IBTRFL Chapter 12

A knife-edged wind thrashed the trees, spiteful as a sulking child.

The last faded leaf that had clung to its branch finally let go. It landed beside the row of small logs arranged side by side on the ground.

And at that moment, the log at the far end of the row began to burn.

One. Then the next.

One by one, each log turned to clean white ash and drifted away.

The last one burned.

Aer, standing some distance back from the rocks, dropped onto the ground with a thud.

A spotless smile rose over a face heavy with exhaustion. A single success, grown out of countless failures. That dazzling thing scoured the frustration clean away.

"There!"

She threw one arm into the air. Her body tipped backward and the soft heap of fallen leaves caught her sprawling frame.

Two months. That was how long it had taken to reach something like control over the magic.

Every dawn she'd hunted beasts in the forest to build her feel for it, and then she'd run the same careful exercises hundreds of times over, pushing for finer and finer control. The dull grind of enduring it had finally borne fruit.

She ought to feel calm. Her mouth kept pulling upward regardless.

Lying there in the leaves, grinning at nothing, Aer raised one hand and scrubbed at the dark shadows under her eyes. The tension going out of her let the tiredness she'd been ignoring crash over her all at once, like a tidal wave.

Whatever else her body could do, a thirteen-year-old was still fragile against fatigue.

"No surprise there," she murmured.

A yawn stretched out of her. The corners of her eyes went wet with it.

Sleep. She hadn't been getting enough. She'd been stealing rest in fragments wherever lessons and free hours allowed, but it wasn't even close.

If not for a body considerably stronger than it had any right to be at this age, she would have been bedridden long since.

Aer was rubbing her eyes, slow and heavy, when she raised her chin and went still.

From the darkness between the trees—dozens of pairs of eyes, glinting with a sinister light. Animal breath, ragged and foul, swarming in from every side.

Gurs. Common forest beasts, the shape of feral dogs.

Aer got to her feet and smoothed down her hair with one hand. The leaves tangled in it came loose.

"Ah," she said. "Tired."

Before the words had finished, the large black-skinned dogs came at her.

The starving dogs' fangs never touched her.

Ferocious flame burned them alive where they ran. The burned shapes—unrecognizable, blackened past any form—dropped onto the leaves.

Aer stood up straight and stretched, unhurried.

In the darkness the remaining Gurs flinched and pulled back.

The pack had watched their companions die in horror. What stood in front of them had already exceeded them. The pack leader barked the order to flee.

Thick ice spikes materialized in midair.

They fired instantly like arrows, each one finding its precise mark—passing cleanly through the vitals of the fleeing dogs. Heart. Head. Belly. The blood flowing from the wounds dyed the transparent ice a deep red.

Nothing escaped.

Aer rolled her stiff shoulders and walked forward. She pushed through the layer of fallen leaves underfoot, and felt something hard beneath her foot.

She kicked the leaves aside. In the cleared patch, lying alone, was a sword—broken and rusted through.

Something surged in her chest—the shock of meeting, face-to-face, a lost piece of herself. As if under a spell, she picked it up.

"……"

A single-handed sword. The most common shape, but also the one she had always preferred. She had only taken hold of it, and yet a strange, giddy heat pooled just under her sternum.

Can I still do it.

Aer had been staring at the sword in her hand. Then she laughed, quietly, at herself.

The reason she'd first picked up a sword was, to put it plainly, pathetically small. She'd saved up enough to buy a weapon and gone to a blacksmith's, and found an apprentice's failed piece being sold cheaply.

No significant moment. No clear goal. No master, no manual. A rootless, scrappy sword style with no foundation at all—clawed together, piece by piece, out of nothing but real combat.

No reason she couldn't do it now.

Aer breathed in and swung.

Top to bottom. Right to left. Diagonal when the angle called for it. With each swing, the feeling she had forgotten woke up, distinct and familiar. The muscles that had contracted back to their child-scale moved with a precision she hadn't expected, and the form came alive in them. The broken, rusted sword turned out to be a perfect key.

A gust of wind arrived at the right moment, and the leaves that had been hanging at the tops of the trees fluttered loose and fell.

Aer's eyes sharpened. She used a tree trunk as a step and jumped.

She swung the broken sword at the falling leaves.

The rusted edge—closer to a club than a blade—struck them. They dropped limply to the ground.

Aer landed without sound. The hand gripping the sword hummed with the impact. A cool, open feeling ran up her spine and spread through her entire body.

"That's it!"

She clenched her fist tight and shouted. And then the rusted sword, which had lived long enough, snapped in two.

The hot elation that had lit up her whole frame went cold. The release with nowhere to go left only irritation behind as it faded.

She dropped the ruined hilt on the ground.

Her hand—her palm, which had been eating well lately and filled in to something almost round and white—was caked with rust-brown dust.

Aer shook her hand out and, somewhat furtively, smelled it.

The rank, nauseating smell of metal gouged into her nasal cavity. Shuddering, Aer recoiled and frantically conjured water—clean and clear.

She washed her hands again and again, until the skin at her fingertips was beginning to crack. The rust smell had gone deep. It wasn't leaving.

Suddenly she hated swords.

"Snow!"

The children's shout broke the quiet. The frame bundled in its rough blanket flinched.

Aer stuck her head out from under the covers and stared at the ceiling with unfocused eyes.

I wanted to sleep in today. She shifted, turned, and brought both hands up to scrub her face.

Then the rust smell hit her—invading, pervasive—and she flinched, snatching her hands back. On a face still heavy with sleep, a thick irritation rose.

Face screwed up, Aer dragged herself upright, swaying.

Through the gap in the window, the children's voices—high and breathless—pushed through. One whiny complaint after another, urgent and pressing.

They had already divided into sides and started a snowball fight, by the sound of it.

On any other day she would have let herself be talked into joining them. Today her body was not cooperating.

Sleep deprivation, probably—her head was thick and dull, her knee joints aching in a way that was strange and new. Her throat was scratchy. A mild cold coming on, by the feel of it.

"May as well return the book," she said.

Aer cleared her throat, climbed out of bed, and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders.

She tucked the book she'd been reading idly under her arm and went out.

The air outside was colder than yesterday by a sharp margin. Aer pulled the blanket tighter and walked a little faster than she meant to.

The nasty wind drove straight through the gaps in the thin blanket, stripping her warmth away. Her teeth knocked together. Her body shook, small and persistent.

"Hey, don't put rocks in the snow!"

"I didn't!"

"Keep it up and I'm throwing a rock at you."

"Fine, fine…"

The cold was something. The rocks were something else. Our kids are tougher than I gave them credit for.

Aer sniffled and climbed the stairs. The carpenter who had come recently to fix them had done his job—they no longer screamed underfoot with every step.

She was heading for the Director's office when she stopped.

An unfamiliar voice, pitched low, carried down the corridor.

"Yes. There is an unidentified beast moving through the forest. My men are searching but we haven't turned up any evidence of it."

"Good heavens!"

The Director's voice, tight with alarm.

The surrounding area was, by any measure, one of the more peaceful stretches of the continent. The beasts that lived here were small things—Glans, Gurs, nothing especially dangerous—and even those were kept under control by regular culls. Nature always produced exceptions now and then, but.

An unidentified beast.

Aer had been through most corners of that forest over the past two months and encountered nothing beyond Glans and Gurs. If something had changed out there, she should have been the first to know. Should have been the first to clear it.

She pressed herself flat against the corridor wall.

"We keep finding beast carcasses—killed by fire or some kind of puncture wound. And the beasts that are still alive are frightened, all of them. Shrinking back. Our working theory is that a powerful beast came in from somewhere else and has settled in the forest. I've seen territorial beasts hunt their own kind for sport, back in my mercenary days—probably some vicious bastard of the same type. If it runs into a person, it won't kill them clean."

"Oh, goddess have mercy."

Beast carcasses. Killed by fire or puncture wounds. No biting, no chewing.

It was me.

...It was me.

Everything she had done in that forest over the past two months rose in her mind, clear and specific.

Aer squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her fingers to her forehead. The dull ringing in her head had turned warm—a fever quietly rising.

"We'll begin a search party tomorrow to track it down. I know you already manage this carefully, but please keep the children away from the forest. Don't let them anywhere near it."

"Of course, of course. Yes. I'll make sure they're warned. Thank you so much for telling us."

"Not at all. I'll take my leave."

Aer pulled herself together and came back down the stairs, tucking herself out of sight beneath the last landing.

Shortly after, the armored soldier and the Director—pale-faced—came down in sequence.

"Well then."

"May the goddess's blessing go with you."

The soldier dipped his head briefly and went out.

The Director paced anxiously for a moment, then moved off somewhere at a quick clip. Passing along what she'd heard to the other priests, most likely.

Aer stepped out from under the stairs, the book still pressed against her chest.

"Tomorrow, he said."

A long sigh settled to the floor of the corridor.