Parsec

She’d obscured his vacant face with the drape of a hood. From there, things weren’t too difficult. Carrying him through the air might have drawn too much attention, so she made him lurch beside her. He was capable of carrying his own pack, though it had taken her assistance to strap it on. Directing fine coordination was beyond her skill. Possibly it was also due to him not being truly dead. Either way, it made her work difficult.

Parsec marched through the streets and for the first time in her life, tried not to pay too much attention to her surrounds.

Paying attention filled her head with flashes of unwanted particulars: phantom footsteps and the peculiarities of human-gait, not to mention strange and unpleasant jolts whenever Jackal brushed up against strands of stray magic in the streets. Humans liked to wear more charms than she’d assumed. Every other shopfront-ward set her teeth on edge if they passed within an arm’s length. Active threads of necromantic magic weren’t pleased with working alongside any other kind. She disliked it immensely; it felt as if the magic were set on hoarding its practitioner to itself.

Directing Jackal’s every motion swiftly became tiring, enough that she took another drop of syrup. She’d strapped the vials themselves to her waist—they nestled in a padded pouch borrowed from his belongings, once she’d emptied the metal tokens within into the bottom of his pack.

Her headache grew as time bore on. She was not used to sustained magical efforts. Eventually, she twisted several of her necromancer’s ties together to form a makeshift leash. It plunged into his sternum and instructed his body to copy whatever motion she performed, two steps away and just out of phase enough to look natural. A clumsy solution, requiring many precious minutes of trial and error in the shadow of a back alley, but it sufficed. She was almost pleased when it worked as well as it did.

Kraedia streets were not winding. She found her way out of the city soon enough. Plunging into the surrounding territory was more difficult. There was a signposted road leading to the oldwoods, but she doubted they would let her through the gate—so she’d decided to trace a stepwise route instead.

With Jackal silent and no Venera to warn her, she only realised the creeping danger as she approached. Mineral geysers spouted hot steam across the sandy fields. An inviting line of oldwood lay past this area, but she could hardly sprint across and hope for the best, could she? Flying alone might work, but carrying Jackal would provide a suspicious silhouette, even from afar. If Kraedian Hivers were anywhere as good as Glister’s, patrols would still be able to see them this far out.

He stumbled over an easily-avoidable piece of rock. She tugged at the leash and it twinged as if in sympathy.

She stopped as an idea occurred to her: perhaps she did not have to carry him.

“Stay,” she told him, and flew upward.

The necromantic leash had give to it, but she hadn’t tested its limits until now. She made it about thirty feet before the line stretched taut and gave a warning tug. When she tried going further, she found she couldn’t control his movements anymore. The sense was still there, but trying to move him was blunted, slippery, ineffectual. Her gaze roved over the lay of the land: little hills and hollows, clusters of rock hiding spouts. It wasn’t the best view she could have gotten, but it would do.

She descended until she was within range again. Slowly, carefully, she guided Jackal over the geyser field. Occasionally, one would spout, its steam dispersed by the wind before it reached her. The scent reminded her of heated metal and crushed stone and old things buried in ash. They reached the beginnings of forest in a reasonable, if not slightly aggravating, timeframe. It was here that she descended into the cover of the treeline, feeling the necromantic leash relax with every foot drawn closer.

Stray clumps of woodland understory escaped the confines of its fencing. The fence itself was filament-like, its physical components high enough to fly over but threaded with warning flashes of runesign. Additional human signage had been posted along it in intervals: little yellow squares displaying stark black glyphs. Mimicry of bees. Perhaps humans understood aposematism more than she assumed. Parsec paused a foot before the fence and scented carefully.

The air tasted faintly of high enchantment, and she doubted the wards ended where the fencetop did. This was the domain of the most highly-ranked humans, but surely there was not enough of a power source to cloak this entire segment of woodland from above. Still, any decent defense would have a multitude of tripwires threaded overhead. This, she had learned from shoring up the outer Hival defenses. If she touched a tripwire upon descent and it sensed her magic, it would send a signal to trigger an alarm. She had no way of blocking that signal or silencing that alarm, but perhaps…she remembered the jolting against other magics, the shivering sting across her teeth.

She couldn’t use Jackal to nudge at the wards, but perhaps she could use something else. She sniffed the shrubbery for signs of dead things. Eventually, her scenting led her to a withered bird’s body, crawling with maggots.

Kneeling over the broken corpse, she picked the worms out one by one. Binding the bird was surprisingly easy. She had more than a few necromantic filaments to string it with, despite the many used on keeping Jackal upright. She only hoped this would work: the bird still had her magic in it, even if it was a weak echo. Would it be too much and still snag upon the tripwire? Briefly, she considered calling for Venera—but no. She was determined to not disrupt Venera, and she would not injure herself more than she needed to.

She took the dead bird in hand and made it fly.

Maneuvering differently-configured wings through thought and magic alone took focus, but it didn’t hurt her in the same way growing additional wings had. The necromantic magic flowed like water, settling comfortably into the vessel she’d given it: the bird’s bones were shattered in places and the flesh had been well picked-over, but it hardly mattered. The revenant-bird swooped upward at her will, an extension of wing and arm and tail all at once. Admittedly, her senses were blunted, and the proximity to the fencing had her battling discomfort until the bird reached open air, but it was a start.

The hidden wards seemed to end about thirty feet up. She swept the bird around in scouting patterns, tilting it away whenever she felt that tell-tale jolt in her spines. On finding a patch of air that didn’t elicit a twinge of recognition, she made the bird hover in place to mark the position. Carrying Jackal was half an ordeal; at least she could command him to not squirm about, as live passengers often tended to.

She brought the bird with her as she landed amongst the trees, perching it onto her shoulder. Its weight bothered her momentarily, something amiss with the situation. She floundered as she scanned the surrounds, before realising the bird occupied the space where Venera ought to be. She dislodged it and made it sit atop Jackal’s head for the time being.

Scanning again, scenting carefully—there was a trace of unfamiliar human, lingering some ways off. It made unfortunate sense: if the claimants of this oldwood were truly powerful, they’d surely have a worker to spare for its inner reaches.

Parsec navigated her way through the shrubbery. Whiffs of wood-rot led her towards a hollowed tree trunk, by some miracle still standing. She made Jackal crawl inside; the colours of his clothing were more easily seen against the shrubbery. She dug through the lengths of rope in his pack and emerged with two of the most magic-soaked ones, the ends etched with runes. Then she half-flew, half-clambered up into the canopy, thick and green with summer growth.

Now for the problem of finding the human and locating deer: she sent her dead bird scouting ahead for stray enchantments. Concentrating on directing the bird left her waiting still and silent, safe in her makeshift nest, navigating with a sense of the bird’s position relative to her own. She prepared to move if needed, but found she could send it far further than she could move from Jackal before the leash began to strain—half a mile, perhaps. A line of sight would have made things easier, but she managed to avoid outright crashing its corpse into tree trunks. Several times, it got caught in branches while circling, but some quality of its body being far more dead than Jackal’s allowed her to twist it this way and that until it extricated itself.

It took about three progressively larger sweeps before her jaw thrummed with muted discomfort, indicating some other source of magic nearby. Another two passes in alternate directions, and she could pinpoint the location of the source. She landed her bird onto a branch above it and wished she could see through its eyes. She made do with the distance-sense instead—about a third of a mile to the east—keeping the bird where it was as a marker.

She dropped back down to the forest floor, hesitating at the idea of bringing Jackal with her. His movements were uncoordinated no matter how much she tried to refine them. His tread might be too heavy; if a guard cast at them, would she be able to shield them both, or make him dive aside in time? In the end, she left him hidden inside the hollow tree, dragging a rotting log in front of the opening to obscure him from sight. She severed the necromantic leash and observed him for a few minutes, but he remained in the torpor-state she had originally found him in, making no effort to move or push the log aside. Satisfied that he would remain hidden, she circled round to flank the position of what was likely a Magister’s guard.

The guard, when she came into view, was at the edge of a clearing. She leaned in dappled shadow with her back against a tree trunk, flanked by half a dozen grazing deer. Parsec assessed the scene from a branch overhead: the singular human, with her hair twisted into a circular coil upon her head. She wore leather armour atop a thick padded vest and breeches, all well-fitted, with no loose straps or bunching of material: no easy handholds. The sword at her hip smelled of clove oils and enchantment; the armour, too, seemed to have runes stitched across its surface.

The deer were not what she had expected, either. They had dusky coats with a blueish sheen to them, not at all golden like the elder’s tales. Some had glinting eyes or glow-tipped antlers, and others possessed frilled blue outgrowths along their backs and shoulders, like fungi on fallen wood. Still, they looked large enough. The guard was not a small human, but her head only reached the height of the deers’ necks. Just one should be enough to fill Jackal’s stomach with plenty to spare.

One human, one deer. That was the objective. Syrup flowed through her veins; she could handle a straightforward fight on either without problem. The true issue lay in drawing attention from other guards if she went for the deer first. Likewise, she might send the deer scattering if she tried to subdue the human. And after she killed the deer, she would need time to bring Jackal here and leave time for him to eat…

Well, she had necromancy at her disposal, and the duties befitting of a General had taught her patience. She sent her bird flying, on the lookout for more twinges of enchantment. The forest was very large. In time, the circling bird reported three others nearby, all out of voice’s reach. Still, she twitched her spines in agitation, hesitant to drop down from the canopy. She recalled some of the bolder Lieutenants experimenting with long-distance spells, speaking into their hands and hearing a reply from a mile away. There was a chance the guard was fast enough to send out a shout, and then she would have a much more difficult task ahead of her.

If Venera were here, she might know an Archival teaching for silencing. But no, that was a slim chance. Venera was busy and summoning her back would leave Parsec in great pain.

Fly with own wings, she recalled, those half-words tinged with gentle admonishment. Much as she would have liked the comfort of her Titania at her shoulder, she would have to complete this task alone.

A distraction, she thought. If these guards were not just for show, they would be familiar with the signs of poachers. She turned her scenting away, seeking more dead things. Moist soil, more deer, crumbling logs…and a hint of rotting flesh, some ways off. She slithered down the tree and followed it, crawling low across the undergrowth. It took several minutes, but the scent-trail led her to a fresh fox’s corpse, crawling with insects. It fur was dull, matted with mud; the body looked old and thin and spent, even without the flesh nibbled away. The insects scattered as she took ahold with her magic. She made the fox lope round to the edge of the clearing as she traveled overhead, fluttering from canopy to canopy, guided by the invisible beacon of her dead bird.

Positioning the fox on the opposite side of the clearing strained her control of it. How strange; moving the bird there would have been easy. Did it have to do with the size, or the amount of decay? She pondered this as she positioned herself slowly, creeping ever-closer until she was directly above the Magister’s guard.

She set her bird circling for surveillance, and waited. The deer grazed, moving languidly about. Most lingered strangely close to the guard; perhaps they were trained to do so. But a pair of bolder, deer—visibly plumper ones, craving fresh grasses—ventured past the center of the clearing and over to the opposing side. It took the better part of an hour for them to nibble their way across, but Parsec was nothing if not patient when it came to the hunt. Overeagerness left one landing short, and landing short back in the shattered lands had meant long nights of hunger and near-starvation, punctuated by the whimpers of weakened fledglings.

Parsec waited, coiling borrowed rope over her fingers. Her fox waited too, crouched deathly-still in a patch of longer grasses.

Finally, one of the deer nudged up against the border of the clearing.

Now, she mouthed to herself.

The fox lunged and bit. Dead jaws clamped shut around living fetlock. The fox was not so old that it had lost all of its teeth. The deer screamed, sharp and shrill, and Parsec felt a shiver of sensation—ghostly canines overlaid over her own mouth—as she forced the fox to bite deeper.

The guard cried out in alarm and drew her sword as she sprang toward the screaming deer. Parsec dropped onto her shoulders from above. Flailing limbs. Another cry—of surprise. Legs crumpling beneath her weight.

Parsec wound a length of rope round one wrist, which was beginning to glow with spell-light. She jabbed her knee into the back of the guard’s head and muffled her garbled shout into the soil. The sword-arm flailed—Parsec grabbed it and forced it down as a spell burst from the tip. The spell—bright red and glowing fiercely—slammed into a tree-trunk, leaving a scorch-mark. It was only the forced angle of the guard’s arm that had sent it there instead of upwards.

Deer snorted and scattered as she attempted to wrest the sword out of the guard’s grasp. The guard thrashed, trying to buck her off; she peeled her hand away from the hilt, possibly breaking a finger in the process. The struggle was too prolonged for her liking, and irritating enough that she couldn’t bring herself to care about the harm inflicted.

She hadn’t expected the sword to work as a wand or a flare. It had been a close call; she should have accounted for it, and the fact that she had not further irritated her. Eventually, she succeeded at removing the sword and binding the guard’s arms and legs. No wings or tail to worry about, but she tore a strip off the edge of her tunic to gag the human’s mouth with, just in case. She held the sword and considered it warily, before throwing it to lodge into a high branch overhead.

At last, she turned her attention to the limping deer. She’d commanded the fox to bite and hold, and it had done so. The deer bled and limped and tried to kick—it didn’t matter. The fox was already dead. Parsec grasped the deer by the antlers, dragging it to the ground. She hadn’t hunted a creature of this size for a long time, but she knew the fundamental steps. Fell the prey. Go for the throat.

The dark hide of its neck was furred and tough, impeded by bluish fungal growths. It was a struggle for her to latch her teeth upon. The fox hung off its back leg, not helping in the slightest. She broke the deer’s front leg when it tried to stand and struggled to bite deeply. She paused, cursing herself for not bringing a knife from Jackal’s pack. She thought of workarounds instead, of Lieutenants pulling blades from their own chitin. The thought hit her right between the eyes: not as painful as when Venera had first initiated it, but bad enough.

She lost her grip on the deer as it tossed its head and screamed again. It stank of blood and sweat and fear. The screaming was a problem. She needed it dead, fast. Shaping a knife from her arm was like clawing sap from a tree, harder than with Venera’s help. She ended up with a meager fragment, barely longer than her hand—it would do. She stabbed the shard into its neck. When she withdrew, bluish blood flowed out. She stabbed again, deeper, until she hit some vessel that spurted far more forcefully.

Something slammed into her back, human-sized and human-weighted. Her shoulder hit soil. Somehow, the guard had shuffled herself upright despite her bindings. Parsec lashed out with her shard of chitin, but it was already melting back into her hand. The guard dropped a glint of metal at her feet.

She tried to cast a shield at the same time as the guard did—a mistake. The necromantic magic rejected the attempt, blazing lines of pain up every tooth, down every spine. The metallic thing burst into spell-light as the guard rolled herself away, still bound but too mobile. More pain followed fast; the spell-light burned where it touched. Parsec hissed and tried to stand—and couldn’t. The metal thing, whatever it was, had deployed tangling vines around her arms and legs and tail.

She detached her fox from the fallen deer. The guard had rolled her way over to a tree stump and was attempting to fray her bindings against a splintered outcrop of branch. Parsec stared her down as she made her fox gnaw at the vines. A few well-placed bites, and her arm was free to aid in pulling the rest of it away. She launched across the clearing and hauled the guard away from the stump. Spell-light fluttered at the guard’s fingertips, making slashing motions across the rope to no avail. Good of Jackal, to have picked such high-quality tools.

Parsec dropped her at the center of the clearing and looked at the dead deer. Hissing faintly, she severed her connection to the fox and leashed the deer instead, embedding filaments into its cooling body and ruined leg. It lurched upright, still leaking blood. She walked the deer over and laid it sideways on top of the guard; its weight would pin her down and if not, it would provide information on her position if she moved or tried to escape.

Her circling bird told her the other glimmers of guard-magic hadn’t moved from their positions, so she flew back to Jackal with little regard for stealth. He was bleeding when she dragged him from the tree hollow. She looked him over in alarm, noting fresh wounds; he’d chewed his own lip open. The bandage she’d wrapped around his arm had come partially undone, and his other arm made ineffective motions, clawing at the linen with blunt fingers.

Leashing him to the necromantic magic was a struggle, like claws slipping against stone, and she could sense, just barely, the guard halfway wriggling her way out from beneath the dead deer. She snarled in frustration and carried him without regard, binding his sluggish struggles with great difficulty as she went. Did the difficulty mean he was more alive than he was before? If that meant the incubation was ending, it might not be a good thing.

She dropped him onto the grass, drew another blade of chitin from her hand, and sliced the deer open along the ribs and belly. The guard cringed away and made a sound as blood dripped from the gash and onto her cheek. Parsec ignored her and worked a section of the hide away, exposing flesh.

“Here,” she told Jackal. She loosened her leash on his not-yet-dead body. “Eat.”

He moved slowly, as if unsure, but he seemed to know what to do. He plunged his hands into the belly and withdrew handfuls of pale organs, cramming them into his mouth. The guard made another muffled sound of distress, and Jackal paused in his eating. His head turned without Parsec’s input. He looked at the guard with glassy eyes. Parsec stepped forward and dragged her out from beneath the deer before anything unsavoury could happen.

Jackal turned his attention back to the deer and took bites out of its exposed side. Parsec busied herself with restraining the guard—who gave muffled shouts of protest at irregular intervals—and watched him carefully. A few minutes passed; she could feel her necromantic magic slowly slipping. She hoped that was a good thing. She’d done all she could.

At last, the necromancy could no longer grasp him. She watched and waited as he slowed in his eating and came to a halt. His body stilled as it had before and he swayed on his knees, blinking several times. He put a hand to his face and blinked some more at the blood there.

“Hhhnnuuuuh,” he said, and toppled sideways onto the grass. His pack cushioned his fall.

Parsec lurched the deer upright. She dragged the guard along and shoved her beneath the weight of the creature once more, before walking over to Jackal.

“Are you here?” she asked. She knelt by his head and waved a hand in front of his face. “Can you hear me now?”

“P-Parsec,” he mumbled. “What’s…where are…” He sounded queasy.

She pulled him upright, into a sitting position. He didn’t seem to like that; instead of speaking more, he put his head between his knees and groaned.

“What…shit, what happened? Where are we?”

“You were unresponsive. Hungering, biting at yourself. It is likely because of the thing in your head.” She wondered how to explain the concept of incubation to him and settled with, “Eating flesh brought you back. Luckily it was not your own.”

He raised his head and looked around, gaze fixing onto the deer and the guard beneath it.

“Oh fuck,” he said. “Is that—”

“The human is alive. And it was I who killed the deer.”

“Oh, gods.” He clutched at his head, then looked up at the canopy. “We’re in the oldwoods? And I—I ate that?” He stopped touching his head and looked at the bluish fluids coating his fingers.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Try to refrain from doing so. I went to considerable effort to get you here.”

“Here? Oh, for fuck’s—” he scrambled to his feet, sounding panicked. “We gotta get out. Right now. What the fuck, how did you even—didn’t you see the signs? That guard’s not the only one. We gotta run. We’re gonna be arrested, they’ll chop your fingers off. Or our heads. Let’s go!”

Her circling bird hadn’t picked up on any changes in guard positioning, but he seemed distressed. Shrugging, she grabbed him by the arms and rose into the air. Her bird abandoned its surveillance-course and started sweeping again at her command, seeking an opening free of warding tripwires. Parsec used its position as a guidepost and burst skywards. She breached the level of the wards and skimmed as low as she dared over the treetops to avoid communicating their silhouette across the skies. Her bird served her well in that regard, skimming lower still to mark out the bounds of the tripwires.

She cleared the forest and began to descend. The dead bird followed in her wake, and for a moment she considered keeping it. But Jackal was shivering faintly in her grip, and it was perhaps not the best time to explain. In time, there would be other dead things to use.

She severed her hold on the bird and felt it die for good. Its body plunged into the treetops and she descended, far more gently, toward clear ground.