Monolithic upsurges of once-flat swaths of land littered the landscape, jutting upward, forming a massive ring of rebellious earth in all directions away from the center point, leaving endless chasms and fissures in its wake. Taken individually, they were not so different from the various ruptures I'd been following since Kholis. Together, their barren teeth jutted upward, forming the decrepit fleurons of a crown that rested upon the head of a city I'd once called home.

  In the center, the castle remained, a stoic, silent guardian, its tallest spires reaching up through dark clouds. Not entirely intact—the east-facing tower was gone, likely crumbled behind the mostly intact walls that hid whatever remained of Topside and the quarters of lower-ranking nobility.

  I'd seen plenty of devastation, even in my first life. The remains were not so different from what my father left behind in the old days, when a demi-human city or village proved too problematic to ignore. Even from here, I could see the dark erosion left behind by the wave of blue fire.

  Somehow I knew, whatever I found there would only bring more pain.

  I felt the watch of the gilded eye beside me. She'd barely so much as glanced at it before observing me instead. As if to her, destruction on this scale was rote, almost to be expected. Dimly, through the shock, I prepared myself to weather whatever she might say. To endure it, no matter how cruel the mockery and cutting the tongue.

  "It only just occurred to me." Thoth said, her voice neutral, utterly unaffected by the sight of the natural destruction. "There's a grotto not far from here, beneath the chambers of a derelict church dedicated to a god or goddess no one remembers, close to a significant ley line. It houses a certain stone formation that absorbs a paltry amount of ambient mana, at a ratio that is next to nothing. But if we were to go there now, after its native ley line has so recently detonated—"

  "Wouldn't it be toxic? I thought that was the entire reason the practice was uncommon."

  "Look around." She half-shrugged.

  "Mmm." I made a noncommittal sound. There was no telling how long it was going to take to find what I was looking for. Anything that extended my capacity to remain in this accursed place was tempting, sheerly on merit of ceding more room to breathe. "Approximate distance?"

  "Twenty wingspan."

  "That's your interpretation of 'not far?'" I turned to her and raised an eyebrow. "We'll be out of supplies long before we reach that point."

  "Then it will be prescient to find more." Thoth paused, nearly leaving it at that. There was something in her expression, a slight tightness around the mouth that disappeared the moment I focused on her. "Are you in such a hurry to walk amongst the ashes of those you loved?"

  "Is there a reason you suddenly don't want me to go there?" I wheeled on her, feeling momentary relief finally wresting my eyes from the ruined city.

  "Our resources are scant. It's as simple as that." She scanned the landscape, losing interest in the exchange.

  It was interesting. The way things were developing. Thoth had always struck me as a descendant of the sphinx, so old and alien that her motivations and mannerisms were utterly inscrutable. For the most part, she was still that. But the water's surface was no longer perfectly placid, and in rare moments, I could actually glean insights into the depths.

  In a game of bluffs, Thoth held no equal. There was no question she'd lied to me countless times since our reunion, and nothing she'd said landed as overtly false. Some statements registered as truer than others, but that was the limit to my insight.

  But, if you took her behavior into context, weighed ambiguities in her intentions against what was actually said, small cracks showed.

  And, for once, I was damn near certain she didn't want me setting foot in the city.

  Grim as it is, this venture bears fruit already.

  "Well. Seeing as we're already here, and the seeping, oozing mess beneath that scarf won't weather that sort of distance well, might as well poke our heads in. See what's what." I forced a small smile.

  "Suit yourself. In the long run, it makes no difference." Thoth said.

  With that, she began the long descent down the slope towards the shattered road that had once led to the capital, past several dilapidated farmhouses that buttressed the hill.

  There was another cluster of residences near the outskirts, a sprawl of disorganized yet charming cabins that had gone up likely with the upsurge of nonhuman workers who wanted proximity but weren't able to afford housing within the already cramped city. Most were flattened, but several were less damaged.

  I paused beside one that was mostly intact, pointing towards it and turning to Thoth with an inquisitive eyebrow.

  Without so much as pausing, she blew past me, still walking with intention towards the city's gates.

  "This will do for our purposes." I called after her.

  "I'm tired of huts."

  "It's not a hut, it's a cabin." I frowned. "And we don't know the state of things within the city walls. If there are a great number of ghouls—"

  "There will be. But even with this endless gray, they loathe the sun more than the living." Thoth glanced back irritably, then nodded towards the front gate. "There should be a surgeon's station in the infirmary off the guards' barracks—the one attached to the tunnels that run through the walls. We won't even have to set foot in the city to reach it. That will be more sanitary and have what we need."

  "Right." I breathed out the surge of anger that threatened to overtake me. "'He who intends to siege a city should seek to have a deeper understanding of its inner-workings than the inhabitants.' I suppose you'd know it intimately."

  Thoth looked over her shoulder, nose wrinkled in disdain. "How is it, independent of timeline, you always somehow end up masturbating over Wi'rell?"

  It caught me entirely by surprise, and my mask slipped.

  "Fuck off."

  With zero concern for the surrounding dangers, Thoth threw back her head and laughed, continuing to chuckle to herself even as the city walls loomed higher.

  A glimpse I caught through the heavy cross-hatched iron of the still-closed gate set my teeth on edge. The sun-bleached stone of the sprawling homes and buildings within the walls were all dyed an ashen black. A distant creaking sounded in the distance, the discordant sound of decay as the pieces that had once formed a city slowly frayed apart. The fog—an old friend at this point—was thick enough to shroud the ground entirely, accenting the decay with an ocean of white.

  As loath as I was to admit it, I had no idea how to get the gate open from this side. Magic would make it simple work to slip through, but the short-range teleport provided by the dantalion flame was too costly to consider. We were probably better off walking the perimeter, finding a section of wall that'd been compromised, or failing that, one that'd be reasonable to climb.

  There was a grunt, then a curse.

  I turned, observing as Thoth stuck the remnants of a rusted-out blade through the gap in the heavy door, leaning forward to leverage her weight against the hilt. She pushed upward with all her might. Wood scraped metal, and the beam barring the door popped up beyond the viewport.

  Before the world had ended, there'd be a guard posted there at all times. Regardless, I made a mental note to see that the security was improved.

  "Don't look so sour." Thoth smirked.

  "On the contrary. Keep this up and a knighthood may be in order." I brushed past her, feeling a deep disquiet as my boots echoed within the wide hallway that slowly curved to the left.

  It wasn't often that I found myself here, within the walls that spanned the city. Every time I had, with the absence of windows, it carried with it the sensation of being deep beneath the surface.

  Entombed.

  The thin layer of ash that coated the walkway swirled along our feet as we made our way deeper in, passing several doors. None were marked, and all could be barred from either side, all identical, with the intention of making further ingress difficult, if not impossible. Only in this case we were the invaders.

  "A few further up." Thoth said, stopping me just as I reached for what was apparently the wrong door.

  "This one?"

  "Obviously."

  I turned the mechanism and pushed it open. A putrid scent rushed out, gases of decay and rot left behind by ruined food stores raising revulsion in my throat and bringing stinging moisture to my eyes. Just as quickly, I slammed it shut. "Dammit. Have you gone senile in your old age?"

  Stolen story; please report.

  In truth, I half suspected the mistake was intentional. A prank based on previous experience.

  But her reaction did nothing to support that theory. Instead, her lips formed a small 'o' of surprise, there for scant seconds before it was gone again, overtaken by placid neutrality. "Siege a city a few times, see if you remember what's behind every single door."

  "You just seemed so confident." I prodded at her, even as she opened another door, then moved to the next with a growing scowl.

  "Just because you're an amnesiac twat doesn't change the fact that you're technically older than I am."

  My mind went back to what she'd told me, picking up an incongruity. "I thought we were both there at the beginning."

  "More or less." Her brow furrowed as she braced, then opened another door. "Ah! Here we are."

  Beyond the door, an empty hall loomed before us. A single corpse lay strewn across it—less body than arrangement of ruined clothes strewn over a vaguely human ashen outline.

  There were more bodies further in, still eerily preserved as the villagers who took shelter in the various homes of Kholis had been. Guardsmen who'd been sitting around a table, all in various stages of alert. Notably, early alert. Gazes of concern cast towards the doorway, palms pressed against tables or gripping backs of chairs as several rose to attention, frowns frozen on their desaturated lips. Overall, they seemed less aware of their fate than the folk in the smaller towns and villages along the way, likely because the shockwave had originated here.

  A blessing and a curse.

  "Friends of yours?" Thoth asked.

  "No."

  "Then leave them. There'll be plenty of time for gawking later, once this wound is treated."

  "Now it's a matter of importance." I rolled my eyes, leaning back on my heels, forcing myself to mentally separate from the scene before me. But Thoth was already gone, her nearly silent footsteps leading deeper into the barracks and infirmary.

  By the time I found her in the surgical wing, she'd already arranged several implements on the metal tray next to the elevated bedside, along with a jar of antiseptic and disrobed from the torso up. Her pale skin was covered in bruises, so light it almost appeared translucent in the lantern light. A thick strip of fabric preserved her modesty, which was something of a relief. There were already too many terrible sights to be seen today.

  "Enjoying the view?" She mocked, seemingly unbothered. But the clenched fist at her side gave away her discomfort.

  "More impressed than anything else."

  "Impressed." She returned flatly.

  I nodded, straightening the implements. Everything I'd need was here, which meant she knew the process. But that begged the question, why wasn't she just doing it herself? Why have me do it? "Truly. It's not every day you meet a person so gifted in the art of denting themselves."

  "Shut up and do what we came here to do." Thoth reclined on the table.

  I felt her watching as I saturated the cloth with antiseptic. "Not to throw a stick in the spokes here, but you're a capable alchemist."

  "Not all alchemists are medically savvy." She said, not bothering to open her eyes, still reclining as if relaxing on some summer coast.

  "Yet enough are that it's a general expectation." I eyed the wound, frowning a little. It was an utter mess now, and whether her condition improved or worsened was in the realm of the absent gods. "Can't help but wonder why you didn't handle this yourself."

  "Because of the paucity."

  "Pretend I'm not omniscient."

  Thoth cracked an eye open. "Your royal, over-educated ass doesn't know what paucity means?"

  "An insufficiency, yes," I huffed out, growing irritable again. "What I'm lacking in is understanding how it applies here beyond describing your ability to navigate objects in your path."

  The open eye narrowed. "I am not bruised because I am clumsy."

  "I don't care."

  "It's the second time you've mentioned it."

  "Truly, I don't. Can we please stay on topic?"

  Thoth barked another laugh, then winced in pain. "Ghouls absorb mana. It is what drives them. The one that broke the skin—its nails penetrated, which sapped the mana from that specific, localized area. Not some of it. Not most of it. All of it. Any idea what that means?"

  Anyone with a basic understanding of the interplay between magic and life would.

  I swallowed and took a seat on the metal stool beside her.

  This would be a great deal more challenging than expected.

  "Necrosis."

  "Yes."

  I pulled the stool over, studying the wound again. "There's—uh—already hints of it around the lacerations. Worse than the last time I looked, though I noticed it then too. It doesn't seem nearly as advanced as it should be, given what you're describing."

  "Because it's beneath the surface." Thoth gripped the affected area tightly, roughly shifting it with her thumb and second finger, drawing a fresh trickle of blood and weeping fluid from the wound. I saw it then, a patch of black as purulent as could be.

  "This is beyond my ability."

  "Then I suppose I'll just kill you, wait for the fever, and pass on." Thoth shrugged, as if she truly didn't care.

  I shook my head, turning away to search the nearby cabinets. "Even if I was willing to do what you're asking, the process will not be kind. The flesh needs to be debrided. A significant mass will have to be removed—literally carved off—and without healing magic, we'll have no method of regrowing the flesh."

  "To that end, I already have the solution." Thoth tilted her head towards her bag.

  "Where's the milk of the poppy? We have some, I saw it amongst the supplies."

  "No need. The real problem is thrashing. I'll take a sip of paralytic and call it done."

  It was everything I could do to suppress my reaction. Surely it was a joke. Any moment now, she'd start cackling again and ask for henbane instead. That would numb the pain and keep her conscious. It had to be something—anything—other than the massive blunder it appeared to be.

  "Fetch it. Hard case within the first pocket of my satchel, third vial from the right. Color of a plum's ass."

  As if directed by some outside force, my legs stood, carrying me to the rear of the room where her satchel was stuffed in the corner, along with the rest of the belongings. Still feeling oddly detached, I opened the satchel and untied the wrappings that kept the case closed. Among dozens of small containers, the vial third from the right was a muddy purple.

  "This one?" I held it up and asked.

  My voice echoed oddly, resembling someone else's.

  "Bring it here." Thoth waved me over and took it. As I watched, tension rising within me, she unscrewed the cap and took a small sip, around a third.

  She's no fool. This is a trick. Another test.

  She shifted uncomfortably, doing an excellent job of feigning the stiffness that accompanied paralysis. I knew the symptoms well, as I'd employed them often in the early days. If she'd been feigning poorly, she would have simply held still. But paralytics took hold in stages, starting from wherever they were absorbed in the body and expanding outward. Thoth did an excellent job of mimicking the stiffness around her waist, slowly freezing as the paralytic spread outward.

  As her neck tightened and she pushed her head back against the operating table with growing discomfort, her lips formed words that, even in the silence, were barely audible.

  "Show me who you really are."

  I spoke words that were not my own. "Before I close your eyes, I'm going to test your reflexes. Make sure it's working so the rest of this goes smoothly."

  There was no reply. No flicker of acknowledgment, or minute pull of the lips. It hardly passed as a real test, but it could be difficult to control reflexive responses, which made it useful, though not nearly enough.

  I took one of the nearby implements with a hefty handle and tapped just below her kneecap, waiting for the involuntary movement.

  None came.

  Briefly, I recalled a memory, of when I'd landed a hit in the sanctum, cutting her cheek with a poisoned knife. Some part of me had believed it was part of her apparent invincibility, a blanket immunity to poison. That wasn't necessarily the case. It was possible she was deft enough with her water element to filter poisons from the blood. It was a legendary technique, with some argument as to whether or not it could actually be done, but it had more grounding in reality than most.

  Beyond that, it was also possible that she simply metabolized things faster than the average person.

  Which meant if I moved, if I... acted. The moment was now.

  This would all be so much easier if I didn't have her biting at my heels, yapping in my ear about everything other than what actually mattered. And if she truly was banking on her metabolism outpacing whatever horrors she expected me to inflict, she had another thing coming.

  Because the thought of torture still turned my stomach.

  But alternatively, the thought of finally being free of her, no matter how temporary, finally unchained from the source of so much pain and fear, was more desirable than I'd ever truly realized until that specific moment.

  A scalpel found its way into my hands unbidden. I pressed it against her throat, feeling it shudder as the vein beneath throbbed, yearning for me to press down, to please, oh please, just get it over with already.

  I wanted it more than I'd ever...

  No.

  No, that wasn't true.

  I wanted Kholis, and the three days I'd spent there to repeat forever. To weave flowers amongst wicker baskets and wax them like tiny boats. I wanted to hold and be held in return. I wanted it all, so much more than I wanted blood.

  And if I did this, I'd have to face the only person who mattered, and tell her that sacrifice had been for nothing.

  Possessed with a sudden anger, I leaned down and spoke directly in her ear. "Whatever game you're playing, I've lost interest. The next time you need a procedure, have the spare do it for you. Yes. I'm not so stupid that I missed that, nor the time it must have taken to set up this farce. Whatever the intended outcome, I have no interest in indulging the sort of reckless risks you revel in. I am Cairn, Prince of Whitefall. Not some personal attendant to play with at your leisure."

  With that, I let the bloodlust pass, and, once I was sure it was gone, began excising the worst of it, cutting quickly and efficiently. Perhaps quicker than was necessary, or kind, but she'd declined anything for the pain, and so long as I wasn't sloppy about it, quicker was better here.

  Minutes passed, turning to hours.

  The entire wound was cut, cleaned, and was nearly ready to be dressed.

  There was just one last stubborn piece of necrotic flesh remaining, perilously deep. I dug at it, wincing as the scalpel brushed something hard beneath the flesh that could only be bone. Another scrape, and another.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her visage flush red, starting at her neck and leading all the way up to her cheeks.

  I barely had enough time to feel relief before there was an explosion of movement and my throat was seized in an iron grasp.

  "It is done," I eked out, immediately growing lightheaded.

  "You took far too much pleasure in it." Thoth growled.

  "I didn't. Look for yourself."

  Chest still heaving from exertion, Thoth looked down at the wound. It was good work, albeit devilishly difficult, the sort of accomplishment that would have made Gunther proud. She stared at it, then back to me in disbelief, and her grip loosened.

  Something else passed there, a deep, horrified understanding.

  "The asmodials. You gave them your soul?"

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