The Endless Solvent

She knew it would be easy. None of these burly fist fighters ever see her coming. Nilda hides under her cloak and everyone assumes she’s just an errand boy for Midge. She wore trousers and rarely said anything; it was all the same for Midge. He never cared for what she had to say anyway.

She moved through the streets of the Heart like a Shade, although she didn’t have the abilities of one. She simply stuck to the darker corners and softened her steps on the cobblestone streets. Being above ground was markedly cooler with the ocean breeze rushing to meet her, but her cloak still trapped her heat and sweat close to her.

Taverns were still open, golden light spilling out from windows on the streets where they converged. Nilda avoided the lights and stuck to back alleys, making no sound while weaving her way through the maze-like arrangements of buildings and stalls. Popular taverns gave way to grungier establishments as she moved to poorer parts of the city; they disappeared entirely when she arrived at the slums.

She avoided a dark passageway where she heard someone begging for their life, walking around the altercation and headed west. Only the occasional lantern lit the main street, making it easier for her to move around. She knew exactly where Mallon lived, since Midge had her follow him one time. It was part of her job to know where to find them.

The shambling houses in the slums were barely houses. A few were built better than others, containing mortared walls instead of wooden planks that rotted and stank. Mallon lived in one such house - one that looked like a slum house but was actually built to withstand more than a stiff breeze. Nilda assumed he had used a bit of his earnings fist-fighting to obtain such a house.

Unfortunately for him, the better housing material will make her job easier.

The wooden door would probably be locked and barricaded, so Nilda tried to warp the stone step under it first, before giving up and started morphing the stone to climb up the wood door. Slowly, like gray slime, stone stretched up from the base and encased itself around the door. A low rumble accompanied her work and she wondered if Mallon would hear it and escape.

Quickly, she snapped her fingers closed into a fist and the door crunched loudly. The stone coating moved towards the hinge with another splintering sound and formed a hole for her in the wrecked door. She stepped in and could barely see the interior with the dim lighting.

The first thing she saw were various pieces of paper tacked onto the walls. Then she heard the whimper of a child. Narrowing her eyes, Nilda finally realized the papers held a child’s drawings done in charcoal. She looked over to a dark corner and made out Mallon’s hulking form: he was hugging a child, shielding it from her.

“Who are you?” Mallon hissed.

Nilda paused - when she followed him, she hadn’t noticed a child going in or out of his house. The child coughed, the sound harsh and phlegm-filled. She curled her hand into a fist inside her cloak.

“You’re one of Midge’s,” Mallon finally said, recognizing her. “You…are you here to kill me?”

“Daddy?” the child suddenly asked, voice trembling. Mallon cursed, clutching his child close to him.

Nilda forced her clenched fist open and made the stone ground underneath Mallon go malleable to move it, forming a stone band over his ankle to keep him from escaping. One other time she had to kill an errant fist fighter who also had a child, but that one had a wife. Mallon didn’t seem to have anyone else in the house with him.

“Please,” Mallon said, struggling to move from her stone vise. “My boy is sick. I need the money to help him.”

His son started crying, the wailing punctuated with fits of coughing. Hands shaking, Nilda kept the stone growing around Mallon’s leg, intent on covering him in stone and crushing him for a merciful, immediate, clean death.

“No!” Mallon begged. “He’ll have no one! My boy…”

Suddenly Nilda froze. Above Mallon’s shoulder on the wall were several things tacked onto the wall that weren't his child’s drawings. One was a small pamphlet for a circus show that performed in the Heart’s main square a few months back. Another looked to be a picture torn out of a book, a professional illustration of some sort of sea creature. A third was a small map of the streets of the Heart of Gaia.

Even such a small map immediately took her back three years. Of being tied up in that dungeon, of the strange Being in Smoke carving up her back. Of unspeakable pain. She had also seen a map the day Adlo accepted her among his ranks - it was the entire reason why she put up with Midge, why she remained in the Heart.

Nilda didn’t know how or why, but seeing it meant something.

She let the stone around Mallon’s leg recede and smoothed it back into the ground.

“Leave this city,” she said to him. “Right now. Get as far away as possible.”

“T-thank y - ”

“Shut up and leave,” she snapped, then ducked her head to leave the house through the hole in the door.

She was expected to kill, then bury the body in bedrock. Nobody was supposed to know where the body was - that was why they used her since her methods buried evidence in layers of literal rock. Nobody would know if she didn’t leave a body behind.

However, she’d never directly gone against Aldo’s wishes before. It made her feel strange. Should she be ashamed? As she left the house, she spotted the map tacked onto the wall one last time, the paper lit by moonlight.

Many Gaians believed the ‘Parts’ were gods that ran the world. They were a strange collection of beings that used the Great Solvent as lifeblood and kept fate, destiny, time and existence running. Others believed that the celestial bodies led people to their fates and reading the stars moon and sun would guide one to their destination. Her inclination to follow where the maps lead her made just as much sense, although she could never really explain why. Perhaps she wanted it to be a sign that she made the right choice, that all of this had some meaning. Often adults made choices as if they were certain they were the right choices, but Nilda rarely felt that way about anything. Perhaps she could convince herself the maps were a marker of some sort and freeing Mallon and his child was what she was meant to do. A small comfort out of a religion nobody else knew about.

The weeks grew and nobody made a comment about Mallon. She was convinced he had escaped with his son, hopefully to another kingdom far, far away.

The conviction lasted up until she went into Midge’s office one day and watched Mallon’s severed head roll out of a burlap bag on the ground. Nilda realized a second, smaller lump was still in the bag.

“I think you have some explaining to do,” Midge’s voice drifted to her, but she couldn’t understand it. She knelt next to the bag, Mallon’s dead eyes boring into her. She lifted the fabric and saw the top of a child’s head.