[game-notes version here]

XVI.

Duskmarch 21, Ashday, Year 731.

“Is it always foggy in the hills?” Alric asked. Maelen waited for complaint, but his tone was curious, not whining, so she held her tongue.

“Usually,” she said, stepping over a fallen branch. “Welcome to winter in the Greenwood Rise, lad. It doesn’t snow like in the capital, but you may not see the sun.”

“Mm.” He stepped over the same branch awkwardly, catching his robe on a twig. “I was just wondering how much Orthuun might be influencing the region.”

“What does the fog have to do with it?” Maelen asked, like he was being dumb instead of her.

“Well, it’s a form of blinding, isn’t it? He doesn’t seem to like sight, or much of anything, frankly.”

That gave her pause. The lad’s mind was always working out connections. “The Blind Sovereign, eh?” she snorted. “I think it’s just fog, not some demon of darkness.”

“He hates light and vision,” Alric said. “But he’s not a demon of darkness, exactly. It’s more like Orthuun is the absence of everything. He’s the void left behind when you’ve erased everything. Complete oblivion.”

“So, darkness,” Maelen grunted.

“No, no. You see…”

Abruptly, Alric stopped speaking and moving. Instinctively, Maelen did the same, listening.

The forest went still.

Then came the humming—low, steady, almost beneath hearing. For a heartbeat she thought it was her own pulse.

Then she realized it was coming from her hip.

The black mace was humming, low and in a steady beat. To Maelen, it felt like a warning. She pulled the weapon from her belt loop and settled the comforting weight of it into her palms.

To her left, Alric’s book pulsed with a faint gray light, each flare answering her mace’s thrum in perfect counter-rhythm. The wan book shed little actual illumination, which reminded her of Sarin the Night Captain’s eyes. That thought made a shiver run down her spine, and she shook her head angrily to focus. The lad wasn’t even noticing the pulsing light in his hand and instead was looking up and into the branches above. Maelen followed his gaze.

Through the fog drifted half a dozen gray wisps, glowing like the light from Alric’s book. For a heartbeat, Maelen imagined a vast Nightwight peering down through the mists. But these were only lights, drifting apart and circling with no pattern she could follow.

Sure enough, every time the lights ebbed, Maelen’s mace thrummed. It was as if they were two halves of a steady signal, or else calling and responding to one another. The lights bobbed and drifted ever closer, like dandelion seeds settling back to earth.

“What are they lad?” she whispered.

“Something bad,” he breathed. “Orthuun’s found us.”

Maelen brought two fingers to her mouth and blew a sharp whistle. Then she gripped her mace in two hands, ready for a fight. Though she didn’t know what harm a puff of light could do to her, Alric seemed spooked.

The eerie wisp drifted closer. One near Alric pulsed out of rhythm, then lashed him with gray tendrils of lightning. He gasped, body convulsing, as more orbs circled him in small, silent storms. His skin blackened where the light touched.

Then a jolt hit Maelen, her back arching against her will. It was a hurt like she’d never experienced, sudden and bone deep. She grit her teeth and roared a challenge, swinging her spiked mace at a sphere that had come particularly close.

Her black mace struck solid resistance, like hitting a soft melon. The orb reeled, wobbling drunkenly in the air. Just then a whisper in the air signaled one of Vessa’s arrows, piercing another orb. The shaft lingered mid-air, trapped in the ball of gray light. The lass had heard the signal and come running.

Maelen grinned viciously and spun to face an orb that had drifted close behind her. “Come on then!” she challenged.

For the next several heartbeats, Maelen swung her humming mace left and right, batting the soft, floating orbs away as they lanced her with small bolts of lightning. At one point, two floated away faster than they’d approached, and she figured they had gone in pursuit of Vessa and her arrows.

Maelen glanced at Alric, who had dropped to one knee while one of the lights crackled silent gray lightning into him. With a snarl, she brought her mace two-handed in a wide, arcing strike. The spiked head of her weapon burst the thing. It exploded in a puff of gray, wispy light, once again reminding her of dandelion seeds drifting in the wind. Then they were gone, and with it the offending wisp.

“Ha!” she shouted in triumph. “They can be killed, lad! Get up and fight!”

Another shock of pain lanced through her, and then Vessa was there, stabbing it with her shortsword, still holding her bow in the other hand. The sphere of translucent light stayed pinned on the blade momentarily, then floated drunkenly away, as if gaining its bearings.

Another orb floated out of the fog and woods over Vessa’s shoulder. The lass must have seen the look in Maelen’s eyes, because she spun with her sword held up just as it passed close enough to crackle with lightning.

Lightning slammed into her shoulder, then her leg. She staggered, grunting. Three gray lights circled, drawn either to her wounds or to the humming black mace in her grip. Her muscles trembled; every shock stole more of her strength.

The gray orbs again reminded her of Sarin’s eyes again—the same pallid gaze, the same soul-draining touch. She saw his gaunt hand closing over her skull, felt the weakness flooding her limbs. The memory pulled her down, down, down into that old darkness, until fury brought her back.

With a roar, she swung the mace with sudden speed, surprising one of the wisps of light. It burst into fading motes as her weapon struck it. Maelen continued the swing, spinning to hit a second orb. Pieces of eerie light shimmered in the forest and then were gone.

She settled the mace firmly in both her hands, turning to the last, pulsing orb. Maelen had lost any awareness of Alric or Vessa; it was only her against the vision of Sarin’s skeletal, pale face, with those gray lights where his eyes should be. She’d put out all but one of the eyes. The last one bobbed and danced in the air, sparks of lightning dancing off it.

“No more eyes,” she snarled, hefting the mace.

Lightning seared her ribs. She barely felt it.

“No more!”

She brought the mace down with everything she had. The orb bobbed to one side, but Maelen had anticipated it. The heavy, spiked head smashed the light into the forest floor. It burst. Gray light shimmered briefly in a wide circle around her mace and then died.

Maelen dropped to one knee, panting. Alric was there suddenly, supporting her.

“It’s over,” he said. “Let me see to your wounds.”

“It’s not over,” Vessa replied from behind her. “There was one more that went searching for me. I lost it, but it could find us again.”

“Help me up, lad,” Maelen hissed through gritted teeth. “There will be time for healing later. Let’s put distance between us and here.”

He seemed ready to argue but just nodded and pulled her to her feet. She noticed blackened marks on him, too, where the lightning had touched. Strong lad, brave and fierce. At least one of those orbs had died to him and the wild swinging of that stick he did. She or Vessa should probably teach him some proper fighting skills.

“Can you walk?” he asked, face a mask of concern.

“I can bloody walk,” she knocked his hand off her gruffly and straightened. The whole forest seemed to sway, but she shook her head and spit into the fallen leaves. “Let’s go.”

Orthuun has found us, Alric said. Maybe he was right.

They moved west through the mists, silent, waiting for the Blind Sovereign’s next move.

Next: When The Heart Stops [with game notes]