Catherine was a mess.
Her journey through the myst had been less foggy than memories of the last hour, where reality and illusion merged into an indistinct haze. Shadows flitted at the edges of her perception, vanishing as she tried to look at them. Her mind was like the sea in a storm. Conflicting thoughts and emotions clashed in the chaos inside her. Thoughts that weren't her own battled those that were, an inner war fought on the battlefield that was her identity.
But now, hiding in the quiet solitude of an empty store that had shut down for the night, she had finally found enough lucidity to pull herself back into the world. Outside, she could hear what sounded like the local militia roaming the streets. Had the entire village been mobilized to hunt her down? It seemed like it. Perhaps the tales of glitchen being bloodthirsty weren't as exaggerated as she thought.
Every distant echo of footsteps amplified how vulnerable she felt, but her heart had had time to stop hammering in her chest. She pressed her back against the cool mycelium shelving and kept her breath shallow, listening for movement.
Soft rustling startled her. She tensed as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, ready to spring to her feet at the slightest hint of danger. But then she saw the source of the noise.
A rat scurried across the floor.
"Pull yourself together, Catherine," she said, quietly. "You can’t sit on this floor forever."
Her eyes rolled toward the broken window. Through it echoed the faint sounds of a search party. "And you'll need to move swiftly if you want to avoid detection." Already her thoughts were running ahead to form a plan of escape.
Before attempting to stand, she reached back into her memories. How much of what she had seen had been real, and how much was the sword's influence? Was a woman really being assaulted? Why would there be sapiens in Jastria? And did that woman really have the face of the girl that she had chased halfway across the mountains?
That last possible hallucination puzzled her. It snapped her out of the haze that would have led her to plunging the sword straight into the woman's heart. The theory she currently favored was that it had been conjured by her own subconscious. A defense against the sword. If it was, it was a damned clever tactic.
If it wasn't a hallucination, it was a coincidence so extreme and horrible that she wondered what cosmic force had developed a vendetta against her.
"That being my dream girl is about as likely as…" she paused, "I'm not even sure what I hoped would happen, but whatever it was, there's no chance of it now."
Her words hung in bitter acknowledgment of the futility of her desires. She groaned. "Truly, what did I expect? 'Oh, miss sapien whom I have never seen, it's certainly grand and not at all creepy that you stalked me to my home with your cursed blood-drinking sword! How romantic! And how fortunate that I too am attracted to other species of the same gender! We should be wed immediately!'"
Catherine squeezed her eyes shut, willing tears to remain unshed. This wasn’t the time.
The one thing she knew for certain was a thing she tried hard not to think too deeply about. She felt the weight of it, even so. She had taken two lives. Human lives. Sapien, even. Just… cut through them like wheat. And didn't even stay long enough to enjoy the harvest. What remained was probably still lying there in that alley, already bled out. Wasteful.
She shook her head. "Gods, this damned sword is influencing my thoughts," she whispered.
Catherine forced herself back to the present. There would be time enough to come to terms with her actions. For now, survival was more important.
Her hands tightly gripped the hilt of the sword. She steeled herself against the tide of whispers crashing against the shore of her mind, calling forth the full force of her will upon the blade, focusing it to cut through the haze. With each word she uttered, her resolve grew, hardening her mental defenses by sheer determination.
"You... Will... STAY... BACK!"
The words echoed with authority. The sudden rush of clarity that followed was palpable.
Seizing the momentary reprieve, Catherine pieced together a mental map of the village, drawing upon fragmented recollections of its unlabeled streets. Though disoriented, she was not without direction.
Instead of exiting through the window she had broken to enter, Catherine’s gaze fell upon the door at the back of the store. Cautiously, she rose and walked over to test the handle. It yielded to her touch.
The room beyond was cramped and dimly lit, containing a jumbled mix of contents. The narrow frame of a smaller window beckoned from the far wall. A less noticeable path to freedom.
Before making her escape, Catherine's eyes swept over the shelves. An idea ignited as she spied a box of brushes, a coil of rope, and a small container of paint. Though not the chalk she had hoped for, they had potential. She swiftly gathered the supplies.
Catherine next painted a sigil upon the floor. Its rough edges and uneven lines weren’t quite up to the standards of the elegant symbol she had intended to make. "'Tis not pretty, but it will work," she said, formed the hand sign, and sang.
Soon, with a pacified rat in hand, she went to the back window and opened it. It led out into a fenced-in area with what seemed to be a seldom-used walkway behind. Through the rat's keen senses, she explored the path ahead, her consciousness melding with the creature's as she sent it forth into the unknown. The rat explored this path a bit before Catherine herself exited.
The narrow walkway wound its way through the village's streets. With the rat as her guide, Catherine navigated the maze-like passages with ease as she evaded the searching gaze of the militia.
They kept cautious and alert, but the area they found themselves in seemed to be completely empty now.
"Where did everyone go?" she asked. Neither her sword nor the rat had an answer.
It did not take much time to reach the outer wall, but this was far from the portcullis where she had entered. She ran her hand against the wall's worn yet slick black stone surface. This wall was not nearly as climbable as the one in Misyrea.
With a frustrated sigh, Catherine checked her surroundings. She saw no one nearby, and neither did her rat friend.
"This won't be easy," she muttered to the rat. She shared feelings of appreciation through her mental link, then sent it on its way as she focused her attention toward the task at hand.
Retrieving the stolen paint and paintbrush from her pocket, she took a seat on the ground and used the wall's surface to paint another sigil. Then she got comfortable. Her hands came together; her fingers intertwined into the needed shape.
As she closed her eyes, Catherine's spellsong flowed from her lips.
She knew that finding an animal that could do what she needed would take time, especially at this late hour. It would be far easier to wait until morning, but that meant being alone in the darkness with nothing but her own thoughts… and the insidious whispers of the sword.
"You there!" shouted someone behind her. "Halt!"
Catherine's heart quickened as she heard the command. With a calming breath, she stood and turned to face the source of the interruption, meeting the eye of a tall man clad in shining armor. He held out a small metal object as if it were a blade.
"Are you a guard?" she asked. Her tone was tinged with a hint of sarcasm. "Seems you've caught me vandalizing your wall."
The man's posture was rigid as he brandished the unfamiliar weapon. "Throw your blade aside!" he demanded. "This device is called a pistol. It's not much use against glitchen but it'll cause instant death to anything else. And you're not glitchen, are you?"
Catherine arched an eyebrow. "Quite a coincidence to be carrying a weapon that only kills non-glitchen. Is it illegal to be sapien, then? Are all the guards here so xenophobic?"
"I am Apostle One-Ten, currently the highest authority in all of Jastria. And you are an intruder. Throw your weapon aside, or I will pull this lever to activate the mechanism." He raised the gun at her, finger poised on the trigger with deadly intent.
"As you command," she sighed, and untied the sheathed sword from her waist, then nonchalantly tossed it into the tall grass.
"Now step forward. Slowly," One-Ten ordered, watching her every move.
Catherine casually walked toward him as she said, "You can clearly see that I am unarmed and defenseless." She raised her empty hands for emphasis.
Just then, a massive nighthawk dove onto his face, sharp talons attempting to tear at his eyeballs. He fought it off of him just as Catherine launched herself into action. Her fist connected with desperate force as she shattered his nose with a single, well-aimed blow. With a second punch he was sent stumbling backward. The following kick put him on his back.
Though disoriented, he attempted to rise, only to be met with a face full of paint that stung his wounds and clouded his vision.
Blinded and bewildered, One-Ten groped at his face while Catherine seized the opportunity to uncoil her stolen rope, tossing the hook at the end into the air.
The nighthawk swooped in and caught it, then sped upward and out of sight. Catherine wasted no time, snatching up the pistol One-Ten had dropped in the scuffle and pocketing it as she searched the grass for her sword.
Her fingers closed around the familiar sheath just as One-Ten regained his footing. His face contorted with rage and embarrassment as he charged at her. Instead of meeting his challenge, she jumped back and upward, grabbing onto the rope that the nighthawk had hooked onto the parapet above.
She climbed swiftly with the sword positioned awkwardly over her arms and under her chin, only stopping to look down when she had reached the halfway point. True to expectations, One-Ten was climbing after, though his progress was hindered by the cumbersome weight of his armor.
With a mischievous smirk, Catherine reached into her boot, retrieving the small knife concealed within.
As One-Ten drew nearer, the realization of his impending fate dawned upon him. His expression shifted from determination to fear. He shouted a curse that cut off halfway, same as the rope as Catherine sliced through it, sending him plummeting toward the ground below.
She held the knife's handle in her teeth as she continued her climb. Her arms ached from all the effort, but she felt the sword sharing a bit of vitality to help her along.
Atop the wall, with the expansive sky stretching out above her, Catherine dropped the weapons and allowed herself a moment of respite. She rolled onto her back and gazed upward. Tired eyes traced the patterns of the stars as they twinkled in the darkness. Beside her, the tired nighthawk nestled into a comfortable position.
"I will have to stay nearby. I must get at those books."
With a long, slow sigh, she closed her eyes. The plan forming in her mind seemed foolhardy, uncertain, and perilous. As all of her plans were. Yet the allure of knowledge beckoned.
"It will be quite a long time until I can sneak in again. And next time they won't be so lax."
Her eyes shot open. "Wait!" She sat up. "How am I going to get down from here?"
Standing and putting away her weapons, she began to walk along the battlements. It did not take long to notice that there was no way to get up here from the ground, much like the towers in the village.
In stories, glitchen always had wings. The ones she encountered did not, but clearly there had been some truth to the tales in the past.
"Maybe I should live up here, have my food brought to me by animals," she said, ignoring practical challenges that such a plan would entail, and the fact that she no longer had an easy way to draw sigils.
As exhaustion finally overtook her, Catherine stretched on the stone and cuddled with the nighthawk. Her weary mind slipped into dreams and shadows. In her slumber, after she had felt the nighthawk leave to return home, an acute feeling of dizziness overtook her. She did not pay it any mind and slept through.
When she awoke, the first light of dawn was filtering through the canopy of trees above.
Trees?
Catherine found herself lying upon solid ground, sprawled amidst the underbrush outside the village walls. Confused, she struggled to make sense of how she had come to be there.
Minutes passed as she puzzled over the mystery of her sudden descent. In the end, she could find no explanation. Her inexplicable journey to the forest floor would continue to perplex her long after she had left the village behind.