"Are you sure you want to continue his assignment?"
Kiriel leaves when he's six. Vortimer spends the next day nested in the throne antechamber's hall, cupping his ears so he can hear the elder knights bark. Each of them runs like a pack of mad dogs to different wings of the fort, hunting for another officer to interrogate.
"...what she would want..."
"—you don't know what Kiriel would—"
"Somebody get Garmore out here and..."
"...crazy? He'll start a manhunt for—"
"Kiriel's dissent is intended to upset our formation." Ezel's voice crashes down like an ocean wave over the throne room, brushing aside Agravain and Beaumains. "She disagrees with us. We will not give her the satisfaction. Vortimer stays."
"Are you certain? That one...if something were to trigger the armor, he would—"
"He stays."
The knights file out hurriedly, muttering to their nearest inferiors. Their attention is turned to the balistrariae and curtain wall, as though expecting an inquisition to fly down the vale's anterior cliffs within the hour. They do not see Vortimer in the shadow of Majesty's statue.
Ezel comes out last, herded by Beaumains and Gareth at the fore. He sees Vortimer. He does not meet his eyes.
When the antechamber is silent, Vortimer claws at his skin, jet platelets bristling. The armor hisses, breathing with him.
"You will remain here."
He thought Ezel came out last.
"Why was that...in question?" It's one of the first things he says to her openly. It comes out as a rasp—He cannot raise his voice to her. She terrifies him. Her skin is scorched black like pitch, scar tissue forming fangs that hook around the witch's jawline.
"You heard us."
Vortimer knows how Macha looks at him. The other paladins get caught on his armor, meeting his horse's iron muzzle, but she stares past that and looks through him. As if his skin were just another sheet of mail, she sees someone else in his eyes.
"I heard..." Vortimer stumbles back, suddenly unsure if he should be making an escape route.
"Go on."
"...that you sent our allies to their deaths."
Macha's expression caves instantly. A smirk, and something like coals being rubbed together stuck in her throat. "I've done many things for victory."
"Then why...why do you serve with us?"
Her eyes grow cold, the gold in them flushed away. "Your Ezel needed power." Macha rumbles, drawing a nail along her scarred cheek. "Witches are good for that."
Shadows clot in her palms, black magic racing along the witch's veins. Macha is distant, gliding toward the antechamber's rear with her rain cape hanging back, like a raven preparing to take flight. "Power...that armor you wear is also powerful. I would like to see it."
Vortimer has more than heard. Faces swim in his dreams, familiar mouths contorted into screams and gnashing teeth. The memories surface in ranks of marching dark armors and a ragged corpse fused at the knuckles to his sword, dragging a bloody cape around his shoulders. Macha is there, jeering at the corpse, and Vortimer's last thoughts before he wakes are wishing to tear her pale face asunder.
"Look at them." Ezel shakes him from his dreams. Vortimer is fourteen. Platoons of black raincoats march down the vale's escarpments, raising up halberds to the roiling sky. "You must always remember, Vortimer."
"Eh?"
Clay spires break open at their approach; dragons' teeth splitting into fiery whorls, throwing up the Shadow Paladin remnants to catch on their allies' weapons. The march continues unhindered.
"The world was not born into darkness," Ezel unsheathes one heavy scimitar, drawing it out over the dusty landscape.
"Futile." Macha snarls, driving her boot into the cliff's fore. Shadows coil about her gauntlets, snapping at the air. "What is this formation!"
"We are charging them." Ezel keeps cool, maintaining his blade's point on the battle unfolding in the vale's nadir.
"Foolishness. We finish them from here!" The spell howls, magical noise blistering the air where it builds.
"No!"
In that moment Vortimer is flattened. Blood runs between his eyes, slipping under his helmet to hide his world behind pools of stinging ink. His spine cries out, mail plates digging in where Macha's spell fired him into the stone below.
"You fire on our allies!"
Macha's steel talons raise him up by the neck, lingering magic creeping about her scowl. "Heel, dragon whelp! They are already in the fray. They have done their part. Know, that this is the price of victory!"
Rays thunder from Macha's free arm, plowing into the clashing tide of black and gold. Loose sinew and burned armor fly up from the epicenter, snaking down into the vale's empty basin.
When the scene is silent, Vortimer is on his knees. Ezel holds him up with one arm interlocked against his back. Still, his eyes are drawn away.
"Perhaps I..." His teeth feel loose when he speaks, as if Macha had shaken them free. "Should not have spoken."
"No!" Ezel barks, brow furrowing. His skin is bleached out by the vale's ever-churning tide of sand and dust, fine grains building up in the Incandescent Lion's armor. "No. If ever anyone tells you that it is wrong to speak...you must tell them that they are wrong, every time."
That is the first Vortimer can remember being seen.
"Every time?"
"A thousand times, if need be. You must always remember, Vortimer. The world was not born into darkness."
In his dreams, Vortimer is a dragon. He watches Macha fight. Fueling her magic with the hearts of allies, sending waves of knights surging out sewn deep with the power of darkness. He watches her blacken and scar, each spell waxing more of her away until only the heart remains. Vortimer spreads his wings, and Macha, the corpse and all their soldiers come unraveled.
Vortimer wakes up sixteen and with his armor choking him. Even with the exterior layers stripped off, the mail still traps heat like a toad to flies in the vale's evenings. In the heart of a battlefield encampment, Vortimer's holy beast armor is his lifeblood.
He greets the dawn while the rest of the Black Horse Corps lie with their steeds, relieving the Valkyries of their watch. Raging Storm huffs at the early rise, nudging her muzzle testily against Vortimer's mail.
He vaults onto the horse's back, running his fingers through her blond mane. The vale is a labyrinth of jagged earth and field traps, one that Storm knows as her territory. He wonders if she even thinks of a world outside the vale's cliffs.
The remnants break out from stone outcroppings with blades born. Vortimer sounds out his hail, brandishing his halberd in sweeping strokes to hold Il Dana's forces at bay; one draws too near, and black vipers surge from the Armor of the Black Horse.
"Fear not the knight of the dark dragon!" Fangs spring up from the ground, witched nettles roaring with Dana's voice, "He is but a man now! Sunder his flesh!"
Paladins with shields slathered black wall up against his horse, herding Storm against the vale's cliffs. Heedless of the men lying in bloody swathes below their heels the footsoldiers press in, batting with field swords and crude javelins. Vortimer pulls Storm into the crowd, planting the warhorse's hooves into the remnant armors.
The valkyries sweep down with Macha and Gareth at their backs on the trail above, blades scissoring through the massing Shadow Paladins. Fire rains down in plumes, fanning out over the vale's floor—Macha's spell sends Flash Edge hurtling, scorched feathers splashing black over Vortimer's armor. Blade Feather jerks back in time for a javelin to catch her, sinking into the sandy floor.
"Sorry," the blood is drained from Flash Edge's face, eyes wandering blind, searching the sky for Vortimer. When she raises her hand, it lands on his horns. "I couldn't...should've told you that—"
The wound in her back yawns wide, exposed tissue cauterized by the rain of magical fire. His hand slips in by accident when letting her down. Another shot sends Vortimer reeling from Storm's back, rolling through the dirt with his helmet freed.
"Absurd." Macha casts Gareth aside, flooring him with a glance. The vale's basin is lain red with corpses. "That you would inherit his armor, and none of him..."
When Macha draws close, Dana steps out from her shadow. Like her his body is drained, open scars running the length of a skin bleached by magic.
"Regardless," the witch towers now, black tendrils drawing into her waiting hands, "I shall release you now, master Phantom Blaster!"
His legs do not respond. Vortimer draws his frayed armor close; the helmet stares back at him, chiseled eyes catching the sun on their rim. "Power..."
"With this holy armor seized, the seal shall break and our god reign again!"
He can feel Macha's spell taking hold, drawing faults in the jagged earth. "I need...power..."
"Now dragon whelp, give your life to the cursed dragon!"
"The world was not born into darkness,"
The Armor of the Black Horse rumbles. Lightning spills forth, gnawing him. Scales flood his arms and surge up from the skin below, clotting into thick plates that bleed magic into the vale's barren soil. Wingtips unfurl, casting loose earth in a hail over the rocky ground. When Vortimer looks on Macha next, he does so through the eyes of a dragon.
"Now darkness maiden," Spectral Duke scours hellfire across the basin, howling into the desolate landscape, "Give your life to the cursed dragon!"
Macha dies afraid. His halberd parts her magic and plows on through Dana, carving a heavy trench in the vale floor with black thunder.
"People made it this way."