A pale fog hovered around us. Thin shafts of sunlight peeked from the gray sky. I listened for movement and encountered silence too complete to be natural.
I evaluated the weapons. Arin’s instructions were clear. Two weapons I could tuck into my clothing and one I would carry. I chose a rounded dagger with its scabbard, tucking it between my breasts. I had wrapped a tight undergarment around my breasts and ribs for this precise purpose. Poor Wes turned the color of a plum during training when I refused to tuck the dagger into my waist and reached into my tunic instead. I slid the second, shorter blade into my boot.
I chewed my bottom lip, deliberating between the axe and the spear. I practiced almost exclusively with the spear. Its weight would be familiar, and it was Arin’s weapon of choice.
I ran my nail along the sharp line of the axe. Too much comfort in battle was its own danger.
A piercing shriek rang from above me. I threw myself to the ground, curling below the nearest tree. Through the blanket of skeletal branches, I watched with breathless awe as Al Anqa’a was released over Dar al Mansi. Wings the size of a carriage unfurled. The limited light reflected off glass feathers fading into the colors of a sunset, a gradient of magnificent oranges and pinks blending along its wings, ending with gray-tipped feathers. Talons long as a man and sharper than any sword curved forward.
Al Anqa’a was the only creature they did not kill at the conclusion of the trial. They had clipped its wings to ensure it could fly only in a low loop, and its beady eyes scanned the village below for movement. I exhaled when it flapped its wings, circling to the left. I darted between the trees, leery of any open space. Once Al Anqa’a fixed on its prey, there was no escaping its clutches.
Rounding a cluster of thistles, I came upon Dar al Mansi in all its eerie glory. Thick green vines covered the earth like bulging veins, creeping up the sides of crumbling shops and over the rubble. Fully grown trees sprouted from low buildings, their bases pulverizing the outer walls. Human life reclaimed by the savage wood.
The space between trees lengthened from here, which meant I would need to keep pressed to the walls to stay hidden from Al Anqa’a.
I dashed from the tree to an overturned carriage in the middle of the road. My nausea grew with each step into Dar al Mansi. I could not tell whether my cuffs were reacting to the residue of magic left here, or if my stomach simply couldn’t handle the suffocating smell of decay.
Crouching behind the carriage’s wheel, I assessed the distance I would need to cover to reach the nearest shop. Al Anqa’a circled over the square. I curled into a tight ball.
A guttural smacking sound erupted from my left. Limping from what might have been an apothecary, the unmistakable shape of a nisnas emerged. I’d heard tales of the ghoulish creatures, yet they paled in comparison to the reality. A nisnas was what might have become of Timur if I had left him lying on Ayume’s forest floor, vulnerable to the forest’s sinister magic. One arm dragged behind the nisnas, longer than the rest of its misshapen body. Where the other arm should have been hung a translucent sack of blood, swishing with its slow crawl toward me. Half a leg bulged from the center of its torso, and the single yellow eye in its bulbous head blinked at me. Stubby fingers formed a spiked collar around its throat. Yellow skin grew over its mouth, leaving it incapable of anything beyond a stifled gurgling.
Wes’s description of the thing did it the most justice.
“A nisnas is what happens if you put a rotting mortal body into an iron bowl and smash it with a pestle,” he’d said.
The nisnas dragged itself forward with surprising speed. Al Anqa’a circled the square once, twice, disregarding the nisnas. I begged the bird to take its flight elsewhere before I had to choose between risking an open space or the nisnas. When the nisnas’s foul stench reached my nostrils, and I could see the shriveled skin of its face, Al Anqa’a swerved past the square with a rush of wind.
I hurled myself away just as the nisnas’s dangling arm whipped out from the side. Rolling to my feet, I swung the axe, cleaving its liquid arm sack. A gurgling moan that might have been a scream erupted as blood and pus poured into the soil. The nisnas skittered toward me on pointed nubs of bone. The axe connected with the line of its swollen head, cutting through the fingers growing from its neck. Though only a strip of brown tendon kept its head attached, the nisnas did not slow. Its arm thrashed around my legs, sending me crashing to the ground.
“Get off me!” I grunted, hacking at the thing. I tried to conjure thoughts to provoke my magic. It seemed disinclined to participate.
Eventually, I chopped enough of the nisnas to wiggle from its grip. The pieces trembled on the ground, and right before my eyes, began to knit back together. I grabbed a wiggling finger and stuck it into one of the knots in my braid to hold it still.
Ichor trailed from the axe as I ran. The places on my clothes where the nisnas touched me were singed, the sludge coating its body eating through the thin fabric. I quickly stopped to scrub dirt on all the places the sludge had touched my skin.
I scuttled like a roach for the next mile, weaving between crumbling buildings and overgrown thickets. The shadow Al Anqa’a cast gave sufficient warning of its approach, and I made myself small every time it circled.
When it came around again, I ducked into an open doorway. The remnants of a family home crunched under me. An enormous tree towered in the center of the house, thriving in the ruin. An infant’s rattle dangled from a branch, and a matching crib lay smashed around the tree’s roots, which rippled over the floor like a stone dropped in still water.
What must Nizahl and the other kingdoms have done to Jasad for the villagers here to prefer this death to another invasion? What horrors had been inflicted upon Jasadis’ homes for consumption by the woods to be the merciful alternative? They hadn’t pooled their magic together to repel the soldiers, but to destroy their village on their own terms.
Glass crunched as I walked deeper into the monument of death. What did Jasad look like, if this was the aftermath in a random village?
Running was not a choice for them, Hanim said. Nizahl had led the charge against their land once already, and they would not be chased from another home.
I picked up a patch torn from a colorful quilt. They had embroidered the kitmer’s agile, catlike body, its golden wings, even its feathered head. Clinging to Jasad, even after it was long gone.
“I apologize for the mess,” said the man leaning against the tree. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”
I dropped the patch. Surprise morphed to alarm, and I lifted the axe, checking for the nearest hole in the wall I could fit through. I cursed myself for wandering in so deep.