The rising sun burst over the horizon of the Eternal Sea, spilling golden light over the Clifflands of Alabach. Fiery rays licked the Teeth of the Glenn, but little heat reached the poisonous valley beyond. The tide, now gilded under the morning’s influence, crashed against the cracked cliffs of the country’s western coast. On the beach lay a dying Simian, desperately trying to remember who he was.

Saltwater filled his lungs, cast out again by a spluttering cough and a barrage of retches. The taste of vomit stung his throat.

Somewhere between the throbbing ache inside his head and the sharp pain at the back of his skull, the Simian remembered a time when he was young, running through the dusty streets of Penance. He saw himself as if a spectator, watching the child weave between the crowds, a coin-purse too large to be his own clutched against his chest.

Two men dressed in the scarlet robes of the Churchguard gave chase, but the young thief was too fast for them.

Swift.They used to call me Farris the Swift.

Then Farris saw himself treating with criminals, led by a Simian with greying hair across his face and shoulders. Next, he was in Cruachan, capital city of Alabach, telling lies to King Diarmuid the Third and Nineteenth.

He held a knife held against a drunken Simian’s stomach. He boarded an airship larger than the Basilica itself. He fled from a pack of beadhbhs, then from a mountain troll. Farris remembered it all, along with the dozens of names he took throughout his life.

Another wave, stronger than the first, washed over Farris’s body. As he closed his eyes to keep the water out, a woman’s face appeared before him. A young, beautiful woman dressed all in white. Or blue. Or both. The image was transient, threatening to vanish at any minute.

After a moment, he recognised her as Slaíne the White, the healer he had travelled across the Glenn with, but she was gone before he could be sure. A voice, fainter than the water washing against his ears, spoke to him.

“Because the gods have willed it, Chester.”

He remembered. Slaíne had told him about destiny and fate, though she believed his name was Chester at the time. The healer had described her own struggles in a world without free will, and how every moment in Farris’s life would lead to this final one.

But the gods didn’t send me here. A deranged king did.

Even with the last of his life slipping away, Farris smiled. Before he left the capital, King Diarmuid had given him instructions to destroy the Simian skyfleet harboured at the ruins of the Tower of Sin, in Penance. The king claimed he was attacked by the Silverback and the other Simian dissidents, but Farris knew this could not be true; he himself was allied with the separatists.

So why did King Diarmuid lie about the Silverback? Why did he think attacking Penance was the best solution? Farris had never known, but the answer was clearer now than ever.

King Diarmuid has lost his mind.

The tide rolled back, and Farris struggled for another breath. The next wave would kill him. That was the only thing he was certain of now.

But the king’s madness left a bitter taste, worse than the salt and sand, for Farris was now the only living person to know of his plans. Soon, there would be nobody left.

The woman flashed before his eyes once more, with a terrible smile spread across her face. In an instant of clarity, Farris saw that this was not Slaíne the White. Before he could put another name to her, she was gone, and the tide came creeping back.

My time has finally come.

His lungs exhaled his last breath, his heart thundered out one final beat, and each muscle in his body began to relax. The wave passed over his face once more.

No!

A maddening desperation took hold of him. He pushed his lips out over the surface of the water for another breath of air. His heart gave another beat, and he slowly tilted his head forward. For what seemed like an eternity, the tide remained over him, but Farris fought the thousand voices in his head that begged him to lie back and die. It almost seemed as if they sang to him, telling him that his pain would cease if he just lay his head back into the sand.

But another voice cast them aside. A voice that roared ‘No!’

He balled the fingers of his left hand into a fist, shifting the weight of his body onto his arm. As the tide retreated, he pushed himself up, agony in every movement.

He slowly sat upright, the water now only up to his waist. Through blurred vision, he saw the face of the cliffs bathing in the morning sun.

A shrill shriek cut through the air, and Farris looked up. The cliffs were perhaps thirty feet tall, but the distance did little to dampen the sound of the troll’s slaughter. The troll he and his companions had brought to the fields by the cliffs.

Farris shook the memory from his head.

More will die worse deaths if the king goes to war.

He tried to stand, but his left leg buckled under his weight, sending him splashing forward into the water once more. With salt upon his tongue, he pulled himself up and crawled towards the cliff-face, dragging one useless leg behind him.

Don’t stop.

His hands found the rough rock of the cliff, fingers groping against the prickly beachgrass jutting out.

Don’t look up.

He reached one hand up and clenched an overhead rock in his fist. The stone grazed against his knuckles, and his wounds stung with salt, but he tore his attention away from his pain. With a muffled roar he pulled himself upwards and reached up with another hand.

Don’t give up.

Soil and loose sand trickled over his head, and Farris shut his eyes. His leg throbbed, but he pulled himself upwards again, dangling both feet over the ground.

I’m their last hope. Only I can warn them.

He reached upwards, struggling to find another grappling point. Instead of solid rock, his fingers grasped a handful of beachgrass in the cracks of the cliff. He held them tightly by the roots.

If I stop now, everyone’s death will be for nothing.

First there was Chester, the Simian navigator Farris had impersonated to board the ship. Chester’s death was a necessity to make up for the Crown’s lack of preparation for the mission. The king had just as much a hand in killing him as Farris did.

The beachgrass took Farris’s weight well. A strong breeze caressed the fur on his shoulders as he reached up again. His arms ached with fatigue, but he turned his thoughts back to his mission.

If I fall now, Penance will follow.

He was the one who caused the fight aboard The Glory of Penance. He was the one who caused the ship to crash into the Glenn. He was just as guilty as the beadhbhs that picked off the survivors.

But it’ll only be justified if I make it home....

His fingers found solid stone again, but their grip failed for a fraction of a second. He slipped, barely catching himself with his other hand. The muscles in his shoulders cried out in protest, and his mind almost submitted to their pleas.

Fionn the Red. Sir Bearrach. Slaíne the White. The crewmen, the labourers in the field, all dead to save the Simians of Penance.

The scene of the troll’s killing field resurfaced again in his mind. The death didn’t bother him; he had seen plenty of that since he first left Penance… but one memory from that morning stuck harder than the rest.

The girl.

He pulled himself upwards again, almost losing his grip.

Chester may understand. Reasonable people like Sir Bearrach and Sláine the White would surely accept that sacrifices must be made in times of war. Their lives could secure the well-being of thousands of Simians in Penance, or hundreds of thousands of Humans across Alabach. They’d understand….

But how could that reasoning apply to a child who watched her mother die?