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Chapter 1
The boy at the end of the line was going to die.
Orange light from the setting sun deepened the shadows of his sunken cheeks. Sweat from the damp heat of the jungle dripped down his matted, mouse-brown hair, which hung lank over a beardless face. The only signs of life on that face were dark green eyes fixed on the rocky path down the slope. The boy was staggering down with limp arms, but he seemed to be choosing every step to minimize the exertion required to carry his scrawny body.
He followed at the end of a line of nearly fifty other prisoners. On a second look, he was tall enough to be older than his bare chin suggested, but his boyish frame made him stand out among a population of perhaps 90 percent hulking men with wild beards and glaring eyes.
Every prisoner wore an identical uniform: a crimson and yellow half-shirt and a pair of short trousers with each leg dyed in the same colors, forming a checkerboard pattern. The uniform was designed to humiliate the prisoners with resemblance to the costume of court fools that had entertained kings in the nearly forgotten time before the reign of the Imperator.
It was impossible to tell whether the boy was even wearing the shirt. Blood red leaves, sharp and fern shaped, completely covered his chest and shoulders. On the boy, the foliage grew lush and thick enough to conceal the woody vines that were rooted into the flesh of the host. Every prisoner was planted with the Void Creeper, but on the rest it was visible as a half dozen blood-red fronds wrapped two or three times around the torso. The plant was feeding too greedily on the boy, leaving the flesh of his arms stretched too tight over his bones.
A rock slipped under the boy’s foot and he nearly fell. As he pitched forward windmilling his arms, Biro saw the strings of the half shirt peeking out from beneath the vines. The garment was designed to tie around the body like an apron so that it could be worn without disturbing the vine. Even a gentle tug on one of the roots would cause excruciating pain, and if one was pulled out, an agonizing death followed.
From a perch hidden behind a large gray boulder, Tiberius Pontius Biro wondered how many days the boy had left before the vine planted in his flesh killed him. He had never seen a void creeper grow so thick. It was a punishment that was both monstrous and ingenious – it suppressed the bloodline magic of the host and was impossible to remove.
Biro saw one of the other prisoners turning back to look at the boy and quickly dropped his head behind the boulder so that he wouldn’t be spotted. He wiped sweat from his brow and for a moment almost envied the way the prisoner’s shirts exposed their stomachs and backs. Humiliation was one thing, but the relentless wet heat of this wretched island was another. Biro was covered in sweat beneath his bronze and leather armor.
After waiting a good long moment, Biro peeked around the side of the boulder and saw no one looking in his direction – but a bit of motion near the end of the line caught his eye.
A barren shrub the size of a dog stirred several feet away from the dirt path, near the cluster of prisoners at the end of the line. The branches of the shrub waved from an apparent breeze that did not touch the dust and dirt surrounding it.
Someone else noticed the shrub too, and seemed to know what it meant – a young looking woman with darkly tanned skin and sheer white hair that was clearly the result of an unfortunate genetic mutation. The girl stood out among the other prisoners even more than the boy had. White Ogreblood hair was common enough in that lot, but women were unusual, and most of them were tall, broad, and covered in scars. What crime could this little waif have committed to be sent to the highest security prison in the Imperium?
The white-haired girl’s lips moved. Biro couldn’t hear, but saw that she caught the attention of a bent-backed old man with a grizzled beard and that same sallow-faced boy with the overgrown creeper.
Whatever the girl said, it was too late. The barren shrub started to slide forward, churning dirt like a tiny plow as it rushed down the hill toward the three prisoners at the end of the line.
The bent-backed man stumbled into a jog.
The white-haired girl shouted “Dirtlurker!” to a chorus of gasps. Tired as they were, the entire line of prisoners broke into a sprint down the hill.
The woody tendrils continued waving in the air as the barren shrub rushed down the hill after the prisoners. It was in fact not a shrub at all, but a tongue camouflaged to look like a dead plant. And it could smell human sweat at a hundred paces, if the wind was right.
The bent-backed man stumbled and fell to his knees, falling just behind the other two. The woody tongue was closing in on him.
Biro leapt up on top of the boulder, easing the warhammer in the loop on his back. As he readied himself, Biro saw the boy turn back, grasping the older man’s hand and hauling him to his feet.
The boy paid immediately for his act of charity. After the old man was on his feet, he kicked the boy viciously in the knee and shoved him to the ground before hauling himself away, just in time.
One of the waving, twig-like tendrils made contact with the boy’s ankle, and the tongue writhed and twisted, wrapping around the boy’s leg. The boy pulled against the grip of the woody tongue, but it would have taken supernatural strength to break the gnarled, branch-like tendrils.
Biro cursed under his breath. Now that the monster had trapped someone, the only option was to strike the moment the creature surfaced. Saving the boy’s life would require extremely precise timing.
But how had a dirtlurker toad gotten inside the walls in the first place? Of course stone walls, no matter how tall, were not a barrier to a creature that could swim through dirt as a dolphin swam through the ocean, but a twenty-foot deep canal of boiling water had been dug on either side of Ixion’s outer wall. The stoneshapers had plunged the trench so deep into the ground specifically to stop dirtswimming monsters. Either there was a breach in the defenses, or this toad had burrowed extremely low before happening to wander past the barrier.
Judging by the size of that tongue, this dirtlurker would be a big one. That would mean a thick, solid skull that would require a powerful blow to crack. Biro had to kill the creature in one strike, before it had a chance to retreat underground.
Staring unblinking at his target, Biro stretched out his left hand, feeling for the pull of Stone mana in the rocky slope. From the top of this boulder, it was a good twenty feet to where the tongue trapped the boy’s leg. Enough vertical distance for two pulls on the Stone, maybe three.
The ground beneath the tongue started to churn and swirl.
Steady, Biro thought to himself. Wait for it…
The boy was still struggling, reaching down with his hands in an effort to pry the woody appendage off of his leg – but all he succeeded in doing was allowing the tongue to trap his hands, too.
Stone mana pulsed in Biro’s left hand, and he could feel the magnetic pull of the ground beneath his feet.
More dirt bubbled up from the ground, spraying dust into the air.
Wait for it…
One bulbous, yellow lip rose up out of the ground, followed by rows and rows of black, triangular teeth.
Biro leapt off the boulder and out into the open air. He pointed his left hand at a patch of rocky ground just a meter beyond the bulbous lip and yanked his hand back.
Biro felt the thrumming power of the Stone surge through his body as he used his gravity amp to pull his bones down through the air, carrying his flesh along with them.
The creature’s bottom lip was beginning to emerge from the ground opposite the first. The span between the lips was a good ten feet across.
Biro streaked down the hill as fast as a driven nail. He held his warhammer tight in his raised right hand as he flashed through the air, thrusting his left hand out a second time to correct his trajectory. He pulled at the earth with his left hand again, forcing his body to whirl and fishhook down like a ball slammed by an invisible bat.
The jerking motion left Biro completely disoriented. He saw nothing but a whirl of shape and color as he swung out wildly with the warhammer in his right hand.
A crunching splorch rang out as the bronze head slammed on the toad’s head. The ground was immediately sprayed with putrid, yellow blood.
The hammer struck the ground first, shortly followed by Biro himself. He landed clumsily, slamming his left hand painfully against a sharp stone.
The creature screamed and spasmed with pain as it died with a sound like a crushed bullfrog that had mated with a bassoon. The sound was loud – so loud that Biro gasped from the pain of it. So loud that Biro felt the sound against his eyes, even as it tortured his ears.
At last the sound died away, and Biro could hear the young man behind him moaning in pain. Like Biro, he was now splattered liberally with stinking toad brains.
The massive head creeping out of the ground had an enormous chunk torn out of it by the warhammer, just above the lifeless yellow eye.
The boy was still trapped in the dead creature’s maw, the tongue still clamped around his leg and both of his wrists. He struggled and managed to free one of his hands – but Biro could see that extracting the leg would be far more difficult. The calf was twisted backward, bending slightly where it should have been straight. That leg was broken – rather badly. The boy’s breath was a hiss of pain, but he did not cry out.
Biro frowned down at the boy. But before he could consider how to free that broken leg, the ground beneath his feet started to swirl. There was only a split second of warning before a creature shaped like a ball with teeth leapt into the air and fastened its jaws on Biro’s arm, in the gap between bronze plates where only leather protected him.
Biro reacted immediately, whipping his belt knife into his left hand and skewering the creature attached to his arm before swinging his warhammer to strike more of the freshly hatched toads out of the air.
More dirtlurker spawn rose up from the ground and started to lap up the putrid yellow blood that Biro’s strike on the mother had spilled onto the ground.
Biro cursed under his breath and immediately set about squashing the tiny, disgusting things with his hammer. They popped like overripe fruit, scattering more putrid slime onto the ground.
Biro heard the boy just behind him gasping in pain and a thumping sound. He turned and saw that another baby toad had risen out of the ground and latched itself onto the young man’s freed wrist. He was banging his hand against the ground, trying to knock the creature off of him.
Biro rushed over and stabbed with the knife, skewering the toad and pulling it off the boy’s arm. The boy let out a breath of relief, but his jaw was still tense with pain – no doubt from his trapped and broken leg.
The young man looked up at Biro with trepidation in his dark green eyes.
Biro grinned at the prisoner, who probably couldn’t decide whether he should speak to Biro to thank him for saving his life. It was good to see that at least one prisoner remembered the rules. Prisoners are not to speak to guards unless spoken to.
Biro knew that no matter how innocent the boy looked, only the worst of the worst were sent to the Ixion Complex for Incarceration and Repentance. No prisoner of Ixion would get a moment of sympathy from Biro. Not even an actual child – and definitely not this boyish, beardless teenager.
He had saved the boy’s life because it was his job to protect the assets of the Imperium. It had nothing to do with the way the boy had tried to help an old man and gotten punished for his kindness.
This boy was criminal scum. Biro reminded himself that one noble act didn’t change that.
He glanced over his shoulder. Biro didn’t see any living toad spawn above the surface, but there might be dozens more lurking underground. A pregnant dam breaching the walls was serious. They had to be exterminated swiftly, before it became a real problem.
Biro stowed his warhammer in the loop on his back before uncorking his waterskin and swigging a drink from it. Then Biro bent toward the boy with the waterskin in one hand and the knife in the other.
“I need blood,” Biro said to the prisoner.
The boy’s eyes widened when he looked at the knife in Biro’s hand. He looked like he wanted to back away – but he wouldn’t get far, not with his leg trapped and broken.
Biro smiled, enjoying the boy’s fearful expression. He could have explained that he wouldn’t need much blood – just enough to fill the empty space in the waterskin. Even diluted, the smell of human blood would drive the spawn wild. A bit of diluted blood spilled on the ground every few feet in a wide enough radius would help ensure Biro exterminated as many of the spawn as possible.
Biro knelt next to the prisoner, who flinched, but did not try to move away. Feeling magnanimous, Biro decided to wipe the yellow guts off of the knife blade using the prisoner’s trousers, so that it would be clean when he used it to harvest the boy’s blood.
That was when a woman’s voice made Biro glance to one side.
“Thank you, sir, for saving us,” she said.
Biro rounded on the woman, glaring. It was the tan, white-haired female he had spotted at the back of the line. Her red and yellow half shirt bore the number 2465 – as high a number as Biro could remember seeing.
She must be new.
“Prisoners speak when spoken to,” Biro barked.
“I am sorry, my lord,” she said, with a bow of her head. “I just wanted to show my appreciation.”
Her smile was warm.
Was this girl flirting with him? She really was fresh off the boat if she thought she could get friendly with one of the prison guards. Perhaps this girl imagined that she would cozy up to him and get treated more favorably.
She looked like she had just reached marriageable age. She was short and lithe, with a cute, pointed nose and emerald green eyes. The woody vine wrapped around her shoulders and waist had not even begun to bud with leaves yet, and the flesh was red and angry where the roots plunged into her abdomen just above each hip.
Fresh off the boat indeed. Biro had to admit that the sheer white of her shoulder-length hair went strangely well with her dark complexion, but the wolf-like shape of her pointed ears marked her as not only an Ogreblood, but one from an impoverished background. Anyone not in abject poverty would have had those ears humanized and that hair dyed.
Biro did see a white scar in the shape of a handprint on the girl’s neck – a sign that she had seen some amount of surgical correction, just not enough. Given the wolf-like shape of her ears, Biro would guess that the girl had needed her jaw repaired. If the deformity made it difficult to eat or speak, the Chantry may have corrected it as a charity case – at the cost of sterilization, to prevent the spread of the impure blood that caused such mutations.
The girl’s stare looked strangely confident in spite of her obvious deformity. The way she held herself made her pointed ears seem pleasantly exotic, rather than a mark of shame.
Biro reminded himself that rotten things sometimes came in appealing packages. And that poverty was no excuse for criminal behavior. There were no excuses for the crimes heinous enough to earn a life sentence to Ixion.
Biro stood up and strode over toward the girl – toward Prisoner 2465.
Her flirtatious smile widened as she saw him approach.
When Biro reached her, he slapped her across the face with his open hand – but with enough force to knock her down to her knees.
“When spoken to.” Biro seethed.
He glared down at the woman for a moment as she picked herself up off the ground, touching her cheek tenderly.
Good.
“Furthermore,” Biro said, “Never refer to me as a Patrician. I am but a humble Plebian, and a servant of the Immortal Imperator.”
Biro pounded his chest in salute, and then continued to speak. “Some of the prisoners, I am aware, call me King Biro – a mockery not only of me, but also of our noble Imperium, in which there are no kings. You would do well not to associate with that kind, unless you crave flogging.”
Biro glanced down at the knife in his left hand.
“Now,” he said. “I need some blood. And I believe you have just volunteered to donate to the cause.”
Biro reached down to grab the woman by the chin. He shoved her face up to look at him – and what he saw only made him angrier.
There was no fear behind those emerald eyes – if anything, the woman’s expression carried a subtle hint of satisfaction.
Biro lowered his knife toward the woman, but she did not blink.
Fine. Biro had intended only to give her a small laceration on the arm, but perhaps a cut on her face would better teach—
That was when a stone whistled just past Biro’s eyes and crashed into the ground. It had passed near enough to his face that he could feel the wind from it, and startled him so much that the knife and canteen fell from his hands and into the dirt.
He whipped his head around to where the rock had come from and saw a bronze-clad form running toward him.
“What in the seven hells are you doing!?” the armored figure demanded.
The voice was feminine, but deep for a woman. Biro recognized that voice as the woman approached, running up the hill as swiftly and gracefully as a deer. She came to a stop a few feet away before Biro had time to retrieve his knife and canteen from the ground.
The light of the setting sun glinted on the woman’s immaculately polished bronze armor. She wore a sword at her hip and completed her Ixion guard uniform with a crimson cape embroidered with the eagle and wolf emblem of the Imperium. A tight braid of blonde hair stuck out from underneath her helmet. She was glaring down at Biro with bright blue eyes.
Briggavesta Cassia, the Warden’s niece. Like her uncle, she was exceptionally pale. She had strong, almost regal features– though someone uncharitable might suggest that her wide shoulders and the stoutness of her jaw made her look less feminine than a truly pretty woman.
Biro was certainly feeling uncharitable toward the ugly cow now. He couldn’t believe he had once considered trying to make her his woman. He had few options while stationed at Ixion, and marrying into the family of the Warden certainly wouldn’t have hurt his career prospects. And Briggavesta had always seemed so soft-spoken and demure. Where had she been hiding this inner bitch?
“You – are you insane?” Biro sputtered. “You– you threw a rock at me!”
“I did,” the woman said.
“You– how dare–?”
“What were you doing with that knife in your hand?”
Biro gritted his teeth.
“I was about to harvest blood from this prisoner,” Biro said.
“Harvest? What sick game are you–”
“We have an infestation of dirtlurker spawn,” Biro interrupted. Niece or not, he was sure the warden would not approve of Briggavesta nearly assaulting him – and he wasn’t going to let some woman push him around.
Biro rose to his feet, to look Briggavesta in the eye.
“And you needed blood?”
“Dirtlurkers crave mammalian blood,” Biro said. “If you had been here for more than a season, you might know that.”
His words had landed. He could see a note of uncertainty in Briggavesta’s eyes.
But then the woman glanced at the prisoner on the ground and the uncertainty vanished.
“So shed your own blood,” the woman said. “Are you not man enough?”
Biro clenched his fists. The last time he had been spoken to so rudely, he had knocked out a tooth.
He took in a deep breath, struggling to keep a lid on his temper. If he assaulted Briggavesta, the warden would side with her. But as it stood, she was the one who had attacked him. Even if her stone had missed.
“This prisoner was insubordinate,” Biro said.
“So she should be reported and formally punished,” Briggavesta said.
“I was handling the situation.”
“You can’t just go and assault whoever you want with a knife!”
“She is an asset of the state,” Biro said. “And I would not have damaged her ability to work.”
Briggavesta just shook her head. “You’re out of line,” she said.
With a look of contempt on her face, Briggavesta snatched the knife and waterskin from the ground. Her movements were unnaturally fast – her hands lashed out like vipers.
Biro had no chance to even say anything before the woman had pressed the dagger into the skin of her left wrist and allowed a few drops of blood to trickle into the now mostly empty waterskin.
A few drops of blood would be nowhere near enough – especially now that most of the water in the skin had spilled out onto the ground.
And yet the stupid woman shoved Biro’s polluted waterskin and knife back at him with irritated satisfaction, like she had proved a point.
“Fine!” Biro spat. He shoved the waterskin back at Briggavesta, but kept the knife.
“I’ll leave this situation to you and report to the Warden,” Biro said. “He needs to be informed about the potential infestation.”
And, Biro thought, about what a worthless, obnoxious bitch his niece was. Family connections were one thing – but Biro trusted that Warden Altaan would not stand for rash incompetence, not even from a member of his own family.
As he turned to leave, Biro glanced at the white-haired prisoner standing behind Briggavesta.
The slender girl with the deformed ears looked back at him. He could see the corners of her lips twitching as she struggled to conceal a smirk.
A smirk!
Biro realized what had happened.
He had been played. The white-haired girl had baited him into hitting her, knowing that he would try to use her blood, instead of the boy’s – and knowing that Briggavesta was approaching. Somehow, she had guessed at how the bitch would react.
A clever girl. But also short-sighted. Biro would not forget what she had done.
Yes, he would remember that white-haired girl. He would dog her every move from now on. Each time she broke a rule, or failed to meet her quota, Biro would report her.
It wouldn’t take more than two or three infractions. Altaan was a reasonable man. He knew how important it was to make an example. He would let Biro make the girl spend an entire night walking barefoot on the treadwheel.
Biro smiled at the vision in his mind as he strode down the hill. We’ll see who’s smirking when your pretty little feet start to bleed.
***
Cato’s mind buzzed with possibilities as he stumbled out of the Chantry and into the sunlight. The flesh of his mended calf was seared where the hand of the healer had touched it, and his re-knitted bones ached in protest as he put his weight on them.
None of that mattered to him. He had found the key – the missing piece. He silently repeated the words of the chant, making certain he fixed them into his memory.
…
***
Progress: ~50% as of April 2023