Chapter XV: Picking Up Hints

It was early in the morning, well before dawn, I was running on the barest minimum of sleep, a bunch of people had just tried to kill each other in a frenzy of hallucinatory violence, and I needed to figure out what was going on. Simple enough, right? The first step was to start asking around and figuring out what, exactly, the soldiers afflicted by the Musician’s violin had been seeing. 

I started asking around, approaching the ones who looked the most dazed and bloodied. Not being very good at debriefing, I generally stuck to acting as friendly as possible, asking if they were alright and if they needed anything in between questions about what happened and why. A few of the soldiers recognized me, one nearly crying when she realized that she had “only hallucinated stabbing me through the chest.” I didn’t have the energy left to tell her the truth. The others mostly just had an exchange of apologies for beating the shit out of each other.

Over the next couple of hours, I started piecing together a general impression of what was going on. The Musician’s ability to get into people’s heads was pretty hardcore. The soldiers on guard that night had started seeing and hearing things almost immediately. The Durkahns generally saw more supernatural threats, demons and angry spirits from the most terrifying corners of Durkahni myth. The Bluerose soldiers had more mundane nightmares to draw on: strange beasts, or attacking soldiers from an unknown nation.

In some cases, the soldiers felt as if their squad-mates had completely vanished, only to find when the hallucinations ended that the attacking demons had been in the exact same place as the people around them. More common was a weird distortion of reality, as concerned looks turned into hateful jeers, and aimed guns seemed to turn to point at the viewer, combined with an overwhelming sense of threat and paranoia. Under situations like that, the Musician didn’t even need to completely separate them from reality to start a fight. 

The most interesting conversation I had that night was also the last. It was a soldier from Bluerose, a few inches taller than me and substantially more buff, with a shaved head and dark brown eyes that looked right through me. She was badly wounded, with one sword wound on her collarbone and another on her stomach, though Dr. Charcharias had pronounced her stable and on the way to recovering. 

“I saw the fucking shadows move, like there were billions of beetles swarming just out of sight,” she said. “It was just like back in the war, the Second Succession War, when you’d get entire trenches overwhelmed with corpse beetles.”

“Wow. That makes sense; a lot of what I saw drew on my memories,” I responded. “What about the others, what did they do?”

“Well, what I saw was them… looking at me, these really evil glares, eyes almost glowing in the dark. Their hands went to their weapons, and every reflex I’d ever built up was screaming at me to just attack, attack now. But I didn’t, because I knew this wasn’t real.”

That was new. The one universal thing between everyone I’d talked to was that they were all totally convinced what they were seeing was real. “Wait… how did you know?”

“Because I’d seen the same thing yesterday,” she said. She paused, squinting at me. “You’re the immortal girl, aren’t you? The one who stopped that brawl this morning.”

There was no point in keeping it a secret. “Yeah, that was me.”

“I was there. I was… part of the squad, with the girl who fired the first shot,” she said, looking down. “Poor thing, barely six months out of basic and slotted into a team of veterans on account of one of us had just died of a plague. And just before she fired… I felt the same way. That same paranoia, the visions of beetles, though not as blatant. Not to mention how the Durkahni patrol appeared completely out of nowhere.”

That could mean a lot of things, the most obvious of them being that the fight earlier had also been the responsibility of the Musician, as a prelude to the chaos at night. But I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. “And you’re sure that they were the same?”

“Sure enough that I bet my life on it tonight,” she said. “Something’s messing with people’s heads, I’m sure of it. Maybe it’s something in the river.”

“Yeah, maybe… Did you hear someone playing the violin today, when you were on patrol?”

The woman looked at me strangely, furrowing her brow. “Yeah, I did,” she said, not sure of what she was saying. “Way off in the distance, though. I figured it was Lady Burnardor, or one of the other upper crust. It’d be like them to start playing the violin in the open for no reason.”

“I guess it would…” I said, standing up from the patch of dirt where we’d been sitting. “Thank you for talking. You’ve answered a lot of my questions.” She had also raised quite a few more, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that bit. 

I spent another hour to two scouring the treaty grounds for evidence. I quickly ran out of people to interview, and instead tried returning to the hill where I had fought the musician. Already, even though no more than a few hours had passed, the entire encounter felt fuzzy and distant, almost dreamlike. I didn’t find anything that would work as a clue, or anything at all beyond a few patches of trampled grass to prove that that fight had taken place. 

My drive to do something, anything about the musician kept me going all the way to the first light of dawn. Even with no actual progress to make, I pushed myself into a frenzy, desperately trying to force my exhausted mind to come to some conclusion, some a-ha moment that would make her goals and motives clear. Pacing and jogging across the treaty grounds, I pushed myself to the limit. And then, when day arrived, I finally hit that limit and proceeded to pass out in an alleyway between two buildings.

I got in a solid eleven hours of sleep, a solid miracle considering I was sleeping on grass and dirty, almost enough to make up for the for the two nights in a row of nightmares. It wasn’t until much later that I realized the genius of it; sleep deprivation is probably the quickest way to turn a normal and functional person into a quivering wreck of absolute suffering and brainless exhaustion. Inflicting an entire camp with nightmares, or even just a few key people, would make whatever else she was trying to do vastly easier. 

I kept trying to find more evidence that afternoon, and eventually gave up when I realized I hadn’t eaten in a day and a half. Dinner that evening was quiet and tense, the weight of the violence from the night before hanging heavily over the entire room like a thick, invisible fog. The Durkahns and the humans mostly separated out, with only a few small blobs of people eating together. The food itself was a bit worse than it had been before, which I couldn’t really blame considering the mess hall was in the process of being rebuilt, and all of the cooks appeared to be at the same level of strung-out and anxious as the rest of us. 

The rest of that evening was spent on the fine art of self-care, curled up next to a kerosene lamp with one of my paperbacks, chewing through the latter half of Redwine House, a gripping tale of a young woman’s escape from her decaying noble family and overbearing and abusive mothers into the arms of a dashing Jaleran bandit. I was enthralled, and reading it entirely for the action and characterization, of course. By the time that was done, I had just enough time to flail over onto my side, pick up my copy of Cleverness Bandford, read the first page, and pass out.

After another eight hours of sleep, I woke up feeling almost but not quite ready to face the world. There was no more point in continuing a fruitless search, I concluded, at least not until I could think up some new way to approach the whole mystery. Or until the musician attacked again, and I would be ready enough to force her to make a mistake. 

That line of thought, about potentially getting attacked again, made me realize that I’d been skimping out on my lessons with Miss Rook. Admittedly there hadn’t been much of a chance for me not to miss out, what with my chores from Lady Halflance, the long trip over the mountains, and getting shot, but that wasn’t any excuse now. I remembered seeing Miss Rook around the armory, and assumed that there must be some kind of practice area around there, taking my saber and revolver with me for an early morning jog in that direction.

The barracks was a small and squat structure, only needing to store weapons and ammunition for about fifty light infantry. The area just behind it, out on the edge of the treaty grounds, had indeed been converted into a training area, a large area of grass cleared out with carved wooden dummies for sparring and half a dozen straw shooting targets. Rook was there, alone, practicing in the chill of the early morning mist. I’d woken up earlier than I thought I had.

“Rook! Need a sparring partner?” I shouted as I saw her.

Rook turned with lightning speed, preparing to fight back for a moment until she recognized my voice. I could swear she flashed me a slight smile. “Ah, the immortal girl shows her face once again. I haven’t seen you around here in a while. Finally ready to stop getting your arse handed to you?” 

“If I didn’t want that, why would I be here?” I said, slowing to a stop as I got close. “But with all of the crazy shit going down around here, I thought I could use some practice.”

“That you could,” said Rook, reverting to her natural accent. “Last time we sparred, I distinctly remember that you were a right mess at it, trust me.”

Rook turned and ran to the armory, returning a short while later with an armful of swords. “Emma, a question: have you had a chance to test the extent of your… ability?”

“I got impaled,” I said, matter-of-factly. “Right through the chest. It hurt a bit, but I stayed standing. I can live through a lot.”

“Very well then,” she said, handing me a blade. She took one in her own hand. “Let’s spar.”

We assumed our stances, Rook slightly more hunched over, her limbs ready to spring out in any direction, while I was upright and relaxed. “Ready… and… begin.”

The moment I said “begin,” Rook shot forward with speed like I’d never seen from her before, six feet of muscle and bone moving so quickly I could only register her as a blur. Her sword was a bullet, tearing through the flesh of my side right above my belly button and biting deep. I felt my intestines move, then snap back into place as the wound sealed shut over the next ten seconds or so.

My lungs forced air out of my mouth in a rattling cough. “What the fuck?” I hissed.

“That was a simple strike. If you weren’t so confident that I wouldn’t open with an ambush, deflecting and countering it would have been trivial.”

“Is that a sharp sword?” I said, my voice high-pitched with shock. “You just opened me up!”

Rook turned around, sheathing her sword. “But you didn’t bleed. At least, not much. Trust me, if you can’t even parry something as basic as what I just did, you will never win a duel against a skilled opponent.”

“You just cut me with a sharp sword! In a sparring match!”

“Because you cannot be wounded, Emma,” Rook said, grinning. “Nothing I do can injure you for long, and with that risk out of the way, I want you to understand what a real battle to the death will be like.”

“It still hurts like hell,” I whined.

“Exactly,” Rook snapped. “Pain motivates you, makes you cautious, makes you aware of your mistakes. That’s always been the great weakness of the traditional spar. It cannot capture the essence of real combat, trust me.”

I ran my hand along where the cut had been. No scar, no mark. “So your plan is to attack me at full speed, with a sharpened blade, doing your damnedest to kill me, just because you know that I can’t die? To teach me?”

“Yes.”

I threw off my vest. “Alright, let’s do this,” I said, starting to undo the buttons on my shirt. “But until I learn how to sew, I can’t be damaging good shirts without a very good reason.” The shirt hit the grass and I kicked it aside, leaving me in pants and a bit of cloth around my chest.

“That’s a dangerous move,” said Rook. “You might want to take what protection you could get, trust me.”

I shrugged. “You said it yourself, nothing can hurt me for long. And I really like that shirt.”

“Very well. Let’s get this started,” Rook said. And then she lunged. 

To Rook’s credit, this wasn’t entirely an excuse for her to beat the shit out of me. Rook moved faster than I’d ever seen anyone move, even when she’d been fighting the ghouls on board the train. She was a blur of movement, capable of crossing ten feet of space in a blink. And her strikes hit impossibly hard, cutting through bone and sinew like it was nothing. But every time she maimed me, the duel would stop while I healed, and she’d then take a minute to explain exactly what she’d done and how to properly counter it. Slowly but surely, I started learning. 

Rook had speed on her side, but our actual reflexes were evenly matched, roughly. Her ultra-long lunges stopped catching me by surprise and I soon realized that they were easy to parry once I knew what was happening. Once she could no longer win through cheap tactics, it turned into a real duel. I pushed myself to the limit, and without the threat of spraining myself, I went beyond my limit. 

Every time our swords clashed, the metal would ring out like a bell and throw off sparks, making me thankful that I was still using a blunt blade. I learned her moves, her favorite defenses, the angle at which she would reflexively parry any given attack. It wasn’t until at least fifteen minutes in that I realized how outmatched I really was. Her overwhelming strength advantage meant that I couldn’t bind or grapple without getting my sword ripped out of my hand or my arm ripped out of its socket, both followed up by a normally-fatal slash to the stomach or neck. I didn’t let her know, but I started to become familiar with a weakness of my ability: blood loss. Though much of the blood would be sucked back into each injury before it healed, I lost just enough each time that as the spar dragged on, my vision started to spin whenever I stood up too quickly. 

With beating her through strength completely off the table, and matching her skill years away, I was forced to rely on my agility. Rook could build up a lot of speed moving in a straight line, but she was also big and heavy. I could drop, roll, redirect my sword’s blade mid-strike, feint with twitch-fast moves, and even intercept her attacks with my own. Most of those tricky maneuvers were deflected or dodged at the last moment, but once or twice I could swear that I heard the dull metallic thud of an unsharpened blade striking fabric or skin. 

After another inconclusive exchange of blows, her too powerful and me too dexterous for anyone to land a decent hit, Rook pulled away and lowered her blade. I did the same, taking a moment to make sure that I hadn’t sprained anything, even though I knew that wasn’t how I worked anymore. Rook looked tired, properly battle-fatigued, covered in sweat and breathing heavily, but still with an enormous grin on her face. 

“You’re getting better,” she said. “A few more weeks of that and you might rate as a competent sword-fighter, trust me. You about ready to be done for the day?”

“After how many times you stabbed me?” I said, laughing right back at her. “Not likely! Feels like I’m just getting started, actually.”

“Alright then, you tenacious fucker, let’s do this.” Rook moved to raise her blade, but she was too slow. The moment she finished speaking, maybe a fraction of a second before if I’m being honest, I charged, almost leaping forward with my saber extended into a sinking cut to her chest. Slowed by fatigue, her sword arm almost seemed to crawl up into a deflection block, but it would be too late. My foot barely touched the ground. But as her sword arm lagged behind, I had the tiniest fraction of a moment to realize that I’d forgotten about her other arm.

The sound wasn’t so much heard as it was felt through the bones of my neck and skull, a sound like a cannon going off, combined with a feeling much like what I imagine getting hit by a car must feel like. My entire torso erupted into searing pain as it was forced back, my limbs going limp as they trailed behind the rest of me. I didn’t see or hear anything, for a moment, all of my other senses overwhelmed by the pain of impact.

I hit the ground. Rook was a dozen feet away. I was on my back. There was blood in my mouth. My chest was concave and I couldn’t even think about breathing. Rook had punched me at her full strength. Ow.

Rook shook out her hand, wincing slightly as if she hadn’t just wrecking balled me across the room. There was a series of shockingly loud cracks and snaps emanating from my chest as my ribcage rose like bread in the oven, returning to a functional shape. Then she noticed me, dashing over to my side. 

“Are you alright?” she said, as if the answer wasn’t already fucking obvious. 

“Gargghkhalffshhhh,” I said. There was a lot of blood in my mouth. 

“You shouldn’t have surprised me like that,” she said, back to her assumed accent. “But I’m sorry anyway. I let the rush get to me.”

With a resounding “Pop!” my sternum returned to being a single intact piece of bone, and I found that I could move and breathe again.

I swallowed the blood, ew, and said, “You opened up some of your scars, the weird parallel ones on your shoulders. Might want to get that looked at.”

The lines looked wider and darker than they had before, though they didn’t bleed, weirdly enough. Rook pulled back, trying not to let me see the old wounds. 

“If this were a real fight, I would have had the time to cut off all four limbs and your head right now, and see how well you could recover from that. Be more careful.”

Rook sheathed her blade, and picked up the dull practice weapon that I’d been using, taking them both back to the armory. “I guess I’ll just get myself off the floor, it’s fine,” I muttered as I got up. There was a distinct feeling that some of my organs hadn’t quite made it back into their original position, despite no part of my body being in pain or otherwise not working. 

Rook didn’t speak to me again for the rest of that day, and I quickly reverted to listless boredom, outside of one incident where Lady Halflance sent a servant to bother me into helping fix a steam generator that had been destroyed during the musician’s attack, one that I had already fixed earlier at that. For the first time since that gunshot Ironseed and I had heard on the open Durkahni plain, there was some semblance of peace in the treaty grounds.

That didn’t mean that I forgot about all the chaos of the last few days, of course. If anything, the lack of new dangers (more giant robots? An invasion of bird-people? Halflance’s long-lost daughter making an appearance? What new hell could the universe throw at me?) gave me more chance to think. More specifically, to think about a theory that had been brewing in my head since the chargerthing attack, the Cassandran Agent hypothesis. What had originally seemed to be the absurd invention of a sleep-deprived mind raised on entirely too many action movies was now starting to look entirely reasonable. After all, I now knew with certainty that there was an agent of some kind causing chaos in the treaty grounds, though I had no idea if the Musician was Cassandran or not. At the same time, there was a huge piece of evidence pointing against the idea, that being the glinggatluk I’d found on the chargerthing. That was a Durkahni tool, from what Ironseed had told me, and would be pretty unusual to find in the hands of a Cassandran.

A couple of days after the Musician’s attack, half an hour after another hardcore training session with Miss Rook, I was taking a walk around the treaty grounds to make sure that all of my limbs were still working flawlessly, when I passed by the Halflances’ huge building, and was hit by an idea. I vaguely remembered Sir Margaret talking about her experiences during the Second Secession War, and some of the bizarre Cassandran war machines she’d faced during that time. If anyone would know what to look for, it would be her.

So I veered off my usual path and broke into a jog, headed towards the front door of the Halflance building. I was so focused on planning out what I was actually going to ask Sir Margaret that I didn’t even notice Dr. Ironseed doing the same thing, until I had already run into her. 

“Woah there, Emma, there’s no need to run me over, now,” she said. “Do you need to speak to the Halflances?”

“Oh, need is a very strong word here,” I said.

“You go first. I’ll give you your privacy.”

I shrugged, mumbled some sort of thanks at her, and entered the Halflance lodge. I was met inside by an upsettingly cosy log-cabin aesthetic, complete with cushioned chairs and elaborate oil lamps that must have been brought in from Zrimash or beyond, all made in the Durkahni style. The front door looked to open up into a sitting room of some kind, all-too similar to the ones scattered around the Halflance manor, which I was starting to get nostalgic for. 

Sir Margaret had her head resting on the back of a chair with her eyes closed, but became ever so slightly alert just as I walked in, glancing over in my direction with bored half-shut eyes that snapped open once she had recognized who I was. “Oh, Emma, I’m very glad to see you; it’s been so long since we’ve had a proper talk that wasn’t in the middle of a complete catastrophe. How have you been? Holding up well after that last incident, I would hope? You seem alright from here, but you never really know, although I suppose with you it’s not very likely that you’d be hurt, is it?”

“Yeah, probably not,” I said, collapsing onto the softest piece of furniture in the room. “Though, the thing I wanted to talk to you about was… related to all that.”

Sir Margaret leaned over the edge of her chair, staring right at me. “Oh, what would it be, then? I don’t exactly have anything to do until there’s another major diplomatic incident, so I’m all ears at the moment.”

“I don’t think I ever actually told you what happened, the night that everything went to hell, did I? At least, not in a coherent way.”

Margaret shook her head. “You were really in a bad state after all of the fighting and the sleep deprivation, so I think you tried to explain to me, but I didn’t understand a lick of it.”

“Okay, yeah. Let me tell you what happened.”

I relayed the story of everything that had happened that night, though leaving out the personal details about Ethan and all of that. Sir Margaret didn’t interrupt aside from those noises that you’re supposed to make when listening to someone. At least, not until I got to describing the Musician. 

“…and she was wearing this weird steel mask,” I said. “I’ve seen it before, on Nemesis when we dueled in her lab. It didn’t have a—“

“It didn’t have a face?” Sir Margaret said, interrupting me. I nodded. “Big glass lenses for the eyes?” I nodded again. “No mouth opening, but they can still speak and breathe perfectly well?”

“Yeah. All of that.” Sir Margaret sounded nervous, almost scared, which in turn had me scared. 

“And you’re completely certain that this was real, not another one of the hallucinations?” Margaret said, speaking slowly and in a commanding tone I’d never heard from her.

I paused, momentarily unsure of myself. “She still had it on when she stopped playing, and all of the other hallucinations vanished.”

“Devolt,” Sir Margaret sighed, in the same way that you might say “fuck me.” “That isn’t an ordinary mask. You said Nemesis wore one too?”

“Yeah. And someone else I’ve seen. I assumed it was just a normal weird mask.” I paused to massage my temples. “I’m guessing that isn’t the case.”

“What you’re describing is a reikverratr mask,” Margaret said, “except it doesn’t make sense for either Nemesis or the Musician to be a reikverratr. If there were a reikverratr anywhere near us, we would all be dead by now.”

The lodge suddenly felt very cold. “Well, then. What’s a reikverratr?”

“Cassandran elite soldier,” Margaret said, looking squarely at the floor, “the best of the best. I encountered them a few times during the war, but never directly. Reports say they have superhuman strength, impossible speed, and are more heavily armored than a dragon. It was the second battle of Fanggard Pass, I think… yeah, that’s when it was. Three reikverratr hit our flank, tore through an entire company of rifles in ten minutes.”

“So Nemesis and the Musician were both wearing reikverratr masks? Why?”

“Hell if I know,” she said. “Neither of them were true reikverratr, that much is clear, from the fact that they weren’t steel-clad giants ripping you apart with their bare hands if nothing else.”

“That sounds… exaggerated?” I said.

Sir Margaret glared right into my eyes. “Exaggerations don’t kill three hundred armed women, Emma.” She paused, expression softening. “I’m sorry, I forget sometimes that you don’t remember anything of the war, despite your age.”

“Because I’ve only been on this planet for two months,” I said, mentally preparing for another argument about the brain fever thing. 

“Exactly. A new perspective from the famed world-traveller, of course. And I suppose, thinking rationally, that it is entirely possible that someone like this Musician could have done that with an outbreak of homicidal madness, making the troops kill each other without her having to take her hand off of her bow.”

“Mhmm. Though, that wouldn’t explain why Nemesis was wearing one.” Or the woman with the werewolf companion, though I wasn’t quite ready to tell Sir Margaret about that entire thing yet. 

“Considering she never displayed the level of basic fucking competence to be allowed anywhere near Cassandran high command, it is rather difficult to explain, I would think. But do go on, Emma, tell me the rest of it, how you managed to drive her off and so on.”

I did. Sir Margaret didn’t have much in the way of advice, besides pointing out that breaking the violin would probably be a good thing, which I’d already figured out. Still, knowing that I might be forced to deal with a nigh-invulnerable super-soldier at some point in the near future really helped with my anxiety. I thanked Sir Margaret for the help, and considered wasting the rest of the afternoon talking to her, until I remembered that Dr. Ironseed was still waiting outside. With a couple of excuses and a polite wave goodbye to Sir Margaret, I slipped quietly through the door of the lodge. 

What I had expected was for Dr. Ironseed to be waiting right outside the door, probably looking slightly impatient, but still being nice about it. What I did not expect was that she had retreated across the path, and was in the middle of a somewhat intense argument with Lady Genesis Burnardor.

“I don’t know why you haven’t just demanded to see it already,” Burnardor said languidly. “This Council of One is a marvel, and we can’t just let their silly tribal superstitions keep it from… what was it you said? The guiding light of science?”

“Yes, I suppose that is in the vicinity of the truth,” said Ironseed, rubbing her temple with one hand. “But we don’t even know what the Council of One is yet, aside from a few rumors and stories. Until we know more, we can’t investigate a damn thing.”

“Then why are we waiting?” Burnardor said with a chuckle. “I’m sure there’s someone around weak enough to take a bribe! Wow them with your advanced technology, pretend to have the guidance of the spirits just before an eclipse, it cannot be this difficult to get information from a bunch of heathen.”

Ironseed sighed. “Alright, alright. I have someone looking into it, someone who’s already made inroads with the Durkahns. Halflance’s ward.”

“Of course you’re working with that whelp,” Burnardor sneered. “Everyone seems to like her, damned if I know why. So impudent.”

“Do you want to learn more about the Council of One or not? She’s already befriended one of Dinara’s personal guards. If anyone is going to be able to get them to open up, it would be her.”

Burnardor nodded. “And once we know what to look for?”

“Then, we—“ Ironseed’s expression fell as she looked over Burnardor’s shoulder to where I was, totally frozen against the door of the Halflance lodge. “How long have you been there?!” she exclaimed.

“Just a second!” I stammered, lying on reflex. “Sir Margaret is free if you want to talk to her!”

I ran all the way back to my own little home and wasn’t even tired. What the hell had I expected from a Selenian anthropologist, if not colonialism and patronization? And I had almost fallen for it, too, her friendly attitude and claims of purely academic interest. I nearly kicked the legs of my bed, picking up a half-finished novel and starting to read.

About an hour later, I noticed something had changed about the light; normally the one window in the building faced to the east, and didn’t get much direct light in the afternoon. Even still, there was an odd orange glow coming through. I stepped outside to see a column of smoke rising from across the river, and a roaring flame shooting up into the sky. Zrimash was burning.

SaffronDragon

Just as an aside, because I don't know if I'll ever get around to mentioning it: when Sir Margaret mentions a "dragon", she's referring to what we on Earth would call a "tank". The Cassandrans used a few of them during the war. And that is the only relevant or interesting thing that happens in this chapter! No superhuman strength here... If you want to see more relevant or interesting things (perhaps related to a certain city being on fire), you can click the link below to join my Patreon, where the next four chapters have already been uploaded, and can be yours for the reading for as little as $3 a month, which also gives access to my exclusive Discord server. Higher tier rewards include exclusive short stories, voting rights on patron polls, and access to early drafts. If not, see you in only one week for Chapter XVI: This Girl Is On Fire