Canon Hub » Bellerverse » The Bird, The Witch and The Scribe
"What family do you have?" Reva asked.
Far beneath the western coast, a black coffin stirred.
Benadam looked up from the little blue flame beneath them. The Waste lay black beneath the stars, its sand damp and trackless. Beyond the circle of firelight, there was nothing alive for miles in any direction.
Reva had known Benadam for eight years. Like many others before her, she would visit him for information on old-world relics — Wonders that she could trade for a pretty coin at Kalefheit.
She knew that plants died wherever he walked, that he spoke languages no scholar had even heard of, and that no blade could harm him without first harming its wielder. She also knew he disliked questions about himself. But that never stopped her from asking them.
"I had a mother and a father," Benadam said with a tired tone.
"Everyone has those."
"Not everyone."
Reva accepted the correction with a tilt of her cup. "Anyone else?"
Benadam watched the blue flame.
"A brother."
The locks on the coffin began to turn.
Reva stepped over an ancient skull as she descended into the ceitu.
The old fortress had been built beneath a mountain. The mountain had cracked centuries ago, exposing chambers and corridors to the open air. From outside, the ceitu resembled a skeleton: white ribs of stone, broken metal arteries, square black gaps where rooms had fallen into the gorge.
It had taken her nine days to find a way inside. The upper portions of the ruins had already been licked clean. The Beller had shown her as much himself when he displayed his wares. The lower corridors were bitterly cold. Reva wrapped a scarf across her mouth and raised her lamp. Old signs clung to the walls, their letters faded.
CON-AIN--NT A--A 25-B
PR-MARY --NTAIN-ENT ZON-
KILLING CORRIDOR
She knew the old language, barely. Benadam had taught her enough to read warnings, which was useful, and inventories, which was profitable.
She had never seen the word killing used to describe a room, though.
Reva kept walking. Ahead of her, a stone door opened.
"Had?" Reva asked. She absently stirred the little bit of tea left in her cup.
Benadam pursed his lips. "Have. I think."
"You think?"
"It has been… a long time since I saw him last."
"How long?"
Benadam's face took a still expression as he trudged through his memory. She could almost hear him riffling through his mind like a book.
"Longer than your cities have stood."
Reva nodded. She lowered her cup.
"Is he like you?"
A light laugh escaped Benadam's lips. "No."
"Old?"
"A bit younger than me, but yes."
"Metal bones?"
"Not that I know of."
"Dreadful company?"
A small smile touched Benadam's mouth. "Hevel wasn't always."
Hevel. Benadam's expression tightened, as though he regretted the name the moment it escaped him.
"What was he like?"
"He was a very good shepherd."
Reva laughed. "How could a shepherd be dreadful?"
"He was good with animals. Endlessly patient with the sickly ones. He could carry a lamb under each arm and still outrun me down the hill."
"You were children together?"
"Indeed. He was only a few years younger than me."
It was difficult to imagine Benadam as a child. She tried to picture him with shorter limbs and fewer sorrows, chasing a dark-haired boy down a green hillside. In her imagination, every flower still withered as he passed.
Reva frowned. "Was the land already dying around you?"
"No." Benadam frowned too. "That came soon after."
The door of the coffin struck the stone wall with a sound like thunder.
Reva looked in, and froze.
A man sat up inside.
He was tall and lean, with black hair tangled around his face. Strange markings covered his olive skin: horned faces, distorted mouths, crooked lines. Some of the sigils hurt Reva's eyes. She turned away and closed them, but the markings still burned brightly in her mind. Chains hung loosely from his wrists and shoulders. He wore only a ragged black garment around his waist.
His gray eyes snapped open.
Reva had encountered walking dead in southern bogs and jeweled revenants beneath the tombs of the eastern kings. The dead generally woke slowly. They clawed their way back to life like drowning men climbing to the surface.
This man went from corpse to predator in a single instant.
He hadn't even moved toward her yet, but Reva recognized look in his eyes, the sudden tension in his muscles. She dropped her lamp and ran. The sound of bare feet striking the floor echoed behind her. She reached the stone door, which had already begun to close on its own. She turned sideways and forced herself through the narrowing gap. The edge caught her satchel.
She slipped one arm free, abandoned her supplies, and tumbled into the corridor.
The door sealed behind her. On the other side, she heard only silence. But she lay still, too scared to breathe.
Something black and sharp pierced the door beside her head.
It was a sword, though no sword she had ever known could pass through a handspan of stone. Its blade reflected neither her nor the fallen lamp. It was an absence shaped to an edge.
She scrambled to her feet and backed away as she watched the weapon slide through the stone. It reminded her, darkly, of her youth, when she would use a stick to draw in the sand.
"Was he always angry?" she asked.
"No." Benadam's answer came quickly.
Reva turned the strip of roasted lizard between her fingers. "What made him angry?"
"Me."
"What did you do?"
Benadam did not answer.
The little burner hissed. Wind pushed sand against the leather walls of his shelter. Reva had learned not to back away from Benadam's silences. He had built walls, yes, but she had learned how to breach any fortification.
"Did you embarrass him?"
"No."
"Steal from him?"
"No."
"Beat him?"
"…No."
"Take someone he loved?"
Benadam sighed. He looked up from the fire to her.
"He loved me…
"And I killed him."
Reva ran through the killing corridor.
Metal shutters lined the walls. Most were twisted or rusted shut. Others hung open, revealing the dead machinery behind them. Red glass eyes followed her from the ceiling, awakening one after another as she passed.
A voice erupted from the walls, its owner unknown to her.
SECURITY BREACH
She knew not what it meant, but she recognized the urgent tone.
Behind her came a grinding crash. The stone door fell into the passage, divided into four neat pieces. The man stepped through.
He held no weapon now. His empty hand swept across the air, tearing open a narrow slit in the world's fabric. He reached inside and drew out a curved black blade.
As she ran, Reva hurled her knife at him. The man turned his head. The knife flew past his cheek and thudded harmlessly against the wall. He looked back at where it had fallen, then turned to Reva with a wicked smile.
Reva ducked beneath a fallen beam and entered a side passage. The man could outrun her easily, she imagined, but he didn't seem to be in any hurry to catch her. Because he's hunting me. The thought streaked across Reva's mind, filling her with dread and raising goosebumps along her arms.
The corridor forked ahead. Reva went left, then doubled back through a collapsed room and squeezed into the right-hand passage. She overturned shelves behind her and scattered ancient glass beneath the dust.
She steadied her breathing, and listened.
The bare footsteps stopped at the fork.
Reva pressed herself into an alcove, barely big enough to fit her.
The footsteps went left.
She closed her eyes and thanked York, her patron saint.
A hand crashed through the wall and seized her throat.
The black blade followed it, carving a doorway around her hiding place. The man dragged Reva through the opening and threw her across the corridor. She sputtered, gasping in air.
The man bent down and got close enough that she could feel his breath on her face.
"Run," he whispered. His voice was deep, roughened by disuse.
Reva stared at him, the cold feeling around her heart delaying her thought process.
He pointed down the corridor with his sword.
Not needing another hint, Reva pulled herself up and took off. Behind her, the man laughed.
"You… killed your own brother?"
"Yes," he answered, ashamed.
"Why?"
"I… I was jealous." He turned away from her now, too ashamed to even look at her.
"Jealous over what?"
"A gift."
"What sort of gift?" Reva seemed to pay no mind to how much Benadam seemed to not want to talk about this, her curiosity getting the better of her.
"It was… the kind that cannot be held or seen. The kind a jealous man nevertheless believes was robbed from him."
Reva squinted, studying his face. "Someone favored him."
Benadam nodded.
"Your parents?"
Benadam thought for a bit before replying. "No… Someone whose favor seemed far more important at the time."
"And so you killed him?"
Again, he nodded.
"How?"
Benadam looked down at his gloved hands. "With a stone."
Reva had heard confessions shouted from execution platforms and whispered in the dark by men who believed the gods were listening. None of them could compare to the guilt dripping from each of Benadam's words. She doubt they would compare even if combined.
"How old were you?"
"Old enough."
"That's not what I asked."
"It is the only answer I'll give."
The thought of striking him for a better answer flashed across her mind, but she knew better.
"You said he might still be alive? How?"
Benadam shrugged. "Because he isn't dead."
"Is it because of what you did?"
"I do not know. Perhaps his state is a punishment given to him for my crime. The world has never been just. Especially to him."
"And you have not seen him since?"
"No, I have seen him."
Benadam's metal fingers closed around his cup. "The people of the Old Order held us both. They wanted to bring us together, but I refused."
"You were… afraid of him?"
"I was afraid of what would happen to him."
"Not to you?"
Benadam shook his head. "Anyone who wounds me suffers the wound themself. Hevel would attack me. He would die. Then he would return and try again and again and again."
Benadam looked out the flap of his shelter into the Waste. Reva followed his gaze, before looking back at him. "You miss him."
Benadam's blue eyes glistened in the firelight. "Every day."
On the third level above the coffin, Reva stopped running. She braced herself on her knees.
Her breath tore at her throat. Blood ran from her temple into one eye, blinding it. The ceitu had led her upward through laboratories, flooded quarters, and rooms filled with small square beds. Everywhere she went, the man followed.
He could have easily killed her a dozen times over. He had cut her braid from her head. He had sliced the palms of her hands. Once, she had stumbled, and the point of his sword stopped against the hollow beneath her ear.
"Slow," he had called her. Then he let her rise, let her run away. He wanted a better hunt. But no matter how much she ran, he would catch up with her. Hiding was no help, either. He could find her wherever she went, almost as if he could sniff her out like a hunting dog.
Reva leaned against an old metal door. Its faded sign showed three human shapes running beneath a burst of flame.
Beyond the door, through the dusty window, lay a wide chamber. A bridge crossed its center, suspended over darkness. On the opposite side, moonlight entered through a crack in the mountain. An exit.
Reva pulled herself to her feet, coughing up blood as she worked her body from the brink of collapse. She opened the door and limped onto the bridge. She heard the man land behind her, and she turned.
"Do… do you have a name?"
The man tilted his head, smiling. It was the first thing she had said to him. Perhaps novelty stayed his sword.
"You first," he said.
"R-Reva…"
"Does that mean something?"
She shook her head. "My mother never had the c-chance to tell me if it did."
He considered this, then raised his blade. He took a step towards her. Reva's eyes widened, and she stammered out her next words.
"Wh-wh-what about you? Does your name mean anything?"
The man paused, squinting at her. A machine stirred beneath the bridge. Metal limbs unfolded from the darkness. A blinking red light swept across Reva, then the man.
MULTIPLE CONTAINMENT FAILURES
The man looked down at the machine. Reva took this chance to limp away as fast as possible.
It spat flames that struck the bridge between them. The center span buckled, throwing Reva forward. Her hands caught the edge of the bridge, summoning what was left of her strength to keep from falling. She tried not to look at how her legs dangled over the deep dark abyss.
Behind her, metal screamed. The man struck the machine with unbridled fury. Black blades appeared and vanished in his hands as he hacked away. Every stroke removed armor, sliced cables, and severed articulated limbs. The sight of such destruction would've been enough to make Geyre vomit. The machine slammed into him, driving him through a support pillar. Yet he emerged from the wreckage laughing with a wild look in his eyes.
Reva tried to pull herself up, but struggled to move even an inch.
The bridge shifted once more. A metal bolt tore free and disappeared below. Reva watched as it tumbled through the dark, echoing but never landing. She looked up, and almost fell when she saw the man standing above her.
Half of his face was burnt away. Beneath the ruined flesh there was blood, bone, and something stranger. His exposed eye regarded her without pain. His hands moved towards hers, and she expected to be pushed off.
Instead, he grabbed her wrists and lifted her onto the bridge. He helped her stumble away from the edge before shrugging her off. A black sword appeared in his hand.
"Now," he said, panting, "run."
"Where is he?" Reva asked.
Benadam's face hardened. "No."
"I only asked—"
"You asked because you intend to find him."
"I intend to find everything."
"Not Hevel. Anything but him."
"You have just told me there is an undying warrior from the first days of man somewhere out there. You cannot expect me to forget that, Benadam."
"I expect you to value your life more than this."
Reva scoffed, setting her cup down. "Then you have learned nothing of me in all this time."
Benadam rose. He seemed taller when he was angry. The blue flame painted his shadow across the tent wall, but his shadow seemed far from human. There were hard angles in his shoulders and back, glimpses of the artifice beneath his cloak.
"Hevel does not value life as you or I do," he said. "He does not distinguish between a traveler, a soldier, or a child. When he wakes, he kills."
"You said he was once kind."
"He was. Once."
"Then something of that boy may rem—"
"No! That was eons ago!" The ancient runes on his arms glowed with his anger. "A time so far behind us you couldn't possibly comprehend how foreign it is to you!"
Reva's brow furrowed, and she stood to oppose him. "Surely you don't believe that of your own blood."
"I have seen what he has become. I have read of what he has done. I remember every word. Every person he slaughtered. Every wall they built around him. Every weapon they used to put him down."
"You remember too much," Reva spat. "It lets you mistake people's past for who they are now."
Benadam stared at her. He scoffed at her, surprised by her audacity. He turned away from her, moving to put out the fire.
"If I found him," Reva said, moving in front of him. "What would you want me to say?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Not that you are sorry?"
"No."
"That you miss him?"
"No."
"That you still love him?"
Benadam grabbed a bucket of sand. He tossed it out onto the fire, snuffing it out. "Reva."
Benadam seized her shoulder, then let out a painful groan. He released her at once, wincing and rubbing his fingers where they had gripped too quickly. Reva felt only the fading pressure of his touch.
"Do not seek him," he pleaded.
Reva frowned. She had never heard him take this tone before. She looked into his eyes.
"Very well," she lied.
The broken machine dragged itself across the bridge behind them.
One metal limb remained. It hooked around the man's ankle and pulled. He fell to the floor, clawing deep grooves across the bridge. The machine's red eye fixed upon Reva.
CIVILIAN
EVACUATE
What do you think I'm trying to do!? Reva screamed in her mind.
The man drove a sword through the machine's eye, screaming as he forced it through. The blade passed into its body and emerged from the other side. The red light flickered but did not die.
ULTIMATE FAILSAFE ENGAGED
Somewhere deep below, a siren began to wail.
The man tore himself free and rose. His burned flesh was already graying, and dust spilled from his wounds.
"What is the final option?" Reva shouted.
"Death!" he answered.
"To whom?"
"Everyone!"
The mountain replied with a deep metallic thud. Ancient shutters began closing throughout the chamber. The bridge trembled beneath their feet. In the walls, machines that had slept for thousands of years drew the last power from buried Wonders.
The man glanced toward the moonlit exit. Reva did not wait for permission. She rose and began running. He came from behind, slinging her arm around his shoulder and helping her stagger forward.
The machine caught Reva by the ankle, dragging her to the ground. The far end of the bridge began withdrawing, carrying the man toward freedom while Reva slid toward the abyss.
He could have left her.
Yet he turned back.
The man sprang across the widening gap, landed beside Reva, and cut through the machine's last limb. He caught her around the waist as the bridge collapsed, jumping towards the other side.
They struck the side of the gorge. His sword sank into the cliff and held them there. Reva clung to his shoulders. Dust poured from the burned half of his face. Far below, the machine tumbled through darkness, repeating its warning until the voice faded beyond hearing.
Above them, the ceitu shook itself apart.
"Y-you came back," Reva said, breathless.
The man's one remaining eyebrow rose. "You have not finished running."
A section of ceiling fell past them.
Reva looked upward. They could not climb the smooth wall. The sword was already cutting through the stone beneath their weight. The man looked down.
"You c-could let go of me," Reva stammered. "You can finish your hunt and climb without me weighing you down."
"I could."
"But you won't."
He didn't answer.
Reva closed her eyes and thought of green hills she had never seen. Two brothers racing down them. One carrying lambs beneath his arms, the other chasing him through flowers that had not yet learned of death.
She opened her eyes. "I know your brother."
The man went still, staring at her. Even the ceitu seemed to pause around them. His fingers tightened painfully around her waist, digging into her flesh.
"What did you say?" His tone was tense, his words sharp.
"Your brother. H-he calls himself Benadam now."
A new rage entered the man's face. His stern expression twisted into a snarl and a furrowed brow, but beneath it Reva saw something else: recognition.
"Liar. Deceiver."
"H-he lives in the Waste. He has blue eyes and a m-mark beneath his skullcap. His limbs are m-made of a metal n-none can recognize. Plants w-wither where he walks, and any wound meant for him r-returns to the ha-hand that made it."
"Stop."
"H-he told me about you."
The black sword cut deeper into the cliff.
"What did he say?"
"That you were a s-shepherd. That you cared for sick animals. That you could outrun him, even with two l-lambs under your arms."
The man stared at her, something lightening in his gaze. He had never said his name, but Reva knew him now.
"…He remembers that?" Hevel asked.
"Y-yes."
The rage cracked. For an instant, Reva saw a child beneath it.
"What else?"
"He said—"
"Reva!" A voice called her from above. She looked up. A gloved hand reached over the broken edge of the chamber.
Benadam lay flat against the floor above them, one arm extended. Dust and dead moss poured around him. Wherever his body touched the vines covering the ruin, they blackened and curled away.
Reva laughed with relief. Hevel did not; his expression became terrible.
"You," he spat out.
Benadam's gaze moved from Reva to the man holding her.
For thousands of years, Qayin had rehearsed what he would say. He had known every word ever written about apology, grief, and forgiveness. He remembered prayers in languages whose final speakers had died in his arms. He remembered the first lullaby their mother had sung to his brother and the last sound he made in the field.
In the end, Qayin could only say:
"Hevel."
Hevel tore the sword free and, for one weightless instant, they fell. Qayin caught Reva's wrist. Hevel caught his.
Pain crushed Qayin's fingers as Hevel's grip closed around him. The same pain struck Hevel, who snarled but did not let go.
The three of them hung precariously above the gorge. Qayin braced his metal legs against the collapsing floor and pulled. He dragged Reva over the edge first. Hevel pulled himself up after. The moment his feet touched stone, he tore a black blade from the air.
Reva tried to step in between them, but was cast aside by Hevel, who charged forward and, with a guttural scream, shoved his sword into Qayin's chest.
Qayin's face twisted in pain as the wound opened on Hevel's chest instead. He staggered back, the blade vanishing from his hand.
"So," Hevel asked. "Still untouched?"
"No." Qayin placed a hand over his unbroken skin.
"I feel every wound."
Hevel made a gagging sound at Qayin's words, rolling his eyes. Dust had begun to form around the wound in his chest. "And yet I keep it. How usual of you."
The sirens rose to a shriek. The chamber's far wall split open, admitting moonlight and access to the mountainside.
Qayin held out his hand to Hevel.
"Come with us. With me."
Hevel stared at it, sneering.
"You murdered me."
"Yes."
"You left me."
"Yes."
"You knew they held me. You knew what they did to me."
"…Not until it was too late."
"And then you hid."
"Yes."
The cracks spread beneath their feet. Hevel glanced down before looking back at the open hand. "Why are you here now?"
Qayin glanced down at Reva.
"Because she is braver than I am. And…"
He hesitated before he continued, "because I miss you. Terribly."
In one quick motion, Hevel drew another sword and brought its edge against Qayin's throat. Blood began to well from his own throat.
For a heartbeat, Reva saw a possible ending: Hevel striking, Hevel crumbling, Qayin kneeling beside the dust, and the coffin calling its prisoner home once more.
Then Hevel turned the sword and drove it into the wall.
"Climb," he ordered.
They reached the mountainside shortly before dawn, with the sun's light already starting to creeping over the horizon.
Behind them, the ceitu folded into the gorge. The stone coffin vanished beneath thousands of tonnes of rock. The final siren broke into one long, descending note before falling silent.
Hevel stood at the edge, watching dust rise from the ruins. When his failing body finally gave way, the coffin would call him back once more beneath the earth. None of them knew whether he would be able to escape it again.
"I know someone who may be able to retrieve it," Benadam offered. "She might be a bit busy at the moment, though."
Benadam stood several paces behind him. Neither brother seemed willing to move closer. Reva sat between them, binding her ankle.
"Where will you go?" Benadam asked.
Hevel looked west, where the sky was brightening over the forest. "Hm. I do not know this world."
"I could show it to you."
"I do not want your help."
"…All right."
"I still hate you."
"I know."
"I may kill you again."
"I know."
Hevel groaned and turned. His gray eyes settled on Reva. "Does he always speak this way?"
"Usually," she sighed. "It can be exhausting."
A smile tugged at the corner of Hevel's lips, but he refused it. He walked past Benadam and started down the mountain.
A few moments later, Benadam followed.
There remained a careful distance between them. It was not so wide as ten thousand years, but neither was it small enough to cross in a morning.
Reva watched them descend. The first murderer and the first murdered, each unknowingly matching pace with one another.
Then she shouldered her pack and went after them.
There were no plants along the path Benadam took. Behind Hevel, black dust spilled from unhealing wounds. Between their trails, Reva left ordinary footprints in the earth.
By noon, the three paths had converged as one.
