William

No one knew Death like William. He danced with her most nights, sometimes dared to defy her, though ultimately no power prevented Death from reaping her fill. She was queen, eternal, limitless, especially so here where the stench of death hovered over agonized screams and smoking entrails.

William knelt among mud, gore, piss, and shit. They seeped into his stained trousers. The scent of burning leather seared his nostrils through the cloth wrapped tightly around his face. A soldier laid before him, insides painting his outsides. Slaughter and stench, vomit and copper, wafted from the open wound. Snow flurries clung to his frozen hair and frostbitten uniform.

Every corpse-to-be he stumbled upon reminded him of years ago, a child listening to war stories told by foolish gentlemen with nothing to do. The fantastical tales high society spoke of never painted reality. They gossiped of heroes and adventures, of glory and the Holy Soul guiding brave soldiers through Elysium’s waters, not shit stained trousers, maggot infested abdomens, and gouged eyes.

“Did we win, Doctor?” the soldier croaked in a puff of white smoke. Blood caked his bruised and chapped lips. His left arm lay a foot away, revolver clutched between blue-tinted fingers.

“We did. The monsters of Lockehold are vanquished and the road to the Deadlands has opened. The war will be over soon and we will return home,” William replied in a carefully crafted voice perfected over five years. The serene and collected tone of a physician meant to ease the pain, and passing, of patients. Some patients.

Blood gurgled in the back of the soldier’s throat. “And I will join them, won’t I?”

“After such a marvelous battle? Of course. King Ellis shall mark this day in history, our names laid among golden plaques within his castle walls. Children will sing of Lockehold’s fall and write of our accomplishments in history books. You will return home a war hero.”

The soldier whimpered a delirious laugh. The dying didn’t want the truth. They sought hope, for Death had her claws in them. Her brisk breath nipped at their necks. A temptress guiding them to the other side, wherever that may be, and so the dying sought comfort, a ledge to uselessly cling to.

He tightened the leather strap securing the rifle to his back. The worn gray leather bag of medical supplies he carried would not be of use. The Sight revealed the interior of living beings, a series of shimmering silver strings coalescing to expose the soldier’s torn muscles, blood bursting from his lungs, and a heart fluttering fruitlessly.

Slipping off a glove, he flexed his fingers among the unforgiving cold, then set his hand atop the soldier’s chest. The strings of the world curled around his fingers, gentle in their caress, even if he willed them to strangle the heart beneath his palm. The soldier offered a curious stare.

“Comfort will greet you in a moment,” William said.

The soldier’s heart slowed, weak as an injured mouse caught between a starving cat’s fangs. With a few short breaths, the soldier’s eyes glazed over, and all went still. Tranquil. An end to suffering. Death swept another away although William knew not where.

He had long since discouraged the idea of Elysium, of the Holy Soul shepherding the compassionate dead to their next life. He couldn’t fathom joy after brutal deaths or supreme beings watching over their miserable existence. If the Souls were real, if all the so-called godly beings ever uttered truly existed, then they were malevolent bastards and he wholly despised them.

He didn’t glance at the dead man’s tags. In his line of work, he needn’t feel for these men, merely care for their wounds, end suffering to those who deserved it, and move to the next. As he did now, shifting through corpses of beasts and man alike in search of the next wounded or dying, but his gaze defied him by traveling north to Lockehold, a midnight black thorn bleeding upon the horizon.

Towers sharpened to deadly points prodded at the gray sky, defiant to the world above. Smoke rose from fires scorching upon terraces and crumbled ramparts. The Dread Peaks, a range of monstrous mountains, ran along either side of the fortress, tips coated in white, casting a looming umbra over the field of dead. A single path sliced through the mountains. The fortress of Lockehold protected that path for decades, until today. They had won this battle.

If the dead could argue, they would say otherwise.

Snow crunched beneath William’s boots. His medical bag swung from one hand and a revolver itching for a fight in the other. A soldier knelt among the grim ahead. Head bowed, the soldier clutched the hand of another man long dead. The corpse of a spion lay nearby, belly ripped open and green guts spilling out, reeking of rotten meat baked in a summer sun. The grotesque creature was an amalgamation of a spider and a scorpion. Eight-legged, two pinchers, a stinger, too many eyes, and a hard indigo tinted outer shell. The webs suffocated prey or pinned them for a spion to drain them of blood. The spion’s stinger had embedded itself in the deceased soldier’s chest. That close to his heart, the poison worked swiftly.

“Doctor,” the grieving man rose and wiped the snot from his nose. A recruit based on his boyish face, plump cheeks, and bloody, albeit uncalloused, hands.

William tugged the cloth from his nose and gazed at the soldier’s name tag. “Do you require medical attention, Oscar?”

“I feel alright, but this cut was bleedin’ horribly earlier, sir.” Oscar revealed a wound along his arm. Out here, infections took more lives than fangs and claws.

William retrieved a mixture of herbs from his leather bag. The Sight granted wondrous magic, but magic had always been wild and unpredictable.

The strings connecting the world didn’t always obey commands. They disliked taking orders and preferred kind suggestions. If one pushed too hard, if they pushed themselves too far, requested too much, magic replied and the response was rarely good. He, and all others with the Sight, knew to use assistance when they could, something to ease the pressure of their abilities. For his healing, herbs and potions worked wonders.

After crushing the herbs between his palms, he ran the green paste on Oscar’s arm. The young soldier winced while admiring the wound, stitching itself back together, then healing entirely.

“How does it feel?” He ran a finger over Oscar’s arm, checking for abnormalities.

“Great, sir.”

“Good, now follow me. You do not wish to be here if there are unfriendly scavengers. The medical tents are over there.” He nodded toward the flickering fires. He did a thorough walk through. Nothing could be done for the remaining bodies, and one on his list had been taken care of.

Oscar shut his friend’s eyes and hurried after him. The cold stole the color from one’s skin, making Oscar white as winter itself. Snow clung to the thin layer of brown hair atop his head and his full lips trembled from chattering teeth.

“The bodies of the dead will be returned to their loved ones, won’t they, sir?” Oscar whispered.

“Perhaps. Did he fare from across the sea?”

Oscar’s sniffle gave the answer. Many, like William, were not born in these lands. During the first year of his recruitment, he remained in the Heign kingdom for training. A year of endless torment. Then came the days of battles that dragged him, and many others, across the sea, closer and closer to the Deadlands behind the Dread Peaks and the monsters summoned within.

“Priests of Soul will retrieve the dead to grant proper burials,” he explained, eyes shifting to the crunch of snow at their back. He feigned looking at Oscar to glimpse their follower; fae scum. He clutched his revolver tighter, and muttered, “Fear not. Your friend may not be home, but he will rest in peace.”

“May the Broken Soul find him true and the Holy Soul see to his rebirth,” Oscar whispered, with two fingers pressed to his heart.

He struggled not to roll his eyes. A friend told him it was uncouth. He didn’t need a lecture from her over his needlessly boorish and unlikable nature. Her words, not his.

“So many dead.” Oscar’s gaze lingered on the decapitated head of a debrak. Titanous monsters, muscled and red as an open wound. They ate men like midday treats and snapped spines easier than flower stems. “At least we ain’t like these poor suckers. Ran himself right into a trap.”

Oscar laughed with a madness to his voice. He kicked the debrak. The head rolled and released a gurgled whine of breath. Oscar cursed and stumbled. William caught the oaf prior to falling into the fatal trick that killed the beast, a fairy ring. Traps created by fae with varying degrees of torment and death laid within, warned only by a ring of mushrooms.

A dry chuckle crept upon them; the pointy-eared vermin William spotted following them. The fae brushed by donning a grin of villainy. She wore a beauty that stole hearts. Complexion perfect even beneath the mess of battle and eyes breathtakingly beautiful, a shade of eternal obscurity against rich ochre skin and white braids woven by starlight. The allure of fae drove one mad, and their personalities were another hoax entirely.