great fire spirit in the Sacred Mountain Temple in- No!” Klin stumbled backwards and grabbed his head, “no I… I can’t! I won’t let… Please, please put it back! Please I don’t want to hurt you! I don’t want to do it again!”

Master, the artifact is in your very hands. The staff said.

Orenda began to unwrap the thing in her hands.

“No!” Klin shrieked, “No! Orenda! I’m telling the truth! Look!” He stared at her with his giant blue eyes as he jerked down his tunic and the chainmail underneath it, and Orenda saw something that intrigued her.

His flesh was unbroken, but it contorted, as if there was something very wrong with his sternum. It looked as if he had somehow gotten a smooth river rock directly under his flesh, but… not as if it had been implanted, as if it had always been there, as if it belonged there.

“Morgan told me not to touch it,” Klin said, “And… I… I should have listened to him. Please, listen to me. Please, I’m begging you! You don’t want this! I… I’m a monster. I’m a fucking monster! They’re… they’re all afraid of me because I… I carved out… I killed… I think… I think there was an earthquake… I was only seventeen, Orenda and… it was… they were going to hurt Xandra and… and the sword kept telling me that the… the artifact was in the heart of the temple and… and the dragon locked me in there and… I was a knight! I had to… had to slay the dragon but… the forest spirit it… when it died I… they all… the priests tried to tell me that you couldn’t… you couldn’t take the artifact out of the temple… but Xandra needed it… she needed the armor because they were gonna hurt her… but when I left I… I think… I broke something… some kind of ancient magic and… there was an earthquake…”

Orenda stared at this sobbing teenager and came to a heartbreaking realization.

“How many times did you do that, Klin?” She asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his body shook with his sobs, “But it… it won’t happen to you.”

He let go of his left hand, and it sprang, almost of its own accord, to the hilt of the sword on his back. As he drew it, Orenda saw, first hand, the sterilite blade that matched, so closely, the legends associated with it.

“It wasn’t just an earthquake!” Orenda yelled, “Was it? It wasn’t just here in Uril! You killed the Great Fire Spirit and carved out it’s heart! That’s what I’m holding!? You’re not seventeen, you’re immortal! You destroyed my people! You caused an eruption!”

Klin’s eyes were green and his voice was steady when he said, “Put that back where it came from, mortal.”

“You killed my father!” Orenda shrieked, “And my grandfather! And my grandmother!”

“I…” The boy’s stance faltered, and he blinked the blue into his eyes, “Your… who was your… who?”

“Garon, Orenda, and Shiron Firefist!” Orenda shrieked, trying to process what she was seeing, trying to understand how this sniveling, broken boy could possibly be the stuff of legends.

“You’re… you’re…” His eyes grew wide, “You’re the baby! You’re the baby that pirate guy had- the night they tried to attack Xandra! They were going to hurt Xandra! They tried to kill my wife!”

“It was never about Xandra, you monster!” Orenda shrieked, “It was about you! Xandra didn’t destroy our home! You did!”

“I… I’m sorry,” Klin began to cry again, “They… they wouldn’t give me the artifact, and the sword said,” his stance straightened and he stood to his full height again, holding the sword as if he meant to attack with it, “I’m not… I’m never… gonna be able to talk you out of it… no one would listen to me… no one ever listens to monsters and demons… it’s why I didn’t listen to Morgan. I’m… I’m sorry, Orenda. I gave you the chance to run-”

“I will never run from you!” Orenda snarled, and unwrapped the thing in her hands.

“I’m trying to save you!” Klin shrieked, and Orenda watched as the stone in his chest began to glow. The magic light that radiated from it was blinding- his clothes were no impediment to the light, or to the forest that sprang from it. The vines and branches wrapped themselves around the boy, not armor in the sense that one normally thought of it, but a living, breathing thing that solidified into a second skin, a shell made of stone and plants, so thick and bulky he towered over her.

She looked at the thing in her hands- a smooth, fist sized red stone. No magic seemed to radiate from it.

And as the Emerald Knight brought his sword down in an arch that would sever her head from her shoulders, Orenda dropped the cloth and clutched the stone that he claimed to have taken from the heart of a god.