Free Twilight of the Wolves by Edward J. Rathke

here, touching dragons. Slay one, too, maybe?
    No, didn’t touch, but you could feel the cold like a breeze pushing out of it.
    I thought they breathed fire.
    Maybe they do but they’re cold, too. No one knows much about dragons except that they’re real. Ask any farmer of the forest.
    The world is a forest.
    Aye, and many a farmer’s seen a dragon.
    So what do these soldiers want?
    No idea.
    What do soldiers ever want?
    Money and love. And power.
    They’ll have all three by Blueday if they want it. And maybe something extra, if any of their tastes lean that way.
    Best to stay away from the temple these days.
    Just these days? Filthy place.
    Our saint! Here to save us from the pleasures of the flesh. Bringing out your goddess soon.
    Not mine, but it’d do you well not to mock a goddess.
    You ever wonder why only she’s a goddess?
    How you mean?
    Can you think of any other goddesses?
    She’s the oldest. Never needed another one.
    Thousands and thousands and thousands of years, the Deathwalker unbroken.
    Lots of work for them.
    And it’ll get worse here, what with the way the temple is dying and then if these rumors of wars are true. Aye, many a crow round, following every battle.
    How long’s the war been going on?
    Has it started?
    I think we’ll know when it starts.
    You mean when it reaches us. Most of the fighting’s taking place in the south right now. Has been for almost a year. Maybe longer.
    So it is Drache.
    Who knows.
    Rej walked into the market spilling his insides into the dirt, clutching after anyone who passed within arm’s reach. He grabbed a hand and felt the foot break his teeth as he coughed more of his lungs into the dirt. The soldier stared down at him with disgust and then horror, and put a sword through his neck and his comrades cleared a circle around the body. He wiped the blade clean, his lips turned sour, his superior telling everyone to stay away from the bodies of the dead. The Deathwalkers tended the body and breathed it away to the Goddess.
    Then it’s true, the soldier heard the mutterings of what they must have known, words of disease, of the whores, of the bridge, the quick steps out of the square, the darting eyes. The coughing through the tents and pavilions and alleyways of stalls that wound labyrinthine through the square, a syncopated percussion tracing the causal lines of disease.
    The soldiers walked through the square, fingering the oddities said to be from across the world, over oceans andmountains, from Soare or even from the far west, where barbarians ruled, lands untouched by Arcanes or Deathwalkers or even Angels. After an hour, the soldier separated from his comrades and made his way to the temple.
    The temple, pale stone glowing beside the canal, the boys, younger than him, standing, adorned in many cloths or nude or carrying chains, their bodies modified by metallic rings and bars. The coughing and the bodies contorting spasmodically in pain but remaining, watching him watch them.
    A girl stood behind the soldier and spoke in a language he did not understand.
    What?
    She spoke again and pointed. Her lips pouted, her head shaking, she spoke louder and slow.
    He turned from her to the boys on the stone steps, then back to her. He waved her away, Go back to your mother. Stepping onto the stone, he turned back and she still watched him, her hands closed together.
    Alina fingered a stain on her dress and cursed. Looking around the square, the people looked haggard, grey, limp. With every day the crowd grew thinner, the coughs louder, and the soldier population rising.
    Wha make ov it?
    Tsukiko shrugged counting coins subvocally. When finished, she turned to Alina, Sickness spread, her Garasun accent still noticeable.
    They shutdown the temple. The soldiers.
    Aye, but only moved. North under the forest. All manner of boys coughing their innards out.
    Alina cleared her throat, picked at the stain, Too late closing the temple and won’t stop noving, aye. Their perversion