Page 43 of Veil of Vasara (Fate of the Five #1)

CHAPTER 43- SHADAE

I placed Ava’s body on the ground, as gently as possible. Those around me did the same. We had lost eight trackers in that fight. We had captured four sorcerers. I didn’t know how many of them we had killed.

I opened my palm to look at the talisman. It was small, rectangular, attached to a rope Claus had been wearing around his neck. It was soaked in blood. The engravings in the wood were filled with crimson now.

I don’t know why I had taken it. But leaving his body there, leaving all of their bodies there felt wrong. I had asked to bury them, when another tracker from Vasara, whose name I learnt was Vykros, had laughed in my face.

“Do you think they’d bury us?” he had said.

“It’s hardly as if they’d have the time,” I’d replied.

“Careful. We have our orders. Don’t push it, cadet.” Cheadd had overheard us.

So, I had taken it. As if it could absolve me of the guilt of leaving him to rot in the soil somehow. As if I had earned it. I could imagine him thrashing around in the afterlife, sick to think his killer was holding it.

But maybe, I thought, I had taken it because I hadn’t felt guilty, not in the way I thought I would have. When Ava had choked on her own blood, I hadn’t felt any remorse as I watched him do the same.

But still, he didn’t deserve to die. Not for any reason I could think of. Nobody had.

“Bitch!” someone shouted at me from the left. It was one of the sorcerers, bound by an immortal coil, infused with the same Curse they used on Vessel’s shackles. One of the three minor ones, the Curse of subjugation.

It was deliberate, it felt, that something as significant as the robbing of someone’s freedom was branded as a ‘minor’ thing. As if the label might convince those it stole from they’d been deprived of something trivial.

And it was easier for them to do it now that generations were growing in chains.

They can’t miss something they’ve never tasted. You've never let them eat.

But I remember.

And I’ll get it back. I’ll get theirs back.

I turned my head slowly to face them, my palm still open, the rope still woven between my fingers.

“That’s not yours,” the man said, nodding at the necklace.

“Riece, leave it, shut up,” another man next to him said.

“You fucking killed him. You’re nothing more than a dog!” he shouted.

I knew that my face remained impassive. I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything. After the adrenaline and fear had coursed through my veins hours ago, now, I felt flat.

“Look at her, she doesn’t even care!” Riece yelled.

The night was fading, and the early hours of the morning were beginning to make themselves apparent, a light layer of sun sifted amongst the clouds.

I walked towards the man.

“Look, you twat! Couldn’t you have kept your mouth shut?” the man who had scolded Riece whispered.

“What’s she going to do huh? Kill me. LIKE SHE KILLED HIM. COME ON, FUCKING KILL ME THEN!” Riece was screaming.

I stopped in front of him, looking down. “This isn’t going to work,” I said bluntly.

“What are you—"

“I know you want me to kill you, and I’m sorry, but I can’t.” My voice was tired, uncaring.

“Didn’t seem to be an issue with him…did it?” Riece nodded at my fist, clenched around Claus’ talisman.

He would have killed me first , was on the tip of my tongue but, what pathetic words they were to say, as if that would appease him, or make his death seem acceptable.

“No,” I said, “Not really.”

Riece shook his head in disbelief. “What are you doing with it anyway?”

“I’m…” I looked at it in my hand. “I’m not sure.” I held it out towards him. “You…you should have it.”

Riece huffed, his breath smacking against the cooler air of the morning. He looked at the man next to him. They both started laughing.

I withdrew my hand confused, looking at the ground.

“Nah…he was an arsehole,” Riece mumbled his voice cracked slightly. “But still.”

But still.

Cheadd approached me and the sorcerers. “What are you talking to them for?” he said through gritted teeth.

“He wanted me to kill him,” I answered.

Cheadd looked at Riece. “Nice try. But no.”

“Can you blame me?” Riece said, disdainfully.

“It’s not about blame. Stop making noise. Your tongue isn’t necessary for transport.”

I was incapable of hiding the shocked side glance I gave to Cheadd.

I didn’t know why I was surprised. It made sense. I didn’t know, or understand the nature of Ava and Cheadd’s relationship, but losing her had obviously affected him. If he had been aggressive before, he was even more so now.

“What are you looking at?” he said to me. “Watch them.” He walked off.

I sat down on the grass, near the four of them.

“Oi, girl,” Riece spoke again.

“Are you trying to have your tongue removed?” I asked.

Riece was quiet.

We sat in silence for a few minutes.

“He’s right,” I said, quietly, but loudly enough for Riece to hear. “Even if we wanted to kill you now, we couldn’t anyway. You’re asking us to kill you because you don’t want to become a Vessel, but everyone you see here was a Vessel, and they were just as desperate as you to get out of those chains, enough to become a tracker. So, you ask if we can blame you for seeking death, can you blame us for doing this?”

“Yes. I’d rather die a Vessel, I don’t know how you can live with yourself,” Riece stated immediately.

I didn’t know either. But somehow, I was doing it, and it didn’t feel as painful as I thought it would have. What did that say about me?

“Maybe you’re just a better man, a better person,” I mumbled. “Or maybe, you have nothing to lose.”

“Is there anything worse than losing your soul?” Riece scoffed.

“Yes.” I thought of the faces of my brothers. “Yes, there is. So, we don’t all get to keep our souls.”

Later, as the morning fully bloomed, we made our way back to Vasara. At the gates, several guards arrived, to escort the sorcerers to the draining centres, to become Vessels. These sorcerers would probably never leave there. They would probably die there. I looked at each of their faces, their apprehension and rage were undisguised.

The guards approached us.

I quickly strode over to the captives.

“Cadet, what are you—" Cheadd called out after me.

But I reached them before he could stop me further.

“Don’t talk back. Ever.” I looked into the four sorcerer’s eyes. “If it hurts, don’t fight it, that makes it worse. If you can, lie down afterwards for at least thirty minutes. Don’t eat or drink anything that Caden gives you. He drugs it. The bread is disgusting, it makes you sick, but the fruit is usually fine. Don’t use the fourth shower room. Don’t try to protect anyone. It’s pointless.”

I was speaking as quickly as possible, the words were rolling out of my mouth, running away with me, escaping in a way I could not. The four sorcerers watched me confused. Some of them looked as if they had only started paying attention halfway through. Riece furrowed his brows concentrating.

“And if you have a chance to become a tracker, take it. You’ll only get it once. If you can, try to volunteer in the kitchen, not the gardens. Avoid Parthias. If you’re offered a choice, the shackle is best on your wrist. It’s bearable on the ankle, but definitely do not get it on your neck, and—"

Cheadd grabbed me by the arm, pulling me away. “Get away from them. The guards are here.”

The guards dragged the sorcerers off by their coils, which were dangling by their feet.

Riece turned around to look at me. “Looks like you’ve still got it. I hope you get to keep—"

A gag was shoved in his mouth.

I hope you get to keep it.

“You too , ” I mouthed.

“What’s he talking about?” Cheadd asked.

“I don’t know,” I lied.

My soul.

Cheadd sighed. He walked over to the guards. After a few moments of conversing with them, he rose his voice, and turned away. He came back over to the rest of us, agitated. He placed his hands on his hips.

“What happened?” one of them asked.

“They’re saying…no,” Cheadd replied.

“Again?”

“Are you really that surprised?”

“What are we going to do with them then?”

“They want to put them in with the Vessels,” Cheadd said.

The mass graves. They were talking about the bodies.

“What?” Vykros said. He sounded crushed.

“It’s like we never really got out,” another woman added.

Did you really think that you had? Take a look at your wrist.

This was nothing more than a trade off from one prison to another.

As they were talking, I cast a glance towards the eight bodies. I could see them from here. I could see Ava’s foot sticking out of one of the covers.

I marched towards the guards. This time, nobody called out after me.

“Sirs, can I ask you a question?”

They looked me up and down.

“What we going to get in return?” one of them said.

Of course, even a question will cost me.

I tried to think but couldn’t come up with anything tempting.

“I’m afraid there’s not much that I can…give you,” I said.

“You get paid now, don’t you?” the second guard stated.

“Well…actually I haven’t been paid yet, I’ve only just started this position.”

“Get lost then.” One of them tried to push me away.

I stepped back before his hand could reach my shoulder. “Why are these bodies being taken to the draining centre? Where are they normally buried?” I took a chance, hoping that asking a question would naturally lead to an answer.

“Buried?” one of them asked.

“They don’t get buried sorcerer, the trackers are incinerated,” one of them said, laughing. He flicked all his fingers out of his palm at once in a ‘poof’ gesture.

“But…why?”

“The nobles are superstitious that’s why,” he continued. “Think the curses they’ve placed upon you lot are going to come back and haunt them.”

“Load of bollocks,” the other one said.

“The new King doesn’t believe in any of that shit. Saves us the bother.”

From what I knew, curses had no way of lingering after death, but then again, there had been all sorts of rumours about sorcery that had spun out of control for decades. In all likelihood, the other trackers and Cheadd, just used such superstitions as a way to lay trackers to rest in a better way. Incineration was better than a mass grave, I supposed.

Look at me trying to decide which method of burial is preferable.

Death had become so guaranteed, so assured, so unquestionable, that even I hadn’t thought to hope for more.

“Now get lost. We’ve answered your questions and for free. ” Some other guards strolled past us, making their ways towards the bodies.

“Wait…How much do you want?” I asked the first one, who seemed more talkative.

“Huh…for what?”

“For…one of the bodies.”

“Ha. We can’t do that. No price is worth our heads.”

I rubbed my forehead anxiously as I watched them approach the carts, and take them by the handles, to start leading them away.

“Isn’t there anything, anything I could do to help… persuade you?”

The first one spoke up again. “Who do you take me for?”

Someone who just a few minutes ago, offered information in exchange for money?

But I said, “The King’s not going to notice, is he? It’s hardly as if he’ll visit the mass graves to check.”

The two men looked at each other.

“One hundred,” the man said, “One hundred rays.”

We only got one hundred and fifty rays each month as a tracker. I had inquired around and asked about it. Usually about eighty rays was enough to allow someone to scrape by each week. Even the humans with the least respected jobs got paid around two hundred and fifty rays a month.

“I…” I started. But they were dragging them away now. Within seconds they would pass through the gates.

“Yes…yes… one hundred rays. Once I’m paid.”

“How can we tell if you’re lying?” the second one said, raising one eyebrow.

I frantically searched for an answer. “I’ll give you something of mine, something important to hold onto, and… I’ll come back with the money.”

The first guard grabbed the forearm of one of the others who was pulling the carts across. He beckoned me closer with his finger.

“Well, how are we supposed to know it’s important to you?” the first man asked.

“Do you want one hundred rays or don’t you?” I asked impatiently.

The man was teetering on the edge of reprimanding me for my tone, but time was running out, and the temptation was enough.

“Which one?”

“Her.” I pointed to Ava.

“Alright, but we can’t let you have her here. Meet us at the Northern gate in twenty minutes.”

“Alright. Thank you.”

Thank you so much for letting me take the body of a dead girl, who died on your orders, so that I can bury her in a more dignified way, in exchange for the majority of my already completely insufficient wages. Thanks.

The guards left. I stood by the gates, watching each of the tracker’s bodies get pulled through, one by one. The archer’s came last. He had saved my life. I hadn’t even been able to ask for his body.

I bit my lip to try and distract myself from the sea of emotions flooding my chest, threatening to drown me.

Once I had slightly composed myself, I scratched my forehead and turned to see that the other trackers had dispersed. A few of them were walking in the same direction, towards the Iloris’ centre, others towards the Palace. Cheadd was nowhere to be seen.

I walked up to one of them, who was just about to head into the Palace.

“Where’s Ch…where’s the Commander?”

“Don’t know. He went somewhere east.” He pointed in that direction.

Very unhelpful

“Thank you.”

I waited twenty minutes and then walked inside to the Northern gate.

Standing there, with Ava’s body, were the two guards.

“Told you she’d come,” the first one said. “What’s this special item you have then, sorcerer?”

I reached around my neck and pulled the talisman, Claus’ necklace, over my head. I had cleaned it slightly while walking to the Northern gate, so that it was less clotted with dried blood.

I held my hand out. “Doesn’t look like much,” the guard said.

“It’s important to me.”

“Whatever you say.” He grabbed it, then placed it in a pocket inside his pants.

“Take her. But you better come back with that money, else this piece of junk,” he patted his hip, “Is going to disappear and then…so will you.”

I couldn’t help but look at him with disbelief. Even though I suspected he was telling the truth about his intentions, and that nobody would particularly care if a tracker died, something about the man struck me as unable to follow through on his threats.

“I’ll find you, in a few days. I’m getting paid then,” I told him, straightening up to my full height.

“See you then tracker.” Both the guards walked past Ava’s body and into the draining centres.

Just before they crossed the threshold of the gates, the first one turned around, looked at me, smiled, and spat on Ava’s body.

The second one began laughing hysterically.

My lips parted and my brows dropped.

“Look at her. She looks so ferocious, like an angry little cat,” the first one said.

“Better beware of her claws” the second one said, teasing the first.

“Oh, I’m terribly afraid. She’ll raise a paw, and that mark will burn her.”

They left, laughing to themselves. The first one waved goodbye.

I was unconsciously clutching at my wrist.

Once they were both a long distance off, I walked over to Ava’s body and stood there. Her face was covered with an old, dark cloth, that lay over the rest of her as well.

I reached out. My hand was shaking as I drew the cloth back.

It had only been a few hours, but Ava’s skin was already turning blue, her lips purple. The mottling of her face looked like thunder lacing through a cold sky. A few strands of her pale hair were stuck to the blood at the corner of her lips. She looked even younger in death somehow. And people lied. They lied when they said death made people look peaceful. It only made them look dead. Lifeless, and frozen, and no longer breathing.

How fleeting our existence. How ephemeral the light in our eyes. How easily we could forget that one day, they would no longer shine.

That one day they would close. They would dull. And our skin would colour like a bruise, battered by living.

I bit down hard on my bottom lip again, this time to the point of piercing pain, to stop the tears from flowing down my face. They simply hovered in the corners of my eyes, bubbling there.

I covered her face back up again, and bent forwards, with my hand on my knees. I took in a few deep breaths, but I was still trembling, from rage at those guards, from exhaustion, from despair. From it all.

I got up and reached for the handles.

“What are you doing here?” Someone’s heavy footsteps were quickly approaching me.

I couldn’t decide what to do, or what was I going to say. I remained facing the body.

“Whose body is this?” The visitor stood beside me. I turned to the left slightly.

My throat closed over. I let out an inaudible gasp, gaping at the man without reserve.

He didn’t notice, and only leant forwards, to remove the cover off Ava again.

“No! Don’t…please, My Lord.”

Lord Elias looked at me surprised. He examined my uniform up and down, which was stained with dirt and blood.

He sighed heavily and turned around to face me fully. “Why are you hovering here, tracker?”

I couldn’t look at him directly. His eyebrows were furrowed, his bright red eyes regarding me with suspicion. I alternated between glancing at him furtively and at Ava’s body. I didn’t know which was worse. They were both torturous.

“She was…She saved my life. I’m…” Without knowing how else to explain, I stopped talking.

“That doesn’t answer my question though, does it? Why are you here?”

“They were going to put her in the mass graves, with the others, but I managed to…get her body.”

Elias squinted. “They don’t put the trackers in mass graves.”

“They do now, My Lord.”

He waved his hands in the air. “Don’t”

“Don’t what, My—"

“Don’t call me “My Lord,” he said, sounding irritated.

Huh?

I didn’t reply. I was stunned and confused. I was a tracker, a sorcerer. I had never once met a member of the human nobility that didn’t demand we use proper titles in their presence, as if their very omission were some kind of sin.

“Since when?” he asked.

Aren’t you a Lord, despite not wanting to be addressed as such? You’re related to the King, aren’t you? How come you don’t know?

I looked at him bewildered. He and the King certainly shared similar features, only Elias was broader, stubbled, more unkempt. The King was almost his complete opposite in that regard.

“I don’t know. I’ve only just started,” I finally told him.

I didn’t think it wise to tell him it seemed as if the King had ordered this himself, and that I currently knew more about his relative’s decisions than he did.

Elias looked down, deep in thought to himself. “Mmmmm,” he hummed.

Should I go? No, but I need to take the body with me and… can I even leave without his permission now?

“What happened? To your friend?” he said, breaking my trail of thought.

“We were…following a group of sorcerers who were near the borders between Vasara and Kalnasa, at Vaden. We found them, but…they were very powerful, and numerous, so…a few of us didn’t survive.”

Elias didn’t say anything. He didn’t offer his condolences, but he didn’t taunt, spit at, or make jokes about Ava’s death, which was more than I could say for the majority of human beings.

“Did you capture any?”

Capture. The word sounded so cruel and harsh.

“Yes. Four.”

“How many were there? In the group?”

I thought about it, “Fifty or so.”

“Do you think you could find this place again?” he asked me.

“I…yes, but they would have removed traces of their presence by now. They probably would have returned sometime after the fight to do so.”

“If that’s the case, then how did your unit find them in the first place?” He squinted at me.

“They hadn’t hidden their tracks properly the first time, I don’t…I hope you’ll allow me the liberty of saying…" I tried to make my words sound as docile as possible. “That I don’t think they would make the same mistake twice.”

“The liberty of fucking saying,” Elias repeated my words, with a slight amendment, chuckling. “You’ve learnt to speak well for a sorcerer.”

For a sorcerer.

Although I supposed his sentence was founded. It wasn’t as if any of us had a chance to increase our rank, or status, or education.

“Thank you?” I said questioningly.

“Who tracked them down, which of your unit?”

“I did.”

“You?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes. I’m a Navigator.” It was strange to defend myself in this way, as if I were trying to retain some credit for what I’d done. As if I was searching for some acknowledgement, some validation for it.

The realisation made me feel stifled. There was nothing good about what I’d done.

Nothing good, only necessary.

“What’s your name?” he asked me.

Don’t call me ‘My Lord,’ what’s your name? What is this?

“Tracker? Tell me your name.”

“Sorry it’s just. We don’t usually get asked that question,” I admitted.

Elias sighed. “Will I ever learn it?”

“Shadae.”

He nodded curtly. “I may need your assistance in the upcoming weeks to find any traces of these people. I’ll send for you when it’s time.”

I nodded too. Agreeing verbally seemed pointless since I had no choice but to obey.

“Any Accipereans?” he said suddenly.

“I think…yes… there were a few, but it would be impossible to tell how many, or what their abilities were.”

“You were there, weren’t you? How could you have known there were Accipereans there if you didn’t see them use their abilities?” He sounded sceptical.

“A few members of our unit reported seeing illusions during the fight, so—"

“Right.” Elias looked at me, as if he were looking at something else, as if he were using my body as a focal point for his eyes while his mind wondered, like I wasn’t even really there at all.

But then, his gaze found the scar around my neck, where my chain had been.

All sorcerers had the ability to heal faster than a human being, but the lower the class, the slower you were at healing, leaving you almost as prone to injury and scarring as a human.

He stared at it for a few moments, then looked up as he noticed me observing him.

“It’s better when it’s on the hands and feet, but…they know that so.” I touched my scar fleetingly.

“Mmmmm,” he hummed again.

What does that even mean? Gosh this is uncomfortable.

“How long were you a Vessel for?”

“Eighteen months.”

“Did anyone die during that time?”

I twisted my face in confusion. Why was he asking me these questions? I couldn’t help but think that this was some kind of trick.

“Some…yes. But it was difficult to be sure since we were rotated so often.”

“How often?”

I looked straight at him.

How come you know so little about this? Wouldn’t you, as one of Vasara’s leading nobles, know a lot about draining centres? Especially since Vasara’s is the largest in Athlion? And what is this…a test? Are you trying to see how easily I would reveal information to someone?

Sensing my anxiety, Elias said, “You’re not being interrogated, and this isn’t a trick. Just answer my questions.” He sounded impatient and fatigued.

Seeing no other choice, I answered, “Every two weeks.”

“How often were you drained?”

The memories of the drainings flooded my mind, I gulped.

“It varied and…I think it depended on the sorcerer as well, but roughly twice a day.”

“How often do you get new Vessels?”

We? We didn’t ‘get’ them.

It was an effort not to correct him. He noticed the slight look of irritation that waved across my face

“Something bothering you?”

I took a breath in. “No. I’m just…” I looked at Ava.

I’m exhausted. I’m confused, I’m scared, and I don’t understand what’s going on. I’m tired of all of it. I want to rest. I want to go back home. I’m the reason Ava died. I’m the reason Claus died. I’m not sure what to make of you and these questions. I’m tired.

I cleared my throat.

“You’re what?”

“Nothing. To answer your question. New Vessels didn’t arrive very often, but again, the rotation made it difficult for us to be sure of anything.”

“How often were you fed?”

I hesitated, it almost sounded as if he was concerned about the Vessels, but that was very clearly not the motivation behind these questions. What the motivation actually was however…was beyond my speculation.

“Twice a day, sometimes it was once. If we were punished, we would be deprived of food for a while.”

“For…how long?” He squinted as he asked.

“Two days, three.”

“What were you given to eat?”

“Whatever you don’t want.” I raised my eyebrows, realising how bluntly my answer had come out, “That is…I mean—"

Elias raised his hand. “I understand.” He didn’t seem offended.

“Did anything strike you as unusual about the centre?” he asked.

Apart from the fact that it was being used as a cover to torture people to death in the self-proclaimed service of humanity.

I sighed as I thought that to myself.

“It’s…what do you mean by unusual?” I looked at him cautiously.

“Did anything” — he looked up— “change while you were there? Did anything seem out of order to you.”

Order?

“I was never…quite sure what that order was meant to look like.”

Elias rubbed his eyebrows with his finger and his thumb. “Just think, and answer. Whatever comes to your mind.”

“It would be like asking someone who had been to the Nevultus Pits what was so unusual about it,” I said quietly.

The Nevultus Pits. It was said that was where those who had sinned so grievously and heinously were transported after they died. A domain of Noxos, pits of unrivalled despair, pain, and suffering.

I supposed there was a good chance I’d end up there now, if they existed.

Elias pulled his thumbs away from his brow and looked up at me quickly, clearly not expecting my answer.

“Well, what was?” he inquired.

I lowered my shoulders as I sighed. “All of it is strange.”

“Can you elaborate?” Elias pressed.

I don’t like this. This feels…like a ruse. Yes, you said it wasn’t, but I don’t believe you.

Elias insisted. “Can you hear me?”

Unfortunately.

I looked at my feet as I replied. “We had no idea what was going on the whole time. Everything was so highly regimented that it’s as if we were completely isolated, even though we were around other people. Sometimes, someone would just disappear suddenly. Sometimes, someone would have new scars, and nobody knew where they had come from, or their wounds would stop healing altogether. I can’t point out anything that was specifically strange, it was all strange.”

I opened my eyes, having closed them towards the end as I spoke. Images flashed before me of the scenes my words were based on.

Elias walked past me and towards the gates. “You should get rid of the body quickly.”

“Do…Do you know if there’s somewhere where I can—"

“No, I don’t,” he said with his back to me.

Polite.

He vanished behind the gates.

I grabbed the handles of the cart and began dragging them out towards the south entrance of the Palace. I met a few confused glances as I made my way through the exterior paths, but nobody was bothered enough to inquire about my deeds.

Once outside, I dragged the body around Iloris, asking people if there was somewhere nearby one might be able to bury their dead. Some people ignored me, others spat at my feet, some told me to ‘fuck off.’

Until one woman, with a small child said to me, “There’s a field to the east.”

I was in the West of the Iloris.

I hadn’t slept throughout the night, which meant it had now been around thirty hours since I’d done so, and around the same time since I’d eaten.

But still, I continued the arduous journey with Ava’s body across the city, trudging over cobblestoned streets. The decay of her corpse was likely getting worse in this heat.

She was only a child. She could have been either one of my brothers. She could have been alive if I had known how to protect her.

Eventually, after three hours, I found the field. I sank down into the grass, heaving, shaking from exhaustion. I sat for a few minutes to gain the smallest kernels of energy, before grabbing the side of the cart, and lifting Ava’s body over my shoulder.

A shovel was sticking out from a heap in the soil. Someone else’s body had recently been buried here. I placed Ava down on the ground, avoiding checking how far her body had begun to decompose now. I had dragged her for hours through the heat of the day, after all.

I placed the shovel in the soil next to her, pressed it into the ground, and dug.

But I was so weak, I could barely lift the shovel. I kept going, but after about five minutes, I had only dug a small and shallow hole, the length of Ava’s body.

I leant forwards on the shovel. I didn’t realise why my breath was shaking until the tears slid off my cheeks. I was too exhausted to even notice I had started crying.

I kept digging.

I would bury her. Even if I collapsed next to her immediately afterwards. I would survive. It hadn’t been long enough to die of starvation yet, and I’d had some water on me which I had sparingly drank throughout the day. I would survive, because she had saved my life and as long as I was alive, it didn’t matter how much I trembled from fatigue, or hunger, I would bury her.

My pathetic attempts at digging only seemed to get worse.

I screamed, my voice cracking, as if sharpened fingers were scratching at the inside of my throat. I yelled over and over again, and sank to my knees, pounding my fist into the dirt next to Ava’s face. I looked at it now through my teary eyes. The sun had caught her blonde hair at the perfect angle. It shone so brightly against her ghostly appearance, as if it had come to illuminate her one last time.

I bent my head forwards into the soil and sobbed.

What was this world? Where a child, like Ava, would die, and have to be saved from being dumped into a mass grave, with children like her? What was this world, where people spat at my feet for asking to find a place for her to rest, because people I had never known, ancestors I had never met had killed their ancestors? What was this place, where the mark against my skin prickled more and more, the further away I got from the Palace? Where I could never be free except to kill, except to hunt others like myself, other people who shared the same dream of freedom, or peace? Where the only way I had found to survive was to deprive it of them. Where sorcerers killed sorcerers, and hated each other, as humans hated us. Where the actions of so few became branded as the future of so many. Where we had to work to prove our innocence to those who would never believe us, because once, long ago, we had given them reason to doubt. Where reason to doubt, no matter how far gone, no matter how long in the past, eliminated any reason to hope, or to strive for better. Where bloodshed felt comfortable for everyone. Where protecting those you cared about could only be done through that bloodshed.

Where Ava lay lifeless on the ground.

“How did you do it?”

I looked up through my tears. Cheadd was standing above me, looking at Ava’s body. His face betrayed no emotion, but his fists were clenched at his sides.

I slowly looked at her, “I…I promised them money.” My voice was strangled, from the screaming.

“You don’t have any money,” he said quietly. He had never spoken so quietly before.

“I know,” I replied in a whisper.

Cheadd reached over and took the shovel from my hands, and began to dig where I had started.

There was nobody else around. It was only us, silent in the afternoon sun, only the sound of earth being torn from the ground to keep us company.

Once the hole was dug, Cheadd lifted Ava, and placed her inside, covering her body with the earth straight afterwards.

He took a step back.

“She was my daughter.”

My heart fell into my stomach.

“She didn’t know of course. Her mother was just…we made no promises to each other. But I’d gone back there once, years later as a tracker, back home, and found out they’d taken her, and that she’d had a child. I made enquiries, in the name of recruiting new trackers, and was told her mother was dead, but that she was still alive.”

“I…” I choked.

At the sound of me struggling to speak, Cheadd continued, “She could have died any day. I knew that, and I still chose to recruit her. I could have tried to get her out, but I didn’t want to take that risk, both for her, and for myself. I could have told her she was my daughter, but I didn’t want anybody to find out, and use that information. You killed her killer, and then you got her body out of that mass grave. You did more for her than I ever did.”

I stared up at him, bewildered by his sudden outpour, his confession.

“That’s… not true,” I managed to speak. “However, many years she did have, she had them because you got her out.”

“She’s probably better off dead anyway,” he said sorrowfully.

My jaw opened and closed. Here he was, grieving, but grateful his daughter was no longer in this wretched place. The place I was trying so desperately to let my brothers have a chance to live in.

Which of us is right?

“Lord Elias wants me to help him,” I spoke. I didn’t know why I said it. Perhaps I just couldn’t bear to speak about Ava anymore.

“That man hates sorcerers more than anyone else,” Cheadd replied thoughtfully.

That hadn’t been my impression, but it was clear he held no regard for us either.

“So, he’ll get me to kill them?”

“No. He’d rather kill them himself. He’ll only get you to find them for him.”

I looked at my hands.

“Is he…he seemed…very—"

“He doesn’t give a shit about anything, or at least, he gives a shit about very little. Killing sorcerers is probably one of the only things he has an interest in.”

“If that’s true, then why hasn’t he been helping, or leading us?”

“Because he’s…” Cheadd paused, clearly confounded. “I’m not sure. But he enjoys it one way or another.” He looked up at me. “Be careful around that man. He’s notoriously volatile.”

Is he? I supposed he seems slightly…impatient and…perhaps blunt, but volatile?

“I’ll try.”

“Although…of all the people who look down on and hate us, he probably has the best cause to,” Cheadd said dejectedly. “Sorcerers killed every person in his squad. He was one of only two survivors. The other died by suicide months later.”

My eyes fell to the ground, I closed them, processing this revelation.

“Every person? How?”

“He won’t talk, so nobody knows. But that level of devastation? It had to be Accipereans.”

“Do you want to…say something?” I motioned to Ava’s makeshift grave.

“No,” he replied quickly.

I turned and looked at the grave. “Thank you for shielding me. Thank you for making me smile. I…” I swallowed back tears. “I won’t let it go to waste.”

Cheadd nodded at my words.

“Then you’re going to have to do everything the Lord tells you for now.” Then he added, “Can you?”

“You’ve already asked me something similar.”

Cheadd grumbled. “I didn’t believe you then.”

“Do you believe me now?”

“No.”

I couldn’t help but smile a little. “Will you ever… believe me?”

“Probably not.” He smiled slightly as well. “But I think you’re most likely to change my mind.”

The sun began to move, glinting against the soil that lay on Ava’s body.

“Do you believe in the Divine Halls?” he asked, looking at me as he did.

The Divine Halls. The polar opposite of the Nevultus Pits. Where the souls of those who died by sacrificing their lives for others, or who had lived in the service of good, ascended. It was said they were able to rest in the Divine Halls of the Nine, and even acquire partial reverential status. Not all of them, but some.

“I’d like to.”

“Then let’s.”

“Alright,” I said, nodding.

I closed my eyes, and chose to believe, that Ava was watching us now, smiling, as vividly as she had done yesterday.

“They’d be fools not to take her. To choose her.”

“That’s good then,” Cheadd said.

I looked at him questioningly.

“Because there’s no doubt the Gods are fools.”

I chuckled slightly. “They’re meant to have created us after all.”

“Terrible idea,” Cheadd said regretfully, sorrowfully, despite the fact he was smiling.

I watched him smile. I watched him look at the ground with a mixture of tenderness and pain, of peace and regret.

What a terrible idea. What a wonderfully, beautifully terrible idea.