Void Sentinel Dale's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Dale stood at the crossing where the living road met the dead one, and he had been standing there long enough to learn every mortal's trick of looking through him. They passed within arm's reach. Their eyes slid off his gray-sand shoulders, off the white sheet pulled tight across his chest, off the black void where his face should be. The purple-green tendrils under that void twitched when a woman walked her goat past his boot. She felt nothing. He wanted, more than he wanted to hold the line, for one of them to stop and see him. Not the shroud. Him. That was the trouble. He could not tell which mortal had the rare sight until he tried, and the wrong try meant screaming, torches, a name like monster nailed to his post forever. He had a plan he hated. The smithy sat at the edge of the crossing, stone and dark timber, a side gazebo forge glowing orange under its shingled roof. Smiths saw strange things and kept quiet. A smith was the safest first test. Dale stepped into the light of the forge. The heat did not touch him. A short man stood at the anvil, black mohawk stiff with sweat, black goatee, blue and black armor scuffed at the knees. Not the smith. A customer, waiting. Pup. Dale had watched him cross this road twice before without a flinch. Pup looked up. His eyes landed on Dale's chest, then his void, then held there. "You're blocking my light," Pup said. Dale did not move. "You see me." "I see a big man in a bedsheet. Move." Dale's tendrils lifted. Pup's tiny head tilted back to track them. He did not scream. He frowned like a man reading a bill. "Those real?" Pup asked. "Yes." "Huh." Pup set down the piece he had been waiting on. It was a black leather harness, crossed straps, gold rings, fresh from the smith's bench. He looked Dale over again, slower. "You've got the shoulders for one of these." Dale's hands opened and closed at his sides. No one had ever spoken to him about his shoulders. No one had ever spoken to him at all. "What am I," Dale said. Not a question. A test. Pup shrugged. "Tall. Gray. Sad, under the pixels. You want me to lie?" "No." "Then you're a man." Pup lifted the harness. "Try it. If the straps fit, I'll buy you a drink and you can tell me what you're guarding out there." Dale took the harness. The leather was warm. His fingernails, short and black and sharp, did not tear it. He had come to the smithy to learn if he could be seen without being feared. He had his answer, and the answer had a name, and the name had already turned back to the forge to wait for him. Dale followed.