"You have taken the wrong path. So this is where you stop," the ferryman said.

Same as always. Encrid regarded the ferryman with that thought: cracked gray skin, eyes without pupils, a mouth as dark as a bottomless pit.

Every time he spoke, darkness seemed to seep from his mouth. It whispered discouragement, urged despair, and nagged him to give up. He wasn't a child, so why all the nagging? Not even a four-year-old would pester him this much.

"You are thinking irreverent thoughts."

The ferryman was as perceptive as Rem. And Encrid was the same inside a dream as out.

"No, I'm not."

He denied it brazenly.

"... After all that struggling, you have arrived before a wall you built yourself. How very, very ironic."

There he went, nagging again.

"More irreverent thoughts."

"No, not at all."

Would being inside a dream change his nature? Of course not. Encrid's specialty was on full display.

The shameless answer nearly angered the ferryman, but the self-discipline he had accumulated was too profound for something like this to shake or undo him. He held himself back.

"Watch yourself."

"Yes."

Why did he have to answer so promptly and obediently? It only made him more irritating. The ferryman missed his body. He dearly missed the days when he had flesh. If only he had hands and feet now, some means of doing something physical.

"How does it feel to face a wall you cannot surmount? One you raised yourself, no less."

Encrid tilted his head instead of answering. Only a single today had passed. Wasn't it too early to discuss how he felt? Something along those lines crossed his mind.

"Irreverence!"

"Yes."

"Watch yourself!"

"Yes."

"Just stop answering."

"Y..."

Encrid opened his mouth halfway, then closed it.

"Go."

"..."

"Get out."

"..."

Encrid pressed his right thumb and index finger together, held them to his lips, and mimed sewing his mouth shut as he nodded. Told not to speak, he would not speak. A sincere show of respect for the ferryman's wishes. With that thought, he drifted away from the dream.

The river rippled. A violet lamp swayed above the ferry. The ferryman's arm was trembling.

"Does so little unsettle me?"

He murmured without emotion. Alone aboard the ferry once more, he stared at the spot where Encrid had been.

It would all end someday. No one could endure a repeating today. Encrid, too, would meet his end by remaining upon the river. The ferryman knew that.

Still, what fascinated him fascinated him. What delighted him delighted him. Some todays he already knew, but others eluded even his foresight. It wasn't that a today he had foreseen changed. A today that had never existed came into being. Just as it had now.

The ferryman had kept his place aboard the boat for ages. He looked back over those years. Had anything like this happened before? Never. That was what made it fascinating. That was what stirred an excitement he had forgotten.

Irritating though the man was, a part of him also sympathized with the subject of the curse. That, too, fascinated him. His own wishes pulling in different directions: he had never experienced that since becoming the ferryman.

One part sympathized with Encrid, another found him irritating, and another obstructed him. Amid them all was a tiny part of the ferryman that wondered what would happen if the man ultimately escaped every today.

A meaningless question. Whatever happened, the ending was fixed. Experience had taught him that.

And yet, what if, somehow...

'He went on, defying all cause and effect.'

Could a single human's determination make such a thing possible? Even so, the ferryman wondered what he would do if it happened.

* * *

'Failure.'

Encrid had failed, but he did not dwell on the cause. He hadn't expected to succeed on the first attempt. Instead, he tried to release his tension, to loosen nerves that had tightened without his noticing.

That was why he had chosen sunset, his favorite time of day, to attempt keeping his Will permanently open. It was one way of relaxing.

He breathed deeply in and out, picking up his earlier train of thought. He continued it as he rose, warmed up with the Isolation Technique, ate the same enormous amounts, shat, rested, and waited for sunset. He was considering the people called knights.

'How to cut down a thousand people.'

How was that possible? Each person who had become a knight had demonstrated a different means.

Encrid continued eating well, stuffing his stomach with staggering amounts of food. He needed to prepare thoroughly for anything, and eating while he could was an old habit.

"Got something nasty living in your belly?"

He let Rem's nonsense in the dining hall wash over him.

"Eating well is also part of training."

He let Audin's words pass him by, too.

"How about crossing swords?"

Ragna spoke to him as he left the dining hall. Did he look more anxious today than yesterday?

Perhaps he did. After all, his first thought upon beginning another today had been to relax. His muscles must have tightened instinctively, his nerves drawn taut. He was aware of it.

An unfamiliar impatience had briefly stirred as well. At times like this, yes, swinging a sword and working up a sweat would be easier on his mind. But he shook it all off.

"Let's do it tomorrow."

He didn't know when that tomorrow would come, but postponing the spar prompted a question from Luagarne.

"Are you hurt?"

"I'm not hurt."

Encrid answered with a smile and spent a day much like yesterday, continuing his earlier reflections as he went.

How to cut down a thousand people. Each knight, he thought, would have a distinctive means.

Oara, for instance, would use her unbroken succession of sword strikes. Her blade would carry on and on, cutting down one, then two, three, four, ten, twenty and more without stopping. When would it stop? Only when an unforeseen level of force intervened.

What about Ragna? Normally, he would cut down enemies more slowly than Oara. It would be another story if they were packed together. Encrid pictured him cleaving through a tightly massed shield formation.

Bunching together in front of Ragna was a mistake. Most proto knights wouldn't dare try to block that sword for even an instant. Where Oara's ceaselessly flowing blade might pause before a wall, Ragna's would smash straight through a flimsy barrier.

Who was superior? There was no such answer. They would have to fight to find out. Death when steel tore through one's body was a fate shared equally by everyone.

How would the others fight a thousand people? Rem would leap about like a grasshopper, swinging his axes everywhere. Throwing, striking, cutting. If Encrid had to choose who here would cut down a thousand people fastest, he would choose Rem.

And Jaxon? He couldn't easily picture him cutting down a thousand people. What would he say if asked?

"Must I cut down all thousand?"

If there were a thousand men, shouldn't he target their commander? Wouldn't Jaxon look at him with that question in his eyes? He probably would. The thought drew a little chuckle.

"Remember something amusing? You're welcome to tell me."

It was Esther's voice. Encrid opened his gently closed eyes and looked at the black-haired, blue-eyed witch.

The nickname Black Flower suited her quite well. Black hair, lustrous skin, large eyes, a high nose, and red lips. Anyone could see her exceptional beauty. Add the cleavage visible between the folds of her robe, and wouldn't most men volunteer to become her slaves?

"It's nothing."

Encrid closed his eyes again. Esther said no more. Noting her step back and sit on the ground, he resumed his thoughts.

He didn't know the knight from Aspen well, so imagining that fight was difficult. The Mercenary King didn't seem likely to face a thousand men alone.

Audin? What about Audin? He looked capable of beating a thousand men to bloody pulp without even attaining knighthood. Encrid thought he could do it.

Then what would it be like to block the swords, fists, and weapons those knights unleashed? What if he looked at it from the other side, as a soldier facing a knight?

Mere good fortune wouldn't let a man block a knight's blade. Even if the goddess of luck showered him with kisses, surviving would be all he could manage.

'That's right.'

Few knights had actually cut down a thousand people. Yet a knight was called one who could slay a thousand. A calamity. What made them so?

Will. The formless force called willpower was the source that allowed them to surpass their limits.

Sunset began. This today resembled yesterday, but some things were different. Odd-Eyes had come over, and Teresa was humming a song.

Unlike yesterday, she only hummed, but it was pleasant to hear all the same. Audin kept time by tapping his right fingers against the back of his left hand. Watching him, Encrid thought he must be proficient with some instrument. His sense of rhythm was exceptional.

["Martial arts begin with the feet. Rhythm moves the feet. Remember that, brother."]

Audin had told him that once.

Encrid moved his Will, trying to keep time as though singing.

THUM-THUMP, THUM-THUMP. THUM-THUM-THUMP.

As though beating a drum, he drew out his Will and planted it in his toes. He had drawn out and controlled Will as needed before. Now he had to leave it planted and forget it, rather than control it. Even when he forgot it, the Will had to remain.

'Can I maintain it while forgetting it?'

He could. Jaxon had taught him something similar: how to keep his senses open unconsciously.

["Mastering the sensory arts opens your ears. Just because you can see and hear everything, will you look at it all? Listen to it all? If you try to perceive, hear, and comprehend everything happening around you, you'll go mad. Filtering out everything but what you need is essential."]

'Intuition.'

That was why he needed something beyond the five senses, the faculty called Sixth Sense. Rather than examine every piece of information his five senses brought in, he would instinctively discard it. By engraving his danger sense into his bones, he would maintain the sensory arts unconsciously.

["Survive mortal danger a hundred times or so, and you'll have taken your first steps."]

Jaxon had said it as though it were impossible, but it was the easiest condition Encrid had ever heard. Far better than being told it would come if he kept trying. A bastard like Ragna would simply say that and leave it there. The thought intruded again: what an utterly deranged, directionless bastard.

In any case, he had faced mortal danger countless times. Had actually died countless times. Engraving danger-sensing intuition into his unconscious had not been difficult. It had happened naturally as he repeated today.

Encrid began the process again: drawing out his Will, forgetting it, engraving it into his unconscious. Soon, the Will filling his body began to run wild.

The gathered formless power became a single current and battered his heart. It felt as though his blood were flowing several times faster. In reality, it wasn't. Only his Will was moving that way.

CRUNCH.

His heart burst once more. He repeated the day again. The next day, his lungs broke apart too. The day after that, some of his internal organs burned.

Why could he use it briefly and disperse it, but not gather it and endure? He didn't know. He would learn, one thing at a time. Encrid kept repeating.

"How foolish you are."

The ferryman appeared occasionally, but Encrid still mimed sewing his mouth shut.

After about fifty todays, he changed his approach. Instead of gathering Will throughout his body, he would try gathering it only in his feet and holding on. It wasn't easy. It kept running wild and spreading through his entire body.

How could he hold it in place? Could he solve it by feel?

Ragna had strode naturally down this road. Encrid had to examine every pebble on the ground and clear them all away as he went. No, he couldn't even walk in the first place.

'What does that matter?'

Instead of walking, Encrid crawled. When had he ever done otherwise?

Wasn't it hard to return to those old days after feeling such tangible improvement lately?

'Not really.'

Every road Encrid had taken until now had been an ordeal. That made the act of getting through an ordeal itself easy enough. Did he simply have to inspect the path step by step as he went? Then he would. He had already seen the way. Adjusting and repeating were his specialties.

How to activate Will. How to breathe while doing it. His mindset, his posture, the intangible feel for controlling Will. He examined every detail in turn. He simply had to keep at it until it worked.

What he needed was patience, the right mindset, and self-mastery. Examine each step; if he took a wrong turn, go back and start again. Patience was what it took to repeat that without tiring of it. And he had more than enough determination to remain unshaken through failure after failure.

The mental strength to endure his Will tearing his body apart would be self-mastery. During some deaths, he had felt everything ripped apart: muscles, nerves, internal organs, from the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes.

In truth, it wasn't so difficult. Encrid could do all of this. He was fine. All he needed was a dream that would not break.

And he already had a dream. A dream once torn and torn again into tattered scraps. He had stitched it back together and come this far.

For the first time, the Will that began in his foot stabilized, if only briefly.

'The right foot first.'

The moment he smiled in elation, his Will ran wild. Perhaps because he had succeeded in controlling his right foot for a moment, the process of Will scorching and rupturing his body from within was a little slower too.

"Step aside, brother."

Because of that, Encrid witnessed a strange sight through barely open eyes as he died. Light flowed from Audin's entire body. Not figuratively: a halo shone behind him. The light was visible, scattering into particles. Divine power.

As he radiated light, blood streamed from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Encrid couldn't be sure, but it looked as though he was prepared to die. Was his body so extraordinarily tough that he might survive? Perhaps. But he was surely straining himself almost to that point.

The light gathered and approached. Just before it touched him, Encrid barely dodged. Instinctively, he sensed that using that light, that divine power, would kill Audin or gravely injure him.

Immediately after dodging, Encrid died. He was gone without the strength to utter a single word. Just before his eyes closed, he saw the light touch his body, but there was no miracle. Divine power was miraculous, but it could not revive the dead.

Still, just before he died, he did hear Audin's voice.

"Rise, brother."

He spoke with blood pouring from his eyes and nose.

By now, merely opening his eyes was enough to know that today had ended and a new today had begun.

"You crazy bastard."

As Encrid stirred, he looked at Audin and said it unprompted.

"Did you have a pleasant dream?"

Audin smiled as he always did.

Encrid watched him for a moment, then shook his head and rose. Time to begin a new today. With the success in his right foot, he seemed to have gained a rough feel for it.

Letting go of the today that had passed and greeting a new one was already familiar to him. Wasn't crawling, walking, and running toward tomorrow the one thing he did well?