Chaos
At the head of a column of ghosts, with Risoven and the dead priests of Ondir at her side, Isabel approaches the crumbling wall. It buckles outward, looming toward her, holding back the weight of the thing behind it by faith and force of will. The many eyes, clustered together like sprouting fungus, roll in unseen sockets to appraise her, pupils contracting to pinpricks.
It’s foolish, what she’s doing. At best, it will stave off the destruction of the world for only a little while longer. She hopes it will be enough time for someone wiser than she to find a more permanent solution.
Another step, and an ear-splitting whine shakes the shattered sky. Isabel puts her hands over her ears, but it doesn’t help—neither the sound nor her hands have a physical presence here in the world beyond. Ripples form in the mud beneath her feet as the high-pitched note goes on and on, stabbing through her spirit form like a hot knife. Stones fall loose from the wall and dissipate upon hitting the ground.
There is triumph in this horrible song, and a warning, and something else Isabel can’t name, a sort of mad, painful delight at causing the world itself to tear apart at the seams, as it screams with both love and hate of the task. If ever this thing possessed the power of reason, the ability is long gone. It is a creature—a structure, an all-pervasive thought—of pure chaos.
Isabel reaches the wall. Through the cracks, bright tendrils reach out and grasp at her outstretched hands, stinging and burning.
This is going to hurt, she knows, and as she looks back at the ghosts following her, she wants to warn them. She wants to tell them she’s sorry.
If she hesitates, she’ll talk herself out of it, and they won’t follow her. She has to do this now.
With one final prayer to whatever gods still remain, Isabel closes her eyes, places her hands together, and throws herself upon the wall.
Blazing white light overtakes her. The world disappears.
Strange, she muses as her awareness fades, it doesn’t hurt that much at all.
The last thing she notices is a tug at her chest, as though she’s reached the end of a long tether, and then the light fades to blackness.
She wakes up, seconds or possibly an eternity later, atop an abandoned carriage at the edge of the University District. The chalk circle around her is smeared and faded, brushed away by the autumn wind. It’s early evening, and the air is cold enough to bite at her fingers and the end of her nose, cutting through the thin clothing she borrowed from Emryn Marner.
The dead lie piled around the carriage wheels, still and quiet as though they had never woken. Silence, thick as cotton wool against her ears, fills the street. The gunfire has stopped, and the shouting, and anything else that might indicate that Isabel isn’t utterly alone in an empty city. She wraps her arms around her shoulders and takes a shuddering breath.
Risoven sits inside her circle, his hands still held out to her and his head bent. He doesn’t move.
Isabel calls his name, but she knows before she does so that she won’t get an answer. She puts two fingers to his wrist and feels only cooling flesh. He’s dead.
Isabel should also be dead. She’d put everything that gave life to her aching body into the barricade that kept chaos at bay—just like Galaser, and just like Father Reeves before her. She expected to wake up as a stone, or not at all, her identity annihilated as she became part of the wall. Had she done it wrong? Why was she here, and Risoven was not?
And what of the other ghosts?
They’ve gone somewhere; that much is certain. The dead are quiet. Isabel unfolds her legs, her feet numb and tingling, and crawls to the edge of the carriage roof. Her boot knocks against the wheel twice before she can feel her toes enough to stand on them. When she meets the pile of bodies, she wishes she were still numb. Brittle, decaying bones crack under her weight. She stumbles toward solid ground and vomits what little is in her stomach into the gutter.
When she can breathe again, she looks up. That is when she notices the forest.
It’s like a wall, and for a moment Isabel thinks that’s what happened, that she’s somehow brought the barrier from the nether world here. But it’s not made of stone or souls; it is as though here, kneeling on the street, she is also a mile in the air above one of the mountain forests she once visited with her teacher. A river reflects the sun, and a flock of birds darts, quick and shadowy, between the trees.
She’s lost her mind, or she’s somehow still in the nether world and has managed to transport herself away from the wall and into some other place. Her nausea is proof enough that she’s back in her body, but she touches the tips of her fingers together and closes her teeth gently on her tongue until it starts to hurt, just to make sure. She presses the palms of her hands into her eyes. When she takes them away, the forest is still there, stubbornly refusing to disappear.
Isabel knows that a change in the structure of the world—such that would allow a second landscape to attach itself at a right angle to the city, with the pull of gravity cheerfully obliging to keep the river water in place, the trees growing upright, and the birds flying comfortably from branch to branch—is far beyond anything she could do, she can’t help but feel that she’s responsible for this. She tried to reinforce the barrier. She looked chaos in its many eyes and offered herself up as stone and mortar to push it back. She begged the restless dead to do the same.
And now she’s here, not part of the holding wall, and the world has been cut apart and neatly folded like a perfumed invitation to the sort of party Isabel has never been invited to. She gets to her feet, fighting back another wave of dizziness. When was the last time she ate anything? At some point, she must have slept. She has a vague memory of a musty sofa and a scratchy wool blanket.
“I need help,” she says to the empty city, the impossible forest, the gods, and Brother Risoven’s lifeless body. Her voice is hoarse, and it cracks. No one will hear her. No one is here, not even the gods.
They’re dying, she realizes, though the idea goes against everything she’s ever learned. The gods are eternal. They always have been, and always will be—they’re made of lasting stuff, unlike the materials of the physical world, never subject to rot, erosion, and the constant assault of time.
But they can die, if they choose to. She saw it herself. Galaser, the god of war and righteous combat, all shining armor and sharpened steel, is no more. The same must have happened to Ondir. The alternative, that the thing beyond the wall ate Ondir, rather than his disappearance being a willing sacrifice, is more than Isabel can bear to think about. She has to believe that there is still something in this world or the next that is at least roughly equal to that thing, and strong enough to prevent its relentless advance. Otherwise, there is only Isabel, surrounded by the dead.
She’ll go to the temple. There’s nothing there for her, and most of the priests were ghosts in the nether world, but she has to go somewhere. She needs food, and warm clothes, and a place to sleep, and what little money she’d had is in the chapel on the blue field, which is now behind the vertical forest—if it still exists.
She’d had a horse there, as well. She hopes that whatever happened, the faithful old mare wasn’t frightened.
The sun sets as she makes her way to the Temple District, and it bathes the city and the forest in eerie red light, as though it’s behind a shade of ruby glass. It’s dark before nightfall, everything blood-hued and dim. Isabel winds her way through bodies in priestly habits and watch uniforms, burial shrouds and civilian clothing from brocade to patched linen. No one living stands at the barricades. One corpse lies impaled on the sharpened wooden points, four gaping, ragged holes torn wider as it struggled and grasped, heedless of the injury. Now it’s as still as all the others. There’s too much blood to identify the status of its torn clothing.
Even in the absence of Ondir, death makes everyone equal.
The Temple District is in ruins. Street lamps lie broken and twisted across the road, and the small shrines have all been smashed, broken stone and glass littering the cobbles. Ondir’s temple, low and hunched, sits over a staircase strewn with broken barricades. The door is shut.
That means the dead didn’t tear their way inside, and that means that the living might still be in there. Isabel’s worn boots crunch on splintered wood and fragments of bone, and her foot meets a spent musket ball and sends it skittering away down the hill.
The temple door’s plain brass handles are filthy; it’s too dark to see with what. It comes off in flakes as Isabel grasps one and gives it a pull. It doesn’t move. The doors are barred to keep out both the horde of dead and the living city watch.
She raises a fist and strikes the door three times. The noise gives her a start. There’s been no sound but the wind and her trudging footsteps since she woke atop the carriage.
“Is anyone there?” she calls out.
A full minute of heavy silence passes before a small voice from the other side of the door says, “Who’s there?”
“Isabel Rainier,” she answers. “I’m a Sentinel.”
She’s not a Sentinel anymore, according to Father Pereth and, if she’s honest, herself, but habit is hard to break.
The sound of something heavy being nudged away from the door echoes between the temple’s exterior pillars. It’s too loud. The city feels like a tiny room, even though there’s more than a mile between Isabel and the newly formed wall of forest. The creak of the hinges is worse.
A dirty, young face appears as the door inches open. One of the novices—Isabel hasn’t spent enough time in this temple to learn any of their names—looks her up and down, his two small hands brandishing a broom handle.
“You don’t look like a Sentinel,” he says.
Isabel sighs. “I know. It’s been a long day. Is Father Pereth—” she’s about to say Is Father Pereth alive, but stops herself. This child, no older than twelve, has clearly been through enough today. And if there’s about to be a question of succession for the position of high priest, she’d rather not know about it. “Can you find me one of the priests? I need to talk to someone.”
“You’ll have to come back later,” says the novice dutifully. “Funeral arrangements are being delayed for the time being.”
He starts to let the door shut, but Isabel takes hold of the handle. “I’m not here for a funeral. I know what’s causing the dead to walk, and why they’re lying down again. I need to speak with the highest-ranking priest available. Can you help me or not?”
The novice gives her another appraising look, makes a decision, and turns around, disappearing into the darkness of the temple. Isabel pulls the door open and follows him, closing it behind her. It slams harder than she intended, shaking the antechamber.
The only light in the temple is a lantern placed upon the altar. In low, whispery tones, the monks are singing a prayer to a god who can no longer acknowledge it.
Isabel has to bring them the news once again. She hopes they’ll be willing to hear it this time.
I GOT DISTRACTED and forgot to post this chapter! Apologies for the lateness!
Space Whales Press 
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