He shivered, considering their destination, the strange wolflike dreamers, and the thing called Sefir, only one representative of a group Ghaelya had called the Choir. Muttering a curse under his breath, he let the first glimmer of doubt cross his mind. Though he’d been well intentioned when he agreed to help, he doubted one city dweller’s ability to survive for so long, surrounded by such nightmares.
As the idea settled in, darkening his already somber mood, he looked to Uthalion and Brindani. Casually shielding his eyes, he glanced at Ghaelya, dreading what he knew he must attempt. He felt very much alone in that moment, but as the seemingly sole voice of surviving reason, he could not remain silent. Certain that only madness and death would greet them in the ruins of Torehpur, he said what none of them wanted to hear.
“We should turn back,” he said, forcing the words out and shattering the awkward quiet that enveloped them as surely as the darkness of the chill night air.
In truth, he spoke only to Ghaelya, his green eyes watching her reaction closely. She said nothing at first, her expression unreadable as he waited. But it was not her voice that first protested.
“No,” Brindani said, stirring lethargically beneath his cloak, his shadowed eyes reduced to two flickering glints of light in the campfire. “We will not turn back.”
Vaasurri ignored the half-elf, waiting only for Ghaelya to respond. It was her quest he had agreed to, and he would abandon it only by her word. She blinked and looked down, her hands balled into fists as a mix of emotions crossed her troubled features..
“We’ve come too far,” Uthalion said from above, glancing down only for a moment before returning his gaze to the south. “Best to just see it through now, stop these… things… If we’re able.”
Vaasurri glared at the human, wondering what mysterious force had Uthalion in its grip and fearing where it might lead them when all was said and done. He held his tongue for the moment and turned back to the genasi.
“Ghaelya?” he said, and she flinched as if startled from her thoughts. “You heard what Sefir said and saw what he wasor rather, what he had become. I hate to suggest the worst, but your sister”
“I don’t know,” she said suddenly, fixing him with a hard stare that she quickly broke. She fidgeted with her sword as she prepared to clean the still bloodied blade. “I just… need to think. I need to rest.”. Vaasurri merely nodded, feeling ashamed for broaching the subject. But he knew he would have regretted turning away from what he felt what right, even if it was painful to hear. He sat back, troubled, but willing to wait for the morning light and Ghaelya’s decision. It was some time before he noticed the dark, withering stare of Brindani from across the low flames of the campfire, and he wondered if his suggestion of turning back had already come too late.
In the abandoned, overgrown streets of Caidris, distant lightning nickered in empty windows and flashed in stilled puddles. A soft breeze whispered through the grass and tall weeds, like secrets being shared among conspiratorial ghosts. Water dripped languidly from the rotted rooftops, ‘ splashing like soiled tears on the wet ground, as Khault slid sinuously between the empty homes and shops of his former friends and neighbors. With quiet, unnatural grace he approached the battered, broken body of Sefir, and he lifted one of the singer’s lifeless hands, caressing the pale flesh and sharp claws as if comforting an injured child.
“How they have savaged my dear friend,” he said, the sound of his voice pouring over the body in ripples, echoing and reporting Sefir’s injuries in greater detail as Khault blindly studied each cut and swollen limb. “Beaten. Impaled. They even stole your voice in the end, but it was always meant to be, I suppose.”
A thin, roping tentacle unfurled from beneath his voluminous, dirty white robes and lifted’the serrated blade of his fallen brother from the mud. He turned it over curiously as other growths reached out, stroking and studying the “weapon, even tasting the rust-marked steel.
“The warrior that presents the sword to his enemies must always find its twin presented back upon him. They could not have known your mercy, dear Sefir,” Khault intoned somberly as he stood back from the body. He cast the blade into the mud angrily, overcome with a primal urge that caused him to gnash his many rows of teeth. He calmed himself after a moment, a sliver of reason still strong in his mind. “But you have succeeded, though you sacrifice your flesh to do so. They shall come to us, ushered to Tohrepur by one of our blood as our dreams foretold. The Lady shall have her twins, and their song shall be carried far and wide, a glorious crusade of Voice and Pronhet.”
With a wide, fang-filled smile of sharklike, uneven teeth beneath his scarred, eyeless visage, he turned to the south, imagining the simple mortals escorting the girl to her destiny. The idea of the brutish, blood-thirsty men gawping at her and protecting her as if she were as low as they, turned his stomach, and his smile faded to a jagged scowl.
“I should like to sacrifice them myself,” he growled, envisioning the deed and the ease with which he might steal their pitiful wills and wits, forcing them to slay one another for his Lady’s glory. “But I shall not disobey the Lady’s will.”
He stretched, his changed body writhing, defying the physical limits he had once known and filling with a power far beyond the farmer that had known Uthalion. Sensitive tentacles lashed the mud, cooling themselves and tasting the soil even as Khault shifted his weight forward, half walking, half slithering away from Sefir’s body.
“I must be swift and greet them upon our Lady’s shore,” he said, then added over his knotted shoulder, “I shall report your service and make your name well known to your… successor.”
With a swift, rolling gait he made his way through the shadows of Caidris, sparing little attention to once familiar places. He paused as he turned curiously to a small tree and the rounded stone placed by the trunk. A glimmer of memory flashed among his thoughts, as quick as the storm’s lightning and gone in a blink, bringing with it a strange sensation of sorrow. He hissed warily and pressed on to the outskirts of town, some part of him vaguely aware of the once oft-visited gravethat of his wife, a place where he’d spread the ashes of his two youngest sons.
Brindani had turned away from the fire and stared out across the highland in troubled wonder. The thick veil of night retreated, drifting away from him to reveal gently swaying grasses and insects taking wing. As he traced the wandering path of a large moth, he shuddered and closed his eyes. He rubbed them fiercely, afraid to open them again lest they show him even more of what should be hidden by the dark. Even with his eyes shut he could hear the moth, rapidly beating its wings, swooping closer, and fluttering over his left shoulder as it was drawn to the fire.
He imagined that if he’d needed to, he could have deftly plucked it from the air without looking. Gingerly he opened his eyes, stared at his hands, and wondered what would become of himand what he was becoming.
The image of Sefir, writhing in the mud like a landed fish, gasping for air and gurgling as the wound in his lung denied him breath, was burned in Brindani’s mind. He recalled peculiar details the more he thought of itthe set of the singer’s jaw, the remaining pale eye and its dimmed blue iris, the smooth curve of an earlobe, and the tendons of Sefir’s throat, stretching taut above the hollow of a malformed collar bone. Despite the teeth and scars and squirming tentacles, Brindani could see the man within the beast.