It was decided. After this escapade was over, she would stay as far away from war as she could. It was an unsightly and unsettling thing, and the results made her stomach turn.

  She had not participated in the battle of course, but as the most senior priestess present it was her role to oversee the wounded. Sequestered amongst the craftsmen, cooks and healers she saw the results of war filter all too clearly.

  She was no stranger to wounds and sickness. She was, however, used to tame injuries, logical injuries, sickness of the body born of contagion and unsanitary conditions, wounds caused by accident. Most importantly, they brought her people who could be saved.

  Here, the tents acting as makeshift infirmaries were filled with the moans of the dying and the shrouds of those already lost. She had sown up gut wounds, cauterized severed limbs, bandaged ragged cuts, all of it unnecessarily messy and brutal. She had failed far too many times today already.

  It was after one such failure that she had noticed it. Her hands still dripping with blood, she had been trying to clean them to maintain some level of sanitation for the next patient. It was at that moment when she felt a curious cold sweep over her despite the stuffiness of the overcrowded tents.

  She was not the most skilled among the priesthood, especially next to the High Priestesses, but that did not stop her being sensitive to the supernatural. She didn’t know what, but something unnatural was out there.

  It would be hours before she could follow up on that strange feeling, hours spent elbow-deep in gore trying to pull the dying back from the brink. She managed to personally save thirty-four lives before the rush of wounded died down. But forty lives were also lost.

  She left the infirmary tent for the first time in nearly a day. The sun was setting but its light still made her squint, her hands occupied in wringing the blood from her fingers with a wet scrap of linen.

  She needed to take the opportunity to learn, it was inevitable if something unnatural had occurred that her expertise would be called upon. Any understanding could put them all at an advantage.

  Her first stop would be the mercenaries. They were boisterous, talkative. Rumours of anything untoward on the battlefield would spread quickly among them. If she could glean some information from them, she would go to the Legate informed.

  The Sand-Spears kept their tents separate from the main camp. Where the legionaries’ tents were drab and uniform cloth, theirs were colourful and ostentatious. Small pennants and bright flags fluttered from the pinnacle of their oversized shelters, while men and women in mismatched clothing chattered, bartered and drank. It felt more like a travelling bazaar than a military unit.

  She walked as though lost, head turning and eyes scanning constantly as she devoured the sights, smells and sounds of this place. Mercenaries of all kinds stared back at her, sharpening weapons, sharing drinks, playing cards.

  Underneath the scent of spiced meats and alcohol there was the slightest hint of antiseptic. She frowned at that, following it, as the recipes for such substances were only offered to certified alchemists in major cities.

  She found herself at a broad, maroon tent. From inside came a ranting voice.

  “I know it was a stupid idea! It’s not like I had any other choice…” Shadrak’s unmistakable tones rumbled.

  Intrigued, Aretuza pushed aside the flap over the entrance and peered inside.

  There was a series of five large cots laid out in a neat row, covered in sheets and spaced out across the large tent. To the far left was a kind of desk, table and cupboard all carved from the same piece of wood, housing countless vials of curious substances and surgical tools in neat order. Leaning over the workstation was an elderly male with drab yellow scales, tinkering away over the source of the antiseptic smell.

  Some unlicensed physician Aretuza assumed. Tagging along with a band of scoundrels for profit and using substances he had no right nor license to. It did not surprise her that there were blasphemies here, and it offended her that they thought she would not find out.

  Laid on the cot nearest this workstation was Shadrak. His face was a mess of healing scars and cauterized wounds, while his chest was bound tightly in bandages. Curiously, Shadrak’s attention was not focussed on the man attending to his mixture. Instead, his eyes were fixed on his second, the woman he had called Misa.

  Only the staccato tapping of mixing implements filled the air until he finally huffed, “what did you expect me to do?” He took a long swig from a skin that was assumedly filled with red wine, based on the colour of the spillage staining his bandages. His tongue ran across his teeth to savour the flavour as he looked back to his second.

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  She was tilting her head a few degrees to the left and cocking an eyebrow.

  “Don’t look at me like that! It was a fucking sorcerer!” he shouted, arms gesticulating wide. “...You’re like my mother,” Shadrak added with a grumble.

  A moment passed, and Misa didn’t seem to move.

  “Oh, shut up. You don’t know your mother either,” Shadrak said.

  Aretuza stared on in some measure of confusion, but there was information to be gained here at least. They had mentioned a sorcerer, but they would have to be performing some catastrophic magic to have her sense it from so far away.

  “Don’t you start!” he said suddenly. “You know how I feel about magic.”

  Aretuza frowned, Misa had barely moved. Perhaps her facial expression was conveying more than she could see from her angle.

  “Yes, I am aware of the priesthood. It’s bad enough we’ve got all of them wandering about slinging magic, but they’re supposed to keep it off the battlefields.”

  Misa leaned forward and rested her arms on her knees.

  “Yes, I also know that Naga don’t care,” the mercenary growled. “It’s why I don’t like this. Who knows what else they’ve got out there…”

  Finally, the physician turned away from his task. His face was sunken with age but maintained some measure of nobility in its pinched features, adorned with a pair of thin spectacles to complete his scholarly visage.

  “If you are quite done rambling about your phobias and rampant magi, we can fit your replacement tooth,” he said, his voice thick with the dulcet tones of a Setaran accent.

  Aretuza began to move away. She had gained some idea of what was going on and would discover nothing else while a tooth was being fitted. She glimpsed Shadrak grumbling as he laid himself back, and the physician produced an iron fang with a spike and clamp to attach it to the gums, slathered in antiseptic.

  ***

  By the time Aretuza was summoned to meet with Khafra, she had spent a few hours listening and learning throughout the war-camp. She had learned little, but it was enough to give her an idea of what she was walking into.

  She pushed into the Legate’s command tent, a simple and drab structure that was twice as broad as it was tall. Surrounding a prone and shackled figure with near-colourless scales stood Khafra, Cleonar and Syla. The tables strewn with maps, missives and letters had been pushed to the side to make room for this prisoner. The space was cluttered and claustrophobic.

  “Ah, Aretuza,” Khafra said as he turned to her, his voice level. “We need your medical expertise on a particular matter.”

  “We’re staring at a corpse that won’t die,” Syla hissed, only sparing her a glance over the shoulder.

  “A corpse that won’t die? That would certainly be a…curiosity,” Aretuza said, horrified by the idea. She moved further into the tent and looked back and forth between the group. “If this is true, you seem too collected Khafra.”

  “I am. It has been bested in combat once before, we can do so again if necessary.”

  Aretuza kneeled before the creature. It was a mess of grey and lifeless scales. Its eyes, looked vacant and lacked colour. Both its arms were cut to the bone in numerous places, and twitching hands laid palm-up on its legs as it knelt before her. To her shame, it took a moment to notice the great cleaving wound from clavicle to chest, that left an arm attached by nothing but a few sinews and knots of muscle.

  Revulsion filled her to the brim as she leant forward for a closer look. She could see through the gaping wound directly into the thing’s ribcage. One of its lungs was ripped into a mess of flesh and arteries. All grey, all lifeless, the ragged organs and meat were almost the same colour as its scales, as though it had been drained with purpose and precision.

  She shifted her angle, tentatively pressing her fingers into the wound to push it open and peer inside. The meat was stiff, yielding slowly to her careful fingers, and the creature did not so much as wince as her digits squirmed inside its body.

  Its chest still rose and fell in a deep, steady rhythm, the head perfectly still. Beyond the first ruined lung, between the remnants of its ribcage, she could see its grey, bloodless heart beating and the left lung slowly inflating and deflating as it drew in air.

  She shuddered, nearly gagging as she stood back. “This…This thing should not be,” she muttered, filled with horror, fascination and revulsion all at once.

  “I would be inclined to agree,” Syla said flatly. “However, one of my most expensive mercenaries is a mess thanks to this thing. It is also sat in front of us. Being.”

  “That does not change that it should not be!” Aretuza shouted, backing further away from the creature. “It should have bled to death from that wound. Its breathing should be ragged and shallow, not that it should be breathing at all. It is…or, it should be, a corpse. The fact that it is not…leaves only one real possibility.”

  “Magic,” Cleonar chimed in, arms folded as she stared at the creature. “We certainly saw enough of that on the field.”

  Aretuza turned to her. “Of course. I was hoping you could tell us what you saw.”

  Cleonar’s gaze fell as she retreated into her own thoughts. Her features twitched as she ran through the memories. “The one leading them wielded peculiar sorceries. Magic that was eating away at everything it touched, even itself…even…souls.” She shuddered at the recollection. “I cannot say for certain. It is what I felt, at least.”

  Aretuza pursed her lips and nodded, pinching her chin between two clawed fingers. “That opens possibilities. I do not recognise it, but there are forms of magic that even the priesthood considers heretical.”

  “Such as?” Syla asked.

  “Void magic. It calls upon a place too volatile, antithetical and unholy to ever be safe, controlled. Our knowledge of the void is limited, only that Aten was the one who decreed it heretical.”

  “I saw a void,” Cleonar blurted. “When the sorcerer escaped. It cut open a hole in the air and stepped through. It disappeared.”

  Aretuza paled. She had expected magic, something powerful or unknown, but not void magic. She stared wide-eyed at Cleonar. “Are you absolutely certain?”

  “I will never get that image out of my mind.”

  Aretuza swallowed, her breath shallowing as her mind raced. “We must get to Balanzar. Now,” she muttered, dragging her gaze to Khafra. “We cannot stay here if that is what we face.”

  Khafra frowned. “We have no friends there. They are not going to open the gates and let us in.”

  “A Naga in the desert, and now void magic?” Aretuza said, her tone growing grave. “Someone in there is going to listen. One way or another.”