Zachary Jernigan: No Return

“I represent your best chance for victory at Danoor,” Vedas said. “I demand a wage.”

The memory of Julit Umeda’s death asserted itself again. The hellhound’s jaws closed around her head. The weight of its body carried her to the ground. Vedas banished the vision from his mind, only for it to be replaced by the memory of breaking the hellhound’s neck, knowing that he was too late. Picking the girl’s limp body up, surprised at how heavy she was in his arms. The smell of vomit rising from her shirt.

“Please,” he said.

For a moment the room was silent. Then Abse nodded.

Fate sealed, the tension in Vedas’s shoulders eased fractionally. He would leave the nation of Dareth Hlum. He would travel the length of Knoori to compete in Danoor, representing Golna’s Black Suits in the near-eternal dispute between the Followers of Adrash and the Followers of Man. In the land of his ancestors he would win glory for the orders and converts to the faith, or he would die.

Before leaving, he would visit the parents of Julit Umeda, offering what comfort he could.

BERUN

THE 14 thOF THE MONTH OF SOLDIERS, 12499 MD

THE CITY OF GOLNA, NATION OF DARETH HLUM

The city of Golna, capitol of Dareth Hlum, was an arid splinter in the easternmost flank of the continent of Knoori. Roughly arrowhead-shaped, its southern and northern shores were bordered by the split end of the river Riolsam, which the residents simply called the Sam. On both shores the privileged had built their private estates, beautiful and airy buildings of imported oilwood and glass, outfitted with private docks below broad balconies on stilts.

The clear waters of the sea some men called Jeru and others called Deathshallow lapped perpetually at the broad eastern beachfront, which the poorest residents called home. Though the shore was undeniably beautiful, beasts had a habit of hauling themselves from the water and terrorizing the citizens along the beach. As a result, the slums’ makeshift defensive wall was forever being repaired.

The majority of Golna’s million souls did not live near the water, however. They had spread over the rocky, dry-shrubbed hill that dominated the island, segregating themselves into ethnic communities of various sizes and economic stature. Eventually, each came to embrace and jealously guard a principal industry.

This is how Butchertown became Butchertown. Everyone trusted a Vunni with a knife, as long as it was poised over a sheep or cow carcass. Theirs was not a prosperous community, but it was safe and clean, and it comprised the

northeast tip of the city. Built into the steep side of the hill, its houses leaned at crazy angles toward the sea. Blood ran in channels into the sea.

Butchertown was famous for its butchers, of course. Its pastush bakeries— the only ones of their kind outside Vunn itself—were also quite renowned. The city’s most attractive prostitutes lived on the Avenue of Broken Pottery. And the Anadrashi temple in the Square of Nights, O’men As, was generally considered to be Golna’s most austere.

For close to a decade, however, the community had been known for one thing above all else: the constructed man known as Berun. He had fought in and won many of the fighting tournaments the city had held in the previous eight years. Though strong men had on occasion incapacitated him with the blow of a heavy weapon, only mages and those highly skilled fighters possessing elder-cloth suits stood a likely chance against him.

He lived on the roof of a Black Suit abbey, home of the Seventeenth Order, though he himself abstained from sectarian violence. Every day from sunrise to mid-afternoon he rested, absorbing the sun’s rays for nourishment. In order to get the most sunlight, he allowed his manlike body to relax completely, spreading into a large circular carpet of dull bronze spheres of varying sizes.

The two glowing blue coals of his eyes perched on the roof ’s edge, connected to the main mass of his body by a thin tendril of spheres no larger than green peas. He took pleasure in watching the early morning routines—the corral of cows and sheep, the haggling over wares in the ruins of the Shoen Adrashi temple, and the extinguishing of the red magefire lamps lining the Avenue of Broken Pottery.

The ordinary activities of men fascinated him, though it was a rare occasion when he engaged them on a social level. Too often, such streetside conversations turned into discussions of religion or money, and Berun had little use for either. This afternoon, like most afternoons, would find him in the abbey courtyard, observing the brothers and sisters at practice. Perhaps the abbey master would ask him to help with the training. It amused him to slowly choreograph an attack for the novices, and let them pummel him with their staffs.

Only large gatherings and other interesting events drew him out of the building. Fights and festivals were his favorites, but he also enjoyed taking part in the charitable works the Seventeenth organized on occasion. There were always buildings to be rebuilt, families to be comforted. The west end of Butchertown bordered Querus, a small Tomen neighborhood. Though both communities professed forms of Anadrashism, neither could agree on the particulars. Bombings, alchemical and chemical, were not uncommon.

Humans were odd, in Berun’s estimation. Odd in their preoccupations. Surrounded by others of their kind, knowing their concerns were mirrored a hundred thousand times over the course of generations, they still did harm to their neighbors.

As the sole member of his species, Berun considered this odd, indeed.

‡

In the Month of Bakers he had turned twelve years old. He did not tell anyone, for the age meant nothing. In truth, he was little different from the being he had been upon waking for the first time. Experience left its mark, but his fundamental nature could not be altered.

He had not been created in Golna. The dialect in which he spoke, full of rolled R’s and elongated vowels, was not common in the city. Its speakers, the people of Nos Ulom, had long been banned from Dareth Hlum. The nations were old enemies. Whereas Dareth Hlum took great pride in its religious neutrality, allowing any sect to proselytize and even battle in the street if properly registered, Nos Ulom took equal pride in its conservative Adrashism, the expression of which the government closely monitored.

Dareth Hlum considered Nos Ulom a nation of dangerous extremists.

Oddly, if this had not been the case, Berun would never have been allowed into Dareth Hlum.

Before achieving fame for fighting in the city, he had achieved notoriety in Nos Ulom for assassinating Patr Macassel, High Pontiff of Dolin. The man, arguably the most powerful religious figure on the continent, was killed in his sleep, skull crushed beyond recognition by hands twice as large as a normal man’s.

Berun had not bothered to destroy the elder eyes that had been set into the rafters above Macassel’s bedroom. As dictated by custom, court mages blinded a slave and implanted the elder eyes so that they could be read, after which the manhunt officially began. For twelve days, the royal mount followed the constructed man through the pinefields of southern Nos Ulom. On the morning of the thirteenth, Berun slipped across the border to Casta, leaving forty-two men dead and many more injured behind him.

The government of Nos Ulom tried its best to cover up the story, claiming Macassel had died of natural causes. They never offered an ounce of bone or skin in bounty for Berun’s body.

Their clumsy efforts of obfuscation failed, and Berun became a hero to the various Anadrashi factions of the continent. Adding insult to injury, Nos Ulom’s Royal Redcoats failed to stop locals from burning the home of Ortur Omali, Berun’s creator and the nation’s most powerful mage. Nothing of value was found in the rubble, and few believed the official story that Omali had died in the conflagration.