In the rotten bramble-wood
his skull abloom with thorn and vine
A man who had my own face stood;
its petals soft, blossom divine.
He looked upon me with no eyes
and spoke without a mouth to talk;
His voice rang out in bell-like chimes:
"In the depths does God's corpse rot."
—
Change arrived as the seasons did — slow yet all at once, most of all inevitable. The undergrowth bloomed verdant with ferns and springtails, the last frost clinging to the leaves withered and died, and warmth followed the rise of the sun.
For many days, each morning Ragnvaldr walked the long trek to the village. He stood calmly at the gate and explained the dangers lurking with the new arrivals, the ghoulish acts of the Midnight Sun and their so-called "knights", the encroaching danger in the woods that surely would be enforced with their presence.
Each time it was explained to him that D'arce, with her thorough knowledge of combat and expertise in fighting beasts, was a valuable asset in the fight against the dark. Her strange and ethereal companion could perform miracles, summoning food and drink with a wave of the hand. They could not afford to lose these enigmatic visitors, said the village guards; not in between rotten crops and sparse, scattered wildlife.
In their eyes he saw the unshed fear and resentment, the unspoken question of why he was here, why he was allowed to remain with his strange, magic-touched companions when he had been nothing but a blight to their village; taking their food and harvest, bringing forth strange omens. He might have thought the same years ago, before the white sails of Le'garde's ships pierced the horizon.
After ten days of pilgrimage, Ragnvaldr pivoted instead to weapon-making. He was seldom seen outside his woodworking shed, endlessly sharpening his blades.
This solitary lifestyle suited Enki just fine. He spent his time sequestered indoors, deep in study. None of the surrounding plant life was spared the scalpel, dissected under his scrutinizing gaze before being carefully categorized into containers.
He experimented with tinctures, salves, and powders, incendiary properties in particular. His fire spells were powerful, but he was just one man — he needed a way to harness that power without wasting all his energy. Rather than exhausting himself, it was logical to instead turn to an external source.
By day five, he had fashioned a suitably flammable concoction. Such a thing would be useful against hordes of enemies, especially those plantlike in nature.
Enki recalled the unnatural blossom sprouting from the dead rat's back, its trembling petals. He held the sprig to the flame until it blackened and curled unto ash.
Most days the house was empty. The girl wandered freely, exploring. The rooms were large but offered finite possibilities. Sometimes she clumsily tended the garden, pulling weeds from the dirt roots and all the way Enki had taught her, leaving the remains in a pile.
When she was done she lay in the courtyard, staring up at the horizon. The sky was endless, as were the surrounding trees, yet there was nowhere to go.
Crimson clouds rolled overhead, and the early days of spring limped forward.
—
The last of Ragnvaldr's previous hunt lay before him, and the kitchen smelled of blood.
It was the haunch of some animal — already partially prepared, skinned and dismembered. His butcher's knife cleaved through it like butter. As the flesh was cut into strips, he stoked the flames of the nearby fire — turnips, carrots, red cabbage and chopped onion would all find their way into the pot, but only once the meat was thoroughly prepared.
Meat marbled through with fat and blood, once the haunch of some animal, pulsing with life. The smell awakened his stomach, sent it hungering. It had been a simpler affair in the dungeons. Flesh was for eating. No time to waste roasting it over flame, waiting hours for it to stew; it was immediate, it was a terrifying rush of adrenaline, it was exhilarating.
The guts of a still-living deer were warm. The guts of a man were the same.
There was a metallic taste on his tongue, coppery; he blinked, realizing in his reverie he'd brought a hand to his mouth without thinking. Red coated his fingertips. He quickly set down the knife and began cleaning off his hands.
Not here, he admonished himself. Not within the walls of this house. The girl's footsteps could be heard in the room over, her soft, tinkling laughter. Not here, ever.
"Ragnvaldr."
He turned in the voice's direction, feeling somehow caught though he knew the voice better than anyone.
Enki looked more gaunt than usual — circles darker under his eyes, thin hair more tangled. His robes, lightly singed, smelled of plant sap. He stared at Ragnvaldr with an odd, vacant scowl, expectant of an answer despite never having asked a question.
Ragnvaldr held his gaze for a moment before clearing his throat. "I'm making dinner."
Enki's eye twitched minutely. He wasn't one for obvious statements. It seemed he was tired enough to let it slip; he shook his head instead of rebutting.
"I have been thinking of the dungeons as of late." That much Ragnvaldr could tell; it was betrayed by the lines in his face, the creased furrow in his brow he only got when remembering things he oughtn't. "I was pondering upon what we experienced."
Unexpectedly, he turned to Ragnvaldr with a question. "Do you believe in fate?" he asked.
"No," replied Ragnvaldr, for he was not in the habit of speaking falsehoods. He knew not of fate before the dungeons, he knew nothing of it after. The concept itself was foolish to him. Life was a set of random cruelties, just as nature was a set of random cruelties; no higher mind strung them together. Yet lucid men, intelligent men, were driven to madness by the thought that they could control it. Their corpses filled the basins of the dungeon by the pile.
"Even knowing of great prophecies?" Enki pressed. "Even knowing of the gods?"
"When have the gods been able to truly change the course of the world? The only true god is time itself." Ragnvaldr paused. "Maybe the old ones could have done... something. But they are gone, you said."
"Indeed. They are gone." Enki stood against the wall with an unreadable expression. Ragnvaldr wished he could see past it, peel back the layers of pretense and see the true core of Enki's questioning. Unfortunately, such a thing was what Enki guarded most ferociously in the world.
"Can such a thing as predestination happen without fate? Even without some puppeteer controlling him, you can't deny a man can be doomed simply by circumstance, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He forgets the warmth of the sun. He might scream and struggle, run to the ends of the earth, but the source of his woe and misery he is forever drawn to, for the shape of his life is touched by it. Perhaps a bit of him yearns for it. To complete the unfinished circle."
Enki tilted his head back. He examined Ragnvaldr with thin eyes as if contemplating the answer to some riddle.
"Can a man continue to live knowing, one day, he is to be redigested?"
Ragnvaldr was silent. The pot burbled next to them, its contents forgotten.
—
At the knock on the door, the girl sprung to her feet and went to get it enthusiastically.
Once upon a time the sound would have sent her running, cramming herself into the nearest hiding spot with a hand over her mouth, wide, unblinking eyes fixed on the nearest entrance. She'd gotten much more at ease with time; there were only two people who would ever pass through that entryway, and they would never do her harm.
The knocking was even but persistent. Ragnvaldr had just left on patrol; he must be back to get something, perhaps a tool or weapon. She could retrieve it for him, and he would give one of his slightly crooked smiles, maybe tousle her hair with the large hand she had once found frightening, and maybe she would hug his leg and smell the scent of oak and pine in his furs.
In good spirits, she swung the door open only to be met by a stranger.
The unfamiliar man stared down at her with bulging pale eyes. Young, but a man still. He was clad in strange garb, different from anything her guardians or the people of the fishing village wore; across his shoulders rested two ill-fitting pauldrons, between them hung a multi-colored tabard. A helmet compressed his ruddy features between its metal ridges. His shield was emblazoned with an eagle and a sword.
The girl looked up at him with wide eyes, clinging to the doorframe.
The stranger cleared his throat. His voice was reedy, betraying his age more than his face. "Ehm... where is your..." His fishlike eyes flickered. "Father?"
The girl shrank back more. Her fingers gripped the frame, white-knuckled.
Clearly scrambling without the intended recipient of his message, the stranger settled for announcing it to her. Pulling out a scroll, he read: "By decree of the knights of the Midnight Sun — head knight D'arce and her paramour have declared this errant land their property, to be used as lodgings for their army as needed, effective immediately, participation mandatory. Inhabitants have three days to vacate the premises, else be escorted out by force."
Met with silence, he mumbled, "The merciful hand of the Midnight Sun greets you." Rolling up the scroll, he held it out to the girl. The girl continued to stare. He cleared his throat and placed it on the porch. He backed down the stairs silent save for the clanking of his greaves.
The girl didn't move until he was gone. She scrambled for the note and bolted the door shut behind her. For the rest of the afternoon she spent the time curled in her locked room, not emerging until sought out by Ragnvaldr, eyes fixed to the barred entryway. Her hand clenched in a fist around the crumpled paper, so ironclad it remained unrelinquished for hours.
—
Red ran warm and sticky under his palms.
Enki knew to apply pressure. It was the first step of basic medical aid, the simplest step impressed upon him by his shrewd teachers. But it was too much. Surging forth like a river from the ragged stump.
The girl watched with hands over her mouth, eyes wide and white as pearls. Moonless was in a caterwauling frenzy, casting flecks of foam from her mouth.
Beneath him, the outlander smiled at Enki, corners of his eyes crinkling. A tourniquet of rags was drawn tightly above what was left of his thigh. Blood pumped relentlessly in time with his heartbeat.
"Why?" It was the only thing Enki could think to say, hand scrabbling over the wound. He would never be able to stop the torrent. His magic only opened wounds. He could never close them. "Why? Why would you do that?"
The outlander's reaction was the strangest thing. His thick fingers danced over Enki's, curling around his wrist. He squeezed gently.
Moonless' howls sounded like human screams. They echoed in the chamber, eaten by the endless black.
"Would you say we're even now?" Ragnvaldr murmured, so hoarse he could barely be heard over the cacophony. "An eye for an eye."
"Shut up," Enki hissed, stuffing more gauze into the wound. "Don't fall asleep."
"I wanted to protect them. I always..." The sentence trailed off and he let his head fall back, calmly staring up into the dark.
"Girl." She jolted to attention at Enki's call. "Bandages. Now."
She scurried to obey. The only wrappings left were scavenged scraps from bedsheets, and they were rapidly running out. Every layer piled on gradually darkened with blood. Muttering profane curses, Enki pressed his whole weight down into it, desperately willing the endless red to stop appearing.
"Bastard," he gasped, "if you die, I'll make sure your spirit knows no peace. Bastard."
His voice was swallowed up by the shadows, muffled under the pressure of the room — the idea of seeing the sun again was impossible. The world ended at the bounds of their sputtering torch and the figure beneath him, haloed in a circle of blood.
—
The sky was gray when the fishermen pulled up their last haul.
The men were already on edge. Despite the springtime they were beset by a strange chill, the origin of which none could pinpoint. Clouds dotted out the sun, but there was no sign of an upcoming storm. No howling winds or smell of rain. In fact, the air was perfectly, unnaturally still, stabbing through their furs to gnaw their bones.
The waters circled wildly despite the stillness. Another unnatural bend.
They plunged their nets into the white-capped waves and heaved, dragging up wriggling schools of trout. Reams of fish touched the shore, struggling and dying. None of them were dead, or looked strange or tampered with — each man, privately, let out a sigh of relief. The incident had stuck with them all despite their best efforts. An omen on the last day of winter is not one easily forgotten.
One man shouted and pointed at the river. The men looked, but there was nothing to be seen — until another noticed a great cloud of bubbles surging up under the waves.
The air broke the surface with an indescribable smell. The stench of rot and putrefaction — the odor of some decomposing animal trapped beneath the surface for gods know how long, breaching and rolling to the shore. The men stepped back and shoved their lower faces into their shirts, eyes watering. Those with less constitution vomited.
Something came to the surface, after much watching and shouting from the men, following the upheaval of air came a large, misshapen object escaping the pull of the currents. It was impossible to discern from the silhouette. There were many parts of strange makeup. Some flexible and billowing, some unmoving and stiff.
An eye.
An eye so large it dwarfed each of the men in height, embedded in a chunk of mottled black flesh. Yellowed and sodden from the frigid waters, trailed by ragged strips of skin. And underneath— a terrible, yawning mouth, lined with yellow teeth, gaping to reveal pitch darkness that seemed to go on forever. A cavernous abyss that could easily swallow any of the men's boats whole.
The wretched sight sent the men into an immediate state of despair. Some vomited. Some sobbed and wailed like children. Some clasped their hands and, for the first time in decades, looked up to the sky and prayed. But it changed nothing.
The corpse of a decaying god bobbed gently in the waves. It faced the sun for the first time in a long, long while, perhaps ever. The gentle rays touched its face like a mother's caress. From the abyss of its gullet, there came movement; thousands of tiny bodies, writhing and crawling.
An ocean of vermin — beetles, worms, cockroaches, spiders and harvestmen, diseased-looking rats — marched a merry parade from the dead god's mouth in a rainbow of purple, brown, red, and black. Those who first took to the water drowned, then others walked atop those drowned corpses until they drowned, then others walked further till the bridge of insects stretched all the way to the shoreline. There were no more fishermen; all had fled either to the far corners of the woods or back to the village, screaming songs of warning.
Their swaying antennae touched the cool spring air for the first time, and they were enthralled. The overwhelming feeling from the parade was joy. Nature had reunited with her son.
—
Ragnvaldr, slumped over his weapons, awoke to the sound of armored feet marching atop grass and branches.
He knew immediately it was time, and began to take the weapons he had spent so much time synthesizing one by one. Each metal soldier found a home on his belt, made from tanned leather strips. He knew in his own repository, Enki was doing the same. His laboratory had become overgrown with plant life, of great tangling roots and vines clinging to every conceivable surface, an acrid chemical smell to the air. His daughter was somewhere in the house, playing.
The footsteps were wide-spanning and unorganized. Clumps of soldiers were traipsing through the woods, tripping over tree roots, hacking through walls of brambles. Armored horses carried banners of the Midnight Sun, nickering as armored men led them. The men stumbled in the dark without the light of day to guide them, strangers to the woods they were. They cursed loudly and blasphemously as they walked, inadvertently giving their location to the great beast stalking through the trees.
Moonless, tall as a house and packed with thick, wiry muscle, was a terrible sight to behold though she was as docile as ever to her pack. Others were not so lucky — her appetite had expanded voraciously, and she was now known to devour entire deer. Skeletons snapped like twigs in her jaws, and skulls were ground to dust.
The shrill screams of men being torn limb from limb filled the forest's silence, echoing far enough for Ragnvaldr to hear even through the walls. He continued to sharpen his spear and watched the sliver of moonlight outside his door.
"Do not falter!" cried a female voice, cutting through men's hysteria with an unwavering shout — D'arce, the short-haired woman in full plate he'd met in the village. "The home isn't far. Regroup and circle there, surround them!"
Ragnvaldr finished sharpening his spearpoint. He tested it against the pad of his thumb. A bead of blood bubbled up. Satisfactory. He opened the door of his shed and stepped out.
Stragglers were already beginning to pour in. Those who weren't directly mangled by Moonless and had the fortune to stumble in the correct direction, as well as those rallied by D'arce's battle cry who managed to organize themselves into vague formations. He could see their silhouettes against the trees, fifty feet away or so.
He stepped forward with his simple armaments and serenely gave thirty feet of berth to the cabin behind him. He held his chin up. It was cold for a spring night, the wind whipping against his face. The darkness of the trees swallowed him slowly.
"Outlander! There's the outlander!" came cries from the army of men, white of their eyes showing, clinging plaintively to their blades of steel. Tall grass brushed Ragnvaldr's ankles as he walked. He felt oddly calm. The men betrayed themselves with their youth, how human they were. Mealy-mouthed, pale skin barely having seen the wilderness, spindly bones struggling to carry the armor that cradled them. They were like children to him. Barely registering as an obstacle much less a threat.
On horseback rode the leader of the army of children. Her carriage and armor were marked with the symbol of the Midnight Sun. Now from this woman, Ragnvaldr sensed strength. Not as old or well-developed as the village leader's but a true core of strength nonetheless. Her underlings were drawn to it, subconsciously, weak moths clinging to light.
"Outlander," she said, face shining and stoic, an angel in plate armor. "You have one last chance to surrender quietly."
"Why?" asked Ragnvaldr.
The woman's brow furrowed in confusion. "The... hand of the Midnight Sun is merciful."
"No," he said. "Why here? Why us?"
D'arce opened her mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again.
"The village people, who accepted our rule gratefully, continued to be beset by beast and plague despite our efforts. The unnatural phenomena was traced back to you... you, who arrived from the cursed dungeons abandoned by the kingdom." She lifted her chin. "It could only have been you who brought this upon those people. Innocent men, women and children. Surely even one as barbaric as yourself could see why I strive to protect them?"
Ragnvaldr fixed her in an even gaze.
"But you too were there," he said, "weren't you? In the dungeons."
He saw the knight's body completely stiffen. Then snap back to normal like nothing happened.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," she replied without a tremor in her voice.
"I never told them we came from the dungeons. None of them know. The only way you would have known we were from there was to know beforehand about that place."
D'arce's face went an ugly shade of red. "A stage of our study, outlander, nothing more."
"Then how are you sure this is all because of us?"
Her eyes narrowed. "At the end of the day, it will be." She took out her lance. "Is this truly how you wish to die? You could give yourselves up, and let us take care of a situation that's bigger than you."
Ragnvaldr looked across the clearing, across the cabin frames by moonlight. "Would we be allowed a new home?"
"Within our territory, yes."
"Within a place of your choosing. Within a place you would impose your rules, monitor us."
"You'd forsake your partner and child for your selfish pride?" she said primly.
"My child will grow up in a free land." Ragnvaldr drew his spear. "I would have no less for her. I would sooner die than live by your wretched rules, and my partner would do the same.
"Your men are too little and too weak. Even at your strongest, you would never survive the change coming to this world.
"In the meantime, I will kill as many of you as possible. With my hands, as much as possible." His pale eyes, two boatman's coins, shined in the dark. "I'll give you a chance to surrender quietly."
"Men!" D'arce shouted, voice cracking through the air like thunder. "Kill him!"
The men charged. Ragnvaldr stood calmly, closed his eyes, and for the first time since the dungeons, reached for the skin of humanity that cloaked it and peeled it from his flesh.
It was euphoric.
The wave of men crashed to the shore, and the creature known as the outlander descended upon them, wielding the hand of death.
—
By the time the fishermen made it back, the village was beset by terrible rains.
Winds churned the seaside clouds to storm, angry and gray, edges seared with lightning. A howling miasmic sound echoed from the sky. A terrible bird call, a discordant song from the ocean depths.
The fishermen banged furiously gates, which were locked tight out of paranoia after the outlander's visits, and the villagers manning them quickly let them open. They surged in with tales already pouring from their lips of the corpse god in the river and the parade of insects, surely coming for them next. Rumor spread from person to person like fire to cloth. Quickly, all the village was set ablaze with flames of hysteria. Rain poured over their tin roofs as they pushed and shoved towards the leader's residence, a lonely hut perched on a tall cliff.
"My leader, my leader!" the desperate men called. "The curse we foresaw, the disaster, it is here."
But there was no reply. The oaken door, once touched, swung open without resistance.
The men walked inside warily. The rooms were dark, candles burnt to the ends of their wicks; what sparse furniture she owned was scattered across the floor. Torn fabric and tufts of fur. Scraps of vines shredded to ribbons.
The head fisherman, a stout man who had found himself leader of the pack for no other reason than his apparent authority, led the way with his crude weapon drawn — a carving-knife. In the stairwell he saw the silhouette of a woman, standing and twitching.
"My leader?" he called, knife shaking in his hand.
He stepped closer and the woman was adorned with moonlight. He saw what was left of her face.
Outside, the vines and leaves trembled as a foreign agent surged through them. The animals were still. The forest held its breath — something was in its lungs. It was spreading rapidly. A virus. What was once confined underground burst through the topsoil, finding purchase in the newly available space. Now the animals were fleeing through the underbrush, but it was too late to outrun the vines; their flesh made warm homes for the reaching roots, cradling them in softness.
Several of these animals, rapidly blossoming and wandering mindlessly, stepped blindly onto carefully laid traps. Snares sprung and sent chemical-soaked bolts flying through the air, igniting them in flame that quickly caught the vines, burning them to dust. The vines wriggled and squealed, and the brain-dead animals they were rooted in made instinctive movements; finally, they died as one.
The setup was effective. But there were more animals lumbering forth with blossoms sprouting from their skulls, more than could be culled by traps alone. Beyond that, through the treeline, men were stumbling, clutching at their throats. Delicate vines grew rapidly in their esophagi, immediately crowding out the air they gasped for. Roots dug into their brains and bloated their flesh, ballooning their scalps into mottled purple. They eventually stopped breathing, but did not stop standing. Now these new units were added to the growing army. Alongside the animals they traipsed, shuffling slowly on dead feet.
Enki cursed to himself. It's not enough. He began to mutter spell words, beseeching his magic to seep into the hoarded bones he'd kept secret from the household. He was a necromancer — asking him to live without cadavers for his disposal was outstandingly foolish. He didn't have many, but hopefully he'd have enough. As the magic taxed his brain he took a long swig of wine.
Bones knitted together to form obedient, temporary soldiers, who shuffled outside holding weapons and means to immolate themselves. They would take out as many vine-possessed creatures as possible, likely destroying themselves in the process. It would buy them some time.
In the clearing there was Ragnvaldr, soaked head to toe in the blood of men. He had sustained terrible, grievous injury which bore his flesh to the bone. None of it hindered his movement nor showed on his face. The state of the bodies around him was such that resurrection was unlikely and improbable. The corners of Ragnvaldr's mouth glistened red. As he breathed his chest rose and fell.
The short-haired woman still stood, struggling to keep hold of her frightened horse. It whinnied and nickered as Ragnvaldr walked closer, as if he were a stalking lion. Its eyes rolled wildly in its skull.
"Stop!" the short-haired woman called, brandishing her spear.
Ragnvaldr continued, as if she hadn't spoken at all.
"Don't come any closer!" Now her voice shook. Tinged with fear.
He gazed at her dispassionately, his face a blank mask.
Something lurched from the dark, moving at inhuman speed. It barreled into Ragnvaldr's side, tearing into him. Ragnvaldr felt his ribs crunch, stabbing into his lungs. Teeth, or claws, mauled into his shoulder and rent the flesh there asunder. The outlander let out an animal's bellow and shoved his attacker to the ground.
The beast that had savaged him glared up at him with wide, pale eyes. The bandages that had covered his face now dangled in torn ribbons. There was nothing but red flesh, skin flayed from chin to crown; surely the rest of his body, beneath the gauze remaining, was the same. Lips peeled back to reveal white teeth, grimacing fat and sinew. A guttural sound emerged from his throat as he breathed.
He stared up at Ragnvaldr not with fear, like the army of children had, but with rage. Recognition.
Ragnvaldr, in that moment, realized what he was.
"You."
Le'garde let out a rasping exhale that carried all the hate and venom in the world.
Blood thundered in Ragnvaldr's ears. He could hear the knight saying, distantly, "don't make us do this."
For a moment he became a man again, not the beast he'd become, to voice the question that permeated every thought and every cell in his person:
"Why?"
Le'garde let out a gurgling snarl and leapt with inhuman speed and strength to swing at Ragnvaldr once again, grasping with claws of daggers. This time he struck truer, burying his hands directly into the soft tissue, squeezing until in his palms they disintegrated, blood gushing from the wounds left behind.
Ragnvaldr spat blood onto the cadaver's immaculate armor.
"I'm sorry," the knight's voice echoed through the ringing in his ears, and she almost seemed to mean it. "We've survived too much to die here."
—
Branches hit her face as the apothecary-woman ran.
It had begun with strange sounds in her garden — where doubtless the white-haired witch had been stealing things, or planting his own strange hexes, or something — strange burrowing-sounds like worms digging through the dirt. Then plants started rotting, leaves withering on the stem, blackened in a way that spoke more to necrosis than thirst or starvation — then came the movement. It was as if the forest itself bore down on her, vines and branches twisting to grab her, to strangle the life out of her, to embed themselves within her.
It was something out of a child's nightmare, and it was here. All the men of the village were insensate, vile flowers blooming from their skulls.
She was trying not to catch her ankle on any brambles when she rammed headfirst into some other figure. Instinctively, she shrieked. She had not seen another human being unpossessed by the flowers since the beginning of the evening.
The figure glowered at her, brushing off their robe, and she realized it was the white-haired witch himself, the apothecary-frequenter. The garden-hexer. He certainly looked worse for wear. His unkempt tresses were tinged at the ends with dried blood; the same color stained the corners of his mouth and trickled from his nose. Deep, dark eyebags stood prominent against deathly pale skin, and one of them swelled in a painful-looking bruise.
"Would you stop that?" he said in a voice dry as ever, as if they were standing in the shop on a winter's day. His skin glistened with sweat. "I'm not confident those beasts can sense auditory waves, but I'm not keen to find out."
"Wha... whaoh..." The apothecary-woman could not make her lips form words correctly. "What are you doing here?"
"About the same as you, I'd assume? Preserving my life."
"The— the— they said you're the one who summoned the creatures..."
The priest snorted. "Please. You'd think I'd have nothing better to do."
"They s—said you brought a curse."
He hums flatly. "That is more true, perhaps."
He bends down to rip a half-torn shred of robe off the hem that's dangling. "Does it look like it's working out particularly for me at the moment? I think not. Now, I only have half a flask of wine and a couple minutes left of consciousness, so I suggest you listen to the advice I'm about to impart. I am in a generous mood, and am also fairly certain I am going to die, so you're only going to hear this once."
The apothecary-woman swallowed her words and listened.
The priest drew a labored breath. "Indeed we came from a cursed place, but we were far from the source. It was all going to come spilling out eventually. You, of all ones, should understand — the proliferation of mold does not stop when out of sight; it in fact doubles in dark and neglected places, and there was nowhere moreso in the dark and neglected than the dungeons of fear and hunger. Now above the dirt it gleefully dances, revelling in newfound freedom, and nothing that lived before will stop it.
"You cannot destroy it, but neither does running solve anything; no square of this earth is free from contamination and anyone who claims it speaks lies. Your errant knights promised protection but were vessels for infection themselves. Too busy playing their foolish games of war. Make no mistake, most of this is a vast tragicomedy of happenstance, but your error was running from knowledge with which you could arm yourself. Now you have learned the hard way. Not ideal. But you live still, so there is yet time to apply it."
"What do I do now?" stammered the woman.
"I wouldn't stop running at the moment. But take people with you, if people remain. Humans are stronger in numbers. If you have incendiary elements, the beasts burn well. They are dumb and animal, even those shaped like men, and can be tricked if you can muster the cunning. Don't pop the heads, they explode."
The woman looked back at where she had run, anxiously biting her nails. "I— I don't know if anyone is left."
"There were a lot of you. The night's young, I'm sure someone's still alive."
"You want m—me to save them?" Her voice pitched up with incredulity.
"I don't want anything of you." The priest waves a hand tiredly. "Do as you will. Or don't. I am going to find my outlander. Good bye."
"Wait," stuttered the apothecary-woman, but the priest was already limping into the brush, drinking heavily of his wine.
"You're lucky," he called over his shoulder before disappearing between the trees, "He's the only reason I stayed to help at all. You should be quite grateful to that man. And his foolishness."
—
A muscle in D'arce's face twitched incessantly.
She stood over the body of the foulest beast, his guts spilled across the floor — pure in victory, yet her hands still shook. Her love crawled at her feet, making trilling noises. She yearned to run her hand over him, but feared puncturing the tender flesh with her gauntlets.
All in all she was a loving soul, D'arce, in all her hardened shell of armor, and she would never hide it from her face. She was never as good as Le'garde, who hid the radiant, star-ridden nebula of his soul behind a stoic mask for his fellow man. She was too selfish, try as she might; she hated herself.
The outlander's face was almost peaceful, turned up to the black sky where night swallowed the stars. She would expect a brutish animal like himself to die with his eyes open, contorted and snarling. Instead it looked as though he slept.
Le'garde pushed his snout against her hand like a dog.
"Shh shh, my love, shh." She knelt beside him, secretly glad for the bodies piled round for it meant they would bear no witness. "You did excellent, you did very good. Alll-mer bless us."
Her lover's smile was tender, showing every one of his teeth.
"It's just the beginning, you know?" She said softly. "The start of our rule, these lands, these people. Chaos befalls all ventures that start as such. But the kingdom of Rondon would not have been built, if not for brave ones such as us."
She smiled and grasped his hand in hers as gently as she could muster. "And this time, it'll be in our image, yes?"
Her lover panted and drooled.
Crack. A pinprick of pain flared in her cheek as something sharp grazed it, cutting through her rosy flesh as a knife through butter. The direction was from in front of her, at a jagged angle but ramrod-straight trajectory, and it was in fact one of a starburst of directions, from which many shards split. She touched her face unthinkingly, and found a hard lump of something still embedded. Retracting it, she found a tooth.
Le'garde's head was a burst red crater. He slumped against her legs with the grace of a ragged doll.
D'arce screamed in anguish and moved to catch him, but her momentum turned to freefall as her leg exploded into gore from underneath her, toppling her over Le'garde's limp body. The pain made her body seize, mouth locked into an agonized gape, and all she could do was look around, look and see who was her aggressor.
"Fool," a papery voice said from across the clearing, ragged and rasping as if from a torn throat. "A battle isn't won till all your combatants are laid before you disemboweled."
It was a man... what D'arce presumed was a man, emaciated and androgynous as he was. His black robe was shredded and his long white tresses were caked with dirt and blood. He looked, himself, beyond death.
He walked over to the outlander and settled a gloved hand on his face. The outlander twitched. His eyes opened to reveal pallid irises, torn lips peeling back to give a thin smile. How could he be alive? thought D'arce, whose life poured out in rivulets from her leg. Was he not just disemboweled?
The outlander dragged himself to a sitting position with much difficulty. The priest remained knelt by his side, slowly slumping in exhaustion. Not human, these two, D'arce thought catatonically, not human in the slightest. Morbidly inhuman! She began to crawl away on her elbows, but her arms were terribly heavy.
"Stop trying," said the priest, barely more than a mutter.
"I..." Her teeth, gritted, stubbornly chattered. "I cannot..."
"You can, I assure you. That's what we've done. We can now afford to."
"Ngh..."
"You might lie to yourselves about your contamination, but not to me. Look at your captain dearest. The most botched of resurrections— how are you under any impression that the darkness hasn't touched you?"
He watched the knight crawl forward for a while longer, looking on as dispassionately as he would seeing an insect crawl.
"I suppose we all wanted the same thing," the priest said; to whom, it was uncertain. "To do as we will."
She made it about five feet before the priest pointed and blew off her head, sending it raining in ten thousand chunks of viscera across the field.
Ragnvaldr sat and stared at the crumpled body of Le'garde with an expression too contemplative for his brutish face.
"Come now." Enki's hand touched the small of his back. "Tell me you aren't still thinking about that."
"No, not him." His deep voice burbled with blood in his torn lungs. "Just wondering if we did the right thing."
"'Right' is a concept for fools," Enki said. "What 'right things' can be done in this world we live in? We see how the chips fall and we make our move. That is all. Unlike the knight, we aren't selfish enough to live in spite of it. With us the curse dies."
He looks up at Ragnvaldr, sidelong. "You needn't worry about her. She's a strong girl."
Ragnvaldr closes his eyes. "I know."
"We told her everything she needs to know."
"I know."
"She gets to learn," mused the dark priest. "From all of us, I suppose." They looked together over the field of bodies, leaning into one another.
Behind them, in the cabin of their residence for three and a half years, a hidden catch sprung which set a chemical-soaked rope ablaze. This rope spread flame to everything it touched, leaping to the insulation and the wooden planks holding the house's structure, licking through the floorboards slowly but surely. Many more were set to go off across the field in due time. This would set off fire traps to catch the piled bodies of the Midnight Sun, ridding the corpses and the stray mumblers who came attracted to them in one fell swoop.
"Thank you," said Ragnvaldr, darkness encroaching the edge of his vision. It takes an inordinate amount of blood to keep a beast as large as him functioning, and he had lost a substantial amount. He was slowly sliding down into sleep.
"It is nothing." The priest was in similar straits. He could keep his eyes open; he leaned into the outlander's side, soaking in his warmth.
He felt a low, soft rumble from the outlander's chest. "I'll miss this."
He says nothing else as the fire spreads, and thick smoke fills the clearing, and the first crimson pinpricks of sun begin to peek through the tree line.
—
The girl was on the verge of crying, but she bit back her tears. Later.
She'd gotten most of them out the night before, or at least she thought she had, when her fathers sat her down and carefully explained to her the plan.
"We are expecting an attack soon," Ragnvaldr had said gently with her hands in his, "from men who wish to harm us."
"Not just that," Enki interjected, but Ragnvaldr shook his head: "It is the men she must know about first.
"My girl. You already know the darkness of the dungeon and how to combat the monsters. Better than either of us." For you were born in it. "What you must be warned of is men, the dark which brews in their hearts."
The girl looked up at him with wide eyes, listening intently.
"The men who are coming are the knights of Midnight Sun. They are unlike the people you have met in the fishing village. They do not desire to simply live, they also wish to take. They took my wife. They took my child." He squeezes her hands softly. "Don't take this to mean all men are like them. These types of men grow from a glut of power and hunger which can only be found in kingdoms.
"Many things are coming, many coming for us. All at once. It's hard to tell when things will happen and why. That is why you must run, when we tell you to."
The girl's lips pressed together, then she gazed at him, affronted. She shook her head violently.
"My girl." Ragnvaldr curled over her like a bear, enveloping her in his warm arms. "You must promise to listen to me, just this once. You must stay alive. The most important thing, in this storm, is to stay alive."
She was crying but she didn't know why. She tugged at his furs, Sobbing like a babe, feeling the iron weight of pain not yet materialized.
"You are the most precious thing in the world," Ragnvaldr said. "Survive, my girl, through all else."
Now. She darted through the woods sure-footed as a deer, nimbly dodging the tree-roots and brambles, wind racing in time with her pulse. She had taken everything she needed. Food to last her twenty days, water to last her thirty, her bow paired with a quiver of arrows, and all the medicinal herbs Enki said would be worth taking. This was thrilling still, despite everything. To navigate a place as surely as one's home, bend it to your will.
In the distance, a burning ember sparked on the horizon. She didn't look at it.
She stopped at a river. Silvery waters snaking through a bed of silt. Behind her, a massive beast clambered through the undergrowth. Moonless, no worse for wear but for a missing eye, was bounding her way towards her with feline grace. Her muzzle and teeth were caked in blood.
The girl embraced Moonless, burying her face into the musky fur on her chest, feeling the slow hammering of the beast's massive heart beneath her skin. Moonless' massive tail wagged behind her.
There was a rustling across the river, a strange and deliberate sound, and the girl turned to see it.
It was the man again. The specter with the scars carved across his chest, now unprotected from sight on the river shore, outlined by moonlight to show the darkness that bloomed across his body. It was as if he were made of shadow.
His kind, tired eyes met the girl's across the whipping waters and he gestured, encouraging her to follow.
The water was choppy and cold. The girl observed, hesitated, then looked up at Moonless and gave her the wordless command to kneel. Climbing astride, she whistled for Moonless to jump across — a trick the outlander had taught her, from times when his group had dogs with which to hunt.
Swallowing her tears at the memory, filled with burning pale fire, the girl whistled Moonless forward. They cleared the gap easily, a great graceless arc pillowed by scrabbling paws, skidding to a stop in front of the midnight stranger. This time he did not walk into the trees. He stood waiting for the girl to dismount, to carefully approach him.
She reached out a hand and he reached back, letting her press her palm against his. He was warm, solid.
Moonless barked happily. The girl whistled the hound to her side. The midnight stranger turned and walked back into the trees. The girl and her hound followed.
—
Come morning, all was swathed in pale light and the woods were filled with birdsong.
Atop the cliff, the fishing village lay in ruins. Buildings were collapsed, their planks broken and rotten, nets were cast about like discarded fish-skins. There was still a strong smell of salt and brine. Such things, hammered so deeply into every surface every day, would likely never be rid of.
The apothecary-woman walked shakily down the winding road, a long-burnt lantern clutched in her hands. Her skin was smudged with dirt. Her ankles were bloody with scratches from thorns.
She walked past the remains of buildings that had been there all her life, erected long before she was born. The fence posts were knocked over, broken through. Dried blood splattered the ground. A seagull pecked at a rotten pile of dead fish, cawing victoriously over its prize.
She walked to her own shop. The door was snapped near in half in its frame. She pushed it open with her foot and it fell backwards with a sad creak. Inside, all the herbs and plants were not just destroyed, but gone. Only scraps of leaves remained. She brushed them to the floor with one hand.
In the back room, there was a noise. Hurried whispering. She limped over to the back and opened the door. Two pairs of wide, frightened eyes greeted her.
Two stick-thin children; of whom, she didn't recall. They seemed to be of the same family. Curly brown hair, dark eyes. They appeared unharmed and unmaladied, aside of course from their obvious fear. She set her useless lantern down. She was tired.
"Come along," she said after a while. The children looked at each other timidly. But when she went to step out the door, they trailed after her, tottering ducklings after their imprinted mother.
She stepped out of her ruined shop and set it behind her. She would never step foot in it again.
—
The corpse of the god was carried slowly by the current downriver. It wasn't a gentle journey. Parts of its great body caught on rocks and tore strips of flesh away.
Eventually it made its way to the sea. Its titanic depths were made small in an oceanic scale. Tugged down by the currents, schools of fish and mollusks took interest. A whale fall of impossible proportions. It would feed a hundred thousand mouths over the course of its drift down to the abyssal depths. When it touched the sand it would feed the worms and crawlers. Life would feed and multiply.
Cradled in white-capped waves, the god was finally made small. It was finally at peace.
—
A hundred million miles away, an underpaid messenger of the kingdom of Rondon trampled a letter concerning proliferation of profane life in the dungeons underfoot.
—
In front of a cabin set ablaze, two exsanguinated figures leaned against one another as flames licked at their heels. Their hands were clasped tightly.
—
A kind god walked with a girl through the woods.
—
In spring, the sun shone bright.