The only light came from the strange lanterns around the Wellspring. Half of those were gone, smashed when the room had been blasted apart, but the rest still remained, casting a strange, flat light over what was left of the keep.

The damage was more extensive than Taelord had at first realized. Practically half the keep was gone, the stone blocks blown outwards. Beyond, houses had been crushed by the falling stones, people along with them in some cases. Fires had sprung up following Utgar’s attack, only to be suddenly extinguished in Jandar’s assault. Buildings had been charred to ash, and then blasted apart by ice. A good third of the Maze was a ruin, a mass of worthless timber and torn leather, scattered with bloody remains.

Utgar’s attack had incinerated practically the entire garrison. Well over three hundred soldiers had been turned to dust, their armor now lying across the floor in pools which had melted, and then frozen. The few who had remained had fled with Jandar, leaving Helsng to the rebels.

The city was theirs. But there weren’t many of them left to claim it. The mob which had attacked the soldiers at the last moment, the crowd of farmers Rehs had been with, had faired just as badly as the garrison. They had turned to a crystalized red mist upon contact with Jandar’s powers, which had then been blasted in all directions. Now, the ice had melted, leaving everything coated in a fine film of blood. Stones, weapons, survivors – everything. It had congealed, and was now caked on, a red crust over everything Taelord saw and touched.

Rehs was dead. Taelord had guessed as much when he suddenly fell silent, but now he knew for certain. He approached the place where what was left of Rehs’ body lay.

He had survived the bulk of Jandar’s powers, thanks to the crumbled block above him, but that hadn’t been enough. He had been slashed by a hundred small shards of ice, frozen from the inside out, his blood turned to crystal, rupturing his skin.

G’shar had been there too, though Taelord hadn’t noticed him until now. He had found a similar shelter near Rehs, and had similarly died. The two were mere feet apart. Taelord wondered if they had known they were so close.

He remained there for a long time, looking at them, their corpses crusted with red, shattered stone about them. One had wanted peace, one war. Both had lost.

Taelord didn’t know what to think, what to feel. He just stayed there, looking at their torn faces, trying to understand, trying to make sense of it, trying to somehow make it work.

But it didn’t make sense. The war had come, just as Taelord had known it would. And G’shar and Rehs… this was their end. Their fate. Not just for them, but for Taelord as well. For all the Volcarrens. War, constant and unending, followed by death. There was nothing else. There never could be anything else.

Ahnvad had been right.

“We beat you,” Taelord whispered. His voice quivered, and he realized his throat was tight. “We beat you, Ahnvad. Utgar left your corpse blackened, your armor rent.”

But that had proven nothing. Ahnvad had said the Volcarrens could never have peace, that if they escaped their prison, they would just start another war. And he had been proven right.

Runa alighted next to him, silent. She hadn’t been present, but had fled to safety. He glanced at her. There were tear tracks on her face, running through a film of soot and dust. She wasn’t crying though. She looked down at Rehs and G’shar, but said nothing. She simply looked at them, still, subdued.

Taelord remembered how she had flown through the air when they first approached Helsng. She had been happy then, sure of peace, untroubled by doubt. Taelord remembered thinking she was naïve, blind even. And maybe she had been. But he had smiled anyway. She had made him smile.

What he wouldn’t give to feel that way now. To feel hope, even when he could see no reason for it. Even a fleeting moment of hope, just a single smile, would be better than what he now felt.

Ahnvad had won. It didn’t matter that Utgar had killed him. It didn’t matter that they had escaped from the Volcarren. Ahnvad had still been right. He had broken Taelord’s mother, and now he had broken Runa. Taelord could see it in her face, her posture, her silence. And Taelord… he would be next. He could feel Ahnvad’s poison within him, growing, feeding on the despair and defeat around him.

No.

Taelord looked at Rehs and G’shar, blinking away a stinging in his eyes.

No.

He wouldn’t let this be the end. He wouldn’t let Ahnvad continue to win, over and over. He had stood against that tyrant, his father, when he was young. He could do so now.

He turned, took Runa by the hand, and led her away, to a clear area nearby. He stopped in a section of the keep which was empty of bodies and rubble, and had been spared from the terrible redness by a nearby stone building, which still partially stood. Runa followed him silently, and stopped when he did, standing still, looking down, saying nothing.

Taelord glanced at her. She wasn’t the same person she had been when they left the Volcarren. This Runa was darker, broken, empty inside. And she had every reason to be. She had been sure they could have peace, and she had been proven wrong. The war had begun, and would probably continue for a long time. Any chance of peace now was gone.

And if Taelord was honest, she should have seen that coming. They all should have. And yet she had hoped, and he had smiled. Despite everything, he had smiled.

Why? Blind optimism was no way to live, was it? Runa had learned that the hard way. And yet, standing now next to this quiet, darker Runa… Taelord couldn’t be sure. He saw too much of his mother in her, in the way she looked down, the way her wings drooped and her arms sagged.

The old Runa had been better. She had been naïve, but she had also been alive. She had seen the future which could have been, not simply the one which seemed most likely.

Taelord watched her silently. Yes. Yes, that was the difference. She had dared to hope, dared to focus on what might have been, instead of what almost certainly would be.

Ahnvad would have called it a foolish hope. An idle dream. A falsehood. And maybe he would be right. But didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because… they needed hope. More than ever, they needed it.

Taelord glanced out over the destruction. Kyrie slain. Buildings burned. Blood coating the streets. Yes. Ahnvad had been right. The Volcarrens did know only war and conflict. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t change. There would be war. And it would be bloody. But in time… in time there could be peace.

The rim of the sun appeared on the horizon. Taelord hadn’t realized the night had passed. He had lost track of time once Jandar had left. The light was reddish, dyed with smoke, a cruel imitation of the blood on the ground about them. But Taelord ignored those things. He looked only to the sun, and the sky beyond, which was now the palest of blues.

“A new dawn,” he whispered.

Beside him, Runa let out a breath. “A dawn of darkness,” she whispered.

Taelord glanced at her. The first rays of the new sun shone through the gaps in the keep wall, and lit her face and hair, illuminating both in gold light, tinted with red. But the light didn’t seem to reach her eyes. They remained dark, downcast.

“There is hope,” Taelord whispered to her.

Runa glanced at him, those cold eyes dead in the new light, as if they were endless pits into which the new dawn had fled.

“There is always hope, Runa. You taught me that.”

“There will be war,” Runa said, her voice flat, expressionless.

Taelord knew that voice well. His mother had used it once, after she had stopped trying to escape Ahnvad. It was the voice of defeat. Of acceptance.

“Yes,” he said. “There will be war. And it will be long and dark. But after every war there is peace. And this war is no different, Runa. There will be peace once it is over. And I will be there, and so will you.”

She looked at him silently for a time, those dead eyes searching his face, the new sun bathing the side of her head in light and casting the other side in darkness.

“How can you believe that?” she finally said. Her voice wasn’t accusing. It sounded almost… desperate. “How?”

Taelord held her gaze. “Because I choose to,” he said evenly. He watched her. “You can choose to also.”

She was silent for a moment, watching him. Then she turned to face the sun. Its light illuminated her fully, casting shadows behind her. To Taelord, the light seemed to lose its reddish quality, leaving her edged in gold.

“I hope you’re right,” she finally said, still watching the sun. She turned to him. “I really do.”

Taelord smiled at her. “There’s always hope,” he said.

She watched him for a moment. Then, as the rays of the sun illuminated the plains and the Red Flats beyond, she returned his smile. It was a small one, a tiny one, fragile in the new light. But it was still a smile.