Chapter 13: UpbringingMiz’ri woke slowly, a luxury she rarely afforded herself. Usually, consciousness hit her like a bucket of ice water—instant, chemical, and full of dread. But this morning, the world was soft.

  She was warm. Offensively warm. A heavy, solid weight was pressed against her side, and an arm thrown possessively over her waist. The Silence in her head—that screaming void she spent her life trying to drown in sex and violence—was quiet. In its pce was the rhythmic, snuffling sound of a human sleeping deeply.

  Miz’ri opened one crimson eye. The cave was dim, the fire reduced to a pile of grey ash and dying embers. The air was cold, smelling of river mud and limestone, but under the shared warmth of their bodies, it felt like a sanctuary.

  She shifted slightly, testing her limbs. Talisa murmured something unintelligible—"mmm... more honey..."—and snuggled closer, burying her face in the crook of Miz’ri’s neck. Miz’ri felt the wet heat of the girl’s breath against her skin and, against her better judgment, she didn't recoil. A traitorous smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth. Soft, she thought. And entirely mine.

  She opened her other eye, ready to enjoy a moment of gloating over her conquest.

  Instead, she found herself staring directly into the hollow, abyss-like sockets of a human skull.

  Miz’ri froze.

  Herkel was standing directly over them. He had finished his regeneration cycle during the night. The cracked ribs were smooth, the missing fingers repced, and he stood tall and imposing in the gloom. He wasn't moving. He wasn't making a sound. He was simply looming, his empty eye sockets fixed downward on the tangle of naked limbs with an expression that, despite the ck of facial muscles, conveyed a profound, rattling judgment.

  The stare was heavy enough to crush rock.

  Miz’ri didn't flinch. She didn't scramble for a sheet. She simply arched a silver eyebrow, staring back at the undead sentinel. "Enjoying the show, you old pervert?" she whispered, her voice a rough morning rasp.

  Herkel didn't move.

  Miz’ri smirked, running her hand zily down the curve of Talisa’s spine, making sure the skeleton saw the cim. "Don't be jealous," she taunted softly. “I'm sure if you had flesh you’d be as stiff as your femur."

  Herkel’s skull tilted slowly to the left. A single, dry cck echoed from his jaw. It was the skeletal equivalent of a disappointed sigh. He raised one bony hand and pointed emphatically toward the cave entrance, where the awful pale grey light of dawn was beginning to bleed through. Move.

  "Fine, fine," Miz’ri grumbled. "You're awfully pushy for a calcified old lech."

  She nudged the sleeping pile of warmth beside her. "Wake up, ste’kol. The bloated sun is threatening us again."

  Talisa stirred. She didn't wake up with a start this time. She woke like a cat in a sunbeam—slow, nguid, and utterly content. She stretched, her body arching against Miz’ri’s side, before blinking her blue eyes open. A wide, goofy smile spread across her face the moment she saw the Dark Elf. "Mmm, Miz," Talisa hummed, her voice thick with sleep and affection. She reached out, her fingers tangling in Miz’ri’s white hair. "Good morning. You're so warm..." She giggled, a bubbly, happy sound that bounced off the cave walls. "I had the best dream. We were eating something so sweet, and sticky and then you..." She tried to snuggle in, puckering her lips for a kiss.

  Miz’ri just gave a polite cough to get Talisa’s attention and then pointed a thumb over her shoulder. "We have an audience."

  Talisa blinked, confused. "What?"

  She looked up. She saw the knees first—bony, pale, and stark. Her eyes traveled up the femur, past the pelvis, up the ribcage, and finally nded on the unamused skull of her great-grandfather. The scream died in her throat, repced by a strangled squeak of pure mortification.

  The bubble of post-coital bliss popped. Talisa scrambled backward so fast she nearly rolled into the fire pit. She pulled her knees to her chest, frantically trying to cover everything at once with hands that weren't big enough for the job.

  "Pappy!" she shrieked, her face turning a shade of red that rivaled Miz’ri’s scarf. "I—We—It's not—I mean, you were—Oh, Saints preserve me!"

  Herkel just rattled his fingers against his thigh. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  "I am so sorry!" Talisa wailed, looking around frantically for her clothes. "I didn't mean to—I mean, I did, but—oh god, turn around! Pappy, turn around!"

  Miz’ri watched the chaos, resting her chin on her hand, a wicked grin spreading across her face. "I think he's seen enough, Marshmallow. At this point, modesty is a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has been thoroughly... ridden."

  Talisa let out a whimper of despair and buried her face in her hands. The air in the cave had shifted. The warmth of the morning was gone, sucked out by the vacuum of Talisa’s sudden, frantic shame.

  Talisa cmbered up with anxious energy , hopping on one foot as she wrestled her breeches back on. Her movements were jerky and uncoordinated, a stark contrast to the nguid, fluid grace she had possessed only moments ago. She yanked her tunic over her head, her hair frizzing with static, and smoothed the fabric down with trembling hands.

  Then, she froze. A shaft of pale morning light had pierced the cave entrance, hitting her left hand. The simple silver band on her finger fred with a sudden, blinding glint. Talisa stared at it. Her shoulders slumped, the fabric bunching in her fists. The flushed pink of embarrassment drained from her face, repced by a sickly, pale grey. She brought her hand to her chest, cradling it like a wounded bird.

  “I broke it,” she whispered, the words hollow. “The promise. It’s all broken.”

  Miz’ri, who had already dressed with efficient, practiced speed and was currently buckling her sword belt, paused. She watched the transformation—from lover to penitent—with a flicker of annoyance.

  “You didn’t break anything, Marshmallow,” Miz’ri said, tightening the strap. “Except maybe Pappy’s sense of propriety. And frankly, he’s dead, so he’ll get over it.”

  Talisa e just kept staring at the ring, rubbing her thumb over the metal as if trying to erase it. “I promised,” she murmured, her voice cracking. “I am betrothed. I am spoken for. And I just…” She squeezed her eyes shut, a tear leaking out. “I just gave myself to… to this.”

  “To pleasure?” Miz’ri supplied helpfully. “To joy? To a moment where you weren’t terrified of your own shadow?”

  “To a stranger!” Talisa cried, spinning around. “To a woman! To… to chaos! Theodore expects me to be pure, my people expect me to be pure!l. A pure, sealed vessel. And I’m… I’m tainted.”

  Miz’ri scoffed, a sharp, dismissive sound. She walked over to the fire, kicked sand over the st of the embers, and turned to face the spiraling girl.

  “What exactly did you promise this man?” Miz’ri asked, crossing her arms. “Did you look him in the eye and swear your undying hunger for him? Did you beg him to take you?”

  “No, you know it’s nothing like that!” Talisa attempted to retort.

  Miz’ri gred back. “You aren’t answering my question.”

  Talisa looked down at her recently-dried boots and sighed. “I am promised to him, body and soul, it’s just the truth!”

  “You are promised to him, or you promised him?” The dark elf pressed. “Be specific.”

  She practically stamped her foot in defiance, “We promised to be wed, said it in front of our families and everything after they introduced us.”

  “Introduced you?” She knew what it meant, but pressed for Talisa to say it.

  “Our parents are old family friends. Our families grew up together but not really that close. When it was time, around when I was 15 and he was 18, 3 years after his own journey to Vigil. They threw a party so we could meet for the first time.”

  “And how was your first encounter with this fated man? Does he keep you enraptured with a memory of his passion?”

  Talisa once again couldn’t make eye contact with Miz, blushing with embarrassment. “We walked around the garden for about an hour…I tried to hold his hand but he didn’t want to. He read me a love poem his Dad told him to read and then talked about how many kids he wanted to have…”

  “Anything else?” Miz’ri’s patience was wearing thin for this stifling ‘retionship’.

  “...I…uh…promised to be quiet when he’s working…?” Talisa half whispered, wallowing in a multitude of shames.

  Miz’ri arched a silver brow. “Go on.”

  Talisa looked down at her boots, scuffing the toe in the dust. “Theodore is a rising star in the Ministry, the Word depends on him. My parents say he needs a wife of good…breeding. My parents needed me… they needed to know I would be taken care of, that our Family would be taken care of.“

  “So it’s a loveless arranged marriage for security.” Miz’ri summarized coldly.“Your owner bought the cow before the sughter, brand and all.”

  “It’s not like that!” Talisa protested, though the defense was weak. “He honors me. He respects me! He’s even seen ‘it’, Miz. I got him to look once, practically had to beg him to let me pull my skirt down. He can read the mark, he knows the date…but…won’t tell me when. He says it’ll unnerve my mind to know my fate.”

  “And yet,” Miz’ri stepped closer, her voice dropping to a low, prowling register. “He refuses to touch you. You said it yourself. ‘Discipline.’ ‘Silence.’” Miz’ri tilted her head. “That isn’t respect, Talisa. That’s asset management. He isn’t starving you because he’s holy. He’s starving you because he knows he owns the meat, so why bother feeding it?”

  “That’s cruel.” Talisa gasped, looking as if she’d been spped. “He’s not like that.”

  “It’s the truth,” Miz’ri countered. “He treats you like a vase on a shelf. Dusty. Untouched. Waiting to be broken. And it sounds like they intend to break you.” She reached out, taking Talisa’s left hand. She didn’t pull the ring off, but she held the finger up, forcing Talisa to look at it.

  “Technicalities matter, ste’kol,” Miz’ri said softly. “You promised to marry him - that seems to be it. As of now you haven’t run from the altar, so your virtue remains intact.”

  “But the intent!” Talisa argued, desperate to hold onto her guilt. “The intent was impure! I wanted it. I wanted you. That makes me a liar.”

  Miz’ri sighed. The traitorous voice tried to whisper in the elf’s ear. She wants you. She released Talisa’s hand and pced a finger under the girl’s chin, lifting her face until their eyes met. “Listen to me,” Miz’ri said, her voice losing its mockery, becoming hard and resonant as stone. “Talisa, I don’t say this to hurt your pride; You were sold to the sughter. And st night?” Miz’ri smirked, a small, dark thing. “Last night, for the first time in your life, you stole yourself back.”

  Talisa stared at her. Her mouth opened, then closed. The logic was alien, heretical, and dangerously seductive. “Stole myself back…” she repeated, trying to grapple with the concept. Her shoulder remained slumped, but she was deeply at war with herself in her mind. Before Talisa could spiral further or formute a theological rebuttal, Miz’ri stepped back. She grabbed her pack, swinging it onto one shoulder.

  “Walk,” Miz’ri commanded, turning toward the cave entrance where Herkel was waiting. “Think ter. If we stay here debating ethics, the Rheans will use us for target practice, and then it won’t matter who you promised what to.”

  Talisa stood there for a second longer, clutching her ring. Then, with a shuddering breath, she nodded. She picked up her own pack, adjusted her straps, and followed the Dark Elf out into the hard, grey light of the morning.

  The trek up the ridge was not a hike; it was a punishment. They had to scale the limestone spine of the foothills. The terrain was a chaotic mess of loose scree, razor-sharp shale, and drop-offs that promised a quick, tumbling death to the clumsy.

  Miz’ri moved through it with the annoyed grace of a mountain goat, her boots finding purchase on shelves of rock barely an inch wide. Talisa, however, moved with the grace of a heavily den pack mule, gasping for air in nearly every step of the ascent. But despite that, she still managed to fill the empty air. “So…” Talisa panted, scrambling on hands and knees up a steep incline of loose gravel. “You’ve heard about my family life…what’s yours like? What are the Niranaths like?”

  Miz’ri paused on a ledge above her, looking down with pure, undiluted exasperation. “We Niranaths meet for tea and discuss the finer points of poisoning our retives.” She reached down, grabbing the strap of Talisa’s pack and hauling the girl up the st few feet. “It is a Noble House. A political shark tank that holds alliances that st exactly as long as they are convenient. We are known for our ruthlessness in expanding the Xyrian Empire, and the many Priestesses of the Void that come from our blood. We are feared from the echoing halls of the Reaches Below to the sun-bleached pins of the Surface.”

  Talisa dusted off her knees, her face flushed with exertion and curiosity. The guilt from the cave seemed to be metabolizing into nervous chatter. “So you have a big family then? Siblings?”

  Miz’ri turned back to the cliff face, searching for a handhold. “I have six. Three sisters, three brothers. I am the seventh. The youngest.” She paused, the word 'youngest' hanging in the air, weighted with implied scorn. "The runt."

  “Oh wow, I’ve just got 2 older brothers - Davin and Patrick.” Talisa whispered, digesting the information. “Six. I can’t even imagine; That’s a lot of people arguing over cake.”

  “It is a lot of people to kill,” Miz’ri corrected ftly. “Two of my brothers are dead, Volondril’isn, first born male, died from standard Dolmaedes bullshit. He was a Jabbuk, a consort for a powerful priestess, who ran out of his sexual usefulness and ended up on the business end of a sacrificial dagger.” As Mizri spoke, Talisa practically gasped.

  ”The second…” Miz’ri pulled herself up a high ledge. She didn't call down for aid; she simply spoke over the sound of her own exertion. “Zeerith’ist, fourth born, second male, He took one of my lovers, well ex-lovers, and got her to cheat on me, with him. I killed them both in the bed they shared. Oh, Mother was so displeased!”

  Talisa stopped climbing, her eyes wide. “You… you killed your lover AND brother?”

  “My scorned heart doesn’t share well.” Miz’ri peered over the edge. “It was the only solution.”

  “Is that why you’re in exile?” Talisa said behind big, worried, blue eyes.

  “Believe it or not; no, Ilharess chalked it up to another one of my ‘difficulties’ that I would some day ‘grow out of’. She may have birthed me, but she does not know me.” Miz said with a look of intensity in her eyes, “I grew tired of her games, the whole of it, so I walked away on my own.”

  Talisa scrambled up, looking at the Dark Elf with a mix of horror and fascination. “Are they looking for you, your other siblings?”

  “Only the remaining runt.They’ve tasked Izzril’or, third male, sixth born, to correct the ‘mistake’ that is Me, their seventh born disaster. The glory of battle for him, and the security of a deviant daughter dead for the House. Everyone wins, except me.”

  Talisa’s face was pensive, tight and worried. She looked as if every time she asked a new question it spped her in the face, but still her curiosity raged, asking “What about your sisters?”

  Miz’r returned with a cold stare, and a wrinkled nose. “What of them? Mother has her heir, Zesryna’vik is every bit her little miserable clone. With my older sisters Malda’ist and Kiaraneil’ost, she’s even got heirs to spare. They are the ones with the true power. Priestesses of the Dark Mother, sorceresses of bargain and curse. I ck their magical prowess, and, apparently, the true cruelty it takes to be successful in the Reaches Below.” She let out a long, hard sigh, staring off into the distance with her crimson eyes. “According to the standards of my birth and the family to which I was born - I am a meaningless afterthought...I’m surprised they are even bothering to try and find me.”

  She let the air hang for a moment, Talisa seemed stunned by the tale of familial dysfunction. She went to speak, but found no words to express her sorrow. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

  The word sorry felt like a hollow offering. She scoffed again, feeling a distance in her heart. “Why apologize? You’re not the ones trying to kill me...”

  “Because I understand, as much as I can anyways. No child should be hated by their family; we are naught but products of their own struggles after all.” She reached out and offered a calm touch on Miz’ris shoulder. She understands. The Traitorous voice remarked as Miz flinched a bit from the sudden feeling of warmth.

  But before she could react they reached a vertical shelf of rock, about eight feet high, smooth and featureless. Miz’ri stopped, the wall effectively a barrier. “Dead end, Marshmallow” Miz’ri muttered, wiping sweat from her forehead. “I can’t haul you up this. Not without a rope.”

  Beside them, Herkel rattled. The skeleton looked at the wall, then at the women. With a stiff, jerky motion, he walked to the base of the cliff. He knelt in the dirt, ced his bony fingers together to form a step, and then, with a disturbing click, locked his shoulder and elbow joints into a rigid, unnatural angle.

  He turned his skull toward them and chattered his teeth. Step on me.

  “Oh, Pappy,” Talisa sighed, looking at her ancestor’s degradation. “Are you sure?”

  Herkel nodded so hard his hat slipped over his eyes.

  “Utility,” Miz’ri approved. She didn't hesitate. She pced her boot squarely in the skeleton’s hands, vaulted up to his shoulders—which felt like standing on a coat rack—and then leaped to the ledge above.

  She turned back, lying ft on her stomach and reaching down. “Alright, Marshmallow. Up you go. Step on his head if you have to; he doesn't have any brains to bruise.”

  Talisa was more gentle. She apologized profusely as she stepped into Herkel’s hands, wincing as her boot connected with his cvicle. “Sorry, Pappy! Excuse me! Almost there!”

  When she got close enough, Miz’ri grabbed her. It wasn’t the soft, exploring touch of the night before. It was a hard, utilitarian grip—forearm to forearm. Miz’ri dug her heels into the dirt and pulled. Talisa scrabbled with her boots, kicking loose stone into the void, until she flopped over the edge like a nded fish.

  They y there for a moment, panting in the dust, their faces inches apart.

  “You’re strong,” Talisa wheezed, noting the corded muscle in Miz’ri’s arm before the elf pulled away. The traitorous voice in Miz’ris head roared. She likes your strength.

  “And you,” Miz’ri grunted, sitting up and brushing dirt off her leathers, “are incredibly dense for someone made mostly of sugar and soft cheese.”

  Herkel pulled himself up moments ter, his movements cttering and chaotic. His left arm had popped out of its socket during the climb; he casually picked it up, jammed the ball joint back into the shoulder bde with a wet snap, and adjusted his scarf.

  “We’re at the crest,” Miz’ri announced, standing up.

  She shielded her eyes against the gre. The ridge dropped away sharply on the other side, revealing a wide, dusty valley below. The trees had thinned out, repced by scrub brush and hard-packed earth.

  And cutting through the middle of it, distinct and unnatural, was the Trade Road.

  “There,” Miz’ri pointed. “Civilization. Or a close approximation of it.”

  Talisa scrambled to her feet, dusting off her breeches. “The road to Vigil? Are we back on track?”

  “Close enough,” Miz’ri said. She scanned the valley floor, her predator’s eyes picking out details the human missed. “Though it looks like the traffic is a bit… backed up.”

  She pointed down the slope. A mile away, a cloud of dust was rising into the stagnant air. It wasn’t the wind. It was violence.