Yann felt himself bumping into bodies, objects, and debris. The churning water pounded him against things and then dumped him down on a hard surface.

He didn’t want to get up. He didn’t want to be alive in this nightmare.

Just lying here and waiting for the Coil to kill him looked like a much more pleasant option, but the sound of his father coughing made him get up.

Wesh and the rest of the Watch lay all around Yann. Tall, dry, yellow grass surrounded them. Yann couldn’t see over the top of it from this position.

He crawled over to his father and touched the Watch Commander’s shoulder, but Yvan and the others were all unhurt.

They choked and retched the water out of their lungs. It dripped from their hair and formed puddles around their fallen bodies.

All the men lay in a vast field of dry grass three feet tall. A soft, warm wind rustled through it and undulated the grass in waves spreading outward from the Watchmen’s position.

The water soaked into the dry soil around the grass roots.

“Now…..now….now we’re in the…..Ancestral Empire…..” Wesh croaked.

No one answered. The Watchmen panted and gasped for breath. No one moved except to sink down on the ground. Vidal rolled onto his side and curled into a ball. No one told him to get up.

Yvan dragged himself onto his knees and collapsed back on his seat. He grabbed Yann’s shoulder and squeezed. They were alive. That was the most anyone could say about them.

“So…..” Omer began after a few minutes. “So…..this landscape will stay the same….for a while? It won’t change?”

Wesh nodded. “The Ancestral Empire is one of the oldest Islands in the Coil. If anything stays the same, this one will.”

“Doesn’t any place stay the same for long?” Rien asked. “Middleborough stayed the same for a hundred years. My father and grandfather were born there.”

“Some islands stay longer than others,” Wesh replied. “Some stay for a long time, but they all fall eventually.”

“The Darklings didn’t attack us that time,” Yvan pointed out. “Why not? You said we were in the Dark Layers. The Darklings should have attacked us there if they were going to attack us anywhere, but the floor collapsed instead.”

“Islands and Layers don’t usually fall from Darkling attack,” Wesh explained. “They become progressively unstable—or it can happen suddenly as we’ve seen.”

Yvan shook his head down at his hands in his lap. “You know so much more about the Coil than we do.”

“I don’t know so much. What I know comes from studying books in our Temple library. I’ve only been out in the Coil once before this. If only Eliska was still here, she could tell us…..”

He trailed off. No one asked him to finish.

He shook it off and pushed himself upright. “We should move. I’ll find us a town—now that we’re actually on solid ground again.

He opened his window. Yann tried not to look at all the collapsing Layers. He really, really didn’t want to go anywhere near any of them again.

Why couldn’t the world just stay nice and solid—the way it always had been his entire life? Why did everything have to start blowing up right now of all times?

It had been like this all along. He knew that. The Coil had always been wild, unstable, and changeable—but only outside the walls of Middleborough.

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He always pretended the world was nice and solid and familiar. He could keep pretending that as long as he stayed inside the walls—which was all the time.

He never left the town since the day he was born. He never had to see the Coil except from his post on the wall.

Middleborough always stayed the same the rest of the time—until it didn’t.

None of the other Watchmen looked into Wesh’s window, either. They must all be thinking the same thing.

Their lives were over—the lives they once knew. Whatever happened to them now, it would never go back to the way it was before.

It couldn’t go back to the way it was before. They’d all experienced the Coil in ways they never thought they would have to.

No one could wipe out that experience. No one could make them back into the men they used to be when the world was nice and solid and true.

Wesh must have seen something in his window that made him come to some decision.

“Yes,” he said to no one in particular. “Yes, that’s all right, then. We can do that.”

He got to his feet. None of the Watchmen asked what they could do.

Yann got up with him and the rest of the Watchmen did the same thing.

As soon as they stood up, they all saw a road nearby. It ran through the grasslands leading away into the distance.

Yann didn’t see anything over there the group might head for, but whatever Wesh wanted to do would be better than anything the rest of them could come up with

Wesh set off through the grass. The rest of the Watch fell in with him.

Yann realized he still had his glaive. He’d completely forgotten about it.

His instincts didn’t forget to hold onto it when he fell into the snowbank, when he fought his way through the wind, or when the Watch got washed away by that water.

He couldn’t loosen his fingers from the weapon if he tried. It remained glued to his hand no matter what.

He didn’t try to loosen his fingers. He couldn’t lose this weapon, especially not in any country crawling with bandits, gypsies, Barbarians, and God only knew what else.

The other Watchmen still carried their weapons, too, so Yann wasn’t the only one. The men scanned the countryside on all sides for anyone coming near them.

Other travelers passed up and down the road. Some pushed handcarts or drove wagons pulled by oxen or draft horses.

Scraggly dogs followed the wagons or tagged at the heels of people on foot. Yann didn’t see anyone who fit the category of gypsy, bandit, or Barbarian.

He didn’t even know what Barbarians looked like and he’d never dealt with any bandits in Middleborough. That was the Watch’s job—to keep people like that out of town.

He hoped he’d recognize them when he did see them. He also hoped someone in this group knew more about them than he did.

He realized on that walk that he really didn’t know much about the other Watchmen’s backgrounds. He always assumed they came from Middleborough.

He knew Rien and Barsali did. He couldn’t be sure about the others.

Omer couldn’t have come from Middleborough. His dark skin and hair, his facial features, accent, his sharp way of speaking, and everything else he did—they all gave him away. He came from some other race—so where did he come from?

Yann shivered when he made the connection. He didn’t even know if his own father came from Middleborough. Yann always assumed that he did.

Eliska’s question came back to haunt Yann now. The men of the Black Watch swore a vow of celibacy when they joined the Watch. They swore off family and women to dedicate themselves to protecting others.

Yvan had belonged to the Watch since Yann’s earliest memories—going all the way back to Yann’s infancy.

Yvan must have had a girl then. He must have gotten together with her before he joined the Watch—so what happened to her? Where was she now?

She couldn’t be alive. Yvan would have told Yann about his mother….wouldn’t he?

Either that or…..

Yann refused to think about the other part of that question. He really preferred reality when he thought he understood everything. He didn’t want to be aware of all the things he didn’t know.

That was the problem. He was aware of them now…….thanks to Eliska.

She asked the questions he never dared to ask himself before. She didn’t hide from reality. She had no reason to. She already knew the worst about herself.

Yann distracted himself by turning his attention back to the landscape. It really looked as stable as he could possibly hope.

He didn’t see any sign of it transforming into anything else. The wind kept blowing at the same strength and at the same temperature.

The ground beneath his feet didn’t change its shape. The road didn’t alter its direction. The birds in the air stayed birds. The oxen and dogs and wagons stayed the way they were supposed to stay.

He didn’t want to get used to that. He didn’t want the safety and calm of this landscape to lull him into a false sense of security.

The simple fact of its safety and calm made him tighten his grip on his weapon. His fellow Watchmen reacted the same way. They became more tense, more watchful, and more ferociously wary with every mile the group covered.

The road went on a lot farther than the others the group had followed before. Then again, the group had never stayed on any road as long as this before. They all collapsed or some other disaster struck before the group had a chance to follow any road very far.

End of Chapter 15.