![]() Tariq’s joints were, I had gathered, sometimes even worse than my own bad leg. I was only when they lowered themselves into the grass by my side and groaned in pain that I recognized who it was. ![]() If the phalanges had not gotten in the way there was nothing to worry of, so my eyes remained closed. Not Hakram, I thought, and immediately felt guilty. I couldn’t be sure how long I stayed like this, but eventually I heard footsteps coming up the hill. I leaned in the grass, staff at my side, and looked up at the twilit sky of this strange realm we still understood so very little. Faintly I saw the phalanges beginning a watch around me, but they were not obvious and I made myself not notice them. I found a grassy hill, past the outskirts of the camp, where I slowly slumped into the cool blades of grass. The wind kept carrying them to my ear, though, and so further and further away I went. I forced myself to ignore the moans and weeping from the tents, the soldiers that would not be saved because we did not have enough left in us to save them. I gestured curtly for her to leave me be. One of the phalanges, who’d been following me like loyal hounds all night, came close to offer me an arm to lean on. My leg throbbed so harshly I felt like I might weep, and now that I had released Night my vision was swimming. I limped away after passing my patient to a priest who couldn’t be older than seventeen – I have taken a generation of my people to war, I grieved, harvested them like a farmer reaping wheat – and leaning heavily on my staff. Night didn’t heal in the intuitive manner that Light did so any mistake on my part was likely to kill the wounded involved. It was only when the power grew sluggish in my hands, when my weave slipped and I almost drew poison into a young goblin’s heart instead out of his veins, that I forced myself to stop. I lost myself to the beat, knowing that General Zola and Adjutant would see to the needs of the Second without me. I pulled out poison and curses, slowed the flow of blood to a crawl and forced hearts to keep beating, Night coming to my hand sharp and steady. Soldiers with faces chewed off, with limbs ripped and bones that’d pierced through the skin. Time grew clouded, the kind of mist where one could get lost for a lifetime going around in circles, and I went from blood to blood. I couldn’t save them, for Night would ever be the power of a thief, but I could steal them enough hours that someone else might be able to. With Night little more could be done than delaying death, but that served a purpose.Įvery hour meant one more priest Light was no longer burning up from the inside, one more mage whose limbs ceased trembling enough for them to be able to cast. Even Akua, though some refused her help and I had to surround her with a protective detail. ![]() Masego – borrowing the last gasps of the Summoner’s sorcery – taught the Apprentice emergency surgery on the most brutal of the beds, snatching the slightest sparks of life and fanning them back to a flame. Tariq, looking himself a step into the grave, moved tirelessly even and he grew more and more wan. What few mages were still capable of casting spent themselves raw in the healer tents, the healers among the House Insurgents moved wearily from one half-corpse to another and I demanded the same of every Named that could still move. ![]() Usually the Twilight Ways were a beautiful place, but this time they were as a sea of the wounded and dying. “Beware of they who laud war, for one who loves the locust cannot love the crop.” – Extract from the transcript of the ‘Sermon of the Shores’, as spoken by Sister Salienta ![]()
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