No, it wasn’t in the events themselves. It was in his response to them. Not in how he had reacted to them physically, but in how he had responded emotionally. The former was over and done with in moments, but the latter lingered on. Emotional response was an after effect of every battle, every violent encounter, and over the years he had learned to recognize it and live with it. Every time he attacked and destroyed a slave camp and the children on which the demons had experimented, he lived with the pain and the sense of horror and guilt for weeks afterward. Sometimes months. If he was brutally honest, he would admit to himself that he was living with it still.

It was so here, but in a different way. Doing battle with Krilka Koos had awakened something new. He didn’t feel pain or horror or guilt about what he had done to the rogue Knight of the Word. But in the course of his struggle he had lost control of himself. This wasn’t new; it had happened before. In the bloodlust of battle, losing control was almost a given. If you weren’t madder and more reckless than those you fought to defeat, you were probably going to die. Michael had taught him that, and Michael had been right.

But this time something new had happened. This time he had enjoyed it. He had reveled in it. And now, in the aftermath, he was eager for a return of the feelings it had generated. How much worse, he wondered, could it be than this? His unwanted fascination with and desire for a resurgence of those feelings of power and freedom was terrifying. It suggested the onset of a steady disregard of the moral compass that had guided him all these years. He had always worried that someday the power of the black staff of his office, the magic that defined the Knights of the Word, would prove too much for him. The simple fact that there seemed to be almost no boundaries to its limits save those placed on it by the strength of commitment and sense of right and wrong of the user had troubled him from the beginning. But he had been confident that he could handle it, still a young man who believed in himself completely. He understood the risks, but he was more than willing to accept them for a chance to strike back at the demons and once-men responsible for the loss of his family and his childhood. Revenge was a powerful motivator, and it gave him a reason to embrace a power he might otherwise have shunned.