The rattling of the mapmakers' wagon is almost unbearable. The only thing worse than that is the chatter of the boy next to you.
You and the rest of the First Army mapmakers have spent hours and even days traveling the Vy, doing your best to maintain your wits on the journey towards Kribirsk. The wheels seem seconds from falling off, long-aged sockets and fasteners sounding like they're giving last wheezes on their deathbed. All of this would be near impossible to manage, but to you, it seems like nothing at all. At least, nothing compared to the incessant whisperings of your fellow mapmaker Milos Gajov.
You can barely go a few seconds before he's peering over your shoulder at the sketch hastily stretched onto a wooden slat on your lap, pointing at still-drying lines and details. This river is too wide, that one is too small to even show up on this map. Why label that town? Why draw that mountain range like that? Were it not for the fact that you're trapped on this wagon and severely outnumbered by the others, you're somewhat tempted to just throw him out and watch him choke in the dust.
Apparently, Milos can't pick up on your barely restrained irritation, because he leans over your shoulder again, jabbing a stubby finger at the southern range of mountains. "There should be a forest over there. The Sikurzoi have a big swath of woods right next to them." You fight the urge to stab your pen into the boy's eye. "I know. I drew them right there." Milos shakes his head. "Yeah, but they should keep going. The forest goes right into the mountains."
Your brow furrows as you consider your map. "No, they don't. There's a gap of a couple dozen miles, big enough for a town. Isn't there that old story that the forest used to touch the mountains and then a lot of the trees were burned down? Ever since then, the woods don't touch the Sikurzoi range. There are foothills there now." Milos scoffs. "Those stories are made up, everybody knows that. Fix your map or Petya's going to have your head."
You raise an eyebrow, pointedly refusing to change your map. Yes, a lot of the old Ravkan folklore about mountain spirits and the comings and goings of ancient towns are nothing but nonsense conjured up to scare children into behaving themselves, but you know this story in particular is real. You happened to be there to see it when it happened, about three hundred years ago.
You were not born of Ravkan blood and build. No, you were a daughter of a much older time, back when Ravka was just an infant country learning politics at the knee of the uncharted world. Your people lived on the islands to the east, a collection of peninsulas and coastlines that have long since sunk beneath the waves. Hellas was long gone, nothing but a memory for those like you. Of those people, the Hellenids, you were the only one left. The last stand of a dead and dying people.
Your gods are gone, the pantheon crumbled away to ash and dust. Hellas has disappeared, washed away by the tide. You were forced to leave your home for newer territories, but that didn't make life any easier. You wandered from coast to coast, making your living and then disappearing when you didn't age or seem to change even as the years passed by like wheat running beneath your fingertips.
You were on the run for two main reasons: your home and your abilities. As the last of the Hellenids, and as the daughter of witch goddess Hecate, you had magic springing from your fingertips in leaps and bounds. You knew spells and words of power before you could even walk, a power that was desired by many who had heard stories of the people of Hellas and the gods who walked and spoke among the men. If you wished to be safe, you would stay by yourself, always running, never staying too long to grow roots or settle down.
They had a name for you, one you'd heard in pieces and snatches as you wandered the length of the continents. They called you Hecari, from your goddess mother Hecate and the Hellan word for daughter, κόρη, or kóri. The rumors grew like fog, spilling out wherever you went. You could tear a building down with a twist of your wrist. You were the reason the sea swallowed your home. You could kill a thousand men without even blinking. The stories went on and on, growing more ludicrous with every word.
You had found occasional solace in Grisha, people mad with the same power as you. They were confined to their orders- Etherealki could only summon their select elements, Corporalki could affect the body and nothing more. You, however, could reach for as far as you wished- your spells knew no bounds except your own half-mortal body. That was another reason why you always left- you never quite belonged, even with the inhumans.
On the day of the forest fire, though, you'd let yourself grow close to a scattered group of Grisha on the run from Shu Han attackers. You'd defended them from a mess of ambushers just emerging from the Sikurzoi, and in return, they'd allowed themselves the pride of thinking themselves a host to you, letting you camp with them and be warm by their leaping fires.
You can still remember that day, the way the few Inferni had stood around, staring at the towering ash trees with branches that seemed ready to reach out to the heavens. In Hellas, your people use to tell stories of the constellations- foolish kings and prideful queens, long-dead heroes and their spiny foes who'd done enough to land themselves among the stars, forever remembered in the night sky. Sometimes, you wondered if their starry spirits remained there, or if the last vestiges of Hellas had come crashing down just like the rest, leaving no more than bright specks of light to be admired, no spirits left entwined with them anymore.
The Inferni had glanced up at the trees, cursing the way they blocked out the sun and made it impossible to see attackers coming until the arrows were upon them. One particularly loudmouthed fool had raised the question of burning down a couple, even though it might draw suspicion from the few Shu Han soldiers waiting in the mountains. They'd turned to you, expecting disapproval, until you had sighed with a barely contained smile and suggested that you use your powers to hide the sparks of the blaze from sight. You had a feeling that this would go awfully- you intended to see how it ended and laugh from afar. You could do with a little bit of entertainment.
So, you had joined the Inferni by the trees and spread your hands wide. A single word passed your lips: κρύβω. Hide. A word of power, taught to you by your witch mother, another trace of sorcery. Your magic began to flow through you, inky pools of emerald appearing from your palms and hanging about the clearing until no trace of light could be seen, even when the Inferni ceased their nervous glances and let the fire pour from their hands and torch the forest.
Dark clouds of swirling green hide the blaze, disguising all sight of fire from spies and trackers. You let the magic run high among the trees, although not so fully as to stop the Inferni from tracking the progress of the fire. When they were too distracted to contain their scorching embers and the fires lit upon one tree, and then another, it was no one's fault but their own.
Panicked voices began to descend upon the clearing as the Inferni scrambled to extinguish the fires, but the damage was already done. By the time the scant few Tidemakers and Squallers joined together to put out the remaining blazes, miles upon miles of forest were burnt to the ground. Inferni fire then was far more powerful than it was now, and exceedingly difficult to extinguish. Could you have put it out in a second? Maybe. But that was not what they asked of you. To a half goddess who had seen civilizations rise and fall, what does one forest matter?
The forest had never fully grown back. The ground became scraggly and then covered by grasses, eventually rising and falling into foothills, a precedent to the looming Sikurzoi behind them. The Grisha lived their long lives and then died, as did their children. You still lived on. There would be no rest for you, not for many more centuries until your heart at last gave out. Then, the long line of the Hellenids would die with you, and your once vibrant culture would cease to exist, present only in the Underworld with the rest of the damned.
However, you can't exactly cite your history as Hecari of the myths to a particularly insolent mapmaker, and so Milos goes unscolded another day. The rest of the wagon ride to Kribirsk is as challenging as ever, although you find you can't entirely blame the boy for being on edge. Everyone is- you're approaching the drydocks where a town had once lived, now home to the Shadow Fold. Certain death is the only thing awaiting you there.
The mapmakers' wagon stops, allowing its passengers to stumble out, cursing stiff limbs and dried ink. You make your way with the others towards the new encampment, pausing to discard your now completed map sketch along with the others, waiting for Petya's likely scathing review. You follow the rest of the First Army stragglers towards the mess hall, waiting to grab a drink of water before receiving orders for the rest of the day.
As you head back towards the mapmakers' tent, a girl jogs up beside you. You recognize her from the whirlwind steps, the strands of black hair tied exasperatedly back from a beaming face. "Alina, where have you been? Everyone else is waiting." Alina rolls her eyes. "You're still here, aren't you? That means I can't be that late." You give her a look, and she clarifies. "I nearly got run over by an errant coach. I'd stop and complain, but I think it belonged to General Kirigan."
You freeze in your place. "What?" Alina glances back at you, brow furrowing in confusion. "It's alright, I managed to get out of the way before then. Honestly, it's not like the leader of the Second Army routinely has his drivers stop for mapmakers. It would be an extremely inefficient way to travel." You shake your head, trying to dislodge the feeling of panic creeping in on you from all sides. "No, not that. I mean, you actually saw the Darkling? You're sure it was him?"
Alina raises her eyebrows slightly at this mention of the less common nickname, but nods anyway. "I'm fairly sure. No one else has a completely black coach, and I saw someone inside that looked like they were dressed all in black. I guess he's visiting to make sure the upcoming trips across the Fold go according to plan. Why, are you scared of him?"
You force a laugh, playfully shoving her in the side as if this is all just a joke. "He's a little gloomy, I hear. Wouldn't want him to ruin the boisterous atmosphere over here." Alina glances around the camp, at the somber faces clad in olive drab. All who travel here live in fear that they'll be called upon to brave the Shadow Fold, a trip that seems to almost always end in death except for the lucky few who make it across. "Yeah, it's really pleasant."
Alina soon starts up another conversation, one you're more than happy to indulge in. She doesn't mention General Kirigan again, which is perfectly fine with you. Even the name alone doesn't seem right- you've always known him as the Darkling, nothing more and nothing less. General Kirigan is just another name he's cooked up for himself, doing his best to constantly reinvent a new life and make the Lantsov kings believe he's somebody to be trusted. You do your best to focus on Alina and keep your mind in the present day, but you can't help but be plunged back into centuries past, back when you'd first met the dark-haired boy with a multitude of secrets to keep.
This was after the creation of the Shadow Fold, after the Darkling had made the mistake of birthing the Unsea and trying to pass it off on a nonexistent forebear, the Black Heretic. You could understand the name change, at least- you'd been trying to do the same for your share of the centuries. Ravkans don't trust the Hellenid gods, and they certainly don't trust girls who've been around for far longer than they could even trace back their own family lineage. You've pretended that the title of Hecari has been handed down to your daughters and granddaughters, even though it's only been you. It almost seems like one more sign tying you to the Darkling, even if you wish you could cut all the strings now.
The Shadow Fold had sprung up before your eyes, although you hadn't been there at the moment. You'd actually been in the Wandering Isle at the time, excited at the thought of spending your years running on coastlines once more, heels rough and raw from a thousand steps taken on shifting sands and rocky islets. In the end, it was nothing like Hellas, and served only as a disappointment. You covered up your regrets by springing into action, taking the first ship back to Ravka to see the phenomenon for yourself.
By then, Grisha were being hunted to the extremes, and you knew you'd have to hide your powers to stay alive. Even then, the tales of Hecari had spread long and far throughout the towns, and your magic would be known to all who saw it. You made sure to seem innocent, just another country girl out traveling instead of an age-old witch who could shape the world if she felt like it. You had journeyed to the Fold; through it, even. You kept a shield of magic up around you the entire time to survive, passing through the already desiccating sands shrouded by an aura of horror.
You made your way out eventually. It was numbing to see the pain that had overtaken the residents, the ghost town trying to form itself into what would later be Novokribirsk. You made a promise to yourself to try and do some good, to stop spending the rest of your seemingly infinite life a shadow on the edge of the global consciousness. Maybe that's why you decided to help the group of renegade Grisha who were being chased by Ravkan guards. Maybe that's why you met him in the first place.
You had sensed the thundering of hearts before you even heard the footsteps. Your hands darted up, tugging the hood of your woolen cloak over your head and disguising your face. You were in another forest, disappearing into the trees and allowing yourself to be hidden from view. There were three Grisha running this time- what appeared to be two Materialki and another Grisha, one clad entirely in black. The boy in black was clearly slowing down for the Materialki, whose lungs seemed to burn as if they would give out any second.
The boy in black turned to face forward again, skidding to a stop a moment later as he realized that they were surrounded by the guards, all chance of escape gone. The guards nocked their weapons, and you could see the boy in black ready himself to make a choice. It was almost fascinating how quickly the darkness descended in his eyes, the bloodlust ready to come out. You didn't feel like giving him the chance to taste the violence for himself, as the word of power was already springing to your tongue. Ασπίδα. Shield. A wall of murky viridian stretches from the ground, rushing forward in an onslaught of magic. The guards' eyes widen and they practically topple over each other in an attempt to flee. Those that are not so lucky as to run are swallowed up by the magic. When it disappears, their bodies are nowhere to be found.
The boy in black turns to you, and even though you are cloaked thoroughly in darkness, he seems to lock eyes with you. Without wrenching his gaze away, he gestures for the two Materialki to keep running, presumably to a safehouse not far from here. Once they are gone, the boy turns to you, raising a hand in greeting. "Are you the Hellenid? The one they call Hecari?" You let yourself step forward, out of the protective shade and into the clearing with the boy.
You consider him for a second longer, then allow your hands to pull your hood down, revealing your face. Your eyes flash a vivid green as the last of your spell fades away, but this boy does not seem daunted. He would be the first. A half smile tugs at the boy's lips, although it's wiped away soon after. "They call me the Darkling." You nod once. "And it is your blood responsible for the Shadow Fold?"
The boy inclines his head. "I feel we have much to learn from each other." You shake your head slightly. "I stay alone." The boy lifts a shoulder. "Not all changes are bad. Not all people are out to kill you." You move to leave. "I've met enough to not believe that." The boy raises a hand as if to reach out to you again. "I've heard the stories about you. You would not find enemies in us. You will be alone for centuries, Hecari. Why abandon yourself to it if you don't have to?"
You turn back to stare at him again. This time your gaze is not dismissive, but interested. "If you've heard the stories, you must know that not many are true." The boy smiles the same half smile again. "I'm willing to find that out for myself." This time, you take his hand when he offers it, and let him lead you to the safe house to meet the others.
He was the first one you allowed to break down your walls, to trust, to give up your heart like a blessing to the Saints. As it turned out, you would regret it, once you found out the truth about the Shadow Fold and all he intended to use you for. You had fled his company, cutting him out of your heart with bleeding palms. You had meant to never see him again, intending only to help the First Army when necessary and try and help drag the Shadow Fold down. If what Alina says is true, then the Darkling is here once more. You wear a new face this time, changing with the times. He shouldn't be able to recognize you at all. Somehow, you have a feeling that he would know you anyway. It is not a thought that you cherish.