Aliyah

There was a glowing arrow sunk into her abdomen. She’d been shot from behind.

The pain seared. It twisted and spiraled.

She dropped to her knees, hands moving instinctively to put pressure against the wound as she poured healing magic into the puncture. Not in the descending aorta, thank the gods. Not in the arteries either—spleen, liver, and kidneys were fine. Pancreas intact, not flooding her insides with spilled enzymes. If she’d been standing just a little off to the side—but no. Focus. Gastrointestinal perforation. Jejunum and ileum—not the worst. Take care of the peritoneum. Survivable. Definitely survivable.

There was blood on her fingers.

Come on, she thought dizzily, you can deal with this. The arrow was still blazing, formed of purest spell-light, sharp and hot and solid. It had entered to the side of her spine, a handspan below her ribcage. The shining tip was poking out of her front. She felt sick.

The spell-arrow flared once more, then sizzled out, leaving an empty tunnel through her body. Blood started leaking out faster, soaking into her shirt, dripping over her fingers as she frantically fixed the wound from the inside out. It hurt. It fucking hurt. There was an arrow, it had been right there, she’d never actually been shot before—

She was vaguely aware of Kionah casting a shield and drawing her shortsword. The blade flashed in a bright arc. Nimble metal thudded into hard carapace.

But her blood. There was too much blood. Not enough to kill her, but—not good. It was dripping hotly over her fingers, the slow flow stemming all-too-gradually as the tunnel in her abdomen knitted back together, flushing bacteria and other waste material out of her bloodstream. Prevent sepsis, she thought. Anesthetised castle rats with pins through their guts. Hah, if only Zahir could see her now. Nothing close to textbook-perfect. It was so hard to think, much less work with the standardised methodology when she’d never closed a wound like this on herself before, when it hurt so much. Too much blood, she thought. Please stop. She felt light-headed.

Light. White light, everywhere. Arrows, not aimed at her. Kionah screamed as her shield shattered.

In the distance, hissing.

Aliyah coughed, half-expecting to see specks of blood in her breath. A brittle chill of fear washed through her body, from head to toe. No. Not again. Almost there.

A blurry shape dove at her from above; a faery face, curved horns and an outstretched arm.

Vasodilation screeched at the forefront of her mind. Did faeries even have a cardiovascular system?

The faery grabbed her. She vasodilated him, not the usual way—yes, there were blood vessels within, though the shape and substance felt different under the questing touch of her magic; spikes where there should be curves, an unknown organ here and there, tessellating honeycomb-like texture in one spot. She reached around what might have been a heart and caught hold of a narrow organ-part connected to a branching network of vessels. It was some sort of ventricle analogue, surely. She forced it to flex open, shunted the chain-reaction across interconnected channels of vasculature. The faery fell. Thank the stars. She poured false-sleep into his brain and—

Something slammed into the back of her head.

Her vision blacked out as she pivoted her magic to the point of impact, eyes scrunched tightly shut as she focused and checked frantically for any fractures. The sounds of spell-fight cut off into a fuzzy silence.

She opened her eyes and screamed.

She was stuck inside a rough-hewn stone tomb. It was like the tunnel she’d crawled through shortly after they’d arrived, only now there was no way forwards nor back. Solid rock, indisputably hard and cold beneath her hands. The ceiling forced her into a half-crouch; her arms were braced on the wall in front of her. The world swayed.

She hammered at the stone, getting a burst of pain against her fist for her trouble. Her heart pounded hard; how had the faery dropped her into this rock hole? Did they carve out such hollows for this sole purpose? Were there dozens of other captives embedded in the rock around her, screaming prisoners or shrivelled, immured corpses? She screamed again, felt around for something, anything. There had to be a door, or an opening; surely no one could teleport her into a space without an exit.

She was going to die. She had almost nothing to work with. She had Zahir’s keys in her pocket and the breaker spell-slip, but—

An invisible hand gripped her shoulder. The fingers felt like stone.

The spell-slip.

She ripped it from her pocket and slammed it against the invisible stone-hand, spoke the word of power. Blood welled up in her mouth. Pointless to stop it. Too much effort, when she had to focus on not actually getting injured.

The stone vanished. The crackle of spellfire and the clash of metal returned, muted behind a ringing in her ears. She was back in the fungus forest. There was a claw-tipped, chitin-plated hand on her shoulder. She twisted her head around. The hand belonged to a faery, two whole heads taller than her. Mottled purple all over, like a bruise. Angry. The faery locked eyes with her, face frozen in a snarl—and crumpled to the ground as the spell-slip burnt itself up. Didn’t make any sense.

Kionah, she thought. Where’s Kionah—ah. She was cutting and casting way over there, against another faery.

“—illusions,” Kionah screamed. “They’re using illusions!”

Her head pounded with the slow throb of overexertion. So the stone tomb was illusory, a distraction technique. Still didn’t make sense, that the spell-slip had worked. Unless that faery had been an enchanted material. Maybe that’s what they all were, strange internal anatomy aside. How would she know?

Another faery was dashing through the air at her, shining like burnished brass. The golden one, the one that had been holding the map; the paper was rolled up and clipped to a belt around her waist. She drew up short as she glanced at the crumpled faeries at her feet. Aliyah tensed, readied vasodilation in her palms.

“What did you do to them, little kingdom gnat?” The faery hissed. Her voice sounded barbed and vaguely poisonous.

“I—I…”

The faery put her hand against her torso, grabbed and pulled. Aliyah watched, horrified, as the lustrous golden carapace stretched, twisted, formed into a long, golden stake in the faery’s hand, and broke off. The stake had a sharp point.

She turned and ran, making for where Kionah was. If she could just get under the shield—

The makeshift spear hit her in the back of the knee, embedding in the tendon there. Aliyah fell forwards and screamed.

She drew a shield around her even as she doubted its strength. She poured buzzing numbness over the back of her knee, shivering. This was a solid thing, not a spell-arrow. She needed to get it out. She reached behind her, yanked it out and let it fall onto the damp, mossy ground, pressed her hand over the wound and tried to heal it. The tendon sealed back together, too slowly. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she pushed it, forced it to go faster. Blood trickled from her nose. She felt her shield puncture, fall to pieces.

A spear stabbed into the back of her other leg.

She lost her tenuous focus and screamed again. Her fingers spasmed against the first wound, a wound that was still raw with frayed skin, barely healed. Her other hand sank into the moss-spotted soil, fingers curling into pained claws. She tore her focus away from the pain, concentrated on the sensation of moist loam sinking into the crevices under her fingernails, the sweat soaking into the back of her shirt. It didn’t help. This wasn’t the worst pain she’d ever been in, but memory was an excellent analgesic. The worst pain was always whatever you were feeling right now.

She used the other hand to tear the second spear out. The numbing had been assembled too hastily; it wasn’t enough. She screamed again before forcing her magic into overdrive. She scrambled to her feet, favouring her better leg, still-gushing blood be damned.

The faery clicked her fingers and pointed.

An invisible force punched into her. Her nose crunched and broke. She flew backwards, crumpling to the ground once more. Her face was warm and wet with blood. Her head felt like it was stuffed with soaked featherdown, soft and heavy and sickening.

Screw not being able to shield. She was a maidservant, for goodness sake, she wasn’t meant to be here—

The faery was approaching, a fresh spear in hand.

“No,” she whimpered. “Please.”

No extra spell-slip now. Her pocket—

Her fingers closed around Zahir’s nausea-keys. She pulled them out and thrust them clumsily in front of her like a warding sign. Laughable, almost. Would the faery even—

The faery doubled over and vomited up what looked like molten metal. Steam hissed out from the sides of her open jaws. She fell to her knees, braced her hands in front of herself. Her body shuddered as she vomited again.

Aliyah perceived the nausea-runes as well. Caught off guard, she retched before she could turn her eyes away; barely anything came up—water and bile and not much else. One benefit of a nearly wholly-magical diet over the past few days.

The faery rose up from all fours, mouth still dripping. She snarled and pounced, clawed hands outstretched.

Aliyah stumbled backwards, eyes snapped reflexively shut, keys still held in front of her. She felt pointed fingers close over her own, heard a hiss of pain, then a scream that was hers and one that was not.

She opened her eyes as the faery snatched her hands back. The carapace there was crinkled and burnt. Wisps of smoke drifted from the joints in her fingers. The faery locked eyes with her.

“Stinking Songian whelp,” the faery snarled, and lunged.

Aliyah shut her eyes once more as she brandished the nausea-keys in the faery’s face. She heard retching, a tortured, gurgling gasp, and then a heavy thump. She scrambled to her feet and half-sprinted, half-stumbled over to where Kionah was still hurling spells at two other faeries.

One of them turned and threw a spell at her, a whirling disc of red light. She dodged, didn’t bother trying to form another meagre shield; it hit her in the shoulder instead of head-on. Her entire arm sizzled and blistered. She healed each weeping blister as it came, still running, breath coming in ragged gasps now.

Kionah gestured with her arm and their floating luggage chest charged out from behind a patch of thorned toadstools. It bludgeoned the faery across the torso and sent him flying.

Just a few more steps—

She thrust the nausea-keys into the remaining faery’s face. He reeled back, face contorting, before he coughed up a cloud of feathery-looking fragments. She vasodilated, clumsily; he slumped over, not fully unconscious, still reaching for her. A moment later, Kionah hit him with a coruscating flare of spell-light.

Dark spots danced in her vision. Perhaps she should not have done that last vasodilation. She fell forwards onto her knees, pressed a shaking hand to her throbbing forehead, shut her eyes against the dizzying dance of fainting-phosphenes.

Her broken nose ached and started to burn; she numbed it, reset it, and the pain faded to a heavy, leaden buzz. Her face would probably bruise. How much blood had she lost? How much magic did she have left in her? She felt feverish. Kionah grabbed her roughly, struggled to haul her up with both arms.

“Come on,” Kionah said, voice thick with pain. “Stand up.”

Aliyah cracked her eyes open, saw that Kionah’s eyes were wide, her glasses askew. She closed them again as a wave of dizziness overtook her.

So Kionah was injured, too. More work for her. She retched weakly. She could barely think, let alone heal any more.

“You have to stand up. There’ll be reinforcements.”

“Can’t…”

“Here, lean against this.”

Something flat and smooth bumped up against her side. She winced, groped blindly at the surface. It felt like roughened wood, a slight curve higher up, a strip of cool metal there, a hinge. Ah, their luggage chest. She slung an arm over the top, hand still clutching the keys. Kionah grabbed her other arm, pulled her upright and forwards.

She cracked her eyes open as they stumbled over mossy bumps in the ground, over a petrified log and the fallen, rotting trunk of a dark mushroom-tree that crumbled into little chunks beneath her boots. She felt Kionah twist, glance back, heard her swear as she brought up a mage-shield.

The shield cracked and shattered under a roar of spell-light. A blur of golden carapace crashed into them. Kionah was wrenched away from her arm. Aliyah stumbled and scrunched her eyes shut as she let go of the floating chest, thrusting the keys out blindly. Pointed fingers latched onto her forearm and she cried out as her skin started to burn.

A rustle of spell-paper; Kionah shouted something, a word of power. Then, as quickly as the faery hand had come, it was gone. Aliyah’s skin itched in the echo of a handprint. She opened her watering eyes. The fungus forest rustled; in the mid-distance, the golden faery was fleeing in a blur of wing and lash of tail. She jumped as Kionah’s hand landed on her shoulder.

“We need to go. Can you walk?”

The luggage chest floated back and bumped against her side. She winced and grabbed at it. “I think so.”

They clambered out of the fungus forest and down a narrow, dark tunnel. Kionah fumbled with the map, towed her down a turn. Pure adrenaline kept Aliyah upright, though she kept leaning heavily on the floating chest, which dipped under her weight.

Step by step by step. As time went on, she noticed that Kionah’s breathing was uneven by her side. She seemed to be favouring her right leg. How badly had she been hurt? She dreaded the prospect of having to heal her too. Her arm itched. She stumbled upon a loose stone and fell. Kionah moved to catch her and missed. She threw out her arms, cushioned the impact, scraped her hands slightly. For a moment, she didn’t move. It was only then that she realised there was a hole in her right sleeve, burnt clean through.

“Aliyah? Are you alright?”

She dragged herself up into a semblance of a sitting position. There was a mark on her skin where the faery had touched her, a mess of black lines that vaguely reminded her of a botanical diagram. Only, the lines were all wrong. Unnaturally straight lines, interlocking cube-like forms that didn’t look like real shapes. Not just a mark, then. A curse? She wanted it off. Maybe she could strip the skin away and heal it back up…but no, she couldn’t. Not right now. Her head throbbed.

She caught sight of the nausea-keys in that hand—her hand, that was her hand, still smeared with her own dried blood and the ugly faery symbol seared just a little ways above it—and shuddered. She shoved the keys back into her pocket. She turned her eyes away from the mark and clutched at her aching head, pressing the heels of her palms against her closed eyelids. It didn’t help, much.

Then, Kionah’s hand on her shoulder, shaking gently.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not dying or anything, I don’t think. Look. There’s—there’s a thing, the faery put it there…” She gestured, opened her eyes, and then shut them again, feeling faint.

She felt cool, dry fingers brushing over the faery-mark.

“Tesseracts,” she heard her murmur. “Six here, in an ellipse. How odd. Does it hurt?”

“Not…really. Itches.”

“Well. It doesn’t seem to be doing any active spell-damage. Unless you’re handling it?”

“No, I’m not. Not doing anything right now. Almost out.”

“I see.” A wince.

“Are you hurt? Much? Because I don’t think I can…”

“There’s a medicine kit in the chest. I’ll see if it can help either of us.”

Ah, but of course they would have packed a medicine kit. A medicine kit that they hadn’t needed to be used once Aliyah had taken Alhena’s place. She opened her eyes, feeling a fraction less dizzy despite the pounding in her head.

“What in the hells was that back there?”

“Not the Glister Hive’s doing, that’s what.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Glister Hive relies on the city just as much as the city relies on them. They wouldn’t simply attack unknown humans on sight.”

“You seem to have a high opinion of this ‘Glister Hive’.”

“Do I? Well, I suppose that’s your opinion.”

Kionah passed her a flask of water and popped open a box—white, with a simple green circle printed onto the lid. Glisterian make, most likely. Funny, she’d half-expected the Shadowsong sigil; silver-red, like an open hand. She sipped at the water, wishing away the steadily-worsening throb at her temples. Her arm itched.

“So what’s the mark?” she asked as Kionah took out a bottle of tisane and a roll of bandages.

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “You’d have to get a proper mage or a faery to look at it.”

“I thought you were a proper mage.”

Kionah snorted as she peeled back a torn flap in her trouser-leg. The skin beneath was bloodied, a mess of miniature lacerations; all shallow, but they covered most of her calf. She applied liberal splashes of tisane, grimacing and humming absently under her breath. “I picked up a few tricks, is all. Do you need any of this?”

“No. I’m just…tired.”

“Tell you what,” Kionah continued as she wrapped layers of bandage around her leg, “once we’re out of here, I can take you to Luxon. She’d be able to fix whatever’s on your arm.”

“Alright…”

She meant to say more, meant to ask a question or to express thanks, but her head felt as though it had been pickled in brine. She pulled at the threads of her magic, trying to soothe the heavy pulsing pain. That was a mistake. All of the magic fled her body in a prickly rush.

She whimpered.

“Aliyah?”

Everything went dark.