The Rot of Koschei

[Ataraxis]

The Rot of Koschei

Act I - The Resurgence


[ Dramatis personae ]

Lillian Marici Sesthal
Valery Nabokov
Ivan Petrovich
Andreï Kasparov

***

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.”

Sir Francis Bacon, in The Advancement of Learning

[Ataraxis]

***

Dear Mr Mrs gender-ambiguous scholar and friend,

This is the last scrap of paper I could find in the laboratory. Lacking the sheer time and lumberjacking gusto to run off and saw down a tree, I chose to make do with it, so apologies for the above strikethroughs. Consider the lines I would have saved had you been more open with your identity… in fact, I blame you for this. Apologies retracted.

With reference to the contents of your last letter: I am systematically disinclined to show you the light of my gratitude. Alas, I find that I must, so feast your eyes on the seldom witnessed radiance that I exude over this grease-stained slip of cellulose. Your suggestion [to acquire and subsequently peruse the genomic libraries of extinct aquatic species from the eastern coasts near Vogstok] has led to a renewed spark in the venture my colleagues have long considered dead in the waters, so to speak. Yes, enjoy this horrible pun, the very culmination of my twenty-five year sacrifice to the field of aquatic wildlife biology.

Simply put, what we now have on our hands is the harbinger of a resurgence. The first organism obtained from our investigations of the Salvaran coastlines bears an unmistakable genetic resemblance to the vanished ‘cottus cognatus’ (and as such will hereafter be referred to as ‘cottus cognatus similis’ or ‘slimy sculpin (almost)’), but there was something I found intrinsically funny about a few of its gene markers. Upon a more meticulous analysis, I discovered it shared key sequences with the ‘panthera tigris altaica’, an endangered subspecies of tiger found in the northern hinterlands of Salvar!

I will keep you informed of any development or potential breakthrough pertaining to this mystery. I will not keep you informed of my progress with yours (which is frankly stagnant).

Yours faithfully,

Andreï Kasparov

P.S.: I am late with this reply due to the sudden rush of work that followed my discovery. Preparations for the study of the slimy sculpin (almost) in its natural habitat are complete. I will join the rest of my team as soon as I learn how not to drown. Yes, ironic.

P.P.S.: You had best comprehend the implications of this unlikely genetic linkage, lest I begin to question the relevance of our correspondences.

P.P.P.S.: I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

P. N.B: Send me some paper with your response.

[Ataraxis]

“Clever how your letters of thanks never actually say thank you,” Lillian groused before heaving a sigh, willowy arms flopping lazily on the other side of the riverboat’s railing. “Ever the sly old codger, aren’t you Andreï?” In a game of malice, she held the letter at the tip of her fingers, an impish smile playing across her lips every time it fluttered too strongly in the nipping breeze.

Her mischief was swiftly punished when the paper slipped away, flapping in the wind like the taunts of an escaping bird. The teenager yelped, scrambling over the gunwale to catch it in the nick of time, but squealing again when she barely avoided a tumble overboard. Upon noticing the enquiring mumbles and looks of other passengers, she did as was her custom after a hefty dose of public humiliation – that is, shy away in utmost shame until it made onlookers look away, uneasy.

The ordeal over, she pocketed the missive after a few careful folds and found her place again at the port side of the deck. The day was draped grey and sullen, a staple of weather in most northern countries, and its dreary ghost had taken possession of the river coursing beneath. Iorlan’s Canal was as dead as watercourses came, its funerary stillness broken only by the backwash of the steamboat. Neither the snow nor the ice was wont to take hold in these milder regions, but the scenery was cold enough on its own.

Dispiriting as it was, the ferry ride was the only way to reach Vogstok, beside the rare and slow-moving caravans or the even more foolish hike through the barren backwoods of Salvar. Even then, she had wasted a week traveling on foot to the bottom-end of Lake Holgolov, upon which slept the island city of Vongolovska. There, she had lost an additional day in wait of the returning ferryboat, twenty-four long hours that saw her face grow as bleak and jaded as the other handful of citizens who deigned leave the safety of their homes.

Vongolovska was dark and dismal, as though a veil was constantly pulled over its roofs, stealing away what little sun pervaded the ashen clouds. It was as close to a soulless city as she had ever seen, but Lillian felt that it had not always been so. There were traces of better times, children's toys and festive ribbons littering the dusty streets, though bedraggled and discolored by the wear of time and weather. Clearly, there was an old story here, perhaps one of conflict that festered into oppression, or of hope lost in the spiral descent toward abandonment. Whatever it was, it lingered in the chipped stones of the bell tower, whispered beneath the grey ruins and the burnt chapels, desperately seeking to be heard, to unravel its mysteries to the one soul who would so choose to stop and listen.

Lillian, alas, was not the long-fated recipient of this forgotten tale – that task would one day fall to another free spirit. There was a different mystery demanding that light be shed upon it, one that was of more immediate importance to the girl, and its first clue was the quaint and greasy letter stashed in the pocket of her dress. The second clue, and the most determining of the two, was the three weeks of silence that had followed the arrival of this very same letter. Nary a word from the biologist, even after she had written her response to his eccentric epistle and sent it along with a stack of unused paper. It worried her: by Andreï’s wording, his replies should have come aflutter, not diminished in frequency.

Not ceased altogether.

[Ataraxis]

“You’d better have a terrible excuse for this,” Lillian warned, her admonition more fear than anger as she watched the distant line of trees shift to the west like a never-ending black snake. “You developed a phobia of paper, or you contracted allergies to ink,” the girl began in a hopeful tone, but it was quick to collapse. “Your messenger bird was shot in a hunting accident…” The more farfetched the reason, the more furious she would get, but at least fury was an emotion she could cope with; anything else only invited worry, sorrow... bereavement.

‘Don't jump to conclusions until you find out what really happened, Lily,’ she advised herself, keeping the negativity at bay. Her vivid imagination was simply preparing for the worst; it did not mean that this illest of scenarios would come to pass. Then, there was also the matter of her trust in the illustrious biologist’s abilities to survive, his unwonted penchant for being chosen as some beast’s midday brunch having become quite a conversational piece among his fellow scholars. It was legendary to the point that scientists expected each of his published works to include a compelling narration of an exciting brush with death.

“After all, they do call him the Terracan,” Lillian said at last, sketching the faintest beginnings of a smile. "If he died, he’d bring shame to cockroaches all over the world.” Besides a chuckle, this also brought her new resolve.

The time was nearing; within an hour, the river would open on a vast sea, with its great ice floes, pale towers darting from fields of white, and shelves of compact snow that had calved from the mainland so long ago. There she would find Vogstock, find the answer to her questions and, hopefully, find Andreï himself, alive and well.

The boat’s steam horns whistled as one, a long brassy bellow that was, to Lillian’s surprise, soon answered by three sharper blows. Making for the prow, she lurched over the railing and stared out, seeing three large vessels patrol the canal along its width to form a blockade. Though she saw no cannons, the craft of these ships allowed no misunderstanding as to their function. They were of Salvar’s nascent naval force, and their presence did not bode well for what lay ahead.

The passengers waited in tense silence, a lull during which the captain was in communication with the other ships by way of straight keys, a new communications technology borrowed from the Aleraran sky-ships. The door to the bridge clicked open and a closely-shaven man with a stern gaze and sagging eyes stood before them all, a slip of paper drooping limply in his callous hand.

“The... the bridges to Vogstok have been destroyed,” the captain said at last in a grating Salvic, his voice harsh yet quavering. “All of her citizens are to be considered dead. We are returning to Vongolovska, and will then shut down the ferry service until further notice.”

In the brusqueness of that moment, the blood in her veins had run cold and solid. Lillian could not count the beats her heart had skipped.

[Ataraxis]

Though none would know of this upon first meeting the black-haired teenager, Lillian was a surprisingly impulsive person. Perhaps not in times when yielding to impulsion meant putting herself in a dreadful spotlight, granted, but she could not help it whenever matters of the heart were involved. For family, for friends. If she ever fell for a kindred spirit, for love as well, most likely. Now that she no longer had a family, the girl only clung on to a handful of people she could label as true friends, and though she had never met him in the flesh, Andreï was one of them. His life’s work had intrigued her for many years, and she had chosen to establish contact with the biologist but a few months ago. Thus unravelled her most bizarre – but genuine – friendship to date.

“I don’t often go in the business of saving lives, so consider yourself lucky,” she whispered from beneath a sackcloth drape, somewhat dampened by the night’s clammy weather. She wriggled uncomfortably, then repressed a gasp as the motion accidentally elicited the wooden clank of oars. Lillian played dead, holding as still as a possum. When she heard nothing but the quiet rush of broken water underneath, she peeked out from the jute covers, and up at the steamboat’s railing. No one.

Relieved, she climbed to one knee, careful not to shake the emergency boat. Having gone into hiding there on impulse when the captain had announced the assumed death of Vogstok, she had no choice but to wait in perfect stillness till fell the curtains of the night. Finally, it was time to move. Though it was possible that the scholar might not actually need saving, she was not one to leave things to chance – especially not since the poor girl had been down on her luck since conception.

Lillian knit her fingers and closed her eyes, giving the strange impression that she was praying. In her mind’s eye, however, she was hard at work on an exercise of visualization, all of her focus on the image of a spider’s web. It stretched, as if pulled taut in opposite directions. Afterward, it twisted on itself to become a single strand of thick and glistening white, then black. Slowly, her eyes cracked open and saw that her hands had disengaged, a peculiar cord of dark matter now stretching between her joint fingers. On one of the four ropes that suspended the dinghy, she touched two points distanced by a mere arm’s width, to which the ends of her sorcerous web were now attached.

Thrice did she repeat the whole process, until all of the cables were thus connected. Unsheathing the glass dirk from her rope belt, she sawed each off between their two nodes so that only the spun web would support the boat’s weight. A final weaving, and she connected all four replacements by a single strand, which she held firmly. “That should do it. Now, slowly, carefully…” As she was now in contact with all webs, she had willed them to stretch by means of mental imagery. The dinghy slipped quietly down, until its bottom kissed the river without a splash.

Just as planned, no undue attention was drawn this way. No one would notice the theft of an escape boat until the morning, and at that time it would already be too late, for the girl would already be far off – into the horizon, she added whimsically. With a single thought, the webs vanished from existence, leaving only wispy streams of black smoke that quickly followed suit; no longer affixed, the dinghy's distance with the steamboat widened. Lillian, with a nervous smile across her lips, produced the oars from the covers and slipped them into the oarlocks at her sides, quietly sinking the blades into the dark river.

Stealing into the night like a criminal on the run, Lillian rowed on toward the eastern floes.

[Ataraxis]

To sail Iorlan’s Canal in the solitude of the night held a quality of liberation, a certain measure of freedom that momentarily relieved the burdens from her spirit. It was, in truth, as a rare breath of fresh air in a life thick with dust that never settled. For hours she traveled in the moonlit cold, warmed only by the drape of jute and a coat fashioned from the pelt of a Drave that had almost devoured her, so long ago. She found companionship in mere sounds; in the dips of the oars, the churning of dead waters and the crystalline trickles that ended each cycle. Some would have found the repetition maddening. The girl found it movingly peaceful.

As if sailing without a destination, in a world devoid of all life but one’s own. Movingly peaceful.

Yet Lillian was all too aware that no good thing ever lasted long. Thus was she none the more surprised when the three frigates she had seen earlier ebbed into view, still quietly making their rounds a mile away from the mouth of the canal. Seeing that there would be no getting by them unnoticed, she dipped the left oar and held it steady, stirring the waters white as the dinghy veered for the right bank. From the serenity of a moonlit escapade to a dreadful hike in the crooked shadows of the trees along the river; truly, she was unfortunate.

Barely had the ship’s helm struck an incline of wet grit that Lillian was already straddling over the railing. After the all too arduous task of pulling the vessel upslope and stashing it away for later use behind a large thicket, the teenager strapped her leather bag on her back and embarked on the journey she knew would turn her legs into formless pulp. “Oh, I wonder: how many times have you told yourself ‘calisthenics every morning if I survive this’, Lily?” She lifted her chin in consideration, then scowled. The sheer numbers put her to shame.

A healthy man, she knew, could run a mile in a little over five minutes. Thirty to forty at the pace of a leisure walk. Granted, Lillian was travelling through harsh terrain with sharp bends, steep slopes, toppled boles and a multitude of roots in such twisted protrusions that they seemed as skeletal hands, waiting to snatch the warmth from the living. Still, there was something deeply mortifying in taking over two hours to reach the coast - and in horrible shape at that. Cuts on her calves were the mementos of a long wade through thorn-bushes, while the hems of her dress were worn to shreds by the snagging of mischievous branches. And even in the chill of a Salvaran night, she had to continuously dab the sweat from her face and neck to keep herself, frail as she was, from catching a cold.

The spectacle of waste and ruination that lay before her, however, was so profoundly horrendous that her aches and pains were swiftly numbed away. As the captain had been informed, the bridges to Vogstok had truly been destroyed, now nothing but severed ropes here and flotsam there, with but a few surviving pieces still miraculously hanging on support pillars. The naval forces had been thorough in their work; the damage, she saw, was done by a number of calculated cannonades. With rising apprehension, she looked to the other side of the waters, to the stretch of white drowned in gray-blue shadows. The island-trapped city seemed oddly… quiet.

‘Unless they learned to sleep through bombardments, that’s an alarming observation in and of itself.’ Then, something stirred her from her brooding. In statuesque stillness, she waited with ears perked, listening hard. ‘There it is again.’ A faint bubbling, rising over the ebb and tides.

There in the silt, an incongruity that felt of dark omens.

[Ataraxis]

Just a fish.

Or so she was tempted to say. Somewhere on the shoreline, rocked by the lap of the sea, the carcass of an animal had been washed free from the mud. Lillian was kneeling close to study it, prodding away the pebbles and silt from the body with a stick found buried halfway into the mire. She saw that her assumption was in part correct. “A sculpin. Dead.” The stick was drawn across the mouth to pull back a fold of its skin, revealing multiple rows of filed barbs.

“Miniature fangs.” Lillian frowned, obviously discomfited by the discovery. It was unlike any sculpin she had seen, what with its coal-black scales, its longer and more flexible body. Like an eel’s. The dorsal and pectoral fins were knife-like, with dark and crimson stripes over the membrane. The eyes were bulbous still, but held an inherently serpentine quality to them. “There’s more to it than a tiger’s genes, Andreï. How could you miss that?”

Unfortunately, she already knew the answer. This was not the same kind he had discovered, over three weeks ago. Though she feared to contemplate the implications of this, her mind had worked against her will. “No organism can change its genetic makeup in so little time. And even if one could, these changes are too… arbitrary. They serve no purpose, give no real advantage.” The fangs came back to mind, and she knew they announced a change to a carnivorous diet. The tiger-stripes and the snake-eyes, however, were without rhyme or reason. An evolutionary mistake? No, more than that. A failure. “When?” she asked, visibly perturbed. “When did nature start making prototypes?”

Alas, Lillian also knew the answer to that. Standing up, she looked over to the sleeping city, eyes grim with worry. ‘Never. She never did.’

She could spare no time to recover the dinghy and schlep it all the way back. Thus, an alternative was quickly devised. Dirk in hand, she approached the stone rise on the shore that was once a part of the bridge, watching with intent what remained of it in the waters. Counting the pieces that still stood on support beams. Measuring distances between each – an average of fifty feet, she concluded.

That was all she needed to know before throwing the weapon, seconds later hearing a distant twang as the blade sank inches-deep into a wooden beam. The pitch had been fast and the aim true, aided by the eldritch wind that had been weaved into its core. What was going to help her cross, however, was the thick thread of sorcery that linked the pommel to her hand. She tied her end sturdily to one of the heavy poles that remained on the railing to her left.

And against all expectations, Lillian hopped onto the taut string. She seemed oblivious to the risk, advancing at a steady pace on the tight-rope with a balance and dexterity that belied her usual clumsiness. So poised, she seemed more spider than funambulist. In this manner she crossed the waters, traveling from crumbled bridge to crumbled bridge, calmly finding solid structures wherever she could for a toss of her dirk. Yet, in truth, she was as far from calm as she could be.

In his final letter, Andreï had called this a resurgence. Three weeks past, the biologist happened upon a dead fish, looking innocuous as any of its kin save for certain traits of a mountain predator. Now, this other dead fish, a failed hybrid of deadly hunters. Lillian was unsure how long had it lain there, but she had no doubt that something else would soon surface, a new wave. It made her wonder. What new traits would it display? How larger would it be?

‘And more importantly,’ she added with a chill, afraid to look down into the inky depths. ‘Will it still be dead?’

A resurgence… and finally, it came to her. The dreadful epiphany. Andreï, the poor bastard, did not have the slightest idea how right he was in choosing that word. “The gods have mercy, you have no idea.”

These fish, they were fleeing. Fleeing from whatever lurked in the fathomless dark, thousands of leagues below. Fleeing.

In vain.

[Ataraxis]

From the shoreline, Lillian had called Vogstok a sleeping city. But here, looming ever closer to its chill mouth, the girl understood that she had been deceptively wishful. The vast hamlet sat in the crook of a low valley, blue with solitude. Steeples from various chapels and a bell tower were sheathed in snow, while the lower rooftops were the dark grey of compact ice. Residential chimneys and industrial smokestacks were equally dry, leaving the night skies clear of disturbance. There were no lights from the windows, none from the streetlamps, not even the slightest glow of a fading candle, of a dying match.

And one final thing, the last dagger to sink in her hopeful heart. The streets were a cold and unbroken white, as if the snows had gently settled over the weeks. “No footprint to upset a single flake.” How she wanted to cry, yet the tears would not form in the merciless cold. She had seen it now, and could no longer deny what she had suspected all along. Through a film of sorrow, she watched the empty roads, heard the silent lament. Long. Long had the city been nursed to sleep, and gently had it gone into that good night.

“What are you doing here?” Caught unawares, Lillian spun on a heel and stepped back, her expression wild as she faced the stranger. The glass dirk had somehow found its way to her hand, brought to bear in a defensive stance. “A foreigner,” he went on in his jaded Salvic, grey eyes studying her with a calculating iciness. “Yes, only foreigners to do something like that.”

“Who are you?” Lillian asked in the same language, none too gently. The girl was unable to quell the drum of her heart, the mixed feelings it harbored. Someone was alive, and that had been the best news in this night of ill tidings, but could that someone be trusted?

“That was my next question.” He paused to consider for a moment, so immobile he seemed a statue draped in a cloak of black fur. “Yet, I see no trouble in answering it first. I am Valery Nabokov, of the Vogstok Politsei.” He tapped something under his ample black cloak, the sound like a knuckle against wood. His police baton, most likely. “Now, I believe you owe me two answers.”

Though she eased her guard, Lillian did not let up her state of alertness. “In order, then. I am here to seek an old friend. My name is Lillian Sesthal.”

“You seem a little young for longtime friends,” the officer remarked, his grin suspicious.

As unflinching as a glacier, Lillian replied with naught but a casual smile. “Indeed. My friend is the one who is old.”

“Good, humor.” Valery seemed delighted by her response, the old rag of his face made soft by laughter. “Had you shown none, I would have killed you.” The dirk stiffened in her grip; she resumed her stance, boots kicking up clouds of snow. The shadow of a black ghost as the officer dashed, sliding across the powdered cobbles, already stepping in to grab her wrist. Success. “Don’t be impetuous, chil–”

“I suggest you move no further.” Blue steel pressed against his rugged throat, close to breaking skin. Lillian could see through Valery’s eyes the cogs of his mind, spinning furiously in an effort to understand. Then, a sigh of futility. The glass-made dirk had been a red herring. The design was so remarkably foreign that he was lured away from the undersized dagger, concealed in her right palm from the very beginning. Shameful. He was fooled so easily. “Now, this child would like to know what you meant by that.”

“Oh, about killing you?” Valery laughed heartily, but regretted the action when the tip punctured his skin. Blood drew thin to stain the blue metal, to trickle coolly down his throat like meltwater from an icicle. Lillian made no move, her breaths steady, misting. “Why, I only mistook you for something else.”

“Something?” Lillian scowled. She was tired of these riddles, tired of the dreadful conjectures that subsequently haunted her mind. Enough. Once and for all, she would seek an answer worthy of the name. She carefully drew back, the dirk returning to her rope belt, the dagger vanishing in the fold of her fur coat – the illusion of disarmament, if only to induce in the officer a false sense of security. “Mister Nabokov, please tell me what happened here. Where have the people gone, and how did this city die?”

[Ataraxis]

Not even that, Valery could grant her. Not yet, he said. Not here. His eyes wandered about the city, their squinted glow distant and sullen, as if only searching for misplaced shadows in a photograph. There was more to it than that, Lillian knew, and that knowledge made her uneasy, made her doubt – made her look. Cracked houses and cracked windows, chimney mouths that breathed no smoke, no fire to warm the stone-lined hearths. Not far was a general store, visibly abandoned, with casks of either wine or oil or other village oddments housed beneath its snow-laden roof extension. Blue-grey alleys ran between the wood-and-brick buildings, but nothing ran down them save for snow and shadows. ‘None of them misplaced.’

But Valery was not actually looking for shadows, and that… that made her afraid.

“In there,” he said after a moment, pointing to the dilapidated store with a dismissive look of his eyes. Lillian tried to follow closely in his steps, the pace of her heart quickening every time she strayed a bit behind. The officer's caution had stirred her awake, made her aware of things she knew did not exist: the ghosts that shed the tears of ice crunching beneath her soles, the grim flautist playing a wistful dirge in the winds. Like the people of ancient times, she had come to personify the inanimate, something that had always lead to worship and to fear. ‘And that makes you a fool, Lily.’

She hurried her step, at last finding refuge in the store. The door closed behind her like a cage slammed shut, yet she felt a wave of relief crash over her mind. Even trapped, she held onto the naive notion that prison bars could lock things in just as well as they locked things out. Alas, that illusion of safety was quickly dispelled.

“What is it?”, came a startling hiss from the shadows near the back room, a hiss that spoke a harsh and hoary Salvic. Someone else was behind the countertop. The top of its head peeked out, an umber shock of dirty hair, but it hid as quickly as it appeared behind a row of empty, dusty bottles. It studied her quietly from behind the glass, akin to a feral predator probing for friend or foe. Its one open eye was riveted onto the girl, warped and shrunken, then magnified and shrunken again as it slinked from jar to jar. “And why isn't it dead yet?”

“Not a what, this time, but a who,” Valery answered with a clear note of relief. “I found her near the town gates.”

“That's impossible,” the hunched man spat, never stopping his broken, sideways walk. "We've checked, there's no one daft enough to still– ”

“Look better, Ivan. She is a foreigner, one that no doubt slipped through the cracks of that naval barrier.”

“Terrific… create a new branch in the army, hire the same pesky idiots,” the man named Ivan groaned, though his amused tone belied his satisfaction: he could not be more content with the navy's incompetence. Something sparked in her mind; a moment later, she knew just why. “You know what this means: if that beanpole managed to get through, then…”

“You can talk in Salvic or any of thirty-six other languages and I’ll still understand you – especially if you're insulting me.” Lillian weaved between the dusted tables, glancing absently at piles of odds and ends while she gathered her thoughts: chinked kettles and old pots, shovels and tillers, shears and loppers. Nearby was a stack of flour, some of them torn open and half-empty. Ingested raw, quite likely; the girl doubted they would take the risk of baking bread.

“Something came from the water,” she began, returning her attention to Ivan. “Maybe more. When the Salvaran government caught wind of this, it ordered the navy to keep it, or them, contained within Vogstok, to prevent their gaining access to the mainland. Now, the both of you obviously know what they are, and obviously think those royalist ships out there won’t be able to lock them in here for long. All I need is for you to answer two simple questions: what, and why?”

Neither spoke for a moment, far too discomfited by the extent of her grasp on their situation. ‘Not just a foreigner after all.’ In the end, Ivan slowly rose from his hiding place, revealing to the girl a most disturbing sight: he was donning a bloody apron, and his right sleeve was folded up and pinned near where should have been an elbow. “You obviously already know the answer for your second question.”

“So, it’s true... Vogstok sided with the Church of the Sway.” Lillian frowned, then sighed as she came to terms with a theory she had hoped to be false. “Which explains why no effort was made to save this city…”

“Best cannon fodder's always been the enemy.” Ivan skirted the counter, lifting up a slab of chestnut as he crossed to the other side. She noticed his pronounced limp, how he had to support his weight on an old broom. Upon seeing his legs for the first time, she understood why. One was gone beneath the knee, supported only by tight wraps and the crudest of wooden pegs, most likely fashioned from the leg a broken table. Her chin fell, and she murmured an apology. “Why are you sorry? You’re not what chewed it off,” Ivan answered dismissively, taking a seat near the black-iron stove in the heart of the store. It wasn’t lit, but he nonetheless seemed to find comfort in its proximity. “And speaking of whats…”

With a surge of anger, he jerked open the stove’s slatted door and jammed the broom into the coal and ashes. A thick, viscid squelch spread through the store, followed by a lazy screech that died away as quick as it came. The shopkeeper stabbed twice more into the furnace, before drawing it out for display. “That’s,” he hissed with his teeth bared, brandishing the giant skewer, “what took it. At least, that's the head of what did.”

“What… what is that?” A heavy pang reached her stomach, one that made it gurgle in revolt to that awful sight, soon joined by a terribly pungent reek. She pinched her nose, feeling tears come to her eyes as she watched the malformed mass of black flesh, bleeding oily trails of yellow puss over the floor. Its bulbous, octopus-like skin still writhed, drooping down the broom’s shaft by the conjoined work of gravity and the visceral trash that was bubbling beneath its flesh. “It… it doesn’t even remotely look like any animal I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s because it’s not an animal. Shat out a demon’s ass is what it was.” At once, Ivan broke the broom in half and threw in the soiled tip back into the stovepipe, slamming it shut. “Denebriel’s left tit take me,” he groused, “my leg was food for feces.”

“It takes a believer to curse like that,” Valery whispered as he stepped in, before Lillian had even regained the wits to comment on his language. “But it’s as you see. These things… they began crawling out the ocean a few weeks ago. We thought nothing of them at first, as most were small and had come belly-up… but then these came, and they were very much alive. Fortunately, as voracious as these creatures were, they were also fairly easy to kill.”

“Valery there, he beat this one to death with a stick. A stick! That’s why it’s a bloated paste of guts and brains, you know?”

“Yes, I… see. In any case… it’s good to know there’s a possibility to get rid of them, at the very least. Their numbers must be what kept you from– ”

“You seem to misunderstand, young miss.” Valery’s grey eyes became dull with despair. He propped his back against a tall stack of flour, exhaling whatever he could of that dismal feeling. “I said… these creatures.”

“You mean to say… there are others?”

“Yes: more numerous…” began Valery with a grave nod.

“… and more dangerous,” Ivan finished, grimly.

“And... am I to assume that you two are the sole survivors of Vogstok?”

“Nah… there should be a few other groups still in hiding.” Lillian could not be gladder to hear Ivan's revelation: there was hope for Andreï yet. “Some went to the northern facilities near the shores, while the others went to the town chapel. That was a while ago, though… not sure how many are still breathing.”

Saying no more, Lillian went to find a seat near the desk counter, farthest from both the door and the stove. One final question was still nagging at her mind, but considering this her recent streak, she was far too afraid to ask and be right, yet again. ‘Please, if only I could be wrong… please.’

“These other creatures,” she began, “they’re at the facilities, aren’t they?” It all came back rushing, toppling her mind: the thought of Andreï, of his team, trapped in their laboratories; the image of Ivan’s missing arm, of his prosthetic leg; how she was now stuck here herself, and how she might share the same demise. She felt her mask of confidence crack, felt the structures of her mind shake and crumble. For the first time since she had stepped foot in this ghost city, she truly feared for her life.

Valery coughed brusquely, trawling Lillian out of her broodings. “No, they’re not.”

The relief was as a thousand burdens leaping off her chest and plummeting to their deaths. ‘I was wrong. Thank the gods, I was–’

“They’re at the chapel,” Ivan continued. “That’s where that team of scientists went to hide, I think. Reckon they’re still alive, Val?”

“If they are,” the officer began, “it is my dearest hope that they are by choice.”

[Ataraxis]

“Tell me where the chapel is.”

Ivan and Valery were dumbfounded when they heard her order. That she was bold enough to issue commands without any authority over them was one thing, but hearing in her tone that what she would do upon getting her answers was another. When the shock dissipated, Ivan stepped forward in raised hackles, each wooden step an angry clack upon the floorboards. “You think this is some game? You think that whatever power you have will keep you from dying here?”

Lillian said nothing as he chided her, only staring on with those unfathomable blue eyes. “You could shatter a boulder with your little finger or snort lightning out of your nostrils, you still wouldn’t stand a ghost of a chance against these things! You think I was always lame? You think I just let them have my limbs? That… that thing there only got my leg because the worse ones had just torn off my arm! You–”

“Mister Ivan.” Lillian was poised on her feet, still holding that unyielding gaze upon the shopkeeper. Within them, however, he could now read that she understood. She understood everything he said, and knew that he was right. She understood all that, yet he could see that she would not change her mind. That stubbornness confounded him, and he wanted to hit her for being so irrational. He genuinely wanted to hurt her with the pieces of his broom for being so willing to throw her life away. “You seem to be the one misunderstanding, this time. I have no doubt that I would die, were I to face them. That is precisely why my objective is to avoid them.”

“Avoid them by walking right into their den? Can you hear yourself talking?” he screamed, slapping the broken stick on the counter – it snapped, splintering down what remained of its length.

“It is not their den.” At that, Ivan’s anger seemed to falter. “It never was, and never will be. This is the house of your people… and every house has a backdoor.” Ivan was dismayed as he tried to decipher her words, as he tried to read between lines. Dismayed, until he understood.

“How do… how do you know?” Ivan asked, flummoxed by how much she knew of Salvar’s situation. “How can you possibly know about the portals in the churches?”

“I’ve visited a fief in the hinterlands, not long ago,” she answered quietly, absently shifting her gaze from the man to countless steel mobiles that dangled from the ceiling. “The Church of the Ethereal Sway has been shipping firearms to each of them for months, via these portals. I was there when it happened.” She had spoken sourly, her voice laced with a mixture of anger and sorrow. “And you,” she said to the two men, her resolve rekindled, “you just happen to have more than one chapel.”

“But this would be in vain,” Valery began as he slid off the stacked bags of flour. “The Church regulates the use of these portals, and they most likely isolated our side from the circuit, to keep this situation from leaking out to the mainland.”

“Precisely. None of the portals here can access the mainland, but that doesn’t mean the portals here can’t access each other.”

“You’re talking about fiddling with a magic no one understands! These portals were never meant to interconnect, they… they…”

“Odd… you claim that no one understands, yet your knowledge of what can and cannot be done with them sounds rather extensive... but even so, you’re wrong.” Lillian tightened the straps on her fur coat, roving her way back to the entranceway.


She was stopped by Ivan, who had hobbled across the distance in a hurry, right as she was about to turn the brass knob. “How can you be so sure? You’re just a– ”

“Child. I’ve heard. I don’t blame you for thinking so: it’s the common opinion, today.” she said casually with a wan laugh, still unusually chipper considering the circumstances. “At least Valery doesn’t think so anymore.”

“What? What did… no.” Ivan stared at the officer, who had suddenly begun shrinking beneath those endless layers of his cloak. Ivan was unable to suppress a smirk. “No. She got you?”

“Caught me off guard, rather,” he muttered under his breath, averting his eyes to the checkered windows. “Even so, child or adult, what you speak of is still impossible.”

“Thank goodness. I’m neither.” Nonplussed, he imagined she had meant that in jest. However, when he saw her face, saw that stern countenance and wounded eyes, he felt he could understand. No, he knew he did, all too well… and that was something he could not let her know.

“These things, they… reproduce, don’t they? If so, then keep waiting here and you’ll be overrun eventually. Your only chance, if you want to outlive them, is to strike early and hope that yours is a good plan.”

“And is it good?” Ivan scoffed, shaking his head. He had known this for quite some time, the inevitability of his death. It stared him in the eyes all the livelong day, mocking this excuse of an existence he was reduced to living. Until now, however, he was content with that illusion. Content with the thought that he had already given those freaks of nature enough of himself. In a way, he still clung onto it: no child would dispel it with words alone. Yet a part of him sought an end to this, and this girl's arrival seemed a convenient excuse to end his search.

“Now what did I just say?” she asked with an ironic grin, having guessed his dour musings. The knob spun, and winter’s harshness breathed into the store. A foreboding chill, and none of them were ignorant of its admonitions. Still, the door clicked shut, and the room was empty once more. Not breeze, not a movement.

Nothing, save for the rising hacks of a squalid voice.