Intermission #18: Annalina

Ann chewed yet more food from atop Adir’s shoulders despite the ache in her stomach. She was forcing herself to continually eat small bits of food all day long now. Adir no longer nagged her because she was doing that to herself. Although she still experienced no sensation of hunger, she forced another handful of various forest foods into her mouth and chewed before asking, “It can’t be the same one is it? Did we get turned around?” She opened her map to look and saw that they were over two-thirds of the way to Randar.

“It’s a different one,” Adir responded, exhaling deeply. “I suspected this one existed, but I’ve never looked at the maps on the west side very closely. Haco did mention a city here once. It fell early during a skirmish with The Darkness, likely even before The Watch came into being.”

Ann frowned thoughtfully. “How could Haco be aware of it if it predates The Watch? Did Shan record it?”

Adir chuckled. “Haco’s age is deceiving. She’s ancient. She's probably forgotten more than we’ve ever learned.”

“I'll remember that,” Ann replied, gesturing toward the gloom just ahead. “This one seems larger than the last.” She scanned the vast expanse of blackness, seeing it stretch endlessly in both directions.

“You’re right,” Adir agreed, his voice growing distant. “The previous one was likely a recent creation. This one, however...”

“As ancient as Haco?” Ann teased, trying to lighten the mood.

Adir looked up at her. “Maybe. I wonder if we’ll see more creatures inside there.”

Ann shrugged. “Maybe they’ve left to attack Randar too.”

“Let’s hope so.” Adir said, letting go of her leg and pulling torches out of his backpack on his chest. “I’m not sure how long it’ll take to get across this one. We can’t only rely on your divinity to get us through.”

Ann hesitated before sharing her thoughts. “Honestly, I know they helped, but the torches were not the most effective at protecting us. Is there anything we can do differently?”

Adir shook his head. “Fire’s never been a perfect defense against The Darkness. We can double up this time around - one in each hand. We unfortunately don't have any shadow suppression torches.”

She accepted two torches from Adir, “I've seen those in Termily. Were you using shadow suppression runes in earlier expeditions?”

As Adir lit his torches, Ann struggled to maintain her balance atop his shoulders. “Indeed,” he began, “the design originated from your mother. Later, Faer refined and mass-produced them. They consume a hefty amount of divinity but are far more effective than simple fire.” He extended his flaming torch, and Ann lit hers, ensuring no sap dripped onto him.

“I’ve yet to meet Faer,” she confessed. “He wasn’t in the stories I grew up with.”

Adir gave a light chuckle. “Yeah. He wasn’t in any of the stories I knew either. Haco must have seen a need for him though. We’re lucky to have him. Without his rune carving skills and resupply capabilities, we would have lost many more wars with The Darkness in recent times.” He held his hand out and lit up her other torch. “Are you ready?” he asked.

She held both torches out, angling them slightly behind herself. She took a deep breath, the weight of their impending journey pressing down on her. "I'm as prepared as I'll ever be," she affirmed.

Adir crossed the boundary from day into eternal night, and Ann immediately felt the same effects she did with the last gloom. Her hearing once again felt muffled as she looked across the bleak landscape from an elevated position. She momentarily activated her aspect, seeing the threads were not any different in this gloom than they were in the first she had seen. They still swirled about in a massive circle, slowly moving up, before raining down slowly in black spikey specks. In her vision though, the white strands outlined something she wouldn’t have been able to see in the darkness without her aspect.

“Adir! I see a wall and beyond it, structures!” Ann shouted, trying to overcome the eerie silence. Not only did the buildings intrigue her, but she also detected a vast, shimmering stretch beyond. “There seems to be a large body of water just on the other side of the city.” She kept quiet, however, about the castle tower in the middle of the city. She could see strands of light streaming out of the center of it directly into the sky like flames. “That’s the center of the storm.” she told herself, certain now that it was the source that fueled the gloom.

Adir took a moment, sniffing the air and listening carefully even as he ran down the hill they had entered on, heading toward the city. "Yes, it’s probably a lot of water. It would explain why this city was built here. A waterway would have offered trade advantages and acted as a natural defense."

Ann peered ahead, "So, going around the city might mean navigating an even bigger obstacle."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Adir nodded in agreement. "Navigating unknown waters in the dark, without a boat and without knowledge of its breadth or dangers? We'd lose more time and face greater risks. Through the city is our most direct path. We’ll go straight across." He dashed forward again at an incredible pace while Ann held on as tightly as she could with her legs.

She cast a wary eye upward. The shadows were unnaturally calm. Every moment they drew closer to the walls, she anticipated they would notice their intrusion, but the shadows remained distant. Those that they ran into moved around their bodies, clearly avoiding them.

Finally Adir stopped a few meters from the towering wall. The structure, however, was not dilapidated. The stones shone with a perfect black mirror against the torchlight. Adir hurriedly let her down to the powdered dirt. “Step back a bit,” he whispered to Ann, his breath fogging in the coldness of the gloom. She barely heard him due to her hearing feeling so strange. Stepping forward, Adir brought his fist back and slammed it into the stone wall. The impact sent spider-web cracks sprawling outwards across the perfect black mirror. “Damn.” Adir muttered under his breath.

Stepping a few paces back, he charged forward once more, driving his shoulder into the newly formed breach. The wall crumbled into a pile of rubble in response, revealing an opening for them to advance through. On the other side was an alleyway, leading left or right, but clearly another building was blocking them straight ahead.

Clambering over the debris and finally back aboard Adir’s shoulders, they took off running down the alleyway behind the buildings. “Why aren’t the shadows attacking us?” Ann whispered beside Adir’s head.

“Either they’re oblivious, or The Darkness is scheming. Sometimes, it believes in ‘lessons.’”

“Lessons like that?” She asked directly into his ear.

Adir sighed, “I can't say for certain. It once told me I was too slow to learn. Now, it merely tries to kill me or uses Taya to torment me.”

Ann went quiet as the alleyway ended with another building ahead of them. Ann looked to the left and saw a darkened path only partially illuminated by their torchlight. “Could that lead to a central road?” she asked.

Adir considered it briefly. “It seems to go directly toward the heart of the city. I want to stay out of sight if we can.” Without waiting, he thrust his hand into the wall before them, and with sheer force, dislodged several stones, creating an entrance large enough for him to slip through.

However, as soon as they set foot inside, an odd discrepancy in the torchlight caught Ann's attention. In one shadowed corner, the glow from her torch seemed swallowed by darkness. Her eyes darted over to spot a shadowy figure, its form flickering and nebulous, hunched and motionless against the wall. She whispered urgently, a hint of dread in her voice, “Adir...there's someone here.”

Adir quickly left the room before the shadowed person noticed them, but as they moved through the building, Ann noticed more and more of these figures. Everywhere she looked, shadowy silhouettes loomed—some seated as if frozen mid-conversation, others lying down as though in eternal slumber, all hauntingly still. All remained motionless as if their lives had been put on hold. Until finally, Adir burst through a door and a shadowy man stood there, staring back straight at them.

Recoiling in shock, Adir's movement sent Ann sprawling from his shoulders. She landed hard, and one of her torches tumbled away on the stone of the interior room they just ran through. She managed to keep a grip on the other one while struggling back to her feet. Adir slammed the door shut in the face of the unmoving man with a groan. “Forgive me, Ann. This place... it’s like seeing my lost sister,” he voice quivered as he turned to help her up.

Ann, trying to shake off the growing dread, urged, “It’s okay. Let’s find another exit,” As she turned to recover her torch, but she noticed it was quite a bit darker than before. Adir grabbed her shoulder firmly with one hand, holding her back. He saw it at the same time she did. A dozen shadow forms were spread out and moved slowly through the room toward them.

As they advanced, the shadows composing their forms seemed almost unstable. Each faltering step saw fragments of darkness, akin to dust, break away and momentarily dissipate, only to reform moments later. When fully assembled, they moved with purpose, but in their fragmented state, their movements were erratic, giving them a chillingly unpredictable gait. The door beside Adir creaked open slowly, but he braced it with a firm hand. “Don’t let them touch you. If enough of those fragments get inside your skin, they can take control of you.”

Ann shuddered watching the people move towards them. “Adir… we’re going to need another way out.”

“Hold the door closed.” he requested and Ann moved to take his position.

She felt a strength pressing against her own. Suddenly though, there was another added on and then another. “I think there’s more than one behind here,” she stated, trying to hold her torch out to see how close the other four were getting that were still in the same room as her.

Adir’s torch still lit up the area beside her as he started pounding on the wall beside them. The pounding was persistent, each thud echoing through the building. Ann strained to keep the door shut, her muscles already tired from the effort. The added pressure against it was intensifying, and every so often she could feel a prickly sensation of the shadowy particles trying to sneak through the gaps that bit into her hand and arm. The light from her torch flickered, casting an eerie glow on the shadow figures advancing on her, their broken gait becoming increasingly more urgent.

Suddenly, a chunk of the wall beside Adir crumbled away, revealing another alleyway. But Adir stepped back instead of running forward. “Shit,” he muttered, holding the torch ahead of himself.

“What!” Ann shouted, trying to control her rising fear. She held her own torch out in front of her to ward off the four shadows approaching her.

“More of them just outside,” he declared, backing into the room to rejoin her. He slammed a hand against the door, giving her relief from holding it, while holding his own torch out to the opening he just made. Ann's heart clenched, her breath catching in her throat as she caught sight of more shadowy figures.

With a held breath, Ann tapped into her Aspect of Light, a familiar warmth rushing through her body. In her vision she saw each wisp of light like a lifeline, taking her away from the suffocating darkness. She kept pulling at them until she felt she had enough held between her fingertips. Then she did what she did to Klarx so long ago. She flung the light out at the nearest shadow in the room. The room erupted with a bright light causing nearly everyone to recoil from the sudden illumination.

Through the brightness she saw two of the shadows fill with the light as the darkness of their existence fused with the threads she sent into them, converting them back to figures of light themselves. Before she could grab their wisps with her aspect, Palitern reclaimed them, taking the two converted persons downward through the floor. The room was once again cast back into darkness save for the torchlight.

Ann prepared to grab at the light swirling around the gloom again when she saw she had used up 4% of her divinity with that one effort. She lowered her free hand realizing she did not have enough divinity to clear the room and alleyway. Adir roughly grabbed her arm, pulling her behind him as he ran through the gap she had made.