Initially, Brother Faerbar had been planning to march straight for the Temple of Dawn and the festering well of evil that lay beneath it. It had been his mission from the very start, but all that changed with the sight of his own God’s remains, though. That was a sight that the Templar had never expected to see. It was one thing to know that Siddrim was dead because the God’s own memories of that moment that burned inside of him said so. However, it was quite another to see his larger-than-life remains fall to the earth, and his eyes stayed fixed on that point even as the giant bones disappeared once more into darkness.

Tears unexpectedly came to his eyes after that, and his sword dimmed a bit as dark emotions rushed through him, but the taunts he expected from the mystery voice never came. It vanished along with everything else, and the army of light was left alone to deal with the aftermath of the things they’d seen. Even though the Paragon knew that the effect was still impossible to avoid, he knelt there on the icy road. Then he began to pray, even though he knew there was no god to hear him. Over the course of the next several minutes, the whole army knelt with him to pay their respects. It was all they could do.

After that, there was no way they could continue on their crusade without going north, paying their respects, and learning what they could about what happened. After an hour of marching, though, all they learned was that physically, there was nothing there to enshrine or bury. Most of Borther Faerbar’s men couldn’t see anything except the crater that Siddrim had made when he’d fallen, but with his sight, he could see the cathedralesque remains towering above him into the darkness.

They hung there like an aura without an owner, and even though he questioned the mage harshly, the young man had nothing to add to the situation. “So Siddrim’s spirit is just stuck here forever?” He demanded of Jordan.

“I mean - I would th-think his spirit was in the small suns that reappeared—” Jordan stammered.

“Those are not the remains of our god!” Brother Faerbar roared. “Those are his horses, running free of his chariot with no one to guide them. I fear that without his steady hand, they might eventually tire and flee to a different pasture or stop and graze one mid-day and burn part of the world while the rest freezes!”

“His horses?” Jordan asked, a look of obvious confusion on his face. “I’d always thought that was a metaphor…”

“And what would it be a metaphor exactly?” the Paragon demanded. “What would light and heat the world if not his four flaming stallions?”

The mage had no answers for that, which was fine, Brother Faerbar supposed. He had never read the scriptures, so teaching him would be nigh impossible anyway. Handling the disposition of Siddrim’s corpse and his steeds only had one thing in common: they were problems that would never be in his power to solve.

Brother Faerbar had always been a simple man, and part of him resented having to be the one to make these decisions. Even as he debated what they should do next with his lieutenants and if this development actually changed anything, he reflected on that.

He did not seek this power or this army, but now that he had it, there was only one use for it. He needed to rip out the black heart of the evil that had inflicted this scar on the world and slain his God by treachery under a shroud of darkness. Which meant fighting. No amount of delays or strategizing would change that.

The longer everyone talked, the harder it became to hear them, though. All he could hear was the pounding of his own heart as it beat with rage at the very idea that there might be an alternative to what was coming next. So, Brother Faerbar gave the order, and they began to march once more. This time, though, it was for Blackwater itself - the very heart of darkness.

He could see the fear and indecision beginning to grow in even the hearts of veterans. The mage looked like he was about to piss himself or run in fear at any moment. Brother Faerbar could understand those emotions, but they no longer reached him. There was no fear in a soul already suffused with a need for vengeance.

On the long slog back to the river through frozen fields and small snow drifts, they found a few more smaller groups of zombies, but they tore apart like tissue paper. To this point, the weather and the darkness had proved to be a bigger obstacle than the forces arrayed against them, and that worried the Paragon. How could an enemy be strong enough to defeat a god but weak enough to fall before them like wheat? The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

It wasn’t until they reached the edge of Blackwater that they met any real resistance, and for Brother Faerbar, that only deepened the mystery. The zombies before them were obviously different from the ones they’d faced until now. They wore crude armor and wielded weapons that were lashed to their hands. More than anything, they bore a resemblance to the warriors that he’d faced years before in Oroza’s under temple, but they proved only to be a distraction.

By the time the Paragon had slain his third zombie, a shape larger than five men together lurched out of the night. For a moment, he thought it was a troll. That was the only thing he’d ever faced that was this size, but this was even bigger. In the end, as it charged him, all he could do was charge it in return before he crushed the men around him into paste.

The thing was more than twice his height, but he was infused with the strength of a god and jumped as they met, slamming his shield into the chest of the thing, staggering it. Even glowing with Siddrim’s light, though, it wasn’t enough to kill the thing, and as he swung his sword hard at the neck, looking for a quick kill, it deflected off the crude iron collar that had been put there. Someone had done their homework, he realized bitterly as he pressed his legs against the thing’s chest and lept away before the thing could grab him and crush him to death in its giant three-foot wide hands.

“Is that the best you can do?” the Paragon roared as he was knocked off his feet by a backhand and sent flying back toward his own lines.

Up until now, he’d succeeded at weaving just at the edge of its range and striking at each blow directed his way with his flaming sword in a bid to sever a finger or a tendon, but it had done very little good, and on his last strike he’d gotten a little too close, and he’d been knocked off his feet for his troubles.

He could feel the pain spreading throughout his body. A broken hip, a twisted knee, and a fractured leg. Each of these wounds healed before he even had the chance to rise, though.

His words were almost as effective as his sword, though. The glowing blades made quick enough work of the lesser zombies, but so far, every slash and trust he’d attempted to land on this monster had done nothing but gouge the metal beneath its skin. Something had taken the time to skin this giant, install bizarre bronze scale armor, and then sew the skin back on as if that made any sense.

It baffled the Templar, but then he supposed the motives of evil wouldn’t always make sense. This also held true for the words the mage began to chant somewhere behind him. For a moment, Brother Faerbar thought that he was about to be betrayed, but even as he braced for impact from whatever foul sorcery the mage behind him was casting, a lance of fire arced up over his head and splashed across the face of the behemoth, making it roar in anger.

Brother Faerbar doubted that was enough to kill it or even blind it permanently. The dead didn’t need their eyes to see. Not truly. Still, as long as it was on fire and distracted, he could afford to try something more complicated. Circling around behind the flailing giant with all the speed he could muster, The Paragon struck hard at the base of the thing’s spine, but the bone there had been replaced with steel as well.

He took a two-handed grip on his blade and struck the same spot twice more to no effect, and even as the monstrosity began to clear the fire to circle around and grab him once more, he switched to a softer target: the inside of the left knee. Because of its need to flex and move in a way that was at least somewhat natural, Brother Faerbar’s blade cut deep there for the first time, releasing foul black ichor even as the thing’s leg went out from underneath it, and it fell on its side roaring in outrage.

It lashed out again and again from its prone position. Sometimes, it succeeded in grabbing a warrior and crushing them so hard that blood poured out of the twisted plate mail before it lobbed them back into the army. It never succeeded in grabbing the Paragon, though, and with each attempt, it only exposed another vital piece of its underbelly to him, now that he knew what he was looking for. The warrior struck at every joint it could with his blade, and with every ligament he severed, the thing grew slower and clumsier until it was nothing but a turtle lying there harmlessly on its back.

A ragged cheer went up from the nearby men who had been doing what they could as Brother Faerbar climbed on top of the monster’s head. Then, without flourish or fanfare, he plunged his fiery blade into the thing’s eye socket to finally destroy the brain, and it exploded, launching the Templar a dozen feet back toward Blackwater.

He had briefly expected that the thing might spring to life once more or that a second wave of zombies would arrive to save it. What he never imagined was that the creature’s death would trigger some alchemical blast deep in that thing’s body.

Suddenly, that bizarre armor made sense, Brother Faerbar realized just before he hit the ground hard. When defending against blows, every hit had been absorbed by the scale mail, but when this thing detonated, most of those same scales went flying, and all of those sharp pieces of shrapnel hit with the force of a thousand arrows as it flew in all directions, shredding those closest to the blast.

Brother Faerbar’s plate mail spared him the worst of it, but he felt the pain race through him from half a dozen punctures and knew that he wouldn’t be able to begin to heal until the cursed metal was removed from his body.

He rose shakily to his feet and began to pull out the pieces. Then he surveyed the damage and the dead, wondering what other terrible surprises awaited him between here and the Temple of the Dawn.