The Reaping Season

by Sarah Stirling

  “Many scholars have written on the riftspawn and the otherworld. There is no need for this.”

  He smiled again. “On the contrary, there is every need. Many have speculated on their nature like philosophers. The world has enough philosophy. What we need are more scientists to understand the reality of the world.”

  “Like you,” she snapped as his fingers gripped her arm. She tried to pull away but she was completely strapped down. There was no escape as he pushed his hand down and then the bite of the needle in the fleshy part of her arm stung.

  Fear stilled her, waiting for the blow. She felt normal, if hot, unable to wipe at her slick skin. Whatever she had been injected with was taking its time affecting her and it made every second agony, breaths coming shallower and shallower.

  “I want to know how much your body can fight with that creature’s help. There have been many accounts of miraculous healing. Do you think you can do the same?”

  As she struggled, her movements became slower, sluggish as if she had fallen asleep in the afternoon and awoken with a head of cotton. Panic overtook her, desperate noises passing her lips as her limbs stiffened, chest heaving with each laboured breath. “What – what did – did you do?”

  He turned away from her as he spoke, fiddling with things she could not see. She could barely move her neck. “It will slowly paralyse you until you can no longer move. Gradually your lungs will stop drawing breath and eventually your heart will stop.” Moving back into her eye line, he held up an hourglass and flipped it, sand draining into the bottom glass in a stream, quickly piling into a small mound.

  Feeling like he had a lung in each fist, she gasped, “Why?”

  “I told you why. The truth is that with all these restrictions you place upon yourself in order to fit in, you would never discover the real extent of your abilities. I want to know just how much you can do. How much you can take. Think of the possibilities.”

  She glared up at him as she fought to keep breathing, the ensuing tide of panic hard to quell when she could no longer feel her legs. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes.

  “We wouldn’t need to press so many into service if soldiers were as powerful as gods. People could live so much longer – forever, even. Sustenance would bloom at the touch of a fingertip. Could you imagine?”

  Rook barely heard his words. Each breath came shorter and black spots were dancing before her vision. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood just to shock her body back into sensation. It was terrifying. Every command sent from her brain never made it to her body, as if their connection had been severed. Just like her and The Rook.

  One can no longer exist without the other.

  She had to find a way to bring back the connection, and fast. It wasn’t gone, not like that soldier in the cells, it had just been buried so deep she struggled to locate it. The scientist continued to talk and she used his words to lull herself into a trance, closing her eyes and slowing her heartbeat on purpose, in the hopes it would slow the progress of the drug in her veins.

  Where are you? She pictured The Rook in her mind’s eye, the white feathers that faded into the curling grey smoke, and pink eyes lit from within. A sharp, curving grey beak, gleaming and sharp. The hazy, translucent quality the riftspawn possessed, for it had no real physical form. Except for her.

  “… to think I’d have the opportunity to meet a beserker…”

  Rook hyperventilated, desperate and pathetic like a fish out of water. She tried to think about Janus’ words, to take his belief and stretch it out, use it as the tether to herself as she plunged down into the well of the power she had once been able to pull from so easily. He believed in her. Of all the people, someone cold and careless like Janus Lakazar believed in her. They were all relying on her to fight through this: Janus, Kilai, Viktor, Seeker. She had failed too much to let herself fail now.

  Do not fight the wind. Let it guide you.

  She pictured huge flapping wings, their rapid beats like the frenzied signature that wafted from The Rook. Her oldest companion. Her biggest adversary and her greatest ally. Here I am! She screamed in her mind, remembering the way she had felt the first time her consciousness had brushed the riftspawn’s. The shiver that had run through her as her body surged with so much power she didn’t think she could contain it. How she had wanted to dance, to fight; to feel everything like she had never felt it before.

  They were irrevocably intertwined now. They couldn’t be separated. Her boomeranging cry echoed back to her, taking on a hissing, clucking undertone that crashed over her in a heady mixture of relief and trepidation. Faintly, she felt that familiar signature stir and her body sang with the fury, the flurry of her frantic thoughts stripping back to raw anger.

  But still, even as she snatched desperate breaths from iron lungs, The Rook held back from her, damming off the pounding waves of otherworldly energy. It was refusing because she had ignored it for so long, always forcing it to heed her bidding and restraining it from mindless violence. In this moment, here and now, she had a decision to make. She could chose survival, to fight back and show them just what she could do, but she would change everything. It wouldn’t be just the formal agreement she had made as a child, overseen by her father and the beserkers of her tribe. It would be true acceptance, a merging of both body and soul. Her will and The Rook’s would be one and the same.

  Rook wanted to grapple with it. She wanted desperately to doubt, and contemplate, consider the consequences. But the sand had nearly fallen. The will to survive was simply too strong.

  “I accept,” she said aloud. “I accept you.”

  “What are you saying?”

  It hit her with the force of a ship dashing against the rocks in a storm. She was broken down, shattered. Every physical sensation had been numbed so that all she felt was the spiritual; all the running, vibrating, shining lines of energy that ran between her and the lives around her. To have everything cut off in one moment and then all revealed to her in the next was staggering, her head lolling as the pulse of the nearby rift restarted her heartbeat to its swelling rhythm. In her mind The Rook screeched, a sound of defiance and ire. Its power – no, their power – raced through her, bringing back physical feeling to her fingers, her hands, arms, chest, legs, toes.

  With a cry that sounded more avian than human she pushed both arms against the straps until they snapped and she was free. She saw two blue, round eyes as a hand snatched at the bond around her throat and tore it away with a snarl. Sitting up, she cocked her head and looked into the scientist’s eyes. He staggered back a few steps when she pulled her lips back in a smile.

  “Why do you look so afraid? This is what you wanted, is it not?” She ripped the rows of straps from her legs and swung them over the side of the bed, relishing the scent of fear as he stumbled back and called for help. Good. More meant a greater lesson to be learned. A greater chance to work off this feverish energy burning up inside of her.

  She took her first step, tiles cold against her bare feet and eliciting a small shiver. Another step. A fragment of her signature distracted her from his bleating for a second as she was reminded of the loss of her blades – like missing limbs that had her fingers curling as she imagined them to hand. They were nearby. Following the trail, she found them caged in a glass box, displayed like exhibits in a museum. With a crack of her elbow she smashed the glass, unconcerned for her feet as tiny shards rained down around her, her sole focus on the relief of plucking them from the box and running her hands over the worn bone of the handles. Something clicked into place, the hole where they had been filling in. She twirled them in her hands and grinned as the first guards burst through the door.

  Now she was ready for a fight. Cracking her neck, she beckoned them with a crook of her finger, grin widening at the momentary confusion on their faces. Let them fear her. She would show them exactly why they should. With a piercing cry, she launched herself at them. She was a storm, twirling and slashing and slicing. All conscious tho
ught stripped away, leaving only raw emotion behind. Lost to the feeling, she felt the ecstasy boil within her like it would spill from her edges.

  Rook was death itself; the messenger and the executioner, come for anyone who stood in her way, blind to friend or foe. In that laboratory beneath the city, Rook became something else. Powerful, vicious, unstoppable. Both human and not. In that laboratory beneath the city, Rook became The Rook.

  And as one they reaped what others had sewn.

  Part Four: Death on High

  Over the years Janus has learned to occupy himself through long periods of isolation. After Rook had been taken again he had fallen into a trance on instinct, mind peacefully blank. He had been taught this form of meditation by a fellow soldier back when he’d still been in Bluestone, when it had been necessary to know how to quieten the mind; to steal pockets of sleep where they became available. In all that time the ability had never left him. Long hours passed in what could have been minutes when he was lost in his trances and it helped to keep his sanity in the worst of situations.

  Still alert enough to register noises around him, he was thrust out of his trance by the commotion from outside, blinking into a sunlit cell. It took him a moment for his mind to resettle, seeing the sun high in the sky and realising it was afternoon. Clanging and scratching sounded from down the corridor and he turned towards the door, listening. The noises were frantic, desperate; not the calm and composed marching of the soldiers.

  A bloodstained figure flew past his cell and fell against the bars outside of Seeker’s, whose head shot up in warning as the bang echoed through the room. The figure grabbed onto the bars and hauled herself back until she was standing before the door to his, her long, pale hair hanging limp over her face. From between strands of hair he could just make out the faint sheen of grey eyes shining from within as she lifted two red hands to the bars.

  “Rook?” he said.

  Her grip tightened and all around her flared a shimmering haze, smoky grey wisps curling up from around her form. With a cry that sounded like a bird’s shriek, she pulled on the bars, muscles in her arms straining. Metal groaned beneath her hands, warping under her enhanced strength.

  Janus stood, unsettled. Too many times before had he seen people move in that same, unnatural way. They’d been unresponsive to his words, as if they couldn’t hear him at all. If Rook had fallen over the edge he had no way of bringing her back and chained as he was, no way of protecting himself should she forget he was not her enemy. He braced himself for the worst.

  Panting heavily, she wrenched the bars apart and stepped through the hole, eyes still staring ahead, blank and shining. Strapped to her back the bone handles of her blades jutted from past her shoulders and he gulped, stepping back. The chain around his ankle jangled.

  “Rook,” he said, raising his palms. “It’s me. It’s Janus.”

  As she stepped into a square of light from the window, he saw her hair shining – but it wasn’t all hair. All around her face and dangling from locks of hair matted with dried blood were feathers, white like an albino raven. She stopped in the middle of the light, glowing so bright with her shining aura it was difficult to look directly at her. She looked vicious, ethereal, terrible. Inhuman. Cocking her head, her eyes flickered up and down his form, some recognition leaking in.

  “We need to leave. Janus.” Her voice sounded different, trembling like a taut wire that had been plucked.

  Janus rattled the chain, still hesitant to get too close. A faithless man only had his instinct to put faith in and every sense was screaming at him to be careful. Rook wasn’t fully in control yet. She could snap at any moment.

  Sinking onto her haunches so sharply he sucked in a breath, she picked up the chain between her hands and yanked it. It snapped with a ping, pieces of metal splashing to the damp floor as she stood and grabbed his arm, claw-like nails piercing through the layers of his coat to cut into his flesh. He winced, bracing himself against the pain as she hauled him towards the door, murmuring, “Leave, leave, leave,” over and over to herself. It sent shivers down his spine.

  “Wait,” he said, grabbing onto the bar to lend him the strength not to be stolen away. “The other one.” The soldier. Seeker, as he went by. “We can’t leave him like this.”

  Rook shook her head violently, hair flying around her face. “Slow us down.”

  “No,” he said. It rattled him even more that he refused to budge on the matter. Janus had walked away countless times from situations no different to this one, uncaring whether someone lived or died. He wanted to pretend he didn’t know why this particular case had burrowed beneath the gaps in his armour but he did. So many had died before him; friends, enemies, lovers. Others he might have been able to save, had he only tried. He owed it to himself to try. To change, if such a thing was truly possible.

  “Won’t leave without him.”

  Her eyes searched his face, assessing him from top to bottom as if trying to catch the lie. Janus stood firm, posture straight, using the inches of height he had upon her. “Rook. You know it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Need to leave.”

  Gingerly he placed a hand upon her shoulder, feeling her flinch beneath his touch. “Please.”

  After another beat of staring she finally moved, grabbing the bars between their cells and bending them as if they were made of little more than paper. On the other side of the cell Seeker hunched up against the wall, huddled in a heap. His head peeked up from the cradle of his arms, eyes flashing over the tattered cloth of his coat. Janus didn’t blame his fear with a barely conscious bloodstained beserker tearing her way into his cell.

  “Come,” she said, looming over him.

  Janus came to her side and held out a hand. “Need to get out of here before they come back.”

  “They won’t.”

  Judging by the splatters across Rook’s face, arms and clothes, he couldn’t deny she had probably made her way through a significant number of them. More than she would be willing to hear of when she came around. If she did. But there was no time for dwelling on ‘if’ or ‘maybe’ so he gestured for Seeker to take his hand, nodding when the man tentatively reached out but he paused before skin made contact. Unsure how long Rook would wait he wrapped his hand around Seeker’s wrist and pulled him to his feet, catching him as he stumbled.

  Rook turned without a word and stomped back towards the door. He feared what had happened to her down there, of how far to the edge she had been pushed. It had always been her biggest concern that she would lose herself to the creature inside and it looked like it had come to light. Splashes of memories, vivid like the red splattered across her arms, reminded him of decisions made out of necessity that still churned his gut to this day. He couldn’t let it happen again but he was only one man. Only human.

  Through the maze of corridors and hallways he steered Seeker, Rook leading the charge in front of them, keeping one hand rested on the handle of his gun. Janus didn’t need to be an oracle to know that it wouldn’t be easy to get away free. Unlike Rook he had no qualms about killing. He would do whatever it took to get them free. To make sure she could still face herself when she came down from the high.

  The more they travelled without seeing a single soul, the tenser and tenser he wound until he felt he might snap with it. In Rook’s wake was a trail of white feathers falling from the cloud of her hair. It was a worrying sign, that she might be changing so far and so fast she would never come back. At his side Seeker was coughing and spluttering, barely able to keep up with Rook’s frantic pace. Between the two of them he felt like he was having to be doubly alert and he couldn’t help but wonder how he had found himself in this position, of being the one to watch out for others when caring was the last word anyone would use to describe him. But he cared.

  The vulnerability was new.

  “Leave, leave, leave,” Rook continued, turning corridor after corridor. Somehow they never came to an exit.

  The last time they ha
d run through the building Janus had tried to map the layout but as he studied familiar marks – vents, marks and stains upon the wall, the jut of a corner – he found himself as lost as his companions. It was almost as if the structure of the tunnels had changed, like a maze someone had completely rearranged. But everything still looked the same and it disorientated him, the comfort of recognition only leading him astray. If Janus couldn’t trust his instincts he had nothing.

  “It’s trapping us,” managed Seeker between a bout of coughing. “The creature – trapping us here.”

  Janus paused, considering. If Seeker was right then the riftspawn was moulding the very shape of the tunnels, changing them as they moved to trap them in. He himself was helpless to fight it but Rook in her current state was emanating enough power to take on a whole horde of the strongest riftspawn and relish the challenge too. The only question was how to draw it out from the walls.

  “Rook,” he called. A shiver ran down his spine when she turned sharply, eyes glowing in the gloomy tunnel. He had a feeling he was not addressing his friend at this moment, truly, but the creature she shared a consciousness with. A creature that had helped him in a moment of weakness. A creature that had possibly, somehow, claimed him as its own. “I’m speaking to both of you now, I believe.”

  She blinked, the human gesture off-putting when she was so unnaturally still.

  “We need The Rook. We need your power. The only way out is to fight this being.”

  “I am powerful.”

  “We need it. All of it.”

  “You wish for me to save you.”

  “Yes. I do.”

  Taking a step forward so that he could see the grey smoke shimmering in her eyes, she said, “In exchange you will be mine. Mine to command as I wish.”

  Heart thumping, he hesitated. Servitude was nothing new for Janus but this contract would be a lot more binding than any other he had known. If he were to give his word to a riftspawn he would be chained to its bidding for as long as he lived. And yet, the creature had saved them. She had saved him. In the end, Janus had little else to live for anyway.