by Heath Pfaff
The Fel Clerics were passing amongst us, screams following them as their healing magic seared through the bodies of those around us.
“Out of the way, there are others who need to come back.” Shaw barked an order, and we dragged ourselves aside to rest against a patch of wall that didn’t have others leaning against it already. Zark was getting pale and shaky. He’d pass out soon if he didn’t get healing, but I wasn’t afraid he’d die now. They’d get to us in time, not like the girl who’d died. She couldn’t have been healed anyway. There hadn’t been enough of her left, not enough life to her. I guessed that was why they hadn’t really made much of an effort.
People came and went. Life was cheap here. There were twenty seven of us left.
Chapter 7
Water Test
7.1
“Lillin?” The voice startled me from my sleep and I almost entirely jumped out of bed, my hand going to the knife I kept beneath my pillow before I realized who it was, and then it almost went there anyway.
“Ghoul?” I asked, shocked that he was there, in the dark, in my room.
“Yes.” He said, voice quiet and thin. “It has been a while. I woke up a few moments ago with a need to see you.”
I frowned into the darkness. I could only make out the vague shape of his body in the dark of my room. “I hadn’t expected to see you again.” I told him, trying to get the fog of my disturbed sleep from my head. “Especially not after last time.”
“Friends always remain friends, through dark times and light.” He answered, coming forward and sitting down on the bed next to me. This whole situation was strange. It didn't quite feel real. I wondered if I was dreaming, stuck in some kind of nightmare waiting to spring its trap on me. Certainly I hadn’t thought of Ghoul outside of my nightmares in a very long time.
“We’re friends now?” I asked, a bit surprised to hear him use that word to describe us. I had never considered him anything of the sort. What he was to me was hard to define, but my feelings towards him bordered on hostile.
“Comrades then?” He suggested. “We are aligned in a cause, though I don’t believe either of us understand the cause or what our part is to play.”
That sent a chill down my spine. “Is it the Everburn?” The question came unbidden as I remembered the malevolence I’d felt from the spark of that fire down in the catacombs below the school.
He shrugged. “Perhaps, or perhaps I’m insane and I’m pressing you with my Will without intending to. It’s impossible to say for certain, but here we are again.”
I didn’t much care for the implications of that statement. Was he pushing me with his Will, forcing me to do things I wouldn’t normally do? Had he forced me to see what he’d done to Ori? Remembering her made me feel sick for a moment. I nearly got up and walked away, but there was nowhere for me to go. We were trapped here together, and I still remembered the compassion that had been in his voice when I’d first asked if I could just leave and not look at what he’d been about to show me. That was the only thing that stopped me from demanding he leave immediately.
“What are you doing here?” I decided to cut to the point of this. I still wanted him gone.
“I’ve heard. There are rumors going around that you or the boy have used your Will before the water test. Was it you?” Ghoul asked, and I could almost hear the grin on his face. “Did you use your Will?”
I shook my head, then realized he probably couldn’t see me. “No. Well, I don’t think so.”
“One of you did. You interfered with the world they’d brought for you, froze it in place. That takes a tremendous act of Will. I think it was you, Lillin.” Ghoul said, and he sounded excited. “That just proves that I’m right about you. You’re different. You’re stronger than the others that have come before you. You have the potential to be the strongest Warden to ever rise from this school. If you live.”
I remembered the moment when everything had frozen, the strength of my desire to survive. Had that been a connection to Will? It had felt incredible, powerful, but was that what I was reaching for? I didn’t know how to accomplish it again. I wasn’t even sure how I’d managed it that time.
“It might have been Zarkov. He was almost about to die too. I think it might have been him.” I said, voice lacking conviction.
Ghoul chuckled. “You’re lying to both of us. Remember, you can’t lie to me. You know it was you. Besides, I know it wasn’t Zarkov. He’s strong, but he’s not a Will user. He doesn't have the spark he needs. His body is powerful, and he is fighting for what he wants, but he isn’t pushing past his own limits. His flesh holds him back. If he dies he might well make a . . . “
“No!” I snapped the word harshly, louder than I meant to. “No, Ghoul if we’re friends, or comrades, whatever we are to each other, please . . . if something happens to Zarkov just let him die. Don’t make him one of those things.”
Ghoul was quiet for a moment. “I want to, but I can’t promise you that, Lillin. The choice isn’t entirely mine. I am a Warden full, and that grants me power and a voice, but I am not one of the most powerful Wardens, though I have manifested ability in strange ways.”
It felt like a grip tightened around my heart. “You will do what you can?” I asked him, feeling like that if I could get that from him, it would have to be enough.
He nodded, a barely perceptible motion in the dark. “Yes, I will do what I can. If he makes it to the water test then it won’t matter. No golems come from the water test.”
My eyes narrowed, though I couldn’t actually see anything. “You’ve talked about that before. What is the water test?”
He hesitated a moment before he spoke, and when he did, he spoke slowly and carefully, as though talking around something. “All of the living trainees will be locked into small vessels that are filled with water. You are given a straw to breathe from, and the vessel is sealed. After three days in the vessel, you are removed and those who can get up and walk away from the test are Wardens. Very few do.”
“You’re not telling me everything.” I pointed out that I could see through his circular talking, hoping this would make him tell me more. Instead he gave me an apologetic shrug.
“I can’t tell you anymore or you won’t pass the test. If you know too much you might not pass at all. Knowing everything would make it harder, maybe even impossible.” He paused a moment before going on. “It will be the most difficult thing you’ve done here. Be prepared, but be confident.”
A frustrated sigh slipped past my lips. “Why are you here?”
“If you pass the water test you will need to choose an area of study, a goal to pursue. Wardens take many different rolls, none of them easy, but you must be a Scout.” He said, voice suddenly and strangely heavy, serious.
“A Scout? What do Scouts do?” I asked, not really certain.
“They go places others won’t, see things others can’t, and learn things others are not able to. That is what you must do.” He almost whispered the words, but his tone was so firm that it was like a growl.
“I’m not sure that’s what I want to do. I have goals of my own.” I told him, and it was true. I had not forgotten my desire to rip the Wardens apart.
I could see him shaking his head even in the dark. “No, you can’t do anything else. You’re a Scout, Lillin. I dreamed it tonight, and when I woke I knew I needed to tell you. You will be a Scout. They will want you to become a Knight, but you must push to become a Scout.”
A Knight sounded far more impressive to me, more powerful. It seemed like the sort of thing I would be if I wanted to climb rank and take over the Wardens, destroy them from the inside. A Scout sounded expendable. “You can tell the future now, Ghoul?” I asked, skepticism a little more clear in my voice than I meant it.
“No! Of course I can’t tell the future. The dream wasn’t about prophecy. It wasn’t a glimpse into what will be, it was a look at what should be. Knights sound like they are full of glory. They fight and kill, carve the Warden�
��s path through the world, but they don’t have any say in their own fate. They are soldiers. They don’t make decisions, and after years and years of battle they are worn thin. They no longer focus on their own goals. You are strong, through, and they will want you to help crush the . . . “ His words cut off abruptly. “That isn’t to be said yet.”
“What do the Wardens do beyond the city, Ghoul?” I had a sudden desire to know. It was a question that had come to me a few times. Not many Wardens stayed behind to train others, so what were the others doing? There was very little news of the world beyond the city. I knew there were towns beyond our walls, and then something called the Expanse.
“They do what they have always done, and what they will always do if things remain as they are. It’s an endless struggle that keeps this machine running, grinding itself away at the top, and rebuilding its legs at the bottom.” He shook his head. “You’ll be told if you pass the water test. I can’t tell you. Betraying secrets is forbidden.”
“You’ve already betrayed secrets. What is one more?” I pointed out, pressing for more.
Ghoul laughed, his dark sinister laugh. “The answers will come in time, but you won’t have them from me.” He stood up. “I must be away. Rest. It’s almost done now. We will see if this has all been worth anything, or if we’ve merely been played for fools by the voices in my head.”
I opened my mouth to talk to him again, but he was gone quickly, turning and sliding out the door like smoke fleeing a fire. The room was quiet. I sighed into the dark. He was gone again, and I still had few answers, and now even more trepidation for the future. What was to become of me in this water test? And what of Zarkov? We were going to make it through this together. He was stronger than me. Ghoul seemed less certain of him, but he didn't know him the way I did. Zark was strong. He’d always been strong.
I told myself this over and over again as I tried to drift off to sleep. It took far longer than I would have liked.
7.2
“It used to protect us.” The mayor of the small town said, his face ragged and gaunt, his eyes deep set in his face. He looked tired, exhausted, as though he hadn’t slept in weeks. There were only a few other people in the room with us, and they all looked equally spent. His accent was thick, so thick it was difficult to make out what he said at times, but the fact that he spoke our language at all was interesting. Most of the time when we went through the doors any writing we encountered was completely foreign.
This test had come as a surprise. We weren't even due for another challenge, but they’d woken us in the middle of the night and told us all to assemble and break into groups of three. There were nine teams of us, and we were sent through the door with minimal direction.
“Go to town, hunt the wolf.” That was all we were told. We were given no extra supplies, and they pushed through the portal as fast they could, stopping only long enough to have it cycle bubbles for each group. It opened up not far from a small town. It was dusk, and the season was Fall. The trees were losing most of their leaves, and the air had a deep chill to it, the kind that didn’t seem so bad at first, but that had a way of sinking in over time.
I was teamed with Zark and Linna, both of whom routinely ranked higher than I did in training. Linna was a clever girl who was always at the top of our educational studies, and she was incredibly quick in physical tests. Her times were almost always top, and her reactions were uncanny. I’d been faster than her for much of our training, but at some point she’d begun to pull ahead of me and I’d never quite caught up again.
Linna was tall and lean, with black hair and dark eyes, but an easy smile. She wasn’t gorgeous, but she was pretty with her long flowing hair and even features. Her skin had a lovely, dark color to it that made it look like fine satin. I felt ugly next to her, but she never had a mean thing to say. Despite the fact that I felt inferior to her, I didn’t dislike her at all. I looked up to her. Her effort to become as good as she was had been phenomenal. She took the lead in speaking to the men of the town.
“Why did it stop protecting you?” She asked, her voice firm but not accusatory, and she spoke slowly because of the difficulty caused by our offworld accents. We were trying to get the story of what was happening with these people. From what we’d learned so far, they’d had a guardian, a giant wolf that lived in the woods and had protected them from bandits and creatures they called “darklen” that hunted the area. The wolf had been the protector of the town for hundreds of years, as long as they had histories written, and then, just two weeks before, she’d started taking people.
They described her as a demi-god, a creature like the gods but different. The gods, they’d explained, had been asleep for a long, long time. They were behemoths in the guise of animals that were possessed of the will to create and destroy. Demi-gods were common as well, though they hadn’t fallen into slumber with the gods, and most of them served as protectors, as had their wolf before this mess had begun. They were attuned to the gods that served the area, carrying out their will to protect creation, but something had changed.
She came from the woods at dusk, grabbing children from the streets, adults too, and dragging them off into the woods. She had changed as well, not the white wolf they’d long associated with safety and protection. Her fur was mucky and muted, and she was crawling with some kind of infestation that bored in and out of her flesh. It was getting worse too. At first she’d just taken one a night, but now she was taking two or three, ripping down doors and going into people’s houses and dragging them screaming off into the woods.
“We don’t know! We did nothing to her. Every week we have gone to her shrine and left her meat and gifts, just as we’ve always done. We love her, loved her . . . I don’t understand what has changed, but people are afraid. They are leaving the town, and the rest of us don’t sleep at night in fear of what will come.” He looked nervously out the window. It was getting near dark.
“Please, if you can do something, we need help.” He pleaded. He was a strong looking man, maybe a bit past his prime, but in good shape with lines on his face that said he smiled often, or had smiled often. Distress didn’t suit him.
“You said she is a big wolf, but how big?” Linna asked.
“Well, she is a god of the wood, though not one of the major gods. She is a little larger than a pack mule, but much stronger.” He looked hopeful. “We would never ask for you to harm her normally, but we don’t know what to do. We think her behaviour is starting to affect the other creatures of the forest as well. The sprites and fairies have been skittish, and one child claims she was bitten by one the other day. Normally we would give no credence to such a claim, but . . . ” He shrugged.
We all exchanged looks of concern briefly. That was a very large wolf indeed, far larger than any we’d ever encountered. Wolves generally didn’t attack people. It wasn’t in their best interest. They were largely peaceful animals that lived in their packs and kept to themselves. They hunted game together and generally caused no one trouble other than an occasional farmer that made the mistake of housing livestock on land that they roamed. This beast seemed quite different. The stories of fairies and sprites were strange as well, though less worrisome. Biting a child was unpleasant, but hardly a threat to us.
“If she dies, you’ll lose what protection you had here.” Zark said quietly. “Things won’t be the same.”
“If she lives, we will all die eventually.” He said, and he sounded miserable. “We do not want her dead, but we also cannot live on like this.”
Linna looked at each of us, and we gave her a nod. This was what we were here to do after all. We couldn’t turn back now. She returned her attention to the men. “We will do this for you. Make sure everyone is locked away in the safest place they can be, but not all in the same place. It would be dangerous to all hide together.”
“By now it’s already done.” He answered. “Everyone knows to be hidden by this time. She’ll be here soon. She comes into the village from the mou
ntain side. That is the direction in which her shrine rests. Gods be with . . . well, I wish you good fortune.” He changed his words, clearly realizing that the gods in this case weren’t really going to be on our side, seeing as we were intent upon killing one of them.
We left his home and headed out into the dark and deserted streets of the town. It was really more of a village than a town, the houses spread out and the main street having only a few shops along its course. There was no inn, and we’d been hard pressed to find someone to talk to. When we’d mentioned we’d come here to hunt the wolf, things had changed quickly though. We’d been led to the Mayor’s house by a small frightened woman who’d run away as soon as she got us there.