I ran.
My lips were peeled back in a frozen grimace, the icy wind inflicting a dull throb on them as I sprinted onwards. Yet the chill faded as the cracked stone within the crater shook layers of frost from itself, with the discarded remnants evaporating from a slow boiling of heat emanating from below-ground. My lungs gradually filled with condensation, like tea leaves left too long in the pot. Speartrees fell, forcing me to constantly swerve in different directions. The uninviting incline into the crater was lousy with pebbles, stones, and boulders shaken away from the mountains above, while the mountains themselves seemed to swarm with drifting chunks of stone. I watched as someone attempted to clamber out of the crater, only to be knocked lifelessly back down by a chunk of red-mossed stone.
But most of my attention gravitated around my breathing: keeping it gripped in a pattern resembling the ebb and flow of tides to prevent it from breaking apart into something irregular and incomprehensible. I’d pulled my arms away from my face, but blood kept dripping from a scratch in my forehead and painting my vision dark red. I lowered my bandana to staunch it and kept running.
A gold-plated soldier stumbled past me – spear discarded; armour stained with blood not his own – and distantly, I felt around a third of his comrades fleeing outwards from the mound as well. The rest stayed in tense formation, even as some were staunched by falling speartrees or sudden crevasses. In contrast, many of the cloaked warriors seemed stood almost entirely still: staring at the ground or sky with stunned, almost delighted expressions on their faces.
“A decade an’ a half, an’ th’ Heartlands’ve woken up,” I heard a short, grey-bearded warrior mutter to his companion. “Aching’ll grow more’n anyone can eat. Famine’s over.”
The other glanced at his peer, wide-eyed, then grabbed the other man and began dragging them out of the crater.
They were right, I registered. The Aching grew everything back – a bounty that Heartlanders had lived on for generation after generation after generation. People would be able to live without fear of starvation for years to come.
Then the ground split, and the grey-bearded man’s leg fell within. It shifted, and suddenly he didn’t have a leg. A howl split from his throat as I sprinted past.
Another shake had my boots skittering through a warm puddle, forcing me into a roll to avoid breaking my neck. I sprung upwards and a speartree crashed into the space I’d occupied moments before. I resisted the urge to glance backwards and focused on a flicker of yellow through the shaking sea of ivory trunks: the faltering remnants of the Albright line, spears still levelled against outside force.
As I drew closer, one of the soldiers spotted me and yelled, signalling the two other beside him to point their weapons towards me. Behind them, a bowman reached for an arrow only to find his quiver empty. He discarded the weapon and drew a dagger from his belt.
I didn’t slow.
With the butts of their spears braced against the ground, running directly into them would see me impaled by my own speed. Yet slowing barely entered my mind. I raced towards them like a charging bull, and scarcely five paces before their spears hollowed me of my innards I threw myself beneath their spearheads and into the legs of all three of them.
We fell in an avalanche of flailing limbs. A boot hit me in the back of the head, but my attention was dominated by the archer’s hand wrapping around my nape in preparation for hammering his blade through my skull. I grabbed the offending arm and yanked. The weight of my body sent him lurching downwards, giving me ample opportunity to seize his other arm and pull myself away from the others. The bowman’s body bent like an sapling abused by a storm as he desperately attempted to keep himself upright. Soon enough, I was standing next to him.
I punched him in the side of the jaw.
He slumped downwards, eyes rolling. Then I was darting away once again, leaving the four soldiers still breathing and vanishing into the maze of trembling speartrees. I weaved my way around them, ducking under collapsed trunks still supported by the dense clustering of the ubiquitous plants and hurdling over the occasional patch knocked down like a set of dominoes. Stopping could see one fall atop me, but my momentum was simply too great to halt.
Through my boots, I felt the ground’s shaking accelerate. I tore my way through a narrow space between the speartrees and staggered out. The mound – previously elevated far above my head – sunk into the dirt in a cacophony of cracks; its weight no longer tolerable to the earth. On the outer edge of the sinkhole stood my group – the Strains, Tully, the three children, Ronnie’s dog and Jana, holding an infant in each arm – surrounded by half a dozen Albright soldiers; spears, axes and swords levelled against them. My eyes picked up on the orange colours of a Foxblood mixed amongst the rest. Gast, Davian, and Tully stood as a bulwark in front of the others. They were accompanied by Yowler. His jowls were raised in a yellow snarl.
Their commander – Finlay, I recalled – was saying something about secrecy and necessary sacrifices to the group. Tully denied it with wild gesticulations, but it didn’t take a Foxblood to see how her hands trembled. Finlay’s jaw firmed, and he opened it to say something…
While I lowered my shoulder and barged into the side of the line, sending all but the largest of the soldiers staggering to the side. The soldier next to me twisted as he stumbled, turning just in time to see my fist pound into his throat and break the cartilage within. I snatched his spear from seizing fingers and beat the next woman’s helmet into a dull ringing. She winced – hands twitching towards her ears – and I impaled her through the armpit.
Four, I thought as my opponents recovered enough turn on me. They spread themselves slowly, eyes flickering between myself and the others, but their hesitation gave me time to withdraw the spear from the corpse and hurl it at the Foxblood and he leaned almost casually away from the weapon's path yet that gave me time to arrive in front of him and punch him in the stomach and though I felt my knuckles fracture as they impacted against the armour his breath fled his throat and I grabbed the winded Blooded because his struggles were feeble without air and turned him in front of a falling sword which bit into his shoulder and he laughed as I broke his neck.
Then I rotated his twitching body to steal the sword stuck in him but the soldier stole it back and I stuck my hands in the Foxblood’s armour and raised his lifeless flesh over my head and hurled it at the remaining three and one went down and the other two broke their formation to move out of the way and I ripped the helmet from one of the dead and pelted it towards one who deflected it with a wave of their axe but couldn’t prevent me from charging into the other and though they swung their blade I caught it on a hand quietly plated in bone and seized its hilt and bore him to the ground with it braced against their neck and the impact decapitated them and I shuddered away from the blood and an axe fell towards me but it flashed purple and disappeared as someone tackled its wielder away and I rose and walked over and stomped the fallen soldier’s head and I stomped it and I stomped it
“Vin.”
and I felt the bones break beneath my boot and the flinch travelled up my body and my eyes were wide
“Vin, she’s dead.”
and the gore spread and the land shook and I could not draw enough air into my body and someone grabbed me and I grabbed them to crush their throat and it was Gast.
I licked my lips. “Sorry, what, uh,” I stuttered, blinking rapidly, “uh, what were you saying?”
The Strain looked up at me. “You’re okay,” she said.
“Yeah.” Nodding, I rubbed my temples. “Yeah, okay. Are you… Are you all okay?”
Davian ripped his short-sword from Finlay’s neck – the commander’s body still trapped underneath a dead Foxblood’s – and gestured behind me. “I… I believe Taja may need your help more, Vin.”
I turned. The teenage nomad stared up at me, face covered in blood from the skull that had been crushed next to his head. I opened my mouth, closed it, and offered him a hand. After a moment, he took it. I hauled him upright. The young man stood quietly for a second, then began slowly attempting to wipe the flecks of brain matter from his hair. The whites of his eyes seemed like islands in an ocean of red rot.
I unwrapped my patchwork bandana – poorly stitched together from different pieces of cloth over a decade ago – and carefully wiped vast swathes of blood from his head. When the bandana had become fouler than what remained on his head, I folded it and tucked it in my pouch, alongside my broken wing.
He stared at nothing.
I patted him on the back. “Thank you.”
Taja’s eyes focused on my own. He shot me a quick smile, then returned to gazing at something I couldn’t see.
“Rita.” That was Tully’s voice. “Was she able to- “
“No,” I said.
She clasped her hands beside her back, beady eyes staring at nothing at all. Her face was expressionless. Behind her, the mound slowly sunk into the earth. After a moment, she looked back at me.
“Vin, was the Albright encirclement still in formation?” Her stern tone was marred by a slight quaver.
I glanced at the old Spiderblood. “Yes.”
Tully released a soft exhale. “Ah.”
I yanked Taja aside as stone split beneath his feet with a vast crack.
“Ah,” she repeated, mindless of the world breaking apart around us. Her eyes clicked into different positions like cogs in some infinitely complex machine. “Vin, can you scale a speartree?”
I wrapped an arm around the base of one, wincing as my fractured hand sparked with agony -- as if the bone was eating my flesh from the inside. But I could. I turned to tell Tully that, when Davian slipped past me.
“Have a break, Vin,” he said. “I’ll be quick.”
Tully grimaced, muscles in her face twitching. “I asked- “
“It would be better to save his energy, correct? He’ll be the spearhead of whatever flight we make.”
“Go, then,” she snapped. “Quickly.”
Davian was quick – faster than I would’ve been. He used a rope to shimmy up the side – wiry muscles in his limbs tensing according to a silent rhythm – and quickly ascended to the point where he could survey the wider crater. Another speartree fell beside the one he scaled, and I prepared to catch him if he fell.
“Cloaks are leaving,” he yelled downwards. “Many Albrights are, as well. But…” He swung around the trunk – far thinner up as high as him – and peered in a different. “Around thirty remain in the encirclement.”
“Raven’s bones,” Tully swore.
I took a step away from her.
“Raven’s bloody bones.”
I began to speak. “Tully, what’s- “
“Someone needs to stay to guide the others out.”
“I could- “
“Don’t be foolish, Vin.” Her reprimand was harsh. “We need you to get out.” In a quieter voice, she continued. “And we need a wise enough person to be the guide – avoid the combatants; the collapsing grounds. But…” Her hands shook, and she grasped them together to still them.
I knew what she was implying. Someone needed to stay to give an overview, and they needed to be capable of making tactical decisions quickly. Otherwise, we’d fall on the end of a gold-plated spear or be consumed by the Aching. Myself and her were the only option she was considering; and she’d determined I’d be needed to get out in the first place. I couldn’t say she was wrong: my Ravenblood gave an overview of a large swathe of the crater, but if I were dragging a group of children and elderly with me, we simply wouldn’t be fast enough to avoid interception. We needed to be able to see the entire crater.
But conceivably, there was a way out for her: if Tully and I left alone, it was likely we could both make it out. Or if she simply accepted that the slower individuals dying was an acceptable price for her survival. It wasn’t something I was considering. For whatever reason, Tully wasn’t either.
Which gave her little excuse to do anything but die.
“That would leave Head Maleen without that resource. But she won’t survive without a strong arm to see her through. In a choice between strength and wit, there is…”
The old woman placed her hands over her face.
“…little contest.”
I raised a hand to place on her shoulder, then lowered it.
“This is a loss for Heltia,” she muttered to herself. “Inevitable, perhaps.
“Inevitable,” she repeated slowly, rotating it around her mouth as if it were the last piece of food she’d ever eat. “In-ev-i-ta-ble.” Tully glanced at me, then grabbed my arm and dragged me away from the others. “There need not be a choice.”
She looked at me as if I were the only shelter from the shadow of some vast god. I didn’t like it. “What are you saying?”
“I am old, Vin.” Her smile was a tremulous line set in a rugged landscape of scars. “You are young, and strong. You will get Head Maleen to Fort Vane.”
“You don’t know me,” I retorted. “You shouldn’t trust me. And we can… find some way to make it without leaving you.”
She released a breath. “You won’t be leaving me. Not really.” She awkwardly drew her sword, and after a quick breath to brace herself, sliced open the back of her hand. When enough blood oozed out, she wiped it against my forehead.
I felt her lifeforce beat – stronger than any around the two of us – and her blood drip down my face. I took a step backwards, my face taut against the horror in my chest. “How long?” My voice was low and jagged.
“How long have I known?” The corners of her mouth strived towards a smile, but the rest of her face was unwilling to cooperate. “Since the village. You did not move like a Lizardblood, or a common soldier. I only saw her take the field a handful of times, but those,” she said, eyes plaintive, “were the skills of the Slaughter. General Maja.”
I didn’t remember her. And I didn’t want her to remember me. “Why’d you… keep me?”
“I do not believe you killed the General.”
That was incorrect. In every way possible, I sliced her throat open myself. “I’m too volatile- “
“You just need to hold out until Fort Vane, Vin. And you will.” Tully’s mouth stiffened. Her eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them. “You will. Whatever’s left of me won’t allow you to stop.”
I shook my head, disbelieving.
“You will carry this for me. You will.”
I felt my face contort. My eyes flicked away.
Tully took my head in her hands. They shook powerfully, held in the throes of the same emotion that set her jaw trembling and her eyes twisting. She turned my face towards her own. “You have to.”
Though I tried to turn my gaze away, a single moment of divine comprehension sparked through my mind: Tully was terrified.
And just like that, I could no longer wipe the blood away.
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The blood had gone cold, yet the avenue between Tully and I was afire. At any moment, I could begin pulling her into my being. With Bhan, I’d once stood beside a bone-dry house built of reeds with a flaming torch in my hand, and for a bewildering moment I’d felt the urge to set it ablaze. While we all waited for her signal, a cold mirror of that same impulse dwelled inside of me: to save before it was too late. But I’d resolved myself to wait until the choice was taken from me.
I glanced behind, where past the opaque clustering of speartrees I knew Tully waited, wiry muscles straining as she clung to her speartree. A single shrill whistle pierced from that direction, and I was bursting from where we concealed ourselves to charge towards the line of Albrights. In the moments before I collided with the two Tully had pointed us towards, I noted they’d turned inwards; putting their backs to the fleeing ‘Seeds’, and instead resolving to slaughter us.
I smashed the helmet of one with a looted sword so hard both the helm and the skull beneath dented while simultaneously grabbing the spear of the other. The soldier kept a grip on her weapon, yet her stubborn refusal to release it gave Davian – three steps behind me – ample opportunity to slice the back of her knee as he ran past. Her grip faltered as she snarled in pained defiance, and I shoved her to the ground and impaled her on her own spear. Specks of blood ejected from her mouth as she coughed.
As I tore the weapon from her fading body, the rest of our group jogged past as fast as the shaking ground allowed them. Jana carried two infants in her arms – looking as if she’d rather be cradling hot coals – and the three children clustered in front of Taja, who was charged with herding them in the correct direction. Yowler – old and grey as he was – was a big enough dog to pull a small man to the ground, and had apparently done so before. Besides the old hound, we had three combatants: Davian – who would lead the way – along with Gast and myself – who would protect the rear.
“Come on,” I told the fat Strain as she wheezed her way towards me. She lowered her massive shield on one arm, hefted the runestone strapped to her other, and accelerated to a slightly faster pace. From experience, I knew she couldn’t maintain it for very long.
I kept her pace, dodging the falling speartrees even as fresh points broke the stone beneath our feet. The rumbling has become so intense it felt like we were bugs inside a jar, being repeatedly shaken by an uncaring giant. No ice remained beneath our feet, having been melted into water then boiled into air. Anything in the distance was distorted by a wobbling veil cast by the relentless heat. Sweat dripped in long streams down the bodies of everyone present.
A series of whistles cut the air in front of us: one of Tully’s signals, demanding that the group veer left. I watched Jana stagger sideways – prevented from falling by Taja – moments before a crack large enough to swallow speartrees tore open from the outer edge of the crater. Its bottom was visible for only a moment before a titanic shudder slammed it shut hard enough to crack both sides.
Despite leaving the range of my perception I still sensed Tully’s lifeforce drumming like a rabbit’s pulse, connected to me by the smear of her blood on my forehead. The beat seized moments before another signal indicating we entirely change our course, and I barely managed to yank Gast aside before she stomped onto a patch of ground cracking as if it were eggshell-thin.
Our pace – bogged down by children and the elderly – was far slower than it needed to be, yet with the instructions of our distant leader we managed to avoid being crushed by the rapidly deteriorating crater. But eventually, Tully’s piercing notes announced the inevitable: a group of Albrights pursued to silence us. I felt them – nine just within range of my perception, rapidly growing nearer. Additional information was tacked onto us: they were faster, and held greater numbers. A more accurate count of their forces was supplied by another set of tweets: five; ten; fifteen; twenty; twenty-five-
Then an interruption. Beneath.
I looked forward to see-
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-⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ of them as the ground t⬛re open as if by some invisible hand. The maj⬛rity made it over – the woman, children, teenager, and dog all managing to charge acr⬛ss the stone before it began foldi⬛g into a sharp tilt. Y⬛t the fat woman and large man were cau⬛ht in the middle as the shelf they ran alo⬛g began sliding downwards, int⬛ the yawning earth.
For a moment, I th⬛⬛ght our task was near⬛y over. With the pair crushed by either the fall or the Aching, all we’d have to do was silence a collection of mostly unarmed ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. It would be a wretched, brutal task, but I ⬛ouldn’t prevent my limbs from sagging with relief beneath my gold armou⬛. We’d have silenced the only whispers of ‘Ich⬛r’ that could’ve escaped. Da⬛, ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ and little T⬛⬛⬛ would all be safe from the Albright’s blades until the nex⬛ time we were deployed. A thought ni⬛gled at me, but surely they couldn’t blame us for not killing all the Seeds? We hadn’t spilled any secrets. Or at least, no⬛ rank-and-file like me and the others that’d survived.
But even as myself and the other eight who were lightly-armoured enough to keep up with me hoped, the man seized the woman and hauled her – muscles taut against his br⬛wn skin in a network of power – above him, onto the shelf above him. She managed to seize his hand as the shelf of stone was eaten by the chasm beneath. I saw his eyes grow wild with terror, yet he still managed to pull his dangling body up on the shelf of stone.
I turned to G⬛⬛⬛⬛, who stood, jaw agape at the edge of the pit. “Do something,” I pleaded.
He startled, then drew a javelin from the pouch on his back and flung it towards the pair as they recovered. The man’s hea⬛ swung towards it like a cat’s, and he shook the woman. She slapped the massive stone tablet strapped to her arm and the projectile glowed purple. It petered uselessly down the hole.
“She’s a godsdamned Owlblood?” L⬛⬛⬛ry hissed. Beneath the cacophony of the land breaking apart, I heard her tone crack.
“Man has to be a Foxblood or somethin’ as well,” I said.
“Oh, gods. What do we do?”
My eyes – as I was sure all the others’ did – feverishly scrawled across everything. The chasm was small ⬛nough to circumvent, but we’d lose time doing so. We might still catch their rearguard, but none of it mattered unless we could kill all of them.
Then, in his northern accent, G⬛⬛⬛⬛ muttered, “What in Kani’s sick skull…”
I followed his gaze downwards. In the deep shadows of the pit lay writhing masses of what my struggling brain understood as not belonging to the earth. From its walls, a forest of spindly hairs grew from a base of raw muscles and tendons. The leg of some quadrupedal creature jerked wildly, and was bisected as a white string of tendon tensed. Ey⬛s – clouded with white – burst across chunks of carapace. They flicked around in the same desperate motions ours had, moments before. A low moan erupted from a undulating tunnel, and I turned my head away.
“Don’t think about it,” I told him, then continued with a strained smile. “We’re not paid sacks o’ chits t’think, right?”
The old joke provoked a quick laugh from him, but more out of habit than anything else. “We are dead.”
Even as G⬛⬛⬛⬛ spoke, another wild shudder caused the shelf the man and woman sat upon to crack into several twisting pieces. Yet instead of outright killing them, a cluster of speartrees grew from the pit at a startling pace, holding the fragmented platforms in place by piercing through them. I could see their tips slowly begin to grow through the stone. The man panted rapidly as he and the woman fought for balance.
Some platforms slipped into the pit, but most halted at various angles. Coincidentally, they’d survived. And coincidentally, the gaps between each were small enough that we could leap between.
“We gotta go over,” I told the others.
“He’s Foxblood,” ⬛⬛o⬛⬛ – always silent until we needed a cynic – spat bitterly. “He will eat us alive.”
“His hair’s black.” I pointed at the man. “See? No orange. He’s a weak one. He has to be. And we may as well.”
What better reason to spend our lives?
“I knew it paid too well,” L⬛⬛⬛ry chuckled hollowly. “Didn’t sign up to have my family killed.”
⬛⬛o⬛⬛ snorted disparagingly. Before we lost more time to pointless argument I took three steps back and jumped to the nearest platform. I landed heavily – knees slamming into the trembling stone hard enough to break skin – and dropped my spear to brace myself against the ground. It spun out my grip, into the darkness below. Tears pricked at my eyes at the sight.
A thud sounded beside me. S⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛s caught herself and her spear on the ground. Beneath his gold helm, he shot me a quick grin. We carefully righted ourselves by grasping one another for balance. He handed me his spear to hold, then leapt for the next platform.
He’d just seized its edge when a purple glow unseated his fingers. His fall downwards was silent. My eyes found the fat woman – the Owlblood – moments before G⬛⬛⬛⬛ began hurling javelins at her. Their purple glow stole any accuracy his throws might’ve possessed, but it was enough for me to clear the final few jumps to their platform. As I did so, the large man drew his spear backwards and hurled it. The wood of its haft missed my head by inches. Behind me, I heard G⬛⬛⬛⬛ howl in agony as he was hit, and L⬛⬛⬛ry’s screams distorting as she plummeted into the writhing abyss beneath us.
But it was too late to look back. I was face-to-face with the man, and in the shadows of the crater his sheer size made him a dark, hulking beast. His expression – tight and almost mournful – was the only hint of humanity in him, and even that was snuffed as his frame tightened into a warrior’s stance. Instinctively, I knew I couldn’t beat him. But even as my hands trembled where they clenched around my spear, a single thought moved me forward: I didn’t need to defeat him – I just needed to ensure my comrades could make it across.
So I feinted towards his face, then extended my spear with my entire body in a desperate bid to kill the Owlblood woman.
He seized the weapon and slammed its butt into my face. I stumbled backwards, barely managing to draw a dagger before he reversed his grip and stabbed the spear towards me. As death reared its bloody fangs in the form of a creature more monster than man, I somehow managed to slap the spearhead away with my dagger and counter by slashing open his arm. The Blooded’s teeth ground together.
Then the platform beneath us shivered as a speartree pierced through its stone. He stumbled slightly, and I saw my chance.
I dropped my knife and seized the haft of the spear he held. With a grunt, I leveraged the fire-hardened wood against his own faltering balance. For a single moment the two of us teetered on the edge, and I could hope my gambit would send both of us tumbling into the bowels of the earth, to be crushed below.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Then he – I? – roared, wrenched me off the ground, and slammed me back downwards.
I blinked, and coughed slightly. Dull incomprehension filled me as my body slowly left the ground. In front of my eyes, what seemed like an ivory spear was drenched in gore. My hands beat ineffectually at it, and came away covered in crimson ropes.
My entrails. He – or I? – had impaled me on a speartree.
Pain caught up to my body. I let loose a strangled scream, seeing the sky and seeing myself be hoisted upwards. I howled in agony and confusion, slowly rotating my head to see the monster beneath me.
Reality doubled. I watched my body be hoisted skywards, and I watched my gore-smeared face contort in abject horror.
Then I died.
I fell to my knees, clawing at my stomach where the speartree had impaled me moments before. Above, I saw my own body growing increasingly distant as the speartree grew upwards. Just like the bodies that gave the Shrike its name.
My pants alerted the Owlblood. Before she could kill me, I scrambled over to her and seized her leathers, cocking a fist to break her head open.
“What?” Gast asked.
I blinked. “Where’d the Foxblood go?” I asked.
“What Foxblood?”
“The- the man!” I stuttered. “That massive man! Where is he?”
Gast just looked at me.
“What’s my name?” I demanded.
“Vin?”
“No, no… it’s…”
⬛⬛⬛⬛. I couldn’t grasp it. It was there; at the tip of my tongue. Yet instinctively, I knew it would remain forever out of my reach.
It was Vin. Or Orvi, or Maja, or Babs or whatever. Wasn’t it?
I grabbed my skull, groaning as a migraine tore through the meat within. My nails cleaved long furrows down the side of my face in a bid to regain my senses, but against the aching of my veins it was less than nothing. In an instant, I tried and failed and tried again to sort the last few minutes out. Two avenues lay before me. One was riddled with holes. Belatedly I realised I’d managed to stifle most of the connection between myself and ⬛⬛⬛⬛. But I’d hesitated. If I’d cut it off completely, I might’ve begun to fall apart again and lost us the battle.
“Vin,” Gast said, “let’s go.”
I let her lead me onto the next platform. Then back onto solid – albeit wildly trembling – ground.
When I finally mustered the will to raise my head again, flashes of gold revealed my comrades – “the Albrights,” I hissed to myself – were close to reaching us again. ⬛⬛o⬛⬛ was barely a handful of leaps away.
My gaze lurched towards Davian and the rest of our group. They were struggling to find a path around another ravine. Tully’s whistles had gone silent, and without them all we had left were guesses.
A group of gold-plated soldiers plummeted to their deaths in a wreath of purple. Gast panted beside me. Yet in the distance behind them sprinted dozens more, expressions suspended between despair and hope.
⬛⬛o⬛⬛ staggered onto solid ground, sweat-drenched face contorted with reckless fury. It was hard to enjoy the company of someone determined to ruin the mood of those around him, but I’d never truly wished him harm.
I imagined killing him. I imagined crushing the faces and expressions and hopes and despair and colour and life from every single person arrayed against me.
A breath left my body in a shudder. “I don’t know if I can do this,” I said quietly.
Gast glanced at me. Then, she levelled her shield towards the approaching soldiers. “Okay.”
Then I felt Tully’s lifeforce flicker.
You watch. Your fathers: scribbling letters on tablets radiating a deep purple to match their own roughly dyed clothes. Those around them: bearing the same outfit, the same activity, and the same wide eyes as your parents. You’re given a wax tablet of your own to scratch your nails in, and between glances towards them you painstakingly copy their movements, though the symbols hold no meaning to you. The world is a collection of tablets, a single round room, and those that dwell within it. But in the moments between waking and working comes a dream: walking back home across the rope bridges to see the endlessly tall ivory towers, and though they’re greater than any individual a thousand people scurry up and down their sides, chipping away at them and gradually the world grows more human. When a dozen labourers are mauled by a great beast at the foot of the tower, you turn your head away. Gently, Da directs your gaze back.
Something clicked in my head. ⬛⬛o⬛⬛ stepped towards Gast, teeth bared. I reared a leg and kicked him back into the ravine.
You grow on a diet of roots and berries supplemented with a miscellaneous assortment of meat. They are mysterious: a glance is all you need to understand they’re brought by the rough-skinned people who climb up on ladders with baskets on their backs, but it takes another three weeks to comprehend they come from the red-leafed mass that dominates the horizon. You think the food might’ve lived, once, and tell your fathers as much. In his slow, measured way, Pa tells you everything lives. Da turns his flat gaze from Pa and tells you nothing does. You’re not sure what to think.
I felt the connection, and knew I could crush it. But the gambit would crush what little hope I had alongside it. And I – I? – had already made my choice.
Alongside the roots and berries you put in your mouth are letters and numbers you cram in your head; so many you sometimes dream they climb from your ears and swarm across the room you share with your fathers into towers and bridges and ropes, where twos eat ones to become threes. Your parents say you will be like them one day. Sometimes you think it might be nice to be one of the women who go into the forest, instead. Until one day the horizon churns into a writhing, cannibalistic mass, and no one who went out that day returns. Yet your portion of roots and berries gets larger, and you wonder whether trees are grown from the dead.
Another of my comrades – no, the Albrights – made a desperate gambit to cross the platforms. Once again, Gast’s fingers pressed on her runestone to ensure his leap fell askew. In the fading purple light around his body I read her bloodtech’s faltering fuel, so I flicked my fingers through the blood on my arm and offered it to her.
On a Frost morning so cold your breath seems to stab your throat, you slip the distracted gazes of Pa and Da and step out onto the precarious walkways raised around the Spires. To you, the scaffolding seems to pull the towers from their ghostly heights and anchor them in the world you live in. You carefully follow the people who painstakingly put the rickety platforms together at less than half their speed – for they are held to the Spires by ropes and you are only held by your own poor balance. Eventually, you find your way onto a small ledge. It overlooks the blooming of a city, and it is here you come to spend most of your childhood.
The Strain cast two more soldiers into darkness before the bulk of the Albrights reached the edge of the pit. A few rattled arrows from sparse quivers are aimed towards us, driving me to pull the massive shield from Gast’s arm.
You watch yourself grow: limbs becoming thin and gangly while your mind weaves an increasingly intricate web of comprehension. The city grows as well: a new crenulation upon the tower; another bridge; the introduction of a contraption that flares purple and inevitably fails, days later. But it is the movements of people you’re truly fascinated by: the way the gatherers go out and come back in; where the labourers and Owlsmiths intersect to reinforce certain platforms; the cool-eyed individuals that record it all. Every human swims through a dozen different streams, yet somehow it all intersects at a single point: your city; the Spires of Heltia.
I stepped in front of Gast and hunched beneath her shield. The volley shattered against its metal.
Facing any individual except your fathers is difficult – you don’t know them; you don’t know what they’ll do – but when one becomes many all the insecurities fade away. They are rhythmic, flowing from one task to another in their own way. In time, seeing the same assortment of faces every day makes them more familiar to you and more stunning for their intimacy: the way the bearded man always laughs uproariously at the stone-faced one; how the old woman always checks her team’s harnesses twice; the unmarked patch of dirt where two quiet gatherers always bow their heads. When someone raises a hand to you one day, you nearly fall off your ledge in surprise. The notion that other people watched as well was utterly foreign.
One more crossed, and I slammed the shield into her ruddy face, feeling her features cave beneath its weight.
But sitting and watching only takes a small portion of your day. The rest is dedicated to numbers. Eventually, you look at a number on a tablet and the people being fed beneath, and see that they’re meant to be the same. In your mind, the two never seem to become one. Your fathers deal with an almost incomprehensible amount of numbers and letters, with days filled with copying as much as their sparse blood allows, and you suspect that they have no trouble with the truth you struggle with. You know they’re right – Spires couldn’t be built if they were wrong – you just don’t have the head to understand. But if you try very hard, you sometimes glimpse the shadows of wood and ore and food amidst the walls of numbers, and it is there you come to a startling realisation about the resources House Heltia consumes. There’s never enough.
I glanced backwards, finding Davian leading the others across the ravine they’d struggled with. The Albrights began circumnavigating the edge of the pit. They continued as several were consumed by the stone as it shattered and heaved.
When House Heltia secures several drops of Siik’s blood – its payment for joining Leyden in delving into the Spider’s mountain – young men and women are offered a heavily-diluted amount to ‘try’, as if being Blooded were a matter of taste and not necessity. Your fathers want the secluded life of an Owlblooded bureaucrat or smith for you. But Heltia needs Spiderbloods, and you pass their test. After a day of writhing, you are among their number. Your whole life you have watched. Now, you see.
The ground beneath my feet undulated. I look down.
In the shaking arm of a worker you see the fall of a hammer. In the slight bend of a piece of scaffolding you see the crack that forms days later. In the feet of fleeing labourers you see them fail to outrun a monster. In the fraying rope lugging timber you see three people have their bones crushed. In the icy wood and long drops you see your own death writ in excruciating detail. In the moments before the day begins you see a thousand ways everything could go wrong.
In its fragmenting stone, amongst a dozen different possibilities, I saw: Gast and I’s immediate death; my leg being pulled into the ground and bit off by chomping stone; the pit pulling more land into its maw.
After the assimilation, it takes three days for you to halt your trembling enough to leave the barracks. Others in your cohort are not so lucky: their heavier Spiderblood or weaker wills tie them to their beds. They die of dehydration, eyes shaking above bleeding lips as they stared at the jugs of water provided. Of the original ten, six remain to assist Heltia in designing buildings and contraptions to support the city’s slow growth. But your skills lay elsewhere. When one of Heltia’s small, purple-clad armies returns to the city, you are placed amongst them.
After surveying the soldiers’ empty quivers, I grabbed Gast’s arm and broke into a run.
There is no formal training; merely an assignment to a senior officer and mounds of documents to review. The army leaves Spires, then the Heartlands, and though you are swamped in paperwork it’s impossible to ignore the majesty of the outside world and those that march beside you. Your fellow soldiers are placed in clear lines of purple like an island of sanity amidst the crushingly open plains. Then Heltia joins Baylar for an expedition, and you realise that your House’s forces barely match their smallest detachment.
I felt nearly twenty Albrights swarm after us. With my halberd, in a narrower battlefield, I might’ve been capable of cutting through them. But no amount of martial skill would help against the ubiquitous chaos of the Aching.
Safeguarded by Head Neelam Heltia’s role in the Albright’s ascendency, House Heltia has no enemies. The Albrights do not allow it. Your role as a soldier is not defence; it is to earn the ore, timber, and rations that sustain Heltia’s growth. You are mercenaries. As your general accepts increasingly deadly odds to beg scraps of favour from the other, more powerful Houses tables – all the while dutifully ignoring the dirty glances of your peers – you see that your home’s rate of expansion had a cost buried out of Spires’ eyeshot. You see your first battle – Baylar placing you against an overwhelming Esfarian force – and watch as a hundred of your people die. Baylar wins; Heltia is paid; you are ordered to tally the dead.
Gast’s breathing grew heavy against the force of our sprint. I shoved her spine, only for her to stumble on a sudden warping of earth and have to haul her back upright.
As the years pass, you quickly distinguish yourself as a deft hand in organising supply-chains, medical staff, blacksmiths; guiding the movements of people to best support an oncoming battle and its inevitable aftermath. To your surprise, you find every soldier from common infantry to the most elite Blooded offering you greetings as you pass. When you ask your general about this, he laughs and says whatever army you’re attached to eats like they’re Albrights. That doesn’t seem like enough. To you, helping your soldiers die with full bellies still means they die.
One of the soldiers behind broke off from the main body of Albrights. Whoever it was couldn’t outrun me, but they could outrun Gast.
Eventually, on one of the few return trips to Spires that the dangers of the Heartlands allows, a retired tactician has the idea of pairing you with General Bina. The General was lent Dure’s divinity late enough that Lizardblood’s inherent mental rigidity cannot smother a keen tactical mind earned through decades of military experience. Yet the newly minted General pushes her soldiers too hard and too far. Her forces continually buckle under the weight of her demands. You are charged with keeping her army in the best possible shape, to ensure they can endure General Bina’s plans. The first time you attend one of her officer’s meetings, you see that it is impossible to supply such obvious madness. For the first time in over a decade, you see wrongly.
I pushed Gast onwards, then halted to meet the sprinting soldier. He barrelled towards me in a gleam of gold, and moments before he reached me I saw one of the many cracks in the stone begin to close.
While General Bina supplies the plans and sheer charisma – often taking the field herself to bolster faltering troops – you place the right people in the right places to ensure she has the resources she needs. Victory rates soar; fatalities drop like stones. Under the General’s command, Heltia’s military is no longer a third-rate force hired to bear the brunt of an enemy’s ire, but the weight that determines victory or loss. The Spires of Heltia’s appetite is endless, but for once it lays sated. Head Neelam Heltia sends tools to the front-line – carved with dizzying filagree and glowing purple – and though they inevitably fail, for once you see the future as a bright thing.
I stepped around his tackle and kicked his leg out from under him. Before his body had hit the ground, I seized his helmed head and jammed it into the closing gap. His helmet crumpled into a mess of red almost instantly.
Your forces cannot match the discipline of the Albrights – equipped with the best gear and staffed by the young nobles of every House. Nor the ferocity of Esfaria – upheld by a worship of the martial way. Nor the chicanery of the Leyden. Nor the sheer economic weight of Baylar. But while their focus is stretched wide, Heltia’s is narrow enough to understand your worth. General Bina – and you by association – becomes so valuable that Head Heltia steers you well away from any gods. Seeing that brings a greater relief than any other in your life.
Ahead of my thundering steps, Gast had halted to eye a ravine five paces across. Within it, vegetation, stone, and flesh writhed nauseatingly.
Most days consist of ordering craftsmen in the mud of your camp, arranging supply-chains or the occasional Divinity by a passing Face and marching through the seasons of Bite, Frost, Tempest, Summit and Spirit. Beyond that are various candlelit reviews in the darkness of the war-tent. Officers come and go – by discharge or by the point of a blade – but with the longevity and utility of Blooded, you and General Bina remain. After over six years of working together, your conversation extends past military matters and into deeper waters. You’re met with a quiet snort when you tell her you used to want to be a labourer, then a hurried apology when she realises you’re serious. She shows you a childhood mapped by scars made invisible by her Lizardblood, yet still lurking beneath her skin. When you learn your fathers have passed their blood along and died during the process, she rubs your back as you swallow sobs. When Heltia sends through a tiny, runework lantern, the two of you watch its ineffectual light flicker with unmitigated delight. When the things you say make her laugh, there’s a thrill unlike any other.
I rammed into Gast as fast as possible and shoved us both over the crack. We hung for a moment weightlessly, then slammed onto the other side in a tangle of limbs.
For eight long years, it never goes farther than late nights and touches that linger on your skin. Someone has to take it further, but whenever you think about doing so you see a hundred thousand disgusted expressions, or gentle rebukes, or eyes that refuse to meet your own. And Bina’s hands are bound by mulish stubbornness both divine but originally her own – infinitely charming and infinitely frustrating in equal measures. Then one day Bina spends three days in a coma, and her waking sees your fears overcome with relief. Your ensuing embrace is accompanied by Bina’s bleary astonishment, and immediately becomes one of the most awkward and most treasured memories of your life. Then the Jackal comes.
I extricated myself from her vast mast. In the shuddering gasps that wrack her body I saw a woman that could sprint no longer, so with straining limbs I hauled her onto my back and continued stomping forward.
At over forty years of age, you’ve spent most of your life in service to the four Houses that border your own: House Esfaria, Baylar, Leyden, and occasionally the Albrights – in battles against other Houses, the Raven’s Cult, monsters, or merely as a show of strength. When you’re contracted by Baylar to remain in reserve in preparation for a decisive battle against House Korla, it’s the first time you’ve faced one of the continent’s three northern Houses. Over nearly a century, Korla has been slowly eaten by the other two northern Houses until it teeters on the edge of either annihilation or irrelevance. Baylar wants to sack its cities before they can. You fall asleep waiting for the call, and awake buried up to your chin in the middle of an icy field, with Bina buried beside you.
Ahead of us, the rest of the group had reached the side of the crater and were scrambling up its side. Yowler bit Crumpet’s clothes and yanked her aside moments before a stone the size of a head would’ve broken her skull.
A dark-skinned, lightly scarred woman greets you cheerily as you spit dirt, surrounded by soldiers who regard your captor with a mixture of fear and awe. Her name has been whispered as a minor addendum to a dozen late-night reports: Valorie, a common soldier elevated to the position of officer. You understand her gambit immediately: kidnapping both you and Bina as you sleep. The handful of soldiers under her command call her the Jackal. That is the name you remember her by.
Above, I could see Ronnie, Head Maleen and Kit’s bodies straining as they tried to prevent the larger boulders from rolling downwards. The task seemed impossible. The swordswoman turned her head to yell something below, and at the sight of her face I missed a step.
The Jackal squats down and addresses Bina in a voice too quiet to decipher, caressing the hilt of her sword all the while. In an eyeblink, you see the shadow of a dozen different ways your captor could kill Bina. But the woman simply grins, straightens, and turns to you with a knife in her hand.
I managed to right myself.
It takes four cuts for you to make a sound. It takes sixteen cuts for you to start screaming. It takes twenty for you to believe you’re going to die. It takes thirty-three for your nails to rip from your fingers as they writhe against the packed dirt you’re entombed in. It takes forty-two for the pressure you force upon it to rupture something in your knee. It takes forty-nine for the Jackal to run out of clean space on your face and begin cutting into wounds already opened. It takes fifty-six for Bina to tell Valorie information about troop movements. Your torturer laughs in delight.
I tore my gaze from Kit in time to notice the group of soldiers slowly catching up. Purple flared as Gast casts whatever magic remains in her runestone, but when their fellows tripped as she redirected their momentum those still standing lowered their head and redoubled their efforts.
The Jackal leaves after verifying the information. Your location is ransomed. Your soldiers find you after half a day. They find your eyes lost in a pit of gore, yet still wildly flickering around. From then onwards, they call you Graves.
I ground my teeth and did the same.
The wounds turn to scars. The work goes on. Yet now, for every nine moments you spend poring over troop positioning, quietly ordering workmen to repair tools or negotiating payment for contracts, one is spent staring into space. Over the months, that moment seeps past the singular and gradually begins to dominate your existence. No one notices.
The ground heaved beneath my boots, and everyone within the crater was tossed in the air.
You make miscalculations, and Bina covers them. They call you Graves, and you hide your trembling with a rigid demeanour. Your poor inspection of newly-acquired armour gets dozens of soldiers killed, and Bina covers it. They salute you as you pass, and you vomit in your tent. Bina tells you that the Jackal – on the verge of becoming a general – has been exiled from House Korla after her elaborate system of blackmail was uprooted. You wake from slumber to see a dark shadow with a white smile, and your arms cannot move. You make mistake after mistake after, and Bina covers every single one. You see tomorrow in today, and it is a thing that fills you with dread.
I prepared to hit the stone beneath me.
One day, the army is camped near the side of a cliff. Someone gets Bina, who finds you staring off its side. You’ve been like that for five hours. She takes you into her tent, holds your hands, and tells you to go home.
I landed poorly. My ribs smashed into the ground with the force of both myself and Gast’s weight, and something cracked, but though agony sparks through my torso I attempted to flail upright. The heat was wretched.
For the first time in over three decades, you’re left behind. The Spires of Heltia has grown more intricate, and in its impossible bridges, intricate carvings, hollowed towers, and countless craftspeople you see that your many years of service was not wasted. But your ledge is gone along with your fathers. You wander aimlessly through its many paths, neither touching nor being touched by the crowds of people around you. In the prototype bloodtech devices you’re charged with evaluating you see a city on the cusp of something greater than even your most vivid imaginings. In a way, you’re glad to witness it. But after the most powerful Aching you’ve ever experienced, the Raven’s cultists start to spread across the continent like a swarm of locusts, and you are not there to help Bina through it.
In a gambit to rise faster, I grabbed one of the few speartrees still standing. Yet when I placed my weight on it, its trunk tilted and began to crash downwards towards us.
With the Albrights reluctant to allow the other Houses into their territory, Heltia is the obvious second choice to host a summit. It’s the second meeting of all eight Houses in history – the only similar occasion being when the Albrights subdued the other seven over a century before – and the first time many have seen your city. They leave with eyes filled with visions of the impossible – slaying a god – but even as you share their hopes you cannot forget the avarice-filled stares they threw as they entered your city.
Before we became trapped underneath it, its momentum slowed under a veil of purple light. My muscles wrenched painfully as I dragged myself and Gast out from under it. The magic vanished, and the speartree was consumed by a crack in the earth.
You request a transfer back to Bina. Your denial arrives in an elegantly scripted tablet marred by Bina’s shaky signature. That is the last message you receive from her before she dies in the shadow of a god.
I staggered upright alongside the Strain. The others were most of the way up the crater. My – my? – comrades had nearly reached us.
The city mourns, then rejoices, but you remain trapped at some point before those two stages. You sleep little, and walk alone beneath the night sky. Your days are occupied by stringent evaluations of bloodtech’s use on the battlefield, but when the sun falls there’s nothing left but shadows. It’s on one of your walks that you meet a gatherer named Tam, quietly eating alone on the roof of a smithy. She beckons you, and without much thought you begin to clamber up. Time has stolen most of your vitality, but after some assistance from the gatherer you make it up. The pair of you speak of simple things, but the conversation quickly spins out of both your grasps: into meaning, hope, solitude, and tomorrows. You meet every night. It takes a month for her to move into your room.
A moment before the soldiers slammed into my back, I grabbed Gast in both arms and moved sideways. I saw a shelf crumble an instant before my foot would land on it, so I redirected my legs to bounce off a series of parchment-thin stones. Someone dove for us, missed, and had their arm crushed between a sudden growth of teeth and hair from the earth.
You still dream of helplessness, savage laughter and flashing metal, but for the first time in a long time you can see the world as it is. The very first thing you see is Spires trembling under its own weight. There’s not enough Godsblood in the city to keep the bloodtech it’s coming to rely upon afloat, yet Heltia refuses to cease or even slow new developments. At the root of the problem is a simple matter of supply. Blood must be inside a person, lest it rapidly lose its potency, which means fuelling the bloodtech in the city is a matter of coaxing people into opening their veins. A new initiative sees taxes levied in blood. Even the staunchest patriots are initially reluctant, but Heartlanders are familiar with the notion of sacrifice and quickly grow used to the practice. Yet even so, it’s only a matter of time before Spires cannot sustain itself.
Their blood sprayed into the air as their fellow’s armoured foot found their neck and accidentally snapped it. Without life, I felt the liquid in their veins grow impotent and empty; fading faster than a memory.
This is the backdrop to your nights with Tam. With her, you can simply be. Until she becomes increasingly insistent the pair of you adopt children. You’re entirely certain motherhood is a bad idea – your scarred face reduces most children and some adults to tears – but there are orphans aplenty to choose from. You go back and forth, until you suddenly receive a missive to enter the Nest – the home of Heltian nobility. They need someone to coordinate the bodyguards of House Heltia, and with Heltia’s best consumed killing a god you’re the only reasonable choice remaining to them. You barely consider it. It’s the first time you’ve ever seen Head Neelam Heltia – a short, wizened man with immense eyes – and the simple act of beholding him is so intoxicated you would’ve likely agreed to anything in that moment. The argument between you and Tam is settled after the sudden promotion sees you with enough chits to sustain a small family.
The little solid ground remaining had been consumed by the earth’s relentless churning until there was no foothold that did not move. Things swarmed and grew and collapsed; a thousand year’s of life spanned in a single breath. It was a place of birth, growth, and death – there was no room for survival. But even as those behind us died I listened to everything and saw myself perish a hundred different ways and step after step, I ran.
You see your two children three or four times a week. Few of the House nobility have much considerations for your job – you’re unsure they’re capable of it – and you’re constantly scrambling to cover them while they pursue their whims. Neelam is the worst. Whatever realm he dwells in is the same in which the ethereal towers of your childhood live: one foreign to you. But you suspect that’s the price of either Owlblood or genius.
It felt like nothing.
The usual food shortages begin occurring four years after the last Aching, with all the easily-accessible food picked away. More lethal territory doggedly guards the rest. But Spires’ stockpiles will last the one or two years until the next Aching, provided everyone within tightens their belts. But year after year after year passes, and it never comes. The first assassination attempt you thwart is made by a man whose ribs stand against his skin.
It felt like nonsense.
Your skills and reputation assist in coaxing trade caravans from Baylar’s capital with promises of bloodtech, Owlforged steel, and protection through the famously savage Heartlands. Though the first handful alleviate the famine somewhat, the flow of goods quickly ceases. A messenger from Baylar arrives incensed, with accusations of deliberately reneging on the deal to avoid giving up your bloodtech. You assuage them, and organise another caravan from Spires. This one falls as well. It takes several months of investigation to decipher what had occurred. The idea that such heavily-guarded caravans were set upon by bandits seems ludicrous – farmers and the occasional ex-soldier would stand little chance – until reports of a scarred, dark-skinned swordswoman reach your ears. The Jackal. Your sweat-drenched nights redouble. You shake when no one’s around.
It felt like a nightmare.
Heltia aches under the weight of starvation and its own ravenous need for Godsblood. One day a rumour passes by your ears: Ichor, a kind of blood that stays in a puddle without losing potency. It’s exactly what Heltia needs, and a bounty is immediately authorised for any information on the subject. Meanwhile, a missive from the Albrights asks all Houses to watch for the only surviving Ravenblood – a short, teenage boy. Several months later, songs about the murder of General Maja reach Spires along with the first wave of refugees.
It wasn’t any of those things.
Your grasping for the Jackal yields nothing but air. You have little doubt there are multiple bandit groups with an extensive network, but despite your many attempts to stifle rumours talk of ‘the Jackal’s Get’ quickly fills conversation between all castes of society. Another dozen assassination attempts are foiled by your diligence before a blade manages to find a scion’s back. You contain the Heltian nobles within Nests with little argument.
The moments passed in a blur of unconscious calculation and movement. I reached the edge of the crater with Gast on my back and didn’t understand how I’d arrived there.
Your wife harries you as you return with talk of spending more time with family. The Heartlands are gradually rotting, yet you know she cannot see the things you do. You try. Usually, you don’t try hard enough. But you come to love your daughters, and see your work as an extension of their protection. You devise an elaborate means of deciphering the Jackal’s location. But there’s still no food coming in, so you send Tam and the girls to Fort Vane. In your dreams you fail, arms tied to your side.
I clawed up the slope – Gast’s fleshy arms choking my neck – past layers of squirming grasses, slimy dirt, and crimson plants.
The plan works. Valorie’s band are killed with few survivors, and the Jackal itself is caged like an animal. But it’s too little, too late – the Aching is gone, there is no food, and there is no House willing to trade for some. Ichor is Heltia’s last, vain hope, but beneath the rumours you suspect there was never anything at all. Almost as soon as starvation hollows the cheeks of everyone around you the Albright’s Declaration spells Heltia’s death spiral. One day, you wake to find every single member of House Heltia poisoned, bar one: Maleen, an unblooded, flame-haired woman barely more than a girl. She only survived the poison due to her delinquency. It’s your failure, and your loss. But you cannot tell anyone. Your dreams are filled with holes ringing with laughter. You’re certain the Jackal did it, but torture yields neither method nor motivation.
Pain flowed from my fractured knuckles and aching ribs. My nails grew red with dirt. The boiling heat fell away as I fled from the land beneath.
Maleen – now the Head – is kept away from the bodies of her extended family. Of Heltia’s reckless genius – its towers stretching skywards like scarred fingers – she is all that remains. You bear her needs on your back. You teach her what you can, and hastily order scribes to gather the expertise onto countless books. Head Maleen understands enough to work hard, but with the ignorance of youth she does not truly see what is at stake. You listen to her quietly weep at night, and redouble her tutoring come morning.
I fell as the weight of Gast vanished from my shoulders. It seemed impossible to get enough air in my chest. Two pairs of hands grabbed each of my arms, and I finally straightened upright.
Heltia’s paltry spy network reports Baylar undergoing recruitment drives. While the military scrambles to conceal what occurred, and brace for the inevitable attack, you organise multiple caravans as a smokescreen for the one you’ll be on. You take Rita and a handful of bodyguards you can be certain played no part in the assassination with you, but monster hunters are needed to complete the guise. To your complete and utter bafflement, the most successful in Spires are a group of Strains – disgusting remnants of reckless disloyalty. Amongst them is a large Lizardblood and a young swordswoman with familiar features. The moment you see her you know you must have them.
Kit supported me on one side and Taja on the other. The small mountain of red-moss smeared boulders had been reduced to a mere hill. I shook of their arms and stumbled towards the tope, where the others waited.
Kit possesses the same vicious bearing that stalks your nightmares, but you see no comprehension or disloyalty behind her eyes. You have no excuse to kill her. Baylar somehow overcomes Spires in a matter of days and finds you. People die. You saw this could happen. You see a handful of ways out. Then some spirit possesses Vin, and he collaborates with you to make a plan. You watch him as he kills twenty soldiers single-handedly, and through a half-remembered glimpse of a General three decades ago you see the Slaughter in his veins. The Ravenblood is not what you expect. He might be what you need.
I made it. Everyone – even Yowler – was present. Except…
You make plans, and rush through the Fox’s forests with minimal casualties. There’s a crater, and there’s a war between Albright and Other, and you know you’re somewhere you should not be. Once again, you see your death a thousand times at a thousand angles. When you find the Ichor underground, you see a reason for the Albright’s Declaration. And when you’re above-ground, you see your death writ in immutable ink. With your sight gone, Head Maleen and the dreams she bears upon her shoulders – the dreams you and tens of thousands like you bent their life towards – may die as well. Between blinks, darkness and laughter lays. You cannot stop shaking.
Me. Or… Was I there?
You oversee the flight of the others. You’ve gotten most of them killed, and a cooler part of you recognises the need of recompense. But when your perch breaks and you fall screaming into the press of earth beneath you, where your limbs and arms and bones are trapped against your body, that part is buried in sheer terror, because the fear you’ve cradled for decades has finally come true. But you see one last trick left, buried in the blood of a dead god and the veins of a boy who wants no part of it. You hope. And, in a plea full of hypocrisy, you are truly sorry he has to take you in him. You die…
Thought was useless.
I sat down.
I’d known that the Aching would alter the shape of the earth. Everyone had. The quakes changed the geography of the Heartlands so radically the only thing that tied one iteration to the next was a red colouration. But with it, everything would grow again. There would be enough food for everyone.
I thought I’d known.
Atop the hill, we saw strips of speartrees and red-leafed heartwoods and tallgrass and flocks of roaming animals drawn into the earth by its churning. Apart from a few patches that must’ve been atop thick stretches of stone, the land we’d spent weeks circumventing was reduced to nothing more than endless growth. That too was swallowed. It felt as if we were ants sitting amidst the undulating coils of an incomprehensibly massive snake.
In the Aching around us, my eyes found none of the gut-wrenching anatomical madness I’d run through. The crater had been just deep enough to reveal what lay beneath the Heartlands’ skin.
Despite myself, I looked back. Where the crater had been moments ago lay a field of red dirt. There were no bodies. There was no life.
Only a memory of what once was.