Chapter 4

They had the extractors humming. Pie set valves and laid pipe. Reaper took to the mire and resolved to make it quiet. She moved low through black water and reed shadow, and anything that rose she cut down. Most never saw her. She wrapped herself in her shadow powers and ended them with clean work, assassination.

She did not shadow step. Pie’s flinch sat under her ribs like a stone, and the idea of blinking felt like pressing on a bruise. Pie kept her at arm’s length, polite and distant, as if power were a sickness. Just when Reaper had started to fit in, the thing that made her useful set her apart again. Elina never treated her differently.

Her mind slipped to Elina. Elina remembered Reaper before she gave up her name. Elina remembered a shy Elin trying to find the right moment to pop the question. Weeks of almosts. A walk to the lake. A festival night. Reaper held the desire like something fragile and bright. Elina almost asked first… But was patient, because she knew Reaper needed time.

Before the war, there had been nothing but time. That ended the day the surprise attack hit the tree at the center of the village. Reaper fell in battle and was resurrected as a weapon. To Elina it felt like a second chance. It also made the others stare. They said Reapers were wrong, against the way things should be. They called them tools, not people. When Reaper put away her given name, it hurt Elina, but she stayed. She said “Reaper” because that was the name that her friend, nay, her lover chose. The new life gave them days back, and it took pieces of Reaper while it did. On the field she was the sharpest thing moving. She fought so fast it looked like two fighters, one shadowing the other.

Reaper fell the beast, using the twin scythes to slowly swing it in a circle around her, speeding up and tossing the carcass with the others. Pioneer, and more accurately ADA, wanted to collect their DNA, whatever that was.

Oil meant growth here. Oil meant light and motion back home too. It fed lamps where magic never reached, greased chains and rails, sealed canvas and hulls against weather. She understood taking this ground.

Homesickness tightened, then turned into focus. If there was any path back, it would be through the power of her shadow step. She would not find it by being afraid of it. Pie was busy with foundations and pump heads. The clink and clank of the factory rose from lines on the ground like a metal garden taking root.

Another spidery beast skittered toward the noise, bigger than the rest and bold. Power gathered in Reaper’s chest. The village flickered at the edge of her sight. She filled her lungs once and dropped into the depth she had been avoiding. The world warped around her. She cut. She was left of it. She cut again. She was above it and already landing. Each footfall carried her farther than the last. The thing collapsed as if the ground had been taken out from under it.

Smaller ones came from the margins, mean and quick. She met them in the same stride. Step, strike, gone. Step, strike, return. The power did not sputter. It poured, steady as a river in flood. It felt cleaner than rage, this time.

Unintentionally, the steps drew her inward. Felling beasts along the way, she finally found a quiet clearing. In the throat of the marsh, vines hid a core. She pushed the greenery aside and the shape underneath was spectacular. Perfectly round. Perfectly black. A sphere that swallowed light at the edges.

This must be a Mercer Sphere; she could feel its hum.

It rang in her ears. Not ADA. Not Pie. A single word with no breath.

“HARVEST.”