Chapter XVI - Phobos - Jiro

The world was a kaleidoscope. Each blink revealed a flurry of color like a gust full of autumn leaves. Shapes melted into themselves, taking on foreign form. Everything glittered like it was made out of gold, blood spattered with a rainbow of hues, and the cacophony of battle took on the tune of a mournful song.

Ventricles pumped myst and lyserg through Jiro’s arteries, sharpening his senses with every breath. He could feel the spirit of the myst as it coursed through his blood vessels. Deep in his trip, nothing was familiar even in the slightest, but in his heightened awareness, his instincts took over. The faces that stared into his did not look like faces at all, yet Jiro could still distinguish a live one from a dead one. But he had no need to distinguish friend from foe; in his soul he felt the camaraderie of his allies surrounding him, lifting his spirits high. He was so in tune with his environment that he could nearly feel the emotions of every person in the room with a near glance. Jiro had not been this connected to the myst since the night in the booktower.

The krima he had scattered throughout the chamber painted a map for him inside of his mind. Each step he took was a leaping bound that warped him through space itself. The element of surprise was his best friend. As he would appear above each crystal of krima, he had infinitely more time to asses his surroundings and pick a target than the men he was slaughtering. If he found himself in surrounded by allies, he would simply absorb the krima to stockpile the myst in his soul, then move on to the next one. Even when the city guard had poured into the chamber, they were no match for Jiro’s precision and speed. He had never felt more alive.

If only my third eye had opened during my mercenary days, Jiro thought as he hacked through the plated armor of another soldier. Then I would have been a true Wraith. If only his old merc buddies from Naeru could see him now, holding off the bulk of a city’s army without so much as breaking a sweat. Jiro had been known for his lightning-quick style of combat before, but his newfound affinity for magyk increased his abilities a hundred-fold. This power would have come in handy more than once. But he was no longer a sellsword in the Free Realm; he was in Phobos, leading an army of statue-worshipers in a rebellion to overthrow their government and stop a conspiracy to unleash an ancient evil back into the world. My, how times have changed. Jiro was enjoying this entirely too much.

With his next leap through space, Jiro arrived just in time to watch Khared son of Bilo have his larynx torn from his still breathing throat by a member of the city guard. Audra cried out in rage, nearly severing the soldier’s neck from spine with nothing but a shovel. She fell to her knees, daring herself to shed a tear, but her cheeks remained dry. Jiro was momentarily caught off guard by the hulking woman’s outcry of emotion.

“The city guard is falling back, mister Jiro,” Audra said, standing up slowly with a composed sniffle. “We should follow them back up to the surface and march on the capitol.”

Jiro’s eyes darted around the room, searching for any sign of his white-haired companion. “Where is Zukan?”

The rebel Phobosi merely shrugged. “Last I saw him, he was confronting the Magnate with a hostage.”

The ruler of Phobos was not hard to spot in the midst of the chaos; his purple robe stood out vibrantly against the colorscape. Zukan, however, was nowhere to be seen. “Rally what men you can and head for the surface,” Jiro instructed. I know who my next target is.

Two mere steps across the path of krima and Jiro was at the feet of the Magnate of Phobos, the honor guard alert to his presence in an instant. The first two fell like flimsy boards in a hurricane, the third got in a good strike or two, and the fourth Jiro had to disarm before splitting him throat to groin. The Magnate put up his hands and backed up against the pillar behind him.

“Oh, you’re afraid of magyk?” Jiro taunted, waving his  bloodletter around like a torch in the face of a feral wolf. “Magyk is what got you into this whole mess, you know. And greed, of course, but there’s nothing arcane about voracity.”

The Magnate’s upper lip stiffened, though he was still obviously terrified. He reached for the ornate golden necklace that graced his shoulder blades and tossed it to the floor. He began shedding gemmed rings and bracelets as well. “Is this what you want, you rebel scum?” He shrieked, unclipping the rings from he ears. “You can have my f*****g gold, if that’s what it takes to end this. There is plenty more of it in the treasury in my palace. My robe is made of fine silk from the west, so I suppose you’ll be wanting that too.”

“I don’t want your trinkets, Luugo,” Jiro seethed, gritting his teeth. “I want you to atone.”

Luugo of Phobos squinted his eyes. “Do I know you?”

“No, not personally at least. Your brother, Tariik, has told me all I need to know about you.”

The Magnate’s eyes went wide. “You’re Jiro the Wraith! I knew I recognized you, I saw you the last time I visited my brother at court in Lissium!” Luugo shuddered. “I promise you, Syr Jiro, I had nothing to do with the fall of Lissium.”

Jiro laughed out loud. “I know that, you f*****g moron. I’m not here for that either. I’m here because your actions threaten to plunge Phaedyssia into an era of darkness not seen since the Unholy Wars. Magyk isn’t just some spirit of fortune you can call upon at whim, it’s a responsibility. You don’t get to meddle with the arcane without retribution.”

It was Luugo’s turn to laugh, though he did so maniacally. “Nothing will stop the awakening of the Pale-Faced God! Kai’toh will crush the lot of you! Your paltry magyk will be like a mere candle against the inferno of the mighty Zuul!” There was a blade of shadow in Luugo’s throat before he could speak another word.

Jiro dispersed the flame of his bloodletter, panting, his trip growing more intense with each moment that passed. Corpses littered the floor of the chamber, the crowd thinning as the battle moved to the streets of Phobos. Where the hell is Zukan?

Suddenly, Jiro felt an intense power spike in the peripheral vision of his soul. He whirled to face the Sentinel, its eyes now glowing with an otherworldly red hue. Is this part of my trip, or is this actually happening right now? The pit of Jiro’s stomach dropped like he was peaking on the lyserg again, but the feeling was not psychedelic in nature; he had felt this drop before.

The atmosphere thickened just then, reddening Jiro’s vision. Any krima that remained scattered around the chamber evaporated suddenly, adding to the dense cloud of myst. A ring of light engulfed the wall that the Sentinel was embedded in. Within the ring, at its base on the Pale’s stomach, a complicated-looking rune began to take shape.

“Jiro!” A familiar voice called to him. Zukan ran toward Jiro, his face more drained of color than usual. He looked as if he had a book’s worth of information to relay, but there was nothing Zukan could tell him right now that Jiro didn’t already know.

Hovering between the newly-made maege and the former maege was a bloodkin; its crooked scar was shaped differently from the last, but it was a bloodkin all the same. It stared down Jiro with its piercing gaze, letting out a howl that could have curdled blood. His ears popped so hard he feared they may bleed.

“Zukan, get everybody out of here, now!” Jiro shouted. Zukan duly obeyed, but it was too late for escape. The bloodkin darted around like a hummingbird, swooping down to pluck the souls of its victims like a pelican caught fish from the sea. The first rune within the glowing ring took its place, then the next one started to form.

Jiro chased after the hungry bloodkin, drawing its attention with a blast of black flame. The foul creature dove at Jiro, meeting his blade with the talons of its ethereal feet. He would have parried in retaliation, but a sudden piercing pain in the core of his head caused him to double over.

Kill, kill, kill, a voice in his head that was not his own chanted incessantly. Kill, murder, mutilate! Destroy the bloodkin, tear it limb from limb, devour its soul! Its delicious soul!

“What… the f**k?” Jiro thought aloud, realizing his head was no longer his own.

What’s stopping you, Jiro? We did it so easily before. What’s so different about this? Do we need to murder another friend in cold blood to get our jimmies rustled up enough to open up a can of whoop-a*s? Go stab Zukan then, that dude’s a f*****g goner anyway.

Jiro grasped his head with both hands and squeezed his eyes tight, but still peered from his third eye. He was looking at himself once more, this time engulfed in a putrid black and red flame. When he dove into his soul, he found that he was not the only one floating naked in the now crimson void of limbo. The creature that stared back at him was all but human in shape aside from the stunted horns that protruded from its temples. Its hair was the same shade of red as Jiro’s, but its skin was a cold and clammy gray.

“I’m a part of you now, Jiro,” his shadow sneered, its voice containing all the gravel of a man who had smoked tobac every day for eighty years. “Just give in, it’ll make things easier for the both of us.”

Jiro immediately knew that this was the piece of his soul that had been awakened by magyk. “Zukan said it took countless years for his bloodletter to take consciousness of its own.”

“Our third eye didn’t exactly open under optimal circumstances, dude. That myst was foul as f**k. And we had never used magyk before. Call it a learning curve.”

Jiro rolled his eyes. “Of course, the part of my soul that’s been given life of its own is the part of me that’s a huge dick.”

“It’s cause you’ve been repressing me for so long, you douchebag!” The living fragment of soul flung out his arms. “Plus that bloodkin soul we swallowed didn’t help our temperament.”

“Swallowed?” Jiro cocked his head.

“Well, duh! Haven’t you heard? Nobody can kill a bloodkin, not even you, hot-shot. Its soul had to go somewhere,” the human-demon patted its belly. “Don’t worry, it’s a good thing. Gives us more power. Think of what we could do if we added another soul to that collection.”

“If you can give me the power to slay to slay this bloodkin with as much ease as I did the last… then okay.” Jiro submitted.

“Good s**t! Not that you had a choice in the matter. By the way, you can call me Ecru.”

Jiro snorted. “Don’t I get to give you a name?”

“Make no mistake, pal. I call the shots around here.” Ecru approached the visage of Jiro’s soul, opened his mouth wide and clamped down on Jiro’s arm, engulfing it up to the elbow. Jiro could only watch as his shadow devoured him whole. “Now we can get some business done,” Ecru winked. “Don’t worry, I’ll give you back your body when I’ve had my fun. I’ll be able to form a body of my own soon enough.”

When Jiro opened his eyes, his consciousness returned to the surface of his lyserg-ridden brain, but he knew he was no longer in control. Not a single muscle fiber so much as twitched at his command. He had returned at the exact moment he had left, the bloodkin swooping round of another attack and a second rune quickly forming around the Pale.

“You should have taken that lyserg earlier, dude.” Ecru commented through Jiro’s mouth, appearing to talk to no one. “This trip is killer.”

Ecru summoned the bloodletter to Jiro’s hands, though his incarnation was roughly four times its usual size and emanated with intimidating shadowy tendrils, and the possessive spirit handled it with as much deftness as Jiro would have with his own. The bloodkin didn’t stand a chance. When it leapt, Ecru leapt higher; when it dodged, Ecru anticipated its movement; when it attacked, Ecru countered with an even more savage blow. The foul Zuul-spawn wasn’t even safe in the air; Ecru had the bright idea to concentrate myst into Jiro’s hands, fortifying them and allowing him to climb the walls and pillars, fingers sinking into marble like butter. He once even launched an attack at the bloodkin from atop one of the Sentinel’s horns. He floated with all the graceful ferocity of a bloodkin but attacked with the precision and might of a seasoned swordsman. The implication of that gave Jiro pause.

By the time a fifth rune was in its place, Ecru had the bloodkin pinned on the ground by the throat. It shrieked like an iceberg sliding violently off of its glacier, but Ecru rebutted with a piercing howl of his own. The bloodkin struggled, but Ecru headbutted the creature back into submission.

“Mortis verum,” Ecru chanted, and with a sound like an elephant stepping on a pile of bones, Jiro’s jaw unhinged in a snakelike fashion. In a single bite, he had devoured the bloodkin whole, slurping it up as one would a bowl of gelatin. Ecru belched.

At this point, the immense chamber had been mostly vacated, save for the countless dead. Though the bloodkin had been vanquished, the foul, heavy myst still lingered in the air. A sixth rune loomed on the wall, near the Sentinel’s elbow; if the glowing ring was a clock and the runes were numbers, twelve through nine had already been filled with the fantastical hieroglyphs.

“Jiro…” Zukan called out to him, who had apparently stayed in the chamber throughout the whole ordeal. The former maege opened his mouth as if to say something, but suddenly became unsure as to whether or not he was actually speaking to Jiro.

Ecru glanced up at the Pale through Jiro’s eyes, a seventh rune beginning to take shape. “What’s going on over there?” The possessive spirit inquired.

“That is the spell that seals our doom,” Zukan replied curtly. “Once the eighth rune has finished forming, the seal on the Sentinel will be broken. There is nothing we can do to stop it.”

“Where’s the caster?”

Zukan sighed. “By now, likely perched atop the pyramid, watching the chaos unfold in the streets.” He spoke as if he knew the one personally. “Anything we could do at this point would be futile.”

“F**k this,” Ecru spat. “I’m out. If we die, at least I can do so within the comfort of my own soul.”

Jiro felt as if a fishhook had ripped his navel out through the back of his spine. He keeled over in pain, finding his motor skills with enough time to brace his fall. Maybe three tabs was too much.

Zukan approached where he knelt. “Jiro, need I mention that we are completely fucked if we do not get out of here right now?”

“I am tripping such major ballsack right now,” Jiro panted between breaths. “This is the worst trip I’ve ever had.” He wanted to vomit but feared that he may heave his intestines up with the bile, unraveling him more than he had already been unraveled.

Jiro was helped to his feet by his traveling companion, and they ran as fast as their weary legs would take them. Jiro clutched at his stomach the entire time. The way out was not difficult to track; all they needed to do was follow the trail of slain bodies until they spotted the blue of a midday sky. It was not blue for very long.

The pair were mere meters from the pyramid when all the myst within it erupted from every exit, every crack in the mortar of every brick. A deadly crimson cloud enveloped the structure, bleeding like a living thing. As the myst fell, an earth-rattling bellow reverberated through Phobos from the core of the pyramid, like a northern wind howling over a vast chasm. Tremors rumbled in its wake, collapsing buildings and upturning tiles in the road. The sandstone of the pyramid began to crack and crumble, creating dark, rectangular holes in the impressive monument. At its peak, Jiro could have sworn he saw the figure of a slender man perched atop.

In the streets of downtown Phobos lined with boarded up shops that had been ruined long before the quakes, Jiro and Zukan encountered a squad of Phobosi rebels who had just finished picking off the last of some city guards. They whooped triumphantly as the foreign rebel leaders approached them.

“We are going to the capitol building next, mister magyk-man!” One exclaimed. “Thanks to you, the city of Phobos is ours!”

“No, it’s not.” Jiro had to dash their hopes. “F**k the capitol. It won’t be there much longer.”

A member of the group gasped as he glimpsed the crumbling pyramid in the distance, covered in an ever-spreading crimson fog and losing bricks at a rapid pace. The sky was almost entirely the shade of a fresh wound.

“The Pale has awoken, we could not stop it,” Zukan shook his head.

A Phobosi threw down his weapon and fell to his knees. “Without Phobos, I am nothing. Take me now, while there is still a piece of me remaining,” he said with deep sorrow, repeating the line Khared had recited before. Some sympathized with the man, throwing down their weapons as well. The majority, however, had hit the ground running before Zukan could finish shaking his head.

On their way out, they found several more factions of their scattered army, warning them of the impending doom that would befall their city and adding them to their ranks. Jiro had no way of knowing how many people they had amassed, how many had perished in the battle, or even how many had decided to burn with the city; the lyserg had rendered numbers an irrelevant notion.

 Another roiling bellow erupted from the guts of the earth as the regrouped army neared the jagged mountain pass that formed the natural gate of the city. They stopped to brace themselves for the tremor, then turned back to watch as the final brick of the pyramid crumbled and collapsed in on itself.

The Sentinel emerged from the rubble like lava from a volcano. It crawled out of the pit of its chamber with lumbering movements. Each time a limb came crashing back down to the ground, a pillar of flame erupted from beneath it. As it rose to its feet, it bellowed once more, the wave of sound crushing buildings and uprooting palm trees. Its sea-green eyes shone like two beacons, sweeping the city like searchlights. Fires broke out all over Phobos with nobody to douse them as the Pale trudged through the city, unimpeded by buildings in its way; the tallest structure barely rose to the Sentinel’s collar, and was bulldozed in moments.

The makeshift army could only stand and watch in awe at the edge of the city. The steep rise at the base of the mountains gave them a distinct vantage point for witnessing the carnage.

“Will we be safe in the mountain pass?” A Phobosi defector asked feebly. “Goldengate is just on the other side.”

“The damn thing is nearly seven stories tall,” Gildan spoke up, who had miraculously survived the entire conflict with no more than a few minor cuts and a bleeding lip. “I don’t think those mountains will give it any trouble.”

“We must move quickly,” Zukan urged them. “The Pale is like a child kicking its way through a cornfield.”

“Where will we go?” A Phobosi youth asked, the flames of his home reflected in his glazed eyes.  “Everything I have ever known was in Phobos, and now she burns before me.”

“Too chicken s**t to go join your brothers in the flames?” Jiro asked curtly, his trip peaking again. The bronze-skinned teen was taken aback by the boldness of the question, unable to procure any form of answer.

“If you’ve made it this far, then you’ve got one thing that those men didn’t; the will to live,” Jiro continued, addressing the crowd. “I’ve been cast from my home twice in my life. It’s been a small comfort telling myself that I was moving in the right direction, but the truth of the matter is, I have no idea what the f**k I’m doing, nor where I’m going. But something I’ve come to find is that direction is often irrelevant; it’s the moving that’s important.” He paused for a moment to breathe and closed his eyes. He could feel the trace amounts of myst in the soul of every person in attendance call out to him. Each cried out in discord. They yearn for unity.

“Friends, I fear this may be the first of many more foul things to come,” Zukan interjected. “It will spread like a plague. All we can do now is escape it.”

Jiro and Zukan exchanged a knowing look. Jiro cleared his throat. “My companion and I got here by heading west, and it’s west that we’ll continue. If safe haven is what you seek, Naeru is just a quick boat ride from Goldengate, and we can part ways at the dam. But your shelter will only be temporary, I assure you. If you are willing to follow us across the crimson sea and into Elowyr, I cannot guarantee victory, but I can guarantee a fighting chance. Avenge those who died at the hand of the Pale because they revered it too much to retaliate against it.”

Gildan was the first to raise a fist in the air. “We will follow you, magyk-man. Pale awakened or not, we owe you our lives.” A resounding whoop echoed through the crowd.

Audra approached the pair, bruised in body and spirit. “Our only home burns, my husband lays slain beneath the foot of a giant. Sometimes the past is to be reveled in. This will be a past best left buried. Mister Jiro, mister Zukan, simply command me, and my spear will be yours.” When she bowed, Jiro noticed the steel-tipped blade of the pike slung across her muscular back, presumably claimed from a city guard.

A portion of the crowd, namely women with children and those who had been too wounded to continue fighting, opted to take a boat down to Naeru once they reached Goldengate. But they all agreed that the less time they wasted debating it, the better.

The mountain pass between Phobos and Goldengate widened and narrowed at a whim. Jiro had read once that the crude path had been dug by hand before the first bricks of the Pyramid had even been laid. With the harsh dips in the road and enormous boulders that had fallen way to erosion from the jagged peaks of the mountains, it couldn’t have been an easy task. The first Phobosi were nothing if not ambitious. The parallax between the mountain’s ridges near to them and the larger, more imposing peaks in the distance caught Jiro’s attention. The fantastical shapes that formed in the negative space between changed with each step.

“Three hundred years of cultural advancement undone by the mindless greed of a single man,” Jiro commented to Zukan as they trudged near the head of their makeshift army.

“You know as well as I that this was not the endeavor of a single man,” Zukan replied. “The excavation and awakening of the Sentinel, the arming of the church in Lissium… they are all part of a plot by the Zuul to reclaim the lands of their ancestors.”

Jiro’s dilated eyes widened. “The Zuul are no more! You confirmed as much yourself.”

“The Zuul are no more, yet bloodkin still roam the sky in their foul clouds of tainted myst and a Sentinel now prowls only a couple of miles north. Have you been paying attention at all, Jiro?” Zukan reproached. “I suppose it is as good of a time as any for history lesson. Could you spare a joint?”

Jiro readily offered one of the several twists of sweetleaf he had already rolled, but took none for himself. In his experience, smoking sweetleaf while under the influence of lyserg only intensified the trip, and Jiro was ready to come down, so he opted for a cigarette instead.

“In the early days of the maege, when the glorious city of Zephias was merely a fortified village on the diamond shores of the sunset sea, Zuul hunting had become somewhat of a sport. Their horns were a valuable commodity, and the men who brought home the biggest hauls of Zuul ivory were lauded. Once the maege had developed the bloodletter magyk, the Zuul changed from imposing bloodthirsty beasts into a common pest. As the maege’s society advanced and the Zuul’s dwindled, some maege even began to take pity on the beasts.

“The fledgling government in the ever-growing Zephias issued a decree in favor of the few remaining Zuul. A cold and dank region, far to the northwest of the maege capitol of the world, would be set aside for the Zuul to live; a small patch of rocky land on a high plateau between mountain ranges called the Shadowfel. It was a ‘preservation of species’, as the scientists of the day had called it. Some magykal touches were placed around the territory, of course, to ensure no farther rebellion from the foul demons.” Zukan took a deep drag from the roll of sweetleaf. “Unfortunately, there is no such thing as Zuul insurance. And, as I am sure you know by now, exile and revolution go hand in hand.”

The Phobosi had begun to listen in on Zukan’s lesson, intrigued by the story being told by the white-haired foreigner from a place they didn’t even know existed. Zukan passed the joint around in a circle, and a few in attendance took a hit as well.

“The Shadowfel is place mostly void of myst and even less krima, and though beasts they were, they found a way to cast magyk. Bloodkin escaped through the magykal barriers without much trouble, and the Zuul would use them to lure human women from the neighboring villages into their territory. They would return in the morning, visibly impregnated, and give birth to foul demonic children mere weeks later. That is how the dal’Zuul were born, a race with all the ferocity of a Zuul and the intelligence of a human, and a vengeance for the plight that befell their ancestors. This is certainly not the first time they have attempted to bring back the scourge, but it is the first attempt in Phaedyssia in over two thousand years.”

“What better time than now?” Jiro advocated. “There haven’t been any maege in Phaedyssia for about that same amount of time. They stand virtually uncontested.”

“This may be. But you promised these people a fighting chance, and I think I know of a way to give them one. You asked me a question earlier, if there was a way for me to regain my former power. If you were asking if Sayaka will ever come back to me, that is a gross impossibility. But the next best thing may be closer than you think. Have you heard of the maege-mashers of Cyan?”

Jiro smiled, recounting one of his favorite childhood tales. “Edric Redmayne was a hero of mine. He held off fifty Elowyri soldiers singlehandedly during the siege of Azuremont. As an Elowyri lordling I was never supposed to root for rebels to the Empire, but I’ve always thought the Cyani were pretty rad.”

“In the days of the old Maege Empire, my ancestors passed down to them a technique to hone and craft blades infused with krima. In a cruel twist of irony, the Cyani used that very technique to hunt down the last of the maege after the Unholy Wars. Their myst-craft blades have withstood the test of changing times.”

A long ash fell from Jiro’s cigarette, which he had let dangle from his lips. “But is a makeshift army of what are essentially refugees armed with enchanted weapons really the next best thing to an army of maege?”

Zukan chuckled. “This far east, the next best thing to an army of maege is literally anything.”

Jiro could have laughed but found himself without the energy. He wanted to tell Zukan about the awakening of his bloodletter, but after what amounted to a few seconds of inner debate, he decided that it was a conversation for a different time. The grating voice of the intruder Ecru inside his head seemed to have retreated for the time being.

But yet another incessant voice bounced around the space between his ears. You’re a coward, she spat. You can never come home.

If Cyan was their destination, it would put him closer to Elowyr than he had been in nearly ten years. In order to get there, they would have to pass through the Halidom of Sayiif. The country was not Elowyr in truth, but they had been conquered and assimilated into the empire centuries ago, to the point where their cultures had begun to bleed into the other. Jiro couldn’t imagine a warm welcome for him or his makeshift army once they reached border control in Goldengate.

Another thunderous bellow echoed from behind them, sound waves pushing a harsh gust through the mountain pass. The whistling of the winds through the peaks made the howl of the Sentinel even more bone chilling. The crowd quickened their pace.

Four mere days and my life has been turned completely on its end, Jiro contemplated. Less than a week ago he had been tangled up with his beloved beneath the sheets, very stoned, waiting for the Seventh Duche to awaken so he could begin his day, just like any other. But wasn’t this what he had wanted? Freedom from the stagnation of his sedentary life,  a chance to the see the world outside the words on the pages of a history tome? I just never imagined myself as the champion for the sole surviving members of an entire culture.

The sun rapidly falling the chill of the desert night setting in, the improvised army set up camp. They all needed the rest, but Jiro knew he would not be the only one who would be unable to fall asleep. Every rumbling footstep of the Pale, though now miles and miles away, caused the mountains to tremble and sent a bolt of panic through the hearts of nearly everyone.

Whatever spare cloaks and blankets Jiro could spare from his pack, he leant to those who had nothing but the cloaks on their backs. Jiro and Zukan shared a single, large blanket; a quilt Jiro had taken with him all the way from Elowyr. It was an ornate tapestry, woven with the heraldry of House Von’faer. A significant number of Phobosi had the good sense to realize that their precious city was doomed, and had scrambled to grab what they could before leaving their home forever, whether it was from their abode or not. There was no fire and little food to go around, but the overhanging rocky crevasse they had settled beneath would at least shield them from the piercing winds.

Zukan drifted off to sleep immediately as if he had not just watched an entire city burn. Jiro, of course, was not so fortunate. All this magykal power and I can’t even get a good night’s rest. Next to him, nestled within a cranny in the rock face, rested Audra and two other Phobosi women in their caravan.

“I have never been more confused in my lifetime,” a young woman said. A dark braid fell across her shoulder. “The Pale was supposed to be the guardian of our city.”

“My husband loved the Pale so much he refused to leave, no matter how much I begged him to run,” the other woman chimed in. He face was covered in soot, and her short-cropped hair was singed at the tips. She must have spent a while trying to convince him.

“No husband, no home, no faith.” Audra brought her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her shins. “Everything we hold dear to us gone in less than a day.”

“I can’t rebuild Phobos, and I can’t bring your husbands back,” Jiro chimed in. “But I can tell you that you can always find something else to put your faith in. More often than not, the best thing you can do is have some faith in yourself.”

Audra smiled. The other women, though still deeply troubled, appeared as if their burdens had been lifted slightly.

“Get what rest you can, if we leave before first light, we can make it to Goldengate before the day is out.”

Audra nodded. “And hopefully warn those in the city about the scourge before the Pale beats us to it.”

Jiro felt a finger on his left hand twitch. “Do you really think the Pale will follow us.”

Audra laughed. “Our magykal leader is as in the dark as we are! I am not sure whether to take solace or unease from that. I do not think it is a matter of whether or not the Pale is following is, but rather, where else does it have to go?” With that, the surly Phobosi woman tucked herself in for a restless night.

If only they knew that I discovered magyk less than a week ago. It all just felt like a dream. The gravity of the events that had unfolded that day would sink in once he woke, but for the moment, Jiro decided to let the weariness of his body overtake the surging lyserg in his brain. It took what felt like hours for him to finally relax enough to settle comfortable against the earth, but when he finally drifted into a fitful sleep, his dreams were vivid and ominous. He watched silently as Ecru ate his corpse, picking bits of flesh from his bones.

You’ve already failed twice, Jiro, he said between swallows. How many more times are you going to let those around you suffer the consequences of your actions? The human-demon laughed, blood dripping down his jaw. Nothing to be ashamed of, selfishness is good. In this mad world, self-interest is the only thing that will keep us alive. Ecru cracked a femur and sucked the marrow from within it.

By the way, the bloodkin was delicious.