He watches Kamala put her boot through a small door between the boarded windows of the storefront, more or less obliterating it in a hail of splinters. She’s first through the doorway, the other Aegins rushing in behind her with daggers drawn. Daian waits after the last of them has disappeared inside, the predictable sounds of chaos that follow causing a hollowness to fill his gut.

A moment later a scraggly little man in a knee-length tunic and leather sandals dashes through the wreckage of the doorway and scrambles across the street, freezing in panic as he finds Daian barring his path.

Daian looks at the brief expanse of the man’s chest. A medallion rests against it, hanging from a chain. Unlike Daian’s coin, the stars upon the medallion’s face are bright and gleaming and clear. Each one has the shape of a basic life-giving element forged into its center; a rock, a wave of water, a flame, curling lines representing wind.

The priest’s terrified eyes shift from Daian’s face to his dagger.

With a sigh, Daian quickly flips the coin into his free hand and sheathes the dagger in its baldric scabbard. He tucks the coin away beneath his tunic.

“Please,” the priest begs. “Please, just let me pass.”

Daian shrugs. “You’re mistaking me standing here for me barring your path, friend.”

The priest blinks at him, confused. For a moment he even relaxes his shoulders and the terror leaves his expression.

Behind him, screams issue from inside the building, followed by what sounds like the breaking of furniture and the smashing of glass.

The priest glances back over his shoulder. When his face turns back to Daian the panic and fear have not only returned, they’ve melded into violent desperation.

“I’m sorry,” the priest offers penitently.

The small, hemp-wrapped handle of a makeshift knife appears in his hand from a hidden fold in the priest’s tunic.

Neither Daian’s expression nor his posture change. His eyes remain fixed on the priest’s face, almost as if he doesn’t notice the weapon.

The priest lunges at Daian, and though the spindly little man is fast it’s almost as if he’s moving through mud, such is Daian’s quickness and ease in seizing the priest’s wrist with his hand and stopping his attack. Daian twists the smaller man’s arm, extracting a yelp of pain and causing the priest’s entire body to stiffen like tumblers in a lock. Daian effortlessly plucks the knife from the man’s hand.

“You need to learn to wear this on the inside,” he advises the priest, tapping the tip of the man’s confiscated blade against his medallion. “That’s the best place to keep the things you don’t want other people to see. Believe me.”