Voska’s defenses were faltering. Wretch could sense as much even without spying through beady eyes. The soldiers were thin, with sunken cheeks and wrinkled uniforms. The walk back to Voska from the front had taken half a day at the beginning of the war. Now it was barely fifteen minutes from the burning trenches to the stone wall of Voska and another ten to the hollow bridge carved into a fortress.
Conrad had walked back with him in silence. He recognized the man from somewhere, but it didn’t matter. He had much to do before the shells of the enemy inevitably began to turn the walls of their fortress into rubble.
He began immediately, sending orders to the rats within his range.
Follow me in secrecy.
Vermin were good at such things. And he needed many for the experiments he had planned.
It was no surprise to him that the fortress of Voska, which had once boiled with activity, now lay in silence. Thousands had been buried in the earth around them, and many no doubt lay in the corpse pits beneath the fortress infirmary.
What did surprise him was that he was no longer led to the empty hall of the General’s dogs' previous abode. No, he was led further up through stairwells carved from stone. Up into abodes he had only surveyed through the eyes of his vermin scouts. The Blessed quarters.
I am truly climbing, it seems.
Even if he still carried the black funeral veil of the penal battalion, he did not mind it. The unblessed still froze at the sight of his tall and fur-clad form. If he exposed his disfigured head marked by a snout and curling fangs, they might faint.
His new room was at the end of a long corridor. His ears told him it was unoccupied, but his heightened scent revealed that it had only recently become the case.
Nov Yanosk’s Blessed were dying. And their commander’s power to bring back the dead didn’t seem to be enough to save everyone.
Conrad and Wretch stopped in front of a door.
“This place is yours now,” Conrad said. “They tell me you’ll be summoned to upper command in the morning. Until then, rest as best you can.”
Wretch turned to him, and the man instinctively took a step back. “I’d like to stretch my legs. May I move around the fortress?”
Conrad shook his head. “No. Even relocating you here is pushing boundaries. My apologies.”
Wretch only nodded. But the man spoke up again. “You, you’re the same man that saved me back in Sternthal, aren't you? In the church?”
Wretch took in the man in earnest. Thick mustache and the two warhammers at his belt. He remembered the time before his imprisonment only hazily. He didn’t dare look too closely at those memories should anger and bloodlust grow too thick within. “Oh, you’re the soldier that ascended before the train left.”
The man gave a quick bow. “You’re correct. You were deadly then, but just a boy. Now... well... what happened?”
Wretch tilted his head. “I met a Pyre. He killed my captain. Now I plan to kill him in turn... hmm, didn’t you promise a favor?”
Conrad offered a half smile. “I can only do what is within my power. Nor can I break the rules.”
Wretch turned to his room, speaking over his shoulder. “Leave the door ajar and try to live. If you can.”
If Conrad nodded in response, he didn’t know. But soon his steps echoed down the hallway. Only when the creak of a stone door came did Wretch enter his new abode.
It was a well-kept room. Tidy, but still bearing the marks of its previous inhabitant. A wardrobe with a set of civilian clothes, a desk under a window, and a bed with a thick mattress.
So Fingers is dead, Wretch thought with a sigh.
The tiny Blessed had shown some promise in combat, but had that air about them to always trip and fall when it was the least optimal. Their Blessings, to burn collected digits for physical strength and to grow them from one's body, had potential. But war was a machine running on the lives of those with potential. Out of all the dogs, only he seemed to have been able to grow into something worthy enough not to be discarded. At least for now.
He lumbered up to the window and looked beyond the glass. Ice nestled on the outside, and a cold draft found its way under the wooden frame. The room was high above the battlefield, perhaps ten stories, offering a spectacular view of the unending turmoil of the front. The falling shells that seemed to have no end crept in on their wall. It would only be a matter of days before Nov Yanosk’s forces were entirely pushed back into their fort. And that was not taking into account the thing approaching from the east with enough weight to make the earth tremble. Whatever it was, when it made its appearance, something was bound to give. The Generals and Gustavius himself would have to take the field. Unless they had other plans.
His own reflection, scarcely visible in the glass, nodded. “It’s time to begin.”
He sat down on the chair by the desk and held out his hands. He could feel them. The rats he had quietly pulled along during their walk through the fortress.
Besides the two dozen, only a scarce few were within his range. This well-maintained upper floor was far too orderly for vermin to flourish.
He pulled them closer with a quiet command. Scurrying claws darted through a stone door left slightly ajar. He sent most of them into the different rooms, hidden in case he needed them. Only one did he order to his own room.
The tiny rat squeaked as it ran up to his naked, hound-like foot.
“Bow,” he commanded.
With a simple burst of his flame, he lit a connection between himself and the creature. He could see it now, the view from down low, along with the rat out to the east, keeping an eye on Kattla.
He sent the creature spiraling up his leg, torso, and arm to rest in his open palm. “Rats truly are nimble creatures.”
Carefully, he prodded the connection. The Beast Flame he held was one prone to violence, ferocity, and greed, yet this newfound power required finesse should it become anything more than sending around a few rats as spies.
He pulled on a form nestled around his flame, one of the Blessed creatures he had slain and eaten. He chose a human this time. A figure he had forgotten entirely, some Gulschak Blessed most likely. A lowly Ember by the feel of their flesh.
He projected the changes he envisioned into the bound creature in his hand. A delicate order for a spine to elongate.
Carefully.
A screech of pain escaped the rat's throat, soon eclipsed by the noise of vertebrae cracking and elongating. The spine grew to bulge under the oily fur.
Good, now the shoulders and legs.
He whispered his power onward, forcing his roaring flame through the brittle connection. It felt like diverting a raging river into a paper straw. The front legs elongated, the paws morphing into the likeness of hands.
It only took a moment of waning concentration to spell demise. The bones burst through the skin like broken shards. The rat spasmed, frothing at the snout. Then grew still.
Another failure.
He gave the sorry creature a look, blood dripping between his fingers while the bone shards jutted into the air, sharp as broken glass.
Or perhaps, this could be of use too.
His fist punched through the window with a crack. He hung the dead creature out by its tail. The cold and snow blew into the warm room, but he didn't mind. He was clad in fur, and a little cold could not hurt one such as him.
“Next,” he called, sending a quiet command.
Another rat soon came to take its place. This one he tried to change into a hound instead. He got it as big as a small dog before it too eventually perished. The remains he threw out the window. He continued as such, changing the dozen rats until they could not bear it. Slowly, he was getting the hang of it. Capable of making them larger and larger.
He breathed out finally. The use of his new power was taxing, and it chipped away at his raging flame little by little. His ascension had distanced him from the mortal realm, and he had not slept in a week, nor had he felt the need to.
But now, back in the relative safety of the fortress, exhaustion finally washed over him. He was strong. A Blaze. A monster. But he still needed time to recuperate, at least for now.
He bound the last four rats to his will and sent them off down the corridor to stalk through the fortress. He huddled down in the corner of stone under the window, disregarding the bed and the thick mattress. The cold wind blew through the cracked glass above, ruffling his fur with a pleasant sensation. And he dozed off into sleep.
It was a pleasant rest, the dreams pushed away by the depth of his exhaustion. Only a scarce few flashed before his mind. Rats crawling up the Spires–the massive towers of his home city. A red-haired warrior grinning wide over flickering candles and Astrid joyfully playing a lute. The sound of her tune grew increasingly discordant. The tone sharp and wrong. Like the sound of a crow.
Slowly, his eyes opened. The light pouring onto the cold walls revealed evening to be approaching. A shadow flickered on the opposite wall. A feathery bird, feasting on the half-frozen cadaver of his first experiment, hanging out the broken window.
His tail was that of a rat. Once a flexible tool for close quarters, it had been relegated to a nimble limb with the changes to his body. The cord of muscle snaked up the stone without a sound, while the rest of him sat motionless.
Then he imagined ripping the creature apart, sending his killing intent outward in all its rough and deadly glory. The bird froze. Stunned for a moment. That was more than enough.
The tail wrapped around the feathery avian. A desperate caw escaped the mundane creature.
“Shh, little one,” Wretch said, bringing the black bird before him. A crow, grown strong on the bodies of the dead. Spreading disease and filth. A vermin. He could see the black within it that marked it as such.
This wasn’t the first time he had tried to command such a creature. But the birds had proved harder than he had anticipated. As he reached for them with his mind, they flew away, sensing danger. This time, there would be no retreat.
The bird cawed, stabbing its beak, marked by scratches from some previous wound, into his hand. He paid it no heed, and instead reached for the black within the creature. It fought against him with a will of its own. Perhaps he was lucky this particular crow was weaker than most of its kin, small and frail with a wing that was deformed. Still, it would listen to no command just because he wanted it to. It was clever, not like the rats. Though he undoubtedly had some connection with the rodents, because they listened to his every whim. They even seemed to revere him.
He pushed a string of his own fiery power into the bird, burning it into submission. It squirmed so violently that a few feathers floated to the floor. But it was just a bird.
With a trickle of power, it submitted. And the bond was formed. Its sight became his own, and he saw his own grisly visage, fur marked by snow having flown through the window without him noticing. It was all sharp and colorful, almost rivaling his own red eyes stolen from a Blessed hound.
“Now here is a spy worth their salt!”
Steps echoed further down in the fortress, walking up towards the corridor that was his own. They were still too far for him to hear. But the rats had sharp ears even if they lacked the bird's sharp eyes.
He whispered a quiet command to the tiny black avian and let it loose. As he stood up, it jumped around his feet in a few orbits, then bowed with stretched wings. The left one was missing a few feathers and stood at an odd angle.
Its intelligence seems to make for some interesting show of admiration. How strange.
He sent it away, signaling it to eat its fill on the dead rats he had thrown down below earlier. It jumped out the window without a care, and as the steps approached his door, he loosened the tail of the remaining rat corpse.
The door swung open.
“Honored Blaze, the General...”
Before him stood a youngling in uniform, frozen at the sight of him. Hair neatly to the side and clothes carefully arranged. One might have thought he was a civilian. A clerk, perhaps. But Wretch saw details others might have missed. The calluses of the hands. The cold eyes even at the sight of him. The scars barely hidden by the cuffs at his wrists.
A soldier. A proper one, it seems.
“You’ve broken the window...” said the youngling at last.
“I did,” Wretch said with a nod under the tattered veil. “Am I to meet someone important?”
“General Frederic of Many Oaths, commander of the Third Outrunner Regiment, has requested your presence. He wants to make you an offer.”