by Mana Sol
“You should have been here already!” he said with a fierce scowl. “It’s too late to go with the vanguard force, so they had to set out without you. And now we’ve lost contact! No gear for you, so you’ll have to make do with what you’re wearing now, but we have two days’ worth of supplies for each reserve and you’re expected to make it stretch as far as you can, understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I said quickly. “Sorry about the clothes. You know how we’re running out faster than they can make more.”
He huffed. “I know. Sicker days to come, so don’t get comfortable either. Where are the rest of you? We were told we’d be getting as many as you can spare tonight.”
“More tomorrow night. We’re the only ones who were in proper condition to come now. The commander wasn’t pleased with how unprepared the others were.”
He snorted. “Like we have the luxury of only taking the prepared.”
“We would have said the same, but…” I shrugged helplessly. “I think Commander Ezrafil would have taken my head off.”
“Are you crazy? Don’t ever say anything but yes or no to him.”
“We know that now.”
“Can’t believe my eyes,” he muttered. “Real live humans in the flesh fighting with us now. Gods help us.”
“We hope so.”
“All right, enough stalling. Follow me and I’ll attach you to the squadron going out in…four minutes! Damn it. Hurry!”
Addy threw me a half-panicked, half-admiring look that I ignored. Lying was the easy part. Now we had to survive.
35
We didn’t even get bags of our own when they saw we had brought satchels already, and I knew then how scarce supplies really were. Hard biscuits and two leather skins of water each, not even a proper canteen. The unease of it all seeped deeper into me as our host, Dario, scrambled to get us together in time to send us out with the ‘squadron.’ I hoped it wasn’t as rigid and disciplined as it sounded. The more out of place we appeared, the greater the chance they would backtrack and realize we weren’t supposed to be here at all.
“You’re crazy,” Addy muttered as we watched a Thaumaturgist fae unwind the wards on the gate to send us off. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Necessity.”
“Oh, shut up. Stop trying to sound cool.”
I smiled. We were on our way, well and truly. I didn’t know how long it would take to catch up to Genie and there was no telling if she had even survived, but right now, we were leaving the Citadel and searching for her. I had no plans for what happened after, no crafty lies and machinations in place to ensure our safety. Our case of mistaken identity would be the only favorable stroke of luck for us tonight. But plan in place or no, we had to go on. Whatever bridges appeared, we’d cross them when we got there.
The grass under our feet didn’t feel so different past the gate. The heavy thunk of the wooden grille closing shut behind us was only the first reminder we were no longer where we once knew, and I wished privately that the Thaumaturgist who’d opened the gate was coming with us. Dario had been begrudgingly relieved when I told him my specialty so he could know where to position me in the squadron - right in the middle of twelve soldiers and Addy at the rear of it, in charge of watching everyone’s backs. It didn’t matter to him that this was my first time leaving the Citadel. Nothing mattered to him except that I could spell craft, and spell craft well.
“Nice gear,” someone to my right muttered, and I found a fae with golden cat’s-eyes staring back at me. “Ready to fight, are you?”
Their words were more snide than aggressive, but I caught the vindictive glint in their eyes all the same. Here it was. I had hoped Dario’s dismissive attitude would be the worst of the reception we got, but clearly I’d been too optimistic. We were still in our Jupiter Gate uniforms, and only now did I remember all those protestors at the gates…Some of the Otherkind had advocated for equal opportunities for us, but many others hadn’t.
Still, this was a welcome change from Jupiter Gate where everyone had hated us.
“I just hope I can do my part and more,” I said evenly. “The human who’s lost with the platoon we’re after now was with us.”
“Better pray to your gods. She’s the best out of the ones who’ve filtered into the army over the last decade.” Pointed teeth gleamed at me. “Most of the humans from the other Institutes are only passably useful at best.”
“I hope I get the opportunity to prove otherwise.”
Our feet moved across rustling grass for a while before he responded. “That’s the problem with your kind,” he murmured. “War’s nothing but opportunities to you.”
“Quiet!” someone else hissed. “We’re going in.”
These woods didn’t seem so different from the ones inside the Citadel either. Not at first, at least. The deeper we went, the faster we traveled until we were almost jogging. I stifled my growing pants. Last thing I needed was for everyone to give me dirty looks for being so weak. If I’d known Thaumaturgists were expected to exert themselves so much, I would have done more jumping jacks growing up.
I wanted to look back and check on Addy at the rear, but just then, a glimmer of purple caught my eye. Something on a tree trunk, just a flash…Then another, there. My eyes flickered between the trees we passed, more and more of them bearing strange purple veins that looked like mineral drips webbing over the wood. There were some red and blue streaks marring the underbrush too, but there was something eerie about the varying shades of purple that made my skin prickle.
“Fuck,” someone hissed in front of me. “It’s already reached this far.”
“The slash and burn didn’t work.”
“No, it did. Look, they’re weak, not pulsing. Must have already been infected before the firemouth burned everything up ahead. We’re only just seeing it now.”
“All the way back here? Gods.”
Silence again, and even tenser this time. A tendril of fear coiled on the nape of my neck, pulling at my scalp and making it prickle. There was something in the air. The earth. Something familiar and wrong and frightening all at once.
I peeked to my right again at the fae. His lips were drawn back and teeth pointed even more than they’d been earlier. In the darkness that had grown under the thickening canopy, he looked as sinister as any fae should - but frightened, too, like a cat cornered in an alleyway by snickering children. To my left, the other soldiers were the same way. I wasn’t the only one, then, and I couldn’t blame my imagination for the wobbling of my knees as we jogged on.
At least our shoes were comfortable, but in hindsight, I guessed that had been deliberate on the part of whoever was behind deciding our footwear at Jupiter Gate. Reserves should always be ready, after all. Overhead, the trees whispered at some unfelt wind wound through the branches and leaves, strong enough to send twigs in our faces. I brushed them away whenever they caught in my hair, wishing Addy were next to me. I couldn’t watch her back when she was the one behind me, and a sinking fear in my gut warned me not to lose her and Genie both.
“Coming up,” someone hissed. “I smell fire.”
Only then did I notice the vampire that had been with us, flying from the rear. He swooped over our heads with a beat of his leathery wings to join the forward soldiers, keeping pace in the air.
“Still no contact,” I thought I heard him say, but he was speaking too quietly for me to hear over the rustling of the grass at our feet. “We need to be cautious.”
“You stay back there with the spell crafter,” the squadron captain replied. “We can’t lose you, too.”
“We aren’t so far out that you can’t find your way back.”
“Assuming they haven’t pincered behind us.”
“Do you think they’re capable?”
“It’s your people who are getting targeted. You tell me.”
“I’m in the lower branch of my clan. They tell me nothing.”
“Maybe better that way. Just get back there and s
tay with the crafter. She’s one of the…”
Humans, he probably said, but I didn’t catch the last of his words because of the crackling of branches in the canopy. I looked up, suspicious and sweating, but I saw nothing other than dark leaves. I thought I saw rodents scurrying along the limbs from tree to tree and following our swift progress, but I wasn’t going to worry about squirrels and raccoons when my every instinct told us something far worse waited for us ahead. Something in the air was wringing the blood out of my heart with every beat a little too hard. Heavy, thick, oppressive - I wanted to blame it on my growing fatigue now that we had been at this brisk pace for well over an hour, but I knew better.
Nether. I’d never seen a Nether creature in person, only illustrated, drawn in the papers or scratched in the dirt. Big eyes, corded sinew, veins threaded through their bodies like creeping vines…
The smell of smoke roused me. Maybe I was being wishful since most fires should smell the same to my untrained nose, but my blood rushed louder in my ears at the thought that we might be closing in on Genie at long last. How long had we been traveling? Three hours? It should be broad daylight by now, but the trees were so thick that it might as well be nighttime now. Magelights glowed at key points in our tight formation. Not mine. I was a Thaumaturgist. My job was to stay out of sight, unnoticed and in the dark. I’d never been in a true battle before, but this was what I’d been preparing for since childhood. I knew the basics.
So why did this feel so awful? My chest was tight, suffocating. The purple streaks on the trees grew to thick gashes, and the acrid scent of sharp smoke was the only thing that soothed the dread curling around my heart.
We broke into a clearing at last all of a sudden, and I breathed in the sunlight with a deep inhale. I didn’t even care that the smell of burnt wood cut into my lungs; anything was better than the choking gloom that had made my bones feel like jelly dipped in sap.
“The firemouth did good work,” someone said. “Look, no corruption.”
“For now. Nether will make everything swell up again in a few weeks.”
“Still, better than nothing. Look, she scorched everything for at least a half-kilometer.”
“She’ll do a lot more than that. Just need to find her.”
I said nothing. Genie had done all this? The clearing was not a natural one, but an entire band-shaped swath of land burnt down to stumps and roots. To think that not so long ago, we’d threatened to have her burn down half as many trees and thought ourselves clever for it. Here, it made her a hero. The purple veins were absent here, snuffed out and dead. I looked around as we picked our way through the wreckage of blackened wood and withered underbrush. And Addy? Finally I dared to look back, and I caught her blue eyes looking back at me before the heads of the other soldiers got in my way. I turned back around.
Genie. Genie was close by. Please, I thought. Please be alive.
When we crossed the burned patch and found ourselves back in the woods again, this time the darkness was alive. Throbbing. I shook, not out of fear but filled with trembling energy like a strangled earthquake. Here, the forest was even denser, and the purple lines that invaded the tree trunks pulsed with something malevolent, hungry, infected with disgusting sickness that reminded me of vomit and pain.
The vampire from earlier was walking behind me, no longer in the air. He, too, was hiding in the darkness that shielded me, away from the magelights. So vampires were attached to squadrons and platoons for their telepathy, I thought as we moved on with increased urgency through dry, crackling grass and over fallen dead breanches. The range would be limited, but with vampires skilled enough, they could maintain cross-unit communication with each over a distance and relay important information to the other soldiers with them.
It was ingenious. It was crippling. And the Nether creatures had somehow deduced the weakness on their own.
“It’s too quiet,” I said. I didn’t even realize I had until the man next to me scoffed.
“Keep your voice down if you’ve got nothing of value to say. Interesting tattoos you’ve got all over you, by the way. Couldn’t see them earlier but got an eyeful when we broke out of the woods. Made friends, did you?”
How could this man be trying to make conversation right now, however hushed? But there was a tension in his voice that told me not all was at it seemed. A nervous talker cracking poor jokes?
“A very nice fae welcome that I got a little while ago,” I answered. “You might know them.”
“Ah, yes, because all fae know each other. Very good.”
“I was thinking more that your attitude reminds me of them.”
“Attitude?”
“Know-it-all, pompous asses.”
He chuckled, and I smiled despite myself. “Which Nephilim have you got bagged, then?” he asked. “Surprised you went to the effort but still got sent out here anyway.”
My lips. I’d forgotten all about it. This fae was misunderstanding the situation, but it wasn’t worth the effort to explain that it wasn’t what he thought it was. I didn’t even know what it really was. I ran my finger over my lips, wondering why the hell Zedekiel had thought it was a good idea to kiss me to end an argument. He’d gotten what he wanted so I supposed he’d won, but in the end he’d kissed some human to do it, so had he really?
“You wouldn’t know the name,” I said after a moment.
“Try me. There aren’t so many Nephilim in the Citadel that I wouldn’t recognize it. And you’re from Jupiter Gate, judging by that uniform. Can’t be more than a dozen there at the most. So who is he?”
“Who said it’s a he?”
“Oh? Given to the softer delights in life, are we?”
I raised my eyebrows at him just in time for someone to kick at my heels from behind. “Shut up,” the soldier mumbled, and I acquiesced. We were deep in corrupted territory now. Keeping my mouth shut was paramount.
We didn’t have long to go before a spurt of orange through the trees made all of us halt. Glowing bright and angry, it was impossible to miss, but the smell that washed over us in a wave was something ungodly. Poison, decay, something that wasn’t pure fire. I choked on the tendril that crawled down my throat and held my nose. Genie, I wanted to say, but I could no longer speak.
“Nether!” someone shouted in a panic. “Get in formation!”
I tried to fight my way past the cluster of soldiers who suddenly dispersed then rearranged themselves in a circle around me. Protect the Thaumaturgist, of course. Damn it! There was one other besides me, my senior; why weren’t they going to him instead so I could run off and find Genie! That was definitely her ahead. I couldn’t see her and it was too far to rationally know - but I knew it. It had to be her.
“Nether!” someone screamed again, but this time it was terror and fear in his voice rather than warning.
And then they were upon us.
36
Noise. Sounds. I couldn’t hear my breathing above the spine-chilling cacophony of slashing, tearing flesh and screams. Twice, dark shapes glowing with purple veins and luminous white eyes leaped at me, and twice the soldiers around me beat them back. Some carried weapons while others wielded earth and water magic and others still light magic and wind magic, which confused me just as much as the sudden chaos that had erupted around us. Fae didn’t carry weapons like that. Wrought iron and dead wood were useless to them. So why -
“Do something!” someone screamed, and the panicked voice galvanized me to action. Someone crumpled next to me, borne down by a hunched four-legged figure bulging with muscle and terrifying malevolence, and my hands were flying faster than my thoughts could form.
Just like I’d learned, but more. Instinct sharpened by desperation, accuracy honed by deathly fear. My mind was empty, every conscious thought chased out by the horror of the agonized screaming all around me, but that meant there was nothing left to obstruct my spell crafting.
One array to anchor me to the ground, another to propel. A double algorithm to la
unch it skyward had the Nether beast flying through the canopy and crunching through thick tree limbs. Not that I watched. I spun around, hands still moving, fingers glowing white like blinding stars. Rotation array, acceleration. The combination array drilled straight through the next Nether creature snarling over a fallen body, about to sink its slavering fangs into vulnerable flesh. It yowled as my spell caught it in the chest and spun it around and around and sent it crashing through three trees.
I’d never done it this way before. I’d always held back, always kept my magic on a leash to show control, skill. There was no such thing as skill here. Every attack I made was concentrated fear, meant to kill and tear apart before they could do it to me or the soldiers dying and falling to their knees one by one. Faster. More. Dark, syrupy blood splattered over me time and again, some from the beasts I tore apart with my spells and some from the ones the soldiers beat back from me on their own. More. Faster. Harder. Wind-sharp, slicing arrays shaped into wheels that raced through the woods, guided by my stare as they rolled and spun and tore apart flesh and bone. Gristle and blood, severed limbs, the mixed sounds of men and beasts dying all around me -
Addy. Addy! I slammed out a triple array and divided it before sending them whizzing in different directions, one to crash into a spider-like creature coming down from the branches and two to rip away a hulking panther-like beast with a mouth full of bloody flesh between its crooked teeth. Too late - the man it had been on top of lay still and mangled, half his head missing. I almost vomited, but that meant I couldn’t keep searching for Addy in the middle of all this insanity.
