When Silver Burned: Chapter 45-47 (Patreon)

45 - A Little Bird Told Me…

Ringtail looked like she had come prepared for a journey. Dark scaled cloak to keep out the rain, a stuffed bag slung over her shoulder, and a very noticeable absence of her shield or halberd. No trace of military steel on someone who’d never had much love for the military.

“What are you doing here?” Kalsin asked, gently pushing Jack out of the way. She let him, too focused on tying her half-shaved hair back into a bun with long, annoyed yanks.

“Deserting,” Ringtail said. She squeezed the letter into a ball and tossed it up in the air, catching it lightly. “You have a way with words. I especially liked the part about sticking it to the Republic.” She stuck her nose up, looking at Jack. “But when it comes to him, I call dibs on being first.”

Jack finished bundling her hair. She then made an irritated shooing motion at Ringtail.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Rin,” Kalsin said.

Ringtail gave the letter another twirl. “Don’t you wave at me, sidecuts. You may be a big gal, but I jumped around towers thrice your size since I was but a gutterling. You don’t stand a chance.”

Jack rebutted with a threatening step forward, coupled with a very clear sign—one that could be interpreted as go fornicate with yourself.

“Who else did you tell?” Kalsin asked.

“Nope. I’m not going anywhere. Not much has mattered in my life, but I can tell this shit is different. You don’t just piss away a chance like this. I will be on the right side of history—his side.”

Having enough of being ignored, Kalsin stormed up to Ringtail and swept away the soaked letter she had been tossing. He stuffed it back inside his pocket where it damn well belonged. He’d have to burn it the next chance he got.

He said, “This is not the time nor the place for your stupid games, Ringtail. Jack and I must leave, and we must leave tonight. Her squad is going back toward the Inner Line within days.” He lowered his voice. “I healed you, okay, I cleansed you because I figured I might as well leave with a single fucking good deed in this whole military charade my life has become lately. And now that I had, I need to vanish. Jack has a plan to make us vanish.”

“Ooh, lookit. I have a talent for making things vanish.” Ringtail wagged her eyebrows at Kalsin’s groin.

The voices from behind her grew louder.

Kalsin had to hold himself from reaching out and shaking her by the shoulders like a ragdoll.

“Who else. Did—you—tell?”

For the first time tonight, Ringtail had the courtesy to look miffed. “Uh. Just Dweller.”

Seconds passed. Uncomfortable silence. Then, the people who crested the basin turned out to be not ‘just Dweller’.

“Oi, guvnor! The storm is sweeping in mighty quick over yonder horizon,” Fals said with a hand shading her eyes. “We’re about to get soaked, me thinks.”

Shoreline came next, with Crux just one step behind and hoarding a gods-forsaken chest strapped to his back. “Rain already got through my boots, Fals. I worry more about the wind.”

“You picked an inconvenient time for an exit plan, Ghost,” Fals stopped next to them, then ducked deeper underneath the pocket of the cliff. She settled in like a bear ready for hibernation. “Pony!” She reached out to scratch Sap under the chin.

Over the next wind-blown moments, a total of six more figures appeared from the dark. Pike, Littleguy and Cyanfish all brought their full military gear, with the latter leading his own mare by the leash. Tall and willowy Dweller was easy to spot even in the dark, and Quiescent was almost invisible as he stood eerily still a step away from the others. Wardoll rounded out the entourage, dabbing at her cheeks as her cosmetics turned runny from the rain. She kept shooting betrayed looks at Fals.

Kalsin tried very, very hard not to lose his temper.

Ringtail didn’t exactly try to make herself small, but she was shifting from one foot to the other as Kalsin stared her down. She lightly tugged on Dweller’s sleeve. “C’mon. Admit it’s all your fault, you mouthy fuck,” she muttered from the corner of her mouth.

Dweller shrugged at first, then folded her arms in a way to keep her coat closed when an errant gust of wind caught it open. “Right. I did tell Shoreline. Sorry. Was I supposed to just ignore the fact that my bunkmate’s scar mysteriously disappeared from her stomach overnight?”

What? Jack’s face turned to Kalsin in shock.

“What?” Kalsin asked his bodyguard right back.

“What?” Fals added for some reason.

With no hesitation whatsoever, Jack pulled Kalsin close, grabbed his tunic, and yanked it up sharply. Only once their audience got an eyeful did he regain his composure enough to pull it back down.

“Shit, Jack! I…” he started. Her frown didn’t ease.

Kalsin took a deep breath. Damn it all. “Look. You were right. Being stuck here was the worst thing I could be doing. So I chose to finally do things my way.” He reached up to scratch at her old scar now sitting on his jawline. “As you pointed it out, using this newfound talent of mine for healing was a valid option. Try and use what I have to unfuck some of this fucked country—or uh, however else the noble would phrase it. Right? So that’s what I intend to do. Take some Scarrd folk, make them Clenn folk. Simple enough,” he said, part of him defiant in the face of her scrutiny. “Only I… might’ve accelerated the timeline a bit.”

He could practically feel the disapproval ooze from his bodyguard’s posture. Yes, she had encouraged him to take action—but there was a fine line between calculated decisions and reckless flailing. This was uncharacteristic of him, and she knew it.

Jack reached out to flick a finger against his scar, then drill that same finger into his chest, right above his heart. Her face was angry still. But questioning too, now.

“Yes. No,” Kalsin said. He closed his eyes for a moment, wishing they didn’t have an audience. “I’m not okay with it. I’ve come to terms with it.” He gave a little helpless motion. “It’s the best I can do under the circumstances. And now that things have started rolling, it has to be enough.”

Jack watched him for a moment longer, than huffed once. Her hand went back to the hilt of her sword and she resumed her position at his side, watching the half-circle of men around them. ‘This is not over.’ her posture stated. ‘But I understand you.’

Maybe she understood because she herself felt the same way about some other things related to him. Accepting, but grudgingly so. Because that’s simply the way some things have to be.

The newest batch of soldiers of the Outer Line of Defense watched in silence. 

“If that’s real,” Pike said slowly, looking around until his eyes returned back to Kalsin. He took a step toward him. “Then let’s not waste any time.” He untucked his shirt from his beltline. “It sits at the small of my back and a bit to the right. You can just reach in and take it off me, yes? Simple as that, and I’m Clenn again?”

Wardoll lurched forward just a heartbeat after him. “I was prism, if anyone’s to be healed first, it’s me!” A note of desperation and uneasy hope colored her voice. “It’ll return, right, Ghost? My surge will be restored to overworld when you take my scar away?”

“Woah, woah!” Ringtail quickly got in their way. Jack had half-drawn her sword, sneering at the oncoming figures with a look that dared them to come in touching distance from her charge. “Let’s just wait a minute, fellas,” Ringtail said. “Nobody is touching anything tonight.”

“Easy for you to say,” Pike said. “You already got what you wanted, ‘Tail.” He looked past the shorter woman and nodded at Kalsin. “We’re on your side, mate, and I’ll gladly leave the military behind if you give us back our dignity.” He spread his hands. “Isn't that what this is all about?”

“This, was never supposed to happen,” Kalsin said with a pointed look around the gathering.

“You were gonna run, is what you’re trying to say. Before any of us got a chance to get fixed up.”

“Oh shut the hell up, you ungrateful fuck,” Ringtail cut in. She stared up at Pike with a furious look on her face. “Stop for a moment and maybe consider what it costs him to do what you’re asking for. He took up my scar, yes. But it was ugly and painful and too draining for all of you bastards to swarm him all at once.” She looked from Pike to Wardoll, then to the rest of the company. “Ghost—Kalsin, is now set on a course to change the world. He will get to each and every one of you. In time. Once we’re safe behind some thick walls with some food in our bellies. Right now, our only priority is to safely extract the most damn important person in the Republic from the borderlands.”

Kalsin couldn’t help but shudder at the thought. It had become something of a recurring nightmare since the revelation about his power—men with revolting scars crowding him like sharks, his flesh chipped away bit by bit as they descended on him. He thought he saw a mirror of that same hunger reflected in his crewmates’ eyes as they stared at him. Or maybe it was all in his head.

Pike had retreated from the two women in his path. He reached up to scratch his jaw awkwardly. Wardoll started pacing up and down the edge of the basin, boots leaving muddy footprints in the softening ground.

A thump sounded as Crux dropped the chest he’d been lugging around, stretching his back. “I suppose that makes you something of a revolutionary, huh?”

“I suppose that makes me something of a revolutionary,” Kalsin muttered.

“Beats being pressganged into soldiering, I think,” Crux said. He looked at Shoreline with a raised brow.

She chewed on her lips, eyes drooping as if she was napping upright. “It does. Now that I’ve seen it, too.” She pointed at Kalsin’s midsection while looking at Dweller. “I would’ve bet four coral rings you were bullshitting me, sailor.”

“So who did you tell?” Cyanfish asked. The dressing covering his one eye looked cleaner than it did right after the battle. When Shoreline just looked lazily at Crux, Cyanfish laughed quietly. “Ah. Of course.”

Crux fiddled with the lock on the chest, crouched, angling his face downward to avoid the droplets of rain. “You’re all fools if you thought news as big as this would stay under wraps for longer than a couple of hours. It’s crazy talk. Ridiculous. I still don’t believe it, and I’ve just seen it with my own two fucking eyes.” The lock popped open, and he raised the lid. Metal and chainlinks jingled in the wind.

“I assume these ridiculous news didn’t die with you,” Kalsin said wryly.

“Nope. Fals was in shouting distance when Shoreline gave me the news.”

Everyone turned to look at the bard in a soldier's disguise. She glanced back with a hopeful expression, hands tucked under her armpits for warmth and hunched under her nook.

Nobody bothered to ask who she told. They’d be lucky if the rumors weren’t all over the camp by now. 

“Fuck,” Kalsin said.

He was already running through the scenarios in his head. If the Civil House agents knew he was their seb hordozó, how much time would they need to ready their contingency? Perhaps until now they had only branded him a heretic—and were only just realizing the true danger he posed to the Republic.

He had healed Ringtail this morning, and left their hut sometime early afternoon. She had likely gotten up not long after. The chain reaction that is word of mouth was harder to gauge, but even an hour would have been enough for the agents to set actionable plans in motion.

The Outer Line of Defense was a robust place. There were rules to follow and systems ripe for exploiting. By now, the agents have had plenty of opportunities to find some ways to muddy the waters.

Kalsin looked at the stormy sky about to descend on them. This reunion had been cut short on too many fronts.

“Hey,” Ringtail said, siding up to him. Opposite from Jack, notably. “Hey. Kaslin, I’m… I should’ve kept this to myself, I know, but…” She bit her lips. “Are you mad at me?”

He wasn’t, Gods help him. 

Well, he was, but for another reason entirely.

“That letter was private, Ringtail. Everything that was said—it was between me and Jack.”

“Right.” Kalsin didn’t have to look to know Ringtail just shot a frown over his shoulder at his bodyguard. A look that was likely mutual. “And I don’t dispute that. I don’t. But without that letter, I wouldn’t have known where to find you. And it’s not like I rummaged through your stuff to find it!” She held up her hands defensively. “It fell out of your pocket, I swear.”

“It did, eh?”

“Yeeeeah. Mmhm. It sure did!”

Ringtail was saved from further interrogation by Littleguy silently passing them toward the gear Crux was handing out from the chest. He caught the army-issue sword and scabbard and started untangling the belt around them without a word. The mess kits, pots and utensils packaged in a compact bundle, went over to Cyanfish. He had even crammed several blankets inside the thing, though likely not enough for all people present. 

Which made Kalsin’s next question all the more pressing.

“Your plan,” he told Jack. “Is it still a realistic option with the increased headcount of these fools?”

Jack, still gripping her sword, had her eyes clouded for just a fraction of a second with a root’s surge. She then gave him a little shake of her head.

Kalsin took a deep breath, watching his mates jibe and curse as they tied knots, pulled on hardy boots, and complained about the steadily increasing fervor of the downpour.

“What did you have in mind?”

Jack thought for a moment. She then pulled a little box from her bag, and Kalsin had to lean close in the dark to see that it was a compass. She tapped the southern marker, then made a motion as if rowing a boat.

Kalsin chewed on the inside of his mouth. “Maybe. Yeah, maybe. If we’re to return to the Republic, Seven Fallter is the best place to do it. We could cobble something together that floats, hug the shore along Grenstel, and then…” he muttered. He was aware of Ringtail standing close and listening in, but they were well past that small concern. “But how do we reach the gulf? We can’t stay between the two lines of defense now that men will be looking for us.”

Jack shot him a look that growled ‘and whose fault is that?’.

“If you’re mad at someone, be mad at me,” Ringtail spoke up. She stuck her nose up in the air as if to compensate for the height difference. “Kalsin did something noble. The last thing he deserves is blame.”

Jack snarled down at the little woman, and Kalsin spoke before Ringtail could dig herself deeper under her skin. He knew from personal experience how good she was at that. “You planned us a route inside the Old?”

Jack slowly relaxed her posture and turned back to Kalsin. She shrugged, then nodded. She weakly gestured at the two of them, then at Hollow and Sap.

True enough. Two soldiers on horseback would have attracted little attention, and would have covered the distance quickly. And with their waterborne mounts, there would’ve been no need to make or otherwise steal a boat.

Kalsin rubbed a finger against his temple. “Mh. The more people around, the more your problems multiply.” Story of his damn life. 

He watched Quiescent test a strip of dried jerky with his teeth, then spit it right out with a scowl at a grinning Fals. Much as he liked the bunch, he wished there was a way to give them the slip, still.

“So I know all this brooding fits the weather perfectly well and all,” Ringtail said, poking Kalsin in the arm. “But why are we acting as if we’re already being hunted?” She looked from Kalsin to Jack, then back. “I mean, I caught a bit of your history from, uh, from what I’ve read. But… nobody knows about you being our savior. Right? Not yet, anyways. Couldn’t we just waltz right back into the Republic through the Inner Line?”

Jack let out a small noise of derision.

“The authorities have been aware of the rumors for many years now, about someone healing scars. They’ve got their ears to the ground.” Kalsin said. “More importantly, they also have my scar prints for identification. I can get new ones, but I can’t remove the ones I already have. There’s no chance they’d let me pass. The whole reason we’re here is because we’ve already been accused of being heretics.” 

Which, ironically enough, was a whole legend that originated from a certain kid being ambushed in a dark alleyway on one tragic evening. And they say dogs chasing their own tails is supposed to be amusing.

Not from the dog’s perspective, it isn’t.

Ringtail slicked a wet strand of her short hair out of her eyes. “Huh. Heretics. Can’t say I ever heard the phrase down the rumor mills.”

Speaking of, Kalsin remembered Áron and Erazza were supposed to follow them to the Old, eventually. Poor fellas. They had just barely missed their elusive seb hordozó.

“Oh, actually. I meant to ask,” Kalsin said, looking at Jack. “When is Cinder supposed to be joining us? ”

His sister was quick on her feet and better at hiding than the both of them combined, so Kalsin wasn’t too worried about her traveling separately during the harder stretch of the journey. But he missed her. There was no reason she couldn’t have joined them, just for tonight.

A flare of lightning lit up the emotions passing through Jack’s face at his question. Confusion, worry, dread. None of which made him feel any better.

“Look, I know you two don’t get on well,” Kalsin said, exasperated. “But I’m gonna be surrounded by Clenn for possibly the rest of my life. So I ask again, and please extend the basic courtesy of telling me; where is my sister?”

Jack’s mouth opened and closed. She shot a pleading glance at the nearest person, who happened to be a frowning Ringtail.

Worry dug its claws into Kalsin’s gut. Why wasn’t she answering him?

“Did something happen?” Kalsin said, grabbing onto Jack’s shoulders desperately. “Jack. Jackie. Please, tell me she’s not in trouble. Tell me she’s fine.”

Kalsin was aware of his rising panic starting to become the focus of the company around them. He was aware of the winds blowing louder, the rain biting harder, and the storm arriving to plunge the borderline into wet and inky darkness. He was aware of Jack’s sorrowful expression as she stared down at him, lips trembling with something she didn’t want him to know, something that she kept unsaid for his sake.

Kalsin felt his hand tighten into a fist, his inability to act, to do something turning into rage. He’d been through this nightmare once before. And he refused even the suggestion of losing his sister again.

Just as he was about to speak—the deep, heart-thrumming wail of a horn blew through the night. Another followed before the first could even finish, this one from a different lookout spot farther down the border. Then another from farther still, until the rumbling thunder rolled over the distant calls for attention.

The Outer Line of Defense had just been mobilized to full alert.

46 - The Scout

Silence, rain, and stillness.

Jack was the first to move. She trundled up to Hollow and started disentangling her shield from the saddle, barely six feet away from Kalsin and already far enough in the stormy midnight downpour to reduce her to a mere silhouette.

Pike and Crux began cursing all at once, Fals rushed over to Littleguy to help with a strap around his back, and Shoreline just barely stopped Wardoll from running off into the night with a steadying grip on her arm—but it was Ringtail who spoke first. 

Ringtail who remained next to Kalsin and yanked him down by the collar to speak into his ears as the horns and the thunder threatened to blow out their eardrums. “The Veiled! In the middle of the night?"

Kalsin only knew what he’d been told about the invaders’ attack patterns. “It’s possible! But…” He glanced aside—at Cyanfish, animatedly pointing at something in the distance; at Littleguy; and at the empty space beside him that still ached, where Crawl should have been. “They shouldn’t. Not in the same place. Not so soon after being beaten back so decisively.”

Ringtail held up a finger. “One call. Right? I only heard a single call from our lookout.”

Kalsin curtly nodded. He pried her wet fingers from his collar, not ungently, and straightened up.

That was it, then. The agents knew their seb hordozó was here, and they knew the only way they could hope to catch him was by rousing the entire army to attention. Whether it was desertion or heresy that got Kalsin killed, well; it didn’t matter to the Civil House. 

He would be hunted from this point forward, no matter what. But not everyone had to share his fate.

Kalsin strode up to his nearest mate, boots squelching in the mud, and clapped Dweller on the back. “One horn, ladies and gents!” he shouted over the rain. “And it’s not a Veiled that triggered the alarm, that’s for certain. We can barely see farther than we can spit in this weather. How the hell could they spot those sneaky buggers?”

“Dunno,” Dweller muttered and wrangled water from her shirt, too low for anybody else to hear. “With their peepers, probably?”

Kalsin continued around the circle, smacking Fals on the shoulder. “The same people who hounded me before joining the army—folk funded by the créme of the Republic—are springing their trap right as we speak!” He hesitated before reaching Littleguy, and instead strode to stand in the middle. The soaked men around him listened, but didn’t pause in their hurried preparations. “See, when the collector of Remallon lay dying at my feet, he wasn’t shy about what the Civil House was going to do to a particular silver-eyed individual. Or anyone around him, for that matter. Killed, cut, butchered; those are the only realistic futures for heretics like us.”

Kalsin paused, letting thunder roll across the land before continuing. “But you, friends, you’ve still got a choice.” He felt more than heard Jack return to his side, leading both their bahten behind her. “You haven’t done anything incriminating yet. Leave. Go back to your huts and to your lives.” He reached up to tap the scar at his jaw. “These little things… they're not pretty, and they’re a painful reminder of some awful shite you went through. But they are not worth throwing your lives away for.”

The wind howled.

Nobody replied immediately. Nobody refuted his words.

“Can’t we just, I don’t know… just delay this whole theatre?” Wardoll asked with a vague gesture. “Let’s say we all go home today and leave on the morrow instead. Same place, same time. No worries about stupid alarms and being spotted, then. No worries about fellow countrymen causing us a headache.”

“Neeh, not quite on the mark,” Fals drawled. “If this mess is as big as it sounds, half the guardsmen in Újtavak will be flooding the borderlands within a few days—long before we can reach the ocean between the two defense lines. So that plan is shot.” She nodded eastward, where—presumably—the older boys were even now forming their defensive lines along the wall. “In the meantime, the alert’s meant to keep us boxed in. Wouldn’t surprise me if a horn blows every twelve hours just to keep that wall nice and stacked.”

“As if!” Pike let out a low laugh, pulling a glove over his hand. “As if they expect us to flee into the Eastern Expanse,” he said. 

His grin slowly evaporated when nobody answered. “We’re not fleeing into the Eastern Expanse, right?”

Yes. No. Maybe. What Fals was saying made perfect sense. Kalsin knew the destination they needed to flee to, but not how they were going to get there.

“That may be our only realistic option left,” Kalsin said. “Again: please, Pike. Crux, Shoreline, everyone. Consider if this is what you really want. Consider if—”

Ringtail elbowed him in the side, hard. “Nuh-uh! No takebacks from here on out, fellas.” She hitched her pack higher on her back and flung out an arm firmly eastward. “Ghost Kalsin, your majesty and first of his name, needs your help and your undying service in the trying journey ahead of us. So let us stop wasting time, and, you know… fucking scram already!”

Crux grunted, tossing over something long and metallic to Quiescent. “Agreed,” he said, standing and kicking his chest shut.

“Conditions are favorable, too,” Shoreline pointed up at the dark sky. “We’ve got a storm to cover our necks.”

It appeared that the consensus was unanimous. His mates gathered around him, soaked from head to toe in the evening and itching to move out. Even Wardoll and Littleguy stood ready, neither of which Kalsin had expected to truly consider desertion for someone like him.

“Wait, just a— Let’s take a moment and…” Kalsin started, his mind wrestling with too many things at once. The storm raged around them. The vague outline of a plan wanted to form in his head. Wind blew in his ears. Ringtail bickered about something to Jack at his side. Low sounds of shouting echoed from the darkness as soldiers manned the wall. Water trickled into his eyes. He shut them, thinking, overwhelmed, thinking, how should they proceed, where should they go, how do they slip past the soldiers, where was his sister…

“Where is Cinder?” Kalsin said, opening his eyes. He pinned Jack with his gaze once more, and this time, there was no—absolutely none, zero give in his voice. “Why did my sister not come with you tonight?” The question carried a harshness that felt like the wrong answer could bring down the walls of a fortress. A question where the wrong answer could cause irreparable damage.

Jack just looked down at him, rain dripping down her face. She put a hand on the side of his neck, then brushed up to his cheek. A small, sad smile. But she mouthed ‘I love you’ all the same.

No. No, no, no, she couldn’t be… They needed to go back. Back to the Clenn camp, she was there, she had to be there, there was no way anything could’ve happened to her and that she was hurt and that they’d need to leave her behind. To hell with this, to hell with everything. He turned, because no reality existed where he would just walk away from her, no rationale that went beyond—

“Kalsin!”

The shout came not from the circle of soldiers around him, but from the howling night toward the east. Blonde hair plastered to her face, leathers tugged and tossed by the wind, Cinder stepped out from the dark.

Kalsin ran to her.

“Come on, hurry them up! We need to—”

Cinder’s urgent words came to a halt as Kalsin rushed into her, embracing her in the rain.

“I, I thought…” he breathed, face buried in the crook of her neck. “When you didn’t show. Gods, I worried that something went wrong.”

He could hear Cinder’s breath hitch. She gently pried them apart with her one good arm, and she glanced at the people watching them before looking up at Kalsin with a pained expression. Her mouth opened silently, unsure what to say. “There’s too many… I tried to be careful, I tried, believe me that I never wanted you to find out like this.”

Kalsin laughed quietly, once. His hand still gripped his sister’s forearm as if to confirm she was real. ”Find out what, Cinder? You’re fine. You’re here. We’re back together now, just like the old days.”

He heard cautious steps drawing near from behind, and once again he saw Cinder glance at the onlookers with a cringe. “Yes. No. I…” she bit her lips, eyes pleading. She slowly reached up and touched a cold finger against the scar between his eyes. His first scar, the one he’d taken so so long ago. “Oh, Kalsin. I’m so, so sorry. Other people can’t— they could never… Because I’m…” 

Cinder stopped herself. She stepped back and took a deep, shuddering breath. “Later. I swear to you, Kalsin—I will explain everything later. But we need to run. I scouted ahead, and the gap is closing, and we need to go now.”

Kalsin wiped rain from his eyes and, after a moment of hesitation, nodded. His sister was right. There was no more time for reunions. If they wanted to be free from the Republic, they had to escape the noose slowly tightening around their necks.

Cinder took an abrupt step back the moment Ringtail crept up to Kalsin’s side. “Um,” she said, slicking a wet strand of dark hair from her eyes. “So uh. Who are you talking to?” There was some badly hidden concern in her eyes as she looked at Kalsin.

But before Kalsin could answer, his sister was already running into the darkness, half turned and urging them to follow. Lightning flashed and thunder drowned out something Cyanfish was saying, and for a moment he could make out the tiny silhouettes crowding the earthen walls in the distance.

“Cinder. My troublemaker of a sister,” Kalsin muttered as he took Sap’s reins from Jack and pointed ahead. “She’s not usually this rude, but… yeah. Come on, fellas. She’s been my intel for years. If she’s leading the way, then that’s damn well our best option.”

He saw Shoreline draw up a questioning brow. He saw Fals and Littleguy exchange an incredulous glance. He saw Jack’s dark scowl at everyone as she took her place at his shoulder, warning them to silence. She needn't have bothered, because Kalsin didn’t give time for his mates to put up an argument.

Boots squelching in the mud, he hurried after his sister’s faint outline leading them into the dark. 

After a long moment, his company followed.

47 - Three Scars, Three Powers

It was as if the storm itself had swallowed them whole.

Kalsin trudged through the soaked tundra, Cinder's silhouette just barely visible ahead as she cut a path straight toward the edge of the Eastern Expanse. She pulled ahead sometimes, disappearing entirely, only to resume her spot a minute later. Mud clung to his boots with each step, making their trek slower than he would've liked. But then again, he figured speed mattered little at this juncture. They had until sunup to disappear.

Behind him, the muffled grunts and mutters of his companions punctuated the constant drumroll of raindrops. The bahten snorted, their hardened fins sinking into the earth. And the wind; the cold, harsh, biting early autumn wind never let up for a moment, rolling over the dead of night and sweeping the storm across the borderlands.

It was hard to tell how much distance they'd covered by now. A hundred paces? Double that? The storm ensured there was no hope of seeing any landmarks in the gloom. Kalsin could only trust in Cinder's memory and her instincts guiding them ahead.

"I'm soaked to the bone," Ringtail grumbled at his side. She huddled deeper into her dark cloak, collar pulled up all the way to her chin. "Your friend is shit at choosing dates."

"My friend is right next to you, Ringtail, and her ears work perfectly well," Kalsin said. He didn't relish the idea of the two of them butting heads every five minutes. He steeled himself for it nonetheless. Of all his troubles, this was the easiest one to predict, plan for, and mitigate. "You still owe Jack an apology."

"Psh! I do not."

"Well then, the next time you pour your heart out to some poor old chap, don't expect her to extend any privacy to you."

Kalsin heard Ringtail sputter at that, hanging behind for a moment before drawing back in pace with them.

"...as if I would just... to anyone... clueless fucking man..." she kept muttering darkly.

Jack snorted quietly beside him. Good. She wasn't an inherently distrustful soul, but the way she had kept sending warning looks around the crew for the past few minutes somewhat unsettled Kalsin. And in turn, it kept unsettling him.

The few downsides of having a bodyguard; if the professional swordslady watching your back is getting nervous, that's when you know things are on the verge of going sideways.

"Back!" Cinder's voice rang out over the wind, her vague shape becoming clearer as she backtracked toward them. She halted a few steps ahead, staying on the outer edge of their vision still, and Kalsin had to squint to make out her expression clearly. "Too late. They closed the gap. We can't squeeze out with so little space between those men."

The fact that she even saw in this weather was a small miracle. But Kalsin wasn't too keen on looking a gift lass in the mouth.

"Where are we, relative to our barracks?" Kalsin asked.

“You mean those clay huts? They’re just ahead, a little north. We’ll brush right past them if we keep going straight,” Cinder said. “Should we veer that way? I can scout ahead if you want.”

“No. That’s the one place I’m sure we can’t go. It’d be the first spot anyone looking for me would lock down—you’d be walking into a trap.”

"But..." She started, almost looking like she wanted to argue. She shifted in place. "I..."

Kalsin felt Ringtail poke him in the side gently. He ignored it. “We’ll swing south,” he said, pointing down along where the wall should run. “You stick to the front, and if you spot a lousy spot in the defenders’ formation, that’s where we’ll try our luck slipping through.”

"Why?" Crux asked at the same time as Cinder answered, "Okay, Kal. If that's what you think is best."

Ringtail poked him in the side again.

"It is. Thanks, Cinder," Kalsin said. He turned a bit, now addressing the men huddled around him directly. "We need to break out from Republic territory. To do that, we can either go north—toward the Clenn camp—or south, where even if we stumble into some fools, at least they won't be wearing gold."

"That's all very interesting, Ghost. But still doesn't explain why we can't just push through straight ahead," Crux said, dabbing at his wet nose with his sleeve. "There's bound to be some gaps left open. 'Specially with us now missing from our spots."

Kalsin stared at the man, annoyed. "There are no gaps ahead. Were you even listening to her?"

When Ringtail's poke came again, this time Kalsin swiped her hand away irritably. "What?" he snarled.

"There's nobody there."

Kalsin just stared down at Ringtail, wordless.

She pointed a finger ahead, speaking quietly. "There's nobody there, Kalsin. Just... just rain and grass and mud. Far as we can tell, you've been talking to yourself for the past while."

Kalsin slowly followed her finger, looking at Cinder's smudged outline in the rain. Lightning flashed, showing her head bowed, staring down at the ground, blonde hair wet and matted to her skin.

“This,” Kalsin turned back, his voice low and threatening. “Is not a time for either your idiocy or your prejudice. She’s Clenn, sure—and now, so are you. All of you will be soon enough.” 

They did not like that answer. Shoreline looked on with a sour expression. Cyanfish shook his head and muttered something about ‘following a lunatic’, and even Fals was somehow starting to appear uncomfortable.

They all slightly jumped at the sound of hissing steel as Jack half-drew her sword and shifted to stand between them and Kalsin.

“Oi, hey, now relax for a second, missus,” Fals held up her hands, taking a single step back and almost slipping in the mud. “We’re just, ah, a tad confused is all. Right. Right?” she glanced at Quiescent next to her. The man had his head tilted, watching Kalsin from under his hood. 

“We’re all in agreement that Ghost right here is worth leavin’ for. Scars shifting around and jumping from one body to another is kind of freaky, but, uh… the good kind of freaky. You won’t hear me complain.” Fals said. She then gestured vaguely around. “Only, it’s gotten awfully dark, and I think me and the fellas would prefer not stumbling headfirst into a clump of soldiers on the eve of their desertion.”

Kalsin had expected this from Ringtail. Maybe from some of the others. But he thought Fals was better than that. “Cinder is—”

Crux nodded at Jack. “Is she Cinder?”

“No, no, the gal is named Jack, didn’t you hear?” Wardoll said.

“Cinder Jack? As in, Jack’s the name of her folk?”

“Uh, maybe? Still doesn’t make an iota of sense. She was walking right there, right beside him all along.”

“I know, I saw it too. Someone that big is kind of hard to miss.”

Deep breaths. Deep breaths, Kalsin kept telling himself. They didn’t seem to be doing this out of malice. But then why… Damn it all, he didn’t understand what their issue was. He ran a hand through his soaked hair, and after a moment tapped Jack’s shoulder. “I’m fine. They’re just… confused. Scared, I think. Too many things they don’t understand happened in too little time. But they’re my mates. They’re not going to hurt me, girl.”

Jack shot him an uncertain look over her shoulder, still gripping her hilt.

“Yeah. They’re good people. You don’t know them yet, but they’ll prove it to you if you let them.”

Slowly, she uncurled her fingers from the hilt of her sword.

And then lightning split the sky, casting a white blaze across the field and revealing the dark outlines of several men creeping toward them from the path they’d just traveled.

“Ambush!” Kalsin roared.

That was all the warning they had before everything descended into chaos.

Standing nearest to the men descending on them, Littleguy could barely turn before two figures surged forward and took him under. Displaced water sprayed in their paths, leaving behind empty spots like reverse afterimages before the rain washed them away. Another soldier burst forward, sweeping a hand to unleash a jet of flames at Fals—who surged with sudden speed, shield snapping up just in time to catch the sticky orange manifestation across its steel face. Rather than smothering it, raindrops steamed, popped, caught on fire and pooled at her feet as they passed through the flames.

His shout lost in the thunder, Pike met one attacker head-on as another lunged past to slash at his side. Quiescent appeared out of nowhere with a handful of mud clutched in his fist, smashing it into the man's eyes, grinding rocks and pebbles into his sockets. Teeth flashed white in a silent scream.

Crux wrestled with a man having caught his arm before slipping out, leaving his attacker clutching his empty wet cloak, but slipping in the process. Only Shoreline's chainmail saved him from a blocky cleaver as she lunged to cover him with her own body, making the two of them roll several feet into the dark. A travel bag ripped at the seams, plates and firewood spilling onto the ground.

Dweller had been near enough to reach Kalsin, and Wardoll seized the distraction her allies created, darting between combatants and stumbling into their circle. Within seconds the skirmish had fractured into scattered pockets around the edge of their vision. Shadows grappled in the dark, revealed only by the fleeting flash of steel and the hiss of burning flames. A sheet of constant rain blurred everything. Even Blindlight would have given a clearer view of their surroundings.

Jack shifted on a tight axis around him as she tried to position herself between him and their assailants, but it was an impossible prospect. Doubly so, with Ringtail deliberately shouldering into her and trying to do the same thing.

Kalsin ignored them both, pulling a knife from the collar of his riding boot and roughly passing it over to Wardoll. "An unstrung bow isn't much use here," he muttered. He doubted she heard him in the storm. She clutched the iron with white knuckles nonetheless, facing outward together with Dweller, the willowy woman hunched over and ready to spring with her sword pointing toward the dark. The clash of steel rang out all around them, interspersed with grunts and muffled screams that could have been theirs or the attackers.

They were in a bad spot. Close enough to the wall for the men stationed along the border to hear a larger commotion, if the sky deigned to cease growling for long enough.

"Go help the others, I'll be fine!" Kalsin shouted at Jack, struggling to be loud enough to pierce the racket of rain and combat. He swept a glance around him, eyes widening as he spotted Cinder's blonde mop by Sap's side. His sister just stood there, staring into the chaos as if frozen. "We need to—"

But Kalsin never finished his sentence because there was a blur of motion coming from the dark, faster than the eye could follow, faster than thought, racing toward him.

Jack surged. Like a lightning bolt, she cleaved a path through the rain with her shield forward, catching the man under the chin mid-surge. The two colliding forces snapped his neck inward, making his throat collapse sharply enough to look damn near decapitated, head flopping at an impossible angle. The momentum and the slippery mud forced Jack to her knees, bracing herself with the point of her sword.

A woman burst out of the storm, her surge running out halfway toward him. Her spear lent her enough reach to almost skewer his ribs anyway. But Kalsin had already raised his sword to parry as his red-haired ghost appeared out of nowhere, directing a hit where the spear-point was about to impact just a second before it happened. Her spear swung away with a clang. The woman brought it around for another thrust immediately.

Ringtail screamed, and the woman staggered.

The abyssal surge that swept over the battlefield was not directed at Kalsin, but even he could feel the crushing hopelessness that rammed against the minds of the ambushers. Ringtail's power—the fully restored power of a Clenn—was sharp, sudden, and intense in its potency. She stood with her feet set wide, sword completely forgotten in her hands, throat going raw with her scream. It didn't last long, a second only. It covered little ground, from the way Wardoll and Dweller's attackers barely paused. But it was devastating in its effectiveness.

The woman had fallen like a ragdoll with its strings cut, collapsing facefirst into the wet ground. Her sharp, panicked inhales made her choke on mud. Kalsin ended her suffering with a downward slash. She died before he'd pulled his blade free.

A flash of lightning revealed Cyanfish engaged with two men. One on each side, with his sword splitting rain and his shield catching blows by sheer desperation. More attackers stalked through the rain and the darkness, steadily converging on the center. Many were already down, slumped unmoving, coloring the puddles red. Flames spread across the wet grass, forming a wall and spitting sparks.

Kalsin didn't wait to get surrounded.

He rushed at the man skirting around Sap, catching him by surprise. He bashed his crossguard into the man's face, the stiff iron embedding itself into one eye with a slick squelch while the blade sawed at the side of his head until Kalsin managed to wrench it free. He pushed the falling body away, already turning to engage the Clenn who had crept up on him, a masked man with his sleeves rolled up, both arms red and transformed into a pair of barbed maces.

Kalsin spun, swinging back with his blade aimed straight at the Clenn. The man blocked with both his arms, catching Kalsin's sword between the spikes of his manifested hands. Metal screeched against metal as they strained, caught in a deadlock. The man leaned in, teeth bared, pushing Kalsin's own blade back toward his neck.

Seconds stretched, and Kalsin lost ground with each one passing. He kicked out, but the man was ready for it, taking it on the outside of his thigh. He couldn't let go of his sword, the blade hovering too close to his body, and he felt the raindrops bounce off the sharp edge and against his chin. His red-haired ghost flickered into existence, overlapping the man in warning—but there was no course of action Kalsin could take. A glimpse into the future is useless if you no longer have the means to change it.

He saw Jack's tall outline spin about somewhere at the edges of his vision. He could hear Ringtail's wild yells coming through the storm. Neither of them would find him in time, and neither of them were close enough to make a difference anyway.

So when a spear point appeared straight from Kalsin's chest and skewered the Clenn right in the gut, Kalsin thought someone had run him through from behind.

Except there was no blood, no pain, and he could only stare down in fascination as a hand morphed into existence straight from his own chest, holding the spear forward and pushing the Clenn's twitching body away like roast at the end of a spit.

A silver-haired woman stepped out of his body.

Like a snake shedding its skin, Kalsin saw her come into existence splitting off of him, and with enough momentum to drive the man onto his back, crouching over him and grabbing his hair to slam it roughly into the ground once, then twice, until he stopped moving. She straightened without hesitation, pulling the spear with a twist. Her braid flailed in the wind as she turned to face him. She thumped her chest with a fist, water and blood dripping down her uniform.

"Reporting for duty, sir."