Chapter 35 Faron #2
“I do. They are tainted with radiance. I sensed the same with Kanth’s diplomat, though nothing quite so severe.”
Another set of howls from a nearby wolf pack interrupted their vigil. Sariel and Faron exchanged a look, their eyes wide.
“Back to the camp, now!” Faron shouted as they sprinted through the brush.
Plans raced through his mind. They needed patrols, thrice as many as they had now, before anyone considered sleeping.
Their camp needed to be more tightly constricted, the less to guard over.
Perhaps they should flee the forest entirely and leave the Grand Castle to rot deep against the Crowning Mountains.
Screams from ahead. Faron drew his sword, leaving Bart behind to crash through the brush.
Panicked soldiers scrambled about, some for weapons, some in search of the threat, and others in sheer terror. Against any other ambush they might have reacted accordingly, but these monsters had them frightened deep to their core.
One such monster crouched atop a screaming Rowan, paw-like hands pressing down on her chest. Its wolf head reared up to howl, while underneath, the human face drooled with teeth steadily growing in size and sharpness.
It bore no spider stinger, but instead a scorpion tail, its stinger vibrating.
Iris snarled and barked at it, but the scorpion tail had her frightened, and she knew not how or when to strike.
Faron blasted past them into the clearing and sliced the monster’s tail off, then grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and heaved it into the air.
Six little arms writhed underneath its belly, and the human face howled in a mindless rage.
Faron spiked it to the ground, then jammed his sword directly into its stomach.
A twist, a slash, and he opened the wolf from chest to crotch, spilling blood and intestines upon the dirt.
“Faron,” Rowan said, her eyes wide in shock. “What… what was…”
He couldn’t answer her, couldn’t stay to protect her. Shouts echoed up and down the camp, matched by the snarls and howls of wolves that were not wolves.
“Take the front,” Sariel shouted to Faron, shaking blood from his sword after beheading his own target. “I’ll protect the rear.”
The brothers split, each traveling in a different direction.
Faron barreled through frightened troops and past cook fires in search of battle.
The screams guided him. The next creature he found slain, the corpse beside a trio of dead soldiers, all three with their faces purple and their bodies punctured by the dead wolf’s stinger.
Several more soldiers stood over them, in shock, or weeping at the loss.
“Move,” Faron shouted at them, his voice a roar never used upon them, only his foes, and it shocked them into movement. “Secure the camp, damn you!”
More screams, these from a battle still in progress.
Faron found one such wolf fully surrounded, the soldiers keeping a wide berth as they penned it in.
It snapped and snarled at them, and though it lacked any stinger, its neck was overly long, and it moved like a serpent as it bit, seeking openings.
Faron pushed through, fearing no venom it might produce.
It leaped at him, mouth open, dripping fangs seeking his throat. He greeted it with his sword, plunging it deep into its neck and then slamming it to the ground.
“Do you not see?” he shouted to the others as he ripped his sword free. “It bleeds and dies like any other beast.”
More howls all around them, as if in defiance of his cry.
“Set up defense lines along the road until we have the camp secured,” he continued, and then pointed to the body. “And someone burn that damned thing.”
The next bunch of tents contained frightened men and women shouting at one another, along with two more bodies. He ordered them burned upon his arrival, but they paid him no heed. Their attention was locked on the trees.
Faron looked to the blue-pine branches and saw it, another strange wolf-thing. It lurked within the needles; four vulture wings sprouted from its spine. Its head was tilted to the moon, and the human face watched them with horrifying intelligence.
“It hasn’t moved,” a woman beside Faron said. “It just watched as the others attacked, as they… they…”
She need not finish the sentence. Faron could see the nearby bodies.
“Are you afraid?” Faron shouted while twirling his sword in a display meant to grab the monster’s attention. “Come down, you wretched thing. Come and die like the others.”
The human face opened its mouth. Its lips twisted. Its tongue slithered out like a snake’s.
“Die?” it asked, and then leaped from the trees.
Faron held his ground, and when the beast was in reach, he swung with all his strength, his blade cutting the thing in twain.
Its two halves split, and its gore splashed across Faron.
As the blood sizzled against him, audibly hissing, he felt the undeniable tinge of tainted radiance burn across his skin.
Whatever was happening in Kanth, it was deeply, deeply wrong.
“See!” he shouted, pretending he felt none of those feelings. “Fight them, brethren! Fight them, sisters!” He rushed ahead, to where soldiers were already recovering and stabbing at the horrid beasts.
“Take up your swords, and fight!”
By the time the camp was secured and the wolf corpses burned, they counted forty of the twisted not-wolves.
Reglia oversaw the burying of the dead, praying to Leliel for guidance and mercy.
Afterward, Faron and Sariel were summoned to Isabelle’s command tent.
Marshals, lieutenants, and the like were there, arguing logistics and morale, and she dismissed them all.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said once the others departed. “I need someone to tell me I am not insane.”
“There is madness here, but it is not yours,” Sariel said. “Why call for my brother and me?”
She paced the small tent, her arms crossed behind her.
“My past is tied to this place,” she said at last, and glanced at Sariel. “And now I see the horrors of Kanth made real, I would hear your opinions on the matter.”
“And why would our opinions rank above those of your advisers?” Faron asked. Not that he minded, for this was the type of trust he’d always sought to build with her, but he couldn’t shake the feeling there was more happening beyond his understanding.
“Because you possess knowledge my advisers do not,” she said, much too harshly. “Do not play the fool, either of you. Oscar tells me you were the first to encounter these beasts, so speak plainly. I am willing to listen, if you are willing to offer the truth.”
Faron struggled for an appropriate response. This did not feel like the proper time to reveal their own ever-living nature, so how might they explain their familiarity with radiance, or that these bizarre wolf-things were changed by it?
“There is a strange magic in this land,” Sariel said before Faron could attempt his own explanation. “And as unbelievable as it may sound, it is akin to that which has blessed you.”
“You would call these things a blessing of Leliel?” Isabelle asked, the color draining from her face. “You would mark me akin to those… monsters?”
“No,” Faron said, pushing to her side while glaring at Sariel. “They do not compare. Yours is proper, and controlled within you. What we saw, it is wild, rabid, and wrong.”
Isabelle did not look comforted.
“Aubert refused to admit the possibility, so I will ask you instead,” she said. “Those things, were they first wolves, or were they people?”
Faron slowly exhaled. Best he be the one to break such news.
“I fear they were never wolves,” he said. “If I were to wager, they are some of the people who went missing from the outlying villages.”
“Never wolves,” Isabelle muttered. “And yet I am different. I am… proper. I am controlled.”
Faron hated how his every word was being taken wrong, but before he could try again, she turned away from them both.
“Aubert wishes for us to flee this goddess-forsaken forest, declare the whole of Kanth desolate, and instead focus on rallying the remainder of the free nations into the protectorate so we might invade the Astral Kingdom. Many of my vassal kings and queens seek the same.” She shook her head.
“I refused. We must see this to its end. Come dawn, we march for Castle Kanth.”
The queen turned back to them, exerting clear effort to remain calm and stoic.
“Marshal Oscar fears soldiers will desert my cause if we continue deeper into the Frostlash. What of you two? Will you stay with me unto the very end?”
Faron drew his sword, knelt, and laid the blade across his knee.
“I will never leave your side,” he said. “My life is yours, my queen.”
After a moment, Sariel dropped to one knee as well. Redemption remained across his shoulder.
“Even if you ordered our army to abandon the forest, I would march ahead,” he said. “I must see this nightmare put to an end.”
Isabelle put a hand to her breast and bowed to them in turn.
“Thank you, Godsight brothers. Come our arrival at the Grand Castle, there is a task I would ask of you, and I can think of no others I trust more to carry it through.”
Faron beamed, thrilled to hear such trust placed upon him. This was it. They were confidants now. Come the invasion against the Astral Kingdom, they would now always have her ear.
“Whatever you wish,” he said, and bowed again.
Sariel stood, far less impressed.
“You should address your people,” he told Isabelle. “They are frightened, and it would do them good to hear your words. If they are to face what nightmares await, they must believe the goddess is with them.”
“There will be more of those creatures?” she asked.
Sariel did not answer before departing the tent.
Faron stood, and after sheathing his sword, he offered his hands to his queen.
She took them reluctantly, and he felt her fingers tremble within his grasp.
So strong, when she must be, but so frightened now.
He looked into her golden eyes and spoke the painful truth.
“A perversion hangs like a pall over the countryside. These beasts were but a taste of what is to come. Whatever awaits us at the heart of Kanth shall be so much worse. We will face monsters, true monsters, the type of which this world has never seen.”
He stepped closer, his presence overwhelming her, his dark eyes holding her captive.
“But know this, my queen. I am always here to slay your monsters.”