The Endless Solvent

Unfortunately, it was not simply cows escaping a barn. Nilda clutched harder at the soldier in front of her as she felt the dread seep in and she saw columns of smoke rise from the direction of Diess.

“Don’t get too close. Stop here,” she shouted at the soldiers who immediately slowed their breakneck gallop. The horses huffed in protest, spilling clouds of vapor from their noses as they suddenly stopped at a distance away from the entrance of the village. Nilda slid off the saddle without help so her feet could feel the ground. The terrain was satisfactorily rocky - Diess was a logging village and so built their community around a stable rock bed to support their lumber stacks.

“One of you should go back for reinforcements,” Nilda said, still feeling out rocks through the Solvent. She curled and uncurled her fingers and went to a boulder to collect rock onto her body. The years that went by didn’t require her to actually fight for her life anymore, but she’d maintained training and practicing so she didn’t grow rusty. She was given these abilities for a reason - how disappointing it would be if she wasn’t able to use them properly when the occasion arose. “And tell your captain to stay at the castle to protect the royal family.”

“You’re sure a Gate opened?” The soldiers craned their necks and squinted towards the village. “I don’t see…”

Then through the trees, they spotted one.

It was so pale, it made the snow around it look slightly gray or yellow. The Unseeing moved on all fours with a silent, uncanny smoothness that blended with the winter’s oppressive quiet. One of the soldiers swore under his breath.

“You should return,” the soldier she rode with nodded to the other one. “You are the faster rider. Bring the governess - ”

“I’m staying. I’m the only one between the three of us that’s ever killed these things,” Nilda coolly formed stone shivs in her hands.

“If I return without you, the captain will run his sword through me on the spot,” the soldier said incredulously.

“Well then maybe you should consider dodging,” Nilda shrugged. “Go, before the Unseeing takes over the kingdom.”

Neither of the soldiers liked it but they had no choice as Nilda started towards the forest. “It takes a certain distance until they detect us,” she whispered to the pale-faced soldier. “Stay close to me and stay silent.”

They made a wide circumference around the village, frequently pausing to make sure nothing would catch them unaware. Handfuls of Unseeing scattered around the village, all slightly different shapes and sizes but all of them an unnatural white. A few of them made the horrible trills Nilda clearly remembered.

“Sun’s mercy.” The soldier’s voice wavered with fear. “Never heard anything so horrible.”

“They die just like a regular person,” Nilda said. “Maybe some have a little bit of armor on them but most of them are just flesh and blood.”

They walked further around the village and spotted more Unseeing. At one point she thought she saw human bodies strewn on the floor, blood soaking the ground. Was the whole village dead? Was the Gate still opened?

As if answering her unspoken question, screams broke out through the terrible silence - human screams. Clutching her stone shivs, she crept towards the sound with the soldier shadowing her. At the very edge of Diess, nearly within the forest was a large wooden storehouse. Two gleaming white Unseeing beasts roamed in front of it and they snapped their heads at attention over the sounds of the screams. Heart pounding, Nilda watched at a safe distance in the cover of trees.

“There’s people in that building,” the soldier whispered to her.

They started moving closer towards the back of the storehouse to attempt to find a way in with the inexplicable dread growing with every step. Another scream rang out and the front doors of the storehouse slammed open. A woman with long dark hair stumbled out. Even from a distance, Nilda could see her plain beige tunic was soaked with blood and in tatters; the right sleeve was completely torn off and revealed a bloodied mess of an arm.

The injured woman stumbled right into the pair of Unseeing and they immediately pounced onto her. Nilda was already running towards the storehouse and halfway crossed the distance when she realized it. The screams of the woman filled her ears, the terror, the fear of death swirling, the Solvent sickening. Nilda flung the shivs hard and directed them right at the head of one Unseeing, then found enough stone on the ground to spear the other one. The second Unseeing scampered back but kept the woman’s head in its jaws.

The woman was still alive, flailing, screaming, crying. The Unseeing almost purred as it closed its mouth around her head and shattered the skull. Furious, Nilda raised as many series of spikes as she could muster, trapping the monster against the wall of the storehouse and finally nailing its torso to it with three sharp spikes. It opened its mouth for its final death trill and pieces of the woman’s head slid out of its maw.

The soldier behind Nilda vomited violently and loudly into the snow. She ignored him and stalked into the open doors of the storehouse. It was dark inside so she could easily spot a pale blue glow. It moved, slowly, until it wandered close enough to the light streaming in from outside to reveal the face of the shorter Kuvanian emissary. Glowing runes decorated his face, the same way runes were on Vartu’s face so many years ago.

She slammed back the double doors to shine more light into the storehouse. Blood smeared the wood plank floors and suddenly the stench of it hit her. Whimpers sounded from a dark corner. The feeling of dread quelled and instead rage filled her solute.

“What have you done?” she stared at the blood on the ground, painting each surface in the type of red all Gaians adored. It made her stomach churn. “And why are you back in Caelis?”

“I was invited back by your Lunaris,” the emissary shrugged, seemingly completely unfazed by the carnage around him. He stepped to the side and Nilda’s eyes adjusted enough to see a figure slouched against the back wall. A man’s body with his clothes dark with blood. Runes drawn in blood radiated out from his body, on the floor and up the walls. There were dark scorch marks around the body like a twisted halo. It was exactly like how she found Lord Leton’s corpse.

“What are Kuvanians doing opening Gates?” Nilda demanded. “You despise runology! Magic of any sort!”

“I do it for the good of the empire!” the emissary shouted back. Nilda was startled at his sudden look of despair. “Do you think I want to be covered in this filth? But it is the will of the Parts, don’t you understand? We must change… we must bring about the change, so I suffer - ”

He suddenly looked up at her, curiously.

“Why are you still like this?” he suddenly asked. Nilda felt her skin crawl. Hadn’t Vartu asked her the same question?

“What are you talking about?”

The emissary made a disdainful once-over her body. “Perhaps you’re not truly a Gaian beauty like I thought. Or perhaps whatever they did to you makes you different. I suppose it doesn’t matter,” he shrugged. “You’re going to die here anyway.”

“You’re going to answer all my questions,” Nilda surged at him, arms outstretched to grab him.

“No, woman, I’m going to sing… a song of truth,” the emissary said, smiling. The runes on his face started glowing in a familiar way and the blood runes on the floor and walls shone pink. More whimpers sounded in the back of the dark room. “I am going… to be a part of the final solution.”

His mouth opened, unhinged at the jaw and the same familiar unearthly sounds no normal throat could produce. The simultaneous multiple tones rocked the Solvent around them and Nilda let out a scream before ramming a stone covered fist into the glowing face.

The sound immediately stopped as the emissary staggered, stunned. His jaw remained loose and dislocated. Very slowly, he turned his head to look at her with unfocused eyes. With his mouth still hanging open, he spoke to her.

“Have you considered that you are also a part of the final equation?” He said this without moving his mouth and slack jaw. There was no way he could have properly pronounced the words, but yet Nilda heard them from his throat as clear as day. “And that the Great Solvent will come to its grand conclusion, whether you like it or not?”

“You’re not the one talking,” Nilda quickly realized. “Something is speaking through you.”

The emissary laughed, a horrible grating sound made purely from the throat. “They think they created an antithesis to the Equation because they think they are always right. They have mingled with Man for too long, it makes them conceited.”

“What are you talking about?” Nilda demanded. “Explain yourself.”

“You were given a purpose, Nilda of the Heart,” the thing speaking through the emissary said. “What was it? Do you remember?”

Her purpose? And how did this thing know her name and where she was from? Her confusion was cut short with the sound of horses and the shouts of soldiers. The Caelisian soldiers had arrived. Sound erupted in the storage house as men filtered in, armor clinking, swords rattling. Nilda felt her blood run cold when the not-emissary laughed again.

“The fact that you are here and they are here,” the non-emissary pointed to the soldiers, “means you have failed.”

Nilda staggered back and blindly reached to the nearest soldier. “How many of you are here?” she demanded the man.

“The Solaris sent most of us from the castle,” the soldier replied. “Are you alright, governess?”

“Most of you? Why?” Nilda tore out of the storehouse and looked wildly around.

The village was filled with soldiers in the blue uniforms, all of them armed to the teeth and on horseback. Dozens of midnight hounds joined the calvary, sniffing at the ground or weaving expertly between the horses’ legs. “We were told the village was overrun with Unseeing, my lady,” the soldier said.

“And it was,” Nilda said fiercely. The soldier who stayed behind with her appeared and nodded weakly.

“We have not seen any,” the soldier said. “We have sent scouts around to see if they escaped but - ”

“The two that you killed suddenly disappeared when you went inside that storehouse,” the sickly green soldier said. “Like snow dissolving into hot water.”

“No… no I don’t like any of this,” Nilda spat. There was a commotion inside the storehouse and she ran back in, only to see soldiers standing around the Kuvanian emissary who was convulsing on the bloodied floor.

“I think they’re death throes, governess,” one of them called out to her. “What should we - ”

If the emissary was dying, it probably meant whatever was speaking to her through him was done. Shaking with rage, she took a sword from the closest soldier and slammed the blade down into the emissary. He twitched, then lay still.

She looked up and saw the terrified faces of several villagers balled up in a dark corner of the storehouse. Ignoring the shocked murmurs of soldiers around her, she turned and snapped at the one she was speaking to earlier.

“Gather all of your men except a handful to help the survivors here. We have to return to the castle immediately.”

“But what if there are more Unseeing?” the soldier remarked.

“There won’t be any more,” she said. “What happened here was a decoy. We must return to the Solaris as quickly as we can.”