There was cold and dark, dust and ash. The dust had come all at once, roiling high over the fields to blot out the sun and cloak the valley in shadow. The townfathers had held a meeting then, clustering in their long hall as the sky darkened at midday, but as the dust began to sink toward the town they could find no answers. The few callboxes installed in richer homes and community buildings returned only hissing static or deep, ominous silence. As the dust was joined days later by ash, light and grey amid the choking clouds, they heard no word from Baron Risal or his constables.

The electricity failed on the third morning, the lines falling dead with no explanation. The water turned black with ash and grit before it stopped flowing at all. The old fathers raised their voices in warning; they had lived through the last succession wars, before Sitrl took the throne. They knew what happened to small towns like theirs when the yoke of order slipped from the land’s neck. Rusted blades and rifles found their way into the dim candlelight, and children stared as their sires took up arms and stood grim-faced against the sooty windows.

They were resolute against the first unkempt deserters that roared into town on their stolen half-tracks, thick treads carving canyons into the layers of grey ash and dirt that hid all but the tallest grasses. Their skin was mottled grey with soot, their faces and vehicles wrapped in heavy cloth to ward against the ashfall. They were grim, serious men, and they spoke little as they spilled the dark blood of the village fathers into the drifts.

None bothered to slaughter the children, rape the village mothers, pillage the finery hidden in generations-old keepsafes within the houses. The ash men killed only those that stopped them from collecting the town’s small stores of food and water before they disappeared into the murky twilight. The rest, they knew, would die in their own time.

The second raid found thin, desperate villagers staring with hungry eyes, those too weak to flee but too strong to have died - yet. Their leader urged his men on with barely a backwards glance.

The third raid saw no more than ash, piled to the tops of the low houses and sweeping over eaves in drifts.

The village slept in a stoic repose under the smothering grey chill. Every so often the silence would be shattered as a house collapsed under the weight of the icy black mass atop it. One by one the beams yielded to the pressure, cracking and splintering until finally the ash flowed in to embrace the frozen bodies of the villagers. A fountain of cold cinders billowed upward from each house as the air rushed out in a last breath, eventually settling back down over the ruins as it joined the implacable ashfall.

Snow fell ink-dark and heavy atop the buried landscape. Days passed, dim echoes of the sun filtering down to sparkle from the obsidian facets of snowflakes. The stillness grew all-encompassing, wrapping itself in cold tendrils around the vague outlines of what were once buildings and roads sleeping beneath their deadly blanket. It was broken only briefly by the false sun of a ship roaring overhead, evoking hopeful sparkles from the audience of filthy snowdrifts below.

But then it passed on to settle down somewhere far over the horizon. The thunder from its engine faded, buried under the suffocating ice as the silence returned to feast on the land of Ysl.

Tarl’s boisterous mood had been nearly insufferable on the short hop from Elpis to Ysl, sped along by a boost from the gate that sent them barrelling through hyperspace faster than even the Grand Design would have travelled. But for the shortened travel time, Jesri thought she might have thrown him out the hatch. Even Tarl’s own officers were looking a bit overwhelmed by his energy near the later parts of the journey.

A full thirty minutes before they arrived he had come to the bridge of the Subtle Blade in a whirlwind of anticipation, driving Rhuar nearly insane with his repetitive claw-tapping on the armrest of the captain’s chair - itself an object of much commentary by Tarl. Jesri was confused as to why a relatively unremarkable chair warranted so much attention until she remembered that this was likely the only Ysleli-make vessel with artificial gravity. Ysleli captains worked while standing, Ysleli royalty addressed their troops while seated.

Rhuar guided them out of the black depths of hyperspace with a deft touch, the ship’s upgraded hyperdrive whisper-quiet on the exit. It was still the loudest noise on the bridge as Ysl splashed across their main viewscreen.

Gone were the cloud-dappled oceans and verdant continents from their last visit. Ysl was an opaque grey-brown morass, its features hidden behind a thick cloak of dust and ash drifting in dirty bands through the atmosphere.

A minute stretched by while they stared at the ruined planet. No ships challenged them, no customs officials drawled out bored-sounding warnings about the authority of the dead king, not a mote of light stirred around the muddy orb.

“Report,” Tarl rasped quietly, his eyes not leaving the viewer. The Ysleli bridge crew stood transfixed as they took in the sight of their home.

“No ship activity,” Rhuar said solemnly. “Hard to get solid readings from the surface, the atmosphere is saturated with large particulates all the way up the air column.” He frowned, cocking his head to the side as he sorted through feeds. “Atmosphere is breathable, although I wouldn’t recommend it. Heavy particulates, and highly elevated levels of sulfur dioxide. Very cold.”

Tarl’s hands gripped tightly on the armrests of his chair, talons puncturing the upholstery. “I…”, he said softly, trailing off before his sentence began. He sat staring at the viewscreen for another long minute before turning to Anja and Jesri.

“How could this be?”, he grated, a plaintive note lurking at the edges of his voice. “The damage from the blast was devastating, but this…” He looked at the viewscreen again and fell to silence. “When I left the king had died, but the government had not fallen. The surviving barons were holding an emergency council, the carabineers were conducting relief operations.” His hands opened and closed spasmodically, twitching and grasping as his voice rose in pitch and volume. “We were rebuilding!”, he bellowed.

“The atmosphere can take some time to circulate dust clouds,” Anja said quietly. “If an impact is especially energetic it takes days for the dust to penetrate back down into the lower layers of the atmosphere.” Tarl turned to glare silently at her, his face unreadable. “Volcanic activity is also common with larger impacts,” Anja continued, her voice unperturbed by his hostile stare. “I would guess that the sulfur dioxide and much of the current ash is actually from secondary volcanic eruptions that occurred in the weeks after the attack.”

“Nonsense, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tarl snapped. “Ysl has no volcanoes. We have nothing, nothing-” He looked back at the viewer and stared, his eye drinking in the sight of the swirling clouds. A low growl built deep in his chest, rising in volume as his muscles tensed. Some of the Ysleli officers looked at each other with alarm and backed away, self-preservation overriding their horror.

“You need to calm down, Tarl,” Anja said levelly. “We have to-”

“I NEED?”, he roared, his teeth fully bared in a snarl as he rounded on her with talons splayed wide. “Tell me again what I need!” He stopped himself bare inches from Anja’s face, the force of his seething breath gently ruffling her hair.

Jesri’s hand drifted to rest on her sidearm, but Anja stood stock-still in the heat of his gaze and met it with a sad look. “Tarl,” she said softly. “Look at it. Accept what you see.” Another growl rose in his chest, but Anja held eye contact without flinching.

Tarl leaned in close to her, teeth inches from her face. “Ysl is strong,” he hissed. “Its people are strong, we survived the attack, that is what I saw! Something like this couldn’t - can’t,” he raved, his words slipping into incoherent growls.

“Denial is unwise,” Anja replied, her voice neutral and her eyes oddly blank. “The Ysl in front of you or the one in your head? I would advise that you choose while there is a choice left to make.”

Tarl pulled back and stood breathing raggedly, then his face slackened and he lowered his hands. “I am calm,” he said dully. “But I do not accept… this. Ysl must not-”, he choked, his voice cutting off in a strangled growl. His hands worked fruitlessly at his sides, then balled into fists. “I do not accept this,” he repeated firmly. “We must land on the planet, verify the conditions on the surface.”

Jesri let out her breath, her hand dropping from her weapon. “I agree,” she said, looking meaningfully over at Rhuar. Mercifully, he took the hint without much prompting and set a course to enter the turbulent atmosphere of the planet. A low roar of rushing wind signaled their entry, heated plasma and sparking dust enveloping the large ship as it hit the first rarified wisps of atmosphere.

The entry was rough, marred by sudden shocks as the ship ploughed through especially dense clouds of particulates. Before they had descended into the lower atmosphere the sky was already obscured, milky brown and growing steadily darker as they descended. Soon only murky twilight peered through the viewports, cast back occasionally by bolts of arcing static electricity raised by the ship’s rough passage through the dust.

It was difficult to say when they first saw the ground, black-on-black-on-charcoal blending into an indistinct smudge outside. The Ysleli crew stared out of the viewports solemnly as they descended, not talking or daring to talk as they passed over what was once green highlands and sprawling farms.

After several long minutes of descent, Rhuar pulled them up short and lowered the huge ship slowly, the landing gear sinking deep, deep into the snow before coming to rest on a rock-hard concretion of icy ash. Jesri peered into the gloom outside the ship, remembering the crisp air and the smell of the trees from their last visit months ago.

“How close are we to the facility?”, she asked.

Rhuar shook his head. “Really hard to tell,” he admitted. “The computer did the best it could based on dead reckoning and the general shape of the land, but we could be up to ten kilometers off from the facility entrance. There’s just nothing out there to use as a landmark, and the sensors can’t see for shit in all this dust.”

“What’s our range on the sensors?”, Jesri asked. “Can we do a search pattern?”

“Um,” Rhuar said, scratching himself behind one ear. “I mean, we could. The ship scanners are designed for vacuum use, so they weren’t optimized for the sort of large particle scattering we’d be getting here. I’d have to fly super fucking low, and with the visibility and conditions...” He shook his head. “We could, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Okay,” she said with a grimace. “Let’s hope we’re on the near end of those error bars. Searching in this muck without the ship is going to be rough.” She caught Anja’s eye and beckoned her over. “Ten click search field,” she grumbled. “Any ideas?”

Anja bit her lip and thought. “I think we have enough handheld scanners for teams of four.”

“Will the scanners penetrate the ash?”, Jesri asked. “We don’t know how deep it is.”

“Should be fine,” Anja reassured her. “The detail scans will be poor, but the base was off by itself and these scanners were designed specifically to help ground crews locate the ferrous elements in hidden bunkers. That facility should be the only big concentration of refined iron or steel in the area.”

Anja glanced over at Tarl, who was staring outside with a brooding expression. “I can handle directing my squads solo for the first shifts,” she said. “Keep an eye on him.”

“Got it,” Jesri confirmed. “Good luck.”

Anja flipped her a casual salute and walked off the bridge, heading back to the ship’s small barracks. Jesri returned the gesture, then went to stand by Rhuar near the command dais.

“Keep her warmed up,” she said quietly, receiving a questioning look from Rhuar in response. “It looks bleak out there,” she explained. “I don’t think we’ll be finding anyone alive. If we do, though, they’ll want out.”

“You want to prep for rescue?”, Rhuar asked. “We don’t have a lot of space on this bucket.”

“No,” she said grimly. “That’s not why we’re here, and they won’t like hearing it.”

“Ah,” Rhuar said mildly, giving her a reproachful look. “Seems a bit harsh.”

Jesri nodded, looking over to where Tarl stood gazing out the viewport.. “One of the officers I used to work with liked to say that the fire of civilization requires food to burn. When disaster or war stops the supply of food, the fire goes out.” She looked back to Rhuar, her eyes serious. “If anyone is still alive out there, they’ve killed to stay that way. This is worse than a war zone, Rhuar. War has rules.”

He blinked, taken aback by her sudden shift in tone. “Right,” he said. “Keep her ready to go, yessir.”

She ruffled the fur on his head, making him scowl. “Just be prepared. It’s probably not going to be an issue, Anja’s squad is scarier than anything we’re likely to find out there,” she said, looking out the viewport into the opaque charcoal twilight. “Probably.”

Anja stomped her foot a few times to pack down the snow before shifting her other foot farther up the cornice. Walking in the ashfall was an exercise in patience and caution, at least if done safely. The Ysleli squads had taken her stern warnings lightly at first, but after Neryn fell screaming into a hidden air pocket beneath the snow and was hauled up dyed soot-black from head to scaly toes - well, they took her more seriously after that, placing their feet with caution and testing the snow ahead with long struts they had repurposed from the Subtle Blade’s maintenance stores.

It made for slow progress, but it was preferable to suffocation below the ash. The snow was unusually heavy, the infusion of particulates giving it a heft and grainy fluidity that reminded Anja of unset concrete. She grimaced and brushed away the crusts of dirty ice from her respirator. No matter what Tarl may think of the Ysleli and their inherent hardiness, Ysl was dying. Even if individuals managed to survive until the dust and sulfur dioxide cleared from the atmosphere they would find themselves stewards of bare dirt and rock. Biospheres were hardy things, but even they had their limits.

Anja reached the extent of her tether and paused in her ascent, allowing the rest of Neryn’s squad to catch up with her. They were tied together in a climbing line to guard against falls, forcing the group to move at the speed of the slowest member. She tapped her ear, shouting into the respirator’s comm pickup over the howling winds. “Tiln, Anja!”, she yelled. “Position check!”

“Go for Tiln!”, came the crackling reply, buzzing overloud in her ear but still difficult to pick out against the storm. “Two kilometers southwest, no signal!”

She clicked a confirmation back to Tiln, then repeated the check for the other four groups in her squad. Hers was the farthest out at nearly three kilometers from the Subtle Blade so far. None of them had found traces of the facility. She unlimbered her handheld scanner and swept it across the ground, wiping the tiny screen clear with a gloved thumb. Nothing. She cursed and snuck a sip of tepid water from the mouthpiece in her respirator.

Feeling some slack in her tether, she resumed her plodding trek up the side of the low ridge. Ice clung to her in crackling sheets that formed and fell as she forged her way into the wastes. Too soon, she was forced to stop again. Position check. Gear check. Scan. Hydrate. Wait for the group, keep moving forward.

The hours blurred together, the cold seeping into the seams between the insulated pads and heating filaments of her gear. Her respirator filter became clogged, forcing her to stop and exchange it with one of her spares. She inhaled a stray breath of unfiltered air while she was swapping the cartridge and spent the next minute coughing fitfully. The acrid stink of the ash lingered in her nose and throat for longer still.

Time to stop. Position check. Gear check. Scan. Hydrate. Wait. The land curved up to either side of her, vanishing into the blackness and swirling snow. They adjusted their course to sweep across the small valley in a languid serpentine, pausing to scan regularly. At seven kilometers out from the ship Anja was starting to feel the subtle tickle of familiarity when she looked at the shrouded terrain around her.

Time to stop. Position check. Gear check. Scan - and a weak signal bounced back, indicating a large mass of metal underneath the snow. She felt a flash of excitement and relief, followed closely by caution. This was the first return they had found so far, but she needed more data before she could call in a position. This could be a vehicle, farm equipment… Even a large ore deposit, albeit a fairly pure one.

She shouted for her squad to fan out on lengthened tethers and check for disturbances in the snow that could indicate structures. Anja stayed in place to run another set of scans, this time a slow, high-powered sweep. The smeared screen cleared, then began to fill slowly with fuzzy wireframe sketches of cuboid shapes - crates, building frames, doorways.

“Hah!”, Anja shouted, letting the scanner swing from its belt tether and pressing a hand to her ear. “This is Anja, all other teams return to the ship,” she called out. “The base is at my position.”

“Copy that,” Jesri transmitted, seeing the ship’s short-range sensors light up with a ping as Anja keyed her transponder to full power. “We have your location, we’ll head out as soon as we get the other teams back in.” She pushed back from her duty station and sprang to her feet, stretching to clear away the tension accrued from long hours of sitting immobile.

“Rhuar,” she called out, “I’m going to get my haz gear together. Prep for dustoff in about an hour, the other teams should be able to make it back by then.” He nodded, and Jesri turned to exit the bridge only to stop short as she caught sight of Tarl still gazing forlornly out the viewport. She hesitated, then walked over to stand beside him.

“Don’t know if you heard us talking,” she said conversationally, “but we found the base. I’m about to go change into environment gear. Did you want to come on the retrieval crew?”

Tarl slowly turned his head to look at her, his face blank and disaffected. “Why?”, he asked quietly. “Am I necessary?”

Jesri blinked, thrown off by his odd manner. “Ah, no,” she said. “You don’t have to go, but you’re welcome to.”

He didn’t respond, staring at her for a few seconds more before turning his head to gaze out the window again. Jesri waited for his response even then, but when none came she shook her head and walked off the bridge towards the barracks.

Across the bridge, Qktk walked up to stand next to Rhuar, most of his eyes looking over at where Tarl stood watching the dark snow fall. “I’m a little worried about him,” Qktk said softly.

Rhuar raised his head from his console and looked at Qktk askance. “You’re worried about Tarl?”, he asked incredulously.

“Look at him,” Qktk insisted. “He was practically bouncing around the bridge on the way over, but now he’s just… standing there. Out of all the Ysleli on board, he’s taking this the hardest.”

“To be fair,” Rhuar said, “he’s having a pretty fucking bad day. Once we get out of here and get his mind back on fighting the Gestalt he’ll perk up. Tarl doesn’t seem like the type to dwell on things. He was fine after we blew up his fleet and he was fine after he got exiled, he’ll be fine now.”

“Was he fine?”, Qktk asked. “There’s only so many supports you can knock away before things fall over. It would be one thing if all he wanted was to fight, but I credit him with a little more depth than that. What if he wanted to fight for Ysl, or even just return to his people someday? Where does that leave him?”

Rhuar snorted. “Staring out a window, I guess. Why do you care so much about how he feels? His entire career has just been killing people - the enemy, his own officers, whoever. Outside of that he’s a black box, nobody knows anything else about him. I can’t summon up a lot of sympathy for a guy like that when he finally realizes death is terrible.”

“You know,” Qktk said wryly, “we may have killed as many people as he ever did. More, even.”

Rhuar blinked. “Okay, yeah, but that was just the one time. It was different.”

“Different from what?”, Qktk asked. “Do you know the circumstances behind all of Tarl’s battles? Rhuar, it’s not too much of a stretch to think that some Ysleli see us the same way you described Tarl just now.” He hesitated, his mandibles clattering a bit. “Well, maybe not you,” he added. “Somehow I got all the credit for that little episode.”

“Well, yeah, but they love you for it, just like they love him,” Rhuar protested. “Captain, the Ysleli are not like most other people. They think killing your enemies in glorious battle is pretty much the best thing ever. When they talk about the Demon of Ysl they get all happy and excited, you’re like a celebrity to them.”

“I suppose,” Qktk allowed, shifting his weight uncomfortably. “All the same, it’s never been one of my great ambitions to be known as a mass murderer. It’s not just the Ysleli who hear those stories, and some of the people I meet…” He shuddered, making a light clattering noise. “I’d rather be known for trading well, or helping people, or whatever we end up doing against the Gestalt,” he said mournfully. “Anything else, really, just as long as people don’t think I’m some vicious killer.”

Rhuar tilted his head, somewhat taken aback by the sorrowful note in Qktk’s voice. “Captain, it’s not-”

He was cut off as the console lit up with an incoming transmission. “Contact!”, Anja’s voice yelled, the clap of gunfire echoing in staticky bursts over the roar of the wind. “The whole place is full of Ysleli,” she shouted, “We need backup as soon as you get all the teams on board.”

“We copy,” Rhuar replied back, setting down in his chair and turning his full attention to the console. “You going to be okay until we get there?”

“Oh sure, everything is great,” Anja shouted back, punctuating her statement with a burst of rifle fire. “Nobody can hit anything in this storm and these guys shoot like civilians. No way we can get in the base without backup, though. We can keep them bottled up for a while, just get here as soon as you can. Oh, and have Tarl-” Anja’s voice cut off as another burst of gunfire drowned out the middle of her sentence. “-talk them down a bit.”

“Ah, copy?” Rhuar said tentatively. “I’ll let everyone know.”

“Super,” Anja yelled back. “Give me a ping when the ship is en route.” Another burst of sustained rifle fire filled the channel before it cut to silence.

“Nothing’s ever easy,” Rhuar groaned, clambering out of his chair stiffly. “Captain, can you go track down Jesri and let her know?”

Qktk nodded and scuttled aft, exiting the bridge towards the barracks. Rhuar rolled his neck, then turned to face the side windows. “Hey, Tarl!”, he shouted.

Tarl turned slowly to look at him, his expression blank.

“Time to gear up, buddy,” Rhuar said with a grin. “Turns out you’re necessary after all.”

“What has happened?”, Tarl asked softly.

“Ah, Anja ran into a bunch of Ysleli holed up in the base,” Rhuar said, turning for a moment to gesture back to the console. “She said they-”

Rhuar stopped speaking abruptly. Tarl had already left the bridge.