As the last rowboat meets the rocky shore, the men gather their things and start down the marked path. There, at the end of the trail outlined by piles of rocks the other fleets marked for them, the bastion awaits on the other side of the tall, thick oaks.
There’s an undercurrent of something running through the island. It prickles the dark hairs on his arms, like how the air grows thick and charged right before lightning calls home and strikes. In the hollow of his throat, the stone he wears is humming.
Basuin doesn’t know which god keeps this forest, because the gods don’t speak to him the way they spoke to his mother. But he feels it—familiar, but inexplicable. From a memory.
The soldiers march into the forest together as if on their way to war, but behind Basuin, Kensy stops on one of the massive rocks lining the shore of the new land, scratching his beard as he stares into the unending trees stretching toward the sky. A breeze blows through, off the ocean and into their hair, ruffling the light collar of Basuin’s shirt. In the light of the sun, his mother’s jade stone glints softly, dully.
“Welcome to Yesua, Bass,” Kensy says, his voice honey but his eyes steel. Then, he turns on his heel and starts down the rock-marked path. “May your gods bless it, or what have you.”
Basuin’s feet feel fused to the ground. He doesn’t know why Kensy’s brought him here; why Kensy sailed five fleets of men to an island that should be uninhabited. He cranes his neck back and stares up at the dark, verdant canopy that shelters the island Yesua from the smoldering sun above.
There is no going back from here. Basuin cannot go back home. The only home Basuin knows anymore is war—and the smell of it isn’t just the burn of the hearth and food that cooks over a flame. It makes his eyes shut and his fingers tighten into fists at his side, ocean water easing down the length of his forearms until he shakes it from his knuckles.
And when he opens his eyes again, there’s a flash of something white outside the left field of his vision. He turns his head in a snap, but when he looks through the gaps between the trees, there’s nothing there at all. Just a trick of the light.
Underneath Basuin’s cotton shirt, his mother’s godstone burns hot.
It isn’t a long walk before the forest becomes sparse, charred and burned and dry where Atun’s Fleet cleared way for the bastion and began to build. The southernmost watchtower bursts through the treetops, made of basalt bricks and wood harvested and stripped from the new island. With its height, the tower clears the entirety of the beach they arrived on and a long stretch of the ocean they sailed. Basuin’s sure it can be seen from the godrealm, wherever such a realm may be.
“Shaelstorm,” Kensy calls from behind him, a hint of pride, or maybe something poisonous, in his voice. “Welcome home, soldiers.”
Basuin almost laughs, but his teeth spear his tongue instead. He could be anywhere but here. Anywhere. Still in the freezing tundra of Grimmalia, fingers rotting black and toes raw as he marched his men into occupied territory and back out, carrying bodies that belonged to them on their backs. Where he saw the frost on his lashes in the reflection of his tin mug, warm from cider as they sat in wait on the border of enemy territory.
But here he is, at the Shaelstorm Bastion, five men dead and only scars to show for it.
Five men whom Basuin sent to the Winter River, to the afterlife of the blessed and holy and kind, to be received by their loved ones in the wake of gods. Those five men are the reason that Basuin’s here at all.
Kensy said Shaelstorm was a second chance, but Basuin knows it’s punishment. No one goes from being a war hero on the front lines to tagging along on an expeditionary crew, colonizing a new continent, if not in punishment for graves and grave decisions.
But it’s still better than going home. Still better than looking for the little shack on the outskirts of Ankor that he built with his own hands and hoping to find his bed still warmed by the fire and his mother still sitting by the window, awaiting his return.
He squashes the image and swallows it back, tongue pressed to the back of his teeth.
As they get closer, the smoke he saw from the shore becomes thicker and hangs heavy in the air. It smells of roast meat, of industry and machines—and then it smells of gunpowder.
Basuin claps his hand over his mouth, index finger pressed against his nostrils to block out the stench. He can smell it anywhere, recognize it before it’s left the barrel, before the striker has hit the flint and fired it. It wraps around him like a thick blanket, suffocating him. His lungs curse at him, begging for air, but Basuin can’t breathe. He can’t breathe that scent in, can’t let it coat the back of his throat the way that blood might.
Blood. He can smell that too, from the edge of a memory.
No, no. He can’t do this right now. He can’t do it. He has to get out of here.
His head shoots up, looking from side to side, searching for a way out. In front of him, men still march down the path toward the bastion within sight. Behind him, Kensy and the captain of the Ha’ria Drokha linger at the back of the pack, discussing something he can barely make out with the blood pounding in his ears.
“The crops are all dead!” one of Shaelstorm’s sergeants growls, throwing a clump of tiny, shriveled potatoes in front of Kensy. “We’re running out of supplies.”
The Ha’ria Drokha’s captain argues, “My crew need more than a day to rest before we go back to the mainland.”
“We’ll starve before then!”
The ground is uneven beneath his feet. Roots running under the ground despite the lack of trees surrounding the bastion. Where do roots go when their mother is cut from their body? Isn’t it the other way around, child cut from their mother’s belly? There are green vines looped and growing up around the signage that was constructed crudely. Grass shooting up from the holes skewered and dug out for the lamp posts lighting the way.
Basuin stops in place before he trips, eyes darting back and forth between the sawed-clean trunks and the ribbons of vines climbing up the Shaelstorm Bastion as if to say, give it back to us.
His body is still fighting against his brain, the smell of gunpowder lingering in his nose. Burning, his lungs are screaming and pleading for air. He can feel his shoulders shake as he tries to regain command over his body, struggling for control.
It’s just gunpowder. A military bastion will be covered in it. Just gunpowder.
Then, Tehali’s hand falls upon his shoulder in a tight grip, and Basuin feels the ache shuddering through his spine as his muscles work to keep him from jumping in surprise. His fingers fall away from his face and he inhales sharply, chest expanding. Tehali doesn’t let go of him, but her hand smooths over his back and she presses him forward.
