It is either arrogance or desperation, for a mortal to face a daemon - such a battle is the province of Exarchs or Angelus alone.


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    <li style="font-weight: 400">The Commentaries of Aram ibn Bashear</li>


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    ?


    5th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297


    Weeks ago, when Clarisant had first arrived at Falais and gotten a good look at her husband’s young squire, she’d immediately known that Yaél was a girl.  She and Trist had spoken several times, to each other and to the orphan herself, about what that meant, including trying to get her training time with people like Dame Chantal and General Ismet.  Trist had insisted that, though Yaél would never put on the sort of muscle a grown man could, she might be just as deadly by relying on a combination of grace, speed and skill.  Claire had even used Dame Margaret, the Exarch of Rahab, as an example.


    Dame Etoile showed everyone watching in the streets of Basilea exactly how dangerous the match of speed and skill could be.


    The mammoth, serpentine head of the daemon Forneus struck downward quick as an adder, hitting the cobblestones like a battering ram.  Shards of rock flew up in all directions, and Claire’s ears rang with the impact, but Etoile slipped to one side as easily as a fish from a child’s hand.  The frosted blade she carried, courtesy of the Faerie Queen Beira, screamed against the monster’s dark scales as the knight passed, spraying a fan of black ichor out to spot the wall of a half-collapsed warehouse.  Pulling its head back up out of reach, Forneus roared.


    Etoile didn’t even pause.  Instead, she dashed in with the sliver of ice held low and off to her right, trailing behind her, and then brought it up and around as she lunged up to the monster’s coils.  She brought her sword forward, up and then down, cutting a diagonal arc that sent chips of scale into the air, and drew another gout of daemonic black blood from the leviathan.


    “She’s almost as good as Ismet,” Yaél remarked, in Clarisant’s ear, standing up to get a better view, like a fool.  Claire reached up, grabbed the girl by the back of the neck, and pulled her back down behind what was left of the wall they sheltered behind.  The fox, in the meantime, had reappeared and was smart enough to cower up against Claire, shaking like a bird.


    “Not a fair comparison,” Henry commented, loosing another arrow.  This one took the daemon in one eye, up where it had pulled its head away from Etoile’s blade.  The daemon shook its head, as if trying to shake loose an insect.  “The General’s an Exarch.  Ettie’s a normal woman, and she’s still got the guts to fight that thing.”


    “It’s Ettie now from you, is it?”  Claire teased him, but Henry merely grunted and pulled another shaft from his quiver.


    “Lady Clarisant!” a man’s voice called from down the alley, and Claire turned her head.  Riddersman Reinolt, sword bared and wearing his guard’s uniform, skidded to a halt behind the wall with her, along with half a dozen palace guards.  “What in the name of the Angelus is happening here?” he demanded.


    “That,” Claire said, pointing at the monstrous serpent, which knocked buildings to the ground with every shift of its coils, “is the daemon Forneus.”  She ignored the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach at saying the name - the monster already knew she was here, and if it beat Etoile, there wasn’t much Claire could do to stop it anyway.  “Otherwise known,” she continued, “As your prince’s newest minister, Fabian.  And now we know why he took us captive, and did not wish to aid Narvonne against the daemons.”


    “That thing is Fabian?”  Reinolt gaped in shock.  “And what of the blizzard?  The animals?”


    “Those are hers,” Claire said, motioning now to where Queen Beira rose into the sky, born aloft by snow-flecked winds, her hair streaming out around her.  “The Faerie Queen of the North.  We had to pay a high price to get her here, but we wouldn’t have even a chance of defeating the Leviathan without her.”


    Beira, in the meanwhile, had raised her hands aloft, as if to embrace the sky above.  On the street, jagged spires of ice rapidly condensed from the air itself, swelling until they formed spears as long as the bolt of a ballista.  The faerie queen threw her hands forward, and the frozen spires ripped themselves from the ground, and were flung up and into the body of Forneus.  Scales and ice alike shattered, reining down from above, and one of Reinolt’s men held a shield up to shelter them.


    “You went to bargain for the aid of the faeries,” Reinolt said, shaking his head.  “No one does that.  They’re dangerous.”


    “More dangerous than that thing?” Claire asked him.


    “Point,” Reinolt admitted.  “How do we fight it?”


    “You don’t,” Henry said, loosing another arrow.  “Unless you have Iebara-wood arrows or a magic ice sword about.  Or an Exarch - you don’t have any Exarchs at the palace, do you?”


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    Reinolt shook his head.  “We had two, but they were sent west to respond to reports of a destroyed fishing village,” he said.  “Fabian’s orders.”


    “Convenient for him,” Clarisant said.  “Then do what you can to get everyone trapped in these buildings away from the fight.  If you have siege engines, you could try them, but I wouldn’t expect much.”


    “You should come with me,” Reinolt said.  “I can get you somewhere safe.”


    “The last time I went with you I was locked in a room for days,” Claire shot back.  “Go take care of your people.”  With a scowl, Reinolt ran back down the alley, and his soldiers followed.


    “I only have a few arrows left,” Henry said, sighting along one.  Claire could tell he was waiting for his moment, whether to take advantage of an opening, or to distract the monster when it struck at Dame Etoile.  “They pierce the scales well enough, but the thing is so big I’m not more than a bee sting.”


    “I’m not certain Ettie’s sword will cut any deeper,” Claire admitted.  “But she seems to be hurting it, at least.”


    In fact, the knight seemed to have already realized the problem.  Rather than strike indiscriminately, she darted in and out of the fight, taking advantage of the faerie queen’s assault to focus on the same part of Forneus’ coils with repeated attacks.  Instead of merely chipping away at a few scales and drawing blood, Etoile had opened up a gaping, bleeding wound, perhaps the size of a knight’s shield, where not a single scale remained.  Every time she came in, she hacked deeper into the flesh, and her armor was drenched in black gore.


    “Enough!” the monstrous serpent roared, and Claire was surprised that Forneus could speak at all, in its leviathan form.  Perhaps, she considered idly, it had something to do with the daemon’s gift of languages, noted in the Marian Codex.  She was fairly certain her mind was grasping at anything that would distract her from blind panic.


    The coils of the daemon spun, rasping against each other, tail knocking over a guard tower as it slid past, and the wound Etoile had made with such daring moved away from her nearly as fast as a horse could run.  The knight dashed after it, at first, then pulled back when she realized she couldn’t keep up, but Claire could see that it was too late: the mistake had already been made.


    Forneus had managed to get Etoile between an inner coil and an outer, and now it pulled its long, serpentine body back closer together.  The monstrous bulk of the daemon moved with deceptive speed, and put the knight out of their sight.


    “It’s going to crush her!” Henry realized, a second after Claire did, and shot his arrow up at the beast’s face.


    “First the knight,” Forneus rumbled, “and then the archer.  When the mortals are dead, Queen of Winter, I will feast on your core.”


    “Forneus!”  Claire shouted, running out from behind the wall and into the devastation.  If someone didn’t distract the daemon right now, Ettie would be crushed.  “Shouldn’t it be me you want?  I called you here.  I brought the faeries.  This is my trap!”  She clenched her hands into fists, trying to keep herself from shaking.  Beira was shaping more lances of ice, but not quickly enough, and the leviathan lowered its head until its massive eyes could meet Claire’s, on the same level.


    “You again,” Forneus muttered, and the stink of its breath made her flinch.  “Your husband did hurt me.  A pity for you that he is not here now.  What will he think when he learns I have eaten his woman?”


    “He’ll come and kill you,” Claire shouted back.


    “Unlikely,” the daemon said.  “He has been taken by the First Exarch.  He will not escape the Sun Eater.  But I will be certain he learns of this day, so that whatever cage Avitus has him rotting in can witness his screams of grief and despair.  Your soul is mine, mortal woman.”


    The daemon opened its maw wide and lunged forward to swallow her, but a wall of ice rose in front of Claire.  It cracked, rammed by Forneus’ head, but somehow held.


    “Her soul is mine,” Beira called, from up in the sky.  “Sealed on an Oath.  Your kind has sought to take what is ours from the moment you came to this world, and I am long since sick of it.  Die.”  Another wave of icy spears shot forward, breaking Forneus’ scales, but this time the monster did not flinch away.  Instead, it reared up with speed that belied its mass, snapping its jaws at the faerie queen.


    Beira flung herself to the side with a great gust of wind, but could not quite get out of the way, and the leviathan’s skull hit her like a runaway wagon, knocking the faerie out of the sky.  She tumbled, spinning, until she hit the roof of a two-story house a block away, and crashed through like a falling star.  Forneus’ head turned back to Claire, from high above.


    The faerie queen was out of the fight, and Dame Etoile was nowhere to be seen.  A final black shaft shot up into the sky from where Henry knelt, but the daemon simply shook its head at the annoyance.  At Claire’s feet, the little fox bared its teeth.


    Claire looked around, and realized that they had lost.  It had been foolish to face a daemon without an Exarch.  She didn’t have a spike of cold iron convenient to hand, like she had in the Ardenwood outside of Camaret-à-Arden.  She’d been lucky that time, and they’d still nearly lost Yaél.  They had lost her father in law.  She drew herself up, staring Forneus right in the eye.  At the very least, she wouldn’t look away.  Instead, Claire rested on hand on her belly.  I’m sorry, she thought.  I should have kept you safe.


    “Get behind me, m’lady,” Yaél said, stepping forward and drawing her arming sword.


    “You should run,” Claire told the squire.


    “Your my knight’s lady,” the girl said, raising her sword into a Plow Guard, though her arms were shaking.  “My job is to protect you.  I couldn’t ever face Sir Trist if I ran away now.”


    “Alright then,” Claire said, reaching out to rest her hand on Yaél’s shoulder.  “Thank you.”


    The head of the leviathan rushed down at them, jaws wide enough to swallow the world.


    Claire closed her eyes, but instead of her death, she heard the ring of steel, and a roar of pain.  She forced herself to look.


    Yaél was still in front of her, the squire’s sword upraised.  Had she somehow turned the monster aside?


    “Trist,” Yaél gasped, and then Claire saw him too.


    He shimmered, like summer heat above the sand, and Claire was reminded of when she’d seen her husband for just a heartbeat, on the ship.  Trist wore no armor, and there was a white cloth wrapped around his eyes, but his sword was raised, and it burned like fire.  He turned to look over his shoulder at the two women, and smiled.


    “Get somewhere safe,” Trist said.  “While I kill this thing.”