Song of Sundering

by A. R. Clinton

  Shara cringed as Taeri pulled a third bandage from her back, “Back to Prin? There are Lifecasters at camp.”

  Sabeen said nothing. Taeri cleared his throat, “Well, uh—you were out for a while. We have new orders. You’re goin’ back to Prin now and we were told to take you. Your ma decided.”

  “What? Why? Cause of this mission?”

  “Well, uh, no. I mean, if she and Hafi knew what we were really doing, then fuck yeah, cause of this. But, they don’t, so no. Hafi got some new data, and uh—”

  Sabeen chimed in again, “Let me just show her.”

  Taeri said nothing, but he must have nodded because Sabeen squirmed around him into Shara’s field of vision and sat in front of her, leaning down. “After we left camp, the scouts saw the Xenai army break into large groups. We have some of their route data that the scouts brought in.” She held her LightTab parallel to the ground and a half foot from Shara’s face. There was a map overlaid with dots and lines. “Do you see it?”

  Shara looked at the hundreds of dots and circular paths they made. “They are looking for something.”

  She pulled the Tab back and started tapping at it, “Yeah, uh—you.”

  Shara felt the same feeling she had when she was hurtling across the rocks; fear. The entire Xenai army was looking for her?

  Sabeen didn’t seem to notice and continued talking while she tapped on the screen of her Tab, “Each of these circles, the center of them is somewhere we were at during our mission. Look at it in a timeline view.”

  She placed the Tab in front of Shara again, the dots and lines were moving slowly and a big blue X appeared, “This was where we found the weird group that had a Tab. See how the nearby groups all start tightening their circling patterns around where we were, but the far away ones stop circling and head straight towards us?”

  Shara could see it. They hadn’t even tried to hide what they were after. It probably only took Hafi so long to find out, because the scouts couldn’t get the information fast enough.

  “Why? I mean, sure we were killing them, but it was not more than a hundred or so, so far.”

  Taeri spoke up as Shara felt the sting of fresh bandages being laid on her back, “Your ma thinks they want to kill you—get rid of the strongest part of Prin’s defense. Hafi thinks—well, he thinks the entire war is a lie—they only came for you. He wants to take out as many as we can before we all fall back to Prin. We can keep them out of Prin for a long time, maybe wipe out their army.”

  “Maybe we can. But, maybe we can’t. I don’t want to go until the rest of the army does; we all have to help as long as we can. Plus, what about all these Blight crystal patches? There is so much we don’t know, Taeri, I can’t just abandon that.”

  Taeri pressed down on the new bandages and Shara groaned, the pain reaching through her attempt to block it. She managed to move one arm up to her chest and push, rolling her onto her side. She realized they were in a cave made of snow. They had dug a hole to survive in and tend to her.

  Taeri looked at her with an understanding smile, “You have to abandon it, for now. They want you safe... We all do. We’ve seen what you can do, Shara. If anyone can destroy the Xenai army while they besiege Prin, its you. But you need some Lifecasting, which we can’t take you back to the camp for with these orders. So, we have to follow them and go to Prin.”

  I can’t leave the army and the crystals. They’re all I have.

  “If my purpose is to wipe out the Xenai, then I’ll do it. But I am not going home until I know more about these crystals or until the army goes with me.” She turned her face from Taeri, who was starting to look petulant. She looked at Sabeen, “You can help me Lifecast on myself. You can identify the connections to remake with Source and I do them one at a time.”

  Sabeen glanced uncertainly at Taeri, but Taeri was now just looking at the ground between him and Shara’s wounded back. “I mean—I could, but I’m not a doctor. Neither are you. We may be able to get you working, but it may not be a very good job. You could end up with a lot of long-term problems.”

  “Then I’ll get those taken care of when this war is over. Please, Sabeen? Help me figure this shit out. For all I know, maybe these crystals will give us a new power to fight the Xenai. We need this. We’ll stay safe and head towards the eastern patches the Nagata found—stay close to Prin. With your help, I’ll be ready in a day or so.” She paused and looked over at Taeri, focusing now on the old bloody bandages he had removed from her, “What do you think, Taeri?”

  “Alright, we head toward Prin—maybe a detour or two is fine on the way.”

  Shara smiled and tried to move, to look at him better, then winced.

  “Stay still, girl. Don’t need you ripping anything apart more than it already is. I’ll get some snow for the pain.” He stood, stooping low to avoid the ceiling of snow. She heard some shuffling behind her as people moved to let him through.

  She looked back to Sabeen, “Thank you. I’ll keep myself safe... I’ll keep all of us safe.”

  Shara chose to ignore the look of doubt that flashed across Sabeen’s face.

  60

  Fiher

  The city that used to be was before him, in complete darkness. Xenai rarely used lights. It didn’t make much sense to put their efforts into old Terra technology. Fiher stared down at the dark blocks of building, rising into the moonlight.

  Each of the large structures contained one of the labs and Fiher had to find the one the Blight crystals were being taken to. He had taken an opportunity to jump off the cart that he’d ridden on with all the crystals. The lie at camp—that he was assigned as part of the guard-had been simple. The Lead Xenai at the labs would know the truth: they had not requested his presence. But, the efforts to conceal himself meant he had no idea which building now contained the cartfuls of Blight crystal.

  Making his way from his makeshift home in a cave was simple enough. He reached out to see if he could sense any other Xenai outside the town. There was nothing. The first junction he came to was the center of it all. On each corner of the intersection, a towering building stood. Only one was protected. Large bushes had been Source-grown around the building. They were embedded with graphene, an experiment that the Xenai proudly used wherever they could.

  The branches grew a web between each of them, the black webbing was near impossible to penetrate. Even the projectiles the Terrans liked to use wouldn’t shatter it. The webbing took on the patterns of the trees and shrubbery that it was embedded in, growing in thick overlapping lattices.

  The protected building had to be the one.

  Fiher circled the building several times. There was no way in for someone who couldn’t Source cast.

  The town was much smaller than Prin, but the massive Underground inspired Fiher to look for other entrances. He circled outward, searching for sewer holes or other entrances to underground structures. He ended up in an open multi-tiered building made of the strange, lifeless stone the old Terrans used everywhere.

  The former motos of the dead littered the structure. He descended into the levels below. There was nothing but one of the small rooms that used to move up and down. Filner tried to open the sliding metal doors, but could not get enough leverage with just his hands. He left and searched around for something he could wedge the doors open with. He found nothing but decaying motos filled with old bones.

  61

  Tani

  They were early. The trek out to the small hut to meet Olivier had taken less time by traveling through the abandoned sections of the Underground before emerging at the edge of Prin. Tani opened the misaligned door enough to squeeze her head through. The place was empty. She pulled it open the rest of the way, waving Vin in behind her. They dropped the packs next to the small table.

  “Go hide outside. He said to come alone this time, but that wasn’t going to happen.”

  Vin turned to leave, digging through his pockets. He winced as the cloth of his pants hit the pricks on the back of hi
s hand that still had freshly dried droplets of blood on them. He continued his adventure of searching his pockets, grimacing each time his hand hit the cloth until pulled out a plum from the large side pocket on his pants. Tani followed him out, patting the back of her own itching needle pricks in her hand while pretending to not see him eating the fruit as he dodged into a group of trees.

  “Thank you.” She whispered loudly at the trees once she was certain they were still alone. She looked up at the stars, clasping her hands behind her back and humming to herself.

  Only a few moments passed before Olivier emerged from the path that led back to Prin. Tani waved at him. Glancing around he waved back.

  Tani started to turn towards the hut as he approached, when she heard Olivier talk, “No, no--I just want an update, no need for the hut.”

  “Uh; okay.” She looked at him, rubbing his hands together; the anxiety was pouring out of him. “Not too much to report yet. I’ve started a series of experiments to determine interactions with various elements. The Blight crystal seems to be the most promising with the way it adapts to the nearby flesh. I think placing it somewhere it’ll travel through all the body’s systems, perhaps repair them.” She paused when he looked around again, “I’ll know if it’ll work in a few days.” Tani looked at Olivier and watched him crane his neck around at a slight sound. His nervous desire to leave was pouring into every movement he made. She still had to ask, “I could possibly speed up the results if I had more samples to use.”

  “Good, good. I—,” He seemed to register what she had asked a second after he started to respond. He took in a deep breath after he stopped speaking, then burst into a fit of coughs. He cleared his throat, “I don’t have time for samples now. I’ll just wait for the news, then, but I don’t have time for more and more tests, whatever we find, we move forward with the operation.” He turned and started back towards Prin without waiting for her to respond. His abrupt and demanding mannerisms awoke her anger, and she glared at his back as he walked away, thinking over the hundred of ways she could delay doing the surgery. All she had to do was keep Olivier happy that there was enough concern to not move forward.

  But, I’ll never be able to make good progress with this when all my samples are in rats.

  Once he was out of sight, Tani heard the crunch of Vin’s steps to the side. He was already heading in to the hut to get the bags when Tani turned. He emerged with both packs. She reached out to take the smaller one, but he waved her hand away, “I got them. If I was the crazy scientist. I wouldn’t need an assistant.”

  Tani laughed, “You would have had to actually learn something in school, though.”

  He shrugged, “Yeah, that would have sucked.” He paused for a half step, “Did he look familiar to you? I swear I’ve seen him before.”

  “I never have. I’m horrible with names, but great with faces.”

  “He’s gotta be someone I’ve seen. Maybe around the markets or something, but I swear I know him.”

  “Doesn’t really matter. We’re still getting paid, either way.”

  They approached the smaller northern gate and the two guards stepped forward, each one pulled out their LightTab and hovered it over their hands. The solar light made the fluid injected into their hands glimmer with various vivid colors, blue, pink, green. They swirled together, muted under the flesh of their outer skin. The guards stepped back and opened the gate to let them in.

  * * *

  Tani shivered as she and Vin made their way into the unused Underground tunnels. The wind had picked up on their way home, biting into them. The luxury of being able to purchase winter clothes had always been foreign to them, but Tani recognized that it didn’t have to be any longer. She cursed herself for not thinking of it before the hours traveling in the cold. The abandoned sections were just as frigid as Upper Prin and the outskirts had been, but the shelter offered relief from the wind.

  They made their way for another half hour before life sprang up around them. The night-haunts were overflowing into the main corridors. Both the buildings and makeshift streets were filled with people, tightly packed into groups, just large enough to fill every inch around the fires as they shared the warmth from their bodies and the flames.

  It always surprised Tani how few Undergrounders observed normal day cycles. So much of what they did was self contained; only one Undergrounder in twenty had a job that required them to ever leave the buried city. The Scavs, like Tani had been, and the marketeers left during the day. Even the refugees that had flooded into the Underground had quickly grown accustomed to this new mode of living. Many of the people out now had likely not seen the sun for years-the children, included. The space was filled with as many children as adults. Perhaps even more. Some were attached to parents, but most wandered, playing or searching the long corridor for whatever their jobs required.

  A flood of people started to come from the far end of the passage. They wore deep red robes. The front of the group walked confidently forward, wielding clubs and a few bows. They didn’t seem to threaten anyone, but the crowds shied away from them. They reached the section of the tunnel where most of the groups sat or stood next to fires. The front grouping of three men lunged forward, grabbing any child within reach. Screams and shouts erupted. Parents lunged back at them, trying to reach their children. The men holding the children retreated into their group with them, while others came forward to beat down anyone trying to stop them and grab more children.

  Tani stepped back behind Vin, pulling him after her like a shield as she retreated to the wall. She was probably too large for them to think her an easy grab, but she hadn’t gotten any taller since she was a short twelve-year-old. Vin reached back and held onto her as he stepped backwards, facing the chaos. The parents who had lost children now realized there was no way to get them back from the militant group of men and had begun crying—a solid wail rising from the mouths of dozens of people, punctuated by the frantic, shrill screaming of the children they had grabbed.

  Like a summer storm passing overhead for a few minutes, the robed men whirled through the tunnel, taking the children into the abandoned path that Tani and Vin had just retreated out of. Tani looked into the group as they passed and instantly saw the commonality of all the children taken: they were all Illara or Inari. The red robes and the type of children clicked in her mind. The BloodSmiths.

  Once they had passed, Vin grabbed her hand, and they ran from the place before the retaliation flooded the Underground. They reached the labs, panting as they worked together to turn the lock on the door and yank it open. When they were inside, with the door locked again behind them, Vin put the crossbar down into the mechanism, preventing it from rotating to unlock.

  The room immediately behind them had a few recovering patients on beds, but neither Tani nor Vin cared to greet them.

  “What the fuck was that?” Vin asked.

  “BloodSmiths. Must be replenishing what the Artificers destroyed.”

  Vin eyed her, “What a—distant—way to say they just kidnapped a fuck-ton of children to replace the ones that were murdered.”

  Tani felt the judgement from him. Vin judged nothing unless it was food, and she felt a pang of sadness. “I—sometimes distancing yourself is the only way to deal with something.” She became aware of her patients, watching them, and grabbed Vin’s arm to pull him closer, “Let’s go talk upstairs,” she whispered.

  He nodded and started up the ramp. A few patients asked what had happened and Tani said it was another fight caused by the BloodSmiths and Artificers, which was technically true. I hope they didn’t have any children or relatives taken.

  Vin took a sharp left into the second tier of the lab, to the surgery room. The only reason he would go in there would be to talk, probably loudly, and keep the sounds away from the rest of the lab. He shut the door and sealed it behind them.

  Before he said anything, Tani felt a tear slip down her face as she started rambling, “It’s my fault. The only reason
they have grown this big to be able to pull this off without fearing the backlash is because of what I did for them to get my blood supply. And now I’ve seen where the blood comes from. Any box we pick up now could be from any of those children.”

  Vin walked over and hugged her, saying nothing as he held her.

  “I mean,” she continued, “I always knew that they kidnapped kids for their supply if they didn’t have any volunteers, because they are easy to grab. Especially down here. But, seeing it—” She kept crying into Vin’s chest and he rubbed her back.

  After a few minutes of sobbing, she looked up at his face, “What am I going to do?”

  “Your improvement of their methods did spark this, but their actions are their own. It’s done. Are you really considering not working with them anymore? Where would we get blood?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe with what we have done so far, we can start taking donations and collecting our own.”

  “It would slow down progress for weeks—weeks some of our waiting patients can’t spare.”

  Tani sighed heavily, leaning into Vin again and mumbling into his chest, “I don’t know what to do.”

  He patted her again, “You know what you should do? Eat. Comfort food is great for times like these. I’ll make that cheesy, spicy corn meal you like. Then, we sleep, with bellies so full and warm it’s like having someone hug you. And tomorrow it’ll be easier to decide.”

  Tani smiled despite food sounding appalling to her. “Alright,” she said. It would make Vin happier, at very least.

  Delilah sat, staring into the wall next to the surgery table. “Wha—I mean—I’m glad you guys are okay, but I can’t believe this happened. This is far worse than anything they’ve ever done before. Before, it was all rumors and children would go missing and sometimes come back with stories of the temple. I felt it, coming here. The entire Underground is tense; I just didn’t know why.”