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"Dame Jeanne," You keep your voice low, for fear of alerting a Guard, "I'm beginning to worry that we've made the wrong decision."
In all honesty, you'd known it was wrong since the moment Seymor had fallen through the solid floor of the basement as though it were quicksand and had not reappeared afterwards. The three of you should have waited longer for him to return. You should not have doubled back and sought a safer entry through the main gate. If you hadn't all been so cautious of losing another member of your party, you'd have never gone through to the backyard and lost Buckman in the mist. And if you simply had to have done all of that, then you should have decided then and there not to stray any further from your original plan, and you and Jeanne would be waiting safely in that ordinary room in the basement, surrounded by spare supplies.
Instead, you're trawling the catacombs. If Seymor and Buckman are to be found here, you're unsure of whether or not they'll be found alive. You sincerely hope that you find them. The idea that you have come so far on a rescue mission only to go home missing two more people is too much to bear.
Jeanne sighs. "We cannot give up hope yet. Surely there's not much more dungeon to traverse."
"We've come all this way, and yet there's been no sign of Ser Seymor or Lord Buckman."
"Nor of Captain Rudimer," She adds, quietly, as though the mere mention of him so deep in this place might seal his fate here.
"No." You swallow hard, "Not yet."
None but those near-unintelligible letters, at least.
"With any luck, they'll both have retraced their steps to the basement and waited for us there." Her optimism buoys you, as much as anything can now. You try not to think of the capriciousness of your luck.
If nothing else, it will be easier to go back than it was to get down here. The staircase from the prisons, as it turns out, leads directly down to this floor; and of course that door only opens from this side, because the Gods were not merciful enough to spare the two of you the ordeal which was making it through the mines alive. You shudder at the memory. This floor is eerily quiet, aside from the noise of two knights moving around in armour, but you'd swear the Wolfmasks snarl in your head still.
A groan of pain pierces the silence, echoing down the hall from one of the cells, the noise unmistakably human after hearing so many beasts fall to your swords - you and Jeanne look to eachother in unison, confirming that it's real.
"Rudimer?" You call, hope leaping in your chest.
And all hell breaks loose.
"Behind you!" Jeanne shouts. You whip around to see her frozen a few paces back, sword in hand, staring up at the wall as the section between you shakes.
One of the stones slips out of place, and then another, and another, crumbling away before your eyes like something is digging through, sending up a cloud of dust. It's almost at head height, just a few inches or so taller than you. A hole forms and widens, seemingly out of nowhere, before something juts through to your side. A dark blade. No, a beak, letting out some vile, piercing shriek, as the black head of a crow shoves itself through. The strangeness of it would be amusing, if not for what body part reveals itself next. A long club of rusted metal, studded all over with bloodstained spikes; it carves a path through the wall as though it were nothing, and you jump back before it can maul you just as easily. Through that widened opening pour dozens upon dozens of crows, obscuring whatever released them, perching upon carvings in stone and torch brackets, covering the high ceiling like a thick blanket of black smoke. The noise is deafening. Their wings knock free more debris, creating an entrance for their captain.
The Crow Mauler tears his way into the catacombs. It takes you a moment to realise why that nightmarish figure seems so familiar to you. By then, you have no time to check with Jeanne that your suspicions are true and you haven't entirely lost your mind - you barely have a spare second to warn her.
"Run," You tell her, screaming to be heard over the cacophony of birds crowing. "You take the deeper path; it can't chase us both!"
She nods sharply. "Stick to the plan. We'll regroup in the basement later."
In one swift motion, she vaults over the broken pillar behind her and hits the ground running, vanishing into the dark passage where that strange gateway sits. You don't stick around to watch how she gets through; you trust that she'll succeed. You wish you were so certain of yourself.
You do not run. The hall to your right is shrouded in darkness, though if whoever is trapped down there is still alive, there may be an ally to be found in them, an escape. And to your left stands the Crow Mauler, but it would not be difficult for you to dash past him and flee back up the stairs to the prisons. You choose neither path. If there is even the slightest chance that this is Rudimer, then you owe it to him to stay. Despite the difficulties of your journey, you haven't let this place have its way with you. You won't leave him to that fate. Whatever madness has taken him, you must try to pull him free of it. And if you cannot... Your mind shies away from the thought, even as your hands itch to reach for your weapons; if there is nothing at all you can do for him, then you will spare him whatever honour he has left, and put an end to his misery.
When those wide, bright eyes meet your own, your faith solidifies itself, convinced that this is no trick of the shadows or your sanity loosening its grip on you. You know it's Rudimer, though you could not say why. The sound of his footsteps, perhaps. The echo of a familiar voice behind the call of a bird. Or the faint shine of white on the back of his human hand, faded scars you recognise from a time long since past, the shape of a cat's bite embedded in his flesh. You know him, because how could you not know your brother?
"Rudimer," You plead. "I don't want to hurt you. Don't force my hand."
For a single moment, passing so quickly that you aren't certain it was there at all, the Crow looks at you; and Rudimer sees you. A glint in his pale eyes. A flash of recognition. A hope, however brief, that your brother will answer when you call to him.
And then his mauler arm smashes into the wall where your head had been right before you ducked.
Instinct and years of training take over. Panicked as you feel, your hand is steady as you yank your shortsword from its scabbard and swipe low at the Crow Mauler's leg, using the moment of his brief stumble to pull your longsword free as well. He swings again, and you know his weapon is too heavy for you to block with your own. Still, you try, sparing yourself just enough of the blow that your armour can bear the rest of it, leaving a terrifying dent in your chestplate. It hurts. The force rattles through your body, shaking your spirit as well as your flesh. The Crow Mauler caws angrily. If he expected you to go down without a fight, then he does not remember you at all.
All at once, what surely must be a hundred thousand crows descend on you like locusts, cawing their vicious battle cries as they swarm your face. Your bascinet is useless against the flock. They pull with their beaks and talons, working in unison to tear it from your head. The spiked wings of the helmet must pierce some of them, others crushed by the weight of what they pull away, but there are so many left that you have no defence against them, swinging blindly with your swords; through the plates of your armour, their wicked claws reach, rending flesh all over. You would scream, were your throat not pierced by a dozen beaks. It's torture. All you can hear is their chatter. That awful, mocking rattle that sounds so much like laughter. Knocked to the ground as they batter themselves against your body, you drop your weapons in favour of trying to tear them off of you with your hands. But for each crow whose wings you break, the rest grow more frenzied. They tear at your scalp, your forehead, sharp pecks landing a hair's breadth from your eyes; you cover your face as best you can with one hand, and the crows strip the meat from your fingers at any point the gauntlet doesn't protect. You can feel gouge marks so deep in your cheek that you fear finding a hole there.
As suddenly as the attack had begun, it ends. Blood drips from your forehead and obscures your vision, world hidden by a film of red. The Crow Mauler caws above you, and you realise that if you have any hope of surviving this, you can't afford to sit and plan.
Where are your blades? You feel the floor around you, but find no sharp edge beneath the carpet of shed feathers. Your bascinet? Defence weakened, no weapons to attack with, you crawl helplessly, still reaching out into the darkness for anything which might save you. Metal strikes stone just by your leg, and you roll away from the blow gracelessly. And then your back hits something soft. Your pack. Your provisions, your salvation.
Grasping, blindly, your fingers close around something cold and hard inside the bag - a vial, you realise as liquid sloshes within. But what colour? If you drink red or purple, you'll suffer a far more painful demise than beheading or butchery. And to throw it at the Crow Mauler would be no wiser a decision, for if the vial is blue, you'll have restored his strength at the cost of wasting your own. There is no time to puzzle out what liquid lies inside. You can hear wings beating above. Desperate and half-mad, you uncork the vial and raise it to your lips; terror grips you as you open your mouth, and you hurl it away, your scream of anguish lost in the sound of glass shattering, the sizzle of burning flesh.
Red. It was red. If you hadn't hesitated, you would have boiled yourself from the inside out.
The Crow Mauler cries out in pain, a hundred of his brethren echoing. It's not the caw of a bird which tears its way from his throat. No, it's the cry a man would make, full of such suffering that your heart seizes with the urge to run to him; when he screams, it's with your brother's voice. He sounds human again. He sounds like Rudimer.
For a moment, you are ten years old, staring uselessly at your brother as his left arm dangles strangely limp, broken just below the elbow, and you are paralysed by fear because you had not realised he could ever be harmed.
You blink. Gone is brave Rudimer, in tears for the first time in his life, the gnarled tree you'd watched him fall from. All you can see is blood. If your eyes were clear, you still could not make anything out, for your sudden return to reality fills you with such hatred that all is lost in that red mist. How dare this creature use his voice? How dare it take your family from you, warp your guardian and idol and friend into this. Man, and bird, and beast, and rusted metal.
Wiping the blood from your eyes, you see the Crow Mauler doing the same, his human hand scratching desperately at the singed feathers, blisters rising quickly where he tries to blot at the potion. His eyes are no less sharp, but when you meet his gaze, you know that he cannot see you. Blinded. Just as he'd tried to blind you. It's only by the grace of some nameless God that you think quickly enough to take advantage of his distraction; shoving your helmet back on before you pick up your twin swords, you haul yourself to your feet. He shrieks at the sound of your movement, lunging towards you. His long beak pecks at you, striking the gap between bascinet and chestplate, barely able to reach. What a feat of chance. It's a difficult opening to hit on its own, to say nothing of finding it without sight. It's pure luck. Yours, that he missed your head. His, that he didn't miss entirely. He tears at the place where your neck meets your shoulder, hot, rank breath burning against the wound.
He may have luck, but you know how Rudimer fights; always on the offensive, striking down any opponent before they can raise blade or arrow against him, so assured of his own strength that armour was more of a formality than anything.
He's strong, but you have something he doesn't. You, younger than him, smaller than him, always fighting to catch up - you've learned to be fast. And you are far faster than he is. Before he can pull away, you bury your blade so deep in his left shoulder that you have to brace your other hand against his chest to yank it back out, tearing through his flesh even worse than on the way in.
The two of you separate at the same moment, howling out your respective injuries.
Blood pulses from your neck, flowing thick and fast enough that you fear for that precious vein of it which runs through the centre of your throat, how a different angle might have let him tear straight through it; it streams down your shoulder, arm, wrist, dripping through the fingers of your gauntlet. You feel dizzy at the loss. It makes each one of your injuries seem to stand out more starkly. The tender bruising on your chest, patches of raw, skinned flesh littered across your body and face, that carved-open wound just above your clavicle.
It only takes a second. One single moment of distraction as you try to catch your breath, shaking your head to clear away how your vision swims and splits in two, double-headed crows with four empty eyes. In the span of that second, the Crow Mauler strikes again. And you are powerless to stop him, to shield yourself, to even close your eyes and escape the sight of what happens next.
He pulls his mauler arm towards himself, crossed over his chest like a prayer, hand on heart. Then he swings it at you, not at the arm closer to him, but at your left, the same as where you struck him; he connects with your rerebrace with enough force to ruin the armour entirely, spikes forcing their way straight through the metal and directly into your flesh. Each puncture burns with the rough scrape of rusted steel entering and dragging out of it, threatening infection. Bone breaks. It shatters, splinters, fracturing into a thousand shards of broken glass moving inside your arm. The noise of it deafens you at such close range. Your shortsword is flung from out of your hand, hurtling down the hallway and into the dark.
The pain almost knocks you to the ground again. Hunched over like a kicked dog, not even screaming, for you cannot make any noise other than choked wheezing, unable to fight or flee or breathe-
You gasp, and the air cuts at your lungs with the force of it, aching in your chest as a blade through your heart would. You gasp once, and then again. It turns to panting quickly, fast and shallow, as the world spins around you in a blur of torchlight swallowed by inky feathers and a sea of bright eyes hung on the darkness like stars. The pain makes, of you, an animal. There is no human thought in your mind. All you know is the pain which shoots through the cracks in your bone as you imagine lightning would, threatening to burn you alive.
It turns you savage.
All of your suffering condenses, bright enough to blind, until you feel it so sharply that it becomes as meaningless as a word repeated too often; you straighten up, grip on your weapon turning white-knuckled with your good hand. You don't need both to kill him.
The metal arm of the Crow Mauler runs red, the blood of his jagged wound mingling with yours on the spikes that pierced you.
You cannot afford to take another blow from it. No, you must disarm him to have any chance of walking away from this fight. But it's that blood which gives you the idea. You feint to the side, his sightless eyes following the sound of your heavy footsteps, but you're already ducking low as he swings at where he expects you to be. Caught off guard by your disappearance, he flails wildly at thin air. Turning on the spot, searching for some clue as to where to attack, he leaves himself wide open for retribution. Just as you had before, too used to having Jeanne guarding your flank. You know where to strike. His wounded shoulder, still bleeding heavily. You slash at him again, spite lending you strength enough to sever through what muscle and tendon still attach his mauler to his body - you take from him the same arm he took from you, and that heavy limb of spiked, corroded metal cracks the flagstones it falls to. Blood sprays you, foul in your mouth as you spit it out. You double over, gagging, the rustle of wings high above you growing louder.
The Crow Mauler doesn't hesitate. He gives no sign of pain, though you know by now that he feels it as keenly as you do; from his lungs rises a vast, echoing shriek, and his flock descends on you once more.
It's no easier to bear than it was the first time, even with a moment to steel yourself beforehand. His flock fights with a fury which outshines your own. A strength of conviction you cannot hope to match; this echo of Rudimer wishes to purge the dungeons of anything still alive within them, and the full weight of that desire is directed at you with the strength and focus of a hammer striking a sewing needle. You are overcome entirely. Not only by the pain, though it would be enough on its own, but by the sheer weight of how much he wants you dead. In heart or mind, you cannot say, but something irreparable in you breaks.
All you can hear is senseless, bestial screaming. High and loud, a thousand mouths cursing you. They claw the skin from any spot your armour doesn't cover, they worm their beaks into the gaps, pecking at you, sharp as arrows. All you see are red-winged birds, stained with your blood. Knowing that it is what he wants, you do not set aside your weapon to wring their necks. Deaf and dumb and blind, you force your way through the crowd of crows towards where the loudest call rings out above countless others.
Begging favour from any God who has not yet left you to your fate, you pray that your aim is true, and thrust your blade into the space where the Crow Mauler should stand.
You stab him straight through his all too human heart.
The clamour stops. The path before you clears as each bird falls silent and ceases its attack, seeds scattering in the wind. You hardly notice the great migration, a hundred of them flying in all directions as they flood every corridor, moving towards some exit you cannot see; and the few who stay and find perches high above to look down on you from, you do not notice either, because the only crow you have eyes for is the one right in front of you. Rudimer's shoulder twitches, some aborted little movement which irritates his wound, forgetting he has nothing there to retaliate with. His beak parts slightly, as if to sing. And then he slumps to the ground like his wings have been clipped.
Of course you run to him; how could you not? How could you watch your brother fall and not drop to your knees, rolling him onto his back and shoving your bag of supplies under his head to cushion it? When all else has failed, he's still your brother.
It strikes you then harshly, the permanence of what you've done. Your prayer comes faster, a low moan of "No, no, please," which cannot be answered.
His wound is deep and mortal, too far gone for any meagre healing you could provide in this place. Blood spurts around the sword like a fountain, welling up as a spring would, seeping through your fingers as you try to staunch the flow. He has to die. He has to die, or you will die, and the injustice of this wicked creature's existence will continue. But you do not want him dead. This cannot be what was necessary of you. The Crow Mauler rattles, terrified, unable to see the grief on your face at having struck him down.
"Shhh, Rudimer," You whisper, stroking the glossy feathers of his face. "It's done now."
He reaches up with the hand still made of flesh, pressing his fingertips to the insignia on your chestplate like he knows it's there, that soaring bird, mark of your family. His touch leaves smears of blood, before his arm falls limp.
You catch it, hold it, his hand over your heart.
"We used to fight over what kind of bird it was, do you remember?" Your voice is scarcely above a murmur, hoarse with unshed tears.
The Crow coos at you, eyes shining pale and inscrutable. You take that as Rudimer's answer.
"I always fancied it as a dove. I thought that perhaps if the symbol of our family was that of peace, it was a sign no harm would ever come to us. You etch it into armour with the hope you'll never have cause to wear it. It's a nice idea, isn't it?" As you talk, his ruffled feathers begin to smooth out. "But you, you were a more practical child. You said it was a crow, because the insignia was black. And you'd say it with that insufferable surety, like the matter was already settled, and I would argue that it was only because colour is wasted on armour."
You laugh to yourself, thinking back. "And if we fought too long, Mother would tell us it was a robin, and we'd be united again by the refusal to accept that answer."
Better a robin than this. Better anything than this.
"A crow isn't always a bad omen, you know. In some parts of Gaelia, they talk of a New God of fate and war, who appears as a crow. She sung a prophecy of peace after a great battle... Oh, how does it go?" You fumble for what to say, "There will be summer in winter, I think."
You do not tell him of the song after that, of all the evil at the world's end. Every man a betrayer. Every son a reaver. Every brother dead at the hand of his brother, you assume.
"And in Rondon, if the highest tower of the palace should have every crow flee from it, the country will fall."
His breathing comes shallow as you continue, "No, not always a harbinger of death. It kept us alive, didn't it? Maybe you were right. Maybe it was always a crow. And we lived so long through living by that bird of war, as though by holding death's symbol close, we could shield ourselves from the real thing."
The Crow Mauler stares with its blank eyes. There is no dim recognition in them, no spark of humanity for you to breathe life into before it can flicker out. Your brother has been dead and gone since long before you crossed the threshold of Fear and Hunger. But it's Rudimer's hand painting your armour red with his own blood, the blood of your brother slick on the ground around you, and so, you stare back regardless. You weep for your brother, and the thing which became of him caws softly in his voice. These should be tears of joy. For you know what he would want if he were here; to die by your blade, rather than live as the kind of monstrosity he gave his life trying to destroy. To be remembered as Captain Rudimer. As a hero. As himself.
But you are tired, and there is no victory in the slowing beat of his heart, and you do not want to leave these dungeons with the knowledge that you have done right by a good and noble man. You want to leave with your brother.
"I wish it could be a dove," You whisper; and now, the tears come heavy. "I wish I had no need for this armour."
His hand slips from your grasp. Rudimer's chest does not rise with breath again. Those eyes look up at you still, not yet clouded by death, full of some sharp emotion unnameable to you.
Whatever it is, you're sure that it's mirrored in your own eyes.
You kneel by his body until the blood congeals. Only then do you raise your head, sick and faint from your own heavy wounds. You cannot sit vigil for Rudimer here. If his soul still remains, then it cannot find its way to any life hereafter through these walls so steeped in darkness.
Clumsy, clumsy as you've ever been, you slowly pull yourself to standing. Immediately, you wish to lay back down and never wake again. The view is so much worse from above; you can take in every slash of your blade preserved on his skin, the charred, broken feathers around his eyes where you'd thrown the red vial into them, the jagged stump of his missing arm still bleeding. A landscape of your cruelty.
And below the marks you've left, you can see older ones. Pale, white scars, and wrinkled patches of darker skin where it's burnt and healed, and bald spots hidden by longer feathers where they've been plucked out. You can't imagine what happened to him in the time between when he set out on his mission and when you found him. There are wounds here you cannot fathom the cause of, nor how any injury so savage could heal. What went wrong? How could such a noble person have surrendered himself to the darkness completely? What did he mean when he pleaded with you to come here, saying the order of the dungeons had collapsed? There is no order, no reason, no sanity in Fear and Hunger. It's a terrible thing, to make brother unfamiliar to brother; any place which holds such power has surely never known sense. You turn his hand over, searching. Tiny pinpricks of white, faded almost to nothingness by the years, that surly tabby's bite. He was only a child then. So were you, and yet, that memory burns so brightly. The Crow Mauler is strange to you, but not a stranger entirely. It's enough.
You wrench the longsword from his chest in one swift motion, and it feels heavier in your hand than it ever has before. Blood spills lazily from the wound without a beating heart behind it.
It might kill you to do this. You know what you must do now - the only thing you can still do for Rudimer - but your courage has long since been spent fighting him, and you are made a coward by the mere thought of raising your weapon against him again. You haven't the willpower to survive this ordeal intact. But have you not already destroyed so much of yourself to bring him down? What else is there to lose? It might kill you, but that is of little consequence to you; it must be done, because you owe it to your brother to give him what honour you can.
"Forgive me," You ask of Rudimer, though you know he cannot hear you. "Forgive me this, because I will not."
Arms trembling with the weight of it, you hold your remaining sword high above your head, and with a cry of pain, you bring it down fast and hard on the Crow Mauler's neck.
The impact shoots through your fractured arm and ruins what was left intact. You could barely hold the sword before, but now, your hand drops and doesn't rise again. Distracted by the white-hot burn of bone piercing you like needles, you almost miss the blow itself; a slice, a crack, the absence of a blade scraping against stone, because you did not cut cleanly through to the floor below.
You sob. Panting with exertion, you lean your good arm on the cross-guard so you don't have to bear the full weight of your body alone. The sword stays standing upright, half buried in the meat of the Crow Mauler's throat.
It's madness which drives you to try again. One-handed and dizzy with fatigue and fear, you lift your weapon, knees almost buckling beneath you, and swing once more. And still, his bone doesn't break. His head lolls unnaturally to the side, as though he cannot stand to look at you. Again, you try, opening the same wound even wider, a red crescent grinning back at you, blood moon spilling what little blood is left in him. You have not the strength for this endeavour, but necessity pushes you past your own weakness; you slice through skin, fat, tendon, you beat against the thick bone of his spine, cloudy fluid pouring out from inside, until finally, it yields in a harsh snap. The sword falls from your hand. Its edge is dull, scratched and chipped from its hard work. You've never despised anything the way that you do it. This is the weapon which saved your life. This is the weapon which killed your brother.
The Crow Mauler watches you stumble towards his head, severed at last, your reflection in his blind eyes dark and bloodied as any ill omen. You want to apologise to him, for he is still part of your brother. No matter how much you wish it were not true, you cannot change that this is what became of Rudimer, that the monster is as much him as the memory of the man is. What's done is done. It cannot be undone. But no words spring forth when you open your mouth. You have no mercy to offer the Crow; what you have done, you have done for Rudimer's memory alone.
Without the face of feathers or his rusted arm, he is human again. The broken, ruined half-body of one, but still human. He can be buried as a man.
Only you know the truth. Your party scattered to the winds, your brother's head left to rot on the dungeon floor, no one else will ever know that his dreams of crows were anything more than dreams. You will drag his body from this place and carry him home. You will tell your family that he was slain saving your life, tell the world that he died as Trortur should have - a hero. Paragons of order, all of you.
It is not a victory, for you or for him. You have killed your brother. And there is no comfort in the knowledge that, being of sound mind, he would have asked you to do so, because he is dead and gone and shall never ask anything of you again. What a cruel act a mercy killing is. Rudimer is dead, because you had decided that there was more kindness in that than in living as a beast. What does kindness matter here? In this darkness, lit by such faint light that there may as well be none, it appears to you as any other murder would; the butchered corpse of a good man, and the monster washed in his blood. Your intention makes no difference to you. You killed your brother because you loved him, yes, more than anything. Love will not bring him back to you. There is no reward for doing the right thing, except the pain of having done it.
Both of you will be remembered as heroes, and it breaks your heart clean in two to realise that if you could choose, you would rather be the most base and loathsome spawn of the dungeons, so long as you were not alone in that lightless existence.
A crow shrieks. You look up to find only ten or so remaining, watching you from on high. They heckle you, mocking calls and caws, and the noise shakes you from your melancholy.
Oh, but how appalled Rudimer would be at that thought. He would never stand for it. Were he here in your place instead, you're sure that he would be glad to have saved your soul. He would be so proud of you for doing this for him. You laugh, noise startling yourself as it echoes strangely out into the black; for even as the Crow Mauler, he was set upon purging Fear and Hunger, and where did that get him? If he hadn't been so stubborn, so righteous, he wouldn't have fallen so far into that raven-feathered madness that he came out the other side changed. If he just hadn't been so...
Well, then he wouldn't have been Rudimer.
You know your brother even now, could find him in a darkness far deeper than this one. If you had not needed to kill him to stop his mission, he wouldn't have been the man that you knew. He was still himself. He always had been. What you lost, you have found, and recognised it as yours still. What was tainted has been cut away. What is dead is the worst of him; now, all that remains is the good.
His courage, his devotion, his refusal to stop fighting until the very end. Your perseverance, your loyalty, your willingness to do the unthinkable for those you swore to help. These cannot die.
Casting your sword aside, you reach for the Crow Mauler's hand, both of you with only enough functional arms to make up one person. You take a step backwards, pulling the corpse with you. Blood wets the floor, easing the path only slightly, as you take another step, dragging him inch by inch away from here and towards where you know there will be light. From here, so many floors above you. So many steps of that winding staircase that will take you as far as the prisons, and from there, the long and arduous journey up and outside. It pains you, to know you'll have to repeat it again after Rudimer is where he belongs, delving back into the black in search of your fellow knights. All you can hope is that Jeanne has followed her own command and circled back to your meeting point. This, you cannot know. All you can do is go on. You will stumble on the summit's path. You will sweat, and you will bleed, and you will weep for the terror that neither you nor Rudimer will make it out of here. But you will continue. Each step makes your wounds ache, your hunger sharper. His body is so heavy. And yet, you know that you will not leave him; no salvation awaits you on the surface, but you set out on this journey to bring your brother home, so you shall return what is left of him to its rightful place. You'll keep safe what you can.
You look down, finding the insignia over your heart coloured by his blood, a smudge of scarlet in the shape of his thumb along the wings and body of it. Not dark like a crow. And certainly no dove, when no purity remains to be seen in you. But perhaps, if you were to look at it in the right light, you could imagine it as a robin. No promise of death or of hope, war or peace, nothing so grand as some impossible victory; but of springtime, of luck, of new beginnings. Or perhaps it's only crow's blood.