Page 46 of What Is Dark Within Me

“Come on, you can say it,” she chuckled. The palace lights came into view, but Liam never strayed too close when they’d come back from a hunt.

“He was a superb commander, though he’d only been the Knowing One for a few decades at that point. Think you can sneak away for another hour or two? I want to show you something, but it’s a bit of a hike.”

“Sure,” Aleja said, wondering if she should chide herself for trusting too easily, but Liam’s company was effortless, even when they were stalking Remnants in the woods. Spending time out here was better than every night of restless sleep, when she woke covered in sweat, either from dreams of war or worse—the dreams that left her with Nicolas’s name on her lips.

Liam led her back to the main trail, and then uphill, into a region they’d never ventured to. The trees thinned as they climbed and she could see the sky; it was streaked with fine threads of red and gold, as if the sunset had been too vain to let night have all the glory.

“It’s not much further,” Liam said apologetically, holding out a hand to help her scramble over a boulder.

“It’s fine,” she told him. “You’re being more mysterious than usual. Where are we headed?”

“Not a lot of evidence remains of the battles fought in the Hiding Place, but there was one fight that did so much damage you can still see its scars. I think the Dark Saints leave it here as a reminder—a memorial, even. There might be a few Remnants there to practice on.”

“Were you there?” Aleja asked.

“Yes,” he told her. There was a long pause before he said anything else. “It was toward the end of the war. At that point, it seemed all but inevitable we would lose. We’d kept a lot of the fighting off our soil, but the Astraelis grew bold enough to mount an attack here, at our last place of refuge. They sent a—”

He said a word that sounded like static interference to Aleja.

“—to the front lines. It devoured half of our troops before we were able to bring it down. I lost many friends that day.”

Liam sounded so mournful that she couldn’t bring herself to ask him to repeat the word she’d missed. He beckoned her over a small ridge. Beyond, it looked like the detonation site of a nuclear bomb.

The soil was black, stinking of smoke, as if the fighting had happened yesterday. If there had once been trees, they’d been reduced to blackened stubs and never grown back. They dotted the field like rows of crooked headstones, filling the valley and the hills beyond. Among them, peeked bits of white. At first, she believed they were mushrooms, but as she squinted into the darkness, she realized they were too large, too smooth.

Skulls.

Hundreds and hundreds of skulls.

She sucked in a gasp. Even the night birds and crickets were silent here. There was only the sound of her and Liam’s breathing. “I’m sorry,” she finally said, as she glanced over to him, and noticed how damp his eyes were.

“It was a long time ago, but I can still hear the” —again, came that strange static in her head—“wings as it made its way across the battlefield, destroying anyone in its path. The Astraelis usually held them back from the front lines. Sure, they were difficult to kill, but they were exceedingly valuable, too. But they thought the war was all but over at that point. Better to take their enemy out in one decisive victory.”

“I should have mentioned this earlier, but I can’t understand…”

“That makes sense. The Astraelis language isn’t readily understood by humans. This type, we also called the Authorities. Imagine an enormous mass of wings and eyes, and at its center, a gaping mouth that can devour hundreds of soldiers at once.”

“Shit,” Aleja breathed.

“Indeed. As they swallowed soldiers, they absorbed them, gaining their knowledge. If one of our officers was in their path, all our plans would be laid bare for the enemy. Luckily, Remnants of them don’t exist here, because just one… well, as you can see, this place has never fully recovered, and the battle was hundreds of years ago. It was my last, as well. I was injured in the fight. I never got to witness our victory.”

“Doesn’t seem like there could be much of a victory,” she said. “Not after something like this. How did you beat them?”

“A sacrifice. We could only defeat the Authorities from the inside. None of our commanders ever demanded it of us, but if a soldier had a bomb… if he set it off at just the right moment once he was in the Authorities’ grasp…”

“That’s terrible.”

Perhaps she couldn’t remember the bloodshed, but the place made her queasy. She wanted to run back into the warm safety of the palace, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. Not when Liam had to look upon this place and picture his friends dying all over again.

“You’re right,” he sighed. “How do the humans put it? ‘War is hell.’ See any Remnants down there?”

Aleja scanned the valley again, but if she was being honest with herself, she didn’twantto find anything. She had wondered if it would awaken something inside of her; the bloodthirsty Lady of Wrath that had fought at the Knowing One’s side. Maybe they had won in the end, but it didn’t make this massive, unmarked grave disappear.

“I should get back before anyone notices I’m gone,” she muttered, turning to face Liam and his glassy expression. She’d spotted a moving figure a few hundred yards away, but in this darkness—well, that could have been just a wolf, couldn’t it?

“Sure,” he said softly, sounding relieved. “Aleja, I—”

A handful of pebbles tumbled down the hill as she turned back to the woods. Another bit of dirt that wouldn’t hide the bones underneath.

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