In Kuroinu

We left the village at first light, and by noon the road had gone from packed earth to mud to something that wasn't a road at all, just a track between trees where people had walked enough times that the grass had given up. Filia led with the map she'd bought in the village, checking it against landmarks that didn't always match. Llusse ranged ahead, appearing and disappearing between trees like she was testing whether we'd notice. Tianne walked beside Mila and the two of them talked quietly, Tianne answering Mila's stream of questions about healing herbs and temple rituals with a patience that made it sound like she'd been doing it for years instead of days.

I walked behind them and watched the road and listened to the forest and thought about the symbol carved into the cave wall and what it meant and how many more like it were out there right now in places nobody had looked yet.

The farmstead was about two hours east of the last crossroads. I smelled it before I saw it.

Smoke. Old smoke, the kind that seeps into wood and soil and stays. And underneath it, something else. Wet and heavy and sweet in a way that made my throat close.

Llusse came back through the trees and her face was flat and her mouth was a line and she said "Don't bring Mila" and then she turned and led us off the road toward a clearing.

The farmhouse had been burned to the foundation. Stone walls still standing, blackened. The roof gone. A barn behind it, collapsed, timbers scattered across the yard in a pattern that said the thing had been hit from above, not burned from inside. The fences were down. A plow was overturned in the field, half-buried in churned earth.

Bodies.

A farmer. Face down in the dooryard, his hand reaching toward the house. What was left of him. The burns weren't fire burns. They were too precise, too clean at the edges, and the flesh at the borders was the wrong color. Magic or acid or whatever had done it, it didn't come from any hearth.

Another body near the barn. This one was wearing what looked like homespun armor, a leather vest with iron studs, and a handmade spear was broken beside him. He'd fought. The thing that killed him had torn through the leather from the left side and the wound was too large for any blade a person would carry.

And in the field, two monster corpses. Big. Larger than the goblins we'd been fighting. Grey-green skin, thick limbs, crude armor that was better made than anything goblins smithed. Orcs, or close enough. One had three arrows in its chest and the other had a sword wound through the gut. Someone had killed them before dying.

Filia crouched beside the farmer's body and studied it for a long time without touching anything. Her jaw was working and her hands were flat on her thighs and she was still.

"This wasn't a raid," she said. "Look at the burns. That's directed. Deliberate." She stood. "Someone sent these things here."

Tianne was kneeling beside the second body. She'd checked for a pulse even though the man was clearly dead and she'd held her hands over him with the glow starting at her fingertips and then she'd let the light fade and she'd sat back on her heels and closed her eyes and her lips moved in a prayer that was too quiet for me to hear.

Mila was at the tree line where Llusse had told her to wait. She hadn't come closer. Her ears were flat against her skull and her tail was still and she was holding herself with her arms crossed over her chest and she was staring at the burned farmhouse with her mouth slightly open and she looked like she was trying very hard to not throw up.

I walked through the farmstead. The barn. The field. I looked at the monster corpses and the crude armor and the weapons they'd been carrying, short heavy blades with a curve at the end that was designed for hacking, not stabbing. I knew what these were. I knew where they came from and who sent them and why, and the knowledge sat behind my teeth.

Maou's forces. Organized scouts, not strays. This was a scouting party that ran into a farm and decided to destroy it. Or they'd been sent to. The symbol in the cave and now this. A staging point and a probe. They were mapping the southern territories and testing resistance and nobody in Lesdea had the slightest idea what was coming.

I wanted to say all of it. I wanted to grab Filia by the shoulders and tell her that this was the tip of a threat that stretched across the entire continent, that the same intelligence directing these scouts had generals and agents embedded in kingdoms they hadn't even heard of yet, that every day we spent walking roads and clearing goblin dens was a day the noose tightened.

I picked up one of the curved blades. Turned it over. The metalwork was rough but the steel was decent and there was a mark stamped into the base of the blade. A glyph. Same family as the symbol in the cave.

"Filia."

She came over. I showed her the mark.

"Same design language as the cave symbol," I said. "These aren't wild monsters."

She took the blade from me and held it close to her face and studied the glyph. "Organized. Equipped. Marked." She looked at me. "You're thinking what I'm thinking."

"Someone's directing them from the north. And they're further south than anyone expected."

"We need to report this. Today." She looked back at the farmstead. "We collect what evidence we can carry. The blade, the glyph, a sketch of the farmstead. We push for the capital and we report to the crown directly."

I nodded. What I didn't say: we needed to do a lot more than report. We needed the queen's army mobilized. We needed the Shield Alliance notified. We needed Celestine to understand that the war she was fighting against Olga Discordia was a sideshow compared to what was gathering in the dark.

But I couldn't say any of that without explaining how I knew it. So I helped Filia sketch the farmstead and I wrapped the marked blade in cloth and I said nothing about the demon king whose name I already knew.

Tianne finished her prayers and stood and came to me and put her hand on my arm. Her eyes were red and her face was composed and she didn't say anything. She just held on for a second. Her fingers were warm and the golden shimmer was there at her fingertips and it pulsed through my forearm where she touched me. Like her magic was reaching out on its own.

I put my hand over hers. Squeezed once. She nodded and let go and went to check on Mila.

We buried the two men before we left. It took an hour with the tools we had. Filia and I dug while Llusse kept watch and Tianne said the rites and Mila stood by with the shovel she'd found in the wreckage and her hands shook the entire time but she didn't stop. When we'd covered the graves Tianne marked them with stones and said a final prayer and we stood there for a minute in the quiet with the burned farmhouse behind us and the forest ahead.

Nobody talked much on the road after that.

We made camp at dusk in a hollow between two hills where the trees were thick enough for cover and thin enough for Llusse to have sight lines. Filia set the watch rotation. First: herself and Tianne. Second: me and Llusse.

I ate the dried meat from my pack and watched the fire and listened to the others settling in. Mila had been quiet since the farmstead. She'd set up the bedrolls with her usual care but her tail was low and her ears were angled back and when she sat down beside the fire she pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. Tianne sat beside her and said something I couldn't hear and Mila's ears perked once and then settled again.

I slept. Filia woke me with a tap on the shoulder when it was time. "Quiet night. Nothing moved."

"Got it."

I sat up. My back was stiff from the ground and the welts from Tianne's nails pulled when I moved and I was back in that room for a second, her hands on my skin, the golden light. I pushed it down and took my position at the edge of camp where the firelight thinned out and the dark started.

Llusse was already there. Sitting with her back against a tree, bow across her knees, hair pale gold in the moonlight. She'd picked the spot with the best view of the approach from the north and she was watching the tree line the way she'd been watching tree lines for a hundred years.

I sat beside her. The ground was cold and dry and the sky was clear and there were more stars than I'd ever seen. No light pollution in a world that hadn't invented the lightbulb. The whole sky was thick with them and the moon was a sliver, just enough to see shapes by.

We sat. The fire crackled behind us, low, and the forest made the sounds forests make at night. Rustling. An owl somewhere. The occasional crack of a branch that could have been anything or nothing.

Long silence.

"Do you think we're strong enough for what's coming?"

Her voice was quiet. She was still watching the tree line and her face was in profile, sharp angles and pointed ears, and she wasn't performing the question.

"We will be."

She turned her head and looked at me. Her green eyes were dark in the low light and she searched my face like Filia searched a map, looking for the detail that would tell her whether to trust the route.

"You sound sure."

"I am."

She held the look for another second. Then she turned back to the tree line. Her jaw was tight and her hands were resting on the bow across her knees and her thumbs were rubbing the wood, the thing she did when she was chewing on words she didn't want to let out.

The silence went on. The owl called again. A breeze moved through the canopy and the leaves whispered and settled.

"I don't want to be left behind."

So quiet I almost missed it. Her lips barely moved and she was looking straight ahead and her voice had none of the bark she usually wrapped around everything. A hundred and ten years old and she couldn't look at me while she said it.

I turned to her.

"You won't be. I promise."

She looked at me. Her eyes were bright and her chin dipped once, a single nod, and then she pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them and leaned sideways and her shoulder pressed against mine.

She didn't say anything else. Neither did I. Her shoulder was warm through the fabric and her breathing was steady and the stars were overhead and the fire was dying behind us and we sat there and watched the dark together until the sky started to turn gray at the eastern edge.

When Filia woke to relieve us, Llusse stood and walked to her bedroll without looking back. She pulled her blanket up and turned away and her ears were hidden under her hair.

I lay down. The ground was cold where Llusse's warmth had been against my side. The stars were fading. Somewhere east, a bird started up, the same trilling call I'd heard at the cave. Or one like it. Hard to tell with birds.

I closed my eyes. The marked blade was in my pack. The farmstead was behind us. The capital was ahead.

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