[prose-only version here]

XVIII.

Duskmarch 24, Goldday, Year 731.

Hadren Kelthorn stood in the rain, arms outstretched, his gap-toothed grin fixed in eerie welcome. From the hilltop, the three companions stared down, stunned by the scene below. Vessa had the keenest eyesight of the three of them, and yet her gaze kept skittering off the dismembered, robed bodies assembled into patterns in a wide circle around the man. Behind it all, a black crevice arced across the earth like an empty maw.

“Hadren, what have you done?” Alric called out, his voice rich and desperate.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Hadren cackled with undisguised glee. “I’ve paved the way! The Starless Rift is open because of what I’ve done!”

“He’s mad,” Maelen murmured for the two of them to hear.

“Very,” Vessa confirmed in a low voice. “How did he kill all these people?”

“Come!” Hadren called out jovially. “Join me, Alric! Let’s have a chat.”

The scribe—mage, Vessa reminded herself sharply—took a halting step forward but Maelen stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Careful lad,” she growled. “Let us join you.”

He paused to look at her, hesitating. Then he glanced over at the grisly scene and nodded once. “We’re all coming!” he announced, and the three of them trudged through the rain, boots squelching.

Vessa clenched her jaw painfully as they drew near and the details of the massacre before them grew clearer. Men and women of all ages, all wearing plain, black robes spattered in gore. Many of the corpses were intact, but just as many had been hacked to pieces to form whatever symbols Hadren had used to… what? Cast a spell? Open the very earth into the jagged, yawning opening behind him? Most of the faces, she noted with disgust, were missing their eyes—black pits as if they’d been gouged with a hot iron. The rain could not wash away the stench; it only spread it: iron, rot, and bile. Vessa fought the urge to retch. She wanted to flee this place, to scrub it from memory.

They paused outside of Hadren’s circle, between two piles of bodies. Maelen seemed to appraise the dead with a calculating eye, but Vessa avoided doing so and instead studied the living man before them. He looked noticeably older than in the tavern, oddly, his hair thinner and whiter, his skin more sunken. Even still, Hadren was remarkably unremarkable to be standing at the center of such an impossible landscape of death and sorcery. He looked like nothing more than a laborer, one of countless populating Oakton’s streets. His hands were calloused and rough, bent by hard work as surely as his curved back. His face was sun-spotted and balding, and neither handsome nor distinguishingly ugly. Vessa would have passed him without remembering a single detail. Indeed, she had done just that two months before as the trio exited the Root Gate towards Thornmere Hold.

Hadren seemed amused by them not stepping into his gruesome circle. He grinned, eyes roving over Alric’s entire frame.

“Why?” Alric asked. “I don’t understand any of this, Mr. Kelthorn.”

“Mister, is it? Well, I suppose you’re recognizin’ my power, as is right. You see what I’ve done? Do you understand the implications, son?” He grinned proudly. “You’re looking at the man who’s gonna bring one of the Blind Sovereign’s generals back to this world.”

He turned, rain running off his sleeves. “Saelith the Vanished, The Touch of Orthuun, is buried there! He’ll be the herald of Orthuun’s return! By my hand! Soon the Blind Sovereign’ll blot out the sun, mark my words.” When Hadren turned back, he was beaming. “And I, Hadren Kelthorn, am proud to be one of the masons to make it so.”

Alric looked stricken. “Why would you want that? You’ve seen what his touch brings! Orthuun is a demon, of nothingness itself! He’ll destroy everything, shroud it in darkness! There will be no rewards for you aiding him, you must see that!”

Hadren scoffed. “That’s your problem, boy. You’re still trying to see. Faith is blind. That’s Orthuun’s gift. Look what faith can bring into the world!” he again gestured wide, taking in the bodies and crevice behind him.

“Besides,” he said, scowling. He seemed to be working hard to stay focused on his words, talking deliberately to Alric. “What have my peers done for me in this life? What have they done for you, Alric Mistsong? An apprentice scribe, toiling away and told what you can and can’t read? Do those ink stains on your fingers ever come off? Pah!” He waved dismissively. “You have that black bookbecause you want to know more than your guild is willing to teach you, eh? Erase it all and start fresh, son. Oakton has mistreated you as much as me.” His eyes studied Alric, roving over how he was taking in the nonsensical rant.

“You’re talking about the destruction of everything,” Alric pleaded.

Hadren sighed, a touch of sadness softening his madness for a heartbeat. He spit into the mud at his feet. “Well, you’re a disappointment, I admit. You’ve read the Tome, but not understood it. That’s clear to me.” Another sigh, and his eyes shone again. “I wanted you to see our greater purpose here, but I don’t have the time to educate you.” He held out a hand impatiently. “Give me the book and you can be on your way.”

“What about our treasure?” Maelen butted in. “You promised gold.”

Hadren looked surprised at the interruption, then winked at her. “So I did, so I did. Rest assured that I collected any remaining coins from all the followers and faithful before they sacrificed themselves to the Starless Ritual, Maelen Marrowson. You’ll have your coin, though… I’d spend it quickly.” He cackled suddenly, slapping his knee. “Oakton’s petty gods won’t be able to–”

Hadren’s voice cut off abruptly and he looked at Maelen’s waist sharply, squinting in the weather. “What’s that?” he pointed a gnarled finger at the warrior’s mace, nestled at her hip. “That… that… profanity cannot be allowed here! The Tome and that… abomination! Give them to me!” His voice cracked to a shriek. “Now!”

Hadren’s fervor and sudden venom was shocking, but not nearly as shocking as Alric. Something in him must have snapped. With a raw shout, he hurled himself at the black-robed man, trying to drive him into the mud. It might have worked, too, if Hadren had been as surprised as Vessa. Instead, Hadren snarled and knocked Alric aside with a push. The young man stumbled but kept his feet.

Maelen took the cue. With her signature roar, she drew the black mace from her belt and swept Hadren’s legs from beneath him. He went down awkwardly into the mud at Maelen’s feet, the breath whooshing out of him. Hadren looked up at her with a hateful look.

“You won’t be getting my mace,” Maelen snarled. “Take your book and be happy with it.”

“No!” Alric reacted. “We can’t! Kill him, Maelen!”

As Mae glanced at him, confused, Vessa saw Hadren begin a gasping chant, much like Alric when he’d healed Maelen. She didn’t know what spell the man intended to cast, but she supposed they wouldn’t like it, so she notched an arrow and let fly in one smooth motion. Vessa intended the arrow to pierce Hadren’s arm to the ground, but the rain and Maelen standing over him made it a difficult shot. The shaft sunk into his shoulder instead. Hadren hissed in pain and he cursed.

She hadn’t been fast enough. Even as the arrow struck and Hadren ceased his chanting, one of the corpses near Alric began to twitch. Vessa blinked as a black-robed woman pulled herself from one of the piles, her eyes burned out and black, her throat slashed.

“Alric! Look out!” she shouted in warning.

The dead, eyeless woman took a fumbling swing at the startled Alric, and he stumbled away. Vessa drew another arrow. Indecision stabbed through her—Hadren or the zombie? Then she saw Maelen bat Hadren aside with the head of her spiked mace. Her friend would be fine, she decided. Alric wouldn’t.

She let loose an arrow, but it thunked into the woman’s back without her slowing or even seeming to notice. Instead, the corpse lunged with surprising speed, wrapping her pale fingers around Alric’s throat. The dead cultist, mutilated face utterly impassive, squeezed, and Alric began sputtering and choking.

Maelen barked a harsh cry of surprise and Vessa glanced in her direction. Hadren, blood running down an arm that now hung limp at his side, was stumbling away, chanting again and with his other hand raised towards her. As she watched in horror, Hadren’s eyes turned utterly black. Dark oil began running down his chin from his chanting mouth, and then… his shadow loomed up behind him, like a thing alive.

Vessa expected the shadow to attack Maelen, but like Alric had said at the campfire—these men were playing with forces they apparently could not control. Perhaps Hadren Kelthorn had offended his demon god in some way, or perhaps the thing he summoned was fundamentally uncontrollable. Either way, the looming shadow fell upon the old man like a cat upon a mouse, black fingers outstretched like jagged claws. Hadren screamed, first in surprise and then in pain, and as he did so the shadow’s body expanded and consumed him. The darkness swelled, bulging outward like a living cloak. Hadren’s screams dwindled fast, falling away like a stone dropped down a well before the black shroud snapped shut around him.

Vessa was so horrified by the scene that she didn’t register that Maelen had moved to help Alric. The warrior brought her mace down again and again, crushing the animated corpse even as it wrung the life out of their companion. A particularly forceful backswing caught the zombie in the side and sent it flying away from Alric.

“Vess!” Maelen shouted in command. “Help, dammit!”

She shook her head and took aim. A single arrow pierced the woman’s skull, directly at the base where head met neck. Whether it was her shot, or Maelen’s continued battering, or perhaps Hadren releasing his hold upon the woman as he fought the darkness all around him, the dead cultist collapsed, again lifeless.

Alric sucked in deep breaths, looked wild-eyed at the growing, pulsing darkness, and yelled. “Run!”

They ran.

Maelen hooked an arm under Alric and hauled him up, half-carrying and half-dragging him as her boots tore through the mud. Vessa rushed to his other side and helped. The two women, pulling Alric between them, stumped through the rain, over the low hill they’d just crested. Vessa spared a brief look over her shoulder at the hill. The darkness was like a living thing—a pulsing, silent mass of blackness in the constant rain, and growing wider to consume the grotesque piles of cultists. She shuddered and pushed her legs harder to get away.

“How…” she panted as they stumbled over the hill. “Far… do we… go?”

“Farther,” Maelen growled, her thickly muscled legs pumping.

Alric regained his wits enough to move his legs, and though they could hear and see nothing behind them, they kept running until they’d crested a second low hill and dropped to the other side of it. There they collapsed, gasping, as the rain continued unceasingly.

“What… what was that?” she asked Alric. “What happened?”

Alric shook his head, still too out of breath to speak. After several attempts he managed to sputter. “Don’t know. He… the magic consumed him.”

“Quiet,” Maelen barked, and the three of them fell silent. Vessa and Maelen strained to hear anything but the rainfall and Alric’s labored breathing. They failed.

The warrior swore. “Vess, go look. But be careful.”

She nodded once and stood. Without a backward glance, she was moving as silently as her countless days of practice could enable. Stealth in the rain was theoretically easier than fair weather, except that the landscape was as blurred to her as anyone looking for her. It made judging places to take cover and hide trickier. Still, with the hills and scrubby trees, she moved wide, taking a less direct route than their retreat to come at the Starless Rift from a different direction. She found a low, rocky shelf of a hill and ducked behind it. Stilling her breathing and adjusting her hood to keep the water from her eyes, she peered around the rock.

Hadren was gone, along with the piles of cultist bodies in arcane symbols. She rubbed at her eyes, scanning. The ground where the bodies had lain was bare, scrub grass flattened by nothing. No blood. No limbs. No symbols. The rain fell upon an empty field, as if the massacre had never existed at all.

The Starless Rift was there, however, an ominous black scar on the plain between hills.

Next: Don’t Jump [with game notes]

[game-notes version here]

XVII.

Duskmarch 21, Ashday, Year 731.

“Enough. Maelen, please. Let me see to your wounds.”

Alric kept his tone low and measured. He knew pleading would only harden her stubbornness and send her limping until the wounds festered.

All that afternoon and evening, she had limped alongside him, their shuffling steps for once matched in speed and rhythm. Inexorably, they’d marched west, out of the Greenwood Rise and into low, lightly forested hills. Twice, Maelen stumbled. When she caught Alric looking at her with concern, she’d scowled and sped up for a time. By the end of the day, however, the warrior had practically collapsed. Alric and Vessa made the camp near a hilly outcropping while Maelen panted that she would join them, “once she’d caught her breath.”  

“I’m fine. Wasn’t sleeping, just resting my eyes.”

Alric smirked. “Well, these burns look bad. I’ll cast a spell, like last time.”

She stilled then, studying his face. After a long, pregnant pause, she nodded.

“Go on, then,” she said, settling back down and closing her eyes.

Alric murmured the same half-heard words that haunted his thoughts—alien syllables he could never recall except when he welcomed the magic in. Once again, numbness crept from the crown of his head down his neck and into his limbs, like cold water filling his veins. By the time he could no longer feel his toes, the murmuring grew in fervor.

Maelen gasped, and both looked up, meeting each other’s gaze. The warrior pushed back the lock of gray hair that had fallen into her face and smiled at him. Then she examined her leg, where the worst burn had been. It was now a dull gray, like an old bruise, the skin otherwise unblemished.

“Thank you, lad,” she smiled, and stood easily.

Vessa had paused her careful stacking of tinder to watch. “That’s amazing, Alric,” she said, mouth hanging open and looking suddenly like a young girl.

He cleared his throat, blushing and looking away. As before, the uncomfortable tingling had begun in his limbs as he regained feeling.

Then he paused. Something was wrong.

“What is it?” Vessa asked, seeing his concern.

Alric waved a hand dismissively but stood slowly, taking stock of his body. Not all the feeling had returned this time. His limbs and torso still felt… deadened, somehow. Deep in his chest, a hollowness echoed, a missing rhythm he couldn’t name. Alric cocked his head, listening for it, and found only silence. Something had shifted. The magic—what he suspected strongly was Orthuun’s borrowed power—had changed him.

“It’s nothing,” he grinned, eventually, hearing himself force cheer. “I can’t fight, so I’m glad to be of some use to those of you who do.”

“More than some use,” Maelen chuckled, slapping him on the shoulder. He experienced the blow as… blunted. “We’re lucky you spent two months studying that book before we give it back.”

Vessa was squinting at him, her face appraising. He briefly caught her gaze then looked away.

“Yes, well. I need to make water, then we’ll eat?” The words had barely left his numbed lips before he spun and moved to be alone in the woods.

That night, lying awake beneath the quiet trees, Alric finally understood the hollowness in his chest.

His heart no longer beat.

Duskmarch 22, Wyrdsday, Year 731.

The next day was gray and forgettable. Cold rain fell, not as heavy as before, but steady enough to soak everything. Alric said nothing of his discovery: that he might already be dead, walking in borrowed flesh. But the realization made him distracted and irritable, and both Maelen and Vessa were quickly driven away from any conversation. The two of them fell into familiar banter while Alric pulled his hood over his bowed head and plodded dutifully wherever Maelen pointed.

He ate little that day but was more than a little relieved to find that he had an appetite, that his stomach growled from lack of food. He chewed his rations slowly. The jerky and oat cakes tasted dull, muted. Still, if he could feel hunger, perhaps his body wasn’t truly dead. What would happen if he continued to use his magic, however? It was a troubling question, and one his mind continued to grapple throughout the wet, muddy trek south.

The rain blurred everything. They trudged south through low ridges and scrub forests, where sandstone outcroppings loomed like old bones in the mist. Alric may have found it beautiful at some times of year, but all he focused on now was his own inner emptiness, the gloomy drizzle matching his mood.

That night, they found a rocky shelf that offered some protection from the wet for camp. The trees around them were scattered and smaller than the Greenwood Rise, but hardly enough to constitute a forest. By Wink’s instructions, they were a mere day away from Hadren Kelthorn and the Starless Rift. Maelen, still in rare good humor, wondered aloud what waited for them. Alric only muttered, his thoughts too heavy to share. The two women whispered after that, and soon it was time for sleep.

Duskmarch 23, Thornsday, Year 731.

“Shit!”

The curse snapped Alric awake. He flailed in his blanket, heartless chest tightening in confusion. “What is it?” It was lighter than night, he thought, as his mind took in his environment, but difficult to tell whether dawn had come because of the drizzle and heavy clouds above them.

Beside him, Maelen climbed to her feet, black mace in hand. She had taken to sleeping in her chain shirt, which Alric thought must have been wickedly uncomfortable. Better discomfort than death, he supposed.

Vessa hurled another curse, kicking something. “They’ve already gone! My pack’s torn open!”

“Who?” Alric blinked, still confused and not fully awake. He noted that his limbs still held that numb heaviness, his chest hollow. What did it mean that his heart wasn’t beating? One couldn’t live without a heart, could they? What had happened to him?

“I don’t… aargh! Rats, maybe. Or skratts again. They took some of the food and ran.”

“Not skratts, then,” Maelen grunted. “At least not the ones we fought in Vastren Hollow. Your face would have been chewed.”

“Well, they bloody well weren’t small rats. Something bigger. Maybe another kind of vermin. Gods damn these wilds! I don’t…” Vessa balled up her fists and shrieked into the gloom, stamping her foot.

Maelen crossed the distance between them and cuffed her hard on the shoulder. The slighter woman stumbled and looked up accusatorily.

“Shut it, lass. Screaming bloody murder isn’t going to help, just bring nasties to us. We lost some food. Nobody died.”

Alric grimaced at the comment, then pulled himself out of his morbid reverie to watch his companions. Maelen missed the point. Vessa wasn’t angry about the food—it was that it happened on her watch. Maybe she’d fallen asleep, or wandered away from camp at some point, or simply been distracted. Whatever the case, the thief’s keen eyes had failed to spot another thief, and she was furious with herself. Vessa Velthorn, Alric had come to understand, did not like to feel vulnerable.

“I was sick of oat cakes and jerky anyway,” Alric said into the terse silence. “Perhaps you can hunt us a rabbit or squirrel? I’d love a proper meal.”

Vessa looked at him and seemed about to say something wicked. She snapped her mouth shut, though, and rubbed furiously at her short hair. “Fine. Yeah,” she said. “I can catch us something.”

Maelen caught Alric’s eyes and gave him an approving nod. Then she turned to Vessa and said, “Good. That’s settled. Fix the packs, then we go see our friend Hadren.”

By the end of the day, the two women’s moods had flipped. Vessa stalked off ahead to forage and returned midday with an entire family of wild turkeys she’d found wandering amidst the shrubs and low hills. They paused to clean and cook them. Alric set aside his brooding to follow Vessa’s brisk instructions. The dagger felt heavy and alien in his wooden fingers, but she seemed pleased with his work. By the time they continued south, their stomachs were pleasantly full of meat, with enough left for dinner that night.

Unfortunately, the rain befouled Maelen’s attempts to navigate the hills. Had the weather been clear, she groused, finding the Starless Rift’s location would have been easy from a hilltop. Instead, they wandered aimlessly in the wet, muddy grasses, without a glimpse of Hadren or a distinguishing landmark of any kind. As the skies began to darken, she grumpily called for them to make camp. She gnawed her turkey by the fire, cursing the gods’ rain, a blind woman’s useless directions, and the endless gray hills. Alric and Vessa shared a smile at her ranting, and when Maelen saw it, she stormed off into the rain to… well, he couldn’t really make it out amidst the cursing and Vessa’s laughter. In any case, they slept wet and dirty that night. Alric focused hard amidst the dark and silence, but his heart remained still. Whenever he thought of using his magic, his mind winced away.

Duskmarch 24, Goldday, Year 731.

The rain only increased the next day, making Alric wake to Maelen’s curses. He couldn’t remember being dry after so many consecutive wet days, and a deep chill had settled into his bones to go along with the hollow emptiness left by his magic. All three of the companions broke their camp perfunctorily, with little conversation.

Though they’d vowed to explore the surrounding area for the Starless Rift and Hadren, the task seemed impossible given the weather. Vessa suggested that they wait out the rain, but Maelen shook her head at the idea. She kept glancing down at the mace at her hip, idly touching the weapon’s head almost as a habit, and said they needed to find the Rift soon. Alric wondered about that but was too lost in his own misery to question her.

So, without a clear plan, they began a trek through the overgrown ridges and craggy hills, the only sounds their squelching boots and the constant thrum of the rainfall. It was an aimless, fruitless morning of exploration, but sometime around midday Alric called the others to him with urgent waves of his hand.

“What is it, lad?” Maelen asked, looking like a drowned dog, her clothes soaked through and water running into her eyes. Vessa remained sheltered beneath her oiled travel cloak but looked no drier.

“I… hear something,” he said hesitantly. “Do you?”

The two women cocked their heads, concentrating. Vessa shook her head, but Maelen said, “Just the mace, humming as it does.”

“It hums?” Vessa asked, surprised.

“You don’t hear the chanting?” Alric asked urgently. They looked at him long and hard, pursing their lips, a clear sign they didn’t. He grimaced. “This way, then. Follow me.”

Though he almost always had quiet, barely perceptible whispers at the back of his perceptions these days, late in the morning a new sound had begun to overlay it, so subtly at first he wasn’t sure it was there. As they’d stopped to refill their waterskins with rainwater, Alric had recognized a voice, deep and somber, saying something just beyond understanding, though it seemed to be the same words or phrase repeatedly. When he turned, one direction caused the voice to raise its volume, just barely. It was in that direction he walked. With each shuffling, mud-caked step, it grew louder.

By the time they’d crested another low hill, the voice was distinct, not so much drowning out the constant whispers but somehow building upon them, like a background chorus to the repeated chant. The words, though, still eluded him.

Alric stopped with a start and shielded his eyes with a hand. Then he gasped.

They’d found the Starless Rift.

At first, he couldn’t make sense of it. Rain blurred everything into motion. Then the land itself resolved—a jagged scar stretching from the foot of a crag into the plain beyond. Wider than two humans laid end to end for most of its length, the rift was shaped somewhat like a crescent moon, black and empty like, well… a starless night sky. Even from this distance, Alric could sense the unnatural emptiness of it, an open wound in the earth needing to be healed.

Standing between the crevice and their hill was Hadren Kelthorn. He stood as straight as he was able with his bent back, his sparse hair plastered to his pale skull. Gone were the homespun clothes, replaced by dark robes as black as the Starless Rift.

What surrounded Hadren took Alric the most time to comprehend. Symbols were arrayed around him, like ones he’d seen etched within the vault of Thornmere Hold but huge, each one as large as the man at their center. The symbols formed a wide circle, black and bulky. Not carved, but built. At first, Alric thought they were stone. Then bile rose in his throat as he understood.

They were bodies. Dozens and dozens of corpses, all in black robes like Hadren’s, lay arrayed in patterned symbols around him. Alric thought that perhaps they were merely praying, but then he saw that Hadren must have needed to sever limbs or heads to create the symbols. Blood pooled around each construction, almost black in the weak, rain-clouded light, and Alric could see white flashes of bones everywhere. His mind reeled at the scene, skittering away from the mutilation and grotesquerie before him.

“By the Rootmother,” Maelen breathed, as she too made sense of it. Vessa stood motionless next to her, jaw clenched tight like she was willing herself not to vomit.

Hadren threw his arms wide in greeting, water spraying from the sleeves of his black robe.

“Welcome!” he called through the rain. “I’m so glad you made it.”

Next: Hadren Kelthorn [with game notes]

[prose-only version here]

XVII.

Duskmarch 21, Ashday, Year 731.

“Enough. Maelen, please. Let me see to your wounds.”

Alric kept his tone low and measured. He knew pleading would only harden her stubbornness and send her limping until the wounds festered.

All that afternoon and evening, she had limped alongside him, their shuffling steps for once matched in speed and rhythm. Inexorably, they’d marched west, out of the Greenwood Rise and into low, lightly forested hills. Twice, Maelen stumbled. When she caught Alric looking at her with concern, she’d scowled and sped up for a time. By the end of the day, however, the warrior had practically collapsed. Alric and Vessa made the camp near a hilly outcropping while Maelen panted that she would join them, “once she’d caught her breath.”  

“I’m fine. Wasn’t sleeping, just resting my eyes.”

Alric smirked. “Well, these burns look bad. I’ll cast a spell, like last time.”

She stilled then, studying his face. After a long, pregnant pause, she nodded.

“Go on, then,” she said, settling back down and closing her eyes.

Alric murmured the same half-heard words that haunted his thoughts—alien syllables he could never recall except when he welcomed the magic in. Once again, numbness crept from the crown of his head down his neck and into his limbs, like cold water filling his veins. By the time he could no longer feel his toes, the murmuring grew in fervor.

Maelen gasped, and both looked up, meeting each other’s gaze. The warrior pushed back the lock of gray hair that had fallen into her face and smiled at him. Then she examined her leg, where the worst burn had been. It was now a dull gray, like an old bruise, the skin otherwise unblemished.

“Thank you, lad,” she smiled, and stood easily.

Vessa had paused her careful stacking of tinder to watch. “That’s amazing, Alric,” she said, mouth hanging open and looking suddenly like a young girl.

He cleared his throat, blushing and looking away. As before, the uncomfortable tingling had begun in his limbs as he regained feeling.

Then he paused. Something was wrong.

“What is it?” Vessa asked, seeing his concern.

Alric waved a hand dismissively but stood slowly, taking stock of his body. Not all the feeling had returned this time. His limbs and torso still felt… deadened, somehow. Deep in his chest, a hollowness echoed, a missing rhythm he couldn’t name. Alric cocked his head, listening for it, and found only silence. Something had shifted. The magic—what he suspected strongly was Orthuun’s borrowed power—had changed him.

“It’s nothing,” he grinned, eventually, hearing himself force cheer. “I can’t fight, so I’m glad to be of some use to those of you who do.”

“More than some use,” Maelen chuckled, slapping him on the shoulder. He experienced the blow as… blunted. “We’re lucky you spent two months studying that book before we give it back.”

Vessa was squinting at him, her face appraising. He briefly caught her gaze then looked away.

“Yes, well. I need to make water, then we’ll eat?” The words had barely left his numbed lips before he spun and moved to be alone in the woods.

That night, lying awake beneath the quiet trees, Alric finally understood the hollowness in his chest.

His heart no longer beat.

Duskmarch 22, Wyrdsday, Year 731.

The next day was gray and forgettable. Cold rain fell, not as heavy as before, but steady enough to soak everything. Alric said nothing of his discovery: that he might already be dead, walking in borrowed flesh. But the realization made him distracted and irritable, and both Maelen and Vessa were quickly driven away from any conversation. The two of them fell into familiar banter while Alric pulled his hood over his bowed head and plodded dutifully wherever Maelen pointed.

He ate little that day but was more than a little relieved to find that he had an appetite, that his stomach growled from lack of food. He chewed his rations slowly. The jerky and oat cakes tasted dull, muted. Still, if he could feel hunger, perhaps his body wasn’t truly dead. What would happen if he continued to use his magic, however? It was a troubling question, and one his mind continued to grapple throughout the wet, muddy trek south.

The rain blurred everything. They trudged south through low ridges and scrub forests, where sandstone outcroppings loomed like old bones in the mist. Alric may have found it beautiful at some times of year, but all he focused on now was his own inner emptiness, the gloomy drizzle matching his mood.

That night, they found a rocky shelf that offered some protection from the wet for camp. The trees around them were scattered and smaller than the Greenwood Rise, but hardly enough to constitute a forest. By Wink’s instructions, they were a mere day away from Hadren Kelthorn and the Starless Rift. Maelen, still in rare good humor, wondered aloud what waited for them. Alric only muttered, his thoughts too heavy to share. The two women whispered after that, and soon it was time for sleep.

Duskmarch 23, Thornsday, Year 731.

“Shit!”

The curse snapped Alric awake. He flailed in his blanket, heartless chest tightening in confusion. “What is it?” It was lighter than night, he thought, as his mind took in his environment, but difficult to tell whether dawn had come because of the drizzle and heavy clouds above them.

Beside him, Maelen climbed to her feet, black mace in hand. She had taken to sleeping in her chain shirt, which Alric thought must have been wickedly uncomfortable. Better discomfort than death, he supposed.

Vessa hurled another curse, kicking something. “They’ve already gone! My pack’s torn open!”

“Who?” Alric blinked, still confused and not fully awake. He noted that his limbs still held that numb heaviness, his chest hollow. What did it mean that his heart wasn’t beating? One couldn’t live without a heart, could they? What had happened to him?

“I don’t… aargh! Rats, maybe. Or skratts again. They took some of the food and ran.”

“Not skratts, then,” Maelen grunted. “At least not the ones we fought in Vastren Hollow. Your face would have been chewed.”

“Well, they bloody well weren’t small rats. Something bigger. Maybe another kind of vermin. Gods damn these wilds! I don’t…” Vessa balled up her fists and shrieked into the gloom, stamping her foot.

Maelen crossed the distance between them and cuffed her hard on the shoulder. The slighter woman stumbled and looked up accusatorily.

“Shut it, lass. Screaming bloody murder isn’t going to help, just bring nasties to us. We lost some food. Nobody died.”

Alric grimaced at the comment, then pulled himself out of his morbid reverie to watch his companions. Maelen missed the point. Vessa wasn’t angry about the food—it was that it happened on her watch. Maybe she’d fallen asleep, or wandered away from camp at some point, or simply been distracted. Whatever the case, the thief’s keen eyes had failed to spot another thief, and she was furious with herself. Vessa Velthorn, Alric had come to understand, did not like to feel vulnerable.

“I was sick of oat cakes and jerky anyway,” Alric said into the terse silence. “Perhaps you can hunt us a rabbit or squirrel? I’d love a proper meal.”

Vessa looked at him and seemed about to say something wicked. She snapped her mouth shut, though, and rubbed furiously at her short hair. “Fine. Yeah,” she said. “I can catch us something.”

Maelen caught Alric’s eyes and gave him an approving nod. Then she turned to Vessa and said, “Good. That’s settled. Fix the packs, then we go see our friend Hadren.”

By the end of the day, the two women’s moods had flipped. Vessa stalked off ahead to forage and returned midday with an entire family of wild turkeys she’d found wandering amidst the shrubs and low hills. They paused to clean and cook them. Alric set aside his brooding to follow Vessa’s brisk instructions. The dagger felt heavy and alien in his wooden fingers, but she seemed pleased with his work. By the time they continued south, their stomachs were pleasantly full of meat, with enough left for dinner that night.

Unfortunately, the rain befouled Maelen’s attempts to navigate the hills. Had the weather been clear, she groused, finding the Starless Rift’s location would have been easy from a hilltop. Instead, they wandered aimlessly in the wet, muddy grasses, without a glimpse of Hadren or a distinguishing landmark of any kind. As the skies began to darken, she grumpily called for them to make camp. She gnawed her turkey by the fire, cursing the gods’ rain, a blind woman’s useless directions, and the endless gray hills. Alric and Vessa shared a smile at her ranting, and when Maelen saw it, she stormed off into the rain to… well, he couldn’t really make it out amidst the cursing and Vessa’s laughter. In any case, they slept wet and dirty that night. Alric focused hard amidst the dark and silence, but his heart remained still. Whenever he thought of using his magic, his mind winced away.

Duskmarch 24, Goldday, Year 731.

The rain only increased the next day, making Alric wake to Maelen’s curses. He couldn’t remember being dry after so many consecutive wet days, and a deep chill had settled into his bones to go along with the hollow emptiness left by his magic. All three of the companions broke their camp perfunctorily, with little conversation.

Though they’d vowed to explore the surrounding area for the Starless Rift and Hadren, the task seemed impossible given the weather. Vessa suggested that they wait out the rain, but Maelen shook her head at the idea. She kept glancing down at the mace at her hip, idly touching the weapon’s head almost as a habit, and said they needed to find the Rift soon. Alric wondered about that but was too lost in his own misery to question her.

So, without a clear plan, they began a trek through the overgrown ridges and craggy hills, the only sounds their squelching boots and the constant thrum of the rainfall. It was an aimless, fruitless morning of exploration, but sometime around midday Alric called the others to him with urgent waves of his hand.

“What is it, lad?” Maelen asked, looking like a drowned dog, her clothes soaked through and water running into her eyes. Vessa remained sheltered beneath her oiled travel cloak but looked no drier.

“I… hear something,” he said hesitantly. “Do you?”

The two women cocked their heads, concentrating. Vessa shook her head, but Maelen said, “Just the mace, humming as it does.”

“It hums?” Vessa asked, surprised.

“You don’t hear the chanting?” Alric asked urgently. They looked at him long and hard, pursing their lips, a clear sign they didn’t. He grimaced. “This way, then. Follow me.”

Though he almost always had quiet, barely perceptible whispers at the back of his perceptions these days, late in the morning a new sound had begun to overlay it, so subtly at first he wasn’t sure it was there. As they’d stopped to refill their waterskins with rainwater, Alric had recognized a voice, deep and somber, saying something just beyond understanding, though it seemed to be the same words or phrase repeatedly. When he turned, one direction caused the voice to raise its volume, just barely. It was in that direction he walked. With each shuffling, mud-caked step, it grew louder.

By the time they’d crested another low hill, the voice was distinct, not so much drowning out the constant whispers but somehow building upon them, like a background chorus to the repeated chant. The words, though, still eluded him.

Alric stopped with a start and shielded his eyes with a hand. Then he gasped.

They’d found the Starless Rift.

At first, he couldn’t make sense of it. Rain blurred everything into motion. Then the land itself resolved—a jagged scar stretching from the foot of a crag into the plain beyond. Wider than two humans laid end to end for most of its length, the rift was shaped somewhat like a crescent moon, black and empty like, well… a starless night sky. Even from this distance, Alric could sense the unnatural emptiness of it, an open wound in the earth needing to be healed.

Standing between the crevice and their hill was Hadren Kelthorn. He stood as straight as he was able with his bent back, his sparse hair plastered to his pale skull. Gone were the homespun clothes, replaced by dark robes as black as the Starless Rift.

What surrounded Hadren took Alric the most time to comprehend. Symbols were arrayed around him, like ones he’d seen etched within the vault of Thornmere Hold but huge, each one as large as the man at their center. The symbols formed a wide circle, black and bulky. Not carved, but built. At first, Alric thought they were stone. Then bile rose in his throat as he understood.

They were bodies. Dozens and dozens of corpses, all in black robes like Hadren’s, lay arrayed in patterned symbols around him. Alric thought that perhaps they were merely praying, but then he saw that Hadren must have needed to sever limbs or heads to create the symbols. Blood pooled around each construction, almost black in the weak, rain-clouded light, and Alric could see white flashes of bones everywhere. His mind reeled at the scene, skittering away from the mutilation and grotesquerie before him.

“By the Rootmother,” Maelen breathed, as she too made sense of it. Vessa stood motionless next to her, jaw clenched tight like she was willing herself not to vomit.

Hadren threw his arms wide in greeting, water spraying from the sleeves of his black robe.

“Welcome!” he called through the rain. “I’m so glad you made it.”

Next: Hadren Kelthorn [with game notes]

[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]

[game-notes version here]

XV.

Duskmarch 18, Hearthday, Year 731.

It was well past dawn when Maelen and Alric found her, though Vessa could hardly tell through the heavy rain. Inside the watch hall—a squat timber-and-stone building near the gate—it was chill and dry, but the roof still rattled with rain, and water streamed down to the packed earth outside. It smelled of sweat and dampness, with only the faint whiff of blood that seemed everywhere across the village.

Blood. Vessa shuddered. What she’d seen that night, hunting straggler skratts with her bow and looking for survivors, would haunt her remaining days. It was the nursery that she couldn’t shake. The babies’ faces… She shook her head, bone-weary. A voice broke through the haze.

“Vess?” Maelen asked, shaking her shoulder. She looked up blearily. The rain had washed the worst gore off her friend, though she was still filthy. “You okay, lass?”

“Tired,” she sighed, and rubbed at her bent nose absently. “I think the skratts are gone, though. You rest?”

Maelen scoffed, but it was Alric who answered. “You should have seen it, Vessa! Maelen organized a fire brigade, shaking people out of their shock. Her efforts saved the remaining buildings! And then, once the rain started, she fortified the palisade where the skratts had climbed over. It was inspired.”

Maelen frowned, seeming annoyed by the praise. “Just did what needed doing. The lad helped the healer. Good work, that.”

The scribe grinned and bobbed his head. “I also did what I could to ward the walls from Orthuun, though I honestly don’t know if it will help or not.”

“You’ve helped, all of you,” came a gruff voice. The Stonekin soldier stood in the doorway, rain dripping from his beard as he stamped mud from his boots. Like Maelen, he was dirty and wet, with dark circles beneath his eyes. “Vastren Hollow is gone, but thanks to you it may one day rebuild.”

“Where will you go?” asked Alric, turning to him and cocking his head.

The man sighed. He looked haggard. “Oakton, maybe,” he shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You should sleep, sir,” the scribe offered. “That’s what, two nights now without rest?”

He grunted. “Right. Anything you lot need? I never asked why you were visiting the Hollow.”

“Just passing through,” Maelen answered. “Going west and south.”

The soldier nodded once, stroking his mud-caked beard. “Terrible luck for you, good for us. Well, you’re welcome to any bed you can find, and food. The gods know we won’t use them all.”

Vessa hardly remembered leaving the watch hall to find a nearby home. The rain muted everything, softening the horror of what remained. A few sparse survivors moved this way and that through the storm, some with dull-eyed shock and others with brisk purpose, and all hunching their shoulders against the constant wet.

Maelen led them to a modest timber house, its door hanging open but the rest untouched. Whoever had lived here must have run to help their neighbors, and died for it. The image of faceless corpses flashed behind Vessa’s eyes. She groaned and shook it away.

Inside, the place smelled of woodsmoke. The walls were rough-cut pine planks, reinforced with river stones, and its main room was built around a large stone fireplace, with cooking pots hanging from wooden pegs, a battered table, mismatched stools, and one frayed rug over the swept earth. Everything about the space felt lived-in and utilitarian, which Vessa supposed must be true for all these frontier villagers.

The structure had only one other room, a small bedroom with two straw mattresses on raised sleeping platforms, each covered in heavy woolen blankets. Without a word, Vessa dropped her pack and crawled into the bed, boots and all. She dimly heard Maelen’s voice behind her, then nothing.

Sleep came, mercifully dreamless.

Duskmarch 20, Moonday, Year 731.

By late afternoon they’d rested. Maelen, unable to sit still, spent the evening outside barking orders and shoring up defenses, even as most villagers packed to flee. Alric kept his nose buried in his book, under candlelight, muttering to himself and rarely leaving the common room. With both of them occupied, Vessa rummaged through the house until she found a hidden bottle of wine, saved for some long-lost celebration. She drank by the fire, wishing for lotus leaf instead.

Eventually, she reached the bottom of the bottle and must have gone back to sleep. When she next woke, curled under a woolen blanket by a cold hearth, weak winter light touched the shudders. Maelen stood in the doorway to the bedroom, buckling her belt.

“Get ready, lass,” she said. Vessa blinked and looked around blearily. Alric was already up and bustling unseen in the bedroom. “Time to go.”

A knock made them all tense. With the casual grace of a predator, Maelen crossed the room to open the door while Vessa eased the shortsword from its scabbard and crouched in the shadows. Alric poked his head into the doorway, curious.

But it was just the Stonekin soldier, still looking haggard. Perhaps he always appeared frayed, Vessa thought, sheathing her blade. Or perhaps he had simply been unable to sleep given everything that had transpired the last two days. Visions of faceless corpses again swam in her vision. Dammit all but she yearned for some lotus leaf.

“You’re off, then?” he said, looking at Alric cinching his travel pack closed.

“We are. Anything else you need?” Maelen asked.

The man shook his head. “You’ve done more than anyone could ask,” he said, handing her a small, coin-heavy pouch

“You don’t have to–” Alric began, but Maelen silenced him with a sharp look. She nodded at the soldier, who was two fingerwidths shorter than her but just as broad.

“Many thanks, and good luck to you and your people,” she held out her hand and they gripped forearms, a common salutation among mercenaries.

“My name’s Brodan,” he said, releasing the grip.

Maelen’s common retort to someone giving their name was “Don’t care,” which Vessa saw her poised to say on reflex. She seemed to think better of it, though, and nodded back. “Maelen,” she said. “I hope to see you again in Oakton. You can find me through the Latchkey Circle.”

They left shortly after Brodan bid farewell to them. No one that Vessa could see watched them leave. There were simply too few survivors and too many tasks burdening them. Even the front guardhouse was momentarily empty when they passed it. Vessa shook her head. Vastren Hollow was dead, even if its corpse had not yet begun to rot. The sooner the survivors could leave, the sooner the wilds could reclaim the land.

The rain stopped in the night, leaving winter fog. They trudged west through muddy trails. Maelen, unlike two days ago, seemed almost cheerful—less swearing, anyway, and the warrior was quick to poke fun at Alric and Vessa in a way borne of camaraderie. When Vessa commented on her mood, though, Maelen brushed it off.  

“Just balancing you and your sour face,” she grinned, slapping Vessa on the shoulder.

They moved up and into the forested hills, the trails gone after less than half a day. The terrain was much like two months before, but the trees in this part of the Greenwood Rise were less dense, the canopy more open to the gray sky above. Vessa kept her eyes sharp but saw no signs of the skratt horde or other dangerous predators. As the afternoon wore on, the fog lessened, until it was simply low-hanging clouds that drifted among the treetops overhead. They’d crested the hills and begun to dip into whatever lay beyond the Greenwood Rise when Maelen called for them to make camp.

Her good mood seemed to have infected Alric, and they ate cheese and hard bread from Leandra’s Rest by a low campfire in companionable silence while Vessa sat apart, quiet and listening to the nightbirds and insects. For the most part, their conversation was brief and uninteresting, until Maelen asked, almost casually, “So, lad. You can do magic now, can you?”

Vessa couldn’t tell in the firelight, but she thought he may have blushed. He grinned through finishing what was in his mouth and said, “It appears so. This Tome of Unlit Paths that Hadren thinks belongs to him is a very old book. Ancient. It’s teaching me things that have likely been forgotten generations before us.”

“But you could already do magic,” Vessa voiced her thoughts. “In Thornmere Hold, it was you that dispelled Sarin’s darkness, wasn’t it?”

“Probably,” Alric said hesitantly. “Though I don’t know for sure. I think… I think it’s like singing. Everyone can do magic, but some have a natural talent for it. Back in Thornmere Hold, I didn’t really know what I was doing. Now I do,” His teeth ripped the end of a tough piece of bread. With a full mouth he added, “Or at least have the beginnings of a grasp. I have so much to learn, still.”

“Healing magic, though,” Maelen said, looking at her hand thoughtfully as she flexed it into a fist and relaxed it. “That’s rare, lad. You could make good coin with that talent.”

“Yes, well,” Alric said, finishing his bite and swallowing. “Perhaps that’s how it’s different from singing. Using the magic…” he faltered, his voice dying as some thought seemed to overtake his mind. He shook his head. “It costs me something.”

“What do you mean?” Vessa asked. She moved to join the campfire circle without thinking about it, interested.

“I don’t have the words,” he said, embarrassed. “It’s just… I keep thinking about that blind seer’s words from Leandra’s Rest. She said that I was damned, held by the tail by a dark god.”

“I didn’t like her,” Vessa spat. “Bitch. Forget what she said, Alric.”

“No. I think she’s right.” He looked into the fire, orange light dancing across his solemn features. “It doesn’t feel like mine. It’s like… someone’s using me. Orthuun.”

Alric’s voice dropped. “Every time I use magic, it’s like I’m inviting him closer. To be with me.”

Vessa and Maelen waited for him to continue. When he next spoke, it was with a grimace. “I can’t explain it. But it’s bad.”

“So, lad. In that case, don’t use the magic,” Maelen shrugged, as if the problem had been solved. She took a long drink from her waterskin and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “We can heal ourselves without it.”

Alric chuckled. “First, no you couldn’t have. You may not remember, Maelen, but your wounds were severe. And anyway, it’s not something I always choose to do. Sometimes it’s like a reflex. But,” he paused, again lost in thought. “I suppose I do have a request.” He looked up at each of them. Vessa raised her eyebrows, a signal for him to continue.

“When we get to the Starless Rift and it’s time to trade the book to Hadren,” he swallowed and licked his lips. “Can you… make sure I do it?”

Vessa blinked and she cocked her head. “You don’t think you’ll want to?”

“I’ll want to,” Alric said hastily, and then added, “Probably. But it’s just, well, I may not be able to. I’ve wanted to get rid of it for weeks now. It… there’s something that won’t let me.”

The three of them fell silent as the low fire crackled and smoked. Vessa watched Alric as he stared into the flames, his face full of worry.

After what felt like a long while, Maelen said, “Lad,” then repeated the word to make his head snap up. “Lad!”

“Mm?”

“When it comes to it, we’ll make you,” Her face was serious, her words heavy with the oath. “I promise.”

“Whatever it takes?” he asked quietly.

“What do you mean?” Vessa asked, confused, her head swiveling between them.

Maelen nodded. “Whatever it takes, lad. You’ll be rid of the book. I promise.”

Alric nodded back, seemingly unable to speak. He bowed his head and, Vessa thought, he wept quietly, his shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs.

Next: Orthuun’s Eyes [with game notes]

[prose-only version here]

XV.

Duskmarch 18, Hearthday, Year 731.

It was well past dawn when Maelen and Alric found her, though Vessa could hardly tell through the heavy rain. Inside the watch hall—a squat timber-and-stone building near the gate—it was chill and dry, but the roof still rattled with rain, and water streamed down to the packed earth outside. It smelled of sweat and dampness, with only the faint whiff of blood that seemed everywhere across the village.

Blood. Vessa shuddered. What she’d seen that night, hunting straggler skratts with her bow and looking for survivors, would haunt her remaining days. It was the nursery that she couldn’t shake. The babies’ faces… She shook her head, bone-weary. A voice broke through the haze.

“Vess?” Maelen asked, shaking her shoulder. She looked up blearily. The rain had washed the worst gore off her friend, though she was still filthy. “You okay, lass?”

“Tired,” she sighed, and rubbed at her bent nose absently. “I think the skratts are gone, though. You rest?”

Maelen scoffed, but it was Alric who answered. “You should have seen it, Vessa! Maelen organized a fire brigade, shaking people out of their shock. Her efforts saved the remaining buildings! And then, once the rain started, she fortified the palisade where the skratts had climbed over. It was inspired.”

Maelen frowned, seeming annoyed by the praise. “Just did what needed doing. The lad helped the healer. Good work, that.”

The scribe grinned and bobbed his head. “I also did what I could to ward the walls from Orthuun, though I honestly don’t know if it will help or not.”

“You’ve helped, all of you,” came a gruff voice. The Stonekin soldier stood in the doorway, rain dripping from his beard as he stamped mud from his boots. Like Maelen, he was dirty and wet, with dark circles beneath his eyes. “Vastren Hollow is gone, but thanks to you it may one day rebuild.”

“Where will you go?” asked Alric, turning to him and cocking his head.

The man sighed. He looked haggard. “Oakton, maybe,” he shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You should sleep, sir,” the scribe offered. “That’s what, two nights now without rest?”

He grunted. “Right. Anything you lot need? I never asked why you were visiting the Hollow.”

“Just passing through,” Maelen answered. “Going west and south.”

The soldier nodded once, stroking his mud-caked beard. “Terrible luck for you, good for us. Well, you’re welcome to any bed you can find, and food. The gods know we won’t use them all.”

Vessa hardly remembered leaving the watch hall to find a nearby home. The rain muted everything, softening the horror of what remained. A few sparse survivors moved this way and that through the storm, some with dull-eyed shock and others with brisk purpose, and all hunching their shoulders against the constant wet.

Maelen led them to a modest timber house, its door hanging open but the rest untouched. Whoever had lived here must have run to help their neighbors, and died for it. The image of faceless corpses flashed behind Vessa’s eyes. She groaned and shook it away.

Inside, the place smelled of woodsmoke. The walls were rough-cut pine planks, reinforced with river stones, and its main room was built around a large stone fireplace, with cooking pots hanging from wooden pegs, a battered table, mismatched stools, and one frayed rug over the swept earth. Everything about the space felt lived-in and utilitarian, which Vessa supposed must be true for all these frontier villagers.

The structure had only one other room, a small bedroom with two straw mattresses on raised sleeping platforms, each covered in heavy woolen blankets. Without a word, Vessa dropped her pack and crawled into the bed, boots and all. She dimly heard Maelen’s voice behind her, then nothing.

Sleep came, mercifully dreamless.

Duskmarch 20, Moonday, Year 731.

By late afternoon they’d rested. Maelen, unable to sit still, spent the evening outside barking orders and shoring up defenses, even as most villagers packed to flee. Alric kept his nose buried in his book, under candlelight, muttering to himself and rarely leaving the common room. With both of them occupied, Vessa rummaged through the house until she found a hidden bottle of wine, saved for some long-lost celebration. She drank by the fire, wishing for lotus leaf instead.

Eventually, she reached the bottom of the bottle and must have gone back to sleep. When she next woke, curled under a woolen blanket by a cold hearth, weak winter light touched the shudders. Maelen stood in the doorway to the bedroom, buckling her belt.

“Get ready, lass,” she said. Vessa blinked and looked around blearily. Alric was already up and bustling unseen in the bedroom. “Time to go.”

A knock made them all tense. With the casual grace of a predator, Maelen crossed the room to open the door while Vessa eased the shortsword from its scabbard and crouched in the shadows. Alric poked his head into the doorway, curious.

But it was just the Stonekin soldier, still looking haggard. Perhaps he always appeared frayed, Vessa thought, sheathing her blade. Or perhaps he had simply been unable to sleep given everything that had transpired the last two days. Visions of faceless corpses again swam in her vision. Dammit all but she yearned for some lotus leaf.

“You’re off, then?” he said, looking at Alric cinching his travel pack closed.

“We are. Anything else you need?” Maelen asked.

The man shook his head. “You’ve done more than anyone could ask,” he said, handing her a small, coin-heavy pouch

“You don’t have to–” Alric began, but Maelen silenced him with a sharp look. She nodded at the soldier, who was two fingerwidths shorter than her but just as broad.

“Many thanks, and good luck to you and your people,” she held out her hand and they gripped forearms, a common salutation among mercenaries.

“My name’s Brodan,” he said, releasing the grip.

Maelen’s common retort to someone giving their name was “Don’t care,” which Vessa saw her poised to say on reflex. She seemed to think better of it, though, and nodded back. “Maelen,” she said. “I hope to see you again in Oakton. You can find me through the Latchkey Circle.”

They left shortly after Brodan bid farewell to them. No one that Vessa could see watched them leave. There were simply too few survivors and too many tasks burdening them. Even the front guardhouse was momentarily empty when they passed it. Vessa shook her head. Vastren Hollow was dead, even if its corpse had not yet begun to rot. The sooner the survivors could leave, the sooner the wilds could reclaim the land.

The rain stopped in the night, leaving winter fog. They trudged west through muddy trails. Maelen, unlike two days ago, seemed almost cheerful—less swearing, anyway, and the warrior was quick to poke fun at Alric and Vessa in a way borne of camaraderie. When Vessa commented on her mood, though, Maelen brushed it off.  

“Just balancing you and your sour face,” she grinned, slapping Vessa on the shoulder.

They moved up and into the forested hills, the trails gone after less than half a day. The terrain was much like two months before, but the trees in this part of the Greenwood Rise were less dense, the canopy more open to the gray sky above. Vessa kept her eyes sharp but saw no signs of the skratt horde or other dangerous predators. As the afternoon wore on, the fog lessened, until it was simply low-hanging clouds that drifted among the treetops overhead. They’d crested the hills and begun to dip into whatever lay beyond the Greenwood Rise when Maelen called for them to make camp.

Her good mood seemed to have infected Alric, and they ate cheese and hard bread from Leandra’s Rest by a low campfire in companionable silence while Vessa sat apart, quiet and listening to the nightbirds and insects. For the most part, their conversation was brief and uninteresting, until Maelen asked, almost casually, “So, lad. You can do magic now, can you?”

Vessa couldn’t tell in the firelight, but she thought he may have blushed. He grinned through finishing what was in his mouth and said, “It appears so. This Tome of Unlit Paths that Hadren thinks belongs to him is a very old book. Ancient. It’s teaching me things that have likely been forgotten generations before us.”

“But you could already do magic,” Vessa voiced her thoughts. “In Thornmere Hold, it was you that dispelled Sarin’s darkness, wasn’t it?”

“Probably,” Alric said hesitantly. “Though I don’t know for sure. I think… I think it’s like singing. Everyone can do magic, but some have a natural talent for it. Back in Thornmere Hold, I didn’t really know what I was doing. Now I do,” His teeth ripped the end of a tough piece of bread. With a full mouth he added, “Or at least have the beginnings of a grasp. I have so much to learn, still.”

“Healing magic, though,” Maelen said, looking at her hand thoughtfully as she flexed it into a fist and relaxed it. “That’s rare, lad. You could make good coin with that talent.”

“Yes, well,” Alric said, finishing his bite and swallowing. “Perhaps that’s how it’s different from singing. Using the magic…” he faltered, his voice dying as some thought seemed to overtake his mind. He shook his head. “It costs me something.”

“What do you mean?” Vessa asked. She moved to join the campfire circle without thinking about it, interested.

“I don’t have the words,” he said, embarrassed. “It’s just… I keep thinking about that blind seer’s words from Leandra’s Rest. She said that I was damned, held by the tail by a dark god.”

“I didn’t like her,” Vessa spat. “Bitch. Forget what she said, Alric.”

“No. I think she’s right.” He looked into the fire, orange light dancing across his solemn features. “It doesn’t feel like mine. It’s like… someone’s using me. Orthuun.”

Alric’s voice dropped. “Every time I use magic, it’s like I’m inviting him closer. To be with me.”

Vessa and Maelen waited for him to continue. When he next spoke, it was with a grimace. “I can’t explain it. But it’s bad.”

“So, lad. In that case, don’t use the magic,” Maelen shrugged, as if the problem had been solved. She took a long drink from her waterskin and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “We can heal ourselves without it.”

Alric chuckled. “First, no you couldn’t have. You may not remember, Maelen, but your wounds were severe. And anyway, it’s not something I always choose to do. Sometimes it’s like a reflex. But,” he paused, again lost in thought. “I suppose I do have a request.” He looked up at each of them. Vessa raised her eyebrows, a signal for him to continue.

“When we get to the Starless Rift and it’s time to trade the book to Hadren,” he swallowed and licked his lips. “Can you… make sure I do it?”

Vessa blinked and she cocked her head. “You don’t think you’ll want to?”

“I’ll want to,” Alric said hastily, and then added, “Probably. But it’s just, well, I may not be able to. I’ve wanted to get rid of it for weeks now. It… there’s something that won’t let me.”

The three of them fell silent as the low fire crackled and smoked. Vessa watched Alric as he stared into the flames, his face full of worry.

After what felt like a long while, Maelen said, “Lad,” then repeated the word to make his head snap up. “Lad!”

“Mm?”

“When it comes to it, we’ll make you,” Her face was serious, her words heavy with the oath. “I promise.”

“Whatever it takes?” he asked quietly.

“What do you mean?” Vessa asked, confused, her head swiveling between them.

Maelen nodded. “Whatever it takes, lad. You’ll be rid of the book. I promise.”

Alric nodded back, seemingly unable to speak. He bowed his head and, Vessa thought, he wept quietly, his shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs.

Next: Orthuun’s Eyes [with game notes]

[game-notes version here]

XIV.

Duskmarch 17, Goldday, Year 731.

The village’s shrine to The Watcher—also called The High Listener, The Fourth Sister, and She Who Watches the Bay, among many other titles—sat in the heart of Vastren Hollow, at the center of a cobblestone square. Alric supposed that, since the village had been founded by rangers long ago, they had built the shrine and its flame to signal safety to travelers or passing caravans, much as Skywarden Tower served for Oakton. Yet Vastren Hollow established no trade routes currently in use and had never proven to be of strategic advantage for the city. As a result, the village had maintained the Watchflame but grown around it, sitting comfortably within the rampart wall and defensive structures, unseen by passerbys. It was now, he guessed, primarily a symbol of safety for Vastren Hollow’s residents, a sign that Oakton’s gods still sheltered them from the wild world beyond.

Today, however, safety was under siege.

As Maelen and Vessa led Alric and the ragged militia through the village, they saw the true devastation of the skratt swarm. Every home gaped open, doors torn, windows bloodstained. Fires guttered across the square. One house, fully ablaze, stained the twilight orange. Black-furred bodies of skratts lay everywhere, some curled on their sides, some with backs arched and white eyes staring lifelessly at the clouds above, and others face down in the mud. Indeed, it seemed that the skratt corpses outnumbered the others by four to one, though everywhere Alric looked there were dead villagers and animals, all shredded by claws and with faces ravaged. The smell of blood, offal, and smoke filled Alric’s nose, making him gag several times.

The shrine itself was a waist-high, octagonal structure made of pale granite, atop which sat a bronze brazier in the shape of an eye. Alric could see immediately that the flame within that brazier was magical, its fires burning both white and blue. A few desperate soldiers stood in a tight ring above a mass of writhing, snarling black fur. Even as they approached, one of the women fell shrieking under the skratt horde. In moments, the others would follow.

With a shout, Maelen charged.

Alric had seen her fight before, stumbling uphill at Greenwood Rise, but this was different. She flew across the square, all power and precision. The Vastren Hollow militia, with a whoop, raised their makeshift weapons and followed her towards the besieged shrine. The humans at the shrine let up an answering call, rallying against the enemies around them. Now Alric watched, mouth agape, as Maelen’s spiked mace swung to catch a startled skratt in the chest, sending it arcing into the air. Right behind her, the Stonekin soldier’s glaive flashed out, shining in the bright light of the Watchflame.

Then the skratt mob swarmed them. The whispering chitter of rats mingled with the cries of pain from the militia, and the group disappeared amidst a mass of black fur. Alric gasped.

“Stay sharp!” Vessa loosed an arrow into the swarm, cursed, and dropped her bow. “Here they come!”

Vessa stepped past Alric and slashed with the short blade of her sword, intercepting a skratt that had run at him. It fell to the square awkwardly, scrabbling for purchase with its claws on the stones. Alric swung his staff, cracking into its body with a crunch. Then it launched itself at him, black hands outstretched and white eyes wide. He sidestepped on instinct but felt the hot flash of a claw across his cheek. It had gone for his eyes.

The creatures were everywhere. Vessa pivoted and swung her blade as Alric held out his staff defensively. Magic whirled in his mind, unable to form into anything coherent amidst the battle.

All around him, violence raged. Yet for several heartbeats, Alric faced off against the skratt Vessa had injured. It crouched on the cobblestones, feet set wide and clawed hands flexing as it sniffed the air loudly. Then its milky eyes fixed on his position, the oil-slicked, ropy tail lashing. The thing chittered and jumped again at his face.

This time, Alric was ready for it. He interposed the staff between them, though a frantic claw still nicked his neck as he pushed it away.

He swung the heavy wood of his staff in a desperate, wide arc. The blow struck the skratt where its head met its scrawny shoulder and the creature crumpled. Then Alric struck again, and again.

He hadn’t realized he was shouting until another skratt, slashed by Vessa’s blade, rolled into his leg.

Alric whirled, wide-eyed, to take in the scene. The dead lay everywhere, skratt and villager alike, though a cluster of both still battled around the Watchflame. Maelen was there, batting furred bodies left and right with her weapon, a fierce smile on a face spattered in dark blood.

Two skratts leapt out of the crowd at the shrine simultaneously. Their bodies fell atop the Watchflame deliberately, as if trying to smother the fires with their lives. More followed. The scattered soldiers on the granite pedestal cried out in dismay, striking at the smoking bodies. Alric watched the blue-and-white flame gutter, and then he couldn’t see it at all amidst the writhing, black-furred mass.

“No!” the stocky soldier roared, his glaive carving a desperate path through the skratt swarm. The last few villagers closed ranks around him, driving toward the shrine. Alric watched, almost transfixed by the scene: A last push of bravery amidst carnage.

The whispery chattering of a skratt near his ear jerked him into the battle. There, one of the creatures bared its long front teeth and spread its clawed hands wide, pale eyes fixed on his face as it readied to leap. He froze, surprised.

Maelen’s spiked mace crushed the skratt into the cobbles with a wet crack. Alric hadn’t even seen her cross the square. The warrior was bloodstained, panting, her hair and eyes wild, as she gripped her black weapon and spun, looking for another opponent. Vessa finished slicing the throat of another creature, then positioned her back to Maelen’s, a move that looked almost instinctual for the two mercenaries.

But it was unnecessary. Any skratts that had broken from the horde at the shrine were dead or gone. For a long moment, only panting and the crackle of fire filled the square.

Alric’s eyes scanned the scene, his gaze passing over countless corpses that his mind refused to register. He focused instead on the shrine. The Stonekin soldier had retaken the granite pedestal. Black-furred bodies lay everywhere around him, the stack of them fully to his waist. Three other humans—all covered in gore—yelled and moved to chase the last of the skratts as they fled. They had been fighting all night and day, however, and had no hope of catching the rat-like creatures. Dozens of skratts scurried from the village square, flowing like a river towards some exit Alric couldn’t see.

The soldier sank to his knees at the brazier’s base. His glaive clattered against the stone dais. The Watchflame was gone, buried beneath smoldering skratt corpses. Only the burning houses lit the square now, flickering orange, warped by smoke.

“White eyes, oily tails, and whispers,” Maelen rasped beside him. “You’re right, lad. Orthuun’s work.” She coughed, blood on her lip, and dropped to one knee.

“Maelen!” Vessa called out, but Alric was already kneeling beside her.

As soon as he’d entered the village, Alric had begun to hear a low, whispered murmur at the edge of his awareness. He’d convinced himself it was nothing.

But as he reached for Maelen’s face, the mumurs rose, coiling around his mind. Words he couldn’t understand, half-heard and hissing. They filled his ears, drowning out everything else. Lone cries from anguished villagers, blazing house fires, and even a question that Maelen asked him as she looked into his eyes—Alric could hear none of it. Only the whispers remained, and his lips moved with the alien rhythm of them.

A familiar numbness spread throughout his body, as if he were separating from the world and becoming apart from it. His skin tingled as it passed from his head, down his neck and spreading throughout his torso and limbs, moving down to his legs and feet. Once the sensation had passed, he felt nothing, no pain or emotions. Dispassionately, Alric said words he and his companions would not remember later.

Maelen’s eyes went wide, then relaxed. She blinked at him, a sense of wonder across her face as he released her head with his long fingers and ceased the spell. It would take, he knew, several heartbeats for his senses to fully return, and the tingling as the numbness retreated was awfully distracting. But he could still speak through deadened lips, and asked, “Are you better?”

“Lad,” Maelen mouthed. “How?”

“Shh,” Alric shook his head, pursing lips. He hadn’t heard her through the diminishing whispers in his ears, but he saw her lips make the words. “Later. Let’s help the others.”

As he stood on shaky legs and surveyed Vastren Hollow, though, he wasn’t sure who there was to help.

The village was gone, its Watchflame cold. Orthuun had wiped it from the world like ink from a wet page.

Next: Make Sure I Do It [with game notes]

[game-notes version here]

XIII.

Duskmarch 17, Goldday, Year 731.

Maelen swore. “Damn this fog! I can’t tell if we’re headed west or back to Leandra’s Rest.” She spat into the grass. The lad winced.

“I haven’t seen signs we’re backtracking,” Alric said thoughtfully. He looked up in search of the sun, but Maelen knew that above was just the dull gray clouds of winter, no help in navigating. “I trust you’re taking us west.”

It was a fool’s comment, trusting in someone you hardly knew, but it warmed her all the same. Maelen grunted in acknowledgement, then asked, “Lad, you ever been this far into the wilds?”

He smiled, tightly lipped. “No. Thornmere Hold was the furthest from the city walls I’d been in my life. You?”

“Some years ago, I was part of a caravan guard. Just a young pup then, like you and Vess. We traveled all the way to Vireth’s Hold. Other than that, no.”

“You’ve been to the capital?” Alric’s eyebrows shot up his forehead.

Maelen grunted again. “Just the once. But it was on the Prince’s Road, nothing like this. No telling what’s out here, away from human patrols. I don’t like it.” As if her words had conjured something, she peered dubiously around at the grasslands and low hills, mists clinging to both.

The only thing that gave Maelen some solace was that they’d moved over marshland and grassy plains into foothills, a sure sign of going west. At some point they’d reach the Greenwood Rise, hopefully by nightfall. She didn’t much relish the idea of sleeping out in the open, without the defense of the forest around her. But had she led them in a northerly way, which only lengthened the trek to this Starless Rift? It was impossible to tell with the blasted gray sky and winter mists. At best, she could see a longbow shot’s distance at any one time, and often less than that.

A sharp whistle rang out from somewhere beyond the fog: Vessa’s call. Maelen stopped, put two fingers to her lips, and returned the whistle.

“What is it?” the scribe asked, looking around him.

“Our lass has found something,” she grunted.

They waited.

Like a ghost, Vessa appeared a stone’s throw away, padding towards them on soft feet. She held her bow in one hand, which wasn’t unusual for her scouting trips. The nocked arrow, however, made Maelen tense. She loosened the head of the mace at her hip, pulling it up and out of the leather belt loop. The weapon, her prize from the vault in Thornmere Hold, had replaced her longsword even though its reach was shorter than her blade’s. Maelen gripped the mace’s leather wraps, the black metal thrumming faintly in her palms. She couldn’t say why she now favored the mace with the heavy spiked ball on one end, except that it was hers, there by her bedside when she’d woken from her long sleep. Since then, Maelen hadn’t let it out of reach.

“Trouble?” she asked Vessa in a low voice.

The lass got close enough to touch them before speaking. “Hard to tell. There’s a farmstead up ahead,” she panted, out of breath from the run. “But it’s all dark and quiet.”

“Farm?” Maelen twisted her face. “Who in the nine gates would farm this far from the city?”

“There are several outlying villages,” Alric said, leaning on his staff as if to give his bad leg a rest. “The one west of Leandra’s Rest would be…” he frowned, searching his memory. “Vastren Hollow, I believe? Originally a ranger ward-post. Which means we’re almost to the hills! Vastren Hollow is small, but should offer another bed for the night, and means we’ve traveled southwest. Well done, Vessa!” He smiled. The lass looked startled by the praise and turned away.

“It’s dark, you said?” Maelen asked her. “Any animals?”

“Not that I saw, but I didn’t take a close look.”

“Well,” she said, grinning. She found the loop at her waist and returned the mace to her belt. For some reason, she felt a little guilty and disappointed at doing so, almost as if the metal itself was sighing. “Let’s go look.”

Vessa had scouted far enough that they crunched through grass and low brush for what felt like a full bell before the mists parted, revealing a simple wooden fence stretching before them. There was no gate she could see, but the barrier was meant to keep livestock inside, not people. The three hopped it easily enough and strode into the farm.

They found the first dead cow ten strides from the fence, lying on its side. Its brown-and-white flanks shredded by countless raking claws, the grass matted in a wide pool of dried blood. Vessa hissed—its head was almost gone, chewed to the bone. Even in winter a cloud of black flies swarmed what was left, their buzzing the only sound.

“It’s eyes,” Alric muttered grimly. “They’re gone. It’s Orthuun again.”

“Don’t get jumpy,” Maelen scolded. She’d freed the mace again and held it in both hands, the weight reassuring her. “Its whole face is gone, not just the eyes, and ravens could have gotten those. Looks like a pack of something got in here, but they’re long gone.” The lad didn’t answer her, his mouth an unhappy line.

The barn loomed ahead in the mists, its wide doors hanging open. Inside they found more of the same—livestock carcasses strewn in their stalls, faces gnawed away, claw marks littering their bodies. Maelen tried to imagine what had swarmed over this place, but it wasn’t wolves or dogs. The tracks were five-toed and rat-like, but too large for typical vermin. Vessa pointed to long, oily trails glistening in the straw, either the drag of large tails or something serpentine sliding beside them. Maelen noted that the flies avoided the oily trails, though they were otherwise thick masses around the bodies.

“If the people survived,” Vessa said. “They would have holed up in their house.”

“Yeah,” Maelen grunted. “Let’s find it.”

Between the barn and longhouse they found a chicken yard strewn with feathers, blood and a few stray legs and heads, but no bodies. Those oily trails and clawed footprints were everywhere. Crows called out from the fog, feasting on some corpses no doubt, but besides the crows and flies, no sound. It was unnerving, the silence on a farm that should have been brimming with life.

Maelen’s hope that the farmers had survived the raid dimmed when they approached the house. The door was a mess of claw marks and, it seemed, the creatures had torn off any window shutters and scrabbled inside. On the uneven wooden steps were bloody, clawed footprints and more of those oily, snake-like tracks.

“Do we go inside?” Alric whispered.

Maelen and Vessa both quieted as they listened. Nothing from inside. She cleared her throat and yelled through an open window. “Hello? Anyone there?”

Silence.

She exhaled. “No profit in raiding a farmhouse.”

“Profit?” Alric blanched. “Shouldn’t we… help?”

“They’re dead, lad.” She said, her voice harsher than intended. “You want to see children with their faces gnawed off?” Alric looked away, like he might throw up. “Let’s get to the village. Night isn’t far off, and I don’t want to be outside with whatever these things are.”

As they turned from the farmhouse, the flies rose in a dark cloud behind them, and for a heartbeat, Maelen thought she heard faint skittering beneath the floorboards. It was probably her imagination, though. She gritted her teeth, jaw tight.

A muddy footpath led to a sagging gate, hanging open. Beyond it, the path wound west through wet grass toward the foothills, cedars and alders ghosting in the fog. Crows cawed, and somewhere a jay screeched. Vessa, bow still at the ready, nodded towards the mess of footprints all along the path–long, five-toed ones, snaky trails, and plenty of human boots, all in no clear pattern. Whatever these creatures were, there had been a lot of them.

It did not take them long to reach the edge of a shallow basin and there, set against the foothills, the path led to a squat, functional rampart wall made of thick palings of dark pine, braced with mossy stonework at the corners. Its wooden gate was reinforced with iron bands, with the symbol of what looked like a hollow tree burned into its wood. Beyond the walls were the faint sounds of people yelling, some screaming, high-pitched and desperate. A dog barked frantically, far off behind the ramparts. Smoke coiled through the gray sky, glimpsed only when the fog tore open for a heartbeat.

A ragged pack of villagers clustered outside the gate. To Maelen’s eye, their gear had been scavenged and improvised—one woman held a woodcutter’s axe, another man held a spear whose shaft had been broken, a boy no more than twelve held a garden spade. Their clothes were damp with dark stains, their faces smeared with grime, and one had her arm in a sling. Only one man, barking orders at the rest, looked to be a proper soldier. Stocky, thick-shouldered, skin the color of earth, his beard tightly braided with copper. A chain shirt hung from him, boots sunk in the mud, a short glaive gripped in one meaty hand.

One of the villagers let out a cry and pointed in their direction. Maelen and Vessa froze, and Alric took one additional, shuffling step before realizing they’d stopped. The villagers froze, mud-streaked, hollow-eyed. The Stonekin fellow growled something at his companions, and then stepped forward, planting the end of his glaive in the mud.

“’Ware, travelers! It’s not safe here!” he called out in a gruff voice ragged with overuse. “Turn back!”

The group had fanned out slightly with their arrival, seven villagers in all, and now Maelen could see two bodies at their feet. Both thin forms were covered in black fur and the size of the boy with the spade, with clawed hands and feet and long tails as black as night. They reminded her of skratts, humanoid vermin that sometimes plagued the Oakton sewers, but these were decidedly larger. Besides, she’d never heard of skratts attacking humans, or of slime-covered tails.

“What’s going on here?” Maelen asked, gripping her mace. The soldier muttered something she couldn’t hear, and the wide-eyed villagers began fanning out more deliberately, forming a semicircle between them and the open front gate. They looked exhausted, terrified, and wholly incapable of wielding those weapons effectively. If it came to it, she would cut them down more easily than the Lanternless in the forest. It shouldn’t come to that, though.

Maelen spat into the mud and cracked her neck. She swung the heavy-headed mace to rest on her shoulder in a display of casual violence. Her face became a thundercloud as she scanned the ragged line of villagers.

“You’ve got troubles enough without testing me. But if you’re eager to taste my mace,” she jerked her chin at Vessa. “Or her arrows, keep coming. Well? Fighting or talking?”

Several of the villagers stepped back, looking over at the soldier. The man scowled and shook his head. “We’re talking,” he said grimly.

“Right then,” Maelen grunted. She nodded to Vessa and Alric, and they fell into step beside her, approaching the Stonekin man. As they closed the distance, the lack of training and skill amongst the commoners became clearer. Their hands shook with fear, this lot. Half of them didn’t wear shoes, like they’d rolled out of bed when the skratts attacked. The soldier, meanwhile, seemed to recognize their competence just as clearly. He appraised Maelen and her crew with a calculating eye, his lips set in a grim line. Vessa, always a good lass, stayed back several paces with her bow.

“So, what are these then?” Maelen asked, nudging a furred body with her muddy boot. Alric dropped into a crouch, examining them without touching. This close, she could see the rat-like heads clearly, their long-fingered hands tipped in short claws. Skratts, yes, but wrong. Too big, slick-furred, and one stared sightless up at her, its eyes milk-white as Wink’s. The jet fur was greasy, their ropy tails covered in a dark slime.

“Some sort of feral skratt,” the soldier replied in his deep, raspy voice. “They fell on us pre-dawn, hundreds of them. I’ve never seen or heard of the like.”

Alric stood up. The lad was shaken, his lips pursed. When he caught her eye he mouthed a word silently, but she understood it well enough. Orthuun. The blind eyes. The black fur and slime. It all harkened to the zombies in Thornmere Hold, and the spider-thing Vessa had described. Dammit all. There was no escaping the eyeless bastard west of the city, it seemed.

“You’ve been fighting ‘em all day?” she asked, shaking her head and trying to peer back towards the gate. The yells and screams became louder and more muffled depending on the mists, but they were still going. And that blasted dog was still barking, like a drum beat of doom.

“As best we can,” the soldier sighed tiredly. “We’ve killed scores of them, but their numbers were overwhelming.”

“What did they want?” Alric asked with some urgency. “Did they focus their attacks?”

Both Maelen and the soldier seemed surprised by the question, or even that the lad had inserted himself.

“At first we couldn’t tell,” he answered. “Then it became clear: They were focused on our shrine to The Watcher, in the village square.”

“The Watcher!” Alric said triumphantly. “Yes, of course. Is there a flame there?”

“There was,” he said. “But we,” he nodded to the ragged group around them. “Had to flee. I doubt it’s still burning now.” At these words, two of the villagers began to openly weep.

Maelen had heard enough. Whatever was happening across the Greenwood Rise, they couldn’t stop it here. They needed to get to this Starless Rift, which was still three days away if Wink could be believed. She needed to get Alric and his book there, exchange it for whatever treasure Hadren offered, and then get back to the city. After that, well… she had to admit that Vessa was right, that it was safer to work within the city walls than not. What could she do against rampaging demons and blighted wilds?

And then the lad messed it all up with his next words.

“Where is it?” he asked, voice steadier than it should have been. “We’ll protect it.”

Somewhere beyond the wall, the dog’s barking broke off suddenly with a yelp.

Next: Battle of the Watchflame [with game notes]