Chapter One: Cinnabar Sands
The young soldier stood, waiting.
The sun hung teasingly below the distant mountains behind him, turning the morning light to a coppery gold on the cusp of red. The color brightened the rust-brown desert, reminding him of fountaining blood, and it flowed down the drought-crusted hillsides into craggy arroyos. And half-buried by the flood, an ancient battle waded through. Armored juggernauts grappling against swarming iron, their final bout locked in eternal rigor by rust and the relentless heat. Their graveyard was a testament, and with the red sun edging towards the horizon, it should have been a warning. An ill omen teeming with dread. It should never be an enticing promise. Never a lure.
A smile crept up on him, spreading across his lips, and underneath his breastplate, eagerness tightened in his chest.
It should never be a lure.
"Ready for battle, kid?" the soldier beside him asked, and he felt himself reeled back to the moment.
All around him, soldiers mustered, their armor clinking like metal windchimes as they formed into lines on the field. They smelled of leather and polish, the redolence of a civilized army, and it mixed with the native sage and manzanita, the scrub that gave them cover. But there was some other scent there, too. It was a kind of ratcheting tension, and it added its pungent flavor to the air. Impatience bordering on listlessness permeated the ranks, its perfume running so deep that not even Carja's famous military discipline could smother it. He inhaled deep, sucking it in, and he clenched his fists with anticipation.
The other soldier glanced at his white-knuckles, and then clasped him on the shoulder, giving him a reassuring shake. "It's all right. Everyone gets nervous on the eve of battle, especially one like this."
The young soldier's smile dulled, and he angled his head toward him, his helmet's visor hiding a raised eyebrow.
"It's disgraceful," the other continued, his speech easy and practiced as though he'd spoken it around a dozen campfires already, "A few years ago, a company of Carja soldiers would fill the road from Barren Light to Plainsong. Now we number a scant hundred and can barely hold this field." He nodded towards the low hills to the south and the hazy outline of an old outpost overlooking the valley. "And that there is our only perch left in this sun-forsaken land."
"Sun-forsaken land…" the young soldier repeated, his gaze drifting to the desiccated remains of a Tenakth fighter tucked under a patch of scrub, their bones sun-bleached and tattooed skin tanned to leather.
"Yeah," the other scoffed, his eyes still on the distance but now admiring a muddy haze that hung low in the sky, "After our week of burning their fields and villages, the cannibals and the grazers can keep the west or what's left of it. Our king can sate his thirst for the Sun Ring with the north and the savage east. Battle on two fronts instead of three. His craving for war on all sides makes a man wonder if he's as mad as they say—"
The young soldier rounded on him and grabbed him by the collar. He yanked him forward and their visors clanged together.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" the other soldier yelled, rage flushing his cheeks.
The young soldier glared at him, gleaming silver eyes piercing on his shadowed face. The only thing brighter was his predatory grin.
The other's outrage turned into terror, and he struggled, tearing at fingers, but he was held fast by a vice-like grip.
"Now," the young soldier said with an affable lilt to his voice, as deadly as it was friendly, "It seems that you misunderstand me, and perhaps that's my fault. I did lie about my age. And I was misleading at best about my family lineage." He gave him a knowing look. "But sometimes that's what you do for the privilege of serving the Sundom. It's what you do when you want to be its arrow. Need to be its arrow. And if I am anything… I am that."
"All right," the other said, still trying to pull away. "I get it."
"No, I don't think you do," he said coolly. "You said this land is forsaken by the sun but when I look to the east, what do I spy?"
Blinding red, the sun peeked over the cresting mountains, and the other soldier gasped as it bathed them in its light.
"The sun is at our backs," the young soldier whispered, the anticipation turning his words bright and sharp, "And it blesses us with blood today, so in turn, we will spill it in its honor as our act of worship." He chuckled inwardly. "Though, if I honestly believe that. If that's madness, then I suppose I'm no better than the sun-king himself."
The other swallowed dryly.
"You two break it up!" a man shouted behind them with the authority of a captain.
The young soldier let go, his hands open in apology, and as he backed away, he spied over his shoulder at the ranking officer. "I'm sorry, sir. Just a little nervous on the eve of battle." He glanced back at the other soldier and gave him a reassuring pat. "I hear it's a common ailment."
The captain snorted, his expression skeptical. "In that case, get your nerves under control and yourself back into formation."
The young soldier obliged, pivoting smoothly back into position, his stance at attention. The other soldier matched him, but with a whispered prayer of relief that showed only in his shoulders.
The loud thumping of running boots sent murmurs rippling through the ranks.
"Sir," a breathless man called out behind them. He rushed towards the captain, the feathery plumes on his helmet casting him as a lieutenant.
"Yes, Fashav," the captain replied, turning on his heel to give him a level gaze.
"There's a problem, sir."
"Indeed," he replied, gesturing to the distant outpost, "We're waiting on a signal to advance on the insurgent Tenakth and Utaru rallying on the western side of the valley. Without any high ground, our only advantage is the morning sun behind us, but it won't blind them for much longer."
"That's the problem, sir," Fashav said, his expression grim. "Last night I sent two scouts to confirm the outpost's readiness for coordinating the assault. A few minutes ago, one of the scouts was found bleeding out in the scrub. Before he succumbed, he said the outpost was gone, massacred, and its signal lens shattered."
"Massacred?" the captain said, shaking his head. "I just spoke with its commander yesterday."
"They're gone, sir."
Realization struck the captain, widening his dark eyes.
And a horn sounded in the distance, its single, raw note echoing across the valley.
"Form up!" he boomed, not losing any more time to astonishment. Fashav followed on reflex, running down the line and repeating the readying command.
The young soldier fidgeted, his keen eyes poring over the southern hillside and into the western valley. He searched for odd shapes and unexpected movement, the signs of an ambush in the maze of ruins. He held his hands at his back, feigning more discipline than he could muster as his fingers brushed lovingly along the curve of his composite bow.
Then he saw them.
A galaxy of yellow lights burning amid the gnarled scrub and exposed boulders.
"Left face, captain!" he shouted, unslinging his bow. "Due south!"
And with his warning, a hoard of machines burst down the hillside in a deluge.
"Left face!" the captain commanded, and in unison, the company pivoted towards the rumbling stampede.
Their pumping bodies gleaming, grazers thundered over the ground, their hooves kicking up clods of dirt. An electronic cacophony wailed and grunted from them, drowning out whirring motors. Needle-like arrows began to pepper their haunches, digging in like cactus. Their terror mounted, becoming desperate rage, and as they closed in on the soldiers, their yellow lights flickered to red.
The young soldier nocked his arrow, the roar of impending violence resonating in his chest. The jittery excitement bursting within him flared, threatening to break him. But instead, he poured it into his arms until it flooded into his bow. He stood, calm and centered, his senses razor sharp. He smoothly drew back the bowstring and aimed.
He was to his arrow as the Sundom was to him. And if he did not miss, neither did the king.
He released it, and with a slicing whip, the arrow flew. It cut through the air faster than the eye could follow, and with a glitter of shattered glass, it punched through a grazer's lens, burying deep in a nexus of neural circuits. The beast crumpled, dead before it hit the ground.
He plucked more arrows from his quiver, his aim true and fast as he sent more machines tumbling. The other archers in the ranks followed. And together they cut the beasts down until their sparking carcasses littered the hillside.
He grinned. A metal tide was nothing before the might of the sun.
Then a screaming whistle drowned out the blood rushing in his ears, its pitch climbing to a shriek.
A lucky grazer crashed through the line, thrashing wildly at the soldiers as they drew their swords. It had eluded every lethal arrow except the fiery one piercing through a blaze canister high on its back.
And with a desperate curse, the young soldier took a flying leap away.
A thunderclap shuddered the field, and the grazer blew apart, spraying shrapnel in an explosion of fire and accelerant. Chunks of molten metal blasted through a radius of soldiers. It melted through their armor and shredded the bodies inside. Those who survived flailed violently, their clothes doused with flaming blaze. They roasted alive, their skin blistering black.
It was then that the young soldier realized he could hear none of their screams. None of the agony or horrified disbelief as death wrenched his comrades free from their tenuous lives. He stumbled to his feet, heedless of the bounding grazers rushing past him, their blaze canisters shrieking in a soundless chorus. He tore off his helmet, tossing it aside, and his trembling hands felt for his ears. Blood gushed from both, spilling down his neck.
Rippling explosions followed, knocking him down onto his knees.
He sat there, shrapnel whizzing past his head, and he stared at his bloody palms. The beginnings of a fugue clouded the edges of his mind and his eyes drifted to the mangled bodies surrounding him. The air tasted like copper and the sour bile from split abdomens.
The carnage did not need the rising sun to turn the field red. It had them.
A hand groped at his thigh, and he followed it to a man who laid sprawled on his back. The young soldier blinked, watching the man without seeing him.
The man grabbed feebly at the edge of his breastplate and shook him.
The fog cleared, and recognition flickered in the young soldier's eyes. It was the other soldier. The one who had tried to reassure him. Except now the jagged remains of a grazer's antler impaled him through the chest.
"Help me, kid…" his lips read, blood bubbling from his mouth.
The young soldier stared at him, his mind retreating to before the horror. The Tenakth and the Utaru, what had the soldier called them earlier? Cannibals and grazers?
Grazers.
The slur rooted, twisting into odd logic, and he thought about the harmless machines who spent their existence tilling soil. The machines that when in peril, they'd rather flee than fight. The ones whose purpose was to be prey.
Prey for the Sundom.
He looked up, and he scanned the hillside until he spotted them peppered among the brightly painted Tenakth. The Utaru, clad in verdant greens and spirals of jasmine, with the tips of their arrows aflame.
Another grazer sprang past him, a matching arrow lodged in a cannister, turning it from beast into bomb.
Pray for the Sundom.
The irony struck him like exploding blaze, and a dark chuckle erupted from him. It grew, splitting his lips with unhinged laughter. And his teeth flashed, their edges sharp.
Then the young soldier was gone.
He lunged at the grazer, his actions all reflex and firing synapses. His sword appeared in his hand, and he plunged it deep into the beast's haunch, felling it. He grabbed the whistling canister and snapped it free from its housing. And with his whole body, he hurled it across the field. Thrown off balance, he stumbled onto the ground, but looked up in time to follow the trailing vapor to its source. The golden cylinder glinted once, and then exploded, showering the enemy below in burning blaze.
He grinned, watching them collapse in writhing terror.
But others pressed past them in a run, bludgeons and spears in hand.
Another bout of laughter shook him, and he scooped up his bow. He sought out an arrow next and drowned the tip in a soldier's burning corpse. Once it was aflame, he nocked it. Then he yanked another canister from the dead grazer's back. He lobbed it at them, and as it arced through the sky, he drew back his bowstring.
Shooting a blaze canister with a fire arrow was an amateur move. Sure, it was devastating when it worked, but it took too long to build pressure and ignite. It gave an enemy time to react.
His aim followed the canister, centering on a tiny speck of silver as it tumbled end-over-end.
If you hit its valve instead…
His arrow flew, streaking towards the canister as it sailed over the enemy. And in a bright flash, it boomed. He followed it with two more, raining a whirlwind of fire and accelerant upon them.
And through the smoke and gouts of flame, those who hadn't fallen sprinted for him, their flesh peeling and bloody. Their bloodlust matching his own.
He reached for his quiver and discovered it empty. He snatched another, ripping it away from a dead soldier's grip. Feeling, if he had ever had it, was gone, replaced by brutal efficiency. He fired them into the enemy's eyes and throats. Each one a kill shot. He lingered long enough to catch the shock blooming on their faces and lamented that he hadn't the time to see their moments of realization. The flash of despair when they knew they had lost the game.
With quiver after quiver, he planted a forest of arrows with terrifying grace. The field overflowed with their painted bodies. And he felt another wave of giddiness bubbling in his chest. His cheeks sore from grinning.
Their numbers were thinning.
In this contest with death, he, the Sundom's arrow, was winning.
Then a blow struck him hard in the head, sending his senses spinning.
He staggered back and blood streamed down his face, blinding one eye.
Growling, he fought to stand. To rage onward.
This wasn't his battlefield to die on.
Another arrow thumped into him, piercing through his breastplate, its fletching catching the red sunlight.
He stared at it, mesmerized.
And then the young soldier collapsed, the world turning black.