A trail of smoke and ash led through the devastated Beaucourt, and the pair of children followed it blindly, without any real understanding of the dangers involved. Peter imagined himself in one of his stories; Remi felt too powerless to turn back on her own. And so the spontaneous adventure continued. Against all odds, with luck on their side, the two made surprising progress. Less than an hour later, they had arrived at the ruins of the old blacksmith’s workshop. It was here that they had sought temporary refuge before they were forced to relocate to the church. The memory of their stay was still fresh, so Peter knew his way around the ruins and knew where to search for weapons.

He walked through the door frame, which stood without a door and without much of a surrounding wall. His old shoes crushed pieces of gravel and broken glass. His nose filled to the brim with a strong burning smell. His ears heard the hammer of the old blacksmith striking against the anvil—a hallucination by all means, since the blacksmith rested somewhere under this very rubble. It was a sad end to 40 years of labor. The old man could not even finish the golden sword that Count Monet had commissioned, but perhaps Peter could salvage the fruit of his labor and unearth the incomplete blade.

Cheered by a regretful ghost, Peter reached where the armory had stood, and started digging with his bare hands. As Remi watched in silence, he removed the rocks and pushed away the gravel. He cleared the glass shards and wiped away the black dirt. Eventually, a metal chest surfaced that was almost as large as his own body. He felt jubilant for a second before he turned nauseous. When the fire started, while all the refugees ran outside the collapsing workshop, the old blacksmith alone had rushed to fetch this chest, and so Peter also unearthed a pair of rotten fingers—one resting under the shank of the lock and another inserted into the keyhole.

“What’s wrong?” Remi said.

“Stay back!” Peter shouted, before he started vomiting.

When he was no longer queasy, after he wiped his mouth and chin, he looked around him for a suitably sized rock, and then started hammering the lock. He hit it as hard as he could, with his shirt collar raised to cover his nose. It’s never easy for a hero to obtain his secret weapon. He hammered and hammered with all his strength, and the lock started to bend and distort before it finally gave in and clicked open. It was this moment he awaited. He threw the rock away and reached for the lid with starry eyes. He opened the chest and found the golden sword intact—proof that his scripted tale of heroism was only starting.

It was everything he ever needed. He reached for it, and his fingers almost touched its grip. But then there was a rattle of armor behind him.

“What are you doing here, kid?” a gruff voice said.

Peter turned around like a child that had been caught stealing.

“This workshop belongs to the Count now.”

It was a town guard, or at least he sounded like one. He wore chainmail and had a mace at his waist. His brown hair and unkempt beard framed his square face, and his wide-set dark eyes reminded Peter of frog monsters. He stood no more than three steps behind Remi, a distance that was too close for comfort, and in the next moment, he took another step toward her before he stopped again. With arms akimbo, he shifted his reptilian gaze rapidly between the girl and the boy. Then the inevitable happened: he noticed the large metal chest and linked it to the hammering noise that he had heard.

“What’ve you got there?” the town guard said.

“It’s none of your business!” Peter answered.

“Well, aren’t you a pair of ugly whippersnappers?”

The guard took another step forward, raised his right foot high, and kicked Remi in the stomach. It was a violent kick—devoid of clemency. His sole landed against her navel as if it were crushing an annoying bug. She fell to the ground immediately and shrank into a ball of pain and tears.

“I’ll ask again. What’ve you got there, kid?”

Peter stood in a daze; he didn’t understand what was happening.

“Looks like you’re gonna give me a hard time.”

The guard picked up Remi by the hair. He stared at her body as if he were searching for something—perhaps gold, silver, jewelry, coins, anything that she might have owned or stolen, anything that could be confiscated as evidence. But the little girl had nothing. He ripped her pockets off her dress to release old buttons and dust. Then he threw her away as if he had no use for her anymore. She fell on the ground and rolled into a ball again; this time, however, she was not only in deep pain but her elbows also started bleeding. She lay there and whimpered and moaned.

“You two are working for the dwarves, aren’t you?”

The guard approached Peter, but the latter didn’t move.

“Are you here to steal weapons and sell ’em to the dwarves? Answer, brat!”

“Stay away!” Peter shouted, and pulled out the golden sword from the chest.

“Well, well, well! Isn’t that a little fortune you’ve got there?”

As soon as he saw the golden sword, the guard reached for his mace. He held it up in his right hand and looked at Remi. It seemed that he was about to head back and crush her skull with one blow, but then he revised his course and decided that it was better to start with the boy who held the prize. After all, it would be simply foolish to do things in the wrong order.

“Put down the sword, kid, and I’ll let you both go.”

“Stay away!” Peter held the sword and prepared to defend himself.

The guard didn’t seem intimidated and approached with a froggish smile. With every step, Peter felt more and more scared. His heart began to pound and flutter; his knees began to shiver. It was one thing to fight God and the dwarves inside his head, another to fight this guard in the world of flesh. Or perhaps God had sent this man to stop him before he could save Elise. He heard the voice inside his head again: “There is no such thing as luck or chance. Everything is as it should be.” Amirani was watching; Amirani was listening. Amirani wanted to punish him and Remi for their childish rebellion.

“Put the sword down!” the guard shouted.

Was it too late to save Elise?”

“Put the goddamn sword down!”

What could he do against a town guard?

“You asked for it, kid!”

The guard swung his bloodsoaked mace, and simultaneously, Peter turned around and started running. He jumped past the large metal chest and scuttled through the scattered rubble. All the time he could feel the mace close; all the time he could see a larger shadow where he should step. The end could come at any second, but his legs refused to stop. He ran through the ruins of the armory and exited into the main room, where the work bench, anvil, and forge once stood. He hesitated for a few dangerous seconds—casting quick looks in several directions. Then he ran along the broken bench, past the rubbled anvil, toward an opening in a half-collapsed wall.

With a few more steps, he would make it out of the building. Then he would circle its perimeter and help Remi back to her feet. It was the perfect course; it was an impeccable plan as far as his brain could tell. While he stepped over the wall opening, however, a hairy hand suddenly reached for him and grabbed his shirt from behind. It first pulled him back but then pushed him forward. He fell on the ground and found the guard seated heavily on top of him. He couldn’t turn around. His golden sword was stuck under his body, and his head was wide open for a mace strike.

“You asked for it, kid!”

The guard swung the mace, but before it landed, Remi had hurled herself at him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and started to pull his hair and scratch his face. Her fingernails drew blood; her weight was like a shackle. As the guard struggled to get her off, she gave Peter a chance to break free. The little boy squirmed like a worm and wriggled out of death’s embrace, and when he was free, he turned around and raised the golden sword. His heart beat like a prisoner against his chest; his eyes blurred everything but his goal. When Remi was finally knocked down to the ground, he rushed forward like a madman.

His enemy was disoriented and vulnerable. It was his only chance. Before the mace could swing again, before the large guard could tower over him, Petit Pete lunged forward and thrust his golden sword with all his childish strength. It whooshed through the air. It stabbed the guard through the neck and called forth a geyser of blood. The warm liquid splashed on the ground, on the golden edge of the blade, on Peter’s stunned face and Remi’s disfigured dress. Then the corpse dropped on its side, and the same red formed an expanding pool around it. Silence returned—a macabre silence across the horizons.

Peter fell to his knees and sat in the middle of the pool. His heart began to calm down, and his eyes began to show him what he had done. He blinked once, twice, thrice. Every time the pool of blood became more defined and the corpse more evident. Did he just kill a man? A town guard? How do heroes feel after they defeat their enemies in battle? Do they feel this strange dread? Do they shiver even more than they had before? Peter remained on his knees and felt out of breath. He moved his mouth, but not a single word would come out, and so he turned to Remi with a grimace on his face.

He crawled toward her and hugged her and started to cry. The two stayed still and held each other as if they would otherwise fall into the abyss. They cried and cried and eventually grew tired of tears. Peter let go slowly, and Remi stood up. She looked at the corpse and immediately averted her eyes in revulsion. The golden sword was still there where it had been planted, sticking out like the most expensive of gravestones, since Peter didn’t dare remove it from the gored neck. The wind blew a cloud of smoke and ash over the ruins; the ghost of the old blacksmith sighed in shame; then Peter finally stood up again.

“Peter … What have we done?” Remi said, with a weak voice.

“We … We …” Peter stuttered.

“You two killed one of the Count’s men,” a third voice answered.