The cultists continued to hand out pitiful rations to a select few of the other prisoners, Rhian among them. Lulana remained latched to Sora’s side, like a lamprey on a shark, half-hidden in the over-worn folds of fabric. Sora’s frustration mounted moment by moment, held back only by the hunger pain in her gut. It’d been nearly three days since she’d eaten anything and roughly a week since she’d had a good meal.

The evening air was warm against her skin, the sky pale blue, dark clouds hovering above the now distant treeline. In the space of three nights and two days, the morantai had managed to clear away a significant portion of the surrounding forest, turning out at least a dozen stacked piles of rough-cut timber nearly twice the height of the wall.

Already Sora could see work beginning on a second wall around the first, a deep trench being carved away at the base of the first wall. With so much foliage cut away, she realized the center of the new fort sat atop a shallow hill, giving the morantai a good view of the freshly carved out clearing.

The morantai were out of the camp, leaving the cultists behind to watch the prisoners, not that there was much to watch. The humans were a mass of dejected detritus, ashen in complexion, faded in their minds. The few who still showed a semblance of sanity spent most of their time scowling and glaring at the cultists, Lulana and Sora.

The sun crept across the sky, going from bright midday to umber evening, dragging the dark stain of rain clouds behind it. There were only moments between the warm breezy air and the sudden onslaught of a frigid downpour.

Lulana hid between Sora and the wagon, the pair of them pressed up against Rhian, who acted as a buffer between them and the others. Sora ignored the other woman as best she could, muttering only a rushed thanks before turning her gaze away and wrapping her arms around the girl. For warmth, she told herself, since nobody else would give it to either of them.

The muck-covered ground became a sea of brown, sinking most of them down to their ankles, Lulana to her knees. Sora had to help the girl climb onto the spokes of the wagon wheel lest she slip away in the increasingly steady flow of water. Sora herself wasn’t sure how long she could last against the rising current.

One man slid away from the main group of humans, falling face first into the muddy water. He flailed, splashing frantically, his shouts dying in the winds, wild screams, and the roar of thunder. His hands searched fruitlessly for purchase as he slid further and further away, unable to regain his footing until he disappeared beneath the muck.

The only regret Sora had for his loss was that he was one less person she could use to escape this star's damned hellhole.

The storm lasted through the evening and into night, the world seeming to grow ever darker as the tempest aged. The only illumination came from nearby moonstones trapped in hanging nets and the occasional strike of lighting hitting the gigantic trees.

When it finally let up, Sora’s legs quaked with exhaustion. Lulana was slumped between her chest and the wagon, the pair of them only upright because of the weight from Rhian’s half-conscious body leaning against them. Sora dared not let herself slide down to the ground, the remaining flow of water still surging against her legs.

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes as that final hour grew long, involuntary gasps of pain wrenching themselves from her throat. Rhian gasped for breath beside her, the other woman's face red as a varin noble’s hair. Slowly, Sora lifted Lulana into her shaking arms, the girl light enough to keep upright with one straining arm as she used the other to settle herself down to the ground. Rhian slumped beside her, head lolling as she leaned against Sora.

There wasn’t enough energy left in Sora’s body for her to so much as complain. She just sat there, wheezing for breath, an unfamiliar child in her arms, and a stranger lying in the sludge beside her.

As she began to drift off to unconsciousness, she was too battered for proper sleep, a light, familiar male voice whispered in her ear, “We’re coming.”

Dawn broke with birdsong and warm morning rays of sunlight. Sora had never been so happy to see that brilliant ball of death hanging in the sky. The words she’d heard just before passing out rang strange in her head. Had she dreamed them? Hallucinated perhaps? Either way, she doubted they meant anything.

All around the camp were the remains of devastation. Three of the four wagons had been split open, wheel’s torn from axles, and in one case, an entire carriage snapped in two down the middle. All traces of the fire pits had been washed away alongside the shoddier of the tents. Only two tattered canvas tarps stayed flapping in the wind, tied down to their poles.

Morantai scurried around the wreckage in seeming haphazard chaos until Sora realized the pattern. They were searching the stirred mud for timbers to repair the battered sections of their walls, carrying the wood away at the direction of the massive majors.

Beside her, Rhian stirred, the other woman opening dark eyes on the carnage around them.

“Well,” the other woman said in a rough, throaty voice. “That was unpleasant.”

Sora had neither the energy nor the desire to reply with anything but a derisive snort. Rhian looked at her, gaze as piercing as before, and Sora found herself struggling not to meet the woman’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Rhian said after a moment of staring. “I shouldn’t have left the two of you there on your own. That was pretty shitty of me.”

“As if it matters now,” Sora said, not bothering to mask the bitterness in her tone. None of that really mattered to her, not at that moment. Rhian just stared at her for another moment before averting her gaze, staring down at the soaked ground.

Somehow, in all the chaos of the previous night, the bindings around Sora’s legs had kept their hold on her, as had the chains and ropes on the other prisoners, all save for the man who’d been carried away, anyway.

“So,” Rhian began after a while. “Got any ideas?”

“Ideas?” Sora said incredulously. “The only ‘ideas’ I’m having right now are how to get food and find somewhere quiet to sleep. Neither of which is going to happen anytime soon, I think.”

“Just asking. I mean, wouldn’t this be a pretty optimal time to make a break for it?”

“While we’re barely able to sit upright? Rhian, even if either of us could stand, we wouldn’t be able to run for it, let alone be capable of fighting for our lives against those things.”

Rhian shrugged. “I don’t know. The ants seem pretty busy repairing things. Perhaps we could slip away without their notice.”

“Right,” Sora said, rolling her eyes. “Because giant magic bugs capable of cutting us in two with one bite from their mandibles are exactly the sort of creatures I feel confident sneaking past while soaked to the bone, covered in mud, and utterly incapable of stealth.”

“Hey, okay, alright. Sorry, sorry.” Rhian said. She was staring down at the ropes around her ankles, making Sora glance towards her own and the manacles around Lulana’s.

Sora watched the woman for a long moment, then sighed. Slowly, she said, “I guess it wasn’t really your fault.”

Eye’s narrowed in confusion, Rhian looked at her. “What? How could the storm possibly be my fault?”

“No,” Sora said, nearly growling. “With the cultist. I’m trying to say I don’t blame you. You were just watching out for your own neck, is all. I get that.”

“Ah,” Rhian said. They were both quiet for an uncomfortable amount of time, almost as uncomfortable as the cold, slick ground beneath them.

“I don’t forgive you,” Sora said, not wanting the woman to get the wrong idea. Sora had no interest in making friends. “I just think you made the right choice, for you, at least.”

“Okay, alright, I get it. You understand, but you don’t trust me. Fair is fair, as the feol traders say.”

Sora chuckled before she could stop herself, grunting at the pain in her sore muscles. “As they say indeed. They may look like the foxes of my homeland on the outside, but everyone knows they’re more like money-grabbing monsters on the inside.”

Rhian laughed slightly as well. “They’re not quite that bad. They’re just really passionate about turning a profit.”

“Sure,” Sora said, shaking her head. Bit by bit, she could feel herself growing stronger again, the pain in every muscle of her body lessening slightly as she steadied her breathing.

Curled up in the crook of her arm, Lulana slept like a stone, her little chest rising and falling with shallow, shivering breath. Sora shifted the girl to her other arm, gently settling her between herself and Rhian. Slowly, her shivering lessened, and her breathing steadied.

“Seems you’ve taken to her as fast as she’s taken to you,” Rhian said, a hint of a smile on her lips.

Rolling her eyes, Sora said, “no. No, I’m not ‘taken’ with her. I just did what most people would, I think. Honestly, she’s been kind of a pain in the ass. I’m a soldier, not a caretaker. She should be sticking beside somebody else, someone like you, Rhian.” She gave the other woman a pointed stare, expression flat.

“I’ve tried,” Rhian said with a sigh. “But there’s only so much I can do here, especially when she doesn’t let me help.”

Sora shook her head but let it go. She was too tired to argue.

The air smelled fresh, if a bit silty, but free from the putrid smell of human waste for the first time since Sora’s capture. She breathed in deeply, closing her eyes to take in the clean scent, then released the breath with a sigh.

It was the beginning of a very long day.

Around midday, a pair of cultists, one being the man who’d brought Sora the rotting fruit, came around the back of the wagon to inspect the prisoners. Their cloaks were splattered with mud halfway up the hems as they moved separately, looking the people over one by one, scowling at the muck plastering the prisoners’ bodies.

“Hey, Bindoff,” the rotten fruit cultist said while surveying the huddled group. “Isn’t one of them missing?”

The other cultist, Bindoff, straightened from where he sat crouched beside an unconscious woman slumped against the wagon and began counting heads under his breath.

“Dunno,” Bindoff said, voice slow, low, and sounded like the beat of a small bass drum as he scratched the scraggly mass of beard clinging to his neck. “Suppose’ to be twenty, I think. How many do you count?”

“Nineteen,” the rotten fruit cultist said. He eyed Sora, scowling, but remained quiet as if in thought. Sora wondered how much of a strain that much thinking must have been for him.

“Doridd?” Bindoff asked in a quiet voice when the other didn’t reply. Sora made sure to mark that name in her mind.

“I’m thinking,” Doridd hissed, then scowled at the prisoners. “What happened to the other one?” He asked them all. When nobody replied, he tried again. “Tell me what happened, or I’ll see you skinned alive and spit-roasted over tonight’s cook fire still screaming.”

A moment of silence, then one of the prisoners stood, a man, so bone-thin his clothes hung off him like curtains from a rod. “The rain took him,” the man said, voice dry and hoarse as sun-bleached bone.

“Where?” Doridd asked, his tone curt. The prisoner pointed to where the man had been carried away and lost in the flash flood. Doridd’s scowl deepened. “Mora, take you all. None of you even tried to stop him?”

The prisoners were silent, some trembling, others silently weeping. “Doridd,” Bindoff said, tone fearful. “What should we do?”

Sora began to wonder just how much freedom these cultist’s really had when among the morantai. Were they liable to be eaten like the other humans if they displeased their masters?

Another moment passed, and Doridd moved to the wagon where the chain and ropes binding the prisoners were still tethered. He glanced to Bindoff as the anxious man approached wide-eyed and said in a clipped tone, “We’ll have to move them elsewhere anyway. If we use them to find the missing one, it should all be fine. And if we make it look like they were set free by the storm, we might even be rewarded.”

He began to work at the hitch, yanking and pulling despite Bindoff’s hushed worrying. The wood groaned as the cultists pushed it back and forth, creaking before a sudden, loud crack split the air. The hitch fell to the ground with a splash as chains and ropes fell free.

“Remember,” Doridd said to the prisoners. “If you try anything, you’ll be volunteering for dinner duty.” They all knew exactly what he meant.

Slowly, everyone got to their feet, Sora nudging Lulana awake and helping the girl rise. Rhian Offered Sora a hand, but she ignored it, using the wagon to lift herself off the ground. Under the two cultists' watch, the nineteen, twenty including Sora, shuffled through the mud. Lulana kept slipping and sliding so much Sora had to keep one hand on the girl’s arm to keep her upright.

They searched through the wet slope for hours, bindings dragging through the mud behind them, occasionally glancing up at the sky as the sun drifted lower and lower. On the verge of twilight, practically pressing herself against the wall, Sora’s foot found something big and somewhat solid.

Giving Rhian Lulana’s hand, she knelt and began scraping away handfuls of wet earth until the back of a tattered tunic appeared. She rested back on her haunches and sighed, then nearly jumped out of her skin when something tapped against her shoulder.

She glanced around but only found a strange look on Rhian’s face. There was nobody but the three of them in the slight depression. “Was that you?” Sora asked.

“Was what me?” the other woman said, the crease of her brow deepening.

Before Sora could explain, a voice whispered in her ear, “It’s me, Sora. It’s Leahan.”

Suddenly alarmed, Sora glanced around her surroundings, then signaled in hand-talk, “Can you see me?”

Her heart raced as she waited for the reply, moments sliding past like hours of infinity. “Yes,” the voice in her ear said.

“How are you talking to me? Was that you tapping my shoulder?”

“Yes,” Leahan’s voice said. “I’m using the silverglass. Jotaranell and I snuck inside the camp under a fog mask, and I threw a pebble at you. I’m speaking with you through a sound funnel. It's like a tunnel of air but warped to carry my voice in one direction. We can’t get any closer than the tents because of all the mud. We’d leave too obvious a trail.”

Rhian was beginning to look concerned, but Sora waved her off, saying, “I’m fine. I’ll explain later.” Then she signed, “Why are you here? Why is he with you and not our brother? What’s going on?”

“It’s complicated,” Leahan said. “But we’re here to get you out, hopefully. There’s a small force of metanite soldiers preparing an assault to the east of this camp, but they won’t attack for a few more days. Yesterday’s flooding affected them as well.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No, just keep your head down for now, and don’t tell anybody else about this. Jotaranell and I just recovered the second earring, so he’ll stay behind while I return to the camp. Keep a listen out for a hare-hawk call. Apparently, they don’t have those here. If you hear it, get somewhere safe.”

Sora grit her teeth. It was all coming too fast. She needed him to slow down. “Brother, I don’t understand. Why is he staying and not you? How did you meet with metanite soldiers? What is going on?”

“Not enough time,” Leahan said. “Jotaranell is better with silverglass than I am, and Sora, I trust him. Just keep your head down and listen for the sign.” Sora felt something change in the air around her and scowled.

“Brother,” She sent but received nothing in reply. She wanted to scream at him, to call him back so he could take her out of here, but she knew it’d be pointless.

Glancing up at a now anxious Rhian and Lulana, Sora said, “I’m fine, really. I promise I’ll explain when I can. For now, let’s just get that cultist’s attention. Maybe we’ll get food for this.”

Rhian was quiet for a while, then asked, “who were you talking to?”

Sora felt cold down her back but replied coolly, “nobody. I was just thinking.”

“You were using a kind of sign language. Don’t think I can’t recognize something like that. The gestures were slight and subtle, but I was a trader for a long time, and there are a fair few people in the world who talk like that.”

Sora sighed again. “I said, I’d tell you when I can. Just trust me for now, alright. You owe me that much.” She didn’t add ‘for what you did the other day,’ but the implication was clear enough in her tone because Rhian stiffened slightly.

“Fine,” Rhian said. “But you will tell me.”

“I will, eventually,” Sora agreed and rose to her feet. Lulana let go of Rhian’s hand and took Sora’s before she could pull it away, and Sora managed to stifle another sigh. Together they clambered up the slope towards the cultists, waving for their attention, the mud sliding beneath their feet like the thoughts tumbling through Sora’s head.