“We’ll need more of this when we’re done here.”

Tadrin didn’t look up as he spoke, though he did lift a newly emptied vial, giving it an indicative wiggle. He was focused on his sword, a double-edged blade sat horizontally across his lap. He sat on a log, his back to a line of trees, his front a good yard away from the creek Eida had led him to. Now and then, she could see him glance up towards the mud and water. They were quick flashes, interspersed between rubbing a cloth over the weapon’s length, but she caught them all the same.

“Likely. That’s the last of that particular oil. I’ll need more sear and hawksbane first, though.”

He held the sword up, twisting and turning it in the light. The oil made it glisten, catching the sun even if the rays were having a hard time peeking through the grey clouds. Grey. It was always grey in Coniston. Sometimes Eida felt like that was the case throughout all of Blightwatch, the whole county just cursed to be eternally dour. Sodden. It wasn’t true, of course - it was just spring.

“I wish I’d known you back in the day,” he said.

“What day? There are a lot of them, Tadrin. You’re old.”

He squinted at her, feigning offense. “Back when I served in that scuffle at the border. The one between us and Goldenwall.”

Eida wrinkled her nose. “Pretentious name. I can’t say I know much about any scuffle, though.”

He gave her a disbelieving look. “You didn’t know there was a border skirmish? Wasn’t that long ago. I don’t know. Fifteen...fifteen years, I think.”

“That’s half my lifetime, Tadrin.”

“Sure, but even a kid would have heard about it.” He paused, before his face broke with a grin. “Especially a kid like you probably were.”

Eida stood from where she was crouching nearby. She’d been scanning that riverbed, trying to see where the earth was churned up near the surface. She glanced over at the sellsword and just arched a brow at him, waiting.

“You seem like the kind of person who’s always been sticking her nose in trouble.”

“Whereas I’m sure you’ve been a saint all your life,” she replied. There was humor in her voice, and she was sure he could hear it, though she turned away again and started pressing her feet more firmly against the ground. It was stable here, but she was certain to find some give. Some hint of tunneling below. “No matter. Why would you have needed a flaming sword in a fight against the men of Goldenwall?”

He laughed. “To scare the piss out of them.”

“Terrible for the metal after a few tries.”

“Sometimes, Eida, it’s worth it just to see the look on someone’s face.”

She took another step forward - and the ground gave way. She felt it with a violent lunge forward, a lunge she hadn’t taken. Not intentionally. Then more of her, her shin, her thigh, her hip, all sinking under. She let out a sound like a strangled chicken, squawking, reaching out and grasping her fingers into the grass and the topsoil. Tadrin was standing, his eyes wide, one hand on the hilt of his sword and the other holding the flint he’d strike against the steel to set it alight.

Eida barked out: “No! No, not yet!”

It was enough to make him hesitate, mercifully. She really didn’t have any more of that oil on her. Her heart was hammering madly in her chest, but nothing was dragging her down there, and she felt no sudden, tearing pain in her legs. If it’d been the creature, she was certain she’d be dead already.

The ground below her was just hollowed out. It caved beneath her weight.

With a grunt, she crawled back out of the hole, hand over hand. She was soaked and filthy. A passing breeze sent a chill through her, but she ignored it, instead turning around to face what she’d just uncovered. The book mentioned that the creature, the Rakisha, tended to build off of a single tunnel, one that it persistently returned to and bored out in order to keep from becoming trapped. It only dug in other directions when prey was near or when it was desperate enough to take the risk.

The tunnel before her now was larger, built to last. She could see the way her own body had cleaved through it, a sorry dip in the rich earth, globs of muck splattering downwards from where she’d broken the sanctity of its burrow. She crouched, slowly, with Tadrin still watching her, moving to poke her head low enough to see where it led. The scent of something fetid filled her nose, and she pulled back again to gulp down air and hold her breath before trying again.

Left and right. Not large enough to stand in. Only large enough to crawl through. The sides of that tunnel glistened in a way that sickened her in a dull, muted sort of way. They marked the passage of the Rakisha, marked its hungry back and forth slipping through the soil.

“You’re doubling my pay if I have to go in there.”

Eida looked up at Tadrin, her expression flat.

“Tripling.”

“We’re not going in. We just have to find the exit points, block one off, and flood the tunnel with smoke.”

“Right,” he said. His voice was more gruff than usual, which always meant he was worried. “And I’ll be standing at the unblocked end, yes?”

“That’s the plan."

“I’m getting half the mark this time.”

“You always get half the mark, Tadrin,” Eida said. “Come on. We’ll follow this side. North.” She lifted her arm and pointed, standing again and starting to walk. “Block it off, then double back the other way.”

He fell in line beside her, moving with her down the creek’s side. The tunnel ran parallel with it - no great surprise. Eida’d assumed as much once she figured out what the creature was. The man who’d died was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, unlucky enough to cross it.

His body was gone already. Taken off to be buried, as though somehow some prayers and a crescent moon drawn onto his forehead would wipe away the memory of his final moments.

If spirits were real and they could remember, Eida could think of few who would be more haunted. The same could be said for anyone who encountered the beasts who crawled from the blighted places.

“How do you think it got this far?” Tadrin asked. “With what you said the other night. About not being able to get through-”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“I’m not sure. We’re far enough from that border that it doesn’t make any sense.”

“...You’re sure it’s the right creature, then?”

That gave her a pause. Tadrin rarely questioned her judgement. She figured by now he’d learned that this was what she was good at. She had enough books and enough learning that she was generally reliable. If he was questioning it, it meant it was worth reconsidering.

The silence stretched. They continued walking, and he simply waited.

“I’m sure,” she said. She’d turned it over in her head, all the images she’d seen between the pages of that book, and none of them aligned so well as the Rakisha. Not with the details she’d gathered.

“So you think there’s any weight to the rumors then? That they’re - they’re changing?”

Even gruffer now, that voice. Tadrin may not have been able to read, but he was sharp. Smart, in an instinctive way. It was a question she’d been considering herself for quite some while. She hadn’t run into any beasts that varied greatly from what was scribed in those books, but the books were also old, and alchemy was, at its core, the power to change.

Could these creatures do it on their own? That was the question, and she didn’t have an answer for it. She hated not having the answer.

“So you don’t know,” he surmised from her silence. “Well enough. Guess we just have to do our best with what we’ve got.”

“I doubt it could eat you anyway. It would try, just couldn’t. Maybe take an arm, at most.”

“That’s very reassuring, Eida. Mother knows I only really need one of them.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but as she did, the ground beneath her began to rumble. It was faint, at first. So much so that she held up a hand to Tadrin to silence him, listening as much as feeling through her feet. It was there, the faint reverberation, tremors sent through the soil. She’d be able to see it coming - it wouldn’t be that far below the surface.

She turned. Searched. Her eyes scanned the area around them as her lips pursed in a line. She should be able to see it. The tunnel wasn’t that deep, and its size -

The ground behind Tadrin abruptly puckered inwards. She saw it just in time to cry out a warning, and the sellsword, more spry than his large frame belied, leapt to the side. She felt him grasp her and shove her in the process. It knocked her back, sent her tumbling off her feet. Rather than struggle, she rolled with the motion, grimacing as she heard the sound of some of her vials shattering. Glass pierced her leg. Minor. She’d deal with it later.

Because there were more pressing matters to attend to. The Rakisha was upon them.

~~~

She knew immediately that something wasn’t right.

Even as the thing loomed over Tadrin, turning that eyeless, bulbous head this way and that, she stared right into its jaws. Those teeth were thick. Strong. Powerful. She watched as they slowly retracted into the damp, fleshy lining of its mouth - and was horrified when another set appeared immediately after. Sharper. Glinting in the paltry light of dawn.

It took the legs. The thought chilled her blood. It took the bones, the flesh, the blood.

It hadn’t occurred to her how strange that was. Hadn’t occurred to her it was an abnormality. There hadn’t been any images showing markings of how it fed -

“...Eida,” Tadrin whispered. He clutched his sword tightly.

“Don’t move.”

The Rakisha lingered from where it’d emerged. Shot upwards, straight upwards, as though it’d burrowed directly down into the ground. Deep. Far beyond the creek and its bed and the tunnel alongside it. It didn’t move. It simply froze in place, like some kind of pale, macabre pillar.

“What do we do?”

“Its only sense is through movement,” she said. She whispered it, even if she didn’t need to. “We’re invisible to it so long as we’re still.”

“Right.” He looked towards the place its head poked out of. The place where our traitorous footsteps had been not moments before. “And how are we supposed to kill it if we can’t move?”

She was silent for precisely thirty seconds before she heard him swear under his breath. “Give me a moment to think.”

Oil. If only she had more of it. She could have thrown a vial at the creature. It would ignite at a touch of Tadrin’s sword then, catch flame. The skin was still damp, but not enough, she suspected, to protect it. This thing was made for cool, wet ground. It couldn’t stand the heat.

It began to move. Slowly, gradually, it pressed its head to the ground and swiveled it, this way and that. The body wasn’t long enough to go far. The range was paltry - but Tadrin also hadn’t managed to throw them out of reach by more than a few inches.

“...Eida,” he said, his voice strained. He clutched the flint in his hand, ready to strike the blade.

She could see the thing’s jaw moving. Undulating, as though the beast couldn’t decide which set of teeth to use in this situation. Why would anyone make something like this? Why would anyone want to twist and contort themselves a monster?

She shoved the thoughts to the back of her mind. Later. Not now.

It halted perhaps a foot away from the sellsword. To his credit, Tadrin stood firm, unyielding, but she knew his heart was doubtlessly pounding out of his chest.

“I’m going to draw its attention,” she said. The decision slipped into place, spread out over her shoulders, and with that, she was set in it.

“No.” Low. Firm.

She ignored him. “I’m going to run, Tadrin. And you’re going to stab it before it can kill me. Go for the head.”

“Eida, I swear to the Mother and her womb…”

“Three.”

“No!”

“Two.”

“Eida…”

She bolted. She hit the ground hard, making sure that her first leap would be like a thunderclap to the Rakisha, that it would feel like a slap to the face. Instantly, the wild, churning teeth within its mouth began to rove and spin themselves, becoming a gnashing, eviscerating force that let it bore forward. Towards her. Half-submerged, above and below, its swiftness sent a surge of panic down through to her gut. It shot after her, and she stopped looking as she powered forward, trying to put impossible distance between it and her, the mud clinging at her boots, clawing to hold her back long enough -

There was a splitting sound, the sound of harsh heat ripping at cold air. She didn’t glance back to see the sword ignite. The sound was enough, and the scent of it, the acrid smell of that oil burning. She hurled herself forward bodily, putting all of her weight into the movement, letting herself hit the ground with the finality of a gong. Tadrin would be there. Tadrin was right behind her. Come on, Tadrin.

She skidded, and the sellsword let out a cry. When she was able to orient her sight again, all she saw was the Rakisha’s maw not two feet away from her, eternally open, the teeth half-transitioned from breaking to bleeding. Her heart plunged, and a strangely panicked thought ran through her head. Will there be anything left of me to bury?

But it didn’t move forward. It didn’t close that infinitesimal distance. It didn’t, because smoke was billowing out of the side of its head. There was a smell like rancid fat, burning. Tadrin’s sword was plunged hilt-deep, and the fire licking up the blade persisted even when thrust into all that soft, gelatinous gore. The flames were already eagerly making their way back down the creature’s body, blackening it as they went.

It gave a single, shuddering jolt, but nothing more.

Tadrin breathed raggedly. Slowly, he pulled the broadsword free, and then plunged it in again. Then once more. They were precise, methodical movements. Not panic. Simply making sure the job was done.

He turned to face Eida, and she could see he was furious at her. She’d doubtlessly hear about it, later. For the moment, though, he just held the sword at his side, letting the flames tumble and writhe and burn themselves to extinction.

“I suppose that answers it, then,” he said, quietly. He never said anything quietly.

Eida stood. In spite of herself, she knew her hands were shaking.

“Mother above and below,” she whispered. “They’re changing.”