“Cared for by a Soulkeeper?” Garruk said, scratching at his beard. “Yeah. Yeah I think that’ll be fine. You’ll stay true to your word, won’t you?”
“We carry the fate of souls in our hands,” he said. “If you trust us with so great a matter, then trust me in all else I promise. The sick shall be under my care, from life to the pyre. The world may end and my word will still remain true.”
“Thank you,” Garruk said. Now that the matter was settled he appeared almost nervous to be in Devin’s presence. “Thank you kindly. You’re a good man.”
He turned and hurried away.
“Are you sure you’re willing to do this?” Jonathan asked, watching him go. “You said yourself that staying here means death.”
“My staying also means others will leave and live,” Devin said. “Perhaps we might have discovered a better solution if you had told me of your plan to abandon the sick.”
Jonathan looked away in shame.
“I hadn’t thought of it, either, Soulkeeper. People started arguing about it this morning and they forced me to make a choice. You and I both know that those inflicted with this disease have no hope left for them.”
“That doesn’t mean they deserve to remain behind and die of starvation and thirst.”
“They don’t deserve to be sick at all,” Jonathan said. “Forgive me for making what I thought was the best decision at the time.”
Devin shook his head and sighed.
“You’re right,” he said. “None of this is just, and your decision was likely the correct one, all things considered. Just remember that survival is not everything. Animals survive. We help one another. Remember that as you lead these people east.”
Many hours later, Devin paced through Jonathan’s living room, the crackling fire his only source of light. He certainly didn’t feel like a good man. Instead he felt tired and resentful of the enormous care required by the sick. He held a large bowl of soup, most of it uneaten. Of the nine people in the mayor’s house, only two still had the strength to sit up and slurp from the spoon.
“I’ve not seen it progress like this before,” Jonathan had told him before joining the last of the wagons trundling down the winding mountain road toward Crynn. “If the doom you predict comes, don’t die for the lot. They’re already dead.”
Too many refused to eat, and those who slept seemed incapable of waking despite his nudges. Deciding enough was enough, Devin let the spoon sink beneath the bowl’s surface and left for the kitchen.
“Don’t die for them?” Devin said. He chuckled as he set the soup bowl on a table and picked up a wet cloth. “Sorry, Jonathan, but that’s what I agreed to do when you summoned me here. Besides, after Arothk wasted his blood on me, it’s only fair I stay back with those who should have been cured.”
People had argued about leaving behind loved ones, but in the end self-preservation won out. Dunwerth was dying of plague. Though Devin and Jonathan did not specify the reason for evacuating, many reached the expected conclusion that anywhere was safer than their seemingly cursed town. Only one man had refused to leave, a husband wishing to die beside his wife. Jonathan came pleading for a solution, and Devin gave it to him in the form of some crushed herbs. A group held him and forced him to drink the herbs, which sent him into sleep that would last for many hours. By the time he woke, he’d be miles from town, and hopefully stay with the caravan instead of attempting to return.
“Would it have been better for him to die here?” Devin wondered as he wrung out the cloth to the sound of coughing. “I don’t know, Anwyn, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I was wrong.”
The night hours passed long and slow. Devin cleaned weeping sores as best he could. When it came time for the sick to urinate or defecate, Devin was there with fresh rags and changes of clothes. People loved listening to stories of Soulkeepers defending against bandits, hunting down murderers who plagued the streets of Londheim, and winning impossible competitions of skill with the pinpoint accuracy of their hammerlock pistols. Devin doubted many would huddle breathlessly around a campfire to hear him tell the story of wiping down of an old man’s crotch and legs because he’d shat himself for the third time that night. People didn’t want to know the real work of a Soulkeeper. They wanted tales of adventure.
By the time the reaping hour approached, Devin was ready to call it quits. He plopped down into the chair by the fire Arleen had occupied the night before. His heels pushed it back and forth in a steady, creaking motion. His hands were raw from constantly washing them, and he doubted he’d ever remove the smell of sickness embedded into the leather of his coat. Eyes closed, he listened to the coughing and hacking of the dying.
“I can only do so much,” he whispered. “Help me out, Sisters. I’m drowning.”
The chair rocked back and forth. Creak, cough, creak, cough. A morbid lullaby…
A ringing sound woke him from his light slumber. Devin lurched to his feet, his instincts sensing something amiss and forcing his sleeping limbs to move. He squinted, trying to adjust to the light, and only after a moment realized it wasn’t daylight that blinded him, nor was it the glow from the now-dead fire.
Nine beams of soft blue light shone to the ceiling. They gave off a subtle chime, a noise more suitable to a cathedral than the stinking room. Devin’s mouth dropped open in shock. The triangle-and-circle symbol of the Three Sisters burned across the sick men’s and women’s foreheads, carved by an unknown hand. The first hints of the rising souls swirled across the marks, casting a brilliant hue across the living room.
In all eight years of his official duty as a Soulkeeper, not once had Devin witnessed something akin to the spectacle before him. It wasn’t just the sight of the souls rising in perfect unison without any need of his prayers or rituals. The reaping hour felt… strange. Powerful. What was once a brush of cold against the back of his neck was now an overwhelming flood of sensation. The walls of the world seemed weak and pliable, the stars holding the void at bay impossibly close.
His sleep-addled mind remembered proper protocol, and he quickly dropped to one knee and bowed his head.
“By Alma, we are born. By Lyra, we are guided. By Anwyn, we are returned. Beloved Sisters, take them home.”
The ringing reached a crescendo. The nine souls vaulted into the air, bypassing the ceiling as if it weren’t there. The blue beams rapidly shrank in size until they were a faint slice of light vanishing into the darkness. Silence followed in their wake, broken by the fire bursting back to life as if it had never died.
Devin slowly rose to his feet and wiped tears of both awe and exhaustion off his face. When the church had informed him of his mission, he’d expected a long, dull hike through the mountains to a sleepy village suffering a particularly vicious bout of the flu. Instead, he’d found himself in over his head, watching the world rapidly tumble off a cliff of sanity into an amalgamation he did not understand.
The smell of death, already suffocating, grew with each passing moment. Devin made for the door, deciding that any other home would provide a better night’s sleep. He glanced at the corpses. They would need to be burned, but that could wait until morning. Devin entered the house beside Jonathan’s, a small abode with a single bedroom. There were no sheets or blankets on the feather-stuffed mattress. That suited him fine. He kept all but his coat on, preferring to leave the bulky leather hanging on a hook by the door. A window was directly above the bed, and he pulled it open despite the chill. Fresh air felt wonderful after hours in Jonathan’s cramped, sickly living room.
“Do we witness the end?” he asked the Sisters, fearing that the world itself would answer him before his Goddesses. “What Arothk said… is it true?”
Arothk’s words echoed in his mind.
Your time of humans ends.
According to Anwyn’s Mysteries, the world would end when the void-dragon crashed through the prison of stars and attempted to swallow the light of the First Soul, now disseminated throughout all of humanity. No part
detailed living stone creatures or black water. Were the Mysteries incomplete, or did a brand-new threat emerge? Chilling thoughts, and they lent themselves to nightmares he was glad to forget when blessed daylight washed over his face through the open window.
The morning greeted Devin with the discovery that his horse had broken free from her stable and fled in the night.
“Not a great start to the day,” he muttered as he surveyed the broken wood that had once been a stable door. Something must have spooked his horse, and badly. Given the spectacle he’d witnessed the night before, it wasn’t much of a stretch to assume the two matters linked. He walked the outskirts of the town, but he saw no sign of her. Devin tried not to let it worry him too much, and he focused on the current task at hand.
Burning nine bodies would require a much larger than normal pyre, which meant Devin had to scout for an open area outside the town’s limits. Dragging the bodies all the way into the forest would take far too long as well. He chose a gentle hill near the western end of town, the sides spotted with fifteen or so trees that would make for easy gathering of tinder and kindling for the enormous pyre.
As for the logs themselves, that was a simple but laborious task. Nearly every home had a large stack of firewood piled against a side of the house. Devin carried armfuls from the nearest home and steadily built a triangular outline to fill in with the logs. Once sufficiently full, he’d layer the kindling atop it, followed by the bodies and the tinder. It was heavy work, but Devin didn’t mind. Everything else might be beyond his reasoning, but at least he could build a fire. Once the pyre was done he’d drag the bodies from the mayor’s house and perform another familiar, comforting ritual.
Devin was halfway finished with the pyre when the ground began to shake. He dropped to his knees and relaxed his body, trying not to fight the suddenly angry earth. Snow cascaded down the peaks of distant mountains as multiple avalanches triggered. The noise built to a roar, a crescendo of snow and stone and cracking walls and snapping pines. Devin closed his eyes and focused on remaining calm. He was safe atop the hill. If he kept relaxed, no harm should come to him.
The earthquake ended. Devin slowly rose to his feet. His legs were unsteady, and he stared at the grass as if expecting it to betray him.
Another terrible omen, he thought. As if he needed any more of those after his horse fled. He gazed to the southeast. There ran a long path sloping through green hills for several miles before curling down the side of a mountain. The villagers were long out of sight, but he looked in their direction nonetheless and offered them a prayer. It’d be a cruel fate if they were caught in the path of one of those avalanches.
Something dark in the distance stole his attention. Devin squinted, trying to decipher what he saw. It looked like a shadow curling up the path around the mountain, but the sky was clear. What had been curiosity quickly turned to fear as the darkness approached at a blistering pace. It seemed made of shadow, yet the substance covering the landscape had a depth to it, and the way it flowed? Like a liquid, or…
“Black water rises,” Devin whispered aloud.
The black water rushed up the path into the village. Though it appeared a flood, it made not the slightest sound with its passage. Devin watched, his feet locked in place. He felt imprisoned, as if in a dream from which he could not wake up. The black water crashed into the homes but did not wash the structures away. It moved nothing as it flowed through windows and around corners. Nothing stopped it, not even the hill Devin stood atop.
“Oh shit.”
Devin sprinted for the closest tree. Its branches were thin but he’d have to trust them to hold his weight. The alternative was to be submerged beneath the black water, and every instinct in his body screamed to avoid that at all costs. Branches scraped at his face, needles poked at his eyes, but he climbed higher and higher. The black water was close, so close…
The water surged beneath him, quiet as a predator. Not even the air moved from its presence. Devin clutched the trunk and watched the liquid shadow pass. The sight was mesmerizing in its beauty. The water bore the color of midnight, yet the longer he stared the more that emerged from its depths. Faint stars swam just beneath the surface. Deep purples and blues shifted like cosmic smoke. Sunlight vanished into it. The physical world dissolved away beneath it.
All the while, silence.
Devin didn’t know how long the water flowed. Time itself crawled to a stop in the presence of the water. His mind lost itself to the flow, the pine’s branches and needles vanishing so it looked as if Devin hung in midair above an abyssal ocean of stars and void. The moment it receded, his mind broke free, and he gasped for breath. His muscles ached. His head throbbed. The unnatural quiet still sounded far too loud. The black water retreated down the hill, through the town, and vanished in the direction of Crynn. In its wake, it left complete and utter devastation.
What had been green grass was now a sickly gray. The pine needles beneath him had lost all color. The brown of the trunk was now black as tar. When Devin’s foot touched a lower branch its needles fell, leaving the branch twisted and naked. Devin climbed down with reckless urgency. He didn’t trust the tree to support his weight much longer. The trunk looked rotted and decayed.
When his feet hit the gray grass, the blades erupted into a shower of powdery smoke that stung his eyes and scraped his throat like a razor with every breath. Devin grabbed the side of his coat and pulled it over his face. It was meager comfort. Impulse said to flee to the dirt-worn streets of Dunwerth, but he fought it down. Had to remain calm. Had to keep track of where he was. If he ran blind and gagging he had as much chance of veering off track and dying as reaching the town’s safety.
Devin waited out the cloud. Slowly the tears left his eyes, and though his throat was raw, cool air blessedly flowed across it. A long, terrifying field of gray separated him from apparent safety. Careful not to move his feet, Devin pulled his shirt over his nose and tied it there with a spare cloth he kept in one of his heavy coat’s many pockets. Last, he removed his hat and pressed it flat against his mouth. He had no protection for his eyes, but hopefully he would be fine without.
Eyes closed, he took his first step. His foot brushed the grass, scattering a fresh cloud of ash into the air. Devin kept his breathing soft and steady. One foot after the other. Despite all his protection the powder coated his throat. But instead of gagging and gasping for air, he merely fought through an impulse to cough. The pain grew like an itch he couldn’t scratch, but it was bearable. Soft breathing. Steady walking. His eyes watered but that was the extent of their suffering so long as he kept them clenched shut.
Devin counted steps, using them as a careful measurement as he closed the distance to the town. Between each one he paused, ensuring that his path remained straight. Even the slightest deviation might take him away from the town. After a minute he paused in place and counted to one hundred before opening his eyes.
It turned out there was no cloud to outwait. He stood at the far end of Dunwerth, the ground already beaten to dust by the foot traffic. Devin let out a sigh of relief as he lowered his shirt and untied the cloth.
“Thank the stars you warned us, Arothk,” Devin said as he looked over what remained of the town. The walls of all the homes appeared to be in late stages of decay. A sickly black mold clung to them and stank of wet rot. When Devin pushed in the door of the nearest home it collapsed, the hinges breaking free with ease. Inside, the floor was a bubbling mass of mold. What had been a rocking chair was now a charred black collection vaguely resembling a human construction. The curtains had lost all their color and hung threadbare from their hooks.
Devin opened one of the cupboards and immediately regretted it. The owners had left behind a handful of apricots on a plate. Their yellow skin had turned sickly gray speckled with black spots. The brief smell that escaped before he slammed the cupboard shut was of sour milk.
“Sisters damn it all,” he muttered, turning aside and retching. The smell refused
to leave his nostrils. The floor creaked beneath his every step as he fled outside. He savored the fresh air, his arms crossed and his eyes closed as he tried to meditate. Every foul discovery heightened his anxiety, compounding a fear he refused to speak aloud.
Just how far did the black water flow?
A loud rattle of wood broke him from his thoughts. At first he thought it was the sound of a rotted home collapsing, but then he heard another noise, and then another. Movement coming from the mayor’s house. A creeping horror slid down into his belly. The bodies of the nine he’d yet to burn… what had the black water done to them?
Devin loaded his pistol, drew his sword, and went to find out.
CHAPTER 5
Seven creatures wandered the street before the mayor’s house. Creatures, for nothing about their jittery movements resembled their former humanity. The black water appeared to have sunk into their flesh, sapping away all color and leaving their skin an unnatural white. Their eyes were empty holes leaking gray pus. Their clothes had rotted away, leaving them naked as they fumbled blindly about. Long ropes of coagulated blood leaked from their nostrils.
“Goddesses above,” Devin whispered, his mouth dropping open. These abominations defied every natural order of life. They were empty shells, their souls removed and taken to Anwyn in the heavens. They should be ash in a pyre, not walking, not moaning quietly as they stumbled about sniffing the air.
Their wet inhalations intensified. What had been aimless wandering shifted toward his vague direction. Could they smell him? Perhaps, Devin thought, but it didn’t matter. He was a Soulkeeper, and he bore responsibility for those bodies. Whatever their state, whatever the dangers they possessed, he would burn them on a pyre.
Devin carefully approached the closest walking corpse. They certainly could not see him, and their sense of smell didn’t appear too precise. They drifted his way, their arms occasionally flailing at the air as if striking invisible opponents. Devin stopped halfway across the street and let the nearest come the rest of the way toward him. It snarled, granting Devin an unwelcome look into its mouth. Half its teeth were missing. The other half were cracked and chipped, forming uneven fangs. He saw no sign of its tongue, just a hollow crevice with a pool of dried blood collecting from its nose.
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