Page 14

The people of Verpace face a terrible conundrum.

The licht must be contained, and yet we cannot hold it.

It lusts for freedom, to consume and break us.

The only option is to flee from one tract to another, a mad race against death.

~ Musings of a Philosopher, author unknown

* * *

Esterra stood on a wide tree root, looking out at a field of glistening white.

Coming down from the hollow she had thought it a place of snow and cold, but the muggy heat drowned that idea before it had even really formed.

This was a tract of pure humidity and the sharp acrid bite of salt.

Stagnant, milky water lapped at the giant mangroves.

Everything was covered in layer upon layer of salt crystals.

Crunching through the mineral with her hard-soled boots, she had marvelled at the trees.

The wan greenery dripping from the branches was a clear indication of life.

They had adapted to the harsh environs, sending roots down through the salt to sip tentatively at the water beneath.

They were great bulwarks within an undulating sea of crystals.

The trunks and thin needle-like leaves were coated in a fragile crust that crackled beneath Esterra’s touch.

She had found the place by following a particularly persistent rumour of valuable gems sought after by the merchant-barons of the Circle, and other tales of steel lying in piles ready for the picking.

Whispers had drifted her way over a long period, a rumour about a map, then some gossip about some tractwalkers who had set off in search of the alleged treasure.

A few dozen weeks later another tale told about the vast wealth waiting for an intrepid explorer to unearth.

Her cynical nature caused her to doubt all these vague hints, and she had been careful not to pursue any trails too brazenly.

This reticence born of doubt remained strong for a long while, but when the tales and hints did not stop, she came to a decision to follow them.

She finally tracked down a scruffy little vagabond who offered a rough map, but she paid the bare minimum for it, acting like it was a joke.

Esterra ignored the temptation presented by the rumours for a long while.

She did not want to arouse suspicions lest others form similar conclusions based on her lines of questioning.

Gossip had an almost miraculous ability to spread in Verpace, despite the dangers of travel and the distrust inherent in all dealings.

In any case, life became too busy to pursue the stories, what with hunting, trading, carting supplies for tals from one side of the world to the other, catching a fever in some poisonous desert tract far from anywhere, being a bodyguard for a water salesman for a good long stint, smuggled a child out of the Circle for an exiled parent, more hunting, and even more tractwalking.

The map was left forgotten deep in her pack, crushed under a thousand other things.

Then one day, while finally doing a full clean of her kit and review of her meagre assets, she found it, crumpled and torn and barely legible.

At the end of her luck and financially destitute once again, she read the little piece of parchment with the lines squiggled all over it and hope breathed life back into the dreams of tals and profit.

She was not sure when she made the choice to believe the stories and take up the gamble. It was not the first time she had heard promises of wealth and prosperity awaiting any who had the pluck to seize it. It was not even the first time she had pursued such a tenuous promise. But she did tell herself, albeit half-heartedly, that if this one also turned out to be untrue, then it would be the last.

So now, after long travels and many grumbled doubts, she was finally here, according to the mixed clues of crystal snow and sharp water and a dry-yet-moist forest that could kill.

All of these were nonsensical on their own yet combined with all the other vague hints she had pieced together, her conclusion that the promised land was a tract of salt, salt water, and trees seemed to have proven correct.

This one certainly fit the mould.

She sat down on the wide ledge of the tree root and pulled out the map.

Underneath the water stains, dirt, and general ageing of the scraped goat-leather, the fading ink indicated an island with a doorway.

She looked out over the jagged sea of white.

There were a few broken ruins of old buildings out there, some little more than low piles of rubble, others with the corners and pillars still standing a few paces high.

She turned the map around and tried to locate her own position.

The lack of defining features in both the landscape and the map did not help at all.

She sighed and sipped at her water gourd.

She was on a big tree near a hollow. How long would a tree survive such conditions? And was that smudge a hollow? Who even knew how old this map was?

What in all the stars-damned tracts am I doing here? The same old question.

Every bloody situation she found herself in, all the rough tracts she had bled her way through, each bitter cold night and each sweltering jungle, she always asked herself the same thing.

And she never really had much of an answer.

Like a rudderless boat, she drifted with fate’s wild tides, this way and that without purpose.

Maybe that was why she finally decided to do something, to make an active choice and seek out a fortune.

Maybe none of it meant anything.

Esterra shrugged.

It did not matter.

She was here, and here was apparently a place with wealth to be had for the taking.

All that was to be done is find the island and see if anything of value could be retrieved.

She pulled her hair back and tied it with one hand, fingers deftly intertwining the cord, then pulling it tight.

The largest ruins were some way off.

She would need to carefully navigate the sea of salt.

While it might seem solid, the fragility of the stuff could send her into the water if it broke. The thought sent a spike of cold up her spine. She could not swim.

Only thing to do is keep going.

A wide area of thick, intertwined roots formed a natural bridge to the next tree.

That was easy enough crossing.

But the next tree was connected only by a plain of slat crystals.

She stepped down and tested one particularly flat area.

The entire mass bobbed up and down gently as it took her weight, salt crystals grinding and cracking beneath the soles of her worn leather boots.

Nothing but water underneath.

Great . She took another step, then another, choosing spots where the crisscrossing roots emerged from the water, hopefully providing some foundation for the salt. Each step was tentative, gentle. She glanced back after awhile and sucked in a breath. The last tree was only a few paces behind her. This is going to be a long day.

She reached the other tree without event and went directly to the next after that.

The salt crackled beneath her boots.

Twisted roots creaked their displeasure.

The water slapped and lapped wetly below it all, ominous in its grey-white thickness.

Esterra felt incredibly heavy, each step hanging over her for a ponderous moment, threatening to send her down into the depths, swallowed up by the water, entangled in wood, embalmed in salt.

How many have drowned here? She heaved a deep sigh of relief as she propped herself on the wide, flat roots emerging from the trunk of the next mangrove.

The ruins that most resembled that scratchy island on her map were still impossibly distant.

The weathered stone looked warm against the land of jagged ice-like structures around them.

The heat of the sun reflecting off them made even the soft curves of the arches of long-broken windows look soft in comparison to the harsh surroundings.

With her finger, she ran a path between trees, almost like the traditional child’s game of connecting dots with lines in the dirt until they formed a picture.

Tree by tree she plotted a course that ran more or less directly towards her goal.

She squinted at the island.

There was a gap between that and the mangroves, a wide, open expanse of pure salt.

Nothing but glistening white, white, and more white.

This is not ice, Esterra.

There is no guarantee that it will hold your weight.

She sat back and looked for a long, quiet moment.

I could throw rocks, see if they break through.

Nope.

Dumb idea.

The rocks were not anywhere near her weight, and they might damage the areas that actually were solid, weaken the salt enough to collapse once she stepped onto it.

I could make a rope out of some roots, tie it around my waist, cross. She shook her head. Too much work, and not much help if the rope cut on some sharp edge of salt, or if her feet were trapped in the roots beneath the water. Stars curse this place. There had to be a way.

She considered constructing bridges from tree branches, alternate routes, running across, going across on her belly with arms and legs spread wide to distribute her weight.

Nothing seemed practical.

The first was impossible due to the distance and the work involved.

Running was a suicide mission.

Lying down would cut her guts to ribbons, as the salt crystals were incredibly sharp, and even if they broke under her weight, the fresh edges would be like freshly-honed knives.

Since she could find no solution, she decided to do what she always did: carry on.

There were a dozen tree-bridges to cross before she would come anywhere close to the island with the ruin.

Tackling the more immediate issues might give her some ideas for the later problem.

The concept had certainly worked in the past.

So she continued along her path, crossing slowly and carefully, one foot in front of the other, step by cautious step, from one mangrove to the next.

The day grew cloudy, the sun hiding its burning face as if it wished to withdraw its blessings from the tract and the little human struggling across it.

Esterra did not care.

Some people relished the heat, but she usually preferred the cold, particularly when travelling.

When it was cold, moving helped one to warm up, and one could always light a fire when settling down for the night.

But in the heat everything became unbearable.

It led to loss of vital moisture, too.

So the sun could bugger right off.

She rested after half a dozen little trips between the gnarled mangrove trunks.

The soles and upper leather of her boots were scratched every which way by the salt, but thankfully they were tough, snapping off the crystals before they could tear through.

She used a twig to brush the majority away.

The stick was almost cut in two by the end of the process.

Damn.

She sipped a little more water.

The air dried out her mouth.

Her lips were chapped. Can’t stay in this stars-cursed place too long. She sighed heavily. Only a half-dozen mangroves between her and the salt bridge. The outlook grew less hopeful the closer she got.

Her feet dangled a few inches from the opaque water as she sat catching her breath.

She considered the dearth of options available to her.

It seemed that no new solutions had arisen in her subconscious during the traversal of the tract.

Absolutely nothing.

She sighed heavily, chin in her palm, arm propped on her knee.

Despondency washed over her in its customarily dull, apathetic wave.

Something whipped by, splashing up water and jagged crystals in its wake.

Esterra flinched back from the open water, knife drawn.

But the surface fell still, swirling grey and white left in the wake of whatever lurked below.

Broken chunks of salt floated on the surface.

The smaller pieces gradually melted away.

She hovered for a moment, knife clenched in her sweaty palm, ready to stab or run as necessity dictated, but nothing emerged.

With some hesitation, she sheathed her blade.

So long as she kept out of the water, she would be fine. That’s worked well for me so far, anyway .

There was a sudden crunch of minerals, followed by a slithering splat.

A foul, slug-like creature squiggled across the root with eerie speed, salt-encrusted eyes staring out half-blind at the world.

Milky skin glistened wetly in the sunlight.

It lurched toward her with a single undulating movement, and she hopped back, hand low by her belt, ready to grab her knife.

The thing opened its mouth and emitted a croaking gasp, a briny stench riding along with it, the sound was ironically arid in its lack of breath.

It rose up and eyed her, gills opening and closing in wet wheezes.

It did not seem a stranger to the open air, and that made her uneasy.

Amphibious things were always more dangerous than standard land or water creatures, unpredictable, adaptable.

It lurched forward again, almost jumping through the air, viciously fast.

She spun back two steps.

Salt crackled beneath her boots.

She flicked a glance behind her.

In that brief instant the slug flew at her.

She kicked out, hit it right in the teeth, sent it flying across the tree roots and out of sight.

But she lost her balance, slipped, and fell straight into the bridge of salt with a thud.

It held. For a second. There was a loud crack, and the bridge broke. She fell into the water, screaming, flailing her arm.

And she floated.

She spat out a mouthful of salty water, the tang like knives as it dehydrated her tongue and gums instantly.

Her body was completely buoyant, as if a dozen hands with a hundred fingers held her up, refusing to let her sink and drown.

What in the stars… But she had no time to think.

Something brushed by her calf and she kicked and thrashed her way to the island with the ruin.

A chunk of salt struck one arm, and grazed a good patch of skin off.

The salt water in the wound stung like a bronze knife straight from the forge, unbearable.

She sucked in a breath and kept paddling.

She was not sure what to do, having never swam before, but she was making some sort of progress.

A pale serpentine body flicked by, just under the surface.

Esterra's knife flashed after the sound.

It found nothing but oily ripples and great wet chunks of salt.

She pushed and paddled and kicked her way forward.

The elation of not drowning quickly gave way to a deep terror of the creatures beneath her.

Only a few paces to go .

Esterra hauled in a huge gasp of relief as she dragged herself up the bank, careful to avoid the sharper shards which littered the shore.

Once she was well out of the water, she noted the blood on her arms.

The salt had cut her in the collapse.

It stung.

Salt water .

Stung like a right bitch.

She swore foully, spitting out whatever salt had made it into her mouth in the chaos.

She had heard salt was great for cleaning wounds, and hoped that there was enough of the stuff in her wounds to prevent infection. She swore again as the cuts throbbed. Her pack was cut in various places as well as soaked through. Hope it didn't get into the tinder.

Water splashed across her boots, a reminder of the pale things below the surface.

She slung her pack on and entered the shelter of the ruins.

The shade was cool on her wet skin, welcome relief after the blazing heat of the day.

When some people thought of ruins, they thought of skeletons lying in the pale sunlight, the ribcage still attached nicely to the spine, and somehow the skull and jawbone resting perfectly together as if nothing dared disturb them, and they lay like that forever, waiting to shock the naive trespasser or trip the wandering tractwalker.

But that was all nonsense.

Esterra found, more often than not, such bones broke down into dust and tiny fragments within a dozen years, even faster in humid conditions like this.

There were even bone-mites in some tracts, little tiny things that burrowed and bored through skeletons till they looked more like some kind of pitted fungus than bone.

She had heard rumours that those mites could get into living bone, if an incision was made and the two made acquaintances.

She glanced down at her salt-cuts and pushed the thought out of her mind.

There were no skeletons here, in any case.

The ruin was a messy, salty, yet surprisingly dry and barren waste of broken masonry and wood.

Perhaps the salt had absorbed all the moisture on this little island.

Her boots crushed planks into dust, the wood dried by the sun for so many years that the dust which comprised them only kept their shape by some miracle.

The granite walls were similarly damaged, cracks veining through the slabs in a hundred directions till the entire structure looked to have been pieced together by a surprisingly dedicated but exceedingly young child.

The mortar sloughed away in a dribble at the slightest touch.

Esterra was thankful whatever roof had once graced this building had long since collapsed and rotted alongside the inhabitants.

The susurrations of the marsh were silenced in these broken walls, as if a sacred veil lay over it all, demanding respect for all that had died here, people, buildings, all memory of the minds that once walked the empty halls, and even the very whispers of their spirits.

This tract had not always been a mangrove swamp.

Once upon a time it was a location of some enterprise, if the architecture was anything to go by.

She spotted a square pit.

On closer inspection, she saw stairs descending into a murky chamber.

It was not very deep, and the sunlight eked through the semi-twilight of the room.

There were a few piles of old wood, what she assumed had once comprised pieces of furniture or barrels.

Then, in one corner, she found a pile of heavily-rusted junk.

Maroon flakes of the stuff crumbled through her fingers, brittle and dry as a desert corpse.

She sifted through them, looking for a single solid piece of steel.

It was all dust. Frantic, she brushed it away, ignoring the little nips as sharper flakes cut into her. Finally her fingers hit something hard. She lifted a small nugget of rusty steel up, wiped it on her tunic to get the looser bits off, saw the gleam of pure steel beneath.

"Stars, yes,” she muttered.

“Stars bloody finally damned yes!"

She uncovered two more, no larger than the knuckle of her thumb, maybe two or three tals' worth.

Still, it meant that, for once in her life, the journey was not a complete loss.

She rubbed the steel till the majority of the rust was off.

She would need to find some sand to give the little nuggets a proper scrub, stop the rust from eating away even more of their worth.

She deposited them into her oiled pouch, and placed that deep inside her pack, hoping that she could keep them dry in her journey out of the swamp.

After taking a moment to sip some fresh water and swallow an ancient piece of dried fruit which she hoped had not gone too bad, she climbed the stairs out of the crypt.

Water still sloshed about in her boots, soaked her foot wrappings and enticed fresh curses out of her, but little could quell the good mood the little bits of steel had engendered in her heart.

She looked back out over the lake.

Some of her blood still stained the salt at the edge.

She wanted to go back to the same hollow she had used to enter the tract, head straight back to the Circle and cash in the steel for a new whetstone, some food, bandages.

I’ll need those .

She checked her bleeding wounds, a dozen tiny scrapes and two dozen thin cuts.

They stung like red hot brands, but only one or two would require any serious care once she escaped this watery hole.

“So how am I getting back across there?” She sat on a large piece of granite which had crumbled down from the ruined wall some decades before, and watched the water.

The breeze sent small ripples across the surface, but now and then some other movement, something from below, disturbed it too.

The little chunks of salt would ride these submersed waves, chinking against eachother as if they laughed at her, stuck on her island.

She sipped a little more water, stretched her neck, cracked her knuckles, frowned a lot, but no solution presented itself.

Minutes passed, and she decided to pace up and down for awhile.

Still nothing.

Ever a woman of action, this tense idling drove her mad.

She adjusted her arm in its sling, then circled the little isle.

She found no answers from any angle.

The tree she had slipped from was the closest to the ruins, and while she was fairly certain that she would not drown in the odd water, she hated the idea of soaking herself even more, and facing the shards of salt as well.

Then she noticed that the roots of the tree were more visible than before.

Rather, the water had receded a little.

For a moment she thought it a trick of her eyes, but she was never one for fancy and had no reason to doubt her senses here.

Sure enough, she saw the scrape of her boots in the broken salt on the main root, and it was much higher than it had appeared at the time, and much further from the water’s edge.

The water was draining away.

The salt crystals were less jagged and much smaller where they had been submerged, having melted through the constant contact of the water.

It had sucked away at them every high tide for so many thousands of hours, leaving them less dangerous to the poor fool stuck here in the tract.

Esterra had heard of such movements with bodies of water, but never seen the phenomena.

Tides, they called it.

She shrugged and set off along the now only half-submerged bridge of land that separated the island from the tree where she had begun.

She was thankful for the rounded edges of the salt, happy that her boots would not sustain even more damage.

Somewhere in the twilight she heard something slither, a wet slapping sound, down where the water had retreated.

Esterra picked up her pace.

The water was still murky, milky white and opaque.

Each step through it was precarious, even if it did only come up just past mid-calf.

She swore something slithered across her foot at one point, and it took all of her self-control not to kick at it or crush it beneath her hard heel.

She sucked in a breath and continued forward, step after tentative step.

The air stung her lips and nose and throat, it’s acrid smell like a million needles to her senses.

Need to get out of this pit , she thought.

Clean water in the next tract.

Make it there, bathe, drink, warm fire. The ground inclined upwards now, and she kept her pace steady. No need to make a mistake now.

The hoarse, croaking gasps of the crooked creatures rustled across the salt treacherous marsh like the spindly legs of a spider, crisp and unsettling.

Two of the things stalked her through the milky water as she made her way across the crackling earth and over the twisting roots.

They slithered through the mangrove roots and under the salt, but never stopped following as she retraced her steps.

They did not have eyes, but the smell of blood and the sound of her boots was enough for them.

Her bandages were soaked through in places.

She growled at the ripples in the water.

Evil little bastards.

But her anger was weak.

She was losing blood.

She dragged herself up onto the salt-encrusted mangrove root, gripping it with lacerated fingers, teeth white and scarlet in a rictus grin.

The muscles in her neck stood out as she climbed, water pouring from every part of her body but pink with blood.

It dripped into the break in the salt where she had emerged, splashed down into the murky dark.

A foul many-toothed mouth flicked up to taste it.

She groaned and pulled herself further up the wide tree root, swearing a foul curse through bloodied teeth.

There was a splash.

Then nothing.

She scanned the rippling surface of the water, looked all over the lower part of the tree root, eyes wide, each breath shallow but fast. Nothing came after her.

Jagged chunks of pale white mineral stuck from her shredded skin, blood ebbing around the very edges.

The smaller pieces melted into ruddy little rivulets down her cheeks, while the larger chunks absorbed the liquid, so it looked like her blood had crystallised and burst through her skin.

The flowing blood cut through the caked mess of salt and dried blood on her face, creating cracked canyons of smeared ruby.

Her dark eyes glistened from the mask of bloody salt, relentlessly alive.

Ruthlessly so.

She picked the larger pieces out, stifled her screams so as not to attract the attention of the eel-like monsters.

But inside she wept as she removed each bloody shard.

Blood ebbed up in the cuts immediately, and it felt like someone had slashed her with a hundred jagged blades.

She took her second tunic from her pack, and held her knife between trembling knees.

With shaking fingers on each side of the blade, she drew the tunic back and cut it into strips.

Blood splattered down across the blade and cloth as she did so.

Shit shit shit, I need to move faster.

But she knew haste would only increase her panic, and so forced herself to move deliberately, cutting one and then another piece, until she had a good dozen strips lying across her thighs. Only then did she sheath the blade and set to bandaging the cuts.

It was a sweaty task, using the blood-slick fingers of her one good hand and her teeth to tear, pull, tie, and tighten each bandage.

Her arm trembled with the exertion after quenching the five deepest wounds, and she took a break, sipping carefully at the little water she had left.

Weariness traced fingers down her sweat-coated back, up her neck, siding around her mind with tempting softness.

Can’t sleep , she thought.

She bit her tongue, but the pain was nothing in comparison to her wounds and had no effect on her.

She tied a sixth bandage, then a seventh.

There was less blood now.

Good . Her eyes grew heavy. She swore gutturally and kept working, another bandage, another knot, another runnel of blood stopped.

The water beside her erupted, and one of the monsters slapped down onto her thigh.

She dropped the bandage and snatched up her knife from between her knees.

The thing chewed through her tunic and trousers and into the meat of her thigh.

Shrieking in pain and rage, she stabbed down.

The blade barely missed her own leg, slit through the creature’s skin, cut halfway through the body, just behind the head.

The teeth kept gnawing, throwing her blood and water and its own milky blood all over Esterra.

She ripped the knife up, severing the head completely.

Still it chewed. She fell off the tree root, screaming. She landed beside the wriggling body of the thing. A wave of nausea flooded her mind. She swallowed and dropped her knife, shoved her fingers deep into the blood and meat and gristle of the monster’s decapitated head, clenched, and tore it from her flesh. She could feel the dead muscles still spasming. She threw the head into the water. The head floated for a moment on the surface of the water, bloody teeth gnashing blindly, then sank away.

Esterra turned away and vomited.

Only a little came up, mostly the last of the water she had drunk, but her body dry retched for a good while after, till her entire body shook with the effort, muscles trembling.

Before she could stop trying to heave her stomach out through her throat and bandage the new wound, the water exploded.

Tails thrashed it into a foaming mess, opaque water and pale blood frothing till it looked to be boiling.

The creatures fed on their own, then surged out of the water for the corpse.

One found no space among the others, and flopped around them, looking for a gap.

Then it spotted her.

It leapt at her with a wild, flowing movement.

She rolled and snatched up her knife, raised it before her.

The thing twisted mid-air, avoiding the blade, and razor teeth sunk deep into her wrist.

The pain seared up her arm.

She tried to turn the knife, but the monster coiled itself about her arm like a snake, tight, clamping down on the muscles until she thought the pressure would snap her bones, forcing her to drop her weapon.

True rage took over.

With every muscle of her arm and shoulder, she slammed its skull into the root of the tree, over and over, till it was nothing but mush and bits of bone.

The thing’s shattered teeth finally let go her mangled wrist.

Blood poured from a hundred tiny cuts.

The other creatures seemed oblivious to the death of their friend, still feasting in a mad frenzy.

She hurled the fresh corpse far out into the water, and climbed up onto the tree root, moving up the gentle slope of it to the trunk.

She sat with her back to the warm wood, bandaging her wrist with great difficulty, eyes ever on the monsters below.

She could only use her knees and teeth, clenching the bandage in turns between one or the other, sweat and blood draining from her body with terrible speed.

The bandage slipped, soaked through.

She retied it.

When she was done, she fainted.

Night had fallen when consciousness found her.

The thin crescent moon was out.

It was quite cold, enough to put some bite into the breeze.

The monsters were gone.

Perhaps they had had their fill for the day, or maybe she was just a little too high up for their evil little teeth to reach.

She swore quietly, barely glad to be alive, what with all the pain.

Little bastards .

Little glowing circles flickered over the water.

At first she thought the loss of blood had her hallucinating, but a few tired blinks later and she was convinced the lights were real.

She had heard of these.

Fireflies.

Hundreds of them, hovering and humming ever so quietly in the cool night like tiny candles.

The water lapped at the roots of the tree.

The tranquillity of the scene was marred by her knowledge of the creatures below.

Esterra imagined she could feel the minuscule weight of the little nuggets of steel in her pack, but it was likely just the weakness of blood loss and dehydration.

Such a tiny prize.

A mockery.

She wanted to fume, to let the bitterness consume her, but she simply did not have the energy.

Thankfully the previous tract had a good clear stream running through it.

She would drink then, drink deep, rest, piss, and then drink her fill again.

In the cold waters she could clean every last bit of salt out of her skin and wash the bandages and maybe snare whatever careful creatures foraged in the bush there, maybe find some roots or tubers to chew on.

Faeroot.

Regain her strength.

Then move on, always on.

Esterra slept till dawn.

By then the insects had disappeared.

The water was still under the pale glow, the burning orb of the sun till well below the tawil.

Her body ached in a thousand new ways.

Her thigh and wrist burned, little embers in each toothmark and salt-cut.

A whispered prayer rose up to whatever gods might be looking down at her, against infection.

Or worse , she thought.

She stumbled into the hollow, tired beyond mere lack of sleep or travel.

Starving.

Suffering from blood loss.

But resolute.

There, in the sluggish, salty mud of the hollow's entrance, she spotted those same odd tracks, one boot heavy, one light.

She might have cared, if exhaustion was not busy clawing at the edges of her fraying consciousness.

Her mouth was dry from all the salt.

She sighed and checked her gourd.

Empty.

Empty as the rusty damned tomb she had found.

Empty as the promises of Verpace.

Same as ever.