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For every step I take forward, it is tomorrow.
For every time I stand still, it is our formation line.
For every time I step back—
—it is home.
— Oath of the Silvermane Guard, c. 212 AF
ꕥ
Gepard’s eyes slot open wearily, encrusted with falling snow and dried blood.
He’s lightheaded. Frost lies thick on his skin. His nostrils are full of the tang of rust. Vaguely, he comes to realize that he is lying in the snow, wasting away beneath a cloudy grey sky webbed by shattered gates and crumbling walls.
Then he comes to realize that he is dying.
Curious, really. He believed the feeling would be brutal, visceral. Tongues of fire lashing at his skin as they dragged him below. But no; this is numbness. A languid hollowness that crawls up his bones and sinks into his lungs, fading everything to dull shades of snow and stone.
He cannot feel anything on the right side of his torso but a vague, sticky warmth.
Still, beyond the lethargy, the Landau-deep drum pounds stubbornly. Live. Breathe. Stand. You will not capitulate. No matter if his shield, or even his body, lies in shattered fragments. His will is whole.
Gepard attempts to lift a hand. His fingers refuse to even twitch.
A flicker of movement catches his eye, and he watches as a shadewalker lazily curls around the corner. Fresh urgency fills him. He only has seconds to seize his shield and drag himself up. The strap isn’t far, just a hair’s breadth from his fingers.
If only his hand would move.
The shadewalker makes a rasping, clicking sound, and Gepard knows he’s been seen. It descends on him with terrifying speed. Corrosive blades snap forth like insect stingers as its haunches spring into a powerful lunge, and Death is only a blink away when—
—the shadewalker’s chest explodes apart, impaled by a blade of concentrated fire.
The heat of it is indescribable, arcane. Somehow, Gepard knows the shape and texture of that flame, knows the way it etches into his soul. He has seen its crest in the museums. Felt the embers of it in his chest as he swore fealty to the City of Preservation.
“Qlipoth,” he murmurs vaguely. The syllables are jumbled behind his frozen lips. “Aeon of Preservation…”
The shadewalker’s mangled corpse ferries off the fire-brand and slouches into the snow. Behind it, Qlipoth looks squarely at him. Their form is—well, feminine, and a bit slight, which surprises Gepard. Silver hair falls in a ragged curtain just past the shoulders, and brilliant, starlit eyes regard him with a knife-keen stare. Qlipoth kneels next to him, hand pulling aside his blood-soaked cloak with urgency.
“Stop moving.” The voice is feminine as well. Textured. Parts of it, melodic and beautiful; others, clipped and hurried. But, most of all, it’s distinctly human.
How is one supposed to address an Aeon? Divine One? Immaculate Lordship? Never in his wildest dreams could Gepard have expected to face the Preservation themself, come to Belobog in human flesh.
He attempts to push himself up, at least to kneel in respect—but Qlipoth’s hand lies firmly on his chest, pressing him back into the snow.
“Stop. You’re going to open it further.” Luminous eyes flicker to Gepard’s numb side. “This won’t be pleasant. Brace yourself.”
In the fuzzy haze of his mind, he can’t quite understand what the Aeon is saying. All he knows is that he has one last chance.
“Lord Qlipoth, I have a sister,” he grinds out, his voice thick and wet—from blood? Pus? Melted snow? “Serval. A workshop… in Belobog. Please, I entreat you. Tell her…” That she needn’t mourn? That he is sorry to leave her alone, the way Landaus always seem to be?
“Tell her yourself. I’m not a messenger. Or an Aeon.” Qlipoth—no, then, a huntress with Qlipoth’s blessing—retrieves a bottle from a fat pouch and uncaps it. The sharp odor of antiseptic pierces the cold musk of snow. “I haven’t learned much. I hope this works.”
“If you’re mortal…what are you doing?” Gepard slurs. How foolish of this huntress to tend a man good as dead. “Return to… Belobog. The Fragmentum…”
“Stop talking and conserve your strength.”
“It’s too late… for me.”
“I’m not in the business of letting others die.” She looks at him. “And you don’t seem in the business of giving up.”
“I’m not.”
“Good. Then don’t.” She pulls away a rag soaked with blood, his blood. Ah, has she been cleaning his wound? Odd. He’s felt nothing.
Then the huntress raises her fire-brand, and suddenly, Gepard understands.
“Maybe I should knock you out for this,” the huntress says. Past her unflappable facade, Gepard catches a glimpse of queasiness.
“No.” He fights off a grimace and steels himself. “Cauterize it.”
The huntress takes a breath and moves her blade. Pain explodes from Gepard’s side like a firecracker.
Then, blissful darkness.
ꕥ
LISTEN: One day, you may fall in love. It will be a quiet thing. A breeze without trees, a song without a voice. But you will know it by how it grows in you, fragile and beautiful, a sprout from a delicate seed.
And if you nurse it, it will destroy you.
ꕥ
When Gepard wakes, he is startlingly lucid. Firelight dances from a nearby brick hearth, painting the small room around him in sunset colors. He recognizes it as one of the abandoned, dilapidated houses that sprinkles the northern corridor of Old Belobog: ashen wood, cracked tile, dusted brick.
His rescuer, the huntress of Qlipoth, is stooped over a humble table in the middle of the room. She’s engrossed in dismantling shadewalker shells, pulling apart the exoskeletons for precious cores.
“Thank you,” Gepard says through a clumsy tongue. The huntress looks up. “You saved my life.”
She regards him for a moment, then returns to her task. “Take some credit. You should’ve been long dead. You’re a tough one.”
He watches the comforting, repetitive motions of her deft fingers as they carve apart alien fragments. He has never seen someone so fearless around Fragmentum monsters.
“Who are you?” he asks, awed.
“Shouldn’t you introduce yourself first?”
“Ah. My apologies.” Through the haze in his mind sounds a faint alarm. The Landau name is a significant one. What if this benefactor were a vagrant or a resentful underworlder, someone with a keen hatred for the Silvermane Guard? She could very well turn on him for his name alone.
But Gepard is not one to speak falsehoods, knowing too well the bitterness of their fruit. So, heart in his throat, he speaks:
“I am Gepard Landau, Captain of the Silvermane Guard.”
He waits for the other shoe to fall. The huntress only stares at him silently, starshine eyes unnervingly vibrant in the dim light.
Gepard frowns. “Are you… aware of the Silvermane Guard?”
“I’m aware,” the huntress replies. “I’ve seen you fight.”
“You… have?” Gepard does not wish to admit that he’d never seen her before. He would have remembered.
“From afar.” The huntress points to his geomarrow breastplate, which lies on the table. “The crystal is bright enough to show. Like a beacon.”
“Ah,” Gepard says numbly.
Slowly, his brain clicks to life. Crystal? She must truly be an outsider, if she does not even refer to it as geomarrow.
“Do you live out here?” he says disbelievingly. “In the heart of the Fragmentum? Alone?”
“More or less.” She turns to the hearth, kicking in some ashen material that sends it roaring.
“More or—! That’s not an adequate response.”
“Why not?”
“It’s perilous here. Beyond compare. No ordinary man could survive among all of these beasts or this frost.”
“You got that much right.” The huntress unhooks a kettle from over the hearth and pours water into a rusted cup. She holds it to his lips. “Drink. You’re dehydrated.”
Gepard drinks. It’s clear, refreshing snowmelt, and immediately, he realizes just how thirsty he is. He takes two cups, then three.
“Thank you,” he says, subdued. It’s unnerving to be so reliant on a stranger. Ever since reaching adulthood, he has always been the strong one, the one to overcome. Now he feels like a child again—pampered, nearly.
The huntress waves his thanks away and sets the kettle on the table. “I’ll make porridge tonight. We’ll see if you can hold anything down.”
“Your hospitality is appreciated.” Gepard hesitates, working up the courage for the question that hangs in his mind like a cloud. “Other than me, were there…any other survivors?”
“None that I saw.”
So easily said. So difficult to hear. Gepard exhales. “I see.”
Kind, quirky Dunn. Puppy-eyed Franz. Dead. Frozen over, just like this hellscape. A pounding ache rises behind Gepard’s eyes, yet tears refuse to shed. He’s too accustomed to strangling them in favor of a brave face. Instead, the ache settles as a knot between his temples that will never untie. More losses. More funerals. More empty rooms and unlit windows.
Gepard sighs, pushing himself against the headboard until he’s sitting up, gritting his jaw through the screaming pain in his side. The huntress turns quickly, eyes flashing.
“Lie back down,” she commands. “You’re not well.”
“How many days has it been?”
“Three. You’ve been in a feverish haze for most of it.”
Three days. Better than he expected, worse than he hoped. Lady Bronya would be questioning his whereabouts. Serval would be worried sick.
“My superiors will be awaiting a report,” Gepard says. “I must return to them.”
“You’ll return to them in a coffin if you go now.”
Gepard hesitates, frowning.
“At least wait until your side closes up,” the huntresses presses.
There is validity in her suggestion. Gepard wants nothing more than to set out for Belobog without delay, but there is likely a horde of monsters between him and his beloved city. To leave while he’s still recovering would be foolish pride, not bravery.
Gepard settles back in the bed. “Then I’ll accept your offer. I’m sorry to impose.”
“It’s fine.” The huntress tilts her head in an oddly endearing, catlike way. “I don’t mind the company.”
Doesn’t she? How odd. She seems the withdrawn, solitary sort, as evidenced by her choice of abode. But Gepard chooses not to press.
“You’re very kind,” he observes instead, quizzical.
“No.” The huntress reaches for a fiery shadewalker mask hanging on the wall and sets it over the crown of her nose. She turns to the door. “You just have no common sense.”
She disappears into the snow. Gepard sinks back beneath the covers, his mind clouded.
ꕥ
Tomorrow.
My family, tomorrow,
I shall go to the warm harbor,
and celebrate the end of my journey,
while laying my stiff bones
to rest.
— Katana Thomas, “The Traveler Who Survived the Blizzard,” c. 48 BF
ꕥ
The huntress leaves often and returns often. Every time, she’s laden with trophies. Old insignias. Small silver cores. Dark fragments. What exactly she gleans from them remains a mystery. Sometimes she feeds pieces into a sleek, whirring machine in the corner, and it smelts them into something new. Other times, she slots them into her equipment, which seems to consume resources with a ravenous hum. It is equal parts unnerving and engrossing to witness.
The huntress’s work is solitary and lonesome, and recovery has always been rather dull, so Gepard attempts to make conversation. Her shell appears impervious at first, but with a little insistent nudging, she opens up. She sheds small, precious facts like flecks of snow.
Her name is Stelle. Her favorite color is not the yellow that lines her jacket and tints her eyes, but its opposite—brilliant, sparkling blue, like an untainted ocean, like a sunny sky.
That shade is difficult to find here, Gepard admits ruefully.
Stelle looks right into his eyes. Yes, she says. I suppose it is.
He learns more: she’s reliant on instant food. She’s fascinated by games and puzzles. She likes trash cans and waste bins. Not the rare finds that can lie within them, no; the mere potential, the excitement of a closed container, the pain of not knowing.
And when she sleeps, her face softened and relaxed, she’s truly beautiful, lashes a silver slant on the curve of her cheek.
Gepard tries not to indulge such thoughts, or nurse what he knows to be a growing infatuation. She is wild and strange and dazzling, and trying to catch hold of her would be like trying to catch a shooting star.
It does not stop him from wanting, and it does not stop her from further worming her way into his soul.
She asks him questions. About Belobog, his city, the pride of his heart. About Lady Bronya and her unrelenting compassion, Pela and her steadfast fussiness. About Serval, his treasured, aggravating sister, both untamably wild and fiercely loyal.
“She would like you,” Gepard says. “You should meet her someday.”
Stelle’s slips curl into a small, perfect smile. “I’d like to.”
“Why don’t you?” says Gepard’s mouth before his mind has caught up. “You could come with me to Belobog. I’m certain that the Supreme Guardian would greatly appreciate your skills.”
Apprehension crosses Stelle’s face. “I’m not sure about that.”
“Surely it’s preferable to this wasteland. Why do you choose to remain out here?” Not within the protective wings of Belobog, not with allies?
The question is meant to be innocent, but immediately, Stelle clams up. Gepard sees how her spine clicks straight and her shoulders knot up. A shutter falls over her eyes, choking the light.
“It’s just how things turned out,” she says stiffly, turning away.
Gepard’s fingers dig into the mattress, and he tries not to feel stung. In the end, he’s still a stranger. There are stories to which he is not privy.
Still, there’s an uncomfortable pang that sits in his chest. A shard of geomarrow that will not dislodge.
ꕥ
LISTEN: Some lights, you only notice when all else is terribly, utterly dark.
ꕥ
Stelle is unfazed by everything. Creeping frost, corrosion, Fragmentum mutations. She appears invincible, the fire-brand an extension of her arm, her uncompromising will serving as both shield and sword.
So it unsettles Gepard when she suddenly stumbles against the table one evening, a ragged breath tearing from her chest.
Gepard, now able to be upright without fainting, stands immediately. “Are you alright?”
“It’ll pass.” To his concern, Stelle hunches on a beaten loveseat, hands raising to cradle her head. She hisses through her teeth, digging fingers into her silver hair with a grip that looks painful.
After a moment of deliberation, Gepard sits next to her and gingerly places a hand on her shoulder. He nearly withdraws when she tenses at the contact, but then she relaxes, leaning slightly into his hand. The motion of trust warms him.
“Is there anything I can do?” he tries.
She releases a shuddering breath. “This is good.”
Gepard rubs her shoulder with a thumb. And—to his shock—Stelle turns into him, curling in a soft line against his chest. Her head nestles under his jaw and she settles there comfortably, cradled in his arms like a lover. Heat flushes up Gepard’s neck and crawls to his ears. He clears his throat.
“This… this helps?” he manages.
“Mm.” Stelle sucks in a breath through her teeth. The pain must be starting again. “Helps to… know someone’s there. That it’s not real.”
Gepard understands that much. He’s felt the same, waking in a cold sweat with hands clinging for reality, the dying screams of comrades still ringing from his nightmares. So, despite the terrible breach of propriety, he raises a hand to drift through Stelle’s hair in slow, comforting strokes. It’s silkier than he expected, flowing through his fingers in a river. His pulse quickens. He attempts to slow it through measured breathing.
“What ails you?” he asks quietly.
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
“I hear voices.” Stelle laughs a little. A pretty, broken sound. “The… plague in your world. It knows that I’m here.”
Gepard stops. “The plague?”
“The thing causing the Fragmentum, the monsters. Maybe even the eternal freeze.”
Gepard straightens, eager. “Wait, you—you know the cause?”
“Well… yes.”
“How? No, wait. We must inform the Supreme Guardian at once.” Hope rises quickly. His mind is spinning. “We could remove the Fragmentum. Restore the corroded Belobog sectors, return citizens to their homes. And it would bring relief to you as well.”
“No,” Stelle says abruptly, looking up. “No one but me should approach it.”
Gepard’s brows knit together. “You may be reluctant to trust others, but the Silvermane Guard would make for strong allies.”
“You’d only be liabilities.”
That ignites his anger. “Just because you were specially blessed by Qlipoth does not mean that the rest of us—”
“It’d freeze all of you!” Stelle’s gaze is touched with a wild, frightening light, a supernova ready to boil over. “It’ll take this—this warmth, this kindness. And it’ll make it a husk. Make you a husk.” Her fingers curl in and she hits a fist against his chest with a dull thud. “Just… silence. Nothing but ice.”
Silence rests between them. Gepard slowly raises a hand and rests his fingers over hers. Her warm pulse alights under his fingertips, fragile and beautiful like the beating wings of a moth.
“Who was frozen?” he asks softly.
Stelle’s eyes flicker. A hint of panic. A trapped rabbit.
“Everyone,” she says.
He waits until her breathing slows and she calms. Then she speaks.
Her tale is like this: she was once a traveler on a train that soared between the stars. Something interfered with the route through Jarilo-VI, and before she knew it, the train had crash-landed onto the planet—right in the heart of the Fragmentum.
“It’s called a Stellaron,” she says shakily. “An… object, or something that causes terrible phenomena. Like the Fragmentum. Maybe the freeze.”
With their surveying equipment in shambles, Stelle’s fellow crewmates had disembarked to gather their bearings, and she’d followed them.
They’d recognized the danger too late.
“One was frozen before we could sense a thing. And the others…” Her mouth pulls tight and her eyes slide shut. “Risked their lives to get me out. Now I’m here, while they’re cold and lifeless somewhere else.”
A chill slowly creeps down Gepard’s back. “Even with your immeasurable strength—”
“Oh.” Stelle chuckles wryly. “Hardly. I couldn’t do much back then. Took a brush with death to even…” She gestures to her fire-brand, which hangs idly on the wall, humming contentedly. “I don’t know. Whatever that is. I’ve… learned a lot since then.”
Learned a lot. A curious way to put the daily struggle to survive, pushing herself beyond her boundaries, driving herself to exhaustion for the sake of growing stronger. Gepard regards the cold, colorless terrain outside the window, and thinks that it must have made for a horribly lonely life.
It steels him all the more, knowing the burdens she’s had to carry thus far.
“We will accompany you,” he says firmly. “This is not just your fight. All of Belobog is tormented by the Fragmentum, every citizen besieged by the freeze. And even if we don’t share your particular strength… do not underestimate the value of a friend’s sword at your back. I’ve learned as much with my men.”
Yes, alone, each soldier is hardly noteworthy. But together, they are the immovable force that holds fast the gates of Belobog.
Stelle’s gaze softens. Her eyes glow like fireflies, a dim but mesmerizing burn.
“Thank you,” she says. She presses her forehead back into his shoulder. “I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have allies.”
Gepard swallows, feeling the pink crawling into his cheeks. He fully expects Stelle to pull away, but she makes no move, perfectly content to stay curled up with him.
“Is it—is it still speaking to you?” he says. “The Stellaron?”
She doesn’t respond, and Gepard finds that it doesn’t particularly matter to him. Because if she has gone months, perhaps even years without human touch, then he cannot begrudge her this.
He cannot begrudge her anything.
ꕥ
LISTEN: Attachment to something means that it will tear you apart when it leaves.
ꕥ
It’s not long before Gepard is moving, and even less time before he’s ready to set out. Much as he appreciates Stelle’s company, there’s a permanent itch under his skin to return to Belobog. The Guard should have retained the presence of mind to retreat across the bridge and disable it, but still, Gepard’s mind will not rest until he sees his city safe and sound.
Stelle hovers around him, prodding his side with a finger. “All recovered,” she says, frowning. “I’ve never seen anything like it. That kind of injury would’ve been fatal for anybody else.”
“Perhaps you’re not the only one favored by the Preservation.” He’s always been tough. Recovered faster than he had any right. Stelle probably does now, too, with Qlipoth’s blessing and all.
Stelle pokes at his side again, silent.
“Am I fit to be discharged, doctor?” Gepard says, trying for a note of humor.
Stelle doesn’t smile, which surprises him. She’s usually quick to share in a witty word.
“Yes,” she says distantly. “Then I guess it’s back to Belobog.” She takes up her fire-brand. “You’ll have to lead us across the plains. I’ve never really been.”
She’s accompanying him? “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”
“There’s a Fragmentum army out there.” Stelle gives him a level look. “No use in nursing you back to health if you die on the way back.”
“I suppose not,” he says, smiling. Dying is not really a concept that prompts smiles, but he can’t stop the note of giddiness at just a few moments more with the huntress.
They move quickly. Gepard is accustomed to the steady, disciplined pace of military companies, but he and Stelle are only a party of two. It makes them fast, maneuverable. He follows Stelle as she weaves expertly through the decaying city like a gazelle, light on her feet, fire-brand sizzling in deft lines through unknowing shadewalkers. She burns like a comet through the frozen graveyard, all the way to the corridor outskirts.
The sight is hypnotic. Gepard tries not to watch too closely.
They change formation when they reach the snow plains, and Gepard takes the lead. Shadewalkers converge on them like locusts, but side by side, he and Stelle are unyielding. His shield breaks into the snow, crushing their adversaries with glacial anchors; then Stelle’s blade sears forth, quickmelting the frost into burning trails that sink through the chinks of their armor.
“You’re better than I thought,” Stelle says, a new glimmer in her eye.
Gepard’s ears burn. “I am a captain.” He would put Belobog to shame if he could not even pull his own weight.
“You must be a good one.” Her lips pull up. “I never have to worry about watching my back.”
It is a high compliment indeed, coming from the lips of such a capable fighter.
They work their way through the northern plains. It’s sobering to see how much ground Old Belobog has lost, entire streets and blocks torn apart and buried under the ever-climbing snowbanks. Finding the northern gate standing proudly, a bulwark raised above the endless sea of white, is no small relief. Even better—Gepard can see that the bridge has been severed on one side, keeping most of the Fragmentum swarm out of Belobog and on the plains.
A ruthless move to most; a necessary one to the Guard. The sacrifice of a few had kept safe the many.
“As promised,” Stelle says. “You’re home.”
Gepard exhales. He’s always known that Belobog would stand strong even in his absence, but it’s good to confirm with his own eyes. He reactivates the console and turns the bridge, carefully making his way across.
It’s not until he’s reached the gate on the other side that he realizes Stelle is still on the snowbank, unmoving.
“What’s wrong?” he calls. He glances around. “Is it the lack of railings? I assure you that the bridge is perfectly safe.”
“The plan was to get you to Belobog,” Stelle says. “Nothing more.”
Her tone is unusually strained. Frowning, Gepard turns the bridge back and steps before her.
“You won’t see the Supreme Guardian?” he says.
“I’d better not.”
That’s unexpected. “Your personal testimony would be of great value.” Stelle doesn’t speak. “I can relay the news, but it would be better if she could meet you.” In fact, protocol dictates that as an outsider, Gepard should take Stelle in—whether she wants it or not. But that seems a profoundly ungrateful way to treat his life’s savior.
Stelle shakes her head. “Talking isn’t really a strength of mine.”
“Madame Cocolia may appear imposing, but I believe her to be a just and kind authority.”
Stelle doesn’t seem convinced. Her fingers tap nervously on the hilt of her fire-brand. Then she shakes her head again.
“It’s better for me out here,” she says. “In the open.”
Perhaps to her, the city would not feel like a fortress, but a prison. Gepard frowns, but he pushes away the sting of disappointment. He would have liked to show her around his city and all its beauty, its little idiosyncrasies. Maybe one day. One day after the Fragmentum.
“Then I suppose this is where we part ways,” he says reluctantly.
“I guess so,” Stelle says.
“I appreciate the kindness you have shown me, truly. Rest assured that I will find a way to compensate you in full.”
“You don’t have to worry about that.”
“It’s the least I can do. And if what you say is true, then our cause is united.” He brings a fist to his chest in sharp salute. “The Silvermane Guard will stand with you.”
He turns back to the bridge, and has just stepped on its rusted plane when Stelle’s hand suddenly grips his sleeve.
“Wait,” she says, gaze burning gold. “You have one week. If I don’t see you by then… I’m coming to find you.”
Gepard is a little surprised by the heat behind Stelle’s words. There’s no reason for worry; Madame Cocolia has never doubted his words, and surely the Guardian will be eager to rid Belobog of the slow decay creeping at its doorstop.
Still, warmth touches his cheeks. He can’t deny the touching feeling of being… worried about. Cared for. One chance encounter—that’s all he’s had with this mysterious huntress, but it was more than enough to form a bond.
He brazenly lifts her hand and presses his mouth to the back of her knuckles. Stelle does not budge; she watches him soundlessly, a deer ready to scare.
“In one week’s time, then,” he murmurs. “I will return with allies.”
Stelle nods silently. Is Gepard imagining the lightest blush on her face, the warm glow in her eyes? She doesn’t stay long enough for him to chance a closer look. Like a fleeing doe, she pulls away and darts into the snow, figure vanishing in the silver flecks of spindrift.
Gepard turns the bridge with the console, separating the plains from the gate once more. As the doors shut behind him with a low, ringing finality, he steps back into the waiting arms of Belobog, embraced by an amber sky.