[…]

It ached, when he pushed himself to stand after calling his companion from the formless aether, and left Running-Beyond-The-Sea to stand guard over Iman and their party’s magicked shelter. It ached, in the fresh wounds and the old, when he stepped away from them all to find the clear air. He would find it surely in the mountain’s eve, green stretching down, and down, and down.

Kairon put his shoulder against a hard-oak tree twisted low by the wind, and took a moment to breathe.

Peace had reigned over him, in Sylfina’s defeat. He had grown beyond her, and that was victory, but seeing her work in Isa and Iman had bitten down on something brittle in him, something deep and violent, and small. Old faces and old memories he’d never forget, no matter how long.

He wondered if this pain would echo, however distantly, to all of angelkind in the Higher Planes, bonded as they are — to all their kin in this world. Maybe this ache in his bones was theirs too, a sympathy across centuries and worlds.

He didn’t feel so alone, nowadays.

He took his medallion in hand, doffing a gauntlet to rub the grooves and cracks of the sunburst, all in polished copper and glass. He thought of Brom. He thought of happier days — tending to the fields and their blessings, listening to farmers bicker over cows, mustering the courage to ask a boy to the dance at Highsummer.

He brought the medallion to his lips, for just a moment, and let it fall against the dark metal of his armor. He traded it for a smiling brown stone, and felt it hum in his hand as he focused.

“It’s me. We did it. We beat her. In the mountains, near Bysaes Tyl, she failed. We’re free. She can’t hurt anyone ever again.”