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Chapter 12: What Remains

Chapter 12: What Remains

Rook did not slow until the last of the pale formations fell behind them. He stopped at the edge of the new region and studied the darkness ahead, his falchion still held ready in one hand.

Mara climbed onto the final ledge beside him.

A forest waited below.

After the black grass, barren ruins and malformed creatures of the field, the sight appeared almost welcoming. Trees crowded together in numbers she could not count, their branches spreading into a thick canopy. Some possessed trunks broad enough to contain houses. Others were short and crooked, growing in clusters beneath the larger trees. Thin silver bark stood beside dark wood covered in thorns, while pale roots twisted above the soil before plunging back beneath it.

There seemed to be no order to any of it.

Trees that should never have grown within the same climate stood side by side. Broad tropical leaves brushed against bare white branches. Long vines hung among clusters of dark needles. Some trees flowered while others carried heavy fruit, their branches bowing beneath red, yellow and violet shapes.

The forest even smelled alive.

Wet soil. Sap. Rotting leaves. Something sweet hanging beneath it all.

Mara stared at it. After everything they had crossed, the ordinary scents felt almost unnatural.

Rook descended without comment.

She followed more carefully, her bare foot protesting whenever it pressed against sharp stone. The pain remained, but the wounds themselves had already begun closing. By the time they reached the forest floor, the cuts had become little more than thin lines across her skin.

Rook stepped beneath the first branches.

Dark leaves folded overhead, swallowing what little open sky remained. The lantern’s blue glow spread across roots, fallen leaves and patches of unfamiliar moss. It revealed the ground clearly, but the darkness between the trunks seemed to gather more thickly in response.

Mara stayed close.

A round golden fruit hung from a low branch beside her. Its skin was smooth and spotless, and the sweet scent strengthened whenever it moved.

She reached toward it.

Rook caught her wrist before her fingers touched the fruit.

"Is this edible?" she asked.

"If you’re lucky."

Mara frowned and withdrew her hand. "What does that mean?"

Rook released her and continued walking. "It means you might eat it."

"That is usually what edible means."

"It might also eat you."

Her hand moved farther from the fruit.

Rook stepped over a root thicker than his leg. "Most of the trees here aren’t real."

Mara looked around. "They look real."

"So did the child."

That ended the argument before it began.

She examined the forest more carefully. Nothing appeared to move beyond the occasional trembling leaf, yet there was no wind. Several branches seemed twisted into shapes resembling arms. Hollows in the trunks looked uncomfortably like open mouths once she noticed them.

"Some are ordinary trees," Rook explained. "Some are dead souls that rooted themselves before they lost everything. The rest are Abominations."

Mara immediately lowered her voice. "Then why are we talking so loudly?"

"I’m not being loud. You’re the one who asked first." He ducked beneath several hanging branches without allowing them to touch the coffin. "Besides, you don’t have to worry about normal Abominations here. Most of these trees are stationary unless provoked."

"Most?"

"The more dangerous ones are deeper in the forest. Normal Abominations avoid them. Even Third Ranks know better than to wander too far in."

Mara glanced behind them. The path they had taken between the trees already appeared different. Roots crossed places she was certain had been clear moments ago, while a curtain of hanging vines concealed the pale stone ledges.

"That’s supposed to make me feel safer?"

"It should."

"Why?"

"Anything smart enough to stay away from this place probably won’t follow us inside."

"And the things already here?"

Rook’s eyes moved among the trunks. "You just don’t know when one of the trees might drag you away."

Mara stared at him.

He continued walking.

"Is there anything here that isn’t trying to kill us?"

"We’re both already dead."

"You know what I mean."

"Then no." Rook shrugged beneath the coffin. "The only safe place was the Eleventh Bastion, but you didn’t want to remain there."

"Eleventh?" Mara hurried around a thick patch of roots to catch up. "You mean there are more?"

Rook sighed as he passed beneath another group of hanging branches. Several brushed against the top of his coffin before slowly drawing away.

"Think about it," he said. "How many people die every day?"

"A lot."

"And how long have I been here?"

"You said three centuries."

"I didn’t say it, but yes. Close to that." He pushed a thorn-covered vine aside with the flat of his falchion and waited for Mara to pass. "If a great many people die every day and some survive here for centuries, where do you expect the Underworld to put all of them? Definitely not in one place."

Mara ducked beneath his arm. "I see. So there must be other cities like ours."

"Bigger, better and far more fortified."

"Then why are you stationed at the Eleventh if there are better places?"

Rook allowed the vine to fall behind her. Its thorns scraped together, producing a sound like teeth clicking.

"Getting to them isn’t easy," he said. "And just because ours is the weakest doesn’t mean it’s bad."

Mara looked back toward the hidden entrance to the forest, thinking of the field they had crossed to reach this place. "That is difficult to believe."

"The Eleventh is the weakest because every Bastion weaker than us is already gone."

She stopped.

The chain tightened between them, forcing Rook to halt several paces ahead.

"Gone?" she asked. "As in abandoned?"

Rook turned and pointed between the trees.

At first, Mara saw nothing beyond trunks, moss and dense undergrowth. Then the lantern’s glow reached something too straight to be natural. A broken section of wall leaned against one of the larger trees. Roots had split the stones apart and pushed through the gaps.

Farther ahead, half an archway rose from the soil. There was no structure attached to it, only fractured blocks scattered across the forest floor. A rusted metal gate lay beneath a carpet of pale leaves, its bars bent inward.

"Where do you think all the ruins and walls you’ve been seeing came from?" Rook asked.

Mara looked from one broken structure to another. She had assumed the fragments were simply part of the Underworld, remnants of whatever civilization had occupied the wasteland before the dead arrived.

Now she noticed the marks covering them.

Claw wounds.

Blackened stone.

Long grooves where something enormous had dragged itself over the walls.

"The Bastions are only as strong as their Reapers," Rook said. "The Eleventh is unfortunately not the best. But we’re lucky enough to be in a region without any high-ranking Abominations nearby. It helps when the things capable of breaking your walls don’t live close enough to try."

Mara looked back in the direction of the field.

Rook followed her gaze. "That child wouldn’t last long against the walls."

"That thing swallowed two creatures larger than you."

"And it would still be killed before reaching the gate." He tapped the flat of his falchion against the broken wall. "Third Ranks are dangerous to travelers. Bastions worry about worse things."

A low creak passed through the forest.

It sounded like wood bending beneath a tremendous weight.

Rook immediately removed the blade from the wall.

The sound stopped.

He continued walking as though nothing had happened.

Mara hurried after him. "And the other unlucky Bastions?"

Rook gestured toward the rubble surrounding them. "This is what remains of them."