“I loved you.”
Couldn’t move.
“I hate you.”
Couldn’t breathe.
“She isn’t real.”
I felt a surge of warmth, as though someone had lit a tiny fire. It seeped into the numbness of my flesh, gave my fingers enough feeling to move. They crawled across the floor, toward the heat, and wrapped around a black wooden hilt.
“You are dreaming.”
The heat coursed through my flesh, awakening me to every cut, every bruise, every burn that scored my body. The numbness began to fade. And every time I blinked, she grew a little hazier, until I closed my eyes.
“Wake up.”
And opened them.
And she was gone.
I let out a groan as I sat up, my body screaming from its many injuries. I was beaten, battered, damn near cooked. But I was alive. And I was alone.
Sometime after I left Lowstaff burning to cinders and left Vraki’s corpse on the floor of a dirty basement… I lost something. I’ve retraced my steps, my injuries, my kills, trying to find it, but I’m not even sure what it is. It’s like… I got cut somewhere, deeper than I knew, and something inside of me just spilled out onto the dust. What was left behind was something vast, hollow…
Empty.
And from it came the ghosts.
Not actual ghosts, mind you. But I didn’t know what else to call them. I started… seeing things. People.
Sometimes I woke up to Vraki, his chest scored with cuts, cursing my name as blood spilled from his mouth. Sometimes it was Jindu, weeping in the corner as I tried to sleep. Sometimes it was people I had killed, people I was going to kill, people who would kill me one day.
Sometimes, on dark days, I woke up to her.
And sometimes, I almost wish she really was here.
I glanced to the empty space beside me. The bedroll wasn’t anything fancy. Just a thick blanket, a thin sheet, and a dirty pillow. It was barely enough for me, let alone two people.
Yet somehow… we had always made it work, she and I.
She’d complained, of course—of it being too cold, of me snoring too much, of the stupidity of agreeing to sleep outdoors with me in the first place instead of just staying at her nice house in her warm bed. She’d complained. A few times, she’d even cursed my name. But she’d never left.
When I awoke, Liette was always still beside me.
Always smelling pretty, even when she stank of the same sweat and road that I did. Always beautiful, even with her hair stiff and messy. Always waking up with the same slow opening of her eyes and the same slow smile that made everything hurt a little less.
Today, though, she wasn’t there. Just like the last three months.
Today, I awoke to the bitter cold. Today, everything hurt. Today, I got up and found no one waiting for me.
Except him.
Evening had settled across the valley. Darkness seeped in through the broken walls and shattered windows on a cold wind. In the manor’s upstairs, there was not a single light to break the gloom.
And still, I could feel him staring.
“Oh, good.” His voice rang out, a brass rasp in the dark, from beneath my fingers. “You’re still alive.”
He was what kept me from slipping into that empty place inside me. He was what saw through the ghosts. He was what kept calling me back.
Somewhere, I didn’t know where, he had stopped being a weapon and started being a companion.
And I hated that.
“Don’t get dramatic. I was just resting for a moment,” I muttered, rubbing a kink out of my neck. “Let’s not forget which one of us just had to kill a fucking Vagrant.”
“Had you simply shot her instead of indulging delusions of being a decent human being, you’d feel much more spry.”
“I’ll take that under advisement when I start feeling the need to take advice from talking firearms.” I waved a hand at him. “There’s a certain way we do these things. The Vagrant’s code requires me to—”
My words slid into a seamless hiss. Across my palm, I could feel a sudden searing heat, deeper than Cassa’s had reached, and crueler. In the darkness, I could feel the Cacophony burning. Even from so far away, I could feel him reaching out.
And into me.
“Do not forget our bargain,” he whispered on a burning voice. “Do not forget what I have given you. And do not forget who I am.”
I bit back the pain, the anger, the scream brewing behind my teeth. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of any of it. The Scar was full of people like him—people who fed on pain, who drank screams, who grew fat off suffering. I knew how to handle them.
Most of the time, anyway.
Those people ate to satiate a hunger that never would be filled. I suppose, on some level, the Cacophony did, too. But more than that, he ate for another reason. He ate to grow.
The pain slowly abated. The heat withered away, leaving the chill of the evening to settle back over me. But his voice lingered in my ears.
“I can feel her slipping away,” he whispered. “Take me to her body.”
I winced, though not from pain.
I’d seen a lot of shit since I arrived in the Scar—murderers atop mountains of corpses, beasts who tore villages apart, mages who could split open the sky. Those got easier to see over time.
This next part never did.
Through his black wood hilt, I felt a faint pulse, echoing in the brass. A slow, steady rhythm that trembled in time with my steps as we walked, hand in hilt, down the hall and toward a black door.
Like the beating of a burning, brass heart.
I pushed the door open. Cassa’s corpse, still warm, greeted us. I had laid her out upon a table, wrapped her in some nice-looking clothes I had found in the basement, and lit a candle that still burned quietly next to her.
A shitty funeral. Far shittier than someone like her deserved. But she deserved something.
Something far better than what I was going to do.
“Yes. YES.” The Cacophony’s voice was an excited squeal, the pulse growing swifter as we looked over her body. “I can feel her strength, her magic. Lady Above, it burns so brightly. Let me taste it. Let me drink from it. Let me FEED.”
I hated when he got this way. You wouldn’t think a talking gun could get any creepier, but he somehow found a way.
I held him up. He left my hand, floating in midair above the body. His brass trembled and shook, glowing brightly. Cassa’s corpse, once pale and empty, began to glow as well.
I looked away. But it didn’t help.
Light left her. A bright purple glow emerged in wispy tendrils from her eyes, her mouth, her skin… and from the wound I had carved in her. They danced over her body, those lights, hovering aimlessly as though confused as to what they were doing out here. That lasted only a moment, though.
Then, the Cacophony fed.
The light swept into him, every last drop of it disappearing into his brass. His glow became brighter, his blaze hotter, his laughter louder as he hungrily drew every scrap of light into him. They didn’t make a sound as they vanished. But if they could, I knew they’d be screaming.
I wasn’t sure how long it lasted—I never was—but eventually, like all the other times, it ended. The glow in his brass dimmed. Darkness settled over the room. And he fell with a heavy thud upon the floor.
I walked over to him, looked down, sniffed.