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[Adeen Pinebarrow]

"What are you up to?"

Adeen counted the cracks on her punishment cell's wall as she bent at the knees and touched her rump to the ground. The Crater healers suggested infrequent bending sets of twelve, and the Crane approached with a question halfway through her second set. She carried on. Each squat tested the bruises along her ribs, worked life into her half-numb limbs, and bought her time.

"An exercise of sorts." The gravel remained in Adeen's voice, but she did not fight the landslide. "The healers swear it hastens healing. Have you heard of such a thing?"

"You know what I mean."

Only then did Adeen face the fox. The Crane loomed even with bars between them, even though he watched the detention hall's one entrance and exit instead of her.

"Canen arrived last night," said Hapley. "He was already on the way for a trade deal, yet he's just in time to see you fight."

"Quite the coincidence." The cloak's hood could've hid her crooked smile, but she did not pull the hem. "Let us hope he enjoys my match."

"...do you think so little of me?"

The smile faded, and Adeen reached for her journal. Nothing hung from her belt, as her gear rested safe and aside in the Crater's bowels. Hapley slammed his forearm on the bars when she did not answer.

"I've warned you, kept you safe, and made more excuses than you'll ever know. Yet, time and again you put yourself in danger. And now you lie to my face!?" Hapley caught his rising tone and retreated to a furtive whisper. "I cannot save you this time. Not from this."

"I do not wish to be saved. Not now, not again." Hapley reared back from the bars. Adeen advanced until her chest met iron. "I will clear the land where others would stand and wait. Tree after tree until this forest falls."

"You mean to kill him."

"I mean to keep other beasts from sharing my fate. If Canen, Nire, and the whole of Northvale must end, then so be it."

The Crane's shoulders slumped, and he abandoned his vigil on the cell block's entry.

"You don't hear yourself, do you?" Hapley's half an ear turned as red as his fur. "Wait. Please, wait. More is in the works than you realize. If I'd known your ambition, if you'd sought my help, then you could've joined our efforts. Your trees will fall, but only if you wait."

Pages feathered through Adeen's mind. Four pages of plans, twelve, hundreds spent in discovering the workings of The Crater, the beasts within, and the opportunities for harvest. She saw no route involving the fox before her, not even with the trashing of Nire's shrine. Adeen turned her back and continued her exercises.

"Waiting damns me to the pit, healer. Waiting damns more to my fate. No, the wheel turns, and not Martin, or Vulpuz, or any storm can still my paw."

"Then you've damned yourself."

Adeen stopped once mid bend, but resumed her stretches in silence. The Crane spoke one last time before abandoning the vole.

"And, for our sake, I hope you realize what you're doing."


~*~


The adrenaline wore off by morning. Come afternoon, Rinam counted the individual pieces of straw in her bedding thrice over, never arriving at the same number. Come evening, she dug at her cell's wall for one stone capable of smashing a lock. The few she pried only dented the metal, and her newest attempt sent the stone flying from her paw and down the hallway.

Rinam jumped onto her bedding in hopes of fooling any approaching guards. No guard came. Not a sound echoed down the punishment wing's hallway.

A black beast detached from the shadows before Rinam's cell, a crown of golden poppies about her head.

"What?" said Rinam. "How!?"

"Quiet," said Adeen. "You're not the only beast in this block."

"But the guards..."

"...will wake with the other prisoners if you keep yelling."

Silence as the vole cycled through a giant ring laden with misshapen keys. A few tests, and the dented lock opened, along with the slow squeal of the rusted iron bars. Now free, Rinam saw a guard heaped before a cell at the hallway's dead end.

"Did you...?"

Adeen stripped herself of her cloak and thrust the black linen garment into Rinam's paws.

"No. Asleep. They checked me for weaponry, but not my belt for Muda's powders." Stripped of all but the belt, Rinam could count Adeen's ribs through her fur, and the jaunt of her once motherly hips. Scars slashed her thighs, white and stark as the matching set along her muzzle. "Wear the cloak. You'll stand out otherwise."

Rinam's cheeks turned pink at the realization, at how her tufts of curled, white fur shone clear in the darkened hallway. The poppy-trimmed cloak swallowed her whole, masking the sand, thunder, and sour musk of Rinam with the vole's anise, ink, and whiskey.

A prod from Adeen and they set off.

A stoat guard at the punishment area's entry slept as well, his face dusted neon with alchemical powders. Rinam noticed the stains along Adeen's paws as she worked the keyring again and unlocked their last barrier.

"...why do you need me with such sorcery at your paws?" said Rinam.

"Canen is a cripple with no soldiering experience." Adeen's tail slithered snakelike along the path. "...but I know my limits. I n-need...I need your strength when mine might fail."

Adeen lead onward before Rinam could reply.

Night within The Crater normally meant slaves corralled into their pens, a jammed pub, and beasts passing favors out of sight. Now, with the vandalism, pairs of guards patrolled the hallways at regular intervals. Adeen unfurled a strip of carefully folded parchment from her belt and squinted for the script. The pair hunched down in the shadow of the Fell Wing's pens, and duos of guards passed four times in the span of ten minutes. Rinam watched as the scribe - who took no issue in curling beside the mouse - counted the intervals on her shaking claws.

Adeen's whispers rattled with every word, intimate and dangerous against Rinam's ear.

"My notes hold true," said Adeen. "We follow the next patrol from here to the stair. Stay directly behind, and at the edge of torchlight."

"We would walk in the open? Foolish."

"For the coin I paid them; for Speakeasy's pressure? No, the Stubtail twins will not look back."

"Stubtail? And you would mock believers as well."

Adeen tilted her head as if unraveling of riddle, and nodded as the thoughts aligned.

"I apologize." Adeen gestured at the capped stump of Rinam's tail. "They're not believers. Stubtail is their family name, not a choice or practice."

"Neither is mine. All That Is calls on us to-"

The scribe's paw shot out and held Rinam's muzzle shut. Drubbins and Nick Stubtail jostled by the pen they hid within. True to Adeen's word, the Stubtails chatted openly about a drinking contest, and barely held their torches aloft, with no mind for their surroundings. Adeen walked calm from pen and followed the guards in stride, far enough back so the torchlight only licked her footpaws.

Rinam made paw signs for strength from All That Is, and then stumbled after the scribe.

Down the halls, past the storage and mortuary, and to the staircase where they broke away and climbed. Rinam grew aware of her heavy steps, louder still than the Stubtails' prattling. She did not hear the scribe at all, and forgot of her presence though they walked side by side.

The stairwell remained unguarded, the landing for the upper tier suites unguarded. They stopped mid climb, and the vole knelt down and pried at one of the stone slat steps. From the gap she pulled out two daggers. The familial rondel called to Rinam, and fit gladly into her palm as Adeen passed the weapon over. The cloud etchings caked heavy with grit, and a stark dryness left the blade cold and stiff.

Adeen's dagger carried no filigree, gold, or etchings. The baselard ran double-edged and wide, the dark iron blade meant more for slashing than plunging. A simple cross served as a guard, which rose with the blade for weight and strength.

The scribe tucked the weapon down the front of her belt, the blade beside the scars on her thighs. Rinam followed suit and spoke.

"Your coin earns more than cleared halls-"

Faster than Rinam could avoid, Adeen's paw clamped her muzzle shut again. The scribe's nose jammed against the mouse's ears as she whispered harsh and low.

"Is stealth so foreign a concept!?" Even near-inaudible, the vole's rage came clear, and cut with a voice no longer the scribe's, no longer of the plane. "It baffles me how a brick of a mouse as yourself eluded my sight for so-"

Weeping. Sobs heavy and bitter, just beyond the bounds of concealment as they echoed along the upper-tier's hall. Rinam drew her weapon and widened her stance, ready for the source. Adeen broke away and pressed her ear against door after door in the hallway. She perked up at one and waved the mouse over. The muted tears became audible and heavy even through the oaken door.

Sob by sob the tears receded, until only Canen's broken voice sounded.

"My son...I couldn't...I couldn't save you from her..."

Rumors ran The Crater's slave pens. Rumors of a desert heiress turned "mayor," turned slave. Rumors of Kraken, Monsters, and Cowards. Rumors of a volewife who slew the husband she enchanted away from his loving home. So close, Rinam considered her partner as she gripped the door's handle with a trembling paw.

The scribe smiled. Not a smile of assurance or a victory at paw, but a curl of pleasure only a beast with scars could achieve.

"Is there not another way?"

Rinam spoke level, normal. She snatched the scribe's paw from the air before she could clamp her muzzle yet again.

"It's too late. He had his chance." The vole's whisper echoed against Rinam's chest. "Through Granz he saw our home taken, my children starved, and this slavery enacted. We strike to ensure we do not happen again."

"There's no 'we' in this." Rinam knew and spoke the truth before her mind gathered the pieces. "No, you don't do this for anybeast else, not even yourself. Did you even plan an escape?"

The vole looked away in guilt, and Rinam's throat clamped shut. She turned to run, to throw herself back into the cell and hope no guard knew her involvement, but Adeen held her arm with surprising strength.

"Stay. We must see this through. If we do not now, then-"

The door opened. Canen Pinebarrow stood with a candle in paw, his eyes reddened and his sleeping frock wet at the front. So close, Rinam could count the lashes of silver fur along his muzzle, a pleasant accent for a handsome beast well into his middle years. The mouse, in the break of a second, searched for the anger of a vole standing upon Bastion's walls. She searched for the savage who spit upon a bound daughter-in-law. She found nothing but a broken father caught before the storm.

Rinam could not stop the scribe, not in time.

Adeen barreled into Canen and crashed them both onto table at the suite's center. At first the mouse only watched as the beast of letters and plans grew more frenzied by moment. She scratched at the male's shoulders, bit at the flaps of his ears, and all but forgot the baselard in her belt, the blade slashing only her in the thrashing.

Canen cried beneath his assailant. He wailed for help, for understanding.

Rinam ripped Adeen off her target and held her tight and outward facing in a submissive hug.

"Let. Me. Go." Words of stone fell from the scribe. A pitch of gravel at first, then a mountain's end. "He must pay! He took them away?he took them away!"

"No, please." Blood trailed from Canen's battered jaw, and his bed frock tore open, revealing his half-twisted leg beneath. "I don't know who you are, but please, take that feral away. I'll give you anything you want, anything!"

The tears renewed despite Canen's blackened eye.

"Truly." Rinam spoke soft though she held the squirming Adeen firm. "You don't know who I am. What you've done."

"I-I...no! I'm just a merchant; I see hundreds of beasts a day. Please, please! I'll give you anything. Money, companions, even a way free!"

"Truly..."

"Aye, but not her. That creature belongs in the pit, in the wilds where they found-"

"Ahhh, when will my instinct fail?"

Rinam did not ask of instinct, nor did the scribe thrashing in her arms. The curl of feline intrigue, both playful and dangerous, fired the rhetorical question. Still, the thunder of metal and boots answered. Waves of guards poured into the suite, beating the trio into conscious submission before any of them realized the source.

Master Nire Borean stood at the doorway, flanked by the Stubtail twins and slavemasters Hargorn and Nix.

"A pity," said Nire. "There's still so much to be done. I'll have to find a less-traitorous mason."

"M-master Borean!" Canen's spoke through a muzzle now missing teeth, held limp and bleeding by the arm between two guards. Both Adeen and Rinam remained on the floor, pinned to completion for fear of the mouse's strength and the vole's frenzy. "I'm no traitor! They came to kill me!"

"And you deigned to bargain with known criminals. To set my property free." Nire did not blink, and his pupils remained slits even in the faint torchlight. "A match at dawn will teach you all."

Rinam pushed her captives off, but spear butts and a doubled effort saw her still once more. Adeen screeched words beyond the realm of understanding. Canen pleaded:

"N-no! You cannot do this! Beasts depend on me, we had a deal!"

With slight wave of the paw, Canen was silenced by the smack of a guard's gauntleted paw.

"If you survive, then you'll learn that there are no limits to what I can and can't do." The lynx turned towards Adeen with purpose. "Or what loyal service to me buys that coin cannot."

The Stubtail twins nodded in approval. Nire waved once more and the guards dragged the trio into the hallway. The lynx looked each over: the sobs of the father, the endless twisting of the Widow, the inked and furrowed brow of the desert flower swept into the storm.

Adeen spat a glob of foam and blood at Nire, splattering the pocket of his doublet.

"Charming. Hargorn?" The weasel stumped over. "That one is yours. See her equipped and to the North gate in one piece, hmm?"

"Wi' pleasure, sir." Hargorn licked his exposed fang and sucked back a tide of drool. "Been meanin' ter teach this 'un a thing'r two."

Adeen screamed. She screamed as the peg-legged slavemaster signaled the guards to drag her away. She screamed through a linen gag stuffed into her muzzle and tied shut with her own belt. Her screams echoed long after only Rinam and Canen remained.

Nire smiled as he spoke.

"The mouse is for you, Nix. South gate." The grim martness saluted and grabbed the mouse by the scruff. "I'll see Mr. Pinebarrow to the arena myself, at dawn."

Rinam did not scream. She only watched as Nix plucked her rondel free, as the windows of the Crater's upper tier passed, as the dread of night lightened to gray.


~*~


"What are you up to?"

Nix crossed her arms as she watched Rinam pray. A knuckled palm for fortitude. Pointer claws touching over interwoven digits for wisdom. Three claws raised with the outer two touched at the tip for strength. She cycled through the paw signs as she silently mouthed the Litany of Strife. The Mice of Dawn would sharpen their blades in time, and bow before the sun and their commander as they chanted.

A fuming marteness and fading torchlight would suffice for Rinam.

"Preparing. All That Is will see me through."

The stiffness of Rinam's battered joints lifted, and she looked through the bars of the South gate, at the sands of the arena kissed by the still-rising sun. The Crater's stands were empty of spectators, but the windows of the tunnels and causeways circling the arena were jammed with servants, slaves, and gladiators who woke to Nire's horn of battle. Rinam stepped forward, but only so the sun could burn away the ink and blood staining her fur.

"Another woodland crazy. Got it." Nix held out a hollow but firm metal pole, about two feet in length and wrapped with cloth at one end for a grip. "You'll each have the same. I suggest you take out the Widow first. You can outpace a cripple."

"I don't need your advice."

"And I don't need to give it." Nix pounded on the waiting area's entry, signaling that the fighter was ready. "But here's another piece: beg for mercy after you win. Keep that sour face and Nire will rip it off whether you win or not."

"..."

"Yeah. That's the face I'm talking about."

"Why help a 'woodland crazy.'"

"Been doing this for a good number of years, mouse. You can smell the difference between troublemakers and stooges."

The door leading back into the Crater opened and Nix half stepped in, closing the door after saying:

"And you're just a stooge caught up. Keep it that way after you win."

The door shut and sealed. Rinam tested the weight of the iron club in her paw, and swung the length upon the gate's bars. The pole was too light for immediate, crippling damage, and would require more than a few hits for stilling an enemy. Perhaps not against foes so small, she reasoned, but these foes...

An ally turned fiend. A tyrant turned father.

"We're built by mistakes. Yet..."

The South gate rumbled as the mechanisms therein raised the bars. Rinam stepped into the arena and the gate crashed shut behind.

Adeen stood before the North gate. She wore nothing, stood completely still, and let her club hang from her limp paw, more the painting of a beast than a living being. Not a spectator at the windows moved or spoke until Nire graced the stands. By his side the Stubtail twins carried Canen, bandaged and clutching his club as a life line. They tossed the male vole into one of the lowering cages, but kept the mason aloft.

Nire cleared his throat and spread his arms wide.

"Let there be no doubt of what we work for." A showbeast's pause. "This arena, our home, shows all of Mossflower and beyond what entertainment means. And through it? Wealth for those above and below, glory for beasts who'd be farmers or hordebeasts otherwise."

The lynx' speech thundered across the near-empty arena.

"But there are those among us who're not satisfied with our arrangement. They do not see the kindness and opportunity my Crater provides. They think they know better than my years of building this monument, the town around, and more!"

Nire signaled and Canen was lowered down, though the cage remained sealed.

"These three Bastion Rebels are such beasts, traitors all. Let us hear them out in true Crater fashion. The last beast standing gains my ear, and, perhaps, my mercy. And if they refuse? Well..."

Behind Adeen a chaos of chitinous limbs pressed against the bars of the North gate. Scorpions, black and glistening, all at once familiar to the mouse who also called the desert home. Their claws starved for the air, mere inches from snapping Adeen's head from her shoulders.

The Widow had moved, ever so slightly between Rinam's blinks, as her wet and ragged body turned towards Canen in his cage. Yet the snap and reach of the hungry insects only joined the morning breeze in her considerations.

A horn sounded. Canen dropped from the open cage. The game began.

Adeen walked. A calm, staggered stride as her tail and club dragged lines in the sand behind. She ambled towards Canen without expression, without word, her jaw slack and broken. Rinam noticed the shift of the scribe's weight, the grip reapplied to the makeshift weapon.

Even now she pursued her revenge.

Rinam dashed across the sand, her birth-widened footpaws keeping the terrain from eating her stride. She covered the length of the arena with ease and placed herself between Canen and the still-distant Widow.

"On your feet, mason." Rinam did not look as she gave the command. She only widened her stance, prepared for the Widow's arrival, and assumed the male followed orders. "I will talk her down. If we work together we can beat back the-"

The length of iron clipped Rinam's ear. Canen's shaking gait, and his awkward stance, stole any impact from the swing, but Rinam reeled at the ringing in her ear. His follow-up attack struck clear upside Rinam's skull.

Rinam fell, the sun faded, and for too long her pink nose buried against the arena floor.

From All That Is, this bounty leads us through,
Our borrowed bliss, repaid with grace when due.

The sun found their daughter once more, and Rinam's limbs knew life. The world still rang as the mouse rose, but she gripped her club with purpose, with fervor, with-

The Widow completed her work. What remained of Canen's skull slapped wet and repeatedly against Adeen's club as she swung again and again. The vole heaved, surged with hideous strength, and whenever Rinam thought the spectacle would end, the vole swung once more.

"Adeen!"

The creature stopped. Only then did Rinam notice the tears mingling with the blood and bits of Canen slicking Adeen's fur. The mouse raised her weapon.

"Speak if you remain," said Rinam.

Adeen spoke. The words knew no material alphabet, the phrasing and accent beyond Rinam's comprehension. She shrieked beyond the bonds of time, and dismounted her prey to lurch towards Rinam. In the distance, the North gate rose by only a fraction, sending a surge through the scorpions as they hungered for flesh. In their stutter-stop movements, in their ceaseless clacking, Rinam saw the same in Adeen's black march.

Above them all, watching near alone from the stands, Nire smiled.

"You are lost. So be it."

Signs for fortitude, for wisdom, for strength. When finished, she raised her paws on high, breathed deep, and proclaimed for all.

"The forsaken, oppressors, and monsters all..."

A rattled sigh primed in Adeen's throat. At the exhale, she charged - claws raised, teeth bared.

"...fall before The Pearl Dawn!"

The mouse and vole collided.


~*~


Poppies.

Petals so red they mirrored the sunset clouds above, a field forever reaching any horizon.

Adeen awoke at its center. She pressed her nose against the nearest flower, and breathed in bitter-sweet smoke - the scent of flora scorched though the blooms remained alive and whole.

No scars, no bone shown through fur, no hunger for revenge or shadows. The energy of old streamed constant and pearlescent from her clawtips, into the sky to mingle with the clouds.

She rose with the blooms and hung in the air, her fur bared and rippling against the early summer breeze. Though the wind enfolded her, not a flower below moved, not a stem or blade stirred. She spread her limbs and welcomed the elements, the freedom, all the same.

She did not rise alone.

Ribbon-pink ears haloed by dusklight. Fur the hue of fresh-baked bread, once riddled with lacerations but now made whole.

Fenton rose beside her, his smile alight with the perpetual sunset.

"You've changed, my poppy."