by Rosie Scott
The swipes of the Twelve's blade slowed before it fell to the ground. Its wielder quickly followed, depleted of life. I turned away from the corpse. I wanted more power, but I only had one enemy left to harvest it from.
The orc corpses had butchered the final griffon on the grasses that fell in the shadow of the nearby Seran Forest. The Twelve archer was the last foe left, and she panicked as her eyes scanned over the casualties on the battlefield. She'd slain the deer and squirrel skeletons simply by using the force of her arrow shots, and only two orc corpses were left. Even still, her only side weapon was a dagger, and she couldn't go up against the rest of us with that.
The woman spun toward the woodland and ran. The corpses followed suit, their bones clacking off one another with the pressure of their footfalls as they passed the forest border and ran through brushing foliage. Intent on keeping my leeching high, I rushed after them all, only skidding to a stop to seize the fallen spear from a heap of loose bones.
I wasn't sure what I would be able to do with the spear. I'd never wielded one before, but my newfound power and corresponding audacity seemed to assume I could use it.
The soldier's alarmed and exhausted breaths echoed hoarsely off surrounding pines as she desperately sought retreat. The vitality of her comrades throbbed in my veins as I pursued her over fallen logs and blankets of brush, barely breaking a sweat. I passed my corpses on the way. When I was close enough to the woman I reached out to leech from her, and the crackling of harvesting life force reverberated through the forest.
She spun in panic, realizing running would get her nowhere. She dropped the bow and snatched her dagger, backing away from me as I stalked after her. The soldier heaved and wheezed as she swung her dagger at my shield. Behind her and to my left was the bare trunk of a dying tree that shed its needles and most of its branches. I sidestepped to the right, directing her there in her retreat.
Moments later, her back hit the trunk, and her eyes widened in realization. I dispelled the leeching funnel and gripped the spear with both hands, using the power of excess life force to plunge it forward at her gut.
Shink.
An exhale escaped her lips, born from fatigue but weakening with the slight sob of pain. She desperately grabbed at the handle that stuck out of her navel as the split leather armor leaked a concoction of abdominal fluids. She didn't have the strength to remove the spear since it impaled through her and to the tree. The skin between her eyebrows creased with a mixture of intimidation and confusion as she watched me leech her remaining life. When she finally died, her last breath was one of relief.
I lifted both hands and stared at them in disbelief. They were just as pale and thin as they'd always been. The source of such strength was life force, and I had no other foes. I panicked as I realized that eventually this strength would leave me.
You are normally weak. To stay strong, you need more.
I glared into the forest as the veteran's corpse leaked blood in a puddle beside me. The two orc skeletons finally caught up and peered at me with hollow gazes. I dismissed them, and they collapsed in a mixed pile at the hanging soldier's feet.
My enhanced hearing picked up on the tweets of birds and the chattering of animals, and my leeching high grew hungrier.
More, it reminded me. More.
Thornwell didn't seem so important to me at the moment. I headed into the Seran Forest, on the prowl for power.
Eight
The woodland animals were weak, but they weren't stupid. As I hunted for life force with a leeching funnel prepared in one hand, they scattered and ran. I wasn't used to hunting, so I was terrible at it. The clattering buckles of my boots and my resounding heavy footsteps alerted all nearby life to my presence, and the funnel had a limited range. I hunted fruitlessly while everything was a confused blur until finally, by expending energy through time and my relentless pursuit, the urgency for power lessened. Suddenly, I realized how badly I'd lost control. Power still throbbed in my veins and I had a newfound sense of arrogance. Nonetheless, my first ever leeching high was gradually losing its influence. Having never experienced one before, I didn't know how I would feel once I was back to normal, or if I could get back to normal at all. But for now, it didn't matter. Thornwell was tantalizingly close, but in my lust for power I'd wandered farther away from it.
I turned back to the north and hastened my pace. I must have spent longer hunting than I realized, for it was over an hour before I passed the Twelve soldier dangling from the tree. Behind a shield of apathy, I inwardly recoiled at the sight. I remembered killing her, but I couldn't believe I'd had the strength to impale her. As if to agree with my bafflement, my arms ached so badly they felt like solid stone, heavy and stiff with overuse.
I didn't compare my experience with the power of leeching to what I'd read in the necromantic book. Not yet. After half a year of traveling and dealing with trauma without being able to process it, all I wanted to do was talk with someone who wouldn't fight me or push me away. I needed a sense of familiarity. Thornwell may forever have been off-limits to me now that I was a criminal, but I knew my parents would come with me wherever I needed to go.
Thornwell beckoned to the north once more, though the skies over it darkened to prepare for the storm that seemed too bashful to ever arrive. My pace quickened toward my hometown until I ran to it like it was my saving grace.
Familiar faces noticed my arrival and peered with a quiet distance. Perhaps they saw the blood stains on my clothes, or maybe the Twelve had spread the word of my crimes. I paid no mind to them, hurrying through eerily quiet roads to the tiny shack that seemed so welcoming.
The fishing boat my mother built for my father no longer hung on the rack outside, so I immediately scanned over the ocean to see if they were out together. Choppy waves harassed the shoreline, rocking small fishing and trading vessels at the docks farther east. But no one was on the water. The impending storm promised to be harsh, so everyone had rowed inland to avoid its beating.
Whispers echoed around me as I rushed to the front door of my house and grabbed the handle. It was locked, so I knocked rapidly.
“Mother! Father!” It was half shout, half hiss. Stares bored into my back like throwing knives. I leaned my forehead against the door, desperate to be inside, desperate to collapse with mental exhaustion in the company of people who loved me no matter what. My hearing was still sharpened with my fading leeching high, so I listened intently. I heard nothing inside.
I turned back toward the inner town. Most staring villagers averted nosy gazes and pretended to be busy. A growing sense of foreboding rose in my esophagus like nausea, born out of intuition rather than understanding.
“Where are my parents?” My hoarse voice nearly squeaked with desperation during the last word. The last few villagers who'd stared turned away.
I started to tremble with a mixture of panic and an unexplained onslaught of horror. I glanced back at our house, for the first time realizing that the boat wasn't the only detail missing. The boots my father left under our front steps that he only used on muddy days were gone. Layered boards of wood replaced the drapes that normally covered our windows.
“Where are my parents?” I yelled into the inner town, my hoarse voice rattling off of window panes. “Where are my father's boots? Where's our boat?” I hesitated, my teeth chattering with overwhelming dread. “They wouldn't leave without their boat,” I reasoned incoherently to myself, my words little more than desperate rambles. “Mother spent so much time building it. He loves that boat. He wouldn't leave it. He wouldn't leave the boat.”
“Cerin.” My eyes snapped to the person who said it. Standing beside the southern wall of her inn and tavern was a woman I only knew as Red. She'd earned the nickname due to her head of fiery red hair. Red worked day and night at the bar of her inn. Neither of my parents frequented it, so the only time I recalled seeing her was when I'd gone with my father to deliver fresh fish to her inn's storage room.
Red was visually i
ntimidating, standing six feet tall and seeming just as wide. Underneath layers of fat hid the muscle she often used to throw rowdy drunks out onto the streets of Thornwell at night. For now, however, a somber look held her friendly features hostage, and she gestured to me with her hand. “Come with me.”
My chest heaved with frenzied breaths made even worse by the jittery excess energy of my high as I followed her without a word. The stares of other residents did not relent until Red led me into her tavern and closed the door behind me.
“Have a seat.” Red motioned to a bar stool. As I dragged myself up onto it, she walked around to the other side of the counter. Her face was unreadable save for deep regret, so I avoided her eyes and looked down at the bar.
“Where are my parents?” Though it was a query, it came out like an urgent plea.
There was a hefty sigh. “Gone.” Red's thick voice croaked out the word mournfully.
“Where did they go?”
“Cerin...” Red trailed off painfully.
“Tell me where they went,” I pleaded, rubbing a fist impatiently on the bar as if the action could keep me from facing the inevitable. “I'll leave now to catch up with them.” After a protracted silence, I asked, “Why were the Twelve here?”
“For you,” Red replied delicately. “They came searching for you. Found your house as empty as you just did and only left after seeing proof they sold the property.”
A fierce pain jolted my gut. “Why would they sell the house without telling me?”
Another sigh. “Gods, give me strength,” Red murmured to herself.
“Even if the gods exist, they don't give a shit about our problems,” I said, glowering at the bar as the motions of my hand finally broke the skin, leaving a smear of blood over rough wood.
Red noticed me bleeding onto her bar but said nothing of it. “Thornwell was attacked, Cerin. About a year and a half ago.”
I stopped scraping the bar and glanced up. “By who?”
Red met my gaze. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “The Icilic.”
The breath left my lungs and didn't come back until lightheadedness consumed me. “Why?”
“They, too, looked for you.”
“I wasn't here.” The intense rattling of metal on wood alerted me to my shaking. The ring my parents gave me for my birthday years ago danced along the bar until I yanked my hand into my lap.
“No, you weren't,” Red agreed before looking elsewhere. “But the Icilic thought you were, and they were willing to slaughter everyone here until they found you. Your mother...” she trailed off and hesitated. “Your mother felt responsible. Offered to go with them to smooth things over with your grandfather in Glacia if they'd just stop killing innocents.”
I stilled. Ice grasped onto my heart. “Father wouldn't have let her go.”
“No,” Red agreed. “Lucius didn't want to let her go. Others held him back while she went with them.”
I said nothing. I blanked out the thousands of what-if scenarios that materialized and stared at my blood on the bar.
“We waited for Celena's return,” Red finally went on. “A season later, a Glacian trading vessel came to dock with a single package addressed to your father.”
I still said nothing.
“Nobody knows who murdered her, Cerin. We don't know if it was your grandfather or if—”
“How do you know she's dead?” I interrupted, the statement nearly incomprehensible.
“Because the package—they sent parts of her back.”
A wave of dizziness overcame me. I almost fell backwards, so I lurched forward to crash my head into my forearm on the bar, perspiration beading over my face.
“Lucius turned to alcohol,” Red went on, her words resounding in my head. The world spun around me and I swayed at its edge. “Stopped working and stayed here from open to close drinking until I kicked him out each night. He'd go back to the house and wail until it woke your neighbors. He fell behind on house payments. Spent every piece of gold meant for the house on ale. Alcohol turned your father from the friendliest person in the world to a mean-spirited man looking for a fight. One night, I had a lute player here performing for tips. Lucius bickered that he didn't want to hear a lute if it wasn't Celena's. It infuriated him until he got up and quarreled with the musician. When I came over to break it up, he fought me. We exchanged some punches.” Red abruptly stopped after her voice hiccuped. “After one of mine, he went down and didn't get back up.”
My forearm was a mess of sweat and tears beneath my face, but I remained quiet.
“I'm so, so sorry, Cerin,” Red offered, her voice masculine as it held a collection of negative emotions.
“I need someplace to stay,” I mumbled, the back of my throat stretching painfully to allow the words to pass over withheld grief.
“I can't let you—”
“Anything. Anything I have on me,” I offered desperately. “It's yours. Just give me a bed for one night. Please. I just need one night. I haven't slept in a bed in half a year. I promise not to bother you ever again. You'll never have to see me again. I have no money, but you can have anything else. My clothes. My boots.”
“I can't, Cerin,” Red managed, remorseful. “I can't let you stay here. I'm putting the entirety of Thornwell in danger just by bringing you in here.”
“The Icilic?” It was a vague request for clarification, but Red understood.
“The Icilic have already pledged to find you no matter where you are,” she replied. “No—what truly puts Thornwell in peril now is Sirius Sera.”
More nausea rose in my throat just at hearing the bastard's name.
“Sirius sent the Twelve here for you, as I said. Earlier this afternoon. You mentioned seeing them.”
I gritted my teeth, flashbacks of my last battle running through my head. “I did.”
“Then thank the gods you missed them,” Red continued. “They have the order to kill you. They informed us that if you ever showed up here, we're required to report it to Sera. If we harbor you, Thornwell becomes an enemy of Sera. All of us could be imprisoned or killed.” She hesitated her ramble to ask, “What happened, Cerin? What did you do in Sera?”
I finally raised my head, and it alarmed Red to see that my face was a mess of tears. I seldom cried, and when I did, I kept it quiet. “I made enemies,” I said vaguely.
Red's eyes flicked back and forth between mine before she requested, “Confide in me.”
“The only people I'd confide in are long gone,” I replied, the words traveling over pebbles of retreating emotion. I clutched the edge of the bar, using it to help me get off my shaking bar stool without toppling over. “The Twelve won't trouble you. They are far away from Thornwell. I beg you to let me stay just one night.” The plea was monotone this time; suffering so much trauma in one day finally persuaded me to revert back to apathy to protect myself.
Red swallowed hard, but she shook her head. “I can't. I'm sorry.” She squatted behind her bar and reappeared with a long object swathed in canvas. “Do you have something to carry this with?”
I stared at it. “No. What is it?”
“A loaf of bread.” Red handed it to me. “I won't report your visit to Sera, but I can't promise you that someone else won't. I could lose everything if they find out I spoke with you. They'll likely spread this news to other settlements, Cerin. I don't know what trouble you got into, and maybe it's better that I don't know, but please...” She watched me take the bread before leaning back from her bar. “Find a way to get yourself out of it.”
Silence permeated the tavern for a few moments. My head floated away from my body and into a fog of misery. I glanced down at the bread in my hand and said, “Thank you for this.”
Being polite to Red only made her sadder, and a single tear rolled down her face as she attempted to smile. “You're welcome. I'm so sorry. It's been so painful to have to tell you all this. I'm sorry I couldn't—”
“Where are my parents buried?”
; Red exhaled slowly, the breath wavering as it escaped her lips. “Lucius had your mother cremated and wore her ashes in a bottle around his neck. When he died, we didn't know what he wanted, so we buried him on the hill. The one your parents loved—”
“I know the one.” I turned away and took my first step toward the door.
“There's a tombstone we made for him,” Red said behind me. “That's how you'll know the spot.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, before gripping the door handle and leaving.
Fearful and confused chatter dulled in Thornwell's streets when I left the tavern and the surrounding villagers hushed their gossip. I shook so profusely with mourning and upset that each step I took felt unstable. I clutched the wrapped loaf of bread to my chest with an attachment unfitting of such an object. With the injustices of fate rendering me totally alone, it seemed I pathetically clung to the last symbol I had of mercy.
Thick rolling clouds so sinister and eerie they appeared blackish-purple bunched up over Thornwell like a bruise on the sky. Long yellow grasses attempted to flee the rolling ocean up the incline of a hill southwest of the home that used to be mine, pointing me to what was left of my parents. Red's warnings that all settlements might be warned of my criminal activities duly reminded me that my first visit to this grave should also be my last.
My parents loved this hill. The view from its crest was magnificent, showcasing the decline of the Seran prairies until they turned control over to the sandy coastline. Beyond, nothing but expansive ocean awaited, inhibited only by the limits of eyesight and the merging of water and open sky on the horizon. It was the perfect comfortable spot for my mother because even in the hottest season of High Star, the natural breezes coming in from the ocean would swoop up the hill and pass over her, alleviating some sweat she always combated due to her low tolerance of heat. My parents loved observing the casts of crabs that wandered the coastline looking for snacks and doing territorial dances. While my mother could build boats and tools like fishing poles just as well as most experts, my father had once managed to build her a spyglass she loved to look through here. If the skies were clear, she claimed she could see Glacia on the other side of the sea.