Chapter One

A warm stream of blood flowed from my nose, mingling with the soil beneath until it was nothing but a muddy pool of crimson earth mere inches from my eyes. The pool made it almost impossible to breathe, compounding the difficulty imposed by the boot that rested on the left side of my head.

I tried anyways.

“Please! She hasn’t done anything. You don’t have to do this.”

To say that my plea fell on deaf ears would be an understatement. A plea to a deaf man would go unanswered. A plea to this fiend earned only a snarl of disgust.

His name was a mystery to me, but I knew his type. A Divine Knight of holy purpose and unyielding resolve. An Assessor.

We followed the same goddess, of course. Eien was, after all, the goddess of everything. Yet Assessors were a class apart from even the clergy of the many faced divine. Their power came unaltered from her blessed source, empowering him to search out the truest enemies of the faith. Non-believers, heretics, apostates...

Devil-Marked.

It was little wonder the fanatic ignored my plea. We both knew why he was here.

“Then it is a good thing we arrived as early as we did, isn't it?” The man spoke with a tone laid bare how much he enjoyed this aspect of his calling. "Keep the girl from spreading her contagion?

Holy warrior indeed, the man is a sadist.

"Spreading contagion? By saving lives?!" I asked, an incredulity I did not truly feel tinting the words.

"Ah, not early enough then."

A swift kick to the abdomen from one of the Assessor's guards put a stop to any rebuttal and left me retching and gasping for air.

"Keep your indignation." Another guard spit on Vincent in disgust as he spoke. "You think two Assessors would come to this backwater if we didn't already know what she'd done?"

“She helped people.” I insisted.

Two armed men dragged my daughter, Terynia into view, while the ringleader, that beast of a man, yanked hard on her hair. She screamed, and I fought and clawed against the ground, searching for some purchase, some leverage to throw away the man atop me, to spirit her away from what I knew was coming.

Tery was crying, and more than anything that sight broke my heart. Thirteen years old was too young for this, for any of it. Even thrice her age, I was not ready. She was nothing more than a child, a little blond waif in tattered linens that I’d promised to replace in the fall, once she’d stopped sprouting like a tree.

“She helped people with this.” The man retorted. He sliced away at handful after handful of thick blonde curls until he was at last able to point the tip of his knife at the inch long black sigil that stood prominently against olive skin.

Her Devil-Mark.

"Of course, you knew that. You knew what she was, you knew your obligation, and you hid this thing anyways." The Knight snarled down at me. A single gesture and my daughter was forced to her knees, her petite frame little more than a dark silhouette against the bonfire they'd set. "Treating the plague is no crime, treating it with this-"

“It is a healer’s mark!” I protested. “She cleansed half a town of the pox, saved hundreds of lives that the clergy was unwilling or una-“

Again I felt the pain of the boot. This time, at least, the knight had the decency to let me see the blow coming, even as it finished making a ruin of my nose.

“Saved them? She removed the plague and doomed the town. The whole of Erinsburg is being put to the torch as we speak. Their souls are damned because of your whelp!”

I’d told her not to do it. Erinsburg was a nothing town, in the nothing province of Greenhills. I doubted that our direct lord, Protector Varin could have found it on a map if he'd tried. But all it took was one overly devout resident, one superstitious fool, one talkative merchant, and our little corner of the world could become very dangerous indeed.

Terynia had done it anyway, and for six months I'd been as proud of her as I'd been terrified of the consequences.

“She is just a child," I said as desperation began to build inside me.

“And we should wait until she is grown, razing half the countryside with her evil before w-“

“Enough. Gerard.” Came a new voice.

My heart leaped in an instant, only to fall into a pit of despair as the newcomer came into view. It was no rescue. He was old, well into his twilight years, the silver of his stubble glinting with each twist and flicker of the nearby firelight, matching the gleam of his armor. Another knight, one with significant clout, if his heraldry was to be believed.

Whatever the elder’s status, it was not enough to fully cow the younger knight, who only drew himself up further as he turned to face his superior. “Grand Master. There is no need-“

"You think I traveled all this way to sit in a carriage while the four of you light a fire and bat around your prey?"

“I’ve been told that fire is the only way to-“

“It is a girl child, for Eiensake. Put the blade to her and be done with it.” The elder growled. “This task is distasteful enough without drawing it out any further.”

“Slaying an aberration is not-“ One of the other men began, clearly intending to argue the point, before a single harsh stare made him think better of it.

“A pitiful existence, to be Marked. But this one is not some SarVok, tearing apart the countryside.” The experienced knight continued. “She is a weed in the Goddess' garden. Impure, and dangerous, but without malice. Pluck it, quickly.”

“Stop!” I shouted pushing against my captor with every ounce of strength that remained in me.

It wasn’t nearly enough. I barely managed to draw one knee beneath me before a stomp to the back of my head drove me back into the dirt, and destroyed what remained of my ability to speak as my jaw shattered beneath me.

Stunned as I was, I barely registered the sound of steel scraping against scabbard. It was only when I saw it glimmer in the firelight, only when I saw the man, Gerard, grasp my daughter’s hair to hold her steady, that I began to scream.

He recited some vow, some religious relic perhaps, or a sentence. My ears were ringing, and though I spoke fluent Ashadi, the words failed to register. There was no pain, no sound, not even the smell or heat of the roaring fire nearby.

The only sense I could rely on was sight. His smug expression, Terynia’s tears, her body arching, then the thrust. Steel driving through the back of my daughter’s neck to emerge just below her chin. One small hand reaching for the blade, leaving finger-width streaks through trails of her own blood.

I couldn’t look at her, so I looked at him. My eyes, blurry though they were, focused on every aspect of his shadowed features. The strong cut of his jaw, the high, severe haircut, the bridge of his nose with a small scar across it. Those perfect fucking teeth.

I would destroy this man. I would level the country, the world, in order to get to him, and when I did it would not be enough to kill him. Nothing, no one would remember him.

“Finish it.” I heard the words more readily than I felt the blade as steel penetrated my back. There was a fire in my lungs, but it paled in comparison to the one that burned within my eyes.

I began to crawl, hand over hand despite the quivering weakness in my limbs. The man who had stabbed me had evidently thought a single thrust would be enough. The fool.

“Khll… yooh.” I said through broken teeth, my mouth open wide in a futile attempt to suck in enough air to stand.

I made it another half dozen feet before the sword found me again. And again. Three more thrusts pierced my body, but I persisted. Another foot, another two. Gerard was coming towards me now, which was good. All I needed was to touch him.

“You’ll kill me? Is that what you just said?” Gerard scoffed as he advanced on me, his sword dripping with my daughter’s blood. Just a touch. I pushed myself upright, my knees beneath me as I readied for the lunge that would end my life, the one that would bring the knight close enough to take him with me. “And how do you plan to do that?”

“With his Devil-Mark.”

No. No! I screamed internally. Gerald was almost within reach, but the words had drawn him up short, and I barely had the energy left to breathe, let alone resume crawling.

“You can’t continue to conceal it anymore, can you?” The old Knight asked, cautiously moving around until he was once more in front of me, one hand now ready on the pommel of his blade. “The girl didn’t have an aura because she was immature, but you, you've been suppressing it somehow, haven't you?”

I said nothing. Even if I’d been able to speak, what else was there to say?

“In forty years of hunting your kind, you’re one of only a handful I've seen make it past the age of thirty. And the only one I've ever seen able to hide it, to say nothing of resisting your foul urges this long.” The man continued. “You deserve this much.”

Rather than draw his sword, the old man leveled his hand in my direction, two fingers and the thumb outstretched in a triangle shape as he mouthed two simple words. “Holy Smite.”

The darkness of the night burst with deific splendor. In an instant, my body was engulfed by the light, awash with pain worse than any cut, any burn.

Then, just as quickly, darkness swam up to meet me for the final time.