#ysraan

The battle is over by the time Ysraan returns from the ritual fires. Thralls move from corpse to corpse in groups, and knights bicker over what trophies to take from the crashed ships. Ysraan keeps well away from the wizards claiming prisoners – almost all the smaller species, for the big ones are strange, a single imprint cast a hundred million times and always identical – in case they are looking for acolytes to pass the duty off to. Sifting through thoughts and gleaning information is important work, but most of it is dull, and she always leaves it feeling gritty, the ideas of other beings stuck to her like a bit of bone caught in a spot she can’t reach.

She finds the other acolytes of the tombship they all have been assigned to gathering up the armour of dead Cabal. A small pile for trophies, and a larger pile of scrap, though even that is bright and glittering with gold alloys. This Cabal lord likes to have even useless things shine.

There is some time before the raiding party moves on to fresher targets, so once they have all had their pick of trophies Ysraan sets the scrap pile on fire to make up for not having fought with the rest, and they all crowd around it.

Not for the first time, she misses the tangled together closeness of her siblings.

Here there is always careful space – right now formed by resentment that she had helped with the rituals, even if it was only as an anchor, even if the spells had won the battle faster than boomers and swords would – and no trust. This is sensible. They are all rivals, scrambling to be the first to learn and grow and reach some sort of certainty. An offhand scrap of knowledge from an indulgent wizard, shadowing the right knight, killing a scant few more than the rest – such small things could tip the balance between them.

But here and now they are all yet equals, and no one is so hungry as to start a fight.

The metal alloys burn coppery blue, making Ysraan remember oceans she has never seen. It sets a mood too wistful for proper boasting.

“Doesn’t it feel like we are fighting the same battle again and again?” Ar Quo asks, with a grimace of bared teeth. “The tactics barely change. The big ones even all taste alike.”

“If it was the same,” Vrun points out, “Maybe you would learn to stop walking into the fires they set by now.”

“You never know,” murmurs Jhitt’sk. “It could be his own fire he walked into.”

Ar Quo bristles, and deliberately ignores where his chitin is burnt and peeling. “As if I haven’t seen more than any of you.”

The rest of them stir, catching the scent-trail of a claim that must be torn to shreds.

“Really?” says Jhitt’sk, eyes shining. “Do tell.”

Ysraan does not like this sort of squabbling, for all that it is very common. But it is useful to stay quiet and watch, and note weaknesses. Ar Quo tends to be boastful, but he does not back down now.

“Really. I’ve seen beyond your childish crypts, or these endless asteroids. I’ve seen...” He lowers his voice so that it thrums with the pitch of secret-telling. “A Lightbearer.”

They all rear back, and Ysraan nearly snuffs the fire out in alarm before she catches herself.

“Fool,” Vrun says, shaking the shock off like rain. “Why tell such an obvious lie? A Lightbearer would have killed you a hundred times over.”

“With their Sky magic, one could kill most of us,” Jhitt’sk adds helpfully. “Six tombships, and I bet all of them would not even kill it once.”

Ar Quo has hunched a little, and he narrows all three of his eyes at them sullenly. “It is not a lie. I did see a Lightbearer. Well – I saw its ship.”

“Its ship?” asks Ysraan, now curious enough to risk taking part. “Then how did you know it was a Lightbearer?”

He clicks his teeth, glancing over his shoulder, and the others follow his gaze to see a few knights studying them with open, haughty amusement. The four of them edge closer to the fire and lean in together, mockery forgotten against the need to keep their affairs secret from their elders.

“The Sky clings to them like a scent-trail, sometimes so thick you can almost taste it. This one did not know we were there, and was not trying to hide.”

“Where?” Vrun interrupts, impatient, and Jhitt’sk elbows him sharply.

“Tell us the whole thing!”

“From the start. The whole of it,” Ysraan adds, eager for new knowledge and glad that the mood has shifted.

Ar Quo lets the moment drag out a little longer before he relents, but he is as greedy to tell them as they are hungry to hear. “This was the tombship I was assigned to before this one, led by an ascendant wizard of great cunning.”

“With only a tombship?” And now it is Vrun’s turn to elbow Jhitt’sk, and Ysraan hisses as their squabble nearly knocks her away from the fire.

“Let him speak.”

“Normally, she would be leading a whole fleet, true,” Ar Quo continues, once they have all settled – and in keeping with Ysraan’s mood, the fire has blazed up enough to singe Vrun and Jhitt’sk’s edges just a little. “But this was some task that required a small force, and a wizard who knows all the ways of shadows and silence. We went to a planet with Vex and stinking pools, and stood watch as she stole something from the metal and glass ruins. And then we left. But as we were leaving, a ship approached, and our wizard kept our navigator from cutting away.

“She hid us instead, and said that we youngest should learn what the Sky feels like, so that we can sense the Sky’s champions before they strike, and maybe live a little longer.”

He stops there for a moment, closing all but his middle eye in memory. “It was warm, sweet smoke, but it was not a smell. It was rich marrow, but it was not a taste. Your worm ached for it, and made you hungrier.”

They are all truly, respectfully silent in the wake of that, and he preens at the skill of his storytelling. “And then the Lightbearer ship made for the planet, to stand in the rain and kill Vex, probably, and we cut our way back without being seen. So. I did see a Lightbearer.”

“You saw,” says Jhitt’sk with irritating predictability, because she cannot help but ruin things, “a ship.”

Pressed into one of the many hollowed spaces in her parent’s throne world, Ysraan waits for her mother to die. The battle has gone on for a long time, as is the way of wizards, and the challenge is only the final unfolding of it into true violence.

The defeat doesn’t come easily. That is why she is hiding, because not even an hour ago her parent had turned all the breathable air to salt-laced poison, and torn loose the many-edged columns of her throne to hurl at the invader. The entire world shook with their impact, and even the safe pockets of air in the hidden paths caught at her throat like barbs.

But the ground is still now, and the air no longer itches when she breathes. Her siblings and the youngest brood are crammed in behind her, a throng of chitin and new bone and gleaming anxious eyes. They do not scrabble and claw for space, but huddle close, told by instinct to be quiet and very, very small.

It won’t save them. But instinct also says that while the many will be found and slaughtered, maybe one will be overlooked in the crush of bodies, maybe one can escape, and maybe they can be that one....

They all feel the chill that rolls through the throne world, the final shudders of a dead thing. Have the sword stars gone out, and the sky darkened? Are the edges of it crumbling even now?

One of the thralls has set teeth to her elbow, gnawing without any bite to it, just to feel something strong and living still. Ysraan shakes them off, pushing them back into the press of their siblings so they won’t follow as she makes for the surface.

The ground twitches and heaves beneath her feet, and beneath its unhappy rumbling she hears the brittle, indistinct sounds of Hive and worm both feeding. She can’t say why she came this far – to face what will kill her? To see her parent, wispy branches of chitin pared away, husked and wetly gleaming? – but she can go no further, and huddles down in one of the deep, acid-worn pits the battle had left behind. It is not even a hiding place, and a lone acolyte with no leader to tithe to is small enough to kill with a thought.

The intruder – no, the victor now – finishes eating somewhere in the distance, and when next Ysraan looks up, they float there, waiting for her attention.

The wizard is pale and fragile, like the discarded shell of something long dead. Their wings trail behind them, long and tattered, and much of their robes have been burnt away, but even wounded they glow with the sleek, sated power of another ascendant.

She faces her death with starveling envy. Maybe they will think she is the only stray Hive here, and not look for the others.

“What a waste,” the wizard says, voice a humming rasp. Surely they mean her – a half-grown acolyte must be barely a mouthful, now. They tilt their head, third eye closing in concentration, and she waits for the gesture or word that will kill her. Once she is eaten too, will their throne world wrap around this one and swallow the fragments into itself?

It won’t matter. Her siblings will be dead regardless. But she can’t help but wonder, as if her mind has to cling to something that is not the helplessness of the small, weak, doomed.

It takes a long moment for her to realize that she still has not been killed and devoured, and she eases her eyes open to find out why.

The wizard has not moved, and clicks their jaws at her fear display. “This is no place for you, acolyte. Such a pointless risk to bring so many young here. You were named, yes?”

They say it so briskly that Ysraan doesn’t catch the question at first, and then tries to return to her earlier plan. She is one of the first to have gained her sight, and if she is nothing before an ascendant, the others are even less so. They should all die together with this throne, not be hunted down in the dark by such a power.

“I – I am the only one here, Ascendant. I am Ysraan.” She gestures supplication and unfeigned awe, clawed hands raised, as if she can ward off what is coming if she is just harmless enough. Surely no one has ever let even the smallest of thralls go for such a reason. Weakness deserves death, as strength deserves life, yet the instinct remains, as deep as the logic she hatched into.

They laugh, the sound dry and soft. “A good effort, but needless. Your brood – and the ones who made it – are part of my many, many duties. I could hardly overlook you.” Another endless moment in which she does not die. “Do you know why I am here?”

They must be waiting for her to speak it into existence. “You killed my mother. We are what remains. It is not – I do not have to guess, Ascendant.”

“What remains,” they say, tasting the words. “Very good. I am here for the remnants of what your mother has wrought, yes. Not to scour them, but to salvage them.”

Ysraan waits there, resolve wavering. She is not so young as to not recognize the traces of ancient gold on their crest. This wizard is of the High Coven. It would be foolish to expect any shred of truth. But they are watching her too closely, when killing her would be the work of a passing thought.

“What do you wish of us, Ascendant?”

“I am Chirraek,” they say, though she had not dared to ask that. “I wish for you to live, and grow to the purpose you are meant for. And not to be thrown away early for some petty scheme.” Ysraan refuses to wonder at that. If she survives this, she will have time enough to gnaw at what her mother had intended, and what had driven another Ascendant to stop her – far from the sword realm, and where only her worm can hear her thoughts.

“Gather your siblings, and tithe to me. I will return you to your crypt.” She hesitates, uncertainty biting deep enough to slow her steps, and they add, “Or you may stay here, and honour your parent with the deaths she meant for you.”

If she listens hard, she can hear the world’s collapse, even the echoes tearing themselves apart as they reach her.

This is a dying place, and she is so, so hungry for life.