There was an apple on the tree. It was pure white: an orb like frozen snow. A tiny spider, as white as ice, crawled across its face. It stood in stark contrast to the small and withered tree, which sat lonely and decrepit against a bed of reeds in the shallow river bank. Muddy and dank waters drifted by in the bed, filled with foul runoff from the edge of The Reach. The wind echoed through the reeds, a slow, sad dirge powered by the wind that blew in from the vast tundra.
The sky felt low and flat, oppressive. The air was raw with cold. Cross stared out, past the lone tree and the dense skeletal foliage, at The Reach, an endless, colorless plain of ice floes, snow-covered hills, arctic waters and drifts of snow deep enough to drown in. The harsh white of The Reach marked the end of civilization: it was where the human haven of Thornn saw its sphere of influence end, and where the deadly hostility of the wilderness began. The horizon was dark, a thin line of shadow that lay compressed beneath the dead white sky.
“Eric? Are you okay?”
Snow was behind him, amidst the gravestones. The cold, hard ground was nearly blue, a thin and long field that stretched all of the way back to the lower defensive tiers of Thornn, which sat implacable, a funnel of reinforced red stone walls embalmed in arcane ice and surrounded by hexed concertina wire. The city was squat and ugly, a troglodyte atop a twisted snowbound hill. Thick plumes of dark smoke trailed from the industrial towers bound in Thornn’s outer walls like serpents into the stale sky. Cross heard the distant wail of klaxons and machinery.
His sister was bound in a pale cloak the color of her namesake. The ground, by comparison, was dirty and grey, as were the grave markers, low plates of steel and stone etched with the names of the departed. Thornn’s citizens could not actually be buried, but were cremated. The notion of the dead coming back as vampires was too much a possibility to be dismissed. Cross understood that it had been a real problem about ten years ago, back in the early days of the war. Now the melting down of the deceased was so standard a practice no one even thought twice about it.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Come and look at this.”
Cross’ eyes roamed upward, to the sentry gargoyles that hovered over Thornn like circling stone ravens. Arcane storms invisible to the naked eye formed a crown in the air, a quiet cyclone of protective magical energies that emitted a constantly collapsing field of destructive power specially attuned to necrotic flesh.
Cross’ spirit moved out and away, floated near the edge of the grave field, then drifted back close to him. There was no danger there, even a mile outside of Thornn’s walls and so close to the openness of The Reach, so his spirit was at peace, and her calm filled him. She fell around him as a warm vapor that enveloped his body, a second skin that constantly tickled against his flesh. She’d been with him since he was ten, the time it had been discovered that he was a warlock. He could barely recall having been without her.
“What is that?” Snow asked. She was shorter than Cross by several inches. There was little mistaking their relation, for she had the same coal black hair and large green eyes, and they were both pale to the point of looking deathly. Her hair was cut short along the sides and back but was longer on top, and there was a single streak of white that ran from the center of her temple. Her choker was black leather set with a black cross. “Is that an apple? God, it must be rotten to the core.”
“No,” Cross said with a shake of his head. “Look at it. I think it’s fresh. It’s just…white. Drained of color by this place, maybe.” It was common -- entire crops had been leeched of color near inhospitable regions like The Reach. Cross had heard stories of entire forests in the Bone March that had been rendered bone white by the necrotic landscape; the Wormwood was so corrupt that even vampires feared the vegetation there; and Cross knew firsthand the dangers of the Ebonsand, where intelligent crabs muttered arcane curses and Vuul pirates claimed control over waters literally infused with occult blood. The world was a diseased and broken place, torn apart and cursed. Cross knew that a better world had once existed, in his youth, but it was becoming harder and harder to remember it.
“It’s beautiful,” Snow said after a time. “Even if it is dead.”
“Yeah,” Cross nodded. “I guess it is.”
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