Blue's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

They made camp at dusk, below a ridge that broke the wind. Raven had not spoken for an hour. He set his crossbow against a rock and unpacked his gear. Blue watched her cub shiver against her leg. It had not eaten since the cave. She had nothing to give it, and her own stomach ached. Raven pulled a skillet from his pack. Runes glowed along its rim. He set it on the snow, and heat bloomed from the metal with no fire beneath. A steak formed inside it. Then bread. Then a dark sauce swirled into being. Blue stared. "Human make," Raven said. He cut the steak in two and held half out to her. "Eat. You're no use to me starving." Blue took it. The cub snatched a scrap and swallowed it whole. For the first time in days, warmth spread through her. Raven dug deeper and tossed her a small vial. Red liquid moved inside like it was alive. "Drink half," he said. "The condor cut your arm. It'll fester out here." She drank. The sting in her sleeve faded. She handed the vial back. Then she noticed the rolled paper beside his pack. "What's that?" Raven hesitated. He unrolled it on the snow. A map, but not of these mountains. It showed the whole world, coast and sea, marked with cities she had no words for. Dense writing crowded every edge. Human writing, the same shapes as her compass. "Found it in the first ruin I entered," he said. "The humans mapped all of it. Then they vanished." Blue's hands shook over the paper. Her grandmother had taught her a few of these shapes. Here were thousands. Whole lost cities, named and gone. The ruins ahead were not one broken place. They were a fragment of something vast. "This is why I left," she whispered. "To find what they were." The cub hissed. Blue looked up. A figure stood at the edge of the firelight. Its skin was deep blue, cracked with pale lines like frost on glass. Its eyes were black. It smiled, and a long tooth showed. The heat of the skillet had drawn it in from the dark. Raven was already moving. He grabbed his crossbow and fired. The bolt struck the creature's shoulder. It did not fall. It lunged, fast as falling snow, and knocked Raven flat. Blue grabbed the hot skillet by its handle. The runes burned her palm. She swung it into the creature's face. Metal met skin with a crack. The thing shrieked and reeled back, clutching its jaw. Raven rolled free and fired again. The bolt took its throat. The creature folded into the snow and went still. They stood over it, breathing hard. Raven looked at her, then at the map still open between them. "Keep it," he said. "You can read it better than me." Blue rolled the map tight and held it to her chest. The lost world was hers to follow now.