Chapter XXXVI: Skirmish & Survival

“There’s three things about this that I don’t understand,” Sir Margaret said.

I did a quick count in my head. “Three?”

“Well, the first is why your wound didn’t heal.” My initial worry, that my regeneration had stopped working entirely, had been disproven when I cut myself pulling my sword out of the thunderfang’s corpse. “The second is why the thunderfang didn’t heal, if you’re correct about its powers of regeneration.”

“I know about those parts,” I said. “I’ve been asking those same questions for the last half an hour. But what’s the third—Ow!”

“Don’t move while I’m sewing you back together,” Rook said. “It’ll make it worse, trust me.”

I rolled my eyes, but stilled under her touch. Fixing penetrating wounds was, to quote Rook, “a bitch and a half”, and she’d been at it for almost as long as it had taken to minister for Sir Margaret’s stomach injury.

“The third question you have to consider is what the hell this thing, the thunderfang that is, was actually doing here. I don’t know anything about thunderfangs, so… Sarnai?”

“They’re solitary,” Sarnai said. “They’ll eat just about anything more nutritious than grass, but they prefer meat. They usually keep a lair, but will range widely in search of food, often for days at a time.”

“A lair?” Sir Margaret said. “This seems as though it would make a good place for a lair; do you suppose that we may have stumbled upon this thing’s lair at an inopportune moment?”

“I agree that it would make a good lair, for the same reason it made for a good hiding place for us,” said Rook. “But I don’t see how it could have. Just look at the creature. It’s as broad as four humans; how could it get in or out?”

Silence fell over the group as we all started pondering our own questions. I sank into my own mind, letting the pain of my wound, and the occasional stings from Rook’s attempts at healing it, wash over me as I tipped back and rested. I stared up at the ceiling of this huge chamber, and at the thin shafts of sunlight illuminating it. Then it hit me.

I jerked upright, causing Rook to jerk back as something snapped. “Fuck! I told you not to move,” she said through gritted teeth.

“What if it comes in through the ceiling?”

“What?” the other three all said at roughly the same time. 

“The thunderfang. It ambushed me from above…” I gestured to its paws with the less-injured of my arms, “and look at those claws. It’s probably a pretty good climber. What if it enters and exits the lair through one of those holes in the roof, somehow?”

“This thing must weigh multiple tonnes,” Rook said to herself. “It couldn’t climb.”

“They certainly can in the legends,” said Sarnai. “Pulling prey from the upper windows of tall structures during times of famine, and the like.”

“And I can’t say that it is entirely unheard of for creatures of this size and bulk to be capable climbers,” Sir Margaret added. “I remember seeing a rather fascinating image of a two-tonne pillarsloth, from far Procellarum, hauling itself up the side of a bloodwood tree by only its arms. And the six limbs would give it a rather stable platform, I think.”

Now Sarnai was looking up, studying the roof as I had been. “If a creature of this size and bulk could find a way in, then the three of us should be able to find a way out.”

“Exactly!” I said. “And there’s no way the ghouls will expect us to escape through the roof, so we might even be able to escape from them entirely!”

In my excitement to outwit our long-term pursuers, I moved to sit up and start searching right away. Rook didn’t startle this time. She simply kept her hand exactly where it had been on my shoulder, and let her strength keep me still. Cowed, I quickly relaxed and let her work. 

“We’ll make our daring escape as soon as you aren’t bleeding out anymore.”

I can’t exactly say that finding the way out of the ruined temple was easy, but it was the kind of difficult that isn’t particularly interesting. A lot of strenuous cardio, interspersed with long periods of sitting on a rock trying to figure out where the hell to go next. Rock climbing with no equipment is kind of a bitch. But we made it, one step at a time, aside from a couple of close calls where a piece of rubble would creak forebodingly, or someone’s foot would slip and force the rest of us to quickly grab her before she fell. None of us could have done it on our own, that much was clear. Even with my speed and agility, I would need boosts from the others, or sometimes for the taller members to climb up first and then pull me behind them. 

When we made our way out into the open air, it felt like bursting out of the surface of a lake, just before you run out of breath. We had made it, home free at last. The air was cool and breezy and didn’t smell like stone dust and old decay, and the light of the evening sun was almost blinding compared to the shadows within. The only problem was the ghouls. 

Because, of course, one day hadn’t been long enough to deter them, not when their lives were as much on the line as ours were. Just looking down on them told a story. They were desperate, milling around angrily, getting into scraps at a moment’s notice, or else hammering themselves against the outside of the ruin in a desperate attempt to break in and devour what they thought was hidden inside. It was a good thing that we were out of sight, because they would have unbuilt the entire temple stone by stone if it meant getting to eat that night.

We were near the back side of the complex, on the roof of a huge dome. From the outside, the layout of the whole temple became more clear, as well as just how enormous of a construction this was; it reminded me of the temple complex at Karnak, or the Forbidden City, dozens of structures built clustered together. The area where we were had once contained several large domes, but now only one remained, the rest having turned into piles of partially-scavenged stone. The rubble also concealed us, providing concealment from anything below, and a long path down to ground level.

We weren’t going to be able to pull the same stunt that had gotten us into the temple a second time. My injury made sure of that. I couldn’t fight because of the damage to my muscles, and I couldn’t run because of the blood loss, though I could probably put up a pretty decent jog if I needed to.

The difficulty, as always, were the long sight lines. Sure, we could have snuck past the initial cordon, but remaining completely hidden for the two or three hours it would take to cross over the horizon was substantially more difficult. We needed something, a distraction, a disguise, something.

No ideas came to us, and it soon became apparent that we hadn’t actually improved our situation in any particular way, and may in fact have made it worse in our rush to not be trapped inside the ruins. The realization, immediately after the burst of relief at seeing the sky again, caused cracks to show. Rook became sullen and quiet, sitting on a stone with her head between her hands, muttering to herself in a desperate search for a solution. Sir Margaret paced back and forth and kicked around stones, swearing rhythmically. I, for my part, leaned against a pillar and fell to pieces; sometimes quietly crying and other times falling into a pit of depression.

The only one who seemed perfectly calm, even in the face of an insurmountable problem, was Sarnai. She stared out over the horizon and watched the sun set with the unflappable calm and optimism of a painter, sitting in deep thought for minutes at a time, or else pacing back and forth and discussing ideas for our escape. 

She crouched down next to me, at one point, and laid a big broad-nailed hand on my shoulder. “For an immortal woman, you certainly seem resigned to your fate.”

“I haven’t slept right in days, haven’t had a chance to slow down and relax, haven’t had a moment out of the cold and the dry and the endless wind since we left Zrimash.” I sighed, my body sagging under the weight of being forced to acknowledge it. “And this wound fucking hurts, Sarnai. Can you just let me be upset for a little bit?”

“You look more than upset, Emma. Being upset would be fine, but you’ve given up.”

“I haven’t given up!” I said, raising my voice as much as I could risk.

“You certainly look the part of someone who has,” Sarnai said, raising one eyebrow.

“Alright. So maybe I’ve given up a little bit.”

“A little bit?”

“Only a little bit. I’ll have a nice cry, take a nap, and then I’m going to go do… something about this problem, probably something stupid, because that’s what I fucking do, isn’t it?”

Sarnai nodded, down at a small party of ghouls passing by our side of the complex. “I doubt it’ll be easy,” she said. “Stonewose are determined, they’re smart, they have strong senses.”

“Whose side are you on here?”

“Yours,” she said. “I’m just saying it won’t be easy; I don’t want you to harbor any delusions about this. But then, everything I’ve heard is that you’re something special as well.”

I sat up a little straighter, furrowing my brow at the idea of where she could have heard about me. “What have you heard?”

“Rook told me about Nemesis, and Sir Margaret filled in the details of the fight in her laboratory. It’s quite the impressive story, at least secondhand. If you can defeat an army of half-woman half-machines, you’ll find a way to get around a pack of stonewose, no matter how determined they may be.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You’re putting a lot of faith in me, seems like.”

Sarnai nodded. “I’m not clever. Willful, skilled, dashingly handsome, but not particularly clever. Which means that I am, in fact, counting on you to get me out of this. But if there was anyone I knew that I would trust to be able to escape from an entire pack of stonewose in spite of being wounded and exhausted, it is you, Emma.” She pointed out across the steppe, slightly to the north. “If you look in that direction, you can just barely see the tips of the highest rooftops in Yazthaan, that’s how close it is. You just have to figure out how to get to it.”

I rubbed my hands together, staring out in the direction of her fingertip and preparing myself for what was to come. “Okay, okay. Give me a bit more time to rest and think, and I’ll get us all out of this mess or die trying. Thanks for talking some sense into me, Sarnai.”

“Of course,” she said, and walked away to find a place to settle down and rest some more. It was obvious that she had a lot to think about. Even when she’d been talking to me, there was always part of her that seemed somehow distracted, like there was something nagging at her, or like she was thinking about something else. It probably explained how she was so calm as well. 

The next hour or so, as day slipped into night, was no more fertile with ideas than the hours that had come before it. Maybe I just needed to sleep. Of course, spending that long in a vulnerable state would only increase the chance of waking up impaled on a spit, so that might not solve the issue either. I had resolved to wait for the right opportunity. Eventually, something would happen, some bit of luck that would give us just the leg-up necessary to escape, if only we were patient enough. Indeed, nightfall might have been that opportunity, if the stonewose didn’t have a source of light, which wasn’t guaranteed given the serious lack of trees around. 

The actual sign was much more obvious, so much so that if I believed in fate or divinity, I’d have been mildly insulted that whatever cosmic force was out there thought I needed it to be made so goddamned obvious. It began with screaming. Then the screaming escalated into a proper war-cry, mixed with howling chants in the stonewose language, both signaling battle. Then the gunshots rang out, and there was no mistaking it.

We took the lucky break and, seeing that there were indeed no patrols anywhere on our side of the ruin, immediately burst out of cover and charged down onto the open grass. I’d be lying if I said that any of us made it all the way down without very nearly losing our footing at least half a dozen times each. But, somehow, we found ourselves at the bottom without a single twisted ankle or even a skinned knee, completely free to flee in whichever direction suited our fancy.

“I don’t think we should run,” said Rook.

“What?” I said, already about thirty feet away by that point. “Why the hell not?”

“Think about it; who’s going to be attacking the stonewose out here? It’s sure as hell not the Cassandrans. Unless they’re so far gone that they’ve started infighting, chances are whoever’s shown up is going to be a friend. And even if they’re neutral, coming to someone’s aid in a fight is the best way to make them a friend, trust me.”

I looked to Sarnai and Sir Margaret. “How are we feeling about a brawl?”

“I could go for a fair fight,” Sarnai said.

Sir Margaret chuckled. “Those medicines you managed to snatch have done wonders; that and having the chance to take a nap. Hell, I’ve fought battles in worse condition. Let’s do this.”

We snuck around the side of the ruin, moving as quickly as we felt we could get away with out of fear that the battle would be over before we could arrive. It wasn’t. We came upon a brutal melee, the stonewose having collapsed into a battle line as they were surrounded by a pack of falt-riders. The stonewose were holding their own, in spite of heavy casualties, mostly carried by the sheer offensive power of their clockwork rifles.  But their backs were more or less unguarded, at least against a small group moving on foot. 

They couldn’t see us in the dark, so we got up as close as we could in absolute quiet. That proved to be about forty feet. Then we stopped in our tracks, drawing pistols and swords, crouching low as we readied for a charge. Despite how ready we’d been a few short moments before, it was a terrifying feeling, to be confronted by the enemy right there, to know that the desperate struggle of battle was right there in front of you. It was worse for me; I wondered if my regeneration was going to fail me again, if I’d die here. But I banished that thought.

Rook, Sir Margaret, and I all let out our battle-cry at once, a resounding “For the Blue Rose!” at about the same time that Sarnai howled a long phrase in Durkahni. Before the stonewose had time to do more than jump at the sudden noise, we charged. I hit the enemy line first, sprinting into battle with so much speed that I crashed directly into a ghoul, sending both of us to the ground in a tangle of limbs. I quickly wrenched the gun out of her hands and, in a moment of desperation, slammed the butt into her face. It took three strikes to make her pass out, at which point I chucked the rifle into another stonewose’s face and fell into it.

I wasn’t feeling quite as sick about the concept of fighting as I had been the last time I’d encountered the stonewose, knowing what they had in plan if I lost the fight. Killing was still off the table, but I could swing my sword to disarm, fire into legs and arms at point-blank range to disable, and things like that. The memory of my sister’s death still played across my mind like a drum beat. Every spray of blood still hurt me, but not enough to do more than temporarily slow me down, and the arrival of the next uninjured ghoul was usually enough to drag my attention back to the here and now.

Rook and Sir Margaret and Sarnai were all around me as well, fighting like frenzied wolverines. Even damaged, Rook was a juggernaut on the field, dodging and weaving through gunfire and hatchets, standing always at Sir Margaret’s side, utterly sure that she would be able to support her, and vise versa. Sarnai was more regimented, using her musket with the bayonet in like a spear, fighting defensively and lunging in and out like a cobra. Of course, just the four of us against over a score of ghouls was still a losing battle. Good thing that it wasn’t just the four of us. 

Seemingly as soon as we had gotten fully mired in the fight, there was an uproar of hoofbeats from the other side, as the falt-riders took the opportunity to charge. Many of the stonewose in the front had broken formation, turning around to fight the newcomers, leaving the line exposed. Shouting and taunting, the faltry (yes, that’s the proper term for it) raced along the line, sweeping stonewose to the ground with their sabers and pistols, then flowing around the flank and taking a toll there as well. One rider came as close to us as the terrain allowed, then jumped off of her steed and started dueling the nearest set of stonewose with a saber in one hand and a pistol in the other. 

“Somehow I knew I’d find you in the most dangerous situation possible,” she said. It was a very familiar voice.

“Sarah!” Sir Margaret shouted, ducking under a hatchet swing. “I’ve missed you so much!”

Lady Halflance cackled. “Less talking, my dear, more fighting.”

Sir Margaret nodded at the suggestion and went back to work. Not that there was much more work to be done; pretty much as soon as the first faltry charge was over, the stonewose realized that they were fighting a losing battle. Some of them must have thought that our four-person charge was the arrival of an entire second army, with the way they were screaming. Within a couple of minutes they had scattered entirely. 

The silence in the aftermath of the battle was shattering. About half of the Bluerosers went off to chase down the other stonewose, with a dozen staying behind to finish off the wounded and recuperate their injuries. I did my very best to look away from the latter activity.

Sir Margaret barely even waited for the fighting to die down, running to her wife the exact moment that there were no more stonewose immediately in front of her. They embraced, kissing passionately, Lady Halflance dipping low as Margaret almost melted into her grasp.

“I was worried you were dead,” Sir Margaret whispered as they pulled apart.

“So was I,” Lady Halflance admitted.

I cleared my throat, feeling very awkward about the whole thing, as I was standing a few feet away. Lady Halflance turned to me and raised a single eyebrow. “Oh. You too. Surprised you made it.”

“I’m immortal,” I said.

“Of course,” she said. “Rook made it as well, I see. And…Sarnai, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Sarnai,” Sir Margaret said. “She’s actually the reason any of us made it as long as we did, what with her knowledge of the area giving us a place to hide from those stonewose.”

“Good. I’ll be sure to thank her,” Halflance said. “These last few days have been difficult, not knowing if you were alive or not.”

“But, you know, if I had bit the dust it would have been totally okay,” I said. “Not like I’m supposed to be under your protection or anything.”

Halflance glared at me through narrow slits of eyes. “As you said. You’re immortal.”

“Doesn’t mean a little concern wouldn’t be appreciated…” I mumbled to myself, but I’m not sure if anybody heard me.

“So where have you been off to, love?” Sir Margaret asked. “How did you escape Zrimash?”

“We fought our way out. Myself, most of the surviving guard, and whatever Durkahns we could find. There was easily a company’s worth of us by the end, and we had to push past an army of stonewose just to get to Yazthaan. Every day since then has been patrols, looking for more stragglers, fending off probing attacks from the Cassandrans.”

“Is Yazthaan safe?” I said, suddenly worried.

“More or less,” Halflance said. “The Cassandrans don’t seem to be very worried about the survivors; they think that they defeated us at Zrimash, and have turned their attention to the total conquest of Urcos. We, meanwhile, have been working on plans for how to prove them wrong.”

SaffronDragon

Well, here we go. We're getting into the final stretch. This is going to be the last "regularly scheduled" chapter of Snows of Selene. In two weeks, I'm going to start releasing the last seven chapters in rapid succession, every other day for twelve days, with the book ending on November 16th. After that, it will likely be another long hiatus before the third book, but hopefully I'll be able to keep you all on board until then with Earthborn Emissary updates and some side projects I plan on publishing. And as always, if you don't want to have to wait until November for the thrilling conclusion, you can click the link below and join my Patreon for as little as $3 a month. I have all of my chapters uploaded early there, as well as several exclusive short stories and patron polls. Patrons also get to join my exclusive Discord server! If you can't afford it, of course, that's totally fine. I'll see you in two weeks for the lead-up to the end, beginning with Chapter XXXVII: Betrayal of Body and Spirit.