8 | Brush Corpse Birds

Atop the boulder, there’s little to see, not nearly as much as Eli was hoping. Trees here are squatter, shorter than in other places, but thick as anything. He can barely see through their branches and trunks, even with the benefit of higher ground. Above, a glimpse of sheltered moonlight reaches weak fingers through the dark branches. Not much use.

Eli perches upon the top of the gray rock, unsteady, and sees a set of pale, bright eyes watching him below.

“Thistle,” he says, much calmer than he feels with his hands sweaty and his heart making its best break against his ribs. “Come with me, boy. You’ll die out here. I’m going to get you back to your father, but you can’t do it this way. We need to return before something happens to your sister.”

In the dark, he cannot see the child’s expression. For all his nasty attitude, Eli doesn’t believe he would leave his sister. Most likely, he would’ve only gone to the edge of the trees had Eli not tracked him down. He should’ve hung back and observed before approaching but was frightened for him, nervous of what could happen to an inexperienced child out in the dark.

Birds whip about the trunks, once again striking Eli in the cheek and shoulders, and back. He swats at them, irritated. Even in the dark, he glimpses the flashing shadows of their wings buffeting Thistle as well, so thick he does not glimpse all of him at once. Nothing about the pain seems to affect the boy. Eli wishes to go down to him but now fears him running once more. As it is, Eli is lucky he even caught up, that the boy did not simply run off into woods at top speed without stopping. Another bird wing strikes Eli in his scarred ear, and he hisses more for the violation of the movement than the muted pain.

Finally, he sees a break in the calm ice of Thistle's expression, the boy’s features twisting up in a frown. Confused more than troubled.

Did he even know he ran out here? Magic as it once did never dictated the actions of its hosts.

Magic is not as it once was.

Scrambling down the rocky slope, he’s relieved when Thistle only looks more confused, not turning on his heel and fleeing. Raising a hand as if he’s confused by Eli’s presence, Thistle mouths a word Eli doesn’t understand. He half looks to be reaching out to him, and so Eli presses through the ferns, hissing at small stabs of pain the plants give off—they are not permanent, so far as he’s noticed—and grabs Thistle by the wrist. Birds swarm, enraged, and Eli is startled by the Order finally desiring to speak to him.

Brush Corpse Birds

-

Fly, fly, into the sun, become like them unless you run—

Well, it’s a little better than anything it’s given Eli about the birds in the past, but it’s still not of much help. There’s no way to kill a swarm of birds with only a sickle and no affinity for casting spells. Running was always the one and only option.

When Eli’s hand closes around Thistle's wrist, light shivers off his skin, not nearly as violent as the time before. Frowning up at him, Thistle looks so utterly lost and much younger than fourteen years, and Eli feels less rage at the child’s petulant running away and obvious hatred, and more pity for how frightening this must all be for him.

Calmly as he can over the roar of bird wings and stings of small pains where their stick feathers bite him, he says, “Come along, son. We need to return to the monastery.”

With a blink, the confusion twists out of Thistle's features. His lip curls and some of the brightness fades from his eyes, replaced by the same dark hatred.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“I’m not your son,” he snarled, yanking back.

Eli keeps a good grip on him, but before he can say, I know, the boy is throwing a rather impressive fist into his face. Were he younger and perhaps not holding his sickle in his other hand, Eli might have the wherewithal to block it.

Instead, the world flashes black.

* * *

For a skinny kid, he sure hits hard, Eli considers. And he’s got enough height on him to reach Eli’s jaw without too much struggle. He doesn’t quite knock him out—Eli isn’t that old—but his vision dips a moment, and when he recovers it, he finds himself on the ground.

Swatting away the stinging ferns, he swears a few choice words and swipes at Thistle as he bolts past him, fingers brushing the ratted pant leg but not getting ahold of him.

Whatever magic the boy has, it changed him, if only for a moment.

Tucking the little bit of information away for later, Eli heaves himself to his feet, his joints complaining at the long, uncomfortable night and the trek into the woods, arm throbbing. Eli will ensure to tell Abner he raised a rude child.

He expects Thistle to have finally made a permanent break for it into the woods, but the boy has frozen only a few dozen strides away, not glowing so much anymore, hands held out in rigid shock. And Eli sees why.

the Unknown

-

What remains of your human blood, run, run, or in it flood—

What cursed being is this…?

Eli pauses, watching the monster standing as equally still as Thistle in the shadows of the trunks.

What remains of your human blood—

There is a possibility this creature was once something human, something of one of the many races of these lands that walk upright and speak. If it is true, if the Order is not simply playing tricks on him, mocking his fears, then Eli can see little of it left.

Frightened any words he speaks will provoke it while it stands still in the mist, head cocked in their direction, Eli bends carefully and flicks a pebble at Thistle's back. The boy twitches but doesn’t drag his eyes away from the monster. Foolish child is determined to get himself killed.

The monster sways. It is vaguely humanoid, with something akin to squat legs and arms, perhaps more resembling a troll than a man. It is a full few heads taller than Eli, and he is a large man himself, if not quite so bulky as he once was. No clothing covers it, only ripples of pale, bulbous flesh, bright red petals sprouting from all the places skin might wrinkle. Its face is only recognizable as one because such is where a face should be, not due to any defining characteristics.

Eli has seen nothing like it in all his years.

the Unknown.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Eli recalls his years in Monsetyra when the magic was first beginning to mutate. It had spoken to him in too many voices, as it did to the others in close proximity to where it first began to spread. In the back of his fuzzy memories, dulled by the pain of loss and injury, he recalls the voice once calling him many titles he was never given before the change.

Unknown. Yes, that was one of them.

It has been long enough Eli doesn’t expect the Order is suggesting he will turn into such a creature, but if it sees them as the same, there must indeed have been something human to this lumbering monster stalking them through the rabid woods.

Nothing so monstrous has ever scaled this mountain, nor has Eli glimpsed any signs of it existing among the trees, no footprint or paths carved through the ferns. Indeed, he’s stayed on this mountaintop so long in part because nothing large the Order has mutated seems to crawl its way up so high.

Slowly, his eyes drift from the monster’s face to Thistle's back, heaving as he breathes in a panic.

One monster could’ve been a coincidence. Two, he could’ve ignored. Three, plus the raging swirl of the birds now becoming frightened by this unknown creature—these things are too many.

Eli must protect these children. And he must protect them with the strangest things the Order has to offer dragging themselves toward the boy and girl.

Abner, what have you done to me?

Momentarily, the monster is so still that Eli wonders if it’s harmless, if it’s attracted by whatever magic Thistle gives off but has no desire for violence.

Then Thistle makes a move to run, and a roar shakes the trees so violently even Eli’s fading hearing is screaming. He winces but doesn’t take his eyes off the beast. It moves with a deceptive speed for something so large and wide and with legs even shorter than Eli’s. Thistle bolts left, disappearing into the ferns, shockingly decent at running through them with bare feet. Eli doesn’t know what his magic is but hopes it is useful in some defensive form. If nothing else, if the kid is going to keep running off in this way, he needs to be able to kill monsters.

Even when Eli bolts after the boy, putting himself in the pathway of the monster, it seems to give him no mind, face affixed on the place Thistle disappeared into the ferns. It almost strikes Eli with a flailing arm as it runs, not even intentional in its attack. With a practiced slice and the familiar feel of wielding a blade even after so long, the sharp hooked curve of the sickle slices the beast’s left arm straight off. It’s no different than cutting through underbrush, a distinct lightness to the flesh if it even can be called such. Nothing particularly akin to blood makes itself known.

It doesn’t slow the monster down.

But now Eli has its attention.