CHARLIE #2
It was supposed to be the safe decision.
But almost immediately, I felt my hackles rise.
The landscape I’d at first taken for normal hills was more uniform than I’d thought.
They were each around thirty feet tall, around fifty feet wide, and evenly spaced—clearly, they were manmade.
Not hills, but mounds. And just as I’d felt a presence within the tree and the stump, I felt a presence in each small hill, as well.
And the energy was not pleasant. It felt dark. Ancient. Brooding. Hateful.
I picked up my pace.
When I’d gotten far enough from the golenae, I gave in to my curiosity and climbed up one of the mounds. I half expected a hand to burst forth from the earth and grab my ankle, and I was holding my breath as I reached the crest.
At the top, a flat, circular stone sat, like the top of a barstool.
Its surface was weathered and covered in dirt and lichen, but I wiped it off as best I could and squinted down at it in the dim light.
There were runes carved there, and something else, a roundish shape that I couldn’t quite make out.
Curious, I climbed another mount and found that it had an identical capstone, but this one was slightly less weathered—and I was able to see what was carved into it—a skull.
A shiver ran through me.
Barrows. That was a word I remembered from my history classes.
The Old Maethalians—the descendants of elves—had buried their dead in enchanted mounds called barrows.
There were some in Admar, too, near Danlee.
They were rumored to be haunted, and people used to visit them for a thrill.
But when I was young—ten or eleven—the government had closed the Danlee mounds to the public.
No explanation was given, but rumors circulated about what supposedly happened there.
Men going mad. Girls going missing. People getting lost, only to be found days later, jabbering about ghosts and demons.
Just bullshit stories. Unless they weren’t...
I heard a whisper behind me and wheeled, one hand on my service pistol. But there was nothing there. Only the wind, sizzling through the grasses. And in the distance, the low rumble of thunder.
“Screw this place,” I muttered, and turned, ready to go on. Then I turned again. And again.
Everything looked the same. Low hills. Grasses. Black sky. I turned a slow circle.
“Goddammit.”
Which direction had I been going? An irrational panic rose up in me, my heart speeding up in my chest. I bounded down the hill and started jogging, then running, staying in the furrows between the mounds, now, where the malevolent presence felt a little less prominent.
But down here, it was even harder to tell where I was going.
I felt like a ball in a pinball machine, pinged left then right, following a path that wasn’t my own.
To make matters worse, clouds swept in above, black as crow’s wings, stifling the meager starlight. Lightning slashed the sky. And then I heard something behind me. Footsteps.
Damn. The golenae. They must’ve seen me somehow…
I drew my officer’s saber and redoubled my pace, sprinting blindly through the night as cold, stinging raindrops began to fall, a few at first, then more and more.
Suddenly, as sure as I’d been that someone was following me, I was sure that no one was there.
I’m going insane, I thought. I have to get away from these goddamned barrows.
But the presences inside them had grown stronger, I sensed, as if each one were an eggshell and whatever waited inside might now break through with the slightest push.
I have to get out of here… I thought again.
Bounding to the top of the nearest mound, I cast about frantically, looking for a way out.
There! In the distance off to my left, in the valley between two mounds. A light!
Or—no, not a light... My eyes were playing tricks on me. Because what I had taken for a light a second ago was now a figure. A man in an Admite military uniform. As I watched, he raised a hand, waiving to me. Confused, I raised my own hand.
“Hey!” I called, but the words seemed to die on the wind.
What the hell was an Admite soldier doing here, in the middle of this godforsaken place?
It didn’t matter. No one deserved to be alone in a place like this—so I ran toward him.
I’d barely reached the bottom of the mound when I saw him again.
He was much closer now, somehow, standing between two mounds.
He was looking at me. And his face—his face was familiar.
The soulful brown eyes. Small, pout of a mouth.
The hair that looked tousled, even cropped short as it was.
My little brother.
But how could he be here? He’d shipped out for the front, for Dorhane. I hadn’t received a letter from him in ages.
“Joey?” I meant to shout, but his name came out a whisper.
At the sound, he turned and ran like a spooked deer.
“Joey!” I screamed into the howling wind and sprinted after him.