“I know you.” Kaern dipped the tip of his blade down, lightning dancing along it and jumping out to occasionally make his target twitch and wince. “I saw you in her dream.”
“Kaern! What…?” Simone demanded, running up to him. She trusted him, but she couldn’t imagine why he was focused on a human while there were still demons fleeing them.
“He’s a collaborator, Simone. He works for the lord,” Kaern said. “I saw him in Elan’s dreaming…this one killed her parents.”
Simone’s gaze snapped to pin the man, eyes narrowing as she hefted her blade and started forward. Kaern’s arm across her chest stopped her and he shook his head.
“Why not?” she asked, furious.
Kaern didn’t reply. Instead he focused back on the man on the ground and leaned closer, taking a moment to sniff the air. He tilted his head and looked closer at the cowering traitor, a hint of a cold smile just barely touching his lips as he seemed to realize something. Finally, Kaern straightened back up.
“You live today, only so she can kill you herself later, if she chooses,” he hissed. “Remember that, and remember this. I’ve seen who you serve, and I know the consequences better than you can imagine. Killing you would be a kindness, and I am not that merciful. Pray she is. Now run, little human, run and run until you outrun your treachery…if you can.”
Kaern withdrew his blade and stepped back, letting the man scramble back and twist to his feet so he could stumble out the door of the temple.
Simone stopped him, angry, when he turned back to those inside.
“Why?” she demanded. “Why let him go?”
“Because he isn’t for me to kill,” Kaern said simply.
“You said yourself that Elan could be dead,” she hissed. “There’s no reason to leave a traitor alive for a dead girl to avenge herself on.”
Kaern snorted. “If that girl is dead, then I would be deeply surprised. I still smell the stink of prophecy in all this. Come, Simone, we have business to finish before the forces outside can regroup.”
Frustrated, but no knowing what else she could do, Simone followed him as he stepped deeper into the temple to finish off the stragglers of the demons left within.
*****
Elan fell out of the room, on her knees and heaving as her now empty stomach tried once more to empty itself. Nothing but a trace of bile and spit came out, however, and in a few moments she managed to push herself to her feet again.
That was when she realized that she wasn’t standing in the hallway she had entered from.
Instead she was in an immense room, with a ceiling so high she couldn’t be certain it was a ceiling and not part of the sky. There were shelves lining every wall and filling up the space in between, all of them stocked full of…something. She stumbled slightly as she moved forward, reaching the closest in a few seconds.
She pulled one of the objects down and realized it was a book.
Elan had seen books before, though rarely. Her mother had a few she used to teach her to read, but they had been small and tattered. What Elan was holding was heavier and larger than all her mother’s books combined. She hesitantly opened it and perused the first few of the pages but finally closed it in frustration.
She knew some of the words, but not most, and the meaning behind them was lost to her. Elan returned the book to where she’d taken it, eyes scanning the room and growing wider by the moment as she began to realize just how many books she was looking at. She didn’t know for certain if she knew the numbers it would take to describe them, just that it was more than she’d ever conceived of before.
Her mother would have called this a treasure.
Elan felt a wave of grief pass over her, thinking of how she would like to have shared this with her mother, but she choked it down. She had to find a way back to the others. As much as she would like to explore this further, it was clear that she didn’t have the knowledge she needed to understand any of it.
She reluctantly turned away from the books, heading back to the only way she knew that might get her back to where she’d come from. The door of the small room remained stubbornly closed, however, and nothing she could do would change that fact.
Frustrated, Elan struck the door with her fist, wincing as the pain drove through her arm and then spiked through her skull as well. She whimpered, gently leaning on the door and resting her head against the cool metal for a time.
A whisper of movement behind her caused her to move, ignoring the lancing pain the motion caused her, and spin around. Elan’s eyes widened as she now saw an empty room, the books all gone somehow. She pressed her back against the door, wishing for the comfort of her sword as an existential sort of fear descended on her, and she wanted nothing more than to curl up on the floor and just close her eyes and pray it all went away.
She didn’t know if she could take much more. The world was not supposed to change on the whims of some unknown force. That wasn’t how things went. It wasn’t.
In the center of the now mostly empty room, though, something caught her eye. It was a pedestal, with a single book resting on it.
Elan took a step away from the wall, almost against her will. Then another, and another, and soon she’d crossed the distance to the book and was looking down at the gleaming black lettering that rested against the white cover.
Ein Taki’amin Kine.
Hesitantly, she reached out and her fingers lightly brushed the cover.
“It means,” a voice spoke behind her, “To Walk the Path of the Knight.”
Elan spun, this time a shard of pain stabbing through her skull so deeply that she felt the world go black as she toppled to the ground, unconscious.
*****
She groaned, not wanting to open her eyes and feel that stabbing pain of the light driving into her brain. But remembering Caleb and the others, Elan forced them open.
It was bright. She blinked back against the light, but the expected pain didn’t arrive.
“You have a concussion.”
Elan started, twisting in place to get her feet and hands under her so she could move to either attack or run, depending on what she saw.
She froze instead, wanting desperately to run, but couldn’t keep from staring.
An apparition was standing there, a few inches off the ground, looking at her. She could actually see through the figure and spent a few moments staring at the wall behind him rather than at the figure himself.
The figure waited patiently for her to refocus her eyes on him, and when she finally did, he let off a very human-sounding sigh.
“Are we quite finished? Yes, excellent,” he said, clasping his arms behind his back. Elan found herself staring at his hands through his torso. “As I was saying, you have a concussion.”
Elan shook herself, refocusing on his face. “I have a what?”
The figure was an older-looking man, with gray hair and flint-colored eyes. Aside from the disconcerting transparency, Elan was surprised by how normal he appeared. Well, the transparency and the clothing. She’d not seen anything quite so neat and clean before. Even her soft shirt taken from the Redoubt didn’t have a look to quite match it.
“A concussion,” he said again. “You were struck in the head, hard enough to injure your brain. I’ve had the worst effects treated, but you need to rest for—”
“I can’t,” Elan said, dropping down off the table she now realized she had been lying on, planting her feet firmly on the floor. “I need to get back to Caleb and the children…”
“They are fine,” the apparition assured her. “Once the facility has been brought fully back to operation, I will set aside areas for them…”