“If you wanted to end up murdered that’d be the way to do it,” Fahan sighed, rising from a crouch and dusting the dirt from his hands.

 Aryana took in the steep chasm walls coming down from rocky shoulders between which the trail meandered into a disquieting darkness.

“I don’t like it,” Jahrom said, soothing his nervous mare with a gentle stroke along her mane. “Damned traders. They should have stuck to the road. Just because it’s harvest season doesn’t mean bandit scum aren’t roving about.”

“It won’t be bandits they’ll be facing,” Aryana said. “I say we head on. There’s still time to catch up.”

Jahrom looked at the sky purpeling into twilight. “Too dangerous. We won’t be able to see the trail much less spot an ambush. And torches will only blind us. Besides, the horses won’t like it and if they panic they might trip and break a leg. No, we’ll camp by the stream and resume our search at dawn. Let’s just pray that the Lord takes pity on their souls and sees them safely through the night.”

Aryana stood alone as the rest were already bringing their mounts about, eager to retire after a hard day of riding. “Then I’ll go alone,” she said. “On foot. I won’t be spotted. I never am.” Drawing the hood of her black cloak to cover auburn curls, Aryana set to dismount when Jahrom raised his palm.

“No, we yield for the night.”

“But I can—”

“Nobody is denying your ability or your dedication, Sister Aryana, but this is my command and, for once, I will have my company function as one … It’s too dangerous.”

Aryana felt her jaw muscles grow tight. “But they won’t stand a chance…”

  Jahrom’s gaze wandered from hers, nodding solemnly. “If they have Faith, they will be protected. Fairness of Roshan be with them.”

“Fairness be with them,” echoed the others.

“Fairness be with them,” Aryana muttered.

Jahrom cocked his head. “Back in formation. We’ll leave at first light.”

And that was the end of it. Arayana grudgingly obeyed, passing her ‘commander’ without sparing him a look. There was no point in arguing and so she would wait for the onset of dusk and the cover of night.

“It’s odd, though, isn’t it?” Baraz mused as he came abreast with her. The two rode at the head of the column, forming the vanguard of the nine man strong company.

“Hm?”

“The increase in raids and incursions. Last year we had what? Eleven? This year we’re up to—”

“Twenty-four,” Aryana said grimly.

“Twenty-four,” Baraz agreed. “And the trees are yet to shed their leaves.”

“Did you come up with another theory?” Aryana asked, her tone just short of conveying interest. Not that that ever mattered to Baraz who happily shared his thoughts to smother the monotony of dirt pounding hooves and the chings and clanks of shield and maille.

 “It could be for any number of reasons. Drought, war or some kind of plague. All valid reasons to look for new lands to settle.”

“They aren’t here to settle. If they were, we’d have seen evidence of their offspring.”

“Not all fabled races adhere to a strict family unit,” Baraz countered.

“But the Acro’an do. The males never leave their mother’s side. So why did we slay two of them at Gindizi? And what about the Haena? Since when have those savages ever banded with any outside their own clans?”

Baraz pursed his lips. “There are always exceptions… Though the fact that the raiding parties are multi-racial could be another clue as to what’s driving them so far south.”

Aryana sighed. “Brother, sometimes monsters just do what monsters do.”

“I suppose there’s that argument… unrefined, but it serves its purpose as good as any.”

“It keeps us vigilant.”

“Quite.”

Aryana peered at the man from the corner of her eyes. Baraz was what you would call a typical scholar. Light of build, sharp of features and always riding a maelstrom inside his own mind with thoughts that never seemed to cease. She smiled to herself as she watched him sink into what was undoubtedly a fierce inner monologue. He was a good man. All of her brothers were good people and she would protect them even from themselves.

When they came upon the stream there was a perfect clearing, a patch of dry grass to set up tents and allow their horses to stray surrounded by low shrubs impossible to sneak through without alarming whoever was on watch. Being designated as scout and vanguard meant that Aryana and Baraz were allowed to sleep through the night since they were needed rested and alert for the next day. Still, Baraz often kept by the fires to read.

He always carried a palm sized tome around, thick with impossibly small writing which he read by the flickering flames. - smoother transition

“You’re going to ruin your eyes someday,” Cas said. Gray and grizzled, the veteran was easily twice their age so his advice was usually heeded. After all, it took more than a good polearm to live to his age and still be able to ride.

“He’s right, Baraz,” Aryana said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

Baraz perked up as if only just realizing he’d been spoken to.

“You should head to bed,” Aryana said. “We both should.”

Baraz looked back at his tome, perhaps struggling to trade the faraway place on the page for the mundane comfort of a frilly sheet under the roof of a clammy tent. “Right, I—hadn’t realized the hour.”

Aryana smiled thinly as he got up. She wasn’t the least bit tired, but Baraz was her tent mate and she needed him on one ear peacefully snoring before she could set to task.

“What were you reading?” Cas asked, poking the fire with a stick.

Damn…

Baraz stopped, glancing at the leather bound. “Oh, nothing really. Chasing loose ends…”

Jahrom snorted, appearing from the night to warm his hands. “I know what he’s reading. You’re still on that trove we found in Axtara.”

Baraz bit his lip. “You have to admit these are non-trivial matters. The knowledge contained in those scrolls—”

“Will still be there when we return,” Jahrom said wearily. “Don’t worry, you’ll be buried up to your neck in parchment within the week. Now, get rest. That’s an order.”

Baraz stacked his fists, the tome held awkwardly under his arm as he enacted the symbolic ‘removing of the lance’ and bowed his head. “Yes, Brother.”

Aryana gave Jahrom a slight smile in thanks which, in hindsight, was a mistake as it would only fuel the rumors that there was something between her and Baraz. In truth, there wasn’t but she supposed it was the price a woman paid for showing favor to any particular man. And she’d given plenty of proof that she watched over him. Baraz wasn’t a fighter, which was one of the things she liked most about him. Though far from a coward, he had no talent for the art of battle. So, she would keep him safe instead.

She would keep them all safe.

Waiting for the others to drift into sleep was an exercise in patience. Not that they were particularly prone to raucous merriment until the early hours, but the night was when Aryana’s spirit came alive, when the stars danced against the black tapestry and the dark became like day to her eyes. The seconds passed ever so slowly, she could count the beats of her heart, anticipation building until she was finally released by the first gentle snore as Baraz surrendered the contest with his overbusy mind.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

With a breath, Aryana gave into the call of darkness, that beckoning thing that lived in the shadows, summoning her to return. It was a constant reminder that unlike her brothers, she wasn’t human.

In a flurry of frozen fractals Aryana emerged from the shadow of a storm bent willow, shedding icy sleet from her black cloak as she hit the ground running, already far from camp. Another breath and she leaped into a different shadow, disappearing again into that void; the place between worlds, brimming with a power so fierce she feared it might pull her very being into its ravenous core, tearing her apart.

There was no fighting it, no way to claim its mastery or exert one’s will over the singularity that burned black and eternal. And so she had to pull away, having only skirted the sliver of infinity to reemerge in the physical, her skin frosted over, the ice cracking as it broke and fell, whipped by a gust racing past her.

Panting slightly, Aryana was back at the chasm. She could only hope she’d made it in time to save the merchants from the invading fiends. Twin sabers drawn, her black cloak billowing behind her, she entered the shadows, appearing and disappearing with each breath. No one, man, lion or horse could match her speed as long as there were shadows to move through, nor could her query hide.

From the Netherworld, the physical appeared like pale phantasms witnessed from the bottom of a shallow lake. Distorted, fractal, but easily discerned.

And she found them.

Large shapes shifted above her, closing the gap between them and the encircled wagons. Aryana sprang from the ogre’s own shadow, her blade splitting his back, a gust of hail meeting the spray of warm blood.

She’d counted six of them, so that left five. Two Suchan warriors, coldblooded lizardmen from the Fire Isles who were sluggish and slow at night, but still a threat. Though easy to wound, they were hard to kill. She had seen one of their kind hold its own against five men, fighting with half its brain cleaved through.

“Find cover,” Aryana shouted to the merchant who nearly tripped over himself scrambling to climb into his wagon. Two other merchants lay dead, their bodies bludgeoned and limbs sprawled at grotesque angles. She’d been too late to save them, but at least, without any witnesses, Aryana could fight unrestrained.  She only needed—

“Aaaah!” Aryana shrieked, feeling hot blood fill her mouth, a dizzying bloom followed as her head snapped back with a tremendous force. She had taken the butt of a spear to the chin. Staggering, she barely managed to sink back into Shadow.

That had been too close. She opened her eyes to the pale ghosts looking cluelessly about. The ogre lay dead, but the two Suchans were still alive as well as three Haena, large fur-covered beastmen with jaws that could mangle steel.

What chance did humans have against monsters? What chance would they stand if she didn’t protect them?

She lunged, a spinning specter of death. Her saber cut across the face of a snarling Haena, slicing its red eyes through to the socket. She then landed in a crouch, too late to catch the shadow she was aiming for, though managing to maim a scaly thigh instead. Metal rang as she parried a two handed slash of a longsword, stolen from a human and unfit for the oversized hands of the hulking Haena wielding it. If it had been a kopec of their clan’s own making it would have been all over for her.

But the raiders never fought like a proper force or in their traditional manner. They attacked in a chaotic frenzy, uncommunicative and relentless even in the face of greater numbers.

The blinded Haena swung his spear about, hitting one of his kin hard enough to splinter the shaft in half. The offended Haena fell upon the other and as the two juggernauts grappled with ferocious savagery, Aryana metted swift death to the still standing Suchan, her blade cutting through the soft underside of his throat.

Nearly out of breath, she risked falling into shadow again. The pale fractals flickered above her, the eternal dark brimming at her back. She watched the blinded Haena’s light wink out after the other had gored its skull with a rock, not stopping even after the body beneath him was nothing but a twitching corpse.

Aryana emerged from the chasm wall, feeling lightheaded, though her aim was true enough and she landed on the Haena’s back, driving the points of her two sabers into the beastman’s lungs. She didn’t linger to hear its rattling death gasps and skewered the throat of the last Haena. Her blade caught as the creature fell, and she abandoned it, landing unsteadily.

Only the crippled Suchan remained, still clutching his thigh, tongue slithering out to taste the blood infused air.

It trembled, lips curling defiantly from venomous teeth. Aryana raised her blade and rammed the the tip down the crook of its slender neck. It clawed at nothing and fell away from her sword.

Yet, before the Suchan hit the ground Aryana was on one knee, hilt pressed against her brow, her head pounding, and the rage of battle leaving her shaken in its aftermath. She prayed to Roshan, the King in Heaven and bringer of Light, thanking him for the lives she’d been allowed to save.

“H-how did you?”

Aryana opened her eyes and rose. She had taken a wrong step at some point. Her ankle hurt, though better than the left side of her face which was already starting to swell. She shook her head, vision slowly clearing, bringing the merchant into focus. He was thin and plainly dressed in a roughspun linen tunic, looking utterly bewildered at the carnage around his wagon.

Aryana spat out a glob of blood, the tang of iron filling her nostrils.

A plump woman climbed out of the cart and shrieked hysterically, hands clutched to her mouth.

The man hissed at her in Vearish, not a tongue Aryana understood well enough to comprehend, but she could guess that the man wanted to quiet his panicking wife who was praying vehemently to an amulet clutched in her hand.

“I’m sorry,” the man said, probably noting the golden sigil embroidered on the breast of her surcoat; the impaled king, Roshan. The Vearish typically didn’t adhere to the Roshani faith. They were an ancient tribe, who still prayed to old gods.

“Let her pray to whichever god she wishes,” Aryana said as she went to retrieve the saber from the Haena’s throat. The blade came free with a wet gurble. When she turned the man was on his knees, hands clasped into stacked fists.

“I never believed, but tonight I saw a miracle!” he proclaimed. “It was as if the Light summoned you from thin air. Now I see that everything the Order preached had been true all along. Roshan is the King of Heaven and you are his Herald, revealing his Glory before we would damn our souls for all time!”

“In Heaven,” Aryana corrected, her mind still fuzzy from the exertion, it took a second for his curious choice of words to hit her. “What do you mean, before you could damn your souls?”

The woman ambled back to the cart, pointing and lamenting something loudly in Vaerish.

The man also rose, palms raised. “I swear to you, we didn’t know, our eyes were blinded to the Light by greed. You must believe—”

Aryana pushed the man aside. “What were you transporting?”

A flap at the front of the wagon came loose and a figure stumbled out, falling awkwardly in a heap. A girl?

“You there, stop!” Aryana said, but the figure scrambled to her feet. Aryana caught a glimpse of a tattered dress as she ran away. The Vearish woman wailed, jabbing an accusing finger in the runaway’s direction.

“We didn’t want any trouble—” the man said, though when he turned there was no one there. “Where did she go?”

“Right here,” Aryana said, returning to the dying campfire having restrained the struggling woman, wrists pinned behind her back.

“Let me go!” she cried.

“First tell me why—” But then Aryana saw why. Her skin had the same hue as fresh moss and knife shaped ears stuck from the sides of her head. She spun the woman, meeting the distraught gaze of a goblina with hair that shone like gold, tousled tresses shading bright lilac eyes. “Y-you’re…”

“Please, you have to let me go!” The woman tried to wrench herself free but Aryana easily twisted her wrist behind her back, forcing the fabled to balance on her toes until she complied.

The merchant got to his knees again, hands clasped together. “Had we known we would never have—”

“This was your cargo?” Aryana snapped.

The couple dropped their gazes, the man nodding guiltily. “You must understand, we’d fallen onto hard times and she promised us our weight in treasure, deceiving us—”

“I didn’t deceive you!” the woman exclaimed.

Aryana twisted her wrist and she grunted, wincing in pain. “That’s enough from you,” Aryana groused, before addressing the two ill-fated merchants. “Stay here for the night, then travel back the way you came at the break of dawn.”

“Y-you’re leaving us?” the man asked, fear lacing a quiver through his voice.

“Ve can convert,” the woman said in a thick Vearish accent. “Ve vant to!”

 “No,” Aryana said too quickly. “I mean, not here. You can take the rite and receive your blessing at Fall-ta-din, near Raqqa. The Fifth Canton has a temple there. I’m sure they will be happy to receive you.”

“But, can’t you… Shouldn’t it be you to—”

“No.” But the man was right. It should have been her. But they had seen too much that would be otherwise hard to explain, and they didn’t look like the kind of people that could keep a ‘divine intervention’ to themselves for long. “You have committed a great sin,” Aryana said gravely, trying to sound as prophetic as she could. “Don’t test the Lord’s mercy by making demands. You will go to Fall-ta-din and submit before their mogh.”

“Y-yes, of course! Please, forgive our—”

“And smother that fire, or do you want to be attacked by bandits next?”

The plump woman immediately waddled over, scooping handfuls of sand onto the embers, bathing the canyon into near complete darkness.

“Good. Don’t follow me,” Aryana said, backing away with the goblina.

“We will never forget you!” the man shouted as the woman seemed to shower her with unintelligible praise and thanks in Vearish. “Your deed will be told on the corner of every market from here to the mountains of Gammanae!”

Great…

Aryana realized she would have to get rid of the bodies. The living couldn’t be ferried to the Netherworld, but the dead could easily be disposed of. No one would believe that she could have bested even one of those creatures by herself, let alone six.

“You’re making a mistake!” the goblina cried, still struggling against Aryana’s grip.

“Shut. Up.” This was getting tedious and when the woman tried to headbut her, Aryana had no choice but to wrap her arm around her throat. It was a good thing she was half a head shorter than she was.

“Grrr…”

“Are—are you biting me?” Aryana tried to shake her arm free from the goblina’s teeth, but her pointy incisors seemed to have anchored themselves into the leather glove. “You savage—”

The goblina kicked back, hitting nothing but air, but Aryana couldn’t help but be impressed with her tenacity.

“That’s enough,” Aryana said, finally having had enough.

“Don’t … you don’t …” the goblina strained to say as she was head locked.

Aryana squeezed the sides of the woman’s slender neck, cutting off the blood flow until the fight left her and her body went limp. Then, she was released and bound, hands behind her back.

“Sleep it off,” Aryana muttered then walked in the direction of the strewn bodies. By morning, the merchants might have wondered if it had all been a dream, weren’t it not for their fallen companions and the blood soaked dirt surrounding their camp. But, there was nothing Aryana could do about that. She just needed to get rid of the unexplainable, then find a way to explain the improbable.