I WASN’T DEAD YET, at least not right this moment. My face felt like ice water; in contrast, my lungs were on fire, which was surprising. Fire usually brought me a soothing sensation. It was then I realized I was trying to breathe. My fear-crusted eyes shot open and for the second time in recent memory, adrenaline flooded my veins. I spat muddy saliva and felt my body twist itself trying to force vital air inside. Something hit my back hard enough to aid me in expelling dirt from my lungs. My first real breath of air filled me in jagged gasps. I wasn’t dying. Instead, I was now stable, staring at a slimy pile of red-tinged dirty vomit. I wasn’t expecting blue sky to greet me, despite the volume of fresh air– how was this possible?
My hazy questions were answered when Nebrei placed me on the ground. I tried to speak, but in one motion almost too quick for her massive hands, she held my mouth shut, ordering me not to speak, telling me that I’m exhausted and need to rest, or something along those lines. My head was still reeling from the lack of oxygen. She was above me, and I lay on my side at her feet.
I went a while without moving because it was easier for my sore body to bear. My abdominal section ached terribly from the heaving, like an entire harvest season’s work rolled into an hour, and each shallow breath still burned. Occasionally, Nebrei would trickle water over my mouth for me to drink. Even sitting beside me, I couldn’t see her face. I lay there longer, head mostly empty except for warm feelings of gratitude.
After a while, maybe an hour, my shoulder grew stiff from lying down, and I pulled myself upright with Nebrei’s assistance. Really, she lifted me, but she made no snarky comment. I couldn’t, either.
“I found you using a scrying ritual – rather, I found an energy spike that I thought might reveal you,” Corbal announced, getting up to stand but immediately reseating himself. It seemed to me like he was fighting every urge he had to walk over and console me. “Don’t speak, your throat is going to hurt for a while. It’s better to rest it. Actually, I’ll make us some tea, it might help!” He turned to rifle around in his bag. As he did, Nebrei chimed in, “You’re lucky to be alive.”
I nodded. I thought I had been crushed in that tunnel. The tunnel! I looked around for the first time, really taking in my new surroundings. We were on a level part of a sparsely-forested, rocky mountain, which I would consider beautiful if not for the horror I had experienced within. There was an opening into the mountain– a small cave, or maybe a mine entrance. I’d heard about people taking metal from the earth, but I never considered how they did it. I always assumed they scraped off some topsoil and picked it up off the ground.
Corbal’s hot tea pulled my view from the mine and my thoughts from the offerings. Smiling weakly with only his mouth, he handed me a small metal mug with chipped teal paint, steam rising in white wispy trails from a sweet, honey-smelling liquid. Its flowery taste reminded me of the first time I laid eyes on the RASA- a grand and beautiful feeling.
Nebrei was served second, and she must have underestimated the temperature after watching me drink mine without hesitation. While my blessing freed me from the consequences of heat, her mouth was easily burned, as evidenced by her panic and spillage of her own tea. I wanted to laugh, but my throat still hurt. Corbal frowned at her spillage, and gently blew over the top of his while maintaining judgmental eye contact. It was nice to drink something meant to be consumed.
Of the two days we spent near the collapsed mine entrance, I spent the first lying on my side watching the fire. Nebrei and Corbal had their conversations, but for whatever reason I couldn’t pull my inner eye from the fresh images of the cult. It wasn’t the violence that bothered me, strangely enough; instead, the building of my innate heat commandeered my attention. I kept thinking to myself how I could melt metal with my flame now. When I first attempted ignimancy, I could hardly hit a tree or burn a rag. I was getting stronger, my flame fed and soon the billows of the world will power it further the strength of it fueled my confidence as well. These thoughts covered my mind’s eye for most of the day unless torn from the campfire by food or drink.
At a few points on the first day, Corbal guided Nebrei while she attempted somatic rituals to practice. I felt marginally better, the gravel in my throat lessened slightly. After, Nebrei slept in her bedroll for a couple hours despite the sun’s crown at the top of the sky. When she awoke, Corbal talked to her and reaffirmed the basics of acumency. I watched them speak through the sparks of the fire, an outsider, a better animancer naturally.
Only on the second day was I able to sit upright and get moving. I regained my voice, testing it with quiet words. Corbal was relieved; his warm smile somehow softer than I’d seen it before.
“What-” a phlegmy cough interrupted my speech, and I spat on the ground before continuing, “…happened to you guys?” Fields above, I sounded hoarse like I swallowed gravel. I hardly recognized myself my own voice. I asked quietly. I’d just gotten my voice back, and while every word freed me from pained silence, I knew I shouldn’t push it. Nebrei was excited to get me up to date, and Corbal filled in the parts she stumbled to articulate.
“We asked around for a day in Habern, but most people we asked were uncooperative. But after… interrogations, they told us about a cult that set up in the mine. Nobody would give us a straight answer. I swear, it was like they were all afraid at the mention of it. They said miners kept disappearing, and as a result the mine fell into disuse. Then people from Habern disappeared. We opted to search for you and asked others to help, but they tried to dissuade us, claiming some hooded figure would steal us in the night if we stayed out too late, either that or we’d be mauled in the forest by shape-changing monsters. They didn’t want us to look for you. They even went as far as leaving us bound in the morning! Told us that you were gone, to forget about ever finding you, that we were lucky we weren’t taken, too.”
Disappearing…? So those were townspeople from Habern…
“Did they, uh, ever find out what happened to the miners?”
“No,” said Corbal, “but I can’t imagine they made it out alive. Thael only knows what they would have done to you.”
I asked him for his water bag. I was parched and would be for a while.
“After this, I’m never drinking anything given to me. Seems nothing good happens to me when I do!”
I expected a laugh, but neither of my friends spoke.
“This isn’t the time,” Corbal scolded softly. The mood had definitely shifted. He turned away and adjusted his glasses while something changed in his posture. His shoulders rose and fell in jerky motions and he tossed the pan he was drying to the ground with a startling bang!. Nebrei and I both jumped.
Corbal swirled around, shouting through gritted teeth, “Damn it, Efrit, I thought you were dead. I almost lost you twice, now. I’m not eager to be scared like that again.” His eyes watered.
“I… Corbal, I wasn’t…” in any real danger. “…trying to scare you. They didn’t…” dare do anything to their god. “I’m sorry…” that you wasted your worry on a god.
My thoughts continually drifted back to my ascension. Corbal trudged to me and put his arms around me and sighed through shaky breath, “One of these days, you’ll save my life, Efrit. I feel it’s only fair.”
“Yeah.”
“While you’re at it, save mine, too. My body hurts from this mountain climbing,” Nebrei joked, but I didn’t think it was really a joke.
We rested there and talked for a few hours. Flashes of the cult ritual appeared before me, images of the curling runes covering my vision. Nebrei smacked my shoulder- it was her way of getting my attention.
“Efrit, you’re spacing out again.”
“I guess so.”
“Are you okay?”
I need to gather more. I need to get stronger for Agnistreya.
“Huh?”
A long silence passed, save Nebrei’s huff. I broke the silence, “Corbal, you said you were afraid to lose me earlier.”
“…I’m sorry for my outburst. Yes, I was terrified.”
“No, that’s fine. I just… I’m not fragile, you know.”
“Efrit, I’ve seen your lifeless face three times. I don’t mean to question your hardiness, but you have technically died before. I’d rather not bury you.”
“I don’t think that will be an issue now.” How much could I say? Have I said too much? I couldn’t let anyone get in my way. He must never know. “Would you bury me? Aren’t there rituals for that?”
“Well, if you were the subject to paranimancy- you, uh, remember how we disposed of your arm? It would be like that. Eventually you’d get buried, but not before Thaelossei’s cleansing waters washed away the traces of it.”
He can never know.
“I don’t miss it anymore,” I said, fiddling with my cincture. It wasn’t uncomfortable, and the cold mountain air meant nothing to my body.
“Miss what?” Corbal replied before his green eyes drifted to my armless shoulder. He winced at his mention of it. He must have been watching my hands as well because he walked over and offered to tie it for me. I allowed him to- my tie was sloppy. He took it off and straightened it out between his hands before wrapping it around my waist. I could feel the warmth from his skin and wanted him to stay close to me like this as long as possible. His presence was inviting, a softness to the world I knew before, the world that would burn. While he aligned the tie in the front, he mentioned how much warmer I felt and attributed it to the tea and sunlight.
He took a seat beside me on the log bench and leaned his head on my shoulder, approaching slowly as though to ask for permission. The weirdness of my scars had long settled, thanks to the good work of the somatic restructurists. Like a tame forest beast nesting, Corbal sought my heat to warm himself. It cost me nothing, and I didn’t mind it either.
“Efrit, I wish you could live forever.” The words dripped like honey, and I felt each word was genuine. He had previously mentioned his partner before me in passing conversation, and while I harbored no jealousy, wondered if he’d used those words with him as well.
“Me too.” And maybe I will.
“Losing people never gets easier,” he sighed. Nebrei took notice and brought her bedroll to lounge on nearby.
“Have you lost someone, Corbal?” I asked.
“I have.”
“What happened?”
“Old age.”
“Old age? I thought gnomes lived for a really long time.”
“We do…” Corbal’s smile drooped. His eyes slowly relaxed to rest on the ground. “…unfortunately. He was a human.”
So I’m not his first human partner. I understood why Wesley denied his age so relentlessly. They must have talked about this before.
“He was an acumencer, one of the highest caliber. Incredibly bright. Introspective. That’s what I liked in him- he could talk for hours about theories and ideas and I could listen.”
Corbal’s nose wrinkled enough for me to notice. He took off his glasses and blinked a few times before taking a deep breath.
“I was the older one- we met when I was around fifty. I think he was also in his fifties- human fifties, that is, so proportionally younger. He taught me some things I still use. Some aspects of divination were yet to be discovered, but with his help, we researched them and made them known. Both our names are on the Standards in Divination cover.”
Corbal chuckled, more to the ghost of his partner than to Nebrei or me, “You know, we actually invented scry-and-seek! We’d take turns hiding somewhere in the Academy and practice finding one another with divination. He always won, he was always the better Acumencer. He didn’t get as tired from scrying as I would.”
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The light from the fire drew more of my attention over time. I only refocused when Corbal sniffled, ending his story with sweet memories. Or so I thought. The fire kept taking my focus off of Corbal’s words. I was drawn to it more strongly than ever before.
“He died at ninety. His hair had turned all white by then. Human hair does that with age, I don’t think any of you are born with white hair. He always said he liked mine. Somancy only goes so far, and old age is difficult to manage with animancy. Avery was an exceptional somancer- an outlier. She likely would have lived another decade.”
I’d only really caught the last part of his story. “Avery?”
“The late Headmaster, yeah.”
Every time I glanced at the fire, it was like a mirror reflecting my anima. The flames that danced in the stone circle danced within me as well. It took effort to pull my attention away from the heat.
What were we talking about? Death? I added to the conversation what I hoped would fit.
“My father was called to the ritual site. He came back haunted by what he’d seen, his eyes were different, scared. He didn’t sleep at all after that. He’d be awake with a candle burning every night, staring through the window to the eastern darkness with a hammer in his fist.”
Nebrei sat upright and listened intently.
“He always sat in the chair I made for him, the first one I built by myself. It creaked and groaned if you so much as looked at it, which is how I knew was absolutely still those last few nights staring out the window. I don’t know what danger he was prepared to fight. He never told me.”
“The fact he was willing to defend you, even from the unknown… He must have loved you a lot,” she said.
“I don’t know. Whatever battle he fought, he fought alone. In the end, he lost. He hung himself on the westward cliff, tied a rope around his neck and jumped off. The rope pulled so hard his head was all but removed. His neck was twisted. I ran to the Elder and we cut him down. We returned him to the Field that sunrise.”
At this, Corbal was horrified.
“So that explains when…” he said before cutting himself off abruptly. Corbal pulled his shoulders in and stared at the ground.
“Yeah.” I replied.
Nebrei hadn’t moved during my story, she sat there on her bedroll unnaturally stiff. After some time, she spoke up. Either she felt obligated to share because she believed I was depressed or because she was vain.
Regardless, she sympathized, “I lost my father too. It’s rough, like a part of me was taken. He was fishing by the river when his line got caught and pulled him in. Nobody could get him out. No matter how I pleaded with Thaelossei I couldn’t save him. I didn’t know what to ask, I had nothing to offer. I decided to study somancy at the Academy to make sure I could help people.”
I didn’t expect to hear such a selfless reason, but my ignorance showed once again.
“You couldn’t dive after him?”
“Mearles are far too heavy to swim. That’s why we pull nets from the shore to get fish.”
Corbal announced his condolences.
Some part of me couldn’t comprehend her pain. Praying to the water god for assistance? No wonder he stayed dead. Boil the seas.
“It’s not that rough. People die all the time. Even somancy can’t save everyone.”
Nebrei’s eyes betrayed a certain glistening.
“You don’t mean that,” she said. “It was horrible. I still feel guilty.”
“Why?”
I could tell her throat was tightening. The pitch of her voice rose and each word ended abruptly. Why she bothered to reply, I couldn’t understand.
“Why do I feel guilty about not saving my father? I don’t know, maybe because it’s a natural thing to do?”
“Natural caused me to raze my village to the ground. I wouldn’t use it as an excuse.”
Upon hearing my words, Nebrei stifled a scoff or some other grunt of displeasure, and stood up with balled fists to storm off for firewood.
“Efrit, I’d like to speak with you in private for a moment.” Turning my head to witness Nebrei’s exit, I allowed him to speak.
“We’re private for now,” I said.
Corbal brought his eyes from the ground to meet mine, face exuding worry. “I feel lately you’ve become colder.”
“Colder? No, my gift makes me warmer. You know this.”
“…that’s not what I meant.”
A silence fell between us, lasting far longer than necessary.
Eventually broken by the twig snaps of Nebrei’s approach. From behind a mound of broken sticks, she asked if everything was okay. She had recovered from whatever grudge she held. Corbal’s somber gaze returned to the mossy ground.
“Yeah,” he replied before slinging his bag over his shoulder and walking back to the campfire. The sticks she collected clattered to the ground beside the fire. Nebrei’s face looked tired. She came over and quietly asked me, “What’s got him so down?” I replied that whatever it might be didn’t matter as much as leaving this mountain.
“We should continue back to Habern,” I followed. She thought a moment before acting, then sagged her shoulders and joined Corbal. I heard them talking. They were quieter than usual, speaking in hushed voices. Hoping I wouldn’t hear. It didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.
* * *
The next five hours passed unnoticed until the tallness of the trees made darkness overtake the afternoon sun much faster than it would in a bare field. An eerie quiet stilled the forest life, and all the birds and beasts fell silent. Corbal froze mid-step and signaled for us to do the same. Taking his lead, Nebrei and I stopped in our tracks to listen. Another branch snapping far to the east made it clear we weren’t alone in these tall woods.
I wanted to know what danger was afoot. Breaking the silence, I asked Corbal, “Are there treecats out–” but I jumped when Nebrei’s scream pierced the tentative silence. Almost faster than I could see, a rush of grey flew over Nebrei and I was knocked to the ground by Nebrei’s wild flailing. My fall to the forest floor put me beneath the giant claw swinging out at us. The fallen torch revealed little other than the huge grey figures rushing over me. A thick, musky scent filled my nose, the scent of damp animal pelt, and more subtly there was a metallic tinge I had grown too familiar with.
If something could knock a person as stalwart as Nebrei to the ground, I had no chance at a fair fight. I cast my fire over the nearest tree and in the flash of burning pine I saw three massive bipedal doglike creatures with claws longer than my arm stalking around us. Startled by the sudden brightness, they retreated just far enough into the brush but I could still see the fire glinting in their beady black eyes. It gave Nebrei enough time to get back to her senses and draw her knife. In one massive fist she held the hilt against her chest like a spearman, and her other hand gripped her face and I saw something glisten between her fingers. The beasts circled us and I had the feeling they were looking for an opening. I frantically searched for Corbal, but I found only his frazzled backpack on the ground.
“Corbal! Where are you?” I shouted at the top of my lungs. In response, I heard nothing but the breaking of branches and a low rumble.
Then from the darkness, immediately following a heavy thud, a spray of black blood spewed from somewhere behind me, coating my back with a steaming spray in the frozen air. Adrenaline forced its warmth through my veins and without a conscious thought in my head I crawled to a sprint and fled forward into the dark.
I remember running like this before, though last time, I didn’t trip over my own feet, or what I thought were my own feet. The branches grasped at me, bound me, squeezed the very life from me in all but an instant and I could do nothing to escape- and just then I felt a large hand with thick padded digits over my mouth and a gruff command to stay silent. Of course I struggled—my body was independent of my mind, running on instinct—but with one less arm than my captor I could do little but comply.
The hand was meaty and smelled of fresh blood and dirt and some other sickly, musty scent I only smelled when an animal was skinned. I fled far enough away I could only see my light in the distance. It was not enough to see anything around me. The man holding me was much bulkier and taller than myself. A nail scratched my cheek as he pointed my face in the direction of some lithe creature’s silhouette stalking about the place Nebrei was attacked. Nails weren’t usually so long, I thought, and maybe the fur was an animal pelt as some kind of coat.
He cleared his throat with a deep rumbling timbre, and with his beard grazing my ear he quietly spoke: “Don’t move. They hunt in packs. They only see your friends and mine right now. Give Hal a moment.”
It was incredibly dark. Even in the moment before now, the sky had grown dark, and darker still with each second lengthened by fear. How could my captor see in the darkness?
Making shapes out was all I could do from this distance, and though the thick trees swallowed up every bit of sound, the violence his “friend” brought unto the night resounded with each shout and crack of bone. I briefly fought against his hand before I understood. Even from the depths of the adrenaline rush, I understood he may be the key to getting out of this in one piece.
It seemed he knew I wasn’t going to resist, so he pulled his hand off of my mouth and dragged it across my forehead to reach his own. He paused a moment upon feeling my brand. “Ay, are you that Efrit kid from town?” he asked as loudly as he could under his breath.
My heart nearly stopped. Fields above, it’s the guys who kidnapped me! I was mentally sorting the sequence of events that led me here, and if I should–
“Fire! Use your thing again, right over there!” he interrupted my thought and pointed at a spot in the dark about fifteen yards out. Doing what I was told and how to do it removed the burden of thought in the most comforting way, and with an absence of consequence I summoned my flame at the spot he pointed out.
The fire burst from beside a howling aber with a flurry of embers around its head, revealing a grey wolflike face with uncanny humanoid qualities. As it flinched to cover itself, a darker, more compact beast lunged toward its midsection, knocking it to the ground.
This contender was no animal. It strategized like a fighter would, biting the aber’s long arms at the elbow to disarm the bladelike claws. The aber tried to eviscerate the attacker with its giant bladelike appendages, but each swing put tension on an already-weakened limb and one hand was dangling from the elbow. During a great thrashing of limbs and piercing cry, the smaller beast produced a metal mace. I saw the shining ball glint in the firelight before swinging over the top of the beast and landing with a solid crack!. After that horrific sound of shattered bone, the aber was unmoving and slumped to the ground. The man holding me shouted out in what I thought was fear, but as he let me go he clapped his hands and whistled, laughing. “Holy Tell, that was incredible! Kid, you should- hey!” he exclaimed, but I took off toward the light. I had to get Nebrei away from the beast before it killed her, too.
I had to reach Nebrei; the fire was too small to catch the surrounding trees. In the dark it seemed much farther. I ran as carefully as I could, but with the uneven floor and thick leafless brush, I caught myself on most of it. I must have looked pathetic as I tripped over every unseen obstacle. The man who grabbed me just before caught up to me and picked me up off the ground. I fought him as he hoisted me over his shoulder, squirming and trying to free myself, but quickly realized I could get there much faster if I let him take me. Even while carrying me, his footing was secure over the gnarled roots, precise as an expert woodsman, and in the darkness, I thought I saw the brush part for him.
A torch came to life beside Nebrei, but there was no black beast in sight, only a human dressed in furs and chainmail, hunkered over the dead aber with a hunting knife. He wasn’t paying any attention to Nebrei. Was she safe?
As I got closer, I felt sick. Her face had a massive gash over her temple to her jawline, cutting through her nose and separating it in an awful way. She was breathing, though. I made sure to check. I pleaded with her to stay awake, and she did. She tried to speak but the skin of her jaw folded in an unnatural way and she groaned. Her blood appeared silver in the low light. The man with the mace—the one I saw at the tavern, with chunks of grey fur embedded in it— pulled me off of her and pushed me aside. Of course I fought to stay near her, but the man who held me before held me again a couple feet away, keeping me from her.
“Let me go to her! She’s dying!” I pleaded.
“She’ll be fine. Mearle skin is deeper than ours, it’s only a surface scratch. Well, except her nose, but we’ll put that back on once we get a camp set up.”
“She’s not dying? She’s still hurt! And where’s Corbal? Oh, Fields!- where is he?” Ice flooded my veins and the adrenaline crash made me dizzy. “I have to find him!”
The man nearest me held me upright, saying, “Whoa there, you’re hardly fit to walk, yourself. Look at you! Shaking like a leaf. We’ll find him. Gnome, right? Probably hid in a log or something. He’s fine for now. Abers don’t like the stench of their own blood. I’ll sniff him out first light, or once we take care of this girl’s poor face.” He helped me to the ground to sit before I fell over. “Poor girl’s face. Sorry.”
Remembering their duo back at the tavern, I looked around for the missing man. I turned and saw him skinning the dead abers, their inky blood spilling onto the forest floor. All accounted for, the man who directed my fire wrenched a cut of meat from the aber and took a bite from the still-steaming chunk. The man with the mace was tending to Nebrei with a rag.
Unrest and confusion grew more and more unbearable within me, pushing me to ask, “Why did you help us? You attacked us at the tavern! Why help us now?”
The man with the mace, Halvek, answered with a haste that led me to believe he had an answer prepared, “I was hoping they’d leave you alive.”
“It would have been better to not risk it at all!”
Halvek responded with cool anger, “I have enough blood on my hands,” and exhibited the black splotches on his mace and glove.
Idvith spoke next. “Kid, we’re for-hires. We’re chasing that coin. Just so happens we saw you get attacked out here. Couldn’t just let you die.”
“You should be flattered, y’know. They paid a generous amount for you. We don’t have to take jobs for weeks now.”
“You sold me to that cult? Fields ab…! Do you know what they do to people?”
He continued wiping the blood from his mace, twisting the rag to squeeze black clots out. He was otherwise inanimate with an equally unfeeling reply, “I’ve got a good idea. I try not to think about it.”
I felt sick and my eyes started tearing up. “How could you sell a living person for money, with no way of knowing if they’re going to their death- or worse? How could you be so heartless? And so greedy-”
I hit a nerve. He cut me off by grabbing my chin and forcing my head toward him; he was unnaturally strong. It was no wonder he could crush an aber’s skull so easily with that massive mace— his hand alone could probably snap my neck. He got close to my face and I could smell the grossness of fresh blood on his breath.
“Listen here, and listen close. I’m far from greedy– there’s just no work for us anymore, not since more people started dying to abers, or plain went missing. And who else to blame than halfmen? Nowadays, we’re muscle and teeth for hire, and we’re damn good. They ran us out of town, the cowards. We’ve got no table to put food on, got no family anymore, except for in Mäkri’s tavern. These days, if you’re offered gold, you take it. You take it or you starve.”
He released my jaw with a rough toss and I recoiled, rubbing the sore area to restore blood flow while he continued, “I can’t afford the luxury of choosing where it comes from. I lost my sense of goodness far too long ago to remember what it felt like at all.”
I listened to Nebrei’s altered breathing while my surroundings faded and my laxness distanced me from the present. Gradually my mind’s eye centered on the journey I’d been on thus far. It wasn’t fair to compare my previous life to my current enlightenment, nor was it appropriate to try. A worm is nothing to the man treading it. It proves the same for proportional growth; had I never questioned, I would have never lived. Agnistreya has blessed me with purpose greater than I could imagine. The cult in the mine helped me understand it further. Was it vain of me to accept apotheosis? No, I consider it natural progression. Twice now I was subject to paranimancy, though recently having gained instead of its opposite. I have taken gifts of others’ anima into my own and been made a demigod, a worshiped being. My fate was my own.
Unlike those whose anima I stole. Or was it gifted?
This is my right. I would have more.
My mind wandered until I fell into troubled sleep lying on Nebrei’s stomach.