SN Chapter 6

Kallix gathered himself and surveyed the room. The spy—his actual objective—he found immediately.

At her feet lay a dark heap. Quite composed. The neck had been twisted completely out of position. No woman's body—however skilled with a blade—could have wrenched an adult man's spine to that angle. Against an armed opponent, at that. Without a mark on herself.

KWANG!

Kallix grabbed her and drove her hard against the wall, blade pressed tight beneath her jaw. She looked up at him. Clear, still eyes.

The moment he met them, something ignited in his chest. He had to press his teeth together to stop them from rattling. The anger kept trying to press further forward, toward her throat, but her face—so like his own face—the green eyes receiving the moonlight—

"Kallix."

His name, in her voice. Perfectly clear.

Kallix was crying. He hadn't noticed when it had started—anger, grief, frustration, pain. He tightened his grip on her shoulder. He was pressing her with force that should have produced a response—any response—and there was nothing. Not a flicker. From the first day through this moment, her expression had not changed once, and the constancy of it had been driving him toward a place he refused to go.

I am not the person you knew.

Her whole body seemed to say nothing else.

Tears ran along Kallix's jaw. He spat out each word as if he were grinding them between his teeth.

"You think I won't cut you just because you wear the face of my bloodline? Talk, damn you! Or I take your head. What purpose brought you here—how dare you—in that form—"

He pressed on, breathing hard. Something he could not name was beating against the whole of him.

Rough hands. Her hair more disordered now, half-obscuring her face. Kallix could not look away from it.

"You are—"

"Who are you—"

His final demand was a scream, raw and tearing. From behind, the shape of it might have looked like an embrace—but between them lay one sword's length of complete severance. Kallix did not move—simply bore down.

Time passed. Not much—the clock's second hand had barely moved. Rosaline, who had maintained silence from the first moment of their encounter, moved. Her hand brushed lightly along the flat of his blade. Kallix flinched but did not withdraw. Her gaze—locked to his throughout—drifted now to the metal. The well-tended surface caught and held her reflection.

She regarded herself for a brief moment. Then she spoke.

"I am a shadow."

And she smiled. Kallix stared at it, blank. The smile was so profoundly like someone else's—her brows easing slightly, the sharp eyes softening, only the corners of her mouth turning up. A very quiet, very still thing. Still as water settling at dusk.

"I am Rosaline's... shadow."

It had been, at times, a bird. At others, an insect. Sometimes the shape of a large beast.

It had existed for a long time in the deepest mountains, in forests ancient and untouched by any human foot. Composed of magical properties, it might have been called a demonic beast.

Red-glowing eyes. Strength surpassing predators. Aggression. All the marks. The reason it was never classified as a demonic beast was simpler than any of that: there was no one to make the classification. There was no one who knew what it was.

Deer, tiger, monkey, wild boar, insects on occasion—it possessed the ability to mimic things it had previously consumed, and many humans might have glimpsed it in passing. But no one had ever seen its true form.

It looked, at times, like black smoke. At others, like a mass of living sand. The black of it held no precise edges—it appeared to scatter, to dissolve—yet it neither scattered nor dissolved, maintaining its barely-cohered shape. Someone, long ago, had called it a ghost. Another, in another age, had mistaken it for the shadow of a tree.

It dropped its mimicry and revealed its true form only when absorbing food. This was why it was so rarely discovered. It could go more than a year without eating. What it consumed was exclusively the already-dead—but it did not hunt. This explained the long fasts. No animal, no demonic beast, abandoned its kill and walked away.

It ate what had fallen from cliffs. Sometimes it waited near the losers of territorial battles, patient through the long business of dying. When hunger grew extreme it ate grasses, fruit—hardly its preferred fare. There were individuals who simply waited for luck to arrive, and never found it, and ceased. It was not unintelligent, exactly. Somewhat indolent might have been a fair assessment.

The Accursed Mountain of Iron-Bramble County. High and treacherous and deep.

It had been hungry for a while. The Count of Iron-Bramble, who had received her title two years prior, showed considerable interest in subjugating demonic beasts. Hunters and mercenaries working through the mountain had reduced the populations of beast and animal sharply. It had fasted accordingly.

Three months or so ago it had found some rotting fruit and eaten a little. Not enough to fill anything. It grew weary and lay still. For a long time, it did not move.

What woke it was danger—sharp, driving through its senses. The mountain's beasts were vanishing, screaming, one by one. It took the form of a bluebird it had eaten long ago and moved deeper. This was exactly the right choice. Not long after, humans pushed roughly through to the place where it had been sheltering. It became a ladybug and went deeper still. Brilliant silver armor flashed distantly. The humans had begun to sweep through the great mountain range like lightning.

It held still and waited for them to pass. Hiding for hours, for years—this was among its particular skills. After no very long wait, what it encountered was—

"......"

Something dying.

A human. Black-haired. A body broken and torn, draped across a grave of boulders at the cliff's base, caught on the largest rock.

It had been amusing itself with a single white wildflower when it found her. It approached. The woman had eyes the color of young spring leaves, just beginning. She was blinking, watching the slow approach with eyes already losing their focus. A flicker of confusion reached her expression.

It waited at a short distance. The living were the one thing it was forbidden to consume. The boulder was becoming wet—blood spreading slowly from wounds that were shredded and torn and twisted and cut.

This human will die soon.

It had witnessed this kind of scene many times. High cliffs were not merciful—they offered no swift ending. Sometimes old men. Sometimes strong young men. Sometimes children who had lost their way. Ribs fractured to pierce lungs, blood coming from their mouths, and still they were afraid. Afraid of the black mass drifting before them. Humans crawled to escape it. Screamed and threw stones to drive it away. Perhaps it was not the drive to survive. Perhaps it was the primal terror of an unknown creature.

But no one had ever looked at it with eyes like these. It had never seen eyes like these. Clear and beautiful as very fine glass beads. No tears—the kind humans typically produced in these circumstances. The way it watched her was the way she watched it—both not looking away, as though studying.

"...You..."

The black-haired human called to it. A voice thin as wind through a gap, barely audible. It hesitated for a moment, then moved faster than its usual pace and stopped closer beside her than it had been before. With not the faintest trace of fear, the human grabbed hold of it—and it was startled, for the first time in its living memory. She was startled too. The black smoke she had seized had the texture of dry sand, dry wood—familiar and strange at once. She could feel the dissolving particles slip through her palm, but some held.

"P-please... help me..."

It was in a difficult position. Human Language. It understood what she wanted. It had no means of helping.

The black shape shifted, gliding smooth. She had the impression of something circulating inside it—a kind of convection. It began to take the form of a young girl, the dark areas receding gradually until at last it was a perfect human: the child it had consumed several years prior. The woman realized that the part she had been holding had transformed as well—a child's warm arm. Warmth moved through it. Her eyes widened. She understood. She knew this creature.

"You. Blood. Lots. Die. I. Can't."

You will die. I cannot help. She read its meaning. She squeezed her eyes shut once and opened them. Something like a spark crackled in those clear eyes—a last fragment of fear flaring into flame. Consciousness drifting further with blood loss. Breath coming shallow and fast. She perceived her situation clearly. Death was approaching. Very little time remained. With a consciousness running as thin as the last oil in a lamp, she managed one sentence.

"...You may eat me."

The child found this human extraordinarily interesting. It had never eaten anything by permission before. Permission had never been extended. The woman coughed blood—once, sharply, then again—and smiled.

"But please... grant me one request."

The child could not understand why she was smiling. Perhaps that was precisely why it wished to know a little more. It exchanged a few more halting words with her.

Iron-Bramble County. Vista.

Somewhere in that deep forest.

A forbidden contract was made.