Halley woke up early. Or at least, it felt early. The stove had gone out at some point, and there weren’t any windows, so it was extremely dark. She considered relighting it, or waking up Gunther to ask him what their plan was, but couldn’t bring herself to move. She felt numb, the warmth of the blankets did nothing to improve her mood. The chill of the room sent her thoughts back to her childhood. She didn’t remember much of her early life, but the stinging bite of winter wind on her face and the empty cold of neglected stoneworks never left her. Halley wasn’t sure how long she spent on the streets, nor how she had been able to survive there. All she remembered was the cold, and the gnawing hunger. She had often wondered if she had been thrown away by her parents, and what kind of people would do that or if she had been kidnapped and then tossed aside. She did her best to stifle those thoughts, and her mind skipped forward to the smiling face of a monk. The siblings of Sahaya may have been isolationist but even they partook in trade occasionally. It had been during one of his routine trips into Partham that Monk Sheanair had decided to take a detour to one of the city's cultural centers: a large and ornate temple to the local gods.
He'd met with the local groundskeeper, an old friend of his, and discovered that the man had found an alarmingly young toddler wandering the temple grounds. The monk, kind-hearted and somewhat rash, offered to take her to their convent
Monk Sheanair agreed to come back during supper, and discuss it with the couple. That, he had said, was when the Siblings had first welcomed her into their midst, and also when they had found out that Halley had a preternatural talent for getting into places she shouldn't. A year passed with her managing to annoy even some of the lifelong masters of patience that were the siblings. After an incident where Halley had somehow gained access to a rooftop terrace containing a rare species of perennial flowers and trampled them, they'd had enough. Though Sheanair had doted on her, and opposed the decision vehemently, they agreed that their convent was not the best place for her, and they found her a new home, with a couple that had recently moved away from the city, to the outskirts of Sahayan territory.
The feelings of cool stone and vaulting ceilings was replaced by creaky wood floors and a roaring fireplace. The solemn hush of prayer and penance by the sounds of farm animals and scolding parents. It made the room ever so slightly less dark and cold. And yet among all of these thoughts, she still couldn't drag her mind away from the image of a cathedral yawning in a rictus scream. She tried staring it down, memorizing every facet of stone, every crack and crevice of the walls and windows. It didn't help. Defeated, she inched blindly to where she thought Gunther had been.
When she couldn't find him, Halley panicked, he had left while she was sleeping, she was alone. She was alone.
"No...no, no, no" Halley crawled to where she guessed the doorway was, her hands achingly cold, and found the latch. As she touched the handle, the door shifted. It was already open, a slight breeze slipping through, bringing with it something else. Halley could hear a slow melody drifting into the room.
Broken upon the back of lies
Beneath a cloud of stars
An echo of her cries
Lost beyond the spirals far
Where is safe for me
Who tore apart our home
I will bear the burden alone
If you but give me the key
Unlock my shackles now, I will bring her back into time
When she weeps no more, space will sing her name again
Let my body be the bulwark, to atone for this crime
Even after life leaves this husk, and my memory from the minds of men
The words faded into humming, and then into silence.
Halley tried to take a step backward, but Gunther called out "I can hear you. This will be the last day you can sleep in. We have a lot of ground to cover."
"What was that song? I've never heard it before." Halley asked, stepping through the door.
"An old song from my army days." He threw a duffel bag at her feet. "Pack your blankets. We're leaving soon."
“Care to explain where we’re going?” Halley asked, picking up the bag.
“Away from here.” Gunther replied
Hmph, keep your secrets, then. “Okay… Are we gonna train now or later? And how are we going to train?"
In response to this, Gunther placed his hands on his knees, then with a great effort, and an unnecessarily drawn out groan, he stood. He refused to actually look at her, but Halley could hear the smile in his tone
"Eager are we? Well then, Open your duffel."
Uneasy, Halley asked "Okay, now what?"
"There's plenty of unused space in it, fill it with these rocks." Gunther gestured to the perimeter of rocks that formed the base of a campfire. Halley gave the back of his head an incredulous look.
"Seriously? Rocks?" Halley said
"What were you expecting?" Gunther replied
"Um, I don't know, a lesson on how to launch a fireball, or turn the ground into mud, or how about flying? At least show me how to defend myself against stuff like that!" Halley griped
"Even if I did show you how to do any of that, wouldn't you prefer to stay unburnt and with all your bones intact? Shaping is dangerous, especially when you’re trying to keep yourself alive. As for defending yourself, excluding the aforementioned, extremely dangerous skills, there's nothing better than physical strength and speed." Gunther said
"Oh and there's a rain barrel in the back, and a change of clothes in the bag. Get cleaned up. You smell terrible."
Halley retreated to the doorway of the safehouse, muttering "Like you smell any better. Don't need you for strength training, could do that on my own. Should crown you with a brick, see how strong I really am."
Halley reentered the tomb of a safehouse, and stuffed the sheets and pillow haphazardly into the duffel bag. The bag was indeed, mostly empty, even with the bedding in it. She missed her bed at the inn, and her clothes that didn't reek of sweat and terror. Halley reached for her necklace. It was gone.
James pulled out the mystery vial he'd pocketed earlier and studied it with great interest. Bright red, and extremely fine dust gently shifted around in the glass, comfortable in its little home. Through the cloudy and chipped glass, the gentle sound of settling sand murmured its presence. What could it be? James felt like the answer was on the tip of his tongue, but knew better than to force the thought out. Instead, he tried opening the vial.
This proved to be more challenging than he had expected.
The cork that was lodged in the vial would not budge no matter how hard he pulled. He even considered using shaping, though managed to contain himself. Still, he was being beaten by a trinket. In a fit of rage, James flung the vial against a nearby wall. A part of his mind jerked awake as he realized he had just broken the vial of unknown, possibly poisonous dust open, and he quickly covered his mouth. The vial hit the wall with a soft "tink" sound and dropped to the floor, unscathed.
His surprise at the unbreakable glass jarred loose a memory and he felt foolish. It was a crystal, not glass. He'd seen similar white crystals in the window of a jewelry shop just before this stupid lockdown policy was implemented. Granted, this one was a bit bigger, but the resemblance was undeniable.
He picked up the vial and under his breath said "Now who would go through all the trouble of hollowing out a crystal just to hold some dust?"
Now, James did his best to ignore the various lectures his squad was sent to, mostly out of spite. He was quite good at this, and couldn't even recall the subject of most of them. Despite his best efforts, he did retain a few details of the more palatable meetings. He recalled a tired voice, probably Charles', droning on about a list of important milestones that they should look out for in the native populace. Obviously James was not interested in anything that required him to do more work, and so he tried to ignore this, too. Then Charles mentioned explosives. Disappointed in the dearth of details about this fascinating subject, he asked how they would know it was really explosive dust versus boring regular dust. His CO, suspicious at the first real question James had ever asked in the meetings, refused to answer with anything more than "Show it to me if you find something weird, and I'll let you know." Then moved on to some spiel about local politics.
James knew that Charles would just confiscate the vial if he did that, but he'd been banned from the R&D department for numerous reasons so he couldn't check for himself. Not to mention if it really was explosive, he'd be risking blowing himself up with it. Better than what It would do to me.
James pondered his options while tossing the vial up and down. Maybe it was some kind of magic seal? No, this world wasn't rated for magic like that. At least not without a shaper, and there are only two free shapers living on the continent. Maybe it was just really high quality glue?
Unlikely given how well it was sealed, but it could happen. In James’ experience, people who were determined to lock something away could easily end up doing so too well, resulting in the place becoming inaccessible to even the people who had the keys. The paper-pushers up top had learned that the hard way when they panicked over James’ first few intrusions and ended up locking not only James, but the entire research team out of their wing of the citadel. A few unlucky souls spent a very unpleasant 48 hours locked in a bio lab with twelve buckets of formaldehyde. They stank for weeks afterwards.
If it was just a glue, maybe he could try to get some butter or oil from the mess to grease it? but no, they'd already banned him for 'abuse of cooking utensils and condiments'. Stingy bastards cut him off before he could even finish the sandwich slip and slide. Maybe he could cut it open if he could get his hands on...
A booming voice to rival God himself derailed his thoughts.
"James! I told you to unpack that shit half an hour ago, quit fucking around and get out here!" Charles demanded
Uhp, fun’s over. He shoved the crystal into his pocket and snapped to exaggerated attention.
"Sir! I regret to inform the officer that the floor is not yet clean enough to eat off of, so this cadet took it upon himself to do the job!"
"That’s a new one. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were turning over a new leaf. Then again, I don't care. Get to interrogation cell 5. You have a lot of work to do."
"Really? Command wants me to interrogate someone again?"
"Fuck no. You can't ask anyone any questions while you're in that room. In fact you aren't even allowed to breathe in the prisoner's direction. Shit, I'd prefer you never be allowed to speak at all, but I'm sure you'd find some way to make me regret that. No, you're transcribing the interview."
"What? This is an outrage. My eloquent and loquacious voice should not be constrained like this!"
Charles just glared at him and shoved a notepad into his arms. "Don't draw on it this time." Then he walked out of the room.
James took a look at the paper on the clipboard. It was blank. James hated empty space. Why would someone create a world if they were just going to leave parts of it unfinished? He tucked the clipboard under his arm and began to walk. This world wasn't perfect, far from it, but even a dull rock like this was better than the raw aether between worlds. It had been a long time since he'd been there himself. Longer even than his internment in the citadel. The aether was not a pleasant place. James couldn't even remember his time there. It wasn't that he'd forgotten. There just wasn't anything to remember. One moment he had been running, and decided to save some time by hopping into the Gossamer plains for a shortcut. In his haste, he'd overshot the plains and fallen into the Aether beyond them. He woke up in the same spot as he had jumped from, but numbed to the point of paralysis. He didn't like thinking about it.
James reached an intersection in the hallways. The interrogation room was to the left. James went to the right. They’ll still be there in twenty minutes. Whistling a tune he'd long since forgotten the name of, but which reminded him of coffee, he arrived at a wholly unremarkable door, save for that it was covered in pastel blue and pink tie-dye. Strange. He thought I thought I painted it green.
James put his hand to the palm reader and waited. The door didn't budge. He kicked it, and said "Walla walla bing bang". The door opened with a clunk, and a slow hiss. Command really needs to fix that. The palm reader was a bit finicky and for some reason, it only functioned if he kicked the door first. The password didn’t make it work any faster, but it filled the silence.
The light from the hallway cast his shadow into his squad’s darkened dorm. He entered, and flicked on the lights. Harsh fluorescent glow washed over him, revealing the many piles of various objects that he had forgotten to clean up. There was, of course, the three piles of clothes as per the perfect clothing system, but there was also the stack of various snack boxes in the kitchen which competed with the tower of cans located across from it. He'd actually stopped drinking the soda a while ago, just to keep the tower weighted down enough to stay standing. James grabbed an energy drink from the fridge and a strange, hybrid fruit that could have been either an apple or a pomegranate and continued onward.
He passed by the stack of junk drawers which contained pretty much anything that could still fit in them, except the top draw which contained only rocks. He thought about dropping the crystal vial in, but his room didn't have a lock anymore, so it wouldn't be safe, even if he hid it. Holiday needs to keep his nose outta my crap.
James looked into his darkened bedroom and glanced around to see if anything had been changed in his absence. Luckily, his various tells were all still in place, little things he'd placed just so, but would be easily ignored if someone rummaged through the room. Satisfied that his room was free of snooping inspectors that Charles sent his way every so often, he moved onto other sources of surveillance. He reached into a pocket and switched on the portable EMP stick he carried with him everywhere. James hadn’t yet found a camera planted anywhere, but that may have just been due to his own disorganization.
He rubbed his eye, then took a swig of the energy drink. James wished those adrenaline pills weren't so damn expensive, they felt great.
Brushing aside a pile of loose papers on his bed that had various ramblings of his scribbled on them, he picked up a screwdriver and, glancing behind several similar sheets of nonsense taped to the wall, unscrewed a hidden panel. A deep red illumination filled the room.
"Good, good. Here you go" James opened the energy drink, took another swig and dumped the remainder into the hole, shaking the can to make sure it was empty, then tossed the fruit in as well. He carefully replaced the metal panel, and screwed it securely. The light gradually angled upward until only a sheet of red could be seen over the top of the sheet, then none at all.
James pushed himself to his feet and tried to forget where he was meant to be going now. He sighed and left his room
The interrogation rooms were completely barren, by design. James objected to this, on principle, but also because he knew that it was meant to unnerve the interrogee. Why did the interrogator need to be uncomfortable too? Weren't they scary enough in their own right?
As this train of thought found new tracks to explore, all looping back on themselves in a vicious circle of perpetuity, the interrogation began.
"Do you recognize any of these photos?"
A pause
"No. I guess that one looks a bit like a weird cup. What's the point of this?"
The teenager in the chair looked almost prepubescent, and half-confused, half-annoyed. In James' experience, this alone told him that this was a waste of time. He obviously didn't understand the depth of shit he'd waded into, and was clueless about the nonsense he was being fed.
"Do you understand the term 'Warhead'?"
James was, shamefully, unprepared for the kid to turn to him and say
"Can I get a glass of water? Answering this idiot's questions is making me thirsty." James laughed, then straightened up as he saw the glare of his assigned partner. Well James thought Gonna get another strike on my record. Wonder if this will be enough to fire me. He thought, sardonically and then refocused on the questioning.
His partner, the name of which escaped James, responded in an annoyed tone. Tempen maybe? "You'll get water when you leave this room. Until then, you'll answer our questions without complaint, understand?" No, his name had an R in it...
“All you’ve done is ask me questions about stuff I don’t know. What exactly is the point of all this? You might as well ask me what is going on in Thonic right now.”
Timpon furiously scribbled on his notepad before responding with “That is none of your concern. As long as you are compliant for the duration of your stay, everything will turn out fine for you and your family. Now, what continent was settled first?”
The kid didn’t respond at all, staring down his captor, with a look of incredulity. Tamrone repeated his question, but again was met with silence, this time, a stubborn silence..
"Refusal to answer our questions only prolongs your time in this room."
"I'd hate to ruin a good thing, this room's pretty nice."
Twotone held up a gloved hand. James' thoughts were prepared to launch into a lengthy diatribe about how he hated gloves and the various things that a glove wearer's mother liked to do in her free time, but then the man slammed his palm flat on the table, and jammed a pen through the gloved hand, and embedded the point into the wood of the table. The kid looked on in stunned silence. As the man wrenched the pen free, James remembered who the interrogator was. Tamrin removed his glove, revealing that he was unharmed, at least by his demonstration.
Tamrin's hand was missing a circular piece, directly in the middle of his palm. His entire right hand was obviously useless. The fingers were stiff, lifeless.
"This is what happens to stubborn people, Peter. Do you understand?" He said
Peter chose to remain silent, but managed a curt nod. James gave him props for that decision. The man before them was not known for his temperance, a fact which had led to the wound on display. Tamrin had been high in the chain of command until recently, so high that James had only ever heard his name once, when two people located somewhere between James and Tamrin's positions in the hierarchy were complaining of his temper and general attitude.
The glove was returned to its post, and the man stared down the boy.
"I got that little pinprick from being too strong-willed for too long. Eventually, I crossed the wrong person, a man who was even more stubborn, and was rightfully punished. Don't make the same mistake, thinking you're invincible. Now, do you remember the question I asked you?"
"Yes sir."
"Good. Answer it."
[Break]
The raucous call of crows echoed through the air as a murder took flight. Gunther stopped. Just what we needed. More delays. He aimed due west and into the thicker brush of the valley.
“What happened?” Halley asked
“We’re taking a detour.” He said without turning around. “Unless you wanted to fight whatever spooked those birds.
“Do you think it was bandits?”
“Would rather not find out. Now tone it down. We don’t want anything to hear us.” Gunther listened carefully, but heard nothing moving in the underbrush. The quiet did nothing to relax his nerves. He doubted that James and his ilk had found him so soon, but the wilderness was home to its fair share of vicious, unhinged, and desperate people, not to speak of the wildlife.
A hushed, but very much still audible voice piped up again "Are we close yet?"
Gunther sighed, hoping that she would take that as his answer. She didn't, but to Halley's credit, neither did she raise her voice.
You know, if you keep treating me as dead weight, that's all I'll ever be.
"Yes, but if you continue making noise, we'll both be dead weight." Gunther whispered
"Wait did you hear that?" Halley said
"No, I'll never hear anything if you don't shut up."
"It's the sound of you being a miserly dick" Gunther gave her a weary look which was coming to be his default. Halley returned the favor with a shit-eating grin. Gunther decided that he preferred trees to people, and busied himself with choosing their route through the dense foliage. A few dozen feet ahead, a very obvious line appeared where said foliage vanished leaving only mature pines, among other things.
A great deal of stonework lay scattered across the forest floor. Though some piles of rock rose higher than others, their decay was uniform. Moss filled the cracks where mortar once was.
As they passed from the comfortable concealment of the forest proper, Gunther could feel anxiety building. It was too open here, but constantly changing directions was liable to get them lost, and he was certainly not going to stop. So he pushed forward, and the lattice of trees opened up to reveal a small patch of raspberry bushes. Gunther sampled a few of the riper fruits, but stopped when he noticed that Halley had been stripping as many off of every bush as she could, shovelling half into her mouth and stashing the rest in the duffel she was carrying.
"You're gonna be sick in about an hour."
Halley began her defense as all great orators do "Fug o-" and promptly began to choke. After a second of struggling, Halley swallowed and resumed her verbal riposte "-off"
"I stand corrected." Gunther mildly replied. He ran his hand absentmindedly across a stone wall as he walked, the material cool to the touch, and smoothed by time. Until it wasn't. Slender lines were carved into the rock, forming words Gunther was unfamiliar with. He brushed away the layers of dirt which clung to parts of the unknown language.
The stone is still warm.
"What did you find?" Halley had leaned over his shoulder, still chewing loudly.
"Writing, but that's not the important part, someone-" Gunther was cut off
"He who speaks with many voices. What do you think that means?"
"You can read this?" Gunther asked
"Yeah, can't you? It's just old Adhlig." Halley replied
"What does the rest say?" Gunther said, urgently, ignoring her question.
"Oh, uhh, let's see. An seo tha e beò le mòran ghuthan, Moladh dha ainm. Fàg a-nis, agus dìochuimhnich saoghal sin a ’caoineadh, no thèid do thoirt leis a’ phlàigh òrain."
Halley paused. "It's talking about a god, I think. Some kind of prayer. A plague. We should leave, I don't like the idea of angering whatever God lives here."
"Are you lost?" A tiny voice spoke from above them
In unison, Halley and Gunther both snapped their heads upward, but he spotted the owner of the voice first. A small, dirty face was partially concealed in the branches of a large pine. Gunther didn't rest his eyes on the kid, pretending to still be scanning the trees.
"Who are you?" Halley asked, clearly unable to see anything, blindly swiping her field of view back and forth. Wind sang through the trees.
"I asked first, stranger." The voice had moved, Gunther took a second longer to find it this time. Moving only when the wind shakes the trees. Smart. Too bad you're still talking. He shot an arm into the needles, felt cloth, and yanked his fist back out, dragging a limp figure with it.
"I'm Veul, and she's Cosa. Care to explain why you were eavesdropping?" Gunther had caught the child by the back of their cloak, so he spun them around. The small face returned, a dark purple paint smeared in jagged patterns across a pale, sun-deprived skin, with a pointed nose and sunken cheeks.
Gunther hardly noticed any of that, however, because the young girl's eyes had none of the panic he had expected to see from a trapped child. The eyes were cold, level. Creepy.
"You shouldn't lie, you know. Especially when you're a guest in someone else's home." The calculating eyes inspected Gunther and Halley calmly.
"We're guests, are we? Well you should know that it is rude to call a guest a liar."
The kid shrugged and said "You were rude, I was rude."
"Put her down. You aren't exactly winning any friends by interrogation. I'm Halley, and he's Gunther." Halley had regained her senses. He was going to have to work on response time in a crisis too, he supposed. Gunther dropped the kid, who landed on all fours, then leapt at the tree, and scrambled back into the cover of leaves.
The kid was now fixated on Halley, who was now digging around in the duffel bag.
"These are yours, right? Sorry for taking them, we didn't know they belonged to anyone." Halley held out a handful of the berries she had hoarded.
The kid's hand shot out from between the pine needles and snatched a few berries.
"Thank you. You're nice, for an adult. But these berries aren't mine."
"Well, if the owners come back, we'll take the blame, okay?"
The child's voice got low, and she whispered "thanks. You're nice."
Halley pushed, "What's your name? How long have you been alone out here?"
A hesitation, and then
"My name is Tèine. Tèine Florànach."
Halley smiled and said "Sin ainm alainn. That is a lovely name. Where are your parents, are you alone?"
"My parents are gone. Snake people took them."
"Snake people?" Halley looked befuddled, and Gunther felt himself sharing that sentiment.
Teineflur climbed further into the pine branches, and spoke softly.
"You two shouldn't make so much noise. Walking around during the day makes them mad."
Halley looked confused, so Gunther asked the obvious
"What do you mean? Who is out here?"
Teineflur ignored Gunther, and addressed Halley in a serious tone.
"You should hurry. The snake people have heard you. If they catch you, you don't come back."
"Wait, what are snake people?" Halley called up to the child, but she had already disappeared into the canopy. Halley turned to Gunther
"I don't like the sound of that. Should we turn back?"
Gunther thought about it a moment. It was true that the Empire had made its fair share of tribal enemies, so running into a bunch of territorial psychopaths wasn't out of the question.
"No, the federation agents are worse than anything living in these woods. Besides, we aren't completely defenseless."
"That's news to me, you have something up your sleeve? A little fireball action?" Halley grinned. Gunther, educating her on how to act like an adult, stuck his tongue out at her. She laughed, but it faded quickly.
"We should help her. " Halley said
"That kid was/is doing fine in an area filled with murderous tribals. Better than us at the moment." Gunther coughed, and Halley waved a hand in front of her face.
"Geez, you could have at least warned me!" Halley sputtered out.
Gunther eyed the woods warily, "It wasn't me, though I wish it had been."
There was a sickening smell wafting in on the air between the trees. The smell of rot, of decay, of death.
Halley looked with alarm at Gunther, one hand pinching her nose shut and in tacit agreement, their plan was set: Run.
The rhythm of their footfalls stretched out as they found their stride, the layer of pine needles kicked up a muffled crunch with each step. The smell receded at first, but their sudden burst of movement must have tipped off their pursuers, because the stench returned, and intensified. Gunther took a sharp turn, reacting to something Halley couldn't see.
The sickly sweet stench seemed to surround them, a familiar but unwelcome reminder of his less than stalwart past. Gunther refused to give his memories the satisfaction of commanding him, and kept moving, but he could hear coughing from just behind him. Halley's footsteps desynced from his, and he heard her retch.
Gunther swore, stopped, and drew his knife. He quickly cut two strips of cloth from his shirt then jammed the knife into a nearby pine, ripped it out, and slid the cloth in its place. Gunther took the strips of cloth, now reeking of pine, then walked to Halley.
"Sorry in advance" He said.
Gunther took the strips of cloth and jammed them into Halley's nose. She looked incensed at him, but did stop threatening to spill her guts, so Gunther considered that a win.
A small voice echoed from overhead.
Tèine had followed them
"Go north, quick! They won't follow you into the faller field, too many traps." She shouted down at them.
Why not? Gunther thought. At least the traps might kill me instantly. But he had spent too long running to give up now. It just wasn’t his way.
Halley had already taken off, but more East than North. At least she was enthusiastic. The child managed to flag her down before too long, and guided them for a long two minutes, during which the smell of rotting flesh nearly dissipated entirely.
"Stop!" The kid demanded. "This is where the field starts. They change the strings weekly 'cause I kept cutting them."
"Can't you lead us through the field?" Gunther asked
The kid ignored him, and took up a perch on a branch just above Halley. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a closed fist. Using her other hand to brace, she flung a handful of dust into the woods ahead of them. The dust caught the light and through its haze a thin line appeared at ankle height, connected by two large trees.
"They're like spiderwebs, if you look the right way, they flash a little. Leaves work okay if you can't find dust."
Halley looked nervously at the field of death they were about to walk into. Drawing herself up, she gave the girl a reassuring smile, and said
"Thank you for your help, now let's go."
Tèine wore a stolid face
"No. I belong here. You'll be safe from the snakes in the traps."
Halley looked disappointed.
"Are you afraid of getting caught out there? We won't let anyone hurt you!"
Tèine looked uncomfortable. "No, I...I have to go." And the child disappeared into the canopy.
"Wait! Come back…" Halley stood, staring up into the treetops.
Gunther shrugged. He crouched beside the first tripwire, and tried to catch a glimpse of the others. He caught many, but nothing he could use to determine a path. Gunther noticed that Halley was pacing behind him. He glanced around for some dust, which was difficult as the entirety of the forest floor was a patchy orange-brown thanks to the needles. Halley's footsteps got louder.
Gunther grabbed two handfuls of dust, and carefully raised a leg to step over the first tripwire.
Halley finally stopped pacing and decided to speak up.
"So we're just going to leave a small child to fend for herself out here?"
Gunther thought he had made some pretty compelling points five minutes ago, but clearly he had been wrong.
Halley started pacing again "She's been taught a lot about survival, but that's not enough. Being isolated screws with any sane adult, nevermind being alone with what may or may not be cannibalistic tribals."
Gunther didn't respond verbally, but he did lower his leg into the tripwire field.
"I can't understand why you, who went out of his way to help four people who, on more than one occasion openly ridiculed you, won't hesitate to leave what is essentially a toddler in a hostile forest. Is it nepotism? Or were you just using us?"
Gunther's foot caught on a wire as he pulled it back up, causing a flurry of needle-sharp thorns to fly past his face and impale a nearby tree. He pulled his leg back out of the field. "Never said we couldn't help the kid."
"But-" Halley started
"How good are you with knives?"
"Wha-?" Halley said "Decent, I guess but how will cutting the tripwires help if we don't know-""
"No, have you ever fought with one?"
"Of course not! Feirm only taught me how to swing a sword and just the one form. He said knives aren't weapons."
"It'll have to do." Gunther slapped her.
"What the f-"
"Relax, I just dulled your senses a bit, it will help with the pain while you're fighting."
"I am going to kill you." Halley's face was an entertaining shade of red
"You and the rest of the world. Well, what are you waiting for? Go help your forest friend."
"And how am I supposed to do that, exactly?"
"If I were you, I'd attack the tribals head on, personally. They probably won't fall for an ambush and you won't outrun a group like that. A counter charge will at least have the chance to surprise them."
"I'm not a shaper, that's suicide!"
"Neither of those points are certain unless you decide they are. Either way, you better hurry , because the smell is back."
Halley ripped the cloth out of her nose and flung them down before flipping him off and running back into the forest.
"If I survive this, the federation will only be the second worst part of your life!"
"I really doubt that." But she had already left earshot. She'd be fine. She just needs a bit of a confidence boost. Gunther scratched his chin. And maybe another knight as a teacher instead of a Jester. Gunther took another tentative step into the tripwires.
Leann paced the floor of the strangest, yet most well furnished, jail cell she'd ever seen, and as a matter of fact, the only jail cell she'd seen. It had a kitchen attached to the main room, and two bedrooms of equal size on either side of a hall which stretched out from the main room. Every room, including the kitchen contained at least three chairs or stools one of which Feirm was currently dozing in.
He had arrived in the room not a minute after her, and they'd spent a few minutes, glancing at the doorway, waiting for Peter. Then they spent a few more minutes, watching the doorway like hawks. When their son still hadn't shownthey had tried to leave the room. They were locked in. They called out, first asking for help, then threatening violence. With no response forthcoming, they tried to break down the door. It remained unmoved. They scoured the room for a way out, but there were no back doors, no windows. There wasn't even anything heavy or sharp enough to be used as a weapon, not even a kitchen knife. Most of the drawers were filled with colorfully packaged trinkets, or tools. lf there had been any doubt before as to whether or not they were prisoners, they'd be dashed against the walls and floors of this fortress.
Feirm had conceded defeat after two hours and slumped into the chair he now resided in, but Leann couldn't begin to relax. How can he be calm enough to nap, now of all times? Their internment here was by all accounts extremely nice, but this was a palace run by either monsters, or worse, men with a goal.
Leann kept finding herself running through new, nightmarish scenarios. In some she never found her son, in others she wished she hadn't. She had nothing to distract her from her own mind, and she was very creative. Hours passed in her mind as minutes ticked by, and she felt herself unravel. She wanted to scream at Feirm, to have him experience her pain, and opened her mouth to do just that when she heard a click echo from behind her.
Leann snapped her head around, but saw that Feirm was already on his feet. Feirm was a heavy sleeper, he always had been. She had witnessed him sleeping through a massive Earthquake without so much as missing a beat in his snoring. A door opening wouldn't have set him tossing and turning much less shot him awake. He was awake. A small voice said to her, but was quickly drowned out by the torrent of relief as she saw the silhouette of a still growing boy step through the doorway.
Leann rushed to Peter, hugged him, and began checking her son for injuries.
"Are you okay, they didn't hurt you? You are hurt aren't you? Who was it, I'll tear them limb from limb!"
"Mom, I'm fine, they just asked me some questions." Peter said, before Leann hugged him again, not letting go.
"Stop mom. I can't breathe" Peter gasped
Leann stayed adhered to her son for several more seconds before stepping back. It was then that she noticed, really noticed, the figure still standing in the doorway.
"Hello, didn't think I should ruin this moment, but I did want to talk to you all. Well, want is maybe too strong a word. Had to? Been ordered to? Needed to, under threat of imminent death." James concluded
Leann bristled "You-!"
"Aren't exactly a welcome sight." Feirm finished her thought, though more politely that Leann would prefer.
James pushed his way into the room, and carefully shut the door behind him.
"Well tough shit. In case I hadn't made it clear enough before, I don't want to be here either. Now." He turned around and stared each of them down in turn.
"Farmer boy is going to be the runner. He's going to fetch things I need. Straw hat is going to be my muscle. You stick with me unless explicitly instructed. Anything else not falling under the first two categories goes to you." He pointed at Leann, and she thought he was wise for not trying to give her a clever name.
He continued "I expect the three of you out in the exercise courtyard at dawn tomorrow. Dismissed." Then, he leaned down, and in a hushed voice "On the way there, do not so much as glance at another person. If you can, keep your eyes firmly fixed on the ground. If anyone addresses you, answer their questions, but give them nothing to grab. We are all in serious danger, but I do want to help. I'll explain further tomorrow." James stood up straight and walked out of the room.
The three watched him go, the door closed behind him, then Leann burst into another round of alternating between hugging and making sure Peter was sure he was fine.
Feirm looked at his son with a complex expression between pride and worry and said "What did they ask you?"
"A lot of really weird questions. They'd show me stuff made of this shiny material that wasn't metal. When I didn't recognize something they'd make me say I didn't know what it was five or more times before they moved on. Then they'd ask me if I recognized a picture of a shovel." Peter looked around and said "Do you have any water? They didn't give me any."
Leann was already walking to the kitchen.
While she filled a glass of water, Peter sat down in the chair Feirm had just been in, but decided it wasn't to his liking and instead sat on the sofa across the room.
Leann handed him the glass of water, and Peter drank the entire glass without pausing.
Leann was relieved to have her son back but still couldn't shake the feeling of restlessness clinging to her back. She longed for something more substantial to do than sit around an empty room. Feirm seemed to sense this and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
Quietly, he whispered "I promise you I will find us a way out. I promise."
Gently, almost without speaking she said "Don't make a promise you can't keep." She kissed her husband, and for the first time since they'd fled the inn, her anxiety abated. Not entirely, but enough.
Peter, having rehydrated, began to repeat the same route around the room that his parents had finished minutes before, leaving every compartment open as he did.
"They showed me pictures of some of this stuff. I wonder what it's all for." Peter said, picking up a small metal wire which was twisted into an oblong shape that overlapped itself. It reminded Leann of a pin, and when Peter dropped it back into its drawer, it made the exact sound a pin makes when discarded. He then pulled out a sheet of paper, and set it aside. Peter searched through the drawer a few more seconds before he said, exasperation evident in his voice,
"Why would they give us paper but no quills or brushes??"
Feirm answered "They don't want us to have anything sharp, in case we tried to use it as a weapon."
Peter groaned "As if having a demigod on their side wasn't enough?"
Feirm chuckled, and he said "Yes, it does seem insurmountable when you put it that way, but let me tell you a story from my army days."
Leann took a seat on the couch, while Peter returned to dismantling the room in search of a writing utensil, "Go ahead, I'm listening, I promise."
Feirm began,
"I had been stationed in an area far from the front lines in midsummer. I was part of the reserves in the Barklow offensive. We held an overwhelming advantage by that point in the war and neither I nor my fellows expected to actually see combat. Some of them were relieved, some were openly bragging to hide their fear, and a select few were genuinely disappointed at the assignment. Those few were left mostly alone."
"I was glad for the respite, and that night most of us drank our fill. But we had celebrated too early. In the early hours of the morning, once the majority of our men were in a drunken slumber, the enemy attacked. Up until that point, the enemy had used magic only sparingly, and never in combat. Rumours spread that the enemy had lost their last war mage months ago. We soon found that this was not the case."
"A tremendous grinding roar jolted me awake. I, like many others, grabbed my shield and my mace, and rushed from our tents. I was greeted by a wall of ice, still possessing the jagged edges of a long-frosted permafrost. It had torn through scores of tents, and divided half the camp from the other. A full retreat was sounded, not that anyone had needed the order. The ones who could still walk, ran. We knew that our only chance was for the enemy mages to miss us in the chaos. But no follow up came. No destructive wave and glorious charge of a full fledged mage, no ruthless slaughter by a band of enemy soldiers secreted in under the magical distraction, nothing.
The next day, no one could find our fifth unit. They weren't among the dead, none of their tents had been hit by the ice, their possessions untouched. Gone. The commanders did not even acknowledge their absence, not to punish it, nor to replace them. Our commander thought we were pulling a prank, told us there had never been a fifth unit. Rumours on their origin after that ranged from old ghostly soldiers that had come back to help us, to a secret elite squad of mage killers from the Emperor's own guard, to simple clerical mistakes. We all made fun of the last one, after all, how many people had talked with them, how many had heard them sing and tell jokes around the fire? That said, I found myself at a loss for their names. I still struggle to recall their unit number now. I did not fuel any of the rumours with my own speculation.
All I know is that the ice wall had stopped just short of reaching a certain tent, a tent that had belonged to the most widely known member of the fifth unit. I no longer remember his name, and only vaguely recall his face, but his cunning and ingenuity were famous, even outside the company. I was chosen to check the tent for the missing soldiers because I protested least, and I found something peculiar. The ice hadn't stopped at the tent, but inside it. A metal and glass box sat on the ground, less than a hair's width from the ice, which seemed to splash out and away from the box."
Peter had stopped searching.
"What did you do?"
"I destroyed the box, and buried the pieces. Whatever it was, was not worth risking a second attack like that to save, and I knew my superiors would want it. They would risk anything to discover what made it so important. I could not bear to see more good men die for that. We never did identify a mage in the opposing army."
Peter was very still "You don't think that unit was James', do you?"
"I don't know. But it seems to me that if anyone was capable of fielding a war mage, it would be these people. More impressive to me is that their leader is not a mage himself."
"How can you tell?" Peter asked
"Their behaviour. Mages are arrogant. Everyone in that unit was professional, except James." Feirm was putting on a brave face but Leann could see the details, the lines of worry forming on his face.
Peter wore a sour look on his face "Which means that we need to help James as much as possible if we want a chance to escape."
Leann sympathized with her son. Working with James wasn't exactly going to be fun or fulfilling. She doubted that she could act as the willing slave for very long and Leann said as much "If he does so much as insult one of us, I will lay him out. We might be slaves, honey, but we don't have to act like it." Leann looked to her husband, and was met with rage. She couldn't remember the last time he had raised his voice in anger, much less directed it at her.
"Neither of you will do anything out of line, do you understand me?" His voice shook the room, his eyes were wild. "If they ask you to do something, do it. If they are threatening you, run. Don't fight. Whatever you do, do not fight." Feirm punctuated the last word by walking to the left bedroom and shutting the door behind him.
Peter looked as shocked as Leann felt, but recovered first, and said "I am actually pretty tired. Good night, mom" and entered the right bedroom.
"Good night dear." She approached the left door. The hinges whispered a creak as she swung the door open. Her husband was sitting on the bed, hunched over. He seemed to have aged a decade.
Leann sat down next to him and asked "What was that about?"
Several seconds elapsed.
"Why did you have to do that?" Feirm replied
"What? Defend our dignity? Give our son hope, reassure him? We're his parents. We should be strong for him."
"You promised him we'd fight. The one thing we can't do." Feirm stared into the distance, he hadn't so much as glanced at her since she'd come in.
"Is it happening again? Focus on your breathing, I'm here." Leann held his hand in her own, and bent down to meet his gaze.
Feirm's pallor improved a bit, and his eyes focused on hers.
"Thank you. I'm sorry for yelling at you both."
"It's okay. Just tell me why."
"Prisoners are disposable, that's why. I can't lose either of you, and when you spoke up I felt like I was watching you march to the gallows." Feirm said "I could see Curaidh and Treun charging into the fray, but their faces were yours. Yours and Peter's."
Leann knew the names by heart. Feirm had kept the names of his brothers carefully hidden from public view. But the nights were long, and Leann was with him for many of them even before they were married. Who were the names he cried out in his nightmares? She had tried to drag the answer out of him at first by confronting him, but that had only strengthened his mental walls. So she vowed to him that she would stand by him, even if the truth was too horrible to bear. It took nine more months before he admitted that he was weak for hiding a part of himself from her. His time during the war was not a pretty story. Feirm had watched his brothers die in front of him for the glory of their country. He survived only because he had been assigned to an auxiliary position for being a less gifted fighter than his brothers. As he had put it, "I survived because I was an embarrassment. Too weak to even make a difference."
Leann still remembered holding their month old child and saying to him
"And yet here you are, still able to love, with a family who supports you. Is that weakness?"
Feirm's wounds were scars, they'd never truly be gone, but Leann could at least be a temporary relief for their echoing aches.
"Your brothers were strong, and they fought the monsters head on. But we aren't them. We can do this quietly, like you said. We're strong enough, right?"
Feirm replied "We're strong." And he didn't know who he was trying to convince.
Halley yelped as one of the tribals lunged for her legs, the cold fingers only just failing to wrap themselves around her ankle. She shifted, kicking at the feral human, but it had already leapt back. Nimble bastards .The tribals were nearly silent, only ever uttering a coarse hiss when making an attack, a fact which had saved her three times now. Unfortunately, the hissing had become more aggravated, and louder.
Halley was tired of being hunted, and had decided to make her stand once it was exceedingly clear that she wasn't outrunning the tribals. Halley just hoped that her martial arts classes would carry her through this, and tried very hard to ignore the fact that the last time she'd practiced was six weeks ago.
So she'd drawn her knife, and turned to face her hunters against an outcropping of rocks.
To her right, two shorter, younger tribals took turns attacking, then jumping back. The girl had a stone tipped spear, but the boy only had a stone shard. They were probing her defense, waiting for her to tire. A less wary member of their hunting party lay unconscious at her feet, having been sucker punched when she first started turned around. Unfortunately she could see ten or more sliding in an out of the shadows of trees further into the woods. The dead tribal had given her a few jagged cuts as a parting gift that stung whenever a breeze hit the open wounds.
Worse yet there was one, tall, lanky, and bald man with a metal tipped spear, waiting just behind the two front-runners. Watching. Planning. He'd probably only attack once he thought she was tired enough.
This isn't training, this was just murder by proxy!
One of the tribals leapt forward again, but Halley reacted in time to sidestep. Her knife cut air.
Well screw him, and screw these guys too. I'm gonna live.
Halley waited for the next attack, and when saw the right tribal tense up, ready for another try, she copied him. Her opponent hadn't been expecting a counterattack, and their momentum denied them the chance to dodge. But she hesitated to deliver a killing blow, and deflected her aim away from his chest. Halley's knife drove into the boy's arm. He fell to a knee, dropping his weapon in favour of clutching his arm. She brandished her knife at the boy and he shrank back, glowering.
Halley kicked the stone shard he'd been using into the undergrowth just in case and turned her attention to the other tribal.
The girl hefted her spear, and inched forward. She didn't seem to be in a hurry, though Halley wasn't sure if that was because she was confident or hesitant. Halley watched the girl's eyes. Definitely confidence. Halley might be able to lose one or two of them in another chase but the whole tribe? She'd be hunted down easily. The tribal girl wasn't making the same mistakes as the first two and kept her distance, relying on the reach of her weapon. Halley sidestepped a thrust of the spear. Then another. Look for an opening. Halley had to duck as the girl swung the spear at her head. Think. The gray blur of a speartip shot toward her torso, and she had to hop backwards. Shit! Halley stumbled backward over a rock on the ground. The spearhead passed inches over her face.
She was now completely exposed, on her back. Halley quickly rolled to dodge the next attack, and the spear was driven into the ground. Halley kicked at the spear, and through some combination of Halley’s adrenaline fueled mania, the tribal’s lack of experience, and sheer luck, the kick sent the spear out of the girl’s hands and twirling into the dirt behind Halley. The tribal girl hissed, and Halley, caught up in the moment, hissed back. Then the moment passed and the girl rushed to grab her spear. Halley grabbed one of the girl’s legs and pulled as hard as she could. The tribal fell onto her hands, but was undeterred, and viciously kicked with her grappled leg. Halley released her to prevent a kick to the face, but pressed her luck by pursuing the girl’s retreat, and was summarily punished for it. Halley suddenly found herself blind.
The tribal girl had picked up a handful of dirt and thrown it directly into Halley’s eyes. Cursing, Halley blindly swung her knife down. There was a sound of tearing cloth and the feeling of soft flesh giving way, and the knife left her grip. Blinking back tears, Halley slowly regained her sight. She almost wished she hadn't.
The knife was buried, hilt deep in the upper thigh of Halley's opponent. The girl blinked in disbelief, then howled in pain as she ripped the knife out of her thigh, and threw it away. Blood cascaded down the tribal's leg.
"Na dean sin! You'll only make it worse!" Halley said, ripping off her sleeve, and tried to approach the girl to dress the wound.
Despite the profuse bleeding, the girl straightened up. The spear shot forward, Halley stepped back with her right foot, her profile presenting a smaller target, and was rewarded with only a shallow cut across her stomach. She hissed in pain. The tribal howled at Halley, but already looked pale.
In spite of this, none of her tribe stepped in to help, not even trying to attack Halley in revenge. A part of her knew that of course cannibalistic tribals would be uncivilized and cruel, but to see the complete lack of concern for their own people was different.
The girl swung the spear at Halley again, but the attack was slow, and had no force behind it. For the first time in the fight, Halley noticed how young the girl was. She couldn't be more than twelve at most. A child.
The spear clattered to the ground, the tribal girl fell onto her side, clutching at her wound and taking shallow breaths. Halley rushed over and began dressing the wound. She tore cloth from her sleeves, wrapping the cut, but the blood stained the makeshift bandages as fast as she applied them. The girl had no color left in her face. Her tribe looked on impassively, even contemptuously as a child of their blood lost her own.
The injustice was appalling. Halley had been pushed around by fate, but these children, they had been mutilated. Born to a vicious tribe, that cared nothing for their existence.
She tore more cloth, this time from the tribal girl's clothes-She was glad this was a tribe that chose to wear full garments- and wrapped them as tight as possible. The girl screamed, and swung a fist ineffectually, narrowly missing Halley.
It was no wonder Tèinefleur had taken to the trees, the kids of this tribe must have been brutalized beyond imagining to be so determined to win.
Having exhausted the usuable bits of both her and the girl's clothes, Halley moved onto the unconscious boy. She wrapped his wounds as well, completed the last rotation and pulled it taut. The bleeding seemed to be slowing. Halley, dusty, beat up, harboring a few cuts of her own, felt a sense of relief.
And then the tall tribal, passive for the entire fight, stepped forward. The chief walked calmly towards them and raised his spear, eyes locked onto the tribal girl.
Halley scrabbled for her knife, and pointed it at him in what she knew was a futile display of defiance.
"Back off!" She threatened
He turned toward Halley, without a trace of emotion on his face, like the muscles had atrophied from disuse. Then he turned back to the girl.
No! Halley thought
She placed herself between the man and the fallen child and reached for the spear. A flash of motion from the man was followed by a wet sound.
A feeling of warmth spread throughout her shoulder. Halley could see the handle of the spear protruding from it. She grabbed its handle, and dropped to a knee. It's warm today. She thought. I should have worn lighter clothes, these ones are too heavy. A distant part of her mind registered that she was in shock. I should ask Leann for a different shirt. She had been doing something important hadn't she? That girl might need a fresh set of clothes too. I should ask her.
Halley felt a fresh agony wash over her, as the spear was ripped from her shoulder. Halley heard an animalistic scream, and it took her several seconds to identify her own mouth as its source. The world spun. A distant feeling came over her, and she reflected on the mistakes that had led her to this point, knowing full well she'd never get the chance to amend those poor choices. She collapsed.
I thought you were gonna live? Get up.
Halley was on the ground, dust swirled around her. Something was blocking the light. Pain still echoed through her body, but a chill was creeping into the places where pain passed.
Stars illuminated a dark canvas. Halley picked out a few constellations, the winter wolf, Tearnan's folly, and the crest of the Singer. She never could convince herself that they looked like anything like their namesakes.
Sheanair had once said that the gods, led by Achiad, had torn back the endless dark winters of the early world by striking the dark with hammers forged of their own minds. The sun blazed forth from their mighty hammer blows. Then the gods had collected the few unmelted patches of snow, and forged them as well, but with finer tools. The largest patch of snow became the moon, while the smaller ones were separated into individual snowflakes and scattered across the heavens.
Halley had asked him why the gods didn't make two suns, so that no one would need to be afraid of the dark anymore. Sheanair had said "After they made the first one, they forgot how to make another, and nobody could look at it long enough to figure it out again." She laughed at the thought.
The stars twinkled above her. A breeze brushed against the treetops, shaking loose a few dry leaves. It was cold, but the sky at night was too beautiful to miss. The world sank into a serene stillness.
"Good choice of memory. Very peaceful." A voice shattered the scene. Halley watched as the trees and stars dissolved into a school of small, silvery fish. Eventually, Halley found herself sitting on a small island of land, surrounded by a swirling, revolving sphere of chaos. Then, the island began to break apart, and Halley fell. She cried out in panic, unable to cope with both the sensation of falling and the feeling of complete disconnect from any frame of reference. There was nothing anywhere, in any direction, just a vast expanse of blue. A hand grabbed her by the wrist.
"Hey, hey, hey, relax. You're safe here. Relatively speaking, anyway."
Halley stopped screaming but only after she needed to take a breath. When she did, she noticed that she recognized the voice, and a human form faded into view.
Halley glared at him "I should kick your ass, Gunther."
"Nice to see you too." Gunther said
"You owe me and everyone I know an apology, not to mention an explanation. Gods know that you have the time now that we're both in the afterlife. What happened to you, then? I figured that once you got rid of me, you'd save yourself. How did you end up dead?" Halley looked around "Speaking of death, I wasn't expecting it to be so empty."
Gunther raised an eyebrow at her.
Halley clarified "You know, everyone who came before us, our ancestors and their ancestors are all gone, so where are all the people?"
"We aren't dead." Gunther said "At least not yet."
Halley was unconvinced "if I'm not dead, where is this? Did you magic us away or something?"
"We are in the Gossamer plains, a separate section of your world, used only by certain shapers and federation agents. The Feds call it the Firmament. Congratulations on your first successful slip, by the way. I was surprised you were a Jester."
Halley was dumbstruck "What do you mean slip? What's a jester and I...Do you mean I brought us here?"
"Well, you brought yourself here. I had to track you down, not that it was hard with that view you were making. As for your first question: in layman's terms slipping is a form of quick travel. It lets us displace ourselves, body and/or mind into a different world. Or it is supposed to be. I've not been able to pull my body here for quite a while. Strange that I can now. In any case, Jesters are one of the three varieties of shaper, and are able to pick up slipping more intuitively."
Halley struggled to keep herself from vomiting from the disorientation of weightlessness. It helped to imagine she was swimming, but she couldn't stop from slowly rotating. Soon Gunther was upside down, or Halley was. "That's great. How do we return to solid ground?"
"There are two ways. The first, and more difficult, is slipping back to a world with ground in it, a blind jump. The second is what you were doing just a moment ago." He held his hand face up in front of him and several of the silvery fish returned, then darkened into a duller palette as they painted a scene covered in autumn trees. The scene became fuzzy and Gunther closed his hand, the fish sliding apart like mercury. With a sharp movement, he threw several flecks of quicksilver under Halley, and a small island of dirt and grass materialized under her. She dropped onto it with a quiet "whoof"
Gunther continued "The beings here are influenced by your mental state. Some, like these fish, can be useful to an outsider, like for manifesting your thoughts to make a stronger link to the regular world. Now let's get you back. Focus on a memory, the clearer the better."
Halley closed her eyes, picturing Trail's End. The fish returned, and an inferno sprang to life around her. Wooden beams fell around her, tongues of fire flowing around them, embers kicked up by the impact of wood striking wood. Startled, Halley threw her arm over her eyes to shield them, but the heat only grew more intense. Halley dropped, hoping to avoid the smoke that choked the air. A dry, hissing voice filled the air
Stay a while. Don't you want to meet your new friends?
She peered over her arm to see three silhouettes, two charred men flanking one who still burned. The inflamed man hissed again
Sit and rest by the fire, won't you?
Halley scrambled back across the singed floorboards and hit a wall. Embers seared her exposed arm.
A raspy laugh echoed over the roaring flames.
You can't run, stupid child. The fire will follow you wherever you go. Why not embrace it?
Halley felt her sense of self succumbing, abandoning her. She began Hyperventilating, but her body refused to make use of the extra air to run away, or move at all. She saw a hand reaching out toward her, and heard a commanding voice.
"Stop! Focus on what your body can sense!" Gunther cried
Halley closed her eyes and drowned everything out save for her breathing, and her pulse. The heat lessened and, gradually, Halley forced back the hellscape. As she felt the tug of gravity weaken and the chill of the void return, the of the burned man sent a parting gift
See you again soon, Halley…
She opened her eyes again, and the endless blue-green expanse greeted her. Gunther was nowhere in sight. Okay. We’re alone again. That’s fine. Halley swayed in the invisible currents of the aether around her for an interminable time. Gunther did not return. Halley's thoughts were plagued by the visions that she'd conjured. The location had been obvious. But the people she'd seen, the charred corpses, had looked familiar. The burning one was obviously James, who else could it be? The other two, already extinguished, though...Halley convinced herself that the bodies were of the men she'd seen cut down in front of her. As horrible as it sounded, she'd rather see the men she'd never met dragged to hell than admit to herself that the charred husks had been her parents. Gods, was she tired. She looked around for Gunther, and saw only schools of gilded fish. She waited, unable to do much else. She waited
He wasn't coming back.
Gunther wasn't kind, caring, or cheerful, but he had been a familiar face. If nothing else, he had been fun to taunt. Halley hadn't realized how much his presence had kept her grounded in the absence of normalcy, of everything she had known.
Halley drifted listlessly.
It was cold. She grabbed her knees and curled up, but the chill seeped into her anyway. She took a breath, and it caught in her throat. The dam burst. Halley cried, out of frustration, out of shame, out of simple physical pain. The sound of sobbing diffused into the void, unable to even echo in the massive space. Without noticing, she slipped into sleep.
She drifted back into consciousness. Every part of her ached in the ceaseless breeze that pervaded the air. The light without a source was still present. Halley couldn't tell if she had slept for a day or a minute. Despite the insatiable gnawing of hunger, and numbing sensation creeping up her hands, she was relieved. Her joints cracked as she stretched out. A peculiar determination had set in, and she felt some of the cold retreat.
She was going to get herself out of this mess, or die trying. If we can’t use the fish, we’ll just have to be the fish. We can do this. Halley used only gentle, deliberate kicks and waves to orient herself approximately upright. Now we just… She eased into an agonizingly slow breastroke, and could feel the familiar resistance of water flow over her hands. Yes! Halley launched herself forward with repeated kicks, and the world around her opened up.
The blue tinge, previously omnipresent in the void, now shed the heavy weight of ocean haze. The feeling of water around her hands lightened, but she kept her momentum, even gaining speed. Clouds manifested, and the void became sky.
Air rushed past her face, and Halley’s nightmarish excursion into her recent past was, if not forgotten, at least soothed.
Gunther materialized in front of her, breaking the reverie. Halley jerked to a stop, but her concentration had been broken, and she flew directly into him. He didn't so much as flinch, nor did he move. Gunther dusted himself off, which Halley thought was a bit dramatic, given the circumstances.
"You seem to be having fun. Strange, given how much blood you've lost." He remarked
"What are you talking about?" Halley replied
Gunther grabbed a fish, which was decorated with fine hairs, and elongated fins, evidently so that it could fly as well. Halley found herself slightly impressed at the feat of catching a fish with your bare hand until she remembered where they were. It dutifully dropped its delicate form to become a blurry but recognizable forest. A human form lay in the center of the frame. Halley saw herself, covered in scratches and a red stain tainting her shirt.
"What?! Why didn't you heal me? You can do that, right? We have to go back, now!"
Gunther shook his head. "Bad idea. Extreme emotions make slipping dangerous. A successful slip relies on an individual's ability to hold onto their sense of self."
“Then go back alone, there are wounded tribals that need attention too!”
“What? Why would I help the people who almost killed you?"
“You don’t understand, they were just kids. I think the leader is forcing them to fight. We can’t leave them there!”
“Halley, they are long gone, and lucky that they were, because savages rarely take prisoners."
The fish window animated, and the colors of the scene dissolved and reformed. Halley remained unmoving and unconscious, but layered bandages had been wrapped around her upper torso, and around several of her lesser cuts and scrapes on her arms and legs. The scene had also expanded to include the wider area her body had fallen in. True to his word, she was alone.
For a moment anger, guilt, and embarrassment wrestled in her mind. "Did you do all that?" Halley gestured at her broken, bandaged form
Gunther replied with a bland intonation “No, I had the gnomes help me. Seriously, though, you're lucky to be alive. I wasn't even sure I could save you with shaping."
Halley, voice cowered under the rubble of her pride, said " Thank you. I'm sorry I made that necessary in the first place. If I had been faster, it wouldn't have happened at all."
Gunther gave her an appraising look. "No. You couldn't have expected to win. I certainly didn't expect you to. No, killing the tribals wasn't why I sent you to a near death experience. You just needed to get here, and mortal peril is the only way I knew to reach this place. In fact, watching you take down three of them proved to me that our cause isn't entirely hopeless."
Halley tasted ash upon mention of the lives she'd taken.
I was desperate, just trying to survive. She told herself.
So were they. A voice answered
"Why?" She asked
Gunther blinked "Why what?"
"Why any of this? Why does it seem like the only two options I have are suffering or inflicting it on others?"
Gunther's face drew back in a bitter grin, more like a snarl than an expression of happiness "Life's a bitch. That's what makes kicking its ass so satisfying."
The answer didn't improve her mood. Is this how my life is now? How many times can I hurt people before I'm no better than a raging tribal, or those federation people? This is wrong. Gunther is wrong.
Gunther clapped once, breaking her reverie. "Chin up. You want your chance to kick life's assw? Then the first step is learning to be a proper shaper."
Gunther folded his arms behind his back then moved in a graceful arc, without moving his limbs, and came to a rest fifty metres from her. He closed his eyes, turned his head to his right and drifted several metres in that direction. He opened his eyes and motioned for Halley to follow.
Gunther swung his arm out in a sweeping gesture.
"The plains aren't uniform, they have different properties as you move across them. You've seen a bit of that already, but the stunning vistas that cover the plains are just the paint on the canvas. What we're looking for is an area where the canvas is weakest. That will make it easier for you to skip."
Halley looked blithely around at the monotonous haze. "How can you tell?"
"Practice. There is a noticeable distortion in basic logic around unstable regions. If you're perceptive enough you can find them by meditation, or just consistent focus." Gunther moved to grab Halley's arm, but stopped short and pointed at a spot in the air.
"Stand here. Or float, just don't move."
Halley kicked gently to the indicated location. She was still floating in an endless blue(but now quite a bit more white) void. Then she wasn't.