Chapter 7: Mist-Beneath

Chapter 7: Mist-Beneath

Mist-Beneath stood over the row of half-immersed human bodies, humming to herself. A nice assortment. To the untrained eye, humans all looked the same, but she knew better. There was enough variety here to give her a chance at success.

Despite her previous two attempts. Which had ended ... messily.

Delicate creatures, humans. Clever and numerous--and cowardly in a way that gave them remarkable strength--but delicate. Shockingly unable to heal. If she cut one's finger off, it never regrew. Not ever.

To say nothing of removing an entire arm, or an eye, or an internal organ.

Still, she'd learned a great deal. So she packed the braziers with herbs and mosses, checked her arrays of crystals, the ones arranged in circles on the floor and the ones embedded in slits in the humans' skin, then she closed her eyes a moment to center herself and--

"This is an abomination," Armored-in-Frost grumbled, at the entrance to her ceremonial chamber.

"This is survival," she told him.

"Pouring a trollish soul into a human vessel." His growl sounded like the rumble of magma. "There is no honor here."

"The humans will kill us all before the winter is over. Every one of our children, dead on your watch. Will that bring you honor?"

Armored-in-Frost rubbed his face. "Is there truly no other way, mother?"

"Not within my power. This is unlikely enough to succeed."

"It shouldn't even be possible."

She lay her hand on his forearm. "The Celestials cannot defeat the Ward from outside the valley. So they've been ... altering human souls. Hoping to damage the valley from within."

"The humans don't need help when it comes to causing damage."

"But they'd never destroy the Warding."

"Because self-preservation is the only creed they follow."

"The Celestials have been at this for a long while now, though with only a rare few successes. Even for them, the cost of twisting a soul is very dear." She tutted. "A long while, though the Sleepers didn't give me a dream of it until recently."

Armored-in-Frost dipped a claw in the blood in which the humans were marinating. "A nightmare."

"The Celestials opened a crack. A tiny crack, through which I may attempt a similar alteration--except I want to save my people, not destroy the ward."

"You're too late, mother. These humans are dead."

"Not entirely. Not yet. There is a faint flicker of life about them."

Armored-in-Frost made an unhappy noise so she chased him from her chamber. Then she hung the white lantern to ensure her privacy and began the rite. She sacrificed her own flesh and chanted to the somnolent ones, a lullaby to seek their guidance ...

***

"Enter what?"

"So impatient!" she cackled. "There is still human in you yet. Do you remember anything of your previous life?"

Eli frowned. He remembered, as far as he could tell, everything of his previous life. His childhood--his parents had been servants, not farmers--and working for the cooper and the hayward and the militia. And then the archive. Finally putting his literacy to good use until that report for the Leotide City office. Then his life had come crashing down.

He remembered everything but he didn't feel much. The memories were almost impersonal. Like they were simply stories he'd heard. Although his time in the Keep's dungeon, that was a story with bite. Yet even that memory wasn't enough to wound him, not anymore.

"I do," he said.

"Do you remember Rockbridge? The ... the tunnels and caverns?"

"You mean the streets and buildings? Yes."

"Can you pass as human?"

In Iolian, the most common human tongue in the valley, he said: "Do I sound human? I do. I look human, I feel human. Am I not human?" He stretched, and felt the strength in his limbs. "I'd think your spell didn't work except I'm alive. I'm whole. Well, except for the odd tooth."

"What?" she said in trollish. "What are you saying?"

"What color is my blood?" he asked, in trollish, extending his arm.

She sliced his forearm with one of her stone-shard rings and his blood welled red. Dark red, true, with maybe a hint of green, but nothing that looked immediately inhuman.

And as he watched, the slice healed.

He wiped the blood from his unbroken skin. "Yes, I can pass for human."

"Good, good. Excellent news, Five. Very good."

"Why are you calling me 'Five?'" he asked. "What happened to One through Four?"

"I asked the moonguards--the trolls who fight the humans--to keep some of them intact. To toss them to me before ending them. This time, six of the humans looked ... possible. For my purposes."

"What are your purposes?"

"Later, impatient one! Later. You were the fifth of six. And the only one who lived."

"The others, uh, weren't still lingering in Death's antechamber?"

Mist-Beneath rumbled a laugh. "Mm. They'd already wandered into death's bedchamber, where not even troll blood could save them."

"Huh."

"Now come along and meet the others. You're awake for true this time."