Unfortunately, the dragon had continued to elude us for the rest of the day. We settled on attempting to find an appropriate location to launch our attack. We had a similar amount of luck in finding somewhere decent. The area around Noel’s Chapel was expansive and variable – we didn’t have the time or the knowhow to find a spot to set ourselves up on.

We headed back to the village and decided to sleep on it, though as we discussed it in the larder, Sandra elected to offer us some advice. I leaned against the table and explained it to her; “We need somewhere with a good vantage point – so Tahar can injure it first before we try to kill it conventionally.”

She snapped her fingers, “I know a good place. It’s near the quarry – they call it Vresgard’s Pass. It used to be a popular travel route before they rotated the mining sites. There’s a big rock formation there that the kids liked to climb up.”

“We’ll have to decide when we see it. Could you show us it tomorrow?”

“For the sake of protecting the village a short detour is nothing to concern myself with.”

“Thank you.”

Cali and Tahar were already preparing to turn in for the night. We were going to have another early morning out in the wilds. I wanted to get the dragon killing over with so we could head back home to warmer territory. I’d never take the sun for granted again after this trip north. Sandra noted that I was still in my gear, “Would you mind helping me with something? I need an extra pair of hands for a little errand.”

“Uh, sure.”

I followed her out through the pews and to the front yard. On a clear night the view was spectacular. The mountains that surrounded the village on all sides, and the way that the lanterns inside and out illuminated the main road and the surroundings. I could only rue the fact that I didn’t have a camera to capture the moment with.

Sandra walked over to the low stone wall that surrounded the perimeter of the property and motioned to a large pile of chopped wood that had been delivered, “Just take as much as you can carry and bring it inside.”

I could have easily carried all of it, but Sandra had already set about taking on some of the burden by the time I reached her. I leaned down and sorted through it, taking the largest and heaviest pieces into my arms to save her the trouble. I returned to my feet and noticed a figure ascending the stairs. It was the same man who had ignited the war of words in the street the previous day – Harold, I recalled. He marched up the steps to the chapel with a furious purpose. He came to a stop at their apex, his eyes locking onto me and Sandra immediately.

“You’re still here? I would have thought that a spineless cur like you would’ve cleared out by now.”

“I came here to kill a drake, and the job isn’t done just yet.”

“Job? Nobody asked you to do nothing! We can handle our own mess, without money grubbing bastards like you demanding the clothes off our back and the leather off our feet.” I couldn’t tell if his red face was a consequence of the cold or his impotent, spitting rage. On anybody else I would have described it as a jolly, Santa-esque visage.

Sandra held up her hands and tried to cool tensions, “There’s no need to be angry with him, Harold.”

“Don’t you start as well! This is partly your fault; why do you house these strangers in the chapel?” he scoffed. “They’ve wormed their way into your home with a few choice words – they’ll be looting and robbing soon enough. You can put a bet on that!”

Sandra wasn’t going to stand up to his withering insults. I cut in to defend myself, “I fail to see how that’s relevant. Unless you mean to imply that this chapel is still in use?”

He opened his mouth to speak but hesitated – had he thought better than to show his hand so easily? He moved evasively and spoke around my question, “We don’t like strangers. They’re nothing but bad news.”

“Maybe it’s because you give them such a warm welcome? I’m offering you charity here. I’m not asking for anything from any of you.”

“We don’t need charity, for all we know you could have been the one who killed our boy!”

Harold was extremely lucky that my hands and arms were occupied with a bundle of firewood, because if not he would have lost a few teeth for throwing a baseless claim like that at me. I stepped up to him, intentionally emphasising the size difference between us. People like him always thought they had the upper hand. They thought their age brought experience, and that they could just order others around without consequence.

I hissed into his ear, “Well he certainly wasn’t killed by a fucking dragon, was he?”

The air was taken from his sails as the full implication of what I said settled in. He quickly backed away, pointing a stern finger at me as if it held some kind of divine power. “Watch your tongue, lad! We don’t take kindly to that kind of talk!”

That was enough for me. I dropped the wood to the floor and grabbed him by the scruff of his jacket. I pulled him over to me and swung my hips, tripping him up and throwing him down onto the snowy ground below in a breathless heap.

“No, you listen to me, lad. I was happy enough to keep my nose out of your business, but you can’t seem to take a hint. If you think I’m taking the fall for whatever you did to him, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Harold fumed – he wasn’t even listening to what I was saying. He scrambled back up onto his feet and tried to throw a punch around the back of my head. I was too wise to fall for a sloppy attack like that. I responded by throwing a jab that smacked him right on the nose and sent him sprawling all over again. Even as I tried my hardest to hold myself back, I still hit him with enough force to break bone. Luckily that didn’t happen on this occasion.

Sandra cried out in shock. The look on her face told me that she wasn’t used to this kind of thing happening in front of her. Harold was laid out on his back like an upturned turtle as I circled around to face him from above. “I could easily go down there and tell his folks what really happened to him, if you’d prefer?”

“Who’s gonna’ believe you?” he spat resentfully.

I shrugged, “Failing that – I could just grab his body, which you helpfully relocated into a safer location for me. I’m sure somebody will crack and spill the truth, as obvious as it is to me already.”

“There’s nothing for the likes of you to know!”

I grinned as I put the screws to him again; “I don’t know. A holy relic, explosives on demand, and tracks that don’t support your pet theory about a dragon mauling him. Motive, method, and cover up. Anything more than that is superfluous to me.”

Harold knew I had him dead to rights now. Again, I didn’t care about what happened. The truth would come out, especially judging by the increasingly terse atmosphere that was building around them while I wasn’t there. The first one to break ranks would lift a weight of guilt from their shoulders and get to dictate the narrative. My rough theory was that they had unearthed an old holy relic somewhere, and had need of killing someone to keep it quiet.

But why would they want to keep it? Those types of thing were only valuable to remnants of the Branch Church, and the inquisition – who were one of the few remaining institutions that sprouted from them. Even the Inquisitors had a complicated relationship with the Church, most of them were not active worshippers. Harold wasn’t tough enough to be an inquisitor, so that meant…

“The reason this chapel is in such good shape, you have Branch devotees here, don’t you? Most other places just left them to wither away into nothing. I’ve never seen a church or chapel like this before. It’s pristine.”

Only in small, isolated villages like this could Branch worship still be considered an active practice. Away from the eyes of the world they continued to hold onto an old tradition. You would be hard pressed to find someone willing to admit to it. It simply wasn’t in fashion.

“That’s complete nonsense,” he replied. He picked himself back up off the floor and clutched his bruised face. “The Church hasn’t existed for hundreds of years! There aren’t even any acting priests!”

“The Church might not exist, but there are still people who follow the teachings. Not that it matters to me in the end. I’m not a snitch. I’m not saying anything.”

“Oh, really? That didn’t stop you from threatening me, did it?”

“That doesn’t mean I’ll just sit back and let you do whatever you want. I won’t say anything as long as you don’t screw with me. Seems like a fair deal. But here’s a word of advice, keeping a secret this big between you and the other guys – someone’s gonna’ crack eventually. It’s up to you whether you want to deal with the consequences now or later.”

I had learned at an early age that signing a ‘pact’ with others was a bad call. Inevitably someone would try to use the knowledge to get leverage on the others. People didn’t understand mutually assured destruction. Many rogues and thieves had been hoisted by their own petard after trying to blackmail their co-conspirators.

“Keep it to yourself, you bastard!”

With that last piece of defiance, he hurried back down the stairs and out of sight. Whatever he had intended to do by coming here had been forgotten in the face of our confrontation. Sandra finally made her presence known again by reaching down to recollect her dropped lumber. I did the same, coming face to face with a pensive frown.

“How much of that did you catch?”

“Some of it,” she whispered, “Are you sure it’s okay to keep it from everyone?”

“As callous as it sounds, it isn’t my problem. You can’t fight gravity. The only way this ends is with one of the guilty parties letting the truth slip. I’ll leave it to his family to decide how they want to respond to that news.”

That didn’t placate her inquiries at all, if anything it only made her angrier.

“Do you always pass on the chance to do the right thing?”

I stopped halfway from grabbing a plank and looked up at her, “The right thing? How do you know it’s the right thing? Every choice you ever make has consequences you don’t understand at the time. Harold could fucking stab someone if I let them know about it. How am I supposed to know?”

Sandra shook her head; “That’s no excuse for inaction. His family is devastated! And if any of them were involved with his death…”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“I’m a bad person. I do bad things all the time; I don’t have a choice – but they’re still the ‘wrong’ thing to do. If I agonised over every little detail, got myself tangled up in everyone else’s business, I’d go mad just from trying to keep up with it. And for what purpose?”

“So that your soul can be judged properly-“

“Let me stop you there, Sandra. You know how I got here? I’m an outworlder. I’m pretty sure I kicked the bucket once. I didn’t do anything to deserve the kind of life I’ve had to live here, not even close. If there is someone making that kind of decision for me - they’ve got a cruel damn sense of humour.”

Sandra stepped back as if I had physically struck her.

“This life is nothing but chaos. People with their own wants and motivations, some of them willing to do horrible things to get them. When you’re faced with all that, in all of its ugliness and rawness – what else is there to do? Leave them to it. That’s my answer. Like I said, it’s going to come tumbling out soon. Then it’ll be down to you to pass judgement on the people responsible.”

Sandra knew that trying to persuade me was a waste of time. She sorrowfully completed the task she had set herself before asking me one last question, “So… do you not believe in the gods above?”

I laughed, “I don’t need to believe. I know. But faith and belief are very different things. I don’t have faith in them. Not one bit.”

I also knew what Sandra wanted to say. She wanted to offer apologies and explorations of the myriad traumas that led me to being the man I was. I already understood them better than her. This was my cold indifference. The ode of a man who didn’t want to be a hero. I had to look out for myself. I had always had to look out for myself. They didn’t need my guiding hand to bring things to their conclusion.

That boulder was already rolling down the hill, and soon Sandra would see that I was correct.