(Fan)fiction Friday 11: Shallya's Will Ch. 3

A Sign Of Things To Come

Tags: [Story] [More of Shallya's Work] [Mutant Child] [Ominous End?]

It was high noon when Vesper crested the last hill and laid eyes on Ostermark’s capital for the first time in her life. Bechafen was an enormous city by her standards, with more than 10.000 inhabitants, she had been told. The temple she grew up in could have fit inside the city’s walls a hundred times, probably many hundred times.

Vesper raised her petite hands to provide some shade from the sun, scanning the city for a white-washed temple like the one she grew up in. The heat was sweltering, even on the hilltop, with a weak, cool breeze grasping at locks of her tangled hair. The initiate paused her search for a moment to run her fingers over her forehead, sighing quietly as she felt the thin sheen of sweat pool along her fingers. A few drops ran into her hair, the rest she shook off her hand, to the ground. The hooded robe really was not made as summer wear, at all. She reached up and pushed the hood back, free from her neck with a small shudder. The cloth clung hesitantly to her skin for a moment, only to let go, leaving an uncomfortable wet patch.

Standing on the tips of her toes to add a few inches to her unimpressive five feet and a few inches, the novice let her eyes scour what she could see of the city once more. Finally, she caught a glimpse of what she thought could be a temple of Shallya. It was situated in the rich district of town, opposite to the gate she was close to. With a small smile on her lips, she set off towards the city gate.

*****

Some twenty minutes later, Vesper crossed the threshold into the city, giving a small nod to the two guards keeping a watch over the surrounding lands, and again to the two standing on either side of the entrance inside. Immediately, the initiate felt enclosed. Not to a claustrophobic degree, but the large city and the mere knowledge and feeling of thousands of other people going about their daily lives around her was quite breathtaking. She did not even realize that she had stopped to look up at the two-story buildings until one of the guards cleared his throat quietly. With a mumbled “sorry,” the girl continued down the main street, into the city.

It would not take long for young neophyte to realize just what conditions many of Bechafen’s inhabitants lived under. There were beggars on every street. The coughs and groans of the malnourished, the sneezes of the diseased, it was all only a few steps away from the main avenues running through the city. She continued onwards, passing through a wonderful market that was absolutely brimming with exotic and wonderful things. A troupe of performers awed her for the better part of ten minutes, and the herald’s news for double of that. The war against Archaon’s forces had left much turmoil.

Finally, wrestling herself free from the grip of the lively, beating heart of the city’s commerce, she set off down a less-travelled street. As she walked, the houses became progressively less well-maintained, the kids playing in the streets increasingly thin, and the amount of people sitting or standing around without work or a goal in life grew ever bigger.

After a long walk, she came upon a small square lined with ramshackle houses and empty food-stands. A group of kids were fighting over some sort of toy, and several groups of people were dotted around the open, unpaved area, many of them looking ill or even crippled. The initiate paced to a free bench and set down her things, drawing in a deep breath, feeling the familiar tingle of satisfaction that she always felt as she was about to start work in an area.

Vesper opened her bag of medical supplies and looked up, smiling at the lone, elderly man with a measure of surprise. Normally, she would be crowded with patients the instant she was ready. She reached out her left hand and placed it on the man’s right forearm, a calm, serious expression settling on her face. Often, people needed someone to listen just as much as they needed physical assistance, so she always remained prepared for both. The man looked down at where she touched him. He was visibly surprised for a moment, then relaxed.

It turned out that he had a minor infection in a wound on his leg. The ardent novice cleaned the injury and patched him up again efficiently, receiving the deepest thanks from the man. Like everyone else she had treated after the night the temple burned down, he commented on how cool and soothing her touch was. She merely smiled to him at the remark, otherwise conversing idly as she worked. The more focus she could take off someone’s wound, the better.

After the man had been treated, it seemed as if the rest of the square became less wary of her. Vesper wondered briefly why they had been cautious at all, given the mission of all Shallya’s faithful, but quickly let the thought go. There were plenty of wounds to bandage and heal, and plenty of minds to mend.

Hours passed as she treated everyone who came to her in the small square. The stench of sweat and long-unwashed clothes hung in the air from the crowd of people around her that needed treatment, even long after the summer sun fell below the walls of the city. At some point, someone offered her a meager meal, which she declined as politely as she could. These people obviously needed it more than her. “Give it to the next beggar you come across, madam. Thank you, and go with Shallya’s blessing.” Vesper gave the middle-aged woman a smile, and returned to stitching up someone’s wounded arm.

Finally, as night truly settled on the square, the initiate started to pack up what remained of her supplies. She finished the day off with blessing every single person present along with promising to come back the day after, and then set off back towards the market square.

*****

A frail, bony hand gripped her left sleeve and held on. Vesper was forced to lurch to the side a little. The initial fear of being gripped vanished quickly, as she looked into the eyes of an obviously desperate woman, somewhere in her thirties. Ragged blonde hair surrounded her starved face.

“Please, miss. Please! It’s my boy. Please, you have to help him! You have to help!” Her voice was pleading, but still barely more than a whisper.

It was hard to say if she was truly so weak that she could barely speak, or if something else was the matter. The startled girl put what she hoped was a calming hand on the woman’s shoulder, smiling peacefully to her. “I will gladly help your son, ma’am. I promise that he will be fine. Take me to him.”

Before turning to lead Vesper down an alley by her sleeve, the blonde-haired woman’s eyes turned abruptly painful as the initiate said that the boy would be fine. It took only twenty seconds for the stumbling novice and the hunger-wracked woman to reach a collection of planks and clay that could only be classified as a house in the most liberal sense of the word. It was more a hut on the verge of collapsing than a proper building. The low-hanging ceiling was wet despite it being summer, and it arched downwards heavily, forcing even the petite novice to bend down as she entered.

Inside was darkness. A figure rustled around in the back of the one-room hut, but with no light inside the house, she was unable to truly distinguish much of anything in there. “Ma’am, I am going to call upon Shallya to create light for us, so I can see while I work. Please, do not be alarmed. This is an entirely harmless prayer.”

The young initiate waited for a few seconds, more sensing than seeing a slow nod from the woman, now standing just inside the hut after closing the door. Vesper mumbled the words she had been taught so many years ago, now, and held out her hand. From nowhere, a small sphere of light flickered into existence, almost as if someone had breathed out and the globe had followed. A milky-white, cloudy ball formed, and a soft light illuminated the entire hut.

Vesper’s eyes focused on the woman first. She looked scared, oddly, but determined as well, standing guard at the door. The girl followed the older woman’s eyes as they flickered from her and to the back of the hut. What Vesper saw made her jolt backwards. She exhaled sharply as her head bumped against the soft, wooden ceiling, her eyes rapidly taking in the sight in front of her.

A boy, probably around ten or eleven years of age. As so many others in Ostermark’s capital, he bore the distinct signs of having had too little food for too long. But that was not what had shocked the initiate. The boy’s hands… Where he should have had hands, his arms transitioned into obscene, orange-red crab-claws big enough that it seemed a wonder that he could even stand up with them. Despite this obvious mutation, he had not charged the foreign girl entering his home. He whimpered in the light, and pressed himself up against the back wall. Vesper cast a glance at the woman by the door, her voice at once frightful and accusing.

“What has he done to become a mutant? What horrible deed runs in your family’s blood? How have you restrained him from attacking me?”

The questions hit the older woman like lashings from a whip. She shrunk away from the novice, though remaining committed to guarding the door. Her voice was tearful and desperate as she spoke.

“I-I don’t know! I don’t… Two months ago, his hands started to change. He has always been a good boy, I swear by the twin-tailed comet itself! We have done nothing to deserve this, miss. I only wish that someone could change him back-“

Her voice broke. She abandoned the door, running over to cradle the equally frightened boy in her arms. When she looked up again, her face was lined with trailing tears. There were no more words, she could not speak, only look desperately at the untried initiate, hoping for a miracle.

Vesper’s lips parted, but she stopped herself from speaking. It was impossible for her to suppress a very sharp tinge of fear as she looked upon the mutated boy. She certainly had no idea how to cure mutation, if there was a cure at all. But how could this boy be a mutant at all? He could not have made the journey to Mordheim and back here unnoticed, and there was not a hint of chaotic insanity in him. Yet, he still bore those enormous, scissor-sharp claws.

She swallowed, wet her lips, and hesitantly spoke once more. “I… I’m very sorry, ma’am, but I can’t change what has happened to your son. I don’t know of any cure for mutation. Your secret is… Safe, with me, but I cannot help you.” She glanced at the boy, meeting his eyes briefly. They were wide, scared, and above all, contained a deep-rooted sadness. Far too much bad had happened far too quickly to such a young boy, Vesper thought before bowing her head and hurrying out the door.

For the first five minutes, the initiate scurried through the mostly empty streets of night-time Bechafen. Her thoughts whirled unrestrained, but kept returning to the look in the boy’s eyes. He had not been mindless. He was an innocent victim of a cruel world. What did that mean for the mutants that had attacked Mercy’s Light? Had they once been what this boy was now?

Vesper’s light run slowed gradually. She wandered slowly through the city, across the empty marketplace, past noisy taverns and whorehouses, barely noticing what was around her. She knew the general direction she had to take to get to the noble district, and certainly needed time to think before meeting her sisters in faith. So lost in thought was she, that she did not notice a young man walking opposite to her stopping dead in his tracks, glancing at her robes and the red heart and drop of blood over her chest. The man paced ahead of her towards the noble district, and was soon out of sight once more.

After more than half an hour of wandering, the tired, pale initiate stepped through the gate to the noble district. She sent a smile to a guard in a metal breastplate and asked for directions to the temple of Shallya. Upon receiving the directions, she offered a blessing to the guard and walked off purposefully. The temple was some four hundred steps up ahead, in the middle of a lavish, paved square. “Perhaps a bit too authoritative”, Vesper thought. Especially the five steps up to the double doors seemed an odd choice to the ascetic, giving servant of Shallya who now stepped up them.

Having knocked on the door a few times, she was received by a lightly panting, dark-haired abbess in white robes. The initiate noted the lack of the bleeding heart upon her left breast, but the revered mother certainly smelled like Vesper sometimes believed she did after a long day working in a crowded hospital. They exchanged brief pleasantries, the woman introducing herself as Abbess Syrith. She was in her late twenties, surprisingly tall and certainly very good-looking, Vesper noted mentally.

The initiate was shown to a small, sparsely furnished room with a prayer mat, a small desk and chair, and a roughly hewn bed. The abbess excused herself, and left the tired girl to drift off to sleep in the small, cool room.

(Fan)fiction Friday 10: Shallya's Will Ch. 2

The Void

Tags: [Nightmare] [Kindness and doing Shallya's Work] [More Story]

Weakness had taken a hold of her limbs. Her breathing came in sobbing gasps. Vesper’s body was shaking, exhaustion tearing at the edges of her fraying mind as she stumbled through the pitch-black, cursed woods. Her best friend’s death was imprinted on her mind. All the unsteady initiate could think about was the pleading look that Amelia had given her when she had realized, in the last possible moment, what was happening. Perhaps worst of all, Vesper was no longer sure if the look had been a cry for help, or simply a plea for it all to end.

The pale, lurching initiate finally sank to her knees, her breathing ragged. Every fiber of her being screamed in pain, but still, she carried on. She had to get away from that horrible place. With even with her vision flagging, Vesper continued to move forward, crawling along the forest floor in a precarious haze. Abrasions had started appearing on her hands as she ungracefully planted her palms against rocks, fallen branches and the raw earth. Her arms failed her, finally, though her fingers still clawed at the earth. A frustrated, desperate sob pierced the silent woods, the girl giving in and sinking down against the ground entirely, rolling slowly to her side, only to fall the rest of the way onto her back. For a moment, her mind screamed at her to continue, but the darkness of sleep descended mercilessly.

*****

She crashed against the floor, impossibly wide blue eyes darting around the dark room as she frantically crawled and clawed her way into a corner between the next bed over and the wall. For a few short moments, her eyes were glassy, her sweat-covered body sliding against the polished, worn floor as she attempted to squeeze herself further and further into the corner.

Vesper’s ragged breathing stopped, her body prickling with what felt like icy needles as she saw a vague form descend and land lightly on the planks, quite close to her. Her heels continued to slide over the floor, her breathing snapping back into existence, coming in fast bursts interspersed with hacking sobs. The figure reached both its thin arms out, palms lifted to show that it had no aggressive intentions.

Suddenly, as if it had just broken water, Amelia’s head pierced the darkness around Vesper, her hands landing on the terrified girl’s shoulders, and then sliding up to her cheeks in a gentle, slow caress. Amelia, Vesper’s best friend in the orphanage, was used to her friend’s nightmares. She kneeled in front of Vesper, who was now slowly calming down, realizing that her nightmare had been just that.

Amelia embraced her panicked friend, positioning her head against her own shoulder. The two leaned against each other lightly, shaking as one with Vesper’s muted, subsiding sobs. After what felt like an hour, she sniffled heavily, reached her small right hand up to her eyes to wipe her tears, though she still had wet streaks down her cheeks.

Amelia was stronger, braver and much further ahead in her studies than Vesper. Despite her being only fourteen, Vesper felt certain that Amelia could do her ordainment ritual the next morning and pass, if she had been allowed. Vesper smiled weakly at her friend, and planted a hand on the railing of the empty bunk she had been leaning halfway against. Amelia got up slowly, taking Vesper’s left hand, pulling her up by it.

*****

With a burst of hot air, the initiate jolted and opened her eyes. It was morning. The wind carried the scent of beginning rot with it into the forest, still only a trace in the gentle morning breeze. Vesper exhaled tiredly. Her body was still tense after the dream, and even more so, she ached and tingled from the amount of strain put on it the night before. With a weak gasp, the initiate blew hair out of her face and rolled to her side.

She bit her lower lip gently upon setting her palms down against the ground, dragging her legs under herself to sit on her heels. Vesper looked down at her palms. They were scabbed and sore, yet somehow quite cool. She had trouble remembering how her hands had taken all those small cuts, though the cool feeling had stuck with her since waking up in the forest the night before. Had it not been for the marauding band of chaos-worshippers, she would have been a priestess now. The Mercy’s Light temple would have been standing, and Amelia…

Vesper shook her head in a vain attempt to clear her mind of the images that came flooding back, clasping her palms to the sides of her head. She took a deep breath, silently mouthing the words for a prayer. For the first time since last night, she called upon Shallya’s power. As it always was when she did, the calming presence of her goddess became clearer and more present than ever. Calmness washed over her, flushed her worries away and hid the horrific images from the previous night. For now, at least. The initiate exhaled, her breathing coming much easier now.

Her body felt lighter, as if she had had a full night’s sleep and a good meal already. The scabs on her hands peeled off by themselves, revealing fresh, lively pink skin below. Normally, the order refrained from calling upon their goddess for such small injuries, but Vesper felt this to be a special case. Placing a hand against the ground again she pushed off, getting up on her feet again. She looked out from between the thinning tress at the edge of the forest, her eyes fastening on the charcoal walls of what had been her home for the past twenty years.

The smoking ruin of burned wood and smoldering stone seemed quite surreal as it was, on top of a small hill covered in swaying, green grass. In the morning light, the path that the chaos warband had taken away from the temple was obvious enough. The ground was trampled, torn and much of the vegetation dead in an almost completely straight line from the burning ruin and into the forest some hundred steps to Vesper’s side.

The white-robed initiate stayed still, staring at her ruined home. She had placed the palm of her left hand against the bark of a tree to her left, pressing gently against it as faint memories of what had transpired the night before in the temple courtyard fought to surface. She offered no resistance, but for now, the blessing she had cast kept her mind at ease. There was no one else left. Not the abbess, none of the guards, not a single sister. She had been unable to save her only friend.

With a heavy sigh, Vesper bowed her head. Despite having been deemed worthy of becoming a priestess, she knew very well that she was, in many ways, still an apprentice. A novice. Without a temple to call home, without her teachers, she would simply have to build up the knowledge that they had had, herself. A fitting penance it was, too. She would wander the world to learn what it was to live a life that pleased Shallya. She would help the sick and suffering.

Vesper sank to her knees slowly. Her eyes were fastened on the swirly lines of smoke rising from the abandoned temple as she once more mouthed a quiet prayer. This time, there was no magic involved. It was merely a show of dedication to the daughter of mercy, followed by a short oath. The kneeling, blue-eyed novice swore to Shallya, her goddess, that the next five years of her life would be spent wandering the empire, helping those in need, relieving suffering wherever she could find it.

She kept still and silent for a long while after finishing her prayers, her eyes slowly scanning all that remained of the buildings on the small hill in front of her. Not until noon came did she stand up to walk away, a timid sort of determination in her steps. The spell would keep her in control for the rest of the day, at least.

*****

It took Vesper the rest of the day to wander eastwards to the small delta of rivers that ran into Ostermark from the river Stir. She camped by the riverside just before the point where it split into smaller streams, eating what she could find of berries and plants, keeping warm with a cover of fallen branches and grass. Exhausted after the day of wandering, she woke up only once, barely even remembering her nightmare by the time she became aware.

On the second, sunny day, she crossed the river. She had seen a map of Ostermark only a year ago, and remembered reasonably clearly that if she wandered east, she would eventually reach a town lying along the main road north.

Getting across the river was no easy task, but nevertheless, she managed without too many complications. It did, however, leave her and her clothes utterly soaked. Wringing her hair was easy enough, at least to a point. It had always been wild and curly, so the wild bath was hardly noticeable in how her tresses fell down over her shoulders. The robe, however, was another matter. The area she was in was wilderness, clear and simple. Even so, parading around naked did not seem like a good idea, much less a proper thing to do.

In the end, she compromised by taking a one-hour break in a secluded little meadow, sunning herself while her robe dried almost entirely. She was hungry, but knew that she was not too far from the town of Burgenhof either. And so, well before noon, the initiate anxiously stepped into the town.

Having no idea of what to expect, she timidly approached the first citizen she saw, asking for directions to the temple of Shallya. What came to pass next would end up becoming a common occurrence for her. The town had no temple to Shallya, merely a shrine in another temple. As a follower of Shallya, Vesper was introduced to the resident priest, and allowed to tend to the shrine of her goddess.

There was barely time to remove a few old offerings before the first supplicant approached her. Even in a small town, there were plenty of sick and hurt people. Many were mentally unstable, and even more suffered in their daily life, living under horrible conditions that Vesper was quite shocked to hear of. She ended up staying in the town for a week, before feeling the need to travel onwards, following the road north. The town’s desperate need had been sated, and she did not want to get bogged down in one place.

For the next three months, Vesper Adalie travelled north along the Bechafen-Kadrin road. Soon, she found that travelling merchants and peddlers had spread the word of her impending visit to a town much ahead of time. It would often be hard for her to enter a settlement to find its shrine before she was swarmed with the needy. Festering wounds and boils had become a part of everyday life. Crushed souls and minds were mended almost every day. And, when treatment was over, the patient would without fail thank her, take her hands and remark how soothing and cooling her touch was. It seemed almost as if Shallya had blessed her in particular. No matter if she used bandages or prayer, the result was the same. Laying her hands on the patient always soothed them. Calmed them.

Along with the awareness of her pilgrimage came an unforeseen circumstance for Vesper. She started receiving gifts. The inhabitants of every single town she had visited had gladly given her of their food, but the gifts grew more lavish the closer she came to the province’s capital, Bechafen. At first, she occasionally received a few pieces of copper.

Vesper had never needed nor handled money before. The people of the land freely gave her what she needed to live, and so, it seemed only natural that she gave the money she received back to those who needed it far more than her. She would go to bed hungry some nights, having shared what food she had with a beggar. She lived the best life she possibly could, keeping the tenets taught to her in her heart.

And still, with all the good she brought, all the suffering she relieved, she could not rest easy. Seeing weapons made her queasy, bringing back horrible imagery from the night the temple was attacked. She awoke often during the night, screaming from nightmares she was too tired or hungry to remember. Whenever she first came to a new town, the people always feared the worst, only to find out of her nightmares.

Eventually, Vesper built up somewhat of a reputation in the rural, dark province. A reputation of someone so preoccupied with helping all of the suffering that what she saw came back to haunt her in the night. It became commonplace for Vesper to find sleeping forms outside of the shrine when she came to in the morning. When she questioned them, they all said the same. They had been praying for her, so that she might continue her work.

On the last night in the last town before she reached Ostermark’s capital of Bechafen, Vesper was gifted a silver-filigree symbol of a heart and a single drop of blood. The creator, a smith whose wife the young initiate had nursed back to health, approached her and spoke to her as if she was otherworldly, a habit that people had fallen into worryingly much when addressing her. She had come to appreciate the hooded robe more and more, so that she might have a chance of not being recognized immediately upon entering new settlements.

This state of things, however, was to change soon.

(Fan)fiction Friday 9: Shallya's Will Ch. 1

Mercy's Light Extinguished

Tags: [Story] [Death] [Violence] [Blood] [Implied Rape] [Implied Torture]

A bloodcurdling scream broke the silence of the spring’s early dusk. A moment of deathly quiet descended over the courtyard. An explosion of splintering wood followed, as a giant, black-bladed axe penetrated the gate’s old oak planks. A second axe followed, next to the first. The gate buckled, curving inwards as the sound of plate crashing against it tore through the early evening’s sudden silence. Vesper looked around in sudden panic, seeing the initiates around her in much the same state.

Her eyes locked with Amelia’s. The force of the second crash against the gate shook some of the initiates from their fear-dulled reverie. Vesper and Amelia had always found strength in each other, but now her normally-calm eyes looked back at Vesper with rising panic.

The third crash was the last. A tower of a man smashed shoulder-first through the gate, the eight-pointed symbol of chaos decorating his armor like obscene jewelry. In one sweeping move, he bent down on one knee and gathered up his grotesquely-large weapons, one in each hand. He let out a deep, roaring laughter, casting his fiery red eyes on the first initiate in the frightened flock that had begun pulling back from the gate. More black-armored warriors and horrible, disfigured mutants appeared through the gate, piling into the courtyard, cutting off all chances of flight from the oncoming slaughter.

A monstrous creature stepped through the gate. He was human, but was covered in living, blinking eyes. Every bit of visible skin was dotted with them: Large, small, crying blood or long-since dried and rotted away from their gaping sockets. His nose flared in bored disgust, his eyes scanning the frightened group of initiates.

Behind the white-robed group of young women, the door to the living quarters adjoining the orphanage was opened, and out of it came the five guards the temple had. Vesper caught the man covered in eyes breaking into a brief, arrogant smile, then his arm shot out and sent a dark mass hurtling towards Amelia. The woman was knocked over backwards, her eyes bulging, tearing at invisible hands that seemed to have locked around her neck.

That was all the agitation needed by the throng of invaders. The giant, black-clad warriors and the disfigured mutants set into a cacophonous, bloodthirsty roar, and then charged. One guard had managed to get in front of the clump of initiates. Vesper saw his head fly, an expression of terror frozen on the helmet-clad face. A jet of hot blood burst from the falling carcass’ opened neck, spraying into the cold air. The steaming, warm liquid splattered onto the warrior who had separated the guard’s head and body, and onto Vesper as well. She took a step back, her icy blue eyes wide with horrified shock. Her back bumped up against the wooden pillar situated right in the middle of the courtyard. The initiate’s hands had already started fumbling over the wood behind her, searching for a way backwards, but it was too late.

A crazed, screaming aberration rushed towards her, sword lowered and ready to strike. Her throat constricted. Her heart felt like it had stopped beating as a thousand tiny prickles of fear poked at her innards. The sword pierced forward, the air audibly sliced apart as the point of the blade was thrust at her stomach.

*****

She awoke, wetly gasping for air. One gasp followed by another, and another. Her senses assaulted her with darkness, a pregnant silence enveloping her. She sat completely still, the rough bark of the oak behind her comforting her with its mere presence. Slowly, her breathing leveled out. Had Amelia been here, she would have calmed her.

For another long, quiet moment she sat there, her hands slowly moving to her stomach. Her robe was torn and wet with something sticky, something that was not water. Her fragile mind constantly threatened her with wandering back to the events of a few hours ago, back to all that she had seen. “No,” she whispered quietly to herself, as if her voice alone could stop the dark path of her thoughts. “No.” A more decisive note loomed briefly in her voice. She ducked her head when she heard how loud the word sounded the second time around.

Now was not the time to waste the second chance that Shallya had given her. Amelia could still be alive. The possibility was there. Vesper had always remained certain that if something was ever to happen to her friend, she would feel it. She felt sick, but it was not the end. Not yet.

The young initiate’s upper body lurched to the right, determined as she was to get up. Her right hand instinctively shot down against the ground, stopping her halfway in her tumble towards the ground. The sudden stop made her feel like vomiting. Again. She bit her lower lip, leaning over further, shakily placing her left hand next to her right, pushing off from the ground. Barely halfway upwards, she had to grab at the bark of the tree behind her, clamping onto it, tearing a nail in the process of staying relatively upwards.

Her abused stomach muscles convulsed. She felt like screaming. There was nothing left to throw up, but she had to double over anyway. Tears forced themselves from her eyes, her mouth agape as her esophagus and stomach worked, allowing only for intermittent coughs of air.

Finally, she was able to stand again. Her shaking fingers clutched the crust of the tree. Time could only be dwindling. “I –have- to move,” she whispered to herself, putting one foot on the forest floor, a small distance away from the tree that had been her companion the last indefinable stretch of time. The other foot went out in front. Vesper’s stomach felt strange. Empty, yet tiny quakes continued to run through her painfully. Another step. The path taken by the marauding band into the forest was obvious enough. Easy to follow.

She stumbled through the dark night, a hand clutching her tense stomach, her way lit only by the sparsely-starred sky above. She staggered from tree to tree, slowly. Certainly, Vesper was no tracker, but she became more and more certain that the trail of the band of mutants and black-clad warriors was widening, and it seemed as if they had begun looking for somewhere to camp.

For the second time that night, a scream pierced the silence. Distant, this time, but close enough that cold fright tore through Vesper’s chest. Amelia. The scream was Amelia’s. Breathlessly, the battered initiate upped her pace, her heart’s beating soon resounding loudly in her ears. There was still time.

There was still time.

*****

She could see flames up ahead, flickering with occasional shadows of large shapes moving around the clearing. The air pulsed with an ungodly, horrible noise. It took a while for the staggering, panting initiate to realize that what she heard was the twisted prayer of chaos. Chants to the dark gods. Raucous laughter began to become audible below the chanting, with the sound of skin against skin coming soon after.

Vesper placed her right hand against the trunk of an old oak, doubling over briefly while gasping for air. She looked ahead, her eyes swimming slightly with tears of despair. The light from the flames flickered, illuminating a gathering of warriors and aberrations massed in front of a crude stone block that Vesper could only assume was some sort of altar. The horned, eye-covered man presided over the assembled flock, chanting loudly with one arm raised, the other slowly moving over the top of the unholy stone table in front of him.

The flames flickered again. The man held a severed human head by the hair. In his trance, he appeared to be painting a barbarous symbol upon the stone surface with the blood and raw juices leaking from what he was holding.

She had to look away, her entrails turning in disgust. Instinctively, she held a hand up to cover her mouth, but there was nothing physical to hold back, only a hacking cough. Vesper turned her head away from the camp, sinking down along the trunk of the tree she was hiding behind. The young initiate felt her heart drop in her chest. Where was Amelia? The sound had surely come from here, and it was not her head that the vile heretic was using to draw with.

There was a flash of red light from behind her. The eight-pointed sign that the horned man had been creating was pulsing with light. At first, the rapid pulses of the light almost blinded Vesper, but slowly, her vision adapted, or the blinking slowed to a lazy shift in hue from blood-red to almost black.

Vesper could clearly feel the difference in the air’s charge. The feeling of the area had gone from bad to worse. Whatever was happening on the altar, it was dangerous. She had to find Amelia and then the both of them had to get away. Where was not important. Once more, Vesper’s eyes darted around the camp, passing heaps of armor, filth, weapons and even human body parts. Finally, with the aid of the sickening light now bathing the camp, she saw it. A silhouette behind the altar, tied to the fallen trunk of a tree that surely had to have been as old as the world itself. The person on top quivered faintly. It was a woman, but her head was turned away from Vesper.

The figure’s arms and legs were pulled down along the curved sides of the enormous log, tied and held in place with black leather straps. The curve of her legs looked unnatural, too smooth. It only took Vesper’s trained eyes and mind another heartbeat to figure out why. Every bone in them had to have been shattered or fractured. The figure stirred. Vesper was unable to hear anything through the increasingly loud chanting, but she saw the unmistakable shake of the body’s shoulders. A sob. The person was alive.

With the ritual seeming to close in on some sort of feverish climax, Vesper rose from the ground, staggering along the edge of the clearing. She passed the altar, casting a glance at it. For a moment, she felt sure that one of the eyes socketed everywhere on the horned man’s body followed her moves, but he made no move to have her captured, nor did any of the men or mutants.

At last, Vesper was past the altar, closer to the large, fallen log. Reaching up to brush a lock of matted, golden-brown hair out of her eyes, she cast a glance past the tree she was hiding behind. The figure imprisoned figure was still more than ten steps away, but close enough that she could have heard Vesper approaching, were it not for the deafening, hellish chanting.

Vesper swallowed, her eyes roaming down over the naked figure. She was tied very tightly against the large log, barely able to move her limbs at all. Her back was marred by what appeared to be whip-marks, cuts and a few large bruises. The worst, however, came further down. Vesper averted her eyes immediately, closing her eyes tightly.

The mad, horrific chanting seemed to be reaching a crescendo, only to abruptly stop. Complete silence enveloped the camp.

Vesper cast another glance past the tree. The horned, eye-covered man had left his position at the altar and picked up two jagged, ceremonial-looking knives. He was moving purposefully towards the figure tied to the large, fallen tree, with three of the bulky humanoid warriors in tow.

Vesper’s eyes darted from him to the tree, seeing the figure tied to the giant log look up. The initiate’s heart skipped a beat, a tingling sensation starting in her head and chest, slowly descending until it layered in the pit of her stomach, weighing her down.

Amelia’s blonde hair was frayed and appeared to have been roughly cut off in places. Both corners of her mouth were ruptured and dribbling blood. Her nose appeared to be broken, and her deep blue eyes were dulled with pain. She had trouble keeping her head steady, her throat working, trying to say something, but her words never left her throat. All that Vesper heard was a vague hiss of air from the girl’s opened mouth.

With powerless desperation rising in her chest, Vesper looked at her lifelong friend. Amelia was too far gone, too groggy to realize what was going on. Her head wavered a little as she seemed to attempt to focus on Vesper, then, finally, her head simply fell to the barky surface below it with a small thump, eyelids half closed.

The lead cultist stopped at the side of the trunk, a dagger in each hand. He was already lifting the two blades high above Amelia’s abused, bare back. It seemed as if in the last possible moment, clarity forced itself upon the beaten and battered initiate. Her eyes opened, staring into Vesper’s. She looked frightened and in pain, far from the blissful slumber they had always been taught. Amelia’s breathing accelerated and she began to writhe what little she could in her bonds.

Vesper refused to move her eyes from Amelia’s, but it was obvious what happened. The young woman’s body jerked once, twice. She squirmed and continued to writhe, albeit far more weakly than before. Blood began to bubble from her throat, overflowing her lips. Red beads rapidly assembled and formed, trailing down to the initiate’s chin, clinging on only to loosen from her skin and drip down. Her body jerked again with a third stab, causing her to arch her back, eyes rolling upwards, before she finally collapsed down against the log.

There was no sign of oncoming paradise in this; there was only a horrible, tortured death, alone and amongst enemies. Tears trailed from Vesper’s eyes, her stare staying locked with Amelia’s eyes, even as those deep blue eyes slowly, painfully lost the luster of life.

Vesper blinked, shaking her head. She realized that her hands were clasped in front of her mouth, that her breaths were coming through her nose in heavy bursts. The three warriors accompanying the leading cultist had kneeled next to Amelia’s body, and were now lapping up the streams of blood formed down over the young woman’s body.

With her limbs shaking, Vesper stumbled backwards, away from the tree she was hiding behind, back into the darkness of the forest.