Chapter Six
Chapter
Six
Why did you stop making games?
God, as if.
Wesley must not have known me well at all to think that it was ever an option for me to stop.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve filled my free time with building worlds, whether they’re fantastical D I’ve holed myself in my office all day, alternating between my day job and my passion project. I think this is the first time I’ve spoken today.
“Ten minutes.” She jerks her chin toward the door to my unit. “I let myself in.”
Right.
She steps into the office and leans against the Wyrmwood table. “By all means, don’t let me stop you. You’re clearly on a roll—it looks even better than it did last week.”
I stare at the screen for a long moment; my eyes feel too strained to be able to tell for sure.
“Yeah,” I finally say. “Yeah, I’m going to compete in NEWT.”
As I say it aloud for the first time, I wait for the dread or uncertainty to flood in, but it never does.
Instead, it just feels right, like I’m confirming something I knew I would do all along.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when I made the decision—was it when I started this project immediately after the Cataclysm?
When Mona played it for the first time, and her face lit up with wonder?
Or during the several sleepless nights I spent poring over it this week?
Wesley’s dark eyes, narrowed in challenge, flash in the back of my mind—but I shake my head to ward them off.
And anyway, Mona has started squealing at a pitch only dogs can hear, which distracts me enough to burst into laughter as she squeezes me in a hug. “Oh my god, finally. Yes! You’ve needed this. I’m so excited for you. How can I help? Do you want to keep working? I can order us dinner.”
She’s talking so fast it takes a moment to register her words. I glance at the time. “We can’t,” I say, still laughing. “We have to leave for D I doubt he would have cared about the new release. He was always the sort who made up the rules as he went along.
“…Reagan?”
I look up at the sound of my name, though I don’t know who said it. The feeling of Wesley’s eyes on me—of the whole table’s eyes on me—shakes me out of my reverie. I didn’t realize they were waiting on me.
“Well?” My tone is impatient and embarrassed. “Let’s get started, shall we?”
“Where we’re from, it’s been centuries since anyone has seen a vampire,” Moss muses. “Really, he’s an honest-to-gods vampire?” She bares her teeth in a comical approximation, though her orcish tusks jut out from her lower jaw, not the top.
Mortimer clasps his hands together in unnerving excitement, violet eyes made wider by the thick lenses of his glasses. “Yes! A necromantic marvel, truly!”
Antoni hisses through clenched teeth. “Need I remind you that necromantic marvel is trying to kill us all?”
“Ah. Right.” Mortimer passes his palm sheepishly over his bald head.
“Perhaps that was insensitive,” he says, though he sounds more thoughtful than apologetic.
He leans conspiratorially toward Sindra and Moss.
“I’m not from Moros, either, you know. I traveled here to study—erm, help. They need my expertise.”
Sindra eyes the skulls tucked cozily under his arm and wonders how far his expertise extends. She huffs a laugh and drums her fingers along Brightmorn’s hilt. “I’ll try to make use of my expertise, too.”
For hours now the party has traveled together toward the heart of Moros, and if Sindra thought matters looked bad near the border, it was nothing compared to how the landscape withers as they journey deeper into the kingdom.
Everything is gray: the ever-present dark clouds crowding the sky, the dried stalks of grass that have managed to punch through the ground, the bark on the skinny trees.
Sindra finds herself glancing down at the ruby red of her skin just to remind herself that she can see color at all.
It’s not hard to imagine how beautiful the kingdom must once have been.
Behind them, the white-capped mountain range stretches across the horizon, threatening to pierce through the clouds.
It’s late summer, and Sindra can picture the valley they’re walking through full of flowers and flooded with sunlight.
But instead, she has yet to see the sun once, and no wildflowers decorate the dusty earth.
Empty houses and barren farms dot the landscape from time to time, and though they’ve been traveling for half the day already, they haven’t encountered a single other soul.
“How long has it been like this?” Sindra breathes.
“Just a little over four years,” Mortimer says matter-of-factly. Sindra nearly trips over her own feet, she’s so stunned. All this devastation in only four years? Instinctively, she looks over her shoulder, back toward the enclave.
Back toward home.
How long do we have before the same thing happens to us?
“What’s next?” Sindra says, her voice clipped. “What’s the plan?”
“The plan,” Antoni says roughly, “is that you’ll come with us as far as the town of Zaska to replenish our supplies. We’ll decide where to go from there.”
Not good enough. “But you do have a plan, don’t you?” Sindra presses. “To kill this vampire? To end the curse?”
Earnestly, Moss adds, “To heal the land?”
Vera seems to perk up at that, but Antoni keeps his hard, narrowed eyes on Sindra and Moss.
Slowly, Mortimer says, “We have a theory—”
“Quiet, wizard,” Antoni snaps.
“Father…” Vera sighs. “If they’re just trying to help—”
“Soon,” Antoni interrupts. His expression softens as he glances at Vera before returning his gaze to Moss and Sindra.
“Once we make it to Zaska—if we make it to Zaska—we’ll determine how much is safe for you to know.
Until then, no more.” Antoni turns on his heel and continues down the rough dirt road.
Their winding journey through the mountains grows so difficult that the party becomes too focused on catching their breath to make idle conversation.
From time to time, Antoni pauses to consult his map, and Sindra considers asking him when they’ll finally stop to rest. Even in Moros’s state of constant twilight, it’s obvious when true evening begins to settle in.
The shadows cast by the skeletal trees lengthen and darken, and it becomes difficult for Sindra to keep sight of the path ahead.
Howls echo eerily through the mountains, and it’s impossible to tell how close they might be.
Vera and Lord Gullet, who have been scouting ahead, seemingly materialize from out of the darkness with identical grim expressions creasing their features.
“It’s gone,” she reports.
“Gone? It was here just last week,” Antoni says.
“Come see.”
Sindra follows the others through the trees until she sees it. The charred remains of a wooden hut lie in a crumpled pile against a rock face. The thick smell of smoke fills Sindra’s nose, and Moss swipes her thumb through the ash on one of the broken beams.
“This was very recent,” Moss observes.
Mortimer’s face has gone pale, and he stands very, very still. “Oh gods. Oh Hells—what will we do?” He casts his gaze around the space, as if another shelter will materialize through the trees.
“That’s all right,” Sindra teases good-naturedly, trying for humor. “Moss and I are used to roughing it.” Understatement, really. Since she joined the enclave six years ago, she can count the number of times she’s slept under a roof on one hand.
But she’s met with the tight, worried faces of the Morosians. Tough crowd.
“That’s not the concern,” Antoni says through clenched teeth.
Vera turns a pitying glance on Moss and Sindra. “Surely you’ve heard the tales, right? Vampires can’t enter a residence without an invitation.”
Moss looks stunned. “That actually—that actually works?”
Vera nods. “We’ve identified several safe houses across Moros that we use when we’re traveling, but their numbers are dwindling. This is not the first one we’ve found like this.”
Silence settles around them, interrupted by another high-pitched howl in the distance.
“Well,” Sindra says. “How close is the next shelter?”
Antoni shakes his head. “We’d have to travel through the night, but there’s no guarantee we won’t find it in the same state as this one.
And the things that emerge to prowl in the dark—the wolves, the undead hordes…
” He shrugs out of his traveling pack and drops it to the ground with a heavy thunk.
“Better to take our chances here with a strict watch than try to face the woods at midnight.”
As everyone begins unfurling their bedrolls, Sindra feels Moss’s eyes on her, wide and round with worry.
What a day, Sindra thinks, resigned. What a shitty first day.
But she’s still eager to prove herself, still eager to gain everyone’s trust enough that they let her help, so she can get the fuck back home.
Head resting on her pack, she reaches forward to pat Moss’s shoulder consolingly.
“Don’t worry,” she whispers. “We’ve slept under the stars a million times, Moss.”
Never mind that, even now, the clouds hang too thickly for them to see any twinkling lights. They had determined a fire was too dangerous, too obvious. Darkness smothers them.
“Sleep,” Antoni commands quietly. “I’ll take first watch.”