CHAPTER TWO

  -[Skill Acquired: Practicing Death]

  On the steppe, we tell our children:

  The names our parents give us are only on loan. Your true name is the one you earn in your first worthy story.

  – Old clan proverb

  The boy lay where they had left him.

  Snow had started to drift down again, thin white dust settling on the churned earth at the bottom of the pit. He felt it melt against his cheek. Cold turned to wet, after that to nothing. His breath came in short, shallow pulls. Every time his chest tried to rise, something sharp inside him bit down. He could not move his right arm. The iron ring was still locked around his ankle, a short length of chain twisted under his calf. He could barely feel his legs. The only thing that still hurt was his ribs and the place where the broken crate edge had dug into him, a deep, thick ache that pulsed with his heartbeat.

  The jade-moon stone pressed into his palm felt familiar. Light seeped out between his fingers. He did not remember grabbing the pendant, but his fist was closed tight around it, knuckles white, wrist shaking. The warmth became heat, a slow, steady burn, like a coal pressed into his palm.

  A crack of green light split the dark. It pushed up out of the stone, twisting as it took shape. For a moment it was only a smear, a long smear of green that hurt his eyes. It folded in on itself and became a woman. She hovered over him, bare feet hanging a handspan above the bloody mud. Her hair fell all the way to her hips in a straight, heavy curtain the color of deep river ice, blue with a pale, strange shine to it. Her face was smooth, almost too smooth, carved with careful hands and left unfinished, with no room for anything as messy as kindness.

  Her eyes were a colder blue than her hair. She looked down at him and her lip curled.

  "What a pathetic sight." Her voice cut clear through the frozen air. "Are you the idiot who disturbed me?"

  He tried to answer. The sound that came out of him was a wet cough. Blood splattered his chin and the snow beside his face. His chest seized. For a moment he tasted iron and bile and nothing else. He moved his head, just a little, side to side.

  No.

  Her gaze tracked the movement. The sneer did not leave her mouth.

  "You're dying." She sounded almost bored.

  A laugh got stuck in his throat. It came out bent, half choke, half snort, but there was something like a smile on his cracked lips. This was almost funny. The fort, the dogs, the boots, the fall. Now some spirit was here to tell him what his own bones already knew.

  Her eyes narrowed, plainly annoyed by the sight.

  "Where are we?" She glanced around, as if the place bored her already.

  She didn’t wait for an answer. Her eyes flicked to the pendant.

  "How did you get that stone?"

  The boy's vision blurred at the edges. The world tunneled in. Her face, her hair, the green light that still clung to her body like smoke, all of it smeared into a single streak. His eyelids grew heavy. They wanted to close. His body was done. He let them.

  Pathetic. Idiot. Why did I run? What was I thinking? I wasn't strong at all. I knew that. I'd seen what they did to the others, and still I thought I could slip through like in the stories. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't strong. If I'd been just a little stronger… if I were given a second chance… I'd do it right. I don't want to die.

  For a heartbeat the world went black. When he opened them again it was only by a sliver. She was still there, hanging over him, watching his face. There was no pity in her expression, no anger either. Only a flat, tired annoyance, the look someone gave a broken tool.

  She sighed.

  "I probably shouldn't do this." She wrinkled her nose. "But look at you. Pathetic. I was finally asleep, truly asleep, and you drag me back for this?"

  Her eyes slid away from his, the look of someone digging through half-lost memories.

  "Let's see," she muttered. "How did I do this, back then?"

  She sank down until her knees almost touched the ground. One hand pressed against the middle of his chest, over the place that hurt the most. The other settled lightly on his forehead. Her fingers were colder than the snow. Green light gathered around her palms, a bright, viscous wash. It spread across his chest, up his throat, over his face. It stung. It seeped into him, through skin and bone. For a heartbeat he felt everything, every torn line of flesh, every broken shard of rib.

  Something pulled. The blood at the corner of his mouth slid back over his lips. The smear on his cheek crawled up toward his nose. Wet warmth poured out of the dirt beneath him, the dark patch of his own blood running in reverse, climbing his clothes, soaking back into the hole in his side.

  His lungs spasmed. Air rushed into them. He jerked and tried to sit up. Her hand on his chest pushed him back down with very little effort.

  "Don't move." Her eyes narrowed. "I've no wish to do this twice. Why I bothered the first time, I don't know." She gave him a slow, displeased once-over. "And don't try to answer. You look pathetic enough to die all over again."

  The light around him thinned. The pain went with it. The deep, stabbing agony in his ribs softened to a dull ache and finally to nothing more than a sore tightness when he breathed too hard. His fingers stopped tingling. Feeling crept back into his legs. The torn place in his side tugged once and closed under her hand, leaving only a puckered circle of tender flesh. He sucked in a breath. A second. A third. Each one came easier than the last.

  Something else lit up. It was not her light. Pale lines appeared in the air a finger's width above his eyes. They were thin as scratches in glass, brighter than moonlight, and they moved when he moved his head, always staying in front of his gaze. At first they flickered, breaking apart into stray strokes and half letters.

  What are those letters? And why can I read them?

  [Error.]

  [Alternate thread is being created…]

  [Error: Return point corrupted.]

  [Warning: Return anchor displaced.]

  [Return point imprint detected: Day 1.]

  [Error.]

  [Error: Inheritance completed.]

  [Sk__l acq__red: Prac_icing Dea_th]

  The words shivered, blurred, came back together.

  [Skill acquired: Practicing Death.]

  [Death teaches only those who persevere.]

  [E_ror:...]

  [Error: Skill sh__ld n_t be acq__red.]

  [Error: Skill acquired.]

  A second line tried to form underneath.

  [Sk__l acq__red: Iye's Tín]

  The letters buckled, warped, snapped into something else.

  [Error: Spirit-class talent bound to mortal host.]

  [Conflicting core forces (life / death).]

  [Skill registration pending.]

  He stared at the lines until they faded. The words dissolved like breath on cold air. His chest rose and fell. His eyes burned. He could not decide whether he was still dying and this was the last trick of a broken brain or whether some higher power had decided that bleeding out in a pit wasn't quite dramatic enough.

  "Practicing Death?"

  Heard himself whisper it.

  The woman's eyes flicked to where the lines had been and back to his face.

  "What now? Did they beat you so hard your wits leaked out?"

  "You didn't see that?" His voice was rough, but when he spoke this time, no blood came with it.

  "See what?"

  He opened his mouth and closed it again. Whatever that had been, it was his. Not hers. She did not look like someone he wanted to sound crazier in front of.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  "Nothing." He looked away.

  She huffed.

  "Good. Since you're finally speaking, you can tell me who you are and where you got that pendant."

  He swallowed. His throat hurt when he did it, but it was a small, ordinary hurt. He would take it.

  "My name is—"

  "On second thought, it doesn't matter who you are." She flicked her fingers toward the stone. "Just tell me where you got that stone."

  His eyes dropped to the cracked stone in his hand. The pendant's surface was a mesh of fractures, green glow leaking from the lines. "Are you… an Iye?"

  Something in her expression shifted. Not much, just a small lift at the corner of her mouth.

  "Yes, indeed. I'm an Iye." Her eyes sharpened. "So tell me, where did you get that?"

  "Our clan shaman gave it to me." He swallowed. "She said it was mine."

  "I see." For the first time, she smiled. It was not a friendly expression. "That's utter nonsense. Clearly you have no right to be the—"

  She cut herself off.

  "To be what?" His voice came out rough.

  "Nothing." She brushed invisible dust off her long hair. "So if it belonged to you, why didn't you protect it? You were supposed to keep it safe."

  Pushing his left hand against the ground, he tested his weight. The world tilted, steadied, and held.

  "You saw me." His throat tightened. "I was nowhere safe. I couldn't even protect myself."

  Iye considered that.

  "Well, I think you're right about that." She glanced around the empty snow. "But now we need to find a place for me."

  "We?" He frowned. "I just need to get away from here before they come back to check if I'm dead or not."

  "Exactly. First let's get out of this hole."

  She stepped aside. The green light around her dimmed. Under his palms the earth felt solid again, not like something that wanted to swallow him. His legs trembled but they held when he pushed himself upright. The chain dragged after him, scraping over bone and frozen dirt.

  Climbing took both hands and feet. The sides of the pit were rough, packed earth and frozen roots. With every reach he could find a hold. Each movement sent little spikes of pain through his healed ribs, but they were bearable. Compared to ten minutes ago, this was nothing, and that alone made him want to laugh.

  At the rim he hauled himself over and lay flat on the snow, chest heaving, eyes on the stars. The fort's outer wall was a black line in the distance. The dogs were quiet. No firelight showed on the watch platforms.

  Iye floated up out of the pit after him, not even pretending to climb. Her hair did not stir in the wind.

  "Move." She gestured toward the edge. "I'd rather not see what happens if you fall back in."

  Slowly, he got his feet under him. His clothes were stiff with dried blood and clung to his skin like armor made of frozen rags. The night air cut through every gap. He turned his back on the fort.

  A small shift of his legs sent iron scraping over bone and dirt. The shackles around his ankles dragged, linked by a short length of chain.

  A swallow scraped down his throat. "Can you… do something about these?" He lifted one foot a little, the chain clinking in the dark. "If they hear this, they'll know I'm gone.”

  The spirit followed the sound with her eyes. For a moment green light gathered at her fingers again before flickering out.

  "I could," she said. "If I hadn't just poured most of my strength into keeping your insides inside. I woke from a long sleep, boy. My form is still settling. Raw flesh is easier to bully than worked iron."

  Once more he lifted his foot a little. The chain scraped and clinked. "So you won't?”

  "Not now," she said. "Not without risking you along with it. If I push hard enough to break these, my power won't stop politely at the iron." Her gaze sharpened. "You wanted to live. Live with the weight for a while. It will remind you why you should hurry."

  Unfair hovered on his tongue. The words felt childish in his mouth, so he bit them back and forced himself upright instead. The chain scraped after him like a shadow dogging his steps.

  For the first few dozen steps he moved slow, careful, quiet, listening for shouts, for the bark of dogs, for the crack of a bowstring. Nothing came. The snow swallowed the sound of his bare feet.

  The memory of the pale lines over his eyes forced its way back in. Those thin scratches of light that had moved when he moved his head. The broken words.

  What were those? It hadn't been a dream. He could almost see the lines again when he blinked, feel the way something had pressed a question into his skull without ever making a sound.

  He shook his head.

  Not now. If the wardens notice I'm gone and send riders, thinking about floating words won't save me. First I get far enough they cannot drag me back. Only after that can I think about ghosts in the air.

  When the dark shapes of the walls were nothing more than a smudge between the trees, he let himself walk faster. Branches clawed at his arms. Old snow crunched in places where the crust had refrozen. His breath steamed out ahead of him in small white ghosts. Iye drifted along at his side, feet still not touching the ground.

  Jaw set, he turned toward the faint orange smear of light on the horizon. The city.

  "Hey." She spoke right by his ear. "Where do you think you're going? That doesn't look like a yurt to me. Where is this place?"

  "Somewhere in Zhanar lands." The boy stared toward the far lights.

  "Zhanar kingdom." She tasted the words like something sour. "I don't know any kingdom by that name. Are you a Zhanar boy?"

  "No." He shook his head. "I'm from the steppes."

  She floated in front of him, forcing him to stop or walk through her.

  "So that's a Zhanar city?" Her chin jerked toward the glow beyond the trees.

  "Yeah."

  "And the ones who beat you nearly to death were Zhanar as well?"

  He hesitated. "Yes."

  "So why in all the winds are you walking toward it? Are you so eager to die?" She waved a hand at his chest. "Know this: the next time you die, you die alone. I won't interfere again."

  The boy looked past her at the distant light. The thought of walls and fires and roofs was a physical pull in his ribs.

  "So where should I go?" He looked from the trees to the distant glow. "Back to the fort? Wait for them to find me?"

  "No." She clicked her tongue. "You might start by not running straight at the men who tried to kill you. Turn back toward the steppes."

  "Fine." He dragged the word out. "That's the plan. But I don't even know where to start. I don't know which way to go."

  She rolled her eyes.

  "Clearly not in that direction."

  For a long breath he stood there, then another, letting the idea settle. She was right. The Zhanar city would hand him back to the fort or sell him to another one. The only people who might hide him for the sake of it were the same people the Zhanar called savages. The steppes.

  Not his own clan. He wasn't stupid enough to crawl back to that fire. His father had sold him once. If the man saw him alive, he would sell him again, or put a knife in his back to keep the coin. But the steppes were wide. There were other banners, other fires, people who hated Zhanar coin more than they cared whose son he used to be.

  Finally, he turned. The trees thickened in that direction, climbing up the slope of low, dark hills. Beyond them, he knew, the land rose into real mountains. He had seen their teeth on the horizon on clear mornings, white and far.

  "Then I should hide in the mountains and the woods." He scrubbed a hand over his face.

  "Obviously." She sounded almost amused. "Let's see how far you get before you fall over."

  Walking again, he headed away from both fort and city. Every few steps, the chain at his ankle caught on a root or a rock, yanking at healing skin. He gritted his teeth and kept going. Snow lay deeper here under the trees. It soaked into his trousers, numbing his skin, but the healed ache in his ribs kept him moving. His breath found a rhythm. Step, step, step, breathe. The night stretched. For a while neither of them spoke.

  "What's your name?" The question had been sitting on his tongue. He'd been ignoring it for a while now.

  She laughed.

  "You have no right to my name." Her eyes narrowed. "And don't start thinking we're close friends. You broke the stone, and now you owe me a new one."

  "I didn't break it." The boy's voice came out hoarse. "They did."

  "That's not my problem." She flicked imaginary dust from her sleeve. "Your shaman or whoever handed you my stone should've known you were supposed to protect it no matter what."

  "Why?" The word scraped out of him.

  She tilted her head. "Why what?"

  "Why was I supposed to protect the stone? I didn't even know there was an Iye hiding inside it."

  "I wasn't hiding." She stretched, languid. "I was sleeping. And you clearly don't know anything about Iyes."

  "I listened to stories," he muttered. "They say there are all kinds of Iye. Some protect roads, some yurts, some water or fire. They even say there are Iyes who watch over horses." He glanced at her. "You're the first one I've seen."

  "Somehow, that doesn't surprise me."

  "So what kind of Iye are you?" He nodded toward the shards. "You were protecting that stone?"

  "Has no one told you how tiresome you are?" Her tone went dry. "If it makes you happy, you can think I was protecting the stone. Until you broke it."

  "Well, you did a good job protecting it."

  She stopped in midair.

  "Boy." Her voice went flat. "You truly mean to test my patience."

  He almost smiled.

  "My uncle told me a true warrior from the steppes always pays his debts." His voice steadied on the words. "Either in life or in death."

  Iye studied him for a long moment.

  "Your uncle seems like a true warrior." It sounded almost like a concession.

  Warmth prickled behind his eyes. He sniffed it back.

  "You saved my life." He swallowed. "So I owe you. I need to pay my debt by finding you a new stone. But… what kind of stone are you looking for?"

  "I don't need just any stone." Her gaze went distant for a moment. "What I want is the same stone as before."

  "The green one?" He frowned. "They called it jade-moon stone. I never heard of an Iye protecting a stone before. You're strange."

  "You don't need to know everything."

  They walked until the black branches above them turned a softer gray. The sky in the east grew thin and pale. Dawn waited, all cold light and no warmth yet. His legs burned. His feet had gone past hurting into a dull, heavy nothing. He kept going. Fort, dogs, chains, Overseer, all of it slipped behind him, turning into memory instead of a hand at his throat.

  Iye's form wavered. She had been drifting beside him, hair and sleeves hanging still in the air, but now her outline shook like ripples on water. Her right hand went transparent, solid, transparent again. Little sparks of green light broke off and vanished.

  The boy stumbled, forcing himself to slow. "What's going on?"

  "There's something protecting these woods." For the first time her voice held strain. "Its power is interfering with my true form."

  Her body jerked, folded, pulled tight, an invisible fist grabbing her from the inside. Light sucked inward. The tall, blue-haired woman shrank, twisted, dropped. When it was over, something small landed in the snow with a soft thump.

  It shook itself. It was a cat. Not the soft village kind he had seen a few times in trading camps, but something wilder: stocky, with a round body, fur so thick it was almost absurd, ears flattened into little rounded triangles at the top of its wide head. Its cheeks bristled with long pale whiskers. Its tail was a short, heavy tuft. The fur was a mix of gray, brown, and white all at once, patterned like rocks and dry grass under frost. Its eyes were the same ice blue as before. It looked at him, unimpressed.

  A slow blink was all he managed, mind lagging behind what his eyes were telling him.

  "You're a cat," he said before he could stop himself.

  His own voice sounded thin in the cold. Of course she was a cat now. Why not.

  "So you can change your form into anything?" he asked.

  "Again." The cat's voice was exactly the same, lips barely moving. "You don't need to know everything."

  He limped after her, the chain muttering with every step. The cat's shape slipped ahead between the trees without a sound.

  I can't just walk behind her forever. The thought came quiet and hard. She healed me once. That doesn't mean she will keep doing it. And if she leaves, I die the first time someone raises a hand.

  He remembered the overseer's boot, the way his ribs had cracked, the way nobody had moved to help. I need to learn how to stop that. I need to get strong enough that nobody can throw me in a pit again.

  She padded forward through the snow, paws barely breaking the surface, the drifts behaving like they were only pretending to be there. The boy fell into step beside her. The trees thinned. A cabin sat ahead of them, half-hidden among the pines. Smoke didn't rise from its chimney. Snow lay thick on the roof. The small window was dark. A stack of split logs waited by the wall, buried to the knees in white.

  Iye vanished from his side. He spotted her a heartbeat later, crouched beneath a low bush, fur blending with shadow and snow both. She flicked an ear toward the cabin.

  The meaning was clear. He dropped behind the next tree and watched. No light kindled. No door opened. No human sound came from within, only the creak of branches and the distant, faint rush of wind over the higher slopes. After a while his legs cramped. He shifted his weight and heard nothing answer him.

  "I don't see anyone." He kept his voice low.

  At last he stepped out from behind the tree. Snow squeaked under his feet as he approached the cabin. As he limped closer, the loose chain whispered over the snow, loud in the quiet clearing. The wood of the walls was weathered gray, the gaps stuffed with old moss that had frozen stiff. Frost traced white veins across the window glass.

  His hand found the door and pushed. It swung inward with a tired groan. The room inside was small. A hearth of blackened stones crouched against one wall, cold ash piled in its mouth. A rough bedframe stood in the corner, stripped of furs. A table with one leg repaired by a stone and a wedge of wood leaned against the opposite wall. Everything was in its place, clean, like whoever lived here had just stepped outside. He stepped in.

  Iye slipped past his ankle, tail low, ears twitching.

  "I think we should leave." Her nose wrinkled. "This place smells like someone lives here."

  "Maybe." He hesitated in the doorway. "But right now it's empty. Maybe there's food. Or a cloak. Anything."

  Another step carried him toward the hearth.

  The door burst open behind him.

  ??

  Tired of suffering alone? Try demonic possession! Our inter-dimensional demons are standing by!

  (Results may vary, Purple wombat not included)

  ??

  Oblivion

  Progression Sci-fi GameLit Tower Ruling Class Dark but funny?

  Eighteen-year-old Aine was destined to live a quiet, miserable life. As an Ashand, her only job was to wade the flooded gardens, harvest the creepy flowers that grow out of corpses, and trust the teachings of the Sanctari.

  Who are the Sanctari? Just freakishly tall, mask-wearing priests who insist those flowers carry souls to the “Living Gods” in the shining city above. Totally normal. Nothing suspicious about that at all.

  Then she stole one of the flowers…

  That kicked off a particularly fucked up series of events resulting in her being forced to climb some kind of intergalactic death-tower.

  Hmm. Now that I type all this out, it does sound rather depressing… But at least she has me! This galaxy’s most dazzlingly brilliant...it's most outrageously fabulous, [REDACTED].

  The viewers are bloodthirsty, the elites are scheming, and I…may or may not be able to help, depending on what time it is.

  What? I’m not missing my soaps for this.

  What to expect:

  - Weak-to-strong progression combining cyberpunk elements with a unique "magic" system.

  - LitRPG mechanics grounded in reality and physics. (No all knowing system)

  - A comedic twist on an extremely grim universe.

  - An interdimensional invasion, consciousness harvesting, and human livestock.

  - Found family, class warfare, political scheming.

  - A sarcastic interdimensional entity and...a baby wombat.

  For fans of: Red Rising, Dungeon Crawler Carl, The Fifth Element