That humiliation had driven her from the City, temporarily.The world was vast, and full of forgotten wonders and nightmares left behind by the First Folk.Reason dictated that there must be some evidence to lend Fola’s ideas credibility.A powerful haunting, or something the First Folk themselves had left behind, or even something that predated them—an artifact of the fae, or the power of a fiend, anything to serve as a first proof that the First Folk soul could, at least in theory, be derived by the process she envisioned.
She had spent four years chasing every rumour and folk tale of ghosts, wraiths, and darker powers.Four years recording countless fascinating wonders, and a few fascinating nightmares.A certain silver-lined cavern where the locals buried their beloved dead so that their ghosts might return with the winter solstice.An ancient well in an overgrown, ruined city in the jungles of Kar which, in exchange for a coin and a drop of blood, prophesied death in a half-heard whisper.The sorcerer-kings of Ulun who made machines from the bones and bound ghosts of dead slaves, animated by an ancient engine they barely understood, crafting toys to be wielded in what amounted to a generations-long war game, with the people they ruled for pawns.
That last nightmare she had destroyed, at no small cost in pain and blood, and fled north into the wilds of Tarebach.Where she had found the thread of yet another rumour—one just as promising as all the others, and just as likely to end in disappointment.
Colm wiped the balding templar’s blood from his face and staggered to his feet.He eyed Fola while his expression worked through surprise and fear towards respect.Having come to an understanding of what she had done, he went to check on the man he had shot through the leg.
‘Dead,’ he announced.‘Cut the artery in his thigh.Enough blood for it.’
The last surviving templar’s screams faded to a hiccuping, terror-addled whimper where he lay in his puddle of vomit.Frog, who had been circling overhead since the fighting began, settled on Fola’s shoulder and began nervously preening.
Fola dismounted, fished in Fellstar’s saddlebag for her purse, then crossed to the whimpering templar.He put up his hands, making a triangle with forefingers and thumbs in a warding gesture at once well practised and entirely powerless.He was young, with peach fuzz and baby fat on his brown cheeks in equal measure, and big, terrified eyes.Maybe sixteen, though even after four years she wasn’t very good at guessing ages.Appearance was a matter of choice in Thaumedony, rather than a matter of time.
Her heart hurt for the young templar.His life had been hard.Whatever bad choices he had made, he had, in her estimation, already suffered enough punishment.She tossed the purse.It thumped on the white brick of the road beside him.‘Take that to pay your way.Follow the First Folk Road south and east.It’ll take you to the City.’
The young templar stared at her, uncomprehending.And after all that effort to learn the regional dialect…
Colm barked a laugh that turned into pained coughing.He cleared his throat.‘Bastard tries to kill you, and you pay him for the service.’
The young templar cringed, which stabbed Fola with guilt.What was the point of leaving the City if not to carry its goodness with her, rather than letting the world strip it away?
‘Listen,’ she told the young templar.‘These people you’re with—they’re dangerous, and they’re wrong about basically everything.They say the City I’m from is a nest of demons and evil magic.It’s not.It has its share of meanness, but it’s the only truly safe place in the world.They’ll give you whatever you need, and almost everything you could ever hope for.They’ll accept you, no question, because you couldn’t possibly threaten them, and they’ll always have more than enough to take in a scared kid off the road.’
‘If it’s as good as all that, then why’d you leave?’Colm muttered.
She ignored him.‘Whatever led you to working with that jackass,’ she pointed to her headless would-be killer, ‘it doesn’t matter.The City doesn’t care who you are, or where you’ve come from, or what you’ve done.It, and its people, will welcome you and take care of you.You’d be a fool to go anywhere else.’
The templar—the kid—snatched the purse and bolted for the trees.Heading west, rather than south and east.Fola felt a pang of betrayal, shook her head and stood, then snapped at Frog and pulled back her left sleeve.The burns could have been worse, given the amount of resistance the templar’s magic had lent him.Still, the fat blisters on her joints and the rounded fractal pattern of burns down her forearm made her wince.She fetched a small bottle from her satchel.Frog leaned down and vomited up a clear, viscous fluid until the bottle was full.She slathered the ointment on her burns and the chafed skin of her wrists.Its coolness blunted the edge of her pain, though she wrinkled her nose at the scent of mint and lye.
She flexed her injured arm, testing the motion of her fingers.Twinges, but nothing immobilising.The blisters and scars remained, but would heal.
‘Catch.’She tossed the bottle.Colm snatched it from the air with one of his smaller, lower arms, uncorked it, sniffed, and made a face.
‘Sorry,’ Fola said.‘It didn’t used to smell like that.’
The dominant scent of Frog’s early batches had been peppermint, but it had gotten worse the further they had travelled from the City.Now, it mostly smelled of acrid lye and something like long-decaying leaves.‘You’ll reek till you can get a bath,’ she went on.‘But you needed one anyway, even before all that.’She gestured to the splatter of blood and brain that coated his face and shoulder.
Colm peeled off his vest with a grimace.She felt an unbidden flutter at that.The way his musculature all connected up, with two sets of arms and shoulders, above a stomach that seemed all one slab of muscle…
She gritted her teeth and focused on his wounds.The stab to his gut hadn’t been as bad as Fola feared.Come to mention it, the cut on his arm had stopped bleeding entirely, and the slash down his rib seemed little more than a cat-scratch.
‘I’ve known some women aroused by violence,’ Colm said with a quirk to his lips.‘Didn’t take you for one.’
‘I… What…?’Fola glared at him.‘How bad are your injuries?’
He winced as he rubbed a dab of ointment on his stomach.‘We’re a hardy folk, my people.Glad for the ointment, if it speeds things, but I’d have lived.’
His words were like a puzzle piece slotting into place.
‘Warborn,’ Fola said, excited and only half-thinking.She had suspected: what little was known of the Warborn told of many limbs and enormous stature.A people recorded more in rumour than in writing, crafted by the First Folk for some ancient, long-forgotten war, gifted with strength and resilience far beyond any natural mortal.
Regret swept in as Colm’s expression soured.
‘I only mean… that’s your lineage,’ she said.‘I’d guess, anyway.’
‘That was a long, long time ago,’ Colm said.
‘Yes, but …’ Fola swallowed the rest of that sentence.Arno had said countless times that half the reason she couldn’t convince anyone to work with her, let alone back her projects to the board, was because of her careless tongue.
