Rain splattered off my face, and I awoke with a slight gasp. It was a mere drizzle, though the water was cold enough to disturb even me. Nearby, the brook sang its songs of peace, unperturbed by my awakening, glinting in the late morning sun. I looked beside myself and, for the briefest of moments, feared with no minor apprehension that Feia would have left already. But she was there. And I was glad. Her slight curves were hidden beneath the wool cloak, though her face and shoulders were exposed.

  I stared at her for some time. Compared to me, she was young, for though I had not physically aged much since my thirty-fifth year, I was likely the oldest person in the world. Time spent captured aside, even. Such was the nature of my lineage. Nevertheless, she was not a youth. No, she might have been in her late thirties, with hints of time’s wearing at the corners of her eyes and the sun-worn aging of skin that meant a good few years in the elements. In the peace of sleep, however, with her face not bent in some extreme of amusement or spite, lips and eyes relaxed, she looked less… world-weary. It was only now and in the throes of passion that the sharp, watchful look faded, and she seemed less a beast cornered in the woods and more a woman who could spend the rest of her days not thinking of violence and curses.

  I smiled. How high-handed of a thing for someone such as myself to think. I gave a quiet chuckle and laid back, ignoring the cold pinpricks of rain, already fading to mist, and pulled up the cloak to cover her from the weather. But not enough so that I could not see her face. I lay there, looking at her, idly aware of my own oddness in comparison. Little about me was usual for these people. My skin, my eyes, my speech and disposition… It never escaped me how truly foreign I was in these new lands. But she did not make me feel so odd—even my marks of Corruption did not frighten her. For some reason, Feia had regarded them with little more than curiosity and hungry approval. As if they signified my capacity as a Sorcerer and not a freakish failure. Of course, I was not so self-loathing as to allow my own fears to bleed into our copulation, but it was simply another factor in the separation between our worlds.

  I told myself Demetria would not resent me for sleeping with another woman. She would want me to be happy. After her death, I tried to part from my grief with physical companionship. Many desired me after my victories and rise in power, so there was no shortage of interested suitors. And yet, it hardly worked. I was despondent, empty. Proficient at forging an effective mask, but inside, I was suffering all the same. Eventually, I stopped trying and became the recluse researcher, ever-pushing for a breakthrough. For life once more.

  But something was different about Feia. She hated subtlety, and that ritualistic dance of courting was irrelevant to her. She was also honest, and in that, I felt companionship of a different sort: understanding. She’d lost someone too, perhaps more than one person. We both knew we could not replace each other’s past and didn’t try to. In only one night of sex, this became clear to me. It was… freeing, to say the least.

  Feia’s eyes opened. “I can feel your gaze. It is warm and testing.”

  “Testing?” I asked, a smile flickering forth.

  “Yes. I do not like to be looked upon, but I can withstand your probing stare far longer than most’s.” She gave me a keen, hungry grin. “What do you see when you look at me, Poet?”

  “Someone in further need of my attention.” I slid closer, a hand weaving under the layers, finding the warm, soft flesh of her thigh. Her eyes held mine as my hand slid higher, fingers light and grazing, bold yet subtle. In a low whisper, my voice roughened by the morning, I continued, “Someone who makes it difficult to keep my hands to myself.”

  “Good answer.” Her hand caught my wrist just as it touched the inside of her thigh. “But not enough.”

  “The subdued, peaceful beauty of your slumber allures me, but it is when you are awake, when the resilient strength of your character shines through your eyes in defiant triumph, that I find myself drawn to you the most,” I said, holding her stare.

  She let go of my hand. “Go on.”

  “Before me is a woman tested, challenged, threatened, but never broken. In the face of the dangers of the world she emerges not just with strength, but with potential. Before me is a Sorcerer this broken place is not prepared for.”

  Her breath hitched and she groped around until she found me under piles of my own discarded clothes, drawing me closer. “Hurry,” she hissed in my ear, shuffling onto her side. “Now.”

  I smiled in self-satisfaction. In something akin to admiration. She was strong, capable, and certain—such traits I pondered the presence of within myself many days when all I felt was guilt. But now, here I let myself drift away from such things. A reprieve. A release. Not quite peace, not really, but something akin to it. For the first time in decades, I felt the touch of it, and it was comforting and warm and sufficiently distracting. And it made me wonder that if given long enough, could I begin to move on? I doubted it, but I’d be a fool to toss this aside so easily. And so I tried to let myself enjoy her company and think of nothing else. Futile as it was.

  …

  Oskar stared at the Dead thing before him, with his hands on his hips and a skewed frown caught between confusion and worry. The camp was packing up after a late night of marching away from a town likely searching for his head, and so after pulling himself up and awake, he’d found this creature here. It was the biggest one called Protis—I can’t believe he gave it a fucking name!—and it was standing over a dead mountain lion. The big cat’s hind leg had nearly been torn off and its neck a grisly mess as if it’d been set upon by a few wolves. But from the blood around the Soulborne’s maw, it was clearly not the work of another wild predator. Others from the camp were gathered around gawking at the scene, clearly interested in whatever exchange was about to occur. And considering that this Protis could talk, well, Oskar was half-way curious too.

  “And what am I to do with this?” Oskar asked, eyebrow raised.

  “Soulborne,” it said, staring down at the massive cat.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Soulborne?”

  It said nothing, merely staring at its kill.

  “I think it means Daecinus can use it to make Soulborne,” Waker said from the side.

  “But it’s not a person.”

  “Maybe he can make Soulborne animals?”

  Oskar frowned. “I don’t think that’s how that works.” He turned and looked through camp until he found the priestess near her fire, doing minor stitchwork on her cloak. “Priestess! Can animals be used for necromancy?”

  She looked up and blinked as if seeing the scene for the first time. Maybe she was with how focused on her work she was. “Ah no. Not that I understand… They possess too little Soul energy to properly animate or infuse. They are used as fuel, at most.”

  “Hear that, big guy?” Oskar asked the undead. “No cat friend for you, I’m afraid.”

  Protis’s eyes flickered up towards him—which was an odd experience, to say the least, given the pure black nature of its eyes—and said after a moment, “Eat?”

  Oskar was about to nod and claim the whole thing when he noticed the creature’s hungry stare. Why would it offer something it wanted to him? Did it recognize him as a leader or was it merely following a command by Daecinus? Regardless, he figured having the goodwill of a monster that could rip apart a mountain lion without any apparent injury was a smart notion. “Much appreciated, Protis, but er, how about we take half, and you get the rest?”

  It grunted, eyes going back down to the creature. So Oskar nodded forward Nifont and a few others to get to work on sectioning off the beast. And, soon enough, they had a few good cuts ready for the fire. When they were done, the cat’s head, guts, and rear legs were left.

  “All yours,” he said.

  Protis gave a low, rumbling growl, and before long, the two other Dead ones appeared from the trees and joined it as they fell upon their kill with ravenous hunger. They broke bones and ate the marrow, drank blood, and feasted on its organs, paying only some attention to the leftover meat. Most of the others turned away, the sight too grizzly, but Oskar stood there, hands on his hips, head slightly cocked, watching. They looked like Dead eating a corpse, sure enough, but there was something so oddly human about how their hands moved, how their black eyes darted and squinted, searching out the next morsel. It was like watching starving men set upon a feast, is what it was.

  “They consume to replenish the Souls fueling them,” Emalia said, suddenly standing beside him.

  “Aye, I know that.”

  “Muscle contains little, surprisingly. Much is in the bones, though modern scholars have no unified, agreeable theory explaining why. Still, humans are far better sources—this is well known, at least.”

  “I’m just glad I wasn’t around when these things were on the battlefield,” he muttered, casting one more look upon the Soulborne before returning to his gear, crouching on cracking knees to assemble it for the day’s hike deeper into the mountains. “Blades and betrayal were enough for me.”

  After some time, when he was mostly finished and the roasted meat was getting handed out, the Soulbornes stood up immediately, stopping their feasting to swivel towards the woods. Oskar’s gut dropped, and he figured the inquisitors and the town militia might’ve caught up to them finally. He began reaching for his shield and spear when Daecinus emerged from the trees, shortly followed by Feia. They were spared a few glances from everyone, but no one gave them too much shit. Out of everyone, they were perhaps the least mockable, with their frightening command of Sorcery and so forth.

  Still, Oskar was always a bit more headstrong than the rest, he freely admitted. After all, it was what got him this life as a poor mercenary years ago in the first place. “Finally find your way back, did you?”

  Feia cast a wrist-cutting glare his way but said nothing, simply snorting. A few of the men chuckled, then ducked their heads like scared pups.

  “Don’t know how you didn’t freeze out there,” he continued, grinning wider and wider. “But I guess you were too preoccupied with staying warm in other ways now—”

  “Try as you may, you old blundering whoreson, I will not be baited by your snide and crude delving into our personal affairs,” Feia said, snatching a stick of meat from Waker’s hands and stabbing it at him.

  “Seems to me like you are.”

  “And it would seem to me like you have a desire to see your twisted destiny pruned of excess to the narrowest of paths that ends with your throat throttled and your body offered to Daecinus for more Soulborne.”

  Stanilo approached, letting out a low whistle, then clapping Oskar on the shoulder more firmly than necessary. “What a threat, eh? Best leave it all alone then, shall we?”

  That was probably the right call, probably the safe one, but so was never saying anything in the first place, and then he wouldn’t have Feia all twisted up so amusingly, now would he? Still, with some effort, Oskar reigned himself back and let out a sigh, pulled away from Stanilo’s hand, and approached Feia. She was shoving things in her back with a strip of greasy, stringy cat meat dangling from her teeth.

  “I was joking, of course, but, well, it’s good,” he said in a conversational tone, glancing around to the trees. “If it makes you happy, you know, that’s what matters.”

  “Oskar.”

  “Eh?” he asked, looking back at her.

  She was flushed with embarrassment, which was new for her. “This is worse.”

  He chuckled, then laughed, tossing his head back. “Well, alright, I’ll leave you alone then.” He walked away, still laughing to himself. Had to take a drink, clear his throat, and stand up on a old stump to move himself on to the next thing. “Alright, people, we’re moving out once everyone’s done eating. Stomp out the fires and leave no trace. We don’t want to wake up tomorrow to our kind Dead friends killing off a bunch of town guards, now do we? Right then. Let’s earn our pay and get closer to Drazivaska. I want to be over this mountain range within a few days’ time.”

  He finished his short speech, looking around for the Soulborne, but they were nowhere to be seen. Just a trail of blood from where the mountain lion’s carcass had been, leading into the trees. The sight made him shiver, and he had to remind himself again that they were on his side. Still, having them out of sight was likely worse than in, even if they were ugly bastards.

  “My apologies for their crude behavior,” Daecinus said. He was a pace away, hands folded behind his back, red eyes steady and observant. Like that of a viper. If they had red eyes, at least. “They will not feast in camp from now on.”

  “Ah, right. Well, they were good to catch the beast in the first place.”

  “They are adept hunters, for they leave little scent and make no sounds.”

  Oskar nodded, glancing around. “Ah, and my thanks for commanding the talking one to share. The men could use the meat before a cold march like this.”

  “I—” He paused, head cocked. “I see. Interesting.” He muttered some other things, though it was too fast and underpronounced for Oskar to try and read his lips. Even if he could to any reliable extent.

  “Yes, well, ready yourself; it’s going to be a long walk today.” Before Daecinus replied, Oskar walked off to busy himself with something else. He didn’t particularly care to get engaged in an extended discussion after the scene with Feia. No, he’d rather handle something he was better at. Like hassling his men until they were on the thin shepherd’s trail and marching again with hopes of the wind at their backs and sun upon their faces. Though the way the clouds looked, and how sour Nifont was while studying the sky, part of him knew they wouldn’t see much sun in a few hours. Or maybe even days.