Wichtig stood in silence, staring at the world beyond the farmhouse. He felt small, unimportant. The Geborene priest blinked in confusion, head turning, eyes wide as if seeing all he wrought for the first time. This was a man with his own inner demons.
A distant scream shattered the silence, growing in volume. Movement drew Wichtig’s eye and he saw a middle aged woman falling from the sky in a mad tumble. For a moment, he thought the dragon must have dropped her, but then saw she was naked and realized she was the Therianthrope dragon. She landed far out in the corpse-strewn field, crunching to the earth with the sound of shattering bones. She lay motionless, limbs bent at odd angles, eyes staring into the sky that cast her out.
Bedeckt folded, crumpling to the ground. The green-eyed woman crawled to him. She looked lost, like now, after all this madness, the world no longer made sense. The little girl Wichtig had seen crouching nearby was gone. Had he imagined her, or was she some kind of hallucination?
Spotting his sword lying at his feet, Wichtig bent to collect it. He stood, unable to explain what he felt. Something—no, everything was different. For the first time in his life, the world made sense. He was good with a sword—maybe even the best—and it didn’t matter. He was just a man. A man without friends. He used people his entire life, casting aside those he no longer needed. He fled his emotions and called it manipulation.
He told himself someday he’d return to his wife and son. He wouldn’t. He’d never see them again. He was a coward.
He told himself he was all that mattered. He was wrong. None of it mattered. He was nothing.
Wichtig tried to strike a heroic pose to make himself feel better and nothing happened. No light illuminated him, no breeze caught his hair. He looked like what he was, a beaten man covered in horse guts, alone and without a friend in all the world.
He wanted to kneel in the mud and cry, but the young woman was watching him and he didn’t want to be embarrassed by a show weakness. Coward. Shame gnawed at his guts.
A whimpering sob caught Wichtig’s attention and he turned to see the Geborene Wahnist. The man looked riven. Wichtig strode to the priest and ran him through. The priest put up no fight, if anything, looking grateful. After cleaning the sword on the man’s filthy robes, Wichtig sheathed it. It was all he had. His only friend. Hadn’t Opferlamm said something like that?
Never again. Never put it down again.
Wichtig approached the woman and she watched, green eyes showing no hint of fear.
After what she’s seen, hardly surprising.
“I’m Wichtig—” He wanted to say more, to brag that he was the Greatest Swordsman in the World, but nothing came out. It felt like a lie.
“Zukunft,” she said, staring at him. Even covered in horse gore she was gorgeous, green eyes framed in blood red. She rested a hand on Bedeckt’s chest. The big man lay still like stone.
“Is he…?” Wichtig couldn’t ask. “Will he…?”
“He’s dead,” she said. “They’re all dead.”
Wichtig tried for humour. “He’s been dead before. Bedeckt would never let that stop him.”
“No,” she said. “He’s gone. He saved me. He stayed and he didn’t abandon me.”
“He was like that,” said Wichtig. He frowned at the corpse of his friend. “Sometimes.”
“I thought she wanted me to suffer,” Zukunft said.
“She?”
“My sister. In the Mirror.”
“Oh.” What the hells is she talking about?
“She was trying to show me there are people you can trust, people you can count on not to let you down.” Zukunft’s gaze fell to Bedeckt and she reached out to touch his face. “She wanted to show me that assuming the worst of everyone was madness. That it was wrong. I was wrong. And she chose Bedeckt, the most unlikely man, to show me.”
“Your Reflection chose Bedeckt to teach you about trust?” Wichtig laughed. He little better, a little more like himself.
“She wasn’t my Reflection,” said Zukunft. “She was my sister.”
Wichtig shrugged this away. Mirrorists rarely made sense. She might be beautiful, but the woman was clearly insane. Who the hells would turn to Bedeckt for lessons in trust?
Wichtig turned to take in the carnage. Bedeckt, Stehlen, Lebendig, and Opferlamm all lay where they fell. All dead. Just beyond the shattered wall lay the Geborene priest and, beyond him, the burst remains of the Therianthrope who’d plummeted from the sky. Had Bedeckt done that? Did the old bastard’s mad insistence reality make sense somehow rob everyone of their delusions?
“You were so sane you were the craziest man I ever met,” Wichtig told Bedeckt’s corpse.
Zukunft looked up at his words and he saw something familiar in her eyes.
Wichtig laughed again. He struck a pose and a breeze ruffled his hair in spite of the thick shellacking of drying horse blood. He flashed her a cocky grin, his favourite.
“You were his friend,” said Zukunft. She brushed fingers across Bedeckt’s brow but her eyes, so green he wanted to drown in them, never left Wichtig.