6. Vireth #3
Satisfied that he’s had as much nourishment as I can provide, I fill my own belly with the heartier portion of meat and mushrooms, saving the best bites for Nibblebones.
The fire in the hearth blazes and I wish I’d had the foresight to bring some tea, but all in all, it’s a moderately comfortable evening.
Rain dances along the ruined thatch and spatters against the mushroom caps plugging the roof, and the muted staccato softens the edges of my anxiety.
When the human finally settles into a restless sleep, I sink into the crooked chair beside the hearth and pull the small ancient book from my pack.
Opening it feels strangely like exhaling after holding my breath too long. Goosebumps lift on the moon-pale canvas of my skin in anticipation.
The clasp gives way easily, and I suspect it has been a long time since the small lock kept anyone out. The pages are as I initially believed—less a formidable magical or historical text, and more a young writer’s private diary.
The first several pages are undated entries, containing the sorts of entries one might expect from a young mage’s apprentice—complaints about endless copying exercises, notes about lectures half-understood, and the occasional triumphant remark about successfully transmuting something minor into something equally useless.
My focus is beginning to blur with exhaustion when I come across a page that snaps me awake.
Today was market day, which should have been unremarkable except that a seer passed through the city and took up residence outside the ruined temple.
The shepherd Axel wished to send her on her way and entreated us, so I was sent to deal with her.
The woman would not be moved. She laughed most eerily and spoke of the Blight Mother—an ancient decay goddess the priests no longer pray to.
She will come, the old woman said. When I pressed her, her eyes rolled white and she intoned her words with many voices.
According to her, the Blight Mother is not born so much as called by the other gods when the land requires it.
Heart thudding so loud I fear I’ll wake the human, I tilt the book closer to the fire to ascertain the next part.
She said the world moves in long seasons of balance, though we rarely notice them while we are living inside them, and that imbalance grows quietly in the corners until the scales can no longer pretend to be level.
When that happens, the gods themselves grow impatient, and something must be done to correct the weight.
She said the Blight Mother is the hand that tips the scale. She is an eventuality, as all fae and humankind tend to push the world towards imbalance.
There is a blot of ink there, almost as if the young mage paused—his quill poised over the paper—before continuing.
Most of the older texts describe her as an ending, which I suppose is not incorrect if you happen to be standing on the side of the world that is about to fall apart. The seer laughed when I asked why the Blight Mother must destroy the world to find its balance.
“Destruction?” she scoffed. “She simply refuses to preserve it.”
A low swear falls from my lips. I close the book slowly and tuck it back inside my pack, turning the words over in my mind. No matter how I rephrase them, I can find no comfort in them.
“Well, shit,” I murmur to Nibblebones, who dozes in a ball in my lap.
Outside, the forest breathes softly in the darkness, the trees whispering against one another in the drizzly wind.
Sleep soon tugs at my senses, and I lay my bedroll out next to the hearth and curl up with my equally exhausted corpse weasel.
Nightmares plague me, yanking me to and fro in my sleep.
Visions of rotting corpses crowned with mushrooms staggering toward me—of my limbs blackening beneath slick, oily slime mold—of my belly’s flesh decaying and falling to the earth in sizzling piles—of blinding pain as my skull twists into something monstrous and forbidding, sprouting heavy antlers dripping gore.
It’s little surprise to me that I wake with the gray dawn even more exhausted, unsettled by things that feel more like premonitions than dreams. The entire floor of the cottage is thick with a carpet of bright orange slime mold that has sprawled outward from my prone body in sticky, pulsing patterns.
It is striking in its beauty, and equally disquieting.
The human wakes sometime after me, his bedframe shifting with a long, complaining groan followed by a pained grunt.
I watch him from beneath my lashes, pretending to be absorbed in my book, and half-listening to the subtle murmurs of the forest outside.
The cottage creaks occasionally as the wind presses against the warped boards, and the mushrooms I coaxed into blooming along the beams give off a faint, pearly glow that softens the early morning darkness just enough to read by.
He collapses back onto the mattress with a muffled curse that is remarkably articulate for someone who lost a considerable amount of blood only a few hours ago.
“Ambitious,” I chuckle.
Immediately, his eyes snap open, sharp and disoriented, and for a brief moment he looks exactly like what he is—a wounded animal waking in unfamiliar territory, unsure whether the quiet figure in the chair is rescuer or predator. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
“So, I’m not dead,” he says, his voice hoarse.
“You’re welcome.”
He studies me then, his eyes roving over me with interest and, I must note, no visible sign of disgust. That’s a welcome change. His gaze lingers briefly on the pale cast of my skin, the knotted, white mess of my hair, my angled ears, needle fangs, and my oxblood eyes.
“…you’re not human,” he says.
“No,” I agree.
He shifts, testing his balance as he pushes himself into a seated position against the headboard. The motion is careful, controlled, and deliberate, suggesting long practice with injuries.
“Fae, then?”
I nod. Wariness sparks in his gaze, but I suspect it’s more to do with me being fae than anything else. His hand drifts instinctively toward his hip, where his sword would normally be. The absence registers quickly, and his eyes flick back to me.
“It’s by the door,” I say, addressing his concern. “I removed it to ensure you didn’t cut yourself open again while you fought the fever.”
“Where am I?” he asks.
“In an abandoned cottage about three hours’ walk from the bog road,” I reply, rising to better face him. “You were being eaten when I found you, which made further travel somewhat impractical.”
His brow furrows faintly as the memory surfaces.
“The… swamp spider thing,” he mutters. “It attacked me almost immediately.”