3 ​Vasara

WHEN RED CLOAKS marched into Vasara’s village square, Tezcat Licolo knew she was in trouble. She set the cleaver down on the bloodied workbench. Slow and deliberate in that way she did everything.

In the lead was a tall man wearing iron scale mounted on a barded sydarag. His cloak bore golden wings at the shoulders denoting him a high-ranker. He also wore a helm with one of those tall crests. It marked him as their commander though it was as much as she knew about imperial soldiers. Her breather friend had told her things about the imperial continent, but she’d never known anything beyond the islands where she’d been born.

Following the officer were four dozen pox-faced, but well-armed, soldiers. They stomped through puddled earth in the rain, all in those stupid cloaks. Did they think red was scary or something? The colour of blood, but blood was life and something beautiful to look at as it spilled out. Rubbin’ our faces in it, she thought, reminding us they is livin’, and we isn’t and nevers will be.

Anyhow, Tezcat weren’t scared although these soldiers were different to the Necros Guardians, who were a sour lot, but generally safe to be around. No, these newcomers were something worse.

It had begun to rain, lazy drops plopping onto the dirt street. It rained a lot on the islands. Wiping hands on her leather apron, she stepped around the bench and the animal carcass she’d been gutting. The rain became a downpour, drops falling from the eaves of the butcher’s shop. From between hocks of dripping meat on hooks, she watched, and saw what no one else did in that way she saw everything.

‘Who are these arse-faced pucks?’ demanded the butcher. He stomped up behind her with another cleaver in his hand. A bald, fat breather, but he was muscled in the shoulders and broad too. He also had a nasty purple rash covering him head to toe. It followed that Tezcat liked him lots.

Most breathers didn’t mind her working there, so long as she didn’t get too close to them. As if being undead were catching. Living folks were stupid sometimes. The butcher - Bors Limber was his name, and an ex-legionary with a belly laugh and a deep throaty growl – well, he didn’t pay much heed to what folk thought neither. Good thing too since she liked butchering. There was something about the touch of the recent dead, animal, or human, though Bors only had animal in his shop.

Fresh blood on her fingers, the iron tang on her tongue. Wonderful. Of course, there was nothing more beautiful than living blood. Even her friend had learned to hide fresh cuts from her. She wondered if there was something of the vampire in her. Taver didn’t agree since she didn’t need blood to survive and she’d never bitten anyone. They’d asked Beezer and he’d said there’d been none for centuries, and some virals were just drawn to blood because they had a desire to be alive. She didn’t understand the problem seeing how breathers were filled with the stuff. Plenty to go around.

‘What is you seeing, Bors, I mean when you looks right at ‘em?’

‘Imperial soldiers, although those cloaks ... wait, why do you ask?’ The butcher squinted down at her. He knew she had gifts he didn’t understand. Bors accepted such things for the most part. He was good like that, and not like other breathers, excepting Taver of course.

‘Well,’ he said, when she didn’t elaborate, ‘end of an era, I guess. I’m thinking they’re after you, little Cat, and your undead friends.’ He nodded in the direction of the Necropolis. ‘No other reason I can think why their sort would’ve come all the way out here, especially armed and armoured.’

Bors was right about one thing; it was an end. She’d known it was coming. Beezer had hinted at it, but she’d thought they’d strike at the school first. She’d also thought it years away. Adalalcas wasn’t close, after all. She’d heard it was five-thousand miles across the ocean. A big number making her head ache if she thought about it much. Tezcat didn’t like numbers.

‘Well, had to happen,’ Bors continued. ‘What with all the grumblin’ about the undead some folk been at the past few years. I reckon those imperial higher-ups have gone and decided to get rid. Can’t say we didn’t see it coming, eh? Now you stay by me, little Cat. I won’t let these mongrels near you.’

He doesn’t see what I do, she thought. She often saw what breathers didn’t, but this was different. Where Bors saw soldiers, she saw something else. She had to squint hard and call up her magic, o’ course, but she saw them for what they were.

The mercenary commander’s mount for one; boils and sores covered the thin creature’s long hind legs. Those boils oozed yellow pus, and beetles. Poor thing’s head hung low to the ground as it plodded onward. Perhaps it was dead, and didn’t know, but likely it was undead. She’d never heard of undead beasts afore, but then, why not? Plagues birthed virals and no one never said animals couldn’t get sick too.

Its rider was skeletal when she looked at him with her viralic sight. What there was of his body was naked. Blisters and purple-black nodules smothered his bony frame. They burst at intervals to produce more beetles. The insects grew in number until they smothered him head to toe. Tezcat took a step back from the sight, and bumped into Bors. Flies buzzed about horse and rider. The others, those on foot, were similar. A ghostly mist swirled around them like oily smoke, as they each turned into beetle swarms with arms and legs.

No, not soldiers, not at all. These were Grim-blinded wights.

‘Alright, alright, none will take you,’ Bors said in a growl he probably meant to sound comforting. ‘Like I said, I won’t let it happen. Leastways, not without me killing a fair few first. And, I’d bet you’d be good for the rest, eh?’ He gave her a questioning look, and half-raised his cleaver. ‘Between the two of us, little Cat?’ Yes, an ex-legionary, who’d witnessed the power of undead mages. He knew what they could do. Problem was, she wasn’t a mage, not for many years yet. She was still in mage school at the Necropolis. Her viralic powers were pathetic compared to the likes of Beezer or Lyrin.

Besides, Bors couldn’t see them beetles. None of them could, breathing or otherwise. Even among virals her sight was unique, according to Lyrin. She’d figured it out long ago after it had gotten her in trouble. She now squeezed her eyes shut, willing the sight to vanish.

The heavy shower petered out and stopped. She dared to look as the commander’s mount moved closer. The soldiers dragged breathers from their homes into the square herding them together.

As her magic quietened, the nightmarish images disappeared, and there was nothing but an ordinary hook-nosed commander in a red cloak, seated on a well-fed sydarag.

While she always attended the school, she sometimes liked to mingle with locals, pretending to be a breather; not as if she fooled no one of course. Still, she liked to imagine she was alive, bright blood pumping through her veins. She would cut herself sometimes to watch it spill out, but of course, it never did, since she was a viral. Taver said she had issues, and should talk to someone, whatever that meant.

‘Grab a cleaver, girl,’ growled Bors, ‘no ... wait, grab two in case. Looks like we might need to get busy. Never thought I’d go back to that sort of butcherin’. Can’t say I’m happy about it, neither.’

Tezcat watched them beating the locals, one elderly breather gutted with a short sword. It made her angry to see that. Yes, she liked the sight and taste of blood, but she didn’t like murdering much. There was a difference.

‘Hey, you butt-face-scum-ugly-wight,’ she screeched at the red-cloak. ‘Tis me you is lookin’ for, right? Let ’em go!’

The viral girl stepped out into the open, Bors not far behind. Pulling off her spattered apron, she tossed it aside. It had resumed raining. Everything ended at one time or other. She would miss the shop. It was peaceful, cutting and chopping, thinking about nothing. She’d been practicing her powers, but watching them soldier-wights approaching her, she wasn’t sure it mattered.

***

THE PRISONERS, ALL breathers, knelt in the mud with cold rain hammering heads and shoulders. Corpses littered the street, walls and doors of houses smashed in. Tezcat’s head ached from the blow. She’d tried to work something nasty on the soldiers, but it had failed miserably.

A blade rested at her neck, cold and hard, solid. She liked its touch true enough. Like the flesh of something dead, it felt real. She heard the villagers’ screams, but couldn’t raise her head enough to see everything.

The commander stalked between kneeling rows of survivors. His hobnailed boots squelched in the mud. Never spoke a word, nor issued a command.

A man’s voice cried out, followed by the sounds of a scuffle. A thud, and wet mud spattered up into Tezcat’s face. She stared down at the corpse. Bors Limber’s face stared back at her, eyes wide and unblinking. He’d not understood what they was.

Poor Bors.

Boots halted beside the corpse, which bled into the muddied street. Swirling patterns of black mud and dark red spat at the rain. Her vision blurred as dizziness and nausea swept through her. She felt something change inside of her, as though she was leaving her body. The nausea worsened.

The boot stomped onto Bors’ face with a sickening crunch.

She felt those blows, and cried out in shock. She tried to flex her hand. It felt cold, odd, but the leathery skin and the calluses, those felt right. No, no, they were wrong, depending on how she thought about it. Her perspectives were all screwed up or something. What was happening to her?

The face staring down at her was red and blistered between those iron cheek guards. No sign of a wight, but it was there, hidden inside. This man’s soul was long gone. She reached up and touched her own face, a pulped distortion of bone and blood. One eye was crushed, the left side of her face shattered. She was lying on her back in the mud. Beside her, she saw a girl with grey-green skin kneeling with a sword to her neck. The girl was staring back at her, horrified. No, not just a girl—that’s me!

Tezcat looked down at the dead face staring up, while she looked up at herself staring down. No wonder she felt sick.

The world spun and she was herself again, the body of Bors in the street before her. She vomited into the mud, a thick black ichor, since virals didn’t vomit like breathers. The soldier’s sword cut her, before he grabbed hold of her by the hair and forced her upright. They hadn’t cut off her head yet. They were holding her, for something special she supposed. Maybe they wanted information on the Necropolis, or they wanted to make a big deal of it all first.

She’d never shown skill in nothing like what she’d just done. Making dead things move was her talent, but this was different. Her mind raced, examining its potential. She guessed the shock of seeing Bors dead had triggered it.

The red-cloaks appeared to notice nothing wrong. The executions continued. Yes, they were saving her for last. She couldn’t understand why they were killing the villagers though. There was a boy, bleeding as he knelt before a soldier. The lad’s head sagged, as he died.

Tezcat felt the queasy transference a second time. She glanced down at her hands, small and smooth, freshly dead, a boy’s hands. They felt nice.

A lurch and she was once again in her own body. Something inside of her was changing, within the middle part, a place she knew of but didn’t understand.

Tezcat smiled then. You’s should’ve cut off my head right aways, you idiots!

Gathering all her strength, she reached out and used her new skill to raise the dead. The boy, an old man and woman, everyone they’d executed, lurched to their feet, and attacked the soldiers.

Tezcat entered the dead brain of Bors. It was a weird feeling, manipulating such a big body, with big muscles beneath layers of fat. She used him to strangle the guard who’d held a sword to her neck. The commander was leaping about, screeching with an unearthly sound. Several of his troops had lost their heads, decapitated bodies collapsing as the wights gained freedom. Beetles were everywhere, crushed underfoot. Tezcat laughed, although the sound coming from Bors’ lungs was heavy and odd. She was creating mayhem, and why not? Her friend had always said she was good at mischief.

Her laughter soon ceased, however, and she felt terror for the first time, staring at the commander with two sets of eyes. A ghostly figure with vast wings clawed free of the flesh. The body thumped onto the ground with arms and legs flailing. Others followed suit, and then the wights attacked the dead under her control.

Hands gripped her shoulders, and it took her a moment to realise they were her shoulders, not those of Bors. She returned to her undead flesh—she was getting better at this new ability, and looked up to see Taver clutching her. He was wild-eyed and yelling, while pulling her to her feet. For once, she had no objection.

She glanced back at Bors, her friend, sprawled in the muck. It was too late for him, but maybe it weren’t for everyone. They fled, breather and undead with hand in hand—for the safety of the Necropolis.