Blade's Story - She Who Consumes

The waning winter sun hung low over the cliffs of the Shield Peaks, dyeing the snow a dark and bloody red. Blade stepped carefully over these last scraps of dirty frost out of habit: there was no one following him, as far as he could tell, but all Khehi-Ket had been trained to step only on hard rock if they could help it, to avoid leaving tracks. And if the Inquisitors caught wind of his presence up on these harsh steppes, there was no telling what would happen. 

He almost wished for the distraction from his thoughts anyway. 

There was no one tracking him, but he was tracking something. Over an hour ago he had hunted down and shot an ironhorn: one of the shaggy, goat-like creatures that dwelled on these cliffs. Ironhorns were hardy things, however, toughened by their life in the frigid crags, and so it had sprung away from him, taking his arrow with it. It would die soon—the Ket steel lodged in its side was not to be taken lightly—but he still preferred to find it and kill it before the sun vanished behind the peaks. It would be much harder to see his prey’s trail of blood after night fell… and the Shield Peaks were not the ideal place to wander alone in the dark.

He dogged the ironhorn for several more minutes, scanning for track where the ground was soft enough, making guesses where bare rock lay. As the sun began to purple and bruise the sky, he began to wonder if he should give up the hunt and find easier quarry. 

Then he came across the ironhorn’s shattered corpse.

The lengthening shadows hid the pool of blood until he was nearly standing in it, but Blade’s keen senses understood that something was amiss before he even saw the poor animal. There was a dark scent in the air, something greasy and rank and unnatural. It sent such a blaze along his nerves that Blade drew his sword before he even knew it. The dark cruel edge of the weapon glinted in the twilight; so too did the black streaks of ichor that lay around the corpse.

He knelt to examine further. Something had gutted the animal, hacked a savage slice across the haunch and into its stomach, cleaving through muscle and driving into the viscera. As Blade watched, the last lingering drops of blood trickled out of the body, running down the stiff legs like urine.

Blade was a seasoned fighter. More, he was probably one of the deadliest assassins in the Autarchy, and despite his age he had seen more death and violence than most veteran soldiers could claim. Very little shook him; and yet the sight of the ironhorn’s brutal death sent a quick cold fear blazing over his skin. Whatever had gutted the animal had not stopped there. Something—he struggled to think of what—had hacked the beast’s head from its shoulders, severing the sinew until only a ragged stump remained. Nearby, the head lay like a dark lump in the gathering dusk; much of the hair had been torn away and the bone was split open. The brain had been scooped out of the ironhorn’s skull as if with a spoon.

Blade sat back on his heels. These wounds were vicious, unnecessary—they did not have the quotidian economy that would lead him to believe crag cats or other natural predators were behind this. Nor was the killing done by a conventional weapon; he knew blade work, and no sword or axe had done this. What, then, had come across this ironhorn? What had not hunted or slaughtered it—but had destroyed it utterly?

All throughout his contemplation, his senses were on high alert; he was sending out pulses of arma, scanning the crags out of the corners of his eyes. But there was nothing out of place: nothing except the strange scent that lingered around the corpse of the animal, along with an uneasy, cringing feeling that Blade had never experienced before.

Like any Ket, he knew when to heed his instincts and when to beat a retreat. He straightened and considered his options. Normally he didn’t mind spending a night out on the crags; it was part of the job, and he had a destination he was supposed to be hurrying to. Besides, nothing had come as a threat to him for a long time.

However: something strange was happening here, and he had a duty to report it to his superiors—no matter what unfriendly terms he and his brother had parted on. One of the advantages of the Ket Resistance was its spy network embedded throughout the Continent. Information was one of the only things they could leverage against the might of the Autarchy. If some new threat was lurking in the same mountains that sheltered his home base from the eyes of enemies, the other resistance fighters deserved to know.

Therefore, he ought to find some vestige of civilization—someone who had the means of delivering a message back to the Ket. That way the mystery would not die with him, if it came to that. Which it most likely would, once he reached Haven to carry out his task. 

But the nearest inhabitants of the Shield Peaks were in a monastery, Blade remembered. Monks and worshippers of the Blank God. They had sworn lifelong vows of silence.

Well, he thought, they could send a letter. And though the worshippers lived ascetic, even harsh lives, they were usually friendly to outsiders. He could take advantage of a roof over his head and take the night to consider things. 

He set off, loping now down the rough crags and steep hills of the Shield steppes. He had already memorized the location of the carcass and its surrounding environment; he would look again in the morning, when the light was better. He doubted that scavengers would meddle with the corpse before dawn. Already the flesh was putrefying, taking on that greasy smell that hung over the area like a dark fog. 

He added some arma to his steps and leapt his way down the mountain pass. Within a few miles he came into sight of the Blank God’s monastery. It was a humble set of buildings, carved into the granite of the surrounding cliffs; the refectory, where he’d been once before, glowed with a soft orange light. Blade secured his sword in its sheath and slowed to a walk. He knew from experience that some found his appearance alarming. There was no need to startle the monks out of offering him shelter for the night.

Gravel crunched under his feet as he made his way out of the ledges. He could hear the quiet shuffle of the monks going about their evening rituals and ablutions. Some were recorders of history, he knew, as homage to the god they believed had created time; perhaps they could provide insight into the strange destruction of the ironhorn.

There was a froth of early spring flowers here, and the walls of the monastery were now so white in the moonlight that they seemed awash with milk. Blade had no time to admire any of this, except with the cold, scrutinizing gaze of a Ket evaluating a place for danger. He strode briskly up the gravel path and rapped on the reception hall door.

There was silence, but that was to be expected; after all, many of these monks had not spoken a word for years. After a moment, the door was pulled aside by a young man, his head stubbly and the ink on his brow new. An initiate. Blade wondered if he’d taken his vow of silence yet.

“The Order of the Blank God welcomes you,” the monk said, answering his question. Blade watched as the youth quickly eyed his dark, nondescript clothes, lingering on the sword at his hip and the bow and quiver on his back. Finally he added, “Come in peace, and partake of what meager food we can provide you.”

Blade nodded his thanks and quickly stepped into the light. 

“You do not need your weapons,” the young monk began, but at Blade’s wordless glance he looked down for a moment, humbled. Then he motioned to another monk standing behind him, who scurried to hand Blade some rough, dark bread and a piece of salted mutton. He began again: “Please, follow me. We shouldn’t disturb the elders at their ablutions.”

“I need to speak to one of your scholars,” Blade said. The monk flinched, as if he had forgotten the sound of a voice other than his own. “And I need to have a letter sent out with the mail ‘van, when it passes through. It’s urgent.”

The monk bowed quickly. “I will take you to Brother Yl,” he said. “He will be able to help you.”

Blade wolfed down the food as they walked down the long, sandy corridors of the monastery. The monk looked at him as if he were appalled, but Blade ignored the stare; he had been raised to have the manners of a Ket aristocrat, but then abandoned them long ago in favor of the solitude—and roughness—that came with his line of work. Efficiency trumped civility; no one cared for a polite assassin.

They came at last to one of the dark and tiny cells that each of the monks were assigned. Each cell was identical, hardly big enough to fit a rough-hewn pallet and a few shelves—but then, the monks did spend all their time in the workshops, making the pale-waxed candles that were their livelihood, or otherwise outside meditating. The young monk knocked softly on the door of the cell and waited; then, though no verbal signal was given, he bowed to Blade and murmured, “You may enter.”

Blade pushed the door open. He found an old bald man sitting calmly on his pallet, bent over a little writing table with a candle. The man looked up when Blade came in, but otherwise showed no sign of surprise at his presence. He gestured for Blade to sit just as Blade made the Ket sign for deference and non-hostility, holding out his hand with the palm turned outward. Then he sat, and the old scholar immediately scrawled a few words onto his paper.

Welcome. What brings you to the Order of the Blank God?

“I need a letter sent north across the mountains whenever the mail ‘van comes by,” Blade said, sparing no time for the niceties. He set aside the last crust of his meal and unslung his pack, rifling for some paper to begin a coded message to his brother. “Or even better, one of your hawks, if you still have them here.”

The monk shook his head and wrote: We sent them south for the winter; they will return in a few sennights. Is something amiss?

In short, clipped words, Blade told him about the carcass he had encountered in the crags—and how the ironhorn’s brain had seemingly been devoured by some creature. 

Old Yl continued to watch his face with tranquil calm. Finally he wrote: And the strange feeling that you had. You wanted to flee?

“Not out of fear,” Blade answered, with just a tinge of irritation that he tried to suppress. “But it was like…” He paused. He had never been any kind of wordsmith. “It was a feeling of repulsion. As when one looks at the designs on the back of a venomous snake and feels nauseated.”

The monk shook his head at this, his features somber, then scrawled, I fear you are too young to know what it means. At Blade’s flat stare, he added, You reek of the presence of an Endarkened. 

“That is a bold claim to make,” Blade said, more sharply than he intended. He had heard that Endarkened had been reappearing throughout the Continent in the last decade or so, but he had never come across one himself. The idea of one to appearing so close to home sent a sharp dread prickling through his gut. He said, “You haven’t even seen the corpse. Why would you say so?”

The monk smiled a little. You have been here before, and yet you do not know the true nature of this place. This is a monastery for Hunters. 

Blade didn’t give an outward reaction to this news, but inwardly he was sitting up a little straighter. He had never suspected; all of the monks within the Order shaved their heads, and without their telltale white hair, there was no way for him to sense that they were Hunters. It made sense, then, that Yl could tell immediately just from smell that this was the work of a demon. 

“That’s good news,” was all he said. “That means you can send some of your monks to dispatch the thing with ease.” 

Yl smiled sadly. Not so, he wrote. In joining this Order, we lay down our weapons for life. We seek knowledge in the silence of He Who Is, rather than power in the rage that befalls us. 

Blade pursed his lips. He wasn’t religious, nor a follower of any dogma, but from what he had gathered, many Hunters considered the berserker rage they flew into at the hint of an Endarkened to be a blood curse. Many dedicated their lives to becoming exorcists, especially now that demons had supposedly returned to Blest; but others turned their backs on their heritage, afraid of the people they became when the fury took them. It was starting to make much more sense why these monks chose to live away from everyone else, ensconced in silence.

“Surely there’s someone here who could be sent to destroy the thing,” he said. Normally it wouldn’t be a concern of his—he was only passing through, after all—but the thought of leaving an unchecked threat so close to Ygrath made the back of his neck itch. 

Yl shrugged. There is a young chieftain visiting with us now from the Reach, he wrote, but he has withdrawn to our inner sanctum for four sennights of meditation and fasting. No one is to disturb him while he attempts to commune with He Who Is.  

Blade grunted. How useful. 

Then Yl gestured to him; he didn’t need to use his pen to communicate, Why not you?

“I’m headed somewhere else,” Blade answered shortly. He had an important mission—the most important of his life, regardless of his feelings about it—that he couldn’t delay to go chasing demons across the cliffs. At the monk’s questioning look, he lied: “I’m going to Kinley.”

It was, in fact, the exact opposite direction of where he was really going—Haven—and he felt the rueful irony of that fact when the monk’s look brightened. Yl wrote: We knew someone who just passed through here, not two sennights ago, who was also heading to Kinley. To their horse fair. A powerful Mage, a mercenary, who could help us address this threat and destroy the Endarkened. Perhaps you could…

“No,” Blade said flatly, before he could finish writing the sentence. “I don’t have time.” This, at least, was true: he had been tasked with carrying out his assassination as soon as possible, which was one reason why he and his brother had quarreled. He’d thought the move too soon, too hasty, while Gladius had insisted that speed would ensure success. In the end he had no choice but to obey. 

Abruptly the monk dropped his pen and beckoned to Blade with his hands, which were papery and crooked with age. At his silent direction Blade went to a shelf in the corner of the room and lifted a cracked and heavy tome, flipping it open to a random page and glancing at the words impatiently. 

“Ancila,” he read. “The Flower of the Void.” He looked up at the old monk for an explanation. 

She is a mistress of the Endarkened, Yl wrote. And she has been active in these mountains of late. If this ironhorn was not her own doing, it was that of one of her servants. For the first time there was a frown on his face; the calm had broken, and he looked anxious—even afraid. His quill darted across the page as if it were fleeing from his hand. It was she who cast the last Blight on Ambryn, she who seeks to unleash the Nightwalker unto our people. She is clever, and beautiful; and most of all dangerous.

“And what does she want, this Ancila?” Blade asked. His mind was dwelling now again on the ironhorn, on the marks of bloodshed scattered around it. The shattered skull, cast aside like broken crockery. The greasy streaks of black ichor. Endarkened blood? Endarkened work? “What does she want to do?”

The monk told him. 

In the morning Blade set out to find the Mage in Kinley. He couldn’t risk facing the Endarkened alone, not when he had such a vital mission awaiting him (one that only he could do). But he could find this mercenary the monks wrote so highly of. Some traveling sellsword with glowing eyes. It would delay his journey to Haven by a few weeks, but it was worth it: he considered it his one last act of defiance. 

He could wait a little to die, anyway. 

#

A sennight away from Kinley, Blade heard gunshots ripping through the night.

His head swiveled towards the commotion. He’d been traveling off the main roads, trekking instead through dense forest—the kind of ancient place where the trees crowded close until sound and light seemed strangely muffled and muted. He hadn’t seen nor heard any living creature for days, save the birds. At the sound of gunshots his blood began to pump, bursts of brightness coursing through his veins as his arma activated. When he looked, he thought he could see a pinprick of light wavering through the trees, maybe a mile away.

He went to investigate. He was supposed to avoid detection as much as he could, but if someone was firing a gun, they likely needed help. 

His theory proved correct when he crept up on a Norm caravan of merchants, a ring of people surrounding three shabby wagons, facing outwards like oxen circling to protect their calves. A few of them were brandishing sticks and torches, shouting off into the dark; behind the wagons, beyond Blade’s line of sight, someone else was firing a rifle.

Wolves, Blade thought, looking at the mangy creatures prowling beyond the ring of lamplight. Inwardly, something in him relaxed: he’d feared another Endarkened, subconsciously, and if there was one here, too…

Carefully he stepped towards the group, aware always of the far-off reckless firing of the gun. When one of the larger wolves whipped its head towards him, Blade glared and bared his teeth, and flared a little of his arma at it; the animals were hungry—else they never would have risked approaching such a large group—but they sank onto their front legs under the force of his presence before fleeing. Which was just as well. He disliked killing animals he couldn’t eat.

The people in the group were staring at him, so Blade hung back in the shadows, conscious of the way his eyes gleamed chatoyant in the gloom—very much like a wolf’s, in fact. Suddenly it struck him that he might appear to be a demon of his own, some kind of forest god among hounds, to send them packing with a look. 

Less a wolf than a sheepdog, he thought, a little bitterly, but he broke out of his thoughts when one of the ragtag merchants called out, “Who goes there?”

For some reason Blade’s many aliases flew out of his head in that moment. “Trouble,” he said after a moment, lamely. It was the name of a friend of his in Haven, a patently-stupid name; but then, stupid names were common among Norms, and it would most likely put them at ease. 

In fact, the person who called out laughed. “Surely, you’re joking.”

“I never joke,” Blade answered before he could stop himself.

The man’s lips twitched. “Very different from our own, then,” he said cryptically. Then he beckoned. “Come into the light, slowly. Yes, that’s it.”

Blade approached, ignoring the way a few of the merchants shrank back from him. He blinked as the full light of the lantern was turned on his face. There were several men among this caravan, as well as one woman, all of them of varying ages and all Norms; they had the wearied, weathered look of experienced travelers, but he saw now that they couldn’t possibly be merchants. Many of them were conventionally attractive, and they carried themselves in a strange, graceful manner, as if they were caught in a dance.

“Players,” he said. “You’re an acting troupe.” 

The man holding the lantern swept a bow. “The Kinley Players, at your service,” he said proudly, in a herald’s voice. “We have a strongman, a poet, actors, a seamstress—anything you could ask for, we can provide. As well as one ‘van guard.” 

He turned expectantly, and now Blade tensed as he heard the rustle of someone else approaching from around the wagons. Whoever it was held a rifle on his shoulder—a male figure, summer-skinned and blond. When he saw Blade, he stiffened, so Blade put his hand on his sword—then relaxed it in the next second, seeing finally who it was.

“What in Hael’s blazes are you doing here?” Trouble exclaimed. 

Blade snorted. “I could ask you the same thing. Were you the one unloading your bullets at a bunch of dogs?”

The sharpshooter bristled. “I was—”

“Trouble,” the leader of the acting troupe said, holding up a hand. “This is—also Trouble. Our van ‘guard. He was retrieving something one of the wolves stole. Trouble, this is another Trouble. He helped us drive the other wolves away. Quite a strange occurrence, don’t you think?”

Trouble gawked at Blade, who pursed his lips at him; he never could tell when his friend would keep his mouth shut. 

Wisely, Trouble said nothing about Blade borrowing his name, and only stiffly and awkwardly shook hands with him as if this was their first meeting. It wasn’t until hours later, after the troupe had invited Blade to sup with them as reward for his help, that he beckoned Blade over to his own campfire and hissed, “What in Hael are you playing at? No—don’t tell me you’ve been gallivanting around the Continent killing people and using my name?” 

“Keep your voice down,” Blade shot back sourly; the two of them were leaning over the campfire to speak in hushed voices, and he could feel the flames licking at his chin. “And it’s not even your real name—it’s not as if it would be traced back to you.”

“Still, though! The nerve!”

“Lower your voice. It was only the first name that came to mind.” He glanced around briefly at their surroundings; the silent wagons, the mostly-slumbering actors. “What are you even doing here, anyway? You’re guarding a group of players? The work’s beneath you.”

“I know that,” Trouble hissed, rummaging in his pocket now for a stick of charch. He lit it up and began to smoke furiously. “But I can’t afford to be picky these days—Diminished folks won’t hire me, and Norms don’t take kindly to someone who consorts with ‘those people.’ Actors are at least liberal-minded and poor enough to not give a shit.”

Blade had nothing to say to that, and for a moment the two of them sat in sullen silence as the fire crackled to itself. Of all places, he had never expected to find Trouble here, in the forest, on the way to distant Kinley—but silently he felt some relief at the fact that his friend would not be in Haven when he came to carry out his final mission. The city would likely erupt in turmoil—and the farther away Trouble was from that, the better.

They spent a while quietly discussing how Trouble had wound up in these circumstances; he’d met the leader of the actors, Sonarus, in a bar, and he’d agreed to ferry them to Kinley as their guard so they could perform at the horse fair. He brightened when Blade said he was heading that way, too—then darkened again as he asked, “You going to kill someone?”

Blade smiled thinly. Trouble was one of the few who knew about his line of work, though he doubted the sniper suspected the level of infamy he carried across the Continent, at least in some circles. “Not in Kinley,” he answered, so quietly Trouble cocked his head to hear. “But eventually.”

Trouble pensively flicked his stub of charch into the flames of the campfire. “Don’t suppose you’ll tell me who it is?”

The Autarch, Blade wanted to say. My brother is sending me to assassinate your Autarch, and possibly her sons if I can get to them before they kill me. I’m going to Haven to die.

But he said nothing, and finally Trouble shrugged his broad shoulders and said, “Why’re you going to Kinley, then? Just felt like making a detour?”

“You could say that,” Blade conceded. The fire was beginning to dwindle now, the embers of the logs glowing like dying fireflies, and he stared into it as he gave Trouble a brief account of the carcass he had encountered in the mountains.

Trouble shuddered. “Sounds nasty,” he said. “The…” He looked around suddenly, more surreptitiously than he had when he asked Blade who he meant to kill; the word demon was rarely said in polite company. “The demon problem has been getting worse and worse,” he said in a low voice. “You haven’t been around these last months, but some are even starting to show up in Haven. It’s got the nobles all scared—that’s their stronghold, and the Autarch’s supposed to protect them from kak like that. Something needs to be done.”

“But what?” Blade retorted. “Demons are killed best by Hunters or Mages, and the Autarch’s all but squashed those out of existence.”

Trouble chewed his lip. “Dunno. Maybe someone could rally the last of them up. Make a fighting force.”

“No one would join.”

“I would. It beats following some dandy poets around in the woods trying to keep them from getting eaten by bears. I’d like to do something more important with my life.” He leaned back on his gloved hands, heedless of the mud and dirt. “And you would join, too.”

Blade’s heart flinched when he thought of his coming task. He wouldn’t live to, even if such an absurd notion were possible—but he wouldn’t tell Trouble that. “I wouldn’t.” After a beat he added, “I’m too busy.”

Which he was: his concerns were more political, his missions more world-moving than hunting demons. The Autarchy was a stronger force than the Endarkened by far, and more dangerous: its tyranny had ruined more Diminished lives than even an army of demons could. Even if he survived the assassination of its ruler, he’d spend his life tearing down the rest of the Autarchy’s regime. He didn’t have time to care about the demons. He couldn’t fight both the Norms and the Endarkened at once. 

Trouble sent him a sardonic, sidelong look. “Yeah, you’re so busy you decided to take a jaunt across the Continent to find a Mage to help some monks,” he said. “That really seems like a task a busy person would take on.”

Blade made a face. “The scholar at the monastery made a compelling argument,” he answered, a little resentfully. He stared into the fire as it began to consume itself. “He told me… about the demons’ leader. About what she wants. I couldn’t exactly walk away from that. This is the one thing I can do before…”

He bit off his next words, but Trouble failed to notice. “What did he say she wants?” he asked, his idle curiosity replaced by some concern now.

Abruptly, the flame of the campfire went out with a sharp hiss, and Trouble had to bend over in the dark to catch Blade’s next words.

“She wants what all Endarkened want,” he said quietly, his eyes distant as he remembered the words of the silent monk. “She wants all of us to pay in blood. She wants to eat the world.” 

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

[Author's note: So, what'd you think? They're a pair of dumbasses, huh? Blade is really uncreative when it comes to telling lies... and Trouble didn't even know his friends was going to die, lol.

Obviously Blade DIDN'T die, and some things transpired between his assassination attempt and the creation of the Shepherds... but what? You'll have to play the game to find out!

(Also, if you're curious--Trouble and Blade did go to Kinley to find that certain Mage, but they'd already left the city by then; now out of work, Trouble opted to go to the monastery himself to help with the demon trouble, and after that to Karzai, while Blade went to Haven to... well, you know.

Thanks for reading!]