Wes’s description of the thing did it the most justice.
“A nisnas is what happens if you put a rotting mortal body into an iron bowl and smash it with a pestle,” he’d said.
The nisnas dragged itself forward with surprising speed. Al Anqa’a circled the square once, twice, disregarding the nisnas. I begged the bird to take its flight elsewhere before I had to choose between risking an open space or the nisnas. When the nisnas’s foul stench reached my nostrils, and I could see the shriveled skin of its face, Al Anqa’a swerved past the square with a rush of wind.
I hurled myself away just as the nisnas’s dangling arm whipped out from the side. Rolling to my feet, I swung the axe, cleaving its liquid arm sack. A gurgling moan that might have been a scream erupted as blood and pus poured into the soil. The nisnas skittered toward me on pointed nubs of bone. The axe connected with the line of its swollen head, cutting through the fingers growing from its neck. Though only a strip of brown tendon kept its head attached, the nisnas did not slow. Its arm thrashed around my legs, sending me crashing to the ground.
“Get off me!” I grunted, hacking at the thing. I tried to conjure thoughts to provoke my magic. It seemed disinclined to participate.
Eventually, I chopped enough of the nisnas to wiggle from its grip. The pieces trembled on the ground, and right before my eyes, began to knit back together. I grabbed a wiggling finger and stuck it into one of the knots in my braid to hold it still.
Ichor trailed from the axe as I ran. The places on my clothes where the nisnas touched me were singed, the sludge coating its body eating through the thin fabric. I quickly stopped to scrub dirt on all the places the sludge had touched my skin.
I scuttled like a roach for the next mile, weaving between crumbling buildings and overgrown thickets. The shadow Al Anqa’a cast gave sufficient warning of its approach, and I made myself small every time it circled.
When it came around again, I ducked into an open doorway. The remnants of a family home crunched under me. An enormous tree towered in the center of the house, thriving in the ruin. An infant’s rattle dangled from a branch, and a matching crib lay smashed around the tree’s roots, which rippled over the floor like a stone dropped in still water.
What must Nizahl and the other kingdoms have done to Jasad for the villagers here to prefer this death to another invasion? What horrors had been inflicted upon Jasadis’ homes for consumption by the woods to be the merciful alternative? They hadn’t pooled their magic together to repel the soldiers, but to destroy their village on their own terms.
Glass crunched as I walked deeper into the monument of death. What did Jasad look like, if this was the aftermath in a random village?
Running was not a choice for them, Hanim said. Nizahl had led the charge against their land once already, and they would not be chased from another home.
I picked up a patch torn from a colorful quilt. They had embroidered the kitmer’s agile, catlike body, its golden wings, even its feathered head. Clinging to Jasad, even after it was long gone.
“I apologize for the mess,” said the man leaning against the tree. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”
I dropped the patch. Surprise morphed to alarm, and I lifted the axe, checking for the nearest hole in the wall I could fit through. I cursed myself for wandering in so deep.
The man approaching me looked utterly unremarkable. He could have been a fast-talking merchant, a lecherous royal, a vagrant. His features were too bland, as though an artist had outlined the basics of a human man’s face and forgotten to fill in the rest.
“There’s no need for that,” he said amiably, gesturing at my axe. “Not with all the delicious magic you can use instead.”
I paused, and he chuckled at my expression. “Did you think I wouldn’t smell it? Oh, but I haven’t had a good taste of magic in so long. I have been searching for a morsel, and here a feast has presented itself to me.”
“What are you?” I held the axe between us as I maneuvered away.
“Hungry,” he said. “Starving, actually. You understand. I can feel your hunger, too.” He moved toward me, unperturbed when I slashed the axe in warning. He sighed. “I much preferred eating Lukubi magic, back when they had it. Jasadis are too much trouble.”
“I do not have any magic for you to eat. Whatever you are smelling is from this room.” I glanced at the door. A few more steps. Fighting in an enclosed home with a tree plunging through the middle was not a recipe for success.
“Nonsense. Your magic is ripe. Fragrant.” He inhaled deeply. “Much better than anything these pitiful fools ever possessed.”