by Sam Sykes
“Woah, hey, darlin’,” that voice said. “Down here.”
A thick arm waved at me from the corner of my eye, drawing my attention away from the Beast and down to the short, attractively doughty, dark woman who stood nearby, completely unbothered by the monster that would kill her if it took half a step to the right.
“Not the best idea to look at the Big One’s face,” she said, smiling through a kind face framed by unwashed, graying hair. She gave me a wink. “Not unless you’re sure you want to.”
“The Big One?” I asked, staring up at the Beast. “HE?”
“Yeah, that’s his name,” the woman replied. She scratched her head. “You raise a good point, though. I have no idea if the Big One is actually male. You’d think I’d have figured it out after fifteen years, but I sure as shit ain’t going to go down there between his legs and check.”
I let out a sigh. “You must be Murthi.”
“That’s what they call me.”
I squinted. She had the fine bones of an Imperial, but I’d never seen someone from the Imperium look quite so… rugged. “Murthi what?” I asked.
“Just Murthi,” she laughed. “I met the Big One fifteen years ago, when he had just finished a twenty-year journey and was settling down for his long rest. Whoever I was before that day was a lie, just something I told myself to keep moving through the day.” Her eye drifted to my leg. “How’s the injury?”
“Fine, thanks for your help,” I blurted out, before furrowing my brow. “But it shouldn’t… be fine. I took a bolt to the leg.”
“Is that what caused that nastiness you had going on down there? Makes sense, I suppose,” she grunted. “But if you want to thank someone, thank the one who gave you the bandage.”
“Irvic?”
If you had told me before that night a gigantic monster could be offended, I wouldn’t have believed you.
A rumble shook the earth beneath us. Trees quivered. Branches shook. Dust fled in great crowds around my boots. The Compass Beast had barely let out a noise, and it made creation shudder.
I flailed to keep my balance, but found that I was the only one. Every other person in Fleatown was standing perfectly still, staring up at the Beast, as though that horrific sound was something they understood. Something they needed to hear.
When the dust settled what felt like an eternity later, Murthi turned back to face me. “Mm. Sorry. When he speaks, we kind of have to…” She waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t fucking worry about what? The…” I started clawing at the bandage on my leg. “What the fuck is this?”
Beneath my fingers, I found the “bandage” flexible, spongy, less like bark as I’d originally thought and more like… meat. With a slowness that stretched every second to agony, my eyes were drawn to the Beast. And its great, greasy, reeking hide of hairy flesh.
The same color as my bandage.
“Get it off, get it off, get it off!”
My shrieking, and subsequent flailing, degenerated into a tangle of limbs as Murthi tried to stop me from prying it off. Our struggle lasted only as long as it took the Beast to snort, a roaring gale that sent uprooted underbrush and clouds of dust sweeping over us.
And through it, I felt an uncomfortable presence… as though I were being watched. And judged.
“Did I…” I whispered to Murthi, frozen beneath that presence. “Did I just… offend it?”
“Him,” Murthi corrected, “or them, I suppose? Either way, I wouldn’t say offended, but we did ask him for a boon and he did give us one, so you’re kind of making us look like assholes in front of the giant monster.”
“Okay, yeah, sure. I’ve got a slab of monster meat slapped on my thigh by a bunch of lunatics, but sure I’m the one with the problem.” I pushed her off—lightly, lest I offend her giant friend. “You’re aware that’s what this is, right? You’re worshiping a giant engine of destruction that could kill you in an instant.”
“Well, he’s closer to an animal than an engine, but if I didn’t want to be close to things that could kill me in an instant, I chose the wrong fucking Scar to live on, didn’t I?” She cut her sarcasm with another wink. “And we don’t worship him. We help him. He helps us.”
I blinked. I wanted to do something that better conveyed my sense of “holy shit this is insane these people are insane this monster is insane get out get out get out get out.”
But I had already been a rude guest once.
“The people here,” Murthi began, frowning, “they don’t have anywhere else to go. Just like I had nowhere to go years ago. The Big One came rampaging through my town, stomped it flat, and started sleeping on the ruins. So some of us just… started living around it. The Big One scares off everything from bandits to beasts and, if you know how he works, he can offer you everything the land can.”
She shrugged. “So when he started moving two months ago, we just started following.”
“But what about food? Do you just pick whatever he’s stepped on out of his toes?”
She grinned, gestured over my shoulder with her chin. “Something like that.”
I followed her glance. Behind us, the miles-wide path of the Beast stretched like a ruinous road, a great mess that had chewed up hills, forest, and streams and spat out angry, sundered earth.
“So you eat… dirt?” I asked. “I guess that kind of makes sense.”
“How does that…” Murthi caught herself. “Look closer, fucker.”
I squinted. Through the scant light of a waning moon, I could see among the destruction. Between crushed boulders and shattered tree trunks, beneath pounded foliage, I could see it.
Green, vibrant, and alive. Brown, rich, and deep. Saplings and leaves and living things, trees I had never known and flowers that I had no name for, pulling themselves out of the ruin and reaching for a sky with blossoming fingers.
“He destroys, true,” Murthi said. “Many of us here had our homes destroyed by him. But in his wake, he leaves something. He grows something. We take what we need, leave the rest as he intended, and keep following until he decides to stop.
“And in exchange, we keep him clean. We pull the filth out of his mane. We deal with the parasites.”
I cringed. “Parasites?”
My eyes were drawn up to the great shape of the Beast. And on the trunks of its massive legs, I could see ropes drawn taut as daring people scaled it, tending to its hide with shears, spears, and other implements. They seemed completely unfazed by the massive creature. Just as the massive creature seemed utterly unbothered by them.
“Well, yeah. Every living thing has parasites.” She chuckled. “Not like this, though. I mean, holy shit, when they found the Old Fellow, he was crawling with them. Big, spidery-looking things. Delicious, though.” She eyed the wrapper I had dropped that had held the sandwich I finished. “But you already knew that.”
I paused. Funny, I really wanted to scream, but there are some facts in this world that, if you think too hard on them, will break your brain.
Plus it wasn’t even the worst parasite I’d eaten.
“How, though?” I asked, with a voice that betrayed how badly I wanted to know. “How do you live with this thing?”
“I just told you, we—”
“No, not like that,” I said. “How do you live with it knowing it can kill you? How do they live with it knowing that it destroyed their homes? How can you not want to… you know…”
“Destroy him? Hurt him?” Murthi shrugged. “Even if we had magic and cannons and all the deadly things of the world, we couldn’t so much as tickle the Big One. And even if we somehow did kill him, we’d just be out of another home.
“The Big One broke our homes. He’ll break more homes tomorrow. And many, many more before he finally decides he’s gone far enough. No one in Fleatown or in Paarl’s Hollow or all the cities he’ll break can change that. But we’ll still have a home here. And we’ll still keep taking in people who want to follow him.” She smi
led. “Sometimes… it feels good to build something new out of the rubble.”
Without quite realizing why, I found myself looking over my shoulder.
I had trouble picking Irvic out of the crowd. The gangly, awkward man masquerading as murderer I’d met that morning was now busily tending to matters around the camp, sharing burdens and boons alike, laughing and receiving laughter in return.
I didn’t understand it.
They were a broken people. I’d seen enough to recognize the long wrinkles and hard scars that’d come from longer and harder nights. But they smiled. They laughed. They wept for reasons that weren’t about blood and built for reasons other than to keep people out.
Maybe it sounds crazy to say… but in the Scar, it sounds even crazier to hear. This is not a land for happy people. This is not a land that makes happy people. This land breaks people, shatters families down to the last living soul and sends them out into the world to break someone else.
That was how the Scar stayed the Scar. That was how this place worked.
So to see them looking… happy… like all their pains and all their troubles and all the dark things they whispered to themselves in the night just didn’t…
What had Irvic said?
About the Compass Beast’s eyes?
For reasons I didn’t truly know—or maybe for reasons I just couldn’t admit to myself—I looked up. And up. And up. Until I beheld the barest corner of that pitch-black emptiness that was the Beast’s eye.
And in it I saw—
“HEY.”
Murthi seized me by the face, pulled my eyes back toward her. The grin and the joy were gone from her face, replaced with something dire and dark.
“Sorry.” She released my face, but held me by the hand. “You shouldn’t look…” She sighed. “All right, so listen, when you look into the Big One’s eyes… you see something. Something that makes you realize how small everything else is.”
“Well, yeah, he’s—”
“Not what I meant. He’ll make you forget your worries. Your fears, your pains, and your grudges, as well. But also your family. Your loves. The places you’ve been and ever will be.” She let go, held her hands up. “If you still want to look, I won’t stop you. But what you give to the Beast… you won’t get back.”
I held Murthi’s gaze for a long time.
For a long, painful time, I didn’t look away from her. And she didn’t look away from me.
Give up everything…
Give up waking up with my scars aching and my heart hanging heavy in my chest. Give up letting revenge and the gun keep me warm. Give up thinking about Rogo and Vraki and Jindu and all the people who gave me these scars…
Maybe one day I would wake up and just not think of the scars at all.
Give up everything.
Give up the list.
Give up the road it carried me to.
Give up the smell of dried flowers and wine. Give up the memory of brown eyes opening in the morning and smiling at me before her mouth could. Give up the next verse of the next poem in the next letter I’d been agonizing over before I send it to her.
I stared at Murthi. I made my choice.
And so did she.
She waved a hand. Irvic came running forward, carrying a burden wrapped in hide and linen, tossing it in my hand with an almost apologetic wince.
I could still feel his heat.
They’d hidden him beneath his sheath, beneath layers of cloth and leathers, but he still burned. I shed the coverings, slid the Cacophony out of his sheath. He flared a little at the indignation, but settled into my hands.
“No offense,” she said, “but if your business is done here, kindly take this thing far away. The Big One… he doesn’t like it.”
I took the gun from her. His heat seared into me as I buckled him around my waist—not as bad as I’d been expecting for the insult of my contemplating leaving him behind. Perhaps he was in a forgiving mood.
“Thanks,” I said to Murthi as I pulled my scarf up around my face. “And sorry.”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Us too.”
I found the rest of my stuff, my bird, and my footing in short order. The smiles that had greeted me when I arrived had turned to cautious, wary stares fixed on the burden at my hip as I mounted Congeniality and started out of Fleatown.
Noise and joy returned in my wake, growing louder the farther away I got. And maybe it was that noise that made me look over my shoulder. Or maybe I just wanted to take one last look at what I might have had.
The people of Fleatown returned to their life, unbothered by the strange Vagrant who had blown briefly through their camp. Yet at the edge, I saw the scrawny shape of Irvic standing there, staring at me as I left.
It would be many days before I could get the pitying look he gave me out of my head.
But that night, as I wandered through the devastated forest, something else occupied my thoughts. And he grinned at me through a bright, brass smile as I unsheathed him.
As if to say…
“Did you miss me?”
And I answered him.
As I rode toward Paarl’s Hollow.
And to the things I couldn’t bring myself to let go of.
EIGHT
Paarl’s Hollow
Bear with me.
What happened on the last day is still a little hazy, even to those who were there. Ask a hundred different people how Paarl’s Hollow fell, you’ll get a hundred different answers, each one its own shape of grief, of rage, of terror. Sometimes, I have trouble keeping it all straight myself.
But I know this.
Like all stories with unhappy endings, this one began with a question that couldn’t be answered.
“What do we do now?”
It wasn’t a question Virian had an answer for. It wasn’t a question that she should have ever been asked. But it didn’t really matter, since she hadn’t even heard it. She wasn’t even aware that Olio was atop the lookout tower with her.
Her ears were full of the deafening silence, that great held breath that preceded good jokes and bad news. Her heart was pounding in her chest, a drumbeat that shook her entire body. And her eyes…
Her eyes were on the Beast.
Its feet, upon a ruin of destroyed forest. Its back, so towering and vast as to block out the light of dawn. Its mane, thick and tangled with ruined redwoods and writhing animals that had been too slow to escape.
How had it come this far this quick? How could it be here already? There was still too much to do, too many people in the town. It was too big. Too big to look at all at once. Too big to even contemplate. Too big… too big… too big, too big, too big, too big, too—
“Virian?”
She blinked herself out of her stupor. And her heart fell as she saw him pointing toward the East Gate.
Their shadows stood long in the dawn’s light, the Children of the Dead looming like gravestones in the burned-out wreckage of yesterday’s battle. They stood, steel in hand and eyes on the city. Waiting.
Maybe she wondered, for what? What was worth staying here, with the Beast ready to grind them all into the earth? Was it worth it to kill everyone to prove some point she hadn’t even heard?
“Some of us tried leaving earlier,” Olio whispered. “You know, with your da—” He caught himself, swallowed something bitter. “With the printing press. But they shot at us. No demands or anything. They just drove us back into the city. They’re… they’re not going to let us leave. What do we do, Virian? Virian? Virian?”
“I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!” she snapped. “Why the fuck do I have to know? Why should I have to pick this up? Is it because of my… that… is it because of Rodaya? Because I’m his—”
“No, no, nothing like that. You’re just the only one with a weapon.”
The crossbow hung heavy on her back—the adjustments and modifications she had once been so proud of now felt like just more weight, a burden that she’d been charged with carrying.
>
She remembered all the times the man who had been her father once… or maybe never… had brought her some new trinket for her to tinker with, for her to make improvements on. She remembered the joy, the laughter, the hugs, and the “thank you, thank you, thank you”s.
Now, she couldn’t help but wonder… who had he killed to find it? Who died so she could have a new toy? How could she even think—
Easy, she told herself. Worry about that later. Worry about surviving now.
At least, that’s what I hope she told herself. I hope she knows how much of what happened wasn’t her fault.
Wherever she is.
Damn if it wasn’t true, either. The few peacekeepers who had remained had attempted to flee in the night. Their corpses decorated the road out of the East Gate and their steel was in the hands of the Children.
Fucking cowards, she thought.
“Virian.”
All of them. They don’t give a shit who they’ve left.
“Virian!”
None of them do. None of them ever did. We’re so—
“VIRIAN!”
“FUCKING WHAT?”
His finger was still pointing.
The other way now.
The Beast’s immense foot, colossal and massive, was raised into the air as it took a lumbering step forward. It loomed in the air like another moon—massive, implacable, impossible.
And it came down like—
“LOOK OUT!”
Someone screamed. The last words anyone heard before the sound of thunder. The earth groaned with the impact, tree trunks crunching and boulders shattering. Windows shattered, doors fell off their hinges, buildings swayed, and even the stones in the walls shook, a chorus to join the wailing of the people below as Paarl’s Hollow screamed out as one. The ground swayed beneath her feet, wood groaned, and—
Oh, fuck.
The watchtower began to list to one side. She seized Olio’s hand, pulled him in a frenzy toward the stairs. They fled down the steps as the tower tilted, its base cracking and splintering underneath them. They fled clear of it as it toppled over and fell onto a house, caving in the roof and making a morbid headstone of splintered wood and shattered glass for the city.
