The shaft they were slowly travelling up shook like a branch in the wind, snapping the elevator’s teeth off one of its pillars and sending it listing downward. Erin grabbed its upward-facing edge, while Blake slammed his head into the spearwood and began sliding downwards. Only Bhan – gripping one of Erin’s legs – prevented him from falling down the shaft by grabbing a handful of hair. The two men seized the moment to clamber up next to Erin.
Blake spat a wad of bloodied saliva down the shaft as the lift carried upwards. “This thing’ll eat our souls- ”
Something screamed – all-encompassing – and the scream coursed through everything that he was. It was the same feeling that had assailed him amongst the cages; a pale shadow of something greater. And though the contours of the sound were different, and the accompanying sensation remained unlike anything he’d experienced before, he recognised the scream. Everything about that cacophony had been different four years ago – everything except magnitude.
A god was screaming.
Erin’s hands slipped as she groaned. Her weak fumbling scraped the side of the lilting shaft, barely slowing her fall. Blake quickly hooked his boots under her armpits, then released a strangled grunt as her weight was added to his fingertips.
Bhan – entirely unaffected by the shout – glanced at them, a quiet consideration in his eyes. It vanished as the elevator clanked dangerously, the teeth clamping around the remaining pillar coming slightly out of alignment. “We need to get off,” he said, wide eyes burrowing into the teetering pillar.
“Sure,” Blake grunted sarcastically, his face turning red from exertion, “but where?” They hadn’t even passed the first floor yet.
The Face raised his chin towards a set of patterns worked into the shaft, which Blake belatedly realised was a ladder carved into the spearwood. Its rungs jutted from the wall, meaning anyone climbing it would have a strenuous time even gripping them.
“No.” His jaw trembled. “No. How’re we even- “
He groaned as Erin gripped his legs and clambered up his back. Once her hands were securely on the lip, she carefully pulling herself on top of it.
The platform wobbled at the redistributed weight. “Stop, stop,” Blake stuttered, “it’s gonna fall.”
When she finished hauling herself onto the narrow ledge that had formed, the muscular woman spoke. “This’s the only decent place to jump from.”
“I can’t do that,” the young man snapped. In better conditions, he’d traversed more strenuous climbs, but with a backpack pulling him down and several weeks of slow starvation fouling his muscles, it was all he could do not to fall.
“I can see the cogs right now,” Erin stated, looking at the teeth. An interjection died on his lips as he puzzled out the unfamiliar term. “They’re nearly out of alignment. We don’t have time.”
“If Bars shakes again, we’ll fall.”
“No different here,” said Bhan. “Jump, girl.”
Blake heard her draw in a deep breath, then set the platform wobbling as she leapt for the ladder. A muffled grunt was the only sign she’d latched on. Next to him, the worn Face leaned backwards, peering downward. Filthy curses erupted from the man’s mouth, and he hugged the platform tighter. The man’s arms trembled with exertion.
“Waiting is good,” stated Bhan, wide-eyed.
As if replying to his assertion, the contraption’s upward momentum stuttered whilst simultaneously releasing a sound like two blades scraping together. Somehow, it listed upwards as the purple symbols lit across its body flared then fell heavily as they begun to fade, nearly throwing the two men off it.
“Jump, jump, jump,” Blake muttered to himself, imagining the tensing of his muscles and the arc his flight must take. He released one hand from the lip and began lining up his shot. His limbs were full of nervous energy, yet for whatever reason his head refused to make the call.
Then the platform made another sound and he yelled and pushed himself off, and then he was in the air above the chasm’s vast maw and gravity took him at the height of the arc and began pulling him downward and a strangled scream erupted from his throat as he pushed his feet forward and they jarred atop a rung and he flailed as he tried to find a grip and wrapped his hands around it and nearly slipped until he realised that the rungs had space behind them for his fingers.
He panted, shivering.
Above him now, the elevator continued upwards, Bhan a dark stain on its back.
“Move.” Erin’s voice echoed from below Blake. He hastily swung to the side, allowing her to clamber past him. As she continued, her climb began to slightly outpace the contraption’s speed. While the woman’s thick arms scuttled onto every second bar, her mouth screamed “Jump! I’ll catch you!”
The Face’s increasingly distant figure gazed down the shaft, then at Erin. After a moment, he leapt, and though his flailing arms missed her outstretched hands they did manage to catch onto her pack. The short-haired woman lurched backwards as a grown man’s full weight hung off her, and the bag’s straps creaked audibly, but Blake scrambled upwards in time to wrap an arm around Bhan and pull him between them.
While the platform shuddered onwards, the trio awkwardly occupied the same rungs on the spearwood ladder.
“Look at that,” blurted Blake, jerking his head upwards. “The weird-magic-thing is fine.”
His companion studiously avoided looking at it. “It would’ve broken in moments, anyway.”
He looked over Bhan’s head at her. “Yeah?”
“With our weight, I mean.”
“Yeah?”
“It would’ve!”
He sighed. “How’re we alive?”
“By the blood, I swear- “
“Boy; girl.” Bhan alternated his stares between them as he interjected. “If god hits tower again, we fall.”
A quick nod was Erin’s only acknowledgement before she began clambering upwards. Just in case the older man fell, Blake gestured for the Face to go before him. With a weary caress of his lightly-wrinkled eyes, the man gave a nod and followed.
The climb to the next level was mercifully short, and contained only one major obstacle: a gnarled whorl of spearwood growing from the ladder large enough to entirely block their path. Fortunately, his axe was just the right shape to wedge into the next rung over, which allowed Erin – coat gripped by the two others in case its haft broke – to pull herself over the growth and help yank the other two up.
Moments after they climbed onto the landing, the entirety of the tower shook, throwing all present to the ground. Like a dog slurping its own bile, the shaft yawned greedily behind Blake. He barely managed to avoid falling down it.
Once again, his bones reverberated with the strength of the god’s scream, nearly defeating his attempts to rise. But its hold on him hadn’t been strong the first time, and though he was incapable of vanquishing the alien colours dancing across his tongue and the echoing of the howl in his mind, Blake’s muscles obeyed their master. He pushed himself upright, and hauled the groaning Erin to her feet.
“You Blooded, then?” It took a moment to recognise the voice as Bhan’s.
Unable to stop himself blinking repeatedly, he simply nodded. “Weakest Oxblood you’ll ever meet.” After a brief pause, he continued. “I’m Blake, by the way.”
“The Face Bhan,” the other man replied in turn. “And the girl?”
“Erin.”
“No. What is- “ Bhan locked eyes with something behind Blake, then frowned disapprovingly. A sharp turn revealed it to be just Erin. “We go, yes?”
The hairs on the back of Blake’s neck raised. He rubbed them down. “Alright.”
Ten steps outside of the chamber lay a sight that forced all of them to halt. Great cracks had formed on the outer wall of the spire, fragments of broken spearwood dusting the floor of the hallway. Yet even in the sturdiest sections of that which remained, a purple glow emanated through solid material and set the light within the tower warbling, as if it were a fish on the end of a hook.
In the absence of the cacophony that had driven Erin and Blake to their knees, the only remaining sound was a faint ringing, and the distant, animal sounds of screams. That deep silence was broken by Bhan whispering: “Speartrees do not break.”
Like a moth to flame, Blake drew closer to a wide tear in the wall and placed his eyes upon it. His breathing quickened.
Minutes earlier, the Spires of Heltia had been like something from a dream. A city wherein humanity did not live with their feet on the ground, but scaled titanic spikes instead – bone-white and slowly transforming into sharp points. Those he’d asked had told him these towers were trees, but the statement became impossible when confronted by the sight of them; so great, wide, and tall that they escaped the feeble confines of language and became something truly singular. And those that lived in Spires adorned these tolerant monoliths in colours and carvings; frowned and laughed and created and destroyed and made lives under their wings. Blake had not known whether the dream was wondrous or nightmarish, but it remained a dream all the same.
That dream had been brought to the dirt. Directly in front of him was a row of collapsed spires: four burst from the base and toppled in every direction. Whatever force had broken them was temporarily halted at Bars. For a moment, Blake felt relief. Then he realised that the collapse of four towers had pulled down every level they were connected to. Amidst the rubble were tiny creatures, made ant-like by distance. Countless insects, ubiquitous enough to be grotesque, scattered as if a child had poured water over their nest.
Blake fell backwards, yet the vision did not fall away. It lingered on the black of his closed eyelids. The retching of his companions was muted by the enormity of it all. A low keening sounded from his throat.
The creatures were not ants. And though they did not move, some lingered in their mortal forms to witness the sea of human detritus. With what remaining life they had, they howled.
Though he did not remember doing so, Blake had found his feet. Mutely, the young man felt for his fellows and found their shoulders. Bhan acceded to his pulling quickly, however Erin’s gaze lingered a moment longer. Within the cast of her face lay the horror frozen to their souls, yet something else chipped past that ice.
A snarl, full of teeth.
----------------------------------------
The tower shook twice more before they found the stairs, each shudder driving more and more cracks through its surface. Unlike the other spires, the damage seemed to be spreading evenly across the entirety of its surface. Blake vaguely concluded it was witchcraft, then continued plodding upwards.
Each step he took returned more sensation to his body. The image of what lay outside receded into the darkness found in an eyelid’s flutter, yet even the lightest of brushes provoked it into surging back.
Slowly but surely, the ground in which they stood was falling apart. A reacquaintance with that truth drove his legs faster, and that change in pattern stirred the group from its stupor. In their short, slurred words the question of their own survival was raised. There was only one reasonable answer: to shelter in one of the remaining Spires, and hope circumstance led the god away.
Neither Blake nor Erin knew the city beyond its dying convulsions, so the specifics fell to Bhan. In the end, the Face settled on Wastes. It was the closest remaining spire to where the god had entered from, and Bhan theorised the god was more likely to go forward than back. In addition, Vin – Orvi, Blake reminded himself – had told his master where his home was. They could cower there until…
As the minutes passed, the thing they’d seen settled into the cracks of their skin, slowly digested into their brain and blood. Understanding was accompanied by an increasing urgency in their movements. Even so, every step was sluggish, dogged by exhaustion’s weighty fangs. And whenever the tower shook and the god screamed itself into alien explosions of sensation, they’d be forced to slow. Despite that, Blake still felt the stairway ended too soon.
Accompanied by Erin’s rigid back and Bhan’s unsteady footsteps, he jogged around the outer hallway until they reached a lone gate in its contours, wrought from heavy metal bars with a single small keyhole in its edge.
“This go to Nests,” announced the Face suddenly.
Blake shot him a look of incomprehension.
“Nest of Heltia.”
His pock-marked face warped as he squinted. “Yeah, I got that.”
“Ach,” Bhan spat. “House Heltia home.”
“Raven’s charred bones,” Blake swore. “No way we have a key for that. There another way out?”
“Spire in front is gone, spire to the back should- “
“Try them.” Erin’s demand cut through the exchange.
“We don’t have time- “
“If- “ She shook her head. “When the god breaks Bars, it’ll go right through the tower behind as well. This is the only way.”
Blake licked his lips, then nodded. He fumbled the keys from one of his coat pockets, then shoved one into the lock.
“If it doesn’t work, maybe you can pick- “
A sharp click resounded throughout the empty hall. The very first key he tried turned in the lock. Before he could push open the door, someone spoke from behind them.
“Well, lookee here.” They turned to find Val standing behind them, having stepped from one of the adjoining rooms. “Waitin’ paid off.”
“Jackal,” Bhan greeted. He wore a carefully neutral expression.
“Face,” the older woman replied in turn. “You keep bad company.”
“They help me.”
“Didn’ help me, did they?” Her mouth stretched into a smile, becoming another straight scar on her face. “Left me t’die. Can’ forget somethin’ like that.”
“They children- “
“They old enough t’know better.” She pursed her lips in consideration. “Besides; lettin’ ‘em go wouldn’ help my reputation none.”
She stepped forward, caressing the hilt of her sword.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Blake shoved the gate open while Erin quickly drew a javelin from her bag. Those present stilled.
“If you come any closer, I’ll nail you to the ground.” The muscular woman held her weapon, poised to throw.
Blake slowly turned his gaze to the walkway the gate opened onto. Being entirely surrounded by a cage and incredibly long besides, there was almost no chance they’d make it to Nests before their pursuer caught one of them. If they did, opening the door on the other side killed that possibility entirely. He kept his eyes on the problem anyway; anything he noticed could give them an edge.
“Do it. I dare you.” Despite the threat, Val’s voice didn’t move any closer.
The response was terse. “Your arm’s broken.”
“So what?”
“There’s three of us.”
“So.” Her tones ambled, low as a prowling beast. “What?”
“If I miss, one of them- “
The Jackal’s laughter was harsh enough to make Blake flinch. “Girl, I’ve killed more people than this city has fingers. An unarmed boy an’ a jumped-up kid won’t even slow me down.”
Before Erin could reply, Bhan cut in. “Jackal, if you do this thing, you kill me too.”
She snorted. “Yer shamanism don’t scare me. I let you off ‘cause it’d be a shame is all.”
“I will curse you.”
“If curses could kill me, I’d be dead a hundred times over.”
At that, Blake turned. If it had just been Dervin – standing a dozen paces behind the Jackal with his halberd poised to thrust – perhaps he could have kept his expression level. But every strand of the Oxblood’s hair – whether on arms, legs, face or head, was matted with blood – while tiny yellow flecks of either spearwood or bone were scattered across chunks of gore, still affixed to his body.
Blake’s eyes widened. That was all it took.
The scarred woman found his gaze, then whirled, slipping aside the halberd and drawing her blade in one fluid movement. Simultaneously, Erin launched her javelin but her quarry’s movements drew her away from the projectile’s flight. Then the Oxblood’s weapon was moving at incredible speeds, and the Jackal was ducking and stepping just out of its path.
While the exchanges grew closer, the three onlookers hovered. After a few moments, another blow rattled the tower, accompanied by another unearthly wail that shook the insides of Blake’s eyeballs. Images of people spread in smears of red slid through his mind, scraped from imagination yet no less likely for it. But while the divine cacophony only triggered a flash of pain in Blake, the effect was far more pronounced in Dervin. The Blooded stumbled, and the Jackal fell upon him.
Blake couldn’t see whether the wound was fatal, however Dervin’s next instructions left no time to check. “Leave,” the huge man rumbled. “You’re in th’ way.”
Arms splayed ineffectually, the youth took a single step forward. A firm hand pulled him back, and soon enough Erin was pulling both him and Bhan into a run across the long walkway. For an indefinite amount of time they ran, and despite the twitching of his shoulder muscles Blake didn’t turn back once. As they approached the small door embedded in the opposite tower, he snatched the only key that hadn’t been used from his coat pocket and crashed into the door, fumbling the heavy metal into its lock and cranking it open.
Faintly, a voice called from behind them. “Tell Ronnie!”
They barged inside and slammed the door shut. All light vanished at its closing. Blake fumbled for the internal lock and, when his fingers clasped around it, cranked it shut.
The darkness was thick enough to obscure the hand he waved in front of his face. A rustle to his side indicated one of his companions was doing something. After a few moments of muted fumbling, an azure light bloomed beside him, caged within a lantern. Tall shadows fled from the lantern’s sight, stretching behind the three stood in the otherwise empty entranceway. Its walls were worked in patterns that seemed to curl in on themselves infinitely, far too detailed for their illumination’s shallow grasp. Interspersed irregularly along it were small holes – the kind that a person could peer through. Or shoot through.
Erin held it. “With your blood, this won’t last long,” she informed Blake.
His mouth was dry. “I’ll, uh, add more when it goes.” The hairs on his arms raised. He rubbed them down. “Whadda we do if someone’s around?”
Bhan’s response was simple. “Explain. All humans allies beneath the gods’ feet.”
“Not her,” came his tremulous reply.
Silence filled the room. Bhan grunted.
“Why…” he began, then shook his head. “Nah. Let’s just go.”
They walked to the opposite end of the tiny hall. There, a short metal door lay embedded in the wall, with a lock set near its handle. Yet when Blake tried the handle, it swung open without protest. The tremulous light of the lantern hinted at a large room, but its details were distant enough to fall into blackness.
Further progress pushed the aura of light forwards, revealing what Blake distantly recognised as some sort of gathering area. Yet all the pieces of furniture revealed were far more richly wrought that anything he’d seen. The pieces could be found, individually, as the boast of any one person: finely woven carpets covering the entire floor; settees and armchairs formed of rich wood or even cut stone with witch-carvings covering their entire surface; dozens of mirrors arranged haphazardly, their edges formed of coloured stones; metal fixtures hanging from the ceiling filigreed with exquisite detail. On most tables were slabs of scarred stone, chisels set beside them, or even paper – hundreds of thousands of brown sheets, enough to buy a mansion – covered in symbols. Orvi would’ve soiled his pants to get his hands on even one of the pieces of furniture; completely ignoring the consequences. Blake smirked at the thought.
The smile died when they reached the room’s centre.
Within the dark, the shapes had initially appeared like another low pieces of furniture – worked from marble or some other white stones. There were at least two dozen of them. An approach revealed them to be stained white sheets mercifully draped over forms, leaving only a hint of the humans beneath.
Bhan knelt beside one and lifted the blanket. He stared at whatever was unveiled for a long time, jaw clenched. After a moment he moved to the next body. When four had been inspected, the Face stopped and began gazing into the darkness.
“What?” asked Blake.
The worn man stared into the inscrutable blackness, his features so still they could’ve been carved from rock. The lantern flickered, momentarily withdrawing its azure glow from the room. For a moment, it seemed he would not reply.
“It’s Heltia.”
Erin frowned. “What do you mean?”
“They all Owlbloods. That,” he said, pointing to the third body from the end, “is old man. Can only be Neelam Heltia.”
“The Head?”
Bhan nodded slowly. “House Heltia gone.” He swallowed. “And they been dead for weeks.”
----------------------------------------
The Jackal danced out of range of the halberd, her feet a blur as she pedalled backwards. She wore a wide, toothy smile across her face, yet pulsing in her gut burned a rare fury.
A trio of rats had escaped her grasp. But Dervin’d been desperate enough to reveal they were going to Fort Vane. She’d supressed a scoff at the thought – being in Gale Vane’s line of fire was worse than being in a god’s. Which was why she stood beside him, instead.
The Jackal grinned. She would see them there.
Another preparatory swing – read in the sudden rigidity of tendons in the Oxblood’s arm – and she ducked beneath it, supressing a wince as the movement jarred the fractured bones in her bad arm. The freak in front of her would be an unwieldy obstacle at the best of times, and suffering from days of starvation and wounds she’d had to tend to herself, the Jackal was far from her best.
If she had the full weight of her power – Gastral; Victor; Jon – Val could’ve run through this freak without breaking stride. Even just her daughter would be enough. But the gang was with the worms now, and the girl had slipped her leash when Heltia knocked; ignorant of the lay of the board and the strategy in play. That was one piece the Jackal had never intended to lose, but she’d simply trained the kid too well. Now she was paying for the girl’s lack of filial piety.
A thrust was revealed in a minute pull of the halberd and when the Jackal angled her body away from it, Dervin snatched at her tunic with a meaty paw, missing and instead batting her bad arm. Her expression fell into a sharper snarl. Usually, she would wait for an Oxblood to tire itself out; watch it break its own body as it charged and snorted, then carve open its throat. The presence of a god only made speed more important; if she lingered in Bars, she’d be dead as dirt.
But starvation and age leaned against her body, and Dervin had broken her arm days ago. Though the Jackal’d stolen an eye in recompense – though she was better than him – the reality was that she was tiring faster than him. That slight burned at her. While the Face, his cohort, and all their snubs had likely vanished into the wreckage of the city, far outside the reach of her ire, directly in front of her was a creature she could vent her spite onto.
And even without most of her tools, the Jackal still had everything she needed.
Dervin’s arms blurred as he slashed his weapon inches from her face, and transformed the miss into a steely spin that crashed into the side of the cage. Val spared a moment to look at the rupture that had formed in the walkway’s cage. Had he been at his best, she’d be dead thrice over. But she’d made sure he wasn’t.
The Jackal opened her arms. “C’mon, Heltia,” she drawled. “Where’re you swingin’?”
The Blooded growled and lunged too far forward, using the length of his weapon to ensure she’d be in range. While the teeth of the halberd was behind her, the haft moved with enough speed to obliterate her ribs. She fell into a roll – which drove uncomfortable pangs up her sore back – and gouged his torso as she moved past.
The giant’s eyes widened as he registered that Val could’ve delivered a worse injury, had she chose. But crippling him ran contrary to her new goal.
“Ooh.” Her voice was raised in a sarcastic flirtation. “So-”
Dervin hurled his scabbard at her, which struck her in the gut. Only an instinctive stumbled backwards saved her head from being separated from its neck.
“Y’know,” she coughed, “you was right.”
For the first time since their duel began, her opponent stilled.
“It was me.” She grinned. “I did let yer assassins in.”
His blunt features twisted on themselves. “How?”
Her hands twitched, suddenly aching for a cigarillo. The slow igniting of one would surely aggravate him. “Yer boys were too eager t’take a bite outta the Jackal. Few bruised ribs an easy trade fer a couple o’ neat tools.” None of it had been that easy. But truth was never the intent. “Simple soldiers. Well- “ she jerked her head sideways. “Not any more.”
Val could hear the man’s halberd creaking. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“Coulda anytime,” the Jackal boasted. That was a straightforward lie: they’d searched her cell before the interrogation, and though none had recognised the bent pieces of scrap as lockpicks, they’d taken them all the same. “But I wanted t’see the city fall myself.”
Another lie. If she’d known Baylar was using mercs as Ox-bait, she’d never have stayed. The ring-leader hadn’t told her. The Jackal would ensure someone died for that.
Dervin nodded thoughtfully, then sprung towards her with another mighty thrust. She caught the crook of the halberd’s point and its blade with her sword, but couldn’t move her feet backwards fast enough. Val rocked backwards on her heels, and that, conspiring with the force of the Oxblood’s blow, stole her footing away from her.
The point of Dervin’s weapon smashed into the ground, the angle snapping the sword she’d swiped from the merc like it was a child’s toy. Simultaneously, the Jackal slammed into the walkway. Only the sudden halt in the giant’s heavy footsteps warned her to move, and just as she rolled away a massive boot crashed into the floor where she’d lain moments before. Yet she transformed the tumble into a leap that restored her footing, and her opponent didn’t follow.
When Dervin withdrew his boot, the material around it was dented. The Jackal grinned.
He was less loyal than she’d thought. Or at least well-trained enough to maintain his composure. There were other angles to try, though.
“Who’s Ronnie?” She toed the detached point of her blade as if in thought, slowly drawing it closer to herself. “Son? Daughter? A lover?”
The Oxblood’s plain disgust at the final guess revealed enough.
“Yer kid, then.” Her body carefully angled itself to the side. As slow as a predator on the prowl, she leaned backwards. “S’funny.”
Dervin tilted his head, jaw clenched so tightly the veins of his face appeared like leeches beneath his skin.
“See, there’s no time t’get my satisfaction from you.” The scarred woman smiled slyly. “But yer get? All th’ time in- “
A sudden gust of air across her face and the screeching of torn metal halted her speech. The Jackal did not see him swing his weapon. It did not matter. He had missed.
Bereft of his second eye, the giant had spent the entire fight without a reliable way to judge distance. It’d thrown off almost all his blows. When the Jackal had drawn the snapped weapon to her feet, he’d found his means. Yet her stance was narrow, and he’d had no way of knowing the greater part of her body had already been drawn back.
It was a simple illusion: one that could’ve been seen through with a moment’s consideration. But the Blooded was too furious to give himself even that.
As the tower shook, the Oxblood howled in time with his god. His arms dangled limply; the muscles beneath his skin so torn there seemed to be twice as many as there was a moment before. His tendons curled limply beneath skin – they’d snapped like twigs under their own strength.
She looked sideways. His halberd had torn a hole in the walkway, just big enough for her to climb out of. At that, a savage grin bubbled from where she’d hidden it; the kind a beast wears after outplaying the shepherd.
When the Jackal slit his throat, she wore it still.
----------------------------------------
They found a way out of Nests through the bathroom: a small opening onto a set of pipes that led from there to Wastes. All of them were just wide enough to shuffle across with the assistance of a rope to conquer the winds and sharp declines. Though Blake offered some token complaints regarding their chosen path, the fear of a worse fate undid his fear of heights.
Their route – suspended so high above the city that it seemed like someone else’s world – offered their first and only glimpse at the god that had destroyed the city.
It took a moment to spot it. For a moment, it seemed as if some flayed wolf had taken up residence in the rubble. But the magnitude of the creature was too great. Far larger than any house yet far smaller than it should’ve been stood a mass of raw flesh, muscle and sinew wound into a vaguely quadrupedal form. Yet it was nothing like any mortal animal. The lines of its body were smooth and flowing from a frontward-facing point, bearing an almost impossible resemblance to an arrow. As it moved tendrils separated from the flesh of its legs – the movement hinting at bone beneath – and slammed into the dirt beneath it. Muscles rippled and in doing so shot blood from within their hidden crevices. That movement repeated, building speed until its massive hind legs flexed-
And as if it were a bolt of lightning vanished, its only remnants a wall of sound like a thousand thunderclaps crashing in every direction. In its wake rubble and corpses shifted, flying towards a straight line of sudden absence that had formed in the direction of Bars. For a brief span, Blake could not help but hope it was over. Then his eyes found it again: a shattered pile of flesh at the base of Bars – broken by its own force – while the tower’s runes rippled purple upwards, spreading countless cracks across its surface until it could take no more and disintegrated from the top downwards. They’d been within minutes before. Covered in the dust and detritus of that it destroyed, the shattered body rippled, tendrils of muscle realigning bones, tendons, and irrevocably shredded muscle. The god screamed the agony of a broken body, and then screamed for longer. The titanic pain of a god buffeted everything around, then faded into the skies.
The god flexed its reassembled body and disappeared. Moments later, every remaining tower on the western side of Spires collapsed, and the wailing began anew.
What hates and is hated in turn? Striking at an ocean of incomprehensible slights, and being crushed by that same vendetta? Every man, woman, and child knows the answer: Enn; the Ox; the Quake; the Furious; the Broken; the one who fights.
They stood atop the pipes, high above the world, buffeted by the wind’s constant attempts to knock them down. Distorted by the clouds rolling overhead, the midday sun’s glare was warped and twisted into a hollow grey umbra, detached from the star it originated from. Across the ruins of Heltia, the Heartlands rippled in a sea of shimmering red.
The three of them made their way across the sky, clutching the woven ropes wound around the pipes. Blake’s shaking eyes scarcely left his feet, but when he did he found Erin gazing at the world beneath, teeth clenched. Bhan’s eyes were still in the mournful set of his face.
“Ox is out-of-place.” His words were sudden, and nearly stolen by the gusts around them.
No one remarked on it.
“When…” he began slowly, “god nearby: move yourself, or move god. Enn moves at strange things; insults only it sees.”
Blake drew his furred coat tighter with one hand, and continued avoiding gaze of the drop below him.
“We know few insults. To move Ox, someone must do one and run. Be chased. Be fed to it.”
The gales around them filled their ears.
“Hirelings did not know they insult. But someone gave orders. Someone wanted…” A pause.
Though Bhan chose not to finish the sentence, everyone present followed it to the end. No one spoke. But Erin did scream, as harsh and hollow and useless as a shroud for the dead, until the air in her lungs was done, and whatever feeling that filled the skies was drawn back to burn inside her body.
For several long moments, Blake could not bring himself to breathe.
The rest of their journey continued in silence. When they reached Wastes, the sun had already begun to set, and the Ox’s pain had faded back into the world.
Winding their way down the spire was difficult under the bloodtech lantern’s fading light, and the place reeked of human waste – despite not being struck by the god, several of the tanks had broken open. But without any immediate threat breathing down their backs, there was no reason to descend quickly. They slowly staggered down to the third level, then searched for the hideaway ‘Vin’ had made.
There was no mistaking it. Hidden in a small room lay a hoard of mismatched items: rocks, herbs, books, jewellery, and bones all piled across the room. A vague semblance of order was in place, but it had shattered under the sheer weight of everything that had accumulated.
Blake managed to find several large chunks of jerky and mouldy bread under a pile of rocks – the same kind of place Orvi’d tended to hide ‘pretty’ food – and they supped on what remained. It was similar to the hoard at home, yet different enough to be alien.
Blake did not ask Bhan about the burned man. And he did not ask Erin the question that’d sunk its edge into his gut.
The Face took the cot, while Erin cleared a space for her bedroll. Both laid on their respective spots, eyes open. The pock-marked young man took a seat against the wall and held an ornate box – far more exquisitely carved than anything else in the room – on his lap. Whatever small articles the man who dwelled here had deemed most valuable would be contained within.
He stared at it for a long time, hands resting upon his lid. Fatigue filled his body, and after many empty moments, the other two’s breathing grew slower. He did not close his eyes. Silence reigned, marred only by its two exceptions: the occasional rapid series of huffs from the sleeping Face, and wordless groans from Erin.
Eventually, he opened the box.
Papers covered the top. Beneath them was a heavy book, the inscrutable text scrawled within only hinted at in several faded illustrations. Neither’s letters revealed anything to Blake, whose limited literacy deciphered nothing. But at the very bottom of the box were dozens of small carvings. Their detailing was incredibly fine, so much so that they seemed steps away from coming to life. Four were of people he did not know: human yet twisted in strange ways. However, he recognised the rest.
Miss Tran, toothlessly grinning as her hands hovered over a table of concoctions. Jackson, stern-faced as he swung a halberd. The hawker Orvi had mooned over – Jasmine, Blake recalled – smiling gently at someone. Dirk and his dog, the latter feasting on a bowl of noodles while the former poked at a plate of sprouts. Stitch, face cut with a stern frown as her finger prodded at a piece of paper. The twins walking: Sash chattering to the air while Dash feigned interest. Erin, polearm in hand as she mouthed something.
Miss Tran had died of Dure’s plague. Jackson and Jasmine had gained authority that slowly obscured their humanity. Dirk’s body had never been found, and his dog was old and scared. Stitch and the twins had all joined Esfaria, finding solace in hatred. Erin was someone he knew less about with every day.
And finally, beneath all the others, came a face four years distant. Free of pockmarks or scarring; perched upon a stool and laughing uproariously at some poorly delivered joke. The young man’s lips quirked, then fell. Within his chest lay a tightness; the phantom of that laughter, turned worn and grey.
He looked at the person in his hands, and slowly, incrementally, began trembling.
Blake clutched at the carving and wept.