vicissitude (n.) a change of fortune, especially one that is unwelcome or unpleasant.

Something wasn't right.

As they had approached Mainyu, Xynone Hanover's horse had spooked at something lurking in the shadows at the threshold of the forest and had bolted; Kostas Savva had shouted something at his comrade's back, but it had been too late. The druj were right on top of them, fast, too fast, faster than any druj they had encountered before – they could not have predicted how fast these things were. Their ordinary tactics would not work, but that didn't matter: they had done their part, and drawn many of the druj away from the walls of Illéa. The people would be safer now.

Kane might have been able to devise a solution on the spot, but in this moment, Xye thought it wisest for them to scatter. If he tried to calm the horse, they would have been devoured, and if he did not try, he would be carried, swiftly and inextricably, into the shadows of the ancient forest.

If he left here alive, he would not be sane, but one rarely left here alive.

He did not have the time to make a reasoned decision. The druj were right behind him, snarling, advancing through the undergrowth like a pack of awful, enormous wolves; Xye's horse spun around the trees like it was a barrel-racing champion. But they wouldn't be fast enough; would they? Could they? He was dimly aware that the druj had slowly thinned out behind them; were they dissipating into the forest, readying for a leap from the shadows to take him by surprise, or was he losing them? Maybe they had turned back to target Kostas, now that he had been left alone. It was impossible to tell, for now and from here; he would have to try and turn, get back to the edge of the forest before he was lost in here for the rest of his life.

He had never ventured into Mainyu before - no one ever had - and some part of him was filled with awe to see it now. It felt claustrophobic, like the city in the walls, but it was a more suffocating kind of closeness, the sensation that, no matter how enormous the trees or how faraway the sky, you were always being watched. He could not see who was watching him; he did not think it was a who. It was just that creeping, crawling sensation on his skin and the utter silence of the undergrowth around him.

They were sprinting through a clearing now, and Xye saw, to his shock, that the entire place was painted with gore; there was blood and cloth everywhere, and a body lying near what might have once been a fire. A body? Blood? This wasn't a druj; druj didn't bleed red but black. A person, then, but what were they doing out here? Were – had been. They were dead. Xye didn't need to slow his horse to determine that much, and yet he did. He was not the most naturally curious person, and yet this stood out to him; this galled his mind like an ill-fitted bearing. Dead.

It was a small body, fallen where she had once stood, and it was a she: the torn flesh of her bare arms were etched with dark markings, shaped like twining flowers, and her hair was a short bob, more severe than anything Xye had seen in Illéa before. Her head had been caved in; Xye could not bear to look at it for long. He was accustomed to killing druj, but other human beings – he had pledged his life to the service of their protection. Seeing this now was like seeing his own reflection in a similar state.

How had she got beyond the walls?

He paused, and then dismounted his horse, praying that it did not bolt again while he was on the ground. He should bring this body back to Illéa, he thought – he should ensure that it received a proper burial, whatever or whoever it was or had been. Lorencio Suer would insist on an inspection first, of course, but…

Something wasn't right.

Xye's head snapped up, and his sword was in his hand in a single instant as the trees nearest to him rustled. He kept his hand on his horse's reins, clinging to them as a drowning man might a life-raft; it was his one way out of this damned forest, if he ever could leave. He spun his sword on his hand, and watched the undergrowth, very carefully, tensing and considering a retreat into the trees as…

As a small girl, dressed in a torn blue uniform, stepped out from behind the tree. Xye blanched – she couldn't be older than fifteen. She had angular eyes and a heart-shaped face, long dark hair dirtied and threaded with leaves, and blood on her arms, blood on her face. She looked scared; scared, and sad, and scared again.

Druj could look, superficially, like people. Xye knew this. Everyone knew this. Everyone had seen at least one – and everyone knew that the resemblance was thin and transparent, like damp paper. There would always be too many teeth, too many joints, limbs that were too long or a jaw that stretched too wide. Most of the time, these druj looked more monstrous than any of the animalistic beasts with which the excubitors usually contended; there was something so much worse about a monster trying, desperately, to look like a person.

This was just a little girl, and she was already scared. Against all of his training, he lowered, slowly, his sword, and gave her a cautious smile. Kane would have killed him. "It's okay," he said. How had she got beyond the walls? "I won't hurt you."

She just stared at him. It was most unnerving – it felt like she was staring through him – no, not through him, into him, inside him, seeing something within him that he had never seen in himself. Those dark eyes of her bored into his bone and his skull, deep and relentlessly. Xye could not help it; he took a step back. It felt like a physical onslaught, that stare; a chilling sensation ran up his spine. He had the sensation of insects and spiders crawling all across his skin. Had he just made a fatal miscalculation?

No, not staring, reaching – she was reaching into him, into his mind. What was she ripping away from him? Xye did not know how to cling to that which was internal… his brother, his parents, his time in the corps, his time in the orphanage… the long sun-drenched hours he had spent drawing out chalk squares outside the clocktower to play hopscotch with the other orphans –

This thing had still not spoken, perhaps because druj could not – it was just staring at him, totally blind – or senseless – to the body lying at his feet. Maybe this druj had been the one to kill her…

He raised his sword, and behind him, abruptly, a voice – human, and sweet, and panicked. "Don't hurt her!"

Of course he wouldn't hurt her. How could this woman think that he would ever hurt her? He turned to tell her as much, and found himself, very abruptly, lost in the gold of her eyes. It was like suffocating in amber – drowning in honey. Of course he wouldn't. He couldn't. He would never.

"Give me your sword."

Of course – she was unarmed. Xye couldn't leave her unarmed in this awful place. It was fine; he still had his hooks. This was only fair. He flipped his sword in his hand, and passed it to her, hilt-first. Behind him, he was distantly aware of her companion rushing over to the dark-haired girl, to see if she was okay. The girl was saying some soft, indistinct word over and over again, something that Xye could not quite hear, something that ended in ki.

She had taken his sword, and balanced it now in her hand, looking like an expert. Of course she would, Xye thought – what couldn't she do? She had arrived quite silently, or maybe Xye had just been so overwhelmed by that girl's dark eyes that he had not heard them – and it was them, a man and her.She was holding the reins of a horse – was that Kostas'? – over which the jacket of an excubitor had been thrown. "Is she okay?"

Was she? Abruptly, Xye turned, the curiosity his own, and was overwhelmed again by the strange sensation that the girl was rummaging around in his mind, trying to find a hook to hang on to. More than that… she was pushing him back, pressing him against the walls of his own skull, filling up the strands of his mind with her own presence and stabbing into his every thought a hook by which she could play his strings from afar. It was an awful, forceful, claustrophobic sensation… and then she said something, and the girl looked away, and Xye gasped to feel his mind belong to him again.

Bizarrely, his first thought was, why was I thinking about hopscotch?

Something wasn't right.

The young man looked between his two female companions. "You look like," he said, slowly, his voice sounding like it was being transmitted to Xye through a very long and very narrow tunnel. "you have an idea."

And that voice – "yes," she said, and Xye abruptly realised that he did not know her name, did not know where she came from, did not know why she was pointing that sword at him like he was the enemy. He knew nothing – he knew only those deep amber eyes and the lilt of that sweet voice. "You could say that, Zor. I do, in fact, have an idea."