Chương 110: Chapter 109 – Say Something

Nobody had told Ant to be quiet. He was anyway. The bowl held them for a while after the passage spat them back into daylight — Garrick and Ashclaw with Anvil's body settled across the Epic's back, Natalia already turning Petra toward the rim with one hand steady between her shoulder blades. Nobody moved fast. Even Kalsar, who moved fast through most things on principle, stood with his arms crossed and let the silence sit until Natalia spoke first.

"Not here." She said it looking at the dead ground stretching out in every direction, cracked and grey and empty of anything that had ever grown in it.

"She deserves better than scorched earth. There's tree cover maybe half a mile east, before the scarring starts proper. We walk." Nobody argued with that either. You're doing it again, Mahkir said, close against Ant's leg as they fell into line behind the others, his gait still a half-step off from where it should have been, weight favoring three legs more than four. The quiet thing.

"Not now, Mahkir." I didn't say it was the wrong time. I said you're doing it. He didn't have an answer that wouldn't turn into a lie, so he didn't give one. Mahkir let it go, which was its own kind of statement — he never let anything go easily, not when he thought something was actually wrong, and the fact that he was choosing to walk quiet instead of pushing meant he was saving it. Filing it under things to come back to.

Ant felt that more than he heard it, a low patience running along the bond that hadn't been there an hour ago. The half mile took longer than it should have. Petra walked like a woman being carried by her own legs rather than using them, Natalia's hand never leaving her back the whole way, murmuring things too quiet for anyone else to catch. Bastian kept close to Nadia, Coil wound tight enough around his ankle that it looked less like a Kithren walking and more like a second boot.

Nobody spoke above the sound of boots on cracked ground. Nobody noticed the grey giving way to green at first — a stand of birch appeared as a smudge on the horizon, then all at once as actual trees, actual shade, actual bird calls doing what bird calls did before anyone had ever cracked this ground open. The smell changed with it too.

Ash and rust gave way, gradually, to wet bark and crushed leaf litter, and underneath both of them something sweeter Ant couldn't place until he realized it was just growing things, ordinary growing things, doing what they'd always done regardless of what had happened a half mile back. Garrick set Anvil down at the base of a wide oak without being asked where, like his feet had already picked the spot before his head had caught up.

He knelt there a long moment, one broad hand flat against the armored plating along Anvil's flank, saying nothing. Ashclaw stood over both of them, head low, and let out a long, ragged breath through its nose — not a roar, not a growl, just air finally leaving somewhere it had been held too long.

"Petra." Natalia's voice, gentle in a way that didn't match the size of the woman using it.

"However you want this done. However long you need." Petra didn't answer right away. She crossed to where Anvil lay and knelt beside Garrick, and for a while the two of them just stayed there, not touching each other, both with a hand somewhere on the armored body laid out between them.

"He never once complained," Petra said finally, flat, no reach for anything grander than the plain fact of it.

"Six years, never once — just put himself where the hit needed to land and took it. That's all he ever did. Put himself where it needed to land." Nobody filled the space after that. Ant had been braced for someone to try — some line meant to make it easier, the kind of thing people said at funerals that never actually helped the person it was aimed at — but nobody offered one, and the silence turned out to be the right choice by default.

Kalsar and the others gathered wood without being told, working fast and quiet, the kind of task people reach for when their hands need something to do and their mouths have nothing worth saying. Ant found himself doing the same, dragging a fallen branch across the clearing before he'd consciously decided to help, Mahkir trailing at his side with his ears back and low. I don't know what to do here, Mahkir admitted, quieter than Ant had heard him in a long time. I've watched things die. Killed plenty myself.

This is — different. I don't have the words for different.

"Yeah." Ant kept his eyes on the wood in his hands.

"Me neither." They built the pyre high enough that it looked deliberate rather than desperate, Garrick doing most of the heavy work in silence, his eyes wet the whole time and nobody commenting on it. When it was done, Petra stood at the foot of it a long moment, one hand resting on Anvil's flank one last time, and then stepped back without a word. Natalia looked to Cindermaw.

The Epic lowered its long body, smoke leaking steady from between the plates along its spine the way it always did, and when it opened its jaw the fire that came out wasn't the desperate, flailing kind Ant had seen from Mahkir mid-fight — it was slow, almost careful, catching along the base of the pyre and climbing with a patience that felt, somehow, respectful.

The flames took the wood, then Anvil, and Petra made a sound Ant would remember for a long time after — not a wail, nothing that dramatic, just one short broken exhale, the kind that comes out when a body finally stops bracing against a hit it's been expecting for hours. Ant stood at the edge of the clearing with Mahkir pressed against his leg and didn't know where to put his hands. He'd killed men. He'd watched enemy Kithren die and felt nothing worth mentioning about it after.

This was neither of those things, and his body hadn't worked out yet what it was supposed to do instead, so it did nothing, which felt like its own kind of failure standing there. That's grief, the voice said, quiet, almost gentle, sitting somewhere behind his own thoughts the way it always did. You're allowed to just stand in it. Not everything needs a response. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Ant went very still. He didn't answer it.

Couldn't, not here, not with Mahkir close enough to feel every hitch in the bond and everyone else close enough to notice if he suddenly started talking to nobody. He swallowed it the way he'd swallowed the last one, pressed it flat behind his teeth, and kept his eyes on the fire until there was nothing left in the middle of it worth looking at. Nobody spoke for a long while after that.

The fire burned down slow, embers sinking into themselves, and one by one people found somewhere to sit — Bastian against a tree with Coil curled in his lap, Nadia close enough to put a hand briefly on his shoulder, Garrick standing over the ashes long after there was anything left to watch. Petra sat apart from all of them, knees drawn up, and didn't ask anyone to join her, and nobody did.

It was Natalia who finally crossed the clearing to where Ant stood, Kalsar drifting over without being called the moment he saw where she was headed. Mahkir didn't move from Ant's side.

"Walk with me a minute," Natalia said. Not quite a request. They went a short way off, far enough that the others wouldn't hear without meaning to, close enough that the fire was still visible through the trees behind them. Natalia stopped with her back half-turned to it, dark hair come loose from where she'd pulled it back that morning, the break in her nose catching the light strange.

"I owe you an explanation," she said.

"Not the favor yet. Before that."

"Okay." Ant kept his voice level. His chest didn't cooperate — a tightness he recognized from before every hard conversation he'd ever had, settling in early, ahead of whatever was coming.

"The vortex." She looked past him, toward the smoke still climbing thin through the branches.

"It wasn't just the deadline. I could've sent Garrick and Petra and called it square, my full commitment without ever setting foot down there myself. I didn't, because I needed to see it. Needed to see what your clan actually does when everything goes to hell and there's no time left to think it through." Her eyes came back to him, steady.

"That's the truth of it. This was never only a favor for hire. It was a test I didn't tell you I was running." Kalsar's arms uncrossed and recrossed, tighter than before, though he said nothing.

"A test for what," Ant said.

"For this." Natalia said it plainly, no dressing on it at all.

"Ashmere's dying, Ant. Not today, not next month, but it's dying, and everyone in that hold knows it even if nobody says the word out loud. The fighting's done — has been for a while now. What's left is the aftermath, and we don't have the people left to climb out of it. Every hand we've got is already spread thin holding what's standing. I could keep leading them through that a while longer. Pride would let me. But pride's not what they need from me, and I've known that for longer than I've let myself admit."

"You want to merge," Ant said. Not a question by the time it left him.

"I want to give you what's left of my clan." She said it steady, like she'd said the words to herself enough times in private that they came out smooth now — though her eyes stayed fixed on a point past Ant's shoulder the whole time, the way people look at something else entirely when a sentence still isn't easy to get through.

"Myself. Garrick, Petra, Nadia, Bastian — what remains of us. Ashmere too, for whatever the ground's worth after what's been done to it. I'd rather my people survive under someone else's banner than die slow, still proud, still mine to lead. I needed to know what kind of hands I'd be putting them into before I asked." Her gaze flicked, briefly, to where Petra sat alone by the ashes.

"Today told me plenty." Nobody spoke for a moment. Even Kalsar, who always had something ready, stood with his arms crossed and said nothing at all.

"That's not a small thing to offer," Ant said finally.

"No." Natalia almost smiled, though it didn't quite land as one.

"It's not a small thing to ask, either. Take your time with it. I've had years to sit with this decision. You've had about four minutes."

"I'll need more than four minutes," Ant admitted.

"I'd think less of you if you didn't." She left it there, turning back toward the clearing without pushing for anything more, and Kalsar fell in a step behind her, glancing back at Ant once before he went — a look that said they'd talk about this properly later, once there weren't fresh ashes still smoking through the trees. Ant stood alone with Mahkir for a while, the fire down to a red glow through the trunks, the smell of birch smoke thick enough now to sit at the back of his throat.

"What do you think," he asked, eventually. I think she's telling the truth. Mahkir's tail moved once, slow. I think it's a lot to carry, too. Both things can be true. He didn't answer. Instead he let his eyes drift somewhere unfocused, turning the offer over the way you turn over a stone too big to actually lift — checking the underside of it, the parts you can't see standing over the top. Her offer sounds reasonable, you know.

Ant's whole body went still again, the way it had at the pyre, except this time there was no fire to hide behind and no crowd to swallow the reaction in front of. He looked down. Mahkir was watching him, ears already coming forward, eyes narrowed on him the way they only did when Mahkir had caught him in a lie before he'd finished telling it.

"Say that again," Ant said, low. I didn't say anything.

"Not you." He kept his eyes forward, toward nothing in particular, willing his heartbeat to slow down enough to think straight.

"Him. It. Whatever you are." Nothing came back right away. Long enough that he wondered if it had heard him at all, or if it even worked that way — if asking a direct question was different from whatever had let it slip through unprompted twice now. I heard you, it said, finally.

"Who are you." He said it out loud this time, quiet, barely above breath, not caring anymore whether that made him look like a man talking to the air. Mahkir hadn't moved, hadn't spoken, was just watching him with an intensity that said he'd decided, for now, to let this happen rather than interrupt it. I don't know. The answer came honest enough that it didn't sound like evasion — it sounded like confusion, real confusion, the kind that didn't know how to dress itself up as anything cleaner.

"Well what do you know," Ant said, sharper now, some old frustration finally finding a place to land.

"You gave Petra the words back there. You've got an opinion on Natalia's offer. That's not nothing." It's muddled. A pause, longer this time, less like hesitation and more like it was actually hunting for the answer rather than deciding how to phrase one it already had. For all intents and purposes, I am the system. A pause, like it was turning the sentence over even as it said it.

That part I'm sure of — I can feel all of it, experience, skills, what's unlocked and what isn't, how close you are to the next threshold before you know it yourself. I can reach in and move pieces if I wanted to, though I haven't, not without you asking. That much is clear enough. But I also feel like more than that. I don't know what to do with the difference any more than you do. I think I was always there, it added, slower, like the thought was only just finding its own edges as it spoke it. Just not like this.

Not aware of being there. Whatever happened when the level came through — that's when I started being able to tell the difference between doing something and choosing to.

"And the rest of it?" I remember things. Slower now. Not this. Not what's happening right now, not you, not any of it, not clearly. Older things. Like looking at something through glass that's sat in a window too long — the outline's there, but the light's wrong, and I can't always tell what I'm actually seeing versus what I've decided I'm seeing. Another pause. I don't like admitting that. It's the truest thing I've got to give you, though.

Ant stood with that a long moment, the smoke still drifting soft through the branches behind him, Mahkir's weight solid and real against his leg.

"That's not much of an answer," he said. No, it agreed. It's what I have.