I grew up on the edge of the Siinlan, right at the bank of the Ashlit Mire; you could see it from the hill that used to be one of my favorite places to play as a child. Just my favorite place, mind—most people avoided that particular spot, especially at night, especially those years right after the attack, after the ashwights.

I look back now and understand how vague that is, "the attack," there are attacks all the time all over Solace, plenty of them involving ashwights, and there was nothing very special about what our little town had suffered the year after I was born, except perhaps that no one was killed, just some close calls and lots of injuries. Healed up without a single scar, those, praise the physicians. Except in the head, and in the eyes, you could see it there, even if I didn't understand it at that age, didn't know how it was connected to their reluctance to look. And I loved to look.

Because I didn't remember the attack, and anyway it wasn't really the Ashlit Mire I was seeing when I looked out from that hill, though it is very pretty in its own sinister sort of way, especially in the dark with the embertrees lit up by slow swirling patterns of silver-green from the ash-sludge below. No, I was seeing farther, even though I couldn't actually make anything out beyond the morass, or catch a glimpse past the high shimmer of the Siinlan Veil. Farther than the Mire on this side, or the other side, farther than the Gyring Ash flowing in between. Out of the Caustlands we all call home. Into the Abwaild.

The Abwaild. The other-place, the unknown, hostile to all us Fallen, humans and other people, the beasts, the birds, the trees, all of it, all of us. Most of would rather stay away, but not all. Not ones like me, and there are always ones like me, always have been, that's part of what it means to be a member of the human race. Or one of its unintentional children, like two of our companions on this venture of ours. I need to see, need to see beyond for real, something truly new, to swallow the unknown. Because I'm thirsty for it. Some of us always will be.

- Chioma Onyeneme, We'll Walk Until Our Feet Are Wet, Various Periodicals, 275 SE

Hafaljaheem, Auraramad, The Caustlands, 275 SE

Marwan Chadriji was getting pretty tired of the speech by the time it looked like Chioma might finally be about to wrap it up. He supposed it didn't help that he was anxious to get the actual start of the expedition properly underway, and that they were all sitting on the grass looking up at her like children on a school trip. It hadn't actually been all that long a speech, or even a bad one, as speeches went; the smattering of journalists from various Caustland State publications certainly seemed rapt enough. But he'd heard the whole thing before in about a hundred variations, they all had.

Something batted lightly against his right leg, and he glanced down to see a black-furred tail flicking back in the direction of its owner. He leaned over to let her know he was listening, and Sabiqah craned her neck up to whisper, one feline ear flicking in amusement.

"You're not very good at concealing boredom, Marwan. It's a wonder you ever survived in the Army, hard to kiss superior-officer posterior properly if you can't even convince dull people you find them interesting."

Marwan stifled a laugh and gave his head the smallest of shakes before whispering back. "She's not dull, I wouldn't ever say that, it's just..."

"Yeah, I know." Sabiqah stretched her front paws out in front of her and seemed to be within a hair's breadth of the kind of massive yawn only a cat was truly capable of. But she found her composure, and drew herself up again to whisper up at him. "Trust me, we all do. But she's wrapping up."

"Hopefully. And you're not very good at the whole not-bored act yourself, with that almost-yawn."

"Didn't do it, though, so it doesn't count. Anyway, I can get away with more, body-language wise. Not fair, but there it is. Only one other Caustland Cat with the journalists, and he's looking at Chioma, not me."

"Like no human knows what a bored Pircaat looks like. Come on."

She gave a feline shrug, dipping her head momentarily down below shoulder-level. "Sure, but they're not attuned to it the same way they are with other humans, they have to be paying attention. It's not instinctual. You, though, they definitely notice. Bet Chioma's gonna be annoyed with you."

There was a hint of mrowling laughter behind that last bit, and he let out a small whispered scoff in response. "She's too wrapped up in herself and the moment and all the attention to give a shit about a bored expedition member. But yeah, let's at least give her our full attention for the end here."

She just nodded, and they both settled back to listen.

"...to mark the start of a new era for we Fallen here on Solace: for humanity, for the Caustland Races, for everyone who's ever looked past the boundaries of the safe and familiar world of the Caustlands and wondered. We will be the first of the Fallen to touch the Solacian sea with skin or fur or feather, and we will bring its waters back, not just in bottles but in our words and memories, our shared dreams. Thank you for being here to share them as well. We march! The Siinlan awaits."

A small moment of silence, and then applause, though somewhat scattered as Chioma's choice of speechmaking venue didn't allow for a very large audience—the journalists, a few city dignitaries, a handful of Auraramad Army officers, and of course the members of the expedition itself. There was Zheng Xiansu, a Caustland Crow from Zhon Han who studied the strange flora in the Abwaild out beyond the Siinlan. Sabiqah Jahangir, with whom he'd been whispering, a Caustland Cat from Nainadion who studied Abwaild fauna and was an accomplished physician as well. Astrud and Shu, the pair of Somonei nuns hired in the hopes that their trained-almost-from-birth combat skills would help keep everyone alive in the dangerous unknown.

And there was himself, of course. Marwan Chadriji of Auraramad. Grumpy old Army veteran turned academic turned adventurer, apparently. He still couldn't quite believe he'd agreed to come along on this mad trip, but really there was no way he'd have been able to pass it up. The Praedhc lived out in the Abwaild, and they were his whole field. Sure, he could go on interviewing groups on the edges of the Caustlands, reading old translations, trying to learn new languages so he didn't have to rely on old translations—or he could meet people no Fallen had ever even heard of.

Sabiqah nudged him with her front paw. "Come on, Professor, time to stand up and go. Time for thinking deep thoughts later."

Marwan started and laughed at himself and saw that Sabiqah was indeed standing up, stretching out her hind legs after sitting on her haunches for so long, and that everyone else seated on the hill was rising as well. He hopped to his feet and turned to pick up his pack. Yep, still heavy as Hell. "Yeah, yeah. Thanks Sabiqah."

She nodded and stretched. No big pack for her, of course, just a harness with a few pouches for essentials, but then he was fairly tall and stocky for a human male; she weighed maybe a sixth what he did and stood perhaps a quarter his height on all fours. And a Pircaat's frame wasn't exactly built for burdens anyway.

"Hey Marwan! Mind if I hitch a ride?" Ah, and speaking of burden-bearing, there was Zheng Xiansu, looking up at him from the grass, wings spread. Not that he'd be much of a burden. Caustland Crows might be a lot bigger than a common crow, bigger than most common ravens in fact, but they were still flying creatures and therefore pretty lightweight. Hitching rides on the shoulders of human friends and colleagues was pretty standard practice.

Though it's probably going to be either me or Chioma for him, almost the whole trip. Maybe standing on Sabiqah's back now and then, when he's not flying to scout ahead, and we'll have to be careful about that, too dangerous. There were, of course, two other humans in the expedition party, but the Triune Path religion followed by Somonei like the two nuns had weird theological prejudices about non-humans, something about not being high enough up the reincarnation ladders. Bigoted crowshit, in his opinion. But they were good fighters, maybe the best in the Caustlands by some estimations, and this wasn't exactly going to be a stroll.

"Yeah, Xiansu, sure. Hop on," he said, aware that the Cropr had been standing there waiting for an answer a few moments too long. "Sorry, I got a little lost in thought."

"No problem," Xiansu said, and fluttered up to perch on the leather shoulder strap of Marwan's pack. "Plenty of thoughts to get lost in right now, for all of us."

Marwan nodded, and glanced over at Chioma, who was holding court with some of the journalists. He was about to say something when one of the Somonei nuns walked over. Astrud, the shorter albino one. At least that's what he assumed she was, with her pinkish-blue eyes and white eyebrows. He wasn't about to bring it up on such short acquaintance.

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"Ms. Onyeneme," the Somonei said, "we have to get going if we're going to keep to schedule." Her voice was calm, as he supposed befitted a nun of such a meditation-focused religion. Though that didn't quite explain her partner Shu's constant lean-forward nervous energy. Maybe Somonei training actually had calmed her down and she would have been positively frantic without it, who knew.

"Thank you, Astrud," Chioma replied. "You're right, we should be going." She flashed the journalists a brilliant smile and hefted her own pack up from the grassy ground onto her shoulders. "Sorry, that's all the questions I can answer for now."

Astrud strode over to where Shu stood looking out over the Ashlit Mire, and tapped her Somonei partner on the shoulder. They shared a look Marwan couldn't quite read, then looked back toward the Mire together. Marwan moved to join them, with Xiansu still perched on his right shoulder and Sabiqah padding along by his left leg.

The Mire. He wasn't surprised that this view had inspired Chioma as a kid, it was damned impressive. You could follow its tangle of embertrees left and right all the way to the horizons, becoming just a grey-green smudge as it moved into the distance. You couldn't actually see into the Abwaild, though, as the rising silver shimmer of the Siinlan Veil obscured everything past about a dozen embertrees deep into the Mire.

"One last look," Chioma said from behind him.

"One last look," Marwan agreed. "I have to admit, I have a hard time taking inspiration from it the way you do. I just see a barrier, you know? An annoying, dangerous obstacle between me and where I need to go. It's pretty, sure, but so's a wall of fire."

"It'll be behind us soon enough," Chioma said. "Let's get going. In formation, like we've discussed. Might as well start practicing now."

They all formed up without further comment, and started down the hill toward the town's back gate, the one facing the Mire. Chioma in the middle as befit the founder (and funder) of the expedition, the two Somonei nuns up front, Marwan taking up the rear with Xiansu bobbing along on his shoulder.

Sabiqah stayed on his left at a brisk feline trot; he knew she'd had to undergo some pretty serious training for this trip, Fathom-meditations and techniques to bridge the gap between her own natural endurance and that of the humans she'd be travelling with. No Fallen creature has greater distance-endurance than humans, she'd told him. Most of the time that doesn't matter so much, but on an expedition like this I'm going to basically need magic to keep up.

Of course they'd probably need just about all the magic they could muster between now and their return to the Caustlands. Every member of the expedition had at least some facility with the Fathom, though with a fairly broad spectrum of focus.

Chioma was frankly the weakest link in that regard; she'd had some level of training since she was a child, but a lot of it was rich-kid dilettante training in comparison to the rest of the party. She had seemed competent enough with the Akrafena sword on her hip during the handful of training sessions they'd all had together, clearly understood the basics of marshalling the Fathom to empower her strikes and defenses and movements, had built up enough resilience to shrug off at least a handful of moderate would-be injuries before she got into real trouble.

Sill, compared with the two Somonei she was a scrappy ferret between a pair of battle-hardened wolverines. Of course, that's why she'd hired them. Marwan could only imagine what it must have cost; the Presilyo charged dearly for the services of its warrior monks and nuns.

He noticed a slight tremor in his sword hand, and stilled it. God willing, none of them would need any of their fighting skills, just the rest of their wits. God willing, he wouldn't have to relive even the smallest part of the war, sorry, border skirmish. Only that was crowshit, and he knew it, because he'd privately ceased to believe in any kind of God years ago, because they were going into the Abwaild, because he knew. So he stilled the tremor, and took a deep breath, and walked through the city gates.

"Good luck!" one of the guards called out.

"Thank you," Chioma responded. The rest of the party held their peace until they were halfway across the hilly patch of ground between the city and the edge of the Mire. Xiansu stirred on Marwan's shoulder.

"Nervous?" he asked in his slightly raspy voice. Marwan felt the brush of feathers along the skin of his neck as the Cropr ruffled his wings.

"God, yes," Marwan said. "Of course I am."

Xiansu laughed, a series of soft caw caw caws. "Glad to know I'm not the only one. Tell me, Marwan, exactly what went wrong in all our heads that we're about to be doing this, wading right into the Ashlit Mire on our way across the Siinlan?"

"Men and all their children, feathered and furred, men and all their children have always been mad," Marwan quoted. "Woman cat and bird and child, seek Elsewhere in its time."

"Oh Heavens," Xiansu said. "Is that how you're going to spend the whole expedition? Spouting poetry in response to questions?"

Marwan laughed, and liked the way it sent a stream of steady-relief to his nervous limbs. "I'm not about to promise I won't. But seriously, we're people and people want to see new things, around the corner, across the river, even when the river glows and is made of ash-sludge and has Things lurking under it."

Sabiqah whacked him on the back of his calf with her tail; apparently she'd been listening. "Don't talk about those, not just yet. Ashwights are bad enough if we run into any."

"Mmmm," Marwan said. "Fair enough. Though I'm optimistic about the ashwights, it's been a while since the guards on the wall have seen them in any serious numbers, and a few I'm sure we can handle." Though it would be ironic if our expedition ended before we even made it all the way out of the Caustlands. No, not ironic. Maybe just terrible and sad. Maybe stop thinking about it.

"I'm not sure at all," Astrud said from up ahead. "Complacency is a killer, terror is a tomb, confidence is a knife's edge. You have to find just the right amount of afraid, and that's hard."

Shu glanced at her partner and shrugged. "Do what needs doing and let the Divine sort it out. I'm ready."

"We're all going to need to be ready," Chioma said. "There's the edge of the Mire. Draw your weapons. Sabiqah, there's your boat. Jump in when we get close enough and I'll tie it to my belt."

Marwan looked down at the Pircaat and grinned. "You get the Very Important Person treatment, Sabiqah, sitting pretty with your paws clean while the rest of us wade through the muck."

"Yeah, well, I'm too short for this crowshit," Sabiqah said. "And too heavy to ride on someone's shoulder."

Xiansu cawed a laugh, and Marwan tossed his head in the Cropr's direction. "Speaking of which, mind switching shoulders? Better if you're not on my sword-arm side for this bit. Watch my flank." He was actually quite happy to have Xiansu there, because as well as being an expert on Abwaild flora the Caustland Crow was quite adept at defensive spells.

"Sure," Xiansu said, and hopped over.

They crested the last of the hills before the Mire, and there it was, just a few dozen paces in front of them. Ash-sludge slurried and churned, crusted with a semi-solid layer the color of charcoal that put off soft grey illumination, parting in places for brief flashes of stronger silver-green light. Up from the sludge rose the bent and twisted trunks of reddish embertrees, here and there a tangle of undergrowth between them, making any path through the Mire a mazelike one.

And there was indeed a boat, a small and simple thing with a thick rope coiled up inside and tied to the bow. Sabiqah waited for the rest of them to stand on the shore before she jumped in and rose up on her hind legs, surveying the sifting patterns of light and dark on the surface of the bog. She unfolded one of her front paws, flexing the resulting six-fingered almost-human hand before using it to point toward an especially turbulent spot. Everyone paid close attention; Sabiqah was the only one of their number who had ever crossed the Siinlan without using the great bridge far to the East.

"That's going to be at least two or three of them. Maybe they'll stay dormant as we pass, maybe they won't, but I don't see any other signs of ashwights so we may as well take care of these so we don't have to worry about them rising up behind us."

Marwan thumbed the hilt of his old officer's sword, feeling the corded grip, pulling out familiar memories from the sturdy scimitar. If we're going to do this, let's do this. He reached into the Fathom, seeing the tide-and-pull of underlying realities, threading here, tugging there, strands wound into muscle and bone, forming fields around his blade, the readied potential of a spell around his free hand. Ready to scythe and wound and kill, but that was fine, he told himself, these were ashwights, not people. No more killing people. No more hurt.

The Somonei waded in first, Shu with her big pudao polearm, curved blade flashing as she twisted the haft between her fingers, Astrud with her simple but heavily-imbued machete, though really all the Somonei pair's equipment carried powerful enchantments. These were serious veterans. Can't have come cheap, Marwan thought again.

Chioma followed, sword drawn, pushing Sabiqah ahead of her in the boat for now. Marwan waded in after them. It was unpleasant, the ash-sludge pulling at his trousers, slowly trickling in to fill his boots. Waders would have been nice, but this wasn't the sort of where they could afford to carry anything beyond the essentials. Had to make room for food.

Nothing at all to eat out there, not for Fallen like them.

It happened very fast. Shu jabbed her pudao into the spot Sabiqah had pointed out, and up they came, one two three, misshapen misunderstandings of the human form, all lumpy flesh and disproportioned limbs and strange round eyeless heads, more maw than anything else.

They screeched, and Marwan felt a hard shiver go up his spine. The first went down burbling as Shu's pudao came back around to slice its blade clean through the creature's midsection. The second died a bare second after Sabiqah landed on its chest, clinging with the claws of three feet while using the fourth to rip out its throat. The third lost its head to Astrud's machete, spurting ichor from a neck stump weirdly devoid of anything like real anatomy.

A moment's silence. Breaths of relief.

"Behind you!" Xiansu yelled into his ear. Marwan spun just in time to see a ragged-claw hand swipe at his ribs as it rose up from the muck, turned barely aside by the Cropr's hasty deflecting spell. "Khara!" Marwan swore, and brought the center of his scimitar's curved edge down right on the crown of the creature's lumpy head. It split with a sickening shlunk of parting pseudo-flesh, and the thing shuddered, fell back into the sludge that had birthed it.

Sabiqah had jumped back into her boat, and the party circled round it, facing east, west, north, south, waiting.

Nothing came. Marwan felt his pulse slowly return to normal. His hand was steady. It had come, it had gone, they had survived. The journey was begun in earnest.

Plenty more ahead.