Taramiel knew the boy was in the valley. He could feel it. Inside or behind some house, hiding on the other side of a mound of dirt, the boy would be cowering in fear, perhaps with another soldier or villager hiding with him.

But as the rubble piled up, wooden beams falling together like logs, that certainty in his chest began to fade. He began to scramble a little bit, unsure of where to put himself: he raided the houses haphazardly, leaving them half-standing and abandoned once he knew the boy wasn’t there. Once he’d exhausted the houses, he ran down to one of the farmer’s fields, picked away at the hiding spots there: no luck. The valley was wide but his horse was strong, and it didn’t take long before Taramiel had exhausted whatever other potential places he could find.

He returned to the others slowly. The villagers were either dead or soon to join them. He looked up at the other horsemen, all watching him slowly ride back with suspicious looks on their faces. His skin felt like it would soon jump off of his body and run away or burn up. The clouds still hung gloomily overhead, gray, and his heart now throbbed with a strange feeling of longing. The treetops of the valley border seemed like teeth pointed up to the sky.

Taramiel saw the Sacredate staring at him, and Taramiel knew that Gloss knew all.