Legends of Gravenstone: The Secret Voyage

by Alex Aguilar

  “I said that’s enough!”

  “You know nothing of horrors…” Hudson said threateningly, this time directly at Jossiah, who stared right back at him but somehow was unable to speak a word, as if the thief’s eyes had casted a spell over him. Cedric listened attentively, his inquisitiveness greater than his pride.

  Hudson knew he had gotten the attention of them all, and he appeared to be enjoying himself greatly. “Tell me, little mate,” he said to Cedric. “Before today, had you ever encountered a real live Arachnian up close?”

  “A… what?”

  “Giant horrific spiders that tried to eat you not three hours ago?” the thief replied. “Have you ever seen one up close…? Been unable to move, as it shoots its hot sticky web at you… tangling you in it… tightening its grasp… crawling slowly towards you on its eight scruffy legs…?”

  “I’m warning you, Blackwood…” Jossiah spoke once again.

  “Then there’s my personal favorite, the stonewalker! Giant creatures literally made of stone from head to toe. They eat nothing but plant, mind you. But killing… Killing they do for sport.”

  “I said shut it…”

  “And then, of course, there are the tree nymphs,” the thief’s scornful voice heightened so as to match Jossiah’s. “That is the appropriate name for them, I believe. Then again, what do I know? I’ve never formally asked one as of yet. But tell me, Sir Jossiah Biggs, you ever face an entire clan of them all at once? You ever seen the way they use their vines to tighten every limb in a man’s body, sucking his life away, allowing him to feel every excruciating second of it?”

  Hudson Blackwood and Jossiah Biggs were sharing a glare, both with a blatant profound anger and despise towards one another. Hudson held onto the glare longer, before finally saying once more, “You know nothing of horrors, mate...”

  Then there was another long silence, disrupted only by the distant sound of leaves and branches crackling, and a loud echoing cry that Cedric hoped had come from a crow. Meanwhile, the fire was beginning to burn out and Syrena seemed to have given up on eating the rest of her meal.

  Cedric, uncomfortable with the stillness of the place, sighed and said, “Sir Biggs is probably right anyway… If we could sleep somewhere the trees will stand still, I’d prefer that.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong again, little mate,” Hudson replied. “In my defense, I did try telling you all, but nobody ever listens to a thief... As if a thief has no honor.”

  “What d’you mean?” Cedric asked curiously.

  “Do you know why the creatures were all secluded to a place surrounded by cities ruled by men?” Hudson asked. “Our ancestors didn’t want them banished a thousand miles east, free to conjure up a scheme of attack whenever they please… No, they wanted them here, right in the center of everything… where they could keep a close watch.”

  “Enough!” Jossiah shouted, and this time it was loud enough to grasp the attention of the entire camp. “You think you know it all, do you thief?!”

  “Not all, no… Just more than you, old mate.”

  “Piss off, you murderin’ little shit!” Jossiah sat up and gripped his dagger. Had Viktor not been present, Jossiah might have made an attempt to kill the thief… Kill or hurt at the very least, for the man had the same fire in his eyes that he had during battle. Hudson didn’t appear to be the least bit concerned. His expression remained unmoved, yet somehow beneath his half-smirk there appeared to be a trace of sorrow towards the man’s words.

  But the thief wouldn’t dare show it…

  The only trace, perhaps, was in the subtle glow in his deep brown eyes.

  “You’re nothing but a fraud and no one knows it better than you!” Jossiah went on furiously. “Notorious thief?! Ha! I’ve shat more potential than the likes of you… Captured in broad daylight?! And by a bloody farmer, no less?! You’re an excuse for a fighter and an even worse excuse for a man…”

  Hudson kept his glare fixed, unwilling to succumb to the rage in his chest. Even Syrena, who sat just a foot away, wanted very much to try to burn through the ogreskin and kill the man. But there was no attack. The thief was far smarter than that.

  Realizing most eyes in the camp were on him, Jossiah scoffed and chuckled with satisfaction.

  “You at a loss for words then, thief? Finally?” he asked.

  John Huxley lay there, wishing he were asleep so as to not witness the discord. Hudson may not have been the most pleasant man to be around, but he had been the one to save them that day. It was his attack that allowed for their escape and John knew that somewhere beneath the name there was a simple man… Hudson was perhaps just as afraid as he was, only better at faking it. And had Jossiah not been one of his commanders, John liked to believe that he would have spoken out.

  “Ah,” Jossiah grunted and spat on the dirt. “Just as I thought… nothing but a filthy fraud. You’re just another man that thinks he’s a god.”

  “Hmm… yes,” Hudson finally spoke, softly and somberly. “Rather typical of men, isn’t it?”

  Jossiah gave him one last glare, before rising to his feet and cracking his neck almost violently. There was no reaction, however. The former knight had heard enough. He walked off into the trees nearby to be alone, preparing himself for the first watch of the night.

  John turned to his side and tried to find comfort, looking towards the trees uphill.

  Cedric was right, he thought to himself. They definitely are moving rather unusually…

  John then moved his neck so as to catch a glimpse of the sky above. The stars were nearly covered entirely behind a roof of leaves that appeared to go on for nearly a mile into the sky.

  Absolutely gorgeous, he thought.

  And it was… There was something about the Woodlands that one could never find in the realms of humans… It was like a beautiful escape… That was until John remembered everything Hudson had said about the creatures that lurked within those very grounds. And then the place suddenly became less beautiful and more unnerving than ever before.

  “Then what happened…?” asked a sudden nervous voice.

  Hudson glanced at Cedric with a mildly perplexed look. “What…?”

  “What did you say before?” Cedric mumbled. “About our ancestors…?”

  Hudson exhaled in the manner of a chuckle, finding the young man’s curiosity entertaining.

  “The conflict goes further back than just 250 years, little mate,” he said, more to amuse the kid. “Our ancestors realized you could only fight poison with poison… So they began practicing dark sorcery, eventually becoming so powerful that they became immune to the creatures’ spells… You see, only a mage can walk freely among those trees up there at night and not be harmed by them. Only a mage or a witch. Last I checked, we had one of those…”

  Everyone slowly turned to look at Syrena, whose instinct was to shoot an intimidating stare right back at them all. And Hudson couldn’t help but smirk at Cedric.

  “Trust me, little mate,” he said. “As long as she’s with us, there’s no safer place for us than up there among the willow trees… away from the real horrors that lurk out here…”

  * * *

  Young Robyn had never been a cowardly girl. Since childhood, her mother could see bravery in her eyes perhaps even greater than John’s. Suffice it to say the girl didn’t even know the meaning of the word ‘coward’ until she was ten years old.

  But neither was she imprudent.

  She knew there was just as much death in the world as there was wonder. And yet in one fateful moment, she’d forced the burden out of her mind and followed her intuition. A girl with a big heart, she was, but like everyone else she was imperfect.

  Too young, they called her, more times than she cared to remember.

  Too naïve, too callow, too stubborn…

  She’d heard it all her life and her incessant ambition to prove them all wrong became her flaw.

  She’d convinced herself that it was for John, that she d
readed the idea of his death and that she wanted to be there with him should fate decide his time had come… and now she was in the Woodlands, far away from home, and it hadn’t crossed her mind until then that her dear mother could very well lose two children in lieu of one.

  She sat in the darkness beneath a massive willow tree with thick roots halfway exposed. Using a sharp stone, she dug a hole at the base of the tree and arranged a thick layer of leaves over it until it looked comfortable enough to nestle in. She slumped into it, using as much of the tree’s trunk to shield herself from the frosty wind. And as she rubbed her arms and shriveled into a fetal position, her shivering dry lips casted clouds of white fog into the air. Her furs were not thick enough to keep her warm, and it only kept reminding her that she had very little advantage with regards to armor should an unexpected danger arise.

  She had chosen a secluded spot above a hill, right in the middle of a cluster of willows, where the height would give her the advantage. She could see in the distance a tiny spark of light where Viktor Crowley’s company had set up camp for the night. And it was the only thing that was helping her keep her spirit, knowing that her brother was within her sight. She tried to lose herself in her thoughts so as to avoid thinking of the cold, except her mind kept going back to her mother and the twins.

  “I-I’m s…” she whispered hesitantly, the way she often would when she was alone. “I’m sorry, mum…”

  She sighed profoundly, hoping to ease the knot in her throat and failing.

  Then she hardened her gaze, firm and determined, and forced the shivering in her lip to stop.

  “You never abandon family,” she said, as if she was talking to her mother. “It’s what you always said…”

  Suddenly she heard a sharp sound above, like that of a branch snapping in half.

  She panted silently, the subtle dismay returning suddenly to her chest.

  Her eyes searched all around… The movement was everywhere, and it was hard to distinguish which was caused by the wind and which was something else entirely. The leaves in the trees were rumbling a bit too harshly, she knew, for as cold as the breeze was it was not strong enough to cause such movement. As a child she’d heard about the tree creatures of the Woodlands, stories told by the few that had seen them and survived.

  Some said they were peaceful, so long as you did not disturb them.

  Others said they were vicious creatures that would kill anything that dared enter the forest grounds. The tree nymphs, or ‘dryads’ as some called them, had a heightened sense of smell and could sense fresh human blood from a mile away. Working together in packs, they would ambush their prey and absorb them into their mother tree so as to keep her alive and breeding even more dryads at the roots.

  The thought of it made Robyn’s stomach turn.

  She tried to sit still, so as to avoid being heard or seen.

  She realized then just how alone she was. She had no one else other than her pony, and the poor thing was tied to the tree nearest to her left trembling and neighing gently, unable to fall asleep. For a moment she considered riding down the hill to meet with her brother. She’d traveled too far to return by then and he would ultimately have no say in the matter unless he wanted to be an inconvenience to his superiors.

  Not now, she told herself. The moment’s not right yet.

  She wanted to prove to him that she could fend for herself, if only to stop him and mother from ever referring to her as ‘just a girl’ again. But the fear was tearing at her insides, for it was rare of her to have such a feeling. She loathed it. At all costs, she wanted rid of it.

  And yet it only got worse when there was suddenly a rustling sound coming from above, after which a few green leaves fell slowly at her feet, startling her, causing her heart to race. She tried to blame her imagination, tried to tell herself the lack of sleep was making her see things that weren’t there. But the leaves kept dropping…

  There’s something in the trees, she told herself.

  All around her, branches echoed one another almost in unison, as if communicating through sounds and movement. She felt the earth beneath her start to rumble all of a sudden, as if she was sitting on the belly of a beast. And then a chunk of earth in front of her began to move, as if something was pushing it from underneath…

  The root of the willow tree began to rise above the soil.

  It was moving... It was alive…

  Young Robyn felt her eyes were deceiving her as she trembled to her feet. The branches above her began to move as well, the hardened wood bending in ways that no branch could ever possibly bend.

  Beware the Woodlands, they told her, for there is dark magic all around that lives.

  Now, Robyn Huxley had never seen a tree come to life, or any inanimate object for that matter.

  She also, however, had never expected it to screech…

  The root of the tree near her feet began cracking and turning about, until she saw what looked like a face made of wood with hollow eyes that were glowing, a bright green. The sound it made was something from a nightmare, loud and high-pitched and excruciating to Robyn’s ears.

  Then, as if answering the creature’s call, the movement among the leaves grew stronger and closer towards her. Shadows began to hop from branch to branch, all the while growing in numbers. And at that very moment, a lightning struck in the distance that brought about a flash of bright light for a half-second. It was long enough for Robyn to see the dozens of creatures hanging from the branches, looking at her the way a predator would look at a prey. Without thinking twice, she ran…

  Never had she moved so fast in her life.

  The tree nymphs began dropping to the ground, one by one, staring and sniffing about.

  Robyn glanced back over her shoulder. She could see them crawling on all fours slowly and beastlike near the pit where she had just been sitting. They were about the size humans, only crouched and hunchbacked like apes.

  All around her, the nymphs began to swarm, protecting their claimed territory.

  Distracted and panicked, she lost her step. A massive wooden arm rose from the dirt, causing her to trip and fall chest forward on the dirt. She turned around and crawled back, as the still unborn tree nymph stretched towards her from underneath the soil, shrieking loudly and sharply. It wasn’t fully bred yet, and the rest of the tree’s root appeared to be holding it down, but the nymph had gotten a grip on the heel of the girl’s boot. Her ankle was numb, but there was a tingling pain that she knew was likely to bruise later; if she would even be alive to see it, that is.

  This can’t be real, she told herself. This has to be a nightmare.

  But she had been startled awake in the past for less. And the sting of the cold in her cheeks, the heavy pounding in her chest, and the pain in her foot as the nymph pulled her closer assured her that this was quite real.

  She panicked, thinking this was how it would all end.

  Above her, most of the fully-grown nymphs appeared to be watching while some became distracted by the glowing light coming from the camp downhill.

  Robyn kicked. But the half-nymph only tugged harder at her feet.

  The rest began to drop on the dirt all around her, crawling towards her on all fours, caging her in…

  Another thunder. And this time, Robyn could see just how many there were.

  She became lightheaded, as everything around her began to blur. Her whole life, these creatures were nothing but stories. And now there were nearly fifty of them within twenty feet of her. She felt her body give in for a moment, and the half-nymph on the earth pulled her in, swallowing part of her ankle into the earth.

  Shit, Robyn thought as she found herself on the verge of unconsciousness.

  In that moment, however, she heard another sound. An earsplitting screeching sound, but it did not come from any nymph. Robyn struggled to keep her eyelids open. All that she could make out was a blurry black shadow at the corner of her eye flying towards her.

  A black crow with its sh
arp beak held up high plunged into the back of the half-nymph’s head.

  Robyn was nearly gone, but she had enough strength to pull her leg back and crawl before she fainted. The crow pulled its beak out from the now-dead dryad’s head and shrieked in a most haunting unnatural way.

  The creatures continued to crawl inward, surrounding Robyn and the crow.

  And the crow stood by Robyn’s feet, extending its wings in place and shrieking at the creatures as if protecting her from them. With as much energy as she could muster, Robyn breathed in heavy puffs.

  Stay awake, she ordered herself. Whatever you do… stay…awake!

  She searched everywhere, but her bow Spirit and her satchel of arrows had been left behind at the willow tree where she had been sitting. She searched for a rock, a stick, anything sharp. That was, until she remembered the knife she had stolen from her mother’s kitchen.

  At that moment, the crow shrieked even louder as a nymph snatched it by the wings with its sharp twig-like fingers. The crow tried to counterattack by biting, grabbing onto the wood with its beak and grappling about. But the nymph fought through the pain and began adding pressure to its stilted claw, preventing the crow from flapping.

  The crow cawed loudly as its muscles became immobile.

  It was defenseless, much like Robyn had been just seconds earlier.

  The nymph tightened its grasp further; the bird’s head was by then twitching with pain.

  As it released what it thought was its last breath, a sharp piece of metal pierced the tree nymph’s arm quite unexpectedly, causing it to shriek and loosen the grasp, a moment which the crow took to flap and thrust himself away back into the air.

  The crow turned to see Robyn on her knees with her knife at hand.

  And it was then that another nymph began to shriek, this time from high above in the trees. The rest of them turned their attention towards it. The nymph above appeared to be beckoning them away.

  And then they left…

  The nymph that appeared to be in charge began hopping downhill, and one by one the rest followed it.

  It was the spark of light in the distance that caught their attention. There was more than one life to be taken down there. And the nymphs were always hungry for more.