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Chapter 13: What Death Left Behind

Chapter 13: What Death Left Behind

She stared at the ruined archway as they passed it. Whatever city had stood here was gone so completely that the forest had swallowed almost every sign it had ever existed.

"How many are there in total?"

Rook shrugged. "I don’t know. Last I heard, a few hundred."

"You don’t know?"

"It isn’t exactly reliable information. Bastions fall. New ones are built. Others isolate themselves and stop answering messengers." He moved between two enormous trunks growing close together. "During my three hundred years, I’ve only seen four...Two of them are already rubble."

Mara swallowed hard.

The sound felt unnecessary without a living throat, but her body remembered how to express fear even when it no longer needed to breathe.

This was not a kind place.

The Eleventh Bastion had seemed chaotic, overcrowded and poorly maintained. Its walls bore wounds from countless attacks, its Beacon had malfunctioned badly enough to throw her into an Abomination nest, and even its Reapers treated survival as something temporary.

Yet it was still standing.

That alone made it one of the fortunate cities.

Rook glanced at her. "You should have stayed back there."

"No." Mara stepped over a fallen branch. "I don’t regret my choice."

"You’re making me do the regretting."

"That appears to come naturally to you."

"It does." He glanced between several nearby trees before angling toward a small clearing. "Anyway, we’ll camp here."

Mara looked around. "In the forest?"

"Yes."

"You’re kidding."

Rook unfastened the chains crossing his chest and lowered the coffin from his back. Its base struck the soil with a heavy thud.

Several branches above them trembled.

Mara slowly looked upward.

Nothing descended.

Rook leaned the coffin against the broad trunk of a tree and rolled one shoulder. "Do you have an issue?"

"Didn’t you just tell me some of these trees are Abominations?"

"Some of them."

"And we’re staying beside them."

"Like I said, don’t agitate them. They’re excellent protection."

"Protection from what?"

"Everything they eat."

That did little to reassure her.

Rook removed a narrow pouch from one of the hooks fixed to the coffin. He opened it carefully and began scattering grey powder around the clearing.

He formed a complete circle around the coffin, checking twice to ensure there were no gaps.

Mara watched from within it. "Won’t we get eaten at night while we sleep?"

"There is no night here. It’s merely dark." Rook crouched and added more powder near a section of exposed roots. "And no. The trees are good at stopping random Abominations, especially the larger ones."

"What about the smaller ones?"

"That’s what the powder is for."

A growl rolled through the trees.

It came from somewhere close enough that Mara felt it through the sole of her feet.

She moved nearer to Rook.

"What was that?"

He glanced up from the circle. "What do you think?"

"An Abomination?"

"You are correct. Sadly, there are no rewards for right answers."

The growl came again, farther to their left this time.

Something scraped across a trunk in the darkness. Leaves shifted, followed by a heavy dragging sound that slowly moved away from the clearing.

Rook tied the powder pouch and returned it to the coffin. Then he examined the weapons he had used during their crossing.

"Damn it. I liked that sickle. I only have one left."

"You carry an enormous coffin filled with blades that can’t kill abominations... Isn’t it heavy?"

"It is if you think about it. Also, even if it doesn’t kill them, they still feel the pain."

Spears, swords, axes and stranger implements had been packed into fitted straps. Several empty loops marked the weapons he had abandoned or lost against the Second Rank.

Rook slid the falchion into one of the open spaces. This time, he wrapped a thick leather strap around its handle and pulled it tight. He checked the other weapons as well, securing each one before closing the lid.

"Why didn’t you do that before?"

"I did."

"Then why were your weapons flailing everywhere?"

"I did it poorly."

Mara blinked.

Rook settled against the coffin and stretched his legs across the soil. "Overthinking things will exhaust you. Try to get some sleep."

She remained standing. "Can a dead person even sleep?"

"Of course. You can eat, shit and piss too. You can also bleed."

"How is that physically possible?"

"Well, one thing is certain." Rook folded his arms behind his head. "If you’re using the laws of physics to understand the world of the dead, then I have to say...thank God you’re pretty."

Mara stared at him. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Rest. Trust me, you’ll need it."

She glanced toward the trees. The blue lantern illuminated only the clearing and the nearest trunks. Beyond them, branches appeared to overlap in shapes that changed whenever she looked away.

"Who’s going to keep watch?"

"It won’t matter much. Even if something ambushes us, the powder should delay it long enough for us to wake up." Rook closed his eyes. "And even if I see something coming, I’m not exactly the best person to Cull it."

"Then teach me."

One of his eyes opened. "Teach you what?"

"How to use abilities. Like the other dead."

Rook studied her for several seconds before smiling almost pitifully. "You aren’t the biggest fool in the Underworld, but you’d better hope the other one never dies."

"Stop treating me like an idiot."

"Think about it." He paused. "Wait. Let me rephrase that."

Mara gave him a murderous look.

Rook snorted. "Who am I?"

"A dick."

"I’ve been called worse."

"I know. I was being generous." She folded her arms. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Do I look like someone who can use abilities?"

"You said you couldn’t."

"Then how in this bloody hell do you expect me to teach you something even I don’t understand?"

Mara opened her mouth.

"Better close it before your last thought runs away."

Her mouth snapped shut.

The look she gave him promised that the contract might soon need to protect Rook from her.

He smiled and leaned farther against the coffin.

"Not to mention, even if I knew how to teach you, it would be a pain. This is also the worst possible place to try."

"Why?"

"Releasing an ability forces you to relive your death."

Some of the anger left her expression.

Rook noticed.

"It’s your last memory," he continued. "Usually the strongest one you have. Nobody enjoys opening that wound, especially when they’ve only just arrived."

Mara lowered her eyes.

For the briefest moment, she saw a floor rushing toward her.

Then pain.

Then nothing.

Her fingers tightened around her arms.

"Worse," Rook said, "that memory doesn’t remain inside you. It spills out. Every fear, every sensation, every fragment of the moment you died. To an Abomination, releasing an ability for the first time is like lighting a torch in the middle of perfect darkness."

She looked toward the trees again.

"They’ll sense it?"

"Every motherfucking monster in range will sense it. They’ll come at us from every direction, and the ones living in this forest don’t need long to arrive." Rook’s voice lost what little humour it had contained. "So if you feel any urge to discover what your ability might be, suppress it until we reach another Bastion. Even if I had ten arms and ten bodies, I wouldn’t be able to save us here."

The forest creaked around them.

This time, Mara noticed that the sound did not come from a single tree. It travelled between them. One trunk groaned, then another farther away, followed by a third somewhere behind the coffin.

As though the entire forest had heard him speaking about death.

Mara slowly sat beside the coffin and leaned against its opposite end.

"You really are insufferable, you know."

"I live by it."

"You..." She turned her head and examined him. His clothes were filthy, one shoulder remained torn from the creature that had bitten through it, and dried blood covered the exposed skin. "Single."

Rook’s eyes opened. "Wow. That’s a low blow. Not cool."

"I knew it. Definitely single. Probably for the last three hundred years." She began counting on her fingers. "Cynical, mean, uncouth and exceptionally boorish."

"Are those reasons or compliments?"

"Reasons."

"Sounded like compliments."

"You probably made every woman you were ever with lose her hair."

Rook smiled.

The expression appeared easily at first, ready to carry another irritating answer. Then something inside it changed. His gaze drifted toward the dark canopy overhead, though Mara had the impression he was looking much farther away than the branches.

"That might have been true."

Mara waited for him to follow the thought.

He did not.

She sighed, folded her arms and rested more of her weight against the coffin. The wood remained cold and hard against her back, but after the field, it felt safer than anything else in the Underworld.

She closed her eyes.