The battle was over, and nearly all the Ragashars were dead. Esharah felt relief permeate the air at the end of the carnage. In formation, led by Ouron and Logash, the combination of Hravast, Kvormskaja, Frostwood resistents and Hellfrost rescuers had weathered the raging canin, stopping their blood-crazed rampage.

  Gannuk had died laughing, howling to his blood god. Even after his death, most of the Ragashars kept fighting. At the end of it all, perhaps only a dozen remained who’d surrendered instead of fighting to their bloody deaths.

  Some had fled, Esharah knew. Former prisoners of Hellfrost who hadn’t stayed for the “blood feast”. And Patz, somehow, still lived, groaning feebly despite the brutal wounds. Logash had smashed the warrior against a half-dozen other Vulgares. Still, he lived.

  The mad warrior’s broken body tried to stitch itself back together. Tried to crawl towards them.

  “Kill you,” he snarled, eyes staring towards Esharah as he crawled. “Kill you all-”

  Janaya’s blade pierced his neck, and hellfire at last burned away whatever force kept him alive.

  “Go to meet the gods,” Janaya hissed at the corpse. “Maybe you can kill each other.”

  Esharah turned away. No more fighting, no more bloodshed. The village square was in carnage, littered with the dead and dying, dirt soaked with blood. But at last it was over.

  Close to the longhouse, the few surviving Hravast warriors surrounded the fallen body of their shaman. Tulun sang still, despite taking Gannuk’s spear through his chest.

  “Mensikhana, Esharah,” the singer spoke. “Please...come.”

  The two Mindspeakers walked to Tulun’s side as the crowd parted. The shaman lay on the ground, hands clasped around the spear thrust through him. Blood stained the snow.

  “Farewell, singer of the Hravast,” Mensikhana’s voice echoed.

  “Sergrud...destroyed our people, led us to our deaths,” Tulun rasped. “I...I allowed him to destroy us. When Sergrud came and promised power, I did nothing. When Sergrud murdered my nephew and called himself jarl, I did nothing. As price for my weakness and cowardice, our people paid in blood.”

  “You are not to blame, Soulsinger,” a Hravast warrior with a thickly braided beard knelt at Tulun’s side and clasped his hand. “You were not the only one who followed Sergrud. We were all seduced. We were all cowards in the face of his strength.”

  “You must live,” Tulun said. “Live...to sing the song of our clan to the future. Esharah of Hellfrost, give me your word. Swear to me that my clan will not be punished for Sergrud’s sins. Swear to me they will live on.” His breathing grew ragged, but his eyes remained fixed, pleading.

  Esharah knelt, her hand resting on the shaman’s forehead. “I swear.” It wasn’t an empty promise. The empire rarely slaughtered its foes, not when assimilating them, punishing them, and binding them to its service was more profitable. Etrani...she wouldn’t take revenge, surely. Esharah could make her see reason. Especially if they could prove that the threat from the void was great enough that they’d need every able body. And it was.

  Tulun smiled, eyes closing, “Sing...for me. The death-song.”

  The rest of the Hravast warriors gathered around their leader. Their voices joined in a mourning chorus, soft and low.

  Esharah left the Hravast to their ritual. All around were similar scenes of mourning. The dead filled Frostwood’s cleared ground. Those who’d locked themselves away, hiding themselves in the houses and tents outside the village center began to trickle out, joining in the mourning or dragging bodies away.

  A woman darted out, hand grasping Esharah’s clothes, “Please! Please, we are no traitors! The Vulgares made us serve them-”

  Esharah felt the panic in the woman’s mind. And saw beyond it. Her brother had died fighting the Vulgares. Her husband had died fighting for them, marching against Hellfrost. She had lost family on both sides. And she had cooked meals for the Vulgares. Lain with their warriors. All to survive.

  “Executor Etrani will decide how to resolve this,” Esharah had no comfort left. She was too exhausted, too drained. The echoes of the fight still lingered in her mind, all the rage and fear and desperation a cacophony nearly smothering to her Empathy. “You’ll have opportunity to plead your case.”

  More babbling, desperate pleading before others from Frostwood pried the woman’s hands away, muttering apologies while they dragged her along with the others. Fear radiated out from them like a cloud. They assumed that death awaited them. The fate of traitors. If it were Yvris and Erdrak in charge of their fates, they’d be right. Etrani was not Yvris. But the laws of the empire...were not kind to traitors. Enemies could be turned to productive citizens and shone the light of the Empire’s civilization, but a traitor? A traitor could never be trusted. Esharah had to hope Etrani would squeeze what mercy she could out of the law.

  For now, Esharah couldn’t concern herself with that. The violence, the bloodlust, the rage, the grief...it all felt so overwhelming. She needed space. Needed to catch her breath.

  The longhouse was packed with the wounded. The hut where Esharah had been prisoner was empty. Or almost empty. The others from Hellfrost were there. Logash, Ouron, Janaya, Katrin.

  “Are you well, Esharah?” Logash’s giant hand found her shoulder. A comforting weight.

  “I will be,” Esharah forced a smile. “It’s...it’s done now. Or nearly.”

  “Nearly,” Logash agreed. “We are readying ourselves. Aven and Shevi tracked Sergrud north, yes? We need to catch up with them now that Frostwood is secured.”

  Right. Sergrud. He was still out there. Until he was dead, they’d only delayed things.

  Someone else was missing, though.

  “Where’s...Wally?” Esharah asked.

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  Ouron looked to Katrin. Esharah couldn’t feel anything in the maledictus’ mind. Every time she’d tried, the shadow spirit’s presence interfered, an alien mind that Esharah found utterly incomprehensible.

  “Wally is dead,” Katrin said flatly. Dispassionately. Esharah felt a rush of shock. But...Katrin wasn’t mourning. That was shockingly callous for reporting a comrade’s death.

  “He died,” Katrin repeated. “Alongside Gretchen and Iskir. All three of them died together.”

  All at once, even without access to the inside of her mind, Esharah understood the meaning behind the lie.

  “Yet their bodies are not among the dead,” Logash rumbled.

  “They fled,” Ouron said, anger setting into his stony face. “They’re traitors. And you let them run.”

  Katrin said nothing. Only shared an exasperated glance that Esharah returned. The men, apparently, wouldn’t take the hint.

  “They are dead,” Katrin repeated. “I will say it as much as I must. I will say the same to the executor, when I am asked. Wally, Iskir, and Gretchen are dead.”

  “Then dead they are,” Esharah said.

  Ouron whirled upon Esharah, looking incredulous. Katrin nodded her thanks and closed her eyes. Esharah felt a sudden, shared connection, Vili’s alien presence and Katrin’s human mind opening just for a single, quick moment of profound gratitude.

  “I am sure Wally died bravely.” Logash nodded slowly. “Fighting the traitors.”

  At least he was getting it.

  Only Janaya remained silent, eyes focused on...well, nothing in particular, it looked like. Apparently not paying any attention to this conversation whatsoever.

  Ouron looked around at all of them. His face hardened further when no one spoke up in support. “You’re all conspiring to cover up the escape of three traitors. I can’t-”

  “We are not soldiers of the empire,” Katrin interrupted. “We are prisoners. All of us have fought the empire for our freedom. They do not fight any longer. Let them have their peace, Ouron.”

  “The empire conquered and killed their families,” Esharah reminded him. “Put them in chains. If the empire had done that to your wife and child, what would you do?”

  Ouron fell silent, face troubled.

  “You don’t need to lie in your report,” Katrin said. “Only report what I have told you: I saw them die.”

  Ouron slowly nodded, “Then I will say exactly that.”

  Sudden alarm bubbled from outside, joined by excitement and shouts. Then a hammering on the door. When Logash pulled it open, the canin runner Shevi practically fell in, one hand clutching her shoulder while Logash steadied her.

  “Aven...Aven is fighting Sergrud,” Shevi babbled. “Told Sunshine. He’s reinforcing...”

  “Easy,” Esharah touched her arm, sending a soothing pulse through the scout’s emotions, calming the alarm. No, not alarm, she was well past that, into shock. “We understand. We’ll go right away. You need a healer.”

  “N-no!” Shevi shook her head. “Not...not until the mission is done.”

  “But your wound-”

  Before Esharah could finish, Janaya stepped, grabbing Shevi’s shoulder. Hellfire touched flesh, and Shevi screamed.

  “Hells, Janaya!” Ouron started forward.

  “She won’t bleed out now,” Janaya withdrew.

  Esharah rushed to support the canin scout, wincing at the wave of pain flowing through her mind. It was a cure...after a fashion. Possibly one worse than the disease.

  “I...It’s fine,” Shevi gasped out, staring at the cauterized wound. “Come...come on, I can show you the way.”

  Esharah couldn’t heal the wound further, but she could at least support Shevi’s mind against the pain. Esharah offered the runner her arm, and the canin leaned on her, nodding in appreciation.

  “Show the way, then,” Esharah said.

  ***

  Esharah kept the mental support as Shevi led them through the forest. Really, they should have kept the scout back in Frostwood. The trail was clear, both sets of Shevi’s footprints along with Sergrud and Aven’s marked the trail clear as day. Shevi still refused all offers.

  “We have to get there in time,” Esharah heard the thoughts swirling in Shevi’s head. “The captain sent me to bring aid. We have to be in time.”

  They heard the laughter long before they reached the clearing. Mad, cackling laughter carrying over the wind.

  “Sunshine?” Ouron asked, the first among them to manage any words that weren’t shocked curses at the devilish laughter.

  No one had answer. Not until they burst through the treeline and saw what awaited.

  Esharah gasped, and even Shevi’s mind pulsed disbelief, scarcely able to believe this could be the same clearing. This wasn’t the scene of a battle between two warriors. More than a battlefield, this looked like the site of a meteorite crash, hurled to the earth by an angry god.

  Chunks were ripped out of the trees. Gouges marked the ground in furrows. Snow was gone from the center of the clearing. In its place, puddles of black blood. Enough to have come from a whole voidpit, it looked like. On one side, Sergrud’s body was in three pieces. Head, torso, and legs all separate.

  Aven’s body was in the center of the clearing, in the largest pool of black blood. Gouges radiated out from his still form. His clothes were torn to shreds, shirt almost completely gone while trousers hung on only by threads. The veins on his voidtouched body stood out starker. Angrier. Bulging out from the skin. Some even writhing and pulsing as if struggling to burst out.

  Right by Aven’s body, Sunshine sat, howling with laughter. Covered in black blood, violent tears along his clothing, though he still seemed unharmed. In the planning, Esharah had only glimpsed Sunshine through Aven’s memories. Now that she saw the boy herself, she...had no idea what she was looking at.

  “He did it!” Sunshine held up an empty vial in one hand while the other clutched half of his staff, the other half only splinters. “He was only supposed to drink a sip! But he drank it all!” A fresh wave of laughter buckled the boy over. “All of it!”

  Tentatively, Esharah reached out her Empathy towards the boy. He wasn’t shrouded. None of his emotions were hidden. They were...blinding. A burst of laughter, of fascination, of joy so powerful it repelled any attempts to look closer. A mind unlike anything she’d ever felt.

  “What...is all this?” Logash murmured, the only one of them able to voice their shock.

  “He’s alive,” Sunshine gasped out, pointing a thumb at Aven. “Killed Sergrud dead. As you can see.” He gestured grandiosely to the three pieces of Sergrud’s body, all flung far away from Aven’s body. “Friends, behold!” He flipped Aven’s body over.

  There on Aven’s back was the brand that marked him as a vis. A brand now surrounded by three concentric circles, the third still appearing freshly cut into his skin. A vis of the third circle, newly risen.

  Aven’s body groaned. A haggard, desperate, sobbing gasp. Then the breathing changed. Deeper, stronger. As if in sleep. Aven rolled onto his side, curling up like a slumbering child.

  “I have witnessed ascensions of third circles,” Logash said. “My own. And others. None...were like this.”

  “I’ve...heard some are violent,” Ouron said carefully.

  “Mine was violent,” Logash replied. “Not this violent.”

  The feelings of pure joy radiating from Sunshine forced Esharah to withdraw further in fear.

  “Of course not,” Sunshine’s smile beamed out. “This path...is all Aven’s own.”

  “And when he wakes?” Janaya asked, hellfire standing out like raised hackles as she stared at Aven. “What will he be?”

  “Well, that’s up to him, isn’t it?” Sunshine beamed, pushing himself up with half of his broken staff. “I’m only the bringer of gifts. What one does with those gifts, why, that’s where things get interesting. We should probably get him back, though. Would be a poor end if he froze to death just after ascending, now wouldn’t it?”

  Logash stepped forward while the rest of them remained frozen, picking up Aven’s body like a child, cradling it gently.

  “Whatever Aven becomes,” Logash said softly, “whatever path he seeks, he remains our captain, and it is our lot to make sure that path is clear.”

  No one objected.

  As they made their way back to Frostwood, Sunshine hummed cheerfully, swinging the broken end of his staff like a toy sword to swat at the low-hanging branches. All the others gave the boy a wide berth. Janaya’s eyes never left him, hand on her sword. Katrin’s shadow spirit remained between Sunshine and her mistress, body sharpening into spikes. Sunshine paid them no heed, lost in whatever mad joy had consumed him.

  In Aven’s mind, Esharah only felt dreamless sleep. No sign of a monster. They’d have to see if that remained when Aven awoke.

  Though, Esharah thought as she watched Sunshine, even if Aven awakened a monster, he’d not be the only one in Hellfrost.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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