Chapter 131: The First Cull

The Abomination lunged before Rook finished drawing smoke from the cigar. He stepped back as its claws swept across his chest, then turned sideways when the second hand followed, lower and faster. Its nails caught the hanging edge of his coat and tore through cloth that had already suffered enough.

“Of course.”

The creature pulled its arm back and thrust straight at his stomach. Rook moved outside the reaching hand, caught the base of one antler as its head came forward, and pulled it past him. He planted his boot behind its ankle, turned his hips, and drove its head toward the road.

The Abomination struck shoulder first. Its antlers scraped across the stone, dragging its head sideways beneath its own weight. It was lighter than it looked; Rook had thrown heavier things without having to put down his lantern. Still, he kept clear of its legs as it thrashed, stepping away when one claw caught his boot and slipped from the leather before finding a proper grip.

He had enough time to try this. Rook transferred the scythe to his left hand and drew its edge across his right forearm. Pain followed the blade, and blood welled along the cut, warm against skin that had only recently stopped bleeding. For a moment, the sight brought back the cave floor and the growing certainty that he would never stand again.

Then he reached for the blood, and it gathered instead of falling. He took the scythe back in his right hand, watching a narrow stream run down his wrist, slip beneath his fingers, and climb the handle. It spread across the iron, filling the small nicks along the edge before extending beyond them. As the creature rolled onto its knees, Rook tightened his grip and felt the blood hold its shape.

“All right.”

The Abomination sprang upright and reached for his face. Rook ducked beneath its claws and swung upward through the exposed shoulder, bracing his wrist for the resistance he expected. He had put enough force behind the strike to break the joint even if the blade caught in bone.

The arm came away almost without slowing him. His scythe carried on upward, jerking him back as the weight of the coffin pulled him farther than he intended. He took a hurried step to keep his balance, narrowly avoiding the severed arm as it struck the road beside him.

“Fuck.”

Its fingers closed around loose stones while Rook struggled to bring his weapon back down. The creature was already charging again, its remaining hand thrust toward his throat. He shifted half a step aside, felt a claw scrape his collar, and drove the curved point of the scythe into the middle of its chest.

This time, he used less force. The blade entered easily, allowing him to pull it sideways and down through the ribs. Dark flesh parted around the weapon, opening a long diagonal cut across the creature’s chest. Beneath it, something grey moved inside the wound.

Rook recognized the core immediately. He had seen hundreds like it, probably more than hundreds. He had cut them out, exposed them, and struck them until his weapons broke. He knew how they looked through torn flesh and how quickly that flesh could close around them again.

For three hundred years, reaching one had meant finding another thing he could not finish. His grip tightened around the scythe. He could still feel the blood along its edge, sharp and held in place by his will, but cutting flesh and destroying the thing beneath it were not the same.

‘What if this still wasn’t enough?’

The Abomination lowered its head, forcing Rook to duck as its antlers swept over him. One point struck the coffin with a wooden crack, ending his hesitation. He reversed his grip and dragged the blade across the other side of its chest. The second cut crossed the first, leaving a broad flap of flesh and broken ribs hanging loose.

The creature crowded him against the edge of the road. Rook passed the scythe into his left hand, planted his feet, and struck its jaw with his right. The blow snapped its head aside, twisting its upper body and pulling the damaged chest open. Before it could recover, he drove the scythe into the exposed core.

The grey surface split beneath the blood-coated edge. Rook felt something give through the handle, a brief tremor passing into his palm that felt nothing like the jolt of breaking bone. The core collapsed around the blade, its smoky interior spilling through the cut.

The Abomination stopped moving with its remaining hand close enough to touch his coat. Then its knees folded. Rook pulled the scythe free and stepped away as the creature fell, watching its body begin coming apart before it struck the road.

The edges of its wounds loosened into grey dust, and its chest sank inward. Beside his boot, the severed arm lost its shape before the fingers could open again. Sounds escaped with the collapsing body: a short breath, several overlapping words he could not understand, and something that might have been laughter. It broke into a frightened cry and faded before he could be certain.

Rook stood still as the antlers crumbled last, leaving two pale curves upon the ground. A passing current of air scattered them across the stones. Nothing tried to pull itself back together, but he waited anyway, watching the place where the creature had fallen.

The road remained empty. He looked down at his scythe, where blood covered the iron in a thin, smooth layer, its extended edge catching the lantern’s blue light. After shifting the weapon back into his right hand, he called it back.

The blood softened and ran along the blade, gathered beneath his fingers, and slipped up his wrist. His forearm stung as the last of it returned, then the cut closed. Rook rubbed his thumb over the place where the wound had been. Three hundred years and a little more, and he had finally Culled something.

There should have been someone to tell. The thought surprised him enough that he looked toward the empty road ahead, almost expecting to find someone waiting there. Mara would have had plenty to say. He could imagine her looking between him and the place where the creature had disappeared, already preparing questions he would struggle to answer.

Rook took the cigar from his mouth. Its end had nearly gone out during the fight, and he examined it for a moment before looking up at the darkness above the mountain. He drew a long breath and let himself stand there.

The relief was there beneath everything else. He no longer had to work out how to leave that creature helpless enough that it could not follow, or wonder how long its damaged body would take to recover. It was gone, and he had been the one to finish it.

But he could also remember blood leaving his body through a tube. He had stood here and cut himself open to use the Imprint, willingly. Only a few hours after remembering what had been done to him, he had found a reason to do part of it himself.

Rook lowered his eyes to his unmarked skin. He would need to learn how much blood he could spare and how long he could keep it outside himself. There was also the question of what would happen if he lost his hold on it, or something carried away a piece he could not recover. A Second Rank on an open road had given him room to make mistakes.

Gascoigne would not.

He put the cigar back between his teeth and bent to retrieve the lantern. For now, the bastard had a head start, and standing here would only make it longer. Rook found the boot tracks beyond the gap where the creature had emerged and followed them uphill.

Gascoigne’s deeper tread remained easy to distinguish. Mara’s prints stayed close to his, though one step was shorter than the other. The road narrowed as it climbed around the mountain, forcing Rook to slow down whenever fallen stone blocked part of the path.

In several places, he had to move close to the outer edge, where the ground dropped beyond the reach of his lantern. He kept the scythe ready and examined each obstruction before passing it. Somewhere below, a creature scraped against rock, the sound following him for several steps before stopping.

Rook paused and held the lantern steady. Nothing moved within the blue light, but he waited a little longer, listening for another scrape or the sound of something climbing. When neither came, he continued along the trail.

It led around a broad shoulder of the mountain and onto higher ground. Here, the wind had swept most of the loose soil from the road, leaving him to search for grit pressed into cracks and small stones disturbed along the edges. Once, he found a faint smear where Mara had steadied herself against the slope. He touched it, looked ahead, and moved faster.

At the next rise, the land opened before him. Rook lifted the lantern, then lowered it again so its light would not interfere with the view. Far away, a Beacon burned, spreading its glow across a low section of the horizon and catching the faint outlines of walls beneath it.

At this distance, he could make out little more than the Bastion’s position and the dark ground separating it from the mountain. But it was there, and Gascoigne had somewhere to take her. Rook moved along the rise, searching the nearer slopes for a smaller blue light. He looked between outcrops and down every visible stretch of road without finding one.

They should not have been that far ahead. Mara was injured, and Gascoigne had spent time fighting the creatures drawn by her charge. Unless he had carried her, there was a limit to how much ground they could have covered.

Rook looked back at the prints. There were still two sets, both heading down the far side of the rise. He followed them until the slope revealed what lay beneath the mountain, then stopped to stare at the trees.

Their crowns crowded together below him, forming a dark, uneven surface that stretched toward the distant Bastion. The forest filled the lower ground and climbed partway up the surrounding slopes. Wherever the road went after leaving the mountain, it disappeared beneath the branches.

“Well, that’s fucking convenient.”

They could have been just inside the trees and he would not have seen their lantern. He checked the tracks again, confirming that Gascoigne had kept to the descending road and Mara had followed. There was no sign of either turning back, so Rook began the descent.

The wind weakened as he approached the forest. Damp earth gathered between the stones, holding clearer prints than the bare ground above. That would help, provided nothing else crossed the trail. The trees would be less useful.

Their trunks crowded the road, with low branches hanging over the entrance to the forest and exposed roots breaking through what remained of its surface. Beyond the first few rows, the lantern showed gaps deep enough to conceal something much larger than the creature he had just killed. Rook stopped outside them and listened.

A faint rustling came from somewhere to his left. Farther in, wood creaked under a weight he could not see. He knew none of this ground, had no idea where the road narrowed or flooded, and could not tell what might be waiting above it. Following the prints too closely would make it easy to miss everything else.

He shifted the lantern forward and checked the branches before looking down again. Mara’s uneven steps continued into the forest. Rook followed, keeping the scythe clear of his coat.