by Jesse Galena
In that moment, I realized it was not an old painting depicting a battle. It was the charred remains that made an outline of the people and things in this room.
Fearful of what could have turned men, metal, and beast into a swath of scorched remains, I delved back into the black maze.
The woman’s screams continued, my heart tearing in my chest as they got closer. When they became distant again, I felt no relief. The tension that twisted my body never ceased.
In moments, her screams grew louder once again. I could hear her footsteps now, growing louder with each scream.
Plagued with fear, I ran. Through the mystery of the black, I trudged through without knowledge of what was before me. I staggered over planks, nearly goring myself with my knife in my haste. I would not put it away, nor would I slow my steps. My fear of the woman finding me was too great. Stumbling in divots and holes of unknown depths, I continued.
I saw light. The gray of the outside world was suddenly beautiful compared to the eternal black of the structure. I found a destroyed wall leading into a mass of old stone walkways with trees pushing through them.
I ran past fires that did not spread. On stakes or engulfing bushes, the fires, fueled by something beyond the objects on which they burned, tinted small patches of the landscape in misty red. After every crack in my body was slick with sweat and my blood threatened to burst through my flesh, I fell. Deep in the corrupted lands near a large, burning tree, my body gave.
In the warmth of the blaze, the grim shroud of the night came. Despite the hours that passed, no rest came.
My eyes refused to close. My pulse refused to slow. Terror wove itself into my skin and bones and gnawed at my soul. I saw the stars move across the sky. I saw shadowed images of the sunrise behind the clouds. Exhausted beyond what even a night's rest could recover, I rose again.
The distant cries of my pursuer returned as I continued.
A few scattered, standing walls surrounded by rubble and weeds were all that remained of what I suspected was a gathering of closely packed buildings. There were so many odd walls, they kept me from seeing too far in any direction.
The ground was still stone. Grass and a few trees burst through it. Perhaps this was once a market, bustling with people haggling and shouting. Now the only sounds were my fleeing footsteps and her tormented wails.
Exhaustion plagued me to my very bones. I stumbled from the area I thought of as a market place, collapsing on the stone path. The strength of my fingers failed to keep hold of my knife as I struck the ground. The twang of steel on stone rang as it slid beyond my grasp and struck the ground.
The chapel, larger than most castles, towered before me atop a mountain. Beyond the chapel lay a forest, and beyond the forest lay the place I meant to venture.
Meant to.
I was not going to make it.
“I was going to bring you back, my friend,” I mumbled, my voice pointed skyward. “I risked everything to find the way to bring you back. I wanted atonement. I wanted forgiveness.”
Nearer than before, I heard the cries.
My mind and body warred over the choice to remain slack on the ground or to stand and defend myself. I wanted to live, but I knew I did not possess enough strength to fight her.
Her cries grew louder.
My belly dragged across the ground as I pulled myself. My mind mocked my body's efforts. Despair and death called for me. They were coming for me. “What good is a blade?” Remember? Those were my words once.
Her cries grew louder.
My fingers slid across the eroded stone to grasp the handle of my knife. I rose to my feet, my legs willing to possess life once again. I turned from the chapel.
I saw the lady who cried. I saw the long, curved blade in her hand. I could feel her hatred, her need for my blood.
“I have failed you,” I said, unsure if the dead could hear apologies.
Part Three
Lavin led Cul farther away from the twisting towers. His leg was terribly wounded, but she refused to believe he was without hope. She had already lost the other three. She refused to accept the possibility of another friend dying by some equally unnatural creature or event. He was short but heavy. Aside from his suit of half-plate armor, he was a stocky man with rounded features. She could see his gentle eyes twitch in pain with each step.
He was all she had left.
The path narrowed until it met the rocky slope of the mountain. Spilling over the edge of the mountaintop and sliding down its face, tombstones and partially unearthed coffins cropped out. From years of erosion, the tombstones and coffins protruded over the edge and crept out of the side of the mountain, making a ragged, ill-proportioned, hundred-foot-long stairwell for them to ascend. They often had to jump from one to the next, and the tombstones were too small for both of them to stand upon together. With nothing but the rocky mountainside between them and a sudden, unforgiving stop far below, she feared the tombstones would fail to hold their weight.
Lavin often stretched over the emptiness between the stones to help Cul onto the next platform. Their groans and heavy breaths drowned out the odd chorus of unfamiliar noises from atop the mountain.
After the grueling climb, their hands grasped the edge of the cliff and they pulled themselves atop the mountain. A multitude of gravestones and unearthed coffins overtook the landscape and showed no path among them. Their tight, uneven placements made it a low-walled maze she and Cul would have to weave through.
As they lay alongside the tombstones, their chests heaving for breath they feared they would never hold, their ears opened to the source of the noise.
Draped in black cloth that masked their true shapes, figures wept over the graves. Black lace hung before their faces. It shrouded their expressions, leaving a featureless shape that mocked the form of a human head. Some shuffled between the tombstones and coffins. Their calls were dreadful, throat-splitting cries that fluctuated in volume and lasted longer than lungs could.
Their long-winded cries of pain and unending sorrow burrowed into Lavin's skull. The sound infecting her mind would haunt her thoughts until her breath failed.
“We have to leave,” Lavin she said as she rose to her feet.
Several of the wailers turned to her. Whether the jingling of the bags or Cul’s yelp caught their attention when he stood, she knew not. Their veiled faces twitched. Gnarled fingers wrapped in black cloth stretched out from their frayed sleeves. Their cries grew louder. Unseen limbs propelled them toward her. The fabric bowed and stretched, but their odd saunter made her wonder if they possessed legs.
Unsure what the wailers intended with them, Lavin guided Cul through the maze. Cul's impaired position slowed them, allowing the ghostly figures to advance.
Their movement, Lavin's labored breaths, and Cul's grunts drew the attention of more of the crying figures. Their indecipherable dialects ran over each other, creating a cacophony of over-extended cries that drowned out the noises she and Cul made.
Countless hands stretched out for them, forcing Lavin and Cul to run. The tourniquet strained, and blood spurted from Cul's wound. The wailers closed in around them, their screams seeming to attract more of the ghostly figures. Lavin lowered her head, trudging through as bandaged fingers brushed over her arms.
The mouth of a cave embraced them, leaving only the light that bled through the opening to guide them.
They continued running into the cave until the wails began to fade. Lavin glanced back. The wailers shambled at the mouth of the cave, their ragged forms refusing to cross the threshold. It was dark in the cave, but void of the crying creatures. Empty and still-sealed coffins plunged through the walls and ceiling, protruding like crystals in a fantastical cave.
With only the bleakest fragment of sunlight shielding them from utter black, Lavin drew an oiled rag and wrapped it around a broken plank from a coffin. The light from the torch revealed a grimmer sight. Cul was pale. His sharp spurts of pain-stricken reactions diminished into the
rhythmic, shallow breaths of someone with a dwindling number of them left.
“We're getting through this,” Lavin told him reassuringly. His eyes met hers, tearing away from the blankness he stared at lifelessly. His mouth moved—a quick spasm of his upper lip. No words accompanied what appeared to be his attempt to speak.
She pulled him to his feet. The gentle sound of running water in the distance gave her hope.
“Do you hear that?” she asked, not waiting for his response. “A stream. We had to cross this mountain to get to the twisted spires. We left our horses by a stream that came out of a mountain. Do you hear the water? We can take the stream down and escape. We'll get treated, and we'll live in wealth from our findings. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Spending easy nights by a warm fire. Good food to eat every meal. A worthy reward for just a little more work, wouldn't you agree?”
She nudged him with her fist, coaxing a smile from his pale lips.
The noise grew louder, and soon the flames showed the edge of the swiftly moving stream. She eased Cul to the ground and moved closer to examine the water. It was mostly clear, tinted slightly white. She placed her leg in in the stream but could not feel the bottom even near the edge. It was deep, and she dismissed the idea of wading in it. The fast current, unknown depth, coffins, and rocky, blue-tinted stalagmites that rose from the bottom of it were enough to deter her from riding down it without a craft.
Lavin dragged a still-sealed coffin to the edge of the water. She turned it onto its top, hearing a meaty thump from inside as it turned. She pushed it into the stream, the curved top submerged and the flat bottom floated above the water. Its buoyancy brought a smile to her face. She led it to two stalagmites near the edge.
“Cul, we're leaving,” she said with a hopeful tone.
She aided her friend to the coffin, helping him lie gently upon it. She grabbed the side and plunged into the water. The water slipped through her clothes. The coolness of it felt pleasing, but her soaked clothes made her inadvertently cringe. The weight of the four bags and her attire attempted to pull her into the stream's unknown depths. With no room for her next to Cul atop the coffin, she held onto a handle on its side and pushed with her legs to dislodge it from the stalagmite.
The current swept them down the stream. She tried to avoid hitting outcropping coffins or rocks, but there was little she could do to control their coffin. After a few scrapes and bruises from minor collisions, Lavin sighed, relieved that the coffins ceased appearing. Clear of the graveyard, it was only those jagged spires of rock that caused her any grief.
Her heart shuddered as she saw the stalagmites move. In the distance, they began to wade from the edges of the stream toward the center. Whatever means propelled them was hidden beneath the current.
A rocky spire rose up from beneath their coffin. It knocked the back half of the coffin into the air as it scraped across the rock’s jagged edge. Cul grasped the handle of the coffin as Lavin steadied him. The coffin slid from the spire and crashed back into the water, jolting Lavin and blinding her with a wave of water. Cul's shoulder dangled off the edge. His head bobbed with the waves, causing him to slip further over the edge. Lavin would not let him fall into the stream. She knew what strength she still possessed was not enough to pull him back to the surface.
The speed of their craft increased as another stream flowed into theirs. The moving stalagmites moved toward them, too slow to catch them at such a pace.
Through the darkness, a distant pinprick of light told of the end of the tunnel.
As a smile graced Lavin's lips, another stony spire sprang from the water before them. The front of the coffin splintered as it struck, lodging itself into the rock. Cul crashed against the rock, throwing part of his body against it rather than slipping into the water. The wood around the handle shattered. The impact left Lavin holding the dislodged handle and floating away from the coffin. She twisted and reached out with her other hand as she floated, snagging the leather strap of Cul's bag. Wrapped around his body, the bag pulled against his chest and the underside of his arm. Still on the sinking coffin, Cul turned his near-dead gaze to his friend, who refused to release him.
“We can make it!” Lavin called out. Her eyes stung from the salty mixture of the second stream. Her lungs caught water that rushed over the splintered edges of the coffin and clawed at her face. She coughed to expel it, but any opening only offered more water a chance to assault her in the same manner.
Turning her head for a breath, she caught the dreadful movement of something below the surface. More rocky spires were rising, closing in around them. The stalagmites were forming into a pattern she recognized. With movement independent from each other, the stalagmites formed the image of teeth in a beast's jaws. Glimpses of the bottom of the stream revealed blackened pits that stared intently at them.
The coffin sank, releasing Cul into the stream. Lavin and Cul flowed with the stream, but Cul's limp arms allowed his bag to slip over his shoulder and release his body. Still holding the pack, Lavin reached out to catch him with her other hand. Cul was too far, and the weight of all five bags pulled her downstream faster than her companion.
Their eyes met as the stone spires rose between them, and she watched as they engulfed him.
She drew a deep breath as the weight of the bags dragged her below the surface. Her speed increased, granting her no power to avoid the rocks. Her chest ached as it begged for air. Her frantic struggle brought her no closer to the surface as her increasingly battered body careened downstream.
Then a light washed the back of her eyelids in brightness. The oppressive clutch of the water was lost as she fell from the mouth of the cave. Her lungs gasped for air she was uncertain she would truly taste. Her eyes opened, the remnants of the stream flicking from her eyelashes. She was falling. She had been expelled from the cave and was dropping before a waterfall. The sun's full light fell upon her, and the warm air and the taste of the water on her lips made her desperate breath all the sweeter.
Her body crashed into the water, the sound of the strike muffled as she submerged. The weight of her bags still pulled her down, but the ease of the current from the wide stream allowed her to grasp the closest rocks and surface.
With her face wet from both tears and water, she swam to the edge of the stream. The rocks along the shore gave her proper footing as she climbed out of the water and flopped onto the grass beside it. The blades of grass were sharp against her bare face as her tears fell to the dirt. In that moment of unequaled sorrow, she mourned. All were lost, dead or worse from unholy means in this corrupted kingdom. The sun warmed her soaked clothes, but what should have granted her a feeling of peace crumbled under the weight of her grief. Those she cared for, those she wished to protect and to be with, were gone.
She knew not how long she lay there weeping. As she began hearing herself and remembered the sounds of the wailers not long before, she clamped her mouth shut and rose to her feet.
The weight of her five bags, four of which belonged to her now-deceased friends, made walking all the more difficult. Each bag possessed enough gold coins and precious artifacts for her to live better than she ever had. But such wealth held little value compared to its cost. Compared to what it took from her now and for the rest of her days.
The Beginning of the Road
"That's an interesting story," she said as she stared at the man sitting before the bonfire. "And not without its poetic sound. But I do not believe it."
The evening sun still shone in the sky, aiding the fire in lighting every crag in the weathered man's face. He did not seem displeased or upset by her words. The fire gave his eyes a reflective brightness that she suspected they once had on their own.
"Such is free will," he said, his accent muddying his words. "The ability to ignore the truth whenever you favor a different meaning."
The narrow slits in her helmet corrupted her sight. His graceful gestures made her nervous. She flinched at his every movement as if he were going f
or the thin swords on his hips.
"Why are you here?" He inquired. "And why are you wearing that goofy helmet?" He eyed her, his gaze scrutinizing her attire. “Is your head really so far above your shoulders, or is your face hidden behind the neck of that helmet? I know it seems like a silly question, but in this place, you really can’t be too sure about anything. I’m not completely convinced you’re really there. I’m not convinced I’m actually here before you, either.”
"Why did you make a waist-high fire long before the sun went down?" she asked, her defensive and unpleasant tone echoing in her helmet.
"Answer me," he replied, "and I will answer you."
"Alright," she said. Tired and in need of a quick rest, she sat with the fire between them. "I am here to kill a man."
The man reeled back, nearly lifting from the stone on which he sat.
"M'lady, no men live here, only monsters. And as for travelers, most people know to stay clear of this accursed place. Besides, I have not seen anyone other than you in all my time here."
"He came here," she said.
"Why?"
"I don't know. There are many fabled things in this land. Some are good. He could be seeking them."
"Most are bad," he said with a slight chuckle.
"I doubt he came here looking for those. I assume he came for something precious, or else he learned I was following him and he came here thinking I would not dare cross into these lands."
"You chase him?" He asked as though the concept of pursuit was foreign to him. "Why?"
"He killed someone.”
“Who?”
She paused, the foul taste of the words coating her tongue before she spoke. “My husband. They worked together. The axe was still pressed into his skull. I found my husband dead in the field with an axe pressed into his skull. His partner was gone. I swore I’d follow him until I found him and I killed him."