Who am I, but my memory? Would I be a different person if I forgot my past? I believe I would. The knowledge I continue to accumulate is more precious than my life. Who I am is shaped by who I was.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  “I don’t like your plan,” Julianos said, scowling at the people who, for lack of knowing what else to do, followed the nearly naked Suta?. “Should we chase them?”

  “We can’t leave this thing to get any fatter off people’s memories. How many have stopped under the same tree and then…” Dragos waved a hand in the direction of the departing group.

  Men and women who wouldn’t have a thing to do with each other if not for the Bezgina. The irony struck him enough that his lips twitched in an inappropriate smile. The sward by the road went towards more forest. Soon they would be lost to it.

  “I want to trust you, and yet I feel like I shouldn’t, brother,” Julianos said looking up at Dragos, who’d donned the leather armor of the Cavalerul de Lumina. “Why—why can’t I remember your name?”

  Dragos considered the question from the back of the ox, fingers curved around the beast’s hump. The brief contact must have had an effect on the cavaler. “The Unspoken touched you, and even from that brief touch, it still stole bits and pieces of what you know.”

  A few more black wisps flew by, having snapped off victims that wandered beyond the monster’s reach. For all Dragos did not fear most Nerostit?, this one kept his guts knotting like snakes. This one had to die.

  The caravan drew closer. He could not yet see individuals, but the shapes of the wagons began to take proper form. More than specks on the distant horizon.

  “We’re running out of time. We have to kill it before they get close enough to see what we’re doing.”

  “Why?” Julianos turned to face the way Dragos's attention was trained.

  “People ask too many questions. Assume too many things. Better to deal with Nerostit? in the shadow and be gone before they arrive,” the wounded wanderer explained, slinging his box over his shoulder.

  Julianos squinted at the distant caravan, lip curling doubtfully.

  “Swing where I tell you, when I tell you. If I’m right…” The last black cord snapped and whipped uncomfortably close past the cavaler’s head. “It will try to keep feasting for as long as people are near. It will come for us.”

  Dragos sounded more sure than he was. What he knew of bezgina filled an acorn. Though, if it slipped back into the veil and vanished, everything would be much easier. He flicked a look at the disappearing figures of the people who’d kept him captive. The people who’d been captives with him, drifting off into the wilds as if sleepwalking.

  The shimmer of the parted veil remained, a dark spot in the center of the crossroads. A shimmer only Dragos could see with his Solomonari training, unfortunately.

  The sun pressed down on his helmet. Sweat trickled, matting his hair to his neck.

  Something dark poked through the tear in reality.

  “It’s putting feelers out,” Dragos murmured, gaze riveted to the spot. His fingers flexed around the metal boning in his gloves. For this, he would have preferred a spear.

  Julianos stepped past the ox, his stance aggressive, sword leading the way. “Where?”

  “Dead center of the road. It moves like a snake on the ground. It crawls to its victim or a surface and from there upwards. It hasn’t stretched far, yet. A handspan.” Dragos narrated its actions. It began as a thick, singular tendril that split into feelers.

  “It’s aiming for you, wait. Almost there. Strike directly in front of you,” Dragos commanded.

  Julianos lunged and slashed. The sword squealed on stone. The bifurcated tendril fingerlings faded and vanished. The main trunk of the tendril jerked back a few inches. Dragos exhaled a sigh of relief.

  The knight glanced up at him angrily, “If you’re playing with me…”

  “I’m not. What I see is what caused your cohort and the prisoners to wander off together. This is real.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it,” Julianos sulked, but the evidence was irrefutable. Their irrational actions were due to the Unspoken. The knight stood true, squinting at an entity he couldn’t see and barely believed was there.

  “It’s slipping out again. Same orientation. Hold.” Dragos held up a hand, and when the feeler got into the knight’s reach, he slashed his palm down. “Strike.”

  It went on like that for some time. The oncoming caravan grew details. Dragos could see a bright red scarf fluttering from a woman’s hair. He could tell the lead wagoner’s beard was long and dark. They were almost there.

  Julianos’ eyes slid that way, his lips firming. “Come on!”

  The feelers split early this time. As soon as the black ribbon slipped from the tear, it splintered into a frayed tapestry of tendrils. “Bigger, it’s bigger. Wide as a wagon! Strike as if cutting a whole blanket!”

  Dragos itched to slide off the ox, to help him, but standing would be impossible. In few days he might be useful. Angrily, he clenched his gloves, teeth bared.

  The cavaler exploded into a flurry of slashes, sword ringing against the broad cobbles.

  “Left!” Dragos barked. “Step back!”

  Julianos responded instantly, his sure grip on his weapon never faltering as he swung. The splayed tendrils kept slipping forward instead of slithering back to the rift as they had been. The ox snorted. Dragos patted her side as he stared, eyeballs drying while the dance of sword and Nerostit? continued.

  The knight’s blade sparked along the basalt, parting the frayed strands. A few on the right wiggled toward him, inching toward the leather.

  Dragos barked, “Back, right!”

  Julianos’ footwork switched. His right hand flashed. Steel rang. He sliced inward in an arc in front of himself, his knees flexing as he blindly cut where Dragos told him.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Something changed. A heartbeat, the air—Dragos couldn’t tell what it was, but he felt it. A pulse in the air that felt like frustration. The slithering tendrils pulled back to bunch around the rip in reality.

  The tear in the veil bulged as a black mass crested.

  Sunlight shied away from its hulking folds. The Bezgina emerged as a gelatinous, walnut-like blob, birthing itself from the crossroads. It rose to jiggle on the stone, easily as large as the ox Dragos sat on. His breath caught.

  “It’s out. Drive your sword straight, as if a man stood in the center of the road and you’d pierce his heart,” Dragos said, finally blinking for the first time in minutes.

  Julianos planted his palm to his pommel and lunged forward, thrusting. He let out a bark of surprise. “I feel something!”

  The core of the bezgina, fed on the memories of the living, was more like a mortal being. Julianos’ sword had found its primary organ. The knight’s hands plunged into the glob as he forced his blade forward. The monster before him wobbled, shrinking in on itself. The tendrils that thrashed on the ground and wound about Julianos’ ankles before dissipating.

  The cavaler twisted his blade and pushed, gritting his teeth. The resistance he hit faltered. The bezgina sank, even as the shimmering rift itself faded. His blade slid through the Unspoken’s jelly-like body as it deflated, shriveling until even the stain of its existence was gone.

  With the cavaler as his weapon, they’d succeeded, against the odds.

  The steady plod of the caravan slowed. Dragos glanced over at the lead wagoner, who sat forward on his bench. “Salut! May we interrupt?”

  Dragos tipped his helmet at Julianos. “Just working on form. Carry on. Lumina s?-?i fie pa?ii.”

  The ox shuffled out of the way. Julianos flicked his sword, though no blood was left behind. A procession of four wagons trundled by, the guards on foot squinting with suspicion at the two as they passed. Dragos sat tall, ignoring their scrutiny. He had no response if they asked why he was sitting on an ox and why Cavalerul might be out at this lonely crossroads practicing sword techniques.

  Thankfully, they didn’t ask.

  Once the caravan had passed the little brook and carried on its way, Julianos turned to face Dragos, then looked around with a helpless shrug, sword still in hand.

  “Is it gone?” the knight asked, looking around for something he couldn’t see.

  “Dead,” Dragos corrected with the flash of a weary smile. For a while, anyway. He wasn't about to tell Julianos that spirits were not easy to kill. Quite likely it receded into cel?lalt t?ram.

  “What do we do now?”

  Dragos looked out where the knight’s fellow cavarul had gone. The empty meadow waved its grasses, uncaring of the people who had disappeared. He sighed and glanced at the wagon.

  “We search for the lost people and care for the children left behind.”

  Julianos frowned. “Lost people?”

  Dragos rubbed the leather palm of his glove across his face and grunted. “You stay and look after the children. You can let them out of the cage now that it’s safe.”

  Julianos flicked a glance at the armor Dragos was wearing and saluted. He turned on his heel and marched toward the wagon. The other ox had settled under the sprawling tree, contentedly chewing greenery.

  “We have a job to do yet, girl,” Dragos murmured. The ox groaned, but plodded forward when he urged.

  He searched the meadow for signs of passing, the tall grasses brushing the bottoms of his boots. The ox nipped at sweet clover now and again when he let her pause. Of the knights and prisoners, he found little sign.

  When dusk came and he’d found no stragglers, he returned to the crossroads.

  Julianos had built a fire.

  The children sat beside it, the flickering light washing over their faces. The girl’s haunted eyes told enough of her recent trouble. The boy was young. Unaware that he was left parentless in the world. He sat in Julianos’ lap, nibbling on a chunk of hard cheese.

  Cautiously, Dragos eased himself off the ox onto his throbbing feet. A bright new blaze of pain ran up his legs, and he hissed as he hobbled to sit. He let it fade before considering taking them off.

  His gaze flicked between the silent faces and returned to the knight’s, whose stare was lost in the little campfire. “What do you remember, Julianos?”

  The man blinked at Dragos, then answered with confidence. “I am Cavaler de Lumina. I protect people from—what we did. I do that.”

  “Where do you come from?” Dragos asked, probing for more. An idea was forming, but he had to know if Julianos lost too much during the fight. The man’s hand had been buried in the bezgina, though briefly.

  He chuckled nervously and pointed at Dragos's armor. “The same place you do. The Palisades.”

  “Before that?”

  “Vladmiren. My surname is Vladmire, my uncle is the count.”

  “And you remember how to fight, yes?”

  “Of course,” Julianos scoffed. “Though I admit some things are hazy. The Nerostit? affected me somehow. You’re my… suta?.”

  Recent memory was faulty. Dragos tugged at a boot and winced, then bit his lip and pulled it off. “You’ve got my medicine for my wounds. We need to brew some.”

  Julianos’s expression blanked, then brightened as he searched the pouch at his hip. While he set to brewing Dragos's medicine, he nodded at the discarded armor. “What’s that from?”

  “Deserters,” Dragos said, blithely lying. “We all deserted when we found out the Luminatori at the Palisades were corrupt. We vowed to no longer serve them.”

  The cavaler’s hands stopped mid-task. The firelight drew the lines of his face in dramatic relief. He looked down at the small clay pot and murmured, “How could I have forgotten…”

  “The bezgina consumed some of your memories, but listen, brother. That changes little. You vowed to protect people. That doesn’t have to change,” Dragos said, copying how the knights referred to each other. “Olta can guide you. She can see Nerostit?. You can raise her and her brother to be warriors, just like you. You can still do good in the world. She can grow up to be just like Zaleska, the first Cavaler de Lumina. A humble swineherd’s daughter can be exalted, given circumstance.”

  Or murdered, under similar conditions. Dragos didn’t linger on that thought. Olta was moroi viu. Either she was doomed to a life like his, or she could make something out of it. Time would tell.

  Olta’s chin lifted. Her reddened eyes glinted in the campfire as she asked, timidly, “Can I?”

  “Yes,” Dragos said firmly. His smile made his cheek ache, but he didn’t care. His heart warmed to see her find a thread of hope to hold to after the loss of her parents.

  Julianos dragged a hand over the small boy’s head and grinned wistfully. “I always wanted to be a father. But what legacy can a third son of a third offer a family?”

  “A grim one, but one with purpose,” Dragos suggested.

  The knight’s smile faded. With a resolute frown, he nodded. “This is a hard land. I will teach them to survive it.”

  Although he’d just consigned the children to the never-ending battle of balance between the living realm and the spirit realms, Dragos felt lighter. His heart beat with warmth. Maybe something good would come from the disaster.

  He glanced at the crossroads and wondered at it. What misbegotten fortune it was. Of all the places a Bezgina could have appeared, it had been on his route towards inevitable torture and death. A fate he'd prefer over wandering the countryside as a daft beast.

  If he were truly the last survivor from his school, who then would remember it?

  Suta? (soo-TASH): Like a Centurion, a non-commissioned, professional officer.

  Cavalerul de Lumin? (Ka-va-LEH-rool deh Loo-mee-NUH) [rolled r]: Knights of the Luminatorii order

  Nerostit? (neh-ross-TEE-teh) Calruthian word for all things unnatural or strange, synonymous with Unspoken. Places, events, and situations can be referred to as this, as well as beings.

  Cel?lalt t?ram (chel-uh-LULT tuh-RUHM): The other realm, where never living spirits spawn