by Martha Carr
Corian pointed at him. “See?”
* * *
They rode the transport shuttle long enough to get hungry and pull out the so-called lunches packed in metal boxes. Cheyenne lifted the square of dark-green chewy-looking something and narrowed her eyes.
“Don’t eat that all at once.” Corian pointed at it and popped a bright-red nut into his mouth. “That’s better left for when we run out of everything else.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I know what this is.” Cheyenne sniffed the square and dropped it back into the box. “Energy bar, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“Yeah, the FRoE has something like it on the other side.” She opted for what looked like a strawberry except for being a deep, shiny purple with heart-shaped leaves. Doesn’t taste like a strawberry either, but it’s way better than that bar. “How do those people over there have the same recipe for a brick of stinky magical fuel?”
Maleshi and Corian exchanged knowing glances. The general shrugged and picked at the food in her rebel lunchbox. “Those friends of yours.”
“They’re not my friends.” Cheyenne shook her head and dropped the berry leaves into the box. “Associates, maybe. That’s it.”
“Whatever the case, when they see something they like when the refugees cross over, they put their own spin on it. Let me guess—their version is mass-produced and comes in a plastic wrapper.”
“Huh.” Cheyenne closed the metal box and stuck it back in her pack. “You know a lot more about them than they know about you.”
Corian chucked. “That’s the way we like it.”
* * *
Despite the shuttle’s high speed, they traveled for at least another three hours before Cheyenne’s activator sent her an alert that they’d be slowing down soon. “Looks like we’re almost there.”
Byrd scanned the empty open land around them and frowned. “What part of the nothingness gave you that impression?”
She stood and went to the control panel, bringing the walls, ceiling, and floor back to their usual shining metal. Then she pulled up a map on the front wall for everyone to see. “Wow. We’re way out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Oh, yeah. Look at that.” Byrd snorted. “Could’ve said you saw it on a map.”
Shortly after that, the shuttle applied its braking system and decelerated to a smooth, efficient stop. The doors hissed and slid open on their own, and the traveling band of magicals pushed themselves out of their seats, groaning and stretching as they filed out of the shuttle.
Ember gave a mocking grimace as she floated out of the shuttle. “What area of town are we in again?”
“Ki’uali,” Lumil muttered behind her. “Not a town. More of a waystation.” The goblin woman’s eyes widened when they stepped around the front of the train. “Ghost town, I guess.”
The shuttle doors closed again, and the bullet-shaped O’gúl train powered up to head toward the capital with zero passengers. Cheyenne didn’t turn to watch it leave. “What happened here?”
“Looks like the same thing that’s been happening everywhere else.” Corian readjusted his pack and nodded for everyone to follow him. “Persh’al painted a clear enough picture of what you saw the last time.”
Foltr scowled at the abandoned village surrounding the transport station, the end of his cane digging into the dirt at his feet. “Four hundred years.”
“What?” Maleshi looked at him over her shoulder and stopped when she saw the old raug’s trembling lips curl into a grimace.
“I was last here four hundred years ago, and the Ki’uali station was an active village. Full of trade. Pups scurrying around underfoot.”
“A lot happens in four hundred years, right?” Ember gazed at the rotting buildings falling apart.
“Not here.” Maleshi approached the raug and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Grandfather. We need to keep moving.”
Foltr snarled but didn’t protest, thumping his cane with unnecessary force into the ground as he fell in line.
“Watch out over here.” Corian pointed toward the closest slanted building on their way up the wide dirt path that led into the mountains behind the village.
“Yeah, that looks like what Persh’al and I saw.” Cheyenne leaned toward the building to peer at the dark lines of black sludge climbing the walls of the building like snaking vines. Shiny vines that pulse like worms. Wrinkling her nose at the mixed scent of decay and old urine, she kept moving after the others.
Lumil’s boot squished into a puddle of thick sludge off the path, sending out black ooze in rivulets like a scurrying swarm of maggots before she lifted her foot again. Beside her, Ember scowled and floated away from the mess. “Ew.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s not always the case, but right now, I’d say ‘ew’ and the death of the land go hand in hand.”
“Wait.” Cheyenne stopped and sniffed at the air. Definitely urine. How did I let that one go? “Anyone else smell something?”
“Yes.” L’zar spun and eyed the abandoned buildings. “We’re not alone.”
Byrd snorted. “Really? I know half of us here can smell fae, but I doubt we’ll find any here.”
“Not fae.” L’zar stepped back down the path, his eyes darting from one rotting building to the next. “But the smell of piss doesn’t hang around for four hundred years.”
A howling shriek split through the air, and a dark shape darted between the buildings. Grunting and sharp, warning hisses followed, then more dark blurs moved across the village.
Corian pressed his lips together. “If we keep walking, we’re not a threat.”
Lumil snorted. “Yeah, great idea. Let’s turn our backs on those. What the hell are they?”
The closest building on their right shifted and collapsed the rest of the way, then a snarling, rabid skaxen leaped from behind the next building over and charged at Byrd.
Byrd unleashed two balls of green fire at the skaxen, hitting it in the chest and stomach. The other magical staggered backward and looked down at its chest. Loose rags hung from the skaxen’s skin, and beneath them, the same black sludge oozed from its pores, giving it an eerie sheen as if the magical had slathered itself in black oil. The skaxen thumped its chest, sending a spray of sludge in all directions, then attacked again.
“Seriously, what the hell?” Byrd sent out more green fire, stopping his attacker long enough to step away from the snarling, flailing creature.
“What happened to him?” Cheyenne asked.
“Anyone wanna help first and ask questions later?” Byrd shouted as the skaxen just kept coming.
Lumil conjured the spinning disks of blazing-red runes around her fists. “I gotcha.”
A mottled black-orange skaxen leaped from the ruined village and landed on Lumil’s back. The goblin woman roared and flung her attacker away, then stalked after that one instead. “Come back here!”
A dozen more skaxen wearing rags and covered in oozing black sludge swarmed from the wreckage toward the traveling party. Black sludge dripped from their fangs and ran beneath their orange skin in thick lines like veins. Cheyenne took a step back. “Jesus, look at their eyes.”
“They might look the same, Cheyenne, but those are not the eyes of Oracles.” L’zar hissed at the oncoming swarm of rotting skaxen while Byrd and Lumil finally managed to put down the first two.
“They’re gone.” Corian’s blade-like claws extended in a glint of silver. “We’re fighting animals now.”
If I couldn’t smell them dying, I’d say he was wrong. Cheyenne summoned two sparking black orbs and nodded. “This sucks.”
When Lumil’s fist came up into her attacker’s face and sent the skaxen-thing flying back into a rotting building, the rest of the crazed pack turned to look at the damage. Then they charged.
Cheyenne sent blast after blast into the oncoming horde, knocking them back into each other. Orange-black bodies flew, spraying black sludge in every direction, but they kept coming.
; Maleshi and Corian darted around the attackers in flashes of silver light, going as close as they dared to the sludge-soaked grass and the rotting village. Their claws glinted in the light as they came down on any mottled body part in their way. The skaxen screamed and clutched bleeding stumps. One kept crawling toward Maleshi’s foot with one hand as it clutched its eviscerated stomach with the other. She put it down with another swipe of her claws and kept moving.
Foltr raised his staff and swung it at the creatures, making contact every time with thick smacks and blasting them back with red light from his gnarled, outstretched hand.
Ember froze behind the line of fighting, staring at the bleeding, burned, or disemboweled skaxen clawing across the ground to get at the magicals standing against them. “Holy shit. We’re fighting magical zombies.”
Cheyenne flung black tendrils from her fingertips, which coiled around the neck of a skaxen leaping right toward Ember and jerked the creature backward. It let out a strangled choking sound and Cheyenne stepped aside, releasing her tendrils to send two black energy spheres into the thing’s throat. “Can’t really say we if you’re just standing there, Em.”
“Right.” The fae girl blinked and stepped forward, shoving outward with both hands. A wall of brilliant violet light shot away from her and spread across the scrambling, snarling lines of rotting skaxen. The force of her attack threw them back like bowling pins, and the lost creatures convulsed on the ground before lying still.
“Whoa.” Cheyenne spun around toward her friend. “That one new?”
Ember shrugged. “I think so.”
L’zar dodged a skaxen’s swiping claws, stepping around the thing with his hands clasped behind his back and watching it move.
Cheyenne turned with the others to watch the drow not fight the creature. “What is he doing?”
As if to answer her, L’zar flicked his hand toward the creature. A concentrated burst of white light hit the skaxen in mid-air as it leaped toward him and blew the blighted magical to smithereens. Thick, sludge-covered chunks of skaxen rained down around the drow, who’d raised a shield around himself and held it until the revolting deluge subsided.
Byrd and Lumil guffawed in surprise, pointing at the mess and shaking their heads.
Ember doubled over and turned away, dry-heaving at the side of the path.
Grunting, Foltr watched the path beneath him as he trudged onward, thumping his staff into the dirt. “A waste. Pure waste is what it is.”
Corian headed toward L’zar, frowning at the bodies littering the ground between them and the not-so-abandoned village. “That was a little excessive.”
“In the end, perhaps.” L’zar’s fingers moved quickly to lower his shield, then he stepped toward the closest intact body and bent over it for a closer look. “I wanted to see how this worked.”
“What, you mean, how an entire village of skaxen mutated with the blight over four hundred years?” Cheyenne stopped beside Ember and set a hand briefly on her friend’s back. “You okay?”
“Yep.” Ember straightened and swiped her violet-streaked hair away from her face. “I can’t believe I didn’t puke. I’m good.”
“This wasn’t a generational mutation.” L’zar straightened again and stepped back to study the black-oozing bodies. “No skaxen village would have a new population in only four hundred years, if it’s even been that long since these were tainted.”
Corian said, “So, they were infected.”
“That’s one way to look at it. Touched, perhaps.” L’zar strode up the path and scanned the foothills ahead. “The wildlife Persh’al mentioned were mutations. I would’ve said these skaxen contracted this from the water or a tainted food supply, but I can’t, can I?”
Maleshi shook a glistening black chunk off the toe of her boot and joined the rest of the party. “The rot found them in their homes. It’s still the Outers, but at a different point of the O’gúl compass. This shouldn’t be possible.”
“No, it shouldn’t.” L’zar stared straight ahead and picked up the pace. “We’re running out of time a lot more quickly than I expected.”
Chapter Seventeen
After fighting off the tainted skaxen, the group’s mood was considerably dampened. Even Lumil and Byrd agreed to an unvoiced truce and didn’t nag each other as they moved up into the mountains. The path rose steadily, and the mood only worsened.
L’zar eventually led them off the path and through the mountains in a direction only he knew. They passed a small pond in a clearing, but it was filled with the same oozing black sludge, every tree and bush and blade of grass around it shriveled into blackened husks. Farther on, a flock of strangely squawking birds dove toward them from the sky, intent on attacking despite hardly being able to fly straight. Their bloated bodies smacked into tree trunks and overhanging branches, throwing some of them off course or to the ground. Most of the birds exploded on impact, raining bird parts and chunks of sludge. Those on the ground flapped around miserably, croaking in denial of their circumstances before Cheyenne put them out of their misery.
“That’s probably the only good way to handle it,” Ember muttered, staring at bird carcasses oozing black sludge. “Don’t beat yourself up.”
“I’m not.” Cheyenne trudged after the others, gritting her teeth. “I want to figure out how to stop this while we still can.”
The next time the group came upon a village, they were cautious of approaching too close. The magicals living up here in huts in the mountains weren’t blighted like the skaxens at the transport station, though it took longer than it should have to discern that the dark smudges on their faces and bodies were from dirt instead of the cursed ooze eating away at Ambar’ogúl.
“If we’re moving farther away from Hangivol into the Outers,” Cheyenne muttered as they passed the village, “how did those magicals skip out on getting infected?”
Corian shook his head, warily eyeing the troll youngsters staring at him from where they sat on the ground in front of the village’s adults. “Doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for this, and we can’t afford to assume there is one.”
A troll elder hobbled toward the strangers, squinting so harshly her scarlet eyes practically disappeared within the folds of her wrinkled violet skin. She thrust a finger toward L’zar and moved it between him and Cheyenne. “Black spirit you bringin’ out to us, nah. Keep movin’. Keep out them no-light wadeen.”
With a hiss, the old troll waved the travelers away, shouting after them in a combination of the Outers dialect and old O’gúleesh Cheyenne didn’t try to understand. She stepped toward Corian and looked over her shoulder at the entire troll village staring after them. “I’m guessing there’s some story about drow being evil spirits.”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “Just O’gúleesh so far removed from civilization, they’ve forgotten what a drow is.”
“For real?”
“You saw the inner city, kid. All the drow holed up close to the Crown and the Heart. Drow aren’t freely roaming around in the Outers anymore. Not like they ever did in large numbers, but it’s obviously been a lot longer for this tribe.”
Maleshi fell behind the party and stopped, facing the old troll head-on and spreading her arms in supplication. “Do you know me, Grandmother?”
The troll elder scoffed, her long, washed-out scarlet braids swinging over her shoulders. “Ha! Nightstalkers lookin’ like all the same, dem, yeh. I know one pushed mine out far back in these hills. Now we pushin’ yours, yeh. Run quick. These pups want nothin’ with claws and hush-hush lyin’. Shoo!”
The general swept her gaze over the three dozen trolls staring silently at her, many with fearful curiosity in their eyes but most of them with pure hatred. Pressing a hand to her heart, Maleshi gave the old troll woman a small bow, then hurried to catch up with the others.
Cheyenne didn’t notice Maleshi had fallen behind until the nightstalker stepped in line beside her as the party followed L’zar up the next rise into the mounta
ins. “Why’d you stop?”
“Just to talk.” The general grimaced and clenched her fists. “I’ve seen that old troll before.”
“What?”
“Long time ago, kid. Not long enough for me to forget the tattoos on her arms. Apparently long enough for her to forget my face.”
“Who is she?”
“A hell of a fighter, that’s for sure.” Maleshi cleared her throat and took one last look at the edge of the village through the trees behind them. “I don’t know her name. I should, though, shouldn’t I? I’m the reason her tribe’s all the way out here.”
Ember floated along quickly behind them. “I know General Hi’et comes with a long line of titles and honors, but I’m sure your leaving this world for Earth doesn’t make you responsible for what’s happening on this side.”
The nightstalker smiled bitterly. “I am well aware of that, Ember, and I appreciate the sentiment, but I am responsible for this specifically.”
Cheyenne stared at Maleshi’s profile and waited for the general to keep going. She’ll say more. She wouldn’t have brought it up if she didn’t want to talk about it.
“I can feel you staring at me, kid.”
“I can feel you about to explode, General.”
Maleshi snorted. “Maybe. After Ba’rael turned the new Cycle, she didn’t waste any time putting all her grand plans into action. I served the Crown back then. Got my orders and carried them out unquestioningly, not thinking about what kind of Crown would give those kinds of orders.”
Up ahead, Corian cleared his throat without turning around to look at them. “We all had our parts to play.”
“Oh, sure. And I played mine very well. That’s not an excuse.”
“Whatever it was,” Ember said, “it can’t have been that bad. The magicals in the capital went crazy when they saw you this morning.”
“The magicals in the capital only saw a fraction of what I did in the name of the Crown.” The general looked into the upper branches of the stunted trees dotting the mountainside as they climbed after L’zar. “I led more war parties than I can count into the Outers right after Ba’rael took the throne. We cleared out the valleys and farmland first. Took the livestock, then the forests, then the mines. Everywhere we went, everywhere she sent us, O’gúleesh had been living their lives relatively peacefully for ages. We all knew that, and we moved them out without a second thought.”