Chapter 27

I woke up the next morning and went to work on my handweaving practice right away. There was plenty of time for it now. I still woke up early out of habit, but like Ozzie had explained, that time belonged to Haven. If I couldn’t go running, I’d find another way to express myself instead. The stiff leaves were shockingly strong once they were interlaced.

Haven was perfect, but I wondered if Ozzie’s treatment had worked. There was still a sense of something missing.

“Oh, well. It’s time to go see if Puja has some fish to debone.” I’d only been three behind the previous morning. I was getting close! That old bat was going to be so surprised when I beat her. It’s always nice to have a goal.

Besides, it gave me another chance to see Kumar. I’d always thought he was handsome enough, but ever since Ozzie had set me straight, it was almost distracting. It was a shame I couldn’t run off with him again, but I’d have been a Havener for a month soon enough. You’ve waited this long, you can go a few more days.

I stretched out as I stepped into the village proper. I’d have to do something about my back. Maybe I could dip into the ibuprofen stock that Ruth kept track of?

Puja wasn’t out of her hut yet, so the late-sleeping Kumar definitely wasn’t, but Sunny and some of the others were milling about, stretching just like I was. I waved to them, and they beckoned me over.

“Hey, Rose,” said Sunny, her smile brightening an otherwise overcast morning.

“Good morning! What’s on the agenda for today?”

“Agenda? You’re so formal!” She giggled, waving me off. “You always make it sound like there’s a plan. I think you’ve been here long enough to know what to do.”

“It’s more fun when I have someone to do it with, though.” That troublesome voice didn’t bother me anymore, but there was still something so uncomfortable about being alone with myself.

Sunny pointed to the rocky section along my old jogging route. “I was going to go look for some clams by the rocks, if you want to join me.”

Something felt wrong about going out that far, but it would be okay if Sunny was with me, right? “That sounds—"

A crack of thunder interrupted us, and the cloudy sky unleashed a torrential downpour. Sunny cried out and ran back inside her hut, but I stayed outside, even as Puja’s old shawl grew completely sodden. Why hadn’t I retreated like the rest? I felt like there was something I should do about it.

I reached my hand towards the sky, willing the rain to stop.

Nothing.

“Well of course, you dummy,” I said, chuckling wistfully to myself. “Nobody can affect the…” I trailed off as I saw a dark shape in the woods, beyond the rows of crops, watching us.

My heart leapt in my chest. Somebody was where they weren’t supposed to be! If I wasn’t allowed to run in the safe zone, then nobody should be out in the woods without Ozzie there!

I waved at them. “Hey, what are you doing out there? You should be back in the village!” I tried to sound friendly, but when somebody was flouting Ozzie’s commands, it was hard not to let my fury bleed through.

The startled person staggered back, before darting into the undergrowth.

My legs had already carried me through Ruth’s taro garden and straight into the jungle beyond. “Hey you, come back! You’re just making things worse for yourself!”

“Go away,” came a voice from deeper in the trees.

A man’s voice that I didn’t recognize. “A spy?” Righteous anger flowed through my limbs, driving me faster even as branches clawed at my face.

I’d never been this far into the forest on the west side of Haven. Sometimes the men would journey back there to harvest wood, but always under Ozzie’s guidance.

It didn’t matter, though. Some outsider had sullied our island with his presence, and I wasn’t going to let him slip away!

I came to a clearing around a rocky outcropping dominated by dark, volcanic stone. The only coverage was a few scrubby brushes, giving my quarry nowhere to go. It was the closest I’d seen to a mountain since my old life, but it wouldn’t have been more than a hill back in… wherever I had lived before. It wasn’t even visible from the village.

The rain returned, to my surprise; the patch of jungle had been so thick I’d forgotten all about the cloudburst.

I spotted my target clambering up the black hill, his dark clothing almost blending in. His skin gave him away, though it being bright… red?

I shook my head. That was impossible, wasn’t it? There were no devils out here. It was a trick of the light. I followed, though more slowly, over the slick, jagged rock.

“I said stay back,” he repeated plaintively, hiding behind a pale green bush at the top of the hill. “I don’t want to harm you.”

I ignored his protests. He couldn’t be a devil; otherwise, he’d have already started firing magic. Those bastards didn’t have any mercy at all.

I reached the top of the hill, breathing lightly. I know it was naughty, but at least my morning runs were doing me some good. “Come on out, you. Hands up.”

“Please, you don’t know what you’re doing,” the man protested, his form just visible through the bush’s scraggly leaves.

I hesitated; the poor man sounded truly miserable. Maybe it would be alright to let him go? Somebody that pathetic couldn’t be a threat to us, could they? A shake of the head cleared away those treasonous thoughts. Nobody intrudes on Haven and gets away with it!

I darted around the bush so he wouldn’t have a chance to flee. “I know exactly what…”

My hands flew to my mouth, stifling a panicked scream. Not well; if it hadn’t been pouring, they might have heard me in Haven.

My mind couldn’t process him all at once, instead breaking him down into his pieces. Red skin, bright as a fire engine. Small, curled horns, like a sheep, almost vanishing into thick, blond curls. Black, sorrowful eyes.

A devil?

“A devil!” Fury burned away my shock as I realized what squatted in front of me. I’d seen them in photos, propaganda films, and even comic books my whole life, but I’d never been so close to a demon before.

“Shush, someone will hear you,” he said in a half-whisper.

“Let them!” I lunged forward, my hands going for his throat. He scuttled backwards, but I was too fast for him. “You stole everything from me!”

“Please,” he croaked, seemingly calm despite me throttling him. “I don’t want to, but I will fight back.”

“Nice try, hellspawn,” I spat, clamping down harder. “You’ll stab me in the back as soon as I let up! They told us all about you…” Somewhere? Where? “Ozzie told us all about you,” I guessed. “You’re all full of lies!”

“I warned you,” he said, an instant before his foot drove into my stomach. I’d heard devils were superhumanly strong, and the impact carried me a meter upwards before I slammed back down onto the rocky hilltop. Puja’s old shawl would need another patch, but the stiff fabric meant I wouldn’t.

I rolled to my feet, locking eyes on my fleeing opponent. Half-formed golden runes sputtered in the air around my hands, taking me out of my battle fury. What the heck? Since when can I… Magic? Do I have… My mind spun its wheels, not finding any traction.

Stop, you can have a crisis later! “Spectral Web!” It wasn’t one of my go-to spells, but they’d drilled it into us at… Why couldn’t I remember where I’d been taught?

You shouldn’t do this. Ozzie said to do what you were told, and he didn’t tell you to fight devils.

“Screw Ozzie!” I shouted, clutching my splitting head. I couldn’t believe I’d said that. Had I said that? The words seemed like they belonged to somebody else.

The devil cried out in surprise as a shimmering, blue web wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his sides. “A wizard? How?” Losing his balance, he toppled over, bouncing down the hill a few times before a scraggly palm tree stopped his fall.

I couldn’t follow up my attack, though. Contradictory thoughts swarmed through my head, as though using my magic had cracked a dam that threatened to wash everything away.

I was Rose. I was born… somewhere, but Haven was my home. Sunny was my best friend, and Puja was like a mother to me. I loved Kumar, and we’d soon be paired together. Ozzie was the greatest man I’d ever met.

I convulsed, flopping onto my side, cradling my poor head.

No, I was Rose, born in England. It didn’t matter, though, because Haven was my new home. I didn’t know Sunny well, but she seemed nice enough, if a little dull. Puja was a cranky old lady, and her son seemed nice at first, but he turned out to be a creep as soon as we were alone. Besides, I felt like there was somebody else waiting for me. Ozzie was my leader, but something about him made me nervous.

My vision swam, useless runes flying through the air around me as I fought to stop the onslaught of conflicting thoughts.

I’d stumbled back to my feet at some point, but my legs gave out, sending me down the jagged hill, just like I’d done to the devil. I tried to shield my head, but it wouldn’t be enough when I hit the unyielding rocks.

Instead of being dashed on the hillside, I slammed into something fleshy instead. My vision refocused long enough to see I was being gently cradled in somebody’s arms.

I was Rose Cooper, and…

And…

Everything was lies.

I felt like a computer hitting an error over and over again. My mind tore itself apart as three different truths clashed with each other.

“I’m sorry, but I think this will be the best for you,” said the devil. He held up two blurry fingers, and a loud pop echoed in my ears. “Don’t bite your tongue. Lechtar.”

“Don’t what?” I asked. I convulsed as electricity poured through my body, finally bringing a respite from my crisis.

Chapter 28

I awoke on my ratty mattress with my head pounding and my limbs feeling like lead. Worse than ratty, it was soaked, since my carved window in this stupid hut didn’t do anything to keep things dry. For once, I was glad I didn’t have anything worth saving.

“Disgusting,” I said, more water dripping off of me as I practically leapt out of bed.

My eyes widened. That was an awful lot of heretical thoughts to have all at once. Was I being too harsh? The sea provided, didn’t it?

“Damn the sea,” I growled, feeling like I was seeing things clearly for the first time in ages. How could I have ever been happy here? “Not just happy, overjoyed. What the heck was wrong with me?”

The sea provides, and Ozzie is your leader. You’re a complete ingrate. The voice bubbled up at the back of my mind. If it weren’t for them, you’d be dead. Aren’t you being too harsh?

I blinked once, and it was like the rose-colored glasses had come back into place. “The mattress isn’t so bad; I need to hang it up to dry before it’s ruined, though. Maybe Ruth or Puja can help me make a cover for my window? It’s really my fault for not doing something about it sooner…”

I slapped myself full in the face, and harsh reality intruded back in. The pain helped me focus. Another blink, and the squalor came back to the forefront. “Bloody heck, that mask did a number on me, didn’t it?”

The sheer terror of what I’d escaped from landed all at once. I picked up Puja’s old shawl and buried my head in it, screaming with all my might. Death would have been better than being replaced with some vapid duplicate wearing my skin.

Surprisingly, Stormbringer didn’t feel the need to join in. No wind. No new rain. Not even the little gusts I always let off when I cast spells. Was it broken?

A problem for later. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Rose,” I said. “You aren’t out of this yet.”

You don’t deserve to leave. You got Zack, O’Connor, and all of those other people killed. This is where you belong, even if you’re miserable.

“Shut up, you. You aren’t going to guilt me into your cult.” It felt strange to talk with a voice in the back of my head, but then again, she’d started it.

I needed to escape, if only because this was going to take a lot of therapy to get over.

For the first time, I noticed a sheet of paper laying on the sodden floor. It must have been left with me. Thankfully it had been written in pencil; ink would have been completely washed away.

Flattening out the abused paper, I could just make out a crudely written message. A few of the letters had been scratched out and rewritten, like he didn’t know how to write in English.

Brought you back. Stay out of the woods. Forget it. It’s better. Please destroy this.

That devil. I’d nearly forgotten him in the tumult bouncing around in my skull. There were goddamn devils on Haven.

“Wait… then why aren’t I dead?” He’d had me in his power. Was he in on it with Ozzie? He’d seemed awfully pensive for a devil. I’d been too enraged to notice at the time, but he’d been almost gentle. Well, besides the electric shock.

I looked through the hole in my wall I refused to call a window. The rain had finally broken, and the women of the village were hard at work tending to their gardens. Poor old Ruth was bailing out her vegetables, which sat under an inch of water.

I jogged over without a moment’s hesitation. “You could use a hand.” It was a statement, not a question.

“About time you woke up!” Her weary, gap-toothed grin tore me up inside. Ruth should have been enjoying her retirement somewhere, not kneeling in the mud with half a coconut! Yet, she was in the same happy stupor I’d been in. She was in heaven.

“I thought I’d catch a nap if we were stuck inside anyway,” I said. “That was an awful storm. Give me that, you rest.”

Ruth didn’t put up much fight as I snatched the coconut shell from her grip and took her place. She strained to get back upright with a pained grunt. “The sea gives and takes,” she said. “It isn’t so bad. We have our huts, after all.”

“That we do,” I said, barely keeping my tone neutral.

She cast a worried look seaward. “I hope the men are alright; they aren’t due back until tomorrow.”

“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” I said, my tone icy. Ozzie kept us separated, so I hadn’t gotten to know most of them. If they were anything like Kumar, they could sink for all I cared.

No, no, that wasn’t fair. All of them, including Kumar, had gone through The Welcoming, just like me. They weren’t in their right minds. They were the victims of Ozzie’s neo-primitivist power fantasy. He was chief and shaman all rolled up into one, able to enforce his whims with a glance.

The mask. I shivered at the thought of his red eyes blasting away chunks of my soul again. Getting back in touch with my magic had let me resist the effects, but I couldn’t count on that again.

What in God’s name was going on here? Ozzie was clearly a wizard of some sort; mundanes couldn’t use fabricata like that. That was all I could be sure of.

I cast my eyes towards the jungle again. I didn’t have answers, but I knew where to find them, no matter what a certain horned someone had said.

**********

It wasn’t easy playing Rose minus the Cooper all day. When I helped Sunny with the knitting or Puja with the cooking, I wanted to grab them and shake the crazy out of them. Their empty smiles had seemed so inviting before, but now I saw them for the masks they were. Did they even have that little voice fighting like I had before my second dose? Or had Ozzie beaten it out of them?

I kept it together, for their sake as much as mine. The outside world needed to find out about Haven, but I didn’t have a way to reach that far.

Yet. I remembered what I’d seen among Ozzie’s curio collection. Yukiko’s Finding Device was there for the taking.

It’d be easy enough to break down his door with a Magic Bolt or something more creative, but I’d only get one chance to end Ozzie’s tyranny. I couldn’t let myself get hit by his fabricata mask again.

So instead, I waited for nightfall and made my way out into the jungle. The full moon lit the way until I hit the tree line, where the thick canopy blocked my view completely.

“Merlin’s Lantern,” I intoned, making sure I didn’t put too much magic behind it this time. I wasn’t out to burn down the forest just yet.

The hike seemed so much longer when I wasn’t pounding after a devil. It was slow going, but I finally made my way back to the rocky hill. I dispelled the magic with a wave of my hand and clambered up the hillside. It was the only high point I knew of on Haven, and I needed to get my bearings.

I couldn’t see the village, which made sense, since the hill wasn’t visible from there either. Turning west, I could see the haze of distant lights and a few structures peeking over the treetops. “Let’s go see what you’re hiding, Ozzie,” I spat.

Easier said than done; I was back in complete darkness, which I solved with another Merlin’s Lantern. I was wishing I could make my way through faster when I stumbled across a narrow hiking trail.

“As long as you’re granting wishes, how about some real clothes?” I wasn’t even sure who I was talking to. Probably still loopy from the mask.

The going was easier, which was almost concerning. The thick jungle wouldn’t produce a path like that naturally, and it hadn’t been created by my idle thoughts. “Whoever made this isn’t going to like seeing me on this side of the island.” I paused. “I should probably stop talking out loud, too.”

It was hard after feeling trapped in my own head all day. It had all been thanking the sea and talking about how great Ozzie was. I’d barely kept it together.

I made great time on the path, and in a few minutes, I’d arrived at another clearing.

What I saw sent me diving into the underbrush again, clamping a hand over my mouth so my breathing wouldn’t give me away again.

A dang megapede? It couldn’t have been a wooly mammoth or a Macrauchenia, or any of the other extinct creatures the Horde had brought with them when they invaded? Those wouldn’t have been too surprising after encountering a devil. Instead it was a roly-poly the length of a sedan scuttling through the jungle on way too many legs.

Every last hair on my body stood on end. I can’t even stand regular bugs, much less ones that could step on me.

Thankfully, he was going the other way, and he was out of sight soon enough. What was he doing out in the jungle this time of night? A quick look at my path showed thousands of footprints matching what he left in the soft dirt in his wake, mixed in with my own. Parts of leaves littered the path; hopefully that meant he was a vegetarian.

My heart had just stopped jackhammering in my chest when the megapede came back into view with a pair of orcs in tow. The green-skinned giants held wickedly sharp, curved swords in their hands. They were mostly naked, aside from tattered shorts and rusted out, metal cuirasses over their chests.

My hand stayed in place as I cowered deeper in the underbrush. Not just devils, but lesser demons, too? Suddenly, running into that meridraken didn’t seem as surprising. There’s a whole bloody squadron of them out here!

The two orcs looked awfully cross at being disturbed at that time of night. I noticed they didn’t have a torch or lantern; had I learned that orcs had fantastic night vision, or was I thinking of goblins? Races of the Horde hadn’t been my best class back in Nagoya.

My eyes widened. If they can see in the dark, they’re bound to see my footprints! I hadn’t even thought about leaving a trace.

The megapede reared up on its back half, its clacking jaws and compound eyes focused right on me. The orcs hadn’t seemed to notice yet; they were busy having a conversation in demonic. One casually picked his nose. As if I didn’t already hate them enough.

To my surprise, Stormbringer hadn’t so much as blinked at my state of panic. The sky was completely clear, and the cool night still. Was it broken?

I sure hoped not. Wake up, Stormbringer; it’s time to go to work. With a thought, the moon was swallowed up by a thick, localized patch of clouds that dumped their contents on the jungle before. One dropped his sword and ran, while the other took a moment to kick the megapede in the side before joining his companion.

Good thing my hand was still over my mouth, or my laughter would have given me away. After everything they’d done, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer pair of demons.

I willed away the downpour with a thought. As a bonus, I’d wiped out some of my tracks at the same time.

Still, I’d gotten lucky. Those orcs had come pretty quickly, which meant that there was a guard post nearby, or perhaps even another settlement. Was that how Haven worked? Humans on one side, Horde on the other?

I wasn’t sure what to do with this information, though. It wasn’t like I could expose it to the villagers; they’d just say some nonsense about the Horde not being a problem, or maybe even talk about how they were chosen by the sea, too. It seemed useless to try.

“No complaining, soldier,” I said, imagining Mr. Maki or O’Connor’s commanding voices in my head. “You knew you were alone. Nothing’s changed.” Pressing on, I mirrored the path the demons had taken in their retreat. The thick underbrush took more effort to weave through, but I wasn’t going to risk being spotted. At least, not until I was ready.

About a kilometer to the west, the jungle abruptly stopped. I had nearly blundered past the tree line into a bloody village; my only warning had been the light cast by large torches along the perimeter.

Dozens of rectangular houses sat on raised foundations in regular rows, patrolled by a pair of orcs riding on long-necked, trunked Macrauchenia. The tawny-hided beasts were almost cute in their way, with their docile, sad eyes glowing in the torchlight. If only they didn’t belong to hellspawn. I spotted my playmates from before; my megapede had rolled up in a ball to protect itself from the lead orc’s boot.

There’s a whole village of them! Jesus Christ, I’m lucky they only sent two orcs on foot! If Haven’s village was a hodgepodge of random refuse, the west was well crafted and uniform.

Stormbringer roiled within me as images of England’s fall flashed through my mind. I’d been spirited away before the worst of the fighting, but I’d seen enough of the news to want my metric ton of flesh. Nice houses you have there, but are they tornado-proof? I held off, since if there were orcs in all of those buildings… Well, I didn’t want to think about that too much.

One of the riding orcs kicked the Macrauchenia in the side with a deep thump I could hear from my hiding spot. They aren’t any better to their animals than they are to us, are they? The beast let out a pained bleat before trotting over, the rider smacking the orc who had kept abusing the megapede. I didn’t have to speak Demonic to know he was telling him to cut it out. Was it concern that they’d kill their pet, or just annoyance at the racket? Knowing demons, probably the second option.

The orc let out an irritated huff before trudging over to one of the houses. He banged on the door, summoning a despondent-looking man. The demon pointed towards a water basin in the distance and barked an order, shoving the poor man into the mud. He struggled to his feet, wiping the mud off his face.

My jaw went slack. His face was hidden by the beginnings of a patchy beard, but I’d know that bushy beard anywhere.

Captain Zhang!