Chapter 002

Most folks don’t know how to listen. But listening is key. Listening is survival.

Harker’s feet were numb clubs by the time he reached his home. The snow was still thick in the shadowed forest, beneath the boughs where the dubious Spring sunlight couldn’t reach. It was knee high in some places but he raced through it without a second thought. Between the threat of Vinell vengeance and a few frostbitten toes, Harker knew which he would rather endure.

Thankfully, there had been no sign of pursuit.

Maybe they assumed those idiots knocked the tree down on themselves. He panted at the base of a familiar cliff side. He leaned his hip against a boulder as large as a farmhouse, right where a deep groove had been polished by wind and rain over centuries. At best, that’ll last until they wake up. With the Water still in their tributaries I’ve got…perhaps an hour before they alert their entire family.

He needed to be gone before that happened.

Still winded, Harker hobbled around the boulder. Neatly hidden in a cleft of stone were a set of ancient, drooping steps and he groaned as he began his climb. Though not particularly wide, ancient carvings filled every inch of the stairway, itself cut into the cliff face by ancient hands. Well before his mother had claimed the little spot, fifteen or so years prior. The stairs curved into the cliff and out of sight, through a dark tunnel crawling with those half-vanished carvings. Cracked arches decorated the bored out tunnel, worn almost flush with the walls and ceiling by the ceaseless touch of the elements. Little better than shallow suggestions of support. Ornamentations of a bygone era.

The tunnel ended in light, and the land flattened out into an uneven platform half-set into the higher cliffs behind it. A ruin of half-walls and sheared pillars clung to the center of the platform and the cliff itself, but if a roof had ever originally existed on the structure it was long gone. Instead there was only his thatched cabin, nestled between broken masonry and jutting cliff. Snow and shadow piled in corners, where trees twisted out of the rock to reach for the muted sun. A biting wind snaked through their thick boles, whistling ever so slightly. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Harker paused, just outside the tunnel. The sky tugged at his attention, same as it had the last few weeks. That thunder was getting stronger, and Harker could almost feel another chill settling in; then again, that could have just been his feet, or the aching pang of his spent reservoir.

Pain is a smothering cloak. Cast it off.

The lesson was an old one. Having such a shallow reservoir meant he was more prone to emptying it than others. It was an everyday occurrence, in fact. Light-headed, ennervation of the limbs, and a sourceless pain that radiated through his skin were common, though the intensity increased in proportion to Water spent. While there were tinctures to ease the symptoms, his mother had insisted he weather it alone. It had hardened him in ways that had nothing to do with Talent.

With an effort of will, Harker put the pain aside. This deep in the wilds it was unwise to lose your senses—the penalty was steep. He may not have had enough Water to use his Talent, but Harker didn’t need it. His eyes and ears coupled with a certain level of concentration and patience were enough.

The ruin was quiet save for the wind. Drifts of dull snow traced along the stone and Winter-dead vines. He crouched, padding as softly as he could, avoiding the crunchy patches of ice while favoring bare stone and the rot-wet detritus of Autumn’s leaves. Here and there, Harker made out tracks in the white, where small game had stepped. That was expected. What was not, however, were the set of claw marks along the outside of the cliff-born trees.

Deep. He placed his hand up to the markings, finding them wider than his own splayed fingers. Big, too. Territorial markings, but—he sniffed, detecting the faintest of odors. Like saltwater gone rancid. Eugh. An Aberrant?

They had been a growing problem in the wilds, another aspect of the strange Winter. Beasts touched by the Sea, those that lingered too long near tidepools where the Horizon was weakest, they were mutated things. Creatures of scale and claw that only got more erratic as their exposure increased. Bestial Aberrants were a true danger, but far better than the one’s that emerged wholesale from the Sea itself. The solution to true Aberrants was simple: run.

This was different. The smell was similar, but Aberrants—Bestial or otherwise—smelled of the Sea. The rot here made Harker pause, scanning the area for more signs of their presence. There were, but not many.

Scent’s weak. It’s been hours since they’ve been here. The creature had circled his home before taking off. Good. I really don’t need this on top of everything else.

Thunder came again, sound without light, and unease crawled up Harker’s spine. He was used to foul weather living on the edge of the wilds, but that feeling from before persisted. The sky was holding its breath.

Harker didn’t care to find out.

Blizzards and driving rain could make the woods all but impossible to navigate, let alone reaching his hut in the north woods. Storms had wracked them that Winter, hitting the wilds much harder than the Vale, which were protected by the knife-topped bluffs to the north and the Gnarl to the south. Living among the ruins of the ancients, Harker had less protection from the elements, though far fewer interactions with people; normally, he considered that more than a fair trade.

He sidled up to his cabin. It was made of sturdy logs where it didn’t borrow the half-standing masonry of the ruins. Far smaller than the Vinell farmhouse, it was never meant to hold more than two in cramped quarters.

Not so cramped anymore. Harker touched the latch, letting it jiggle left and then right while listening for the soft ratchet of something mechanical disengaging. That done, he stepped inside and shut the door quickly.

Inside was a single room, and it was dominated by a pot-bellied iron stove, a wide workbench, and a narrow bed that had seen better days. It was dark but well kept, with cubbies and nooks filled with oddments, stones, and potted plants. The place had fit both him and his mother, and evidence of her remained in the carved planter boxes filled with herbals, a lacquered stool, and mounds of quilted blankets.

The old ruin had once been a temple before his mother had converted it. She had claimed there were more in the east, but all of them were just as broken. No one in the Vale remembered why they existed, only that they were thin places where the Sea touched the mortal world. Places of ill-omen, according to some.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Harker just called it home.

He hobbled toward the stove, grabbing the lacquered stool along the way. The yokels in the Vale were correct in one regard, at least. The Sea did touch the ruins more than other places; Harker made a point of planting useful flora all around the grounds and letting the Sea charge them with potency. That was part of why he was so good at his profession; Sea-touched reagents could do things normal herbs could not.

If only they could cure a spiritual infection, he mused, more than a touch bitterly. Nothing in his garden could have reversed Mari’s injury. Spiritual rot was something to do with the Sea itself and had a thousand different variants. Even if he had known which one was afflicting Mari, he lacked the power to stop it, let alone reverse it.