Aldric Thorne's lungs burned with each frozen breath. The basket in his arms felt heavier with every step through the knee-deep snow. Inside, his son whimpered against the cold.
Should he have stayed? Fought them at the estate?
No. The Council had sent too many.
"They found us, Marcus!" His voice cut through the howling wind as he spotted his friend's silhouette ahead. "The Council's dogs are almost here!"
Marcus wheeled his horse around, face pale beneath his hood. Snow clung to his beard like fragments of bone. "How many?"
"Six. Maybe more." Aldric stumbled forward and thrust the basket up. "Take him. Now."
The baby's cries pierced the night. Such a small sound against the vastness of the Thornwood, yet it might as well have been a beacon. Marcus leaned down from his saddle and gripped the basket's handles. His leather gloves creaked in the cold.
"Where?" Marcus asked.
"The Reeve family in Millhaven. Vale Reeve is a carpenter. Good people. They lost a child last winter..." Aldric pressed his lips to his son's forehead. The blue lotus birthmark on the infant's neck caught the moonlight, glowing faintly like a promise. "They'll love him as their own."
Would they? Could anyone love a stranger's child?
They would have to.
Black shapes emerged from the tree line. The Official Kiratashi moved like hunting wolves, their coats dark wounds against the white landscape. Aldric counted eight now. They'd brought more than he expected.
"Go!" He pushed the basket into Marcus's arms and turned to face his pursuers. "Ride hard. Don't look back."
Marcus hesitated. "Aldric..."
"Three days to Millhaven. Tell them his name is Kael." Aldric reached for the origin item at his throat. The obsidian pendant thrummed with eager hunger. "Tell them nothing else."
His friend spurred the horse. The sound of hoofbeats faded beneath the wind as Aldric stepped forward to meet his fate. Eight Official Kiratashi against one Master. Poor odds on any day. Worse in a blizzard with no time to prepare.
But he only needed to buy Marcus time.
The lead Kiratashi stopped twenty paces away. Ice crystals glittered in his black beard. "Aldric Thorne. By order of the Council, you will submit to questioning regarding unauthorized spirit research."
"Unauthorized?" Aldric laughed. The sound startled a murder of crows from their roost. "Is that what they're calling it now?"
He poured his blood onto the obsidian pendant. The special aspect awakened instantly, drinking deep of his life force. Reality twisted. The air itself screamed.
His Lord spirit materialized between the trees.
The manifestation stood three times the height of a man, its form a writhing mass of shadow and hunger. Where its feet touched the earth, snow flash-boiled to steam. Ancient pines groaned and splintered under the weight of its presence. The spirit's voice was the sound of grinding millstones, of bones breaking in the dark.
Finally, it whispered into Aldric's mind. You let me feast.
The Official Kiratashi scattered like leaves. Good training, but not good enough. Their split spirits emerged in flashes of silver and crimson. A blade-dancer here. A frost-wyrm there. Impressive for Officials, but they faced a Master's Lord.
Aldric's spirit moved faster than thought. One moment it loomed behind him. The next, it had torn through two split spirits like paper. Light flakes burst from broken origin items, dissolving into the night. Two Kiratashi dropped, souls severed from their anchors.
Was this what the Council feared? This power?
Trees shattered. The ground buckled and heaved. An Official woman manifested twin flame sprites that danced between the shadows, buying her partner time to retreat. Clever. But Aldric's Lord spirit simply opened what might have been a mouth and inhaled. The sprites guttered out like candles.
Three more Officials down. Their bodies cooled in the snow, origin items cracked and leaking essence. The survivors pulled back, trying to regroup. One shouted orders Aldric couldn't hear over his spirit's roar.
His vision blurred. Blood ran from his nose, warm against his frozen face. The feedback from channeling his Lord spirit at full power felt like molten lead in his veins. How long had it been? Five minutes? Ten?
Long enough. Marcus would be miles away by now.
The remaining Kiratashi attempted coordination. Their spirits moved in practiced formations, testing for weaknesses. The frost-wyrm breathed clouds of diamond dust while something that might have been a metal spider skittered up a tree trunk, seeking high ground.
Aldric smiled and wiped blood from his chin. "You should have brought Masters."
His Lord spirit erupted skyward, then came down like a falling star. The impact crater swallowed two more Officials whole. The metal spider's origin item rang like a bell before shattering.
One Kiratashi left. A young man, barely past his advancement ritual judging by how his hands shook. His spirit looked like a white moth, wings spread wide. A mental genre? Interesting choice for combat.
"Please," the young Official said. "The Council only wants to talk. About your research. About what you found in the old texts..."
"The Council wants my son." Aldric spat blood into the snow. "They can burn in the seventeen hells."
He sent his Lord spirit forward for the killing blow. The moth's wings fluttered once. Aldric's mind went white.
Memory manipulation.
Clever boy.
But Aldric had bound his Lord spirit twenty years ago. Their souls were so intertwined that mental attacks slid off like rain. His spirit's claws closed around the moth, crushing it to powder. The young Official gasped once and fell.
Silence descended on the forest. Only wind and Aldric's labored breathing remained. He sank to his knees, origin item pulsing against his chest. The obsidian had cracked from channeling so much power. Hairline fractures that would never heal.
How far had Marcus gotten? Far enough?
He thought of his son's eyes, so like his mother's. Brown with flecks of gold. Would Kael remember anything of this night? The lotus birthmark suggested he might be special, might have inherited more than just his parents' features.
This... No. Better if the boy grew up normal. Safe. Human.
A branch snapped behind him.
Aldric turned his head slowly. Two more figures in black emerged from the shadows. One tall and thin, the other stocky with silver hair. They moved wrong. Too smooth. Too confident.
Masters.
"Fool," the thin one said. "Did you think we'd only send Officials?"
They'd been watching. Letting him exhaust himself against lesser opponents. Aldric tried to stand but his legs wouldn't cooperate. His Lord spirit flickered, struggling to maintain cohesion with its damaged anchor.
"Where is the child?" The stocky Master stepped over a cooling corpse. "We felt the birthmark's resonance. He was here."
"Gone." Aldric grinned through bloody teeth. "Beyond your reach."
"Nothing is beyond the Council's reach." The thin Master manifested his spirit without ceremony. The temperature dropped twenty degrees. Frost spread across the trees in spiraling patterns. "But we'll find him eventually. The birthmark will call to us when he comes of age."
Would it? Aldric had spent years researching that mark, that sign of the old bloodlines. But so much knowledge had been lost...
"Last chance, Thorne." The stocky Master's spirit began to emerge, something vast and patient. "Tell us where you sent him."
Aldric closed his eyes and thought of his wife's grave. Of the son who would live. Of research that would die with him tonight.
"I'll tell you," he said.
Both Masters leaned forward.
Aldric poured the last of his life into the cracked obsidian. His Lord spirit blazed like a dying sun, expanding outward in a final surge of defiance. If he couldn't win, he could at least make them remember the name Aldric Thorne.
The explosion leveled a quarter mile of forest.
Three hundred miles away, baby Kael stopped crying. The blue lotus birthmark on his neck faded from brilliant sapphire to the faintest shadow. Marcus looked down at the suddenly quiet infant and urged his exhausted horse faster.
Behind them, the night sky bloomed with unnatural light.