When Shadows Fall

In a stone-lined tunnel beneath a city that has long since faded to dust, a woman in a hooded cloak and a man in a fine silk tunic reached the bottom of a long flight of stairs and stopped to catch their breath. Well, just the man's breath, really. The woman, whose name was Vera, wasn't winded at all.

After a minute, the man's breathing quieted, and he rose to his full height and strode over to Vera.

"Thank you ever so much," he said, a grin lighting up his face. "For a minute there, I didn't think I'd make it."

When she did not respond, he hesitated, peering into the shadows beneath her hood in an attempt to make out her face. "Erm, who… may I ask the name of my daring rescuer?"

At that, Vera threw back her hood and pressed a hand against the wall. A mark on the stone lit up at her touch, and a moment later the tunnel was filled with a faint, cool light.

"I would think you already know it," she said, staring into his eyes with a carefully neutral expression.

It took a beat, but you could see the exact instant he realized—his face blanched, and he stumbled backward, tripping and landing flat on his rump. "You're– you're her!" he stammered out.

He turned even paler as two long, gleaming, razor-sharp knives slid into her hands from sheaths hidden in her sleeves.

"But wait—aren't you in the Order of Reian? What about your vows?"

The smile that spread across her face then was unearthly and utterly terrifying.

"Oh, I am." Vera prowled forward, her movements smooth and almost feline. "But there was one thing in this world—one thing—that was more important to me than those vows. Would you like to take a guess as to what that might have been?"

The man whimpered and scrambled back a few paces.

She tilted her head to one side, that eerie smile fixed in place like a mask. "No, you don't need to guess, do you? In fact, you know all about my brother. I suppose you'd have to, seeing as you're the reason he's dead."

For a moment, all was silent as her words hung in the air and the man went still. In the distance, a drop of water fell from the tunnel's ceiling and splashed against the floor.

Vera started moving again, but the man stayed frozen on the ground.

"So, if I were you…" she said, trailing off as she reached the man and stopped just short of his huddled form. She bent over until her face was inches away from his, and her voice dropped to a whisper.

"I would start running."

The words seemed to break whatever spell had kept the man in place. He launched himself to his feet and started sprinting away. Vera let out a caustic laugh, the sound echoing down the tunnel until it came back twisted and inhuman, and took off after him at a leisurely pace.

Soon, a screech of outrage and despair sounded from somewhere ahead, and she smirked, knowing the man had come to the end of the tunnel and realized that there would be no escaping her. A few more turns, and there he was, shaking and clinging to the wall. His gaze flitted over the tunnel, searching desperately for some way out, but there was nothing to find. Vera crept closer, and his shaking intensified. His mouth started to form the beginning of a plea, but she could see in his eyes that he knew it would be useless.

Suddenly, a figure shrouded in black dropped from above and landed between them, crouching, hands splayed in a conciliatory position.

"Vera, you have to stop!" the newcomer shouted, glancing back and forth between them. She looked as if she were about to say something more, but the wry look on Vera's face made her hesitate.

"Well," said Vera, with a glance to the hole in the ceiling from which the interloper had emerged, "that's new."

"I can't let you kill him, Vera." Her voice was sorrowful but steady. "You know that."

"Honestly, Miranda," Vera said, "do you really think so little of me? Obviously I'm not going to break my vows over this"—she gestured with the knife in one hand to where the man now crouched in the corner—"pathetic filth."

"Wait… you're not?" the man ventured hesitatingly. Both women whipped their heads in his direction, the same furious, withering look on their faces, and he went back to cowering silently.

Miranda rose to her full height, letting her hands drop, but looked at Vera skeptically. "Well, then what, uh, are you doing here, precisely?"

Vera followed her gaze to the knives and heaved an exasperated sigh. "These things? Please," she said, rolling her eyes as she flipped the knives over in her hands and returned them to their sheaths. "I was just messing with him. Thought Menda would like watching him soil his pants. Besides, you know perfectly well I wouldn't need knives, of all things, to kill him."

Miranda thought for a moment, then slowly turned to look at the man. "Oh, he did wet himself, didn't he?" She turned back to Vera, and the two shared a grin.

Later that night, when the man was locked safely away in the deepest recess of the Order's dungeons, there was a soft knock at the door of Vera's chambers. Grumbling softly at being kept from sleep, she opened the door to reveal Miranda standing in the hall, a sheepish look on her face.

"Can I come in?" she asked quietly.

Vera grunted and stepped to the side. Miranda supposed that to be an affirmative, and she took a few strides into the room.

Closing the door, Vera turned around to see Miranda still standing mere steps away, her back to the door and the older woman, her fists clenched and shoulders hunched.

"I- I'm sorry." Her voice, despite its youth and clarity, was halting and full of sorrow. "For thinking you'd kill him. For jumping to conclusions. You're the most dedicated member of the Order I think I've ever met, and I shouldn't have doubted you."

"Hey, it's not that big of a deal, it did look like—"

"No, let me finish. I shouldn't have doubted you, but I think the reason I did was…" She paused for a moment, then, with a heavy sigh, turned to face Vera. "It was because it's what I would want to do. If someone ever did that to a person I cared about. I would want to kill them, and I'm not sure what that says about me, but I don't think I like it. So I wanted to ask… why didn't you?"

Vera laughed softly. "Of course I wanted to kill him," she said. "Part of me, anyway. But- that's the part that's full of all the anger and darkness, so I try not to let it have much of a say in my decisions, you know?" She hesitated, looking Miranda in the eyes and seeming to gauge what she saw there. "Why don't we sit down for a minute?"

When they were both seated on the simple linen couch at the center of the room, Vera continued.

"Obviously, you understand the vows we take to enter the order. But, how much do you know about why we take the vows?"

The question was met only with a look of confusion.

"Ah. I suspected as much. Well, there's a whole class on this that you really ought to take, but what the Order teaches—and what I believe to be true—is that life is precious, a gift from the gods. Some people waste that gift, and some misuse it—the man we caught today being a prime example of the latter—but their actions… they do not make it right for us to destroy what the gods have given. Also, it's a bit like bite-beetles."

Miranda had been nodding along thoughtfully, but that last sentence had her back at confusion. "Bite-beetles?"

"Once, many years ago, there was a city-state in the marshlands of the south that was plagued by an infestation of bite-beetles. The itching from the bites was driving people to distraction, and a few even died, for the beetles often carried illness. So the king sent out a call for the greatest mages on the continent, asking them to cast a spell that would rid his lands of bite-beetles. Many of the mages refused, cautioning the king that such a spell would have drastic, terrible consequences. But the suffering of his people spoke louder to the king than the mages' warnings, and eventually he found a less-than-scrupulous mage who was powerful enough for the spell he desired so ardently. This mage most likely knew as well as the others why the spell was ill-advised, but she was either too arrogant or too greedy to care. Soon, the city was free of bite-beetles, and the mage was setting out for distant lands in a wagon full of the king's gold.

"At first, the people were thrilled. They celebrated in the streets for days on end, and the king was hailed as the great saviour who so heroically rid them of the pestilent insects. There was even talk of building a giant statue of him in the center of the city—crushing a bite-beetle beneath his mighty foot, naturally. But as the weeks passed, they began to notice that something was wrong with the plants in the city. And when autumn came, bringing the harvest, all of the city's crops failed. Every single one. As it turned out, the plants depended on the bite-beetles to help them bear fruit—without them, nothing could grow. The king, of course, was furious, but the spell could only be broken by the mage who had cast it, and she was long gone. Many people starved to death that year, far more than would have been killed by the bite-beetles and their diseases, and since the spell had not only expelled the bite-beetles from the city-state's boundaries, but prevented them from entering as well, there was no hope that food could be grown there in the foreseeable future, even if they could buy enough seeds to replace what they had lost. In the end, the king was overthrown, executed on the very spot where the proposed statue was to be built, and the city abandoned. I trust you've heard of the ruins of Collimnus?"

Miranda did a double take at the name. Of course she'd heard of them—everyone had. But she'd always thought the city had been wiped out by some awful plague, or perhaps destroyed in a massive earthquake.

"The point of all this being, of course, that even the filthiest, most troublesome of creatures have their uses, and that you should never make a decision in a moment of passion unless you are sure it can be undone. And despite the efforts of centuries' worth of mages, death is still not something we can reverse."

"But- what if you have to?" asked Miranda. "I mean, what if killing someone were the only way to stop something even worse and equally irreversible from happening?"

"Well, if that were ever the case, I suppose you'd have to take the course of action that you believe will result in the least harm done, and hope you can live with yourself afterward. Fortunately, though, the magic granted to the Order means we do not have to make that choice. Killing that man today wasn't necessary, and it wouldn't have brought my brother back. If I had killed him… that would have been about me, and my own desire for vengeance. Besides, who knows? Perhaps he also has a sister who loves him the way I loved Menda, and no matter what he has done, she does not deserve the same pain, the same rage, with which I am burdened. And if I kill him to avenge my brother, maybe she kills me to avenge hers, then someone who cared for me kills her, and the bloodshed just goes on and on until we are all broken and alone. So no matter how much my fingers itch to close around his scrawny neck and squeeze until there is nothing left, I will not perpetuate that vicious cycle. And that choice is more powerful than any act of violence could ever be."

A long, long time later, Miranda thought back to that conversation as she cleaned the blood from her sword for what felt like the millionth time. It had been five years since the magic of the Order had vanished without warning, five years since that awful, bloody night when the prisoners had fought their way out of the citadel, and she had long since lost count of the people she'd killed. Even the nightmares had eventually stopped, not too long ago. And yet, somehow, that stupidly idealistic woman and her stupid, stupid lectures managed to haunt Miranda more effectively and thoroughly than any ghost. Though she couldn't say she found it entirely surprising—"thorough" and "effective" were two things Vera had always done better than anyone else, after all.