She was having the dream again. Back before all of this, back when she hadn’t been on her own, Samanta had found her occasional lucid dreams fun. That was before the dream started, before it haunted her every night with terrible visions she was powerless to escape.

The caravan thundered down the path, the noise loud enough to make her ears hurt. The wagon shook like an earthquake as they sped along the dirt road, each bump so jarring that she worried they’d break a wheel or axle. She could recall other times in her life when her father had pushed the pace, but never this fast or for this long. She could see the foam spittle flying off the garophs’ mouths as they raced forward with the rest of the caravan, all the various wagons pushing themselves to keep up with the pack.

They were afraid. Samanta could see the fear in the eyes of her father, the woman driving the wagon behind them, and the man holding the reins on the wagon beside theirs. Most concerning, however, was that she could see the fear on her mother’s face. Mother wasn’t like the others. Not once in her life had Samanta ever seen her mother show fear—at least, not until about an hour ago.

Mother looked out towards the front of the caravan, where a single yellow flag had been raised above the lead wagon. “What are they doing, signaling a slowdown?!” she snarled. “We’re nowhere near safe yet!”

“The pass ahead is too precarious to take this fast, honey,” Father told her.

“More dangerous than what we’re running from?” she snapped back.

“It’s too rocky up ahead. If somebody in front of us breaks an axle, then what? We’d be stuck! Beli and Peli can’t take much more of this, anyway. You know garophs aren’t meant for speed.”

Mother’s lips drew into a thin scowl, but she didn’t argue as the caravan slowed. Instead, she turned to Samanta and glowered her way. Samanta shrank back beneath her mother’s hot gaze.

“Samanta Zemzaris, what under the moons were you thinking?!”

“I...” Samanta hesitated.

“Mom, what is going on?” her brother Kenatt stepped in. Samanta felt a moment of gratitude for her older sibling. Nearly sixteen years old and almost of age, he could talk back to their mother in a way that she could never get away with. Normally, however, he was too busy being a stupid jerk to bother. “It’s been more than an hour now. Isn’t it time you explained what happened to make us abandon our stop like that?”

“Samanta ran into the escaped Elseling, and instead of running away, she decided to talk to him!” Mother snapped.

“What?!” both Kenatt and Samanta gasped.

An icy fear lanced through Samanta’s insides. The Elseling?! The one they said was responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Otharians since his escape some days back?! The one that the heroic Apostles of the Church were hunting across the nation right now? That Elseling?!

“No way!” her brother asked, his eyes wide with excitement. It figured that he would be too stupid to be afraid. “What was he like?! Was he scary?!

“You should have run to me the moment you found him, you stupid girl!” Mother berated her as they both ignored Kenatt’s outburst.

“Maritha, enough. She’s just a child,” Father said from up front.

“That’s no excuse!” Mother shot back.

“I... I didn’t know it was him!” Samanta protested. “I would have run, but I didn’t know!”

“How could you not know?! We all watched the Many and saw what happened!”

“B-because I had-”

“Did you forget, Mom?” Kenatt laughed. “She got the runs and missed it all! The Elseling had escaped before she was finished!”

Feeling her face flush with embarrassment, Samanta shot daggers at her stupid brother. “Only because I ate your cooking, you stupid dumb jerk! Maybe you should learn to cook right!”

“Kenatt, leave your sister alone,” Father called back. “Honey, he’s right, though. She never got to see what the Elseling looked like. It’s not her fault.”

“...very well, I suppose I spoke too harshly,” Mother conceded.

“So, what was he like?” her brother pressed again. “Did he try to attack you?”

“No, he was just weird,” Samanta replied. “He was digging a hole for his hand or something, and he seemed scared, but then he just argued with me for some reason. He didn’t seem that bad, really.”

“Samanta, what are you saying?! Elselings have been the greatest enemy to Otharia since the dawn of the Church!” Mother snapped. “And Othar said to the assembled people, ‘Beware the Elseling, the greatest of our enemies, for they strike from the shadows wearing the faces of our brothers.’”

“But why? Why do the Elselings attack us?”

“The other nations envy us, sweetie,” Father explained. “They hate that we are the Great Lord’s chosen people. That’s why they send their people to infiltrate Otharia and try to bring us down. They know that their armies would stand no chance against our Apostles, so they must use more devious methods.”

Samanta seethed with righteous anger. To think that she’d nearly had the wool pulled over her eyes by that dirty Elseling!

“We have to tell the Church! We have to warn everybody that he’s nearby!” she declared

Her mother’s face grew grim. “We will. That is, if the Elseling doesn’t come for us first.”

Another lance of fear, stronger than before.

“D-do you really think that we’re in danger?” Samanta meekly asked.

“We know where the Elseling is. If he doesn’t want the Apostles to find out, then he needs to kill us,” Mother explained. “That’s why we ran so fast. Whether or not it makes a difference, we’ll find out.”

Samanta tried to push down the rising panic and failed. “B-but what do we do if the Elseling finds us?!”

“Run, hide, and pray,” Father said. “And don’t come out, no matter what.”

“Yeah, who knows what the Elseling will do if he finds you!” her brother said with a smirk.

“Noooo!” Samanta quailed.

“Kenatt, enough!” Mother barked. “Samanta is more than right to be afraid, and you would be wise to follow her example!” She turned to Samanta, her anger shifting to contemplation. “Listen, my child. Othar forbid it, but if you do find yourself in danger, your best hope is to take advantage of the fact that the Elseling doesn’t see you as a threat. The fact that you still live is proof of that. It’s possible, if you play meek, that he will let his guard down. That is when you can strike and escape. But once you strike, you must escape. You’re still just a child. Capturing and exterminating Elselings is an Apostle’s job.”

“I don’t know, that sounds scary...”

“Samanta, listen to your mother. She knows what she’s talking about. She was an Apostle candidate before she threw away her future to marry me, you know.”

“This isn’t the time for jokes, honey. I didn’t throw away anything; I gained a wonderful partner and two beautiful children,” Mother told Father. She turned back to Samanta. “I should have started teaching you a season ago, but there wasn’t enough time. Tonight, I’ll start teaching you how to fight. We’ll start with daggers.”

“Yes, mother,” the Samanta of the past dutifully replied.

“No! Don’t listen to Mom!” Samanta cried out at the vision. Nobody listened, of course. Not Father, not Mother, not Kenatt, not even her past self. They never did.

“You lacked the conviction from the start,” the voices said.

“Shut up! Go away!” she yelled into the darkness.

Her entreaties fell on deaf ears. “If you had applied yourself harder, listened to your mother’s teachings better, practiced that night more, it all might have gone differently.”

The scene shifted, that day transforming into the next in a blink of an eye.

“Are those... Keqont guards?” Samanta’s mother muttered as they trundled deeper into the canyon. “We’re still more than half a day from Keqont. What are they doing out here, of all places?”

“I’m not sure, but it can’t be a good sign,” her father answered. He pulled a nearby rope, raising the Stop flag above the wagon for the rest of the caravan to see—the caravan rotated their order regularly, and they were the lead wagon that day.

“Both of you, hide in the back,” Mother ordered them.

“Mom?” Kenatt asked, his true question unstated but understood by all.

“I’m sure it will be fine, but just in case. Don’t show yourself until we say so. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Mother,” they both replied.

Together with her brother, Samanta crawled over and around the many crates and boxes that filled the majority of the wagon. Nearly all of them were filled with something or other to sell in Keqont, but a few chests in the back were still at least mostly empty. She crawled into one and Kenatt closed the top, sealing her away into darkness.

Samanta had only her hearing to work with now, but it wasn’t that bad. The rigid hardened leather walls muffled the sound outside a bit, but she could still hear well enough if she focused.

“Officer, what brings you so far from the city?” she made out her father inquiring, his voice carefully level.

“What do you think? The Elseling, of course,” came the gruff reply.

Samanta’s heart leapt. The guards had come to help them! All her parents had to do was mention their run-in with the elusive enemy, and then surely the guards would protect them!

“Of course, how silly of me,” her father said instead. “May Othar lead your hunt to a swift and successful conclusion.”

Samanta couldn’t help but feel confused. Why wasn’t Father saying anything? Or Mother, for that matter?

“We’re going to need you to line your wagons up by the side over there and unload for inspection.”

“Pardon?”

“Elseling check. Need to make sure you’re not assisting him by smuggling him into the city.”

She heard a gasp that sounded like her mother.

“How dare you!” she snarled.

“Sir, we humble merchants would never dare associate with such evil,” Father quickly cut in. The sound of pieces of metal caught her ears; having heard it thousands of times before, she immediately recognized it as the sound of coins jostling against each other—a lot of coins. “Surely there is a way to show you that we are simply plying our trade legally and honestly.”

More jostling.

“These are trying times. It’s taking a lot out of my men to track this dastardly Elseling down. A whole lot.”

Her father let out a defeated sigh. She heard rummaging, and then more clinkage of coin. There followed a pregnant pause.

“Line up by the side for inspection.”

“Please, no,” Samanta begged. “Please, don’t make me see it all again.”

It was starting. Samanta wanted to close her eyes, cover her ears. She wanted to run away from what was about to happen. She wanted to wake up. Her wishes mattered naught, and the dream continued unabated.

“Sir, I beg you, we are but humble merchants.”

“Word is that the Elseling lurks within this caravan. It is our duty as guardsmen to investigate to the fullest.”

“Please, sir, that is all we have. We are loyal Otharians, one and all.”

“Borroth, hurry it up! We’re getting bored over here!” somebody called.

“Fine,” the guard grumbled.

Samanta heard a moment of muffled movement, and several beastly screams of pain echoed through the canyon from somewhere far back by the tail end of the convoy.

“The Elseling’s attacking the caravan! Move in, men!”

“Wha-”

Father’s voice cut to a wet gurgle, followed by her mother’s howl of rage.

Samanta laid in the chest, curled into the fetal position, as the world around her erupted into chaos. She could do naught but listen to the myriad screams and sounds of combat, powerless to do anything but witness the terror of the moment. She couldn’t say for how long she hid there trembling, praying to Othar that it would all end soon and she and her family would be alright. It felt like hours, but it might have been only a few minutes. At some point, she thought she felt the wagon move forward, but she was not in the right mind to pay attention to such things.

Her nose caught the subtle scent of smoke, the smell growing less subtle with every breath. She could feel the chest heating up, much hotter than it should be even with her warming the inside.

Though her mother had instructed her to stay hidden, Samanta decided she needed to get out of the chest, and fast. She pushed urgently at the lid, only for it to resist her shoves entirely. The chest was locked!

Her palms beating against the insides of the chest, Samanta fought the urge to panic and found it swiftly becoming a losing battle. Her breath came quick and shallow, and her heartbeat thundered in her ears. She wanted to scream, but she feared the consequences it would bring just as much as the source of the heat and smoke.

The muffled sound of somebody fumbling with the latch filled her with a mix of hope and dread. The chest swung open and she let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding as she recognized the silhouette of her brother in the thick smoke. That exhalation proved to be a mistake, the omnipresent smoke filling her lungs on the subsequent inhalation.

Samanta coughed heavily, her body refusing to listen to her as she struggled to climb out of the trunk. Her brother’s strong hands grabbed her and roughly lifted her from the chest before carrying her out of the wagon entirely. As Kenatt quickly and unceremoniously set her down on the hard canyon rock, she had never been more grateful in her life to have him as her brother.

Samanta staggered, her legs still a little weak as her lungs sucked in much-needed clear air. She took the moment to look around and nearly fell over from what she saw. Fire blazed high from each and every wagon within her vision, filling the air with choking smog. As hazy as the area was, it wasn’t hazy enough to block the sight of the dead and dying littering the ground and the indistinct blobs of people struggling for their lives.

The death and devastation before Samanta’s eyes brought her body and mind to a standstill. Without even needing to turn her head, she could see three people she recognized, all covered in blood. None of them moved. One of them was still slumped over the side of their wagon, slowly charring within a small inferno.

She couldn’t process what was happening. Why were these people dead? Who had killed them? The Elseling? But there was only one Elseling. If he were attacking, why were people fighting all over? Had they been killed by the guards? That didn’t make any sense either; guards protected people, not killed them! But Father had been talking with a guard when-

Father!

Samanta went to turn back towards their wagon, but Kenatt’s hands clamped around her shoulders like vise grips and steered her away.

“Samanta, come! We must go!” he said.

“But Father-”

“We must go! We must go! We must go!”

Together, they ran from the caravan and into the canyon, her brother repeating those three words over and over and over as some sort of mantra. Some sick, masochistic part of her wanted to turn around and look back at the burning remnants of her life, but her brother would have none of it.

They ducked behind a large boulder at the sound of unfamiliar voices, sliding into a gap about three paces wide between the side of the boulder and the canyon wall. There, they waited and hid, listening to the sound of two men chatting as if it were nothing but a normal, pleasant day. They were just too far away for her to get any understanding from their speak, but the occasional laughs were more than enough to tell her all she needed to know.

Samanta’s body trembled as the full weight of these most recent events began to press upon her spirit. She sank to her knees and fell listlessly against the stone, tears finally filling her vision far too late. With everything she had, she prayed to Othar, begging him in his unlimited benevolence to ensure that her parents were still alive, pleading with him to get her and her family out of this terrible moment intact.

Like the rest of her family and all Otharians as a whole, Samanta had always been a pious person. She said her morning and evening prayers with devotion and sincerity, opening her heart to her Lord without reservation. This time, however, she bared her soul with a desperate totality that she didn’t know was possible. She gave her everything, trusting in Him as the only being capable of guiding them to safety in this time of danger.

“Hey, get over here and help us with this bitch!” a new voice called out, cutting off the pair of voices’ jovial conversation.

“Captain, where’s everybody else?” one of the original voices inquired.

“Dead,” growled the new voice, who was probably ‘Captain’. “Cunt here killed Lars, Fredis, Borroth, and Vidmans.”

“Fuck!” the other original voice spat. Samanta heard a thud, followed by a woman’s grunt. “Fucking bitch!”

“I haven’t seen Jozefs, Roko, or Ilvars, either,” Captain continued. “They’re probably gone too, as is all the loot.”

“FUCK!”

The unknown woman let out a weak laugh. “Better to burn it all than let you curs take a single piece.”

“Shut it!” She heard several more impacts—all harder and crunchier than the one before—each followed by a moan of pain.

Samanta let out a gasp. That voice! That voice was her mother’s voice! She was still alive! Though her situation didn’t sound good. Part of her wanted to try to sneak a peek, but she was not far gone enough to take such stupid risks. She could feel Kenatt’s worried grip tighter and his breath become even faster and more shallow.

“Hey, don’t make her too ugly just yet,” one of them laughed.

“What do we tell the higher-ups?” asked another, sounding somewhat anxious. “Somebody’s going to notice that a bunch of Keqont’s guards just vanished overnight.”

“Same thing we tell them about the caravan,” Captain replied. “They died when the Elseling attacked and killed everybody but us. We have some time before we get back to nail down our story. But first, it’s time for a little payback, wouldn’t you say?”

The others laughed, though Samanta only caught the sound of two voices.

“What do we have here?” Samanta and her brother spun around at the sound of a man behind them. A Keqont guard, blood dripping down his face from a cut next to his left eye, stood at the entrance to their little hideaway. He grinned triumphantly. “I thought I’d heard something.”

“Run! Run now!” Samanta pleaded at her past self. “Please! Don’t look!”

Dream Samanta didn’t listen, the vision proceeding as it did each and every night. The her of the past remained rooted in place, paralyzed by fear.

The man stepped forward, his arm flashing out towards Kenatt with something metallic in his hand. Kenatt’s body violently shook for a heartbeat, before the man grabbed him and almost threw him against the canyon wall in the same motion as he pulled his blade from her brother’s chest. Kenatt twitched as he slid down the stone, his eyes unfocused. Even so, he managed to meet her gaze, his terror and desperation almost physically striking her.

Her brother’s gaze finally brought Samanta to action. She scrambled away from the man, making a beeline for the other end of the gap. That side was far smaller, narrow enough that she would be able to squeeze through but the much larger man would not. She was halfway into the small gap when a hand grabbed her ankle and yanked her roughly backward.

For the first time since this had all begun, Samanta screamed.

“Gratz, what are you doing over there?” Captain called.

Gratz didn’t bother to answer right away. Instead, he simply dragged her out into the open by her leg, letting the rough rock scrape and cut her as they went.

“Look what I found,” Gratz gloated. “There was another one in there but I took care of him.”

“Samanta!” Mother gasped.

“Oh, so this is your brat?” Captain sneered. “Give her here.”

The guard passed Samanta to Captain, who grabbed her by the collar and pulled her upright.

Samanta struggled as best she could. She squirmed and kicked and bit the man’s arm, but nothing she could manage was enough. The man’s grip was too strong, she couldn’t get enough leverage with her short legs to kick hard enough to matter, and her teeth couldn’t break through the man’s tough, thick guard uniform.

Something cold and thin pressed up against her throat and Samanta went still.

“I was gonna give you a painful death for what you did to my men, but now I have a better idea. We have a lot of pent-up energy that needs relieving, and you’re going to do it all for us or I’ll make your little brat wish she’d never been born.”

The other three men held Samanta’s mother by her arms, keeping her kneeling but upright. Samanta hissed when she saw her mother’s state. Much of her clothes were stained crimson with blood, or at least much of what remained. Large scorch marks covered her flesh, with large burnt-out holes dotting her top to let Samanta see the gashes and red welts beneath. Her dress was largely missing entirely, with black charred edges lining most of what she could see. Rivulets of blood dripped down her face from her nose, which was clearly broken in several places and pointing askew at a terrible angle. The blood mixed with more coming from her grimacing mouth, where Samanta could see a messy display of broken and missing teeth in what had once been her mother’s perfect smile.

“Mongrels! Filthy bastards!” Mother howled. “The Wastes await you all!”

“We’re just looking out for ourselves, cunt, same as all the rest,” a guard said as he delivered a swift kick to her side. Samanta winced as her mother cried out in agony.

Mother struggled against the men, but they were clearly Feelers while she was an Observer. Her strength on its own was nowhere near enough to break free.

“Well? What will it be? Do a good job and we might even give you a swift death,” Captain pressed her.

Mother stared at her captor with caustic hatred for a long moment. Then, her eyes shifted to Samanta and her expression softened to something sadder. Still, though mournful, her gaze was steady and set. Samanta immediately knew what was happening. They were both going to die, and so her mother had decided she would go on her own terms.

“Forgive me, Samanta,” Mother rasped. “I failed to protect you. I’m sorry. I love you, sweetheart.”

“I love you too, Mom,” Samanta sobbed.

“Please, no more!” Samanta wailed into the darkness. “Why?! Why must I see this again?! Why?!”

“Your mother was strong. She did what had to be done, no matter how much it cost her,” the voices stated, just as they had the last night, and the night before that. “You were weak. You held back. You failed.”

With a cry, Samanta’s mother summoned every ounce of strength, managing to pull just hard enough to wrench her left arm free. She twisted, her hand reaching up toward the guard on her right, and a scorching-hot sphere of flame burst into existence above her palm. It shot into the man’s chest, lighting his clothes on fire. The man screamed and dropped his hold of her as the fire quickly spread, but before her mother could take advantage of her sudden freedom, the third man stepped forward

“Mommy!” Samanta screamed out as the man’s blade pierced her mother’s heart. “No! Mommy!”

Suddenly, Samanta found herself thrown to the ground. She gasped in pain as a thick boot slammed into her side.

“That bitch!” Captain snarled.

Another kick, knocking the wind out of her.

“That fucking cunt!”

A blow to her back, making her cry out in pain. She closed her eyes and curled into a ball, praying that she could make it through the beating alive.

“Fine men dead and nothing to show for it, all because of your dirty whore of a mother! Fine, I’ll make you pay, you little cret-”

The man’s abuse came to a sudden halt as Samanta heard the now sickeningly familiar sound of metal biting into flesh. Something fell to the rock in front of her with a meaty thud. Opening her eyes, Samanta recoiled at the sight of Captain’s arm laying on the ground next to her, a large dagger still clutched in its hand. She twisted around and looked up where the man had stood, only to find the one thing that could somehow make the situation even worse.

Dread filled Samanta’s soul.

The Elseling had found her. He’d finally hunted her down to silence her, to send her to the Burning Wastes for all of eternity.

The sermons of the Voices were clear. Only a spirit cleansed by a Voice or other official of the Church would be welcomed within Othar’s golden halls. All others would fall to the Wastes, forever to suffer the fate of the tainted in that horrible desert where nothing grew. One look at the Elseling, standing tall with his blade lodged in Captain’s skull, told her that her body would never be found and her spirit never cleansed. The man she’d run across before was nowhere to be found. Instead, Death stood over her.

The Elseling moved, but Samanta barely noticed, her mind overcome by a horrible realization—it wasn’t just her; her whole family was going to be condemned to the Wastes! The chances that their bodies would be found and recovered before they had wasted away or been devoured by scavengers had already been low, but the Elseling’s arrival cut it down to zero. Endlessly hateful to Othar’s chosen people, as all Elselings were, he would be sure to scatter their bodies to the winds to deny them the chance to dine at Othar’s table and bask in His presence.

Why had this happened to them? What misdeeds had she done to deserve such a fate? Was there nothing she could do?

Two memories, separated across seasons, came together to provide her with an answer.

The first was her memories of the night before, when her mother had placed a dagger in her hands and showed her how to use it. The second was a sermon, one from the previous year. In that sermon, the Voice had reminded them that there was, actually, one way to get into paradise without being cleansed, one way to save not only your soul, but the souls of your entire family as well: kill an Elseling.

Her mother had been right. The Elseling stood before her, his back bared to her, completely unguarded. He did not consider her a threat. She would show him his folly and save her family in a single stroke, and free her beloved nation from his reign of terror while she was at it! Prying the blade from the dismembered arm beside her, she slowly and quietly stood up.

“Don’t! Don’t do it!” Samanta implored her former self. She knew it would not change anything, but she could not help herself. Now, looking back at what would follow this moment, she wished to change this one act more than anything. “Please! You don’t know what you will unleash!”

Her hands gripped the dagger’s hilt firmly, her body moving with purpose. The Elseling stood over the corpses of the men, having butchered them like animals. She raised the knife. The Elseling said something, but she did not listen. One should never listen to an Elseling, lest one become twisted by the falsehoods they spew as easily as breathing.

Just as he started to turn around, she struck. Her mother had taught her to focus on easy-to-reach targets like the kidneys, but she wasn’t looking to just “strike and escape”, not anymore. A better target, one more suited to her new goal, was right in front of her, so unprotected and accessible that it had to be Othar’s will. How could she, a pious and devoted Otharian, not accept His guidance?

The knife lanced straight into the Elseling’s spine, and the Elseling fell.

Samanta began to weep as her heart swelled with relief and joy, but also boundless sorrow. Her family was gone from this life forever. She would never again laugh at one of her father’s jokes, or fall asleep on her mother’s lap, or sing a song with her brother beside the campfire. But she had saved them.

“B-b-blessed are the heroes w-who slay the f-foes o-o-of Othar, f-f-for the spirits of their clan shall r-reside in His h-h-hallowed halls f-for all eternity,” she sobbed to herself. “I d-d-did it like y-you told me, Mommy. I stopped the Elseling. Othar will w-welcome you now. You’ll be alright. Y-you’ll all be a-a-alright.”

But then, the world itself began to writhe.

Tendrils of metal erupted from the ground beneath her feet, wrapping around the legs and climbing up her body. She yelled in alarm, struggling against them, but they suddenly hardened, holding her body in place. She struggled against them anyway, screaming at the top of her lungs. More metal flowed up from the earth, flowing into her open mouth, filling it so that she could no longer cry out.

The Elseling was still alive. Barely, but it was enough. He clawed at the ground with his metal arm, trying to move, while tugging at the dagger embedded in his spine with the other, releasing a teeth-grinding cry as he pulled the weapon out. Nothing below the knife, which still jutted out from the Elseling’s back, showed any signs of life. He couldn’t stand, she realized, couldn’t walk. Even if he still lived, Samanta knew that he would not last long in the wilderness as a cripple.

Then, more metal flowed out from below, engulfing the man’s lower half in a formless mass of liquid gray. Slowly, the mass gained definition, rounded blobs hardening into angular plates that combined to become a set of strange-looking armor that encased the monster’s body from the knife wound down. Lines of unknown purpose wound around the pieces, carving a pattern so complex that Samanta could not even fully grasp its entirety. A whimper escaped her as the Elseling, gritting his teeth, staggered to his feet, a white-hot fury burning in his eyes.

“You were too weak,” the voices said.

The Elseling approached her slowly, haltingly, as if he were learning how to walk for the first time. A small metal platform formed beneath her feet. She could hear the sounds of gears turning under the platform and she felt herself being raised up until she stood eye to eye with the horrid creature. She could do nothing but watch as more metal flowed up the man’s body and onto his hand, moving with a speed and control greater than any water Observer she had ever seen. The lump of metal flattened and rounded, becoming a thick circular band covered in strange markings. The Elseling pulled several small, glowing crystals from somewhere and placed them into the metal, the crystals sinking in as if the metal were liquid. Then the band opened from one side, like the jaws of a predator, and the man snapped it around her neck.

Samanta flinched at the sudden action. The band, apparently some sort of collar, felt cool to the touch as it pressed up against her neck, snug but not tight enough to hurt or restrict her breathing. What was going on? Wasn’t he going to kill her like the others?

More metal flowed onto the Elseling’s hand and a second collar formed. Once more, several crystals were inserted into the device. Once he had finished, the man stumbled over to Captain’s corpse. The body’s head had been damaged by the Elseling’s blade, but as a whole, the body remained largely intact. He fastened the collar to the corpse and then staggered back towards Samanta, his breath shallow but his eyes determined.

“I want you to watch closely,” the Elseling croaked, his raspy voice making Samanta’s skin crawl.

He pointed towards the corpse, and Samanta looked at it, still unsure of what was happening. Suddenly there came a loud “CRACK”, and the body was no longer a body. Blood and organs spilled everywhere, bits and pieces dripping off the nearby rocks.

“If you cry out, or attack me, or try to remove that collar, or disobey me to my displeasure,” he said, pointing at the mess that had once been a man, “that is what will happen to you. Have I made myself clear?”

Samanta whimpered. She didn’t understand what was going on but she nodded her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. The metal in her mouth flowed back out and the tendrils released her, dropping her to the ground.

“Please,” she pleaded, cowering before the Elseling’s oppressive gaze, “please let me go. I’m sorry...”

“Let you go?” the man replied. “Oh no. Oh, no, no no no no no. I couldn’t do that. We have so much to do together, you and I. So very much to do.”

Time passed in that way that it only does in dreams, where days pass by in moments but nothing ever seems out of place. Samanta sat against the side of a cave, watching her captor stare at metal for the twenty-eighth day in a row. The Elseling, whose name was apparently Blake, spent most of his time doing just that, gazing into nothingness and mumbling to himself. His eyes would glaze over, his breathing would become labored, and he would twitch every so often while he sat there for hours on end.

She found it creepy, but not exactly scary, which was what surprised her the most about her new life as the Elseling’s captive. Had she not known what Blake was, what he was capable of, she could easily have confused him, with his round face, piercing green eyes, and thinning dirty-blond hair, for somebody’s weird uncle with an unhealthy obsession. But she did know, and if she could ever somehow forget, one hunting trip would easily remind her.

Every few days, Blake would rouse himself from his self-imposed fugue state and become something else. More and more metal would flow over him, covering his upper body in a thick suit of armor like his lower half until he no longer looked human. “Come on, Sam,” he would say. She hated how he called her that. “Let’s go find us some food.”

With her in tow, he would march off, his massive gray boots thudding against the ground. Of course, nothing worth hunting would stay near something so noisy. That didn’t matter to Blake. He would just point a long tube at something far off in the distance, there would be a strange “phu” sound as something left the tube faster than she could make out, and then whatever stood off in the distance would die. The ease at which he killed terrified her. It went against the natural order of things. You were supposed to need to fight for your victories, but he didn’t have to.

The way he seemed to achieve the impossible with ease lent credence to his words about her collar. She dared not go against him. It didn’t help that he always seemed to know where she was. She’d tried to sneak up on him to finish the job several times while he sat in his daze, but it never worked, like he had eyes in the back of his head. She didn’t understand how he knew, but he always did.

Today Blake sat where he always sat, metal legs crossed, head bowed, looking at something only he could see and seemingly ignoring her presence. However, the object in his hand, usually some nondescript lump of gray metal, or sometimes a sphere or cube of the same material, was something else this time. It looked almost like a model of an insect, though not quite. The body only had one segment about the length of his hand, ovoid but angular. Strange, glassy eyes stared out from all sides. Instead of six or more legs, it only had four, one at each end of the body. Each leg had three segments, connected by two joints that seemed capable of bending in any direction.

The entire ensemble unnerved her for reasons she couldn’t quite understand. It exuded an uncanny quality, like some strange, unnatural mockery of life. Samanta didn’t know why Blake was busy creating bizarre knock-offs of real animals, but she knew that some sinister reason was behind it all. No matter what he did, he was the Elseling, and he could not be trusted. He had not harmed her physically since the night they had first met, but that meant nothing. She could see it in his eyes when he looked at her, the rage, the hatred, barely contained. She didn’t know for what reason he’d kept her alive, but she did know that it did not bode well for her.

Blake set the model down on its legs and stared at it as if waiting for something to happen. Samanta stared as well, unsure as to the reason for the Elseling’s expectant gaze. Then, to her abject horror, the figure began to move on its own. It made slow, ponderous movements to start, like a baby garoph taking its first steps, but gradually the figure sped up and it began to scuttle across the cave’s uneven, rocky floor, its metallic legs clicking against the stone with every small step.

She looked away from the creature for a second to take a glance at its creator. Blake watched the creature intently, studying its every movement as it poked about the cave, climbing walls, scurrying under rocks, and the like. Just how powerful was this man? To create such an abomination was a task far beyond anything she had ever seen or heard of in her ten years of life. What other terrors could he unleash, if given time?

The small metallic beast skittered towards Samanta and she quailed at its approach. Without warning, it scampered up onto her leg, causing her to shriek and recoil at its cold, smooth touch. Without thinking, she backhanded it into the nearby wall, but the evil thing persisted, heedless of her protests. Her body quaked with fear as it clambered up onto her shoulder, and then finally onto her head. Then, to her utter dismay, it settled down onto her hair, letting its limbs fall down the sides of her head, and released a series of syncopated clicks.

“Would you look at that,” the Elseling said in mild amusement. “Alpha likes you. That’s so sweet.”

Samanta didn’t have the courage to voice her disagreement, though her face said more than enough.

“Well!” Blake clapped. “Glad that’s finally over! Now we move on to Phase Two!”

Time shifted again, and Samanta found herself beside Blake atop a giant six-legged metal beast as it strode powerfully through the forest, treetops speeding by on either side. Below, hundreds of "skitters", as Blake called them, ran through the trees, their multi-jointed legs churning to keep up with the giant vehicle. Skitters came in various shapes and sizes, though they all seemed to come from the same basic template as Alpha, who chittered away merrily perched atop her shoulder. The smallest of the ones below resembled the Elseling's first creation, though larger, standing at almost half her height. The rest, however, were each equipped with an array of assorted implements. She didn't know what most of the devices did, but if the ones she understood were any clue, none of them were good.

Many of the skitters sported at least one strange blade, long, thin, and wide, with hundreds of tiny metal teeth around the edge. She’d watched as the first version Blake had created brought down a great tree in moments when a woodsman would have chopped at the trunk for a quarter of an hour. She shuddered to imagine what they would do against a person, but something told her that she would soon find out.

The other implements she recognized were the death tubes. Most skitters had at least one. Some larger ones had strange setups with multiple death tubes arranged in a circle. Two skitters taller than a single-story house wielded two sets of tube arrangements each, the tubes themselves each thicker than her arm. None of those, however, could compare to the array on the back of the six-legged skitter that they rode. Samanta believed that she could probably fit herself into the death tubes behind her, they were so wide.

“Almost there,” said the Elseling, his voice buzzing through his suit, robbing his words of what little humanity they had to begin with. He wore his full armor and more, standing around one and a half times his normal height. Two large metal cylinders jutted out from his back, each connected by a hose of some sort to a circular array of death tubes at his sides. Even without the weapons, his figure cast a foreboding air. Not a single bit of flesh could be seen on his person, to the point that, if she hadn’t known better, Samanta might not have thought him human at all. Instead, he seemed like a spirit of evil given form, all the way down to the mask that covered his face, which seemed to scowl while casting judgment with its eerie glowing eyes.

Suddenly the giant skitter halted, shaking Samanta from her dour thoughts. She looked about and paled. They had stopped at the entrance to a canyon, a canyon she recognized but wished to never see again.

“Remember this place?” he asked. “Of course you do. I thought we should pay a quick visit to where this all started—get our bearings. Now, which way to the capital from here? Which way to Wroetin?”

Samanta’s entire body trembled under his gaze. She wanted to lie, to point him to some distant, uninhabited place, far away from the capital and the Church and everything else, but he would know. He always knew.

A shaking hand rose, slowly, laboriously, and pointed to the southeast. The entire army, as one, pivoted towards that direction and headed off. Samanta barely noticed. She felt hollow inside.

“You could have told him anything,” the voices said. “Led him into a trap. Wasted his time. Sent him to the ends of the world. But you didn’t.”

“I was too scared!” she argued, trying as always to silence the voices before it was too late. “He would have known, and he would have found it anyway, even without me!”

The voices did not heed her words and the dream shifted once more. Armor encased her body against her will, covering her from head to toe. Blake had formed the suit around her before the battle, ignoring her protests. The weight made it hard to stand, though she didn't much desire to stand and witness the destruction taking place all around her.

The giant six-legged skitter rocked as giant metal pieces shot out of the death tubes on its back, flying through the air at impossible speeds to slam into the once-mighty walls of Wroetin, her nation's capital. The Elseling's forces cut through the army hastily arrayed against them almost as if they weren't there. All that remained were those who ran and those with that unique combination of courage and stupidity to keep fighting. The latter would pop out from behind cover as Blake and his troops moved past, charging towards Blake and Samanta's ride or observing some sort of attack, only to be riddled with holes before they could do anything.

Some remaining forces mounted a last-ditch counter-offensive outside the Grand Cathedral, led by the best of the Church itself, but it fared little better than the rest. Samanta huddled on the floor of the giant skitter, hands over her ears, trying to block out the sounds of whirling toothed blades and her screaming countrymen. She prayed to Othar to make it stop, to end her suffering, but her entreaties went unanswered.

Blake halted their metal beast in front of the Grand Cathedral and turned to Samanta.

“Hey,” he said, nudging her with his gigantic metal boot, “where do they have all the weird people who show images in the air and talk over large distances?”

He meant the Manys, she realized, unsure why he cared to know. She pointed to a round, wide building off to the side. Any Otharian would recognize the House of Manys, the part of the Grand Cathedral where the Grand Apostle led worship.

“Stay here,” he said in reply. He hoisted his death tubes off of his shoulders and leapt down to the ground, a group of small skitters forming around him where he landed.

Samanta stared, appalled, as an Elseling walked into the most holy site in the nation, unchallenged and unimpeded. What hope was there left for her country? She flinched as more screams and loud bangs echoed from the church. Walls began to collapse, windows shattered. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. One piece at a time, the most significant symbol of Otharia became ruins before her eyes.

The dream skipped ahead slightly, moving to the next moment of interest. Blood. So much blood. Organs caked what parts of the walls still stood. Samanta followed the monster that had created this nightmare through the wreckage, choking down sobs as the Elseling took one beloved part of her life after another and ripped it to shreds in front of her. This time, it was their beloved, glorious leader, the Grand Apostle, whose hole-filled corpse he dragged behind him, leaving streaks of blood wherever it passed. She had no choice in the matter. He bade her to follow, to witness everything.

Together, accompanied by the same group of skitters as before, they walked towards the only part of the Grand Cathedral that remained untouched: the House of Manys. Samanta had always found Manys unnerving. Most people did. The way they mumbled to themselves, the way they were never fully there, the way they seemed to see things that nobody else could — there weren’t many people who would willingly subject themselves to their presence. They seemed positively normal to her now, next to everything else she’d seen.

Blake paused outside the large double door entrance and began to remove his excess armor. Soon he wore only his usual full suit — still an intimidating figure of angular metal taller than any man, but closer to resembling a person again. Samanta noticed that he kept his mask on as he opened the doors and strode through, the Grand Apostle’s body still in his grasp.

“Come,” he ordered.

Inside, two church functionaries cowered before several skitters that had somehow gotten inside already. They looked up at the open door, saw their guest and what he had with him, and fell to their knees in shock.

“If you two want to live, get these people ready immediately,” Blake said, their despair making no impression upon him. “I want to speak to the entire country. Now.”

The clerks looked at each other and then went to work, hurriedly removing veils from the Manys’ faces. The process took several minutes. This was the Grand Cathedral, after all, the nexus of the Otharian Many communication system. Hundreds of Manys stood in semicircular rows on stands arranged around a central podium, the point where Blake stood unmoving, red luminescent eyes glowering.

As the handler removed a veil, the Many would startle, as if surprised by the sudden incoming rush of sensations. He or she would focus on the central podium and raise his or her hands. As the handler for the Many’s counterpart, wherever they might be, noticed the transmission, he would remove the veil on the other end, and a projection would appear between the Many’s hands. Samanta watched silently as one by one, small projections appeared in hundreds of hands, each one showing a similar scene: hundreds of people, staring back in confusion and fear at the sight of the hulking metal man.

“Once, not too long ago, I came to your people with a vision,” he began. He spoke softly and surely, his metallic voice somehow amplified for all the Manys to hear. There was a cold fury to it that chilled Samanta to the bone far more effectively than if he’d ranted and raved, roaring before the public. “A vision of a world where food is plentiful. A vision of a world where life was more than just a constant struggle to stay afloat, where instead it could be pleasurable and easy. But you said ‘no’.

“I came to you with a vision of a world filled with wonders, where anybody could travel from one side of Otharia to the other in under a day. A vision of a world where cities were clean and disease was kept in check. A vision of a world where even the moons themselves were not out of reach. But you said ‘no’.”

“I came to you with a vision of a world where knowledge was celebrated, where truth to be sought, where ignorance was the enemy, and where to question was to live. But you said ‘no’, and you made it very, very clear.

“I will not accept that. I cannot. Not anymore. As I walked this land, seeing the abject suffering that is life here, I came to realize that I don’t need your permission for any of what I have done or am about to do. And as I spent my days hounded by a society that teaches its children to strike down any who dare to challenge orthodoxy, I came to realize that I don’t want your permission.”

The Elseling lifted the Grand Apostle’s body up for all of the country to see. Gasps and cries could be heard from projections all around the chamber. Contemptuously, he tossed the body behind him, not even caring where it fell.

“I am Ferros, and I come to you today to tell you that the Otharia you knew is dead and gone. No longer shall entire villages starve. No longer shall soldiers kill those they swore to protect. What rises shall be something more. Something greater. Something to go down in legend. I will remake this place, and none of you can stand in my way.

“There is a saying where I’m from: ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.’ That saying is bullshit. I’m about to hold your head underwater. You all have a choice—you can drink, or you can drown. There are no other options. Choose wisely.”

Without another word, Blake turned, strode past Samanta, and left the chamber.

The parade of memories continued, the scene flashing to another point in time, once from just a few days past.

"No," moaned Samanta as she recognized the scene and realized what she was about to witness again. This was the hardest part of the dream, the newest part. The part that had broken her.

Samanta slowly walked through the metal fortress, each footstep echoing down the empty corridors, joined by the lighter clicks of Alpha's feet as it followed close behind her. The metal felt cold, even after an afternoon in the late summer sun. Blake had raised the massive structure from the earth in only a few hours, replacing the ruins of the Grand Cathedral with his own creation. Only the House of Manys remained from the Grand Cathedral, and even it had been largely altered to suit his needs.

Perhaps because it was such a large, cohesive piece of metal, the fortress seemed to have a deep connection with Blake. She could feel it thrum sometimes, minute vibrations passing through the structure whenever he became excited or angry. Twice a day the entire place would shake noticeably, once in the morning and once at night, though she didn’t know why just yet.

She could feel the thrum begin as she continued through the massive building. She’d kept him waiting, and he wasn’t happy about it. Samanta didn’t care. The last few hours had been the only daytime she’d had for herself in a while, and she’d wanted to get every moment out of them she could manage. It was the one small act of rebellion that she had the courage for.

Most of the time she spent her days following him about as he did whatever he planned on doing. She’d watched as he slaughtered the army thrown together to fight him by the remains of the Otharian government, followed in tow as he hunted down the rest of the Church’s power structure from cities around the country and removed them, even sat in a corner as he worked on plans for something called a “sewer system”.

This was a bit different, though. The last few days, he’d started to set aside time just for him and her. “To teach”, he said. Samanta hated every moment of it. He wanted to shove his Elseling thoughts into her, make her just like him. She wouldn’t have it. Her fear had caused her to bow to his will over many things since that unfortunate night, but this was her limit. No matter how much he wanted her to be Elseling, she was Otharian, and she would not allow that to change.

“You’re late,” he snapped as she entered the room. He seemed tired, frazzled. “Sit down.”

Samanta sat down in the empty chair across from Blake. Between them stood a large piece of slate. Blake would write on the slate using pieces of chalk that he got from who-knew-where, scribbling in his bizarre language various things as he jabbered on. Reading that language was one of the things he most insisted on teaching her, for reasons she could not understand.

The man sat in a metal chair of his own design, covered in metal armor from the waist down, as usual. However, he did not wear the matching upper half for these “teaching sessions”, instead just donning a simple shirt. Samanta believed that he thought it would make him more relatable, help them connect. It didn’t.

“Let’s start by reviewing what I taught you yesterday. List as many of the elements as you can off the top of your head.”

“Earth, fire, wind, water, lightning, light, and darkness.”

“No!” His metal hand slammed down upon its armrest with a thunderous clang. “For fuck’s sake, Samanta, I’m getting sick of your bullshit! I’m trying to help you here and all you do is fight me every inch of the way!”

Something in Samanta’s head snapped, and anger surged forth, words that normally would stay bottled up inside rushing out.

"I don't want your help!" she cried. "Why do I have to do this? Why won't you let me go? What do you want from me?"

“What do I want from you?”

The stillness in his voice told her she’d made a mistake, but the subtle tremors rippling through the floor were what truly made her heart clench with fear.

“I want an apology.”

Samanta just stared at her captor in disbelief. An apology? That was it?

“I’m sorry for stabbing you, okay? Can I leave now?”

“Oh no, no no no.”

The tremors increased and her stomach fell into an endless pit. She’d only heard him talk like this once before, on the worst day of her life.

“An apology,” he continued, “means nothing without understanding. Without that, it’s just a bunch of words, not even worth the air used to say it.”

“I understand! I swear! I’m really sorry!”

“You understand nothing!” he roared, shooting to his feet. “None of you do! You clump around in wooden wagons pulled by fucking animals, proclaiming your greatness far and wide! You dump your shit in the street and call it paradise! You’re all so proud of your pathetic little lives, so fucking smug and self-satisfied, it disgusts me!”

The tremors grew stronger still. He took a step forward, his face contorted in anger.

“I try to help starving people, I’m attacked for no fault of my own. I try to share my knowledge and improve everybody’s way of life, they try to execute me in front of hundreds of thousands of people. Why? Because I’m from somewhere else? Do you think I wanted to be here? Do you think I wanted to come to this shithole? No! But I tried to help! I tried to do the right thing!”

The tremors were audible now, but Blake seemed too far gone to even notice. He came closer still, his eyes wild.

“I saved you. I fucking saved you from your own corrupt, irredeemable people. The same people who were supposed to protect you. They killed your family instead and I saved you from them and what did you do? You took my body from me.”

Samanta wanted to move, to escape from his white-hot gaze, but her body wouldn’t listen to her. The Elseling took one final step and stood right in front of her.

“All those people out there, walking around with their heads up their asses, acting like their shit don’t stink? They’ll see, soon enough. I’ll make them see. I’ll shove progress down their fucking throats until they have no choice but to admit how shitty their lives were before I showed up! But you...”

He leaned over, bringing his eyes level with hers. Samanta tried to look away from the inferno raging within those eyes, but his gaze held a power that she could not break. The whole fortress vibrated with his unquenched fury, shaking her to her core.

“You’re different,” he said, his voice suddenly quiet but still just as terrifying as before. “You stole my legs, and you probably think it’s the best thing you’ve ever done in your life. I will show you just how wrong you are. We’re going on a journey of discovery, you and I, and by the time we are through, you will grasp the weight of what you did to me. You will see the magnitude of your actions, and you will look upon my work and you will understand so deeply that you will not just apologize, you will THANK. ME. for what I have done! Then, and only then, will you be free to go.”

Samanta’s spirit broke, unable to handle the pressure he exuded any longer. She sprinted out of the room, tears flooding her eyes. The sound of a chair breaking against a wall echoed after her as she ran away from the monster she was trapped with. The monster she had created.

“You betrayed your country,” the voices said. “You betrayed your family.”

“I didn’t want to! I didn’t mean to! Please! Please stop!” she cried out, begging for the voices to leave, begging for them to stop. She couldn’t take what they were about to say, couldn’t handle what she knew came next.

“Otharia is dead, and it is all your fault,” they whispered.

Samanta could only weep, for she had no arguments left.