Chapter Fifteen: The Huntress
Prelude: Scavenger
TERA
I had once seen a painting of Hektinar in the Drastin Gallery. The steel spires stood like needles that pierced the sky, their heights breaching the clouds to defy the sun. The stadiums were so large that their steel canopies made their own atmospheres, the bridges were so long that their ends could not be seen, and the university at its center was the grandest display of architecture ever conceived. The entire city glared in the sunlight as if perpetually aflame, a foreboding symbol for its fate. The painting had captivated me, and I remembered feeling a great sense of loss that such a treasure had been torn from the world. But as I looked upon Hektinar now, I was even more dazzled by its corpse.
The spires were like melted candles, the stadiums were deflated hills, and the bridges were twisted causeways leading to nowhere. The twice-tempered steel still shined in the light, never to be rusted, only to be blanketed and reclaimed by the desert. The sand filled the gaps where streets used to be, and climbed the bases of the drooping towers. The steel effigies now stood as islands in the vast desert ocean, but the university was a mountain.
It was obvious that Arbitrus had directed most of his hate at the great melted dome. I could see the concentrated points where his flame struck, and I could see his frustration that the building would not fall. He'd tried to take out the supports, he'd tried to compromise the superstructure, he'd even tried collapsing other buildings atop it, but all his attempts had been in vain. The structure still stood—deformed and mutilated—but still there. I looked back over my shoulder at the vast promenade of orcs, and saw Julia impatiently waiting for me at their front. She could wait a little longer; I was here to get rich.
There had been thousands of scavengers here before me. I could see the evidence all across the derelict city in the form of outturned houses and blown-out vaults. Maybe the lucky ones had stumbled across something, but most of Hektinar's wealth had melted with its steel. Fortunately, the treasure I sought would never have been scavenged by the likes of orcs or goblins. I could only hope that it hadn't been stolen by fire or time.
I aimed my crossbow at the high tower of the university, and pulled the trigger. The line of rope oscillated behind the arcing grappling hook, then went taut. Perfect shot, as always. I staked my end of the rope, hooked my hook around it, then began my ascent. If I hadn't been so well-fed, the climb would've exhausted me, but I had vast stores of energy in my muscles now. I scaled the five-hundred-foot height, taking breaks here and there by dangling on my metal appendage. I missed my hand, but I had to admit, there was a great advantage in not having to worry about grip strength when climbing. After half an hour, I was atop the dome, and jogging to the moonroof.
I imagined that there was once a vast planetarium beneath the dome. Likely, the sun would've filled the hole come noon, and illuminated great gyroscopic solar systems that boasted planets the size of rooms. During the night, I imagined an enormous telescope would've been brought through the hole, and that astronomers would've marveled upon the heavens. I could only imagine these things, for it was obvious that Arbitrus Gen had used this hole to hollow the entire building out.
"Well, shit," I grunted. "I'm already up here; might as well find out."
I slid down my rope into the vast atrium, passing floor after collapsed floor until I reached the bottom. Once there, I looked around, and frowned. Absolutely nothing had survived. There wasn't even debris in here; just melted steel floors stacked atop each other like pancakes, and piles of accumulated sand below the moonroof. There wasn't even a... hey, what's that?
Something round and black protruded from a mass of melted steel. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was an obsidian vase. Well, it was worth something. I tried to pry it from its steel parent, but it would not budge. After another minute of struggling, I realized that hundreds of scavengers had probably attempted this feat—for the vase was rather obvious—and none of them had succeeded. Of course, none of them had a hand-forged hook made by the Heat Bringer herself. I hacked at the parent metal for an hour, chopping around the base as sparks flew past my eyes. When I finally managed to free the damnable thing, it was so fucking heavy that I had no hope of getting it out. I knew I should've brought one of the Breytans with me.
"Hmm...." I mused, looking at the priceless ancient artifact. "I'll be damned if I'm going to let some other fucker get rich off my hard work." And I smashed it to pieces with my metal hook.
And there it was. Beneath the shattered shards of obsidian, entombed within a vase that had survived the apocalypse, was the very thing I'd come here to find. I grinned as I picked it up. It was heavy for what it was, but it weighed a mere fraction of what it was worth in gold. I just had to find the right buyer, and fortunately, I happened to know someone who would pay through the fangs to get it. I tucked it in my satchel, took a swig of orc-protein from my flask, and began my ascent. I didn't know if I'd ever get the opportunity to capitalize on my hard work, but it was worth the effort. If shit went south with Julia, I needed as many escape routes as possible, and this treasure was worth at least an oceanic crossing on a luxury ship. If I was going to flee for my life from an enraged psychotic god, I sure as shit wasn't going to do it in coach.
Part One: Dreamscape
WILLOWBUD
I knew that I was asleep. It wasn't lucid dreaming, for my subconscious offered no nightmares to torment me, but an odd state of awareness. I was floating in blissful blackness, detached from myself, but not separate. I could feel the blankets wadded around my fetal-curved body, the pillow pressed wetly against my matted hair, and the chill that wracked my form as my mind blazed with fever. I wasn't sure if I was dying, but I hoped I was. If death was simply walking into the blackness, then it was a merciful finale. Then the brightness came, and I knew that such mercy would not be afforded. My crusted eyes peeled open to reveal a blurred white face with crimson eyes staring down. I recognized it, but I couldn't remember from where. I groaned, and felt a dull pain in my arm. There was a bamboo needle in the vein, connected to tubing that led to a hanging blood bag.
"No," I murmured, "just let me go."
My savior didn't respond. She laid a hand on my forehead, and it was an oasis of cold against my infernal brow. The small comfort pushed me back into sweet blackness, and I left the world with a smile curving my face. This time, I did dream. I was a little girl racing through the treetops of Arbortus, ducking oncoming branches as my soles slid expertly along the bark. I leapt from one tree to the next, my body flailing in the air, a thousand feet of nothing between me and the forested earth below. It didn't matter. I'd catch the oncoming branch as surely as I'd caught the last thousand. My hands closed around the column of wood, and I swung myself forward, my feet aimed for the next wrung of the great natural ladder. I missed. I overestimated my trajectory, and felt a moment of pure disbelief as the branch passed below me.
Then, I was falling. Falling and screaming, flailing stupidly for refuge that wasn't there. The ground rose to me with terrible speed, but every second was an eternity. A pair of arms wrapped around me, and I was hoisted into the air. I let out a cry of pure joy, and turned to see Astrid smiling down at me. Her hair was gone, her scalp was cooked, and her wings were sliced off. She stared at me from dead eyes, looking at the distant light high above. I was in a cavern of my own making. Mother was watching me from the corner, a questioning look in her green eyes.
"Why, Willow?" she asked. She held up her hands, or what was left of them. The fingers were gone, the palms pierced, the flesh stripped away. "Why?" she asked again. "Why, why, why, why..." she disappeared, the grotesque remains of her body fading away, only her untouched face glowing in the void, asking its tortuous question.
"Why?" another voice asked. I turned around to see Lucilla, a hole between her sapphire eyes. Her voice harmonized with Mom's, then a third completed the chord. "Why?" my father asked, his throat slashed open. "Why, why, why, why, why...."
"I know why," a fourth voice cut through it all. It was a drawling voice, a voice I hated and loved in equal parts. Corruption stepped up to me, her white eyes burning in their black depths. "Because she wanted to, that's why," Corruption said, running her hand across my cheek. "She'll blame me to convince herself, but deep down, she knows the truth."
"No," I whispered, voice choked with tears. "No, I didn't! You made me do it!"
"I just took the pain away," Corruption smiled sadly.
"You took me away!" I screamed back.
"I was just the mask, Willowbud," Corruption said softly. She was fading, they were all fading. Blackness swallowed the world, leaving me blissfully alone. "Give someone a mask, and they will show you their true nature," her final words hissed from the void, then she was gone with the rest. I sighed, and dropped to my knees. Nothing. Wonderous, silent, nothing. Drip, drip, drip, drip.
