I don’t know how long I kneeled there.

  It had happened so fast. The shock, the loss, drowned me in feelings, paralyzed me. I wept for him. I cried with shame or restraint. When Sempronius had died, the man I called father, it had cost me more in shame for my lack of grief than in actual grief. But Harold? Harold had always been there. Not bathing me in love, but nurturing me and caring for me in his own reserved manner. He had believed in me. He had protected me from the worst of Sempronius’s humors.

  A life with this man flashed before my eyes as I came to understand that he was truly gone.

  As the anxiety had before, the pain and sorrow eventually began to condense, to harden and morph into something else. They could come again, later. But now there was an all-consuming need to avenge this. I buried the loss, buried the feelings, in an avalanche of rage.

  But how to point that rage at an ephemeral being? How to make F’ael hurt for what it had done?

  I stormed to my feet, fists pounding pallets of stone to dust. I raged at the sky, at the earth. I raged at F’ael. I raged at Enki.

  I found myself standing, hands on my thighs, bent over. I felt weak and shaken and strong and boiling with rage. The ground beneath me was a tapestry of the crimes that had been committed. The human-sized indentations of the boots of fleeing workmen. The huge impressions of the Golem’s feet. I frowned, eyes twitching as I looked over the footprints. Here the scrabbling prints of a man sprinting, huge Golem prints in pursuit, but there two more Golem tracks intercepting the man’s flight. I turned, looking at the ground, scanning around. There again, two giant sets of tracks convening on one set of human feet. Again and again. There were too many impressions left by the Golem. Too many prints for one Golem.

  And then I saw more.

  New prints. Alien to me. Too big for a man, yes. But too small for the Golem. Human-like footprints. They were evenly spaced and largely defined. The being that had left these footprints was not in a hurry.

  I straightened and considered the scene I had arrived to. The utter destruction. The careful eradication of all the workers. Harold, left mortally wounded but somehow with enough life left in him that he lived for me to experience the trauma of his expiration. Why had Harold been spared so long when every other man here had been brutally put down? Was this a message? Was that what it was?

  No.

  As I turned and thought, and inspected the scene, I realized this wasn’t a message. Or rather, it wasn’t only a message. There was no way I could convince myself that the carnage and destruction was not some attempt to communicate with me. But that was not the true purpose.

  A Golem had been sacrificed to my delay. These men had died, this site destroyed, and Harold murdered all to keep me here. But why? What could be so important about keeping me here instead of…

  “...Boston…” I breathed.

  I had no DOOR. I’d used it up to come here in my panic to save Harold. F’ael had taken me away from Boston with this attack. F’ael had trapped me out here, and kept me here so much longer still. Something was happening in Boston. I felt the urgency that could only be born of terrible dread.

  I paused to look once more to Harold. I couldn’t leave him here for the crows to pick his eyes out. The longhouse was burning brighter. I could feel the heat rolling from it. Not quite an inferno, not quite yet, but getting there.

  I picked up his limp form, again shaken by how light he was. I carried him in through the gap in the wall. The heat was incredible. Even my suit could not entirely protect me from it. My human skin screamed in protest, the thermal torture bleeding through the armor that could turn bullets away.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  I lay him back where I’d found him, arranging his arms and legs with what dignity I could afford him. He had always been dignified. He would not end an eyeless corpse staring at the sky while the birds feasted on his insides.

  I whispered to him, “I’m sorry.”

  Then I left him in the pyre of the longhouse and turned to Boston. The fire surged and roared. There might be nothing left of him when I came back. But that would be for the better. Let his ashes rest here, his ghost, forever beneath the shadow of the castle I would rebuild.

  I took hold of the footfield and streaked for Boston. I had no exact measure of how long it would take with my grown powers and the red cape. I focused everything I had on keeping the field tight, on driving my feet with relentless single-mindedness. I stopped thinking about Harold, about revenge, about F’ael and Golems. I thought of nothing but the city that called me protector and what terrible happenings might be occurring in my absence.

  The gates of the city were shut when I arrived. It was jarring to find the city gated to me.

  Smoke rose from points within, dark amorphous columns of darkness that reached for the sky. The city wasn’t on fire, but some buildings must have been. HEARING brought me the sounds of steel on steel, of men screaming rage and crying in death.

  I hammered on the gates. “Let me in!”

  I roared again, demanding entrance, the suit making my voice loud enough to be heard in the Tower. No one responded. I bellowed at the gates, “I am Lord Tiberius Bloodsword, Sword of Boston! Open the gates of my city! Let me in!”

  I had promised to tear down the walls of Buffalo but in the end I’d conquered that city from the inside out. The gates of Boston had been ripped away only days before by cannon fire. The walls were patchwork, stone and temporary structures patching the gaps left by that assault.

  I ripped the gates from the walls with my hands. I drove my armored fingers into the boards, splintering the timber and crumpling it like paper. I grasped them and pulled, heaving with all the strength of my Griidlord body, my feet cutting into the earth, bracing me. The steel that held the gates in place groaned. The metal warmed and the timber creaked in desperate objection to the force of my body.

  Then the ties gave and all that bound force, all the coiled strength I pitched against the gates became too much. The gate flew, crashing to the ground beyond the walls.

  I entered my city.

  I couldn’t have known where to direct myself. There was fighting in my city, but none in view. I could hear the sounds of battle. A dozen little fights, skirmishes rather than armies clashing.

  I raced forward, heading for the heart of the city, the most vital prize any attacker might seek. The Tower.

  Where were the other Griidlords? Where were the guards?

  The streets were deserted of citizens, but littered with bodies. I hurtled over the tangled remains of Boston soldiers, seeing the colors of the city guards, of the Boston regulars, of noble houses. But no attackers.

  My eyes swept the bodies as I raced forward, assessing, seeking explanation. These men had not been killed by Golems. They had been killed by steel.

  The rattle of gunfire reached me from near the Tower and I doubled my steps, honing in on the sound. I passed more clusters of dead combatants. Again no alien corpses, no fiends, no Golems, no outsiders.

  I skidded to a halt as the thought dawned on me. I had been too warped by grief and rage and panic and focus to see it clearly. I needed to be in the fray, but I also needed to know what I faced, and so I stopped. I turned and moved towards a macabre diorama of dead men.

  Guns barked in the near distance. Swords rang on swords. Men died.

  I looked down on the bodies. A fight had played out here. It had happened since I left for Castle Bloodsword. Nine bodies were arranged. Six of them were soldiers of the city, employed directly by the Tower. Three of them were of Boston as well, bearing the colors of House Ironveil.

  I peered down, not wanting confirmation but finding it there. One of the soldiers lay dead, his mouth a mask of frozen pain and stained with his own life’s blood. His killer lay on top of him, still clutching the sword that had pierced his heart. The Boston soldier’s killer wore the colors of the Ironveils.

  I took a breath, shaken by what I suddenly understood. I looked to the sky as if to seek an explanation. I looked at the sky with accusation for whatever entity might be looking down. We had just ended the war with Buffalo. We had secured the Tower of that city, its resources. We were so close to breaking through, to starting the world on a path to real change.

  And now? Now we fought and killed each other.

  Leona had warned me of a coming civil war.

  I had scoffed.

  I resumed my race towards the sounds of combat, steeling myself to lay waste to my own countrymen.