The sun’s light spread its fingers over the horizon, brushing the countless treetops from leering crimson to brilliant gold. The shadows of the River Ien were slowly pushed back by the sun and their hasty retreat wound towards to the east, along the trail we’d spent the last two weeks travelling. In their wake the waters glittered with a blinding radiance, tracing the path of sunlight as it strived to encompass the globe.

Above, the sky’s clouds bloomed pink and red, made pregnant with the glow of dawn. The darkness of night fell to the blue of day. A deep breath revealed its bounty: clean, full air, smelling of nothing but stars.

Dawn had finally broke. A new day had begun. Yet though the sky changed, rippling with the sun’s rebirth and casting a new shade upon the land, the earth did not.

Whip was dead.

The arrow had sunk into her abdomen, penetrating entirely through her torso at a bad angle. We’d fed her potions, but though they could close skin and flesh they could not replenish lost blood or heal ruptured organs. There was no physical pain, not for her senses – only the knowledge that she would never experience what lay past the night. Whip had died, Davian and Gast and Ronnie and I holding her as Kit hummed quietly, the tune breaking apart as she made it.

Whip no longer wept. But others did.

Atifi wept for her fallen children, while Snapper’s attempts to supress his tears failed. Decades of love and labour distilled into a legacy scattered across the hill, growing cold in the cruel light of day. All they had left was Snapper’s son Wil, their three grandchildren, and their own faltering bodies.

Aron wept quietly, his head lowered as Willow tossed and turned in her sleep, sweating beneath her pierced shoulder. The silk of her dress had been torn to expose her wound and create bandages, and in performing her hasty surgery Tully had revealed the woman’s countless bruises to the world. Daisy held her mother’s feet, refusing to look her father in the eye.

Taja wept over his sister’s corpse, blue and broken by the shock of a punctured lung. My eyes picked out pieces of what could have been his brother – an arm; a leg; a lone intestine – all spread along the hill we marched up.

The children had wept: Tippi and Crumpet and Daisy and Wil’s adolescent kid and the two infants, scattered throughout the room. During the night, they had watched in corners as their guardians, parents, and grandparents had desperately tried to save what was left. With no adult with hands available to hold them, they’d clung to each other. They slept restlessly, now, holding Ronnie, Atifi, or Snapper: those with the composure left to comfort them.

All that loss had been pushed into the stone building behind us. The nine of us that remained waited out front. Seven stood behind barricades formed of furniture and dismantled walls, sturdy enough to turn away arrows and spears if necessary. They were placed upon the three major paths within the village.

Guarding the path furthest from any entrance was the Dolphinblood Holt, Gast, and Maddie. The Blooded held one of our dead guards’ crossbow, while the Strain readied her massive shield and slab of runestone attached to her arm near the young House Head. If that woman fell, all our efforts would fall to nothing. Yet, garbed in chitin armour faintly glowing in runework, she’d insisted on grabbing a spear and staying with us. Tully had taken her aside to speak of ‘selfishness’, but I’d interjected. Despite the oncoming battle, she was safer outside of the grasp of those in the stone building. She already nursed a bruise from Kit.

In front of a path that began at the settlement’s rear entrance sat Davian, Wil, and Jana. The older Strain sat behind one of the barricades, expression inscrutable as always. The bow in his hand trembled. Wil’s leg had been staunched with cobwebs and wrapped with rags, but he still leaned heavily against his makeshift cover, holding a sharpened fencepost as a makeshift spear. He’d asked me to teach him the basic stance and grip before his tears had ceased. A clenched jaw was the only sign of grief the man allowed for the siblings that had died the night before. Jana’s single eye was grim as it surveyed the area, but she held her spear with a familiarity that Wil did not.

Behind the barricades of the main path hid Tully, her crossbow in-hand. She’d been wearing light armour beneath her clothes. Her breath came and went in a carefully controlled pattern.

I sat behind nothing, body fully exposed to the road as it leaned against the speartree on top of the settlement. On my arms were countless barely-scabbed gouges. My old backpack, wing dangling from its straps, lay on my right. My monster-bone halberd leaned on top of it. My blade, the silver filigree upon its scabbard still speaking of a giant that felled a god, lay on my left. The rags I’d wrapped it in fluttered beneath, undone from the scabbard. In my lap sat a mask.

The corpse impaled on the speartree loomed above, the gold shine of its armour cut by bloodstains.

I watched day begin to fall upon the world. The forest’s crimson canopy was ablaze with light, yet underneath branches wound and bristled and stabbed, the bark of their trunks oozing where they penetrated one another. The sound of the river’s turmoil was carried to the hilltop, static in its churning. At the base of the hill, the abandoned farmstead lay golden in sunlight, even as the halting screams of those touched by Tully’s weapon raged from within. A faint mist covered the land beneath the hill, making it seem distant, despite how close it all was. The sun’s heat warmed my bones, chilled from the long night’s labour.

Even when I placed my head in my arms, none of it disappeared.

No one could deny it was a beautiful morning. No one could deny that was a hateful thing.

I exhaled, the sound of it worn and ragged as it scraped from my throat. My hand ran over the scarred leather of my pack; its fine black material grown rough over the years. Then I breathed in, placed the mask on my belt, and rose to my feet.

Thirty-seven humans had entered the village. Some were weak and flickering, some were still strong. Three pulsed with the power of the divine. Against such numbers, nine would not be enough.

I grasped the hilt of my sword, and began wrapping its rags around my hand.

They slowly advanced up the path, their ranks broken as they rippled around the constant forms of speartrees. According to a quiet order, sixteen split from the group in squads of four, entering each derelict house along the road.

A firm shake showed the hilt’s bond would hold to my left. Inch-by-inch, I drew the blade from its sheath.

A squad hesitated in front of the door of an intact house. Their distant argument was almost without form when it arrived at my ears, but enough remained intact to tell me that the noises inside seemed suspicious to them. Their talking turned to screams when the four monsters I’d trapped within broke through the door and mauled them. By the time the small army managed to put the Godkin down, they numbered twenty-nine.

The blade did not shine when I raised it to the light. Its onyx edges were flawless, each honed to an unseeable edge by nightly worship. I hadn’t used it in a long, long time.

Those upon the hill began moving upward again, now allowing only one to check each destroyed house while their three fellows waited outside. I felt one enter a house with a life burning in its rafters, and felt them turn away when they did not find it.

I considered the scabbard for a moment. Then, I tossed it to the ground.

Tully inclined her head downhill. At my nod, she made her rounds to the other six, leaning into the ears of each and whispering, before moving to the next. She stayed longer with Maddie, reiterating instructions given a dozen times before.

I checked my buckler, attached to my belt. It had been purchased two weeks ago, by those who couldn’t trust me to buy my own.

They continued up the hill, passing the halfway point. A momentary halt saw them correcting ranks marred by the speartrees, and a sharp whistle recalled those investigating the houses.

I took the mask from my belt, and pressing a depression in its side, rotated it to the correct facet. It shook in my hands.

They were just behind the final stretch of speartrees.

After uprooting my halberd, I walked to my place and planted it again. My breath, thick and sharp, fogged the air in front of me.

In front of my eyes, the Baylar army filtered through the speartrees, entering the final open stretch before the incline disappeared upon the top of the hill. Of the seventy-odd warriors originally fielded against us, less than half had survived the ordeals of the night. Many limped on bandaged legs or held spears with a single arm. A few clenched their jaws against the agony of the burns wracking their limbs and torsos. Whatever tears they’d shed for the dead had dried, wilted along with their anger. They trudged forward, ready for an end.

I would give them one.

I put on the Face. Then, I took a step-

-forward, and stopped. The large man drew his legs together. The beautiful, onyx sword was still at his side.

My mind tried and failed to make sense of the thing that clung to his head. It searched for patterns and found many – a horn; a fang; a tear; countless eyes – only for each to fall away, the meaning of the shapes morphing into something else. But though individual pieces could be cohered temporarily, the mask as a whole was a writhing, chaotic mass, unrestrained by order. Though I knew its twisting had to be an illusion, my eyes would not falter in their conviction.

“Halt,” I barked. The forward-guard – formed of our most unwounded men and women – obeyed, those behind following suit moments later.

With Commander Andros recovering from his burns, leadership fell to me. It was a wise decision on his behalf, given my track-record. Yet victory was hardly necessary. The rider – who I suspected was the replacement Head – had deftly escaped with minimal wounds. Andros had broken the runeworked beads that communicated such. I’d done so with my own, private collection.

“Surrender the Head,” I told the Face standing above us.

Overtly, our purpose on the hill lay in simple fastidiousness. If the rider had simply been a diversion, we would catch the true Head and kill them. But in truth, we’d come because none of us would sleep well until they were dead. Weary, weary vengeance.

The large man’s mouth could not be seen behind the mask he wore. It did not stifle his voice. “The Head is gone,” it said, low and flat. “Killed fleeing up the hill.”

One of my two Blooded escorts – Lieutenant Nile – drew in breath furiously. I placed a hand on his shoulder, and the Oxblood quelled. “You understand we cannot let you leave?” I asked the man.

“Yes.”

“If you surrender all that live upon the hill, we may spare your life.”

Both he and I knew that was a lie. It didn’t matter – he wouldn’t obey. Someone had managed to quell Godkin enough to use them as a trap, and that person was prepared for a fight. I suspected he’d been the one to do so.

“I’ll make another offer,” his voice stated from behind that roiling mask. “Leave, and no one else will suffer.”

I cast my eyes around, at the twenty-eight others who’d joined me. The cause – the end of House Heltia – mattered less to me than it did to them. I hadn’t come for the Head. Yet even if I left, they would not.

My answer was low and predictable. “No.”

“If you take one more step up this hill,” the Face told us, “you take responsibility for everything that happens next.” He paused. “Each and every one of you need to be prepared to die.”

Nile snorted next to me, disdain thinly layered over ever-present fury. “What d’you think- “

“No,” the Face snarled, “you agree to this.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “That’s a refusal?”

The Oxblood answered before the man could. “Yup.”

I took one last look at the wrecked village, each home pierced by the speartrees. An Albright hung, impaled above us. No one present but me understood the irony of that.

“Last chance,” I told him.

He said nothing. The man refused to even widen his stance in preparation. Behind, a man’s head appeared over the hill, his face’s features twisted horrifically. He approached hesitantly, mouth opening and closing. Yet before he could persuade his companion, a scarred woman dragged him backwards, and he vanished from sight.

No one else emerged. Only the Face remained, standing above us.

“Lieutenant Nile,” I said, and the Oxblood understood without being told.

Eight feet of muscle walked up the hill, shield readied beside his axe in anticipation for an incoming projectile. He continued unimpeded. I raised my arm above my head and jerked it down, signalling the eight members of our first rank to follow, spears readied. Eyes still on the man, I considered ordering the archers further down the hill to fire, but opted not to spend a volley on a single opponent.

Nile drew less than five paces away from his opponent. The Face shifted his right arm behind his body, and then something blurred from behind him. My Oxblood fell as his feet were severed from his legs, and the man’s left arm flashed, thrusting his sword through the Blooded’s neck and out the other side.

If I had blinked, I would have missed it.

The halberd he held had been concealed behind his body, the butt of its shaft hidden by the incline of the hill.

The Face was Blooded.

He-

-took a single step downwards.

The eight wielding shields and spears thrust their weapons forward. I used my blade to lop the points off three, their hafts impacting against my abs ineffectually, while the other five moved for a better angle. I spun my halberd, redirecting the momentum of my initial swing to smash through the skull of the rightmost spearman and rupture the head of the woman next to him. His brain covered the ground.

Two swings, and I’d killed two people, with a third dying on the ground.

Twenty-seven.

I took another step down, shoving the woman with the dented skull onto an incoming spear.

Twenty-eight? Twenty-six.

Spinning, I fell to one knee behind the remaining six and cut through another five ankles. The weight of their bodies was too much for the paltry pieces of flesh remaining, and three fell to the ground. I stabbed one, angling my sword through his ribs and into his heart while leaning around a final spear-jab. A shout from behind was picked up by my divinely sharp hearing; enough warning to spin the impaled soldier around and use his body to block three javelins. I kicked the remaining man, causing his feet to catch on the bodies behind him and send him tumbling down the hill. He screamed – the first so far.

Flecks of blood, separated from their place, fell from above in a crimson shower. They hit my bandana, beginning the process of soaking through the patchwork material. Carefully, I unwrapped it from my head and tossed it behind, then returned to dispatching the fallen. The soldier down the hill scrabbled upright and fled to his fellows.

Three steps. Eight dead. Twenty-one remained.

A shuddering breath hissed from behind the mask. I took another step down.

“Back,” their leader called, teeth clenched and eyes wide, “into the speartrees!”

They retreated away from me, ranks twisting around the long, bone-like protrusions. Every one of them kept their eyes on me. I felt their lives burning in my perception, then cast my mind away from it.

He’d made a good decision. Amidst the sturdy trunks, I wouldn’t be able to swing my halberd freely. If an Oxblood hit one with the strength I had leveraged, the blow would reverberate back up their arm and potentially cripple it. I wasn’t an Oxblood, but the weapon would still be much harder to use. With all the nooks the village provided, a makeshift ambush could kill me – even if I knew it was coming. I couldn’t give them that time.

I breathed in and bellowed at the top of my lungs, hoping Kit-

-dropped from the rafter I’d been laying on for the past few hours, the fall dislodging some of the dried mud covering my furs. Excepting the thud of my boots, the landing was almost entirely silent – I’d tied cloth around my scabbard and… Whip’s crossbow. Vin’s shout – the signal I’d been waiting for – smothered whatever minute rattle remained.

I ducked under an angled speartree and slid over one of the many holes in the back of the hovel. My eyes throbbed at the sudden profusion of rough-red light falling from the sky, yet I kept them open. Outside, I slid along the edge of the building and peeked through an alleyway leading to the main road.

Five stood, bows in scratched arms, arrows held between bloodied fingers. Whip had died, asking us – asking me – if everything would be okay, and they still lived. My fist clenched around the hilt of my sword, tight enough to ache.

As much as it twisted my guts, I needed patience. At least until-

-I took another step downwards, bringing me into the speartrees.

Immediately, two charged from the alleys on either side while a third hurled a javelin, directly in front of me. I slipped aside the javelin, decapitating the one on my left against a speartree while letting the one on my right impale himself on my halberd. I dropped the now-cumbersome weapon and scooped one of the fallen’s spears, hefting it in my hand. Its weight was poorly distributed, yet it only needed to fly for less than a second. As the javelin-thrower backpedalled, I stepped forward on one foot and propelled the weapon forward. He tried to duck behind a speartree, but the spear caught him in the shoulder, throwing him to the ground. I uprooted my halberd from the still-twitching corpse and began walking down, towards him.

He saw me coming. “Wait- “

I stomped his skull into the stone, bone and blood flying upwards.

You lie amongst the pigs and dogs during the night, huddled in their-

I stifled the link. Eighteen.

Between the speartrees, I saw the main body of warriors slowly stepping backwards. One stumbled over an overgrown root, only to be grabbed by her fellow. They wouldn’t rout – not while they still had two Blooded up their sleeves. That was good. We couldn’t allow any to escape.

According to a barked order from their Blooded leader, the archers – two directly behind the main group and another four further back – loosed a volley towards me. They would fall upon the area in-front of me. They’d halt the advance of anyone who couldn’t anticipate their paths reliably, which was a rare skill held only by sharp-eyed veterans and Foxbloods. Buying time – but for what? It didn’t matter. Six arrows weren’t enough to stop me.

Step by step, I continued after them.

The arrows fell, missing as I casually turned my body, and-

-there wouldn’t be many more.

My sword cleaved through the archer’s neck, digging through flesh, sinew, and bone then flying out the other side in a shower of blood. The head fell forward, now only attached by a strip of flesh. It was cleaner than what he deserved.

Another marksmen, feeling the spray of hot liquid on the side of their face, began to turn but I transformed my slice into a charging thrust, impaling his neck and ripping the blade out in two quick movements. The third managed to complete his turn and open his mouth to yell, but the shock of having his bow sliced in half sent him stumbling backwards, and I cut his windpipe moments later.

My luck ran out with the fourth. She managed to scream, “Flank!” but another voice temporarily seized the attention of her comrades.

“You two Blooded at the back,” called Vin, his voice seeming quiet despite the volume. “Do you surrender?”

A quiet part of me registered what my companion was telling me, but the rest devoted itself into piercing the woman’s yellow armour, impaling her on my sword and driving her into the open door of the hovel behind. The archer stumbled over nothing, ripping her guts open on my sword as her fall ripped the blade from his body. The scent of filth filled the air as her intestines’ contents spilled over her chest. I slammed my weapon through one arm and into the dirt below, then pulled a knife from my belt and fell upon her.

“You worm,” I snarled, smashing the dagger into her ribs; chest; torn belly. “You thought. You thought you’d waltz in and bloody finish it?”

I stabbed her eye; her helmet; her cheek; her neck; feeling my fury begin to tear the stitches in my face. “You don’t get t’win. You don’t get t’beat this!” I screamed at the corpse, jaw quivering. “Jus’ die!”

I stopped. Pants escaped me. A shaky breath emerged from my body, sharp against the abused flesh of my throat.

As I stumbled to my feet, I shoved the dagger back into my belt and grabbed my sword. A thought flashed across my mind and before it could leave, I drove the blade of my weapon downwards, severing the dead woman’s helmed head in one swing. I seized it and tossed it through the doorway I’d charged through, then slipped through a hole in the back of the house. Silence resounded as the soldiers saw the head thumped to the ground.

Several quick steps brought me to the house a few paces up. I eyed it, searching for the sturdiest part of the roof. Upon finding a firm beam inlayed into its sides, I sheathed my sword. A leap, enhanced by a boot shoving off the wall, had me catching the roof’s edge. I-

-gripped the haft of my halberd and remembered the night before.

I’d been gathering cobwebs. We had no bandages, and the rags we could tear from our own clothes wouldn’t staunch wounds well enough. But if one of us crept through the darkness, without light to give away their position and stole the sticky silk, we’d be able to keep the bleeding down. With no one else who could see in the shadowed night, I was the only one who could find the webs.

By the time I found the spider and her children, seven thick handfuls had already been delivered. It was enough to halt the bleeding of every open wound we had and then some. I’d told them I’d keep going out to find more for tomorrow, but in truth, I hadn’t wanted to stay in that cold tomb.

Whip had already died. Kit had kept humming the tune Whip had asked her to, even though her audience was gone.

So I’d kept my hands and legs moving, groping in corners and under furniture. Underneath a damp stone fireplace, I’d found them. And I hadn’t done anything. I’d just watched.

The mother had strummed her legs against the web she’d meticulously wove, still spinning silk even then. Her miniscule spiderlings, transparent yet made black by darkness, groped their way over to her. Her legs jerked, and a single, stupid child crawled onto her body. Its fangs sunk into her. Despite the poison in her body, the mother had continued jerking her legs, silently signalling her location to her offspring. They’d swarmed onto her, mindlessly biting and hurting, but she’d persisted for another several minutes: entirely still as they ate her alive. I’d watched the fluid drain from her limbs, even as she endured. Then, mercifully, she had died.

Why did she do it? Her body would provide sustenance, I knew, but that wasn’t the entire answer. It could only be love. That raw maternal instinct, flooding through her tiny body, jerking each leg upon the string to beckon pain closer. To be eaten alive by her children. It must’ve been agony. In a way, it was a beautiful thing. But I couldn’t call it just.

The moulted shells of the spiderlings had scattered the damp floorboards beneath. They’d shed their own bodies, letting tiny ghosts of themselves fall to the ground.

Corpses littered the ground behind me. I took another step down the dead village, towards the fourteen remaining men.

Their leader barked an order, and the eight soldiers forming the two frontward ranks morphed into an open semicircle, designed to allow an enemy in to be pierced from all sides. Assailing those at the edge of the formation would see the rest rotating around to surround me. With the area studded with speartrees, any attempt to end them with a sweep of my halberd would see it rebounding off the ivory wood.

Their weapon’s tips were bronze – Baylar hadn’t enough Owlbloods to make iron or steel in quantity. I wore no armour – my size meant none we had fit – so even bronze would part my flesh with little difficulty. If I wanted to end it, I’d have to find a way to flank them.

The soldiers watched me, fingers slowly drumming their spears. Red light filtered from above, but the shadows of the abandoned buildings around prevented it from falling onto us. Despite the cold of the morning, sweat beaded their faces.

Then their leader whispered something in another man’s ear, and a group of two spearmen and the two remaining archers peeled off from the group, heading away from both myself and Kit. A sudden chill sparked through my body, but I steeled myself against the urge to pursue them.

A carved whistle dangled from my neck, and I leaned my head down to bite it. Twice, I blew. From their varying lengths, Tully would interpret ‘north.’ Yet in all likelihood, upon sighting our fortifications they would retreat, and try to find a way to flank me instead. The thought blunted the fear within my body.

They watched me. According to a muttered command, the front ranks opened marginally, while the leader and a short, broad-shouldered woman crept towards the gap. Both were Blooded.

Before they could push through the formation and attack, Kit crept towards edge of a nearby roof and leapt-

-towards the pair, dagger clutched in both hands. The leader’s armour was reinforced with steel, yet around his back it hung in burnt and broken pieces, though the skin beneath was unmarred. I landed heavily, but not before the knife slid down his shoulder and through his back, ripping out of the flesh in a shower of blood and viscera.

He groaned and turned, but I was already tossing the weapon aside and unbuckling Whip’s crossbow from my back. I staggered upright moments before the broad-shouldered woman thrust a short-sword at me from behind her shield, barely managing to stumble out of the blade’s way. Then I shot her in the stomach, the recoil sending me another few steps backwards.

I wouldn’t be able to reload it. Last night, I had tried for what felt like years, sweating and spitting and keening as I strained against its massive form. But it was Vin who managed to cock it.

I would learn. I had to.

I spent precious moments slinging the crossbow onto my back, then my sword hissed from its sheath. The leader, teeth clenched in pain, straightened his back and discarded the spear he held, instead drawing a longsword from a scabbard upon his belt. It struck me for the first time just how huge the man was – even larger than Vin. Large enough to wield a longsword as if it were a one-handed weapon. I made some space between us, eying his long arms. My tongue ran over the stitches within my mouth. An Oxblood, maybe.

The woman ripped the bolt from her gut, and stepped beside him. Lizardblood, I thought. She covered the leader’s unarmed side with her massive shield.

I caught myself taking another step back, then stopped. Instead of retreating, I raised the heavy steel of my blade at the leader.

“Yer dead,” I hissed through clenched teeth, and surged forward.

My approach was met with a rapid stab from the Lizardblood, yet my lifted arm saw her weapon pass underneath without meeting flesh. Within range, I thrust my sword towards the leader’s face, hoping for a flinch, yet he simply ducked beneath it, slamming his own blade towards my ribs. I rolled beneath the blow, and rose in front of the woman, slicing at her as I did so. Her sallow face barely registered my sword nicking her calf. Another stab was easily avoided, as was my two-handed swing towards her unguarded pelvis. I transformed the missed blow into a pirouette to step around the leader’s blow, using the momentum to slap his blade further off-course and attempt to pierce his unguarded torso. Yet the Lizardblood’s shield quickly intercepted my sword.

I hopped two steps backwards, out of the pair’s range. The steep incline of the hill made doing so precarious, and though it was awkward to swing down at me, it was far more difficult to land a decent hit on either without overextending myself. Despite the burn in my lungs, I kept my breathing steady and gazed at the pair steadily.

Time would see my stamina flagging – I had to move twice as much as them, and there was a Lizardblood – but also Vin arriving. If I was holding against two, both of us would be pure butchery.

The wise move would be to buy time as efficiently as possible. Instead, I snarled and moved back up the hill.

This time, the leader took a single heavy step downwards. His swing carried the longsword horizontally with incredible speed. A gasp escaped him, and as I ducked so low my mouth nearly brushed the ground, my lips stretched in a grin. He’d strained his wounded back, the bastard. But they’d anticipated my move. Before I could straighten, the broad-shouldered woman barrelled into me, sending me rolling sideways to slam against the wall of a mud-brick hovel. I bounced off, falling heavily on the broken cobbles.

I blinked, and found the Lizardblood above, trying to pin me with her shield. Another roll downhill took me away, but a boot swiftly followed, stomping on my free hand’s fingers. An audible crack followed, and pain flared within my pinky, sharp as a knife in the night. Yet even as a groan traitorously fled my throat I was ripping the hand out, stumbling away from the two probing blades and into the doorway of the building.

My back quickly ran into a collapsed ceiling-beam, and as I stepped aside another one of the Lizardblood’s thrusts followed. I slapped the blade downward with my own, causing it to get stuck in the wood. But before I could capitalise on the opportunity, the leader shoved her aside and swung at me, forcing me to retreat beneath the beam and further into the house.

A quick glance burned an image of the tiny room into my mind – firepit, tables, chairs, hanging tools, and a partially collapsed roof at the back – and then the leader’s actions forced my attention back towards the pair. His powerful kick snapped the worn beam in two, but the force he leveraged far outmatched the durability of the material, throwing him off balance. I slammed my blade atop his head, failing to pierce his helmet but still rattling his skull, and as the Lizardblood charged towards me I slipped aside. Her pass was met with a flipped blade, flashing downwards to bite into the thick muscle of her calf. When she placed weight on it again, she tripped and slammed through a cobwebbed table to fall a half-pace down, into the central fire-pit.

Then the leader was swinging again. I parried his sword with my own, but his size forced the two of us into a clinch. Before he could push me further towards the dirt, our swords audibly grated as I slipped out of the blow and transitioned to a slice at his thigh. He jerked the leg backwards and attempted to punch me in the ribs, but the lack of resistance allowed me to swing my blade into his arm.

Yet instead of lopping it off, the blade bit through his bronze arm-guards and caught. Absurdly, I realised he was wearing some sort of stone beneath. Then his arm ripped from my blade and seized me by the furs. Only a wild swing towards his head prevented him from running me through. He shoved me backwards, and I slammed into the walls, jangling the stone tools still in the holsters embedded between the mud-brick.

He levelled his longsword and thrust towards me, but I snatched a sickle off the wall and spun aside, using the momentum of the pirouette to slam my blade into his steel breastplate. Its crumpling was accompanied by an audible crack. I’d broken his ribs. A small scream ripped from the man’s throat as he bent around the blow.

I barked a hollow laugh, and moved to cut his head off.

The downward swing was met by the Lizardblood’s massive shield. Before the leader could recover his composure, I swung towards the side of his body opposite the broad-shouldered woman. Awkwardly, she reached around and interposed her shield, and I slammed the stone sickle around her unprotected side, over her bronze gorget, and into the flesh of her throat.

I retreated, leaving the sickle embedded and slamming into the mud corner. The Lizardblood stumbled sideways, dropping her short-sword and slapping the freed hand against the side of her neck.

It closed around the sickle’s wooden hilt, the tip of its edge bulging against the skin of her neck.

I’d heard stories of potent Lizardbloods surviving throat wounds. If they could get the wound clear, it could, potentially, heal before they suffocated or died of blood loss.

The leader coughed, eyes fixed on it. “Stop- “

When she pulled against the haft, she pulled the direction it pointed. For a dagger, or arrow, or any conventional weapon that could get embedded in a person, it would’ve worked. But the thing in her was a farming tool.

Instinct screamed at her to pull. So she did.

And ripped her own throat out.

Her eyes followed the gore and viscera on the sickle’s blade. Then, the woman took a single step towards me. I couldn’t retreat any further.

After the second step, she staggered sideways and slumped against a wall. I blinked.

A short laugh had my eyes flicking towards the leader. He leaned down and retrieved the dying woman’s shield. Like mine had been moments before, his gaze was fixed on the woman.

As if he couldn’t help himself, the leader snorted, and shook his head at his dying companion.

I looked at him. When what he had just done finally registered, I howled and-

-took a step downwards, towards the eight soldiers arranged against me.

Kit was alive but I had no idea if she needed my help. There was no time for a better plan.

Infinitesimally, they pulled their spears backwards in preparation to impale me when I entered their formation. Obliging them, I took another step down and hooked my halberd into the torso of a man on the outer edge. Before his flame vanished, I yanked his body towards me and used it to catch another two spears. A bronze tip erupted from his gut, splattering my mask with gore.

You wander broken roads-

I squashed the link. Twelve remained.

From behind my makeshift shield, I slashed at the pair of wrists holding their wedged spears, managing to sever a hand before both withdrew. Someone screamed, but I was busy whirling my halberd and flinging the corpse atop it into the middle of their formation. Those that stood in its path received it on bronze shields, and their staggers disrupted the formation.

Pain beat within me as I carved into those that had lost spears, and a shiver running through my hands turned dual slashes into sloppy thrusts. The sheer force behind the weapons impaled one on my halberd and other on my onyx blade. Before I could recover properly, a soldier mutely charged towards my side.

I took a halting step down, and blindly stabbed his throat. His momentum sprayed blood onto my face.

You-

Immediately, I cut the connection. Bile filled my mouth.

Nine.

I blinked rapidly as the four remaining soldiers spread around me, the shine of bronze piercing through my eyes to exacerbate the agonising pulse behind them. Simultaneously, all of them screamed and charged. A swing of my halberd dented the skull of one, only for the weapon to slam into the length of a speartree and shudder from numb fingers.

Your life is spent between bites of bread, burning-

My balance faltered, body listing dangerously to the side as I staggered away from their jabs. The scent of something crisping – falling to ash – filled my nostrils, yet for whatever reason I couldn’t see what it was. I lifted my buckler onto numb fingers, only to have it torn away as I blocked an errant thrust.

Steps followed steps as spear-thrust after spear-thrust herded me away, each bringing me precariously close to a fall. Though knowledge of the ideal placement of feet twisted through the mist of my mind, it always arrived one step too late. A single faulty step and I’d twisted my ankle. The scavengers lunged.

A wild swing clipped the wings of one, and the two remaining hopped backwards, cawing. Wetness seeped onto my face to the rhythm of pain, yet when I raised my hand to paw it away something was in my way.

Some sound escaped me. I raised my free arm and leaned against a nearby wall. Beneath my hands, the vanishing smoothness of the wall as I caressed it felt like wisdom itself. Then it disappeared from my finger’s sight.

They swooped towards me again, but instead of retreating I staggered towards them. One bit into my shoulder, but their talons snapped under the force of their own blow. I hacked into its body, ripping it from itself in a shower of bone and gore.

The other shrieked and flew towards me, its shaking path missed me by inches. I grabbed it in my hand, feeling its panicked pulse beneath my fingers. Its weight caused me to stagger forwards. The stagger became a walking fall, each step keeping me just above the dirt and deferring the responsibility to balance to the next. The fall picked up speed, and we slammed into and through the wall of a building, bursting through the other side.

The creature fell from my hand, fragile neck broken in my fingers. I looked at it and opened and closed my drooping mouth and spat something from it and tongued the new hole and tried to stay upright and groped with blind fingers and shivered; could not stop shivering.

Just one, now. Where had everyone gone?

I felt them. The lights.

Slowly, I turned and began the long journey towards-

-the leader. My blade sung through the air, a blur of shining metal abruptly muted on the brown of his stolen shield. The man slashed again with his longsword, but I easily read his blow; he was unprepared for the addition of the dead Lizardblood’s equipment and its vast weight. Yet though my knowledge gave opportunity, the shield was large enough to form a wall between my blade and any delicate organs. Instead, I kicked his wrist, slamming it into the bronze shield like a hammer against an anvil.

Whatever reinforcement lay beneath his leather gauntlets allowed the bone to remain in one piece, but for a moment his hold on the longsword weakened. With a toothy snarl, I smashed my sword against his own, sending it slipping from his grip and onto the dirt below.

Immediately, the leader began stepping backwards, retreating from my whirlwind of blows. Sparks flew as my blade scarred the bronze shield, briefly lighting the man’s deep frown and focused gaze. After one hateful blow, his heel caught on the back of a broken chair, forcing him into a stumble which I made use of by slashing both of his exposed calves. Before I could use his brief flinch to decapitate him, he snatched a chair and hurled it towards me. I hopped sideways to avoid the projectile and he exited the doorway. I reset my stance and followed.

Outside, the street was a mess of broken bodies and gore. One corpse lay on the ground, its face hanging off its skull in flaps of skin, as if some beast had clawed it away. A new hole had formed in the hovel above. As soon as I registered that, Vin, tunic and skin stained with gore, emerged from it. The head of a broken spear hung from his shoulder, above a uselessly dangling hand. In his other hand was his viscera-smeared sword. He staggered against a wall, and I couldn’t see his expression. The mask still concealed his face.

Vin was alive. I was alive. Only a single opponent remained, gaze fixed on my comrade.

My face twisted.

“You,” I enunciated carefully. The leader’s head whipped towards me. “Are done.”

Body low to the ground, I sprinted towards him. He responded by barrelling in my direction, shield levelled. In the moment before impact, I slid beneath him – the skin on my knees opening on the cobbles beneath – and turned, cleanly slicing one of his hamstrings.

He listed to the side, then fell into a roll down the hill. I followed at a sprint, and slammed my sword through his good leg, pinning it to the ground beneath.

The man’s face erupted into an agonised scream, pain hoarsely soaring into the sky. I shut him up with a kick to the head.

“You piece of human filth,” I spat, stomping his torso. “You kill Whip? You kill Whip?!”

My boot slammed into his gut and he gasped. “What’d she do? What’d she do?!” I shouted. “Huh? Yer not fit to water th’ dirt, you bastard. Just rot.”

His hands grasped my ankle, and I snatched the hilt of my sword and wrenched it. Another hoarse cry emerged from the man, shaking with the fatigue pain brought upon him. I spat a glob of spit onto him. “You- You…”

I fell upon him, my knees weighing his fists down, and began dealing blow after blow onto his unprotected head. My vision blurred as I screamed and swore at him, hands flaring in pain as each hit damaged them. His face grew wetter and wetter, but still his eyes shone and I roared wordlessly at them, the cry extending, then slowly trailing into nothing.

Then my knuckles fell and something cracked within them. A keening sound emerged from my throat as I clutched the abused bones. I opened my eyes as something shifted beneath my knee.

My cry stopped. His jaw had become covered in a layer of ivory material. Bone had grown from his face.

Then his fist, having slipped out from his gauntlet, smashed into my face, breaking my nose in a shower of blood and rocking me off his body. The force of the punch tore the stitches in my face and I roared, flailing in his direction, only for my blurry vision to pick out a hand covered in pale white slamming into my ribs.

I fell, pressing down against the flaring of pain in my face. Whip’s crossbow dug into my spine. A pained yell sounded from next to me. I recovered my composure in time to shift aside, as my own sword slammed into the space my head had just occupied.

Then a weight fell upon me and two hands wrapped around my neck.

I gurgled and fumbled for the bolts holstered to the side of the crossbow, but-

-the two flames felt like they were years away. Agony pulsed in my skull, flashes of crimson lightning turning the organ within to broth.

I shuffled down a wall. My eyelids sluggishly fell, and opening them felt like lifting the weight of the world. Even when they were open, all I saw was a confusing mass of blooming red.

A fall would end me.

Blindly, I groped for the next step down. I found it, and took another. Then another.

Sensation vanished. I couldn’t feel the sun on my body, nor the cold air of early Frost. The pain fled. I didn’t know if I was breathing or not. Within that empty expanse, I felt as if I were held in the gut of some great machine, everything that I was slowly being digested by its heedless cogs and scraped away, layer after layer.

The only thing that remained were the two candles. And one – that carrion cry – rattling through the empty void of my soul.

The lights flickered.

“Please,” I tried to say, but the word fell apart on my tongue.

Same as always, I told myself, alone on the battlefield or kitchen or estate or writing room or wilderness or fortress or training yard or amidst my legions, ordered against the dead and dying and wanting nothing more than an end even as every ounce of my body yearned for something, anything, to hold to my chest and protect but it all turned to ash in my fingers and slipped through the gaps in the end by halberd or spear or knife or careless words and the shadow stretched and I saw the two figures killing one another and my stumble left the wall and staggered, step after step, as gravity pulled me inexorably downwards towards them, building speed until-

-a sharp pain in my torso ripped my hands away from the swordswoman’s neck and carried me away. The wounds in my legs twisted as my body was pushed further backwards, down the hill, forcing another howl up my throat. Yet even as the suffering within tried to escape from my mouth, the attempt spurred another flaring of agony within my gut. I clawed and scratched towards the pain, hoping for relief but feeling only fabric.

When the thing pushing me finally slammed me against the outer wall of the village, I looked down and understood.

A beautiful, black blade was buried inside of me.

My gaze found the arm attached to its hilt and followed it upwards, to the thing that had killed me. The Face watched me, its obsidian material twisted into its ineffable contours. Sense and nonsense clashed and separated in the space of a single mask.

The signs were all there. Great strength that did not break the body. Perception beyond mortal ken. Well-worn skill, the likes of it supposedly left with the corpses of humanity’s greatest warriors years ago. The sword itself, carved from a dead god’s bone. Only one entity held all those things at once.

We’d found it.

The urge to sob filled me. I dragged my hand upwards, bone-clad fingers tracing bloody wounds to fall around the bead tied around my neck. It had lain there for four years. I placed it in my mouth, and crushed it to splinters between my molars.

I coughed, then groaned, an iron froth dribbling from my mouth. The creature holding me shook, but did not otherwise move.

Slowly, I reached behind its mask, and smeared my blood there.

For a single moment, the solitude of existence vanished. I saw myself through another’s eyes, a mirror truer than any forged by human hands. All the pain and light and sound and texture and terror of reality, doubled in a recursive pattern of seeing.

Then a will met my own, and though reduced by the weight of its fragmenting mind, it still remained great enough to force my own aside and swing the connection shut, and I became just Seoras once again.

“No,” I muttered. Memory told me the creature’s future. Within those full of the Raven’s power, rejection unwound the chords of the mind. The ties that bound face, feet, fingers, body, and finally being would fray and snap. Past a certain point it would unstring the heart itself, leaving a cold and lifeless lump of meat within an empty chest.

“If you do not accept this…” I drew a shaking breath in, lighting the fire of agony within the pierced body. “You will die.”

It did not move.

As my being filtered away from my body, dripping down my body in tormented rivers, I searched what little remained for an answer.

My armoured hand raised, cocked back, and slammed into the mask. Cracks spread within its frame, even as the motion thrust the thing’s blade upwards, through my intestines and into organs.

Another blow, and a scream forced its way from me. Agony burned, greater than my weakness could endure. My vision spoiled, rotting at its edges. Was the suffering worth it?

But arrayed against my own torments, millennia of far greater pain was measured, so I raised my fist and smashed the mask into pieces.

I focused, and beheld what lay beneath.

Blood travelled in trails, retreating from nostrils and ears in dark tears. A piece of lip was missing, bitemarks marking the wound. Two mismatched pupils sat in their sockets, crimson slowly subsuming the white around them and seeping from their corners.

It trembled as it bled.

I looked into its face and recalled a name.

“Maja,” I said as the world darkened, “are you going to let your son die?”

One half of the face drooped; strings cut. Yet amidst the blood, a slow flinch filtered through the other half.

The channel opened, and for a single divine moment, I was no longer just myself, but also the roiling shadow opposite. The unity wobbled like the ripples of a lake, and closed-

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛,

-shaking with the strain of it, the connection re-established itself. Once more, it struggled against a confused will, shaking an impossible perception and betraying a struggle within. But finally, completely, it yawned wide. Reality became twofold. My hands wrapped around my neck and squeezed. Something snapped. Moments later, I died.

Then I fell backwards, away from the corpse impaled on my sword.

The impact of my body against the hard cobblestones jarred the spear in my shoulder, yet the pain remained miniscule next to the agony wracking me. Light jammed painfully against my eyeballs, setting them flinching away from the sky. The heavy taste of blood permeated every corner of my mouth. Numbness faded from finger and limbs, revealing the ravaged fibres within, determined to punish me for the abuse I’d heaped upon them. It was all wrong, and I could do nothing to heal it but writhe.

I lay there, sensible of nothing but suffering for what felt like years. When I finally opened my eyes and registered the sun scant inches above the horizon, I knew it couldn’t have been more than a handful of minutes.

Gingerly, I grasped the snapped weapon in my shoulder and extracted it. Flesh sucked greedily at the spear as I worked it out, brutally mirroring the path it had taken inwards. The urge to clench my jaw was powerful, but attempting it evoked greater pain. Somehow, I’d fractured my own teeth.

Slowly, I levered my body upright, delicately tonguing the hole where a third of my bottom lip once was. Standing was easier than it should’ve been due to the incline of the hill, yet that same angle sent me staggering backwards once upright, slamming into the wall surrounding the village. A body hovered in the corner of my vision. As I glanced at it, only the pain in my throat stopped me from screaming.

My face was destroyed, long nose broken in three different places above what was once an impeccable beard, now permanently marred with gore. The musculature I’d taken such pride in – that I’d laboured countless hours for – was irrevocably destroyed by the sword impaled in my torso, between the tattoo of eight equidistant lines extending outwards in a strange and irregular shape. Whatever power, or skill, or anything worth respecting was gone. I was dead.

I shook my head vigorously. The body wasn’t me. It couldn’t be…

It was I.

No, Vin-

No, it was Seoras.

Then I winced as I tried and failed to parse the memories rent into a thousand fragments, relentlessly marred by my attempts to push them away. Some coalesced into something sensible; most fell away. Within my skull a life had been broken. Against my own will I mourned that fact.

A quiet swear passed through my torn lips.

“Blood, Vin,” someone said.

I glanced upwards at the swordswoman who… At Kit. Vainly, I tried to flap my arm towards her, yet it refused to cooperate.

“How’s the nose?” I asked instead.

She chuckled lifelessly. “Well, I’ve skipped flatter stones at least. A good twist’ll straighten it.” The half-hearted humour vanished, and she stared at a point behind my head.

The swordswoman’s face was immensely swollen, blood leaking from opened cheeks. One of her fingers had turned a similarly painful shade of purple. But besides that, she remained mostly unmarred by the battle. I’d taken a sword… No. Just the spear in my shoulder.

Behind her, the impaled body remained atop its ivory perch, steadily journeying towards dust. Its empty gazed upon the grotesque flowers blooming, snaking from beneath the broken stones of the village to drink the blood spent in the abandoned village. The fallen lay among them.

“That wasn’t me,” I said.

Kit blinked, head turning to follow my gaze. Her eyes locked on the countless corpses. “You…”

“No, no,” I muttered. “That’s not on me.”

“Vin?”

Eyes wide, I raised a bloodied hand and ran it through my hair. “I didn’t do that, Kit.”

The young woman swallowed. “Vin, I, uh…” She paused. “Sure, Vin. Let’s just- “

“It’s not,” I interrupted. “It’s not.”

“Alright, Vin,” she crooned crookedly. Slowly, Kit walked towards me, one step at a time. “We’re gonna- “

I kept staring at them. “How many?”

The swordswoman halted. “What?”

“How many of my- “ A pause. I clenched my eyes shut. “How many are there, Kit?” The words were plaintive.

The response took too long. My eyelids fluttered open and she swallowed. “Dead? I dunno. Thirty?”

“I need a number.”

Her lips twisted. “Blood, Vin, I wasn’t up there. I don’t know.”

“You don’t…” The sentence trailed away. Uselessly, I fumbled for the mask on my head, seeking to rip it off. I discovered what I’d already known.

Slowly, I slid to the ground. Beside me, the shards of my broken Face lay on the ground. My trembling hands tried to put the pieces back together. When I pressed two disparate shards against one another, they fell apart. They failed.

“Oh, gods,” I whispered.

Somewhere, amidst the screams, blood, steel and bronze; amidst all the slaughter, I’d lost the number.

I’d lost count.

I raised my head, uncovered by artifice. Then I lowered it.

Footsteps grew closer, muted by the dirt beneath their feet. A thump sounded as Kit unslung Whip’s crossbow and slumped next to me. The warmth of her shoulder pressed against my own. It began shaking.

Something caught in her breathing. A low keening hissed from the back of her throat, then shuddered outward into small, stifled sobs.

I placed a hand over my eyes, trying desperately to keep the ache buried within me. I failed.

At the bottom of the broken village we sat and wept.