Goddess Liv Savell (best autobiographies to read .TXT) 📖

the child’s tunic even as they worked to stand only to fail and fail again. Finally, the child just crawled forward, shaking and stuttering towards Etienne, who stepped back in primal disgust. This thing hardly looked human any longer.

And yet, it could still speak. The words were impossible to make out at first, rough and whispered, but as the child moved closer, Etienne could understand. “Make it stop,” they crooned. “Make it stop.”

Behind him, he could hear Meirin rustling through her pack, but he doubted she carried anything that could help.

“Make it stop.” No one was a healer here. Alphonse could have saved this child, but with just Etienne and Meirin for saviors, its hope was less than none.

༄

Delyth landed between Etienne and Meirin, weary and pale. This was not the first settlement she had seen since leaving to scout ahead. Mascen’s destruction was complete in the swath he had chosen to attack, but she had not gotten this close to any of the others. Were they all so full of bodies? She shuddered and forced herself to look at the pitiful creature that held Etienne’s attention. He had not so much as looked away when she landed.

The child was still, sunk into a heap of blistered skin. The flies, briefly disturbed, settled upon it once more, crawling amongst the red and black ruin. Still, they lived, breathing in shallow, gurgling gasps in between murmurs that were no longer perfectly distinguishable as words.

There was no sound other than ragged breathing and the clinks of Meirin rummaging through her pack. A useless endeavor. There was no medicine in the world other than a healer’s touch that might make a difference now, and none of them were healers.

They could provide no comfort, no easing of the child’s way, for they would die. There was no recovering from wounds of such magnitude. Not alone and helpless in this place. No choice at all, really, except to leave the child to suffer, or…

Etienne stumbled back, his wan face focused on the horizon rather than the child in front of him, unable to take in any more of the misery of it all. The warrior closed her eyes for a long moment, sick at heart even as her stomach turned with sudden nausea. She could not let this creature continue on like this. Die slowly, alone, and in unimaginable pain. Her hands trembled. Tears leaked slowly beneath her closed lids. What being could be this sick? Could cause such abject agony?

She took one breath, then another. She could not make her feet start moving forward, could not will them into action. But it had to be done. The alternative was impossible to entertain. Slowly, Delyth stepped toward the too-small pile of flesh. So little. How could a form that slight be asked to bear so much? It was unfair, unjust. It should have been impossible. What right had such things to exist in the clean light of an autumn sun?

Delyth kneeled down in front of the child, her tears coming freely now, and cupped the unburnt side of their face. One eye had swollen shut, crusted over by drooping skin, but the other, though unfocused, was a clear, unadulterated blue. The warrior fumbled at her waist a moment, then stroked the soot-stained cheek with her thumb.

“Go quietly, little one.” And she plunged her dagger up through their jaw and into their brain, killing the child instantly.

Slowly, Delyth lay the little, still form down and heaved herself back up. The world was blessedly blurred, made indistinct by tears. With a thump, Delyth’s beautifully crafted dagger hit the scorched earth of the road, and she stumbled out of the town in the direction of that great, smoking city.

⫸

Meirin’s eyes were wide but somehow dry as she looked over at Etienne, Delyth’s form retreating in the background. It had been the right thing to do, to spare the child hours of suffering. Who knew how much longer it could last in those conditions? It had hung on for days by the look of things—agonizing days.

It had been the right thing, but Meirin was selfishly glad she hadn’t been the one to do it.

Taking Delyth’s forgotten blade, Meirin gingerly wiped the child’s blood off with the underside of her own tunic. There had been worse on her before. She heaved her pack over her shoulder and nodded to Etienne. “Let’s go.” In the distance, storm clouds were gathering, ominous and reflecting her own swirling thoughts. They’d have a wet night, but maybe the storm would put out the fires.

Etienne straightened shakily, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His face was tearstained from the force of his vomiting, and the tears mixed with soot, staining his features. Heonly nodded, putting his back to the carnage of a careless God.

Chapter XIX

Eleventh Moon, New Moon: North of Gwynhafan

Excerpt from the Journal of Etienne d’Etoiles 

Eleventh Moon of the Year 1819, Central Thloegr

I have now been to a number of Thloegr’s towns and settlements, from the rough clans that cling to the mountains’ skirts to the walled cities of the plains and dozens of smaller villages in between. I have heard talk of peoples to the farthest reaches of our continent who live in the frigid lands north of the Brig’ian mountains and of sprawling cities on the sea. In the Moxous texts on the Wildlands, these places are described as dirty, as pits for pestilence and crime. I can now say, with confidence, that these works are inaccurate, born out of nationalistic propaganda and a lack of first-hand information newer than the Great War.

Etienne pressed a soot-stained hand to his eyes and tried to turn his mind back to his work, away from the images of death and fire that would not seem to release him from their grip. He had to keep writing, to do anything but relive that memory, or he would descend into insanity.

The people of the mountain clans are fierce,