Page 115 of The Last Syphon

Prince Walder fished something out of his desk, then offered her a stack of papers. Inara was scared to take it. To read it. Swallowing thickly, she pushed her fear down and took them, running her eyes over it.

Half the top page was taken up by a drawing, and the note beside it indicated it was an exact representation of what the scout saw.

“Once the scouts return, we use a Memory Caller to call forth what they saw and draw it,” Prince Walder explained.

The first drawing was a dragon’s eye view of several villages clustered close together, right near the border of Tolanaa. Inara noted nothing out of the ordinary. The rot was in the same place it had always been. The date indicated the third day of the seventh month, four years ago. The drawing on the next page was from two years before that, and again, the rot had not moved.

Inara flicked through so many pages she lost count, seeing almost the same thing on every one, the only thing to change being the orientation of the villages and their homes. The rot never moved.

“Where is the most recent report?” she asked. These dated all the way back to the Dark War, like he’d said. But the most recent report was not here.

The prince inclined his head to the papers he’d handed Lord Howling and Lady Armanie. Inara rushed to pick them up.

Like all the others, there was a drawing depicting what the scout saw, but this time…This time, the rot had completely consumed the villages. They were utterly destroyed. In pieces. Even through the page, Inara could sense the power. The evil. Her stomach vaulted. She felt ill.

“No. No, no, no.” She flicked through page after page. The reports changed in frequency. The ones from before showed a two-year gap between the reports. These ones showed only a month, the drawing on each page nearly identical except for the slightest movement of the cursed land, inching forward slowly. “They’re gone.” She breathed out in shock.

She spun to face the prince. “What about the people? There were over a hundred people spread throughout those three villages.” Granted, she didn’t particularly care about them. They were dark, evil people and deserved to die for all the shit they’d done to others, but what had happened to them would determine what happened to anyone else if this rot continued to spread.

A mixture of sadness and anger swirled in his violet eyes. “All that remained was dust and ruin.”

Inara knew it, but hearing the words solidified it for her. The papers slipped from her hands as she stumbled back. She spun, running for the door. “I have to go.”

Prince Walder appeared in front of her in the blink of an eye, blocking the door. She skidded to a halt, almost running into him.

Her heart beat wildly in her chest. “Get the fuck out of my way,” she growled. Fraener responded to her hostility, raising his wings and snarling.

Prince Walder didn’t move. “Where are you going?” he asked calmly, and it angered her.

“Where do you think?! My village! They’re in danger! I need to get them out of the Borderlands before that fucking rot reaches them!”

“It will be some time before that occurs.”

“What?!” She shook her head, trying to clear her mind and listen to his words. It was hard. The fear pounding in her veins for her people was trying quickly to take her over, but Inara had a lifetime of beating back unwanted thoughts and emotions. She wasn’t going to let this fear win. “What are you talking about?”

He jumped, picking up the papers she’d dropped, and jumped again, appearing back in front of her in an instant. “Look again.”

She snatched it from his grasp, her eyes running frantically over it. “Whatever I’m meant to be seeing, I don’t fucking see it,” she growled out in frustration.

It was a waste of time. She had to leave. Images of her friends—Venerable Cias, Sayduh, and even the Drunken Trio—flashed in her mind, their bodies decaying right before her and there being nothing she could do to stop it.

The prince pointed to the notes below the drawing. Inara read it, mumbling the words.

“Expanded approximately 3.4 kilometres.”

“Okay. And that matters why?”

“Do the math.”

“I’m not a fucking mathematician. Words are my thing. You want a verbal lashing, I’m your girl. Numbers? No.”

He rolled his eyes. “It took two years for the rot to expand 3.4 kilometres. Your village is located on the complete opposite side of the Borderlands. It is one of the villages closest to the Arelian border, over 100 kilometres away. That means at its current expansion rate, it would take roughly fifty-eight years for the rot to reach your village.”

She relaxed, but only slightly. “Fifty-eight years?”

“Give or take a few.” He shrugged.

Okay. That made her feel a little better. That meant she had time. Time to get her people to safety and figure out what the fuck was going on.