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Chapter XLI

The Deadlands

“We call it the Deadlands,” Daedra explained, grass soft beneath their feet, the distant horizon a heavy, clouded gray, the map they stood over a sweeping desolation of emptiness and an enormous city of spires.

“You mean the Rim,” Vera murmured, eyes on the horizon instead of the map.

“That is what the edge of it is called, yes, but deeper in, where the chasm was largest, are the Deadlands. This is where we will find Sanctuary. At the heart of it all, the epicenter, if you will.”

The heart of it—of the Incident. Of everything that had gone wrong—truly wrong—in Fenrir’s life.

Daedra’s map was accurate, if crude. Where the Empire’s side of the chasm was marked, she’d estimated the distances between the Gilded Palace and the Stacks with alarming precision, evidence of how much Sanctuary knew about the Empire. But it was the details etched through the Deadlands which fascinated Fenrir. A great empty expanse that consumed hundreds of miles into what he recognized from pre-Incident maps—a place in the world where humanity once thrived. A network of east coast city centers connected by a nerve-like corridor that spanned nearly two-thousand miles end to end. Now, Daedra tapped a finger at its eastern edge, golden eyes narrowed as she indicated their destination, and where he would find Orpheus.

Orpheus, and the man who had kidnapped him.

Fenrir had Daedra explain the route three times before allowing her to retire for bed. Spent another hour alone with the map, memorizing her instructions, committing to memory a path he’d not yet walked but needed to know like the back of his hand in case the worst went wrong. By the time his head hit his bedroll’s lumpy pillow, dawn was scant hours away.

His dreams were filled with shadows, silver trees and a violet-tinted sky. Dawn dragged him from its strange depths, Vera’s voice a distant murmur he grasped at when sleep threatened to drag him back under. He didn’t answer her questions when she asked if he was okay. He gave her the same smile he gave his men when their marching orders were taking them somewhere he knew would end in many of their deaths.

They left the horses behind at the encampment, the very same one Red had passed through when rendezvousing with the fleet. Hooves were traded for tires. Weapons for a truck of foodstuffs because when Daedra said Sanctuary was suffering, she really meant starving. Fenrir wasn’t entirely sure they’d accept a peace offering after sending a whole army after them, but a truce had to start somewhere, and Vera insisted a shared meal was as good as any parlay.

They made good time on their first day into the Rim. Their path wove in and out of a trail only an army could have left, leaving it behind when Daedra adjusted their course, her gold eyes a constant on the horizon, her instructions clear. Her corrections quick.

Night fell, and with it arrived their first campsite within the Rim.

“It’s familiar,” Vera whispered, attention locked onto the skeletal remains of a village half-collapsed into one of the many scar-like ridges that now stitched up the puckered horizon. At their back, Fenrir’s soldiers worked on getting a fire going.

Fenrir unrolled Mercer’s etching tools, then braced his new forearm atop his lap and got to work.

At his side, Vera shifted her weight, hands coming up to cup her elbows in a kind of protective gesture Fenrir didn’t often see from her. She stared out over the Rim with narrowed eyes, breath shallow in her chest, attention lingering on the village in the distance, the half-collapsed house that could have been the one they’d called home all those years ago.

“Is this what Hell looks like?” Vera asked Daedra when she joined them, a steaming cup cradled in her blue-gray hands.

Fenrir glanced up from where he was etching a portrait of Nightmare into his elbow and Daedra looked away, mouth drawn down. “Hell, if it’d been sucked dry of everything that gives it life. The only thing this place shares with Hell is this here.” Daedra kicked a rock across the shale. “Where your world is green and vibrant, Hell is shadow and mist. Days of twilight, and a night that blossoms with life. Our worlds are opposites in many ways. Balanced, our historians teach us. Complimentary.”

“You think we made a mistake? Sealing it off like we did?” Fenrir asked the question rather than the one he really wanted an answer to: whether the tea helped with her hunger.

“Such extremes are rarely beneficial,” she murmured, “but I am no scholar. I do not know if there is some kind of lingering ill effect.”

“Myrkur weren’t living in Sanctuary when it was summoned, were they?” It hadn’t even occurred to Fenrir that they may have been. To imagine humans stealing not merely a city, but Myrkur away from their families and homes.

“No,” Daedra said, strangely solemn. “Sanctuary is a hallowed site of sacred importance, but too many memories of a darker time haunt it. The Myrkur have not lived there in many generations. Though…they might have returned if...”

Daedra trailed off, unwilling to speak her thoughts aloud, like she had already given up on the people she ached to return to.

“If what?” Vera asked, looking between them.

It was Fenrir who sighed and explained. “If Daedra had managed to kill Ohm while up here on Earth.”

“You’re enemies? The Myrkur and Ohm?”

“A conflict of glorious legend, dating back many thousands of years,” Daedra breathed, eyes half-mast, hands shaking. Fenrir put a palm to her elbow when she lowered to sit. “I came here to kill him, but Ama reached him first. I thought him defeated, but it is me who has failed.”

Vera looked at Fenrir, eyebrows raised. What does she mean? “When Orpheus and I closed the chasm, we sealed Lore in Hell with Ohm and the Myrkur. Daedra needs to get back and help her people.”

“Home,” Vera said, the word from days ago taking on a new meaning. “But how can you return to Hell with the chasm closed?”

“Sanctuary stole Orpheus in hopes to reopen it. If he does, we can get Daedra home.”