“Hello!” Elody greeted cheerfully as the door to her pharmacy opened. The sun shone through the door and windows, basking the interior in warm light. The polished stone countertop beneath her hands was cool, contrasting the warm, dry air of Ade. She could hear the bustle of Rudy, her apprentice and adoptive family, somewhere nearby. She couldn’t see him, but the sound was all she needed to know he was tending to his own duties.
The customer came to the counter and ordered their medicine. Elody handled it as a matter of routine, and waved to them as they left, leaving her right where she started. She smiled, feeling the warmth, comfort, and familiarity of her shop. This was her livelihood, her home. She had spent more time here than anywhere else in the world, and that was exactly how she liked it.
She heard a strange sound from somewhere. It was a low thud, followed by a loud groan. Elody turned around to see if anything strange was afoot.
“Rudy?” She called into the back of her shop. “Rudy, is everything alright?”
As soon as she asked, she felt pressure on her arms, and she was pulled back. She gripped the sides of the threshold, trying to resist.
“Rudy? Rudy, where are you!” Elody began to plead, panic seeping into her voice.
The pull intensified, straining Elody’s arms and sending her into a heightened panic. It was too much. and her grip slipped. She was pulled backwards and her shop dissolved around her.
Her back hit a wall, cold and lumpy. The warm, golden sun of Ade was replaced by thin, weak rays of light that seemed to forego the concept of warmth entirely, leaving her to fend off the freezing cold of the tundra on her own.
“Rudy!” Elody screamed again as she tried to get up. She wriggled, but something kept her down. She continued to struggle, and willed herself to get up into a run. Everything she felt now was condensed into a handful of pure emotions: Terror, urgency, panic. She had to get back, she couldn’t let them take Rudy too, he was all she had left. She ran, and ran, as though she could outrun the tundra and return herself home. Wasn’t that how she got there, after all?
She ran, the permafrost underfoot stretching endlessly on into the horizon all changing at once as she once again found herself in Ade. The transition didn’t feel odd, it felt justified. She came home. She would do anything, and nothing else mattered.
She flung open the door to her shop and ran in. The stench of death hit her nose like a wall crashing down atop her. She continued to call out for Rudy as she ran to the back once more, feeling that pure terror all the way. She feared she would be pulled back once more, and braced herself. She was not braced to see the corpse of her only remaining family lay on the floor, reeking of death and decay.
Waves of emotions crashed within her as she tried and failed to process what lay in front of her. One wave, grief, crashed down. He was gone. She would never see him again. Another wave crashed, terror. How could this have happened? Was she going to die too?
Guilt. This was her fault; she was responsible for both of them, and she was gone. How could she keep them safe if she was gone? How could she help him grow if he was dead?
Anger. She never wanted to leave, she was taken! Someone wanted to hurt him, and so they had removed her. Or they wanted to hurt her, and took her from her home and killed her family. Both were true in her mind at the same time.
Fear. What if they did it again? What could she do? She was powerless. She was powerless then, what would stop them from doing so again? They could just hurt her, over and over until there was nothing left. But who was they?
Rage. No, there was no “They”. There was “Him”, the One and Only person who could be truly responsible for this. The hands that pulled her and the dagger that ended Rudy’s life shared the same owner, Orivaughn. He ruled this town, and it was he who must pay now. Orivaughn Medeah had to die a slow and painful death.
Elody did not know Orivaughn personally. She had only seen him from a distance when he made one of his rare jaunts into town to make some proclamation or declare some edict. She did not even know his face. He was a name, and she poured her rage onto the concept of that name. Orivaughn Medeah. Orivaughn Medeah. Orivaughn killed Rudy. Rudy…
She tried to focus on the rage once more, but it slipped as the waves of guilt, fear, grief, and anger at herself crashed back down. Her rage hurt the least, and she wanted to hold onto it only for fear of being hurt by the others. All surrounding her had frozen in time as she lost herself to feelings, and now it dropped away, leaving her in a void, the only sensation remaining was the smell of death that came from Rudy’s body.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“Rudy, Rudy, Rudy…” Elody muttered in her sleep as she tossed and turned in the bedroll. She thrashed impotently against the soft fabrics as she continued to softly cry Rudy’s name.
Then, she was awake. She did not jolt, nor scream, she was simply no longer asleep. She lay there with her eyes open, the remnants of her nightmare still rattling against her head. She still felt that fear and grief in her mind, though it was now contextless. Rudy was not dead, at least as far as she was aware. She hoped that he was still alive, but she had no way of knowing. Surely he thought she was dead, or possibly imprisoned for life. It was not a new realization, but it did bring her into a sobbing fit as it had so many times since she was dropped into the tundra.
Her sobs delayed the novel realization that the terrible smell that had convinced her that her only remaining family had perished was still lingering. It was the same smell they had endured the previous evening as they pushed through a field of rotting corpses, left after some battle they had no stake in.
She sat up, groggy and unrested, trying to make out where the smell was coming from. Her first thought was that the wind had shifted and was blowing it from the battlefield. They had not gone so far that that was out of the question. The wind, however, still blew towards the field, much as it had the previous evening. That would make the source of the smell… Their own wagon?
Elody rose from her sleeping roll to investigate the horrid stench. She thought about why such a smell would be possible. Did someone die behind the wagon? Did they pick up a piece of a corpse on a wheel, unknowingly? Where was Hugh, anyways? Did Hugh die? In the wagon, somehow?
This line of questioning would have seemed silly normally, but in the shadow of her nightmare, anything terrible felt possible. She tiptoed to the wagon and peered around, making sure nothing- or no one- was behind. Nothing lay in wait for her. She steeled herself with a breath, and looked through the wagon’s rear entrance.
Inside, she saw Hugh, hunched over some of the boxes around where he conducted his experiments and studies. She never quite understood how writing stuff down over and over advanced his understanding of anything, but he always seemed to know more about his chosen craft than when she had last asked. She had tried to press him on it when she helped him draft a letter to Malthus, but even when he tried to explain, it didn’t make sense.
She moved inside quietly. Hugh never liked to be disturbed when he was studying, and she didn’t want to be a nuisance- is what Elody told herself. In reality, she was terrified about the confluence of the horrid stench and his presence, and what it implied about his current state. Her instinct was to approach with caution, and so she did.
As she got close, the smell became more pervasive and harder to deny. She could now see Hugh’s shoulders rising and falling with breath, ruling out one of her fears whilst raising more questions in the back of her mind. She was close enough to see around the two stacked boxes that blocked her sight of his desk- and his face. His eyes were squinted in focus on what was ahead of him, his pen clutched tightly in his grip as he scrawled his markings into a journal he picked up in the River Collective.
He must be deep in contemplation, Elody thought, or he would have noticed me by now.
She tapped his shoulder as she tried to get his attention. Perhaps he could answer the olfactory mystery.
“Hugh?”
Hugh awoke with a loud snort and a brief bellow as Elody startled him awake. He stumbled upright, knocking over his materials in the cramped confines of the cabin, creating another loud noise with the crash.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
Sam burst onto the scene, awoken by the sudden noise.
“What happened? Is anyone hurt?” He demanded, only to grimace and pinch his nose. “ Dear gods, what’s that smell?”
“No one’s hurt, I think,” Elody said, “But I don’t know about the smell. That’s why I came in here. Hugh?”
“I ah, I do not know,” Hugh lied.
“Y’sure?” Sam asked as he looked Hugh up and down. “Sure seems to be comin’ from you.”
Hugh sniffed at himself and winced.
“It must have gotten into my fur when we passed through the corpse field yesterday,” Hugh hypothesized. “Only now that we’ve been away from that for a while does the scent on my fur stand out as much.”
Sam made a sound of uncertainty, but didn’t challenge the supposition.
“Do us all a favor and head down to the river for a dip,” Sam ordered. “I’m not dealing with that smell for the next who-knows-how-long!”
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
An hour later, Hugh was bathed and they were back on the road. Elody had taken her seat up at the front next to Sam. Elody was visibly tired and still vaguely unnerved by her nightmare. Sam looked over at her, not concerned, but not quite neutrally either.
“Night terrors again?” He asked.
“Yeah,” Elody confirmed, voice soft.
“Rudy or Orivaughn?”
Elody looked at Sam askance.
“What?” He asked. “Yer always muttering one of the two names when these terrors hit, so which was it?”
“Both,” Elody said. “It was both.”
The conversation lulled for a minute, the rumble and creak of the wagon filling the silence. Sam looked over at Elody, who was hunched over and staring at the floor.
“Hey, don’t go doing that,” Sam said.
Elody looked up.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Bullshit,” Sam said. “Yer going through all that sad stuff in yer head again. Over and over. Ain’t good for you. You gotta do something else so yer either moving forward or at least not going in the same circles. That’s how you end up crazy, and I need you Not Crazy.”
The rumble and creak of the wagon wheels once again ruled for a minute as Elody tried to think how to escape. Nothing came to her, just the same dreaded possibility of what await her back in Ade.
“Hey, what’d I just say?” Sam demanded.
“Sorry,” Elody said, “I just don’t know what to do.”
“Well,” Sam said with a sigh, “I don’t mean to tell you to put yer nose to the grindstone as a way to just solve yer problem, but I dunno what else to tell you. Go back there, tell Hugh to come up front for today. You go finish up what you can before we get to Wella, arright? Try to put some hustle into it so you don't start thinking about yer issues.”
Elody nodded without enthusiasm, and slowly moved to the back.
“Hey Hugh, let Elody have the space back there!” Sam shouted to the back. “C’mup here so she can hustle.”
Hugh got up, seeing the sadness that was painted across Elody’s face as they passed. He sat in the front next to Sam, his huge bulk filling much of the front cabin.
“Yet again, I am grateful I do not yet have antlers,” Hugh muttered as he felt the tiny clearance between the top of his head and the roof of the cabin.
“Yeah,” Sam said, “Never did get that. Why don’t you have ‘em, anyways? Lotsa yer kin did.”
Hugh shrugged.
“Not old enough, I suppose. My father grew them late as well.”
“Huh. That simple, huh?”
Sam let the rumble and creak rule again as he listened for Elody’s sounds of work. Once he heard the shuffle and clink of her materials shifting around as she worked at her craft, he spoke to Hugh in a low voice.
“Why did you lie to us?” Sam asked.
Hugh was taken aback. He looked at Hugh fearfully, afraid for what this could mean.
“Don’t gimme that look,” Sam hissed, “I don’t give a Ratkin’s ass about the fact that you lied, but you smelled like you got elbow deep into a cadavers gut, and I need to know why. What the hell did you do, and why?”
Hugh looked around, as though he could find a solution to his immediate distress in his surroundings, then sighed as he forfeited the foolish fantasy.
“I,” He began, then stopped to measure his explanation. “I went back. To study what we saw.”
Sam looked at Hugh with a steadfast gaze.
“Whaddya mean, ‘study’? And back? Back where, the battlefield we went through?”
“I needed to know how the Shifters work. How they can defy the physiology the rest of us are bound to. Is it magic, or not? How can-”
Hugh was interrupted as Sam grabbed the tuft of fur in the center of his chest and brought Hugh’s face close to his. In one hand, he still held the reins while in the other he held Hugh close to his own furious face. The scene of such a small man handling two things far larger than he with such ease was the picture of control. Sam was in his element, and exercised it to the fullest. Hugh may have been far larger physically, but in that moment, Sam may as well have dwarfed him like a mountain dwarfs a tree.
“What. Did. You. Do.” Sam demanded through gritted teeth. He continued to keep his volume low, but the implicit threat behind his voice was clear.
“I, I, I,” Hugh sputtered as he crumpled in the tiny man’s grip, “I, ah, opened one up. I had to see.”
“You desecrated their dead?” Sam asked incredulously.
“They were just sitting there,” Hugh rationalized, “Rotting in the sun. It was simple, and I made a miraculou-”
“Did you ever think, in all that wondering and thinking, why, just why, no one had the answers to why they do what they do?”
Hugh shook his head as he shivered in Sam's grip.
“It’s because,” Sam explained in his low growl, “Most people aren’t stupid enough to cross them. Now, I dunno what the Wellans did to earn their ire, but I’ve heard stories of what they can do to people. I’m no cultural expert, but desecrating dead is usually pretty high up on the list of ways to piss a culture off. Did anyone see you?”
The last sentence Sam said came out slowly and carefully, enunciating each word to put heavy emphasis that this was this was the highest priority.
“I don’t think so?” Hugh said uncertainly.
Sam finally relinquished his grasp on Hugh, sitting back down with the reins in both hands once more.
“Let me be clear,” Sam said, “That if anyone comes for us because of this, I’m letting them have you and washing my hands of it.”
The rumble and creak of the wagon’s wheels were the only thing Hugh could process for a moment. He understood that he had committed a grave mistake, but didn’t know how to explain himself further. He didn’t need to.
“So. What’d you get?” Sam asked calmly, as though moments ago he hadn’t embodied Tempest himself.
“From the body,” Sam clarified when Hugh expressed confusion. “Look, if I’m gonna be on the hook for what you did, I may as well know what you got out of it. "
“Does that not put you at further risk?” Hugh asked.
“Well yeah, but so what?” Sam asked. “You didn’t seem to care that it’d put me at risk the first time, and the way I see it, I’m already at risk. May as well turn this into a risk versus benefit situation rather than have it be all risk.”
“I do not know that I understand,” Hugh admitted, “But you seem sure. I think I found what makes them work. It has to do with what is at their core. I did not keep it, but I do not need it. What was important was the central concept, and I’m confident I can replicate it with time.”
Sam sighed with relief at the knowledge that, at least, Hugh did not keep any physical evidence of his deed. Without physical evidence nor a witness, what was one more mangled body in a battlefield? He still carried concerns about the bounds of Hugh's curiosity and where that would lead him, but that was a larger fight than he could tackle right now.
"Arright, Hugh," Sam sighed, "I know it won't really stick, but it'll probably help you get things straight in your head. Tell me, best you can, how they work."