54 – The Bloody Wight

I gave a grunt as I pulled the next potato from the yielding soil, lumps dirt falling away from the dark brown surface of the tuber. A flick of the knife sliced through the root and I set it in the wicker basket my daughter was holding.

Casea grinned. “I do like potatoes,” she admitted.

“Mm. You and me both. Looks like a good harvest too.” I’d been checking each one I plucked from the earth and was heartened to see no traces of blight on them.

The village had had a bit of a rough patch of late, some harvests doing worse than others, but my family was doing well and that was what mattered the most to me.

Lydia made her way up the track, her dark hair tied in a loose bun. She grinned wolfishly, drying her hands in a small rag. “Working hard, eh?” she asked.

“I usually am.” I smiled up at her. Gods, how good it was to see her face. “Someone has to keep you two fed.”

She reached over, and I leaned into her touch as her slim fingers threaded through my hair. A pleasant sensation, so sorely missed. “And we appreciate it love, I truly do.”

“I appreciate it too!” Casea cheered.

“Ha. Well, you two are my main audience.” I rose to my feet, grunting all the while. Human pains, so long forgotten, briefly twinged in my joints. It felt... good. To be able to feel such things again, I never thought it possible.

“Reckon that should do. Casea, run on home and put them in the pantry. We’ll et some aside to sell, and then the others... well we can eat them tonight.”

“Okay!” the girl cheered, turned, and sprinted up the path toward our squat cottage.

“She’s shooting up like a weed,” I said, smiling. “It’s honestly shocking.”

Lydia smiled sadly at me. “She won’t grow any older,” she told me simply. “And I won’t grow any older.”

Tear pricked at the corners of my eyes. I nodded at her solemnly. “Aye. I know that.” This, all of it, was a dream. A wonderful dream, but that was all it could ever be. “Bastard must have knocked me out.”

“Looks like. Hard to believe anything could rattle that hard head of yours.” Lydia smiled, leaning up on the balls of her feet so her lips could flutter on my brow.

“I don’t want to go back.”

“You’re not dead. Not yet. And you know that you’re the only person who can decide whether you live or die.”

I nodded. “This is... a twilight, then? Some space between here and the next world? Or am I simply mad?”

Lydia said nothing, offering me a fond look. It felt more vivid than something I would imagine in just a dream. “It’s a brief respite for you.”

I nodded, only partially understanding. “I can’t... forgive myself. I can’t ever forget how I failed you. I can’t ever be free from how much I hate myself,” I told her. “And so... I persist. Stuck here, away from you.”

Lydia’s hand rested on my cheek, and I couldn’t bring myself to meet her gaze. I didn’t deserve to. “You did nothing wrong, Tarion. There was nothing you could have done. But what you can do is forgive yourself. Nobody else will do it for you.”

“Ha. If you knew the full extent of what I’ve done, the horrible things I’ve done... you wouldn’t even be willing to spit on me if I were on fire.”

She didn’t pull away. “I know what you’ve done. And I know that a bloody mad wizard got inside your head, sicking you like a mad dog on people.”

“No excuses,” I said, shaking my head. “Doesn’t matter what was happening in my head when I did those thins, I still did them. And... Gods help me, there were times when I liked it. Liked hurting people. Killing folks. And there’s no justifying that.”

We fell silent for some time. I couldn’t meet her eyes, even as she threaded her fingers through his. “You can’t change the past. All you can do is brace for the future. And you do want a future here, don’t you?” she asked.

I said nothing. My throat felt impossibly tight.

I looked away from her, toward the distant horizon. A figure stood alone out there, hazy and indistinct, yet I knew it was the Old Stranger. Young or old, rich or poor, good or evil, the Old Stranger is the shepherd to all on the other side. Yet he did not beckon to me.

Wasn’t my time, we both knew.

“Those people down in Tiode... you’ve grown to care for them in your own way. Even if you don’t want to admit it. So keeping them safe... you need to do what you can to make that happen.” Her other hand reached up, tugging my head around to look her in the eye. “You have a chance to help them. But that means you can’t hold back. Not against a bastard like that.”

“Become the Wight again? That might put everyone in more danger.”

“They’re already at risk of being destroyed.” Lydia frowned. “You have that power, so for the love of all that’s holy use it for something good, Tarion. You want to be a better man? Then this is how you be a better man. To take that wretched power of yours and use it to help people.”

A chilly wind rose up through the sunny valley. The ground shuddered, and I knew my consciousness was being dragged back to my body. I could feel it, the tugging of a hundred unseen hands upon my very being.

“I don’t wanna go,” I spluttered, and I felt like a fucking child for doing so.

“You have to. For now, you have to.” Our eyes met, and hers shone with an emotion so beautiful that I knew such a thing could only be love. “We’ll meet again. I promise.”

“Lydia.”

Our lips met for a fraction of a second... and then we were apart again.

Sha rose trembling to his full height, huffing for breath. Bloods and shards of bone dripped from his knuckles as he stared down at the mulch that had been the foreigner's head.

Strong, a worryingly strong foe. On some level Sha loathed this little desperate trick of his, drawing on the soul of another to strengthen himself. But, on the other hand, fair play was a notion for foolish mortals.

You did what it took to win, or you died, simple as that.

He managed a small smirk, and a flash of heat from his fists burned the gore away. A shadow swept across him, and he looked up to see the bruised woman sweeping toward him on wings of darkness.

"You damned animal!" She snarled, swooping toward him with sky-shattering speeds. Sha swept his frozen arm toward her, creating a broad dome of ice.

Her billhook slammed into it, sending great tremors racing under his feet, but the woman was rebuffed by the recoil of her own blow and had scarcely marked the ice.

"Such a harsh reaction," Sha said, his voice once again filled with an ironclad confidence. The woman may have been a threat to him in his old form, but like this? He could tear through her as easily as he tore through the Snake Flower.

"Did you love that man?" he asked.

The woman glared at him, her eyes like those of a cornered tigress.

Sha grinned broadly, great spikes of ice sprouting from his left shoulder while the flame on his right side blazed brighter. "Oh don't worry. You'll be joining him soon."

The woman's eyes widened, and for a moment Sha allowed himself to relish the shock in her expression. Until he realised she wasn't looking at him. She was looking past him.

Sha spun sharply, his own eyes wide as the near-headless corpse pulled itself upright. He sensed the qi in the body, felt it grow higher and higher, until a tangible miasma of black and red vapour rose up from his body. An aura of dense qi.

"That's... not possible. That's not possible!" Sha roared, thrusting his frozen arm forth and summoning a colossal wall of ice to crush him flat. The spikes of ice met the westerner... and shattered apart, dissolved away to nothing as it hit his aura.

He could only watch, transfixed, as the shattered bone slid back into place, regrowing missing portions and fusing them back together. Muscle tissue, torn and shredded, sprouted back piece by piece like the struts of an intricately constructed cobweb. Then came the skin, devoid of even a hint of bruising.

The miasma around his opponent shifted, shaping itself into something... else. Great plates of armour, sharp and angular in places, forming into an intricate and interlocking suit of these plates. He'd heard tales of these looming western warriors, clad from head to heel in steel.

Knights, he believed was the term. And this was a knight clad in purest black.

The looming armoured giant rose to his full imposing height, a cloak of white hot flame blossoming down his back. He held one hand out, and in that hand appeared a massive claymore that similarly smoked and hissed with fire.

Upon his head appeared a spiked helm, concealing his face with the exception of his eyes which blazed like two pools of molten iron in the shadow of his visor.

Sha could feel his own heartbeat in his ears. He was... afraid? No, no, surely not. The thought alone was absurd. Yet he felt how the foreigner’s qi had changed. It was so much more intense now, blazing with a malevolence he had previously only sensed in his own qi.

Had he... been holding back this whole time? To such an extent?

“What...” Sha’s jaw trembled. “What are you?!”

And the foreigner spoke with an entirely different voice. Deep, rasping from the iron confines of his helmet. “I’m the Bloody Wight.”