80. [INTERLUDE] The Nameless

  Renate Sandvik had no name. And Renate Sandvik had many names, all given to her long after the Realm had forgotten who she really was. She was reminded of one such name now, as she approached a stranger who lay rotting on the side of a dried-up stream.

  “You’re her, aren’t you?” The man used his fading strength to turn his bloodshot eyes up at her. “The Reaper. I suppose I knew this day would come.”

  She was on her way ‘home’ from her failed run in Stamgard. He was on his way to die alone, knowing full well it wasn’t death that awaited him. Their paths now converged on the side of a dried-up stream, one of many that carved up the Realmtree’s Roots, down where the resident souls had been abandoned by gods, man, and nature alike.

  The starving man was younger than Renate, though it was hard to tell from his crumpled posture and withered scales. And whether out of youthful naivety, cowardice, or perhaps even hope, he’d driven himself away from his peers as his sanity waned, thus turning his back on the age-old Rotter tradition of looking after their own—before it was too late.

  Renate stared at the Starveling with her wide-set amphibian eyes. She gave no acknowledgment of the man’s ‘greeting’—if it could even be called such—instead focusing on his features for the tell-tale signs of imminent Frenzy. For her wares were valuable, and she couldn’t just hand them out to every starving Rotter she crossed Paths with.

  Much to her chagrin, the signs were there. The man’s irises had taken on a sinister red tinge, distinct still from the engorged capillaries that marked the whites of his eyes. His scales had shriveled and flaked en masse, taking on a sorry, sun-dried appearance. The man could barely see, let alone read the ripples around him.

  And that still left perhaps the most convincing sign of them all: an earnest plea from the Starveling himself.

  “Please…” The man’s eyes squeezed out the last drops of liquid left in his body. “Please, Reaper. I thought I could do it, but I can’t. I’m just… I’m just so scared.”

  The irony wasn’t lost on Renate. The Stammers—with their creature comforts—were easily frightened by an invisible shadow that occasionally passed through their midst, wreaking no greater havoc than to nick a few knacks the townspeople could live without. Yet here was a destitute Rotter who welcomed the same shadow with open arms, knowing full well it wasn’t death that awaited him.

  But when it really comes down to it, Renate thought, they’re all frightened of the same thing. The new, the unknown, the undefined.

  Without a word, Renate reached into her hooded diving suit and pulled out OYSTER.

  The Yaksha wore her Zealous Instrument over her right shoulder and across her chest, with each of its components fastened onto a homemade bandolier. In truth, it was nine ‘instruments’ in one, each of them a waterproof container that opened on a hinge to reveal its contents—like an ‘oyster’, as it were.

  A cumbersome mechanism, perhaps—one not particularly suited to the frenetic pace of battle. Renate, however, liked her Instrument’s cumbersome, multi-layered access, for it bolstered the knowledge that she alone of all souls in the afterlife was privy to OYSTER’s secrets.

  On this occasion, her use of OYSTER was an especially secret one, indeed. [Pearl of SERENITY]. A complicated formula that had taken years of her life to perfect, one that not even Pathsight could reconstitute, meaning she had to brew it anew after each use.

  Yes. The Reaper’s wares were valuable, resource-intensive, and time-consuming to produce. She couldn’t just hand them out to every starving Rotter she crossed Paths with. She chose this stranger, however, for her latest act of mercy—to grant him a moment of [Serenity] while something of the man’s self still remained.

  By then, the Starveling had lost his faculty of speech. He barely had the strength to open his mouth, so Renate knelt down, held his chin, and force-fed him the contents of the Pearl—a dull, milky-white substance. Some of it washed back and dribbled over her hand, but she held it in place, gently but firmly tilting the man’s head until the Pearl had emptied.

  Then she sat with him a while and waited. She waited until the red faded from his eyes, only for the lids to fold over them for the last time. Until the flaky hand with which he squeezed hers went limp, before it dissolved into Souldust along with the rest of his emaciated body.

  [-100 ? (deduction)]

  A measly 100 ?. As far as Pathsight was concerned, that was all this destitute Rotter’s life was worth. If Renate had waited even a few minutes longer, the man would’ve Frenzied, which would’ve allowed her to smite him for a reward rather than a penalty. And yet… they didn’t call her ‘the Reaper’ for nothing.

  Renate rose to her webbed feet and resumed her trudging march back home, with an even heavier heart than when she’d begun the trip.

  This far down in the Roots, what little vegetation hadn’t dried and withered was scarce and far between. As for water, most Rotters would be lucky to find even a puddle that might’ve seeped through to the surface from the Realmtree’s internal reservoir. For at least several years now, not one drop of the Sanzu River and its thousand branches flowed through Rotgard’s rugged terrain. King Tyr’s Waterways Redistribution Act had made sure of that.

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  It all meant there was very little cover with which a career thief could hide her tracks. But she also didn’t much need to. For this far down in the Roots, everyone was a shadow that floated unseeing and unfeeling—unfeeling, save for the [Hunger] that still drove their every impulse.

  Case in point, Renate trudged past several more Yakshas in varying states of starvation, not one of whom looked up nor fluttered their scales as she passed. Even if they were scared of her, they wouldn’t have the strength to act on that fear.

  Today, home was buried within a niche next to the taproot, camouflaged beneath a mound of dirt and dead leaves Renate herself had painstakingly built. But as she approached, the home moved on its own accord, undoing her work before staring at her with a pair of opaque, morose eyes.

  Renate sighed, then patted the giant tortoise on the dirt-covered bump above its nostrils. She then unstrapped a bundle of fresh turtlegrass (the irony wasn’t lost on her) she’d managed to collect on the downstream leg of her journey.

  “Here,” she said (a little more gruffly than she’d intended) as she shoved the whole bundle into Munkfred’s gaping mouth. The tortoise waited for her to pull her hand out before going to town on its long-awaited lunch, then blinked several times in satisfaction.

  Renate’s irritation softened as she watched her house/tortoise eat. You’re almost certainly the happiest creature in all of Rotgard. Not being a turtle, you’re not as dependent on water. And even if I sometimes come home empty-handed from my smuggling runs, at least there’s always plenty of turtlegrass to go around.

  She gave Munkfred one more pat on the nose, then clambered onto its shell. Careful not to disturb the camouflage more than it already had been, she tiptoed her way to the shell’s apex, where she pulled on a handle that had been disguised as a tree branch. The hatch opened—another example of a hinged lid in Renate’s life—revealing a hollow chamber that was just large enough for one frog-typed Yaksha to live inside.

  Large enough for one Yaksha, perhaps, but rather cramped for one plus her bedridden housemate.

  Inge Bjornsdatter was sleeping, as was how she spent most of her days. She’d been a sound and tidy sleeper for as long as Renate had known her. Presently, most of her wizened, koi-typed body was tightly wrapped in the layers of Nether-kelp Renate had left her in.

  Renate reached over and touched the kelp, and found to her dismay that it’d dried much quicker than she’d anticipated. It meant Inge’s illness was getting worse, and also that Renate herself would have to go on a water run soon—on top of another attempt at the Realmtree Dew.

  She withdrew her hand, but her eyes lingered upon her friend’s face.

  Inge was the second most beautiful Yaksha Renate had ever met (second only to her own mother), so much so that it was a wonder the woman had managed to evade King Tyr’s amorous attention throughout the decades she’d spent in Krongard. Even in her advanced age, her beauty remained evident, most prominently in the red-and-gold ribbons that accented her eyes upon a field of lotus-white.

  But even those beautiful ribbons were starting to show the ravages of the Siphoning Disease. Cracks, flakes, and that dreaded sun-dried appearance. Inge was in no danger of Frenzying (and would never be, for as long as Renate drew breath), but the ‘end’ was coming for her all the same.

  Perhaps Renate had spent too much time staring. Or perhaps something about her brooding energy had stirred the ripples upon Inge’s scales. At any rate, the ribbons of red-and-gold unfurled to reveal a pair of hazy, sleep-addled eyes.

  “Renna,” the old woman whispered, her words like the flaking bits of a yellowed ginkgo leaf, “how long have you been home? I’m sorry, child, I haven’t fixed you breakfast yet.”

  Renate swallowed a lump in her throat and forced a smile.

  “Go back to sleep, nana. And you don’t have to worry about breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. You’re not working in the palace anymore, remember?”

  “Oh.” Inge closed her eyes again, even as her dainty koi mouth formed a little ‘o’. “How silly of me. My memory isn’t what it used to be. But… but, um”—the ‘o’ flattened and bounced several times as Inge smacked her lips—“I’m sorry, but I’m just so thirsty. You wouldn’t happen to have a pitcher of lemon water nearby, would you, doll?”

  It’s been an age and a half since we’ve had a pitcher of anything, nana.

  “Of course,” Renate said aloud, “just one Ksana.”

  Stifling a heavy sigh, Renate reached for OYSTER again, this time pulling out [Pearl of WISDOM]. It was a swirling blue liquid, one she’d use to recover MP in the heat of battle, but for an Anchored, diseased soul like Inge, it’d do little more than slake her thirst.

  She could’ve used any of her remaining Pearls, but she chose [Wisdom]—mainly because she knew Inge like the taste. Renate herself had never given any thought to the gustatory merits of her various potions, but she supposed [Wisdom] did have something of a lemony aftertaste.

  On this occasion, Inge could take in no more than three sips before she coughed and wheezed with fatigue. Renate then downed the rest of the Pearl herself, not because she needed the MP, but simply because a Pearl couldn’t be resealed once used—just another cumbersome wrinkle to her brand of magic. Besides, unlike in the case of [Serenity], there were plenty of Waystations around (all hidden, of course) where she could reconstitute a new batch.

  Inge smacked her lips a few more times, this time in something that resembled satisfaction. Then her breathing settled, looking as though she’d gone right back to sleep.

  Renate leaned down and brushed her own lips against Inge’s forehead, just above her red-and-gold ribbons. She then stood—or half-stood, anyway, with her finless back arched to fit the contours of Munkfred’s tortoise shell.

  Up the hatch and out she went—back to work.

  Her run this morning might have ended in disaster, but that didn’t mean she could afford to wallow in self-pity. Because she needed the Realmtree Dew to brew a [Pearl of REBALANCING]—just another complicated formula Pathsight couldn’t replicate. Because [Rebalancing] was the only way to slow the progress of the Siphoning Disease—the only way to keep the ‘end’ at bay.

  Because Inge Bjornsdatter was the last living soul in all of Pretjord who would still call Renna Sandvik by her name.

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