“You’re not the Chosen One,” Orenda told him, “I’m the Chosen One!”

  She threw back the lid of the chest and didn’t understand what she saw there. It was mostly empty. Something about the size of her fist had been wrapped in cloth, and she leaned in to pick it up.

  But the boy, who before this had mumbled all his words, had spoken so quietly that she could barely hear him, screamed.

  “No!” He shrieked.

  Orenda turned at the spectacle of it and watched him leap over Anilla and through the barrier. As he crossed it, Orenda saw it flair up- and she knew the spell was checking for something. Orenda gathered that only certain people were allowed in this room- and this boy was either one of them, or, depending on the ward, Xandra now knew they were here.

  “Anilla!” Orenda snarled, “What the fuck part of ‘guard the door’ don’t you understand!?”

  Now that she could see the boy, Orenda was sure he was just another fighter, just another soldier. He wore their uniform and carried their weapons. Her medallion began to heat as she readied another spell to get rid of him. One more. She… she just had to make it through this one day, and then they could mourn them. Now was not the time.

  “Don’t!” Klin warned, with pain in his voice. It had changed, had become a sob in the middle of the word, and tears leaked from his giant, blue eyes.

  Orenda paused.

  His eyes were the color of a deep crystal lake.

  They were not the eyes of an earth elf.

  “You… have strange eyes for an earth elf,” Orenda said.

  “I take after my mom,” Klin said and wiped his eyes on his sleeve, “Sorry I… I shouldn’t be… it’s been a really long… I’m sorry.” He tried to dry his eyes, and stood staring at Orenda, “You’re kind of short for a fire elf. I bet you take after your mom, too, don’t you? Or your dad? I bet one of your parents wasn’t… they always made fun of me… for my weird eyes.”

  “You aren’t a Urillian,” Orenda said, “You’re after the artifact too, aren’t you?”

  “No,” Klin shook his head, “No we… I am… a Urillian. I’m a knight in the service of the crown.”

  “A knight?” Orenda scoffed, “You’re not a knight. You’re twelve.”

  “I’m not a little kid!” Klin said defensively, as if he said it a lot, “Orenda, listen to me, please! Just… just listen to me, and everything will be ok… I just… you don’t want to touch the thing in that chest. I don’t know what you think it is, but- wait, I just realized something… Thesis’s glowing eyes, I’m so stupid! Why am I this stupid? I wish… if I could have one thing… it would be that I had… that I had ever been smart… I wish… it’s so hard to be this stupid.” He began to cry again, with fat tears running down his cheeks, “Because it’s like… she’s not… I don’t think… so much of it is… that they aren’t right! You know? They’re not right, they’re just smart! And you’re… I mean, I… I’m stupid and it’s not fair because… because I can’t tell the difference! I don’t know… I just…”

  “Stop crying!” Orenda demanded, and turned to take whatever had been wrapped inside that cloth.

  The artifact is yours, master. It was stolen by-

  It isn’t stolen. My master took it fairly. He claimed it in a valid battle. It is his right by combat.

  “Shut up!” Klin screamed and grabbed his ears, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

  “Who said that?” Orenda asked, and from the way Klin had doubled over, had collapsed in on himself she could truly see the hilt of the sword on his back.

  It was the same sword in her history books.

  It was the same sword the crazy man drew on his fliers.

  “I won’t let you hurt her!” Klin was hyperventilating now, and Orenda watched the magic of his soul swirl and grow within his heart. Anilla was right. It was almost like looking at her own. But it was a bright green, so bright it almost hurt to look at him.

  “I won’t let you hurt her!” Klin said again, “She’s so young! She’s so pretty and strong and she has her whole life ahead of her! She’s still a child! She’s still a child and I won’t let you hurt her!”

  “Klin!” Orenda said with more authority than she felt, “Where did you get that sword?”

  He stared up at her with tears in his eyes.

  “I got it the same way you got that staff, I reckon,” he said, “I picked it up, and it… it was so easy to do I didn’t even… I didn’t think… and Xandra said they were gonna kill us! And they were! They killed my parents! The house was on fire- and when I got out the wheat was on fire and we were gonna lose everything! We were gonna starve! And they were everywhere, and they shot arrows at us- the arrows were on fire too, so I ran, I ran into the castle behind the walls because it was supposed to be safe, but I couldn’t find my parents, and the voice in my head told me where to go, so I listened to it and… and… He was gonna kill her!” Klin stared up at Orenda, begging with his eyes before he began to beg with his voice, “He was gonna kill her! He was alone, in her room, with a little girl, and I was… I was just a little kid… I didn’t.. I didn’t know, and I was scared- You have to believe me! I didn’t mean for… I just… I had to save the princess!”

  “What did you do?” Orenda asked.

  “I killed him and he didn’t… he didn’t really fight back, I was… I was so little and I don’t think he thought… I don’t think he knew I… could or… wanted to fight a little kid… I was… I think I was like… nine or ten… and I… He looks… I have dreams and… he looks… like the face on the coin… the painting that used to hang in the grand hall… he looks… I think it was her daddy.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Klin fell to his knees and held his face with his left hand, and his left wrist with his right. Orenda saw a wedding ring peeking out from under his fingerless leather gloves, and thought she recognized the stone there, cut into the shape of an open rose.

  “You’re the prince?” She asked.

  Klin was chanting something, under his breath, and clawing at his face; his accent was so thick that Orenda could barely understand him, but it sounded like, “Stay down, stay down, stay down.”

  “Answer me!” Orenda demanded.

  “We went… she wanted… to leave… it wasn’t safe… we went… to the temple…” Klin said instead of answering, “And I… I don’t know how they… the bad people, with the fire… they were going… they burned the crops they… they were going to kill her! But they were dressed in green and… in my dreams I think I… I don’t… I don’t know what happened I… she told me to get the sword… and they told me to stop… not to touch the princess… and I wasn’t… I wasn’t supposed to touch the princess… I… I… I was a peasant I… we weren’t even… we were migrants and… we didn’t even own… I’m nothing I’m… I’m just… the thing that holds the sword, you know? And that… that position was filled… for centuries… by a fucking rock!”

  His left hand twitched and he grabbed it more fiercely with his right.

  “I can’t I… I just… Morgan said… we can’t… I…” He closed his eyes and began repeating his mantra again, “Stay down stay down stay down.”

  “Well this is all very interesting,” Orenda said, “But I don’t have time for it.”

  She bent at the waist and scooped the cloth from the bottom of the chest.

  “No!” Klin shrieked, “No! Please! Listen! Listen! Put that back! Don’t touch it! If you touch it, it’ll be inside of you! You have to listen to me! I know I’m not making sense, but it’s so much and it’s so much worse than you can possibly imagine! It’ll… It takes you into the nothing and you become nothing and then it… it changes you it becomes you and you can’t do anything! It… It… I’m a fucking monster! You’ll be… I can’t… I can’t let you! Put it back! Please, let me save you! And you… you can’t get it out! You can’t even carve it out because it’s not your body anymore, and they won’t let you and ‘I will allow no harm to come to my vessel’ and you can’t even get a tattoo or… it’s not your body anymore! And you… they get into your head and there’s so many voices with the stone and the sword and Xandra that you don’t know who you are because you never were anything and I wish to god, wish so badly, that I had ever, once in my life, been smart! They chose me because I was stupid! Because I was easy to manipulate!”

  That isn’t true master. We chose you because you were strong, because you were special, because you were powerful.

  “Shut up!” Klin shrieked. “Shut up! Stay down. Stay down. Stay down.”

  The boy before her did not look strong or powerful. Orenda thought of the staff, of how it had told her to kill Anilla, of how it had told her to slay the soldiers who were only trying to do their jobs, of how it had brought her here, to this castle, with the Emerald Knight and the Empress. The thing she was holding in her hands could not be a part of the staff, it wasn’t the right size to attach to it anywhere. The staff didn’t even look broken.

  Klin pulled himself to his feet, and Orenda saw that his eyes were green.

  “Put that back,” he said with far more authority than he had said anything so far. “Put that back. Now. I won’t let them hurt you. You would rather die than touch the fire stone. I carved that stone from the heart of the great fire spirit in the Sacred Mountain Temple in- No!” Klin stumbled backwards and grabbed his head, “no I… I can’t! I won’t let… Please, please put it back! Please I don’t want to hurt you! I don’t want to do it again!”

  Master, the artifact is in your very hands. The staff said.

  Orenda began to unwrap the thing in her hands.

  “No!” Klin shrieked, “No! Orenda! I’m telling the truth! Look!” He stared at her with his giant blue eyes as he jerked down his tunic and the chainmail underneath it, and Orenda saw something that intrigued her.

  His flesh was unbroken, but it contorted, as if there was something very wrong with his sternum. It looked as if he had somehow gotten a smooth river rock directly under his flesh, but… not as if it had been implanted, as if it had always been there, as if it belonged there.

  “Morgan told me not to touch it,” Klin said, “And… I… I should have listened to him. Please, listen to me. Please, I’m begging you! You don’t want this! I… I’m a monster. I’m a fucking monster! They’re… they’re all afraid of me because I… I carved out… I killed… I think… I think there was an earthquake… I was only seventeen, Orenda and… it was… they were going to hurt Xandra and… and the sword kept telling me that the… the artifact was in the heart of the temple and… and the dragon locked me in there and… I was a knight! I had to… had to slay the dragon but… the forest spirit it… when it died I… they all… the priests tried to tell me that you couldn’t… you couldn’t take the artifact out of the temple… but Xandra needed it… she needed the armor because they were gonna hurt her… but when I left I… I think… I broke something… some kind of ancient magic and… there was an earthquake…”

  Orenda stared at this sobbing teenager and came to a heartbreaking realization.

  “How many times did you do that, Klin?” She asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and his body shook with his sobs, “But it… it won’t happen to you.”

  He let go of his left hand, and it sprang, almost of its own accord, to the hilt of the sword on his back. As he drew it, Orenda saw, first hand, the sterilite blade that matched, so closely, the legends associated with it.

  “It wasn’t just an earthquake!” Orenda yelled, “Was it? It wasn’t just here in Uril! You killed the Great Fire Spirit and carved out it’s heart! That’s what I’m holding!? You’re not seventeen, you’re immortal! You destroyed my people! You caused an eruption!”

  Klin’s eyes were green and his voice was steady when he said, “Put that back where it came from, mortal.”

  “You killed my father!” Orenda shrieked, “And my grandfather! And my grandmother!”

  “I…” The boy’s stance faltered, and he blinked the blue into his eyes, “Your… who was your… who?”

  “Garon, Orenda, and Shiron Firefist!” Orenda shrieked, trying to process what she was seeing, trying to understand how this sniveling, broken boy could possibly be the stuff of legends.

  “You’re… you’re…” His eyes grew wide, “You’re the baby! You’re the baby that pirate guy had- the night they tried to attack Xandra! They were going to hurt Xandra! They tried to kill my wife!”

  “It was never about Xandra, you monster!” Orenda shrieked, “It was about you! Xandra didn’t destroy our home! You did!”

  “I… I’m sorry,” Klin began to cry again, “They… they wouldn’t give me the artifact, and the sword said,” his stance straightened and he stood to his full height again, holding the sword as if he meant to attack with it, “I’m not… I’m never… gonna be able to talk you out of it… no one would listen to me… no one ever listens to monsters and demons… it’s why I didn’t listen to Morgan. I’m… I’m sorry, Orenda. I gave you the chance to run-”

  “I will never run from you!” Orenda snarled, and unwrapped the thing in her hands.

  “I’m trying to save you!” Klin shrieked, and Orenda watched as the stone in his chest began to glow. The magic light that radiated from it was blinding- his clothes were no impediment to the light, or to the forest that sprang from it. The vines and branches wrapped themselves around the boy, not armor in the sense that one normally thought of it, but a living, breathing thing that solidified into a second skin, a shell made of stone and plants, so thick and bulky he towered over her.

  She looked at the thing in her hands- a smooth, fist sized red stone. No magic seemed to radiate from it.

  And as the Emerald Knight brought his sword down in an arch that would sever her head from her shoulders, Orenda dropped the cloth and clutched the stone that he claimed to have taken from the heart of a god.

  The book recorded that the fire elves had been a people weak and frightened, who had lived in fear of that which they did not know, because they refused to embrace the more scholarly pursuits of the Urillian culture. They had been overthrown easily- the entire country had fallen in a day and a night. Their names were not recorded. Their history was not recorded.

  They had fallen because though they were deeply devout, they did not have the knowledge to accept the chosen one when he appeared among them. Thesis had chosen an avatar among mortals, referred to in the text as the “The Emerald Knight”. He had come on a mission of peace, to teach them all the marvelous things the Urilians had, to spread knowledge and love at the hands of a god.

  But they had been frightened of his gifts. They had not believed him- and they were punished by their god for their hubris. To reject such a gift had been sacrilege, and the fire elves were smote- the Sacred Mountain had erupted, burying their capital in lava, burning their civilization to ash, and completely wiping them from the face of the planet.

  They were gone.

  She was alone.

  Johnny telling Orenda legends way back in Book 1, where he mentions the same earthquake the Klin admits, in this chapter, to causing:

  “Have you ever heard of the Emerald Knight?” Johnny asked.

  “I read something about him,” Orenda said, breaking her naan into chunks small enough to eat with, “he was the Chosen One, sent by Thesis to educate the fire elves.”

  “No,” Johnny told her.

  “It’s a scary story!” Jill said happily, “the Emerald Knight is a boogieman!”

  “I’m telling it,” Johnny told her, “hush.”

  “Oh?” Orenda asked, intrigued.

  “Yeah,” Johnny said, “The Emerald Knight is a monster. He’s the one who hunts you down, when you run away. He’s killed thousands of people, all over the world. Back home, they say that he killed the god who used to live in the Sacred Woods. Now, those woods are angry, and haunted. If you go there, there are monsters who lure children into the trees, and they-”

  “And they never come back!” Jill interrupted.

  “Hush!” Johnny warned.

  “They say that nobody sees him and lives to tell about it,” Johnny said, “But that’s not true.”

  “It couldn’t be,” Orenda agreed, “If no one lived, no one could tell the story.”

  “Right,” Johnny continued, “But he’s supposed to be ten feet tall, all armored. And he glows like the sun. It can be the middle of the night, but he lights it up like the middle of the day. You can see him coming, but if you do, it’s too late. I heard he’s a demon-”

  “No,” Jill said, “He’s a ghost!”

  “No, he’s a demon,” Johnny said, “Hush!”

  “Don’t frighten her,” their mother said, “The Emerald Knight isn’t real. It’s only a legend.”

  “Xac said he’s real,” Johnny argued, “And Captain-”

  “What did we say about talking about the good Captain?” His father interrupted him.

  “But these people won’t tell,” Johnny began- but silenced himself at the look his mother gave him. He lowered his voice and spoke again, “I think the Emerald Knight is real. And I think he killed gods, like they said.”

  “Gods?” Orenda asked, “More than one?”

  “That’s what they say,” Johnny answered, and the flickering firelight made his face look strange, “When he killed the one back home, it caused an earthquake-”

  “I thought you said it caused a haunted forest.” Orenda said, “Which is it?”

  “It can do more than one thing,” Johnny huffed.

  “It just seems like a lot of different stories,” Orenda said, “He’s a demon or a ghost or a man in armor. He causes earthquakes or hauntings. He’s either evil or good. It sounds like a legend.”

  “You can think what you want,” Johnny huffed, “But Xac and the Captain have seen him.”

  Ali talking about Orenda the elder:

  “Certainly not the way I heard,” Ali motioned for the water and she handed it to him. He took a drink and continued, “They say that she was killed by the Emerald Knight, but I think the humans who escaped from slavery brought that legend with them. I don’t think that the Emerald Knight is real- I think that people are eager to have a reason for things. If I had to guess, I would say she died in the war, perhaps at the hands of Lady Genlen herself. She was a leader; she would have been the first one the Urilians went after. We’ll never know what happened. It was more than two centuries ago, and all the records have probably been destroyed.”

  Orenda's history lesson at the Glenlen Acadamy, which tells the same story that Klin tells here- fire mages and all:

  “How were they attacked by fire mages? Fire mages can’t travel to the Capital. We can’t cross the sea. I passed out in the bathhouse. Water, in large quantities makes us ill, so ill we pass out. I don’t understand how they could have traveled there to make such a brazen attack.” Orenda’s eyebrows knit in the middle of her forehead as she thought on it.

  “This was over three hundred years ago,” The teacher explained, “The fire elves were still plentiful, still had a vast network of city-states that stretched the entire range of the Sacred Mountains.”

  “I’m not asking if they existed,” Orenda clarified, “I’m asking how they traveled to the capital.”

  “On ships, I suppose,” the teacher shrugged, “It wasn’t recorded.”

  “But fire elves can’t travel on ships!” Orenda argued.

  “Obviously they can,” the teacher explained, “They were there. Now, going back to the texts, you’ll see that this is the first recorded instance of the Emerald Knight appearing during battle. The reason we have so few records of these terrorists as individuals is because none of them survived the night. By that morning, the entire advancing army had been completely eradicated.”

  Orenda began to take notes again. She wrote:

  They want to tell everyone that we attacked first. That’s why they say that fire mages attacked the capital. I do not believe it happened.

  “The Emerald Knight appeared before the princess and drew the sacred sword,” The teacher went on, and Orenda became interested in the drawing in her history book. As the teacher began to speak about Xandra’s coronation and early reign, Orenda took in every aspect of the print. It had been a woodblock, she suspected, and depicted a princess, around the age Orenda was now. She thought that the wispy earth elves may think she was beautiful in her pretty dress with her pretty hair flowing out behind her. But she did not draw Orenda’s focus. Orenda was looking at the man behind her.

  He was easily ten feet tall, but the branches that extended from the helmet made him even taller. Every inch of him was covered in armor that the artist had decided to depict as being made of plants and stone- not worked stone, but the very living stone of a forest. It didn’t look like armor; it looked like a forest had taken the form of a person. The knight’s chest held a stone that seemed to be particularly important to the design, because that was where the glow that surrounded him was coming from. He was obviously supposed to be a protective figure, standing behind the princess with his left arm held in a defensive stance over her head.

  In that hand he held a sword, a sword that Orenda recognized. It was a hand and a half blade, though she did not know enough about swords to know that. She did know that it had the hilt that feathered out toward the blade- did not know that the “feathers” were called guards, but thought they were very pretty. She saw the flowers, vines, leaves, and runes etched down the blade, and thought that it looked more ceremonial than practical. She saw what she thought was an oddly shaped earth crystal in the place where the blade met the hilt and wondered if magical swords were a thing.

  Felearn talking about serving under the Emerald Knight:

  “Just… just let me have this, Orenda,” he said, and turned to leave again. He paused, in the doorway and spoke softly, “I’ll tell you everything. I promise. Just not right now. Not while you’re so young and innocent. You have to understand, Orenda, that the… the Emerald Knight is real. And sometimes, in life, you have to make a choice. You have to march forward, or you get shot in the back. It does no good to run from the Emerald Knight. That’s a death sentence.”

  And again:

  “It means that there was not enough left to recover,” He said at length, “technically it means ‘Missing In Action’ but we joked that it meant ‘Maim Incinerate Amputate’. It means that by the time the Emerald Knight was finished with you,” He tapped his fork against his plate, and Orenda watched his eyes glaze over. He seemed to be somewhere else, perhaps in a memory, far away, “There was not enough left to identify the body. There was not enough left to bury. They had nothing to send home to your family. He could… There are no teeth, there are no bones, he would just… it was just a red and pink pulp… just a stain.”

  And Orenda's reaction to his story:

  “You’re afraid of the Emerald Knight,” Orenda said as if it was a matter of fact.

  “Anyone with any sense is afraid of the Emerald Knight,” Quiroris said quietly, “I’m sorry I’ve frightened you, Orenda.”

  “I’m not frightened,” Orenda assured him, because she wasn’t. This story meant nothing to her, and she doubted that it was true.

  Gareth talking to Toli's dad about survivng the Emerald Knight:

  “Honestly, Tiarus,” He laughed, “I have twice faced the Emerald Knight! I have seen my entire world buried by a shimmering stream of lava! I have seen the mountains explode and take everything that I have ever cared about! I was there the night your pathetic drones followed your false god to spill sacred blood on sacred ground! I have seen the wrath of Thesis first hand! What the HELL do you think you can do that hasn’t already been done to me!?”

  The entirety of Felearn's flashback in Chapter 37 is foreshadowing, but particularly this part about Klin- look at his behavior here. From an outside perspective it looks intimidating, but now that the audience knows Klin, knows his personality, it should be pretty obvious that he's got a preset script in his head, that he's nervous and only speaking when he absolutely has to in front of a crowd. He's not a man of few words because he knows he's the strongest person in the room- he's an anxious teenager who's nervous to be doing anything:

  But beyond these public spaces, the temple was carved into the very living rock of the mountain, and as he marched in formation beside Tolimaur with the other mages, he saw the air ripple with the heat of it. The incense that saturated the air, the voices raised in song of the fire elven congregation, and the heat that made everything shimmer and ripple like a mirage were so disorienting he could not, with any authority, say that he was not dreaming.

  Near the front of the procession, the Emerald Knight stood with Lady Glenlen, looking as terrifying as his reputation would lead one to believe. His armor moved and rustled like a living thing, like a forest taking life, and the stone in his chest shone with the divine light of his status- the chosen one, sent by Thesis to unite all of elvenkind under divine rule. The artifact held in the temple had been guarded by the council of fire elven priests for centuries, and finally the rightful owner had come to claim it.

  The eight priests sat in a semicircle on a raised platform, and the ninth stood tall and strong before them. She was undeniably beautiful, but in a way that Felaern could not understand. She looked nothing like Xandra, nothing like how the Urilians understood beauty. She wore her long, flowing priest robes, but was sturdy underneath, and tall enough that the Emerald Knight would only stand a head above her. She dwarfed the soldiers before her. Her ceremonial headdress drew the eye to a fire crystal on her forehead, in the same place that many of the fire elves wore ceremonial makeup to symbolize the placement of a “third eye”, a gesture that mages and priests used to represent seeing into the ‘spiritual world’ or ‘magical world’. Her golden eyes seemed to radiate a light of their own as she spoke.

  “Welcome,” She said in her gorgeous accent, deep and exotic, “To the Sacred Mountain Temple. I have been told that one of you believes himself to be the Chosen Child of Thesis, and would like to be tested.”

  The Emerald Knight stepped forward, and spoke, “High Priestess Firefist,” he said, “I am the Chosen One. I am knight in the service of the Urilian crown, chosen by Thesis to wield the sacred sword.”

  “What is your name?” The high priestess asked.

  “I am the Emerald Knight,” the Emerald Knight replied, “And I have traveled long on the advice of my sword. It tells me that the artifact lies in the heart in the temple, and I must claim it.”

  “The great fire spirit dwells in the heart of the temple,” The high priestess told him, “That is not where the artifact lies. The great fire spirit holds a link to Thesis himself, and no one can look upon it who has not been chosen.”

  “I have been chosen,” The Emerald Knight swore.

  “Only the Chosen Child of Thesis may take the sacred staff from its resting place,” The high priestess explained, “This test was devised by the one true god himself, when he built the temple. It is held in a fire that burns from the very core of the planet, the life-force that flows from within Xren herself, the heat that allows all life, that creates the movement of the continents, that builds mountains and carves valleys. This is the fire that flows from the heart of the world, just as magic flows from the heart of the body. This is a particularly trying test for you, as a foreigner. All who have not been chosen for the priesthood who have ever tried to take the staff from this sacred fire have been succumbed by it. The mountain, and the great fire spirit within, will not allow the failure of a false prophet. If you fail this test, you will die burning.”

  “I understand the trial by fire,” The Emerald Knight said, “And I will overcome this trial, and meet with a god.”

  “Very well,” she raised a hand and the entire council of priests rose, “We take your sword as proof of your divine right on your own ground, but to meet with the great fire spirit, to prove you are truly the one chosen by the great god Thesis, you must obtain the sacred staff. Follow me.”

  “Well shit, Tolimaur huffed as the Emerald Knight and his personal guards followed the council of priests, “I thought we’d get to see it.”

  And, the end of Felearn's story, where he straight up says that The Emerald Knight killed the great fire spirit, which Klin also admits to in this chapter:

  “The rumor around the unit was,” Quiroris stared into his empty cup, “That the Emerald Knight really had killed their god- that minor deity, the ‘great fire spirit’ that could commune with Thesis. I liked to think, for a long while, that the fire elves had had time to evacuate, because of the shield we put up to buy them that time, that perhaps at least the children survived. Then, I reached a point, because I had gone for so long and seen none of them, that I admitted to myself that that probably was not the case. But now… now I have you, Orenda.”

  “Two centuries and one person,” Orenda said, “Those are not particularly comforting numbers, Felaern.”

  “I don’t know why I thought they would be,” he said.

  They were silent for some time, in thought, but eventually Felaern spoke again.

  “No one goes up there, anymore,” he said, “a few expeditions say that they’ve tried but the land must be cursed, because they can’t even get close before they begin to get sick, deathly sick. More than one person has died of heatstroke, or of a magic blast from their blood that burned them from the inside out.”

  “Do you think the Emerald Knight is the chosen one?” Orenda asked.

  “Are you the sort of person who could turn me in for treason?” Quiroris asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “I don’t think the Emerald Knight should have been allowed inside that temple. I think that we brought something unholy to a holy place, that we spilled sacred blood on sacred ground, and now all of us who let that happen are being punished for it. Almost everyone who was there that day is dead, Orenda. I don’t know why I’ve been spared. I know that the Emerald Knight claimed to have the sacred sword, but that thing is no child of god. If anything, it’s a demon.”

  When Orenda summoned Morgani in that mirror before she ever met him he tells her that the Emerald Knight killed her father, Ronnie, long before Gareth ever confirmed that any of that was true.

  Adam and Steve talking about the Emerald Knight right after Orenda met them, and once again, she's skeptical about their stories, but Steve says he killed "The God of the Sacred Woods" which Klin has also admitted to:

  “Before the colonization?” Stephendore asked, “No. No I defected to the water continent after the Emerald Knight started his killing spree and the nobility got too strong back home. I saw it coming. I knew something awful was going to happen.”

  “They came for us, too, Orenda,” Adamareyn explained, “The Emerald Knight came for our queen. She was a… there are so many words for it in common… a siren? Mermaid? Water Nymph? The Emerald Knight killed her and our god in the Sacred Ocean Temple. The entire continent is still underwater, except for the islands. It used to be a landmass that met the northern continent in the ice fields, but the sea rose and swallowed it in a single day and night.”

  “My god,” Orenda said.

  “Mine too,” Adamareyn agreed.

  “And mine,” Stephendore added. He had packed the pipe and was rolling his pouch back up. “The Emerald Knight killed the god of the Sacred Woods.”

  “Three gods?” Orenda asked skeptically, “...I don’t know, guys, that’s a lot of stories.”

  Toli, explaining why he loves Orenda and TOTALLY FUCKING CALLING IT:

  “Because... because you... you really, will, Rendy. You really will kill the Emerald Knight. You'll just walk up with some magic staff and say, 'I'm Orenda Nochdifache, and I'm going to kill you!' And then you will! You just... you just don't care, at all. You did that to Quiroris! We were all terrified of him, all of us! He was a war hero! He was a hardened soldier! He could slaughter any of us with a word and you called him by his first name and threatened to set him on fire!”

  Gareth talking about the first time he met the Emerald Knight, to Toli:

  “Oh, but I think you’ll like it,” Nochdifache said. “When I was a boy, I, too, had a father. He loved me, I think. Certainly he loved… someone. And when I was ten years old, I watched the Emerald Knight slice him clean in half. His blood splashed on my face- I was standing that close. He was standing between us and the Emerald Knight, to protect us. And I watched that evil sword split him clear across the middle.” He stopped walking and Orenda wished she could see the expression on his face, see his eyes. “He… he had looked back at us, my father. We… we weren’t supposed to be there. We were supposed to evacuate but… but someone… he was… he was so stupid and he thought… We were TEN!” He snapped at Tolith as if his age had been his fault, “What the hell could we do, Glenlen!? We were children! What the hell were we supposed to do!?”

  Tolith didn’t answer him, so Nochdifache clutched his mask, thought for a moment, and continued.

  “Ah, yes, a story, the story has an ending, you see, that… well, with stories you do get a point, a moral. And I do have one, you see, it just… it gets so hard to think, sometimes.”

  “Captain Nochdifache,” Orenda cried, but she could not make him hear her. None of them heard her. They were afraid they were going to have to fight, and they were focused on each other.

  “The Emerald Knight is a person, you see, I knew it then and I know it now. The legends aren’t true. He isn’t a demon- I’ve met demons and they’re much nicer. He isn’t a ghost, because if ghosts are real and I’m not being haunted then I’ll be quite angry indeed. He isn’t a fairy tale, unless… unless my life is a fairy tale, and I assure you it is not. He is a person with real life in his eyes when he looks at you through that helmet that holds the power none of us can comprehend. He looked me right in the eye, and do you know what he said to me?”

  He seemed to expect a real answer, so Tolith held his stance and, in a voice that plainly said he didn’t believe the story at all, answered, “No.”

  “Captain Nochdifache!” Orenda begged the universe, but her prayers went unanswered.

  “He said ‘Run!’,” Nochdifache said, “So I did. And I’ve been running ever since.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Tolith said.

  “More’s the pity,” Nochdifache shrugged, “You see, Lord Glenlen, the thing about the truth is that it is not dependent upon you to believe in it. It’ll be true no matter what you believe.”

  Again, Gareth's whole flashback in chapter 57 is about the Emerald Knight, but in particular, this part where he did actually see him:

  Gareth burst through the door and ran after his brother.

  “Ronnie!” he called, but Garon was too far ahead of him, and as Gareth ran following him through the gated wall, past farmhouses and down a steep incline he had to stop and secure himself. The hill was too steep, and he was afraid he would fall, that he could hurt the baby, but he had to hurry, because what he saw at the docks put the fear of god in his heart.

  The Emerald Knight towered over them by a head, towered over the Urillians by a head and shoulders. He glowed in the night, brighter than any torch, brighter than any fire spell, glowed with a green light that would have rivaled the sun. Garon was running toward him, like a fool!

  “Ronnie!” Gareth screamed, and took off down the hill.

  Falsie had made the smart move, and was running for the ship, and Gareth made note of this, but he didn’t hear what he said, didn’t hear Bella calling to him, trying to get him to move in the right direction. All Gareth could think is that if he caught up to Garon, if he showed him the baby, if Ronnie knew that he had something to live for, he could stop him before he did something stupid, and they could sail away together, and it would be like they had never joined the Knights. They could live, together, again, like they were supposed to. They were a matched set, and they were supposed to be together, and if Garon realized that he would stop having delusions of grandeur, stop thinking of himself as some sort of fairytale prince who was going to defeat the bad guy and save the day. They could be safe, they could be alive, and Sokomaur’s death could mean something.

  “Ronnie!” He screamed, but Garon was already there, already before the Emerald Knight.

  “Emerald Knight!” Garon screamed, and Gareth moved as fast as his legs could carry him. “I am Garon Firefist, son of Orenda and Shiron Firefist! I am a Knight of Order! You killed my parents! You destroyed my home! I have come to challenge you to Right by Combat!”

  The Knight turned his attention to Garon, and took great strides across the battlefield. He looked a lightning flash. He seemed so bright. Gareth was nearly blinded by the sheen. It was as if he wasn’t real, as if a ghost were passing, every inch in green.

  “Ronnie!” Gareth screamed, and the Knight turned to look at him. The blood froze in his veins.

  But it was over in an instant, and the Knight was in front of Garon.

  Ronnie threw up a fire shield, and he was every bit the mage he claimed to be. As that sword, too beautiful for combat, borne of a metal Gareth would not have recognized, had he not been wearing it under his clothes in the form of soft, fluffy rabbit fur, met that shield, the living armor under it burned away. Garon was strong enough to hurt the armor, strong enough to hurt the Emerald Knight!

  Under that armor, as it burned, Gareth caught the glimpse of a hand, a normal hand. The light tinted everything green, but Gareth was sure the skin was light, like a Urillian, like an earth elf. There was a person under that armor.

  The sterilite sword met Garon’s throat, and in one motion went through it.

  Gareth watched as his head flew from his shoulders with the force of the blow, and went rolling towards the sea.

  The fire went out.

  The Knight did not pause to watch Garon’s body fall, and he was upon Gareth in an instant. Gareth threw up his free hand out of instinct, but did not have time to think. He didn’t cast, he didn’t run, he didn’t move, and he barely felt it as the sword cut into his flesh. It severed the hand he had thrown up at an angle, and as it carved into the flesh of his face, Gareth let out of a shriek of pain- but there were words there, instinctual words, begging not for his own life, but for the only thing that really mattered to him.

  “Please!” he screamed, “I have a baby!”

  The sword paused where it was, slicing open his face, and Orenda, as if on cue, began to cry.

  The Emerald Knight withdrew quickly, staggered, took a step back, and threw one hand over his heart, over the light that glowed there. He seemed like a person coming to his senses, and Gareth watched him as the helmet fell, as if he was looking at the baby in his arms, and for the second time in his life, he heard the Emerald Knight speak.

  “Run,” The Emerald Knight said again.

  Gareth did.

  I want to actually talk about this- and about how, like with Gareth and Felearn, we get the same night told by two different people- but this time the two people actually remember it the same way. Klin remembers doing this- he knew who Orenda was after she screamed about "Garon, Orenda, and Shiron Firefist"- the same thing Garon screamed. But the difference here would probably not be about what actually happened or was actually said- it would be about intention. Gareth was intimidated, felt that the Emerald Knight was always chasing him, that he was running from death. But if you asked Klin, he would likely say, "I begged him to run. It was dangerous. He had a baby. I didn't want to hurt him."

  Also, Klin said that he was defending his wife, that they were assasins trying to kill his wife. Which, to be fair, is a true fact.

  Orenda trying to make sense of the different legends she's heard:

  “You know,” Orenda said, slowly turning her kabob and listening to the crackle of it cooking, “It can’t be… there are holes in the story. I think that’s what the Emerald Knight was after, when he first came here. He was taken to get the staff, and if it’s still there that means it rejected him. So he can’t be the Chosen One, and he shouldn’t have the sword. But Gareth saw him with the sword.”

  Anilla and Orenda talking about the Emerald Knight:

  “The way Gareth speaks,” Orenda said, “The Emerald Knight spared his life because of me. One would think he would be a bit more grateful.”

  “But that’s what I mean,” Anilla said, “Things like that. The Emerald Knight is supposed to be a monster, but he likes you. He decided to spare your life. You turned a monster away from murder.”

  “That does strike me as strange,” Orenda said, “Gareth said he didn’t want to kill a baby. But he would have killed hundreds of children in the disasters he caused. None of the stories about the Emerald Knight have ever made any sense.”

  “There is good in everyone,” Anilla said, “Like I said. If he is a real person, there must be some good in him.”

  “Not enough to make up for what he’s done,” Orenda argued.

  “Perhaps not,” Anilla said, “that isn’t what I’m saying. I just… don’t know that anyone sees themselves as a villain. I wonder how the empress and her knight think of themselves…”

  “I don’t really care how they think,” Orenda said, “Xandra created a world that destroyed everything about me. It destroyed everything for a lot of people. I don’t care how she’s convinced herself that she’s not evil.”

  Gareth's whole flashback in chapter 75, but particularly this part:

  They entered the chamber of the priest council, and Gareth took in the scene before him, committing it, against his will, to memory. He had been wrong- the smoke wasn’t coming from the furnishings. A thin woman was standing in the place his mother should be, holding her staff high, casting so fiercely her eyes were glowing. Some sort of plant had sprouted and covered the room. It was on fire, and was billowing out black smoke that choked him. Smoke didn’t normally choke him. Something was wrong with it.

  The table behind her had been overturned, and Gareth saw that the room was littered with people he used to know, who used to be people, who used to be alive. He didn’t understand. They were the most powerful mages in the country.

  “There he is!” Garon said, and pulled Gareth away from the scene. Shiron was standing in a corner; he had burned a hole in the plant matter and was ushering a group of survivors, mostly low-ranking holy people, teenagers only a little older than the boys themselves, out to the relative safety of… anywhere else.

  The fighting had so far not reached him- he was hidden and staying out of the scuffle- and Garon hugged the wall of what Gareth knew had to be poison to make his way to him, shouting as he went, like a fool.

  “Dad!” Garon shouted, and Gareth knew the soldiers would hear him.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Shiron asked in a rage that scared Gareth. His father was a holy man, a stern man, but he never cursed, and never looked at them with that terrifying emotion in his eyes, “I told you to leave!”

  “Where’s mom?” Gareth asked.

  “Go!” Shiron demanded, “Go now!”

  “Ruvean!” Came a voice that would haunt Gareth’s nightmares, “I got it. It’s over.”

  The smoke was nothing against the light that shone through the room. The creature easily towered over them, and the very ground below them trembled at his presence as the Emerald Knight came striding from the room of the sacred test. In his left hand he held a sword that Gareth did not know was important, and in his right-

  In his right hand he held by the shoulder the inanimate object that had once been Gareth’s mother. The Emerald Knight held the lifeless corpse of the greatest fire mage on all of Xren as if it was nothing to him. He tossed her onto the podium beside Lady Glenlen and spoke to her, but Gareth did not register what he said. He only had the same thought as Garon, running over and over in his head, but he did not, as Garon did, speak it aloud.

  “Mommy!” Garon shouted, and Gareth felt the hand he was still holding heat up.

  “Go!” Shiron grabbed Garon by the shoulders and shoved both his sons behind him, “Go, now!”

  “Mom!” Garon begged, as if it was a complete sentence, and Gareth knew what he meant and agreed with him.

  “Go!” Shiron shoved them toward the opening he had made, but he saw their faces and turned to see what they were looking at behind him. As his attention diverted, Gareth felt their exit close with the powerful earth magic that had conjured it.

  The Emerald Knight was upon them, and Shiron brandished his staff. A flame leaped from him, surrounding himself and his children, but the Emerald Knight was not looking at the boys, didn’t seem to register them. His focus was on Shiron, and, in hindsight, Gareth believed that it was purely on the headdress that identified him as a member of the priest’s council.

  The shield did nothing.

  The sword hit their father at an angle, and Gareth remembered that he did not scream. He looked over his shoulder at them, and the expression on his face burned itself into Gareth’s memory.

  There was so much in his eyes. Love. Horror. Regret.

  Then his body slid apart at the angle it had been cut, and Gareth was covered in something wet, thick, and sticky.

  It was only then that the Emerald Knight seemed to notice him.

  The monster took a step back, sword still raised, and looked around the room. Gareth was frozen. It was obvious that something was going to happen in the next second, and whatever it was, it would decide their fate forever.

  “You monster!” Garon stepped forward and grabbed Shiron’s staff from where it had fallen, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!”

  The Emerald Knight stared at him as the staff began to glow, then he calmly reached down, took the staff easily from Garon’s grasp, and stared at it as if it meant something.

  “I once…” The Emerald Knight said, “I… that is…”

  He looked around the room again and his gaze lingered on Lady Glenlen. Then he reached out his hand, and the light from his chest intensified as the curtain of plant matter behind them parted. The helmet tilted as he looked down at them. He threw the staff through the opening he had created and spoke again.

  “Run.”

  Morgani Magnus talking about the Emerald Knight, and cryptically calling him by name:

  “No!” Morgani said, “Orenda, listen to me! Do not seek that sword! Do not fight the Emerald Knight! You can’t defeat him! Klin is the only one who can defeat the Emerald Knight! I don’t have time for this. I have to get back, I have to prevent a fool from destroying the world. Put the staff back. The wards will spring back into place. I don’t know how you got it out. I should be the only one able to touch it.”

  When the staff told Orenda to go get the artifact, it called Klin, "The Man in green with a soul that is not his own".

  Interestingly, Lapus, like Klin, warned Orenda that if she tried to fight the Emerald Knight she would meet, "A fate worse than death". Klin said over and over that she would rather die than get what's in that chest. That she doesn't understand how bad it will be- that killing her would actually save her.

  Sarya's whole song is actually foreshadowing:

  Where wonders, wars, misfortunes

  And troubled times have been

  Where bliss and blind confusion

  Have come and gone again

  Each lord dug in with pleasure

  And grabbed at what lay near

  Twelve platters piled past measure

  Brought wine and foaming beer.

  They sat there, gaping gasping

  At his strange immortal sheen,

  As if a ghost were passing

  Every inch in green.

  He looked a lightning flash

  They say he seemed so bright,

  No mortal would dare to clash

  Against the Emerald Knight.

  He blooms with blossoms set

  In lines luxuriant and lush

  While the notes flowing from nests,

  That fill the forest hush.

  He says though no one sees his face

  “Why shrink back from the quest?

  Though fate bring glory or disgrace

  One must meet the test”.

  Wherever wars appear,

  Surely the Knight ought

  To reign without a peer

  In fields where battle's fought.”

  He looked a lightning flash

  They say he seemed so bright,

  No mortal would dare to clash

  Against the Emerald Knight.

  The meaning of his deadly way

  Will show what words are worth-

  And teach how hard is it to play

  The game of Lover's Mirth.

  Her chin and cheeks are sweet

  Blending rose and white

  Her voice a pleasant treat

  Her small lips are delight.

  The beating drums to measure

  Tunes that pipes proclaim,

  As each man takes his pleasure

  And these two do the same.

  He looked a lightning flash

  They say he seemed so bright,

  No mortal would dare to clash

  Against the Emerald Knight.

  She'd such a cheerful air

  Who seemed so sweet of face

  And he with spotless care

  Answered every case,

  “My person's yours, of course,

  To see you take your pleasure;

  I am obliged perforce,

  To serve you at your leisure.”

  The blow he must wrest

  To ease her troubled mind

  She asked if he could quest,

  And he was so inclined.

  He looked a lightning flash

  They say he seemed so bright

  No mortal would dare to clash

  Against the Emerald Knight.

  Our land, not steeped in darkness

  Instead this blinding sheen

  The light that pierces, heartless,

  The Knight in blazing green.

  The whole world lies asunder

  At the mind of our great queen

  We've angered our own savior:

  The Holy One we need.

  The world falls all around us

  Please listen to our plight,

  The people who sit helpless

  Below the Emerald Knight."

  There's a lot more, but my overall point is that I try to write in such a way that if you read the whole thing through once, then read it through again it makes a lot more sense the second time, once you know who everyone actually is.

  So I guess my main question, the TLR question- is what do y'all think of The Emerald Knight, now that you know him? I wanted to continue the theme of the duality of characters- there are always two seperate things- the person and the legend. Sometimes, like with Xac, the legend is all you have, and sometimes, with Orenda, the person is all you have (the audience doesn't get to see the legend that grew around her, because Orenda can't see that), but when you get both they're... the legends are usually true, and that means that there are people who have been through some fucked up shit. So that's fun.

  Also, it's important to me that Orenda is a real person and not a goddamn idiot for no reason, like protagonists often are. She's smart enough to put those things together as fast as the audience does, and is mad enough to scream through a face that's falling apart and a broken jaw. (Also points to anyone who realized that Rendy and Gareth have similar injuries. Firefists just take swords to the face, I guess. It runs in the family?)

  This might be the only chapter in the whole trillogy I'm actually pretty proud of and happy with. There's so many callbacks and I feel like everything came together really well. Even shit like Orenda screaming, "I will never run from you!"

  She's said a bunch of times that she would never run from the Emerald Knight, because Gareth did that and it became an obsession.

  Oh, also Klin keeps talking about "Morgan said" as if he's recently talked to Morgani, and the last time Orenda saw Morgani he said he had to get back to stop the Emerald Knight from destroying the world- but then Rendy "killed" him.

  Also, just on the psychology thing- the way Klin is acting and talking here, the way he can't form a sentence fast enough to get through it before the rest of it flees and is replaced by another thought- is indicitive of a panic or trauma disorder. He's trying really, really hard to keep his shit together, but his stressors are about to overcome his ability to deal with stressors- and this is actually a whole other thing that is pretty important, but I just wanted to make sure that those symptoms were obvious. He's having frantic thoughts, intrusive thoughts, paranoia, doesn't trust his own memories (as if he's been gaslit a lot) and he's not annucinating clearly or using and kind of diction (Orenda's said several times that she can't understand him because his accent is too thick. The Urillian accent is an Appalachian accent, which tends to have a much higher tempo than standard English, often forgoing space between the words in one phrase [Jeff Foxworthy actually does a comedy routein about this: ] and this is exaserbated when nervous or paniced. I tried to show this by putting elipses wherever he draws breath, because if I wrote it out phonetically it would be unreadable and I really hate when authors do that. But, for example, the paragraph:

  “Morgan told me not to touch it,” Klin said, “And… I… I should have listened to him. Please, listen to me. Please, I’m begging you! You don’t want this! I… I’m a monster. I’m a fucking monster! They’re… they’re all afraid of me because I… I carved out… I killed… I think… I think there was an earthquake… I was only seventeen, Orenda and… it was… they were going to hurt Xandra and… and the sword kept telling me that the… the artifact was in the heart of the temple and… and the dragon locked me in there and… I was a knight! I had to… had to slay the dragon but… the forest spirit it… when it died I… they all… the priests tried to tell me that you couldn’t… you couldn’t take the artifact out of the temple… but Xandra needed it… she needed the armor because they were gonna hurt her… but when I left I… I think… I broke something… some kind of ancient magic and… there was an earthquake…”

  SOUNDS like,

  "Mergent'ldmehnatatchet," Klin said, "An Ah Ahshouldalistenatim. Please, listentama. Please, Ahmbegginya! Yewdonwontis! Ah Imamanstyr. Imafuckinmanstyr! They're they'realla'fearedame acauseahcurvedout- Ahkilt- Ahthank- Ahthankthe'wus a earthquake- Ahwas on'ly seventeen, Orenda'n- it'us- they'us gonnahurt Xandra'n nthesord keptallinme'ata theartifact'as innahearta the temple'an anthe dragin lockedmin'ere'an I was a knight! Ahhadta taslay'the dragon bu- the ferestspirit'it whenit died'ah theyahll- th'priests'tridta tellmethayacouldna yacouldnatake'the artifact outta'the temple bu'Xandraneeded't sheneed'd'tharmor'cause'theywagonna'hurter bu'whenahleftah Ithink Ibrokesomethin somekinda ancient magican therewuza earthquake"

  And Orenda's like, "...do what now?"

  Because I actually speak like that though, I can read Chaucer and just understand it. Like read any old English out loud in a redneck accent and it makes perfect sense. This all goes back to the dialect just being that old. But Ordenda speaks a more contemporary dialect and really does get like every third word and he's not making a whole whole lot of sense anyway, so it's not just that she doesn't believe him, she's telling the truth when she says she straight up can't understand him.

  But I really, reall hate when people write out dialects and accents because it just aggravates me. It's really hard to read, so I've tried to convey it without being super annoying.

  Here's another video that kind of shows this tempo shift because when she tries to hide the accent she deliberately slows herself down:

  This video is REALLY good at showing what I'm talking about with the tempo:

  Lord I'm gonna hush. I could go on and on.

  Edit: Actually one more thing- I like to listen to this song and imagine a duet between Orenda and Klin: