Void System: Every Heroine Makes Me Stronger

The 1st numbered body returned to the marked field at dawn.

It lay across 2 reinforced boards beneath the low canvas shelter, exactly where the gray-haired appraiser had pointed. A waxed sheet covered the earth below. The corpse’s plated back still held the dents and dried blood it had carried when Severin Stored it. Nothing had healed. Nothing had worsened while it remained inside the Vault.

The appraiser checked the cloth tag in Alicia’s hand before touching the corpse. The older field worker who’d helped keep the coverings in place stood beyond the shelter rope. He looked from the empty impression beside stake 1 to the plated corpse on the boards.

"Stake 1," the worker said. "That was the body we kept here."

The appraiser held out his hand. Alicia gave him the tag. He compared its chalk mark with the stake, then returned it to her.

"And the bodies from inside?"

"Tagged 16 and 17," Severin said. "They stay separate until you compare them."

"Good. Put nothing on these boards without a number."

The man bent over the boards. He’d removed his travel coat and tied his sleeves above the elbows. Old knife cuts crossed the leather guard over his left thumb. His knives, narrow saw, wooden wedges, chalk, scale, salt, and folded cloth occupied the inspection side of the shelter in an order that didn’t need labels.

Beyond the canvas, the other 14 surface stakes remained in the field. Empty impressions showed where the bodies had lain before Severin Stored them. Tags 16 and 17 waited beside Alicia for the 2 corpses taken from inside Faultroot.

They’d returned from the reed camp late the previous night. The 4 captives remained inside the Vault, separate and unexamined. Severin had told Mereford only that the 1st hard rain mattered. Saelith chose this high ground before sleeping. Tressa chose 4 workers before dawn and left the patient shelter staffed.

The appraiser had reached Mereford from Greycross before dawn. Now the eastern sky was pale, and he looked only at the corpse on the boards.

He pressed a thumb against a plate seam. "Turn the shoulder toward me."

Severin shifted the corpse without scraping the plate against the boards.

"Not that far."

He stopped.

The appraiser slid a wooden wedge beneath the seam, tapped it with the mallet, and watched the plate lift by less than a finger’s width. A dark smell escaped from beneath it. The nearest worker tightened his mouth but stayed at the board.

The man took the smell without pulling back, cut through softened tissue along the seam, and peeled back a narrow strip of ordinary hide. Wet collapse had spread beneath an outer layer that still looked firm.

"No meat," he said. "No organs. Don’t put ordinary hide in the clean wraps."

"The plate?" Severin asked.

"Worth taking if you don’t crack the edge. The claws, jaw, teeth, and sound bone may be worth taking. I haven’t finished looking."

He opened the mouth, worked the jaw hinge, and counted missing teeth with the tip of a wooden pick. Then he checked the claw roots, the wound through the ribs, and the places where the corpse’s weight had rested outside for days.

"You would’ve saved more if you’d Stored them earlier," the appraiser said.

The days in the marked field had shown Severin who counted, who obeyed, and who kept working after the smell worsened. That knowledge remained. So did the loss on the boards.

"What can still be saved?" Severin asked.

The appraiser glanced at him for the 1st time. "Now you’re asking the useful question."

He marked 3 cut lines in chalk.

"Open here, here, and below the shoulder. I need to know whether the wet rot stays near the seam or has gone deeper. Sight and smell won’t settle that without wasting more tissue."

That was the narrow question Severin’s new Original could answer.

He rested a gloved hand against the exposed seam.

How deep is the active deterioration?

He used Deterioration Sense.

The boards showed no change.

Decay resolved into layers inside Severin’s perception.

Ordinary postmortem decay had resumed where the air reached the opened tissue. It moved fastest beneath the shoulder plates, where trapped moisture sat against connective tissue and muscle. The active layer had passed below the hide and spread through the soft tissue around the joint. It hadn’t reached the bone. Along the open rib wound, the rate was slower because the flesh had dried before Store.

No market value came with the result. It showed the decay, its depth, and where it was working now.

His Core dipped by a trace. The Reserve restored it before he lifted his hand.

"Below the hide," Severin said. "Through the soft tissue at the shoulder joint. The bone is clear. The open rib wound is drying faster than it’s rotting."

The appraiser shifted the 2nd chalk line.

"Then we cut the shoulder wider and salt the inner plate before the rest." He looked at Severin’s hand. "Your Skill can find rot. It can’t tell you what a Greycross buyer will call worthless while trying to lower the price."

"I didn’t ask it for a price."

"Good. People do."

The appraiser handed a knife to the worker opposite him. "Follow the chalk. Stop when the blade reaches firm tissue."

The work began.

Severin removed his coat and hung it beyond the clean-lot side. Tressa had found him an oilcloth apron and thick gloves. They were made for a smaller man, but the ties held. He waited until the appraiser set wedges beneath the plate mantle, then lifted where directed.

The weight barely pulled at his arms. A careless lift could still split the edge.

"Higher on the left," the appraiser said.

Severin adjusted by less than the width of a claw. The plate came free without splitting. The appraiser ran a thumb along the inner edge, marked the source number, and nodded toward Alicia.

"Full mantle. Stake 1."

Alicia set the matching cloth tag against the wrap. "Stake 1, Master."

She folded the waxed cloth around the plate while 2 workers scraped the boards and gathered rejected tissue onto the waste sheet. Severin Stored the sealed mantle after the appraiser accepted it. The spoiled flesh, organs, unusable hide, salt, and fouled cloth went into a separate waste group.

Only when the boards were clear did the appraiser call for the next number. The empty boards mattered. A body left open beside them would have resumed decaying while the workers were still cutting the body already on them, and a misplaced tag would’ve turned every later bundle into an argument.

The 2nd corpse had lost 3 teeth and carried a split along the plate where Severin’s earlier strike had broken through. The appraiser rejected the cracked edge, kept the sound sections as a partial bundle, and marked the jaw incomplete.

The 3rd yielded another full mantle.

At the 4th, a worker lifted a bucket toward a blood-dark knife.

"Don’t," Saelith said.

The worker stopped before water touched steel.

Saelith stood outside the shelter where she could see the boards and the fall of the field. Her gray-green coat moved lightly in the morning wind. "That rinse runs downhill. The ditch and lower field are below us."

The appraiser held out a scraper. "Wipe the blade. Ash after. Water waits until the ground is cleared."

The worker set the bucket down and obeyed. Blood and softened tissue went onto the waxed sheet instead of the earth.

By midday, the shelter smelled of salt, old blood, damp plate, and the bitter ash used on the tools. Villagers watched from behind the rope line, far enough away that nobody stepped into the work. The appraiser didn’t look toward them after the 1st body. Every bad cut still drew his eye.

"Not across the root."

"Keep that claw with its number."

"That’s bone, not a handle. Don’t lever against it."

The older field hand answered with a grunt and corrected his grip. A broad-shouldered woman asked, "This side?" before shifting each jaw. The youngest man breathed through his mouth when the smell thickened. Another worker kept glancing toward Tressa as his hands began to shake.

Tressa saw it before the knife slipped.

"Put it down," she said.

"I can finish this cut."

"You can finish it after your fingers stop missing the handle."

His jaw tightened, but he set the knife on the cloth.

Tressa pointed to the worker resting beside the salt sacks. "Take his place. You, drink and sit where I can see you."

The tired man started to argue, looked at his own trembling hand, and stopped.

No blood joined the blood already on the boards, and the line continued.

Severin retrieved each body only after the appraiser called its number. Some mantles lifted cleanly. Others came away in sound sections after combat damage or days of weight against the ground had split the edges. Claws were cut with their roots intact. Jaws remained attached until the appraiser had checked every hinge and tooth. Bone lots stayed separated from plate and from the smaller route-blocker.

Tag 16 belonged to the guide killed inside Faultroot. The appraiser compared its plates, jaw, limbs, and claws with the surface runners before allowing its plate and bones to join the runner lots.

"Same kind of runner," he said. "Keep the source number separate. Buyers ask where material came from after they’ve already mixed it."

Tag 17 belonged to the smaller corpse from deeper on the route. Its plates overlapped at different angles, and its bones couldn’t be bundled with the runner lots without pretending they were equal.

"Small plate bundle," the appraiser said. "Separate bone lot."

A gust struck the shelter hard enough to lift the western canvas edge. The workers caught the boards instead of the cloth. Saelith tightened the nearest line, then looked past the field hedge toward the darker band forming under the western clouds.

"Do we stop?" Tressa asked.

"Not yet," Saelith said. "But keep the clean wraps tied as soon as they’re filled."

The appraiser tapped the small plate with his chalk. "Then don’t leave this waiting for weather. Wrap it."

Alicia repeated each result to Severin as she matched cloth and tags. She never guessed when the appraiser’s chalk blurred or a worker set a bundle on the wrong side.

Near the end of the runner group, she caught a jaw wrap before the cord tightened.

"This is stake 9, Master. The wrap says 10."

The appraiser checked the jaw, then the chalk mark on the board. "She’s right. Change the cloth, not the jaw."

Alicia replaced the tag. Severin set a hand against her lower back for a breath.

"Good."

She leaned into his palm, quick and warm through the practical cloth. "Thank you, Master."

Then the appraiser called another number, and she returned to the wraps.

Late-afternoon light reached beneath the western edge of the shelter before the final bone lot was sealed. Severin Stored it, then Stored the last waste sheet separately. The boards stood bare except for stains that hadn’t reached the ground.

The appraiser washed his tools only after Saelith led him to a patch of bare clay beyond the field where rinse water couldn’t reach the ditch or crops. When he returned, Alicia had arranged the sealed lot tags in rows beside the work book.

The appraiser read the manifest aloud.

"12 full runner plate mantles. 4 partial runner plate bundles. 1 small plate bundle. 17 claw lots. 14 complete jaw-and-tooth lots. 3 partial jaw-and-tooth lots. 16 runner bone lots. 1 small bone lot."

He turned a page.

"Accepted meat, organs, and ordinary hide: 0."

Alicia checked each line against the tags. "All matched, Master."

The 17 corpses no longer existed as whole bodies. What remained worth carrying had been separated, wrapped, tagged, and Stored. Everything rejected stayed sealed apart from the sale material and away from Mereford’s ground.

The appraiser wrote the costs beneath the manifest.

"4 Gold for appraisal. 6 Gold for salt, waxed cloth, tags, and wrapping. 4 workers at 5 Silver each. That’s 2 Gold."

"Claim cost," Severin said.

"Yes. Against the sale when it happens." The appraiser wrote the market charge on a separate line beneath the 12 Gold already owed. "Reserve 2 Gold for the Greycross market fee. It isn’t paid until the lots go through."

No coin changed hands. He still held the same coin from the reed camp: 8 Stellar Gold, 4 Gold. The claim book now carried 12 Gold in direct costs and a future 2 Gold market charge.

"What are the lots worth?" Severin asked.

"Enough to justify Greycross." The appraiser sanded the ink. "I won’t give you a binding field price with no buyer in front of me. A buyer will see clean wraps, exact sources, and material that hasn’t been salted into rubbish. Then the arguing starts."

He signed 2 copies. Severin Stored his copy. The appraiser folded the other into an oilcloth sleeve for the market journey he hadn’t yet begun.

The workers lowered the canvas sides and cleared the last boards. Severin returned the apron and gloves after the separate wash. Tressa sent the 4 workers toward food and rest. They left tired but uncut, and the field held no soft tissue.

Outside the shelter, the wind had turned.

Saelith stood beyond the 15 stakes, watching the western sky. A darker edge had gathered beneath the higher clouds. Leaves along the field hedge showed their pale undersides, then snapped back when the gust passed.

"Will it reach us?" Severin asked.

"If the wind holds, after dark," Saelith said. "The air’s carrying more water than it did this morning. I won’t promise the hour."

The 1st hard rain.

Another gust rolled across the stakes and snapped the loose canvas against its rope. The appraiser caught the oilcloth sleeve under his palm. Alicia’s ears turned west before the sound faded.

The camp records had ordered someone to hold an upper release until it came. The bodies were finished. Mereford still had to be ready before dark.

"We’re done here," Severin said. "Bring the working copy."

The cloud edge had already swallowed the western light when he took the Mereford road.