3. Lina
Lina
I ’m barely able to register anything beyond my fingers digging into the thick mud and the absence of a monster’s arms around me. My panic-filled breaths halt entirely.
Thankfully, my body knows what to do, even while my mind is racing to catch up, and I scramble away from the vile monsters, into the tree line and through the brush. I’m not quiet. I’m not even fast.
I shouldn’t be able to escape them—the death cult warriors with shadows at their command. They captured me; he had his muscular arms gripped tightly over my chest.
It’s everything I’ve feared for the last decade, and somehow, the impossible happened and I’m running free. Terrorized but with wild wind blowing through my hair.
How?
They do not allow their prey to escape.
Sticks and thorns slice into my cheeks and arms as I run, but I don’t feel the sting. I can only focus on escape.
“Down here!” a voice hisses. I’m barely able to hear it over the pulsing of my panicked mind, but I twist and clumsily leap into the pit beneath an overturned tree. The roots, covered in dry dirt, scrape into my skin, but then two small arms wrap around me, pulling me down into the leaves.
I tremble as her comfort eases my dread, and I grip her tightly.
Astella.
I am supposed to be her guardian, her protector, yet it always seems she is the one saving me.
My skin still crawls where he touched me. I still feel his hot breath on my neck. A predator ready to consume me whole.
I shiver at that thought because that’s exactly what I would be. They’d literally feast on my flesh while I still lived. While I begged for mercy.
Nausea claws its way through my body. I don’t want to think about what would have happened if I hadn’t managed to escape. Besides, I have another danger to focus on.
The cult warriors are not the only monsters in these woods.
My body continues to tremble without permission, but I will my bones to still and somehow manage to quiet my breathing. My very survival depends on this.
“You’re okay. You’re safe.” Astella croons in my ear. I grip her tighter and try to force myself to believe her words. Even if it is a lie, it’s a comforting one.
I must be calm.
The air chills. The brush under us and the thin cloth covering my body does little to keep us warm.
The spiritual beasts that haunt these trees slumber deeply during the day.
The rumble of human and animal voices is not enough to wake them.
Only the high-pitched whine of their young will disturb them while the sun is risen.
It’s why we always follow the rule never to whistle in the forest, lest you wake our most fearsome creature.
We have some protections against them in our towns, but here, we are at the mercy of the shadowscelp.
Astella broke a long-known rule in a desperate attempt to save my life. She called one of the few things in this world even a warrior fears.
Foolish, foolish girl.
And I adore her for it.
Through the tree branches above, I watch in horror as the high noon sun slowly darkens until it is solid black.
Bitter cold descends over our hollow. I cling to Astella, shivering against her rail-thin arms and burrowing my face into the crook of her neck.
The small hiss of sizzling shadows begins as a low murmur in the distance.
The shadowscelp has long been the fear of our people. The living embodiment of shadows, that will suck the life from all living creatures unfortunate enough to be found outside.
Those who are taken by the shadowscelp return as a shell of their former selves. They will hide in the shadows, waiting for warm blood to pass nearby. Anything will do. Rabbit, deer, wolf, human.
For hundreds of years, it has been our tradition to hang sage over our door frames and carve blessing sigils into the foundations, all to stop this one creature from taking our spirits.
The back of my neck prickles. Are the cult warriors still out there? Will they be taken by the shadowscelp? Will a soulless Drak’yn be better than a regular one? Do they even have a spirit to steal?
For a time, my mother thought the warriors were an evolution of scelped humans. They acted similarly—killing indiscriminately and drinking blood.
But scelped humans do not use tools. They do not run in packs and act on orders. They do not ride lizard beasts or worship gods in sickening rituals.
No, the cult warriors are something more than the result of a desecrated spirit.
They are not what is hunting us now. The hairs on my arms rise as the shrill shriek of the shadow rings out through the unnatural silence.
“Don’t move. Don’t make a sound,” Astella instructs me.
I press my eyes closed so tightly it hurts, but I obey. We are somewhat hidden behind the roots of a fallen tree in this sunken hollow where it once stood. Even with the small bit of shelter, there is no hope we’ll survive an encounter without a structure.
“We will not die tonight,” she tells me.
She’s so young, so strong, so brave.
I should be the strong one. I should be the one saving her.
“Do you remember when we met?” she whispers.
How we met? I blink as I process her words. Of course I remember. It was only a year ago, but it feels like a lifetime. One by one, everyone I’d known died or left in favor of the desert.
Though I was nearly an adult, I was truly alone for the first time. I’d given up hope. There was no food. No safety. There was no one left to care if I lived.
I was wandering the wilds, my mind a hazy mess of fear and grief. It was almost dark, but I didn’t stop to find shelter. I just kept walking.
And that’s when I found her.
I thought all three of them were dead at first. Three bodies, laying limp in the pathway. Blood everywhere.
My sadness was sharp as I examined the dead child curled up in her father’s arms.
Then, the girl moved.
“I would have died there with them,” Astella says, “if it weren’t for you. I wanted to. I wanted to die with my mama. What more did I have to live for? They were my whole world.”
I sniff back my tears.
“You pulled me into your arms and everything changed.”
“It changed for me too,” I admit. I was dead in those weeks between loved ones. Living but not alive.
“In your eyes, I saw my first vision,” she says softly.
“Before you, my parents had the sight, and I trusted them. I listened to them every step. I believed them when they said things would get better. But then, they were gone. The world was too big for me to travel on my own. I didn’t know the way. ”
It’s always hard for a child to lose a parent. But I know what it’s like to rely on someone else’s supernatural wisdom, so that loss is an added layer that is hard to imagine.
The dark forest grows even darker until I can see nothing. I can only feel Astella’s arms and hear her shaky voice.
“I wasn’t just sad that they’d died,” she tells me.
I focus on her voice, ignoring the fear.
“I was angry. So, so angry. They lied. They—” She sniffs.
“They betrayed me. They betrayed me by dying. They weren’t supposed to die.
Or… that’s what I thought. Because you came and it all made sense in some strange way. ”
Tears stream down my cheeks. I don’t know how I could be her salvation when I was just as lost. She was only ten when I found her, almost a year ago now. I was eighteen.
I felt like as much of a child as she was.
But when I saw her trembling on the ground, curled up next to a man and a woman, clinging to their lifeless bodies, something snapped inside me. I didn’t crumble; I couldn’t.
I had to be strong for her.
A girl I’d never seen before that moment and suddenly, she was the center of my whole world. I needed to protect her. I needed to save that girl.
But she keeps saving me.
“I don’t remember what you said,” she continues. “But in your eyes, I saw my first vision. For the first time I saw . It’s not a clear image. It’s far away, even now. But I know it; I know it deeper than anything else I’ve never known. And I’ve never doubted a day since.”
I work hard to hold my sobs back, but my chest convulses. “How? How can you have such faith?”
“Because anything else would be death.”
Unnatural cold drops over us in an instant. For a moment, I think her words caused it. Maybe death came to claim us after all. But Astella’s comforting warmth still seeps into my limbs.
A chilling rattling call makes me wince. “It’s coming,” I whisper the obvious.
Astella begins whispering mumbled words I’m not familiar with. A soft enchantment heats the small space we inhabit.
Is she powerful enough to keep the monsters at bay?
I’ve not heard of a sorceress able to spell away a shadowscelp, let alone an adolescent one.
Moments creep by. The sizzle of the shadows rise and fall. The booming cackle of the shadowscelp’s call to its young is painful to my ears, but the dark magic tugging at my soul never appears.
In those long moments, I memorize Astella’s chant, even though I know the words will do nothing from my powerless lips.
I mentally chant along with her until my mind and heart begin to slow.
My limbs settle into the warmth of the spell and a little girl’s arms.
If this is how I die—at peace with her—I would bless the stars in thanks. I would forgive the universe for every trauma it has laid on my shoulders.
I fall asleep with soft prayers that do not belong to me on my lips, of peace and escape from the monsters that hunt us.
Even though I’ve long known that prayer does not reach the heavens in these ruinous lands.