My head meets the surface of the miretouched water first. A jolting pain rips through my leg as my knee cracks against a submerged stone. A sensation like cold lightning spreads through my scalp, snaking into my head. I lose all orientation, and for several heartbeats I panic as I try to right myself.
At last I break the surface, choking, reeling. Struggling to my knees, I promptly curl over and vomit. Everything is chaos, sensory onslaught beyond my ability to process. And then, after far too long, it hits me.
I have an entirely new sense now.
It's like trying to cram another piece into a puzzle that's already complete. I can't make sense of it. My brain isn't built for it.
But that's changing, I can feel it, a rapid transformation that spreads like icy fire. There's an odd pressure in my skull that builds and builds until I want to scream-and then it's gone.
The world opens out before me, and it's as though I'm suspended in a great web, made of something akin to lightning—tingling and alive, an unseen light. Every living thing is a point of convergence, connected by lightning-silk strands.
The two motes nearest me on the web are moving closer. Something about the way they feel distinguishes them from one another, their pulse is different. I turn. The beast that took me down is struggling towards me. It caught a spear to the side while I'd floundered in the water. A few paces away, the remaining Hunter Guard we'd taken down with us brandishes his bloodied weapon with one arm. Struggling forward in spite of the fact that the skin on the left side of his body is erupting in oil-black, stony growths.
But the creature is almost on me again, its bulk blocking out my wavering view of the road, the people on it who struggle even now for their own lives and each other's. How many of these things are there?
The pulse of the beast's energy shifts as it readies to make its kill, the vibration of the web-strand between us intensifying. Adreline burns through my veins. My focus narrows down until the world is just myself, that beast, and the fiery line of connection that joins us. I don't know how I know what to do, I just know I have to do something. My will surges out from me, into that strand of the web which connects me to my doom.
GO!
The command crashes out of me, through that joining thread, into the mirebeast. The pupils of its yellow eyes narrow to slits, its hackles raise and it stumbles backward with odd, jerky movements. Then it turns, fleeing desperately away through churning, chest-deep waters.
I stare, raking in breath after shaking breath. The shouting and clashing behind me continues. Someone calls my name. I turn.
It doesn't matter that I can barely make out what's happening on the road. I can feel every living creature there. I can sense which are humans, which are akhanas, and which are mirebeasts.
I close my eyes to shut away the distraction of sight. The threads connecting myself and the remaining wolf-creatures flare to the forefront of my awareness. My mind is beginning to buckle under the weight of exhaustion and overwhelm, confusion and shock. Pain pulses up my leg and through my wrist, hard and red. I gather the last of my dwindling strength, and push it outward into those electric threads with all the force of will I can muster.
GO. Do not come back.
Black spots dance across my vision. I hear and sense the Mirebeasts as they halt, jerk away, and run-splashing across the wetlands in all directions.
And then I pass out.
~*~
I come to, awakened gradually by the rhythmic thumping and clanking of what can only be the train. I must have been out for hours.
Everything aches. My head swims. In my dreams, I'd forgotten the Other Sense, but the presence of it crashes over me now. Puka is curled up warm at my side, and there are two more akhanas and three other people in the car with me—two of them miretouched like myself. I'm shocked as I realize that, even with the newness of the sense, I recognize the feeling of Kai's pulse immediately.
Deciding I need a proper name for the energetic presence of other living things that I can now feel burning all around me, I go with the first thing that comes to mind-"ember".
I groan and open my eyes. The lights in the train car are warm, pinkish amber-the walls a dark, gleaming wood. Laid out on a raised pallet to one side of me, the Mirefallen Hunter Guard's shoulders rise and fall in the steady, slow rhythm of deep sleep. Then I roll over to check on Kai, who lays on my other side. His skin is ashen, and I can't see his injured side from where I am-but he too seems to be unconscious, breathing easily.
"Good waking," says a deep, richly accented voice from the other end of the car. I startle, biting my tongue as I jolt upright.
"Please, lay back down. I haven't gotten to see to you yet."
"Who are you?" I demand, clutching my blanket up in front of me like a shield. Puka bleats and hops off the pallets to sniff around the car.
The intruder chuckles as my eyes range over them, but I can't help it.
They're one of the most striking people I've ever seen.
I settle on that word—striking—very carefully, because I can't actually decide if I like the look of them or not.
They're tall, broad shouldered and broad chested-with cool brown skin except for a patch of moon-white about their left eye which trails off like a dappling of stars over their eyebrow. Their hair is short, inky black, and artfully sculpted at the edges, just a little longer at the front.
But the most arresting aspect of their appearance is their eyes, which are black. Entirely black, with no whites whatsoever. As they step closer, the light of the car's lanterns glints off of them, revealing a Mire-like iridescent sheen.
"I am Dhajia Rheva Rhetrien of Palace Amorant, Kolikai," they say, looking away from me as they rummage about in a black leather satchel to their side. "But you may call me Rhetrien."
