With a violent cough, Wretch expelled the fluids filling his lungs. A groan escaped his throat as he flexed aching muscles, feeling sand between his fingers.
“Shit,” he slurred. His head was spinning and his body shivered. Opening his eyes, he found why. He laid half-submerged in water on a black sandbank.
He pushed himself up to his knees as nausea hit him like a hammer to the temple. His body purged the remaining content of his stomach in a burst across his lap. Another cough followed before he found the strength to speak.
“That’s better.”
Still seated in the meandering water, he looked around. He was on a shore of coarse black sand that faded into a gloomy forest of firs, their branches sifting the afternoon suns. On the opposite shore was a similar scene, though beyond the treetops rose the jagged Scar Spines.
He stood up on shaking legs. The clothes were torn, and a dozen cuts and bruises covered his arms and legs.
“The dog,” he whispered to himself, looking over the wilderness as the memories returned. A few birds called from the trees as the memories returned.
The train. Me, Elenya and the beast fell.He staggered out of the water, dragging his feet. Reaching the dry sand, he let himself collapse at the river’s edge. He took heavy breaths, recouping some strength into exhausted limbs. The belt had torn from his pants, and with it, his weapons.
Holding out his hand, he visualized a weapon of shimmering metal. It burned into existence, the Blinking blade returning to his palm.
“At least, I’m not alone,” he said, feeling the comfortable weight between his fingers.
He let what flame he had flow through his body. Stitching his skin and regenerating bruises. It eased the fatigue somewhat, though it left him dangerously low on flame. There was no other choice, he needed to move.
After a few minutes he crawled back onto his knees and up to his feet, stumbling forward along the black beach.He walked downstream along the shore, leaving a trail of one naked foot and a boot. His black eyes scanned the sands. If Elenya was alive, perhaps the current would have carried her further given her weight.
He quickened his pace to warm his shivering body.
“It could be worse.” He muttered.
Wood splintered across the river.
He froze.
Out of the thick foliage, came a creature nearly half the height of the trees. It stood hunched on two legs. The exposed skull of an elk formed its head, and piles of furs covered its crooked back, each pelt stained with layers of dirt and dried blood. From its forehead extended branchlike horns, thin strings of sinew dangling from every protrusion.
“What the hell is that?”
The creature crouched down by the riverbed and scooped up water with a strangely humanoid hand, raising it towards its skull. Wretch stared, not moving so much as a muscle.
It froze, hand inches away from the bony snout, then its head turned towards him.
“Shit.” he whispered as a name appeared in his mind.
“Tinem, the Unnatural”
The creature rose on clove hooves and gave off a low, rumbling call. It was neither speech nor animal cry. melodic and deeply unsettling, like a horse trying to sing.
Wretch turned and ran. He had no flame, and was far from ready for a fight. But something was wrong, his body was slow, every step away from the shore felt like wading through quicksand as an invisible force dragged him back towards the river.
A Blessing!
The creature waded into the water, continuing its song as Wretch struggled against the pull. Pearls of cold sweat ran down his forehead as he used his short-sword to dig deep into the black sand, thrusting himself forward.
He glanced back. The creature was half submerged in the rushing river, moving towards him at a measured and patient pace.
Wretch shoved himself backwards in the black sand.
Allright, if you insist I will kill you too, Wretch thought as something shifted below the surface of the water next to the singing horror.
The river erupted, a long body with streaks of silver broke through the surface and crashed into the stag-like creature in a geyser of foaming.
The song turned into a bellowing cry and the curse upon Wretch snapped.
The sudden release sent him flying across the sand. He twisted mid-air, landed on all fours, and sprinted along the shore as quickly as his feet could carry him. The river took a turn and he risked a glance over his shoulder.
The water was red and a coiling body covered in scales thrashed just beneath the surface. He ran and didn’t look back.
After what felt like half an hour, he stopped behind a large rock, gasping for air.
“Let’s stay away from the water, shall we?” He said.
The suns were lowering to his left, painting the opposite shore and the Scar Spines beyond in fiery light. He snuck forward directly on the edge between the black shore and the mossy forest.
Nov Yanosk and the rest of the settlements should be towards the south, directly into the woods, but he wouldn’t abandon Elenya yet.
The sand had been disturbed in front of him. He stopped, listening intently and sniffing in the air. Birds sang from the forest, and the branches rustled. The only smell, a lingering acidic tint in the wet air.
Seems safe enough
Carefully, he skulked up to the tracks in the sand. Something had dragged itself out of the water, leaving prints up to the edge of the forest.
“It’s not her,” He whispered through sharp gritted teeth. They weren’t imprints of boots or feet, but paws.
“That bloody dog.”
He shook his head and pressed on.
As the last rays of the suns lit the treetops, the sound of running water grew stronger. Soon he spotted the falls, a rocky ledge that plunged fifty meters down into a basin below. He snuck closer, walking over the shallow running water to the edge.
He looked down the cliff with a frown, then turned to examine the cliffs.
By his feet, a smattering of dried blood had stained the texture. He crouched down and dragged a finger along the surface, licking the red stain from his thumb.
“Human.”
He sniffed in the air and followed a trail along the rocks to the west. Among the boulders, a pair of boot prints zigzagged into the woods.
Wretch gave a toothy smile. “There you are, now I just have to find you before that dog does.”
He gulped down as much water from the river as he dared while keeping a watchful eye towards the murky depth, then followed the tracks up and away from the shore. The spacing of the prints differed, and the left print dragged in the black sand.
“She’s hurt, limping with her left foot.”
Something had left a bigger imprint in the sand a few meters above the waterline. “She rested here, then rushed towards the trees. Did she see something?”
He followed the prints, sniffing in the air. They moved around a stunted fir that struggled to grow in the black sand.
“She stopped here. Maybe to hide?”
He looked around, at the base of the stem, something had been written in the black sand. Uneven and clumsy characters.
Something in the water. Heading east.
Wretch nodded. “Who is the scholarly one now?”
He wiped away the tracks with his tail and walked into the forest. The last rays of the sun scattered through the canopy onto the moss infested stumps and stones. Unfamiliar scents filled the forest and birds sang in a chorus of life. The firs however stood silent, their stems continuing to the edge of his vision.
“Doesn’t seem too deadly.” He murmured as he walked forward with torn clothes and the Blinking blade clutched in one hand.
In the thick moss, Elenya’s tracks were almost invisible, but her smell was far easier to follow. A scent of iron he had realised appeared after she used her Blessings.
The trees grew thicker and more twisted as he trekked deeper, and soon the sparse lighting from above faded away, replaced by a shuddering cold. He followed the fading trail that snaked among the firs. He realized the trees were changing, becoming more crooked and strange the deeper he went.
There is no such thing as a peaceful place outside our walls.
As the suns disappeared to the west, a chime echoed through the forest, Like that made from wooden cylinders placed outside the stores of Nov Yanosk’s markets.
“A wind chime?”
Fatigue washed over him. Tension drained from his aching muscles, filling him with a pleasant drowsiness. The soft moss under his bare feet invited him into its embrace.
That can’t be good.
He pushed on along the trail, stepping over fallen trees and sidestepping mossy stones with increased speed. Only then did he notice the forest was deadly silent. No wind, no song of birds.
“Damn it,” he muttered, struggling to keep his eyes open.
It felt as if he had been awake for days on end, every fiber of his body urging him to lie down.
I can’t go on like this.
He slumped towards a thick tree trunk. Biting his lips to regain some lucidity, he climbed upwards. He used his claws to scale upwards, curling up on a low branch.
“This is not good,” he muttered with closed eyes.
Not good at all.
He dug the claws into the wood and snaked the tail around the branch. When his head touched the bark, he was already fast asleep.