WE BECOME THOUGHTLESS

eight | sana

The Chrysosian army had all the friendliness and charm as a half-starved wolf frothing at the mouth, and from the tender beginnings of late childhood, Cole had known this firsthand.

His mother had taken him by the wrist and ran before they could steal his mind and turn him into advena, but not before they took his childhood home and decimated his village. Clan Usra was destroyed. The once powerful, proud Welish Clan existed in only its two remaining survivors.

Well, one remaining survivor.

Each Clan had been blessed an animal under the miracle-giving hands of their gods. Clan Ursa used to belong to the bear, and so they controlled it, tamed it. But Cole had never possessed this connection. His father hadn't been from Clan Ursa. Sometimes he wondered whether Niamh used to resent him for it.

Because when a bear had ripped its curled claws down the length of his back, she hadn't been surprised. Instead, she took him by the face and looked him straight in the eye and said:

"You can blame your bastard father for this."

Cole's skin went tight and ached along his scars as the cold muscled through his damp clothes to cool the body beneath. His ankle throbbed and beat with pain. In front of him, the mindrenderer shrugged passed a long-boned tree and gingerly tapped his fingers along his useless arm.

The dark memory of alabaster fingers roaming along the side of his head surfaced in his thoughts, pulling the strings of his mind. Cole felt sick and looked away. He had only ever met one other mindrenderer before, other than Alastair – a woman whose face was cruel and hands were crueller.

Something inside Cole was urging him to finish his mission and kill the boy in front of him, wrangle his hands over his pale neck and squeeze. But he wouldn't stand a chance, not with his ankle the way it was. Even if he managed it, even with his extensive knowledge of survival in the cold and sometimes hellish Weles landscape, Cole wouldn't live long on his own with his injury.

For now, he would do what he couldn't stand to do.

"I can hear a river nearby," Alastair called from ahead, watching the sky above as the tell-tale signs of the nearing evening appeared in the clouds. "We should make camp now, somewhere near it."

Cole shook his head and limped forward again. "No, keep moving."

Alastair sighed and stepped over a thick tree-root, towards him. Cole stepped back as the mindrenderer advanced, watching his hands from where they stayed by his sides. Alastair stilled.

"We'll need to look at our wounds before we go any further, Cole." Cole didn't like the sound of his name on Alistair's mouth, he didn't like the way his voice softened or the way it sometimes sounded like he was singing, breathy and unamused. Or like Cole was a wild animal. With caution. "We can follow the river upstream tomorrow, after we've rested. I'm sure you're tired."

"I'm not tired." He lied. Every part of him was aching and hurting under the weight of exhaustion. If he didn't rest soon, he would surely collapse.

But Cole wouldn't let the enemy know that.

"Sure," Alistair's voice hardened. "Well I'm tired, and now that we're working together, that means we rest. Let's go."

Before Cole would follow Alistair towards the stream and through a spotting of snow-dusted trees, he perked up angrily, stumbling over his words; "I don't like being—being bossed around by Chrysos scum like I'm advena."

The words didn't carry the way he had hoped, because instead of looking stung or angry, Alistair looked tired and – was that guilt? Cole didn't know how to feel about that.

"You can come if you want, but you know I'm right," was all he said before turning around and carrying on towards the sound of the river.

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By the time night arrived, they were huddled at separate sides of a fire that Alistair had collected the dry wood for and Cole had started. Cole rolled up his pants and carefully pulled off his boot to inspect his injury. The sight of his gnarled ankle made him want to gag and cough up his last meal.

They hadn't had time to fish or hunt for food, although Alistair had collected a few wild berries while collecting wood of which Cole had hesitated before letting him know that they were poisonous. He had managed, surprisingly, to obtain a handful of sanaberries, which could scare off infection and help speed-up the healing process.

He thought that maybe Alistair trusted him a little more now, but that trust was misplaced. Cole was not someone to be trusted if you were "gold-blooded", a pretentious term Chrysos had nicknamed its people out of pure arrogance. What did that make him, he wondered?

They sat in uncomfortable silence.

Just a few hours ago, Cole had been trying to kill the boy from across the fire, a thought that was very much still fresh in his mind. Firelight ran along the hard edges of the mindrenderer's face and shadows slipped into the hollow of his cheeks. Alistair struggled to keep his eyes open, lashes grazing his cheeks every five seconds as they fell shut.

Cole crushed the sanaberries in the cup of his palm and rubbed the salve other the base of his ankle where the skin had torn and the bone was chipped beneath. He sucked in a quick breath.

"You'll need something to bandage that up." Alistair said tiredly.

"I know," Cole snapped back. Then, quieter, "You'll need something for your head."

A coating of crushed sanaberries was rubbed over the blood-encrusted wound on the mindrenderer's head. He chuckled lowly before shrugging off his dark coat and letting it fall around him after slipping from his shoulders.

Cole squinted. "No – you'll need the coat. The cold—"

"Although I'm flattered by your worrying, that's not what I'm doing. Now look away." Shaking in the chill of the night, Alistair pulled off his vest and then his shirt. He was thin beneath his clothes, lean and blemished pink in some areas because of the cold.

"I wasn't worried." Cole said quickly, looking away. He was used to changing comfortably in front of people and people changing in front of him, there was no shame in a naked body in Weles. But there was something distinctly vulnerable when the trembling mindrenderer shrugged off his shirt – a vulnerability Cole had never witnessed in a Chrysosian soldier that made him strangely uncomfortable.

From what he had learnt, Chrysos culture was thick with rules and senseless laws. Clothes that covered everything from neck to toe, despite the hot climate of their country. They prioritised academics and beauty over physical capability and fighting strength. Emotions were weak. Self-restraint was highly valued.

It sounded like a hellscape.

Even its citizens seemed to struggle under its values.

After Alistair had pulled both his vest and coat back over his shoulders, doing up the buttons and breathing shakily as he pulled his arms over his stomach to keep the warm in, he threw the shirt at Cole.

"There, rip its sleeves and tie it around your ankle. Maybe get a stick to keep it in place." He rubbed his hands together and placed them close to the fire.

Cole pulled the shirt from where it had landed in his lap and narrowed his eyes at the mindrenderer from across the fire. His sunlight-coloured hair sat along his shoulders and shone like a halo.

Cole felt at the soft fabric. "You know a lot about... healing."

"I was going to be a doctor." Alistair said flatly, not looking up. "Before they took me away."