Cainan picked up the only weapon he had available, which happened to be the book he’d read a hundred times if he’d read it once, the words practically burned into his memory.

What was happening now wasn’t history repeating itself, was it? If so, it didn’t make sense, like a world viewed through cracked glass, distorted and twisted into something grotesque.

Another guard was assailed by several spikes, whipping past and embedding themselves in gaps in his armor while others clanked off the metal. His eyes immediately rolled back in his head and he toppled over. Dead or sleeping? Cainan wondered. It was impossible to tell.

A third guard, finding his courage, stopped his retreat and stepped forward to meet his enemy, who moved into Cainan’s view. About half the guard’s height with a beard that almost reached his own feet, the dwarf was weaponless and armorless, not seeming to care that his foe’s sword was stabbing directly toward his chest. But then, before Cainan’s very eyes, his vision seemed to distort at the exact moment when the blade should’ve pierced the dwarf’s skin, instead somehow reversing its path, twisting around and impaling its owner, whose mouth gasped open like a fish out of water. His hands remained on the sword’s hilt, and to any outsider who’d just stumbled upon the scene, it would very much look like the guard had stabbed himself purposely. He grunted, pain flashing across his face, his arms straining at his own weapon, trying to dislodge it. There was a moment where the blade held fast, but then it squelched free, a lopsided smile finding its way onto the man’s lips, fading as blood pumped from the hole in his chest. Strength left him and he went the way of the first two.

But his bravery had inspired his two remaining comrades, who decided this was as good a place as any to make their last stand. They stood, white-knuckled hands on weapons. The dwarf offered a low, sweeping bow and then backed away. It had been many years, but what he’d learned in the Rocklands had never left him, and he knew the effects that use of godsblood had on a person, especially a novice. Though the dwarf played it off with all the drama of an actor, the creases in his forehead and the sweat that had gathered between them told Cainan that he was fatigued from the effort to use his Ability.