Without Aven’s testimony, they had to pivot to Sergeant Ouron to describe the voidspawn threat. Which he did with the directness and matter-of-fact approach Aelia expected of an imperial officer. Less impact than Aven might have made, though. Even if Aven’s theatrics played havoc on her nerves, they certainly captured attention. And just having him present would have been far more a comfort than his recklessness was a detriment.
She tried to keep her thoughts on the gathering, not on Aven. For now, all she could do was press on.
A hundred people crowded the Northstar citadel’s great hall. The long tables for feasts had been replaced by benches forming three sides of a rectangle. In the middle, Sergeant Ouron stood as if on trial.
“We acknowledge the threat that voidspawn currently pose.” The ambassador from Orienbar spoke after Ouron’s report concluded. “Yet I strongly dispute the claim that this threat demands even greater resources poured into provinces that are already a drain upon the Empire.”
“A drain, Ambassador Coreon?” Governor Iraias cut in. Aelia hadn’t noticed the slightest difference in the governor’s demeanor today. Shocking poise for a man who had, supposedly, been victim of an attempted assassination. Even proven false, Aelia would not have that same poise. That was the line between a novice like herself and a governor who mastered both himself and the province. “I believe the most recent census has demonstrated Septentrion as quite self-sufficient. Can your province say the same?”
Considering Aelia herself had been the one to compile the final provincial report for that exact census, she knew that calling Septentrion self-sufficient was quite a stretch. The ambassador from Orienbar, however, did not seem to have her understanding of the economic realities.
“If our province weren’t endlessly financing others’ northern campaigns, we might be equally well off,” the ambassador shot a dirty look towards the representative of Frelund. Governor of Frelund, in fact, Governor Roshan being the only other provincial governor to attend.
“We are the vanguard against threats that could crush Orienbar in mere months,” Governor Roshan boomed. He was a large man, a former soldier himself, and speaking softly did not seem to be in his nature. “We defend the empire with our bodies and blood. You pay for that protection in arms and supplies. I’d call it a fair trade.”
Aelia could have pointed out that Frelund’s military adventures in the north had been more about expanding their territory than defending the empire. Frelund, however, had been the sole province that seemed amenable to cooperation so far. At the very least, the fact that the governor himself came to the conference rather than sending a representative showed more dedication.
“And it may be fair today.” Orienbar’s ambassador cowed in Governor Roshan’s presence. “But every year you press for more. I don’t see this supposed threat as anything more than an excuse to line your coffers with more of our silver.”
The accusation hung in the air, ugly and persistent. The Agenthus delegation had been quiet so far. And that fact was worrying Aelia more than the open hostility. Lady Elesmara was counted as part of their delegation, yet they’d not spoken up in agreement, even after Lady Elesmara and Priscilla Voleton presented their research.
Then another quiet voice spoke. “There is...another factor here.” The speaker was a small man with watery blue eyes who had not spoken all morning - Ambassador Trellian Rosval of Tenebras. “The projections of a growing threat are only theoretical. We’ve fought voidspawn in the Darkwood for decades...” he glanced to the soldier by his side. “Have we not?”
Legatus Ellis Tovran saluted (which seemed to be a reflex for the man, as Aelia had seen him do it at the slightest provocation) and reported in stiff tones, “The 12th Legion has fought voidspawn in the Darkwood since the beginning of Emperor Dramus’ reign, sir!”
“And our present soldiers have contained them effectively,” the ambassador continued. “Why should we believe that will change now?”
Priscilla Voleton spoke up, “As mentioned in my testimony, our predictions are formed based on the observed rise in activity and projected forward under reasonable assumptions of a cyclical pattern-”
“Yes, yes, we heard your report,” Ambassador Coreon of Orienbar interrupted, waving her off. “Do you have any more evidence than numbers conjured out of the void?”
Priscilla Voleton went red, and only Esharah’s calming touch on Aelia’s own mind prevented her from leaping to Voleton’s defense. They had their own battles to fight without joining in with others.
“It’s a foolish mind that assumes seas will remain calm because they were calm yesterday.” Lady Elesmara rose to her apprentice’s support. “The wise look to signs of the weather changing.”
“A lovely proverb,” Ambassador Coreon sneered, clearly not appreciating the implication that he was one of the fools in question. “But what signs do you have beyond your scribbles?”
Sergeant Ouron had been waiting with the patience of a Paragon while the higher officials argued, despite this technically being his own time to report. Now, at Esharah’s signal, he spoke up again.
“I’ll ask you, Legatus Tovran,” Sergeant Ouron looked the captain in the eyes. “How many more of the larger spawn have you killed this past year compared to the previous? In Hellfrost, speartails and burrowers were rare before that damned deathsinger showed up. Now, they’re on nearly every hunt.”
“...there have been more of the larger spawn varieties,” Legatus Tovran conceded. “We saw those deathsingers in the Darkwood too. But we killed them all, and we’re prepared to do so again. The 12th Legion won’t be overtaken by a foe like that.” His pride was palpable, and Aelia could feel it in Esharah’s mind as well. Legatus Tovran had fought these things. He did not fear them.
Perhaps that was a failing as well.
Aelia recalled the timeline described in Lady Elesmara and Priscilla’s report. She relayed the information from Esharah to Ouron.
“How long have you been with the 12th Legion, Legatus?” Ouron asked. “At least twenty years by your stripes.”
The legate puffed out his chest, letting the ribbons on his ceremonial armor stand out more. Signs of a man who’d completed a decade as a soldier and another decade as an officer in the legions. “Twenty-two years this Septem. Joined just after I turned fifteen.”
“A youngblade,” Ouron said with a nod. Aelia had heard the term reference soldiers who joined before their 20th year. A practice widely discouraged, but not technically forbidden. “I was too. Fought in the Darkwood for four years in my first company.” For a brief second, the sergeant fell silent, and through Esharah’s bridge between their minds, Aelia felt a wave of nostalgia run through him. “Stationed in Wolfridge.”
Something changed in the legate’s posture. From a begrudging, almost condescending sort of limited respect to a real acknowledgment.
“When I fought there, I never saw a spawn larger than a terrier. Now, in Hellfrost, I’ve seen speartails larger than oxen. So how big are the ones a decade from now going to be?” He let the question hang. “Your legion might be able to handle them as they are. But they will not remain as they are.”
Legatus Tovran opened his mouth, then closed it. The words “we’ve always handled them” died on his lips, because Ouron had pointed out the critical flaw in that logic.
“I don’t know what the numbers say,” Ouron continued, “but I know what I’ve been fighting. I know the voidspawn are growing, and there are more of them. Until that stops, only a damned fool would dismiss the threat. Listen to the scholars or listen to the soldiers on the ground fighting the monsters. Either way, you get the same answer.”
Frelund’s Governor Roshan gave an approving nod, the look of one soldier to another. Legatus Tovran looked to Govern Roshan, then back to Sergeant Ouron. Then to his own ambassador, as if his judgement was torn between soldiers he respected and the leader he was assigned.
“How rare for the wise and brave to be so aligned.” Governor Iraias steepled his hands and gave the ambassadors of Orienbar and Tenebras a smile. “One wonders what virtues are left for those who disagree with them.”
“It’s still...” the ambassador from Tenebras paused. A longer pause than Aelia could give credit to nerves. It reminded Aelia very much of someone listening to a mind domain vis.
“There’s...a message coming through his mind,” Esharah whispered in response to Aelia’s curiosity. “I can’t tell who it’s from or what it is. There’s too many people around. Too much noise.”
Anything more would require a level of scrutiny unacceptable for a peaceful gathering. Still, even knowing that the ambassador listened to some hidden mindspeaker was valuable.
“Hanion vis Dreamweaver isn’t here,” Esharah noted. “I’ve looked. Nor is Aven’s sister. But I don’t know his range. He could still be influencing the ambassador from somewhere distant.”
The ambassador finally spoke, “It is still unclear what extent the threat will reach. If...if we grant the voidspawn are growing in power and number, the projections are still only speculation...”
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“Then let us provide insight into what a fully realized voidspawn threat might look like,” Aelia seized the moment. “Lord Governor, I move to call our next testimony, from a woman who comes from a land where the voidspawn are no longer a contained threat, but a daily reality of life and death.”
A brief silence greeted the claim.
“No such land exists,” the ambassador from Orienbar sneered.
“That, you may judge for yourself.” Aelia met his gaze calmly. She looked to where the maledictus Katrin waited. Stiffly, expression guarded but determined. Even as the strange dark spirit companion fluttered around her head, gibbering softly in its incomprehensible language. Thankfully incomprehensible, judging by Aven’s reports.
Governor Iraias’ eyebrows shot up, because Aelia hadn’t had chance to inform him of Katrin’s testimony. “Very well. Let us hear it.”
Aelia ceded the floor to Katrin, trusting that a woman she scarcely knew would provide the final blow to the skeptics’ doubts.
* * *
Katrin opened her eyes as the discussion turned to her. Exactly as she’d known it would. Exactly as she’d volunteered for, in defiance of every instinct her mind held. And every word from Vili
“These are our sacred memories, sister,” Vili warned beside her. “You would share them so lightly with these...” Vili paused. Katrin’s mind could fill in the silence because even though Vili still refused to “befoul her ears” with the insults she shared among everyone else, she’d still heard it constantly when Vili addressed others.
“There is nothing sacred about them,” Katrin murmured, the words tasting like poison. “And they are not ours alone.”
“Katrin Yvesdaughter, maledictus of Nightfall.” Executor Etrani called the name Katrin had offered for the testimony. A name that Katrin had not borne in full for years.
She rose and walked to the center of the room, brushing past Ouron, who gripped her shoulder and murmured a brief encouragement in passing. She didn’t hear the words over the pounding in her own ears.
Eyes all around fixated upon her. Skeptical eyes. Intrigued eyes. Disgusted eyes. Calculating ones. She expected all of them. The looks she’d been used to all her life. Even in Hellfrost, those looks persisted.
From birth, the eyes of voidspawn and spirits followed her everywhere she went. The eyes of mortals were no greater a burden.
Esharah’s mental touch reached her. Careful. Gently, as one might handle an injured butterfly. “Are you ready?”
“These fools will not understand,” Vili protested, agitation pulsing as she clutched Katrin’s shoulder.
Katrin took a deep, slow breath and opened up her mind, “I am ready.” Aloud, to the rest of the assembly, she began the words she’d practiced for hours upon sleepless hours. “In the north, beyond the borders of the Empire and the Sea of Mists, lies a land called Nightfall. It is my homeland-”
“Absurd,” the ambassador of Orienbar interrupted her at the first line. “There are no lands north of the Sea of Mists.”
“Oh, you know more of our home than we do, piss-drinker?!” Vili shrieked, mercifully incomprehensible to everyone else present.
“She speaks true,” Madame Truthteller cut in before the debate could escalate.
That one sentence was enough to still protests. Skepticism remained, but it couldn’t voice itself. Not in opposition to Madame Truthteller.
“Ambassador, if you have a witness who has thoroughly explored the Sea of Mists, you may call them afterward later,” Governor Iraias said. “Otherwise, you should be silent and seated until the current testimony is complete.”
A look of profound bafflement crossed the ambassador’s face before he sat back down.
Katrin unclenched her jaw and started to speak again. She’d hoped it would be easier to speak once she began. It wasn’t. “If you do not believe my words, I offer my memories.”
Esharah sent out the invitation. Not all the delegations had mind domain vis present, but all had at least someone tasked with relaying the thoughts of mind vis. A crowd assembled at the outer edges of Katrin’s mind. Minds bearing the same skepticism, even scorn, as the eyes did. Not much different from the crowd of spirits that Katrin invited to do battle alongside her. The difference being that these onlookers did not want her blood and soul in payment. Not in the literal sense, at least.
“They do not deserve your thoughts,” Vili gave a last protest. “Your mind is not for them. Please, sister.”
But Katrin’s mind was an open field. An open wound.
She began with the smallest of memories, not yet ready to unleash the horrors.
* * *
An image of home. The black, ever-sunless sky above Nightfall. Covered by thick clouds that in the empire would signal a fierce storm. A small village, built of scavenged wood that seemed to rot almost as quickly as it could be replaced. Fed by meagre harvests that grew even in poisoned soil.
Her earliest memories were warnings.
“Never leave a door open at night. Never venture into the forest alone. Never leave the path.”
Every six days, the entire village locked themselves in the temple. An old, worn structure to forgotten gods. Dead gods. Dead since the void came to Nightfall. Still they sought protection in the empty sanctuary when the spawn came.
As a child barely old enough to remember, Katrin hid under mother’s cloak, sobbing as the spawn scrabbled at the stone walls of the temple. Their howls and shrieks like a storm.
Once, she’d dared press her eye to the boards covering the windows, seeing the spawn through a thin crack. There were spawn far greater than speartails or burrowers there. Monsters with a dozen legs and claws like scythes. Things of slime and teeth that wriggled and left trails of black ichor in their wake. Monsters beyond comprehension that would kill any mortal who did not claim sanctum.
Uncle Devran, her father’s brother, was not within the sanctuary that day. Father was first to notice, asking for him first in hushed tones, then panicked screams. He tried to rush out the door, held back by half the village. Katrin watched as the villagers pinned her father down to stop him from bursting through the door.
They found Uncle Devran’s remains the next morning. Headless, recognizable only by the missing little finger he’d lost in a woodcutting accident years before.
After that day, Katrin could never remember seeing her father laugh.
* * *
Once a year, the Daughters came. Taller than any mortal, cloaked in black. Skeletal limbs and burning red eyes visible even behind their veils. They would take a child from each village. None would ever see those children again. Every year, the village waited in fear, preparing charms for their children that they hoped would ward away the Daughters.
Every year, Mother prayed with Katrin for hours on the day of choosing. Hours spent with bowed heads and closed eyes pleading to forgotten deities for mercy until the Daughters left.
In her tenth year, Katrin was chosen. The charms had failed.
Father tried to stop them. He rushed at the Daughters with a howl more beast than human.
The Daughter struck a single blow with claw like scythes.
The last time Katrin ever saw Mother, she knelt by Father’s corpse and wept.
* * *
The Daughters took her to the tower at the center of Nightfall, where the Great One dwelt. A towering edifice of black stone, twisted into impossible shapes. Where, they were told, the Daughters served the one who commanded them. Who ruled over all the voidspawn of Nightfall. A creature of unspeakable power. The Nightfather. Lord of the Sunless Lands.
She saw the Great One only once. In the great hall on the first day, brought with hundreds of other weeping, screaming children.
This memory was clearest because it was the one she saw most in her nightmares.
Seated on a black throne, thrice the size of any human. Its skin was a void so black it seemed to drink the light. Its form was constantly shifting, a vortex of blackness. One arm became a blade of obsidian, then tentacles of shadow, then a dozen grasping claws. The only constants were the Eyes, six great orbs of burning red that swept the brought sacrifices. Even just the touch of its gaze left a cold that could not be warmed, that seeped into the soul.
When one Eye fixed on Katrin for a second longer than the others, she was certain she would die. Instead, the Eye moved on.
As they sobbed, pleaded, begged for mercy, the Nightfather stretched out a claw and seized the girl right next to Katrin. The girl’s screaming ceased as the Nightfather drew her towards its great, formless mass. Her body writhed, twisting in unnatural ways as it was pulled inside the Nightfather’s shifting form. Then, she was gone. Consumed.
The Daughters led all the others away. Most were taken to the basement.
They took Katrin aside.
“The Father sees you,” the Daughters whispered to her. “He chooses you to be a Daughter.”
* * *
Every day, the Nightfather devoured another child. Every day, the rest waited in fear it would be their turn.
Never Katrin. The Daughters visited every day. Every day, they touched her forehead with cold, skeletal hands that sent horrifying images into her head. Every day, they stopped only after agonizing hours.
“One day, you will ready,” the Daughters said. “But not today.”
Then, they would leave Katrin alone in the darkness.
While Katrin waited, she pled to gods, to spirits, to anything that would listen for salvation.
The spirits answered. Vili answered.
* * *
She didn’t share the months that followed. Desperate months bonding with Vili, gaining strength, seeking a way to escape while any day could have been the day of her death.
When the Daughters filled her with twisted magic of the Void, Vili supported her. Protected her. Together, they held on. Katrin refused to change. Refused to become one of Them.
She rushed the memories ahead to the escape. The desperate flight through the forest and the weeks seeking the shore. The wounds she took from even the lesser spawn that nearly killed her. That left scars that still covered her body. Scars she’d shared with few others.
Nightfall had no boats that could cross the sea. A storm surrounded Nightfall that no mortal vessel could breach. Katrin tried anyway, stealing a fishing boat and pushing towards the edge of the storm. The boat shattered, and Katrin should have died in that sea.
Instead, she awoke on a distant shore, Vili perched on her chest. In a land where the voidspawn had not yet won. On that distant shore, Katrin opened her eyes and, for the first time in her life, she saw the sun.
* * *
Katrin closed her mind, and the memories ended. The rest were her own. The time in the Darkwood Tribe who’d taken her in before the Empire came and sent her to Hellfrost.
The eyes still stared at her. No longer sneering. Some were shocked. Some were pitying. Some still denying, yet only as a mask against the creeping horror of what they’d seen.
Before any could protest, before any could profess doubt, Madame Truthteller’s whisper cut through the silence. “She speaks true.”
For the first and only time, the ambassador from Orienbar was silent. Legatus Ellis Tovran’s face was gaunt, all his military pride drained away. He looked at Katrin with an expression of dawning horror. All around, Katrin saw the looks of those who had just realized the monsters in the stories were real, and the walls they’d been leaning against were made of paper.
“This is what the voidspawn are,” Katrin’s throat felt raw, but she forced the words out. She hadn’t noticed until now the tears staining her cheeks. “They are not mere beasts. They are not any mortal force. They are evil of a darker, purer sort than any you have known. If you let them, they will do to your lands what they have done to mine.”
She had nothing else to say. That was all she had to give. Only through Esharah’s support did she walk calmly away rather than collapse.
“I...” the ambassador from Agenthus spoke for the first time. An iron-haired woman clasping her hands tight. Forcing them not to shake. “I would suggest a brief recess to...discuss among ourselves what we have seen.”
Agreement sounded, and the delegates dispersed. Whispering to each other in low voices as if afraid of being overheard by the terrors Katrin had shown them. That horror would linger in their minds for a long while. Katrin hoped it would. Sometimes, terror was the only way to force someone to confront reality.
“That was incredibly brave of you to share,” Esharah whispered to her.
Katrin did not feel brave. But she hoped everything she had offered would be enough.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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