We are cut off from the rest of civilization. I can only assume the same for the other cities. People lay dying in the streets, starving. My kingdom. My people. Is this how the once-blessed creation of humanity ends? Trapped within our own walls, gasping for life? Alone in the darkness?

--King Leofwine’s Journal, 27th of Bleaksun, 451

ARC 4 - RADIANT

CHAPTER 2 - LESSON LIVED, LESSON LEARNED

Even in winter, the Elysian lands had a striking beauty to them. The swaying green grasses were replaced with near-frozen stalks of brown and all but the heartiest of trees lost their leaves, but the way both stood out from the frost and dusting of snow brought promises of rebirth rather than an end. Ruts filled with slush along the roads alluded to the trade still ferrying in goods from far off places and small columns of smoke revealed chimneys too distant for the eye to see.

Too distant for normal sight, anyway. Raegn had flashed the Light into his eyes several times now, if only because watching the farmers wake with the dawn to feed their livestock was a distraction from his own task. The frost gave the entire world a bright glisten as the sun came up and Raegn squinted, then abandoned his outward look.

The only thing Raegn needed to see was Cenric barreling along in front of him. The High Justicar had personally come to beat down his door when blackness still filled the night sky and they’d been running ever since. The journey itself wasn’t that bad, for Raegn had once been accustomed to running for days at a time, but the anticipation of what might come next was far worse than the ever-present threat of the Void had been in the Scarred Lands.

Kai had said that the trial was much different for those seeking the path of the Justicar. ‘Near torturous,’ the words had been. Ulrich had always been one to train Raegn harder than what was required. If a scouting trip was normally eight days, Raegn was made to run for ten. The appropriate gear and supplies were a certain weight? He’d work with double that. If Cenric was anything at all like his elder brother…Raegn didn’t shudder at the thought, not physically as his body was too invested in the run, but it brought a feeling of trepidation.

They continued along the road, periodically taking extended strides to avoid particularly deep puddles filled with muddy slush. In Raegn’s zoned-out state he almost missed the moment they broke away from the beaten path. The crunch of frosted grass beneath his feet alerted him to the change and he glanced over his shoulder to see the road bending away in the other direction. Taking it as a sign that they might be close, he brought another flash of Light to his eyes to see what might lay ahead.

Nothing significant. The terrain took a sharp turn upward and formed a cliff that might be ten men or so tall with a waterfall that poured down to continue the river’s flow. There were a few branches consisting of small creeks and brooks that also fed into the main waterway and on the other side a marsh gave way to the edge of a forest. All of it was far enough away to not be seen from the road, yet as Cenric stopped Raegn couldn’t help but wonder about his new instructor’s intent. Seclusion seemed most likely - the training of a potential Justicar wasn’t something the general populace needed to see.

Raegn’s breathing was heavy, but measured. “What’s here?” he asked.

Cenric took a long, deep inhale that filled his chest so much Raegn could see the expansion even with the Justicar’s back to him. The exiled farling looked around in front of them slowly as if to take in the scenery for the first time.

“Nothing,” he replied, still studying their surroundings. “That’s the point.”

Seclusion it was, then. Still, the true question remained unanswered. Raegn took a careful tone, unwilling to show apprehension or eagerness.

“And what’s next?”

Cenric’s face was hidden, but the drop in the man’s shoulders wasn’t a good sign. He turned to put the weight of his rigid gaze on Raegn and the disgraced lordling found it hard not to look away.

“You need to learn to become like this place, to be at peace,” Cenric explained. “You carry too much.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Raegn asked with a frown.

“It means you cannot separate yourself from the events around you,” Cenric said. “You have failed to reconcile with your past and that will continue to pull you towards failure in the future unless you learn to shed those chains.”

“I have reconciled!” Raegn blurted out. “I failed Bastion, I know that much, but here I am, trying to make things right by joining the Order!”

Cenric shook his head. “You didn’t join to make things right, you joined to continue your old life. And you did not fail Bastion,” he added. “Everything in your head has become clouded by your emotions and you can no longer separate the individual events that occurred.”

“Our home is gone!” Raegn’s muscles tensed as he barked out the truth. “Damn near everyone we ever knew is dead, buried beneath a mountain, or fallen into an abyss! If that’s not failure I don’t—”

“What do you feel, when you call to the Light?” Cenric interrupted.

“I feel like—what?” The sudden change in topic put Raegn off-kilter mentally and he couldn’t summon an answer.

“I imagine my brother taught you to envision the flame as a method of control,” Cenric continued, “and I’ve heard that your interaction with the Divine was not a pleasant one. I can see the pain the Light brings each time you call for it. In fact, I can see all your past suffering in the way you are now.”

Raegn clenched his jaw and hung his head downward. “I feel burning,” he admitted. “And ash. I taste ash.”

Cenric began to walk around him slowly.

“Your grip is a bit weaker on your left hand, something to do with an injury the Light left on your fingers, I imagine?” He briefly took Raegn’s hand and rolled it in his own. The High Justicar let it fall back to Raegn’s side after giving the miscolored digits a hard scowl. “I’ve heard you don’t sleep well. What is it that haunts you? Visions of the Void? Of Camael? The rubble of the city you called home?”

“All of it,” Raegn grunted.

“You have a large scar on your torso,” Cenric continued, still circling and unconcerned with Raegn’s answer, “but it’s one of the only injuries that doesn’t hold you back. Why is it, do you think, that the one that nearly killed you is the one you accept?”

“I-I don’t know…”

“It’s because you see death as the only way to triumph,” Cenric informed him. “That your supposed failures can be washed away by your own blood. And, somehow, you’ve convinced yourself that becoming a Justicar will serve as some sort of path to that redemption.”

Cenric stopped and glared down at him. Mud-colored eyes had never carried so much heat.

“I’ll not have anyone join my ranks in a selfish quest for glory and death.”

“What would you have me do?!” Raegn leaned in towards the large Justicar. “Return to the Far East? Accept my fate there? Or stay as a Templar as some sort of penance?!”

The intensity on the High Justicar’s face vanished as quickly as a summer storm. He turned to look out across the river and other features of the land with his hands clasped behind his back, leaving Raegn to stew out of view.

“Neither,” he answered. “I would have you shed the burdens of your past. If you can reconcile with yourself there may be a future for you as a Justicar, but as you are, you will not pass our trial.”

Raegn chewed his lip. It had been too much to expect an exile to have any understanding, any feeling, for the loss of Bastion. But the rest? Raegn looked down at his left hand and flexed the fingers into a fist a few times. Everything else Cenric had said was accurate.

With a heavy swallow of his pride, Raegn set aside the frustration.

“Where do we begin?” he muttered.

Cenric turned his head some, looking back over his shoulder. Was that…a grin? Raegn’s brow creased as he tried to discern the expression, but Cenric turned away before he could be sure.

“First, we will fix your interpretation of the Light,” the large man said. “You are aware of the other schools of thought besides the flame, yes?”

“Life and water,” Raegn answered, though it came out as more of a mumble.

“Yes,” Cenric said, loud enough for the both of them. “Life and water. I want you to choose water.”

“Why?”

“Because it has all the power you seek while carrying the preservation you need.”

Raegn looked at the man quizzically.

“In time,” Cenric explained, “the tide can wear down all things. In sudden bursts, like being struck by a wave, its force can crush any foe, and yet…” Cenric nodded out to the landscape before them. A small offshoot of the river lazily wove its way around the roots of trees, babbling a bit along the stones at its edge. Further upstream, though, the waterfall churned and the main current swept its way along, down towards the sea.

“There is a perseverance to it. An endurance. A river finds a path through the world, carving it out if it must, but always seeks the point at which it can settle and be at peace. I want the same for you.”

The long-winded explanation was pretty, Raegn could give the man that, but ultimately the request was a simple one.

“You want me to visualize water instead of flame?” he clarified.

“I want you to meditate. Sit.”

Cenric took a position on a thick part of the grass and sat down with his legs crossed and hands folded in his lap. Raegn rolled his eyes but mirrored the posture. It looked a bit odd, for a man so large to partake in activities of the mind. Anyone would have presumed him to be much more comfortable in a training yard bashing heads, not out in nature attuning his thoughts.

“We will do this until you no longer scorch your own soul when you use the Light, no matter the amount,” Cenric informed him.

Raegn closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

To Raegn’s disbelief, Cenric’s method had worked, even if not perfectly. Filling his soul to the brim still brought the taste of ash, but it didn’t outright burn anymore. More surprising was how quickly he took to the visualizations. A massive lake, still as glass, could shift just as quickly to a raging river the same as a small fire could erupt into a swirling inferno. There wasn’t quite as much power behind the new technique, but perhaps that would come with more practice.

Cenric, much like his brother, hadn’t been one to let Raegn rest on his laurels. The moment he’d grown comfortable with the meditation he’d been all but tossed into the river. There was a rock with a flat top near the base of the waterfall, squarely in its stinging spray, that was to be Raegn’s new spot for meditating…if he could ever reach it.

The entire afternoon was spent on failed attempts to swim upstream. Most of them ended with effort fueled by desperation to not drown. Anything that would undermine the meaning of the exercise, namely approaching from the side or Light-running atop the water, was forbidden of course. The activity had been more along the lines of what Raegn expected, more so than the meditating anyway, and it left him drained and barely able to keep up with Cenric on the run back to Elysium.

And now…

Raegn looked at the gaggle of Templar standing before him. Some faces bore a look of curiosity, others outright scorn, but most seemed indifferent. They’d come to train, though most had understandably expected a Crusader to be standing in front of them as they had every other day. For those that knew or heard of Raegn, a healthy skepticism wasn’t unexpected.

Still, Raegn fought hard not to glare back at the eyes that seemed moments from openly challenging him. Highlord Orgeron sought to punish him with this instructor duty, but it would not be without purpose. There was a connection between the two, even a child could see it. Cenric wanted him to find peace in his past, the Highlord concord with the present.

“First, let me set the record straight,” Raegn said to the quarter of a legion before him. “I do not care what you think of me. Brash, arrogant, failure…none of it matters. The only truth you need is that I alone have slain more Void than all of you.”

The only way he could think to hide his exhaustion was through the harsh tones of command, but he recognized the formation would not respond to his commentary for long. Raegn glanced up at the balcony that overlooked the training yard. Both Dulius and Cenric stood there, expressionless. Scrutiny from both sides, it would seem.

“I can tell you that it does not matter how many you kill,” he continued. “You can fight all day and through the night and your effort would be wasted. You can slay one hundred or one thousand and it will make no difference. The Void is endless and you stand no chance at what you would call victory.”

There were murmurs from the formation and they began to shift about, some craning for a better look at the man who told them their fight was hopeless while others leaned to whisper to a friend.

“The only Void that matters is the one right in front of you,” Raegn said overtop the clamoring. “Kill it and another takes its place. Do it enough times and, if everyone thinks the same, you all survive to die another day. There is no secret or hidden method for success. You will fight a relentless tide of darkness until you die either to them or old age and then they will keep coming. Your victory is not the end of the Void, but surviving another day.”

That seemed to quiet them. The Highlord and High Justicar still bore faces of judgment, but neither seemed inclined to interrupt. Raegn turned his attention back to his “students”.

“That is the future that awaits everyone you’ve ever known if the Void spreads throughout the Realm. That is the reality of your fight if you go to Bulwark.”

He sniffed and let reality settle in. He had grown up in that fight and had known no other existence. The Templar before him, though, were different. They were used to assignments with an end in sight. They were used to coming home - to seeing family and friends again after being away. Few would have any real combat experience and almost none would have ever seen the Void.

“That is how Bastion lived for centuries,” he told them, “but they did live. And I will show you how they fought.”

As Raegn rolled his shoulder forward to push the spear from it and into his hand the gaggle shuffled into a loose formation.

“You,” he pointed at a Templar near the front. “Come here.”

The Templar glanced around at those next to him, then resigned himself to being selected and stepped forward.

“Raise your shield,” Raegn instructed.

Once the Templar did so, Raegn stepped to the side so he could still see the others. “You all know how to defend yourselves. Your shield protects you. How dangerous is one voidling?”

Raegn gave a light shove against the shield. The Templar leaned back some against the force, but flexed and recovered instantly.

“A single voidling is hardly a threat. But two?” He shoved the shield harder and the Templar braced to keep himself in place.

“Half a dozen?” Raegn stepped back, then lunged shoulder first into the shield. The Templar staggered back and barely stayed on his feet.

“You, stand behind him.” Raegn pointed at another Templar who reluctantly joined his comrade in front of the group. “When there are hundreds of beasts bearing down on you, you cannot stand alone. Raegn nodded to the newly arrived Templar and the man braced the other at the shoulders. Even with a running start Raegn hardly moved them an inch. He nodded in approval and motioned for the two Templar to rejoin the group.

Raegn utilized the time it took them to travel back to catch his breath. Damn the Highlord for requiring this of him knowing full well that Cenric was working him to the brink of death. Those few shoves felt like he was trying to press away Elysium’s walls.

He eyed the formation, the dozens of eyes waiting for him. Anticipating. Judging.

“Everything I know I learned from Commander Ulrich Aldway, a forty-year veteran of combat and the last marshal of Bastion’s forces,” he continued. “In Bastion, we believe there are four tenants to combat. The first is precision. You strike to kill, always. There is no sense in wounding a voidling or Voidborne. They will continue to fight and attempt to kill you until they are no longer able, no matter their wounds.”

It had been a long time since he’d put his knowledge into words, but the longer he spoke the more Ulrich’s voice flooded his mind until it seemed the Bear of Bastion himself was giving the instruction.

“The second tenant is efficiency. Sentinels scout for up to half a season at a time. Skirmishes can take place over days and vast distances between pursuit and repositioning. Bastion’s final battle was nearly half a day of constant fighting. You strike to kill so that you do not waste energy, for you will need every drop.

“You will always be outnumbered, which is why we have the third tenant: the unit. As you have just seen, there is strength in even small numbers. Alone, even if you are precise and efficient, you will be overwhelmed. The more warriors you can put together that can be precise and efficient in unison, the harder it becomes to overwhelm you. The unit is your best chance at survival - and therefore victory.”

Raegn took a brief pause, letting the information settle. The final piece had always been his favorite. He made them wait for it, like dogs eager for their meal.

“The final tenant is savagery,” he said with teeth bared. “When the unit fails in time and you are no longer precise and efficient due to fatigue, you will win or you will die. When your spear has broken and your shield shattered and a voidling leaps for your throat you must find the animal within yourself if you want to survive. The Light gave you life. Do not be quick to give it back.”

Raegn gripped his spear and held it out in front of him. In reality it was only a quarterstaff, training with real weapons was the quickest way to injure half your forces, but he held it with the same intensity that it may as well have been sharp.

“The spear keeps your enemy at range. Your sword is only a fall-back. If you draw it you must believe that you will not come out of the fight unscathed, for you have only one blade; a voidling has half a dozen limbs like knives and jaws that will sever a limb with ease. If you can’t keep them away from you they will tear you apart faster than a pack of wolves does a deer.”

Some swallowed, eyes wide with fear. It was the same fear that every man and woman had when they were made to realize the evil from stories was real. Most would feel it again when they truly saw the Void. They would freeze and then they would die. Worse, they would endanger those around them for not holding their portion of the shield wall. That, in Bastion’s terms, was unacceptable.

There was nothing to do but build their confidence.

“We will start with the thrust.”

Raegn paced through the spread formation correcting movements here and there. Some of the Templar were fatiguing after only a few hours, he could see it in strained shoulders and weakening grips. He made his way to the front of the training grounds and whistled, waving his quarterstaff in a circle to indicate he wanted them to form up.

“In Bastion, children at the age of twelve will drill these movements for a full year before being allowed to progress to any other sequence,” he told them. Faces full of disgust were his response. “But you are not children,” he continued. “I expect you to learn faster. As a reward for hard work, I will show you the single thing that has stood between the Void and this Realm for centuries. Form up, shoulder to shoulder! Twelve across the front!”

The Templar shuffled together at his order. It took longer than it had any right to and Raegn sent several of them to fill in elsewhere as they had mistakenly lined up in thirteen columns.

“If you are in the front row, crouch down slightly and make sure your shield is low to the ground. Second row, place your shield offset at shoulder height,” Raegn said, loosely demonstrating the actions as he spoke.

He waited as shields clattered together and feet shuffled across the dirt, trying to get closer to the edges to put the wooden barriers in place.

“If you are in the middle, your shield goes above your head.”

Shields went up and continued to jostle until Raegn could no longer make out more than a limb here or there between small gaps.

“This is the shield wall,” he told them. “Bastion used this formation to fight the Void for all of known history. This formation fulfills three of the tenants at once. Alone, you might be able to kill a few voidlings before being overwhelmed. Bastion’s warriors were expected to fight five to six at once. A full company of sixty-four, however, could withstand over five hundred with no losses. This formation requires precision, but it is efficient when done correctly. Now, each of you place your spear through the gap that has likely formed just off to the right of your shield.”

Wooden poles clattered against the shields and there were mutterings and curses as the opposite ends knocked into shins within the formation.

“Voidlings are bloodthirsty and single-minded. They want to kill you - nothing more. They will claw and bite at your shield and their masses will crash into this formation like waves against rock. You will eventually tire and break if you do not kill them first. Luckily, a good portion of them will die as they impale themselves trying to get to you. You will have to attack to kill the others. Their dead might even pile up in front of the formation and they will begin to climb over top. You should be able to…”

Raegn called the Light to him and took several quick strides on small platforms of golden dew that formed beneath his toes. He landed atop the shields just behind the front row and several Templar groaned trying to support his weight.

“If you cannot use the Light to strengthen yourself your shield should be above someone who can so they can support you,” he said. “Bastion was blessed by its number of warriors with affinity, but not all had it. Knowing those in your unit is essential to proper positioning.”

He continued to walk across the shields, wavering to keep his balance as the shields gave slightly under his feet. When he reached the edge, he hopped down.

“That’s all for today. We will train again at the same time tomorrow. Be ready with shield and spear.”

The formation broke apart quickly, many of the Templar rolling their shoulders and shaking out their arms from fatigue after holding their shield for so long. As they dispersed, Kai approached.

“That seemed to go pretty well,” the islander remarked with a slap on Raegn’s shoulder that almost knocked him over. “What do you think?”

“I think I need to sleep,” Raegn grunted. “You were watching?”

Kai nodded feverishly. “Are you kidding? You never talk about your home. I think I learned more about you in these last hours than I have in the past few seasons.”

“Great,” Raegn said with a roll of his eyes.

“Come on,” Kai chuckled and threw his arm around Raegn’s shoulders to guide him, “let's get some food in you before you sleep. You look like shit.”