Chapter 20 Forla
FORLA
The coastal winds give way to something harsher as we climb into the hills of Rach.
What started as a gentle breeze becomes a cutting gale that slices through our clothes like knives.
I pull my cloak tighter, but it's threadbare fabric meant for summer days, not this bitter cold that seems to seep into my very bones.
"Storm coming," Rophan rumbles, his massive frame somehow more resistant to the chill than the rest of us. Dark clouds gather on the horizon, moving faster than seems natural.
"How much farther to shelter?" Thoktar asks Nazim, who's been leading us along what he claims are old smuggler routes.
"There should be caves ahead," Nazim replies, but uncertainty colors his voice. "If memory serves."
If memory serves. Not exactly confidence-inspiring when the first fat raindrops begin to fall, cold as ice against my skin.
Within minutes, the gentle rainfall becomes a deluge. Water streams down the rocky hillsides, turning paths into treacherous rivers of mud. My feet slip and slide with every step, and more than once I have to grab Thoktar's arm to keep from tumbling down the slope.
"There!" Nazim points to a dark opening in the hillside. "Cave!"
We stumble toward it, soaked and shivering. The cave is shallow but dry, barely large enough for the four of us to huddle together. I press against Thoktar's warmth while the storm rages outside, lightning illuminating the landscape in stark, violent flashes.
"This isn't natural weather," I murmur, watching the way the rain seems to fall upward at times, defying gravity.
"Nothing about these hills is natural," Nazim agrees darkly. "Rach has old magic in its bones. The kind that doesn't like strangers."
That first night sets the pattern for what follows.
Three days of brutal travel through terrain that seems designed to break us.
The weather shifts without warning—blazing heat that has us gasping for breath one moment, then bitter cold that numbs our fingers the next.
Rain turns to sleet turns to snow, all in the space of an hour.
But it's not just the weather that troubles me.
There are sounds in the darkness that make no sense.
Howls that rise and fall like human voices, but no human throat could sustain those notes.
Scratching against stone that suggests claws, but claws larger than any beast I know.
And underneath it all, a constant whisper that might be wind through rock formations, or might be something else entirely.
On the second night, I wake to find glowing eyes watching us from the darkness beyond our small fire.
They're too high off the ground to be wolves, too widely spaced to belong to any creature I recognize.
When I nudge Thoktar awake, the eyes vanish, leaving only the memory of malevolent intelligence.
"What did you see?" he whispers.
"I don't know. Something that shouldn't exist."
We find tracks the next morning—footprints in the muddy ground that look almost human, except they're twice the size of Rophan's massive feet and have too many toes. Nazim studies them with growing unease.
"Hill wraiths," he murmurs. "Haven't seen sign of them in decades. They usually avoid travelers."
"What changed?" I ask, though I suspect I already know the answer.
"Us. We're being hunted, and it's stirring up things that should stay sleeping."
The third day brings new horrors. We're climbing a narrow ridge when something screams from the peaks above us—a sound like metal tearing, but with an organic wetness that makes my skin crawl. Rockslides follow, forcing us to scramble for cover as boulders crash down the mountainside.
"Not natural," Thoktar pants as we huddle against an outcrop. "Those rocks were aimed at us."
He's right. The pattern is too precise, too targeted. Something up there is intelligent enough to try to crush us, and coordinated enough to nearly succeed.
Our supplies dwindle rapidly. The dried meat Nazim packed is running low, and the water we've found in mountain streams tastes wrong—metallic and bitter, like it's been tainted by whatever dark magic infests these hills.
I do what I can with my healing herbs, treating cuts and bruises and the constant ache of exhaustion, but my knowledge only goes so far.
By the fourth day, we're all showing the strain.
Thoktar's limp is more pronounced—his arena injuries never fully healed, and the harsh travel has reopened old wounds.
Rophan's breathing is labored, and I catch him favoring his right arm.
Even Nazim, with his serpentine grace, moves with painful deliberation.
Worse than the physical toll is what the constant fear does to our spirits. We snap at each other over minor things—which direction to take, how to ration the remaining food, whose turn it is to take watch. The stress of being hunted, of facing the unknown, wears at us like water against stone.
"We need shelter," I say on the evening of the fourth day. "Real shelter, not just another cave. Somewhere we can rest properly."
"Agreed," Nazim nods. "There should be an old waystation ahead. Abandoned, but it might still have a roof."
The waystation, when we finally reach it, is little more than ruins.
Three stone walls and part of a roof, but it blocks the wind and gives us our first real respite in days.
We gather what dry wood we can find and build a proper fire.
For a moment, as I watch the flames dance and feel warmth seep back into my bones, I almost let myself relax.
The constant scratching and howling seems distant tonight.
The strange tracks we've been following have become scarce.
Maybe whatever's been stalking us has finally lost interest.
I'm tending to a cut on Thoktar's arm when the attack comes.
They burst from the darkness without warning—shapes that seem to pour from the very shadows themselves. In the flickering firelight, they look like demons given flesh: twisted faces with too many teeth, eyes that burn like coals, claws that glisten wet and black.
My scream dies in my throat as terror freezes my blood. These aren't the supernatural horrors we've been fleeing—they're something worse. Something that wears the masks of nightmares while moving with deadly human purpose.
The first creature—no, not creature, I realize with mounting horror, man wearing a monster's face—leaps over our fire straight at Nazim.
Steel flashes in the darkness as weapons catch the light.
More shapes pour through the broken walls, their grotesque masks making them seem like things crawled up from the underworld itself.
Thoktar shoves me behind him as he draws his sword, but I can just see the exhaustion in his movements, the way his wounded arm trembles with effort. Rophan roars and charges the nearest attacker, but there are just too many, coming from all directions at once.
Their faces; each one more horrific than the last. Fanged maws dripping painted blood, hollow eye sockets, twisted horns and writhing tentacles that move as if alive in the dancing firelight.