The village at night had become as still and unsettling as a graveyard. Thea fought hard to resist the urge to turn back to her hiding spot and huddle beneath her blankets. Although the urge to wait until sunrise was powerful in her, she knew she had to set aside such a childish urge. There was no time that was safe, day or night. In fact, the night offered her the best chance for escape. She just had to be brave enough to seize this moment.
She never thought she'd be in a situation like this. Did anyone?
Everyone is counting on me, she thought miserably to herself. I must escape here. I must find an adventurer! If not, that beast will eat us all up. First the grown-ups, then the other children! Gods save us all; I need to move!
Thus resolved, Thea made her way forward, as quietly as could be, fearing the idea of making the slightest bit of noise. The monster’s ears were beyond sharp and would surely notice her if she gave cause. Silence would guard her far better than any weapon could.
Sticking to the shadows as fearfully as any mouse that lived, Thea slowly made her escape. After what seemed like hours, the village was finally behind her. Just as it seemed she’d finally be able to release the breath she’d been keeping inside her lungs all night, a horrendous scream tore through the air. A child’s scream.
She knew that voice. It was Adriette. They’d both committed to the decision to run tonight; Adriette would escape to the north, and Thea would take the southern route, and whoever managed to avoid the beast’s detection would be the one to bring help.
From the intensity of the screams, it appeared that Adriette had not only been caught but she was also receiving a severe punishment. Chastisement, the fiend liked to call it. Those who disappointed the creature received an agonizing death; pain beyond description.
Thea shuddered to think of the methods involved.
Still, even though she wanted to weep for her poor friend, even if she wanted to lay in the dirt and sob until her heart gave out, the fact that the monster was such a merciless sadist could play to her advantage. Now occupied by playing with its food, Thea could now run as fast as she liked. It would be too distracted in its killing frenzy to even notice her.
Gods above forgive my cowardice; I pray that you welcome Adriette into paradise for her bravery, Thea thought as she desperately raced through the night. Please let me find help, please-please-please! Please don’t let this be for nothing! Please let me save the children, please let me save all that yet live!
Another bloodcurdling scream sounded throughout the night air. But this one wasn’t a scream of fear and pain as Adriette’s had been. It was a howl of rage and hunger. The cry of the beast. It sounded once, distantly behind her. And then it did so again but was much closer. And that was when Thea knew that it was chasing her.
Of course. Of course! The fiend could read the thoughts of living men. It had probably torn the very memory of their plan right out of Adriette’s skull even as it feasted on her flesh and blood. It knew about Thea! And now it was hunting her down!
Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, oh gods! She whimpered inwardly, now too terrified to properly pray. Instead, she raced for her life as quickly as she could, knowing that if her feet dared fail her, she would soon join her friend in the beast’s maw.
Another sound soon reached her ears. The sound of the raging river that divided the two great territories that bordered it. A recent deluge of rain and melting snow had made the river perilous for those who fell in it. But in her desperation to defeat the speed of the monster that was swiftly closing the ground between them, that river now represented the best hope Thea had for survival.
“I can smell you, girl!” a cheerful voice called to her. “I can smell you! You’re going to join your friend as my toy you cowardly, simpering little thing! And when I get bored, I’M GOING TO EAAAAAAAAAAT YOOOOOOOOU AlIVE!”
“NOOO!” Thea screamed in panic, now no longer able to contain her fear. Without looking backward, fully aware of what she would see coming towards her if she did, Thea leaped into the dark, freezing river and was immediately swept away, desperately trying to keep afloat even as she was rammed mercilessly into rocks, and felled trees, and other dangerous objects trapped in the water with her.
In a moment of perfect clarity given only to those who’ve realized that they are about to perish, Thea now knew that the choice between the river and the monster had merely been a decision between how she wanted to die; being eaten alive or drowned in terrible darkness.
As the current began to pull her under, Thea sorrowfully asked her friends and the spirits of her family to forgive her. She’d failed them. She’d failed all of them. No one would avenge them. No one would save them. No one would even know that she ever existed.
“…I’m sorry,” she said to the lonely night. “I’m so sorry…”
Then down she went.
Gone into eternity.
From the darkness, a cruel figure with bloodied talons emerged. His glittering eyes observed the girl’s descent. He waited patiently to see if she would emerge again. When she didn’t, he smiled, pleased with the results of his hunt.
He would have liked to have taken her alive. He’d barely been able to enjoy the other one before her terrified thoughts of her friend had alerted him to this one’s attempted escape. Oh, well.
He’d just have to pick a fresh one from the larder, wouldn’t he?
Silly little things.
He enjoyed them so.
==
Everly was a girl who loved living in the moment. Like, the moment. That very particular point in time when the past was firmly behind her and the future was nothing but an undecided possibility, leaving only the very real, the very urgent now. For in that moment, there was nothing left to do but to do it.
Whatever it just happened to be.
“STUPID GIRL! I SMASH YOU GOOD!”
Everly’s it of this moment was killing a troll.
It wasn’t like she’d sought this troll out in particular. She’d been minding her own business and had been enjoying her walk down the king’s road on her journey to Oldstead, not realizing that the troll had been lurking under the old stone bridge she was crossing, waiting to snatch someone up at random to make a meal of them, as trolls are known to do.
His error had been selecting Everly for that meal.
On paper, it made sense. Everly was tall for her age, at five foot eleven, and very well physically conditioned. Endless hours spent alone in the woods of her hometown of Anders while gleefully engaged in relentless calisthenics, weightlifting, and swordplay, had put a surprising amount of muscle on her lithe frame. From the troll’s perspective, the young blonde teenager must have seemed like an utter snack.
An excellent source of protein.
What the poor troll couldn’t have known was that Everly was no ordinary exercise enthusiast with an unhealthy obsession with bladed weaponry. In addition to being an extremely capable combatant with a sword or her bare hands, having long surpassed the vaunted title of Sword King, Everly was also an extremely powerful magic user. Possibly the strongest one on the entire planet. The skills she excelled at were earth magic and spiritual manipulation.
Which is to say, she was a psionic behemoth who could destroy a person’s mind as easily as she could bring down a mountain range. (Which would have been very easy for her.) Everly considered herself quite the complete package, which was why she’d decided a while ago to declare herself the Empress of the world at a future point in time and rule with tyrannical impunity since no one was strong enough to oppose her.
The troll didn’t know any of this. He just wanted lunch. What he got instead was the most difficult fight of his miserable life.
He wasn’t enjoying any of it.
Everly was, though. She really loved a good fight; it could be said that her nature was combative, with a real emphasis on combat. There was something about seeing something strong and self-assured and then grinding it to dust beneath the heel of her boot that really spoke to her.
The words it spoke were usually some permutations of do it.
“STOP MOVING!” The troll roared in frustration when she avoided another one of its sluggish strikes. The creature was a massive thing, standing nearly twenty feet in height and coated in matted hair atop the rippling fat that covered its large but spindly limbs. “WHY WON’T YOU STOP MOVING?!”
“Because the rhythm is nigh!” Everly called back. “The rhythm is nigh, and I’m letting it carry me away!”
To emphasize her words, she gracefully danced away from another of the troll’s clumsy blows with an expertly timed dodge that bordered between being breathtakingly precise and suicidally overconfident. The troll began to scream and stomp with homicidal rage.
Everly, stop playing with this monstrosity and take it down, NOW! said the stern voice of Grail, her mentor since childhood and unwilling conscript in her mad but undeniably fun scheme for world domination. Drawing the fight out like this makes a mockery of your training. A Sword King finishes the battle with one swift and decisive blow.
“Aww, I thought I was making a mockery of the other guy,” Everly smirked as she effortlessly cartwheeled away from another wild swipe. “Why you gotta be so down on me, teach? I’m just having some fun.”
Combat is not about fun, Everly. It’s about respecting the line between life and death and responding to your enemy in earnestness. You might think you’re belittling him but, you’re making yourself look arrogant.
“I am arrogant,” Everly said with a wicked grin. “And powerful! Stylish! Talented! And undeniably cool!” Everly emphasized each of these sentences with a brilliant slash of her sword, which she drew and swung so swiftly that the blade seemed to vanish from sight with each impossibly quick movement.
Four scarlet lines appeared on the poor troll’s body, beneath its throat and four limbs, that soon began gushing blood. Everly kept the edge of her sword supernaturally sharp; the slightest tap of it would be enough to chip stone. To say the troll’s limbs had been severed would have been as obvious as denoting the wetness of water.
“Wuuuut,” gasped the dying monster as it lay dying on the bridge, seeing nothing else but the unbearably bright sun it had avoided its entire life.
“What?” Everly asked it as she sheathed her blade. “You’re dying, big guy. That’s what. Got any final words?”
The troll pondered his killer’s question. Then he said:
“I regret that until this very moment, I had never truly beheld the majesty of the sun at its noontime apex. How many precious moments did I squander hiding in the lonely darkness of this aging bridge when I could have sat beneath the sky’s gentle warmth and reveled in the beauty of the day? Could even a loathsome beast such as myself have found peace under the gaze of such all-seeing magnificence? Truly, I was beyond foolish. What a sad thing it is to realize your own absurdities…only when it’s too…late…to change…”
That having been said, the troll closed its eyes and breathed no longer.
“Well, okay then,” Everly said after a suitable number of moments had passed. “Yeah, I really didn’t see that coming. Jesus, he kind of put a damper on the whole thing, didn’t he?”
A malicious attempt to ruin your fun, that’s what I say, said Eris, the spirit elemental who had served Everly since childhood. He couldn’t defeat you in fair combat, so he decided to haunt you with his words. What a conniving tactic!
Aww, now I feel bad for trolls, said Titania, the other elemental who served Everly, and the younger sister of Eris. Can’t we, like, liberate them or something? Show them they don’t have to live under bridges and in sewers and all those other awful places?
How is the embodiment of the very earth such a ridiculous softy? Eris said. The way of the world is to kill or be killed. Why do you concern yourself so often with the feelings of those who serve the cycle of life and death?
I don’t know, maybe because you’re a mean bitch? Did that ever occur to you? Titania answered sullenly.
Why, you little worm! How dare you disrespect me in front of the others! I have half a mind to twist your arm behind your back until you squeal like a dog in a bathtub!
Bring it on, nerd! I’ll take you down to taco town! Destination: my foot up your ass!
Everly mentally muted the sisters so that they could carry on with their argument as they had done a thousand times before, without it bothering her. They were loyal to her and loyal to each other, but they were also extremely disagreeable at times. As all tight-knit siblings knew, it didn’t take much to get them at each other’s throats. Sometimes Everly discouraged it, sometimes she egged it on.
Today, she was distracted.
“Grail?” she asked as she stood at the edge of the bridge and looked down. “Do my eyes deceive me or is that a dead body floating in the river?”
Your assessment is correct, he replied. Perhaps it was one of the troll’s victims?
“I’m curious,” Everly said. “Let’s find out, why don’t we?”
==
Fishing the dead girl out of the water hadn’t taken much effort. Using a giant hand of stone that emerged from the very earth itself, Everly carefully placed the corpse on the grass growing just past the embankment.
“Let’s seeeee,” Everly said to herself. “Okay, so if I’m remembering my Law-and-Order SVU correctly, she couldn’t have died that long ago because she’s not bloated or rotting. Still has her eyes…very identifiable, I’m sure. Yeah, no fish have been nibbling on her. I bet she was alive as recently as yesterday.”
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Pretty good guess, boss, Titania said cheerfully. Her decaying cells just told me she died last night at eleven thirty. Got dragged down by the current. Yep.
“You can just talk to her body, and it’ll tell you when she died?” asked Everly.
Well, yeah. I can talk to anything that comes from the earth. All the various cells, acids, and assorted squigglies involved in animal reproduction and maintenance are built up from consumed food and all food comes from the earth, so I can pretty much get answers to any question I desire.
“Could you ask a stone that was used to bash in a man’s skull who it was that swung it?”
Yup, Titania said immodestly.
“Damn, T. You’d be a scary witness for the prosecution,” Everly said with genuine admiration.
Well, thank goodness I’m an outlaw, Titania said smugly.
“Damn straight,” Everly said with a smile. “So, what was she doing in the water? Why did she drown? She looks only a little younger than me. Old enough to know better than to play near a raging river.”
She was running from something, Everly, Titania said. This time all the humor had fled the elemental’s voice. Something nasty was on her heels. She was trying to get help and had to choose between death in the water or a worse death facing whatever was after her.
“Is that right?” Everly said with a frown.
Yeah.
“And her body can’t tell you what it was that hounded her?”
No. Only that it was cruel. And that it likes to eat children.
“Hmmm,” Everly said to herself.
This was obviously a complicated issue. The sort of entanglement that Everly didn’t personally wish to involve herself in. Killing monsters was a job for heroes. Everly knew herself too well to ever fantasize about being such a noble soul. The fact of the matter was, she was a bad person. An awful person. And joyfully so. Solving issues for others was white knight territory and the future Empress of the world was most certainly not one of those.
If anything, she probably had more in common with the monster. When it came down to it, Everly was a villain at her core. Her goal in life was to thwart justice and rule through tyranny, after all.
At the same time, however, she had personal standards. Sure, Everly was a bad person but that didn’t necessarily mean she marched lockstep with all manner of vileness. She believed in gradations of villainy and felt that while it was possible to be evil and happy, that didn’t mean she had to continence all evil. Just the parts she herself enjoyed. Being a villain didn’t mean you had to be accepting of others and it didn’t mean you had to pass a litmus test of darkness.
In other words, just because she liked crushing heroes and wanted to turn the world into a theocracy that worshipped her didn’t mean she had to be okay with something eating small children.
When it came to her principles, you either got on board with them, or you drowned. That’s all there was to it.
Although, now that she thought about it, using a drowning analogy next to a girl who had recently died that way could be viewed as being in bad taste. Low-hanging fruit, as it were.
“Oh, whatever,” she muttered to herself. “Titania, do the thing.”
Huh?
You know, the thing. She looks fresh enough to be brought back relatively intact. So, wake her up from her sleep, so she can lead us back to where she came from. I want to have a talk with her about this child-gobbling fiend that’s been plaguing her home.”
So, we’re not calling it necromancy anymore? We’re just calling it ‘the thing’?
“Titaniaaaaa, just do it,” Everly groaned.
Heh, heh, right on it, boss.
==
Reviving Thea didn’t take long at all. Although Everly didn’t understand the particulars of how Titania’s talent for earth manipulation translated into being able to raise the dead, she was glad that it was a power that served her vision alone.
The girl, Thea, soon awakened back into life without any traumatizing memories of how her first stint at it had failed. The cold of the river had done her a service. It had preserved her body so well that Titania hadn’t had to go to any extra effort to restore her. Everly only had to tell one mild fib about finding her floating unconscious on her back to make her believe she’d survived fleeing the creature that had been after her.
“Are you really an adventurer?” Thea asked hopefully after everything had been carefully explained to her.
“Sure. I have adventures all the time. That’s a prerequisite, right?” Everly said.
“I’m sure it is, but I just…I mean, what I’m asking you to do is very dangerous! If you’re not prepared for it, you really could be killed!”
Everly smiled at the other girl’s worry and patted her hand gently. “Me? Killed? Dear friend, you may not be aware of the nature of the reality we inhabit, but I genuinely don’t believe that there’s anything in existence that could possibly end my life. I’ve lately begun to suspect that I’m the only thing that truly exists, you see and therefore death is a meaningless concept reserved solely for background characters such as yourself. Whatever the perils that assail the little people, I’ll surely be fine.”
Everly, are you certain you want to do this? Eris’s voice buzzed through her mind. Your charmingly arrogant self-confidence notwithstanding, there’s no need to put yourself in danger unnecessarily.
It’s not arrogance if it can be demonstrably proven, Everly shot back. Eris, stop being such a nanny! This is adventuring! What could possibly go wrong?
Everly, according to the information I’ve absorbed about popular entertainment in your world, the prelude to every horrific death in every horror movie that ever existed begins with someone saying, what could possibly go wrong if I do this?
So, you agree that I’m correct!
I…what? No. No, I most certainly do not! I was suggesting we ignore this child’s request. If your goal is to participate in the summer campaign before your academic year begins, then you really need to stop being sidelined by all of these…these…
Side quests? Everly offered.
Yes! Exactly the term I was looking for. You need to stop being distracted by all these meaningless side quests! Are you a warrior or a cat distracted by shiny objects?
Can’t I be both?
Well…yes? But it’s annoying.
Is it really?
Yes!
Well, then I’m absolutely going to do it. Thanks for your advice, dear servant! But Grail the Golden Wanderer could no more turn from a maiden in need than she could ignore a puppy locked in a hot car.
Everly…what do puppies have to do with anything? And why do you insist on using MY name whenever you want to play at being heroic? Grail’s complaining voice interjected.
Never question me, old man! Everly commanded.
“Uh, Miss Grail?” Thea hesitatingly cut in.
“Yes?” Everly answered. “Wait, let me guess. You saw me standing perfectly still and found it slightly unnerving and you also noticed that I seemed to be talking to myself quietly as though I were having a conversation with several invisible entities. Well, have no fear, it was just a mental exercise that I do to refresh myself daily. A strengthened mind is a powerful mind!”
“Oh. Oh, good, I’m glad!” Thea said enthusiastically.
“Yes, gratitude is entirely what’s called for,” Everly said with a nod. “For I have decided to lend my sword to your service. Lead the way, Thea. Let’s go fumigate your village.”
“Thank you!” the girl said excitedly. “Oh, thank you so much! This is what I hoped would happen. Save us, Mistress Grail! Save our home!”
“Kid, you only had to ask,” Everly said with a smile and a wink. “Trust me, I’m great at everything I do. This will work out just fine.”
==
As they made their way to her home, Thea told the sorry tale of what happened. Of how Mister Whisper came to take up residence in the village.
“He looked so old when he first arrived,” Thea said. “Just a little old man. He claimed he was a retired merchant from the capital who wanted to retire to the countryside and enjoy his remaining years in tranquility. The mayor and the village council gave him permission to stay.”
“Your village was big enough to have a mayor, huh?” Everly asked. “And he just let a random stranger take up residence?”
“Mister Whisper had…he had a lot of gold,” Thea said. “More wealth in his one pocket than I’ve ever seen in my life. The mayor said you can trust a man with money. They have no reason to lie. The village council agreed with him. And we needed that money on account of the poor yield we got from this year’s harvest.”
“So, your idiot leaders let a monster buy his way in. That’s a shame. I take it they didn’t make it?”
“No. I mean, yes. No, what I mean is, my father is dead. He realized the mistake that had been made and tried to stop it. But the council is fine. They’re now sleeping. The mayor and all the other important villagers. One night they went to bed and they haven’t woken since.”
“So, none of the other adults have died?” Everly asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh, lots of them,” Thea said sadly. “Mostly the ones who tried to protect their kids, like my dad. Mister Whisper would leave them hanging in the village center. The ones who tried to fight, the ones who tried to take their children and run, he made examples of them all.”
“But not any of the councilors,” Everly said.
“No, ma’am.”
It would seem a pact was made, Eris said darkly. I suspect if you ask for further details, the people who began disappearing first would be from the poorer sections of the village. Invalids, orphans, disruptive elements, and any other undesirables.
Is that how it works? Everly wondered.
It’s in accordance with nature, Titania said sadly. Genuine predators prefer targets that are either too young to defend themselves or too old. If in mortal society, it’s even better if they’re the dregs. No one cares what happens to the poor.
“When did you start to notice people were missing?” Everly asked Thea.
“All throughout the winter. Folks stopped coming to church. Stop coming to meetings. They just started dropping out of sight. At first, it was the poorest of us—"
See? Told you,” Eris said.
Shush, Everly told her.
“Then it started moving closer to the center of the village where the most prosperous of us abide, while slowly getting worse. And all throughout, Mister Whisper began to change. He grew hale, stronger, uh…younger if you can believe it. The longer the season of death continued, the more refreshed he became. We knew what was happening. We knew it was him somehow, but the council…our leaders wouldn’t believe us. They didn’t care.”
“A lot of gold buys a lot of complicity,” Everly said neutrally.
“He was eating us!” Thea said with a sickened, strained voice. “We told the mayor we had to stop him, and he said it didn’t matter if a little trash got sacrificed for the greater good of the community! He slapped me across the face when I told him we needed help! Said I’d be ruining a good thing for everyone.”
“Sounds like something that needed ruining,” Everly said sympathetically.
“It did!” Thea said tearfully. “On the day the council went to sleep and didn’t awaken, Mister Whisper called us all to the center and said he was in charge now. And if we were good and obedient then it wouldn’t hurt when he came for us. Harl Ebens started crying when he said that. He was only eight years old! He started crying and it annoyed Mr. Whisper so much that he grabbed him and right in front of us he opened his mouth and—”
Thea began to shake at the memory. Her body trembled as tears glistened in her eyes. Everly began to feel uncomfortable in her presence. How does one go about comforting a troubled young person? It would be the height of insincerity to merely pat her on the back and say there, there. Embarrassing too.
No, the truth was that trauma is very particular to the people who suffer it. She couldn’t say or do anything to provide genuine comfort. She could only keep her word and deal with the creature.
So, that was what she would do.
==
When the two of them arrived, they found the village covered in a dismal mist that obscured their vision and made their forward progress uncertain. Everly found it extremely annoying yet thematically appropriate. It certainly set the mood for this confrontation. What better setting than this for the tale of a haunted village?
The center was empty. The houses were quiet. Even the animals that remained had fallen into silence. Their footsteps across the cobbled streets echoed loudly throughout the air, violating the stillness of the place. Everly saw that Thea was growing increasingly terrified. She’d been surviving for months by attempting to make less noise than anyone else to keep from drawing this Mister Whisper’s attention. Everly’s blatantly careless stride went against every instinct she possessed.
“Don’t be afraid, Thea. I’m here now. Whoever he is, whatever he is, he doesn’t matter anymore. I’ll show you.”
She gestured to the mist that surrounded them and said with a magnified voice, “MISTER WHIIIIIIIIIISPER! HELLO!”
Her greeting echoed and reverberated throughout the village center, loud as could be, as though Everly had projected it with a speaker and a microphone. It washed over the entire area, bathing it with the sound of her voice. The tone was flippant, irrelevant, and contemptuous. An open challenge for those that heard it.
A challenge that was swiftly accepted.
“Hello,” said an elegantly dressed man who appeared before them, seemingly out of nowhere. He was handsome, young, and pale. Severely pale. Distractingly so.
Extremely distractingly so.
Everly didn’t want to focus on that one aspect of this loathsome bastard, she really didn’t, but she couldn’t help herself.
He was so pale.
“Holy shit, man. Is pigmentation your kryptonite?” Everly asked him.
“I…what?” he asked.
“You look like a vegan covered in chalk.”
“What do you…huh?” he said with increasing irritation.
“I can see more blue veins on your face than in an expensive cut of foreign cheese,” Everly continued.
“Have you any idea who you’re talking to, girl?” he snarled at her. “This glib mockery only whets my appetite for your suffering.”
“Do you sweat milk?” Everly asked him with utter sincerity.
Mister Whisper closed his eyes and breathed deeply to settle his temper. Then he looked past Everly to face Thea. “Ah, our lost little doe has returned to the herd. I could have sworn I saw you drown, though. Well, no matter. What a wonderful reunion this will be, Thea. I’m so excited to see you once more—”
Everly ripped his head off and then mashed it beneath her boot. Then she had Titania drag the body into the very center of the earth where flowing magma hotter than the surface temperature of a star incinerated it completely.
No more Mister Whisper.
“Ignoring people is rude,” said Everly with a frown.
“Uh,” said Thea in surprise.
The fog quickly dissipated.
==
I mean, I’m just saying it was a bit anticlimactic is all, Eris said later as they entered the mayor’s home. He was a very mysterious creature, wasn’t he?
“I suppose,” Everly said uncaringly.
You have to admit there was a lot of foreshadowing involved, Eris continued. I mean, narratively speaking, wouldn’t it have made more sense to draw things out? We didn’t even know what sort of creature he was. Weren’t you the least bit curious about his background?
“Nah, he was gross, fuck him,” Everly replied as she walked into the mayor’s bedroom. “There are some people that just aren’t worth knowing.”
Seeing the mayor snoring peacefully in his bed, Everly drew her sword and dispatched him with a thrust through the neck then left him to choke to death on his own blood, just as she had with his fellow conspirators.
Everything on her list had been neatly checked off.
“I mean, when the mood takes me, I’m all for some fun banter and all, but these guys…this whole thing…Yeah, I just don’t know. I thought it would be more fun than this. But when I wasn’t looking, someone flipped the setting from light to heavy. I think after this one, we’ll need to go on a, you know, more lighthearted romp. More trolls, less Pennywise the dancing clown.”
Don’t let the trolls have last words though, they’ll seriously harsh us out, Titania reminded her.
“So noted,” Everly said with a nod.
Regardless of your motivations, you’ve done a good thing today, Grail said to her quietly. Confronting the darkness of this world and putting it in its place was a noble deed.
“Ugh. Gag me with a spoon while you’re at it, old man,” Everly said with disgust.
So, what now? Titania asked. You saved the girl and killed the monster. You even punished the greedy fools who let things get so out of hand. But the village population has decreased significantly; entire families have been wiped out. Plus, there’ll be loads of orphans as well. It’s a real mess.
“Yeah? Kind of sounds like a local problem to me,” Everly said indifferently. “Not all the adults were killed. We’ll leave it to them to deal with. They still have all the gold Whisper was throwing around, so I’m sure they can figure something out. I’m going to go ahead and call this a successful conclusion to an otherwise regrettable affair.”
Aww, we’re not even going to say goodbye. Titana whined. I hate all that mysterious wanderer stuff. Getting credit and receiving thanks makes me feel pretty good! Can’t we at least see some of the smiles on the faces of the children?
“The faces of the children who now get to grow up with the immense mental trauma of having seen their friends and family slowly eaten alive by some hideous thing?” Everly asked pointedly.
Oh. Well. Yeeeah, when you put it that way, maybe it’s best to just quietly disappear, Titania decided.
“I thought you’d see it my way,” Everly smirked.
Too bad, though. Whatever qualities existed that drew Mister Whisper here have surely been magnified by his long presence, said Grail as they made their discrete exit. This place could be even more vulnerable to attack with no one left to protect it.
“Who said we were leaving it without a protector?” asked Everly.
==
Weeks later.
“How disappointing,” said Lady Murmur as she surveyed the village, noting its gradual restoration. “I came here seeking the company of my brother, who told me this place had been thoroughly pacified. Instead, he is gone, and the prey roams free of the larder. How unsightly.”
Behind her stood ten more of her kind. The entire clan.
All here to finish what Whisper had begun.
“Get out of here!” Thea quavered hysterically as the elegant-looking woman slowly approached her. “Leave us alone! You have no place here!”
Somehow Thea had known this would happen. Now in the dead of night, she stood alone, facing them.
“No place here, child? Noooo. Quite incorrect. My place is where so ever I wish. Just as your place shall soon be inside…me,” the ethereal-looking creature said, before her face quickly transformed into a razor-fanged horror. “Now come to me, dear girl…come to me and—”
Thea put her fist through the monster’s head. When she removed her hand, Lady Murmur’s face had been replaced with a cavernous hole from which various fluids now dripped messily.
Her body dropped to the ground, twitched once, then ceased motion.
Thea stared at her hand in surprise, then made another fist with it. She had felt strange ever since she’d met Lady Grail. She felt somehow greater than what she had been before, but it was difficult for her to articulate the difference that she now felt between who she had once been and what she had now become.
Had she been reborn? Was she the same person?
Was she still Thea? Or was she the inheritor of her place?
Did it matter?
“Who’s next?” she growled at the remaining creatures who had all begun gradually backing away.
It didn’t save them.
That night, in the name of vengeance, and justice, Thea played her own games with those that had dared torment her and the community she loved.
Like Everly on the bridge, she danced with the monsters, let herself be swept away with the rhythm of violence, and asserted herself over them.
She played a melody of discordant rhythms whose patterns only she knew.
Discordia was what she had become.