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We walked on in silence.
My feet kicked against the dirt as I walked; I held my blade ready in my right hand. The cold air stung, the dull feeling still somehow registering as pain on the numbness of my skin. I closed my arms in and pulled the now-tattered cloak around me further. It warmed parts of me, and I was thankful for that. But as the howling wind blasted the warm cloth off my skin for what felt like the millionth time, my thanks was only getting smaller.
I took another step forward, walking under a small break in the forest’s oppressive canopy. A ray of moonlight flushed over me, revealing the resigned scowl that painted my face.
My eyes flicked to Myris, his grey hair glinting in the light. I stared harshly at the back of his head, the fire of anger fueling my gaze. A small, shriveled, still-angry part of me believed that if I stared hard enough, he’d turn around and admit his fault in everything.
He didn’t. Obviously.
The sounds of our footsteps rang softly through the trees, our signature metal boots clashing with the ground thud after thud. The almost scarily consistent rhythm of our feet beating on the ground echoed in my head, only accentuating the cold, dead silence that permeated all around us.
My eyes scanned over the party, watching the determined way both Jason and Carter were still watching the woods. We’d killed one of those things, I reminded myself. But that didn’t mean we were safe. We were still deep in the forest, somewhere I only half-recognized in the dark.
I tightened the grip on my sword, my arms flexing as I thought. Each of my fellow rangers looked vigilant; stoic, tight expressions on each of their faces as they continued to scan the trees. I tried to echo their actions, to make myself useful, but I was just too tired. A different kind of anger rose up in my mind as the exhaustion in my bones reminded me again of just how weak I was.
How weak my body was, I corrected myself. A small, mirthful grin grew against my scowl as I flexed my muscles, remembering the power I used to have.
I’d get there, I told myself. It was just going to take more work. Despite my frustration and the cloud of fear that was still slowly fading in my mind, I kept myself calm. I knew the truth—even if I wasn’t all that excited to accept it.
Getting to my peak form took time. Even back in Credon, it had taken me years just to get to a point where my body never disobeyed my orders. And I’d only been training with the one I currently possessed for a couple of months.
I would get there, I told myself, cementing the thought in my mind. It was just going to take more time.
A howling spike of wind slapped me in the face, flying perfectly through the hole in my cloak and onto my skin. I grimaced in pain, pleading to my body to make up its mind. Either the wind should’ve been painful, or my skin should’ve been numb. But the middle-ground I was feeling that mixed both of the feelings was just worse than either one by itself.
I shook my head and bit down, ignoring the pain. As the howling wind died down back into the brisk washes that continued to break against my face, we were left in silence again.
None of us were talking. Not even Jason.
After the terror—I had to remember that it had a name—had been killed, I’d come up with an ultimatum. I had hundreds of questions, each more serious than the last, and I needed answers to each of them.
But somewhere back in the woods, with the fear still fresh in my mind, I’d said I was only going to ask them once we got back. I hadn’t meant it fully; I really wanted answers as quickly as I could get them, but Myris had kept true to my statement.
When I’d started to ask him questions, he’d just shrugged me off. He’d made some excuse about how I’d be distracting him and that, just as I had said, he would answer my questions once we got back to the lodge.
I hadn’t taken that very well, even with how tired I been—and still was—but I still hadn’t gotten much. The most I got out of Myris was that the beastly, humanoid thing that fed off of my fear was called a terror. Besides that, everything else I’d got had come in the form of a complaint.
After each of my questions—and his refusal to answer them—Myris had grumbled about how I’d disobeyed a warning or how their mission had been wholly unsuccessful. Apparently, before they’d heard my scream and come rushing to my aid, they hadn’t even encountered another terror or found the ‘source,’ as Myris had called it.
Myris’ complaints, though, with the little information I’d gotten from them, had only raised more questions. But with the cold still seeping through my clothes and Myris’ aggressive disregard, I’d shut up.
But as my legs stepped on, the cold flame of exhaustion starting to eat away at my bones, I had a whole new question that I desperately wanted to ask.
“How much longer do we have to walk?” I asked, the tinge of childlike complaint in my voice.
Jason straightened up, stopping his watch of the forest. He turned back to me, a strand of his light hair shining in my eye. “Not long,” he said firmly. I heard Myris angrily mumble something to the wind. “From the looks of it, the lodge is coming up soon.”
I squinted at Jason as he turned back around and adjusted his stance. There was no smirk on his face, no flash of arrogance in his eyes. With the night pressing in on us and an unsuccessful mission following in our wake, his attention had completely changed.
I shook my head lightly, casting my eyes back to the ground. The dimly lit, dirt covered ground looked the same to me as it had when I was fighting the terror. The trees around me, I noticed, were starting to look more familiar, but it was the kind of familiarity that wasn’t concrete. Even though I could recognize the trees, they still almost all looked the same and even the thought of navigating my way through them seemed far out of my reach.
I didn’t know how they did it, but I was thankful that they could. Memories rushed up in my mind. The scream I’d let out as the fear had gripped me echoed in my ears and a shiver raced down my spine. They’d saved my life. I really was thankful that they could.
But with the tip of my nose on the verge of falling off, my thanks was quickly brushed away by pain and I pushed myself to continue.
We walked on in silence.
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The slowly dimming moonlight shined down on us as we walked through the clearing and toward the lodge. The confusing, gnarled sprawl of the forest was put further and further behind us as the simple thought of rest pushed us more quickly toward the large wooden building.
My legs screamed at me as I continued to walk on, the pain in them completely uncaring about just how close rest actually was. The scabbard by my side swayed in the wind, carrying with it the sword that I’d long since sheathed in its walls.
Anger still seethed beneath my skin, spawning dozens of thoughts and even more questions that I needed answers to. A devilish grin took my face as we walked around the lodge’s familiar walls, the subtle warmth of the torch still burning on the building’s front already brushing against my skin.
“We’re back,” I said, trying to keep the anger from my voice. Myris twisted his neck and turned to me as the orange light of the lodge’s front door came into view.
“Yes we are,” the older ranger said, slinging his bow onto his back. “The danger is gone.” I could see him gritting his teeth. “I guess you may ask your questions now.”
Hearing the small concession sent a jolt of pleasure to my core. My grin grew wider, my teeth shining in the dim orange light. “Good… Now what the hell is going on?”
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Myris sneered at me and I heard Jason exhale sharply from his nose. Carter furrowed his brow and looked at me curiously from the side.
“You’re going to have to be more specific than that.” Myris looked completely unamused.
The fear I’d felt less than an hour before stung from my memories. “What just happened? What was that thing?”
Myris cocked an eyebrow at me. I could see him gritting his teeth. “It was a terror. I’ve already said that.”
I nodded, instantly moving past the bitterness in his tone. “Okay, but what does that even mean? I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
Myris scoffed, the sound cut off by a sharp gust of wind. “How? They tell ghost stories about those things to kids.”
“Leave him alone,” Jason cut in. His smirk was back. “The kid’s new around here.”
I glared at him. He smirked at me. My fingers flexed as they hovered over the hilt of my blade. “I’m not—”
“Can we get inside?” Carter asked, ripping me from my anger. I looked up at him, my eyes scanning over his flushed face and the desperate intent in his brown eyes. I didn’t know Carter that well, his short brown hair and toned form kind of made him blend in with the rest of the rangers. But remembering the numb pain on my own skin, I couldn’t do anything but agree with him.
I nodded to the hunched ranger as he swung the door open. A wave of warmth escaped out into the cold night, returning some of the feeling to the skin on my hands. I took my body’s hint as quickly as I could and followed Carter into the lodge, walking directly in his wake.
I filed through the large, dark wooden door after Carter, Jason filed in after me, and Myris let the door slam behind him at the same time as a grunt. A long breath escaped my lips as I walked through the lodge’s entryway and into the dimly lit training area. The pain of the cold slowly bled off my skin, leaving only relief in its wake.
The lodge was quiet, probably a consequence of the time, and it was mostly dark. Aside from the torch out on the front of the building, the only other light I could see was the small fireplace underneath the golden emblem on the wall.
The stone-surrounded fireplace crackled brilliantly, filling the room with soft warmth and dim light. I’d seen the fireplace before; it was hard to miss anything in the room that I’d trained in hundreds of times. But since the very first time I’d stepped in the lodge with Kye, exhaustion similar to what I was feeling now biting at my bones, I’d never seen it lit.
Feeling its warmth on my skin and hearing the its soft crackling though, I couldn’t complain. Even as small as the fire was, it was thousands of times better than the frigid, howling wind I’d had to experience outside.
Myris cleared his throat, the loud sound echoing throughout the lodge. I turned to him, frustration already moving its way back into my mind.
“What other simple things don’t you know?” he asked. I glared at him.
“I just wanted an explanation of exactly what those things—the terrors—are.” It would’ve taken more energy for me to keep the bitterness out of my voice than to just let it out. So I let it out. “If they’re messing with our forest,” Myris scrunched his nose, “then I want to know what the hell they are.”
The older ranger and I were left staring at each other. Neither of us said a word as I waited for him to give an explanation.
“They’re magical beings,” a voice said, one that definitely wasn’t Myris. I turned, watching Jason walk over to where Carter was standing by the weapon rack before he continued. “They’re shapeshifting beasts that live and feed off of our fear.”
My eyes went wide, the truth that I already half-knew sounding much more ominous coming from his mouth. “Magical beasts? Like the other things we hunt in the forest?”
Jason started to nod before cutting it off midway. “No. Not exactly.” The slight, resting smirk that he’d had on his face slowly faded as he thought. “They’re completely separate from any normal animals.”
I saw Carter nodding from the side of my vision. I flicked my eyes to him, watching him look closely at one of the knives on the rack. “Lorah’s always said to think of them as just pure manifestations of magical energy.”
My brow furrowed and lines appeared on my forehead. “How does that even work? That thing looked…” I had to fight the shiver racing down my spine. “Terrifying.”
“Exactly,” Carter said, still not turning to me. “They’re manifestations in the mold of human fear. They usually take a form of whatever scares their victim the most.”
My breathing accelerated. What he was saying was ridiculous; it didn’t make any sense in the world that I knew. What he was describing was something straight out of obscure folklore. And yet, I’d seen it for myself, experienced it with my own eyes. Hadn’t I?
“Which is why you have to keep your mind sharp, to keep your walls up,” Myris said through his teeth. I could already hear the comment that he’d decided not to make. “The only goal of those things is to increase your fear. It’s their food. They’ll do anything if it makes their victims more scared.”
Memories rushed up in front of my eyes. The cold, the memories of my father, the terrifying images of the rangers around me. The terror had picked out my worst fears and shoved them in my face just so it could feed. The simple thought alone left a sour taste on my tongue.
“That explains a lot,” I said. Even staring at Myris, my tone was void of anger. “That’s how it lured me into the woods. It picked at my fear of not doing my job, of letting you guys die in the forest.”
Myris’ features softened a bit and he opened his mouth, but he didn’t get to be the person to speak.
“What?” Carter said from behind me. I turned on my heel, watching the knife-wielding ranger staring directly at me. “You should’ve been able to tell that it was fake though, their imitations always sound hollow and emotionless.”
I furrowed my brow and started to shake my head. “The first one did, but the second time I heard it, it sounded exactly like Jason.”
Jason’s eyebrow shot up and I saw his hand tense up for a moment. “What? Exactly like me?” I nodded.
Carter’s eyes widened at the question. “It shouldn’t have been able to do tha—”
“Shit,” Jason mumbled. Carter’s words died in the air as we all turned our eyes to the swordsman. “It must really be bad this time.”
Carter’s face paled almost imperceptibly in the dim orange light. My eyes flicked between the two rangers. Myris let out a curious sound behind me, but I didn’t turn toward him.
More questions rose up on my tongue and I was not going to wait to ask them. “This time? I’ve never seen one of these things before, how rare are they?”
Jason’s eyes snapped to me. “They’re almost nonexistent for most of the year. They usually only start appearing right after winter, coming in just to feed off the fear of all the spring game,” his gaze wavered for a moment, “or off the fear of the town.”
I swallowed audibly, his words ringing in my mind. “But why do they only come once a year?”
Jason shrugged. “I don’t pretend to know the reasons for the cycle. But every year there’s always some cause… some source of their return.” The word source rang out in my head. Myris’ complaints from our walk through the woods played back in my head.
“Source?”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “Last year, they came later than normal and we found the source to be just a mass of them collected near a watering hole somewhere deep in the forest. They had been feeding off the fear of the animals for weeks before we found them.”
I scrunched my nose, the thought of a terror—let alone a mass of them—sending bile rising in my throat. “Do they always come in masses like that?” I wanted the answer to my question to be no.
“No,” Carter said, answering perfectly my thoughts. “But there’s always something that brings them. Terrors never appear alone. Last year’s source was a bit of a special case because we didn’t even know they were there for so long.”
A smug grin inched upward on Jason’s face. “It was a special case. We’re lucky I was there in the party when we found it too.” Carter rolled his eyes. Jason’s arrogance really knew no bounds.
“Whatever’s causing it this year could be even worse though,” Myris said. I twisted back toward him, but he wasn’t looking at us. His eyes were instead on the door and his hand was clenched into a fist by his side. “They never come during the winter.”
Silence took the room. Jason opened his mouth, but no words came out. An understanding seemed to build between all of us, one that cemented just how serious the situation was. It was serious to me, the horrible, debilitating fear the terror had brought out of me still all-too-fresh in my mind, but I knew so little. For them, it was much larger than one terror. I was just glad the one was dead.
“At least we killed one,” I said, finally breaking the silence. Myris turned back to me, the disdain once again building behind his eyes.
“Yes, but we didn’t even get close to finding the source. Hours of hunting resulted in nothing. If it weren’t for the sure signs, I would’ve thought that their scourge hadn’t come at all.” Myris straightened himself. “And one of us is going to need to give that report to Lorah.”
Again, there was silence in the room, but this one didn’t last very long.
“I’ll do it,” Jason said, a smile tugging at his lips. Myris nodded before moving his gaze back to the door.
“You can do it in the morning.” The older ranger’s command brought out a soft grumble from the swordsman. “It’s way too late now and we all need rest.”
I nodded silently to myself and I assumed the other rangers did as well. My legs reminded me of just how they felt and the clouded fatigue in my mind longed for the sweet release of sleep. The fearful part of me, the part still shaken by the terror, screamed at me to stay awake, to ward off the nightmares it was sure would come. But under the overwhelming pressure that I still felt in my bones, that little voice could barely be heard.
I turned back around, just in time to watch Carter moving off through the hallway and down to his room. Jason followed quickly after, flashing me another smug smile before he disappeared. A short chuckle slipped from my lips as I followed their lead and walked to the edge of the training room.
The whole time I walked, though, my ears had missed one thing. And when I turned around, I saw Myris still standing by the door with his fist clenched tight. He hadn’t moved. I tilted my head and opened my mouth.
“I’m going to be up just a little longer,” Myris said, answering the question I hadn’t even asked yet. “I still think somebody should keep watch.”
His eyes bored into me, staring me blank in the soul. I could see his suspicion in the way he stared, the slight lines on his eyes as he squinted at me. It was good to know that something hadn’t changed, I told myself dryly.
Myris still didn’t fully trust me, not that I expected my encounter with the terror to have changed that. But it didn’t matter much to me. I’d gotten more explanation from him in one night than I had over the entirety of my knowing him, so I counted that as a win.
And with my body once again reminding me of my need to sleep, I turned away from the stubborn ranger, left the crackling fire behind me, and walked my way down the hallway in peace.