Elmira

“Shterc!”

El’s boot caught in a deep mudhole. She yanked until it came free with a sickening slurp. The mud caked her boot above the trim, and moisture seeped through the lacing till her socks were wet through and through. She growled and stomped on, leaning into the headstrong wind with an equally stubborn strength. This day was not going well. At all.

“Mind your step, lass!” an orcish man shouted at her from across the street.

“Mind your manners, fucker!” she shouted back, making an obscene gesture.

“Get lost!”

“After you!”

He barked a laugh and dove into a tent. El adjusted the straps of her cloak and harness, patting her pockets to make sure everything still had its place before trudging on. Her lungs were already screaming, and she was only halfway up the ascent. The air was always thin at this altitude, but it felt somehow thinner today.

This sorry part of the world was the place that the gods forgot. A hellhole made up of all kinds of dirt that hadn’t seen proper sunlight in over a decade. Damp, smoky, polluted, and altogether populated by the most dangerous and deranged individuals this continent and the next had to offer.

Deep within the wilderness of Khorun, Sangora was the home of the misfits, the outcasts, and the wayless. Who else would even consider moving to the inhospitable, rough, seething landscape resting in the shade of spitting volcanoes? Their sulfur stench faded into the background most days if the winds were favorable, but still gave a unique taste to the air that perpetually lingered in everything. Even clothes.

Sprawled along a ragged mesa, Syndicate Base 19 was the prime example. Perhaps that included her for the time being, as it had since she set foot on this godforsaken soil. Death was as sure as the rising sun if they made her, and not a pretty one either. There was a special kind of hell reserved for Akati Elves like herself.

"Hell?" she thought, catching herself. "Esirno, I have been here too long."

Still, she did not regret volunteering for the mission. Given the chance, she’d do it all again. It was her right and obligation. There was much she needed to make up for. Much she wanted to be far away from, too.

The sound of air being forcibly displaced caught her attention, and she barely managed to get out of the way as a platoon of soldiers on bikes swooped by. Biting back the curses, she pulled her thoughts together and focused on paying mind to where she was going.

The land outside the walls of Base 19 was lawless and unmarked, free for all and perilous. The black stone that made up pretty much everything was porous, brittle, and as willing to cut through your boots as it was to give way beneath your weight if you weren’t careful.

Sometimes it was replaced by black rock that looked like the wrinkly skin of a dreadhorn. Creatures of legend. Massive, living bulwarks of muscle and stone. Much like the ground, their hides were as tough as enchanted basalt, their towering horns etched with ancient runes that glowed faintly when danger’s near. Which made them coveted by trophy hunters.

Some say they were shaped by the gods of war, forged from mountain roots and set loose upon the world. Personally, El believed they were merely beasts left over from the Age of Primordials that somehow survived the First Sundering.

Signs of civilization became more frequent. A set of grim-faced, armed men were doing drills in the drizzle, rain mingling with the sweat on their foreheads as their commander barked orders, punctuated by a crack of his whip.

“Lousy worms!” she could hear the sergeant scream in common illevian through the bellowing wind. “I should toss you to the Vanish! Babes do better than that! Again! Come on, you cowards! Don’t make me regret this!”

“Thank fuck I did not sign up for that…” she whistled and pushed on.

Splinters of the illevan society scattered like rats across the lands after the great battle that saw the end of the Age of Arcanum. Few trusted the perilous Accords struck between the empires of Illeva and Akati. Fewer still believed they would be honored.

“Get the latest!” a young man with snagged blonde hair bellowed, waving a sheer sheet on which headlines and ads fought for attention. “Brand new! Fresh bodies in from Kilmoru! Could this be it? Exclusive inside! Get the latest!”

The name triggered a memory in the back of her mind. Kilmoru. Kilmoru bordered Sangora to the northeast and was little more than deep, ancient forests and ruins that seemed alive. What few people made it their home gathered in villages loosely run by shamans and chieftains. When the sangorans and the syndicate seeded bases on their side of the border, no one came to challenge them.

Maybe the Kilmorians would rather let it happen, let their land be taken and violated, than gear up for another war. Kilmoru had been hit hard by the Shadow Wars, lost most everything. It was a broken country. If they were sending troops, something was brewing, and it piqued her interest enough to part with some of her hard-earned coin.

El approached him and held out her hand. “I’ll take one.”

“That’s three coppers, doll.”

She cocked an eyebrow as she pulled the coins out. “Since when did the price go up?”

“Since this morning.” He wiped snot from his nose with the back of his hand. “You in, or what?”

“Yeah, yeah, better be worth it.”

Several teeth were missing from his wide grin as he handed her a paper. “Never is, doll. Never is.”

He sauntered off, hollering to anyone and no one to get the latest news.

After what felt like ages, climbing the never-ending incline, El finally looked over the edge of the plateau with the wind ripping her hair. The view was stunning, and not for the faint of heart. The cragged rock was so vertical that it effectively isolated them from the rest of the world. Running along the precipice, an old frost-cracked stone wall kept people and cattle from wandering too close to the edge that led to nothing but air and certain death.

A loose pebble dislodged as she swung across and lowered herself over the wall till she hung at the edge of her fingertips. Her heart skipped a beat, the muscles in her fingers tensed before she dropped down, finding purchase on the small ledge just inches below. It would take a long while yet before that pebble made a sound.

Taking a deep breath of cold air stained with a hint of dust and sulfur, she could not help but feel proud. Before this mission, she’d never have made that drop.

“You have the dexterity of a snake,” her friend and teacher had told her with a stern look that barely contained laughter.

El had swallowed her ego and lifted her chin. “So, how do we make the snake grow limbs?”

“By surviving.”

Gods, she missed Elena sometimes. The woman had been the best thing that happened to her in the early days of her arrival. This place had forced her muscles to grow and wind themselves tight around her frame, taught her feet a bounce that the grand halls of Agartha had not.

There were scars on her body that her past selves would never carry, for they would never have survived their causes. But she did. Every day was a fight for life or death, and she scraped by.

The oasis she’d found one day by accident was nothing more than an indent in the rock, but to her it was everything. Far too narrow, it was dangerous and precarious, especially on rainy days when the rock became as slick as ice. It was her place, a place where she could be herself. Drop the mask of deception and deceit. A well-placed overhang eased the sounds of the Base and protected her from prying eyes, providing comfort in a comfortless place.

Pulling her coat tighter, she checked the position of the sun. There was still time. There was always time until there wasn’t.

El pulled a small, rectangular runestone out from one of her many pockets and held it against the paper. It glowed faintly when she activated it with a whisper and flickered out. No traps, no magic. No secret messages. Damn it.

First up in bold letters was the headline:

The Shelling Ghost leaves for greener pastures!

The fact that the Herald had even printed it only proved what fools they were. Sure, the ghost had not been active in some time, but believing he was gone? The familiar knot in her stomach twisted. Way to bait the beast no one could find, let alone dispose of.

Then again, the locals were not as wise as they boasted and about as smart as a goliath drenched in ale.

In her mind, she tore the article free, balled it up, and tossed it as far as she possibly could before marching into the Herald’s office and strangling the editor responsible for the bloodbath to come. Lingering on the fantasy with a small smile, she could practically feel her skin heat with bloodlust and justice she’d never get. With a sigh, she pulled out of it and turned her attention back to the sheet.

The rest was the usual mix of trash and information that one could expect. A raid of thefts left bodies in their wake, while a lieutenant in the Red Division got dismissed for gambling, and the western mountains were shaking the earth five times a day now.

There was a piece heralding the mighty Black J’kol as they ventured into the void that was the Morimyr Ocean to raid the akatian outposts along the Varuvian border with the Olirian continent.

That article she read twice, but the details were vague and said nothing of the forces they’d encountered or the colors flown by their adversary.

With a sigh, she scrolled through the rest of the newspaper. Obscene jokes and crude depictions covered the last section, and she let it land in her lap as she leaned back against the cold rock. Her home was over there. Somewhere far, far away on the other side of the world.

White waves crested the rocks below. Such grand, dangerous, fatally serene beauty. In the local accent, the lake was named Qi-Betrí. The Endless. Despite its deceptive calmness, it was the most dangerous body of water in the world. No one knew its true depth, nor its secrets. Was there a monster lurking below the surface? Several? Were there cities sprawled on its floor? For thousands of years, it had been the stuff of legends, of cautionary tales told to too-adventurous children and horror stories told around a flickering fire.

Frankly, the consensus was that it was all true and that the lake was utter trash. Beautiful and deadly, but trash all the same. Unless it was an ocean, like many claimed, cause they didn’t know better. Such was life here. Perpetually dim in both wit and light.

Half an hour to go. She was restless, eager to move, to do something, anything. Instead, she tried to forget the frigid wind that seeped into her bones and settled her gaze on the horizon, thinking back on the path that brought her here.

She refused to forget.

The first dark days had been intense. Back when the Shadow War between Illeva and Akati was fresh in everyone’s mind and every sound sent gazes darting about, pulling hands to weapons. It had been pure devastation. The losses on both sides were too big to count. Too big to comprehend. Not to mention the collateral damage. It was a war that had no victor but turned into a mutual annihilation that dethroned both races from the top of the cosmic order. And from the skies as their cities crashed and broke.

The Illevans and the Akati scurried like rats back into the shadows of their lands. El remembered the uproar when it was decided to relocate the Council of their Empire to the innocuous town of Farhaven in western Oliria. Leaving the ruins of Agartha had seemed impossible, despite the destruction, despite the irrevocable loss of enchantments, despite the air becoming too toxic for their lungs to handle. And still, the stubbornness remained. Even when the waters rushed in to reclaim the once beautiful continent of Toura, now a broken wasteland.

Oliria was not the biggest continent, but sizeable and with challenges and quirks that took some getting used to. Its inhabitants had welcomed the refugees with open arms, letting them settle in a remote corner out of the way that no one wanted to touch anyway. In time, trade picked up between the different nations, and there was a mutual, if cautious, exchange of knowledge and technology.

This brave venture eventually led to the refounding of the Akati Empire and the renaming of Farhaven to Agartha Nova to honor the fallen and the lost.

For El, the change was a welcome one. She had been there after all. Sat through the unhinged debates, the boring, endless arguments that never led anywhere, saw through the signing of the Accords, presided over the funerals of the Guardians of Ayursha that fought and fell in that devastating final battle, attended the remembrance ceremonies for many more.

She was there when the Regent succumbed to his wounds and joined the Veil and saw her oldest and dearest friend, the bombastic and charming Misha Eldter, rise to the position through the mechanics of convenience.

He had made her proud, proving himself worthy of the power, albeit a little rough around the edges. The last time they had seen each other was nearly 80 years ago.