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Citadel Research File - Ruin

Research Notes: AS-0847

Prepared by Dr. ██████ ███████, MD, PhD

Citadel █████

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Patient History:

Anomalous Subject 0847, preferred name ███████ ███████, was apprehended in a remote location by ███-████ and contained at Citadel █████. The subject appears to be a human male approximately 30 years of age, however, he claims to have first hand knowledge of events which predate that figure by several decades.

Observation, both in the field and under laboratory conditions, has shown AS-0847 to poses a number of anomalous abilities, the full extent and limitations of which are currently poorly understood. The subject maintains that he remains in confinement as a matter of personal choice, and not as a result of containment efforts by Citadel staff.

In-keeping with this delusion, AS-0847 has proven to be cooperative with both limited interrogation and low level testing of his anomalous abilities. The subject does however become highly intractable when questioned on certain highly specific topics, or when asked to perform certain demonstrations of his abilities. These include, but are not limited to, very minor abilities previously observed in other anomalous subjects.

Due to his relatively stable nature and proven track record of cooperation with Citadel Research Staff, as well as the difficulty of obtaining and maintaining live anomalous subjects, Citadel Command Staff has granted AS-0847 an indefinite stay of termination. Command staff has further mandated that all testing be conducted in as amenable a manner practicable in order to glean as much information as possible from the subject.

Extensive notes regarding each interrogation, as well as each test of the subject’s anomalous abilities, have been archived and are available upon request.

For notes regarding the current procedure in place in the event of the subject’s death due to natural or unnatural causes, or in the event of a revocation of the relevant stay of termination, see document AS-0847-███.

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Interrogation Log:

Subject – AS-0847

Interrogator – Major ████████

Date - ██/██/████

AS-0847: Good morning Major, how can I be of service today?

Major ████████: Do you know the proper response to the following pass phrase, “Do you know the way to ███████?”

AS-0847: Oh dear. I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. Perhaps you would like to talk about something else?

Major ████████: So you do know something.

AS-0847: I know many things about many things Major ████████, but I’m afraid I won’t be of any help here.

Major ████████: Can’t, or won’t?

AS-0847: Neither, and both. You are simply not ready.

[Both Major ████████ and AS-0847 remain silent for several seconds while maintaining eye contact.]

Major ████████: Please, tell me everything you know about the location referred to as ███████.

[AS-0847 becomes somewhat agitated at this juncture.]

AS-0847: ███████, The city built over the sleeping corpse of an unborn god? ███████, which stands on top of a mountain that is not a mountain? ███████, which both exists in this world, and somewhere else entirely? That ███████?

Major ████████: … If that is the location referred to in the aforementioned pass phrase, then yes. Everything you know about that would be very helpful.

AS-0847: This, Major, is often the folly of the young; the desire for knowledge without first having the context to understand its significance… But I can tell that you won’t be satisfied with such an answer. If you wish, I will tell you something of use. Please, sit.

[AS-0847 indicates the empty chair on the opposite side of the table, the Major remains standing. Major ████████ has requested that it be noted in official records that, at 52 years old, he is one of the most senior members of command staff in terms of both rank and age.]

AS-0847: There is a place, north-east of here by your reckoning…

Major ████████: Would this place happen to be ███████?

AS-0847: Patience Major. Just listen for a while.

[Major ████████ sits begrudgingly.]

AS-0847: As I was saying, this place is hidden in the mountains, cut off from everything around by thick forests and rough terrain. It did not exist in this world before what you call the Breaking, but it now sits on a high plateau. A broken scar of gray overlooking an ocean of green. It is what you would call anomalous, what some others might call cursed.

Major ████████: How far away is this place you describe?

AS-0847: Many hundreds of miles, if you wish to deal in traditional distance. You needn’t worry about destroying or containing this place Major, it does both itself. Such is its nature.

Major ████████: Explain.

AS-0847: Gladly. The effects of this place are subtle at first. A man approaching the plateau would feel a mild sense of fatigue and lethargy, the sensation becoming stronger the closer he came to the plateau. Eventually, he would either lay down or collapse from exhaustion, and shortly thereafter, he would die. His body would then rapidly decay, and by sunrise the next day there would be nothing left of him.

Major ████████: That is hardly unheard of.

AS-0847: That is not the most anomalous part of this place, Major. If this theoretical corpse of ours were too get up and keep walking, the body would begin to rapidly decay even while alive. The skin, the flesh, and the bone. All together and all at once, though the bones would of course disappear last. Nothing but dust would remain long before he reached the top of the plateau. If however someone were to find themselves at the top all in an instant, they would be destroyed almost immediately. Anything would. Human, animal, plant, or stone. Nothing but dust would remain.

Major ████████: And what exactly on this plateau is so special?

AS-0847: Nothing. That’s the point Major. The only thing on this plateau are stones. Ruins. Nothing else remains of what might have been there in another place and time. No one knows if the stones are special in some way, or if they are just so large that they have lasted this long, and they too will decay away into nothingness. That is why the place is called Ruin. Not for the stones, but the fate of whatever else dares exist there.

Major ████████: So this place isn’t ███████?

AS-0847: No Major, it is not.

Major ████████: Then what exactly was the point of this whole story? Wasting my time?

AS-0847: Not at all. Think for a moment, Major. How could I know any of this? How could any man know of a place that kills anyone who sets foot in it? How could I, or anyone else, know what would happen to something in a place no one can ever reach.

Major ████████: Simple, you made it all up.

[AS-0847 begins to laugh harshly.]

AS-0847: No, I’m afraid I did not, and that is the power you must come to understand. In ███████ they know of this place. It is they who have discovered so much about a place no man can ever go. And this is not the only such place they have knowledge of. Consider that for a moment Major. What power must they wield, to come by such knowledge without risk to themselves? That is the power of ███████.

Major ████████: And you think this should scare me?

AS-0847: The knowledge and the power? No. What should scare you is that they are wielded by men. Men like you and I. Enlightened, yes, but human nonetheless. Pray you never find ███████ Major, it is not a fit place for sane men. Not ones that wish to live long lives with their sanity intact in any case.

[Major ████████ and AS-0847 both fall silent again. AS-0847 continues to concentrate on the Major. Major ████████ begins cleaning his fingernails.]

Major ████████: So in short, you have no intention of telling me where we can find ███████.

[AS-0847 makes a conciliatory gesture with his hands.]

AS-0847: I’m afraid not Major.

[Major ████████ rises from his seat and walks over to regard the wall behind AS-0847. After a few moments of silence, the Major grips the back of the subject’s head and attempts to slam it against the surface of the steel table. The subject’s head stops less than an inch from the surface of the table, entirely unharmed. Major ████████ proceeds to place his other hand on the back of the subject’s skull and leverage all of his weight against it, physically lifting himself off of the ground. Analysis of the footage shows that the subject’s head does not move any measurable amount.]

AS-0847: I think I would like to go back to my cell now.

[After several seconds, four armed personnel arrive to escort AS-0847 back to containment. Major ████████ releases the subject’s head and steps away as the escort enters the room.]

[Compiler’s Note: Shortly after the above transcribed encounter, Major ████████ submitted a request for the immediate revocation of the subject’s stay of termination to Citadel Command Staff. His request was unanimously rejected.]

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Hello everyone, news flash, I'm not dead yet. Unfortunately I have been very busy lately, and I'm pretty sure things won't be dying down for a while yet, so this may be it for a little while. I hope this will tide you over until then.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

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A Nightmare is Born

Soraya stalked quietly between sparse trees, careful of loose rocks and dry branches in the fading twilight. It was late fall, and the ground would be blanketed with snow soon, but until then the world as far as she knew it was dry and dead, covered over with fallen leaves.

She was following the sound of chanting somewhere out in the trees. Who made the noise was a mystery to everyone in Somerset, as was why they chose the same nights every year to conduct their strange rituals. On some level, she thought most of them didn’t want to know.

If the people making the alien noise were looking for privacy, they had certainly found the right place for it. Somerset was a small framing community nestled in the foothills, and contact with the outside world was sporadic at best.

As she crept closer she began to notice a flickering light in the distance between the thickening trees. A bonfire if she had to guess.

She slowed her pace, carefully making her way from trunk to trunk. As the voices grew louder and more distinct she dropped to a crouch, sticking to the deeper shadows as best she could.

Boredom had drawn her out into the dark as much as anything else. Boredom, and latent curiosity. Soraya had her own theories about who made the journey out into the cold and spent the night chanting around a fire at this time every year. The explanation was obvious to her; it had to be some sort of local tradition. There simply weren’t enough people that visited for all of them to be outsiders. Strangely, whenever she tried to broach the subject with anyone in town their response was either to profess complete ignorance, or to chastise her for talking about it at all.

That was why she found herself in the middle of the woods on a cold dark night, creeping ever closer to a chorus of voices, listening intently as they chanted something in a language she didn’t recognize over and over again.

It was full dark by the time Soraya could make out a clearing. The light was in the center, the chanters throwing shadows through the forest as they circled the edges. She couldn’t remember having ever seen the clearing before. That was odd. She had spent her entire life in Somerset and the surrounding wilderness. She would have gladly sworn she knew them both like the back of her own hand.

Everything was too far away for Soraya to make it out clearly, so she resumed her slow journey from tree to tree, finally taking shelter behind the raised root of an old oak.

When she lifted her eyes from the ground to look back up at the clearing, several revelations struck her one after the other.

The first was the state of the various revelers. Many were dancing around the edge of the clearing, but others were more stationary, cavorting in twos and threes along the edges. All of them were in various states of undress, and all were glistening wet, though with what she preferred not to guess.

The second was that what she had initially mistaken for a bonfire was nothing of the sort. Instead there were eight black pillars in the center of the clearing, surrounded by the rubble of what might have been a building long ago.

In the center of the pillars, hovering in place a few feet off of the ground, was what looked like a tear in space. Soraya couldn’t think of any other way to describe it. It seemed angry, constantly seething and shifting, leaking a purple-red light that made it appear that the revelers had all bathed in blood.

The last thing she noticed was the screaming. It was faint in comparison to the chanting voices, but it was definitely there. It grew louder, and then faded away again and again, as if the screamer were fighting for breath.

Soraya listened carefully, scanning the clearing from right to left and back again, trying to discern the source of the discordant voice.

Her eyes settled on a young man being carried between two of the debauched figures. He had been badly beaten and abused. His face was swollen and bloodied, and his body had fared no better. Soraya didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t mean much given the sorry state that he was in.

She laid there helplessly, and watched as the two anonymous figures forced his half limp body in between two of the pillars.

The boy almost seemed to struggle for a moment, rising briefly to his feet and walking with determination around the circle. He cut across it a couple of times, but he always stopped short of the edge, as if he couldn’t even comprehend that there was a way out.

After a few brief moments he lost his footing again, and shortly thereafter rose limply into the air.

Soraya watched in horror and disbelief as his body gradually eclipsed the rend in space, casting the world around them all into complete darkness.

The chanting changed in pitch and tone, growing deeper and louder, building to a crescendo. Soraya could still hear the scream that tore from the center of the pillars clearly enough.

After a few seconds, she became aware of another sound, a subtle snapping and breaking. That sound slowly grew in volume until it overshadowed both the chanting and the boy’s screams entirely.

As the crunching of bones grew louder, a subtle light began to illuminate the clearing. It was the same sickly purple-red of the rift, only now it seemed to bleed out from behind the young man.

It was that unnatural light that finally made the cause of the sickening sounds clear. Soraya watched powerless as the joints of the boy’s hands snapped backwards and elongated into claws. His torso stretched and extended. His jaw snapped and unhinged, only to reset into an even more unnatural shape.

When the transformation was finally over, Soraya couldn’t see any resemblance at all between the boy that had been forced into the circle and the creature that had taken his place. That unnatural thing let out an equally unnatural cry. Not a cry of pain. That would have been too ordinary, perhaps even comforting given the circumstances. Instead the sound struck her as almost mournful; a lamentation of the creature’s own creation.

For reasons Soraya would never understand, that was the moment that she finally screamed.

As soon as the sound had left her mouth she saw the head of one of the revelers, still until now, snap towards her. She couldn’t see their eyes, they were too far away, and some sort of mask or paint seemed to be obscuring their finer features.

Soraya couldn’t see their eyes, but she could feel them boring into her, and in that instant she knew that they knew. Everything. Where she was, who she was, what she was doing…. Maybe it was just an irrational fear, but that was the moment that she finally ran.

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The next day Soraya made her way through the trees again in full daylight, tracing her path from the night before as best she could remember it.

The fear from the previous evening hadn’t worn off entirely, but she had almost convinced herself that it had all just been a nightmare. Only the scratches and abrasions that she had acquired in her wild run home through the woods told her otherwise.

When she reached where the clearing should have been there was no sign of it, but there was a certain wrongness to the place. The angles seemed incorrect somehow. She tried to walk in a straight line through where she remembered it being, but if she closed her eyes it felt like she was walking in a circle. When she tried to correct the feeling with her eyes closed she opened her eyes to find that she had angled away from her destination, and was heading off into the woods in a seemingly random direction.

Trying to decipher the discordant feelings made her head spin, so she settled for examining the ground instead.

She found a few bent twigs and broken branches, but no definite sign of anything or anyone. Certainly not enough to prove to herself or anyone else that there had been dozens of manic cultists performing unspeakable acts there just the night before.

When she noticed the sun beginning to sink towards late afternoon she quickly turned to head home and determined to never think or speak about the strange rituals ever again.

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Hello everyone. Sorry this story is a week late, I had a lot going on last weekend and have been sick all week.

With any luck, I'll be back on schedule by next weekend.

Thank you for your patience and, as always, thanks for reading.

Places you can find me:

WordPress: rhunterwriter.wordpress.com DeviantArt: rhunterwriter.deviantart.com Tumblr: rhunterwriter.tumblr.com Twitter: twitter.com/RHunterWriter

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Citadel Research File - The Mountain

Research Notes – AP-103

Prepared by Researcher ████ ████

Anomalous Phenomenon 103 is a geological feature measuring approximately 4 km in radius and 2 km in height. It was initially flagged for survey by field teams who noted its conspicuous absence from civilian and topographic maps dated prior to the breaking. Following significant study, it was determined that AP-103 was formed as a result of the geological upheaval characteristic of the breaking, and the mountain was subsequently re-classified as non-anomalous. AP-103 will retain its designation until such a time as a formal name can be selected and applied to the appropriate records. Due to concerns about its geological stability, citadel staff are prohibited from approaching within 10 km of AP-103.

A detailed description of the observations which led to AP-103 being re-classified as non-anomalous has been archived and is available upon request.

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Research Notes – AP-103 (Archived)

Prepared by Dr. █████ █████

Anomalous Phenomenon 103 is a geological feature measuring approximately 4 km in radius and 2 km in height. It was initially flagged for survey by field teams who noted its conspicuous absence from civilian and topographic maps dated prior to the breaking. After these observations, a field survey was conducted to ascertain AP-103’s exact location and dimensions. The measurements taken were cross referenced with the geological and cartographic information available to citadel research staff, and it was determined that AP-103 had indeed been formed at roughly the same time as the events of the breaking.

Field research team ███-██ was dispatched to the site of AP-103 in order to extract appropriate biological and geological samples. These were to be used to characterize the nature of the anomaly and, if possible, provide insight into its origins.

Local tribal populations encountered by ███-██ described AP-103 as a living entity which several venerated as a pseudo-deific figure. Common to almost all of these groups was a tradition of tattooing or grafting which involved material derived from several anomalous plant species present on AP-103. The tribal groups claim that these body modifications grant mystic powers, but the veracity of these claims has yet to be established.

Following contact with the local groups, ███-██ conducted a ground survey of AP-103 itself, which revealed the presence of both natural and anomalous flora and fauna. Shallow ground samples showed the presence of only ordinary topsoil.

After scaling approximately 700 m from AP-103’s base, ███-██ attempted to conduct a boring operation in order to obtain a core sample suitable for comparison with records of the local geological strata.

Upon reaching a bore depth of approximately ten meters, ███-██ experienced an earthquake which the members of the research team estimate to have measured between six and seven on the Richter scale. The earthquake reported by the research team is thought to correspond to a seismological event observed at Citadel ███████, ███ km away.

After the tremors had ceased, ███-██ withdrew the boring apparatus, fearing damage. The core they obtained appeared ordinary for the majority of its depth. However, upon closer inspection, the sediment transitioned to limestone, uncharacteristic of the local strata, and then to a chitinous shell like material. At exactly what depth this transition occurred is a matter of some debate.

What is not a matter of debate is that the last 1.2 m of the boring apparatus were covered in what appeared to be biological tissue of anomalous origin. The tissue itself was iridescent in color and displayed a remarkable degree of bioluminescence. All tissue samples obtained by ███-██ defied immediate classification into any known tissue type. The samples were subsequently destroyed on order of citadel command staff according to standard decontamination procedures before a more thorough investigation could be conducted.

Following the unexpected results obtained from the boring attempt, ███-██ determined that a less invasive study of AP-103 was required. The research team ultimately scaled to a height of approximately 1600 m, collecting a number of biological and geological samples, the majority of which were also destroyed in accordance with standard decontamination procedures.

Having determined that further vertical exploration was unlikely to yield any new significant data, ███-██ began their descent of the mountain. Before departing, they decided to briefly explore one of several caves they had observed during their assent, speculating that the seemingly natural formations might allow access to samples similar to what might otherwise have been obtained by further boring efforts.

According to the team’s independent debriefings the cavern they explored appeared to be natural and purely geological in nature for several dozen meters. As they progressed however, the walls, floor, and ceiling all gradually transitioned first to a smooth, uniform opalescent solid, and then to a softer, iridescent substance, somewhat similar to the tissue they had encountered during the boring operation.

This transition was accompanied by the appearance of various anomalous plant-like growths, which the team insists became thicker the further the cavern continued. Photographic evidence collected by the field team supports these accounts.

Fearing potential contamination, ███-██ withdrew from the cavern without observing any indication of an endpoint to the cave system. The field team subsequently proceeded to depart from AP-103 entirely.

Following their return to Citadel ███████, the research team and their samples were immediately subjected to decontamination and quarantine, accompanied by independent debriefing by both citadel research staff and citadel command staff. A full quarantine of AP-103 was ordered by command staff in short order. However, given the limited resources available to Citadel ███████ and the sheer size of AP-103, this order was descoped to a mandatory exclusion zone for all citadel staff.

AP-103 was subsequently re-classified as non-anomalous to preempt any further proposals for direct observation by citadel research staff. Access to any documentation that would indicate the anomalous nature of AP-103 was ordered to be archived, with retrieval requiring approval by citadel command staff of rank O6 or higher.

Prior to the implementation of the exclusion zone, citadel research staff did conduct a limited geological survey of the region surrounding AP-103. They concluded that contrary to expectation the local strata had been depressed surrounding the anomaly, indicating that the mountain is not in fact an anomalous geological formation, but rather a foreign object that lies on top of the local strata. Any further research on the nature of AP-103 has been suspended indefinitely, and the research staff responsible for the final survey have been reprimanded for seeking to subvert the intentions of citadel command staff before their orders could be formalized.

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Here's something a little more analytical to break things up. I hope you all enjoy it.

Thanks for reading.

Places you can find me:

WordPress: rhunterwriter.wordpress.com DeviantArt: rhunterwriter.deviantart.com Tumblr: rhunterwriter.tumblr.com Twitter: twitter.com/RHunterWriter

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Emerald Eyes

Dorian was running as fast as he could, chasing someone half seen in flashes between the trees. Somehow he knew it was a good natured chase; the figure wanted to be caught, and he wanted desperately to catch them.

In his brief glimpses he could make out smooth copper skin, and a body that was both firmly lithe and softly curved in all of the right places. He felt that the figure was a woman, though he hadn’t gotten a clear enough look to tell for sure. As he grew closer he saw her glance back, and caught sight of emerald green eyes, glowing subtly in the strange twilight.

With his gaze locked on hers, it wasn’t long before Dorian lost his footing. He fell hard, his legs becoming tangled on the forest floor. Strange, he could have sworn the ground in front of him had been clear a moment before.

The world shook and flickered around him. The last thing Dorian was aware of was the emerald eyed figure, approaching him slowly out of the corner of his vision.

Dorian awoke in his bedroom, his body only half in his bed and his legs hopelessly tangled in his blankets.

He was drenched in sweat, out of breath, and his heart was pounding.

If Dorian had heard the dream described, he might have guessed that it was all due to arousal, but that wasn’t what he was feeling at all.

It was terror. He was feeling terrified.

Dorian couldn’t think of any reason he should be afraid. He was safe at home, in bed, and had just woken from a dream about chasing a beautiful woman through the woods. There were a few things he could think of that he should be feeling right then, but fear certainly wasn’t one of them.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking.

He rolled the rest of the way onto the floor and disentangled himself from the sheets and blankets, steadying his hands by mechanically making the bed before lying back down.

The feeling of his heart pounding in his chest had lessened somewhat, and it didn’t take him much longer to get his breathing under control. Still, he laid there for more than an hour, staring up at the ceiling in the dark and wondering why he had woken from a perfectly pleasant dream as if it were a horrible nightmare.

When he woke the next morning the dream was nothing more than a vague memory, if a persistent one. It felt like he had forgotten something important about it, though he was certain he had never known what it was in the first place.

By evening he had forgotten it entirely.

Dorian was running through the woods again. This time he was closer to his quarry, barely a dozen paces behind her.

At this distance he could see her figure much more clearly, and had to constantly remind himself to tear his eyes away for long enough to watch his footing.

Every so often she would turn her head to look back, and he caught glimpses of a beautiful face, fixed in a playful expression.

Dorian was exhausted, but he was slowly gaining on her. He just had to keep this up for a few more minutes, then they could finally move past the chase and playful glances. A slight stumble quickly reminded him not to think too much about what might come after and to concentrate on his surroundings instead.

He had halved the distance between them, and had a distinct feeling that she was slowing down, when he suddenly hit an invisible wall and fell back.

The fall was painful, but he was back on his feet in an instant, and managed to stay upright when he ran into the wall a second time.

He pounded his hands against the invisible barrier. He shouted… Something. He wanted to yell her name, but he didn’t know it. What was her name? Did she even have one?

She turned her head, then stopped dead when she saw that he was stuck. Dorian was intensely aware of her expression as it shifted from playful to disappointed, as if her face were his entire existence. Then the world flickered around him.

Dorian woke standing in front of his locked front door, his hands pounding against the rough wood.

When he became aware of what he was doing, he stopped immediately and slumped to the ground, much more exhausted than a trip from his bed to the threshold could explain.

He had a much easier time accounting for why he felt so horribly terrified this time. The dream itself had seemed innocent enough, but he had never had any sort of dream that could bring him from his bed to his door entirely in his sleep.

Dorian sat curled up with his back against the door and his knees against his chest, breathing in deep gulps and waiting for the sound of blood rushing in his ears to subside.

When he finally felt like himself again he made his way back to his bed on trembling legs. He carefully locked his bedroom door behind him and curled up under the safety of his discarded blankets.

The sky was growing gray by the time he finally managed to get back to sleep. He didn’t remember anything about whatever dreams he might have had after the first, except for the distinct feeling of being watched by a pair of unseen emerald eyes.

The next night, Dorian took precautions to secure his home. First he made sure the front door was shut tight and barred. Next he checked the windows, shaking them against their latches before drawing the curtains tight in front of all of them. When he finally made his way to bed he left a lamp burning in the front room.

He pulled his bedroom door closed as soon as he entered, checking it to make sure it was locked, then he secured his bedroom window. That done, he looked back and felt a strong urge to check the bedroom door again. It was still locked. He decided to toss a blanket over the window and curtains for good measure.

With his house as secure as he could make it, Dorian checked his bedroom door one last time before diving into bed and curling up under his covers.

Dorian made his way through a thicker part of the forest than before. He was moving more slowly, occasionally brushing hanging branches out of his path.

He knew that the chase was nearing its end. How he knew that, seeing as he couldn’t even remember how it had begun, concerned him briefly. At least until he saw a sliver of copper skin flash between two trees.

That brief glimpse was all that was needed to spur him back into a run. The trees around them gradually thinned, and he could see her running directly in front of him, just a few paces away. If he reached out his hand, he thought he could almost touch her…

Dorian stumbled, his knee striking the ground hard, and the world shook.

<flicker>

Dorian was kneeling on the ground in the dark, surrounded by sparse trees. Somewhere just outside of town by the look of it.

He was nearly naked, wearing nothing but his night clothes, and those were horribly torn and tattered. His feet were bloody from running over bare ground, and his arms, legs, and torso stung from what felt like hundreds of welts and scratches.

It took him a few painful seconds to disentangle his foot from the bramble that had snagged it. He stood, concerned and confused, trying to figure out which way to go to get back to his home…

<flicker>

The copper woman was leading him at a walk, hand held out behind her. Over her shoulder, Dorian could see an open space in the forest, illuminated by sunlight. It hadn’t occurred to him that the strange twilight might be sunrise, rather than sunset, but he counted that a pleasant surprise. He could finally see her clearly now.

Dorian reached out a hand to clasp the one she was holding out for him, but she snatched it away and shot him a mischievous grin over her shoulder. He tried to grab it anyway, but she danced ahead of him, leading him into the clearing proper.

The space was idyllic, lit by a rising sun somewhere behind them. The ground was covered in soft green grass, punctuated here and there by various wildflowers. On the far side, in the direction the copper skinned woman was headed, he could see an old willow with a large blanket nestled comfortably under its branches.

He followed behind her at a leisurely pace, taking in the view as he walked. With his eyes distracted by the beauty in front of him, he missed something hidden in the grass under his feet and staggered.

<flicker>

Dorian landed on all fours, cutting his hands on dried foliage and gravel.

He was tired. Bone tired. Not the kind of tired that came from a lack of sleep, or even sleep walking. He felt as if he had been running for miles.

Making his way back to his feet was a struggle. When he finally managed to stand upright and take stock of his surroundings, he found the ground covered by scrub grass and rough slate. The shards of stone showed dark splotches, which he belatedly recognized as splashes of his own blood.

A short distance ahead of him was a cave mouth, a yawning black gash in the rough gray hillside.

No. No. Not like this. I have to wake up. I have to…

<flicker>

Dorian slapped himself in the face. Hard.

The woman turned on her heels, concern plain on her face.

She raised a hand, gently brushing his cheek where he had just struck himself. Her skin was soft and warm. Warmer than normal skin should have been. Still, it was pleasant in the slight chill of the cool dawn air, especially with his lack of clothing.

Even just that small touch was intoxicating.

Dorian wrapped his arms around her lovingly, running his hands across the bare skin of her scalp and the contours of her back. He bent his head towards her lips, and the earth trembled.

<flicker>

Dorian stood immobile at the cavern entrance, the ground rumbling under his feet.

Paralyzed, he watched as a monstrous form emerged from the darkness and loomed over him. It was little more than a mouth from his perspective, wider than he was tall, and opened to reveal row upon row of needle-like teeth, surrounded by massive copper scales.

The last thing that Dorian was consciously aware of before he came to his senses and turned to flee was a pair of glowing emerald eyes, staring down at him from above the open maw.

[rhunterwriter-blog]

The Chemist

It had all started with a flower.

Many years ago Leland had just been a small town chemist, providing whatever medications and treatments his neighbors could have need of.

To fill the time between concocting actual medicines and stabilize his income, he had occasionally experimented with mind altering substances. Nothing really dangerous of course, just compounds to produce mild modifications of sensation and perception.

One day he had received a few potted flowers from one of his regular customers. The man had told him that the flowers grew wild in the area around Resthaven, and that they were supposed to produce a mild hallucinogenic effect. An expansion of perception, his friend had called it.

Leland could still remember his excitement in those first few days, the rush of experimenting with something entirely new, if only to him. He had quickly determined the flowers themselves to be harmless, at least in small quantities, and had moved on to attempting to extract their anomalous effects.

In the end it was a fairly simple process, mostly just a literal distillation, which produced a few drops of transparent green liquid from the petals of one of the flowers.

He had spent hours debating how best to utilize the substance. He had settled for placing one drop under his tongue and washing it down with a glass of water.

For a long while, he thought he had failed. Everything in his home and workshop had looked the same, as had everything outside. That was until he happened to glance at the two potted flowers sitting on a workbench next to his window.

The previously ordinary white and violet bulbs had taken on a fractal nature; constantly shifting and folding in on themselves. They were at once both infinite and completely contained in the space of the flowers. Staring into that space, he could have sworn he saw an entire world of strange foliage and landscapes, all reflected in the ever shifting crystals that somehow grew on a delicate stem.

Leland wasn’t sure how long he had stared at the strange plants that first day, or over the next few days as he tried other methods to coax out the mind altering properties of the petals.

Why the strange flowers did what they did he hadn’t the slightest idea, but over time he discovered that when under the effects of his distillate he could see something akin to auras around strange and anomalous things. People always seemed to have them, though most were pale and subdued. Sorcerers, and others with unnatural abilities, often had stronger auras, somehow both attached to them and not wholly contained within them.

Objects occasionally carried them as well, but only ones with strange properties, or those that had been touched by the anomalous. These always sparked an instant curiosity in Leland; he had always had a taste for the strange and otherworldly.

At first he had sold his new discovery just like many of his other experiments, as a harmless experience for the curious. To his surprise it became extremely popular with salvagers, hunters, and other adventurous types. Apparently many dangerous creatures had a strong and obvious aura around them, making his distillate essential for anyone at risk of encountering such beasts, or searching for objects with anomalous properties of their own.

He had also been surprised at how much people offered him for the substance. It did make sense, when he considered that for some of his customers having it could literally be the difference between life and death.

With that in mind he gladly took their money, and when they couldn’t pay with coin, he almost always accepted trade. For him this was a perfect arrangement. After all, the people he was trading with were also the people most likely to encounter strange and anomalous things, and he was always happy to get his hands on anything that matched that description.

They sometimes traded in other things as well. Mostly books. The ones about Old World science and medicine were always useful. The ones about more esoteric subjects were usually less so, but he valued the few useful bits he could extract from them immeasurably.

Over the years those trades had filled his shelves with all sorts of books and stranger things. At first the later had just been curiosities, but over time he had discovered that he had a knack for extracting and distilling down the effects of the anomalous.

The shelf above his desk held vials, jars, and boxes containing all sorts of abnormal substances. A small vial held a clear liquid, distilled from ice brought from the glaciers in the far north, that instantly froze any water that it came into contact with. Another held a fine powder, extracted from a bag of sand brought from the far west, which would absorb the moisture out of anything it touched. He always kept those two vials as far apart as possible, curious as he was to see how they might interact.

One box held explosive powder. A jar, ever burning fire. Some were the products of his research into Old World sciences, others of attempts to understand and condense the properties of what his customers brought him. A few items he kept purely for himself, others he sold. None of them was ever as popular as his simple floral distillate, and even now, decades later, it still had to be his favorite discovery.

This particular evening he found himself sitting at his workbench, carefully dispensing a pitch black fluid into a small vial. He was under the effects of his floral distillate. One small drop of diluted essence in each of his eyes often helped him with his work, especially for projects like the one he was finishing now.

In addition to his usual business, people sometimes came to him looking for help with particular projects or problems. His latest client had arrived three nights ago, carrying a bottle of warm black liquid. Black Blood.

The man couldn’t have known that Leland would recognize the substance for what it was, but three years ago another man had come calling late at night, begging the chemist to treat his daughter. It had taken Leland quite a bit of time and effort to convince both the father and himself that the girl didn’t have a disease. The girl was becoming a ghoul, and the blood in her veins was in the process of turning black, but her symptoms didn’t have anything to do with illness. It was a transformation. While a ghoul’s appearance changed, in return they gained superhuman strength and speed, not to mention a lifespan greater than that of any human. It was a curse, yes, but also a gift.

At least, that was what Leland had told the girl’s father.

After that encounter he had taken the time to learn more about the process. Because of that research, he was reasonably confident that the blood the stranger had brought him was quite potent. Taken from either a ghoul of the first generation, or Shab’wahyd itself, the progenitor and god of their race.

That was how Leland had known that when the man asked for him to make an extract of the substance’s power, something that would make him stronger than the blood itself ordinarily would, that he was essentially asking for Leland to make him a god. Under different circumstances Leland might have refused outright, but when someone showed up at his door in the middle of the night carrying a jug full of blood fresh from a being stronger and faster than any normal human, he considered it safer to play along. Especially considering the disconcerting aura that surrounded the man.

His work finished, Leland capped the vial containing the results of his last few days of work and sealed it with wax. The man, if man he was, had said he would return in three days. All that was left to do now was wait.

Leland ended up waiting for hours, recording his process and the results of his efforts by candlelight. It was just after midnight when he finally heard a firm knock at his door.

He stood and swung the door inward to find his newest client waiting on the other side. The stranger’s appearance wasn’t particularly remarkable, just an ordinary man in a dark brown traveling cloak. The effect of Leland’s eye drops had worn off in the hours since he had finished his work. He was grateful for that. The sight of the man’s aura made his skin crawl.

“Do you have what I asked for?” The stranger inquired, his voice quiet and distant. As if the sound hadn’t come from his mouth at all.

Leland didn’t answer, he just pulled the sealed vial from his pocket and offered it to the man.

The stranger snatched the vial and, without taking his eyes off of the shimmering black liquid inside, tossed a small bag on the ground at his feet. He turned to walk away without another word.

Leland waited for a few moments to be sure that the man was really leaving, then shut the door behind him, leaving the bag where it had fallen. Presumably it contained the coin that the man had promised, but he didn’t much care. He was just glad that the stranger was gone.

For the next half hour Leland made a show of finishing his notes, but his heart wasn’t really in it. After he had closed and replaced his notebook he walked around the house, checking the latches on the windows and glancing outside to make sure that the stranger hadn’t doubled back. That done, he returned to his desk and retrieved another small vial from a rack in one of its drawers.

Leland wasn’t a judgmental man. For all he knew, the stranger might have made a fine god. His aversion to the man wasn’t the only reason he had decided not to give him what he had asked for. Perhaps Leland could have made the substance the stranger had asked for, but instead he had removed the transformative components from the liquid, rendering it inert, and replaced them with poison.

Not a fatal poison of course, but something that would make the stranger so ill that he was unlikely to ever try the process again. The trick had been finding a poison that produced a convincing aura, but wasn’t strong enough to kill many times over.

Separating out the inert components had by necessity left him with the active ones, and Leland had been torn about what to do with those. The source didn’t bother him over much. They were either alive or dead, and nothing he did could change that. His aversion had more to do with his past experiences with transformative substances.

He had ultimately decided that further study was required. He thought he had managed to discern two distinct functions in the blood the stranger had brought him. The first was transformative, altering whoever was exposed to be more akin to the originator. In this case, Shab’wahyd itself. His preliminary tests had indicated the second was an enhancing agent, presumably responsible for giving ghouls there strength, speed, and long life.

That second substance was what he now held in his hands, purified and distilled, a clear liquid with an emerald tint in spite of its midnight black source. Producing it had taken all of his skill, the result of decades of careful study and experiment. He had also made one small, sentimental addition. A single drop of the essence of those peculiar violet flowers.

Leland had no interest in being a god, but he was getting older. He was well into his forties now, and he was only beginning to scratch the surface of what his work might reveal. If he was right about what he was holding in his hands, he could live for centuries yet, with more speed and strength than he had ever had, and still remain human.

His hands were shaking, torn between excitement at the possibilities, and dread of what might happen if he had gotten it wrong.

In the end, Leland raised the small crystal vial to his lips. He drank the elixir down in a single swallow, trying his best to ignore the taste.

For a few blessed moments, he felt nothing. Then he became aware of a wrenching pain in his guts, and knew instantly that something had gone wrong. He fell to his hands and knees, trying desperately to vomit.

He succeeded in producing a few flecks of a white-green substance, which instantly began to grow and bloom into small flowers as they struck the ground.

It was at this point that Leland realized that he was well and truly fucked. He convulsed, trying to vomit again. Even as he did so he felt something snaking through his body, struggling to free itself from his intestines. Then his bowels released, and something came pouring out.

All his retching produced was a similar sensation in his throat as a supple green growth slithering up his esophagus and protruded from between his teeth.

Leland gagged on the creeping tendril, then realized with horror even as it continued to grow that it wasn’t cutting off his ability to breath entirely. And so he laid there, convulsing on the ground for hours until he was finally torn apart by the fresh green growth emanating from his body.

Even many years later, people still occasionally commented on the mysterious fate of the local chemist.

One day he had been his usual reclusive but friendly self, and the next he was gone, his home reduced to ruins and a massive tree growing over the foundations.

The tree itself was commented on even more often than the man who had lived where it stood. Why did it seem to have shards of white bone embedded in the trunk? Why did it bleed red sap that dried to a rusted brown? Why was it surrounded by strange violet flowers all year round? Why did it seem to sway in the breeze, even when the air was still, and the forest around it quiet?

No one knew the answers to these questions. They would have asked the chemist, but he had disappeared the same night the tree had grown. Most people avoided the ruins, but a few more adventurous sorts swore that they always felt more comfortable under the tree, basking in the constant unfelt breeze and surrounded by flowers whose scent they could never describe, but loved nonetheless.

This one has quite a bit more backstory than I usually put in, I'm interested to know what you think about it.

As always, thanks for reading.

Places you can find me:

WordPress: rhunterwriter.wordpress.com DeviantArt: rhunterwriter.deviantart.com Tumblr: rhunterwriter.tumblr.com Twitter: twitter.com/RHunterWriter

[rhunterwriter-blog]

Citadel Research File - Standing Stones

Research Notes – AP-926

Prepared by Researcher ████ █████

Anomalous Phenomenon 926 was first recorded in Citadel records as an unexplained environmental occurrence three years before the events involving field team ███-████. Reported anomalous activity included sudden and unseasonable changes in weather, increased likelihood and rates of lightning strike, spontaneous formation of intense cyclonic wind and cloud patterns, and the occurrence of thick and abnormal plant growth.

After a corroborating report was submitted by local sources and deemed to be of sufficient reliability to justify further study, a follow up effort was made to pinpoint the epicenter of the observed phenomenon. It was granted designation AP-926 by citadel research staff at that time.

Several limited field studies were conducted in order to triangulate the location of the epicenter of AP-926. After several such studies yielded consistent results, ███-████ was deployed from Citadel █████ to conduct a limited survey of AP-926 in order to assess what if any threat it might pose to the Citadels and the region as a whole.

Reproduced below is a transcript of the debriefing of (former) Researcher Fiona Shaw by Dr. ███ ██████, prepared from recorded observation of the interview.

Fiona Shaw is the only survivor of the survey attempt conducted by ███-████. Prior to her debriefing, she was treated for lacerations to her left leg and minor abrasions of her exposed skin.

Dr. ██████: Ms. Shaw, please begin by describing your journey to the site of AP-926 to the best of your recollection.

Researcher Shaw: Yes sir. We departed at approximately 0545, just before dawn. Our team consisted of myself, Dr. ███████, and six armed escorts in two vehicles. Maps predating the Breaking indicated a driveable route of approximately six hours. Our plan had been to stop for a midday meal as near to the epicenter as our vehicles could get, then continue on foot with our equipment. Unfortunately, whoever planned our route hadn’t accounted for how overgrown the old forestry roads would be. We arrived around 1430.

Dr. ██████: And what did you find when you arrived?

Researcher Shaw: It was a large ring of free-standing stones, I would estimate between forty and fifty meters in diameter. It was surrounded by what looked like large hedges or piles of plant material, but the ground inside and in a few spots around it was mostly clear. We parked our vehicles just outside the ring and started setting up our equipment.

Dr. ██████: What exactly did that entail?

Researcher Shaw: We brought just about everything. Imaging equipment, radiometers, RF spectrum analyzers, basic survey equipment… I don’t see how any of this matters sir.

Dr. ██████: Just relate what happened in chronological order and with as much detail as you can manage.

Researcher Shaw: Yes sir. After our armed escort had screened the area Dr. ███████ took one of the cameras and started photographing some strange symbols carved into the stones. I got started setting up some of the radiation and RF monitoring equipment. The readings were a bit strange, but not extreme enough to indicate any potentially lethal anomalous activity. That’s when things started getting weird.

Dr. ██████: How so?

Researcher Shaw: Lightning started striking the area rapidly out of a blue sky. None of the equipment was struck, and we were all fine, but I was worried we might be about to get caught in a forest fire. Nothing appeared to be burning however.

Dr. ██████: And how did Dr. ███████ react to this development?

Researcher Shaw: Honestly he seemed excited more than anything else. You have to understand, we were sent out to observe and characterize a potential weather anomaly. As far as he was concerned this is exactly what we were there for. After the lightning died down he switched from taking photos to setting up video equipment in case it started happening again.

Dr. ██████: How did things progress from there?

[Shaw’s jaw and hands noticeably tense at this point, and her body language stiffens.]

Researcher Shaw: Within a few minutes the wind started to pick up. The sky was clear when we arrived, but by the time Dr. ███████ finished setting up the cameras there were clouds gathering overhead.

Dr. ██████: How severe did the weather become before you started to reconsider your situation?

Researcher Shaw: I was concerned fairly early on, but again, this was exactly the kind of activity we had been sent to study. It had started raining by the time I suggested packing things up to Dr. ███████. He was reluctant at first, but there was already a cyclonic wind pattern forming, centered in the middle of the stone ring as far as I could tell. I would estimate the winds at over a hundred kilometers per hour by the time he conceded the point. We had just started packing up when everything really went to shit.

Dr. ██████: Exactly how did that happen? As best you can recall.

[Shaw pauses here for over thirty seconds, staring at Dr. ██████. Her facial expression is concealed by the doctor’s head, but her body language is noticeably tense.]

Researcher Shaw: Our escorts were spread out in screening positions. Two were watching our transports and helping us load equipment, two were watching the treeline behind us, and two were walking patrol around the perimeter. The first thing I heard was automatic gun fire. Both behind me and to my left. I turned around and saw the two escorts in the rear firing into what we assumed were hedges. I saw…

[Shaw pauses here again, apparently trying to regain her composure.]

Dr. ██████: Please continue when you are able, Researcher.

Researcher Shaw: Yes sir. I saw one of our escorts with something wrapped around his neck. A vine or root of some sort. It must have been razor sharp, because when whatever was on the other end pulled back, his head nearly came off. He was the lucky one. His partner got cut in half, he screamed for a while. I didn’t see what happened to the two on patrol. Between the dust the wind had kicked up and the rain visibility was low.

Dr. ██████: And then?

Researcher Shaw: And then those damned hedges started moving towards us sir. We dropped what we were carrying and tried to get to our transports, but those things were faster than they looked. Our escorts grabbed their rifles and started firing. I only had my sidearm, but they were large targets. We ran out of ammunition fairly quickly. They didn’t even seem to notice.

Dr. ██████: How large would you say they were?

Researcher Shaw: Maybe eight to ten meters tall, five to eight meters across. We didn’t exactly stop to take measurements.

Dr. ██████: What happened when you reached your vehicles?

Researcher Shaw: Our escorts took up defensive positions to let Dr. ██████ and myself load up. The things reached us before we could get in. Cara, the escort that was watching me… It didn’t seem to want to finish her off as quickly as the other two. It just opened up and pulled her in. It just… consumed her. Like it wanted to eat her whole…

[At this point Shaw looses her composure for a prolonged period. Dr. ██████ doesn’t speak or intervene. While it is unclear whether Fiona Shaw and Cara Ridley had any sort of personal relationship, records do indicate that they shared the same duty station at several points throughout their careers.]

Researcher Shaw: The one that got ahold of Dr. ██████ and Marcus was more… efficient. They both died almost simultaneously. I dove for the driver’s seat, but one of the creatures managed to wrap one of those vines around my legs. I managed to struggle my way free and slam the door. I don’t remember actually starting the vehicle, just slamming the gas as hard as I could. Once I got away from the circle of stones the weather cleared up. I’m not quite sure what time I got back here, it’s all a blur. I’m sure you could ask the gate guards for that information sir.

Dr. ██████: And how exactly did you get away Ms. Shaw?

Researcher Shaw Sir?

Dr. ██████: You said you struggled your way free. Exactly how did that work?

Researcher Shaw: I just told you sir…

Dr. ██████: I don’t think you understand me, Researcher. You just said that you watched one of these creatures cut a man in half. That it effortlessly swallowed a woman whole. How. Did. You. Escape.

[Shaw refuses to speak for several minutes. After the application of mild coercion, she removes sufficient clothing to reveal an intricate tattoo covering her upper left arm, shoulder, and chest. The tattoo appears to be composed of thorned vines in intricate knotted patterns, interspersed with unknown symbols. The vividness and sheen of the ink would tend to suggest an unknown method of application, possibly anomalous in origin.]

Dr. ██████: So what, you showed it that tattoo and it just let you go?

Researcher Shaw: More or less sir. The vine started snaking up my torso. When it touched my tattoo it loosened up enough for me to pull free.

Dr. ██████: There, was that so hard? Here, clean yourself up.

[Dr. ██████ produces a cloth, which Shaw uses to wipe away the various fluids that have accumulated on her face. She tosses it at Dr. ██████, who allows it to fall to the ground.]

Dr. ██████: Exactly how did you come by that tattoo?

Researcher Shaw: I was part of an infiltration mission in the region around █████████. Acquiring the tattoo allowed for rapid assimilation into the community and increased access.

Dr. ██████: You are aware that any supplication to anomalous entities is grounds for immediate termination.

[Shaw shakes her head vehemently.]

Researcher Shaw: The tattoo isn’t connected to the worship of any anomalous entity or entities. As I noted in my report, the local religion is more similar to nature worship, borrowing mostly from western European traditions. I didn’t include the tattoo in my report because some senior staff... have a well earned reputation for over-applying the regulation you just mentioned.

Dr. ██████: Very well. Lieutenant, Sargent, please escort Fiona here back to quarantine. We’ll keep her there until we’ve figured out what to do with her.

Following the above transcribed interview, Fiona Shaw was stripped of her rank as a Researcher. Reinstatement of her position has been made contingent upon her receiving a clean bill of mental health and the conclusion of an investigation clearing her of all wrongdoing in conjunction with research and reconnaissance activities undertaken in the region surrounding █████████. Dr. ██████ notes that these contingencies are unlikely to ever be met.

Given the injuries suffered by Ms. Shaw, and the damage sustained by her vehicle, it is considered likely that she and the rest of ███-████ were indeed attacked by an anomalous entity, though the nature of this entity has yet to be confirmed. The entity’s connection with AP-926 is also as of yet unknown.

What little tangible research material has been recovered from the vehicle Ms. Shaw returned in appears to have suffered corruption due to electromagnetic interference. However, recovery efforts performed on still photographs taken of the large stones at the site appear to show symbols similar to those present in Ms. Shaw’s tattoo. These images are highly distorted however, and the symbols correspond to no known language or culture, though some research staff have noted that they bare a passing resemblance to symbols dating back hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years.

Perhaps most disturbing of all is some of the historical evidence which has been uncovered by the research staff since the loss of ███-████. These documents would tend to indicate that the stone structure Ms. Shaw claims that she and the rest of ███-████ encountered existed long before the events of the Breaking, with the earliest written records dating from the early 19th century, and claims of oral records dating from long before that.

The most popular theory among the research staff is that the structures have in fact existed for hundreds of years, and were subsequently re-purposed by unknown parties or anomalous entities after the Breaking. The less popular opinion holds that the stones have existed in their current form for two hundred years at a minimum, and possibly several thousand. Proponents of this hypothesis point to various legends and anecdotes which record phenomenon similar to those described by Ms. Shaw.

While the latter case is widely considered unlikely by Citadel staff at large, if it were found to be true it would be one of only a few pieces of evidence of anomalous and transdimensional phenomena existing on earth before the events of the Breaking.

For the above reason, Citadel research staff finds it unfortunate that Citadel command staff have banned all further field research regarding AP-926, and have ordered that any and all future research into AP-926 and the associated phenomena described by Ms. Shaw be classified at the highest level.

It's been a while since I've posted something in this format, which is a shame seeing as it's become one of my favorites to write in. I hope you all enjoy it.

As always, thanks for reading.

Places you can find me:

WordPress: rhunterwriter.wordpress.com DeviantArt: rhunterwriter.deviantart.com Tumblr: rhunterwriter.tumblr.com Twitter: twitter.com/RHunterWriter

[rhunterwriter-blog]

The Little Ones

In the days before the Breaking, Plymouth was considered a reasonably sized town. By more modern standards, that would have made it a fairly large city. Unfortunately, the town had suffered in the intervening decades, despite surviving the Breaking itself largely intact.

Years worth of moist air blowing in off the sea had taken its toll, and many of the homes and buildings stood broken down and decayed. The worst were those that sat abandoned for many years, the lack of maintenance often leading to rotted out frames and caved in ceilings. Constable Foster Hayden might have guessed that a full quarter of the buildings left standing weren’t safe enough to even enter any more.

The Constable walked by several such buildings on his patrol as he made his way to market row. Just because the buildings weren’t safe to enter didn’t mean that no one ever did. On the contrary, such a criminal underbelly as the town had often conducted business or laid low in the gutted structures. Where better to hide than where no sane man would go?

All and all Foster liked the little seaside town. It was just large enough to occasionally meet a stranger on the street. Not so small that absolutely everyone knew everyone else by name and on sight, and not so large as to get lost in an endless sea of faces.

As he walked through the open air market, the afternoon sun hidden behind thick clouds, Foster felt more than saw someone sidle up next to him. His hand instinctively reached for the weighted club on his belt just as the hooded figure tapped him on his shoulder.

Foster stopped abruptly and spun, hand on his cudgel, only to see the smiling face of his least intelligent cousin.

Living in a town the size of Plymouth had its downsides, one of which was having far too much extended family, some of whom were bound to be a prodigious pain in the ass. For him that pain was named Cyril, his mother’s older sister’s youngest son.

“Hey cuz, you got a sec for a drink?” Cyril asked with his usual lightheartedness.

Foster glanced up and down the street, then checked the empty doorframe of the abandoned building behind him. It wasn’t that he suspected Cyril of trying anything nefarious, he wasn’t that stupid, but the man was dense enough to make for a perfect dupe.

“For you Cyril? I have exactly one second, and no time at all for a drink,” Foster replied flatly, his eyes still scanning his surroundings.

“Come on cuz, it’s important.” The statement was delivered with more weight than Foster expected from his cousin. A rare moment of seriousness.

The Constable stood silent for a moment and calculated. Odds were that whatever Cyril had to say would be an absolute waste of time, and he had actual work to do. On the other hand, he could count at least five relatives he would be hearing from by noon tomorrow if he said no, and two of them were Foster’s own parents, regardless of the fact that he had moved out of their house and across town years ago.

“Fine Cyril, but it’ll have to be quick,” Foster finally responded.

“Fine, fine,” Cyril replied, turning and leading Foster towards a small establishment across the street.

Molly’s was more of a bar than a restaurant, and was mostly empty in the early afternoon. Nevertheless, the cheap sub-par food and large drinks served all day insured there were at least a few people in the place.

Cyril led Foster to a table against a wall, as far away from the other patrons as possible. The proprietress, Jolene, approached them from behind the bar. Cyril ordered a beer, and tried to order one for Foster as well.

“Just water for me, boiled mind. I’m still on duty Cyril,” Foster interjected, shifting his attention off of Jolene and back to his cousin. He studiously ignored the woman’s expression as she turned to walk away.

“So, what’s this all about?” he continued once he judged Jolene to be out of earshot.

“It’s kind of a long story.”

Foster shot the man across the table a hard look. He wasn’t very good at intimidating people with facial expressions, but he didn’t have to try very hard to pull off angry.

“I’m just trying to think of the fastest way to tell it!” His cousin responded, raising both of his hands defensively. Foster just sat quietly and waited for him to continue.

“I guess the best place to start would be that I’ve met someone.”

Foster almost walked away then and there. Cyril must have seen that urge on his face as well.

“It’s not like that! We’ve been together quite a while.”

“How long?” Foster asked. His cousin’s relationships were notorious for lasting days, if not hours.

“I’m not exactly sure. Two or three months?”

That surprised Foster. Cyril’s previous record had been something like two weeks.

“What happened?” Foster asked.

“She’s gone.”

Foster was standing to leave, not caring in the slightest about his cousin’s latest sob story, but at that moment Jolene returned with Cyril’s beer and his water. Foster thanked her quietly, tried to cover his reason for standing by adjusting his seat, and reached for his drink. He immediately sat it down on the table. It was literally boiling hot! How had the woman even carried the glass?!

He looked up, expecting to see Cyril well into his first drink. Instead his cousin was slouched over the glass, staring into the liquid. He had lost all of his usual flamboyance, in its place sat something like sad dejection.

“What do you mean ‘she’s gone’?” Foster asked reluctantly.

Cyril looked up at him, the Constable thought the man might have been crying if he had been sitting there alone.

“I mean she’s gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Missing. Whatever you want to call it. I can’t find her. No one knows where she is. I’ve talked to everyone, looked everywhere I can think of. I can’t find anything.”

That caught Foster’s attention, and, more importantly, was something he knew how to deal with.

“Alright, back up, who exactly are we talking about?”

Cyril sat back in his chair, his expression at least partially relieved.

“Her name is Sara. We met… It really doesn’t matter how we met. Anyway, she’s an artist. Smart, funny, charming, beautiful... way too good for a bum like me.” Cyril shook his head with a wry grin, eyes still on the table, his long dirty hair swinging in front of his face. He knew how people thought about him, Foster thought he usually took pride in it.

After a few seconds and a sip of sour beer, Cyril continued.

“Everything was going great, had been for a couple of months, then recently she started spending a lot of time with some new people.”

“Any idea who exactly? What kind of people?” Foster interjected.

Cyril shook his head again.

“No. I was trying to be supportive. Give her her space. Figured she’d tell me when she was ready. She’s an amazing person, but she can be self-conscious about the strangest things. I’m new at the whole relationship thing, but I trusted her to not keep anything really important from me.”

Foster nodded. He was sure there was more to it than Cyril was letting on, there always was when it came to things like this. For now he just waited for his cousin to continue.

“After a while she started to get reclusive. Spent less time with me and her old friends, spent more time with these new people she wouldn’t or couldn’t talk about. I tried asking her about it, told her I was worried. Me being worried turned into an argument. She stormed off and said she never wanted to see me again.”

Foster palmed his glass, trying to judge if the contents were safe to drink yet. He wanted to say that the girl was probably just avoiding him, and that Cyril should get over it, but he doubted he would be sitting here if it were that simple. For all of his cousin’s innumerable flaws, he did have his own dubious resources. More importantly, this had quickly spilled over from an annoying family matter into the purview of Foster’s actual job.

Cyril just stared at him, apparently waiting for more questions. When Foster didn’t ask any, Cyril continued.

“At first I thought she was just avoiding me. Figured she would cool off for a few hours, maybe a day, then she would come back and we could talk. After a couple of days I got in touch with some mutual friends, and they said they hadn’t heard from her either. Then I went to talk to her mother. She also said that she hadn’t seen her, but that she assumed that she had run off with me, and that she was worried because she thought that Sara might be pregnant...”

“Oh for fuck’s sake Cyril!” Foster interjected.

His cousin raised his hands in a placating gesture.

“Hey man, we were careful. But I don’t know! I just don’t know...” He trailed off, his tone quickly taking on a defeated quality.

Foster just stared at Cyril. The man’s expression and body language evoked a list of adjectives; defensive, dejected, depressed, hopeless, angry, and, above all, helpless.

“Fine, I’ll look into it. Where does her mother live?”

Foster made his way down a poorly lit street. He was flanked on either side by abandoned repair shops and warehouses, the buildings casting long shadows in the evening light, occasionally cut through by his handheld lantern as he cast it about nervously.

The street was entirely deserted, as were the buildings around him. In the old days they would have serviced the sea trade, but the structures nearer the docks had plenty of room for that these days. The ones further inland had fallen out of use decades ago.

It hadn’t taken Foster long to find Sara’s mother. He hated talking to worried or grieving family members, but he had spent almost two hours talking through her daughter’s recent changes in habit. Inez Poole had largely confirmed what Cyril had said, though she was quite predictably less keen on Sara’s and Cyril’s relationship than his cousin was.

Apparently Inez had been happy that her daughter had fallen in with a more respectable crowed, as opposed to her eccentric artist friends and dead-end boyfriend. Unfortunately, when he had pressed her for their identities she had confessed that she didn’t actually know any of them, just that Sara had told her that they were all important and respectable people.

When he had asked about her daughter’s supposed pregnancy, Inez admitted that Sara hadn’t actually told her anything about it, but insisted that she had noticed certain changes in her behavior. The first had been her diet; she had started craving a great deal more meat, and other foods that she had previously expressed a dislike for. She had also started experiencing mood swings, alternating between withdrawn silence and animated excitement. In the week before her disappearance, her mother had noted that she had started wearing looser clothing to cover a slight but apparent bulge in her stomach.

That had all sounded fairly standard to Foster, but that was more of a problem for Sara and his cousin to worry about if and when she was found.

The most useful piece of information had come after the outpouring of worry for her daughter, and various invectives leveled at Cyril.

Sara had told her mother that her new friends had helped her set up a new space to work on her art; a run down but passable studio in a previously abandoned building. At first Inez had denied knowing where it was, but as it turned out she had a nosy streak. She had followed her daughter one night, ostensibly out of concern for her safety.

Given the part of town this alleged studio was in, that wasn’t an unreasonable concern. It wasn’t a place he would have suggested anyone go alone at night. Especially not an attractive young woman. Most especially not a pregnant one.

Perhaps that line of thinking made his present actions a bit hypocritical, but he doubted anyone would attack a uniformed Constable in the middle of the street, especially before full dark. If the girl really was just avoiding his cousin and her mother, this workspace of hers was the most likely place that he knew of to find her.

Foster found the building at the end of the abandoned street and could hear the sound of water lapping against rocks nearby. When he tried the door he met with some resistance, but a good shove with his shoulder was all that was needed to force it inward.

When the light of his lantern illuminated the inside of the space he immediately stepped back and took a second look at the faded numbers over the door, then compared them with the small slip of paper where he had recorded the address.

His first thought was that Sara’s mother must have remembered it wrong. The interior wasn’t anything resembling an art studio. It was a covered dock, with two long stretches of concrete on either side of a ramp, descending into a large pool of sea water. The back wall of the structure appeared to be an oversized door, broken in places and creaking in time with the lapping of the water.

The space certainly wasn’t what Foster had been expecting, but leaving would have been a waste. Maybe there was a loft that Sara had been using, or perhaps this building allowed access to another, smaller space in one of the adjacent structures.

With those possibilities in mind, Foster stepped inside, sweeping his lantern over the bare walls and floor.

As he walked towards the ramp that lead into the water, he heard a rustling sound behind him on his left and turned towards it, sweeping the lantern light over the far corner.

The light revealed an unmoving body with its back towards him, a woman judging by the length of its hair. A dark shape covered her shoulders and head, nibbling at her face almost affectionately.

When the lantern light fell on the dark shape it reacted violently, jumping off of the body and spinning to face Foster.

The best description he could think of for the thing was a perverse combination of a squid, a spider, and a house cat.

It was a slimy blue-black in color, barely a foot long, the majority of its length made up of four long cephalopoid appendages serving as legs. It seemed to stare at him briefly, though he couldn’t discern any visible eyes. He could make out a small carnivorous beak, flanked on either side by spider-like mandibles.

Foster reached for his cudgel slowly, but the small creature only lingered in the light for a moment, letting out a melodious chirping sound before bounding out of the beam of light with surprising speed.

The Constable spun in place cautiously, trying to search the entire space with the feeble light of his lantern. A few seconds later he heard a small splash in the water.

He felt a brief moment of relief, then he heard the rustling of a much larger creature somewhere in the rafters over his head. As he turned to look up he just barely caught sight of a massive shadow falling through the corner of his vision, then a much larger, heavier splash emanated from the water in front of him.

First he felt shock at the appearance of such a massive form, then relief when he quickly concluded that whatever it was had fled. That relief quickly turned to terror as he realized that instead of silence he was hearing a subtle swishing sound in the water, and that the shadows he was beginning to see under the surface weren’t simply a byproduct of the shallow waves.

He didn’t have any time or desire to think. Instead he fled, turning back towards the door and running as if his life depended on it.

It took Foster almost half an hour to reach the safety of the station. It took him another half hour to relate what he had seen to his superiors, and to convince them that he wasn’t raving mad.

Under different circumstances convincing others of his sanity might have been much more difficult, if not impossible. Thankfully, or perhaps unfortunately, the men and women he worked with were all accustomed to strangeness and violence. Plymouth was a largely peaceful place, but they all knew of the abnormal things that existed elsewhere in the world, and each and every one of them was determined not to let any of that unpleasantness take root so near to home.

A course of action was agreed to almost immediately, but it took another two hours to pull three more Constables off of their night patrols and get them all properly outfitted.

In this case, properly outfitted meant unlocking the old storage closet in the back of the station to pull out four hand grenades and a hand-pumped flame thrower. Each of the four took a grenade, and two of them, Anthony Marshall and Darin Arnold, teamed up to take the flame thrower. Anthony strapped the tank to his back and took the pump in hand, while Darin took the nozzle and igniter.

The extra weight of the grenade opposite the cudgel on Foster’s belt was unsettling, and he felt extremely under prepared in comparison to the two men behind him carrying the heavy weapon.

Still, he felt much less exposed with the two men watching his back and Freddie Black on his left, her own grenade and heavy stick supplemented by the half dozen or so knives that she was notorious for keeping on her person.

Foster led the way, the larger lantern he had picked up at the station illuminating almost the entire street in front of them. No one spoke for the near hour it took to walk back to the abandoned building next to the water. When they finally arrived in front of the closed door, Foster found himself at a loss for words.

Ultimately, Freddie put a finger to her lips, then motioned for Foster to open the door, indicating that the other two should rush in after him. Logical, given that he was holding their only source of light.

Foster hesitated for just a moment, then nodded, shoving the door open with his shoulder and pouring light into the space.

At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary, the space looking just as deserted as it had the first time he had entered. When he turned the lantern on where the body had been, he found it still lying there, a small black shape curled up in the crook of its exposed neck.

The shape cried out as the light fell on it, then lept down the dock towards the water.

Foster found himself at a loss, the creature too far away and moving too fast for him to reach it with his cudgel.

Thankfully, his companions were better prepared. Freddie shoved him bodily against the wall, out of the way of the two men behind them. As soon as they were both clear, Anthony and Darin shot a burst of flame at the leaping shape.

The creature cried out in pain, its leap turning into an uncontrolled tumble as it bounced off the hard concrete floor and into the water.

The splash was followed almost immediately by a quiet squelching sound, and Foster spun on his heels, shining the lantern light at the opposite side of the dock.

A much larger creature had appeared behind them, climbing down from the ceiling and onto the ground in near silence.

It seemed to be a much larger version of the thing they had just incinerated; its four black arms at least twelve feet in length, and the beak it extended towards Anthony and Darin easily as large as a human head.

Foster shouted wordlessly, and Darin spun to face the direction he was staring, tangling himself in the hose of the flame thrower as he did. Then it was Anthony and Darin’s turns to scream as they tried to disentangle themselves and bring the weapon to bare.

Two of the creatures long arms shot out, tangling around Anthony and Darin and trying to force them towards its maw. The two men fought valiantly, but Darin had already lost his footing and fallen to one knee.

As Foster stood stunned he noticed that Freddie wasn’t facing the new threat, but instead towards the water.

Foster closed his mouth to stop his own screaming and turned to follow her eyes.

The pool in the center of the building was churning. Shapes similar to the one they had already burned, though larger, were jumping up out of the water before splashing back down again, all of them surging towards the ramp leading to the intruders.

Foster drew his cudgel instinctively, realizing even as he did so that the gesture was useless. There were simply too many of them.

Freddie was thankfully more level headed. She slipped the grenade off of her belt, pulled the pin, and lobbed it into the water. Then she reached for Foster’s belt and repeated the process with his grenade as well.

Foster braced himself for the explosion, and was startled as a roar of flames exploded behind him. He turned his head to find that Anthony and Darin had managed to fire a prolonged burst at the large creature that was assailing them. Darin was lying on his back, angling the nozzle directly into the open beak of the unnatural beast to fire at point blank range.

The large figure let out an unworldly cry, far louder and deeper than the one that the smaller creature had managed, and dove for the water as well.

Two subdued explosions proceeded a much larger splash as the massive beast tumbled beneath the surface.

Anthony and Darin echoed Freddie’s earlier action, pulling the grenades from their belts and chucking them lazily into the water. Foster didn’t know if it would do any good, but it seemed as reasonable a course of action as any.

The Constable numbly noted that the building was on fire as they made their way outside, shaken, and in Anthony and Darin’s cases, burned and bloodied, but alive.

Freddie dragged the corpse of a young woman behind them as they departed.

The next morning, after a few hours of fitful sleep, Foster found himself summoned to the Mayor’s office.

It wasn’t a unique occurrence. The Mayor was an eccentric man, and he liked to stay informed about what was happening in the town. His town, as he often referred to it. No doubt he wanted the whole story straight from Foster’s mouth.

After the night’s events the Constable had passed out at the station, which was thankfully situated just down the street from the old city hall. He took a few extra minutes to rinse out his mouth, wash the soot off of his face, and put on a fresher uniform before following the aid that had been sent to fetch him to the site of his next interrogation.

When the aid finally left him it wasn’t with the Mayor himself, but instead a secretary in her forties sitting at a large desk in front of his office. She informed Foster that he would have to wait a while.

Foster barely processed what the woman had said, distracted with noting the bags under her eyes and what looked like tear streaks on her cheeks.

The Mayor finally called for him a few minutes later, and Foster let himself in through the heavy double doors.

Mayor Waters sat behind his desk, scribbling on a small sheet of paper. He was a large man who bordered on truly fat. Like the woman outside he had bags under his eyes, though his were less pronounced. Part of Foster was glad that he wasn’t the only one who was tired, but had everyone in Plymouth lost sleep last night?

“Ah, Constable Hayden. I heard you lead something of an impromptu raid on the waterfront last night.” Mayor Waters’s voice was subdued. He opened one of his desk drawers and removed something before placing the page he had been writing on inside.

“Lead is a strong word, but yes. I provided the initial information and guided a few other Constables to the location in question to take care of the situation.” Foster eyed the two heavy armchairs in front of the Mayor’s desk, but he hadn’t been asked to sit so he reluctantly remained standing.

The Mayor leaned back in his seat, spreading his hands over his stomach.

“’The situation’ referring to the unfortunate business involving the dear miss Sara Poole?” The Mayor asked. The man looked tired. No, not tired, bereaved.

“Yes sir. Though we haven’t confirmed the identity of the body as of yet,” Foster replied, confused.

“I take it that you haven’t seen the doctor’s report then. I’ll save you the trouble. The body you dragged out of that building last night was Sara Poole. I identified her this morning myself. Were you aware that she was working for my office?”

“No, sir,” Foster answered, suspecting the Mayor was about to launch into one of his famous monologues.

“I’m not surprised, she didn’t advertised it. Sara joked that it would hurt her credibility as an artist. She started almost two months ago. A temporary stand in for Lidia out there. A brilliant girl. Smart, sensitive, creative, beautiful… Her death is a real tragedy. She will be sorely missed by everyone here. Tell me Constable, how would you describe the circumstances of this terrible business?”

Foster shook his head noncommittally.

“I don’t rightly know sir. As I said, I wasn’t even certain of her identity until you confirmed it. When I first found her she was being gnawed on by some abnormal creature. I suppose it’s possible that it, or something like it, killed her. Or that someone else did it and dumped her in the empty building, and whatever it was we found was just scavenging her corpse.” Foster was having a hard time reading the Mayor’s expression. The man’s face was blank. Maybe it was just his way of concealing grief.

After a few seconds of visible consideration the Mayor nodded.

“Yes, I see how you could come to that conclusion. Tell me Constable, what happened to the creature you say you found… gnawing… on her?”

The Mayor’s expression was dark. It occurred to Foster that “gnawing” may not have been the best adjective to describe what had happened to one of his staff members.

“It’s dead sir. At least I can only imagine it is. We burned it.”

Mayor Waters sighed sadly, then produced a pearl handled revolver and set it on the table pointing at the Constable, his finger lightly tapping the trigger.

Foster froze, his hand inches from his cudgel. He had never fired a gun before, but he knew how they worked in principle, and the Mayor was just eccentric enough to have both the revolver and the ammunition to match.

“I was afraid you might put things in those terms. Personally, I had hoped that you might be brought around to the right side of things, in spite of your recent… transgressions. Unfortunately, I don’t think that will be possible under the circumstances.”

“I don’t rightly understand sir,” Foster responded warily, playing for time. He really didn’t understand.

Mayor Waters rose to his feet, one hand holding the revolver, the other covering an apparent pain in his stomach.

“I’m afraid you’ve been looking for foul play where there never was any Constable. Poor Ms. Poole died of natural causes. Bled out after giving birth in fact. I told her she needed to take better care of herself. Carrying one of the little ones isn’t the same as a normal child... The body doesn’t fatten itself up the same way... I suppose she was concerned other people would notice, or maybe she was just worried about her figure.” The Mayor broke into a coughing fit, and Foster was tempted to rush the man. He resisted the urge, figuring that he wouldn’t be able to make it over the desk before the larger man got a shot off.

After the coughing subsided, the Mayor resumed his tirade.

“She wasn’t due for another week, the poor dear, and none of us were at the sanctum that night. As far as we can tell, she wandered in early in the morning. She should have gone for help, but she must have been concerned for the little one. She cared for them so much. I’ve never seen anyone take to them as quickly as she did, be so eager to carry one of their own.”

The Mayor coughed again, a jet of black and red shooting out of his midsection as he did.

Foster stepped back instinctively, expecting another gush of blood. Surprisingly, the Mayor was still on his feet, a trickle of red fluid running down his bulk and a coin sized hole in his jacket.

In a state of disbelief, Foster’s eyes ran from the Mayor to the other side of the room. A writhing ball of tentacles laid at the end of a long trail of blood, flopping helpless on the floor. As Foster watched, it slowly righted itself, drawing itself up on four limbs and seeming to stare up at Mayor Waters.

Foster acted reflexively, drawing his cudgel and stepping forward to clobber the abomination to death. He would figure out how it had gotten into the Mayor’s stomach later.

He had barely made it two steps before he heard a loud bang, then felt a blinding pain shoot through his right arm.

The next time Foster opened his eyes, he found himself lying on the floor. Mayor Waters was standing over him with the small creature curled up in one arm, nuzzling him like a particularly affectionate kitten. His other hand still held the pearl handled revolver.

“I didn’t have to explain any of this to you Foster. I could have just had you beaten down in the street, or chopped up into chum, but I thought you should know. At one point I had high hopes for you, that you could see reason, but you’ve proven that impossible.

“You’re not going to die because you discovered our secret, or even because of your own ignorant stupidity. You’re going to die because you took the tragedy of a beautiful, brilliant woman’s death and made it worse by killing her offspring and assaulting the being that saw fit to bless her with it. My only regret is that this will be over so quick.”

Foster never heard the second gun shot. The bullet had already torn through his brain before the sound reached his ears.

If anyone was hoping for something a bit longer than my usual stories, this is for you. I hope you all enjoy it. As always, thanks for reading.

Places you can find me:

WordPress: rhunterwriter.wordpress.com DeviantArt: rhunterwriter.deviantart.com Tumblr: rhunterwriter.tumblr.com Twitter: twitter.com/RHunterWriter

[rhunterwriter-blog]

Jaxon ran through the forest as fast as his legs would carry him. A small sliver of his mind, the most logical part, screamed that he was running deeper into the trees. That was wrong. He should be running the other way. Out of the forest.

The more primitive part of his brain, the one that was currently in control, couldn’t have cared less. Even if he had felt like stopping to think, a desire that was far from his mind at the moment, he likely would have concluded that which way he ran really didn’t matter.

This deep into the woods the ground was almost entirely clear of underbrush, a few saplings and the occasional flower occupying the sparse spaces where sunlight managed to seep in through the canopy overhead. All that he could see around him were the trunks of massive old beeches, all of them far too thick for him to wrap his arms around, their lowest branches easily fifty feet above his head.

Even in the darkness he could still see and hear some motion. The beating of diaphanous wings against a nearby trunk, a subtle rustling in the leaves around him.

He had stopped a few hundred yards back to catch his breath, though that felt like hours ago now. Stopping had been a mistake. He had only been still for a few seconds before the occasional fluttering insect had given way to a winged storm, and the rustling in the underbrush had turned into something like cold static in his ears.

If he looked over his shoulder he could just make out the flock of insects somewhere behind him. He couldn’t tell how far away they were, or how numerous, he just noted their presence when they flitted through one of the thin beams of light and took it as a sign to keep running.

He tried more than once to turn aside, to circle back to safety, but every time he angled his path he found a handful of the insects blocking his way, and chose not to risk it.

The sliver of his mind that had held on to reason told Jaxon that he couldn’t possibly have anything to fear from the pack of insects; no forester had ever been killed by butterflies. The part of him that forced his legs to keep running reminded him that his companions had probably thought the same thing, and of what it had sounded like to hear them all die screaming. And so he ran.

Motivated as he was, his legs still eventually tired, and as he slowed he noticed something curious. There were thin vines wrapped around the trunks of the beeches, cutting into their bark and stringing between the boughs overhead.

Staggering onward, he realized that the rustling of leaves under his feet was interrupted with increasing frequency by crunching and snapping sounds. If he looked down he could see shards of thin white bone, large and small, somehow rendered brittle enough to snap and break with the slightest provocation.

Finally, he stumbled. He forced himself to his feet, only to stumble again half a dozen paces later.

He struggled back onto wobbling legs, but he was quickly overtaken by the swarm behind him, battering him with hundreds of papery wings. As the flock passed, it made a wide circle back the way it had come, resuming its pursuit.

The static like rustling in the underbrush around him was building to a crescendo even as the butterflies looped around for another pass.

Jaxon took one shaking step, then another.

His foot was rising for a third when he felt thin vines snag around his ankle. He stumbled and fell, his foot pulled back by the tiny cords that had managed to ensnare his leg.

He kicked helplessly, but even as he did more vines slithered through the leaves to bind his limbs.

Strangely, the static kept increasing in volume even as the vines constricted around him, cutting off circulation and choking the life out of him.

It was only when he looked up that he could conclude that the sound was coming from the approaching swarm of butterflies, now advancing more slowly, coalescing into an otherworldly whirlwind.

Out of the tide of wings stepped a figure, vaguely human in shape. The butterflies swirled around it, some briefly alighting on its body before they fluttered off to rejoin the swarm. The vines reacted to it as well, reaching up to embrace its feet before settling back to the ground, either satisfied or dejected.

The figure didn’t seem to have a face. When Jaxon tried to look into the swarm at where the thing’s head should have been all he could see was a storm of distortion and static, blessedly obscured by swirling wings.

As he stared, the sound in Jaxon’s head reached a head-splitting tone and volume, and he was forced to return his gaze to the ground.

Jaxon struggled against the vines. He didn’t try to free himself, he had a distinct feeling that it was to late for that, but he thought he might just be able to reach into his pocket.

He twisted and squirmed, trying simultaneously to turn his back to the alien creature, and to close his fingers around the small metal lighter that he carried.

With trembling hands, he managed to separate the top half of the lighter from the bottom, spilling the flammable liquid it contained down his leg and onto the forest floor.

The logical part of his brain protested at first, but quickly acquiesced as the sound in his head intensified from merely painful to utterly debilitating. He flicked the flint on the lighter, and flames spread quickly over his body and onto the damp forest floor.

The vines that had held his leg pulled away and began to writhe, burning hotter and far more intensely than any normal vine should have. The thin strands that held him were consumed in seconds, leaving painful wounds where they burnt away. Jaxon was just barely aware of the fire spreading as the vines continued to burn, covering the forest floor with a spiderweb of flickering flames before climbing up the trunks of the ancient trees.

As the flames touched the first of the flying insects the debilitating static coalesced into an inhuman screech in his head. Then the swarm exploded, dispersing back into the forest the way it had come, fleeing the spreading fire. And with that, the impossible entity was gone.

“I once had a patient. A man named Jaxon. He was a forester who worked in the western foothills. He claimed that one day he and his colleagues happened upon a carnivorous swarm of butterflies, as well as some anomalous entity connected with the insects. He also claims to have been the only survivor of this encounter.

“In the old world there was a clinical term, lepidopterophobia, for the fear of moths and butterflies. I have found no concrete explanation as to why this fear existed before the Breaking, or why it seems that it was so wide spread at that time. It was, as best I can tell, a totally unfounded fear.

“Be that as it may, Jaxon’s injuries were consistent with his account of events, and I believe that he believed in his words wholeheartedly. I can also tell you that he experienced a life long and debilitating fear of butterflies thereafter.

“One question has nagged at me for years since Jaxon first came into my care. Were our ancestors simply weak of mind, with their unreasonable fears, like a fear of butterflies, replaced by more reasonable ones in the modern day? Or, perhaps more disturbingly, was it the fears of the people of the Old World that gave rise to the anomalous creatures we sometimes encounter today?”

- Lecture by Dr. █��████, Citadel █████

And we're back.

As always, thanks for reading.

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[rhunterwriter-blog]

The Rover

Elias stood over the graves of his wife and children, pulling handfuls of soil out of his pockets. It was an odd tradition, bringing dirt to a loved one’s grave. There was no purpose to it so far as he knew. Perhaps it was meant as a sign of status; there were no grave stones here, and everyone, man and woman, young and old, rich and poor, was buried in nothing but their own skin. The only way to differentiate between the various graves was the size of the small mound that built up over time, carried by visitors handful by handful over the years.

The ritual finished, he took a moment to stoop and pick up a pinch of dirt off of each of the graves, dropping the fine grains into a small glass vial which he tied around his neck. It was supposed to be bad luck to dig up the dead, but he would risk a small bit of bad luck to carry around a reminder of them. Especially since he was unlikely to ever return.

It had been stupid to come at all. He knew that logically. Almost everyone else had left days ago, and even the other rear guards were well ahead of him by now, but he couldn’t pass up the chance to visit them one last time. Still, he was a sentimental man, not a stupid one. It wasn’t long before he picked up his shortbow and walked away, leaving the overgrown graves of his family behind.

If anyone had been around to see Elias they might have wondered at his lack of grief, but the truth was that all of that had worn off a long time ago. He had grieved for years, but any pain lost its bite after half a lifetime.

He had been a young man when it had happened. After a long day out working he had arrived home to find his young wife and children all lying still on the floor, cold and dead. No one had known exactly what had done it, but they all knew what manner of creature was likely responsible. People called them different things; the most benevolent were sometimes termed angels, the more indifferent or hard to understand, spirits, but most of them people simply called demons. No matter what they were called, they all had two things in common; they were difficult to understand, and they were damn hard to kill.

His family had been the first to die, and everyone had agreed that it was a tragedy… At least, after they had all agreed that he wasn’t responsible. Then, a few days latter, it had been another family. And then another, a few days after that.

They had never learned what was causing the deaths; no one had ever seen the thing and lived to tell about it. In the end it didn’t matter, once it had become clear that the killings weren’t going to stop they had all had to make some hard decisions. The kind that changed peoples’ lives forever.

The first had been to abandon the town, at least for the time being. There had been no way to know if that would help or not, but they had all known that they couldn’t stay. The second had been not to settle anywhere else nearby. They may not have known what was causing the deaths, but most of them had agreed that there was a chance that it could follow them, and they hadn’t wished to visit their misfortune on others.

Instead of settling down they had invented a new way of life for themselves. Spring spent by a waterfall fed by the snow melt, hidden in the trees. Summer and fall harvesting unkempt fields of grain, and orchards left to grow wild. They slept in tents, or small homes hidden in the ground or undergrowth.

They were always on the move, families or hunting parties splitting off here or there to rejoin the main body later. The only constant thing in their lives was perhaps the strangest; since the beginning they had returned to the old town for the winter. To weather out the storms and snows in their old stone homes.

He suspected, as most of them did, that that too was about to change. A hunting party had spotted a large group of fanatics traveling down the old road that had once connected their little town to the rest of the world.

Most of the town’s inhabitants had set out for the falls almost immediately. Everyone was accustomed to moving quickly, and they all knew that not even the buildings were likely to survive this particular threat. A handful of the best fighters had hung back to keep an eye on the fanatics and make sure that they didn’t catch up to their friends and families as they made their way somewhere safer.

Elias hadn’t been much of a fighter when they had first abandoned the town, but in almost two decades that too had changed.

Elias crouched at the base of an old oak tree, bow in one hand, arrow in the other, watching a small group of the would be raiders eating around a fire. Idiots, ruining their night vision by staring at the flames instead of watching the woods around them.

He heard the hoot of a barn owl in the distance, then counted to thirty. He worked his bow instinctively. The second arrow left the string just as the first buried itself in his target’s neck, with a third close behind.

The remaining men barely had time to scream before he was quietly making his way through the underbrush. As the alarm went up from the men he had left alive, it was echoed twice more along the edge of their disordered camp.

Killing had bothered Elias at first, but he had learned the necessity of it quickly enough. He had seen all sorts of horrible things, traveling on the roads and through the wilderness, and there were some things in life worth protecting no matter the cost.

The tactic they were using tonight was a simple one. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t killed as many men as he could have. That wasn’t the point.

Soon the enemy camp would be boiling, people shouting to wake up those who had already fallen asleep, scrambling to find torches and weapons, more shouting and shoving to put together search parties, brief fights and injuries as the search parties bumped into each other in the dark. All of them looking in three directions for dozens of fighters that had never existed while Elias and his friends melted into the woods.

The fanatics would wake late the next morning, tired and sore from the night before, and stop early the next evening to set up defenses and put out sentries. Then they would do the same the next day, and the same the day after that. The effect would be to slow their rampage through the countryside to a crawl, and if they got complacent, a few more arrows in a few more fanatics would serve to slow them down again. All while Elias’s own people plodded on to safety.

Effective, and in the end, much more humane than simply killing as many as they could before they died themselves.

As Elias stalked through the darkness, careful of snares and fallen branches, he heard a loud roar from the camp behind him. No doubt something inhuman, angry at its rest being disturbed. He looked back, the slight glow of the campfires barely visible through the trees, and judged whatever it was to be too far away to do much harm. Then he resumed his methodical journey to his hiding place, intent on sleeping for as long as he could before dawn.

Elias shadowed the raiding party for almost a week.

The midnight sting had worked almost exactly as predicted. Perhaps even a little too well. Instead of keeping their fires low, the fanatics had taken to building large bonfires every time they stopped, presumably to provide light and keep them warm during the early spring nights. More than one of the blazes had burned out of control, and Elias suspected the flames would have spread through the forest if the woods hadn’t been so damp from the recent snow melt.

The old town was gone. The raiders had picked it over for the better part of a day, then put torches to what little would burn when they found nothing of value. Pulling the buildings down stone by stone struck Elias as excessive, but the fanatics had taken to it with childish glee. In any case, he and his people wouldn’t be returning there any time soon.

Gale, one of the other rear guards, had had to withdraw after the second night. The raiders hadn’t found him, he had just gotten careless and rolled his ankle in the dark. Kiri would have worked herself to exhaustion, spending as long as it took to carry him back to the others. That just left Elias and Percival.

Elias hadn’t seen the other man in three days, but that didn’t worry him. Percival was the best woodsman they had. The man could cross a lake without leaving a ripple, and track wind over bare stone. The fanatics had a better chance of catching the sun.

He heard the falls before he saw them, the crashing sound growing to a roar by the time the river came into view.

Most people might have made their way to the banks of the river, or maybe even tried to check behind the waterfall. Elias knew they wouldn’t find anything. Instead, he made his way to the cliff beside the falls and waded into the trees and underbrush. He followed the cliff side to a narrow crag, more than wide enough for a man to walk through, but well hidden, and followed the twists and turns until the passage opened up into a large cavern. A narrow crack in the ceiling letting in sunlight was the only visible sign of the outside world.

People cramped the space, but the first one he saw was Merrion, waiting near the outlet of the narrow passageway.

“What’s this?” She asked, walking up and flicking the small glass vile hanging around his neck.

“Just a memory,” he replied, more sadness creeping into his voice than he had intended.

His wife didn’t say anything, just pulled his head into the crook of her neck and held him tight. Elias returned the embrace, squeezing just a bit harder than he probably should have.

Elza was too old to jump up and start trying to climb his leg. Instead his daughter rose from where she had been sitting next to her mother and curled an arm around his back, waiting patiently to be included in the hug.

Elias wrapped one arm around his daughter and rubbed her shoulders as she sobbed into his side and her mother’s chest. Both parents held her there until her tears had stopped.

When his family finally pulled away, Merrion toyed with the small glass vial again, her expression unreadable. Elias didn’t say anything, just brushed her hair out of her face and kissed her until he felt the tension leave her shoulders. He was a sentimental man, not a stupid one.

As far as my recent stories go, this one is probably my favorite. It's a bit more slice of life than proper horror, but don't worry, the regularly scheduled programming will return in a couple of weeks.

Until then, thanks for reading.

Places you can find me:

WordPress: rhunterwriter.wordpress.com DeviantArt: rhunterwriter.deviantart.com Tumblr: rhunterwriter.tumblr.com Twitter: twitter.com/RHunterWriter

[rhunterwriter-blog]

Witch Hunt

Braxton looked over his shoulder and felt pride swelling in his chest. Eighteen Children of Man were arrayed in a rough line behind him, each garbed in shining white with a red flame stitched over the left breast. All of them were armed. Most carried either short spears and torches or halberds, with long knives or hatchets at the waist. A few, either cowardly or more experienced, kept to the back of the disorganized formation cradling bows.

He sometimes wondered if there were a meaningful difference between experience and cowardice; the more senior men often became skittish, willing to run at the first sign of trouble. Braxton preferred dealing with fresh blood, the kind of men unafraid to charge into the fire.

Looking to his left he could see Abraham out of the corner of his eye. The older man had the command, but Braxton was his second. True, twenty men should be overkill for a single sorcerer, but there was still honor in commanding on a day like this.

Abraham raised his hand and began pointing their men into the woods, forming a rough semicircle. It was a simple tactic; form a noose and hopefully catch the sorcerer somewhere in the middle. With any luck he wouldn’t realize how outnumbered he was until it was too late.

Braxton leaned heavily against an old oak, hand pressed to a deep wound in his side, trying to slow the bleeding. Young Danny and Benedict were both with him. Danny was exhausted, his weapon either thrown or discarded, and Benedict had a thick gash in his thigh that rendered his left leg nearly useless.

A bird took flight somewhere overhead, and Braxton jumped, then cursed himself quietly for jumping, trying to keep still in the underbrush. Trying to keep himself and his two remaining men alive in the fading light.

He would have liked to tell himself that he wasn’t sure where it had all gone wrong, but the truth was he knew the exact moment. It was when they had surrounded the bastard, and Abraham had been about to cut off his head.

How could Abraham have known the man would catch his sword and melt it in half with his bare hands? How could any of them have anticipated him ripping the old man apart so easily?

The worse part of it all was that they still could have won. If they had charged, if they had all piled in at once with polearms, he couldn’t have kept at least a few from skewering him. Many would have died, perhaps even most of them, but at least they would have died victorious. Instead they had fled, and now they were all dead for nothing.

The veterans had redeemed themselves a bit in Braxton’s eyes. Unlike most of the younger men they had retreated in good order. Each turning to pin the monster down with a few arrows before taking his turn to run, covered by the next man in line. Maybe there was something to that tactic.

Braxton thought a few of them might have actually escaped, but he didn’t know for sure. He had run after the largest group of routing men. He told himself it had been to rally them, to lead them in another charge, or at least to get them out alive to come back and finish the job another day.

He told himself that.

Maybe it would have been more honorable to lead the charge after Abraham had died. Maybe he would have had a better chance of living trying to slip away on his own. It didn’t matter. Here he was.

A change in the wind brought the faint scent of smoke to his nostrils. He wasn’t sure whether one of the torch bearers had started the fire, or if it had been the sorcerer. The way he had melted through Abraham’s blade made him think the latter more likely, but he was more concerned with simply avoiding the blaze. Fire would mean illumination, and being hemmed in on one side. He and his men had a better chance of survival sticking to the dark. Hopefully the bastard couldn’t hunt what he couldn’t see.

Amazing, how quickly the hunter could become the hunted.

Braxton waited a few more heartbeats to make sure the wind wouldn’t suddenly shift on him again, then tapped both of his remaining men on the shoulder to rouse them.

He had always considered stealth a form of cowardice, the last hour had taught him that it had its place. The sound of every snapping twig made him wince, and he grew increasingly frustrated by the sound of Benedict’s useless leg dragging along the ground as he supported himself on his spear.

The one small comfort that Braxton had left was that he was fairly certain of where he was going. He had kept them off any sort of road or trail, but the moon had risen just as the sun was setting, and he could judge its direction by the subtle illumination that leaked through the trees. Town couldn’t be more than a mile away now, and the last screams he had heard had been in the opposite direction.

After a few minutes of walking in silence they reached the edge of a large clearing. Braxton thought he could see lights through the trees at the opposite edge, and he stopped to consider a moment. If it were just him, he might have made a run for it. A large risk for safety just on the other side… But Benedict made that impossible. He could leave the last of his men, make the gamble for himself, but he had come too far to abandon them now.

Instead he led them into the shadows at the edge of the clearing, slowly and quietly leading them forward.

Little more than halfway around the clearing a shape stepped out from behind one of the larger trees ahead, and Braxton froze.

Aside from his near nudity, the man looked almost entirely normal. What little clothing remained on him was burned and tattered, still smoking in places. He was average height and build, with attractively disheveled brown hair. The only thing that really set him apart were his eyes. In the light they had been brown, but in the dark they shone with a subtle red light, like warm coals in a strong wind.

For a heartbeat everything was still. Then Danny ripped the hatchet from his belt and charged. A spear flashed over his shoulder, and Benedict collapsed to his knees, his crutch gone and the last of his energy spent in the throw, kneeling and waiting to die.

Braxton forced himself into action, circling around towards the center of the clearing, trying to flank the man as Danny charged.

Their ordinary looking opponent deflected Benedict’s spear with a snap of his hand, the haft smoking slightly where it buried itself in the ground.

Danny used the apparent opening to swing his hatchet at the man’s center of mass.

The sorcerer was lightning quick, closing one hand around Danny’s wrist and the other around his throat. Braxton heard a sizzling squelch as the sorcerer squeezed, crushing Danny’s throat, and tossed his body to the ground.

Braxton roared and spun his short spear in an arc as he sped by. He felt the tip of the weapon dig into the sorcerer, both of his hands still occupied with Danny’s body. Braxton had cut human flesh before. This didn’t feel like flesh. More like soft stone.

He didn’t look back to see how badly he had injured his opponent, or where Danny’s body had fallen. He didn’t even break stride, the wound in his side completely forgotten.

The edge of the clearing was only a few dozen strides away, and there was a chance he could still reach safety if he could make it into the trees.

Especially if enough people had heard their screams.

With the rush of wind in his ears he nearly missed the sound of running feet beside him. He turned to see the sorcerer speeding past, then spinning around low to the ground, avoiding Braxton’s spear. He thrust his hand out, catching Braxton in the side just over his existing wound.

Burning pain rushed through Braxton’s body, causing him to fall limp and spasm on the ground. He was unconscious before the dirt and underbrush rushed up to greet him.

Some new (actually on time) content for your viewing pleasure.

As always, thanks for reading.

Places you can find me:

WordPress: rhunterwriter.wordpress.com DeviantArt: rhunterwriter.deviantart.com Tumblr: rhunterwriter.tumblr.com Twitter: twitter.com/RHunterWriter

[rhunterwriter-blog]

Update and Future Plans

Hello everyone, I've been doing this for a while now, so I thought it would be a good idea to give an update on how I've been doing things so far and how that will hopefully be changing in the near future. To give a bit of background, after writing and editing a story I usually submit it to several publications for consideration. Which publications varies based on the length and content of the story, but due to the policies of every publication that I know of this has to be done one after another, waiting for a story to be rejected by one publication before submitting it to the next. I usually only post a story here and elsewhere after it has been been rejected by everyone (with a few notable exceptions). As I'm sure you can imagine, this takes quite a while. I often have several stories going through the process at any given time, and this has usually resulted in me having a story ready every couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I've noticed that some of the publications I submit to regularly have been taking significantly longer to issue rejections. It's not just that this has been happening with my stories; as far as I can tell the average response time has been getting longer for everyone. I already cut one publication off of the list earlier this year, but even so the process has been taking longer than when I started. So, where do I go from here? Personally, I don't feel like I've been writing or posting enough. I've already posted a couple of stories without submitting for publication (mostly because the style and format weren't what most publishers are looking for) and will be trying to make this more of the rule instead of the exception. I may still submit a story for publication here or there, but I'll be aiming to post something here at least every two weeks, probably on Friday or Saturday, regardless of whether I've submitted it for publication or not. I'm sure that won't always be possible, but I'm going to do my best. If you have any input on when I should be posting, or you know of any publications you think I should be submitting to, please leave a comment and let me know. As always, thanks for reading.

[rhunterwriter-blog]

The Teacher

Devin looked around the room distractedly, trying to keep his head off of the long desk in front of him. The instructor was standing at the front of the newly constructed classroom, his back to a portrait of an old man. The portrait itself looked new, but the subject was wizened, with a long white mustache and ponytail. He seemed to stare down at the students with an eternally disapproving expression. The teacher himself was reading from a small leather bound book, his monotone voice quickly becoming a nonsensical drone in Devin’s ears.

The small schoolhouse had seemed much larger than it had a few days ago. The strange man standing at the front of the room had shown up out of the blue only last week, informing the townspeople that he was there to teach anyone whose parents were willing to let them learn. The town had taken to his offer enthusiastically, and when he had demanded a new schoolhouse be built, no one had really complained.

The morning after the building was finished the stranger had started going door to door, asking after people’s children and requesting to meet with them individually. “Assessing individual needs and potential,” he had called it. Devin had hoped that his daily chores would save him from that first encounter, but his mother had seemed very eager for him to go.

In short order, he had found himself sitting across a desk from the new teacher in the otherwise empty room. For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, Devin had felt that there was something distinctly wrong about the man. His appearance was certainly strange, with white hair and eyebrows despite a face that didn’t look much older than twenty. Even stranger were his eyes; milky white, without visible pupils. Like the eyes of a blind man, though it seemed like he could see just fine.

Perhaps his appearance was all that it was, but Devin thought he could have gotten past all of that. Even if he discounted the man’s countenance, there still seemed to be something wrong about him. A certain weight that contrasted with his frail frame. A tendency to draw the eye and attract attention despite a soft voice and diminutive stature. The teacher commanded attention, even though everything about him whispered frailty and insignificance.

The questions he had asked during their conversation had seemed strange as well. The answers to some were so glaringly obvious that they seemed too stupid to ask in the first place, and the rest were so useless and obscure that Devin couldn’t think of a good reason to ask them at all. Whatever Devin said, nothing seemed to phase the teacher. Every answer was received with a positive yet impassive expression. Every question was met with a knowing smile and meaningless platitude.

Given that he hadn’t been able to answer the majority of the man’s questions, Devin left with the distinct impression that he wouldn’t be asked to come back, and he was fine with that. Normal life didn’t require much more arithmetic than the kind he could do easily in his head, and his mother had taught him enough of his letters when he was a child to get by day to day.

Smart enough to get by, stupid enough not to bother with. Exactly the right combination to avoid any more of the man’s attention. At least, that’s what he had hoped.

Devin had been very surprised when his mother had told him the day after his interview that he would be starting school the very next morning, along with pretty much everyone else in the town his age or younger. An even bigger surprise had come later that day.

The teacher had made the rounds again, going door to door through town, but this time he was asking to see people's books, instead of their children. Devin had watched how the process went as the strange man made his way up and down the street. The teacher would ask, very politely, to see whatever the people in the house had to read. Some were confused, others annoyed, but everyone complied, though some required a lot of convincing. He flipped through each book, more for show that anything else as far as Devin could tell, and sometimes informed the owner that he was taking one volume or another.

That was the first time Devin could remember seeing anyone get genuinely angry at the man. A few people shouted, others flatly refused, but most just complained. Devin hadn’t been able to hear what the teacher had said to each of them, but he could tell by the look on their faces that it chilled them to the core.

Then, around sunset, the teacher had made his way back through town, asking everyone to gather in front of the schoolhouse many of them had helped build just a few days before.

He had stood behind a larger than expected pile of books and paper and railed about the evils of superstition, the value of enlightenment, the need for rightness in thought… On and on and on.

Devin hadn’t listened to much of what the man said, but he couldn’t help but notice the fervor in his words, the intensity of his blind stare. The man might have seemed insignificant to look at, but Devin couldn’t help but notice the deep fanaticism that drove him.

Fanaticism. That was a word he should probably pretend not to know if he intended to avoid the teacher in the future.

A few of the townspeople had already started to disperse before he had finished his speech. Quite a few others left when, with a grand gesture, he lit the pile of books and leaflets with a torch.

The reaction of those that remained was split. Some watched passively, nodding to themselves as they watched the texts that he had deemed unacceptably go up in flames and drift into the night. The rest looked on in abject horror, and Devin thought a few of them might have leapt forward to save what remained if it weren’t for the strange man with white hair, watching them with expressionless eyes. His mother’s reaction had stuck with him more than any of the others. She had returned the teachers expressionless stare with an unreadable one of her own. Her expression didn’t betray any emotion, but Devin had seen it a few times before. It didn’t bode well.

Something that the teacher was saying caught Devin’s attention, and snapped him out of his reverie.

“'Therefore we may conclude that those beings which some call gods are in fact nothing of the sort. They are rather mere living beings, born of a foreign and alien environment, disconnected from, but coterminous with, our own reality.

“'Thus we come to the subject of these beings’ motivations. Here again we are confronted with a distinct break from their oft purported divinity. Their key motivation is one familiar to any living being; the need for basic sustenance. Indeed, the key distinction between these beings and lower beasts is the source from which they derive said sustenance…'” The teacher halted abruptly, and his eyes snapped up towards the sound of squeaking iron hinges as the door to the small schoolhouse swung inward.

Councilman Mathews, who until last night had boasted about having the largest library in the small town, stood in the opening. The councilman wasn’t a fat man, but he was a very large one, and his shoulders brushed the doorway as he stepped inside.

He stared at the teacher intently, his mouth open as if to shout. Then he seemed to notice the two dozen or so students staring at him.

“Class today is canceled. Everyone out!” He snapped at the onlookers, returning his gaze to the white haired man.

The majority of the class began to stand slowly, hesitantly readying to make their way to the door.

“Stay where you are class. It seems I need to have a word with the venerable councilman.” The teacher’s voice was even more devoid of emotion than it had been when he was reading, though how that was possible Devin couldn’t say. He walked down the aisle between the long desks, and brushed past the much larger man on his way out the door.

The students returned to their places reluctantly, and the much larger man was forced to follow the teacher out, swinging the door shut behind him.

A clamor of voices reached the students from outside, the booming voice of Councilman Mathews dominating what must have been a good portion of the town. Anything that the teacher might have been saying was drowned out entirely.

Devin was the first to stand and make his way outside. Almost the entire class followed close behind.

The sight that greeted them on the other side of the door was an unexpected one. The teacher stood with his back to the students, surrounded by a semicircle of townspeople, many of them carrying threatening looking farm implements. Almost everyone who had left the book burning early seemed to be present. Councilman Mathews stood directly opposite the strange man, red in the face from shouting.

“You will leave! This instant! You will take nothing with you but what you came with. We want nothing to do with you or your kind, so never even think of coming back! If you so much as consider delaying, me and my friends here will see you out of town with nothing but the clothes on your back, if we’re generous enough to leave you so much as that!”

The Councilman fell silent, apparently waiting for a reply.

The teacher let the silence stretch on. He didn’t speak until the much larger man was filling his lungs to launch into another tirade.

“No.” Was all he said, his voice clear and flat.

“No?” The Councilman replied, incredulous. When the teacher failed to respond, he looked to the crowd around him, some of whom egged him on while others merely snorted in disbelief.

Mathews took three long strides forward, grabbing the stranger around the arms and lifting him off the ground effortlessly. It seemed almost comical to Devin, who stifled a laugh at the mental image of the Councilman carrying the teacher to the edge of town and tossing him casually into the woods.

As he watched, the white haired stranger’s hand shot out and gripped the much larger man around the throat. In an instant the Councilman was doubled over, and the teacher’s scrawny arm appeared to be the only thing holding him up.

It seemed impossible that the teacher could successfully strangle such a large neck with such a small hand, but the students and townspeople looked on in horror as Mathews began to choke and splutter, his veins bulging out even as his body went limp.

Within seconds the spluttering had all but ceased, and the Councilman’s complexion had gone from ruddy red to papery white, his veins standing out dark against his pale skin.

When the stranger finally released Mathews the large man fell to the ground. To everyone’s surprise he was still alive, but instead of getting up he merely thrashed on the ground, babbling incoherently. Devin caught sight of the councilman’s eyes, and they struck him as impossibly dull. As if all the life had been drained out of them, and nothing was staring back at him but two wet balls in the head of an empty shell.

By contrast, the teacher’s eyes seemed to almost glow. They were still stark white, but brighter somehow. The stranger’s odd weight was altered too, drawing the attention of everyone present, despite the mewling of the thing that most of them would have called their friend a few seconds before. Even the man’s shadow seemed more pronounced.

“Back inside everyone,” the teacher said in his usual monotone, turning his back to the armed crowd and leading the way back into the classroom.

With that, the students returned to their desks without complaint, and the mob of armed townspeople began to slowly melt away.

I hope you all enjoy this new and almost on time story. I'll be posting an update here shortly for anyone who's interested.

As always, thanks for reading.

Places you can find me:

WordPress: rhunterwriter.wordpress.com DeviantArt: rhunterwriter.deviantart.com Tumblr: rhunterwriter.tumblr.com Twitter: twitter.com/RHunterWriter

[rhunterwriter-blog]

Forging Embers

Hiram picked his way through the forest, trying to avoid snagging his plain brown cloak on thorned vines and fallen branches. The man he was following, Carver, never looked around or deviated from his path. Instead he walked as if he had made the journey a hundred times before, his red trimmed black robe not impeding him in the slightest.

Truth be told, Hiram wouldn’t have been surprised if Carver actually had made this journey many times before. The organization he had spent the last year working to join was anything but forthcoming, but as far as he could tell Carver held a fairly high rank.

Finding a way to even be considered for membership had been difficult, and the tests and trials that followed had been grueling, but as far as Hiram was concerned it was all a small price to pay. With any luck, today would be the day it all payed off, though he at least considered the possibility that it would be just another test instead.

Hiram looked up from the forest floor to find that the trees ended abruptly in front of them, cut off by an edifice of stone. He stared at Carver’s back, confused for a moment, before the other man made a sharp left turn and led Hiram into a shadowed cleft in the rocks.

The evening light trickling in from outside failed after a dozen steps into the darkness, and Hiram felt his breathing become increasingly forced. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the dark. Not really. He just didn’t like being anywhere he couldn’t see what was right in front of his face.

Even though his sight had failed, he could still hear Carver’s surefooted steps a few feet ahead. He continued to make his way forward slowly, feeling out in front of him with his hands and toes.

After a few dozen more steps, Hiram noticed a dull red glow beginning to illuminate the tunnel in front of them. Once they turned the last corner of the passage, his jaw dropped open.

Laid out before him was a vast circular chamber. The walls and floor were smooth black stone, spider webbed over with various strange symbols in brilliant gold. Four cylindrical pillars held up the ceiling, massive crystals standing in the gaps between them, most of them larger than Hiram himself. Each was perfectly clear, and they all seemed so precariously balanced on their plinths that he expected they would fall over at any moment.

Inside the circle of pillars and crystals were four raised platforms, each occupied by a figure in a black robe sitting cross legged and facing the center of the chamber.

All of that seemed fantastic, but none of it was what made Hiram’s jaw drop open.

In the center of the chamber was a ring of golden script, and inside burned a raging wildfire.

The intensity of the flames made it difficult to look at, especially in the darkness, but Hiram squinted and forced his eyes to focus. The flames shifted and flowed, constantly probing the confines of the thin ring, occasionally rising up to caress the ceiling where the script was mirrored high above their heads.

There was no fuel for the fire that Hiram could see; no shape in the heart of the flames, or apparatus to supply gas or liquid. It seemed as if the fire was a living thing, struggling against some invisible barrier. The chamber was warm, but nowhere near as warm as it should have been given the intensity of the inferno.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

Hiram jumped at the sound of Carver’s coarse voice, then looked over at the other man. Carver wasn’t looking at him, his full attention seemed focused on the flames.

“Very impressive. Did you… that is to say we… build all of this?”

“This sanctum? No. It was here long before our organization existed. Long before the Breaking in fact. We just found it and made a few necessary modifications. But there will be time for you to learn more of our history later. For now, come.” With his final word, Carver began to walk with purpose towards the large central ring.

Hiram followed what he hoped was a respectful distance behind, glancing about in wonderment at the construction.

Carver stopped with his toes a few feet from the ring and the fire, then spoke aloud to the chamber.

“Lower a section of the barrier.”

The flames leapt towards Carver and Hiram behind him. Hiram felt the intense heat wash over him, and teetered between the instinct to drop to the floor and cover his head, and the urge to jump out of the way.

As the inferno flowed onward Carver held out his hand, and the fire halted inches in front of his palm, as if he were physically holding it at bay.

Hiram forced himself to look into the blaze, and saw a figure forming out of the flames. The creature was vaguely humanoid in shape, with white hot liquid for eyes. Its billowing form was ebony black, with veins of red leaking through from behind. Like cracked, slow-flowing lava, or volcanic ash shot through with red lightning.

Carver looked into the creatures bright glowing eyes, apparently unimpressed.

“We have a new ember in need of forging. Our offer is the same as ever.” His voice was strong and steady, not betraying even the tiniest hint of fear.

The strange creature appeared to incline its head in assent.

Carver motioned Hiram forward, his eyes still fixed on the small points of glowing white.

Hiram’s legs seemed to move of their own accord, coming to stand right next to his escort.

Carver stepped back, making room in front of the creature.

“Kneel,” he said, indicating the narrow space between himself and the amorphous entity.

Hiram complied, kneeling awkwardly between Carver and the strange creature. He raised his head, trying to look into the burning white eyes the same way the other man had. As he watched, the flaming creature reached out a hand of billowing red and black, and touched him between the eyes.

Burning white light rushed into Hiram’s head, building behind his eyes and in his ears, blinding and deafening him with pain. He felt the intense heat surge into his heart and be pumped through his body, burning his muscles and scorching his bones. Once the fire had reached the tip of every one of his extremities, he felt it gradually receding with every heartbeat, briefly intensifying before subsiding, each time slightly less excruciating than the last.

When Hiram finally came to his senses he was surprised to find himself curled up on the ground at Carver’s feet, his body still spasming slightly.

He haltingly made his way to his feet. The creature seemed to have been recontained, the flames once again confined to the interior of the golden circles. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but Hiram thought that the fire seemed calmer somehow; more concentrated, but placed. Content to stay in place instead of licking along the sides of the barrier and up against the ceiling.

Hiram turned, expecting to find Carver, but his escort wasn’t alone.

The taller of the two stood on Carver’s right, a woman by the look of her face, holding up a light gray robe.

“Welcome, Brother Hiram. Please, step forward,” Carver said, a small smile curving his lips upward.

The woman stepped towards Hiram, holding the robe open for him. He looked down at himself and was surprised to find that he was almost entirely nude; what little clothing remained was scorched and tattered. Most of it was white ash on the floor.

Hiram moved to cover himself reflexively, but a subtle change in expression from Carver caused him to instead pull the last few scraps of his old clothing away and let the strange woman settle his new raiment around his shoulders.

He adjusted the garment subconsciously to mirror the others. Perhaps the strangest thing of all was how normal he felt. It was almost as if nothing had changed at all. Who ever would have thought that magical power could seem so ordinary, or that near immortality could feel like nothing at all?

I've been under the weather, so this is a bit latter than I intended. I hope you enjoy it.

As always, thanks for reading.

Places you can find me:

WordPress: rhunterwriter.wordpress.com DeviantArt: rhunterwriter.deviantart.com Tumblr: rhunterwriter.tumblr.com Twitter: twitter.com/RHunterWriter

[rhunterwriter-blog]

Fisherman’s Folly

Reed sat with his back to the small fishing village he called home and watched as thick rain clouds rolled in over the waves.

The village was small by necessity; there was only ever so much to be caught in the shallows, and no one dared risk going out much further. Horrific things dwelled in the deeper waters, and some of the older stories told of them coming uncomfortably close to shore.

The clouds overhead gradually took on deeper shades of red and purple, and the last few rays of the setting sun behind him sparkled off the water. A strange outcrop caught Reed’s eye, the white spray contrasting against the sheer black rock.

The people in his village called it Fisherman’s Folly. It wasn’t anything much, just a few black stones jutting out of the water about half a mile out from shore. Some days, when the wind was just right, you could hear what sounded like singing coming from that direction. The stories said that it was something in the rocks that sang; luring boats closer to wreck against more stones hidden just beneath the surface. More reasonable people thought it was just a peculiar effect of the rocks. Something about their shape that made the waves crashing against them sound musical.

All Reed knew for sure was that everyone in the area gave them a wide berth. He had never really understood why.

He had always wanted to find out for himself though.

The last light was fading from the horizon by the time Reed pulled his eyes away from the black mass jutting out of the water and found his way back home.

Reed woke to the sound of gentle rain outside his window. It wasn’t particularly loud or heavy, but he knew almost everyone would stay off the water just in case it got worse.

He settled back into bed, thinking that the rain would make an excellent excuse to sleep in, but for some reason he found himself lying awake, staring at the ceiling and straining his hearing for… He wasn’t quite sure what.

Frustrated, he rolled out of bed and pulled his thick cloak from a peg by the door. There was a slight chill in the air, but the cloak cut it nicely, and the rain was a soft, pleasant drizzle for the time being. Reed made his way down to the edge of the village to looked out over the water and saw that it was clear to the horizon.

He stood there for a while, enjoying the quiet and the rain, before he noticed his eyes had settled on the black outcrop resting in the waves. When he pulled his eyes away to stare down the shore he found himself tilting his head, listening for something at the edge of his hearing.

Looking up at the cool gray sky he judged that the rain wasn’t going to be getting worse any time soon. A full day out fishing would be risky, but he could be out to the rocks and back in an hour. No real risk in that.

His grandmother’s voice floated up from somewhere in the depths of his memory, admonishing him and remind him that it was called Fisherman’s Folly for a reason.

Reed snorted to himself. As if he was going to worry about some story his grandmother had told him as a child. And not a very scary story at that.

Making his way down to the dock and untying his boat was so mechanical that it didn’t require thought. He made his way out methodically, soothed by both the gently falling rain and the familiar creaking and swishing of the oars.

The further Reed got from shore the harder the rain fell, soaking his hair and cloak, and forming a small pool at the bottom of the boat. A good indication that he shouldn’t spend too much time on the water. He would just make a quick circle around the rocks, then head back to shore.

As he finally neared his destination, his arms beginning to feel the familiar strain of working the oars, he heard a sound. Not proper music or singing, more of a gentle keening.

He rowed to within a few paces of the rocks, only afterword remembering that there were supposed to be more just beneath the surface. The sound was clearer now, and he could make out what seemed to be individual voices.

A gentle splash off to his left shocked Reed out of his reverie, and he glanced around worriedly.

Looking over the side of his boat he saw a face just beneath the water, staring back up at him.

He recoiled, banging his back against the opposite side of the boat and making it slosh back and forth in the water. It took him a few long breaths to steady himself and look back over the side.

The creature was still there, staring up at him with a concerned expression. It was a woman, bare naked and treading water just beneath the surface. She was pale, with long black hair and a lithe body. Reed half expected her to have a tail, but instead he saw only long, shapely legs. Her pure black eyes and webbed hands and feet he missed entirely.

Reed leaned over the side of the boat to get a better look, and felt something pull him into the water by his shoulders.

He struggled back to the surface, gasping for air. The water was cold, but not the coldest he had been in, and after a moment of panic he was bobbing safely with one hand on his boat.

The woman was doing the same just a few paces away, her head and torso just above water. As he watched she raised a hand, beckoning to him.

He considered for a moment whether she had pulled him into the water, but dismissed the thought almost immediately. She had been too far away, and besides, she didn’t look strong enough to do much pulling.

She motioned to him again, and without much at all in the way of consideration he shed his cloak and tossed it up into the boat before swimming towards her.

The enigmatic woman flashed a tight lipped grin over her shoulder and dove into the water.

Reed followed more clumsily. The saltwater stung his eyes, but he forced them open, enjoying the view as the woman led him deeper down and towards the side of the rocks.

By the time she had stopped diving his lungs had begun to burn. She turned in the water, her back to a gap in the black stone, holding her arms out to him. Reed approached sluggishly, distractedly trying to calculate how long he could stay before he had to head up for a breath.

When he came within arms reach she laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. Then Reed felt a hard punch to his stomach, forcing the precious air out of his lungs.

He kicked his feet, trying desperately to force his way to the surface, but he could barely move. The woman had pressed herself against him, wrapping her arms and legs around his, restraining him far more effectively then her slim figure would imply.

As he struggled against her grip Reed felt more hands reaching out of the darkness, pulling him deeper. He was vaguely aware of the woman’s tongue caressing the side of his neck before he felt sharp teeth puncture the flesh of his shoulder, then tear back, ripping away skin and muscle.

He screamed, or at least he tried to. All he really accomplished was filling his lungs with sea water, his world quickly turning black.

The strange woman loosened her grip as his thrashing ceased, then joined the other denizens of Fisherman’s Folly in dragging their latest feast down into the depths to be devoured.

I just realized that this is my second story in a row with a cannibalistic touch. If that bothers you don't worry, I don't expect it to become an oft recurring theme.

As always, thanks for reading.

Places you can find me:

WordPress: rhunterwriter.wordpress.com DeviantArt: rhunterwriter.deviantart.com Tumblr: rhunterwriter.tumblr.com Twitter: twitter.com/RHunterWriter

[rhunterwriter-blog]

The Moonlit Glade

Alicia’s eyes fluttered open sluggishly.

The world around her was painted in blacks and grays. The moon was shining bright somewhere in the sky, casting long shadows from the trees around her.

She was in a forest, though how she had gotten there she wasn’t sure. The air around her smelled of damp soil and freshly fallen leaves, and she was vaguely aware of her feet dragging over occasional rocks and branches. She was being carried under the shoulders by a figure on either side, barely visible in her peripheral vision. When she tried to raise her head to get a clearer look she found she could barely move it at all.

Panic set in quickly, and she tried desperately to flex her muscles, willed her legs to run, fought to free her arms from whoever or whatever was carrying her, filled her lungs to scream.

All she managed was a subdued moan.

Fighting down the panic of being locked into her own body, she tried to think back to how she had gotten where she was. She found a haze clouded her mind, all too similar to the sensation that kept her from controlling her body. Her thoughts were coarse and sluggish. She could perceive the world around her, but her memory of anything before she had managed to open her eyes was mired in fog. Even now she struggled to keep her eyes open. She struggled just to remember her own name.

Alicia, she thought desperately. My name is Alicia. Gods, why is that so hard to remember?

Perhaps she had been drugged? That would certainly explain her current state, her inability to remember, but that same lack of memory also kept her from being sure. Maybe she had suffered some horrible injury. If so, would she recover? Where was she being dragged?

She fixed her eyes in front of her, trying to anchor herself in reality. It wasn’t an interesting view; just a man’s back, covered by a tattered gray cloak.

As she was dragged further and further through the forest she found her thoughts were coming more and more easily, and her senses gradually sharpening. There weren’t just three sets of footsteps around her, but many, all of them shuffling and dragging, as if she were near the front of a long procession. Her sense of smell sharpened along with her hearing, and she became aware of a sickly sweetness underlying the more wholesome smell of the forest. Alicia made a point to spend as little time as possible around corpses, but even she could recognize the scent of decaying flesh.

Were all the creatures around her already dead? If they were, did that mean she was dead as well? Was that why she couldn’t move? Why she was having such a hard time formulating her thoughts? Did the dead remember their lives before they died? Or how they had died for that matter?

The journey through the forest took what seemed an eternity, and Alicia had regained almost enough strength to raise her head when the scenery around her finally changed. The procession had arrived at a large glade in the forest. Thin beams of moonlight filtering through the trees and broken clouds overhead illuminated the expanse. A gentle breeze that felt like a cool caress on her skin blew through the grasses, causing them to flow in the gentle white rays. Even in her terrified despondence, Alicia had to admit that it was beautiful.

Whoever was carrying her dragged her through the knee high grass into the middle of the glade. In the center was a slab of soiled white stone, eight feet long and half again as wide, with a bowled and slightly tilted top.

The creatures turned to grip her under the thighs and began to lift her onto the stone. She tried to struggle and kick, but she could barely move her own limbs, and whatever had carried her didn’t seem in the least bit weakened by their trek through the forest.

Alicia laid there on her back, looking up at the waning moon and stars where they showed through the clouds. She quietly moaned and spasmed, trying desperately to will herself to her feet.

She was afraid. Not the sudden panic that had welled up when she realized that she was locked in her own body, but a deep, ineffable dread. She was barely aware of her clothes being cut away, and couldn’t understand the strange words that someone was speaking nearby.

Her fear spiked into abject terror as a dangerously curved blade appeared in the bottom of her vision and, after a single word she couldn’t understand, plunged quickly down towards her chest.

Alicia barely felt the blade pierce her flesh. The effects of whatever was dulling her mind also lessened the pain. When she realized the blade had missed her heart she was unsure whether she should be feeling joy or dread. It meant that she would die much more slowly and painfully, but it also meant she would live just a little longer, and the pain wasn’t so bad in her current state.

As her consciousness began to fade she was vaguely aware of slurping and sucking at the end of the altar beyond her feet. She wondered, dully, what could be making the disgusting sounds. At least until she felt teeth and claws rending at her flesh, and cold lips descending to the wounds to suck out the last of the blood in her veins.

Hey everyone, sorry for the wait, I hope this will tide you over for a while. Thanks for reading.

Places you can find me:

WordPress: rhunterwriter.wordpress.com DeviantArt: rhunterwriter.deviantart.com Tumblr: rhunterwriter.tumblr.com Twitter: twitter.com/RHunterWriter

[rhunterwriter-blog]

The Summoner

Erin sat across the table from her friend Freya, both of them quietly sipping tea. Not proper tea. That had been hard to come by even before the recent influx of refugees from the north. Now it was downright impossible to get a hold of the stuff, but this herbal blend tasted almost as good.

She opened her mouth to break the silence, but was interrupted mid-syllable by something heavy striking the door. Erin nearly jumped out of her seat at the noise, which was followed by a second strike, then a third, the last accompanied by the sound of the doorframe splintering inward.

Four men clad in soiled white rushed into the room, each with a small red flame sewn over their left breast.

Erin froze halfway between sitting and standing, her hands gripping the arms of her chair and her head turned to face the door.

Freya stood smoothly and confidently, regarding the intruders with one hand still holding her teacup.

The first of the four men looked around, confused, before his eyes settled on Erin and Freya, regarding them briefly.

“Are you the witch?” He asked, seeming genuinely confused. Perhaps he had been expecting a scraggly old hag bent over a cauldron, not two young women in colorful dresses sharing a pot of tea.

“Us? Witches? No, of course not. Are you?” Freya retorted, her voice and features carefully composed.

“Don’t be smart bitch, just stay where you are,” the man retorted, glancing back and gesturing one of his companions forward.

The second man, shorter and more disheveled than the first, also glanced around the space. Instead of the two women, his eyes settled on the mantelpiece, covered by half a dozen small figurines carved from jade and lapis.

“There,” he said, pointing for the first man.

Freya glided towards the fireplace when the man pointed, leaning against the fine brickwork before the men could cross the room to reach it. Their two compatriots stood waiting just inside the door they had broken open, making a show of standing guard.

“That was remarkably quick for someone who isn’t a witch,” Freya said, smiling faintly at the man who had pointed out the figurines. She regarded the other man with an indifferent glare.

“What are they Heran?” the leader asked, ignoring Freya almost entirely.

“What, these?” Freya retorted before the short man… Heran… could open his mouth. “These are… well I guess you could call them family heirlooms.”

Freya raised her hands to stroke one of the figurines affectionately. It was a small statue of a strange man with six arms, carved from nearly transparent jade.

“You see, I’m not a ‘witch’ but my grandmother, I guess you could say that she was one. I guess you could also say that these were her friends.” Freya continued, rolling over any attempt by the men to speak and taking the figurine from of the mantelpiece. “Take this one for example, his name is… well, hard to pronounce. But don’t worry about that. Here, I’ll introduce you.”

Both men stood dumbfounded, unsure of what they were watching, as Freya held the statue up to her lips and whispered into its ear. After she was done speaking she kissed it gently and cradled it under her breasts.

Erin sat transfixed, just as dumbfounded as the intruders, as a glowing apparition manifested itself between Freya and the two men. The alien figure towered over everyone in the room, looking down at the men in white. Its head was elongated, with a distinctly alien cast that somehow matched the creatures thin, avian limbs. Other than its strangely bird like features, the most remarkable thing about it was its arms. There were six of them, each with a hand ending in four clawed fingers. Four of those hands were holding rather nasty looking blades.

The larger of the two intruders stepped forward with a gulp, intent on confronting the beast.

Freya sighed.

“If you would please be so kind as to see these men out of town I would very much appreciate it darling. And their friends too, if it’s not too much to ask,” Freya said in a sweetly conversational tone, still leaning casually against the fireplace.

The glowing six armed figure glanced at her before nodding. The man who had entered the house first took the opening to reach for the sword strapped to his belt. The apparition's reaction was lighting quick, and its first swing caught the leader in the stomach, sending him flying into the freshly broken doorframe with a disgusting crunching sound. Heran made it three steps before he was grasped by its two unencumbered arms.

The two men watching the door turned and ran, trying to drag the motionless form of their apparent leader after them. The alien creature exited close behind, dragging their companion without any apparent effort. Freya followed on the creature’s clawed heels, shutting the ruined door behind it to block out the ensuing panicked screams. Only then did she drop the facade and exhale heavily, slumping against the nearby wall.

After she had composed herself for a moment, Freya walked over to a small cabinet opposite her chair. She produced a small bottle of light brown liquor with unsteady hands.

“I assume you have questions,” she said, returning to her seat and placing the jade statue and the bottle on the table between them. It was only then that Erin noticed that she was standing.

She returned to her seat slowly, trying to stop her hands from shaking by gripping the arms of her chair again. Freya leaned over the table to pour a splash of the liquor in Erin’s cup.

“Here, drink this. It usually helps with the shock. Gods know it’s handy to have a bottle on hand for moments like this,” Freya said as she settled into her seat, adding a bit of liquor to her own tea before she resumed her usual sipping.

They sat quietly for a while, regarding each other over teacups, the statue between them glowing faintly.

Erin was still grasping for something to say when Freya suddenly burst out laughing.

“You’re doing a lot better than I did my first time around. When my grandmother showed me Ooru for the first time I actually wet myself. Granted, I was still a child at the time.”

Erin forced a smile and a halfhearted laugh, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. She half expected to find a puddle.

“Ooru, that was...”

“Yes. That’s not his entire name, but that’s what I’ve called him since I was a little girl. The rest really is very hard to pronounce.”

“And what you said about your grandmother, that was true as well?”

Freya snorted.

“As far as they’re concerned? Yes. There’s a lot more to it than that though. I obviously wouldn’t have called her that… Not to her face anyway. She was more of a… Scholar? Mystic?… I don’t really know a good word for it. I just know she spent a lot of time studying strange things.”

“And how long have you… had friends in common?” Erin asked, the knot of shock and terror that had formed when the men broke in settling somewhere near her midsection.

“Do you remember when we were about thirteen, and my mother or grandmother started taking me away from school for ‘extra lessons’?”

Erin nodded. She did remember. It stuck out as an abnormally lonely time in her life.

“It started then. Things got more and less intense over the years, but I didn’t stop learning until after my grandmother died. I’d met all of them but one by the end of that first year, and a couple of them before that.”

“So all those figurines, they’re all like...” Erin trailed off, nodding at the softly glowing figurine sitting on the table.

“M-Hmm. Here, let me show you,” Freya responded, hopping out of her seat with apparent excitement, the stress of having her home broken into seemingly swept away.

“Oh no, no that’s really not...” Erin stuttered out.

“Don’t worry, I insist. Besides, it’s not like I’m going to bring them all out right now. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

Erin just sat helpless, staring as her friend brought the other figurines over to the table two by two, sometimes taking a moment to stroke one or cradle another just so. Half way through the statue of Ooru brightened, then went dull.

“Um, Freya, is that normal?” Erin asked, indicating the now inert jade figurine.

“Hmm? Oh. Yes, it just means that Ooru is back. He probably just finished up dealing with those Children.”

“Children? I agree they were pretty childish, but they looked a little old to be calling them that.”

Freya giggled quietly.

“That’s what they call themselves Erin. Children of Man. They’re just a bunch of self important zealots. Nothing Ooru couldn’t handle with four arms tied behind his back.”

Erin smiled in spite of herself as her friend returned with the last of the figurines.

“Do you think they’ll come back?” Erin asked, doing her best to keep the genuine anxiety out of her voice.

“I hope not. For their sake.”

Erin surveyed the figurines on top of the table. They were all exquisitely detailed and similar in size. Ooru sat in the center, colored in almost translucent green. To his left were three more like him. The first looked vaguely like a bear, or perhaps a wolf, with a strong chest and hackles raised, cast in milky blue. Next was a humanoid creature sitting cross-legged with a hand extended in front of itself, forefinger and thumb forming a circle, a rich sapphire in color. The last on the left Erin would have called a human woman, except she was a bit too lanky and had too many eyes, her hair pulled up on top of her head, all in forest green.

To Ooru’s right was another beast, its forelimbs almost twice the size of its haunches, and with a mass of tentacles instead of a head, colored in a yellowed green. On the far right was the largest of the figurines, a massive worm or caterpillar more than twice the size of the others, with a green body and yellow-brown armor plates.

Erin sat quietly, appreciating the fine detail of the clothing and faces, mulling over what her friend had said and done.

“You can touch them if you’d like, they won’t bite.”

Erin glanced at her friend, confused for a moment, then picked up the woman with the strange hair. On closer inspection Erin noticed she was resting her hands on top of a two handed sword planted in the ground in front of her, and that her lips were parted in some sort of scream.

“Are these all like… Your friend?” Erin asked.

“Yes. More or less. Don’t worry, they’ll only come out if I wake them up. I see you like Ulma.”

Erin returned the strange woman to the table in front of her and forced her eyes away from the figurines and back to her friend’s face. Freya was still smiling faintly, regarding her with warm eyes.

The nervous iciness that had pooled in Erin’s stomach melted away. Freya had been her friend since they had barely been able to walk. They may have grown apart a bit over the years, but what friends didn’t? If she wasn’t safe here, with her, she wasn’t safe anywhere.

“I’m guessing all of this is why you suddenly became so important, after your mom?”

Freya nodded sadly.

“Not that the stuffy old bastards on the council really listen much, but they know that they need us. They respected my grandmother; my mother and I not so much. But my grandmother only taught my mother, and they both only taught me, so if they really want to live they have to at least pay me lip service.”

“What exactly is it that you do then? For the counsel?”

“Provide protection mostly. They used to come to my grandmother for advice too, but they haven’t done much of that for a long time. In all honesty I don’t know much more than how to wake these up.”

“What exactly do you provide protection from?”

“Why do you think we’ve never had any gods here?”

“Oh… Are all of these really that… dangerous?”

“Absolutely. Ooru and Ulma are a bit more tactical, and the two more bestial ones are more or less exactly what you would expect. Zhi there isn’t a fighter, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous.”

“And that last one?” Erin asked, indicating the worm with her teacup.

“Oh, him?” Freya asked, running her free hand along the worm’s back. “I wouldn’t unleash him for anything other than the end of the world. My grandmother only introduced us the once, and she made sure we were a long way from here before she let him out.” Her face was suddenly deadly serious, her eyebrows drawn down in a frown.

Erin sipped at her tea, quietly watching her friend’s hand as she stroked the back of the worm.

Everything Freya had said made sense in a way. The council that ran the town didn’t exactly have a good record of listening to women, but after her mother’s funeral Freya had suddenly started to receive summons from them, and had gone from a normal girl to one of the most prominent women in the community overnight. Come to think of it, that was also about the same time some people had suddenly started looking at her as if she was carrying a plague. Still, one question was gnawing at her.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Erin asked, trying to keep her voice firm and steady. Freya’s expression was sad, but she had clearly been expecting the question. For a moment the self-possessed woman was gone, and the girl from her childhood was sitting in her place.

“I wanted to Erin. Really, I did. From the very beginning. But you have to understand, this is supposed to be a secret, the kind you keep no matter what. I swore to my grandmother not to tell anyone except under very specific circumstances. I’m telling you now, and I’m sorry I couldn’t before.”

“How many other people know?”

“Everything? Just the council. And probably their wives and families as well. Unfortunately, quite a few other people knew enough about my grandmother to think of her about the same as the men that just left. They aren’t very fond of me for pretty much the same reason.” Freya finished with a long draw from her drink.

“And what will you do? If those men come back?”

Freya shrugged.

“I asked Ooru to chase them out of town. If they’re smart they won’t come back. If they aren’t I’ll let him finish them off. I wasn’t kidding when I said he could do it with two arms.”

“You talk about… your friends... like you know them. Are they really alive? Can they see and hear us like this? Can they speak?”

“Yes, I don’t know, and sort of. I like to think they can see, and hear, and feel, like this.” Freya picked up Ooru’s statue and kissed it’s forehead, as if to emphasize her point.

Erin suddenly became very aware of how she had started absentmindedly running her fingers over Ulma’s statue as they talked.

“And what happens to all of us? If, you know...”

Freya snorted sardonically.

“You sound like my mother. Don’t worry, I’m still young. Besides, even if I never have a daughter, I can teach whoever I want. It doesn’t only have to be family Erin.”

Erin refrained from commenting on Freya’s love life, still unconsciously stroking the small statue. The two friends lapsed into a long silence, Freya staring off into space, her mind apparently somewhere far in the past. In the end, it was Erin that broke the silence.

“Hey Freya… I’m glad you finally told me.”

Freya just smiled and nodded, both of them pretending that Erin hadn’t been about to say something else entirely.

Happy holidays everyone. I hope you enjoy the extra story. As always, thanks for reading.

Places you can find me:

WordPress: rhunterwriter.wordpress.com DeviantArt: rhunterwriter.deviantart.com Tumblr: rhunterwriter.tumblr.com Twitter: twitter.com/RHunterWriter

[rhunterwriter-blog]

The Stormlord

“Do you know that feeling you get right before a thunderstorm? The way the wind rushes in, so thick with the smell of rain and soil that you can almost taste it, and it feels like you’re being swept up standing still? The way the clouds come boiling over the horizon, illuminated from inside by flashes of glowing blue? How the dust and leaves can just swirl around you, and you’re the only solid thing, waiting for the storm to come and wash the rest away?

“I love that feeling. More than I could ever describe. Or at least, I used to.”

The forest was black as death. The sun had set a short while ago, and the moon and stars were blocked out by thick storm clouds.

Vellana dodged through the forest as best she could, trying to orient herself in the brief flashes of lightning that struck in the woods around her, cringing in the split second before the crashing thunder that followed. She ran as fast as she dared, trying to avoid both getting too close to the trees tall enough to attract lightning and getting caught out in the open.

If she looked over her shoulder she could almost make out a dull blue glow through the trees, but she did her best to ignore it and kept running up the hillside.

She stumbled and fell, her pants caught by a gnarled root. Vallana cursed herself, not for the first time that evening. Then threw in another for her soaked and tattered clothing and her matted and tangled hair before forcing herself to her feet and running on.

It had been stupid, climbing this far over the hill just before a storm, but she had been hoping to see the Stormlord. He was a story, a legend of sorts that people told in her town. They said he was a man made of living lightning; that he glowed with the light of the storm and heralded its coming. When Vellana had seen the storm approaching she had thought it would be the perfect opportunity to see for herself. She loved the rain, and the feeling in the air right before a storm, but she hadn’t counted on how fast this storm would rush through the valley, or that she might be stranded out alone in the dark, dodging lightning. But here she was.

The trees began to thin as she ran up the hillside, and soft soil and greenery gave way to rocks and brambles. Vellana did her best to pretend there was no blue glow behind her, and that it wasn’t getting brighter. She was focused on reaching the top of the hill, and then getting back down the other side. Back down to where she might find some shelter from the rain and safety from the lighting.

She scrambled up the last few feet to the crest of the hill on hands and knees, tearing her clothes even more on the jagged rocks.

The crest of the hill was remarkably flat, dotted here and there with bushes and rocky outcrops.

The lightning flashing around her intensified, coming so fast that she could make out her surroundings almost as well as in daylight. A bolt struck a nearby outcrop and Vellana dove to the ground, narrowly avoiding the flying shards.

As she lay struggling to regain her senses she became increasingly aware of the dull glow at the edge of her vision, and of every hair on her body standing on end. She forced herself over onto her back to see a humanoid figure floating through the air towards her, its body formed of dancing bolts of blue electricity, arcs shedding off to caress the ground beneath it.

Vellana scrambled back on hands and feet as the creature approached, trying desperately to gain distance. The entity seemed to be looking down at her, watching curiously, closing the gap without effort. She tried to fumble to her feet, but the creature reached her while she was still on her knees and reached out to cup her chin.

Lightning arced through Vellana’s body, sending sparks of blue light dancing over her skin and streams of white hot fire burning through her veins. She floated gently into the air, her limbs spreadeagled, her hair standing out, also dancing with sparks. The lightning burned her, blinded her, aroused her.

Her heart stopped.

Time stopped.

What are you doing here little one? A deep voice questioned in her head.

I came to see the Stormlord. Came to see you. The truth came unbidden, floating up through her mind.

Why?

To see you…

But why?

… Because I love the rain. Love the lightning. Love the storms.

Indeed you do, little one. Would you like for them to be part of you?

What do you mean?

It wouldn’t hurt you any more than it already has. You’d still be you, just a bit more like me.

… I suppose. If it won’t hurt any more.

Vellana woke on the hilltop. The rain had lifted, and the sound of thunder was far away. As she lay on her back looking up at the sky, she realized she was seeing real stars, not just spots in her vision. A gap had opened up in the clouds, and the moon shone through enough for her to see clearly.

She forced herself to sit up, crossing her legs, and winced at the sudden pain. Groaning through gritted teeth, she bent her neck to look down at herself. Her clothing was burned as well as tattered now, and through the many holes she could see her dark skin was covered by red and white welts. She reached up to feel her face, and winced again as she found the same covering her cheeks and climbing up her neck.

Glancing around she found a puddle of still water and scrambled over to it. The face that looked back at her out of the water was her own, but now it was covered in a dendritic web of thin light lines. Her eyes, once so dark that they almost seemed black, shone brilliant blue in the moonlight.

Vellana stumbled to her feet, the strain of the night’s events making itself felt in every muscle and joint. She made her way down the hillside, carefully picking out every step in the moonlight, eager for a dry towel and the warm soft bed hopefully still waiting for her near the bottom of the hill.

“If I’m being honest, I guess I’d have to say I still love the feeling of a storm, but it’s different now. Instead of feeling it on my skin, I feel it inside of me. Calling me, warming me, welcoming me… Sometimes struggling to burst out of me. I always know when it’s going to rain, and just how bad the storm is going to be. But no matter how bad the storms get, I’m not afraid of them. For some reason it just feels like they can’t hurt me, or at least like they won’t.

“I’ve always loved the storms. I guess the only difference is that now it seems like the feeling is mutual.”

Sorry for the long wait. Life and work have been... Well, life and work. On the plus side, I have a bit of a backlog to post. As always, thanks for reading.

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