July dipped into an alleyway, dodging past bits of flaming wood and chitin. Reaching the alley’s end, she turned and held her sword up, finding the men exactly where she wanted them––one behind the other, in the bottleneck mouth of the crevice.
The first soldier lunged forward, bringing down his axe in an overhead motion. July sidestepped the swing, returning with a strike at his knees, looking for the kink in his armor. A yell, thick with pain, told her that she found it. He fell to his knees. She kicked him in the head, which whipped forward and cracked on the side of the building, knocking the man unconscious. July turned back to the other two soldiers, stepping back over the limp body of their compatriot––the last thing she wanted was an enemy on both sides.
The next, learning from the first, threw away his torch in favor of the shield on his back. He raised it and came running, looking to tackle July’s smaller frame to the ground. She took advantage of his blocked eyesight and ducked, using the man’s momentum to lift him over her shoulders and onto his back, and taking a mean whack to the forehead in the process. She raised her sword and sliced at his shoulders in an ‘X’ form. His arms went slack and his weapon fell to the ground, clattering meekly. July kicked his head too, cutting off a bellow of pain.
She suddenly realized that there was nothing preventing the third man from striking at her back. She spun on the spot and, registering movement, hit the dirt.
But when she looked up, the third man was still standing––and protruding from his stomach was the tip of a long, thin blade. It retracted, and the man crumpled.
“Putna,” A figure, silhouetted by the burning village, beckoned to July. The blade was sheathed in one smooth motion, and from its hilt, two ribbons fluttered.
“Captain Mercury,” July breathed. A rumbling noise––very similar to the one July had heard the night before––shook the ground. Mercury frowned at this, but did not look away.
“Stand,” The captain said. She seemed to take in the scene before her; July, with a bloodied sword and mushroom on her chest, surrounded by unconscious soldiers. “The armory is hidden under the side of that hill.” She gestured towards the mouth of the alley, at a long swell of ground. Then, she pulled a ribbon from the hilt of her sword and tossed it to July. “Show Pate, the armorer, this ribbon. Dress yourself, and escort Saul from the village. Whether you return to fight is up to you.”
July nodded, moving past Mercury and into the inferno without hesitation. The captain watched her depart, her golden-brown eyes full of fire, but did not linger long––the bloodshed called its siren song, and she was bound by duty to answer.
She drew her blade.
CHAPTER TEN
THE CHITINWOOD BURNS. HE FOLLOWS. DEVASTATION.
Pate was a short, stocky man of a kind nature and a pleasant face, even smeared with ash. With one glance at the ribbon in July’s hand, he opened the gate to the armory without complaint, pointing out the sections and their contents.
“Swords. Spears. Clubs. Shields. Armor, head to toe.” He gestured at each set of cabinets in turn. “And everything else.”
July thanked him and began to rummage in the sword cabinet. Her short blade limited her range severely; she wanted to be as far from their axes as possible. She found a nice balanced thrusting sword with a round guard on its hilt, and gave it a few jabs, testing its weight before sheathing it at her side. She pulled a flat wooden shield from its hook and secured it to her back, just in case. Finally, she donned a metal helmet and a set of light armor made from a material similar to leather, but spongier. Probably some kind of toadstool, she thought, pushing back out into the hot, muggy air of the flaming Chitinwood. Just like everything else out here.
“Hey!” Pate called from the doorway of the armory. “The captain is alright, isn’t she?”
July flashed a thumbs-up to Pate, who disappeared back inside and began to fortify the door. She turned back to the smoldering woods ahead of her, scanning the village from the top of the hill.
The gate and mouth of the village was lost, entirely consumed by licks of greenish fire. Farther down the path, Mercury’s company of soldiers stood in combat with the sieging Lhord forces. July noted that Mercury was not among them. The deeper paths of the wood were being fortified by the villagers, who knew the ins and outs more intimately than their invader. They rallied around the plaza, where all paths met, including the one to the apothecary. July descended the hill again, starting in that direction.
She passed two soldiers on the way, felling one in their tracks with a well-aimed stab to the abdomen. The other fled, although because of her or her horrific environment––trees burning, bodies strewn about the dirt and the collapsed ruins of the buildings––she didn’t know.
Finally making it to the plaza, July turned to the apothecary, pushing past villagers with fishing spears, planks of wood and buckets of water in arms. However, as her eyes fell on another path, she quickly diverted, skipping over roots and rocks with nimble warrior feet. She landed in front of Mana’s secret fishing pond, where she pulled her short sword and her knapsack from her back. She placed them gently into the discarded log, with Mana’s spear.
“I’m coming back for those,” July told the log. Then she turned and ran back up the path, skimming the edge of the plaza and trotting into the apothecary.
She passed the store’s front desk, moving directly into the study. The injured woman rested on the examination table, still recuperating. Mana watched her from the deck with almost supernatural stillness. Otherwise, the room was empty.
“I couldn’t stop her,” Mana said tonelessly. “Your friend insisted on finding him.”
“Him?” July repeated.
“The prince,” They said. “To end things.”
July squeezed her palms, her nails digging in painfully. “So he wins, then.”
“It seems so,” Mana affirmed. “Very Amoran of her.”
She paused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Unimportant. Find your friend quickly––it won’t be long before devastation arrives.” Mana turned back to the women, and this seemed to end the conversation. Sensing that there was no use in pushing the child, July left the room––but not before planting a fist in the thin wooden paneling.
Pacifists, July fumed. These people are going to die anyway, and she’s giving him exactly what he wants. Fucking pacifists.
She set off again into the flames.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Amelia carried on down the twisted path, ignoring the snap and rumble of buildings collapsing and burning around her. She felt almost as if she were dreaming––a nightmare, surely, but a queer feeling of floating persisted. She didn’t arm herself; she didn’t hide. She simply walked, knowing that the world would guide her to him.
You brought him here, a voice whispered in her soul. It was serpentine, familiar and righteous in its conviction. Mel found it hard to deny, even as it coiled venomously inside her, turning her stomach. You brought him here, and now you will make him go away.
Another voice shouted in the distance, something that resembled her name, but it blended with the chorus of frightened screams that frequently dotted the village. Mel elected to ignore it, needing no more evidence that she was responsible for the forest burning at her feet, but it persisted, shouting twice more until the figure it belonged to broke onto the path in front of her.
It was the captain of the guard, Mercury. She pried the glimmering helm off her head, letting her hair rustle in the current of the breeze, sword in one hand and small crossbow in the other.
“Amelia Saul,” She said simply. “Your friend is looking for you.” Then she was gone, running full tilt towards the sound of battle. Mel wanted to chase her, to apologize for the destruction that followed her, to somehow make amends––but the moment passed, and she could do nothing but keep moving.
The idea that July was out here somewhere looking for her, the same way she was looking for the princ
e, made her uneasy. Her eyes fell to the bodies at the ground, and she began to take them in as she walked. She looked for short brown hair, and tan Amoran skin––perhaps a short sword at their waist. She looked for the vest July was wearing earlier that day, or her leather knapsack.
She found none of these things, but instead of soothing her anxiety, it only grew worse. Her body, streaked with blood and ashes, the snake in her heart hissed, decaying somewhere deep in the swamp. Somewhere even the villagers won’t be able to find her––not that they’d try very hard for an outsider. No burial for poor July Casperan.
It was then that the snake continued to speak; only the sound fell on her ears instead of her mind. “And I thought doctors were supposed to prolong lives––not shorten them.”
Her eyes snapped to the source of the sound. A figure, its edges sharp and mean, watched from the dark, cast in shadows by the burning village at its back. A pair of bright blue eyes burned in his angular face, bitterly cold––something horribly unnatural in this sweltering heat. A grin slipped onto his face, his teeth borne hungrily. It was the grin of a hunter on its cornered prey.
She had found him. Or perhaps, he had found her.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
July yanked her sword free of the fallen soldier’s shoulder, stepping over his slumped form and marking her environment again. The more paths she encountered, the more often she looped around on herself; finding anything but where she’d already been was proving quite difficult. The brewing fog of ash and smoke, trapped in the village by the toadstool canopy, was growing thicker by the moment. She decided she was going to have to change tactics.
She nestled herself in the space between two trees, waiting for the next Lhord soldier to pass. It was only a matter of moments––the majority of the damage was done, and they too had switched tactics from scorched earth to search and destroy. July lunged out, tackling the man to the ground and placing her knee on his chest. He began to shriek, but fell silent when the tip of her blade came to rest on his throat.
“Don’t kill me,” The man pleaded. His face was damp with perspiration––due to heat or fear, July didn’t know. “I’m just a tailor. I have a family in Lhordan. I–”
“I don’t want to kill you,” July prodded gently with her sword, and the man yipped. “So tell me where he is.”
“The prince?” The man questioned. “He’s after the doctor––Saul. He took a different path into the village––around the back of the wood. Please don’t hurt me. They came to the countryside looking for volunteers––I didn’t know we would be doing something like this. I wouldn’t have––I needed the money, I mean, I–” His babbles descended into wet sobs, tears cutting tracks on his ashy face.
Feeling a little guilt, July sheathed her blade and stood up. “Get out while you still can.” The man nodded, still crying, and stood, loping off into the smoke clumsily.
July turned back to the path, beginning to feel lightheaded from inhaling so much smoke. She knew she was on the right track, and plunged farther into the wood, away from the fire at the front of the village. She ignored the paths entirely.
It wasn’t long before she reached a relatively untouched portion of the village, all but deserted by its tenants. It seemed a sort of residential pocket, with houses all facing inwards at each other, separated by a circular pad of dirt and stone and a few thin paths. Two figures stood in the plaza, forming a triangle with July. She recognized one as Amelia, disheveled but otherwise intact. The other was a thin, wicked-looking man that reminded her of the scoundrel she’d encountered in the alleyway in San Della. She readied her sword, and, still unnoticed in the thick atmosphere, intercepted their conversation.
“Have you changed your mind about my offer, doctor?” The wicked man said.
“No,” Mel responded. “But if it will make this needless loss of life stop, I will.”
“That can be arranged,” He grinned. July noticed the man reach behind his back. He stepped forward.
Mel began to speak, but was cut off by the third titanic rumble the forest had produced since they arrived. A few more loud crashes followed, and a group of trees fell to the ground, opening up a beam of sunlight that dissected the smoke.
July realized that she was no longer hidden. There was no way she could close the distance between herself and the man quickly enough––and if there was anything nastier than a knife in the hand behind his back, she might not want to. She wished she still had that fishing spear now, but would’ve settled for anything. A hatchet, or a rock, or––
Suddenly remembering their visit to the governor’s estate, July pulled the shield from her back and whipped it, disc-like, at the man. It made perfect contact with his temple, knocking him onto his side. He didn’t get back up.
Mel looked around with a dazed expression, as if woken from a deep sleep. She took in the fallen man, and July. Recognition dawned on her face. July ran past, farther into the wood, and she followed, and even more catastrophic rumbling than before at their backs.
“Who was that?” July called over her shoulder.
“That was the prince,” Mel responded. “He didn’t like our little stunt at the manor.”
I just assaulted royalty, she thought, with equal tinges of pride and horror. Good thing he couldn’t see my face. She turned a corner, trotting carefully down a steep incline in the path. She looked back at Mel to make sure she didn’t fall, and found her stopped halfway down the hill.
She began to protest, but noted Mel’s slack jaw and dumbfounded expression. She followed the doctor’s line of sight back to the village. At first she didn’t understand, but the ground shook with more of that unsettling rumbling, and then it clicked home. Mel’s words bubbled to the top of her mind––one living organism.
The village was gone. In its stead was the colossal, writhing body of a worm, its sunless skin pale as milk and leaking a horrible, viscous green fluid. It was larger than any living thing July had seen before––larger even than the vast chitin trees that towered over them. Despite its size, it moved with incredible speed, snaking through the destroyed village and smothering the flames. Its massive form left huge trenches in the ground and knocked down trees on all sides. The screams of a group of terrified villagers were abruptly silenced.
July could see a battalion of Lhord soldiers bearing torches in the center of the village, ensnared by the worm’s long, slick body. Perhaps that was all that was left of the invaders; she didn’t know for sure. Some stood, but most were kneeling, praying to some god or another. Only one tried to strike, sinking his axe deep into the worm’s hide. It pierced the skin, letting loose a gush of the green fluid that filled the worm’s tracks. The worm’s head––if it could even be called that––turned back to the group of warmongers, and began to rise, its body tensing. July felt sick as she realized what would come next, a fraction of a second before it happened. She couldn’t turn away.
The worm lunged forward, its head smothering the men instantly and piercing the ground. Its body twisted and shook, and it burrowed into the earth, its wet form throwing dirt into the air in great plumes. Almost the entire body of the worm disappeared before its head reemerged a few hundred feet away in an explosion of dirt and trees, followed by more of its tubular form, crashing through the wood once more.
It slowly came to a stop, its eyeless face resting in the smoking ashes of the village. For a horrifying moment, it seemed to look directly at July and Amelia, its immense spiral maw turning and grinding at bizarre angles. July realized, her breath caught in her chest, that there was nothing she could do; her sword was less than the size of one of its jagged teeth. They were helpless.
That moment stretched out for what felt like decades. Neither of them spoke; neither of them even breathed. Then, the worm tunneled back into the depths of the gloomy Chitinwood, as quickly as it had arrived. The rumbling grew distant.
Mel and July looked at each other, at an utter loss for words. Something fli
ckered in Mel’s eyes, something resembling hysteria, but it was stifled, pacified by shock.
Finally, she spoke. “Go to Aja and bring help. I…” Mel trailed off, watching the ruins. “I’ll look for survivors.”
July only nodded, not knowing what to say. Images flashed before her eyes in a traumatic array––fire, soldiers, the worm, Mana, the prince, the worm once more. She would not sleep well for a long time––neither of them would.
She summoned as much courage as she could find, and turned to the path. But she did not move for a long time. Not until that distant rumbling ceased altogether.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE AJAN SHORE. SYRINGES AND SAILBOATS.
The following month in Aja rested heavily on Amelia’s heart. She longed to keep moving––a mere echo of the urgency she felt leaving San Della, but enough to keep her from ever truly relaxing. On the other hand, the citizens of Shribe were still on the mend, and so her responsibility to the sick and injured––the reason she started this journey at all––chained her to the small fabric tent that served as a clinic.
Aja was not all bad; the smell of seawater was a deeply nostalgic one, and the chilling air was almost invigorating at times, even if it did contribute to a moderate creaking pain in her wrists. Besides, Mel’s small room in the apartments at the city’s mouth had thick walls, and within an hour or two of arriving, she could feel the shivers begin to retreat. If she lit the hearth in the room’s far wall, it could be warm in a quarter of the time, but on the few occasions she was forced to do so, the smell of smoke turned her stomach horribly, and she snuffed out the fledgling flame. She did not sleep well those nights. Barring that, life on the Ajan Shore was almost comfortable.
It was with this on her mind that Amelia instructed her apprentices––two of the three students she had lectured a month prior in Shribe’s orphaned apothecary (the third rested in the closest bed to the vented fire, paying rapt attention to every word she doled out). They made the daily rounds––checking vitals, cleaning wounds, and adjusting pillows, only deferring to Amelia’s judgment when they happened upon something unusual. This grew more infrequent over the weeks of practice, until the apprentices practically ran the clinical tent without her.
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