"Please. Kill me." Sister pleaded desperately, and for the first time Joy noticed that her eyes were green. They were rich as emeralds, glinting with the same hue as the skies in the Outlands. Had they always been so green? So verdant? Yet they glistened with tears as he gazed into them, glittering faintly in the sunlight.
Kill her? The thought caught him across the jaw and struck him in the stomach; even his heart froze in his chest. His first instinct was to refuse, to shield her from anything no matter the cost. Yet questions followed that impulse, a certain hesitation and doubt about what he had once accepted without pause. Since when had she begun to matter so much to him? Since when had her weak figure become second nature by his side? Since when had her worth surpassed his own inside his heart?
He knew how he would have answered in the past. The strong lived and the weak died. The weak belonged to the strong, in lives and in fate. She was weak, useless and vestigial to him now that madness threatened her with every passing breath. Letting her live could only prove a hindrance, could only possibly be a mistake. By every code of the creed that he had known in the Outlands, he ought to kill her.
And yet every instinct screamed at him to protect her.
He saw her bloodstained face as they had fought, her hair whipping madly as it was stirred by wind and magic. He saw her tired expression as she had struggled to keep up as they fled the Outlands. He saw her wonder and disbelief as they had talked around the campfire. He saw her desperation and wild beauty as she howled and screamed and ran and stabbed and tore and struggled. She was family, his first, his only, and perhaps his last. She was pack and blood. She had given him his name.
That shadow behind him had long since been joined by another. To part with it now was to part with a piece of himself, was utterly impossible.
Joy's expression turned bitter as he snarled, "Never. You are sister." He tore out an arrowhead with a vicious motion, tossing the damnable thing off the pallet and making it bounce off the stones on the road. The force was so savage that it threw up sparks, the arrowhead flying high before landing amongst the grass. "My Sister."
Her face went slack with shock, clearly not having expected that answer. "B-but…" she stammered, meeting his gaze with surprised eyes. Such green eyes.
"You will live. You will not die here. On the road. By the grass. Useless and broken." he snorted, throwing his hands wide as a spark in his heart burst into a flame. "You will die fighting. With blade. With magic. With purpose. Your death will have meaning." He pointed at her with a black claw, his fangs clacking as he spoke hoarsely, "You will not die until then. I will not allow it."
Sister could only blink, her weary and defeated face suddenly breaking out into a smile. "You've learned to use your tongue." was all she said before she turned once more in her saddle to face the Kingsroad. Joy fell back onto the pallet with a grunt, feeling the blood stain the wood as his reopened wounds began to crust over. Inexorable exhaustion sank into his bones, and he wished nothing more than to sleep. Yet as his vision swam and his breathing slowed, the rattling of the cart on the stones and the bouncing of the wheels on the cobbles kept him from sleeping. He was perched on the precipice, dimly aware of the passing of time around him.
A sudden screeching halt and a loud whinnying of the horse roused him from his half-sleep. His blood surged as he sank into a crouch, instinctively expecting an attack. Yet as he took in a breath to smell the assailants, his thoughts slowed with confusion. There was blood in the air that was not his, but it was also old. Decay was mixed in with it, that pungent scent that brought bile to his throat. "What?" he growled out before gazing around in bleary uncertainty.
Sister had already gotten off the horse, striding over to the side of the road with an arm over her mouth. Quickly, he lumbered off the pallet to join her, his steps unsteady, for his legs had grown weak from disuse the past few days. It was not until he neared that he made out the details of the sun-burnt figure by the road.
It was a corpse.
From its size and structure, it had been young when it had died—perhaps only six or seven, for its head was too large compared to its hands. Its flesh was withered and desiccated, the skin sunken and dry like leather under the sun. There was no blood around it save for the brown liquid in its wounds, where the bugs had begun the laborious task of turning it into dust and dirt. Maggots and beetles squirmed and burrowed underneath that sun-tanned skin, their bulging figures and twitching movements giving the faint illusions of life in the corpse. There were no clothes on the thing, likely taken away, and it had died in a ball with its knees tucked up against its chest. Dirt and mud caked its feet, where the blisters had burst and were now beginning to blacken with rot. Two of the toes had fallen off already, being devoured by flies where the flesh was still pink and not necrotic.
It had clearly been a boy in its life, likely having collapsed along this road and died in the same spot. There were only a few tufts of ragged hair still left in his small skull, loose and blowing in the faint wind. His nose was already beginning to fall apart and crumble, without any bones to support it through death. His lips were pale and shriveled, utterly colorless and peeling back to reveal yellowed, rotten teeth. Blood and pus oozed from his face, from numerous boils that scarred his image.
Sister seemed about to retch from the image, her face growing pale as she looked away. "A crow-cursed child." she muttered, a hand over her nose as she dragged in a difficult breath. "Sworn stars, what was he doing here?" Unable to face it any longer and likely fighting her weak stomach, she turned to get back on the horse. Joy took one last look at the corpse, confirming that it was too far gone to scavenge. Any part of it that he ate was more likely to make lose strength as he recovered from doing so. He merely snorted, blowing the stench out of his nose before he followed her back onto the pallet.
Yet as they left that boy behind, it was the same day that they saw another by the road. Its circumstances were similar, and they did not stop this time. Sister merely took a short look before turning away, muttering under her breath. The wind tore most of it away, but he caught a short bit of "—faces watching me—" as he listened with perked ears. Worry gnawed at his heart, but he did not ask as they pressed onward. It was nightfall soon; surely this Capital must be near?
"How much longer?" he asked by the fire as they ate, the horse spending what little time it had to graze and rest. They were pushing the poor beast hard; it likely would not make it to the end of the journey.
Sister shrugged as she tore into a piece of salted meat, eyes unfocused as they stared into the bonfire. "I know not. Follow the Kingsroad; it will take you to the Capital. That is what they said in the cities. So I'm following it. I assume that the crow-cursed city will be there at the end." She spoke no more after, soon slipping into a deep sleep, and Joy gave a low huff as he settled in for first watch.
They are mere pawns in the face of my god, rabble and waste that must be removed. These fools know not how far I can reach, how far my children have been birthed. They underestimate my power, his power. They think me shackled and bound, as if I am long spent and gone. I grow in lands past the seas, spreading where they are too simple-minded to even imagine.
I will paint a trail of corpses, and the final flourish will be waiting at the end.
As the sun rose, so too did they continue their journey. The grueling clack of hooves and wheels against stone wore on, growing monotonous and tiresome as the silence grew. Joy spent his efforts reaching into himself, searching the pool of mahji that was inside him. Where it had been utterly empty days ago, there was now a thin film over the bottom. Yet it was trickling back at a meager pace, far too slow for his liking. When he had done magic on the world, making fire and pulling flame through the earth, it had never spent him in this manner. Yet for the simple task of enthralling a few men, even just for a few moments, he now faced an empty pool of mahji. Truly, a spell acting directly on the sphere of man, as Sister had put it, was taxing.
The dead grew more common as they continued, growing in frequency and number. Soon there would be two and three lying together, their flesh so decayed and ruined that they blended into a single mass of blackened, rotting meat. Flies swarmed in numbers so thick, they seemed almost clouds around the dead, and the sweltering sun made the stench of rot linger in the air.
Yet he found them stopping near halfday, the wheels screeching on the stone. He sat up in confusion, looking about before noticing. There were more dead, along the road. Yet their end must have come not long ago, for two were kneeled by the corpses, looting what little they could from the bodies. The scavengers recoiled as the horse and cart neared them, squinting through heavy cloths that covered their bodies.
They were short and hunchbacked, what little skin he could see tanned and withering. They were muttering quickly, too low for him to hear, and when they finally spoke it was with a voice like sand. "Please, my lady. The road is long and the end is close. Have mercy on a few weak souls."
Sister paused before answering to them. "The end is close? Do you mean the Capital?"
They nodded hurriedly, seemingly eager to please her. "Aye, my lady. Hardly over these few hills, and you can see the walls. Please, grant us a favor for these weary legs."
She held up a hand for them to stop before gesturing to the corpses on the ground. "And the dead? Why do they litter the stones? And what purpose do beggars have in the Capital?"
They bowed deeply, trembling on weak limbs as they replied. "Please, my lady. We flee from villages no longer of this world. There have been many of us, these past few days. Those too weak to make it to the end pass along the way. They have no more use for—for baubles and trinkets. It is only fitting...please my lady."
"No longer of this world? What do you mean?"
They shook as they remained bowed, their wrinkled hands clasped almost as if in prayer. "Monsters. N-nightmares. They came out of the s-shadows—nay, they were the shadows. They butchered us, like...like cattle. When I think of it..." Their voices trailed off, growing more and more erratic. Nonsensical words danced on their tongues, their mutterings more and more incomprehensible until finally they straightened. The wind blew back the cloaks that they wore, revealing hideously scarred flesh that wept black mist. When they spoke, tongues of shadows crept out of their mouths, crawling down their throats and dancing in the air before darting back inside. The corruption was a blight on their bodies, seeming to cling to the very air it touched.
Joy growled in anger and hate and horror and fear. Almost instinctively, he threw out his hand, drawing out a thread of mahji from within him. It flew out of his claws, bursting into flame as it traveled, showering the scavengers with sparks and it wrapped around their flesh. Their screams were swallowed by smoke and quickly turned to ash, the horse whinnying in terror and fighting to bolt. Sister relented, letting the beast follow its instincts, and they fled with the flame still burning bright behind them.
So shocked were they that they did not speak, hardly even thought as they rode hard from the pyre. The wind blew the stench to them, and the horrific smell of charred flesh clung to his fur. He hardly even noticed as they passed more and more corpses, hardly even noticed as some of them were still moving. They groaned and reached out as the two passed, some whispering and pleading. He hardly even noticed as the stones became laced with dried blood, bordering the cobbles with dark brown and scarlet.
He finally noticed when they came over the hill, looking down to see a massive wall stretching from each side of his vision. Corpses and the living littered the Kingsroad, crowding the outside of the walls in ragged huts and thatches. Archers leered behind the crenelations, the gates of wood and metal raised ominously. Screaming and yelling rose to a fevered pitch audible even at this distance as the ragged masses begged to be allowed inside.
"Behold," muttered Sister despondently, "the great Capital."