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--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—
Uicha de Orak, a young man of no renown, village of Ambergran, facing one hell of a coin flip
Johan Steadyhand, a man of no renown, village of Ambergran, suddenly brave
Tabitha Gentlerain, Quill of Ambergran, with more news to come
Battar Crodd, Death Knight of the 13th Renown and Quill of the Orvesian Witnesses, a wish soon to be granted
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Wish Day, 1 New Summer, 61 AW.
The village of Ambergran, North Continent
299 days until the next Granting.
There was screaming, of course, although less than Uicha might have expected. The farmers of Ambergran were a stoic people. Some immediately bolted from the meeting hall, parents hustling away with their young children. There would be a story later about a father who had tried slicing the mark of Ambergran off his wife and children with a paring knife, the whole family bleeding out before annihilation even came. But then, there would be a lot of grim tales about that day.
“How long do we have?” someone shouted.
Tabitha shook her head ruefully. “Midday,” she said. “Or thereabouts.”
Uicha remembered the way Tabitha had looked up at the sun when he’d seen her before. Estimating the time. He wondered if maybe she shouldn’t have told them at all.
The shouting and wailing grew now, more people fleeing the meeting hall, as if putting a time to the wish made the thing more real. The people of Ambergran had only a couple hours left. Or thereabouts.
Uicha stayed planted with Johan and the farmhands. Johan breathed fiercely through his nose, like a storm was rising inside him. It didn’t seem like much more needed to be said, but Tabitha raised her hands and shouted to be heard above the ongoing commotion.
"The Orvesian Quill said they'd accept volunteers! Anyone who would... well, anyone who would step forward to spare another... that option is open to you. The Orvesians will be waiting in the southern fields."
Only two Orvesian champions had survived the Granting. That meant their wish for annihilation was only half strength. The odds were fifty-fifty. A coin flip for survival. Better odds than his parents got from the pink pox, anyway.
Uicha flinched when Johan clapped a hand on his thin shoulder.
"I'm going back to the farm, boss," he said, the last word dripping with contempt. "And then I'm heading out to face those dirt-smeared bastards. I'll give them a volunteer. Gods won't stop me."
“You…?” Uicha squinted. “You’re going to try fighting them?”
“Don’t suppose you want to join, eh?”
“What would be the point?” Uicha asked earnestly.
Johan snorted, then snapped to his feet with enough force to knock Uicha to the side. He and the farmhands stormed out, everyone leaving as a mass now, pushing and shoving at the doors. Uicha stayed fastened to his pew.
He could not believe that he was going to die in this place. He’d never even liked it here.
And then he was alone, except for Tabitha. The Quill shuffled around, resetting the pews that had been knocked over as their neighbors rushed out. She stopped in front of him.
"You keeping it together, Uicha?"
He was surprised that she knew his name. "I'd been thinking I might leave town," Uicha said, his mouth dry. "Just hadn't figured out where I would go. Maybe back to my parents’ people. Don’t suppose that’s a possibility now, is it?"
“You might get there yet,” Tabitha said. “There’s a chance.”
“They wouldn’t know me, either,” Uicha replied. He pushed a hand through the shock of unkempt hair atop his head, then looked down at the floor. There was that old darkness again. The same hopeless feeling that had kept him lingering around the farm like a ghost. Uicha was more than ready to sink back into that place. In a way, he’d already been annihilated.
"You could come with me to meet the Orvesians," Tabitha said, an odd warmth in her invitation. Uicha looked up at her, blinking. "You southerners believe that our souls join the gods when we die, right? You might be reunited with your parents that way. It would be an act of real heroism, Uicha.”
Uicha said nothing. Tabitha had just suggested that he effectively kill himself. As conversations with his elders went, this was at least an honest one. He understood clearly how the people of Ambergran viewed him. A broken boy, an outsider in his own home, who could be sacrificed to save someone more productive.
“We never believed in soul unification,” Uicha said at last. “That’s only Crucifalia. And I’m not a southerner. I was born here.”
“Of course. Yes, of course, I’m sorry,” Tabitha said. She shoved both her hands through her hair as if she might pull it out. "Don't listen to me. I'm already lost."
Tabitha stumbled out of the meeting hall after that. From outside, Uicha could hear the clatter of wagon wheels and the rumble of hooves. People were fleeing, as if they could somehow outrun a wish granted by the gods.
Uicha decided to go home. He'd lay in his bed and wait for the result of the coin flip. He hoped it would at least be quick.
On the way back, he kept Clipper to an easy trot. A few groups of farmers passed him in a rush, cursing at him to get off the road, but mostly Uicha was alone with the swaying fields of wheat. Whoever was left would need to harvest soon.
As the farmstead came into view, so did Johan and a handful of the other hands. Five of them, in total, ones who Uicha recognized as carousers and toughs, the ones without families. They were all on horseback, riding out hard. At a raised hand from Johan, they stopped in front of Uicha. They’d armed themselves with pitchforks and axes and crossbows.
“Last chance to become a man, boss,” Johan declared. “I don’t give a shit about the Granting or their gods damned wish. The Orvesians won’t have this place without a fight.”
“You won’t be able to kill them, though,” Uicha replied. “The gods won’t allow it.”
“The gods pissed on Orvesis once, didn’t they? Why not again?” Johan replied with a ferocious grin. “We aren’t going to just curl up and take it, yeah? If we’re going out, it’ll be like the warriors of old. Isn’t that right, boys?”
Stolen story; please report.
Johan turned to receive a response from his followers that ranged from bloodthirsty to drunken to half-hearted. Uicha didn’t care about this. He would’ve let them ride off into futility, except when Johan had turned in the saddle Uicha had noticed the scimitar strapped to his back, the sheath wrapped in ribbons of yellow and green silk.
“That’s not your sword,” Uicha said, surprised at the sudden hardness in his voice.
Johan’s smile faded as he returned his gaze to Uicha. “A fine weapon like this isn’t doing any good stashed away in a closet.”
So, his head farmhand had been rummaging around in the main house. Vaguely, Uicha wondered how long that had been going on. “It’s my mother’s sword,” Uicha said. “Give it back.”
Johan clicked his tongue and his horse moved closer, so that he was right alongside Uicha. He reached out and put a firm hand on Uicha’s shoulder. "Before we ride off to battle, I have a confession," Johan said quietly. “I think often of your mother.”
"Oh," Uicha said, taken aback by the sudden sentimentality. "So do I."
Some of the other hands snickered. Johan’s mad grin returned, flaring across his face. "Not the way I do, boy," he said with a laugh. “Those swaying hips and those silk robes just a bit too short!” He made a sucking noise with his mouth that made Uicha’s stomach twist. “Anyway.”
And with that, his fingers dug into Uicha’s shoulder. Johan easily hoisted him from his saddle and tossed him to the ground. Uicha hit the hard-packed dirt road with a crunch, the air flying from his lungs. He had the presence of mind to curl up and cover his head as the horses galloped around him.
“We’ll sort out the property rights when I’m done saving the town!” Johan shouted over his shoulder.
The farmhands charged south. By the time Uicha regained his wind and dragged himself onto his knees, he could see only a dust cloud to mark their trail. Clipper had stayed close, staring down at Uicha sympathetically.
“Bastard…” Uicha said, the word tasting like bile. He felt a crushing sensation in his ribs and a loose, jangling pain in his shoulder. Despite that, he unsteadily climbed to his feet, leaning against Clipper for a moment to make sure nothing else hurt. If the Orvesians were going to annihilate him anyway, it didn’t much matter what condition his body was in. It didn’t much matter what happened to his mother’s sword, either, but Uicha couldn’t tolerate the disrespect from that fat-headed yokel Johan. This damned village had stolen so much from him already.
With a groan, he climbed back atop Clipper and gave chase.
Johan and the other farmhands outpaced him. When Uicha arrived at the southern edge of Ambergran, the confrontation with the Orvesians had already begun. The Witnesses weren’t a new sight to Uicha – they’d been lurking around the edges of Ambergran for the last year – but he pulled up short when he saw all of them massed. Some 300 Orvesian Witnesses stood in tight ranks across the burnt brown grass of the untended fields beyond Ambergran. In their black feathers and furs, they clogged the road south. There would be no escape from Ambergran in this direction. The Orvesians were quiet, almost somber, as they gazed as one in the direction of the village.
One Witness stood apart from the rest. Like all the others, his head was shaved and patterned with stripes of ash. He was of average height but prodigiously muscled. He wore a loose fitting caftan, decorated in raven feathers and unbuttoned down the front, revealing the swirls and symbols of his Ink. The Orvesian had more Ink than Uicha had ever seen on an Ambergran champion. He suspected this must be the Quill who also fought as a champion, the one who had offered to accept volunteers for annihilation.
Johan had apparently made that deduction, too, because he stood with Uicha’s mother’s sword pressed to the Orvesian’s throat. Yet, Johan was the one screaming.
Uicha dismounted and stumbled forward. Focused as he’d been on the Orvesians, he hadn’t immediately noticed the small crowd of villagers gathered by the roadside. They were mostly older, grandfathers and grandmothers, although Uicha saw Tabitha among them. So these were the ones who would accept the Orvesian bargain and sacrifice themselves so their children might survive.
Tabitha noticed Uicha and sucked in a sharp breath. She tried to put herself in his way.
“Go home, Uicha,” the Quill said. “I wasn’t thinking before. You’re so young. I never meant for you to—”
He brushed her aside. “I’m not here for that.”
Uicha tried to walk straight and proud, but the pain in his ribs kept him hunched as he made a beeline for Johan and the Orvesian. The farmhands that had ridden out with Johan passed by Uicha, retreating in the other direction, none of them meeting his eye. They’d already realized their folly and now wanted to get as far from here as possible. Meanwhile, Johan kept screaming.
Sweat soaked the back of Johan’s shirt. Veins popped on his neck and forearms. Uicha got close enough to see that the scimitar was stuck in the air just an inch from the Orvesian’s neck. Try as he might, Johan couldn’t bring the blade any closer. The gods protected the Orvesian and no amount of Johan’s farmhand strength or foolhardy bluster would change that.
The Orvesian’s eyes flicked to Uicha and the boy stopped a few feet away. He smiled faintly, then moved his head to regard Johan as if only just noticing him.
“Too sad by ten to see a man waste what might be his last moments in futile struggle,” the Orvesian said. “Here. Allow me.”
The Orvesian sidled forward just enough to drag his own throat across the scimitar, drawing a thin line of blood. Johan bellowed with renewed frustration. Even now, he couldn’t truly bring the blade any closer to a fatal cut.
“There, there,” said the Orvesian. “Now you can at least say you drew the blood of Battar Crodd.”
Uicha realized he had been stood there entranced. His mother had kept her blade surprisingly sharp and the edge shone in the midday sun. The sight of the Orvesian’s blood dripping across the weapon disgusted him. He lunged forward and struck Johan on the elbow. The scimitar fell from his grip and sliced into the dirt between them.
Johan rounded on him, eyes wide with fury. He cocked his fist back and Uicha braced himself because, unlike the Orvesian, Johan would be able to hurt him as badly as he liked. But then, the farmhand hesitated.
“Boy,” he growled, “what have you done to yourself?”
Uicha didn’t understand the question and before he could muster a response, there was a shimmer in the air. A sizzling sensation like just before a stroke of lightning. A power so vast that it could be discerned only by how the rest of the world seemed to bend around it. Uicha and Johan both stumbled backward, although Battar Crodd remained unmoved.
There was a god among them.
“Battar Crodd, you have wished for the annihilation of Ambergran.”
To Uicha, the ge’ema’s voice was like the tolling of bells. He had no doubt everyone nearby could hear just as clearly as him. The god’s shape itself was impossible to grasp, a bending of light that Uicha’s mind couldn’t interpret. The god was more presence than anything else, like the sensation of heat rising up from a kettle.
“Yes,” Crodd replied, unfazed by this encounter with the impossible. “I would say a few words first.”
“You test our patience, Battar Crodd,” the god replied. Although the words sounded like a rebuke, Uicha thought he heard amusement in the sonorous voice, like a teacher forced to keep a straight face after a wisecrack from the class clown.
The Orvesian held up his hands. Unnecessary, as all eyes were already on him, or at least the barely perceptible entity at his side. “People of Ambergran, I have wished for your annihilation,” Crodd declared, like he was ordering stew at a tavern. “The gods allow this. They could stop me, but they choose not to. You few who have gathered here have come as brave sacrifices or foolish warriors, hoping to have some say in your fate. If not for the rules and whims of these blasted gods, you might even be able to stop me. Why do we honor the games of these invisible tyrants? A question for you survivors to ponder, in the year to come.”
“Survivors?” It was Tabitha who spoke up, coming forward haltingly, half-bent toward Crodd and the god. “You said… you said that we could give ourselves over...”
“Alas, Tabitha, that wasn’t part of my wish,” Crodd said. He tilted his head toward the god. “And I’m not allowed mercy now, am I? Can I choose the half who die and the half who live? Could I take back my wish entirely? Having seen the bravery of Ambergran, I’ve actually changed my mind. Could we call the whole thing off?”
“No,” the god replied. “We cannot.”
“Well,” Crodd said with a shrug. “Get on with it then.”
Suddenly, there was dirt in Uicha’s eyes.
No, not dirt.
That was Johan.
He caught only the briefest glimpse of the farmhand in his last moments close to whole. It was as if someone had created a replica of Johan’s body made from fine grains of sand. The details were amazing, right down to the frozen look of confused horror.
And then a gentle breeze blew across the field and Johan’s head crumbled away.
Tabitha wailed, keening and loud and endlessly. She’d survived the coin flip. So had some of the others. And some were piles of dirt.
But it wasn’t just the people. Half the trees, half the crops, half the buildings – half of all that once was Ambergran blew away on the wind. The day became prematurely dark. Uicha hadn’t realized that his mouth was hanging open until he tasted bitter soot on his tongue. He wondered which of his neighbors that had been.
A hand patted him on the shoulder. Battar Crodd.
“Yours, I assume,” the Orvesian said.
Blinking, Uicha accepted his mother’s scimitar from the Orvesian. He tried to turn away, but Battar held him.
“A timely trick you pulled,” Crodd said.
“What do you mean?” Uicha managed to ask.
Crodd clapped his hand against the side of Uicha’s neck. “Your Ink is gone, young man. Dropped your allegiance to this place, just in the nick of time.”
Uicha swatted Crodd’s hand away without thinking. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to.”
“Not many who can change what’s in their hearts. Even fewer yet who can go completely blank.” Crodd smiled at him, interest gleaming in what Uicha only now noticed were the man’s startling blue eyes. “I wonder what the bastard gods will write upon you next.”