Crimson snow Lora Gray The battle began with snow, heavy and rushing from a late winter sky. It drifted high in the ancient ash groves where the soulpods grew. It shoved past evergreens and into the sylvaneth forest. It pummelled the vast field beyond, where the armies of Chaos and the Wargrove of Winterleaf collided. Night fell. Snow deepened. Young dryads, too small to join the Wargrove, huddled at the edge of the forest, their arms and branches twined together for warmth. The Song of War pounded through them, but the rumble of charging soldiers, the sharp clamour of claw on metal, the screams and dying sounds, had faded into the distance. They could see and hear practically nothing, and Kalyth was impatient. She untangled herself from her sisters and, hands on her hips, marched to the edge of the tree line. The wind stung her cheeks. Snow bit her eyes. They had been ordered to wait in the forest, to tend their wounded brothers and sisters when the battle ended. They were the last line of defence against the servants of Chaos, should the Wargrove fail. But it had been an hour now since sunset and they knew nothing of what was going on, out there in the dark. Kalyth needed to do something. Jaws clenched, she pulled herself into the low boughs of an evergreen. The tree was massive, large enough to hold a young dryad if she was careful. If she could climb high enough to see above the constant swirl of snow, maybe she could get a better sense of the battle. Bracing herself against the evergreen’s trunk, Kalyth stretched, pulling herself up. Her foot slipped. A broad, clawed hand steadied her from below. Kalyth looked down and saw Idrelle, her face pinched against the snow, her branches whipping in the wind. She helped heft Kalyth up and onto the branch. ‘Can you see anything?’ she asked. Kalyth ascended two more branches before inching gingerly forward. Even in the daylight, there hadn’t been much to see. The Wargrove’s front line had dissipated hours ago, spreading wide as the dryads and branchwraiths, noble spirits and outcasts drove the servants of the Dark Gods from the forest, away from the soulpod grove. Now, in the dark… Kalyth shook her head. ‘I can’t see much at all.’ But deep inside, she could feel the Song of War beginning to slow. Maybe the battle was finally dying? A pair of warriors burst through the driving snow to the left of the evergreens, locked together and heaving, startling Kalyth so badly that she almost fell. Idrelle flattened herself against the tree’s trunk with a yelp. The warriors tumbled closer, a tangle of thick limbs and armour and claws; struggling, grappling until one of them broke away. His mask was half-shattered and askew, the long mouthpiece bent nearly in half. Kalyth glimpsed blood beneath the broken patchwork of metal, a human face, shredded nose to jaw and panting. The cultist took a halting step towards his opponent, the wind snagging his ragged cloak away from his body as he raised a jagged axe. The cultist stumbled. Grunted. And then, as if surprised by the blood spreading from the hole in his belly, he collapsed into the snow. For a moment, Kalyth thought the cultist’s opponent was one of their own enclave, perhaps one of their older sisters, but as the warrior rose and turned, Kalyth saw blue skin, a wide and dripping mouth, eyes flashing and wild. She had never seen an outcast so close before. He reared back, long claws splayed, and screeched. The sound shook the branch beneath her and she clung tight as the outcast pounced on the cultist’s body, yanking armour and flesh away in grisly chunks. He ripped meat from the cultist’s throat with his teeth, wrenched the axe from his dead hand and split his skull with it. He tore the cultist’s arm from its socket with one savage pull and flung it across the field. The arm arced high into the air, buffeted by the wind. It ­tumbled end over end and landed with a soft thump at the edge of the tree line. The outcast’s eyes shifted from the arm’s trajectory to the trees. His gaze slid over Idrelle and then, slowly, climbed the evergreen and landed on Kalyth. Below her, Idrelle whispered, ‘No, no, no.’ The wind howled. Snow whipped between them. The outcast panted. Snorted. Stared. Kalyth tried to tell herself the outcast wouldn’t hurt them. He fought alongside their Wargrove, after all, even though he called Drycha Hamadreth queen and not Alarielle. He was more like them than not, wasn’t he? Even with that scar puckering one side of his face like a long, sideways grin. Even though he ­trembled with bloodlust. Even though he was utterly, utterly mad. Gristle dripping from his chin, the outcast cocked his head. His lips crawled away from his teeth. A smile? A snarl? He took one lurching step towards them. And then, with a roar, he turned and dashed away across the field. As soon as it was clear the outcast wasn’t turning back, Idrelle whispered, ‘Cover your mouth.’ Her voice quavered. Kalyth could see the outcast still, a dark, loping figure in the gusting snow. ‘Cover my mouth?’ ‘You don’t want to catch the outcasts’ madness, do you?’ Idrelle gave the tree a shake. ‘Cover your mouth!’ ‘He saved us,’ Kalyth murmured. ‘That doesn’t make him any less mad!’ ‘Do you suppose he was a spite once? Or was it tainted soil that turned him? I heard there was a soulpod grove south of here that was cursed when–’ ‘Kalyth!’ Kalyth finally looked down at her sister. Idrelle’s hand was plastered over her own mouth, her face bright with fear. Sighing, Kalyth descended. ‘You worry too much,’ she said. ‘Outcasts aren’t creatures from some sapling bedtime story. Besides, how can madness be contagious? It isn’t wood blight.’ ‘You don’t know that! Nobody knows how the madness spreads!’ ‘Idrelle, he saved us. Did you see how he swung that axe?’ ‘Kalyth, please.’ Idrelle was on the verge of tears. Kalyth wanted to tell Idrelle she was being ridiculous. The stories they’d been told, about the outcasts’ contagious madness, were just that, stories. But Idrelle was trembling when Kalyth dropped to the ground beside her. Guilt sank into her and Kalyth moved to wrap her arms around her, to apologise, when the Song of War shifted. Wavered. Stopped. The Spirit Song returned, flowing softly through the sylvaneth. The battle was over. In unison, the young dryads at the edge of the forest lifted their heads. They emerged together, filing across the stormy field towards the remains of the Wargrove, to tend their wounded brothers and sisters and, in the deep night, mourn their dead. It wasn’t long before the young dryads separated to cover more ground. The field was almost as long as it was wide and between the distance and the snow, Kalyth soon lost sight of Idrelle and the others. She was alone when she first saw one of her sisters, dead. Her body lay like a fallen willow tree, torso curved and slumped, her branches spiralling away from her in the snow. Kalyth waded as quickly as she could through the deep drifts, calling out to her as she knelt, but as she rolled the older dryad onto her back, her head swivelled at an unnatural angle. Her broken neck was crooked so far to one side, Kalyth could see heartwood punching through her skin. Her lower jaw had been ripped away. Snow, black with blood and riddled with bark, slushed out. Kalyth pulled her hands back as if she’d been burned. Grief soured her gut. She realised now, as she looked around her, just how dire the situation was. There, what she thought were uneven drifts were half-buried bodies. There, a broken branch resolved itself into an arm, frozen stiff and jutting skyward through the snow. That small rise was nothing but a smothered jumble of bodies, a dozen of them, broken, puzzled together and still. Dead faces emerged from the shadows, depressions became open mouths. Every icy glimmer was an open, sightless eye. Kalyth wanted so badly to help. To do something. To be useful. But what could she do when so many were already dead? Shivering, she pressed her hand reverently to her sister’s forehead and stood, marking the spot for the branchwyches to find so they could harvest her lamentiri and take her soul back to the sylvaneth grove. Kalyth had taken no more than a few steps when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw breath rising in short, cloudy bursts from the side of a snow bank. Kalyth ran towards it. As she dug the snow away from the trapped and dying warrior, she realised it was the outcast. His body was crumpled. A trio of spears pinned him to the earth. His right leg was severed, his hip a pulpy stump leaking blood, sluggish and dark, into the snow. His branches were torn away. His left foot was mangled. His right arm was crushed. His remaining eye swivelled towards her. The outcast opened his ruined, bloody mouth and laughed. Every story the branchwyches had told her, every warning that seemed so silly at the time, snapped through Kalyth. Don’t breathe their breath. Don’t look them in the eye. Never touch them. Nobody knows how the madness spreads. Cover your mouth. Don’t breathe. You’ll catch it. You’ll catch it. But this outcast had saved them, after all, whether or not that was his intention. Didn’t he deserve some sort of comfort? How could she leave him there? How could she not help him? Kalyth hesitated and then touched an uncertain hand to the outcast’s heaving side. His head whipped back and he snapped his jaws, enraged, gurgling and growling. Kalyth forced herself not to pull away. ‘I’m trying to help,’ she said and wished she could blame the way her hands trembled on the cold. The outcast bit at her again, so hard this time that his bark cracked. The stump of his leg churned against the wet snow. Still pinned against her, he jerked, desperate and violent, and Kalyth realised, as his jaws snapped together again and again, faster, faster, that he would bite her hand off if he could. Kill her, maybe, if he could. Did he even understand she wasn’t the enemy? That she was sylvaneth? Or had the madness robbed him of that too? ‘I won’t hurt you,’ Kalyth said. Her eyes stung. Her throat tightened. ‘I’m sylvaneth. Like you.’ She wanted, so badly, for him to understand, to see some spark of recognition. Instead, the outcast keened, the sound needling through her ears and into her skull. ‘Oh, please, don’t do that.’ Kalyth pressed both palms to his chest. ‘I want to help. Please let me help.’ Kalyth was so close she could see the ridges in his bark, all the gashes and scars, every blow, every cut and scrape and wound. His face twisted. His body arched as far as the spears pinning him allowed and then, with a whimper, he slumped back towards the ground again. The outcast’s voice crumpled into silence. Kalyth felt a tremor race through him and his eyes widened. For a moment, his gaze was so clear, so intense, so frightened, that Kalyth could imagine the sylvaneth he had been before the madness took him. Carefully, Kalyth stroked his shoulder. He didn’t try to bite her. He drew a breath instead, deep and ragged. He looked up at her and exhaled, his feverish breath washing over her, tasting like lost summers and blood and dying things. He convulsed one last time. Kalyth held him until his body grew cold in her arms. As the silence stretched around her, she thought she heard a whisper. It didn’t sound like the Spirit Song. It was infinitely softer. Infinitely more mournful and deep. Kalyth looked up. The snow was still falling but, for a moment, it wasn’t white. For a moment, it was crimson. In the centre of the sylvaneth grove, where the evergreens gave way to ash trees, a thicket grew. The soulpods nestled there, spherical and shielded from the snow by a knot of low branches and thorns. They pulsed softly in the morning light. It wouldn’t be long before new dryads emerged from them. Kalyth wondered if the snow would still be there when they did. Would there even be enough sylvaneth to tend them? There were so few of them left. It wasn’t until morning that the full impact of the battle became evident. The servants of Chaos had been driven back, but not before they devastated the Wargrove. They had lost nearly two-thirds of their army and the forest felt empty. There should have been branchwraiths with grave faces planning the next ­battle. There should have been dozens of dryads gathered beneath the evergreens, trading war stories, tending each other’s wounds, grumbling or laughing in the cold morning light. There should have been noble spirits quietly listening to the Spirit Song, drifting between the trees, murmuring about the ‘pettiness’ of dryads, about how emotional and unstable and loud they were. Only the branchwyches’ numbers seemed untouched. They gathered in solemn circles, their broad backs hunched as they planted lamentiri after lamentiri, burying the souls they had harvested the night before in the cold soil. The young dryads were silent, their heads bowed as they passed. Every one of those lamentiri was a sister or a brother, a friend, a face, a voice, a life. Even though the lamentiri would grow into new soulpods eventually, the memories and experiences that made each individual unique would never really return. They had lost so many. Kalyth felt physically sick with grief. It gnawed at her. It made her itch. She felt it like a living thing crawling through her in fits and spurts, as if the sorrow had grown legs and scuttled through her, racing through her and filling all the empty pockets inside. Idrelle had been casting worried glances at her all morning and, as they reached the forest’s edge with the other young dryads, she looped her arm through Kalyth’s and pressed close. The snowstorm had stopped before daybreak and the field stretched before them, a pale sky against pale ground, smooth and rolling and still. Kalyth tried not to think about what lay under the blanket of snow as the other dryads set out across it. ‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’ Idrelle’s voice was hushed, her body tense against Kalyth’s side. Kalyth squeezed Idrelle’s hand, took a deep breath and tried to ignore the itching, the feeling of sickness. ‘The rotbringers won’t be that hard to find,’ she said. ‘Besides, scouting is a lot less dangerous than fighting. We’ll all be back before nightfall.’ ‘But you’ll be careful?’ Kalyth forced a laugh she didn’t feel. ‘I’m not planning on attacking them single-handedly, if that’s what you’re asking.’ Idrelle shifted, darted a look back at the forest. ‘You shouldn’t even be doing this. You’re too young.’ ‘And you’re not? Besides, who else is there?’ Kalyth tried not to sound bitter. Idrelle wrapped her arms around herself, long claws ticking against her bark. ‘It’s just that we lost so many.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t want to lose you, too.’ Idrelle always fretted, always worked herself into knots, even when there wasn’t immediate danger. Now that there was, Kalyth didn’t want to make it worse for her. Hands on her sister’s shoulders, Kalyth rested her forehead against Idrelle’s and met her gaze. ‘I’ll be careful. I promise.’ Idrelle nodded, her branches tickling Kalyth’s. When she finally pulled away, she trailed her finger over Kalyth’s cheek. ‘You look unwell,’ she said. Kalyth felt unwell. She needed to put some distance between herself and the yawning emptiness of the forest. The memory of the field. The outcast dying in her arms. She could almost feel the heat of his last breath ghosting over her still. ‘I’m fine,’ Kalyth said. ‘Are you certain? Maybe you should…’ ‘I’m fine.’ Kalyth gave Idrelle’s arm a squeeze. ‘Let’s go. The day isn’t getting any longer.’ It wasn’t until the sun was directly overhead, watery and pale, that Kalyth realised she had wandered west. She was far from where the armies of Chaos should have been. Boulders littered the landscape, rising up all around her like angry fists. In the distance, a blue-grey ridge arced skyward like a spine. The trees were sparse and small. The wind moaned, long and low. According to the branchwraiths, the enemy would never camp here where there was so little cover. Only the outcasts favoured this terrain. But why had she come here? Why had she not realised where she was walking? It was as if her body had shrugged her mind away and drifted to this place of its own volition. She didn’t remember the journey at all and it was unsettling, as if slowly surfacing from a dream. Disoriented and dizzy, Kalyth leaned against a boulder and took in a lungful of sour, sulphuric air. She had the inexplicable urge to keep going, to let her legs carry her up and over that ridge. She envisioned summiting the blue-grey rock, looking down at an encampment full of outcasts, dangerous as a cluster of thunderclouds waiting to storm. Kalyth shook herself and pushed away from the boulder. She needed to finish her mission, to scout the ground she’d been assigned, or she’d never make it back to the grove before dark. Kalyth started back the way she came, but that itching, that horrible sense of something wrong, blossomed through her again. It was stronger than it had been in the forest. It was swelling. Spreading. It felt as if a thousand thousand somethings simmered in her legs and arms, and Kalyth knew it wasn’t grief over her fallen brothers and sisters that she felt. Something was inside her. Cover your mouth, Idrelle had said. Nobody knows how the madness spreads! Kalyth’s heart lurched. Had she been infected by Chaos after all? No. There had to be a simpler explanation. Parasites perhaps? Kalyth’s body was as much a part of the natural world as the trees themselves and sometimes other creatures made her their home. Perhaps the morning sun nudged a colony of insects from their winter sleep and they had burrowed into her for warmth? As Kalyth walked, she tried to disregard it, but the itch intensified. Every step she took seemed to drive it deeper. She felt it in her hands, the crook of her elbow, the socket of her hip, places so deep she couldn’t begin to scratch them. Last summer, a colony of beetles had burrowed into her left calf, just beneath the thick bark of her skin. Kalyth remembered the scrape of their mandibles, the horrible tickle of their legs, wriggling, squirming. It wasn’t until the first frost that she had been able to finally pluck their still bodies out. The carapaces had fallen onto the frozen ground at her feet, small and upturned, their wings half folded, their legs crooked and bent. She remembered her surprise at how small they seemed. Crawling through her, they had been impossible to ignore. But this was different. This itch became a throb. The further Kalyth went, the worse it became until she wanted to scream in frustration, rip her bark away in long strips. A shudder wracked her, as if her body was trying to shake the bugs loose. Kalyth moved faster. She felt feverish. She needed to scout the land quickly and return to the grove and huddle beside Idrelle, warm and safe in the familiar forest, feel her brothers and sisters all around her, close her eyes and let the Spirit Song of Alarielle comfort her. She tried to connect to it now, but the buzzing inside her made that almost impossible. For one terrifying moment, she couldn’t hear the Spirit Song at all. Kalyth ran. She bounded through the snow in great, loping strides, the wind bitterly cold against her skin. A deep gelatinous heave knocked her off her feet. Kalyth fell headlong into a snow bank. Something in the centre of her chest pulsed, round and moving and very much alive. It shouldered its way deep inside. Kalyth tried to tell herself she was imagining it. Parasites didn’t do that. Her body would push anything that dangerous out of her before it bored that deep, wouldn’t it? But she could feel it pounding; a second pulse. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see it there, coiled against her heart, bigger and brighter than all the other little things skittering through her. Kalyth curled around herself. She felt the Bright One shake himself in her chest. She felt his mouth shift, the hard press of his teeth from the inside as he smiled. And then he spoke. By the time Kalyth returned to the grove, the sun was setting. Sweat rolled down the crags of her bark. It took every ounce of effort not to dig at her own body. She was fevered, full of those thousand thousand horrible little things, the Bright One whispering over and over to her. Don’t you want us here? We just want to be warm. You’re so warm. It’s so cold out there. It’s so cold. Please. Pleasepleaseplease. Kalyth had spent nearly an hour on the ridge trying to ignore his voice, trying to dislodge the little ones that had somehow spread through her until it felt as if every inch of her was crawling with them. She beat her arms, pounded her palms flat against the boulders, plunged her feet and hands into snowbanks, ­hoping the cold would drive them out of her. Nothing worked. The little ones wormed into her ear canals. They squirmed around her jaw and into the roots of her teeth. And the harder she tried to get rid of them, the faster they moved. The Bright One chuckled softly, the sound vibrating against her ribs. And as many times as she told herself what was happening was impossible, she could still hear him murmuring, whispering, sighing into her ear. Now, Kalyth hurried across the snowy field. She needed to be home so very badly. She needed somewhere safe. Somewhere that made sense. Idrelle waited for her in the copse of evergreens at the edge of the forest. The setting sun tossed shadows onto her face, violet and deep; so dark her eyes seemed as though they’d been spooned from her skull. The Bright One hammered in Kalyth’s chest and, for a moment, her vision hazed red. She didn’t see Idrelle as she stood now, her mouth pinched with worry, one hand outstretched and wanting Kalyth to hold it. Instead, for an instant, Kalyth had a vision of Idrelle with her body broken and slumped against the evergreens. There were bloody holes where her eyes should have been and when Kalyth looked down, she saw those eyes, wet and round, in the snow beside Idrelle’s upturned hand, bloody fibres trailing away like tails. It would be so easy to make that vision real. To reach up. To pluck those eyes out of Idrelle’s skull. The Bright One wrapped his fingers gingerly around one of Kalyth’s ribs. It would be so very easy. It would feel so good. All that blood. All that warmth. ‘Kalyth, are you all right?’ Idrelle’s hand was cool when she touched Kalyth’s face. ‘You look even worse than you did before. Oh, I knew it. You are sick. You should have stayed here.’ The worry in Idrelle’s voice sank through her. Kalyth shoved her panic aside and strained to clear her thoughts. She could control this. They were only parasites. Just a few bugs. There were bigger problems, an army swelling in the dark and waiting to attack and Kalyth wouldn’t do anybody any good if she unravelled now. She needed to be strong. For Idrelle, she needed to be strong. ‘I’m just a little tired,’ Kalyth said. Did she sound as breathless as she felt? Did she sound normal? ‘I didn’t find any enemy camps. Did you?’ Idrelle frowned, studying Kalyth carefully. The corners of her mouth were tight with concern, but she finally said, ‘No. Berlyth did. Just south of the glassy lake. She said there were two hundred of the rotbringers there. The Wargrove is mustering at daybreak.’ ‘We’re going to fight?’ ‘We’re not. We’ve been ordered to hold the line at the edge of the grove. Oh Kalyth, don’t look at me like that. Somebody needs to stay here. Besides, you don’t look well. Are you sure you’re not sick?’ The little ones scratched over Kalyth’s shoulders, bubbled beneath the bark of her back. ‘I just need some rest,’ she said, and hoped against hope Idrelle believed her. When it was all over, she would tell Idrelle all about it. She would let Idrelle baby her and nurse her back to health. But for now, she needed to keep the truth of it to herself, for Idrelle’s sake. For everyone’s sake. There were so few of them left. As night settled over the forest and Idrelle nestled beside her in the grove, Kalyth told herself it was all for the best. Some secrets needed to be kept. But she could still hear the Bright One whispering as she fell asleep. Let us stay with you. You’re so warm. And we’re so cold. So hungry. We’re starving. We’re dying. We need you. We want you. Help us. Please, help us. In the dream, Kalyth stood in a pale field. Tall grass rippled around her. Shadows hovered at the edges of her vision, though the sky was cloudless and lit by an indistinct sun. The air was hazy and thick. And everything, everything, was white. Kalyth inhaled. The thick air slid into her nose and mouth like oil. It slicked the back of her tongue, rolled into her belly. Kalyth’s chest tightened and she retched, but every time she opened her mouth, the liquid air poured in until everything inside of her sloshed. But she could breathe. Her body pulled oxygen from the syrupy air like a fish inhaling water. Shuddering, Kalyth stilled herself and tried to concentrate on that. She wasn’t dying. There was life flowing through her. She reached for the Spirit Song, but it was slippery and she couldn’t grasp it. And then she realised she wasn’t alone. The parasites inside of her, those thousands of tiny squirming somethings, were all around her now, a slowly churning carpet where the grass had been moments before. Their bodies were bloated and gelatinous. Branches sprouted from their sides, tender new shoots above their stunted arms. Their heads wobbled on thin necks, their faces were wide-eyed and gaunt. They gazed up at her as they caressed her feet and ankles. They crawled up her legs and curled their tiny hands against her bark. They pleaded with her silently, vibrating with hunger and need, shaking desperation into her arms and chest. They were so cold. They were so hungry. They needed blood. They were dying. They needed blood. HelpusHelpusHelpus. They needed blood. The sea of tiny, bloated bodies quivered, and in the distance a mound rose from the earth beneath them. It ploughed languidly towards her, a giant rolling wave in an ocean of squirming bodies. It slowed to a stop in front of her and the Bright One emerged from beneath the blanket of his tiny siblings, letting them fall away from him as he stood, eye to eye with her. His skin glistened, his branches, so familiar, so much like a sylvaneth’s, shimmered. His eyes shone. A scar puckered the side of his face like a long, sideways grin. We’ve been waiting for you, the Bright One said. The words coiled through Kalyth’s mind, slow and steady. His lips didn’t move. He laid his hand over his chest, fingers ticking over his colourless skin as if searching for something. He paused, grinned, and sank his fingers into himself, hand disappearing into a gummy wound. The Bright One’s eyes fluttered, his grin widened, and when he slinked his hand back out again, he held an axe. The axe was dripping when he handed it to Kalyth. A gory umbilical tethered its haft to the hole in his chest. The axe throbbed, that same slow thrum Kalyth had felt when the Bright One was inside her; a distant rhythm, a second heartbeat. The little ones began keening. Wailing. Crying. They were so hungry. They needed her help. They wanted her help. The shadows at the edges of the landscape detached and elongated, twisting and turning and growing, until they became bodies, faces, the servants of the Dark Gods rising from the pale earth. Kalyth gripped the axe more tightly. How many of her brothers and sisters had these monsters killed? How many forests had they burned? The Bright One stroked a smooth hand over her shoulder. You know what you have to do, he said. Kalyth raised the axe. The little ones clamoured up her legs, onto her arms, clung to her, dug their fingers into her. Thousands of needling hands, thousands of hungry, open mouths. Kalyth rushed towards the nearest enemy, the Bright One beside her. There was no resistance when she swung, the blade cutting through armour and flesh as if through water. The dream world shuddered. Kalyth drew the blade out again. Blood fountained from the wound. The little ones scrambled off her, gleeful and diving into the river of blood, burrowing and sucking with their tiny, starving mouths. The Bright One pressed against Kalyth. The axe, still tethered to his open chest, burned in her hands. Again, he said. Kalyth charged and swung. The world gushed red. Again. Blood rushed over her, hotter and faster, frenzied and full of jubilant need. Again she attacked, laughing, screeching, howling. It felt good; it felt so good, to finally do something. To attack, to let her rage bubble up and over like a spring. A geyser. A volcano. When Kalyth finally stopped, gasping, blood raining from her branches, the ground roiled with parasites, their bellies pulsing red with gore. They cooed and purred, wriggling happily over her feet. The axe hummed in her hand and Kalyth closed her eyes to let the rhythm of it settle into her, steady and powerful. The Bright One nuzzled her ear and, even though there was nobody left to kill in the dream world, he breathed, softly, sweetly, Again. Kalyth woke in the grove, the moon bright and full. The ground beneath her wasn’t soaked with blood. Not yet. But she could smell it all around her, salty and sweet. Beside the frantic beating of her heart, Kalyth could still hear the Bright One whispering Again. Kalyth’s hands clutched for an axe that wasn’t there. Trembling, she sat up. Idrelle lay beside her, her face soft, one hand looped around her own branches for comfort, the other outstretched where her arms had been wrapped around Kalyth. She didn’t stir. Was she sleeping still? Kalyth wanted her to be. Because if Idrelle saw her now, feverish and full of bloodlust, she wouldn’t be able to hide any of it from her. And what if she did know? the Bright One whispered. Kalyth couldn’t seem to silence him now no matter how hard she tried, but the presence of him behind her thoughts was beautiful in its own way. Would sharing that beauty with Idrelle be so terrible? Kalyth pictured holding Idrelle in her arms, her head against her breast. Maybe she’d be able to hear him, too. Maybe all the little ones would wrap their tiny hands around Idrelle’s fingers. Maybe the Bright One would flow into her. All she had to do was open Idrelle up. It wouldn’t be so hard. She didn’t need an axe. Her claws were her weapons. One slice, one carefully placed swing, would do it. She could hack into all the fleshy, woody parts of Idrelle and the Bright One and all his brothers and sisters could rush into her. And if Idrelle didn’t want it, if she resisted, well then, her blood-sap would feed the little ones. They were so very hungry. Kalyth felt them jitter eagerly at the idea and the Bright One nudged Kalyth with a gentle hand. She leaned over Idrelle, one arm raised. Her claws glinted in the moonlight. Idrelle stirred, frowning and fitful as she rolled onto her back, as if she could sense something was wrong. Idrelle was always so sensitive. How many times had she known something was wrong before Kalyth mentioned it? Idrelle cared for her, loved her. She loved her so much. The Bright One whispered how lovely it would feel, how warm. Idrelle’s blood would be like velvet running over her skin. All Kalyth had to do was drive her claws into the back of Idrelle’s head, crush her body between her fingers, pop legs from hips, arms from shoulders, tear into flesh with her teeth and– Breath hitching, Kalyth jerked upright. She staggered away from Idrelle, horrified. She lost her footing. Tripped. Turned. Ran. She crashed through the forest, past the ash trees and the soulpods, through the copse of evergreens and into the field. Frost crackled beneath her feet as she sprinted across the snow and the little ones scampered into the warmer parts of her, coiled around her insides, fingers tugging, faces upturned and begging for heat and blood, blood and heat. It wasn’t until Kalyth reached the western ridge, towering blue-grey and cold, that dead landscape leading to the outcasts’ camp, that she stopped. She collapsed against one of the boulders, her claws scraping against it, clenching and unclenching as she tried to gather herself together again, but she couldn’t feel where the parasites ended and she began anymore. Everything was shifting, squirming, moving. She looked up. The Bright One stood beside her. ‘You aren’t real,’ Kalyth whispered. She tried to believe it was true. The Bright One chuckled. The little ones clustered around his feet, mewling as they wound between his legs. The Bright One reached out a hand. He stroked Kalyth’s face tenderly. What makes you say that? Shivering, Kalyth reached, one last time, for the Spirit Song, but there was nothing left to bind her to Alarielle or her brothers and sisters. There was nothing but an emptiness that seemed to stretch on forever. Kalyth sank into the snow. The Bright One sank with her. Her hands trembled. Her insides quivered. You know what you have to do, he said. Kalyth clenched her teeth. ‘You aren’t real.’ The little ones crawled over her legs, inched onto her arms, around her hands, up and down the length of her claws. ‘This isn’t real.’ Cut. Kill. Break. Kill. Kill. Kill. ‘You aren’t real!’ Kalyth’s scream pierced the stillness. Claws whistling through the frozen air, shining, sharp, desperate, she raised her arm and swung. She struck her own body, pain razoring through her, searing, blinding, as she slashed at her branches, hacked into herself. The impacts shuddered through her and branch after branch fell into the snow at her feet. Cold snapped into the wounds. Sap and blood poured down her side and she swung again. Because the Bright One, the little ones, these things, whatever they were, weren’t really beside her. They were in her body, in her head. And she would bleed them out, cut them out, if it killed her. Kalyth swung again, woody pulp and bone splitting. She braced her left arm against a boulder. Locked her elbow. Swung. Her claw sliced through skin, bark, bone. Agony flared, a deep heave of pain. She swung again, awkward for the angle. She needed to get him out. All of them out. She swung. Again and again and again. Her arm snapped in two with a wet crack. Shock. Pain. She looked down at the severed limb in the snow, her hand, palm up, clenching and unclenching still. Blood gushed from the stump of her arm. With a sudden flare of light, the Bright One and all the little ones disappeared from her field of vision. For a moment, Kalyth thought it had worked, that she was finally rid of them, but something jolted deep in her chest. Her heart tripped over itself. The Bright One squeezed, dug his teeth into a thick artery. He swelled, pushed himself against her organs, thrust hate and rage outward as if he could stopper the wounds with it. Kalyth felt life rushing away from her and still, the Bright One shouted for her to kill. Killkillkill! ‘Kalyth!’ Idrelle’s voice snapped through waves of pain and Kalyth turned, severed branches littering the snow around her, what was left of her arm swinging, sopping and limp, against her side. Idrelle bolted up the hillside, her hands outstretched as if she wanted to embrace her. The Bright One roared. The Bright One surged. The Bright One shoved Kalyth away from herself, sliced her from her own body as surely as she’d sliced her own arm away and Kalyth watched helplessly as her body charged, her legs pumping against her will. Kalyth screamed, tried to warn Idrelle, but the Bright One’s voice overtook her own. He flung her working arm back and leaped towards Idrelle. For a moment, Kalyth felt herself suspended, her body launched high into the air, and there was Idrelle below her, confused and terrified, as the Bright One sneered and swung Kalyth’s claw at Idrelle’s head. Idrelle scrambled, skidding and sliding on the icy ground, narrowly avoiding the blow as Kalyth’s body crashed to the earth. The impact shoved blood from Kalyth’s mouth and nose. The claws of her hand lodged deep into the ground, wedged into ice and frozen soil. Kalyth bore down, trying to force her body to remain there, pinned to the earth so the Bright One couldn’t attack again. But he took hold of her arm, his grip like a vice and he yanked at her buried claws with all his strength, trying to pull free, trying to kill Idrelle. Kalyth screamed again as Idrelle moved into view and the Bright One kicked at her from the inside. ‘Kalyth!’ Idrelle’s voice broke, her hands raised and defensive, her own claws ready. ‘What are you doing?’ Idrelle stepped closer and the Bright One snarled and heaved. ‘You’re hurt! Stop it! Stop!’ Kalyth gasped as the Bright One flared, thundering into every vein, every muscle, every pore. He wrenched her arm so hard Kalyth’s claws shattered. Her fingers dislocated. The Bright One heaved Kalyth’s body upright and rushed towards Idrelle, mouth slung wide, teeth like daggers, hand a cluster of broken, splintered spears. Idrelle fell back, but she was prepared this time and her arm slammed into Kalyth’s body as the Bright One attacked, knocking her away so sharply that Kalyth’s body flew into the air. For one suspended moment, Kalyth saw the moonlit sky above her, and felt the wind, cold and terrible, whip into every open wound. Kalyth slammed into the boulder spine first. A rib shattered. Her belly bulged where a jagged wedge of stone pierced her. Viscera drooled out of her back and onto the ground. She tried to inhale and couldn’t. She couldn’t move her arms. She couldn’t move her legs. Her eyes were open, but blood was closing over everything. And there was Idrelle, kneeling over her and weeping. Kalyth’s breath bloomed over Idrelle’s face, feverish and tasting like lost summers and blood and dying things. Idrelle watched as Kalyth’s eyes unfocused. She watched her best friend die. Idrelle pressed herself against Kalyth’s ruined body and tried to beg the life back into her. She clutched Kalyth to her breast, the stump of her severed arm swinging against her side as she rocked her back and forth, back and forth. She didn’t understand why this had happened. She didn’t understand why. Grief surged through her like a rainstorm, like a river. Every inch of her filled with it. She felt it like a thing alive. Like a thousand thousand somethings racing through her and wanting to fill her up. She felt it settle deep in her chest. She felt it grip her heart. Idrelle wailed, low and long. She held Kalyth until her body grew cold in her arms. As the silence stretched around her, Idrelle thought she heard a whisper. It didn’t sound like the Spirit Song. It was infinitely softer. Infinitely more mournful and deep. Slowly, Idrelle stood. Cradling Kalyth’s body, she walked through the frozen landscape. But she didn’t walk towards the sylvaneth grove. Instead, she moved without thinking towards the blue-grey ridge, travelling west towards the outcasts’ camp where the land was rocky and still. Just before dawn, it began to snow. And the snow wasn’t white. It was crimson.