Children of Darkness

[Warpath]

Years Ago

The governor was already out of bed by the time his personal guard burst into the bedroom: four men carrying lamps and drawn swords.

“We need to move,” the captain said.

The governor was already walking, eager. There was a horrific din coming from somewhere downstairs, a continuous racket that suggested incredible violence. Wood was splintering, men screaming, glass shattering. The noise had summoned him out of a deep sleep and hadn’t abated since. It was growing progressively nearer. Louder. More intense.

The guard formed a square around him as they marched: two in front, two pressed close behind. He had his hands on the inside shoulders of the guards ahead. “Is the city under attack?” It took effort to keep the tremor out of his voice.

“We don’t know,” the captain said, behind and on the right. “We don’t know anything.”

They rounded two corners, ascended a broad staircase. He glanced left, looked all the way down the hall. Rain was battering the window pane there. Lightning flashed, and for a lingering instant he could discern smoke rising from somewhere below. The manor, on fire?

The quintet hustled into the adjudication chamber. It was the highest and most secure room in the manor, and necessitated a winding route through the manor to reach. A petitioner would need to take an impressive and circuitous path through the house to reach the chamber - plenty of time to have the weight and opulence of Radasanth’s highest office impressed upon a man. The guard split away from the governor as they entered, and the two men that had been leading pushed the heavy double doors closed and worked together to bar them. There was already an additional reserve in the chamber, four men with crossbows, two with spears, and a lieutenant with blade drawn. The lieutenant saluted.

The governor stepped up onto the dais and sat down in the impressive seat he ruled from by day. It comforted him. He hoped it impressed his authority upon the guard there - hardened their resolve. “I need information,” he said.

“Yes sir,” the captain said. There was nothing else to say.

The din below continued, muffled behind the doors and yet growing louder until it stopped near, too near.

Silence for a heartbeat, two, three.

Then a thunderous impact. Plaster and dust rained down around the door frame, crackling as it landed on the stone floor. The governor jumped, swallowed. Ten men surged forward in formation, melee forward, bowmen in the back. The captain remained at the governor’s side, his expression invisible inside his full helmet. It gave the impression of stoicism. The governor clenched the arms of his seat and pressed himself back. Nowhere to run.

Another impact. This time the wood groaned, and the governor closed his eyes. He tried to calm himself with logic. Who could organize such an attack? Overwhelm his military guardsmen? How did they carry a battering ram through the entire house?

The doors crumpled inward on the next impact, more insistent than the previous two, but the bar held. Still, the governor could see between the doors now. When he’d been in the hallway moments before, the lamps had been lit. Now it was pitch black beyond the chamber. Was this a nightmare?

Something surged out of the dark from the other side and split the bar in half with disturbing ease, and then retreated back into the darkness. The doors swung wide so fast that they lodged themselves into the walls on either side of the doorway, crooked off their hinges. A gust of humid wind rushed into the chamber, battering out most of the lamp flames. The scent of rain was on it. Somehow, the governor could hear rain pattering from somewhere in the dark. They’d put a hole in the roof? How?

The guard crouched in the semi-dark of the chamber, arrayed and ready, unflinching in their armor. Silence reigned, pregnant with menace. Something hissed angrily in the dark - not an animal, but like steam from some unholy machine. Sure enough, those standing against the dark blinked their eyes, unsure, as the steam began to glow a phosphorescent red as it formed whorls around a hulking silhouette in the doorway.

This had to be a nightmare, but the governor could not wake up.

The silhouette raised one impossibly huge arm, and pointed over the heads of the formation between itself and the governor. “You,” the red-hued shadow said. Its voice was a grinding stone, acid-raw.

“FIRE,” the captain roared.

The crossbowmen took aim synchronously, and fired as a natural part of the motion. The bolts hissed overhead, missing the spear-wielders entirely. The silhouette staggered back, punctured four times over in the chest and shoulders.

And then it stood straight and growled, and twin jets of glowing red steam surged freshly from its forearms. Now, in the burning light, they could see the apish monster before them: imposingly tall and broad, impossibly muscled, armored at the forearms, and faceless behind an Aleraran gas mask. Though all four bolts stood out straight from the man’s chest, he lumbered forward without pause or hitch, raising his hands.

The governor watched in ever-mounting horror as the brute dispatched his guard one by one with cruel efficiency. Every bone broken sent a quiver of malefic bliss across rippling shoulders. The hulking shadow relished in every last breath, greedy for death, reveling in its own invincibility.

It raised one boot and kicked straight, and the impact sent the last standing guard rocketing fifteen feet across the chamber in the blink of an eye. The airborne man collided with the line of crossbowmen before they could finish cranking their weapons for a second shot. Two of the archers were still stirring. One couldn’t get to his feet; the brute simply stepped on his head as it marched forward. The second was beaten to death with his own weapon, which didn’t take as long as it should. Good for the victim, in a way. Bad for the governor.

The nightmare turned its masked face to the captain, a sheen on its skin. It was wearing the thin remains of a shirt the governor first thought black, but it wasn’t. Saturated entirely, clinging to inhuman musculature, it was dark with blood. It had boulders for shoulders, its biceps like tree trunks. There were eyes through the red-tinted lenses of its mask, but they suggested no humanity.

The captain raised his sword and lunged forward, swinging low. The beast didn’t move or react at all. The blade slid across the monster’s thigh, opening a broad wound through its leather pants. If it felt the wound, it didn’t show it. The captain came back up, slashed across the monster’s prodigious chest to draw another wound and add a fresh layer of blood to the remains of its shirt. Then the captain took a step back, brought pommel to shoulder, and then lunged forward and plunged his blade into the brute’s abdomen.

It looked down at what should have been its death, and then raised its head, reached out casually with both hands, and grabbed the captain’s head. The governor watched, face twisted in horror, as the brute slowly deformed the captain’s helmet with his head still inside it, pectorals standing out obscenely, freshets of blood oozing from the crossbow bolts protruding from them. The captain didn’t make a sound, pushing and struggling as the helmet crumpled down smaller and smaller, until the man slowly fell to his knees, and his arms went slack. The governor could see blood and grime under the massive fingernails of those hands, sinews standing out on inhuman fingers.

The masked face came up again. “You,” the monster said. Its voice was bass, a gravely rasp inside the filtered mask.

It dropped the captain’s corpse and stepped forward, flexing its fingers, insensible to the assortment of mortal wounds displayed on its chest.

“You forgot who I am,” it said. “What you took from me. I take from you. Do you remember who I am?”

“I d-don’t,” the governor whispered, breathless, pressing himself tight back against the symbol of his authority. “I don’t know you. Please, I don’t know you.”

“I’m fear.”

The governor’s face went slack when he realized why he only had seconds left to live.

And then he died screaming.

[Warpath]

Resolve found herself whispering “holy shit” a lot as she sprinted through what was left of the governor’s mansion. She wasn’t horrified by what he could do, but by what he would. Anger, she understood. Rage was an old friend, recently stoked to the limits of sanity even in her - but she could not justify this. She didn’t know if she could forgive it, but she had to try. She owed them that much.

She reached the topped of the stairs, and stepped slowly through the shattered doorways, heart sinking. She was too late, again.

Flint sat in the dark at the top of the dais steps, next to an ornate seat. The remains of something that might have been human once were occupying the seat. Flint was leaned forward, grimacing as he pulled a sword from his abdomen. Bloody crossbow bolts littered the steps in front of him, next to a discarded gas mask. He started wearing that when they tried to suffocate him in Serenti. Things had been out of hand then, and were only getting worse.

He let the reddened blade clatter on the ground.

“Resolve,” he croaked, but didn’t raise his eyes. There was a fresh layer of dark fuzz on his head, and stubble on his face. In a few weeks, he might have a beard again.

“Flint,” Resolve said cautiously. “This isn’t what we do. This isn’t what…”

“It’s what I want.”

She paused, taken aback by the force of his voice. She’d always felt antagonistic toward him but she was losing recognition for him, the line blurring between what she saw in front of her and the man he’d been before…well. Before. If he went over the brink, if he hadn't already, what little hope Chronicle had left would dwindle further.

She took a steadying breath. Reminded herself that this was why she was here, now. She had to try, keep trying until he listened, before it was too late to come back.

She rehearsed it in her head first, for once, and then a fresh horror interrupted her train of thought.

He was fiddling with his gauntlets. They were whirring, clicking unpleasantly.

“Flint, what are you doing. Stop it, think about what…”

The first gauntlet fell off his arm with a heavy thud, and then the second. He flexed his fingers experimentally, exhaling slowly.

“You need those to live.”

“No I don’t,” he muttered. “Not anymore. I needed them before I had focus. Now I have focus. I only ever think about one thing.”

“No,” Resolve said, struggling to sound reasonable, struggling to keep the anger and frustration out of her voice. Why wouldn’t he listen? “Flint you have to sleep, remember? You have to eat.”

“They slow me down,” he said, waving dismissively at the gauntlets. “I heal faster without them. Think faster. They’re a crutch.”

“You’re still human…”

He smiled joylessly. “No. Not anymore. I only eat to fuel the warpath. When I dream, it’s of killing them all. This is all I think about. This is all I want. I’ll take everything they took from us.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” Resolve said, desperate. She moved closer to him, and when he didn’t react she took another step, and then another. This wasn’t her way at the best of times, but she needed him to understand. She slid down to one knee, careful to keep it out of the blood. She reached for his hand, tentative, and rested hers on his. Looked up at his eyes, remembered a time when he was shorter than her. Tried to keep the hard out of her gaze, the annoyance. “I can hear her, Flint, she’s…”

He cocked his head to one side, blinked, listened to something she couldn't hear but could sense in other ways. “City guard coming,” he said. “You should go.”

“No no no,” Resolve said, shaking her head. “Flint, focus. Listen to me, now. Flint. Rauk. This is not the way we do things, this isn’t how Lu…”

He flinched away from her as if struck, growling. She closed her eyes, took a steadying breath, then stared up at him again.

“This isn’t how Chronicle did things. We didn’t kill governors. We didn’t kill city guards. Otto still knows some of them, they’re not all…”

“Governor,” Flint grunted, peering over his shoulder at the mess in the chair. “Collaborator. Funded the Knights. Supported the Brotherhood. Aided the Hand. If they defend him, they are as guilty.”

“You don’t have to do this. Please, if you’ll just come back to the library with me, hear me out. No one will bother you there. Rest, just for a while, talk to me. We can go back to the way it was.”

“A dream,” Flint said, not unkindly. “I’ll never have it, Rez. It’s not allowed. I was made for this. I’m just going to point it at the people who deserve it until they find a way to…well. I don’t need an exorcist.”

“Suicide, Flint? Really? Mass murder? Chaos? You think that’s what she wants? You're spitting on her grave.”

“No,” he admitted, but he was already standing up. “She was better than me. Made me better than what I am. They brought this on themselves when they took her away from me.”

“Gods damn it Flint,” Resolve said with head bowed, clenching her hands together until her knuckles turned white. She ground her teeth. “That’s what I’m telling you. If you’d just listen. Having a titanic bloody hissy-fit is not the way to honor...!”

She opened her eyes and looked up, and then blinked. She was alone.

The gauntlets sat on the ground next to her, abandoned. That was the last time she spoke to Flint.

Less than a week later the rampage ended, and nobody knew how or why.

[Resolve]

As Otto rinsed the last piece of earthenware from dinner, he felt a tiny presence emerge from the hallway door behind him. His visitor waited patiently as he rested the plate with its companions on a wire rack next to the stone sink with a clink, and then he slowly turned around. The girl’s silhouette stood ghost-like and still against the shadows. “Maisie,” he greeted her. “Are the little’uns taken with dragon dreams again?”

“No,” she shook her head, braids waggling behind her ears. “We could hear a ruckus out back. Thought you’d like to know.”

“I’ll see to it. Thank you.” He drew the tea towel from his broad shoulder and folded it, hanging it precisely over the edge of the dish rack. Throwing himself into domesticity seemed as reasonable a coping mechanism as any, he had reasoned earlier that day. If he had to grieve, may as well make it constructive.

Maisie didn’t budge from her post in the doorway. Somehow she saw straight through him, even without her vision. “Are you all right?”

Otto smiled, and when she could hear it in his voice, Maisie mirrored it with a relieved little grin of her own. “Hard days, these. But we’ll keep on as we always do,” he exhaled, his voice deep and tired. “You should go back to bed.”


By the time Otto found Resolve, she had bludgeoned their iron scrap bin into a two-dimensional art sculpture with fist and foot. The curses she muttered under her breath were enough to take even the worldly orc aback, and the worry lines on his gray face deepened. As he stepped into the dusky alley, Resolve paused in her punishment, violet eyes raising to his in indignant regret.

“Sorry,” she eventually offered to the silent bricks, her voice almost lost to the cool night breeze. “I’ll help you make a new one. I just…”

Otto approached with measured caution and compassion. “Talk to me, Rez.”

“Flint’s destroying everything we’ve worked so hard for as if it doesn’t matter anymore. But it does!” Resolve’s words hissed between clenched teeth. “He’s a monster, and I honestly can’t believe we ever trusted him. He’s ruining everything, Otto. Gods, what I would give to grind that smug fucking face into the dirt!” She stomped the bin some more, and it groaned unsatisfyingly under the long-suffering soles of her boots.

As Resolve leaned down to pick up the sheet of crumpled metal, presumably to craft it into some loud, fury-inspired origami, she found herself enveloped from behind. She deflated almost instantaneously in Otto’s massive, gentle arms, sharp angles of anger giving way to languid acceptance. Slowly, she melted into his warmth, timing her breaths with the heaving of his stomach against her back. And then, even more slowly, her wits returned to her.

“He wouldn’t listen to me,” she murmured into the coarse hair of the orc’s forearm.

“Everyone grieves differently.”

“But she’s alive,” Resolve snapped, the abruptness of her response tempered by the sobs that followed. She gasped through her tears, clutching his arms close. “I can feel her. She’s out there somewhere, I just need time to figure out how and where and… gods, why doesn’t anyone believe me?”

“He watched her die –– we all did –– and it can be hard to accept something you can’t see for yourself. Even from an expert planewalker who knows death so well…. even from a friend.” Otto pulled her in tighter, burying his face in her inky black hair. “But, for what little it’s worth, I believe you.”

Resolve sighed.

[Luned]

Current day



Amnesia wasn’t nearly as romantic as Rosie’s romance novels would lead one to believe, and Luned was sorely disappointed by this. The recollection of herself had grown into a mundane routine over the past months, and the bits and pieces she’d lost seemed without rhyme or reason. She knew who she was, where she was from, whom and how she loved. She missed the library, comfortable clothing, Flint’s arms, good tea. Every day, she felt more like herself, even if she wasn’t sure what that meant –– it came in threads of memories falling back into place, tingles of magic she’d forgotten she could control. Her concept of self felt more surreal than anything, especially so far from home with nothing to ground her.

With most things, Luned hadn’t realized they were missing until they rematerialized in her mind as if they’d always been there, cozied alongside the rest of the experiences and thoughts that made her who she was. The only loss she was fully aware of, and acutely so, was connected to her current circumstances.

Luned had no idea how or why she ended up at the edge of the Tular Plains, with her last memories placing her in Radasanth. She only knew what the travelers who found her said: she’d been discovered by chance one morning, half-buried in sand and naked as the day she was born. It was a miracle they’d found her alive, they said. She believed them.

The skin-crackling heat of the Tular Plains felt far from a blessing, but the caravan was. Luned managed to hitch a ride, inherit some hand-me-downs, and befriend another hapless fish out of water, a young dark elf of few words. Pyralis shared her food and showed Luned how to soothe her ceaseless sunburns. Eventually, she even began to talk a little.

“Your accent brings back memories of Ettermire,” Luned ventured one afternoon, meaning it as more of a compliment than it probably sounded. One one hand, she wasn’t sure she’d ever heal from the trauma of her time in that troubled city. But it was also how she met Flint, and perhaps now she had enough distance to look back on the experience for what it was: the strangest of meet-cutes. “What brought you to the Plains?”

Pyralis shared the open tailgate of one wagon with Luned –– far from comfortable, but also far better than walking the hundreds of miles back to the city –– and it was her turn in the narrow shady spot. The elf leaned back into it, eyes closed, sandy hair falling away from her brown face. Pyralis considered the question so long that Luned gave up hope on receiving an answer, and the human’s crystalline eyes returned to the dusty road before them. Luned wondered if her skin had ever seen so much sun before, if she’d ever grow tan or if she’d finish this journey as one giant, lady-shaped freckle. She pulled her new-old scarf further over her head, creamy fabric hiding the auburn highlights in her dark hair, but the gauzy weave didn’t do much to save her fair skin. She wondered what bigger things she’d have to mull over if she could only recall how she got there.

“Help,” Pyralis’ small voice finally piped up over the rattle of wooden wheels. “We need help.”

Through much effort, Luned coaxed out some details. “My family is… unique,” Pyralis finally volunteered. “We all were born with something different. Sometimes it’s a blessing, but sometimes…” The elf’s gaze cast down into her lap where she fidgeted with the over-long sleeves of her tunic. With a deep breath, the thin fingers of her left hand emerged to pull up her right sleeve, revealing something she’d successfully hidden from Luned for weeks now: her right hand was deformed, almost claw-like, with stiff joints and rigid, mottled skin. “It started small, but soon it’ll take my shoulder. I don’t want to find out what’ll happen when it reaches my heart. I need to find a cure.”

Luned realized she was staring when Pyralis suddenly yanked her sleeve back down over her hand, face lowered in shame. “I’m sorry,” Luned offered hopelessly. “I didn’t mean to stare. It just reminded me of someone I met some years ago, also from Ettermire.” As she spoke, the clues began to line up in the tangle of her mind. “I… I wonder, perhaps she is one of your relatives? Do you know a girl about your age, named Helethra?”

Pyralis became very still, and after a long moment, the shudder of her chest revealed she had been holding her breath. Her eyes found their way back up to Luned’s face with such utter meekness, such caution, that the woman feared the girl might break just by making eye contact. “H-how?”

“I knew her mother,” Luned treaded carefully. “She seemed like a good kid. Is she well?”

The elf girl stared at her in disbelief, eyes wide. “You could say that, yes.”

Luned’s polite smile wavered at all the implications. Helethra survived! That tiny, troubled person actually lived, and could be described as doing well despite the tragedy of her childhood. Her heart swelled, and then it pained. If Pyralis was a mutant like Helethra, what traumas had she experienced? Her life had certainly not been easy, if she’d gone to a dangerous place like Tular searching for help.

“My own personal circumstances are… not exactly simple,” Luned spoke again, “but I’d like to help if I can, Pyralis. When we get to Ettermire, perhaps you could introduce me to your family and help me learn about your situation. I don’t know if I’d be able to help, myself, but I know people who possibly could –– doctors, wizards, friends.”

Pyralis’ brow furrowed, posture weakened by fear. “And what would you ask in return?”

This time, Luned’s smile was genuine. “You’ve kept me alive on this journey. It’s the least I could do.”

[Luned]

Nightfall on the Aleran scrublands was Luned’s favorite thing, these days. When the sun sat molten over the horizon, casting the landscape in gold, the caravan would stop to make camp. By the time they’d settled, the world had softened into gray-blues, a deep indigo creeping over the sky speckled by the brightest stars the scribe had ever seen. As the heat from the day slowly dissipated and the moon carried in its merciful breeze, her travel-bruised body recovered. She wished she’d forgotten what baths were like along with the other things she’d lost, just so she couldn’t miss them as much as she did.

To Luned’s delight, Pyralis seemed to have found her voice since their conversation that afternoon. As the pair settled down next to the campfire to sleep, the rest of the caravan already snoring on hammocks in their wagons, the elf finally spoke up again. She kept her words soft and close, as if afraid of what the stars might do if they overheard.

“You haven’t told me what you’re doing out here.”

Luned shifted on the scratchy woolen blanket that they shared. It smelled of horses, but she didn’t mind when it also was the only thing softening the hard, rocky ground they lied upon. “I suppose I do owe you openness after what you shared with me.” She hesitated, finding it a challenge to articulate what she, herself, didn’t understand. “This probably sounds ridiculous, but… I don’t know. Last I remember, I was living in Radasanth with no plans to travel. Then I was here.”

Pyralis nodded to the sky. “Peculiar, yes.”

“It’s not unheard of for me to, erm, vanish from one place and appear in another. But the thing is, it’s always been intentional. I’ve never been out here, I have no reason to be here. That I can recall, anyhow.”

“You do magic?” Pyralis’ curious eyes found Luned’s through the sharp shadows cast by the smoldering campfire.

“Yes. It’s gradually coming back to me, in bits and pieces. It was almost like I’d lost myself in that desert, and now slowly but surely, I’m gathering myself again.”

Pyralis sat up, staring down at her new friend. “Then maybe… I mean, possibly, you could…”

Luned pushed herself up on an elbow, concerned. “I could what?”

The elf inhaled deeply, shuddered, and leaned in, as if about to tell her most delicious secret. Luned felt her breath on her ear as Pyralis whispered. “Do you know how to use Swaysong?”

Funny, the power that some words have. Swaysong’s invisible hand grabbed Luned by the throat, catching her breath in her lungs and sending an electric shock through her chest. It made her dizzy. She hadn’t forgotten the events of her last visit to Ettermire, but they returned to her in such vivid technicolor that she could even taste the stench of the sewers, of the tannery, of…

“What’s wrong?” Pyralis ventured. Fear seemed to be the small elf’s principle emotion, and it showed in her delicate face.

By now, Luned sat up fully, head between her knees as she took a few long, deep breaths. She shivered, and then she whispered. “How in the world did you get your hands on some of that?”

Pyralis paused. “I don’t. Not yet. But someone offered me some in exchange for… some work. You do know how to use it, don’t you? Will you help us?”

In that moment, a forgotten piece of herself returned to Luned. It laid itself heavily over her shoulders, tightening around her heart. Along with it came a weariness so all-consuming she could feel it in her bones, and because there was nothing she could do about it, she laid down once more.

“I don’t know,” she muttered, and then she closed her eyes.

[Luned]

“I’ve found you!”

Luned could see she stood upon a surface not unlike the mirrored salt plains she’d visited some years back, but her feet bore no weight. It felt like she was floating in this misty gradient of blues and whites, and though her chest still ached, she could breathe with ease. She took in the crisp air and glanced around for the source of the echo that rang through her ears.

A familiar figure dashed toward her, wavering and transparent, then it suddenly burst from the clouds to sweep her up in an embrace. “Luned!”

“Resolve?”

“I knew you couldn’t be gone, I knew it! Oh, Luned, we’ve missed you so much.” Resolve brushed her hand over her long lost friend’s hair as she squeezed her close. “Where have you been?”

Luned buried her face into her friend’s shoulder. “I don’t know. I… is it really you?”

The younger woman finally released Luned from her tight embrace just enough that she could study her face. “I suppose this is the first time I’ve dreamwalked with you, isn’t it? I’ve searched for you every night since we lost you, and here you are. How did you end up out here, of all places?”

“...Lost me?” Luned’s freckled brow creased. “What happened?”

Resolve’s exuberance faded with the pain of a memory she’d waited so long to dismiss. She took her friend’s face into her hands. “You died, Lune.”

Such news should have hit hard but it resisted Luned’s grasp, escaping between her fingers like a handful of sand. She heard it, she understood it, but it felt like something that was happening to someone else, and she was simply an onlooker. “How?”

“Poison. It––” Resolve faltered, searching for the words through her grief. “It was awful, Luned. But you were so delirious, I’m not surprised you don’t remember any of it.”

“Gods,” Luned sighed. “Did anyone else…? Are you all right? How’s Flint?”

Concern drew lines down Resolve’s youthful face. “No one else was poisoned, don’t worry,” she lied through omission. “I can’t stay much longer. Are you safe? Do you need help?”

“Thank you, but I’ll manage. My magic isn’t what it was, but it’s slowly coming back to me. I’ll come home soon… when I’m able.”

Resolve smiled. “Thank the gods,” she muttered. “I can’t express how glad I am to see you well. I’ll check in with you soon if I don’t hear from you otherwise, all right?”

Luned nodded. “Thank you. Please send my love and apologies for making everyone worry. To you and Otto, to Flint…”

The exorcist’s gaze drifted away from Luned’s, falling onto their reflection on the ground beneath. It stared back as her nose wrinkled, soured by her thoughts. “There’s something I should tell you. Flint… didn’t handle things well. He left soon after you did. As far as I can tell, he’s in Ettermire, though I haven’t looked into what he’s doing there.” Resolve’s bright blue eyes lifted once again to meet her friend’s, and Luned couldn’t tell if she should be reading worry or anger in them. “He may not been the man you knew anymore, Luned. You’re better off coming straight home when you can. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the scribe nodded, and as she did so, she felt Resolve’s form grow insubstantial under her hands. The exorcist pressed a kiss to Luned's cheek and, as she did so, faded away into nothingness.

“Take care.”



When Luned woke that morning, she knew what she had to do.

[Warpath]

Somewhere in the south seas, months ago


Katsunada stepped off the dinghy and onto solid ground again, squinting against the equatorial sun with one hand on the hilt of his weapon. He preferred his clothing loose and light as a general thing, but here the humidity made it a necessity. He resisted the urge to look back across the expanse of ocean between the shore and his ship, anchored well out beyond the reefs. Swanra’ann did not pay him to doubt.

This island was relatively substantial, forested and teeming with life, but it appeared on no map. No one lived here, supposedly, and the tidal streams that guided trade discouraged ships from ever venturing close enough to see it. He saw no walls, so Katsunada supposed sheer isolation was the next best thing. Still, he wondered, who discovers a hidden paradise and thinks to build a prison?

Swanra’ann didn’t pay him to ask questions, even of himself. Especially of himself. He trudged through the sand, impressed by the heat he felt through his sandals, and scanned the tree line. He was utterly alone, but that was the way he worked. The sparse crew he’d hired for the venture remained on the ship, deeply loyal to good coin and deathly afraid of the Queen of the Pit. They would not abandon him, or even think to raise anchor for weeks to come. Katsunada planned on being back before dark.

It was cooler in the jungle, and it was not so difficult to follow a strong, broad stream of freshwater that wove industriously through the coconut palms. He could still hear the lapping of waves on the sand when he arrived at a pond nestled in the undergrowth. Next to the pond was a beautiful, open-air bungalow with palm leaves on the roof. Curious, brightly-feathered birds sat silently in a line on the balcony, tilting their heads this way and that to regard him as he approached.

He scanned the house from one side to the other, his gaze precise and practiced. “I seek the Jailer,” he said firmly, first in Trade and then in a few other languages of the south, working his way linguistically toward the equator.

He’d said it five times before a stooped figure stepped blinking from around the side of the house, apparently fresh from a nap. His skin was almost black and his hair white in a shock of contrast, and though he was old and thin he moved well. He was naked from the waist up, and wore loose silk from the belt down. He wore gold around his neck, sparkling throughout with tiny inlaid diamonds.

“You have found Noambu,” the Jailer in paradise said, rubbing the white stubble at his jaw. “Who are you?”

“I am Katsunada,” Swanra’ann’s man said. “I have come for one of your prisoners. I will pay you for him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Jailer said. He spoke Trade with a heavy accent, but confidently.

“I think that you do,” Katsunada said. “Give me Flint Skovik. Swanra’ann wants him.”

Noambu frowned deeply and nodded at this, as if thinking. “Those are big names,” he said at last. “Swanra’ann is very rich, but I am richer, and this man Flint…he is very dangerous. If he were here - I am not saying he is - many people would pay very good money for me to keep him here. More money than even Swanra’ann has, I think.”

“You misunderstand,” Katsunada said, “the money is offered in consolation. You will give me Flint Skovik because you must.”

Noambu narrowed his eyes.

Katsunada continued: “Her name is Keyritiri. She lives in a town on a hill in Saadaquar. They’ve imported harpsichords and people to teach her. I understand she plays beautifully, and can speak six languages. She has a good life. Seems happy. My associates also tell me that she is very beautiful. I do not like them, my associates. They are men of evil appetite, and they are impatient.”

Noambu said nothing for a long time, and Katsunada watched him impassively.

“I, however, am very patient,” the mercenary said at last, almost by way of apology.

The Jailer sighed. “Come, then. Let us go collect your man.”

[Warpath]

A short time later, Katsunada sat at the end of a canoe gliding across the pond and away from the bungalow. Noambu sat across from him, six or seven feet away, and behind him was a young man working the oars at the back end of the canoe.

“How many people live here, besides yourself?” Katsunada asked politely, nodding at the oarsman. He didn’t actually care, because Swanra’ann didn’t pay him to ask questions.

Thankfully, Noambu did not answer. He just stared for a long time, mulling over the situation. He didn’t seem angry, but Katsunada figured he was.

“I wonder how your Swanra’ann found my niece,” the jailer said at last. “I wonder how she even knows she exists.”

“You are, as you said, a rich man,” Katsunada said. “Your money offers a lot of control, I think. More than most people in the world can understand. But Swanra’ann does things, sir, and people know it. Greed is strong. Fear is stronger.”

They stared at one another in silence for a long time, with only the sounds of the jungle and the steady slosh of oar meeting water to fill their ears. A calm, steady stream fed from the pond and through the jungle for a long way, and eventually let out into an incredible lagoon surrounded by sheer green hills on every side. There were waterfalls everywhere, and birds of paradise suspended lazily in the mist like tropical ornaments. Those sights were not what caught Katsunada’s breath in his throat.

There were hundreds of metal columns rising out of the lagoon like gleaming tree trunks, each less than a foot in diameter, and each topped with a flat eight-foot platform. The oarsman guided them steadily into this mechanical forest, weaving expertly between the structures, and Katsunada looked over the edge of the boat into the clear waters. Below him he saw more of these platforms, beneath the surface, and could discern that they were topped with glass domes and housed bodies.

So this was the secret of the hidden prison.

“Sometimes a man becomes too dangerous to try and kill,” Noambu said thoughtfully. “When you bring your swords and guns, he refuses to die, exactly because you try to kill him. The same if you put a man in a hole or a room with bars, if you take something from him. I found a different way, you see. I do not take anything, I only give peace, and bring them far away from places where they can do harm or harm can be done to them. They sleep, and find the things they need in their dreams, until they grow old and die. I am not a jailer, as you say. I am a keeper. A gardener.”

Katsunada had thousands of questions. How were they fed? Didn’t their bodies waste away? Who tended the machines, did Noambu build them himself? How?

But Swanra’ann didn’t pay him to ask questions, so he said nothing.

The canoe sidled up beside a column and the oarsman reached out to steady the boat against the unyielding post. How they knew this was the right one was another mystery, compounded upon when Noambu reached out and touched the shadowed metal. There was no discernible change in the structure, no button or switch, and yet the column began to slide downward into the water as the jailer - gardener - withdrew his hand. In scant moments the platform came to a stop just above the water’s surface, and the glass dome split open like the petals of an industrial flower to reveal a sleeping figure within.

Flint Skovik had worked for Swanra’ann, years ago, and Katsunada knew him. At first, he was sure Noambu had chosen the wrong man, and he was wondering if it was an honest mistake or a trick. Though Flint had been muscular, he hadn’t been tall. This was a towering hulk, dominating the surface area of the platform he slept on. The mercenary looked closer, though, and after a moment he saw the resemblance behind the wild beard and mop of long black hair. What had happened to the man? Was all this a result of his time in the garden - certainly the length of his hair was, the fresh bronze of his skin…but shouldn’t he be reduced from months of slumber?

“The Flint Skovik, or so you call him,” Noambu said. “One of my strangest dreamers. Take him, if you must.”

“He won’t wake,” Katsunada said. It wasn’t a question - for obvious reasons - but a demand.

“He cannot,” Noambu said. “Not here. Not anywhere, perhaps. The magic is strong.”

Katsunada leaned out over the edge of the boat and steadied himself on the platform, reached out, and with great effort pulled the naked brute off the platform and into the boat. Though he was handled roughly, Flint never stirred, though he was breathing.

“If you take him, I promise nothing,” Noambu said as the boat steadied again. “I cannot preserve the man or the spell if he goes beyond these shores, and I do not know what dreams occupy him. Peace means different things for men, you see? For some, it is restful days and happy nights, laughter and health. But for others?” He nodded down at the sleeping brute. “For others, perhaps peace is endless carnage, hmm? Perhaps it is finally getting his hands on those who have wronged him. Perhaps peace for him looks as hell does to us, and he is the devil presiding over it.”

Noambu reached back and patted the oarsman’s arm affectionately, and as the boy readied to guide them back out of the garden, Noambu made a thoughtful sound. “I think I would not want to be near him if he ever was woke, by some means” the gardener said. “Not if I were Swanra’ann, anyway.”

[Luned]

Current day, once again



Somehow, they’d made it to Ettermire, and here they were. Luned stood still in the mouth of the narrow cement tunnel, hesitant, and the darkness stared back. She felt it recognize her, that it couldn’t wait to eat her alive. To finish the job, so to speak, that she’d somehow escaped the last time they met.

“Come,” Pyralis beckoned impatiently from within, her slight form a glimmer in the abyss. “It’s not as scary as it seems. You’ll see.”

The scribe took a deep, steadying breath, and followed.



The children greeted Pyralis in a mess of tears. “I missed you too, so much,” the elf wept happily, somehow sweeping all of them into her small arms at once. There were six, varying in age from toddler to tween, though some appeared more as beasts than people. Virny, the eldest after Pyralis, sported a coat of wiry fur and pointed little teeth that glinted Cheshire-like in the shadows. “Has Helethra looked after you?” their biggest sister asked.

“Yes,” the one called Lufe sniffled. He appeared maybe half Pyralis’ age, though he had twice as many fingers and toes to make up for it. “She brings us food and clothes and keeps the bugs away. She rides them sometimes,” he rambled, “but she won’t teach me how. Says I’m too small, but I don’t think so. Tell her I’m not too small, Pyr. Please?”

Luned shuddered at the thought of Helethra atop one of those creatures, the clickety-clack of the giant roach’s massive, armored legs against the tunnels still fresh in her mind. If she was capable of giving Helethra any credit, she would have –– the chamber where the children lived was fairly dry, illuminated by fungal growth on the ceiling, and made relatively liveable with some found furniture and nests of blankets. But it was still a sewer, and her stomach turned from more than just the stench.

A sudden distant skittering that echoed into the chamber set Luned’s heart pounding. Her breath seized in her chest, painful and shallow.

“Yer friend doesn’t look so good,” Virny glanced to the staggering scribe. She watched as Luned braced herself against one of the walls, then recoiled from the grime.

Pyralis smoothed her sibling’s hair, and then stood to attend to her newfound ally. “Are you all right?”

“I can’t do this,” Luned gasped. “I’m sorry. I mean… I can help, I just can’t be here right now, in this place. I’m truly sorry. Tomorrow,” she said, almost pleading. “We can figure it all out tomorrow.”

The elf frowned. “But where will you go?”

“I’ll be fine,” the scribe reassured her as she stumbled toward her approximate memory of the exit. “Meet me outside the tunnel in the morning and we’ll talk. I just need some time to… to catch my breath.”



On her way out, Luned couldn’t shake the eerie sensation that something was watching her.

[Luned]

The closest inn was also a familiar one. Luned and Flint had stayed here when they first met, a brief respite before they dove headlong back into the trouble that would change them forever. She chose it now because she recalled that they were good not to ask questions, for a fee; she just hoped they wouldn’t remember her from her first visit. Their rooms weren’t made to contain her younger self’s shoddy attempts at alchemy, those years ago, and she still felt guilty about the state she’d left things.

If the innkeeper remembered her, she didn’t let on, especially after Luned’s convincing deposit of umteen gold pieces. The scribe felt guilty about this, too –– her magical creations would disappear from Ms. Sethrin’s purse after a few days as if they’d never been there at all –– but she hoped she’d have access to her real funds at that point, when she’d be able to repay the inn twice over for the trouble.

A hot bath was already on its way by the time the innkeeper delivered Luned to her room, parting with promises to send up a tailor in an hour. By the time the scribe closed the door and found herself alone with a tub of steaming water, she nearly wept from relief.

Her bath took the better part of that hour. Luned scrubbed the layers of her long journey away –– sewage, sand, dead skin from her deep sunburns –– until she was pink and raw and felt nearly new. She delighted in using too much perfume, determined to douse any remnant of the sewers in bergamot and vanilla, and had fallen fast asleep in an impractically fluffy robe before the tailor even had a chance to offer his assistance.



When Luned finally awoke again, night had fallen. Someone had lit a fire in the hearth at her feet, her flushed toes resting on the warm, white-washed bricks. She shifted upright in the plush armchair and glanced around blearily. The afternoon was a blur, and the confusion of having lost half her day unsettled her. It reminded her of…

She stared into the fire, unblinking. It reminded her of dying.

Resolve was right. With the help of hindsight, Luned recognized delirium-riddled memories as indistinct recollections of incomprehensible faces and voices and pain. It must have been in her tea that morning. Flint had found her on the kitchen floor, and she had been so glad to see him that she brushed off the severity of her illness until it was too late. After all, no one would have supposed something as mundane as poison would have been the thing to take this illustrious adventurer down.

Luned had been glad to see Flint because they’d had a fight. Conflict between them was so rare those days, even just one night of tension and separate beds was enough to eat away at her.

Flint had told her he wanted to settle down, to have children. She’d laughed, but it wasn’t a joke.

“I have to find him,” Luned muttered to herself, as if it’d help her find the strength. “I have to…”

“Awake at last,” Ms. Sethrin announced herself as she let herself in. She carried a sterling tray heavy with hot supper, and she placed it on the table next to Luned. “Mithread wasn’t pleased you slept through your appointment, but fortunately for you, he is a reasonable dwarf. He has left a variety of ready-made garments for you to peruse at your leisure, and when you are ready, he will come fit the ones you choose.” She gestured to a large chest that had been deposited at the foot of the bed.

Luned blinked up at the elf, needing a moment to parse her words. “That was thoughtful of him,” she finally managed. “Thank you for looking after me so well.”

“You get what you pay for,” Ms. Sethrin winked wryly, then turned back toward the door. “If you are settled for the night, we shan’t disturb you again until breakfast. I suggest you lock the door behind me.”

“Yes, quite settled. Thank you again.”

Occupying that surreal twilight between sleep and wakefulness, Luned inhaled her soup and bread, then somehow found her way to the even plusher bed. The deep blue brocade of the canopy enveloped her in its warmth, and soon, she returned to a dreamless doze.

[Luned]

To say Luned felt like new the next morning would have been a vast overstatement, but she did feel better, and that was enough. If anything, the comforts she found her made her feel human again, her humanity now just something else she had lost in the Tular sands some weeks ago.

Mithread’s clothing was beautifully made, though she was forced to make do with the best-fitting garments in her rush to meet Pyralis. Still, tailored linen felt blissful against her skin after journeying in what essentially had been rags, and she cobbled together an ensemble that helped her recognize herself in the mirror for the first time in ages. Either Mithread or Ms. Sethrin had also thought to place a new pair of boots next to the chest, crafted with gorgeous burgundy leather. Luned recognized the mark on the sole –– a gothic letter G –– as Gravebeard’s seal. She pushed thoughts of Swan’raan’s lackey from her head and put them on, hoping they weren’t a sample from his orphan-sourced line.

And then she set out. To her relief, Luned finally felt ready. Ready to take on the burden of helping Pyralis, ready to face her fear of the sewers, and ready to find Flint and set things right.



Pyralis was already waiting for her when she arrived. The young elf had changed her own clothing into something still worn, but vaguely cleaner, and it appeared she’d given her face a good scrub. “I always figured you were secretly a proper lady,” she greeted Luned. “But I still barely recognize you. Have you recovered?”

“Yes, thanks. Here, for you and the kids.” The scribe offered a parcel containing some bread and fruit that she’d nicked from the inn’s breakfast spread.

The elf smiled and accepted it. “Thanks. But first, let’s go for a walk.”

The sun finally peered over the rooftops, its warm rays expelling the rest of the early morning chill. Ettermire was a gray city of stone and smog, and it appeared much as Luned remembered. Pyralis led her away from the tunnel into a busier part of town, weaving through the streets until they found a bench near the markets. The shouts of sellers rang above the white noise of the traffic, and as they sat, the elf leaned in.

“I wanted to talk somewhere Helethra couldn’t follow or hear. You see… I need your advice.” Luned nodded, watching the crowds pass by, and Pyralis continued. “I’m torn. I… you know that job I mentioned, that would earn me some Swaysong? It’s for this person, she has a tannery, but… she’s bad news. She asked me to betray Helethra. She thinks she’s competition, but I can’t imagine why.”

Luned looked Pyralis in the eye, freckled brow pinched. “You mean Swan’raan, don’t you?”

Pyralis gulped as she nodded, fully understanding the predicament by gut instinct, even if she was unfamiliar with the politics of such an infamous person. “I should be clear that Helethra and I aren’t exactly friends. She’s proud of her mutations, not that she shouldn’t be, she’s healthy and capable and can take care of herself. But not all of us are that lucky. I told her I was sick of seeing other kids die, that we deserve a way to opt out if we need it. She was so angry, Luned.”

A passer-by bumped into them as he carried some sacks of grain, and Luned lowered her voice further. “A deal with Swan’raan is never worth making. Please trust me on that.”

“I do,” the elf forced a half-smile. “In my heart, I’ve known all along. It’s just so hard to pass up any chance. Lufe has started fading, and I don’t think I can take losing another one.” Luned reached up to wrap an arm over Pyralis’ shoulder, who accepted the embrace. The elf stared into her eyes, lilac meeting blue with new determination. “I’m tired of being naive. You know more than you’re letting on, and I need you to tell me. I need to understand what I’m dealing with, here.”

Luned hesitated, sighed, and spilled. She told Pyralis, at length, everything (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25044-Child-of-Darkness): how she was going to purchase Swaysong from Swan’raan, but a thief got it first and drew Luned and one of Swan’raan’s thugs, Flint, into the sewers; how they met the terrible creatures living there, barely surviving; how that brought them to Helethra and her scientist mother, Ezura. “All Ezura wanted was a cure, but it pushed her daughter away until Hel started hiding in the sewers. We didn’t realize until it was far too late that Ezura had stolen the Swaysong and given it to Helethra. She almost died.” Ultimately, Swan’raan captured Ezura, but it was Flint who exacted revenge by forcing her to take some Swaysong, herself. Luned and Flint eventually escaped together and hoped they’d never look back.

The elf listened in fascinated, horrified silence, until Luned finally trailed off. “I’m so glad we met,” Pyralis took the scribe by the hands, tears in her eyes. “I had no idea what Helethra’s been through, and I can’t believe I ever even considered betraying her to someone like that. Maybe I should try talking with her again, now that I understand… well, you know.”

Luned offered a wistful little smile. “I’ve received a tip that Flint is here in Ettermire, as we speak. I need to go now, I need to find him, but when I have, I’ll come to you and we’ll devise a real plan. At the very least, we can find Lufe a doctor. Does this sound all right to you?”

Pyralis wiped her eyes on the grimy sleeve of her tunic. “Yes, yes it does.”

[Luned]

Within a few hours, Luned ran out of the savorier options of where she could get a lead on Flint. Distant mutual connections, past business relations, and even Gravebeard couldn’t help her. The dwarf wouldn’t budge from his place at his workbench, where he nailed a heel onto a silk shoe with such delicate finesse that one never would have guessed at his cruel choice in materials. “With all due respect, ma’am, if you don’t leave my shop in the next ten seconds, I will be forced to tip off Swan’raan to the presence of your brute. You’re not the only one looking for him.”

There were two options she hadn’t explored yet, but she hoped so deeply that Flint hadn’t gone back to working with Swan’raan that she opted for the second, which was only marginally more enticing.

The tavern-brothel-general place of ill repute was mercifully quiet this time of day, as morning hours were generally reserved for the recovery of both patrons and hosts. But still, the pragmatic organization wasn’t one to turn away any business, and Luned was welcomed by unlocked doors.

“What’s your pleasure, miss?” a yawning barkeep mumbled from the floor.

“Just looking for a friend,” Luned waved him off, much to his relief. “Won’t be long.”

Flint had taken Luned here when they were on the run, though now that she looked back on it, he’d probably only thought to drag her with him as some insurance his boss wouldn’t have it out with him over allowing the Swaysong theft. After all, as a buyer who never even met Swan’raan face to face, she probably didn’t have much to fear, herself. At the time, this place had overwhelmed her, but with the morning sun betraying its shabby, pitiful face, it wasn’t as bad as she remembered. But, then again, she returned a changed woman.

Luned searched as efficiently as she could, sidestepping piles of vomit and sleeping bodies as she climbed stairs and roamed hallways. She didn’t expect to find Flint here as much as she hoped for a sign of him; he’d used this place for his stash before, and though she didn’t think he’d use the same place again, it was all she had.

The scribe peeked into yet another room, spied a couple lithe, slate-skinned bodies snoozing on a naked mattress in an otherwise nondescript room, and gently closed the door. As she stepped away, she felt something pull on her skirt, and looked down to see one of the drunkards peering up.

“Excuse me,” she whispered, pulling the cloth from his grasp.

“Excuse you,” he laugh-coughed, then tsked. “Not very nice to spy on others.”

Gut reaction said to shrug him off but Luned was desperate, and instead, she looked him in the eye. “Do you come here often?” she whispered, kneeling at his side. “I’m looking for someone. Very tall, light skin, bald head, black beard. Built solidly, huge even, but definitely human. Wears a lot of leather. Have you seen him?”

The prone man’s grin oozed sleaze. “Hmm, might ring a bell. Let’s get a room and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Never mind,” Luned sighed. As she stood to walk away, his fingers found their way up her calf, and in one smooth motion, she struck his hand down against the floorboards under her heel. She glared down at him, reminded of yet another nuance of the horrors she experienced in this godsforesaken city. “Did I give you permission to touch me?”

“Bleedin’ sakes, woman,” the drunkard howled under his breath. When she released him, he pulled his hand to his chest and laid on his side. “Bitch!”

This was a silly idea, and Luned knew it. She walked toward the stairs, so incensed and anxious that when someone stepped out of a room in front of her, she just about leapt out of her skin. Before her towered a wiry dark elf in black leather decorated with many straps, all of which held blades of various sizes and shapes. Her silvery hair was short and mussed; perhaps she’d just woken up, as well.

“Leaving so soon?” the thug greeted Luned, easily blocking her path with her long limbs. “He’s right, you know. What sort of person creeps about a place like this, spying on others? Can’t be up to any sort of good, wouldn’t you think?”

Luned did her best to stand tall. “I apologize for my intrusion, I was just looking for––”

“––a friend?” The thug’s purple-red lips slid into a sharp grin. “I thought you looked familiar.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve only been here once, years ago.”

The elf’s musical laugh filled the dusky hallway and she lifted her arms into a malicious shrug. “It’s my job to never forget a face and I haven’t forgotten his, either. Especially with the interest that followed. I’ve been looking for a gift for Swan to get her off our backs and it’s just fallen into my lap, like fate. Will you help me find him, or shall I let her deal with you, herself?”

“You’re mistaken,” Luned glared back at her. “Please allow me to leave.”

“No,” the thug replied more seriously as she reached for one of the daggers at her hip. “That would be silly of me, wouldn’t it?”

Unconsciously, Luned stepped back. She tried to remember –– they didn’t use the stairs to leave last time either, did they? As the elf stepped forward, Luned twisted and took off down the hallway, bounding over bodies as she went. She’d seen an open window just a few minutes ago. She just had to get there.

Attempting to outrun the gazelle of an elf with her short legs was a fool’s errand, but she did manage to scramble around the corner before she caught up. The thug grabbed her by the back of her shirt, sharp fingernails tearing holes in the fine linen, and Luned swung her right arm back in what she’d hoped would be one smooth motion, but was more of a defensive flail.

The thug shrieked as Luned’s blade clipped her thigh, surprising her just enough that her grip faltered. As the scribe took off again, her dagger vanished into thin air, droplets of the elf’s blood falling to the floor in her wake. “The fuck was that?” she spat after her, taking up the chase once more.

Luned finally reached the room, swung the door open, and darted through to the window on the other side. Someone groaned in disgruntlement from one of the stained mattresses on the floor, but she couldn’t be bothered to apologize. Instead, she started to climb through, but only when she was halfway through the process did she realize this window didn’t face the roof or anything else. Below was a three story drop to the pavement below. There was a balcony across the alley, but too far for her to jump.

The elf’s laugh startled her from behind. “Nice try,” she grinned. “I won’t hurt you if you come willingly.” And then, swiftly, something swept the amusement from her face. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

The breaking of bones was a new sensation for Luned, one she’d anticipated and braced herself for, but she learned the hard way that there was no way to prepare oneself for one’s limbs to collapse under them. She probably screamed as it happened, though she wasn’t self-aware enough to hear it over the visceral crackle of her legs snapping into gods knew how many pieces. She felt it through her entire body as she hit the ground hard, but through the temptation to vomit, pass out, and call it a day, she recalled a spell she hadn’t cast since she left Radasanth.

Again, in the blink of an eye, that pain vanished. Luned picked herself up slowly, looking down at her legs to see her new skirt bloodied and torn, but her limbs as healthy as they were when she knelt on that windowsill. That surreal thing happened to her again where it was like watching her life through the eyes of an onlooker and she realized others were watching, passers-by who stood shocked and upset by what they just witnessed. Should she feel self-conscious? She couldn’t tell.

She did know, however, that she had to move. Luned picked herself up off the street, dusted off her ruined new clothing, and pushed her way through the small crowd that had collected when she’d fallen. She ran, though she wasn’t sure where she was going.

As the scribe wove her way through growing crowds of workers on their way to or from their shifts in the industrial quarter, it dawned on her: she had no idea how to find Flint. Maybe he wasn’t here, or perhaps even worse, he didn’t want to be found. Maybe Resolve was right about everything and he was just… gone, and not worth searching for. Her skin broke out in a cold sweat as she ran with labored breath, her legs sore from exertion, heart tight in her chest. It felt wrong. Everything was wrong.

It got even wronger as an arm darted out in front of Luned just ahead, clotheslining her and dragging her coughing, sputtering self into the shadows of an alley. The familiar thug threw her down on her back and pressed one steel-toed boot onto the scribe’s chest, pressing her hard against the pavement and hindering her breathing.

“Nice trick,” the elf smiled in triumph. “You’ll have to teach me how to do that later.”

“Listen, you h––” Luned started, ending with a wheeze as the thug placed her weight almost entirely on her breastbone. Her lungs refused to inhale, and little black spots danced in her vision.

Her assailant leaned down, bearing even more weight on the scribe’s chest, and grabbed her by the collar of her shirt. Luned’s eyes squeezed shut as she struggled, shuddering as she found herself unable to even gasp. “Now,” the thug glared down at her, “you’re going to cooperate.” And then, for a second time, something swept across the elf’s face as she suddenly stumbled forward: pure astonishment.

The elf still grasped the scribe’s collar in her fist, but there was no one left inside the shirt. Luned had vanished.

[Warpath]

And then Luned could breathe again.

She opened her eyes, confounded by momentary blindness. Her vision adjusted to the sudden change: she was no longer in sunlight, but somewhere deep underground, cool and damp and stony. Goosebumps sprang along her arms and shoulders in the sudden chill, and the muscles of her back and shoulders complained when she sat herself up to look around.

She wrapped her arms around herself to preserve heat, surprised - and then suddenly not - to find that she was down to her silk camisole. The memory of her teleportation spell was back again like it had never been gone, and she was mildly amused at the thought of her assailant left throttling an empty shirt. Still, now she was missing the extra layer.

This was the sizable workshop of someone with magical talent. The outside walls were hidden, floor to ceiling, behind towering bookcases overstuffed with academic texts on magical and alchemical theory. There were tables arrayed throughout the room in the style of a chemistry class: each table an exact distance from the next so orderly rows and aisles were created in between, like roads. The tables were neatly covered in alchemical instruments and most were in active, dizzying use. The sound of bubbling liquid and low burner flame was everywhere.

The exception to the layout was at the front of the room: there were no bookcases hiding the naked stonework wall there, and the bench that ran all along the wall’s length was not divided at all. She knew this was the domain of a wizard, not merely an alchemist, because the entire chamber was lit by hundreds of enchanted candle sticks that floated just overhead, tirelessly exuding an antiseptic blue-green light and never dripping wax.

There was a huge body on the table, amid all manner of mechanical instruments, and it was covered head to toe in a thin white sheet. Luned’s heart sank. They’d already killed him. She should have listened to Resolve.

She stood arguing with herself for a long moment, knowing what she was going to do but not wanting to, and instead procrastinating by trying to decide what she should do. She felt numb. She either didn’t know the appropriate emotion to feel, or didn’t have it anymore.

She felt her breath tremble, hitch a bit. No, she decided with no relief, the feelings were still there. There were just too many at once to make sense of.

The scribe forced herself to walk toward the figure, one foot in front of the other. She stepped up to the work bench and reached out haltingly toward the sheet, and pulled it slowly downward. It was Flint, of course, eyes closed and face impassive - deeply browned by the sun, somehow, but still sickly in the clinical light of the room. She recognized him instantly despite the fact that she’d never seen him with much in the way of hair at all, and now he was covered in it. It marked the passage of time for her starkly, made it real: his hair splayed out all around his head long and thick and straight. His beard was fuller than she’d ever seen it. His cheekbones stood out alarmingly on his face.

How?

She furrowed her brow, confused. He’d fought dragons, been eaten by leviathans, and should have died from a million more mundane wounds long before now. Fate was cruel, sure, and she wasn’t surprised that the universe would let them pass going opposite directions through death’s door without realizing it. They seemed destined to suffer twice over to earn a day of happiness. But why the hell would fate or the universe or the gods have a say? The man couldn’t die. She pulled the sheet down further, exposing his chest and his arms entirely. Something was missing.

“You idiot,” she whispered to him. He’d taken the gauntlets off. Why the hell would he take the gauntlets off? “Why would you take them off?”

Because of course the one thing that could kill him was inside him - swaysong. She’d wanted to be angry at their enemies, but in the end he’d killed himself. She glared over at his face, struggling with that. There was a little war in her heart for a minute. At first it was between anger at him and a sense of propriety, like one shouldn’t feel anger toward a dead man, only pity. Then her mind started to work on the why, on what might have been going through his head, all the myriad possibilities. The anger didn’t fade as understanding grew, but it mingled with something like sympathy. She reached out and rested her hand on his chest, over his heart. At least he was free of all that…

His heart was beating under her hand.

[Warpath]

The scribe’s eyes flicked over the scene. Her heart hammered in her chest, and her sense of purpose was back with a vengeance. First, she needed to make sense of all this.

She hoisted herself up on the bench and half-crawled over Flint’s considerable bulk on her hands and knees. There were tubes running from the arm opposite her, a multitude. Some carried blood out of him, others carried a clear fluid into him. The tubes passed through small Aleraran machine-work that clicked and whirred and let out little hydraulic hisses periodically, and then fed another set of tubes into glass tubes and beakers. “What in the world are they doing here?” she muttered to herself.

She pulled the tubes out of his arm one by one, gently. The wounds bled for a couple seconds, and then stopped.

She bent over him and gently shook him, touched his face, brushed his hair back out of his eyes. He didn’t stir. Was she imagining the heartbeat, driving herself insane? But no, she reassured herself by pressing her palms to his chest again. It was unmistakable. She again tried to make sense of the machines and the unlabeled chemicals, but that didn’t add up. The swaysong would have prevented him from being drugged so effectively.

Luned hopped off the bench and scanned the room again with fresh eyes. There, at the far end of the work space, she saw the only stool in the room. Sure enough, there was a large manuscript there. She sat herself lightly down on the stool and started on the first page. Luned knew a little bit about everything because of books, and in turn she knew a lot about the written word itself. She a master of the art of skimming for relevant details, and she began leafing through the handwritten volume at a furious pace.

It was part work log, part scientific document, part notebook, and part diary. Its author was a wizard - an honest-to-gods one, serious business - in the employ of Swanra’ann. His appointed task was simple and two-fold: first to keep Flint asleep, alive, and away from Swanra’ann, and second to find a way to extract the swaysong from Flint’s blood. The wizard’s name was Berivar, and he was technically brilliant. Swaysong was a chemical mystery the world over, as far as Luned knew, and yet Berivar had already made incredible strides in isolating some of its alchemical features and behaviors. He was on the verge of a breakthrough.

Luned didn’t want to imagine swaysong in the hands of someone like Swanra’ann. She glanced over at Flint’s sleeping form, and bit her lower lip. There was no telling when Berivar might return to his workshop, but she guessed by his notes that he wouldn’t want to be away from his work from long at all. She’d need to figure something out, and soon. She’d already spent too long here.

Berivar’s notes had woefully little detail on the spell keeping Flint in limbo, though he did speculate admiringly on its likely composition. Most of the theory was beyond Luned’s expertise - her magic was more innate than the result of focused study - but she grasped enough to start formulating a plan. She stole Berivar’s ink and pen, and hurried back over to where Flint was sleeping. She didn’t let herself hesitate or plan because there wasn’t time, and she didn’t need doubt slowing her hand. She dipped the pen in the ink, and began drawing on Flint’s skin in quick, short strokes.

There was some force acting continually upon him, and she didn’t have the means to sense or see it. She put herself in a thoughtless trance, a place of pure creative wandering. She felt out the ethereal tides and eddies that made up the man - the magical and natural forces that comprised him and bonded body to spirit and made up his essence - and traced them on his skin. Soon she abandoned the pen altogether and drew on him with her fingertips. This was Flint. The lines needed to be bold and sharp, tribal, savage arcs contained in squared geometries that reminded her of clockwork machines. His chest, shoulders, and upper arms were covered in what looked like black tattoos.

Luned lifted herself up on her knees, looking over him. She was unaware of the smear of ink down her right cheek, and right now didn't care. She rubbed her nose with the back of her right wrist, and then paused. There. She licked her pinkie finger and diligently scrubbed away a set of incongruous lines while a pulse ran through her from her spine. There was static in the air, making it heavy, making wisps of hair stand out around her face, but she paid it no mind. Magic, for her, came from a place of creative surety and never from doubt and contemplation. She wanted Flint back and by gods, she was going to get him.

She leaned over him close, keeping her ink-stained fingertips curled away from his face as she pressed the heels of her palms to his thin cheeks, and she pressed her lips tight to his. “Please wake up,” she whispered against his mouth. “Please, please wake up.”

She lifted herself back, brow furrowed, and looked down at him.

He was staring back up at her, head cocked to one side.

[Warpath]

She wasn’t sure how she got him sitting up, but she did.

Flint was awake, but he wasn’t back yet. He stared around the room blearily, his gaze always lingering on her behind an unsure expression, but he didn’t say anything. He was clumsily tying the sheet around his waist, which was an encouraging sign, but Luned was busy. She was rushing from one side of the room to the other, raising the heat on every burner she could find, randomly dumping chemicals and reagents from one beaker into others on opposite corners of the room. She was wreaking havoc on any progress Berivar might have made, ruining months-old experiments. She gathered up every vial of Flint’s blood and washed it down an iron drain. She tried to use one of the enchanted candles to burn Berivar’s book, but the eerie flame wouldn’t catch. She rolled it up and squirreled it away instead. She’d have to find some way to destroy it later.

The air in the room was filling with unpleasant, acrid odors, and thin gray smoke was gathering above the candles. Somewhere in the back of the room, glass popped and fell tinkling all over the stone floor. Luned hurried over to Flint and put her hands on his stomach lightly, looking up at him and speaking slowly, firmly. “We have to go. You have to walk.”

He grunted dryly, feebly, but he lurched toward her. She pushed all of her weight against him when he almost stumbled, but she knew she didn’t have the strength to stop him from falling. Thankfully, he caught himself on the edge of the table.

She found a hidden door between two of the bookcases, locked from the inside. She could feel the magic emanating from it in waves, untold numbers of wards and counter-spells like a complex magical tumbler to prevent anyone from opening the door from the outside except he with the magical key. Thankfully, it was much easier to leave than it would have been to enter this way. She unlocked the door and pushed it open and peered into the hallway beyond. Stone, low, empty, and dark. She snatched another of the candles out of the air, and motioned Flint over to her.

He walked with unsteady, lurching steps. He was slow and heavy, leaning alarmingly on anything within arm’s reach, but he followed.

“’MmI drunk?” he muttered, disbelieving, confused. “Where…?”

He was leaning against the door frame, shaking his head. She closed her eyes and pressed her back against him. She didn’t want to be worrying about escape, or what she’d do if he fell. She wanted to hold him, explain everything to him. No time.

“Stay with me,” she whispered.

If he understood, he didn’t acknowledge it, but when she crept into the hall he stumbled after her, arms stretched out to steady him as he lurched from one wall to the one on the other side. She wished he weren’t so big, so she could have at least pretended to support his weight. There was only one way to go: the hallway trended upward, and every so often turned right, and then right again, spiraling ever-upward.

There were doors in the short hallways wherever the way turned, and Luned had ventured a peek inside one. Inside there were bunks, and sleeping dark elves. She had closed the door silently, but quickly, praying her light hadn’t disturbed them. They’d looked more like academics than guards, but she didn’t doubt there were guards to call for. Flint wasn’t in a state to fight anyone at all.

She coaxed him forward when she needed to, one arm wrapped around his waist, one hand pressed to the center of his chest. When he lurched, she stumbled with him, but he never fell. The air was getting warmer.

“Who’s that?!”

Luned whipped around. Flint didn’t seem aware of the voice. There was an elf down the hall from them, raising a lantern high in the gloom. He was young, bookish. He filled his lungs to call out again, but Luned acted without realizing, until it was done. One minute he was standing in the middle of the hallway, the next his body was a crumpled mess against the wall to his right. Luned had frozen him in time for the briefest instant: he had stopped moving entirely, but the world had gone on spinning without him. In his perception, the wall had suddenly lurched out and smacked him out of the living world as if he were an insect.

The scribe felt a pang of guilt, but Flint’s unsure weight in her arms made it small. Still, she stood watching for far too long, wanting to be sure his chest still moved. Gods help anyone else who got in her way.

[Warpath]

The underground laboratory was hidden underneath some kind of factory, which Luned was now leading Flint through. Workers stared down at them from scaffoldings as sparks and smoke rained down from somewhere above. It was hot here and the air was thin. Two more elves lay unconscious in the secret chamber behind them.

They found a door at the side of the factory and Luned pushed Flint outside, and then closed the door behind them. There was a thin sheen of sweat on both of them, mingling with ash from the factory. The ink was smeared all over Flint’s chest and shoulders now as he leaned back against the brick wall of the factory, his hair falling like a veil over his face. It reached his shoulders, and stuck to his skin.

There were elves out here too, and dwarves, all looking at the pair uncertainly. They wouldn’t do anything, the scribe knew, but if they knew someone to tell they might do it for a little money. She and Flint weren’t safe yet, not by a long shot. She tried to lead Flint toward a busier street - she hoped to flag down a carriage - but there weren’t enough walls for him to lean on and he couldn’t stand of his own accord. Instead she led him down an alley. It was darker and there were fewer prying eyes and plenty of things for him to lean on. It didn’t escape her notice that for the first time in her life, she felt safer in a dark corner of a city than in the bustling light.

They reached the far end of the alley and hurried out into the street, and Luned tensed. Dark elves in military dress were in the process of ordering everyone out of the street, closing it off with barricades. She pushed herself back against Flint, urging him back into the alley, but when she looked back she realized more of the elves had stepped between them and the alley, drawing rifles.

Now others were beginning to notice them, drawing rifles and shouting - they were yelling so quickly and so insistently that she didn’t understand them. They were aiming their rifles at Flint, at her. The brute growled behind her; she felt the rumble in his chest against her back. She spread her arms out and pressed herself back against him protectively. She didn’t know if she was trying to protect them or trying to protect him, or, no, protecting him by preventing him from throwing himself against them. She didn’t know what might happen.

A steam carriage rushed down the street and came to a skidding halt, spilling out a commanding officer of some kind before it was fully stopped. She shouted orders and shoved the ends of drawn rifles downward, and held a placating hand out toward Luned. “Don’t,” the elf was saying. “Whatever you’re about to do, don’t.”

“Leave us alone,” Luned said. She hoped she sounded steely.

Flint ruined the effect. One of his knees went out, and he knelt down with a harsh groan.

“Luned Bleddyn,” the elf said cautiously. “You’re not in trouble.”

Luned raised an eyebrow. This felt like a lot of trouble.

“Put your damn guns down!” the elf barked, still holding her hand out toward Luned. “Miss Bleddyn. You aren’t under arrest. Grahf Holjaer requests your presence. He ordered no harm to come to you, if you come peaceably. We don’t want a scene here, but we really do need to go. Now. The police are not popular in this neighborhood.”

Luned looked back at Flint. He was on his knees, panting, wearing a sheet and struggling to keep his eyes open behind a curtain of greasy black hair.

“Okay,” she said.

[Warpath]

Flint’s world was reduced, blessedly, to the base essentials.

He needed food so desperately he couldn’t believe the depth of his longing. Someone put food in front of him, so now he ate. He didn’t know how much he ate, or for how long he’d been eating, just that he needed food and now it was supplied. His body was visibly human, but mechanically something very different. He felt unnamed biological systems, unique in all the world to him, as they slowly came to life within him and began processing his meal. Strength flooded into muscles too-long unused. His vision cleared. Gravity seemed to loosen its hold on him.

His awareness of the world around him - his comprehension - grew. It was as if someone was shining a very narrow spotlight on him, and beyond the shaft of light were vague shadows and echoing, indecipherable sounds. As he ate, the spotlight expanded. He felt scratchy and greasy and disgusting. The carpet was red, thin but fine. The table he sat at was more of a desk...or was he simply too big for it? Four large containers sat empty in front of him, emptied of the whole milk they’d carried. Someone came into the room - he didn’t care who or what - and carried away the chicken carcasses he’d mangled in the search for meat. How many had they given him already?

He didn’t feel full. He didn’t think he would ever feel full again. He felt alive again though, capable.

Someone had supplied him with a large napkin, utterly ignored until now. He used it, along with a little water left over at the bottom of an upturned pitcher, to try to wipe his face clean. He had hair, which was immensely confounding and set his heart thumping in his chest. He hadn’t worn his hair this way since he was a child. He was no child now though, his beard was ponderously long, wild.

Why was he covered in ink smears? Why was he wearing a bedsheet?

He demanded more from his memory, but it supplied nothing. The last he recalled were scenes of his rampage; all his grief and rage. The little furnace in his gut sputtered to life and he exhaled slowly, pushing away the reason for those emotions. He needed facts now.

He remembered, faintly, a trap. The floor crumbling out from beneath him, burying him in heavy stone. Someone had fired a cannon? He’d almost freed himself when he’d heard chanting, felt his body struggling against magic. And then the final, hazy vision: a black-skinned man looking down on him not unkindly and then...dreams. An eternity of dreams.

The rage was like a voice inside him now, eager to feed the furnace of his hate. It told him he had yet another new enemy, another nameless antagonist. He ought to...he was going to…

And then there was a small, hesitant knock at a door he wasn’t aware of until now, and all his fury was focused upon this person that stepped so slowly into the room. At first he didn’t react at all, because he couldn’t believe the gall, the outrageous foolishness of it. They’d managed to dream up the most suicidal attempt to manipulate him he could fathom, though not before this moment.

They’d sent someone to impersonate Luned Bleddyn.

[Warpath]

Flint was up and halfway across the room before even he was aware of what was happening. The table crashed to the floor with an incredible cacophony of noises: splintering wood and shattered glass, breaking china. He didn’t even remember flipping it over.

He had his hands outraised: kill now, questions later.

But something made him stop.

Maybe it was her expression. She saw him coming, but didn’t flinch. There wasn’t fear in her eyes, but something else - remorse? Resignation? Or just...sadness? Behind all his fury, he told himself that he was hesitating for tactical reasons, that something just didn’t add up.

In fact, he would eventually admit to himself, he just couldn’t do it. It didn’t matter that she was a fraud. She looked like her, so much like her, that he could never bring himself to do anything remotely injurious to her. The look on her face alone turned his blood cold, doused the fire, and set him pacing in front of her.

“How dare you,” he rumbled.

This was clearly not how she pictured this going, and that confounded him too. If the plan was to trick him, shouldn’t she have come in expecting this? Shouldn’t there have been a plan, a plot for every conceivable outcome? But she just stood there for a long moment, gaping, wringing her hands and looking for words.

“I’m sorry,” she finally blurted out. “For laughing. I’m sorry we fought. I’m sorry I….”

Flint blinked, shook his head slightly as if he’d been struck.

“You’re not her.” He wanted to declare it, but it sounded unsure, petulant.

Again, she seemed too surprised to find words.

It was true though. He knew Luned Bleddyn. This woman, whoever she was, looked like an idea of Luned Bleddyn. The color of her hair was a little too saturated, the red standing out too much. The color of her eyes stood out too bright, the tone of her skin too even, each freckle like it had been placed by design rather than chance. The scars he’d always admired - gifts from a badly mutated Helethra - were gone, replaced by white ink designs that mimicked the old wounds like pretty tattoos.

But even that gave him pause. If this were a trick, why fail in the duplication in such an obvious way? How would anyone miss that?

Flint’s brow furrowed. “You died,” he said at last. He was sliding down to his knees in front of her so he could look up at her. “I watched it happen.”

She approached him tentatively. Not as if she were afraid of him, but for him. “I know,” she said, still as if she weren’t sure what to say. This conversation was, to be fair, utterly new territory. What does one say about dying and coming back? “I’m sorry,” she tried at last. “That you went through that. I don’t remember it very clearly…”

Flint was searching her face now, and she sighed. “I’m me,” she said finally. “At least I think I am. I didn’t at first, but now I remember almost everything. I remember the library, and Bleddyn...Resolve. Otto. Ags. I remember how cold it is in Andvall, and how warm it is in your parents’ house. I remember how tightly Suska hugs, and how scary your mother is, but how good. I remember how good it felt to drink tea after we escaped Ettermire the first time...I remember meeting you for the first time. Formally, and informally. I remember the first time I kissed you. It was on Carcosa. We thought we were alone.”

A ghost of a smile played over Flint’s lips. “But Bleddyn was there.”

Her cheeks actually reddened, and she laughed at the memory - lightly, cautiously, but relieved too. “This is...new,” she began, reaching out to let her fingertips play very lightly over his cheek. “I mean, I don’t know if anybody in the history of the world has ever had to deal with this. For awhile I was afraid you were...you know? That I lost you, too. I know it’s not the same, but…”

Flint nodded, ever-so slightly. “We’ll figure it out,” he said very quietly.

“So you believe me? That I’m...me?”

He started to nod, and then to shake his head, and then looked a little pained. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally. “I believe you believe it. I feel it in my gut. But I’m afraid of it, too. Both ways.”

She tilted her head to one side.

“If you’re a trick, that will hurt. If you’re not,” he thought about it, looking her face over, “I don’t know if I’ll survive losing you again.”

Luned shook her head slightly, and there was something otherworldly in her confidence when she spoke next. “I don’t think you have to be afraid of that,” she said. “I don’t plan on dying again but if I do, I’m pretty sure I’ll just come back again. Flint, I don’t think I can die. Or rather, stay dead.”

Flint locked eyes with her for a long time, not saying anything. “Luned,” he said at last, “our lives are very fucked up.”

She laughed again, harder this time, easier. She leaned forward, putting her weight against him, and she rested her hands on his shoulders. She was nodding her agreement. “But we don’t have to deal with it alone,” she said. “I’m here.”

Flint nodded, wrapping his arms delicately around her waist, almost afraid that if he touched her she’d disappear. She didn’t. He closed his eyes, pressed his cheek against her upper chest. She wrapped her arms around his head, so gently, and pressed her cheek against his hair.

“I didn’t know you had such pretty hair,” she murmured to him.

“I need you to help me cut it off,” he murmured back. “I also need pants.”

“I don’t agree,” Luned said airily. “On either count.”

[Luned]

One of the servant-soldiers who had welcomed them to the keep earlier, a dark elf named Vendesa with deep lines over her brow, interrupted Luned and Flint’s embrace with a delicate knock at the door. She wore vivid indigo cloth draped over her armor, a mark of status, though she hadn’t betrayed her title just yet. “Pardon. The Grahf extends an invitation to dine with him tonight, allowing you the remaining daylight hours to recuperate from your respective trials. Meanwhile, we would like you to feel comfortable here. What can I do for you?”

Flint pawed at his glossy tresses with a grunt and Luned articulated for him. “A bath, please. Scissors, a straight edge razor, and good soap.” She paused, then laughed. “And some trousers, I suppose.”

“Our pleasure, Miss Bleddyn. I’ll return for you in just a moment.”



Flint didn’t really fit in the elegant clawfoot tub but he sat down in it anyway, too weary to argue. His struggle to find a comfortable position displaced much of the hot water, staining the matte slate floor in a slick dark blue. Luned’s bare feet stamped ripples in it as she stepped up behind him, armed with scissors, but hesitant. She couldn’t resist running the fine silver comb Vendesa had provided through that inky black hair, and she admired how it ran surprisingly smooth under her fingertips. “It’s lovely. I can see why your mother wants you to grow it out.”

“Cut it off,” Flint grumbled from between his knees, which he was forced to keep raised to his chest.

With a sigh, Luned complied. But from the way Flint’s own back rose and fell with relief as the scissors sang their first snip, she understood. He needed to reclaim control over his body, and this was the easiest way to start.

“Where did you reappear?” he finally spoke up again.

“The edge of the Tular Plains.”

“Why there? What do you remember from when you reappeared?”

Luned held another length of hair between her fingers and cut it away, dropping it to the floor at her feet with the rest. “I don’t know. I wonder if I just appeared wherever Carcosa manifested at the time. Do you remember how Bleddyn needed decades to track it down, because it kept moving? I woke up on a wagon. They told me they’d found me buried in the sand, as if I’d just… fallen asleep there. I never forgot who I was, exactly, but it took me some time to recall what had happened, to find my magic again.”

“Hmm.” Flint stared blankly ahead. A tapestry of black velvet and silver thread added some warmth to the cold stone wall, but not enough to make it feel anything like home. “Do you remember being dead?”

“I…” Luned faltered. “I remember dying, I think. The fever, at least. But… I don’t think I really died. Carcosa must have felt I was in trouble and called me back to it, healed me.”

“We buried you, Luned.” Flint twisted as much as he could in the narrow tub to look at her, and she finally saw it: he wasn’t just hungover from a magical sleep. He was still grieving.

“I…”

“Are you sure you’re Luned? How can either of us really know? Maybe you’re someone else who’s just stolen Luned’s memories. Maybe even they believe they’re Luned now, but they’re not. Or maybe you are you, somehow, but you’re different. Maybe this body is a new one. Do we need to dig you up?”

After months of watching her life from a distance, it was as if Luned’s soul was called back to her body, and the room spun. She knew, intellectually, what had happened. But now that she actually had to really think about it, reason it out, and deal with the consequences, it became tangible for the first time.

“Or would that just be traumatic?” Flint continued, turning back around to allow her to finish his haircut. The swish of the water in the tub was loud in Luned’s ears, and the scissors suddenly felt heavy in her hands. “Why didn’t Rez know you were back?”

Finally, a question she could answer. “She did,” Luned replied. “She found me, told me what happened, where I could find you. She…” the scribe trailed off as she trimmed the last of his mane. “Flint,” she began again, setting the scissors aside. Worry wavered in her voice. “Why did you remove your bracers?”

[Warpath]

The question caught Flint by surprise, and all his ruminations about Luned were - miraculously - put on hold. Until now, he’d either been waiting to wake up or for the next dream to start. When had his dreams ever questioned their own mechanics, though?

“You were dead,” he said dully.

Luned was about to call him out on repeating himself, but he continued: “I couldn’t stop it. All my strength, all the control I had over the world around me, and there was nothing I could do but watch you die. You’d been attacked, and I had failed to protect you. I didn’t even know who did it. I still don’t.”

Flint shifted in the tub with a small, frustrated growl. More water sloshed all over the floor. His hair was short now, but still longer than she’d ever seen it. For the first time, she realized how much softer his accent had become, how easily he was speaking Trade, without needing to stop and think for the precise word to convey the deep thoughts he was prone to. He had changed. More evidence of lost time.

“When it was over, and you were gone, I was profoundly empty,” he said. “But if you are concerned that I took them off because I wanted to die, don’t be. I’m not religious,” understatement, “but the consensus seems to be that you and I wouldn’t end up in the same place.”

Flint wanted to face her, to read her reaction. He sunk, slightly, and rested the back of his head against the edge of the tub. He still couldn’t see her, but she could see more of his face as he spoke. “I wanted...I needed to take back some of the control I’d lost. I couldn’t save you, so I had to avenge you. Before you say it, I know you would never ask me to. They hurt you in your own home. Insulted you. They had to be punished. So I started looking for those that had made it possible. A lot of people were opposed to Chronicle, and a lot more had thrown money into undermining us - you. I followed the money to all its sources and dead ends. I chased the rats from the Brotherhood and the Knights into holes. I killed a lot of people.”

He let that sink in, raising one of his naked forearms from the water. The sight of it, without the metal vambraces, was strange to both of them. “Toward the end, I had the gradual realization that the bracers...well. The swaysong alters me on the fly, evolving me based on my moment-to-moment needs. The danger of it was always a matter of focus, ever-shifting requirements would cause my body to be ever-shifting. But now my focus never changed. All I cared about, thought about, dreamed about was hurting the people that hurt you. The vambraces protected me, but they also limited me. They were a crutch I didn’t need anymore.”

“But,” Luned said, and hesitated because she was afraid of what the realization might cause in him. “But what about now?”

Flint shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m not dying. Maybe my body has learned to regulate the swaysong on its own or...or maybe I’m still waiting to wake up. I don’t know.”

[Luned]

Flint’s shave proceeded in silence, and Luned assisted with his scalp while he trimmed his beard in a fine glass mirror. Before too long, he appeared much himself again, though the scribe couldn’t help but wonder if he’d grown again, as well. It was much subtler than the foot of height he’d gradually gained after initially ingesting Swaysong, and only really noticeable when he stood to wrap himself in a linen towel. As he towered above her, however, another thought crossed her mind: had he gotten bigger, or was she the one who had grown smaller? Did she really look different? She couldn’t tell.

“Are you angry with me?” Flint asked. He leaned down slightly to speak, his voice soft.

“No,” Luned looked up at him, relieved to see some brightness return to his dark eyes. “Are you? With me?”

He wore his grief with such purpose that she almost forgot her guilt. “Never,” Flint finally replied. He reached up to brush some loose hair from her face but the way his knuckles glanced gently over her cheek felt tentative, unsure. She couldn’t blame him for his hesitance to accept this apparition.

Luned recalled a moment after Flint had committed to the bracers to preserve his life, those years ago. He’d warned her that he’d want to hold her with nothing between them someday, something she could never allow. She’d never felt his embrace without a metallic chill before.

The woman’s fingertips found the lace-lined hem of her camisole and liberated it from the waistband of her skirt, the keep’s cool air prickling across her stomach. She took Flint by the wrist to guide his arm around her waist and, to her relief, he allowed it. His other arm followed and as she draped her own over his neck, she felt his palms drift up her back and pull her close. For the first time, she felt the bare skin of his forearms around her, but it didn’t feel especially exciting or new. It just felt right.

For a long time, Flint held her breathlessly tight, like a sob suppressed in one’s chest.



In the dressing room next door, Vendesa had laid out some thoughtful gifts for both of them. For Flint, the mysterious grahf’s staff had managed to scrounge up new leather gear that would fit like a glove with a little breaking in. Even the shirt miraculously fit, though that wasn’t made of leather itself; the twilight silk sported slashed sleeves that allowed his hulking arms room to move and breathe, embroidered with such understated delicacy that he might have missed the intricate wisps of silver thread if Luned hadn’t pointed them out. It matched the bodice of her new dress, an airy design with low shoulders, and together, they looked almost civilized again.

“He was expecting us,” Flint commented as he laced up his new boots. Also Gravebeard models, of course.

“Apparently so,” Luned grimaced, looking over her own shoes. The burgundy beauts had held up to the fall about as well as her tattered, blood-stained skirt, and she set them aside in favor of the grahf’s replacements. “I’m sure we’ll find out the hows and whys of it very shortly.”

As if on cue, Vendesa knocked from the other side of the heavy wooden door. “He awaits.”

[Warpath]

Flint rolled his shoulders as he walked, side-by-side with Luned. For the first time in what felt like years - what had been years - he felt like himself again. Or perhaps it was more than that. He thought on it and couldn’t decide if it was the relief from the impossibility of having Luned back, or if there was something else he was missing. He felt improved, better than he’d ever been.

This was an impressive house, but he felt nothing in the way of apprehension. He was assenting to this meeting as a courtesy.

The house was old, certainly, but chillingly clean. The walls were dark scarlet-painted wood, and they were close, just barely leaving space for Flint and Luned to walk side by side. He could feel the velvety luxuriousness of the carpet even through the soles of his boots, and the way was lit with humming electric lights set inside yellowed globes near the ceiling. Of course a grahf would have money, but this place was ostentatious even so.

The hallway turned on itself twice to carry them to the middle of the household, far from the industrial din of Alerar. The sounds of bells and whistles and steam-driven carriage wheels faded away, and without windows to tell otherwise they could have been anywhere. When the hallway ended, it was at a pair of handsome wooden double doors, attended by smartly dressed elves that opened the way for them.

It might have been a study, the room they were let into, or a small library, or an office, or a smoking room. It had features to suggest each: too many lounges and sofas to be a private refuge, but too cozy and lived-in to feel fit for public occupation. “The grahf will arrive presently,” Vendesa said behind them. She excused herself, and the double doors were closed after her.

Usually this meant they’d be waiting awhile, in Flint’s experience, but he took just one step into the room before a side door opened and a short, thin dark elf in silk loungewear hurried in with a smile and a nod. “Miss Bleddyn,” he said smartly, “Mister Skovik. A pleasure to see you both out and about after all your personal excitement. And no worse for the wear, by the looks of things. Congratulations to you both.”

“For?” Flint said.

“Not being dead anymore, I suppose,” Holjaer said with a grin. He was pouring something amber colored into a short, broad glass. “Want some?”

“No thank you,” Luned said. Flint grunted and shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“I didn’t think so, but I try to be polite,” Holjaer said, indicating a set of seats nearby with an outstretched hand while he took a sip.

The seats were well-chosen: a large purple-cushioned couch for Flint and Luned to share, and the grahf turned a tall-backed chair around for himself. They all sat, Luned politely demure, Flint leaned forward with forearms over his knees, the grahf comfortable with his right leg over the left.

The elf smiled charmingly at them, first at Luned then at Flint, then back again. He sat smiling like an idiot for a moment, took another sip, then set his glass aside. “I want you to kill Ezura’s daughter,” he said.

Flint and Luned looked at one another, and then at the grahf, eyebrows raised.

He looked between them. “Sorry,” he said. “Maybe I should start somewhere else. I’m Grahf Holjaer. Each grahf deals in something specific, almost more of a guild master than a parliamentarian or a senator or what-have-you. Some deal in the rails, or in textiles, or in infrastructure, or in...what? I don’t know, iron ore. Whatever. I deal in information and rumors. I know things.”

“The spymaster,” Flint offered.

“Mmm,” Holjaer said, pointing a finger at Flint while he took another long sip. “Something like that. Look, each grahf has to run a solvent business to maintain any kind of political clout. I don’t have any factories, or anything to feed to factories, so I have to know more than anybody else. Don’t mistake it for something sinister. Or at least not universally sinister. I keep the wheels greased for my contemporaries, and they keep me stocked in...you know, whatever, whiskey and silk. I’ve got a good gig, I’m not interested in plots and all that. At least, not personally. I just keep tabs for the people that are interested in plots and all that.”

“I don’t mean any offense,” Luned said carefully, “but I’m not sure I’m following you. What does this have to do with Helethra? Or us?”

Holjaer nodded. “It’s just, people think ‘spymaster’ and assume I’m playing some tricksy long game trying to take the throne or make pawns out of people. Like I said: good gig. I mean, look around. I’m really happy with how things are going. That’s why I want you to kill the kid.”

“What makes you think she’s still alive?” Flint said. His face betrayed nothing, and Luned looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Process of elimination, honestly,” Holjaer said. “It could be Ezura herself, maybe, but I doubt it. I know you two blew into town years ago and stirred up something ugly with Swanra’ann. I know Ezura was running some pretty nasty experiments out of her little museum, and I know she somehow crossed the underboss and got herself nabbed. I know the kid disappeared before then, because Swanra’ann didn’t get the kid. Then Ezura and the kid go off the map for a couple years, and now we’ve got things creeping up out of the sewers and causing trouble for Swanra’ann - a lot of trouble. It’s a little more complicated than that, sure, but that’s the skeletal framework of the situation.”

“Whoever it is,” Luned said thoughtfully, “it sounds like you’re saying they’re causing trouble for Swanra’ann. Why is that a problem? I’d think that would make you happy, as a member of the legitimate government.”

Holjaer made a sound as he sank back into his seat, swirling what was left of his drink. “Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.”

[Warpath]

Holjaer laid out the story as he understood it.

For months after they disappeared from Ettermire years ago, Swanra’ann had scoured every inch of the city. She’d tried to keep it a secret, but secrets were Holjaer’s thing. The fact that she’d tried to keep it a secret is what attracted his attention in the first place, and that’s what made him dig up the rest of the story.

He found out about Flint and Luned, and the swaysong, and what had brought each of them to the city in the first place. He found out about Ezura and Helethra, and from there he traced their story back too. He told them that Ezura had been a very successful royal apothecary with a promising career before Helethra was born - neither Flint nor Luned knew that - but that not even he knew who Helethra’s father was. He knew there had been ill-defined complications during the pregnancy, and that Ezura had abandoned her career shortly before her daughter was born.

Ezura opened her eerie museum of horrors a few years after that. She’d begun writing letters and scheduling meetings with other scientists, speaking to anyone that could tolerate her for more than a few minutes. Her obsession was mutation.

Now, there have always been stories about monsters living in the sewers beneath Ettermire, Holjaer told them. The sewers were dangerous and largely unknown, and certainly home to strange wildlife that could, sometimes, be a danger. It wasn’t until after the museum, however, that more concrete stories started to emerge, and rumors became news.

Of course, the grahfs hadn’t paid much attention then. Orphans are of limited use; missing orphans offered even less.

Ezura began making strange friends, and began buying strange things from them. She wanted books at first, and then ingredients and equipment. She wanted things from far off lands: unicorn horns and salamander hearts, then exotic and darker things still. Things that legitimate alchemists and people of conscience don’t trade in.

So she made a new friend: Swanra’ann.

The criminal underboss had connections beyond imagining, and influence that stretched out all over the world, and no scruples to speak of at all. Holjaer heard a rumor that Ezura had asked for a virgin high elf’s heart, once, and that Swanra’ann had provided it at a steep price. Just a rumor, mind you, but…

Well.

Eventually Ezura asked for something that she couldn’t afford; something that Swanra’ann acquired anyway at great expense. When Ezura couldn’t (or wouldn't) meet the price the underboss set for the mysterious swaysong, Swanra’ann went looking for another buyer, and found one in Luned Bleddyn. Ezura, desperate, conspired to steal the swaysong for uses Holjaer could only guess at.

And, well, they knew the story better than him from there. He told them what he knew, most of which was true: Swanra’ann blamed Flint, an employee, for the loss. Swanra’ann blamed Ezura for stealing the swaysong. And, eventually, Swanra’ann blamed Luned for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He figured Swanra’ann began cleaning house: first kidnapping Ezura’s daughter to draw out Ezura, which must have worked because Ezura disappeared soon after that. He figured somehow Flint and Luned had escaped Swanra’ann’s wrath by escaping into the sewers, which he knew they’d done once before with a little girl who was often seen coming and going from a sewage outlet.

This, he assumed, had been Ezura’s daughter Helethra. This meant that either Ezura had slipped Swanra’ann’s clutches after all and was hiding out in the sewers, or, more likely, that Helethra had done so.

Flint made a thoughtful sound here and interrupted the story. “And why do you assume either survived at all?”

“Because someone is making Swanra’ann’s life a living hell,” Holjaer said with a shrug, and poured himself a fourth glass.

Here’s what happened after Luned and Flint escaped.

Swanra’ann began scouring the city, and things calmed down for a time. As far as the grahf council was concerned, the whole affair had been an interesting diversion for all of a month and now it was over. Back to business. But Swanra’ann didn’t seem to be letting it go. Holjaer found that very interesting.

In time, he started to hear rumors that Swanra’ann was slipping - that her wealth and power weren’t what they were. That was, Holjaer told them, utterly unthinkable. Swanra’ann was old, as much a legend as a person, and her presence was inexorably tied to Ettermire’s underworld. She’d been Queen of the Pit when the grahf’s predecessor’s predecessor was kicking around, and she’d always been as good as infallible.

But then he started seeing signs of it.

She overreacted to every perceived slight, and went to war in situations where a strongly worded letter had once sufficed. Her foot soldiers, once unfailingly loyal, were beginning to skim and defect and, worst of all, spill secrets. Gangs were beginning to crop up that didn’t pay her tribute, and advertised themselves as such. She was slipping.

[Warpath]

“Swanra’ann and I, we have an interesting dichotomy,” Holjaer said. “Her schtick is obfuscation, mine is revelation, you see? Not to say I just run around revealing secrets, but I like to know things and she very much likes to keep things to herself. It’s a tug-of-war, and I’ve always had to play it a little safe because, well, people that Swanra’ann doesn’t like tend to just up and disappear.”

The grahf indicated Flint and Luned by pointing at them with his glass.

“You know better than me,” he continued. “But all of a sudden, it’s easy to find out what she’s doing. All the protection rackets, all the backroom deals, all the grahfs on the take, all the factory bosses and foremen and guild yeomen in her debt...everybody is talking, and she can’t seem to shut them up. And you know what they’re saying?”

Luned sighed. “I can guess,” she said. “Swanra’ann is under attack.”

“Bingo,” Holjaer said, “and she’s losing. Now, I don’t know this, but the pieces all fit. I think someone has found a way to weaponize whatever is down there in the sewers, and they - she is pointing that weapon at Swanra’ann. I think Swanra’ann is spending her resources fighting that attack off, and has been for awhile now. And I think their little war is about to come to a head. That makes me nervous.”

“Why?” Flint said.

“I’m a grahf,” Holjaer said with a casual shrug. “The city is my responsibility. I need to hold it together. Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time: good gig.”

“Yes,” Flint said, “but isn’t this a self-correcting problem? One will triumph over the other eventually.”

“Exactly,” Holjaer said, “and it’s starting to look possible that Swanra’ann is going to lose.”

Flint and Luned look at one another. Holjaer looked between them.

“I don’t think you’re grasping what Swanra’ann represents, here,” he said after a moment, setting his glass down for the first time. “Imagine a table or like, a stool or something, and it has three legs. You follow? Three legs holding this thing up. The stool is Ettermire. One of the legs is the citizens, we need them to work the factories, to produce things, buy things, so on. The second leg is the council of grahfs; we grease the wheels and feed the factories and keep things proceeding apace. And the third leg is Swanra’ann: the secret grahf.

“She manages the necessary evils, guys. The black markets, the rackets, the underhanded shit that has to get done. She navigates the grey areas: the loopholes, the contractual disputes, the corporate espionage. No system is perfect, but Ettermire...Ettermire’s infrastructure is a runaway freight train barreling downhill, and we’re building the machinery as we go, even as this crazy thing is trying to shake itself apart. The image of perfect bureaucracy is as necessary as the ability to quietly subvert it...if we lose Swanra’ann, we lose everything. Society collapses, it’s as simple as that.”

Luned frowned. “Do you know what she does?”

“I do,” Holjaer said gravely. “We all do. She makes sure the grahfs know what she does. She wants us to be afraid of her, and we are. If we could excise her, we would. We would have done it decades ago. Hell, centuries ago, if she really is as old as she wants us to think she is. We probably could, but the cost…” He shook his head. “Even if we won, we’d lose absolutely everything anyway. She’s the devil, Luned, but we need her.”

“Perhaps it would be for the best, then,” Flint suggested, “that your city did collapse. If its core is so rotten, why protect it?”

Holjaer nodded. “Sometimes one of us makes that argument, but it’s hard to be that callous when it comes right down to it. I’m not stupid, Flint. I know I’m a rich piece of shit wallowing in disgusting levels of comfort while children are starving to death in the street. I know I don’t have a leg to stand on, morally speaking. But as bad as it can be here, it’s orderly. It’s utilitarianism. Chaos means more death and suffering, not less.”

Luned put her hand lightly on Flint’s naked forearm before he could speak again. “Why us?” she said. “Why go to all this trouble to bring us to you and ask us to kill...whoever is behind all this.”

“Because I think it’s Ezura’s daughter,” Holjaer said, “and nobody else has succeeded thus far. You know her, at least. You’ve been into the sewers, and came out alive. And neither of you can stay dead, apparently, so that’s a bonus. Look, I’m asking for help, here. I can pay you a boatload of money if you need me to, but honestly I’m hoping you’re just better people than I am and you’ll do it because it’s the right gods-damn thing to do. Before you showed up again, I was about ready to march three hundred men into the sewers with guns drawn and just...bury the whole thing. I need a better solution.”

Luned sighed, and began to shake her head when Flint said, “We’ll do it.”

“You will?” Holjaer said, glancing between them again with his eyebrows up. “You’ll kill Helethra? Or Ezura, if that’s who it is?”

“We will fix your city,” Flint said. “We’ll stop the crisis.”

Holjaer sagged back into his chair with a sigh, and took a long drink.

[Warpath]

Later, Flint and Luned removed themselves from the grahf’s estate and promptly disappeared into the chaos of the city again. It was late afternoon and beginning to drizzle the grey, foul-smelling rain native and unique to Ettermire. Holjaer had supplied them with a daily stipend to fund their efforts, and Flint promptly spent some of it on an umbrella that he held dutifully for Luned. She sighed at his fussing, but used it as an excuse to throw her arms around his waist and turn their march into a romantic stroll.

The rainfall had the dual benefit of clearing the streets around them and making enough white noise to drown out their voices beyond a few feet. They both felt the eyes of the grahf’s spies on them, but for the moment they needn’t fear their ears.

“We’re not going to kill Helethra,” Flint said. “I only told him that to get his money.”

Luned grinned up at him. “I know,” she said. “We have to figure something out, though. I don’t know how Hel could be fighting a war with Swanra’ann as it is, but even if Holjaer is right about all this, I just can’t imagine her being able to stand up to both Swanra’ann and the grahfs.”

Flint nodded. “And Swanra’ann hasn’t abandoned her empire completely. That means she still has resources to bring to bear. She might be making preparations already, which may explain why she’s been withdrawing from her obligations. She’s winding up to throw a haymaker, and figures she can swing back around to the rest of us once Helethra is down.”

Luned was quiet a moment, thinking.

“Still, she’s more vulnerable now than she’s ever been, as far as I know,” Flint said.

“We can’t just abandon Ettermire, though,” Luned said. “Holjaer had a point about that. I just walked through a relatively tame den of mobsters and...well, I don’t want to see what that place looks like without any checks and balances. I don’t want to see those people turned loose on the rest of Ettermire.”

Flint shook his head. “I know,” he said. “I think he’s underestimating the influence the grahfs and their police would have. Those who benefit from a broken system rarely want to imagine the sacrifices they will have to make to see it fixed. I don’t trust them to make those sacrifices, though. We will need to find our own solution.”

“Okay,” Luned said, pressing her cheek to his ribs through his shirt as they strolled. She closed her eyes. “So what do we do first?”

Flint was silent for a long moment, thinking. “We need to know more,” he said at last. “We need to find Hel.”

Luned made a face. “The sewers,” she said flatly.

“Yes,” Flint said with a sigh of resignation.

[Luned]

This time, Luned didn’t hesitate in the mouth of the sewers. She stepped into the tunnel, turned, and offered Flint her hand. “Watch your head,” she warned him of the obvious. “Helethra protects this path. We’ll be fine.”

Flint’s hand found hers and she couldn’t help but notice how soft it was without the usual callouses that had remained persistent even through the healing magic of the Swaysong in his veins. “Mm,” he grunted, stooped, and stepped into the darkness with her.

Their steps echoed in the pipes, but not so loudly that it drowned out the distant skittering of who-knew-whats. The racket crawled up their spines with the muscle memory of terror, but still, they walked on.



Pyralis welcomed them with as much hospitality as a sewer-dwelling orphan could manage. “Is this your… friend?” she asked as Flint stepped into the chamber behind Luned, finally able to rise to his full height. He stretched his back with an audible crackle.

“Yes. Pyralis, this is Flint,” Luned introduced them. “Flint, this is my traveling companion, Pyralis.”

“Glad you were able to find each other,” the elf girl offered a smile to the giant. “Please, come in. Um… make yourself at home?”

Flint stepped further in to get a better look at their surroundings. In the darkest corner, on their pile of old blankets and rags, a couple of the smaller children napped. Otherwise, the space was empty, save the scattering of tattered furniture they’d liberated from garbage collection. There must have been decent ventilation here, as he felt just the slightest bit of air movement and the overbearing musk of sewage seemed to dissipate a little. As he observed, he felt something at his leg, and he thanked the gods it spoke up before he gave into the reflex to shake it off with the mercy he’d offer a giant cockroach.

“Mister,” Lufe piped up, barely taller than the muscular knee he grasped. “How do I get big like you?”

The giant stared down at him, processing the dirty little face that gazed back in such reverence, until Luned answered for him with some secondhand wisdom from Otto. “Eat your vegetables?”

Instantly, both of the boys looked at her. “Gross,” Lufe sneered. From the matching grimace on Flint’s face, he agreed.

“Sorry,” Luned chuckled. Pyralis covered a snort with her hands.

They allowed the men a moment, Flint kneeling to better conspire. Much of his muttering was lost to the white noise of the sewers, but Luned caught some bits about “when I was your age” and “meat” and “one hundred push-ups”, at which point Lufe began to lose interest.

“So, what do we do, Luned?” Pyralis’ young brow creased with worry, one hand braced against her tumultuous stomach. “Have you had a chance to think about it?”

“A bit,” the scribe smiled, though it probably wasn’t very convincing. “We need to see Helethra. She won’t remember us, so we’ll need you to do some introductions.” Luned lowered her voice. “I haven’t forgotten about the doctor. I promise.”

Pyralis shifted a bit on her feet. “All right. We’ll have to go now, though… she usually leaves around dusk.”

[Luned]

Helethra lived deeper underground than her found family of mutant children. Pyralis guided them without fear and meanwhile, the further they walked, the quicker any stray sound or sensation spooked the scribe. She held Flint’s hand with white knuckles, fingertips digging into his palm perhaps a little too hard, but fortunately, he didn’t seem to mind.

Something they found pleasantly surprising about this journey was, despite the fact that they climbed further and further away from the sun down ladders and through pipes, it wasn’t nearly as dark as they’d expected. Luned had worried they’d be stumbling blind, but every time the black seemed to finally have enveloped their three figures, a new glimmer of light emerged before them. Usually, it was some sort of fungus or algae, adapted to glow in alien greens and blues. But now, as they entered a new chamber, they discovered a source of light in the water that rushed in an open pipe down the side.

“I don’t remember seeing that last time we were here,” Luned muttered, afraid to send her voice echoing through the tunnels around them.

Pyralis paused. It glowed an electric violet-blue, reflecting brightly in her pale eyes. “It started a few weeks ago after a raid on an unlicensed alchemist. Must’ve poured something potent down the drain.” And then, without a second thought, she jumped into the manmade brook. As she waded upstream toward the opening in the wall, she glanced over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”

Luned might have argued, but animal shriek rang at them through the tunnel they’d just emerged from, and it was mighty convincing. She jumped on in, and Flint followed close behind.

“At least it killed the leeches,” Pyralis laughed before continuing on her way. Luned felt faint for a moment, struck by the reminder of an unhappy memory, but Flint took her hand again, and they continued on.

This pipeline got narrower toward the end, forcing Luned to stoop and Flint to nearly crawl. But at least they could see, and this water was… well, relatively clean. Finally, it opened up into a massive chamber, and the scribe realized she’d been holding her breath.

The gray stone walls were tall, leading to a high ceiling. A couple rusted ladders led up the far side toward larger tunnels, just a hint of light filter down through them. Something had built a nest of sorts in one of the high corners and that was just about all there was of interest… that was, until Luned noticed the bones. Scattered all around lied the skeletal remains of what she now realized were giant rats, dozens of them, most in a pile against the far wall. The last time they were there, these creatures were alive, entangled and cemented together by their own festering feces and urine to create a living wall of their own. But something had apparently killed the rat king during their absence, only their scars to remind them –– but then again, even those were gone. The bite Flint had taken on the shoulder had disappeared after he drank the Swaysong.

Luned had been so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t realized Flint had let go of her hand. He strolled over to one of the skulls, stared down at it, then pressed down on it with his boot. It popped under the pressure, crumbling into dust.

In a far corner, Pyralis stood beneath the nest. “Hel,” she called tentatively. “We have guests.”

What crawled out of the nest only contained the ghost of the child they used to know. Its arms stretched longer than any humanoid’s should, the joints bending in strange directions as it crept down the wall with astounding speed and grace. As it approached, it did so on hind legs, but nothing about it seemed elf-like anymore. The closer it got, the more it became apparent that some of the Swaysong had remained in Helethra’s system and had transformed her into the version of herself that she had idealized the most. And now that she was just a few arm’s lengths away, the alchemical light of the water reflecting softly off her form, Luned could see how beautiful she was.

“Who are you?” Helethra spoke accusingly. Her hair was mossy now, impossibly soft-looking, with hanging tendrils that curled over her shoulders with delicate leaves. The bark-like substance that had been growing on her skin now covered almost her entire body. In some places, the bark showed fissures, out from which more life grew. Some of the glowing fungi had spread down her arms and legs, and she left traces of it in her footsteps. Her eyes were the same –– a warm honey-brown, and still so young –– and they glared at Luned and Flint without an ounce of recognition.

“Hello, Helethra,” Luned replied. She kept her voice even and low, her posture relaxed. “I’m Luned, and this is Flint. You probably don’t remember us, but we knew you and your mother when you were little.”

The child’s eyes blinked. “Is that so?”

Flint, now standing beside Luned, wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “We’d gotten ourselves lost down here, and then you found us. You took us home to the museum and told us about your friends. We met Ezura, and…” he shuddered. “Bruno, was it?”

“Bruno,” she glittered, grinning. Her teeth were jagged now, a couple missing, making for a rather menacing –– albeit genuine –– smile. “Haven’t thought about him in forever.”

“We’re glad to see you so well after everything that’s happened,” Luned continued. “And I’m glad those kids have someone looking out for them. They really seem to admire you, Lufe in particular.”

Helethra laughed. “Yeah, yeah.” And then something switched inside of her, hunching her posture. “Anyway, what do you want? I’ve got stuff to do.”

Luned replied perhaps a bit too smoothly. “I met Pyralis by chance while traveling. I couldn’t believe it when it turned out you two knew each other, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the child I met those years ago. I figured I owed it to your mother to check up on you, see that you’re all right.”

The girl-creature lifted her head, looking between the two strangers. “Do you know where she is?”

“Who?”

“My mother. Ezura.” A hint of panic reached Helethra’s vocal chords, twisting her mother’s name into a growl. “Where is she?”

The scribe paused in shock. Did she really not know? How…

“She’s dead,” Flint said, matter-of-fact.

Something changed in Helethra’s carriage, an alarming shift that transformed her from mutant into monster. She stood almost as tall as Flint at full capacity, but leaner, scrappier, more beast-like than he could ever manage. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I was there,” Flint answered. “I put the Swaysong in her hand and forced her to drink it.”

[Warpath]

Flint sensed Luned tense beside him, could imagine her closing her eyes and holding a sigh. He’d been blunt, said too much all at once, and he knew it - he wasn’t stupid. She would know why though. He couldn’t lie anymore; he could never lie about this again. He’d never forget how he’d felt when Luned found him standing over Ezura’s mangled body, and never forgive himself for hiding the Swaysong from her after that. He had accrued enough debt by that act. No more, and never again.

He stared into Helethra’s eyes as she searched his face, teeth bared. Rage, confusion, hurt, and...something else. He’d felt it the moment he’d laid eyes on her, and he thought she felt it too. There was a vibration between them, inside them. It was as if his entire body had been abuzz at a very specific frequency, but he hadn’t noticed it in himself until he felt echoed in someone else. Helethra had it too.

A chill went down the brute’s spine and goosebumps ran down his arms in waves. It was almost an alien feeling, except he remembered it from a time before.

Some part of him was afraid that Helethra could hurt him. She could be a physical threat to him.

She was so close that when she huffed, he could feel her breath on his face. Her eyes glinted in the eerie light of that place. “You’re lying,” she said, voice raw, each word enunciated. It was as if her teeth could whittle the syllables down to sharp edges and spit them into his eyes. “You’re a liar.”

The hum between them intensified, tension like a million steel strings between their inhumanly altered bodies, each stretched to their breaking points.

And then Helethra turned her back to him and stalked off into the dark in three long strides, hissing. The invisible strings sang as the tension released, and the feeling was more than emotion - Flint felt light headed, like the sound was a real, physical thing, an actual throbbing in the air itself. He could feel it in his bones. He watched the rangey muscles in her back ripple as she disappeared. She felt it too. There was something…

Flint shook his head and took a step back toward Luned, who sensed something was off beyond the obvious. She pressed her palm to the small of his back, as if worried he might fall.

“What…?”

“Swaysong,” he murmured wonderingly. “She has Swaysong.”

[Warpath]

Pyralis had hurried them out of what they remembered as the rat king’s chamber and into a smaller nook in the sewers, clearly concerned that Helethra might change her mind and decide to do some damage. She was wound up, nervously shuffling around in an attempt to be hospitable, despite the fact that she lived in a dead-end tunnel at the bottom of a sewer system. Anything to avoid any more awkward confrontation.

The young elf was fiddling with something in the dark, murmuring, as Flint crouched down to be at eye level with Luned when she sat on a stone bench along the sheet metal wall. Or a chunk of stone that served as a bench, anyway. The curve of the ceiling prevented Flint from standing at full height without tilting his head, anyway.

“It makes sense,” Luned sighed. “I didn’t think about it before now because she’s alive, but...she was dying from whatever Ezura made her drink. I cast my spell and undid it, and then she was herself again. I might have overdone it a bit because she didn’t remember me anymore, but the physical changes were reversed…”

Flint nodded. “But you cast the spell on me, too, after I drank the Swaysong. And it undid the changes for a moment, but the Swaysong came back.”

Luned nodded vaguely, thinking. “Swaysong has some...property. Some function that causes it to bind to the body, recreate itself even when it’s undone or depleted. It must override the flow of time, even. I found a way to rewind each of you to a moment before you consumed Swaysong, but your bodies just...made more. So I took away whatever Ezura had mixed with the Swaysong, but the Swaysong eventually came back, without the rest of the mixture.”

“But she’s alive,” Flint said. “No gauntlets.”

“Clearly Ezura was trying to counteract the harmful effects of Swaysong. She was trying to make a chemical version of your gauntlets. And it must have worked to a degree, because Helethra was still alive hours after consuming it.” Luned shook her head, then sighed and looked up at him. “Without notes or formulas or even samples of what Ezura was working with, all I can do is guess at what she did. Or tried to do. And even then, her research was so advanced. What if it was all unnecessary though? What if Helethra didn’t need the harmful effects counteracted, and Ezura just ended up doing more harm than good?”

“But then, how is she alive?” Flint said. “She was just a child.”

Luned nodded, reaching out to touch his bare forearm. “Maybe that’s all it was? Her body and mind were better able to adapt because of her age or…”

Flint frowned. “Or she’s just that focused. Has been that focused, even from that age. Knew what she was and wanted to be, beyond even a moment's doubt.”

“Is that possible? She was so young.” Luned said. She didn’t want to believe it. “What did that woman do to her?”

[Warpath]

“Child,” Flint said to Pyralis, causing her to peek around the corner at him wide-eyed. She’d stepped out of the nook, ostensibly to look for something she hadn't tried to define, but clearly hadn’t gone far. “We must speak to Helethra again. I have to make her understand.”

“Um,” she said, glancing between the pair. Luned tried to look encouraging. “No offense, but is that a good idea? I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Very few of my ideas are good,” Flint admitted. “Nevertheless, I have to try.”

“You told her you killed her mom?” Pyralis said very quietly, so cautiously that it turned into a question.

“I told her the truth.” He stood up, too fast, and his head met the ceiling of the nook with a resonant metallic gong. He grumbled and rubbed his scalp. The last time he was here, he couldn’t have reached the top of these tubes on his toes with both arms raised over his head.

Luned was making a valiant effort not to laugh at him, but when she turned to add her voice to the discussion she saw that Pyralis was desperately trying to contain a giggle, and failing. The elf looked simultaneously mortified and delighted, somehow. The situation became so surreal that the scribe laughed and, now having permission, Pyralis laughed too. She still covered her mouth with both hands, and looked up at Flint to be sure. He looked between them, frowning.

Luned shook her head at Flint, still chuckling, and turned to speak to Pyralis again. “I know we’re putting you in a difficult position,” she said. “I really do. I understand you’ve already done a lot for us. You’ve shown kindness to me that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fully pay back, so believe me, the last thing I want to do is create trouble for you in your home.”

Pyralis looked at her feet and shook her head. “I know,” she said quietly.

Flint sighed, but not irritably. His tone was suddenly gentle, which surprised even Luned. “This place and everyone in it is in danger,” he said. “Swanra’ann is desperate, and the grahfs will throw their support behind her if Helethra continues to push her campaign. Whether or not Helethra realizes it, we are the only allies she has, and she needs allies now. We need your help. She must be made to see this.”

The elf girl mulled this over with a deep frown, and slowly, gradually, her eyes hardened. “Let me speak to her first,” she said. “Let me try to calm her down. She’s too mad right now.”

“Okay,” Luned said. “Just...be careful, okay?”

Pyralis nodded, once, paused a moment to work herself up, and then disappeared into the sewers again. Flint and Luned watched her go.

“Helethra won’t stop pushing Swanra’ann,” he said. “She needs the war, at this point. The threat of the grahfs will only harden her resolve.”

“We can’t know that for sure,” Luned said. There was no conviction in her tone.

“Perhaps not,” Flint said, “but the look in her eyes...I’ve seen it before.”

Luned nodded, toying with the material at the waist of her dress with her fingertips. “In the mirror,” she guessed.

“Yes,” he said.

“So we can’t kill Swanra’ann without dooming Ettermire, we can’t fight off the whole Aleraran military, and we can’t stop Helethra from bringing both down on her own head,” Luned mused. “What do we do?”

“The best we can.”

[Warpath]

It was almost a half hour later that Pyralis came back to them in a rush. She was panting, her hair matted to her face in the dank humidity of their subterranean environs. “Helethra,” she huffed. “She’s doing something crazy.”

By the time Flint, Luned, and Pyralis returned to the rat king’s chamber, it was abuzz with activity. There were two other orphans there, closer in age to Helethra, elves with minor deformities to mark their respective mutations. They were sulking, defensive, and in the middle of yelling back at a gaggle of younger elves that were accosting them. Flint listened to their argument before deciding it had devolved too far into petty name-calling for him to glean the cause of the fight.

“Quiet,” he barked, straightening to his full height as he did. The nearest boy to him, an elf with what looked like cauliflower ears, spun on him with a sneer that quickly faded. Flint pointed at him and loomed. “Name.”

“Uh,” the boy said. “Addoc?”

“Where is Helethra?”

Some of Addoc’s anger returned, tempered by fear into a sullen bitterness. The boy expected to get chewed out for his answer, and he was clearly considering a typically teenaged response. “She got all pissed off when I told her she was being a bitch. She left.”

“Left where?” Flint said.

“Tenner’s, I guess,” Addoc said, slowly. “She wanted us to hit there, but we’re not ready. I told her we’re not ready, and I’m not getting skinned just because she’s in a mood. So she made my bug buck me and took off. Tossed Sulli too.” Addoc nodded at the other teenager, who shrank away as attention shifted, even briefly, to him. His face was mostly hidden behind a mop of violet hair.

“Your...bug?” Luned said.

“Yeah,” Addoc said. “You know? Big, lots of legs.” He mimed antennae. “Bug.”

Flint grinned. So it was true. Helethra wasn’t fighting Swanra’ann with an army of orphans. She was fighting Swanra’ann with an army of mutated sewer creatures. He wondered at it briefly, but the idea made certain things make sense. If nothing else, it explained how Helethra had survived the sewers when she was a child. Flint had almost died, multiple times, moments after stepping foot here. He had a multitude of questions, but no time.

“Tenner’s,” he said. “The plaza? Edge of the smelter’s district? What’s there?”

“A drop,” Sulli said, softly. “Or we thought it might be.”

“Skinner’s got people there, day and night,” Addoc said. “They bring stuff into a warehouse in bags, but don’t bring anything back out. We only just started scouting it though. We don’t know what it’s for. I tried telling Hel that. It could be nothing, or it could be the Skinner’s summer house. It’s stupid to go there before we know more.”

“She was really mad,” Sulli said, looking at Flint sidelong through his hair. “Not thinking straight. I just didn’t want her to get hurt.”

“She went alone?” Luned said.

“No, Dizzy was with her,” Addoc said.

“Take me there,” Flint said. “Now.”

Addoc looked around helplessly. “But she took my bug.”

“Your legs work,” Flint said. “Do you not know the way?”

“Well, yeah, but it’s...I mean, it’s a long way.”

“Then start walking,” the brute growled. “Go. We will catch up with you.”

Addoc wanted to argue, but not with Flint. He jerked his head at Sulli, who instantly fell in line with him, and the pair hurried through a passage somewhere in the dark. Flint noted it from the corner of his eye. Luned glanced at him, then hurried after the boys.

He turned to Pyralis. “You have defenses here?”

She seemed surprised that he was talking to her. She glanced around in a slight panic, then his question sank in and she nodded quickly. “You need to collect everyone left down here,” he said. “Find safe spaces. Prepare your defenses. Hide until Helethra, Luned, or I return.”

“Is someone coming to get us?” one of the younger orphans said.

“I don’t know,” Flint said. “But the whole surface world is looking for an excuse. I’m going to assume the worst until I know better.”

“What’s the worst?” Pyralis said.

“The worst is that Helethra might have just given them the excuse they’ve been waiting for. Swanra’ann has something up her sleeve, something expensive, and if the grahfs don’t think that’s enough they’re going to take matters into their own hands.”

A murmur went through the children, but Flint silenced it with a look over the group. “Fear later,” he said firmly. “Prepare now.”

And then he moved off to follow Addoc, Sulli, and Luned.

[Warpath]

Though the sewers were familiar to him, Flint couldn’t help but feel as though everything was different too. Part of it was that they had expert guides this time: Sulli and Addoc knew where they were going and what what might be down various side passages. When they felt confident that discussing the horrors wouldn’t also summon them, Flint and Luned began to ask after things they’d witnessed the first time they’d come here.

The talking mice rarely came up from the undercity - a lost set of stone catacombs beneath the sewers of Ettermire - but they were still kicking around. Addoc didn’t know where the mice learned Trade, but they were not great conversationalists. They only cared about food. The ants had been a troublesome pest for some time years ago, but Helethra had somehow wrangled them into sealed off ‘pens,’ where she could regulate their hive-pack populations. It sounded like she used them like ill-tamed dogs of war.

They were still in the middle of discussing the ants when Addoc called for a stop, reached into his pack, and pulled out a wineskin. “Wait here,” he said. The remaining trio watched as he cautiously rounded a corner, then slapped his palm a few times rhythmically on the wavy metal wall. He stared for a long moment, stepped back, and then tossed the wineskin underhand down the tunnel in front of them. He backed away from the side tunnel, then hurried back to the group, holding out a hand for patience and silence. His gesture said, firmly, "be quiet and don't move."

Flint and Luned watched with mounting horror as a set of long, knife-like black limbs emerged from the side passage and groped around experimentally. They were already six or seven feet long, sleek, skeletal thin and shiny, delicate but blade-like. The ends of the limbs tapped the far side of the tunnel, and then the rest of the spider emerged, herky-jerky, and it turned down the tunnel now opposite the group that watched it. It found the wineskin and, with surprising care, used its shorter pair of front limbs to lift it to its fangs.

Addoc hurried the group forward now, with no small amount of silent urging to Flint and Luned, who very much did not want to get any closer to the creature. Thankfully, the group turned down the tunnel the spider had emerged from, though Flint did not like having the thing behind them at all. The end of the tunnel was lined in webbing, and Addoc ordered them to watch their step. It was five minutes and a few more turns before any of them spoke again.

“Helethra has this place locked down,” he said, “except for the spiders. We could probably go around killing them all, but honestly they’re probably our best defense. Every day we find another group of dead thugs, sucked dry.”

“How do you know where they are?” Flint said. “We encountered one the first time we came here, but we didn’t see it until it was already on us. It had blocked a tunnel with its body, waited until we passed, and then snuck up on us.”

Addoc was nodding as Flint spoke. “The big ones all do that. The lucky thing is that they tend to set up facing sewer entrances, and like I said, food is plentiful coming into the sewers, so they don’t really bother trying to catch those of us already inside. That spider never moves; she’s got prime real estate there and always has because this is the only way out to the docks and warehouses. Skinner’s people always tend to come from the direction of her big strongholds. As long as you know the passages and where they go, you can usually guess where a spider is going to be. Those ones don’t have super great eyesight either, so if you see them first, you can usually do like I just did and feed them. Just don’t run or make any quick movements when they’re facing you and you’re usually okay.”

“What if you’re coming from the other way, though?” Luned said. “How are we going to get back?”

Addoc nodded wisely. He was clearly enjoying being the expert here. “Well, like I said, it helps to know where the old-timers are. They usually don’t move because they don’t need to. If you know where one is going to be, and they’ve got the tunnel blocked, you just throw a meat sack right at them. You have to hit them though, otherwise they’ll just stand right there in your way and eat it and then just block the tunnel up again.”

“How is it different if you hit them with it?” Flint said.

“It gets them mad, or scares them? They’ll still grab the meat sack, obviously, but they’ll run back to the nest with it and eat it there. Or tack it to the wall for later? I don’t know, I’ve never followed one to find out exactly what they do.”

“...nest?” Luned said, frowning.

Addoc nodded. “They all have nests somewhere down-tube from where they hunt. Or at least all the big ones do. You know when you’ve found one cuz there’s bones all over the place and it smells awful and it’s all covered with webs. You ever see that, just turn around and go back. Dizzy tried to check one out once and got real stuck. She was lucky Hel heard her yelling and got her out before the spider found her.”

“Ugh.” Luned shuddered, and pressed closer to Flint. He was glad for her vote of confidence, but he did not feel especially empowered to protect her from what she was feeling. He felt it too.

“It’s not far now,” Sulli said. It was the first thing he’d said since they’d started walking. “This tunnel goes all the way out to Tenner’s.”

[Warpath]

The sewers had an overpowering scent, but it wasn’t what one would expect. It was a chemical smell, acrid and unnatural, and somehow promised it was something you didn’t want to get on your skin. Before, the metallic walls had been covered in green moss and mildew and other disturbing things; now the metal was oxidized into a dull patina, naked, solid, and clean. Flint wanted to ask Addoc about it, but the boy suddenly stopped them, turned a corner, and pointed at a ladder set in the center of the tunnel.

“This will…” he started to say, but then he paused.

Above, they could hear someone screaming.

“Hel!” Sulli said, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

Flint let out a primal growl and crossed the rest of the tunnel in a few long strides. He heard the others splashing after him as he ascended the ladder, three rungs at a time. There was a manhole cover above him. He noted a clever, crowbar-like contraption tied to the ladder, which doubtlessly the boys used to pry the manhole cover up just enough to slip through when scouting.

He didn’t need it. The cover went spinning madly in the air like a flipped coin as he surged up from the sewers and onto the street. When the cover landed, it cracked the cobblestone with a sound not unlike gunshots.

The noise didn’t attract any attention, though, as the street was already alive with the roar of gunfire.

At first, the brute feared that the grahfs had already lost patience. There was a small army in the streets, elves and humans and dwarves armed with military rifles and blunderbusses. There was a steam-carriage parked against a warehouse wall, and its roof had been torn away to reveal a mounting apparatus for a cannon-sized gatling gun; an until-now mythological construct. A team of elves was endeavoring to load it and get it turned toward the action.

The action, as it happened, was a small army of thugs in the middle of getting savaged by a quartet of horse-sized cockroaches.

Flint only got a glimpse of a female elf riding on top of one of the roaches before a firing squad lined up, took aim, and unleashed a hellish volley of thunder upon her. It didn’t seem to bother them that most of what they hit was their fellows in the melee: their goal was accomplished. The rain of bullets fell on the roach in three waves, and the girl fell off her mount on the second wave in a cloud of red mist.

The roach itself only stumbled. The gunfire ricocheted off of its shiny brown carapace with a series of loud, rapid-fire ticking sounds, followed immediately by the sound of bullets finding other targets. Thugs in the melee that hadn’t been shot yet got a second chance, and a few of the bullets even found their way back to the firing squad.

It was chaos.

Flint didn’t care. He was blind to the threat, consumed by the sight of the elf girl falling, and he might have been surprised at how much rage he was still capable of...if he was capable of anything but indulging it.

Bones cracked and bodies flew, and the firing squad scattered. The roaches were regrouping, struggling against a horde armed with pikes and halberds, each separated from the others by their own gang of wranglers. Between Flint’s sudden intercession and the firing squad’s callous disregard for their allies’ lives, it was not hard for him to dispatch and scatter the rest of the pike-wielders that were trying to contain the roach nearest to him.

He fell to his knees beside the fallen elf-girl, panic in his eyes. Relief flooded him when he realized hers was not a face he recognized, but the call to action didn’t fade. She was young, too young to be full of bullet holes. He didn’t recognize her as a dark elf at first: her skin was almost translucent white, her eyes a disturbing pink. Her albinism made the blood show an alarming black on her skin; it was everywhere. She was gasping, searching his face in fear and disbelief.

“LUNED,” Flint roared, helpless. He held his hands out over the girl’s body - should he touch her? Would that make everything worse? Would he kill her if he moved her?

And then, despite the screams and shouts and gunfire, he heard a quiet, rhythmic, mechanical clicking, starting off slow and then steadily rising. His blood went cold, and he felt the muscles in his face melt. He raised his eyes just in time to see the gatling gun spinning up, and the crazed smile on the face of the man cranking it. He dropped, scooped the bloodied girl up in his arms, and tried to run.

No good.

The bullets sprayed into him too fast to conceive, a rush of rain drops somehow falling sideways into his back. He didn’t feel the pain, but he felt the impacts, and they made him stumble. He curled up around the girl and dropped to his knees, and hunkered against the onslaught, curling around her body and cradling her to him. He growled, and the sound came out as if he were riding in a carriage at speed on a bumpy road. His back felt wet.

His vision vibrated, but he saw Luned, Addoc, and Sulli in front of him huddling in the mouth of an alleyway. Luned had clearly herded them there the moment she’d seen the gatling gun, and even now was struggling to keep the boys from running into the maelstrom of bullets. They had tears on their faces, and they were screaming something, but he couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the gun and the steady pounding of bullets against his back, an endless series of thuds in his ears.

Eventually - it seemed to take hours - the gun ran out of bullets.

Flint was kneeling in a pool of his own blood. He looked down at his chest and saw blood there, too, but after a moment’s panic he determined that it was the girl’s. They hadn’t pierced him. He raised his eyes to meet Luned’s, and she was already sprinting across the street to him, the boys hot on her heels.

Later, Luned would tell him what his back looked like when he turned away from her in that moment, and charged the steam carriage. The fine shirt the grahf had given him was utterly gone in the back, dissolved by the rain of bullets, and the skin was tattered away in a mess of blood and gore. But beneath the blood, gleaming wetly in it, was the musculature of his back, laid bare, and shining like steel. The bullets had sparked and rang and ricocheted off of him just as they had off the carapace of the roaches, though in his case they’d done so with metallic pops and flashes of light.

By the time he’d tipped over the carriage with one hand, killed its driver and the gun operators, thrown two cases of rounds across the street, and begun dismantling the gun with his bare hands, the metallic shine was indistinguishable against the layer of blood. By the time they got back to the sewers and Luned examined him again, his back was whole, as if nothing had happened to it at all, and there was no visible cause for it to be covered in dried blood.

Before that, however, they had to escape a war zone.

The boys were huddled with Luned over the girl, their voices overlapping in naked terror.

“Dizzy oh gods Dizzy I’m so sorry Dizzy, Dizzy oh my gods Dizzy!” They knelt beside her, Addoc touching her shoulder, Sulli wringing his hands. Luned pushed them away, too hurried to be gentle.

Her face was stone as she searched for something - what? Dizzy’s eyes were roaming blindly, blood pooling from her lips and staining the lower half of her face with never-ending freshets. The girl was clawing at her chest and throat. Luned didn’t feel anything, didn’t hear anything, didn’t know what she was doing or why. There was a cold, easy sense of necessity that removed the immediacy from everything around her.

She ran her fingertips over Dizzy’s cheek, collecting blood, and drew something on the brick beside her head. Dizzy was staring at the sky and at nothing now, each gasp coming after a longer interval than the last, weaker, quieter. The boys were screaming “no,” over and over, but Luned was deaf to it. She had drawn a halo of arcane symbols, fanning outward across the stone from Dizzy’s head. How long had she been dead now?

And then Luned brought both her fists down hard on Dizzy’s chest. The girl gagged and curled upon herself, and Luned helped her roll onto her side, and she spat up what seemed like a gallon of blood, and then she took the hardest, deepest, most desperate breaths a living body could. The sheer force of her breaths threatened to crack her ribs, if Luned’s fists hadn’t already, and the boys fell back on their butts, staring wide-eyed at the miracle they’d just witnessed.

Dizzy clawed at her chest, scrambled against the blood-soaked confines of her shirt until it tore and stretched, revealing crimson-streaked but unbroken stretches of absolutely white skin. She was looking over herself wide-eyed, horrified beyond the concerns of decency. She looked at Sulli and Addoc, disbelieving, and then her face crumpled and she was a child, burying herself in Sulli’s arms and sobbing, as desperate to cry as she’d been to breathe.

Sulli clung to her and cried into her hair, and Addoc stared at them, slack-jawed.

[Warpath]

Meanwhile, Flint was around the corner. He was trying to figure out why he had a human head in his left hand, sans body, but dismissed the mystery in favor of the next kill. The gangs were struggling to push the roaches down different streets. One by one, the gangs realized they were fighting a war on two fronts, and they were not equipped for it.

The pikes, poles, and halberds were effective at holding the roaches at length and pushing them around, but nobody had yet found a soft spot or weakness in the bugs’ armor. This resulted in a kind of stalemate: the small army of thugs was making an effort to divide and conquer the insects while their leaders were arguing about what to do beyond this. Nobody had any bright ideas yet, but it was only a matter of time. Desperation would demand they figure out something.

Flint was scattering one gang now, and when they realized that they no longer had the numbers to keep the roach contained, they split and began to run and scatter in every direction. The roach spun, raised its front two legs, and tried to impale Flint. He pressed one hand to the segment just beneath its head - its “chest” - and shoved it away. It was disgusting, but he didn’t feel the overwhelming terror for it he’d felt the last time he’d come up against its ilk. It helped that he was bigger now.

“Zit!” someone yelled.

“Excuse me?” Flint said.

The albino girl was running at him, the lower half of her face a mask of black, her shirt torn open in the front and her modesty scarcely preserved by a mess of war paint made of her own blood. The roach half twisted to regard her, and Flint was ready to pummel the thing to save her. Something made him hesitate though, something about the way it shifted two of its legs down, and he realized with a shock what was happening just before it did.

The girl leaped up onto the roach, putting her foot between two segments in the armor of its leg, and it lifted her up just enough that she could hop up onto its back. Her nerves were raw, her face streaked with tears and snot and gore, but her eyes showed a fierceness that surprised him. He wondered if that’s how his eyes had looked when he’d been a child gladiator facing his own death. Existentially destroyed, but determined not to be prey.

“We have to get Helethra,” the girl called down to him fiercely. “We have to.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know, she was farther up the street when they came out of the buildings and swarmed us. She must have fallen off of Rash.”

Flint blinked, then it clicked: Rash was Helethra’s roach.

“I don’t know which is which,” Flint said, pointing at Dizzy’s roach - this one must be Zit, then. “They’re trying to separate them.”

“Help me, then,” Dizzy said. She tapped Zit’s right eye, patted it full on with her palm, and the insectile mount turned to the right and began marching toward the next-nearest gang.

Together, Flint and the girl riding a giant roach, charged directly into the backs of the pike-wielding gang. The crowd tried to scatter, but they were so closely packed that there weren’t many places to go, and many were trampled from the get-go. Once that side broke, the rest of the assembled throng struggled to gather up on the opposite side of the roach they’d been tormenting. The effort left many of their number exposed. Flint was stabbed twice in the right shoulder, but managed to push into their midst and begin wreaking havoc, and the roaches were at his sides. Dizzy was directing both of them.

Once what was left of the gang turned and ran, Dizzy leaned over Zit’s head to still the roach they’d just saved. “This is Pimple, not Rash,” she explained, frustrated.

“Clearly,” Flint said.

“Can you start on the next group? I’ll get Pimple back to Sulli, he’s just going to run wild without someone to direct him.”

“Go,” Flint said.

The next group was making an effort to push their roach into a narrow alley. A trio of elves with military rifles were coordinating the undertaking, ordering the pikemen to roll the roach onto its back, where they promised to shoot at its underside once it was flipped and trapped between the walls of the alley.

Flint killed the riflemen first, and tossed one of their bodies into the group. The ensuing panic was enough for this roach to surge through to freedom, and Flint immediately saw that it was bigger than the others. Its legs were adorned with fresh, pierced corpses, and it was covered in blood and foul-smelling gore.

Somehow, though he could never say what made him so certain, Flint knew that this was the roach he’d fought the first time he’d entered the sewers. It was bigger now, impossibly, but something in its hitched gait and the mottled, discolored warps and weaves in its carapace told him of the battles they’d shared. Aurelianus was supposed to have killed it with fire.

This had to be Rash.

The monstrosity bucked and twisted, stomped and slashed with a cruel purposefulness that Flint hadn’t observed in the other two roaches. It knew how to kill, and wanted to, not simply because it had to in order to survive. It was almost as if it had been insulted by the attempt to destroy it, and it was punishing, with relish, anyone that had been so foolish as to try. It didn’t seem to notice Flint until the group splintered, and then it grew very still and regarded him, cocking its alien head first one way then the other.

He took a step back, certain it recognized him.

He would never know its feelings on the matter, or if it even did know him, because Addoc came sprinting up from behind Flint. The boy clambered up over Rash’s legs to mount the monster, muttering to it all the while. While Rash didn’t react negatively to the elf’s presence, it didn’t make any special effort to make his life easier as Zit had for Dizzy. Then again, Rash was Helethra’s mount, not Addoc’s.

“Hurry,” Addoc said, once he settled onto the roach’s thorax. “The others are attacking the last group already. Helethra must have been separated from Rash, hopefully she just jumped on Wart.”

[Warpath]

Luned was riding on a giant cockroach, and she did not find the experience to be a pleasant one.

Roaches, giant or otherwise, were not built for riding. Their wings were too wide, which meant one had to sit with her legs tucked, more than let them hang over the monster’s sides. The nearness of their legs to one another also prevented one’s feet from being too low along the thing’s sides, as they were all covered in stiff barbs. There was nothing in the way of a mane or anything of the like to hold onto, so the rider basically clung to the edges of the carapace plates where they met over top the wings, but Sulli had warned her to be careful about pushing too hard.

The roaches were not unintelligent, he’d been explaining to her, it was just that their minds were alien and simple. No one understood or could work with them as well as Helethra, but she’d conditioned these four to at least respond to certain stimuli and commands in predictable ways. He could press his feet against those two plates to get Pimple to back up, he could nudge the right antenna in just such a way to get him to shuffle to the right, or pat the right eye to get him to turn in that direction. In time, the pair just started to understand one another.

Luned took his word for it, tried to avoid pushing too hard on any plates, and clung to the boy’s back to avoid getting bucked off the monster as it waded into a horde of screaming gangsters.

The scribe was still working out the best way to leverage her powers to help when two more roaches plowed into the group from another angle off to the right, and then the fighting broke. They’d done it.

She was looking down at Flint, concerned at how much red there was on him. “Are you okay?” he said, oblivious to his own state. She almost laughed at him.

“Flint,” she said, “I’m not the one that just...I don’t...yes, I’m fine. Are you okay?”

He seemed to think on this a moment, but Dizzy interrupted them. “She’s not here!”

And then the brute was back in military mode, scanning the scene and barking orders. “Sulli, take Luned and go back the way we came from, search the bodies and make sure Hel isn’t among them. Fix her if she is. You two,” he pointed at Dizzy and Addoc, “follow that group, see where they lead you. I’m going after the one we just broke. With any luck, they’ll have an agreed upon point to regroup, somewhere with leaders. If they took Hel, she’ll be there.”

“Go,” Luned said, nudging Sulli. He didn’t need to be told thrice: he patted Pimple’s left eye, and the roach turned to the left until it was facing the direction they came from, and began to march.

Luned knew the carnage should have horrified her. She told herself to focus on finding Hel, to overlook the details otherwise, but found that she didn’t particularly need to. Dozens of people had died, and some were still dying. They were hardened criminals, of course...but Flint had been one of them, not that long ago, in a very literal sense. He’d been working for Swanra’ann when she met him.

She tried to find the horror, but it wasn’t there. Instead there was something chilly inside her, and that almost disturbed her more - the lack of guilt or fear or disgust somehow more worrisome than its presence. She was relieved that Flint hadn’t been hurt, but not surprised...was she impressed? A little, yes, that was there. But afraid of him? Disturbed by his actions? She couldn’t summon up the old hesitations. What did that mean?

“She’s not here,” Sulli said. She heard in his voice the mind-blasted, numb feeling she should have had but didn’t. “I don’t see her.”

“No,” Luned agreed, “I don’t think Helethra is here.”

“Is that good or bad?”

Luned frowned, shaking her head a little. “I don’t know, honestly.”

Addoc met them some time later, his especially massive roach twitching its antennae in such a way that seemed to express irritation. Luned stared at the mount for a long moment. “Nothing?” Addoc said. Luned and Sulli both shook their heads.

“What did you see?” Luned said.

“Nothing,” he said. “I tried to follow them, but they’re just scattering in every direction, throwing down their weapons. They’re just...scared. They’re not soldiers, you know? They’re not following orders or anything, they’re just running away.”

Dizzy came barreling into the square in the middle of this, and the riderless roach hurried along behind hers. She looked over the faces of those assembled, and was on the verge of hyperventilating. “Where is she? She’s not here? Guys, where…”

“She’s not here, Dizzy,” Addoc said firmly. “We looked. I don’t...wait, what did you see?”

Dizzy looked at the faces of those assembled, struggling with her panic. “I saw some of them getting on an airship,” she said. “They were climbing ladders, but it was already rising up, and I couldn’t reach them in time, and it…”

“Dizzy,” Luned said, and hoped she sounded gentle. “Breathe,” she said. “What did you see?”

“It was going that way,” she said, and pointed.

Sulli moaned in dismay.

“The tannery is that way,” Addoc said numbly.

[Warpath]

Tenner’s was beginning to look a lot like every other public place Flint had recently visited: nighttime property damage and broken bodies as far as the eye could see. As he chased the last of Swanra’ann’s thugs into their holes, he considered the implications of this particular rampage.

Hel was gone, but alive - taken. He couldn’t know the mind of his old employer for sure, but she often paid more when her enemies were taken alive. She had a taste for hands-on vengeance; a love of the personal touch. Flint pushed this problem out of his mind and moved on to the next: Tenner’s itself. Two warehouses were on fire, and a good three city blocks were completely blocked by bodies and debris. Already the watch whistles were sounding and the high-pitched screech of steam-coach tires echoed everywhere.

The grahf had been very specific that Swanra’ann was not the enemy, and Flint was under no illusions that his actions could be seen as anything but antagonistic toward her people. Once the military police began sorting out the chaos here, they’d know he’d been killing gangsters and saving giant roaches. He didn’t know what the grahfs would do, but he figured his line of credit was in question, at the very least.

A return to his party’s staging point told him that Luned and the kids had retreated back into the sewers. The military police were only a few blocks over, so he figured they hadn’t had much of a choice, and Luned knew he could take care of himself. Still, he wasn’t excited about navigating the sewers without a guide.

He dropped into the sweltering humidity of the shadows beneath the city streets, his boots splashing in the chemical slurry. He knew immediately that the others could not have returned this way: the roaches wouldn’t have fit through the manhole. He still heard splashing boots and shouts echoing tinny off the metal walls, though. Either the police or some of Swanra’ann’s more ambitious thugs had followed them down. Someone fired a gun, and Flint couldn’t tell if the sound had come from above or below.

Flint still looked human, essentially, though his physique strained credulity. Doubt, in this case, was healthy. He had come from human stock but he was something else now. A human being of his size should not have been able to move with such ease in the malodorous dimness as he did. The eyes of a normal human being wouldn’t have glinted bestially as his did, affording him uncanny night-vision. He was relatively comfortable down here, avoiding the subterranean threats and the heavily armed intruders alike, but he knew that the place itself had not changed. He had.

He came across two black-clad elves carrying rifles, who peered into the shadows with their sharp elven senses and yet never heard or saw him coming. The first died without the second even knowing, not until Flint disarmed and incapacitated him. This one he needed alive. He dragged the dazed invader down a series of tunnels, somehow remembering the twists and turns he’d taken at Addoc’s direction. He threw the elf bodily against what looked like a solid wall of stone set into the metal of the tunnel. There was a dull thud and the body splashed down into the muck beside the “wall,” which in fact fell suddenly away. There was a mad, nightmarish scramble of man-sized legs shaped like daggers, black fingers that snatched the elf right out of the water and dragged him at speed down the revealed tunnel.

Flint peered down the hallway, and watched as the giant spider skittered backward, dragging its prey around a corner and out of sight.

He hurried past, turned the opposite way, and stalked away from the sounds of gunfire and terror - deeper into the moist abyss.