The first person Khepri saw fall on the southern road was an old man whose name he did not know.
He knew the man’s wagon. It had stood beside the western cooking fire for as long as Khepri could remember, and its owner had complained whenever the apprentices used too much wood to boil their instruments. Once, after Khepri scattered a box of nails across his path, the old man had knelt beside him to gather them. He had returned the last nail with a grave warning that careless inventors would eventually run out of metal. Khepri had promised to be careful. The man had laughed and told him he did not believe a word of it.
Now he lay beside a great root, unable to stand.
A woman stopped to help him.
“Please! Somebody!”
Khepri slowed.
Simi’s hand tightened around his.
“Keep moving.”
“He can’t get up.”
“I can see.”
The woman had managed to help the man sit, but each attempt to lift him failed. Behind them came a dry clicking from the forest.
Dark shapes moved between the trunks.
The woman looked up. Fear changed her expression, and she fled with the others.
Khepri took a step back towards the man.
Simi caught him by both shoulders.
“We won’t reach him before they do.”
He wanted to argue. He could picture a lifting frame, a rope pulled between two branches, something that might bring the man to his feet. He had spent years learning to look at a problem until it yielded. But the old man was still waiting on the road, and Khepri had nothing to give him. He tried to turn again.
The Thralls were already at the edge of the road.
She turned him around.
“Run.”
They ran. Khepri kept looking back until the bend concealed the old man. He did not see what happened next. That was no comfort. He could still remember the old man's patient voice as they counted the scattered nails together.
The southern road had been cleared for caravans, but its edges were thick with roots and fallen branches. Fleeing families stumbled across the uneven ground while the Thralls spread through the trees on either side. Some attackers ran low; others climbed above them, taking paths no human on foot could follow.
Khepri looked towards an abandoned supply cart and saw sacks of grain split across the ground. He tried to avoid the scattered kernels, caught his foot against a root and fell.
His knees scraped against the hard earth.
For a moment he could not move.
Simi hauled him upright.
“Look at me.”
He tried.
“Can you keep running?”
He nodded.
“Then stay with me.”
They passed under an arch of enormous branches. A lantern ahead slipped from somebody’s grip and went out, leaving the crowd to navigate by the few remaining lights.
“Where’s the southern station?” somebody called.
“Beyond the ridge!”
“How far?”
Nobody answered.
Above the canopy, a pale figure travelled in their direction.
The winged Vekari kept pace without effort. Its translucent wings reflected the lantern light whenever it passed an opening between the branches.
A guard near the rear raised his bow.
“Get down!”
His arrow flew upwards.
The creature avoided it with a small change of direction. A moment later a compact burst of pressure struck near the guard, forcing the last families to scatter.
He tried to regain his position. The winged attacker descended beyond the bend, and Khepri lost sight of him behind the trees.
The clicking from the forest grew louder.
The creature had not needed to destroy the whole road. Each interruption delayed the people struggling to escape, and the lesser Thralls filled the space behind them.
Khepri’s mind tried to count the creatures.
He abandoned the attempt.
A younger child ran past them with a small brass bell clenched in one hand. The child’s father called from farther along the road, waving a lantern. They reached each other for an instant before the crowd pressed between them again.
Khepri remembered the bells above Elune’s great tree. Only hours ago one had sounded over the celebration, and the whole clearing had answered with laughter. He remembered wondering whether he could make a smaller bell ring from a distance. He had almost asked his father. Now the sound of metal made the people around him flinch, and there was no one beside the family table to ask.
Simi looked behind them, judging the widening distance between their small group and the last lanterns.
“Can we help them?” Khepri asked, nodding towards the family struggling with the light.
“We can keep the path clear.”
She moved to the edge of the road, caught the child’s elbow and guided him around a root before he tripped. His father reached them and took his hand. Neither stopped to speak. The bell slipped from the child’s fingers as they hurried on.
Khepri stooped to pick up the fallen bell. By the time he straightened, the child and his father had vanished into the lantern-lit crowd.
One useful detail: this text was taken from the author's official posting without consent, and reading that page supports them.
Simi pulled him onwards.
* * *
The bridge had collapsed. Broken timbers drifted downstream, and the crossing that had carried hundreds of people only minutes earlier was now an empty span of rushing water.
He stopped beside a boulder and tried to catch his breath.
Dàre set his last arrow against the string. His fingers refused to settle into their familiar grip, so he shifted the bow against the boulder and tried again.
The bowstring scraped against the guard of his glove.
He tightened the fastening with his teeth.
“Dàre!”
A physician emerged from the trees, helping a woman whose injured leg would not bear her full weight.
“There’s a ford upstream,” the man said. “The eastern stones.”
“How far?”
“Half a mile.”
Dàre looked towards the forest. Beyond the abandoned bridge, clicking sounded from more than one direction.
“Take the path below the bank,” he said. “Don’t follow the main road.”
The physician hesitated.
“Can you come?”
Dàre looked at the woman leaning against him.
“She needs both your hands.”
“We can help you too.”
He shook his head.
“If we all stay, none of us gets far. Go while the path is open.”
The physician studied him a moment longer, then led the woman away beneath the trees.
Dàre waited until they had disappeared before turning towards the road.
Only hours ago, he had been sitting beneath Elune’s great tree. Làmi had been laughing at Bọ́dé’s complaints. Simi had wanted to tell him about her clinical training, and Khepri had been making plans for an improbably large workshop. Dàre had listened, amused, already thinking about whom he might ask for materials. He had been away so often that coming home still felt like a gift. He had assumed there would be time to make up for the days he had missed.
He looked at the bow in his hands.
A fastening had loosened near the grip. Khepri would have found it at once and argued that the weapon’s continued service was evidence of his father’s alarming disregard for engineering.
Dàre could almost hear the complaint.
He allowed himself a brief smile. He had told Khepri they would look at the carrier together in the morning. For a moment he wanted nothing more complicated than to keep that promise.
Then the first Thrall appeared between the trees.
Others followed.
He glanced towards an enormous trunk leaning over the road. Its roots had been exposed by earlier damage along the riverbank. If it fell, the branches might block the passage long enough for the physician and his patient to reach the ford.
But reaching the trunk with a conventional arrow would not do enough.
He waited for the leading creature to cross in front of it.
Then he fired his last arrow.
The shaft struck. Accretion carried the impact outward, and Dàre sustained the connection for another measured pulse. The Thrall lost its footing near the exposed roots.
He added one final burst of force.
The unstable trunk shifted.
For an instant nothing happened. Then the roots pulled free, and the tree fell across the road with a tremendous crash. Its branches tangled against the trees opposite it, creating a rough barrier across the passage.
Several attackers drew back. Others immediately began searching for ways around.
Dàre lowered his hand.
The effort had nearly exhausted him.
He braced himself against the boulder, trying to breathe steadily. There was no Agbo left, and he could no longer call enough Chi to use Accretion reliably.
The tree had bought time.
Perhaps that would be enough for the people at the ford.
Behind the barrier came another series of clicks.
A Thrall climbed into view, followed by a second.
Dàre tried to lift his bow and found his arms scarcely able to hold it.
He thought of his children on the southern road. Simi had always been the first to pull her brother out of trouble and the last to admit she was frightened. She would try to keep them both safe, whether or not she knew the way. He hated that he had placed such a burden on her. He wanted to be there to tell her she did not have to manage everything alone.
He thought of the new treatment, carried in the hands of trained physicians who would be able to help people in places he had never visited.
And he thought of the machine he had promised to examine in the morning. He had never seen its finished frame. Khepri would have explained every joint, grown impatient when his father failed to follow, and begun again from the top. Dàre had been looking forward to all of it.
The nearest Thrall approached.
Dàre held the bow between himself and the creature, though he had no strength left for another shot.
The road beyond the fallen tree filled with movement.
He could no longer keep it clear.
He listened for footsteps on the road beyond the fallen tree, hoping the physician and his patient had reached the ford. Then he looked once towards the south, where his children had gone. He had no way of knowing how far they had travelled. He wished he could see them just once more, if only to be sure they were still together.
* * *
The southern road divided beneath a cedar whose roots spread across the path like stone walls.
One route climbed to a high ridge. The other descended towards a deep channel carved by an ancient stream. Most of the surviving families had taken the upper route; others had turned towards the valley, uncertain which path would be safer.
Khepri and Simi reached the junction with the final group of patients.
Tàlé stood beside their carrier.
Meka lay inside it, pale but awake. Two handlers were arguing over the front wheel, which had twisted against a root and jammed the suspension.
“The ridge is too steep for this,” one said.
“Not with the frame pulling to one side.”
Khepri hurried forward.
“What’s happened?”
Meka lifted his head slightly.
“Your machine is having another difficult day.”
Meka tried to smile, as though the broken wheel were simply another workshop mishap and the world around them had not changed. Khepri recognised the effort. They had argued about this carrier so often that, for a heartbeat, he almost answered as if they were back beside Ibara’s workbench.
Khepri inspected the underside.
“The left support is bent. The locking rail is fine.”
“I’m relieved,” Meka said. “It would be a shame for the door to fall off.”
“It’s not a door.”
“Then your machine needs better descriptions.”
Khepri crouched beside the damaged joint. The bend was obvious. He could picture every dimension, the angle of the support and how much space the wheel needed to turn.
He reached for the metal.
Chi gathered weakly along his fingers.
The bent fitting loosened into a cloud of tiny fragments. He started guiding it into shape, but the motion became uneven. His vision blurred, and his hand began to shake.
The fragments dropped against the frame.
He caught his breath.
Simi was beside him at once.
“Enough.”
“I know how to fix it.”
His voice came out louder than he intended. He knew where the frame had bent; he knew the shape of the replacement fitting. If his hands would obey him, he could make it right. There had to be at least one thing tonight that he could make right.
“That isn’t the problem.”
He looked at the fragments scattered across the frame. His hand would not steady enough to call them back.
Tàlé examined the straps.
“We can remove him from the carrier,” he said. “But he’ll need support.”
“Then do it,” Simi replied.
The handlers released the restraints and prepared to carry Meka between them. Meka looked from one person to another.
“Everybody’s being dramatic.”
Nobody laughed.
He looked towards the trees.
“Oh.”
A branch snapped beyond the junction.
The nearest handler froze.
A dark figure appeared between the trunks.
“Take him,” Tàlé said.
The handlers lifted Meka carefully and headed towards the upper ridge. Khepri reached for his tool case.
Simi caught his wrist.
“We can’t stop.”
“The reader’s in there.”
“Khepri.”
He looked down.
Sẹ́ni had given him the resonance reader only days earlier. Inside the case lay months of sketches, little fittings Ibara had allowed him to keep, and the tools he knew almost as well as his own hands. He remembered Sẹ́ni placing the reader in his care, trusting him to learn from it. He remembered Ibara making him repeat a measurement because she knew he could do better. The case was heavy, but leaving it behind felt like abandoning their voices along with everything else.
He could not abandon them without a struggle.
The reader’s loose retaining ring had taken him an afternoon to mend. Ibara had made him finish the next fitting by hand while she watched. He could remember the exact impatience in her voice when he reached for his Spark too soon.
Khepri clutched the handle until its metal edge bit into his palm.
For a terrible moment he wondered whether he might never hear either of those women scold him again.
He pulled the thought away before it could stop his feet.
He snatched up the handle.
Simi pulled him towards the ridge.
Behind them the first Thrall reached the abandoned carrier. Its weight knocked the frame onto one side. Another creature collided with it, and the left support broke. A wheel rolled down the slope and vanished between the trees.
Khepri looked back once.
The machine had carried Meka through the evacuation and much farther than its builders had been able to test. It had needed help, repairs and careful handling. It had also allowed the boy to travel when he could not have kept pace on foot.
Now the broken frame lay on the road.
Khepri felt a sharp anger that had nowhere useful to go. He had built the frame to carry Meka safely, and for a while it had done exactly that. He had imagined bringing it back to Elune, showing Ibara the parts that held and telling his father what they could improve. The thought arrived whole before he remembered the burning tree. He stumbled, caught himself, and kept walking.
Simi tightened her grip.
“Come on.”
He followed her up the ridge, carrying the case in one hand and trying not to look behind him again.