Sessryn had joined the Hallowed Company back in the time of Old Yoss himself. She’d been one of the first to find the cast out lord dredging his funds to gather up armed soldiers in the Greenlands. He came from the Hallowed Realm and so he’d named his company after that, rather pretentious she’d thought.
She’d been with the company when it had fought for Lady Renlang against the Azure Horde. When it had defeated the Seelso Battalion at White River. When it had gone from strength to strength in the wars and squabbles of the Greenlands. Yoss had had a talent for leading mercenaries, where he came from lords had their own soldiers but in the Greenlands everyone hired their wars out to the professionals and in such an environment he had thrived.
Then he had taken them further west, along the Grey Road to the Final Fork. There they could have gone North to the Library or South to the Wilderness. Yoss had chosen the Wilderness.
It was at times like these that Sessryn wished he’d chosen the Library. They were camped in their little huts that they’d built years ago when it was all supposed to be temporary. Her hut hadn’t been built particularly well and it leaked in the rain which it was doing now. She got up and picked up the bucket that had been slowly filling with water, emptying it outside.
Her muscles protested at the weight of the heavy bucket, she was getting old she knew. Far too old to be out in this godforsaken forest. She stood in the doorway and watched the rain beat down around her, watched the forest bear the weight of the storm. They had to fear storms now apparently, the sorceress could be hiding in any one of them they said. Waiting to bear down on them with lightning and death.
Some people believed that there was no way she could find them all the way out here but Sessryn wasn’t convinced. It always seemed to her that if something could go wrong, it would go wrong. And it would hardly be difficult for a sorceress to find them, plenty of people knew about the secret tunnel, all it would take was for one of them to be captured and the sorceress would know everything she needed to know.
The tunnel had been collapsed so maybe she couldn’t come through that way but all she’d have to do was to search the whole Wilderness, something that wouldn’t be that difficult by air. So they were fleeing. The Inkdrop Queen, Old Yoss’s daughter, had decided they were going to leave.
Sessryn watched the storm, she watched the forest. She was looking forward to leaving.
As one of the oldest and most trusted members of the company she ended up in the rearguard which was just typical. So as they all began to file out her and some of the older soldiers moved about the place checking on things, ensuring they were leaving nothing of value behind. She’d been in this clearing so long she could remember everything anyway. There was the magical cave that led to Meduramanth, now sealed with the biggest pile of rocks they could gather. There was the roaring waterfall off to the side that fed the river that flowed through the middle. The old bridges they’d built when they first got here, still standing strong.
She remembered all the old soldiers too, they were easy to recognise from their black black lips. Living in the forest did that to you, they said. There was a newcomer too, the Inkdrop Queen’s slave turned soldier, she had the blackest lips of all. She was talking to someone on the other side of a tree in hushed whispers. Sessryn moved over toward them, she didn’t trust slaves, especially not ones who’d had their lives ruined and had nothing to lose.
By the time she got there the slave had stopped talking and had turned around to look at her. Sessryn looked around the tree, there was no one there.
“Who were you talking to?” she asked suspiciously.
“No one,” she replied.
Sessryn narrowed her eyes and looked at the hideous black scar across her mouth, stained with dripping inkdrops. The scar that indicated she had to lie.
The slave looked guilty.
They were leaving in a few hours, most people had already gone so Sessryn made sure to keep an eye on the slave. She was subtle about it, she might be old and tired but she could stay out of sight of someone in this camp, the camp she knew so well. So she stayed out of sight and watched. The slave was helping to pack everything up and doing just as much as everyone else. Sessryn watched her the entire time as they loaded up their horses and started to file down the path. It was only then that she made her run for it.
She was sneaky, she had to give her that. Sessryn only saw her go because she’d been looking for it, but she didn’t have a horse, and Sessryn did. She turned to follow her, whispering in Ayessa’s ear as she left.
“I’m going to check something out,” she said to her commander. “It’s probably nothing, don’t wait for me, I’ll catch up.” She smiled at the young woman, Yoss’s other daughter who she’d watched grow from a child into their new commander.
Ayessa nodded, her sign that that was fine. It was a bit difficult, having a commander that couldn’t speak any truthful commands. Sessryn hated Yoss sometimes for what he’d done to his daughters, testing the blades on them. It really wasn’t fair.
She moved off through the houses, careful to stay out of sight of the slave if she decided to come back. It was impressive, Ayessa didn’t usually miss much but in the rain and the bustle of leaving there had been an opportunity to escape and she’d taken it. Sessryn wasn’t having it though, she’d follow her, find whoever it was that was working with her and bring them both back so she could finally leave the godforsaken wilderness. Or so she hoped.
Rana joined up with Sal at their rendezvous point and they began to trek into the Wilderness. Except he wasn’t Sal anymore, he’d changed. He’d always seemed strange, inhuman with his eyes that never blinked. It turned out that he wasn’t human, he was something else, something that could change. At one point he’d been Ayessa ordering her around in front of the other soldiers, at another point he’d been a different slave, cleaning the barracks and whispering in her ear while she trained, now he was his old self again, thin and pale, with lidless eyes and black lips.
He led her through the forest, ignoring the many paths and trails trekked out by the Inkdrop Queen’s forces and taking other routes instead. They climbed up the hill over rocks and roots and emerged atop the waterfall then they began following the river.
They didn’t talk much, Sal never talked much and Rana didn’t like to. So the only noise was the roar of the river, but it was a loud roar. Loud enough to mask the hoofbeats of the horse chasing them.
Sessryn emerged from the treeline and rounded her horse in front of them, drawing a sword and pointing it at them.
“Where do you two think you’re going?” she asked.
Rana didn’t respond, it wasn’t easy. It seemed that telling lies to do with subterfuge and trickery was all the more tempting. Sal responded though and the urge died away.
“Ayessa has sent me to fetch things like I did in the castle. Rana is here to guard me.”
Sessryn snorted in derision. “Ayessa didn’t send you anywhere, you ran away! Both of you! Come on, let’s get back to the-”
Sal turned to Rana, already transforming into a new shape. “Swim!” he shouted and then dived into the water. The rushing, roaring water that sped off toward the rushing roaring waterfall.
Rana paused for a second and looked up at Sessryn on her horse, then she dived in as well. It all came back to her, all her days as a girl swimming in the lakes pretending to be a shark. She powered through the water. But this water was not like the still lake water, it was powerful and strong and fighting against her. She felt herself being carried downstream toward the waterfall and could do nothing to stop it, she could only swim on toward the opposite bank. But swim she did, until her arms were aching and her hands were shaking and her body was screaming out in pain. Then she swam some more.
She grabbed a wet branch on the other side of the river and pulled on it. It snapped off but by then she’d grabbed another one, a stronger one. She pulled herself, wet and shaking, onto the other bank and then looked back to see Sessryn sitting on her horse watching them. The horse did not seem to want to go into the water.
Beside Rana Sal crawled out of the river, but he wasn’t Sal. This time he was her, complete with her inkdrop stained mouth and scar. She felt quite uncomfortable as the image of her slowly changed back into Sal again.
“We must go,” he said and began walking into the forest, Rana followed him. He’d turned into her to swim across the river, she was the best swimmer he knew. That made her feel a bit better, she had to admit. She wondered if he could turn into a horse, that’d save time. He likely couldn’t though, otherwise he would have done that already. They trekked on.
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On the other side of the river Sessryn cursed, there was no way she was swimming across that river and her horse didn’t seem very keen either. She could abandon them she supposed, let them eek out whatever miserable life they could in the forest. But she wasn’t going to. She’d seen Sal change into Rana and back again, she’d always known he was strange, but not that strange.
She could go back and get Ayessa to organise a proper search party and everything but that would really slow things down and they were supposed to be leaving as fast as possible. She cursed again and sped off back down the hill. Back toward the bridges they’d built so long ago that were still holding strong. She’d catch those two and this time she’d make sure they didn’t just escape across the river. This time, she made sure to bring a bow.
Sal and Rana walked till nightfall. They had taken bags of gear with them when they’d fled but it had all been lost in the river. The rain had cleared up a little but everything was still very wet, Rana was starting to worry she might just die from the cold. Sal, thin and pale and trembling, didn’t seem to be doing much better.
“The cold is harmless,” Rana said ominously. “We must not find shelter.”
“I have not been in this forest for a long time,” Sal said. “I forget where everything is. We must keep going upriver though.”
Rana shivered as the chill of night slowly settled in. She looked at Sal walking ahead of her. She wanted desperately to ask him what was going on, what he was, why he knew these things. He’d probably answer too, he could probably tell her all she wanted to know. But she could only lie, there was no way to convey the sort of information she wanted. She remembered the herald, the Herald of the Inkdrop Queen he’d called himself when obviously, he hadn’t been. He’d conveyed information, and they hadn’t even known he could only lie at the time. An idea began to form in her head.
“ I know you will tell me what you are. I know you will tell me where we’re going. I know you will tell me how you know so much and what is going on and who you are. I know this because I know we are going to die soon in the cold.” She grinned at him through the rain, it sounded morbid but he’d know what it meant.
Sal looked back at her those lidless eyes. He seemed sad somehow, maybe it was just the dark and the rain. “You’re right,” he said. “I should tell you all those things. I have lived my whole life lying to humans. It is hard to change now. We may die in this cold, I will tell you as I look for a cave for shelter. There is one around somewhere I think.” He moved off through the darkening forest and Rana followed. He was looking intently at everything, trying to find something he recognised.
“I am a medusae, the Salamander, a child of Irasada.”
Irasada, that sounded familiar. Rana remembered the note he had translated for her, the inscription on the blade, “forged from the blood of Irasada”.
“That name was not on the blade,” she lied.
Sal nodded. “It was. My kin, the Spider, forged those blades from our mother’s blood. The Spider was a horrible person, they ruled over us in Meduramanth and at the waterfall. I thought that when the monster came and killed them the blades were lost forever but I was wrong.”
“I know this monster.”
“The monster may have had a name but it doesn’t anymore, the Cleanser of Names took it. It came out of the cave between the waterfall and Meduramanth and killed every medusae there, including the Spider. I was not there then, I came much later and decided I wanted to live among the heritage of my people even though it was filled with humans. I have worked with them ever since, changing faces as the years pass by. Then I met Rana and she was nice to me, humans are rarely nice to me.”
He turned a corner and his face lit up as he saw a seemingly unremarkable branch. He moved around the tree and back to the river and sure enough there was a cave there, dug into the bank. They both crawled inside.
“And where we are going,” he continued, ringing out his wet clothes. “We are going to see my mother because she will not let anyone near her who does not have her blood.” He nodded at her scars and Rana ran a finger over them. “That scar grants you some boons at least,” he said. “Although it is far from worth it compared to what you’ve lost.”
“I know Irasada,” Rana said, wondering who this mother actually was.
“She is a god,” Sal said thoughtfully. “Or a demon,” he acknowledged. “You will probably think of her as a demon. She is bound though, my people bound her in chains of strongest stone. There are caves there, caves like the one we just left, caves that can take us wherever we need to go.”
“I know why you bound your own mother.”
Sal looked at her sadly. “I am sorry Rana, there are some things I cannot tell even you. Some secrets our people keep for very good reasons.”
They went to sleep after that and she dreamed of ink. Swimming in a river of ink and all around her copies of herself drowned. Rana didn’t think she wanted to meet Irasada.
They woke the next day and they were hungry, they hadn’t eaten anything for most of the day yesterday but Sal assured her that there would be food where they were going, they just had to get there. So they trekked on, through the wet cold forest. It had stopped raining but their clothes were still damp and the night in the cave had not been comfortable. Rana’s stomach complained for hunger and her skin complained for the cold and the damp and her body complained for the ache, but she did not complain. It helped that she somewhat couldn’t.
So they trekked on, up and up through the Wilderness. Rana hadn’t been there long but it seemed to always be going up, like a huge mountain that never seemed to end. As they walked she thought about gods and demons and she clutched at her little idol to Vestus that was around her neck, at least that had made it through the river. Was she still worthy of Vestus’s love and strength as she ran away from all of her problems, off into the forest to traffic with demons and monsters. She was already marked by a demon and she could no longer pray aloud, it was difficult to pray at all. The inky river rose up around her and she fought back tears as she trekked through the forest.
They climbed through the mist and mud and trees and eventually they reached a door. It was a secret door but Sal knew where to find it and so he led them there.
The door was in the back of a cave and it was a sealed stone door marked with the same spiralling patterns as the walls of Meduramanth. Behind the door she could feel the river of ink, waiting to rush into her, to drown her, to smother her. She took a deep breath and the feeling passed, it was only a door.
Sal put his hand on the door and it slid slowly open, just like how the walls of Meduramanth moved. It opened only a fraction before an arrow hissed past Rana and struck his hand. Sal screamed and fell away from the door which closed again. Rana spun around and drew the sword that she’d also dragged through the river. In the mouth of the cave Sessryn stood, knocking another arrow but Rana wasn’t going to give her the chance. She dashed forward and Sessryn cast aside her bow, drawing her own sword.
Behind them Sal cried out in alarm but Rana ignored him and attacked. The old woman was fast but Rana was younger and faster. She lashed at her face, then followed up with an immediate second attack. To her surprise Sessryn deflected that one as well, her sword seeming to drop into place almost by accident.
Then she launched her own attack and it was all Rana could do to keep her back. She wasn’t faster, or stronger, but she seemed to know what Rana was going to do before Rana did and her sword was always in the most dangerous place possible. Slowly Rana backed up before the blistering attack and then her wet hands slipped on her sword after a devastating blow. She couldn’t block the next attack properly and was forced to stumble away, Sessryn pressed her advantage and knocked her to the ground of the cave.
“Alright, you-”
An arrow shot out from deeper in the cave and pierced Sessryn’s shoulder. She staggered back in agony, clutching the wound and looked up. Rana looked as well and saw three figures with bows emerging from the door which had been opened fully. Sal still lay on the ground beside them, clutching his hand.
The figures all looked like Sal, pale and with lips blacker than his. The lead figure held up their bow and pointed it at Sessryn who growled in annoyance. They said something to Sal and his eyes went wide with fear. Despite the arrow still sticking out of his hand he climbed to his feet and seemed to be begging with them. One pointed their arrow at him and he backed away, continuing to plead.
Rana looked at him with a questioning look and he looked back at her. “Run,” he mouthed and he seemed so desperate when he said it. She didn’t want to leave him but she really didn’t trust these figures at all. They were watching Sal and Sessryn so she slowly picked up the bow and arrow Sessryn had thrown to the ground.
Sessryn saw Sal talking as well, she also saw the slave picking up her bow. She hoped that bow wasn’t going to be aimed at her. The arrow wound hurt and her arm would likely never be the same again but she could still fight with her other hand if necessary.
One of the figures was looking right at her with unnatural eyes. She looked right back and smiled at them, then she threw her sword and moved. The arrows released but she was already diving to the side by then and the sword flew through the air. It missed but the arrow the slave shot from the ground didn’t. Piercing the skull of the only figure who hadn’t fired yet, who’d been pointing their bow at Sal.
The slave rolled away and the two women left the mouth of the cave behind. They ran together and disappeared into the trees. Sessryn’s horse was there, it was getting skittish, she really should get a braver horse.
The two women looked at each other. Sessryn gestured to her arm. “I can’t ride very well like this. If you give me a hand I can get you out of here.”
Rana nodded, just like Ayessa did, and leapt onto the horse, pulling her up behind her. An arrow flew by but Rana was already steering the horse away to gallop off into the forest. She felt herself slowly pulling out of that inky river.
The Salamander walked down the tunnel nursing the arrow in their hand. The other medusae walked around them, furious that their human had escaped. The Salamander hadn’t known, how could they have known.
“How did he escape?” they asked. “Those chains were supposed to be unbreakable.”
The Dragonfly turned to the Salamander, fury still evident behind their eyes. “He made a deal with Qinar, just like we did to get those chains in the first place.”
“But Qinar told us those chains were unbreakable?”
“No, he told us that Irasada would never escape them. He said nothing about if we used them to chain up anyone else.”
The Salamander nodded, that sounded like typical demon behaviour.
“Now we have to capture him again or make another one and most of us don’t seem particularly eager to try making another one” the Dragonfly growled at the Salamander.
The Salamander stood as tall as could. “Our previous attempts cost many lives-”
“Human lives.”
“Lives nonetheless, and what do we gain from it? He didn’t achieve much in the time he was here.”
“You would rather the medusae fade into obscurity, that we die out completely?”
“We have already faded into obscurity.”
Their group left the tunnel and emerged into the great stone cave across which was strewn two great chains, each one ending in broken manacles. The Salamander looked down at them, they were a sign of disaster that was for sure but they couldn’t help but feel happy anyway. The man who’d been chained up here may have been a sorcerer but he was a man nonetheless and he did not deserve to be chained forever. The medusae might die out because of it but the Salamander didn’t feel as bad about that as they should’ve. They were going to die out anyway.