Monsters & Mist

by Taylor Fenner

  “The slipperiness of the seal skin will allow you to move swiftly,” Rian folds the excess fabric, “and the scales are blade-and-teeth-proof. The Mistborn are known for razor sharp nails and teeth so if you should be bit, the scales will protect the wearer’s upper body. The holster is of course for easy access and I threw the gold trim on for a pop of color.”

  Andromeda snorts, “I’m sure I’ll be the height of fashion among the other Warriors.”

  “Don’t jest,” Rian replies seriously. “The Royal army only dreams of having uniforms like this suit instead of those horrid, bulky orange confections. Just think how many lives could be saved were they to have more stealthy attire to work with.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” Andromeda murmurs.

  “All right, now take it all off,” Rian waves his hand in her direction. “It’s time to fit you for your sacred aquaswift.”

  Wiggling her shoulders and hips, Andromeda shimmies out of the suit in one slick, solid piece. The cloak shutters closed around her, concealing her nudity. She digs around for her shift before slipping the cloak off her shoulders. Once she’s more modestly clothed she steps back onto the pedestal.

  “You can sit down,” Rian gestures to a stool next to his workstation. As Andromeda watches he gathers a bowl and a few oddly curved feather-ended needles before surveying his stock of swords. He tests a few out for weight, dismissing a handful before deciding on an impressively wicked blade with dark symbols carved into the hilt and a shimmering blue stone fitted into the pommel.

  “How does this work exactly?” Andromeda asks as she gazes nervously at the needles.

  “I need to extract a piece of your soul,” Rian shrugs. “It’s not a long process.”

  “Is it a… painful process?” Andromeda inquires.

  “Don’t look so grave,” Rian chuckles. “You won’t feel but a few pricks then it shall be over.”

  He sits across from her and readies the needles, humming a little to himself as he works. He places each instrument on a clean white cloth, tapping each several times to count them or to make sure they are in the correct order.

  “All right, are you ready?” Rian asks. Andromeda nods nearly imperceptibly. Rian nods, “Good, now lower the neckline over your heart.”

  Andromeda obliges as she watches him closely. He selects a needle and drags it through a bowl of mixed inks and foul-smelling herbs. “Take a deep breath and hold very still.” Rian instructs.

  She gasps as the needle makes contact with her flesh and quickly clenches her teeth as Rian pokes out a design on her chest. Andromeda scrunches her eyes closed as she feels a sharp tug deep within her chest cavity. Feeling a part of herself being ripped from her chest Andromeda bites down hard to keep from crying out.

  “You can open your eyes now,” Rian’s amused voice vibrates against her ear.

  Cracking open first one eye, then the other she’s just in time to witness Rian coax a blue fluid from the tip of his needle into the pommel of the sword.

  “That is a piece of my soul?” Andromeda asks in hushed awe.

  “It is,” Rian nods, “and so this sword will be an extension of you, a part of you will be connected to this bit of metal from this moment until your soul finds peace in the Undrawhorl.”

  He places the sword into Andromeda’s hands and she hold it gingerly, feeling a current zip through her — a lost piece of her soul seeking home within.

  ❖

  Andromeda exits the bladesmithy in a fog, her suit draped over one arm and her sword strapped to her hip. The sounds of the encampment, which felt like a muted world far away while she was in Rian’s company comes rushing back to her.

  A young warrior whoops in victory as he pins his sparring partner to the ground mere feet from the bladesmithy as their instructor barks orders. A few women, dressed in simple dresses, not warrior armor, drag tables into the middle of the encampment. Wives of warriors perhaps? Andromeda didn’t realize the Warriors’ families were permitted to live in the encampment. One woman breaks away, watching Andromeda warily as she seeks out Hugo and Lester. As Andromeda crosses the encampment to the far training field the woman, a slim raven-haired hag with dark circles under her eyes and a lumpy brown dress that drowns her frame, steps into Andromeda’s path.

  “Excuse me,” Andromeda stumbles back a step.

  The woman’s face contorts into fury as she lunges forward and spits on Andromeda’s boots. “Scum, that’s what you are.”

  “Excuse me,” Andromeda repeats, certain that she has misunderstood her.

  “Thieves like you don’t deserve the honor of the uniform,” The woman snarls.

  “Gemma,” Hugo’s voice cuts sharply through the encampment as he limps across the field. “That’s enough. Leave the girl alone.”

  “She trapped my husband’s soul,” the woman shrieks, “she delayed his journey into the undrawhorl.”

  “I - I’m sorry,” Andromeda stammers. “I didn’t know. It fell off a merchant’s cart-"

  “It’s all right, Andromeda,” Hugo slaps her shoulder. “You didn’t know.”

  “I hope the Mistborn take you and rip you to pieces like they did to my poor Malachi.” The woman shakes one long brittle finger in Andromeda’s direction before stalking off.

  Hugo sighs. Andromeda shifts on her feet awkwardly. “So that’s the wife of the Warrior whose sword I found.”

  “That’s her,” Hugo confirms. “Malachi was a good man, but the Mistborn cut him down like he was made of the waves she’d emerged from. It was a great loss.”

  Andromeda hangs her head, slightly ashamed. When she found the aquaswift sword that had fallen off the merchant’s cart she’d assumed a down-on-his-luck former Warrior had sold it to the merchant for coin but she’d never dreamed the merchant had stolen it from a Warrior massacred by a Mistborn maiden. Andromeda had been so proud of her find, flashing it around for all to see since she didn’t realize it contained a piece of that Warrior’s soul. She feels so foolish now.

  “Come along Andromeda,” Hugo says.

  Falling into step beside him Andromeda asks, “Does everyone here know?”

  Hugo is silent for several long moments before nodding, “When you were taken into the Warrior’s custody outside your village one of our scouts rode back here and delivered the news to Malachi’s widow and news spreads like fire here.”

  A fierce determination sweeps through her, now more than ever Andromeda is eager to prove her rightful place among the Warriors, to make amends and fill the hole left behind from their fallen brethren.

  ❖

  After a sparring match with Hugo which left Andromeda breathless and a little in awe of the old man’s speed and agility, she joins the other Warriors for the evening meal beneath the stars. The wives and partners of the Warriors had dragged long tables outside and set them with large wooden platters and pewter goblets that shone from the light of twinkling torches strung from one hut to another forming a large square in the middle of the encampment. Candles woven between stone centerpieces in Zarouk and Nalley’s likenesses illuminate the spread of breads, meats, and vegetables held over from the reaping season.

  Andromeda keeps her head down throughout the feast and keeps close to Hugo and a jovial Lester after the overly public confrontation with Malachi’s widow. Even so, Andromeda can feel the stares of others on her from all directions.

  “The General and the remainder of our squadron will arrive in the morn,” Hugo murmurs as he sips from the tangy bitterberry wine in his goblet. “Knowing young Thane, he will want to train you himself so he can assess your strengths and weaknesses.”

  Andromeda nods her understanding as she nibbles on a crusty piece of bread slathered in honey butter. As the feast draws to a close one of Thane’s Commanders rises from his seat and raises his goblet.

  “To a successful season and the thrill of the hunt,” the Commander’s booming voice reaches out to every corner of the encampment as the Warriors raise their own goblet
s in toast.

  “To the thrill of the hunt!” the Warriors echo, a few whooping and hollering joyously.

  Little by little the gathering Warriors break away, heading to their dwellings or to the practice fields where a few Warriors bet extra patrols on two warriors sparring in the center of the field.

  “We have few women among us, but we’ve eked out a few huts near the back of the encampment for the women to live. Men and women are expressly prohibited from sharing a dwelling unless they be mated together under the eyes of King Pavo.” Lester explains as he leads Andromeda to her new dwelling as he bobs and weaves, tipsy from too much bitterberry wine.

  The hut is identical to the two it is sandwiched between and Lester deposits Andromeda at the doorstep before hobbling off to watch the sparring in the practice field. Stepping inside the simple one-room shack Andromeda surveys the sparsely furnished room. A bed lines one wall beneath a window flanked by a washbasin and stool. A ashwood trunk sits at the foot of the bed, Andromeda’s small rucksack of belongings atop the pale wood. The only other items in the shack are a dummy on the opposite wall dressed in her Warrior suit and her aquaswift sword on display in an upright mahogany rack the color of her mother’s hair. Andromeda forces all thoughts of Lyra to the back of her mind. Lyra is not the reason Andromeda is here, she reminds herself. Lyra is nothing to her but a person from her past.

  Lighting a few candles on the windowsill Andromeda undresses down to her shift out of sight of the window and plops onto the bed. The mattress bounces slightly as she lays down upon it and props the pillows up behind her back.

  As she stares out the window beside her bed Andromeda’s thoughts wander to her father. Is he wondering what has happened to her? Have the villagers told him of the Watierai Warriors taking Andromeda away? Will he think she’s imprisoned in the bowels of Vanyia’s palace? And Midge, she must be beside herself. First Wink was taken and now Andromeda has failed to return with the search party.

  Andromeda’s shaking hands find their way into her braid and unweave the long chestnut strands. The ends are a puff of tangles and snarls and she finger-combs them free as she worries about her family and fights the homesickness making her stomach flip-flop.

  Through Andromeda’s window she watches the candles flicker to darkness in the windows of the neighboring huts one by one, the comforting golden halos fading to shades of black and eerie gray shadows. Turning away from the window Andromeda lays on her side, closing her eyes and try to coax sleep to come but she jumps at every crackle and groan she hears.

  The minutes tick along as Andromeda tries to slow her breathing and empty her mind. She feels each muscle in her body go slack, becoming weightless as her eyelids finally flutter shut. Soon she is floating on a cloud, adrift in a turbulent sea bobbing up and down with the current. A recurring dream, a feeling of being cradled and safe then being ripped away and choking on salt water as she fights to stay afloat. Her mother’s face comes into view hovering above her, Lyra’s features sharp and distorted, her silver eyes molten and calculating as she coos words Andromeda cannot understand. It’s always the same, this dream of hers.

  Andromeda jolts awake as she feels gravity return to her body and makes contact with the unforgiving stone floor of her hut.

  “Good going, seaweed digits,” A male voice hisses in the dark.

  Andromeda blinks once, twice, three times but she can’t seem to clear her vision enough to see in the darkness of the hut. Hands reach out and touch her everywhere — hands grabbing her under each arm while others grip her ankles - and suddenly she’s airborne.

  “Hey!” Andromeda yelps. “What are you doing? Put me down!”

  She squirms in the hold of her captors and realizes that someone has placed a sack over her head preventing Andromeda from seeing her attackers.

  “Shut up, recruit,” a gruff voice snarls.

  Andromeda kicks blindly and hears a sharp intake of breath as her foot connects with a soft stomach but her triumph is short-lived as the hand around that ankle tightens like an iron band, unbendable as Shroudanian steel.

  “Stop squirming and we won’t slit your throat before the night is over,” Another impatient voice growls.

  Andromeda feels them carry her, stepping down as they exit her hut. From the sound of their footfalls on the gravel pathway she counts four, maybe five assailants. Andromeda tries to scream and alert the other Warriors but the sack is briefly lifted up to her nose and a rough, mildew scented cloth is quickly thrust between her teeth gagging her before she can make a sound.

  They carry Andromeda an unknown distance, her only distinction of where they are heading being the sound of the sea growing louder and louder in her ears. Her assailants deposit Andromeda roughly on the rocky shoreline as one straddles her chest to keep her down. She tosses her head from side to side as she tries to buck the stranger off with her hips but his weight presses down heavily on top of her.

  “Do you have the chains?” The stranger pinning Andromeda down asks his coconspirators.

  “Right here,” the gruff voice from before replies breathlessly. “Get ‘er ready.”

  The weight of the man pinning Andromeda down lifts as she is dragged to her feet and her arms are stretched in opposite directions, popping as they are ripped out of their sockets as she is thrown against a solid wall of rock.

  “Quickly, chain her in place,” a smug voice commands.

  Steel manacles are clamped into place around her wrists as the sound of chains clanking together above her head fills the otherwise silent night. Andromeda feels hot breath through the sack over her head as the manacles are attached to the chains and the process is repeated, spreading her legs to the point of her muscles screaming in protest, manacles clamped onto her ankles and attached to more chains. The hands holding her against the rock disappear and she tries to twist but the chains keep her from moving more than an inch from the rock. Andromeda feels the cool kiss of a knife at her collarbone as her shift is cut away from her shoulders and breasts, the thin cotton slipping down her torso before becoming caught on the swell of her hips.

  The last sound Andromeda hears is the roar of laughter and the taunts her assailants call out that normally she’d brush off with a crude retort of her own. But Andromeda can’t fight back; she’s powerless, bound to a mammoth rock, gagged, and blinded from seeing her attackers. That is how they leave her as the chill wind off the sea puckers her skin and makes her shiver.

  History of Esternwhorl #5

  The Disappearance of the Mistborn Princess

  Some years ago a young mother sat upon a rock in the middle of the sea sunning herself and singing to her infant daughter. The young mother’s wavy sun-lightened brown hair cascaded down her bare back into spiral curls against her lower back. If you’d seen her face you would have seen her haltingly beautiful golden eyes, the same eyes reflected in her young daughter’s face. Her skin glistened as the sun tried to peak through the mist shrouding the sea, the coloring a strange gray-blue not seen among the Landborn.

  But a sinister force watched the young mother and her babe, plotting a horrible injustice. As the young mother slipped into the water to return to her home her babe was torn from her arms, the water that usually rose up under the control of the young woman’s people turned against her becoming a violent, churning whirlpool casting the young mother far out to sea as her daughter was tossed toward shore on the white-capped waves.

  The young mother was powerless to get to her child as the sea dragged her under and the babe’s frightened cries were the last thing the mother heard before sinking below the surface.

  When the mother was again able to rise above the shifting surface of the sea the morning was calm, too calm as if the world were waiting on bated breath. No sign of the young mother’s child could be seen though the young mother and her family searched the coastline, minutes turning into hours turning into days. The babe was gone.

  But this young mother was no ordinary woman. She was Carina, Crown
Princess of Perscesia, one of Faeta’s own, the one true heir to the throne and future ruler of all that dwelled below the sea.

  The royal family would not rest until the stolen Mistborn princess was recovered. As days bled into weeks then months the Perscesian royal family cursed the Landborn. If the scale of justice could not be balanced with the return of the daughter of the sea the Mistborn Perscesians would in turn steal one infant Landborn child a year, taking the children away to live among the Mistborn.

  This yearly reaping went on for ten horrid years before abruptly ending to the puzzlement of the Landborn. Nobody knows for sure what happened to the infants that were stolen away to the sea for they were never seen again. The missing Mistborn Princess has never been recovered and though Mistborn men and woman are occasionally seen come ashore to taken Landborn lovers and cause mischief no infants had been taken in eight years. Until now.

  Chapter 5

  Thane

  The sun has yet to peek over the horizon as Cutter and Thane lead the squadron through the gate into the encampment. Though the hour is early, squadrons of Warriors are already up and about, some training, others patrolling the watchtowers high above.

  In the far practice field Hugo leads a group of men, training them in hand to hand combat. In another field Lester puts the small group of female Warriors through the paces of their training. Absent from the group of female Warriors is the girl-thief, Andromeda. Thane frowns. Where is she? Why is she not training with the others?

  Thane rides right up to Lester, his mighty Scalptain stallion puffing angry tendrils of fog from his massive nostrils as his saucer sized hooves dance on the sand.

  “General,” Lester nods his head to the general in greeting.