4
And it was gone.
Like a puff of smoke; a breath of air; a fog bank shredded by the summer sun.
The imperative—which had demanded Isma's death above all other things—forsook me. And I was left behind, feeling heavy and lethargic. A new command pinned my feet to the sand and shackled my arms.
I did not move. I could not.
My nail hung frozen over Isma's prone form, the fatal point a mere inch away. In the flash of a silvered claw, the nail was batted aside into the sand, and Ogrim loomed before me.
"Enough, little one," he panted. "That is enough."
From every side, I was submerged beneath a sea of bugs. They flooded into the pit, laying their claws upon me, every scrap that they could grasp, and held me still as if fearing I would fly away. Many circled furtively around Isma, murmuring low.
"…Kindly Isma is wounded?…"
"…It is most grievous…"
"…Did that runt really do this?..."
"…Impossible. It moved so fast. Like dark magic…"
"…That blast of light! I've seen it before! Amongst those snail cult outcasts…"
Ogrim waved his claws over the heads of the crowd and bid them to step back. They released me, falteringly, but only once my nail had been confiscated and ferried away.
"Make room!" Ogrim bellowed. "Make room!" He knelt to cradle Isma. Rain chimed against his head and back, dripping from his chin onto her mask.
After a long second, Isma stirred. Again, she swallowed something in her throat. "O..Ogrim…?"
"I am here. You must be still. Rest. The little one delivered quite a blow."
Isma lifted a claw and pressed it against her chest wound. It came back damp, not with rain, but a pale, blue liquid. "Quite a blow indeed," she whispered. "The King would be pleased."
"What nonsense is that?" Ogrim growled. "The King would take no pleasure in the suffering of his Knights."
"Perhaps not, but he would… revel in the triumph of his Vessel…" Isma tilted her head to glance at me.
Ogrim's voice grew low and strangled. "Can you heal it? Is this merely another death that you defy?"
Isma let out a chuckling gasp. "I am afraid… not this time… The Vessel is a rare sort of thief. I am drained… If I had my—" But she lapsed into silence.
Ogrim jerked Isma close and checked her breathing. He lifted her into the air like a bundle of broken sticks and roared. "Move aside! All of you! Now!"
The crowd divided before him, creating a passage through the chitinous sea. Their voices were an indistinguishable tumult, but they all carried a cumulative question: had I killed her?
Is that… what I had wanted?
Ogrim moved with uncharacteristic grace, careful of the burden in his arms. He did not answer the queries hurled at him like stones. As he reached the steep embankment, he came to a halt. "A litter!" He yelled. "Quickly, and rope!" The two nearest bugs scrambled to fulfill his demands and vanished into a nearby supply tent.
From across the camp approached a retinue of lumbering warrior beetles. They were large, spherical, and heavily armored, each bearing a wicked-looking greatnail upon its back. The beetles maintained a wary vigil and warded away any members of the crowd that strayed too close. In the center of their defensive circle strolled a thin, ghostly figure.
As the beetles reached the edge of the pit, they parted, and the figure shuffled forward. I failed to define it, bug or otherwise, for it was concealed beneath a long, gray cloak that ran the length of its body and pooled in tattered strips at its feet. The only distinct feature that it possessed was the mask upon its head, pristinely white and bearing a single oval eye.
Ogrim finally took notice. He leaned forward, as if to better see. "Watcher Lurien…? What are you doing here?"
"I watched," Lurien replied. His words seemed to stain the air, and not even the rain could wash them away. He rotated his apparitional body a few degrees, inclining the mask toward the distant Spire of his namesake.
"I—I see," Ogrim said. "But there has been a sparring accident! He looked to me, at the black, tar-like substance that oozed through my mask and onto the sand. "Isma is in a serious state. She needs healing!"
"I know."
"Is there a Soul master nearby in The City? Someone who could tend to such a wound?"
"No."
A tremble worked its way into Ogrim's limbs "A medicine bug, anything?"
"No."
"Time is very short. There must—"
"I know."
"Lurien, she needs aid! Will you help her, have you no purpose in being here?"
Lurien's body bent forward, lowering the mask as if to stare at his own feet. Mud and sand had sullied the fringes of his cloak.
All was silent, but the rain. Seconds passed, and Ogrim's tremble became a quake. "Lurien!" he yelled.
Ponderously, Lurien turned to his retinue and nodded. "My garden."
The beetles swayed into motion, like statues infused with sudden life. Out of the supply tent emerged the earlier pair of bugs, draped in vine-rope and bearing the litter that Ogrim had demanded. They hastened toward the pit but were stopped by Lurien's retinue. The beetles silently, but forcefully, appropriated the rope and litter before descending the embankment and forming another defensive circle. They did not ask permission to extract Isma from Ogrim's arms, but he did not stop them.
"What of this garden?" Ogrim asked. "What good will it do her?" He stood sentinel as the beetles lashed Isma to the litter. The blue ichor seeped from her chest like a spring emerging from a fractured rock.
"Watch."
"Offer me more than but a single word. Can she be saved? Tell me!"
Lurien's attention did not drift from Isma's still body. "Trust," he said.
Ogrim hissed out a long breath. "Very well… But you must be most careful with her. At times, even Great Knights are fragile."
"Yes," Lurien seemed to concede.
At the nudging of the warrior beetles, the crowd dispersed, back beneath their tarps and out of the rain. Isma's litter was hoisted up the embankment and carried off, with a beetle on each handle like a royal procession. It moved smoothly and swiftly out of the camp, waiting for no one. Ogrim hastened after it, without so much as glancing in Lurien's direction.
I was soon left alone upon the sand, immobile and aching. Something of me pulsed beneath the mask, each time bringing a lance of pain and a fresh, black droplet. Fatigue shook my legs, begging me to fall, but my directive required otherwise. I was to remain still. As long as necessary.
But Ogrim did not turn back to collect me. His wide shoulders vanished beyond the rim of the pit, and the rainsong of his armor faded into the distance.
He had forgotten.
Only Lurien remained to stare at me, slowly scanning from top to bottom, ending on the expanding puddle of black at my feet.
"Vessel…" he finally said, testing the word. "Come."
My body heaved into mechanical motion, and for the first few steps, Ogrim's command lingered, chafing against this new order and hindering my progress. But over time, it attenuated into nothing and Lurien won out. I ascended the embankment with quavering arms and settled myself at Lurien's side.
He turned away, departing the camp without another word.
As did I.
Lurien's path through The City was indolent and meandering. Ogrim, Isma, and the retinue had long since left us behind, but that did not hasten Lurien's step. He paused many times to observe things. A crumpled metal fence, the sodden remains of a scroll, a tumble of masonry aside a derelict building, a green-shelled child twirling a parasol. He did not approach anything. And did not respond to the child's wave. He just stared.
We stood beside a puddle on the road. It was deep, as if some huge weight had fallen from above and indented the cobblestones. Something lurked beneath the water, but the rain's assault distorted the surface. Lurien leaned over it, obstructing the rain with his body and stilling the water. "Look," he commanded. Below the lingering ripples, a cluster of shattered glass slowly came into clarity. It reflected the frosted light of the Lumafly lanterns, painting Lurien's mask with warped rings of gray that danced and shifted with the slosh of water.
I leaned in to look, as I had been ordered, and the glass glittered before me like diamonds. But as I gazed, an inky droplet filtered through the crack in my mask and fell into the pool. It dispersed like tines of lightning, unspooling and lancing out toward the fringes of the puddle. In the passage of seconds, the waters were overtaken and transformed, becoming opaque and unnaturally still.
Lurien's body crackled as he straightened. He looked at me, at the blackness smearing my mask. And out of the parting shadow of his cloak emerged an emaciated arm, with long digits that ended in needle-like points. He reached out, tracing the curvature of my horns, the circle of my eyes, and the fissure that ran down my forehead.
"Pain?" he asked. "Terrible?"
I did not reply. Merely dripped in the rain.
"Come," he repeated.
We set off again, abandoning the puddle without looking back. This time, Lurien did not dawdle with errant distractions, and our march was unbroken until the silhouette of the Spire blotted out the cavern's ceiling.
Lurien's Spire was a structure of stone and metal, with intricacies that had been imperceptible from a distance. Fossil-like carvings embedded its archways, and jagged, gleaming steeples adorned its roofs. A sheet of glass covered one side of the building, rising all the way to its summit and offering a view into the Spire's innards. Floor after floor, chamber after chamber, of elaborate decoration gazed back into the gloom of The City.
We stopped at the entrance, beneath an overhang supported by gilded pillars and covered in conical spikes. A massive pair of doors guarded passage into the Spire itself, but they hung ajar, just wide enough to accommodate visitors. Lurien shook the water from his cloak before proceeding and bid me to do the same. As we entered, the ubiquitous hiss of the rain became a far-off, splattering percussion.
The Spire's interior was warm and bright. The entrance gave way to a vast, tiled atrium five stories tall, with a ceiling of mirrored glass. Scroll-stacked library shelves lined the perimeter of the room, illuminated by hanging chandeliers. Tables and silk-draped benches were arrayed upon the floor in complex geometric patterns, and all about them were bugs. Young and old, large and small. They reclined on the furniture, clenching writing utensils in their pincers. Discussion bubbled among a few, but the majority scribbled and read in silence. Activity did not cease at Lurien's presence as it had for Ogrim and Isma back at the mustering grounds. Only a few of the bugs acknowledged the Watcher with glances and shallow bows. In turn, Lurien paid them no mind.
We ascended a staircase onto a landing that offered a sweeping view of the atrium. Beside us, an attendant bug—polished to a sheen—stood before a darkened shaft that rose up into the Spire above. Lurien nodded at him, and the bug responded with a dexterous genuflection that nearly brushed his eyes against the floor. The bug reached over to a silver lever and yanked it with brutal efficiency, eliciting a distant rattling sound that grew gradually closer. Soon, an open-faced elevator, suspended on metal chains and crowned with spikes, descended into the shaft. The attendant bug hopped inside and readied himself beside another, identical lever. He did not speak, but gazed at Lurien intently.
The ascent was jostling, and my enervated legs toiled to maintain balance. The walls were close about the elevator in a claustrophobic embrace, and the only light came from a lantern nested in the ceiling. The Lumafly within fluttered fitfully, periodically dimming to a sickly orange.
An unusually powerful jolt stole my feet out from under me, and I stumbled to the elevator's floor. Lurien's current order was to follow him, and I could not do such a thing collapsed upon the ground. I pulled myself back up by bracing against a brass support beam. But once I had steadied, another jolt hurled me back down. Lurien watched me, head tilted, as I repeated this several times. Darkness dripped against the cold metal, and the pulse behind my mask intensified. Each throb was like feeble arms beating against a prison. Black bubbles escaped through the gaps in my cloak and floated into the air where they evanesced in a corrosive sizzle.
But by my seventh attempt, Lurien bent over and placed a cadaverous claw on my shoulder. "Sit," he said, before taking his own seat upon the ground. His cloak billowed out and settled amorphously about him, concealing his shape.
I fell again, and this time there was no compulsion to rise, instead the opposite. I slumped, legs extended before me, arms limp at my sides. The panting did not end for some time.
The attendant bug blinked. And glanced from Lurien to me. He cleared his throat as if to voice something, but instead seated himself on the floor and crossed his legs.
Above and far off, the concussion of rain grew louder. It rose steadily, climbing toward a paralytic cacophony. Just as it seemed the sound could grow no louder, the shaft's walls fell away and were replaced with one long sheet of glass that stretched into the interminable distance above. The rain slammed relentlessly against this new, translucent barrier, but accomplished nothing. Below us sprawled The City. It was an indistinguishable mass of shadow-shapes pierced by points of light.
Across The City, the densest constellation of lights carved a twisted, centipedal path westward, toward the mustering grounds and the tunnels beyond. Lurien observed it from his seated position, looking like a watchtower atop a hill.
The elevator slowed and ground to a screeching halt before a corridor lined with many closed doors. The attendant bug sprung to a standing position and gestured expectantly, but Lurien shook his head and glanced up. The attendant yanked the silver lever once more and we resumed our ascent.
This process repeated, each time revealing another aspect of Lurien's Spire. A room of sallow-eyed bugs bent over liquid-filled glassware. A barracks stocked with beds, lances, and winged sentries. A plush parlor suffocated by hanging tapestries and lurid portraits. A filigreed balcony embedded in the glass, roofless and open to the rain.
Eventually, the elevator stopped at a portal discrepant with all the others. There was no twinkle of precious metals or the sheen of polished stone. Just a dome-shaped chamber replete with greenery. It was large, with lofty pillars and a high ceiling that culminated in a skylight. Leafy vines dangled from the walls, and untamed shrubbery peppered the brown-black soil. Flowers exploded from every surface in every color and shape. Some plants were sequestered behind silvered fences or perforated shells of glass, while others burgeoned unhindered.
"Come," Lurien said to me.
In the midst of the verdure were Ogrim and Isma, alone, for the beetle retinue was nowhere to be seen. Isma still lay upon her litter, the ropes cut and tossed aside. Ogrim sat beside her, his back braced against a pair of tree trunks that had coiled together. Upon noticing us, Ogrim rose to unsteady feet. "Her condition has not changed," he said. "Her breathing is shallow, and her sleep will not end. I fear that she—Well… I fear a great many things."
Lurien did not immediately reply. He turned back toward the elevator and nodded once more at the attendant bug. With that same, acrobatic genuflection, the attendant bug pulled the lever and descended, leaving the four of us alone.
"Fear." Lurien said. "I know." He moved to Isma's side, sliding smoothly across the grass and the protruding tree roots.
As my command dictated, so did I.
Ogrim offered me a look as I approached—one fleeting second—before turning back to Isma and bowing his head. He gazed upon her as if she rested at the base of a deep pit. "Soon after my Knighting at the Champion's Call" he began, "before I was even granted time to fully convalesce, a crisis befell the Kingdom. That year, a great spawning of Dirtcarvers had overpopulated Deepnest, and in their discontent the pests tunneled into the Queen's Garden, seeking fresh prey and wider spaces. The gleaming legions of Hallownest could not be spared, so instead the King dispatched we Knights to resolve the matter." Ogrim sighed. "It was our inaugural moment. The first time that we Five Greats battled side by side. And what a magnificent sight it had been… We chose a knotted grove as our place of combat, infested with vines and brambles that served as their own sort of bulwark. And though hundreds—thousands—of Dirtcarvers hurled themselves against us, we held firm. Minutes turned to hours, and when one of us inevitably fell back in exhaustion, another was ever quick to take their place. I saw the best in my friends that day. Hegemol's crushing power. Dryya's relentless ferocity. Ze'mer's unerring insight. And Isma's…" He shook his head, chuckling weakly. "It will serve as an eternal blemish upon my valor, but at first I could not bring myself to join in the fray. Apprehension bound my feet to the earth and would not leave me. But as the battle's intensity reached its zenith, and it seemed that the creatures' raw numbers would win the day, Isma's words were what spurred me to action and rattled the fear from my heart. That day will endure with me always, the truest embodiment of Knighthood."
Lurien nodded. Silent.
"But now," Ogrim continued. "Ze'mer has forsaken us, and Isma…" He swallowed. "This very morning, I learned that we Five Greats had diminished to four. But by this evening will we be three?"
"No." Lurien said, with a forcefulness that he had not yet displayed. He crouched at Isma's shoulder and reached through the folds of his cloak. Those needle-thin fingers stretched down to clack against her mask, causing near-microscopic scars upon the surface. "Awaken," he commanded. "Drink."
Isma twitched and took a wheezing breath. Her carapace crackled like an old eggshell and she coughed. One of her tender arms shot out to the side of the litter, blindly, desperately, searching for something. Her grip settled on the branch of a shrubbery with feather-fine leaves. She released her breath and went slack.
Lurien stood, gesturing for us to step back. Ogrim protested, but still acquiesced, retreating to the archway that led toward the elevator shaft. We watched Isma from across the room. She was corpselike in her stillness, yet the trickle of blue continued from her chest.
"What is the meaning of this?" Ogrim asked. "How is this meant to aid her?"
Lurien replied in a liquid murmur. "Soul."
As he spoke, Isma stirred upon her litter. She raised her arms into the air and grasped at something invisible overhead. A phantom wind began to disturb the plants nearby. They sighed and scuffled as the wind rose to a gust, and then to a gale. Shrieking filled the room, rattling the panes of the skylight. Loose leaves and blades of grass danced crazily in the current.
And I saw it, again, just as I had during our battle upon the sand. A ripple ran through the world, warping and twisting the space about Isma, condensing into a single point and then clawing outward.
A white mist, like ink dispersing in water, rose from the plants all throughout the room. The trees, the shrubs, the flowers. They all exuded this pale, luminous substance—the very same that I had drained from Isma's vines. The gale tugged at this ghostly mist, shepherding it through the air and toward Isma, in countless, thread-fine streams that centered upon her chest like the spokes of a silken wheel.
Every plant shivered, quaked. And wilted. The greens of the leaves, the reds, blues, and yellows of the flowers, they all bleached, and then blackened as if consumed within a fire. They bowed upon their stems and branches, before crumbling into desiccated husks and settling upon the ground.
The mist swirled above Isma's raised arms like a gathering tempest. At the sight of it, the hunger in me sparked to life but went unsated. After one revolution, the mist was drawn into Isma's chest with a massive rush of wind and vanished.
The once lush garden was now an umber ruin, and Isma's once mortal wound was now but a memory.
She lowered her arms by her sides and took a great breath that swelled her unblemished carapace, then relaxed.
Ogrim stormed across the room, kicking dead plant life into clouds of ash. They coated his armor and smothered away its sheen, but he was heedless. "Isma!" he cheered as he fell to his knees and lifted her head with the flat of a claw. "You are healed. Death is bested yet again, oh, thank the King!"
Isma coughed, gently, and swiped a claw over her chest. "How long was I—"
"Hours at the most," Ogrim said, his words a river. "We ushered you here as quickly as the Watcher Knights could manage."
"Here…?" Isma pushed to a sitting position with Ogrim's aid.
"Lurien's Spire, it was his proposal to bring you here, to recuperate in the Spire's—"
"Garden," Isma breathed. She absorbed the room with a slow turn of her head, lingering on the pallid bark of the twined trees beside them. She extended a trembling arm to cup the petals of a bellflower. It was brittle and brown like corroded glass. It shattered at her touch. "I see…"
Lurien approached the pair, and I trailed after. Isma flinched at the sight of me.
"Lurien," she said, "you brought the Vessel? But why is it still wounded?"
They inspected the slashes and fractures in my mask. I was hunched, sluggish, and black bubbles still drifted from my body like molted feathers.
Lurien heaved a sort of shrug. "Depleted. Soul-less."
Isma gazed into the middle-distance over my shoulder. "It weaponized the Soul that it stole from me… and yet it cannot mend itself. The other Vessels were the opposite." She shook her head and attempted to rise.
"Easy now," Ogrim rumbled. "You are adept as ever at miracle-making, but that was close, Isma. Far closer than I would ever like to see again."
"I am fine," Isma replied, with a half-waver. "Lurien's shrewdness saw to that." She nodded at the Watcher. "I have you to thank yet again. I am sorry that your garden was made a libation for my meager sake. It is… lamentable."
Lurien glanced down at the husk-covered dirt and prodded at it with a foot through the folds of his robes.
"Well, if you are truly recovered," Ogrim huffed, "then do explain yourself! And not just this," he gestured vaguely to the dead plants, "but that madness of yours at the mustering grounds. That was no death-duel, and yet you still fought with such bestial vigor. It is wild fortune that this little one still lives. What compelled you to such lengths?"
"It is not your right to chide me," Isma began. "And I already informed you that the Vessel is not alive, it is—"
"And you!" Ogrim shouted, jabbing a claw in my direction, as if just now noticing me. "Little one, do you know nothing of sparring?! There is a crucial distinction between warfare and mere practice. When you approach a fellow Knight in the yard, you do not strike at them with every shred of your strength. You exercise restraint, especially when clashing with one weaker or less experienced than yourself! Sparring is the act of bettering one another through gallant combat, one nail sharpening the other. It is not some squabble of rabid Mawleks."
I was to restrain myself…? But who were my fellow Knights?
Ogrim paused, allowing his indignation to echo off the walls. "Well?" he asked, his gaze shifting between the two of us.
I said nothing and bowed my head, for I could no longer lift it. Maintaining consciousness was growing more and more difficult. The fatigue weighed upon my back like slabs of stone, and my vision shrank to a pinpoint in a sea of black.
Isma wobbled to her feet. "Suddenly, Ogrim, you speak as if I am the novice and you the veteran Knight. You know full well why I tested the Vessel so, but that truth does not suit you, and so you banish it from your mind. There was great risk in what I did, yes, but it was necessary. For our King. For Hallownest. Do you truly expect some manner of apology?"
Ogrim's bluster fell and rose like a sputtering flame. "I—Perhaps I do! But not for myself, no. Mutual amends are in order between you and the little one. Even if that brutal clash was at the King's command, there mustn't be any lingering resentment. With a few earnest words, any rift can be repaired."
Isma shook her head. "The Vessel does not care about wounded pride and reparations. Would you have me apologize to a lance or a hammer? This is no different."
A few seconds passed. The burden of my own body was crushing. Gravity threatened to hurl me to the ground like the flowers and withered shrubs. Lurien took note as my legs spasmed and my shoulders bent. He spoke one word to Isma, "Heal," but it was swept away in Ogrim's next outburst.
"You are so adamant, and I cannot fathom why! Every third day, Hegemol expresses undying love for his own mace. What harm is there in a few kindly words, hollow though they may be?"
"Because it is senseless!"
"And are those beauteous arias you offer your grove not senseless as well? The plants have no ears to hear, they must care not."
Isma shot Ogrim a sidelong glance. "Your fondness for this Vessel is a mistake. It has none for you, I can promise. And its only destiny is sacrifice."
Ogrim spent a time clawing aimlessly at the remains of a flower bush. "This power that you possess… You sucked the Soul from these plants like a starving Squit. Is this why you keep your grove, so that it might serve as your sacrifice?"
I fell to one knee. Though I struggled to rise, my limbs did not respond to me. They grew numb and infinitely heavy.
"Yes, it is. And I am not sorry." She turned to Ogrim, all the frailness seeping out of her. "Just as our King, I do what I must. So that I might be powerful enough to protect the things I cannot afford to sacrifice. Like this Kingdom. Its citizens… And you."
Ogrim stiffened. He began and abandoned several sentences, before going quiet.
"You fear that I grow cold, don't you?" Isma asked. She reached out, but stopped herself, hiding her claws behind her back. "But I am what I have always been, and your eyes only now open to the truth of things." She looked down at the leaves of her skirt. "This is a Great Knight, Ogrim. This is what you have vowed to be."
"Was that vow a righteous one?" Ogrim asked, with a voice parched and cracked. "Or—"
Vertigo surged, and the ground rushed up to slam against my mask. The garden—strewn with corpses—spun and spun, all the while diminishing behind a pall of gray. I was made vaguely aware of distant, panicked shouting.
And then darkness devoured me.
