scintilla (n.) a tiny, brilliant flash or spark; a small thing, a barely visible trace

The grasp around her hair was vice-like; she felt as though she were hanging in the water, as limply as a kitten from the mouth of its mother. She was distantly aware that her legs were dragging through water, the loose folds of her shirt and trousers catching on rocks as she was hauled across them with the grace of a burlap sack, but she could do nothing. She was nothing; she could do nothing. She could only focus on the sound of her heart and think, I'm still alive; I'm still alive, or I am in Hell. I am in Hell, and the worst is yet to come.

She had always been unremarkable, forgotten about, an afterthought. She could only hope, fervently, her bones shaking within her, that her Hell would be a mild one, for her curse had surely not been.

And then, quite promptly, she was released onto the rock. She had not managed to catch herself; her head cracked for a second time in so many hours, against one of the smooth stones that made up a long stretch of the Illéan coast. Her elbow, too, cracked against the rock; she lay there, motionless, staring sightlessly ahead. Her hair was hanging in thick salt-matted tendrils; she could not distinguish the thing that had drawn her from the water, but that hand – that cold, taloned hand – that had not been the grasp of a fellow Warrior. She was still struggling to catch her breath; though she had been swept beneath the water for so very long, she had not swallowed water. How was that possible?

Where was she? Was this the Illéan coast?

Had she been captured by the Schreaves? Or was this indeed Hell?

Slowly, very slowly, Hyacinth Estlebourgh raised her head, weakly. The salt in her hair stung her eyes; her limbs shook beneath her, shuddering with such awful strength that, for a moment, she thought it likely she might break her own teeth upon the rock. She peered through her hanging hair at the thing that had pulled her from the water – and she found herself suppressing a scream. There had been enough screaming. There was no need for more.

And yet… if anything was worth a scream, surely it stood before her now.

It was shaped, vaguely, like a person. Shrouded in a ragged dark cloak, Hyacinth first had the bizarre thought that perhaps it was perched upon stilts, but a moment's hesitation showed her, instead, that it had legs longer than any human ought, with joints where no human had joints. At it was thin, thin enough that it appeared to be woven from smoke itself; from beneath its hood, Hyacinth could not distinguish a face: the only features was that jagged smile, like it had been cut there. Oh, god – like it had been cut there. What an awful smile. It was a glowing white, though she could distinguish no teeth, just light. And those eyes – two slits, carved into the darkness – were just as bright, harshly lit from some inner light source she could not distinguish. The hand which had pulled her from the water had fingers two or three times the length of Hyacinth's own, with tiny black spurs curving from palm and joint alike.

It did not speak. It made no sound but that soft chittering, like perhaps beneath the cloak lay only a column of bugs towered upon one another, making the soft, skittering sounds of all insects.

This thing had pulled her from the water, and for the merest moment, Hyacinth's fear overwhelmed her and made her stupid. For the slightest trace of an instant, she prayed, maybe they were wrong about the druj. For the merest moment, she dared to think, perhaps he shall spare me. For a fraction of a second, she made the mistake of thinking, perhaps one monster recognises another.

That was what they were now, correct? Xrafstars. Warriors. Monsters in human skin.

They were made of the same stuff, weren't they? Sorcery and druj. Dark magic and demon-craft. Cursework.

She had always thought as much. They had occasionally seen the previous Warriors around the training compound during their candidacy; they had always struck Hyacinth as wrong, like they were doing something wrong merely by existing in the same space as ordinary people. The way that Decebal Nicolescu could disappear into the wind and reform himself where he pleased – the way Jaga Szymanska's skin had roiled over her bones, like something darker dwelt deeply within – the way Voski Grigoryan's veins had glowed, red and subtle, like lava beneath her flesh…

Voski Grigoryan. The previous Sun. The others had called her their stalwart – the bravest and brashest of them all. Self-immolation – that had been her. Some part of Voski was meant to lie within Hyacinth now, wasn't she? Then where was she? Where was her courage, her bravery? Why did her bones feel so light and hollow?

Was it only Hyacinth here? Scared, pathetic Hyacinth? Was she alone, here, now, staring into the eyes of a druj?

Oh, god – hadn't she, on some level, always been alone?

And then it reached for her, that cut-sliced-mutilated smile glowing bleach-bright-white in the shrouded dark of its ragged, smoking hood, those white slit-eyes staring and staring and staring, and she thought no no no no no no…..

NO!

She didn't want to die. Those had been the words, unspoken, in her scream when she had fallen into the water during the druj attack. She didn't want to die. Cessation of self? Nothingness? Darkness forever? And before that, while the druj still had her, the pain – the agony – whatever preceded death.

Whatever it was that monsters did to the little girls they found in the water and the woods.

The voice in her mind was much softer now, but there was greater strength behind it. It was the quiet, determined resolution of someone larger and stronger than Hyacinth, but it was spoken with her own soft voice.

No.

There was an abrupt ripple in the air; it shimmered before her, almost imperceptibly, something like the sheen of heat during the summer. This was not wind, and this was not quite heat either; it was the feeling that the little word in Hyacinth's head – no – had found its way out into the world and forced its way between all the molecules that made up the reality before her. And the little word – no – was something awful popping into existence in the spaces between oxygen and nitrogen, pulsing through the ragged fabric of the druj's cloak, soaking into the very rocks around her. The whole world seemed to have tilted on its axis; Hyacinth was the lone thing in the world which remained upright. For a brief second, all of the air seemed to have been purged from her lungs, and for an even briefer second, it seemed that she did not need it. She was an Else-thing, just like this druj. And she thought again, with something approaching conviction, no.

The thing's hand hung in the air before her, but it was shuddering now, shaking; those long fingers and multiple joints were curling and uncurling upon themselves. She was not sure if this thing had bones, but something was cracking within it now as it – very abruptly, so abruptly she nearly jumped – writhed and twisted on itself, its whole shape folding once and then twice. It was still standing, but if it had a spine, it was twisting now; it snapped, very abruptly, to the left, and that awful chittering was so loud as to reach a crescendo. It wouldn't stop; it was forcing its way into Hyacinth's head. It felt like her skull was full of beetles….

But it wasn't in control anymore. She was. For the first time, she was. And this – this was a monster in pain.

Through the hanging tendrils of her salt-stained hair, her perception of the world was narrowing and fading, slightly. It felt like she had put all of her energy into those few simple thoughts; her head spun, and her stomach roiled. Her skin felt feverish; she felt like she was about to burn up from the inside out. Would she even notice if her hair caught fire? She was so tired.

And the druj was gone. Could that be? Moving slowly, almost arthritically, Hyacinth placed her hands flat on the rocks, grounding herself for a moment in their smooth surface, and pushed herself up to her knees, pushing her hair out of her way. She stared across the stones, and found that she was, again, as ever, alone. The thing was gone; this stretch of coast was utterly deserted.

She wanted to sob. So this was Illéa. So this was the cause to which she had dedicated ten years of her life. So this was what Aleia and Riedman had given their child up to.

She wanted to sob, and then she did. In that moment, any number of druj could have emerged from the water to devour her; Hyacinth Estlebourgh would not have noticed. She just put her head into her hands, and began to cry.

It seemed like the whole forest of Illéa was steadfastly determined to be as poisonous as possible. What few plants Mielikki Zorrico could identify were deeply toxic; those that she could not seemed to have decided to be deadly. Here was foxglove, tubular and freckled in lilac; here were the spiky red maces of castor bean; there were the auburned orange and red leaves of poison sumac. They shouldn't have grown together like this; they demanded very different climates, which the mild and grey atmosphere of Illéa seemed disinclined to provide. And yet they grew in one another's shadows; it was truly the most peculiar thing.

Those which were not more familiar were more concerning again, not least because it arose in Mielikki the mild concern that every leaf and branch against which they brushed might be inclined to kill. She had plucked a mushroom from the ground as they walked, and crushed it now against her skin, examining the dark purple liquid that oozed from it and sank into her flesh like so much soap. It did not sting; no rash rose on her skin, and the scent was not as acrid as she had expected. Plants were plants – provided they did not have to mistrust the flora as they mistrust the fauna, perhaps they could forage for some amount of food on this long journey of theirs. Twisting the white stalk of the fungus between her fingers and examining the pulp which clung to her fingers, she brought it slowly towards her mouth, and –

"Zorrico." Ghjuvan Mannuzzu was staring at her with an expression that suggested he knew he shouldn't have expected better from her. "Don't put that in your mouth."

"I'm not going to eat it." Mielikki rolled her eyes. "I can just spit it out if it's..."

"Ki," Azula said, quite softly. She had been quiet for most of their long hike; Mielikki imagined she was missing Hyacinth and Ina and Zoran and… well, their list was getting rather long now, wasn't it? Her leg still wasn't healed from training; she stumbled over a few of her steps. Had they really been still training, only three nights ago? "It might be poisonous."

"Yes," Mielikki said, "hence the spitting out part."

Khalore said, from the rear of their tightly formed group, "I say we let her do it."

"I appreciate your support, Angelo," Mielikki said sweetly. Their voices were hushed, as though they thought they might be overheard. By what, she couldn't quite imagine; they had seen no sign of druj since emerging from the water. Propaganda could do so much, she thought. Maybe there weren't any monsters on this island at all.

Present company excepted, of course.

"Your faith in me is as invigorating as it is surprising," Mielikki continued.

"More food for the rest of us," Khalore added, and Ghjuvan shot her a look as well; Mielikki suspected he would have laughed in any other circumstances. Khalore was a bitter sort, but she said what everyone else was thinking – Mielikki had always found her rather difficult to get along with, but blunt honesty was refreshing in a time like this. So often it seemed thus: that she would play the bitter supporter, eager to martyr herself and keen that everyone should hear how she suffered, while Ghjuvan and Myghal served as her shadows, one stoically silent and one flippantly elusive. Mielikki had rarely seen the three of them apart in the last few years; she had always supposed that they were close enough rivals that they felt compelled to keep tabs on one another, and by keeping their competition close seek to outmanoeuvre it.

Mielikki had thought this, not because it was the type of thing she usually thought, but because she imagined this was how the others did; she had never quite got the hang of the petty rivalry, which had been Uriasz's speciality. She had always felt a little outcast because of it, never quite able to muster the fervor against her fellow candidates which had so characterised Nez or Khalore or Myghal. She expected that was why she had come as low in the rankings as she had – she had lacked that killer instinct.

The mushroom tasted sour, and she decided not to persist in examining its edibility after that. Between her fingers, it was darkening rapidly, into something rotten and black. She dropped it, and crushed it underfoot as they continued further into the woods. Beside her, Ilja was remaining quiet, scanning their surroundings; there was a vein jumping beneath his jaw. She glanced in her direction, raising an eyebrow; he shook his head, mutely, and then decided to think better of his silence. "I think we're being followed. A few hundred yards back."

Mielikki resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. "Perhaps," she said, "it's the others." There was a black spot on her fingers, like black dye stained there; she could not recall what might have produced such an effect. She worried at it with her thumb as she walked. "Ina and Zoran."

That vein jumped again. "Perhaps."

There was no point in trying to look behind her; she didn't think she could have spotted anything more than a metre or two away. These woods were dense, and thick, and grey, and quite unlike anything their training had prepared them for.

How enormous! She found herself marvelling at what little of the canopy she could glimpse; the top of the trees were, oh, so far away – enormously far away. She could almost believe she would never see the sky again; these trees were so enormous. Hundreds of metres tall? Some fraction of a mile in height? It was awe-inspiring. They were moving through a place which had existed some millenia before the Warriors had ever been dreamed of; it would exist for millions of years afterwards. There was something terrifying about something so constant, wasn't there? It was like looking at a poisonous plant – it could kill you in a second, and would care little. It would not even deign to have an opinion about you. Beneath this canopy, among these poisonous plants, the Warriors were little more – little less – than rats or grass or rain. Here, for now.

For now.

The trees were shuddering about them. Mielikki picked up her pace to keep with the group. Somewhere in the depth of the forest, something shrieked. That ordinarily wouldn't have worried her unduly; camping trips with Lysandra's family and survival expeditions with the Warrior candidates had taught her that any number of animals liked to shriek: vixens and birds and some types of burrowing rats. Animals made the strangest sounds; foxes sounded most uncannily human during the winter, after all. So, ordinarily, this wouldn't have worried her.

But they hadn't heard a single animal since stepping into these woods some hours earlier. There were no birds, no rustle of rodent underfoot, no movement of insects on the fallen trees and boulders over which they now scrambled. The whole place was so utterly silent, and now it was not.

What could the Star do? She wished she knew. She wished she had unlocked her powers. Instead, as Ilja turned his head towards the sound of the shriek and said, his voice low, "did anyone…?", Mielikki could only watch as Khalore ripped her knife from her bag and levelled it towards the undergrowth.

Azula said, her voice low, "something's coming."

How far to the palace? These flowers were wild; these trees were ancient; this forest was utterly untamed. There was no civilisation here. Maybe the druj had picked off all of the Schreaves and their followers. Maybe there was nothing left.

Maybe, Mielikki thought, and then didn't have time to finish that thought before the whole world shook with an enormous roar.

The thing that charged through the forest was enormous, and wrong: none of its body parts ought to have fit together in the way it apparently did. It was broadly canine in build; Mielikki could have imagined that this thing was originally a wolf or wild dog of some stripe, but if that was what it had been, that was certainly not what it was now. It was not shaped correctly for that: its face was flat, very flat, with bits of skin peeled back along its jaw to expose bare red flesh, embedded into which were those enormous dagger-like teeth, each one as long as Ghjuvan's arm. Its paws, such as they were, were strangely human – long, and flat, the legs not curving back in a bow as canid limbs typically did. Its back was hunched, as though it had not been created to run on all fours but some sheer feral instinct had compelled it to do so.

And those eyes…. merely pits, from which black mucus slowly dripped. Could it see? What might have been a nose, similarly, was an open wound on its face, its flesh black and curled as though burned back from healing.

It snarled, saliva dripping, and lunged for the person nearest to it – Ghjuvan. He fell backwards, barely evading the attack. Beside him, Khalore produced some strange sound from very deep in her chest, and lunged, leaping, to sink her knife into its leg. She buried her dagger deeply into what might have been a hock, on any other animal; Mielikki could only stare. Khalore's knife… it was barely as long as one of this thing's talons. And those fangs… The druj seemed to have barely noticed Khalore existed.

Mielikki was the Star, wasn't she? Stars supported the other Warriors… they helped, they protected, and right now…

Khalore ripped her knife free and scrambled, sliding right under the druj to its other side. Her knife flashed out in a wicked silver arc as she aimed for where an achilles' tendon might have been on a person – Mielikki felt for her own knife, desperately, but really, why weren't they running – and then Khalore shrieked, loud and awful, as the druj's maw closed tightly over her arm. The movement of this beast's head was enough to lift her off the ground, completely, and swing her; Mielikki could hear the awful cracking sound of the other Warrior's arm splintering under the sheer force as she hit a nearby tree trunk, hard, and the druj withdrew and prepared to lunge again.

Three things happened then, one very quickly after another: Ghjuvan dived in front of Khalore, his eyes and arms wide; Ilja yelled, "bastard, take me!"; and with a sound like a great crack of thunder, the tree nearest Mielikki buckled under the weight of the second druj that had alighted behind them.

This was an enormous, grotesque, crawling thing – sinuous, like some kind of enormous clawed lizard with a skull for a face, its hooked hands clinging to the tree trunks as it prepared to launch. And it was right behind Mielikki. She turned, and stared, and gaped, and thought oh well that's it maybe I can do it some damage on my way out… and then the second druj lunged, bypassing Mielikki quite harmlessly, her hair and clothes whipping around her as though in a hurricane by the sheer force of the air displaced. It raced past her, enormous, rippling with strength. Then the enormous lizard-like druj sank its maw around the throat of the thing in front of Ghjuvan and Khalore, and wrenched its head viciously, hauling it backwards. Both of them were shrieking, like something entirely wild and feral.

Mielikki thought, with a detached kind of fascination, they're fighting over who gets to eat us.

Well, it was always nice to be popular.

Ilja had shoved Azula ahead of him. "Go!" he shouted, and Mielikki saw that Ghjuvan had pulled Khalore over his shoulders to haul her, like so much cargo, through the trees. Mielikki didn't need to be told twice; those two monsters were thrashing, shaking these trees that had, only moments ago, appeared to her so utterly implaceable and eternal. There was black ichor and flesh flying in every direction; when she risked a glance in their direction, there was only fang and talon and blood. She stooped, seized Khalore's dropped knife and her own bag, and then sprinted into the woods after the others.

The forest floor seemed to disappear beneath her; she could not recall the last time she had run so fast. She kept the others in the corner of her eyes, picking her path with a furious desperation to avoid an ill-timed fall, unwilling to entrust her stability to someone else in the same state of panic. Through the trees, she was abruptly and awfully aware that they were not alone, and maybe they never had been; there were things moving through the trees that had probably always been there, and that they had probably mistaken for trees.

Nearby, Azula hit the ground, hard; Mielikki came to a skidding stop, leaves flying, and darted for the smaller girl, only to recoil abruptly as the leaves around the other Warrior came abruptly alive; the vines Mielikki had assessed earlier as merely untrustworthy seemed to have latched on, very tightly, to Azula's limbs, as though to draw her into the earth. Mielikki stared – stared, as she dropped to her knees, knife in hand, and began to slice, desperately.

For every strand she cut away, two more twined around Azula; they were around her throat now, around her throat and her wrists and her legs; Mielikki's knife caught the younger girl's skin and came away red-stained. There was the awful sense that she was watching the smaller girl being buried alive, right in front of her, just sinking into the ground and be swallowed up...

Mielikki's knife flashed and again came away red-stained.

Most of Azula's face had been bound up now. Mielikki fumbled; her knife fell, and was pulled away by these strange vines, swallowed up by the forest of the foliage. Without a moment's hesitation, she began to tear at the vines with her bare hands, desperate. She could see so little of Azula's face: only that single, staring, desperate eye that was still visible….

She tore at the vines, and in her hands, they rotted. Wherever she lay hands upon them, they blackened as the mushroom had, and sank into mulch. They splintered under her hands; it was like tearing through cut grass. Within a moment, she was reaching for Azula's hand, to haul her back to her feet – and the other girl was recoiling, as Mielikki's hand touched hers and Azula's flesh blackened rapidly. It looked like frostbite; it seemed like necrosis had set in, in the single second her skin had made contact with Azula's. Some of her skin sloughed off, like the shed skin of a snake; the Devil of Kur fell backwards, and stared at her hand, and stared at Mielikki.

And finally, she said something that sounded like, "thanks."

Mielikki waved this away. "I'm sure you would have..."

She didn't finish the sentence. Azula was staring around herself. "The others..."

The others, indeed. Azula was the youngest – certainly Ilja and Ghjuvan would not have left Mielikki to try and save her alone if they were able. So, quite certainly, that meant that they were not able.

And deep within the woods, there was a low growl rumbling. The forest was alive around them now, alive and malevolent. Unbidden, the sound of Khalore's arm splintering sprang to the forefront of Mielikki's mind. Mielikki just reached for the knife that had belonged to the Hanged Man; without needing to speak, she and Azula scrambled to their feet, Mielikki studiously keeping her hands away from the other girl. She was about to say something, when she saw how grey Azula's face was, and turned to see what the Devil was staring at, with those same scared eyes.

The forest was so enormous; it could have sheltered three cathedrals within it, spire upon spire. And there stood a druj close behind them now, surely the size of a cathedral, a tall golem-like beast with great limbs of stone. Close behind them – no, it was not close behind them, but with such immense size it would not have taken it longer than a step or two to come level with them. It was utterly still; for a moment, Mielikki thought that perhaps it was some strange outcropping of rocks, approximating a silhouette, but then it turned its head, slowly, painfully slowly. It had two very small eyes set into what might have been a head, and the light within was a very pale gold; it hurt to look at those eyes. Mielikki felt like there were sabres being driven into her, just looking at those eyes.

Could they run? Mielikki didn't think they had another choice.

Was this their fate? To be pursued through these woods, mere prey? Oh, and to think she had been so proud to become a Warrior. She had worked hard, hadn't she? And this was all they were good for. Her hand tightened around her knife. Beside her, Azula whispered, "we need to find the others."

They did.

They ran.