KORIK

‘“Tell me, Great Scaled Mother, what I ever did to earn such hatred from you?” I question the vast expanse of darkness and shimmering lights.

But the night remains still and silent as death.’

— Korik, “Silent” They Come at Night

Nearly a year later…

“…I’m going to become a Royal Knight.”

What a fecking joke. I’ll be lucky if they even let me scrub wurm guts of a knight’s boots.

I head out away from the barracks and into the darkness. Away from the braziers and the people around them. Out to where it’s just me and the night. Still and empty and…lonely.

What made me think that this place would be different? That volunteering for service would make a damned of a difference at all?  

I laugh bitterly to myself as I spin the ring of the kunai on my finger.

I was a fool to think it would actually work. That anyone anywhere would see me as anything more than—

I let the kunai go and watch it arc up into the night before it plummets back down to strike the earth with a nearly silent thunk. 

As anything more than the Ditchwater Fawn. 

I pull the bottle I nicked from a cart along the way from the inside pocket of my moss-green jacket and lift it to the moonlight so I can read the label.

Oh wow, I nicked the good stuff.

This mead must have been on its way to a knight’s quarters.

“Oops,” I say in mock apology as I pull the stopper from the bottle. 

I feel absolutely no remorse for the theft. It’s only fair seeing as the Grands sit by and do nothing while the other cadets poach my meager stipends. 

The bastards.

I yank the kunai from the earth and flick it halfheartedly toward the side of the building as I put the bottle to my lips.  

The liquid slides across my tongue warmed just enough from being pressed against my body as I carried it. 

My breath catches and I nearly choke. It tastes like sunlight dancing across the forest floor. 

It’s sudden—the stabbing pain in my heart.

Why couldn’t I have lived there forever? Why did that monster have to take you away? Tell me why, Mamma?

I tip my head toward the night, but find no comfort in the Stars, just anger in their silence.

I pour so much of the mead into my mouth that I nearly do choke on it this time.

The bottle makes a dull thunk as I half set it—half drop it—in the crabgrass at my feet. 

I could strike down every Star in the sky with a kunai—cover the whole of the earth in their shimmering ashes and it would never be enough. I would never be enough. 

Because I wasn’t born like them. Because I wasn’t made like them. And they will never ever let me forget it.

I’ve brought a dozen kunai and I unleash them one by one on the side of the building like it owes me a debt. Like it alone robbed me of my mother and my home.  

I throw the kunai quicker and faster. Thunk, thunk, thunk. I retrieve them and start again. 

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

Again. And again. And again.

This was supposed to make me feel better. Or at least less retched. But if anything it’s only added kindling to the fire raging within. 

Why would you curse me to be so weak that I cannot even draw a proper bow? I angrily question the Great Scaled Mother.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

Why would you give me the heart of a knight, but make me unable to wield a sword?

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

Why would you leach the colors from my mane and antlers and tail?

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

I stomp over to the wall and yank all the kunai from the wood. Then I storm back through the crabgrass and drop the blades like a cloud delivering a dozen bolts upon the earth. 

My teeth clamp tight as I prepare to toss the next kunai. 

Why would you—?

And that’s when I realize my eyes have gone a bit blurry not from drink, but from tears.

I start to swing back to throw the blade but let my hand fall to my side instead. 

Why…?

I sink to my knees, trembling with all that I’m trying to keep contained inside. As the angry tears spill down my cheeks I tip my head toward the star-filled sky. 

“Tell me, Great Scaled Mother, what I ever did to earn such hatred from you?” I question the vast expanse of darkness and shimmering lights.  

But the night remains still and silent as death.

“You have nothing to say for yourself?”

I surge to my feet in blind tear-soaked rage.

“Fine then. I don’t need you! I don’t need anyone!”

I wrap my fingers around my pendant as I swing my other arm back and—

The kunai feels so light in my hand as I let it loose. And a strong wind comes rushing across my skin, dragging my mane along with it. The tendrils splaying out before me in the moonlight like pale ribbons. As if they would chase my blade across the air were they not attached to me.

Thunk. It hits the side of the building. 

And someone screams.

Uh oh, Korik what did you do?! 

Did Kor just commit murder? Find out in the next episode of They Come at Night!