Peaceful morning, still and warm
From the silence, terror born.
The herb garden was doing well. Small, fragrant bushes of thyme, mountain sage and wild spinach, bilberries and pepper berries, dandelions and thistle clustered together in the tiny courtyard, protected from the wind. They didn’t receive as much sunlight as Luca would have liked; mostly in the mornings when the rising sun had lifted above the mountain peaks, and before the castle’s shadow enveloped them. But he kept them watered and pruned, neat and tidy, checking on them every day.
The thyme had started flowering, the little purple blooms attracting bees, which buzzed around the young Centaur as he pottered around, gathering some of the herbs to flavour his dishes later. He paused for a moment, regarding his sunlit garden. One side of the courtyard was bordered with white walls and the tall dining room windows, the other with black stone. It was a little odd, and a little cramped, but he liked it here. He was proud of what he had grown, and he enjoyed the challenge of trying to create tasty dishes from sparse, wild ingredients. It made every day interesting, and kept his mind from dwelling upon more worrying things. He was content to simply cook and forage and look after everyone at the castle.
He was concerned at how little Lord Arzath ate, but Luca took trays of food up to his chamber regularly, anyway. Sometimes, when he returned for them, they were actually empty.
Satisfied with his cuttings, he headed back inside, turning right along a white-walled corridor leading to the kitchen, his mind already dashing ahead to the meals he needed to prepare. Breakfast was already done and over, the others having retired to their rooms upstairs. Everine had attempted to loiter in the kitchen again, but her brother had dragged her forcibly away.
Luca was grateful.
Lady Araynia had been very quiet lately, hardly speaking to anyone at all. Luca was worried about her. He felt that something was going on that he didn’t know about, something important, but she didn’t seem to want to talk to him. He was fairly sure that Lord Arzath had threatened her or scared her in some way, but he had no idea what to do about it. He wished he knew how to help her.
Reaching the kitchen, he brushed the thoughts aside, busying himself with the food.
A few minutes later, he was in the middle of chopping up some tubers when an unexpected crawling sensation spread over his skin, as though his entire body had suddenly been swarmed by ants.
Luca froze mid-chop, his knife held in the air.
He suddenly had an immensely powerful feeling that he was being watched.
Slowly, he looked over his shoulder.
There was no one else in the kitchen. No one standing by the doorway.
He stared at the two entrances to the kitchen for a couple of minutes. Nothing happened.
Slowly, he turned around, still gripping his knife, walked to the dining room doorway and peered out.
Deserted. The dining hall was empty. The fire flickered brightly in the hearth. The tall windows opposite were filled with bright sunlight.
Backing away, Luca moved carefully across the kitchen to the door leading to the rear corridor. Opening it as quietly as he could, he looked through.
The pale-walled corridor stretched away to his left. There was a spacious circular stairwell at the far end, past the door to the garden. A bright red drape with a rising sun emblem hung on the wall in the stairwell, moving slightly in a draught. Luca watched it, then glanced back into the kitchen again, then back at the drapery.
Nothing.
There was no one there.
He closed the door to the corridor. Why, then, was he filled with such unexplained dread? His skin was covered in sweat. He felt almost… ill…
He had felt something like this before. In Crystaltina, the night the wraiths had attacked. He had felt it so strongly he had rushed to get Lady Araynia out of the house.
It was the same dark feeling, as though a hole was opening up inside him, as though he was being devoured from the inside…
Demon-wraiths!
But he could see no creeping black shadows. No telltale hint of oily, fireless smoke. Sunlight continued to pour in shafts across the kitchen from the narrow ventilation slots near the ceiling.
Luca made his way quietly out into the dining room, still clutching his knife. Nothing seemed amiss, but the eerie feeling of dread grew. His heart told him to run, to bolt out of the castle, right now, as fast as he could go.
But he could not do that. He could not abandon everyone else to save himself. If there was danger here, he had to warn them, at least…
He started moving around the dining table, heading for the doors, when he heard a noise.
Footsteps.
Clear footsteps walking across the stone floor of the foyer.
Luca stopped dead. For a moment he was almost relieved – wraiths didn’t walk in boots, they were soundless – but something still felt wrong.
The footsteps were steady and purposeful. And then they stopped.
The door to the dining room opened.
A stranger stepped in.
She was the most terrifying-looking Human that Luca had ever seen.
Red hair spilled about her shoulders, as though dyed in blood. Black lines traced the sides of her pale face; her wintry eyes shadowed. She wore some kind of sinister black armour, half-hidden beneath an incongruous dusty-coloured longcoat.
Luca wished he wasn’t trembling so hard. The small kitchen knife in his hand might as well have been a bunch of dandelions. He couldn’t see any weapons on the woman, but who knew what she was concealing under that coat?
Bravely, he found his voice. “W-who… are you?”
The woman could have gutted him with her gaze alone. “Where,” she replied, “is Mekka? Where is Hawk?”
Luca didn’t know how to lie. Not even to save his life. “N-not here,” he stammered. It was half true. “Mekka is in Arkana,” he added. “He was… taken to Caer Sync.”
The woman regarded him, tilting her head slightly to one side. A small smile formed on her bloodless lips. “But Hawk is here.”
It was a statement, not a question. She knew he was here. Nothing that Luca told her would make a difference.
“Yes,” he replied, hoping he could gain a small measure of trust by being honest.
The woman stared at him for a long moment with the same unnerving smile. Luca tensed, waiting for her to do something, waiting for an opportunity to run. He could outrun any Human. Perhaps he couldn’t fight, but he was more nimble than most…
“Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed, her smile fading. “You’re afraid of me.”
Luca’s heart rate increased.
She lowered her gaze, then, slumping slowly, like a downcast child. “They were all afraid of me,” she said softly. “No one tried to fight me. They were just… afraid…” There was a glimmer of tears in her eyes. “I had to kill them, because they were afraid of me.”
She was clearly insane. Luca’s mind raced, trying to work out his options… Through the kitchen. Along the back corridor. Up the stairwell…
The woman sighed.
And then everything went black.
For a second Luca thought he had gone blind, or knocked out. Realising he was still conscious, he bounded backwards, twisting around in the air and landing in a gallop. Though he could see nothing at all, he had a good memory of the layout of the dining room, and ran fast for where he anticipated the kitchen door to be.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
He slightly misjudged the edge of the long dining table. Attempting to leap the corner, he smashed into a high-backed chair and went down in a tangled heap of limbs.
Frantically, he tried to extricate himself from the furniture.
At that moment, the fireplace bloomed, off to his left. It wasn’t bright enough to illuminate the entire hall, only its close surroundings. It was as though the darkness had pulled back in just that one spot.
The suddenness of it startled Luca, but allowed just enough light to let him kick the chair away and jump to his feet.
He was only a few feet away from the kitchen…
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of movement in the blackness of the hall. Out of pure survival instinct, he slid back to the floor, just as a massive, gleaming black spike shot out of the shadows, right over his head, the tip embedding itself in the opposite wall.
Luca looked up at it in horror.
It hung there for endless, abominable seconds before retracting, softening as it did so, becoming limber, like a tentacle, and melted back into the darkness.
Luca was frozen in fear, his breath in his throat. He dared not rise to his feet.
The woman appeared in front of him, stepping silently out of the dark, positioning herself in front of the kitchen doorway. The firelight dimly etched out her figure, gleaming on the strange armour. Her eyes were like black holes in a skull…
Luca ceased to think. Springing to his feet and turning in one fluid motion, he bounded around the dining table and sprinted the length of the hall, heading for the main door.
He expected a huge spike in his back at any moment…
With a cry of fear, he threw himself at the darkness where he thought the door must be…
… and burst out into clear light, skidding on the polished marble floor of the foyer.
Blinking in the sudden change of light, he risked a glance behind him.
The interior of the dining room was completely black.
He heard the woman laugh. It was not a maniacal laugh, but soft and happy, as though enjoying a quiet joke with a lover.
Luca raced for the sweeping white staircase, reaching the top in three bounds. He threw himself into one of the corridors leading from the balcony, then swung up a narrow spiral staircase, his hooves clattering loudly on the stone.
He was aware, as he ran, that he was leading the wraith-woman directly towards his friends. She had probably allowed him to escape for exactly this reason. But Luca had no choice. He had to warn them…
He burst out onto an upper level, galloping down the corridor. “LADY!” he screamed. “EVERINE! BEN!”
A door halfway along the hallway opened, and Araynia peered out, looking alarmed. Luca slid to a halt in front of her. “We must go!” he told her breathlessly. “We must go NOW!”
Seeing his expression, the blood drained from her face. Pausing only to grab her cloak from a chair beside the door, she hurried out of her room.
Luca was already galloping towards Everine and Ben, who had stepped out of their own chambers in bewilderment. No one had heard soft-spoken Luca scream before.
“A… a wraith,” he gasped. “In the castle! We must go!”
The lady and the boy paled as well. Ben raced back into his room, his sister close behind him. Moments passed as they dragged the battered wheelchair and its half-dead occupant out into the corridor.
Luca glanced anxiously behind him.
Nothing appeared in the stairwell.
“A wraith?” Araynia said fearfully. “How… how did it find us here?!”
Luca shook his head. “It is… different. Still… partly Human. A woman, with red hair. She was asking for… Mekka, and Hawk…”
Both Everine and Ben looked up at him in shock.
“Carmine?!” Everine gasped, blue eyes wide.
Ben stared at him as well, agape. “She escaped?!”
Without another word, Everine gripped the wheelchair’s handles and started running.
The little group sprinted down the hallway and around the corner. Here began a maze of complicated corridors where the black part of the castle met the white. Luca directed them, being the only one who had ventured into this wing of Castle Whiteshadow. Dark, unlit walls and empty yawning hallways passed unnervingly.
They piled into a black stone stairwell, heading down. Immediately, they encountered a problem: the wheelchair jounced so violently that Hawk almost fell out.
Ben leaped forward, catching the body in time, but was forced to hold him in place as Everine struggled to manoeuvre the chair down the narrow, tightly winding steps.
Their progress became excruciatingly slow.
Luca kept glancing behind him, jittery as he brought up the rear. The stairwell seemed to wind down and down infinitely, the banging of the wheelchair echoing, seemingly, throughout the entire castle.
“Hurry!” he urged. “Please, hurry!”
Everine muttered something unintelligible, and probably not polite.
At last, they reached the bottom, and picked up speed again, passing back into a white-walled section of the keep. Luca guided them into another stairwell, this one somewhat wider and less steep.
Everine charged into it a little too enthusiastically. The wheelchair jolted hard, and its occupant tumbled out, rolling down the steps like a rag doll tossed by a careless child.
Everyone cursed.
They ran down the stairs after Hawk’s body.
The bottom opened out into a pale, circular chamber, empty except for a single crimson drape hanging against one wall. Everine and Ben got to work hauling Hawk back into the chair.
Luca darted to the side of the chamber, running his slim bronzed hands over the stone walls. “There is a secret door here somewhere,” he explained. “Ferrian mentioned it before he left.”
Araynia hurried to help him search. As soon as Hawk was seated again, the others joined them. Minutes passed as the four of them searched for the hidden catch.
“Are you sure this is the right stairwell?” Everine asked in exasperation.
Luca nodded, equally frustrated. “He said it was the eastern stairwell, behind the kitchen,” he replied. “It must be here!”
Araynia shook her head helplessly. “We’ve searched everywhere. Even behind the drapery!”
Luca shook his head as well. “We are missing something. Keep looking!”
They did so, with increasing desperation. Somewhere in the castle, the wraith was hunting them. If the hidden exit wasn’t found soon, they were all going to die…
Araynia gasped suddenly, causing them all to look at her hopefully. “Oh, Gods!” she exclaimed, looking around at them. “Lord Arzath!”
Everine snorted, waving a hand. “Forget about him!”
“No!” Araynia stared at her in horror. “No, we… we can’t! He deserves a chance!”
Ben stepped out from beneath the drape. “I’ll go!”
Everine grabbed his arm. “No, you will not!”
“I will.” Luca swallowed. “I… I know the way to his chamber.”
And before he could think about it or anyone could stop him, the Centaur bounded back up the stairs.
Araynia kept watch at the entrance to the stairwell as Everine and Ben continued to prod and peer at the walls, floor and stairs for any sign of a catch or mechanism that would open the elusive hidden door. Everine’s cursing became increasingly louder and more… inventive. Araynia winced.
Her own heart felt as though it wanted to leap out of her throat. She stood pressed against the chilly stone of the wall, hardly daring to peek around the corner.
The rest of the castle lay in silence.
Araynia strained her ears to hear anything, anything at all. She could feel the seconds ticking away along with her frantic heartbeat.
Luca is taking too long! She chewed on her nails unhappily. I should not have let him go!
There was no hint of ominous black shadow… yet…
“Who… who is she?” she whispered, half to herself. “How did she find us?”
Everine sighed, turning, and set her back to the wall. She waved a hand at the wheelchair. “His fiancée,” she replied dismally.
Araynia stared at her, aghast. “What? How did…?”
“Long story,” Ben interjected from the opposite wall. He shook his head. “But trust me, you do not want to meet her.”
“Carmine was my friend,” Everine said, arms clasped around herself. There was a glint of tears in her eyes. “A spy for awhile, trained by Mekka. But she wanted to be a soldier.” She sniffed. “That’s what got her into this damned mess!” She kicked the wall with the heel of her boot.
“Oh no,” Ben said quietly. The other two looked at him. “I just thought of something.”
Everine straightened. “What?”
Ben looked at his sister, his young face pale and haunted, and then over at the wheelchair. “Hawk is half-wraith too, right? Well… what if Carmine can sort of… sense him? What if wraiths can track other wraiths? Luca told me that Centaurs can kind of smell magic, or feel it, or whatever. Like, traces of it hang around for days or weeks or even years, but normal Humans can’t detect it. What if… what if trigon is like that?”
Everine stared at him. “Are you saying we led her here? That no matter where Hawk goes, Carmine can find him?”
Ben shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s… just a theory…”
The blonde-haired woman pushed herself away from the wall, pacing across the chamber. She stopped and kicked the wall again. “Dammit!”
Araynia stared at the wheelchair with its limp, hooded occupant, expecting him to rise up at any moment, which was entirely possible. Her fear surged. She felt suddenly trapped, like a mouse in a corner. The demon-woman was coming for them, coming for her fiancé. It knew exactly where they were!
And it knew that they couldn’t get away…
She could feel herself panicking, breathing too fast. The archway beside her was too open, without even a door to barricade themselves behind…
Clutching the blue pendant at her throat, as though its dim, soft magic could somehow protect her, she forced herself to look around the corner…
A black figure loomed directly in front of her, blocking her vision.
Araynia shrieked, throwing herself back against the wall…
It was Lord Arzath. He strode into the room, his black cloak sweeping out behind him. He carried a long, beautiful sword in one hand, unsheathed, the blade seeming almost to glide at his side…
He swept through the room, slamming his free hand on the central pillar as he went, without looking or pausing. “Fools!” he spat, swiping the drape aside and disappearing without breaking his stride through the exit that had opened in the opposite wall.
Everine leapt at once to the wheelchair, turning it and pushing Hawk quickly into the passage. Her brother followed close on her heels.
“Go!” Luca urged. Araynia saw that her servant – her friend – was pale, exhausted and shaking. His brown eyes were wide and terrified. “Go!” he urged again, breathlessly. “She is… coming!”
Araynia hurried into the passage. Inside the threshold she turned, holding the drape aside for Luca.
And that was when she saw that the corridor outside the stairwell, just behind the Centaur, was black. Impossibly, inky black.
The blackest black there ever was, or could be.
Eyes widening, she took a breath to warn Luca…
She saw him gathering himself, preparing to leap into the passage…
The spike shot out of the darkness like a bolt, monstrously huge, piercing the Centaur’s back with an awful, sickening noise, impaling him mid-air just as he sprang forward.
As Araynia’s breath caught in her throat in horror, masses of thin, dark, oily tentacles swarmed out of the shadowed corridor, coiling around Luca’s legs, body, and throat. Then they yanked him soundlessly into the blackness.
And just like that, Luca was gone.
Araynia found her breath again, and screamed.
Then something was pulling her backwards, and she screamed again, thrashing violently, but it was not tentacles, it was hands. The stone door of the passage slid closed with a heavy thud.
“NO!” Araynia screamed. “LUCA!”
She broke free, throwing herself against the door. “LUCA!”
Then a much more powerful force seized her, hurling the young woman several feet down the narrow, dark passage.
Arzath stepped in front of her, placing himself in front of the door, one arm extended, purple lightning crackling around his hand, sending light dancing crazily over the rough-hewn walls of the tunnel. “He is DEAD!” he snapped brutally. “Now get up and MOVE, or we will shortly be joining him!”
Ben was attempting to help her get to her feet. She brushed him off. Tears flooded her vision. She could barely breathe for the frantic sobs. “No! NO!”
Arzath swiped his hand. A lightning bolt crashed into the wall right beside her, showering her with sparks and rock dust, making everyone jump. “RUN NOW!”
They ran. Ben took Araynia’s hand and forced her to move with him.
Araynia ran through her tears, through her grief, through her fear, through the darkness of the tunnel, into the unknown.
She ran for her life.