He was still walking.
That was the thing nobody on that battlefield would forget. Not the explosions, not the dark aura, not even what Lady Amy had done to herself in the name of this fight. What they would carry home, those who survived, was the image of Rhys Lewallen walking forward across broken ground with an empty tank and a swollen wrist and dried blood on half his face, walking toward the most dangerous thing alive with no plan worth the name and the specific, terrible calm of someone who had simply run out of ways to be afraid.
The Dark Lord watched him come.
He did not move. He did not charge his aura. He just watched, arms loose at his sides, head tilted at that familiar angle, wearing an expression that had shifted over the course of this fight from amusement to curiosity to something that was beginning to look, against all reasonable expectation, like genuine interest.
"You again," he said.
"Me again," Rhys confirmed.
"Your wrist is broken."
