Kylara froze as she overlooked the sheer drop and the chasm below. They were almost sixty metres up, above what looked like a field of fine spikes, which scaled the side of the cliff face on their right. Beyond that were open, green, rollings hills, much different than what she had seen on the other side of the tunnel with the cold fog and the sheer rock. The spike field extended over the hills and–
A shiver went up Kylara’s spine.
It wasn’t a spike field, was it?
It was the corpse of a massive, unmoving caterpillar. It was so massive her brain had not registered the shape. Its head was pressed up against the cliff, out of sight and to the left. Its body extended to the horizon. They were on a boundary line so Kylara couldn’t get an exact number on the distance, but it felt like at least a kilometre.
Its bristles were massive spikes. Some were large enough that they rose like buildings off its back, like towering cities along its back. It was segmented and colourful, mostly an iridescent green, purple, and blue. Most of its body was spiked but there were other sections of its back with exposed soft flesh and other sections with what looked like plated armour. Row after row of sucker-like legs lined its underside, each thick as a tree.
Kylara looked at her sister, who was frozen next to her. “That’s–” she started.
“Big,” Kylara finished. “That is a big caterpillar.”
Tal came running over of the entrance a few seconds later and skidded to a stop, almost losing his balance before Janeyca–or perhaps it was Joontah–Kylara literally could not tell the difference between them at the moment–grabbed him and stopped him from tumbling off the cliff.
“You alright?”
“You could’ve warned me!” he shouted as he let go of–Kylara thought it was Janeyca’s–hand. “Tal, don’t fall off the cliff. Tal, watch out for the cliff. Tal, there is a cliff up ahead. Watch out for it. See? Not that hard.” He straightened up and ran his hand through his hair. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m in a bad mood. Thanks for catching me…”
“Joontah,” Joontah finished. Kylara switched her mental picture of the twins. Joontah was Janeyca and Janeyca was Joontah. Confusing. But that’s what happened when fraternal twins suddenly turning identical, she supposed. They’d been next to each other for less than a two minutes and Kylara had already mixed them up.
Joontah seemed a bit confused by Tal’s apology but said nothing.
“Now,” Tal said, turning to Janeyca. “Janes! Glad we got you! Hello!” He pulled her into an awkward hug, which became even more awkward when Tal went right through her and almost fell off the cliff again.
“Watch out!” Kylara said, running forward.
Tal grimaced. “I hate cliffs,” he said through gritted teeth. “And I need to remember to be more consistent with this thing.”
Janeyca frowned. “You’re–”
“Intangible. Sometimes. Yes, I know. It is impressive. I will be taking praise later.” He put on a little show of dusting himself off, and Kylara finally got a better look at him.
He looked horrible, and the splotchy way the light reflected off of him made him look even worse. He was grimy and covered in little nicks and scratches. Both of his hands were bloody. He was holding them in fists but as Kylara looked closer they looked less like fists and more like several of his fingers had been cut off. She wondered if they actually had.
“What are we going to do?” Janeyca asked.
Kylara looked back at the entrance. It was hard to make out what was going on inside, but there were still sounds of movement. They hadn’t lost them but perhaps… the beasts were afraid of the daylight? Would they eventually venture out? How long could they stand on this little strip of rock on the ledge?
Tal looked at entrance. “No worries,” he said, without his usual confidence. “I have a plan. Maybe. Probably. Might be more accurate to say I will have a plan.”
“Can we go back Down Under?” Kylara asked. “Can we translate from here?”
“Here?” Tal squinted. “Probably not. The gradient is quite strong and–oh, look at that! Good news, finally!”
He seemed to finally notice the giant caterpillar draped over the landscape and skipped over to the side of the ledge, where one of the spikes extended close enough that he would be able to touch it, if he could touch anything at the moment, Kylara supposed.
“Is it… dead?” Yalmay asked. “Please tell me it’s dead.”
“It’s dead,” Tal confirmed after a moment, looking into the distance. “But be careful. Its bristles are coated in poison and probably still potent.”
“That’s how you were injured,” Kylara stated. She had been thinking they could perhaps hide amongst the bristles, but if they were poisonous that plan was out. Any escape plans would need to be with warding. Which was doable, but it did put pressure on her. Maybe it was good to have something to worry about. She started mapping out the warding equations. It would take some effort to figure out a safe way down from this cliff. They were unfortunately on a boundary, which meant she couldn’t create the wards ahead of time. They would need to jump and she would need to create the wards while falling.
“Oh,” Tal said, staring the the caterpillar. “I’m sorry you big ol’ girl. You deserved better.” He turned to Kylara, “Yes, this is the one that got me.”
“I thought when you said big you meant like, the size of a finger,” Joontah said.
“Nooo,” Tal said. He turned to Yalmay, “You really need to work on your translation skills. When I said big, I meant big.” Then, under his breath, he muttered, “Let’s hope the others don’t come back.”
“Others?”
“The bigger ones,” he said. Tal gave her a quick smile then swung around towards the cave entrance.
“Alright,” he said. “Time to talk. Is anyone home?” He took a few steps forward, facing the cave. He waited for a moment, then swung back around to the group and whispered to Kylara, “We may need to jump.”
“I know,” she whispered back. “I’m ready.”
“Good,” he said. He winked at her. “But only if we need to go to plan d, alright?”
Yalmay groaned. “Is plan a talking to it again?”
“Of course,” Tal said, striding forward, arm raised. “You always need to talk first. They might have something interesting to say.”
“You think?” Kylara said doubtfully.
Yalmay looked at her and mouthed something. Kylara couldn’t make it out.
“What?” she mouthed back. Yalmay’s mouth moved a bit more slowly. Kylara shook her head. Maybe learning a fake language through warbler trickery didn’t quite translate into learning how to lip read in it.
Yalmay moved over and whispered, “Should I translate for him? I don’t think talking is a good idea. Maybe if I refuse, we could go straight to plan b.”
Kylara shook her head. “No, just do what he says,” she whispered back. She didn’t want to get on Tal’s bad side. At the very least, they needed him to translate back home.
“Hello?” Tal asked again, swinging his arms above his head and facing the cave entrance. “I would appreciate a response.”
Yalmay translated into moth.
Tal looked back at her, surprised. “What are you doing?”
“Translating?”
“No, don’t,” he said. “There shouldn’t be any need. What’s controlling these creatures is… well, you’ll see.” He turned back to the cave entrance. “Oh, c’mon!” he shouted. “Talk to me. I know you want to.”
A corpse fell out of the cave.
“What the hell?” Yalmay shouted, almost tripping over herself.
“That’s a body,” Kylara said numbly, staring at it.
“Where did they get a body?” Joontah asked.
Kylara crouched a bit to get a better look at it. She really, really hoped it hadn’t come with them.
“Good question Joono,” Tal said. He had not moved, or even flinched, when the corpse had fallen out. In fact, he now seemed to be addressing it. “Where did you get a body?” He frowned. “Actually, no–I don’t care. Tell me if any of the others survived.”
“Others?” Joontah asked at the same time the corpse said–
“No.”
“It speaks,” Kylara said numbly, backing up slightly. Unfortunately, there wasn’t very much rock to back up on to.
“No?” Tal said lightly, circling it. “Just this one?”
“If there were others,” the corpse cawed, “I would be using something much fresher than this.” Each syllable came out strangled and sneering, almost like a hiss.
“Would you?” Tal said gently. “Because it seems to me you’re trying to scare us.”
The corpse tried to smile. “I know better,” it said. “You don’t scare so easily.”
“No,” Tal said, “I don’t. Tell me what you want. You have me where you want me.”
The corpse sat up slowly, painfully. Kylara almost gagged. It looked very, very dead. There weren’t any visible injuries, but the skin was pressed up close to the bone, like a preserved piece of meat. Its teeth were missing or decayed. The eyes were hallow, with one eyelid missing and one drooped and pinned below the socket. Only a few long, black hairs remained on its head.
“Steady there,” Tal said. “The muscle atrophy is going to be a hell of a thing.”
“I can manage,” the corpse said, although it had stopped moving.
“What is that thing?” Janeyca whispered. “Was that… controlling everything?”
The corpse’s eye sockets looked directly at her and Janeyca flinched a bit.
There was something there, Kylara thought. Something she couldn’t look away from. It was like looking at death. Looking into a void. She wondered how long it had been here, waiting for company.
“No,” Tal said. “It wasn’t controlling anyone. It’s the other way around. Well, sort of, it’s complicated. This is just the mouth, the mind is elsewhere.” He glared at the corpse. “Using the voice of the looong dead to speak to me–I hope you have something very important to say to me very respectfully because this situation is toeing the line I will tolerate.”
The corpse’s eyes–or lack of them–turned and fixed on Tal.
“They said you talked heaps,” the corpse stated.
Who said? Kylara thought.
“Get to the point,” Tal said. “You didn’t chase us here just for gossip. And what stale gossip too. Everyone knows I could talk heaps. Could give a speech underwater with a mouthful of marbles, me. In fact, I have done that. Several times. Don’t ask why, it’s a long story. But if we’re doing gossip–did they say it was dangerous, letting me talk?”
The corpse smiled. One of its teeth popped out from the effort. “No,” it said.
“Aw, I really thought I had a reputation there. I assume you aren’t attacking us because you are waiting for something?”
“Yes.”
“What? Is is backup, indecision, what?”
The corpse smiled again. “I am not telling,” it said. “But they will die.” The thing was looking directly at Kylara.
She shivered.
Tal laughed. “Oh, they will not,” he said. “You really think I’d let that happen?”
“You are cornered. Talking will not help.”
Tal shrugged. “So? You’re not exactly doing much. You’re just letting us stand here. We’re comfortable, aren’t we?” He turned to the four of them as if asking for confirmation. “Comfortable, right?” Kylara nodded. Yalmay gave him a shaky thumbs-up. Joontah and Janeyca continued to stay absolutely still.
“How does it understand us?” Yalmay whispered. “The other one didn’t.”
“Because the other one was just a beast. A thinking beast, but at the end of the day, that is what it was. But this is different. This came with us. I brought it here. That in-between language I created is in its head too.”
“How?” Joontah unfroze. “I mean, I remember translating up here. There weren’t any corpses. There weren’t any monsters. Where’d it come from?”
“There were gwiyalas. One of them seems to have hitched a ride with us.”
“You’re saying that’s a gwiyala possessing a human?” Kylara said slowly, staring at it.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“Not quite.” Tal turned back around, addressing the corpse. “The gwiyala is being possessed too. There’s levels to this–is that how you did it? Is that how you attacked that poor woman? So many levels, you forgot who you were at the core?”
“What woman?” the corpse asked.
“The one you killed in the forest.”
“The woman was a test.”
“No, the preacher was the test. And before you ask, yes–I found him. It took me a full day, but I did. The poor man is traumatised. I had to wipe a large portion of his memory and even then, he’s still going to have a long recovery. But he was the test. You found out you could hurt someone. You even found out the extent. But the woman? That was pure evil. You didn’t need to kill her.”
“I did it for fun.”
“I don’t understand,” Janeyca said. “That thing killed…”
“Ulinda, yes,” the corpse said. “It was quicker than I would’ve liked, but it was enjoyable in the end.”
Tal’s lip twitched a bit at that. “How did you break the warye?”
“The war-ee?” Kylara whispered to her sister.
“A curse or a condemnation,” Yalmay whispered back. “It’s an ancient word.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know how I did it?” the corpse asked. “Then you can fix it. Protect them and hurt us, isn’t that what you do?”
Tal was circling the corpse again, and the corpse was trying to maintain eye contact with him by turning its neck. It kept turning a tad too far for a normal human neck.
Tal just stared at it. Calmly. Kylara got the impression he was trying very hard to stay to stay calm.
“I don’t understand,” Janeyca said.
“We’re talking to a warg,” Tal said, “someone who can possess others.”
“Can it possess us?” Kylara asked.
“No, I don’t think so. Warging is restricted. It’s an ancient and dangerous practice with a history of misuse. The world was long ago rewritten to prevent human possession.”
“You are lying.”
“Am I?”
“I do not care about possessing humans. I care about hurting them. And the world wasn’t rewritten. I was.”
Tal didn’t say anything. He just kept circling.
“They are coming,” the corpse said. “I told them about you. They will kill you.”
“Will they now?” Tal said, voice low and intent.
“What are we going to do?” Yalmay said, panic on her voice. “I don’t want to die. Not yet, please. I am not ready.” She started breathing heavily.
Tal’s eyes darted towards her, then towards Kylara. He mouthed, help her. This time, Kylara understood the silent words. She walked over and embraced her sister. Yalmay started silently sobbing into her bare shoulder. Kylara didn’t say anything. She just held her and stared worryingly at Tal.
“She is weak,” the corpse said.
Tal snarled. Kylara blinked and he was down on one knee and gripping the corpse’s neck, forcing its chin up to make eye contact. “I would break your neck if you needed it to breathe,” Tal said.
And then Tal was back standing, his demeanour completely different. His voice was almost cheery.
“Right,” Tal said. “If we are all going to be dead soon, I have to know. Did you like my tricks with the mirrors and lights?”
“I saw your silly attempts to blind us.”
“Silly. That’s a bit dismissive, isn’t it? I worked hard on those. Do you know hard it is to get this entad to go where you want?” He pointed up, at the glowing orb. In the daylight, it was barely visible. “I deserve more credit.”
His whole body animated and he skipped over to the edge of the cliff and pointed at the giant caterpillar.
“See this?” he said. “This is the one I fought. Well, one of many. There’s like a dozen of the things further up. But this was the big baddie. Impressive, isn’t it?” The corpse gave no response. “C’mon,” Tal begged. “I deserve praise for something. You are a terrible audience.”
“But you lost,” the corpse said. “You were poisoned. I overheard you. You want praise for losing?”
“Well,” Tal leaned back, walking a bit closer to the caterpillar. “You keep focusing on the negative. Try to focus on the positive, I find it better for your health.” Tal froze, then looked at the corpse again. “Not that you are in need of health, I suppose… But you are missing the obvious!”
“What obvious?” the corpse croaked.
“How I did it!” Tal exclaimed, throwing his arms out.
“How?”
Tal snorted. “Figure it out,” he said. He then turned back around and winked at the four of them. “See?” he whispered, easily loud enough for the corpse to still hear. “Now it’s interested. It’s not killing us because it thinks I have contingencies. Perfect for buying us time.”
It doesn’t matter, Kylara thought. It said it is waiting for others. Not for contingencies.
“How?” the corpse asked again. “How did you kill it? You have no weapons now.”
“Well,” Tal said, "I might've."
"You do not."
"You don't know that, are you willing to risk it?"
Kylara frowned. Tal was a horrible liar.
“Yes,” the corpse grinned. “I will take that risk. You do not have weapons. You would have used them already.”
Tal sighed. “Well, alright. You caught me–no weapons. I was bluffing. Bit of an embarrassing story, really. The entad I was using required words to activate and this one here–” he pointed at Yalmay–“she got in my way. Suddenly, I couldn’t remember how to speak any of them. Weird, huh? The kinds of problems you face in old age. Anyway, I ended up getting eaten–which is not pleasant–and poisoned. Not a great day.”
The corpse smiled. “So your weapons are currently in the stomach of the beast. Inaccessible. Thank you for telling me. I look forward to retrieving them when you are gone.”
Tal sighed. “You're a bit thick, aren't you? Look you drongo.” He stepped forward and walked right through the corpse. “Don't you get it? I am intangible. I can go through things. And how convenient we are right next to the stomach of–”
Tal promptly smacked into the side of a caterpillar and fell over.
“Ugh!” Tal winced from the ground. He brushed himself off. “Let’s try that again.” He got up and promptly smacked into the side of the caterpillar again.
“Is the entad off?” Kylara asked.
“It’s not that,” Tal said. “The entad gets into your mind, figures out what you consider solid and what you consider not. It’s why I’m not sinking through the floor right now, or walking through my clothes. I could, but I try very hard to believe I can't.” He shivered, as if just remembering a traumatic experience. "Believe me, I concentrate very, very hard when using this. Now if I just–" He closed his eyes “–if I just delete the part of my head that thinks caterpillars are real…”
He smacked into solid flesh caterpillar again, falling back on his side.
“Funny,” the corpse said. “Keep going, I find this amusing.”
“Fuck,” Tal said, rubbing his head. “This isn’t working.”
“What’s wrong exactly?” Joontah asked.
“I got eaten by a caterpillar, I have caterpillar trauma. It’s making everything harder to delete. My stupid old brain doesn’t want to. Ugh! Do you know how hard it is to delete trauma?” He slapped his forehead with an open palm. “Delete, delete, delete!”
Kylara raised an eyebrow. Considering Tal claimed to have 'deleted' his knowledge of every single language, deleting knowledge of what a caterpillar was seemed like a trivial task in comparison. She wondered why.
“They are coming,” the corpse said.
Tal hit himself one more time then seemed to pull himself together. “Right,” he said sharply. “Ominous threats only work for so long. Kylara, give me that.” He strolled over to her and causally took the butterfly entad out of her hand. “I can’t believe you didn’t like my light tricks,” he tutted, again addressing the corpse.
“The light tricks were simply tricks. You are well known for them.”
“True,” Tal said. “Tricks. Good thing to do, less of a good thing to be known for. Makes bluffing hard. What else do they say about me?”
The corpse smiled. Something moved in the darkness behind it. A breeze whipped Kylara’s hair up and a group of nearly thirty identical looking gwiyalas came out of the cave.
Tal threw the entad back at Kylara.
“They say many things,” the corpse said. “They say Kel is wrong. He thinks you will never break. A year, a decade, a lifetime, you will keep fighting him for them. You know this world. You know its holes, the threads to pull to make it unravel. He thinks you won’t stop. You’ll just… suffer. Pulling on threads until there are no more left. But we think he’s wrong. It just takes moments for you to weaken. Moments like this where you watch your friends die.”
Friends? Kylara thought.
“Well that’s just nonsense,” Tal said. “I have no idea who you think I am but I hope you don't think I'm the kind of person who would leave my friends to die. No, even without me, they have everything they would need to be rid of you in their hands.” He glanced over to Kylara. She could have sworn he winked.
She looked down to the paper in her hands, then quickly covered her arm. The entad must had been activated when Tal had given it back to her because now the paper was blank. Its ink had all moved to her arm and was covering most of her skin. It looked like Tal had tried everything before he had handed it back. Dozens of species, dozens of times over. There were hundreds of little pictures of butterflies.
Kylara frowned. He clearly wanted her to do something with it. But what? The entad was useless. If there were a single real flower anywhere in this realm, Kylara would’ve gone flying in a random direction towards it the second he had handed it back. Maybe he had gone through them all as a test? But no, that wasn’t it. He wanted her to do something with it.
“You are bluffing,” the corpse said, even more monotonously than before. “You are bad at bluffing. Your friends have no weapons. I know this well.” This time when it spoke, hundreds of little clicks and hisses came from the blackness of the cave, as if cheering. If gwiyalas were capable of having facial expressions, Kylara might have labelled them as “smug.”
“Don’t be mean,” Tal said. “I quite like bluffing. I hope I’m decent at it. Bluffing and disguises. And codes! Love a code. You know Yalmay here is the warden of language now? Impressive right? But of course codes don’t just do language. They can do maths, they can do maps–you can encode anything with a code. Maths is probably my favourite though. Maths is great.”
Kylara frowned. He was repeating himsel–
Oh, she thought.
The butterflies were a code for something.
Kylara looked down at her arm and the entad, still set to several hundreds butterflies. All in neat, straight lines. Like an equation. A warding equation.
Warding equations were just maths after all. And Tal was right. It was just a code. The equation for a sphere-shaped ward was typically written something like
x² + y² + z² = 10
But it could just as well be any kind of symbol. Something like
→⇈ ⇿ ↑⇈ ⇿ ↗⇈ ⇄ | ˚
worked, as long as the warder knew what the cipher was. Side arrows were horizontal distance units, a double up arrow meant multiplication two-fold, opposite arrows on top of each other was the equality symbol, et cetera.
The encoded symbols could be anything.
Even little pictures of tiny butterflies.
But what was the cipher?
“You can say you are bluffing but you aren't,” the corpse said. “You have done nothing. You cannot get past all of me and you cannot translate.”
“Nah,” Tal said. “I have a plan. See, I figured it out. It must be awful hard work possessing that many creatures at once. Honestly, I am a bit impressed, that is a real talent you have there.”
“They have simple brains.”
“But it’s still a lot of effort, spreading an an already broken consciousness into all these bodies, isn’t it?”
Is he trying to cause a distraction? Kylara thought. Or was he just saying they could be distracted?
And she still needed the encryption code if she wanted to activate the ward.
“It is doable,” the corpse said.
“See, I figure you haven’t integrated them all. You haven’t had the time. One of them is really you and the rest are simply controlled. One point of failure.”
The corpse shrugged. “So? You’ll never figure which one it is.”
“Won’t I?”
“It’s not this one, if you were wondering. This one simply has a the best shaped mouth to speak your mockery of our language. The others are... less human.”
“Well, obviously," Tal said. "But I already know which body you are hiding in. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”
“You are lying.”
“See, your mistake was killing all those gwiyalas. I mean, really? Possessing the creatures just to have them commit mass suicide? That is just cruel. And I am forgetful on the best of days–I would forget my own name if I could–”
“You did forget your name,” Kylara interrupted, hoping to draw his attention. He needed to remember to tell her the cipher.
“Right,” Tal said. “Suppose I did. Should write it down somewhere, perhaps the first line.”
Kylara’s eyes widened. The first line, that was the cipher. That meant the rest had to be the equation. But she still needed the corresponding symbols to break the code.
“It is Multhamurra,” the corpse said. “That is your current name, at least.”
“Really?" Tal smiled like he had just been gifted a pot of honey. "Oh I like it. Good name. I picked well. Surprised I kept the th sound though, I usually drop it.” He turned to Yalmay, “What’s it mean?"
“Healer,” she said.
“Of course it does,” he said. “Anyway, my point being–I’ll forget my own name if you let me but I will never, ever forget a face of someone I failed to save. You killed those gwiyalas. You stripped them of their autonomy and lead them to their deaths in the most cruel way possible. And I remember each and every one of their faces. Including the one you stowawayed on to come here. Do you think I wouldn't recognise you?”
The orb of light suddenly moved forward, illuminating the entrance way of the cave. The gwiyalas squirmed as the light washed over them, recoiling slightly further back. A few of them seemed to peel away from the walls. And they were each identical. The same black-orange pattern. The same oddly spaced eyes.
The corpse started laughing.
“You will never find the right one,” the corpse snickered. “The warrens produce these things on mass. Do you think a gwiyala is unique? They’re not. They are disposable.”
“Thought of that,” Tal said, walking forward. His eyes scanned the group of gwiyalas. He didn’t seem bothered by the fact they kept crawling over each other. “See, everyone’s unique.”
He looked quickly at Kylara, very briefly but deliberately. She frowned.
“Everyone is someone, a single individual.” He looked up. "Is everyone getting this down? Hope so. This is important, take notes. Everyone is someone."
Oh, Kylara thought. One. The number. The first butterfly, a dark blue one with ruffled wings–that meant one.
“No one is nothing,” he continued.
No one. Zero. The second butterfly.
“Everyone belongs somewhere.”
Belongs somewhere? Kylara frowned. What did that mean?
It wasn't a number and it wasn't an operation like addition or multiplication. You couldn't put the concept of belonging into a warding equation.
“They’re part of a set," Tal said. "Love sets. Great word. Like set theory. Love set theory, probably my favourite kind of maths. But I digress! Back to my lecture...” He almost skipped over to the other side of the ledge and bent down to another group of gwiyalas. "It's basic logic–" he continued.
And it clicked for Kylara.
Oh, she thought.
Sets. Logic. Those were a thing in primitive maths. She had learnt the theory briefly, it was covered at the start of Southvale Lectures in the Study of Constructing Complex Objects, the most boring of her warding textbooks. Sets were groups of things that belonged together and somehow, after heaps of definitions and something called a successor function, they could be used to define numbers. But Kylara had no idea how.
So... what did that mean in terms of the code? Did the next butterfly stand for set membership? Was that what Tal meant? The symbol for set membership was ∈, but it was never used in warding. Just theory. Kylara noted it anyway.
“Everyone is equal," Tal said, "in theory, anyway. There are some naysayers that think otherwise, but in general I find they’re a small subset of the general population. In my experience, most people do try to be good.”
Kylara recognised those symbols.
Equal. Equality. =
Naysayers. Negation. ¬
And subset. ⊆.
“You are trying to buy time,” the corpse said. “I do not need a basic moral lecture.”
“Don’t you?” Tal smiled. “Because have you looked at your swarm lately? Crawling all over themselves. Disjunction, conjunction, I mean, what are the implications of that? Can’t say what it means exactly, but it doesn’t look like the sign of a stable mind.” He leaned forward, showing teeth at the corpse. “You. Are. Falling. Apart.”
Kylara noted down the next few butterflies. More logic symbols.
Disjunction. ∨
Conjunction. ∧
Implication. ⇒
Kylara looked up. There was only one butterfly left on the row, a pale yellow one with black spots edging the sides of its wings. Was that it? Was that all the symbols you really needed? Could a warding equation be defined with that little?
And what did Tal want this equation to do?
“I am doing better than you at the moment,” the corpse said.
Tal turned still. “This is your last warning,” he said, standing straight. He looked cold. Alien. Distance. The colours of his clothes seemed to blend together and disperse on the air. His face still looked painted, Kylara thought, but now it looked less like watercolours and more like a harsh oil palette. “Let us pass. Let me return my friends home safely. Let go of this useless quest and do not hurt or kill anyone ever again. Do that, and I will let you go unharmed. I will not follow. In fact, I will even offer to try to fix you. I was right you know, you are falling apart.”
The corpse said nothing.
"It's a better deal than most would give," Tal said seriously, "and it's a better deal than you deserve. Consider it carefully."
“If I am falling apart, you are already in pieces.”
Tal stared at the corpse for another second and then he rolled his eyes. His mood swung the other direction again. Suddenly cheery. Suddenly manic. “Oh shut up. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows I fell apart ages ago. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I am only representing 44.683926% of my former self. I look into the mirror every day and wonder what I lost.” He looked directly at Kylara. She nodded.
A number. 0.44683926.
The last butterfly.
And a substance. Mirrors. Which meant Tal wanted a light ward.
Well, here it goes.
Kylara took a deep breath and activated by far the strangest warding equation she had ever seen.
Everything went bright and hot and loud. It lasted only a few seconds, but it was nearly unbearable. Kylara almost took the ward down in a panic, but something grabbed her hand.
“I like tricks and lights and mirrors,” Tal said over the screams. It took Kylara a second to realise he was the one gripping her arm. “Light. The flicker in the void." He laughed. "That appeals to me somehow, I suppose. But the thing people forget is that light is power. Energy. All life was created, at least originally, from the light of a single star. Can you believe that? Every beat of your heart, every breath or thought or step you take–all forged with sunbeams. People forget its potential but in the hands of the right person, light becomes a sword."
The light dimmed. All Kylara could see was smoke. There was an awful burning smell in the air. Her hand was numb from Tal's grip.
She looked at him in shock.
"As a child," he grinned, "did you ever catch a bug on fire with a magnifying glass?"
Kylara opened her mouth but found she couldn't summon any words. She closed it again.
Tal frowned. "No? Just me?" He glanced at the others and then, shrugging, stepped over a blackened corpse. "Fine. Just me then. Come along you three. Places to be, things to do. Don't want to be late."