Rizawa: The Artery of Perdition
Act II
The Pan Rin Rainforest
The night echoed with the mating songs of Dirge Crickets and Wanderer Flies, and Rizawa couldn't shake the notion that the jungle cacophony, rather than being the aggregate of thousands of individual beings competing for dominance of the sonic environment, was born from some singular beast whose amorphous body wound around her like a serpent poised to smother her in it's clicking, chittering embrace.
Rizawa caught the motion at her periphery just in time to see a Scorpion Gecko whip it's stinger-barbed tail into the air. She instinctively swung out her hand to knock back the branch, but the force of the impact loosed a Flying Centipede from it's burrow. The antipode let out a shrill cry as it glided onto her arm, darting straight for the gap between her gloves and the leather armor she'd acquired from her friends in the 22nd Scouting Company. As she felt dozens of tiny legs probing for weaknesses in the string band that bound the two together, she could no longer resist the impulse to bang her arm against the trunk of a nearby Hammerfruit Tree, undoing half a night's work concealing the sound of her footsteps.
As she regained her composure, Rizawa found herself wishing that she'd been a bit more constrained in her harsh assessments of the Pan Rin. It wasn't that her unabating contempt for this jungle had ever tarnished her words so much that they didn't glisten in the light of untainted truth, but once you'd exhausted the limits of your vocabulary on the oppressive heat and pestilent air around the garrison, you weren't left with much room to maneuver in that hellish stew of seeping muck and venomous fangs that was the rainforest itself.
A rustling noise caught her attention. Something much larger than the bugs and lizards carpeting the forest floor. Something that moved on two legs. As Rizawa cursed herself for making enough noise to draw half the jungle around her and then getting so lost in thought that she barely had the time to duck down in the undergrowth, a lone Phujeng Bird walked into the clearing. It's half-man long legs kicked out in an oddly disjointed manner, which, along with it's large eyes and bright multicolored plume, always made them seem like they were in a perpetual state of confusion. While their large talons could certainly do a lot of damage if provoked, the Phujeng were at heart peaceful creatures, which made them one of the few animals in the entire Pan Rin docile enough to be roped into humanity's schemes.
“Very funny.” Rizawa said.
From the other end of the clearing, in nearly the opposite direction she had been looking, two figures rose up from the brush. The moment they revealed themselves, the Phujeng Bird came rushing over like a dog whose owner had been away, nuzzling its technicolor headdress against an outfit that, to an unacquainted outsider, would have seemed nothing but leaves and vines. In fact, Guanh was wearing the same lamellar armor worn by many soldiers in the Divine Army, save for the ecosystem's worth of wildlife carefully threaded through and the ritualized blessings of Namapha magic which imbued it. Likewise, the pike in his hand was a modified version of those used in Nezhu, it's shortened staff perfectly adapted to the kind of close quarters combat necessitated by the jungle. The mere fact that he chose it over the bow and arrow that he used on their hunting trips spoke much of what occupied his thoughts.
“I'm sorry, Rizawa...” the woman in a calf-length dress whose jungle fauna had been woven into intricate, nearly geometric patterns, said. “But in times such as these, the only time I get to see a smile on my brother's face is when he's watching you stumble through the jungle.”
“Well I'm glad that somebody's enjoying this.” Rizawa answered, carefully noting the strain beneath Vieng's jovial affect. “But I don't need to be shepherded through the jungle in secret like some small child.”
At this, Guanh began to laugh.
“You have eaten at my table, Rizawa. You alone among the Nezhuans in the western garrison can make that claim. However, if any child of the Diengu were as inept as you are in navigating the Pan Rin, our elders would have both them and their parents flogged.” he said, his face suddenly going serious. “If the Ukni so much as suspected that we've discovered what we are about to show you, then they would burn down every Pan Chui village for a hundred miles.”
In all Rizawa's years knowing Guanh, she had never picked up so much as a hint of over-exaggeration from him. The Ukni were frightened enough of the Pan Chui's ability to disrupt their supply lines to not risk open conflict with them. If that had changed, then it wasn't just the jungle tribes who had cause to be frightened.
“This trip is going to be different from the others.” Vieng said. “If you wish to know why your enemy have suddenly grown so bold, then the answer will not be found in watching the patrols around the Thozogh's perimeter.”
“Are you saying that we're going into the construction area? How the hell can we pull that off?” Rizawa asked. “Entire companies of Divine Army infantrymen have been lost trying to breach the canal.”
“That's because the entire Ukni defense doctrine has been built around repelling large bands of loud, well-armored soldiers such as those used by your Divine Army.” Guanh said. “You don't need many pickets to detect the advance of an infantry regiment. In fact, the Ukni use the exact same patrol routes night after night: an inflexibility that has allowed us to devise our own paths to the canal. More to the point, however, as you yourself have admitted, somebody within your garrison has been working with the Ukni. Perhaps that same someone simply wishes for you to believe that the enemy's lines are impenetrable.”
“General Chunlao?” Rizawa asked.
“I would have no way of knowing. However, I can say this much: if a single one of your scouts had discovered what we are about to show you, then your entire base would be readying itself for war. So ask yourself, if all it took was one lone spy breaking through their cordons to send years of planning into ruin, then don't you think it's strange that there are no fixed defenses until you get to the canal itself? It's almost as if someone knew the exact route that their spies would have to use, and made sure that the Ukni knew it as well.”
Rizawa now understood the reason for their caution, and the risk that the two of them were taking by bringing her along. The relationship between Nezhu and the Pan Chui was complex in the best of times, but while the common cause of a shared enemy could unite them in times of peril, the idea of them staking the fate of their tribe on a foreigner was nearly unheard of. The ugly reality was that life was rarely pleasant for those born into the borderland between warring powers. Rizawa could thread the needle between Heir Empress Zhe's struggle to defend a kingdom of millions, in which tribes like the Diengu were just grains of sand on scales built to measure out cities and empires, and the realities that Guanh and Vieng were contending with. However, she also understood that the Pan Chui had plenty of reason to distrust Zhe's support.
If one of the cities in the Fezhong Valley found itself facing down an Ukni army, they could safely be evacuated and relocated. If their original homes could not be retaken, then within a few generations they would have seamlessly integrated themselves within their new community. The same could not be said of the Pan Chui. Their customs, values, and lifeways could exist only within the bounds of this jungle. The Heir Empress might have been able to write off the territory around the western garrison if it meant securing the lives of her subjects in the interior, but for Guanh and Vieng, their entire world lay within the bounds of the Pan Rin. If the Ukni succeeded in destroying their homes, there would be no evacuations or resettlement. Their entire way of life would be swept away like fallen petals in the spring floods.
At the heart of that unique, vibrant culture sat the Namapha, the ancient magic of the Pan Chui. In its current state, the Namapha was as indebted to the highly respected Vijnav magic of the Shugatyad order as the untamed, deeply secretive arts that were practiced in the Pan Rin before the their arrival. Humans, however, are inclined to see differences over similarities. While the scholars and generals back in Tyung might recognize a certain distant kinship to the magic of the Pan Rin, they were also keenly aware that each time the Pan Chui rose against them, it was under the command of a preternaturally gifted Namapha mage. Needless to say, the question of whether they were even interested in protecting the school was an open one, a fact that practitioners like Guanh and Vieng were all too aware of.
“There's just one thing I don't understand. All of the reports from the 22nd indicate that the Ukni are using Kolghur tracking dogs with their pickets. Even if what you said about their patrol routes is true, the idea that those dogs would miss your trail seems a bit ridiculous.”
“There are ways of covering one's scent...” Vieng said, pulling out a cloth sack whose stitched symbols seemed to glow with a light of their own making. “Especially when you are dealing with beasts of the Zuthruhk.”
“You don't mean that-”
Vieng reached into the sack, carefully, reverently removing three items and presenting them to her with upraised arms in a gesture that Rizawa recognized as being reserved for the Diengu's most sacred rites and relics.
Rizawa attempted to mimic the sincerity, if not the precise motions, of Vieng's offering as she took up the leather cloak, braided shoes, and long silver hairpin.
“Do they bear the touch of the Quansai?” Rizawa asked, sheepishly despite her best efforts to match Vieng's stern composure.
“It is as my brother said, if the Ukni knew that the Diengu had discovered their secrets, our tribe would be exterminated without mercy.” Vieng replied.
Even as the weight of their danger pressed on Rizawa's heart, she struggled to shore up the gravity and gratitude befitting such an unprecedented gift. The Quansai Stone was the most sacred relic of the Pan Chui. It was said that, prior to the Shugatyad's arrival, the Pan Rin used to be infested with Saklugz's creations. The Diengu claimed that the Dark God himself had split the earth in twain, and from that fissure every variety of nightmare came screaming out into the jungle, driving the Pan Chui to the edge of extinction. Rizawa doubted whether even Saklugz ever had the power to raise up life from the earth, believing the story to be a conflated retelling of the kind of breeding grounds that were still used to make the swamps of the Galghad an impenetrable morass. However, whatever disparities might exist between the Pan Chui's oral history and the accounts at Tyung's imperial archive, there was no dispute about how the matter came to be resolved. A young mage of the Shugatyad order named Huidai presented himself before the dying confederation. After hearing the stories of the Ukni onslaught against their people, Huidai calmly walked down to chasm, hoisting up a boulder many times his size and sealing off the entrance. He then intoned a powerful chant, changing the shape of the rock so that it resembled arms reaching out from the sealed opening crowned by stone hands held out in a gesture of offering. The Quansai Stone was still held to be the most sacred relic of the Pan Chui: an ancient treasure that outsiders rarely got to see, whose power to ritually bless objects against Zuthruhk magic, as far as she knew, had never before been bestowed upon a foreigner.
Rizawa put on the garments with as much care as she could manage given her surroundings, and fell in behind the two mages as they crept through the overgrowth. As she did so, she noted, as she always did, how their mere presence seemed to have a calming effect on the wildlife. No animals came bursting out of the clearing, nor did she again have to deal with that vile, skittering sensation along her arms and legs. In fact, there was barely any movement in the forest at all until their paths crossed the first of the Ukni pickets.
She heard the sound of footsteps half a second before Vieng grabbed her sleeve. As her confidence in Guanh's assessment of the Ukni defenses evaporated before her eyes, the Namapha mage reached out and held his hand to the ground in the same gesture he often used to pacify the wildlife. The footsteps grew closer, until there was less than two men's length separating them from the search team, and Rizawa began to pick up fragments of their conversation:
“What the hell's his problem, anyway?”
“Beats the shit outta me. A minute ago he was freaking out like he expected to find a bitch in heat on the other side of the clearing, but now that he's out here all he wants to do is turn back.”
“I swear these Kolghur are more trouble than their worth. Give me a Wenghur any day of the week. Their noses might not be as good but at least they have the decency not to drag you halfway across this shit-carpeted wasteland on some phantom pussy hunt.”
They were nearly on top of them now. Rizawa was sure she could reach out her arm and touch the man's ankles if she wanted to, but she kept her gaze pinned to the floor, listening as their tracking dog strained against it's leash to get away from whatever magic Guanh was using.
“You know what, fuck it. Let's just get outta here before Zehuk shows up. You know how he gets around rules and regulations. It's like the stick they shoved up his ass was so long you could raise a flag from his mouth.”
“No such luck, I'm afraid.” the second man said as a new set of footsteps became audible.
“What's going on here?” a third voice asked.
“Fuck if I know. The dog started freaking out like he smelled something but as soon as we got here he started pulling to go home. We were just about to head back to base, actually.”
“You heard what the Dissatir said about the Pan Chui. Seems they've started getting a bit more brazen lately, pushing too close to the canal for high command's liking. You know, they say that the barbaric forest magic they use actually lets them control their scent.”
“Even if that were true, and I highly doubt that it is, what the fuck are we supposed to do about it. We've already done a full sweep of the area and we didn't find a single angry native.”
“I believe the two of you conducted a thorough search about as much as I believe that my dick's two hands long. C'mon, the sooner we finish the sooner we can get home.”
Rizawa moved her hand to the hilt of her blade, but felt Vieng grip her wrist before she could reach it. From the corner of her eye, she watched the Diengu mage place her hands on the ground and intone a whispered chant. A moment later shrill shrieks began to echo around them. The guards leapt up with their torches just in time to see the Phujeng bird from earlier leap out from the overgrowth, squawking like someone had stepped on her eggs and then sprinting off into the night.
“See? I mean what did I fucking tell you. That terrifying jungle warrior looked a hell of a lot like the stupid shitbirds that always eat our rations if we don't dangle them out on branches. You know as well as I do that high command just make shit like that up anytime they think we've gotten soft.”
“Fine, fine. Let's just go back to base, okay. No need to make a huge fucking deal about everything.”
They rose, following in the guard's wake, pushing far deeper into the Ukni territory than she had ever gone before. Further, in fact, than any Nezhuan had in years, if you believed what high command were saying. Rizawa didn't, of course, otherwise she'd have been happy to follow Meixi's advice and leave this all to the generals. But someone in a Nezhuan uniform had made this trip many times, and she aimed to find out who.
There were a few more close encounters as they moved past the perimeter defenses, but by the time they'd gotten a half a mile from where they'd met the first picket it was obvious that none of the guards seriously believed that anyone was out there. They made no effort to whisper or conceal their movements, and, as a whole, seemed completely disinterested in anything whose scent bore the slightest hint of “more work”, giving them ample opportunity to skirt around them. After a slow but mercifully uneventful slog, Guanh raised up his hand and the three of them gathered together.
“We've reached the site of the canal. Pay close attention to the materials and building equipment lying around.”
Rizawa did as she was told as they crept down the steep embankment, but she sensed nothing of the trepidation in her companion's voice as she took in the scene. If anything, the sight of all the carts and stones strewn carelessly about the work site brought relief to her heart. Whole sections of the masonry were in complete disrepair. It reminded her of the middling nobles back in Wajukara who thought to equal the splendor of Tyung's palatial estates by hiring the cheapest work crews they could find. She had become skeptical of the claims that the canal was still years from completion after discovering the enemy's Zuthruhk magic, but the chaos around her seemed to suggest that this was an optimistic assessment.
The first sign that something was off came from a pile of building stones strewn across a flattened stretch of dirt. They were midway down the defile when she noticed that the stones, which had been scattered as if thrown at random a moment before, were now heaped into a disordered pile. By the time they reached level ground, those same rocks had taken the shape of a partial curtain wall.
As Rizawa took in her surroundings, she could see more and more evidence of this strange translocation. Wheelbarrows rising up with each step forward and sliding into neat rows, girders floating up into the air and securing themselves around a massive canal lock. It was as if, in the span of 100 yards, a years worth of progress had been made.
“What the hell is happening?” she asked.
“You wanted to know what that mage was doing in your garrison? Here's your answer.” Vieng replied.
“That's impossible. Everything about that operation pointed to a single culprit, but no lone mage could achieve results like this, not even a member of the Grevaburz. Our killer was as savage as any I've seen. They ended the lives of quite a few working girls, but the only time I've ever heard of illusion magic this powerful it came from the sacrifice of thousands. I mean even if that mage had slaughtered our entire garrison, it still might not be enough.”
“Which would be a problem if the Western Pan Rin Garrison was their only source of human chattel. But the Dark God's wrath has never been reserved for Nezhu alone. It was the disappearance of some of our own tribesmen who sparked this discovery, but even that barely scratches the service. It seems that enough progress has been made on the canal for them to start carting in sacrifices from all across Aios. The Diengu alone have already discovered dozens of sites similar to the manor you mentioned hidden underground around your garrison. The forest echoes with the muffled screams from those lightless pits, where human souls are extinguished on a scale and precision that rivals the ingenuity of the Thozogh Canal. Rather than being the first forays of an Ukni incursion into your base, the sacrifices that were being performed outside your garrison were the terminus of a great web of Zuthruhk nodes, each designed to conceal the progress of the Thozogh Canal from the eyes of outsiders.”
“But surely someone would have noticed when the Ukni started digging up the forest and building sacrificial altars in the middle of the jungle? I have close friends in the 22nd scouting company. There have been some problems that have stopped them from getting too close to the canal, but I can't imagine them failing to notice something of that magnitude. I know Captain Wan. He can be a bit of an asshole, but he's as unyielding as cold iron. He'd set fire to his own barracks before willingly covering up a thing like that.”
“You know as well as I do that the Pan Chui do not share your convictions about the reliability of the Divine Army. I cannot speak for Captain Wang, but you came to us looking for proof that someone in the garrison is in league with the enemy, and this is all the evidence you could possibly ask for.”
“I'm afraid that isn't so.” Rizawa replied. “I appreciate the risks you've taken to bring me here. Really, I do. But you didn't drag me this far into enemy territory to help me solve a prostitute's murder. Once the Heir Empress discovers whats been happening, she will almost certainly seek to mount some kind of intervention. But going to her now without a clear report on the canal's progress could add months of delay while she does whatever she needs to do to rebuild her spy network.”
“We expected that Zhe would want hard evidence if she was going to commit more of her forces to the Pan Rin, and we are prepared to bring you to the canal itself if that is our best chance at securing her aid. Things have begun to move far quicker than we anticipated, and we do not have the luxury of getting mired down with your bureaucrats.”
Rizawa nodded her head, and the company fell back into silence as they crept through the shifting landscape. She never felt more exposed in her life than when they stepped out from that overgrown embankment into the still night air. She could never remember a time when the Pan Rin felt as cold as it did then, but rather than bringing any relief, the bitter winds seemed to suck the vitality from her, stripping away the strength from her limbs and dissipating the mental acuity that such a dangerous mission required. She could see no lookouts along the now-fully-completed curtain wall, but it would take but a single pair of well-trained eyes to spot the three figures creeping through the open clearing. Without the heaps of detritus, even the midnight darkness could not veil them as they moved across that vacant, flat expanse. Guanh and Vieng, however, showed no sign of hesitance, and, as headstrong as she was, even she could accept that the situation was entirely in their hands, so she soldiered on behind them in silence.
It was as if there was some invisible threshold midway through the clearing that set a network of invisible gears in motion, hoisting up her surroundings with machine precision. Earlier, the changes had been so subtle that she found herself constantly second guessing her own assessments. Now, however, it was as if each step forward turned the wheels of some tremendous crank. Girders the size of palaces leapt up at odd angles until they sketched out the shape of a monolithic water lock. The only advantage that came from the shifting terrain was the fact that she now understood why there were no guards to spot her. Rather than being in a vacant field, Rizawa found herself standing at the base of a defensive wall that stretched to the limits of her night-blind eyes.
“We've been able to reach the edge of their defenses from stealth alone, but we'll need a disguise if we're going to make it past those walls. Getting armor off three of the infantry guards would be all but impossible, but the Ukni have been working their slaves through the night, and given the climate, it's not uncommon for the overseers to shed everything but the outer cloak used to signify their station. We've seen workers coming in and out of an exit on other side of the water lock, but the Ukni custom of using only men for positions of command means that the two of you will have to play the part of prisoners.”
Rizawa was as enthusiastic about pretending to be an Ukni slave as she was about taking a spa trip to a Wyr grounds, but it had been her idea to enter the canal, and doing so remained the only viable path towards giving the Heir Empress the information she'd need. Reluctantly, she gave Guanh a nod as he disappeared into the darkness.
Before Rizawa even had the time to properly catalog the whirlwind of anxieties tearing through her mind, Guanh had returned in the blood flecked coat of an overseer. Using a line of rope that he'd acquired along with the outfit, he tied her and Vieng's arms in a fierce looking knot that, in fact, could be undone with a single tug, and led the two of them along the walls. A few moments later they reached a large double door where four men dressed in loose clothing with cloaks similar to the one Guanh stole stood around a dozen or so rag-clad figures carting wheelbarrows full of dirt out from the dig.
They walked in silence, with Rizawa doing everything in her power to imitate the broken shuffle and floorbound yet horizon-spanning gaze of the other slaves. Her heart leapt up when a man in the full uniform of a Nashragha infantryman stepped out from the passage and began interrogating each of the teams as they returned to the complex. While the laborers appeared to be drawn from every corner of Aios, the same was not true of their masters, and Guanh's thick Pan Rin accent would be immediately recognized the moment he opened his mouth to speak.
As they got close enough to make out the hundreds of dings and scratches in the infantryman's armor, Rizawa felt the rope jerk behind her. She turned around in time to see Vieng trip and stumble forward, falling to her knees in front of the soldier and quivering as if her body had been pushed to its furthest limits.
“Water... please...” she begged.
The infantryman struck her in the face with his shield, sending her toppling backward. Rizawa let the force of the line carry her to the ground as well, and as the two of them scrambled out of the soldiers way, he barked a handful of curse-laden orders to Guanh about keeping his workers in line, and then hustled the three of them through the gate.
Rizawa's jaw dropped as she entered the building grounds. Being a child of Nezhu, she was no stranger to the sight of canals. During her youth, the northernmost stretches of the Zu River had been the site of a vast irrigation project designed to make the countryside more arable, and her travels had given her many chances to cross the titanic canals that bridged her homeland's two great rivers. The construct before her looked far closer to the latter than the former. There were dozens of water locks that dwarfed the largest of the garrison's pinnacles, most of which already appeared to be completely operational. Those sections that were still devoid of water seemed visually indistinguishable from their completed brethren, suggesting that the entire canal was nearly complete.
As if to confirm her fears, her eyes caught upon dozens of stakes rising out from the furthest lock like the spikes of some disjointed crown. At first, she couldn't figure out what she was looking at, until at last she realized that they were the masts of a gigantic fleet that had been dry docked on risers just above the water line.
“What the hell is happening there?” she whispered, pointing up towards the ships.
“Probably to transport the slaves.” Vieng replied.
But while Guanh and Vieng's knowledge of the Pan Rin dwarfed her own many times over, their knowledge of the outside world was decidedly less impressive. Of course, before today, there would have been little reason for a people who spent their entire lives in the jungle to learn the flags of the Ukni navy, or to distinguish between the lightweight Chakaltun skirmishing galleys and the wide-bellied transport ships used to haul slaves around the empire. But even Vieng, on her second look, was able to pick out the looming form of the Thasak tower ship, where, just beyond the hazy torchlight, a three man long Golugz ballista was doubtless being readied to rain it's ship-piercing bolts upon the Water Stallions of the Divine Navy. Not only was the Thozogh Canal nearly complete, but the Ukni had already prepared the fleet for its upcoming invasion.
“Look, up there.” Vieng said, gesturing towards a group of figures lining the parapets.
Rizawa looked up to see a cloaked figure surrounded by Nashragha infantrymen making their way down a broad stairwell linking the upper levels of the water lock. Even with his face partially obscured, she instantly recognized the short, bulbous figure who was being escorted. Frankly, she doubted if there was a single soul in all of Aios whose walk combined the clumsy waddle of the morbidly obese with the crisp, certain strides of a man bred for command into such a comically overdrawn composite.
“That's Yuanqi. He's General Chunlao's personal adjutant.” Rizawa gasped.
“Then that should be all the proof you need that the commanders of the western garrison are in the enemy's pocket.” Vieng replied.
“You there! What are you staring at?” came a shout from behind.
Rizawa had been so transfixed by both the Ukni armada and the sight of Chunlao's highest ranking subordinate that she'd forgot to keep up the appearance of a broken slave, lifting her head to openly gawk at her surroundings and speaking without a care for the attention she was drawing on herself.
Guanh tried to answer for her, throwing out a bunch of vague explanations about where they had been assigned, but the moment that the words left his mouth, his atrocious accent became startlingly apparent, and the Ashravid began shouting out for his superiors.
Rizawa looked around, her eyes catching on a large pulley with arm-thick ropes up against the wall. Before she even realized what she was doing, she'd untied her hands and drew out her knife. She sliced loose the rope just as Vieng threw off her own bonds, cutting the throat of the Ashravid and throwing him beneath the cartload of mortar and building stones just as the entire thing came crashing down.
Within moments, dozens of guards had swarmed around the site of the accident, while hundreds of slaves, their overseers too preoccupied to worry about beating them, put down their work and rushed over to gawk. She felt Guanh's hand tugging on her robes, pointing to a narrow alley between a large outbuilding and the curtain wall. They could hear the screams of dozens of guards as they dashed into the darkness, but they didn't stop to listen, pressing on through a mob of confused work teams until they came to an exit gate guarded by four Nashragha infantrymen.
Rizawa dashed forward. The shouts and panicked flight from her advance may have given the Ukni soldiers some warning that the unbound woman rushing towards them was armed, but while Rizawa’s elongated hunting knife had been forged by the best blacksmith in Shungnath specifically for it’s combat efficacy in the cramped jungle environs, its visual similarity to the machetes the Ukni used to clear out overgrowth, combined with the starvation rations that slaves were fed, meant that the Nashragha had little reason to suspect she actually knew how to use the thing until the tip plunged straight through the slats of the first man’s helm. She pulled it loose just in time to parry the stroke of the man behind him, but he fell dead before Rizawa even had the chance to counter, Vieng's poison dart still sticking from his neck as he collapsed to the floor.
“They're heading east!” came a shout from behind.
Guanh threw off his overseers cloak as the three of them rushed out into the night, grabbing the hem of the camoflaged inner robe that he'd concealed underneath it and flipping it around to reveal a coat of feathers on the reverse side. As he began to chant, Vieng came rushing up from behind her, throwing her own robe overtop of her as arrows rained down from the parapet.
A cacophony of shrieks echoed through the clearing as hundreds of birds rushed forth from the tree line. The flat brown sea of packed and flatted soil was suddenly awash in thousands of bright colors. Arrows still came down, but their cloaks were indistinguishable from that roiling sea of feathers, and in the chaos they were able to dash out into the cover of the forest. All the while, Rizawa's thoughts were fixed not on the bolt that had torn through her shoulder nor even the firsthand knowledge that Nezhuan officers were in league with the Ukni, but on the beautiful young courtesan whose decision to sleep with a poor criminal investigator may have left her stranded and alone in a den of wolves.
"Rizawa: The Artery of Perdition" has been published freely online in order to introduce readers to the world of the "Under the Burning Tower" series. Because of this, hiring an editor for this project simply isn't feasible. If you happen across any typographical or grammatical errors while reading, especially if you see something that looks like a missing paragraph, please feel free to reach out and let me know.
