Autumn was nature’s most elaborate dying ritual. It cloaked the woods in lavish yellows and sunstreaked days, while all along the trees huddled inwards and abandoned the leaves that adorned them, once golden in the spring, verdant in the summer, now fiery in the autumn.

All Alize’s life, autumn had heralded the journey to the salt deposits by the Inland Sea. Eight hundred years of Hrumi iron had dug the winding caves in the hillsides, a bridge through their history. Always with the trees as companions, Alize had dug into the cool earth to find the halite minerals that the Hrumi so valued. Just as Hesna had shown her.

Not this autumn. Yesterday Alize had thought that alone was strange enough.

Now she studied the Mage dozing beside her. She had never seen such sparse and broad eyebrows. They swooped from his temples, granting his expression a permanent weary assurance, even with his eyes shut. His hair had once been black but was now almost entirely the whispy white of cirrus clouds.

Alize pressed her back against the treetrunk behind her and watched the trees shutter with the breeze. She had known one other Conjurer in her life, a Hrumi a few years older than she. Hesna had been among those that pressed Celillie to send her to the Magi for training. Too much power, they had whispered, the Hrumi cannot contain it safely.

Celillie, newly initiated as clan leader, had insisted the girl stay, that there was no contradiction at all in a Hrumi Conjurer. In private, Hesna found this troubling. The sky may be vast, Alize, but it will never be home to wild horses.

The young Conjurer had disappeared following her dagger binding ceremony. Alize always wondered, ultimately, who had made the decision.

Perhaps this Mage knew her. Might that stay his hand from punishing Sosje for her mistake? The Hrumi respected the Magi for their restraint. Any Conjurer who chose to become a Mage swore never to learn healing magic in exchange for the knowledge that came as a Mage. Otherwise it would be too tempting to rise themselves above the consequences of the world.

Of course, healing magic would be terribly useful just now. The Mage blenched each time Alize changed the dressing on his wound. She reminded herself he was unaccustomed to this circumstance, these antagonisms that rose with the sun in her world. In his pacifism, he had no reason to know pain, nor any reference to ease the experience.

The Mage’s slow, steady breathing was the only sounds external to Alize until Josoun ambled into view. He was a great tracker, for a horse, and Alize was only a little surprised he had taken so long. She unpacked several items from her sac before she even properly greeted him.

Behind her, the Mage lurched.

“Careful.” Alize cautioned him as she approached, gesturing to his shoulder. In the daylight it looked improved, but its red rimming confirmed the poison’s surviving virulence. “You’ll want to keep that still.”

But instead the Mage seized Alize’s wrist. She met his bloodshot eyes, astonished at the force of his grip. Under his seering attention, she struggled against the impulse to jerk free.

“You carry a light,” he said gruffly.

“You speak!” cried Alize, “Tell me, have you sent your brethren after my sisters?”

The Mage squeezed harder, his hands sweaty and febrile. “What have you to do with the earthquakes? You carry a light.”

Alize’s stomach dropped, but she could give no weight to his words while his mind lay thick with fever. “It is daylight, Master Mage. There is only the sun.” Alize tugged her hand from his grasp.

The Mage swallowed. Then, seeming to remember something, he relaxed his posture and leaned against the tree once more, closing his eyes. Alize stepped away, but kept her gaze on him. His breathing steadied, and he said no more.

In the evening, a drizzle settled over the forest, the very first of the winter rains. The approaching storm ushered the night’s darkness. In the woods, such storms lashed at the trees and turned the ground into mud. The air would soon turn cold. Alize tugged her cape from her sac.

The rain dampened her outer layer as she foraged for food. This time of year she could find edible grasses, sweet roots, and seeds for roasting. She popped berries into her mouth and the juices burst against her teeth.

She was far from the campsite when the forest’s tone changed. The pitch recalled something Alize never expected this far west: an invocation of terror that pressed her to return to her camp with her sac unfilled. Her own urgency grew with the trees’ until the fear spurred Alize to run. The ground underfoot slickened and thunder began to rumble.

The Mage stood at the campsite, gripping a tree. His stillness distinguished his profile from the gusty rhythmic rushes of the undergrowth, tossed by the gathering wind.

“There’s something in the forest.” Alize uttered as she arrived next to him.

Around her the trees ached, though they did not mask the sound of hooves approaching from the road. Alize wiped raindrops from her nose and resumed her sprint, fists balled.

“Wait!” The Mage called behind her, but the trees sharpened their tone.

Against the rain, two horses’ silhouettes flickered in the shadows. Alize darted into concealment just before the lightening illuminated the forest.

Only the first horse bore a rider and Alize concentrated as he approached, timing her movements to catch his reigns.

The rider shouted in surprise as he fell and the sound alone disarmed Alize.

He sounded human.

Mindful of the forest’s terror, Alize shoved him into the mud, but of one thing she was certain: he was not the Kogalok monster that the trees warned against.

“What devilry is this?” the rider demanded. He thrust Alize off him.

She caught his knees with her heels.

Because he maintained his balance, Alize mentally categorized him. Not a Kogalok, but trained in combat. Her next strike forced him to the ground, and she brandished her dagger towards him.

“State your intentions, rider!”

“Stop it, both of you!” The Mage arrived between them. The strain in his face showed clear even in the semi-darkness of the storm. “Listen!”

Thunder ripped through the forest. Amongst the trees’ repeating warnings, Alize registered low voices yelling in the distance.

Abandoning the man beside her, Alize cast her net of attention into the forest and listened for the trees. The other riders were still quite far but she understood they approached by the stream instead of on the road. This would bring them right to her camp.

The forest tossed in agony.

The man pulled himself up from the mud and turned to address the Mage. “Onder, what is the meaning of this?”

Alize ignored him. “Master Mage, for your safety, we must distance ourselves from the camp.” The presence of a Mage would normally deter any attacker, but it would not deter Kogaloks. Alize flitted her fingers over her dagger hilt.

“There is another way,” the Mage spoke. He gestured to one of the horses, but Alize glanced back to see him moving his lips silently. A small blue light formed between his outstretched palms.

It drew Alize’s eyes, and she watched it with both wonder and alarm.

With a flick of the Mage’s fingers, the magic jumped through the air to his horse. For an instant, the mare’s forehead glowed.

Then the beast disappeared.

Alize blinked her eyes, wondering if it were a trick of the lightening, but the horse was gone. The Mage exhaled and the next blue light he produced loomed much larger.

Was this his plan?

Alize’s pulse quickened. “I forbid you to enchant me -”

But he launched the light into the air, interrupting her. Though Alize felt nothing, she looked down to see her body had vanished.

Alize choked on her breath and the noise in her throat echoed loudly through the rain. She covered her mouth with her hands, the sharp regret as immediate as pain.

Beside her the two men were gone. “It’s only temporary,” the Mage’s voice murmured, “but I fear these travelers warrant it.”

To anyone’s eyes, the woods stood entirely empty, but the trees held their vigilance and Alize heard their fear. Hrumi, man, and Mage watched as six bulky shadows emerged from the trees.

The figures prowled the storm, engulfed in soaked animal hides. The wet furs clung to their skin to blur the line between carcass and humanity. Thick tattoos, blackened and uneven, trailed over their skin and overlaid various disfigurements. A scar traced from one man’s forehead to his earlobe and the eye it passed through blinked yellow and useless. Another man had no nose, only a dark cavity where it had once been. The face of the only woman in their company was stained pink and pocketed with old burns.

These Kogaloks would not fear the Magi’s reprisals. They did not carry fear with them. They did not know the world, and they would find nothing to recognize in a mirror. The mutilations were signs of the Soulless.

The lightening flashed again.

One man glared forward into the landscape, his eyes disturbing clear. The Soul Eater. And his eyes were locked in Alize’s direction, spurred forward likely by Alize’s audible cry a moment earlier.

After consuming a soul, the Kogalok Soul Eater took control of their victims’ bodies. The Kogalok Soulless followed their Soul Eater without any sensation in their flesh or their bones. They followed until their skin flaked off and infection spread into their lungs and inner organs. All too often in the Ginmae plateau, the Hrumi encountered their mangled bodies, unable to walk another step and choking their last breaths where they had fallen.

The Kogalok band paused close enough for Alize to see their weapons. Dried blood matted the furs at the Kogaloks’ wrists and clotted on their weapons’ thick iron handles. The blades were meant for maiming, not killing. Soul Eaters had no use for corpses.

As the band, Alize leaned forward. There was something different about this Soul Eater. The skin surrounding his eyes was riven like hammered stone and the cracks shimmered with unearthly light that glowed around his cold gaze. It might have been beautiful, if not seeping from the flesh of a Soul Eater. Instead, he resembled a breathing corpse trying to encase a moon.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The Hrumi had no stories for this.

The band paused only steps from Alize.

Alize held her breath until he looked away. I have nothing to fear from them, she reminded herself. The Mage’s magic felt like water around her, hindering her limbs, imperiling her speed, should it come to a fight. It was not the safety she would have chosen, in the treetops, in the forest’s embrace.

After all, any Kogalok knew better than to try to catch a Hrumi soul.

While the Kogaloks lingered in the glade, Alize pondered her responsibility to the Soulless. The Hrumi killed the bodies, their own small defiance against the Kogaloks. But I cannot face so many alone, Alize thought bitterly, not trapped in enchantments.

She doubted that would have satisfied Celillie.

The clouds overhead bent into the horizon and the Kogaloks slowly withdrew. Though Alize told herself she had not been afraid, she exhaled a long breath when the last one faded into the forest.

The Kogaloks left behind them a more tangible threat to preoccupy her, one she could actively resist. Indeed, she had an obligation to. The Mage had enchanted her without her consent. He had prevented her from challenging the Kogaloks, from carrying out her duties as a Hrumi. Even as a Mage, he had no right.

When her body materialized once more, Alize confronted the reappeared Mage with an unambiguous glare. “You have dishonored me. A Hrumi needs no assistance for concealment.”

“Hmm,” he murmured, wiping his brow. His face had paled. “That was necessary for our safety

“You,” Alize glowered, “presume Hrumi weakness. I advise you not to make that mistake twice. And you conceal another.” Alize gestured to where the rider, the man, had stood. “I hope it is not at my expense.”

She expected the forest to bolster her fury, but instead the trees perplexed her by copying the Mage’s composure.

“No no, he’s a friend,” the Magi answered, “He’ll not threaten you.” He winced as he shifted his stance. Struggling, he lifted his hands and called his magic forth once more.

When the townsman reappeared, his eyes flashed at the Hrumi before him.

He stood a head taller than Alize and looked to be a few years older as well. He wore his satin black hair to the length of his trimmed beard. It swerved as he inspected his surroundings through coal-black eyes. His knee-length tunic split at the waist where a metal studded belt cinched the coarse cloth. Traces of the wispy Unity Script sprawled blessings on his cuff links. He adjusted them repeatedly as Alize’s attention become obvious.

Alize had never been so close to a townsperson in her life. She dropped her eyes in distaste.

“Onder?” the man exclaimed. He darted forward to support the Mage who wavered on his feet.

Alize hesitated, then drew nearer. She could see the Mage trembling as he bent to sit once more. His skin reflected dull gray.

The townsman spoke. “That was too much, Onder.”

“I’m all right,” the Mage answered, shuddering. “A strong spell felt, ah, judicious.”

“Who were those men?” the man asked. “They were no soldiers, nor common thieves.”

“I’ve no idea.” the Mage replied.

Alize crossed her arms. “To ask ‘who’,” she spoke, “implies more humanity than they warrant. They are Kogaloks.”

“Kogaloks?!” the Magi hissed. “Here?”

He voiced the same confusion plaguing Alize. Proximity had taught every Hrumi more than anyone wanted to know about the Kogaloks, both the Soul Eaters and the Soulless that accumulated behind them. The Soul Eaters had emerged from the ruins of the Silver City almost a generation ago, after the Ginmae massacre. Some said they were Magi gone awry, sullied with power and unconfined by rules or honor. The stories about them haunted children and princes alike. They were stories told to let in the darkness.

The grisly fate of the Soulless inspired mutual dread, pity, and revulsion among the Hrumi. Both Soul Eaters and Sargons separated souls from their victims’ bodies, but the Kogaloks destroyed souls, leaving only the body to shamble onwards, obeying the Kogalok who consumed its essence.

Sargon soultrussing meant the inverse: Sargons preserved the soul while the body starved and died.

No one knew how long Hrumi souls survived after the Sargons harvested them. But the Hrumi had learned that the magic that protected the clanmembers from Sargons kept them safe from the Kogalok Soul Eaters too. However, if given half the chance, a Kogalok showed no hesitation to kill a clanmember. The Kogaloks fought without fear of death, formidable adversaries for even the best trained Hrumi.

But Alize had never heard of them leaving the battered steppes of the Ginmae plateau, further east than even the Temple.

The townsman shivered, echoing her thoughts. “What could draw Kogaloks so far from the Silver City?”

The Magi shook his head and Alize wondered if he stole a glance at her, “Perhaps they know of something stirring in the west.”

Alize jerked her head down. Was he referring to again the earthquakes? The question nearly formed on her lips when she caught her breath.

Then the trees’ voices coalesced in a shrill warning. Something else stalked the woods.

This time Alize resolved to choose how she confronted it.

Alize hushed the men and let all her senses assist her vigilance. Following the trees’, she walked south as the rain resumed into a whipping veil of water. Wind gusts rattled the branches overhead and hurled droplets in Alize eyes. Still she watched unblinking for any signs of movement. She drew her dagger from her belt.

To her surprise, footsteps announced the man behind her. When she glanced backwards, he brandished an unsheathed sword. Alize had not realized he carried one. He twisted it in the shadows and for an instant she caught her own dark reflection in the metal.

“You hear something?” he asked her.

Alize considered not responding, but relented. “Something aberrant.”

In confirmation, a low growl rumbled above the drumming of the rainstorm.

The trees lowered their voice to an urgent hush. Alize edged forward, alert to any rustling to betray their predator. Beside her, the man did the same, hardly breathing. When a twig snapped behind them, they both whirled to see a mass of grey fur spring towards Alize.

She slashed her dagger into it.

The animal rolled to the side, revealing itself as a great wolf. Alize bit back her astonishment. No beast had ever attacked her before.

Nor had she ever seen a wolf with cracked skin surrounding its eyes. The fissures emitted the same eerie glow of the Kogalok. Lightning flashed and Alize wondered if she had imagined it.

Despite Alize’s jab, the wolf had not recoiled. Snarling, he lunged again, this time raking Alize’s arm as she wielded her dagger. She felt certain she had struck it, but the wolf paced without limping.

When it lunged for the third time, Alize and the man moved together. Their coordination was haphazard but efficient: Alize stabbed into the wolf’s side while the man pieced its heart as it faltered.

Whimpering, it collapsed to the ground. The light framing its eyes extinguished. But almost instantly, the body began to convulse. Alize covered her mouth as she watched the figure become indistinct, like the clouds shielding the moon. Slowly, and almost gracefully, its limbs elongated and its gray fur melted into pale skin. When the haze dissolved, Alize found herself facing a man’s corpse, naked, face-down and impaled on a curved sword.

A Conjuerer who had taken the shape of a wolf.

“By Rehsan-” Alize started, but the scene had not yet stabilized. A small ball of light emerged from the center of the man’s exposed back. The light hovered over the body before flashing forwards.

It plunged into Alize like a punch to the chest.

Alize stumbled, unprepared, before collapsing backwards, her hands sinking into the mud as she caught herself. Though she closed her eyes to focus, her body felt disjointed, convoluted. A sickness swarmed her, so powerful it nearly made her retch.

The fingers pressing into her forearm made everything worse. Alize opened her eyes to see the sword-wielding man kneeling beside her, confusion bare on his features.

Alize jerked from his grasp and bent over to wait for her gut to settle.

“Can you hear me?” the man asked softly.

The sickness did not abate. Alize focused on her breathing. She armed herself with patience alone against the turmoil raging in her core. Patience did not come to her easily.

The man’s black eyes scoured her. “Did you do that, with the magic?”

Alize felt sicker. With overly deliberate movements, she forced herself to rise, hoping to conceal her unsteadiness. Finally, she drew closer to the corpse on the ground.

“A shape-shifter,” the townsman murmured. He stayed close to Alize even as she tried to put distance between them. “It has been a long time since I have heard of anyone conjuring such a spell.”

Alize studied the corpse. A matted trail of dark hair traced down his spine. His fingers curled upwards with blackened nails, the crimson tips alluding to more gruesome foes than mud. The longer Alize considered this man’s presence, his attack on her, the more confused she felt.

Instead, she shifted her attention to the curved sword buried in his chest. She wiped the rain from the metal crest before grasping the hilt in both hands to wrench it free.

Beside her, the townsman held out his hand to accept the sword from her, but Alize ignored him while she examined its emblem. Carved into the crest was a lion surrounded by attacking hawks.

The illness Alize felt expanded. It roiled her stomach and blurred her vision. The entire situation had just become far worse. She tilted her head to stare at the man beside her. It made gruesome sense now, the way he had repelled her first attack. He was no townsman. Alize could see the thickness of his arms beneath his sleeves, she could infer the strength of his abdomen just by how he carried his body. A Hrumi could outpace a man’s speed, but not his strength, not if he were trained. Every moment that she remained near him, she endangered herself because he could overpower her.

And he had every reason to.

Even though he did not wear his armor, his iron helmet, Alize knew what he was.

“You,” Alize uttered, “are a Sargon of the High Prince of Parousia.”

The man jerked but held her gaze while he tugged at the wet hair coiling against his face. “I am.”

Emotions swept through Alize, each competing with the sickness she carried for her full attention. Alize felt no fear, only horror and intense shame to be sharing the air with him. She loathed to see him any brighter with the next lightning flash.

Alize shook to think of the fate of her captured sisters. The Hrumi prayed for their deaths. A successful Sargon soultrussing would leave their bodies bereft of anything beyond a pulse, eyes unblinking, until the flesh succumbed to dehydration and starvation. Until only the soul remained, untethered, and in agony.

The princes and their Sargons would have her and all her sisters mutilated for their gain. For each Hrumi soul could grant its keeper everlasting life. The torment of a disconnected soul bred such pain that it became power.

Sargon persecution forced the Hrumi to tiptoe across the steppes, to favor speed over any armor that risked slowing their horses down, to notch every arrow they made so none could ever fit a Sargon’s bowstring.

Sargons had pursued Alize twice in the west. Three years ago, two Sargons from Mulum province had hunted her over four nights. Theirs had been the first male voices she ever remembered hearing.

The second time, Sargons from Balanjar pursued her. One sister had already been captured, but Celillie needed herbs from the shady mountain slopes. The Sargons lay waiting. Despite all her training, one evening they came close enough to challenge Alize. They had chased her and Josoun out into the open steppes, where one Sargon kept so close on her heels that when he lashed out his sword, the blade cut deep into her forearm, into the muscle. Alize remembered his helmet, and the darkness underneath that hid his eyes while he struck the blow. But while he recoiled, Alize changed course, back towards the forests, where the trees had guided the route that would shake her pursuers. She had stitched her wound herself with trembling fingers. She still bore the scar.

But those were Sargons of Mulum and Balanjar, satellite provinces of Parousia. The rota system of succession among the steppes princes passed the Parousia throne between brothers and nephews who first cut their teeth as princes of lesser provinces.

In Parousia, the Sargon attacks against the Hrumi had been systematic for nearly a generation. The clans had lost many sisters, and the Parousian High Prince remained evermore ardent in his persecutions.

The man before Alize held her gaze. “Don’t think of me as a Sargon-”

“How dare you?” Alize shouted. Suddenly the repressive heaviness of her body seemed all too obvious. “You are attacking my soul! This is profanity!” Her head positively throbbed with disorienting sickness, but it was not quite pain. Still, Alize felt certain in her convictions without even seeing any halite.

A Sargon soultrussing.

The realization staggered Alize. Not only could this Sargon break the Hrumi protection, he used a clandestine methods for soultrussing, something the Hrumi had not prepared her for. The trail ahead was unmarked except for the pain and torment she had always feared above all else.

Rehsan grant me strength to fight this.

“This is none of my doing,” the man objected vehemently, “I swear on my family. We both saw that magic emerge from the corpse.” The man reached again to reclaim his sword from Alize but she held it out of his reach.

“What have you done?” The Mage caught up to them. He was panting, and he leaned into one a tree trunk for support.

“You!” Alize spoke disjointedly, “Master Mage! A Sargon is the greatest enemy of my people! You have deliberately endangered me!”

“She absorbed this Conjurer’s magic,” the Sargon murmured, “It practically attacked her.”

“His magic?” The Mage spoke in alarm, “You’re certain?”

“He is attacking me!” Alize shouted, gesturing to the Sargon while clutching her head. Her fury reared at the Mage, who had repaid her careful ministrations by hastening her own soultrussing.

“It’s not Davram’s doing,” the Magi protested, “Lady Hrumi, I may be able to help you.”

“So far you have exposed me to a Sargon!” Alize flung the sword to the ground where it clanged harshly against a stone. “And enchantments!” she indicated the dead man. “I beg for no more of your assistance!”

Alize pushed past the two men towards Josoun. Her dizziness defied her every step, but she forced herself to manage her body’s incongruence. The forest’s beseeching voices braided with the sickening pressure in her skull, but she could not untangle the meaning. She pressed forward, even as the mud tried to engulf her footsteps.

She had done her duty, she had protected the Mage. And he had betrayed her.

If she rode fast enough, she could meet her clan by dawn.

With practiced movements Alize mounted Josoun, directing him to a swift gallop. The sounds of his hooves disappeared into the forest.

The Sargon looked back to the Mage for instructions.

Though he scrunched up his face in disappointment, the Mage could only shake his head. “If I am right about her, it would not surprise me to discover she has some interesting features. But picking up dark magic, well, I don’t know what to think of that.”