What does make a hero indeed?

Knox watches the scene unfold before him with a bitter taste in his mouth--perhaps the taste of hunger or the taste of hate. He too remembers the day of his fight with his brother over Loretta's folly.

Now he is older. Manhattan looks upon the day's memory with no grudge clouding her vision. She struggles, even, to remember the terror of those days before she could control her magic, and remembers most the slow, blind walk home where she clung to her master's side and the sound of his hum.

But Knox's hatred has only grown. His mother, the one thing that had stopped him from biting at Archibald's throat that day, is dead. And his father, the Sentinel, he knows now was truly and brutally murdered at his own brother's hoof. Knox may have drunk the Sentinel's blood, but he had been forced to. Archibald, Vincent, all of his brothers had shown some semblance of self-awareness the day they had followed him to kill Mandrake. But on the day of Knox's birth, they had all bowed their heads and done as they had been told.

Where had resistance been then? Knox watched from his cloak and burned with a shame that he felt not for himself but for his elder brother's actions. The chimp was shocking, and perhaps should have stirred Knox's own senses, but he paid it little mind, only pausing to instinctively protect his own bonded when the creature approached Loretta. The hunter's blue eyes fixed on Archibald, watching him sway and start to tumble after the odd being's assault of a sort. Would he fall that day? Finally, would his elder brother fall?

Knox circled the scene slowly to stand not at Archibald's back, but front. As the chimp hopped away and Archibald struggled to stand on his bones of stones, Knox thought of the moment of Roanne's death. He could see it clearly: think it and conjure up that last moment in his mind. Roanne had seen nothing, in his final breath. His blindness made complete by his own blood soaking his features, his power lost, and his last act a feeble attempt to reach out to the sounds of his own progeny, were all but lost to time. Knox was thankful for what the Sentinel had shown him and what he now knew: Archibald was a monster.

Was it hypocritical to condemn his brother's crime when he had murdered so many himself, or simply biased? Knox didn't care. The hunter felt nothing but a white hot rage, and Manhattan could do nothing to soothe him this time. He paid no mind to his companion as she shook nervously at his back. She feared her sister would sense her and discover them, even through the magic of the cloak, but feared too that Knox had gone too far. It was true she had wanted him to see his enemies for who they were, but Archibald... was the dauntless one of them?

Knox drew closer to his elder brother, lifting his head to bridge the gap in their height fearlessly. Manhattan sent a flash of warning to him, for fear that they would be discovered, but Knox knew he was safe in his shadow, safe enough anyhow, and paid her no mind.

He wondered faintly if Archibald thought, after all this time, that he was dead. And he wondered too if Archibald would blame himself for that. In a dark corner of his soul, cleared from all minds but his own, he hoped to his goddess that the dauntless would. The hunter exhaled once, the taste of his breath stale and weathered. Would Archibald notice the tickle on his face, catch the scent of kin and fall into mourning, or think it just a breeze?

Even if he did, it would be for nothing. Knox turned then, finally giving into Manhattan's unease, and started towards the edge of the meadow. There was nothing more to see here but this creature his brother had always been, this wretched beast he now knew well to despise. Helovia had branded Archibald a hero, but Knox still tasted Roanne's blood--on his lips, in the back of his throat, burning his nostrils, and staining his face--and he would never forget it.

As he drew further from Archibald, Knox let out a low, familiar hum. Perhaps some of its traces would slip through the cloak, but he had little care. Manhattan recognized the sound instantly, the same tone he had made in the meadow years ago when the fight had threatened to occur, and snapped to his side to follow him swiftly.

Maybe Archibald would hear the sound as the hunter and his companion retreated and be haunted by the ghost of that day. Knox had faith that someday, the ghosts would catch up with the dauntless. Someday his brother would be haunted. And on that fateful, forthcoming day, Archibald would know at last that he was no hero.

And if it didn't happen at the hand of the gods, Knox would make it so.

—

[[Permission to join cloaked granted by Archibald.]]