PROTOBLOOD BROTHERS Chapter Five

From: Cheryl Baumgartner(C Baumgartner, Posted Date: Dec 10th, 2010

 

The last time we were together 

I grabbed his hand and I pledged 

‘If I ever draw my sword on you

 May the Good Lord strike me dead’

-Iced Earth

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

The Assassin, Thorin of Ostral-B that was, recoiled ever so slightly as his shuttle’s tertiary propulsion system roared to life, wrenching his craft—a shuttle sporting tri-foil wings and adorned with faded tribal markings—free of Stygiak’s pull.  Out of the corner of his black, sunken left eye he spied half a dozen errant shuttles lingering in the planet’s upper atmosphere.  He cocked his head, acknowledging them.  They scattered at once like terrified insects, as though they could feel his gaze peering through them and sought to conceal themselves somewhere, anywhere beyond his line of sight.

            Thorin set about scanning for vapor trails, utterly disregarding the ships.  It mattered little where they fled, as he could easily have zeroed in on any one of them and hunted them down.  Those who opted to flee the planet, as two from this group did, left themselves open to any manner of long-range weapons (Thorin’s shuttle was equipped with an arsenal that rivaled an entire fleet of Reform fighters), while those who were apparently returning to the planet’s surface could be tracked with no significant output of effort.  Were he to turn back now, Thorin could expect to be standing atop a mound of lifeless husks by the time Stygiak’s pale blue sun reached its zenith…but that was a moot point. 

Beyond moot, in fact, as the possibility of engaging any but the one craft he sought was beyond Thorin’s ability to comprehend.  His was to do the bidding of His Shadow, and His Shadow cared nothing for the people in those shuttles.  Thus, Thorin cared nothing for them.  They no longer impeded his progress, leaving him no further reason to take up arms against them.  No, Thorin had already keyed in on the exhaust trail he sought, and as he set his meager conveyance on a pursuit course, His Shadow’s instructions, the only words that meant anything to him, repeated themselves in an otherwise empty head.

…you will kill the arch-heretic Tharin of Ostral-B.  As he breathes his last you are to kiss his forehead, meet his eyes with your own, and say ‘The Power of Order embraces you, brother.’  Assassin, you will kill the arch-heretic Tharin of Ostral-B…

            Tharin…the arch-heretic Tharin.  Thorin’s task was to kill this man.  To kill him because His Shadow desired it.  That was all he knew, and all he needed to know.

#

The thrusters dimmed from a pulsating white to a hazy blue, traversing the spectrum as they cooled.  The normally roaring exhaust ports coughed the last of their life away as the craft lurched forward, gradually accelerating.  Thrusters were of no use now…the shuttle was firmly within the grasp of a neutron star.

            Heretics and mercenaries had been jumping the gap this way for centuries.  It was a well-known trade secret, likely discovered on accident by some drifter who flew too near a neutron star’s gravwash.  How surprised he must have been, when his screaming finally relented, to find himself in one piece, squeezed through a dimensional viaduct and spit out on the other side of reality instead of crushed to a quark by the gravitational hellstorm.  Star-jumping was hardly foolproof—practically impossible for larger vessels—but the staggering failure rate did little to dissuade those who were truly desperate and/or foolish enough to charge headlong into the white roar.   

Tharin gave a steady nod to Breel, who dutifully readied the shuttle’s casters.  On Tharin’s order he would simultaneously loose every joule of disrupter shot in the craft’s payload on a fixed point of the star’s surface no bigger than a human thumbnail.  If his aim was true, and luck was on their side, and a hundred other things went exactly right, the resulting localized gravitational anomaly would tear open a temporary conduit between the Two Universes.  They would jump, and Thorin would follow.  If something went wrong…they would probably never know.  But Thorin would know.  And he would not follow.

Tharin gave the order.  Breel locked on and fired without thinking.

#

The destabilizing gravwash tugged at the ship’s bow as the pulsing mass of hyper-dense, dying particles cast a pitiful light on the outer hull.  Once, long ago, eons before the very notion of a Divine Order had been infused with a catalytic spark…before even the onset of the millennia of chaos and suffering known as the Age of the Insects, a magnificent red supergiant had occupied this now misbegotten corner of the universe.  A laughably miniscule fraction of its tremendous output had breathed life into two worlds, both long vanished, their existence unbeknownst to even the most versed of historians in both the Order and the Sector.  One was an inhospitable, hellish rock marked by an unstable atmosphere and upwards of thirty thousand volcanic eruptions per day.  The other was a thickly forested planetoid.  The former had no interaction whatsoever with humanity.  The latter should, by all rights, have remained similarly obscure—and would have, but for happy chance.

For it was here that the Brunnen-G, romantic dreamers and reluctant messiahs, stopped to rest and refuel following mankind’s first successful expedition into the Light Universe.  Champions that they were of all things aesthetic, they were instantly mesmerized by the planet’s sprawling, unmolested natural beauty.  It was in every way a diametric contrast to their tech-ravaged home world; its natural aesthetics smothered by the iron hands of industry and progress long before any of the trans-dimensional trailblazers’ great-grandparents filled their virgin lungs with processed air.

Why they chose not to settle down on what came to be known as Shebarset, The Place of Resting, was swept away by the entropy of time.  It would be for some other, lesser human civilization to defile this untarnished new universe with a permanent outpost.  But the Brunnen-G retained a special reverence for Shebarset nonetheless.  As new generations came to pass the planet came to embody the very ideals upon which their culture was built…romantic idealism, boundless optimism…in short, dreams…possibilities.  Mass trans-universal pilgrimages to Shebarset’s lush northern hemisphere became a regular part of growing up for young Brunnen-G, who were expected to breathe its air, touch its soil, and bathe in its pristine waters at least once before reaching adulthood.

            It was a sacred place, though not necessarily a holy place, as the Brunnen-G had no orthodox religious beliefs.  Rather, they clung to a loose-knit pantheon of “understandings.”  They understood that the cycles of time had been woven and set into perpetual motion by some intangible “other” power…they understood that theirs was the seventh incarnation of the People of Brunnis, who had existed in one form or another since the primordial Ur-Time, when the dulcet glow of Blue Star guided their Proto-Brunnen forbearers out of the mists of the Dream Zone…and they understood that the lush wilds of Shebarset were capable of inducing tears of joy.  They understood it…they just couldn’t explain it.

            Shebarset…The Place of Resting.  A name and location absent even from Tharin’s vast litany of knowledge.  And for good reason.  As far as any halfway learned person was concerned, this region of the universe was utterly inconsequential.  As far as they knew.

            How astounded the pompous clerics and heretical philosopher kings would be to learn that this region, this star, this long vanished, “inconsequential” world was the lynchpin around which the history of their species was woven.  It was here that a slumbering giant was awakened, without whose succor the light of humanity would surely have been extinguished for all time.

            The Insects, who for centuries had scoured the Dark Zone killing with impunity, burst through the Fractal Core and descended without warning on Shebarset, reducing its verdant forests and serene waters to a boundless, blasted heath with all the mechanical efficiency the frightened masses of humanity had come to expect from their would-be annihilators.  Not a living thing—be it flora, fauna, or the seven thousand young Brunnen-G partaking of pilgrimage—was spared. 

            The Brunnen-G, who had always professed to possess a deeper range and understanding of human feeling, now had a new emotion to get acquainted with—unabashed hatred.  All talk of non-interference ceased, and the longstanding vow never to take up arms against a sentient race was quickly washed away by a worldwide blood oath.  On the lives of the seven thousand lost pilgrims, and the memory of The Place of Resting, the Brunnen-G swore to eradicate the Insects from the four corners of the universe, regardless of the cost.  In a symbolic declaration of war—a war of attrition that would span untold generations—the scourged remains of Shebarset were ritually detonated to the tune of the Brunnen-G battle hymn that would come to be known and feared by Insect and human alike. 

            Regardless of the cost.  Regardless.

            Human history as Tharin understood began here.  Had he the slightest notion of how significant this faded shell of a star was, perhaps he would have looked upon it with something a little more substantial than the boiling contempt that consumed him.  Contempt for those who had stripped his brother of his very being, but moreover, contempt for himself.  Contempt for his actions.  Eight years removed from combat or not, he was still one of the elite.  Still a soldier.  And soldiers did not run.  Soldiers the likes of which Tharin had been groomed from childhood to be did not believe in living to fight another day.  He who lives on the run will die short of breath.  The words were as fresh now as they had been the first time they spewed forth from the overgrown, hyper-aggressive Sub-Master’s mouth.

And so, it was with a deep, regretful sigh (though not a trace of the nagging fear that gripped Breel) that Tharin closed his eyes as time and space began to bend and a white light engulfed everything around him.  He detested compromise, had loathed it since childhood.  It was a bitter feeling.  One he could only liken to the handful of defeats he had suffered in his time.

            Tzybi’s thousand wanton daughters willing, he thought to himself as he ceased to feel, it will serve as a means to an end.

#

Hot…cold…light…dark…pain…fear…uncertainty…but a few of the myriad of sensations that flooded Thorin for, as far as he was concerned, the first time in his existence.

As time and space creased and came to a head; as his dense, decarbonized molecules disjoined and became one with the subatomic effluvium, he knew for a fleeting second what it was to feel again.  To be again.  His avatar stripped away like slag from so much ore, the real Thorin, the intangible whose locus was rooted too deeply even for His Shadow to fully purge, awoke, as though startled by a nightmare.

No longer confined to a mindless mockery of a human body, he began to wander, to think, to remember.

He remembered blackness…he remembered unrelenting agony…he remembered what it was to run.  To run in slow motion, as if weighed down by some unseen force while darkness descended on him.  Horrific, blasphemous, maddening darkness.

And yet, in the midst of panic there existed a counter-force.  Of a splendor that shamefully dwarfed the awful majesty of the creeping darkness.  It beckoned to him, touched him…touched him in a way that the darkness, for all of its menacing grandeur, could scarcely aspire to.

As quickly as it had come, the darkness ceased to be.  All traces of fear and doubt were rent asunder by a voice he only vaguely recognized as his own.

Put ‘er there, brother…

Put ‘er there, brother…

“…brother…”

Five seconds later reality reset itself and the Assassin began scanning for exhaust trails as a single notion strummed about his mind: kill the arch-heretic Tharin.

#

Don’t visualize.  Just act.  If you have to stop and think about what you’re doing, you’re already dead. 

One, three, seven, pivot.  Two, four, eight, pivot.  Thrust, reset.

            Tharin snapped his head back, flipping the hair out of his eyes as his body, acting more so of its own accord than as a functionary of his mind, performed the standardized katas with which it had been familiarized since before it was even a third of the way through its developmental cycle.

            One…punctured trachea, three…lacerated carotid artery, seven…pierced liver.  Three kills in three seconds.  Two, four, eight.  Three more mortal wounds (with options for up to six more depending on the nature and number of attackers).

            Tharin sheathed his knife, popping his neck as he clipped the sheath to his tunic.  An hour or so of rest and reflection, he thought to himself.  No more than an hour and a half.  Then he would go through his routine again.  Footwork, plyometric exercises, reflex training, shadow sparring.  He had to be tight, hard, focused.  He couldn’t afford to lose his edge.  Couldn’t afford to allow the sluggishness that so often accompanied prolonged space travel to get the better of him.

            He sipped at a jug of Pick-Me-Up, appreciating its effects immensely amidst wondering where in the hell Breel had stowed such vast quantities of it.  Aside from shaving his beard and taking an errant moment to check in on his children, he had been in continual practice, on an unrelenting state of high alert, for the entirety of the two days that had elapsed following their emergence in the Dark Zone.

            The Dark Zone…the universe of chaos, evil, and depravity.  Truly a misnomer if ever there was one.  How much worse could the Dark Zone possibly be?  Who in their right mind could justifiably demonize a place that was ignorant of the Divine Order’s influence?  Did the empty-headed clerics who grinned from ear to ear while demanding the populace give thanks to His Shadow for his divine guidance and protection truly believe that a regime built on a solid foundation of fear, oppression, torture, and murder had any business arbitrarily assigning such a slanderous subtitle to a region where their tin god had no dominion?  It was laughable!

            And yet…laughable as it was, Tharin understood enough about human nature to know that the moniker “universe of chaos and evil” carried with it more than a smattering of truth.  Human nature was depraved and chaotic.  There were no “good people.”  Good individuals, yes.  But people were, by and large, cruel, manipulative, and hurtful.  It was in their nature—they didn’t know any better.  Were the clerics and the attack waves and for that matter The Cluster itself obliterated tomorrow, Tharin was fairly certain that squabbles would ensue the day after.  Squabbles that would give way to violence, and violence that would give way to retaliation.  Within the span of a week, scarcely enough time for the celebratory bonfires to cease smoldering, full-scale interplanetary war would break out, pitting those who had stood united for millennia against one another as they lapsed into the very cruelty that the Power of Order represented.

            It’s inevitable, Tharin always thought with a twinge of remorse.  To that end, we’ve already lost.  To that end, the Glorious Cause truly is hopeless.  Still, at least it will be on humanity’s terms.  Maybe that’s all we’re really fighting for…the freedom to damn ourselves.

            “Tharin.”

            Tharin’s internal world shattered.  He quickly shook himself back to his senses, reminding himself where he was and what he was doing.  So focused had he been over the last two days that he had all but forgotten about Breel.

            “How long have you been standing there?”

            Breel cracked a smug smile, tossing Tharin another flask of Pick-Me-Up.  He accepted it graciously, having ceded to the notion that a polite refusal was quite out of the question on Breel’s ship.

            “Long enough to have put up a fight,” Breel playfully threw a flurry of openhanded punches at Tharin, each of them, if delivered with optimum force, capable of crippling or killing a man twice his size.  “For about two seconds anyway.”

            Tharin smiled, the grimace highlighting the normally concealed wrinkles on his newly shorn face.

            “Don’t sell yourself short.”

            “I didn’t think I was,” Breel said.

            Tharin nodded.  Though he would never admit it, he concurred wholeheartedly with his friend’s sentiment.  Two seconds…maybe five if he got lucky. 

            Tharin couldn’t help but make comparisons.  Couldn’t help but assess everyone.  Just to be on the safe side.  Just to be sure he had a thorough plan for all possible contingencies—however unlikely so very many of them may have seemed.  In a universe where uncertainty was the norm, “just in case” was a way of life. 

            In this case, there was no comparison.

            Yes, Breel was a magnificent warrior, his body as lethal an instrument as one could hope to forge out of flesh, blood, and bone.  Yes, in the whole of the Sector, Tharin could scarcely think of another man with whom he would rather face death.  And yet for all his prowess in battle, Breel fell far short of Tharin.  Laughably short.  For reasons Breel could never fully understand, Tharin’s inhuman killer instinct exponentially eclipsed the decades of intense training and thousands of hours of combat experience he had under his belt.

            Though they had never spoken of it, both men understood that if they ever engaged in mortal combat it would be a matter of seconds before one fell and one stood.  And there was no question as to who would be left standing.  This was all they knew, and all they needed to know.

            Tharin internally admonished his friend’s smile.  Perhaps Breel could joke about something like that, but there was nothing funny about it as far as he was concerned.  Taking back his blade against Breel was as inconceivable as the prospect of doing so to his brother had been eight years prior.

            Still, Tharin thought to himself, in light of the last few days…hell, maybe anything is possible.

            “You should eat something,” Breel said.

            “I’m not hungry.”

            “Come on, you have to.  You haven’t eaten since before we took off.  You need your strength.”

            “I’m fine.  Really.”

            Breel wasn’t about to budge.  Not when he knew he was in the right.  “Tharin come on.  Coitilia dipped into my rations; used ‘em to whip up some kind of stew…”

            “How is she?” Tharin abruptly cut Breel off.

            “Fine.  She and the kids slept right through the jump, just like you said they would.”

            “No…I mean her arm.  How is she?”

            “Hasn’t said a word about it.  Hasn’t said much of anything.  She’s just been…waiting.”

            Tharin nodded, sighing deeply.  She had bent to the will of her conditioning…the will of that f***ing box…just like he knew she would. 

            “I’ll go,” he said, bracing for the sting of another compromise.

            Breel smiled and turned to leave.

            “Breel?”

            Breel paused.

            “How’s the shuttle holding up?”

            He sighed.  “We’ve got maybe a week’s worth of drifting left in us.  After that he’ll either run us down or watch from a distance while we choke on our own dead air.”

            Tharin unsheathed his knife, running the flat of the blade up and down his left forearm as he listened.

            “How’s our course look?”

            “Not so hot.  We’re about a day out from the nearest system, but the pickings are pretty slim.  Bunch of rocks and an…ugh…underdeveloped Type 13.”

            Tharin sheathed his knife.  “That will do.”

“Tharin, did you hear me?  Type 13.  Disaster planet.  We’re talking about a first rate shithole here.”

            “It’ll do.  Plot a course.”

            Breel offered no further argument.  He recognized Tharin’s tone.  He was giving him an order.

#

The stew was surprisingly good, considering its primary ingredients were Pick-Me-Up and a normally putrid algae-based meat substitute.  Tharin devoured three bowls and was tempted by fourth, but held his appetite in check.  He had eaten more than enough already—the last thing he needed now was an overburdened stomach or overworked bowels.  He spoke little, but made certain to cast an approving smile at Coitilia, who beamed at her husband’s regard.  And with that minor gesture the slate was wiped clean.  As far as Coitilia was concerned, she was back in her lover’s good graces.

When Tharin had eaten his fill Coitilia went to work clearing the table, caressing his stringy hair as she deposited their few dishes on the washrack.  Tharin reclined in his seat and cracked a genuine smile as he watched Thadin and Thindolin drink heartily from wineskins filled with berry juice (another delicacy Breel kept tucked away).  This was what he was preparing to fight for.  In all likelihood, to die for…his family, his loved ones.  And, despite his repeated attempts to skirt the issue over the years, they did love him.  His wife, his children, even Breel.  They loved and revered him just as Thorin had.  It would be their love that drove him as his diamond knife tore into the cold, dead shell that had been his own flesh; spilled the unholy mucus that had been his own blood.

“Come on,” Thadin said to Thindolin as he pushed away from the table, “I’ll show you my hiding place.”

            “Ok,” Thindi pushed away from the table, mimicking her brother.

            “Thadin,” his father beckoned as the boy turned to leave.

            “Yes father?”

            “Come here for a moment.”

            “You go on,” Thadin waved his sister off.  She hobbled out of sight as he turned to join his father.  He pulled a chair up to the table, making certain to adequately distance himself.

            “Thadin…”

            “Yes father?”

            Tharin hesitated.  He knew what he had to say to his son, but did not know how to say it.  Oftentimes he could simply trust the words to find themselves, but this time he wasn’t so sure.  Once again, here went nothing.

            “Thadin…I might have to go away soon.”

            “Where?”

“Far.  Far away.”

            “Why do you go?”

            “Because…because I have to.  I know you don’t understand.  Just…just…if I…if I do I want you to take care of your sister.  And your mother too.”

            “But you’ll come back.”

            Tharin couldn’t tell if the boy’s words were a question or a declaration.  He decided it was the latter, the more logical of the two in the black-and-white mind of a child.

            “I’ll try.  I swear on the memory of Ostral-A I’ll try.  But if I don’t, you remember what I told you.  And you mind your Uncle Breel.”

            “I will.”

            “Okay, you can go.”

            Thadin ran off to join his sister.  His father’s words had little to no effect on him, and would soon be forgotten, likely in mere minutes.  Like his stripped down lecture on the dichotomy of good and evil, Tharin knew that his words couldn’t possibly exert their full force on the boy.  The words were as much, perhaps more so, for Tharin himself.  As his son vanished around the corner he breathed a sigh of relief.  An enormous weight had just been removed from around his neck.  It wouldn’t make dying any easier, but the peace of mind his words furnished would take the strain off of living the next few hours.

#

Vaiyo A-O…

Vaiyo A-O

A Home Va Ya Ray

Vaiyo A-Rah

Jerhume Brunnen-G.”

Tharin didn’t know what this chant meant.  But he understood why he was singing it.  He had learned it as a child from the war historians who lectured with authority on the times before the Order.  It was a battle hymn in the ancestral tongue of the Brunnen-G.  Tradition held that they sang it aloud as they charged into combat.  Combat from which they did not expect to return.

            As far as Tharin was concerned, the words needed no translation.  He understood what they meant.  Profound sadness, ethereal joy, and pride.  The apotheosis of human pride.  For what, in the whole of the Two Universes, was more honorable than risking one’s life…than laying down one’s life for a loved one?

            Vaiyo A-O…

Vaiyo A-O

A Home Va Ya Ray

Vaiyo A-Rah

Jerhume Brunnen-G.”

#

Breel hated interrupting Tharin’s meditation, but time was of the essence.

“We’re in range,” he said as they approached the flight panel.  “That’s our target.”

The Type 13 materialized on the screen.  It was small, blue, and generally unremarkable in every way as far as planets went.  And yet, at first glance Tharin couldn’t help but think back to Ostral-B…home…the bright blue waters, the sparkling beaches, and (eyesore though it may have been) the spectral defensive shield, none of which he would ever see again.  He cracked a bittersweet smile.  There were far worse places to die.

            “Put it down someplace secluded.”

            Another order.  Breel nodded.

“But first I want you to unload me out in the open.  If you don’t hear back from me in eight hours, leave.  Take my family as far from this place as you can, and don’t ever come back.”

            “But…”

            “Breel.  I mean it.”

            “Yes sir.  Eight hours.”

            It had been five years since Breel had broken the habit of addressing Tharin as his superior.  How effortless it had been to pick up where he left off.

            “That’s not a lot of gear you’re taking.”

            “It’s everything I’ll need.”

            Both men exchanged knowing nods, which gave way to another in their series of awkward silences.  Breel yearned to break it, lest his mind should start to wander.  Thankfully, Tharin broke it for him.

            “Promise me something, Breel.”

            “You name it.”

            “Thadin…if I don’t come back, promise me that…when he’s old enough to understand, you’ll explain my scars to him.”

            “I swear,” Breel started.  “I swear it on the…”

            “…memory of Ostral-A,” Tharin completed Breel’s thought.

            “Well if it means anything, I don’t think it will come to that.”

            Tharin thumbed his knife, digesting Breel’s statement a piece at a time.

            “It’s funny,” he started.  “I’ve never been afraid of dying.  It happens to all of us sooner or later, and there’s bugger-all you can do about it when your time comes.  I was born ready to die.  But now…this…Thorin… 

            “I’ve had a lot of time to think this over Breel, and I’m terrified.  I’m afraid I’ll die before the job’s finished.  That I’ll get that split-second release while Thorin lives under that daemon’s thumb for all time.  Like I said before, I can’t bear the thought of crossing over to the next world without setting my brother free.”

            Breel took Tharin’s hand.  “I wouldn’t sweat it.  If there’s one thing you were never any good at, it’s failing.”

#

Thorin’s breaking thrusters fired as his heat shield powered up.  As he made his descent toward the surface of the little blue planet the lower third of his craft disengaged from the whole.  The secondary shuttle, normally idle, would remain in low orbit in the event the landing craft sustained damage.  Predictable though they may have been, the Divine Order believed in relentless preparation.

            The planet was grossly underdeveloped; it would be at least two thousand years before the scattered pockets of seeded humanity became industrialized.  This was significant to Thorin only inasmuch as it made his quarry’s vapor trail extremely easy to pin down.  He had apparently made his descent over the central region of one of the northern landmasses.

            Thorin descended to cruising altitude, preparing to scan for processed alloys.  As it was, no scan was necessary.  He quickly made visual contact with Tharin’s shuttle, the only standout in what was an otherwise endless expanse of wild grass.

            Thorin dropped his landing gear and set down a quarter of a kilometer from Tharin’s craft.  He readied his brace and stepped down the ramp into the open.

            His quarry’s shuttle appeared, based on the exterior, to have sat unmolested for several hours.  A single plasma beam would be more than enough to obliterate it…but Thorin had his instructions, and was incapable of deviating from them.  He would sweep the shuttle first, then, if need be, scour the prairie for his prey…

            Thorin!

            Cancel the sweep.

            The voice echoed across the plains, but Thorin could tell right away that its source was directly behind him.  Slowly he turned.

            “You are the arch-heretic Tharin of Ostral-B.”

            Tharin stood aloof in the grass, sweat glistening on his forehead as he clutched his diamond knife.

            “I’m through running from you Thorin!  If I die, I die on my terms!  Not His Shadow’s!”

            Unmoved by his brother’s words, Thorin raised his brace.

            “I kill you in the name of His Shadow.”

            The triangular blade shrieked as it took to the air, instantly zeroing in on Tharin’s sternum.  Tharin broke hard to his left as the brace whizzed by, narrowly missing his torso.  He advanced, still brandishing his blade as Thorin’s weapon reset itself.

            “Come on, give me your best shot!”

            Thorin let fly with his brace a second time, and for the second time Tharin narrowly averted being cut down where he stood.

“I said best shot!”

Thorin fired his brace again, and once again the shrieking chitin disk hit nothing but air.  Tharin was little more than a blur, his agility nearly defying his humanity.  With each successive failed shot he inched closer and closer to Thorin.

            “Come on!” he taunted his attacker.  “Is that all you’ve got?  Is that all your rotting god could give you?  Come on!”

            Thorin momentarily lowered his arm, cocking his head as though contemplating his next move.  Tharin advanced another step and his brother quickly discharged his brace again.  This time, however, the tendril remained fixed to the primary weapon.  The blade once again sailed past Tharin’s nimble head.  Tharin readied himself to attack.  As he took back his blade Thorin grasped the tendril with his left hand and violently retracted his arm.  The brace broke from its intended trajectory and swung in an arc around Tharin’s body.

            Tharin barely had time to register surprise before the blade cut through cloth, skin, sinew, and bone.  The weapon blew through the front of his torso as though he weren’t even there.

            Thorin reset his weapon as his brother clutched his chest and collapsed in a heap on the ground.  His lower lip quivered as the pigment vanished from his face.  His breathing became increasingly erratic as he slipped into shock.

            The Assassin approached his mortally wounded quarry.  He had fulfilled his primary objective: the arch-heretic Tharin had been dealt the deathblow.  All that remained was the second set of instructions His Shadow had given him.  Thorin knelt before his brother, his black, beady gaze looking right through Tharin’s sunken, frightened eyes as they rolled back in his head.

            “The Power of Order embraces you—”

            “Brother!”

            All traces of