The Hungering Saga Complete

by Heath Pfaff

  "Malice, Silent and I might seem like unstoppable machines of death to you, but Silent is injured and unable to fight, and I have had no rest since our skirmish at the inn, in which I spent almost everything I had to hold back the tide of enemies. Malice was able to get a few hours of sleep last night, and is therefore in fighting condition, but of the three of us 'monsters,' she is the only one who will be effective in combat.

  "The hunting party following may be only one or two soldiers, in which case we will have no problem, but what if it is twenty, or thirty strong?" My voice had taken on a bitter edge, and I knew it was not a pleasant thing to hear. "Survival is dependent upon us getting to the king and his men as quickly as possible."

  A heavy silence fell about the camp. Liet and Reana said nothing. Timro stepped forward and spoke for the first time since the inn. His voice was firm and quiet.

  "You've done right by us, and I give thanks for that. I will walk until my legs fall off if I have to." The farmer said, and they were words that helped ease the anger burning inside of me. He seemed to need no other words. He gathered the few belongings he had and slung them over his shoulder, ready to march on.

  Sheana, the youngest of the girls walked to Malice and put her arms around the furry leg of my green-eyed companion. "You're not a monster." She said with the conviction that only the young can muster.

  She was maybe five years old, near Kay's age. Emotion burned my eyes, and formed a knot in the back of my throat. It was a stupid and sentimental reaction, but I was so very tired. Malice picked up the young girl and put her on her back. For a moment, her deep green eyes met mine, and I knew that Malice was thinking the same thing as me. How was little Kay doing?

  "Let's move." I said, my voice quiet. There were no further complaints from the others. We prepared our gear and began walking, at a faster pace, across the snowy terrain. The snow, though, was starting to pile up and the terrain was becoming more difficult. We were being slowed down, and it couldn't be avoided. Traveling any faster would be dangerous.

  For their part, Reana, Liet and Timro pushed themselves hard. Reana looked over her shoulder constantly, as though she suspected the enemy would come lurching out of the trees behind us. I could understand her feeling of paranoia. I too felt as though they were riding down upon us. In fact, as the day wore on, the feeling seemed to grow, and even I found myself checking over my shoulder, though my hearing should have been enough to give me early warning. Was I so tired that I was becoming paranoid?

  I looked to the horizon, checking the position of the sun. We still had three hours of light left. So why was it that I felt that peculiar sensation of being watched again? I looked to Malice. She seemed calm, and did not return my look, fixed on forward motion as she was. Paranoia? I couldn't be certain. Silent weighed heavily upon my back, unmoving, except when he thrashed about in his sleep, making carrying him even more difficult. I trudged onward.

  Timro screamed, and the world erupted into chaos. Snow seemed to explode into the air in front of me, blocking out the dim light coming through the gray sky as everywhere around us the world descended into violent madness. Driving all of the chaos was Timro's piercing voice, his suffering scream like a backdrop to the terror.

  I found my sword in one hand, though I could not remember drawing the blade. Silent still weighed heavily upon me, a constant pressure I was unwilling to part with. I looked for Malice, but she was gone, having likely blurred into motion the instant things began. I could see nothing. The cascade of snow had left the world in a spinning dance of colored light. Timro's scream gurgled to a stop, a sound of such finality, that there could be no question as to his condition.

  The three children sat huddled in the snow, deposited where Malice had left them when she went to Timro's aid. I moved to them, laying Silent amidst them, I stood sentinel over their shivering forms, for there was little else I could do. My mind felt slow, and my body was tired and unresponsive. My ears twitched. I looked around, but saw nothing. They twitched again, and I realized that they were attempting to focus on a sound, a dull rumbling from beneath my feet. It took my exhausted mind precious seconds to come to a conclusion.

  "The ground!" I called into the whiteness of the world. "They're in the ground." I did not know what to do, but I picked up Silent, and gathered the children to me. Carrying all four of them was difficult, but I managed. My heart hammered in stable rhythm within my chest, reminding me that it would not falter on me, even if the rest of my body was uncertain. My eyes scanned the nearly blinding snowscape until, finally, I caught sight of a massive tree. I moved on instinct then, pushing myself forward with as much speed as I dared. I leaped at the tree, reaching out with one clawed hand, holding my precious cargo with the other, and knowing that I would need to grab hard if I was to support all of the weight I carried. Tiny hands squeezed tightly into my cloak and clothing, and Silent hung limply over my shoulder, acting like a dead weight.

  I hit the tree with explosive force, the entire thing shaking at my impact. One of the children, I couldn't tell which in the confusion, nearly was flung free, but I snagged them before they could fall. I climbed the tree, digging in with my claws and pulling myself up the bark of the evergreen, its sap coating my hands and feet. Somewhere beneath me, back the way I'd come, another terrified scream filled the air. This one was female. I sat the children in the tree as firmly as possible, and draped Silent within a nest of branches.

  "Stay in this tree. Do not come down until one of us comes to get you, and make sure he does not fall." I pointed to the prone form of Silent. "If we do not return, wait for Silent to wake, and tell him that we have died." I could see tears forming in the eyes of the children, and knew I would have a problem on my hands in a moment.

  "I know you want to cry. I know things seem terrible, but Malice and I will fight to our last breaths to see you to safety. Be strong, be quiet, and we will come through this." I pulled free my cloak and handed it to the children, who quickly spread it over the three of them and huddled close together. I gave them one last look, and dropped from the tree.

  A rumbling sounded from the ground beneath me, but knowing what to tune my ears into, I was ready. It was coming up through the ground, getting louder as it did. I waited, my sword at the ready, its hilt now sticky in my hand. Just as I was certain that whatever was beneath the ground was about to burst through, I thrust my sword downward with all the power I could muster. The blade clove through the ground, passing hesitantly through the dirt, until suddenly it hit something far softer than crumbling earth. There was a dull groan from beneath the ground, and the sound of subterranean digging ceased.

  I ran, moving in the direction from which the screaming had been coming. It had stopped before I left the tree, but now I could hear the sound of combat, quick movements, punctuated by the sound of weapons swinging through the air. The snow made it difficult to make out details. Below me, another rumbling approached. I stopped and waited, again letting it come near before reacting.

  The rock beneath my feet churned and I jumped upward, and brought my full weight down on my sword. The blade pierced earth, and then it pierced whatever lay beneath, but this time I was too late. The digging creature's momentum was too great and it burst forth from ground beneath me, though my blade had surely slain it. It was a terrifying monster, eyeless, with a front half so heavily bulged with muscle that the beast's mere existence seemed to deny reality. Its powerful forearms ended in large, heavily clawed hands, so great that the two of them could have closed around a fully grown man's chest. Its face, if that was what it could be called, was mostly featureless but for two side-facing slits whose purpose I could not be certain of, and what looked like a second set of clawed hands, protruding from where its mouth should have been. My blade had pierced this malformed lump of flesh that seemed to be its head.

  For a moment I thought my weapon may have failed to kill the enemy, for its body kept pushing up through the ground, wriggling upward as though it were still crawli
ng to the surface, but this was not the case. Instead, other creatures were pouring out from behind it, thrusting its corpse into the cold, icy world of the surface. These creatures resembled the Hungering, though, in truth, even the diggers shared a similar aesthetic. They looked the same, pale skin stretched too tightly over their bodies, and had those same terrible, burning eyes.

  These newest demons, though, looked even more like the Hungering creatures I was familiar with. They were smaller in stature, and did not wear the chitinous armor of their fellows, but their bodies were covered in spines and spikes, and they were humanoid, by the barest standards of the word. Four of the monsters came to the surface following the digging creature. If they were alarmed by the death of their fellow, they did not show it. They attacked with a vengeance, leaping at me, teeth barred, and horrible spiked bodies being wielded as weapons. I jumped backwards, forcing myself to speed up. My entire body screamed in agony, and my head swam, but the speed came.

  The creatures came at me in slow motion, their bodies sailing through the air with a seeming leisurely meandering. I changed my direction, pushing forward against my backward motion with a force that would have broken my legs had they not been the legs of a Fell Beast. I tore my sword through the air, feeling the buffeting of the wind friction against the fine honed steel. My blade struck the nearest creature across the neck, and passed through with little more resistance than offered by the air. One of the other creatures, having landed from its initial spring, was changing direction, and attempting to charge me again. I let my momentum carry me forward, and used it to tumble, rolling to my feet safely out of range. Snow kicked up from the ground, flying into the air in a gradual cascade. I was moving again before it even reached its peak.

  The next two creatures I took out as one, for they were close together, and it was easy enough to accomplish. My blade slipped through them as if they were paper dolls, and I swung to take out the fourth. It was in mid-leap, its momentum already set. I needed only to bring up my sword to meet its rush. The creature ground to a halt against my crosspiece, and I shook it free, letting the world resume its normal pace about me.

  I moved forward once more, and then I could see Malice fighting, Liet at her side, his good arm was still useless, and so he was fighting, ineffectively, with his left. Malice flashed from place to place, but there were too many of the creatures, and some of the diggers had reached the surface as well. One of them lay off to the side, obviously dead, but with Reana gripped tightly in one of its terrible fists. Her eyes had bulged out of her head, and her face was bright red. I guessed the creature had squeezed her to death.

  I took no more time to stare at the atrocities before me. I attacked. The speed came back to me only hesitantly, but I grabbed a hold of it and fell into it with reckless abandon.

  As I joined Malice, I freed her to move, since she no longer had to stay tied to Liet's position. We fought together, weaving a pattern of death around us, beautiful and terrible. The last enemy fell to Malice's sword, as had many before it. She had done the better part of the killing, though I had tried to keep pace. I was at my limits. A scream sounded in the silence of the after battle, coming from the tree where I had left the children. We all looked, but Malice leaped forward first.

  I charged after her, finding that I could not make my body go any faster than the run of a normal man. My muscles ached, and I was so tired I could not think.

  The tree was swarming with creatures, at least six of them, two had already begun to climb the sappy bark, while the others sat below, looking up with hungry red eyes. The children huddled around Silent, trying to shake the injured Knight awake. It seemed to be to no avail. He was still deep in the process of healing. Malice leaped into the fray, dispatching the creatures with every blurring motion of her powerful body.

  I charged forward, though I knew not what I hoped to accomplish. I was so far behind my limits it was surprising, even to me, that I could keep walking. I engaged an enemy. It attacked, claws and teeth gashing and trying to score a hit. I fell into the familiar patterns of my weapon, turning aside the blows to the best of my ability, but I was losing ground. My sword had become heavy and ungainly.

  A loud snap sounded from near the tree, and my eyes glanced in that direction. It was not an intentional move, but before I knew it, my gaze was there, locked on the tree. One of the hungering creatures hung pinned to the bark, half a sword sticking out of its lifeless body, the blade still reverberating in the tree in which it had been broken off. Malice's work, though she had already moved on.

  The distraction cost me. The creature that had been attacking me used that moment to spring, driving me to the ground. The many spikes and protuberance of its body tore into my flesh in multiple places, and it immediately began to tear into me with its vicious, hooked hands, ripping at my chest. I was not wearing my cloak, so it tore easily scored wound after wound. I brought my sword up, but its body was too close to mine for the weapon to be effective.

  I dropped my steel weapon and brought my claws to my defense, but I could not force them to sharpen, and my strikes were ineffective. I felt a bone in my chest snap as the Hungering gouged at me, and I believed, in that moment, that I would die. I looked up into the terrible red eyes of the beast that would kill me. They burned, but there was no hate or malice in them, only a great, fiery emptiness. Another rib cracked.

  Suddenly the burning eyes were gone, and the head to which they'd been attached went sailing through sky and fell away. The clawing at my body stopped, and I looked up, expecting to see Malice standing above me. Instead, my eyes found Liet's. He was looking down at me, his face drawn and pale. He looked even more distressed when he saw the damage the Hungering creature had left. I forced myself to look down.

  My body was in ruins. My ribcage was exposed in multiple places, and the bone was snapped and jutting at unnatural angles. The snow all around me was bright red. I heard voices, the sounds of children, the sound of Malice's voice, and I tried to look up and see who was talking, but the world had taken on a fuzzy haze.

  "Oh, by the king's name. . ." I heard a familiar male voice say as it approached me, but I couldn't quite place it. It sounded like an old friend. "We'd better. . ." The voice faded, and the world went with it.

  I woke with a start, and found myself stretched between two people, an arm over the shoulder of one on each side, my feet dragging in the snow. I looked from left to right, taking in those two helping me walk. On one side was Malice, and on the other, to my surprise, was Silent, looking grim and tired. His face was drawn and pale. I put my feet under me and unburdened my two travel companions, who both looked surprised when I stood on my own.

  "You're awake." Silent said, stating the obvious in his surprise. "You've only been out for about three hours. When I first saw you I thought. . ." His words trailed off and he turned his eyes away, hiding what might have been concern.

  I looked down at my chest, remembering the grisly damage that had been left after the attack by the Hungering earlier. I had to pull open my cloak to see for myself, but I was comforted to find the wounds had closed, and the flesh had begun to knit back together. There were horrible scars crisscrossing my skin, but I knew that in a matter of hours they would fade like all other wounds I had acquired since becoming a Knight of Ethan. The only scars I still wore on my entire body were those white lines that crossed my face, the only sign Wisp had left upon the world.

  I looked around and saw that Liet was walking with the children just ahead of us. He stopped when the rest of us did, and was watching us, his face also locked in a stare of surprise. It was apparent, from the looks of the others traveling with me, that none had anticipated such a fast recovery after my injuries. Remembering what I'd seen before passing out, I too was surprised to be in such a hearty state of repair so quickly. Death had truly been close to me. I survived, I knew, only because of Liet's good timing, and excellent sword stroke. I owed him a great debt, and when the opportunity came, I intended to let him kn
ow as much.

  I continued to look around, hoping beyond hope that I would see Timro somewhere amidst our group, but he was not there. Reana, I knew, was dead. I remembered her red, swollen face, and her empty eye sockets. In my memory, they seemed to stare at me accusingly. I had told them we would be safe during the day, and I had been wrong. That wore heavily upon me, yet another burden to bear.

  "Are you alright?" It was Malice's voice. I turned my attention to her. She seemed well enough, strong and as confident as ever. That, at least, was good.

  "I don't know." I replied, my words an apt reply to both the questionable state of my physical body, and my emotions. My chest still hurt, fresh skin and muscle were still quite tender in places. Every movement of my arms, and even the act of breathing caused me pain. I knew that would fade before long, and so I did my best to ignore it. My mind, though, was suffering another type of hurt. I felt personally responsible for those who had died in the last attack. I had sworn to myself that I would protect them, but I had failed in the end. I wanted to tell the others, so that they might punish me for my failings, but I knew that such was the act of one seeking attention. My failings were my own, and I would have to learn to live with them.