No Man's Land

[Inkfinger]

Threshold II
No Man's Land
[FQ Quest: Bend the Iron]

Currently closed to Ruby La Roux.

Daylight comes slowly in Salvar, as if the night itself needs physically beaten down by the sun. The great dome of the sky was still satin-black, dusted with stars almost close enough to touch. The east was on fire, a riot of gold and orange and pink, broken here and there by clouds and the black silhouettes of the mountains. The air smelled of water and the sharp, clean scent of moist earth. The silence was broken only by the constant gurgle of the thawing river to the south, and the tentative chirping of the first of the season’s songbirds returning.

It was finally spring. The last vestiges of one of the worst winters in recent memory were beginning to fade from the land, but in one or two pockets - the towns and villages furthest North and closest to Berevar - the frigid weather had yet to be entirely banished.

Heivernok was in one of those pockets. A few stubborn flowers were striving to bloom through the sludgy grey snowdrifts, blotches of vibrant yellow and purple and red in the early-morning light. They weren’t enough to lift the spirits of the only living soul in Frostwyne paying attention this morning, but they did bring a small smile to his lips.

I had forgot how pretty Salvar can be.

Cael Strandssen sat on the steps that had formerly lead up to the village’s small chapel, his breath crystallizing in the air. He had returned to Salvar a month ago - sailing first from Fallien, then from Corone – and he still wasn’t used to the chill. Sure, he had grown up in the North, spent from birth through adulthood in the snow and ice and barely-there summers, but that didn’t mean he had to enjoy the frigid temperatures.

The chapel’s tiny courtyard was surrounded by what had once been a tidy picket fence. It wasn’t the most practical barrier; the constant winds and snows made walls of brick and stone more common. This fence could have been used as an example of why. The wood was warped, posts beginning to topple, the paint chipped and peeling, scorched black in places where the fire that had destroyed the chapel months ago had licked.

The town had been abandoned since the first week of winter. He had staged his section of the rebellion here; fled here, after that sect was all but destroyed; stayed here in more recent times, as well, helping to nurse the assassin who had pulled him from the grasp of the Church of the Ethereal Sway back to health.

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his heavy coat as he stared down at the silent gateway, shivering.

And memories or no, I never wanted to come back.

If anyone had told him he’d return to Salvar three months ago, he’d have told them flat out they were lying. His homeland’s government had demanded his arrest; his homeland’s church had actually achieved it. He still bore the deep scars from that experience. If he had his way, he would have left the nation to rot in the snow; left it to become nothing more than a skeleton that wouldn’t reappear until spring. It had happened before; he’d seen it in his childhood: hunters and travelers who went out on the wrong nights, never found while the snow fell.

Why shouldn’t it happen to the entire corrupt nation?

Life, however, is what happens when the one living makes different plans. He wasn’t a warrior. He wasn’t a wizard. In a happier time, he had been a simple scribe with an overactive conscience. But an unfortunate turn of events in the desperate days before his prison time had left him able to access something that the League of Salvic States could use: he could access the portals. Careless dealings in Fallien had led him to a strange woman known only as Areesha Gallowsgate. He’d found out, too late, that Areesha was a slaver, and a shrewd businesswoman. She had seized that knowledge, and all but sold him with it, all before he’d had a chance to blink.

So here he sat in the early morning, waiting for the rest of his team to finish their silent work.

It still seemed so wrong.

The League was clearly the best force to pedal his talents to. They had had no place in the events of the previous winter, the ones that still woke him late at night in a cold, sick sweat. They – or the few Barons he’d spoken to - seemed to have the best mind for the country. They seemed progressive, perhaps they would manage to drag Salvar out of the self-destructive pit the defunct monarchy and corrupt church had dug for her. But the task they had given him…

It’s just a waste.

He heard the fwoomph of accelerated flames light before he saw them; felt the heat on the side of his face before he turned. A high whoop of glee cut through the crackle of flames, shocking the birds into silence. The caterwauling grew as several other buildings seemed to explode simultaneously, old wood and thatch catching like kindling. In a matter of minutes, the ghost town was a nightmarish maze of light and heat and ash.

Cael just sat on the steps and watched it all through narrowed eyes. Sometimes, he reflected, progress hurts.

“Hey up, scribe,” came the call, in the first human voice he’d heard in at least three hours. He turned to look slowly, watching the dark figure step from the burning door of a nearby house. Smoke rose from the shoulders of the shape, transforming it into some flaming pagan demigod before the shape clarified into that of a human in a heavy black robe that trailed along the ground behind him. The robe’s hood was drawn up; the face masked with metal and glass in a way that emphasized each feature while stealing those very features away – perhaps the sacrifice that demigod demanded.

The hood fell, the mask pulled away, and the figure became, simply, a young man; dark-skinned, bright-eyed and beaming. Cael seemed to recall him introducing himself as Ježek.

“Pretty good show, yeah?” Cael shrugged, noncommittal, watching as the young man shook himself like a dog. Clumps of ash fell to the white steps like a heated snow. “We figured a way to make it all go up at nigh the same time, should save us a couple’a hours at least…” There was a groan of timber and a nearby roof folded, sending a shower of sparks into the heavens.

“Oh, good,” Cael finally replied, standing and shaking the wrinkles out of his coat. His bad leg panged at the movement after so long sitting still. He rubbed at it as the three other men, each clad the same as Ježek, appeared from their respective quadrants of the doomed village. “People to see, places to go, buildings to burn down, now we can burn down more faster! Maybe we’ll get medals for efficiency…”

Ježek looked hurt at the bitterness that had crept unwittingly into his tone. “Hey now. This was volunteer. You just do your part and get us home. Leave the cynicism to the Barons.”

This was volunteer for you, maybe, Cael thought a few minutes later, leading the way down the precarious rubble pile that was the only way down to the portal now that the chapel was gone. Not for me. I would have chosen something worlds apart from this sabotage.

The barons had called it scorched earth. The idea was an old one, and sound, but it still gnawed at the side of Cael’s mind like a rat with a hunk of cheese. These were good buildings. Surely they didn’t have to destroy everything that the church’s forces might possibly use.

However, every time he had opened his mouth to protest - back when his assignment with the Fire Shrikes had been made clear– Areesha had been ready. All she had to do was raise one furless eyebrow, are you sure you really want to say anything? written clearly in her gaze, and his mouth would snap shut again.

He tried to shake off the sudden discontent as he crunched through the debris that littered what had once been the church’s basement floor, listening to the Shrikes talking. The young men compared flame height and intensity with all the intelligence and fascination he had once shared with his friends over ancient books and political imbroglios. The times, he thought dryly, reaching out to press his hand against the portal, they are a-changing.

He counted to six. White flame licked out from his tingling palm right on cue, leaping from sigil to sigil until it filled the empty space within like a film dancing over the surface of a barrel of water. That light only existed for a moment before it changed, darkening to blue around the edges. Cael let out a startled yell, leaping backwards into the equipment-laden Shrikes. He’d seen that light only once before, in an escape attempt. He had ignored it, that time. The portal, in some malevolent response, set him down in a space currently occupied by inside another person. That other person hadn’t survived – there hadn’t even been a body to bury.

“Sainted Sway,” he cursed, fighting to regain his balance. Ježek grabbed his arm, hauled him back to his feet, but otherwise the Shrike’s gaze didn’t move. He was too busy staring at the portal. Cael, reluctantly, followed his eyes.

The portal’s flame was spiraling inward, a hurricane of white, blue and red that merged, glowing orange instead of purple. The whole effect looked like a bruise on the flesh of the universe, drowning out and sucking in all of the light from the burning village at the same time. He felt the Shrike’s gloved hand close on his arm tight enough to hurt.

The portal’s flicker seemed to still for a moment – and then the light shattered, shooting outwards in a coalescence of tangible energy before it tumbled to the earth, solidifying into…

A woman.

A young, pale and elegant woman clothed in crimson who was, nonetheless, screaming like a babe newborn to the world. Cael looked at the Shrikes – each of whom looked as if they’d never seen a woman, much less a frightened one – and cursed again. They were going to be completely unhelpful. He could tell.

He knelt down next to the woman, eyes scanning her frame for any visible injury as he held his hand out slowly. “Excuse me, madam,” he said in carefully pronounced Tradespeak, “but I do believe you’re lost.”