“Raiten right?” the old man asks. I give him a curt nod. He smiles: “Name’s Saegor.” He holds out his hand, expecting me to take it. I don’t. Shrugging, he stuffs the wrinkled hand back in his long, raggedy coat. “You know, it’ll be easier to work together if we get… comfortable with one another.”

  “I don’t care,” I respond.

  “You will soon enough. I do right by my comrades—trust me on that.” It's like a sales pitch. The man confuses me.

  Thankfully, the twins don’t even bother to greet me. They stick to each other like glue and in the corner of the barracks, they start admiring some swords and spears—guessing their make.

  “Halberd.”

  “No dumbass, that’s a spetum.”

  “A spetum? Are you sure Zyla?”

  “Are you? Look at the prongs—it's obviously a damned spetum. Or… hold on. Maybe it is a halberd?”

  “Alright now you’re being stupid.”

  “You were the one that said it was a halberd originally dumbass!”

  I watch the two bald-headed idiots bicker. I think I would’ve cracked a smile, had it been yesterday. Yesterday. That feels like forever ago.

  “Raiten,” Pamela calls sharply. I turn to her and she beckons me to the map. “Listen. These mancers know the Blightbriars well enough. You don’t. Let me show you what you’re about to face.”

  I nod. She pulls the map down slightly, hovering over the white text outlined above the black blotches meant to represent the vast briars.

  “Show me our path,” I say.

  She puts a finger on the Old Road. “This is our checkpoint. From here, on to the East, forest gets thick, then thin, then muddy. Past that is swamp and gatorland. Marshes. Then… we don’t know.” She picks her finger up about halfway through the forest.

  I raise an eyebrow. “Aren’t the briar’s mapped out?”

  “Yes. You misunderstand, topographically we understand everything: the marshes should dry up about three quarters through and then, it's a straight path till the glades. But, any scouts we’ve sent to that point have never come back. Which makes us suspect that—”

  “The turned and plague are most dense there, correct?” I guess. She nods.

  “Our position is precarious. Catolica mobilizes slowly because my damned fiefs bicker and bark well-before deployment. And we move from the West, slow and steady, a fractured army. Reinforcements will come. But not soon.

  “Meanwhile, Sorayvlad moves swiftly from the East, and no doubt, they are already halfway through the vast Giant’s Glades. And according to my spirit mages and their wind whales, they herd a number of plagued in our direction—meaning those bastards are going to blitz us, dissolve our lines, and then rip us apart like a pack of wolves.”

  “For what it's worth, I can confirm that for you,” I say. “I met some people along the road who saw the Sorayvladian army.” A question lingers in my mind: how did the war even start? Now of all times? But according to Riddeck, it's partly because of Sorina’s supposed murder. I wonder how Pamela would act if I mentioned that I knew Sorina.

  Nothing would change. The war still goes on, some deeper part of me whispers. And I think it's right.

  “I know you disapprove of our stockading methods, with the villagers,” Sorina says, drawing me back. “But, we aren’t cruel for the sake of cruelty—I know what's at stake. My armies, though larger, are ten times as green as Sorayvlad,” she spits. “That clan has one singular force. One army of killers. I’ve been begging my financiers and barons to deploy, but they thought, in their hubris, that Sorayvlad would not be a problem. Then, we lost our fief at the ranges. Five thousand soldiers vanquished in a night.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  She lets the words settle with me. It's as if she’s still trying to sell me on the idea of fighting for Catolica. But, what she and everyone else fails to realize, is that I’m not fighting for anybody.

  Then, she places a hand on my shoulder. “You have no allegiance to me. In fact, I’m sure you must dislike me to a degree. I must seem like a monster to you.”

  “Not just to me,” I mutter. She ignores that jab.

  “Listen. I’m giving you a straight path to vengeance. You and my mancers might be our only avenue of ending this war swiftly. Are you with me?”

  I look her in the eyes. Meet that determined, green glass stare of hers.

  “No. I’m not with you. But, I’ll kill Masaru for you.”

  She exhales slightly. “That’s all I need. Now, before we go, let’s try and increase your odds of success, shall we?”

  …

  Saegor whistles some bleak tunes as we exit the barracks into the sun-bleached fortress grounds. The first thing that draws my attention—mostly because it is equal-part an infuriating and anxiety-spiking sight—is a pyre of wood upon which Baroth’s corpse lays on its side, antlers cracked, tongue lolling, eight eyes glazed. Even in this gaudy, ramshackle fortress, the elk’s large corpse reeks of malice.

  I turn to Pamela. “What are you doing?” Somehow, my tone is civil.

  “Ah. I figured this is the thing you fought. What is it exactly?”

  She doesn’t know what she plays with.

  “A djinn reincarnated,” I explain. It's not an inaccurate description, but it is then that I realize how little I know of this… elk creature that Baroth inhabited. Only one thing really matters though: “Did you check that it's dead?”

  “Oh it's dead alright,” Saegor says from ahead of us. “But we want it alive.”

  What?

  “What?” I ask. I turn on him, hand going to my amulets.

  “Oh calm down kid, I ain’t gonna bring it back as it was,” he says. Saegor licks his lips as he approaches the elk. “I can smell the eldritch on you big boy.” His voice is a lusting whisper now, too youthful for his age and body.

  “What are you—”

  “Let’s have a taste.” Saegor stalks around to the beast’s neck, which has been slit open, leaking a slow, viscous purple. He swabs his finger in the blood and puts it to his tongue.

  His eye rolls up in ecstasy.

  I expect my stomach to stir, my body to physically reject the scene playing out before me. Yet, once more, my reaction is docile.

  Clinical.

  I suppose all the anger is sucked up by one figure.

  I look at Pamela. “What is this devilry?”

  Instead of answering, one of the twins, the girl named Zyla, strides up next to me. She puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezes hard, digs her nails into my skin.

  “Trust old Saegor, Raiten. He’s a weird pervert, sure, but he taught my brother and I. He’s the best warlock around. And besides, I want whatever that… thing is on our side.”

  “Trust me, you don’t,” I tell her, before swatting her hand off and approaching Saegor, whose one eye has rolled to an irisless orb.

  “Don’t do this,” I demand, grabbing his hand.

  His eye rolls back down and he snarls. “Don’t interrupt. I’m getting a feel for the beast.” He twists out of my grip. “Look, I meant what I said. Whatever monster that previously inhabited this vessel won’t be able to reinhabit it once I revive the beast. I will…” he smacks his lips, theatrically searching for the right word. Then, with strenuous attention to every syllable, he says, “I will revitalize it.”

  For some reason, his confidence assures me slightly. Not nearly enough to convince me though.

  “How do you know?” I follow up. “How can you be sure?”

  “Trust me.”

  “Saegor, I don’t even know who the hell you are. I’m not trusting you with this.”

  “Kid, let me show you something,” Saegor says. Then, he whistles. The ground rumbles, and for a moment, I am reminded of Umbrahorn and think it is him. But no, instead of a great hammerhead shark bursting from the ground, a young colt—one of wood and dirt, roots and mud—emerges in the field. It whinnies and sniffs Saegor’s hand with its muzzle. The old man pets the mount.

  “This is Nancy. We picked her up along the trail. Wild spirit. Must’ve ran from the Brightbriars before the blight came.”

  The horse is, admittedly, beautiful. But it doesn’t prove any—

  In the next moment, Saegor slits the spirit’s throat with one slice of his hand, as if it is a blade. The spirit leaks mud and golden essence before its eyes go dark and the wood goes wet and the horse crumples and falls, like a toy done-away with.

  It's such a senseless kill.

  And so fast.

  I stare in shock, watching as Saegor comes around the young horse and drinks of its muddy essence. His eye once more rolls to the back of his head but I don’t move to stop him this time.

  Because this time, after a few moments, the horse begins to move again.