7 Chapter 6: A Blasted Sky

The Outlands stretched across the boundless landscape as an endless desert of cracked earth and dry bone that hung under a sickened, dying sky. It was a single, massive, dry plain that was boxed on three sides by massive mountains, carved by the winds or the gods, depending on who was asked and who was believed. So completely surrounded was it that a common old wives' tale had the Outlands be the footprint of a giant—the imprint of the heel formed three mountain ranges, and the toe dug out a sea.

The Peaks lay to the west, running down the center of Altaros and the main continent. They joined the Twisting Spires, which lay to the south in the direction of Malifor along the narrow isthmus that joined the two warring nations. To the east lay the Pikes, entrapping the final side of the Outlands by land. These three walls of stone served the useful purpose of separating the Outlands from the Capital, and thus cutting the it off from the rest of Altaros.

The fourth side lay to the north and opened towards the Cold Sea, with its murky black water crashing onto the spires of twisted rock that grew out of the coastline. The frigid winds blew in the only source of moisture these lands would find; no other water-bearing wind would ever make it past the blockade of mountains. The further south from the Cold Sea one went, the less life one would find. In the very south the land was fed from runoff born in the melted snowcaps of the Twisting Spires. The formed pathetic rivers, but it was enough for the desperate life there to cling on to.

It was in the center of the Outlands, farthest away from sea and stream, where the land wept salt and sand. The cracked earth and scorching sun without a drop of water in thousands of paces meant stark vegetation and a painful death. There were not even corpses on the ground; there was not enough life to warrant their presence. Nature's cruel mark on these lands was harsh enough, yet man had found it in him to do more still.

The land was filled with marai: wild, uncontrolled magic. Magic was bonded to its caster in life, the two forming a pact in purpose and in blood. Yet it had two states, one of order and one of disorder. When it came from the body, formed from the decaying soul, it was mahji—the pure magic, able to be shaped. Yet as death claims the living, those pacts with the now-dead unraveled with the passing of time. And so the pure magic came to be marai—decayed magic, feral magic.

It could be seen in the air, the distinctive hue of unchanneled arcane power shifting from deep purple to a dark green as it hungrily devoured the earth. The decaying magic warred between its two states, leaving the air heavy with the charred smell of static and constantly crackling lightning. The marai lingered, unable to find escape from the confines of the mountains, building up as a swirling green fog that shrouded the sky and made the red stars glow with unnatural light until they nearly blotted out the black of the sky at night. The stifling smoke trapped heat from the sun and swallowed up the rain in its gluttony, leaving only at most the meager water from the mists that blew in from the Cold Sea to the north to feed the sparse grasses growing out of the sun-baked earth. The sloane had thought it made a sickly corpse of a landscape, and from what she saw the earth shared the sentiment.

The Capital used these lands to dispose of its marai, to leave the remains and remnants of magic no longer used. It collected in the air and in the land, building without dispersal until the very sky was warped. It was a blight, a curse on the earth, and she wept at the desolate scene before her.

Dry bones littered the horizon, for she was still north enough that there was life still yet to die, the silence of the plains deafening as it echoed off the sheer cliffs. There were no gnats to lay eggs in the dead, no maggots to devour the decaying flesh—the heat cooked them in their eggs and the constant drought starved the few survivors with a slow, tormenting death. It was as if the land itself had taken pity upon the wretched creatures that lived here, killing them in its cruel mercy. She laughed bitterly at how fitting it was that she, a dying wretch and an orphan all her life, should finally find her true home and kin here among these diseased creatures.

There was no place for the infirm and weak in these harsh lands, in these broken lands that could feed upon naught but themselves the way a starving snake feasts upon its own tail. The wild magic killed much that lived there, its murderous will sometimes mercifully swift, ofttimes long and painful as the afflicted watched their skin blister and smelled the fetid stench of rot seep up through the pus-filled cracks in their greying flesh. Marai was fickle in its nature, as unpredictable in its decay as it was ultimately fatal.

For many beasts here, the numerous corpses of the dying mewling pups were the easiest source food and water. Others hunted in the meager grasslands that grew closer to the coast, killing those that grazed on the sparse weeds. It was nothing but a wasteland of insatiable magic and blazing heat that lay west of the Capital. It was a disgusting throng of waste and madness, uninhabitable and unsalvageable.

It was the Outlands.

She had ran there to escape the Witch Hunters, even the bravest of which would not dare enter this land of certain death. Yet now that she saw the Outlands presented before her, she felt a sinking feeling in her heart slowly eat away at her will to live. The dying girl coughed bitterly, giving a weak smile as she whispered through cracked lips.

"Seems I'm good for nothing but putting on a fool's show for the gods." Just those few words sent piercing pain from her stomach up her spine, making her muscles clench in agony and her breath turn to fire in her lungs. Her very body was falling to pieces; it would not be the first to have done so here.

Gritting her teeth, she glanced up, craning her neck to gaze at the sky covered in that sickening green film. "Well I hope I made you laugh, all my dear lords and ladies. For my next trick, I think I'll be disappearing. Don't bother with the encore." she chuckled softly before a bloody cough racked her chest and made her fall to her knees. She pressed her hand against the ghastly lump of scarred flesh covering her stomach from when she had sealed the wound shut with tongues of fire. Although she had tried her best to pick out the shards of the blade that had shattered in her stomach after she killed its wielder, bits of metal still pierced the unhealed flesh, drawing new unseen lacerations beneath the surface.

"Damned Witch Hunters with their thrice-damned silver." the sloane coughed out as her attempt to rise to her feet made the bits of metal sink their jagged teeth into her flesh. "It doesn't kill me any more than steel but it still damn hurts."

Like a nest of hornets, they dug into her flesh and sent waves of unrelenting pain and nausea through her. A fleeting thought crossed her mind, perhaps from the pain, perhaps from desperation—dig them out.

"Ah, why not? Might as well get it over with. After all, the worst is I die." The words sent a painful chuckle through her as she smiled a bloody smile. "If I'm lucky, I won't die here. Then I get to die all I want later."

With grunt of effort, the girl chosen by the gods collapsed against a large rock. The smooth, weathered stone was hot against her skin from the light of the sun as she leaned her back against it with a mild hiss of discomfort. Her heart was racing despite her attempts to remain calm, her pulse like a horse at full gallop. She had only an idea, not a plan. She was grasping at straws now, that sliver of hope in her chest causing pain far greater than the dull emptiness of resignation and defeat. An image entered her mind of a dying man bound in a rope of thorns. The struggle to live was painful, but only the weak-willed accepted death.

Feeling her breath slow and her racing heart calm, she braced herself for the pain that would come from her struggle. The scar on her wound might have saved her life for the moment, but she would have to remove it if she wished it to ever heal. There was rot underneath—rot and blood from the shards of silver buried mere inches from her stomach. It would be grisly and bloody, but there was no other choice for her survival.

She would have to slice the wound open and cut them out.

With a short dagger held in a shaking hand, she ripped cloth from her bloody shirt as a rag for her mouth. Birds circled above her, cawing with raucous cries. They were dark omens, for the birds could smell death and the dying. And the girl was certainly dying. If anything, she was about to be taken even closer to death by her own hand.

Her fingers were clenched tightly around the rough handle of the blade as it bit into the flesh of her stomach with a kiss of cold steel. Blood welled up in brilliant scarlet as she carved open her stomach, cutting apart ruined flesh that had been seared shut by flame. As the scarred lips parted the hideous smell of pus and char filled her nostrils and burned tears into her eyes. It was putrid and nauseating and unmistakably hers. Bile burned up her throat as her stomach heaved, the involuntary motion sending new lances of white-hot pain shooting down her back.

The flesh underneath was dark pink with a film of clear white, the blood flowing freely like an undammed river as the sickly sweet smell of blight and decay sent her heart plummeting. This decay was not that of a normal blade's doing. Above her, the cawing of carrion birds grew ever louder.

There had been poison on the bits of blade.

That thin sliver of hope that had been dangled teasingly in front of her eyes was now pulled hopelessly out of reach, yanked tauntingly by those gods had chosen her or perhaps by the devil that had made her a witch. In a moment of delirium, she wondered if they were one and the same, merely a single, uncaring god watching her from above with omniscient apathy. She could see his form in the green sky above her, see his eyes in the glittering stars. They twinkled beautifully as she died.

A memory flashed through the wretch's mind as hopelessness sunk deep into her bones, a fleeting memory of a girl she had watched die, and a memory of the hate and regret that had coursed through her blood. She had spat on the gods that day, she would do all in her power to deny their will upon her life. If they sought her dead, if they wished to laugh at the futility of her final moments, then she would spite them and curse in their faces. And she would live.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I think that I choose to live a little longer." she rasped out. "I still have to pay you all back for my sister." If the gods wished her die, then she would live.

That determination was what kept her heart pumping, what had steeled her resolve and clenched her jaw. Reaching into the decaying wound, she probed with nervous fingers, feeling for the press of metal. She would feel the shards digging into her flesh, feel the pain as they carved new wounds into her. She used to pain, traced it to its roots. Her stomach convulsed and her eyes blurred in nausea, but she pulled out one piece with shaking fingers, the sharp metal glinting cruelly in the light. It took her an eternity to extract the rest, the nerves of her gash growing dulled as she struggled to resist the overwhelming urge to heave. The puddle of blood pooling around her was macabre as it attracted more and more scavengers waiting for her death. Finally, she found no more silver in amidst the rotting flesh, feeling merely the phantom pains that shot through her gut and made her blanch in reflex. Her face was bone-white; her rapid heart beating a frantic pulse. Her bloodstained hand was cramped from the strain; her chest heaved as she let loose a breath that she did not know she had been holding. The cawing above her grew louder still.

There was poison in the wound, but she could not heal it now. Even as she thought this, she hissed at a large cat-like creature that ventured too close to her. It was glared at her, nostrils flared as it smelled blood, but the dagger in her hand was enough to drive it off for now. She had to move, to hide until she could tend to the injury in peace. Yet, as she tried to get up, a massive spear of agony shot up her spine and tore the breath from her lungs like a clawed hand, her body clenching in sheer reflex as the wound in her stomach tore. Fresh blood spilled forth as she pressed a hand against her stomach, wincing at the pain.

The smell that rose up from the wound was familiar, sparking a memory of her as a child learning under the old man in Telavir, reaching for a small jar with a light blue flower inside. The top was tightly screwed shut so she threw it on the ground, shattering the glass before she bent down to pick up the flower. When it touched her fingers it numbed her skin , sending the blood rushing to the surface and flushing her skin into a deep rosy color. When the old man walked in a saw the flower in her hand, he knocked it out of her grasp with a shout, a look of terrible fury on his face. Picking up one of the shards of glass on the floor, he cut into her finger with the blade, uncaring as she screamed and cried in fear.

From that small cut, the blood spurted forth like an unstoppered bottle, running down her arm and dripping onto the floor. The flowing refused to stop, even after he held a cloth to her skin. In the end, the old professor used a foul-smelling salve from a cabinet to close the wound and stem the bleeding. When she had asked him about the flower, he simply replied that it was a frost lily. He told her that it was small and unremarkable, yet deadlier than any blade. He had smiled then, saying that it was rather like her.

That was how she had gotten her name.

The memory faded and the girl with the name of a killer was brought back to the present. She was losing blood at a rate that would leave her dead in a few hours; extracting the shards of silver had been necessary, but only sped up her imminent death. She could not remove the poison without the necessary materials, but she could still buy time to heal. It would have to be enough.

Still bleeding a trail of blood from a hole in her stomach, Lily dug into her pack of meager supplies to fish out a painful thin pouch of water. Tearing off a strip of cloth, she cleaned the wound as best she could, clenching her teeth as the nausea sent her reeling. The waste of water was necessary—an infection would defeat the purpose of what she was about to do. With every drop that spilled out of the flask, she knew that she was now committed to her task. No, rather, she had been committed a long time ago. Her life—all of her past, and all of her future—she would have to bet it all on the next few moments.

Thinking back to her lessons in the yard with the aged professor, she recalled their discussions on magic and time. She remembered endless theories on their complex relationship, a seemingly relentless tide of words that streamed out of his mouth. How she wished now that she had paid closer attention then, but she knew enough of the basics to gamble on this attempt. She could not stop time, but she could slow its passing to a crawl. This spell would do nothing to remove the poison, it would merely extend her death. With the delay, she could hide and heal. It was a slim opportunity.

There were no other options available to her.

With her back against the jagged ground, Lily briefly dug in her bag before she found what she was looking for. Muttering a distorted chant under her breath, she shattered three purple crystals that promptly dispersed into the air as a powdered mist. Crystallized mahji, power incarnate. The greatest strength known to man, with the might in the hands of the skilled to raze a city in a flicker of thought. They had been purchased from a benefactor in Telavir, a black market merchant. She needed to use these crystals for the spell that she was about to cast; her own body was cursed not to bear mahji of its own. If she failed to finish a spell of this magnitude, the backlash would surely kill her.

She could feel the pure magic's raw, unchecked power crackling madly as it mixed with the wasted, feral marai in the air. She fought to keep it under control, whispering hurried incantations to halt its ramshackled spread. With each beat of her chant, she drove back the corruption of the marai, but its taint ran deep to the roots. Any slip of her concentration threatened to sent her magic into irreversible decay. The conditions were hardly ideal to test out her theory—her master's theory, but she had no more time.

With eyes closed, her body swayed as she accepted the purple mahji, drawing it in from the air around her. The siphoned magic crackled through her fingers to the pit of her stomach and circled throughout her body, warming her veins and speeding her pulse. The natural center for magic to coalesce was in the base of the abdomen, but her wound left her sensitive and exposed, further interfering with the already nigh-impossible spell. A buzzing in her temples sent shivers down her spine as her vision grew clearer, her nerves on fire, tingling at the slightest touch. This was it, the maddening euphoria of magic that bent many minds and broke many more.

Without pausing to revel in her high, the sloane began her chant, words giving form to the mahji that flowed in her body, the power pouring out of her to follow her bidding. With magic, words gave a cadence, a pulse for the magic to flow with that needed to match the heartbeat of the world around her. Meaning was not needed, merely rhythm, and she felt the magic follow in a stream that grew with every beat of her chant. It was a cord of wispy purple tendrils uncoiling slowly from the tip of her finger. It raveled into a cord that wrapped around her navel, winding around her wound and growing in thickness.

Small amounts bled out, her weakened countenance and the unstable foundation of the magic unable to fully control the power. The leakage would bleed around her as marai, driving all the weak beings nearby to fits of madness. Perhaps that would be desired; it might keep her alive long enough to finish the spell so that she could die properly later.

Lily could feel the magic stopping everything as it closed its seal, slowing even time to a feeble drag around her stomach. The warmth of hope filled her as she felt the profuse bleeding from the poison slow until it nearly stopped entirely. For a fleeting moment, she thought to herself that it had worked. With the wound sealed in time, she would be able to hide and heal. She would be able to survive.

She should have known better.

The gods were always watching in cruel amusement, and she would find no rest from their torment in this life. The dying girl was almost finished, but in a sudden rush the last magic poured out of her as the power from the crystals depleted, and she felt a tug in the chest below the sternum. The cord of magic was pulling at her soul with the force of the gods. The pain was incredible and searing, but she did not stop her chant—to do so would be certain to spell death.

Her vision narrowed, edges fraying into black as she collapsed to the ground, bloody mouth moving in a frantic babble of words, desperately keeping the chant with her fading willpower. With the last eight words, the girl sealed the chant with words of habit, their meaning never more clear to her than now: An oath in blood, an oath in life. Greedy magic tugged at her life force as it took its share of the pact, her battered body finally giving in as her pounding head made everything fade black.

The cawing of the carrion birds above her fell silent.