“PRAISE AIVOR FOREVER BLOOD OF GAU”

-Words found hastily scratched into the wall of a cellar in Etyslund, 244 YT.

Etyslund: 243 YT. Five days after the execution of Marga Zelenko.

“Are you kidding me right now? What was that thing? I thought the Reapers just, you know… made people disappear, not…”

They’d been holed up in the Valers’ old gathering hall for over an hour and Arshay still wouldn’t shut the hell up. Fatih groaned, and made sure to do it as loudly as possible as he looked over at the nervous scout. He flicked his gaze over to Zoe, who leaned against the wall, admiring a beaten-up old guitar. It was a good quality instrument, Fatih had to admit, though it had a few specks of blood on the fretboard. The red still wasn’t dried to sickly, flaky brown. If anything, it gave the instrument a more intense look, like something one of the stars in North Kurikuneku would carry onto the stage.

“Kid, pull yourself together, will ya?” Fatih reached up to rub his fingers against his temples. Good Lord, this ‘soldier’ was more of a child than a man. Fatih could hardly stand to have people like that on his side, but… He looked to his left, where Cigdem paced in front of the barred doorway and the boarded-up windows, stepping carefully – almost daintily – around the holes torn in the ground when the soldiers had lifted up the floorboards to cover the windows with.

Fatih leaned back over the couch and stretched his hand down to the floor, wrapping his hand round the trophy fallen there. It was a crossbow bolt, covered almost to the feathers in blood. He’d collected it himself, from the suicidal Valer lying facedown in the dirt outside the gathering hall. Must have not been able to handle the stress, poor little thing… Fatih smiled and caressed the bolt gently before putting it back in its place. The stress of having to listen to Arshay alleviated somewhat, he rolled forward, off the edge of the couch, and landed flat on his feet. As Fatih stood, Arshay met his gaze. The young scout’s eyes flitted from the blood and the grey-brown gore wreathing Fatih’s hands, up to Fatih’s own eyes. In the scout’s regard, Fatih saw and felt deep disgust. Arshay’s heartrate was high enough to give his face a flush, his nervousness obvious enough that Fatih could see his hands shaking. The disgust rolled off of Arshay like Fatih.

I can’t work with this psychopath –

We’re all psychopaths, aren’t we –

For a moment in Fatih’s mind there flashed a spear of self-hatred. He grinned, inwardly and outwardly, showing teeth (stained by dirt and blood) to Arshay. Fatih grasped that spear in his heart and, smilingly, he twisted it away and consumed it. There was a moment’s hesitation – this isn’t me, it’s another, another’s thoughts – but then he leaned into the feeling. Yes. Another’s thoughts. Delicious, isn’t it? Pathetic, how they look at you.

Arshay blanched and shrank away from Fatih. The victorious minelayer caught Zoe’s confused look – as far as she was concerned, nothing had occurred in that moment between Fatih and Arshay – and he gave her a quick wave of his hand. He moved around the table and crossed the gap between himself and Zoe, probing at the guitar with his foot on the way there. He leaned forward against the wall, pondering if he should let slip what Arshay had said to him, there at the end.

Nah, that wasn’t necessary. Yet.

The words still stuck in his mind, though: I can’t work with this psychopath – We’re all psychopaths – Arshay’s desperate racing mind. Maybe Fatih would even get to see him act on it. I need to get out of here.

Yeah, not a chance, kiddo.

Though she let none of it slip through as open disgust, Fatih didn’t need to feel Zoe’s discomfort to know that she felt it. it was in the stiffness of her posture, the way she shifted her gaze toward Fatih but didn’t quite meet his eyes, turned away just a little in discomfort. He wanted to laugh, to reassure her, but it wouldn’t have helped. He sighed and moved to lean against the wall. “Look, Zoe, I know things got a little bit hectic out there. But we’re still… you know, friends, right?”

Zoe chuckled. “I don’t know what any of us are to one another, Fatih. But if you’re asking if I hold it against you, I don’t. I think it was inevitable that things would end this way. Only… we didn’t exactly help the situation, did we?”

“It’s your mistake if you think we could have made this omelet without breaking a few eggs,” Fatih replied, stretching his arms out wide. “Look, here’s the thing. We have information now – details, about the Mirshalites here. Stepan Zelenko, for instance, is a Sower, which we didn’t know for certain a few hours ago. And, I suspect, we’ll find that the boy you wouldn’t let me kill is also a Sower. In some ways they’re more dangerous than the Reapers, so, you know, good job on that one.” He smiled, then turned his gaze on Arshay, who was walking near the wall opposite the entrance.

“And you!” he called out. “Arshay!” The kid flinched and moved his arms as if to cover his head. Fatih laughed, full of mirth and joy. “Relax. For your information, what we saw back there wasn’t unprecedented, just unexpected – hey, Cigdem, why don’t you tell him all about it?”

Cigdem grunted. “It’s Sower magic. They just do things like that.”

“Oh come on!” Fatih snorted. “That doesn’t tell the kid anything. You can do better than that, tell him all about how it works!”

“Don’t order your Captain around, minelayer,” Cigdem said, but he crossed the room to where Arshay stood and began to speak quietly with him.

Fatih glanced over to the door of the gathering hall, reminded of his role. Several thick discs of iron, stuffed with explosives, were attached to the front door facing the soldiers. Everyone gave the spot a wide berth, knowing just how much damage Fatih’s explosives – even the shaped charges – could do when set off. There was no telling when the Valers would come here – true, they’d been holed up in the library before, but assuming the apparition that tore through the building as the soldiers fled hadn’t killed everyone inside, they would eventually come back here looking for revenge.

The minelayer sighed and turned back toward Zoe. “It’s okay though. I forgive you.”

Zoe’s smile was strained, but Fatih returned it with the most warmth he could muster. “Look,” Zoe said, “Neither of us knew anything about the boy at the time, and we don’t know that he’s a Sower, besides which he isn’t our problem anymore. Didn’t he flee through those caves at the north of town?”

“Yep. Probably off to Kivv, probably along with his sisters. Who, again, you allowed to escape.”

“Fatih!” Zoe hissed. “What is your problem? You have to put every failure in this mission on me? As though you haven’t had your fair share of screw-ups? Remember we would have gotten here days earlier if it wasn’t for your little detour, and that’s not even considering how much you escalated th-“

“I didn’t escalate a thing,” Fatih said, his smile fading. “I just saw the direction things were going and I acted accordingly. The only reason we came in with as much restraint as we did, the only reason we didn’t just bulldoze this place, is because good old Captain Cigdem wants us to look good back home. And look what it’s cost us. Lives, Zoe – Gaurl lives, Invictan lives.”

“But…” Zoe looked down at her hand, flexing her fingers, nails biting into her callused palm. “You did take things further than you needed to, Fatih. I agree, these people need to be punished. They’re harboring dangerous cultists, they don’t care about the danger they’re posing to the whole world. They look at us and think we’re just conquerors trying to take everything from them, not understanding that the world is bigger and more important than this tiny village.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I intend to take everything I can carry from this backwater.” As he interrupted her, Fatih flipped his bloodied dagger out of its sheath and let the hilt dance among his outstretched fingers. In the movement of the knife he saw the final moments of a Valer, fingers stretching toward the door of a burning house even as Fatih twisted the knife in her back and pulled it free. The memory filled him with warmth and a lovely fear.

He stepped past Zoe, passing in front of her toward the corner of the room. “But you’re right, of course. It’s too much to expect backwards people like these to put the concerns of the outside world ahead of their own. I can almost sympathize… but. Well.”

His foot caught on something, and he glanced down. There was a crack in the floor between boards where his foot had just caught. No – a part of the floor had lifted up, just a tiny bit, and fell back into place with a small thump. “Hold on.” Fatih bent his knees and squatted, lowering himself to the floor and craning his neck for a closer look. “Look at this.”

He jammed his fingers into the crack and pushed the trapdoor open. Below the door, a ladder led down into the darkness. “I think we may just have found our missing scouts,” Fatih said, and waved over at Cigdem. The group’s captain broke off from his conversation with Arshay and hustled over to where Fatih now stood, looking down into the dark of the ladder. Fatih pointed his rifle down the shaft. At Cigdem’s questioning look, he simply shrugged and said, “We don’t know who could be waiting down there.”

“Well, why don’t you go first, Fatih?” Cigdem asked.

Fatih tilted his head to consider this. He knew now that the game was up – giving a mournful glance toward the small pile of trophies he’d collected behind the couch nearby. With the scouts recovered and the survivors of the Invictan unit reunited, there would only be two things left to do: get the Mirshalites if possible, but more importantly, push forward through the Vale. Ideally, they would join with another unit along the way, but if not, they would keep pushing regardless. And so things would go back to normal – out on the road, with the team, except for Plato of course but he was always a bit stuffy and boring and he cared too much about the cause, not enough about the Gaurl nation.

Instead of speaking, Fatih simply smiled, gave a thumbs-up, and slung his service weapon over his shoulder. Sidearm drawn, its attached flashlight activated, he began to climb down the ladder.

The air grew colder as he descended, and heavy. The smell hit him long before he reached the bottom and turned to see the scouts. They lay in their chains and ropes, each one with a single bolt through the head or chest. One – the one closest to Fatih – had been struggling to rip the bolt free from his stomach and had only gotten it stuck between his ribs. Dried blood coated his chin and lips. The sight of it nearly made Fatih gag – the fear in that soldier’s eyes…

He thought of driving his knife into that hapless Valer woman’s back, and smiled again. Then he turned his head up toward the entrance to the cellar. “Hey, Captain? Problem.”

“What is it, Fatih?” Cigdem called down, though the weary resignation in his voice said that he already knew the answer.

“Everybody’s dead.”