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--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—
Red Tide, Enchantress of the 4th Renown, The Reef, learning the limits of a pretty song
Throne Gazer, Salt Wall, and Cuda Bite, the champions of the Reef, and Turtle Jaw, their Quill
Theo Adamantios, Axe Master of the 6th Renown, and Sylvie Aracia, Penchenne, a complicated working relationship
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9 Harvesend, 61 AW
The outskirts of Besaden
231 days until the next Granting
The day had grown darker since they entered the enclosure of trees. Looking up, Red Tide thought the already dense canopy appeared thicker, the branches nearly woven together. Even birds couldn’t squeeze through that tangle. The forest here had become eerily soundless, a quiet that felt like underwater.
She elbowed Turtle Jaw. “What’s this remind you of?”
He paused for a moment, following her gaze. “Prison,” he replied. “A cell.”
“What you think the beastlords are keeping trapped in here?”
“Whatever it is, I suspect that’s what the gods want us to kill,” Throne Gazer said, overhearing.
The stiff-backed trident master continued to lead the way, his gold-plated weapon held in front of him. Salt Wall and Theo Adamantios walked alongside him. While the Reef’s berserker had slipped her hook on over her hand, Theo still hadn’t taken up the hand axes that hung from his hips.
“They aren’t all beastlords, you know,” Sylvie said, the short-haired young woman stalking along a half-step behind Red Tide and Turtle Jaw.
“You talking to me?” Red Tide asked.
Red Tide recognized nervousness in Sylvie’s scowl. Apparently, lecturing made her feel more at ease.
“Of course, Besaden has always belonged to the beastlords,” Sylvie said. “But they gave sanctuary to the gala’em at the beginning of the second age. The gala’em arborists tend to the trees and the plants while the beastlords handle the creatures. A symbiotic relationship, not unlike the tomes and candles of Magelab, although the denizens of Besaden share the same Ink.”
“I did know all that, actually,” Cuda Bite said with a smirk.
“You just showing off?” Red Tide asked. “Or you telling us this for a reason?”
Sylvie breathed out through her nose. “I’m telling you because it’s not the beastlords keeping something trapped in here.” She waved at the tight canopy above and the dense wall of warded tree trunks they’d squeezed their way through. “Only the arborists could make this.”
“Correct, as always, Madame Aracia,” Theo called over his shoulder. “And I do believe we have located the arborists in question.”
They found the four bodies huddled together on their knees, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, heads bent inward. The arborists had turned themselves to wood—trees, more accurately. Where their shins touched the ground, roots burrowed down and outward. New, bright green leaves sprouted from their twig-like strands of hair, which had woven together in the space between their heads. In some places, the bodies were indistinguishable from one another, with ridged layers of redwood bark connecting arms to backs. Given long enough to grow, the human features would be subsumed entirely, elbows and knuckles reduced to knots in the trunk of a great tree.
Red Tide traced her fingers down the spine of what had been a woman. “Who did this to them?”
“They did it to themselves,” Throne Gazer replied. “The cost of their ritual was steep.”
Red Tide suspected that Throne Gazer had plenty of opportunities to see his sea witch mother work magic in the old ways. The whorls of Ink drawn across Red Tide’s chest felt warm at the thought. Before becoming a champion, she’d never dabbled with the arcane arts—cutting open a dozen fish and burning their guts to ward a single harpoon seemed to her like a rip-off. Her people had so little already; bargaining with the gods of magic meant just another hand digging into their pockets.
Cuda Bite bent low, sticking his head in a gap between two of the bodies. An intricate latticework of fledgling branches connected the insides of the arborists. They had disemboweled themselves during the ritual. Cuda Bite was mindful not to disturb any of the branches as he twisted to look upward, like peering into a hollow tree.
“You can still see their faces, kind of. They don’t look unhappy,” he reported. “Hope you guys liked each other since you’re stuck together forever now!”
Salt Wall grabbed Cuda Bite by the shirt and yanked him back. “Fool.”
“All the arborists die like this,” Sylvie said, a note of reverence in her voice. “They believe their spirits continue on through the trees.”
“Maybe they do,” Theo added.
“You telling me all these trees used to be people?” Cuda Bite asked.
“No, of course not,” Sylvie replied, the sharpness returning to her voice. “What an idiotic question.”
“Sure, these people turn themselves into firewood and I’m the idiot,” he replied.
Without realizing it, Red Tide had dipped her fingers into the pouch of coral shards she wore on her belt. The jagged, spongey pieces scratched the pads of her fingers. After a week of mourning, the oca’em let their dead sink to the bottom of the ocean. That was the way it had always been. Let the dead feed the depths. She thought of the Reef—sanded down to a sliver of its former glory thanks to the wishes of Merchant’s Bay. Given the opportunity, would she transform her body into coral, so that her people might build upon her? Such an end seemed good and honorable, in a way.
As one, Throne Gazer and Theo stiffened and turned to the north.
“Something approaches,” they said in unison, exchanging a glance.
“[Alert]?” Theo asked.
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Throne Gazer nodded curtly. “It’s big,” he said to the others.
The forewarning was unnecessary. Within a few seconds, they could all hear the beast. The creature didn’t seem built for subtlety. Its hooves vibrated the ground and its bulk maneuvered without care for the surrounding foliage. Branches snapped and trees creaked in its wake. They could hear the thing breathing before they could see it—loud, painful grunts, like something had stoppered up its air passages.
“Sounds like a fat fuck with a broken nose,” Salt Wall said. She had resumed her spot in line with Throne Gazer and Theo. Red Tide stood behind them with Turtle Jaw and Cuda Bite. Sylvie retreated further back, putting not just the champions but the huddle of dead arborists between her and the beast. Red Tide couldn’t blame her; the girl didn’t have any weapons.
As Turtle Jaw drew his short sword, Red Tide glanced at him.
“You didn’t do so hot with that last time,” she murmured.
“You saying I should go hide with the girl?” Turtle Jaw replied.
“Is that an option?” Cuda Bite asked.
At last, the beast stomped its way through a copse of bushes and stopped, sizing up its quarry.
“That’s a…” Cuda Bite hesitated. “Big fucking horse with horns?”
“A giant ram,” Sylvie said. “Moron.”
Red Tide held tight to her harp, staring at the creature. The giant ram stood as tall as two horses, its mighty head dominated by two curling horns made from braided spirals of wood and bone. The giant ram’s shoulders were broad and powerful, its legs chunky with muscle. Overlapping plates of shining armor grew from the base of its skull and ran down the length of its spine. At first, Red Tide thought the beast foamed at the mouth, but there were actually tufts of pale mushrooms growing across its lips and nostrils. The blooms of fungi obstructed the dead-eyed beast’s breathing.
The giant ram stomped its front foot twice and hunkered low, ready to charge.
“Play,” Throne Gazer said over his shoulder. “Like you did with the deer.”
She didn’t need his order. Red Tide’s fingers were already moving, plucking the first few notes of a soothing melody. She made eye contact with the giant ram, expecting the great beast to wobble and sink forward as it fell under the spell of her [Hypnotic Object].
Instead, its ear twitched as if fly bitten. The giant ram stared at her and snorted. Red Tide’s Ink felt cold—usually, the symbols warmed as power flowed through them. Her notes sounded badly out-of-tune.
“Uh, Red…?” Cuda Bite said, edging further backward.
“It’s not working,” she said. “It’s resisting!”
The giant ram charged, its hooves a drumbeat that drowned out Red Tide’s music.
Throne Gazer acted first, leveling his trident and using [Eel Sting]. An arc of electricity sizzled from his weapon. The giant ram dipped its head, though, and the bolt ricocheted off the glasslike plates across its back. The lightning was redirected back at Throne Gazer, who dove aside to avoid his own attack.
At last, Theo drew his two hand axes. He threw both of them in one jerky motion—and the axes sailed woefully wide of the massive target—thudding into the ground on either side of the giant ram. Before anyone could comment on his terrible aim, Theo clapped his hands together. A chain of pure energy flared, connecting the handles of the two axes. Theo had effectively created a tripwire. The giant ram’s body lofted headlong over the energy line, hitting the ground headfirst with a crunch, horns digging massive furrows in the earth.
The beast rolled and kicked out in a fury. A blow from one of those hooves would be enough to crush a skull. The champions scattered to avoid the flailing limbs, all except for Salt Wall.
Timing her attack well, Salt Wall reached the giant ram just as it righted itself but before it had risen to its full height. She buried her hook in the creature’s snout and raked backward, pulling up flesh, bone, and mushroom spores. A rotten smell filled the air and Red Tide found herself recoiling.
Salt Wall didn’t let up. Her heels dug in as the giant ram’s head slammed into her torso. She tried to hook one of her thick arms through a horn, twisting the beast’s neck around to the side. Muscles flexed in the giant ram’s throat as it resisted, then bucked with all its might. Salt Wall was thrown backward. She rolled with the momentum and came up to her knees as the giant ram rounded on her.
Throne Gazer darted in and stabbed the beast in the side, distracting it from charging Salt Wall. Theo, having collected his axes, next attacked from the opposite side. Turtle Jaw closed the box around the beast, the Quill raking his short sword across the thick hide on the back of the giant ram’s leg.
“You two don’t do much,” Sylvie said as Red Tide and Cuda Bite watched from a safe distance.
“Shut up,” Red Tide said offhandedly. She still didn’t understand why her [Hypnotic Object] had been rebuffed. Something else bothered her about this creature. “Where’s the Ink?” she asked Cuda Bite.
“Huh?” he replied.
“You remember Most Loyal Spear?” Red Tide asked. “The stuff practically dripped off him. I thought the gods were supposed to mark our quarry.”
Cuda Bite waved a hand. “Maybe it’s hidden under all the fur.”
“No, she’s right,” Sylvie said, peeking out from behind the petrified arborists. “This thing isn’t the challenge.”
“Seem pretty fucking challenging to me,” Cuda Bite muttered.
Getting attacked on all sides—bleeding now from wounds that hastily filled with fresh growths of ghostly fungus—the giant ram bellowed. The armored plates on its back vibrated and came loose. Dozens of metallic discs whipped through the air around the giant ram. One struck Theo in the jaw with a sickening crack, putting the axe master down. Another slammed into Turtle Jaw’s gut, doubling him over on the plate of armor for a moment, before flinging him aside. Salt Wall punched a few of the armored plates aside before her hook caught in one, jerking her arm upward, and another cracked into her ribs. Only Throne Gazer escaped the bombardment unscathed, using [Vault] to leap clear.
“What kind of animal does that?” Red Tide asked.
“Not an animal at all,” Sylvie said.
The giant ram bucked in a quick circle, its armored plates snapping back into place. Then, the monster bounded toward where Theo had fallen, its hooves churning up dirt.
“[Shadow Step] him out of there,” Red Tide said urgently to Cuda Bite. She realized that she wanted the Penchennese champion alive, and in their debt.
“No,” Sylvie said. “He’ll be fine.”
The giant ram brought its two front hooves down on Theo’s skull. His head should’ve been squished like a grape but, instead, the giant ram seemed held in the air as if caught on an invisible net. Theo took the opportunity to scramble backward, out of the creature’s shadow.
“Not a beast,” Sylvie said. “A beastlord.”
Frustrated that it hadn’t been able to crush Theo, the giant ram reared back on its hind legs. As it spun in a mad circle, they all had a chance to see the Ink tattooed across its underbelly. That wasn’t the swelling blob of Ink they’d seen at Most Loyal Spear’s throat—no, the giant ram bore the paw print tattoo of Besaden, and the complicated rune-work of a champion. One with much higher renown than any of them.
The gods had protected Theo. There could be no killing between factions outside the Granting. They couldn’t kill this monster, and it couldn’t kill them—they could only inconvenience each other.
Glancing across the battlefield, Red Tide noticed that Throne Gazer had landed where the giant ram first emerged. He bent down, examining a trail of the pale mushrooms that led deeper into the woods. Straightening, Throne Gazer turned his back on the fight and disappeared into the trees.
“The royal’s going to mother fuck us,” Red Tide said.
“On it,” Cuda Bite replied, and used [Shadow Step] to drop into one of the many shadows cast by the trees.
Sylvie had, apparently, reached the same conclusion. “Theo! Forget the gods damned maniac beastlord!” she shouted. “He’s not the prize!”
“Easy for you to say,” the axe master grumbled.
The giant ram still bore down on him, Theo backpedaling as he tried to regain proper footing. Red Tide had thought they’d been fighting a wild animal, but there was apparently a man trapped within that giant ram. Regardless, the beastlord had lost all sense. The creature did not recognize how the gods had thwarted its last attack and that further efforts would be bruising but futile. It understood only a desire to see Theo—and then the rest of them—flattened to paste.
“[Psychic Blade],” Sylvie commanded from the sideline. “That should penetrate the carapace and put him down.”
Theo nodded. The axes in his hands blurred with a purplish energy. Red Tide found the weapons difficult to look at, a headache forming behind her eyes as she tried to study them. The metal axes had lost their corporeality. Theo cocked back his arm, waiting for the giant ram to charge.
And charge it did, head dipped low to pummel Theo with its horns.
Theo brought his axe down toward the beast’s head, no longer concerned with taking the full brunt of the attack if he needed to—the gods would protect him.
The giant ram stopped short, opened its mouth, and spat a clot of fungi into Theo’s face.
The axe master went rigid immediately, the arm that had been arcing down for the giant ram’s skull frozen mid-swing. His body jerked, but only once, as the white mushrooms foamed into his mouth and nose. The giant ram looked on—almost docile now—no longer attempting to trample Theo.
“Red?” Turtle Jaw asked. “What’s happening?” The warden had regained his feet, short sword held uncertainly before him. Salt Wall was up, too, her broad features knotted into a look of disgust.
Red Tide took a step backward, sensing Sylvie right behind her. She sprinkled a handful of coral shards into the grass at her feet.
Theo’s body started moving again. His head cocked, examining the axes in his hands, almost as if he were feeling their weight for the first time. Then, his gaze shifted to Red Tide and Sylvie.
“I think,” Red Tide said, “that our enemy has just evened the sides.”
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