by Scott Beith
Just ahead, on the right side trench shallows we ran along, there was a crowd of thick shelled leaf beetles that kept in their herd while they grazed the reeds peacefully, too big and bulky to be disturbed by all the other carnivores of night.
They were the only pleasant beings left in their world, and yet I had no choice but to fortify my salamander with as much armour as I could under the forest’s moonlight, so I could stampede straight through and pass them. My shadow attempting to knock or scare them out of the way as they physically blocked any further progress I could make across their swampy river track.
Against the bumps of their own defensive tramples, my hand rocked and slipped as I cut the side of my arm rather nastily on one of the side spikes I had added. I looked backwards to check on my paralytic prince and make sure he was ok, only to see that very bite mark I feared and be reminded of just how insignificant little cuts and bruises even mattered to him, given his dire situation.
I hoped he was alive, because he looked just as blue and white as a rotting corpse. To me, it felt like every extra second that passed was that one vital second of time he needed to live.
“HURRY!” I shouted upwards into the canopy, without a care in the world of who or what else might overhear it. Stuck waiting for another arrow to follow, only one available hand to stabilize Arlo and me on the beast while we were stuck without motion. Arlo’s head swaying heavy, rolling from one side of my shoulder to the other and then back again as he seemed like he might be dropping in and out of both consciousness and paralysis.
We were stationary for too long, allowing the ambitious buzzards to swoop from their trees as they came pecking at us from above. They screeched and snapped their beaks just above our heads, only to collide into leaves and be caught and swallowed up by a coiling net of trapdoor plants with razor sharp stems and leaves that seemed to enclose over them like a clamp from the reeds we had unsuspectingly stood beside in that short time.
Maybe it was me that did it, but most things I created came from history or myth I had been told about, and those dark carnivorous plants looked like nothing I had ever seen or known before in the past.
Other than some skilled hybrid renditions of prehistoric armadillos that helped to design the thorny devil salamander we were mounted upon, even my imagination was limited and I was left rightfully blinded by terror whilst we sat idly among a nightmarish wilderness of carrion feeders, whether they be fungal, floral or animal in nature. Everything that was still living seemed to have adapted to survive only by eating upon the deathly remains of whatever failed to become carnivorous in the first place.
The land itself was hostile, even the ancient beast I sat upon felt like no match to the beings of their strange cold wintery world, and yet I had surrendered all control of our movements to my own subconscious impulses and inhibitions, making me feel every bit the backseat passenger as Arlo was while he and I waited in the dead centre of the single most dangerous yet direct route through the merciless midnight forest glades.
I kept my eyes up to the sky in search of direction, observing a flock of a hundred blood-sucking needle-nosed critters fluttering up in the sky above the tree line, flapping their wings as some landed to scratch their talons into the wood stalks of branches while they squawked, warning each other about the intruder somewhere up there with them as I waited for her and her arrows to send me to my next location.
Unimpressed by the delay, I was a powerless spectator to a scenery instantaneously changing around myself, watching trees dig up from the earth with a hundred legs as they changed location from beside me. Centipedes opening their eyes just as other creepy crawlers uncurled themselves from the rock deposits they pretended to be as they came out of protective hiding in order to inspect whether I was a threat to them or not.
Luckily for Arlo and me, they took one look at my basilisk dragon predator and decided it would be best to move away, the forest distancing itself in a ring around me, my whimsical nature perhaps being strange enough to warrant some level of true threat and concern to their everyday madness.
My innovative monster companion had helped me survive the river run without any serious disposition, but I had no time to marvel over recent advancements I had made in my own puppet sorcery, that reptile needed to move, but there were no more arrows to follow. I had no choice but to wait, I started wondering if Rogue Anara was actually real, feeling delusional up until the point one last arrow was launched overheard towards the wooden dam that stopped the river mid-flow.
Her arrows were remarkably precise, perhaps even better than Zephyr was with that leafy green forest bows. Quite simply put, Anara had suddenly acquired new talents, and yet substituted them in place of other just as vital ones. She wasn’t herself anymore – now she was just another one of those battle-hungry gnoll fanatics.
Nevertheless, I chased the arrow to its location, with the last arrow landing down the stream upon the thick log that blocked any further passage forward, looking directly upwards to see it implanted at the top of the thick fallen tree’s highest perch. To the left of me was the built up pool of fresh water that seemed to keep the whole swamp sector alive.
Although, having reached our apparent destination, Anara changed directions from above, retracing her steps backwards through the trees in the direction we’d just come from, back towards the squawks of the needle-nosed buzzards.
I still felt as though I was going to climb into a trap, and that I couldn’t completely trust Anara anymore, having only seen death and corruption in the faces I had seen so far. But regardless of my scepticism and distrust of her, I knew my choices were limited, and so I dismounted my ride so that I could prepare to climb up the log and see what was on the other side of the damming floodway.
As with the closing of my hands, I started compressing the slimy ride we rode while Arlo remained slumped across its back. Sponge hardened to ice and then granite to the toughness of diamond and steel as I reduced the size of my ride to that of my own size.
The protector had taken the reformed shape of a knightly man as it carried Arlo over its shoulder with ease, a body and helmet like plate-mail as that shadow started climbing the log by its branches, taking lead as it made the climb without me or my consent.
I created wings for myself and zoomed to the top, arriving first beside the arrow, where I observed the dry vineyard clearing beyond that point. A natural dam blocked all the rainwater collected as everything beyond that point seemed to be nothing more than a dry barky woodland hollow, with the only track to follow being one long empty river and its expired meadows forever ahead.
It couldn’t have been the way onwards, as there was nothing out there to see. But turning back to the log on the other side of the river, it came to me with the faintest eye. The shortest sparkle of a light I was hoping for – a source of campfire smoke arising out of a cave entrance that was hidden in the branches at the end of the fallen tree. It was the most inconspicuous burrow ever concealed – something sealed away from sight using the leaves of the fallen tree to help break the smoke that came out from its underground chimney spout.
I walked the giant long dam bridge as I finally came across the cut wooden branch steps that led down to a dim and muggy dug out underground bunker. My shadow and I carefully lowered ourselves down the thick ladder steps as we descended into the groggy renegade-style tree hut that been hidden away from the rest of the world.
We entered into the cabin darkness, my shadow moving in first without proper inspection, standing in wait at the bottom steps as I approached and peered into the tree hut bunker. A bright campfire burned across from a long large rectangular table that seemed to apprehend a great deal of my attention, considering its size and general focus point in the centre of this underground bunker.
I had a certain pain that came from staring into the campfire light. Enough of an annoyance to notice I was intruding on a family without word or greeting yet to be said. My natural assumption just being that trespassing wasn’t an
issue, given the current state of things, finding it strange to be stared at in curiosity by two female gnolls wearing shrouds. They stood beside the mantle of the chimney fireplace and corner edge of the table, bewildered by my surprise appearance among them.
31
Refuge
“s that you, Kya?” asked a sweet but confused young voice from beside the dim corner fireplace, calling out softly and quietly from the other end of the bulky long wooden centre table. Anara’s unmistakable voice once again calling me over from some gloomy unseen darkness just outside the blur of natural eyesight. Her voice resonating from inside the dark enclosed bunker rather than up above in the moonlight where I assumed she was supposed to still be up within.
Anara approached from around the long table to come and greet me and confirm my suspicions – her reaction was most happy and welcoming, if not a little weird, considering the whole staggered amnesia and confusion she had surrounding how I arrived to be among her once again.
She had a look of shear gratitude upon the very sight of me, acting as if I had the only light within the darkness – hardly the reaction I was given before.
“Arlo!” she then loudly shrieked upon her notice of him beside me, throwing off her warm grey shrouded winters cloak, dropping it upon the table as she bypassed me completely upon the horrid sight of her lifeless brother being held up by my condensed knightly shadow. The white hair I noticed in Anara’s before on our first introduction in the darkness, was suddenly blonde again like magic.
“Put him down now!” she commanded towards my knightly shadow, distrusting his presence among the three of us, almost upset and casting blame upon him, the knee-jerk reaction of seeing a gruesome sight and wishing to kill the messenger for it. In her case that shadow being the bearer of bad news, considering it held him while he remained as stiff as a corpse with me absent of any word of explanation.
The den we were in felt much like Milena’s war-room carriage, with a vibe quite similar to that stuffy cabin, only more dark and secretive, suited for all sorts of espionage and perversion – another mysterious map room fit for obvious insurgency and revolution.
Following Anara’s instructions, regardless of the vibe, my knight had laid the prince onto the long empty table, striding past a small fleet of empty pushed out chairs, moving it halfway down the table towards the fireplace despite the heat beginning to attack and deteriorate its skin, tearing away at its layers and demisting the bulk of its rock solid arms and sides accordingly, the light of flame sapping its strength no different than fire would do to a thick block of ice if it were dropped onto a hot stove at dinner time.
“What happened to him? Kya, is he going to be alright?” she asked me, trying to open his eyes only to look towards my own two shocked eyes as I tried to comprehend what was happening and whether I had just imagined the ghostly version of the woman who led me here.
“No,” I said, trying not to cry. “Our spiders bit him, Anara”
“How did you find us?” spoke the other lady from beside the fireplace, cutting in only to keep her distance from me, her voice crackly and trembling, much like that of a person too sick or old to be of any serious threat to anyone.
How wrong I was when I looked over towards that blackness to the warrior woman who came limping towards us, Milena’s face uncloaked from the hood she had removed from her head, her walk slow as she was in crouches, a stiff hip and one half of her right leg amputated and missing completely. All those features only becoming obvious once she left the darkness to come and inspect her lifeless son lying frozen stiff upon her war table.
“Bring him closer into the light,” she insisted after coming around the table enough to quickly inspect him for the blue veiny bite mark branching out from his shoulder and one inch away from his heart, pushing over chairs as she limped up as close as she could get to him.
“Milena?” I announced, puzzled, unsure of myself despite her presence beside us. Her face old and withered, unlike the formidable mother I knew her to be. “How did you find us?” she asked again. “Are we in danger for being here?” she asked in deep concern.
I looked at her, about to respond only to have the conversation halted with a harsh jolting sound of wings flapping and battering against the thick wooden roofline of branches above.
“Explain everything later,” someone said while tugging something forcefully down the ladder. Another Anara wrestling to control her own movement as she battled to hold a sharp-beaked predator swinging its sword-like nose, attempting to stab her with it.
I gasped when I realised the newcomer had the white hair of the girl I’d seen before. Her voice and face was identical to the very girl standing beside Arlo. Some lost evil twin or shapeshifter who was so similar to Anara I was rubbing my eyes in disbelief.
“I could use some help you know!” she yelled, still tackling the crazily large gnat, which was as big as her. One of those needle-nose bugs that had been swooping at her earlier – a nocturnal bloodsucking critter with six legs and four wings, snapping at all of us viciously as it attempted to flap free with the two remaining wings Anara couldn’t grip as it attempted to escape from the hut she had dragged it down into.
That pretend Anara had a ruthless ferocity about herself that was unbefitting of the princess I knew. Wrathful and determined, despite the cuts and scratches she had already taken just to subdue it, she refused to let it go.
Without the need to decree it, my man-sized shadow intervened to take control of it, pinning down the mindless winged predator against the table, each stab from the bug going straight through the shadow’s torso as the shadow restrained it from all possible escape.
“Don’t hurt its beak, we need it,” she ordered my shadow, speaking to it fully aware it was controlling itself free of any of my own suggestions.
“What are you doing with that thing?” Milena asked frantically. “Why would you bring such a dangerous insect inside here?”
“He’s been bitten by a spider,” that pale princess responded, removing all the layers of thick winter gear she had no need of inside the warmth of the hut.
“We haven’t had any anecdotes for years, but this creature sucks blood for food,” she explained, trying to catch her breath due to the taxing effort it had taken just to bring it to us. “Maybe it can suck poison out before it spreads too far.”
Everyone looked to Anara, hoping she could confirm whether it was possible or not.
“Prep the table,” the real Anara ordered immediately in agreeance, checking over her brother. “Bring me every clean piece of cloth you have here,” she stated.
“What if we make it worse?” I asked.
“What more harm can we do?” she replied bluntly, pulling off his metal and dropping it to the floor, ripping off his wet mud-soaked shirt and using her hands to crystalize his skin, white flesh becoming clear like glass as all his organs became visible like they were underwater, the blood flow of his right arm and the pathway of venom towards his heart near complete.
“He’s completely catatonic at this stage… But he has been bitten on the left side, so if we act quickly enough, we can remove the neurotoxin before it travels anywhere unrecoverable.”
“What do you need?” Milena asked as she joined Anara beside the table, clearly no stranger to surgery, her hand grabbing and clamping over the beak of the giant gnat locking its body under her arms as if it were some artificial drilling machine Midas would have built, given the need.
“Bring over as much cloth as you can spare,” Anara said to her white-haired double, turning to her mother as she nodded her head to confirm the princess’s orders, cloth being as valuable as gold in winter climates – at least that’s how I remembered it.
“Start at the wound and move inwards, slowly,” Anara rambled to her mother who held the bug, mapping out Arlo’s body as if it were a battle map on their war table. Mother and daughter working with perfect synergy, a sight our own world hadn’t seen in half a decade.
“Ho
ld its beak firm, control the flow-rate that way,” she continued to advise her mother. “Just don’t let that creature escape, ok,” she announced, immune to the grotesque incision site and blood splatter from the surgery commencing.
I sat down, trying not to be sick, my shadow disappearing to the light as I sat down at the furthest end of the table, as closest to the warmth as I could, unable to look at the graphic nature of the surgery without feeling ill. The idea of that needle-nosed gnat about to be stabbed into Arlo’s body to feed on the bad blood was making me want to vomit.
“What you’re doing is fine for the bulk of it, but we’ve got to be exactly precise when we start moving upwards,” Anara instructed her mother, the princess pulling out a pin that she must have kept in the back of her dress, bending it like a needle and threading apart some of her dress as she ripped out spare lining.
“Is that silk or linen?” Milena asked, watching her as she multitasked, ready to stitch up the wound afterwards. “It’s cotton thread – don’t worry it doesn’t inflame the wound. I use it for this very reason,” Anara responded, the two of them colluding in pure concentration as the rogue pale princess and I were to take to separate seats, only to observe and wait for instruction among the tail end of the long table.
I felt hot, dry and flustered despite seeming all of the opposite. I was one step shy of a panic attack but had to simply breath and recompose, all while the pale snow-white beauty on the other side of table leaned back causally, almost bored and disinterested, fiddling with a smooth and shiny bronze ring that sat on her finger as she continued to twist it on and off, completely absolved from the situation.
“Thank you,” I said to her.
“You don’t have to thank me, he does,” she stated, staring towards Arlo with the very same look of unbridled resentment she had when she first laid eyes upon him back in the forest.
“He’s very lucky you were there,” I added, complimenting her as a way to break the ice and perhaps change the negative perspective she clearly had about him and me.