by Unknown
“Mihaela,” cooed the imposter behind her, his wry smile returning to his malevolent face, the calming tone of his voice deep and brooding, “tell me where Cervis is hiding.”
---
“Hello?” Röark called in a sheepish and frightened tone, “please, hello?”
Inside the shackled old grave-keepers hut, the newly discovered man’s dimly lit face oozed with agony, his bottom lip trembling. He spluttered, saliva dripping from his mouth. The man had no tongue, and was therefore unable to speak. The small flame disappeared, replaced almost immediately by a freshly lit match, gripped by the man’s forefinger and thumb, the only fingers left on his right hand.
“Who are you?” Röark asked, choosing his tone carefully. He knew the man couldn’t reply, and was a miracle he was alive, yet the words still escaped his mouth. He needed to comfort this man, reassure him. He felt an overwhelming desire to help the man, yet was flustered and felt he needed to approach with trepidation. The man responded with a pitiful whimper, his sorrowful eyes locked on Röark, mouth agape once again baring his bloodied gums and stumped remnants of a decimated tongue. A grief-stricken wail followed, and he partially collapsed.
“What happened?” Röark asked, trembling. The whimpering mute sobbed, his feeble body shaking. Röark swallowed a lump in his throat, fighting back the pity of how this man was certainly beyond traumatised.
The flame the injured man held again went out. Retracting back into the darkness, they were left in silence.
“I can help you. We need to get out of here,” Röark called, voicing his concerns aloud, sweat on his brow becoming profuse; the result of his rising fear, “let me help you. There’s a medical centre thirty miles away in Sibiu, they will help you. The nurse and my mother are friends.”
The reassurance didn’t seem to give the man solace. He shook his head fiercely, scabs falling from the side of his burnt face. His eyes widened in fear, and he outstretched an arm to fight off any attempt Röark had to approach him.
“What’s wrong?” Röark asked. “You cannot stay here.”
Terrified, the man again shook his head, whimpering like a stray dog. He pointed his index finger to the window, his arm shaking.
A soft tapping on the wall outside urged Röark to spin and listen intently. The tapping ran up the wall to the roof, then followed with three loud bangs, before racing back down again in an almost playful display. Then, a ravenous hiss and a sickening gargle followed by the distinct sound of flapping wings. Röark’s body went limp with fear, a feeling he had never encountered before.
Weakness is the birth of humility.
“We cannot stay here, come with me,” Röark demanded, shaken, launching forward into the darkness, grasping hold of the man’s bony arm.
---
Bursting through the door without looking sideways, Röark abandoned the old grave keeper’s shanty, the heavily injured man over his broad shoulder. His feet crunched in the foliage as he ran directly south, to where the opening of the creek bed began. Barely able to stand, Röark held the terrified man, his huge hands gripped under the frail man’s armpits to keep him stable. The man was incredibly light, and as he flailed about blood from his mouth sprayed like shrapnel across Röark’s shoulder.
As he ran, Röark narrowly avoided various falling branches, raining from the sky as though the dying forest was attempting to thwart their escape. Eventually, as he anticipated, they reached the creek bed so he continued west, to exit the forest via the swamplands.
Within minutes, Röark’s feet sank into the thick murky puddles approaching the outskirts, fighting with every step to wade through the thick swampy trails amongst the deep stirring hums of frogs and cicadas. Dragging the man through the lime-green slush, Röark lured him up to one of the nearby banks. He glanced backwards.
The sight was one to behold, sucking the breath from his exhausted lungs.
A huge, brown mass of dying trees lay before him, a menacing purple smog rising above it. The vision was frightening; the once flourishing forest now a cesspool of rotten wood and thick poisonous air.
What had caused this?
Choking on his own blood, the injured man gurgled, red bubbles popping around his toothless jaw. Urging the wailing man to stay calm, Röark slung him over his shoulder like a deer carcass won in a hunt, and raced across the open fields, past the glassy lake. Afloat in the water, Pascal’s boat drifted unmanned, a single fishing pole floating beside it aimlessly.
CHAPTER 4.
“Sorin!” Röark called out, his voice raspy and troubled. Röark raced towards town, noticing one of the Sibiu city guards near the bridge crossing the stream, “Sorin, please help me!”
“Röark,” replied Sorin, his tone heavy, his expression flaring, “where have you been? Who is that with you?” Almost six feet tall, Sorin donned a standard, yet perfectly arranged, grey and red militia uniform with a short bucket hat with a gold trestle, grasping a musket in his right hand. The barrel of the weapon rested on his right shoulder.
“We need help,” Röark alerted the normally effervescent guard, known for his loyal and spirited persona, “this man is very ill, he needs-“
“Where’s Cervis?” Sorin cut in, not fazed by the urgency of Röark’s medical distress. It was immediate there was no sign of Sorin’s normally impish character, his mischievous charm or his relaxed smile. Instead he appeared agitated, standing with both feet firmly together.
Röark stopped in the middle of the rickety bridge.
“Is Cervis with you? Where is he hiding?” Sorin asked, his glazed eyes offering no sense of solace. Röark didn’t respond, instead taking the opportunity to catch his breath.
“Sorin,” Röark eventually muttered, “what’s going on? You must let me cross the bridge.”
“No one goes near the village until Cervis is found. Now you’ll have to come with me, I insist. You need to tell them where Cervis is.”
Sorin’s grip on his musket tightened, and he took a step forward, approaching the now apprehensive Röark.
“Them?” asked Röark.
“Come, now,” urged Sorin, “your mother is asking for you.”
“Why would Cervis be hiding?” Röark asked, as the newly-freed crippled man howled in angst, “I don’t know where he is. Why would I know?” In his peripheral vision, Röark spotted an abnormally large collection of guards patrolling the western fields and across the eastern reaches. The open fields around the Cuitleirs’ cattle farm appeared heavily guarded, as were the pastures to the north. Röark was stuck on the bridge, unable to pass. If he retreated backwards, he would have only the dead forest to hide him. That wasn’t an option.
“Lies,” Sorin snarled, his voice full of unreason, “they said you would lie! You are a part of Censu after all, a Censu!”
His eyes were red, yet hollow and empty. Strange white fluid seeped from the corners of his mouth.
“Sorin,” Röark urged, raising his hands in surrender, “I don’t know what Censu is. Please, you need to listen to me, something is wrong with the trees in the -“
Sorin lifted his musket, letting the barrel fall from his shoulder, catching it in his hand and pointing it towards Röark.
“Censu!” Sorin roared, face red with fury, “Censu! Censu!”
Röark’s heart sank. He didn’t know whether to fear Sorin, or feel sorry for him. He didn’t know whether to pursue his attempt at negotiation or plead for his life. He didn’t know anything anymore. Anything at all. Suddenly, the fear that had purged his body disappeared. He felt tired, angry, sad.
“I’m sorry,” Röark whispered, looking down at the heavily injured man from the shack, “looks like we don’t have a choice.”
Röark flung the wounded man off the stone bridge into the rushing waters of the Mino below, then took a deep breath and jumped, following him in.
---
Mihaela’s whole body shivered. Biting her nail down to a jagged stump on her index finger, she made a conscious effort to
stop breathing so heavily. But fear had taken hold, and she couldn’t resist. Her skin felt like ice, she was barely able to feel her fingers or toes.
After they had abducted her, the two giant men had forced her down into the abyss of the catacombs, through a tiny hidden trapdoor concealed under the gold-trimmed maroon carpet near the back windows of the church. The same carpet she had prayed on daily, her whole life.
Throughout her younger years, she had knelt on the same carpet deep in prayer, her father by her side, his gentle touch across her shoulder. Phonas, the village’s elderly butcher, would be first to request wine while they were blessed by Father Hugal with a flick of holy water. Phonas would secretly chug the wine, chuckling to himself before requesting a refill. Cariss, the frail, blind old woman played the grand old organ nearby. She had lost a leg to gangrene so used a wooden plank to depress the pedals. Not once was Mihaela aware that beneath their feet was a hidden trapdoor, one that led down to such a cesspool of despair where she was now contained. She felt betrayed, deceived.
When they forced her through the tiny square opening, she had found herself inside a foul smelling chamber filled with small cubicles barred by corroded iron poles. Mould and rust climbed the walls, a single candle burned with minimal light. She had heard desperate wails echoed from beyond the inky darkness of the corridors. Men and women, screaming, begging, offering their souls for release.
How many people were trapped down here?
Then they had savagely thrown Mihaela into the nearest cell, gashing her left arm on one of their pickaxes, blood squirting from the wound. Slamming the cell door shut, the two men, faces dark and scarred, turned and left. The squeal of a door, followed by a slam, reverberated through the tombs.
“Please no!” Mihaela had screamed. Her squeamish voice barely carried down the murky hallways, echoing eerily. The wails and cries of unseen prisoners stopped. Now, just stony silence.
This was the realisation she now had - sat alone, in a dirty, slimy enclosure beneath the church she once adored, her face twisted in distress. Gently wiping the tears from her eyes, she attempted to rip the sleeve from her blood soaked shirt to bandage her wound. Her father was a keen hunter, part of the chasseur alpin; an elite mountain infantry in his adult years, and so her clothes had always been made for hunter’s and their children. She didn’t have the strength to tear the strong material, and so she whimpered, her wound remaining untended. Griping in pain, she squeezed her eyes tensely, tightened her hand around the gash in an attempt to minimise the seeping blood. Making an effort to breathe through her mouth to avoid the foul stench, Mihaela sat in silence for a moment, her head spinning and her mind racing. Eventually, she approached the back wall of the cell.
Assisted by the timid flicker of the single candle outside the cell, Mihaela cast her glazed eyes over the wall, detecting engraved markings, identifying it as an inscription of some kind. She ran her skinny fingers along as though it were braille, feeling each groove of the ancient encrypted lettering. Her fingers soon crossed a large lump, and a circular opening. It didn’t take long for her to realise it was an eye socket.
There was a skull encompassed into the staggered rocky wall.
There were in fact, hundreds. Taking a step back, she realised the entire stand-rock wall was made up of old bones and skeletons, mashed in cryptic ways amongst the ancient stone. The wall appeared as a giant graveyard, hundreds and hundreds of ancient remains protruding from the back wall of her ghastly cell.
Mihaela whimpered in horror. What happened to these people? Who were they? Did they die here, in these catacombs?
Her thoughts were soon interrupted by a distressed moan coming from the cell beside her. She briskly made her way to the bars at the front of her grisly chamber, soft splashes beneath her feet as she walked through the unidentifiable thick brown liquid carpeting the floor.
“Hello?” she whimpered. Her voice echoed down the corridors.
There was no response.
“Hello? Is someone there? Please, I need help!”
There was another, more menacing moan. The deep grumble forced Mihaela to take a sudden step backwards. She approached the front of the cell, pressing her face against the iron bars so she could see down the corridor to the right of her. She felt rust and dirt smear on her cheek, their touch icy cold.
Three passageways lay before her, one directly ahead from whence she had been brought, and two others to the left and right, all ending in an envelope of darkness. In the tiny cell adjacent to her was a naked man collapsed on his knees, face in a puddle of mud, holding both hands around his throat.
“Hello?” Mihaela squealed in desperation, “Hello? Can you help me?”
“Help you?” croaked the man, gazing upwards, “how could I help you?”
As he raised his head, Mihaela realised his throat had been cut open, from ear to ear. Blood flowed freely from the fatal injury across his hands, torso and lap like ink from a spilled inkwell. Even with the minimal light, Mihaela could see his face was deathly white, his lips dry, eyes vacant. He was about to die, and his expression revealed it. Mihaela gasped in revulsion, taking a step backwards, holding her blood-soaked hand over her mouth.
“What happened to you?” she gasped shrilly, moving back into his sight, grasping hold of the rusty iron bars.
“Did he find it?” the dying man enquired, dropping his head down, his voice faint and strained. His naked body shivered, blood trickling onto the floor all around him.
“Did who find what?” Mihaela asked frantically, trying to shake the iron bars.
“That boy, I think his name was Cervis, did he find it? Did he get away?”
Mihaela paused with a foreboding stunned silence.
“What do you mean?” Mihaela asked, trying to push her face out further between the bars to get a better look at the fatally injured man.
He coughed, blood splattering across the floor in front of him. He sucked in a few desperate gasps, clutching his throat. He appeared to be choking on his own blood.
“That boy, the thief, Cervis, you...know...him...” the man rasped, dark red droplets trickling from his mouth.
“Where is he? Is he okay?” Mihaela cried, her voice loud and frantic, “why have they done this to me?”
The man lifted his head feebly, making brief eye contact with Mihaela. Again he released the grip around his throat, blood from his laceration flowing liberally.
“You must escape. Don’t let them do this to you. Make sure Phillipe finds the Censu and exposes Aevum.”
He fell to the floor in a lifeless slump. His head bounced on the stone, blood flooding the cell.
---
Dragging the wounded man from the gushing Mino River, Röark let him rest on the grassy knoll west of the ridge that housed the windmill farms. Kneeling beside him, Röark scanned the surrounding area carefully, shaking his head to dry his face and hair. A surge of pain in his leg called his attention. He’d caught himself on one of the underwater rocks strewn along the riverbed, cutting his shin as he struggled free. Turning to the injured man resting beside him, Röark planted his hand gently on his damp forehead in a bid to ease his terror; something his mother used to do when he was young, chasing away illusions that malevolent shadows haunted the orchard outside.
The only sign of life in the motionless man was the abrupt rise and fall of his bony chest as he desperately inhaled and exhaled.
Due to Cervis’ keen sense of adventure, Röark would commonly venture to these parts during the long winters and hot summers. As a result, he knew a way back to his cottage without risk of being seen by the increased number of guards – through the old Trundle farm’s windmill that bordered the outskirts of the village.
The Trundles’ had abandoned their windmill believing it was cursed, and over time it had fallen into chronic disrepair. The family believed the windmill was once the site of demonic ceremonies, illicit faceless men using the hollows within to summon the dead. The ideology was born when one of
the Trundle children was sent to clean the wooden drive shaft. Not long after, the child claimed he had witnessed an inhuman entity inside, with a face horribly burnt, and without eyes. His description told of the entity’s body levitating, its fingers long and pointed, huge monstrous horns atop its head.
Soon after, townsfolk became concerned about the windmill’s purported demonic rituals, and intended to knock it down. Other’s told that the boy was simply lazy, and didn’t want to work within the windmill. Whatever the truth, the structure was now abandoned.
And so, aware it was no longer in operation, Röark and Cervis would hide inside, away from Röark’s overbearing mother. Cervis would fashion spiked knuckle gloves for himself using old soldier’s chain link armour, ironbark, steel and tree sap, and Röark enjoyed the solidarity. Cervis would continuously hail that they’d leave town one day, make money through his adventurous treasure-hunting trade, and make it all the way to the green pastures of southern France.
Those days seemed like an eternity ago.
Urging the incapacitated man to drink some fresh water, Röark led the way up the hillside, to the old stone doorway of the huge windmill. A single kick to the door gained them access, and once inside, the air was predictably musty and damp as Röark remembered. He didn’t intend to stay inside long, the stagnant air potentially dire for the injured man’s health.
The pair quietly made their way through the cramped hallways, past the inert gears and the great spur wheel decorated with heavy cobwebs. They turned down a small passageway, past a room filled with heavily decayed wooden clogs. The timber beams along the roof swollen from the rains and moisture from humidity, threatened to collapse at any moment. Reaching a second doorway, Röark pursed a finger to his lips to urge the man to stay silent. He carefully pushed it open.