The Lithian campsite comprised of about twenty tents in all. Most of those tents had been stitched together from Tuskar skins, though a few shaman’s tents had been made from the hides of white lions or snow snakes.
The snowy expanse of the Reach stretched on for as far as the eye could see. The shadow of Thornn was barely a blot on the western horizon.
Cross stood up, slowly. He smelled campfire smoke and tasted cold air that cut to the back of his throat and burned his lungs.
“
Morning, sunshine,” Dillon said from behind him. The lean scout was in a pair of camouflage pants and a loose tee-shirt.
“
Aren’t you cold?” Cross asked. He reached down and found his green wool blanket, which was nearly as stiff as his back. The interior of the tent was littered with more blankets and the rest of Cross’ gear, which was actually quite little: his backpack and his weapons, two pairs of gauntlets and their insulated battery packs, a cast iron skillet, some clothes, and a map case. The tent was barely big enough to fit Cross, let alone his gear. He wasn’t sure how the Lith managed to sleep two or sometimes three deep in those tents, even with as light and as thin as they were.
“
Nah, man,” Dillon said as he folded out a second shirt. He set his backpack down, which was loaded with weapons and filled canteens. “You get used to it.”
“
Yeah…
how
long
have we been out here?” Cross asked. He rubbed his hands together over and over again, desperate to work some warmth into them.
“
Most
people get used to it,” Dillon smiled.
The air was the same hue as the drifts of ice and snow that covered so much of the Reach. The sky seemed unusually bright, especially compared to the smog and smoke that Cross was used to back in Thornn.
His home city was actually close enough that it could be seen, but the smoke of its industry and the arcane fog generated by its perimeter defenses crowded the air around it and contributed to the red haze that constantly suffused the western sky. Sometimes that haze was more subtle, a ring that clung to the pale air like a faint sore or a bruise, but the air held some trace of red no matter where you went. People of the Southern Claw called the effect Blood Skies: a perpetual crimson gloom that clung to the atmosphere, an unwholesome miasma of unstable arcane energies and unholy toxins released over twenty-odd years ago, when Earth had been fused with uncounted other worlds during The Black. No one really knew exactly how or why it had all happened. They likely never would.
Standing in the snowy wastelands of the Reach, while exceedingly dangerous, was worth the risk for the brighter air, made that way since they were away from the cities and because the pale sun reflected so easily off of the snow. It was pleasant. It reminded Cross of his youth, and that was difficult to remember, sometimes.
The condition of the atmosphere was worse the closer one drew to the Ebon Cities. The vampires were hundreds of miles away, but their influence extended all across the north and western rim of the continent, which was thick with the presence of malign blood spirits, hunter wraiths and winged necrotic patrols. Poisonous gases and aerial toxins gushed out of the Ebon Cities’ industrial vents day and night so as to dissuade Southern Claw approach; naturally, those poisons had no effect at all on the city’s undead inhabitants.
I never want to see the Ebon Cities. Not in person, anyways.
But seeing them was always a possibility, of course. Cross was a warlock of the Southern Claw Alliance, a coalition of humans and their allies who controlled the southern half of what was commonly believed to be the only continent of the new world. Before he and Viper Squad had been dispatched to hunt down the traitor Margrave Azazeth, it had been their job to carry out special missions against the vampires of the Ebon Cities. Now, Cross was the only member of Viper Squad left alive, and his role had changed.
“
So is today the big day?” Dillon asked. He sat down on a smooth and dark stone and fastened his combat boots. Jamal Dillon was a frighteningly tall man, easily a head higher than Cross’ not inconsiderable six-foot-two, and when he wasn’t burdened down with eighty pounds of Southern Claw standard issue armor his carefully honed muscles were intimidating to behold. Not that his physical appearance was in any way indicative of his personality: Dillon was about as laid-back of a soldier as Cross had ever met, and after having served in Wolf Company and Viper Squad, Cross felt had met his fair share. Dillon reminded him a bit of Samuel Graves, Cross’ best friend, killed in action while fighting Sorn in the ruins of Rhaine. Graves had saved Cross’ life and paid for it with his own. Not a day went by that Cross didn’t remember that, or him.
“
I think so,” Cross nodded. He ripped open a packet of jerky, and looked around as if a fresh cup of coffee would magically appear for him. When it didn’t, he settled for some water from his canteen, instead. “I need to find Sajai and see if she’s ready.”
“
No you don’t,” Dillon said with a shake of his head. He didn’t bother looking up from his boots. Dillon was a man of few words. Living in the wilderness for weeks on end would make one reticent to speak, Cross supposed, so Dillon made sure that the few words he did use were efficient.
“
Right,” Cross nodded after he thought about it for a moment. “She’ll find
me
.”
“
There you go.”
“
I’ll figure this out eventually,” Cross said as he pulled on his sunglasses.
“
Yes, you will,” Dillon answered. “Just in time for us to leave.”
“
Better late than never.”
Dillon reached into his pack and pulled out a piece of jerky and a sealed plastic cup. Dillon shook the cup, which rattled the handful of beat-up dice that were inside. They made quite a racket in the still morning air, but none of the Lith ever seemed to mind. He cast the dice onto the ground, and then he wrote the sequence of numbers down in a little notepad with a charcoal pencil.
“
You know how strange that is, right?” Cross asked with a grin on his face.
“
Can’t say that I do,” Dillon laughed.
“
Really?” Cross pulled his jerky apart with his teeth. It was surprisingly juicy and hot. “Are you ever going to tell me what that’s all about?”
“
Maybe,” Dillon nodded. He finished the sequence, and put everything away. He’d gone through the same routine every morning that Cross had spent with him out there in the Reach. “You want to talk about strange…when are you going to name that camel?”
“
I’m not,” Cross said with a smile.
“
Do you even know its gender?”
“
No. And the thought of checking is kind of repulsive.”
Dillon laughed, and gathered the rest of his gear. He was something of an irregular soldier. Like Cross, he’d served with Hunter squads and large Companies, and, also like Cross, Dillon had gained distinction by living through some impossible situations, and he’d earned himself something of a non-traditional role in the Southern Claw military. In Dillon’s case, that role involved serving as a guide for special missions that ventured deep into the wilderness. Dillon had been doing it for almost eight years now (which meant that he was older than Cross had originally thought, and certainly older than he looked), and he was on friendly terms with various mountain tribes and non-humans, including the mysterious Lith.
Cross saw a few of the Lith now, breaking camp as they prepared to move on. There were over two dozen of the silent nomads in the camp. They were almost invisible in the dull white dawn thanks to their incredibly pale flesh and hair. A full-grown Lith male was barely six feet tall but only, Cross estimated, about 150 pounds, and yet somehow the Lith managed to actually thrive in the harsh winter wastelands called the Reach. The females were smaller than the males, but Cross thought they
all
looked as thin as skeletons. He watched them move across the camp, bound in white and deep blue furs and boiled leather armor, ghost-like as they expertly broke down their tents. They left no trace of their presence.
Dillon and Cross grabbed their packs. Any business Cross had with the Lith had to wait until they broke camp. The humans were guests there, and not terribly well trusted ones in spite of their best efforts to abide by Lithian customs and obey the ghostly people’s loose laws. The Lith were one of the few races that humans got along with, after all, and while their presence was much quieter than the Gol or the Doj, the Lith were a valuable source of information and trade. They were tied to the land in a way that humans hadn’t been since The Black, and they had ways of culling resources from the inhospitable terrain that people of the Southern Claw couldn’t, even with the aid of magic.
Perhaps most importantly, the Lith were a race of prophets. Their witches sensed future events and determined when and where something of significance might occur. Cross wasn’t sure how they did it – if it was through the use of spirits, it was in a manner that was unknown to humans.
No surprise there
, Cross thought.
For as much as we know about magic, we still don’t know a damn thing. It’s a wonder we’ve survived as long as we have.
Once Cross had all of his gear stowed away, he cleaned his weapons and tended to the camel. He’d first worked with such a beast during Viper Squad’s last ill-fated mission, when they’d purchased one from a merchant in the armistice city-state of Dirge. That camel had noisily but faithfully served at Cross’ side for the rest of the mission, and while he never found out what had happened to it (he was fairly certain it had either wandered off into the dead lands north of the Carrion Rift or else had been eaten by ghouls), he decided he’d always bring one along whenever duty required him to trek into the wilderness. This camel – which he didn’t name out of pure superstitious habit – had been with him for the better part of a year. Cross still didn’t know how to ride the beast, and he didn’t think that either of them was up for trying.
The rock shelf that the Lith camped on overlooked the Reach from the side of a squat mountain. Navigating up and down the sliding mountain face to get to and from the camp was treacherous, but the elevated position meant that only the most dedicated predators would dare try to harm them. The air was thin and cold atop the rocks, and the wind snapped against Cross’ cloth-wrapped face and cut straight through his grey armor like a blade. At times the gusts were so strong Cross felt sure they could have forced him off of the rock and into open air. The campsite was large enough, Cross guessed, to land a pair of the Southern Claw’s new Bloodhawk airships.
Dillon stood next to him. His scraggly black beard had finally shed some of the frost it had accumulated overnight. Cross’s own face bore only slight traces of stubble. Growing a beard wasn’t in the cards for him, and never had been.
Cross’ spirit pushed against him. Before the Viper Squad’s last mission, such an act would have brought him comfort. His spirit was tied to his soul, after all, an ethereal feminine counterpart, an extension of his own life force that he called on to craft magical effects and to gather information. She had, in many ways, been his deepest friend and companion, and his one true love aside from his sister.
They’re both gone now. Gone, and they’re not coming back.
The touch and feel of his spirit had changed, just as Cross had changed. The spirit he was bonded to was an entirely different entity than that he’d spent most of his life with.
A year before, in the secret obelisk prison that housed humankind’s arcane souls, Cross had destroyed Margrave, and his original spirit had, in turn, sacrificed herself to save
him
. His new spirit was a reward, of sorts, granted to Cross by whatever entity it was who ruled that obelisk.
It had been an uneasy marriage thus far. Sensing this spirit was like reaching through ice-water, or staring into a smoky mirror.
His spirit was a shadow of the one he’d once known, a bitter and resentful echo. The emotions that she emanated usually felt like an indictment of Cross, a resistance to whatever he attempted.
He felt more alone that ever.
There’s still so much we don’t understand about magic…so much that still doesn’t make sense. Maybe that’s why I’m still here. Maybe that’s why they sent me back.
He sees his old spirit, falling into the sky.
“
Hello?”
Cross snapped to. Dillon was looking at him.
“
Sorry,” he said.
“
Are you all right?” Dillon’s voice was thick and loud. Rangers had to be silent. Cross was fairly sure that was why Dillon actually didn’t talk all that much – even his whispers were easy to hear. He had to make an effort at being quiet, which was probably why he was so good at it.
“
Yes,” Cross said after a moment. A thick crust of iron clouds crept over the stale sun. Heavy shadows floated like vessels on the face of the pale valley. A silver-red river wound its way across the land below like an open wound. “What’s up?”
“
Sajai,” Dillon said with a nod.
The Lith witch worked her way up the stone hill and towards the two Southern Claw men. Like all Lith, Sajai was thin and short. Her golden hair flowed in the freezing mountain breeze, and her milk white skin was as flawless as snow. Sajai was dressed in a pale blue cloak laced with gold and platinum cuffs, but the garment was tied tight at the waist like a corset. A series of tall knife scabbards surrounded her washboard frame, while her gloves and boots were made of some sort of animal skin, probably ice wolf.