by Rosie Scott
The breath was knocked out of me as I was grabbed from behind. Panic filled me as my boots left the ground, kicking futilely in the air as I was carried toward the canopies, both of my arms taut against my side within the branch. I was alone out here. I had mistakenly thought I could kill the other goddess with the throw of a spell; I hadn't considered her plants would defend her much like my dead minions protected me. Even as I thought this, I didn't consider death. There had been too many times when I'd faced it and prevailed. I had to believe I could find a silver lining here.
Just then, a memory came to my mind. I was fourteen again, watching a plant disintegrate into ash.
Enflic le plague. I twisted my wrist around beneath the branch around my gut, forcing the death energy into its wood. The plague took time to work, however. I couldn't be sure this would free me before she killed me.
“May I have the honor of knowing which goddess means to kill me?” I shouted down to her, as the branch carried me ever upward, until it had no more to give. I was nearly thirty feet in the air, and the branch was weakening around me from my spell. I was terrified of falling, and memories of the Twelve soldier who had exploded upon impact kept flashing through my head, even though he had been at three times the height. I didn't know what would happen to me if I fell from this height. There had never been a reason to find out until now.
“My name is Nirit, darling, but we all mean to kill you.” Nirit. The goddess of nature. I knew of her, because Silas's family worshiped her. As I watched, Nirit lifted both palms to the sky, releasing more of her energy, which sizzled as it flew toward the army behind me. “To be honest, half-breed, I didn't much care to get involved in this mess, but I have been trying to win Vertun's favor for centuries, and he told me of your arrival. Your visit to my forest could not have come at a better time.”
“Vertun is a fucking coward who ran away from our shipwreck before he could finish me,” I spat, wheezing as the branch tightened. The plague was not working quickly enough.
“Vertun is one of the oldest gods alive, child,” she retorted, glaring up at me in offense. “He has better shit to do than babysit some measly half-breed to ensure she doesn't keep meddling in matters she cannot understand.”
“I understand all too well,” I breathed, my head growing hot with the pressure on my gut. “You all are assholes who need to be eradicated!”
Nirit scowled up at me in pure hatred, before she lifted up a hand toward the tree which held me. The branch holding me crushed further, and I held my mouth agape, unable to pull in any air.
Shing!
The tree's limb loosened a bit, and the oxygen I'd so badly needed finally slipped through my lips, nourishing my needy lungs. I glanced down at Nirit, finding that her eyes still stared at me, though the light within them started to fade. There was no one else within my vision. I wasn't sure what exactly had happened until red blood pooled within a cut at her throat, proceeding to drip slowly down the exterior of her neck. Her two brown eyebrows dipped together in a mixture of shock and confusion before she fell backwards to the forest floor, the edge of one of Nyx's throwing stars shining silver from where it had cut through her jugular.
Nyx rushed beneath my vision a moment later, taking a dagger to Nirit's throat, ensuring the goddess was dead for good.
“Cerin!” My best friend yelled back to where the sounds of battle had started to fade. “I need your life magic! She's going to fall!”
Oh, I thought distantly. I am.
As if on cue, the branch uncurled itself from my body in a swift movement, no longer beholden to the goddess's magic. My heart jumped into my throat as gravity took its course. Wind was whirling past my ears, and Cerin was screaming. He was too far.
I forced my mind to clear, holding a hand to my side as I fell feet first toward the ground. Sheel a—
Crack! A scorching heat rushed up from my legs and through my body, even as I fell over onto the forest floor, face first. Sweat beaded across my forehead, and I was suddenly so nauseated that I started vomiting before I even mentally realized I landed. A piercing buzz rang through my head, and the sounds of yelling were so distant. My head was light, and then heavy, and then I was so dizzy the world was spinning. I collapsed into my own vomit, feeling as my legs were surrounded in blood.
Yelling. So much yelling. It echoed in my head as I stared vacantly toward the sky.
The sky? Who had moved me? I lifted my head, paying no attention to Cerin's screaming as I glanced down at my legs. Both of them were broken fully at the knees. I saw bloody pieces of my kneecaps loose amongst my flesh, and it didn't faze me, because I felt like I was watching it all from a distance.
I laid my head back down. I still could hear nothing. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I thought of the battle with Malgor, and how a single punch had broken my ribs. I hadn't felt it, but at the time I wondered whether it was my god blood or the leeching high which gave me that reprieve.
Now I knew. My god blood alone did not make me stronger. The bloodline alone hadn't made any of the gods any stronger than the other races. It was their powers which gave them strength. I could die as easily as anyone else without them.
It was a humbling thing to realize.
Jakan. Nyx. Both of their faces were above me, both of them concerned. Jakan turned toward my legs, and spoke for a moment, though I couldn't hear him. After another second, he squatted down beside me, and put his palm to my forehead.
My focus came back to me, my ears clearing and finally relaying the surrounding chaos. I heard Cerin rambling so quickly near my legs I could barely understand him, and started to lift up my head.
Jakan slowly pressed my head back toward the ground. “Kai?”
“...yeah?”
The Vhiri looked relieved I could hear him, and shook his head slowly. “Don't look down there. Lots of awful things happening that you don't want to see.”
“But can you fix it?” I heard Cerin demand, his voice heightened in panic.
An alarm bell went off in my head. “What's happening to me?” I insisted, now terrified to look.
“You shattered both kneecaps in the fall,” Nyx replied, her voice low. My eyes flicked to hers, finding them swollen and moist. I realized I'd been fluttering in and out of consciousness, then, because she hadn't had the time to cry if my memories served me correctly. “Cerin's a healer, Kai. He wasn't at the university long enough to learn surgery.”
I hesitated. “I was, though. I can do it.”
Jakan shook his head, glancing toward my legs again. “Vallen is working on you,” he informed me.
“Vallen knows surgery?” I questioned. This was news to me.
“I know enough, Kai,” the Vhiri's voice replied from near my legs.
“Should that answer make me feel better or worse?”
Vallen chuckled, though it was edged in nerves. “I have done this exact thing before, and all turned out well.”
I left him to his work, my eyes falling back to Nyx, who still watched over me like a hawk.
“I'm sorry I couldn't save you,” she offered, ashamed.
“What are you talking about? That's exactly what you did,” I retorted.
“I didn't think, Kai,” she insisted, looking off to the side to avoid my gaze. “I knew she was the one controlling the trees, but I was a fucking idiot and killed her before I could get some sort of safe landing for you. Because I never think that far ahead. I just thought if I killed her, all would be well.”
“Because you wanted the title of God Killer,” I mused.
Nyx's black eyes came back to mine, where she laughed softly while shaking her head. “No.” She shrugged lightly. “It's a good perk, though, I guess.”
I huffed in humor.
“Seriously, though...I wanted to save you,” she insisted. “As payback for all the times you've saved me.”
“I know, Nyx. And you did, because my body felt like it was going to explode into a million pieces. I said something to piss N
irit off and she was telling her tree to squish me to death. If that had happened, I would have been dead before I'd had the chance to fall at all.”
Nyx looked relieved to hear me tell her that, though Anto's face soon appeared above me, a mixture of worry and amusement on his face. “Do you remember when I teased you about having a bucket list to argue with all the gods back in Nahara?” The orc asked.
I closed my eyes in embarrassment and said, “Yes, Anto.”
“Do you think now might be the time to pitch that list?”
Despite my predicament, I couldn't help but chuckle.
Twenty-one
86th of Dark Star, 419
The shattered kneecaps were yet another inconvenience to add to an already trying trip. Vallen had been able to put the fragile bones back together so that Cerin could mend them with his magic, the two men figuring out a way to heal me with both life magic and surgery that only I had ever been able to do. Even still, we did not make any traveling progress that day or the next. We spent a few days camping so that I could recuperate, and so the beastmen who had lost their lives to the goddess and her forest could be found and buried.
All in all, we had lost nearly thirty people. A small amount in comparison to the total of four hundred, but each life lost was a tragedy, and it only hurt worse because we had been so close to the safety of Silvi. I found myself leery of moving farther north. Jakan had been right about Vertun being the god who summoned the storm over a full moon ago, and if he had come across Nirit and told her what he had about my arrival in the wildlands, it meant he was headed north. Vertun had appeared to be Vhiri, from what I could tell after seeing him from a distance. Perhaps he was headed to Eteri. Surely Malgor was not the only god who lived amongst the unwitting so-called mortals. I wondered if any of the gods held positions of power within the hierarchies of the lesser races, and then thought about how terrifying that would be.
Despite my worries, we finally reached our final stop in the wildlands on the 86th of Dark Star, 419, just a fortnight before the new year, and we came across no more enemies, gods or otherwise.
Silvi was settled at the center of a fork in the river which ran straight through the land bridge connecting the wildlands to Eteri, and it was large enough to spread itself across nearly the entire mass of land. The trees of the rain forest were much taller than those in the swamps, though none of them here were wide or ancient enough to house cities. That didn't mean Silvi couldn't include the trees in their architecture, however. Much like the swamps of Misu had walkways and the tree of Tenesea had built on additions, Silvi combined both of these designs to create a city that was double and sometimes triple layered. Huts and ramshackle homes were built between and sometimes around the trunks of trees on the forest floor around roads marked only by the constant impressions of feet upon the same areas of dirt and plant debris. Above us in the trees, walkways led from one trunk to the other, where homes were carefully built along the sides of the plants, the weight supported by both attachments to the trees and sturdy wooden stilts which stood upon the ground below. In more populated areas of the city, a third tier was sat above even those, built in much the same way.
The rain forest city was separated into two sections. In the northwestern half of it were houses, apartments, and shelters for the recently escaped Alderi from the tunnel lying just a week to the north. In the southeast nearest its port, Silvi was a flourishing mix of goods-making, services, and trade stations. A mercenary ship was in the midst of being built right off the shore while we passed it, various carpenters calling out requests for tools and supplies beneath the full sunlight which made it feel like we weren't in the midst of Dark Star. Overhead, a bright blue and orange bird with a thick body flew, calling out a signature cry I hadn't heard since the night of the shipwreck.
Ga-woo! Ga-woo!
As I watched, an Alderi man standing amongst a group of sailors near the docks rolled up a piece of bread into a hard ball, before he threw it in the air toward the tropical bird. When the animal caught it in its large beak before it swooped away into the nearby foliage, the man and his friends laughed with glee.
I glanced over to Calder as we made our way to what he called the check-in office, where they logged new arrivals from the port. He'd said that if anyone would know the best way to get a letter from here to Hasani as quickly as possible, it would be the people who worked there. It was our first stop in the city, but we had walked through it for awhile so far, and he hadn't made a sound. It was unlike him.
“You consider this your home, don't you?” I questioned curiously.
Calder's look of nostalgia changed to a smile as he met my gaze. “I do. I was born here, just sixty or so years ago, so it feels like.” He jabbed a thumb back toward the docks as we left them behind. “The first ship Koby and I ever had was bargained for right in that harbor.”
“How did you bargain for it without any gold?” I asked him.
“Oh, a mixture of things. The man who passed it to us said it needed fixing up, so he'd take a lesser price for it. We still couldn't afford it, so he decided to take Koby and I on a trading voyage on his ship. It took half a year, and he taught us what we needed to know to be good sailors. How to work a ship, deal with food and repairs and storage, all that. It was a half year's worth of work from two capable men, but it got us a ship when we returned.” Calder dug into his pocket for a ferris cigarette, before offering it to me. With a smile, I shook my head. With a teasing grin, he pushed the cigarette at my lips, chuckling as I ducked away from it, before he gave up on his chase and lit it for himself.
“So,” I said, getting back to the ship story, “Why were you and Koby trying to buy a ship before knowing any of that?”
Calder grinned around his cigarette. “A beautiful mix of ignorance and impatience.”
“Was that ship the Galleon Stallion?”
“Nah, we called that one the Wobblin' Woody.”
I couldn't help but to burst out into an embarrassing snort of laughter at that. “Gods, you're awful at naming ships. The Wobblin' Woody? I'd be worried it was some sort of omen.”
Calder chuckled, smoke blowing through his nostrils in bursts. “It was, love. That ship was true to its name.”
“What happened to it?”
“Well, the wood got wobbly and it sunk.” He raised his black eyebrows as if to say, of course.
“Ah, so that was the time you told me you were stranded.”
“One of them.” Calder's face darkened with embarrassment which was rare for him. “I have very bad luck with ships.”
“Well, then I'll be turning around and walking home, Cal, because I now owe you nothing,” I jested.
“Suit yourself, love, you'll be doing me a favor saving me from your fickle friends.”
The check-in office was larger than its name would have one believe. Like all of the other buildings of Silvi, it was built entirely out of wood, and though it had windows, they were free of glass. The building sat beneath the shade of the nearby forest, just on the edge of the sandy beach which held the port. A human mercenary walked out of the front door, politely leaving it open until we reached it. I had been around Vhiri and Alderi elves for so long that I took special note of this, wondering if the man was originally from Nahara or Chairel.
Inside the office, a Vhiri woman sat behind the desk, in the midst of jotting down something in a book before her. Benches lined the walls of the building, and an Alderi man half-slept on one to our left, having been waiting for awhile. Calder and I walked up to the desk together, waiting for a few moments before the woman finally looked up.
“Check-in?”
“No, actually.” Calder leaned on the counter over both forearms. “We're looking to send an urgent message to Nahara. Got any mercenaries in the harbor who are headed there? Preferably beastmen.”
The woman blinked rapidly, in thought. “That depends on what you mean by urgent.”
“Royal mail,” Calder replied.
On
e eyebrow lifted. “Fan mail?”
“Royal correspondence,” I spoke up. The woman looked over to me, before her eyes traveled from my bright red hair to the rings on my fingers.
“Ahh,” she trailed off, understanding. “I never expected to meet you,” she mused softly, before starting to flip through her book. “We have four ships set to sail for Nahara within the week. One to Killick, three to Llyr.”
“Captains?” Calder asked.
“Ah...Mirai Blake, Jaecar Rapp—”
Calder snapped his fingers. “Jaecar's here. Where's he staying?”
“On his ship, I believe. The northernmost spot of the harbor.”
Calder tapped on the counter, thinking. “Okay.” He turned to me. “Jaecar's someone I can trust. Used to be one of my sailors before he saved up enough money for his own ship.”
I nodded. “If you trust he'll do it and do it right, I'll trust your judgment.”
Calder looked over the counter. “Do you have any stamped Silvi parchment?”
“Mmhmm. Just one page?” A piece of parchment with an impressed logo in the bottom right-hand corner of a forest was set up on the counter before me.
“That should work, thank you,” I offered, taking the paper.
“Good luck,” the woman called after us as we left.
Calder led the way to the northern harbor, where various ships were swaying beside wooden piers. At the northernmost spot floated a galleon that had to be as large as the Galleon Stallion, for it towered above us as we walked alongside it, keeping us in its shadow. The majority of our army stayed on the beach under the direction of Vallen and Jayce while Calder, myself, and the rest of my friends boarded the ship, looking for its captain.