Book One

Falling Backwards

 

If the legends said that there was a gemstone that could grant you near-infinite power hidden deep within the mana caves below the surface of another world, connected to your own by a bridge of molten metal and inhabited by creatures born of the nightmares of those driven insane by the creatures that were already there before they arrived, would you set out to retrieve it?

Riyo Falsemoon would.

Though for now she sits on the dry stone floor of a cell in the local jail, tomorrow she could be out beyond the rigid walls of her small town in the rocky foothills of the greatest adventure story anybody has ever told.

“You don’t have much respect for authority, do you miss?” the sheriff says. He’s a broad man with a thick, greying moustache, wearing the golden wolf pelt that marks his station over his head and shoulders like a cowl. His grey shirt and silver waistcoat are crossed with a pair of leather belts dangling with throwing knives, and there are two swords and a cudgel through his actual belt.

“I don’t see why the apothacarium is out of bounds in the first place,” Riyo says. She surreptitiously rubs her arms against the cold. The officers have divested her of her jacket and her fur-lined boots for fear that she has concealed weapons in them. This is sensible of them, because she has, but she is still allowed to feel indignant about being left to freeze her arse off in this cell.

“Because it’s damned dangerous, girl,” the sheriff says, shaking his head, “as you well know from experience. What was it, half a week ago when we pulled you out of the south tower minutes before it was hit by an ice satellite?”

“It barely even fell down,” Riyo complains. “And besides, you pulled me out of the foyer. I was already on my way out. I don’t see why it’s such a big deal.”

The sheriff just sighs. “Your master is on the way here now. Perhaps he can beat some sense into you.”

Riyo shivers, knowing it has nothing to do with the cold. “When did the dragonfly arrive?”

“About twenty minutes before you were apprehended. It’s how we knew you were in there.”

“So I wouldn’t even have been caught if it wasn’t for his stupid prescience. That hardly seems fair.”

“Laws are laws, missy. The crime is breaking them, not getting caught.”

Riyo pouts at him and rubs her arms again. Riyo’s master, Elvolar, is an Archcrafter – a man whose reality-crafting abilities have been recognised by the crafters’ council and the Grand Commander of the worldforce.

“We’ll see about getting you something warm to wear for your little stay here. The Archcrafter’s earliest convenience is three days from now, and he insisted that you not be allowed to leave.” The sheriff turns to go.

Riyo throws herself at the bars of her cell. “You can’t leave me here for three days if you aren’t charging me with anything,” she says. “I’ll sue you.”

The sheriff pauses by the door. “Girl, on the word of an Archcrafter I can keep you locked up forever and no lawyer this side of the Reach could make a case against me.”

“Damnit,” Riyo says, smashing the heel of her hand against the bars and making them ring as the sheriff leaves. “He’s not even that cool. He mostly just sits in his library all day.”

Riyo turns to face the wall of the cell. Chunky grey stones look back at her, illuminated by the light that slides between the bars of the high window. She doesn’t know what her master will do to her, but it worries her. She has been living on her own in this town for almost a year now, refining her own crafting, and she believes she is ready to begin reaching out towards her own destiny. If her master takes her back, though, she might be trapped in his estate for another decade.

So she decides she must escape. Her master will know where she goes thanks to his prescience, but the reality he crafts for himself is called Intellectrum. He reaches beyond the physical world with his powers and touches thoughts and ideas, moulding them to his will. He may know far more than any human being has ever known, but he must still travel like any other human does.

Riyo has no high ideals about crafting, despite her master’s constant coaxing for her to consider everything. In the end, she crafted a physical reality – one that she could rule, and one that would make her uncontainable. One that would make her, above all, strong.

“Gravity Mould,” she utters quietly, and feels her reality take hold over the jail. She draws back her arm and punches the unyielding stone wall. Gravity shifts ahead of her fist, becomes hundreds of times greater, and angled away from her. For the wall where her knuckles impact, down is suddenly away from Riyo, and it falls as though being pulled into a black hole.

The effect ripples outwards, shredding the stone and mortar and dragging it away from the jail until it reaches the edge of the effect. Then it stops, and, like putty in Riyo’s mind, it goes where she wishes it to, directed by changes in her reality’s gravity. It scatters into a little starscape of static rock chunks, and when Riyo hops onto the lowest of them it doesn’t move. She jumps from rock to rock until she can skip onto the roof of the jail, where the sheriff is standing with a pair of other officers, smoking a pipe.

“I’ve decided I’m leaving,” she says. She leaves her reality open, holding the remains of the wall behind her and watching the officers’ reactions.

The sheriff’s pipe falls from his slack mouth, and Riyo adjusts how gravity affects it, slowing its fall to the roof.

“A crafter’s apprentice is a crafter, sheriff. Your jail won’t hold me, and I don’t want to be here when my master gets here.”

“Your master will-” the sheriff begins.

“My master will suck it up. If he really wants to find me then he will. Your walls can’t hold me, but Elvolar Lightseer’s sight is inescapable.”

“What should we do?” one of the other officers whispers, a little too loud.

The sheriff, having recovered somewhat, reaches down and retrieves his pipe. “As far as I’m concerned,” he says, “this is now above my pay grade. Would you like to get between two crafters who disagree with one another?”

“No,” the officer says pragmatically.

“Well then,” the sheriff says.

Riyo nods to him. “I would like my jacket and boots back, please.”

“Go fetch them, Will,” the sheriff says, and the other officer heads towards the trapdoor. He keeps watching Riyo and her field of shrapnel as he does. There is an awkward silence that nobody wants to break until Will returns with Riyo’s crimson jacket and fur boots.

“For what it’s worth,” Riyo says as she pulls on her boots, “thanks for looking out for me while I was here. You didn’t know what I could do, so I suppose you really were concerned for my safety all those times you came into the apothacarium after me.”

“Unfortunately that isn’t quite true,” the sheriff says. He knocks the fragrant ashes from his pipe and stares at it for a moment while Riyo puts on her jacket. “The apothacarium is dangerous, and local laws forbid people from entering it, but it’s been a long time since that law was so strictly enforced. Your master instructed us to keep you out of it on purpose.”

Riyo gets a crawling feeling in her stomach. The apothacarium is the reason she chose to undertake her study in Galsbreath, and now it’s clear why her master kept recommending other locations. He knows what is hidden deep within the ruins – what Riyo now knows – and he didn’t want her to know it.

“Well,” Riyo says. “I suppose that means there is more to the legend of the sunlight stone.”

The officers all blink at the same time.

“Most people call it a fantasy,” Riyo continues, “but after what I found in the apothacarium and knowing my master didn’t want me to find it, perhaps it’s real after all.” Riyo smiles. “Which means I really can find it.”

“Most people call it fantasy because it is,” the sheriff says.

Riyo frowns at him and makes to argue, but he shakes his head.

“Oh there might be a sunlight stone,” he concedes, “but as to what it is? It’s all fantasy. They say it’ll grant wishes or eternal life, or bring back the dead, or any of a thousand other mortal desires. Anything that spawns those kinds of tales is either going to be a grand disappointment, or so dangerous that it should stay exactly as lost as it is now.” The sheriff shrugs his shoulders, but his steely gaze doesn’t waver. “You’ve obviously learned well from your master. I’m sure you can achieve anything you want to without the stone.”

Riyo smiles. “And what if the thing I want to achieve is retrieving the stone?”

The sheriff frowns.

“It’s time for me to spread my wings,” Riyo says, allowing her reality to begin closing. The remains of the wall begin to sink back to the earth, and Riyo steps up to the edge of the roof and hops onto one as it falls past, turning back to the sheriff. “I’ve outgrown this town. I’m going to try on the world instead. See if it fits.” She passes below the lip of the roof and touches down, her reality crumbling away.

The sheriff steps up to the edge of the roof and watches as the young crafter strides through the remnants of his jail’s wall towards the eastern gate of the town.

“Well that was something,” Will says. “I suppose I should get in touch with the stonemason’s guild.”

The sheriff nods. “Let the mayor know we’re in for a visit from an Archcrafter as well. Tell him the man might be a little angry.”

Riyo knows three things about the sunlight stone. First, it is powerful. The nature of its power, she must admit, the sheriff was right about. Even the archives in the apothacarium had been mute on that, but that is the least important fact on the list.

Second, she knows it lies deep within an immeasurable series of caverns and caves beneath the surface of Calis, Valos twin planet. The two are connected by the Reach – an oozing column of molten metal that ebbs and flows from one planet to the other. People have crossed it before, but it is difficult, and only a handful of them came back. To a person, they refuse to share their tales, and only a handful of accounts of Calis like the one Riyo found in the apothacarium exist.

The third thing Riyo knows is that to retrieve the sunlight stone is considered impossible. People use the task as a euphemism for something that will never happen. Alice will agree to go on a date with me if I retrieve the sunlight stone. I’ll finish that book I’m writing the day after I retrieve the sunlight stone. I’ll do that for you if you show me the sunlight stone.

Riyo wants it because of that. She wants to touch the impossible and then cast it behind her, to show the world, and her master, that she can. To her, it is an adventure that she cannot help but undertake.

Riyo knows several things that are unrelated to the sunlight stone as well, and one of them is that a human being requires food and water to live. She wishes ardently that she had considered this piece of knowledge before she left Galsbreath with neither. Of course, it was too late to go back and correct her mistake. She can imagine the sheriff’s face if he found her in the market buying provisions after everything she’d said. She can’t face the embarrassment of that, and so she continues.

Besides, she expects this journey to test every facet of her – not just her crafting, but everything she knows and everything she doesn’t, everything she can and cannot do. Out towards the borders of civilisation, where The Reach births monsters that most people prefer to avoid, there will be precious few places where food will be easy to obtain. She will have to hunt and forage.

Her stomach grumbles, and she considers everything she knows about the procurement of food out in the wilderness. She knows animals are often made of meat, and that some plants are edible, while some are so poisonous they could kill the most powerful of archcrafers in a matter of minutes. She does not, however, know how to differentiate between such plants. Animals it would have to be, then.

The area she is walking through is mostly woodland, so she figures there are animals around. Deer, rabbits, woodland caravaks, bears, ligmists… She wonders which would be the tastiest. Perhaps she should start simple by catching the first animal she finds. There is nothing in immediate view of the path – which will eventually take her to Folvin, the capital of the Everstall Song – so she decides to leave it.

The foliage quickly becomes thicker, and as time passes the shadows grow deeper and her stomach louder. Despite a lot of walking and searching she sees not a hint of anything edible. She is not one to grow worried, but she realises that she has no idea where the path is and that soon night will fall. On the other hand, perhaps some of the larger night predators will see her as a meal themselves, and bring their meat directly to her.

Between one step and another she smells smoke on the twilight breeze. She stops, and, for the first time since leaving Galsbreath, uses her brain for a second. The wind is unreliable, but as it swirls around her and rustles branches and leaves she begins to track its path, and the direction it is bringing the smell from. She follows it through darkening underbrush, feeling quietly relieved as it grows stronger, until she sees the flickering light of a fire against the bark of a tree off to her left. This close, amid the smell of smoke, she picks up the scent of cooking meat as well, and her mouth begins to water. Perhaps the owners of the fire will be willing to share?

She steps around the tree blocking her view of the camp and stops dead. A guttural growl breaks through the night time forest sounds and plucks at the hairs on the back of her neck, dropping the temperature around her to freezing point. The green bear is hunched in the shadows beyond the fire, and its rat-goblin masters are clustered around the blaze, watching her with hateful red eyes. Perhaps half her height, their green-brown skin is leathery and painted with mud and berry juice, their gnarled little fingers clutching crude stone weapons.

“Oh,” Riyo says.

One of the rat-goblins hisses and yells something in its harsh, growling language, exposing pointed, greying teeth. The green bear lumbers forward, at least twice as tall as Riyo on all fours and bigger in every other dimension than a reasonably sized wagon, the rat-goblins shift aside to allow it to pass. Its thorn-filled green fur brushes a tree and rips the bark from it.

Riyo swallows, her instincts telling her to run. But this is the part of the adventure she expected to be good at. A beast like the bear should be no contest for a crafter, especially one with a reality like hers.

“Gravity Mould,” she says, and the bear’s next ground-shaking step pushes it away from the forest floor.

Riyo has spent days at a time living in her reality, learning to cope with different gravitational effects. The bear does not even know what gravity is. Was, until now, unaware that gravity could be anything but constant. So as it floats into the air it panics, begins to flail, smashing branches to the ground with its enormous paws. One of the rat-goblins yelps and dives for cover as the entire tree cracks about half way up and comes crashing down into the fire, sending embers and hot air rushing out.

Riyo leaps to the new top of the tree, gravity’s effects on her as minimal as on the bear, then pushes off, giving herself a little extra weight so that she comes to a slow stop just above the gently spinning bear. As its back comes round to her, she slams her heel down on it, creating a pillar of space from the point of impact where gravity is a thousand times its natural state.

The bear rockets towards the ground, almost too fast to see, and hits with a gruesome crunch that sends blood, bone and innards splashing outwards against trees and rat-goblins. Riyo sinks back to the epicentre of the bear-comet’s impact and looks to the rat-goblins. They scatter, disappearing into the forest in a matter of seconds, leaving the calming sounds of the wind in the brush and blood dripping from the leaves.

Riyo nods to herself. Perhaps she will not be so lucky next time she gets hungry, but for now she has a meal. Whatever the rat-goblins had been cooking has fallen into the fire during the commotion, but there are sizeable chunks of bear flesh dotted around the little clearing, so it is a simple matter for her to spit one and set it to cooking. She sits down on the dried leaves and drying blood to watch the flames gently brown the bear meat.

Just as she is about to dig in, somebody says “who are you?” from behind her.

She jumps to her feet and spins around, dropping her chunk of bear on the floor, ready to open her reality. There is a lone man behind her, and he is wearing a uniform similar to the officers of Galsbreath. His wolf pelt is shimmering aquamarine, draped over his left shoulder and hanging past his hand. His right arm is bare, wrapped in silvery wire that pierces his skin in several places and has barbs sticking into his hand, which grips the handle of a strange sword. Its dull grey blade runs along his forearm and sticks out a foot or so beyond his clenched fist, only its very edge showing a hint of a shine. He is glowering at her from above an exquisitely shaped black moustache that makes him look older than his soil-brown eyes suggest.

“My name is Riyo,” Riyo says. “I just left Galsbreath.”

The man’s eyes roam the clearing and his expression remains wary. “I’ve been pursuing a group of rat-goblins that’s been ransacking local farms and destroyed a Fort Favial watch tower.”

“Oh,” Riyo says, relaxing a little and nodding. “This is their camp.” She reaches down and picks up her dinner. “This was their bear.” She takes a bite and then immediately spits it out. The taste is worse than anything she has ever experienced, like swallowing a thousand rotting worms.

“Fuck me,” she says, trying to find more saliva to spit out. The next breath she takes makes her retch, and she is forced to her knees. “Help.”

The man thrusts a canteen into her face, and she grabs it, taking a mouthful of water and spitting it onto the ground before gulping down several mouthfuls. She still tastes green bear.

“The green bear was dead?”

“No,” Riyo says, spitting again. “But it is now. How can something taste so revolting?”

“Green bears are regular bears made wretched by a toxic parasite,” the man says. “The bear itself is essentially long dead, animated and enhanced by the parasite.”

Riyo sighs, grimaces and spits again. Her stomach rumbles. “I don’t suppose you have anything to eat?” she asks the man.

He shakes his head. “I had expected to catch up with the rat-goblins a while ago. They travelled a lot further before making camp than they usually would.”

“Well maybe you can help me find an animal that doesn’t taste like poison swamp.”

The man shakes his head again. “I don’t make a habit of sharing meals with complete strangers I meet in the woods in the middle of the night.” He begins to walk away.

Riyo glances back at the fire once before following him. “In that case I’ll just follow you back to the road. I’m embarrassed to admit I was a little lost.”

“I’m not going back to the road,” the man says, casting a displeased look over his shoulder. “The rat-goblins are still out there, and they need to be punished.”

“Well then I’ll help,” Riyo says. “We’ll make quick work of them and then you can lead me back to the road.”

The man stops and rounds on her, pulling her to an abrupt stop as he points his sword at her. “Just back off,” he says. “I work alone, and it’s your own stupid fault you’re lost.”

“Well you’re the only person I’ve found so far, and I’d be stupid to just let you go and leave me lost, so screw you. You don’t need to talk to me, just let me follow.”

“Fine,” the man says. “But if you lose track of me, that’s your problem too. I’m not waiting around.”

Riyo falls a little behind the man and watches him. She wonders why his sword is bound to his arm like that, and why a small-town police officer is out hunting a pack of rat-goblins with a green bear all on his own. She also wonders why he is such a grumpy bastard, but then perhaps that has something to do with all that barbed wire wrapped tight around his arm.

The man swipes away looming foliage with his sword as he walks. He follows the obvious tracks the stealthless rat-goblins have left in their wake and wonders about the girl behind him. She is young – too young to be out in the forest alone – and yet the camp site they leave behind them is a disgusting mess of dead green bear. The girl is an enigma, and he has little time for such things. Once the rat-goblins are dealt with, he will return her to Malvis and be back on the beat.

He glances back, finding the girl still there. Her crimson coat and pale blonde hair contrast harshly with the dark brush around her. Her leather knee-high boots are fur lined and at least practical, though their buckles are the same crimson as her coat. He has no idea how a girl such as her finds herself this far out from the civilised centres of the world.

Riyo is growing tired, and her hunger gnaws at her like she wished she could gnaw at just about anything at this point. Even the green bear meat is beginning to seem appealing again. Ahead of her, the man holds up his sword hand. She takes this to mean the rat-goblins are close, and glances around at the near-silent forest. There is no hint of a fire burning like last time. It seems they are camping cold now that their great green protector has exploded.

“Wait here,” the man whispers, before pressing ahead on quiet feet. Riyo tries to imitate him, but immediately step on something dry and brittle that snaps.

He scowls back at her. “Quiet,” he says. And then he is gone. Riyo blinks and looks around, but he is nowhere to be seen.

Then she hears a high-pitch scream coming from ahead. She figures that the moratorium on noise is at an end, so she scurries forward to see what is happening. By the time she gets there, it is over. A large rock creates an overhang, beneath which lie the corpses of seven rat-goblins. All of them have been decapitated. In the dark it is difficult to see the man, but she can make out the shape of his sword and see the blood dripping from it. He pulls a cloth from his waistcoat pocket and runs it down both sides of the sword, then drops it on the corpse of the closest rat-goblin.

“That was fast,” Riyo says.

“Cowardly creatures who prey on the weak die easily,” he says. “Now come. The road is this way. We are still several hours from Malvis.”

“Hours?” Riyo complains, looking around at the rat-goblins’ hasty camp. “When I found them earlier they were cooking something. Can’t I at least see if they have any food on them?”

“No,” the man says. “They made quite a mess at the Carham farm, but their two children were not there, and nor are they here. It is most likely that…”

“Oh,” Riyo says. Then, “oh fuck. I think I’m going to be sick again.”

“I won’t wait for you.”

“Fine,” Riyo says, fighting her revulsion by running down the list of rocks and minerals that apparently exist on Calis according to a book she had found in the apothacarium. She resumes following the man, sparing one last glance for the executed rat-goblins. They are quickly swallowed by shadows, and will no doubt soon be swallowed by other things, too.

“You move quickly,” she says, trying a new method of keeping her mind off her stomach.

“I said be quiet,” the man says without turning around.

“You said that because the rat-goblins were behind the next tree. They’re dead now.”

“I told you – I work alone.”

“You’re not working now. You finished your job, right?”

“Fine. I just don’t want to talk. Will that do?”

“I suppose.” Riyo sighs. “But I’d like to at least know your name.”

The man is silent for almost a minute. “Rolleck. Rolleck the Lost.”

“I’m Riyo Falsemoon,” Riyo says. “Also lost. Thank you for helping me.”

Rolleck grunts, and they continue on in silence. Riyo sees things and immediately forgets them. She is tired and hungry. Her feet hurt, and the darkness of the forest is oppressive and endless. She barely notices when they emerge from the trees and brush onto the road, and by the time they reach the gates of Malvis she is practically asleep on her feet.

“Travellers,” Rolleck shouts.

Riyo looks up and realises that there is a tinge of light in the blue-black of the sky. It provides enough contrast for her to see the silhouette of someone’s head appear above the gate.

“Identify yourselves,” a female voice says.

“Private Rolleck of the Malvis police force,” Rolleck says. He sounds irritated at having to say it.

“And?”

Riyo blinks up, then realises that must be directed at her. “Oh. Riyo Falsemoon.”

“Don’t recognise it. Who is she, Rolleck?”

Rolleck scowls. “A traveller, like I said. Unless the town has suddenly come under martial law while I was out we have no reason not to let her in.”

“I’m on guard duty, Rolleck. If I think she might be a danger to the town then I can keep the gates closed.”

“What possible reason might you have to think she’s dangerous, Kallie?” Rolleck says through gritted teeth.

“She arrived here with you, for a start,” Kallie says. There is venom in her voice, and Riyo decides she is too hungry and tired to let whatever animosity exists between these two keep her outside the gates.

“Excuse me,” she says, “but I’ve been on the road since yesterday morning and haven’t eaten. If you don’t let me in soon I will either die or destroy these gates.”

“You see,” Kallie says. “She’s already threatening to damage the town. I’m afraid you’re both going to have to wait outside until the sheriff’s shift begins.” She sounds smug, and even though Riyo cannot see her face she already hates her.

“I don’t believe in making empty threats,” she tells Rolleck. She takes a step towards the gate.

“Wait,” Rolleck says, grabbing her by the arm.

Riyo looks back at him. “I don’t know if you dumped her or kissed her boyfriend or what, but I am hungry enough that if someone else stands between me and food I will tear this whole town apart.”

“As an officer of the law, I would have to stop you, no matter your reasons,” Rolleck says. His eyes have gone hard, molten steel behind his amber irises.

Riyo feels like she could literally flatten him quite easily, but that’s no way to treat someone who has helped her. She sighs.

“Fine. Do you have any issue with my entering the town peacefully in spite of your jilted ex’s orders?”

Rolleck holds her eyes for a moment, then lets go of her arm and takes a step back. “I am a little interested to know how you killed that bear,” he says. “If you can get in without harming anyone or damaging anything, there’s not much Kallie can do about it until morning anyway.”

“Grand,” Riyo says, then turns back to the gate. It is impressive; thick wood bound in more steel than could ever be required. To open it without damaging it will be tricky, but it is thick enough that they have had to leave a small gap between the doors themselves so that they will open properly. Through it, she can see the large bar holding them closed, and if she can see it, then she can manipulate it with her reality. “Gravity Mould.”

Reversing the gravity on the bar produces no results, so it must be completely surrounded by braces and slotted in from one side rather than from above. She shifts its gravity sideways, and sees it begin to slide. A moment later there is a startled cry from above, and the bar slides out of view to the right. Riyo completely negates the gravity affecting the left door and then pulls it open with her hand. Weightless, she can only feel the minor resistance of the air the door is displacing as it opens, and it makes barely a sound.

She nods to Rolleck, who has one eyebrow raised, and walks inside. There is a clattering of boots on stone and Kallie appears from an open archway on the inside of the wall. She is dressed in the attire of a police officer in shirt and waistcoat, her silver wolf pelt wrapped around her waist like a skirt. Her hair is ginger, cut short and held back with a headband. She draws a pair of short swords as she approaches and points one at Riyo, who still has not closed her reality in case something like this happened.

“I told you to wait until morning,” she spits. Riyo notices another officer lingering in the archway with a loaded crossbow.

“I can’t,” Riyo says, “so I’d like to raise a complaint about your conduct with the sheriff.”

“You don’t get to speak to the sheriff, you get to speak to me, and as officer in charge of the gate you listen to what I fucking say. So now you’re under arrest.”

“And if I resist?” Riyo says. She likes to think of herself as a polite and well-meaning citizen, most of the time. She will blame this on her stomach speaking. If this lady doesn’t shut up soon then Riyo may eat her.

“Then I will have to use force,” Kallie says, and without warning she swings at Riyo. Half a split second before Riyo multiplies her gravity a thousand fold and turns her into a puddle, Rolleck catches her sword on his own.

“This is excessive, Kallie,” he says quietly. “Your issue is with me-”

He is interrupted by the other officer firing his crossbow. This time Riyo does use her reality, and the bolt comes to a relaxed halt in front of her hand. She plucks it out of the air and then drops it on the ground, its gravity back to normal.

“Where’s the inn?” she asks.

“I’d recommend the Ploughman’s Neck, on the east side of the town square,” Rolleck says, still holding Kallie’s sword with his own. The pressure Kallie was putting on it has waned somewhat as she stares at Riyo, dumbfounded.

Riyo nods. “Thank you for your help today, private Rolleck. You are a credit to your profession.” She glares at Kallie to ensure she knows she believes the opposite of her, and begins walking towards the centre of town. When Kallie turns around and begins to say something her swords suddenly weigh fifty times more, and she stumbles to the ground with a yelp.

Rolleck watches the girl go with a frown. Crafters aren’t so common that you’d expect to find one so young lost in the forest. He wonders what it is she is doing out here.

“You just wait until the sheriff hears about this, Rolleck,” Kallie says, abandoning her swords on the floor and barging into him as she walks past. “You’re finished, this time.”

Rolleck squeezes the handle of his sword, feeling her barbs dig into his hand. Her turns his eyes to the lightening sky and sighs. Perhaps it is time to move on anyway. There is still almost a year before It comes again, but the more he moves, the more time he will have to escape.

He throws one last look at the gate, still open, before heading home.

Riyo stops around the next corner and closes her reality. A wave of nausea and dizziness hits her and knocks her to the ground. She rests her head against the wall of a house and closes her eyes, riding out the pain and discomfort. She has a habit of keeping her reality open longer and longer when she knows she isn’t really in a fit state to open it in the first place to put off the after-effects. Of course, the longer she keeps it open, the worse it feels when she closes it.

Crafting can seem like an infinite and unstoppable power to those who don’t know much of it, but Riyo’s master has drilled into her the consequences of over-using a reality. If she uses it sparingly then there is no real effect on her. If she opens it when, for example, she hasn’t eaten or slept in a long time then it will crush her once she closes it. She feels like she weighs five times her real weight, and her muscles and thoughts are so slow to respond that she has no idea how long she is slumped against the house before it fades.

Fade it does, though, and though the sun is now peeking over the walls of the town there are only a few people around, casting concerned or disgusted looks at her. Most of them think she is a drunkard sleeping off an awful hangover, and to be fair that is exactly how she feels. Her head hurts like it has been squeezed in a vice all night, but at least she has the strength to stand again, for now.

The Ploughman’s Neck is a sprawling hodgepodge of old buildings and newer extensions in varying sizes and colours of stone, all topped with the same brand of ratty thatch. Her sign is a gruesome picture of a man lying in the mud with a plough in the process of decapitating him. Riyo pushes against the door and finds it unlocked despite the early hour. There is nobody behind the bar, but the warmth and smells of baking bread emerge like a siren’s song from the kitchen, drawing Riyo towards it.

“Inn ain’t open yet, sweetheart,” a voice says from behind her.

Riyo turns around and finds a huge man sat at one of the tables in the corner of the common room. He has a flagon of ale before him and an empty plate wiped almost clean of grease and sauce. His thick moustache and beard bear some of the crumbs and stains of his breakfast. He holds a massive fork in one hand, and it is clear that his other arm is missing, though that side is covered by a golden wolf pelt.

“Oh,” Riyo says. “When will it open?”

“Later,” the man grumbles. “Get out.”

A short woman in her middle years appears at the door to the kitchen. She smiles at Riyo. “Looking for some breakfast?”

“I was,” Riyo says, “But-”

“She was just leaving,” the sheriff says, standing up. He is nearly as large as the green bear, and his muscles bulge down his bare arm. He grips the fork hard and the metal bends. “Because you’re closed, Thistle.”

The woman swallows, closes her eyes for a moment and then turns them on Riyo. “I’m sorry, we’re still closed.”

Riyo grinds her teeth. She cannot be free of this stupid town and its ridiculous police force fast enough. “Perhaps you can recommend somewhere else I can find breakfast?” It is possible some of her disgruntlement comes through in her tone.

“The lady said leave,” the sheriff says. His eyes and stance warn of imminent violence, and though Riyo would like to meet it in kind and send him flying through a wall, she does not appreciate the idea of opening her reality again before she can eat and rest. She does not think it will kill her, but it will certainly hurt a lot, and her master has warned her that death from over-crafting will definitely be on the table eventually.

Riyo turns and leaves, her fists clenched and her teeth grating together like millstones. She finds another tavern, this one delightfully free of police officers, and pays for a meal and a bed. The portly matron serves her a generous portion of bacon, sausages and bread with butter, and Riyo retires pleasantly full, just as the town begins to shudder to life.

 

Riyo awakens to a knock on her door. She glances at the window and finds that it is dark outside, which means she has slept through the whole day. This isn’t surprising to her, as she has overused her crafting before, and paid dearly for it then, too. Her stomach growls, having already forgotten her breakfast. She blinks the sleep from her eyes as the heavy fist strikes her door again.

“Open up,” a deep, familiar voice says. “Police.”

Riyo squeezes her eyes shut and grimaces. She rolls from the bed and pulls on her undershirt and stockings, then someone rams their foot against the lock. It gives immediately, the wood around it splintering into a thousand shards.

Riyo mutters under her breath to activate her reality and whirls to face the sheriff, noticing Kallie peering in at her from behind him, her face split by a broad grin.

“This is harassment, sheriff,” Riyo says, reaching for her skirt. “I’m changing.”

“You’re under arrest for illegal entry, bitch,” the sheriff says, striding forward and grabbing her by the upper arm with his massive fingers. His grip is tight enough to cut off her circulation, and perhaps, if he squeezed, enough to cut off her entire arm.

Riyo scowls at him. Messing with his gravity now will probably make things worse for her, but she keeps her reality open anyway. He might give her an opportunity.

“You are both dreadful police officers,” she says, pinning both the sheriff and Kallie with a glare.

“I’m adding resisting arrest to your charges,” the sheriff says, before shoving her out of the door and down the corridor.

Riyo trudges out of the pub in her underwear, grimacing as the stones on the street outside dig into her feet. No doubt this will ruin her stockings on top of everything else. She receives a collection of scandalised and lecherous looks from the townsfolk as they pass through the central plaza, then she is pushed into the cool shade of an ugly, black iron building.

The corridor is lined with barred cells that blend smoothly into the grim façade of the building. Riyo is led halfway down this corridor before being rudely manhandled into a cell. The sheriff slams the door in her face and turns a big black key in the lock.

“You’ll be tried this evening,” he says with a smirk. “But don’t count on it being fair,” he jerks his thumb at Kallie, “she’s the judge in this town.”

Kallie is smirking too, and Riyo considers altering the gravity of her face so that it is drawn towards her fist. Instead she just narrows her eyes at the sheriff. “Will I get clothes for this trial?”

“No,” the sheriff says, before plodding deeper into the building.

“I look forward to seeing you hang,” Kallie says, before following her boss.

Riyo sighs. “That’s twice in as many days I’ve been thrown in jail.”

“I’m not surprised,” a familiar voice says. Riyo looks up to find Rolleck the Lost in the cell opposite. He is sat with his back to the far wall, his chest crossed tight with chains and several manacles holding his sword arm flush to the iron.

“Oh,” Riyo says. His wolf pelt is gone, and his waistcoat and shirt are ripped and bloodied. This is probably her fault. “Well to be fair,” she says, in part to console her own conscience, “this was probably going to happen to you sooner or later anyway.”

Rolleck glances at his sword arm and shakes his head. “Perhaps, but I’ve been keeping ahead of it well. Until I met you.”

Riyo blanches. “Shit, that reminds me, my master can’t be far away by now.” She has already lost almost an entire day, and her master will be traveling by horse, meaning even if she actually manages to travel at top speed without getting arrested in every town along the way, he will still catch her eventually. “I don’t have time to be in jail.”

“So escape,” Rolleck says. “I don’t doubt you can.”

Riyo whispers her reality open and taps two of the bars in front of her, shifting their gravity in either direction and magnifying it. As if gripped in the hands of a giant, they begin to bend outwards, until there is enough of a gap for Riyo to slip through. She frowns down at her inadequate dress and makes to leave, then hesitates, glancing back at Rolleck. She does the same thing to two of his bars.

He raises an eyebrow at her.

“It gives you a fighting chance,” she says. Then she heads for the exit.

Rolleck is still chained to the wall, his weapon bound, but these things, like the bars of the cell, are not what keep him there. He is tired. He feels as though he has reached the bottom of his endurance. And yet, despite this, he knows he will keep running. He is too much of a coward to face backward toward that which follows. He is too yellow to face his origin, the eternal pursuer within himself.

He stares at the gap between the bars. Still almost a year until it comes again. Would he waste away in this cell until then? He thinks about the farms around the town, about the Carhams, ripped apart, their children dragged away and slaughtered like pigs before being roasted in the same manner. He resolved, while he was running, to do some good along the way. That is why he wears the pelt of a policeman. A sad state of affairs, then, to find himself surrounded by corruption and doing the bidding of a dreadful man who besmirches the title of sheriff. Just existing. Until he has to run again.

What’s the point in that?

Rolleck grips his sword. He feels her barbs, her fury. He has been ignoring her, and like any woman she is angry about it. She craves release.

His muscles tense, strain, and, gradually, the bolts holding his shackles begin to creak. Blood and oil begin to seep from the wounds that bind him to his sword, until, with a yell, he tears his arm from the wall. The shackles crack apart and fall from his wrist and forearm, and with a grin he slashes through the chains that cross his chest.

Rolleck the Lost stands and shakes blood and oil from his sword arm. Then he slips through the gap in the bars and follows the girl.

He finds Andrew unconscious at his post in the guard room, and the rest of the prison is deserted. No doubt sheriff McRife is off extorting someone or generally causing problems for the citizens he is sworn to protect. Rolleck retrieves his pelt and throws it across his shoulders. He takes a deep breath. What is a life on the run if there’s no meaning in escape? It is time for him to remind himself of his reasons for running.

 

The police did not bring Riyo’s things to the police station. She reasons, then, that they must have just left them at the inn. She retraces her steps and earns a similar variety of reactions to her lacklustre state of dress. She doesn’t really mind. She will not be coming back to Malvis once she has retrieved the sunlight stone, so its inhabitants can stare all they want.

There is a police officer outside the inn, and her eyes go wide as Riyo approaches.

“You,” she says. “You should be in jail.”

“I was,” Riyo says, walking towards her, “but it wasn’t good for my constitution. And besides, all my stuff is here.”

The woman is clearly confused, but as Riyo gets closer she decides she would feel better if she was armed. She raises her buckler and draws a cudgel from her belt. She has leather armour, studded with iron, which is a great deal more than Riyo has.

Even so, Riyo is in a bad mood and the woman is standing between her and her things. She doesn’t stop walking. The police woman shouts “halt,” at her, then yelps and swings her cudgel. Riyo easily dodges it, and grabs the back of her elbow, using her momentum to turn her around, then slamming her forehead against the door frame. She collapses like a boneless lump of skin and Riyo steps over her and into the inn.

The woman behind the counter looks up at her in shock.

“I never got the chance to check out,” Riyo says. “Let me just grab my things and we can settle up.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” the woman all but whispers. “If the sheriff finds out…” Riyo can see her shaking. Her eyes dart to the corners of the room, as though the sheriff’s massive bulk might be squeezed into one of the shadows there.

Riyo wonders how much time she has already lost on her master. Her grand adventure may well end tomorrow at this rate.

“What will he do?” she asks anyway.

The woman swallows. Her eyes continue to move sporadically, chasing nothing. “I can’t…”

Riyo sighs. “I’m taking my things anyway. If it makes you feel any better, I can knock you unconscious like I did the guy outside. That way I overpowered you and you couldn’t stop me.”

“I… I can’t… You’ve already doomed my inn.”

“Oh. Okay,” Riyo says. “I wasn’t looking forward to punching you anyway. I’ll just go and get my stuff and then we’ll see what the sheriff will do.”

 

Rolleck strolls down the main street of Malvis, following the silence and emptiness of worried people. A jailbreak is likely to draw out the sheriff’s true wrath, and knowing the destruction his idle corruption has wrought on the town, they do not want to be around to see the full extent of his power. He occasionally sees a wandering soul to whom the information has not yet passed, but upon seeing him they slink away, comprehension dawning. It isn’t a secret that Rolleck’s position is tenuous, that conflict lives just beneath the surface of the Malvis police force.

He reaches the inn where Riyo was staying, and finds a small but respectable pile of his colleagues outside. Riyo herself stands in the doorway, her golden hair floating softly in the breeze.

“Freedom suits you,” she says.

“But apparently not you,” he replies, glancing towards the eastern gate. “You’re determined to wait until you get arrested again.”

Riyo shakes her head. “Not going to happen. I’m done with jail for a while. It’s bad for my complexion. I hope you realise your police force is not very effective.”

“I’m the only member of the Malvis police force,” Rolleck says. “Like I said, I work alone. All these others work for some other organisation.”

Riyo smirks. “And this other organisation would be a criminal one? That you have failed to shut down and arrest a single member of? And you want me to retract what I said about the effectiveness of the force?”

“You make a reasonable point,” Rolleck says, glancing down at his sword. “But police incompetence in this town ends today.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Riyo says.

“Perhaps it should start with the woman causing a ruckus in the centre of town and endangering its citizens?” Rolleck says, looking back at Riyo and relishing the sudden tension in her stance, in the way she looks at him.

A loud crash fills the street with noise, airborne debris lancing through the weight of the moment and thumping into hard-packed dirt and thatch.

“Or maybe it should start with whatever that was,” Riyo suggests, and Rolleck smiles.

“That seems reasonable,” he says. “What will you do?”

“I’m expecting company.” She looks down the street in the opposite direction of the sound, to where another group of officers are gathering, armed variously with crossbows, swords and spears. Kallie is at their head, and she has murder in her eyes. “I don’t suppose they’re likely to rush past me to the aid of the citizens of Malvis?”

“No,” Rolleck says.

“Then they’re just in the way,” Riyo says, and begins idling towards the police host, pulling a pair of short, needle-like daggers from somewhere inside her coat.

Rolleck turns his back on them all and walks towards the east gate. His former boss is probably behind this, and that means the people of Malvis are in danger. A good policeman would protect them all and arrest the perpetrator, but Rolleck is not sure he is that good of a policeman. It is likely he won’t be able to save everyone.

He turns past the library and onto the main thoroughfare that bisects the town from east to west. There are still only a few people around, but there are some faces he recognises and they are distorted with fear. They cower in doorways and side streets, unable to make it home in time and now too afraid that running will draw attention. The ruin of the eastern gate leaves a shattered maw of brick and stone that smiles grimly towards Rolleck, vomiting rat-goblins into his town. The green bear that broke the gate is larger than any he has ever seen, towering over the walls and oozing rot through the mould and moss that cover its reanimated hide. Smaller green bears – though to think of them like that isn’t really fair to them, since they are all at least the size of a four-horse cart – follow their rat-goblin handlers through the wound in the wall.

In their midst strides McRife. He has removed his waistcoat and wolf pelt, and now sports a loose chainmail jerkin and a substantial golden crown. His enormous mace rests on his shoulder, its four blades glinting with menace. The rat-goblins quibble excitedly around him, but despite their overwhelming numbers they restrain themselves. Even those citizens caught outside their homes remain unharmed. Instead, they move with purpose – an army at the command of a general. Several of them wander close to Rolleck and he feels the muscles in his sword arm twitch, feels his grip tighten. But they wait, then part as the former sheriff of Malvis comes to a halt not far from Rolleck. His expression is no different from any other day – he looks as though somebody gave him some bad news just before breakfast. Rolleck has never seen the man smile, and he has never met anybody else who has either. They say that he just turned up in Malvis one day, one-armed and wearing the same sour expression he wears now. He joined the force as a constable and was sheriff within a year.

“I should have known those bars wouldn’t hold you.” His voice is thunder on the other side of the mountains. Not enough to shake the ground, but enough to send a shiver through a person’s soul.

“They gave me some time to think,” Rolleck says, meeting the man’s fierce golden eyes squarely. “And I’ve got a few ideas that I think could help reduce the crime rate.”

“Funny,” McRife says, though the mirth in his face would turn rivers to glaciers, “I’ve been thinking too. I’m tired, Rolleck. Tired of this backwater and its silence. Tired of the shape of this world. Once upon a time, I thought it was a grand place. A place where adventure grew on every tree and a wealth of treasure was right beneath my boots if I’d just dig for it.” He holds his mace out between them. Its taller than Rolleck, but McRife wields it with ease despite his missing arm. “I fought for that, with this mace and the arm I can still feel sometimes. I learned some hard lessons out there. I learned it takes more than just a strong will and a strong arm to make your little notch on the sword of history. And I learned that a heart is just there to be torn right out of you. Which is why I came to this town without one, and why it will be easy to take what I need from it in blood before expanding eastward.”

“So,” Rolleck says. “You mess up. You trip on a log and lose your arm. You get mopey and roll into this town, telling yourself that you’ve come from this dark place that makes you better than the people around you. Over time you convince yourself that you’re wise to the ways of the world, and that only the cruel survive. So now you’re going to rip Malvis apart to feed and arm your rat-goblins and go try to be a heartless conqueror. Carve out a little part of the world like it carved away part of you.” Rolleck shakes his head and laughs. “You have no idea what this world is. Thousands of men and women like you have been broken by it but still lived a fulfilled life. The fact that you couldn’t makes you weak, not strong. All your tantrum will achieve is the murder of innocents. Innocents you swore to protect. I can’t allow that, and if you think my heart is here just to be torn out then you are welcome to try, but you’ll find it’s wrapped in the same steel as my arm.”

McRife’s eyes have narrowed. He closes them and shakes his head, making his chainmail tinkle. “You would die protecting this nothing town?”

“I would live protecting it, and I should have done a better job until now. I let you get away with so much because I rolled into this town as mopey as you did. But that isn’t going to be my legacy. My time isn’t going to leave a notch on the world, it’s going to clean up a few of the blemishes.”

“Empty words. You will see, one day.”

“I’m sure I’ll find a better perspective on anything I find than the one you brought to it. Now hurry up and give whatever order it is you need to. My blade is thirsty.”

McRife points his mace at Rolleck. The command is a simple one. “Kill.”

Riyo Falsemoon knows her abilities as a crafter make her strong. The crafters and archcrafters are often talked about in such terms, and perhaps crafting is unique in that it is a strength that is taught rather than inherent, but they are hardly the only strong beings on the planet. From her reading, Riyo has come to learn of people and creatures with abilities that would make most crafters wet themselves. Even those who don’t appear to possess any strange or exciting abilities are still capable of surprising her.

Kallie and her guards were not those sort of people, but Riyo thinks that Rolleck the Lost might be. She sits atop the tallest structure in the town – a clock tower of wood and stone that gives her a good view of the chaos unfolding below. Several fires have already started near the east gate, and panic and fury are slowly spreading out along the walls and towards the town centre.

“Did you know this would happen?” Riyo asks.

Kallie swallows, and the action draws a little more blood from the pin-prick wound in her neck where the point of Riyo’s dagger still rests. “He said we would move on. That we could leave this little town behind and bring the whole of Everstall Song to its knees. I knew he could control the rat-goblins, but this…”

“Rat-goblins eat people. How did you think he was going to feed them?”

“Well I knew… but I didn’t think there were so many of them. There’s an army.”

Riyo sighs. “I suppose this would be something that an actual police force would be useful for.”

“We had the whole town under our control,” Kallie says. She is staring down at the madness, and it is reflected in her eyes. “I thought…”

“Well clearly you didn’t think, and now all you have is him.” She gestures to a spot on the main thoroughfare where the bodies or rat-goblins are beginning to pile two or three corpses high.

 

 

Rolleck is enjoying himself. There is a sense of clarity and purpose in what he does. Every rat-goblin he kills is one that will not harm a citizen of Malvis. Grey-green blood slicks his clothes and blade, but the chilling sharpness hidden within that metal refuses to dull. If anything, with every spine she severs she grows sharper. The rat-goblins are poor fighters. They have a vicious cunning and a wiry strength to their over-long limbs, but faced with a determined opponent they cannot hope to touch them. Their movements are feral and instinctual, while Rolleck’s are intelligent and graceful. He winds between and around them, dodging, parrying and slicing, moving faster with every kill.

Even when a green bear lumbers forward and attempts to plant its greasy undead claws in his flesh he turns its flails aside and removes its paws before burying his blade deep within its skull, neatly piercing the parasite controlling the shambling creature. It barely takes him longer than it does to kill a rat-goblin, and he exults in it, flowing seamlessly into the next kill, and the next. He feels unstoppable, but there is a nagging feeling hidden beneath the rush of the fight.

Because he knows that every rat-goblin he kills will not harm a citizen of Malvis. Which means that all those he doesn’t kill, will. And there are far too many for him to kill them all. He is just one man.

 

“He could have killed me in a whisper,” Kallie says. “All those times I provoked him. Acted superior. Treated him like dirt for not agreeing with the sheriff.”

“People carry things with them,” Riyo says. “The things they do reflect what’s in their heart, but hearts can change. He let you and your sheriff live and keep doing what you were doing because of something in his heart, but it looks like that facet of him has shattered. What do you think the new Rolleck will look like?”

“Like a corpse,” Kallie says. She sounds bitter. “He really is so much stronger than I ever knew, but he is all we have, and he’s fighting against the rising tide.”

Riyo shakes her head. “He may be all you have, but you aren’t all he has.” She stands and rolls her neck until it cracks. “He has me.” She drops from the clock tower.

 

Rolleck can feel his breath biting in his chest. The flux of power that crackles through his muscles hides the strain on his body, but he knows it is there, and that it will eventually bite so hard that he can no longer breathe. He cleaves a green bear’s head from its motionless corpse and bowls it into a rat-goblin, then quickly slashes through another two before darting backwards, hoping to grab a few full breaths before the fight is on him again.

“You still haven’t touched the big guy,” a voice says behind him. He turns to find Riyo standing in the middle of the road. Some of the rat-goblins that had been circling around behind him now sport neat little holes in their foreheads, and her slim daggers are wet with their blood.

“I’ll get there eventually,” Rolleck says, trying to hide the grip of fatigue around his throat and his relief at the extra few seconds she has bought him.

“No you won’t,” Riyo says, “and even if you did you’d be in no state to fight him.”

Rolleck grits his teeth. She’s right. “That won’t stop me from going as far as I can. And further, and further, until there’s nothing left.”

“It’s like you’re a completely different man from the one I met in the forest yesterday.”

“This was a mostly peaceful town, yesterday. Now it’s full of rat-goblins. A lot changes in a day.”

“So it seems. So, supposing this new you could face your former employer right now, do you think he could win?”

Rolleck looks towards the rat-goblins, who are massing for another rush, that monstrous green bear looming behind them. He sees past them, to the empty man in the golden crown, and meets his eyes.

“Yes.”

Riyo steps up next to him, the top of her head coming only a little higher than his shoulder. “Then don’t screw this up, because if you lose then we’ll get worse than prison this time.”

“What are you going to do with those knitting needles?”

“Well I’m obviously not going to… Oh, just watch. Gravity Mould.”

 

Riyo closes her eyes. She has never extended her reality so far, never done so much with it. The come-down from this will be unforgiving. Should she survive.

“Grand cosmos,” she says, pushing her senses out around her and shifting the gravity of the street, then the block. She reaches as far as she is able, nudging every rat-goblin and green bear she can find into the air by turning their world upside down. Malvis is suddenly filled with screeches and roars; confusion, disorientation and fear. The sound gently retreats into the sky, until Riyo can feel tendrils of clawing pain inside her eyes.

“Starfall,” she whispers, and lets everything go.

 

Riyo collapses, and Rolleck manages to grab her before she slumps to the ground. Moments later, there is a rush of screams and a ground-shaking crash as the entirety of McRife’s inhuman army slams back to earth. Rolleck feels his teeth rattle, and blood bursts from every direction at once, painting the town in grey-green sludge. Even the building-sized green bear has been reduced to an enormous, oozing puddle. And in the middle of it all stands McRife. For the first time in years, his face is a mirror of his emotions.

He is terrified.

Rolleck smiles. He lays Riyo down amid the grisly carpet she has created and levels his sword towards the former sheriff. Then he charges through the shattered bodies of the king’s army, blade keen for the man’s throat.

At the last moment McRife recovers and his mace deflects Rolleck’s blade, but he spins past it and thrusts for McRife’s midriff. The larger man roars and turns the thrust away with the handle of his mace, then uses the movement to swing it in a wide arc, forcing Rolleck back.

“Do you know how many weak-minded abominations there are out there, just waiting for me to control? These rat-goblins and their pets are just the beginning. I was made to be a king, to go down in history as a leader, a conqueror. Don’t you see? I had this power from the start, but I was too weak to use it, too weak to nourish it and take my throne. You, and that girl, you have thrones waiting for you too.”

“Your throne is made of corpses, McRife. I don’t want any part of that,” Rolleck says. “Besides, this bony arse wasn’t made for a throne. You can’t lead others if you can’t even choose a path for yourself.”

McRife brings his mace down over-arm, making Rolleck dodge back again and leaving a respectable crater in the bloody mud of the main street. Rolleck lunges in, but the large man has no trouble bringing the mace back up to parry. They throw their anger back and forth, Rolleck struggling against his own lungs and the long reach of the mace, McRife never quite quick enough to hit Rolleck. The clash of metal rings around Malvis, trying desperately to fill a silence left by dead rat-goblins and terrified citizens.

Their exchange lasts anywhere between half a moment and half a day, Rolleck cannot tell. He is focusing everything he has on keeping himself upright, searching for the one sliver of space he needs.

And then he sees it.

A quick feint brings McRife’s mace up to parry and Rolleck kicks out at the man’s knee. He lets out a roar that’s part scream and overbalances, his mace dragging him forward. His mace swings around one last time, but Rolleck darts beneath it, his sword cleaving through rough chainmail as though it’s a twist of silk. He feels the cold shiver of life course up his arm as blood washes his blade. It almost feels as though he tastes it, coppery on his tongue.

Then he is past McRife, staring down an empty road towards a broken gate over a charnel carpet of meat and inhuman blood. His arm pulses. He feels joy and desire race through him, emanating from his sword. She is eager to finish the job, to drink her fill. Her blade is wet with red blood, some of it his, and pitch black oil. Rolleck turns to where McRife lays in a gently growing pool of his own blood and raises the blade high. Then he looks past him, and sees Riyo. Sees Kallie watching him from further back.

Suddenly his bloodlust is gone. The blade is silent again, and he lowers her to his side. Fatigue burst from his elongated shadow and drags him to the ground, his breath rough and heavy. He digs his fingers into the dirt and blood beneath him and just breathes. The air itself tastes of death and rot, but beneath that there is something like a fresh beginning. A breeze from the west that smells a little more like pine trees and salvation. He squeezes the handle of his sword and feels it squeeze back.

Kallie walks forward as though in a daze. She stops by McRife and, with some effort, turns him over onto his back. His eyes stare at the sky, not able to meet hers.

“Just a setback,” he says through gritted teeth. “The world is mine for the taking.” With some difficulty he raises his arm, reaching out to grasp the sky. “You’ll help me take it, won’t you Kallie?”

Kallie shakes her head slowly. “Not if taking it means burning it down completely.”

“Weak,” McRife says. “Like the rest.”

“Maybe,” Kallie says, drawing her sword so slowly that it barely rasps against its scabbard. “But maybe we’re all weak, in the end.” She puts the point of her blade at McRife’s throat. “And I don’t think weaklings like us have the right to tell anybody else they’re weak.”

A little pressure, and McRife’s face twists into agony for a moment, before falling slack.

Kallie pulls the blade free and then lifts it to her own throat. Closes her eyes. And pulls.

The sword resists, and she opens her eyes again to find Rolleck gripping it by the blade. He had been sitting more than ten metres away when she closed them. She sees a flash of fury in Rolleck’s pupils before they both sag and stumble against each other, letting go of the sword as it seems to gain a thousand kilograms and slams to the ground, splattering their legs with bloody mud.

They both turn to look at Riyo, who sits panting in the middle of the road, one eye closed and her clothes caked in the same mud.

“It’s not that easy, Kallie,” she says between laboured breaths. “You make a mistake; you fix the mistake. Your life isn’t worth shit, not nearly enough to pay the debt you owe this town. You and everyone who blindly followed the sheriff into the abyss.”

“What do I do then?” Kallie asks, feeling tears brushing down her cheeks.

“You start by begging on your knees for forgiveness,” Rolleck says. “And then you do everything you can to show them you deserve it. The town is short a sheriff, after all.”

Kallie looks up through her haze of tears. “What? But you…”

Rolleck shrugs uncomfortably. “I can’t stay here.”

“He’s coming with me,” Riyo says, limping over. Beneath the mud her face is pale, but she is grinning like she has just told the best joke in her repertoire.

“What?” Rolleck and Kallie say at the same moment. “No I’m not,” he says.

“Sure you are,” Riyo says. “Like I said, freedom suits you.”

“Maybe it does, but that doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere with you.”

“Uh huh,” Riyo says, then turns to Kallie as if the conversation has ended. “You want to repay the people of Malvis, right? Here.” She yanks the blood-and-mud-stained wolf pelt from beneath McRife and offers it to Kallie. “Do right by them, this time. Kick the rest of your team into shape and they’ll forgive you. Not easily, but then, would you expect it to be easy?”

Kallie stares at the barely-golden pelt for a moment. Over the top of it she can see a street littered with dead monsters and the smoke and haze of distant fires.

“There’s a lot of work to do,” Rolleck says, “and I’m in no condition to do it.”

“Nor am I,” Riyo adds.

“It’s a good place to start,” Rolleck says.

Kallie reaches out and takes the pelt. She throws it over her shoulder and picks up her sword, running it neatly into its sheath. “I suppose, even if they won’t accept me, I can at least fix the mess I’ve made.”

“That’s where the road to forgiveness always starts,” Rolleck says, and pats Kallie on the shoulder.

“Thank you,” she says. “Both of you. For stopping him. For saving me.” She sets her shoulders and heads towards the inn where Riyo left the rest of the police force. Riyo nods after her and then turns to Rolleck.

“You look just about strong enough to carry me to an inn,” she says.

“What?” Rolleck says, but Riyo has already collapsed into unconsciousness.

Rolleck sighs. He should just leave the girl on the ground, disappear into the fading light, one more step ahead of his demon.

Instead, he hauls Riyo up over his shoulder and heads towards his house, stepping carefully to avoid slipping in blood.

 

Riyo awakes in a bed. It is not a comfortable bed, but the room it is in is warmed by the soft crackling of a fire. Rolleck the Lost is asleep in a chair that looks altogether more snug, and she surmises that Rolleck does not often sleep in his bed. She is reassured of this assumption by the realisation that she is still in her muddy clothes. Her body aches, but it feels good. She still hasn’t reached the absolute limit of her power. Destroying the ex-sheriff’s army yesterday had taken everything she had, but it hadn’t killed her, and that meant next time she could push further.

That is for the future though. For now, she is hungry. She slides out of bed and takes in a little more of Rolleck’s home. It isn’t much. Everything feels temporary, perfunctory. Rolleck the Lost is not a man of physical possessions or attachments. What furniture and utensils lie about the place are not well cared for, showing rust and rot, stains and scrapes. Riyo finds a few scraps of food in disparate cupboards, but they leave her unsatisfied, so she goes over to Rolleck and kicks him in the shin.

His sword stops a hair’s breadth from her face, but she just frowns at him. “I’m hungry.”

Rolleck grunts, standing up and running his hand through his now-dishevelled hair. “Just go get something then,” he says. “This isn’t an inn.”

Riyo blinks. “Right. Come on then, let’s go.”

Rolleck narrows his eyes. “You still think I’m going with you to wherever it is you’re going, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Riyo says, “because you are. Let’s get some breakfast and get going.”

“I’m not just going to follow you to… Where are you even headed, anyway?”

“Calis.”

“I’m not just going to follow you to Calis because you think I should,” Rolleck says grumpily. Then he blinks. “Calis. As in the planet.”

“Yes,” Riyo says. “It’s a long way, right? So we should get a move on. Besides, my master is looking for me and I don’t want to be here when he gets here.”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

“I’m not. But fine. Even if you’re not going to come with me we can travel to the next town together. You’re leaving Malvis, right?”

Rolleck is beginning to get a headache. “Fine. Whatever.” He picks up his wolf pelt and brushes off some of the dried blood. It has seen better days, but it is the fur of a rare soulless icecap wolf, and it is the only thing he owns that he is not willing to part with.

“So you’re genuinely chasing the sunlight stone?” he asks.

“Yep,” Riyo says, as though it’s a perfectly normal thing to do.

Rolleck grunts. “I’ve met a few others like you, over the years.”

“Aw, so someone else might already have the stone?” Riyo says.

Rolleck looks at her, then rolls his eyes. It had been a genuine question. “No. They’re all dead, so far as I know.”

“Oh good,” Riyo says. “I mean, not that they’re dead, but that the stone is still there.”

“You’re a strange woman,” Rolleck says.

“People have told me that,” Riyo says with a nod. “Do you not need to pack anything?”

“No,” Rolleck says. “I just need this.” He lifts his sword arm and Riyo smiles.

“You’re not one to be calling people strange, Rolleck the Lost.”

“Yeah, well,” Rolleck says. “Let’s just get going.”

Riyo nods and they head out into Malvis, and onward, towards the bleak crimson silhouette of Calis.