Chapter 87 — The Soldier
"You gave me a lot of work, crown."
Silvano's voice had that quality of someone making a factual observation before anything else—not an accusation, not a threat, just a record of a situation that had consumed time and energy and therefore deserved to be mentioned.
Dagon looked at him.
At the armor. At the discreet symbol on the chest. At the sword that continued to drag along the ground with that normality of an object that was an extension of the arm rather than a separate tool.
"Soldier of Nellis," he said. Not a question.
"You got it, crown."
Silvano stopped twelve meters away. His light brown eyes swept over the empty space of Nessis with that specific attention of someone inventorying what he had found rather than what he had expected. The houses still standing. The gardens intact. The golden light pulsing with no one there.
"As you can probably imagine," he continued, "I'm after you and the masked girl. You have dirt that interests the Church."
"We don't know what you're talking about."
Dagon's voice came out with that specific quality of denial that convinces no one but still needs to be said.
Silvano made a sound that wasn't exactly a laugh but had the quality of one.
"Don't play dumb, crown. Connection to the Death Cult." A pause. "And involvement with monsters and non-human creatures that the Church does not allow."
His gaze shifted briefly to Jelim—to the white mask, to the way her feet didn't fully touch the ground—with that specific contempt of someone who has a category for what he is seeing and does not like the category.
"That," Dagon said, "is none of your business."
"I completely agree."
The answer surprised him.
"It's the Cardinals' business. They sent me." Silvano drove his sword into the ground with a single, efficient motion, and with his left hand began to untie something attached to his belt—a small bundle wrapped in dark cloth, tied with simple cord. "I'm just a soldier. I follow orders. If they told me to kill my own allies, I would, for the sake of the sacred objective."
He untied it.
The cloth opened.
He threw it.
The object traveled the twelve meters and landed at Dagon's feet with that specific sound of organic weight meeting stone.
Dagon looked down.
What lay at his feet had its eyes closed, its skin greenish with that specific tone of a young orc, the neck ending in a way a neck should not end.
Orzun's head.
The silence that followed was not one of shock—it was one of processing. Dagon stood with his head tilted, his gaze on Orzun's closed eyes, and during that specific second what was on his face was neither anger nor strategy but the quiet version of something that had no convenient name.
The last time Orzun had been beside him, the young orc had eyes that communicated genuine interest in everything around him. He had liked Nessis. He had been impressed by the elder. He had run to them with information about Steve with the breath of someone who had run more than he should because the information was urgent.
All of that, Dagon realized now, had been exact.
The unconscious pawn's performance had been perfect precisely because Orzun had been Orzun until the end.
*Cassius used his body as a mask. And the Church killed him on the way.*
"Why," Dagon said, his voice coming out lower than he intended. "Why did you kill him."
Silvano tilted his head.
"I already told you. Orders. No non-human creature lives after crossing me."
"He was young," Dagon said.
"He was an orc," Silvano replied, with that simplicity of someone who saw no contradiction between the two statements.
Dagon raised his gaze.
His eyes had changed quality—not combat anger, not yet, but its specific precursor. The calm that comes immediately before a person with real training decides that the point has been reached where negotiation is no longer the most efficient answer.
"Do you want to come with all your limbs intact?" Silvano said, his voice completely neutral. "I'm being generous. I don't like unnecessary blood."
Dagon remained silent for a moment.
"Jelim," he said finally.
She was already moving.
"Let's eliminate this murderer."
---
Silvano closed his eyes.
Not from tiredness. Not from hesitation.
From concentration.
It was a small gesture that lasted less than a second—but Dagon, who had three years of reading opponents in contexts that didn't forgive evaluation errors, noticed. And he noticed that it wasn't ritual, wasn't affectation. It was someone activating a specific state. Letting the body and mind enter a mode that was not normal functioning.
*The Instinctive.*
The lowest level on the scale of an exploration knight. Reflexes. Heightened perception. Adaptation to adverse conditions. The base upon which everything else was built.
Dagon assumed his stance.
"Time," Silvano said, his eyes opening with that quality of presence that was not completely the same as when they had been closed. "I'm going to fight a lizard in the shape of a man."
He paused.
"How disgusting."
And he disappeared.
---
It wasn't movement—it was absence where there had been presence, and presence where there had been absence.
Dagon felt the displacement of air above him before he processed what it was. The veteran instinct that had learned to read threat before the threat completed its movement turned his body by reflex—not completely, not enough.
Silvano was directly above him, the sword descending in a vertical line with that precision of a strike calculated before it was executed.
Jelim acted.
Telekinesis grabbed Dagon's shoulder and pulled—sudden lateral force that displaced the target two meters in an instant. Silvano's sword continued its arc without finding what it sought.
It found the ground.
The impact was disproportionate to what a normal-sized sword should produce. The stone of Nessis exploded into fragments that flew in all directions. The ground opened in an irregular crater, fissures spreading like roots, the nearest trees tilting with the shockwave before two of them gave way completely and fell with that crash of ancient wood that hadn't expected to be tested this way.
Dagon landed on his feet, sword already raised.
"Let's not underestimate him," Jelim said, her floating having that quality of strategic altitude rather than casual height. "Switch to the incomplete form. You need the strength."
Dagon didn't answer verbally.
But the scales appeared.
Not the full transformation—not the dragon that had appeared in the Frozen Mountains with ten-meter wings and eyes that weighed more than normal gravity. The intermediate form, which was harder to maintain precisely because it was not completely either of the two things: golden scales covering the backs of his hands, forearms, neck, and the line of his spine beneath his clothes. His eyes becoming reptilian with that quality of not being limited to the same field of vision as human eyes. Muscles with that different density of tissue that wasn't completely biological but still functioned as biological.
"Lizard in the shape of a man," Silvano repeated, observing with that irritating calm. "Confirms the report."
And he attacked again.
---
The speed was the problem.
Not the strength—Dagon had enough strength in the intermediate form that strength wasn't an open variable. The problem was Silvano's rhythm, which didn't have the cadence of any combat style Dagon had encountered in three years. It wasn't sequential—it was reactive, which was harder to anticipate because it didn't follow a pattern, only responded to opportunity.
The sword came from below. Dagon blocked with his own blade, and the impact traveled up his arms with that contact force that the intermediate form absorbed but still registered as real pressure.
Silvano didn't retreat. He spun—not to the side but downward, his body folding at an angle that required core control that wasn't normal—and the sword slipped out of Dagon's line of pressure before Dagon could transfer the weight of the block into a counterattack.
Dagon lowered his elbow.
Silvano was no longer where the elbow went.
The blade passed centimeters from Dagon's neck—the line of golden scales received the contact, and the metal slid over them with that sound of something failing to find grip, but the edge cut enough for a thin line of gold-and-red to appear on his jaw.
Dagon rolled his shoulders and pushed.
The distance opened for a second.
Silvano used that second to look up—at Jelim who was gathering energy, her fingers tracing patterns with that speed of a manipulator who had learned to work simultaneously with an ally on the ground—and tilted his head with that gesture of someone making a calculation before choosing direction.
He closed his eyes again.
Dagon attacked in that moment—not because closed eyes meant vulnerability, but because it was the moment of Silvano's lowest predictability and therefore the moment with the highest probability that the attack would reach a place not completely anticipated.
Dagon's sword cut air.
Silvano had jumped—not backward or to the side, but upward, his feet finding the trunk of the nearest tree with that lightness of contact that distributed weight so the bark didn't give way, and he continued upward, using the momentum of the previous leap to reach the highest branch before Dagon completed the half-turn of recovering from a missed strike.
From above, the voice descended with the specific quality of someone completely comfortable at height:
"Good reflex."
---
Jelim launched the trees.
Not one or two—the underground forest around Nessis had enough trees that Jelim, with telekinesis active at the maximum the accumulated fatigue allowed, managed to create a curtain of trunks flying in converging trajectories from multiple angles.
Silvano dropped from the branch before the first one hit.
And he ran across the falling trees.
Not dodging them—running over them, his feet finding each surface that passed from horizontal to vertical with that adaptation of a body that processed balance faster than consciousness could formulate instruction. One trunk went sideways and down and he was already on the next before the previous one finished falling. A torn root swayed with the impact and he used the swing as a ramp, leaping to the next point of contact without losing speed.
His eyes were closed.
*His eyes were closed and he was running across falling trees as if he could see them.*
Jelim processed that from above with that coldness of a manipulator who evaluates threat before reacting to it.
*The reflexes are working without visual input. Perception is active in a mode that doesn't require the eyes.*
"What is this man," she said, in a low voice that wasn't meant for anyone.
She sent the stakes.
Dozens of them, sharpened stone formed from the ground rock with that speed of focused telekinesis, trajectories calculated to cover the space of movement in front of Silvano at every speed he might have.
Silvano didn't dodge.
He accelerated.
The sword rose in front of his face with that gesture of a shield that wasn't a shield—and the thunder came from the blade.
Not lightning. Thunder in the most exact sense— a sonic pressure wave that expanded in a cone in front of the blade, the frequency calibrated for what was coming straight at him. The stone stakes met that wave and disintegrated—not shattered into pieces, but reduced to dust with the speed of something that had encountered a specific resonance it couldn't survive.
Dust and smoke and the silhouette of Silvano continuing to rise.
Jelim retreated—not flight, repositioning, her fingers already calculating the next sequence.
The thunder came again beside her.
She turned her face.
Silvano was there—two meters away, his eyes opening at that precise moment with that quality of total presence that made the before-eyes-open and the after completely different. The sword raised in the attack position with that precision that came from having arrived exactly where he intended without Jelim having been able to predict when or how.
Fear arrived before analysis.
Not the performative fear of a combatant who uses emotion as information. Real fear, which Jelim rarely felt because she rarely encountered something that justified it so immediately and so completely.
The sword descended.
And Dagon was there.
---
The wings appeared at that specific moment.
Not the full dragon wings—the wings of the intermediate form, which were smaller and therefore faster to open and had that specific quality of something that shouldn't exist in a human body but existed anyway because dragon biology didn't ask permission from anatomy to occupy the space it needed.
Dagon flew.
Not in an elegant arc—in a direct shot from point A to point B with the speed of something that wasn't optimizing trajectory but was optimizing arrival.
His body placed itself between Silvano and Jelim.
Silvano's sword met Dagon's sword.
The impact was different this time—not the contact of blade on blade where forces partially cancel. Dagon's sword broke. Not in the blade—in the base, where metal met the hilt, the point of least structural resistance when the force came from the right angle.
The upper half flew.
Dagon flew too—backward, his body absorbing the force transfer with the golden scales and with the different density of tissue that cushioned but didn't cancel, and he collided with Jelim who was directly behind in the same vector of force and the two went together, their bodies hitting the ground with that lack of grace of something that had no time to prepare for the impact.
Nessis's ground received them with the indifference of stone that had existed long enough to have seen worse things.
Jelim's telekinesis failed completely at the moment of impact—the concentration interrupted, the suspended stones and trunks losing support simultaneously and falling. Into Nessis's gardens. Into the streets. Against the walls of houses that the people had left less than an hour ago. The golden light that pulsed with no one continued to pulse, indifferent to the fact that two buildings no longer had roofs and an exterior wall gave way under the weight of a three-meter trunk that chose exactly the worst possible point of impact.
Dagon stayed on the ground for a second.
The scales pulsed with that quality of the intermediate form that was deciding whether to dissolve or complete—the pain entering through the channel that the combat state had kept blocked, the muscles reporting damage that the intermediate form had reduced but not eliminated.
Jelim was beside him, breathing in a way that wasn't her normal breathing pattern.
On the other side of the street, approaching with that walk that had no urgency because the urgency was on the wrong side, Silvano dragged his sword along the ground of Nessis. The falling stones and trunks around him didn't alter his pace. The cadence was the same as when he had entered the empty village—regular, deliberate, with that quality of someone who had arrived exactly where he intended and was only checking the final details.
He stopped five meters away.
Looked at Dagon on the ground.
At Jelim beside him.
At the destroyed houses of a thousand-year-old civilization that was empty but had still been standing until thirty seconds ago.
"Do you want to come with all your limbs intact," he said, his voice carrying the same neutrality as when he had asked the question the first time, as if the interval between the two questions hadn't happened—or not?"
Dagon was on his knees, his torso straightening with that slowness of a body refusing the implication of staying on the ground. The golden scales still present, his reptilian eyes focusing on Silvano with that quality of attention that wasn't defeat but wasn't the calm before combat either.
There was something else.
Smaller. Harder to name.
Orzun's head was still on the ground near the entrance to Nessis, where it had fallen when Silvano had thrown it. Two meters from Dagon—close enough to be visible without needing to search.
The young orc's eyes that had been closed remained closed, with that stillness that wasn't sleep but was the irreversible version of sleep.
*The young orc who had been impressed by Nessis. Who had his father's story as motivation. Who had been Cassius's pawn without knowing it. And who had been killed by a soldier of the Church for being an orc, as if that were reason enough for any other consideration to be irrelevant.*
Dagon looked at Silvano.
At the soldier who had said *I would kill my own allies if they told me to* with the tranquility of someone who had thought about the matter and had reached a conclusion he was at peace with.
And he felt something that wasn't only anger.
It was something deeper, older, that had been beneath everything since Simon and since Carla and since three years in a world that wasn't his and that wasn't going to let him leave in time—the perception that there were things that could not be negotiated with, that could not be convinced, that could only be crossed or not crossed.
He stood up.
Slowly. Completely.
The golden scales pulsed.
"Jelim," he said, with the voice of someone who had made a decision before finishing formulating it. "Stay where you are."
Silvano tilted his head.
He waited.
---
**[STEVE AND YELRA: UNKNOWN DESTINATION — IN TRANSIT]**
**[DAGON AND JELIM: NESSIS — CONFRONTATION WITH SILVANO]**