Drazivaska, city of ruin, Neapoli of the West, Vasia’s Second Folly, the Kosican Bane—by its many names, the infamous Ruin was nearly before her, buried amongst the forests and low western hills of the Kosican Range. Emalia could just make out the slate roofs, vaulted arches, and stretching towers of Drazivasksa, once thought to be the Nova of the north before the empire’s reach was broken by calamity and barbarians. She sighed, pulling her eyes away from the dark, broken towers and manor roofs barely visible over the trees. She stood in a field, long since abandoned, the ridges and furrows still present under the browned, frost-touched grasses. Not far away, a small cluster of recessed hovels of a small hamlet, now dilapidated and crumbled with time. Some of the men squatted around a fire there, its thin trail of smoke filtering out the emptiness where a thatch roof once was. She didn’t think the Dead were in so great a force on the city’s outskirts, but Oskar was taking no risks, establishing watches at all times, and she was not one to argue.

  I’ve already endangered them much, she thought, glancing back up to a particularly tall tower peaking over the tree line, its innards exposed from collapse, showing the dark recess of a staircase. It was beautiful, haunting, and promising. Emalia struggled to take her eyes off it, some voice in her Soul whispering of portends of a divine future. They’ve followed me here to the ends of civilization on promises of riches and holy fame. But this land is dead, and my god is a demanding one.

  Days had passed since her vision, and each morning, she felt herself further and further from those around her. It was as if she were walking through a dream. Living in the shadows of the day, moments meant only to lead her to the next. To here. To Drazivaska.

  Sovina bumped her with an elbow. “Wishing for some good riveted mail now?”

  “No.” Emalia smiled, memories of their departure from Nova and Sovina’s futile insistence she wear armor, dissipating her melancholy with warm nostalgia. “Never. Far too noisy.”

  “We will have Dead around us here. I can feel it.”

  “Rotaalan was more dangerous, by my research.”

  “I know. But still.” Sovina craned her head high, her sharp, strong jaw raised in a moment of focus. She looked to be carved of marble, a heroic rendition. A saint’s devotion, defiance. “I sense Sorcery here. It wafts strong.”

  “The broken portal?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Emalia nodded, gaze flickering over her guardian, her companion. She was clad in mail, recently oiled and shining in the hazy sun, her soft quilted helm long since replaced with an iron one that sat atop it, though Emalia, as it shamed her to admit, could not remember when she got it. She frowned at this, scanning her mind as one does an archaic manuscript, deciphering the odd penmanship, the wearing of age. Other things had fled her. Small things. Small memories. She shook her head, returning to admire Sovina. To drink her in. Death might come soon, whatever Raizak’s plans for her, and suddenly, she felt the need to open her mouth and say something. To draw close and share a moment of humanity, of love. Though what that might be, she did not know. And as oddly as the sensation arose, the hesitancy and fear did too, making her mouth dry and hands shake.

  She went to speak, but a grey shape loped out of a cluster of nearby trees, a struggling form in its grasp. Protis. It was carrying something. She took a step towards it and recognized it: an animated corpse. Or, as Daecinus put it, a Shell.

  A few dozen strides away, she felt the Soulborne’s dark eyes on her. Black orbs of secrets. What did it tell Daecinus? What did he know of her renewed purpose?

  “Column-sister,” came Sovina’s voice, tentative, cautious. “I want to say something. And I don’t want you to doubt my loyalty or trust for it…”

  Emalia looked at her, seeing hesitance in her tightened lips, her held, searching gaze. “What do you mean?” she asked, voice high-pitched.

  “I’m sorry. My lack of surety is just making things worse… I want to ask—I need to ask—if you think this path is the right one. If retrieving the stone, and whatever comes next, must happen as we’ve thought.” The words were carefully articulated as if she were testing the ground with her expert swordship footwork. “The Crown of the Column… Where you had your first vision. Are you certain it was free of Sorcery? What if they never told us—”

  “Sovina, what are you saying?”

  “I…” She sighed, pausing to stare off at the mountains to their east, then turned and leaned in close. “Why would Raizak demand we sacrifice Daecinus? Why would he demand a portal stone and some Southern relic? What is this all for?”

  She doesn’t believe me. The thought struck her like a club to the chest, ripping at her heart. “How could you say any of this? How could you doubt me?”

  “I don’t. Em, I asked you not to doubt my loyalty or trust, and I mean that wholly. But gods, it just doesn’t make sense to me. And I know I am ignorant and have no place questioning you and your mind, but by the Column, are you fully sure that some Souls are not deceiving you? That your visions haven’t been twisted by—”

  “Was Feia’s insights not enough? Daecinus’s? They didn’t see Spells nor curses upon me.”

  “Why does Raizak want this?” she demanded, jaw set and firm.

  “He does not need to explain himself.”

  “Not if he demands death? If he demands complete obedience?”

  “No.”

  Sovina stepped in closer, less than a foot away. “I don’t like seeing you bent to unknown purposes like this. It’s pulling you apart from everything, from those around you…”

  “Raizak’s getting between us, you mean.”

  Her mouth opened, but she paused in hesitation, then nodded firmly. “That and more. And I worry, Emalia. Gods know you’re wiser than I, but if I didn’t worry here, I would be a poor Column-sister. A poor guardian.”

  Emalia’s tongue felt dry behind her tightly drawn lips. No words came to her. Rebuttals and arguments aplenty, certainly, but they all felt inadequate. So she looked away and found Daecinus with Protis, looking over a pinned Dead one. The others were there too, fire extinguished. “We need to get moving,” she said, not meeting Sovina’s eye.

  “Please don’t walk away from this. In all our years sworn to each other, we never have.”

  “We can discuss later. But now, we have a responsibility to see through.”

  “Emalia,” Sovina started, but she was already striding away, her skin hot with shame and directionless, unsated frustration. There was nothing she could say, and yet, much she needed to. So as she marched off, Emalia did her best to swallow her scowl and not think of why Sovina was bringing this up. It led back to Daecinus sowing discord, certainly, which meant Protis had spoken. In the end, it was her fault for speaking in a moment of weakness, of that she was not ignorant. And yet, it still seemed as if everyone were against her, doubting her, undermining her. And that thought, as petulant as it was, sat deep in her stomach and roiled with the buried shame, the grappled frustration. Even if resentment was a child’s reaction to that which they did not understand, an unfocused mind’s floundering, she could not sway its hold. And there, it festered.

  …

  “By the rotting Dead, look at this fucker,” Oskar muttered, crouching over the pinned and struggling Shambler. Its skin was dark with a spiderwebbing of blackened veins—not unlike those Daecinus tried to keep hidden—that stretched across its exposed, cracked flesh. Trying to bite at everyone gathered around it, the Dead thing had some nasty teeth like fangs.

  When it made to lung at him, snarling and leaking dark fluid, Oskar stepped back with hands on his hips. “He’s hardly a looker, this one.” He looked up to Daecinus, who was squinting down at the monstrosity with that penetrating stare of his. The one that made something shudder and go cold in Oskar’s chest. “Well, you figure the mad Sorcery of this place has got the Dead all Corrupted and ugly as they are? Wouldn’t want to get bit by one of these, I figure. Way it’s spitting everywhere, makes me think they’d infect you with the sickness. Heard some of ‘em can do that, believe it or not. Make you Corrupted.”

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  “Your estimation is not inaccurate.” He nodded to Protis, the main one holding the fucker down, and the Soulborne crushed its skull in one quick stomp of the foot. The Shambler twitched and writhed for another second or two before going still. “I will not risk conversion here. Other Dead may sense it.”

  “This one seemed stronger,” muttered Nifont, who stood beside him.

  “Aye. Maybe it’s got something to do with the Sorcery?” Oskar shot the man a questioning look, but Nifont just shrugged.

  Again, it was Daecinus who answered. “Drazivaska is home to a broken portal. While Pethya had never attempted to penetrate the Low, much less even build a permanent bridge, we had theorized on it. Souls will leak through here as if raised by a potent Caster, taking forms of flesh—both natural and not—and hunger for the living. We will find the immediate land around to be sour with Corruption and empty from the wandering Shells. The Dead themselves will be leaking Corruption, as with this one, and we should avoid confrontation at all costs lest they sink their teeth into you and you find yourself torn asunder by the demands of the Dead.” He stared off, and it took Oskar a second to realize he was looking past them towards Emalia and Sovina, who were finally coming to join. “We must be cautious indeed. The priestess’s knowledge will be of great use here.”

  Oskar nodded, glancing around to his men. Most met his gaze with their own looks of understanding. He’d spoken in hushed words to them inside the hovel around the fire earlier. If it came to violence between Emalia and Daecinus, they had their orders. Despite his better judgments, he’d included Feia, and she gave him plenty of mean stares and cryptic threats in return. But he was being fair, being reasonable. In the end, she would follow through; he was sure of it. Whatever she had with the ancient Sorcerer was a passing thing next to her bond with them. After all, the band came before all else.

  Sovina was the first to reach them. She nodded brusquely forward toward the city, shrouded by nature’s overgrowth. “Let’s get moving then. Only have so much daylight.”

  The men looked to Oskar. He grinned. “True enough. Personally, I don’t want to be pilling up gold and jewels in the dark. Sharp senses and blades, everyone.”

  So they left the field behind, and delved into the trees and along old, forgotten roads ripped up by incessant weeds and hungry tree roots. The two Column women took the front with Nifont and two of the Soulborne, Protis and the other hung back with Daecinus near the rear. Feia did too. He wasn’t the happiest about her being so close to the grey man, but what could he do? Tell her to walk somewhere else? Oskar sighed and exchanged glances with Stanilo. The big man raised his brow a tad, and though he was a rather straightforward, honest one, Stanilo had a knack for grasping others’ perspectives. At least someone here gets my bloody predicament, he thought with a frown, wishing he had his spear. But it’d been lost in the shithole that was Levanska, with the rush to escape the city. It might have fallen out or simply been left behind, he didn’t know. But now it was just a sword, and the gods knew he’d rather have a long spear to fight Corruption-leaking Dead than a short fucking blade. He sighed again. Wouldn’t be the adventure I was hoping for if things were easy. My fate needs a few twists Feia would be happy with to keep things interesting, eh?

  And so they went. Following the old, nature-eaten road wasn’t an easy thing, for the bricks were almost indecipherable from the overgrowth, so it really felt more like a shepherd’s path than some main way into an old city of alleged note. He still remembered the stories told of Drazivasksa, of tales before its demise and how it was supposed to change the world, to usher the empire into a new age and redeem its failures in Neapoli. Much good that’s done, he thought with a derisive snort. Typical boyar overreaching and blundering, sacrificing the common man for his arrogance, even back in the glory days. Maybe even more, if it were possible. Oskar spit to the side and marched on, lips twisted in a frown, eyes narrowed at the trees all around, waiting for the Dead to come. But they never did. It was quiet. The only sounds were their shoes on the ground, rustling of gear, hushed mutters, and wind through the leafless trees. There were no animals here.

  “This place is dead as a tomb,” he muttered, glancing around. “Better not Corrupt us.”

  “Emalia had said it was safe,” Stanilo replied.

  “Safe, hm? Except for the Dead. And whatever lingering Sorcery is in the broken portal, I would venture.”

  “Safe to enter. Maybe not to get out alive.”

  Oskar smirked. “Sounds like our kind of city.”

  On they went, trying not to think of what lay ahead or the potential dangers all around. It wasn’t an easy task, being in such an ominous place, but a soldier’s life was one of managing the strange line between monotony and fear, so the trepidation of a walk into a deathly abyss was one they all took on well enough, he reckoned, even though they were hardly soldiers anymore. And eventually, they caught sight of it through the tree, fully and truly.

  Cities were usually built up near rivers with plenty of fields around to feed it, more of an accidental thing than with any real, conscious planning. They might have walls, though it depended where you were, sure enough, but they almost always stretched beyond those walls with districts of shitty housing and unsavory trades clinging to the outskirts like lusting men to a whore’s dirtied woolens. Butchers and tanners and such, those smelly pricks. Cities were not, however, often found in the middle of forests with only a few strangled fields and hamlets to surround them. No, Drazivaska, in all its infamy, was walled and isolated in the northern edges of the Western world. And in the forests around, there were only a few scattered Shamblers, dark-veined and mean as they got, but only a few. He expected more, certainly, but it wouldn’t do to scowl at a nice enough surprise. So he didn’t, and they killed whichever isolated ones they couldn’t avoid.

  Now, they stood in the forest, staring up at the stone wall, pock-marked and time-worn, standing upon earthen ramparts before a man-deep ditch—all of which was overgrown and nearly part of the forest itself. Oskar stood with his hands on his hips, staring up at the top of the wall, wondering how many Dead lie inside.

  “And here I was hoping we’d not have to climb to get into another Ruin,” he muttered.

  A few of the men around chuckled, but most were silent, just staring on like freshly orphaned street urchins.

  It was Daecinus who spoke up, drawing everyone’s attention from the walls. “By the state of the roads and the prevalence of vines and creepers—” he nodded to the walls, where nature was reclaiming the barrier well enough “—there will be gaps. Let us follow the perimeter, and we may find one.”

  The men looked to Oskar, and he nodded his assent, waving a hand south. “A good notion. Don’t know if we have the ropes for this.”

  And again, so they went. Through the forest-choked fields with an eye to the wall and potential dangers all around. He expected Dead in droves here, but it was silent. Even with an ear to the city, he didn’t hear the tell-tale rasping moans of Shamblers in mass. Perhaps the broken portal had not drawn as many as he feared? That the stories of the Ruin’s horrors were overtold and Emalia was right? Maybe, but he’d be a shit mercenary to put too much stock in first glances.

  It wasn’t long until they stumbled upon the rubble-strewn opening. Some particularly persistent creepers had dug their way into the stones and caused an eventual collapse, for the craggy entrance was an overgrown and tangled mess.

  “Lots of plants here for a city of the Dead,” he said. “Thought you said the portal would kill everything around it or something?”

  “Latent, untamed Sorcery affects all living,” Daecinus replied, eyes narrowed at the collapsed wall. “It’s all Souls, in the end. Plants possess a minuscule amount—too small for any practical purpose for Sorcerers—just enough to enable responsiveness to Soul stimulus. But why it has enlivened them instead of killing them is the conundrum.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Plant matter usually dies around the greatest of Sorcerous exchanges, where the area has been depleted or experienced excessive reverberations… Ah, so that’s it.”

  Oskar sighed. Academic types were always so fucking opaque. “Care to enlighten the mortals around?”

  “The portal is not broken. It leaks Souls even still.”

  “What does that mean for us?” he asked, feeling cold and prickly all over.

  “Many things. Little for our mission. It does shed light on why it is important to venture here, however. If the broken portal has some function yet, then the retrieval of a piece of it might allow for Spells on a far grander, more demanding scale than a normal Soul-imbued environment can support. Supposing that’s the intention of Emalia’s vision visitor, of course.” They glanced at the priestess in question, who was approaching the wall with no sense of caution. Typical. “But,” Daecinus continued, “it might also offer me some potential to circumnavigate the restrictions of this age. One can only speculate what sorts of old relics lie in such a tomb, their strength enhanced by such leakage.”

  “That’s well and good, but we don’t have to worry about being—I don’t know, affected by this leaking portal? I don’t want to start hungering for flesh, Daecinus.”

  “Enough incessant whining,” Feia snapped. “Follow Daecinus’s direction and your Souls shall be preserved. We are here for a purpose, are we not?”

  Oskar screwed up his lips tight. “I’m hardly whining. It’s no small matter,” he said under his breath. Dead, he could fight. Dead, he could understand. All this Sorcery business and worries of things far beyond his control? Well, that was just something he couldn’t quite stand.

  Daecinus gazed out over the city. “She is right. Follow our leads, and you shall remain unharmed by Sorcery, at least.”

  Fine enough. Time to burn the boats. “Alright then, lads,” Oskar said, turning to face his band, “We’re going in quiet enough, but full kit. This time, we’re not taking any chances. Understand?” A murmer of agreements to that, but most were fidgeting and casting wary looks at the city’s looming walls. “In and out. She’s a pretty boyar’s daughter, Drazivaska is. Get in, have a pleasant time, and leave before anyone’s the wiser.” A more enheartening chuckle to that, at least. He smiled wide and made large enough gestures so they couldn’t see his hands shake. “They’re just corpses, ya hear? Bones and gristle that die like anything else. But with luck, we won’t need to kill any. So let’s move! The sun’s falling on us. I want to be back in camp by a warm fire when night hits us.”

  With the confidence from a speech and an undeniable momentum, Oskar strode forward, picking his way over the overgrown rubble, the first to enter Drazivaska.