As Wretch’s door screeched open, a high-pitched caw greeted him. The one crow bound to him had been swooping around the sky for hours, just as he had commanded. But even though he had forced the creature to his will, it had other plans besides spying on the status of the war.
From the broken window, the bird gave another caw. Snow had blown inside to the point of leaving a thin layer across the bed. The bird jumped down onto the floor, running a circle around his feet before stopping and performing a bow with outstretched wings. Its beak was scarred, and one of its wings was damaged and shortened.
With another caw, it dropped something at his feet.
How curious! Wretch thought as he leaned down to inspect the item.
It was a silvery button. Amused, he picked it up. It wasn’t a button from Nov Yanosk’s uniforms. Rather, it carried the likeness of a cog. The bird gave another caw and jumped another circle around him.
“It’s no real use to me, but I appreciate the effort. Let me return the favor. Buttons will be your name, if you survive this.”
He willed the creature to his palm. It didn’t follow his order immediately, watching him with its black eyes for a moment before fluttering into his hands.
“You don’t have to be so cheeky.”
Wretch carefully pulled flame into the connection between him and the aven. Just a trickle of flame, not too much and not too little.
His eyes lit up, and the bird squirmed in pain. The clipped wing cracked, the limb relocating to a natural position. Damaged feathers across its body shed to the floor while a plume of pristine ones broke through the skin beneath. It took only a few moments.
“There you go, little one.”
Buttons swayed in his palm, struggling to find their balance. With a shake of its head, it regained some composure.
“Now, if you can find this, there is something else you can look for. Easy enough with your eyesight. Hey!”
Buttons had no interest in listening to his words. It jumped for the window, fluttering its new wings and happily overriding his order. But the aven was unfamiliar with the full power of its healed wing. It swerved to the left, missing the broken windowpane and instead slamming headfirst into the intact glass with a thud.
It fell to the floor with a surprised squawk.
“Buttons, you idiot!”
His tail wrapped around the creature before it could escape, and he lifted it up before him. He extended a lecturing claw.
“You’ve bowed to me. Act like it, damn it. Now look at this.”
Wretch took two claws and pierced them deep into his gut. From within, he pulled a glowing rock. A coal he had saved as spare ammunition for the hand cannon hidden between his organs.
“These glowing rocks are valuable to me. There might be some in the land between the armies. Find some for me.”
The bird turned its head to glare at him.
“I’ll feed you a rat if you do.”
The aven turned its head the other way.
“Please.”
Buttons gave a caw that he sensed meant approval, and with a sigh, he released the bird. It jumped to the windowsill and stretched its wings. It gave him one last look that somehow carried a sense of smugness, if a bird was even capable of such an expression. Then it threw itself off the ledge, more falling than flying as it struggled with its new wings.
“Bloody hell. Can’t even command a wounded crow.”
In the glass, his reflection stared back at him.
“Are you done playing around with your newest pet? Time is running out.”
Wretch scoffed and glared out the window. Snow was blowing sideways, obscuring even his sharp vision, but blasts lit the haze with flashes of light. Farther east, however, a distant sound brushed against his senses. A tree breaking beneath the weight of a mountain. Something was coming closer, the thing the Gulschaks meant to end the war with.
“You’re right. At this pace, it will be here in two days. Three at most.”
His reflection growled.
“Then let’s get moving with that pretty little plan of yours.”
Wretch turned, walking out of the room without looking back. He was free to do as he wished, bound now only by his new vow to the General. To help the military head escape when the time came. But he had no intention of running back to the city, nor of becoming the hidden guard dog of some plotting politician. He had enemies who still lived.
He walked down the steps, passing through the checkpoints. It seemed plenty of people knew who he was, for he could move unhindered. It wasn't strange, there were barely a handful of Blazes left in their ranks. The few rats still bound to him, he sent scurrying through the lower levels. The General had mentioned a secret route, and Wretch was going to find it. A tunnel, most likely, perhaps by the storage units where he had promised to rendezvous when the time came.
He inhaled deeply and took a peek through the vermin spying on Kattla. She and Dalynja were retreating after their section was almost surrounded. From above, Buttons soared with newfound vigor, cawing loudly with joy.
“Damn bird,” he whispered.
The lower levels of the fort were filled with activity. Despite their hunger, the soldiers walked quickly back and forth. Doors were being hastily reinforced. Defensive cannons were being put in place. All of it was done in eerie silence. Orders were whispered, and footsteps were light. Wretch soon understood why.
The beating tremors of something approaching.
Above, in the halls of upper command, it wasn’t even noticeable. Here, it was steady. Enough to tell everyone that something was coming. And that something would spell the end of the war.
He passed men and women huddled together in prayer to both the Saint and Gustavius on his way out of the fortress. He moved into the snowfall, through gates that had now been fitted with barbed wire, metal spikes, and shuddering steam cannons.
The cold air blew against his skin. Burned fuel pricked his nose, and the noise nearly deafened him. Outside the fortress stretched a mile of buildings, repurposed sawmills turned into bastions and storage facilities. Beyond them stood the stone wall of Voska. Farther still were miles of trenches, now all in the hands of the enemy. Artillery reached the walls around them, ripping the defenses apart in blasts of cracking stone and screams. The snowstorm wailed, obscuring the slow death of Nov Yanosk’s army.
Wretch watched Kattla hurry through the stone gate through the eyes of his spy. At an order, it slammed shut, dooming anyone who had been too slow or had not heard the order to retreat.
From above, Buttons’ eyes informed him that there were plenty.
He had watched Kattla fight on the eastern front, and it pained him to acknowledge that she was strong. She somehow carried more than three Blessed weapons, emblems, and medallions that she used interchangeably. The several swords on her back she hadn’t even needed to touch. If things went smoothly, he wouldn’t have to test his mettle against her.
Wretch moved like a ghost through the storm, pulling rats from dark corners to scurry into the alleys where he was hiding. There were plenty here, and he would need them all. Crouched, he picked them up one by one, forcing gruesome changes through their flesh in an effort to learn and strengthen his control.
Blasts rocked the walls. Tremors approached. But Wretch worked unceasingly. In the alleyway, his fiery eyes shone through the blowing snow. In his clawed hand, a rat squirmed and changed. Parts of its rib cage bulged and shifted. It squeaked in pain, but he continued methodically, enlarging organs, expanding the arteries to sustain the increased pressure, widening the ribs to allow the growth, and burning blood into existence to sustain it all.
The rat burst open in a spray of gore.
Another failure. Another took its place.
His reservoir of flame was large and refilled like a house fire out of control, yet he drew from it without pause, one fiery strand at a time.
It was then that one spy pulled at his attention, dooming its kin between his claws. Down in the cellars, in the back of a suspiciously well-guarded storage room, a rat had found airflow. A tunnel hidden behind a simple stack of boxes. His spy scurried deeper into a smooth corridor made by some Blessed power that had upended the earth.
Oh, General. In the storage rooms. How uninspiring.
He continued his gruesome work while his spy ran deeper. Over time, a pile of malformed vermin accumulated beside him. Hours later, when the frost had bitten his ears and frozen his veil with the condensation of his own breath, he finally succeeded.
Through experience, he had changed his approach. Instead of a continuous stream of fire focused on one organ, he changed them all. Bones, blood, and flesh, all at the same time, often drawing from several of his forms at once. It gave the brittle anatomy of his subjects a chance to hold itself together.
As his spy found the exit of the tunnel, a crawlspace to the south hidden beneath a fallen tree dozens of miles away, he held success in his hand. A rat so changed and strange that it was scarcely recognizable.
Carefully, he ushered the struggling creature beneath his veil.
He rose to his full height and shook the frost and snow from his form. The vermin that remained were in the process of feasting on the corpses of the failures. He reached out with his mind. Within his range of two hundred yards, he could see every vermin as a black speck in his vision. Even the lice on a soldier shivering inside the building to his right he could sense, but those were too hard to control, at least for now.
What remained of his swarm he sent scurrying toward the main gate. He could control thousands, but only connect to a dozen, allowing him to see through their eyes and feel through their skin. That role was reserved for his spies and the amalgamation hidden beneath his veil. The rest were free as soon as they left the two-hundred-yard range. But they would follow his last command, at least briefly.
With his flame running low, whispers of madness drifted through the blowing winds and the screams of the crumbling walls. He had not been this depleted since his ascension, and the whispers seemed more intelligible, as if he could make out meaning between the sputtering hisses if he only focused enough. But he had promised someone not to listen to them. And that someone had been important.
He walked out of the alley into the blowing snow. A spy informed him of the situation at the wall. The Gulschaks did not seem interested in an extended siege. A dozen of the Professor’s amalgamations, now clad in steel, threw themselves toward the walls with bestial fury. Cannons answered as they crawled up the stone, slaughtering what they could before the Blessed of Nov Yanosk met them. The eastern section had already fallen, and a stream of survivors fled toward the main gate of Voska’s stone fortress.
I have to hurry.
He made his way through the alleys toward the torrent of fleeing soldiers. He could guess what would follow. A grueling skirmish in the city where the remaining Blessed of Nov Yanosk would meet the enemy in desperation. He would like to join them, but first he would have to be unshackled.
He took a right but suddenly froze.
Deeper in the alley, a figure moved in the dark. Something digging through trash and waste. Dressed in rags and marked by snow and frost. A human by the look of it. A deserter trying to hide from their post?
No. To Wretch’s new senses, it was clear.
A black blotch like ink in his vision. A vermin. Something that lived on the work of others, rummaging through trash and spreading misfortune.
A human vermin? Is that even possible?
He stepped closer, the snow crunching beneath his paw-like feet. He reached out with his will and was met with a consciousness. The strength of personality that came with intellect. He couldn’t even force crows to do his bidding, so how could he influence a man? Unless, of course, they bowed to him willingly.
The figure froze as his will squirmed against theirs.
“You,” Wretch said. “How long have you lived in the trash and hidden? If you want to survive until morning, bow to me and I—”
He paused, sniffing the cold air. Despite the blowing wind, Wretch recognized the scent. Perhaps he should have expected as much.
The figure swiveled their head in his direction. Fair features hidden beneath the rags.
“Guess I wasn’t the last dog after all. Isn’t that right… Fingers?”