Dusk fell early that day. Even as Cordelia remembered her last sunset, the eerily quiet woods omened something sinister as death. Gone were the sounds of birds; even the trickling of a nearby stream, which could be heard in the morning, was now dampened by some oppressiveness in the air.
Esme had with alacrity obeyed her brother's demand that they leave early. But as for why he did not delay the trip for tomorrow morning, where the passage through the woods should be safer, he refused to explain beyond some vague cryptic divination.
Blankets, clothes, foodstuff and other necessities like flint and whetstone and cooking gears were divided into three packs of sturdy skin, of which Cordelia carried the lightest and Esme the heaviest. The arrangement at first puzzled Cordelia, for she thought Derrick would take on the greatest burden. She soon found out why.
“Should we be caught in a melee, or ambushed,” Derrick said before they left, “both of you will run before and not look back. No, Esme,” he said ere the girl could open her mouth, “Someone ought to look after Cordelia, and this may not be done in the heart of combat.”
And so it was decided. Derrick would be the only one to engage in combat, while the girls flee with most of the gear and food to subsist them on Esme’s back. One thing to be sure, Cordelia did not feel safer, quite the opposite.
With a heavy heart and uneasiness, she followed the siblings away from the lodge in the woods. They went in the direction of the road where her fictional life had met a tragic end. As soon as a sharp bent hid the tiny house from view, however, Derrick halted. As though recalling something he had forgotten to pack, the knight turned sharply and told them to wait. Thereupon he went back to the house and only returned a few minutes later. The purpose of this short trip was not guessed by Cordelia until a much later time. For now they proceeded in cautious silence, Derrick at the front, then Cordelia, and last went Esme.
They reached the narrow dirt road at a tactful distance from the carnage of yesterday. Derrick had searched the carriages early that day, but found naught to report. Cordelia wondered if they had ever been real people with real lives, or mere fabrications placed by the World Serpent. It seemed best not to find out. She kept her head and gaze straight ahead as they followed the road, sparing no glance to either side where the forest grew thick and things prowled with soft paws and silent breaths.
After an hour or so, the first change occurred in Derrick’s hastened steps. Without being told, she hurried to match his pace. From that point on, the three communicated solely through the sounds of their footsteps. Through which she knew Esme was close behind. A silent understanding of the great need to press ahead. Meanwhile, night encroached.
By the time one of them broke the silence with human voice, there was little need for caution anymore. For all around them the forest was awake with scarcely concealed growls and rustles and hisses.
“We are surrounded,” Esme said.
Derrick did not answer, but pressed on. And along they went unchecked, unnerved only by the ceaseless threats of beastly presences.
Cordelia had been thus far able to comfort herself with the denial of things supernatural, telling herself that such sounds on both sides of the roads belonged to wild and ordinary animals. And if such things hungered for human flesh, surely a fire could drive them away, if the siblings should find the need to start one. Why they had not already struck a torch, as it seemed the most sensible thing to fight back the dark, she could not tell. She wished they would do it soon. For her sanity was giving away. Even the extraordinary number of the gathering beasts she could explain away, but not so an orb of silver light somewhere on the periphery of her vision. A ghostly thing it was, overhead and to their left, lurking behind many rows of trees in stark contrast with the falling darkness. And it followed them at a distance, and was not the moon.
As Cordelia's eyes fearfully followed it, the eerie thing would sometimes vary its relative height with the earth, or flutter and disappear, then moments later blink into existence past a turn in the road. And the darker the world grew, the brighter this strange light shone brokenly. Until it was the only thing in existence, whose suffusing touch to be seen and to be heard. And enchanting were the undulating beats, its intoning of a melody of whistling winds and such sallied souls of the forest, mesmerized by every twinkle rebounded on great boughed trees, and lingering threads of some distant daydream reaching to everything and anything and yet without substance, vaguely like multiple beckoning portals to some safe abode aheart an endless eve of dreams and fancies and unsleep.
Cordelia’s scream pierced through it all. She dropped to the ground unheeded of aught danger that might be harking, aught predators baring fangs for signs of weakness. Distant voices admonished the careless noise she had made. But one illusion stood out among the rest and whispered close to her yielding ears where her hands covered, and dark breaths touched upon the thin membrane, filthy breaths spreading upon her skin that hateful discomfort of the cruel and incurable curse still livid in her mind - far too close, too close.
A searing pain shot through her, unrelenting like good intentions. But even as it burned it pried her eyes open. And there she found her savior backing away with equal fright and relief.
The scorching was keen on her shoulders where Esme had seized. But her mouth gasped in the wholesome air and she saw that the world had not yet gone wholly dark. Her eyelids had simply been shut and her mind led astray.
“What was that?” she croaked with tears in her eyes.
“Something evil,” Esme said all too obviously, her eyes dark with concern. “You should not have followed it.”
But she had not. If her feet had moved it was on their own accord. She could recall naught of what had transpired in the moment of unconsciousness but the glaring contrast between a light too bright it seemed fake and a darkness too black it seemed tangible.
Esme looked at her brother, “She can’t move much farther in such a state.”
“Nor should we,” Derrick grimaced, “They have us completely surrounded. But they wait till it’s all dark.”
“What then?”
“The remains of a house lie somewhere ahead. Its terrain favors us. We shall make a stand there.”
And so said he turned and resumed the march.
Without being told to, Cordelia struggled to her feet, feeling weak as though she had hiked for a thousand miles. But she could not depend on Esme for a helping hand, or anyone else. No one. Simply one foot in front of the other.
The air was ghoulish, stank with the smell of gathering evil and Cordelia’s own mounting fear. The shuffles of paws and claws were now at hand, but now there came also the flapping of wings and constant sounds of slithering things on the grass and over great roots. Little hope had she that she may find an understanding with these crawly creatures who shared with her a patron god. Upon her wrist, even Mastema stirred uneasily, and would at times loose a warning hiss when she strayed too close to the edge of the road.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Before darkness could completely envelop them, Derrick made a sharp turn. At first she feared he had decided to confront the lurking things in direct combat. But a thin, almost invisible path yielded to her feet as she followed groping behind him, who was now but thin outlines.
After a small eternity, they emerged into a vast clearing. A dried pond stood between them and a mansion long conquered by the overgrowth. And this was a proper estate, unlike the siblings’ shack, two stories and made of solid bricks. But for the most part, its center and left wing had collapsed, while the whole inward wall of the standing right wing was exposed to the elements.
As they went into the dried pond and away from the treeline, Esme struck a fire and then another torch for Cordelia. She held on to the burning thing that was still cooler than Esme’s touch, depending her life upon it.
“What is he doing?” Cordelia asked. Though her heart beat so hard it ached, the fire and the sign of civilization, if a dead one, had heartened her enough for conversation.
“Putting up barriers,” Esme said simply. “Come, we gather wood for a pyre.”
And so Cordelia steeled herself to skirt close to the treeline, picking up such branches and sticks that had fallen from their casting shadow.
They cleared the ground floor of the right wing and piled woods there, and a great fire was lit. When Derrick returned, his hands sparkled with holy water. The edge of the clearing now glimmered with scribbled glowing signs upon wooden stakes driven deep into the ground. And at the center of the pond, where the knight would make his stand, the ground had been dug up.
“But these would not hold,” he said pessimistically. “They number too many. Even more than what should normally dwell in this forest.”
Cordelia dared not ask their chances of surviving till morning.
Still moodily, the knight pointed at the sword at her hip. “Can you use it?”
“Not for fighting, I don’t think.”
“Let me borrow it a while.”
She handed him the weapon. Upon which he whispered and made a sign. “This should mask your presence somewhat. But not for fighting.”
Then they sat with their backs to the fire. Waiting.
They needed not wait long. For soon a howl to high heavens marked the moonless night’s complete consumption of the world.
Derrick shot up. “Esme, at my back,” he barked, “Cordelia, under the stairs.”
It was hardly a dignified place to be in as others engaged in desperate combat, but Cordelia had little use for dignity at this point. She squeezed herself under a flight of stairs or what was left of it. Planks upon which dangled and splintered like a massive cobweb stretching from the ground floor upwards.
“Think you they have a chance?” she whispered.
“Hide well, mistress,” Mastema said simply.
She swallowed.
The earth quaked. But neither of the siblings stirred from their firm stances. Derrick with his sword held diagonally across his torso, Esme with an arrow nocked.
Now even the air pulsated, and the ground did shake unceasingly. Waves after waves of unseen assaults hurled at gradually shortened intervals. Deafening were the howling and roars and many other sounds utterly unaccountable by mortal ears. So loud they came as though something grievously wounded was laying in maddened agony by her side and crying into her ears.
Even then, the siblings held unmovingly. She heard Derrick offer a soft prayer.
A stake gave, uprooted and flung across the dried pond. Past the siblings, it slammed hard against the stairs Cordelia was hiding under. It collapsed on her. But the siblings had no time to pay a mind for Cordelia’s well-being. For in the very literal sense of the phrase, all hell had broken loose.
Her mind barely functioned as she crawled out from under the fallen stairs. Mazed by pains and shocks, she could but stare with wide eyes at the unfolding scene, utterly disregarding the danger that could bend her way at any moment.
Most unreal, perhaps, was the calmness with which Esme carried herself. So much so it verged upon absurdity. She nocked an arrow, she loosed it, then shifted her aim, and another arrow drew.
What these sure and measured arrows pierced Cordelia could not tell for surety. For the shapes that were now pouring into the dried pond were in no way comprehensible. Some did resemble the wolves that had near torn her apart yesternight, but in the moonless night they had taken on inexplicable dimensions to their outlines. Nor could the fire resolve these things into coherent shapes, for with their charge they dragged forth darkness into the vicinity of light. And the more they came, so did the shadow of the forest encroach, groping like gnarled fingers toward the building. The stakes inscribed with holy runes were trampled upon and uprooted until there were none left standing.
Into their midst, Sir Derrick flew untouchable with battle rage, meting out devastating punishments one after the next. And with his every blow bolstered by a resounding warcry a dark shape crumbled. They came. They fell. Each twice replaced by their uncaring brethren, coming like an unrelenting flood. The more he killed the thicker their encirclement swelled.
Inevitably, the horde spilled around the knight, and some instead of climbing and shoving at each other for a chance at Derrick would shoot straight for Esme, checked only by her well-placed arrows. Yet gradually, their charge outpaced and outnumbered her nocking, drawing and loosing. Ere her arrows were spent, Esme discarded the bow, unsheathed the blade.
As a perfect contrast to her brother’s unbridled indignation, the Maiden of God’s demeanor of grace was still as a stone rampart, as unmoving. But even the mightiest walls cannot stand forever a siege. And Esme’s defense was not flawless as her brother’s. She misplaced her footing, exposed herself, struck with lacking or too much strength. To Cordelia who possessed no combat experience, she was a fine warrior. And yet clearly the number and varied nature of her foes were too much to bear. Flying or crawling or charging they came at her with no predictable patterns. And the girl-warrior could only adapt so fast to foes she had never faced before.
Now Cordelia’s mind was growing clearer, and the haze dissipated, till she could discern the nature of Esme’s calmness. That it was not one born out of an unwarranted confidence in skills, nor of foolishness. But she was perfectly aware of her shortcomings. Esme simply did not fear, was not afraid. As though she could not envision the likely outcome of being conquered, despite by all appearances being pressed. Or that not for one second did she mind dying here to save a helpless stranger. Deep gashes were being scored with greater frequency upon her flesh; the strength in her attacks was failing at a markable rate. Once, she lost her footing, fell. Fangs immediately sank into her sword-wielding arm. Yet she untangled somehow and regained her stance, and, with the sword wielded off-hand, she fought on.
This proved too much for Cordelia. She knew with certainty that Esme would not hold onto life for much longer. Nor could she mark Sir Derrick, buried as he was under the dark horde.
Tears stained her face as she wept for saviors and protectors. Then ineptly she got to her feet, and fled.
The flight carried in confusion and desperation bore her aimlessly into the collapsed parts of the building. Against all good sense she had run without a care for stealth, as a readily marked and exposed prey. And yet with tangled feet making careless noises on the rubbles she scaled, the fallen bricks she pushed aside, none came after her. Could be that the charm Derrick had worked on her sword, which she clutched still, had effected this smooth escape. Or, deep down she thought guiltily, because she had been the lesser prey, so long as the coveted flesh of the Maiden of God was at hand.
Very soon she had plunged so deep into the dark embrace of the forest that the pyre had become little more than a faint outline over the treetops. One backward glance she threw at that funeral pyre before turning, resuming her cowardice flight. And then she saw it.
Alone in the infinite dark it appeared with scarce a sound. Silver as it was as before, the orb hovered tantalizingly, eerie and enticing as sleep after a fitful night. Yet she knew it was a fake comfort, and its nature was fey. No time even to fear. For in a blink it was over her, and there it descended upon her in all its terrible and consuming power.