Seven Forsaken

Please note that the chapter below is an early draft. Names and world-building details subject to change. This deleted scene was originally at the beginning of Chapter 9, but I decided that the chapter had more impact when it focused solely on the relationship between Isa and Spensa. This remains an important scene from Isa's past. It just doesn't have a home in the current draft.

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In Isa’s travels among different cultures, he had heard a lot of conflicting claims on precisely what event in a boy’s life turned him into a man. For all the disagreement, Isa knew exactly which day had turned him into a man. It just hadn’t turned him into a very good one.

In his defense, having your almost-brother sell you to bandits had to be one of the worst ways to embark on adulthood. He wasn’t sure when the bandits had knocked him unconscious, only that he had come to lying in their covered wagon between crates of contraband, tied hand and foot. When his hands groped for his sabers, they weren’t there.

“Nazaru!” was the first thing he cried out when he realized his position.

“Don’t bother callin’ for your friend.”

The voice made Isa start and he twisted to find a bandit sitting at the far end of the wagon, casually skinning a hare. This man’s name was Yenaris, if Isa remembered right. He was the one who had offered Isa and Nazaru a ride to the next town.

“The witch boy sold you to us for our spare horse,” Yenaris said, “since we’re headed west in the morning and he wants to keep to the river.”

“What?” Isa must have heard wrong. The man’s thick northern accent was hard to understand. “No… no…”

“Yeah.” Yenaris had a little chuckle at Isa’s shock. “He’s gonna leave for Krell in the morning.”

“No…” He wouldn’t was on Isa’s tongue, but his head knew better. Aer knew better. The truth was too crushing to contemplate, so Isa turned to the more pressing issue. “What are you going to do with me?”

“If you’re Inkarnam,” the bandit said, “might be some Wildermyn out west interested in your skin—since it’s got magic in it and all.”

“What? No, th-that’s not how it works. My tattoos aren’t useful to anyone but me.” At least, as far as Isa knew. There was magic out there in the Wilds that no Riverlander understood.

“We’ll see. Some Wildermyn’ll pay extra shells for rare magic users.”

“But Nazaru’s Inkarnam too,” Isa said in confusion.

“Yeah,” the man laughed, “we don’t fuck with witches.”

“He’s—not a witch, okay?” Isa stuttered, straining against the ropes. “He has albinism.” The condition rendered Nazaru’s eyes pale blue, his skin flour-white, and his godmarks invisible but that was all it did. Elder Thrask always said it was just color—as relevant as Kendiri’s eyes being a little lighter brown than Isa’s. Anything else was ignorant superstition… Isa just hadn’t realized he would encounter that superstition within days of leaving Azenkar. “It’s a color, nothing else.”

“Yon demon boy was right,” another bandit grumbled from somewhere outside the wagon. “You are annoying.”

“We’re really supposed to drag this chatty brat all the way into the Wilds for a sale?” said a third voice.

“Well,” Yenaris said, “we could kill him now.”

Isa’s stomach fell through the bottom of the wagon. “No—!”

A fist slammed into his cheek, sending him crashing to the wagon floor.

“You keep quiet,” the bandit growled above him.

When Isa gingerly lifted his head a fraction blood was dribbling from his mouth, dripping onto the wood beneath him.

Stay calm, Isa, Aer bid him. Stay with me.

“Wildermyn want their parts fresh, not rottin’,” one of the bandits outside the wagon said impatiently.

“So? We’ll get him off our hands tomorrow. That was the plan anyway, wasn’t it? To see what we could get for our catch in Hiyrza? Who cares if he’s been dead for a few extra hours?”

Aer faded as the taste of salt and metal filled Isa’s mouth. Blackness surged into the Gray with a force Isa had never known. The force of total panic. When Nazaru had held him under the water, or strangled him with his braid, or playfully cut too close during saber training, Isa had never believed that the other boy would really kill him—at the very least, he hadn’t believed that the other Inkarnai would let Nazaru kill him. This was different. And Isa had no way to balance Theid in a position like this.

“He’s got a point,” one of the bandits outside said as Darkness overtook the Gray. “I much prefer a carcass to live cargo.”

“It’s settled then.” Yenaris stood and wiped hare’s blood from his knife as Theid grappled madly with Aer in the blur of Isa’s mind. The bandit grabbed Isa by the hair and hauled his head up, knife poised over him.

“Let me see…” he mused, sounding as bored as if Isa were just another hare. “Don’t want to damage your skin, so… open up.”

In a moment of insanity—or clarity—Theid and Aer coalesced into a single entity and screamed in one voice:

Transform!

“Come on, Inkarnam.” Yenaris shook him by the hair. “Open your mouth.”

So, Isa did—and closed a hundred python’s teeth on Yenaris’s neck.

The knife harmlessly clipped Isa’s scales as bandit and snake fell to the wagon floor among the crates. Even if Yenaris’s windpipe had survived the barbed teeth, he still wouldn't have had the chance to scream. A thrash of Isa’s coils broke his neck, killing him instantly.

The fatal crack of Yenaris’s spine broke something between Isa and Aer; he felt it, even through the fog of panic. That break could never heal straight—but there was no time to dwell on the loss, no time to absorb the sin he had just committed. The commotion had drawn the attention of the men outside the wagon and Isa instinctively coiled his body behind the crates to hide.

“What the fuck?” a voice said from the wagon’s entrance as Isa slid deeper into the dark between the crates.

Footsteps hit the wagon floor, boots approaching Isa’s hiding place. A clunk as the bandit went to one knee to peer behind the crate—and, cut off from Aer, Isa drowned in the swell of Theid’s voice.

Bite! Kill!

He exploded forward.

Screams pierced the dry evening air as Isa’s teeth hit hot flesh, his twenty-eight feet of muscle spasming in directionless fury. He didn’t realize he had torn the man’s arm off until hot human blood was spraying everywhere, confusing his thermal sensors.

Disoriented and unable to think, he transformed back into a boy. This was a mistake as the second bandit had just leapt into the wagon. The hulk of a man physically overpowered Isa in seconds, twisting his left arm behind his back and clamping a hand over his mouth.

Fight! Theid’s voice bid him, shooting adrenaline through his every vein. Bite! Kill!

And Isa, who had lost track of his body, sank his teeth into the bandit’s hand and bit down hard. Fresh blood welled around his gums and bone crunched beneath his molars as the man shouted in pain. When the hunter released Isa’s arm to grab for his jaw, Isa thrashed, turned into that larger body, and shoved—without loosening his bite.

Tearing muscle felt different, more visceral, in human form. Isa stumbled back with a mouthful of flesh behind his teeth, blood splattering the floor between him and the bandit. Isa let out a sob of horror and a thumb fell from between his teeth. He had bitten so hard and jerked back so ferociously he had torn the man’s thumb from its socket.

Still bellowing in pain, the bandit jerked his dagger from its sheath with his good hand. It was only at the rasp of metal that Isa came partway back to himself and remembered what he was: human. Inkarnam. Meaning that when he transformed—

Sabers! distant Aer, at last, got a word in past Theid’s shrieking presence. If you must fight, fight like a human!

Remembering that he had hands, Isa unsheathed his sabers, each twice the length of the hunter’s knife. The bloodied bandit lunged for Isa but a hunting knife was not a sufficient weapon against sabers. Isa slashed out messily on impulse and muscle memory. The first saber did little more than knock the knife aside but the second sliced through skin and muscle to slide against bone.

Isa’s shout of horror—at himself, at the amount of red that sprayed from the man’s lacerated arm—was lost in the bandit’s shriek of agony. Weak with blood loss, the man stumbled to his knees. And that was the end of him.

Because Isa didn’t stop slashing.

Isa! Aer cried out in agony. Isa, stop! Stop!

But Isa didn’t, couldn’t. If he stopped, if he returned to his logical mind, he would have face what he’d done and he couldn’t…

The carnage only ended when his body started shaking so badly that the sabers, slick with blood, slipped from his hands. By that point, the twitching meat beneath him was no longer recognizable as a man—and Aer had stopped calling to him.

Bereft, Isa heaved, sobbed, and stumbled from the wagon before vomiting violently in the dirt.

He was still on his knees, spitting blood and stomach acid, when he felt eyes on him and looked up.

“Told you not to trust anybody.” Nazaru was leaning against the tree where one of the horses was tied.

“What the fuck, Nazaru!?” Isa roared, throat raw, fresh tears in his eyes.

“Language, Isa. What would Elder Thrask say?”

It was that—the total nonchalance—that made Isa realize that Yenaris hadn’t been lying. Nazaru really had done this. “You sold me… for a horse?”

“A horse and a gun.” Nazaru rolled his cold blue eyes. “Let’s not be dramatic.”

“They were going to cut me into pieces!”

“Well, they didn’t,” Nazaru said, untying the mare from her tree. “Relax, Drama Rama. You’re fine.”

“Fine!?” Isa’s voice startled a hawk from the branches above Nazaru. “I… I just murdered three men!”

“Yeah,” Nazaru laughed. “Better get to meditating, huh? See if you can square that with Aer.”

“You did this!” Isa roared, tears rolling down his face. “Witch! You square it with Aer!”

Nazaru’s expression hardened, a muscle twitching near his eye. In all their years of squabbling and name-calling, Isa had never called him ‘witch.’ That was what the people of his village had called him with they had repeatedly tried to murder him—in the four years before a sympathetic Wildermyn had spirited him away and brought him to the Temple steps.

“Oh, Isa,” His voice had gone cold. “Aer knows what I am.”

“I’m going to kill you!”

“Well.” Nazaru’s easy smirk returned as he swung into the saddle. “If you can catch me.”

“No…” Isa was ashamed but in that moment, despite everything, all he could think was that he didn’t want Nazaru to leave him alone here with what he’d done. Not when Aer had just deserted him. “Wait!”

But Nazaru had already kicked the mare into a gallop.

Isa took a few steps after him before realizing that he would never overtake him on foot and turned to where the bandits had tied the rest of their horses. Immediately, he knew something was wrong. Two of the horses were lying on their sides, squirming in a way that horses really shouldn’t. The one that was still on its feet was swaying and twitching.

Cobra venom.

The horses might not die of it—they were robust animals—but they wouldn’t be carrying riders anywhere for at least two days. All Isa could do was watch in grief and fury as Nazaru rode upriver and out of sight.

He hadn’t figured out what on Earth he was going to do—Spirits, he had barely scrubbed the tears from his face—when a “Fuck!” made him turn back toward the wagon.

“What the fuck is this?”

It was the fourth bandit—Sadir, the one who had gone hunting for dinner. The antelope he had shot slid from his shoulders and thudded to the dust as he looked over the twitching horses and butchered men.

“Damn…” His eyes drifted from the corpses to take in Isa, who was still soaked in blood. “You did all of this?”

“I…” Several thoughts chased through Isa’s head as the hunter’s eyes met his.

Sadir was the oldest of the bandits, the most experienced—at least, Isa assumed, based on the awed way the other men had deferred to him. He clearly knew how to hunt and kill a wild animal… and he had a gun. If he decided to kill Isa, out here in the open with no crates for cover, Isa didn’t stand much of a chance… unless he made himself seem more dangerous than he really was. If Nazaru could do it, so could he.

“Yeah.” Isa drew his shoulders back like a cobra’s hood and tried to suppress the lingering tremor of tears. “I killed them. You have a problem with that?”

“Well, shit…” the man said and Isa waited to see if that note of shock in his voice would shift to fear or wrath. Neither, it turned out. Instead, he started laughing. “Ostia save me, how old are you?”

“Sixteen, sir.”

“And your name?”

“Isa.”

“Well, young Isa, how’d you like to get very rich?”

“Wh-what?”

“With those skills…” Sadir let out a low whistle. “There’s good money to be made out here. Come with me and I’ll show you how to turn that killer instinct into heaps of shells.”

“You’re… not upset?”

“About that?” He looked to the mangled flesh that had been his travel companions and shrugged. “I was only travelin’ with the fools ‘cause I wanted a bit’a backup on my next job. Now I’m thinkin’ I might not need ‘em.” He raised his eyebrows at Isa. “And half a fifty-gold-shell bounty is a lot more’n a quarter.”

“Fifty gold shells?” Isa had never seen that much money in his life.

“Twenty-five of ‘em are yours, if you help me on this hunt.”

Isa had no money, no transportation, and the further upriver he went, the more he struggled to understand the language. Years later, it was still hard to forgive himself for how brutally he had killed those three bandits; it was easier to forgive a sixteen-year-old the moment he took a faltering step toward Sadir.

“What do you say?” The hunter held out a hand rough with callouses and smudged with antelope’s blood.

Take it, said Theid as Isa looked down at the bandit’s hand and his own far bloodier one… Take it, Isa! It’s the only way to survive.

And Aer was not there to disagree.

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