“Find a kinslayer,” Lekt muttered to himself as he splashed water on his blood encrusted face, trying not to think of Niss. He hissed in pain when he tried to straighten up, back still in agony from the torturous blows he’d received and the days he’d spent in the stockade. Everyone knew kinslayers were a rare appearance in the Deep. They hid in their cities of fire and roaring machines far above, scorning all that lay beneath. Lekt didn’t feel lucky enough to assume one would fall into his lap.

And what would happen if he even managed to capture one? A shudder rippled through his pained body as he thought of the slavering zeal of the Chosen, the devouring curiosity of the Cold Ones. Did anyone deserve to be dragged through those doors, even evil incarnate? Lekt’s stomach twisted and roiled as his memories of seeing the one who had birthed him hauled inside came surging to the surface. A raw panic always followed, fueling the one promise to himself he had never broken: I will not end the same.

But if he didn’t find a kinslayer to deliver, he would shatter his own chances of survival. They’d made the consequences abundantly clear.

In the barren warrens of tunnels called the Deep, the desert of rock and danger between the great bastions of the Maker’s power, there were few resources and fewer allies to be found. Even the water he’d found was a trickle dripping down limestone into a shallow pool, not even large enough to contain cavefish. He’d tried to satisfy his hunger on little crawling insects drawn to the water, but his belly still growled like a beast.

Lekt knew he was in no condition to do much of anything except convalesce, but that required finding a place where he could rest safely, and such security was unheard of beyond the gates of the Maker’s strongholds. He had only his claws and fangs for defense. The knapped knife of flint he’d managed to make one evening was a tool, not a weapon. A proper, hardened spear would be a necessity if he was going to survive.

If he wanted a kinslayer, well, that posed its own problems. It invariably meant venturing into the Above, the Lands of the Traitor.

They will destroy you with their fire.

He shuddered at the oozing, icy malice of the voice. Right or not, it was still a hateful specter arising. The presence was louder here in the cold, away from the churning machines and the cries of the tormented. Kinslayers had fire that could destroy the Cold Ones, or so it was said. He would burn easily in such a flame.

Every one of his people had heard the stories. What angered him most was not their fire, but that the kinslayers didn’t use it, didn’t share it. If Thalrus had brought that flame with him, perhaps he wouldn’t have been tortured to death. Perhaps the Cold Ones would have been forced to flee.

A stupid thought if ever there was one. No power could break the Maker’s clawed grip on his people. The Deep answered to a singular god and no other would replace Him.

Muted rumbling, not an earthquake, but something moving through the tunnels shook Lekt from his thoughtful stupor. He heard the soft chiming of a silver bell, its beautiful pealing spreading through the barren tunnels like waves. Lekt scaled the wall nearest to him, searching for a hidden place even as his back burned and screamed. Everyone knew what that sound meant: the Dark Folk were the only ones who so announced their presence, and even then only the powerful ones. He didn’t dare click himself, using the echoes of his own frantic panting to locate a crevasse higher in the rock.

The bell jingled louder as it approached and he felt something ghost across his face. In a split second, before he could so much as growl or gnash his teeth, the cord lasso tightened instantly and he was pulled, strangling, down from the edge of the crevasse. Lekt landed hard on his better side, mercifully not landing on his fragile flint knife. He floundered like a caught cave fish denied water.

“What do we have here?” a male voice crooned, soft and high compared to his own. Lekt looked over to see it had come from a lanky hooded figure who played with the cord lasso like an angler making their fishing line dance. “Forsaken, it seems.” His tormentor was attired in a rogue’s leathers, meant for soundless passage through the Deep. Every time Lekt moved to try and loosen the tautness of the spider-silk cord so he could breathe, the lean hooded one danced to one side or the other, wrapping the cord tighter around his own fist to prevent any slackness.

Behind, the hulking figure of a crawling dzheni, armored chitinous plates and mandibles that could slice off a limb, came to a stop and ceased its rumbling. Each of its six articulated limbs quivered slightly, delicate hairs scenting the air. The Dark Folk liked the insects. The warrior ones were formidable foes, enough to give even the Chosen pause. Cold Ones could overcome them, but not quite as easily as they could unarmored creatures.

Lekt heard a figure slide off the back of the insect’s back, the soft ringing of the bell originating not from his immediate captor, but the saddle of the beast. This one wore metal armor, beautifully articulated so the only sound that came from its movements was the faintest of whispers. Pinpricks of light glowed in the place of eyes and Lekt felt the urge to panic surge up.

A death guard. He had only heard the stories of them, since few enough lived to tell the tale. They were walking corpses with a sort of life breathed into them by the twisting of heresy. Rumors whispered in the mines said they could even strike down a Cold One occasionally with weapons made of strange metal much harder and sharper than the iron smelted in Lagarra.

“Release,” the armored figure rasped.

The hooded figure inclined his head, loosening the cord around Lekt’s throat with a flick of his wrist. “As you wish, Ka’anis.”

Lekt froze even as they released him. One could not out-run the Dark Folk. They had ways of crossing distance in an instant, faster than even sound could travel. “Why are you here alone in the Wilds in such a state, little Forsaken?” the death guard asked, those unsettling glimmers of eyes piercing into his soul.

“It could be a trap. They will sometimes use their own as bait,” the hooded one said.

“I doubt that.” The death guard drew her blade, a narrow and wicked thing wielded with two hands. “Let him answer.”

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“Exiled,” Lekt said hoarsely. It wasn’t a lie, even if it was not the whole truth. “I refused the Maker’s blessing.”

“Then you are rarer than I thought.” She stepped towards him, but the blade was not raised. Instead, she held it down at her side and reached behind her back with her other hand. He tensed, but after a moment, she tossed a skin of liquid to him. “You must thirst, if you lap desperately at the drippings here. Drink.”

Lekt’s brow furrowed. “This is a trick.”

“If I wanted you dead, I would not stoop to poison when my merciful blade suffices.”

He cracked the seal on the skin, sniffing deeply. It smelled not like water, but faintly of alcohol and earthy spices. “What is this?”

“It is athyss, the staff of life. It will fill your belly as well as quench your thirst.”

Once upon a time, he had heard the Maker’s Chosen crack stolen casks of the fermented drink and imbibe until their wits left them. It was filling enough to march on and just alcoholic enough to be safe from sickness. His people had less of a tolerance to it than the Dark Folk, but it promised survival even if it slowed his reflexes. “Why?”

The hooded one clucked his tongue. “You perceive of a gift dzheni only its mandibles.”

Lekt didn’t know the phrase, but he understood he was on much shakier ground with the hooded one than with the death guard. He drank, reveling for a moment in the sweet earthiness of the drink. Thick and rich, it filled him more than any gruel he had ever eaten. The spices hit as an aftertaste. He coughed a little and thumped on his chest, feeling warmth spread up his throat and out into his tortured limbs.

“You crossed our path and did not attack,” the death guard explained. “Perhaps that is because you are unable, but I am not so certain.” Her eyes flashed in the darkness and she sheathed her blade when Lekt made no move to lift himself any more than he needed to for the drink. “I think our meeting is fated.”

The Forsaken lying on the ground didn’t understand the meaning of the word, but the death guard spoke it with reverence. Her companion, however, shifted his weight back and forth in annoyance. “This wretched thing is not what Her Radiance spoke of, Ka’anis.”

“Perhaps not,” Ka’anis said almost indifferently. “But his mind is a doorway into the Forsaken world. Her Radiance is most clear on the value of listening to such things. You will take Qudan and return to her, making a full report.”

“And leave you alone with this thing?” her companion balked.

“I do not sleep to have my throat slit. Better I remain than you.” The death guard waved him away. “I will tend to this one.”

The hooded Dark Folk sighed and threw up his hands, then coiled his noose swiftly. “Be it upon your head, shala’zai.”

Lekt flinched at the sound of that insult rolling easily off his lips. He knew the meaning of the word, having heard it used often as a slur against the Dark Folk’s walking dead: it meant something akin to ‘brainless corpse’, only harsher. He cringed back in case the death guard struck out at her companion, not eager to be caught in the middle of such a skirmish.

Instead she laughed, the sound as silvery as the pealing of the bell. “Sweet words, my brother. Let them not come back to sting you.”

The hooded one climbed onto the back of the great insect mount and tugged on the reins, turning it back the way it had come. He made no retort, leaving the death guard alone with Lekt.

“You let him speak so?” Lekt croaked. Any Chosen would have split a skull open for such an insult.

“Why should I be troubled by empty air?” The death guard crouched down beside him, close enough that he could smell the sweet incense that clung to her body. “Let us be properly civil, even in this uncivilized place. My name is Ka’anis. What is yours?” Her voice seemed amused. “Unless, of course, you prefer I simply call you the Forsaken wretch I found dying in the wilds?”

He tried to hoist himself up, but his tortured back burned with sharp pain. “Lekt.”

“Well met.” It was strange that she needed no clicks to perceive through the darkness, moving with such certainty but little sound. “Your wounds are significant. Then again, I imagine the Maker’s servants are not accustomed to refusal.”

“You could say that,” he muttered, rubbing at his throat and the fresh bruising there from her friend’s lasso. “Why are you helping me?”

“A Forsaken who has turned from the Maker is rarer than a ruby amongst the slag heaps. Perhaps in that there is hope for something better.” She reached out and took his clawed hand, bringing it to her face so he could map her features.

Lekt’s first instinct was to gouge out those glowing eyes with his claws, but he stopped himself. Instead, he ran scarred fingertips over her face in greeting. She had the narrow, angular face of the Dark Folk, with high cheekbones and a sharp chin. As he moved, he felt her fingertips trace over the scars across his face, some from claws and some from whips, but all marks of struggle and pain. “You trust too easily,” he warned as he pulled his claws away. “I could have blinded you.”

She laughed. “Yet you did not. What does that say about my trust?”

“Fool,” Lekt muttered, reminded of Niss and her bloody death.

“You are in little condition to move, but we cannot remain here,” Ka’anis said. “If you would like, I can take us to a safer place.”

“Using your witchcraft?”

“Why yes. Is that a problem?”

Lekt considered his options. She was right, he needed to rest and heal, and they were still close to Lagarra. It was dangerous for a death guard to remain in such territory alone. Not that he was in much better straits: the Chosen could always reconsider their offer of redemption and come hunting for him. “Alright,” he growled, trying again to lift himself.

Ka’anis put a hand on his shoulder. For a moment, he felt a shock of sudden cold and heard the sound of a river flowing. The texture of the earth beneath him changed for a moment, from stone to black sand stretching endlessly in every direction. He sucked in a deep, sudden breath as he tried to adjust. As quickly as the sensations came, however, they fled. He shuddered as he felt the ground again change, now into the damp moist earth of a mushroom grove.

“Where are we?” He heard the lapping of water against stone, the occasional splash of a fish, and all the little sounds of various insects and other creatures moving through the growth around them.

“Two days’ travel west of where you were dying. This place is protected by ancient wards, laid down by my people in the Before. We are not likely to be troubled here.”

Lekt collapsed onto the earth, relieved despite everything he had ever heard about death guards. He had a chance at survival now, a chance to fulfill his impossible task. If nothing else, he could lay down and sleep without fearing being devoured. The Dark Folk could be treacherous, but they were hardly as cruel as the Cold Ones.

“Rest,” Ka’anis advised. “I will see what can be done for those wounds of yours.” With that said, she prowled into the depths of the grove, no doubt hunting for medicinal growths.

Lekt closed his eyes. If the worst he had to fear was a swift death from a sword blow, he was golden.