“What are you thinking about?” 

Asphodel did not turn to acknowledge Terrence.  They had preferred Logue’s company, insofar as they begrudgingly allowed any company other than Leonard’s; the straightforward friendliness could be tuned out as background noise, the easy, comfortable bearing parsed as a part of the requirements of navigating the Moor’s trickier wetlands. 

Logue had accepted Asphodel’s silence.  Their reticence.  Their occasional forays on their own, out of eyesight, out of earshot.  

But Terrence—

Terrence asked too many questions.  Had too many opinions.  Looked at Asphodel with a bright, knowing shine in his eyes, a tilt to his head as if he recognized in Asphodel some unnameable thing that set them apart. 

“I am curious about the standards,” Asphodel said.

“Ahh, those.  Memorable, aren’t they?” 

“They are.” 

They had come past one just a moment ago; Asphodel slowed, stopped, turned, and the flutter of the torn flag drew his eye even now — the deep red bleached in places by water damage; the narrow tresses along the bottom torn and ragged.  The pentacle.  The Coursers’ heads.  Their open mouths, their square teeth set to throat. 

Asphodel could imagine it — the yielding of flesh.  The splintering of bone beneath the set of their jaw.  The taste of blood—

“Leonard will not go near them,” they said, displacing the dream-thought. 

“Huh,” Terrence said.  The mercenary’s head turned in the way that Asphodel wanted — away from the banner; towards the skeletal servant, who skirted wide around the next standard, propped into the hungry, sucking earth.  “So he won’t.  Wonder what that’s about.  Not like they’re any more special than the trees.  But hey — you like those, wait till night comes; you timed the season right.” 

Asphodel could see it in Terrence’s bright, sharp eyes — the wanting to be asked.  The hunger to be needed. 

He did not ask, and after a moment, Terrence shrugged and did not continue. 

~~~

But nightfall came all the same. 

They had made camp at the heart of the Moors, cut off from the chill of the wind by the crumble of stone ruins around them; Leonard spread his bone fingers out beneath his cloak in front of the fire, ghastly shadow playing across the bare skull and teeth.  If he could feel the warmth, Asphodel did not know.  They had never asked. 

Terrence heard it first — pricked his ears.  Lifted his dark head.  The quick, sharp smile flashed across his eyes. 

“C’mon,” he said, shaking off clinging grass, flicking his tail airily.  “What sort of guide would I be if I let you miss this?  Can your skeleton guy stay and keep watch?” 

“He can if I ask him to.  Where are we going?” 

But Asphodel heard it too.  The strange whisper-murmur of many voices somewhere quite near.  The rolling thunder of motion across the moors.  The wind suddenly snagging on something, whipping around shapes. 

“Not far,” Terrence said.  His smile widened, indulgent, self-satisfied.  “C’mon.” 

This time, Asphodel followed. 

~~~

Terrence led them to the crest of a long, sloping hill, crowding low behind the ridgeline, shuffling Asphodel towards a ruined wall. 

“Look,” he said—

Asphodel was already looking. 

Down across the sloped land, the bleached green of the Moors turned strangely red beneath the harvest moon.  And where the valley had been bleached bone and tangled vine in daylight, the moonlight drew ghostlight up, gave it shape, voice — strange, translucent creatures carrying battle standards, wavering in a dream-like insubstantial afterlife. 

A hulking creature, mouth cragged with fangs, walking upright despite knuckles that might have brushed the ground, hefted a flag that blew in a phantom breeze — a boar with tusks that curved upward towards the sky.  A thin, graceful creature with hair like Asphodel’s mane, their shield emblazoned in metal that had followed them in death, showing the elegant curve of a deer’s spine, her lovely legs set in preserved motion. 

“They are different from the others,” Asphodel murmured — to themself, but Terrence, beside them, smiled and nodded, too, his eyes liquid and knowing; and Asphodel, hating themself for giving him the satisfaction, but unable to stop, continued.  “Battle factions.” 

“Mm hmm.  What else?” 

“They were allies.  Or friends, perhaps.” 

They watched them move around each other, past each other, spirits whose ghost-shapes touched and permeated at the edges, blurring, sharing whatever it was their souls were comprised of.  Their strange limbs passed through each other without violence.  Their expressions as they faced each other were placid with recognition, soft with the anguish of loss. 

“Yeah?” Terrence said. 

Asphodel blinked.  The harvest moon shone red as blood overhead.  They did not know what path Terrence expected him to find, what thread among the lost souls below them, but they turned away after a last look into the valley of the dead. 

“The Harvester will lay them to rest.”  Their voice was of finality.  An ending of a conversation in which they had somehow lost the upper hand.

“And us, eventually,” Terrence said.

Asphodel did not intend to ever become one of them — souls birthed from the vines like fruit, reaped beneath the scythe like wheat, felled and harvested and silenced — but to say so would have been admitting too much.

“And us,” they agreed instead, and Terrence’s bright, knowing eyes smiled at them.