Sora knew that even if he'd known of Jynn's wound prior, it wouldn't have made any difference. It would have only slowed them down that much more, and they had walked a good ways. The sun behind them hung mid-morning, which was strange in its own right; strange he could see the dawn beyond the storm, way out in skies of clear, but no matter of how far they had walked the rains followed.

His mind scrambled to seek options, but it found none—helpless, lost, and enthralled in a storm. And this cold, this bitter cold from rains lasting half a day, still exhibited no sign of stopping. He thought of the feather and the way it felt: dismal, a wretched cold beyond norm. The storm felt this way. The Crowrider. He recalled an old tale; remembered the book, remembered the demon who rode amongst the winged beast inked onto the cover. The Riders Storm.

Lightning flashed like a surge of realization.

The demon. It made sense, and it surprised Sora that it took him this long to see it. Then again, there wasn't a moment to really stop and reminisce of old stories. The demon had trapped them in what would be their sodden grave. It was the storm.

He hauled Jynn onto his back and moved forward. "Eoshi!"

He called several times. It was a shot in the dark, but those shots were all he had. Nothing called back. Nothing came. Not that he expected it to.

"Jynn, are you there? Talk to me, kin. Don't you die on me; I'm going to get you out of this. I swear it on my name. On my word, I swear I'll get you home. I'll get us home." The promise fell from his lips, but this was the first time he felt his words ring utterly hollow. Did he mean what he said? He wanted to, but some sick feeling in his heart told him this could very possibly be their grave. Would anyone find them? Would the demon take their corpses? Ana.

He heard a noise, a sort of snarl. He pushed the thoughts away and snapped his neck to his left to catch sight to a giant lizard-like creature scampering around blindly, smelling the air. A gnawer had awoke, from when he yelled for his mount he assumed. He noted it didn't look cheerful, no surprise there either. As he had heard before, they had become hostile. Not long before Haede's death, he received news of a single gnawer destroying an entire merchant caravan, the thought of it shook him. He took some slow steps backward and watched the gnawer follow. The blood! It has scent of Jynn's blood, he realized. The rain provided good deterrence, but what gnawers lacked in vision, they gained in hearing and smell, pretty exceptional considering the downpour. He rolled his shoulders to get a better hold of Jynn. The caster moaned and with that brought him both relief and concern.

He walked backwards and unsheathed his dagger. The gnawer came that much closer. The short piece of steel trembled in his hand, simply holding it was more painful than one could imagine. His knuckles felt as if they would shatter if he gripped any tighter. He steadily walked backward and the gnawer inched closer by the second. It raised its head and met him eye to eye.

He stopped.

The gnawer opened its wicked jaws with a loud trill. Sora stumbled, with the extra weight, he turned and tripped against his own feet. In that descent, he remembered how he had laughed at his clumsy messenger for doing the same mere hours ago, now, not so nearly as funny. Both the dagger and caster fell from his grasp, all landed hard. The gnawer roared. Sora immediately scrambled to his feet, lunging for the blade. The gnawer moved in, head low, serpentine. It snarled showing rows of serrated teeth. "Shit, shit, shit!" He readied what remained of his strength, blade in a fist, hilt down.

The skies resonated with a caw. The crow. The gnawer stopped abruptly and craned its thick neck skyward.

Sora didn't hesitate to seize the moment. He vaulted himself onto the gnawers back, wrapping his stiff, aching legs around its throat. The beast growled. He clasped the dagger in two hands and drove the blade into one of the beast's beady eyes, gratingly twisting the blade in the canal. The gnawer howled. It bucked and rose on two legs with a spin and jerk. Sora locked heel in foot. He withdrawed his dagger. With it, came nerves and what was left on an eye, dangling grotesquely from the end of the blade, leaving the beast a bloody and rather brutalized empty socket.

Above, the crow again voiced its caw. Below the gnawer continued its distressed howling. Sora flicked the eye from the dagger and went for the other, but not with steel. He dug into the socket with his frozen fingers, clawing out the eye with his bare hands. Somewhere inside him, he felt as if a flame had ignited. Not in the sense of warmth, but a like a blaze of adrenaline, and it burned like two hells. He felt his mouth quirk at its corner as he ripped out its other eye. He had never felt this kind of feeling before. This burning inside, it slightly unnerved him. A sick feeling hit him as he glanced at the beady pupil staring back at him. A part of him suddenly wondered what it'd feel like to crush it; wondered if it would run like honey and jam between his fingers.

And so, he did. And so, it was true.

The beast roared, sprawling about in a prance; in one leap, it damned near came down upon Jynn. Sora shoved the dagger down beast's ear canal with a trained precision. Even for something as vicious as a hostile gnawer, its anguished howls would bring anyone's heart sorrow. He yanked out the dagger and slid it relentlessly into the beasts neck. Out and in – out and in, over and over until he finally embed the dagger into its skull. The gnawer's legs buckled. Its howling met an end.

Sora recovered and stood watching the rain wash his red stained hands. The rain was cold, but the blood . . . Warm.

He eyes scanned for Jynn. He saw the caster lying where he had dropped him. He ran over and took a knee, laying an ear to Jynn's chilled face. Chilled really beyond an understatement, but he heard what he wanted to hear. The rasped ebb and flow of Jynn's faint breath. "Stay with me, kin." He cut his own cloak to pieces until nothing but tatters remained sprawled across his back; enough to make a makeshift bandage to dress Jynn's wound. The fate of the caster rested beyond his knowledge, but he would do everything he could for the man he called friend. Many summers had passed since he'd come to know the miraculous, Jynn Thorn. Gods, the things we'd get into, he thought. This wasn't the first time the two had a run in with an angry gnawer. One of the last, it was Jynn who had saved him, AND they escaped with the egg. Magi wasn't the only thing Jynn excelled at either, he was quite the cook and that day he learned fried gnawer eggs were delicious.

He stood and made back for the creature and pulled the dagger from its sheath of bone. It took everything he had to roll the creature over. He drove the blade into a point right below the gnawer's throat and filleted the creature neck down. Its organs oozed out from inside. Above he heard the crow again, louder than ever. It seemed close. He couldn't see it, but he felt it circling them above and he understood what the demon was trying to do. He returned to the thoughts of his father and mother. Anger and the love for a friend was the only thing he had left to fuel him.

He dragged Jynn to the gutted gnawer and rolled him inside, its innards a fine blanket of warmth. He quickly saw the rain would be an issue. If it didn't stop, if all else, they'd drown. He angled the remains of the gnawer to the side and used the large crow feather and remnants of his cloak to keep the rain from Jynn's face.

When he heard it, it was already too late.

It came back.

It was faster than he ever could have imagined too. Strange world when one moment your life hangs on the verge of hypothermia, the next your life literally hangs in the crippling hands of a demon. It had Sora by the throat, his feet dangled under him.

His lungs no longer burned from the frigid air, but from the lack thereof. He never thought he'd long for another icy breath the storm so generously bestowed him. The demon held him above like a hooked fish. He kicked and tried to break free of its grasp, a pointless feat, and near pitiful, really. In its other hand it held a long, meaty piece of steel, the greatsword it had taken from him. He watched the demon drive it into the ground and claw back its hood, veiling a face of ages past. Decayed flesh hung loose on a skeletal frame. Hanging with it, a prominent smell of burnt ash and rotting corpses turned his stomach. Heathen-black eyes tugged at his own as if the demons dead stare pull him in, like a part of him was being sucked out.

He couldn't look away.

His head began to throb miserably. He felt it when it entered his mind, shifting through his memories; visiting places in his head that even he had long forgotten and it tore them apart. He tried to think of Ana, but could not picture her face. His own thoughts seemed like fragments; pieces of things he couldn't place back together. The demon probed further, filling his thoughts with its own. He saw only what the abomination wanted him to see. He saw the black. He saw the timeless abyss. He saw He, and Sora knew His name.

"Cinhdyr."

Words would never truly describe what he saw. A fallen god hung, shackled in chains bolted to the fabric of an empty void, the feeling that overtook him as the god raised his head – indescribably sickening. The eyes of Hell met his own like vile pools of the blackest sin. He looked upon the face of ruin and saw loathing. He saw iniquity. He saw hate, envy, and scorn. He saw death.

But the more he looked, he found something else.

He saw fear.

He saw dread and dismay and trepidation in that face.

He saw terror.

It stopped.

The vision faded as it withdrawed from his thoughts. The demon dropped him. The abhorrent screech it released sent chills crawling up his spine, much worse than any terrible caw the crow could muster. Sora gasped for breath. The frozen embrace that met his lungs was not a pleasant one, but welcomed. The demon fell backwards, clawing at its face yelling in a tongue he did not recognize. The words rang not in one voice, but voices of many.

"Digna."

"Est Nomen Tuum."

"Filius Dei. Sanctus."

The demon rolled on its back, screaming, spitting the words repeatedly.

"Digna.

"Est Nomen Tuum."

"Filius Dei. Sanctus."

Sora saw his greatsword standing where the demon had left it. His eyes turned to the crow. It studied him queerly, its neck snapped from side to side, silent, watchful.

He moved for the blade.

"Digna . . ."

His hands wrapped around the hilt and he watched the crow warily as he pulled it from the mud.

"Est Nomen Tuum . . ."

He stood over the demon and grasped the blade in both hands.

"Filius Dei–"

"Caaaaaw"

Sora snapped his gaze up. The crow plunged toward him like a loosed arrow. He threw himself left and swung in a wide arc, his blade seared through the bird's feathered side as it soared past; dark ash spewed from the wound. The crow screeched and with a swift flail of wings, it turned and came darting back faster than one could blink. With no time to react, the crow came down upon him, pinning him to the ground with its talons. It drilled down with is crude beak. He quickly yanked forward his blade to shield his face. The beak ruthlessly hammered against the faces of the Old Kings engraved along the flat of the steel. Underneath, the sword battered him with each bludgeoning strike.

He felt it – felt it well up inside him again, his heart surging liquid flame through his veins with each boiling pulse. It was stronger than before. He didn't know what it was, but it scared him; scared him more so than the crow itself. In fact, for a moment he forgot about the crow entirely – the cold, the storm, the demon, his dying friend even, he forgot them all. The feeling grew hotter and hotter until he saw it. His thoughts brought him to the flame, a magnificent fountain of crystal flame locked inside a cage. The flame shone brilliantly, reflecting his image like blazing mirror, the cage surrounding it, dull, black stone.

You must only tell it to open, you know.

He heard these words in his head, but they were so much unlike his own. Were they his own?

Speak the words. It will obey.

Words? What words? He said to himself.

I have given the gift. You only need use it.

I don't understand?

Speak the command. Tell it to open and it will be so.

His eyes fixed on the flame. Open . . . Nothing happened. Still it blazed beyond the cage.

Speak with the gift.

I don't understand! What gift? His thoughts brought no reply. He asked again, What gift?

Speak not with your tongue, speak with the gift. Let the word pass you lips, unhindered.

He felt it burn inside him, but he realized it still contained. He saw the cage, no lock, no door. He focused on the flame. He watched it dance, flicker and curl at its end. His mind's eye became lost in its smokeless beauty. He felt himself take a breath, the air alarmingly warm. With that breath he felt its power. With that breath he inhaled no darkness. With that breath, he found it.

He spoke the gift.

Patefacio!

The stone cage shattered before him into shards beyond count. The flames consumed him. His eyes flashed open, no longer their red and blue, but beaming like two suns of brilliant white. When he saw the crow, it would strike him no longer. Its gnarled beak made its last fall when he took hold. The crow squirmed to jerk its head free, but he did not grant it the blessing. "

"Mortuus!"

The crow began to shake violently. Its flesh bubbled underneath its black feathers. It managed to give a final anguished caw before it erupted into nothing more than black dust.

Sora rose to his feet, turning to the demon. It still lay repeating the same words, its skin clawed and mangled off its grim face, and now, he understood.

"Worthy."

"You Are"

"Being of God"

Sora moved for him, his heavy blade drug behind. With a merciless heave, he swung overhead, cutting the demon's babble short through a split jaw. Half a head rolled away. Its eyes and flesh withered, leaving behind only hollow skeletal remnants. In an instant, the bitter cold left them, as did the rains, cleared up with a single swing. The clouds dissipated and so did his flame. With that brought the dawn and a weathered king.

Sora grinned, because for once, he thought he finally understood what the caster meant by being drained. He turned to meet Jynn's dead stare. The feather had vanished, exposing the casters ghastly face to the light of the morning. Sora's tried to speak Jynn's name, but it never escaped his lips. Strengthless, he collapsed to his knees and onward so to his face. With his last moments, he took one final glimpse of the sun. He wasn't sure what it was about its embrace - warmth, victory, maybe - but it was enough to bring him one final smile.

"As they always have, kin."

It was finished.