Lucent, Capital of Westerweald

Castle Lysandus, Palace Courtyard

"Come on, boy! Put yer back into it!"

Within the pearl-white walls of castle Lucent's courtyard, a young Greycloak was practicing his swordplay.

And failing.

"Call that a swing!" his aged instructor barked. "You couldn't hit a bleedin' fly with that shitty ass swipe, never mind a bloody Archon!"

The boy received a liberal stab under his right armpit from the wooden sword of his teacher. He staggered forwards, caught his breath, and came running right at the source of his frustration again, screaming bloody murder as he did so.

The old man smirked, not even turning round to look at him this time. With a simple sidestep, he got out of the way of the boy's line of attack and tripped him, sending him rolling into the thistle displays in the old King's garden.

"Hah! How's the exiled King's flowers smell, Jonah?"

The boy rose slowly but surely, skin prickling with thistledowns. His eyes found the source of his rage silhouetted against the midday sun. He was an old man – far fatter than any warrior Jonah had even known back in the Plantation. His grey, bushy moustache had the disconcerting habit of twirling at its ends as though it had a life of its own. It obscured the irritating smirk that always stretched across the old man's face.

Jonah looked at his Instructor as he offered him a hairy hand.

"Today's lesson," he said. "Remember that yer anger can only go so far before it becomes more of a problem than a solution. Stay mad all the time and you'll get blinded to simple tricks."

Jonah sighed, emptying the dark thoughts that had been swirling round his head ever since he'd started his strict training regimen in the new Greycloak Barracks.

"Anger makes me strong, Master Ranok," he said, looking directly into the narrowed eyes of his Instructor. He wanted, more than anything, to sound like a real warrior. "I'll kill all the hybrids. Then I'll kill the Archo-"

A smack to the back of his head snapped Jonah right out of his haze of rage. His instructor had appeared behind him in the blink of an eye – using a Skill that he was most known for in the Greycloak ranks.

"Anger doesn't 'make' anything!" Ranok yelped as he placed his booted heel on the back of the child's head. "Here – can yer anger make my foot disappear? Eh? Can anger draw blood from a stone? Can it bring back yer papa?"

Jonah's teeth grimaced as he felt his face lower towards the dirt. He knew that cursing Instructor Ranok was as pointless as trying to actually land a fatal blow on him.

"Come on, boy – answer your teach!"

"No…" Jonah growled.

"Hm? Speak up, my angry young man!"

"NO!"

The boot came away, and Jorah fell to the side.

Ranok tutted as he sat down beside him, nodding to a few of the Greycloak guards at the walls. They needed to get back to their real duties, and he generally preferred to work alone.

"Boy," he murmured. "I've known plenty of young men who've ran into battle with nothin' but hate in their hearts. Lemme tell ya, hate's a fire that burns everything around it. Anger won't help ya get what you want."

Jorah scoffed, unwilling to hear another one of his Master's lectures.

…but neither did he welcome another beating. If he had to choose between the old man going on some tangent or feeling the pressure of his boot on the back of his neck again, he'd take the tangent every time.

"You can say that," the boy said. "But you didn't watch your father die, Master. You haven't seen what this Archon can do."

The aged warrior turned to the boy he'd taken under his wing at the orders of his commander. He fixed him with his old, drained eyes – eyes devoid of even the characteristic blue sheen that all Greycloaks maintained.

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"You know why I decided to train ya, boy?"

"Because you gambled one night and lost a bet."

"Eh – aye. But that's the practical reason. I woulda trained you anyway for a more theoretical reason. You know?"

Jonah had quickly learned that he couldn't lie to his Master. So he shook his head.

Ranok sighed, pointing up at the castle battlements and the slowly lowering sun that was dipping just below them.

"See this?" he said. "Everything here was built by humans who wanted one thing and one thing alone: safety. A lot of people, including our old Commanders, think that its freedom we wanted. Hah! What the fuck use is freedom in a world like this?"

Ranok took a leatherskin bottle from his belt and uncorked it with a wet sniff. He downed its contents like a great bear supping from a lake.

"Freedom's a thing for the young. The idealists. Nah. Most of us just want the same thing even if we don't admit it. We want safety. Security. Certainty. We just don't wanna admit it."

Jonah leaned forward. "Master Ranok, is my lesson over for the da-"

"Come on, boy," the old warrior said as he suddenly rose and pulled him along. "Let's go fer a walk."

The young recruit and the aged Greycloak walked through the courtyard and nodded at their passing brethren as they went. Currenly, there was an uproar in the city. Ever since Carliah Argent and Lightborn Artorious had not returned from their hunt, there was a general feeling that Lucent was blind. Completely on its own in this world that was under immanent attack.

With the rumors that were circulating – of the fall of the port town of Sentinel…of merchant caravans with Greycloak guards disappearing near the Ashfalls…the entire city was on edge. Military rule, it seemed, never really worked long term…or when the side under such rule seemed to be losing the war.

These concerns did not belong to Jonah, however. Instead, the boy had thrown himself into his training regimen of the last few months. He'd not yet taken the blood of Krea, but he hoped that, with his Master's approval, he could eventually become a full fledged Greycloak and commit wholeheartedly to the fight.

The walls sparkled with their usually radiant sheen – so bright that Jonah had to shield his eyes as his Master brought him to the top of the battlements. New defenses had been hastily constructed recently in the inner and outer keep – ballistae brought from Caer Krea itself. Some of them bore scars that filled Jonah's young mind with sadistic wonder: it was said these great weapons had been used in the battles against the first Archon. The dragon that wished to swallow the world was slain with bolts fired from these very weapons…

"Pay attention now, boy," Ranok coughed. "You're about to learn somethin' more useful than swordplay."

Jonah scoffed, but he followed the eyes of his Master as he looked over the city – at the poor district with its noxious smells, at the open-air markets where merchants hawked their meagre wares or haggled on the price of bread, and at the Nobles quarter where most never even set foot on the city streets anymore.

"We Greycloaks exist because the people are scared," Ranok said somberly beside him. "Maybe they'll always be scared, even when there ain't no Archon anymore. We exist because us – humans – we're a bunch of whiney, shit-kicking little bitches."

A soldier next to Ranok turned as if struck, saw who it was who was talking, and then promptly got right back to his guard duties.

"But we got somethin', don't we?" Ranok went on. "We got this drive to keep each other safe. We build walls. We make weapons. We bake bread. We tuck children in at night…and we make creatures like us."

At the word 'creature', Jonah turned.

"Oh aye son," Ranok said. "Make no mistake. Us Greycloaks are just as much monsters as those beasties we slay out there in the wilds."

"No," Jonah stated plainly. "No – there…there's a difference."

Ranok cackled, taking another swig of his bottle. "Oh aye? Do tell."

"We – we're good," Jonah said. "We're right. We always kill the Archon. We kill it because its evil and we –"

Another slap from his instructor silenced the boy.

"You know what that kinda black and white logic makes you?" Ranok spat. "An animal. Just a fucking animal. Another fucking monster roaming about the fields…"

"It – it takes a monster to kill a monster!"

Everyone on the wall looked at Jonah and chuckled privately to themselves. The boy said those words as if he thought they sounded profound.

"Bingo," Ranok said. "That's the difference. We know what we are. We're a necessary evil, kid. That's it. The truth is, its conscience that separates us from the big bad wolves out there. That's why anger ain't the tool that's gonna serve you in the war to come."

The old man turned and took his apprentice's hand.

"I'll tell you what I saw in you the day the Commander brought you to me, shall I? I saw a boy that was already a monster. Had been made into one from seeing what the Archon and his slaves were capable of. I saw a boy who had vengeance in his heart but didn't know how to make it work for him. I saw a boy who was all anger, but no skill. And I thought: hey, I can work with that."

Jonah looked confusedly at his Master, seeing the strange smile that flickered just beneath the old man's bushy moustache.

"Anger ain't what defines you, boy," Ranok said. "You got determination. You got grit. You ran all the way here and told us how to find the Archon, with nothing to sustain ya but yer wish to see it dead and buried. But yer also a boy that's blind to what you are. And you could be so much more if you'd just learn ta see."

The old man placed the wooden sword in his apprentice's hand and clasped his fingers round its hilt.

"If you wanna be a Greycloak," he said. "You're gonna have to look in the mirror and see if you can live with what looks back…anger's part of yer humanity, boy. Yer gonna have to leave it behind to get what ya want."

Jonah's mouth opened, but no words tumbled out. He could tell, with as much certainty as the Northern wind that was currently blowing, that this moment would be one that would live in his mind for years to come.

But not entirely for the reasons he thought.

"ALARM!" the city Magi suddenly cried. "THROW OPEN THE GATES! REFUGEES FROM SENTINEL! I REPEAT: REFUGEES FROM SENTINEL!"

Ranok and Jonah both jerked their heads towards the city gate, seeing the line of ragged civilians that were currently pouring through en-masse.

"Lesson's over," Ranok said. "Time for some real shit."

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