The days bled into one another, a muddy mix of grey skies and splatter from the relentless thudding of hooves. The landscape beneath Filip’s horse had shifted, transforming from the claustrophobic, ancient forests surrounding Marchand into expansive, rolling plains that in turn gave way to treacherous swamplands. The air here was dank and stagnant; the rot of vegetation hung over everything, and the fog hung low, deceptively hiding ravines and crags. There were few trees now, only stunted, skeletal imitations. It looked nothing like the world Filip knew, and he had to remind himself to breathe as the foreign world passed around him.

They had passed through a nameless village days ago. Little more than a collection of hovels clinging to a rocky outcrop, the residents as grey and weathered as the stones. Ash had not spoken much to the strange men that watched them, but his presence alone had been enough. Filip watched, fascinated and unsettled, as the villagers surrendered two of their finest horses, strong, well-bred beasts that seemed entirely out of place in such a destitute setting. Inquisitor Ash had offered no coins, and none had been asked. They had watched from their doorways and windows as they left, but even then no one had spoken, and that strange sight had settled deep in Filip now. A vision of ghosts burned into his mind, and he had been unable to shake the vision.

Distantly Filip wondered how they would survive without the animals, but as they rode away, the haunted faces faded, and soon he found that he didn't truly care. The farm boy who had agonized over a neighbor’s lost calf had been replaced with something sterner, stronger, and Filip’s chest swelled with pride.

A sharp jolt from the horse’s back drove into his nether regions and Filip grimaced in pain. Despite his upbringing, Filip found the act of riding to be an exquisite form of torture. A plow horse was one thing, but these mounts were built for distance and speed. Every stride sent fresh spasms up his spine, and the hard saddle pushed into his most sensitive parts leaving them raw. His thighs burned from clenching tight, and his lower back was stiff and warped.

Yet, Filip said nothing, voiced no complaints. He watched Ash’s unyielding back, unbothered by the pain, unwavering despite the long hours riding, and that sight gave Filip the strength to grit his teeth and push on. He would not show weakness. He would not be the sniveling boy from the Night Watch tower. He would show this man that he was worth something; prove that this farmer’s boy possessed the metal required to walk in the shadow of the Inquisition. He would be someone whose name carried the weight of authority, no matter the cost. No matter the physical toll. No matter who got in his way.

His thoughts of home were rare now, but he felt no shame. He could still remember his mother’s face, his father’s wet, racking cough, and the ceaseless bickering of his siblings, but the memories felt like something distant. The violence of Marchand, the sight of his own mutilated hand, the screams of the dying, these things had done something to him, and day by day he was realizing it had been something good. He no longer felt a coward. When he looked at the stumps of his fingers, he didn't feel fear for his future. He felt a thrill, a surging of adrenaline. He was alive, he was traveling with the Emperor’s shadowed hand, and he was going to become someone that mattered. All that had come before, the dead, the hanged, the burned, they had made him stronger, had molded him, and he found meaning in their deaths. There was a strange beauty to the pyre that Marchand had become. His cohorts in the Night Watch had not deserved to die, but they also could not have lived. If they had, then he would not have this chance, and he knew then that he was truly blessed by the gods. He wondered then what further deaths, what further trials would be set before him, and he did not fear them.

He began to mimic Ash. He matched the Inquisitor’s calculating gaze, ever watching the horizon for threats before they appeared. He adjusted his shoulders to match the man’s posture, even shifting when the other man shifted. Gone were the idle conversations that Filip had tried to draw out; now Filip fell into silence and spoke only when spoken too, mimicking his word choices as best he could, trying to perfect the Inquisitor's cold tone, his finality.

Ash seemed to notice, and then his lessons began to come more frequently.

“Do you see the droppings there?” Ash asked one evening as the light began to fail.

They were setting up camp near a shallow brook, the water green with algae. Filip turned where Ash pointed, eyes scanning a nearby thicket of flowering bushes. He saw nothing but mud and shadows at first. Ash was watching though, and Filip would not disappoint the man. He dropped into a crouch mirroring Ash’s own, eyes sweeping over the ground, examining every detail, every crevice.

“I see them,” Filip said. There they were, small brown spheres scattered near the base of a bush. “They’re not deer droppings.”

“Rabbit,” Ash responded. “You may not have seen them near your farm; the rats and dogs tend to drive them off or devour them. But here, in the south of Marchand where people are infrequent, they are abundant. In these parts they are your best source of protein and easy to find, if you know when to look.”

“Why not deer?” Filip asked, glancing toward the darker line of the swamp where he imagined larger prey might lurk. “Or the berries?” He pointed to a cluster of bright red fruit nearby.

“The deer in these lands are not to be trusted,” Ash replied, his eyes tracing the ground near the bushes. “They carry a wasting sickness. You will see them sometimes, thin, hair falling out in patches, eyes clouded. Even the ones that look healthy can carry the taint in their marrow. Hunters who eat them find themselves wasting away just the same, their minds turning to mush before their hearts stop. And the red berries are of the hemlock family; they will kill you within a day of consuming them. There are many berries to be found, many strange fruits in these swamp lands; but if you do not know what you are looking for you will end up dead, or wishing to be dead. Even the edible berries are often nests to parasites that nest there, waiting for passing game animals to consume them, and then when they are consumed they will burrow into flesh and begin consuming from the inside.”

Filip felt a cold shiver as the words. To be host to something not his own; to have some other being feeding on his own body, there was nothing more terrifying.

“Look there,” Ash whispered.

Filip followed his gaze, thoughts of burrowing insects fading. A pair of long, thin ears twitched in the tall grass. A rabbit sat perfectly still, its dark eye fixed on them.

“Rabbits are prey animals,” Ash said, his voice so low it blended with the gurgling stream. “When they are spotted their first instinct is to freeze. They assume that if they do not move, they are invisible. They will sit there, believing they have won the game of shadows even as the hunter looks them in the eye.”

Ash didn't move his upper body, but his hand slid into the folds of his cloak. He produced a familiar black blade, barely visible in the dying light.

“The rabbit convinces itself that by doing nothing, it eliminates the danger,” Ash continued. “It is a fatal philosophy. In this world, you must always act; always assume your opponent sees you. You must assume they know your next move. When you ignore a threat, or dismiss one as unimportant, you invite the noose.”

Filip didn't see the throw, only a blur of motion. Then the rabbit was on its side, its life ending in a final twitch, the black blade buried deep between its eyes. Filip didn't flinch as he watched the blood soak into the grey fur with a pragmatic detachment that would have horrified his former self, but now only made him proud.

Ash retrieved the kill and began to break it down, hands moving with practiced ease. “Grab the flower buds now,” he commanded. “Not the berries. Get the small yellow flowers with green stripes.”

Filip obeyed, finding the strange flowers and returning to find Ash crushing a green herb into a stone bowl. They ate in a familiar, heavy silence, the rabbit meat smeared with a tart, peppery paste. Filip chewed, feeling the strength return to his tired muscles, watching the orange flames of their small fire dance in the Inquisitor’s dark eyes.

“When the Feticeiro touched you,” Ash said suddenly, his voice cutting through the quiet, “Describe exactly what you felt in that moment.”

Filip paused, a piece of meat halfway to his mouth. The name, Feticeiro, sent a thrill of something strange through him. He knew the name, somehow he knew that it was the creature from the courtyard, the one with the metal capped teeth. The one with the bird-like clicking.

“Fear,” Filip said. “Just fear. And then the pressure on my chin, and then it was like the world went black.”

Ash leaned forward, the firelight casting long shadows across his face.

“I need to know more than that, Filip. I need to know what you thought. Was there anything unusual in your own mind when it spoke to you, or when it looked at you? Any strange thoughts, even if fleeting.”

Filip closed his eyes, trying to reach back into that moment of terror. The connection he had built with Ash, in that moment he realized how one sided it truly was. Ash’s eyes blazed with an intense, ruthless intelligence, and Filip knew that if he said the wrong word he could be as easily discarded as the rabbit’s fleshless bones.

“There was a disconnect,” Filip whispered.

“But not when I met him, it, whatever it was. Not at first. But when I was unconscious, there was something then. Something odd in my dreams. Or I thought it was my dreams, when I woke in the dungeons they had faded. But now, I’m not sure what to make of them.”

Filip’s mind reached back, pulled the strange visions that he had seen in his fever dreams in the dungeons, before the torture, before the loss of his fingers. There had been something unnatural that his mind had tried to suppress. He frowned, thinking. Abruptly the sing-song clicking flooded his ears, coming from all around. He felt a tingling in his extremities, and the heat drained from his face, and the campsite began to spin. Then he was falling, as if the ground had vanished beneath his boots. He gasped, his vision doubling. He saw Ash, but he also saw... somewhere else.

It was a land of darkness and ice, the air was so cold it turned his breath to crystals before it left his lips. He saw snow, vast drifts of it, stained with frozen blood. He felt himself moving, reacting to the cold, but his limbs were too heavy, his perspective high and strange. He heard the clicking, not from outside, but from within his own throat, and with the clicking came an overwhelming chasm of hunger within him.

Then, the vision snapped.

Filip lay face-down in the dirt by the fire, gasping for air, body trembling with an impossible chill. He felt as though he had run for miles and his body rebelled against him as nausea replaced the overpowering hunger he had felt only a moment ago..

Ash moved far faster than Filip thought possible, not to offer comfort, but to grip Filip’s shoulders and pull him up. Ash’s eyes were wide and wild, and deeply unsettled, and something more that he couldn't place.

“What did you see?” Ash’s voice was insistent, urgent. “Tell me every detail. Every shadow. I need to know exactly what you saw.”

Ash produced a sheet of parchment and a reed pen, his hands white with tension. Filip’s chest heaved as he tried to regain breath that would not come, his body simultaneously fighting the nausea and his own lungs. He tried to speak, but the words fought him, refused to obey for a long moment. Ash stood impatiently, grasping his shoulders, eyes picking him apart as if he were something he didn’t recognize.

At last he could breathe, and shakily he pushed first one word out and then another. Strange how his body resisted him, but soon he was able to tell him of the snow, the frozen blood, and the icy wasteland. Most of all he told him of the hunger.

Ash made him repeat it once, then twice, then a third time. Each time, the Inquisitor’s frown deepened, and he scribbled furiously, his eyes never leaving Filip’s face. The night grew darker, the fire dying down to a bed of red embers, but Ash did not stop his interrogation. He sat there in the gloom silently recording the visions of a boy who had looked into the void and, for a brief, terrifying moment, seen the void looking back.