Amidst the countless mouldy carts, tattered tents, and worn inhabitants of the refugee camp sprawling south from Spires dashed a young man and a young woman, the former lagging behind the latter. Though their rough clothing, filthy skin, and large packs did not distinguish them from the refugees around them, the pair ran with a sense of urgency that none matched.
Between coughs and pants, the pock-marked man yelled a single name. “Orvi!”
His companion slowed slightly, to grab his arm and haul him ahead. “Save your breath; he won’t be here.”
He shot her a dirty look, and returned to screaming. “Orvi!”
“By the blood, Blake,” the muscled woman cursed, giving his arm a firm shake, “we’re on a time-limit and he’s probably using a different name.”
“He’ll hear it…“ He wheezed. “…If he’s…” Another wheeze. “Around- “
A fit of wet coughing erupted from his throat, interrupting Blake’s justification and forcing him to stop and bend over at the waist. The woman’s hand flew off his arm as momentum carried her forward, but after a moment she stopped and jogged back. She slung her large bag off her back and withdrew a corked bottle of water, which Blake accepted gratefully.
The liquid fell down his throat, landing in his stomach and provoking a wave of roiling inside of it. Days of slow starvation, ameliorated only by tiny amounts of nuts and chunks of the bread they’d looted, had taken its toll. Blake was weaker than he’d been since Dure’s plague had ravaged his failing body. But while the miniscule amount of Enn’s power – extracted from Maja for a boy whose body couldn’t handle it – could save him from divine disease, it could not overcome lack of food. Only urgency kept his legs moving; without that, he would’ve fallen hours ago.
After draining half of the bottle, he ejected a wad of phlegm from his throat and straightened. “What’re we gonna do, Erin? Look at this place.” He gestured towards the gargantuan speartrees thrusting from the ground, each ornamented with their own unique look and adorned with eight platforms hanging between them and the adjacent towers. “How in the gods’ names’re we gonna find ‘im? It’s a damn witch-house.”
Erin turned, briefly inspecting the countless pieces of bloodtech firing purple filigreed across every pipe, platform, and lamp; many even writ across mundane objects. “We’ll find that Face he’s travelling with… What was his name…” She clicked her fingers, grinding her teeth in frustration.
“Bhan, I reckon,” answered Blake.
“I knew that,” she snapped. “Anyway, people will know him.”
His eyes bulged. “We’re back t’square one, then, Erin!” The tanned young man pressed his palms against his forehead, his gaze boring into the ground. “Oh, we’re dead. We’re dead.”
A blow to the back of his head sent him stumbling forward. He looked up. Erin brandished a clenched fist at him, and he backpedalled rapidly.
“We’ll find a place with a lot of people and ask after him.”
Blake froze, then gave a single nod. “We gotta be quick.”
“The world trembles at your genius, Blake,” Erin stated blandly, rolling her eyes.
After a moment staring at each other, the lanky man punched her in the arm and sprinted away as fast as his backpack-laden body would allow him. A grunt and rapidly approaching footsteps were the only reply given.
Together, Blake and Erin weaved around refugees performing chores or quietly talking, and eventually passed into the thick crowds of Spires proper, forcing their way through like a blunt knife cuts cheese. As they passed through, everyone around them was treated to a variation of a single question: ‘Have you heard of Face Bhan?’ Yet before any responses could be formulated and given, the pair had already cleaved past them.
Blake, panting, quickly glanced over his shoulder. Thousands of paces distant, waves of hunters and harvesters alike emerged from the heartwoods at full sprints like ants fleeing from some monstrous finger; some carrying comrades or stopping and ensuring their companions caught up while others barged through those around them, knocking their fellows to the ground in a desperate bid to gain distance from the trees. Soon, though, the sight was hidden by the mass of the crowd he shoved through.
Yet as Blake sighted the lifts climbing up the outside of a mossy grown tower, he paused. Each elevator carried either people or material, and often enough of both that the contents threatened to spill over the side and splatter to the ground, far beneath. He muttered an obscenity under his breath as he watched one trail upwards, growing increasingly distant with every moment. Magic and witchcraft was the domain of the Owl – its calamity capricious and uncaring – yet within the city hubris made it mundane. Though pure terror had set his legs moving, at that moment a more potent alloy of fear and awe stilled them again.
Erin grabbed his arm and opened her mouth to chastise him, but any sounds that could emerge were quickly smothered by the shouting of a boy balancing atop a pile of boxes, his voice amplified by a strange muzzle strapped to his mouth.
“…And make no mistake, Heartlanders; the Albright’s dissolution of their century-old treaty with Heltia is motivated solely by fear, and flies in the face of all our Head had done for them! The accusations of harbouring the Ravenblood are entirely unfounded; crafted by a group of tyrants scared of our progress. But fear not, good people: though we forge through our lowest point in years Heltia remains strong; strong enough to detain the Jackal even in our weakened state! And though trouble may approach, the Terms- “
While the crier had caterwauled over an ambivalent crowd, Blake and Erin had slowly crept closer to the pile of boxes until they were at its foot, at which point Erin boosted Blake to its peak. The mound wobbled precariously for a moment so he ditched his backpack, dropping it to Erin below. The child stared at him, wide-eyed. Blake gingerly unstrapped the muzzle from the kid’s head, grabbed him beneath the armpits, and began lowering him down to Erin. As he did so, the young man whispered into the crier’s ears.
“We’re about t’be invaded.” He jerked his head towards the heartwoods, and from their position above the mass of people a line of metallic glints was barely visible. Better eyes than his, Blake knew, would reveal them to be ranks upon ranks of soldiers, bereft of any affiliating colours. “Get outta here.”
The child sat in Erin’s arms for a moment, stunned. Then, he wriggled from her grasp and was rapidly swallowed by the crowd. Blake wore a lopsided smile as he watched the boy flee, the lines of his lips and face frozen. A purple-tabarded man forged through the crowd towards the crates, club in-hand, and the young man startled, then strapped the muzzle over his mouth.
“Hullo, all!” The enhanced reply exploded out of the muzzle, pounding through Blake’s ears hard enough to make him jump. “We’re lookin’ for a, uh, Face Bhan? He should be travellin’ with another, younger man – a Face as well, I think.” From behind the noise, the blowing of a horn was faintly audible.
The crowd slowly milled towards the lifts, yet the low murmur of omnipresent conversation had vanished as all eyes had alighted upon this new and sudden diverging from the norm. But a small handful were looking towards the forest, their brows furrowed.
“The one tha’ got arrested?” someone called to Blake.
“Did he have braids; little trinkets in them?” The reply was massive loud in comparison to the small voice.
“Thas right,” responded the speaker, identity concealed in the crowd. “He in Bars, ah think.”
Blake eyed the armed men – guards, he realised – that were converging on his location. “Where’s that?”
“Big glowin’ tower, that-a-way.” The location could only be deduced because the line of towers continued in only one direction. The speaker guffawed. “You’ll be there in a minute!”
Almost as soon as that response had finished, someone else cut in. “You know Vin? The hunter? You’re friends of his?”
This person was much closer: a rough man in leather armour, his expression eerily still as he looked up at the young man. A quaver had shivered through his voice.
Blake licked his lips beneath the bloodtech contraption. “No- “
“Yes!” answered Erin, much quieter but still distinctly, accursedly audible. “We are!”
“Oh?” said the rough man. “Well, he burned my brother alive, you filth!”
The rough man charged forward and kicked the pile of crates. Suddenly, the firm press of a solid object beneath Blake’s feet vanished and he was falling downwards through a maelstrom of dust, jabbed by the sharp corner of boxes all the way. His grunts blared outwards across the rapidly thinning crowd, and then red dirt met ribs with enough force to drive all air from his lungs.
When the cloud cleared, the man was standing over him, a short sword gripped in his hand. Blake fumbled behind him for a non-existent axe, and began scrambling backwards moments too late. The blade sliced downwards and he rolled aside, but a swift boot to the torso stopped him from fleeing any further.
The rough man’s face contorted into fearsome rage. “This is for- “
His threat transformed into a wheeze as he stumbled sideways. The sword trembled in one hand. The other dragged downward, folding around an arrow that had embedded itself in his back. With a scream, the man raised the sword again, and was immediately felled by another three projectiles embedding themselves into his back.
Blake watched as the man angrily drew himself towards him. Two firm hands helped him to his feet, then shoved his backpack into his hands. He looked up to find Erin holding his arm, entranced by something.
Tracing her gaze revealed a triple-layered line of at least a hundred warriors, the frontward lines wielding spears while the back held bows. Each were clad in hardened leather reinforced by steel. The wall of bristling weaponry stomped towards them and suddenly Blake came to the realisation that everyone had fled.
An arrow landed nearby. “We’re unarmed!” he shouted, raising both hands. The muzzle amplified his voice, making it impossible to ignore.
Some animal instinct drew his eyes towards a tall man in the third line, whose calloused hands slowly pulled back an arrow on the string of his bow. Several minute changes in the weapon’s angle caused Blake’s eyes to widen, and he prepared to grab Erin and dive behind the boxes.
Erin raised her hands as well after a short delay. “We’re civilians!”
With a mighty heave, the archer yanked back the arrow, only for another soldier to shove him and foul his aim. The two argued, both of their hands jabbing towards the two angrily.
“Go, go, go,” Blake whispered, and the two of them began following the rest of the crowd, who had departed in a flood of dust and stamping feet. He unstrapped the bloodtech device from his face, and after a moment’s consideration, crammed it into the bag of his companion, running steps ahead.
Their sprint easily outpaced the slow, methodical advance of the line of soldiers. The Spires of Heltia flickered past, and in any other circumstance Blake would’ve stopped and gaped, yet the terrifying and wondrous spectacle of each tower, radiant with magic and mundane knowledge, flashed past as if they were nothing but air.
“Why didn’t they kill us?” he panted.
“The Terms,” Erin replied without so much as a hitch in her breathing. She quickly pre-empted Blake’s next question. “Made by the Albrights after they rose to ascendency a century ago, in order to stop mass casualties from inter-House conflict.”
Blake spent the next few moments deciphering that. “Wait, they’ve been kings for a century?” he asked, bewilderment overcoming fear.
She chuckled. “Yes, Blake. The Houses as we know them are three centuries old. Except Heltia, which is a little over one.”
“Damn. That’s… a long…. time, huh?” His eyebrows furrowed for a moment, then he snapped back to the reality of their desperate flight. ”So these ‘Terms’,” he said, stopping momentarily to continue panting, “stop Houses from killin’ people, right?”
Erin nodded as they slammed into the back of the crowd, who had gathered around a lift on the outside of a Spire with fabrics hung periodically for each level. A single, purple-tabarded guard was trying and failing to coordinate the evacuation. Blake turned to his companion and gestured for them to go around.
They barged through the thinnest part of the crowd, incidentally pushing a thin woman to the ground. Immediately, Blake turned back to apologise, but she had already vanished under the feet of the fleeing masses. Beyond the screams of the woman, the army’s inexorable advance continued, now only one Spire away. When he began running again, moments later, his face was significantly paler.
Unperturbed, Erin continued her explanation. “They blew a horn, which notifies the start of a battle according to the Terms. There are a few specifics, but the biggest one is that civilians – the unarmed – shouldn’t be harmed.”
“But…” Blake said, shaking off the horrific image and continuing his previous train of thought, “it’s jus’ for Houses, right?”
“Yes? Honestly, I didn’t expect them to actually obey- ”
“Why aren’t they wearin’ any House colours?”
Erin paused in her statement, and licked her lips. “I…” She stopped for several moments, and Blake worried she would fall into anger at not knowing something again. “…don’t know,” the woman finished.
Amidst a quick glance over his shoulder, Blake gave a grunt of affirmation. “S’okay mate.” He huffed as Erin sped up, the exertion taking its toll. “How d’you… know this stuff, anyway?”
His companion pointed ahead. “That’s the tower, isn’t it?”
Ahead of the running pair was a Spire distinguished from its fellows by the sheer amount of pulsating runework running up the side, the bizarre angles of the workings causing it to look like the scarring of a burn victim. Layered in front were lines of soldiers who clearly outnumbered the invading army at a glance. Among them were a dozen bearing obvious marks of Godsblood: the sallow pallor and thick bodies of Lizardbloods; the height and musculature of Oxbloods; the orange hair and sclera of Foxbloods. Blake wondered how the House kept such advanced Blooded’s impulses in check.
As they sprinted towards the lines, the young man sighted several strange contraptions through the sweat blurring his vision. Blinking coalesced them into discrete objects in front of the Heltian forces: pieces of machinery in the shapes of crossbows, slings, or tubes, all blazing with the purple light of charged bloodtech. Bemused-looking individuals stood next to each, blinking owlishly at the world around them.
One furious officer was screaming at a Foxblood, demanding to know how their patrols had missed something as large as an incoming army, especially seeing as they’d have to be carrying their supplies with them. The Blooded cocked an eyebrow at the man and, grinning widely, informed him they were likely dead. Another angry yell was borne with an increasingly dangerous silence.
Blake tried to ask Erin whether they should go around, but the question transformed into a dull wheeze. His legs ached as he slammed himself forward and his stomach screamed in defiance of its abuse. All the while, his lungs tried and failed to pull and push sufficient air through his lungs. The muscular woman was pulling ahead, and he wondered how she had the energy to do so.
Despite his fears of being blasted with magic, the line shifted to allow them through. As soon as he passed them, Blake noticed his pace slowing without his command and keeled over, huffing in great gasps of air. A shove to the back sent him stumbling forward, a glance behind revealing a furious soldier. He staggered onward, and ‘Bars’ drew closer and closer, looming so high that simply looking at it made him dizzy. Where were the low, sensible, sandstone of the Foot?
Blake scowled. Leagues distant, in a place that was no longer his home.
Then he regained enough coherency to hear the approach of a hundred pairs of boots. Far paler, he stumbled forward.
In front of the tower, Erin was gesticulating wildly at a massively hairy Oxblood, whose face was marred by a bruised lip and blood-soaked bandage over one eye. The Blooded held a halberd beside him, and despite being the only soldier guarding the entrance, Blake knew better than to try to muscle past. He could recognise the clenching jaw of a man seconds away from taking a swing a league away, and hurriedly yanked his companion back before her head could get punched off its neck.
“What my friend ‘ere meant t’say, sir, is…” He turned to the slightly taller woman and hissed at her. “What did’ya say?”
“We need to get in there!” she snapped towards the huge Blooded, scowling fiercely.
“Shut up, idiot!” he whispered, shoving her back. “Sorry, sir… I didn’t catch your name?”
“Dervin,” the Oxblood spat angrily. “An’ tell your girlfrien’ to back off, ‘les she get a nice time in jail.”
The accent was so unfamiliar it took Blake several seconds to decipher it. “Yeah, absolutely. Situation bein’ as it is, both of us understand you.”
Erin sighed, then nodded. “I am sorry. I didn’t even- “
“Great,” Dervin rumbled. He leaned forward. “Now get outta here.”
Blake licked his lips. “…But, y’know, we needa get in there.”
Something dangerous fell into the lines of the Blooded’s face. “What?”
“Bhan – the Face – we need to talk t’him.”
Dervin took one hand and rubbed his face. “Ah, gods. ’im again.”
“Again?”
“Spendin’ ‘alf me day lettin’ Vin in,” the Oxblood muttered to himself, “an’ then ‘e comes an’ asks me for- “
“Vin?” Erin said. “Bhan’s apprentice?”
Had they been a few years younger, Blake would’ve slugged her in the face. But, unlike him, she’d never stopped growing, and he was now confident that the return punch would knock him senseless. He settled for backing up a few steps and hoping that this Blooded didn’t hold a vendetta against Orvi.
Who had burned a man to death. Blake swore quietly. The image was grotesque. The angry man must’ve made a mistake.
Dervin, though, was unbothered. “Vin, aye. You know ‘im?”
Erin nodded. “That’s who we’re looking for. We’re hoping Bhan will know where he is.”
The Oxblood laughed quietly. “Bad luck. Vin’s gone.”
“Gone?” Blake asked.
He regarded them for a moment. “e’s dead.”
The young man’s eyes widened. “Whaddaya mean, he’s dead?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Dervin shrugged. “You’re one of th’ fellas who want ‘im? Well, someone gutted ‘im before you could.” He sighed. “Gods, I’ve told you people more times than a ‘ore ‘as pox. Not th’ bloody time for it, anyway.”
Blake blinked. He blinked again. Within his torso, every organ rearranged itself into a system that no longer made sense. He stumbled over to the wall and fell against it. The pain in his lungs and stitch in his side were overwhelming, yet the phrase still rung in his head. “He’s dead?”
Erin slumped next to him, staring into the distance. Suddenly, she punched the wall and immediately clutched her knuckles.
The large Blooded stared at them, mildly bemused. “Go on. Get outta ‘ere. ‘ole up somewhere, an’ get that skinny bastard to eat something.”
They ignored him. The young man folded his head into his arms, staring sightlessly into his tanned flesh.
“It’s not like ‘e’s your kid or something. Move, ‘fore I move you myself.”
Erin quietly swore. “For what?” she muttered. “For what? I’m so stupid.”
Dervin’s single eyeball watched the incoming army, now barely two hundred paces from his own forces. His hand clenched around his halberd hard enough for its monster-bone material to audibly creak.
Erin grabbed the man beside. “We’ve got to find his body, Blake. We need to bury him.”
He shook her off.
“Blake. This might be- “
“Just another corpse, then,” he spat bitterly. “Dead flesh won’t thank you. Nothin’ there t’do the thankin’.” He let out a strangled cry. “Another game of make-believe, and the bloody fool too late t’know it. Course it’s like this.”
“He might not be- “
“’e’s not,” Dervin announced, still gazing at the incoming forces. “I lied.”
The two young people whirled to stare at him.
“People’re after ‘im. ‘ad to be careful.”
Blake leapt to his feet. “You bas- “
“Where is he?” interrupted Erin.
“Vin’s left,” Dervin stated blandly. “Couldn’t tell you where.”
Both of them opened their mouths to say something, only to be interrupted by an all-consuming cacophony, piercing from above in a maelstrom of noise reminiscent of a thousand screeching cats, falling pans, and screaming babies. Even when Blake and Erin clamped their hands over their ears, the sound still permeated through their flesh and stabbed into their ears.
Yet upon hearing the sound, Dervin ceased all movement. When its echo faded, he took a single, hesitant step backwards. His features were entirely still, having frozen moments after the sound started, as if they’d been carved from a block of glacial ice. His mouth shivered open, then closed. It opened again.
Words slipped from his mouth, heavy as tombstones. “You need t’go.” As soon as they stopped, he suddenly whirled. “No, wait.” He fumbled a keyring from his belt, letting his halberd fall to the ground, and extracted several keys from it with trembling hands.
He tossed three keys to Blake, who caught them in two hands. The young man had opened hundreds of locks in his lifetimes, yet it struck him as distinctly ironic that the first keys he’d ever been given came from a complete stranger.
The Oxblood pointed a finger at the two of him, his body turned to face something far away. “Vin’s going to Fort Vane. Th’ keys I’ve given you unlock Bhan’s cell, in the basement of Bars. He’ll know th’ way, no mistake. You won’ make a day t’the west without ‘im.”
Blake faced him, unease filling him. “What’s goin’ on, sir?”
“You find th’ Vane boy, an’ you tell ‘em Spires is done.”
Erin touched her companion’s shoulder, seemingly unconscious of the act. “What’s- “
Davian’s face twisted, falling into itself like water down a drain. “An’ you find Ronnie – big Strain, should be with Vin – an’ you…” He paused, swallowing. “You jus’… Say I…” Another pause. “You tell ‘em I’m sorry. Tell ‘em I’m sorry I was such a coward.”
“What’s happenin’?” Blake pleaded.
The Blooded spoke as he scooped up his halberd, hopping quickly on the balls of his feet. “Go up Bars on your way out. Find somewhere sturdy.” He turned again, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “An’ don’t free anyone else – only Bhan can leave. ‘e’s the only safe one. Promise me.”
“Alright, okay!” said Blake, raising his arms. “Just tell us what’s happening!”
Erin nodded firmly.
Davian’s wide eyes stared leagues distant, towards the heartwoods they’d emerged from minutes ago. On the horizon, trees fell like wooden sticks, and a cloud of red and brown rose from a single point, as if some great, hulking inferno coursed towards their location.
“A god’s coming.”
----------------------------------------
The pair were ushered inside the massive metal door, which creaked close after them. Erin began slamming a heavy steel deadbolt to its locked position afterwards, but Blake arrested her hand.
He gestured outside. “What about him?”
Erin’s eyes were wild. “There’s a god, Blake; there’s a god. We need to get as many layers between it and us before it gets here, and… “
“Erin,” the young man said, grabbing her shoulders. She continued babbling, and he shook her once again. “Erin! We’ve done this before, alright? Survived Dure- “
“Dure didn’t come into the city, Blake!” she yelled, her short black hair shaking with the shivers of her head. “Let me bolt the door- “
Seeing Erin so uncharacteristically panicked forced Blake to keep calm. “Gods can’t open doors, Erin. If the guys outside need t’retreat, we can’t bar the entrance.”
His companion stopped.
“We’re almost better off than we were, right?” Blake joked. “Orvi’s alive; we know where he is… An’ how many people can lip about seein’ two gods in their lives, huh? Not bloody many.”
“Mostly ghosts, I imagine,” Erin muttered.
“Maybe.” He looked for any remaining signs of persisting panic in her face. Whatever fear had seeped into her had crawled back behind her eyes. “Alright, c’mon. We can’t wait here.”
They delved further into Bars, the tapping of their boots echoing through the otherwise silent halls. Its white walls were turned blue by whatever witchcraft burned within Heltia’s lamps, and while tiny hooks were embedded periodically in their bone-like material, they were empty of all but the occasional short sword or empty sheath. Soon their first obstacle made itself apparent: neither of them knew how to get to the basement, and the sparse signage of the walls contained only single letters. Or so Erin told Blake – the small symbols could’ve told a three-act story and he’d have no idea.
Eventually, they ran past a circular chamber with a massive shaft yawning its middle, a single platform hanging precariously over the chasm. It latched onto sturdy pillars at either end, which were carved to create an alternating pattern of angular depressions. The contraption dug its teeth into both. To Blake’s eyes, it resembled the wooden platforms that shot up the side of Spires; only formed of white spearwood and crenulated with additional magic symbols. Erin hopped the small gap and began examining an obelisk which jutted from the platform, a lever embedded in its side.
Still looking at it, she spoke. “This could take us down.” She turned back, staring at Blake, pressed against the wall of the room. “Why are you over there? Hurry up.”
He stared at the elevator. “I’m not gettin’ on that.”
“Blake, we need to hurry.”
He pushed his head further away, brushing the sparse hairs of his chin against the spearwood wall. “That’s bloody magic stuff.”
“Blake- “
“We can find stairs. Easy.”
“There might not be stairs,” she snapped.
“Thing’s god-work, Erin; could steal our souls.”
“Blake,” Erin said, her hand on the lever. “Get on it, or I’ll make you get on it.”
The young man’s eyes flicked to her, then back to the platform. He shuffled away from his spot, then leaned over the gap and peered down the shaft. Blue lights shined from its walls periodically, revealing organic growths of spearwood from each wall, dripping with muddy ooze. Then Erin grabbed him, yanked him onto the platform, and cranked the lever downward.
Everything fell upward in a slow drift, accelerating until the world left Blake at a blur. Comprehension of his surroundings slipped past him like ash through outstretched hands. It was a familiar feeling, yet no less terrifying for it. Then their descent slowed, and finally stopped, the only hint at its existence new surroundings and a quiet anxiety resettling in his gut.
Unlike the floor above, the halls outside their chamber bore no hint of previous adornment, and beneath the blue witch-lights its walls seemed to become a more putrid yellow. But the biggest difference was something Blake only noticed when Erin silently extended a hand to touch the nearby wall.
Confused, he mirrored her gesture. Within the wrinkles of his palm, the surface quietly pulsed, each beat growing minutely closer to its neighbour the more time progressed. At any other time, he might’ve mistaken it for some kind of performance, but the young man could only identify it as one thing: the building cadence of a monstrously large entity, indefatigably accelerating.
Erin stared blankly at the wall.
His voice fell into a whisper. “Oi.”
She started, and quietly loped into the nearest hallway. He quickly followed, glancing over his shoulder before he left.
They followed a large, slightly curving hallway, nearly missing the first door in their haste to find an exit. Erin managed to process it several steps after they passed it, and quickly motioned for Blake to follow her back. It was a door carved from the same spearwood as Bars itself, sized for someone much larger than either of them. Several deadbolts were embedded into its outside keeping it from opening, which Erin hastily slammed aside. Both grasped the protruding bolts, and together, the two of them managed to slowly pull the weighty slab open.
An immensely bright light assailed them. Rapid blinking managed to coalesce the room into something comprehensible: a small area with a long table in the centre, two chains shackled to the floor at the end further from them. Blake shaded his eyes and walked to the other side of the room, where another door sat. This one was similar to the first, except in addition to the deadbolts there was a keyhole. He fumbled with the keys in hand, jamming each into the depression and jiggling it. Finding the right key took long enough that he almost wished he'd tried to lockpick it instead, but on his second round of shoving the three keys in Blake turned it at just the right angle. A dull clunk reverberated through the door.
In response, several hoarse cries sounded from the other side. Blake glanced at Erin, who withdrew a javelin from its holster. He left his wood-axe where it was, instead choosing to unsheathe the bronze dagger in his belt. They exchanged a quick look, then heaved the door open.
The other side contained a winding hallway, similar to the one they’d been in moments before but distinguished by its steeper curvature and the closet-sized cages embedded in either side, their bars seemingly wrought from the spearwood of the spire itself. And the cages seemed to be meant for human use; the one across from Blake contained a low cot and a small hole in its floor, edges smeared with…
Before he could inspect it in full, another set of hoarse yells emanated from down the hallway, empty of language but full of desperation. Erin suddenly stiffened, and following her gaze, Blake realised that while most of the cells were uniform in their emptiness, many were not. Atop the cots, sprawled upon the floor or slumped against the bars, were people.
Jaws yawned below empty eyes, bloody gums absent of teeth. Hands were wrapped in crimson bandages, digits unnaturally short beneath the soaked wraps. Some were missing limbs in their entirety, cleanly severed with the flesh of the stumps smeared together, as if they’d been held in a fire. Somehow, none of the wounds seemed infected, yet the men and women kept prisoner had died anyway.
“Raven’s bones,” Blake whispered. The hallway’s curve vanished behind itself. Walking down its clean white floor, with a procession of tortured souls on either side, seemed ghastly. He looked at a woman, eyes and mouth made gaping chasms, and shivered. “Why…?”
He’d seen worse devastation. A decade ago, when those that remained in the Foot grew ill, ejecting water and food and dying steeped in their own filth. And again, four years ago: the bodies of hundreds of volunteer soldiers, skin covered in pustules oozing fluid, swollen limbs still twitching with the desire to live. He’d only been saved by outstretched hands. The sights had nearly undone him, both times; but here was not the feckless destruction of nature. Nor was it the desperate gambit of those fighting for their survival, grasping at other’s lives yet bearing no ill-will. Blake wanted more than anything to deny the truth, but it was writ too plainly to conceal: here were the finger-prints of humanity, indelible and deliberate, carving hatred and sadism into a single, impossible scene.
He had never seen anything like it.
“Why?” he repeated dumbly. He bent over and retched, and the thin dribble of water that emerged seemed pathetic.
Erin shook her head, the bright lights of the hall casting her features in grim shadow. “Is anyone alive?” she called down the hall.
The response was more coherent this time: weak voices responding in the affirmative in both directions.
Blake’s eyes flashed back and forth, searching for whatever monster caused such agony. It took a moment to realise that they’d most likely left it at the entrance.
A strangled groan left his mouth.
Underneath the harsh, unrelenting light, nothing was said. Erin had already started walking away. He followed, head full of hands and masks.
Blake plodded forward, carefully avoiding the sight of those around him. Occasionally, he would glimpse a body leaning against the wall of a cage, and tucked in the corner of his eye fear and anxiety did its work, transforming the corpses into creatures staring past flesh, bone, and the paltry amount of Oxblood within him, their ethereal eyes boring into the common blood that marked him and everything he’d ever known.
That was why he missed a body standing up, reaching through the bars, and grabbing his wrist.
A guttural scream left his lips, accompanied by an instinctual wrenching of his arm that nearly broke his joint. Within the cage, a tall, muscular woman glared at him, her dark eyes boring into his. Her black skin was cut with shallow wrinkles, while her hair showed the first hints of grey. She wore the same ragged tunics of the other prisoners, only marred with less blood. But most arresting of all were the numerous scars carved across her face: clean and straight as blades.
He heaved backwards, slamming her into the spearwood bars of her cage. The woman groaned as her other arm – cradled against her chest with each finger twisted unnaturally – but did not release him.
“Lemme out, kid,” she hissed through a face contorted in pain. “Haven’t eaten fer days. I’ll make it worth yer while; promise.”
“Me neither, Miss,” came Blake’s tremulous response. He brandished his knife in his other hand. “Lemme go, we-we can talk.”
Her arm trembled as she eyed him. “Fine.”
The sudden release of pressure caused him to fall backwards onto his arse, the back of his head smashing into the bars of the opposite cage. He clutched it silently, right as Erin slid beside him, feeling around his head.
“Are you okay?” the young woman asked, then turned and glared at the prisoner. “How are you alive?”
She chuckled, then coughed harshly. “Tough n’ scary, I guess.” The woman gripped the bars, and rested her head on the gap between them. “Listen: I’m Val. Yer not Heltia; ‘f you leave me, they’ll starve me. Or worse,” she said, flicking her head towards the corpses. “Be a fellow an’ lemme out.”
“You’re here for a reason,” declared Erin blandly.
“Nothin’ t’deserve this. Killed a man in self-defence; jus’ so happened he was a guard. Didn’ believe me.” Val raised her eyebrows. “So I’m here.”
“You’re lying.”
“Do I deserve to starve t’death, or be tortured?” she said, addressing Blake.
He massaged his wrist, swallowing.
Her eyes flicked across his body. “Who does? These people ain’t people. People don’t do this.”
Blake nodded, slowly.
Val looked him in the eyes. “You get it,” she whispered. “S’gotta be ‘cause Heltia’s ruled by a Blooded, right? Only Blooded could do this.”
“Blake,” Erin warned. “We promised him.”
“We didn’t know… this, Erin,” he protested.
“She wouldn’t be here – she wouldn’t be alive – if she wasn’t dangerous.”
“You let me out; I won’t hurt you,” said Val gently. “Promise.”
“They-they’re monsters, Erin,” he pleaded. “Godkin. They’ve surrendered their humanity.”
“Monsters didn’t do this, Blake.”
“If we leave her here, she’s done for.”
“If you try to let her out,” warned Erin, “I’ll stop you. We don’t have time- ”
Val pounded the bars with her hands, then sighed. “Least lend me some food, then.”
Blake took off his pack and fumbled through it, withdrawing a beaten, grainy chunk of bread.
Erin visibly startled. “You have bread?”
“I was savin’ it. If we were, uh, close to the edge.”
Val stepped back a little. The young man was extending the chunk through the bars when she surged forward, good arm snapping through the barrier to grasp the keys tucked in his belt. However, before she could withdraw Erin’s hands wrapped around her wrist and wrenched it, forcing the prisoner to release the keys. Blake snatched them and backed away when Erin let go.
Val stumbled backwards several steps, then moved forward again, arm flailing for Erin’s coat. The young woman managed to back away.
“I’ll gut you, girl!” Val screamed, spittle flying from her mouth. “You’ll be holdin’ yer bloody entrails and wishin’ you’d helped me! I’ll make you swallow yer tongue! You’ll beg fer yer godsdamn lives! No gods or monsters’ll do as much; just wait!”
They backed away, and ran. Obscenities and threats echoed around the grotesque sights of the prison, following them as they dashed down the curving hall. Their flight covered enough ground that within moments, they sighted their target. He stood out: amongst the sea of dead, he was the only one left unharmed.
“Eyah, fellows,” he called through his bars. “You met- ”
“You’re Face Bhan?” asked Erin.
His brows furrowed. “I am him.”
“Who’s your apprentice, then?”
“Face Vin,” he responded monotonously. “Why?”
“Where were you two years ago?” she fired rapidly. “When you performed the Divinity about the Fox and the Owl?”
“Ach. I do not remember.” He drummed his fingers. “Likely small town in bushland.”
“It’s him,” announced Blake. Erin shrugged. The two of them approached the gate carved into the bars.
“What happening?” Bhan said, backing away from the bars. He raised his hands. “I know nothing. I was performing Divinity that night, in commons; ask Dervin. You know this.”
“What?” said Blake, sparing a confused glance at the man while he attempted to find the right key for the lock. Erin snatched the keys off him and began doing so herself.
“No, no, no.” The Face backed away further. “Bad luck to hurt Face. Don’t- ”
“Mate, we’re gettin’ you out,” assured Blake.
Bhan shot him a disbelieving look.
“There’s a, uh, there’s a god coming. And- “
“What?” snapped the worn man. “Why we leaving?”
“Dervin told us t’go up, find a good place.”
“What god can break spear-towers?” murmured Bhan. Moments later, he opened his mouth. “Ah. Why would… No, why me?”
Erin gave a hiss of annoyance as her trembling hands fumbled another key.
“We’re lookin’ for Orvi.”
“You would know him as Vin,” Erin interjected.
Bhan frowned, backing further away. “What he do?”
“Known him since I was…” The young man paused. “Eight? Nine? Long time.”
“He is friend?” asked the Face.
“Yeah. Ran off. Been lookin’ for him.”
“Why you so late?”
Blake stopped.
“He needed friends.” Behind the bars, the worn man scowled. “Need friends. You late. Years late.”
Silently, his jaw opened and shut. A withering glare affixed his gaze. Eventually, he worked enough saliva into his mouth to speak. “You don’t- “
An immense impact rumbled the walls and floor of the tower, fierce enough to send everyone present sprawling. Before Blake could recover, a shudder ran through his entire body, bubbling into a slightly more piercing pain in his chest and skull. Alien tastes and scents flooded his tongue and nose, yet despite its bizarreness, the entire experience was faint: as if happening to someone very far away.
Erin seemed less lucky. She trembled on the floor, arms wrapped around her head. A low groan escaped her mouth.
Bhan stared at the two of them, bewildered. “You hurt?” the Face asked, as if trying an ill-fitting cloak.
His only response was Blake smacking the side of his head, like a mason smacking an offensive lump of protruding stone. The young man cracked the side of his neck once, then hauled himself to his feet, snatching the keys that had fallen next to Erin’s form. She was rapidly regaining her composure.
With an ironic twist, the first key he tried unlocked the gate.
Blake rubbed his eyes. “I dunno.” He yanked the cage’s door open, then heaved Erin to her feet. “Let’s go.”
The Face raised a hand. “Wait.”
“We gotta find somewhere safe- “
“The woman – Jackal – she quieter.”
A brief pause demonstrated the truth of Bhan’s statement: no longer did the prisoner constantly yell threats after them. Instead, her voice was joined by a much quieter one.
“…I’m trying!” someone hissed.
Val’s response dripped with mockery. “Blood; a blind toad could do better.”
“It’s not- “ An angry pause. “You think it was easy to get in here? You’re not even our secondary objective- “
“Lotta excuses, not a lotta unlocking.”
As their words faded into incoherence, Bhan blanched, his skin taking on a green pallor. “Jackal is getting out.”
“Whaddaya mean, Jackal? You talkin’ ‘bout that lady?” As both an animal and a name, the word was only vaguely familiar. “She important?”
The Face hastily pushed his way out of the cage, moving the opposite direction they’d entered from. By Blake’s estimation the hall was circular, meaning they’d reach the entrance anyway, however it was still the longer route. He and Erin exchanged looks, then followed, imitating Bhan’s quiet tread.
Every step could be measured by the tortured bodies in each cell, their features so decimated they barely resembled humans. The murmurs of distant discussion were no longer recognisable as words; instead, the echo seemed to be the low muttering of each body.
Blake couldn’t stand it. “Why’re you so spooked?” he whispered in Bhan’s ear.
The man maintained his silent walk. “She will kill us.”
“There’s three of us and two of them.”
“One.”
Blake’s head whipped around, briefly turning from the hall ahead. “What?”
“Three of us and one of her.”
He frowned. The words were individually sensible, but as a whole flew in the face of reality. His reasoning soon made itself apparent.
A sudden shout pierced through the quiet. “You have to help us!”
Whatever response the woman gave was dominated by the echoes of that plea. “Help us!”, the walls called. “Help us…”, said the empty cells, “help us…”, murmured the bodies. “Us…” trailed away into oblivion.
Another yell. “…But you’re the Jackal!”
Val chuckle resounded from every angle, low and harsh. “Maybe th’ name’s makin’ you think I’m like a god.” A short pause. “Maybe I am. But my business ain’t with gods. It’s with humans.”
Her saviour growled. “If you’re not going to- “
A faint snap resounded, like a vulture’s cry on a misty night. Moments later, it was followed by the dull metallic moan of a blade being drawn from a sheath.
“You coulda saved me, boy! Girl!” The sudden bellow jolted the trio, and Blake and Erin began pushing the Face faster. “Fer nothin’; no skin off your back! But you was gonna let me die!” Her next words were lower, but still audible. “An’ kiddos? I jus’ can’t let that lie.”
Silence reigned over the stagnant air. Bhan’s clear fear urged the other two to increase their speed, gradually accelerating their rapid walk into a sprint. Then suddenly the door they’d entered from was there, and Bhan and Erin barged through, winding around its back to begin shoving it shut.
Though Blake followed bare moments later, he was a moment too late to avoid sighting the Jackal’s rictus grin emerging from the round of the hall at a sprint, sword clutched in her good hand.
“Go!” he shouted, slipping past the spearwood door and grabbing one of the room’s two chairs. A moment of confusion came and went as Erin and Bhan paused, turned, and ran out the opposite door. The gap was too narrow for either to pass easily, and after a moment, Erin exited, yanking Bhan with her. Their hesitation gave their pursuer enough time to follow through the crack. Though she halted to ward off Blake’s hurled chair, when he hurtled out of the blinding room she was only seconds behind.
By this point, the tanned young man had spent most of the past hour running, mindless of starvation’s slow burn ravaging his stomach. The encroaching fatigue was familiar in the same way a dying person’s terminal illness was; Blake knew that his terror could only slow exhaustion’s approach for so long. And when it finally fell upon him, his dagger wouldn’t match a sword. Neither would the warped shaft of his wood-axe, even if he managed to draw it in time. Any obstructions to his flight would end with a blade through the spine.
Yet while one half of his mind wryly counted the odds, the other felt the placement of his feet and the slap of the bag upon his spine; saw the backs of those in front drift closer and farther according to the drive of his legs; heard the Jackal’s gasps behind him. For the briefest moment, he imagined turning around and facing her. Her furious gaze, now unlocked from her spearwood cage, prevented the thought from moving further than his death.
Fear drove him. In the end, it drove him faster than the Jackal’s spite could keep up with.
One after the other, Blake saw his fellows dip around a corner. When he followed them, he found the elevator they’d left behind already beginning to lift, its runes alight with purple energy. Erin’s hand lay atop the lever on its central pedestal. He leapt up on the gap, smashing his shin against the contraption’s rising edge and tumbling into the legs of Bhan.
As the lowest floor of the Spire stole away from him, he glimpsed the Jackal’s face: mouth stretched into a thin grin; sharp eyes watching him beneath raised brows. Then she was gone, left alongside the empty halls and cells full of mangled bodies.
He shuffled onto his back, and thought of Dervin and the broken dead.
Blake’s eyes were fixed on the yawning shaft above him, its walls alternating between light and darkness according to the designs of purple lamps. “Bhan?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“Did Orvi… or Vin…” He swallowed. “…Kill someone?”
“…It is the way of the world.”
A growth bulged from the spearwood walls of the shaft, and the play of luminance and shadow made him unsure whether it would hit them or not. It flashed past, and he flinched. Yet even that did not stop his question. “No, I mean… Did he, uh… Burn a man to death?”
The young man heard the Face’s mouth open, then audibly close. The long silence gave an answer before words could. “I do not know.”
An image flashed through Blake’s mind: a man engulfed in cackling flames, a lone silhouette lurking behind.
He missed home.