Chapter 3
In Which I Am Very Scared of Death and Feel Very Small and Shaky and Would Like to Bite at My Hand so as to Focus on the More Manageable Sensation of Pain, except that I’m Certain Glenda Would Look at Me Funny.
I hadn’t always been afraid of death. Or at least, not so obsessively.
It was like complaining of a disease—‘I wasn’t always stumbling about and covered in sores!’—except that it existed only in my mind, where nobody could see it to spit in disgust. Why I proved weak enough to catch this fear while others seemed immune, I didn’t know.
The moment of infection . . . That I could pinpoint with certainty. It happened during a childhood tutoring session on the Descent. I was sitting in the shadowy depths of our manor’s great hall, while outside I knew it to be sunny and warm, my eyes not quite focused on the man across from me.
At first, I struggled to pay attention. It didn’t help that my tutor-priest spoke wetly, like he was holding a mouthful of saliva.
I already knew the broad strokes of his lesson: the ancients, with their heretical devices, pumped poisons into the air and water, and instead of seeking a solution, they simply retreated indoors, leaving the outside world to rot and die.
You might imagine that watching all this, God would grow rather fed up, and so He did!
One day, He snapped. Or rather, He Descended.
Like a parent storming into a child’s room with a brush, He purified the world, blasting away the blasphemous devices with their gaseous emittances, and banishing the knowledge that had brought them into being.
With blue skies and fertile lands restored, His true believers inherited Larnia, and all was paradise, forever and always.
At least, that was the version of events taught to young children.
Having recently turned six, and thus passing some necessary threshold of sentience, my teacher could now detail how the ground had cracked and churned beneath the ancients’ feet, and how all who looked skyward saw Him.
How, in reshaping the landscape to His Design, vast chasms formed and sealed, the raw fire of Larnia’s core exposed.
And how, though all survivors received His Design, not all chose to abide by it, necessitating the hasty formation of the Church of Order, to keep the world on its ordained path by way of sermon and sword.
And despite my tutor’s squelching delivery, and the worn familiarity of our hall, all those ancient deaths linked to the inevitability of my own in a rapture of emotion, like a saint awakening to religion.
The diseased knowledge entered me that every person burned or crushed in the Descent was once a fully realized human being. And that very little, aside from time and luck, prevented me from joining them and becoming similarly nameless and forgotten. From becoming nothing.
Digesting that all, I excused myself from the lesson politely, walked up a flight of stairs, hid inside a wardrobe, and got properly hysterical.
From that day onward, the Fear would descend periodically like the maw of an animal. Caught in its teeth, I’d curl up and sob.
And now, I had not years, but hours before my greatest fear came true. My skull felt tight, tingling, as though in the grip of a hand. Even the whistling of birds overhead sounded mocking. “Are we close?” I asked, hearing my own voice only distantly.
Glenda rearranged the pack on her shoulders.
Despite her small size, she carried more than I did—a testament to her elven strength.
I’d wasted precious time fretting, wondering why the Order hadn’t drugged me, or at the very least, marched me with a proper escort, but when understanding finally hit it was unwelcome.
The short girl walking at my side had nearly a century’s practice in warfare and magic.
Add to that her elven sight, speed, and instinctive ability to track .
. . If it came to combat, I’d be greatly outmatched.
If I fled, she’d be on my ass like a wolf after a three-legged doe.
They may as well have hauled me to the spot in shackles.
Besides, the Order probably had precautions in place. Spy animals, hidden troops, spells waiting to be triggered . . . They wouldn’t do it halfway. Not for something this important.
“We are,” Glenda answered, and I started.
My mind buzzed with increasingly ill-advised schemes. She’d said she loved me. Clearly, she didn’t love me enough, given that she planned to butcher me like a goat, but that could change. Perhaps a passionate dalliance on the forest floor would tip the scales in my favour?
I didn’t particularly want to—but then again, I didn’t particularly want to die.
And she liked me like that, she had to. She was always cooing about my looks—about my eyelashes, for God’s sake—and now this love confession. Yes, I had a good shot. All that remained was to execute this plan with maximum skill and charisma.
“Hey,” I said, all light and sexy-like. “Why don’t we take a load off?”
Glenda, who’d been walking ahead for some time while I dragged my feet, glanced back. Her eyes looked sore and red from crying.
“Stop and rest,” I clarified. “Or stop and . . . ah, other activities.”
“We have a schedule to keep,” she said, but something in my face must have convinced her to pause. “If you’re not feeling well, we can rest. Sorry, I sometimes forget how quickly humans tire.”
“I mean. There are some activities where I never tire.”
“Certainly. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” Glenda removed her pack in a fluid motion and sank to the ground. She frowned at me. “Cameron, why are you undressing?”
I paused with my shirt half-off, my arms trapped in the sleeves above my head.
“Are you feeling overheated?”
“Yes!” I shouted gratefully. “It’s a hot summer day, isn’t it? And I was just thinking, well, it might be more enjoyable with our clothes off.”
I didn’t typically take the lead in these things. It felt cosmically mean that my life now depended on it.
“That’s . . .” Her face was unreadable. “That’s an interesting thought.”
Dropping my shirt to the ground, I casually flexed one arm to push back the combed waves of my hair. “How interesting a thought is it, exactly?”
“I think there’s a cultural barrier here. I’m not really following.”
Aware of my clenched teeth, I relaxed my jaw. I was a golden lion. Everyone wanted me. Confidence was key.
Loping closer in a leonine fashion, I sank to my haunches and dropped a muscled arm around her shoulders. “I’m sure any barrier can be overcome.”
I moved in for a kiss, and Glenda yelped, her head shooting back so fast that, if not for my arm, she’d have toppled to the ground. I froze, lips puckered.
“I’m so sorry. I’ve, uh, it’s not you. I’ve just never been that attracted to humans,” she said, looking anywhere but at me. This close, her breath smelled strongly of seaweed.
Realizing that my arm still trapped her, I recoiled, leaping to my feet. “But you . . . I mean, don’t you love me?”
“I do! I do love you.” Glenda hugged her knees.
“You make me laugh every day. And I’ve had such a wonderful time serving the Order with you at my side.
My friends back home, they’re always asking me how to get a human of their own.
” She tried to smile, but it wobbled and failed. “They love hearing about you.”
A human of their own? “Isn’t that somewhat bigoted?” I asked. It came out sharper than I intended.
Glenda rocked back like she’d been slapped. “I didn’t mean—that’s not—Cameron, I am going to miss you so, so much, and I will never forget you, I promise!” Her head sank into her hands, her breath coming in gasps.
I realized, as the noises became wet and clogged with snot, that we had entered another round of crying. And back came my anger. I was the victim here. I ought to be the one in tears, and yet here she was again, emotionally incapacitated by the slightest . . .
Hold that thought. She was incapacitated, wasn’t she?
Something despicable occurred to me then, and I immediately accepted it as my best course of action.
“Glenda,” I said, fingering the hilt of my sword.
“This is my last day alive, and you’ve already ruined it.
Would it have been so difficult to peck me on the cheek and lie? Or am I too lowly even to touch?”
Her damned elven hearing could ruin it all . . . but Glenda had her pointed ears covered to better blunt my words, and her own swallowed cries likely drowned out some level of noise.
“You shouldn’t have told me any of this!” I timed my shout with the oh-so-gentle snick of my unsheathing blade. “You broke a promise to the Elders, and for what? Just to scare me before I die?”
This outburst must have been shocking to her—we’d never had so much as a disagreement. But I couldn’t spare any pity.
She belched something that sounded like an apology into her knees, her body quaking. I stood behind her, lining up a shot with the flat of my blade.
“Sorry, Glenda.” And I swung.