Field

The sky was filled with lines of gold.

The wall was filled with lines of remnant crimson.

The ground was riddled with lines of every colour.

People were only lines.

Lines without colour.

Nazran sat on a boulder beside the grave of Urmi and contemplated broken soil.

The sky was different now, and looking down meant less.

He pushed a finger into the earth gently. A crack that spanned two of his old steps spidered outward. The earth didn’t break, it didn’t rumble, it just cracked.

Because Nazran wanted it to.

A ring of soldiers guarded his rest. One step from him. He shook his head and blinked a few times. The lines dimmed, and the bodies returned. He couldn’t use steps anymore. He’d tried, but his step could take him as far as his vision perceived. Beyond it somehow.

Distance. Distance. Distance wasn’t there anymore.

The thought exploded out from his mind and through his chest. His thoughts felt more real now; he could feel them move. Especially when he understood the thought and ‘saw’.

He breathed. Slow. Deep. That helped to calm the thought and let it return to its rest.

Inside where it mattered.

Outside, others could see it and sight had become the sense that infiltrated the most.

Soldiers stood at loose attention with swords floating above their shoulders, eyes scanning the horizon. Each sword was identical, a mirror to Indrani. The sojourn blade rested across his knees. Humming with pleasure and awe. It would not leave his side. He could command it to rest, to hide, but it was so lonely. They’d killed its sibling and buried Indra beside its master.

Sitting near the grave helped a little.

Death they’d caused held everything tighter.

As his gaze passed over the soldiers, they turned to face him. They felt his gaze. Nazran’s attention was precious now.

Each carried another sword—his sword in one eye and his Cut in the other.

“You wish for something, Holy One?” A soldier saluted, and the sword at her shoulder bowed to him. Asha. She’d been near the walls when he struck. When he Cut.

“Holy. I’m not…” he stopped. They saw the sword. They carried the sword. What did he look like in their eyes? Did they see the lines? They wouldn’t answer. “Have the supplies reached? Have the citizens been fed?”

She dropped to her knees and bowed. “Forgive me, Holy One. I do not know.”

Nazran sighed. Sighed and cursed himself for sighing. His sigh caught the wind and entwined around the soldiers. They swayed, and the sword light in their eyes flared. Ecstasy swept through them, and the echo of clashing swords thundered across the field, across his boulder. He raised a finger, and the sound vanished.

“Go see.” He said and closed his eyes.

The lines were still there, but they didn’t call to him when his eyes were closed.

He breathed easier now, yet less. One breath could last minutes, but if he needed to he could breathe faster, more often, dozens of times in a second. His brows twisted as a new thought skittered across his mind. It wasn’t his breathing that was adjusting to time; time was accommodating him. His breath continued, waiting for the next moment his attention mattered.

A presence approached in the window of a breath.

“You’re willing to come?” He asked.

“The generals are afraid.” Aarti said from outside the ring. Nazran opened his eyes, and the soldiers moved aside to let her through. Before he asked.

Aarti’s arm was in a sling, and one eye was covered in bandages. A patch of her hair had been shredded, exposing smooth skin.

She’d cried about the hair. Then cursed when her eye burned beneath the bandages.

“And you?”

She laughed and gestured at her eye where his sword hovered. “They refuse to look. Refuse to see. The sword is easier to look at. Safer.”

“It would have been nice to see them bend knee,” he whispered, and Aarti blushed. She’d also bowed.

In front of the gate she’d hobbled after him and collapsed at his feet, head bowing when he faced her. Bowed but returned to Aarti. Maybe the others would return.

“It doesn’t work like that.” She explained and sat on the boulder. Not next to him. Half a hand below.

“How does it work?”

“I don’t know, but I’m here now.”

“Where’s your sword?” It was in the camp he could feel, but none of these sword bearers were apart from their swords for more than a few moments.

“At the camp, sitting in a pool of water magic I summoned for it. It’s a greedy little thing.”

Nazran caressed Indrani, lovingly, sadly, ritually.

“Urmi talked about sword spirits. Indrani and its sibling were so close to alive that I used to dream it spoke to me in its sleep. Now she’s here, in my hands and will never leave.”

“And?”

“She’s not a spirit.”

He didn’t explain. She didn’t ask.

Indrani still rested on his lap. In her sheath. Even in her sheath she was a cover, the shade, the line to blanket the sky. Nazran closed his eyes again. To push out the thought, that most insistent thought, the insidious demand he’d created when his will tore through the city, the demand to raise his hand and have everything be covered by him, by his sword. By his skill.

A soft groan escaped his lips; a tight sound, a whisper of a vibration that he smothered by breathing in; taking back what he’d created faster than it existed. His fingers trembled, his heart thumped once, and his mind danced, grasping at the lines to pull them closer, away from others, beyond their being, safe from him.

“I want…I want, Aarti.”

Aarti raised a hand; it drifted toward him as his breath escaped once more, the stream of air carrying it closer until it touched the lines he’d drawn in. There was no moment, she moved forward, yet away, her path no longer toward him. She stood behind him now; for a moment before her legs gave out, eyes swimming and her mana trembling uncontrollably.

“Wait. Let me try to undo it.” Nazran said, and loosened the lines. Cracks in the air appeared: black lines and crimson lines and sickly yellow strips and green streaks that refused to change direction as he let himself be closer to her, and she was by his side again. The soldiers all were.

They stood within arm’s reach and raised their hands to brush against him; his clothes weaved through fingertips and strands of his hair fell away to curl around fingers. Dozens snaked around Aarti’s wrist, her hand going to his cheek and her eye welling, fingertips tightening around his cheek.

“Don’t cry.” She said as tears rolled down her cheek.

“Don’t cry, Holy One.” The soldier’s voices broke, their sadness filling the cracks.

Nazran raised his hand to cover Aarti’s. He took her hand from his face and looked at their hands together. She carried scars, tattoos of magic and symbols she’d gathered over years. Her nails were filled with a purple ashen dust. Was it blood? Partly.

His hands were clean, the old calluses gone. The slightly bent middle finger he’d carried because a cousin had broken it in play was ramrod straight, piercing and sharp enough to trace violence and separation wherever he wished.

Always what he wished.

The urge rose again. To wish.

“The second coda.” He breathed.

“Discipline defines. The blade follows.” The rest echoed.

In the west, a piercing light rose into the sky. Far to the west, beyond the camp, across the plains and roads to the capital. It breathed of a long journey, and it was tied to him.

Something was changing there. Someone had collapsed; was in danger.

“Urmi said family.” Nazran reached out and pulled at the light.

A woman who’d seen his Cut.

She appeared at his side, kneeling, trembling shoulders straightening as his presence enfolded her; as his sword tightened his connection to her once more; as he cut away the hardship of her journey.

“Your will is done, Holy One. Your coming is announced.” The courier he’d sent for orders and assistance had returned to him.

The sword in her eye relayed her danger. The attack: magic and swords flashing towards her. The fear swelling at her existence. Nazran traced her path back along the line she’d come from and saw the palace, nobles and administrators huddling against walls and columns. Just as her sword showed.

“The plague is gone. We need assistance.” He declared, and his words left him to cut into the stones of the palace chamber, sharp and filled with whatever he was now.

He stared at the courier. Her name was on the tip of his tongue, but it drifted the moment her eyes met his.

Eyes. What did he look like to her?

What did she look like to herself?

“Your Courier returns with your will.” She bowed and the light twisted away from his grasp, her presence shuttling along the light, bound with an agency of her own to face the palace once more.

She was his Courier?

The Courier of Nazran.

The Courier of who he was now.

What he was now.

What he wasn’t anymore.

“You’re Nazran,” Aarti whispered, tightening her grip on his hand. “And … made a choice.”

Nazran tried to grasp the Courier’s name, but the line to her was stronger, tighter, and freer. Less of him existed. No. He breathed and felt those around him, Aarti, the soldiers, his Courier. She had become greater, more of her walked the lines.

“… the Courier of Nazran of the Cut.” The soldiers intoned.

They could remember. Could speak her name.