It’s the day after Arza, Mole, Rabbit, and Griffin had left to return to the Capital, and Haven has been abuzz with activity ever since.

There’s expansion work to be done, after all. Much to the delight of the elder children, plans for the second bunkhouse have been finalised, and a block at the end of Crystal Road is being cleared in preparation.

Everyone age fifteen and over has been mobilised for the effort. The man with the most work on his hands is Marcus, Haven’s carpenter, who’s one of the older residents of Haven, looking like he’s a few years older than Rann. While the Chief had been entrusted with overseeing the plans he drew up for the bunkhouse, any new building needs furniture. In this case, beds. Lots of them. New desks for the schoolhouse, new chairs, a new table and new benches for the tavern. Not to mention the need for more cutlery and more clothes to accommodate the expected growth in Haven’s population.

To my surprise, one of the things that didn’t need to be made was blankets; the wooden crates stored in the Cellars had plenty of them, still in pristine condition despite being over a hundred years old. Apparently, the wood they’re made from is so solid that when sealed the crate is airtight, so the goods held inside are in good condition. In fact, the majority of the otherwise out-of-place items in Haven came from those crates. All the books, the metal tools, nails, bedsheets, some items of clothing, an anvil, metal weapons, the seeds for the farm, even the four clocks around Haven were all brought down here in those wooden crates, and we’re still surviving thanks to them, even a hundred years later. Arza had noticed these clocks around town, and after checking one of them, she asserted that they’re absolutely Azorii-made, which is why they’ve lasted so long without any maintenance. It seems Azorii craftsmanship (or craftswomanship? They are an all-female race...) is a cut above the rest in this world.

Everyone in Haven had a job to do, and they set about doing them with vigour. The town hasn’t been this lively since the day we brought back the bloodbeast we hunted. The younger children are excited at the prospect for new friends coming to stay. The older residents look forward to having more helping hands around town, to pass on their skills and wisdom. The expedition team will likely be heading out more often to link up with the Wolf Pups bringing rescued children to Haven, and there may even be a second team established for such a duty.

There will be a tighter squeeze on our resources, of course. While clean water is plentiful, food has always been carefully rationed to make sure there’s enough to go around. As it stands, we’ve cultivated as much farmland as will fit within the walls of Haven. There has been a recent effort to start vegetable gardens around some of the homes where fertile soil is available, but in the long term, we may have to expand Haven’s walls themselves, beyond the natural gate formed by the black rocks that surround most of the town nestled up against the cliff.

Though, hopefully, we’ll have found a way out of this hell-hole before such an expansion would be necessary.

Now, where do I, an able-bodied young woman, fit into the flurry of work being done around town?

Lookout duty on a logging mission outside Haven, of course. Thanks to the heightened senses my wings give me, I’m quite good at sensing when strangers are near. At least, that's what I’ve been told. I feel like, by now, just as many people have snuck up on me as I have noticed other’s presence before I saw them. Regardless, I’ve been sent out with a small group of mostly men and the older teenage boys while they chop timber for the new bunkhouse. We’re about an hour’s walk south of Haven, deep enough south to be within the borders of the southern mud pine forest. We brought the same heavy sled we used for the bloodbeast hunt to drag the timber back to Haven.

Now, they’re called mud pines because they look like pine trees, but their leaves or needles rather are the same reddy-brown as the mud that coats the Abyss. As far as trees down here go, these are almost, almost, normal. No leering faces, no spiked roots, no carnivorous creatures pretending to be trees. They’re pretty straight, just like regular pine trees. The only thing weird about them is that their “bark” is just… mud, basically. That’s actually why they’re called mud pines; their bark is soft and sticky and earthy like the mud. You peel that off and there’s perfectly good timber underneath, but if this place follows the laws of evolution, I don’t know why trees would develop soft bark that gouges and can be scraped off easily.

Why do I know so much about these trees? I read about them in my down time back home, as per the Chief’s recommended readings now that I’m more or less an official member of the expeditionary team, and I’ve been staring at them for the past several hours on lookout duty. The woodcutters don’t really need my help moving the timber; Rob’s here, and he can carry them over his shoulder like they don’t weigh anything. Most of the work is cleaning the gunk off the fallen trees so they can be put onto the sled.

While I’m sure there are still plenty of things in this world, or even just the Abyss that’ll surprise, shock, or turn my whole world upside down, now that I’ve just come to accept that things here a wildly different and I have a very tenuous baseline assumption for what things are, it’s somewhat easier to mentally process everything and just move along with doing what I need to do. Yeah, the trees have faces. The trees try to eat you. It gets pretty tiring freaking out over every crazy, nonsensical little thing, so eventually it all becomes normal to you, even as part of your brain is curled up in the corner sobbing how “nothing makes sense.” The rest of your brain just gets on with it. When the fact that nothing makes sense makes sense, it stops being a problem and just becomes one of those ordinary things that are just a fact of life you never pay more than a moment’s notice to.

I’ve read about the banality of evil, though, not in this life, of course; how ordinary people can take part in atrocities if it’s just their everyday job, if they believe they’re just following the law, doing their job, unaware or not caring about what they’re doing. I’d like to introduce its cousin: the mundanity of insanity. When insanity and madness become commonplace, it stops triggering the alarm bells in your head. Your baseline understanding of what’s “normal” changes to adapt to your abnormal situation. The sky is usually blue. It gets dark at night, gets grey when it’s cloudy, and is all types of oranges and yellows when the sun rises or sets. If the sky suddenly turns black in the middle of the day, or the clouds glow red, you start to freak out. If it stays that way, though, you just get used to it; it becomes another mundane, insane fact of life. The mundanity of insanity. Not as catchy as the banality of evil, but hey, mine rhymes.

Though, I won’t have much of an opportunity to publish my theory on the mundanity of insanity as long as I’m stuck in this hell-hole.

Gods, I’m so bored.

“You still awake over there, Feathers? Been real quiet while we’re bustin’ our asses over here.” Johnny calls, grunting with effort as he takes measured swings at a mud pine’s trunk.

‘I’m on lookout duty. I’m supposed to be looking out, not having a chat.”

“D’you even need to be lookin’ out? Don’t ya wings do that for you, like how they picked up on the Crow kid followin’ us?” He asks.

“We’re making a lot of noise out here. Don’t you want my full attention to stay on our surroundings so we can move out if something’s moving towards us?”

“Ahhh, ain’t nothin’ but us out here this far southwest. You just don’t wanna get mud all over your pretty hands.” Johnny groans, wiping the “mud” off the trunk he just felled.

Oh, one more thing about these mud pines; they stink like tar. Actually, if they are somehow related to pine trees, then it may actually be a form of pine tar all over their trunks. Either way, it’s sticky, and it stinks, so I’m not complaining about not having to touch it.

“She’s doing the job Rann told her to do. You’re not doing yours. Back t’work.” Rob steps in, refocusing Johnny’s attention.

“I’m doin’ my job just fine, big guy. Just gets monotonous choppin’ wood, wiping all this stinkin’ mud off, over and over til we load up the sled and head back home. Hopefully, it’ll be the only trip we make.” Johnny continues to voice his complaints, but he is still doing his work.

“I like th’ monotony. ‘S calming.” Rob sighs glumly, getting back to work.

We’ve been at the logging site for about an hour, and the sled’s half-loaded already. I will have to help pull it back, but that’s frankly the easy part.

Though, a logging site leaves a lot of evidence of human activity. It may be a few days before the rains come to wash away the very obvious sled tracks that’ll lead right back to Haven. That doesn’t seem to be a concern, though, this side of the Seeping Wound. Few people head this far west in the Abyss. I don’t blame them, given there’s the Bloody Mire up north, and much of the south is mud pine forests, and well…

This place stinks, in a very literal sense. I understand why people generally don’t come this far west. Not to mention the Ghostwood up north or the Stonefields… everywhere here is either stinky, or creepy. Were it not for the cool breeze the Crystalfall brings rushing down the cliffs, Haven would probably smell just as bad.

Still, I was put on lookout duty. Looking out is what I’ll do.

…

“Feathers.” Johnny’s voice pulls my attention back to reality, as he shoves a bread roll in front of my face; my lunch for today.

“Ah, thanks.”

“Dunno why Rann decided we needed a lookout for some woodcuttin’. Not like we’ve been bothered out here before.” Johnny shrugs, sitting down across from me on a mostly dry stump.

“Well, we were followed all the way back to Haven after the last hunt. Doesn’t hurt to be cautious.”

“We weren’t in the mud pine forests last time. In case ya haven’t noticed, this place stinks worse than the south side docks in Newport after the trawlers have come in. That’s a smell that’ll stay with ya long after it’s gone.”

I imagine the smell of salt and fish. Can be unpleasant, especially depending on the state of the fish. Though at this rate, I might just take anything over this pine-tar stench that’s been burning my nostrils for the past couple hours. I’m going to bury my nose in the first soft-looking thing I see when I get back…

“I miss it, in a way.”

“Smell of the sea? You musta been pretty close to the coast if you lived in Sovrana.” He clues in pretty quickly. “Yeah. I never much liked fish. Or boats. Never thought I’d miss the sight and smell of ‘em.”

“I imagine we’re a long way from the sea, wherever it is in this world.”

“Longer than ya think, Feathers. This whole continent we’re in’s just one big circle. No inland seas, just a few rivers ‘round the place. Seafarin’s not something the natives of this place do.”

“I read in one of the more interesting books in the library that the Damned used to think we’d just been sent to the far side of the world, and that if we crossed the seas we could find our way back home. That theory died out after people from the New World started turning up in the Underlands, proving we probably are in another world altogether.”

“I dunno how they ever could have thought that. Back home we had one moon, not three. Can see that clear enough, even down here.” Johnny looks up to the overcast sky.

At night, you do get occasional glimpses of the three moons. Tun, Kin, and Yan, they’re called. Tun is the biggest, known as the Pale White for its colour. Kin is the Golden Glow, the second largest. Then there’s Yan, the Callous Red, the smallest, and what would otherwise be called a blood moon. Tun’s lunar month is only slightly longer than that of the moon back home, which makes timekeeping easy enough, especially considering how Kin’s is much longer, and Yan’s is almost the entire year, including the one night a year when it’s the only moon in the night sky, casting its red light on the world below.

“What was it like, in the New World? I heard all kinds of stories from people who say they’ve been there.”

“Oh yeah? What kinda stories?”

“Temple-cities filled with more gold than you can ever imagine? Defended by… lizardmen? Dragon-folk?”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Hah!” Johnny laughs. “Tell ya what, I ain’t no explorer, Feathers, but I’ve seen enough scaly pelts bought and sold around Newport to know that at least some of the tales those explorin’ types like to spin are true. Fortunately for us Newporters, those places are a ways off from us. Far enough that they don’t give us trouble on the daily.”

“What, lizard scales but no gold?”

“That’s what they always say. There’s so much gold they can’t possibly bring it back all at once. Not that they ever brought back more than a trinket or two to show off.” He shrugs, taking another bite from his bread roll.

“Did you see much of the New World itself?”

“Me? Nah. Newport had plenty of things to do, with the city growin’ bigger every day. Besides, all that lay beyond city limits was the jungle. And lemme tell you this, Feathers; while there wasn’t no lizardmen anywhere near the city, there’s plenty of other things in the jungle that’ll kill ya. Some fast, quick as an instant, others… slow, an’ nasty.”

“Sounds about as pleasant as this pit we’ve found ourselves stuck in…”

“Maybe, but we had a lot of learned types ‘round Newport, studyin’ whatever explorers bring back. There ain’t no books tellin’ you what to expect in the Abyss. Only experience, of others or yourselves, teaches that.”

We stop talking, for a while, just silently eating our lunch while keeping our eyes on the featureless, still forest. If something approaches us, there’s no way we won’t see it.

“So, what was things like, over in Sovrana?” Johnny asks, breaking the silence.

“Peaceful, mostly. Occasional duels here and there, but war was a “foreign thing”, especially when there was money to be made.”

“You get to travel much? Heard you could read Drachenkoenig pretty good.”

“Drachensprache, yes. I’d never been there, but I had a cousin there I exchanged letters with. As for travelling, I never went further than the borders of the Empire, but I saw a fair few country estates and urban mansions. Even went to the Imperial Capital a couple times in my life.”

“All the way to the Capital?” Johnny cocks an eyebrow, leaning towards me. “What’s the big city like? People from there who made it to Newport wouldn’t shut up about how Newport was a tiny village compared to the Capital.”

“I first went there when I was young with my sisters and father, and all I can remember is thinking how big everything was. The second time, I was eleven, travelling alone with my father as he personally delivered an instrument to a client. That time, I thought we’d gone to the wrong city with how different everything looked, how different everything… smelled. Turned out it was still the Capital, just we’d gone through it a different way, and had wound through the lower districts. The less… well-off districts.”

“The not-crazy-rich districts you mean. Yeah, don’t sound all that different from Newport. There was a big hill the rich loved buildin’ their mansions on, away from the stink comin’ out from the harbour. They love being close to the centre of power, but.”

“Not so close they can smell it?” I finished for him.

“I mean, the choices you had were smellin’ of shit and piss, or smellin’ of salt and fish. The rich didn’t have ta make that choice. Me? Salt and fish. Any day.”

I laugh, even as my nostrils flare at imagining… well, remembering the smell that lingers when large numbers of humans live close together with limited access to clean water, let alone hygiene products of any kind. Thank the gods the Chief is so particular on keeping things clean. I do my part to keep myself clean, as does everyone else, following the Chief’s example (and a few warnings here and there.) Thanks to the clean water that Arezza provides the Wolf Pups, they were able to stay clean and healthy, too. Yet that powerful stench of body odour, human excrement, and general filth isn’t something you soon forget. It’s like it’s right in front of me…

Because it is.

Standing just a few dozen steps in front of me is undoubtedly another human, filthy and dishevelled as they are. Long, black hair that hasn’t ever been washed comes down to their shoulders, concealing half their bearded face as their wide, vacant red eyes stare at me. What’s left of their clothes are rags barely holding together, with their arms, hands, and feet covered in reddish mud that’s permanently stained their skin. I didn’t hear him approaching. I didn’t see him approaching. I didn’t get that alarm in my head when someone’s close like I did before, but I certainly noticed them before Johnny did.

I jump to my feet, grabbing the spear and going to point it towards the man, but he scarpers in the opposite direction as fast as he can the moment I move, quickly vanishing amidst the trees.

“Who, or what the hell was that?!”

“He’s probably thinkin’ the same thing, Feathers. ‘Specially with ya wings out like that.” Johnny comments nonchalantly.

My wings? Ah. Both wings had raced out from under my cloak as I stood, reaching out to their full length with their eight blades drawn. He’s gone now, wings. You… we can calm down.

Still.

“Well, you’ll have to answer for him, Johnny. Who or what the hell was that?”

“Just a wildling, from the looks of him. Don’t see ‘em too often, ‘specially not ‘round here. Doubt he’ll be comin’ back here after seein’ you like that.” He shrugs, standing up and stretching his legs.

“You mean that was a person? Someone else in the Abyss?”

“There ain’t any people-shaped monsters down ‘ere, Feathers. ‘Cept maybe you. Wildlings don’t bother with groups, anyway, too dangerous. He won’t be back.”

“Are you sure he won’t try to follow us?”

“Well that’s your job making sure he doesn’t, ain’t it?” Johnny just grins, standing up and heading back to work.

“What? Do you want me to make sure he’s run off or something?”

“Somethin’ like that.” Johnny calls back, waving over his shoulder.

Gods… well, I know where everyone is. Easy to hear them, now that they’re chopping wood again.

In his hurry, the wildling man left wide, skidding footprints as he ran off through the mud. He was smart enough not to run straight, zig-zagging between the trees, but his tracks are still clear. I follow them for some fifty paces, but they just stretch deeper eastward into the forest.

Johnny’s probably right. The sight of a human with bladed wings probably scared the hell out of him, and he ran away as fast as he can. He’s long gone, and won’t be coming back. I’ll head back—

<>

—is what I thought. The second I turned around, that alarm went off in my head, and I spun back around to where I was just looking, my wings helping, or rather pushing me around as they rushed outwards and upwards. The wildling was running straight for me, screaming at the top of his lungs, holding a large wooden club above his head with the intent to bring it crashing down on me. I can barely point my spear towards him in time, but—do I strike to kill? I can’t block a club with a spear, the only way to stop him is to stab him. Do I kill him? He’s clearly trying to kill me, or at least injure me since he’s definitely attacking me, but I haven’t, I can’t just kill someone, can—

Were it not for my wings, I’d be dead. Or at the very least, suffering a severe head injury.

In my hesitation, the wildling had closed the distance between us, and tried to bring his club down on my head, only to find it stopped in its tracks as my right wing lifted to block it, impaling it on all four blades. The wildling tries to pull it free, to no luck, as the blades shift, bend slightly, then snap the club clean in two, each half falling to the ground with a wet thud.

“M… M-mm…” The wildling stutters with a deep, hoarse voice, staggering backwards in disbelief. “Monster!!”

He screams, turning back in a hurry to run deeper into the forest.

“Marina!” Johnny calls from behind me. Somehow, I instinctively dodge to the left, as an axe flies right past me, hitting the tree right in front of the wildling.

The wildling lets out another shriek of terror, before bolting in the other direction, disappearing into the woods once again.

“Well.” Johnny chuckles, walking up beside me with Rob right behind him. “He definitely won’t be comin’ back now. Was certainly braver than most wildings, comin’ at you like that.”

“Stupider, more like. Wouldn’t ‘ve ‘eard ‘im if he didn’t scream like that.” Rob comments, swinging his axe over his shoulder.

“The hells…” I pant, the adrenaline already wearing off. I’m glad the others came to help, but they wouldn’t have gotten here quick enough to stop the wildling from bashing my head in. Still, did…

“Did you call me by name, Johnny?”

“I needed your attention and I got it. What, would you rather me be so formal all the time? Nothin’ wrong with bein’ called Feathers, Feathers. Friends don’t have to be so formal. Ain’t that right, big guy?” Johnny chuckles, giving Rob a slap on the shoulder.

“I’m not your friend.” Rob glumly replies.

“Yeah, you’re lucky to have any friends with that kinda attitude. C’mon. Unless that wildling’s run off to get an even bigger club, he ain’t comin’ back.” Johnny shrugs, heading back to the logging site.

“Marina.” Rob says, turning to me. It’s hard to get a read on him, with him being so… glum, all the time. He always sounds like someone just ate the last slice of his birthday cake without asking.

“Yes, Rob?”

“Put your wings away.”

“Why?” I feel strangely compelled to ask. They just saved my life, again. They can be out for a bit, can’t they?

Rob just looks at the mud pine he’s standing next to. He traces his large finger down the tree’s trunk, gouging off some of the sticky tar lining it, inspecting what was now stuck to his finger… then flicks it at my left wing.

“They’ll get dirty.” He shrugs like he didn’t just dirty them himself, before heading off behind Johnny.

I can only stand there for a moment, dumbfounded, as my left wing shakes and flaps vigorously, trying to get this blackish-brown, sticky, stinky stuff off it to no avail, as the right wing points it wingtip back and forth between Rob and my left wing, seemingly as dumbfounded as I am at what Rob just did.

I wipe the gunk off as best I can with my hands, not that… I can wipe my hands on anything, given I certainly don’t want this stuff getting on my clothes, well enough that my wings are happy, for now, to go back in my cloak. I’ll definitely wash that spot with clean water later, wings, trust me. I’ll need to clean my hands properly, too.

I made it back to the work site shortly after Johnny and Rob got back. All the needed timber has been chopped down, now it just has to be cleaned. They use carved, shaped pieces of wood that cleans the gunky, wet “bark” off the trunks easily enough. What I didn’t expect was for Johnny to toss me one, motioning at a trunk in need of cleaning.

Well. This stuff’s already on my hands. May as well help…

So that’s what I did, for the better part of an hour, cleaning off the last few logs before helping load them onto the sled. My hands are now covered with that stuff which I’ve only barely managed to keep off my clothes, but the others have assured me that it’ll wash off “eventually” with “enough” water. When I pressed them for how long or how much water it’d take, they were unhelpfully evasive. All they said was the smell goes away before the dark brown stains on my skin would.

Once everything was loaded and secured on the sled, it was an uneventful, slow trip back to Haven. The sled needed four people pulling it as we slowly made up our way up the hill to the south of Haven, so I helped lighten the load for a bit until we made it to the long downhill slope to the gates. I kept an eye and an ear out on our surroundings, but the lack of any foreboding feeling that we were being watched never crossed my mind. That wildling had no interest in following us after what I did. I definitely don’t blame him, either; I’d run for it if someone not only had wings, but blades in their wings that could split a wooden club like it was a twig.

You’re more entwined with my thoughts than I knew, wings. When I saw those four silver flashes before me, I feared they’d be followed by a rush of blood, but you went for the club instead. You moved faster than I was thinking, too. I was so caught up on whether or not I wanted to harm or even kill someone that was about to bash my head open that I didn’t move fast enough. Really, with a spear, my only option was to stab. If I tried to block with the haft, the club would probably have smashed it in two. You did well, wings.

Soon enough, we were back inside the walls of Haven, as the Chief checked over the materials we’d brought, and if anything happened.

“A wildling came right up to the logging site?” The Chief asks a second time, for confirmation.

“Came right up to us, barely a few feet away. Took one look at Feathers and made a run for it.” Johnny answers.

“But then it came back, armed this time.” The Chief continues, making sure she gets the story straight.

“Sure did. Came at her with a nasty lookin’ club, not that he had a chance. One swoop of her wing-blades split the thing in two! He turned to run again, though not before I chucked an axe at him so he knew not to mess with us. He ran off screeching into the woods like a scared pig. No way in this hell he tried to follow us back.” Johnny finishes his story.

“And you’re certain you weren’t followed back, Marina?” The Chief asks me. I nod. “Hmm. Unusual actions for a wildling, but you did your duty, Marina. Well done.” She gives me a small, but satisfied smile.

“Sure glad Rann poached her from sentry duty. She’s saved our skin a few times out in the Abyss.” Johnny nods, giving me an affirmative slap on the back that makes my wings wiggle uncomfortably under my cloak.

“A job well done, all of you. You’ll get an extra helping of whatever you want from the kitchen tonight.” The Chief addresses our group, and is met with a few relieved cheers.

“After you all have a bath. You’re not allowed into the Tavern until your hands are as clean as the day you were born, and there isn’t so much of a whiff of that gods-forsaken mud pine stench about you.” She quickly clarifies, and is met with a few beleaguered groans.

I’m more than eager to have a bath, though. I like being clean, and I like staying that way. Besides, I promised my wings I’d clean them, and any promise I make, I keep.

That said, it took near-on three hours of scrubbing to get my fingers clean enough for the Chief’s liking so I’d be allowed into the tavern to eat dinner. Even then, there was still a slight brown stain on my fingernails that took several more days of scrubbing to finally clean off. At least it came off my wing easily enough.

Frankly, I’d be happy if I never had to touch the stinking tar of a mud pine ever again.