AKI:
I snapped awake to a world of oranges and reds. The sudden jerk of my legs as I sat up kicked a tiny ball of fur up and over my head, its sudden and involuntary departure accompanied by a twinge of discomfort swiping along the inside of my calf. At a glance, I found a clean cut running along the leg of my already ruined breeches and, past it, a ragged stroke of blood tracing from ankle to knee.
The crackle of crushed leaves drew my attention.
The critter who’d thought of me as its next meal skipped and rolled across a field of dry leaves to slam against the trunk of a tree. Dazed, the odd creature, a cross between a short-faced bear cub and a malformed sloth, wobbled to its feet. It hissed at me in a pitch so devoid of menace as to belie its predatory outrage, carnivorous teeth bared, one canine dripping red with my blood. But its anger did not drive it to violence, and whatever intellect it possessed drove it away to blur behind some bushes and skitter off into the dense forest.
The initial frenzy of my rude awakening subsided. Agony escaped the sleep we had shared and greeted me in earnest, wrapping around my body and overshadowing the pain of my new injury. Thunder boomed behind my eyes. Each pulse of my heart and blood was a storm of lightning to my senses. Pain became me. With little choice, my mind was dragged back to the haven of oblivion.
***
The bastard managed to escape with a mouthful.
Some time must’ve passed before the opportunistic rodent dared come back for another attempt; the noxious consequences of my encounter with the Bainan godlings and their Named had dulled substantially—the same depth of connection between body and soul that held back the tide of old age served to heal practitioners of the Arts, and the greater your power, the more proficient the healing.
The creature darted back, the chunk of flesh it had excavated from my thigh held between its sharp teeth. Once more, it skittered off under the cover of foliage, its muzzle slick with my blood.
I clamped down on my urge to give chase and turned my attention to my injuries. First came the pain. A Tunneller matrix severed the signal. A dangerous technique for the untrained; subverting any part of the mind risked severing it entirely. Next came the bleeding. An easier endeavor. A lattice of sensus covered the wound, stunting the blood loss and urging the flesh and muscle to regrow. My memory was a great tool in this regard. Many required decades of practice under strict supervision before they were passable at reconstituting missing body parts. Last came the lingering effects of my earlier injuries: exhaustion, sore muscles, hunger, thirst, sensus burn, and a litany of overtaxed bodily systems. One by one, I cleansed and revitalized them all, and for those I couldn’t outright fix, like my hunger, I dulled into a negligible ache.
The sun was at its zenith when my task was complete. I reckoned a day and a half had passed since my escape. Time enough for them to have long since reached the capital. Yet I knew Edon would not meekly resign himself to his fate. I knew because, slight though it might’ve been, I had glimpsed his soul. Still, I did not have time to waste if I wished to ever see my friend again.
My clothes were rags. Much of it slagged off my body as I stood, a patchwork of misshapen fabrics and leathers. Thankfully, once I ripped off all the dangling strips and flaps, enough remained for a modicum of modesty, which is to say I wore little better than a loincloth and scuffed boots.
I knew where I was—a more comforting consolation than the unavailing modesty of my undress. The Shallow Fields was a well-known destination, remarkable for its ample but dangerous population of evolved fauna and flora. It was a region filled with saplings borne from an evolved tree that’d cleped itself ‘Fall Blossom’ and proclaimed ownership and sovereignty over a swath of flat land north of the southern route between The Academy and the capital. In an act to solidify this claim, the androgynous humanoid of corded wood and bark—I had seen illustrations of its visage in one of the many books I’d perused in The Academy’s library—planted a host of saplings to mark its territory. Through centuries of growth, its army of children had grown into watchful pillars of semi-conscious trees, guards whose perpetual state of shedding created and maintained the shallow sea of leaves the location was named after, their constant and overwhelming presence cowing any attempts the many evolved beasts who’d taken refuge there might make to contest their progenitor’s rule. It appeared that a host of evolved had preferred to risk each other's predatory company in lieu of chancing an encounter with Alchemists seeking material for their experiments.
Where I was, however, did not solve the problem of where I needed to go. Yes, south was a good bet, but how exactly was I to find Edon and his captors? There was also the very distinct possibility of having to face one of the many powerful and aged evolved beasts who roamed this territory. Nevertheless, any action was better than no action, and so I oriented myself due south and began my trek.
The trees were alive. My knowledge of them might’ve given them the quality, yet it seemed to me that they watched my every move, their branches leaning towards me and swaying to the beat of my every step. They had no eyes with which to observe me, but I knew better than to think eyes were the only avenue of sight. Leaves crackled beneath my feet. More floated in the air, spirals of bronze and amber and gold, their passage shaped by passing winds. With the turbulent gales came the queerly pleasant scents of dying vegetation, sweet and sickly. Myriad sounds were carried to and past me in whirlwinds, each a potential sign of danger. I traveled through this foreign terrain largely unmolested, though my mind conjured dangers from the strange attractions and echoes of what was to me a novel setting, which, in a manner of speaking, was a molestation of sorts. Hidden behind the rain and waves of leaves, past the reaching branches of the curious trees, came allusions of the evolved beasts I knew wandered the region, their predatory gallivanting inherently inconspicuous. Thankfully, none had seen to make themselves known.
Until one did.
“Lost, are we?”
I spun in the direction of the voice, a baritone whose resonance dug into my bones. Above me, perched upon a branch, sat a crow as black as night, ethereal flames of an ominous shade flickering over its dense feathers, the onyx beads it had for eyes peering at me from behind a nitid beak.
“It has been some time since I have seen one of your kind encroach on these here lands,” it said without lips, beak unmoving.
“How is it that you speak?” I asked.
The creature cocked its head, the gesture all too humanlike. “You are a curious youngling. Royal, I assume?”
“I am.”
“Lost and alone and far from your source of confidence, yet still you do not feel tremble before me.”
“My source is entirely internal.”
The creature’s laughter reverberated, the odd sound clashing into and onto itself. “You are rather amusing, child. It is not a trait your people are known for.”
“I was not trying for facetious.”
“Oh. Why not?”
I shrugged. “Being amusing is not conducive to portraying oneself as a capable combatant.”
“Wit is an instrument of beguilement, and I find, compared to the imposition of physical threats, it is more often than not a better tool for disarming a foe.”
“Disarming beasts with wit seems a futile undertaking, particularly when their claws are so firmly attached.”
“True for my less evolved brethren, though I reckon you’d be capable of handling them without the need for sharp words.”
I arched an eyebrow. “One might misconstrue that to mean I’m in danger of death if my wit were to fail me this instance.”
“Lucky for you, I’ve evolved beyond the constant need to hunt and fornicate, and so, but for my frivolous amusement, your wit is irrelevant to the outcome of this meeting.”
I offered the odd creature a smile. “I have already implicitly admitted to possessing a healthy dose of pride, have I not? Who is to say I’d not make it relevant?”
The bird adjusted its wings as if preparing to take flight, its flames growing rich and turbulent, yet it remained perched on its branch. It took me a few breaths to realize it was laughing again, only it did not do me the favor of vocalizing the sound.
“A healthy dose indeed,” it said.
“Setting aside your ability to utter words without lips, how is it you speak so well?”
There was no hint of amusement in its tone when it answered; the inflections of its speech stretched and shifted to add a flavor of melancholy, the deeper tones inflecting a morose tenor. “Like many of my kind, I was reared in the pens of The Academy. Unlike many, I had the fortune of encountering one of the rare godlings who possessed a heart. As to my ability to speak, I am a creature of wind. Fire, too, though that has nothing to do with said ability.”
“Vibrations?”
“Indeed. Am I to assume those rags you wear are the remnants of an academy uniform?”
“The Academy, to be exact. I pray you do not hold it against me.”
“What is your name, child?”
“Aki. And yours?”
“My rescuer bestowed upon me the name ‘Raven’—bless her, but she was not the most original of thinkers. Still, given her vast reservoir of kindness and the generous amounts she’d shared with me, I could not find it in me to relinquish the name.”
“Well met, Raven.”
“Indeed. And my thanks for affording me a small portion of your time, young Aki. It has been ages since I’ve engaged in such an amicable conversation. I am aware of your haste and shall not delay you any further. Be about your way in peace.” The raven stuck its beak a little due west of true south. “Head in that direction. It is the path of least resistance.”
In thanks, I bowed briefly to the aged crow, then headed off in the direction it had indicated.
The sun glided ploddingly across the sky in its usual arc. The sea of leaves grew shallower, the trees more sparse, and the faint rustle of prowling paws more distant. By nightfall, I had reached a more familiar landscape. Yet sleep was a luxury I could not afford. Guided by the faint light of the moon’s borrowed luminescence, I trudged onwards.
Whether by the arbitrary luck of chance or the capricious favor of an omnipotent god, finding my targets was resolved by happenstance. It did, however, by the same token, cost many lives—not that I cared at all for those who paid the price.
Their bodies were scattered among a marsh, half submerged in muddy waters. I walked amongst them, weaving through a throng of dark-haired, lean, armed men and women dressed in dark greens and rich browns. There were fifty of them, by my estimate. Raiders, one and all. Successful raiders, if the quality of their gear was anything to go by. Unlike the barbarians who scavenged like unscrupulous vultures, lived mainly from the miserly bounty offered by The Wilds, and only occasionally dared to assault the least protected of unsponsored trade caravans, raiders made a living off troubling free cities, more often than not at the behest and under the employ of neighboring states.
Behind a copse of trees with thick, low-hanging vines for branches came the sounds of a struggle. I rushed toward the scene, wading through knee-high muddy waters.
A pack of snarling wolves hounded a pair of injured raiders, necks stretched, ears perked up, muscles tense. Atop a plot of solid land lay a man, panting, his back pressed to the trunk of a tree, one hand clutched around his upper arm. His grimace of pain cracked lines into the half-dried mud on his face. A woman stood before him, her once-braided hair wild, wet, and plastered to her head, face, and neck. She waved a sword before her, her tired arms lacking any sense of technique or aim. She favored one leg, further ruining her balance and turning each stroke of the swords into uncoordinated flailings. Despite her exhaustion and injury and willfully ignorant of how dire her circumstances were, she snarled right back at the nipping wolves. The animals, though only on the lowest rung of the evolved, were a cunning lot. They harassed the raider, darting in from different angles, always just out of reach of her wild swings.
The man noticed me first. “Help!”
His protector risked a look in my direction. The wolves were quick to punish her lapse in concentration, one of their number scoring a swipe across her abdomen while another nipped at her ankle. She hissed and fell back a step but somehow kept her balance. Disregarding the blood oozing from the new wound, she resumed her feral swings.
“Help!” The man reached out to me as though that might aid in his pleading. It did, but not by appealing to my empathy or sympathy as he intended, but by sparking in me a hopeful curiosity.
There is a quality to Surgeon matrixes. When they manage to penetrate past your defenses, any changes they make are… right? Expected? Natural? I do not know the word for the perceived intuition I speak of. I did, however, know the wound the raider exposed in his efforts to attain my aid was made by a Surgeon—an abscess, layer upon layer of exposed, sliced, and distorted flesh decorated with a mingle of wet and crusted blood. It was, I knew, wrong, a deviation from a natural state as any deformation is or is meant to be. But because it had been inflicted by a Surgeon, the wound appeared… fitting, as if it was not provoked by a mind but instead decreed by the bearer’s soul, by the laws of the world.
“Who?” I asked.
“Help us!” The man was delirious. Blood loss, fear, and his burgeoning optimism had driven him to hysteria.
A wave of force from a Zephyr matrix accomplished the task. It pushed the closest of the wolves off their paws. They yipped in surprise. The wolves were, as I’d already noted, quite intelligent; the threat my involvement added and the nearby sacks of meat, which mightn’t have been as fresh but were most definitely edible, drove them off.
The woman fell on her rear, the look of stubborn savagery giving way to her profound enervation. Her shoulders slumped, her chest heaved, her ragged breaths scattered spittle from her slack mouth, and she sat there, so engrossed in her condition as to forget my presence.
The man wept. I let him. The jarring shift away from certain death can be just as abruptly devastating as its cause. Soon, his sobs quietened, but I did not speak until his tears stopped flowing. The man righted himself, suddenly conscious of his state. A self-deprecating smile crossed his lips, equal parts wry and sorrowful, its crooked crescent inflaming the far-off, pensive look in his eyes.
“Who?” I asked.
“My name is—”
“No.”
“We are—”
I shook my head.
The man nodded. “You mean our attacker. He was… barely older than a boy.”
“Alone?”
The growls, howls, and splashes of the wolves dragging and feasting upon the bodies of his dead comrades echoed to us from behind the copse of trees that kept them hidden from our sight. The man looked in that direction, each new sound causing him to shudder.
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“Alone?” I asked again.
The man shook his head, his gaze locked on a scene he could not see. “No. There were five of them. Six, really, but—.”
“When?”
“The boy… he made them wait. He spent a turn torturing Gelwa. H-her screams. I’d never heard the like. All the while, he watched the sixth member of their party. I—"
“When?” I asked again, hoping he’d not run himself into another bout of crying.
The man looked back at me, eyes once more wet and brittle. “He made a game of killing us. We thought we knew how cruel the world could be. Ha! Some of us thought ourselves hard. Cruel, even. How wrong we were. Aelan and I only live because he grew bored of torture. That, and because his audience seemed uninterested in his exhibition.”
“When?” I asked. The man flinched back at my tone, and he seemed all the more broken. I knew raiders to be hardy folk, weathered by a life of pragmatism. The story of Dako’s upbringing came to mind. I took a deep breath before I spoke again. “When?”
“Two turns ago.”
I checked around for any familiar landmarks. I did not find any. “We’re some ways from the road. What drove them here?” I turned back to the raider. “And what drove you to attack a party of godlings?”
“We didn’t.” The woman had gathered herself, though the remnants of her debilitating fatigue finagled her every move. Past the mask of muck on her face shone hazel eyes, and the odd streak of grey highlighted her matted hair. “In fact, we tried to circle around them.”
“The boy?” The question was redundant. I asked it anyway.
“A demon in the guise of a godling,” she said. “He and his party had visited Dakartha, the free city from which we hail. We’d seen them leave a turn or so before us. Once we caught sight of them, Hollser, our captain, called for us to leave the road some ways off so we might escape their notice. ‘Godlings are a bad omen,’ he said. Never have I heard truer words.”
The man looked me up and down, trying to reconcile the shade of my complexion and the less-than-refined state of my undress. “Given the presence of our rescuer, it would appear that is not always the case.”
“I meant nothing by—”
I held up a hand to stop the woman's apology. “You aren’t wrong. My kin…” I paused, disgusted with the way the word tasted on my tongue.” They are not typically heralds of prosperity. Even to their own, as my current state so colorfully attests to.”
The female raider laughed awkwardly. “Still, my apologies, My Lord. It is rather rich of me to make the accusation. We raiders aren't exactly regarded fondly either.”
“Which way?” I asked.
Both raiders pointed towards the south.
“Dakartha is northwest of here if my memory serves me right.”
They nodded.
I knelt down beside the man and healed him as much as a quick injection of raw Surgeon sensus might. The woman got the same.
“Make haste. I do not have much time. I take it you can manage by yourselves once we reach the road?”
They nodded.
***
My quarry had gone to the free city to obtain a skeleton cage and a carriage. Edon, as expected, had not been a compliant prisoner. Past the gleam of twilight reflecting off the polished metal of the cage sat my bruised and battered friend. Atop the cage, a long spear in hand, stood a jubilant Spenten, prodding at Edon with the sharp end of the weapon.
I stalked forward, slow and careful, my breathing even, my Painting covering me head to toe. Whatever draft animal pulled the carriage—the cage blocked it from my view—was of the mundane sort and plodded along at a sedate pace. The Bainan pair led the way. The ascended brothers rode at the rear. I approached from behind, half-naked, the roll of my feet sure but silent.
Once I was twenty or so paces away, one of the brothers looked back at me. I halted, crouched, struggling to stilt my breathing.
“What is it?” his brother asked.
“Nothing, I think.”
“Your instincts have rarely led us astray. What did you sense.”
“A… presence. I’m not sure. Something… dangerous.”
“Where?”
“I cannot say.”
“Do you still sense this danger?”
“It came and went.”
“Then perhaps so too did its cause.”
“Perhaps.”
I was more careful moving forward, only daring to creep closer by inches. Despite my caution, twice more, the more perceptive of the brothers looked right at me. Both times, my breath caught. Both times, his gaze moved on. I suspected he had unrealized talents as a Tunneller. Thankfully, most Named were not so longlived as to master a second classification.
I kept a safe distance as I trailed behind the group. We were in open terrain—discouraging for the cloaked battle I wished to fight. Attacking here made success a herculean feat. Then again, going by the pace of the carriage, they were half a day’s ride from reaching the capital's farmlands, and there, my task would ascend from difficult to impossible. I had but one chance, one strip of forested land half a turn away from the capital’s farmlands.
My first target was apparent: the observant Named. Flurin and Bujn—the two Bainan godlings—likely possessed sensight, but their martial prowess was less formidable, especially when compared with how well the two brothers attacked in unison. Cut down one, and the remaining Named would be far easier to deal with. As for Spenten, he was irrelevant to the coming battle. Besides, I knew a certain someone who’d relish the taking of his life.
The time came. The trees were not as tall or numerous or dense as I’d have liked near the outskirts of the forest, but I had several enemies to hunt. A pang of hunger knotted inside my stomach. Fatigue clawed at my mind. Trepidation paced the beat of my heart. Sensus and Arts could only do so much to waylay the troubles of fleshly cravings. But the time had come, and I had to move.
I crept closer. And closer. Each step was careful. My heart grew quiet, my breathing even, and my mind focused on the task at hand. My Painting was immaculate. As was the knife of force I built atop the outstretched fingers of my right. Simple as the Zephyr matrix was, casting my Painting around the fluctuation of sensus was, at that time, my most outstanding conscious feat of sensus to date.
I struck the moment he turned, as I knew he would. Our eyes met. He stilled for that slice of time the mind takes to process the unexpected, then died as the thought was in transit. Before his dead body hit the ground and called to his brother's attention, I slipped back behind my re-erected Painting.
“Brother!” The one remaining Laminae jumped down from his horse, hunched over his dead brother, saw the blood and brain matter leaking from his empty left eye, and in a moment of madness and incredulity, shook him by the shoulders as if to wake him up. “Brother!”
The carriage stopped. Spenten paused his harassment of Edon. Flurin and Bujn, hearing the sudden commotion, trotted back on their evolved jackals.
“What happened?” Flurin asked.
“My brother!” The Named cried.
I did not stay to listen.
The trees became my Painting. Now that they knew I stalked them, Flurin and Bujn kept a watchful eye, their sensight ablaze. I forewent the expenditure of sensus and stuck to traveling between shadows—it is a skill I’d trained since infancy and one undulled by my stint in The Academy.
The deeper we went, the taller the trees, and with it came the opportunity to hide and travel among the highest branches, my weight lightened by Pondus matrixes. Another piece of good news—though this one cut both ways—was how despondently the surviving Laminae brother reacted to his sibling’s death. Where I’d have raged and thirsted for blood, he seemed to have lost his purpose, suffering a drunken grief that had him slumped dejectedly over his horse. His pain reminded me he was a Named. An ascended. A Root. A victim. As was his brother. Yes, their submission to the tides and waves of circumstance did not rid them of blame or guilt, and I knew their allegiance to this godly force that’d overwhelmed them into service had made murderers of them, but despite their atrocities, it was, given the scenes my mind imagined for what was sure to be the many violent crimes they committed in the name of those they served, difficult to not to see them as hapless puppets.
These thoughts did not plague me long. The trees would thin, and with it, so too would my chances of rescuing Edon, whose battered state remained in my sights and so on my mind.
The rest of my hunt, unlike its opening salvo, was one of attrition. I bled them—except the Named, unwilling as I was to spur him into action—with a thousand cuts, hampering them until their journey slowed to a crawl: I poked at their souls with Tunnells, erected Paintings to stumble their mounts, threw Golem-enforced stones, herded beasts in their direction, and snuck close to deliver attacks personally, all the while interspersing flashes of wind blades such that the more mundane articles of clothing they wore were cut to ribbons and dyed a dark red. It was just after such a barrage when Flurin’s stolid patience broke.
“Face us, you coward!” He dismounted, sword in hand, shouting into the forest. The new cut on the side of his neck had already healed, though the blood it released before he’d sealed the wound dripped down to soak into his collar.
“And face four of you alone?” I Painted into the air around them. My person was high in the trees, standing on a branch, hidden behind a sensus-filled trunk that was thrice the width of my shoulders and so a perfect smokescreen for my own workings of sensus.
“You cannot stop us.” Flurin’s head swiveled, eyes darting about the forest surrounding the path. “You are merely delaying the inevitable. Cease this farce and go about your life. Or better yet, face us and die.”
I stayed silent. Eventually, Flurin resumed their march towards the capital. I stared after them, contemplating my next course of action. He was right, of course. If I maintained my current tactic, I’d fail, they’d escape, and Edon would die.
And so Bujn died next.
My decision to target him was not derived from logic; I’d have killed Flurin if my emotions were kept away from the choice. The thinner Bainan was more dangerous. But I disliked Bujn. He was of a kind I detested. And so I killed him next.
All three godlings rode the carriage. The evolved beasts were left to guard their rear and marshal the horse the Named rode, though the creatures made a point of doing as poor a job of it as they could get away with.
I dropped in from high and knocked Flurin from his seat. He tumbled off the carriage, his jaw dislocated. Spenten, coward that he was, screamed and followed suit out of his own volition, leaping off the carriage after his protector. The startled horse accelerated. Bujn turned to face me, snarled, and swung a cumbersome fist. I ducked under the blow, dug the two forefingers of my left hand into the space between collarbone and neck, and hooked the two on my right under the bottom of his sternum. He gasped in pain, and in that moment of distraction, for the crime of being obnoxious, and because Edon was watching me, I Tunnelled his mind into the recesses of his greatest fears.
Or I tried to.
Something on Bujn’s chest began to glow. Its light shone through the nicks and cuts on the thick leather of his Surgeon-cut, Alchemist-enchanted cuirass. Flesh healed around my fingers. I tugged them out, slapped away Bujn’s reaching hands, and slammed an elbow into his temple. That wiped the grin from his face. Another blow and a grimace replaced the grin. A third, and his mouth went slack. Stunned, he buckled. I twisted out of the way of his fall, adjusted the angle so he fell backward across the driver’s seat, slammed my knee and shin along the center of his ribcage, and let my Pondus-aided weight settle on his chest.
“You’re a fool,” Edon said from behind the bars of his cage. He sounded as injured as he appeared.
“I’ve been called worse.”
Edon looked over his shoulder. “Be quick. They’re nearly upon us.”
I grabbed Bujn, one hand under his jaw, the other wrapped around the back of his head. In one quick and brutal motion, I twisted, and the godling's thick neck shattered, the crack of bones like the snap of a dead log crashing into the banks of a raging river. To make sure of my kill, I ripped the necklace from his bent neck and severed his floundering soul from his body.
Flurin leaped over the back of the carriage, Reaper-infused arms pulled back, hands wrapped around the pommel of his sword. I slipped out of its path. The overhand swing severed the carriage seat and the rear end of the draft horse in two and dug a furrow into the earth beneath. The carriage shuddered, squelched over the half-sundered of the dead horse, went off-kilter, teetered until the wood of the front-right wheel snapped, and then crashed on its side, sending all of us off its back. Edon tumbled within the now rolling cage, going wayside and disappearing under brush.
Flurin faced me. The Luminae Named, the two jackals, and Spenten trotted slowly towards us. Behind me, at the edge of the horizon, a jagged portal-like opening marked the end of the forest, a stream of moonlight calling out an invitation to rescue us from the gloom of the dark canopy. This was now or never. I had to kill or incapacitate them. Or perhaps, if fate was kind to me, Flurin’s death would conclude the matter. Either way, it was here I’d rescue or fail Edon.
“You have been a sharp stone in my boot for far too long, Lorailian,” Flurin hissed; all sense of his initial equable and assured demeanor had evaporated to reveal a caustic man driven to the edge of frustration. His golden hair hung loose, his clothes were scuffed and disorderly, and a potent hate twisted his handsome face into one of rage-fueled intentions. “Fuck the accords. You shall die here.”
“Tell me again why you think you’ll succeed where but days before you’d failed with two more in your number?” I smiled away my worry. The Named and evolved had come to stand beside their master, and, given how depleted I felt, the coming fight seemed a daunting venture.
Flurin cast his gaze at his trio of slaves and began to bark orders. “Sethano, attack. Do not kill him. That honor is mine. You two mongrels, assist him.”
Reluctant obedience drew the evolved beats in my direction. Their lithe forms, thin and graceful, rippled across the ground as they circled around me. Sethano, the Named, did not react. Seemingly unaware of the happenings occurring around him, he remained atop his horse, his gaze cast down, his eyes vacant.
“He killed your brother!” Flurin stalked towards the Named. “More importantly, I fucking gave you an order, Root! Obey, or you shall follow him in death!”
I attacked. Flurin’s had shown me his back—a fatal mistake. One I had the mind to exploit. And he’d have died, right there and then, if Sethano had not chosen that moment to snap back his suspended awareness from wherever his grief had held it captive.
The Named moved like a released arrow, still one moment, darting forward the next. The force of his sudden charge threw me back a dozen paces. I rolled a few more besides. Instinct had me add to my momentum. I escaped death with that decision. His axe kick made rubble of the ground I’d have stood on had I not quickened my movement. His next attack came before I’d settled my balance. I stumbled back, arms up to defend. Something cut along my hamstrings. Reaper Arts kept my feet underneath me. It also healed the cracks and bruises and abrasions on my forearms, though Sethano was doing an admirable job of refreshing the damage.
Desperate, I flung a desultory slice of force at the Named. My aim struck true, and the weak attack scored across his eyes, blinding him for the brief moment I needed to regain my bearing.
Another surprise attack from the jackals carved a deep cut on my back from shoulder to hip. I dashed in the same direction as the slash, spun, and loosed a formless punch, sacrificing technique for power. My fist hit, cracked bones, and sent the spindly form of the evolved into the ground. The jackal bounced, then fell, lifeless, its spine shattered.
I lost my arm.
The limb fell off my shoulder, the sword cutting clean through skin, muscle, and bone. I staggered, barely remembering to staunch the bleeding with a Reaper matrix. The pain brought me to my knees. Through blurry vision, I saw Sethano standing over me, sword in hand. Hate ruled his expression; it held tight along every line, every crease, and every feature of his face as if it had fermented in the lands of grief and had come back with a sour and pungent vengeance. Just as he stepped forward, no doubt intending to end me, a hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.
Flurin stepped forward. Excepting the disorderly state of his person and the cruel spite shining in his cold gaze, the close proximity of victory reverted him to the man I’d first met, and he approached me with slow, measured steps.
“Was he worth it?” he asked. “The slow and painful death you're about to suffer?”
Something stirred in me then, red, hot, and unstoppable. It ate through my pain, my despair, a fuel so potent and abundant as to blot out everything I was and felt. This man—no, godling, dared to fancy himself the dictator of my fate. He, this worm among those blessed by sensus, like my mother, like those who lorded over Evergreen and contaminated this once great kingdom into this infected, pustulated glut of depraved, power-hungry vermin, dared to speak to me of ‘worth.’
Time slowed to a crawl. It appeared as though everyone was frozen in its grasp as I got to my feet, snatched my dismembered arm from the dirt, reattached it, swiped the blade from Sethano’s tight grasp, and dug it into Flurin’s back.
Time resumed. Flurin groaned and staggered forward. Sethino’s sharp inhalation hissed behind me, and I felt and heard him step back in shock. The rapid footfalls of the remaining and usually silent jackal escaping into the forest softened with distance. A cry rang out. Spenten fell back and mumbled through quivering lips.
I slid the blade from Flurin’s back and cut off Sethano’s head in one fluid movement. Spenten’s cry redoubled. Flurin collapsed and rolled on his back. He stared up into the pitch-black canopy of the forest, eyes wide, face contorted into a grimace of pain. I did not fall for his ploy.
The sword took him in the eye before he knew I was onto him. Same as I did with Bujn, I severed his soul to confirm his death.
I turned my attention to Spenten. The coward fainted. I locked him in his unconscious state.
For a while, I did not move. My body shook. The brief spell of violence I meted out did nothing to diminish the hunger to act, to right wrongs, to fix everything with power and strength. The world was sick, afflicted with gods and kingdoms and empires that raped the glory of its potential.
Eventually, I shook the meandering thoughts— the rage and urge to hurt someone—from my mind and went in search of Edon.
The skeleton cage lay knotted amid an array of thickets.
“You alive?” I asked as I began to untangle the bramble, my Reaper-enforced skin ignoring the many hardy thorns. No reply came. “Edon?”
“Hold on,” Came his distorted voice. “I’m contemplating if forfeiting my life is worth avoiding your impending smugness.”
“I can leave you here to starve if you prefer.”
Edon’s face peeked out from behind a clop of earth I’d just displaced. He coughed and wiped the debre from his mouth and face. “And render all your efforts pointless?”
I shrugged. “It’s enough to know they deserved to die.”
“Did they?”
“You don’t agree?”
“I’m not your conscience or the arbiter of your principles.” Edon chuckled. “You are more lost than me if I am. But that is neither here nor there—we both know who the arbiter of your principles is. What was it Merkusian said in that manifesto of his? Ah, yes, ‘Be as sure as you would be if your life was at risk.’”
“I am.”
“Fair enough.”
Silence settled in as I continued to excavate the cage. It quickly grew awkward for all the unsaid sentiments the silence held back. And so I chose to banish the silence and fill the space with practicalities and questions.
“Will you be safe in The Academy?” I asked.
“No more or less than you are.”
“Barely safer, then. What of your secret?”
“They will not let it pass outside the House.”
“Are you certain?”
“Most definite. House over Leaf. Such a scandal would lend weapons to the others. However much the Leaf houses despise one another, and for all that we love power, or perhaps because of it, none dare to weaken the House of Bainan. Our internal conflicts will be dealt with internally. Now hurry up and get me out of this thing.”
Pretty as it was, the cage was a poor excuse for a skeleton cage. The metal was polished, the joints and rivets well formed, the shape symmetrical, and the matrix carvings well traced. It was, to the naked eye, a beautifully made skeleton cage. To the more discerning observer, however, it was a failure; the metal was weak, much of its surface marred by the thorns; the matrixes were uninspired and crude, the work of a journeyman commoner; and, worse of all, the sensus powering the construct was appalling, lacking the depth and strength to last any longer than a few cycles of night and day.
Freeing Edon was but a stroke of sensus. The cage rattled open. Edon ducked out, hands grasped tightly on the bars of the frame to keep his balance. I held out a helping hand, but the offer remained unheeded. He struggled to his feet, glimpsed the unconscious form of Spenten, who I’d left collapse in the middle of the road, closed his eyes, took the kind of deep breath you have to work your shoulders to take, and began to laugh.
“You’re a fool,” he said after he ran short of mirth.
I grinned at him. “So I’ve been told.”
He nudged me on my arm and offered me the first genuine smile since… that day. “It appears as though having a fool for a friend has its benefits.”