It would have been cold by the measure of most men, but to the Executioner, it was just chill enough to be comfortable. Dry autumn leaves crackled in the wind. But for that, the forest was quiet. The events of the past hours had shaken the normally cold and immovable man to his very core, but the darkness and the silence provided some small measure of comfort to his troubled mind. In the shadows of the trees, he struggled to come to a decision. The prudent thing to do would be to hide the talisman, exactly as he had intended, and yet, there was something about the words of the dying Leianna that gripped his heart, an echo of his own mother’s dying words that pulled the painful memory to the surface of his mind, and threatened to drown out all reason. "What will you do now?" Darien heard a voice speak. He whirled to his left at the sound. The voice, however, was familiar. "You!" Darien exclaimed. "Ezra, was it? How did you get here?" Sure enough, there stood the old man he had first met in the fog five years ago.
