"Maia, is this wise?"
I pulled my gaze away from the bare blade resting across my crossed legs, meeting Grenwin's concerned gaze.
We sat across from each other on Grenwin's pelt rug. Late morning sunlight shone through the window behind her, casting her auburn locks in golden light. The fire nearby burned lowly and smoke curled up around the rafters to a vent on the peaked ceiling above us. A goat's bleating sounded outside as Misa, Inella's daughter, guided the animal past the window.
What a silly question to ask.
"It's fine, Gren. It's just funny metal."
I tapped the matte reddish-black metal with my fingernails in emphasis, enjoying the quiet ting-ting they made. My fingers felt as light as my buoyant mood when I moved them, though they almost seemed to move too quickly, as though my thoughts were wading through water while my body remained free.
Grenwin didn't appear to be very convinced or to be enjoying the fine day. Instead, she'd been worried since she caught me climbing the heart tree earlier. Sure, I'd been hanging upside-down from a branch when she found me, but I'd made it down just fine.
"I've never seen anything like that before," Grenwin said with trepidation, vibrant green eyes flicking down to the sword across my knees. "You said you cut yourself and it lit up. That's strange, Maia, and strange is dangerous."
My head felt stuffed full of wool as it tilted to the side of its own accord and I blinked at her. I'd been called strange often over the last couple of days, but this is the first time anyone's said that.
"I'm dangerous?"
She gave me a flat look and blew out an exasperated sigh.
"Well, you are strange. Fine, go ahead and show me."
I felt a grin grow as I bobbed my head in a nod. My left hand took the hilt and turned it so the blade's edge faced upward. I stuck my right thumb out and hovered it close to the edge, idly noting that it wobbled a little too much. Focusing, I steadied my hand before meeting Grenwin's eyes again.
"Alright, watch," I told her eagerly as I slid my thumb along the blade.
The pain was sharper than I expected as it cut a little deeper than I wanted. My nanites helpfully alerted me to the damage, giving me a detailed analysis as blood not only flowed from severed capillaries but was actively being sucked out of my finger. The nanites present in the fluid vanished as they made contact with the sword and the wound seemed to resist the nanites' efforts to mend it. At the same time, the hilt began to heat under my palm and a chill gathered at the edge of my thoughts.
Fascinating.
"Ow, ow ow, oh, that's interesting."
Grenwin gasped, eyes wide and fixed on the blade. Her hands gripped at the trousers over her knees, bunching them up beneath white-knuckled fingers.
Waves of soft scarlet light rippled outward along the dark metal from where I'd cut myself. They were more vibrant than before, bouncing along the flat. A thin red vapor rose from the edge wherever the ripples made contact and fell back, as if coating the blade, before condensing and dripping to the rug between my legs. The strange phenomenon evaporated away in moments, the hilt cooling, and the chill fading from my mind.
"See? It's weird, isn't it?" I asked Grenwin without looking away from the sword. "It almost seems like it's consuming my blood. I wonder what will happen if I feed it more?"
Grenwin's wide eyes flicked up to mine, then back to the blade. She swallowed thickly before wetting her lips, and her voice was strained with fear.
"Aye, it's strange. Where, ah, where did you say you found it, again?"
I shrugged at her, "One of my lights, I think, though I think I remember seeing it somewhere else before. It's a mystery!" That last came out a little more brightly than I'd intended, though Grenwin's lips twitched upward in momentary amusement. I wondered for a moment if it would react the same to her. Carefully lifting the sword, I offered it in her direction.
"Want to try? I'll heal you up after!"
Her face turned ashen as the blood drained out of it. She stared at me as though I'd grown a second head.
"What? You want me to bleed myself on that?"
Nodding to her, I pushed the sword in her direction again.
"I want to see what happens. Please?"
Grenwin scrunched her eyes shut, lips held tight together as she took a deep breath in through her nose. After a moment, she nodded, opening her eyes and reaching out to the sword. She glanced at me again, hand trembling above the edge, then carefully slipped the tip of her little finger along it. Pulling her finger back, a crimson droplet grew there before dripping onto the dark metal, splashing against it.
The sword's reaction was far lesser, a faint ripple of light shimmering around Grenwin's blood as it slowly drew it in. There was no vapor this time, nor did the hilt warm that I could feel.
"Well, I wasn't expecting that," I told her, setting the sword back down and reaching over to fix her up.
Grenwin took my hand, squeezing it hard, eyes focused where her blood had vanished. She shook her head, auburn hair shifting over her shoulders, then met my gaze.
"That wasn't so bad. What were you expecting, Maia?"
"I don't know, more than that, I guess. Wonder why it didn't work as well for you."
Her eyebrows rose and some of the color began to return to her features.
"Maybe it has to do with your wings?"
"Ah!" I snapped my fingers, pointing at her, "I bet you're right! Lemme check myself out for a second."
Nodding, Grenwin squeezed my hand again. It didn't seem that she had any intention to let go.
Recalling the way my nanites had given me a detailed overview of Grenwin's physiology when I'd first healed her, I closed my eyes and tried making them do that for my own body. It worked; after a moment, they rendered a multicolored model of my biology in my thoughts. Immediately, significant anomalies and deviations from the human norm stood out to me. Sending the machines over to my friend, I compared what I saw of her to what I saw in myself.
My neurology was odd, the neurons packed more densely within my brain, especially in the regions governing sensory processing, and there were several structures I didn't recognize. Even stranger, I found a pair of peculiar organs situated between my frontal and parietal lobes, incredibly active clusters of neurons clinging to something crystalline and inorganic at their cores. My nanites couldn't make heads or tails of those and Grenwin lacked the structures, so I made a mental note to come back to it later.
My bones were abnormal as well. They were more porous than they should be, almost hollow, and rather than the calcium apatite foundation I saw in Grenwin's, they were composed of an iron-calcium compound that appeared to serve the same function. There were more bones than I ought to have, though most of the extras were in my wings.
Those were structured like elongated hands, connected to stubby wrist-like structures fused to my shoulder blades, and I lacked the neural connections to actively move them. Instead, they were tied into my autonomic nervous system, and I watched as the muscles in the finger analogues moved in reaction to my sense of wonder, spreading the wings wider. The feathers, as I'd thought, were packed with nerves and a series of blood vessels that enabled them to expand and contract.
My blood was stranger still. There was an extra fluid present alongside a slew of cells and compounds I didn't recognize nor could divine the function of, and there was something else present that very subtly interfered with my nanites' movement. I had no explanations for any of this; my grasp of biology was limited to a few college courses and I couldn't make any sense of what it meant. I could only assume that the extra factors were what the sword was somehow making use of.
Retracting the nanites from Grenwin, I opened my eyes and found myself at a loss for words. What could I say? That I was only partially human, if at all?
She must have seen my confusion, as her brows furrowed in concern.
"What is it? What did you find?"
I opened my mouth to speak before I'd formed the words. Closing it, I looked at the hand she held and frowned, then said, "I'm really not sure at all. I think I have to think about it."
"How are you feeling?"
Her concerned tone pulled my eyes back up to meet hers.
Grenwin leaned close to me, pressing the back of her free hand against my forehead. She frowned and muttered, "Hm, maybe that's a fever. You're not normally this warm."
If there was a fever, the nanites weren't telling me about it.
Shrugging at her, "I feel, ah…"
Now that I was looking, I felt very odd indeed. The room began to shift from side to side, tilting slightly back and forth. That wasn't normal, I didn't think.
"I feel like I'm strange. My body feels strange, I mean. Like it's moving too fast for my mind to keep up."
"You're swaying," Grenwin noted, and once she'd pointed it out, I found I was; that explained the room swimming around me.
"So I am!" I granted readily, grinning broadly at her. Her expression was very amusing.
She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment before saying slowly and clearly, "I think you're sick, Maia. Do you understand?"
Understanding felt a tall order, just then. I nodded anyway, beaming at her, then was mystified by the expression she wore. I couldn't tell what it was, though I knew she'd been concerned only a moment before; that wasn't normal, I didn't think.
A man's faint shouts drifted in through the window and Grenwin's head snapped to look. She swore, then grabbed me by the shoulders and peered into my eyes.
"Maia, stay here. I need to check this out."
My chin bobbed up and down as I nodded, "Okay, go have fun!"
Her jaw clenched and she shook her head, standing quickly. She moved over to her bed and pulled a round wooden shield from under it, the front painted in a faded red bear's paw. She strapped it to her arm and grabbed her spear from where it stood next to the door, pulling that open. She hesitated for a moment, turning my way before repeating her earlier statement in a commanding tone.
"Stay here!"
With that, she ran out of the hut, slamming the door shut behind her.
I wondered what all that was about, taking up my sword's hilt and putting it back across my lap. It likely wasn't any of my business, if Grenwin's tone was anything to go by. My attention drifted back to the sword and the way it seemed to like to drink my blood. Maybe if I gave it more, something interesting would happen?
My mind suddenly made up, I slid my hand along the edge, wincing as I accidentally cut deeper than I'd wanted. My nanites warned me of the significant damage, but I put it aside as I watched the bright crimson light rippling out along the blade.
"Go on," I urged it, "Do something. Take as much as you need, I've got plenty!"
The blade flared brightly, blinding me for a moment. There was the sensation of snapping, as though something ephemeral had just broken, and the hilt burned under my hand. The cold spot at the edge of my thoughts intensified, sharpening somehow, and then it spoke, a freezing wind that blew away the wool stuffing my head and left behind a sudden, stark clarity.
"At last! I am free once more!"
It sounded like a woman, her tone haughty and dripping with eagerness.
What?!
Stunned, I couldn't respond. Blinking my vision clear, I found the blade transformed, the previously dull metal shining crimson and alight with scarlet-black fire. The fire rippled and dripped from the sword, pooling on the fur rug without burning. I couldn't move my fingers, my hand clamped firmly around the hilt as the fire crept towards my skin.
Outside, I heard more shouting, and then Grenwin bellowed, "First Fork! To me! To me, First Fork!"
Urgency filled me as I heard the call, but I couldn't move a muscle. The strange fire reached my hand, burning through my skin, into my muscles and along my nerves. It hurt like nothing else I'd experienced before, a horrible creeping pain that intensified as the fire traveled up my arm. I wanted to shout, to scream for help, to throw the sword away, but I was helpless to act. The cold spot pulsed and spoke again.
"I sense your need. Accept me and I will lend you my strength."
Screaming in my own head back at it, "Let me go! It hurts and I need to help them!"
The shouting outside grew more urgent as men and women I'd come to know charged past the window. Something was happening out there and I needed to help. Grenwin told me to stay, but I couldn't just sit here and do nothing.
"Accept me and the pain will cease. We are already partially bound, you and I, and I cannot stop the process. Can you?"
I tried desperately to force it away, to attack the fire in my flesh with the nanites, but they burned away without slowing the progression up my arm. I felt it in my veins, burrowing almost like a physical thing under my skin and through my muscles and bones. I had the nanites try separating the tissues, severing portions of my arm that fell to land wetly among the fur. I saw my black bones and wanted to retch, and the nausea grew as I watched the flames creeping up them. It was already up to my shoulder, too far for me to stop.
"I can't, please, just stop!" I screamed and screamed in my thoughts, trying to hurt the cold thing like it was hurting me. A spike of pain stabbed at my brain and my head throbbed in time with my heartbeat.
"You are only harming yourself! Cease this and accept me!"
In a sudden moment of clarity, I realized I couldn't do anything. There was nothing I could do to stop this. Something deep within me snapped and I couldn't struggle any longer. I wished I could die instead, but even that was denied me. My resistance evaporated and I stared brokenly at the sword as I let it in.
"I accept," I thought, and for a moment, the pain flared as the fire surged through me. Then it was over, my nanites restoring my damaged arm, and I could move again.
Outside, the shouting was turning frantic, and now they were bellowing loud cries. There was screaming, too, screams of pain and shock. I needed to go, to help them. It was all I had left.
The woman spoke again, cold voice kinder now.
"I am truly sorry for the pain I have caused you."
I ignored her, standing and making for the door. My legs felt stiff and I had to force them to move, and I didn't bother to carry the sword properly, letting it drag on the ground behind me. Stumbling out into the sunlight, I squinted against the glare and picked up speed as I followed the sounds of distress.
Turning around an old building, I saw a group of unfamiliar men fighting several of the villagers in the street. I saw Wyck standing over a fallen Misa alongside Inella, the pair warding the strangers off with spears. Across the narrow street, stout Gudrid and Hild were on the ground, surrounded and being beaten with cudgels.
The strangers themselves were dressed for the weather in an unfamiliar style, and some held long poles with loops of rope on the end they tried to catch Wyck and Inella with.
"Slavers!" The woman spat out with loathing in my head. "Kill them, girl!"
Nodding woodenly, I held the sword up as I shifted to a run, charging the strangers. I wasn't entirely in control of myself as the cold in my head seemed to guide my movement.
The slavers were too occupied with the villagers to notice my charge. I held the blade out to the side as my feet pounded through the snow. I was close enough to smell the strange perfumes the three slavers standing over Gudrid and Hild wore when I swung the sword, the long blade arcing through the air and leaving a trail of scarlet-black fire behind it. I felt no resistance as the edge passed through the slavers, cutting them in two. I felt numb as they fell, turning and charging those harassing Wyck and Inella.
The sword felt as though it was acting of its own accord as it had me raise my arms and cut down into the nearest stranger, then turned my waist to sweep the blade through the remaining two before they could do more than look at me. I looked wildly around the street, half expecting to see more, but it was just us now. Ignoring the way Wyck and Inella backed warily away from me, I knelt to check over Misa, healing her of a bad concussion before moving to restore Gudrid and Hild.
Ygdis' cry of despair and horror rose nearby and my head snapped in that direction. My legs moved of their own accord as I sprinted around the corner and between two shacks.
There were two slavers in the alley facing the way I was coming, both carrying crossbows. I couldn't make the distance between us as they shouted in surprise and raised their weapons, a pair of loud twangs sounding in the air as they loosed.
The bolts struck me like twin fists, punching through my parka and lodging in my heart and spleen, staggering me. My heart shredded itself on the barbed iron tip and I screamed from the awful sensation. The nanites tore at the foreign objects as I recovered, the stubs falling away from my skin. A wild cry rose from my lips as I leaped at them, catching them both with the blade in a wild slash.
I could hear Ygdis shouting close by. Bursting out to another street, I saw the rest of First Fork battling the slavers. I almost stumbled over Teagj's fallen form, sparing a moment to reach down and heal away the bolts in his belly.
He took my offered hand, rising to his feet and taking up his spear. He nodded once, "Thanks. Help the others!"
Then, he was gone, running to rejoin the battle.
I found Dagmoor nearby, torso studded with bolts. It seemed the one in his right shoulder was the oldest wound by the blood clotting there, though I wasted little time in wondering at it. He gasped back to awareness as my nanites gave him a little jolt to the brain stem, staring up at me with wide eyes.
A flash of copper at the edge of my vision stole my attention.
Ygdis had been separated from the others, the slavers carrying her away from the fighting. They had Sigrid, too, and kindly Frerthe.
Focus narrowing, I rushed towards them, screaming a wild, wordless battle cry. It felt savage, drawn up from deep within me. My heart pounded wildly and blood thundered through my ears as my feet splashed through crimson mud. The air was heavy with the thick scents of offal and feces and blood.
I slashed at the slavers, downing one of them and taking the arm of another with a scarlet-black arc of flame. The wounded man, his face scarred across a damaged nose, stumbled out of the way of a follow-up, backing away out of reach and fleeing. His blood fell to the snow and steamed in the frigid air.
My vision blinked as a cudgel came down on the back of my skull, my nanites healing the concussion nigh-instantly. I whirled and the red-black blade carved through the skull of a clean-shaven man who stared at me with stunned brown eyes for a second before his face split in two and he fell.
Rope fell across my shoulders and tightened, pulling me hard to the side. I thrashed against it, falling as the sword cut through the wooden pole. A moment later, five pairs of boiled leather boots pounded past me. One paused for a moment, and I looked up to see Misa offering me a hand. Taking it, she pulled me up to my feet, pointing at the slavers and shouting.
"Come on!"
Then she was gone, spear in hand to join Wyck and the others I'd helped as they savaged the slavers holding Sigrid and Frerthe with spears and knives.
I ran after those trying to carry Ygdis away. Some looked back at me with terror in their eyes. The numbness inside grew as I cut them apart, forcing them to drop Ygdis. In a moment, the group was in pieces on the ground around her, and she panted wildly, staring at me with wide, maddened eyes. She shouted at me, pointing back up the street.
"Help Gren!"
Turning, I saw the battle was all but over, the remaining slavers being butchered by the villagers.
I sought for the auburn hair I needed to find and the numbness shattered like glass when I saw Grenwin slumped against the earthen slope of a cabin, staring up at the heart tree's canopy above and hand grasping at a bolt over her heart. Her spear, the one I'd made for her, lay in the snow next to her and her shield was nowhere to be seen.
The broken shards carved deep through my mind as I sprinted over, stark horror filling me and hot rage twisting in my chest as I slid to a stop next to her. I slapped my palm down over her hand, flooding her body with the nanites.
She was dying, a hair's breadth from total brain death. My nanites worked as fast as I could make them, but it wasn't fast enough to fix the cascading failures. Oxygen deprivation had already set in. There was too much damage already, too much blood lost, her shredded heart trying in vain to beat.
"No!" The cry spilled from my lips, words coming before thoughts formed. "No, no! You can't go! I need you!"
The cold voice spoke in my thoughts once more.
"Your blood, girl. Give her your blood."
Desperate, I latched onto her command, taking up my belt knife and slashing Grenwin's wrist, then my own, pressing the wounds together. The nanites chained together into tubes that linked my veins and arteries to hers, transfusing my blood to make up for what she'd lost. I ordered the nanites to remove the bolt and set her heart pumping again in time with my own. I could only watch as the strange compounds in my blood provoked stranger reactions in her tissues as they passed, easing the nanites' struggles to repair the damage. It flooded into her brain, stabilizing the death cascade.
"Please, Grenwin," I murmured to her, "Please don't go. I want you to live!"
Grenwin began to recover in fits and starts. I felt my own strength draining out of me, jellying my muscles. I couldn't keep myself upright, slumping over to lay across her legs. My head was facing out towards the battleground, my black hair a veil that obscured the details of the bloodied snow and mud. The rest of First Fork was up now, I saw.
Herrick slashed the throat of a kneeling slaver and kicked him over. Sigrid knelt over another, driving her knife into their torso with mechanical motions. Wyck and Inella hugged Misa between them, and I thought I saw him looking my way. Ygdis was limping over to Grenwin and me, face drawn in muted horror. More began to congregate around us, seemingly unwilling to approach, staring with wide eyes and fearful expressions as they murmured to each other. Symon pushed his way to the front of the crowd, using his crutch to clear the way, then stopped dead and stared slack-jawed.
The snow around us began to turn pink. It took me a moment to realize that there was a light shining around Grenwin and me. It took all of my effort to turn my head to look up to her face and I gasped. Her skin was glowing, a vibrant pink shade, and her face was fixed in a rictus smile of pain. Glimmers of the light sparkled in the air, small pink petals that formed from nothing and fell slowly before fading away. To my horror, the skin around her left eye turned gray and ashen, the color spreading up and back around her head. A strip of her auburn hair paled to a dull, listless silver.
"It appears she has decided to live. I am so sorry, girl."
Grenwin gasped, jerking upright as the last shreds of my strength were yanked out of me.
My vision dimmed, eyelids too leaden to keep open as they drooped shut. Vaguely, I felt strong arms lifting to carry me, the sword falling from my numb fingers. The murmurs of the villagers around us rose to victorious cheers, muted and distant in my ears. Grenwin spoke, her voice strong and clear, but the meaning of it passed me by. Relief filled my fading mind as I slipped away into comforting darkness.