A Perverted Path to Victory

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Sara

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“Watch where you’re stepping,” Ketch whispered. “Don’t trip, don’t step on any leaves, and don’t knock any sticks or break branches.”

“I know that much,” Sara whispered back irritably. “It’s actually doing that that’s hard.”

“I told you I could do this alone, dear,” Evie murmured.

“Yeah, and you could, but shut up.”

The jungle creaked and croaked around them, buzzing with vigorous, teeming life. Sara watched Ketch’s feet carefully, doing her best to place her boots in the woman’s much-smaller footsteps. It wasn’t going great. Sara was a foot taller than Ketch, a hundred pounds heavier when she was stark naked, and was now wearing an extra hundred-something pounds of armor on top of that. Evie and Ketch had swaddled her black plate metal in enough blankets to make Sara a kid’s homemade mummy costume, and still she heard her armor constantly shifting, grinding, and clunking. Evie, meanwhile, practically floated over the jungle’s harsh terrain.

Bastard.

They were approaching the enemy army. Forward riders had broached the perimeter an hour ago, finding signs of the enemy that were, as suggested by Sara’s interrogations of the captured pickets, far closer than originally anticipated. The Powdered Lead scouts had reported a sudden and harsh widening of the jungle, the road terminating in hard right angles, all the surrounding ground filled with nothing more than empty tree stumps. Curiously, there hadn’t been signs of the enemy. Just empty ground and a few prowling creatures hesitantly exploring this strangely open terrain. Too wary of a trap to continue, the scouts had returned in silence, hopefully unnoticed. Evie and Sara, finding their caution wise, had chosen to use Ketch as their jungle guide to approach undetected.

“Do we really have to be this quiet?” Sara asked. “There’s no way they can hear us walking around in the jungle.”

“You don’t know that,” Ketch whispered back. “Just because I’ve snuck around a bunch of Imperials before doesn’t mean I know how good they are at finding people. They couldn’t find me no matter what.”

“You’re turning into one arrogant motherfucker,” Sara muttered.

“And,” Evie added from behind, “I do believe we are trying to avoid notice from more than just the rebel pickets.”

“Like what?” Sara stepped over a rotting log that Ketch had stood on, recognizing— after a loud lesson earlier in the trek— that it couldn’t take her weight. “Everyone keeps talking about jungle monsters this, jungle monsters that, but we haven’t actually seen any of them causing problems. Are we sure they aren’t just ghost stories?”

“How brilliant an observation, dear,” Evie shot back sarcastically. “When one takes all necessary precautions for a prolonged period of time and never suffers a problem, it is clearly evidence that the precautions were unnecessary. I will be sure to pass this on to Tulian’s industries so that they can know all your safety regulations are, in fact, useless.”

Sara’s only response to that was low, meaningless grumbling; her usual fallback tactic when she lost an argument with one of her wives.

It was slow going. Not only was the jungle the harshest kind of terrain besides a vertical cliff, the actual traversing of it was exhausting. The blankets Sara had swaddled her armor in were stifling in the heat, her sweat steadily soaking the cloth from the inside out. She had to keep one hand on her sword to keep it from making noise as it bounced on her hip, and she used the other hand for balance as she ducked under hanging vines or clambered over the variety of logs, lumps of dirt, and the occasional ant nests that were as tall as she was. The only time she was actually glad for the blankets was when she spotted a long, hairy insect crawling up her arm, a dozen legs sending it skittering straight for her neck. She swatted it off with the back of her hand and a stifled yelp, shuddering at the mental image of what might’ve happened if it had been able to slither under the joints of her armor.

“We’re getting close,” Ketch finally announced. “I don’t think there’s anyone near enough to see us, but I can’t be sure.”

“Thank the fucking gods,” Sara sighed. “I almost hope we’ll get caught on the way out. At least that way we’ll get to run back along the road instead of going into this hell again.”

“I know that some mortals have, in fact, visited the hells,” Evie quietly intoned. There was a flash of summoning, a quiet swish, and then Sara was treated to a sprinkle of blood raining down on her back as the bisected body of a snake flew over her head to land in the bushes ahead. There was palpable disgust in Evie’s voice as she spoke. “I begin to wonder if at least some of those hells were more hospitable than this green monstrosity.”

“Not as humid, I’d bet.”

“Shh!” Ketch stopped in place, pointing forward. She spoke so quietly that Sara couldn’t hear it at all, instead relying on her Blessings catching what Evie could just barely discern. “We’re here. You’ll be able to see out as soon as you go around that big tree there.”

“Okay—”

“Shh!”

Sara rolled her eyes silently, but didn’t say anything else.

She and Evie crept forward, keeping the wide tree between them and the, if Ketch was right, open clearing. It wasn’t until Sara could actually reach out and touch the bark that she glanced back at Evie, jutting her chin to the side. Evie understood, sidling out from behind Sara to be the first to creep around the tree. Neither of them had Skills like Ketch, but Evie wasn’t half the bull in a china shop that Sara was. Evie disappeared around the corner, leaving Sara holding her breath.

“It’s safe,” she announced a moment later. “I can’t see anyone. There are, however, some… oddities.”

Sara stepped out from behind the tree, curious. How could the clearing be so big that the Imperials weren’t even in sight? At their lowest estimate, this place was the temporary home to thirty thousand troops. At the highest, a vast horde of a hundred thousand. Either number was all but impossible to hide.

The oddities Evie referred to, at least, were obvious. Sara knew that the scouts had said there’d been extensive logging, but this was… vast.

Several hundred yards of completely devastated trees were immediately visible to Sara, with the rising terrain hiding what could only be a great deal more beyond. There were no scorch marks, no signs of fire, and the entire place was absolutely lousy with muddy footprints. Deep ruts in the dirt seemed to serve as some series of roads that crisscrossed in mostly random directions, but they couldn’t have been the product of pedestrian foot traffic. The ruts were dozens of feet wide and three or four feet deep at the centerline, becoming a vast network of trenches that the morning rains had left half-filled with muddy water.

Most interestingly, however, was the total absence of lumber. Thousands of trees cut cleanly through the base, and not a single log left behind. Just scattered branches and trampled bushes. That’s what the roads had to be. The product of thousands of logs being dragged away.

“The hell is this?” Sara asked quietly, her subdued question seeming loud in the empty space.

“A considerable logging effort, I would guess.”

Sara snorted. “Thanks. Couldn’t have figured that one out for myself.”

“It’s almost a salient question, I fear.” Evie stepped up to a stump, running her fingers along the exposed wood. “If it weren’t for the human footprints and signs of sawing, I might have been willing to believe that this was the result of some natural process. Perhaps enormous herbivores that clear entire forests at a time, some magically-charged equivalent of your world’s dinosaurs. But this is clearly the product of human industry.”

“Yeah.” Sara hopped up onto the stump Evie was inspecting, shading her eyes. She still couldn’t see over the closest hill. “Think they’re still here, then?”

“Considering the barricade we encountered? Yes.” Evie stood, summoning her rapier so that she could give it a twirl while she considered. “What could they possibly need so much lumber for? Do they intend to try and make a stand against our artillery from within a wooden fortress?”

“I hope so,” Sara chuckled. “That’d make things a hell of a lot easier.”

“Quite. But I find myself doubting that the commanding officers who were raised amidst centuries of warfare would be so foolish.”

“A girl can dream.”

“Mm.”

“So… what now? Just keep walking thataway until we run into the enemy?”

“If you think you can fight an army singlehandedly on open ground, yes, that sounds like an excellent plan.”

Sara eyed her wife. “You’re in a sarcastic mood today.”

“An irritable one,” Evie corrected. “I don’t enjoy that jungle anymore than you. But…” She sighed, dismissing her rapier and turning about. “I think we should retreat back into it, using the foliage as cover to help us circle around this clearing.”

“Ugh.” Sara hopped off the stump. Even with all the blankets wrapping her up, her armor made a sound like someone had just flung every pot and pan out of a kitchen’s cabinets. Maybe there had been some minor improvement. Like they’d been flung onto a carpeted floor instead of tile. Still loud as hell, though. She rolled her shoulders, eyeing the jungle distastefully. “Fine. Let’s go do the worst shit ever again.”

“It could be worse, I suppose,” Evie mused as they returned to the trees. “This clearing could have a latrine ditch dug around its perimeter.”

“Yeah, and I could trip and snap my fuckin’ neck, too,” Sara grumped. “Just because it could be worse doesn’t mean it’s actually good now.”

“Since when was I the voice of optimism between us?”

“Since we stumbled across a bunch of shit I don’t understand while I’m hot enough I might die of heatstroke.” Sara cursed as she shook her arms out, trying to let fresh air beneath the wrappings. “Gods, this fucking sucks.”

Ketch was waiting for them when they returned, and she was the only one who wasn’t disgusted with the fact that they had to keep going.

Of course she isn’t. Why should she be?

Sara eyed Ketch’s back jealously. Garen had been training her magical senses as best he could over communication crystal. Sara had gotten to the point, just barely, that she could sense something off about Ketch. Magical senses felt nothing like her other senses, as incomparable to touch and hearing as sight was to taste, but the peculiar feeling still evoked an emotional reaction in her. Just like how seeing a juicy steak could have the ghost of its flavor echoing ni her mouth, the subtle magic rolling off Ketch prodded at a certain part of Sara’s memories. A very particular sort.

It clearly did the same for the rest of the jungle’s creatures. Ketch was witch-touched, a Familiar bound to Selliana, the ancient creature that lurked in Tulian’s harbors. Human beings, in fact any kind of thinking being, shouldn’t be taken as familiars. Every mage and priest Sara had met had agreed on that. Yet Ketch and Selliana had done it, and the natural world treated them accordingly.

Insects leapt out of the bushes and fled as Ketch approached. The hooting and howling monkeys up above fell silent. Birds either hopped to further branches or took to the skies entirely, fleeing her presence. Sara couldn’t blame them. When Sara’s senses narrowed in on Ketch, nipping at the tinge of Selliana’s magic that she could just barely discern, it reminded her of…

Rot.

Twisting.

Perversion.

Not the kind of perversion that Sara knew so well. A more primal sort. The natural order itself taken in two withered hands and bent, straining against its twisting until it could bear no more, snapping. The magic around Ketch belonged to something that should have died a long time ago, yet lingered on and on and on, for so long that there was no cause for its survival that could be considered good or just. To her magical senses, Ketch was a bloated, disease-ridden corpse, sores and boils leaking bloody pus into the open air. Sara hadn’t visited Selliana since her magic had gotten to the point she could sense it. She didn’t think she’d ever want to. Being in the presence of the woman that left this on Ketch would probably leave her vomiting until she was spitting bile.

I gotta admit, Sara thought, eyes scanning down Ketch carefully, that is hands-down the nicest ass I’ve ever seen on a disease-ridden corpse.

Ketch slipped through the jungle with ease that could have made mist envious. Her dark skin twisted beneath tiny scales of pale blue, creating a shifting mirage that ran up and down her shirtless flank. Unnatural creation or not, rotting corpse or not, Ketch was one of a kind. To have the woman on her side left Sara feeling as uneasy as she was grateful.

The further they went along the jungle, the more that second emotion came to dominate Sara’s thoughts. Unease. On and on they traipsed, still seeing nothing of the enemy. By now they’d passed enough treestumps that an entire city could have been built with the resulting lumber, yet there was no sign of construction. At one point a griffon flew overhead, a gently angled glide sending them eastward. Probably one of the animals returning from their more distant patrols, working hard to keep General Borek’s own griffons from getting close.

As noon passed them by, the day’s heat became too much. Sara was forced to rip the blankets off her armor for fear of actually suffering heatstroke, stopping for a few minutes to pull her helmet and gauntlets off while Evie poured cool canteen water down her back. Ketch kept watch, a small self-satisfied smile on her face, as if feeling smug in correctly guessing that Sara couldn’t actually suffer all that armor for long.

They continued on their way a few minutes later, now with Sara holding her helmet in her hands, gauntlets tied together and tossed over her shoulder, brass knuckles reflecting the rare few sunbeams that managed to penetrate the jungle canopy. Evie would occasionally pour more water down her back, using up the last of their drinking supplies. Sara wasn’t concerned; it was a rainforest, after all. If they were out long enough to need it, fresh water wouldn’t be hard to find.

Eventually, thank the gods, Evie began to hear the dull hum of a distant crowd. Nothing specific, not at first, but the fact it could be heard from so far away was promising. Though they hurried their pace, it was another half hour of creeping through the hostile jungle before Ketch whispered to them, pointing out a spot ahead. Sara and Evie crawled up on hands and knees, barely poking their heads above a large-leafed bush to put eyes on the rebel army.

The first thing Sara noticed were the wyverns.

Wyverns. Plural.

A whole shitload of them.

Creatures the size of buildings lay across the open ground like lounging housecats, multicolored scales sparkling beneath the evening sun. Green, purple, gray, blue, red, and many of the shades between. Some of the largest rivaled Taotri in size, fifty meter wingspans tucked close to their ribcages as they snacked on horse-sized carcasses that had been laid out in front of them. Most were smaller, measuring closer to thirty or forty meters from wingtip to wingtip, but that didn’t make them small. A pair of elephants could have stood side by side in their ribcage with room to spare.

The wyvern’s riders were mingling amongst each other. With the animals laying in a rough circle, heads facing outward, their crews were free to splay out on the ground without worry, knowing that even the largest of jungle beasts would be ripped to shreds in a heartbeat. They played dice games on low-set tables, helped one another polish and repair the vast arrays of buckles and leather saddles that their steeds wore, and generally seemed to be engaged in a peaceful, almost lazy pace of work. For the moment, at least, their life was good.

Sara’s mouth was dry. This wasn’t what she’d expected. She’d expected something strange, obviously, but this was almost terrifying in its mundanity. How many wyverns were there? Twenty, at a glance. There could be more. The cleared trees went a lot further, following the road to curve out of her view. There could be a lot more.

As she managed to tear her eyes from the wyverns, the dryness of her mouth was worsened by the taste of bitter ash.

The rest of the camp was nothing like the lazy camp at its core.

Her first thought was that someone had created an open-air factory in the middle of the jungle. Her time working as a city welder, and the months spent administering Tulian and touring its industrial facilities, allowed her to make sense of what might have otherwise been an incomprehensible tableau. Work camps were set between towering piles of lumber, a swarm of soldiers buzzing atop the piles like human flies. Thoroughfares with signs and arrows planted in the ground went this way and that, armored soldiers standing in intersections to direct the traffic of man-pulled carts that trudged through the mud. The carts were piled high with all sorts of things, sometimes bags of food or other supplies, but they were a minority. Most of the carts carried, predictably, wood.

Wood in all its forms. Sara saw raw logs entering from the north, admitted through a spiked perimeter by guards who briefly inspected the carts. Sara glanced ahead, following the path they took with her mind’s eye by tracking the cart ruts toward a station she hadn’t noticed at first. An exceptionally small wyvern, one of similar size to Fanlah, was spitting white-hot flames at something small and dark. When the fires died, Sara saw that it was an iron container. One connected to a thick box that spun a wheel at its side, a tall pipe emerging from the box to blow white steam high above the worker’s heads. Men and women hauled logs onto a table, careful to avoid the gyrating pole attached to the spinning wheel. As Sara watched, they laid down one long log onto a table, then began pushing it forward.

Powered by the pumping steam engine, a spinning sawblade cut it in half.

“Oh, fuck,” Sara whispered.

“Gods damn us,” Evie swore. “We didn’t protect the logging camps. We had too many of them. They moved constantly. They were beyond the influence of your Blessings, and so we couldn’t guard them all from spies. We should have tried harder. The Empire now has steam engines.”

“Fuck,” Sara breathed. “Fucking hell.”

“I agree.”

She followed the sliced logs down further. They were being taken to a second steam-powered machine, this one cutting the long boards into thinner planks, then sending them back around to be cut again, only to—

“Sara,” Evie grabbed her arm with one hand, pointing with the other. “Sara, there. Next to the constructed cabins, with the-”

“I see it.” Sara wished the icy pit in her gut was more literal than metaphorical. It would have done wonders for the heat. “Give me Dad’s crystal, Evie. Right now.”

“I don’t have it.”

“What?”

“You have it.”

Sara fumbled at her side, flipping open her belt pouch. “I do?”

“From your discussion with him regarding the mortar.”

“Fuck, you’re right.” Sara found the crystal, shoving it right up against her lips so she could whisper into it while still being heard. “Dad. Dad, it’s Sara. Whatever the hell you’re doing, stop and get somewhere quiet.”

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