by Travis Smith
8
Ian and Gregoire ventured north around the Hoxar Woods. They walked in silence for much of the day as Ian drew them in the general direction of their old home, Teromade. As the sun began to fall toward the western horizon, he found a small grove to take rest.
“We’ll stop here for the eve’, Greggy.”
Gregoire nodded but said nothing. His disposition seemed to improve now that they were a day’s walk away from the Woods, but something within him was still off. His perpetually clean slate seemed unable to shake whatever he’d experienced through the proximity to that cursed forest.
“It is odd, is it not,” Ian asked, “being free again? Just us two?”
“Hmm,” Greggy pondered. “Just us two,” he agreed with a wan, toothless grin.
“I shall miss our new friends, though,” Ian said, now looking down at the ground, scrawling wide circular symbols in the dirt.
Gregoire cocked his head as he considered this. “It is always just us, brother.”
Ian nodded. In a way, this was true. He muttered to himself in a foreign tongue while his brother settled down to rest. “Do you remember them, Greggy?” he asked at last.
“Who’s ’at?” Greggy asked. With his oblivious smile, he looked more like himself than he previously had.
Ian sighed. “We’ll return home soon and continue our search,” he said. “For now, rest.”
“We’ll see father at home?”
“Yes, Greggy. We will see him soon.” Ian finally lay back and let his eyes close, but his mind continued to race. He and his brother had spent so long in that cell in Fanxel, he could scarcely recall where he’d left off in his research. He’d heard tell of a warlock in Iskar who was on the brink of necromancy. Ian maintained an unfaltering certainty that—wherever he was—his father was not dead. But if one could control death, surely he would be master, too, to the chasm separating this plane from the next …
Finding his father was his life’s sole undertaking. When he’d been with the others, perhaps other ambitions had clouded his thoughts, but they were alone again now—as they ever were—and notions of the two of them restoring order to the world were foolish. He lamented the hopeless fate of his friends on their uncompromising mission, and, just before his mind turned off and he slept at last, he wondered if his undertaking was equally doomed.
9
The Stranger opened his eyes. Bright morning sunlight shone through the castle’s windows as a flock of shorebirds cawed just outside. He sat up and stretched, feeling more refreshed than he could remember. In fact, he could remember—
What exactly did he remember?
He looked around the castle room. It was familiar, though not a room he had ever physically inhabited. “How did I get here?” he asked the empty room. The last place he remembered being was …
He stood up suddenly from the bed. “Laura? William?” he called. He made for the door, over which the White Sword was hung, but, as he did, a disconcerting sound arose from outside the window. He turned toward the cacophony and slowly approached the window. His head swam as he observed just how high this bedroom was, towering over Krake, over all of Reprise. The Great Sea rolled across the horizon, and he was certain he could see the distant shores of Fordar on the other side.
As he peered down below, the people of Reprise stood in a horde outside of the castle. Though mere specks, he could plainly see Laura holding their infant son among the crowd. She gazed up at him with sad, unrecognizing eyes as a growing chorus of despair rose from the crowds. The bright blue sky darkened to a deep purple, and the horizons grew ablaze with catastrophic flames. As The Stranger watched, apocalypse swept across his lands, and his heart raced with the growing cries for help coming from the vast crowd.
“Laura …” he choked out feebly, but she was approached by a man—The Stranger’s own brother—who took her in embrace and turned her away from The Stranger’s gaze. As the chaos crescendoed into a deafening roar within The Stranger’s mind, he gasped in a breath and turned away from the destruction. He made for the door once more, but now someone stood in his way.
“Where are you going?” Patrick asked.
“Wh—what?” The Stranger stammered. “How did you come here?”
Patrick cocked his head inquisitively. “How? You brought me here, of course. You brought us all here. We are your family, and this is our home now.”
The Stranger groaned and turned back to the window. Streaks of blue-ish lightning struck down from the black skies. Where his wife and son stood moments before was naught but ash and human remain. “No—” he managed.
He turned back to face Patrick, but now another figure stood beside him. The room had darkened and was nearly black, save for the endless flashes of silent lightning from outside. A nude witch stood beside the boy. Her joints jutted out into grotesque bony prominences, around which her disproportionate limbs writhed. Her straight, grey hair covered her face, but The Stranger could see one black eye peering through at him. She turned her head to face the boy and placed a bony, long-fingered hand atop his face. The Stranger could see the bones of the vertebrae in her neck and upper back standing upward in her ashen skin like lines of tombstones in a desolate necropolis. She pushed the boy backward, and he vanished into a puff of smoke so black that it stood out even against the light-less castle room.
As the witch approached, The Stranger was frozen in fear. She placed a cold, slick hand atop his chest and spoke in a foreign hiss. The words were incomprehensible and distorted, but The Stranger understood her message clearly.
“All that you love is lost,” she crooned. “Your heart is naught but shadow …”
Before The Stranger could move or even think to reply, the atmosphere erupted in a glowing purple light. The streaks of lightning turned to bright purple against the deeper backdrop and scattered across the lands, not descending from the heavens, but rippling out in all directions like cataclysmic tidal waves of electricity. The lightning engulfed everything in sight, and, as The Stranger stood, paralyzed in fear, the castle room evaporated around him. He felt only the faintest sense of vertigo as he realized that he was standing not atop an impossibly high tower, but on the cold, dry ground.
For a moment, he was back in the Hoxar Woods. As the purple streaks of electricity rolled away in every direction, the forest’s trees, too, began to dissolve away beneath its power. The synthetic blackness of the sky shimmered amid the purple clouds, and the witch who stood before him looked—for a moment—frightened.
10
John Tompkins was jolted awake as the back of his head bounced off the wooden hull of the ship. His hands were chained to the wall, and across the ship’s chamber were his wife and adolescent son. His heart swelled at the very sight of them, and he raised his hands toward them until they were stayed by their shackles. He grunted and struggled against the restraints.
“Darling,” he said, face lit in his characteristically beaming smile.
Unreality washed over him as she gazed back, eyes empty. He looked around the small ship’s chamber where several more slaves were chained the last time he was here. Now, it was empty. This wasn’t a memory—nor was it a dream.
“This isn’t real,” he sighed.
Just then, the ship’s hull erupted inward as it smashed against a rocky cliff jutting out of the sea. Splinters of wood exploded throughout the room, and salty spray coated John’s face. His right hand broke free as the wood it was chained to turned to splinter. He tugged against the chains on his left as seawater filled the small room.
At last he turned back to his wife and son, who remained still and silent, shackled to the far wall. “I’m so sorry,” he said, tears streaming down into his bushy beard. “I am loathsome every day that I roam free without ya both.”
The ship lurched to the right, and a deluge of water poured in from the hole in the hull. A wave sloshed across the room and splashed over their faces, momentarily submerging them. The door leading to the deck opened to Joh
n’s left, and a man stepped in.
“Come, soh!” Eugene called.
John looked up at the frail man standing stolidly aboard the jostling ship, cane and all. He reached down and extended a key to the prisoner.
John chuckled. “This isn’t how it occurred …”
“We got t’ go, an’ if ye wanna live, ye got t’ go now!” Eugene hollered.
John looked back at his family. The water had risen to the level of their necks and was rapidly ascending. “I did not deserve yer grace,” he continued. He looked back at Eugene and said, “Nor yours … But not a day passes that I don’t reflect on ya both.”
He forced himself to watch as the water splashed over their mouths and noses. No, this was no memory, and John never expected to discover the fates of his loved ones he’d abandoned in his darkest days, but he suddenly became unable to reject the notion that this had been their true fortune.
“Last chance, boy,” Eugene spat.
John shook his head. “Not this time.” He looked at his wife one last time before the water washed over her head. “I will be better for you.”
Eugene threw the key down into the water below and slammed the door to the ship’s deck. John craned his head upward and heaved in one final breath before the water grew too high.
At once, the water was alight with a deep, magnificent purple hue. It was forced in all directions against the walls of the ship, as though an invisible force field had appeared around John. His wife and son were gone. As he watched, the water and the walls of the ship evaporated as waves of purple lightning erupted in every direction.
11
When Ian awoke, he was immediately cast out of sorts. His mind was vigilant and restive, as though he hadn’t been asleep at all just a moment before. His internal senses told him it should be the middle of the day, but the world around him was black. He glanced up at the sky and saw nothing—only boundless blackness.
“No,” he rasped. “No, no, no, no …” Each utterance rose in pitch, ending in a desperate groan. “Greggy! Greggy, where are you?”
He looked around at his surroundings, but the trees and grass were gone. He crawled on his hands and knees atop a hard, flat earth. His eyes could see a small orb of space around him, but beyond that was a vacuum in every direction. As he spun and crawled in a frenzy, he continued to call out for his brother. No sound returned his calls. The sound of his own voice seemed to dissipate and scatter in all directions without bound or medium as soon as it escaped his lips.
Suddenly he stopped. There was something on the ground ahead of him. He crawled toward it with caution. As it drew nearer, Ian could see it was a body—or at least part of one. He swallowed hard and choked back a bleat of despair as he made out Greggy’s legs and feet.
“I’ve found him,” his brother spoke. “Father is home.” His voice did not come from the body before him, but from within Ian’s own mind.
“Greggy, no,” Ian wheezed, crawling closer still.
The body lay on its back. Ian could see the unmoving arms and legs, but everything above the chest was obscured. A black curtain that somehow stood in contrast to the blackness around it was suspended, attached to nothing. It was draped over his brother’s midriff and concealed his upper half.
Ian’s breath hitched, and dread of what stood beyond that veil filled his thoughts. Still, his hand reached up to pull the curtain aside. As he pulled it up over his head and peered beneath, anguish filled his mind, and his sanity bowed to its limits. His mind clouded with endless tormented wails.
The darkness beyond was alight with innumerable glowing particles. To estimate that there were billions of the twinkling clouds would be robbing the image of its true consequence. As Ian peered into the infinite, his heart sank at the futility of his existence. Every word he’d ever spoken, every action he’d ever undertaken was inconsequential. The cacophony of screams and agony rose to a peak in his head. Just before his sanity splintered, his brother spoke again in his mind.
“I see him here, Ian. I see everything. I remember everything.”
Ian gasped as the noise quieted and he focused on his brother’s voice. He looked down at the body that should be on the ground beside him, but there was nothing. Only this eternal blackness. On the other side of the veil, he could still see the lower half of Greggy’s body, but on this side, everything was empty. Empty save for those twinkling clouds of dust in black space.
“Greggy?” he whispered, but he knew that his brother was dead, passed beyond this shadowy veil. In response, a not-so-distant orb of light glowed brighter, and his brother spoke again inside his mind.
I am here. The words were calm, but Ian could sense suffering behind them. I remember everything! The words grew choked now, pained.
Ian gazed around the abyss and found that he could focus his mind and connect with any individual cloud of consciousness that he so chose. When he did, he felt their anguish. Men, women, children, elders, infants—all who had ever existed and passed on were here, floating in this infinite afterlife. When his mind linked to each disconnected consciousness, he felt its suffering. He felt the end of each of their lives. Blades piercing their skin, fire burning them alive, fever ravaging their organs, water filling their lungs, beasts mauling their limbs. He felt everything that each of them felt in their final moments … what each of them now felt, again and again and again, for eternity.
He turned his mind back to Greggy and felt his breath hitch in his chest. He felt the panic that came with being unable to take in air. He felt the helplessness of watching everyone and everything he’d ever known move on without him. Watching. Waiting. Dying. Everlasting.
Calm your mind, he thought at his brother. Breathe.
This was the antithesis of all he’d ever learned about death. This was an endless sea of intangible, unmoving spirits, lost and suffering for all time. There were no protector souls, there was no inhabiting of herbs to aid your loved ones even in death, there was no good, no evil. Just perpetual, futile awareness.
A bony hand seized Ian’s arm and yanked him back from beyond the veil. Saleema was standing in the darkness beside him. Her gothic elegance had faded, and her face was the pallid, sunken mask that represented the Sisters’ true form. Her right eye was grey and sightless, and yellowed teeth that had been eroded to uneven points snarled at him from behind her cracked lips.
“These are the answers you sought!” she spat at him. “Your fool’s endeavors have brought you naught but suffering. You may as well be dead,” she thrust her bony, deformed arm toward the black curtain, “just like the rest of them!”
Before Ian could respond, the witch recoiled from him in a spray of black smoke. Purple bolts of lightning erupted from the ground where she stood and spread out across the world around him. The bolts leapt upward along the black veil and evaporated it out of existence. From there, they spread outward across the darkness in all directions.
12
By the time Patrick awoke, the arachnid creatures had finished wrapping him in a tight cocoon. He writhed in his binding, but was scarcely able to move even a fingertip.
The witch entered the cabin door, her hands empty now, and approached the boy from underneath. She stared up at him through hazy eyes.
“Please,” Patrick moaned.
“You are a fool to come here,” the witch crooned.
“I only came for my friend …” Patrick’s voice was muffled, as he could scarcely fill his lungs with air from within his constraints.
“You have no friends here.” The witch raised one long, bony hand and tracked her sharp, dirty nail gently across the boy’s neck. She bit her lip with her gnarled upper teeth before approaching the nearby table to retrieve a long blade. Knife in hand, she walked back beneath Patrick and raised the blade to touch the point to his chin. “However, you will soon.” She winked and nodded to the beasts suspended from the ceiling.
Patrick winced as he felt the tip of the blade enter the soft tissue under his chin. He str
uggled again against his captivity, but to no avail. He began to feel a thrumming power against his hip and attempted to move his hand, which was bound at his waist. It was the stone. He slipped his fingertips into his pocket and felt a static shock as they touched the stone’s smooth surface. Suddenly, the spider’s web was loosening its grip. He slipped his hand the rest of the way into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the stone. At once, an incredible power surged throughout his body, travelling up his arms and entering his mind. The cabin’s room grew alight with purple electricity. His fingers pulsated against the stone, and his fist clenched spasmodically. As it did, unseen waves of power emanated outward from the stone. The witch recoiled away from him, dropping her blade to the floor. An unstoppable scream rose from Patrick’s gut as the foreign force overtook his mind and body. As his breath ran out and the cry tapered off, Patrick opened his eyes to see brilliant light scattering throughout the cabin, riding a trail of purple lightning bolts in every direction. The spiders’ webbing evaporated out of existence, and so, too, did the beasts themselves. The witch recoiled again as the very cabin around them shimmered and then disintegrated against the electricity.
Patrick fell to the earth and landed on his hands and knees in the dirt, stone still gripped in one fist. Now they were again in the dark forest, but the lightning continued to spread across the earth. The witch gasped in horror as her illusions were shattered. Trees were brought to the ground or disappeared right where they stood. The wave of electrical destruction continued in all directions, as far as the eye could see. The black atmosphere that concealed the moon and stars was the last thing to vanish, leaving Patrick and the witch standing in an open desert, semi-lit by the night sky.
Patrick stood on shaky legs and looked around his new surroundings. They were in the familiar desert. No trees, no artificial darkness, no forest at all. Several witches were now exposed, standing around the boy in a loose circle, gazing on in horror.