There were a few heartbeats of silence as the siblings, still bunched in the corner, stared at her. Trembling, Morton was the first to speak. “This is all your fault, witch.”
“I just saved you, you piece of shit.” Aris wiped her blood soaked hands on the clean patch of tunic of the woman lying on the ground. Of course he would still blame her. She should have just left them.
“You have to save the rest of them.” Jorra pushed past her brother, then hesitated but walked through the puddles of blood to reach out and grasp Aris’s hands. “I’m sorry about what Morton’s said but you need to help us.”
“Jorra, stay away from her.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” Aris burst out, flinging away Jorra’s hands. “You’re all hypocrites. You’re afraid of runes and spells like the rest of those Kuvanians but you ask me to make spells to help you. You despise Kuvanians fucking you over but you’ve done nothing to stand up against them. You even deny you’re Caelisian any more. Not once has your fucking brother been happy or even thankful of my help and he even blames me for this. He just sold me out to the Kuvanians, you have the nerve to ask me to save your village?”
“They’ll see what you did here and come after us,” Jorra said tearfully. She glanced down at the bodies on the floor and winced. “At the very least… At the very least we need our chief. Maybe then - ”
The three of them stiffened as a sensation washed over them. The feeling was familiar, waves of dread and restlessness that came from outside their bodies. Aris and Morton exchanged a glance that told her all she needed to know - he recognized it too. Somewhere close a Gate was opening. He swallowed, his throat bobbing. “This is retribution,” he said in a strained whisper.
“Don’t be stupid,” Aris snapped. “Tell me who has the largest house in the village. Someone with the largest room.”
“The chief,” Jorra immediately replied. “His house is also a gathering place. Old man Calar holds meetings in his dining room and the whole village can sit in it if they want to.”
“Stay in here if you want to live. Bar the door and windows,” Aris told the siblings.
“Where are you - ”
Aris didn’t hear the rest of that as she flipped to Shade form and disappeared through the walls. Screams erupted from the houses and villagers stumbled out. Aris froze in horror as she saw something white come out after the terrified villagers out of one of the houses.
Unseeing. Of course, where there are Gates, there are such demons that come after it. However this one looked much different from the ones she’d seen before as half of its body was… a person. It staggered and turned so Aris could see more clearly. It was still wearing a new looking brown tunic and half its head still bore a human face and hair growing out of the scalp. With a jolt, Aris realized this was one of the Kuvanians that had arrived at Gendis to intimidate the villagers.
The half man half unseeing creature gave a tortured groan and gave off the sound of bones breaking. A ripple effect rolled over the half that still looked like a man and it changed to a too-white flesh of the Unseeing. The eyes disappeared, the mouth stretched to a red gash filled with teeth. Clothes ripped apart and fell away.
A person had turned into an Unseeing. A Kuvanian, yes, but still a person. The newly made Unseeing turned and bounded towards a fleeing villager with unnatural speed and tore the person apart.
Aris believed that Gates opened to allow monsters through although… In hindsight there had never been a single report with people actually witnessing that. There were always accounts of people approaching a Gate already opened, monsters already roaming the area. It was simply assumed the monsters went through the Gate from some monstrous hell. This changed everything.
A male villager shrieked in terror as the Unseeing now went after him. Aris cursed and moved quickly to intercept the monster, plunging a ghostly hand into its too white flesh, switching to bodily form, then grabbing whatever muscle, organ or soft tissue and ripping it out. The Unseeing turned to her, screeching some horrible trilling sound, red gash of a mouth gnashing its too long teeth.
It was too much like the nightmares she frequently had.
The man shrieked again but Aris ignored him and disappeared while still studying the frightened villager. This man hasn’t turned into an Unseeing - also Aris hasn’t turned into some monster. Neither had Jorra or Morton.
She heard more screaming and fighting as Gendis became overrun with Unseeing. Who was turning and who wasn’t, she wasn’t sure but she had to find the Gate and find a way to close it. Her heart pounded - this was it, she had to show that she could do it. It was her chance. Ignoring the clamor or Unseeing hunting down the villagers, she hurried to the village chief’s house and slipped in.
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The smell of blood hit her first. It was everywhere, on the floor, the walls, the furniture - some even splattered the ceiling. It took Aris a few moments to realize most of the blood was drawn into runes and glowed slightly in a warm pink color. Jorra was right, the room was quite large and spacious. The center was cleared out and in the very middle, in a pool of blood, was a body Aris recognized to be the elderly village chief. His throat was slit and his belly cut open. Bloody intestines trailed the floor from his body and formed a circular shape on the floor. A rake and a broom jammed into the wood the floor, the handles touching to form a roof-shape over the circle of viscera. On the ceiling directly over the chief’s torn up body was something that looked like dark fire burning into the wood, except no scent of burning and no smoke emitted from it.
A strange sound emitted from the assembly but Aris located the sound to be coming from the old man’s body. His head was thrown back on the floor, mouth open too wide as if someone forced it apart beyond what the jaw could take. It almost sounded like scraping multiple swords against stone and the pitch changed as if it was trying to form a melody. Surely no one’s throat could make such a sound, but it seemed like it came from the old man’s mouth.
A few paces from the carnage stood an Unseeing. It was on all fours, standing awkwardly as its limbs were all different lengths. It seemed to be almost braying at the portal, but the sounds coming from its red mouth wasn’t barking or howling but that bone chilling trilling noise. Aris spotted the pieces of a tunic on the floor near it, along with a fine gold hilted sword. It seemed like whatever Kuvanian had accompanied the village chief into his house had also turned into an Unseeing. Was that the pattern? Kuvanians were the ones to turn into monsters when a Gate opens?
She had to close the Gate. Keeping an eye on the Unseeing lurking on the other side of the room, she drifted in Shade form to the village chief’s bloody corpse and quickly flickered into her corporeal form to topple the rake and broom to break the enchantment configuration. She then quickly returned back to Shade form while the Unseeing snapped its attention to her.
Aris retreated back to the wall while the Unseeing bounded to the spot where she stood. It crashed into furniture and walls as it thrashed around, trying to find her - she simply waited in a corner, hidden, allowing the monster to smear apart the blood drawn runes and break the terrible circle of intestines on the floor. Yet still the black fire on the ceiling burned. Frustrated, Aris reached out to finish off the Unseeing, its movements now annoying her.
It was easy murdering things that could not sense her. All she had to do was find a soft, exposed fleshy bit and wait for the moment they pause.
As the too white monster died on the ruined floor, Aris glared at the still burning circle of dark fire, then blinked at the dead Unseeing. With every rune enchantment, every spell, there needs to be an instigator. Not only do the runes need to be in place, it requires someone to activate it to bring it to life. Professor Gardlo, the one who tried to keep teaching her runeology, used a boat analogy to explain it. The runes and lines drawn were the construction of a boat, the Great Solvent the sea in which it floated on, the destination was the effect of the spell. Theoretically speaking, any effect can be achieved if the boat is built properly.
However someone needed to row the boat - obviously this would be the caster. A catalyst from the Solute is needed to start the spell. Most spells were activated and the results accomplished in a very short amount of time. There were spells that required extended amounts of time that needed the caster to keep activating it - the boat needed continuous rowing, so to speak.
Aris narrowed her eyes at the Gate. If that was the case, then who is rowing the boat to keep this spell alive? The only other person in the vicinity was the Kuvanian that turned into an Unseeing and she killed it.
She glanced down at the torn up corpse of the village chief. He was most definitely dead: the blood in and on him was beginning to coagulate, his heart wasn’t beating and his lungs were still. But from his open mouth came the twisted sound of a song with no melody. Could it be that the chief was somehow still alive? Perhaps… his Solute was still intact and that was what’s fueling the Gate’s persisting existence?
Her hands balled into fists. She had no proof that his solute was still there, but at the moment it was the only theory that made sense. Why else would the Gate still be open? She had returned to her normal form and she picked up the abandoned sword in the corner of the room and unsheathed it. It made her sick to the stomach, but if there was a possibility it would close the Gate, she had to try. She was the fucking Lunaris.
She raised the sword and poised it to sever the chief’s head from the body. Aris choked back a scream when the corpse’s hand suddenly moved and gripped her ankle, the head raising from the ground to look at her with glassy eyes. The jaw seemed detached and hung loosely to the side.
“The antithesis,” a voice hissed from the slack-jawed mouth. The nerve-grating sound temporarily went quiet for the eerie voice to come out. “You are here. You will not leave.”
Panicking, Aris tried to pull free in Shade form but found that she was unable to. She blindly tried to stab at the ‘corpse’ but even as the blade sank again and again into it, the death grip it had on her ankle didn’t lessen. It turned its head and the ‘song’ came out louder, more horrible. She then tried to sever the arm holding her leg but she found her swings too weak and imprecise from her anxiety.
Suddenly something crashed at the door. Aris tried to twist around to get away from it but the corpse held her firmly in place. Two, three more loud thumps and the door smashed open, scatting splinters everywhere. A large group of Unseeing swarmed into the room, all of them crawling on their hands and legs
Aris did her best with the one sword in her hand, but her breaths were coming out in rapid wheezes. She was going to die here, with her leg trapped by a corpse. She thought the Unseeing would all tear her apart immediately, but they stalled around the side of the room, waiting.
An Unseeing showed up with something hairy clutched in its too wide mouth. Shaking, Aris watched it deposit Jorra’s head on the floor. It made a trilling noise as if pleased with what it had done. The head rolled after it hit the floor with a sickening thud and Jorra’s twisted, bloody face turned to her, dead eyes staring up at her. Aris no longer remembered what Nilda’s voice sounded like so the words were replaced by Jorra’s voice.
Close your eyes, little moon.
For once, Aris obeyed.