12. Florence

The engine that was going to propel them through the dense and dangerous wood known as the Skeleton Forest had seen better days. Better years actually. Long, long-ago years. It was an old and rusted thing, paint peeled at every corner and orange lines of oxidation ran down its sides. Florence didn’t have to be a Rivet to know that the make and model dated before she was even born.

It should be in a museum, or an artifact graveyard, not the overgrown tracks they were supposed to be traveling on.

Even with her minimal training as a Raven, Florence could see the signs of wear that time had abused into the exposed metal. The cranks between the wheels looked brittle and the pistons were in no better shape. The actual Raven of their group, Anders, had been tearing out his hair over it for the past week trying to get it up to par. Florence wished he looked a little more confident now, running his final checks.

“Where did we even find this thing?” Derek asked no one in particular.

“I feel like some questions are better left unanswered.” Nora threw her rucksack into the car that would be their moving home for the next few weeks as they traversed down through Ter.2 into Ter.1. The train was only three parts long—the engine, the tender, the car—and no two parts looked as though they’d come from the same machine yard.

“Flor, come help me with this!” Anders called from the front.

Florence glanced between her chests and the direction the voice had come from.

“We’ll load it up,” Derek offered.

“Carefully,” Florence cautioned. “Or you’re going to blow us straight to Nova.”

“If there’s anything that temperamental in here, we have no chance of making it to Ter.1. I doubt this is going to be a smooth ride.” Nora grabbed for one side of the chest.

“Still, be careful,” Florence called over her shoulder, making her way up to the engine. “Anders?”

“Flor, pass me a wrench.” The man held out a hand from where he was wedged under the engine. “There’s a small disconnect here to the cylinder I want to fix and Rotus is up bothering with the whistle. Not that I know why we even need a whistle. If we encounter another train on these tracks we have bigger problems to worry about…”

Florence passed the Raven his tools as he muttered commands. She watched him tinker and toil, remembering all the times she’d seen Will and Helen do the same when they were younger. Florence wondered where her friends were now, what vessel they were currently obsessed with.

“This is almost on tight… Can you check up on the safety valve while I finish up?”

“I don’t think you want me doing that…”

“It’ll save us time, and I want to get well down the tracks before midday.”

“Yes, but I’m not—”

“You were born in the Ravens, no?”

“Yes, but—”

“How long were you there?”

“Fourteen years. But—”

“More than enough time to understand a safety valve,” he insisted.

“I left for a reason.” Florence chewed the inside of her cheek to keep herself from chewing out Anders and creating tensions before they’d even started on their journey.

Anders paused, sticking his head out enough to inspect her properly. “Do you understand it or not?”

“Not confidently…” The truth was Florence did understand it, in principle. But she didn’t want anyone depending on her work when it came to anything but guns and explosives. And even when it came to those, she didn’t have the best resume for a gunsmith.

“We all understand things a little better when our lives depend on it.” Anders passed her a tool and Florence reluctantly accepted it before climbing up to where the safety valve was located at the top of the engine.

Her handiwork appeared to be sufficient, and within the hour they were chugging down the tracks, set along a southerly course. Florence, Nora, Derek, and Rotus took turns helping Anders manage the engine. For the most part, that involved shoveling coal and calling out numbers on gauges.

It was shocking to Florence how ineffective purely steam-based travel was compared to magically augmented vessels. The train was so old that there wasn’t a speck of gold on it, and the metal was too rare for the Alchemists to have invested in attaching some before they left. But Anders was an older man, Florence would guess in his late twenties, so he was raised in a time on the fringe of the wide proliferation of magic. Where Florence was unnerved, he was relaxed behind the wheel. Or as relaxed as one could hope to be in a rattling death trap.

Florence was surprised the train held itself together well enough to grind the wheels to life and pull the two cars day after day. It was an imperfect process that changed regularly. Things broke, and repairs had to be creative solutions. She was continually selected as the extra set of hands over Derek or Nora. Anders reasoned it was because of her birth guild. Rotus reasoned it was because she’d studied under a Master Rivet.

After the first week, she stopped all form of protest. She had worked with Arianna enough times on various clockwork gadgets to trust herself when given direction. Each morning she’d get up early with one of the two men and help them with any daily maintenance.

The trees towered around them, encroaching tightly on the untended tracks. Florence watched them whiz by in the fading light. Her eyes lacked focus that reflected her blank mind.

“What is it like in Ter.5?” Derek asked as he plopped down next to her, ungracefully due to the swaying of the train.

“The trees are smaller.” They passed the hours doing almost anything to stave off boredom. This was the carbon copy of a conversation they’d had before. But they’d have it again over the endless symphony of chugging metal and grinding wheels. “The land isn’t really flat, not unless you’re by the coast.”

“And Ter.4?”

“More flat land there.” Florence tried to dredge up memories of the Territory she was born in, but all that came to mind was the great, moving guild hall of the Ravens. A perpetually changing, ever-moving structure from all the tracks and raceways that curved through its many levels. “Though I haven’t ever really explored it.”

“Just the Underground?” He already knew the story.

“Just the Underground.”

“What’s that like?”

“Dark and terrifying.” Florence had no good memories of the Underground. She’d almost died both times she’d ventured beneath Ter.4.

“I can’t imagine anywhere more terrifying than the depths of the Skeleton Forest.” Derek followed her blank stare out the open door of the train car to the whizzing trees. Darkness remained nestled within them, uninviting.

Florence shook her head. “There’s light here. There’s sky, and up, and down, and headway to be made. In the Underground there is simply blackness. Inky, endless, blackness… and Wretches.”

“Perhaps the endwig are nothing more than forest Wretches?”

“You’d know better than I, Alchemist.”

“We don’t regularly find them in a state we can dissect. Or we would.”

Florence inwardly cringed at the idea. Her hands were kept busy with the revolver in her hands, diligently oiling it. Every day it had its turn, following the rifle slung over her back. “What are the endwig like?”

“Nightmare given flesh.” Derek’s tone was instantly grave.

“Have you seen them before?” Florence studied his face with fascination. It was an expression she knew, one of world-shaking horror—a death shroud pulled taut over one’s features, even if they escaped its clutches. She knew the answer before she even asked the question.

“Only once, from a distance. They hunt in the twilight hours; it was my mistake for even being out then.”

“What happened?”

“A nightmare.”

Florence knew she would get nothing more from him, and she didn’t pry. It would be like someone asking her to recreate the sound of the Wretches’ pincers, or describe the glow of their mutated saliva as it cut through the darkness like the most ominous beacon one could possibly imagine. She wasn’t that cruel.

The conversation faded with the light and the train’s steam. They coasted to a stop along the tracks, not risking wearing down their brakes for no good reason. By the time they jumped out of the nearly immobile vehicle, dusk was nearly upon them.

Nora made the fire that they would all sit around. Anders and Rotus were exhausted from managing the train, and did little. Derek kept Florence company as they ventured into the silent woods in search of game, hastily avoiding the impending twilight.

His hearing was better than hers. Pointed and ruby red, he had the ears of a Dragon instead of a Fenthri. Even though Florence found her senses heightened since the introduction of magic—years of ringing from explosions smoothed away due to the healing powers of her new blood—her aural acuity was nothing compared to his. They stalked quietly through the brush in the direction of a water source.

Derek would collect the water while Florence hunted their dinner. She was the best shot of the group and had yet to fail them. Creatures crowded around the streams and brooks that wound through the forest. She’d never hunted before this excursion, but it proved no more difficult than target practice.

Point, aim, shoot.

She adjusted her grip on her rifle, scanning the brush for any signs of life. A fat hare, a small deer, a wild boar—it made no difference. With her gun in hand, they were all made equal.

The rush of water over stones permeated the foliage, blending with the sound of rustling leaves. They broke through the brush and crossed onto a rocky bank. Florence scanned the edge of the small river they had come across.

“I don’t see anything.” She sighed heavily. “I’m going to track upstream a bit.”

“Don’t go too far, it’s almost twilight.”

“Just around the bend.” She kept her voice low to avoid scaring off any potential quarry in the distance.

“I’ll wait for you.” He slung the water bladders off his shoulder and they fell to the ground with a dull splat. Derek began to unscrew them, his skin almost the same shade as the dark leather in the fading light.

“I won’t wander,” Florence promised. She knew the dangers of wandering. It was what had separated her and Arianna in the Underground. She would only stay along the stream.

Derek vanished behind her as she trekked onward. Time and again, Florence ran her hands over the hinges of her rifle. She felt the tension in the trigger, assuring her that it was cocked and ready. She needed just one creature, and she could return back victorious.

With a grand stroke of luck, a pheasant made its way along the bank with an enticing little coo. Florence dropped to her knees, gun at the ready. The noise of her footfalls was covered by the sound of a nearby waterfall, seemingly the font of the river.

It rushed down around craggy rocks, determined to smooth over the rough hillside in long white strands that seemed to glow in the pale twilight. Florence brought the gun to her shoulder, adjusting her crouch so that one knee was up and the other was planted firmly in the river rock. She lined up the notches down the barrel of the gun, tracking it over the bird.

Florence took a deep breath and fought the urge to close one eye. With the bird securely in her sights, she brought her finger to the trigger and held her breath.

The creature raised its head suddenly, turning in surprise. Florence hadn’t heard what spooked the animal, but she didn’t hesitate; she took her shot.

With a crack, the bird was dead.

Satisfied, Florence stood, slinging the rifle over her shoulder. It wasn’t as much as she’d bagged previously but it would be enough for a night, even split five ways. So relived was she that Florence never bothered to heed to what had nearly scared the bird away from its watering hole.

She didn’t realize she wasn’t alone until she had the pheasant’s clawed feet in her grasp.

The sound of the water rushing over the rocks began to fade. Her head filled with a numbing white noise that set her inner ear to spinning. Florence blinked, turning, looking between the darkness of the trees. She grabbed for her revolver, waiting with heart-pounding dread for something to emerge.

Movement caught the corner of her eye and Florence looked up to the top of the waterfall. Long, clawed, horribly joined and gnarled fingers curled over the edge of the rock. Cresting the edge was a set of horns woven like frozen flame. They were attached to a skeletal face, skinless and pointed in a sharp-toothed snarl.

Eyes like those of a Dragon glowed in spite of the darkness. White on a field of obsidian sockets sunk far into the depths of the creature’s head. It was all arms and legs and sinew, a monster that looked as though it had woken from a thousand-year slumber and now sought its first meal.

Its low breathing dulled her senses. There was a wicked sort of magic at play here. Not like the Dragons, not like Chimera. This was a creature born of malice and murder...

And it was not alone.

One by one, horned monsters crested the rocky bluff. Each sang their sense-dulling requiem. Their eyes turned to her with instinctual purpose.

Florence’s sweating palm slipped off the handle of her revolver. Her legs had been disconnected from her body. Her hands didn’t move as commanded. She could hear nothing other than the mind-numbing, low breaths of the monsters. She could see nothing other than their glowing eyes.

In the fading twilight, she stared at a nightmare made flesh.