When Cage returned to them hours later, dropping back into his human form in front of them, his brow was furrowed and his eyes hard. They kept darting around as if he were waiting for an attack almost.
"We have a problem," he told Mercer, striding up to him more serious than they'd seen him since this trip started.
"What is it?"
"I found their camp. Everyone's gone. Vanished. But they were out in the middle of nowhere, and there was all this equipment I've never seen before. I can't figure out what they were doing, but it doesn't look like they were actually looking for anyone."
"How far away?"
"Half a day by carriage. We could cut that down if we rode the horses without it."
Mercer glanced up at the sky, considering. "We should err on the side of safety. We'll stay here tonight and set out early tomorrow."
It did feel as if they had just wasted the day, searching places they already knew would be empty. But she supposed it was best to be thorough. There could have been a possible survivor or something, someone who wasn't... taken? By what? The Traverse?
They returned to the inn, going about making something to eat. They carried it out in silence, everyone lost in thought. Sun wondered at the machinery they had out there and why they were in the middle of nowhere to begin with. What could they have found out there that would warrant setting up base?
After dinner, Sun went to bed; she had the middle watch and wanted to get as much sleep as she could, partly to investigate further on the other side but also because she just needed all the sleep she could get.
Of course, because she needed to sleep, it took forever to come. When it finally did, she found herself in the Traverse amidst the bodies again. There was nothing she could do for them; she wasn't even sure she could get them back for a proper cremation.
She crouched down beside the nearest body, inspecting her without touching her. Sun had no idea how old she might have been before whatever happened, happened.
Sun couldn't help but wonder if there wasn't someone like her running around out there, on this side of the world barrier. Illusens died; they would have had to pass through the Traverse; some might still be there. Would they still be able to use their abilities after death?
Sun stood up, looking around, a little paranoid now.
She continued winding her way through the bodies, keeping an eye out for any Revenants and any movement. It was still mostly silent, the only exception the ice song. A couple of times she thought she heard something in the distance, too far to really make out what it might have been.
It felt like the Traverse was violently ripped away when she was woken up to take her turn on watch. Cullen was the one to wake her, having been on first watch. He didn't bother saying anything, figuring she knew what being woken up meant.
Honestly, the way that boy spoke, you'd think he was paying by the letter.
Sun pulled her uniform jacket on to try and protect herself from the worst of the cold and went downstairs. Cage was there, sitting on a chair at a table by the window. He had a small oil lamp lit, and he was sharpening one of his swords.
"Hey, Sun," he greeted, not looking up from his work.
"Hi," she returned, taking a seat opposite him.
She was tired, exhausted really. Perdition had made her too soft. The regular meals, the safe place to sleep... She lived her childhood in a constant state of exhaustion. Now she struggled to get through winter, and the smallest changes threw off her sleep. At least she had enough restraint to keep that weakness to herself.
"Any luck on the other side?" He asked.
Sun shook her head. So Commander Mercer had told him then.
"What's it like over there?"
"Unusually empty," she replied.
"I mean in general. What does it look like?"
"Sure you want to know? You're not a religious fanatic, are you?"
They tended to be the worst when she contradicted their beliefs.
He chuckled lightly. "Furthest from it."
She side-eyed him a moment. People had lied to her about that before too. For some reason they came to her to try and validate their beliefs, then got shitty when she didn't.
"It's dark, not like nighttime, more like the bottom of a lake," she began. She could say that now, since she did have some idea, despite not being in the deepest part of it. "There are usually other souls there, and ravens. The people look like how they did when they died. Some of them obviously had pretty gruesome deaths."
"So you can just catch up with people you knew there?"
"They're not like they were when they were alive; they're... confused and disoriented. Some of them don't even know who or where they are. But I've never found anyone I know there, thankfully. Not everyone is there. Not everyone stays there either."
"Where else do they go?"
"Wherever lies beyond it? I think I see it sometimes," she said softly. "It's the only light in the distance. I used to try to get there, but it was too far, and sometimes not there at all."
"Do you think that's Heaven?" He asked, just as softly, and his eyes no longer on his work.
"I don't know. I don't even know if Heaven is real."
Cage let out an amused huff. "Here I thought you'd have all the answers."
"Nope, just as clueless as the rest of you plebs."
He laughed then and resumed sharpening his blades. Sun settled into her seat and tried to focus on staying alert.
-
The next day Cage led them to the camp he'd found. As they neared it, the others started to complain of feeling ill. They even started looking pale, and as they neared the camp, Cullen had to throw up. Cage said he'd started feeling sick yesterday as well. He thought it had something to do with the machinery they had set up. Sun felt fine, however. She didn't think it was the machines making them sick. The closer they got, the louder the Traverse got too, the stronger it felt. She could almost see its darkness under everything. Still, she kept her mouth shut in case she was wrong.
When Cage could see the camp coming into view, he called out to the others. The horses were also starting to act differently; they had reluctantly brought them this far but were refusing to go any farther.
"We'll have to walk the rest of the way," Cage told them. "It's not too much farther."
They climbed out of the carriage and into the drizzling rain. Sun looked around. Visibility wasn't great, and that darkness she could see wasn't helping. She had never seen the Traverse encroach visibly on the living world like this. What had happened here?
They followed Cage, their pace slow as the two boys started feeling really bad. Cage and the Commander didn't look great either but were managing better than the younger ones.
"Why don't you look sick?" Seph accused.
Sun just shrugged, but now that he had called attention to it, the others were looking at her curiously too.
"Sun, if you know something..." Mercer pressed.
She sighed. "I don't know anything for sure."
"Then tell me what you suspect."
"I'm not sick because I'm used to it maybe. It's the Traverse. The veil is so thin here I can see the other side. Vaguely. This has never happened before. I think that's why you're all getting sick. Living things aren't supposed to be so... drenched in it. Look at the plants."
While many of the trees and bushes were bare for the winter, there were no green buds ready to spring forth with the change of season, and even the deciduous trees were dying, so was the grass.
"But, like I said, I don't know for sure."
She was worried she might be wrong and they'd act on that information; she didn't want that kind of responsibility. Not out here where there were so few of them, they had no clue about what was going on, and they were completely cut off from any kind of reinforcements or help.
"How do we stop it?" Cullen asked.
"I don't know. I don't know why this is happening," she replied.
She felt like she'd been saying that a lot since she got here. Gods, she was going to look useless on her evaluation.
"There it is," Cage suddenly pointed out.
Through the dead and dying trees, they could make out tents and containers. They picked up their pace despite the ill feelings of the others. As they neared it, Sun paused her step. There were bodies, but they didn't look solid. They were flickering, transparent, and blurry, and they only appeared for a second or two before being invisible again. Most of them were wearing Revenant uniforms. She looked at the others, but they didn't seem to see them. They even walked right through them, and nothing happened. They were on the other side then... Why was she seeing them as clearly as she was? Was the divide truly that thin? Why were they pulsing?
"Sun?"
Her eyes shot to Mercer, who was standing a few feet away and watching her curiously.
"They're all dead," she told him.
His brow furrowed, and he walked towards her while she started counting the bodies. He might want to verify it was all of them.
"You can see them?" He asked, to which she replied with a nod. "How is that possible?"
"I don't know, but they blink in and out. Nothing works like it should here..."
He looked concerned, but whatever he might have been thinking, he kept it to himself. "All right, take a look around; see what you can figure out. I have a feeling whatever they were doing out here had nothing to do with finding missing people and everything to do with the Traverse."
Looking at this place, she could agree with that assessment. But what were they trying to do?
The group explored the campsite; the generator was still running, powering the machines and lights they had set up. There were a dozen or so tents that made up the sleeping quarters and another dozen containers repurposed to offices and labs, and oddly enough, cages.
They walked through the rows of them, eight in all. When they got to the last one, there was an actual, corporeal body there. He was locked in the cage, a bullet hole in the side of the head. The pistol was resting loosely in his hand. It was clear he had shot himself. But why? Didn't want to disappear like the rest of them? Did he know what was happening to them? He must have known something to be scared enough to take his own life.
"Fucking hell," Cage sighed out, more irritated than anything else. "What the hell was going on here?"
"Maybe this sickness got to him?" Seph suggested.
"Or paranoid with everyone else disappearing," Cullen said.
"How did the others die?" Cage asked Sun, turning to look at her.
She inwardly cringed. "Old age, I think," she replied. "There were no visible wounds."
"Old age? Like what you can do?" Cullen asked.
She nodded, reluctantly. Surely they couldn't accuse her of having anything to do with this. She had been with them the whole time.
"That's what you do? You just... age people?" Cage asked.
"Rapidly. Child to ancient corpse in seconds," she tried to shrug it off like it wasn't that weird.
"So it would appear we have someone else with the same ability running around," Mercer said, his brow furrowed.
She breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn't immediately jumping to it being her fault.
"Or maybe that's what they're doing out here," Cage said. "Trying to replicate it. But why would they?"
His question set fire to a small spark of dread in the pit of her stomach. She could think of a couple of reasons, and none of them good. It also begged the question, how much did they know about it?
Sun shrugged when the others looked at her like she might have the answer. She was a little torn, but Kalys had told her to keep as much of her ability to herself as she could. Letting anyone know they might be trying to replicate the life-stealing part of her ability was not an option.
"Let's just try and figure out how to reverse whatever has happened here," Mercer told them.
Before anyone could make a move, a distant cry rang out over the encampment. All of them stiffened up at the roar, Sun looking to the others. It had been days of no other signs of life, so the distant sound was a little startling.
"You all heard that too?" She asked.
"Of course we did," Seph snapped in a whisper.
Sun knew that sound; she had heard it once before, weeks ago while she had been out at the pond with Nick. It had slithered into her bones and left her feeling disturbed back then too.
She looked at him, brow furrowed with worry.
"You shouldn't have been able to."