Hungry stones await; to sip from thy crimson well.
One silent midnight, thy fool,
born 'neath a cyclopean wall
...Stepping under stars 'til the mountain calls:
Return
To the valley deep—where light was buried and lost,
wants to meet its shimmering end,
To touch that hollow seed—coffin of light;
Recall
How life lay dreaming, by this little key unlocked.
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At daybreak, the bluish-grey light of dawn streamed into their room through the now half-ajar window, rustling the thin, crinkled curtains in a brisk, early morning breeze. The three women slowly stirred from their sleep.
During the night, a sleepy Geneve had wrapped her arms around Zark'thul's midsection, practically treating him like a body pillow. Despite the intrusions on his personal space, he made no move to dislodge her until the day's first rays descended from the window.
Once the women were awake, he shifted out from under Geneve, crossed to the window, and peered through its glass panes. The windmill, bathed in the sun's gentle rays, began to turn. Within the town, human figures started to come to life, stirring from their dwellings. Soon, the faint chorus of morning conversation and the shuffle of activities echoed from below.
"The plan remains the same," he declared, turning to face the women as they sat up in their beds, "Proceed with your assignments. Learn more about the town and its... issues. Given the circumstances, it will probably take more than just today to finish this investigation."
He left a pregnant pause, allowing a few moments of silence to press the importance of his next words. "Be wary of who you approach and who approaches you. We'll meet back at the tavern at noon, and go from there."
"Yes, sir," they nodded. Then, one by one, they all got up and began to dress.
Zark'thul waited for them outside. Clare and Lyssa came out first, their new garments having been purchased the evening prior.
Clare wore a burgundy-hued dress, tailored close to her slender frame and modest in length. Her sleeves draped off her shoulders, and her neck was adorned with a ruffled collar. Matching leather boots clad her feet.
Lyssa wore a similarly form-fitting olive-green dress, complimented by a leather bodice wrapped around her waist and chest. The material tapered just above her knees, while a pair of sand-colored leggings and low-heeled boots protected her legs.
Soon, Geneve emerged in her new clothes. She'd chosen a slate-blue tunic that fell to her thighs and was cinched at the waist with a brown leather belt. Her legs were covered in maroon trousers and dark leather boots.
Byron and Warren were already waiting downstairs, likewise dressed in outfits from the local market. Byron sported a wool shirt of dusky maroon, tucked into brown pants fastened with a leather belt. His feet were shod in sturdy workman's boots.
Warren, in contrast, chose a fitted vest over a collared shirt, both dyed in various shades of grey. He'd paired these with simple trousers and oiled-leather shoes, along with a wide-brimmed hat atop his head.
Zark'thul gave the group a once-over. Satisfied, he gestured for them to follow him. "Breakfast first. Then, our mission begins."
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After breakfast, the squad went their separate ways in pairs to begin their investigation. Zark'thul, for his part, wandered. Byron accompanied him, taking the role of a guard escorting a 'merchant'.
As they walked, people shot glances Zark'thul's way, their expressions hard to discern. Whether due to his unconventional attire or simply his imposing presence, it was clear he'd become a focal point of local curiosity and speculation. A few risked cautious but seemingly benevolent smiles and nods, which he returned as he walked.
Striding further, the heart of the town began to reveal itself.
Timber-framed abodes mingled with brick-and-mortar dwellings. Signboards hung from iron rods, announcing establishments of trade and service—the town's baker, blacksmith, tailor, cobbler, and all manner of livelihoods that defined community life.
"Excuse me, pardon me." A man brushed past Byron and Zark'thul, pushing a handcart loaded with lumpy sacks and stumbling towards one of the nearby grocers. They stepped aside to let the man pass.
Vendors had set up shop outside. The town square teemed with wooden stalls, the vendors within peddling their wares.
"Farm-fresh carrots and radishes, penny a bundle, finest in the county!"
"Figs! Candied figs, just a copper!"
"Fabric here! If your dress has seen better days, see me!"
Their calls created a sort of harmonious chaos that resonated within the hustle and bustle of the marketplace.
As they made their way through the vibrant center of Athebury, a ruckus of hounds and horses disrupted the din, splitting through the crowd. People either jumped out of the way or hastened their strides, moving away from the disruption.
The cause of the ruckus was a small group of armed and armored men atop warhorses, imposingly encased in thick iron barding. At their forefront rode a man astride a charcoal-coated steed.
This prominent figure was more heavily armored than his comrades, protected by a dark suit of articulated steel plates and dressed in a tailored, damasked gambeson. His greying hair flowed unkempt, a wild mane framing deep-set, keen brown eyes that settled on Zark'thul, considering him with a somber, composed gaze as they crossed paths.
"That's Count Evan Tarris," someone muttered from the crowd. "As ominous as the reaper himself..."
An ominous reputation?
"He's headed towards the edge of the forest..."
"The forest?"
"Shhh, be quiet!" Another voice chimed in urgently. "Tarris has a knack for hearing gossip. He'll think we're cursing his name and throw us in the stocks."
For a brief instant, their eyes met—the local magnate's and Zark'thul's.
Tarris dipped his head in acknowledgment, and Zark'thul reciprocated with a similarly guarded, curt nod. Without a word spoken between them, the rider nudged his stallion down another street, galloping off in the direction of the distant forest.
A subdued hubbub of conversations, questions, and comments buzzed back and forth among the town residents.
After some time had elapsed and the clamor died down, Zark'thul approached a vendor's stall. The owner, a small-statured man, stood behind the counter of his meager setup. When he saw Zark'thul standing before him, his demeanor altered subtly.
"H-hello, sir, welcome to my shop," the vendor stuttered, rubbing his hands against the front of his tunic. "What can I interest you in today?"
"Information," Zark'thul stated plainly, leaning down slightly to place his elbow upon the man's wooden stall. "Rumors have been circulating about this town. I heard there are strange happenings here, but people are hesitant to speak of them."
The vendor's demeanor changed immediately upon hearing those words. "Str-strange, y'say...? My humblest apologies. I don't rightly understand your meaning, sir," he stammered.
Zark'thul observed the man quietly. Even without prying directly into the recesses of his thoughts, it was obvious to him that the man was lying. Perhaps his reluctance was understandable, but to feign ignorance directly to his face?
Not too intelligent.
"Surely a peddler like yourself is privy to all the news and tales within these walls," Zark'thul prodded. "You must be aware of any unusual occurrences." He studied the man intently, noting the subtle sheen of sweat across his brow and the trembling of his hands. His left eye twitched—a telltale giveaway of his dishonesty. Or was it simply fear?
Either way, this man was much easier to read than the woman at the tavern.
"W-well," the vendor coughed and shifted from one foot to the other, "there've been talks of missing people, yes. It's been the subject of a great deal of worry, of course, but there's naught to be done about that at the moment."
"Why not?" Byron queried. "Missing people ought to be looked for. Who disappeared?"
The vendor seemed to shrink back even further from the conversation. "P-people here and there—farmers, workmen, bakers, guards. Traders, like yourself. My cousin, too," the man recounted. "Oftentimes, 'specially of late, it's folks from the forest that go missing."
Zark'thul straightened up from the counter. His imposing demeanor noticeably rattled the small-statured shopkeeper. "Speak on. What's wrong with the forest?"
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"W-well, Count Tarris is sending out parties into the forest daily now. He says the woods are no longer safe. Not only because of the disappearances, mind you, but also"—he gestured about them furtively before continuing—"There are things moving through the woods. Dark things. Strange things. A corruption growing amongst the trees, some say..."
"What do they look like, these 'dark and strange' things?" Byron's questions became pointed and specific.
The vendor gulped audibly. "Nobody rightly knows. What they've found after their sorties aren't 'things' so much as they are... patches of forest floor, seemingly corroded by... I don't know, a mysterious rot or disease of some kind. Even the leaves of the trees in these areas blacken and fall from the limbs that hold 'em. All that's left behind is something wholly unsettling."
Zark'thul pondered in silence.
Black patches within the forest? These could potentially be related to those who were vanishing...
"Do you have any idea why these issues are occurring?" he asked.
The vendor paused, seeming to reflect on Zark'thul's words. After a moment, he replied, "It wasn't always like this. At first, we thought they might've been attacks from a nearby pack of goblins, which are fairly common in these parts. But the pattern of the disappearances didn't match their work. People were plucked straight out of their homes, right in the dead of night."
"Including your cousin?"
"Y-yes, sir. Him, too. I mean, it's hard to know for sure. That is, many don't really talk about these sorts of things openly around here. At least not while Lord Tarris is in earshot," the vendor lowered his voice.
"You mentioned this hasn't always been the case. When did it start?"
The vendor dipped his chin and looked to the side. "Just a few months ago. It started slowly; just the odd farmer or drifter who went missing here and there. As time went on, though, it began to happen more frequently. Lately, it's getting worse still."
"What does the local government plan to do about the situation?" Byron chimed in again. "You said people had gone missing, right? From their homes?"
The vendor bobbed his head again. "Uh... well, Tarris says we shouldn't worry our heads much on the matter. We have enough to deal with. He promises us that his knights have it under control. But honestly," he leaned in, dropping his volume even further, "folk are quite scared, especially when someone close to 'em goes missing, disappearing in the middle of the night and all that."
Then, as if remembering himself, he snapped back to attention, straightening his posture. "Th-thank you for your custom, sirs. Apologies, but I must return to my business. Please come again if there's anything else you need." With that, the conversation was evidently concluded.
Zark'thul and Byron withdrew from the shop stall and meandered further down the lane, keeping pace with the bustling throng of townspeople.
Byron rubbed his forehead. "What an unpleasant story."
"The investigation is beginning to look more straightforward," Zark'thul said, acknowledging him. "Still, there are more clues needed to paint a clear picture. What do you suppose are the chances of the Count being the perpetrator?"
"Why suspect him?" Byron asked.
"People fear to speak while in his presence," Zark'thul mused aloud. "We haven't met the man personally, but there could be a correlation to explore. It is curious how all this talk of disappearing people is linked to the forest."
----------------------------------------
They returned to the tavern and found their group seated around a large, wooden table laden with plates of eggs, sausages, and toasted bread. Byron and Zark'thul joined them, each claiming a vacant stool.
"You've been productive this morning, I trust?" Zark'thul asked. After he'd said his piece, a barmaid bustled to their table to pour an ale for him.
Geneve plucked a morsel of sausage off her plate. "Warren and I didn't learn much. We made our rounds and spoke to a bunch of people. Everyone talks about the same thing: people have gone missing, mostly from their homes or within the nearby forest."
"I don't think they know what's actually happening," Warren interjected. "It's a whole lot of hearsay and local folklore at the moment. Still, we were able to get an impression of how the townspeople are dealing with all of this."
"I can't believe they're dancing around puddles when it's pouring outside," Clare chimed in, punctuating her point by stabbing her fork into a cut of sausage. "Lyssa and I checked in on a few of the guards, the apothecaries, even the undertaker, to ask what they knew about the disappearances and to see if anybody had shown up dead."
"And?"
Lyssa finished chewing a bite of her meal. "Apparently, nobody's turned up dead. The guards don't have any reports of discovering a corpse near town, nor have the morgues or mortuaries seen an influx of new arrivals. The only thing everybody's agreed on is that people have been vanishing."
"We heard the same from one of the vendors," Byron stated. "We also ran into their Count in the streets. He seems to be leading an investigation of his own, so I figure we should look in on him first before we start running around after leads."
Zark'thul observed their exchanges and how, collectively, their perspectives all shared a common thread. By their account, these occurrences were spontaneous and discrete—no discernable connection among the missing. Even more strangely, not a single one had been discovered dead, at least as far as anyone was willing to divulge.
"Why all the secrecy?" Geneve huffed, breaking off a chunk of bread. "If someone's targeting their family or neighbor, how come it's all down to gossip and whispers? Surely, everyone can't just be content to accept it all with a shrug?"
"There are some instances of break-ins. Locked doors ajar or smashed in," Warren remarked, running a hand through his hair. "But, those are supposedly rare, from what I heard. It's hard to say for sure... people keep dodging questions."
Zark'thul contemplated the situation.
Missing people, all within a large town, and a lingering menace nearby, most likely connected to the forest.
Did that mean the threat originated from within the woods? And it started three months ago?
There were still too many unknowns, but this felt like a solid foundation to pursue a lead. Perhaps more information would reveal itself in time. For now, he had an idea of where to go next.
He placed his palms flat on the table and pushed himself up. "Once you're done eating, we'll go through the places where these missing persons were last seen. Question their friends, families, and whoever else may have known them."
Geneve arched an eyebrow. "Won't that get us flagged by the guards and, by extension, the Count?"
"Hmm, good point. Then just find out where those missing people lived and I'll go check them out on my own. For now, go do another round of questioning around the town."
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That night while the three REDLINEs women practically took custody of his sleeping quarters—he'd been making peace with this new fact—Zark'thul sat by the window, eyes closed. He had already sent his Thousand Eyes of the Dark Beyond to the locations the others had scouted for him, the residences of the missing townsfolk.
Or, perhaps the missing was too presumptuous a descriptor. No bodies had been discovered as of yet, so it remained uncertain whether they were dead or alive or otherwise.
With a focused clarity, Zark'thul gazed through one of the Thousand Eyes' perspectives. He found himself looking at an ordinary house that showed no indication of a break-in or a struggle. The Eye drifted through the interior, which was mostly untidy. On a wall by the windows, he noted scratches left in the wood, positioned far too high for even an adult to reach.
He opened his eyes and made a mental note of what he'd seen.
Throughout the rest of the night, he divided his time among his other ethereal eyes. Most of the dwellings offered scant clues, displaying no obvious signs of ransacking or assault. In three out of six abodes, he noticed peculiar gouges in the walls similar to those observed at the first location. Again, he paused to document his findings.
However, that wasn't all he'd come across.
Faded symbols, painted on the inner walls with a dark substance, revealed themselves. Their pigments appeared too dull or too pale in the night's natural lighting for unaided human sight to distinguish from the surrounding dark, but not so for him. Though worn and obscure, the glyphs' placements were identical in every domicile.
During this discovery, the eyes zoomed in on these cryptic inscriptions—twisted shapes encircling a heptagram and bordered by an Ouroboros.
Within his reservoir of knowledge, a faint awareness about this strange configuration pricked at the edges of his mind, but it remained elusive and inaccessible. Even more vexingly, the majority of his subsumed memory remained tantalizingly beyond his immediate reach.
Nonetheless, seeing the symbols was enough to gather an understanding, albeit general and speculative in nature.
The work of a cult, perhaps? Maybe they were somehow connected to the forest?
Despite the glaring gaps in his knowledge, he remembered occultists trying to reach out to him before, at times offering even their lives to become a part of him in a hopeless plea to achieve greater communion. They never seemed to grasp the nature of his being, mistaking it for something comprehensible or digestible.
They were little more than misguided fools.
"Did you find anything, sir?" Clare asked, interrupting the quietude of the room.
The sound of her voice drew him out of his trancelike state, causing him to blink a few times. He turned to look at her—she was in the middle of braiding Lyssa's hair as Geneve slept next to them.
"Found some symbols at the sites of the disappearances," he answered plainly. "Most likely a cult of sorts at play here."
She perked up at his words. "A cult?"
He nodded in response, maintaining an impassive expression.
"What will we do then, sir?"
"Catch them in the act, follow them to their base of operations, and from there... neutralize them. Simple as that."
"Are you expecting to encounter the cult tonight?" she asked.
"We'll see. I can keep watch over the town all night, but there'll be gaps in my coverage. Though, that shouldn't pose a big problem. I know what to look out for, now," he replied, and closed his eyes once more.
His scrying eyes scattered through the town, probing from house to house. Focusing intently on each location, he sought the subtle glow of incandescent sigils to direct him.
----------------------------------------
After hours of fruitless searching, something finally shifted. His scrying eyes alighted upon a pair of hooded figures lurking near a timber-framed dwelling near the edge of town. Their movements caught his attention as they paused by the home's door.
The taller of the two began tracing cryptic patterns over the aged wood with his fingertip, his cloak shielding his hands from sight. A dark aura emanated from the motions, and moments later, the door swung inward, granting the silent figures entry to the home. They vanished into the darkness of the house, the door shutting soundlessly behind them.
Zark'thul's eyes snapped open, and he swiftly rose from his seat. "I found them."
Immediately, the women on the beds sprang to their feet and hastened to ready themselves. Even Geneve, despite the lingering grogginess of sleep, rapidly donned her gear and weaponry within minutes.
"Should I wake the guys up?" Clare asked as she threw on her boots.
"No. Just the four of us will be fine," Zark'thul answered, adjusting his suit. He beckoned for them to follow, and they hastened from the tavern into the moonlit night, traversing through the slumbering town.
Zark'thul kept one eye closed, his vision alternating between his own perspective and that of the scrying eyes converging outside the timber-framed abode. He picked up his pace, weaving through the winding streets.
"My eyes will only last another five minutes at most. Clare, Geneve. When we near the location, disperse and track them when they leave. Do not lose them," Zark'thul ordered quietly, casting a brief glance over his shoulder.
"Yes, sir," they replied in unison.
A few more twists and turns of their route brought them closer to the target area. With a wave of his hand, he signaled Clare and Geneve. They acknowledged his command with a nod, broke away from the group, and darted down an alley.
Zark'thul spread his scrying eyes around the neighborhood, monitoring the area to keep an eye out for any other cultists. The potential for other accomplices to the two intruders was a real possibility.
Moments later, the robed individuals slipped out of the residence. Zark'thul caught a brief glimpse of them before his final scrying eye dissipated into wisps of blackened mist.
"It's up to them now," he murmured. Beside him, Lyssa silently acknowledged his words with a nod.