Chapter 393 - The View From Down Below, Again

Been a while since I did a chapter this experimental! Feels good! Might double-dip! Could be fun! I really like the chapters that help the world feel more complete, like stories of all kinds could be told with so many different parts of it, and alternate POVs like this one can be really, really fun. Enjoy!

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AT CURRENT CENSUS, THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY THREE MILLION, SIX-HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN THOUSAND, FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY FOUR LIVING CITIZENS WITHIN THE FALLEN KINGDOM. THIS NUMBER HAS DECREASED AT A STEADY RATE OF 2.3% FOR THE LAST SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY YEARS, BUT DUE TO DIMINISHING POPULATION FACTORS, HAS SOMEWHAT STABILIZED IN RECENT YEARS.

WHILE THE IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW BIRTHS FOR CITIZENS ARE RARE DUE TO THE LACK OF RESOURCES ALLOCATED FOR THE PROJECT, MOST RESIDENTIAL INFRASTRUCTURE HAS SURVIVED ENVIRONMENTAL PHASE-SHIFT, AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ADDITIONAL ARCHITECTURE, MECHANISMS, AND TRAINING HAS ALLOWED FOR A RELATIVE DEGREE OF INDEPENDENCE FROM LOCAL CONCLAVES. POPULATIONS WITHIN SAID CONCLAVES REMAIN RELATIVELY STABLE, WITH A MILD GROWTH FACTOR OF 3.6% EVERY DECADE, OFFSET BY OCCASIONAL LOSSES DUE TO UNSECURED TERRITORY OR INCIDENTAL ENCOUNTERS WITH LOCAL THREATS. 

OVERALL PRODUCTION OF DEATH-ASPECTED ENERGY HAS REMAINED AT A CONSISTENT PEAK IN SPITE OF THIS RELATIVE STABILITY, INDICATED A STRONG POSSIBILITY THAT THE THEORY OF END-BASED RECURSING ENERGY GENERATION IS POSSIBLE. IF, AS CERTAIN RESEARCH SUGGESTS, THE DEATH OF A LANDSCAPE CAN BE USED AS A NEAR INDEFINITE POWER SOURCE, AS OPPOSED TO SMALLER AND MORE CONVENIENTLY UTILIZED BURSTS OF LOCAL DEATHS, THIS ONLY REAFFIRMS OUT PATH. WITH THE CHURCH’S PURPOSE ONLY FURTHER STRENGTHENED BY THIS UNDERSTANDING, WE SHALL CONTINUE TO MAINTAIN CURRENT OBSERVATIONAL PATTERNS. LOCAL POPULATIONS SHALL BE ENCOURAGED TO REMAIN STATIONARY AND STATIC FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE.

GLORY BE.

-Official documentation from the Department of Eschatology, Mortaria, Second District, Office of Bishop Ruk Citra

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It sounds like the End of the world. 

The elder always said that the End wouldn’t sound like anything at all, that it would be like a big silence that came over everything all at once, but Bi Shuma is pretty sure that if the sound she’s hearing is anything, it’s the End of the world. 

The horizon keeps glowing brighter and brighter. Every day, day by day, it seems to approach, and the distant structures of the ancients, the sky to the west, get little easier to see. At night, the world glows white and silver, black and gold, red and strange, and everyone huddles indoors, unwilling to stare too long at the way that war approaches. 

Except for her, obviously. 

As the far-off thunder crawls across the earth, stopping only every few hours before starting again, she sits on the side of a fence, staring out at it, her eyes wide and bright. 

It’s not every day you get to watch the End of the world, after all!

It’s the third day in a row that the rumbling of the approaching danger can be felt as much as heard. The fence kind of vibrates underneath her, making for a very uncomfortable massage as she sits, her butt quickly getting sore. Still better than just standing, because then it just tickles her feet, even through extra socks and bits of cloth she stuffs into her shoes.

A particularly loud bit of thunder echoes past, and some of the farm-bulbs tremble a bit at the force of it. 

Idly, Bi Shuma reaches out to pat one of the big hunks of meat, growing up out of the ground. She’s never been very good with them, but she does think they’re sort of cute, the way their plump, round polyps pop out of the ground in big bushels. Sometimes they have little extra bones and meat, which make them kind of look like babies, which are fun to poke. They’re all a little unnerved by the incoming conflict, which is probably going to make the harvest taste a bit sour, but that will really only matter if the harvest ever happens. 

The End of the world is thundering on the horizon. 

She sighs. On the bright side, it’ll be a lot less work. 

“Enjoying the view?”

Bi Shuma startles so bad that she actually falls off the fence, landing on her ass on the hard ground. The ash is so dense that it cracks, coughing up a little cloud of dust as she lands- not deep enough that it’ll hurt the roots of the bulbs, but deep enough that someone will definitely know that someone fell.

She scrambles back against one of the bulbs, the warmth of its skin comforting her as she turns to try and find who snuck up on her. 

A figure emits a soft chuckle, shaking their head as they lean on their forearms over the fence, smiling. 

“Hell of a fall. You alright down there?”

They’re a stranger. 

It’s the End of the world, and there’s a stranger in town.

Bi Shuma stares, eyes wide, at the woman leaning on the railings of the farm. 

She’s mostly skeletal, even more than some of the elders in town, like she hasn’t eaten in years and years. Her eyes, though, are bright, the sockets recessed but a gleam of black pupils on white sclera matching the smile below them. Dressed in a long and crappy robe that looks like it’s seen better days, she seems like a vagrant or some sort of wanderer, one arm a deep black, like the skin is made of soil under moonlight, and one arm a bright, pale white, almost like bone. 

“You fell on your ass, not your head, kid. Can you talk?”

Bi Shuma gets her arms behind her, lifting herself up off the ground using a polyp as support. The strangers eyes dart to the polyp, tracking its twitches, but it’s only another moment before Shuma’s back on her feet, and the eyes go back to her. 

“Who are you?” Bi Shuma asks, keeping her voice calm. Her feet are well planted, ready to run- everyone knows that when a stranger shows up, you need to warn people. 

“Eh, nobody you need to worry about. All the big scary stuff is waaaay over that way,” the stranger says, waving their black hand at the horizon and the ongoing thunder. “Me, I’m just… sightseeing. When else are you going to go for a walk, if not at the end of the world?”

“The world’s not ending,” Bi Shuma replies, frowning.

The stranger tilts her head, raising an eyebrow inside the dark of her cloak. “Does everyone always huddle in one big building at night, then? I assumed that all the houses were meant for living in. If they’re just for decoration, I respect the choice.”

The stranger knows where everyone is. Has she been walking through the town? How come no one’s seen her? Did the alarms not say anything?

She’s starting to regret sneaking out. Just a little.

“Just because something big and scary is happening doesn’t mean the world is ending. The End of the world is going to be silent, everyone knows that.”

The stranger laughs a little at that, the sound cold and breathy, like her lungs aren’t so good. “And you know what? They’re probably right. The big E End isn’t very loud, in my experience. The silence of it is, though. Doesn’t mean that the end isn’t coming, though. Big difference. Big scary. And a bit too much for a kid like you. Pretty soon it’s going to be too close, and that’ll start to make a mess. Why don’t we take you back over to your parents, hmm?”

Bi Shuma frowns, pulling a bit further back and away. “You mean the spawners?”

The stranger tilts her head. “I… don’t think so. Weird emphasis, there. Not an insult, I think. Do they plant you, like these polyps? Or do they… ‘spawn’ you, and no more? Feels like everywhere I go, things are always so… different.”

Bi Shuma is very, very ready to run. 

It’s one thing to know that the End of the world is coming, another to feel its touch, another yet to see the kind of horrors that she’s been told about her whole life. A stranger, someone from the winds, not of the ash and soil, not from the cities, even.

“Well… if you’re looking for them, they’re over there,” she says, pointing with her chin.

The moment the stranger’s eyes leave her, she bolts. 

She darts under the fence, past the polyps, down onto the main path. She runs as hard as she can, her breaths panting, her legs heaving- if there is one thing that Bi Shuma is known for, it’s that she’s quick and hard to catch. That’s how she’s always gotten away, even when she’s not sneaky enough. The dirt and ash feel soft under her feet as she runs, sprinting in towards the center of town.

She dashes past some of the outer homes, more decrepit and first abandoned at the sight of the horizon burning. Broken glass and hard concrete walls, partially worn down by time, quickly get cleaner and better maintained as she runs, until she makes it past the bigger and blockier buildings leading to town center. 

There, out of breath, sweating from the desperate sprint, she sees the town hall.

Sharp angled, brutal, covered in well-made bits of metal that even old man Kui can’t smith in his workshop. At the middle of town, the perfectly rectangular building sits as the heart of the town, glowing with windows lit by candles on the inside, artificial lights glowing bright along its edges. The door is completely sealed, of course, the interlocking parts already connected and shut, but there’s a little corner around the back she can use.

With one final burst of speed, her lungs burning, she dashes around the building, comes around the right corner, and then taps, three times, then four, then two, against one of the windows.

At first, nothing happens. She turns to stare back the way she came, the brightness of the horizon not enough to let her see clearly. No sign of the stranger. Maybe it was just a passing wraith, and by tricking it, she’s safe.

Better to be careful, though.

She growls, then knocks against the corner back window again, a little louder this time. She’s not nearly as worried about being found out as before, not in the face of such a close experience with the dangers of the dark. She almost goes to knock a third time- but then the half-latched, half-broken gear clicks, and the window swings open. 

Her brother pokes his head out of the window, glaring at her. 

“Shuma! I told you-”

“Hsst! Shh!” 

She throws herself in through the window, scrambling over the edge and shoving Bi Haro aside, falling into the building. The moment she feels concrete against her shoulder, she breathes a sigh of relief- and then sits up, pointing back at the window.

“Close it! Close it! Close it!”

Motivated by her panic, he stops glaring at her, turning and pushing as hard as he can against the window. In spite of the one broken gear, it’s still a functional barricade, and it fights back against him as he shoves it, but Bi Haro is a big lad, and their cousin is with him tonight, his arms coating her brother’s and lending him added strength. 

The window slams shut, the mechanisms understanding at last that they’re not closed like they should be and whirring shut. Bi Haro yanks the tiny little pin they used to poke open the mechanism to unlatch it in the first place, sealing the miniscule flaw back into the rest of the system and letting it lock everything back into place.

Only when it finishes latching does Bi Shuma finally let out the breath she was holding, a wave of adrenaline falling out of her heart like a sudden block of ice.

She lays there, panting, out of breath, drenched in sweat. 

Bi Haro glares down at her, throwing his arms out, asking in no uncertain terms- 

“What the hells, Shuma! That was so loud! I promised to help you not get caught, not to cover for you if you wake up the entire town!”

She shakes her head, fighting to get her breathing back under control. 

“There was… a… there was a stranger.”

Haro’s outrage calms, almost immediately, then shifts into an entirely different shape. In a panic, he kneels down next to her, grabbing her face, tilting her chin to get a good look into her eyes, pulling her lip open to see her teeth.

“I’m not- Haro! It didn’t get me! I-”

“Shush! You met a stranger? From the ash? Did you see where it came from? Was it from the storm?”

“It’s not a storm, dummy, and no, they just… I don’t know, she just showed up! I didn’t see where they came from. I was just in one of the fields and-”

“You were where?”

The new voice sends a fresh thrill of fear running through her, for an entirely different reason. 

Slowly, she and Bi Haro both turn their heads to stare at the figure looming over them.

Dressed in some of the more stately robes of the town elder’s guards, her big brother glares down at the two of them, his gaze hard, little wisps of wraith-matter drifting from out between his lips as he seems to hold back a snarl. 

“You went out? While we’re in quarantine?”

“Say it a little louder, won’t you?” Bi Shuma hisses, waving at him to calm down. “I’m not sure if the elders heard you! It was just for a minute, and I’m fine, I promise.”

“You don’t look fine!” Bi Nuris says, his voice a low grumble. “You look like you realized you had a terrible idea, and then had to run to get back.”

His gaze does soften a bit, however, as it looks over her. He sighs, quietly.

“Are you alright?”

She rolls her eyes at him, but… eventually, she nods. “I’m fine. But… there’s a stranger out in the fields.”

For a frozen moment, her brothers turn, look at each other, and communicate something in perfect silence.

She hates it when they do that.

Bi Haru picks her up by the back of her shirt, lifting her like she’s barely more than a handful of grapes, and their elder brother takes her from him, dangling her off the ground.

“Hey! Wait, no, don’t-”

“We have to tell the elder about this.”

“Just tell him I saw it through the window! You don’t have to-”

“And I’m telling mom.”

“WHAT! No, don’t tell mom, please, it was no big deal, I swear it wasn’t even-”

But at this point, she’s already been carried all the way over out of the corner of the basement, out of the storage room, and around the corner- where people are already congregating at the amount of noise they’ve been making.

“Oh, what has she done this time?” asks old lady Keru, who’s old and nosy and should mind her own business and whose polyp pie isn’t even that good. 

“Listen here, child, if you’ve messed with the supplies, you’ll be in for a world of trouble!” says her husband, old mister Kinu, who probably only got married because their names sound alike and because they look the same and are both way too nosy for their own good.

Bi Shuma kicks her feet in the air, trying madly to get her hands around Bi Nuris’ grip on the back of her shirt, which is getting stretched, damn it. “I didn’t do anything!” she says, flailing in vain. “This is totally unjust treatment! I’m being bullied just because my stupid brother thinks he’s special, when he’s just a big idiot that likes it when people tell him what to do!”

“She says she might have seen a stranger,” Bi Nuris says, ignoring her well-reasoned complaints on his character. 

“A stranger?” asks another member of the crowd, who might be Ji Senki the farmer, but she can’t really tell because she’s currently being carried like a stupid bundle of fruit. “Is that true? We need to take her to the elders, then.”

“Already on my way,” her traitorous older brother says, not rolling his eyes like he should be about all these stupid questions. 

She gets carted with an ever-growing crowd alongside her, both brothers on either side, one of them carrying himself like he’s constipated and has a stupid look on his face, the other like he’s trying not to be seen and with a stupid look on his face. Pretty soon, as she’s navigated through the dozen or more corridors in the labyrinthine mess of the bunker, she’s got half the village following along, mumbling.

Only when she’s finally dumped in front of one of the nicer rooms, that has furniture and some of the big fancy panels that connect to all the metal, does she finally get to start kicking her feet and trying to get away again.

Of course, the moment she tries to scramble back out of the doorway, a hand made of wraith-matter grabs hold of her, holding her just as tightly as her brother did. 

“What is it this time?” asks an old, quiet voice. 

The elder is sitting in a meeting with a half-dozen other senior members of the community, all of them looking down at the disruption in their midst. Other members of the town guard and the elder’s protectors are around the edges, keeping a close eye on the crowd of people actively trying to peek in from around the corner. Her brother goes down to one knee, saluting across his chest.

“My sister appears to have caused some trouble again, elder,” he says, pointedly ignoring Bi Shuma’s glare. “It would seem that the old corner window in the storeroom has degraded enough that she managed to open it enough to… peek out. She claims that when she did, she saw a stranger.”

Bi Shuma does not, in any way, appreciate the fact that he’s not saying what actually happened. Especially because it would be bad for him too, since he’s the one who told her and Bi Haro about it when they were younger and he still cared about being the cool older brother. Nope, doesn’t appreciate it one bit.

“Has she been possessed? Affected?” the elder asks, even though obviously she wouldn’t have let Bi Nuris carry her around like a fricking vermin if she had brand new wraith-powers. 

“No!” she yells, almost at the exact same time as Bi Nuris says it, much more calmly.

“She hasn’t been,” her brother says, shaking his head. “No trace of wraith-matter on her, and no strange behaviors. Just her usual… personality.”

The elder scoffs softly, but nods. “Very well then. Bi Shuma? Tell us what you saw.”

“She saw me,” says a voice from out of the crowd. 

Everyone turns as one to stare, to try and identify the surprise- and audibly gasps pale skin flexing in sync as they step back from the stranger in their midst.

The stranger raises her hand, waving politely, and then gives a strange sort of bow, one that Bi Shuma hasn’t seen before. 

“Just stopping by, elder,” says the stranger, acting like it isn’t someone from outside of town, someone who isn’t marked with the official seals of Mortaria or with any groups from any other villages. Like it isn’t the scariest thing in the room. Like it didn’t someone follow in the midst of an entire crowd of people who were actively panicking and suspicious, and not be noticed by a single one. 

“I’m a traveler, and thought to introduce myself along the ways which I walk. There’s a bit of a mess coming over the horizon, one I bear a part in, and it felt incredibly rude not to say hello and offer tribute for the sake of those in its path.”

The elder… doesn’t strike. Doesn’t use their magics, granted to them by the great old ones of Mortaria, which sustain much of the runes and enchantments of the village, to beat back their enemy. Bi Shuma’s eyes dart to where people are still now retreating from the stranger- is it that the elder can’t? That they might hurt people?

Her brother, next to her, has frozen stuff, but has done so while crouched in front of her, shielding her with an arm. Bi Haro is back in the crowd, and Shuma sees her mother, held back by her younger child’s arms, her eyes wide. Bi Shiya’s face keeps darting between the stranger and her kids, between it and the elder and the important figures of the town behind them.

Instead, the elder bows, mimicking the stranger’s movements.

“We are grateful for your kindness, honorable parishioner,” the elder says, instead of doing any of the crazy magics she knows he can do, that can summon the spirits of those passed on and which can flay wild beasts of the ash apart with a gesture. “Still, our humble town is much too unimportant to bear any weight upon your time. How may we best serve you, that we might speed your journey?”

The stranger tilts her head, smiling- but softly. Not as sharply as before.

“I appreciate your words, elder,” she says. “But in truth, I’ve come to offer my services to you. With your permission, I’d like to strengthen some of the wards around your town. As it stands, the incoming… conflict will cause quite a bit of trouble for your people, and as I bear some responsibility, I’d like to help with that, if I can.”

The elder hesitates for a moment. Even Bi Shuma can tell, this is an unexpected moment. Whoever this stranger is, they’re not just a wraith from the ashes or a wandering criminal. To be treated with respect like this by the elder must mean they’re important, no matter how strange they look- and they’re offering something, which is… good? Shuma’s not sure. It seems to have put the elder even more on edge than before, and she can see many of the villagers looking around at each other with fear, but… less sharp than before, even though it seems bigger.

“I wouldn’t dare to refuse such a generous offer,” the elder says, in spite of how Shuma can see that the bowing pose he’s holding must be affecting his back. He’s always complaining about it, and one time, she brought him a warming pack for it, and he thanked her, and then didn’t scold her too badly when he found the biting ant she left in it. Yet, he’s holding the pose, as if speaking to someone who he can’t look into the eyes of.

“If I may, honorable parishioner- what might this simple town elder refer to you by? Is there a proper title by which we may address you?”

The stranger waves a hand, as if dismissing the idea outright. “I’m not too comfortable with titles. You can just call me Raika.”