Years ago. . .

  Clyde’s leg hadn’t stopped bouncing ever since he sat with his party for some final drinks before their fated journey to assault Commander Dread’s fort, and he’d yet to sip from his deflating mug of ale.

  “So nervous?” Adept Julia asked as she sat down beside him. She had a bald head with orange runes tattooed into her scalp, and despite the appearance, her face bore an attractive nature. Perhaps it was the mesmerizing way her ice-blue eyes seemed to see things beyond what was there. They looked upon Clyde with both concern, friendliness, and a directness that he couldn’t quite place. She held a stein in a gloved hand, keeping the drink a good foot away from her purple robes.

  “How could you not be?” Clyde watched his other companions.

  First, there was Professor Gul-Foot, a halfling flute master who filled the tavern of the Sleeping Dragon with joyous music while tapping his feet on a table. His grey beard fluttered about as he danced from side to side, and a crowd of patrons danced across a cleared space at the center of the tavern.

  One such dancing patron was Ser Cantu, of the Order of the Obelisk. He stood a head and a half shorter than the humans that joined in, but he was twice as skilled a balter as any of them. The broad shouldered dwarf spun carefree, swinging from one partner to the next, the widest grin and hardiest laugh of any man Clyde had met. A rare thing it was for the obsidian knights to welcome in a non-human amongst their ranks, yet here the paladin was. Clyde wondered if they had simply mistook him as a growth stunted boy when he was adopted, or maybe Ser Cantu had joined the order during a time when such grudges between the dwarfs of Stone Summit and the knights were narrower. The paladin rarely discussed such things, however.

  Eventually Clyde had no one else to think about other than himself, a once promising student of fighting art, whose blade had nary scraped another’s in real battle. How was he to aid this party of seasoned warriors and mages?

  “Why do you doubt yourself, dear Clyde?” Julia leaned forward, peering into his soul with those searching eyes of hers.

  He sighed. He doubted himself because he had no reason to believe in himself. While his father had joined with the Coalition Forces to face Dread’s armies in the swamps, Clyde had tricked his way into joining up with the Old Guard. They had been seduced by his scores and the praise of his mentors from the Blade’s College of Aplista. For several weeks they marched and trained together, and indeed he was able to showcase his skill as a swordsman in sparring with Ser Cantu, but practice fighting was not the truth of taking blood and having blood taken. He knew that he could not tell the party of their folly to trust him. He’d tried at times, but they—like he expected Julia to do now—always dismissed his concerns as the nerves of a younger man who would prove his worth when the time came. He was too much a coward to dissuade them of their misgivings, and so he continued to travel with them as a nervous man, and not the true vestige of fear that he really was.

  Julia still looked upon him, no doubt expecting an answer. Maybe she would listen to reason.

  “I am not the man you think I am,” Clyde finally answered.

  She smirked. “Perhaps you are not the man you think you are. I have seen your bladework. Not even a sturdy man like Cantu could hide his surprise when you swept him off of his feet and disarmed him.”

  “But that was practice,” Clyde said. “I. . . I have never—”

  There was a great stopping of feet and clanking tankards as Ser Cantu hobbled on top of the table beside Professor Gul-Foot. The knight raised his stein and downed a hefty swig of liquid, the dregs of which trickled down his black beard.

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  “Ahh,” he sighed, “friends! Family! Allies!”

  Patrons cheered from each group of patrons as he called upon them, dozens upon dozens of them.

  He gave them a stern look, and they quieted. Then he smiled rougeishly. “The night passes, and day comes, and with it the salvation of our land. While your fathers and mothers, your brothers and sisters, your sons and daughters hold the line, we set out to cut off the head of the vile Dread. We have discovered his secret, which I dare not utter here! But, when next you see us, I dare say we will bear the head of the daemon, and these lands can go back to squabbling like always!”

  The tavern roared with laughter and cheering, and the clinking of more steins, sloshing of ale, and wild flute playing.

  Julia leaned over to Clyde. “We will prevail, dear friend. Trust in fate.”

  ****

  The party lay dead. Every one of them, gutted and slashed.

  The ashes of Professor Gul-Foot blew across the stone floors of Dread’s fort.

  Ser Cantu’s head remained face down beside Clyde, the rest of him in the belly of a vicious monster, whose flapping wings high above, masked by low-hanging black clouds.

  Julia was splayed in front of Clyde, her neck snapped in such a way that she stared back at him, those icy eyes stuck in their piercing gaze. “Finish the ritual,” was the last thing she had said before Commander Dread wrapped a gauntleted hand around her and silenced her forever.

  Clyde cowered on the floor, the hilt of Ser Cantu’s obsidian dagger slipping within his sweaty palms. Behind him was an entity he knew not of, a man laid bare across an altar, his milky-pale arms and legs chained to the sides of the stone surface. Wisps of light tendriled from him, running across the open sky of Dread’s roofless-throne room, and surrounding the body of the very monster himself as he thrust his immense blade into the already dead form of Julia. It split her in half with a single thrust. He flicked the purple steel and stared at Clyde with a gaze of emptiness. There was no soul behind them, just the void of death. He should be dead, by any other circumstance, due to the blade that Clyde had stuck into his chest. The very blade that still protruded there. But Commander Dread was no mortal to succumb to such things. Not while he was kept alive by the anima of others.

  Dread thrust his greatsword at Clyde.

  The fledgling hero dropped to the floor as the steel pierced the stone altar.

  Clyde rolled behind the table, all while muttering the prayer that Ser Cantu had taught him, the crystal dagger pressed against his lips. The artefact hummed to life, and glistened with the power of some otherworldly entity.

  Who calls upon me? You are not mine, a deep voice said within Clyde’s mind.

  Dread’s great feet clamped toward him.

  Clyde whispered in his shaking voice, “I am Ser Clyde, of Maplebrook. I am a lowly man. I am nothing. I pray for your power and wi—”

  The greatsword slashed sideways, lopping off Clyde’s left arm. He cried in agony and toppled over. He scurried back as Dread turned the corner, blood dripping down his blade.

  “I. P-pray. For. . .” his vision faded, his mind swam. He grit his teeth. He knew he would fail. He knew his companions had made an error in bringing him along. Now he would fail them. They would all fail. Dread would. . .

  Infernos with that!

  Clyde summoned his last morsel of will and pushed himself up on to the altar with the dagger in his right hand. He plunged it down toward the chest of the man there.

  Dread’s greatsword slashed through the air.

  Clyde’s right arm was severed. He sobbed as his armless torso collapsed down toward the unconscious man.

  The dagger fell.

  Fell.

  Fell.

  Right into the pale man’s chest.

  Clyde’s own chest dropped upon the pointed hilt and was also pierced. He shuddered as he felt his heart burst.

  Then there was light. Overwhelming, burning, silver light that washed over him and everything.

  Dread screamed terribly.

  All consciousness faded from Clyde.

  Then he heard a new voice.

  “Awaken, Champion.”