Has-been, Once-was, No-longer

“Brace—!”

Sels squawks an instant before a wall of black and red smears between us and the view of impending death. The sharp ichor slams into it like the point of a blade through sword-devouring paper.

I can’t take it all. Holes punch through before I flash a burning spark of imbuing into the lot, flames flickering red and blue searing away the excess.

An undulating shriek forces me to clap hands over my ears or keel over again. Hard to tell, but sounds like it’s mixed with Jeanu’s frission-popping scream—the real one, not the ghost’s weaker version. Nightmarish mix.

“Go! While it’s stunned!”

“Sels, up,” I gasp, reaching for her as she stumbles by my foot, managing something resembling a run through the battlefield suddenly occupied by melting remains and writhing hornets, my spirits efficiently taking care of them. Jeanu waited until we got close enough to make a dash for it, for once. I’d be more proud if it hadn’t threatened to take me out too.

The half-formed monster still in the throes of a fit lashes out wildly in our direction, flinching back as I catch and burn the cords again with gritted teeth, burning arrows assisting. Tasting blood on the back of my tongue now.

“Down.” I slap a hand to the tough leather under my shirt, imbuing it. “Stay by Akir.”

Sels grunts something and leaps down as ghostly spirits leap forward. Flying for the fissure, I tear through a black tentacle, plunging down to the heart of the pool at the base of the tree.

For just an instant, my hand touches, sinking through the ooze.

Dyste-Eino....

The burning eye of a raptor turns and locks onto me, the fierce thrill of a smile cutting the edges of consuming darkness.

All I need is a glimpse—

No. I think not.

A black cord flicking out of the pool slams into my chest.

Flung back, I barely manage to break the fall, crashing into dusty ashes and dirt with a wheeze. Slimy bastard—

My struggling focus lands on sister, her arm shoved up to the elbow in the pool, gazing up at the monstrosity with dark eyes.

No—

White light bursts through the fire-flecked black, throwing me down before I can lunge forward.

She— she didn’t.... I swim back from having my last shreds rattled to find scarred but closed ground, buds gone, no more shrieks; a cleansed grove. Sister closed it. Traitorous, devilish sister closed the damned fissure.

I let my eyes close, gritty ash kissing my cheekbone. Hunh.

“Hey....” Sels’s voice drags them open again, sideways goose gryphon wobbling towards me, her voice oddly thick. “Think that was more impressive’n you.”

Something dark dribbles from a black stain on her dim white chest. It takes me half a moment to realise it can’t be ichor. I shove up faster than my whirling head can catch up with. “Sels?”

“Huh?” She glances down and teeters to a stop. “Huh.”

The small thud of her hitting the ground rings louder than the fissure closing.

“No—” Dammit, how didn’t I notice she’d been hurt? It must have been after that first wave of spikes. It hit her in the chest, how deep—?

I can’t crawl over fast enough before a booted and stockinged leg kneels next to still feathers, seamed skirt brushing the bloodied ash glimmering in a blue light.

That blood creeps over my hands, still warm. Cooling.

“Get away from her.”

She jerks back from a thousand glittering needle points cast violet in the light, stopped a breath from her neck by chains biting tight around my wrists.

Blood and tar bubbles on my lips. “Step. Back.”

Her throat moves; so do her lips. They stop when Atsukute hovers over her head.

She moves back, glancing up, glancing over, carefully shuffling away from Sels’s painfully-small frame. Its flanks still move, still alive, her head twitching when I touch her.

Gently, I turn her over, soothing behind an ear with my thumb at a quiet mewl, placing my hand on the bloodied chest. From the sound of the rattling, it went through a lung, another wet spot underneath and behind her leg. Clean through.

I close my eyes, gently testing through the tear in her flesh with thin strings, too aware of her labouring heart. Patience, patience. It only takes a moment longer. In one quick flicker of white focals, the imbuing pulls through the wound, sealing up behind each thread.

She still breathes. Weak, but alive. A shiver ruffles through her, and I take her into my arms, lending her a bit of warmth. Not that the beating of her heart against my hand isn’t reassuring.

I close my eyes. I shouldn’t have brought her here.

“Ah, Lonn...?” Someone kneels beside me.

“Absent,” I murmur.

Everything fades out after that.

Ξ-Ξϟ†ϟΞ-Ξ

It was a long, dusty trail.

Despite the barrenness of it all, bare scrub clinging to the scarred rock of torn and shattered valleys, the sun still shone overhead in a steely-blue sky, hot enough to scorch. Better than eternal smog, perhaps.

Not that we knew that, back then.

“Uuugh, my feet are killin’ me.”

“You can ride with me if you want.”

Sels glanced up at the front of the saddle and made a face. “It’s kinda cramped now.”

I shrugged. “It isn’t my fault you had a growth spurt. There’s plenty of space behind me if you want it.”

“Nah, too easy to fall off. I got no human legs.”

“Mm. We’ll reach the ruins soon.”

“Yeah, any moment now.... Like you said the last three whole times. In the mornin’.”

I eyed her sideways. “It’s closer now.”

“Yeah, and the Empire’s further away. Wow, a whole two steps.”

I rolled my eyes, choosing to end the conversation there. We’d get there when we got there.

That moment turned out to be just around the next rock cutting across the crumbling goat’s track, the ancient valley opening below into harsher shapes, and terraces that seemed familiar, somehow.

“Those paddies made outta rock?”

She was right, that’s what they looked like, despite the dry scrub and rocky edges. We picked our way down, passing dusty blocks and wood, ruins preserved like fruits left to dry in the sun. Some of them seemed shaped from the very stone of the valley itself, moulded into the edges of the cliffs surrounding paddies and the line of an ancient river at the bottom. An old stone bridge still stood there, crumbling but whole, leading across to what I could only describe as a mixture between a castle and a fortress taking up the sheer face along the other side.

More of it came into view as we passed the canyon wall cutting across our view from the end we’d just come through, turning the valley’s bowl into a twisted flame. A fortress city, of sorts, carefully sculpted and tiered, built to be a stronghold.

It seemed a warning to me later. Something prophetic we failed to see in our ignorance.

“Wonder what happened to ‘em.”

No signs of any life but the hardiest kind scuttled through dead buildings and old streets littered with rubble. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Some ancient people who got destroyed by Noruaas because of their pride or somethin’, yada yada, lotsa morals about hubris and stuff and lettin’ demons in and all that.” She flapped her wings about widely. “This happened somethin’ like a thousand years ago, right?”

“A thousand years ago was the War of Talons. This was eight hundred.” I let the voices of my scholars in. “In the time of prosperity following the joining of the human and gryphon peoples under the sun, we became our own nation free of the powerful influence of the east and south, proving ourselves valid trading partners—”

“Hey, you start goin’ off into economics and stuff and I’ll kick your scholarly butt.”

“The east was famous for its jade. They said the mountains were green not because of trees, but the stones. More old containers than you’d think are carved from Angrilan jade.”

“Yeah and they were also fancy magic people. Figures.”

“Blessed by the spirits.” I tapped my forehead through the curling black locks half-plastered to it as we approached the bridge. “Some say they had horns of green jade, ears like a goat’s, and eyes blue as the sky. Apparently the Imperial family has ancestors there, though, and I don’t recall any of us sprouting horns or long ears. We do have larger wells of spiriscence than the average, though.”

“So you just got the lame stuff. Meh.”

“Hmph.” I smiled, slowing my horse and slipping off, giving her a pat as I peered down at the supports. “Looks stable enough. I’ll leave Patuo here. Wouldn’t want to try making her fly if we fall.”

“A flyin’ horse....”

Leaving her after a quick bowl or two of water, we made it safely across the bridge to the gates, still locked tight. No barrier to those who can fly, though.

The sun-bleached bones on the other side weren’t really a surprise.

“It’s said that the more powerful they became, the more they craved power. ‘He who craves becomes an open mouth’.” The splinters of wood on the ground were a puzzle until we met intact frames covering narrow open passages between blocks—either housing or barracks. Maybe both. “They swallowed even the demons, and in the end, the demons consumed them.”

“So... they let ‘em in?” Sels stepped around a skull. “Looks like where they all died, anyway.”

“Accounts differ. Some say immissures came with promises of power and deceived them—”

“Like us.”

I closed my eyes, climbing the steps to a more formidable door decorated with worked-metal effigies—the entrance to the inner halls, and whatever answers might be left there. “In a way. Unlike us, they were deceived by power, not hope of joining with some imaginary nation that supposedly exists. Whether they pretended not to be demons, or swayed the Angrilans with dark arts, who knows.”

With the quick drawing of finger to palm, I carved a hole in the heavy stone and shifted it aside, the darkness inside welcoming us like the mouth of death. A warning, from the beginning.

“I suppose we’re about to find out.”

We never should have gone there.