The canvas of the tent flapped gently, a rhythmic, mundane sound that usually bored Thane to tears. But today, the Captain of the Serpents found the noise almost melodic.
Thane sat in his high-backed chair, his boots resting casually on the scarred mahogany of his desk. His eyes were closed, his head tilted back as if listening to a symphony only he could perceive.
He was thinking of the boy. Norvin.
Thane's mind drifted back to the first time the name had been uttered in his presence. It was Mat who had brought it up. When Mat had spoken of the slave boy who knew nothing of war and turmoil, joined the battle to earn scarps to eat, Thane had heard it—a faint, rhythmic thrumming in the air. It was like the distant beating of war drums, soft and erratic, accompanied by the high-pitched weeping of nature.
It was a melody.
Thane had always heard the Melody. Since he was a child, people didn't just speak to him; they sang to him. Not literally, but their souls emitted a frequency. Cowards sounded like scratching chalk. Liars sounded like out-of-tune violins. Heroes usually sounded like trumpets—loud, obnoxious, and hollow.
But when Mat spoke of Norvin, the melody was curious. It was faint, barely a whisper, but it had a hook. It intrigued him.
Then came the meeting.
Thane shifted in his chair, a cruel smile touching his lips as he remembered the moment Norvin walked into his tent.
The moment the boy stepped across the threshold, the faint drumming exploded into a deafening orchestra. It wasn't the heroic trumpet or the cowardly scratch. It was profound. It was a heavy, bass-filled thrum that vibrated in Thane's teeth.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It was the sound of a heart beating against a cage of ribs, desperate to break out. But underneath the percussion, there was a string section playing a tune Thane recognized intimately.
It was the Tune of Rage. The Tune of Greed. And most deliciously, the Tune of Self-Destruction.
Thane had opened his eyes that day, staring at the slave boy, and he had realized why he felt such a sudden, magnetic pull toward him. He had never heard that specific composition from anyone else.
He only heard it when he was alone. It was the same song Nature sang to Thane.
The desire to burn everything down, including oneself, just to see the sparks fly. Norvin possessed the same suicidal ambition, the same voracious greed to consume the world or be consumed by it. That was why Thane had sent him to the Bronze Falchion. Not because he needed a spy—spies were a dime a dozen—but because he wanted to see if the boy's melody would reach a crescendo or if the instrument would snap under the pressure.
"Beautiful," Thane whispered to the empty room. "The world sings you are the same. This…I never thought I would her this from someone else, especially a child devoid of both malice. But I am not just a man, my ambitions will kill anyone who stands in my way, my wish will destroy any land that doesn't provide me and my desire will burn the world to ashes. Will you burn the world for me, or will you burn along with the world, Norvin?"
Suddenly, the melody in the air shifted.
'Danger.'
Thane didn't flinch. He didn't even take his boots off the table. He simply opened his eyes, revealing irises that looked like frozen lakes.
"Captain!"
The flap of his tent was thrown open violently. A knight stumbled in, his armour dented, blood spraying from a gash in his neck.
"Lord Captain! Ambush! They... they just appeared! Men in robes! They bypassed the perimeter!"
Thane looked at the dying man with the mild interest one might show a broken vase. "Robes? How cliché."
"We are being overrun!" the knight gagged, blood bubbling past his lips. "There are too many... the outer guard is gone. They are closing in on the command tent!"
Before the knight could finish, a spear made of compressed air—invisible save for the distortion of light—punched through the back of the tent, pierced the knight's chest, and pinned him to the floor.
The knight thrashed once, then went still.
Thane sighed. He slowly took his legs off the table. He stood up, picked up his heavy weapon draped in leather. He didn't draw a weapon. He simply walked over the corpse of his subordinate and stepped out into the night. It was a few hours before sunrise.
The scene outside was, in a word, cruelsome.
The Serpent camp, usually a bastion of order and fear, was a slaughterhouse. Tents were burning, casting long, dancing shadows against the trees. The smell of copper and charred meat was thick in the air.
Men in grey, tattered robes moved through the smoke like wraiths. They fought with a fluidity that was terrifying to behold, their weapons glowing with enchantment. Thane's men—hardened killers, mercenaries, and elite soldiers—were fighting them.
Thane watched a Serpent soldier get decapitated by a wind blade. He watched another get crushed by a hammer of condensed air.
His expression remained perfectly flat. Bored, even.
To Thane, death was not a tragedy. It was an aesthetic choice. He had seen crueler scenes than this. Hell, he had created crueler scenes than this. He was the artist who painted battlefields red; seeing someone else hold the brush didn't scare him. It just made him critical of their technique.
"Sloppy," Thane critiqued, stepping over a severed arm. "Too much wasted movement."
He walked through the chaos, untouched. An enemy soldier lunged at him with a dagger. Thane didn't even look. He simply backhanded the man without breaking stride, the force of the blow snapping the attacker's neck instantly.
Thane stopped. He felt it. A presence.
It wasn't the chaotic screeching of the grunts. It was a deep, resonant cello, playing a low, mournful note that dominated the battlefield. It was a sound of immense power, layered with a heavy, suffocating pressure.
The fighting in the center of the camp had stopped. A circle had formed.
Standing atop a pile of crates, looking down at the carnage with the eyes of a judge, was a man. He wore robes similar to the attackers, but his were cleaner, woven with silver threads that caught the firelight. He had a beard grey as ash, and his hands were clasped behind his back. around him, the air itself seemed to bow, the wind curling affectionately around his limbs.
Thane recognized the aura. He recognized the strength.
"So," Thane called out, his voice cutting through the screams of the dying. "Why pay me a visit?"
The man on the crates turned. His eyes were sad.
"I am merely a vessel," the man replied. His voice carried effortlessly over the roar of the fire, amplified by the wind. "The Goddess conducts. I only follow where her will takes me."
Thane scoffed, walking forward. "The Goddess? Please. I prefer a partner who doesn't hide in the sky."
Thane tilted his head, listening to the soul-sound of the man before him. It was of Grief.
It sounded like a funeral dirge played in an empty cathedral. It was the sound of a man who had lost everything and decided that the world should mourn with him.
"I know you," Thane said, a spark of recognition lighting his cold eyes. "I know that stance."
Thane smirked, his arrogance radiating off him like heat. "You're Aegis Kazar. The Captain of the Blazing Lord Knights of the Kvothe Kingdom. Or... you were. To think that I would meet you here, such a small world."
The man's expression tightened imperceptibly. "That name belongs to a dead man."
"Dead?" Thane laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "No. Just a traitor. You were once the pride of Kvothe. The 'Wind-walker.' And now look at you. Leading a pack of ragged zealots, burning camps in the mud. How the mighty have fallen into the manure."
Aegis Kazar stepped down from the crates. He didn't jump; the wind caught him, lowering him gently to the ground. "I serve the Goddess of the Night Sky now. I cleanse the world of those who would defile it. You, Captain of the Serpents... you are the most foul human I have ever seen, a disgusting half breed."
"And you are the most common kind of fool I see everyday" Thane retorted. "But I suppose I should thank you. I was getting tired of paperwork."
Aegis raised a hand. The air pressure in the clearing dropped so sharply that Thane's ears popped.
"Gaoth... Guadana."
Aegis swiped his hand horizontally.
It wasn't a gust of wind. It was a blade. A crescent moon of compressed, razor-sharp air, twenty feet wide, tore through the space between them. It moved faster than an arrow, slicing through the burning tents, the crates, and the ground itself.
Thane didn't dodge.
He drew his weapons—two jagged, heavy axes forged from solid Redstone.
As he moved them, the blades radiated a faint, bloody light. In this world, the Coloured Stones—Red, Purple, Green, Blue, Yellow, and Grey—were minerals far rarer than gold. To forge a weapon from them was the ultimate display of wealth and power.
Most men could barely afford a dagger of such material, for it was infinitely superior to iron or steel. To wield a proper weapon made of Coloured Stone was a privilege usually reserved for the elite. Most only acquired one if they hailed from a wealthy Noble family, had amassed an immense personal fortune, or were among the chosen few upon whom the King—who held a strict monopoly on the supply—had bestowed such a gift.
Yet Thane held two massive chunks of the precious mineral in his hands.
He swung them upward with impossible speed.
CLANG.
Thane shattered the wind blade.
The force of the impact blew the hair back from Thane's face. He stood his ground, his boots digging furrows into the dirt.
He held the glowing red axes wide, his silhouette framed by the burning camp. His stance was terrifying, a perfect reflection of the title his enemies whispered in fear: "The Rustle of the Demonic Axe."
"Not bad," Thane sneered, resting the heavy axe on his shoulder. "For an old man."
Aegis didn't respond to the taunt. He spun, his robes billowing. "Goath Mur"
Dozens of spheres of condensed air formed around him, spinning rapidly. With a flick of his wrist, he launched them like cannonballs.
Thane charged.
He moved with a violence that contradicted his arrogant demeanor. He swatted the air bullets aside with his two axe, the impacts sounding like gunshots.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
One sphere struck his shoulder, tearing the coat, but Thane didn't slow down.
He closed the distance, swinging his demonic axes in a horizontal arc aimed at Aegis's ribs.
Aegis vanished.
He reappeared ten feet in the air, floating effortlessly. "Speir... Presion"
Thane's knees buckled.
Gravity seemed to triple around him. The air turned into a hammer, slamming him into the mud. The ground cracked in a spiderweb pattern beneath his boots.
"You speak of arrogance," Aegis said, looking down from his aerial perch, "But you do not understand the weight of the sky. You are a child playing with sharp things, Thane. You indulge in violence because you have nothing else."
Thane gritted his teeth, the veins in his neck bulging as he fought the invisible crushing weight. He forced himself to stand upright, his bones creaking.
"And you..." Thane wheezed, forcing a grin, "...you indulge in religion because you're too weak to live with your own failures."