What light filtered into the courtyard barely glinted from blackened plates as much weapons as armor, bladed and forged with the visage of a fiendish skull dominating the breastplate, its monstrous teeth gnashed together in a wall of daggers. The infernal steel piled upon a mountainous figure, his face now hidden behind the featureless visor of a newly donned helm. Had the night itself sent its own legionnaire against me, its manifestation could not have been more menacing.

by F. Wesley Schneider

My face isn't a welcome one here. Too many have seen it too recently and too often. Everyone has their bad memories, their reasonable hatreds, and many of those injustices look like me. I'd started out hoping that maybe I could change that, but a year of stinking alleys, tear-soaked streets, and steel rusted by blood made me doubt.