Following the pathway of rocks that Faye had found got much harder in the shadow of the hill. Rising up into the night on her left, it blocked the majority of the moonlight that was still rising. The run down the path, which was proving much longer than she had first thought, had done its job of warming her up so she slowed to a walk.
She kept calling the stones she was walking on a path in her mind, but looking down at them, they were too big to be practical as a path, really. Each one was at least ten feet long, and six wide; made from some kind of pale stone they picked up every mote of light. They were arranged around the edge of the lake, each one being no more than a foot away from the next.
It certainly seemed like it was a path. It was the only thing she had seen that suggested life nearby, which got her heart beating — in excitement or fear, she couldn’t tell.
The air around Faye grew colder by the minute. Her breath was coming out in plumes of white now, and the thin layer of sweat on her body was starting to bring her temperature down.
Just before setting off on another jog, Faye caught sight of something in the corner of her eye. The hillside on her left had kept rising as she’d followed the pathway, soon it became the side of the mountain. But there, just a few steps away, were what looked like much more reasonably sized stone stairs set into the ground.
She followed them up the side of the hill with her eyes, then looked over her shoulder at the mountain she’d been aiming for originally and scoffed at herself.
“I probably wouldn’t have made that. Let’s go for the attainable one.”
Taking the stone steps as fast as she could, trying to keep the cold at bay, Faye didn’t realise when she’d made it to the top. At first, she’d thought there was some kind of light source, but it turned out that the full moon was almost directly in front of her. It had risen some more, and soon it would bathe the entire lake behind her in direct light.
The moon’s face was scarred. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed before. Gone were the circular craters of Luna. Instead, the moon’s face was criss-crossed with lines of darkness. It looked like some knife-wielding loon had attacked the moon.
“What the hell is going on?”
A small rock tumbled and bounced from higher up the ridge, clattering to a stop near her foot. Her sword was already out and facing the direction it had fallen from. The sword tip was visibly shaking in the moonlight, but she couldn’t help that. Her arms were absolutely refusing to be steady.
She sucked in breaths through clenched teeth; the cold air harsh on her throat.
Her eyes darted left and right.
There wasn’t anything up there, or coming towards her. Shaking her head, Faye turned, keeping her blade in a middle guard. The stark moonlight lit everything in an almost monochromatic, high-contrast light that made it both easy and hard to see at once.
Every sharp edge was thrown into relief, which made it easy to see that she was standing at the entrance to some kind of ruined stone building, and a second path that lead over and higher up the ridge were also clearly visible.
But in the shadows of the stonework, it was utterly impenetrable. Edging forward, Faye realised she was holding her sword with a white-knuckled grip but couldn’t bring herself to stop.
She prodded into some of the deep shadows, lunging forward in quick thrusts, but after hitting stone more than a few times, she realised that she was literally jumping at shadows.
A quiet, shaky laugh that was too loud in this strange, monochromatic night world escaped her lips.
“Great one, Faye. Scare yourself half to death and then die of exposure. Good way to go.”
One of the walls had the rusted remains of a metallic fixture half-attached to the wall. She wasn’t sure what it had been, maybe a torch sconce, but it was yet more evidence that whoever had made this place was long gone. She just hoped that whatever they had built higher up the mountain had survived enough to give her some real shelter for the night.
Passing through the ruined archway of the stonework building and on to the path that led up the mountainside, Faye noticed that there were some kind of etched markings in the stones. They were completely alien to her. She’d always been interested in historical discoveries, in a purely amateur manner, but these didn’t look familiar at all.
The path here was still made with more ordinary proportions in mind, the pieces were barely bigger than a foot, and they were much more natural looking. This path followed the ridge higher up the main mountain, and looking over the right-hand side, she could easily see the lake.
With moonlight showing her the way once more, Faye set her sights on the regularly shaped stones above her and began walking.
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The regular shapes above turned out to be just a single wall of what was once some kind of fort, or if she were being generous: a castle. No identifying marks remained, and it definitely had the air of a centuries-abandoned ruin without even basic upkeep by a national organisation. The stones were weathered, rounded, and stained by mosses and rain. The floor was uneven, cracked and broken in places where small boulders had bounced into the ruins from high above. The little craters were disconcerting, and Faye had to force herself from looking up at the darkened heights above, watching for more deadly tumbling rocks.
Whoever built this place must have used wood for the roofs, because there was nothing above her head in the main sections. Some of the smaller rooms were dark and fully enclosed by stone. She avoided going in those for now. She wanted to see if there was anything living here first.
The generous main entrance led to a wide set of steps that rose into an expansive space. It looked like a viewing platform that jutted out from the mountainside. Whether it had always been this way or if it had once had walls, windows, and a roof, she had no idea. But now it was just a mostly-even stone floor.
The floor itself was made from a granite-like stone that was much darker than the walls and paving flags outside. There were markings and grooves in the granite that were visible here and there, and strange misshapen lumps dotted the platform.
Before she could take another look, a sudden drop in temperature and a feeling of dread swept over her.
The wind, before only a calm breeze that brought a fresh bite turned now into a howling gale that chilled Faye to the bone and threatened to pull her off the side of the mountain.
“Iiiin-truuuder.”
Uncertain if it was her mind playing tricks on her, the wind, or genuinely the creepiest voice she’d ever heard, Faye spun around to see where the sound was coming from.
Shielding her eyes with one hand, the other desperately grasping her sword’s grip with somewhat sweaty fingers, she twirled slowly in place.
From the depths of the shadows near the steps back into the ruined fort, a shape detached itself from the wall. It wore a hooded cloak that drooped from around eight feet off the floor to flutter just an inch from the ground.
The howling gale didn’t seem to affect the floating hooded figure at all. It moved with its own wind, a wind that Faye could neither hear nor feel.
When the figure moved into the light of the moon, she realised that whatever body she’d been expecting to see was not there. In the hollow space under the ragged cloak, dangling on a chain that shone in the light of the moon was a pendant clearly outlined with internal light in the distinct shape of an hourglass. Its large glass bulbs were filled with a strange, glowing sand that moved between the bulbs independently of gravity.
Faye dragged her eyes away from the impossible pendant.
Above the chain, in the place of a face, hung a grotesque metal mask. It glinted in the moonlight, but it was muted, dark, and blotchy. It vaguely resembled a skull, but in the centre of the forehead a single piece of the mask rose up into a jagged spike, reminiscent of a crown.
There were no eyes. No faded or glowing lights from beyond the pale. Just empty, dark sockets. The moonlight couldn’t penetrate the space behind the metal.
Rooted to the spot, Faye wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. Animals she could fight.
This… thing?
No.
That was when a skeletally thin arm with abnormally long fingers appeared from within the ragged remains of a cloak and began drawing a sword from a scabbard at its side that until a moment ago definitely had not existed. The blade was easily six feet long, the almost leaf-shaped blade pockmarked and made of the same strange, dark metal as the mask.
This ghostly apparition wielded it in a single hand as if it were a letter opener.
Faye got the impression it would pass through her as if she were an envelope.
She blanched, and the deathly figure let out some inhuman screech that she felt almost as much as she heard. It moved toward her in a straight line, its robe flapping the wrong way for the gale winds that still tore at her body and clothes.
She tore her scabbard away from her blade, throwing it aside in her haste. The first blow came almost too quick to follow. Some instinct allowed Faye to get her guard in place in time, but the blow staggered her, and she nearly lost her blade.
Her hand and arm were numb from the blow, and she grimaced at the internal voice telling her never to take an enemy’s swing directly on her blade like that.
The next swing came almost as fast, from above. She threw herself aside, moving in a semi-circle around the spectre.
Whatever the thing was, it was somewhat slow to move, but lightning fast to strike. Dancing out of its reach, unwilling to test its ability to feint, Faye mostly kept moving around it. But her luck wasn’t going to hold out long, she knew.
The inhuman screech that the thing gave off changed in tone, it became an ominous howl that echoed in the air. She felt her arms give way, her legs almost refusing to move. Lethargy seeped through her bones like molasses.
Stumbling once more to the side, Faye realised that there wasn’t much else to do to escape the thing. It had somehow managed to get between her and the exit. Her sword felt too heavy to lift, and her limbs didn’t want to respond to her commands.
The dark metal of the spectre’s mask turned to face her. The blank stare of its empty eye sockets was more harrowing than anything else this place had thrown at her. She felt tears spring to her eyes. It began gliding towards her, its cloak’s ragged ends twitching this way and that.
Just before it got into range of swinging for her once more, Faye tried to take a step backward.
She felt something under her heel just as she moved, and without time to right herself, she knew her drained legs would let her fall.
The six-foot greatsword parted the air in front of her face, moving so quickly she hadn’t seen it.
She was already falling to the floor, the object she’d stumbled across soft and irregular under her feet. She threw back her hands instinctively, her sword falling into her lap. Faye landed on her arse, hard, but she could barely feel it.
The spectre was approaching again and was winding up for another swing.
Something like glass cracked under Faye’s palm as her hand slammed into the granite floor.
Would you like to use the [Stone of Recall]?
Yes or No?
YES! She screamed in her head.
Her actual voice could only produce a single, high-pitched sound that didn’t resemble a word so much as it was fear made audible.
Everything snapped to darkness.