By the time she had crossed two continents and returned to the monastery to fulfill her destiny, Endsong had so deeply mastered the demon's blade that she could lay down in the cool grass--or dance to her own inner music with the careless whimsy of a schoolgirl--all the while guiding the sword through the air in a flashing spiral of killing strokes that left whole battalions silently bleeding in its wake. The mages of the monastery, of course, had heard the tales of the young woman marching homeward, and had built up a significant defense, including the first artillery their world had ever known.
Strange, however, that although they took the stories of the dancing blade seriously (as if it were commonplace to witness a sword flying through the air of its own accord) the mages completely disregarded the rumors of ghostly wolves as the hallucinations of superstitious, terrified survivors.
Endsong... with her long, brown hair flowing in untameable ringlets... with her seal-brown eyes... with her white swordswoman's shirt and blue tunic... with her wide grin and penetrating gaze, a little mad, a little feral... she stood upon the green, in a full blaze of sun, and drew the silver sword. The distant walls ran with shapes that scurried, and shouts carried on the wind, informing her of their plans to unleash death in her direction.
Ceres, the lone wolf, the king and last survivor of a great pack, walked beside her, the top of his wide head coming near to her shoulder.
"Years you have dreamt of this afternoon, my love," said Ceres at length, the sound coming to Endsong's ears as though he were simply a man standing beside her. The great jaws of the wolf, however, remained closed and unmoving.
"Years I have prepared for it," she replied, and touched him lightly behind the ears. "Today I do what none of them expected, when they dropped me alone into your wilderness. I finish my training. I take them by storm, and leave no soul behind to write my story."
"And after?" he asked. Endsong bent to kiss his ear.
"We find another world to win," she whispered.
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