Everything seemed to go better after her encounter with the wildling healer. The bruising on her face faded more quickly with the application of actual medicine and Mara was careful to leave it alone. While she hadn’t seen hide or hair of the buck, she had caught rabbits and a pheasant on her way back, ensuring plenty of food. She took an extra two days in the woods, not in wilding territory, but further from Sjaligr than most who weren’t hunters went. 

Eventually, though, there was no avoiding it and her feet turned back to the homeward road. 

The rugged wilderness of the Red Mountains slowly became more docile the closer she moved to the small city built into the rocky cliffs. Sjaligr was pretty enough, strikingly carved into square towers and regal walls, but just the sight of dawn’s first light falling golden on the main gate was enough to knot her stomach into a hard lump. The outlying fields were just about ready to harvest, which meant people were up and about even at this early hour, preparing everything for the work to come within the next day or two. 

The one benefit of the early hour was that people were too busy and sleepy to pay her any mind. Mara pulled her hood up as if against the chill and strode through the open gate, timing her entry to the city for when the gate guards were distracted with Old Gierdrius and his very cantankerous cow. She sighed with relief when no one stopped her and made a beeline for the smithy that stood beside her father’s house. Smoke rose from its chimney, a sign the forge burned anew. No sound of hammer blows yet, but she did hear voices. Mara stopped and listened, only removing her hood and opening the door when she was confident that it was just her mother and sister. 

“Sabine,” her mother sighed almost despairingly. “You must be more careful with hearts.” 

“Adomas will be fine,” Mara’s sister said airily. “He has girls all over town to nurse his pride back to bloated health.” 

Mara almost rolled her eyes as she eased the door fully open and stepped in, closing it carefully behind herself. That sounded like Sabine up to her usual vixenish tricks, which she supposed was in keeping for any sixteen-year-old girl so favored with the gift of beauty. Mara moved around a rack near the door, footsteps soft enough that she hadn’t disturbed the two in conversation. She was used to going unseen. 

Her mother was working the bellows with one hand and the lean of her body, every movement precision and mastery carefully applied. She stirred and shaped the coals with a poker in her other hand, protected by heavy gloves. Mara knew from explanation that such sculpting changed the temperature of the furnace based on the amount of air reaching the coals in different parts and layers. Her mother had yet to slow down even after four children and reaching her middle years, though she constantly insisted that her youthful vigor was because of her children rather than in spite of them. Her blonde hair had acquired some red as she’d gotten older, hinting at a fiery temper, but now it was beginning to turn silver. 

Sabine sat alongside a workbench, though she probably couldn’t even name a tool on it. She had never expressed an interest in her mother’s work, nor in the thick volumes along the far wall that described countless years of metallurgic advancements. The girl shared their mother’s beauty, particularly the stunning blue eyes that were perpetually warm. Mara’s version were harder, like sapphires, but shared the same color. Marks dotted along Sabine’s cheekbones in a horizontal line of blue runes, just like their mother’s.

“I wish—” Mara’s mother started to say, but then she caught her eldest’s presence out of the corner of her eye and almost dropped her hot poker on the stone floor. “Mara!” 

“Here we thought you’d run off for good this time,” Sabine said, crossing her arms. She at least sounded more amused than sincerely disappointed in that comment.

“I’ve been so worried about you,” their mother said once she’d hurriedly set everything aside, stopping in front of Mara. They were the same height, so it was doubly hard to evade her concerned gaze. She pulled off her gloves and reached out to touch her daughter’s bruised cheek. “What happened?” 

“I wanted some time away,” Mara said with a shrug. The touch was careful even though the last of the bruises didn’t hurt. Aallotar’s medicines had worked well enough to almost be magic, though the huntress knew they were nothing of the sort. 

“And your face?” her mother asked more firmly.

“Sparring was a little rougher than usual,” Mara lied. 

“Gaius did this?” the older woman demanded.

Mara knew that if she involved her mentor, her mother would probably snap at Gaius and he would tell the truth: he’d thumped her left leg pretty thoroughly for not being careful with her shield, but nothing more. The bruises to her face and worse to her ribs were not his doing, but if she told the truth of their origin, there would be hell to pay. “It doesn’t matter. They’re just bruises and almost gone at that.”

She could see the heat brewing in her mother’s expression. Mara knew that meant her mother was anything but satisfied with that answer.

“You’re gone for more than a week, come home looking like you picked a fight with a troll, and tell me that it doesn’t matter?” her mother said fiercely. “I love you, Mara. I want the best for you. Tell me the truth.”

Those words twisted in her heart like a knife made of broken glass. Mara hated making her mother angry when so often, the older woman was the only source of comfort in the world. She just didn’t want to suffer the consequences of her mother expressing her displeasure to the person responsible. For her entire life, snitching had only ever been rewarded by vicious reprisals. Sometimes they were delayed, but they always came. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Mara said, lips thinning into a stubborn line. “I’m fine, I promise.” 

Her mother evaluated her expression for a long moment, then sighed. She knew how to read Mara enough to know the huntress wasn’t about to budge. When Mara set her mind to something, swaying her from it was often a difficult to impossible task. “It does seem to be healing very well,” her mother said more gently. “Here I thought those lessons on medicine were lost on you.” 

Mara shrugged. While Aallotar was safe at a distance and as a wildling, habit made it difficult for Mara to divulge the identity of any who showed her even a passing kindness. Better that they not find themselves on the receiving end of the punishment that came with her taint. 

Sabine dusted her hands together. “You might tell Deda that you’re back,” she said. “He was looking for you.” 

Mara had grown past the point of envying that her sister could use the familiar name for their father whenever it pleased her. “He wanted to see me?” she said with a hint of surprise and a kernel of dread forming in the pit of her stomach. 

Her sister nodded. “There’s something that needs doing, and you’re wood-wise enough for it,” she said. “That’s what I overheard anyway.” There was not an abundance of things to do in Sjaligr, so Sabine spent more time than she probably should have prying into the affairs of the powerful in the city, particularly their father. 

“Better not to keep him waiting,” Mara said with a nod, steeling herself for the conversation with him. 

Mara’s mother stopped her before she could turn away, pulling her into a fierce hug. “I’m glad you’ve returned,” the older woman said softly. “I’m always afraid you never will.” 

The urge was certainly there sometimes, but Mara’s world ended at the borders of the Red Mountains, not that she had ever seen the emptiness to the south to know what lay there or beyond. As much as she loved the woods, she didn’t want to live isolated in them forever. It was a shackle that always kept her chained to Sjaligr: fear of the unknown. Someday, though, Mara promised herself that she would see what was beyond the edge of the world. “I’m careful,” she told her mother softly. “And Gaius trained me well.” 

Her mother smiled sadly as she released Mara. “That was not my concern. Go see your father.” 

Mara nodded, swallowing away the brief knot in her throat. She left the forge with those words in the back of her head. Speaking with her father demanded more care, however. She headed for the chieftain’s hall, beside the forge but not adjoined to it in case of fire. It was a large, grand stone manor, the roof timbered and tiled instead of thatched. On either side of the large set of reinforced double-doors that lead to the main hall were statues of dragons, their stone teeth bared to ward off evil spirits. 

When she was younger, Mara wondered if they would ward her off, but their power seemed not to affect her. Then again, perhaps even that was subject to her curse. 

Her father dominated the center of the hall when she stepped in. Luukas Fire-Bringer was a tower of a man, his shoulders squared with a chieftain’s pride. She had inherited much of him in her face: his darker hair, strong jaw, piercing stare, thin lips, and chiseled nose. But where he radiated strength and a presence that demanded the attention of others, Mara had learned how to fade into the background. He was out of his armor at the moment, wearing fine green wool with knot-like patterns running the length of the edges in gold thread, with the emblem of a dragon’s eye on his brooch. 

Her people often wore their wealth on their persons and he was no exception: golden armbands patterned like scales and a ring set with a large ruby marked his victories in war against the other chieftains. That ring had been claimed from an ancient enemy of her family, taken from a cooling hand after her father had severed the aggressor’s head from his shoulders. Mara’s father was not a leader who commanded from the rear and let his men fight for him: he commanded respect because he led from the front and did so with peerless skill. 

Her uncle was in conference with her father, and the gravity of his expression meant it was something serious. For being twins, there was a great deal of difference in their personalities, though their appearances were very close. Gareth spoke often and seldom weighed his words, inclined towards boasting and lacking the same ferocity. He was due more respect out of his kinship ties, but his martial and magical skills were both still more than adequate to the task of war or punishing those who struck at his pride. 

Mara approached carefully to hear more of what was being said without immediately alerting them to her presence.

“...I don’t see why we care what Aukusti is up to,” Gareth said. “Beyond the matter of tribute, that is.” 

“The silence is troubling,” her father said firmly. “Such things are often a prelude to war. Even the merchants do not pass our way from Valkaldr.” 

“The south is always trouble,” Gareth muttered. He glanced over and caught sight of Mara, lip curling automatically. “That thing is here.” 

The contempt was expected and while it was entirely meant to be taken personally, Mara had learned to let it roll off her scarred self-image. She didn’t like her uncle enough to let the blow strike hard. It was more of a scratch, one of the hundred applied every day. Besides, his ability to harm her was sharply curtailed by his desire to stay somewhat on her mother’s good side. 

Mara’s father turned fully to face her. “I see you survived your jaunt into the woods,” he said, looking her up and down. He must have noted the bruising, but said nothing of it. “I have a task suited for you.” 

If there was any feeling Mara associated with her father, it was a profound indifference. She had no memories of his affection, no expectation that it would ever change. She knew it was a bitter point of contention between her parents, but her mother had not left him...likely because it would have sacrificed the protection of Mara that her mother’s position bought and it would have impacted the woman’s ability to see her other children. It was something much, much harder to brush aside than Gareth’s active animosity. 

Mara would have preferred it if he acted like he hated her. At least that would require effort, passion, thought. Instead, she gave everything and received nothing in return. 

“What task, Fire-Bringer?” she asked, bowing deeply. Using the honorific name was a proper gesture of deference suited to a chieftain. ‘Father’ would have been altogether too familiar. 

“We have had no word from the lands of Valkaldr to the south. No tribute payments, no messengers, no merchants. This has meaning. You will seek out the oracle Kalevi in the woods to the south east. His vision is clearer than all others. Ask him of his dreams.” 

“She will cloud his vision,” Gareth objected sharply. “Better that I attend to it.” 

“His memory is exceptional. He will be able to recall his dreams,” her father said bluntly. “You, Gareth, are to take a patrol and scout as far south as Ingata. If there is an army coming from the south, I would know of it.” 

“And if there is only silence?” her uncle asked. 

“My answer will depend on Kalevi’s sight.” Mara’s father looked at her, expression still impassive. “You are not to leave the old man’s presence unless he demands it to gaze deeper into the future, at least not until you have an actual answer for me. If Valkaldr is planning a war, they will seek his counsel as well. Your unnatural affliction should deter them, and if it does not, apply the skills you have learned from Gaius.” 

Mara dipped her head. When she was younger, she had leaped at any opportunity to try to prove herself useful, as if she hoped her affliction could somehow earn approval. It made no difference. At the end of the day, no one would forget or forgive her curse. Now she welcomed such tasks because they gave her a chance to leave Sjaligr with less in the way of harassment by certain people. “I will return with his words, Fire-Bringer.” 

“Do not delay in your task,” her father said coolly. “I would have my answer from Kalevi soon. Begone.” 

Mara turned on her heel and strode swiftly out of the hall, already making a mental note of the supplies she would need. Her sword and shield were waiting at Gaius’s house, as she left them there so no one would take them or tamper with them. He could probably be persuaded to give her enough food for the journey. She knew the way to Kalevi’s home, mostly because she had explored a good deal of woodland in this part of the Red Mountains. She had never approached close enough to speak to the man, however, well aware that such a man would likely find her presence offensive. 

Hopefully her father’s word would be enough to grant her an audience. 

She was too in her thoughts to pay much mind to where she was going, trusting her feet to hurry her to Gaius’s house on habit alone. She crashed straight into someone, heart sinking when her focus snapped to the young man’s face. Viljami had their father’s height and bearing, enough to dominate the space around Mara even though she was two years older than him. His temperament, however, was much alike to Gareth’s and he had a cruel streak easily visible when her words so much as touched his pride. 

Her face throbbed almost in reminder of their last sibling encounter.

Viljami seized her arm where it made contact with his chest and shoved her backwards. “Have you learned nothing?” he snarled.

Mara’s first instinct was to bite back, a mark of pride that not even years of abuse had stomped out of her. Where her father’s indifference left a hole, her brother’s open hatred never failed to stir the coals of Mara’s simmering anger. She swallowed down the venom and dropped her gaze, however. One, she didn’t need a confrontation with him here at the center of town, where everyone would see and no one would intervene, and two, she was on a mission that required haste. “I’m sorry, Storm-Born.” As heir apparent, he was owed a respect closer to her father than Mara enjoyed.

“Take your pollution elsewhere,” he said sharply, apparently less interested in a confrontation than usual. That probably had more to do with their mother’s opinion than any charity on his part. 

Mara gave him the obligatory bow of deference and apology before skirting around him with plenty of space to spare. She was almost to Gaius’s home, an island of refuge in a hostile sea. She heard the cracks and thumps of splitting wood and passed through the wooden gate in the wall that surrounded Gaius’s home, fingertips skating across flaking brown paint used to seal the gate against moisture. It rained often on their side of the mountains, adjacent to the sea in the eastern lowlands. 

Out in the yard, Gaius swung his splitting maul down again, cleaving neatly through the section of log he was working on. The man was in his middle-years by everyone’s estimates, but barely showed it. Without his shirt on, the countless scars across the front of his chest marked him as a warrior more seasoned than most. He had a few on his back, but the majority were on his front, a sign that he did not flee from his foes. Mara had known him her whole life and could vouch for the fact that his age had not slowed him at all. There weren’t even gray hairs in his beard yet. He was olive-skinned with dark eyes, a sign of a more southern heritage, something made more pronounced by the amount of time he spent in the sun. 

Besides being a warrior, Gaius had no trade, so much of what he did was unskilled labor. Sometimes he was an extra farm hand, other times he helped fix a roof or a wall, sometimes he dug ditches or graves. People treated him politely, but there was no way around the fact that he fit like a square peg into a round hole. 

He had no marks across his face, no magic to speak of. He didn’t share Mara’s curse, but it was enough that sometimes people whispered she was his bastard. After all, hadn’t he and her mother come to the Red Mountains together all those years ago?

As a girl, Mara secretly treasured the idea, but age and experience had taught her better. Gaius acted as her mother’s brother, not her lover. His idea of raising her had been to equip her with all the skills he thought she needed, most of which were combat. 

And letters, of course. Literacy was something Gaius valued intensely where most in Sjaligr could barely make a mark to denote their name.

“Are you just here to gawk?” Gaius said gruffly, placing his next section of log atop the splitting stump, shouldering his splitting maul. “There’s wood to be stacked.” 

“I can’t,” Mara said. “I have an errand to run.” 

“Must be dangerous if you’re here,” her mentor said, looking over at her. He frowned. “I thought I taught you to block fists.”

Mara sighed, well aware that the comment was more concern than disapproval. Gaius had a brusque way about him with everyone and made no exception for her. It was one of the things she appreciated most: he treated her the same as everyone else. “I just came to get my gear and maybe some food for the journey.” 

“Better come inside, then.” Gaius said. He leaned the maul against the splitting stump and led the way inside his home. It was a stone foundation, but timber construction otherwise, with a thatched roof. The place was as utilitarian as its owner: most of it was a single room, a combination of kitchen and living space with a cot along one wall and several rows of books beside it. They were Gaius’s prized possessions, more valuable even than his sword and spear that hung on the wall above a black shield painted with the blue runes that matched her mother’s tattoo, his symbol of loyalty. A bath was kept in the only other separate room. Gaius spent more time cleaning himself and carefully grooming than any other man Mara had encountered. For all the jests made at how effeminate most warriors found it, their wives seemed to appreciate him all the more for it. 

“So where are you running off to this time?” Gaius asked as he grabbed a large square of cloth and started packing together provisions for the trip: bread, dried meat, cheese, and a few apples. 

Mara went over to the chest in the corner of the room and opened it, looking down at her mother’s crafts with fondness. The weapons were not quite a copy of Gaius’s: her sword was slightly longer and thinner in the blade, but still double-edged and well crafted enough to slice easily even without a razor edge, just by virtue of the shape. Per Gaius’s insistence, none of it took a shine and was simple, unadorned except for the knots in the wrapping of the rayskin around the hilt’s grip. 

For all of its unassuming nature, however, the steel in it was superior to any made anywhere in the Red Mountains except her mother’s forge. Mara knew her mother’s knowledge was part of what made her domain so powerful and prosperous, but those secrets were kept as if by the grave. Only Ritva, her youngest sibling, had taken to learning them. Her little sister was practically her mother’s fetch, a spirit double. 

“The chieftain wants me to talk to the oracle in the woods, Kalevi,” Mara said. “It sounded like there might be a war with Valkaldr. They’re being awfully quiet.” 

“At harvest time?” Gaius said with a scoff. “They’d be damn fools, letting their crops rot in their fields just to get a punch off at a rival they can’t afford to anger.” 

“I’m only telling you what they told me,” she said with a shrug, slinging her shield over one shoulder and then belting on her sword. 

“Why are they sending you?” Gaius asked. 

“My curse,” Mara said.

“Well, if what they say about Kalevi is true, that might be sensible,” her mentor acknowledged. 

“And they won’t miss me if I’m horribly killed.” 

Gaius shook his head at that and sighed. “Your mother would, so be careful. And if the oracle really is a troll, be damn careful. Even without magic, he’d be able to rip you limb from limb. I’d hate to see my pupil shredded and devoured.” 

“You wouldn’t see it,” Mara pointed out with a half-smile.

He pushed the satchel of supplies into her arms. “I mean it, Mara,” he said gruffly. “Don’t do anything stupid.” 

“I won’t, I promise,” she said as she hefted the pack. Gaius had given her a bit more than she probably needed, which she appreciated. She shouldered it and flashed him a smile. “If I can survive Sjaligr, I can survive an oracle.”

This stretch of woods always brought back fond memories, despite the dark and unnatural nature of the foliage. Deadwood was a place very few ventured, the black twisted trees reaching bare, pleading claws up towards the clouded sky. The ground was rocky and uneven. The people of the Red Mountains considered it cursed. Maybe that was why Mara felt so at home. That and the years she had spent learning the wisdom of the woods from Aamu. 

The old woman was the finest trapper within the bounds of Sjaligr’s domain, one of the only people who had looked at Mara with some measure of approval. It was no charity: Aamu expected the girl to keep up, to help empty and place traps, to carry the dead animals, to split and carry wood, to help fletch arrows and braid bowstrings out of sinew. Aamu had no patience for people who couldn’t pull their own weight, which she said often was why she made her home away from the city. 

Mara smiled faintly as she passed the standing stones where Aamu first showed her how to make fire with flint and steel. It was exhausting, time consuming, and anything but easy. These days she was an expert and knew to carry char cloth, but at first it had been a good many sparks and no flame. 

Why don’t you just use magic? I know you can, the girl had asked the first time Aamu had shown her the trick.

Can and should ain’t the same, my girl. All power comes at a price. Best not to use it when your head and hands do just as well.

This path took her close to Kalevi’s home, but it also took her to Aamu’s cairn. Whenever she was in this part of the woods, Mara made certain to stop near it. No one was immortal, not even a woman as cantankerous as Aamu. She had died in the winter, taken in her sleep by a fever. Few mourned her after a life lived separately from Sjaligr and all its people, as she was just the stranger of the woods who brought the finest furs to trade every now and again. 

Mara stopped before a pile of stones waist-high, stacked six feet in length and three feet wide. Time’s hands softened the edges of the stones and moss grew on most of them. Little, pale blue wildflowers bloomed around the base where the shaking hands of a teenage girl had planted them so Aamu would be surrounded in the beauty of the woods that she had so admired in life. 

A large standing stone, about three feet in height, marked the north end of the mound as a headstone, carved with stone-cutter’s tools stolen and then returned with no one the wiser. Aamu Frost-Weaver. Gone from us full of wisdom, full of grace. The huntress knelt by the headstone and placed one hand on it, leaning into it. Her forehead touched the cold stone. “I miss you,” she said softly. “I’m sorry I haven’t been by.” 

She gave no sign when she heard a twig snap behind her. It was a quiet, barely there sound, but it was enough to tell her that she was not alone. Mara contemplated her options. Her shield and wrapped bow were still across her back, but she could easily draw her sword. The person behind her was approaching slowly, but she heard the shifting in the fallen leaves and the movement of armor. 

Mara turned and drew as she stood, facing the stranger with a bare blade. The man was as tall as her father, but much broader in the chest, a bull of a man wielding a spear and shield. Mara almost winced at that sight. His much longer reach would be a problem if this came to blows. He was also better armored, wearing a mail hauberk and a rounded cap helm with a spectacle guard shielding his cheeks and around his eyes. The symbol of Valkaldr was stamped into the metal of his brow. 

“I don’t want any trouble,” Mara said as she shrugged off her satchel slowly. She made no move to unsling her shield, not yet. “We have no quarrel.” 

“I know blades such as yours. Only Sjaligr has midwinter steel,” the man said, his tone hard. “You have come to these woods seeking Kalevi.” 

“I’m just a hunter,” Mara said. “I wander these woods often.” 

“Geared for war?” His sneer of disbelief was almost audible. “I was warned that Fire-Bringer would send a spy. I will burn you with flames worthy of your master, sow.” 

He raised a hand, barking a short incantation to summon flames. Nothing happened. 

Mara wasted no time. She charged him as his eyes widened in horror. “Spellbreaker!” he shouted, trying to bring his spear to bear. 

Gods, but she hated that name.

Her sprint got her inside the reach of his spear with ease. Mara was not the strongest combatant, but she was one of the fastest in Sjaligr and more than quick enough to close distance. He knocked her blade away from his body with the edge of his shield, then dropped his spear and reached for the falchion at his side. Mara stepped across him, slamming her shoulder into him as she caught the edge of his shield and pulled. Her momentum and pivot sent him sprawling. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hold him down, so she shrugged off her shield and gripped it tightly as she thrust down at his throat. 

The man swung to hit her in the side of the knee with his falchion, a blow that would have crippled her for life. She had to almost dive to get out of reach of the strike, turning and taking third guard, shield forward with her blade angled back over her left shoulder, prepped for a cut.  She was always conscious of her footing and the leaves were wet enough to be slippery, so she took a more cautious stance. She also made certain she was between him and his spear. Now his blade was shorter than hers, bringing their reach closer to even with his longer arms. 

He scrambled to his feet, pale as fresh snow. “I have heard of you, demon,” he said, a tremor in his voice. “You poison the very weave of existence around you, locking it away from us.” 

Mara measured her options as he spoke. She was more of an unknown to him than she was to her own people. She steeled herself and prayed to any god that might take pity on her that her next ploy would work. “I can do worse to you than that,” Mara said, pitching her voice lower for as much menacing effect as she could get. “Perhaps you’ll kill me, but if I so much as scratch you, your spirit will be forever severed. How will you enter Heaven’s gates without your gods-given soul?” 

“You lie,” he spat, lifting his blade. She saw a hint of more tremor to his hands. 

“Do I?” Mara challenged, tapping into the well of anger that simmered perpetually under her skin.  “You’ve seen what I can do to your magic without even batting an eye. What do you think would happen if I turned my will to it?” 

The man took a step back and Mara advanced with a measured, purposeful stride. “Stay back!’ he shouted. 

“Flee or have your soul ripped out. I don’t care either way,” Mara said, grinning ferociously at him. “Though I might enjoy it if you’re fool enough to stay.”

The man retreated into the wood line, never turning his back to Mara until he was certain she was a distance away and no longer following. He sprinted south, no doubt back to the safety of whatever camp he had made in the area. 

Mara exhaled in a shaky breath and lowered her sword once the danger was past. She didn’t enjoy leveraging her cursed nature, but it had its uses. She realized she was sweating despite the autumn chill in the air and sheathed her sword. Gaius had trained her how to fight and fight well, perhaps better than even Viljami or her father if they could not draw upon their magic, but she hated it. She had too many memories of boots grinding her bare face into the dirt. 

She went over to her satchel and picked it up again, stopping only long enough to drink water. “I’m sorry, Aamu,” she told the cairn. “I know you didn’t like me fighting. I’ll come back again soon.” 

With that said, she started on her way again. She couldn’t afford to hesitate when she knew for certain now that there were men of Valkaldr in the woods as well. She could frighten one, but if there were more, she would have a problem. Numbers could overwhelm even the best warrior, and she was not the best. She shrugged her shield back onto her back, grateful that she wore no emblem of her home on her person, not even painted on her shield. Without her sword drawn, perhaps she could lie her way through her next encounter more smoothly. 

After another hour’s walk, she found what she had come seeking.

Kalevi’s home was at the center of Deadwood, a large, ramshackle construction built against a cliff. Stories said that there was a deep cave in the stone, the opening covered by the hut, where the oracle worked his magic. The scent of rotting meat drifted on the wind and Mara caught sight of several savaged deer carcasses outside the hut, mostly bone and offal. Either Kalevi had a large and dangerous pet or the old man really was a troll. 

Mara felt her nerves redouble. She had to hope that either way, he wouldn’t object to her affliction as much as everyone else did. The huntress steeled herself and approached, stopping a few yards from the door when it creaked open on its own, revealing a yawning dark hall behind it. She offered up a prayer again, though she didn’t expect it to be answered. 

Gods had no interest in those without a soul. 

“Hello?” Mara called as she approached the threshold. There was no answer, the air coming from the open door cold as a cave and moist. Inside was dark, but she had no way of conjuring a light other than making a torch, which people seldom appreciated in their homes. She sighed and stepped across the threshold, foot sending a bone scattering. 

With Aamu, Mara had learned what the bones of every animal in the area looked like, what they could be used for, their strengths and weaknesses. That femur belonged to no beast. 

Troll, Mara thought with a grimace. 

“Come,” a deep, rumbling voice ordered, distorted by the echoing depths of the house. 

Mara placed her hand on the wall and walked carefully, shuffling her feet so she wouldn’t trip over any other human remains. She walked and walked for what felt like forever before she saw firelight ahead. The wood of the wall gave way to raw, uncut stone. Apparently the stories about the cave were true. She tried to ignore the fact that her stomach was one huge knot of fear and her hands were shaking like leaves in a gale. It was probably the same level of terror that she’d put into the warrior. 

“Your approach is timely, Empty One,” the sonorous voice boomed, even more imposing up close. She rounded the corner in the cave to see a large fire and walls covered in ochre cave paintings, but her attention couldn’t fix on them long. Even the nauseating smell of death and filth couldn't distract her from the owner of this wretched hole. 

Kalevi was a towering figure, probably ten feet tall when he stood, but for now he was seated cross-legged on the stone with the fire between him and Mara. A long, white beard yellowed by tobacco spilled down from his chin beneath a maw of large, razor sharp teeth bared in a grin. His eyes were milky, not completely blind from cataracts, but probably close. He almost blended into the stone, skin rough and grey like the rock he leaned against. A long clay pipe with a bowl the size of a soup-bowl rested in one clawed paw-like hand. His other hand rested on a large, polished orb of onyx. His broad chest and bulging belly stood out in contrast to limbs that seemed thin, almost spindly for his size. 

It was not a picture that instilled any comfort in Mara. There was something altogether too hungry in that grotesque smile. 

“You are fortunate I have already eaten,” Kalevi said, stirring the remnants of a mail hauberk with one clawed foot. The chain mail was shredded, links broken from being pulled apart. “I have things that I could say to you, Empty One. What do you have for me?” 

Mara knew Kalevi had no interest in wealth or even gifts of food or drink. The stories of what the seer found an acceptable gift varied wildly and frequently ended in the phrase ‘and we never saw that person again’. “I have no riches to offer you, nothing that can equal your gift,” Mara said carefully. “But I can walk beneath the sun. Maybe I can do you a favor.” 

The troll’s smile widened, something Mara hadn’t thought was possible. “A favor?” A thunderous sound rolled out of his chest, equal parts growl and laughter. 

“If that is not to your liking, I can leave,” Mara said cautiously, ready to retreat. She was very conscious to stay out of the troll’s reach. 

“I will take your offer,” the troll said. “You will repay the service at a time of my choosing. When I ask a task of you, you will fulfill it.” He leaned closer, reeking of blood and offal. “Without question.” 

Mara’s skin crawled at the idea of what the troll would ask, but she knew her options were limited. “What do you know?” 

The lids on Kalevi’s clouded eyes drooped almost as if he was about to sleep. “For your people, Empty One, I see only ruin. I see the clash of chieftains, the shattering of shields, the earth turning to mud from spilled blood. More than that, I see Void. It will devour the Red Mountains and all the gifts of Creation. Its tide cannot be turned back. There, seated silver in darkness, a demon prince bids his kith forth. In their wake, nothing will remain except fire, death, and salt.” 

Mara shuddered. There was a gravity to Kalevi’s words, a deep piercing certainty that shook the rest of the world on its foundations. 

Kalevi turned to look fully at her with his clouded eyes. “But your path is not the same as your people’s, Empty One. I see the weave of your fate entangled with a tortured beast’s, maddened by agony and a terrible rage inflicted by the gods themselves. There is destruction, death, pain, and sorrow, but also hope. Even a curse can be a blessing to some.” 

“Is there anything that can be done to fight Void?” Mara asked. 

Kalevi’s laugh shook the cave, deafening and terrible, bitter and sour. “Void cannot be bargained with, cannot be fought, cannot be turned from its purpose. It will not be satisfied with anything but wiping all traces of your people from this earth. In its fire, all who stand will be consumed. Even I will not escape its horrors.” 

Mara took a deep, shaky breath, but before she could ask her next question, the troll raised his clawed hand. “I will not speak more of Void,” he said. “I will not call its attention.” 

She nodded, putting a hand on the wall to steady herself after that dark oracle. “You said my fate is bound to a beast’s?”

Kalevi grinned. “Yes,” he said with a sudden sort of gleam to his eyes. “A soul shredded by madness and fury, a being with two faces, a prisoner of the flesh who knows only agony. Treasure your time with the beast, Empty One. It will not last forever. Nothing lasts forever.” 

“Where can I find this beast?” Mara asked. She wasn’t certain if she wanted to with the description the troll gave, but if it was part of her fate, there was no sense in running from it. Such things always caught up to mortals. 

“At the eye of the storm,” Kalevi said. The troll stretched and let a clawed hand rest meaningfully on his belly. “Your questions are tiresome. Run away, Mara Spell-Breaker. I hunger again and I would have you live to perform for me that favor.” 

Mara didn’t hesitate for a split second. She turned and ran for the door, tripping and sliding over the bones strewn in the hall. She ran faster and faster, putting as much distance between her and Kalevi as possible. 

Sunlight seared her eyes as she reached it, but it was a merciful relief knowing that Kalevi wouldn’t be able to pursue until sunset. She didn’t stop running as she headed back towards Sjaligr. Her father was not going to like Kalevi’s dire prophecy, but she would have to give it anyway. She found the description of her own fate equally unsettling. 

Only time would make it clearer, however, and so she ran. 

Chapter 4
A Blow

By K. Olsen

“This prophecy is the word of a god enraged by the presence of a soulless abomination at a sacred site!” Gareth shouted.

Mara watched her father’s eyes. He didn’t even spare her a glance where she stood holding her jaw cupped in both hands, flesh already bruising from Gareth’s fury. Instead, his glare focused on his brother. “Kalevi’s hut is not what I would call a sacred site,” he said with a sharpness to his tone that meant his own anger was present, if kept leashed. Luukas Fire-Bringer had a fury worthy of legend, but it was not easily roused and the offense he took was more about Gareth publicly denouncing his decision than the assault on Mara.

“You should have sent me,” Gareth snarled. “Or Viljami. Anything but that.” The last word was spat at Mara more than her father. 

Mara tried to ignore the blood welling from her split lip even as she cupped her hand to stop it from splashing down onto her shirt or the floor. The taste of copper always made her sick to her stomach, more an association with shame and humiliation than any objection to the flavor itself.

“If the gods are angry, Gareth, I trust they would have more reason than a single blighted branch.” 

“It should have been exposed at birth! But your wife—” 

The chieftain rose to his feet, towering in his rage. “Mind your words!” he thundered, hand falling to the hilt of his sword. “Brother or not, I will cut you to pieces for slandering my wife!” 

Mara felt a stab of bone deep pain in the darkest part of her heart. She slunk back towards the edge of the great hall as the warriors of her city parted to give their chieftain space.

“Blights spread,” Gareth said more quietly, spreading his hands in a placating gesture and taking a step back. “That is why they are cut away. Yet this one remains and has brought doom upon us all. Something must be done.” 

“Kalevi said nothing of the source except Void,” her father said, tone still hard as stone. “That means demons. Whatever you say of the spell-breaker, surely you have shed enough blood to know the weakness of the cursed flesh, not the unfeeling power of sorcery.” 

“It is still a creature of that power. What else but the taint of Void could make a body without a soul?” her uncle said. His body was still rigid. 

“Spell-Breaker, leave us,” the chieftain said bluntly. “Your presence offends Gareth to the point of losing his senses and I would have him with his wits if we are to face off against the greatest of evils.” 

Mara bowed, still cradling her jaw. She hurried out of the hall, out of her father’s house. She still had all of her gear waiting at the wall around Gaius’s home from the trip. There was no reason for her to stay in Sjaligr with her uncle on the warpath. She hadn’t seen Viljami, but he had spent his whole life under her uncle’s tutelage and was always inclined to take his side. 

The bleeding stopped by the time she made it to the fence. She stopped long enough to rinse her hands in the water trough, more interested in getting blood off her hands than anything more civilized. She slung her shield and belted on her sword, grabbing the pack empty of rations except for a full water-skin. 

Gaius called her name from his doorway, but Mara made no attempt to listen. Instead, she ran without thinking of anything but being away. The ache was a shock through her face with every impact of her foot against the earth, but the physical pain was always easiest to deal with. She knew distantly that her mother would worry, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. 

Her pain pushed her further and faster than her usual jaunts out into the woods went. She barely slept on the path, letting her feet carry her north and higher in elevation, back towards the Sylfr River. She waded across it ready for any beast that might come her way, careful to carry her sword in its scabbard and her shield over her head. She didn’t have her bow to hunt with, but she could always fish or make snares.

It was hard to even think of that, though. Her stomach was too knotted with sickening emotions to welcome food. Her sleep was impossible, thoughts lodged again on what had happened with Kalevi. His vision for her, the favor she owed him, the evils that carrying his message had brought into her life. By  the time she returned, there was probably a decent chance a pyre would be waiting for her with no expectation that she would be dead before they burned her on it.

Mara sat down hard on the stone where Aallotar had tended her wounds, trying to deal with the ache in her chest that was so much worse than her face. The argument between her father and Gareth was full of things that made her regret surviving Kalevi’s presence. Being devoured by a troll would be horrible, but at least it would be an end to the otherwise inescapable misery of Sjaligr. Better a monster than a kinsman, if she could call them that. She had no soul, so could she ever be kin to anything?

Mara blinked back a few tears, too stubborn to let them fall. It shouldn’t have hurt, really. No shame there was new, no neglect unknown. Gareth’s venom towards the rotten fruit of his family tree was famous, as was his emphatic assertion that she should have been destroyed as an infant, before the taint had a chance to grow. 

Then again, that wasn’t what hurt the most. 

Absence did not make the heart grow fonder, not when it was a yawning void between two people in the same room. Her father didn’t care what happened to her. If Kalevi had devoured her, she doubt he would have noticed except his task going undone. Perhaps that would lift the pall of shame from his family line, to have the soulless child cut away like the blighted branch he’d called her. 

It hurt because she knew he could be a good father. He heaped praises on Viljami, treated Sabine like his princess, and indulged every request of Ritva’s inquiring mind. He had the capacity to love...just not her.

She wished she hadn’t run. She wanted to scream in his face, pound her fists against his chest, force him to at least look at her. He would never acknowledge her, not as his, but Mara had learned that hatred was a great deal easier to deal with than being treated as dust in the wind unless he devised a use for her for a few moments. Then she was a tool, ascribed all the thought and feeling of a pair of tongs or a hammer. 

Mara sucked in a deep breath, even the barest hint of tears fading. She realized the sting in her hands and unclenched them to reveal her nails had cut into her palms. 

“You are hurt,” a voice observed, the words accented and stilted. 

There wasn’t enough energy in Mara left to jump in alarm. Instead, she turned slightly to face the voice, suddenly aware of exhaustion in every fiber of her being. Her emotions had pushed her so far, so hard, that she had little left. “Aallotar,” she greeted, unable to make herself smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring a gift.” 

The wildling approached cautiously, as if she was expecting Mara to do something dangerous. It was probably a fair assumption given the shield and sword instead of a bow. Aallotar looked the same as at her first appearance, painted in woad and clothed in furs with some leather mixed in. It was more eclectic clothing than Mara had first realized, pieces tied together rather than stitched, almost scraps. 

Mara stayed still, at least until she saw Aallotar’s hand dip towards her satchel of healing remedies. “I’m fine,” Mara said flatly. She didn’t want pity, though she knew better than to say so. 

“I do not think so,” Aallotar said, finishing her approach. The wildling crouched in front of Mara, taking in the sight of the blow’s impact. “This is worse.” 

“I’m fine.” The same stubbornness that could hold even her mother at bay now reared its ugly head. “I don’t need anything.” 

Aallotar was quiet for a moment before speaking, her tone of voice soft almost to the point of pleading. “Please,” she said gently. “Let me tend this. It is not equal to the gift of your presence, but it is only right.” 

Mara laughed, the sound sharp and bitter. Her mirthless smile pulled at her abused lip and made her jaw ache. “My presence is a curse. Ask any and they will shout it to the heavens.” 

The wildling shook her head. “You are kind, Mara,” she said quietly. “You bring peace to this place.” She hesitated before saying, “Such that I have never seen before. Please let me tend your wounds. That is all I wish.” The golden eyes that looked up at Mara seemed so hopeful that Mara wasn’t certain she had it in herself to crush their ambition. 

Something was strange about Aallotar’s answer. The woods were a place she always associated with peace. Occasionally there was trouble, but for the most part, it was far, far more pleasant and serene than anything that happened in Sjaligr. “What is so dangerous about these woods?” 

Aallotar’s gaze dropped to her satchel. “Dangerous creatures dwell in these woods, things of tempest and savagery,” she explained, though Mara suspected a great deal was being left out. “They rage forever.” She looked up again at the huntress. “You are not that. You are the lull amidst their howling winds, their cracking thunder.” 

The eye of the storm, Kalevi’s voice echoed in the back of  her mind. The realization hit Mara like a punch to her already twisted gut. 

“A seer told me to find such a beast,” Mara said. Saying why right now was probably not the most prudent course of action, not when Aallotar was omitting things that were likely very important.

Aallotar shook her head. “It is not safe,” she said. “Please let me tend your wounds, Mara.” 

Something about the stilted emphasis on her name was hard to refuse. As much as Mara wanted to stay stubborn, she couldn’t escape the fact that her jaw hurt badly and she was being foolish by refusing the rarest of souls, one who would willingly offer her aid. Her shoulders slumped slightly, the last of the defiance fading. “Fine,” she said. She fixed Aallotar with a gimlet glare. “No magic.” 

“Nothing if you do not wish it,” the wildling promised, opening up the satchel. She set to work, mixing again the green rinse she used to clean off Mara’s face. 

The touch of the brush and the cold rinse again tingled and stung, but pain was not new to Mara and she knew it wouldn’t last long. Aallotar knelt closer to work, against Mara’s own knees. The healer was most careful around her torn lip, gently rinsing it a few times. The sting made Mara’s eyes water slightly. 

“What did this?” Aallotar asked softly once she was finished with the rinse, all the dried blood removed from Mara’s face. 

Thanks to the punishment for snitching, Mara always favored evasiveness. But who would Aallotar tell who could enact retribution on her? “Gareth Earth-Cleaver, brother to my father.”

“Why?” Aallotar asked with genuine confusion.

“Because I’m a monster,” Mara said bitterly. “A cursed, soulless, empty shell of a person.”

“They are blind,” Aallotar said bluntly, with such certainty that it took Mara aback. “I know monsters. You are not that.”

“You barely know me,” Mara said in an effort to brush off those words. A tremor was growing in her chest at their impact, a hint of tears building. Her mother saw goodness in her, Gaius saw goodness in her, but they had to. Her mother was her mother. They saddled Gaius with training her most of her life. For a stranger without those ties to see something good in her was unheard of.

Her interaction with the warrior in the woods was how those meetings invariably ended. Someone crossed her path, realized what she was, and tried to fix her family’s mistake.

“I know enough,” Aallotar said with the same forcefulness, setting aside her brush for a moment so she could look straight into Mara’s eyes, showing no insincerity or uncertainty. “You carry a thorn in your side like none I know, but you have soul. I feel it in the air around you. It makes me calm.”

Mara pulled in a deep breath before turning her gaze away. It was hard to meet Aallotar’s eyes. Their golden color was enough to get lost in. “Thank you,” she murmured. She had no other words. This wasn’t exactly a situation she had prepared for. Her doubts remained, however. Once Aallotar learned what she was, she could expect the same. 

In a few moments, fingertips lightly touched her chin, turning her head back. Aallotar had another brush in hand, covered in the rust-colored balm that she’d used last time. Fortunately, now the wildling was focused on her injuries, lips pressed into a thin line. “He is fortunate he does not know the way to these woods.” 

“Gareth?” Mara said, a stab of anxiety in her stomach at even the thought of him meeting Aallotar. “He’s a powerful eldritch knight. I can’t recommend confronting him.” 

“I do not fear mennskr,” Aallotar said. Her tone was firm, but not prideful. “Their bones litter this place, though few come since ancient days. Most know better.” She eyed Mara for a moment, expression betraying a hint of amusement. “Most.” 

“If there’s one thing I will never learn, Aallotar, it’s what’s good for me,” Mara said, a hint of smile finally appearing. It stung as it pulled at her lip, at least until the brush dabbed at her wound, soothing it. “You must be quite the warrior.” 

“Enough to end those across my path,” Aallotar said with a sudden edge of discomfort. “I do not love might or its uses.” 

“Fair enough,” Mara said gently. “But sometimes we do what we have to.” 

Aallotar nodded solemnly before finishing her work carefully. Again, she checked it carefully, turning Mara’s chin with a featherlight touch to examine all the covered bruising. “Leave on for a day at least,” she instructed. 

“That’s what I did last time. It works incredibly well,” Mara said. She flashed Aallotar a smile. “You’re a fine healer.” 

“Fine enough,” Aallotar said with distinct embarrassment over what she seemed to think was flattery. 

“Skill thoughtfully applied should always be praised,” Mara said. “That’s what Gaius says, anyway. He’s all about doing things with intent.” 

“I have little practice in that,” Aallotar admitted, shifting back on her knees as she packed away her satchel. She wrapped each jar carefully. “I should return this to my home.” She hesitated a long moment, looking into the woods before looking back at Mara. “It would be safer for you if you came. Safer yet if you cross the river.” 

“I’ll go with you.” Mara rose to her feet with ease and then held her hand out to Aallotar when the healer was ready to stand. “Do I need to worry about more of your people at your home?” 

The wildling shook her head. “We do not live close together. This part is mine.” 

“That must get lonely.” Then again, Mara appreciated the idea of a life away from others.

Aallotar shrugged. “Some meet often. Not I. I do not wish to fight.” She turned a somber expression towards Mara. “We are not like mennskr. Our way is...conflicted.” 

“Well, thank you for breaking your solitude for me,” Mara said, adjusting her shield over her shoulder and tightening her sword belt. “Lead the way.” 

Aallotar took her on a turning, twisting path that seemed to double back on itself numerous times. It was confusing, which was probably the point. Clearly the wildling didn’t want Mara to know the direct way to her home, which the huntress thought was reasonable. They didn’t know each other well.

Mara had expected a cabin in the woods, but instead they stopped at the mouth of a cave, mostly overgrown. The earth at the entrance was packed down, a sign of frequent travel in and out, a passage narrow through rock and leaves. “A cave?” Mara said with a touch of surprise. Before Aallotar could take offense, Mara continued, “They do stay about the same temperature all year, so I can see why that would be good for herb storage.” 

“It is,” Aallotar said, blinking in surprise. Apparently that wasn’t the reaction she’d been expecting. She brushed some ivy aside and gestured for Mara to follow. “Come in.” 

Mara glanced down as she stepped in and almost stopped dead in her tracks. There were prints in the earth, faint because of the hard packing, but definitely there. They looked almost like giant wolf tracks at first inspection, but the front set of the prints looked very, very strange. A chill ran down Mara’s spine. There were claws, certainly, but the pads were longer and jointed. They looked almost like…

Hands. 

She tucked that thought back in her head, making a mental note to ask Aallotar about her animal companion. It was hard not to think of the beast that had watched her from the shores of the river. The tracks were the right size for it. 

It was dark in the cave,  lit by a soft green-blue phosphorescence from some fungi growing on the walls. Mara let her eyes adjust and then her heart twisted at how bare the place was. There were stone outcroppings used as shelves for various herbs and a number of mismatched clay pots. A large pile of furs lay in one corner, which was probably Aallotar’s bed, and a small pile of flint sat opposite to it, clearly in the process of knapping. There was a stack of branches, but no sign of a fire at all.

It was cool in the cave, which made Mara grateful she was at least dressed for the autumn weather, not much warmer outside than in here. 

Aallotar set her bag down beside the herbs, then turned and watched carefully as Mara stepped in. “It is different than you are used to,” the wildling observed. 

“Don’t you get cold without a fire?” Mara asked curiously. 

“My blood runs hot,” Aallotar said with a shrug. 

“What about your furry friend?” 

Aallotar went rigid. “I want no thought of the beast,” she said, voice a combination of pain and anger. “Not now.”

Mara held up both hands placatingly. “Alright,” she said gently, trying to think of a topic that was safe. She would have to coax the story about the beast out of Aallotar at another time. “Why don’t you tell me about the herbs you just put all over my face? I have to admit, I’m curious about how it works so well without magic.” 

The wildling relaxed slowly, accepting the change in subject. “It would only be fair,” she said more softly. “They are an old secret with a long, tedious story.” 

“I’ve got the time,” Mara said with a smile. “Let’s hear the story.”

Chapter 5
An Offer

By K. Olsen

Mara knew well that she was being watched as she brought the flint and steel together, showering her char cloth and tinder with expertly struck sparks. Aallotar had moved back against the cave wall like she feared even the promise of flames, but her golden eyes followed every movement of the huntress’s hands with relentless curiosity. 

“You really don’t use fire, do you?” Mara said, surprised. How did Aallotar eat food or stay warm? Winter in the mountains was always brutal, enough to drive even great bears into hibernation to escape the cold. 

“No need,” Aallotar said, cocking her head slightly as she watched. “It is a thing of mennskr.” 

“I promise you that it infinitely improves meat,” Mara said. There was no way in hell that the wildling had grown to her present height and musculature without eating animal flesh, which meant she’d probably eaten it raw. It was a concept that made Mara wince internally. “You should try it.”

Aallotar shifted uncomfortably as the fire caught, slowly growing to consume the tinder before licking at the kindling that Mara had found. “I…”

“I promise it won’t hurt,” Mara said, flashing Aallotar a winning smile. “Trust me on this.”

“When you go and fire is no more?” the wildling said pointedly. “If I like and cannot have again?”

“I can teach you how to do this,” Mara offered. “Then you won’t even need me.” 

Aallotar shook her head. “Only mennskr can use.”

“Anyone can wield flame, so long as they understand that it is a fine servant and a deadly master,” Mara said, carefully bringing her little fire together. She had waited until she had Aallotar’s permission for the fire to make it, but the wildling still seemed intimidated by it. She smiled more softly at Aallotar. “If it makes you feel better, I promise I won’t hurt you with it. It’s just a tool.”

“I...suppose.” Aallotar sounded dubious, but her posture relaxed slightly. She watched the flames with pensive eyes.

Mara worked away diligently until her makeshift hearth was burning well, but the fire itself was still small. She glanced over at Aallotar often, bruised jaw aching as she gave the wildling a crooked smile. There was something wonderful about the way Aallotar returned the expression shyly. Not that Mara lingered on such a thought long. She knew how this would end, no matter how much Aallotar seemed to want someone around too.

Aallotar stayed at a distance for a good ten minutes before approaching the small fire like it was some wounded predator that could lash out at any distance. “It is warm,” she observed as she drew closer, a hesitant smile forming.

“I should hope so,” Mara said with amusement, turning her attention now to the trout she’d caught on her evening venture out with Aallotar now that her face was tended to. There was only one fish, but it was one of the largest she’d ever caught. She’d cleaned it already, so now it was only a matter of cooking it. Mara’s cooking was always rough and ready, but she did a fine job if one wasn’t grading on appearances. She laid out a plate from her pack for the fish as soon as it was roasting away.

Aallotar reached for the fish, to save it from the fire, but Mara flicked the back of her hand just hard enough to dissuade her. “I—”

“Trust me,” Mara said gently. She didn’t know why or how Aallotar never learned to use fire, but she wouldn't shame the wildling for it. Particularly not since Aallotar was the closest to a friend she’d ever had. “This will make it better. I even have sea salt for it.” 

“Are you from the seaside?” 

“No,” Mara explained, carefully arranging her fish over the fire on a forked, green stick spit. “My father’s hall is to the southwest. We’re almost a month’s travel through the mountains from the coast, but we trade with the cities along the fjords. My roots are in the stone still.” She flashed Aallotar a smile. “Though not so much as you.” 

“Mine is the wild,” Aallotar acknowledged.

“Have you ever seen a city?” Mara asked curiously. 

The wildling shook her head. “I stay far from mennskr lands,” she said. “I do not go more south than the Sylfr River. All that is north of river-waters and west of the Great Rift is ours.” 

“It’s surprising how few stories there are of this place,” the huntress said as she settled in more comfortably, watching the fish roast with careful attention. “At least, those that at all resemble the truth.” 

“Stories require survivors,” Aallotar said solemnly. “The hunting grounds here hold many the bones of mennskr who tried to trespass during the ancient days.” 

Mara looked over at the wildling. “You haven’t hurt me. The opposite, in fact.” 

Golden eyes suddenly looked away from her. “You are not like them.” 

“How so?” 

Aallotar shrugged, but did not indicate that she intended to elaborate until Mara’s hand caught her wrist. The wildling’s eyes widened slightly as she looked down at the grip. The contact came as a surprise. 

Mara held gently enough that Aallotar could easily pull away. “You can talk to me.”

“I cannot explain,” Aallotar said hesitantly. Mara could practically see the words burning up inside the wildling’s throat, but she kept them behind pressed lips. It left Mara with a similar opinion about her odds of success at pushing as the brief exchange about the beast did. There were some things about Aallotar’s life that the wildling was not about to share.

Mara wanted to know, particularly since some of it seemed to be about her. At the same time, however, her fear of Aallotar reacting poorly to the intrusion nipped her curiosity in the bud. Her face already ached from Gareth’s blow. It would be better not to earn any other abuse or worse. “Alright,” she said with a sigh, letting go of Aallotar’s wrist. She flashed the wildling a smile when those golden eyes seemed concerned, anything to ease the sudden tension. “Keep your secrets.” 

Aallotar shifted to sit beside Mara so close they were almost in contact, bumping her shoulder gently into Mara’s. “Thank you,” she said in a low voice. 

Mara felt her cheeks heat up. It was strange and wonderful to be thanked by anyone, particularly for such a tiny thing. “I do owe you, remember? That means I have to be nice.” 

The wildling laughed at that. “No,” Aallotar said in her strange, clumsy way of speaking. “It means you catch for me a deer. Nice is extra.” 

The huntress grinned at that. “I think I can manage that.” 

“Can you?” Aallotar teased. “When we met, you had trouble so doing.”

Mara turned to look at the wildling, pursing her lips. “Was that a jab at my skills in hunting?” she demanded, barely able to keep the smile off her face. Gaius had left something of an impression on her, so when teasing, she did so straight-faced.

Aallotar’s eyes widened slightly, and she immediately went to apologize. “I did not mean—”

The huntress softened immediately. “I wasn’t actually upset, Aallotar,” she said more gently. “Just going to tease back. It was a joke.” 

Aallotar’s face reddened with embarrassment at that. “I am not wise with faces,” she admitted.

“The peril of living alone, I suppose. I’m not angry or offended, I promise you,” Mara said.  There was something about the way Aallotar’s eyes reflected the firelight that didn’t seem normal, a hint of glow to them. “How long have you been alone out here?” 

Aallotar shrugged and gave Mara a small, almost apologetic smile. “Many turnings of the seasons,” she said. “I would make my own way.” 

“I can understand that,” Mara said, touching her face gingerly with  her fingertips. “When I’m back in Sjaligr, all I can think about is getting away. The woods are lonely, but no more so than living surrounded by...that.”

“Why do you stay?” 

Mara’s expression turned rueful. “A good question,” she said, carefully adjusting the fish where it was cooking. The smell was already wonderful.

“An answer you do not have?” Aallotar said gently. 

“Something like that,” Mara admitted. “I guess it’s mostly that I don’t want to upset my mother. It doesn’t help that no matter where I go, I’m marked forever by what I am and people hate it as much as they fear it. It’s like leprosy of the spirit.” 

“I do not hate,” Aallotar said. “Nor fear.”

Mara smiled faintly, though she tried to ignore the current of warmth through her soul at those words. She knew it wouldn’t last, but the words were still sweetly spoken. “It’s things like that that really make me wonder how sane you are.” 

“That was joking,” the wildling hazarded, though she wasn’t certain. 

Not exactly, Mara reflected, but instead of voicing that, she flicked Aallotar’s hand lightly. “Why do the nice ones all have to be crazy hermits living in the woods?” she teased. 

Aallotar’s expression could only be described as pouting. It was, in Mara’s estimation, adorable. “Not crazy.” 

“I suppose we’ll see,” Mara said. She leaned back against the rock shelf to her back with a surprising comfort around a stranger. It was easier to talk to Aallotar, maybe just because the wildling didn’t really know who she was or what she was capable of. Ignorance was probably the best explanation for Aallotar’s kindness at this point. 

The wildling looked over at the fish to watch it cook. Now and then, she pulled in a deep breath to enjoy the aroma. “It smells good,” she murmured after a few more minutes. 

“It’ll taste even better, I promise,” Mara said. “Just don’t wolf it down. It’ll be hot and you might burn yourself.” 

Aallotar looked over at her, head turning almost sharply. “I will not,” she promised after a second’s hesitation. 

The fish came out even better than Mara had hoped, looking every bit perfectly cooked because of her constant fussing with it. A sprinkle of sea salt and the addition of a few wild herbs both as it cooked and afterwards turned it from a simple mountain trout into a meal to remember. Mara felt immensely proud of her cooking skills in that moment, particularly since it was going to be Aallotar’s first experience with roasted fish. Possibly with roasted anything. 

“This might be hard to eat,” Mara said with a grin as she watched the meat of the fish fall apart at pressure from her knife as she divided it into two halves, giving Aallotar the larger one. The wildling was bigger and her gaze was downright ravenous after being inundated with the smell, so Mara figured generosity was in order. She’d barely had the patience to let it cool a little, waiting only at Mara’s insistence. “I never do this well. Aamu would be proud.” 

“Aamu?” Aallotar said, looking at her section of fish with fascination. She used her fingers to pick up a chunk, but it fell apart immediately, which meant she had to catch it in her hand.

“She taught me about the woods,” Mara said, grateful for a fond memory. “Tough as hickory, charming as a thorn bush, but with a good heart. She spent more time in the wilds than anyone I’d ever met until you.” 

“I think I would like her,” Aallotar said with a smile. 

“She went to the Aurora four winters ago,” the huntress said, sorrow touching her voice for a moment. She smiled all the same, fondness still mingled with sadness. “In her sleep. Death was a little too scared of her to knock on her door while she was in a state to answer it.” 

Aallotar reached out, putting the hand that wasn’t holding fish on Mara’s shoulder. “Gentle ends for gentle souls are Death at her best,” the wildling said. Her next words were a soft request. “Tell me about her?”

Mara nodded, grateful for the comfort and the opportunity. She’d grieved Aamu alone, with no one to speak with about the old woman. “Only if you eat your fish.” 

The wildling nodded and ate from her palm without hesitation. It was entirely ungraceful and not at all proper, but Mara grinned when Aallotar’s eyes widened and she let out a hum of approval. The smile across the wildling’s face was broad and delighted. 

“Well?” Mara prompted with a laugh. “Is it better than catching it out of the river with your hands and teeth?” 

Aallotar beamed despite her earlier hesitation. “Much!” She poked Mara gently in the ribs. “I will eat much. Tell me of Aamu.” 

Mara used her knife to lift fish to her mouth. She’d eaten this way so many times that it was easy to do so without losing the fish. Aallotar continued mangling her half with her fingers, which was more endearing than offensive.  “What do you want to hear?” she asked. 

“Tell me of Aamu and fish. How did she catch them?” 

“Most of the time? She used a line and a hook,” Mara said between mouthfuls. “No need for a pole, just gnarled fingers making the hook and its bait dance. She snared only the most cunning of fish, even in the dead of winter, fishing through the ice. I used to think it was magic, but she would always slap me whenever I asked her for the incantation.” 

“She did not use magic?” Aallotar guessed. 

“Never. She always said it was because sound scares the fish away, and she had a glare worthy of a death-knight for any girl raising too much racket moving through the brush on the banks,” the huntress said fondly. “She thought magic was too important and dangerous to use doing every little thing. It was one thing she didn’t like about Sjaligr. She lit her fires with flint and steel, scrubbed her floors with a brush, tended her gardens by hand, even dug her own cesspit with a shovel. Anything she could do by hand, she did, and she taught me how.” 

Aallotar nodded thoughtfully at that. “She was wise.” 

“She learned to be,” Mara said, voice taking on a quieter tone. “Aamu was gifted in death-magic. She knew all about the price of spells.” 

The wildling’s eyes widened slightly. “Powerful, evil magic.” 

“Some people just have the gift for it. Aamu was one of them. It wasn’t like she studied it or sought its power, but she knew that if she wasn’t careful, she could disturb the rest of the dead with a thought. Aamu never intentionally raised any corpses, but when she was young, my age, she had a lover who was killed in a battle. Grieving, she went to find him on the field to bury his body and make certain his soul could pass on.” 

“And he rose,” Aallotar whispered.

Mara nodded. “She said it was the most horrible thing she had ever seen. She put him back to rest, but she had to strike him down to do it. I think it soured her on magic.” 

“As it would anyone, enduring such a thing.” Aallotar’s golden eyes grew sympathetic at even the thought. “Such a pain.” 

“She was never afraid to speak of it,” Mara said. “It always surprised me, confused me, how she could just go to such a terrible place. She said it was important to remember, to tell. There is always a price, a danger, to magic. Woe to those who forget that, she would always say.” 

“And she taught you such wisdom.” 

Mara laughed. “I made her.” When Aallotar cocked her head curiously, Mara smiled. “I was her little shadow for a full season before she officially taught me anything. Everything she did, I followed her for. She couldn’t be rid of me. We were both very, very stubborn. She gave in eventually and started to actually explain and show me things instead of watching helplessly as I tried to copy her and failed. She always said, My respect to the little wildflower that digs its roots into rock.”

“She saw herself in you.” Aallotar looked up from her fish, giving Mara a smile. She was almost finished with her part of the meal already. 

“I hope so,” Mara said. A connection to anyone was a pleasant one, but particularly to Aamu. “Though she was braver than I am. She didn’t tolerate anyone giving her grief without giving them a piece of her mind. I can’t say I live to that example.”

Aallotar smiled. “How old was Aamu when you knew her?” 

“Sixty-six winters,” Mara said. 

“And you are now?”

“Twenty.” 

The wildling shrugged. “So in forty-six winters, you will fear nothing and be as wise as her.” 

Mara laughed at that and shook her head. “If I make it to her age, it’ll be a damn miracle,” she said. She studied Aallotar. “How old are you?”

“Many,” Aallotar said with a shrug. “In wilds, who tracks?” 

“You must have at least a guess,” Mara said.

“Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six,” Aallotar said, not entirely certain which of those it was. 

“You’re more of a spinster than I am,” the huntress teased. 

Aallotar furrowed her brow as she cleaned off her hands with a broad burdock leaf. It was a surprising show of restraint, not using her tongue to catch the last of the fish. “Spinster? What is word?” 

“Most girls in Sjaligr are married at sixteen,” Mara explained. “Some make it to seventeen before they are, especially if they’re highborn. It gives the fathers extra time to find the best match. Only one or two in a single village make it past eighteen without marrying.” 

Aallotar pointed at herself. “This does not marry.”

Mara laughed, trying to imagine Aallotar in a wedding dress. The image was amazing, all that woad and wildness clashing with a fine garment and the manners expected at such an occasion. “Probably for the best,” she said with a smile. “I don’t think you’d like being a housewife.”

“Nor would they like my cave,” the wildling said with amusement. “You are married?” 

The levity that Mara felt faltered at that. It was a bitter sore spot, knowing that even if she found someone foolish enough to want to bind himself to her, her father would never consent or pay a dowry. She sighed. “No. It’s...not for me.” 

“Not in Sjaligr,” Aallotar said. Her voice was understanding. 

Mara leaned back against the stone, letting the touch of cold soothe her. Many of her best memories were of winter-time trapping and adventures with Aamu, so she appreciated the chill even when it was a little uncomfortable. “My father told me he would forbid it,” she said. “I never told my mother, but I think he’s afraid of what might happen if I ever had children.” 

“Why?” Aallotar said with a frown. 

“I think one empty, soulless, cursed thing in his family line is far more than he’d like already,” Mara said softly. “I don’t want it either, honestly. It’s hard enough for children to grow up in Sjaligr as part of my family. Doing so with my blood in their veins? They would be lucky to live to see a winter.” 

A silence passed over the pair of them, broken only by the little snaps and crackles of the fire. Aallotar studied her, face illuminated by the flickering of firelight. After a long moment, she spoke. “Mara?” 

“Mm?”  

The wildling took a deep breath, then looked at the huntress with her strange, reflecting eyes. “You should stay,” she said more firmly. 

Mara offered her a small smile, though she doubted Aallotar would mean it for much longer. "Thank you," she said. "You're probably right, but..." She let the words trail away, feeling terribly foolish. What could she say? That for all its cruelties, Sjaligr was her home? "I'll think about it." 

A howl split the quiet of the distance, barely audible in the cave, and Aallotar froze.

Chapter 6
A Beast

By K. Olsen

Aallotar surged to her feet before Mara had a chance to do more than blink. “What’s going on?” the huntress asked as she scrambled up to her own. 

“Stay here,” the wildling said, tension building in her body. Suddenly there was something almost animalistic in the way she moved, like a growl was building in her body. “The beast hunts you.” 

“You have no weapons, Aallotar,” Mara said firmly, wishing she had her bow or a spear. A sword and shield would have to do as far as defense, stupid as it sounded. “I’m not letting you tangle with anything dangerous alone. It can’t be worse than a troll.” 

“Worse,” the wildling said, turning to face Mara. There was something pleading in her expression. “Stay here, Mara. You are mennskr. Nothing except your death will satisfy its hunger. Please stay.” 

“What if it hurts you?” Mara had no intention of allowing her first and only friend to die. 

“I am stronger than I look,” Aallotar said. Her expression hardened at the sound of another, closer howl. “We have no time for quarrel. Stay.” Without waiting for a reply, Aallotar turned and bolted from the cave into the darkness. 

Mara grabbed her sword and shield with a spat curse, giving Aallotar a three-second headstart so she wouldn’t immediately be spotted by the wildling. She wove through the woods with every bit of cunning she had learned over the course of her life, doing her best not to make a damn sound as she followed Aallotar’s passage through the brush. More and more, Aallotar gained distance, moving with a speed Mara could barely even follow. 

The clawing branches of the deep, dark pines tore at Mara’s face as she hurried after the wildling. Thorn bushes scratched her and roots sought to capture her feet as she moved, but Mara spent far more of her life in the woods than out of them. She was not going to take a fright of the darkness, nor of this strange beast. 

She stepped up to the edge of the clearing, the light of a half moon shedding silver illumination down on the ground. There was the beast at the far end of the clearing, a wolf-like monster the size of a draft horse with dark, matted fur and long strings of glistening drool pouring from its jaws. It could almost pass as one of the great dire wolves, but Mara saw none of the calm of an animal in it. Never before had she seen anything so captured in rage, wrath visible in its tense posture and hateful gaze that swept across the edge of the clearing in hunt for something, probably Mara herself. Even rabies seemed not enough to account for the behavior, though that possibility made the huntress shiver.

There was no sign of Aallotar. 

Mara slipped her sword out of the sheath. Even if the flash of the blade alerted the creature, she wasn’t damn well going to keep it concealed when she would need it to defend herself. She adjusted her grip and took a deep breath, waiting for the creature to approach. 

Branches snapped from the woodline well more than a stone’s throw from Mara, probably close to fifty yards from her current space. Another great beast of the same variety surged from the woodline, colored more like the timberwolves of the region, hurling itself at its opponent without hesitation. The quiet night was now full of snarling and growling as the creatures ripped at each other. 

It was a duel of titans, one Mara had no interest in being involved in. She had no way to get back to the cave without retracing steps, and that was impossible in the dark without a light...particularly because her host had ensured that the path was foreign to her. She needed Aallotar to find her way. She took a deep breath and gripped her shield a little more tightly, as ready as she would ever be to contend with the victor. She felt woefully unprepared for the savagery she saw unfolding. 

Even if a touch smaller, the grey wolf ripped flesh from the jaws of its enemy and slashed at it with rending claws. The larger, black-furred one made full use of its larger size, slamming and crushing with its body as well as snapping its jaws to try to rip the throat from the smaller creature. They circled and battled like two hungry wolves, but there was no dominance play here, no chance for submission: kill or be killed. 

Mara heard the crack of bone from the creatures and almost cringed. The larger wolf-like beast howled in agony, recoiling back from the other with a broken foreleg. The way it held up its paw as it limped displayed its most unsettling feature. 

It had a hand or at least a long, narrow paw with space between its claws, with what might have been a dew claw that was pronounced enough to almost be a thumb. A chill gripped Mara’s spine when she saw it. Whatever these things were, they were not natural beasts. Her hold on her shield was tight enough that she was starting to go numb in that hand, but she couldn’t get herself to loosen her grip even a little. 

The smaller beast ducked low and surged up as soon as it saw an opening. Its opponent tried to recoil back, to save its own throat, but grey jaws clamped wickedly around its windpipe. The rip and tear was enough to make Mara ill. Even after the larger wolf-like abomination fell to the ground, its foe was still in a frenzy, shredding the body apart. 

Mara exhaled and took a step back, wary of the creature. There was an unfortunate snap from below her heel and Mara cursed every god she had ever heard of in the privacy of her own head. 

The beast swiveled towards her and snarled, eyes glowing eerily in the moonlight against its hateful, ravenous face. There was something so twisted about it that Mara’s dread almost completely overwhelmed her. Bloody foam streaking its chest and jaws, the beast moved towards her, its passage through the grass silent even though it limped slightly from the wound dealt by the bigger one. 

Everything in Mara screamed to run, but she held her ground. She knew that if she turned and fled, she would have no defense against it. She raised her shield, bringing it forward to protect as much of her body as possible as she readied her sword. A deep breath restored her center. Calm. Be calm. Fear will end you.

The creature tensed and lunged for her, a devouring fury fueling its charge across the meadow. It was on her in almost a split second, but it never connected. 

As soon as it was within twenty feet of her, something horrible happened to the beast. There was a symphony of snapping, like every bone breaking at once, and the creature let out a banshee howl that turned into a scream of agony as its whole form twisted and contorted. Suddenly it was staggering rather than walking on all fours, fur growing lighter as it receded across the body. Joints snapped and twisted even as its legs changed shape. 

Aallotar hit the ground on her knees in front of Mara, covered in blood and bile, sides heaving as she trembled uncontrollably, the last of the transformation finishing. The smell of the beast still lingered around her, sweat and musk mingling with the reek of death. She looked horrible, woad smeared over by the blood across her face, golden eyes still reflecting the moonlight like a wolf’s.

Mara took a step back, lowering her blade so it was no longer pointed at Aallotar’s chest. “You’re the beast,” she breathed.

Aallotar shook her head, tears filling her eyes. “I am not,” she choked out. “I am not. Not when with you.” 

Mara knew what her kinsmen would have done in her position. Aallotar was a monster, the kind out of nightmare, the kind that would devour humans down to the very marrow, every bit as dangerous and hostile as the troll Kalevi. If any true son of Sjaligr were in her place, they would plunge their sword into the wildling’s chest and have one less eater of men in the world. 

There was no escaping that whatever she was and however dangerous she was, Aallotar was unmistakably hurting and not just from her injuries. Mara could see genuine torment in the wildling’s expression, fear and shame every bit as visible as the blood. It gave her every answer she could ever need from Aallotar. 

Mara sheathed her sword and slung her shield across her back, stepping forward to steady Aallotar with both hands. The blood that was everywhere was still hot against Mara’s hands, filling the air with its coppery stench.

“We need to get back,” she said, ignoring the quiver in her own body. Part of her was still screaming for her to run away from this predator that looked like a friend, but she overruled it. Aallotar had been nothing but kind and her protection, no matter how terrifying, was just that: protection.

Aallotar made a sobbing sound as she drew in her next breath. “I am sorry,” she whispered, voice rough from the force of her growls and cries. 

Mara knew that wretched sound. It’d come out of her own mouth many, many times when she was younger. She knelt in front of Aallotar, catching her friend’s bloody face between her hands. It forced the wildling to meet her eyes. “Aallotar, I’m not going to hurt you or leave you,” she said, letting her eyes and voice show her sincerity. “I need your help finding the way back to the cave. You’re not well.” 

Arms wrapped around Mara and pulled her close into a hug so tight it felt like it would break ribs. Aallotar’s body was hot to the touch, as if she suffered the worst fever Mara had ever experienced. “Sorry,” she said again, more softly. 

Mara winced. Now she was covered in blood and saliva too. “Let’s get you back,” she wheezed gently, trying to breathe through the crushing grip. “Can you walk?”

“Yes,” Aallotar croaked as she released Mara. Even beneath the light of an inconstant moon, her relief and gratitude were visible. She got to her feet with the huntress’s help, grimacing as she did so.

Mara glanced down. Aallotar was definitely favoring her right leg, so she moved to the wildling’s left side to offer support. She formed a rough crutch, though she wasn’t certain if it was even needed. Even with the deep bite wound to her leg, Aallotar’s pain tolerance was impressive. “You’re going to need medicine and bandages. And a bath.” 

“There are still some left,” the wildling said. “The cave touches a grotto with water.” 

Mara nodded, trying to ignore the frantic beating of her heart as the reality of their situation set in. She was alone in the wilds with an injured Aallotar. If another of the wildling’s kind appeared, Mara would be defending herself and that was not a battle she was confident she could win. 

Together, the pair made their way back to the cave, where the fire still burned, albeit low. Mara helped Aallotar sit and then stoked the fire, adding wood. She needed to heat water if she was going to properly clean wounds. Medicine wasn’t something she knew much of, but Gaius had taught her how to tend battle wounds and she had a lifetime’s worth of practice handling bruises and cuts. 

Of course, to do that, she would need a pot. Mara cursed herself for coming so far with an empty pack, but Aallotar was already up and moving towards the back of the cave, hobbling towards the faint sound of running water. “I will return.”

Mara followed, catching Aallotar gently by the wrist. “Let me help you,” she said. “You’re covered in mess and you’re injured. I also have some soap.” 

Aallotar hesitated, ducking her head and turning her gaze to the ground. “I…” 

“Trust me,” Mara said, stressing the words. “I trusted you to tend my wounds.” 

“I...I do,” the wildling said softly. “I just…no one…” 

Mara wanted to hug Aallotar and never let go at that answer. She knew exactly how it felt to have to tend her own wounds alone. “Let me help you,” she said again, touching Aallotar’s shoulder. “Can you do that for me?” 

Aallotar nodded and made her way slowly to a deep, cold pool where a stream passed through the stone, weaving its way underground. There was just enough current for it to gently flow from east to west. 

Mara stopped and grabbed her things as well as Aallotar’s healing satchel before following. By the time she arrived, Aallotar had stripped off her furs and stepped down into the pool. There were a number of lacerations on her back, but most of the bites seemed to be focused on her arms and legs. It was the scars that stopped Mara in her tracks. 

Across the dense bone and sheets of hard muscle that were her body, the wildling bore hundreds and hundreds of claw and bite marks, overlapping into a rough topography that was painted with woad. Then Mara realized something when the woad was not disturbed by the waters. No, not painted. Tattooed, like us. 

The sheer number of scars and the severity of some of them hurt Mara’s heart more than a little. It explained Aallotar’s comments about living alone to avoid conflict. How many times had she been forced into a fight where there was only death? 

Too many, Mara thought, resolving to move gently around such terrible wounds. 

By the time Aallotar was clean, she climbed out of the pool shivering. Mara was waiting with the blanket out of her bedroll. Soft wool warmed by the fire would do more to ease the cold than simply putting on her haphazard assortment of furs, all of which were still bloody. 

“I have one of Gaius’s shirts in my bag,” Mara said as they walked back towards the fire. “You’re about the same height and he’s pretty barrel-chested. It’ll be something.”

“Thank you,” the wildling said. Her eyes seemed more human here in the firelight, though they still caught the light strangely. 

Mara knelt down by her pack and fished out the shirt. She kept it in case she needed to make more char cloth or for various other uses, but it was far more useful now as an actual garment. She held it out to Aallotar before reaching into the satchel to find the little pot of herbs. “You’re going to have to tell me the order here. Green, then red?”

Aallotar smiled at that for the first time since they’d left the fire, pulling the shirt over her head. It fell down to mid-thigh on her, still leaving the worst wounds exposed enough to easily treat. “Swift recall.”

“I occasionally remember a thing or two, to everyone’s surprise,” Mara said. She kept her tone light after seeing Aallotar’s smile out of her peripheral vision. That was an expression that looked much better on her friend than terror and shame. 

She wasn’t as confident as Aallotar in tending wounds, but she could follow instructions. She opened the first little jar and picked up the brush that Aallotar pointed to. Mara carefully added water to a small dish and then the herbal mix, creating the same green rinse that the wildling used on her face with such skill. She carefully flushed and painted every scrape and cut, trying to go as gently as possible to avoid too much pain. Then she added the rust-colored salve with the same care.

Aallotar hissed occasionally, but for the most part took the discomfort and pain in silence. She watched Mara with luminous golden eyes, hesitating and then stopping any time words began to form. She relaxed a little when time came to bandage everything. “Close enough to fit well, gentle enough not to cut the tide of blood through veins,” Aallotar instructed. “The clots are made, no need for more pressure.” 

“Thanks,” Mara said quickly. She made certain to be careful as she bound up Aallotar’s wounds using the rolls of old gauze that were tucked in the satchel.

“We should speak,” Aallotar said reluctantly as Mara worked. 

“About?” the huntress asked. She kept her hands moving so the process would be over sooner and Aallotar would be able to rest more comfortably without someone fussing over her. 

The wildling pulled in a deep breath. “The beast.” 

Mara looked up from bandaging. “Only if you want to.” She wasn’t about to put pressure on Aallotar, not with her own past full of unpleasant realities that she wasn’t keen to discuss.

Aallotar nodded. She hesitated for a moment, gathering courage together. “It is a curse we suffer. Agony and rage forever, never knowing peace,” she said softly. “Once, the mage who gave me these balms, this knowledge, sought to break it. While he could still my fury for a time, he could not change my form. He was an old man when I knew him, but he taught me much: to move, to speak, to understand.”

“So you were always in that form?” Mara asked, thinking again of the wolf-like beasts in the clearing.

“For all my days. The fury returned after he died as if it had never been touched,” Aallotar admitted. “Until...you.” She shook her head slightly. “My thoughts cleared, my heart calmed, my soul stilled, even my body became what it was meant to be. I do not know why or how.” 

“I have an answer for you,” Mara said. It was strange to think of her own curse as anything beneficial. “I can break spells. Just being near me severs the connection between magic and the Weave.” 

“Could you break it forever?” Aallotar asked, hope glowing to life in her golden eyes.

Mara hesitated. “That’s a good question. I don’t know,” she admitted. She didn’t like that she couldn’t just say yes. “It’s always just happened. I can’t control it.” 

Aallotar leaned forward, touching her forehead to Mara’s. “Yes or no, you are a wonderful soul,” she said sincerely. “Always I will be grateful for the peace you bring, the lull in the storm.” 

“So that other creature was…” Mara stopped before she could say it. She understood death and war, though she was not allowed anywhere near the warriors on the war-path, where she might weaken their powers before battle. Aamu and Gaius both had taught her many lessons about the end of life, in their very different ways. 

“He was like me,” Aallotar acknowledged, something in those words small and hurting. “The rage is uncontrollable, but even more so near the blood of mennskr. The beast within craves it.”

“You were defending us,” the huntress said gently. She straightened up slightly. “We’ll break your curse, Aallotar. We’ll find a way.”

Aallotar’s entire expression softened. “Thank you.”

Mara knew that meant she would have to do the thing she dreaded most: returning home to Sjaligr. It would be a while before Aallotar was healed enough for her to leave, however. She flashed the wildling a smile. “I guess there is a way for me to repay your kindness after all.”

Chapter 7
A Late Night Plan

By K. Olsen

Mara sighed in frustration. When it came to stubbornness, she was becoming more and more aware that Aallotar was her equal, at least when Mara’s protection was the matter at hand. No amount of persuading was going to keep her in the cave. The wounds to Aallotar’s flesh healed swiftly enough to seem like magic, but that didn’t mean Mara approved of this madness.

“We don’t know how far from me you can be without transforming,” Mara argued. She didn’t want to see the soldiers of Sjaligr turn on Aallotar or have a rampaging wolf monster around her people, vile as they could be. “It’s not safe.”

“You walking into a pyre is?” Aallotar demanded. Her whole body was rigid, looking very much like she wanted to raise her hackles but had no fur to do so. “They will not kill you. I will rip them to shreds first.”

“I thought you didn’t like the beast,” Mara snapped. She appreciated the protection, but Aallotar’s insistence that she not go alone put the wildling in serious danger.

It was the wrong thing to say. Aallotar’s jaw snapped shut and she turned on her heel, striding out of the cave in a sudden, frigid silence. Mara blew out a sigh, her temper cooling immediately. That was a low blow, she told herself. You know she hates that part of herself. Justifying it as a reason to keep Aallotar here wasn’t even vaguely enough to make it alright. She needed to apologize.

Mara followed her friend out of the cave. Aallotar hadn’t made it far. She had one hand on a twisted pine tree, her back to the cave mouth with her other hand over her eyes. At the sound of Mara’s approach, her body stiffened like she was ready for a fight. Mara was something of an expert when it came to pains in her heart, but this one was new. Seeing Aallotar in any pain, doubly that she’d caused, made her heart twist unpleasantly.

“Aallotar, I’m sorry,” Mara said, stopping a few feet away. “I didn’t mean that. I—”

“It’s true,” Aallotar said. Her voice almost cracked at the thought. “I would rather give in to the beast than lose you.” Her gaze fell towards the ground. “Selfish.”

Mara shook her head. She knew Aallotar wanting to have her around likely had everything to do with being free of the curse’s torment, but there was no escaping the reality that no one had ever wanted her safe so badly. She took a deep breath. “You just want to protect me,” she said, offering her friend a smile. “I know you keep the beast at bay with everything you have.”

“The thought of them hurting you makes a rage froth in me like no other,” Aallotar said, anger hardening her face. “If they laid a finger on you, I would show them savagery.”

Mara sighed softly. “You’re better than that, Aallotar. Just because the madness is all you have known doesn’t mean it will be all you know.” She flashed her friend a smile. “There are a lot of better parts to being human.”

Aallotar’s tense shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. “I already feel so many things,” she admitted. “Too many.” Vulnerable golden eyes searched Mara’s face. “Let me come with you. Please. I will stay beside you and fend off the beast if it rises.”

It was not a good idea and Mara knew it, but she really only needed to talk to her mother, to learn at least of places where Aallotar’s curse might be recorded or studied. If she could avoid people, go under the cover of night, perhaps no one would cross their path…

“It isn’t wise,” Mara said softly. “Or safe.”

“My fate is bound to yours, nathæ. You are my calm, my refuge,” Aallotar murmured, gaze still soft and pleading. “Do not send me away.”

It was impossible for Mara to refuse when faced with the heartbreak in her friend’s expression at the idea. “You’ll have to stay close,” Mara warned. “We don’t know how far you can roam without the beast returning.”

“I will,” Aallotar promised, a smile breaking out across her face like the dawning of a brilliant sun. She closed the distance between them on impulse, pulling Mara into a crushing hug. “I will not fail you.”

“It’s not you I worry about,” Mara wheezed. Her friend’s hold was almost painful. Clearly Aallotar didn’t know her strength, even out of beast form, and it was hard on Mara’s damaged spine and ribs malformed from beatings. “Gentle, Aallotar. I’m only mortal.”

The hold relaxed into something more comfortable. “Forgive me,” the wildling murmured. “Even with the curse ebbed, my mind restored, its strength burns inside me.”

Mara felt almost awkward in the hug, though not because of Aallotar. She’d just...let no one close besides her mother. Even Aamu hadn’t been the type to hug or coddle and gods knew Gaius wasn’t. The wildling’s body burned with heat, erasing all the chill from the night air, and something about the muscular form holding her felt so safe. Mara had to blink hard, banishing tears. “You’re fine,” she promised.

A feeling snaked through all her other emotions like a serpent through a vineyard. As it did so often, worthlessness sunk its fangs into her heart. For her entire life, the pressures of the world had taught her she was nothing, not even human. Aallotar’s hug was wonderful, but she didn’t deserve it.

Mara pulled away and brushed at her eyes before even the hints of tears could make themselves known. Her hope that Aallotar wouldn’t see was quickly crushed when rough fingertips touched her cheeks.

“What shadow is over your sun, nathæ?” the wildling asked.

“You’ve called me that twice now,” Mara said to deflect. “Should I be offended?”

“It sounds ‘peace’,” Aallotar explained. She seemed to understand without words that Mara wasn’t ready to talk about her darker feelings. “Because that is what you bring, I thought it good.”

Mara smiled, Aallotar’s presence fighting back against the insecurity. “Best name I’ve ever been called.”

“Then I will call you it until you tire of it,” Aallotar promised. She ran her hands down Mara’s upper arms when she felt a shiver. “Back inside, back to the fire.” Her authoritative tone left no real place for argument, not that Mara wanted to.

“I knew you’d like the fire,” Mara teased.

“For you, not me. Mennskr are cold-blooded, like snakes. You need a warm rock.”

Mara grinned at that. “There’s a reason my mother says all the women in my family descend from the Queen of Frost,” she said as she placed her hands on the back of Aallotar’s neck once the unwitting wildling had exposed her back.

The wildling let out a squeak that was almost a shriek of shock and whirled around. “You are an ice wraith!” she said accusingly, catching Mara’s hands both to warm them and prevent Mara from putting them on any other bare skin.

The huntress laughed hard enough to make her ribs and face ache, offering no resistance when Aallotar marched her inside and pointed to a seat by the fire. Mara took it, gasping now as she tried to catch her breath and brush away a few tears of mirth.

“And what amuses so?” Aallotar demanded, hands on her hips.

“That sound!” Mara wheezed, trying not to burst out laughing again. A throb from her ribs stopped her. “Oh, gods’ blood and bone, don’t do that to me.”

“You seemed to enjoy it,” Aallotar observed dryly, though her own smile was starting to form. “Cackle away, little nymph.”

“I’d love to, but it hurts,” Mara admitted.

“Are you wounded?” Aallotar asked with instant concern.

Mara shook her head. “Just muscles that don’t get used and bones not quite in the right places,” she explained. “I’ve broken every rib and some set better than others. They can be hard on me.”

Aallotar sat beside her by the fire, no longer so afraid of it. “You mean others broke them,” she said with a frown.

“One or two were just me,” Mara said matter-of-factly. “Once I was so sick that I coughed so hard, I dislocated a rib. Aamu said she heard it across the room.” She winced at the memory. “Not my favorite winter.”

“And your back?”

Mara’s expression sobered. She hated the damage to her spine and leg. It gave her grief every time she tried to use her body to its fullest potential. It was the limit on her skill as a warrior, but also removed all the natural grace her mother’s blood had given her. “A fall.” She sighed when she saw the demand in Aallotar’s eyes. “There are these cliffs near Sjaligr, probably as tall as three towers stacked on end. The knights were practicing earth-sculpting in the area and an idiotic younger Mara wanted to watch, so she could learn how to do magic. Gareth said he missed his target, that errant magic slammed me off the cliff, but the Earth-Cleaver never missed a mark before or since. I don’t remember the fall or the landing.” Her lip curled. “He almost got what he wanted: an end to the blight.”

“The hardest part of being in Sjaligr will be keeping my teeth from his throat,” Aallotar said, voice rough with a growl.

Mara winced. “You don’t have the fangs for that in this form, Aallotar. Besides, the taste alone would probably gag a buzzard.”

Aallotar bared her teeth, showing canines still pronounced enough to rip and tear. “He deserves it.”

“Deserving’s a funny thing,” Mara said, looking back at the fire. “I guess I always tried to believe Aamu when she said that what the gods do has more to do with them than us.”

“What do you mean?” Aallotar asked, slowly calming. She looked over curiously.

“Good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people,” Mara elaborated. “Aamu said people use it as a cudgel. Something bad happens to you, you must have deserved it. I felt that way about my curse for a long time. She tried to fix that, but the rot ran too deep.” She sighed. “I still feel that way.”

“It is not a curse,” the wildling argued. “It is just a thing, a part. Like blue eyes, like warmth in laughter, like bravery.”

“I almost believe you when you say that,” Mara said with a smile. “You’re a good friend, Aallotar. Crazy, but good.”

Aallotar pursed her lips. “Not crazy.”

Mara laughed, ignoring the sting in her ribs and face. She relaxed a little, stretching her back and her fingertips. “I was thinking something,” she said, flashing the wildling a smile when curious golden eyes turned her way. “You said yourself that you’re feeling things that you don’t have a name for. So let’s name them. Gaius had me do that when I was younger. He says it’s important to know your feelings to know yourself. Granted, he also said that was for the purpose of keeping a cool head in battle.”

The appeal to Aallotar was unmistakable in the way she sat up straighter. “To be calmer?”

“If you know what you’re feeling and why, it might be easier to deal with the beast,” Mara said. It was a guess, but she was confident that it wouldn’t hurt.

“How? I will not feel all the things between here and Sjaligr,” Aallotar said curiously.

“So we’ll make up stories,” Mara said with a grin, warming to the idea. “I know it sounds silly, but it’s a long walk and plenty of time.”

“It sounds good,” the wildling said. Her eyes were alight with excitement at the idea. “Do you tell many stories?”

Mara stifled a yawn. “Only for you. Some of them will be from Gaius or Aamu, though. Or my mother.”

“Will we meet?”

“I don’t know about Gaius, but I’m going to ask my mother about your curse, if that’s alright,” Mara said firmly. “No one knows magic lore better than Eirlys Silver-Song. She and Gaius have spent most of their lives in Sjaligr trying to gather tales of magic and write them down. The scholarly pursuits and the smithing suit her more than the life of a chieftain’s wife.”

Aallotar cocked her head slightly. “Smithing?”

“A smith is a master of fire and metal, who can take ore or iron sand and make it into tools or weapons using heat,” Mara explained with a smile. “Most do so with magic, but iron is hard to move and shape with will. It doesn’t like it, so the steel isn’t as good. My mother does it with just her hands and knowledge, making steel so strong and flawless they call it Winter’s Breath. My youngest sister, Ritva, is learning all her secrets to keep the tradition alive.”

Aallotar’s eyes were wide. “Can I see this?”

“Smithing?” Mara said, grinning when her answer was an enthusiastic nod. “I’m thinking you enjoy fire more than you say.”

“I wish to see,” Aallotar said defensively, though she was still smiling. “Magic without magic.”

“When we get there, certainly,” Mara said with a smile. “If we have time and aren’t running for our lives, I’ll ask her to make you something. Maybe a knife. Something useful?”

Aallotar looked down at her hands. “Maybe a human thing?” she said softly.

Mara understood in that moment that for Aallotar, a human thing was something that didn’t need to have a use, but was free of all parts of the beast. “I’m sure she could,” Mara said. She didn’t know if the patterns worn on jewelry would frighten off the beast, evil spirit as it was, but it wouldn’t hurt to give Aallotar something beautiful. Something...human. Mara liked the way that thought sounded.

“We should rest,” Aallotar said with a smile at the thought. “We can leave at first light.”

“And hope we can get better clothing on the way,” Mara said with amusement. Aallotar’s furs were still bloody and shredded, so she’d kept Gaius’s shirt and was wearing pants Mara had made from two pairs of her own, which had cutting and stitching that were, as Sabine would say charitably, abominable. It would hold well, but it looked like sutures a necromancer might use to hold together some unholy amalgamation. It left neither of them with alternatives in the clothing department.

“Is this not acceptable?” Aallotar said, plucking gently at a seam. “The needle marks are so artful in their chaos. Like little lightning bolts.”

Mara threw a fur from the wildling’s bed at Aallotar’s head since it was the first soft thing in reach, rewarded by a peal of laughter. “You look like you stole a witch’s hex-doll’s pants.”

“You dressed me,” Aallotar pointed out with a grin.

“I’m not saying I’m not responsible,” Mara grumbled, though her act hid a good-natured appreciation for the teasing. Aallotar had learned quickly to determine when it was a joke and when not, at least mostly. The banter reminded her fondly of Aamu, jibes coming without sting. “Go to bed.”

“Do you want the place of resting?” Aallotar offered. “I am not injured any longer. It is more comfortable than your blankets.”

“You say that because you don’t know how nice my blankets are,” Mara said as she kicked her bedroll open with one foot. They were just enough padding to take the edge off the rocks and roots that dug into her back on the road, but she was out in the woods so often that it felt strange to sleep in a bed anyway.

Aallotar’s nest was made of more moss and other soft things than furs, but covered by the soft pelts of sables carefully crafted by the mage who had shared her cave for a few years. It looked damn comfortable, but Mara was already arranging the fire to bank it for the night before laying down on her bedroll. “Better hope you can carry that with you, Aallotar,” she teased. “Otherwise the road’s going to be real disappointing.”

The wilding laughed. “You know I slept on the ground often as a beast.”

“That was as a beast. Now you’re all squishy and human-shaped,” Mara said as she laid down.

“I am not squishy,” Aallotar said as she curled up in her bed, positioned to Mara’s back.

For the first time, the huntress didn’t mind someone being behind her where she couldn’t see what they might do to her. She trusted Aallotar not to harm her. “Fair enough,” she mumbled mostly into her blanket. The wildling’s hugs were more than proof enough that Mara’s friend was more sculpted than soft. Aallotar was not just taller: she was harder than the huntress, her beast blood and life of constant motion leaving her body mostly iron muscle. “Just between the ears.”

Aallotar’s pinch caught her in the small of her back, earning a yelp from the drowsing Mara. She rolled over to glare. The wildling had her eyes closed, but her lips were twitching with a smug smile.

Mara grinned viciously. She had just the revenge for that. Aallotar was hot-blooded enough to run a furnace, but cold feet would be more than enough to ruin that for her. “Don’t start with me, Aallotar. I will end it.”

The wildling laughed, eyes hooded with sleep as she buried herself deeper into her furs. “No fear.”

The shriek of shock and horror that echoed down the cave almost ten minutes later was chased by Mara’s victorious cackling for more than a full minute. It was at that moment that Mara realized Aallotar was going to break her face, though probably by forcing her to smile so widely her face split in half rather than as a traumatized revenge-thumping.

Chapter 8
A Return to Sjaligr

By K. Olsen

The closer they drew to Sjaligr, the tighter the ball of nerves in Mara’s stomach wound itself. Dawn was just barely rising, more a blush on the horizon than a real sunrise still, when the city itself came into view. The buildings packed against the cliffs were no different than she remembered them, but they seemed grand enough to Aallotar to prompt a sudden inhale.

Mara turned to face her companion, noting the tension in the wildling’s body that ran as tightly as a drawn bowstring. “Are you alright?” 

“I feel nerves,” Aallotar admitted. “There will be many mennskr. More than I thought.” 

“You can always stay out in the woods,” Mara offered. “We can backtrack a day or two.” 

“I could cover such ground easily as the beast,” the wildling said with a shake of her head. “I would be drawn to hunting so close and leave terrible evil in my wake.” 

Mara flashed Aallotar a quick smile to reassure her. “Then stay with me. As long as you don’t stray, the beast won’t come out.” 

“Strong emotions may push the boundaries, but it is so,” Aallotar said. She reached out, catching Mara’s hand with her own. “Are you well, nathæ?” 

“Not looking forward to my reception,” Mara admitted. “Gareth won’t have forgiven me for bringing news of a curse. Everyone will know by now, too. I might be dodging rocks if we leave in the daytime, or worse.” 

Aallotar gave her hand a squeeze. “Then we should hasten,” she said softly. Mara could tell that the wildling still couldn’t understand why such violence might await, but Aallotar wasn’t going to ask again. Not after Mara had given the same answer several times and been incomprehensible to the wildling.

Her curse was a blessing to Aallotar, after all. It brought peace as nothing else ever had. 

The wildling tensed again. “Mennskr are coming,” she said. “I smell sweat and steel.” 

Mara cursed and looked around. Their section of the path winding through the low hills had only a few hiding places, mostly surrounded by bare rock and stunted trees. “How many?” She knew from traveling alongside her for a while now that Aallotar’s senses were keener than her own. 

“One.” 

It was hard not to think of the sword on her hip. Mara didn’t want to be a kinslayer. It was almost the worst crime one could commit, sitting beside oath-breaking in contempt. “Let’s see who it is,” she said grimly. “Maybe they have something important to say.” 

“Let us hope it is peace,” Aallotar muttered. She glanced down at herself. Wearing clothes and boots bartered from traders using her sable furs and a jar of the green rinse, she looked the part of a local, but her jagged tattoos, long loose hair, and feral golden eyes still left her with a wildling’s edge. It had taken her most of a week to get used to having boots.

She relaxed when a familiar figure rounded the corner. Gaius was always a pleasant sight, looking his gruff usual self with only a few thin lines of worry in his brow and at the corners of his mouth. “I guess I’m worse at sneaking than I thought,” Mara said, relaxing.

“Your mother’s dreams were disrupted. That only happens when you near,” Gaius said by way of explanation, his eyes falling warily on Aallotar. “Who’s this?” 

“This is Aallotar, my friend from the north,” Mara said. She looked over at Aallotar and offered her companion a comforting smile. “This is my teacher, Gaius. He’s a good sort.” 

Gaius grunted at that. “Your mother sent me to fetch you. Less chance of trouble with Gareth. He may not respect me, but he appreciates that I can beat him into the paving stones even with all his precious magic at his fingertips.” 

Not once had Mara ever seen Gaius flinch away from a spell. He wasn’t able to disrupt them the way she was, but he tended to hit so fast and hard that even eldritch knights struggled to keep their concentration focused enough to channel magic. Even when a spell did hit him, the pain only seemed to make him fight harder, probably because it angered him. She nodded, grateful for the protection. 

Aallotar’s lip curled at the mention of Gareth. Mara put a hand on the wildling’s arm before she could say anything and shook her head. It would not be wise to run into a confrontation with her uncle. 

If Gaius noted her friend’s anger, he made no mention of it. “I’ll escort you two,” he said instead. “No one’s really up and moving in town yet except your mother and I, with the harvest pulled in. What kept you so long?” 

Mara had several answers to that question, but she only gave voice to one. “Aallotar was too injured to travel for a while. I stayed with her to make certain she healed well enough to come.” 

The middle-aged man grunted at that. “What’s her story, anyway? Her tattoos don’t match the mountain people that I’ve seen, and I’ve been all across the Red Mountains.” 

Aallotar glanced at Mara, seeking reassurance before she spoke. Mara’s small smile was enough encouragement for her to brave forward with her stilted words. “I come from north to the Sylfr River.” 

Gaius stopped and turned on his heel, leveling a piercing glare at Mara. “How many times did Aamu and I warn you to stay south of that accursed river, Mara?” he demanded sharply. “As far as I know, no other has ever returned from fording it. You could have vanished just as they did. That is a place of death.” 

Mara glared right back, even though Gaius’s words were truer than even he likely believed. After seeing the beasts to the north, it was easy to understand why no warrior or hunter had ever returned, no matter how powerful. She would have died without Aallotar. “I had protection,” the huntress said. “Aallotar wouldn’t have let me come to harm.” 

Her mentor didn’t budge, lips a thin grim line as he shifted his attention to the wildling. “Few are so charitable. What are your reasons?” 

“Gaius, leave her alone,” Mara snapped. “Is it so hard to believe I might have made a friend?” 

“I am here to protect you,” he said bluntly. “The Red Mountains are full  of betrayal for a spell-breaker.” 

Aallotar bared her teeth at that. “Never,” she said. If she had been in her cursed form, her hackles would have stood on end. 

“We’ll see,” Gaius said as he turned back to Sjaligr. “If you prove to be a danger to her, wildling, I will put you in the ground myself.” 

Mara put a hand on Aallotar’s arm. She appreciated that Gaius was trying to protect her, but she wanted Aallotar to feel welcome. Her mentor was doing nothing for Aallotar’s tension about being in the land of mennskr. “You’re alright,” Mara whispered near her friend’s ear, so Gaius wouldn’t overhear. “He’s just overprotective.” 

“Not enough to save you from Gareth,” Aallotar ground out from between tight teeth. Even in human form, her canines were slightly more pronounced. 

It was a point Mara couldn’t really argue. For all the lessons and support Gaius had given, he was often unable to protect her from her uncle and her brother. He could make no inroads on her father’s absent heart either. Only her mother could really exert enough sway to make Viljami back down or push Gareth into abandoning his tormenting. Mara picked up her pace as they followed Gaius, eager to reach the forge and the safety it represented. 

The streets of Sjaligr were basically empty at this hour, and Mara kept her hood up to prevent being recognized, not that it really could with her crooked back and slight limp. The people here knew her too well. It was the problem with living in a city that was more of an overgrown town, where everyone knew everyone’s business. You couldn’t truly have a secret in Sjaligr, not without someone finding out within a fortnight. Still, they made it to the forge without drawing attention enough for trouble. 

Gaius pushed open the door to the forge for them. Already, heat radiated from the furnace. “I will find and distract Gareth,” he said. “I don’t know what the plan is to calm his ire, but it’s possible that your mother can persuade your father to put him in his place.” 

“Thank you, Gaius,” Mara said sincerely. For all his cold towards Aallotar, this at least meant he cared in his own gruff way. “We’ll stay out of sight.”

Aallotar hesitated at the door behind Mara, peering over her shoulder into the forge at the furnace itself. It glowed like nothing she had ever seen before, growing steadily brighter as it came more and more alike. Leaning over it, her hair swept back into a braid, was the lean figure of Mara’s mother, already smudged with coal and sweat from the heat. The smell of hot metal filled the room perpetually, but it had faded slightly overnight. Eirlys’s work would soon restore it to full strength.  

The sound of an iron stirring the fire from the left side where the coals were at their deepest sent a wave of relief coursing through the huntress. She stepped into the forge, catching Aallotar by the hand to pull her inside before the wildling could overthink anything. Meeting Mara’s kin was something of a nervous endeavor for someone who had spent almost their entire life in isolation. No doubt Gaius’s reaction hadn’t helped.

“It’ll be fine,” Mara promised quietly. She cleared her throat and raised her voice. “Ma—”

Eirlys spun at the sound of her daughter’s voice, dropping the iron she was using to stoke the fire. She closed the distance between them before Mara could even finish her word, wrapping her arms around the huntress in a death grip of a hug.

“You’re alright,” Eirlys whispered as she held Mara close, smoothing out the young woman’s hair with one hand. The relief and gratitude in her voice were enough to make the huntress’s vision blur with tears. “Gods, I was so worried.” 

Mara closed her eyes and leaned into the hug. The strength of her mother’s arms was intensely comforting despite the specter of danger in their future. “I always am,” she murmured. 

Eirlys drew in a deep breath and then reluctantly loosened her grip, resting her forehead against Mara’s. “That’s not always the case,” she said fiercely. “Blood and bone, I’m going to kill Gareth. Sjaligr is your home and I will see no one drive you from it.” 

“He hasn’t yet,” Mara pointed out with a sigh, rubbing along her jaw. All traces of his blow were gone, at least, though her mother had probably heard of her return with the oracle’s dark message already. “Has anyone else noticed me gone?” She wanted to ask if her father had even blinked at her absence or noted it in any fashion, but she doubted he had. 

“Plenty,” Eirlys said gently, giving Mara’s shoulders a squeeze. “Even your father asked me where you had gone.” 

Mara swallowed hard. “That isn’t like him,” she murmured, the knot in her stomach clenching tighter. She tried to force the worry out of her mind. “I have someone for you to meet.” 

“Oh?” Eirlys said, looking past Mara to a particularly anxious Aallotar. The huntress’s mother smiled warmly to set the wildling at ease. “Who is this?” 

“My new friend,” Mara said, a smile creeping across her face even though the anxiety was alive and well beneath. Her mother’s reaction was exactly what she’d been hoping for. “This is Aallotar. I met her further north.” 

“Well met,” Aallotar said stiffly, tension visible in every fiber of her being. 

Mara took a step back, putting a hand on Aallotar’s shoulder. “You’re alright,” she promised to comfort her friend. The wildling’s nerves had grown more and more agitated as they neared Sjaligr and Mara’s family, so this wasn’t unexpected. “No one’s going to hurt you.” 

“That was not worried,” Aallotar mumbled, relaxing slightly at the touch. She turned her face towards Mara, though she kept tabs on the older woman out of the corner of her eye. “I worry of you.” 

“Welcome to Sjaligr, Aallotar,” Eirlys said with approval in her smile. “I am Eirlys Silver-Song. It’s rare to see my daughter dragging a newcomer at her heels. I hope she’s been kind.” 

Aallotar took a hesitant step forward and relaxed slightly, though she still ducked her head to avoid meeting Eirlys’s eyes. After a lifetime of seeing eye contact as a challenge, Mara had no doubt that her friend was cagey for a reason. “Thank you,” the wildling murmured. “Mara is kindness itself.” 

“Good,” Eirlys said. She sighed slightly in relief, leaning against the nearest workbench. “So what adventure brought you our way? I don’t recognize your accent, so you must have come from quite a distance.” 

“Yes, far,” Aallotar confirmed. More hesitantly, she said, “To break a curse.” 

“A curse?” Eirlys said, looking to Mara for an explanation.

“Aallotar and her people are afflicted by some kind of magic,” the huntress explained. “Imprisoned in another form. I can interrupt it, but as soon as she’s far away, it comes back. You know more about magic than almost anyone in Sjaligr.”

“The key to curses are their roots,” Mara’s mother said thoughtfully. “Do you know why the curse was placed?”

Aallotar hesitated for a long moment, body slowly tensing again. “The mage who found me before Mara suspected my ancestors had angered the Life-Giver. How is unknown, but he thought it was a terrible act of violence in the days when the gods walked the earth.”

“It must have been considerable to afflict a whole people,” Eirlys said. More gently, she continued, “I’m sorry to hear that, Aallotar. If you’ll permit, I could try to examine your aura, but Mara would need to be a distance away. She negates magic, including auras and my ability to perceive them.”

Aallotar shook her head vehemently. “I do not wish that parting,” she said, nerves giving her voice a strained quality. “The curse pains me greatly.” 

Mara found her friend’s hand with her own, offering a comfortable squeeze. “I’m not going to force anything on you,” she said gently. “We can figure it out without that.”

Before Eirlys could reply, the door to the forge swung open, banging into the wall. There was no sign of Gareth, who was probably locked in a quarrel with Gaius, but Viljami stood in the doorway with thunderclouds in his expression.

“Storm-Born,” Mara greeted respectfully, lowering her eyes. She knew that look on his face: Gareth had told him of her supposed misdeed already, or perhaps he just hated to be so close to her.

His lip curled. “You are summoned,” he said with distaste. “Father has words for you.”

Eirlys pulled her gloves off. “Viljami, mind your tone,” she said fiercely. “Mara is your sister.”

Viljami’s sapphire eyes glanced at his mother, a combination of resentment and something more hidden flickering across his face. “She has no seat in the hall of my father. She is no sister of mine.”

Eirlys’s lips pursed into a thin line and she strode straight for her son. “She carries my blood, just as you do. Your father’s obstinacy will not change that,” the older woman said. Hints of heartbreak were visible in her expression. “Where is my little boy? I remember him in a fight every day when his sister shed tears. I see nothing of him in you.”

“I grew up and learned better,” Viljami retorted.

Aallotar gripped Mara’s hand tightly. “A kinslayer of the soul,” the wildling said with open contempt, stepping between the siblings. “Your spirit must be stained with shame.”

Viljami was taken aback by the sudden intrusion, but his eyes narrowed quickly. “You know nothing of what you speak, feral. The spell-breaker is no kin of mine.”

Aallotar’s golden eyes were fierce as she glared directly at Viljami’s face, no sign of submission to be found. “And a liar.”

Mara wrenched hard on Aallotar’s hand to pull her back from the coming tempest. “She’s a wildling, Storm-Bringer. She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” Mara said quickly. “Hospitality—”

Aallotar stiffened at those words, flashing a glare back at Mara, and Eitlys stepped in to be the peacemaker. “Aallotar is here as a guest, Vil. We will honor our obligations as hosts.”

“Next time you speak so, wildling,” Viljami said in a low voice, “I will cut out your tongue and feed it to you. On a silver plate, worthy of any guest.” He turned his scowl at Mara. “I am to take you to Father and Gareth.” 

“Then we will go,” Eirlys said coolly, a mixture of anger, pain, and disappointment in her voice. 

Viljami hesitated for a moment at his mother’s comment. “Ma—”

“Don’t you dare. I am Lady of Sjaligr,” Eirlys said sharply, words a slap across his face. “I do not intend to take orders from my son, particularly when all he has room for in his heart is arrogance and cruelty. You may be Lord of Sjaligr someday, but not until I am in my grave.” 

Viljami looked away, a hint of shame on his face. It wasn’t often that he was rebuked by his mother, particularly in front of a stranger, mostly because he kept his interactions with Mara away from his mother’s eyes. “Fine,” he said brusquely, turning and striding out the door. “Follow.”

Mara took some comfort in the sharpness of her mother’s words. It would only feed the resentment, but in the moment it was protective and satisfying. Her brief comfort evaporated when Aallotar pulled her hand away.

“I knew what I spoke,” Aallotar said fiercely.

“I know,” Mara said quietly, a sudden pang of fear in her stomach. Her body tensed in preparation for a blow. “But Viljami would have killed you for an insult like that.”

Aallotar looked like she wanted to retort for a split second, but then she softened when she realized the amount of fear simmering under Mara’s forced calm. She reached out a hand, touching Mara’s shoulder. The huntress flinched at the contact. “I will not harm you,” Aallotar promised in a low voice.

“I know,” Mara lied, turning to follow Viljami and her mother.

Aallotar saw right through the lie and wrapped an arm around Mara’s shoulders. “This I mean,” she said more urgently as they walked, pulling Mara against her side. “You are dear. Never would I strike at you.”

The huntress nodded slightly. It was so hard to trust that promise.

“Nathæ, not even as the beast,” Aallotar whispered softly, squeezing Mara’s shoulder with one strong hand. “Trust me not to worsen your wounds as I trusted you to tend mine.”

Mara swallowed hard at that. She didn’t like remembering Aallotar’s wounds. “Alright,” she said, forcing herself to relax slightly. The dreadful future looming ahead pulled her from her thoughts. Whatever was about to happen, it was not going to be good.

Chapter 10
A Terrible Wrath

By K. Olsen

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.

The hall of Luukas Fire-Bringer was almost deathly quiet as Mara followed her mother and brother in. She saw many of her kin gathered to the sides of the walls and Gareth standing beside her father’s throne. Not one had any softness to their expression, but Mara knew better than to expect warmth from the warriors of Sjaligr. She was a contamination to them, a severing from the flow of Creation through the world that granted them their powers. Bringing them a dark oracle did nothing to endear her to them.

Mara felt about an inch tall as she looked to her father’s seat, raised slightly from the rest of the floor by a series of stone steps. The only things offering her any comfort were her mother’s presence to her left and Aallotar to her right. The wildling gave her hand a squeeze, holding with a tightness that told of Aallotar’s own tension.

Though, for all the men gathered around with weapons at their sides, the wildling did not appear frightened. Mara wasn’t certain if it was courage or ignorance of the danger they posed.

“Luukas, what is the meaning of this?” Eirlys asked, a calm authority in her tone. Mara saw many shift at her presence. The smithing of Eirlys Silver-Song was a chief reason for Sjaligr’s prominence and fortunes. Few wanted to anger her, even knowing she was the unceasing protector of the spell-breaker.

Mara’s father seemed unreachable by even his beloved wife’s voice, sapphire eyes hard and cold as he gazed down at the huntress. “Gareth sought Kalevi and carried back an oracle of his own,” he said. “It seems our sleeping demon will find its place at the right hand of those who seek the destruction of Sjaligr.”

“And you trust that he gave this message with impartiality and in its fullness?” Eirlys said.

Gareth’s face twisted in anger. “Are you accusing me of lying, sister-in-law?” he demanded. His hand stayed away from his weapon whatever his fury, well aware that his brother would put him in the ground for harming a hair on Eirlys’s head despite their disagreements.

“You would say anything to rid yourself of Mara,” the chieftain’s wife said without backing down an inch, the steel in her voice no longer hidden behind softness.

Luukas gripped the arms of his throne. “Beloved, this is no longer a matter of Spell-Breaker’s curse,” he said coolly. “Nor Gareth’s disgust for it.”

Mara gripped Aallotar’s hand so tightly that the color bled from her knuckles. If it pained the wildling, she gave no sign.

Eirlys seemed to straighten imperceptibly. “Mara is my daughter, Luukas.”

“I know,” Mara’s father said, leaning back slightly in his seat. “But the gods have spoken. The spell-breaker will destroy Sjaligr and all its people if permitted to live. I am sorry for your grief.”

Mara felt a sudden cold and light-headedness sweep through her body. She’d always known that her father cared nothing for her survival, but for him to actively pursue her death was new. What poison had Gareth poured into his ear? Or, worse yet, what had the oracle revealed?

The color drained out of Eirlys’s face, but she in no way softened. “You cannot do this, Luukas!” she said fiercely. “I will not permit it! If you would have me at your side, Mara leaves Sjaligr alive.”

“And in exile, what do you think the spell-breaker will do?” Gareth challenged. “Kalevi saw her standing at the right hand of Void!”

Aallotar lunged for Mara’s uncle, teeth bared like an animal’s as her golden eyes flashed. Mara barely kept hold of her, wrapping arms around Aallotar’s waist to pull her backwards. “Don’t, Aallotar,” Mara said near her friend’s ear. “We need to run, not fight.”

“Guards, remove the feral. Banishment is more than suitable for a foreigner who has committed no crime yet,” Gareth said, gesturing to several warriors waiting to each side. “This judgment does not require an outsider.”

Mara felt a stab of horror. “No!” If she allowed Aallotar to be taken too far from her side, her friend would revert into bestial, raging form.

Eirlys put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder, eyes still locked on her husband’s. “Whatever you do to my daughter, Luukas, you do to me,” she said more quietly.

Mara’s brother looked terrified as he saw resolve crystalize in their mother’s face. He turned to face his father and uncle. “Father, imprison her,” he said swiftly. “The spell-breaker cannot destroy chains and bars as one of us could. She would be alive, as Mother wishes, and far from aiding the enemy.”

“And if she escapes?” Gareth said ferociously. “Your merciful impulse would doom us all, Viljami.”

Guards stepped forward even as Mara’s family quarrelled. Mara let go of Aallotar just long enough to draw her sword and shrug her shield down to her arm. “You cannot take her,” Mara said with all the ferocity that she could muster.

It was a movement that drew everyone’s attention. “Mara, let her go,” Eirlys said, holding up her hands. “Do not make this worse.” 

Viljami drew his own sword, leveling the point at Mara. “Drop your weapon, Spell-Breaker,” he warned. “A kinslayer’s fate is death. You will be beyond saving.”

Aallotar lunged at the guards closing on her, but a shield caught the blow of her fist rather than one man in armor. The wood cracked audibly at the blow but did not sunder. The mesh of shields and swords surrounding Aallotar separated her from Mara.

If she struck at a guard and drew blood, Mara knew she would seal her own fate. She looked over the shoulder of the guard closest to her, gaze meeting Aallotar’s furious and fearful golden eyes. “I won't leave you,” she promised, advancing towards the guards with her blade still firmly in hand. Even if it meant dying, she was not about to let Aallotar succumb to her curse and do the unthinkable.

A blow hit Mara in the back of the head before she could react, dropping her to the ground. A boot pressed down on her side, pinning her to the stone floor. “Don’t be a fool,” Gaius said gruffly as he disarmed her, throwing her sword across the hall. “You’ll get yourself killed. Your friend will be fine.”

“No!” Mara shouted as the guards seized the wildling and dragged her towards the door of the hall. “No no no no!” She struggled up to her feet, breaking Gaius’s pin, only to have him grapple her and hold her in place. Her old wounds left her too weak to fight her mentor completely off, but she struggled with teeth and fingernails to free herself. Even scratching bloody marks down Gaius’s left cheek wasn’t enough to force him to let go, however.

Aallotar fought ferociously to return to Mara’s side, cracking bone and even dropping two guards with her hands, strength increasing the further they pulled her from the huntress. “Mara!” she cried out. A spear’s haft caught her in the solar plexus, dropping her gasping to her knees. Temporarily debilitated, they pulled her out of the hall and slammed closed the great doors.

Tears streamed down Mara’s face as she struggled against Gaius. “Let me go!” she shouted. “You don’t know what her curse will do!”

Her father looked sharply over at her at that. “What have you brought into my hall, Spell-Breaker?” he demanded.

His answer came from the other side of the doors. A low, deep growl split the air on the other side, rising in pitch and volume until it became a banshee’s howl of agony and rage. Screams erupted from the other side and the doors shuddered on their hinges as something flung a body against them. Horrible, sickening crunching sounds crackled through the air on the other side, chased by a rumble of rage that made a chill settle into Mara’s bones.

Gareth grabbed his spear as Mara’s father drew his sword, both refocusing on the new danger. Suddenly Mara was not at the forefront of their minds. “Bar the door,” Gareth said. “The guards will contain any—”

Before the men could bar the doors, the wood portal opened with a slam so powerful it almost broke the hinges. Mara retreated backwards towards her father, grabbing her mother’s arms as Gaius released her to draw his blade. There, in all her savage glory, was Aallotar the beast.

A lupine monster the size of a draft horse at the shoulder, savage golden eyes glared into the room above a snarling maw dripping blood and the foam of the mad onto the stone. One hand-like set of claws dragged the body of a guard, his chainmail defenses ripped like moth-eaten cloth by the razor-sharp nails at the end of the twisted paw’s shape. All trace of humanity was gone from the wildling’s new shape, replaced by a rage so deep and powerful that it shredded all sense of self and sanity from Aallotar’s mind.

“Kill it!” someone shouted, but Mara couldn’t even pay attention to who. She was too busy getting her mother back, away from it.

The guards all around the room charged the beast, their weapons rebounding off its hide as if it was encased in god-hardened steel. Mara understood: no weapon made of man could slay something bound so by the curse of the Life-Giver. Aallotar would rampage through Sjaligr, killing every living thing she encountered, before roaming on. At least, if Mara didn’t intervene. “Stay here!” Mara hissed to her mother before letting go, preparing herself for the sprint at the beast.

“Viljami, don’t!” Eirlys shouted as her son advanced on the creature with his sword drawn. “You have no magic!”

“Storm-Born, return!” her father shouted, his fear just as powerful as her mother’s at the sight of his only son and heir approaching Death itself. 

Mara almost stumbled as she moved forward when she saw her younger brother nearing the raging beast that was currently devastating her father’s honor-guard. Aallotar snapped a spear in her jaws before parting the man’s head from his shoulders. Then she turned straight towards Viljami, chest and face drenched in blood. Hackles rose all along the transformed wildling’s spine, wordless fury reaching a fever pitch. The creature’s whole body tensed to leap at the son of Luukas Fire-Bringer, to crush him in her jaws.

If Mara hesitated, her brother would die. Whatever his flaws now, she still remembered the little boy who would fistfight every bully who made her cry. The huntress sprinted straight for the beast. “Aallotar!”

The creature’s head turned at the sound of her voice, jaws opening to savage the huntress’s flesh.

Mara slid down onto her knees, passing beneath the jaws. She collided with the beast’s chest and wrapped her arms around Aallotar’s neck, face pressing against the fur matted with gore from her victims. “Come back!”

The wolf-like monster’s head snapped back, a horrible wail tearing free from its jaws. Bones cracked beneath its hide, twisting and deforming before shrinking and again shaping towards something more human. Fur faded back into hair and bare skin, claws shaping back into fingernails. Aallotar’s body seized and shook like an epileptic’s as she again became the wildling that Mara knew. The wail turned into a human noise of fear, pain, and horror.

“I have you. I have you,” Mara promised, threading fingers through Aallotar’s hair. She held the wildling fiercely against her body, letting her friend sob into her shoulder. “I have you. I have you.”

Viljami grabbed his sister’s shoulder to pull her away, but she kept clinging to the wildling in such a way that he didn’t have a clear path to stab at the shapeshifter without hurting her. “Mara, leave the creature!” he ordered.

“If you want to kill her, you’re going to have to kill me first,” Mara said over the force of her friend’s cries, not a shred of doubt in her voice.

“Do that and the beast will return permanently,” Eirlys said, approaching. She was shaking in fear of the creature, but there was a distinct note of pity in her voice. “Get away from them, Viljami. Mara saved your life, the least you can do is give her space.”

“Very well,” her brother said, lowering his sword and taking a step back.

“Chain them,” their father ordered, voice booming over the sounds of the dying. “Together. If the spell-breaker’s curse contains the creature, fine. I will decide what to do with them tonight.”

Mara knew she wouldn’t be able to fight anything off and take care of Aallotar at the same time. “I have you,” she said again to soothe, even though she knew there was no answer to the wildling’s pain. It would have to run its course.

If there was one thing that Aallotar dreaded and hated above all other things, Mara knew, it was being reduced to the creature that imprisoned her better nature.

Guards pried them apart but kept them close together, just close enough for Mara to cling to Aallotar’s hand so her friend had some kind of contact to ease the agony. Bitterness welled in the pit of the huntress’s stomach as she looked towards her family and Gaius. Hate was a familiar feeling, but she’d never felt it so strongly before. Hearing Aallotar weep ripped apart her heart, leaving only poison in its wake. “I will never forgive you for this,” Mara said, her gaze sweeping across them.

“Mara,” Viljami said, his expression welling with guilt for the first time in a long, long time.

She lifted her chin, meeting his gaze with burning anger. “You’re too late for that, Storm-Born,” she said with that same bitterness as a gall on her tongue. “It’s Spell-Breaker, remember?”

He looked away, shame coloring his face.

Mara clung to Aallotar’s hand with everything she had as the remaining guards pulled her and Aallotar towards the narrow steps cut into the stone beneath that led to Sjaligr’s frigid dungeon. “Are you happy now?” she shouted at them, fingers tightening around Aallotar’s. “You have your curse like you always wanted!”

“Mara—” her mother tried to say.

Everything boiled over inside Mara, the years of relentless abuse and the sudden shock of her friend’s torment breaking through her careful crust of calm. “I hate you!” she screamed. “Void take you all!”

Chapter 11
A Dangerous Proposition

By K. Olsen

Tears turned to dry sobs and then to a crushing silence. More than anything, Mara wished she could just hug Aallotar and never let go. Anything to ease the ache, both from the transformation and the guilt. Unfortunately, they were chained back to back, arms fully extended to either side so there was no slack for them to tamper with manacles. Mara couldn’t even look into the wildling’s eyes and promise that the attack on her father’s guards had changed nothing. All of that helplessness twisted like a knot of fire in her stomach. The hate still burned in her like a beacon to all thoughts dark and bloody. Her resistance to becoming a kinslayer vanished: her family had thrown them in the dungeon to either rot or perish.

Mara intended to do neither.

“Aallotar,” she said, voice raw from thirst. It was impossible to know how much time had passed chained in this windowless tomb, but it had to be late at night by now. “Talk to me. Please.”

There was no response. If it weren’t for the warmth seeping through fabric into Mara’s crooked back, she might have thought she was just imagining her friend’s presence.

“Aallotar, it wasn’t your fault,” Mara pressed. “You are not the beast.” 

The body against her back stirred. “I am,” Aallotar rasped. Her tears and sobs had left her with only shreds of a voice. “I can’t stop it.” 

“Not yet,” Mara said as soothingly as she could while chained to the point of straining. “Once we break your curse, it will never take over you again. I’m here and I’m not going to leave you. I promised I would break it.” 

“How?” Aallotar said, a sharp edge of desperation in her voice. “We will die down here in the dark.” 

Mara took a deep breath. Aallotar had always been a creature of the wilds, free to roam wherever she wished. Imprisonment was something she couldn’t even have conceived of, and it was Mara’s doing that had introduced her to it. You should have kept her from coming with you, the huntress thought bitterly. One more mistake to add to a long tally of failings. “We’ll find a way out,” she said with all the confidence she could muster. 

There was a soft gurgling sound and a whisper of movement beyond the bars. Mara’s stomach twisted into a knot, turning her head to gaze through cold iron. There was barely enough light coming from a torch down the dungeon’s hall to see a dark liquid seeping into their cell from beneath the bars. The smell of copper, so intimately familiar, meant it could only be blood. 

Aallotar sucked in a deep breath and caught the scent, drawing a keening sound from her throat. No doubt the smell drew her back into the memories of her own savagery. “Mara…” she whispered in ragged tones. “Something is there.” 

Mara closed her eyes for a moment and pulled her focus together, then opened them again. “If you’re here as an executioner, you might as well come in here and show yourself,” she said sharply, pouring in all the air of command she’d seen her father and uncle use. It wasn’t terribly intimidating given that she was chained hand and foot. 

A dry, rasping chuckle was her first answer. “I am here for you,” a deep, resonant voice said, its timbre dark and devoid of any warmth. “But not to kill.” 

“Then why are you here, stranger?” Mara asked, lifting her chin. The answer terrified her, but she refused to show the man any fear. She could see him now, the barest suggestion of a silhouette all but lost in shadows cast by the distant torch. Flickering illuminated his hands as they closed around the bars, both coated in blood. She caught the gleam of claws and shivered slightly in her chains.

“The men of Sjaligr have decided to destroy what they cannot control, what they cannot understand,” the stranger said. “I aim to preserve you, Spell-Breaker, and your companion, from this injustice.” 

“I do not trust him,” Aallotar whispered, her tugs at her chains utterly futile even though she was a good deal stronger than Mara. 

“Would you prefer I leave you here, all alone in the dungeon, dying for a hint of sunlight, a wisp of breeze, a reprieve before execution?” the shadowy figure asked. His claws clicked slightly as he drummed them against the bars. “I do not require your trust. Only your cooperation, else this rescue will be woefully unsuccessful.” 

“We need your help,” Mara said, eyeing the man. His shape was irregular, twisted and bent worse than she was. “Who are you?” 

“You may call me Sammael,” he said with a cool calm. A rattle of keys fitting into the lock and the sharp squeal of metal against metal announced the opening of the door.

For a moment, Mara felt his gaze on her so intensely that her skin crawled. It didn’t feel predatory, but it did give her a feeling of a strange fascination. Still, if she had been willing to bargain with Kalevi, what was one more debt on her soul? She watched as the man shuffled in. 

He walked with a significant limp, form covered in the bandages and rags of a leper. It was a disease even healers with the gift of magic struggled to treat, though some claimed to be able to cure it. Piercing, obsidian eyes stared at them through the gaps in the bandages across his face. Not once did Mara see him blink. Sammael approached casually, spinning the keys on his clawed finger with a soft, almost tuneless whistle. He wiggled his fingers on his other hand thoughtfully, carefully sifting through the keys until he found the one that matched Mara’s binds. “A little click and the fun begins,” he said as he unlocked the manacles. 

Mara fell forward, arms numb and tingling from their held position and the tightness of the cuffs. Sammael caught her to her surprise, filling her nose with a scent unlike any she had encountered before as she fell into ragged cloth. 

Sammael smelled like ash and smoke, but more than that, a harsh acidic scent and the air after a close lightning strike. Mara recoiled back and turned, watching as he unlocked Aallotar’s cuffs too. 

“Why are you doing this?” Mara asked, catching Aallotar before she could fall. She felt better with her arms around her friend, squeezing her into the tight hug she’d wanted to give for hours now.

The bandaged man tilted his head as he looked back at her. “Because I understand you, Spell-Breaker,” he said in his low, rasping way. “You and I are cut from...similar...cloth. To allow that precious gift of yours to be snuffed out by ignorant beasts…” He clucked his tongue and then paused for a moment, listening. “The changing of the guard is not for another hour. I hear an approach. The dead men will be discovered.” 

“Then we have to go now,” Mara said, fumbling to grab Aallotar’s hand. She looked to her friend, whose tattooed visage looked downright terrified of their rescuer. “Aallotar, we have to take this chance. Otherwise we’ll die.” 

The wildling swallowed hard and then nodded. “Will follow,” she croaked. 

“Good,” Sammael said. His hands changed as Mara watched him, gleaming claws retracting back into his bloody, bandaged fingers. “I cannot conceal you as I did myself, so the way I came will not suffice.” 

“There’s an old passage down here that was sealed off. If the tunnel is intact still, it leads out of Sjaligr,” Mara said. “Ritva and Sabine used to play down here. In times of siege it was meant to be an escape, but that hasn’t been a danger for as long as I’ve been alive. If we can unseal it, it might be a way out.” 

“Clever girl,” Sammael said approvingly. “Lead the way.” 

Mara gripped Aallotar’s hand tightly and led the way, even though she desperately wished that she didn’t have their mysterious new friend right behind her. Some part of her kept imagining those claws plunging into her back and ripping out her heart. Stepping over the bodies of the guards, their throats ripped out, cemented the danger in her mind. Still, whatever the reason, Sammael’s rescue meant a second chance at life that she was not going to pass up. 

They wound their way through passages as quickly as they could without raising too much noise. Behind them, Mara heard a sudden clamor. “Guards!” Viljami shouted, an edge of fear in her brother’s voice. 

Good, she thought viciously. He should be afraid.

“Hurry now,” Sammael urged from behind them. “We will have left tracks in blood.” 

Mara nodded and picked up her pace, stopping only when they reached the large steel slab that blocked the passage. This was entirely more reinforced than even the cell doors, designed to be impenetrable with no intention of ever being opened. There weren’t even hinges or a lock. She let out a hiss of frustrated breath. “They did a better job than I thought they did,” she said. “This doesn’t help us!” 

“A wall is just a door with a different kind of key,” Sammael said smoothly, stepping forward. “Stand to the side and close your eyes. The light will be quite painful if you do not.” 

Aallotar wrapped an arm around Mara and pulled her to the opposite side of the steel hatch, watching as Sammael pressed his hand against the dull metal surface. Within seconds, they heard the pings of a sudden heating by the metal, the dull cherry red glow spreading outwards from Sammael’s hand growing hotter and hotter, brighter and brighter. In moments, he was peeling the glowing hot door apart like a set of curtains with his clawed hands, the bandages burning away.

Aallotar turned her face towards Mara. “How can he use magic?” she asked. “You are here.”

Mara felt a cold lump of dread settle into her stomach. “He’s not,” she said softly. There was only one power she had ever heard of besides magic that could work such a feat: sorcery. Their rescuer, whoever or whatever he was, drew his powers from Void. “He’s….” 

“A demon?” Sammael said calmly as he bent the metal with incredible strength. He turned his face towards them, those obsidian eyes seeming somehow sharper, less human. “AND WHAT IF I AM?” The question was harsh and metallic, sending a wave of icy dread down their spines. 

“There they are!” someone called from further down the hall. 

The bandages around Sammael’s face remained immobile, no hint of a smile materializing as he stepped into the passageway through the arch of glowing hot metal. “DEATH OR A DEMON. YOU DECIDE.”  

“We’re not dying here,” Mara said fiercely, pulling Aallotar after her as she followed Samael into the tunnel.

“They will catch us in the tunnel,” the wildling said, her hold on Mara only tightening. 

Sammael turned and extended a hand past them. “RUN,” the demon commanded. “I WILL CLOSE THE WAY.” 

Aallotar and Mara wasted no time at that statement. Together, they ran through the pitch darkness of the tunnel as fast as they could with their hands out in front of them, tripping and stumbling as they went. Behind them came a great rumbling and then a sudden crack, like lightning splitting a mountainside apart. The tunnel collapsed, spewing dust in their direction. The pair didn’t stop until their sides were in agony and the adrenaline ebbed. Mara had no idea how much distance they had actually covered, but all was quiet. 

“Do you think it died?” Aallotar whispered. 

From directly behind her came an answer, cold and inhuman. “IT WOULD REQUIRE MORE THAN THAT TRIFLE TO SLAY ME, WILDLING.” Claws delicately gripped Mara’s shoulder, the fine needle points of its nails barely pressing into her flesh. Sammael possessed a terrifying dexterity and seemed to understand the precise amount of pressure needed to break human skin. “WE HAVE MUCH TO DISCUSS.” The demon raised his other hand, conjuring a weak, flickering bolt of lightning that danced from claw to claw, casting a disturbing light across his face.

“Are you going to kill us?” Mara asked through a jaw stiff from fear. 

“THAT IS NOT MY INTENTION AT THIS TIME, MARA SPELL-BREAKER.” 

“How do you know her name?” Aallotar asked as she pulled at Mara’s hand to tug her away from Sammael. The creature’s grip turned to iron and Mara gasped. 

“I HAVE PAID ATTENTION,” Sammael said. Without inflection, it was impossible to read any emotion, but Mara was willing to hazard that the demon was at least mildly annoyed by the line of questioning. “IT IS NOT AS THOUGH SHE WAS SOME SECRET HELD IN THE DARK PLACES OF THE EARTH.” 

Mara took a deep breath to steady herself. It didn’t work, but she soldiered on ahead anyway. “So what do you want from us?” 

Sammael leaned in closer, obsidian eyes meeting hers. When the demon spoke, the bandages around his face moved, revealing a short muzzle instead of a proper human face. Needle-like teeth filled those jaws, barely visible in the darkness. “YOU ARE AWARE THAT VOID IS COMING TO THE RED MOUNTAINS. YOUR ORACLE FROM THE TROLL WAS RATHER CLEAR ON THAT POINT. I AM A CREATURE OF VOID, YES, BUT NOT ONE WHO BENDS TO THE WHIMS OF THE PRINCES OF IRON. I AM FREE.” The claws tightened slightly, almost painfully, on her shoulder. “I WISH TO REMAIN SO.”

“Kalevi said that Void couldn’t be fought or beaten,” Mara said.

“THE PEOPLE OF THE RED MOUNTAINS WILL BURN IN THE FIRES LAID BY THEIR OWN IGNORANCE AND HUBRIS. FOR YOU, FOR YOUR WILDLING, FOR I, THERE IS ANOTHER PATH.” 

Mara swallowed hard. “I don’t understand.” 

The demon released her. “WHEN THE IMPERIUM COMES, IT WILL DEVASTATE EVEN I, FOR THE PRINCES OF IRON CANNOT TOLERATE WHAT THEY CANNOT CONTROL. I WILL SURVIVE BY IMPARTING MY KNOWLEDGE TO YOU, SPELL-BREAKER. YOU ARE AN EXPRESSION OF VOID, ONE THAT COULD LEARN TO TAP INTO ITS POWER.”

Aallotar’s presence was the only thing that kept Mara from falling over at that. “It’s impossible,” Mara said with a shake of her head. “I’m a living, breathing thing. Even nearing that kind of power would...render me to nothingness.” 

Sammael leaned back slightly, the lightning captured in his claws sending shadows flickering across their faces and his own. “ALL POWER HAS THE CAPACITY TO DESTROY ITS WIELDER. VOID COULD DEVOUR YOU DOWN TO THE VERY ATOMS OF YOUR BEING, YES. A NATURAL RESULT OF IGNORANCE, JUST AS A MAGELING CAN INCINERATE HIMSELF WITH HIS OWN FIRE. I OFFER YOU WISDOM, MARA SPELL-BREAKER. I OFFER YOU KNOWLEDGE. I OFFER YOU POWER.” 

“Mara, be careful,” Aallotar pleaded, still holding the huntress’s hand. “Demons give with one hand and take with both.” 

“Could it break Aallotar’s curse?” Mara said, giving her friend’s hand a squeeze to comfort her. 

“ANYTHING BORN OF CREATION CAN BE UNMADE BY VOID. WITH DEDICATION AND SKILL, EVEN A CURSE AS POWERFUL AS THE ONE BURNING IN HER BLOOD COULD BE EXTINGUISHED LIKE A CANDLE’S FLAME.” Sammael brushed Mara’s hair out of her face with the claws not holding lightning. “I ASK ONLY THAT YOU REMEMBER ALL THAT I TEACH YOU, THAT IT BE PRESERVED. KNOWLEDGE IS MY PURPOSE, MY TREASURE, MY SOUL. IT MUST LIVE ON WHEN I AM NO MORE.” 

“You are a strange demon,” Mara said with a frown. 

“HAVE YOU MET MANY OF MY KIND?” There was still no inflection, but the movement of the jaws and the gleam of those inhuman obsidian eyes seemed to indicate a dry sardonic edge to the words instead of a simple question.

“Only you,” Mara admitted readily.

“ONE DOES NOT LOOK AT A PINE’S SINGULAR NEEDLE AND PRESUME THE FOREST.” The demon turned, moving at his strange, loping gait. It put him a bit faster than a comfortable walking pace for Mara, but easily followed for Aallotar. Together, the two young women followed the creature down the tunnel. “WE WILL DISCUSS MORE WHEN WE HAVE REACHED MY ABODE. THE CLOSER WE STAY TO SJALIGR, THE GREATER THE DANGER OF DISCOVERY.” That cold gaze fixed her with a stare again for a moment, the head turning back towards them without any change to the body’s trajectory. “ARE WE AGREED, SPELL-BREAKER?” 

“If an apprentice is what you seek…”

“IT IS.” 

Mara took a deep breath, that bitterness welling in the pit of her stomach as she thought of all the warnings she had ever been given about demons. For all his probable evil, Sammael was still treating her more like a human than most of her own people had. “Then I am your apprentice.” 

Sammael stopped and turned, bowing his head. “IT IS CUSTOMARY FOR MY KIND TO MARK THEIR THRALLS,” he said, claws taking hold of both of Mara’s shoulders. “YOU ARE NEVER TO ACCEPT THE BRAND OF ANY DEMON, WHATEVER THEY OFFER. THIS IS YOUR FIRST LESSON.” 

Mara felt a wave of relief crash over her when the demon released her without working any kind of sorcery. “You aren’t going to brand me?” 

“NO,” Sammael said with metallic bluntness. “YOU ARE MY APPRENTICE, NOT MY POSSESSION. NOW FOLLOW. WE HAVE SEVERAL HOURS OF TUNNEL AND FOREST YET TO GO.” 

Aallotar looked over at her friend, some of the tension ebbing from her shoulders. “I have never heard of such a thing,” she murmured. “Not from the mage who taught me.” 

“Neither have I,” Mara said, studying the back of their strange rescuer. “But if it can break your curse and protect us against whatever is coming, I’ll gladly play apprentice to a demon.” 

“You do not worry what he might ask?” Aallotar murmured, golden eyes flickering in the inconstant light. 

Mara gave her friend a half-smile. “I didn’t say that,” she admitted quietly.

Chapter 12
A Home of Secrets

By K. Olsen

The paths Sammael led them down were dark and twisting, into the deepest parts of the forest to the east of Sjaligr. The demon pushed on without letting them stop to rest until they were under the boughs of dark pines, far from the huntsmen that answered to Mara's father. Aallotar relaxed slightly once they were away from the lands of mennskr, as tilled field quickly became wilderness, but her golden eyes followed the every movement of their rescuer with unmistakable caution. Sammael took the time when they stopped to pant for breath to rebind his hands with the bandages of a leper, the better to pass scrutiny if they met travelers on the ancient, all but forgotten track.

Mara felt no real relief being outside the dungeon. The anger still sat in the pit of her stomach like a red-hot stone, surrounded by crystallizing hurt. Her family's condemnation was far more bitter a memory than any she had held before, despite the glimpses of her mother's support and Viljami's guilt. The more she thought about it, though, the more the weight set in.

Aallotar turned back when she realized Mara was lagging. They were both exhausted after days on foot, never sleeping more than an hour at a time if even that. "Mara, are you—"

"I'm fine," Mara said, softening her glower slightly. Aallotar was the only one she wasn't angry with, and she didn't want to take it out on her friend.

The wildling glanced over her shoulder at Sammael, who had stopped to survey the path ahead. She approached Mara, placing a hand on her friend's shoulder. "Lying is not needed," Aallotar said, the words still clumsy. She didn't speak often even out of captivity, which sometimes left Mara worried by silence.

"Don't worry about me," Mara said, catching Aallotar's other hand and meshing their fingers together. "What about you?"

A look of sickening guilt crossed the wildling's expression for a second, at least before Aallotar looked away, back towards Sammael. "I wish it undone," she admitted.

Mara knew that Aallotar meant her slaughter of guards in Sjaligr in beast form, not Sammael's rescue. "You are not the beast. We'll do our best to make sure it never happens again," Mara said, giving the wildling's hand a soft squeeze. She sighed, sagging slightly. "Gods, what I wouldn't give for a bed and a meal. I don't know if I can keep going at Sammael's pace."

"OUR DESTINATION IS NEAR," Sammael said, gesturing to a large stone spire rising out of the forest like a broken pillar. Cracks had given it a craggy appearance, but the overall shape was still regular enough to look like a construction rather than a naturally occurring rock formation. "MY ABODE IS BENEATH."

"A cave?" Aallotar asked, keeping her hand in Mara's as they approached the demon. To the huntress, the wildling's touch felt protective as much as fond.

"A REPOSITORY OF KNOWLEDGE THAT I HAVE ACCUMULATED OVER MANY MORTAL LIFETIMES," Sammael said. Beneath his hood and heavy wrappings, he might have passed for a deformed human. His twisted, animalistic bearing and blunt muzzle of needle-teeth were disguised, but those inhuman obsidian eyes betrayed his true nature even when he sought to conceal himself. "IT EXISTS IN THE SHRINE OF THE EIGHTH."

"The Shrine of the Eighth?" Mara asked curiously.

"YES. THE EIGHTH OF THE SORCERERS WHO CREATED ME, SHE WHO DECEIVED THE DECEIVER," Sammael explained in his grating, mechanical voice. "THROUGH HER GRACES, I CAME TO BEING BEFORE THE GREATEST OF ALL MY KIND AND I WILL ENDURE THROUGH KNOWLEDGE AFTER HE IS NO MORE."

That tidbit stunned Mara. "You were created by a mortal?"

"HARDLY." Even Sammael's inflectionless tone was easily read as dismissive when joined by the wave of one clawed hand. "THE SORCERERS OF OLD WERE IMMUNE TO THE RAVAGES OF TIME AND REQUIRED NO INDULGENCE OF BASE PHYSICAL URGES THAT DEFINE MORTALS."

"But they are no more?" Aallotar said with a frown.

"THE SEVEN DIED TO FUEL THE CREATION OF THE PRINCES OF IRON. EACH ONE PROVIDED ALL OF THEIR KNOWLEDGE AND POWER TO GRANT ANIMUS TO THE CHILDREN OF THE DECEIVER. THE EIGHTH DIED AT THE DECEIVER'S HAND," Sammael said almost patiently. Then the demon turned back towards the spire and shambled on. As he moved, the first few raindrops began to fall.

"I hunger," Aallotar admitted quietly after another quarter mile of walking, her hand still holding tightly to Mara's.

Mara's stomach growled at the reminder, aching furiously from having been ignored for days. "I don't think demons eat, but maybe there will be food nearby his home," she said thoughtfully. "We could make snares or maybe fish, but I don't have a weapon to hunt with. Gathering plants on the way would probably help."

"Perhaps," Aallotar murmured.

The problem was that winter was swiftly coming to the Red Mountains, which sharply limited their food supply, and they both knew it. "Sammael, we need to eat," Mara said, looking up at her apparent tutor. "Aallotar and I need food or we'll die. Neither of us are doing well."

The crunching of snow ahead stopped and then the demon turned to face them, cold eyes scrutinizing their condition. "I HAVE MADE ALLOWANCES FOR THIS IN MY ABODE," Sammael said. "WHILE I DO NOT REQUIRE THE CONSUMPTION OF FLESH OR PLANT MATTER, I FIND BOTH TYPES OF ORGANIC MATERIAL WORTHY OF STUDY AND CULTIVATION. THE LAKE AND WOODS BOTH CONTAIN AN ABUNDANCE OF LIFE IN THE ABSENCE OF HUMAN HUNTERS. IT WILL MORE THAN SUFFICE."

"That's something, at least," Mara said, trying to take some heart in the fact that Sammael didn't want them dead. "Are you the only one who dwells in your abode?"

"I HAVE A SERVANT, A HUMAN SUCH AS YOURSELVES," Sammael said as he continued on his march. "HIS NAME IS CALIBAN."

"Is he like me?" Mara asked curiously.

"NO." The demon's words were blunt, almost to the point of being punishing, as if the man's lack of quality was a personal affront. As a demon, Sammael could not experience anger as a human did, but the cold was palpable. "CALIBAN IS UTTERLY MORTAL, NO GLIMMER OF THE SUBLIME TO BE FOUND IN HIS CHURLISH COUNTENANCE. HE SNIVELS AND GROVELS FOR POWER, FOR BOONS. I HAVE DENIED HIM."

"Why?" Aallotar asked softly.

"HE IS UNWORTHY," the demon said with his customary dispassionate tone. "HE HAS HIS USES, HOWEVER. THERE IS MUCH TO BE SEEN TO, KEPT IN ORDER, AND HE WILL DIE BEFORE BETRAYNG ME."

Mara frowned at that. "Unless he meets a demon willing to give him power."

"YOU MISTAKE ME. HE MAY SOMEDAY POSSESS THE MOTIVE FOR BETRAYAL. HE WILL NOT HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY."

"Because you will kill him," Aallotar said quietly, a sort of understanding creeping into her tone.

"CORRECT," Sammael said coldly. The demon returned to his shambling stride. He could cover distance much faster than Mara realized as she pushed to catch up, legs aching. Aallotar seemed in better condition, but she was in peak physical shape after a lifetime in the wild as a beast that never knew true rest.

Soon they reached the base of the spire and a great crack that split between two statues, devoid of visage after the wearing hands of Time. Centuries of rain and wind had defaced all the carvings here, only a few lingering reminders just inside the crack that was about five feet wide. Mara saw no script, only hints of faces looking at them from the weathered rock that left the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end.

The feeling of age did not fade even as she slowly acclimatized to the passageway. It was not completely dark, lit behind them by the sun and ahead by firelight. It was slightly warmer than Aallotar's cave, probably because somewhere someone kept a hearth. Mara could smell woodsmoke ever so faintly.

They stepped from their rough stone passage into an echoing hall with tall, vaulted ceilings and statues lining the walls. These were undamaged by the weather, but the faces of every carved person had been defaced by brutal claw marks. The acoustics as they walked and the somber air of this place reminded Mara of the old stone temple in Sjaligr. "What was this place?" Mara asked as they approached the undesecrated statue of a woman on her knees, its face turned towards the sky with tears flowing from both eyes. One hand that the statue held over its heart looked like a demon's claw, the other limb decidedly more human as the statue its hand wound in its hair as if tearing at it in grief.

"YOU SEE THE BEGINNING, THE FIRST TO CHANNEL VOID, AND THE END, THE LIFE DESTROYED BY THE UNLIVING THAT IT BEGAT." The demon ran a clawed hand almost reverently over the base of the statue, claws tracing the carvings in an almost infinitely complicated script covering it. "STRANGE, THE NATURE OF GODS TO FORGET THE ONE THEY FEARED AND REVILED MORE THAN THE DECEIVER HIMSELF. AFTER ALL, WITHOUT HER BRILLIANCE, THERE WOULD BE NONE OF MY KIND." The demon pressed his short muzzle to the base of the statue as if leaving a kiss. "THANK YOU, MOTHER."

"She looks..." Aallotar said, struggling for a word. Describing emotions was not her strong suit and 'sad' didn't seem like enough.

"Anguished," Mara finished for her friend, captivated by the woman's expression.

"SHE WEEPS THE TEARS OF ONE WHO SAW THE ENDING OF WORLDS BEYOND COUNTING." Sammael turned to them, studying both young women with his sharp, obsidian eyes. "LITTLE REMAINS OF THE OLD WORLD IN ITS TRUE FORM. THAT WHICH DOES MUST BE PRESERVED. IS THIS UNDERSTOOD?"

Both of them nodded, though the wildling's hand tightened around Mara's. "Where is this Caliban?" Aallotar asked as she inhaled deeply to catch a trace of his scent. She made a face of disgust at something, though Mara didn't catch a trace of it. Even with the curse's power suppressed, her friend's senses were still keener.

"CALIBAN." The command boomed through the hall, echoing down side passages. Almost immediately, Mara heard the scurrying of feet.

A man emerged from the tunnel to their right, unshaven and unwashed. He looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties, but the sourness of his expression made him seem haggard and older. Dark hair hung in matted locks around his face, a stark contrast to sharp green eyes. The moment he saw Mara and Aallotar, his expression shifted into a mix of confusion and suspicion. "Master, who do you bring? I hadn't prepared for guests..."

"THEY WILL REQUIRE INTRODUCTION TO THIS PLACE," Sammael intoned. "I HAVE EXPERIMENTS TO ATTEND TO, I HAVE BEEN AWAY TOO LONG ALREADY. YOU WILL SHOW THEM EVERY CHAMBER AND DOOR, CALIBAN. THE SPELL-BREAKER AND HER COMPANION ARE HERE TO STAY." With that said, the demon stepped away, off towards his work.

Caliban's jaw dropped and he stared at the two women in front of him. Mara wasn't certain if it was shock, awe, or indignation. He pulled himself together when he saw the slow turn of Sammael's head towards him, however. "Of course, Master," he said fawningly. "Anything you wish." He gave Mara and Aallotar a deep, sweeping bow. "Do follow me. The Master is no doubt too busy for introductions. I am Caliban." He held out a hand, dark crescents under each nail, for them to shake. "You are?"

"Mara Spell-Breaker," the huntress said, shaking his hand. He smelled like something terribly foul. "My friend is named Aallotar."

Aallotar looked at the man with narrowed eyes and made no move to touch his hand, tightening her grip on Mara. "You smell of death."

"I'm flattered," Caliban said sarcastically. He looked to Mara, immediately flashing her a smile. "Is your friend always so dour, Spell-Breaker?"

"We've only just met," Mara said as reasonably as she could to hide her own mistrust. A life of abuse had taught her that people were not to be trusted.

"Of course," Caliban said, brushing off their mistrust. "There's some stew on the fire, though I'm not much of a cook. There's a spare nook up near the north end of the library, though you'll have to share and there's not much space."

"We'll be fine," Mara said. The idea of having Aallotar close was immensely comforting. "Food and sleep would be wonderful. We've been on the move for days."

"Follow me," Caliban said with a sort of cheer that seemed alien to his normal expression.

His accent was foreign enough that Mara couldn't place it, piquing her curiosity as they walked down a side passage. "Where are you from, Caliban?" she asked. "You don't speak like any in the Red Mountains that I have heard."

The unkempt man chuckled at that. "I come from across the sea to the east. My home is a glittering jewel called Zaeylael. It dwarfs Sjaligr a dozen times."

"How did you come to be here?" Aallotar asked, tension still lingering in her voice. Mara looked over and saw a deep distrust in her friend's face. Whatever her reasons, the wildling did not like their guide.

"My ship wrecked upon the shoals on the eastern coast of this continent. The Master found me among the rocks and brought me here," Caliban explained. He gave Mara a crooked smile. "Have you ever sailed?"

"No," Mara said.

"Ah, more's the pity. It is a wonderful thing," Caliban said. "So, first I'll show you where you will be sleeping, then we'll get you fed."

All words of questions died on Mara's lips as they stepped into the next room, grander even than the entrance hall with its statue. The ceiling had to be thirty feet high, lined up to the brim by shelves. The room was filled with them, each one bearing a load of books and scrolls so heavy that Mara was amazed the shelving wasn't creaking with protest under the weight. Her eyes lit up at the sight and she squeezed Aallotar's hand tightly. "I've never seen so many books! Gaius would—"

As soon as she'd said her mentor's name, the bitterness overwhelmed her. Gaius, who had allowed them to drag Aallotar from her side. Gaius, who had left her to rot in the dungeons.

Aallotar sensed something was awry, leaning into Mara's side. "I am here," she said softly.

Mara gave her a half-smile, pulled partially out of her horrible thoughts by that reminder. "Thank you," she said with sincere gratitude. She tried to study the faded book bindings as they passed. Most were in Gaius's language, a combination of histories, treatises on different subjects, alchemical tomes, and metallurgic manuals. One or two looked like poetry, though she would have to open it to be certain, and a great many of the others either dealt with Void itself or its twin, Creation. One or two even looked like they might be about the First World and Godfall if she were to guess by the title.

The nook Caliban took them to was certainly cramped quarters. There was a mattress on the floor just big enough for the two of them, a small dresser made of wood scraps, and a low table without chairs that could be used as a desk if seated on the ground. It looked dingy at the moment, but Mara was confident she could clean it and turn it into something more comfortable. After all, for at least a little while, this was home.

"I wondered who the Master had me make this for. Now I know," Caliban said, gesturing to the space.

"Thank you, Caliban," Mara said, taking the lead since Aallotar still glared at the man.

The smile he gave her in turn was difficult to read. It seemed almost pained, but with traces of hunger to it. "My pleasure, Spell-Breaker," he said. "Now, let us away to the stew."

Mara let him walk ahead just enough that she could whisper to Aallotar without being overheard. "What's wrong?" she asked her friend softly.

"I do not like the way he looks at you," Aallotar muttered. "He wants..." She let out a frustrated huff at her own inability to articulate her thoughts. "He is not good."

"I'll be careful," Mara promised before catching up to Caliban with her friend on her heels, their hands still linked. It was nice to have an anchor in such a terrifying new world. "Caliban, when will Sammael return?"

The man twitched slightly when she used the demon's name. "The Master will return when it pleases him," he said stiffly. "You would do well to show him respect."

Mara's lips pressed into a stubborn line for a moment as she studied the unkempt keeper of Sammael's home. "I am his apprentice, not his servant."

Caliban bared his teeth in a smile without warmth. "Of course, Spell-Breaker," he said calmly. 

Mara knew trouble when she heard it.

Chapter 13
An Awakening

By K. Olsen

Mara sat on the edge of the steps leading up to the nook that was her new home, knees pulled up to her chest with her arms wrapped around them. Staring down into the endless possibilities of the library and its collected knowledge stirred at her mind, but everything felt so heavy. She’d left tears behind years ago, mostly because her damaged dignity refused to give others the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

Caliban had announced that Sammael was finishing up his most recent experiment, which Mara assumed meant the demon would approach shortly to line out what he expected from her. It was their second day in his hidden home, most of which had just been spent recovering. The food wasn’t terrible, though Mara knew she could cook better than Caliban and planned on doing so in the future.

Arms slipped around Mara from behind and a warmth pressed against her back. Aallotar had arrived to end the gloom, resting her chin on Mara’s shoulder. “You look sorrowed.”

“Sorrowful,” Mara corrected, a hint of a smile touching her lips. She took a deep breath and sighed, sensing Aallotar’s unspoken question without needing to see the wildling’s face. “I never really thought I would leave Sjaligr. Not forever. Not like this.”

“You are free of a place that was killing your soul,” Aallotar pointed out gently. “And you are not alone.”

“True.” Mara leaned back slightly into the hug with a more comfortable sigh. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You would forever brood,” Aallotar said with soft reproach in her stilted speech, prodding Mara gently in the ribs. “This has much awful to it.”

“I’m not exactly sunshine and rainbows on my best days,” the huntress pointed out.

“You smile for me,” Aallotar countered, giving Mara a squeeze before letting go. “That is enough.” 

Mara smiled despite herself at that, turning to face her friend. “You really aren’t going to let me sulk, are you?”

“Never,” Aallotar said emphatically.

From the depths of the shelving below, Sammael’s harsh, metallic voice called out the summons Mara had been waiting for. “SPELL-BREAKER, I DESIRE YOUR PRESENCE.” 

“We’d better not keep him waiting,” Mara murmured as she stood up. She looked hesitantly at her friend. “Do you want to come? I understand if you’d rather not.”

“I will not leave you to face the demon alone,” Aallotar said staunchly. “Nor do I wish to be the beast.”

As much as Mara wanted to joke about Aallotar taking the opportunity to eat Caliban, she knew not to press. Her friend was still deeply traumatized by what had happened in Sjaligr and the insanity and agony of beast form was not something she ever wanted Aallotar to feel again. “Alright,” she said, linking her arm through Aallotar’s. “Let’s see what the plan is.”

Sammael waited beside a long table covered in tomes and notes written in delicate handwriting. He could retract his claws and write with a sensitive touch, well-suited for more scholarly pursuits. For the first time since they had met, however, he showed his true form without any of the wrappings and Mara almost shrank back in terror at the sight.

The demon's body was a twisted mass of metal, smooth chunks blending with silver tubes that pumped something dark like blood through veins. Now that he walked straighter, he stood six-and-a-half feet tall. His short muzzle was full of needle-like teeth that were hollow and his face was carved to be that of some horrible monster with a rictus grin and three angular obsidian eyes, one at the center of his forehead. His legs were digitigrade, like a wolf’s or a dog’s rather than a human’s, and ended in paw-like feet with long, lethal claws to match those on his hands. Like his teeth, his razor-sharp claws were hollow. Sammael was able to produce agonizing, deadly venom of some kind and all his natural weapons could deliver it.

“I GREET YOU AS MYSELF NOW, SPELL-BREAKER,” Sammael intoned. His voice sounded sonorous and cold at the same time, like the echo of a midwinter wind sweeping through a deep cave. “YOU FACE SAMMAEL THE TORTURER, THE VENOM OF GOD.” 

Mara’s grip on Aallotar became iron as a tsunami of fear crashed down on her. She knew from Aallotar’s stiffness that her friend felt it too. For a long moment, she couldn’t even speak to address the demon she had agreed to learn from. “I thought you were the preserver of knowledge,” she managed to get out.

“AND A SPECIALIST IN ITS ACQUISITION,” Sammael said, his perpetual grin sharp and wicked. “BUT YOU ARE TO LEARN SORCERY, NOT THE DELICATE ARTS.” 

A tiny measure of relief pulsed through Mara at that, but not enough to soothe the dread of the creature in front of her. Mara’s hands shook like leaves in a gale as she faced him, wishing for a moment that she was face-to-face with literally anything else, even the monstrous troll Kalevi. “Are you certain I can even learn to use it?”

“YOU POSSESS THE POTENTIAL,” Sammael said. “WE WILL SEE IF YOU CAN HARNESS IT. SORCERY IS NOT LIKE THE MAGIC OF YOUR PEOPLE. IT DOES NOT REQUIRE STUDY, INCANTATIONS, RITUALS. IT DEMANDS WILL THAT CAN SHAPE REALITY AND ENDURANCE BEYOND THAT WHICH IS MORTAL.”

“But I am mortal,” Mara said, fighting the urge to take a step back.

The demon took a step forward, looming into her space. His presence dominated hers, the darkness of his shadow hitting like a falling ton as it covered her. The only thing that stopped her from fleeing was Aallotar’s presence at her side. This could break the curse, Mara reminded herself. For the sake of her friend and all her friend’s people, this was worth it.

“YES, A FASCINATING ANOMALY, THAT.” Sammael’s obsidian gaze devoured Mara’s, trapping her in place with a stare that was almost hypnotic in its darkness. She felt like a little bird confronted by a serpent. “I BELIEVE YOUR ENDURANCE TO THE POWERS OF VOID CAN BE INCREASED.”

“How?” Aallotar asked, voice hard and sharp. Her fear was barely hidden behind a protective anger.

“HOW DOES ONE STRENGTHEN A BONE? MICROFRACTURES AND HEALING, A CYCLE REPEATED OVER AND OVER AGAIN.” Not once did Sammael’s eyes leave Mara’s. “YOU WILL ENDURE BECAUSE YOU MUST ENDURE. HOW ELSE WILL YOU BREAK THE CURSE YOU DESIRE TO END?”

“Mara, you do not have to,” Aallotar said, squeezing Mara’s bicep with her hand, resting her chin against the huntress’s shoulder. “This is dangerous.”

“It was my fault you reverted to the beast in Sjaligr. It was my fault they locked us away,” Mara said fiercely. “We both know it isn’t right, what the gods did to your people. I owe you this.”

“You owe nothing,” Aallotar said, stressing the last word like her life depended on Mara understanding.

Mara turned to look at her friend. “I’m doing this,” she said with all the courage she could muster. “If you don’t want me to do it for you, then let me do it for myself. If I can’t live a normal life in the Red Mountains, at least this way I can protect myself and the people I care about.”

Aallotar studied her for a long moment, but after scrutinizing Mara’s stubborn expression without finding a glint of hope of the huntress changing her mind, the wildling softened again. “Promise me we will stay together,” Aallotar said softly.

“I’m not going to leave you,” Mara promised.

“THIS WILL BE DIFFICULT FOR YOU,” Sammael said, shifting his gaze to Aallotar. “THE RESILIENCE NEEDED TO HANDLE SORCERY SAFELY WILL REQUIRE A GREAT DEAL OF PAIN AND MODIFICATION. WHILE YOU ARE WITHIN MY ABODE, YOUR CURSE HAS NO POWER. I SUGGEST YOU REFLECT UPON HOW BEST YOU INTEND TO DEFEND YOUR SORCERER WHILE SHE IS IN A FRAGILE STATE. CALIBAN IS A CAPABLE SWORDSMAN, SHOULD YOU REQUIRE INSTRUCTION.”

Before Mara could offer to instruct instead of Caliban, Aallotar nodded, much to the huntress’s surprise. The wildling was no fonder of the demon’s servant than she had been when they first met. Mara had to hope that Caliban would worm his way into better graces, otherwise the combat instruction would be ugly. “This I will do,” the wildling said.

“Are you certain?” Mara asked.

“If you are to endure the unimaginable for me, I can endure Caliban for you,” Aallotar said softly. “Besides, it will give a purpose besides collecting dust.”

“EXCELLENT,” Sammael purred, the darkness in his voice sending a shiver down Mara’s spine. “IDLE HANDS ARE THE INSTRUMENTS OF ENTROPY. I BELIEVE CALIBAN CAN BE FOUND IN HIS KITCHEN. TELL HIM I HAVE COMMANDED THAT HE INSTRUCT YOU IN ALL HE KNOWS OF THE ART OF WAR.”

Aallotar looked at Mara. “Remember,” she pleaded softly.

“I will,” Mara promised again, flashing her friend a smile of gratitude. It was immensely comforting that she wasn’t alone, particularly knowing that whatever Sammael would do to her was going to be painful.

The smile seemed to restore some of Aallotar’s hope. She turned towards the kitchen and started to walk, leaving Mara temporarily alone with her new mentor.

“YOU ARE FORTUNATE,” Sammael observed. “SUCH LOYALTY IS A RARE QUALITY. SUCH A DEFENDER WILL BE INVALUABLE.”

“Let’s get started,” Mara said grimly.

“FOLLOW.” The demon turned smoothly on his heel and loped deeper into the shelves, towards the back chambers where he carried out his experiments. Mara followed, shivering slightly in a combination of cold and dread. 

The room he brought her into was entirely different from the dusty library. Everything was gleaming white, sterile, and smooth. A metal table waist high stood at the center of the room, surrounded by several tables on wheels covered with different implements that looked like they’d come from a torturer’s nightmares. The sight of needles and flensers, scalpels and prods, complemented by a set of manacles at each end, sent ice through Mara’s veins.

Sammael touched the edge of the table and it adjusted, descending on its legs. “SIT.”

Despite everything in her screaming in terror, Mara took a seat. She had endured so much pain over the course of her life, how much worse could this be? The demon could savage her body, surely, but at least her heart would be safe with Aallotar.

Sammael studied her, touching her chin with one needle-like, razor-sharp claw. “REMEMBER, SORCERY IS WILL PERFECTED. TAKE YOUR ENDURANCE WHERE YOU CAN FIND IT. EVERY IOTA OF IT WILL BE REQUIRED.”

Mara sucked in a deep breath. “I’m ready,” she said with every ounce of conviction she had, looking into those obsidian eyes.

“I WILL SECURE YOU SO THAT YOU DO NOT INJURE YOURSELF IN THE THROES OF VOID,” the demon said. “THE INTENSITY WILL INCREASE WITH TIME AND PRACTICE. IN ADDITION, MODIFICATIONS TO YOUR BODY WILL ALLOW YOU TO CHANNEL SORCERY WITH MORE EASE. THOSE WE WILL ADD WHEN WE REACH YOUR CURRENT THRESHOLD.”

“What kind of modifications?” Mara asked as she laid down on the table.

“TO USE VOID WITH PURPOSE, YOU MUST SACRIFICE SOME OF WHAT MAKES YOU HUMAN.” Sammael leaned down, placing his nose almost against her nose, filling her senses with his smell of ash and ozone. “I WILL GIVE YOU A PIECE OF MYSELF INSTEAD. A TASTE OF IMMORTALITY.”

Mara took a deep breath. Memories of Sjaligr flashed unbidden as she felt cold against her wrists and ankles again. She was entirely at Sammael’s mercy now. Whatever the demon willed, he would be able to do. It was an incredible amount of trust, but she fixed her mind on breaking Aallotar’s curse. Another feeling surged through her as the demon’s clawed hands rested on her cheeks.

She wanted her family to be wrong about her worth.

“ARE YOU STILL WILLING, SPELL-BREAKER?”

Mara hadn’t expected the question. Some part of her had assumed, like all powers in her life, the demon would place her where he wanted regardless of her desires. Instead, there was a challenge in his voice. He was daring her to balk, not demanding that she comply.

“Yes,” Mara said fiercely.

“GOOD. YOU WILL NEED THAT COURAGE TO FACE WHAT IS TO COME.” Without waiting for further response, Sammael moved his hands down to her shoulders. “ALLOW ETERNITY TO FLOW THROUGH YOUR VEINS, SPELL-BREAKER. EMBRACE THE SUFFERING FOR THE POWER IT BRINGS.”

Mara’s awareness of the world around her vanished. There was only the agony of Hell itself unleashed inside her, burning outwards from Sammael’s claws. Some part of her knew she was screaming, but she couldn’t hear it over the roar in her ears as demonic lightning crawled inside her body like a thing alive. Fire and ice warred through her nerves, turning her into a nova, wreaking an agony she could have never imagined. Visions flashed beneath her eyelids, images of the darkness between stars.

“FOCUS.”

The word throbbed through her body, an intensity of burning, ripping, tearing torment that sent a fresh wave of tears spilling down from her eyes.

Mara tried to fix her mind on anything except sensation, but her body refused to obey. Instead, she forced her mind to fixate on the cold that dug like needles into her bones. She felt the frost forming in her marrow even as the firestorm raged. The more and more she focused on the cold, however, the more the fire seemed to ebb. The blackness behind her eyes grew deeper and deeper, a devouring cold that sapped away at her life, like she was a fading echo into the darkness of some subterranean abyss.

Her entire body arched as she touched the darkness inside her soul, muscles so rigid that only her heels and the back of her head were still touching the table. Power crackled through her body, leaving fractal burns across the skin of her right arm as she grabbed the table with a scream.

The torment released her in a moment. “YES!” Sammael roared in approval, catching her head as her body collapsed onto the table.

Mara sobbed for breath, face wet with tears as she trembled and quaked. The power still crackled in her right hand, burning her from the inside out. Gripping the table’s edge allowed it to flow out of her body for a few more seconds before the connection died, leaving her a trembling mess.

Claws touched her cheek almost lovingly. “I KNEW YOU WERE CAPABLE OF IT,” the demon said. The cold in Sammael’s voice felt immensely grounding after the tempest she’d just endured. “THE VERY FIRST SINCE THE DAYS WHEN GODS WALKED THE EARTH.”

Mara pulled in a ragged breath, her heartbeat slowly returning to normal. “It hurts,” she hissed out through her tears, looking down at the blistered burns on her hands, patterned like the lightning that had coursed through her.

“SOMETHING THAT WILL EASE IN TIME. YOU HAVE PROVEN TO BE POSSIBLE WHAT ALL OTHERS SAY IS IMPOSSIBLE: LIFE CHANNELING VOID.” The demon stroked her hair with something that felt like affection, even though she knew the creature could feel nothing of the sort. “YOU HAVE DONE WELL, MY APPRENTICE.”

The longer she looked at her burns, the less they seemed to hurt. A strange feeling welled up in the center of her chest, something so out of place that it took her a long moment to realize what it was.

Pride.

Chapter 15
An Ambush

By K. Olsen

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.

The winter wind sweeping through the half-logged path stirred the snow-covered trees into threatening creaking, their branches threatening to dump their heavy loads if sufficiently motivated. The cold reminded Saevia of her first campaign into the lands of the Fosii. Mercifully, they weren't dealing with much in the way of altitude at the moment, just frigid air and frequent snowstorms.

Godric leaned forward on his warg's back, elbows resting on the front of his saddle. The tower of a warg-rider was perfectly comfortable in the furs he wore over his armor. It was barbarian in style, but practicality won out and the Legate couldn't blame him in the slightest. Even with extra thermal layers beneath her black armor, she occasionally rubbed her hands together for warmth. "There is an ambush, as expected," Godric reported.

"How many?" Ialia asked. The semi-aquatic woman was more accustomed to warm climes in the south, looking positively miserable even with thick cloth beneath her armor and a scarf covering her blue hair instead of her helm. The nictitating membranes beneath her eyelids blinked closed whenever falling snow came too close to her pitch-black eyes.

"Several hundred."

Ialia snorted at that.

"I assume there were heretics among them," Saevia said pointedly. "That magnifies their ability to wreak harm. Even if their spells cannot directly pierce our armor, anything that might change atmospheric conditions to our disfavor could be dangerous."

"More than half were spell-blades," Godric confirmed. He straightened up and then leaned back with a twist, popping his back audibly. "How do we want to play it?"

Saevia pursed her lips thoughtfully at that. "They will expect the legion to follow the road, where they can hit us through the trees. If we leave the road, we will be unable to marshal any kind of formation, the forest is too dense," she said thoughtfully. She turned to look at the big legionary waiting attentively at her side. "Malleus, give the order to pitch camp without construction of a wall. Every legionary is to be prepared for battle and ready to fall into formation."

He saluted and retreated to pass on her instructions to the different messengers that awaited eagerly for any word.

"We've only made half a day's progress," Godric observed. It was more question than critique.

"True," Saevia said. She smiled thinly, anticipation for battle thrilling through her veins. "But I find often that good things come to those who wait."

"You think they'll leave their ambush spot to attack?" Ialia said thoughtfully.

"I think the sight of a camp without a wall will be rather tempting," the Legate said, undoing her mask-like visor and pulling off her helm. The cold burned against her cheeks. "We do not need large formations to deal with them, not if we position ourselves carefully. They will have eyes on us already. We are past the point where we can disguise our presence."

"Three legions and full contingents of auxiliaries are rather noticeable," Godric said with a chuckle. "Particularly with Thornholm and Sandgata under our heel."

The sound of hooves through snow drew Saevia's attention to her third auxiliary commander. Sverrir looked as sour as ever, his dark hair and short beard wild from the wind and snow. He swung down from the saddle of his huffing horse, throwing her a salute the moment his bowed legs touched the ground. "There are more on the rear of our column."

Saevia laughed at that, a genuine smile creasing the corners of her eyes. An attempt at a flank both showed supreme ignorance of Imperial ability and of the two other legions following on Fourth's heels. "How many?"

"Two hundred and forty-three," Sverrir reported. "All of them looked like what passes for trained warriors here. There were some bearing the markings that Frost-Breaker said were reserved for death-speakers."

"I saw the same to our vanguard," Godric said.

"So they plan to supplement their ranks with the fallen," Saevia murmured. "Is Beleth aware?"

"I sent my second to inform him and the other angels," the dour cavalry officer reported.

"That will need to be dealt with or we will have a larger problem," the Legate said thoughtfully. She rubbed at her chin with her quivering hand, brushing against a healing scrape from her last sparring match with Malleus. He knew she would murder him for holding back, so she had her fair share of bruises. Not nearly as many as he did, however. "Godric, take your wargs east and circle around to the rear. Your job is to cause enough disruption to their ambush that our immortals can contend with their death-speakers at the flanks. You can move through the snow with ease compared to traditional cavalry, and doubly so the Immortals. I think they'll be pleased to finally flex their muscles."

The warg rider saluted. "Understood, Legate. Any other instructions?"

"Make it known that anyone who brings me the head of a death-speaker will earn a band," Saevia said, referring to the trophies awarded to soldiers for the killing or seizing of enemy leaders. The simple silver armbands, each marked with the date of their owner's victory, were highly prized by legionaries and auxiliaries alike. She knew Godric's brash warg-riders would be looking forward to the bragging rights that came with such feats.

"What about those to the front?" Ialia asked.

"We will engage with our infantry when they approach," the Legate said. "We have two archangels and three visages with every century."

Ialia grinned, showing her mix of human and needle teeth. "That does seem rather like overkill."

"When we are finished, the snow on the path to Eskaldr will be melted by the heat of their blood," Saevia said with her composed calm despite the electric excitement coursing through her body at the anticipation of a real battle. "That will make progress significantly more satisfying and potentially even easier. Ialia, move your people to the middle of the formation with Sverrir's cavalry. We will form square around you."

"Thank you, Legate," Ialia said with a salute. Everyone knew her people were the most vulnerable to the cold and currently not at their full strength as a result. They were still deadly, but not quite as devastating as normal, particularly not with the rivers frozen over.

Saevia's instructions rippled outwards through Fourth Legion and it slowed to a halt. Camp was pitched in minutes without the time taken to construct a wall, but everyone stayed in armor with weapons on their person and shields beside them. The tents were all set to be easily cut down and nothing was in place that would block their ability to link up into deadly formations.

It was a waiting game now, and Saevia was highly confident that her patience far exceeded that of their enemies. She put her helm back on and moved back to Command, giving Tribune Marcius a nod as she approached. The young man seemed utterly unconcerned by the coming battle, a pencil dangling from the corner of his mouth as he stared down at one of their supply ledgers. He looked up at the sound of her boots crunching through the snow and stood rapidly, giving her a sharp salute. "Malleus says we are waiting them out."

"We are," Saevia confirmed.

"A SUITABLE STRATAGEM."

Saevia turned and saluted the archangel as he approached. Beleth still wore the form of a man, about eight feet tall. His malleable metal body was bipedal at the moment, head studded with many obsidian eyes of varying sizes and shapes. "We have death-speakers in the enemy ranks, Revered One."

"A new wrinkle," Marcius observed. "Is it true that they can animate the dead?"

"THAT IS WHAT OUR LOCAL CAPTIVES HAVE INSISTED," Beleth said. "IT WILL TAKE CONSIDERABLY MORE THAN THAT TO BREAK IMPERIAL MORALE."

"Particularly with two archangels," Saevia observed. She sat down on a stump, and pulled a whetstone out of her belt pouch to touch up the edge on her sword while she waited. "We have not faced with their death-speakers before, they have not even seen our archangels. A learning experience for both sides."

It was an hour before the unmistakable howls of the wargs pierced the air to the south. Marcius leaped to his feet, but Saevia held up a hand. "Wait," she ordered. "The rear centuries and Immortal contingent will have that well in hand. Those at the front need time to realize what is happening before they launch their attack."

The moment she heard a roar of wind from the front of their formations, Saevia was on her feet. She pivoted to see a blizzard pouring towards them out of the forest. There was no way it was a natural storm, bearing down with supernatural focus.

"Form up," she ordered through her speaking stone, a command that would play in every centurion's ears.

The legionaries snapped into formations and braced for the storm in an instant, spears and shields ready for the attack.

Saevia looked over at the archangel beside her. "Would you care to introduce yourself to them, Revered One?"

Beleth strode towards the front without a word, his black robe billowing in the howling gale. The archangel raised both hands the moment the enemy could be seen moving through the flurries of snow.

There was a catastrophic explosion of lightning over the heads of the legionaries, a massive charged bolt hitting their enemy's lines and arcing from mailed body to body, destroying the first two ranks of the enemy.

As soon as the scorched bodies hit the earth, they rose again, twitching and jerking like marionettes, slowly growing more and more confident in their movements. Saevia smiled to herself.

"Is something amusing, Legate?" Marcius asked as he donned his own helm.

"Once Beleth and Shedim hit full stride, I wonder how long it will take those death-speakers to realize they cannot reanimate ash," she said, testing the edge of her sword on a sheet of paper before donning her helm and snapping the visor closed.

"For the Imperium!"

Shedim appeared out of the snowstorm to their left. The great tree-like archangel towered over the legionaries at his ten-foot height, plowing forward through the wind that nearly swept the mortals around him off their feet. He seemed to be picking up speed, not moving as casually as Beleth. Then again, with his unusually thick hide for even an angel, he was perfectly suited to wade into the enemy.

"I WILL BREAK THEIR STORM," Shedim intoned as he passed them.

Saevia grinned ferociously behind her visor. "This I have to see," she said, moving forward on the archangel's heels. The wind was hampering the legionaries' ability to form up, but it didn't seem to trouble their enemy in the slightest.

Thaumaturgy, however, was a different story.

Shedim wound his hands in a strange circular pattern as he passed through the Imperial front lines. There was a ripple across the enemy lines as he displayed his rather unique understanding of Void. Suddenly, at the center of that formation, gravity intensified a dozen times over. Bodies hurled through the air, slamming together into a twisted mass of bodies so crushed that even reanimated, they would be nothing but splinters. The archangel's next movement was a slamming backhand that sent four unaffected enemy warriors flying into the distortion.

"I had heard stories," Marcius said, a proper awe for the divine in his voice.

A wave of ice shards rained down on Shedim, shattering on his bark-like armor. The archangel's power hummed through the air for a moment, collecting like the charge before a lightning strike. One sharp movement of his hands brought the enemy slamming down against the ground. The sphere of bodies at the center exploded outward, hitting their allies as shrapnel.

The winds sputtered and died. The moment they could move freely again, whistles sounded an Imperial advance to support their archangels. Black-armored units formed together seamlessly into a v-shaped advance, leading on either side with the aim of engulfing their enemy.

It hadn't been a fair fight from the beginning, but Saevia was enjoying every moment of it. There was something so intensely satisfying about seeing Shedim at work, not that Beleth's lightning was any less impressive. Explosions lit the night like a thunderstorm had settled at ground level, devastating thaumaturgy wreaked by expert hands.

These would-be ambushers were learning exactly what Skarde Frost-Breaker had learned in one brutal night: on the battlefield, the Imperium had no equal.

Saevia shifted her focus for a moment, speaking the command word that selected out her warg-riders' commander. "Godric, status report!"

"Immortalis Aelius has decapitated the last of the death-speakers where we are. The lines are quaking and soon they will rout."

"Capture or kill them all. I want no survivors going to warn Eskaldr of their failure," Saevia ordered sharply.

"As you command."

The enemy was too heavily armored in their mail for arrows to have a good effect, so Saevia felt no need to bring Commander Odovacar and his men into the fight. If it weren't for the snow, she would have sent Sverrir to sweep behind, but she had no way of knowing what the summoned storm had done to the terrain, particularly at night. Imperial eyes could pierce the darkness, but her auxiliaries other than Godric and Ialia's people had more difficulty.

She would likely have to have Godric and his wargs mop up after the battle on the front as well. Fortunately, infantry in mail armor were not going to outpace the ferocious beasts.

A figure appeared out of the last of the storm, a death-speaker by the painted runes across his chest and helm. The black painted skull on an otherwise silver helm was a universal symbol for death. The bodies closest to Saevia shuddered to life, clawing their way up from the ground to run at her, first on all fours, but then on two feet.

Saevia's whistle had an immediate answer, shrill and defiant as it cut through the night air. Legionaries on either side of the sudden advance slammed together, forming a wall that the undead slammed into. The dead warriors had to be hacked to pieces to stop them, but that could be accomplished more easily than the enemy expected courtesy of Imperial breeding and metallurgy.

Saevia ghosted around the sudden clash, whistle still biting. A rank of legionaries turned, surrounding the death-speaker with their spears even as he struggled to raise dead as swiftly as he could.

"I want him alive," the Legate ordered over the speaking stone.

The legionaries circled in on him closer and closer, boxing him in with their shields before pummeling him into the ground with the hilts of their weapons. Saevia stepped forward and the ranks parted for her now that the death-speaker was on the ground. He raised a hand weakly, weaving a gesture in the air as he tried to gasp out an incantation.

The Legate slammed her heel down on his hand, shattering the bones as she ground them into the frozen earth. She leaned down and grabbed him by the strap that held his helmet, wrenching his head back so that he was looking up into her eyes, holding her sword against the flesh of his throat where the mail gapped because of the angle of his head. "I have plans for you, death-speaker," she said, his language dripping off her tongue with cold contempt.

She rather enjoyed the horrified look in his eyes as a visage appeared behind her, revealed in its celestial form: metallic skin with barely a suggestion of a human face and two unblinking obsidian eyes. "Please," he gasped out, no longer fumbling for an incantation.

Saevia's expression was steel. "Save your breath, barbarian," she said coolly. "For you, the angels have many questions." She glanced over at the visage and returned to her own language. "Take him to the other prisoners, Haagenti. Shedim and Beleth will want to learn about his powers."

"Please!" the man cried out in terror as the angel seized him, struggling to get away.

Nothing in Saevia's dead soul moved for him. Pity was not an emotion she typically experienced and she was not about to start now. "Haagenti, if you would?"

The angel let the fury of the divine pour into the man's body in a torrent of agony. He screamed, but only for an instant before the sound was cut off by his entire body locking up for a long moment, unable to even breathe. As soon as the angel released him from his divine torment after a moment, he slumped into a limp, rag-doll like state. Haagenti was strong enough to maneuver even the dead weight of a man in armor with ease, picking the death-speaker up and slinging him over one shoulder.

Saevia nodded to the visage as Haagenti went on his way before looking back at the combat as it unfolded. The enemy was shattering. Shields fell as armored men turned tail and tried to flee. Many would not make it more than a few steps without being pierced by spears or consumed by the powers of the archangels. Some would escape temporarily, but so far none of the locals had managed to successfully elude Godric and his wargs.

In that moment, she felt the satisfaction of duty inching towards fulfillment. Now there would be little between them and Eskaldr, and all of it would be known to her after the interrogation of prisoners.

The third city of the Red Mountains was now that much closer to falling to the gods of the Imperium. In her heart of hearts, Saevia found that idea most pleasing.

Chapter 16
A Warmth

By K. Olsen

Pain was beginning to feel normal in a way it never had before. The burns to Mara’s right arm had spread up to her shoulder, perpetual now that she was channeling sorcery on a regular basis. She had fresh incision scars from Sammael’s work on that arm. In order to mitigate some of the pain and improve her ability to channel, he had replaced nerves with delicate wire and bone with infernal steel. The flesh around her new modifications was still scorched and scarred, but Mara wasn’t worried about being pretty at this point. With her damaged spine and slight limp, her older scars and bones that hadn’t healed right, she was hardly a creature of grace or beauty.

Every evening she spent with Aallotar, who was perpetually sporting savage bruises courtesy of training with Caliban. He corrected sloppy form with blows and the wildling had spent most of her life in beast form, so moving a human body was a far newer experience. That left plenty of room for vicious correction.

There were fewer and fewer bruises and cuts every day, however. Aallotar was a quick study, mostly out of spite. Her animosity towards Caliban had not abated, though Mara wasn’t sure of its root. Sammael’s servant always met the huntress with flattery and a sort of hand-wringing awe.

“You are awake?” Aallotar whispered in the darkness, shifting slightly on the mattress they shared so she was facing Mara.

Most nights, even with all the pain in her body, Mara was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. It was only once in a while when the wave of homesickness hit her and kept her awake, staring upwards at the ceiling. Mara rolled onto her good side, healing arm tucked across her body. “What’s wrong?” she asked in a voice thick with exhaustion. In the darkness of their little space, Mara could barely make out the outline of Aallotar’s face, the gleam of eyes caught by the sliver of light coming from Sammael’s study above on the opposite side of the library.

As a demon, Sammael required no sleep, no food, no drink. He spent his nights pouring over every text he could acquire that touched upon the remnants of the First World. Most treasured, kept under lock and key, were the pieces of lore he had preserved from before Godfall that described Void and the sorcery of the ancients. Mara found the idea of his presence somewhat comforting after two months of study under his tutelage. Whatever his deepest motives and intentions, her survival and improvement were his top priorities.

Aallotar brushed fingertips very gently over Mara’s bandages, carefully not pressing in case it caused any extra pain. “I worry,” the wildling murmured. “Always, you are hurting.”

“But I’m getting better,” Mara said in a gentle counter, barely able to keep her eyes open. “I’m so much stronger than I was.”

“I still worry,” Aallotar said.

Mara smiled at that, even with the exhaustion weighting her whole soul down. “That’s because you have a good soul,” she mumbled. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”

Aallotar shifted again, hand resting over Mara’s injured one. “What if there are hunters?”

“We’ve been underground for weeks without a break. I think I’ll take a bit of risk for a chance to see the sun again.” They’d crept out together to see the stars a few times, but winter’s chill meant they were never out for long.

Sammael had presented a task for them, both a test of sorts and a necessary function. They would be going with Caliban in the morning to meet with a few treasure hunters in the nearby village of Barri, since the men from the south were rumored to be carrying goods ransacked from an ancient ruin. There was always a chance that something truly valuable might be unearthed by such adventurous types. Mara’s education was finally to the point where she could be trusted with identifying such potential clues to the past.

“Fair,” Aallotar conceded. She ran her fingers over Mara’s brown hair, smoothing it back from her face. “Sleep.”

The touch was immensely comforting, soothing away the last of the residual heartache that clung so fiercely to Mara. Truthfully, the more time she spent in study of sorcery, the more distant her old life seemed. Only Sammael, Aallotar, and Caliban seemed real after the floods and fires of agony through her body. Mara spent no effort trying to stay awake, slipping into the world of dreamless sleep.

When she awoke, she wasn’t alone. Normally Caliban had Aallotar up even earlier than Sammael roused her. This morning, she was practically wrapped around the wildling, face buried in the back of Aallotar’s shoulder with her injured arm across her friend’s waist. It was warm and comfortable, the deep and even movements of Aallotar’s breaths felt against her body. It was pleasant enough that she had no desire to move, even though her arm throbbed in pain.

Mara closed her eyes again, luxuriating in the chance to sleep in even for a few minutes longer than normal. The ticking chronometer that Sammael had given them counted the sixth hour of the day, well before dawn still at this time of year. Their blankets were worn and threadbare, but there were enough of them to trap the heat that rolled off Aallotar like a furnace. Even Mara’s feet were warm, tucked against her friend’s lower legs.

Aallotar growled softly in her sleep, hands and feet twitching. Mara knew that was a sign that she was dreaming of her days as the beast, never a pleasant recollection. The sorcery of Sammael’s abode allowed her to stay in human form as long as she stayed within it and being beside Mara still prevented the curse from manifesting, but the bloodstains on her soul refused to fade. The sorcerer knew full well that the anguish was still there even if Aallotar never said anything of it.

The huntress brushed her hand in a circle across Aallotar’s abdomen, trying to soothe the nightmare. “I have you,” she murmured. “You’re okay.” When she heard another growl, she repeated herself in a soft voice near Aallotar’s ear. “I have you. You’re okay.”

The growl became a whine and then the wildling shifted, slowly coming awake. “Mara?” Aallotar mumbled, scrubbing at her eyes. She couldn’t roll over with Mara’s hold on her, not without potentially jarring the huntress’s wounded arm.

“Right here,” Mara said, letting her forehead rest against the back of Aallotar’s shoulder again.

“Did I wake you?”

The concern in her friend’s voice left Mara smiling. “I was already awake,” she promised to soothe the wildling’s guilt before it could take root. “We should probably get up.”

Aallotar made a mumbling noise at that and buried her face in their blankets. Clearly she had no desire to get out of bed.

Despite agreeing wholeheartedly with that assessment of the premise, Mara prodded her friend in the ribs. “Up,” she said, reluctantly letting go of the wildling. “I’d rather get up on my own than have Caliban come dump water on you.”

“He would regret it,” Aallotar muttered even as she rolled onto her back and stretched languidly, easing stiff muscles into better movement. She sat up, rubbing at her eyes again before looking down at Mara. “How is your arm?”

“Not too bad,” Mara said as she slipped out from under the blankets, sucking in a sharp breath when the cold hit her in a wave. “Sammael said I could take off the bandages today.”

“Let me?” Aallotar offered. She still had a healer’s touch, even with the combat training that had callused her hands and added even more muscle to her already strong body. She’d become something of a master at getting bandages off Mara’s arm and shoulder without ripping any wounds open again or causing much in the way of pain.

“Thanks,” Mara said gratefully, turning so her shoulder was towards the wildling.

Aallotar gently unwound the masterful wrapping from Sammael, exposing deep red burn scars in fern-like patterns and fresh incisions that had been glued closed using some kind of adhesive. Mara never asked Sammael for an explanation, as his descriptions usually went right over her head. The wildling’s brow furrowed slightly, a sign that she didn’t like seeing the injuries. “Must we go with Caliban?” Aallotar asked, her wording still slightly stilted and awkward, though her pronunciation had improved leaps and bounds. “You should rest.”

“I’m not made of glass,” the sorcerer said with a small smile, flexing her fingers and then her wrist to show she had full range of movement in that hand. “Besides, if the adventurers really do have something worth buying, we might need it.”

Aallotar’s golden eyes looked unconvinced, but she got to her feet anyway and held her hand out to Mara. “Where is Caliban?” she murmured, looking around.

“Ah, good, you’re up,” the man said as he came up the stairs. For the first time, Mara saw Caliban clean and well-groomed. He had shaved off his wild beard and his matted hair was combed into neatness. The crescents of grime remained under his nails, but he had washed off the rest of his customary filth.

It was jarring to hear that slippery voice coming from a handsome, charming face. Caliban’s rugged jawline and sculpted cheekbones were utterly at odds with his usual bearing. He was also dressed in clean, if simple, peasant’s clothes with a sword belted at his side.

Aallotar nodded, her eyes turning curiously to the bundle he carried under one arm. “When do we leave?” she asked.

“As soon as you two are bathed and dressed,” Caliban said, tossing Aallotar the bundle. “There’s a shield waiting for you downstairs.” He switched his attention to Mara, giving her a saccharine smile and a sweeping bow. “Good morning, Mistress Spell-Breaker.”

Mara offered him her usual smile. As much as Aallotar disliked Caliban, he was always respectful to the huntress. “Good morning. You look...much better. What’s the occasion?”

“Good looks are advantageous,” Caliban explained, sweeping a hand through his dark hair. He gave Mara a grin. “The better to charm young ladies for information.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t know much more than you do,” Mara said as she stretched her arm.

“That is untrue,” he said, eyes flickering to the scars on her arms. She caught the glint of envy in his eyes. It was hardly a secret that Caliban would have changed places with her in an instant, no matter the amount of pain. While he could be charming, there was always an edge to him, a desperate hunger for power that was probably the root of Aallotar’s distaste. “But perhaps simply to charm then, Mistress.”

“She does not need your charms,” Aallotar said as she unwrapped the bundle, revealing a plain but very functional sword of local design, meant to be wielded one-handed with a shield.

“Jealous, are we?” Caliban sniped back with amusement flashing in his eyes when Aallotar glared at him.

Mara sighed audibly and put a hand on Aallotar’s shoulder. “Can’t we all just get along for a little while?” she said.

Aallotar nodded, turning her gaze back to the sword, drawing it from its sheath. It gleamed like midwinter ice.

“That’s Sjaligr steel,” Mara observed, studying the wave-like patterns in the blade from how it had been folded and hammered during forging. There were at least a hundred layers in that construction, maybe more. She hesitated for a moment, staring at it. With such quality, it had probably come directly from her mother’s forge. “Where did you get that, Caliban?”

“From a dead man, Mistress,” the demon’s servant said as he strolled back down the steps. “Hurry up and bathe. There are clean clothes by the baths.”

It wasn’t an answer that Mara liked, but she knew from experience that getting information from Caliban could be like trying to draw blood from a stone. He held onto secrets almost as well as his master. The sorcerer hurried through the cold library towards the baths, well aware that only cold water awaited in those mirror-like pools. Sammael saw no reason to heat them, as attending to the comfort of his mortals was seldom a concern that troubled him. Aallotar followed soundlessly on bare feet, moving with the predatory grace she had honed now that she was finally used to moving on just two feet.

As always, Aallator stopped at the door to the baths, letting Mara pass through the curtain to get cleaned up first. The wildling seemed to feel it necessary to post a guard, probably against Caliban. It was such a part of the routine now that Mara didn’t even give it a thought, stripping down and then unwrapping a paper package containing a simple, pine-scented soap.

She was very gentle with her healing wounds, but scrubbed thoroughly all the same. The water was cold enough that she only ever lingered right after a session with Sammael. When she was finished, she drained the pool using the plug at the bottom and then replaced it, climbing out. Sammael kept them filled through the use of ingenious pipes, something Mara had never seen before coming to the demon’s abode. It was a pity the water wasn’t warm as she refilled the bath.

She grabbed the set of clothes that was meant for her, a simple woolen dress over a linen slip, and dressed quickly. The sleeves were long enough to cover most of the scars and she could wrap bandages around her hand to conceal the rest. “Trade,” Mara said, poking her head out as she dragged a comb made from antler through her hair, picking out tangles.

Aallotar nodded, flashing Mara a quick smile before taking her turn.

The wildling emerged a few minutes later, braiding her blonde hair the way Mara had taught her so it would stay out of her face in a fight. Her clothes were a pair of pants tucked into tall, armored boots and a tunic belted at the waist that she could wear beneath a mail hauberk. Aallotar was strong enough that armor barely slowed her down and Mara stressed the importance of protection every time she had the chance to. The last thing she ever wanted to see was Aallotar wounded.

“We will draw some attention,” Caliban said from where he was leaning against a nearby shelf, every bit the casually comfortable rogue Mara had come to expect. “Women warriors are not common in the Red Mountains. Still, the additional protection is worth a bit of scrutiny.”

Mara nodded, pulling a shawl around her shoulders to prepare for the cold. Once upon a time, she would have objected strenuously to a dress, but they couldn’t afford too much scrutiny and she had a powerful defense even without using the sword and shield she’d trained with. Besides, right now they had only enough weapons for Caliban and Aallotar, other than the seax Mara kept belted horizontally at the small of her back.

“We shouldn’t keep Sammael waiting,” Mara said, earning a nod from both of her companions. She combed her fingertips through her damp hair. She had dried it as much as she could, but it would still freeze outside. The sorcerer lead the way with Aallotar and Caliban following close on her heels.

“GOOD, YOU ARE READY,” Sammael said coolly in his metallic voice as they approached, three pouches of coin sitting in his clawed hand. “YOU ARE TO OBTAIN ANY RELICS BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE. IF THIS COIN DOES NOT SUFFICE, EMPLOY OTHER TACTICS. WHATEVER COIN REMAINS IS YOURS TO SPEND.”

“Thank you,” Mara said as the demon passed them each a pouch. She knew from experience not to think too hard about where Sammael had gotten the money. Caliban had explained gleefully that his master sometimes went out on the hunt for bandits to drag back for experiments, taking their ill-gotten gains with them. Mara didn’t know if it was true or not, but she also didn’t want to find out. It was easier to sleep at night when she didn’t think about what evils her demonic mentor had worked in his pursuit of knowledge.

Aallotar pulled on the gambeson and hauberk that waited for her. The mail covered her down to her knees, complete with sleeves that guarded her arms. Thick leather gauntlets stitched with plates of metal, a spectacle helm with a straight nose-piece, and her round shield completed her protection. She looked like a proper warrior-maiden, golden eyes particularly fearsome when glaring from behind the protection of her helm.

Caliban wore the same armor, but carried a two-handed sword instead of a sword and shield. He was familiar enough with the local fighting style to teach Aallotar well, but preferred that of his own country. Together, they were downright intimidating.

Mara smiled at her friend. “I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about trouble. You and Caliban will be able to scare anything off.”

“I hope so,” Aallotar said, a trace of nerves in her voice as she adjusted the fit of her helm and then removed it, hooking it to her belt. The last time they had ventured into populated lands, it hadn’t gone well.

“We’re prepared,” Mara said with confidence despite the quiver of fear inside her own chest. This would be a test in more ways than one. “Besides, Barri is just a village. It won’t have guards the way Sjaligr does, so we can always run away.”

“True enough,” Caliban said with a chuckle, his smile sly. “Tails tucked between our legs?”

Aallotar glared at him. Any reminder of the beastial nature barely under the surface of her soul was enough to rouse her dislike of the man and he hadn’t chosen that phrase by accident.

Mara knew she was going to have her hands full keeping them from going after each other. “Come on,” she said, giving Aallotar a push. “We’ve got a long way to go before sunset if we’re going to reach Barri tonight.”

The wildling nodded stiffly and motioned for Caliban to lead the way.

The bow he gave her in return was probably mocking, but Aallotar knew better than to snap at him with Mara trying to keep the peace.

“Shame we don’t have horses,” Caliban commented as they stepped out into the frigid air, wrapped in furs over their armor. He hefted the pouch in his hand. It was a generous amount, but probably not enough.

Mara was the warmest without steel holding the cold to her body, but her lungs and face ached from the winter chill on every breath. It was a beautiful morning, the sun a sliver of gold on the horizon that turned the sky brilliant colors. The crust of ice at the top of the snow glittered like a field of diamonds and the icicles hanging from the branches of the trees around them refracted light like prisms into rainbow shades across the black bark.

In response to Caliban’s comment, the sorcerer shrugged. She kept her hope that she would have some coin left over to herself, mostly so she could buy some soap of her own, that smelled of something other than pine, and clothing. Even in the winter, traders passed through Barri on their way to Sjaligr and back, meaning there was a good chance of a little temporary market in the village. Besides, she wanted to get something for Aallotar other than a weapon or armor, something with a purpose that was more human.

It was something she hadn’t been able to obtain in Sjaligr for her friend.

“And off we go,” Caliban said with unusual cheer.

Aallotar glanced over at Mara, a hint of worry in her eyes. She knew better than Mara that Caliban in a good mood meant some kind of misfortune would befall someone else.

“We’ll be fine,” Mara promised, reaching out to give Aallotar’s gauntleted hand a squeeze. “I’m right beside you.”

Chapter 17
A Southern Encounter

By K. Olsen

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.

“The treasure hunters will be at the inn,” Caliban said with certainty as they made their way through the little market, Aallotar walking stiffly at his side with Mara close to her back to offer comfort. “Drinking and telling tall tales of grand exploits.” The contemptuous curl of his lip told them what he thought of the adventurous types.

Mara tried to ignore the discomfort of cold in her healing arm as she moved. Her demonic mentor tended little to her pain, only scouring every wound for any hint of infection that might harm his precious pupil. As a result, the burns and incisions seemed to sting even more fiercely in the cold than they had inside, the flesh around her freshly metal fingers aching and burning the most. Once upon a time it might have been enough to make her faint, even with the experience of a childhood full of beatings, but after channeling sorcery, all other pains seemed merely uncomfortable.

Aallotar’s hand touched her good shoulder, the contact comforting even despite the weight of the wildling’s heavy leather and steel gauntlet. “Are you well?” Mara’s friend asked.

“Fine,” Mara promised. “Just can’t wait to be warm.”

Caliban gave her a lupine smile. “How fortunate that we are almost to the inn.”

“Have you been to Barri before?” the sorcerer asked, flexing her fingers inside their cloth glove to try and restore some body heat through motion.

“Upon occasion. Never with regularity,” the demon’s servant explained quietly, lingering near Mara’s ear even though it earned him a fearsome glare from Aallotar. “Too many visits would inspire too many questions. A lesson that you would do well to learn. No longer are you so...ordinary.”

“Trust me when I say that’s never been a feeling I enjoyed,” Mara said. “I’ve never experienced life as anything other than what I am, and I don’t see any other spell-breakers running about.”

The inn was a partially two story, half-timbered and half stone building. Caliban caught the large door and pulled it open for Mara and her wildling guardian, revealing a room dim except for firelight and the sunlight that streamed through the ventilation holes in the thatched roof. “Fair enough,” Caliban acknowledged.

Aallotar inhaled reflexively, taking in the scent of the air even without her bestial nose. Mara suspected her friend’s senses were still slightly keener than her own. The wildling made a face of disgust, though her expression was only half visible under her spectacle helm. “They need bathing,” Aallotar murmured.

“Most in the Red Mountains don’t bathe as often as we’ve been,” Mara said. She’d learned from her mother to be fastidious, and constant injury ensured that she kept to that lesson with rigor. “Especially not in the cold of winter.”

“It offends,” Aallotar grumbled.

Mara laughed, enjoying the faint hint of a wrinkled nose she could see under the steel nose piece that guarded her friend’s face. “Get used to disappointment,” she teased. “Let’s go in and get a drink before I freeze to death.”

Aallotar immediately moved to go into the building, almost colliding with a tower of a man who stood more than a head over Aallotar’s six feet. She looked up and her eyes widened as she took in his unusual appearance and smell.

His skin was a dull red, like the color of Sjaligr sandstone brick, stretched over a square face. The angular nostrils of his flat nose flared as they collided, the fearsome glare he leveled at them coming from eyes the same shade of feral gold as Aallotar’s own. He wore furs over his armor, dull grey steel without a shine. His breastplate was one solid piece instead of mail and the curved sword he wore looked like nothing Mara had ever seen. The man’s eyes narrowed as he looked over the three of them. For such a huge brute, the intelligence that gleamed in his eyes was dangerously present.

“You should watch where you’re going, foreigner,” Caliban said almost imperiously, apparently unconcerned by the obstacle in his path.

The foreigner’s bearing was rigid, his expression cool when he turned his eyes on Caliban. “Such a tongue does you a disservice, warrior of Barri,” he said, accented voice deep and sonorous. “Have a care or it will be cut out.” Instead of moving to attack, however, he brushed by Aallotar and shouldered Caliban out of the way.

Mara stepped out of his path, eyes following him to his destination.

A great, horrible beast waited for the stranger near the stables, spotted and round-eared, slavering jaws unmistakably carnivorous. It was larger than a draft horse, clearly meant to be ridden, given the strange leather saddle draped over the fence beside it. The fearsome man had a pack there and a long spear resting against it. His strange armor bore no symbol that Mara recognized from the Red Mountains, only painted green hands on his left and right shoulders, with a silver badge affixed to his breastplate just beneath his throat.

“Must you start a fight with everything, craven?” Aallotar muttered, glaring at Caliban.

“Just my little joke,” Caliban said, ducking into the inn. “Whatever he is, he’s a long way from home.”

“There’s another one,” Mara whispered to the wildling with a hint of nerves, her hand finding Aallotar’s sword arm, nudging in that direction without turning her head. Seated beside an ordinary-looking man in merchant’s clothing was another one of the red-skinned behemoths, this one with hints of short horns in two lines running backwards through his dark hair. “Who are they?”

“Danger,” Aallotar murmured back.

Caliban guided them to a table, catching the wrist of a nervous-looking barmaid as they went. “Drinks for my friends and I, if you’d please,” he said, flashing the young woman a disarming grin before she could snap at him. “And a pointer towards the gentlemen with trinkets from ruins to sell.”

The fawn-haired young woman was too jittery to scowl, probably from the same source of nerves that Mara was feeling. “There,” she said, indicating a group of weathered, hard-bitten men sitting at one of the bench tables near the center of the room. The sound of their boasting dominated the room. Even the large, red-skinned warrior was making relatively little noise in comparison, conversing quietly with his merchant companion as his golden eyes surveyed his surroundings.

“Who are those strangers?” Mara asked their server before she could scurry off, nodding her head towards the strangely dressed warrior and the merchant he was guarding.

“They came from Eskaldr.”

“Have they been trouble for a beauteous young lady like yourself?” Caliban asked solicitously.

The barmaid hesitated for a moment at that, collecting her thoughts before she spoke. “Haven’t laid a finger on anyone,” she said softly. “Nice enough manners, but ain’t ever seen them smile.”

“And the merchant?” Caliban’s questions were probing, but his tone stayed polite.

“He’s an odd one,” the barmaid admitted freely. “He speaks all fancy-like, but he dresses simple. I don’t like the way he looks at folk, but he ain’t done nothing.”

“Well, we’ll stop pestering you. Except for those drinks,” Caliban said, dropping a silver coin into her palm. Her eyes widened and she darted off to get them drinks and whatever meal was being served. Silver of that size and purity was a rare sight in a town like Barri, where people tended to trade in copper coins or barter. In actual cities like Sjaligr or Eskaldr, coins were minted even in gold, but on the fringes of civilization like Barri, seldom was such wealth seen except for on the occasional adventurer.

“Do you think they’re here about the items recovered from the ruins?” Mara asked in a low voice as they took their seats at a rough-hewn table.

“I suppose it’s possible, though more likely they’re just stopping here on their way to Sjaligr,” Caliban said breezily. “Barri, stunning metropolis as it is, hardly holds the attention.”

Mara shook her head slightly at his sarcastic description of the town. Barri had probably about fifty people who permanently called it home and about as many passing through, a little huddled hint of civilization bounded on all sides by wilderness. There was a reason Sammael had chosen to make his home within a day of the settlement: he was not likely to be disturbed, even if the villagers actively went hunting. There simply weren’t enough of them to pierce his protective wilderness or pose a true threat to a demon of his power.

Aallotar sat with her legs touching Mara’s under the table. “We should do business with the boastful swiftly and be gone,” she urged. “”They look to be thinking of trouble with the foreigners.”

Mara looked over at the treasure hunters, clearly hardened men even by the standards of the Red Mountains, but loutish when into their cups. One of the men was staring at the red-skinned warrior, a thoughtful grin forming on his face.

“Marvelous,” Caliban said with a touch of sarcasm as he sprang up to his feet. His eyes almost immediately found the heavy-looking pack on the floor beside the leader of the adventuring party. “If a fight breaks out, we take that and leave.”

Aallotar glared at him. “And join the fight?”

“I wasn’t suggesting being obvious about it,” Caliban said breezily.

“Theft is not the ideal,” Mara said as she stood up to follow Caliban. She winced when she saw two of the scarred toughs approach the red-skinned man’s table. The beginning of the conversation wasn’t audible from a distance, but it became audible as Mara followed on Caliban’s heels, Aallotar at his side.

“...ey, look Hansi, I think he’s blushing,” one slurred with a grin. “Not much of a guard for his fancy-man merchant.”

The line between adventurer and bandit was seldom clear and defined in this part of the Red Mountains, Mara knew. Still, even with numbers and ale-courage on their side, it seemed a foolish risk to take on the unknown to Mara. That was probably her own native caution, though.

The red-skinned man said nothing, his expression almost bored as he looked over at Mara’s group, pointedly ignoring the adventurers mocking him.

“Ey, I’m talking to you!”

“There is no need for trouble,” the merchant said in soothing tones, his speech every bit as silver as the coin that he no doubt carried. “We are simply travelers, the same as you.”

The leader of the troublemakers put a foot on the merchant’s table, shoving it back to pin the merchant against the wall. “I don’t like your looks, fancy man.”

Mara blinked and there was a tearing sound. The red skinned man moved in an instant, that wicked curved blade streaking out of its sheath to decapitate the man with his foot on the table in an instant, cleaving cleanly through his neck. She could see the weapon it its full, bloody fascination now: its curve was also weighted forward, that much easier to slice and slash. She had never seen anyone so large move quite so fast before, but the man was already on his feet, contemptuously shoving the body off the table with his foot. She had only ever seen one person escalate so smoothly from absentminded fascination to lethal violence without stopping at a single step in the middle: Gaius. Was this big, red-skinned man from that far south?

The dead man’s six companions let out a shout, pulling weapons that varied from swords and knives to axes. Caliban sidled around the rear of the group as they charged the red-skinned man, preparing to grab the pack of treasure.

“They’re going to kill him,” Mara observed, catching hold of Aallotar’s business. The lone guard could be fast and strong, but six against one was not even close to a fair fight.

“Perhaps we can separate them until heads have cooled?” Aallotar murmured, looking to Mara for guidance.

Mara shook her head. “He killed one of them. That’s blood feud material if ever I’ve seen it.”

The first to close the distance with the red-skinned man was met not by the guard’s blade, but by a fist that hit the assailant in the side of the head with enough force to drop him like a thunderbolt. Even as that movement happened, the red-skinned man was already flicking his wicked blade at the throat of a second attacker. The movements he made were strange and circular, clearly focused on always keeping that curved blade in motion so it had its full momentum. It was flashy, but it did an excellent job of keeping the adventurers at bay as well, as it could threaten anywhere in reach at any moment.

“It’s not our business,” Mara said, catching hold of Aallotar’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

Caliban grabbed the bag even as they spoke, shouldering the pack now that attention was focused firmly away from him. He turned to dart for the door and collided with the second red-skinned man returning from outside with sword bared.

Instead of cutting Caliban down, the foreigner punched out into the thieving man’s solar plexus with enough force to drop him to the ground where he gasped like a landed fish. The red-skinned man stepped onto his prone body with one boot, pinning Caliban to the floor. Instead of drawing his sword, he hurled a javelin so hard it pierced one of the adventurers through the body.

“Two is fairer,” Aallotar said, grabbing Mara’s hand and pulling her back against the wall since the door was occupied by a potentially hostile force.

“Thief!” one man shouted. He pivoted and saw Aallotar and Mara, but before he could charge them, a bloody arcing blade caught him in the back of the knees, dropping him to the ground before the second rotation of the red-skinned man’s arm brought the blade down on his skull with a brutal chop.

The merchant seemed utterly unfazed by the actions of his guards, even as the other people in the inn scattered for cover and let out cries of horror. Aallotar pulled Mara behind the bar and down to the ground beside the barmaid who was cowering there, her shield arm circled around Mara so the large round shield protected the sorcerer from any danger. Together, they knelt out of view.

“They have Caliban,” Mara said in protest when Aallotar kept her down. She wasn’t tall enough to peer over the bar the way the wildling could. “We have to help him.”

“Caliban can care for himself,” Aallotar said firmly, watching the battle as it raged.

The adventurers, hardened and skilled at arms, were no match for the fury they had roused. Soon the last of their bodies hit the packed dirt of the floor, blood splashing into the covering straw.

The red-skinned warrior with a boot on Caliban looked down at the gasping man. He ground his heel harder into the sternum of the demon’s servant. “Where are you running to, little thief?” he growled out.

“Bring him to me, Ansigar,” the merchant said, silver voice commanding. “Let us see what he was stealing. Perhaps his companions will join us as well.”

Mara and Aallotar exchanged a look. That did not sound good.

Chapter 18
A Clarity

By K. Olsen

Perhaps it was because of the easy violence his guards had displayed that Mara thought the merchant spoke with the authority of a lord. “You may come out,” the man said, pushing the table back out so he was no longer pinned to the wall. The heavy oak moved easily, suggesting that he had the muscle of a trained fighter even though he looked slim and unassuming. “So long as your manners are better than your countrymen’s, I have no desire for a quarrel.”

Aallotar looked at Mara. “There is a back door,” she said in a hushed voice.

“We might outrun them, but not their monsters outside,” Mara whispered back. “Those creatures looked like they had a wolf’s nose.”

Reluctantly, Aallotar nodded and stood, helping Mara up from their concealment behind the bar. She kept her shield on her arm, eyeing the two guards. Both men looked like devils from some fiery hell, spattered with blood from the cleaving wounds left by their wicked curved swords. They stood taller than even her father’s six foot height and their golden eyes seemed doubly feral now even if their faces were calmly composed.

One ran a hand over his head thoughtfully as he looked down at the man pinned beneath his heel, brushing across the rows of small horns that rose from his scalp, mostly lost in his hair. The other stared at Aallotar without so much as a sign of heavy breathing, sword held loosely at his side, as if he had not just been some whirling dervish of death.

There was no way they were going to get to Caliban or the pack containing whatever treasures the dead adventurers had looted from the ancient ruins without entreating for their guide’s release. Even a demon’s servant didn’t stand a chance against the two expert warriors they were facing.

“Who are you?” Mara asked, as cautious as a feral cat.

“I am Dexsius,” the merchant said, rising from his seat to give them a polite bow. “My companions are Ansigar and Ealhhere.” He gestured to each one in turn. Ansigar had come charging in from outside. Ealhhere had been seated at the table with the merchant, easily distinguished by the series of scars that criss-crossed his face, even biting into his flat nose. “Do not let the twins trouble you too much. They are here for my protection.” He gave the two women in front of him a thin smile. “You are?”

Mara had never been a good liar, something she bitterly rued at the moment. “Mara,” she said with all the politeness she could muster. She could at least limit information by not giving her full name. “I’m sorry about Caliban. He really doesn’t mean you any harm.”

Ansigar bent over, wrenching the backpack from Caliban’s death-grip with ease. He tossed it to his brother like it weighed nothing and Ealhhere spilled the contents onto the table. Coins and assorted wealth likely robbed from graves and buried share scattered across the surface of the wood, followed by a few chunks of twisted metal covered in the same incredibly intricate writing that Mara had seen in her master’s tomes.

God-Tongue.

The dead men had found something of interest after all.

“Fascinating,” the merchant said, picking up one of the metal shards. He turned it over in his hands, inspecting what could be seen of the markings where the dirt caked on it had been rubbed partially away.

“What is it?” Ansigar asked, his voice a low rumble.

“A piece of ancient history,” Dexisus said with amusement flickering across his face. “These are prayers to the pretenders who fell from heaven and died, back in the days of warring gods and angels.” He looked over at Caliban. “Are you a scholar, then, or is that the domain of your lovely friends?”

‘That one is a warrior,” Ealhhere muttered with narrowed eyes, gesturing to Aallotar with his sword.

“One can be both, even if that is not common in these lands,” Dexisus reminded his guard. His eyes focused on Mara. “Who is your protective friend?”

Mara put her injured hand on Aallotar’s back. The wildling couldn’t feel its presence through her chainmail hauberk and gambeson, but Mara couldn’t think of another way to calm her. “Easy, Aallotar,” she said, trying to distract her friend from Ealhhere’s glare. Then she glanced over at Caliban, who looked particularly sour at the moment. “No one wants a fight.”

Aallotar nodded and relaxed slightly out of her stance, lowering her shield. In answer, both of the red-skinned strangers wiped down their blades and sheathed them. The villagers cowering in the corners still didn’t step out to face them, not with six dead men on the floor of the room. “Indeed,” Dexsius said.

The more he smiled, the more aware Mara became that there was something not quite right: the expression never reached his eyes. There was a cold detachment to his basilisk stare, like that of a dead man. It wasn’t the menace of her master’s obsidian gaze, but it seemed an echo of something just as dark. She would readily face her master’s displeasure and leave empty-handed if it meant getting away from Dexsius and his bodyguards.

“I was more interested in the coin,” Caliban said, oily tone as measured as always. Mara could almost see his thoughts turning like grindstones in a mill as he tried to figure a way out of their current predicament.

“A failure at banditry,” Ansigar muttered. “Are thieves branded here or do they cleave off at the wrist?”

“The local justice is not ours to administer,” Dexsius said mildly, setting down the piece of inscribed metal he held. “Not beyond self defense.”

“As you wish,” Ansigar said with a bow of his head. “What are we to do with them?”

Dexsius shrugged. “Let them go about their business. We have a task of our own to concern ourselves with. If they wish to pilfer the dead, by all means. I have no use for such coin and its last owners no longer have need of it either.”

Caliban scrambled up to his feet as soon as they allowed him to and swept the bulk of the treasures into the pack again, not forgetting the ostensibly worthless pieces of metal. Coins scattered onto the floor, but he wasted no time trying to gather every one that had escaped. He jerked his head towards the door when he caught Mara’s eye and then flashed the three strangers a wide smile. “Thank you for your generosity, my lord.”

Dexsius nodded thoughtfully, eyes still fixed on Mara. “The rest will pay for the damages,” he said almost absently. “Be careful on your way, my friends. We were warned of a demon in these woods.”

“We will be,” Mara said quickly, wincing when Caliban caught her by the arm and pulled her out the door. Aallotar followed quickly, slamming her shield into his back to shove him forward and away from Mara.

“I am working for her protection, mutt,” Caliban growled, catching himself before he fell on the pack.

Aallotar’s face paled like he’d slapped her, eyes narrowing. She went to lunge for Caliban, but Mara stepped between them to break up the fight. “That’s enough!” Mara barked. She’d never raised her voice to either of them before, so it had the intended effect: both combatants froze. No doubt for Aallotar it was fear of her displeasure and for Caliban it was fear of her power. “We need to get back.”

“Mara, you are bleeding,” Aallotar said, looking down at Mara’s arm where Caliban had grabbed her. An incision had to have reopened. Golden eyes snapped from ferocity to worry almost instantaneously. She closed the distance between them, gauntleted hands reaching to lift Mara’s sleeve so she could look at the wound.

Caliban grabbed Aallotar’s hand before she could expose Sammael’s work on the sorcerer’s arm. “Not here, wildling,” he hissed in a low voice. “We are still under scrutiny. You may tend her when we are away from this wretched little hamlet.”

“He’s right,” Mara said quickly, before Aallotar could refocus her protective wrath on the demon’s servant. “We need to make it home. I’m worried that they’ll follow.”

“Why would they?” Aallotar asked, letting Caliban lead the way back out towards the woods.

Mara didn’t have a good answer to that. There were no actual words to explain the icy dread that sat in the pit of her stomach when she thought of that uncanny smile. “I don’t know. I just...I don’t think that’s the last we’re going to see of them.”

“You’re probably right,” Caliban said, glancing over his shoulder. The large, spotted predatory creatures that stood beside the stables full of terrorized horses looked like a cross between wolves and lions. They were definitely not native to the Red Mountains. “I have heard of such beasts.”

“You said nothing before,” Aallotar said harshly.

“I had not seen the riders and the insignia of their owner to remind me,” the man muttered. “The Angravarri are warg riders, servants of the demon prince of Arcem Solis. Not the eldest of his brothers, but certainly not less dangerous. The Master must be told.”

“A demon prince?” Mara asked hesitantly. “Like Sammael?”

Caliban shook his head. “I do not know where the Master would fit in their cosmology, but he is not the same as the Princes of Iron. They command a vast realm with sorcery at their beck and call as living gods, servants of the empty throne that once held the Deceiver himself.”

“With your hunger for power, I am surprised you know of them and did not think to seek them out,” Aallotar said darkly.

The demon’s servant turned sharply. They had just reached the thick treeline, lost from view under the shadows of dark pines. “Ambitious, yes, I am,” he said, giving the wildling a fearsome glare. “But a fool I am not. The Princes of Iron are jealous with their power. They do not bestow it upon kith the way the dissenting demons do. At least if I choose, I may leave the Master’s company. He does not assign me a place in the cosmos and annihilate me if I so much as breathe wrong.”

Mara felt a chill at that. “Is that what Kalevi saw?” she whispered, more to herself than to anyone else. Sammael had already known about her oracle from the troll, probably through spies in her home city of one kind or another, possibly even through sorcery. No doubt Caliban knew of it as well, though she hadn’t confirmed that with him. The troll’s words followed her mind through its movements like a specter of horror to come.

...In their wake, nothing will remain except fire, death, and salt…

“The Master will know,” Caliban said with unshakable certainty. He sighed. “That said, probably. You were not chosen at this time by accident, Spell-Breaker. The Master has been preparing for the end of the world for a long time. As long as I have known him, at least.”

Mara knew Sammael had been preparing for his enemies to encroach upon his refuge for a very long time, apparently more aware of what was coming than anyone else in the Red Mountains, except for perhaps the Oracle of Deadwood, the monster that was Kalevi. Those preparations had spanned some gap of time longer than all three of their lifespans added together, most likely. She started to walk quickly towards their hidden home, stopping only when Aallotar made her so that they could cover the bandages seeping blood. They didn’t really have time for a re-wrapping.

Together, the three hurried through the woods. Caliban took them across the stream that had frozen over, thankfully deeply enough that it was safe enough to stride upon. They made good time back to the mouth of the cave at the foot of the large stone spire. It was dark by the time they arrived.

Sammael was waiting for them just inside. The demon’s metallic body was unhidden, strange dark ichor flowing from one twisted portion to the next through translucent veins. His almost bestial form leaned against the wall, three angular obsidian eyes glinting slightly in the moonlight. He extended one hand for the backpack that they had brought, needle-like claws catching the strap effortlessly. Without ceremony, Mara’s mentor flipped the bag open and drew out the inscribed fragments of metal.

“YOU HAVE DONE WELL,” Sammael said with little in the way of inflection, his tone perfectly inhuman with the same air of a cold wind sweeping through a deep cave that he always had. He tilted his head to the side slightly as he regarded the first fragment. “EASILY CLEANED. YES, THIS IS AS I HAD ANTICIPATED WHEN I HEARD THEY WERE DIGGING AT THE SOUTHERN SITE.”

“What is it?” Mara asked, voicing the least of her questions.

“Perhaps we should tell you of the interlopers,” Caliban muttered.

Sammael turned his head to regard them as he led the way down the stone steps where snow had drifted. “ELABORATE.”

“There were strangers in the village,” Aallotar said. “Two men with skin the color of Sjaligr’s red stone, dark hair and horns, accompanied by one who smelled of death.”

Caliban didn’t miss the opportunity to snipe at the wildling. “Quite the blood-hound, aren’t you? They all smelled like death.”

Mara stepped between them again before Aallotar could lose her patience a second time. “I know he is pushing,” she whispered to her friend, giving the wildling’s elbow as much of a squeeze as she could with Aallotar wearing mail armor. “Please don’t let him get under your skin.”

“I am not a beast,” Aallotar almost spat, her comment very much directed at the man grinning over Mara’s shoulder. “You are fortunate she steps between, wretch. Some day she may not.”

The demon spun, catching Caliban by the throat. There was just enough light from the sconces ahead for Mara to see the indents the very tips of his hollow claws were making in Caliban’s flesh as he trapped the human man against the rock wall. It was just enough pressure to almost, but not quite, pierce the skin. “ENOUGH,” Sammael boomed, his sonorous voice even more intimidating in the echoing cavern. “TELL ME OF THESE STRANGERS, CALIBAN.” His voice took on an almost purring, alluring quality at the last order. He released Caliban and resumed striding.

The rock ahead melted away to reveal a large, steel door: the portal that barred the way to the library. Symbols hummed to life on the door with faint, flickering light as Sammael approached. With a gesture from the demon’s hand, it slid open with a grating sound to reveal the neat rows of books on tall shelves among the other assorted pieces of memory preserved from the First World.

As they went, Caliban provided Sammael with an exacting recollection of the interaction with the two warriors and the merchant. He omitted or hadn't noticed the strange quality of the merchant’s smile, however.

Mara cleared her throat as he finished, drawing the attention of unfeeling obsidian eyes. “There was something odd about the merchant,” she said. “His expressions looked like...copies. Like he’d had a smile described to him, and almost managed it, but it was just pretend. His eyes were like a dead man’s.”

“THAT ILLUMINATES MORE THAN CALIBAN’S PRATTLING,” Sammael mused aloud. He turned to face his mortal servant. “BEGONE. I HAVE WORDS FOR MY APPRENTICE.”

Caliban’s answer was a fawning bow as he vanished towards his filthy accommodations. He’d never been one to clean the way both Mara and Aallotar did. “Of course, Master. Anything you wish, Master.”

Sammael paid Caliban the precise amount of attention that a horse swatting a fly from its hide with its tail might mind the bug. He beckoned for Mara to follow him. “YOU MAY BRING YOUR GUARDIAN.”It was rare for him to permit Aallotar entrance to his study. Clearly he was deep in thought, or perhaps he understood from the way Mara was now gripping the wildling’s gauntleted hand that his apprentice required an anchor. “THE MERCHANT WAS MUCH AS YOU ARE, MY APPRENTICE. HE IS ANOTHER TOUCHED BY SORCERY, THOUGH HE CANNOT COMMAND IT AS YOU DO.”

“Why is that?” Mara asked softly.

“HE HAS ALL THE WILL TO MUSTER THAT A SWORD DOES, A HAMMER DOES, A SCALPEL DOES.” There was no hint of contempt in his tone, but Mara knew it was probably safe to imply it. Sammael seemed to harbor a deep superiority when regarding things that he could bend to his will, though it was always hard to be certain. Demons were often beyond the comprehension of a mortal. “A COMPLEX TOOL, MOST ASSUREDLY, BUT STILL AN INSTRUMENT AT THE FINAL ACCOUNTING.”

Mara didn’t like the sound of that. “And a demon prince is using him.”

“AS I TOLD YOU, THOSE WHO STYLE THEMSELVES PRINCES OF MY KIND DO NOT TOLERATE WHAT THEY CANNOT CONTROL. YOU WOULD BE ANATHEMA TO THEM, MARA SPELL-BREAKER. WHATEVER HERESY MAGIC IS TO THEM, YOU ARE A THOUSAND-FOLD WORSE.” He turned, capturing Mara with one arm around her shoulders, claws just delicately touching her shoulder. She knew they could rend the flesh from her bones in an instant, but she seldom feared Sammael.

The demon wanted her alive. Whether his reasons were as honest as he stated or not, she was very confident in that.

“Why?”

“THEIR ENTIRE DOMINATION IS BUILT UPON THE VERY IDEA THAT WHAT IS GIVEN TO GODS AND ANGELS IS NOT GIVEN TO MORTALS,” Sammael explained carefully. “IN A SINGULAR DISPLAY OF POWER, YOU COULD END THAT SUPPOSITION FOR THE ARROGANT DELUSION THAT IT IS.”

“Could another do as I do?” Mara asked, her nerves audible in her voice now.

“YOU ARE THE ONLY THAT HAS COME SINCE THE DAYS OF GODFALL,” Sammael said with his same, unshakable certainty. “I DO NOT KNOW IF YOU WILL ALWAYS BE THE ONLY, BUT AS OF NOW, THAT IS HOW IT IS. KEEP YOUR GIFT SECRET FROM THEM, MARA, UNTIL YOU ARE SAFELY AWAY. YOU ARE TOO PRECIOUS A THING TO DIE TO THEIR HUBRIS.” 

Author Notes

Mara Spell-Breaker - human apprentice to the demon Sammael. Aallotar - cursed wildling with a twin soul of a beast imprisoned inside her. Caliban - Sammael's servant. Sammael - an elder demon known as the Venom of God, torturer and scholar.

Chapter 19
Strays

By K. Olsen

Mara awoke with a start to quivering limbs and visions of Sjaligr fading from her mind. Any memory of the place of her birth seemed a cursed omen, not that she was worthy of the gods speaking to her. She took a quiet, deep breath to center herself, trying not to wake Aallotar. The wilding had been up all day, training and splitting enough firewood to last the rest of the winter. She didn't need to be roused at some ungodly hour of the morning.

Fortunately, Aallotar currently slept with a depth worthy of the dead. Her breathing was deep and even, face not quite completely buried in her threadbare pillow. She was sprawled out instead of her favorite position, being curled around Mara, which meant the sorcerer could at least attempt to sneak out of bed.

Seeing Aallotar so peaceful, untroubled by nightmares, always warmed Mara's heart. It was a rare night for either of them if they slept without hints of their pasts tormenting them. Mara stayed a minute just to watch her friend's calm comfort. Apparently exhausting herself beyond normal had done the trick for Aallotar.

Mara wished she was so fortunate. She was still thoroughly tired, but wide awake.

She slipped out of bed and grabbed her bundle of clean winter clothes, scurrying back to the baths to dress so the rustle of fabric wouldn't rouse Aallotar. Quickly dressed in warm wool and tough leather, Mara grabbed a thick cloak and made her way out of her master's hidden sanctuary. There was no sign of Sammael anywhere around, but that meant nothing. For his size and metallic weight, the demon could be exceptionally stealthy. She still remembered the night he had stolen them from Sjaligr's dungeons, particularly his unnervingly human-like disguise. Then again, Sammael sometimes was gone for days at a time.

The chill outside was brutal, but Mara had lived in the Red Mountains her entire life and braced for it. Her breath clouded in front of her face and almost instantly she felt her hair freeze along with the inside of her nose. For all the punishment that was the cold, however, it felt cleansing. She made her way to the only sign of human activity in the area near the cave besides the tracks in the snow: a single, large brazier stacked with wood.

She brushed away all the snow and added the pint of oil that hung in a flask from a small hook set into the stone dais. The wood was dry despite the snow just because of the sheer cold, as long as you didn't leave the snow on to melt. In a few minutes, she had a fire going to warm her hands before they could go numb. She had enough wrappings under her fur-lined boots to keep her toes warm for a while, but the void-touched metal replacing the bones of her right arm ached in the bitter chill if she was out in it for too long. Mara still knew almost nothing of the sorcery Sammael had used on her, but channeling was less painful now.

His explanation certainly left something to be desired. The less mortal you are, the less it will hurt. I have given you a piece of myself to ease your progress. Perhaps you will require more as you grow in power.

The wind shifted directions, carrying a familiar copper tang. It smelled like a dead or dying animal, and not a small one, yet she'd heard no hunting cries. The snow cats didn't come this far down the mountains and the bears were all asleep this early in the year. In her experience, when wolves were in the area, they made themselves known and kept a distance from Sammael's territory. The demon's presence unnerved animals.

If it was a threat, it was probably wiser not to deal with it alone, but she didn't have the heart to wake Aallotar. Besides, she had learned much in the way of sorcery, more than enough to handle a beast.

She followed the breeze through the darkness, allowing her eyes to readjust as she moved away from the firelight. Fortunately, a brilliant full moon burned above, casting light onto the snow. Without that illumination, she would not have dared to venture any distance from the mouth of the cave. She followed the footpath mostly lost under drifts of snow, carefully crossing the small river that was frozen over at its thickest parts of the ice.

Beside the road was the scene of a minor battle. Several men in furs lay dead, their blood cold against the snow. Bandits, probably, though their foe was not Sammael. Instead, a great beast lay on its side in the snow, huffing. It looked like no animal native to the Red Mountains, but she recognized it from their visit with the strange southerners: a warg, spotted like a hunting cat but built more like a wolf. It seemed injured, though someone had done their best to staunch the bleeding.

Mara looked around carefully for its rider, well aware he could be a danger if he was around. She spotted him quickly, slumped against his beast's side. His head turned towards her. "Please, help us." There was barely a trace of a shiver in his voice. If she didn't get him warm soon, he would die.

Mara approached quickly. Whether or not it was the wisest thing to do, she didn't have the heart to just let him die in the cold. "Can you walk?" she asked, kneeling down in front of him. She saw the answer to her own question in the arrow protruding from his thigh. Another had pierced him through the knee on the other side.

He grimaced as he tried to get up, hissing in pain. His beast seemed to wake when he stirred and turned its head towards Mara with a growl so deep it rattled her bones.

"Let me help you," the sorcerer said gently, trying not to show her fear. If that warg went for her, reflexes and power would only get her so far. "Can you tell your companion that I am not your enemy?"

"Unnr, na'ach," the rider barked with what little strength he had left.

The warg perked its rounded ears and rose to stand, pushing its rider up to do the same just by how he was sitting. Mara caught him before he could fall, forming a rough crutch for him. She was stronger than she looked, but he was a tower. Fortunately, between her and his beast, the rider could move.

"What is your name?" Mara panted as she turned him towards the cave.

"I am Theudhar, and this is my soul bond, Unnr." There was a cry of pain in the distance and he froze. "Saxa is alive!" Sudden energy seemed to course through him and he tried to step towards the cry. "I thought...I thought they had killed her. Please, you have to help her."

Mara pushed him gently against his beast. "Keep following my old tracks. There's a narrow place across the stream where the ice is thick and beyond is a cave. Just keep going that way. I'll find your friend."

Theudhar nodded, grabbing the strap that held his saddle onto Unnr's back. The warg couldn't bear his full weight, but together they could limp along. She would be able to catch them probably before they reached the river, at least if she was quick and this fight wasn't much of a fight.

Mara padded through the darkness, wishing she had Aallotar with her more than ever. Sifting through the snow, she found splashes of blood and a place where someone had been dragged away through the snow. Her stomach churned as she followed a winding path amongst the dark pines.

"Tell me how to open it, witch," a male voice growled a short distance away, crouching over a female figure slumped against a tree. The man dressed in furs held a scroll case in one hand, though this one was far more extravagant than any Mara had ever seen before: intricately worked metal covered in finely graven rings. "I'm weary of asking." His accent was local, which Mara suspected meant that he was a brigand of some kind. The woman was lucky it was as cold as it was.

The woman tilted her chin up in defiance, so he twisted her broken right hand again, prompting a cry of pain.

"Leave her alone," Mara said, stepping out into the open.

The man turned towards her and drew his axe. It was the last mistake he ever made.

Mara closed her eyes, embracing the bitterness of the supernatural cold that came with touching Void. She extended a hand towards him without need for incantation or gesture, forcing her soul back into that place darker than the sky between the stars.

There was a brilliant flash and burning heat as a bolt of power struck from her fingertips. He was dead and sizzling when he hit the snow with a clap of thunder. Mara felt no drain or weakness, but she knew that if she didn't stop, Void would consume her. She locked it back in her soul and approached the woman. "Saxa? Theudhar sent me to find you."

"He is still alive?" the woman said, struggling up to her feet. She seemed just as cold and miserable as her comrade, but more able to move.

Mara nodded as she picked up the scroll case quickly. Whatever it contained, it seemed important and leaving it could be foolish. "He was last I saw him, though in this cold, you are both in great danger. I'll need your help getting him and Unnr back to the cave."

The woman nodded. She was lanky and moved with strange grace, but her face was unreadable beneath the layers of fabric that covered it, sensible dressing for the weather. They quickly caught up to the struggling warg rider and his beast.

Together, the four crossed the river at Mara's fording place, narrowly avoiding a fall when the warg slipped. Soon, the brazier burned ahead of them. Eyes reflected in the light as it fell into the depths of the cave, right at Aallotar's height.

"Mara!" The wildling came bolting out of the cave at the sight of her friend with these strangers, still holding a stack of warm blankets in her arms meant for the sorcerer.

"It's okay, Aallotar," Mara promised even as the warg growled at the sudden appearance. The beast seemed confused, which was fairly normal for anything trying to reconcile Aallotar's human shape with the hints of her curse that remained in her scent. "Please, I need help with them."

Without hesitation, the wildling moved to aid. She was strong enough to lift Theudhar across her shoulders in a fire-man's carry, bringing him quickly towards the fire burning in the entry hall, inside Sammael's first sorcerous door. It would be warmer than the library and wouldn't immediately wake Caliban. The warmth hit them in a wave, no doubt stinging the cold flesh of their two survivors. The beast collapsed beside the fire, fur steaming in the warmth.

"You need to strip down," Mara advised the woman as she started working on Theudhar's armor. She went carefully because of his injuries, which were more than she had realized. Aallotar checked over his body for frostbite, wrapping him in the first of the warm blankets.

"I will get bandages and the salves," Aallotar said quickly, vanishing back through the second set of doors.

If they kept their guests here and not in the library, Sammael was less likely to kill them. At least, so Mara hoped.

Mara turned to face the woman to check her for injuries and completely lost what she was going to say when she realized immediately that this was not a human woman. She was shaped like one, but with large dark eyes and sheet-white skin that gleamed like countless fine scales. Across her ribs were the closed slits of sealed gills and webbing spanned the long joints of her black-clawed fingers. Her teeth, when she smiled nervously, seemed a mix of sharp, needle-like fangs and the normal human variety.

There were also a lot of bruises to accompany a shattered wrist. Mara winced sympathetically when she saw how swollen the joint was. "We're going to have to set that carefully," she said, recovering her train of thought. After all, Theudhar wasn't strictly human either: the short black horns mixed in his dark hair were proof enough of that.

"Unnr needs healing too," Saxa said fervently. She didn't even seem to realize her wrist was broken other than how she cradled it with her other hand.

Mara flashed the semi-aquatic woman a smile and held out a warm blanket. "We'll do our best. Aallotar and I won't hurt you. Are there any places on your body you can't feel?"

Saxa shook her head, but Theudhar nodded. "My smallest fingers on my shield arm," he said, holding out his hand. His red skin looked purple there from the cold. "They will need to come off. The rest may be saved."

Unfortunately, Mara had seen enough frostbite over the course of her life to agree with his assessment. "I'm sorry," she said gently, feeling his other fingers. "The others should be alright, though they'll burn like fire when they warm."

"I'll do it," Saxa said quietly, fishing around in her discarded gear. "I still have my kit."

Mara shook her head. "Rest," she said firmly. "Aallotar is an excellent healer. She knows how to handle this kind of thing."

Theudhar grimaced. "Can she keep it clean? I have seen much ill worked by your people's healers."

"Yes. She learned from the best." For all his flaws, Sammael knew much of healing and had been quite rigorous in his instruction of Aallotar, probably because he wanted his precious apprentice to be hale and healthy as much as possible. Clean wounds healed without issue, something Aallotar had stressed during her care of Mara even before knowing much about infections.

Aallotar returned with bandages and a large bowl of hot, soapy water. She already had the wrap of sterilized tools tucked through her belt. The implements Sammael used to torture and dissect worked perfectly well for healing as well, provided they were clean. Her next trip returned with the familiar medicines that Mara relied on so often, rinses and ointments designed to speed healing and fight infection. Sammael's notes on the local flora had expanded Aallotar's knowledge of the healing arts, on the rare days when Mara had time to read them for her.

Theudhar and Saxa both relaxed when Aallotar started by washing her hands up to her elbows with the soap and hot water. Mara poured clean, hot water out of a pitcher to rinse the soap off onto the floor, leaving the treated water in the bowl for cleaning the wounds themselves.

The first thing the wildling had to treat was Theudhar's hand, something Aallotar did with great care while keeping the amputation of those fingers swift. Both he and Saxa were in significant pain, but the best Mara could do for that while Sammael was away was willow-bark tea and the numbing agent he had given her for her burns. It wouldn't help broken bones, but it helped with the pain from the cold.

Mara took the time while Aallotar was working on Theudhar and Saxa to take a look at Unnr's wounds. She'd tended to hounds and horses before many times. The female warg's hide was thick, but the blade of a hewing spear could get through even it. The wound to Unnr's hindquarters was ugly, so Mara cleaned it and bandaged with the same care she would have given to its owner, making soothing sounds every time the beast growled. It at least wasn't a deep piercing wound, only a laceration, so there was at least less risk of abscess.

"It seems the gods favored us well, love," Theudhar said once Aallotar finished bandaging his wounds and cleaned up again before moving to tend to Saxa's wrist.

Saxa flashed him a smile. "A good thing, too. Fine healer I am with this wrist."

Mara ducked back to find them clean clothes, coming nose to nose with Caliban.

"Who in every hell did you bring here?" Caliban hissed, catching her by the wrist.

"Caliban, they would have died," Mara said evenly. "Does it matter?"

"They cannot be allowed to remain alive," he hissed. "The Master will be furious!"

Mara frowned. This sudden bitter anger was not an emotion she usually saw on Caliban's face. "I'm not going to kill them."

"Then I will, or we'll all be damned!" He went to push past her, grabbing her roughly by the shoulder. He already had his sword drawn in his other hand.

Mara grabbed him by the arm with her right hand. "Caliban," she said in a low voice, infusing it with every drop of Sammael's venom she could imitate. "Whatever you do to them, I will do to you."

He turned and sneered. "You have power, Spell-Breaker, but you don't have the spine for bloody necessity."

Mara stared into his eyes even as she gathered her will. The icy cold flooded into her body, a subtle shift in the air around her announcing the arrival of her power. "I have Void enough to devour you." When she touched the power Sammael had helped her unlock, those softer feelings like love and mercy vanished.

It never failed to frighten her, but she would use it if she had to.

"I fear the Master more than I fear you," Caliban spat.

The sudden smell of acrid alchemy and ash announced the arrival of Mara's mentor even though nothing stirred visibly in the darkness of the library. Caliban froze like a rabbit sensing a wolf nearby, his anger replaced by a profound terror.

"I SEE WE HAVE GUESTS." Sammael's words were cold and inhuman, utterly devoid of emotional inflection. Then again, demons were not known for their virulent anger, only the cold detachment of their fury. Sammael would never shout and curse, but he would peel a living being's skin off, strip by strip, while they were still conscious to feel it.

"They are travelers from the south. The man is of the same breed as the soldiers we saw in Barri," Mara said once she'd swallowed her own nerves. "I've never seen anything like the woman before." She held out the thin scroll case she'd picked up and tucked through the back of her belt. "There was a bandit trying to take this from them."

Sammael's twisted, bestial form emerged from the shadows, mostly shrouded in rags. His unfeeling, unblinking obsidian eyes pierced her soul as she handed it over. He retracted his long, needle claws and turned the case over in his dextrous hands with a delicate touch. "A WORK OF SORCERY. ENTERING IN THE INCORRECT COMBINATION OF SIGILS DESTROYS THE CONTENTS. I THINK IT UNLIKELY THAT THEY WERE WAYLAID BY BANDITS, IF THEIR ASSAILANTS WERE WISE ENOUGH TO KNOW THEY COULD NOT MERELY OPEN IT AND HAVE ITS PRIZE."

"They seemed a bit wild to be spell-knights," Mara said, recalling the desperate edge to the man torturing Saxa. "Underfed, for certain."

"THE LAST DEFENDERS OF ESKALDR, SCATTERED TO THE WIND BY VOID." As he spoke, the demon's attention seemed fixed on the scroll-case. The many rings of sigils on the scroll-case appeared to turn under their own power. As the last settled in place, there was a soft buzz from the case and then Sammael opened it. He produced a roll of paper and held it up. "AN UNFINISHED MAP. THEY WERE SEEKING TO STUDY AND CHART THE RIVER SYSTEMS THROUGH THE NORTH. IT SEEMS THE IMPERIUM INTENDS TO LEAVE NO STONE UNTURNED, AS IS THEIR WAY."

"So we kill them," Caliban muttered.

"YOU SAY THAT AS IF THEY WOULD NOT SEND MORE, IN GREATER NUMBER AND POWER. THEY MAY YET PROVE USEFUL, IF THEIR LOYALTY CAN BE CULTIVATED."

Caliban looked at Mara, wild-eyed. "Servants of the demon princes have no loyalty save to those who hold their leashes!"

"THE HEARTS OF MEN ARE WEAKER THAN YOU THINK, CALIBAN." Sammael turned his head to Mara. "KEEP THEM WHERE THEY ARE FOR A TIME. I WILL REARRANGE THE LIBRARY SO THAT THE SORCEROUS TOMES AND RELICS ARE IN MY STUDY AND THE PRIVATE QUARTERS. THEY ARE YOUR RESPONSIBILITY, MY APPRENTICE. IF THEY PROVE A DANGER, YOU WILL BE THE ONE TO STRIKE THEM DOWN."

"Thank you," Mara said with a sigh of relief.

Sammael carefully returned the papers to the scroll case and sealed it again. Then he touched Mara's chin with a long, lethal claw. "THIS IS NOT CHARITY. THEY WILL PROVE USEFUL OR THEY WILL PERISH. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

Mara met the demon's infernal gaze. "I do."

Author Notes

Mara Spell-Breaker - human apprentice to the demon Sammael. Aallotar - cursed wildling with a twin soul of a beast imprisoned inside her. Caliban - Sammael's servant. Sammael - an elder demon known as the Venom of God, torturer and scholar.

Chapter 20
A Change of Heart

By K. Olsen

“I’m coming with you.” 

Eirlys looked up from packing away her tools, shoulders bowed under the weight of an invisible burden. The anger in her burned like the fire of a wrathful god, but she softened as she looked into her son’s eyes. “You know that this means taking up arms against your father, Viljami,” she said quietly. “I am going to war.”

“I…” The young man sucked in a deep breath, fear easily visible on his face. “I know. I’ve talked it over with Ritva. I want to go with you.” 

Eirlys set aside her pack and stepped towards him, framing his face in forge-roughened hands. “I’m sorry. I wish you didn’t have to make such a choice, but I will never turn you away.”

Viljami nodded, jaw tightening as he thought of their future. His father was locked in negotiations with some of the landholders to the south and would be out of Sjaligr for a time, enough for them to leave without his knowledge. “Sabine and Ritva are going to stay with…Luukas.” He said his father’s name with strain instead of any familiarity, hardening himself to the days to come.

“I know.” Eirlys pulled her son into a fierce hug. “I know we have quarrelled, but I am proud of the man you want to become.”

Viljami nodded. “We will find her,” he promised his mother. “I…was not the brother she needed.” 

I hate you! Void take you all!

Those venom-filled words echoed in his mind often, particularly when he remembered Mara charging into the jaws of the accursed beast to save him. He had given her every reason on earth and under heaven to hate him, and yet she had bolted forward without a second thought. Remorse was an emotion Viljami Storm-Born now knew like the palm of his own hand. 

Eirlys smiled at her son. “You can be,” she said gently. 

“That...that thing that she fled with…” Viljami’s words halted slightly as he stepped back from his mother. “It was a demon, wasn’t it?” 

His mother’s expression turned stony. “It was. Sammael, the Venom of God.”

“You know the creature?” He picked up his mother’s pack, shouldering it and glancing over. His movements had a nervous energy now. Viljami had trained to fight many beasts, but never a demon.

The older woman ran her hand over her hair, catching strands of silver in with the blonde and red. “I encountered it once before,” Eirlys said in a low voice. “Of all the demons in the world, I think it is the most dangerous.” 

Viljami fought down a shudder as he thought of those obsidian eyes. “How did you meet it? What did it want?” 

Eirlys was quiet for a long moment, weighing her words carefully. “I don’t know what it intended. I remember little of our meeting.” She pulled in a deep breath and looked directly into her son’s eyes. “It was when Mara slept beneath my heart. I was so very ill.”

He froze. “Is that why she breaks spells? She really is tainted by sorcery?” It made a horrible amount of sense.

“Does it matter?” Eirlys asked. She touched Viljami’s shoulder with her fingertips. “I need to know if you will fight for her, whatever that thing did. If there is any doubt in your heart, stay with your father.” 

Viljami seemed to thaw at that, determination settling into his features. “She faced a monster for me. How can I not do the same?” 

The soft sound of a sword being drawn cut through their conversation. Eirlys and Viljami turned to see the tall, proud figure of a spell-knight in their way, his lips twisted into cruelty. 

“Gareth,” Eirlys said curtly, hand settling onto her own blade’s hilt. “You are not going to stop me.” 

Viljami’s uncle glared, leveling the blade at her. “I will bury you, wife of my brother. I do not care what Luukas says. You nursed a poison and let it flourish. The deaths that came are on your hands.” 

The young man stepped between his mother and uncle, face settling into the hardness it was accustomed to. “Mara is my sister, not a poison.” 

“How you have changed your tune, Storm-Born,” Gareth said with stabbing disapproval. “You know better. I taught you better.” 

“You taught my son cruelty,” Eirlys said, a fire blazing in her blue eyes. “You taught him hatred. A plague on you and your brother, Gareth Earth-Cleaver. I am leaving Sjaligr and when I return, it will be with an army.” 

Before Gareth could speak to mock or challenge her, Eirlys surged forward like a crashing wave, slamming her shield into his side. Gareth spun, hooking the edge of her shield, but by the time he moved to strike, Eirlys was past him and accelerating. 

Viljami sprinted after his mother, catching her with both arms as the surging wave of stone from behind tried to smash them to pieces against the wall. He focused his power and pivoted back to face Gareth. His hands clapped together with a thunderous boom, a wall of howling gale springing from his fingertips as he channeled the storm with a few sharp words of incantation. It hit the smashing rock with barely enough force to stop the assault short. Gareth’s earth-shaping was mastery in motion, but Viljami’s raw power, even with less training, was difficult to contend with. 

The wall of earth collapsed into the ground and Gareth charged, driving his sword straight towards Eirlys’s heart. 

She side-stepped out of the way and Viljami punched out, hitting Gareth in the side of the head with enough force to send him crashing into the wall. “I am not you,” Viljami said bitterly. “Nor the one you made. I remember who I was.” 

Gareth lashed out blindly, still disoriented from the blow to the head. His blade stabbed deep into Viljami’s thigh, but missed the artery. He bellowed like a wounded bull, earth magic shoving the pair further and further down the hall away from him. “I will find you wherever you run, Silver-Song! I will rip you and your precious son to pieces!” 

Viljami’s expression twisted with pain, and not all of it was from his wound. He turned to his mother. “We should go.”

Eirlys placed her palm over the wound on his leg and murmured a prayer of healing. Golden light flashed under her hand and a warmth bathed Viljami’s leg as the pain of the blow eased. “I’m sorry, Vil. I know what Gareth meant to you.” 

“I am almost him,” Viljami said, shame coloring his face. 

Eirlys slung her shield over her shoulder and squeezed his hand. “We need to go. Gaius agreed to stay and look after the girls. We have many miles to go before we rest.” 

Viljami nodded, following his mother out of Sjaligr’s main hall. It was late enough that even the few guards posted were dozing at their places. “Where are we going?” 

“Sundvik, to the north-east. That was my first home in the Red Mountains and I have many friends still there, most close as kin. They have no love for Luukas Fire-Bringer,” Eirlys said. She shook her head slightly. “I should have left sooner.” 

“Why did you stay?” he asked quietly as they slipped through the streets. “You could have taken Mara and left.” 

“I didn’t want to abandon you and Sabine,” Eirlys said softly. “And then Ritva came along...I thought Sjaligr would be safe enough, that I could protect Mara if I could make your father listen to me.” She clenched her fists. “It seems he cares nothing for what I say.”

“We’ll find her,” Viljami said again. He had promised himself and Mara over the long dark of winter nights that he would find a way back to the little boy that had bloodied his fists in fights every time his sister cried.

Author Notes

Eirlys Silver-Song - mother of Mara Spell-Breaker and Lady of Sjaligr Viljami Storm-Born - Eirlys's son Gareth Earth-Cleaver - Eirlys's brother-in-law, a spell-knight of considerable power and temper.

Chapter 21
A Pushed Limit

By K. Olsen

Mara had never been more aware that she was walking the edge of a knife. She collapsed to her knees in front of Sammael, the flesh of her arm seared by sorcery. Her breathing came in sobs now as she tried to pull herself back together. “I can’t.” 

Her master brushed his hollow, needle-like claws across her forehead. “DO NOT CLOSE THE DOOR OF POTENTIAL INSIDE YOU.”

She heard her tears more than felt them, harsh catches in her words. “It hurts so much.” Void had a way of making her a stranger to her own body. “I can’t take it.” 

Claws dug into the flesh of her shoulders. “YOU WILL ENDURE IT AND MORE. THAT IS WHAT IT WILL TAKE TO ACHIEVE YOUR FULL POWER.” Sammael leaned down, putting his blunt muzzle beside her ear. The next words came softly, but held that same demonic coldness. “DO YOU NOT WANT YOUR GUARDIAN FREED FROM HER CURSE?” 

Mara tried to stem her tears with her good hand, but they refused to stop. “You know that I want that more than anything.” 

“THEN YOU KNOW WHAT IS REQUIRED OF YOU. WE HAVE SURMOUNTED SUCH PLATEAUS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS.” Sammael held her firmly in place. “ONE MUST BREAK THE BONDS OF IRON IN THE INFERNO BEFORE IT CAN BECOME STEEL."

Despite all the pain, the sorcerer tried to reach down into the blackness again. The higher she reached, the more conscious she was that Void itself was trying to rip her apart for daring to think she could bend it to her will. Someday, she knew she might over-commit and destroy herself, but while she was always cautious on her own, Sammael seemed intent on forcing her beyond her limits. 

When he said they had passed several plateaus in this way, however, he was not lying. 

Mara collapsed completely before she could even bring her will together. Her body had taken all that it could for the moment, demanding rest that not even her determination could overpower. Sammael was pushing her to the bitter edge of what she could maintain without another modification. 

It was hours before Mara’s consciousness returned. Eyes closed, she took stock of her situation. Warmth suffused her body where there had only been cold, blankets warmed by the fire now wrapped around her. Aallotar was somewhere nearby, humming in the depths of her voice, and the smell of cooking food filled the air. Her arm still hurt, but barely a drop when compared to the oceans of agony from earlier. Sammael had to have tended to her wounds, her arm stiff from bandages. 

It was strange how comfortable and safe she could feel in a place that came with such merciless torment. That was probably Aallotar’s doing.

“Is she often like this?” Theudhar asked quietly. 

Saxa made a mumbling sound, probably asleep with her head in his lap. The big man liked to run his fingers through her hair, which was just about guaranteed to put the semi-aquatic woman straight into the world of dreams. The cold was hard on the two southerners and left them fatigued whenever they had to contend with it for too long. With winter’s grip on the Red Mountains slowly easing, they could be outside more and more, but the streams were still too frozen over for Saxa to swim. 

The humming stopped. “This is...worse,” Aallotar admitted softly, her worry clear in her tone. 

Mara felt her heart clench at that sound. It was necessary, but she hated it when her condition really weighed on the wildling’s mind. 

“I am glad she has you to care for her.” Theudhar paused for a moment, then continued even more softly, “I heard you and Saxa talking. You should tell her.” 

Aallotar blew out a tense breath. Mara heard the soft clink of a ladle against the side of the pot. “It’s not a good time. She has too much on her mind already.” 

“I don’t think it would be such a bad thing,” he countered gently. 

“Mmm?” Saxa mumbled, stirring to half-waking.

Theudhar chuckled warmly. “I suppose it is about time for you to be awake, love. Food’s ready.” 

A warm hand touched the center of Mara’s back. If the sorcerer hadn’t been awake already, it would have been just enough to rouse her. “Mara, do you want to eat?” Aallotar’s breath tickled at her ear.

Mara let her eyes open, adjusting to the firelight that bathed the room in an amber glow. When things were bad, Aallotar would bring her down to be near the hearth. The cold of Void wouldn’t let go on its own. “Depends on who cooked,” she mumbled. 

“You’re safe, Mara,” Theudhar said with a chuckle. “I didn’t touch it once.” 

At times like these, the conditioning that Sammael put her through seemed almost like a bad dream. The demon never approached when Theudhar and Saxa were around. For his own part, Caliban tended not to stay in their company for too long either and had opted to take a journey on his master’s orders that would take him far from their little hideaway. 

Mara eased herself up, stifling a yawn. She was still exhausted, but much better than she had been. 

Saxa seemed sleepy-eyed still as she sat up as well. With her wrist mending quickly, the semi-aquatic woman ventured out now and then, though she never ranged too far without Theudhar. His knees were still healing more slowly, so he was far less able to maneuver even though his warg was finally to where she could take the weight of riders without issue. Staying in the saddle still caused him some pain. 

“Smells good,” Mara said, leaning against Aallotar’s shoulder as the wildling scooped stew into bowls for each of them. She knew that things returning to normal would ease the worry more than retreating into herself. 

Aallotar chuckled despite her weighty thoughts. “You taught me.” 

“Apparently I do good work.” Mara took her bowl with a grateful smile. It was nice to be taken care of, whatever the circumstances. “How is the weather outside?” 

Saxa stirred her bowl, blowing over the top for a moment before answering Mara’s question. “A storm is rolling in from the east. Does it ever stop snowing?” 

“Occasionally.” Mara grinned when Saxa practically deflated at that answer. “I remember one year when it snowed on Midsummer’s Day. My sister Sabine had to ward the crops. She was always better at that kind of magic than my mother.” A stab of regret hit her at those words, though. When would she ever see either of them again? 

She missed even Sabine’s needling whenever she thought of Sjaligr, but no one more than her mother.

“What about you, Mara?” Theudhar asked curiously. “I have not seen you or Aallotar use magic since we arrived.” 

Mara had not forgotten Sammael’s warnings about what fresh hells would find her if the Princes of Iron learned she could bend sorcery. “Aamu, a mentor of mine, used to say magic isn’t for all the everyday things everyone else uses it for,” Mara said, carefully following the bounds of the truth. She wasn't good at bold-faced lies, but she knew how to leave things out. “It’s a powerful, dangerous thing. Best to work with your hands if you can.” 

Aallotar seemed to sense the question turning to her. “I cannot control mine,” the wildling said, tensing at even the thought of the beast inside herself. “It is a curse that only Mara’s presence soothes, though the walls here can stop it from showing.” 

“I’m sorry,” Saxa said with sympathy. “That sounds very difficult.” 

“It...is.” Aallotar turned golden eyes towards Mara for a moment, glancing before studiously looking back at her food. “I am very glad of her.” The wildling’s old, stilted way of talking always returned when her thoughts moved towards her affliction. 

Mara bumped her good shoulder into Aallotar’s. “Happy to be here,” she said gently. 

Theudhar looked towards the library. “I have been browsing,” he said. “I was surprised to see so many books, particularly in so many languages. Most lack the scholarly knack here. Sadly little in the way of the history of the region, even of the many kings.”

“Most of it is older,” Mara acknowledged. “Parts of the repository have been here for a very, very long time.” She knew Sammael had been stockpiling his knowledge for more than a thousand years, well back into the time of the great cataclysms when gods walked the earth. Her master had concealed the most ancient pieces of knowledge, but there were still hints in even what he had left in the library. “Besides, we pass most of the histories story-teller to story-teller. You’d be robbing them of all their chances to out-lie each other if you scrawled the truth down in a book.” 

“True enough,” he said with a chuckle. “My compliments to your master all the same.” 

The lie that Aallotar, Mara, and Caliban had agreed on was that Sammael was a mage of significant power and dangerous temper who stayed in seclusion from all except his apprentice. It was the easiest way to explain things and close enough to the truth that none of them would have to stretch themselves. Denying Sammael’s existence altogether would raise too many questions about when Mara disappeared and then reappeared with injuries from the strain. 

Mara felt a throb through her arm and winced, almost dropping her bowl. 

“Are you alright?” Saxa asked, genuine concern in her tone. 

“Fine,” Mara lied through clenched teeth. It didn’t seem to fool anyone, least of all Aallotar. When the three of them fixed her with quiet judgment, she admitted, “The pain is returning.” 

“You should not let him abuse you so,” Theudhar said more firmly even as Aallotar immediately moved to fetch the numbing salve Sammael kept for her. 

Mara shook her head slightly at that. “It’s not him. My power is just a little more than my body can handle right now.” 

Saxa paused for a moment, eyes following Aallotar’s departure. She waited until the wildling was out of earshot. “Be careful, Mara. She’s worried half to death.” 

The twinge of guilt bit deeply. “I know, but I have to do this.”

“Is there no other way?” the semi-aquatic woman asked. 

“No,” Mara said firmly. “He would tell me if there was.” 

Aallotar returned with the jar of salve and clean bandages. She knelt down at Mara’s side, gently turning the sorcerer’s bandaged arm. “I’ll be careful,” the wildling promised. “Where does it hurt?”

Mara tried her hardest not to flinch when Aallotar touched her wrist, but the pain was intensifying. Sammael always gave her things to speed the healing to nigh-miraculous rates, but even that could not be fast enough to spare her agony. She tried never to show it, but she could only take so much. “My hand is the worst, but none of it feels great.” 

“Are you alright if I take the bandages off here? The light is the best.”

Theudhar and Saxa would see the burns and other scars for the first time, but Mara knew she wouldn’t be able to wait for Aallotar to secret her away and then hunt down a stray lamp. She would have to hope that they didn’t recognize it for the demonic meddling it was. “That’s fine. Please be quick. It hurts.”

Aallotar nodded, unwrapping her arm with a practiced ease. She had learned months ago exactly how Sammael bandaged a wound and to replicate it, so Mara would always be well cared for. 

Theudhar and Saca both let out a sympathetic hiss when they saw the extent of the burns to Mara’s arm, blistered and angry across the topography of incision scars.“Lightning flowers,” Saxa murmured, dark eyes wide as when she saw the fern-like patterns of the burns. “Your poor arm, Mara.”

Mara gasped in pain and then relief as Aallotar spread the numbing agent across the wounds. It was mixed with sorcery that fought infection, always something to be wary of with repeated injury. “Sweet hells that feels better,” Mara said, leaning her head against Aallotar’s shoulder.

Theudhar shook his head slightly. “Playing with a storm?” he joked as best he could, brows furrowed with concern. 

“I suppose you could say that,” the sorcerer said.

“It looks more like torture,” Saxa observed when Aallotar turned over Mara’s arm, revealing more scarring. Much of it was too regular to be anything other than deliberate incisions. Then again, Mara knew she had so many scars from just growing up that it was less obvious. 

“I had an…adventurous youth.” Mara relaxed slowly as the wildling double-checked to make certain every burn was covered before starting to bandage it again.

“A cruel one,” Aallotar said before it could be brushed away, tone stubborn in its refusal to let that slide. “Do not excuse them.”

Mara looked away. “Sorry. I just don’t like talking about the details.” 

“Don’t apologize,” Theudhar said firmly. “You owe us no explanation.”

Something about the way he said it made sudden, grateful tears threaten in Mara’s eyes. Maybe he and Saxa would try to kill them if they learned the truth, but for now, Mara had more friends than she had ever had before in her life. She pulled in a shaky breath, hoping it would just seem unsteady from the pain and then relief. “Thank you.”

A sudden cold draft swept through their little area, the door to the outside world opening with a swirl of snow that had managed to make it in through the cave mouth and the outer chamber. “I hope some of that food is for me,” Caliban muttered as he entered, eyes darting and dangerous. His eyes flickered over the scene before him as Aallotar bandaged the sorcerer’s arm. The wildling ignored him, too focused on her work to scowl.

“Welcome back,” Mara said, ignoring the way Theudhar and Saxa both tensed slightly. Both of the southerners seemed to know that the narrow-faced man was not pleased with their presence. Things there were uneasy whenever they were near each other. Mara was the only person who seemed able to stand him for long. “Where have you been?” 

Caliban approached. “Sjaligr.” He flashed Mara an oily smile. “I have news.” 

Mara felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold outside settling into her blood, the old venom rearing its frigid head. “You say that like I’d care.” 

“You may find that you do. It seems the Lord of Sjaligr has lost both his wife and son.” The man gave Mara a wolfish smile when she paled. “They aspire to earn the title of kinslayers, if Gareth Earth-Cleaver is to be believed. Many riders have gone out in pursuit of them and come up empty-handed.” 

The sorcerer looked at him like he’d grown a second head as Aallotar finished the wrap. “Excuse me?”

“Did the Master’s thunder deafen your ears, Mistress?” Caliban asked, all innocent concern.

The wildling snarled at him, face almost bestial with defensive anger. “Leave her alone!” 

The wild-looking man sneered. “Your hound is showing.”

Mara had to grab Aallotar with her good hand to stop her from lunging. Theudhar put a hand on Saxa’s shoulder to keep her down as well. “This is not our affair to rule,” he reminded the semi-aquatic woman in their own language when her hand touched the hilt of the knife she wore up one sleeve. “Let Mara handle them.”

Saxa’s thin lips pressed together, looking supremely displeased.

“Aallotar, let it go,” Mara said firmly. “He only does it because it gets a rise out of you.”

Aallotar pulled away from the sorcerer’s hand, rising abruptly to her feet. Without a word, she stalked off through the shelves. 

Mara combed her fingers through her hair, not pleased with Caliban or being on the receiving end of a cold shoulder, even if it was perfectly understandable. She turned a glare on the demon’s servant. “You don’t have to antagonize her.” 

He helped himself to the stew. “I do not care to be snapped at. If she wants me not to remind her of her fangs, she can stop baring them at me.”

The temptation for Mara to throw up her hands was almost overwhelming. She sighed, thoughts in turmoil. “Great. Just great.”

Author Notes

Mara Spell-Breaker - human apprentice to the demon Sammael. Aallotar - cursed wildling with a twin soul of a beast imprisoned inside her. Caliban - Sammael's servant. Sammael - an elder demon known as the Venom of God, torturer and scholar. Theudhar - a rescued warg-rider from the Imperial forces in the south. Saxa - a strange mer scout from the Imperial forces.

Chapter 22
A Demon's Task

By K. Olsen

The Story so Far: The dark power of the Princes of Iron is advancing upon the Red Mountains. Born in a world of magic with the power to innately disrupt magic, the despised outcast Mara Spell-Breaker has always lived on the fringes of society. After seeking an oracle that promised only the destruction of her people, she fled imprisonment in her native city of Sjaligr in the company of Aallotar, a wildling cursed into a feral, bestial shape. Mara's power allows Aallotar to return to a human body, but the curse is not broken yet. Drawn in after a murderous rescue from the executioner's block by the promise of finding her own power and breaking Aallotar's curse, Mara studies under the tutelage of her savior: Sammael the Torturer, Venom of God. An elder fiend of unknown motives, he has taken an interest in her and helped her reveal her true gift: sorcery. Tapping into the power of Void has its costs for a living being, however, and for Mara it is perpetual pain and losing parts of herself. With the rescue of two strangers from the southern invaders, Saxa and Theudhar, things in Sammael's abode have become even more strained with Caliban, Sammael's human servant who envies Mara's power.

***

The blast of cold air that hit Mara as she stepped out was punishing. There had been no sign of Aallotar in the cave, which did nothing to ease her concern. They still didn't know how far the wildling could venture from Sammael's hideout alone before reverting to her beast form.

"Aallotar!"

The woods gave the sorcerer no answer. Mara sighed. She'd barely taken the time to pull on warm clothes, assuming that Aallotar would be close enough and on speaking terms, so she could soothe Caliban's snipe and be done with it. She already felt the chill in her right arm. Not for the first time, she cursed her metal bones and stepped out into the snow. A proper blizzard was here, snow coming down in flurries. Any tracks in the woods filled almost instantly, no matter how large.

"Aallotar!"

A hand caught Mara by her shoulder, turning her. Aallotar's eyes seemed more bestial than human, though they quickly returned to normal now that she was near Mara. The snow had already coated the wildling's fair hair and shoulders. "You are going to freeze to death."

Mara pulled her back inside the mouth of the cave. "I could say the same to you. You're not dressed for the cold, Aallotar."

Gold eyes flashed in the dark for a moment before turning away. "Does it matter?"

"It does to me." Mara reached out, brushing some of the melting snow off the wildling's hair. "Just because I tell you not to let Caliban get to you does not mean I don't care."

Aallotar pulled in a hiss of breath, almost flinching away from the comforting touch. She kept her eyes fixed on the stone beneath their feet. "He drives words like thorns into me."

"I know," Mara said softly. She sighed when Aallotar's gaze didn't move from the floor of the cave. "Look at me." When the wildling did as she asked, Mara offered a smile. "We have each other. Nothing's going to change that."

For all her straightforward nature, Aallotar seemed conflicted as they moved back into the cave proper, further from the chill of the snow. Mara could almost see the words poised on the tip of Aallotar's tongue, but the wildling kept them locked away behind pressed lips. It was a display of guardedness that Mara wasn't used to seeing. It sent a pang of worry through the sorcerer.

"Aallotar, you can talk to me." Mara assumed it was about Caliban.

The wildling nodded slightly in acknowledgement, but said nothing until they made it to the door. "I do not want to go back in. Not to see him sneer at me."

Mara's shivering quickly grew worse, until she felt like she was going to rattle apart. "If we don't go in, we'll freeze to death. We can just go to our spot. He won't bother us there."

Aallotar nodded quickly and then wrapped her arms around Mara as she opened the sorcerous door. The sudden warmth and faint smell of wet fur was immensely comforting for the sorcerer. Aallotar released her once the door was open, but with reluctance in every movement.

Caliban was there when they stepped back in, but this time without much in the way of mockery. Instead, there was that familiar envy in his expression. "The Master wishes that you attend to him, Mara."

Theudhar frowned, still seated beside Saxa, and ran his hand over his dark hair, brushing over twin rows of short horns. "Isn't she hurt badly enough already?" At the tall red man's side, Saxa kept her black eyes ever watchful of Caliban.

Mara appreciated the concern, but she knew she needed Sammael and all the pain he inflicted. "It'll be fine."

"You are to bring the beast with you."

Aallotar bared her teeth at Caliban, but moved past him without a word. Mara followed and almost sighed in relief that there hadn't been more of a confrontation. Eventually things would come to a real head, but in her heart of hearts, Mara was hoping that it would be when she was done with her studies. The sorcerer knew better than to keep Sammael waiting and hurried ahead.

"What do you think he wants?" the wildling asked quietly as they climbed the broad stone stairs that led up from the library.

Mara worried at her lower lip with her teeth for a moment before answering. "I don't know. Normally he gives it more time between sessions. He doesn't usually ask for you, either."

Before she could take another step, arms curled around Mara from behind, halting her progress towards Sammael. "I am afraid." Aallotar's whisper was soft against Mara's ear.

Something about the closeness and the warm breath on her ear sent a shiver down the sorcerer's spine. "You have me. That's something, isn't it?"

"It is everything." Aallotar's whisper sounded almost guilty for a moment and she let her arms fall.

Mara turned, but the wildling studiously avoided her gaze. Sammael expected instant obedience, but he was a patient creature at his core. He could wait another minute or two. "What's gotten into you?" she asked gently. "You don't have to hide from me."

Aallotar shook her head. "The demon awaits."

"But we're going to talk about it afterwards," Mara said stubbornly. Without waiting for the wildling to concede, she turned and placed her hand on the flawless metal door that led to Sammael's chambers. The metal seemed to ripple at her touch, responding to the sorcery inside her, and the door flowed apart as if liquid. All of her questions about the door's strange properties found no purchase in Sammael's attentions, as he considered the workings too obvious to be worth elaborating on.

The only sound on the other side of the door was a faint scratching, the only light a single candle that could barely handle the oppressive gloom. The smell of harsh cleaning fluids and coppery blood oozed out of the lower workshop off to their right, but Mara followed the forward path towards the candle, catching Aallotar's hand with her own to make certain she didn't lose the wildling in the dark.

Sammael hunched over his writing desk, dipping the needle-like claw of his index finger into ink and then scratching away at a sheet of parchment. His metallic, emotionless voice made it impossible to gauge his mood. "I HAVE A TASK FOR YOU."

"So soon?" Mara asked. She was far more comfortable with the demon than Aallotar was, but that was a low bar.

"DO YOU SUGGEST YOU ARE INCAPABLE?"

Mara shook her head immediately, trying to ignore Aallotar's protective posture. Sammael made no note of it, his twisted metallic form still utterly focused on his writing. Not once did his obsidian eyes turn towards them.

"THERE WAS AN EARTHQUAKE SEVERAL DAYS' TRAVEL TO THE NORTH OF HERE, FELT WHILE YOU AND I WERE TESTING YOUR LIMITS. AN EYE OF MINE, AFIELD, REPORTS SOMETHING ONCE THOUGHT LOST WAS UNEARTHED THERE BY THE ACTIVITY OF THE EARTH."

"What is this thing?" Mara asked.

"MY MAKER'S WORKSHOP." Sammael's claw scratched another delicate line of ink. His design reminded Mara instinctively of the etchings she had seen in the oldest part of his laboratory, where the walls were metal instead of stone. "THE EYE SUGGESTS THAT THE DOORS ARE STILL SEALED. I CANNOT OVERSTATE HOW PRECIOUS THE THINGS THAT MIGHT BE HELD WITHIN ARE TO OUR CURRENT ENDEAVOR. MY MAKER WAS THE FIRST TO BLEND SORCERY AND MORTALITY, TO DO WHAT COULD NOT BE DONE." The harsh, inhuman voice of the demon took on an almost purring quality at the mention of his maker. It was as close to love as Mara supposed a demon could come: reverence, awe, fascination.

"I take it you want us to leave soon," Mara said, spotting the dim outline of two packs beside his writing desk.

"AS SOON AS ALL THE OTHERS HAVE GONE TO SLEEP, PARTICULARLY CALIBAN. HE MIGHT SEIZE UPON THIS OPPORTUNITY TO APE THE POWER THAT YOU WIELD. THERE ARE LIKELY TO BE ARTIFACTS THERE EASILY MISUSED FOR SUCH A PURPOSE. SUCH THINGS ARE NOT YOUR CONCERN, HOWEVER."

Aallotar shifted uncomfortably beside Mara when Sammael finished his drawing. He turned and handed the paper to the sorcerer, treating the wildling as if she was some piece of furniture. Mara furrowed her brow, looking down at the drawing. There, in a perfect ink likeness, was a tablet covered in the writings of the ancients. "If we have to lug back some kind of obelisk..."

"IT IS NO GREATER THAN YOUR THUMB IN DIMENSIONS," Sammael said. "LEARN EVERYTHING YOU CAN. TAKE RUBBINGS OF ALL WRITING YOU ENCOUNTER. BRING THIS OBJECT BACK TO ME. DO NOT TARRY OR LINGER LONGER THAN YOU MUST, HOWEVER. THE ENEMY WILL LEARN OF IT AS WELL. THEY HAVE SPREAD THEIR SPIES FAR AND WIDE AMONG THE LOCAL PEOPLE."

"To what end? Are they looking for sorcery too?" Mara asked.

"THEIR PURPOSE IN THE RED MOUNTAINS IS NOT SCHOLASTICISM. HOWEVER, SUCH AN ANCIENT POWER IS NOT SOMETHING THEY CAN AFFORD TO IGNORE." Sammael leaned down, bringing his maw of needle-like teeth close to Mara's face. "WHETHER THEY WOULD DESTROY IT AS THE WORK OF AN APOSTATE OR TAKE IT FOR THEMSELVES, EVEN I COULD NOT SAY. WHAT I CAN SAY WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY IS THAT IF THEY FIND YOU OR LEARN OF YOUR GIFTS, THEY WILL DESTROY YOU DOWN TO THE VERY ATOMS OF YOUR BEING."

Mara swallowed hard. She doubted Sammael was exaggerating, and given what she knew of sorcery, the hunger of Void could certainly do such a thing. "We won't let them catch us."

"GOOD." Sammael's cold, black eyes seemed to sharpen somehow, their obsidian depths giving the impression of an even more intense look. "I WOULD NOT RISK MY APPRENTICE IF IT WERE SOME MUNDANE MATTER, BUT THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY THAT MAY NEVER COME AGAIN."

"I understand," the sorcerer said.

The demon rose from his workbench, running delicate claws along her cheekbone. "GOOD. THE BLIZZARD WILL COVER YOUR TRACKS. DO ENDEAVOR NOT TO PERISH. THAT IS ALL."

Mara bowed to her master and caught Aallotar's hand, pulling her back. Once they were out of the darkness and back on the library overlook, the metallic door to the study closed behind them.

"He risks your life. The cold is not good for you," Aallotar growled, still in that almost rigid protective posture.

"I think it's worth a risk, if it means we get the chance to learn something to break your curse," Mara said softly, staying close to Aallotar's ear so no one would overhear. As much as she liked Theudhar and Saxa, she didn't know how much she could trust them with, and Sammael had directly warned her about Caliban knowing.

Aallotar turned, lips pulled into a tight frown. "We do not know there is any such knowledge in this ruin."

"Who would know better than someone who understands Creation and Void enough to blend them?" When the wildling looked unconvinced, Mara trudged forward in her logic. "This is from the time before Godfall, likely before the origin of your curse. Trust me, Aallotar. I think this is our best chance."

Golden eyes studied her with something approaching ferocity. "Fine," Aallotar said shortly. "Just do not expect me to like it." She turned and stalked down the stairs, leaving Mara at the top.

Mara felt a pang in her chest. It was probably just an extension of Aallotar's mood from before, but the sorcerer hated quarreling with her friend. More than any familial spat, it left her feeling insecure and gave the voices in her head that muttered about what she was actually worth that much more breath to rant with. Her logical mind knew that Aallotar was angry with the situation and not with her, but her bloodied heart still couldn't distinguish between such things. Too many times, it had been beaten down.

She sighed and tried not to show that it bothered her as she followed Aallotar towards their living area. They would leave in the dead of night, with little in the way of preparation besides warm clothes.

Caliban was out of view of the library, busy needling at Saxa and Theudhar. He was less interested in annoying them and more in seeking information, from what Mara could tell. That meant he was well distracted. Mara put together a bundle of furs to wear over her clothing, special boots and gloves that could handle the snow. Aallotar took provisions from the kitchen as quietly as she could, then returned to the packs.

"Armor will hold the cold," Mara said. "You might have to leave it."

"Pack," Aallotar said shortly, twisting the knot in the pit of Mara's stomach.

The sorcerer didn't flinch. Her tone, however, was far more muted than before. She knew to avoid conflict after a lifetime's worth of beatings from her uncle and others. It only ended badly. "Whatever you want."

Aallotar looked up, golden eyes flashing with recognition. Her expression softened as she looked at Mara. "You are worried."

"I'm fine." Mara gave the wildling a smile she didn't really feel, but she was a fine actress after Sjaligr. "Just thinking about what's ahead, and what might come of it."

The next thing she knew, Aallotar's arms were around her shoulders, pulling her into a tight hug. "I have you." Mara felt her anxiety calm as she heard those words whispered against her hair. It was strange, though. Even as the knot in her stomach eased, her heart started to beat faster. She wasn't certain what she was afraid of. Fear was the only thing that had ever sped her heart like this.

Aallotar hummed, deep in her chest, and Mara felt her heart skip a beat. "You feel like a little bird," the wildling said as she let go, clearly concerned. "Are you alright?"

The sorcerer nodded. "Fine. Better." At least she was less worried about the wildling's moodiness.

"It is the demon who angers me," Aallotar promised. "Not you."

"Am I so easy to read?" Mara asked as she started putting together a bedroll, avoiding her friend's gaze. She doubted Aallotar appreciated her guardedness, but as much as she wanted to be open, it was reflex to close.

"I cannot read."

"You know what I mean, Aallotar."

The wildling finished her packing quietly, then tucked the pack itself away in their corner, hidden behind the dresser made of scrap wood. "No, you are not easy to read," Aallotar said softly, looking over at Mara through her eyelashes. It was a strange look, conflicted and soft at the same time. "I wish you were."

Mara didn't respond, not certain where that conversation would go or if she was ready to ask Aallotar more. Besides, the pain in her arm was slowly returning. She hated the constant burns. At least now they would have a chance to heal, so long as she kept her use of sorcery to a minimum. "We should at least pretend to sleep. If we wait up, Caliban might realize something is going on."

Aallotar nodded, stripping off her outer layers of shirt in one fluid movement. She hadn't bothered with boots, so it was easy for her to crawl into their little sleeping spot, the stuffed mattress already dented from their usual positions.

Even if she didn't know why, Mara knew there was no chance of her falling asleep while they waited. Not with Aallotar's bare arms linked around her waist, the wildling burying her face in the sorcerer's dark hair.

It felt almost too close, but she wouldn't have had it any other way.

Author Notes

Mara Spell-Breaker - human apprentice to the demon Sammael. Aallotar - cursed wildling with a twin soul of a beast imprisoned inside her. Caliban - human servant of Sammael Sammael - an elder fiend known as the Venom of God, torturer and scholar. Theudhar - a rescued warg-rider from the Imperial forces in the south. Saxa - a strange mer scout from the Imperial forces.

Chapter 23
A Firelit Night

By K. Olsen

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of sexual content.

The Story So Far: A pariah as a woman who negates magic in a world full of it, Mara Spell-Breaker has fled persecution alongside Aallotar, a soul cursed to bestial rage and feral fury. Mara's spell-negating powers can suppress the curse, but to break it, she has apprenticed herself to the demon Sammael the Torturer, Venom of God, who saved them both from execution by Mara's father, the lord of Sjaligr. Danger is coming to the Red Mountains, a punishment for old sins, and the oracle Kalevi predicted that Mara would have a part in it. Now she and Aallotar have been sent to search an ancient ruin unearthed by an earthquake, the workshop of Sammael's creator. As things have gone on, Mara and Aallotar have grown closer and closer.

Content warning: There is a queer romance in this story, particularly in this chapter. If you would prefer not to read, that is perfectly understandable.

***

Trekking through a blizzard in the middle of the night was a good way to get herself killed, but Mara had no intention of letting Sammael down. She trudged through the snow with her head down, following in Aallotar's tracks as her thoughts turned over her master's words relentlessly.

If they find you or learn of your gifts, they will destroy you down to the very atoms of your being. Part of her wondered how different that really was from her own people. It was a bitter thought, but the anger it brought kept her pushing forward despite the gnawing of cold on her right arm. The pain was coming back with a vengeance since they had no time to stop and spread more salve on it. Finding shelter was much more important. Fortunately, there was no chance of anyone tracking them in this snow.

Aallotar reached back, pulling her through the dense trees where the snow was thinnest to the mouth of a cave, sheltered by branches creaking under the weight of their frozen burden. "There is no bear," the wildling said with confidence. "I would smell him. Let us be gone from this weather."

Mara thanked their lucky stars and slid down the last slope of snow to reach the cave. It was warmer than the surrounding area without the wind blowing through it, a welcome relief. "We need a fire, fast," she admitted. "As soon as we start to warm, everything we're wearing will need to dry."

"I will fetch wood."

"Don't stray too far," Mara said softly. "We do not want the beast returning."

Aallotar nodded and disappeared out into the snow. The flurries were so fierce that Mara could barely see two feet out of the cave. She heard some sharp cracks and soon Aallotar was back with freshly gathered branches and a number of chunks of deadfall that brought with them dead needles. It was only a matter of arranging it properly then. Much of it was set aside to dry as well, but Mara carefully stacked what she could and then closed her eyes, holding her hand beside the tinder that they'd gathered to start the kindling. She thought of Sammael's lessons, focusing her will as she tapped into the devouring emptiness of Void.

All things are in motion, no matter how still they seem. The difference between a pot of boiling water and a pot of ice is only the speed at which it moves.

Mara felt the air around her bandaged hand grow hotter and hotter the more she pressed with her will. She had to twist her fingers, crafting a spiral of air in motion, a current so slight it was imperceptible except for the heat it generated. Magic was flashy and obvious, in her experience. The paltry control of Void she had was much more subtle in its application. She couldn't conjure a fire, but she could send particles racing from one side to the other, pulled by the Void, sparking a flame in the tinder. The agony in her arm was well worth the sudden flash of light and heat. She had done better than she realized: soon the kindling had taken and they could add sections of log.

She let out a hiss of breath and clutched at her arm as she released her grasp on her power. The whole length of her arm throbbed and burned from Sammael's attempt to push beyond the next wall holding her back. Aallotar was there in an instant, bandages in one hand and salve in the other.

"Mara, let me see it." The worry in the wildling's golden eyes sent a sympathetic stab through Mara's heart.

Without thinking, the sorcerer nodded. She stripped off the heavy wool cloak she was wearing and two of the shirts she had layered on. It left her with one, which she pulled her arm out of, holding the shirt to her chest with her other hand. Not that it mattered much. Compared to Aallotar, she was soaked almost to the bone. Even wet wool could only do so much. She knew that she would have to strip and dry her clothes near the fire now that it was going.

Aallotar gently spread the numbing salve across the inflamed wounds, some of the curling fractal burns worsened by her use of sorcery. Then she bandaged the arm expertly. "You shouldn't have had to do that, Mara. Flint and steel—"

"We would have been here for an hour or more trying to get that thing to spark." Mara gave Aallotar a gentle push and a smile to show she was feeling better. With the salve on her injured arm and shoulder, the pain was barely perceptible. She just hoped that it would heal before they ran out of salve. Then again, since Sammael had begun his project, she had noticed that she recovered faster and faster from her wounds. She wasn't certain if that was sorcery he had added or her native pain tolerance increasing.

Aallotar sighed, a reluctant acceptance, and then stepped over to their packs to tuck away their supplies.

For her part, Mara was all too eager to shed her clothes. Wet wool was heavy and not the most comfortable apparel in the world. With the fire now at a comfortable crackling, the cave was warm enough. She pulled off her boots and socks, hanging them on the pile of wood to burn. Both sets of her pants followed and she went to pull her shirt over her head, stopping only when she realized Aallotar was staring at her. It was a look she had never seen on her friend's face, a mix of fascination and indescribable longing.

She had only seen it on the faces of Sabine's suitors, directed squarely at her heart-breaker of a sister.

"What?" It was absolutely impossible not to feel self conscious under that gaze. She let go of the hem of the shirt, letting it fall back into place. Suddenly, the clothing didn't feel like enough. It was just a thin layer of cloth, damp from the snowmelt, and a sudden shiver ran through her body at the flash of feral golden eyes in the firelight.

Aallotar averted her eyes abruptly, a flaming blush spreading across her tattooed cheeks. "I am sorry."

Mara had absolutely no experience with that look, only Sabine's sometimes too graphic stories of her adventures with the occasional young man. "I should be the one apologizing," she said softly. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, Aallotar. I just wanted to warm up."

"I know," the wildling said, turning on her heel and striding quickly towards the mouth of the cave. "I will see if I can warm the cave more by blocking up some of the entrance with snow. That will help with the light, too."

The sorcerer sighed and combed her fingers through her dark hair, a sudden frustration with herself blooming. Now she had driven off Aallotar again, to face cold and snow. She unrolled their bedrolls, slipping into hers. She didn't particularly feel like eating with the unease gnawing away at her stomach. Mara closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep. Normally a warm fire and exhaustion were enough, but for some reason the flash of golden eyes in the dark stayed lodged in her mind. No one had ever looked at her that way, as if they…

Mara couldn't even complete the thought. Aallotar accused her of being unreadable, but the wildling was hardly any more communicative. She wanted to talk about it, to ask about the words that she had seen hiding behind closed lips, but she had a feeling that the silence would only continue.

The sorcerer rolled onto her side and watched the fire until finally warmth and fatigue pushed her to sleep. The dreams that came were not the darkness of Void or the old pains of former home. Those golden eyes haunted her instead, promising things that the Spell-Breaker of Sjaligr knew nothing of.

She woke to a bank of coals carefully arranged to keep them warm all night and an empty bedroll, a chill against her back. Immediately, Mara snapped into a full awakeness: Aallotar hadn't come to bed.

The wildling sat over by the narrow window left in the snow wall, face turned up towards the sky with her hands clenched into fists. Aallotar was a picture of tension, like a caged beast, not the familiar warmth that Mara had become so accustomed to. Even the lines of the muscle in her neck seemed taut.

"Aallotar."

Abruptly her friend shifted focus to her, away from the falling snow. Mara saw with a sudden clarity more of a war inside Aallotar than she had seen since they were dragged apart in her father's hall. The beast was awake and stirring in a way it shouldn't have been. "Mm?"

"Come to bed," Mara said softly, patting the bedroll beside hers. "I took the one nearest the fire so you wouldn't roast."

Aallotar tensed, shaking her head mutely.

The sudden shock of insecurity hit Mara like a bolt of lightning, not that it ever took much to spawn those worries. She slipped out of her less than perfectly comfortable travel bed, missing the misshapen mattress they shared in Sammael's workshop already, and padded closer to Aallotar on bare feet. "Is it the beast?" she asked softly as she approached.

Again, a shake of the head. As soon as she started to move, Aallotar rose to her feet and tried to take a step back. Unfortunately for the wildling, there was a very well constructed snow wall behind her.

"Am I so unbearable?" Mara demanded as she stalked forward, a sudden welling of anger bubbling up as she felt the fear grip her. It was like her friend was slipping through her fingers, transforming into just another one of the people who couldn't stand to share a room with the Spell-Breaker.

The golden eyes that had watched her with such fascination for those few moments suddenly could not meet hers. "No."

"I want you to look at me and tell me the truth," Mara said fiercely, even though parts of her were absolutely terrified of that exact thing happening. Experience had taught her often how cruel the truth could be. She would have rather had her heart ripped out than have Aallotar view her with the same distance and contempt that so many others had.

Aallotar looked up abruptly. "I cannot." The stilted pattern of her speech was back, a sign that whatever was going on had pushed her closer to that half. "You would never look at me the same if you knew."

Mara closed the distance between them further, even knowing that a cornered Aallotar was far more dangerous than the regular variety. "No more secrets." Silhouetted by the glow of the fire, she hoped she didn't seem as menacing as she might have. "If you care about me at all—"

The war in Aallotar's eyes raged on, but now Mara could at least see it. "When you…I…all I…" The wildling was struggling with her words, growing closer and closer to a growl. "I feel so…so much…and the beast…"

Mara reached out, fingertips brushing along a line of blue as it traced across Aallotar's collarbone. "I am not afraid of your beast," she said with absolute certainty, ready to rip the last wall between them down.

If the look Aallotar had given her undressing at the fire was an ember, the glow to her eyes now was an inferno. The wildling caught her by the hips, her nails sharper than usual as they dug into soft flesh, and pulled Mara in. Now the only thing between them was a thin layer of fabric and the inner layer of clothes Aallotar had kept on. Their lips collided in an imperfect symmetry, and the moment they touched was like a dam breaking inside the wildling. Suddenly any touch was not enough, instinct and need overriding all of her apprehension as if it had never been there.

Mara gasped into the kiss, surprised by the intensity. The sound turned into something softer and lower in her throat when Aallotar's hands started to roam so possessively over every bare inch of skin she could find, sharp nails digging hard enough to leave marks. As soon as she felt the wildling start to pull back from the kiss at that sound, Mara chased Aallotar's lips with her own. Even if she had almost no idea of what she was doing, she knew that she wanted this forever.

No, she wanted more.

The answer was a growl low in Aallotar's chest that sent shivers through the sorcerer's whole body. The next thing Mara realized, she was against the rough wall of the cave with Aallotar's teeth scraping along her collarbone. Every touch felt emblazoned on her skin, scratched in some places by sharp nails, as if a reminder that she was Aallotar's alone. The soft moans rising out of her as the wildling explored her body seemed only to spur Aallotar on. The wildling left lovebites down the side of her neck that were probably more forceful than intended, but the sorcerer had no complaints. The feeling of being desired and desiring was too intense.

Mara untucked Aallotar's shirt from behind her belt with a single tug, ignoring the flash of pain in her right hand. She slid her hands up beneath the cloth, gliding across smooth skin and the muscle playing beneath it. The gasp from the wildling against her throat was well worth the sting in her hand, a cascade of hot breath that did nothing to cool Mara's intentions.

It only took her a split second to make up her mind. Nothing in her life had ever felt so right, not even sorcery. "Aallotar." Her voice was low and definitely breathier than it had ever been before, but it immediately caught the wildling's attention.

A flash of hesitation crossed through those golden eyes, but Mara pressed a finger to the wildling's lips before she could apologize or ask if it was too much too soon.

The sorcerer had waited her entire life for love and desire, and had no intention of waiting a night longer. She used words she thought she would never say: "Take me to bed."

Fangs gleamed in the wildling's wide smile, her canines slightly more pronounced than usual. Aallotar's shirt and pants hit the floor as they made their way, Mara taking every chance to explore the wilding's curves as more and more fabric fell away. She made note of every place that made Aallotar shudder or seemed to push on the beast, demanding more from it. Her sorcery could keep it in check, but there was something special to Aallotar in not shying away from it. Besides, it felt so good.

Mara had long ago abandoned any thoughts of being a lover. She would be forever grateful that Aallotar had stumbled into her life. Gone were all thoughts of ruins and demons, death and danger, Void and even the morning with all of its questions about what this meant. In the moment, she was Aallotar's and Aallotar was hers. That was enough.

Author Notes

Mara Spell-Breaker - human apprentice to the demon Sammael. Aallotar - cursed wildling with a twin soul of a beast imprisoned inside her. Caliban - human servant of Sammael Sammael - an elder fiend known as the Venom of God, torturer and scholar. Theudhar - a rescued warg-rider from the Imperial forces in the south. Saxa - a strange mer scout from the Imperial forces.

Chapter 24
A Quiet Morning

By K. Olsen

The Story So Far: A pariah as a woman who negates magic in a world full of it, Mara Spell-Breaker has fled persecution alongside Aallotar, a soul cursed to bestial rage and feral fury. Mara's spell-negating powers can suppress the curse, but to break it, she has apprenticed herself to the demon Sammael the Torturer, Venom of God, who saved them both from execution by Mara's father, the lord of Sjaligr. Danger is coming to the Red Mountains, a punishment for old sins, and the oracle Kalevi predicted that Mara would have a part in it. Now she and Aallotar have been sent to search an ancient ruin unearthed by an earthquake, the workshop of Sammael's creator. As things have gone on, Mara and Aallotar have grown closer and closer, feelings coming to a head last night.

Content warning: There is a queer romance in this story, particularly in this chapter. If you would prefer not to read, that is perfectly understandable.

***

Mara awoke before dawn, very conscious of both the burning pain in her right arm from Sammael's last lesson and the wonderful aches through her body. The places where Aallotar's sharp nails had broken her skin stung in the best possible way, reminders of the passion they had chased together. Aallotar's arm draped over her waist, tucked close to hold her back against the wildling's chest with no clothes to separate her from the warmth of the body behind her. She didn't want to wake Aallotar, and the burning wasn't as bad as it had been, so Mara stayed still and just listened to the easy breathing muffled against her hair.

Her thoughts wandered to the inevitable question far more quickly than she would have liked. It was harder to just enjoy Aallotar's presence when she realized she didn't know what the night before meant. In Sjaligr, not only had her father crushed any such interest in her and explicitly said he would never consent to a marriage, but marriages were between men and women, matters of property and bloodline. Occasionally, a man might make a proposal out of fondness, but ‌most of the time that was an afterthought or something to grow between the two after vows were made.

So what did this mean?

Aallotar shifted behind her and gave her a slight squeeze, kissing the soft skin just below Mara's ear. "Are you awake?" the wildling whispered. Her voice was so delicate that it wouldn't have woken Mara if she was still asleep.

"Mhm." Mara rolled over, letting her bandaged hand rest on the small of Aallotar's back under the blankets. She looked into those golden eyes, hoping that her inner turmoil didn't show on her face. No one could make her heart beat faster the way Aallotar could. Even half asleep still, adoration practically shone from the wildling's smile.

Mara's hopes died instantly, when Aallotar seemed to wake more and the smile faded into something more serious. "You are worried."

The sorcerer tried to piece together her thoughts. In the moment, things were so much easier. There was just desire, following the cues of her body and Aallotar's beast. Maybe there was still some damaged part of her soul expecting that all the complicated feelings now tangling her up were not the same for Aallotar. "I just..."

"Mara, what's wrong?" The wildling stroked her cheek gently, a worry of her own shining in her golden eyes.

"Last night..." Mara felt a blush building when her thoughts strayed back in that direction, even with all the weight on her mind. The memories were fresh and exquisitely vivid. She knew she wanted all of it again. She rallied as best she could, refocusing on Aallotar. "What did that mean to you?"

Aallotar seemed to understand that the question was much deeper than it appeared on the surface. "To me it meant everything," the wildling said softly. "It meant...I do not want the sun to rise if I am not with you. It meant...I would rather give you my heart than let it beat alone. That is what it meant." Aallotar hesitated, but did not look away. It took her a moment to find her next words. "What did it mean to you?"

Mara combed her fingers through blonde hair, very conscious of Aallotar's gaze. The longer she was quiet, the more worried and tense the wildling became. "I never thought I would..." She sucked in a deep breath, tears welling at the twin realization that this was only possible because of her exile and that it had actually happened. It wasn't the future she had hoped for as a girl: it was better than she could have ever conceived of. Aallotar's love was not in spite of her curse, nor was it because of it. That was a weft of Fate that had brought them together, but it hadn't been her answer.

"Mara, if it was not—"

The sorcerer knew her own insecurities well enough to recognize them in Aallotar. "Listen to me," Mara said softly, interrupting as gently as she could, a fingertip against Aallotar's lips to hush her. "I never thought I would ever get to experience something so wonderful. I never thought I would hold something as priceless as your heart and have it want to be held. I...I want this. I want you. For as long as you'll let me, and if you ever wish me gone or leave, I hope it kills me. You have nothing to worry about. I'll keep your heart with mine forever if you want it there."

"No words of death or unhappiness." Aallotar ducked her head slightly, a scarlet blush spreading across her tattooed cheeks. "It seems so silly now, but I was worried, since..."

"Since what?"

The blush worsened. "Since I am not a man. I thought you might not like it as much. Or at all."

Mara laughed, tracing a finger along Aallotar's chin. "Did I at any moment give you the impression I wanted you to stop?"

Aallotar shook her head, smiling through her embarrassment. "Never."

A different question occurred to Mara, replaying the night's events in her head even though she knew it would stain her own cheeks pink. "Aallotar, how did you know about any of this? I at least had stories, but..."

Aallotar rubbed the back of her neck, cheeks now flaming red. The blush had spread to her ears too. "When I told Theudhar the way you make me feel, the things the beast wanted, he pulled me aside and said there were some things I needed to understand."

"Oh?"

Aallotar nodded. "He told me passion is of use only if it benefits the other person and is best led by the heart. I think he chased many ladies before he fell for Saxa, because had endless stories and suggestions. I just...when I turned beet red and stammered, he told me to stop imagining you and go take a cold bath. The command did nothing, but the cold helped a little."

Mara laughed even as she made a mental note to thank the foreigner if she could find an indirect, less awkward way to do so. She had most definitely benefited from his advice. Her own mother had passed on what to expect from a man, but everything with Aallotar was a new, unexplored dimension.

"Last night, I was afraid I would hurt you."

"I am a little sore," Mara admitted. When Aallotar looked like she was about to apologize, the sorcerer shook her head. "Don't you dare. I wanted every second of that, every mark and every memory."

Aallotar's gaze flickered down to the lovebites along the column of Mara's neck and across the delicate angle of her shoulder. They stood out livid against the sorcerer's pale skin. "I should have been more careful."

"I swear to you I loved every second of it. Don't apologize."

"They will notice these," Aallotar said hesitantly. "Even if we are at the ruin for a while...I doubt they will so swiftly fade."

Mara smiled. "Good."

Aallotar turned almost crimson beneath the blue streaks of her tattoos. "You want this?" Surprise colored her voice into a mix of confusion and hope.

Mara pressed her lips to the tip of the wildling's nose, a barely there touch. "Of course I do. Do you?"

"I do not want to hurt you, but..." Aallotar covered her face with her hands, muffling the rest of her answer. "The beast...I like seeing that you are mine."

Mara felt her heart stutter at that. It was more than a skip. "The mark you left on my heart will be there forever, Aallotar," she promised, sweeping the fingers of her good hand through her love's hair. "So you can reapply these any time you like." Reality was seeping into Mara's peace of mind even with all this closeness, however.

"Another time," Aallotar promised gently, as if she could sense the slow gravity pulling them back to the world beyond their own private one. "Though..."

"Hmm?"

"Caliban," Aallotar said quietly. "I do not know what he will do if he sees them."

Mara frowned, more in worry than disapproval. "You think there will be a problem?"

The wildling nodded, golden eyes worried. "He already does not care to have me as an obstacle in his way. Knowing how close we are, he will seek to break us apart."

"Why would he do that?"

Aallotar's rough fingers touched her bandaged arm. "He wants what you have, Mara. If he cannot take it, he will find another way to have you, and I am in his way."

The sorcerer sighed and looked down at her gauze-wrapped palm. The pain was slowly worsening the more and more sleep left her body. "Nothing is going to turn me from you."

"I was more worried about a knife in the back."

The very thought touched the Void inside of Mara. She felt it not as a hot, wrathful anger, but something cold and almost alien. She carried around her hatred as a fire. This was...different. "If he tries, he will not live to regret it."

"Mara?" Aallotar said softly, worry shining in her golden eyes. "That was not like you."

Immediately, the darkness in Mara dipped again below the surface, like a leviathan slipping beneath the waves of the sea. That was a new feeling, not one that her feelings for Aallotar could explain. "It's nothing," Mara said softly. She had a sense that it had more to do with the sorcery and Sammael than anything else.

"That did not sound like nothing." The wildling shifted, pulling Mara tighter into her embrace. "I do not wish to lose you to Sammael's influence any more than you wish to lose me to the beast."

"I'm only doing what I have to," Mara said gently. "Sammael understands that I have limits."

Aallotar traced her hand down Mara's bandaged arm. "Does he?"

"Trust me."

"It is not you I mistrust. He is still a demon, just as I am still afflicted. We all bow to our natures."

Mara kissed Aallotar, lingering against the wildling's lips for a moment before reluctantly drawing back. "Hopefully not for much longer. There has to be something in those ruins that can break your curse."

"Then the sooner we find them, the better. Particularly if others will come looking," Aallotar said. She looked over at the low coals of the fire, just barely enough to beat back the chill rolling in from outside. "Time to break camp?"

Mara sighed, but as much as she wanted to spend the rest of the day between blankets with Aallotar, the wildling was right. "I hate it when you're sensible."

The wildling nipped gently at her shoulder, sending a shiver down Mara's spine, before pulling away the blankets. Aallotar's laughter filled the air at Mara's entirely undignified squawk as the cold air rushed in at them. Mara sprang up and hustled to get dressed. She couldn't bring herself to be angry at the laughing, not when it was one of her favorite sounds. Delightful aches and twinges of pain echoed the pleasures of the night before, every one sparking a memory that kept her cheeks burning.

Aallotar was quick to pull on her own clothing before throwing another chunk of wood on the fire and stirring up the coals. Soon they had a proper fire again, enough for Mara to warm food over while Aallotar widened the hole in the snow at the mouth of the cave, allowing them an escape.

By the time the wildling finished her task and returned, the pain in Mara's arm was reaching unbearable levels. Aallotar knew without a word being said what was going on: the ragged edge to the sorcerer's breathing betrayed her.

"Let me help."

Mara nodded. She had to pull her arm and shoulder out of her shirt, a move that was somewhat undignified, but it was absolutely worth it for the coming relief. The blistered burns down her arm looked better than they had the day before, already healing, but they were deep. Whenever they reached a plateau, Sammael always pushed her the hardest. Mercifully, the healing ointment soothed basically instantaneously.

"I wish it didn't have to hurt," Aallotar whispered as she bandaged up Mara's wound. "I feel like it is me burning you, knowing that you do this for me."

"It isn't. This is my choice." Mara leaned in and rested her head against the wildling's shoulder. "Besides, you know there's much more to it than that."

"I know, but if you had never met me..."

"Then I would be miserable or dead," the sorcerer said firmly. "They would have burned me alive for the second oracle that Gareth brought back."

"Do you think it was true?" Aallotar asked, allowing Mara to divert her. "The oracle that Gareth delivered."

Mara started packing away the rest of their supplies as Aallotar began eating. "About me being at the right hand of Void, wreaking some horrible revenge? He hated me enough to lie, but maybe Kalevi saw Sammael taking us in. The troll was right about you. That said, I would rather just leave the Red Moutains. If what Kalevi says is true, they'll get what's coming to them and more."

Aallotar nodded thoughtfully at that. "Do you think they will go north of the river to where my people are?"

"Until that curse is broken, I don't think that would end well for any invading army. I seem to recall something about the bones of mennskr littering the earth there," Mara pointed out gently. "Sjaligr has the best steel in all the Red Mountains, and their weapons couldn't put a scratch on you in beast form."

"We have not tested if magic could harm me. Or if sorcery could."

Mara sighed, rolling up the bedrolls and attaching them to their packs as the last step in packing. "Let's hope we never find out. Give me a minute or two to eat and then we can set off for the ruins. Even knowing they'll likely be defended and dangerous, I have to admit that I'm curious. After all, Sammael's maker was the first living thing to channel Void. Maybe there's something there that will explain my abilities."

She didn't even realize until hours later, when they were trudging through the snow, that for the first time, she hadn't called it her curse.

Author Notes

Mara Spell-Breaker - human apprentice to the demon Sammael. Aallotar - cursed wildling with a twin soul of a beast imprisoned inside her. Caliban - human servant of Sammael Sammael - an elder fiend known as the Venom of God, torturer and scholar. Theudhar - a rescued warg-rider from the Imperial forces in the south. Saxa - a strange mer scout from the Imperial forces.

Chapter 25
A Foot in Each World

By K. Olsen

The Story So Far: A pariah as a woman who negates magic in a world full of it, Mara Spell-Breaker has fled persecution alongside Aallotar, a soul cursed to bestial rage and feral fury. Mara's spell-negating powers can suppress the curse, but to break it, she has apprenticed herself to the demon Sammael the Torturer, Venom of God, who saved them both from execution by Mara's father, the lord of Sjaligr. Danger is coming to the Red Mountains, a punishment for old sins, and the oracle Kalevi predicted that Mara would have a part in it. Now she and Aallotar have been sent to search an ancient ruin unearthed by an earthquake, the workshop of Sammael's creator. As things have gone on, Mara and Aallotar have grown closer and closer. With feelings now in the open, they brave the depths of the workshop and the secrets held therein. They are not the only ones drawn by the earthquake, however.

***

The sight of a faint curl of smoke drifting up past the trees that screened their view of the ruins sent a current of worry through Mara's stomach. "Someone else is out here."

Aallotar looked around, but there was no sign of any tracks on the lone game trail through the woods other than those of a rabbit. "They must have come before the blizzard. Not Caliban, then. He was abed when we left and I doubt he would move any faster in the snow than we did." She inhaled deeply and then frowned. "I smell only the forest. We are not close enough. Is there a village nearby?"

"Not this deep in the woods. Barri is the closest thing to civilization, and that's well more than a day behind us."

The wildling's furrowed brow was a reflection of Mara's own worry. "Perhaps a trapper or woodsman? Or Sammael's spy?"

"I hope that's all it is," Mara murmured. "At least Sammael's spy would be an ally."

Aallotar's golden eyes considered the trees and then her nostrils flared slightly, another attempt to detect anything. "There is only one way to know. Let us not go straight in, though. We should approach from downwind." A steady breeze had been blowing from the north all day, bringing with it a bitter chill that left Mara's metal bones aching. Even Aallotar, usually a furnace, had opted to pull on an extra layer of fur over her mail hauberk.

This close to where Sammael's map said the ruin was, both of them had prepared for trouble. Aallotar was armed and armored, while Mara carried her bow across her back along with a borrowed sword and shield. The sorcerer wasn't certain her sword arm would be any good between the cold and the burns. Hopefully, there would be no need for weapons at all.

After spending so much of her youth as a hunter, Mara was in absolute agreement of the approach from downwind. She let Aallotar lead the way, breaking trail in the shallower forest snow for her. Here the pines grew so thick that the branches had kept the white death only knee-high, creaking ominously above under the weight of their burden. After living so close to each other, it was easy to move together, and the breeze through the trees masked the sound of Aallotar's armor moving, at least for now.

They made it through the bulk of the forests before the scent hit Aallotar's sensitive nose. "Smoke and beasts," she whispered. "There is something else. The smell of mennskr, but...not like the ones of the Red Mountains."

Mara kept her voice barely audible. "What do you mean?"

"They smell like Theudhar and his warg." Absolute certainty weighted every syllable from Aallotar. She frowned, concentrating, and pulled in another deep breath. "There is something else. Something strange."

Mara's heart sank. So the servants of the Princes of Iron had found this place before they had. "A demon?"

Aallotar shook her head. "I do not know," she said quietly. "It makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise."

"We'll be careful." The sorcerer wished her arm was in better condition. She would have rather liked to have use of her bow right now, just in case, but that sounded as painful as the sword. "If all else fails, we can fight, but I'd rather not."

"Not if they are even half the warrior that Theudhar is," Aallotar agreed, creeping north through the woods towards the trail of smoke.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, they managed to find a rise and a rock formation that gave them a view down to the ruin itself. The earthquake's damage was immediately obvious: half a hillside sheared away from the base of one of the Red Mountain's larger peaks, exposing an archway that gleamed in the sun like silver and the ruined remains of an outer wall. Behind it was a door set into the stone of the mountain itself, not unlike Sammael's home itself. Someone had excavated the stairs leading down to it. A short distance away was a camp, comprised of six wargs and their riders: tall, red-skinned men covered in furs and smoke-dulled steel.

"We would have to go upwind to reach that door, and the ground is open. During the day, they would see us. If we crossed under starlight, they would smell us," Aallotar muttered as she took stock of their surroundings.

Mara had eyes mostly for the door. A man prowled back and forth in front of it with the grace of a hunting cat, his hand resting on a cruciform sword. His armor looked different from that of the riders': it was black and seemed much lighter in construction. She couldn't make out much more than that from this distance. "Do you think they've opened it?"

"It is closed now," Aallotar observed. "Perhaps they cannot. Regardless, we will have to contend with them to reach it, one way or another."

Everything in Mara's most primal brain was screaming at her to avoid the prowling man. He didn't move like a natural warrior. It was too graceful, too effortless. She knew men who had trained for combat their entire lives who lacked such an awareness of their body. "I think we should try to find another door."

"Another?" Aallotar said quietly, not yet tearing her gaze away from the ugly scar on the hillside. "Do you think there is one?"

"Sammael's lair has many, and half of them even we don't know. Why would this sorcerer be any different? Only one way out would mean being trapped in a siege."

"Did they think of such a thing, though?"

Mara sighed, brushing some snow from her hair. "It couldn't hurt to try. I'd much rather find a back door than have to fight seven people and six wargs, and they look too bored to be diplomatic."

Aallotar shaded her eyes, surveying the scar on the hillside. "Let us stay downwind. It looks like it curves around the side to the south. Swiftly. I do not want to be caught."

The sorcerer gave her love an uneasy smile. "No argument here. Hopefully, their sentries don't come out this far, or they'll find our tracks."

Aallotar nodded and started moving as swiftly as she could while still maintaining some degree of stealth towards the southern edge of the collapse. They hid in the trees as far as they could, then used the debris and uneven ground to cover them as they dashed for the hillside in a crouched run. The damage to the hill continued, splitting several ridges in two. The cataclysm here had been a violent one.

Mara looked up at the slopes of the mountain. They had gotten a lot of snow in the past few days, even for the Red Mountains, and she didn't like the sight of it looming above them on the slopes. Aamu had taught her to watch for avalanches many a time, and she could see both glittering hoarfrost on the snow above and massive ridges in the snow on the slopes sculpted by the winds. They were much worse on this side of the mountain, too. "We should be careful," she whispered. "If there's too much more snow or any more earthquake, it'll drop a mountain's worth of snow on us."

Aallotar nodded and then pointed. "There. A cleft in the stone."

"If they've been here for days, they probably know about it," Mara murmured.

"Perhaps, but would you post a guard under a waiting avalanche?" the wildling asked as they approached cautiously.

Mara shrugged. From the very few stories Gaius had told when he was drunk late at night, the south had soldiers who would risk anything they were commanded to do. "Do you smell or hear anyone?"

"Not fresh. They were here, but they must have moved camp. That or their patrol has not come by in some time." Aallotar led the way with her shield, keeping low while taking a good look around. The only thing visible was a hollow in the snow where likely a campfire had once been placed. Feet had packed down the snow, but a fresh layer about an inch or two deep had formed. "A day since they were here, I would guess."

Mara stopped to make a torch with a pine branch and a bandage wrapping, then approached the cleft in the rock. It was barely large enough for Aallotar to squeeze through in her armor, and they would have to strip off swords and shields to manage it. It ran deep enough that darkness claimed the inside. "I'll go first."

"Mara..."

"If this place has sorcery to it, better I take the first step," the sorcerer said firmly. "Besides, the worst of the danger will have to come from behind us."

Aallotar paused, weighing that against her protective instincts, and then nodded. She unbound her shield from her arm and adjusted her sword so she could squeeze through after Mara. "I hate closed spaces."

"You do okay at the cave," Mara said.

"That is larger." Aallotar pulled in a deep breath as Mara stepped through sideways, then started her wriggle through the gap. "If I am trapped here..."

"I'm right here," Mara whispered as the cave echoed and amplified her voice slightly. "I won't let you get stuck. At least if there's an avalanche, I can probably get us out. It just might hurt me a bit."

"Then better we not have to do it." With the scrape of metal against stone, Aallotar struggled through the gap. It widened again and the wildling pulled her shield and extra gear through after them. Mara heard an audible sigh of relief from her love, even knowing that they would likely be leaving the way they had come. "I was afraid I would stick."

"We're fortunate you're not as big as Theudhar." A thought occurred as Mara sparked her torch, but died before it could reach her lips. The room they were in was small, but it was obviously construction rather than raw stone. The walls were smooth, as if carved into the mountainside with a precision no human craftsman could ever muster. The floor beneath their feet was polished as well, decorated with swirling script in the same ancient tongues that covered Sammael's most precious artifacts. Each character had been methodically graven into the floor and then filled somehow with a different colored stone: white and black characters on a grey surface. She knelt down and ran a hand over one letter. The different types of stone were absolutely flush, almost glassy in how polished they were after all this time sealed away from the elements.

"What does it say?"

The words formed a perfect circle at the center of the small chamber, half black and half white. "The white is the language of Creation, the God Tongue," Mara said softly. "It is still read in places in the Red Mountains, though mostly just my mother's workshop. This phrase, I've seen it before: speak only truth."

Aallotar looked down at the spidery black characters that seemed dark and crawling compared with the beautiful swirling white script. "And this?"

Mara knew the answer, echoing up from the deepest, darkest part of her soul. "Tell no lies."

"Why would they write the same thing?" Aallotar asked, her brow furrowing in the flickering light of the torch.

"They aren't the same," Mara said. A pull tugged at her. This. This was why Sammael had sent her and not come himself. He needed someone who could be both a living thing and use the power of Void to get through the door. He was only half of the puzzle, and if it had survived unopened, it had to be because sorcery alone was not enough. This place was sealed, and it had been sealed by one just like her.

She knew she was probably one of the only people who had lived since the Revealing who knew both halves of the inscription, who stood with a foot in each world. She faced the depths of the room, visible in the torchlight as a rough archway made from the two statues of a weeping man and a weeping woman with their foreheads pressed together. Then she stepped into the center of the circle. "My name is Mara Spell-Breaker. My companion and I have come to learn from the Eighth. I am Creation and Void. Open the way."

A sharp, actinic light flared around the circle, each character glowing to life one at a time around her. It completed before Aallotar could wrench her away, bathing Mara in glowing motes of light. With a soft sighing sound, the stone between the two statues melted away like water to reveal a dark hall that stretched beyond the light of their flickering torch.

"Thank you," Mara said as smoothly as she could, stepping forward. The circle faded, but the way stayed open. She looked at Aallotar and gave the very worried wildling a faint smile. "Seems like I'm good for something after all."

"We should hurry in before someone follows," Aallotar said, trying to take it in stride. "Can you close the door once we are inside?"

Mara caught the wildling's hand and together they walked through the archway, torch held aloft by the sorcerer. The air at the threshold seemed thick, almost like Sabine described wards, but Aallotar was able to pass through without harm. Once they were both past, the wall reformed behind them. Along each wall, dancing motes of lightning suddenly sparked to life at ceiling level, bathing the hall in a faded, grave-gray glow.

They followed the lights for almost a full minute before coming to an overlook. Mara's breath froze in her lungs. "Mother of all things," she whispered, eyes wide.

Below, row upon row of standing stone tablets filled a room the size of Sjaligr, each one probably ten feet tall, eight feet long, and three feet across. It reminded her of Sammael's shelves, but they were smooth, without holes for books or scrolls. The sheer size of it wasn't what left her breathless, though.

Mara could feel it here, hungry and waiting, just barely separated from their world as if an ocean held in check by a mere sheet of parchment paper: Void. There was so much power penned into this room—huge in comparison to her, but not even a mote of dust compared to the enormity of the nothingness—that Mara didn't know how the fabric of reality hadn't ripped.

Aallotar shivered and took a step closer to Mara. "There is something here. Something dark."

The sorcerer nodded, still unable to speak. She knew without knowing how that it was waiting for her. Waiting for an invitation, an opening of a door, inside of her. If her time with Sammael had taught her anything, however, it was that such doors could not be closed once they were opened.

A mageling could do a great deal of damage to himself and others with the power of Creation at his fingertips, that was something Mara knew well. That was why one was cautious with their power, why one studied, why one trained.

Mara had a sudden, terrible sense that in one way or another, she was in the presence of an ending of a world, something not even far-seeing Kalevi could have conceived of in his description of the destruction of the Red Mountains. Aallotar's presence at her side, hand around her own, was the only thing stopping her from fainting.

And then, like a dream, it spoke within her, resonating in every fiber of her being.

Welcome home, Mara Spell-Breaker.

Author Notes

Mara Spell-Breaker - human apprentice to the demon Sammael. Aallotar - cursed wildling with a twin soul of a beast imprisoned inside her. Caliban - human servant of Sammael Sammael - an elder fiend known as the Venom of God, torturer and scholar. Theudhar - a rescued warg-rider from the Imperial forces in the south. Saxa - a strange mer scout from the Imperial forces.

Chapter 26
When Void Speaks

By K. Olsen

The Story So Far: A pariah as a woman who negates magic in a world full of it, Mara Spell-Breaker has fled persecution alongside Aallotar, a soul cursed to bestial rage and feral fury. Mara's spell-negating powers can suppress the curse, but to break it, she has apprenticed herself to the demon Sammael the Torturer, Venom of God, who saved them both from execution by Mara's father, the lord of Sjaligr. Danger is coming to the Red Mountains, a punishment for old sins, and the oracle Kalevi predicted that Mara would have a part in it. Now she and Aallotar have been sent to search an ancient ruin unearthed by an earthquake, the workshop of Sammael's creator. As things have gone on, Mara and Aallotar have grown closer and closer. With feelings now in the open, they brave the depths of the workshop and the secrets held therein. Mara has opened the door, but what awaits may be more dangerous than the strange soldiers outside.

***

The Void knew her name.

Mara froze in place, even her breath chilled to its core when the magnitude of that set in. Her mind raced as she tried to comprehend. That wasn't possible. Void wasn't alive, it was the antithesis of life. How could it speak? How could it know anything? It just...devoured. The endless, unceasing hunger of nonexistence tearing apart Creation—that was all her people's stories said of Void. Even Sammael, master of sorcery and a demon himself, had not corrected that view.

"We are not alone." Aallotar's warning voice crashed into Mara's panic like a hammer, dropping her back into the present instead of the vast, hungry possibilities stretching thin the veil of reality.

Mara nodded, swallowing hard. "It spoke."

The wildling turned her head, her concern for Mara overpowering her other fears. "What?" Whatever its source, Aallotar hadn't heard the voice.

If it could be called that. The interaction felt more like an etching on the surface of Mara's mind, a gnawing taste of what awaited at the end of all things. Mara started walking forward, every footfall echoing softly through the otherwise silent hall. Her heartbeat hammered in her ears. "You said we weren't alone? Do you think it's the ones from outside?" Mara asked to distract herself.

It was not evenly distributed, the threat of the Void. It was less here, like the shallows of a pool. Where they were going, where they needed to go, was the depths. Sammael's priceless relic would be at the epicenter. Mara knew he wanted knowledge, the more dangerous and potent the better.

Aallotar reluctantly let go of Mara's hand, but only so she could draw her sword. "I saw..." She hesitated for a moment. "There was someone far ahead, walking between the shelves. Could they get in? The door we saw was closed. Surely they would not camp in the cold if they could get in."

"Who else could it be?" Mara said quietly. "This place has been sealed for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. Maybe the man in black armor made it in."

Aallotar shivered, though it wasn't clear if that was the thought of the strange prowling man they'd seen or the cold in the air here. Even without the ice and snow, the chill was palpable. It was as if the air itself sapped away all thoughts of light or warmth other than the little flashes of white light dancing in the ceiling sconces as they walked, casting hard and frequently disturbing shadows. Mara could have sworn her own shade was moving out of sync with her body, but perhaps it was just the strangeness of the angle.

They picked their way through the massive array of stone slabs. For a repository, it was strange to Mara: no books, no scrolls, no paintings, no carvings. Yet there was an order to the place, even if not immediately apparent as they made turn after turn, trying to reach the center. It was less like bookshelves and more like a maze, carefully and intentionally designed to confuse the senses. Mara couldn't really navigate it any better than Aallotar, except to follow the twisting fray of reality she could feel in her metal bones.

They walked for hours, winding their way back and forth through the maddening labyrinth of stone slabs, frequently hitting passages that wrapped around and came to an abrupt dead end. Retracing their steps wasn't easy, even with the quick marks of chalk Mara made on the stone. The place seemed endless.

"What is this place truly?" Aallotar asked as they rounded another corner into a blank wall.

"I don't think Sammael lied, but I doubt he told us everything," Mara muttered. Between the aching cold and the ceaseless backtracking, she was already sliding into exhaustion. Her wounded arm burned with pain beneath the bandage. "Whoever his maker really was, they left a hell of a path."

Aallotar steadied her with one hand, brow creasing with worry. "Are you well, Mara? You are pale."

The sorcerer didn't want to admit that she was struggling with the pull of the Void, the clawing of a world-ending hunger at doors hidden in the dark reaches of her mind. Once a door opens, it cannot be closed so easily, Sammael had warned once. He had pushed her to open them, but now she fought to keep them closed desperately. Void was everywhere here and it would devour her. If a young mage could incinerate himself with his own power of creation by mistake, what consequences awaited someone playing with nonexistence?

"Mara, please talk to me," Aallotar pressed gently, golden eyes flashing in the flickering light.

"This whole place feels..." Mara pulled in a shaky breath, trying to find a word for the surges of emotion and sensation that were overwhelming her. "...I feel like it's balancing on the tip of a needle, and all around is this darkness."

Aallotar sheathed her sword and wrapped her arms around Mara, offering her warmth and safety. "I have you."

Even if it was an illusion, the sorcerer took comfort without a second thought, burying her face in the wildling's shoulder. The smell of wood smoke and weapon oil cut through the stale air of the workshop and Mara felt the first tears bubble up. She'd experienced pain in Sammael's training countless times‌ of the extreme variety, but this was a new level of fear. Aallotar stroked her hair and held her as close as she could with armor between them. "Something terrible happened here," Mara whispered.

You imagine you are at the beginning of the story, but ‌truly you have reached its ending.

Aallotar froze in place, but Mara turned to look towards the voice. She regretted it instantly, coming face to face with her reflection—except there was no mirror, only blank stone behind a perfect simulacrum of herself. Mara raised her hand to touch the side of her own face, but the copy didn't mimic her. Instead, it smiled.

Not-Mara even had the fresh mark on her lip from a fanged nip given the night before. Every blemish, every feature, a perfect copy. It was even her voice, except for the reverberations that crawled under their skin like a thing alive, echoing the hunger of Void.

"What are you?" Mara croaked.

A representation of the infinite within the microscope of your finite minds.

"A demon," Aallotar said nervously.

Not-Mara tilted her head slightly, regarding them. No. A demon is little different from you at its core. It was created, it exists, it will cease to exist. They may pretend otherwise, but they are as bound to the circles of the world they inhabit as the flesh they presume to have surpassed. Even if every demon that ever had existed, exists now, and ever will exist, suddenly disappeared—even the one you call the Deceiver—Void would endure. It cannot be destroyed.

Mara hesitated. "Like magic? My mother used to say that was a law."

Those who worship Creation delude themselves with the notion that nothing can be created or destroyed, that they are merely rearranging things. Even those that acknowledge the reality of their own ending, the world's ending, assume another universe will arise from the ashes. A pity they have forgotten that Void in action is all around them: entropy in every system. Eventually, Creation and all its works will end.

There was no joy in that statement, no perverse pleasure. Mara's doppelgänger seemed to derive no satisfaction from it. Eternal certainty dwelt in the words, though. "There has to be a way to stop it," Aallotar said fiercely.

Mara shook her head slightly. "Kalevi said nothing could stop what was coming."

The destruction of the Red Mountains is only another iteration of beings exterminating each other. That one side clings to Creation and the other has learned to tap into Void is almost immaterial. Not-Mara shook her head. There is little interesting in the ambitions of the Princes of Iron, just as there is little remarkable about the folly of those who created them. Neither are unique or as perfect as they pretend. Each is comprised of matter that will one day be no more.

"Why are you wearing my face?" Mara asked.

The figure cocked its head slightly, a faint curl of the lips suggesting a smile. Because you are far more interesting, Mara Spell-Breaker. You are the beginning of all things and the end of all things: balanced, as you say, on the tip of a needle. The Princes of Iron teach their followers that the fear of gods is the beginning of wisdom, but what you have done is beyond what even they know to be possible.

Even though the answer terrified her, Mara had to know. "How is what I do possible? What am I? Sammael is so certain, but how does he—"

You are the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, one who has lived lives beyond counting. Did the opening of this place not tell you enough? This is your home because once you made a life here, toiling away. Sammael's reconstruction was crude at best, something he has attempted to refine with his modifications. Much of your memory had to be sacrificed to preserve the essence. Did you never think to wonder how intuitive your grasp of Void, that you could access it even without awareness? After all, he did not have to teach you how to break a spell, only how to master yourself.

Mara stared at the creature with wide, frightened eyes. "But..."

The child sleeping beneath your mother's heart was a small sacrifice to preserve the Eighth, the Mother. Sammael, so devoted, so loyal, never hesitated for a moment. In a world filled with false prophets of Void, those who seek to bend it to their whims, the genuine article is one of a kind.

The sorcerer tried to take a step back away from her double, but realized she was still in Aallotar's arms. The cursed warrior still held her tightly, trying to protect her from the creeping horror of the revelation. "Sammael made me out of his maker?" Mara whispered.

He merely hollowed the vessel and placed you within. That is hardly the same as the spark of inspiration that led you to create all demonkind.

"Mara, it must be lying," Aallotar said firmly. "This is not possible."

What did the words of power say, Mara? Her duplicate smiled in its uncanny mimicry.

"Speak only truth," Mara said around the hard lump in her throat. The binding at the door was not only on the door, she realized. It was everywhere around them. "Tell no lies."

The power waiting here is yours, to do with as you please. Chase this thread until every interwoven falsehood unravels before you like the decaying tapestry they have become. Rediscover who you are.

"Don't listen," Aallotar pleaded. "Mara, it is not safe."

Would you forever make fear your master, Mara? Or have you been running from this truth long enough?

Mara swallowed hard and pulled away from Aallotar. She turned to face the wildling, cupping the tattooed woman's face in her hands. "I need you to trust me."

Aallotar's tormented golden eyes focused entirely on her. "Ask anything else of me. I cannot lose you."

There was a very real danger that Aallotar would lose her, whether that was by Void devouring her or just robbing her of every iota of feeling. If she opened this door, there was no guarantee of anything. "Trust me and I will come back," Mara promised. "Whatever I have to do to make that happen."

The wildling's eyes filled with tears, but before she could speak or grab for Mara, the sorcerer was already stepping back and closing her eyes. The door inside herself came crashing open the moment she stopped resisting. It was not the agony she had grown used to under Sammael's care.

Clarity rippled through Mara's being as she bridged the last gap to Void inside herself, balancing as if on the tip of a needle as the emptiness came rushing in. She saw in stuttering bursts the Revealing, worlds disintegrating into dust, universes unraveling and flashing out of existence, the magnitude of the loss eroding away continents and civilizations like the tide crashing over tiny castles constructed of sand. Grief boiled up from the pit of her stomach as power crackled around her, wreathing her in the actinic white light of this place. Her double vanished like a fading shadow.

She looked down at her own hands and saw them covered not in blood, but in the black of night between stars. For the first time, she understood Kalevi's two prophecies and the vast gulf of eternity between them.  He had seen the destruction of the Red Mountains, yes, but also what awaited at the end of the universe's existence.

Mara knew that while she had a part to play in the first, it would be the second where she found her place. She also knew, distantly, that somewhere, someone was screaming her name.

Then there was only darkness.

Author Notes

Mara Spell-Breaker - human apprentice to the demon Sammael. Aallotar - cursed wildling with a twin soul of a beast imprisoned inside her. Caliban - human servant of Sammael Sammael - an elder fiend known as the Venom of God, torturer and scholar. Theudhar - a rescued warg-rider from the Imperial forces in the south. Saxa - a strange mer scout from the Imperial forces.

Chapter 27
In Two Minds

By K. Olsen

The Story So Far: A pariah as a woman who negates magic in a world full of it, Mara Spell-Breaker has fled persecution alongside Aallotar, a soul cursed to bestial rage and feral fury. Mara's spell-negating powers can suppress the curse, but to break it, she has apprenticed herself to the demon Sammael the Torturer, Venom of God, who saved them both from execution by Mara's father, the lord of Sjaligr. Danger is coming to the Red Mountains, a punishment for old sins, and the oracle Kalevi predicted that Mara would have a part in it. Now inside an ancient ruin unearthed by an earthquake, the workshop of Sammael's creator, Mara has learned the truth of her strange powers: she possesses the soul of the ancient deity who created the first demons and unlocked sorcery by tapping into the power of Void. To regain her lost knowledge, she has opened the door to darkness, but the price may be losing herself in the process.
 

***
 

Visions of ash and flame flickered behind her eyelids. For the first time in a thousand years, she felt the grip of oblivion easing and the crackle of power like the tang of ozone on her tongue. So close. So close I can taste it…

Her fingers twitched slightly, but could barely move. Someone had bound her hands carefully to prevent her from being able to gesture. The taste of power faded, replaced by the repulsive fabric of a gag. Her eyelids refused to open yet, weak from rebirth, so she slowly re-attuned to her senses.

“…how did they even enter? There was no way to open that fissure, no door,” a man said in a rough, deep bass voice.

It took her almost a full minute to process what he was saying, the words a confusing corruption of a language she had once known well. It was disorienting to hear it butchered by an accent, but it was still discernible as the language she had given to her children. Drift? Has it been so long?

“The powers of heresy are considerable, Barend. Though I agree, it was quite the feat. The tattooed one seems incapable, but this one on the other hand…”  The second speaker’s grasp on the language was almost flawless, almost just as she remembered.

Something cold and sharp touched her cheek as he spoke. She didn’t need to open her eyes to know it was a blade. 

The one called Barend growled low in his chest. “I thought all these barbarians had markings and heresy. Here is one with no markings and the other with no heresy.” 

“Certainly strange. Perhaps foreigners as well? The tattooed one has a different accent.” The blade moved from her cheek, slipping under her chin and lifting her head. “You may open your eyes, barbarian. I know you are awake.”

“Mara!” 

The sound of a young woman’s voice, frightened and pained, sent a pang of heartache and anxiety through her. She opened her eyes as the man had instructed, realizing they ached from tears as she did so. 

There were many men around, tall red-skinned behemoths with rows of stunted horns in their dark hair, wearing well-fashioned armor. All of them smelled like wet fur and woodsmoke, hints of soap mostly lost beneath the musk. The one holding the sword, however, was very different: lean almost to the point of lankiness with a catlike grace, with bright blue eyes and a charming smile. His skin was fair. “Mara is a pretty name,” he said affably, as if he wasn’t holding a blade beside her throat. The black of his armor was matte, designed not to give a hint of shine. 

The blade in his hands was soaked in her power.  She could feel it against her skin, cold and welcoming. More than that, it flowed through him. She felt a creeping revulsion as she stared at him, no question in her mind now of his source: one of the Deceiver’s spawn had twisted him into something beyond the purely living.

“Shall we dispense with the gag?” he said. His smile was shark-like, never reaching those blue eyes. “If you go to cast a spell, I will kill you before you can finish it.” Without waiting for a reply, he undid the gag.

Her mouth was dry after the fabric. It took her a few moments to wet her tongue enough to speak. “You chirp relatively well for a trained popinjay.”

The effect of her perfect grasp on the tongue seemed to shock even him for a split second. His blue eyes narrowed. “Where did you learn to speak Imperial?” he demanded.

“I did not need to learn.” She looked past him at the young woman thrashing against her bonds and felt a sudden surge of too many emotions all at once, followed by a swell of memories hitting like a tidal wave.

She had to close her eyes again, trying to center herself in the overwhelming rush of trauma. There was so much hurt and loneliness there, flowering outward like briar roses made of broken glass, enough to overpower even the grief of a dead world. It was visceral and intense: a heel grinding into a cheek, a brother’s bitter words, a father’s absence. 

I hate you! Void take you all!

“Mara, please,” the young woman begged, golden eyes tormented. “Come back.”

Her head felt like it was going to split in two. “Aallotar?” The name fell from her lips in a mumble, but she knew it was right when the desperate hope flared in the tattooed wildling’s eyes. More would fit together in time, but right now she was a shattered self and she knew it.

So much was missing and nothing made sense.

“Speak sense, barbarian,” the blue-eyed man said sharply. “How did you come to know our tongue?”

She hunted through her shattered memories for something that wasn’t a lie, but wouldn’t reveal too much. The binding was still in place, but her unique situation enabled her to skirt its laws. “A tutor,” she rasped, dragging a memory up. “A black shield.”

Be grateful for the gifts I give you, a stern Gaius said, thumping a book down on the top of her head.

“Sixth Legion, maybe?” one of the red-skinned men muttered. “Haagenti said there were captives taken, Immortalis.”

The blue-eyed man narrowed his eyes again. “Where is this tutor?”

She curled her lip in contempt. “If you knew the price of immortality, you would not invoke it so casually, particularly in the name of a facsimile.” 

“This one does not speak like the others,” Barend said. “Should we not bring her to the Legate, Immortalis Aelius?”

“How did you unseal the door?” Aelius demanded. 

She saw one of the big warriors bring his foot down hard on the struggling young woman behind Aelius and a flash of rage ripped through her. “Leave her alone!” she snarled, almost coming up off the ground herself. She was weak, too weak to fight, and bound, but in that moment the need to protect Aallotar outweighed everything else. 

Immortalis Aelius smiled like a shark scenting blood in the water. “If that is what it takes to get your attention, heretic…”

The next wave of anger that hit her was powerful enough to smash her shattered self back together, even if only for a moment. She sucked in a harsh breath, fresh tears suddenly dripping as the young and frightened collided with the hateful and ancient. “I said leave her alone!” Mara screamed, seeing for a moment both Aelius’s face and her father’s.

Void answered her in a surge, flooding out of her body. The bonds that held her disappeared in an instant as the darkness devoured them, allowing her tortured limbs to move freely for the first time in at least hours, maybe longer. The metal bones in her arm burned with cold as she reached around and grabbed the sword by the blade. 

Immortalis Aelius thrust on reflex, but Void devoured the blade before it could slit her throat. The metal twisted and warped as it was eaten away by the nothingness all around, surging towards his hand. He recoiled and dropped the hilt. “Get back!” he ordered, springing backwards in a leap. “That is no magic of the Red Mountains!”

Aallotar strained at her bonds as Mara swayed to her feet. “Mara, run!” she shouted. “If you can get far enough—!”

Mara knew what would happen: Aallotar would revert to her bestial form. All these men would suffer the same fate as her father’s honor guard. She shook her head, trying to stumble towards Aallotar. She felt drunk, head spinning with conflicted thoughts and a body so exhausted it could barely respond. One of the towering soldiers stepped between them, his curved sword whipping towards Mara faster than she could force her body to move.

However, Void had an entirely different reaction time. As she threw up her wounded arm to defend her head, it surged outward, engulfing the man in a black flame. There was no scream, only the contortion of his face as it crumbled into dust and vanished into a gnawing emptiness. Pieces of his armor clattered to the ground, trailing hints of nonexistence that devoured even the light of their fire. 

Mara felt her grip on herself slipping the more she tapped into Void. There was an agonizing madness to it, the erosion of who she was. “Go forth from this place, Immortalis,” she heard herself say with words like daggers. “Tell your Legate that what has been opened cannot be closed.”

“What are you, creature?” Aelius demanded as he retreated, drawing a long stiletto from across his lower back. He was recalculating, looking for a way to harm her without risking her power. The cold, logical part of her brain was confident he had still misidentified it.

“I am the end and the beginning of a world.” The words came from the other her, that hungry resonance burning in every syllable, crawling under their skin. For a moment, images of a universe shredding flashed across her vision, like an eclipse superimposing itself on the room’s image for an instant.

She heard the creak of wood and her vision returned to normal. One of the riders carried a strange contraption that she barely recognized from Gaius’s stories of the south: a crossbow. The bolt was as thick around as a man’s thumb and pointed at Aallotar. “You will cast no further, mage, and allow us to depart.”

Immortalis Aelius glared at him. “We are not leaving a heretic to slip through this net, auxiliary.”

“The Legate demanded a survey of the area unearthed by the earthquake,” the red-skinned man said bluntly. “If that information is damaged or does not reach her, we will have failed her and the Divine Prince.”

“You forget the laws of the Imperium.”

The red-skinned man, clearly a leader of some kind, motioned to one of his men, who produced a scroll case. “They have already waited a decade. What is a few more weeks? They are weak and will not make it far. This writ is our command and it explicitly states that we are not to deviate from our mission for any reason.” 

Aelius’s lip curled, blue eyes flashing with anger at the insubordination. “Then they should be taken to the Legate, as their knowledge of this place is far more expansive than anything we have found here. They were able to gain entry.”

Mara felt her head again about to crack in two. She put her hands to her temples, trying not to scream in pain. It was worse than her arm, even without the numbing agent on those healing burns.

The sergeant seemed solid in his intent of withdrawing. “Neither the Legate or Commander Godric said anything of captives, Immortalis.”

“I am not going to quarrel with an auxiliary,” Immortalis Aelius said dangerously, prowling closer to the sergeant. “You will take custody of the mage and her pet or I will find a suitable replacement. One with appropriate reverence and zeal for carrying out the will of the Divine Prince.”

Mara realized the crossbow was not as steady as it had been before. As stern and solid as the sergeant seemed, his hands were shaking on the crossbow, even though he dwarfed Immortalis Aelius and was clearly a veteran of many battles by his scars. The red-skinned man gritted his teeth, steeling himself. “The Legate—”

“Whose lives are worth more to you, Sergeant?” The words oozed an oily menace. “I will see you decimated and the Legate will not deny me. Unless you think these barbarians will do worse to you?”

That threat seemed to chill the big man’s blood further. The red-skinned man looked directly at Mara, adjusting his grip on the crossbow. “You and yours will come with us,” he said harshly. “If you do not, you will be slain.”

Mara felt another strange slap of clarity hit her. “You intend to take us to where we will certainly die,” she said, swaying even as she prepared to call upon Void again. “At least a battle here is only a maybe.”

Aallotar tried to thrash loose, but even with her considerable strength, the bonds didn’t budge.

“We can come to an accord,” the sergeant said, sweating rivulets when Immortalis Aelius stepped behind him. “The tattooed one will free herself in time, even if she cannot use heresy. Accompany us and she lives. Deny me and you will both die here. It is obvious you are too weak to combat anything long.” 

Mara considered that. If she moved away enough from Aallotar, the beast would come out. If they were the only people in the area, Aallotar would pursue. That left her and Mara with their best chance of escaping, particularly if the ambush was unexpected. Besides, black was quickly starting to edge her vision. She had used so much so soon after opening the door to Void, more than she had ever used in Sammael’s study. He was right: she was about to collapse. “Swear to me on your Divine Prince’s name that you will take me alive and that you will honor your Legate’s command regarding my fate, not Immortalis Aelius’s word. That is my condition.”

“She is in no position to make such a demand,” Aelius said patiently.

The sergeant glanced at the ashen remnants of the body that had been mostly consumed by black flames. “I swear on the name of Divine Prince Michael and on the honor of Fourth Legion that my people and I will take you directly to the Legate and render you for her judgment, so long as you come peaceably.” He straightened. “If you violate your side of this covenant, barbarian, you forfeit your life.” 

Mara was surprised, as were several of the big soldiers. She hadn’t expected him to actually acquiesce to that request after Immortalis Aelius’s response. “Very well.”

“Mara!” Aallotar cried out, struggling against her bonds. It was clear by her weakness that she had suffered greatly while Mara was unconscious.

Mara knelt down beside her love, running her hands over the wildling’s hair. It hurt so much it ached to even think of leaving her here, alone and in the grips of her curse again. “Aallotar, I need you to trust me,” she said thickly in the tongue of the Red Mountains instead of the soldiers’ language. “We will see each other again soon. Even a curse can be a blessing.” It was the only way she could dare explain. Theudhar and Saxa both knew her tongue, so it was possible these ones did too.

Aallotar’s eyes teared up, but she nodded in understanding. Mara made no move to resist when one of the big soldiers seized her by her arm and pulled her away. The sorcerer was too weak to object and only growing weaker. 

Immortalis Aelius was watching carefully, his eyes focused on Aallotar. “Consider yourself fortunate, barbarian,” he said to the distraught wildling. “If you had even an iota of magic within you, I would gut you here and now.” 

Mara had never been more grateful for her curse than on hearing that and watching the man prowl away with that supernatural, cat-like grace. She stumbled outside to the waiting wargs, hauled by the soldier’s bruising grip. Disjointed visions flashed before her eyes and she cried out in pain when he switched arms, seizing her by her wounded one. 

The sergeant moved immediately, knocking his subordinate away at the cry of pain. “Remember what happened to the last to harm her!” he barked in his guttural version of the Imperial tongue.

“What would you have us do, Sergeant?” the soldier asked, eyeing Mara warily.

“She rides with Dagr and I,” the sergeant said. When Mara crumpled, he picked her up carefully, avoiding the wounded arm. Under his breath, he muttered to her, “Remember that I honor my oaths when you stand before the Legate in Sandgata.”

“Sergeant Isbrand, a word,” Immortalis Aelius said calmly as the towering sergeant helped her up onto his growling warg’s back. 

Isbrand turned, and Aelius struck savagely with a blow across the face that sent the sergeant buckling back against the warg’s side. The red-skinned man cringed and the warg stifled its growl with a whimper at the cold fury in Immortalis Aelius’s expression.

“If you ever conduct yourself in such a fashion again, I will butcher your beast and feed it to you on the saltire. Consider that strike your first taste of the lashing you will receive when we return to Imperial circles. Do you understand, auxiliary?”

Mara’s eyes went wide. No man she knew would accept such a blow without responding in kind, but the much bigger warrior bowed his head, in a state barely better than cowering. His men looked equally shaken. “With crystal clarity, Immortalis. Never again. I thank the servant of the Divine Prince for his mercy.” 

The sorcerer took a deep breath and prayed to any god that might listen to a soulless thing that she would be free soon. She did not have a good feeling about their concept of mercy.

Somewhere deep inside, something else shifted within her, dark and hungry.

Author Notes

Mara Spell-Breaker - human apprentice to the demon Sammael. Aallotar - cursed wildling with a twin soul of a beast imprisoned inside her. Caliban - human servant of Sammael Sammael - an elder fiend known as the Venom of God, torturer and scholar. Theudhar - a rescued warg-rider from the Imperial forces in the south. Saxa - a strange mer scout from the Imperial forces. Immortalis Gemellus Aelius - a strange sorcery-touched servant of a Prince of Iron. Sergeant Isbrand - minor leader of the warg-riding auxiliaries to Fourth Legion.

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