Chapter 170

The seven of us reached the first waystation around noon the following day.

Thae circled overhead, keeping watch from the sky while the other ferals spread out through the scrub grass on either side of the road.

Arvellia was an idyllic land of forests, rolling hills, and broad grasslands. Further north, the forests leaned toward pine and aspen. Here in the south, beech trees dominated instead. In both cases the woods resembled their European counterparts from Earth - tall trunks, open sightlines, very little undergrowth.

Closer to Caldris, the land had begun to harden. Stone pushed through the soil more frequently. The hills sharpened into jagged rises. The trees grew thinner and more twisted as they struggled against poorer earth and harsher winds.

The road remained well maintained - not paved, but heavily traveled enough that little grass dared reclaim it. Between the sparse forest and the rolling terrain, visibility stretched nearly a hundred feet in every direction.

We passed only a handful of travelers. For the most part, we were alone.

The waystation emerged slowly from between the hills.

It was little more than a roadside house - whitewashed stone walls, dark timber framing, a steep roof, and a covered porch facing the road. Even from a distance it was obvious the place had seen better days.

The paint peeled in curling strips. Several shutters hung crookedly from rusted hinges. One side of the roof sagged inward badly enough that I doubted it would survive another harsh winter. Nearby, the stable had partially collapsed, and the split-rail fence surrounding it had rotted away in sections.

No horses. No travelers. No smoke from the chimney.

Clo vanished behind a tree and didn’t come back out.

“It’s quiet,” I murmured.

“Too quiet,” Vel agreed immediately. “No birds. No animals. Not even bugs.”

I strained my ears. She was right. And suddenly every hair on my body stood on end.

Inside we found signs of recent habitation. Footprints in the dust. A bucket beside the well that had been used recently. The main room had been swept, though nowhere else had. A mug near the hearth contained dried beer sediment. A blanket sat folded neatly beside the cold fireplace.

The air smelled of mildew, wet wood, old smoke, and rotting hay. Tables and chairs had been overturned throughout the common room, but none appeared broken.

Clo appeared soundlessly beside me. “There’s a root cellar out back,” she whispered.

I nodded and led the others around the building.

The cellar door was swollen shut from moisture. I braced my shoulder against it and shoved hard enough to unjam it and splinter the deadbolt on the inside.

I reached for my mana and conjured a floating orb of light.

Together we descended the narrow stairs.

“Stinks,” Moss observed.

She wasn’t wrong. Damp earth. Mold. Rot. And beneath it all, the coppery scent of old blood.

At the bottom the cellar widened into a larger chamber with a natural stone floor. Thick timber supports reinforced the ceiling overhead much like the tunnels of a mine.

Restraints had been bolted into the walls. Pools of blackened blood stained the stone floor. A rectangular table dominated the center of the room, caked in dried blood and crimson resin, its moldy leather restraints hanging limply from the sides. Shelving lined one wall, nearly empty save for two filthy jars. In one corner sat the remains of an old fire pit, the ash so old it had become powder.

Vel approached the table. Moss moved toward the shelves. Thae examined the restraints while Clo crouched beside the firepit. Nim and Tansy lingered near the stairs, silently surveying the room.

Vel scraped one claw through the dried filth coating the table, then sniffed it.

“Blood,” she said flatly. “And sap.”

Something caught her eye. She dug her claw into the wood and pried loose a fragment. “Fingernail.”

Moss uncapped one of the jars and sniffed deeply. “Sap.”

“People were held here for days,” Thae observed while inspecting the restraints. “Poorly cared for.” Her nose wrinkled with disgust.

“Maps,” Clo said from beside the firepit. “Books. Leather. Paper.” She stirred the ash. “They burned everything. They were thorough.”

I stepped past Vel toward the far wall. Thin veins of hardened crimson sap pushed through the packed clay.

I touched it.

My hand recoiled instantly. It felt wrong in a way I couldn’t explain.

I kicked the wall hard enough to crack the packed earth. Dirt crumbled away in chunks. Beneath it sat old brickwork.

I kicked again. The masonry buckled inward.

The smell hit me first - blood, rot, sap, sweetness gone foul. I staggered back covering my nose and mouth.

Moss simply shoved the remaining bricks aside, seemingly immune to the stench.

Behind the wall stood… something I had never seen before.

It had once been human - I think.

Now it resembled a figure carved from dark bark frozen in the middle of a silent scream. Thick crimson resin coated its body like hardened amber. Deep gouges had been hacked into its flesh, exposing pale wood-like tissue beneath the bark. From the crown of its head sprouted a single thin branch bearing two glossy blood-red leaves.

I turned away immediately, nausea twisting my stomach.

“Saplings,” Vel said coldly. “Or something like them.” Her gaze lingered on the wounds. “Cut off after sprouting.”

I shoved past Nim and stumbled back up into the daylight.

Fresh air flooded my lungs. I sucked it in desperately.

Was this how the Covenant spread the Weeping Gallows? Torture people until the trees rooted inside them? Turn them into incubators and butcher them apart once they sprouted?

It was monstrous beyond comprehension.

I had no idea if that person felt every chop and amputation. But judging by the expression still frozen on that thing’s face, whatever came before had been unimaginably worse.

“Thren.” Vel’s quiet voice pulled me from my spiraling thoughts.

I looked at her.

Worry. Compassion. Fear for me. Real emotions. Emotions she was never meant to have. Emotions that someday might destroy her.

“Sorry,” I began.

Rapid hoofbeats and a confused cry cut me off.

A horse came tearing down the road at full speed. Its rider swayed wildly in the saddle before suddenly tumbling free and crashing hard onto the dirt road with a groan.

I broke into a jog toward him instinctively.

Bark exploded inches from my face as a rifle cracked somewhere in the hills.

Vel instantly bolted toward the sniper’s position.

A sharp thunk echoed nearby. Something dark blurred toward me through the air.

I threw myself sideways.

The hillside behind me exploded.

Another detonation thundered across the road and Vel vanished into a cloud of dirt and blood.

Gunfire erupted from every direction. Fog rolled across the battlefield from the left like a living wave, thick and unnatural. At the same time a strange pressure settled over the area, muffling sound and warping direction until it became almost impossible to tell where the shots were coming from.

Behind me the root cellar collapsed inward with a roar, burying everyone except Clo and Vel beneath tons of earth and timber. I hadn’t even seen Clo move, but flashes of her red-and-yellow Faith streaked through the fog faster than my eyes could properly follow.

Music rose around me - drums, bass. A distorted guitar screamed through the haze.

“I can’t escape this hell…” I sang as I launched myself forward.

A glowing shield of pure mana snapped into existence ahead of me. Bullets sparked and ricocheted from its surface as I sprinted within the fogbank. Something punched into my left shoulder hard enough to spin me slightly, but I kept moving.

The earth surged upward beneath my feet like rising stairs, carrying me skyward.

Arrows hissed past me.

I leapt. Thirty feet. Forty. Fifty. The fog thinned above the battlefield.

They were hidden well. Spread apart. Dug into cover. Constantly repositioning. The fog barely hindered them at all. The only reason I could see them was their Faith flickering faintly against the landscape.

There was no uniformity, nothing tying them together. They were mortals. Regular humans. Not gallowborn.

I twisted midair and redirected my momentum violently downward.

“So what if you can see…”

One operative dodged as I slammed into the ground beside him.

“...the darkest side of me?”

My fist caught him square in the chest hard enough to launch him thirty feet backward into a tree trunk with a crunch.

Stone ripped free from the earth as I hurled it toward another shooter.

“No one would ever change this animal I have become!”

I launched myself back into the air toward the next position.

By now the other ferals had stepped free from the collapsed cellar.

Tansy became a whirlwind of blades and blood as she tore through one ambusher after another. Thae swept overhead trailing silver fire that ignited trees and shattered cover.

The fog began to thin.

Someone hurled a grenade at Moss.

She caught it. And ate it. Nothing happened.

Nim charged through a storm of gunfire, his massive body shrugging off bullets until the ground beneath him detonated and hurled him cartwheeling through the air.

Another thunk. Another dark blur. Tansy tried to swat it aside. The grenade exploded point-blank against her arm and chest. She disappeared into gore and smoke.

Gunfire shredded through Thae’s wings. She spiraled from the sky and crashed violently through the trees.

I landed atop another operative hard enough to crack bone beneath him.

And something inside me snapped.

This time it wasn’t only my perception that shattered - I did as well.

The flesh exploded from my legs. My right arm stripped raw to the muscle. Pain erupted through my chest as blood poured from a dozen wounds that weren’t mine.

I roared - the sound of an angry, wounded animal - my voice echoing around me in half a dozen pitches.

I couldn’t see my bloodchildren anymore. I was my bloodchildren.

And they were me.

Vel rose first, her legs shredded but functional. She launched herself at the nearest rifleman and tore his throat out moments before he fired on Moss.

Thae’s wings knitted together just enough for flight. She hurled herself toward two soldiers raising assault rifles-

-but Clo reached them first, hamstringing both in a blur of claws and laughter before Thae’s silver fire reduced them to ash.

Clo snatched up one of their rifles. Then another.

Her manic laughter echoed through the battlefield as bullets tore through Covenant soldiers.

Moss seized Nim - legs shattered but somehow working again - and hurled his enormous body across the battlefield into a mage shooting lightning toward Clo.

Tansy staggered from the smoke. Her arm mangled and bleeding, but still attached.

She cut down two men. Picked up their rifles. And became carnage incarnate - two hands firing guns, two hands wielding blades.

Moss charged next. Her jaw unhinged impossibly wide as she swallowed bullets, arrows, and fire alike while barreling directly into enemy lines.

They no longer fought as individuals. They fought as one organism. Each instinctively knew where the others stood, what they needed, what they intended, where danger would come from next.

My mind burned beneath the weight of all of it - both their pain and mine. Every broken bone. Every bullet wound. Every terror and burst of fury slammed through me simultaneously.

I gritted my teeth, blood running down my chin as my vision darkened. My breath came in short bursts as I struggled to remain conscious.

Until finally I couldn’t anymore.

* * *

I woke to pain.

Not sharp, blinding agony. Just a deep, all-encompassing ache that had settled into every muscle, every joint, every bone in my body. Like the soreness after a brutal hike stretched across my entire existence. Even my eyes hurt.

Ignoring my body’s protests, I forced my eyes open.

I was in my bedroom.

Cool autumn air drifted through the open windows, stirring the curtains as pale daylight spilled across the room. Someone had pulled the blankets over me. Much of my body had been wrapped in bandages beneath them.

And someone warm was pressed tightly against my back.

“Moss,” I rasped, my throat dry. “Why are you in my bed again?”

She shifted immediately, her head rising over my shoulder. Her enormous grin split her face nearly ear to ear, rows of sharp teeth giving her the appearance of an excited shark.

“I’m protecting you!” she announced directly beside my ear.

I winced.

“Good job,” I muttered weakly.

I pushed myself upright. Pain flared through my arms and chest hard enough to make me grit my teeth. Even sitting up felt exhausting.

“How long was I out?”

“Two days,” Moss replied as she scooted to the edge of the bed beside me.

Two days.

“What happened?”

“Ambush,” she said simply. “It was a trap and we walked right into it. They were winning. Then…”

She trailed off.

Her grin faded slightly as she stared at me with sudden intensity.

“How ya feeling?” she asked carefully.

“Sore,” I answered. “What happened?”

Her gaze slipped away.

For one strange moment she actually looked uncertain. Hesitant. Like she was trying to decide whether or not she should tell me something.

Then she looked back at me and seemed to reach a decision.

“Vel can explain it all!”

Before I could stop her, she slid from the bed and melted straight into the floor. Darkness spread beneath her like spilled ink before rapidly shrinking away again once she disappeared entirely.

I stared at the empty spot for a moment and sighed.

Then I peeled the bandages from my body and slowly got dressed.