Methias heard a jumble of sounds some distance behind him. He marked heavy footfalls, cries, and a chorus of voices in a tongue so alien he physically shuddered. It was as if his mind didn’t understand how to hear it. Not how to comprehend it, but how to actually process the sound.
He rolled to his feet, turning to take in his surroundings … and fought the urge to simply gape.
He was on the edge of a sizable, ruined sculpture garden. Its statuary lay shattered and strewn about as if tossed on storm winds. Arms and ruined faces lay between and beneath the few upright stone benches, at the marred feet of marble plinths, or forgotten amid the narrow grass. In the center of this garden stood a tall stone, pale as fresh milk. Though he was sure it was a natural formation, it resembled nothing so much as the middle three fingers of some giant’s hand rising from beneath the ground.
Amidst the ruined statuary lay better than half-a-dozen children, freshly butchered by both the claws of some creature and the clear marks of the Weave. His eyes found points of impact where there were burns, discolorations, or, in the case of one young girl, a small sheet of melting ice covering the lower half of her face.
At the far side of the garden, a lone figure stood against a small cadre of shifting shadows. The scene struck Methias as kindling for what would undoubtedly be a lifetime’s worth of nightmares.
As he watched, the blackness grew tendrils, a blank, shifty mouth, bolts of shadow fire… There were people within those shadows, moving their limbs to match the leaping, lancing lunacy of the greater blackness.
But their heads! Each of them moves with chin on chest! They move. They react as if they see and know what threatens them, but their heads simply … loll there.
As for the figure they fought, Methias had at first mistaken it for a dwarven warrior, based not only on size but stance. The truth was far less mundane. The creature’s hands were talons. The wretch’s face, though surrounded by a mane of rose-red waves, was a mass of dark snakes.
No eyes nor mouth, save those of the serpents themselves, yet there’s that … voice? Can such a thing be called a voice? It’s a chorus of bubbling, moaning noise that hurts—physically hurts to hear.
Methias stepped back. With an effort, he forced himself to change his field of view. He needed to see the scene as a complete thing unto itself. But his traitor mind did its best to insist he look at the creature or the shadows—to focus on the individual players in all of their horrific glory.
No!
He fought to check the urge. His heart felt as if it were about to batter a hole in his chest. His stomach had seized and clenched, which was likely the only reason he hadn’t vomited or soiled himself.
“…Battlefield.” Methias forced himself to say it. He took pains to keep his voice low, but he had to hear the word aloud. “This is a battlefield … and must be viewed as one. Nuth nugosek puav oal ayom, xu lakth puav jhaiyv uundahl, damnit. Puav jhaiyv uundahl.”
(Because of mighty hands I am come, and here I shall remain.)
“You cannot have her!” The sound came from the shadows or perhaps the folk they puppeteered. It came out in a chorus, a choir of children who sounded not long into their apprenticeships, much like the blond boy he’d rescued. “Go back! The world is tired of your desperate prattling! Go back! You will not take her from me!”
They may bleat in children’s voices, but they speak through bearded chins. And her? Her who?
The not-dwarf gabbled in that un-voice again. Methias could feel an altogether unpleasant tingling between his legs and a surge of nausea threatening to overtake him.
The serpents which rode where the not-dwarf’s face should have been seemed to curl in on themselves. An instant later, they erupted in a wave of baleful green, like blood spurting from a battlefield wound. It spattered forward, flying past one of the shadows and onto the boy within. Wherever the serpent’s spend touched, flesh simply ceased, leaving bone to glitter in its wake. There was no scream, blessedly, but that particular shadow winked out, leaving the body to collapse.
It was then that Methias’s eye fell upon the apparent object of this conflict. Laid out on the severed top of a stone bench, he saw the small body of a young girl. She was stocky, broad of shoulder, and well-built for her age, which he hazarded at perhaps eight or nine. She was also unmoving, though he noted she still drew breath, as if in sleep.
The shadows must have scored a hit on the not-dwarf, for there was a spine-scraping, gibbering growl that physically forced Methias to stumble backward, nearly falling. A bright blue scar now glistened where several of the creature’s snakes had been a moment before. It leapt into motion, barreling into the remaining shadow puppets, sounding for all the world like a boiling swarm of insects pouring forth from their hive.
“Puav ka vehm hol vel.” Methias kept his voice just above a whisper. He would need to move, soon, one way or the other. Whichever side won the contest, the girl was likely to lose, and so was he.
Did he know that? He did not. This rite might show him…
(I will see the Weave.)
He couldn’t look for long. The strange light of insanity tried to bore its way past his eyes as they fell upon the not-dwarf’s underlying power. Before he looked away, he noted the shadows were not, in fact, many. Their light—and indeed it was a light, pale greyish-white—was interconnected as a single source.
His eyes next fell to the girl’s motionless form. Nothing… No taint of the not-dwarf, no tie to the shadow creature. There’s … something off, but whatever it is, she isn’t bound to either of those two. If I’m quick…
He moved as swiftly as he dared, building up speed from a walk to a jog at a steady climb. He had to avoid being a sudden blur in the corners of either creature’s eye. He kept his hand on the hem of his cloak so as not to let it make his silhouette too large.
He reached her miserable bower beside a knee-high plinth. Bending down, he tried to shake her awake, his first finger over his own lips in a shushing gesture. No good. Whatever had happened to her, she was utterly unresponsive.
Hells! If she won’t wake… If she wouldn’t wake, he had only two choices. Leave her behind or…
Methias dismissed his rite, returning his vision to normal, then glanced back at the battle. Both creatures—for he now thought of the children within the shadows as appendages, not individuals—were clearly wounded. Only two of those children were still upright and fighting. The not-dwarf’s left arm now hung limply at its side, though it too still strove to win its prize.
Methias nodded to himself, licked his lips as he made up his mind, and picked the girl up. She was heavier than she looked, but he could still manage her with one arm. Her head rolled onto his shoulder as he rose.
“No! You cannot take her! She … is … mine!” The choir, having been reduced to a duet, did little to make the sound less unnatural. As the shadow children screamed their protests, the not-dwarf turned to look over its wounded shoulder. Its face was now missing half of its serpents, that glistening blue left where they had once been.
One of the shadow children attempted to bolt past their distracted foe, aiming toward Methias with obvious intent. Seeing the girl within running a foot off the ground—as if kicking in a black pool of water—was made even more unsettling by the speed with which she moved.
The not-dwarf called up another eruption of green misery that ate away the shadow girl’s face and upper chest. It was an instant of hideous perfection that seared itself into Methias’s mind. It would be replayed, he had no doubt, along with the rest of this encounter in countless nightmares to come.
Time for that later. He has one shadow child to kill. Whichever one winds up victorious, this girl is likely to lose.
Methias turned, gazing at the place where he’d broken through the bulwark of the Hollow Ones. Here’s hoping I’m remembering the distance rightly. He spoke four words and took a single step.
“Puav ka koav luukth.” (I will stand there.)
His back foot left the ground, and the world blurred past. When it subsided, he was standing … much closer than he’d intended.
…Miscalculated. I thought my distance would put me just inside the hilltop ring. Not in the very gap.
He had barely enough time to draw breath before the vines above snaked toward him, the roots below beginning to grab at his feet. His gorge began to rise at the overwhelming scent of fresh blood. It seemed to come from every direction. It was the Hollow Ones, of course, moving their loathsome vitality within, in order to move their heavy bulk without.
He drew in an iron-flavored breath as he stepped, trying to get beyond their range. He coughed and gagged instead. Just as he had moments before, he felt a vine snake around his shin.
What can I do? I can see Mezofel. I have the power, can get us free, but I need … air! I’d burn the vines, but have no throat for speaking! The Crown of Stars? No, they’re darksome, but not... not hellish or … I… I’d draw War Cry, but how can I fight with the girl in my arms?
His head was swimming. He held the girl tighter, meaning to whisper something to comfort her. She slept on. Wherever her mind wandered, it was beyond his ability to comfort for the moment.
He froze. He could smell her—could smell the grass and dirt in her hair.
Before the dizziness overwhelmed him, even as more vines wrapped around his thigh, his waist, his dim-side shoulder, he made his decision. He bent close and buried his face in her brown hair, drawing in a deep draught of sun-sweetened air. Raising his foot, he spoke those same four words and stepped forward.
Again, the world blurred around him, but this time when it was over, he heard a chorus of the damned shrieking its displeasure. He knew why. Even as he stepped to Mezofel, he felt what was left of the vines which had tried to claim him fall to the dirt road beneath his feet.
The horse’s ebony ears were perked forward, and he pawed at the ground as he nuzzled Methias’s face.
“So was I.” Methias’s voice sounded ragged and raw. “Believe me, so was I.” Shifting the girl’s weight slightly, he mounted Mezofel. Once they were settled, the horse turned without prompting and began to walk back the way they’d come.
“Puehv ka zulek puav al luukth.” Methias spoke through an exhausted sigh. (My will takes me beyond here.)
Between steps, the trio left the wilds behind.