Harlan saw several of the monsters going towards Sam and Liat, and he rushed forward, but something stopped him.
It was like a statue of something from the deep brought to life.
She and her features were frozen, yet full of burning fury.
He clashed with the monster, trying to get to Sam and Liat.
Its hand was malformed, like it had been uncarved, left as just a jagged stone.
The force of the impact split his chest nearly in half, and he reached forward to grab his organs which came flying out.
Before he even had a chance to heal, a wave of stone shrapnel was sent towards him.
His body was full of holes as he knelt there on the ground.
Why was he so tired? This should’ve been nothing to regenerate.
How long had he been fighting?
The monster didn’t seem interested in finishing him off, it just kept roaring at him from a distance.
‘I need to run away from here, I need to stop this, please, get away before I hurt you.’
He froze, a hundred thoughts ran through his mind, and he took a second look at the monster with its stone hair and mace hand.
No, that wasn’t right, but he didn’t know how, he didn’t know why.
He turned the sigil off letting the pain focus his mind, then looked at the monster again.
“Safira?”
“You’re awake. HE’S AWAKE.”
The camp seemed to be relatively safe, the fighting had stopped.
“What… what happened?”
Sam and Liat were on the sidelines, staying away from the fight itself that was surely be beyond them.
“I don’t… I.”
“Liat, explain to him.”
“Coronach gave you a scroll, so you could take the madness into yourself.”
“Madness? What madness?”
He noticed Safira was using her mace to support herself and gripping her side.
“Did I hurt you?”
“You caught me off guard, so it doesn’t count.”
He was suddenly hit with a splitting headache and started to scream.
Safira lifted her mace again, but Harlan wasn’t being aggressive.
He was there, the endless sky.
“Have you even thought to becoming my champion yet?”
“Why am I here?”
“I just said why.”
“No, why right now, in this moment.”
“Oh, because I can solve your problem. I’ll do it anyway, no cost to you.”
“I don’t even know what my problem is.”
“You are fighting with something in your head, and I can force it out.”
“What am I-”
“You can figure it out yourself in time.”
Back in reality, the soldiers looked at Harlan and gagged.
His jaw made a popping sound and out of his mouth crawled what seemed to be an infant made of brain matter.
The malformed thing tried to crawl across the ground, but its limbs were too soft and squishy to move at anything but a slug's pace.
Nobody knew how to react to what they were seeing, and they didn’t want to touch it either.
Harlan threw up pink fluid and then crawled closer to the thing, slamming his fist down on it.
Most of those watching emptied their stomachs.
Harlan was asleep again, trying to sort through his fractured memories and make sense of how he ended up fighting with Safira.
The camp was in a daze, but that was seemingly all that was happening.
He recovered, but the rest of the soldiers had to lean on whatever they could around them.
Harlan gave a quick check up to a few of the men then a shadow came over him.
“Boy, use this.”
Coronach tossed him a scroll.
“What?”
“It worked, Nemain came for you. Now I hunt.”
The dog caught the scent of blood, and rushed toward it.
Harlan opened the scroll, something straight from The Darkness and written on leather whose origin he’d rather not think of.
It was clearly Fomorian, instructions on how one properly controls emotional feeding, stealing emotions and putting them on others.
There was also a segment at the end explaining why they would do this, but it had been cut from the scroll, and by the freshness of it, this had been done just before it was given to him.
The Darkness had told him before that he couldn’t force someone to feel a certain way, that empathy was only ever raising the peaks and lowering the valleys of emotion in another being.
This first lie being unraveled sent his mind racing with ideas about what else was a lie.
But no, that wasn’t important now.
He jumped into action, pulling the song from the men around him first.
He felt it crawling around his mind like a snake, coiling around his thoughts, devouring them and laying eggs in their place.
The more madness he took into himself the closer to a tipping point he got.
His sigil activated by itself, trying to protect his soul from the poison in his mind, and it had some success.
He saw it then.
Coronach was in the distance fighting Nemain, and a few dozen monsters, men with blue skin, red eyes, and bulging muscles rushed the camp.
Their hair was straight like spikes, sparks came from their rubbing as if they were flint and steel.
Their legs were backwards, and they jumped forward like a springing hare.
Their hearts were like war drums.
He could see the fighting, that each blow from them was enough to tear men in two, that they devoured some whole with their mouths that stretched past the ears, opening like the hinges on a chest more than a jaw.
But he did not remember this. That was the feeling he had, that his eyes were not his own, his feet were not his own, his hands that grappled with the strange once-humans were not his.
There was no sensation, he could not feel them, their heat, their skin being hard or soft, the breaking of bones, it felt as if he was being told a story and making it up in his own head.
Then there was darkness.
Harlan saw Sam, he saw him knock her to the ground, then Liat, her neck nearly snapping at his punch.
He couldn’t tell what even led to this point.
He loomed over the smaller woman, he saw her lithe frame, he saw the fear in her eyes, his own reflection was nothing but a shadow.
“Please. What would Vivi think if she heard-”
He heard the screams, he felt nothing of the contact, but he felt the anguish, this thing in him, this beast awoken, it was not entirely mindless, and it loved Viviane as he did.
He ran from Sam, he healed Liat’s neck, and then he looked around the camp.
He felt in control again, the scent of roasting flesh from a soldier who had been tossed into a still burning fire, the cold wind that cut him to the bone, the screaming, the blood on his hands.
Then darkness again.
He jolted awake, his body convulsing and letting out a sharp breath.
The walls told him that this was the facility, but he was unsure of what was real.
In the corner, he saw a woman, sitting in a chair, blood pouring from every orifice.
He breathed weakly, but he seemed satisfied.
Harlan didn’t understand anything he was seeing, it was just a disjointed mess of events that he wasn’t even sure were all his.
----------------------------------------
Sam and Liat had been sleeping peacefully when Harlan suddenly burst inside and woke them up.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Something is wrong, be ready.”
“What?”
“I had a bad dream.”
“Fuck… can’t this guy just drink some warm milk instead of-”
“Sam, no. Harlan, we’ll get ready.”
With a groan, they got out of bed and dressed themselves.
“They just had to attack while I was sleeping.”
“Shut up, you don’t need rest as much as I am, I need my beauty sleep.”
Liat kissed her.
“If you get any more beautiful then it’ll cause problems. I can’t be fighting men off all the time.”
“Ha ha ha. Beauty sleep is to maintain, not to build. It’s like basic exercises every morning.”
“Where is your sense of humor at today?”
“In bed, where I should be. Fuck. We’ve been here with him for weeks, and nothing happened, not once. Now I’m used to actually getting a full night’s sleep and he has to wake us up in the… I don’t know, is the sun up out there or not?”
“Doesn’t matter, fights don’t wait for the right time. And something happened, all those rebels got taken away by fairy circles and then Xol did… something.”
“That doesn’t count, that’s god shit, not our problem.”
“Sorry, but Harlan is god shit, and we’re rolling around in it too just by being here.
I hope we just need to kill rebels instead of getting into Fae shit.”
“You’re gonna fucking jinx us. Just like in the Bluelake forest, you started joking about plant monsters and suddenly I’m getting attacked by a fucking tree.”
“That barely counted, that was just a Grasping Wood and we got you out in seconds.”
“Yeah, well you were the one with a branch almost in her-”
A soldier came in.
“Commander Orden wants to know why you haven’t reported to him yet.”
“Fu-”
Liat covered Sam’s mouth.
“We will be out soon, we simply needed to wake up and double check our equipment.”
“I will convey this to him.”
Orden and his night commanders were unhappy; Sam and Liat arrived near the end of the meeting..
“You woke me up, you gathered my night commanders, because you had a bad dream?
Do you know why we do not seek out seers, why they are never officially used in any military operations? Be-”
“Because seeing is unreliable, it requires not only that the seer is strong, something which cannot be accurately tested by any objective standard, but also that the seer and the person being reported to is capable of interpreting the sight, a nearly impossible task due to the nature of seeing.”
Orden glared at Harlan.
“So you know all of this, but you still decided to wake me, to gather my night commanders without my consent, and to have us ready to raise the alarm so we can repel a threat that you can’t even be sure is coming?”
“Of course.”
Liat had to stop herself from laughing. Harlan could’ve explained why he thought it was justified, but he wanted Orden to ask him for a clarification, and Orden knew this.
He waited a full minute, the icy stares of burly men with pronounced brows directed at him.
“Fine, if you won’t ask, I’ll explain. My sights in the past have foretold imminent danger, and as I told you before, I am drawn to places where something terrible is either going to happen, or has already happened.
We’ve already had rebel forces disappear, and Xol has already told us that Fae were involved in this.”
“But he handled that already, did he not?”
“Well, he didn’t really tell us that, he said that everyone was dead and that he didn’t find any useful information about the Fae.”
“I am going back to sleep.”
“What if I said that Ratthel was in danger?”
“Why would I care about a single soldier?”
Despite his tone remaining casual, he sat back down in his seat.
“Because she’s your daughter.”
He scoffed.
“Are you just guessing?”
“Yes.Believe me or don’t, my people are going to stay on the wall and watch for threats.”
“I’m going to bed.”
Sam and Liat shivered on the wall, but Harlan seemed perfectly content.
“The north wind, it’s calling. Perhaps my blood wishes to return to the place of my grandfather.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“Sam. You know that you don’t need to reply to me, right? That perhaps I was just thinking out loud.”
“Sorry, she just-”
“Liat, let her talk.”
“I should be sleeping, not sitting up here in the cold because you had a bad dream.”
“Before the Crisis of Borden, I had a bad dream, and tens of thousands died, millions could’ve if I hadn’t put a stop to the spiders there. My sister and Liat have been picking up the slack for you, but you were with them because they liked you, not because you were some great asset.”
“Leave her-”
“Liat, you shouldn’t be so quick to jump to her defense.”
“She’s-”
“A grown woman who has a shitty attitude. Sam, you would’ve never made it in the army, that’s the truth, you had the potential, but you have a massive chip on your shoulder.”
“Oh yeah, thanks mister mass murderer, I’ll be sure to listen to your advice about how to act.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. You want to snap back at people, and because these last few weeks you spent more time with me you went right back to acting that way despite us not actually getting closer.”
“What is even the point of this, why does this matter?”
“It doesn’t, I’m just killing time.”
“Prick.”
At first light, a song was carried in the wind.
“What the hell is that?”
“Hmm?”
“That fucking sound, is it singing? A whistle? Drums? Just screaming? I can’t tell and it’s driving me mad.”
She staggered, grabbing Liat with one hand and her head with the other.
“Harlan, do you hear anything?”
“Hmm hmm hmm, hmm hmm hmm… It’s beautiful. But she isn’t singing for me.”
Liat began to hear it, but only through Harlan.
The sound seemed to resonate through his body, his bones vibrating with the hum.
Then the song was silenced, and the mountain pass closed.
“GET DOWN.”
The slamming of mountains together produced a boom like an angry god, sending a wall of air at the camp that pulled those tents which were improperly secured and burst the eardrums of those on the wall.
Coronach appeared alongside the woman who The Darkness used as a messenger.
“The madness shall begin soon.”
Harlan was handed a scroll, but she was more focused on the woman.
Sam elbowed her.
“HEY, WHY DON’T YOU JUST ASK TO FUCK INSTEAD OF STARING.”
“Sam, I love you, don’t be like that. Coronach, what-”
“Don’t speak to me, desert born. The dog has her scent.”
“I won’t fail again, this time we’ve got her.”
“Then we hunt.”
Both Coronach and the woman turned to shadows and glided across the ground towards the mountain.
A wall of energy was
Harlan was focused on the scroll, and once he read it, he began to heal the people around him.
“What do we need to do?”
“Dodge Sam’s attack first.”
“Huh?”
She didn’t understand the order, but she turned around and Sam had a dagger out.
“What’s gotten into you?”
Harlan opened a gate behind her and put Sam in a headlock.
As his forehead pressed into her, she calmed.
Sam groaned before she spoke.
“Thanks.”
“What was that?”
“Nemain’s warcry drives people into a state of frenzy, I need to take their madness into me.
Liat, go to Orden, tell him to order the golems to start restraining the soldiers before they begin to lose their minds.”
“What if he is also losing his mind?”
“He’s half Golden. Sam, you’re with me, do whatever you can to keep the others off of me while I’m taking the madness.”
As she flew through the camp back to Orden’s tent, she saw everyone stuck in a daze; she could feel a poison welling up in their minds.
When she stepped to enter the tent the two guards suddenly changed, lust and a purple hue filled their eyes as they drew their swords at her.
She easily dodged their strikes and punched each of them hard enough to knock the air from their lungs then bound them with stone cuffs so they didn’t hurt themselves or anyone else.
Orden was trying to block out the song as best he could, his efforts giving him a migraine.
“Orden, you need to order the golems to start restraining the soldiers.”
“I’m sure he’s… laughing it up, he was right, I was wrong.”
The song manifested in more than simple rage.
“No, he is just worried about saving as many lives as he can. Stop being a baby and get the hell up and give that order.”
She pulled on his arm, but he seemed content to stay.
“Fucking Golden.”
“I know, I can’t stand them, that’s why I left. Now do the right thing or shut the fuck up.”
He began to laugh, losing the fight with the song.
Liat lacked Harlan’s finesse with emotions, not his own, he was an example of how one shouldn’t try to manage themselves, but others.
Rather than trying to talk him down or make him see why he had to beat the madness, she slapped Orden.
“YOU BITCH, I COULD HAVE YOU-”
She hit him again.
“WHATEVER YOU HAVE PLANNED HAS TO WAIT UNTIL WE BOTH SURVIVE WHATEVER IS COMING.”
Her words seemed to finally wash his mind clean.
Yet as he stood from his bed, the ground shook, then came the shockwave that knocked them both off their feet and caused the tent to fall on them.
“WHAT WAS THAT?”
He said, muffled by the enchanted canvas layered with mammoth fur.
“CORONACH IS FIGHTING NEMAIN.”
“WHO IS CORONACH?”
“DOESN’T MATTER.”
The pair worked together to lift the tent back up and find the military issue command rod while chunks of stone rained down on the area from the fight.
Liat was the one who first picked it up, which caused a strong electrical shock to run through her.
Once the rod was in Orden’s hands the golems began to move according to a new order.
They were already trying to break up the fights, but now they were allowed to disable limbs through any non-lethal means at their disposal.
The pair cut themselves out of the tent, or rather, Liat cut them out, since her blades were a gift from Balor. They cost as much as a modest home in a city and were forged by Brig himself out of high quality skysteel.
Orden meanwhile had a good blade, he was a commander of an important camp, but his weapon was still more or less standard issue compared to the one of a kind scimitars.
The shaking and shifting caused an eruption of several mountains whose real nature was hidden.
They stood there in shock once they were out, the sky had been blackened by thick black plumes.
The stones which pelted them were small, but as they looked around several people had been crushed by giant flaming boulders.
“What hell has been unleashed on us?”
“I’m trying my hardest to not say he told you so. Come, we need to just-”
A roar pierced the air, followed by a dozen more.
“Oh what the fuck is that.”
“No beast that I know.”
She and Orden went to the wall to get a better look.
Monsters with blue skin and spiked hair.
Harlan appeared through a gate and wrapped his arms around them.
Then he began to laugh.
“I’M GOING TO KILL THOSE FUCKING THINGS.”
They didn’t say a thing until his hands were off of them.
“Has he lost his mind?”
“Probably. He’s been absorbing the insanity of the people in camp.”
“Can you handle him if he tries to-”
“Nope, not a chance, maybe a few years ago, but not a chance now. I’m calling people in.”
Liat didn’t have a direct line to the royals, but she had a direct line to Adina, which was basically the same thing.
Orden used his amulet to request reinforcements of his own, but they would pale in comparison to her’s.
Safira and a squad of royal guards arrived to quell the riot, not even bothering to sort the sane from the insane.
The one large downside to telekinesis being taught to so many soldiers was that mass suppression techniques against civilians didn’t work on them.
A team of royal guards in a city could lock down hundreds of people at once; they would have to settle for using normal magic.
Men became encased in crystals, some had the ground under them turn to churning soil that they couldn’t escape but wouldn’t drown them, others were trapped in illusionary mazes.
Safira took no part in the main pacification, instead she went to help or contain Harlan.
What she saw beyond the wall was something of a nightmare.
These monsters, ten feet tall at the smallest, tearing chunks out of Halran, yet at the same time, he would constantly eat them, like an Ouroboros. Only some of them were smart enough to move on into the camp itself and ignore the endlessly invigorated man.
Yet beyond this rampage of regeneration was a clash of power enough that some would lose faith, that they would understand the valley where humanity resided and the peak where deities lived.
As the opening move, Xol had slammed two mountains together, something he prepared when he was there to investigate the fairy circles.
She saw a black hole birthed in the palms of the Lich, she knew her mastery over gravity magic, her grandest spells would be reduced to nothingness against it.
The strongest mortal involved in the fight had only a single job, to help maintain a barrier that Xol had built, for anything she could actually do would be pissing in the wind compared to the others: Coronach, Dog of The Darkness. Xol, Ancient Lich, Otherworlder, Fae. Sepul, Champion of Light, Wyvern’s Bane, Master of space.
She had to cover her eyes as Sepul became a being a pure light and channeled Cecht through his body, every feather that burst from the man heated the air and began to brew a storm.
Yet all of this, every attack that warped reality and physical law, was just smoke and mirrors, a distraction.
A single word was clearly spoken from Marigold and heard for over a hundred miles.
“Cleave.”
Thus was born The Scar