SUBJECT // gideon fate // citizen accountant //

THEORY POTENTIAL // dull //

Oh gods, more killing, more death, bodies everywhere and that poor girl—she doesn't make a sound, just drops to the ground like a bundle of rags, and the other girl, the awful dirty girl who killed them all, she's going to kill the gentleman and then me if she sees me, so why am I still standing here?

Because death is everywhere, in every direction, and doing anything will get me killed. Maybe I've already given up. Maybe I just can't tear my gaze away.

"Now now!" the gentleman says, hands raised, as the awful girl advances on him with her knife dripping blood. "I'm harmless and useful!"

"How," the girl growls, still advancing so slow and deliberate and terrifying.

"You're Muurian a scout lived your life in the mist—" the gentleman's talking so fast I can barely understand him but it's working, the awful girl is slowing "—first scout I'd wager with loss in your past alone in the world with survival your watchword and, and you're not just Muurian, you're Zanthic—"

"How the fuck you know about Zanth," the girl says. She's stopped.

"Ambassador," the gentleman says, gesturing to himself. "I've been everywhere on this cursed continent—if indeed this is still Est. I'm a superb judge of character, highly skilled at reading people and rather a smooth talker as you're grudgingly accepting—Briya, my life is yours to dispose of as the whim takes you but I am worth more alive, please understand."

"What about her?" the girl Briya says, jerking her head at the small sad corpse behind her. "You even care I just ended her?"

"Caring," the gentleman says, "is a vice I have seldom indulged."

Briya grunts. "Fuck it then. First sign of anything and you'll be tasting steel." Her mouth twitches. "Please understand."

Then her blank eyes flick to me and I piss myself.

But she doesn't kill me.

She just turns and runs and she's gone.

It doesn't make sense until I hear the heavy footsteps behind me.

I add shit to the piss and run like a man being chased by reptilian death in a nightmare world, towards anything other than what's behind me. Some horrible winged insect slaps against my face and maybe I make a noise or maybe I'm already past that. Maybe my mind has no part to play in this. There's a scream from somewhere, shrill and sharp and any other day it'd be the worst thing I ever heard but here and now I feel that hideous scream fill my ears and all I think is, good. It's not my death. Not my pain.

My foot catches and my hand bursts and my mouth is open but all that comes out is a pathetic wheeze that turns into a hacking cough and then shrieking laughter.

And I don't die. No lizardmen come charging out of those ugly tree-parodies to tear me to shreds. No insects rise up to eat me alive. No horrible filthy girls with blank eyes open my throat without so much as a change in expression. I don't die and there's a noise, so ordinary that it takes me near a minute to recognise it.

Water.

Just a shallow stream, narrow and fast, the water clear over smooth rocks. I don't know how I get to it, my body crawls or limps or stumbles or drags itself forward, I see the miracle stream come closer until I can touch it and gasp at the cold and then push my face into it and drink and sob and remember I'm more than blind animal instinct.

Awareness of the stench from my trousers brings a ridiculous flush of shame, I struggle out of my shoes and socks and work my filthy underclothes off and roll into the stream and sit there, naked from the waist down, splashing and crying because it's so cold it hurts and I can feel that because I'm alive.

I look up and see a stone giant watching me.

"Oh no," I moan, and everything goes dark.