Renard Cox

So refined the showing of spectacle
And yet still so barbaric the notion that a cut in the soul impressed through the flesh
Could eclipse me in the heart of my votary

—those eyelids snap open.

Panic possesses Renard from out of his gut; he scrambles to grasp the solid iron of a blade, but only air—

You hear me quite fluently. rollick your self in my introduction: en garde
Renard braces — still an instant too slow to receive the impact that comes barrelling in, fast as a slung bullet, forceful as a whole planet. He tumbles feet over head and feet over head whirling like a sparrow caught in a storm, no bearings possible except the abrupt jolt of clawed hands gripping his ankles. With this point as the fulcrum, he is spun once, twice, like the sweeping blades of a windmill. And released, to shoot into the sky with the same insane momentum of an arrow loosed from a bow.

Hung so impossibly high in the blue yonder, five hooks dig in to his back, scoop him around in a wide circle, and pitch him straight back down to the ground.

He crashes onto the earth tummy-first. “Bkuh," Renard wheezes.

Yet again this should not be survivable; yet again he is being toyed with. But he cannot be as bitter as he would normally be at that prospect. Though similarly superhuman, these were not the clumsy aggressions like those of the monster Arsene. The nature of who and what just attacked him is elucidatingly clear.

Renard, aching on his stomach, wrenches his neck up to look. An impression strikes him immediately.

Something is extremely wrong.

He is no longer in a sludgy marsh, but a field of healthy grass that sways endlessly beneath a blue sky. Aside from himself, the only things present are a small tree laden with red fruits — and, standing before that tree, the silhouette of a figure.

This silhouette’s form is crimson red like molten steel in a forge. Equally like molten steel, it is both firm, and malleable, for though its core appears biased toward a particular human shape, its edges are persistently smearing into the air like trails of a dying fire. Details, the suggestions of flesh and of clothing, flicker in and out over the surface of the steel, but break apart and melt away as the foundations beneath melt, shift, and struggle to refuse. A memory from Ashurst of the trailing jelly-man flits into Renard’s mind; that and this phenomenon feel alike in kind.

It is like a porcelain teacup has been dropped, and its shattered fragments hastily glued back together with clay that is still melting and warm.

And yet the sheer uncompromising excellence and power that radiates out from this echo of a willowy man, poised yet for combat, is so absolute that Renard is glad to already be on his knees, for he must be looking at the shape of the most beautiful thing in the world.

Incredible awe and incredible concern simultaneously shoot through Renard. Is his instability a corruption by Nix?

—No time to think, for the Creator between his pinched fingers draws a line in the air. Sparks and fire crackle boisterously from the traced line and solidify into a sword, the most wondrous that Renard has seen or could even conceive.

It is wreathed in furious, passionate flames. From its channel drips a blood as pristine as water, which sanctifies the grass upon which it falls. Blooming flowers explode from its guard and perpetuate down its length so profusely that they should not fit, and yet they do, in a thousand different kinds of beauty all harmoniously aligned like a tended garden, but as wild and as bloodthirsty as any plot of pure brutal nature, that celebrates in the killing of one thing for the flourishing of another. Its body is the same molten crimson as the body of the figure, but, peering into it, firm like the facets of a crystal, inside which are reflected the firmaments of unwritten universes.

Outmatched beyond outmatched, Renard’s head slumps down to his hands.

But the tip of that miraculous blade is still pointed at him, and the echo of the Demiurge still stands straight-backed in the combat poise of a master duellist, waiting.

Under the pressure of that disdainful gaze, an indignant smoke does coil. How on earth is Renard meant to face something like that! And what kind of smug sadist would even fancy a fight with such an overwhelming disparity of power, as if there were any valour to prove by smudging Renard into the dirt. And yet, how satisfying it would be… for Renard to charge in with nothing but his fists, and batter that arrogant smile off the very face of a god, who thought himself so immaculate and so superior as to treat his own creations like worthless ants to step upon at his leisure!

But no, no, such an impetuous track is obviously wrong. If he had a blade, if he had Kingslayer… there are some fights that are not about any man destroying any other, but about understanding, and about exhibiting principles in a manner unmatched. The memory of the Pilamine knight flickers through his mind. Such battles are ones that sanctify the act of fighting itself with any meaning, and if this could be the nature of a duel with God, absolutely, Renard would reciprocate. But his frantic hands run over only grass. He has no weapon to answer with, and to answer a duel of swords with pugilism is so…

“Ah," Renard realises. Hand shielding his reddening brow, tears prick in his eyes.

A bitter, pained laugh chokes out of his throat.

He would have to ask God to give him a sword.

But if you would challenge the very powers that elevate you, you have already lost.

Sages nesting in screeds of philosophy are famished for even a tittle Of the wisdom that excellent warriors know as a matter of course
A satisfied grin flashes over the Demiurge, who dismisses his blade with a wave of his hand, but Renard is too distracted in his thoughts to consider this much.

Though the stature of God is not all that large, especially compared to a burly man like Renard, even if he were standing, and not flatfaced on the dirt, the presence of this entity would make him feel as he does feel now: like a trembling child. If Renard is being completely honest, he does not want to fight Him at all. If anything, if it were possible, Renard would wish to be on His side…

…but is that truly possible? If God appears before him here, is the Serpent’s accusation not right, that He was present through all of Nix?

And if he was present in all of Nix, and Renard plunged so deep by his favour, then why wait until now to…

To what? Congratulate Renard? Condemn him?

And yet so swiftly does that vulpine perspicacity
Bumble over its own feet to the hounds
By the inanity of its own cunning irritating irksome infuriating
the conundrum, moreso for myself than for you
Of thin shields shining as pyrite,
to an edge with the lustre of gold
Urgent ambitions to the aureate,
To be as kin to the idols you adore
Arduous fealty to righteousness,
To consequence so ironically self-righteous
Am I to weigh that heart on a scale?
Does a rock gilded not grow more heavy?
You quite know that your wish is alchemy.

Renard trembles on his hands. Defeated.

Is feeling defeated at hearing such words not then a concession, that after asserting no wish to wrestle this entity, he immediately did so? Then he truly is like a rock wrapped up in gold foil. And he truly does… truly does wish…

Yes, very well, so you know me. Then you also should know that I could never bring my efforts to… a truly satisfactory end.

Why select me for tasks I could not do?

Why not Verdan, or the Queen, or Isen? Why should these good people die so that Renard could go to the depths of hell to be mocked?

Ask you,
To a miner in the caves,
“Why use not a trowel, but a pick?"
To a sailor on the raft,
“Why use not a rope, but an oar?’
To a painter over his easel,
“Why use not a saw, but a brush?"
Even a court jester would be abhorred for that buffoonery
Though you err not as clown but as picador,
flourishing fatuous jibes as keen barbs to the bull

Confused, are you, to my motives?
I wrote my covenants clear in the north.
Pray, do you, for distinction?
You abound in more accolades than can be forgot.

Yet so pointed grow you against me,
That proudly you would accost me
For tendering your success? Exaltation? Edification?
Camaraderie? Comfort? Charges? Cradle?
You so adore a tragic legacy,
You would carve into my body the myth of a man’s death in the mud?
For a champion indeed of steel Outrageous the glory you rob, from myself
Is a man without love of romance and your own trophies that jangle, now hollowed as tin
A comic, without any comedy
Catastrophe, without any ‘eu’ The gladiator who seats himself umpire predestines,
whole in error, himself to win
You will see, I have condemned you not once

THAT IS BESIDE THE POINT! What FLORID CODSWALLOP is assaulting his ears!?

Renard slams his fist to the grass.

Is THAT the error, that Renard was too stupid to think to read scriptures? Ridiculous!

WHY SHOULD RENARD GET TO LIVE OVER SO MANY MORE DESERVING PEOPLE? Are you making an omelet! Are you just ‘breaking eggs!’

I stand below the nest of a cuckoo that shrieks, ‘I will not be a cuckoo!’ As casualties rain on my head

Do I reach out my hand? The valour of this knightly facade turns the hailstorm grasping instead for you,
so sincerely is the hope ought to heroes Do I offer my own miracles? Even to your own student, you know well I do
But that would not lasso you in, nor jostle a speck of his loyalty

Now the wages of your striving are consummate
Now reaped are the tender elect
Now you are the one that is left
I can place upon you expectations you cannot betray,
Guarantee your name celebrated sans fault,
And certify you as exactly the legend you promise, until so soaked would you be in virtue
That you too may call yourself deserving. For these names of saints you sling at me
Are not ones inclined with your ambition were I to forge them into your mold,
Know that I would myself be a murderer.
You presume me some reprobate
Sitting unimpressed humorlessly jealous too exacting to please

I tell you I am in fact the opposite;
Your wife will say, ‘only you do what you do’
While you see the mirror of your deeds;
I will say, ‘only you are who you are’
For this is the root of the river
And my love is twice that of her

Again, Renard can only tremble. And again, Renard can only feel defeated. For how outrageous the Demiurge’s words are, nothing about them seems false, and little to no purchase is given for Renard to blame him for anything.

All Renard can conclude, then, is that the problem is himself. Tears squeeze hard from his eyes. How can someone claiming to love him say in the same breath that it’s Renard’s fault things fell below standard? How could he ever hope to be good enough if he could strive all his life for a pinnacle and still only get it wrong? How could any virtue he could soak himself in change him if this couldn’t? It’s just more rolls of gold foil. He already knows it doesn’t work.

Why even open it as an option?

To get revenge for something? Because this is the way things ‘have’ to be?

Or is he offering something too astounding for Renard’s dumb brain to get?

Conflicting thoughts and sentiments so spin in frenzy. Hope: that the Demiurge will adore and adopt him as a representative, exalted in His glory and power, that he could be an unfailing instrument for His righteous ends. Doubt: that Renard could be truly eligible for anything so grand, or suitable for such legitimacy. And before all, regret and fear: that the Demiurge knows Renard stopped fighting short of his limit, will not allow him this bookend, and is telling him it is not enough.

There have been many moments in Renard’s life where he felt like death was acceptable. Often, even desirable. When the person you are is so profoundly detestable, and so guilty of such ridiculous crimes that amass like the bricks of a gaol, the only way to escape the dungeon in which your acts case you is to change so drastically that you no longer make such mistakes. In the sense that Pleione may say, liberation is to kill the person you were, that you may become someone new.

For Renard, it does not feel that he ever truly changed. He did shift in some ways. He did become older, perhaps a little wiser and a little more mature. He had the incredible fortune of meeting merciful people like Pleione and Colette to lean upon. But it does not feel like he ever stopped being a wretched and deceitful moron, whose natural inclinations when dealing with problems were always ones that just made things worse.

Atonement is not something achieved in death, but in life; Renard’s persistent second chances have taught him this. But it is also a word of which Renard has grown rather sick.

If he can come so far and do so much, and even win against Arsene (for surely the Demiurge knows how he wins?), but still be told that, because of the nature of his heart, he is falling short—

Frankly, by that point, he would be better off just being dead.

At that thought, in that meadow, the earth quakes and the sky darkens. Rather than centred on a physical avatar, the Demiurge’s presence has been pervasive like the very freshness of the air, but abruptly even that blinks away. Hatred and despair from Nix flood into vacancy. Substance drains from the grass as it turns transparent like glass, in the same way as those unfinished scaffolds, and Renard notices that the skinny tree’s trunk is marred with a deep gash.

Renard laughs and sobs at the sight. That is what it is! He thinks, He must hate me because I cut his tree!

Below his chin, the scene of the serpent in the garden-turned-swamp comes into view. The place is still a mess, the sky below is dark, the great miracle tree is gushing filth, Fidel is a fossil in gunk, and from this aerial vantage, he sees his own fallen body. His ashen face with mouth agog is half sunken in sludge.

It’s not a very noble look, Renard’s scrunched gut has to admit.

Correct I will a misapprehension
You and my servant both share on my supposed affiliation affinity affection for that plant
as a seed withers in barren soil,
And as a headstone is not raised by the corpse,
The erection of that arbour was not my contrivance
As a utensil, it extends gorgeously
As a monument, it is without parallel
But of its nature, it is only wood

Its presence pleases my purposes
For it is an affirmation to you and a comfort to him

Renard glances over his shoulder. The Demiurge has returned, seated on air, not as a melting spectre but in unremarkable flesh and blood. Though his air is that of comfortable confidence, his fingers are curled elegantly over his mouth like a worried mother, and his gaze bares a complex sentiment of concern and commiseration and pity, as he too observes the scene unfolding below.

Renard rips his gaze away, rattled. Crimson echoes of the Demiurge’s silhouette burn over his vision like trails of fire in the night.

Below, the serpent comes to a stop, looming over Renard’s crumpled body. A message weaves clearly into Renard’s watching mind, though the speaker’s smooth voice is muffled near into silence.

‘You just make me so mad.’

And Renard’s body in the swamp twists — it burbles, it splits, under the focused gaze of the snake. Planes of flesh and muscle melt into tangles of string. Hauntingly, human features, even his contorted face, remain as the body knits into a lattice of orificed wormlike tubes and dark rotten splurge. A putrid smile buckles like a broken bone onto the smooth plane of his ‘face’, his ‘throat’ bulges out in laughter like the fleshy gizzard of a turkey. A sickening feeler of rot tickles his gut from the inside, even through the insulating barrier of the looking-glass.

That vile snake won’t just let him die. It’s going to desecrate him and corrupt him into some kind of organ for Nix!

Renard thumps his fists on the grass of the meadow, gasping, sweat teeming down his brow. He has to stop this! He has to get in there, and do something, he has to…!

…But, really, what can he do?

Nothing… by his own ability, in such a circumstance, he would be capable of little to noth—

—Ridiculous! There has to be something, even the thinnest whisker of a chance by which he could prevail. He has already proven he can nick the beast’s hide, by little more than his own determination! So what is this trembling voice? How could he stand to recede?

But the sheer discrepancy of power between himself and the snake… it’s simply so large…

The lattice of his body, dragging like a sheet of dough, is lifted by one point into the air. The line of space he occupies plunges out in an infinite vector; geometric blocks choke and spasm out of him like the vomit of an evil kaleidoscope. Though still only in the garden, his being has been spread like a string across a thousand pockets of Nix, in such a way as to form a ley line. Renard knows, for the scent of every one of those pockets, and of the stream of transitional space between them, seeps into his consciousness deliciously. He knows what is happening at any point along that line. He may too travel instantly to any linked pocket, simply by focusing his attention upon it; for he would then flow to that spot.

Simultaneously, in flows a hunger. In his gullet his tongue is a hard pipe four hundred feet long, and every tastebud on it burns dry with a thirst, a manic lust for pure bloody murder!

Yes, that’s right! Any interloper stupid enough to think they have a claim to HIS turf, better know they have another thing coming! They think THEY’LL be the champions who unlatch the world from Nix? These untested upstarts, wanting to upstage HIM? Renard will piss on their corpse! And the more humiliating their slaughter, the better! These weak little shits, doddering greenhorn ducklings, well they shouldn’t even be here, those who can barely lift a blade — those ones he’ll stomp with such ruthlessness it would make anyone wonder what the point of them was. And the stronger ones, the nobler ones, the ones who could maybe be dangerous, Renard with keen goading and mockery will strip them down virtue by virtue, strength by strength, until they are feebler than a quadruple amputee, and only once they have realised they have lost every chance, that their virtues did not matter, and their spirit of confidence is shattered, will Renard deign to laugh in their face and slice open their throat and finally teach them they are dying.

Then he will frolic in the jets of their arteries, piss in the puddles of their blood, and tapdance merrily on their bodies until they meet oblivion. And it’ll be so wonderful!

Renard chokes his mind out of the vision, grasping his heaving chest. The rot is spreading down his core like the roots of a tree, proliferating at a wicked pace. He has only maintained even a fleck of sanity because he is guarded here, in the meadow, from its true brunt. Had he attempted to contest it with will, he would already be dead. There is only one escape. And it’s obvious.

He can take the Demiurge’s offer, or he can be corrupted by Nix.

And curse him. Curse his wretched heart for even flirting, that it would prove something grand to die here.

Even though he is observing not Renard, but the garden, the Demiurge’s waiting presence is as solid as eyes upon his back. That Renard will say ‘yes’ is an inevitability, as sure as the sweep of the tides. Even Renard knows so.

Yet he cannot shake the spiteful sensation, that his soul is scissored between two deities playing a game. And yes, he may be inserting himself — though how could he not, given Arsene’s strike against man — and is this the Demiurge’s riposte? He should have the power to conduct it himself! Why Renard? Why Renard? What’s good about Renard? But of course Renard, for isn’t he great?

And curse his wretched heart for envisioning, that he could break out of this checkmate with the strength of a god himself, and laugh both at the Snake and the Demiurge! To so freely win by being himself, as though that is not how he got in to every one of these traps to begin with.

Why must he be such an egotist that he thinks his ends would be better than God’s?

Renard grunts, clutches blades of grass tightly as his anchor, every pulse of his rotting heart as sickening as the blow of a sledgehammer.

One thread of resistance does remain. One question towards the Almighty’s motives, for Renard and for all the world.

Why not Fidel?

Why not choose Fidel?

He is dead. But the glorification of you would be the glorification of him,
Where the glorification of him would be the misery of you.
I assure,
Often are you like wind, that bolsters the flight of an eagle
And I assure,
Never will you buck off a saint, nor serve the hand of the wicked
Your adoration for honour would make you unable.

Certainly, I will break the thing you are now
That your heart more brightly may rise to the fore
In the agreement that you will live to please me,
And one day, accept dazzling rewards.

Again, the response feels too perfect to counter. The more his mind scrambles for a parry, the more deeply submerged he is in deep water, struggling against tides that will swallow his tired soul down.

But is there not still a fundamental problem…

That the serpent is only able, to be so wicked because the Demiurge wills it…

…

…maybe, much in the same way, that Renard’s own shenanigans are only barely permitted…

There must be a limit. The magnitude of horror between himself and Arsene is incomparable. It isn’t comparable. It can’t be comparable…

An impact strikes through Renard’s sternum like a pounded nail. Renard gasps. His mind refocuses on the serpent’s foul ministrations; for the creature has taken the tendril of his corrupt form and anchored it to the stretched space. More impacts pelt him as the serpent takes another wriggling tendril of Renard’s flesh, extends it over a thousand more spacial pockets, and again hammers that into place. And again, and again, splaying the web of him across Nix like a thousand-armed starfish…

But,

‘Ugh, this is weird. How come you’re so sticky?’

The process is not going smoothly. The invisible nails are not holding Renard’s flesh stable; seconds after being hammered in place, his body melts and flops like clay out of the binding. Though still tendrils drifting in the same rough region the serpent assigned them to, they can, of themselves, move, and perhaps even coalesce back into each other given enough time to cross paths.

It’s like the serpent is trying to hold on to silk, that keeps spilling out of its hands.

This thing is so useless, eye-rolling irritation flashes through Renard at Arsene. But after that, the dim prospect that, if Arsene is struggling to handle him, he may still be able to reform, and challenge the beast…

…and bred of that thought, exhaustion. And then what? Why deceive himself? Why bother? As he already said, this war should already be over.

For the Demiurge to be in error, Arsene’s evil must be so vile that there is no comparison to make between it and the faults of Renard.

But for Renard’s win to be true, Renard and Arsene must be alike enough that even a beast so wretched could be inspired by Renard to start looking up.

So if Renard wins, then Camille is right, and logically Renard ought to stop… dawdling…

He barely has the strength to clench his teeth.

Why is he so scared?

Do I point you into a valley
Whose river is safe to follow?
Even if it is not, you must yearn only to trust

An incisive memory surges out of a sunken sarcophagus, a spear straight to the softest corner of his heart. It ravages, it rips, it bleeds — Oh, God! His father tried to kill him!

Renard screams, but his voice is so weak. He sobs, but his body can barely shudder it is so frail.

HIS FATHER TRIED TO KILL HIM!! BECAUSE HE HATED RENARD, BECAUSE RENARD WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH, BECAUSE HE WAS A BAD SON, HE WASN’T EVEN A REAL SON. THE ONLY THING HE COULD’VE DONE THAT WOULD’VE PLEASED HIS FATHER WAS IF HE DIED. IT DIDN’T MATTER WHAT ELSE HE DID. IT DIDN’T MATTER!

Certainly Renard with age made more of himself than just a farmboy yearning for approval from his dad. But God! God!

More dull impacts of nails flurry into his chest. He grunts and he spits, but barely feels the pain.

Because that is all he is, isn’t it!

‘I see. It’s that sword.’

Froth rattles out of Renard’s mouth as he seizes. He cannot move, he cannot think, and every wisp of strength is wilting as though his soul were being sucked into mist. His face is a film of tears, blood, snot, and sweat. It is not even the snake that is causing this. It is just the aftermath of touching an abscess he has let fester for all his life. His weepy mewling is too muffled to even be called sobbing. He is so utterly powerless he hasn’t even the vigour to cry properly.

There is no question he’s dying.

Kingslayer, somewhere, rises into the air.

A jet of sludgy black vomit pulses out of his lips. As his eyes roll up in their sockets, he only thinks:

Let the accolade I confer eclipse all ethic—but love. And let the armour laid on the mantle, Come to its days—and shatter. I have been a pest — God take me.

Many things happen at once.

—Two blades of fire settle themselves gently on Renard’s shoulders. They are searing, but do not burn. These are the fingers of the Demiurge, which rap over Renard’s epaulettes with a whimsical flourish. What is he doing? Those whimsical hands then slam together to crush his neck, their clawed grip ferocious, righteous and furious, unflinchingly strong even as Renard chokes and screams.

Inside his flesh, his skeleton cracks apart into chunks. Clumps of bone stab against the twisting meat of muscle and organs, skin dissolves into vapour, his face is gone, he cannot struggle but pulse — Renard cannot even envision what he must be beyond a clod of viscera.

AT LEAST ARSENE WAS UPFRONT ABOUT IT! DASTARD!, he spitefully screams, but no hand and no voice remains to answer.

Laced in a golden inferno, he falls. Though the grass, through the earth, through the meadow…

—A bell weakly chimes a single note through the snake’s garden. Though barely heard, the air and plants all gasp breath, as if invigorated by the sound. The cloying humidity of the rot dissipates under the tickle of a fresh breeze, and the sludge choking the earth retreats another inch as drowning flowers straighten their stems. And the greatest of them all, the flowering tree of miracles, that immaculate headstone for the corpse buried underneath — that one is not unaffected.

The knot of anguish grimacing on its bark releases with a relieved sigh. Black sludge gushing from the cut on its trunk thins into amniotic water, flecked with crimson light that glimmers like the flecks of an opal. The mixture floods upon Fidel, scouring away the encasing muck, streaming into open cuts, and washing him perfectly clean.

His fingers twitch. The boy gasps. His eyes snap open, awake but disoriented.

Between sleeping and waking, visions wisp yet through his mind: the flag of Lacren, Sebilles restored to peace, Meurille’s citizens saved, and an overwhelming desire to protect this land he knows is his home. Through his growing sobriety, a memory vague as smoke lingers, of the face of a crimson angel so gloriously beautiful and so ruthlessly murderous it must be the very face of God, grinning with shark’s teeth a grin of approval.

The camellia flower that fell for him too pulses warm beside his hand. Gasping again with shock and recognition, he flinches to pick it up — for inside his body, there is sickness… but no nausea, rather only the strange refreshment of a man coming out of a fever. All his inner flesh tingles as if digesting a meal. Experience insists that such abnormalities signal dreadful degenerations, but the longer that this goes, the more he only feels revitalised, healthy.

His very bloodstream flows as fresh as a woodland zephyr. Sputtering, he raises his hands — the digits are not deformed, but in his bleary awakening (for surely, surely, this must be illusion), the already mild colour of his skin is lost, that he is paler than fishes, paler than an Easterner, paler even than ghosts of the snowcaps…

As the serpent rages on, Fidel trembles in shock. The wash of red liquid cascading upon him peters dry as resin clots the wound of the tree.

Wet and shivering as a child out of the womb, not an inch of that boy is not blessed, shimmering and soaked as he is in the crimson blood of camellias.

—Arsene raises Kingslayer high into the air. This stupid black stick is why things’ve been funny, and if that stupid lunk of a human, huddled up all in his stupid tin cans, didn’t have it to wave around, he totally wouldn’t have even looked at Arsene without dying! And he went on about honour or whatever when he was actually cheating the whole time. It’s always just so stupid. You can’t expect any more from these pests… and they just never get it that they should leave Arsene alone. He’s pretty sure he told someone that not too long ago. 35 years? Humans have such tiny worm-brains and die so fast they can’t even remember stuff from 65 years ago. They’re going to keep forgetting and keep barging in like this blockhead…

And keep hurting Leah! They keep hurting Leah! These — these, monsters, they just never stop. He’s already DEAD and they COME HERE to hurt him. It’s ridiculous!

And so what if Arsene’s making things bad for them? They deserve it, because they’re huge jerks! They always make things bad for others too! Like Arsene! They made things so bad for Arsene! He’s allowed. Leah lets him. Even if he doesn’t really like it, Leah lets him…

Dwelling on it’s better kept until after he’s not getting poked by the MEAN CHEATER LUNK. Oh yeah, and what Arsene will do to him, it’ll be sooooo nasty! If anybody does get here again, it’ll be because they killed him first! And Arsene will tell them that! That they killed a human. And he’ll laugh at them! ‘How did you get through that guy? He was soooo annoying and gross, wasn’t he?’. But really, it’d be better if nobody came at all. And he didn’t have to think about them at all…

…

It really is annoying, that this empty human ‘Renard Cox’ actually got under his skin this much.

Whatever. That can be over now.

Kingslayer shudders in turbulent air as the pressure of rot squeezes in. A ‘chnk’ peals out of the metal as violent white fractures pip out of its skin, as the breaking of an eggshell, and deepens into an ugly, authoritative: Craccck. The two halves of Kingslayer fall away, severed at the blade. This tested sword is now the same as a hundred other knick-knacks, shoved in a crate in what was Sebilles’ tower, dead and useless — and so, would it be, is its protection, for the final uncorrupted fragment it held of the soul of Renard Cox...

Kingslayer like a dead skin falls away, and wreathed in gold, suspended in the air, a second sword is revealed.

It hangs in the sky for a moment, then like a stone too drops…

And in that moment, many things happen at once. A peal of a bell sings out. Fidel Asphodel gasps back to life. The serpent’s tantrum freezes, as the familiar tenor of the note strikes its ears.

And hurried footsteps crunch across the yard’s rejuvenated grass, utterly forgetting Renard. Far away, like a prayer, a child’s voice calls, “Leah!?"

—And that is the last that Renard registers, laying on the grass paralysed in metal, before darkness swallows his consciousness.

Fin.