Ser Alder crept away from the chattering of the Cross and Rose, pulling his dice from his pocket and laying them on the soil. They twirled on the spot for a moment, settling into a pair of ones. He frowned and pottered over to one of the slain creatures.
He gouged the eye from one of the company's monstrous enemies and placed both it and his dice in the same hand.
Retrieving his pocket knife, he cut two lines down the sides of his forearms; blood spiralling around his arm and trickling into his palm. Kemp felt a bubbling sensation in his hand for a moment, before black ichor shot out from his fist into the soil— his vision temporarily becoming monochrome.
He turned to the mercenaries, who were wrapping their fallen comrade in all white linen; sending him off with a proper burial.
Kemp's form seemed to meld in with the muted tones behind him, his surcote a wash of swirling shadows and the illusion of shrubbery. He tiptoed along the tar-black line, each step a wave of malice and an embrace of ash. He had worn greaves today, polished and barely worn. The articulations creaked with every motion and he doubted his wardrobe choice, although the elongated scraping sound falling upon deaf ears.
He tore a strip of cloth from his tunic, soaking it in the blood still running down his forearm and tucked it into the wrist of his cote. His dice rattled relentlessly against his thigh, vision fading in and out of monochrome.
Out of practise I suppose, I can scarcely see a damn thing, Ser Alder huffed. He recalled his time studying under Master Aquinas, alchemist to George XVI's court, where he had first learned to unpick and weave together miniscule strings of fate.
**
'I would have you remember child, that it is not the strength of the fate that makes oneself enduring. For they can be wound and unwound, knotted and frayed until the singular fate remains. To be strong you must have roots, apart of the very steel and guile they would use against you,' Master Aquinas gestured to a corpse on a stone table, dissected and quartered, 'You must singe them with every misguided look, break them at the first sign of disloyalty. End them, when you know they have no use.'
His Master had paced the room, showing off stone statues of former apprentices. Beautifully carved, like they had been frozen in time.
'I will forge you into something greater,' his eyes sparkled, 'A lone mountain among mere dunes. My storm in calm seas, and I will be the eye.'
**
Kemp crept further along his path, his fingers tracing back and forth over the now clotted wounds on his arms; switching between the cuts and itching at a new patch of fuzz growing on his chin, anything to keep his hands engaged.
The physician exhaled and took a stiff grip of his dice — their neat corners having been worn down by years of worry — a slight smile quivering into place as his feet disappeared from under him, the murky shadows of the woodland like fog hanging in the air.
The ebony path became paler as the stench became stronger, he could almost feel it sitting on his skin like being covered in oil.
Stringy bark peeled off of the trunks surrounding Alder, their innards rotting; spilling out like frozen tears. He shuddered at the image and pressed on, small trickles of light appearing briefly before the breeze swayed the canopy— enveloping him in darkness again.
His eyes darted around the darkness, the cold numbing his feet causing his vision to blur. He had strapped his sword tightly to his waist, careful to keep the blade covered from moisture, his hand teetering over the hilt with every chirp and chatter.
The path dispersed into a complex web, lines shooting off, curling back in, reaching over each other in a weave of dense but readable patterning. The whole sigil quivered and vibrated, lines snapping and reforming in other places; slipping into another and becoming larger.
Alder knelt down, tracing his hands along the thickest line.
'No death line,' he muttered, 'Someone didn't read their by-laws.'
His eyes glanced over the edges of the pattern, three coils wrapping the top three sides of the pentagon shape; taught and tightly shielding the rest of the marking. He walked the perimeter, keeping his foot in contact at all times; the pattern forming a concrete image in his mind.
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Tugging at the coils with his foot, they shook and sprang back into place. The centrepiece of the intricate design — an ouroboros enclosing an eye — lay still, unaffected by the prodding.
Alder exhaled, removing his soaked strip of cloth from his cote; placing it over the eye and holding it down with his coin. His dice stopped rattling and began orbiting each other in his pocket, bound together by increasingly strong lines of tension.
Stepping to the point of the pentagon, Alder placed his dice on the palm of his hands; watching them spin until they became a singular ring, humming as they whirled.
**
Master Aquinas burst through the observatory doors, dropping a pile of books upon the polished tile floors. He eyed his student, scraping the grout between the tiles with a metal wire; hands scratched and calloused from the gruelling work.
'Boy, I have discovered the solution to our problems,' the Master said, sweeping his wine-coloured cloak, 'We're going to remove your death line, courtesy of my genius. You may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.'
Alder looked to his master, sunken eyes bruised and red like an allergic reaction. His neck had been deeply scarred, lacerated the whole way round; scratch marks peppered around the chunky scar tissue.
He stood and wandered over to a stone working table to the side of the observatory room. He ran through the motions, lifted his shirt and laid down on the table. Surgical scars littered his torso, running does his spine and sides.
The alchemist placed his hands over the boy, his vision effortlessly slipping into monochrome; hundreds of threads and strings emanating from his body, bearing into the walls, books, tools and every facet of the observatory.
Aquinas sifted through the complex weave, untangling thick twines until he found a solitary black sheep. It was frayed and yet strong, thin as a hair and knotted every few feet. He took this thread into his palm, first coiling it — stripping its fibres and supplanting them into others — before cutting it loose with his fingernail; wrapping the trimmings around another insignificant line.
The boy fell limp.
**
Alder ungloved his right hand, revealing a lengthy nail on his thumb; gnarled and battered. He struck smoothly through the first coil, the *twang* it made as it released reverberating through the boughs of the woodland. The second came just as easy, nothing more than a whisper seeping out at as it disconnected.
The third proved to have some resistance, bending and morphing around Kemp's fingernail; it too, however, gave way. A pulse of energy erupted in all directions, quickly followed by an aftershock and a low thrum like that of a baritone in a choir.
***
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***
As clouds rolled over the small town of Ebbing, farmers began collecting their tools; hauling themselves back inside before the rains came. The streets were quiet, apart from the occasional clanging of metal as harvesting tools were stacked, organised and put away.
A gusts of wind blew through the street, rattling the crates stacked up against the dry well. A bare-footed child stepped through the empty streets, whistling a haunting tune; the hymn echoing throughout the streets, deafened by the pitter-patter and drizzle of rain that fell as he entered the town.
His hand shimmered for a moment and then settled into a long, feathered claw; fingernails twisted and cracked at the ends. His arms elongated, forearms drooping down to below the knees; claws now scraping against the cobbled street road, sparks kicking up with each step.
A familiar lopsided smile shivered into place on the child's face as he arrived at the well, leaning over the dark drop below. He retrieved a small, bloody thumb from the underside of his tongue, serated bite marks lining where it had been chewed from its larger appendage.
Dropping it into the well, the child backed away; bony knots forming underneath his tunic around the shoulder blades, writhing and squirming like a parasite beneath the skin.
He backed away, returning to his whistling and eyeing the chapel before leaving town; his grin straining to be contained on his face.
The well in the centre of Ebbing erupted, flames poured out and stripped the air of all its moisture. Before the body of the inferno could even reach the houses, it super-heated the air; now suddenly dry and burning hot, the thatch-roofed dwellings in Ebbing combusted— incinerating their inhabitants.
Customers of the tavern poured out of the door ablaze, writhing in pain as their clothes bonded to their flesh. Before they could even fall to the ground the backdraught hit, exploding outwards and erasing the tavern.
The fire quickly consumed Ebbing, those who could escape their houses being caught by the smoke and heat; surrounded on all sides by the flames.
The chaplain ran out of the chapel, finding Ebbing up in smoke; he could barely see the houses through the orange and red.
Taking nothing, he ran.
The road was hot, and yet still slick from the rain earlier. He could smell the burning flesh as he rounded the hillock the chapel was sat upon, heading for the crossroads outside of town. The ruddy dirt road out of Ebbing snaked into a flat and open field, devoid of trees and brush. Where it met the Crossroads, a marker of sorts before travellers got too close to the border.
The chaplain gasped for air as he entered the field, choking on every breath he inhaled. He stumbled forward for the next few steps before catching himself and taking a full breath, calming his panic and cooling his lungs.
A few hundred paces he saw the tall signpost denoting the crossroads, wooden points jutting out at even intervals in every direction. Atop the wooden pole seemed to be a body, *an execution of a thief perhaps. Not particularly common.* It had been bound and quartered, strung lazily in anatomical approximation; stripped of hair and largely without skin.
The chaplain crept closer to get a better look. Bile rushed up oesophagus and he choked it down, tears beginning to stream down his face as he saw it.
Haulder swinging gently in the breeze.