.....Clara tried not to look disappointed after opening up her Frost Moon gift.
.....“Oh,” she said, picking up a piece of the splintered indigo rod. It was about as long as her wrist to the end of her middle finger and had a little black animal to cap it off. A bat, she decided after closer inspection. It was possible to pretend the two blobs to either side of its body were wings. “I wasn’t expecting this at all,” she added in what she hoped wasn’t a strained voice.
.....Her parents beamed; thick, the both of them, but Clara’s love for them tempered that failing.
.....“It’s been in the family for a long time,” reassured her mother, reaching across to pat Clara’s hand. “Nenius the first, your great-grandfather (many, many times over) owned it. Back in the old country.”
.....A derisive sound from down at the end of the table. “Stole it, more like,” said Uncle Yalicus. “In fact,” he went on, turning his head slowly to the left, “if memory serves, our family has a history of that, doesn’t it, Andrus?” Clara’s father said nothing, holding the gaze for a while longer before looking away.
.....(Like watching something playing at being human, Clara reflected, as her uncle’s half smile appeared. She also noted that he hadn’t brought any gifts this year.)
.....There was a brief lull; you could hear the cords of pearlwood in the fireplace cracking apart from the heat.
.....“I’ve gone and spoiled the moment.” Yalicus raised his hands in mock apology. When no one replied, he pushed back his chair, its feet scraping loudly against the floor, and walked out of the room. He was whistling a cheerful scrap of song, and his steps going up the stairs were deliberate.
.....Clara cleared her throat, attempting to look interested as her father took over the history (“Nenius wasn’t a thief. In his journal he wrote that he’d gotten the rod from a hedge-witch…”), all the while eyeing her older brother as he admired his new sword. Denroe gave it a few practice cuts; Light’s Bane, he’d named it. Obvious choice once you got used to how the black blade seemed to be drinking up the lamplight. Apparently something to do with the type of metal: demonite, and from the old country as well.
.....He gets a sword and I get some old wood chips. An inward sigh; then it was her turn to hand out gifts (she gave father a bottle of blue-white will o’ the wisps collected from the derelict mansion by the cliffs, mother an amber-studded dress and Denroe a jellyfish necklace bought from that strange merchant who had visited three months ago). A round of hugs and holiday song (both felt forced, courtesy of Yalicus) and then she was alone at the table.
.....She looked at the broken rod. Her parents would expect her to fix it, of course. How economical: offer cheap gift and unwanted project at once. Even so, an idea was forming in her head. When she had a rough mental sketch, she gathered up the pieces in the dark blue silk, took up Denroe’s gift (an aglet; chipped, dull yellow, covered in grease) and went outside.
.....It was snowing. Fat, white flakes lazily drifted down from the night sky. The frost moon sat heavy and massive in the clouds. Clara’s breath fogged the air as she walked round the side of the house, its warmth spilling out the windows, and over to the workshop.
.....Judging by the strewn tools and general disorder, Denroe had been here earlier. Talentless hack. She placed the silk and its contents down on a chair and spent the next little while tidying up. It was cold, so she set about starting a fire, reaching under the fireplace into the woodbox and was about to lay down some pearlwood when she caught sight of her brother’s latest monstrosity: a lamentable waste of nails, mahogany, the last bit of their lime shellac and brown splotches that looked suspiciously like dried blood. Which meant it was most likely Denroe’s blood; he had no goddamned sense around anything with a sharp edge, which made it all the more bizarre that he’d gotten a sword this year. Then again, she mused, removing the nails with a hammer and tossing the obscenity into the fireplace, this year had been bad, with bandits hitting the northern towns almost monthly. But if her parents thought Denroe could somehow keep the town safe— well, that wasn’t wishful thinking so much as it was inviting certain doom, and nothing useful could come of that.
.....(Uncle, on the other hand... In the old country, he’d been a military man. Clara pictured him holding Light’s Bane and did not like the image one bit.)
.....There: a blazing fire, stopping just shy of uncomfortable. Now she set out gouge, carving knife, chisel and coping saw on her workbench; retrieved the silk-wrapped gift and untied it; set out in a row the different segments—
.....Clara yanked her hand away. She’d felt a vibration when she touched the small bat. Harmless, but startling. She frowned; waited; then reached out to gingerly prod the bat. Nothing.
.....Moving on. She had decided on a gel core encased in shadewood for the sceptre’s design (she paused; yes, sceptre seemed the right word) and walked over to the slime tank.
.....It stood shoulder height, and had once been a large pink crystal until she’d hollowed it out with chisel, sore arms and weeks of determination (her favourite discovery, as it turned out, from the cave system beneath the town, with all those tunnels spooling out into the dirt-filled dark). The tinted sides of the tank helped obscure the unsettling sight of so many multi-coloured slimes self-replicating. She slid open a hatch in the top, chose four green blobs, closed the hatch.
.....Then Clara put the wriggling slimes into a pot, and the pot on top of her miniature forge.
.....She worked the small bellows expertly: modest pumps, smoothly executed, maintaining a steady heat. She recited the Dryad’s Creed, at the end of which the slime’s thin membranes would have softened enough. A quick look inside; yes, the slimes were flat now. Clara pricked the skins with a needle, watched the fluid gush and fill the pot immediately.
.....Work the bellows with one hand, stir the pot with the other; satisfied with the consistency, she turned her attention to the shadewood.
.....Resilient material, this, but loyal to whatever shape you carved out of it. Clara produced a tube within an hour; then she shaved it thinner, down to two fingers’ length diameter, cut off an inch at the top with the coping saw, sanded the tube and applied lacquer.
.....After the coat had dried, she took a long breath, and then exhaled. This next part would require attention to detail. She stood the tube on its end and set a funnel in its top and poured the gel. Then Clara snatched up the little black bat and sank the stem she’d whittled out of its old indigo base into the gel; and now with both hands she applied pressure evenly from top to bottom of the sceptre, head to one side, listening as the shadewood fractured ever so slightly and had the wounds immediately filled in by searing gel. Strength through injury; this careful bonding between materials allowed for greater resilience, and made it possible for it to endure incredible stresses without comprising the overall shape. A careful business, forcing weaknesses into so sturdy a wood while keeping the lacquered skin free of cracks.
.....(She heard a cry at one point. Clara glanced at the door. It came again, weaker this time. Irritatingly familiar; and then she placed it: a wolf on the cliffs, maybe having slipped on the ice.)
.....Then it was done: a bat sceptre as long as her shoulder to fingertip, gleaming in the firelight, smooth surface belying a centre of durability many times over.
.....A bit like me. Her fingers hurt; she opened and closed her hands gingerly. She examined the sceptre again— then remembered that it had come from the old country.
.....She didn’t know what to make of that just then, was frankly too tired to care, so she stepped outside for a smoke.
.........
.........It’s not that I’m against family heirlooms. Clara lit up on her second try, inhaled bloodroot deep into her lungs, welcoming the slow tightening in her chest. She always enjoyed hearing the odd scraps about mother and father’s life back in the old country, whenever she could steer the conversation to that subject without her parent’s catching on too soon.
.....Which had always bothered her, this reluctance of theirs to talk about life back then on the islands across the ocean. Why give up being landowners only to travel here, to this dreary continent, and fall under the thumb of an empire in its death throes and live in constant fear of roving bandits?
.....(The fairies decided to revolt, mother sometimes explained, when pressed; or the undead started appearing during the day, father said once, before returning to his journal. Horses with horns, floating red eyeballs, a gigantic carnivorous plant— and magic. Magic, most of all. Even though everyone knew no such fantastical things existed outside of children’s stories.
.....She wondered, as she always did, why her parents kept to these made-up excuses, when none of that could possibly be true. What had really changed in the old country to make them leave?)
.....It’s academic as all
anyways, and I’m no good with math. Holy scripture from the Book of Denroe, all glory be to the idiot.
.....The front path from the workshop joined up with the one leading from the house before swinging out down the hill and out of sight. The town would be at the bottom somewhere, sheltered in snow and silence, everyone abed because this was no respectable time to be up— homes like dens, she imagined, with families of slumbering bears.
.....Rather apt description, now that she thought on it: they were a miserable lot, swift to punish honest mistakes, all of them with brooding, dark eyes and fur coats to fight off the winds that came skirling down from the mountains.
.....She turned to have a look at that stony horizon but was met with her uncle peering down at her instead.
.....“Since when did you smoke?” asked Yalicus.
.....Three years and counting. Moving on, though: “It’s late and I don’t feel like talking,” Clara replied tiredly. She could still smell the roasted snow hare from dinner on his breath. “Please go away.”
.....“I shan’t.”
.....Clara cringed. “Really?” she said. “Who says that?”
.....“Me.” He was staring. “Can I tell you something?”
.....“You can, but I hope you don’t.”
.....Yalicus nodded. “I don’t like you.”
.....Clara went still. Then she dropped the cigarette into the snow. Ground it down with her heel.
.....“It’s okay,” Yalicus went on, one hand on the hilt of a sword hanging off his belt, “because you don’t like me either.” He smiled. “In fact, I don’t think you ever have.”
.....“I have my reasons.”
.....“ on your reasons,” he said calmly.
.....Thating smile. Clara looked away and down— and froze. “That doesn’t belong to you,” she said after a long moment.
.....“This?” He unsheathed Light’s Bane, raised it up so they could both see the blood staining the dark blade. “I took it from your brother.”
.....“What did you do?” Clara felt dizzy. Do not pass out. “Oh God.”
.....“Clara, you’re an atheist.” Her uncle took a step back and rested the flat of the sword against her cheek. “We’re going to talk now.” He motioned with his head to the workshop, never looking away from her face. “After you.”
.........
.........Once they were inside, Clara began to shake. Small tremors at first, then uncontrollably.
.....“Sit.” Yalicus pushed her with Light’s Bane over to the chair by the workbench.
.....Clara cried out as the point cut into the small of her back, followed by pain. She could feel blood trickling.
.....She sat; and in the act of turning to face her uncle, surveyed the bench for something to use—
.....(coping saw— not enough time to saw deep; chisel— yes, strong thrust, but no reach; gouge and chisel can’t—)
.....—but he could cut her down before she picked up any of the tools. He had been a military man, after all. Presumably that would mean being somewhat familiar with a sword— which was multiple magnitudes more skilled than she was, her sum experience with that weapon numbering zero.
.....He hooked a foot around another chair and dragged it over. His green eyes did not blink as he sat opposite her, sword held lightly in his grasp, scant inches from her chest.
.....“You’re wondering why I killed them,” he said eventually.
.....“Them?” Clara echoed. Not just Denroe, then. Tears blinded her, spilling hot down her cheeks.
.....“I killed my brother first,” said the blurry vision of her uncle. “Niera afterward. You see, I didn’t know who was responsible for the theft. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t care.” A slight pause; Clara wiped her eyes. “Denroe heard them call out and came running. Only to be expected: a son hears his parents’ screams, he goes and investigates. I hadn’t planned on hurting him but then he swung at me and— well, you know how it is.” A small, unrepentant shrug.
.....(Not a wolf she’d heard, but her family crying out at the last moment as—
.....She turned away from the image. Not now. She couldn’t. Maybe not ever.)
.....“That isn’t why,” she heard herself say. Such a soft voice. Hollowed.
.....He looked at her. “I guess not.” Her uncle transferred the sword into his left hand. “Does it matter?”
.....“You wanted me to know, otherwise you’d have—”
.....“Cut you down in the snow, yes.” He fell silent; then: “It’s to do with the old country.”
.....Clara frowned. Glanced at her bat sceptre.
.....“Yes, that, and this” —quick rattle of Light’s Bane— “were stolen.
.....“I mentioned your parents were thieves.” Hard grin, baring teeth. “The place we came from isn’t the bliss you’ve made it out to be, Clara.
.....“I know you don’t believe in magic, but that’s because you haven’t seen it. Experienced it. Witnessed armies of slaves raised by fairies. Fled from a sentient jungle. Watched your son”—his lips thinned—“watched your son gasp back into life after being dead for hours and try to attack you. It’s real, though. All the things your mother and father tried to keep from you— all of it is true.
.....“And all of it is dangerous. Terraria was a nightmare in every sense of the word.”
.....It was a lot to digest; however: “Was?” she asked.
.....Her uncle nodded. “The problem with magic is it can get out of hand really fast. Terraria was breaking apart when we left the continent.” He tilted his head. “I know you can’t picture this— you haven’t been there —but there were wyverns raining down from the sky on the last day. Each of them dead before hitting the ground.”
.....Clara rubbed the back of her hand under her nose. Coughed sharply, sat up straighter. The tears had stopped. She was still alive.
.....She was excited. It felt completely wrong— her stomach heaved —but this was information about the old country she’d always wondered about, and it turned out that the snippets of unbelievable information she’d gathered all this time had been pieces of the truth. A bizarre, backwards truth— but she owned it now.
.....(A small voice in a corner of her mind: you’re in shock. This is your way of coping, falling back on the mystery of your parents’ history. You can’t be this heartless. You can’t be like him.)
.....“Why didn’t you bring any presents?”
.....That took him aback, though the sword never wavered. “What do you mean?”
.....“For Frost Moon.” She wasn’t sure where this was coming from but ran with it. “You didn’t bring any presents this year. And you didn’t know what our gifts were until after mother and father gave them to us.”
.....He blinked. “Maybe I saw the gifts before the party.”
.....“But you didn’t,” she insisted.
.....“No.”
.....Understanding so sudden it made her heart skip: “You were going to kill us tonight anyways.”
.....“Do you know what I like about this continent?” He shifted the sword back into his other hand. “It’s empire might be in tatters, but you can still make a future out of it if you know where to apply pressure.”
.....He was waiting, Clara realized. She thought about it. “The bandits,” she said, and he nodded. “You’ve been working with them.”
.....“Close. I’m managing them. They’re a proper mercenary band now, and we’ll move south to the capital come spring, once we’re through here.” Firelight danced shadows across the angles of his face. “I told you, your parents and I came from Terraria.” That half-smile again. “We have a history of violence. It’s in the blood.”
.....No point in feeling disgust: he’d already murdered her family. But she had to keep him talking. “What’s so wrong about Light’s Bane and the bat sceptre?”
.....“You haven’t been listening,” he said, and his voice was cold now. “The old country was rotten to the core with magic. People like you and me, we weren’t in power. Humans weren’t in power. We were the lowest creatures. I won’t have any remnant of that place taint this land. Nothing good can come of anything to do with magic.”
.....He pushed the sword into Clara’s chest.
.....Her mouth widened; no sound came out.
.....She stood up and her uncle did the same.
.....“You have no idea the sort of magic is capable of,” he explained. “It doesn’t belong on this side of the ocean. Your parents made a mistake and I am correcting it.”
.....Clara staggered into the workbench— and now she screamed as the sword was pulled away by her moving. She fell on top of her tools, trying to suck in breath. Her left hand pressed against the portable forge and the stench of flesh burning filled her nose.
.....He was talking still. Agony blocked out his voice.
.....Her right hand had fallen on the sceptre. She gripped it, knuckles brushing against the bat—
.....—and all the light in the world dimmed, greedily lapped up by a presence larger than a mountain. Its wings were made of shadow and Its belly broken up by row after row of wet red eyes.
.....Its talons sank into the crust of the earth; It stood astride the world, a creature of endless night.
.....You bring offering, It crooned.
.....It had mouths for eyes, rimmed by long teeth.
.....It has been too long.
.....When It closed these holes, the teeth tore gashes in reality and in understanding. Clara felt warm liquid leaking from her ears.
.....Come closer, child. I thirst.
.....Clara was pulled toward the nameless entity and—
.....—she lifted the sceptre up and around to strike her uncle in the face.
.....Or would have, had he not taken a nimble step out of reach.
.....“Don’t be stupid,” he snapped, pulling the sword back for another thrust—
.....—at which point the head of the sceptre twisted, and a bat the size of a fist shot forward.
.....Clara fell back on the workbench. Watched her uncle adjust his strike into an upwards cut through the bat— but it had no effect, the bat struck him in the face.
.....He reeled, raising his free hand. His fingers passed through the bat, ineffective. Clara watched as the animal’s teeth cut open her uncle’s cheek.
.....Another bat appeared from the sceptre; another; then a torrent of black bodies and rushing air.
.....I can’t let go. Her mind felt sluggish. She looked down, frowned with some effort, tried to pry her hand loose to no avail.
.....The bats had enveloped her uncle, until there was no shape of man or animal— just one writhing, dark mass. And still more bats appeared.
.....She ought to have felt pleased, but there was only the sensation of pain in her chest and back and the fiercer pain of her clenched right hand, as if some greater, invisible palm had caught her fist in a vise and would not let up.
.....Clara slid to the ground, back to workbench, eyes averted from the feeding.
.....She couldn’t hear his cries anymore.
.........
.....The old country; Terraria.
.....Magic, Yalicus had said. It exists.
.....It is real and it is dangerous.
.........
.........Her eyes were closed. She had a sense that time had passed. She opened her eyes.
.....To her right, a seething mass of movement. She didn’t want to look. Yet there was no point resisting now.
.....She turned her head. The wall in which the workshop door had been set was gone. Broken wood littered the floor. Snow had blown in and choked the fireplace. Only the Frost Moon gave light now; that, and the wet red eyes of the hovering bats.
.....A ribbon of darkness made up of the animals extended from the main mass outside and across the sky. She felt lightheaded. She heard their wings beating in cold air. She heard the thin screams of townspeople in the night.
.....The bats had not slaked their thirst. She knew now that they never would.
.........
.........Clara looked down at her hand holding the sceptre: it had been squeezed until the skin split apart and the crushed bones pushed through the meat.
.....The bats began to land on her shoulders. Her legs, her face. Claws pricked her soft eyes. Snagged her lips and pulled until they tore.
.....As they began to feed, she tried to move away and found she had no strength; so she closed her eyes instead and her mind was filled with roses of torment blossoming bright red in the darkness; and then the darkness gave way to a vast shape that stood astride the world, and it was a creature of endless night.
.....
.....“Oh,” she said, picking up a piece of the splintered indigo rod. It was about as long as her wrist to the end of her middle finger and had a little black animal to cap it off. A bat, she decided after closer inspection. It was possible to pretend the two blobs to either side of its body were wings. “I wasn’t expecting this at all,” she added in what she hoped wasn’t a strained voice.
.....Her parents beamed; thick, the both of them, but Clara’s love for them tempered that failing.
.....“It’s been in the family for a long time,” reassured her mother, reaching across to pat Clara’s hand. “Nenius the first, your great-grandfather (many, many times over) owned it. Back in the old country.”
.....A derisive sound from down at the end of the table. “Stole it, more like,” said Uncle Yalicus. “In fact,” he went on, turning his head slowly to the left, “if memory serves, our family has a history of that, doesn’t it, Andrus?” Clara’s father said nothing, holding the gaze for a while longer before looking away.
.....(Like watching something playing at being human, Clara reflected, as her uncle’s half smile appeared. She also noted that he hadn’t brought any gifts this year.)
.....There was a brief lull; you could hear the cords of pearlwood in the fireplace cracking apart from the heat.
.....“I’ve gone and spoiled the moment.” Yalicus raised his hands in mock apology. When no one replied, he pushed back his chair, its feet scraping loudly against the floor, and walked out of the room. He was whistling a cheerful scrap of song, and his steps going up the stairs were deliberate.
.....Clara cleared her throat, attempting to look interested as her father took over the history (“Nenius wasn’t a thief. In his journal he wrote that he’d gotten the rod from a hedge-witch…”), all the while eyeing her older brother as he admired his new sword. Denroe gave it a few practice cuts; Light’s Bane, he’d named it. Obvious choice once you got used to how the black blade seemed to be drinking up the lamplight. Apparently something to do with the type of metal: demonite, and from the old country as well.
.....He gets a sword and I get some old wood chips. An inward sigh; then it was her turn to hand out gifts (she gave father a bottle of blue-white will o’ the wisps collected from the derelict mansion by the cliffs, mother an amber-studded dress and Denroe a jellyfish necklace bought from that strange merchant who had visited three months ago). A round of hugs and holiday song (both felt forced, courtesy of Yalicus) and then she was alone at the table.
.....She looked at the broken rod. Her parents would expect her to fix it, of course. How economical: offer cheap gift and unwanted project at once. Even so, an idea was forming in her head. When she had a rough mental sketch, she gathered up the pieces in the dark blue silk, took up Denroe’s gift (an aglet; chipped, dull yellow, covered in grease) and went outside.
.....It was snowing. Fat, white flakes lazily drifted down from the night sky. The frost moon sat heavy and massive in the clouds. Clara’s breath fogged the air as she walked round the side of the house, its warmth spilling out the windows, and over to the workshop.
.....Judging by the strewn tools and general disorder, Denroe had been here earlier. Talentless hack. She placed the silk and its contents down on a chair and spent the next little while tidying up. It was cold, so she set about starting a fire, reaching under the fireplace into the woodbox and was about to lay down some pearlwood when she caught sight of her brother’s latest monstrosity: a lamentable waste of nails, mahogany, the last bit of their lime shellac and brown splotches that looked suspiciously like dried blood. Which meant it was most likely Denroe’s blood; he had no goddamned sense around anything with a sharp edge, which made it all the more bizarre that he’d gotten a sword this year. Then again, she mused, removing the nails with a hammer and tossing the obscenity into the fireplace, this year had been bad, with bandits hitting the northern towns almost monthly. But if her parents thought Denroe could somehow keep the town safe— well, that wasn’t wishful thinking so much as it was inviting certain doom, and nothing useful could come of that.
.....(Uncle, on the other hand... In the old country, he’d been a military man. Clara pictured him holding Light’s Bane and did not like the image one bit.)
.....There: a blazing fire, stopping just shy of uncomfortable. Now she set out gouge, carving knife, chisel and coping saw on her workbench; retrieved the silk-wrapped gift and untied it; set out in a row the different segments—
.....Clara yanked her hand away. She’d felt a vibration when she touched the small bat. Harmless, but startling. She frowned; waited; then reached out to gingerly prod the bat. Nothing.
.....Moving on. She had decided on a gel core encased in shadewood for the sceptre’s design (she paused; yes, sceptre seemed the right word) and walked over to the slime tank.
.....It stood shoulder height, and had once been a large pink crystal until she’d hollowed it out with chisel, sore arms and weeks of determination (her favourite discovery, as it turned out, from the cave system beneath the town, with all those tunnels spooling out into the dirt-filled dark). The tinted sides of the tank helped obscure the unsettling sight of so many multi-coloured slimes self-replicating. She slid open a hatch in the top, chose four green blobs, closed the hatch.
.....Then Clara put the wriggling slimes into a pot, and the pot on top of her miniature forge.
.....She worked the small bellows expertly: modest pumps, smoothly executed, maintaining a steady heat. She recited the Dryad’s Creed, at the end of which the slime’s thin membranes would have softened enough. A quick look inside; yes, the slimes were flat now. Clara pricked the skins with a needle, watched the fluid gush and fill the pot immediately.
.....Work the bellows with one hand, stir the pot with the other; satisfied with the consistency, she turned her attention to the shadewood.
.....Resilient material, this, but loyal to whatever shape you carved out of it. Clara produced a tube within an hour; then she shaved it thinner, down to two fingers’ length diameter, cut off an inch at the top with the coping saw, sanded the tube and applied lacquer.
.....After the coat had dried, she took a long breath, and then exhaled. This next part would require attention to detail. She stood the tube on its end and set a funnel in its top and poured the gel. Then Clara snatched up the little black bat and sank the stem she’d whittled out of its old indigo base into the gel; and now with both hands she applied pressure evenly from top to bottom of the sceptre, head to one side, listening as the shadewood fractured ever so slightly and had the wounds immediately filled in by searing gel. Strength through injury; this careful bonding between materials allowed for greater resilience, and made it possible for it to endure incredible stresses without comprising the overall shape. A careful business, forcing weaknesses into so sturdy a wood while keeping the lacquered skin free of cracks.
.....(She heard a cry at one point. Clara glanced at the door. It came again, weaker this time. Irritatingly familiar; and then she placed it: a wolf on the cliffs, maybe having slipped on the ice.)
.....Then it was done: a bat sceptre as long as her shoulder to fingertip, gleaming in the firelight, smooth surface belying a centre of durability many times over.
.....A bit like me. Her fingers hurt; she opened and closed her hands gingerly. She examined the sceptre again— then remembered that it had come from the old country.
.....She didn’t know what to make of that just then, was frankly too tired to care, so she stepped outside for a smoke.
.........
.........It’s not that I’m against family heirlooms. Clara lit up on her second try, inhaled bloodroot deep into her lungs, welcoming the slow tightening in her chest. She always enjoyed hearing the odd scraps about mother and father’s life back in the old country, whenever she could steer the conversation to that subject without her parent’s catching on too soon.
.....Which had always bothered her, this reluctance of theirs to talk about life back then on the islands across the ocean. Why give up being landowners only to travel here, to this dreary continent, and fall under the thumb of an empire in its death throes and live in constant fear of roving bandits?
.....(The fairies decided to revolt, mother sometimes explained, when pressed; or the undead started appearing during the day, father said once, before returning to his journal. Horses with horns, floating red eyeballs, a gigantic carnivorous plant— and magic. Magic, most of all. Even though everyone knew no such fantastical things existed outside of children’s stories.
.....She wondered, as she always did, why her parents kept to these made-up excuses, when none of that could possibly be true. What had really changed in the old country to make them leave?)
.....It’s academic as all
anyways, and I’m no good with math. Holy scripture from the Book of Denroe, all glory be to the idiot......The front path from the workshop joined up with the one leading from the house before swinging out down the hill and out of sight. The town would be at the bottom somewhere, sheltered in snow and silence, everyone abed because this was no respectable time to be up— homes like dens, she imagined, with families of slumbering bears.
.....Rather apt description, now that she thought on it: they were a miserable lot, swift to punish honest mistakes, all of them with brooding, dark eyes and fur coats to fight off the winds that came skirling down from the mountains.
.....She turned to have a look at that stony horizon but was met with her uncle peering down at her instead.
.....“Since when did you smoke?” asked Yalicus.
.....Three years and counting. Moving on, though: “It’s late and I don’t feel like talking,” Clara replied tiredly. She could still smell the roasted snow hare from dinner on his breath. “Please go away.”
.....“I shan’t.”
.....Clara cringed. “Really?” she said. “Who says that?”
.....“Me.” He was staring. “Can I tell you something?”
.....“You can, but I hope you don’t.”
.....Yalicus nodded. “I don’t like you.”
.....Clara went still. Then she dropped the cigarette into the snow. Ground it down with her heel.
.....“It’s okay,” Yalicus went on, one hand on the hilt of a sword hanging off his belt, “because you don’t like me either.” He smiled. “In fact, I don’t think you ever have.”
.....“I have my reasons.”
.....“
on your reasons,” he said calmly......That
ing smile. Clara looked away and down— and froze. “That doesn’t belong to you,” she said after a long moment......“This?” He unsheathed Light’s Bane, raised it up so they could both see the blood staining the dark blade. “I took it from your brother.”
.....“What did you do?” Clara felt dizzy. Do not pass out. “Oh God.”
.....“Clara, you’re an atheist.” Her uncle took a step back and rested the flat of the sword against her cheek. “We’re going to talk now.” He motioned with his head to the workshop, never looking away from her face. “After you.”
.........
.........Once they were inside, Clara began to shake. Small tremors at first, then uncontrollably.
.....“Sit.” Yalicus pushed her with Light’s Bane over to the chair by the workbench.
.....Clara cried out as the point cut into the small of her back, followed by pain. She could feel blood trickling.
.....She sat; and in the act of turning to face her uncle, surveyed the bench for something to use—
.....(coping saw— not enough time to saw deep; chisel— yes, strong thrust, but no reach; gouge and chisel can’t—)
.....—but he could cut her down before she picked up any of the tools. He had been a military man, after all. Presumably that would mean being somewhat familiar with a sword— which was multiple magnitudes more skilled than she was, her sum experience with that weapon numbering zero.
.....He hooked a foot around another chair and dragged it over. His green eyes did not blink as he sat opposite her, sword held lightly in his grasp, scant inches from her chest.
.....“You’re wondering why I killed them,” he said eventually.
.....“Them?” Clara echoed. Not just Denroe, then. Tears blinded her, spilling hot down her cheeks.
.....“I killed my brother first,” said the blurry vision of her uncle. “Niera afterward. You see, I didn’t know who was responsible for the theft. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t care.” A slight pause; Clara wiped her eyes. “Denroe heard them call out and came running. Only to be expected: a son hears his parents’ screams, he goes and investigates. I hadn’t planned on hurting him but then he swung at me and— well, you know how it is.” A small, unrepentant shrug.
.....(Not a wolf she’d heard, but her family crying out at the last moment as—
.....She turned away from the image. Not now. She couldn’t. Maybe not ever.)
.....“That isn’t why,” she heard herself say. Such a soft voice. Hollowed.
.....He looked at her. “I guess not.” Her uncle transferred the sword into his left hand. “Does it matter?”
.....“You wanted me to know, otherwise you’d have—”
.....“Cut you down in the snow, yes.” He fell silent; then: “It’s to do with the old country.”
.....Clara frowned. Glanced at her bat sceptre.
.....“Yes, that, and this” —quick rattle of Light’s Bane— “were stolen.
.....“I mentioned your parents were thieves.” Hard grin, baring teeth. “The place we came from isn’t the bliss you’ve made it out to be, Clara.
.....“I know you don’t believe in magic, but that’s because you haven’t seen it. Experienced it. Witnessed armies of slaves raised by fairies. Fled from a sentient jungle. Watched your son”—his lips thinned—“watched your son gasp back into life after being dead for hours and try to attack you. It’s real, though. All the things your mother and father tried to keep from you— all of it is true.
.....“And all of it is dangerous. Terraria was a nightmare in every sense of the word.”
.....It was a lot to digest; however: “Was?” she asked.
.....Her uncle nodded. “The problem with magic is it can get out of hand really fast. Terraria was breaking apart when we left the continent.” He tilted his head. “I know you can’t picture this— you haven’t been there —but there were wyverns raining down from the sky on the last day. Each of them dead before hitting the ground.”
.....Clara rubbed the back of her hand under her nose. Coughed sharply, sat up straighter. The tears had stopped. She was still alive.
.....She was excited. It felt completely wrong— her stomach heaved —but this was information about the old country she’d always wondered about, and it turned out that the snippets of unbelievable information she’d gathered all this time had been pieces of the truth. A bizarre, backwards truth— but she owned it now.
.....(A small voice in a corner of her mind: you’re in shock. This is your way of coping, falling back on the mystery of your parents’ history. You can’t be this heartless. You can’t be like him.)
.....“Why didn’t you bring any presents?”
.....That took him aback, though the sword never wavered. “What do you mean?”
.....“For Frost Moon.” She wasn’t sure where this was coming from but ran with it. “You didn’t bring any presents this year. And you didn’t know what our gifts were until after mother and father gave them to us.”
.....He blinked. “Maybe I saw the gifts before the party.”
.....“But you didn’t,” she insisted.
.....“No.”
.....Understanding so sudden it made her heart skip: “You were going to kill us tonight anyways.”
.....“Do you know what I like about this continent?” He shifted the sword back into his other hand. “It’s empire might be in tatters, but you can still make a future out of it if you know where to apply pressure.”
.....He was waiting, Clara realized. She thought about it. “The bandits,” she said, and he nodded. “You’ve been working with them.”
.....“Close. I’m managing them. They’re a proper mercenary band now, and we’ll move south to the capital come spring, once we’re through here.” Firelight danced shadows across the angles of his face. “I told you, your parents and I came from Terraria.” That half-smile again. “We have a history of violence. It’s in the blood.”
.....No point in feeling disgust: he’d already murdered her family. But she had to keep him talking. “What’s so wrong about Light’s Bane and the bat sceptre?”
.....“You haven’t been listening,” he said, and his voice was cold now. “The old country was rotten to the core with magic. People like you and me, we weren’t in power. Humans weren’t in power. We were the lowest creatures. I won’t have any remnant of that place taint this land. Nothing good can come of anything to do with magic.”
.....He pushed the sword into Clara’s chest.
.....Her mouth widened; no sound came out.
.....She stood up and her uncle did the same.
.....“You have no idea the sort of
magic is capable of,” he explained. “It doesn’t belong on this side of the ocean. Your parents made a mistake and I am correcting it.”.....Clara staggered into the workbench— and now she screamed as the sword was pulled away by her moving. She fell on top of her tools, trying to suck in breath. Her left hand pressed against the portable forge and the stench of flesh burning filled her nose.
.....He was talking still. Agony blocked out his voice.
.....Her right hand had fallen on the sceptre. She gripped it, knuckles brushing against the bat—
.....—and all the light in the world dimmed, greedily lapped up by a presence larger than a mountain. Its wings were made of shadow and Its belly broken up by row after row of wet red eyes.
.....Its talons sank into the crust of the earth; It stood astride the world, a creature of endless night.
.....You bring offering, It crooned.
.....It had mouths for eyes, rimmed by long teeth.
.....It has been too long.
.....When It closed these holes, the teeth tore gashes in reality and in understanding. Clara felt warm liquid leaking from her ears.
.....Come closer, child. I thirst.
.....Clara was pulled toward the nameless entity and—
.....—she lifted the sceptre up and around to strike her uncle in the face.
.....Or would have, had he not taken a nimble step out of reach.
.....“Don’t be stupid,” he snapped, pulling the sword back for another thrust—
.....—at which point the head of the sceptre twisted, and a bat the size of a fist shot forward.
.....Clara fell back on the workbench. Watched her uncle adjust his strike into an upwards cut through the bat— but it had no effect, the bat struck him in the face.
.....He reeled, raising his free hand. His fingers passed through the bat, ineffective. Clara watched as the animal’s teeth cut open her uncle’s cheek.
.....Another bat appeared from the sceptre; another; then a torrent of black bodies and rushing air.
.....I can’t let go. Her mind felt sluggish. She looked down, frowned with some effort, tried to pry her hand loose to no avail.
.....The bats had enveloped her uncle, until there was no shape of man or animal— just one writhing, dark mass. And still more bats appeared.
.....She ought to have felt pleased, but there was only the sensation of pain in her chest and back and the fiercer pain of her clenched right hand, as if some greater, invisible palm had caught her fist in a vise and would not let up.
.....Clara slid to the ground, back to workbench, eyes averted from the feeding.
.....She couldn’t hear his cries anymore.
.........
.....The old country; Terraria.
.....Magic, Yalicus had said. It exists.
.....It is real and it is dangerous.
.........
.........Her eyes were closed. She had a sense that time had passed. She opened her eyes.
.....To her right, a seething mass of movement. She didn’t want to look. Yet there was no point resisting now.
.....She turned her head. The wall in which the workshop door had been set was gone. Broken wood littered the floor. Snow had blown in and choked the fireplace. Only the Frost Moon gave light now; that, and the wet red eyes of the hovering bats.
.....A ribbon of darkness made up of the animals extended from the main mass outside and across the sky. She felt lightheaded. She heard their wings beating in cold air. She heard the thin screams of townspeople in the night.
.....The bats had not slaked their thirst. She knew now that they never would.
.........
.........Clara looked down at her hand holding the sceptre: it had been squeezed until the skin split apart and the crushed bones pushed through the meat.
.....The bats began to land on her shoulders. Her legs, her face. Claws pricked her soft eyes. Snagged her lips and pulled until they tore.
.....As they began to feed, she tried to move away and found she had no strength; so she closed her eyes instead and her mind was filled with roses of torment blossoming bright red in the darkness; and then the darkness gave way to a vast shape that stood astride the world, and it was a creature of endless night.
.....
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