When it was all over, Alder could not help but stare at the knight's corpse. The sight brought to him a tinge of disappointment. When they came every two months to ask for payment from the older boys and girls they seemed so menacing. Alder had known not what they intended to do, but their presence just felt so...distinct.

'Where was that impression now?' he asked himself. Perhaps that quality came not from them, but from the armor they wore. The scene in the alley is what happened when a weakness was found in it, and this was what happened when they were without it entirely.

He rose slowly from the ground, trying to pull himself away from the grotesque sight, but he kept being pulled back to it. It was entrancing in its repulsiveness, like some sort of dark message from god himself.

He still remembered the cold feeling of the stones in his hands as he threw them. It was invigorating, as if some spell had been cast upon him.

'What are you so happy about?' he thought to himself. The si