Page 8 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)
Casual cross-reality breaking-and-entering
Fi practiced her morning serenity by ordering the largest, frothiest, most caramel-drenched coffee she could find amongst Thomaskweld’s cafes.
She devoured a staggering quantity of pancakes topped with cream and Summer strawberry compote, a warm core to guard against the frigid winds down the valley, replenished energy reserves for whatever bullshit awaited her today.
She bought a heap of the freshest icefish in the river market, presenting them to Aisinay while telling her how she was such a good horse, she was in the fact the best Void horse in all the Shattered Planes for tolerating these rude people and their crates of energy capsules.
Aisinay munched her meal with finned tail swishing, successfully bribed.
At last, Fi hooked up her cart, groaned to the sky for precisely five seconds, then headed out to meet Milana.
Even near noon, the sun barely crested the encircling mountains, casting Thomaskweld in lavender. The central parkway bustled despite the gloom, bright with shopfronts and capsule-powered heaters on cafe patios, a hum of voices warring against the clatter of passing trolleys.
Quieter, as Fi neared the capitol complex.
A wide avenue and a wall of red stone separated the main city from several blocks of gardens and government offices, gates of tall wrought iron to regulate public entry.
Beyond the barrier rose the city’s most ornate buildings: the plated copper and glass of the trade warden headquarters, silver arches of the treasury, a dome of aurora green and blue atop the courthouse.
A crowd gathered at the main entry gate.
Fi tensed instinctively at any public gathering, rare as they were.
Doubly so when angry murmurs perked her ears.
Even her small provincial school taught every student the dangers of organizing.
Teachers with tight smiles explaining it was best to never cause a fuss.
Any concerns should be submitted to the governor’s office, or to the daeyari’s personal attendants.
They were here to help, after all, to keep the territory safe.
Even the midnight-clad guards met the crowd at the gate without weapons.
Everyone knew which creature enforced the rules.
Fi led Aisinay past the crowd, not close enough to be construed as part of them, enough to eavesdrop…
“When will the governor speak with us?” someone asked.
“The district still has no power,” called another. “Tonight will be even colder!”
“My daughter has the silver sickness. Another cold snap will put her in the hospital!”
“Your complaints have been received,” a guard said with pacifying hand movements. “They’ll be shared with the governor. In the meantime—”
As Fi passed out of earshot, she pursed plum-painted lips, appraising the copper energy conduits humming down the avenue—daeyari technology, one of the immortals’ more generous gifts, as part of the pact.
Now, every human city depended on them. Neglecting basic infrastructure didn’t bode well for the territory’s human governor, come next election year.
The ruling daeyari bore equal responsibility.
Larger cities fed most of the territory’s sacrifices: everything from wealthy houses trying to curry favor, to a desperate laborer trying to lift their family’s fortune.
For some people, those lives lost were a drop in the Void compared to Thomaskweld’s dense population, a negligible price to pay for reliable infrastructure and protection from other daeyari.
Narcissistic assholes had probably never had to sacrifice a family member. Or been dragged in as an offering themselves.
Aisinay huffed as she walked, lowering finned ears and the spines down her neck.
“Agreed,” Fi muttered back. “Something’s weird in this city. But we’ll be back home in Nyskya by tonight, then you can spend a whole week eating trout and spooking Bodie in the middle of the night.”
Between the capitol complex and the river, Fi reached a public park full of old cedar trees, snow crusting red trunks and drooping boughs. She’d arrived, as usual, a half hour early—and was admittedly a little impressed to find Milana already waiting for her.
Cold stabbed Fi’s gut, seeing what the woman was wearing.
A momentary slip. Fi had no control over how her heart jolted at the sight of the silver robes with fur-lined collar. A swell of nausea at swirls of Void-black embroidered up the sleeves. The attire of a daeyari attendant.
Equally instinctive, she snapped her stupor behind a wall of bristles, not a single crack in her arched brow and dry tone as she appraised the bold disguise.
“What the fuck are you wearing?”
“Good morning!” Milana greeted brightly. “Timely, I see.”
“If it means we can get this over with—”
“Yes, thank you for your help with our newest renovation project ,” Milana chirped over her. “Right this way with the supplies, if you please.”
Fi’s brow arched higher as she followed Milana down a stone path beneath the cedars.
The park was the quietest part of the city.
Grouse clucked in the underbrush, accompanying a distant rush from the river.
They passed a young man in a coat and work pants, sweeping the walkway clean of needles.
A woman in a shawl of metal beads knelt off the path with head bowed, muttering a prayer for a loved one’s departed energy to pass safely through the endless black of the Void, to find rest in the Afterplane.
Milana wore her silver-robed attendant disguise too well, earning nods from each passerby, not a single suspicious glance straying to Fi and her cart. All this for an art heist?
Not Fi’s business. She moved cargo. Her clients decided what to do with it.
At the center of the grove, their path skirted a stone amphitheater.
Fi’s people believed in gods, once: Great Beasts who raised the mountains when they fought, carved valleys out of stone.
As technology grew vaster, the world grew smaller.
Souls were nothing more than energy, gone to the Void in death.
Buildings of metal and stone tamed the riverbanks.
Explorers found no gods lurking in the forests.
There were only daeyari.
The garden’s amphitheater was less a shrine, more a reminder. Energy conduits cobwebbed stone pillars, silver lamplight illuminating the reason Fi kept every visit to Thomaskweld brief: a bronze statue of the reigning Lord Daeyari, Antal.
Metal made harsh lines of his lean frame and raised chin.
A slender tail, five feet long at least, arced around his ankles.
Astrid’s antlers would never surpass a few inches—vavriter, the daeyari word for hybrids, meant “half antler,” she’d told Fi once—but a daeyari’s grew with age.
Antal’s were sharp tipped, sleek to his head as befitted a predator.
They arced backward like a circlet, three points each side, the farthest tips just beginning to curve up into the crown worn by older members of his species.
At least, two and a half centuries counted as young by daeyari standards. Territory rulers changed rarely, this one a mere fifty years in power. Maybe inexperience was the reason for Antal’s laxness compared to other territories, leaving his human governor to rule without interference.
Or maybe this daeyari just didn’t give a shit. So long as food came delivered, why bother with bureaucracy?
In the shadow of the amphitheater, they reached the deepest section of the grove, hardly a trickle of sunlight through needles.
“It’s here, yes?” Milana whispered.
She glanced over the empty path, the wide cedar trunks, clearly unable to see it.
Fi could: the translucent glint of a Curtain wavering in the shadows.
Mildly annoying that she’d never found this one herself, but she supposed that was the price of avoiding this part of the city.
She stepped off the path and ran her bare fingers through the cold, weightless ripple on the air.
“There are no existing Curtains inside the capitol complex,” Milana said. “But this is the closest Shard we know of.”
Fi offered a hand. “Have you done this before?”
Milana grimaced. “Not my favorite…”
They grasped hands, a stab of cold as Fi pulled them both through the Curtain.
A Shard lay on the other side, a field of frosted shale, crumbling into nothing at the edges.
Void sky hung over petrified trees with gossamer leaves—like nothing on the Planes, adapted to survive on the meager light that somehow seeped into this sunless reality.
Overhead, the aurora floated purple-red instead of green, humming whispers that were almost words.
Fi’s shoulders eased, a breath of familiar ozone-laced air enough to settle nerves.
Beside her, Milana shivered. Most humans were uncomfortable, staring into the emptiness of the Void.
Not that there was nothing out there. The four Season-Locked Planes were unusual, linked directly by Bridges, operating more like islands than separate slips of reality.
But there were other Planes across the Void—hundreds more, not connected by Bridges, but accessible by navigating the smaller Shards in between, a maze of stepping stones to other civilizations.
Maybe that was why Fi always got that odd prick on her neck when she looked into the Void—as if something, somewhere, was staring back.
Behind her, loose stones clacked. Aisinay stepped through the Curtain on her own, cart in tow, finned ears perked as she inhaled an appreciative huff of Void air.
“Can you see a way through to the capitol?” Milana asked.
Fi was about to find out.
Seeing Curtains came innately to a Voidwalker. Slicing new ones was, energetically speaking, not much more difficult. The danger came in ensuring something lay on the other side.