Mia gasped, jolting awake. Her hands lashed out, trying to keep her head above water. She gulped, kicking her feet out.
Dust filled her mouth.
She spluttered, scrambling back.
Her feet caught, tipping her back.
She lay flat on the ground, sun burning her skin.
It took a moment, chest heaving, for her thoughts to clear, for the fear in her to recede.
The ground was hard, painfully hard against her sore back, but it wasn’t water.
She was alive.
Her ears strained, but she couldn’t hear anything other than her own rasping, strained breaths.
She forced her eyes open, finding herself in a desert.
Wide-eyed, she scanned her surroundings, her heart pounding. She wasn’t dead, but wherever ‘here’ was, it might be worse.
Her hands frantically patted her body, finding everything still in place.
She sighed in relief.
Mia pushed up, sitting.
She clasped a hand over her mouth, swallowing a scream.
The thing she’d tripped over was a body.
It was dry. The skin stuck to the bones like wet silk over wood.
Mia crawled closer.
She was grateful she hadn’t eaten, turning to the side, retching.
It was Beatrice.
Or what was left of her.
They’d entered the water minutes apart, but she didn’t know how long it took them to reach here.
She turned to move away, then saw something wiggling.
With careful movements, she circled the body, looking at where Beatrice’s leg had been cut off.
A shiver travelled through her body.
There, inside the wound, black strings writhed, tangling and fighting to crawl out of her body and into the earth beneath, where there was a wet patch of blood.
It looks like hair.
Not strings.
Worms.
Her hand flew to her head, ruffling, tugging, and pulling at the strands. She felt the pain, but couldn’t shake the sensation of them crawling over her, burrowing into her skin.
Mia, frantic, brushed at her body.
“Get off. Get off.”
A drop of sweat landed on the sand.
She froze.
Horror clutched her throat, making it hard to breathe.
The sand shifted.
A thin, hair-like strand poked up before disappearing.
Sir Benson healed her. There were no wounds on her body, and her mouth was dry when she woke up.
There was nothing wet.
No water for them to find.
Panicking wouldn’t keep her alive.
She closed her eyes, trying not to think about lying there, soaked in seawater.
Mia couldn’t stay here.
With slow breaths, she pushed away the rising panic.
Look around.
Start there.
That was easy enough.
Doable.
Mia stood, her limbs shaky, but holding.
The ‘desert’ wasn’t small or large. A dry patch the size of a polo field. A familiar blue barrier separated it from eight different terrains: two forests, grassland, water, desert, snow, a rocky mountain, and a place with little mounds that spat steam.
Mia stepped forward, terrified and fascinated, but a sound cut through the silence.
A thud.
A whimper.
She turned.
There was someone there.
A man. Thick arms tied in front of his body, a leg missing.
She watched, horrified, as thin, black worms launched out of the ground. They filled the torn flesh of the wound until a wriggling weave of black connected the man to the ground.
He didn’t scream.
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Didn’t appear to feel it.
But she watched as he mummified.
His skin shrank to hug his bones.
She blinked.
It was over.
The hair-worms detached, vanishing into the sand as if they’d been a nightmare.
But the wound still moved.
The space dyed black.
Clustered. Balls left there.
She retched, swallowing bile.
Eggs.
It left eggs.
Mia turned to Beatrice, but stopped herself. She didn’t need to see that.
Looking wouldn’t help.
Hands clenched tight, she prayed to Marri for strength.
She didn’t believe in the gods, never had. No one she knew had benefited from their grace. No help or benevolence, but she prayed now, wishing for any help she could get.
The dust coating her…she didn’t think it was sand.
Mia needed to leave.
Now.
She turned to the two forested paths.
One looked wet, with towering trees she didn’t recognise. There was little light, and leaves covered the earth. The giant tree roots twisted across the ground like traps.
The other had guam trees. They were familiar. She’d seen one in the duchess's garden, transplanted from a forest in the west.
She bit her nail before realising what she was doing, then spat.
Worms launched themselves from the ground.
She jerked back
There was a crack under her foot.
She glanced down, not that surprised to see bone.
The urge to spit crawled up her throat, but she forced herself to swallow the ‘sand’.
Guam trees grew in forests inhabited by monsters.
The other option was the grassland.
Grass taller than her swayed in the wind.
Just looking at it made her feel hunted.
The Drunn Empire didn’t have grassland like that. You had to travel to the south to find anything similar, and the duke and his friends used to go hunting there. Mia remembered stories of large beasts with claws and teeth that hunted the grasslands. Things that ran faster than horses.
A prize catch for mages to show their prowess.
The duke had returned with a trophy, a giant cat-like beast with horns, but she hadn’t gone to see it.
Thud.
Mia spun.
Another man.
His colouring was strange. His skin was like red clay, with intricate black marks etched in his skin. He didn’t wear linen pants or even leather. Instead, he wore layers of silk. He must be rich.
There was a deep slash across his chest, but he, unlike the others, was awake.
His eyes burned with fury.
He shouted words Mia couldn’t understand.
She shook her head.
He shouted louder, his face flushing red.
She stepped back, ignoring the crunching under her feet.
They were coming.
His thrashing caused blood to touch the sand. They came, but he was awake. He tore at them as they crawled into him.
A bitter smell filled the air, making her eyes water.
He ripped them apart, but more came.
They didn’t cause pain.
He didn’t scream, but she saw his anger bleeding away and turning to panic.
In his last moments, he reached towards her, eyes pleading.
Mia stepped back.
Her hands clutched to her chest.
She shook her head.
Mia knew Guam trees. They were familiar, if not safe. She turned to walk through that barrier, but stopped.
You’ve looted corpses before.
You’re not a decent person.
Not a maid-in-waiting.
Not anymore.
Mia gritted her teeth.
Survival came first. Shame could come later, when her belly was full.
She approached the odd foreigner first. He wore gold bracelets on his arm and an intricate headpiece, but the prize was the chain on his neck. It hadn’t been there when he appeared, and she knew what it was on sight.
Her hands reached out before her mind realised what she was doing.
She pulled back, falling on her arse.
I shouldn’t.
It’s not right.
Mia knew that nasty, hungry feeling inside her.
Greed.
The same greed she felt looking out from dark alleys as people with clean clothes and full bellies walked by.
A storage space.
She ripped it off his neck.
He didn’t need it. It would give me a better chance at surviving.
It’s not stealing, not really.
It was heavy in her hand, but nothing else happened. It took her a moment, but she remembered what the young lady said about blood bonds.
It needed blood.
It was of high quality. Magic hid it until he died. She glanced at the forest, the unknown.
Mia took out the knife, pricked her finger, wiped it on the necklace, then shoved her finger in her mouth.
The necklace vibrated before settling.
One second, there was nothing, but the next, there was the knowledge that she could access a space the size of a large trunk.
That was good, but there was nothing inside.
Mia’s mouth gaped. She looked at his gold-laden arms, then checked the space. Her mind refused to accept that it was empty.
She looked at him again before noticing the scratches on his arm.
Kneeling, she lifted his hand. Someone had tried to yank the bracelets off. She looked at his face, his expression angry even in death. They’d probably forced him to empty everything he had. Mia hesitated for a second. Hands shaking, she still pulled the bracelets off, putting them away. Next, she took off his pants and stored them.
The next corpse was easier. He only had a sword and a few gold coins from a currency she didn’t recognise. His clothes weren’t worth anything, so she left him dressed.
By the time she reached Beatrice, she was numb and tired.
Every breath laboured, and her mind screamed for water.
The search was quick.
Beatrice had a platinum coin sewn into the lining of her dress, and nothing else.
Mia took off and stored everything on her body except for the dagger and a few coins in her pocket.
Mia looked at the dagger. It was high quality. The blade gleamed, and the hilt was iron wrapped in silver. She took out the sword she’d stored. It was heavy and functional, steel with a wooden handle. Mia put away the dagger, went to the second corpse and took his belt, attaching the sword to her hip.
“I don’t know what religion any of you were, and I’m not sure any god would hear my prayer, but I hope that you all find rest in death that you didn’t have in life.” It felt hypocritical and hollow. Still, Mia meant every word.
She turned to the terrain, uneasy that the picture hadn’t changed. No leaves had fallen, the time hadn’t changed.
It stayed frozen like a painting.
A loop, like the music box the young lady treasured.
She couldn’t stay, but she didn’t want to go.
Like with every other distasteful job or task, Mia forced herself to move forward.
