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It’s silent in the Liurnian Lakes. Fog blankets the landscape in waterlogged haze. The old Carian castles loom overhead, dark and silhouetted against overcast skies. It’s approaching evening now, Finlay senses. She watches the change in the shadows, in the temperature—how the whistling breeze grows to a cold, tempest howl.
She regards the silence as a rare relief. She trudges forward, foot-deep through the shallow lake, the water sloshing up to her ankles and seeping through her armor. Her pace is slow, marked by labored, hobbled steps. One of her legs nears useless now, she fears. The rot burrows itself into the bone, fungal roots needling through the marrow. The skin had long since been flayed. The flesh, Finlay knows, is soon to follow. Decomposing muscle and viscera cling to her chainmail, corrosive blood nurturing coral spindles that entwine around the metal. First this leg, she thinks. Next the arm, then the neck. Curling around the ribcage and running down the spine.
Finlay marches on. Her exhausted, injured left leg steps forward. Her rot-corroded, withered right leg staggers behind. Left, then right.
The rot is not something Finlay can easily suppress—not anymore, even with the aid of her armor’s gold. She distracts herself the best she can: she focuses on her footsteps, her exhales, the rippling of the water and the swaying of the trees. She keeps her mind’s eye fixed towards the north. She thinks of the Haligtree, warm and aureate, brightwood branches spun to filigrees unfurling.
She tries not to dwell on the intervening distance. Two continents, with the capital and snowfields between. Soldiers and snowstorms, and Finlay walks towards both—with decaying body, wavering spirit, and the rope-bound rotflower fastened to her back.
The Aeonia lurches against its bindings, chafing against knots and harnesses. Malenia slumbers in the cocoon within, seen in hazy impressions through translucent, dawnlight membrane. It’s an embryonic coma that Finlay dares not disturb. She'd seen what the flower had wrought during the last battle—refuses to test it any further.
In Caelid, the bloom had nearly burned Finlay’s eyes. Where its rosy light shone, the rot blossomed in its wake. First to corrode were the wildflora, fungal roots crawling through the groundsoil, seeping into the fieldwater, glutting itself on its own corruption. Flowers and bushels split in twain to nurse spiny, mycotic growths. Trees formed ulcerated pustules that begot their own cysts. Next to fall were the Redmanes, crumpled and contorted. Last to fall were Finlay's fellow knights, facing consumption with quiet dignity.
I'll join them soon, she thinks. Her exhausted, injured left leg steps forward. Her rot-corroded, withered right leg staggers behind. Left, then right.
Finlay stumbles to a stop. She hears movement a stone’s throw away, across the shoreline underbrush, metallic clanking cleaving silence; the sound of footsteps that aren’t her own. Figures emerge from the forest, from the dark pines and tallgrass.
The livery of the Cuckoo Knights is distinct even at a distance, their red-blue regalia visible even through the mireland fog. The watchmen are armed, six in number. Four take up the vanguard, their shields up and spears raised; two follow a distance behind, their glintstone staves at the ready. The soldiers approach cautiously—there are many things to fear about a Cleanrot Knight, the rot foremost among them.
Finlay stands straight, forcing the gutted flesh of her leg to move. Rot gnaws at fungal-eaten bone. Through bloody lip and grit teeth, she musters the strength to raise her scythe.
Her exhausted, injured left leg steps forward. Her rot-corroded, withered right leg does its best to follow.