Math drew in a sharp breath. He was properly fucked if he didn’t follow her. Here was the only human he had seen in over two months, and she had a working compass. And what was more, he was worried he was coming apart, alone out here.

  On more than one occasion since his compass had stopped working, he’d been left with the certainty he was being watched. Not the suspicion, the certainty, as though something in the fog just beyond his reach, maybe the fog itself, was carefully tracking him. Routinely perceiving him in a place where everything became assimilated into the impenetrable shroud of the milky haze.

  There was supposed to be no life able to persist in the Sear.

  “I will go with you,” he tried to sound confident, but inside, he dreaded turning back into the void through which he had just slogged.

  “Fine,” she said. “Don’t slow me down and don’t interfere. And I don’t have enough supplies to share.”

  Math nodded once.

  She glanced at her compass, checking their position and the time.

  “It will be dark soon,” Math said quietly.

  “No shit,” Dyathne grumbled. “But this is no place to camp.”

  Math cocked his head curiously. In the weeks he had been in the Sear, the unending sameness of the place had meant he camped wherever and whenever the need struck. Except perhaps for the places he felt watched most intensely.

  “How do you know?” He asked. “One place is as good as another in this—” he waved a hand broadly at the fog.

  She snorted, “You really aren’t an Ashwalker, are you? How in the name of all that is holy did you survive out here?”

  He stayed silent, matching his footfalls with hers, the fog swallowing the sound of their steps. They both knew she wasn’t expecting cogent answers.

  The light was waning by the minute, the temperature along with it. Dyathne’s anxiety started to percolate under her skin. They were at least thirty minutes out from a passable campsite and she did not want to move through the fog in the dark. Iphan had insisted on traversing at night on more than one crossing and the mere thought of doing it again, without him, was nauseating.

  “What is it?” Math broke the silence, his concern apparent.

  Dyathne considered honesty for half a breath before gritting out, “I don’t want to travel after dark and we’re losing the light.”

  Math gave an agreeable shrug, as he wound his scarf a second time, cold closing in. “I tried walking at night in here and it was… impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible,” Dyathne looked at him sideways. “It’s deadly.”

  “Deadly?” He echoed. “How?”

  “You haven’t seen them?” She looked at him uncertainly. “How long have you been out here?”

  “Nine weeks and four days, if I tracked the days correctly,” Math said. He paused. Then, “I haven’t seen who?”

  She shook her head in disbelief, “The Venemon.”

  The word was reflexively whispered, as if the mere mention could summon them. She wasn’t entirely sure it couldn’t. She had never spoken in the Sear. What if voices attracted them?

  She shook her head to clear her mind of the growing dread surrounding her predicament.

  It was obvious Math had never heard the term.

  “Shhh!” Dyathne hissed preemptively. “No more talking. Not until daybreak. None.”

  Math swallowed his question. She quickened her steps. The light was fading faster now, chill biting at any exposed flesh, and her furtive glances at the compass didn’t help her mounting anxiety, or his that was rising to meet it. The woman was .

  The darkness enveloped them before they had managed to make it halfway. She reached her hand out to grab his sleeve, tugging him to a stop.

  Without a sound, she unwound a section of line from her belt, grabbing his hand and placing the end in it. She guided his other hand down the line to her hip, letting him know what it was for. A moment’s hesitation, then she felt the line tighten. She reached along it to check that he had secured it to his own waist.

  White light flickered on next to her. she thought.

  Instinctively, she slapped at the glowing object Math held, trying to get him to extinguish it. She had never seen anything like it: a straight black cylinder, roughly the length of his palm, emitting a bright blueish-white beam of light from one end.

  She loathed it instantly.

  She only briefly caught the surprise in his eyes before he got the message and the light clicked out. Dyathne touched the compass around her neck, gently gliding her index finger over the nesting rings. The rings hadn’t moved; they were on track. She allowed herself a silent sigh of relief.

  Understanding there was unlikely anything physical in the fog that might trip or hinder them was far different than believing it to be true. Their pace slowed to accommodate for the darkness.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  And the cold.

  Darkness was too gentle a word for night in the Sear. It wasn’t dark, it was nothingness. An aching, grasping nothingness that threatened to consume people whole, paired with a cold that flayed skin. Even the ground felt less steady, despite their footfalls sounding increasingly loud. Or perhaps that was the sound of their hearts beating in time punctuating the space.

  Could she hear his heart beating? Dyathne frowned. She had never heard Iphan’s heartbeat, but then, that was the blasted organ that had done him in. Maybe it wasn’t strong in the time she walked with him.

  After what felt like hours, the compass clicked. They had made it. She stopped, the line going tight as Math walked past her. She felt him carefully sidle over toward her until their shoulders touched. He didn’t move, clearly waiting for her direction.

  Dyathne felt once more for his hand, lifting it up behind her back to contact her bedroll. She felt his hand grasp the rolled fabric, trying to identify it by feel. Then she heard him shift his pack slightly, the soft rustle of unfurling cloth was reassuring.

  Squatting, she tugged the line to bring Math lower so she could lay out her bedroll. Instead, she felt a large hand land on the top of her head. Startled at being touched, she grabbed his wrist and yanked in annoyance, perhaps more forcefully than intended.

  He lurched forward, his weight sending them both to the ground.

  “Oof!” He landed with a thud.

  She was pulled roughly forward onto her bedroll and could only imagine that the tall man had toppled over onto his front, taking her with him.

  Dyathne didn’t bother hushing him, but it grated that he didn’t know how to control those reactions. It only took her one night in the Sear to know not to make any sound, and he claimed he’d been out here for weeks and weeks!

  Viscerally, she abruptly recalled her first night in the Sear, how she had cried silent tears of terror as she lay in the freezing black oblivion, trying to take comfort in the sound of Iphan’s steady breathing. She had even considered sidling into the old man’s own bedroll at the time to manage the terror, but reconsidered; they had slept close enough that she could have touched him just by extending her fingers, if she needed reassurance. In a decade, she stubbornly never sought it.

  She crawled toward Math, following the line. Tapping lightly on his back encouraged him to sit upright, when the realization hit her: he had dropped his pack somewhere in the darkness.

  He must have noticed his missing pack at the same moment he got to his knees, she felt the line tighten and slacken in rapid succession as he swiveled back and forth, reaching into the abyss.

  Math cursed silently. .

  Dyathne shuffled sideways, aligning her knees behind Math’s feet as he knelt. That he didn’t know the procedure for searching in the fog was a problem.

  What she couldn’t tell him, perhaps wouldn’t tell him when they spoke again, was how objects were not so in the darkness of the Sear.

  Nor were people.

  She gently placed her hand on one of his ankles, letting him know where she was. His frantic jerking on the line stopped. She leaned forward, keeping one hand on his ankle, stretching her body as far backward as she could against the ground, extending her right leg along the ground. She swept it wide. Nothing.

  She repeated to the left.

  Nothing.

  Straightening, she pulled backward on his ankle. He took the hint and slowly worked his way backward, walking on his knees in reverse. She moved just a hair faster than he did. His feet bumped gently into her braced knees.

  She leaned forward again, sweeping her leg to the right.

  Shift. Sweep to the left.

  There!

  She felt his pack.

  It was farther behind where it should have been.

  But it wasn’t as bad as she feared.

  Relieved, she allowed herself a small smile.

  She grabbed the pack. His bedroll had fallen under it, mercifully. Gruffly, she placed the pack and bedroll on the back of his legs, straps positioned toward him.

  Math shifted the pack onto his back once more and grasped his bedroll. Then he stilled, waiting for Dyathne’s next instruction.

  She moved back to his left, their shoulders once again barely brushing. The line tightened around his waist as she stood and quickly followed suit. Rather than let him fall again, she grasped his wrist and took one, two, three large paces to her northwest, dragging him with her, to where she had abandoned her own bedroll. Blessedly, her toe found it immediately.

  Slowly, she sat down on the splayed bed, the steady pull on their connection giving him the cue to do the same. It was difficult learning the dimensions of someone new. Iphan had been roughly her height; it was easy to know where his body was on the rare occasions they needed to make contact.

  Finding Math’s hand in the dark after a few unfortunate jabs to the sternum and ribs, she guided him to lay his bed out parallel to hers, open sides together. That way, they could remain tied while they slept.

  Kneeling on their own beds, she helped him slip his pack off and guided him to shove it to the bottom of his bedroll. She crawled forward and looped one of the straps around his ankle, demonstrating how he should keep it safe once they slept.

  Then she sat, untied her pack, and reached in for her water flask. Guiding Math’s hand over her flask, she let him know now was the time to eat and drink.

  He pulled his hand away and she knew he was rifling through his own pack. To her consternation, he wasn’t quiet about it. She heard him take a huge swig of water. Then another. Then a third.

  How much water did this man have on him? And where in the name of God and all the angels and demons had he gotten it after so much time in the Sear? She frowned.

  Math’s hand landing on her forearm made her jump. She felt him place something in her hand.

  Bread! And it was still soft! She brought it under the vizard without thinking, the hunger that had gnawed at her spine suddenly coming into sharp focus.

  Fresh

  At that moment, she didn’t much care to know the answer. As she chewed, she stopped herself from moaning aloud from the simple ecstasy of soft, crusty bread. They would have much to discuss in the light of day. Checking her manners, she placed some of the mushroom jerky in Math’s hand.

  He stilled.

  Math felt the gift with both hands, turning it over several times as he tried to discern what she had handed him. Was it leather? Did she hand him a stiff strip of ?

  It didn’t feel like food. Tough and spongy at the same time.

  He lifted it under his own mask. It did like food.

  Tentatively, he licked it. It tasted surprisingly good. Salty, seasoned with something unfamiliar but savory. And mildly spicy. He bit down. It tasted of chicken, almost.

  He reached over and patted her shoulder in thanks, feeling her startled jump again.

  Tomorrow, he would tell her they had plenty to eat, however hungry she might be. She didn’t need to eat her odd jerky if she didn’t want to.

  But tonight, he left her to stew in her ignorance. A smugly petty, punitive act for convincing him to come back the way he came.

  He felt the line shift and guessed she had looped her pack strap over her ankle and laid down.

  He did the same.

  There was no difference between having his eyes open or closed in the Sear at night, save the cold sucking liquid from his eyeballs. And yet, sleep always snuck up on him here, but never before several minutes of waiting. Dyathne’s breathing shifted and he knew she was already asleep.