by Cora Choi
***
I fought that day with a ferocity I didn’t know I had within me. I believe if I had been fighting only to protect my own life, I would have been felled by the first opponent I encountered, but I was fighting for something greater than myself. I was fighting for future generations who would be enslaved by fear once the Order of the Shrike took over. I fought for them because I knew that until the Slayer came, there would be no one they could turn to. I became a madman and swung my cleaver at all of those who charged at me.
I punched and hacked and kicked tirelessly, all the while waiting for the sun to come out so that I might see it one last time. The billowing cloud rising from the flames in the courtyard continued to block it. Eventually, in that cloud of dust and ash, I saw my enemies charging toward me. First it was four, and then six . . . seven . . . ten. I was outnumbered. They chased me until I had nowhere to run.
I found myself cornered against the outside wall of the abbey. The traitors approached me slowly, their grins gleaming with malice and their eyes oozing with hate. I walked a few steps sideways, my back still against the wall. I was about to reach for my wolfsbane, when my foot ran into a body that was facedown. A knife was sticking out of his back, but the way he had fallen made me realize that he had dropped from higher ground. I looked up and saw that he had fallen from an open window on the second floor. An idea suddenly came to me.
A large, sturdy trellis leaned against the wall a yard away from me. I leaped toward it and climbed like a monkey to the second floor. My attackers grabbed the trellis and shook it as I lunged toward the open window. I tumbled in and found myself once again in the prayer room. I went straight to the altar and moved it. Just as before, it revealed the secret passage. I found the stairs again, but instead of going down, I went up.
I climbed that spiral stairway, knowing it led to the roof. The only surprise was when I reached the roof and saw my enemies already waiting for me on the other end, several yards from where I stood. Still, I made my way toward them. As I walked along the apex of the roof, I looked down and saw the Forgotten Cemetery on my right. Enclosed by cloister arches on four sides, it housed the deceased members of the Order of the Crane—a number of whom were renowned historians and storytellers. I had always thought it would be decades before I found myself lying there with them. Now I knew it would be only seconds.
“You thought you could escape, but you were wrong,” I heard one of my enemies say. Immediately, two of them came toward me as fast as they could while maintaining their precarious balance. I stared at them, unblinking, as they approached. Right when they reached out to grab me by the front of my cassock, I leaned to my right and dove down into the Forgotten Cemetery as though it were the Stauros Sea. My last view of the world as a living man was the blue of the waters that surrounded the island. Then nothing.
