#### [[2.1.1.0 - Song of Sundering|Song of Sundering]], the first novel in the [[2.1.0.0 - the Sunder Series|Sunder Series]] → [Available on your favorite eBook Platforms!](https://books2read.com/b/arcwtfsos) ![[zz_images/SoS3D.png]] --- > _A dark song is rising > The blood in the heart of the mountain > Resonates in stone and spire > Echoing throughout the infinite_ > > From the encrypted journal of Kingston Cross (84 AS) --- # Prologue 209 AS (After Sundering) *** Some beginnings are more cruel than endings, but for his children, today was both a beginning and an end, and neither with mercy. It had been thirty years since Holt went through his Initiation, but looking at the cautious faces around him, he remembered every second—the pulling and tugging on his organs and the burning pain consuming his body. It was all they had to look forward to. The five children, forming a half circle around him, looked up at him with eager eyes. At eight years of age, each one was deadly—more deadly than most grown men left in the array of worlds his kind guarded. He knew most would die in their Trials and not even see Initiation. He took a moment to survey the land around them and was pleased to see them turn their heads and observe. “Laila, what do you see?” She was the smallest of the group and the quietest. She never spoke unless asked, but beneath her shyness lay the most gifted of the children. She was a Second Blood, like him. Her deep blue eyes stared into him, her long silver hair curling around her face, creating a strong contrast from the near black matte armor that wrapped around her, as if forged to her body rather than being part of it. Seeming to see his intention to bring her into the group, she rejected it with a nod and kept her response short and to the point. She raised her arm to point at the rock formations behind Holt and said, “Creation—manipulation.” The red rock rose from what looked like craters in the ground, twisting like a wet rag. The loops and whirls from its forming motion rose seven feet in the air, ending in a spike. Time had worn it down, but even after a hundred years, it was deadly. The top of the formation was a darker red than the rest of the rocks. “Chaman, what is the significance of this?” The tall Illara boy looked surprised. “This was the ambush that started the First War.” Holt nodded. “Yes, but why do we come here? Why do we study it?” Chaman squirmed, and the girl next to him, Sera, sighed and answered, “We study it because this is the Origin of the First Blood. The war made her, and she made us. Without this, we would not be Palors.” Holt nodded again. “Yes, but why do we care? Isn’t it just ancient history?” Sera huffed. “We care because we guard the balance of the worlds. Without knowing the story of when they were unbalanced, how can we prevent it from happening again?” “Good.” Holt turned and walked through the Source-forged stone, waving for the children to follow. Approaching the nearest twisted stone, he reached out and placed his hand upon it. The children gathered around and did the same. “Close your eyes. This rock has a story to tell. Find it.” Obedience was the first thing they learned; they all closed their eyes and fell silent. He heard the shift in each one’s breathing as they each found the answer he had asked them to seek. Laila was the first to settle into the slow, deep breaths as she attuned herself to the formation. There was a catch and a near inaudible gasp. _Good_. She opened her eyes and dropped her hand back to her side, standing quietly while the others searched. After each child had finished the task, they gathered in front of him. Holt turned again to Laila. “Tell us the story.” “It was cold that night. The rock was part of the shelf, until it was ripped apart—into dust—then put back together, forming the sharp section first and the rest behind it, thrusting it up into the air. It happened so suddenly the guards couldn’t get out of the way. The dark sections are from the blood of the soldier who stood on the ground as it collapsed beneath him, then impaled him. The blood mixed into the stone as the Source remade it.” Holt heard Chaman sigh. He had likely not realized the blood was the reason the top of the stone was a deeper red. He said nothing to the children, but turned to look over the field before them. He knew they were looking too, seeing the story of the stone repeated all around them. The field stretched in front of them for several hundred feet, just as wide as it was deep and filled with the strange formations. Where one crater ended, the next began. The silence pressed against them for several minutes. Behind him, he heard a shuffle. One of them was growing bored. Likely Chaman. He emphasized the point of what they saw. “How many died here? How many sisters, brothers, fathers, and mothers bled into this stone, Chaman?” “Um, a thousand?” Holt held in the growl of impatience that threatened to escape. “I asked how many died here, not to guess how many Source formations there are. Sera, you will probably interrupt anyway. Do you know the answer?” “One thousand two hundred and fifty-one.” “Chaman, you get another chance. How many lives were lost in the war that followed?” He heard the shuffling behind him again, but eventually Chaman answered, “Ninety-six thousand three hundred and six.” “Good. You get another, Chaman. This one is easy. How many people do you love?” “Well, my family and my two best friends and—” “I want a number not a list.” He heard the boy’s shoes scraping over the stones again. “Um, seventeen.” “Each of you, come up with your number of everyone you love. Picture their faces.” He waited a minute for the children to conjure up their loved ones inside their minds. “Laila, how many died in both the wars and the Sundering combined?” Holt had barely asked the question when Laila answered in a quiet but clear and firm voice, “Sixty-two billion seven hundred and ninety-seven million eight hundred and twenty-five thousand five hundred and seventeen.” He said nothing and let the number hang over the children as they looked at the spire-filled valley. He wanted them to feel the weight of death. It was an important lesson to learn before they were free to kill. --- # JAMES 133 Years Prior 69 AS *** James kept his head under the blanket. He could not see any better in the darkness when he dared to peer out of it. But, the blanket was warm. It was a barrier. It suffocated him in its safety. Papa had headed out with the other men to check the fields. James had never known that a cow could scream, but they could, and they had tonight. Not long after he had heard the pitiful yelp, someone knocked on the door. There were many sharp, hurried whispers between the adults. He knew their attempts to be quiet were because the adults believed he was sleeping, so he stayed still and pretended. His father had gone to grab his shotty and his coat, then left. James knew his mother was there, sitting with a view out of the window. Waiting. He wanted to crawl up into her lap and sleep against her chest, but he could feel her tension filling the room. She would hold him gently, rock him softly, whisper kind words to him, and put him back into bed to return to her worry-filled vigil. So he stayed in bed. Best not to make her worry about him not sleeping on top of worrying for Papa. He lay as still as his little restless body would let him. He was grateful his father was not the one left at home. His Illara father likely knew James was still awake before he left. The sense the Illara shared with each other and their Inari children was a strong bond. James shared the same bond with his mother, but it was one way. He could feel her, sense her thoughts at times, but she was oblivious to it. Without facial expressions and gestures in the dark room, she was unaware of what her son was experiencing in his bed in the far corner. He closed his eyes, reached out mentally, and felt for his mother. He found her in his mind, just as he had sensed. He held her there in a youthful hug and found she relaxed slightly. The air in the room around him, even under the blanket, felt lighter. He smiled softly to himself and leaned into the mental image further. He slowly began to drift off to sleep. *** The scream woke him up. It was close. Closer than the fields. He sat up in bed. He was covered in sweat, even though the night was not very warm. He could feel the fear rising around him. It seemed to be pouring into the air from everywhere in the town at once. A series of soft steps made their way toward his bed. The air thickened and pressed against him, as if trying to choke him. “James, we have to go.” His mother’s voice was barely more than a whisper. A light sparked up outside the window, and he saw his mother’s face in a quick flash. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes wide, and she was half-crouching beside the bed, ready to burst forward into a sprint. He slid out of bed next to her, grabbing his pants and shoes, putting them on. No words were needed. Once he was ready, he slipped his hand into hers, and she led him to the bedroom she shared with Papa. She opened the back door. There was about twenty feet of open space beyond the door before a copse of trees that would hide them from whatever was happening on just the other side of the buildings. James felt her body tense up, preparing to move. He also felt the shadow in the copse. He squeezed her hand sharply and pulled back, hoping she would trust his senses. Something was there. As he hoped, she shrank back and shut the door slowly. “Xenai?” she whispered. “In the trees.” She said nothing. He could feel her terror grow. The heavy air grew cold and felt as though it was sticking to him. He could feel the air like it was a cool lake, a cool lake with monsters in the depths, waiting to consume them the moment they relaxed and began to float. She walked him over to the closet. There was no door on it, so she scooped up the packs and books that lay on the floor as quietly as she could. She pushed him into the back corner, then replaced the items in front of him. “Stay here. Quietly.” She walked to the other corner of the room. There were various jackets and implements leaning against the wall that would hide her from being seen, as well. They sat in their hiding spots, listening. Screams were accumulating. At first it seemed like they all came from the south end of town. Now they were surrounded by them on all sides. There were flashes of light—warm light that crackled. _Fire_. Occasionally, he caught a flash of bright blue light. Several people in town had lightning-Source amulets. Either the township was fighting back, or they were being attacked out of the darkness by Sourcecasting Xenai. He heard Terran cries. The lady who lived next door with her daughter began to yell, “Please! No! Stop!” The crackling grew louder. He heard a loud pop and saw debris hit the front side of his home. “Jump! Jump! I got you!” Thud. Another scream, fueled by pain, broke through the other sounds of chaos. “My leg!” “We have to go!” It felt like everything was converging outside of their home. It didn’t occur to him that being the house in nearly the center of the town, that was exactly what was happening. He sat quietly, drowning in the thick air. There was a roar. Not Terran, not Illara, not Xenai. It was loud and crashed down on his ears so hard it made him feel dizzy. The shotty. Papa was back and he was fighting. James felt the elation and fear bear down on his chest. He glanced over to his mother’s hiding spot. He could not see her, but could feel her position shift. She knew that it was Papa out there, too. In the middle of it. Saving them, or dying trying. She moved out from her spot, moving to grab the sword that Papa had left behind. She was going to join Papa and leave him alone in the darkness. He felt the presence from the copse again, just outside the back door. Before he could warn his mother, he felt it shift. The shadow weighed down on him, pushing into his mind, and the back door burst inward, shattering to pieces. The shadow seemed to fill the room, the flashes of light from outside dimming. He felt his mother’s explosive burst of movement as she lunged the final foot for the sword. She had it in her hand, sheathed, as the darkness swallowed her up. Her screams were so oddly far away. The cool air transformed into warm droplets, which landed on his face. He was drowning in the warmth of them. He stayed quiet in his corner. He could no longer feel his mother’s presence. *** The sun rose and reality flooded in with it, an endless wave of thick, warm fluid pouring over the boy. His father came inside just before dawn, calling for him. He found him in the closet, scooped him up, and marched him out to his bed. They sat together in silence for a long time. The flickering light of fires dying down came in through the front window. There were no more screams, no more cries. No one begging another to jump out of the window to escape the flames. The sun rose and, as the light began to fill up the front room of their home, James became aware of the flakes of blood that covered him. The skin on his face was stiff and hard to move. He sat silently, his head against his father’s chest. Somehow he was crying while not crying at all. The tears streamed down his face, even though he made no noise. An occasional breath would tremble and ache inside of him as he let it out. But he was not crying. Someone knocked on the door. His father, Kingston Cross, the unofficial ruler of Century, walked to the door. Head up. Tall. Proud. Broken inside. Pardee, one of the field hands, appeared as Kingston opened the door. James watched the man shuffle in, seemingly oblivious to their state until he sat down at the table at the front of the room. Pardee’s eyes met James’s. Then they drifted over the boy’s face, down to his small, shaking hands. He put the pieces together. “Oh, Kingston,” he said quietly. It was all there was to say. “Tell me about the livestock,” Papa asked him. Pardee shook his head. “It’s nothing we can’t handle.” He looked from Kingston over to James. “Is there anything you guys need?” Kingston leaned in close to Pardee and said something James could not hear. The man nodded, then stood to leave. A few minutes later, his father rejoined him, sitting in silence on the bed. James heard people come in the back door, moving around the bedroom. His mother was being removed. A nice grave would appear in the back, he knew. They had buried his grandpa there. It would be clean and neat and give away no details about the horrible way his mother had died. All that was left of her was the red stain in the floor of his papa’s bedroom. # SHARA 13 Years Later Autumn, 82 AS *** Shara moved through the dark and quiet streets of Prin. She could feel her unknowing mother’s disapproval like a foul gaze on her back. Though she knew that her mother was unaware of her escapade, she could not help but look over her shoulder periodically to make sure there was no shadow in the form of her mother. Or, more likely, in the shape of one of her mother’s many men: soldiers or spies. Ayna Shae had eyes all over Prin. It surprised Shara that she could get out at all without her mother knowing. Shara had changed out of her embroidered silk and velvet dress. She had donned a pair of muslin pants she had bought off a worker who came to the Shae home. They were slightly too large for her, hanging low and buckling forward from the weight of the metal buttons. Shara had left the button-up shirt free at the bottom to hide the way her pants fell forward. As she walked near the shadowed brick wall that opened from an alley onto the main street, she played with the edges of the oversize shirt, twisting it tight, then remembered the gap between her skin and the waistband of the pants she was openly exposing. She dropped the shirt and smoothed it out as she would one of her dresses when she stood from sitting after a long state dinner at the States House that her mother made the family attend. Jon was often late, so Shara forced herself to maintain a slow pace as she moved toward the meeting spot. She was usually early. It was the curse of their outings; Shara doomed herself to wait and work herself up into a ball of anxiety before Jon came sauntering down the street. He was her guide. The Underground was a maze of collapsed sewers, train tracks, and subway stations. Topsiders who went into the Underground without a guide rarely came out again. Not only was the Underground wet, dirty, and sure to ruin any beautiful piece of clothing, but nice clothes would make a Topsider stick out. Blending in wasn’t just necessary for Shara to enjoy the evening, but also for her to survive it. She measured each step in her mind as it echoed in the empty streets. The state buildings were a short walk up the road to the west. Straight ahead of the alley in which Shara walked, the looming buildings blocked out the stars behind them. The largest buildings lay here, near the state buildings, at the center of Prin. And next to the heart of all they had built since Prin’s establishment eighty years ago sat the Nagata. It dwarfed all the buildings. The old generation ship had crashed down from orbit when the Sundering happened and had not moved since. The old hunk of metal and ceramic reflected the stars dully. The original settlers of Prin stripped her of most of her panels and innards and put them to use elsewhere. They had created half the cobblestones that formed the main street from the ceramic reentry panels. The founding Illara of Prin had forged the other half, and the bindings between them, with Source, reshaping the red rocks of the surrounding land into cobblestones. The merging of technology that the Terrans aboard the Nagata brought with them, augmented by the Source the Illara had brought to Sunterra, had formed so much of Prin. Without a spaceport or the means to climb around the Nagata with ease, the Illara had manipulated the trees and stone. Where most of the Nagata’s missing panels were on the east side of the ship, carefully forged rock rose and intertwined with trees and vines to form scaffolding made entirely of natural elements. Workers had then scaled the Illara’s scaffolding to rip pieces off the ship. Initially, the parts had been used to construct buildings and fortifications for the fledgling town, but even those original buildings had been gutted and reconstructed repeatedly. The Nagata Outpost had become a vast farming community before it condensed itself back down to what it was today: the most significant settlement of survivors of the Sundering. There were other settlements. Some were nearby. Most of those were still farming communities. There were rumors of a few along the east coast. Ceafield, the mercenary town, was well established in the southern swamplands. What little data came over the Satellite Network verified that there were a few communities in what had been Europe. Praha and Roubaix sent updates to her mother occasionally. There had been discussions about rebuilding long-distance travel options, but when it came down to working on them, it quickly became clear that Prin was the only location that had enough stability to develop luxuries beyond basic survival, and with the Xenai army heading toward them, that luxury was fading quickly. Neither colony in Europe had enough to offer Prin in trade to justify the work that Prin would have to put in to get functioning aeroplanes. Shara did not let these facts get in her imagination’s way. She had spent hours on her father’s lap, looking at his LightTab with him. Praha was her favorite. The gothic architecture, the spires, the feel of the place spoke to her. She wanted to go there. She imagined that someday she would, and that would be where she’d meet her husband. Inevitably, her marriage would be political, just as her grandmother’s had been. Just as her mother’s had been. But, from duty had sprung a deep well of love between her parents, and Shara figured any multinational political union could also be filled with love if it started in a place like Praha. Praha and Roubaix had inspired her father in their own way. His political career took a turn into city planning not long after he married Ayna. This had led to Prin’s main corridor being filled with buildings that spoke of European inspiration, from the cathedrals of old London to the bulbous spires of Russia. The central state building, where her mother kept offices, was inspired by a famous structure in a place in the Old World, called Tehran. Shara could see the shadow of its upside-down V off in the distance. The base of the shape swirled into concentric circles that swept up into grand ramps and stairways behind, branching off to various floors. It had taken her father nearly thirty years to build the statehouse. They had used up the last of the materials the Nagata had on hand to print her own repair parts. In the night, it looked like a bulb of darkness that came to a sudden point. Shara turned her back to the building and headed towards the shanties. As more and more of the outskirts of Prin encountered problems, those who were not beholden to their fields or cattle had come to Prin for shelter and security. Prin had to make do. The Underground had flourished in the past few years. It was this growth that led Shara to this alley tonight. Along with the masses of people that filled every livable corner of the various structures of Prin had come layers of culture. They performed spoken-word stories and poetry a few times a month, and Shara snuck out of her tightly guarded home in her shabbiest clothing to attend. These were nights when she was not the half-breed daughter of the most prominent political couple in Prin. She was not the First Inari. She was not the Peace of Prin. She was not responsible for these people, but one of them. She savored each moment. She ran her hand along the last of the stone buildings as they gave way to the fallen buildings that had never been rebuilt after the Sundering, but had still been made into homes. Residents had thrown up tarps and planks of wood where they could to segments off areas of the buildings as their own. The small fires they made for warmth were visible, flickering in between the gaps in their privacy. Shara walked on for another minute, coming to the barricade that desperate people pushed aside long ago when the sky shattered above them. She walked between the concrete barriers that came to her waist, up to the doors of the Underground, and stepped over the broken glass as she ducked through the metal frame. She paused for just a moment at the top of the metal staircase before she spied a shadow at the bottom move unexpectedly. Excitement rose in her as a light bloomed in the darkness below, but she still leaned against the side of the stairs as she waited. As it came closer, Jon’s form became clear. Shara pushed herself off from the rubber railing and moved down the stairs toward him when he brought his hand up in a stop motion. He shook his head at her. _No? Why not?_ He looked back over his shoulder before darting out of the shadows and up the metal stairs to meet her. “The Artificers have moved against the Bloodsmiths. No meeting tonight.” She opened her mouth to protest that there had to be something to do in the Underground tonight, but she could feel disapproval radiating off of him, along with fear. His words sunk in. “Is there anything we can do? To help?” she asked, even though she knew the question itself betrayed how entrenched she was as a Topsider. “Yeah. Stay the fuck away.” He turned on his heel and darted back across the street. *** It had always been the Shae family. As she turned to retreat from her failed night Underground, Shara shivered at the cold, or perhaps at the thought of ruling. Her mind again turned to the thought of a political marriage, but without the tinge of romance. Despite the limits of her Terran perception, Ayna Shae was in tune with people in a way that cast a shadow over the abilities of her Illara husband and stepchildren, and far surpassed Shara’s own Inari abilities to sense people. Ayna was a born mother, and so she mothered an entire city of survivors. Shara never wanted children of her own, let alone a city of people to serve as if they were her children. As Shara stepped through the doorframe, out into the streets of Prin, she kicked a piece of the shattered glass. She meandered down the streets before turning toward circular streets that made up the States House streets. As all the eligible bachelors in the ranks of the Pact came to mind, and she wondered if she could forge a loving marriage with any of them, she took a sharp left and decided she would not head home. She would go to see Hafi, general of the Pact Army and the confidant of both herself and her mother. Stone walls gave way again to small buildings. Hafi’s own house was a well-kept squat unit. She came to the crimson door she knew so well and knocked. As the door swung open, Hafi’s concerned look melted into a smile, and he swept Shara into a hug, enveloping her in his large frame. “What are doing you out here so late, little princess?” he asked as he set her back down. She laughed. “I was supposed to be at a poetry reading tonight in the Underground, but it was . . . cancelled.” He didn’t miss a beat. “Fighting in the Underground again. That is a lot of trouble for people who have no credits on either faction.” The slight frown on his face turned into a small smile as he took a half step back and asked in a conspiratorial tone, “Were you heading to the place with the good sangria?” Shara smiled back at him—the same smile she had given him since he began training her ten years ago—and she kept her silence as she leaned over and propped herself up on the doorframe. He laughed—the same laugh he gave her when her antics amused him. He had not broken her trust in the past, and he wouldn’t break it now. If her mother found out about her excursion in the morning, then Hafi would be the first person Ayna would complain to about it, and he would still keep her secret. Tonight, he was Shara’s general, not her mother’s. “It’s not like sangria is in a good state right now anyway—since trade with the western towns is increasingly difficult and fruit choices are more limited,” she replied. At this, he threw his head back and laughed loudly as he began to turn and retreat into the house. “Figures you would pay attention to trade issues when it affects getting good fucking sangria.” Shara brushed past him into the living room, giving him a shrug as she turned and dropped herself onto the couch. “A girl has to have priorities.” Hafi sat in his winged armchair and looked her over. He could never turn off his guardian mode entirely, and she felt his eyes appraising her for wounds or any evidence she had gotten close to the fighting. She felt him relax back into the chair when his search revealed that she was unscathed. She donned her girlish smile again. “Did you finish aging the whiskey Mom sent you?” When he responded with a raised eyebrow, she shamelessly broadened her smile to the point of ridiculousness. He grunted his disapproval, but got up from his chair. She followed him into the kitchen, where leftovers sat on the counter from a quick meal: roasted fowl he had half-shredded, half-sliced into thick slabs. “I must see if I can get my hands on some new flours that came in. I overheard the cook saying that one was the right weight to make a good pasta,” she offered. Hafi handed her a short glass with a few ounces of amber fluid. “It’s been a while since I have had pasta . . . That would be an acceptable payment for this—enough flour for two weeks’ worth of pasta—since you know how long I take to age this stuff.” He poured himself a glass, swirled it under his nose, and smiled. “This would go well with a good Bolognese sauce. A pity to waste it on sangria lovers who can’t appreciate the complexity of flavors.” “I may not appreciate it fully, but I listened to Dad droning on after he made you the cask. Something about the dark and peaty flavor that would come from the wood. And without me, you’d have nothing to put your pasta sauce on.” She took a sip and was careful not to wrinkle her nose. “What the hell does ‘peaty’ mean, anyway?” “For the pathetically uneducated, it is the salty and smoky flavor. And, despite your father’s brilliant attempts to season the wood with flavors, this really is sad compared to the real stuff.” She rolled her eyes at the barb and smiled. “Ah, I must ask Dad to make you a second cask with a less peaty finish for my uneducated palate. How would you know what the real stuff tasted like?” Hafi grunted. “Ceafield lives on salvaging. Eighty years is nothing for a properly sealed scotch bottle. They last. The Hall was filled with treasures like real Old Terra scotch.” “The Hall? You’ve never told me of this glorious place.” “Eh—it’s like a museum, except the Guild uses everything in it for payment for jobs.” Shara opened her mouth to ask about the Guild, only to get a glare from Hafi. “That’s enough of that.” Dark tones and quick words always ended every discussion Shara tried to create with Hafi about his mercenary days, so she turned and walked back to the living room, where she sprawled out on the couch again, half-upright, to continue drinking. She watched the liquid shift in transparency as the various sources of light around the room filtered through while she sipped it. “Hafi?” “Mmmmmf?” “I know things aren’t going well. Mom only works so late when there is a problem . . . Is it the Xenai?” Hafi took another sip and started eyeing her protectively again. After a moment, he sighed and took a large gulp of his whiskey. “Yes. We lost the canyon this week . . . And the half of the army that was in the pass. Completely cut off. We are mustering everyone we can with the conscription clause to go out there and defend the edge of the pass before any Xenai get to Prin.” The Xenai horde so close to Prin? Shara squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, the black behind her lids seeming to swirl like the smoke barrier that surrounded each Xenai. She could almost see Prin—her home—enveloped in it. No wonder her mother was so busy. “The sorghum . . . ?” Hafi gave her a nod and took another sip. Despite its hardy nature and that Prin could have used the full harvest, Ayna had elected to send almost all their usable sorghum to the southwest because of the settlements over the mountains’ lack of crops. They had hunted most species to near extinction and had almost nothing to eat besides small handfuls of foraged food. Ayna made them a deal—they would send half of their harvest to Prin, along with recruits for the Pact Army: every young person between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five. Despite the lower yield, the sorghum saved the people on the other side of the mountain and provided Prin with enough of two different needed resources over the summer. The agreement was a sore spot for many of Prin’s leaders, given how indefensible the settlements were. If the Xenai ever attacked them, Prin would lose all their yield from the crops. And that’s precisely what had just happened. Ayna would face the backlash from the other leaders, who didn’t care about the people she had saved, or that she had mustered up more soldiers for the army when Prin needed soldiers most, but only that the grain was lost. “How many died?” “We aren’t sure if they are all gone, but we haven’t been able to contact anyone who was stationed there. Aaron Shriver sent us a message on the SatNet before we lost contact with him, too.” Aaron had been a few classes ahead of Shara in her school days, and given her age, she felt safe in assuming that he was pretty far down the command chain. That wasn’t a good sign. She glanced at Hafi. He sat staring at the last drops of whiskey in his glass. His eyes flashed between sadness and anger. “We are deploying the whole Pact Army in a few weeks. Everyone but the Prin Guard. I’ll be staying a little longer to recruit where I can—there are a lot of people on either side of the conscription age bracket that we could really use.” Shara took a sip, feeling the cloud of shadow over both of their thoughts filling up the surrounding room. “You won’t get many. Maybe not any . . .” She swirled the liquid around and glared at it, only slightly aware that she and Hafi looked like mirrored images. “We can’t keep doing this, Hafi . . . These aren’t little skirmishes of our men and a handful of Xenai anymore. This is a real war. The only allies we have close to us are Century, and you know Kingston Cross isn’t willingly going to bring his people here to be conscripted. Even if he did, there aren’t enough of them to make much of a difference. We have to win something. Have you talked to her about letting—” “I talk to her about it every goddamn week, Shara, but you know how it goes. Your mother won’t agree unless everyone else is dead, including me. And even then, you’ll have a harder time fighting her than the Xenai. She is as stubborn as a damned croc prepping for a death roll.” Shara swallowed the smile that threatened to take over her face. The schools of Prin had never thought it important to teach the kids about the swamp creatures around Ceafield. Shara had never asked what they were like. It seemed more fun to imagine the craziest beasts that her mind could conjure. Putting on her grim stare again, she continued, “We have to convince her.” “_You_ convince her. I’ve been trying for three years, Princess—and warning her she’d have to face that day for seven more years. The day I started training you, I told her this would come. Eventually.” “I can’t convince her, either. She always brings up the cave and how I needed to be rescued.” Hafi let himself show a slow but sad smile. “She does the same with me, no matter how many times I remind her that it was you who saved my life in the end.” Shara shifted lower onto the couch, resting her neck on the arm as she let her mind wander. Thoughts slipped over her at different angles, and she spun them around, contemplating the way forward and what few tools she had at her disposal. She held the drink by the rim of the glass as she moved it in a circle, sloshing the last sip of amber fluid in the bottom up the sides. She let her hands drift down to her lap, rebalancing the glass between them both. She could almost see it. The full thought, the first one in a plan, was in front of her, but still in a bunch of unconnected pieces. “You have the same look as your mother. You even mouth words to yourself like she does when she is coming up with something. What horrible idea are you thinking?” It took a moment for her brain to shift from the forming image to process the words that Hafi had said. “It’s just the start of an idea. I’ll let you know when it solidifies.” Hafi stood. “Yes, you will tell me before you do anything. I agree that we need to convince her, but you running off and being a bullheaded dumbass won’t help.” He took her glass from her hands, downing the last of the drink before taking the cups back to the kitchen. Shara let her mind wander down each path of the problem. She wasn’t aware of the small living room anymore as her thoughts took her away. --- # AYNA It always came down to numbers, data, and logistics. Ayna Shae was not sure how she ended up here. This was not at all what she had intended when she got into politics. Of course, it ran in the family to be politicians. Her mother, Mara, and her father, Shannon, had been pillars of the Terran community before they had built the States House. They had lived through tragedy. The Sundering had torn the worlds as they knew them into pieces and put them back together like some surreal piece of artwork that had an echo of horror, but mostly just chaos. Both her parents had ran to the Gates together—the strange pinpoints of light that most people ran away from had collected a few who walked right into them. Those few who reached the Gates in time survived. With the remnants near where the Nagata crashed, those Terran survivors had started the community that became Prin, joined soon by the strange Illara. Ayna was here because she carried the torch, sure. But she was ultimately here because she cared. Born into chaos, grown into order, and built up from nothing, she and Prin had many things in common, and her love for the place went deeper than anyone fully understood. “Fuck no. We will not use the hill tribes as bait,” she spat. The dozen mouths around the table stilled. The room looked at her, holding its breath. She could hear the arguments they were spooling up in their minds. Every single one would come down to one point: sacrificing the hill tribes would give them the greatest chance of survival and the lowest number of deaths. “No way in fucking hell we are just going to leave them to die with no warning.” Ayna turned to Hafi, the general she had brought to power precisely for his brutal problem-solving. “Is there any way to use the settlements as bait after we evacuate the people?” Hafi shook his head. “The Xenai scouts are in full view of the settlements. Any movement or attempt to evacuate will raise flags.” “How long will it take for Xenai command to take action if we start an evacuation?” “Minutes to put a plan into place. A few hours at most before they hit the evacuation.” “We can use their normal daily activities to evacuate some people during the day. Then start a full evacuation near the end of the day. Ambush the scouts before they can get the word out that we are there for the evacuees. Once your men are in place, you start the evacuation.” Hafi opened his mouth to protest. Ayna already had a raised eyebrow pointed at him. He closed his mouth and nodded. “We will need about a day to get in position and lay some traps without being seen.” Ayna gave a curt nod in his direction as she turned toward her aide, standing at the door. “Let me know when you get the last person safely into Prin.” She turned her head an inch to the side to look at the boy. “Bring me some fucking coffee.” The sudden shift of her gaze startled the poor kid. His eyes grew wide. He jumped to his feet and fumbled with the door while mumbling something that ended with “ma’am” before bolting through the doorway toward the States House’s kitchen. The door to her office clicked shut. Ayna turned on her heel and gave a wide gesture with her arm towards the door to signal to the other observers that the meeting was over. They all stood, eyes scanning the room for anyone else willing to change her mind. No one made the move, and so they formed a line to leave the room. Everyone except Deman Dekro. He stood in his usual casual manner, his tall frame always somehow looking like it was leaning up against something, even when he was standing straight. He kept his eyes firmly down on the table ahead of him. As each other member of the council filed past him, they looked away. They all knew, just as she did, that the Pact Army recently conscripted his son; he was just a year older than Shara. “Hafi.” Ayna met his eyes and nodded back toward the blackboard wall covered in chalk drawings. He stayed while the room emptied. Ayna walked over to where Deman stood at the end of the table, still not moving to leave, and still not looking or saying anything to her. She did the only thing she could. She reached across the table and put a hand over his, and she lied, “I know, Deman. We have all been where you are . . . Or we will be soon.” He looked up at her, surprise on his face. She could see the question in his eyes of whether she would allow Shara to be sent when she turned seventeen—a question she often asked herself. She smiled and nodded, giving his hand a small squeeze. He seemed to accept her implied promise that she would send Shara, and he nodded back to her and turned to leave the room. As the door shut behind him, Ayna sat down with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know how to do this, Hafi. How do I choose who lives and who dies? Against all logic, I’ve made a call. A call that sentences your kids to death, rather than a few farmers in a small mountain pass. Is it justifiable just because your soldiers agreed to some terms when they moved here? Or their parents did, anyway?” Hafi sat and placed his hand on top of hers. “You don’t decide who dies. You don’t decide who lives . . . You . . . you decide what matters to those of us who lose sight of it.” He waved at the chalk on the wall behind them. “We all see strategy. You see people. We all want to win. You alone know what isn’t worth losing.” Ayna smiled down at the table. “Thanks. I needed someone to make up emotional bullshit to keep me going.” “That’s what I am good at.” She laughed. “It is good I didn’t meet you until I was about to have you killed. This entire city might not exist otherwise.” He winked. “I’ve never forgiven you for nearly sending me to the grave. But, at least I am badass enough to change your mind, you stubborn bitch.” Ayna threw her head back and laughed. As the moment tapered off, she reached over and squeezed Hafi’s hand. “You mean, luckily you were useful enough to change my mind! But, now I need to figure out all the other ways Prin could fall apart.” She tapped the tabletop, which lit up in response to her fingerprint. She began shuffling through documents too classified for Hafi to see, knowing that he would take the hint. The door swung open, and her aide shuffled in. He placed the coffeepot in the center of the table, glanced at her, then bolted back out of the room to his desk. Hafi chuckled as he stood and moved toward the door. “If you’re not careful, that boy will need to be potty trained again.” Ayna smiled, but didn’t look up from the pages of text. “I’ll call his mother.” *** Ayna burst into the study that her husband kept meticulously clean. From outside the room, she had heard the light strum of a guitar. She crashed through the doors. She had intended to walk lightly through, so as not to interrupt him. Often her inner turmoil burst out of her, no matter her best intentions. He sat in his corner in a deep forest green, high-backed chair, surrounded by shelves of books. Most of his library had been salvaged and covered such a wide variety of topics there was no way he could ever consume all of it. He kept them for the house, believing that someday the books would be needed by someone in the city. Most seemed too arcane or filled with Old Earth to be of much use. Sure, maybe someone would pick up that electrical engineering textbook, but outside of the basics of circuitry and soldering, many things in Prin were different. Their primary means of manufacturing was through the dimension bots. Feed them any blueprint, and they could print it out, sometimes in minutes, sometimes in days. There was little to no need to wire anything up, let alone use resistors or capacitors, as the old books talked about. The machines printed materials with the needed levels of conductivity, or could create amalgams on the fly with the right resistance. On the table in front of her husband was a spread of tools he had recently used to change the strings of his guitar. Guitar strings were one of their luxuries. They had been rewound with various scraps scavenged from the world around them. Jo complained about this fact often, the way it changed the tone of the guitar and how they so easily fell out of tune. It was easy to forget how many people had never seen a guitar, much less held one or learned to play one. Ayna raised a hand, palm up, and shrugged in apology when Jo looked up, startled by her explosive entrance. He smiled and placed the guitar on its stand next to the armchair. She kicked off her shoes and walked across the worn Persian rug—another salvage—until she was close enough to collapse into his lap, pulling her knees up to her chest as she wrapped an arm around his neck and leaned into him. She sighed contentedly, letting the day slide off of her. “Your ass is so bony,” Jo mumbled, shifting underneath her until he found the right angle to avoid her bones digging into his legs. She lifted her head and looked at him with a mischievous, unapologetic smile, then rested her head against him again. Jo chuckled. “Rough day?” Her rough days were the days she brought home her fury, which quickly dissipated into dark humor and playfulness with Jo or the girls. Jo could never drop his anger and frustration completely, which was why he had retired from the eye of the public nearly as soon as Ayna and he had married. Without the worries of a newborn city and its survival, he was calm and collected and hard to ruffle. It suited them to be such a pair: the woman who never stumbled for long and the man who stayed level-headed in the background. “Jotryll Shae.” Her voice rang out in sharp, stern tones before dropping into a sigh. “Every day is a rough fucking day,” she muttered into his chest. He rubbed her shoulder softly and waited for her to continue. Sometimes she did and sometimes she didn’t. “We’ve had to start evacuations along the Cascade Line settlements. I had to fight for it, too. No one else wanted to take the risk of evacuating the people there. In a room of twelve, I was the only one who cared for hundreds of lives . . .” Ayna knew this was an exaggeration. Hafi cared—but slightly less than he cared about winning. It was what made him good. He had served Ayna well, first as a hired bodyguard, then in the Prin Guard and as general of the Army of the Pact. It was his need to win that had brought her back to Prin when she had wanted to forsake the duties before her. She had not wanted to marry the strange Illara man in whose lap she now lounged. She had not wanted to run Prin after her parents. She had taken up the mantle because no one else would, and she didn’t want to watch Prin die. Hafi was for hire, so she hired him. She had run away to Ceafield right when Hafi needed to leave Ceafield. So he had convinced her she needed to win for her people in Prin because it was the only way he could win. The journey out and back had taken longer than the time she’d spent there, and she had always been grateful for Hafi. He was a face and a name that others may have forgotten, but he was her cornerstone. He had taught her about a struggle she had never known. It was all around, even here in Prin. Layers of society. Those like the mountain tribes, which weren’t worth risking a small evacuation team to save before a giant Xenai army swept over them, living beside those like hers, which an entire squad would risk their lives for without any question. Unquestioned and protected. Jo dropped his hand to her back, massaging in slow circles. Patient. Waiting for whatever else she decided to share. She thought about Shara’s own seventeenth birthday. If Prin was still standing, Ayna had come up with various ways to avoid Shara’s own conscription into the Army of the Pact. She could easily pull off any of them and keep her daughter safe and, she believed, keep Prin safe as well. But, explaining those actions was not as simple, even to herself. Jo’s two eldest daughters had both missed the mandatory conscription ruling, already enrolled as full-time students at the U. This had been their way out, along with having received no combat training. Mandatory conscription for them would have meant administrative tasks and medical assistance, which near a battle is not without risk, but the closest to safety they could have gotten—this was where Dekro’s son would end up. Shara was well trained. She would be in vanguards and used wherever her power made her valuable, and the way Hafi talked about her, Ayna suspected that would be everywhere. Ayna had done her best to downplay how powerful her daughter was with Source from the public and even her fellow politicians, but she could not hide it from Hafi, who had helped trained the girl. Would his desire to win still be more than how much he cared for Shara? Hafi knew the other risks of placing Shara in the path of the Xenai. Neither of them forgot the day when nearly fifty of them had charged at the walls of Prin, howling her name. She knew it was only a matter of time before he weighed those risks far enough below the consequences of not having her in the army that their occasional arguments became something more. _Am I weighing it all wrong, too? Am I lying to myself just as much as I lied to Deman today?_ She needed to get more conscriptions, to keep Hafi happy and give her a reason to not send Shara before her seventeenth birthday. There were only two other untapped places for her to get soldiers: the unregistered people in the Underground, and Century. She would try to pull Century in first; at least they had some experience fighting Xenai. The Undergrounders would have to be a last resort. Ayna decided these thoughts were not worth breaking the quiet peace of the moment with Jo. _I’ll send a message to Kingston tomorrow._ She sat patiently as Jo worked his way over her mid and lower back. His hand gave a gentle but abrupt squeeze at the top of her butt, and he kissed the back of her head. Ayna let him continue massaging her before she stood, took both his hands into hers, and pulled him gently behind her toward the door to their bedroom. # HAFI It was the stench they all noticed first, but only Hafi, born into a world of death a lifetime ago, recognized it. The mountains looked as they always did, the aspen, pine, and juniper trees framing the path that was covered in dry pine needles and the leftover crumbles of leaves decayed in winter. Everything was as it should have been, except for the smell. As they progressed toward a drop in the mountainside, the smell grew more potent. At first it was sweet and curious. As it lingered in the nose, it turned sour. The aroma felt sticky. It permeated the senses and didn’t quite leave before the next breath, which increased the intensity of the scent, rather than clearing it. By the time the troop of soldiers and civilians had progressed another dozen meters, the smell had dripped through them all, through the rags and clothing they held to their faces, and sent them into fits of hacking. Whatever it was, they all felt like it covered them. It stuck inside them, clinging to their skin, hair, and clothes. Hafi held his fist in the air, signaling for all who followed him to stop. He waved them toward the thicker trees to the north and singled out one of the new recruits, Lee, to follow him. As the civilians and remaining escorts hid in a cluster of juniper trees, Hafi stepped forward until the steep decline severed the group from his view. He shifted to descend at an angle that would prevent the pull of gravity from toppling him and his recruit. Lee followed the path Hafi was making, but not at quite the right angle. He lost his footing a few times. Hafi was certain he would watch the boy tumble to his death, but at the last second, Lee always managed to grab a root or thick clump of brush before his slide turned into an unstoppable tumble. Halfway down, the trees thinned out. The smell was just as stifling, even as the air and sky opened around them. As the hill leveled out, Hafi turned to head straight down the next decline of the mountainside. The trees near them seemed to wither. Leaves on some branches were dead. The air was still. There was not a single sound of birds or the gentle rustling of wildlife. Silence hung in the air, wrapping itself around them like the scent had. Hafi knew what the smell was, of course. He had seen many massacres. The smell of old blood and decay was not foreign to him. What was odd was the location. There had been no battle nearby. The entire war with the Xenai was about ten miles to the west of them in the mountains. The only Xenai troops in the area had been a small group of scouts to the south. He had turned the small band of farmers and soldiers this way to avoid the scouts while they were evacuating. The small group was mostly Illara, with himself, Lee, and a young farmer couple as the only Terrans. They were lucky. A troop of Terrans would have gotten much closer to the Xenai before anyone noticed them. But the few Illara in the group who were gifted with Intuition had felt the Xenai presence. Hafi sent the Illara soldiers to scout, and they had returned with the grim news that the Xenai blocked their former path. With as many children as adults in the group, and only a half-dozen soldiers, they were in no position to fight the Xenai, or even distract them. So, here they were, on a path that wasn’t a path at all, walking into the thick scent of massacre and death. As Hafi worked his way down the slope of the mountain, he saw a plateau in their decline. A small outcropping of red rock lay slightly south of their location. He turned again to travel horizontally across the mountainside. Small rocks jutted out from where the mountainside turned into a pure vertical drop of thirty feet. Not high enough to kill either Hafi or Lee, but enough to make Hafi’s head spin. He hated heights, but knew he couldn’t send Lee to the edge to look at what lay in the flat terrain below. He stepped halfway out, just far enough to get a view to the east, where Prin lay behind the hard-to-see crack in the cliff wall. Bounded on three sides by similarly steep hills, the valley was the last segment of the mountain to get through before approaching the west side of Prin. Every entry point from the three mountainsides was precarious and created a small, natural barrier to any large army movements. The east side was not wide open, but a wall of rock thirty feet deep—with only the one small pathway through it. The path itself came out of the cliff face beside Prin, right in the center of the sight lines from the States House, where Prin had built its strongest defenses and placed its most skilled snipers. If the Pact put its army on the east side of the cliffs, any push by the Xenai through the choke point would be near suicidal. Even if the Xenai could push past Prin’s immediate defenses on the other side and spread out to the north and south, the weaponry held by Prin could wipe out anyone in the fields outside its fortifications. This was the scenario Hafi looked for first. Had some Xenai force gotten around his men, leaving the Prin Guard to fight them off? The funnel made by the cliff walls was clear. In fact, the eastern half of the valley he could see looked exactly as expected. He took a slow step farther out on the rock. Lee was creeping out behind him. Hafi waved him back as he looked down into the valley straight below. A wave of nausea overtook him. He recognized immediately that what had been a dry, empty plain was now a lake of blood. He felt as if the lake knew he was here, looking down at it. He could see it in his mind, rushing up towards him, forming arms of crimson waterspouts that would grab him off his ledge and suck him into a sudden whirlpool mouth that would vanish after it devoured him. He quickly stepped back, nearly knocking Lee over. “What—” Hafi quickly covered the boy’s mouth with his hand while bringing his other hand up to put a finger to his own lips. He stepped out of the way and gestured to the boy to look for himself. He watched Lee creep up even slower to the edge. The boy was no soldier and had no thought to check the cliffs for any sign of a battle. Instead, he looked straight down into the bloody field. His almond skin paled, and he backed up in a scramble. Hafi gestured the boy to follow him farther up the hill, then gave him orders. “Go back to the group. Send out Yorshe and Maltro to find a path north without Xenai in the way. As soon as they do, you take everyone through. Then circle back around to reach Prin from the north. It’ll add a few days to the journey, but you cannot take the civilians through that without knowing what it is.” Lee nodded and headed back up the hill when the full situation dawned on him. He turned to look down at Hafi. “You’re not coming back with me?” Hafi shook his head. “We need to know what it is. That’s my job now. We are close enough to Prin. I can get there through this path if nothing is . . . alive. If I get through, I will gather reinforcements to meet you on the northern path.” The discomfort on Lee’s face was contagious, and what had seemed to be the logical move to Hafi now felt like his own death sentence. It was too late now. It had to be done, and he was the only one who could do it without endangering the group. As Lee stood digesting the information, Hafi reached out, placed a hand on each of the boy’s shoulders, and turned him to face back up the mountainside. “Be quick. Be quiet. Go.” The boy moved and quickly vanished into the trees. Hafi turned on his heel. He stood for a moment, the valley out of sight. He recalled the vision of it over and over again until conjuring up the image didn’t provoke fear or the urge to run. He walked toward the southern hill, taking the longest but easiest path down. *** Hafi descended, and with each step, the foliage on the ground darkened, until all the green and golden hues preparing for the winter turned to various shades of red and small, sharp, thornlike protrusions of red crystal grew on the plants. Nearest to the ground, the thorns were thickest, thinning as the foliage became taller. The smell continued to grow, assaulting him with such intensity that every other sense dimmed in comparison. He could not hear any wind or movement other than his own. He was aware of the sound of branches breaking as he stepped on them, but the only sound he really heard was the squish of the ground as he walked. Each drop of his sweat turned to blood in his own mind as it ran down his body, until he felt as though it drenched him, even though there were only small accumulations of red mud on his armored boots. He tasted wet copper sliding down his throat like clots of flesh each time he swallowed. He pulled his rifle from its strap and stepped down onto the flat ground of the valley. His boot crunched on something beneath it, then slipped down into a slurry of crimson. His composite armor had no traction on the slimy mud beneath the fluid, so he took a second to steady himself in the muck. He lowered his center of gravity until he felt solid and pivoted with care to check the edges of the field, ready to fire at anything that moved. Everything was still. Hafi took slow, calculated steps, making sure each foot was secure before shifting his weight onto it. The crunch of each step faded as he moved farther into the swamp. He assumed he had been walking on the red crystals, which were now larger and protruding out of the goo. He realized how oddly beautiful they were. Like giant rubies growing into the red brush. This deep in the field, many bushes seemed to have grown around larger crystal formations that came up to his shins. He continued to move with caution, finding the red fluid was getting deeper. In the mountain air, the fluid was cool against his skin as he felt it seeping through the cracks of his armor and soaking through his underlying cloth suit. It didn’t take long before he was wading through the bloody basin. Occasionally, a large mound of rock or harder mud was on the floor of the lake. His boot would slip over it until it found a firm enough spot to stand on the other side. He could not see through the liquid well enough to determine what these lumps in the mixture were. He should have skirted the edge of the weird swamp. He knew that being out in the middle of the mess was a poor tactic, but the thought of taking the long way through the mess was too much, and he knew he could not keep control over the growing horror in his mind for much longer. Instead, he glanced around the edges and back to his destination with every step he took. His foot slipped again over something round and long. He had written off these objects as fallen branches or logs that had been soaked through and accumulated layers of bloody slime. But this time, his boot caught on some part of the object, dredging it up between his legs as he planted his foot ahead of it. He looked at the smooth object. It started out thick but thinned out at the other end. The shape was not a fallen branch or other foliage. He shifted his weight to his back leg, placed the toe of his boot under the object and pushed the smaller end up out of the sludge. It flopped upwards, spraying drops of red as it broke free of the surface. Hafi recognized what had been a forearm, with a hand still attached. A few fingers were missing, but the ones that were left held a stiff and slightly curled grasp that he had seen many times before. The lifeless hand gripped at the air in obvious torment before slipping back under the ripples of crimson fluid. Hafi pushed through the fluid with renewed vigor. Each step over an object now conjured fresh images in Hafi’s mind. He frantically scrambled to make sense of it all, as if assigning a body part to what he was stepping on and over made it better. As his mind raced to solve a puzzle that was ultimately unimportant, he realized he could hear a noise other than his own movement in the field of blood. There was a low hum. It took him a moment to slow down the momentum he had built up in the water, but he came to a halt, even though his mind was yelling at him to move faster. He could not feel any vibrations in the ground. He glanced around. There was nothing visible in the field. He was nearly halfway through the valley before the pass. He was just a few dozen steps away from where the plants and trees turned back to greens and browns. He resumed moving, thrusting each leg through the liquid as hard as he could, pausing for just a moment to check his footing before leaning into the next stride. The humming did not get louder or go away. The consistency of the noise drove itself into his mind, and he felt panic well up inside his chest. He picked up the pace. With each step, he reminded himself to find solid footing before shifting his weight. The reminders fell flat, and his speed increased, and he knew that he was not checking his footing well enough. Even so, he pushed harder toward the pass. He nearly fell three times as he moved through the mushy red ground. The depth of the red lessened. First, returning to cover merely the tops of his boots. Then it barely came halfway up them. As he emerged from the weight of the lake, he moved faster, free from the physical weight but taking on another weight as he scanned the valley and continued to move. He was no longer finding body parts in the soup, but seeing them and bounding over them. He found he had not been imaginative enough. While legs and arms were a part of the mixture, other parts were entrails and organs. A few pieces belonged to rabbits, alongside the head of a fox. One part on a mound nearly clear of blood was smooth and spongy, and the only name he could assign to it was “brain.” The white chunks on the ground beside it looked like pieces of skull. Another few feet away lay what was a jawbone. Crystals had grown over the part of the bone that touched the ground, creating the strange impression of a crown put on the wrong way. Hafi took a last leap out of the muck onto the patch of ground next to the brain and bone fragments. From there, he could leap from one clear spot to another, until he was out of the bloody field entirely. He kept moving. He was nearly to the cliff pass before he realized he was running at full speed. His heart was pounding, and he could hear nothing else. He stopped to catch his breath. The stench of everything he had experienced in the field was still coating him. His armor was tinted red from the thighs down. He shivered with relief when he realized he was clear. As his breath slowed and his mind cleared, the humming returned. It was less like a distant vibration now, and more like a note being sung—a single note hanging around him. He pushed it back in his mind as he leaned forward, placing his hands on his knees and gulping for breath. Each breath quivered and gave out before he had fully drawn it in. He cursed at himself for his own lack of fortitude and thought of the soldiers on the other side of the pass. His soldiers. He stood and looked back at the field, breathing each shaky breath and replaying his walk through the blood swamp. He saw himself running to where he stood now and told himself no one else could ever see him run like that. His breathing was steady enough then. He turned back toward Prin. The guards of the pass were minutes away, likely already alerted that someone was coming through. He forced himself to whistle, finding that only a soft, single note came out. Walking through to the end of the pass, he painted a smile onto his face. --- #### [[2.1.1.0 - Song of Sundering|Song of Sundering]], the first novel in the [[2.1.0.0 - the Sunder Series|Sunder Series]] → [Available on your favorite eBook platforms](https://books2read.com/b/arcwtfsos)