《"Fight!"》 Chapter 1 The power of that single word staggers through the chosen instance, sparking in Ylo the ghost of emotions he¡¯d been sure had left him years ago. It rolls across the northern grass, riffles through the southern desert, reverberates off the mountains to the east, and casts itself west on the Depthless sea. It drowns out the crunch of his feet as he shifts his weight against its force, bracing himself on the sun-scorched soil, making sure he holds his balance while the force of it moves past. It ripples through the crowd of townsfolk that have gathered in the shade of Marking Church ¨C the old one, unattended now, whose crumbling walls and fallen alter serve only as the edge of Atthe, the last village this far south that clings to the fringe of the Gaslight Plains. It shivers the panicles of the Su?uraj trees, what few still manage to dot this land, highlighting the oblative yearn many sense within their branches, for which the wretched things are named. It dances amongst the Judean huts that huddle together to form the town¡­the inn, where Ylo arrived last night, accreted over generations in near impossible slopes and angles, its rooms added wherever they could be, whenever its coin was greater than nil¡­the market, open now but empty, the only place Ylo has seen that still entices with hints of green¡­the Hold, where racks of oozing, filthy knuckles grip at even filthier bars, and grins of rotted, tombstone teeth jostle at windows for a view. It tickles at the widow¡¯s chimes that dangle in front of each of those windows, adding their tinkling to its milieu. It sears like steam as it fills Ylo ''s ears, equal parts compulsion, invitation, foreboding, and acceptance. And, in a way only one as cursed as Ylo could understand, an underlying hint of pain. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it is only Ylo that hears and feels that last, because it is only Ylo who cares. Because it¡¯s Ylo e who needs it to be true, because it¡¯s only Ylo who has (wasted?) the ages of his life reading every scroll he could manage, hunting down every possible lead. Listening to every rumor on every corner of every road, from every merchant, soldier, minstrel, or sun-crazed, hook-handed lambic-sodden waif of the world that claimed to know anything about anything that had to do with the thing that spoke it. Impoverished himself to buy (or steal, if buying wasn¡¯t an option) every artifact they mentioned. Because it¡¯s Ylo who, if that imagined pain proves to be, in fact, imagined, and all of what he¡¯s learned is wrong, will soon be so much worse than dead. He takes a small step forward, into the circle, head down and palms together in the tradition of this thing that speaks, this thing of which he is now a part, for better, worse, or absolute hell, and lets the blocks come crashing down. Lets the Voices he has kept at bay flood through him with their crush of soul, opens himself to every secret they promise, every tactic they argue, every desperate plea they scream. He feels their chaos coursing through him, filling him with their idiot power, lets them use him as their conduit between this world and the next, and in so doing siphons off as much of it as he is able. He drinks until it fills him fully, feels his breathing slow, his mind race, his arteries swell, his tendons tremble with the force of it, until he knows he can hold no more. His senses heighten. The tiniest twitch at part of his skin, the palest ray of refracted light, the softest whisper of the wind is as a torch, a gale, a smithy¡¯s hammer in his head. He begins to feel the currents of air that rise from heat baking the soil, the shudder of the crash of waves half a league down the rocky beach. He hears the caw of the crows and vultures that circle the dead in the arid south, and now can smell the Gaslight burps that light the northern plains each night. He senses his opponent doing the same from the opposite side of the circle, and then¡­Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Then he is forced to tone them down, lest the inputs overload him and drive his fragile mind insane. He analyzes the stream of inputs and selects the ones he did not need: the searing heat of the midday sun, the sizzle of the sweat on his brow, the rank smell of unwashed bodies radiating from the crowd¡­none of that will help him here. He mutes them all. He doesn¡¯t shut them off, exactly, but turns his mind away from them. Pulls them on a lower level of his consciousness, and twists that part of it sideways, parallel to the direction of their flow, so they¡¯ll strike with only glancing blows. All this he does automatically, unconsciously, and perfectly, the result of ages of study and practice. It is the foundation of everything to come, the kettleballer taking his stance, the chef selecting her delights, the artist making up their pallet, assembling just the tools they¡¯ll need for the masterpiece to be created. One cannot win it here, in this pregnant phase of preparation, but if one is slow, careless, or just plain off, it can certainly be lost. And all this he does in the space of a heartbeat, with the timbre of the commensurate word still ringing in his ears (practiced¡­perfect¡­automatic¡­the mantra he adopted for himself all those centuries ago, when he¡¯d first explored the art, which he still chanted every morning as he exercised his skills). A sense of calm comes over him, like it always has before, once the background noise is dulled, and he can focus on the task. He opens his eyes. Light assaults his heightened senses, bouncing off the bleached formations, the harsh white stone of the huts, the bones of animals picked clean, the budding fruits of the Su?uraj trees. It pierces through his open retinas, blinding him for a half a breath, until he tones these down as well (pulling, turning, glancing blows¡­practiced, perfect, automatic). His vision clears, revealing through the eyes in his face what the one in his mind has already seen: the earth, the town, the people, the sea. The circle, stretching out behind him, around him, and forward, towards his opposition, who is standing on the other side. It shimmers with a boreal light, which, despite the gravitas it represents, extends no more than a finger or two above and beneath the soil. A barrier which none can pass, not until this thing is done. If he looks closely, he knows what it will show to him¡­script etched in its formless mass, repeating itself over and over all along its hundred-span circumference. Script to represent the edict under which it has been called: Et debitum redditur¡­et debitum redditur A debt repaid. As nervous as he is, Ylo almost smiles at that. Indeed, he thinks to himself, as he eyes the thing across from him, but not the one you think it is¡­ Chapter 2 ¡­a dark man sits in a dusty room in the back of an unkempt cleric¡¯s office, built at the edge of a lonely town somewhere in the western sands. In his lap are molded clays, flat, wide sheets of earth filled with strange, archaic symbols set in frames of Holly Oak, which he¡¯s uncovered in the archives. He traces through them with his napstrak, a thin, blunt instrument of wax that he¡¯s attached to the end of his finger, lips moving, eyes darting, torso turning every now and then to a length of skin he¡¯s set to his side, on which he makes a mark or two with a stick of char he holds in his hand. The town, once known as Al¡¯Jaziera, but which, in the centuries since this scene took place, has decayed into an unnamed cloud of hovels, pits, and shallow graves, settles into dusk around him. Children finish at their chores and answer mother¡¯s call to sup, horses whinny in the livery, hoping, perhaps, for one more stub of root or one last nibble of grain before the nighttime game of swatting flies. A lone peddler pushes his wares down the trampled pathways that pass for streets on a homemade, rickety mess of a cart, hoping to fleece one final patron before he drinks his profits away and starts it all again tomorrow. Long sunlight filters through the myriad cracks in the office¡¯s walls, lighting bars of airborne dust in orange, almost reddish hues and letting in all these distractions. He sits cross-legged on the floor ¨C there are no tables in this office, only a lining of shelves and cabinets ¨C poring over one of the clays as he held it in his lap. It is not the first time he has held it. Some months ago, while visiting a neighboring town, he heard rumors they existed, and he came to check them out. But they were useless to him then, written in a language he could neither read nor name, and it has taken all the intervening time to find someone to help him translate. It was a wizened, doddering old woman, who¡¯s turned feet and rheumatism left her scarcely spry enough to earn her keep by cooking and cleaning for one of the town¡¯s wealthier merchants. She gasped when she saw the rubbings, light sparking in her eyes for the first time in the dark man couldn¡¯t guess how long. ¡°Yes!¡± she exclaimed, speaking broken common tongue around a cup of lukewarm tea, ¡°yes, Nema knows this words before! Clays like this old Master has when Nema is a little girl, Nema not allowed to touch!¡± She wasn¡¯t able to translate for him, but together, over a weak second steeping of the same spoonful of leaves, they identified the language, and visits to one and then another of the nearby cities unearthed the cipher he would use¡­Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. Now he¡¯s back, rubbings translated, cipher secure, saddlebags relieved of nearly half a stone of silver he¡¯d had to part with to secure it. Back because Nema, sweet, blessed, half-demented but beautiful Nema, reminded him to check the frames before he left, which he¡¯d forgotten when he took the rubbings he had taken on his search. Sure enough, there are markings, etched into the Holly Oak that hold the crumbling clays together. tek¡­dekali¡­a?vienci-hermidad¡­the record eyewitness of¡­ He begins to translate, imagining Nema as he does. Imagining her as a child, of eight, maybe ten years old, peering through her master¡¯s keyhole, or a crack in one of his doors, or from behind some luxurious drapery long enough to hide her feet yet loose enough for her to see through, spying on her master as he turned them over in his hand, inspecting them in much the way the dark man is doing now. ¡­metada¡­uop¡­tek-untkuv¨¢ntka¡­bur¡­method for the invocation of¡­ He thanks her silently for all her help. For sneaking peaks at all the symbols, and taking note of how he¡¯d turned it, and remembering for all these years the time he¡¯d spent inspecting the frame. But most of all he thanks her for sharing those memories with him when he shared his rubbings. He hopes the powder he left with her has done something for her hands. ¡­aggra¡­akiva¡­denegar¡­keeper (of) Justice, Regulation The etchings on the final frame are clunky, and defy translation. The dark man cannot tell if they are nouns or proper names. But it doesn¡¯t matter. He knows what they hold by now. Someone in the murky past actually tested three separate of the rituals, and has documented the results. He reads through the rubbings again, interpreting them very differently now. Two of the methods had failed miserably, it seems, having no effect or worse, but the third... He sweats cold despite the heat that holds this country in its grip. There might actually be a way¡­ Chapter 3 Ylo locks eyes with the figure, in a small tradition of his own. He holds them steady despite his nervousness, using his newly sharpened senses to delve into its oily pupils, watching them pulse, twitch, widen and shrink. The figure does the same to him, and an unspoken opening volley is begun. He has his doubts about this part. There are those, he knows, who¡¯d count it as a waste of time, believing the only thing of any importance is tapping into one¡¯s source of power as quickly and completely as possible, and as long as one did that, and entered combat at full strength, all this foreplay didn¡¯t matter. But Ylo initiates it anyways. The struggle between the two is real, even if it¡¯s purely mental, and an early victory, however small, might prove useful in the end. Besides, he thinks to himself, there are plenty of things a man can learn without relying on his Voices. He delves into the figure¡¯s eyes, searching them for strengths, weaknesses, motivations and desires, and senses the confidence they hold. It is strong. Stronger than he was expecting. Fresh adrenaline jolts through him, and he rests a hand against the pocket sown into the side of his tunic, and on the amajlija held within. Strong enough, he thinks to himself, and he hold¡¯s the figure¡¯s gaze. A stream flows past and around him. Not a stream of air, or light, or anything else his body could sense, but a stream nonetheless. His Voices, in their wildest form. It tiptoes around him, anchored to him in its way but not controlled by him, not yet. Like a gymnast¡¯s ribbon, it seems to be a part of him but never touch him, not directly, always aloof, always behind. It swirls up one leg, then out and around the other, licking at his hips and waist. It dances up his abdomen, throwing itself wide around his arms, his shoulders, giving them an ample berth before closing back in and circling his neck and head. It fades as is streams up and away. How he knows this, indeed, how he can sense the stream at all, he still can¡¯t fully explain, even after all this time. But somehow, some way, he does. It is chaos at the moment. Disharmonious, directionless, uncoordinated chaos, as useless to him as a bolt of lightning, or a spore cloud on the wind. But, like the lightning, and the fire it can create, or the spore cloud, and the fungi they can spawn, it has potential. He holds a hand out into it. Spreads his fingers as wide as they¡¯ll go and curls them, forming a sort of five-pronged claw, which he thrusts fiercely into its flow. The stream splits. Each of the gaps between his fingers serves as a sluice for one of its motions, and each becomes a separate stream. A little of the chaos fades.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! He rakes his hand back, struggling against the thrashing motions, forcing them back, to him, behind him, warring with them for control, an oarsman in a stormy sea. All the way to the edge of the circle, never allowing the sluicegates to slacken, never letting his claw deform. With a violent shove he slams it there, throwing it against the circle, forcing the split into its ether, keeping what dances around him pure. Chaos out, control in. Harmony, peace, cooper- (practiced, perfect, automatic) -ation¡­and one more thing, before he sets the thing affixed¡­a subtle curling of his thumb, and bending of his runted finger, just enough for them to graze each other at their tips, forming a fifth, forgotten gate, through which the barest trickle flows. All this he does in a second heartbeat, with the echoes off the eastern mountains still cavorting towards the sea. He breathes. The streams breathe with him, swelling, strengthening, brightening as he inhales. He senses them and takes comfort in their twisted embrace. They are his, and they are his alone, and yet, are also willful things, subject to their own caprices, burdened by their own desires. Like dogs of war, trained to serve with utmost loyalty¡­but what is trained can be untrained, and there is always fresher meat. He touches on them one by one, not counting, not taking inventory ¨C they would never stand for that ¨C but sensing, getting a feel for which are present, which are not yet, which are strong and which are logy, which are eager for a sprint and which will need to be held back. He selects some of his most reliable and shifts them ever so slightly, altering the direction of their flows, bringing them to here and now. This he does with his third heartbeat, as the last of the echoes fade away, and the only sounds that can be heard are the whispers of the Southern winds and the crunching of the townsfolks¡¯ feet as they shift their weight on the shell-and-pebble sand. He release the breath he has just taken, feels the tension dribble out of him, feels his body, his mind, his soul relax, allows himself to open up to the Voices he has just invoked, receives the knowledge they impart. The dance begins. His posture shifts. The ceremonial semi-kowtow becomes an active, athletic stance, full of entasis and strength. He scans the circle once again. His adversary is with him, he sees, readying himself for battle, drawing forth his Voices also, or whatever sources he will use. Behind, perhaps, by no more than the time it takes a fly to flap its wings¡­ Almost (but not quite!) automatically, he selects one of his stronger Voices, and attunes himself to it¡­ Chapter 4 ¡­a man with a scar running up and down one of his shoulders stands, panting, in a bamboo hut located somewhere in the Eastern jungle. Sweat is pouring down his face, dripping off his shaven chin and soaking into the fired grass that passes for the building¡¯s floor. His teeth are clenched. His hands are balled up into fists. His eyes are closed in concentration, and every muscle in his body is tensed to the point of popping veins beneath his skin as he struggles with his latest test. The place is sweltering. Midday sun beats down on a roof made of banana leaves, bouncing off the puddles and swamps freshened with last evening¡¯s rains, without so much as a breath of wind to help circulate the air. His bare feet curl their toes in and around the sheets of grass, seeking purchase on their surface, or perhaps only fidgeting. He collapses. Physically collapses, falling forward on his hands and knees, and buries his face in the grass. He groans and pounds the grass with his fist. A second person sits on a three-legged stool set into the corner. Sunlight filters through the window to their right, illuminating a thin, frail body swimming in a silken robe. Its hair has lost all trace of color, but it¡¯s long, enough that it could reach the waist if its owner stood erect. Its face is sunken, pallid and wan. Its jaw wags slackly in its mouth, jostling from side to side on hinges tethered incorrectly, revealing the sutured stump of a tongue flopping around at the back of its throat. Black crusts rim its mouth, the end of some grotesque infection which has eaten away much of its flesh. The scarred man is not sure of this person¡¯s gender, only that it is feisty, far more than it ought to be with but a few (days? The scarred man thinks it must be days, as ravaged as its jawline is) days left to live. That it is feisty, ravaged, old beyond measure¡­and has lived a life the scarred man needs to emulate. Smack! It reaches out with a rapier-like instrument and strikes the scarred man on the head, using its broad, flat design to annoy more than to harm. It grunts furiously, forming whatever noises it can with its rotten jaw and severed tongue, noises not assigned a meaning by any language of the land. But they are easy to interpret: Lazy donkey! Why so weak?! You keep face down in the grass! You eat grass like donkeys do! Get up! Do it again! Or something to that effect. The scarred man groans to his feet, using his hands to prop himself up and throw his weight back to his heels, and stands, brushing debris and bits of grass of his knees, shins, forearms, face. Very little off it moves. He picks at if for a moment, plucking some of the larger strands and shaking them off and onto the floor, but gives up before too long, and instead prepares to try again. He breathes. Once in, once out. Once in, once out. Once in, as much as he can, swelling up like a buoyant bladder, and hold, letting it get to know him, to be a part of him, and calm the bedlam in his body, once out, as slow as his burning lungs will allow letting it cleanse him to his soul. He closes his eyes, and sees distractions breaking up and flaking away in the wind his exhalation generates. The grass, the hut, the sun, the heat¡­the sweat, freshening again upon his brow after drying on his trip to the floor, about to trickle into his eyes. The second person, whatever they are, striking him again and again, and gurgling admonishments. The dull aching in his shoulder, lessened in this jungle heat, but which is omnipresent now, ever since he took the scar. All dissolving, flaking away. He feels his spirit emptying, accepting silence, the things that make him who he is giving themselves back to the world, the barriers he holds within him thinning, turning, opening to what may come. The rhythms of his body slow, stutter, crack, and shatter. Predictions, expectations cease. His next breath is now unscheduled, a thing which may take seconds or years, his next heartbeat not assumed. The fields his body generates, magnetic, gravitational, strong and weak, become uncycled, ready to sync up with any input he desires. He gives himself to nothingness, and, at last, he is prepared.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. He clenches his fists again, and holds them out in front of him, wrists curled, palms outward, in his classic power stance. A Greek god cast in chains, struggling eternally against his bonds. Or perhaps a newly favored mortal, ready to receive their boon. He sees himself in this state of preparation, of openness, of complete and total lack of self, standing before an empty landscape. He sees deserts, mesas, arroyos and boulders, all beneath a midnight sky. He sees lightning in the distance ¨C heat lightning, far too far away to spoil the peace with any sound ¨C and, paradoxically, the moon, as bright and as clear as ever it was despite the roiling of the storm. And to this barren waste of a dream, from someplace neither inside of him nor out, of neither this world nor the next, something comes a-sauntering. Out from behind his consciousness, this tiny little pocket of existence he has never dreamed was there, it strides, bounding along with its carefree gait, whistling its sprightly tune. The scarred man listens. He listens with his ears, of course, tilting his head, stretching his drums, tightening them as much as he can trying to pick out every note, every little nuance of tone, but he listens with the rest of him as well. He listens with his eyes, watching the something jounce along, taking note of where it peaks, valleys, is sharp or is flat, searching for some causal ground. He listens with his face and neck, feeling the vibrations, the resonance, as they strike against his skin. He listens with his tongue, his nose, his fingers, his toes. Listens with his heart, his head, his gut, his intuition. Even listens with his cock, vulgur as that seems to him. But it¡¯s true, and, what¡¯s more, it is necessary. Every part of him must strain, every single cell must feel, let the rhythm fill him up, give up all the emptiness, all the openness he has created, to the melody and flow. And, gradually, he aligns. He senses the timbre of the Voice, and he copies it exactly. He feels the pitch to which it¡¯s tuned, and he matches with his own. It¡¯s happening, he thinks, acknowledging the idea bot not allowing it to form fully, not wanting to break the equilibrium with words. This is where I lost it last time, but¡­not here. Not now. This time I¡¯m going to hang in there. This time it is mine! It almost dumps him even so, just from that seed of a roil of a thought, and he has to slue to keep his bearings, turning himself on the dreamscape, tilting perspective this way and that. His body stumbles, almost collapses as it did before, pitching face-first in the grass, but it recovers, warily, and it resumes its focused stance. He takes it deeper, delving further. He feels himself backing away this time, letting it happen more than he is making it happen, giving every part of himself the freedom to align this way, and wonders as they fall in place. The fields his body generates begin re-form, re-focus, syncing with the thing that¡¯s joined him, matching signature and spin. The vibrations of his cells adjust, until they, too, are in accord, lining up like a nonillion compasses, straining, twitching, yearning towards their one true north. He backs off further, removing his buttresses and guards, trusting the pieces of himself to hold the balance in his absence, retreating deeper into the caverns hidden from his conscious mind, until, like someone building a house of cards, placing the final two at its peak, he removes his touch completely, and marvels that the house still stands. And then, when every last part of him is following their marching orders, and down to the tiniest molecule is syncing with the chosen Voice, he returns. Re-emerges from the caverns, calls his minions to his side, and, with full support of everything inside of him, as one with the Voice they¡¯ve tuned, he parts his lips and¡­ Chapter 5 He speaks. He speaks with his arm this time, reaching it back, into the streams, and arcing it forward as fast as he can. It joins with the Voice to which his body has been tuned, thinning veils, merging planes, phasing with the dreamscape world and calling an imagined something from the space between the two. A double-bolus appears in his hand. Twin balls of blinding light, bound by no force he can see, which are assigned corporeal weight as he accelerates his hand, and reach their necessary mass just in time for him to release them with his throw. They hurtle across the space of the circle, neither rising on the winds nor falling to the earth, as fast as if he¡¯d thrown a dagger, each orbiting around other like two halves of a binary star. Ylo watches them intently, tracking their progress, sensing their strength, as they approach the figure on the other side. A spark of hope flashes inside him as he prepares his Voice again, readying another chord. Maybe, just maybe, it could really be that easy¡­ They stop when they are a pace away and fall, lifeless, to the beach. Their light winks out, and for an instant they are solid, balls of matted, leaden grey. Then they are gone, returned to the rifts from whence they came, and all that remains are two plebian dents in the ground, where the shells that make it up are just a bit more crushed than they were before. He tries not to feel let down. He had no right to expect it to land, he tells himself. It was an inchoate attack, a cheap shot he¡¯d hoped to use to paralyze his foe¡¯s preparations and cement his early lead. He shouldn¡¯t be surprised it failed. He had selected that Voice for defensive reasons, anyways. Any offense he got out of it would have just been gravy.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. And, uh¡­speaking of? Right¡­ Now he speaks with both his hands, throwing them forward, facing outward, spreading his palms in a starburst of fingers just as the figure opposite him gestures toward him with its hand. A barrier explodes before him, spreading like a supernova from the locus of his thrust. He speaks with his heart as well, lending it structure, desire, passion and life, instilling in it the strength it needs to repel assaults of epic power, giving it the depth to ward against advances of cunning and guile. But it is useless anyways. He wasn¡¯t sure what to expect out of the figure. The gesture wasn¡¯t one he knew, the figure not one he can read. It could have gone a number of ways, from a Somme-like bombardment of shells designed to grind him down with sheer fatigue to a swift assassination meant to end it bloodlessly, to a single megaton explosion to try and blast him from the earth, to a probing sacrificial lamb, too pathetic to pose any real threat of its own but able to learn, interpret, react and report. But this¡­this is none of these. It is a deep, subsuming warble, felt more than heard at first, the airy whisper of a ghost, the breathing in before the scream. It reaches an immediate crescendo, filling every dram of the circle, respecting nothing of the barrier. It hits him like a solid thing, knocking him back to the edge of the circle. The world slues. Perspective shifts, and senses pitch in a sickening combination of slurring and skewing. The world seems to separate into layers for a moment, twisting, warping, and stretching apart in awkward ways, creating gaps that shouldn¡¯t be. Sound blends, its different sources, volumes and styles piling up upon themselves, losing all identity in a mad rush to reach his ears. His skin prickles in alternating bands of heat and cold. His connection with his Voices slips, and he can sense them trying to eel away, fleeing from this unsure thing. He reaches for them, groping semi-blindly in the funhouse world the circle has become, and, with some effort, opens himself up to one, and to it he attunes himself¡­ Chapter 6 A tall man in an eider coat steps onto a rocky crag that pokes out from a drift of snow. His spiked boots scrape and clatter on the granite, enough to make him check his balance, holding his arms out at his sides, while he finds a solid hold. He drops to his hands and knees and creeps, moving inch by inch, until he is at the edge of a crevasse, peering down into its depths. It is blackness, frozen emptiness within. He checks something on a piece of paper, which he has sewn to the sleeve of his overcoat so he can check it without exposing skin or digging gloved hands in his pockets, then nods, satisfied he knows the way. He regains his feet ¨C carefully, very carefully, making sure his spikes don¡¯t slip and send him tumbling into its depths ¨C and, through the slits in his wooden goggles he has fashioned against the threat of snow blindness, he measures the distance of his leap. He rocks himself back and forth, telling himself it¡¯s the wind, he¡¯s waiting for a lull in the wind, while he gathers up the courage. One¡­testing the footing, making sure his push-off point is sound Two¡­checking his landing zone for hazards Three¡­oomph! He tilts himself forward and half-falls, half-jumps in an awkward head-first dive. He clears the crevasse without much trouble, but never gets his feet beneath him, and upon landing finds his upper body buried in a drift of snow. He lifts his head, spitting powder as fast as he can, trying to get at least some of it out of his mouth before it melts and steals his body heat, and checks himself, making sure he¡¯s still intact. Satchel¡­pickaxe¡­anchors¡­cord¡­ Everything appears in order. He rises to his feet, dusting powder off himself by brushing with his doeskin gloves, and begins to scramble up the drift. His heart skips a beat as he approaches the top, and prepares himself to look at what his sources tell him should be there. It is. He has to squint to see it, even through his slitted goggles, such is the brightness of the sun out here in this cloudless tundra, but it¡¯s there. A savage, hand-hewn arc of granite, rising only a few handspans above the snow, and the darkness of the tunnel it protects. He stutters towards it, picking places where the stone rises to the surface or, failing that, stepping lightly where the crust seems thick. Within seconds he is at the mouth, digging at the crust of snow, widening the opening enough to slide his body down. Click¡­click! First one foot, then the other hits the floor, and he releases the cord down which he has abseiled. He doesn¡¯t bother untying himself¡­the grotto is not supposed to be large, and the cord affords him more than enough maneuverability to explore. He does give it some curious tugs, however, yanking it sharply this way and that, making sure his anchor holds in the oblong of sunlight glistening above his head. The climb back up will not be long, only a few span, at the most, but making it without an anchor would be¡­challenging, to say the least. He turns, satisfied, and strikes the torch he pulls from his satchel. Schizophrenic light illuminates the grotto.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. It is small. Smaller even than he was expecting, based on the accounts he¡¯s heard. Barely a span wide, and a fraction less than that deep. The ceiling curves steeply down from the entrance, blending into the opposite wall, into which is carved a chamber filled with desiccated human forms. A single stone sarcophagus takes most of the natural space, so much so that he cannot walk normally, instead having to shimmy sideways in the space between it and the stone. It stands, elevated off the stone by a bier formed of petrified wood, its marble sides carved with intricate scenes of royalty and godhood. Its lid is formed of tooled copper, and bear, presumably, the image of it esteemed inhabitant, sprouting from a flower budding from the tree of life, perhaps ascending to their next appointment, perhaps simply being reborn. Five lanterns surround the coffin, in a star, pentagram, circle, the tall man knows not what they mean. Even with his cold-numbed nose he can tell the bricks of neem oil they contain has been rancid for a generation. He shimmies past all of them. The object he seeks is not in the sarcophagus, if the legends are to be believed, but rather in the lesser forms that crowd the excavated space. He does not believe them blindly. He is prepared with hand tools with which, he believes, he can open it, should the need arise. But he will let them guide him. He steps into the chamber, spikes sinking into dust he tries not to think of what. Or perhaps it is ash, he thinks, noticing a smattering of jars amongst the corpses, at least one of which had broken open. He¡¯d heard the dead were sometimes burned, in case of a certain wasting disease. Perhaps it is only ash. He kicks at one of the nearer forms, which looks to be the least entangled. A child, he notes with some disgust. A girl, who never reached the age of ten. She sits, cowering, apart from the others, her arms wrapped around her ankles, her head drooped between her knees. Her skin is impossibly crepey and brown, almost leather in appearance, after so many years exposed to the dry, cold air. It has sucked back from what remains of her frame, clinging to her disappearing flesh and lending her a vacuumed look, like something drained from the inside out. Her elbows creak as he probes her arm with one of his spikes, testing to see if he can free it, and skin-slash-bone-slash-textile dust sifts free from the joint and joins the bedding at the chamber¡¯s bottom. The elbow separates completely, and her forearm dangles in the air, tethered now by only its fingers intertwined with their counterparts at her ankles. Next he tries to lift her head, groping it with one of his gloves, digging a finger under her arm to seek the purchase of her brow. The soft piff of vertebrae disintegrating accompanies the lever upwards, and he is staring at her face. It is pale, relative to the rest of her, sheltered lo these many ages by the wrappings of her arms and legs, but it is just as drawn and dry as the rest of her. Her teeth grin up at him in the half-smile, half snarl human skulls can¡¯t seem to help once their lips have rotted away. Her eyelids platform uselessly out across their empty sockets, looking like some sort of fungus growing, reaching out for nothing. One flakes away as he moves her, crumbles and flutters down her chin and into the bowl of the rest of her body. Her hair disintegrates, flaking off the back of her head like talcum in a powder-bag. He lets her go. Her head bounces off her arms, falling back into its bowl. It settles in a position not quite the same as when he found it: turned to one side, ever so slightly, so one corner of one of her sockets can now peer out and into the grotto, keeping watch for future guests. The tall man briefly wonders how long it might be before she has another. But he tries not to think about it. She is not the one he seeks. Based on her position, both her huddle posture and her location relative to the rest of the forms, he doubts she was even part of the massacre. Probably placed here after the fact. A survivor, perhaps, who passed a month or a year or two later, and somebody felt she should be with her family. He turns his attention towards the others. Chapter 7 He has to stoop as he steps into the alcove, unlike in the rest of the chamber, where the slope of the roof was steep enough for him to have stood naturally. He curses whoever made it at first, wondering why they couldn¡¯t make it high enough for him to stand. Then he considers the effort it must have taken to carve even this much out of solid granite, and finds a measure of compassion. A huddled mass of forty or more is pressed into the tiny space. It is hard to tell, as desiccated as they are, but it appears as if they were placed with care¡­standing upright where they could be, or sitting propped against the walls, with only a few thrown in the center, left to lie in heaps on the stone. But they have shifted as they¡¯ve dried, shrunk, rotted, dissolved. Many now lean against the walls in pieces, their joints giving out under the dual pressures of gravity and time, the pieces of their strengthless frames crushed by the weight of their fellow corpses. Some share a final embrace, whether because they died that way, as lovers, meeting the end together in each others¡¯ arms, or because they were arranged post mortem, the tall man doesn¡¯t know. A few still bear the markings of the massacre itself ¨C blade marks on their bones, cracked or open bits of skull, skin, brown and shriveled as it is, darkened in places and in patterns time and tannins can¡¯t explain. At least one is flat out missing a limb, lying, prone, on the floor, one leg missing at the hip. Others likely are as well, but it is impossible to tell what was missing from the first and what has simply fallen away. He chooses one of the prone figures and begins his search in earnest. He isn¡¯t sure what he is searching for, exactly. A woman in a ceremonial robe, the makings of which he only knows from modern adaptations, is his only real clue. But all the clothing has rotted away, and gender becomes indistinct in such advanced stages of decay. He can¡¯t see anything to indicate which might be the form he seeks. Sigh! At least there are only forty or so¡­ He finishes searching the first prone figure and tosses it, bone by bone, towards the sarcophagus, He runs each between his fingers, cleaning it of anything that might conceal the object in question. More than one crumble into dust themselves, joining the detritus on which he kneels. He sifts through that as well, of course, removing his gloves and raking his fingers through it square by measured square, searching for anything of any size that might have gotten buried. But there is nothing that piques his interest. A dagger here, a bracelet there, a couple of coins that might be treasures to the numismatists in town, but nothing the man can afford concern for at the moment. He moves on to a second figure and dismembers it as well. Then a third, then a fourth. His back begins to ache from crouching as he finishes with the pile of prones and moves on to the figures that are propped against the walls. A few of these are still wrapped in scraps of clothing ¨C warrior¡¯s leather, by the feel of it. Tough material, and oiled deeply, very slow to decompose. He has to work through these with care, checking every fold of skin, every baggy pocket that has formed as the flesh the once-taught garment surrounded lost itself to the passage of time. He finishes with the sitting figures and starts in on the few still standing, changing his position every few minutes from kneeling to sitting, sitting to crouching to standing, semi-erect, while he inspects their upper bodies. He gets through the last of them. Still nothing.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. He sits back against the stone, watching the shadows chitter and dance in the failing light of the torch. He fishes a second out of his satchel and strikes it, re-illuminating corners that have dimmed, and eyes the bulk of the sarcophagus, which rises now like an Atlantean temple from the sea of bones and dust he¡¯s tossed. He doesn¡¯t want to open it. Aside from the time and effort involved (his tools are very rudimentary, and he has no expectations of speed), he is worried about the other legends, and what else he might disturb. He sighs. But there is nothing for it now. On weary legs without conviction he rises, and scuttles towards the coffin. He is searching in his satchel for his awl and lever, the first of the tools he¡¯ll need to unseal and move the copper lid, and he is just about to (dagger) ¡­and he is just about to¡­to¡­ (look at the dagger you pea-brained little donkey-lover!) It takes a moment to sink in. The dagger. The very first thing he extracted from the dust, and tossed aside as nothing more than one of the victims¡¯ attempt at defense. But was it? There was something off about the dimensions, not so great for combat or throwing, and it was ornate. He digs into the pile just outside the alcove, where he thought he¡¯d tossed the thing. He burrows through the pile of bones and other detritus, searching for that glint of steel. It seems almost fitting, now that he thinks about it, than an object of such peace and kindness would be disguised as a weapon. The Chubain may have had a sense of humor after all¡­ THERE! A flash of something metallic¡­no, not the dagger, just a bracelet. How about there, half-hidden in the dust? Was that an edge of sharpened steel? He extracts the thing, pinching it gingerly by the blade despite the doeskin that protects him, and blows the dust off its haft. It is the dagger, and it is indeed of awkward dimensions. It is small, barely longer than his hand, with a thin, corroded blade that was only ever sharp on one side. Despite this, its haft, carved from bone, or perhaps whitewood, with arcane patters across its surface, is easily three fingers wide. Almost wide enough for¡­ He smiles as he pops the haft, and the amajlija tumbles out. Cast in a lustrous, silvery metal, which the tall man thinks is pewter, it depicts a man in robes, with features of the southern wastes, arms raised to Mother Sky, hailing a flock of messenger birds as they flutter towards the dawning sun. On the reverse, three bands of raised material run up and down the height of it, giving it a platform feel, or some sort of guided track. Into each is etched a word: Matiti¡­kun¡­mir Dovesong. Chapter 8 Ylo sends it in the figure¡¯s direction, speaking mostly with his Faith. He imagines it penetrating through the warble, lancing out against its source and piercing it right through its throat. The warble falters, screeches and dies, and the Dovesong blossoms with senescent light. It fills the circle and, somehow, precipitates, scattering drifts of particulate light to calm the pitching and the yaw. Ylo sets his feet beneath him using slow, cautions motions, like a sailor making land, and casts a glance at the thing that spoke, watching from outside the circle. He cannot see its eyes, if, indeed, eyes it has ¨C the thing wears a hooded cloak, which casts part of its face in shadow ¨C but he can see the set of its jaw, and the smile the thing projects. A taste, that smile seems to say. Just a taste of what you¡¯re in for. There was no display of force in that smile. No ride in with guns a-blazin¡¯, no intimidation game. No final counsel to renege, and yield with his life intact. Only cold, sardonic surety of the outcome, and anticipation of the show. Ylo narrowed his eyes, studying the thing intently, searching for some sort of weakness, or anything to help prepare. We¡¯ll see, Ylo thinks, trusting the barrier to minimize any damage he might suffer in the half a heartbeat¡¯s idle time this takes. We shall see¡­ He prepares his next attack, selecting a Voice of Passion crowned in gildings of Aeth, and attunes himself with practiced (perfect, automatic) ease. He holds his hand out in a puppet-master pose and speaks with it, and with his animal lust. A mist appears before the barrier, swirling, creeping, and somehow darkening the patch of earth on which it sits, an oasis of dampness in this Philistine sun. Fangs appear inside of it. Sharp, overlapping peaks of white enveloped in a black-lipped snarl. The growl is heard, guttural, deep, and it is joined by another, then two, then five. The eyes form next, yellow and keen, followed by the ears and snout. The fur that covers the back of its neck, the strong, powerful shoulders and forelegs. It knits together the main of the body, forming it in washed-out mist, and then¡­nothing. Their hindquarters remain unseen, hidden in the swirling fog. One howls. Sees the sun and opens up, piercing the air with its predator¡¯s call. All six of them leap forward, out of the mist, and hit the shell-pocked soil running. They convalesce as they cover the distance between them and the figure, becoming solid, vivifying. As Ylo calls them with his Voices, setting them to here and now. The figure wiggles one of its fingers and a row of brambles appears before it, sprouting from the arid soil like shot from a fowling piece. Its branches match the earth in which they are rooted: crusty, dry, and stubborn as hell. Its thorns are daggers in the sun. The first of the wolves is already at their rows and thrusts itself upon their fury, unable to turn away. Skin and fur alike are shredded, and the thing yelps in pain as they open its flesh, spilling blood upon their vines. It struggles, hopelessly entangled, doing more and deeper damage to itself with every twist and every spasm. The others were a span away as the brambles sprang up from the ground, and Ylo still has time to save them. He attunes a Voice of Passion and, aided by his proximity to the Southern Desert, hits the hedge with belts of sunfire and burns a hole in the thing. He considers burning the lead wolf too, but decides to save his energy. Its suffering will not last long. He could have called them back ¨C all but one of them, anyways ¨C and regrouped. He could have changed tactics and launched an aerial assault, over the hedge, or one with armored vehicles or beasts. But he wants to force the figure to engage, even with something as harmless as the forest wolves, and do so in a more active way than guarding with a wall of brambles.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The five remaining canines scamper through the hole in the hedge, teeth bared, lips drawn back in predatory snarls, passing within handspans of their fallen comrade, whose yelps have already started to weaken as the poison paralyzes her. The figure makes another gesture, and a cyclone of scorpions appears in the space above the wolves. It rains down on them, clinging to their coats, causing them to yelp and stagger as stingers sink into their skin. Within a span they¡¯re off their course, and on the ground a half-span later, eyes rolled back in their heads and spittle gathered at their lips, their legs kicking feebly at nothing. Ylo grimly watches them die. He could have saved them ¨C some of them, at least, with precision licks of fire, killing the insects one by one, but the concentration that would have taken, and the strain it would have placed on his Voice, simply isn¡¯t worth the effort. The wolves have served their purpose by eliciting a response, and through them Ylo has gained valuable insight into the mind of his opponent. Funny thing you¡¯ll realize, he thinks to himself, remembering a conversation he had had with one of his mentors many, many years ago. As you start to face stronger opponents, you must learn to read them. Not their style, or their strengths and weaknesses, or the habits they exhibit ¨C you know how to read those well enough already. But their opinion of you is something you must also understand. Men who believe themselves stronger than you will invariably take the defensive, waiting for you to make the first move and show them something of your form. Then, once you have revealed yourself, they will try to match your style, and best you with your own devices. If they match your every form, parrying when you thrust and only using counterstrokes as their offensive, then you¡¯ll know they have contempt for your abilities. But if you get them charging you, in their own style, attacking and defending with the forms that they know best, that is when you have them frightened. This is from a fencing lesson, which he engaged in, without fail, twice a month from the age of ten until he passed the rites of adulthood and graduated to the Klewang sword. During this particular lesson they had finished forms a little early and focused on the psychology of the game. It feels strange, going this far back, and remembering with his natural memory, snippets from his natural life. Strange to think of the time before he learned about the Voices, before this dogged quest began, to visit those sanguine salad days when the only scars he carried were the ones he took during fights in the training yards. Strange¡­but somehow it feels right. He senses the counterstrike rattle the barrier, shaking it like a physical thing, causing it to strain its moorings in the earth and at the edge of the circle, strong enough that it opaques itself for a heartbeat or two while it rebuffs. A direct attack, then, likely of air, but whether aimed at him or at the barrier he could not say. When the opaquing clears he sees a cloud of dark, ominous grey boiling towards him. It slaps into the barrier and attaches itself like a leech. He can see it press against the surface, forming a ring that roils and darkens like a live thing, and he can see it seeping into the cracks, microscopic though they are, made by the attack of air. They spiderweb around their center, sneaking, probing, prying, and buzzing, bombinating with an insectile hum as they eat away at the fibers that construct the thing. Ylo counters with a wash of rain, but it is too late; only the cloud outside the barrier is dispersed. The¡­whatever they are, that have already penetrated carry on their deleterious task. The strands of the spiderweb, which at first were literally the width of a strand of silk, visible only at certain at certain angles only, when they caught the light just right, expand, and a noise like water freezing crackles in Ylo¡¯s ears. Within a few heartbeats the entire barrier is nothing but a dome of cracks, which crumbles into windborne dust and feathers away on the next of the breeze. Ylo makes sure he¡¯s ready. Chapter 9 He makes a fist with one of his hands and swings it in a wide arc, letting his body turn with it, as if throwing a roundhouse punch. An arc of sunfire flashes from it, burgeoning in all directions. It is not his real attack. Based on what he¡¯s seen so far, the figure should have no real trouble diverting, blocking, or counteracting its advance, but, as with the wolves, the method it chooses will tell him something, and the arc should be wide enough and hot enough to cleanse the circle of the technics that had eaten away his barrier. His other hand joins the first at the apex of its Herculean swing. They lock together, forming a single fist, and, in the haze of heat and vapor created by the wash of sunfire, he slams it downwards, as if planting a flag in the soil. The earth begins to tremble, ever so slightly, beneath his feet, as the thing his Voice is calling forms. The figure barely moves a muscle. Two fingers, forked slightly and touched to its forehead, then drawn down the chevrons marking its nose, are all the response it makes. The air shimmers in front of it and a shield of ice crystalizes into existence. Steam hisses as the sunfire billows into it, melting and then boiling it away bit by bit, layer by layer. The last of it vaporizes just as the fire fades away; the figure has designed it perfectly, creating it in the exact shape and thickness to defray the heat, with nothing left to interfere as he prepares his next maneuver. It waves a hand, and a dark mist begins to swirl in front of it. The mist coils inward, tightening and gaining speed as it vortexes upon itself, until there is a flash of light, and a hulking mass takes its place. It stands, bent over, hair dangling from its scalp in dirty, rotten clumps, its teeth, gapped and stumpy, hanging limply in its jaw in a hungry, look-what-we¡¯ve-got-here type smile. Decomposing flesh clung to its frame, which only showed through to bone in a handful of places. The tattered remnants of a merchant¡¯s tunic waved gently in the vortex¡¯s wind. It advances towards Ylo slowly, making gestures with a skeletal hand as it did. At each gesture a cloud of¡­something floats towards him, a subtle warping of the world, in a space no larger than a fist. The first few fall short, landing in the soil before him, where they sink into the shells and pebbles, aging them to weathered dust. Ylo dodges the next few manually, watching their trajectories and stepping aside whenever he is in their path. They are slow; it is not difficult. But it is a nuisance, and diverts his attention away from more constructive tasks. The undead thing will need to dealt with. Another tremor in the earth. He checks the Voice that holds the thing he has summoned and decides that it is stable enough. He reaches for a Voice of empathy, with which he can smite the ghoul, and¡­Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. He hears that deep subsuming warble, and the world slues again. It is stronger than before; he has to clap his hands to his ears in a vain attempt to block it out. He can feel his Voices slip, trying to scatter once again, and again the anchor of perspective shifts, throwing off his eyes and ears. He gropes, doubled nearly over, for Dovesong as he did before, finding it easier this second time despite the increase in distortion, and sets its melodious Voice singing towards the figure. The warble fades, the light senesces, perspective quells, and his Voices are his own again. And the undead thing is almost on him. As the last of the warped perspective trues he can see the weathered dust, in patches scattered in front of him, beside him, even behind him, outside the circle, and he breathes a sigh of relief. It is only by sheer luck that they had missed him as he¡¯d gone through his gyrations. The thing begins another gesture, hand outstretched, close enough now that Ylo wonders if it might be reaching for him, and he sees the subtle warping start to form above its palm. In something of a panic he attunes his sunfire Voice again ¨C it is the one he can manage fastest, having used it the most recently ¨C and lashes out at the thing with a ferocity he would normally reserve for much more powerful targets. A single bar of white-hot light blazes at it from above, catching it full in the body, scorching it a Tartaran black. The smell of burning, putrid flesh fills Ylo¡¯s nostrils, and its ragged, half-chord screams makes him want to guard his ears. The whole of the thing¡¯s torso is enveloped, and before long it¡¯s burned away. Its dismembered limbs and head topple with a sickening squelch, and then these, too, begin to hiss and mist away. That was close, Ylo thinks, remembering the fencing adage that the first one to cede position usually loses. It almost knocked me off my¡­ Oooph! He hears it first, the violent clip-clop, clip-clop of an equine creature charging, but he was too focused on the ghoul, or else the figure has been able to mask it longer than it should have been, and he hears it late, too late to put up any but the most primitive of defenses. The blow catches him clean in the side, overpowering his cushion of air and sending him flying across the circle. The fall knocks the wind out of him and he lies, groaning, struggling to gain his feet, then, sensing time slipping away like water from an upset mug, he gives up, and merely rolls onto his back. He can almost hear the soft, satisfied little chuckle he¡¯s sure the Speaker is emitting as he stares up at a rampant Cayou, a half-man, half-horse creature of the prairie, with polewood staves in place of hands. Its chiseled chest sparkles with dewdrops from the mist that formed it. Its raised hooves are close enough for him to pick out hairs upon its leg. He has maybe half a heartbeat before it comes crashing down, crushing whatever part of him it chooses with its considerable weight. Briefly he considers defending, trying again with the cushion of air, or a more protective Voice, but he rejects the idea. The figure has had time to plan, and might be ready with a counter. Instead, he jerks his head sideways, towards the figure, and calls his thing from in the earth. Chapter 10 It erupts beneath the Cayou, gnashing it with dragon¡¯s fangs and snapping one of its hind legs clean off. The Cayou tumbles, landing on its rear and stomach, its forelegs missing Ylo by mere fingers as it tries to crush him with its fall, and finds itself wrapped in the craigworm¡¯s coils before it can turn or drag itself away. Ylo watches as his serpent squeezes, snapping bone and juicing innards, and takes the chance to rise to his feet and check himself for injuries. His ribs ache where the Cayou struck him, its staves seeking the soft flesh of his belly and his vital organs, and he suspects they might be cracked. On top of that, the hip on which he landed now is feeling stiff and locked. But nothing that should hurt his chances. He will just have to make sure this doesn¡¯t turn into a footrace. There is an audible pop! and he finds himself sprayed in several of its fluids. He pinches them out with his thumb and forefinger, then resumes his scan of the circle, searching for the figure, or any follow-on attacks. Seeing none, he takes a breath, and prepares to take to the offensive. He planned to use the craigworm to surprise the figure and create some havoc, ideally to knock it off its feet with the surfacing maneuver he¡¯d been forced to use on the Cayou, then follow up with archers¡¯ cover and a healthy dose of flying swarm. He planned to see how things developed, and, if attacks began to land, charge in from there himself and begin the fight in earnest. But now, absent the element of surprise, he will have to reevaluate. He sends the worm back into the earth, and feels as much as watches as it burrows through the shale and clay as effortlessly as a fish might swim the ocean. Next he modifies the atmosphere, bringing fields of moist, warm air and cold, dry air together, and lets them mingle as they may. Storms begin to bluster and crackle, creating a natural source of lightning on the figure¡¯s portion of the circle. It is a crude tactic, random and chaotic, but one he can leave to its own devices while he focuses on more targeted plays. Next he queues up a mischief of rats, their beady eyes the color of sulfur, their too-long teeth gnashing like shortswords fashioned of bone. They are not of the mist, but as a mass they roil like one, the dull luster of their coats lending them a mesmeric quality as they climb over, under, and around each other, searching for a tasty morsel. Scores of them find one in the spray of the Cayou, snapping up a ligament or a bit of supple tissue which the figure has wisely held in the world, before Ylo sends them across the circle. These he follows up with¡­This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Nothing. Not yet, anyways, not until he sees how things play out. His bandwidth is not unlimited, and he wants to hold something back. It is always wise to maintain flexibility whenever possible, in case an opportunity presents itself. The figure raises its hands above its head, yanking them violently up from the earth, and a line of trees sprouts before it, each as tall as three men stacked, spaced perhaps a span apart. Their bark is dark, almost black, and their strands of elongated leaves as dry and sere as the brambles were. Their branches are short, thick, and bulbous, crabby little things that have grown slowly, over ages, and used to inhospitable soil. In each of them is seen a face, sometimes high, sometimes low, sometimes thin and limned on the trunk, sometimes fat, beery, and swollen, growing in amongst the branches. The fat ones seem to scowl at the world from within their oaken prison, imbued with haughtiness, contempt. The thin ones feel a bit more dour, resigned to whatever their fate may be. All are static, abstract visages, and could be written off as unremarkable twists of the wood, if one were obstinate enough. If there weren¡¯t a dozen of them lined up side by side Ylo would probably have done just that. It is a good defense. Better than Ylo was expecting. The roots of the Iron Willows will tangle in the craigworm¡¯s bittings, forcing Ylo to bring it to the surface well before it enters combat, and its long, dangling strands of leaves can snare many of the rats. And the curmudgeonly nature of their wood makes them resistant to the lightning strikes Ylo had planned against another plant defense¡­ Kra-KOW! A bolt strikes with blinding ferocity as Ylo retakes control of the storm. He gathers all its energies, and, speaking with a Voice of wisdom, amplifies them, focuses them, and directs them at the tree he judges weakest, just to the side of the crest of the arc. It topples, splitting less than an arm¡¯s length up its trunk, leaving the upper portion leaning lifelessly against the next tree over and the stump charred and smoking in the rain that has begun to fall. The face, which is one of the bulbous ones, is now an abstract grimace of pain. Resistant, Ylo thinks. But not impervious. A small smile creases his lips. He sends the rats in through the gap. Chapter 11 The trees still snag some of them; the gap is not so large that they can pass through unchallenged. But only a few dozen are captured, and even some of those are able to gnaw through the offending willows before being strangled to death. He sends the craigworm through as well. He still has to send it overland ¨C killing the tree did not remove its network of roots, or otherwise make them passable ¨C so it won¡¯t be as formidable as he had hoped, but it is still a fearsome beast, capable of considerable damage. The figure counters with more Cayou, conjuring a line of them to slow the rats and block the worm. An almost comical battle ensues, with rats scrabbling for purchase on the smooth hooves of the Cayou, nipping, gnashing at the their forelocks, and the Cayou dancing, prancing about, trying to keep their legs aloft, trampling as many of the rats as they can. Their staved forearms come in handy as well, stabbing at their furry bodies, piercing them and raising them clear off the ground before flinging them across the circle. More than one lands near Ylo, spraying its guts out on the soil. The worm hangs back, entering the fray only lightly for fear of crushing too many rats as it slithers on its flat, wide belly. It sits near the rear of the mischief, flicking the Cayou with its tail, trying to catch them by the legs and upset their balance as it did the first. It succeeds in this but once, as one of the Cayou reared up for a killing blow to several of the rats that plagued it. The Cayou falls like a sack of grain, crushing at least a dozen rats but exposing itself to the fury of scores, which swarm upon its prostrate form and sink their teeth into its flesh. It tries to fight them off but there are far too many. Within a heartbeat it¡¯s submerged, and nothing more is seen of it beneath the roiling mass of lustrous fur. Lightning strikes another, randomly this time, unencouraged by anything Ylo has done, and it staggers enough for the rats to nibble at its forelock. It topples as the joint is bitten, and its fate is likewise sealed. Ylo, noting the space afforded by the falling of the two Cayou, sends the rats deeper into the ring of trees, and sends the worm in after them. The rats use the extra room to divide into two groups, allowing the worm to crawl between them and support them more effectively. Ylo takes a moment to read the field, and rehash how they got to here. The rats are his most potent force at the moment. Their mobility and numbers, supported as they are by the sheer power of the craigworm, present a daunting combination. The Cayou¡¯s staves make excellent weapons against a creature like the worm, but prancing around the sea of rats as they currently are, they won¡¯t be able to hold for long, let alone mount an attack. The willows are largely out of the battle. They still manage to snag a rat or two that strays too far from the mischief, and their roots, branching deep enough and wide enough to cover the ground inside their arc, are still keeping the craigworm at the surface, but other than that they are doing little. On top of that, the rain is moistening the earth, creating little pockets of mud and compromising footing. Not a problem for a belly-crawler, or for scamperers like rats, but a big concern for beasts like the Cayou, that put all their weight on just four hooves. Certainly, things are going well for him. He checks on his remaining Voices, playing fingers through the streams that still swirl around him from the sluicegates at the edge of the circle, and wonders which he should use next. Perhaps it is time to start with his direct attacks, and try to end this quickly¡­The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. One more, he tells himself. One more serve and volley, then I¡¯ll look to tighten the noose. He lift a confident finger and points, giving his troops their next set of orders, then attunes the one he thinks will help him press his advantage. He speaks with his greed, and a Warlord appears, muscles rippling, helmet made of carven bone gathering the drizzle of rain, heavy sword, broad and polished, slung across its massive back. It stands just outside the gap left by the fallen willow. It takes one look at the skirmish within, draws its sword, and charges, its strength amplified many times over by the frenzy of the other combatants. The figure takes a step back, yielding some of the ground it gained while Ylo was dealing with the first Cayou, and prepares another gesture. It holds its hands in front of it, palms facing out, and spreads them wide as they shove forward. A calm settles over the circle. The storm clouds Ylo has conjured darken, and lightning flashes cloud to cloud, the silent, eerie kind of lightning that is more foreboding than it is threatening. There is a lull in the struggle of the animals within the arc, and for a pregnant moment the only sound that can be heard is the pitter-patter of the rain as it falls upon the stones and willows. Fresh wind eddies from the edges of the circle. Gently at first, barely enough to fan the dangling branches of the willows, but it strengthens quickly. Before long it is a gust, then a gale, then a hurricane, hurtling rats this way and that, forcing Cayou into crouches. The lightning and the thunder resume, redoubled. Rain pelts every surface, chipping away the bark of the willows, tearing at the craigworm¡¯s scales. Ylo¡¯s back is soaked through The branches of the willows are pulled taut, reaching like ten thousand arms, all towards the heart of the arc, all towards the creatures within, and start to whipsaw back and forth. The worm burrows into the earth, sacrificing itself to the tangle of roots Ylo knows is waiting for it, but the rats have no place to hide. The branches tear them all to shreds, their thin, reedy construct as deadly as swordplay at those speeds. They do their best to huddle underneath the Cayou, ensuring the beasts¡¯ destruction as well, and there they are blended to bloody pulps. Within a score of heartbeats there isn¡¯t one piece left of either animal that can be recognized as such. The Warlord, at first able to resist with branches with slashes of its mighty sword, soon suffers a similar end, once the essence of the rats and Cayou are no longer there to lend it strength, and its entrails join the primordial soup the battlefield has become. The wind calms. The clouds lighten. The rain returns to its pitter-pat nuisance. Ylo watches in silence as it dribbles down the slackening branches, pooling in the divots left by the Cayou¡¯s stomping hooves, forming little rivulets that carry tendrils of the carnage towards the hole burrowed by the worm. He is stunned, both by the savagery of the defense and the ease with which the figure fooled him. He should have seen it. The willows, acting like a barrier and nothing more, the Cayou, formidable beast as they may have been, deployed in numbers too small to mount anything more than a phantom defense, even the one scraggly weakling he was able to destroy with lightning¡­he ignored it all in his berserker¡¯s glee. It never crossed his mind that the willows, when powered by the strength of winds, might become a weapon too. And now he pays the price.