26 A. L. BROOKS
THE SHAPESHIFTERS
a short story by
A. L. BROOKS
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Coming soon - novels by
A. L. B R O O K S
CLOUDFYRE FALLING
a dark fairy tale
Something is killing all living things on Cloudfyre.
Will Gargaron the giant have enough time to uncover the mystery before his world is lost?
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And the re-release of
STRANGEWORLD
THE MORTIFERA
A Cornish village. A mysterious doorway. A monster hell bent on killing all it encounters.
Jake and Emily find themselves at the heart of an ancient mystery.
Can they find a way to defeat the Charon and shut the doorway before it’s too late?
If you love monsters, magic and adventure then don’t miss these ripping tales!
THE SHAPESHIFTERS
1
I HAD no fear about killing her. I’d planned her demise methodically over a number of months and was confident I could pull it off. She was well guarded of course. Her home being the Everard Manor, a colossal structure built on land in the centre of Garkhorst Lake. No easy place to reach. And no easy place to infiltrate. Though I managed it quite well in the end. I swam the lake using the paste of a grounded horned katydid, a secret method I’d picked up from my mother to help one breathe beneath water. When I reached the island I leapt lithely here and there to avoid being chomped in two by giant crabs, and then scaled the tower. Again, to aid me, I used concoctions of my mother’s devising; this time it were a draft brewed from the rainbow fly to grant me spider-limbs and tiny wings.
She were at her looking glass when I climbed silently through her open window. And she were still there brushing her hair when I stood up behind her.
She shrieked when she saw me. I grabbed her around the neck and clapped my hand over her mouth. I dragged her back onto her bed and pushed my pig blade into her throat.
We sat there, she on my lap, as she gargled to death on her own blood. A wonderfully brutal sight it was... watching her reflection in her looking glass, watching her suffer. She watched it too. I made sure of that. I could see her eyeballs watching her neck bleed out. But it was not a quick death. I had slaughtered many a pig in my time. A skill I had acquired from my dear father. Thus I knew how to get it right, either to make it quick or to let it draw out.
In the case of the Baroness I let it draw out quite a wee while.
I chatted to her as she spluttered and gargled. Not to comfort her. I wanted to introduce myself. ‘I doubt you’d remember who I am,’ I told her. ‘My name is Arrabel Grean. Daughter of Lanson and Florence, sister of Marietta and Selena.’ I felt a need to explain why I had done it. Why I had snuck in, why I had crept up behind her, why I had held her before her vanity glass and punctured her neck. Under other circumstances I am certain she would have understood, perhaps even appreciated my cause if she had not had all that hot gummy blood gushing down her nightdress, sticking it to her breasts.
I sat there going over my reasons. Not with any great sympathy. She had ordered the slaughter of my family for “unpaid taxes”. I told her that in return, if that is the way she wanted to play, then I was taxing her with her life.
After I made certain she was dead I finished her off by hacking my knife through her neck, her bones grating against the steel of my father’s swine blade, until her severed head lay nose down against the wooden floor and her neck was squirting blood. Some would think this a tad excessive. But I had to be certain. There are beings out there in the bleak corners of the world that have unnatural ways of bringing the dead back to life. The Crones of Gremlock for example. Though the Crones would be unlikely to do business with the Barony for both parties had been at each other’s throats for many a year by then. But I remained wary. For fear that some other race or soul may have learned the reanimation secrets of the Crones and thus answer any potential call by the Barony to have the Baroness kissed back to life.
Taking her head stuffed unceremoniously in my satchel, I slipped out of her bed chamber by the arched window. And dropped silently into Garkhorst Lake three hundred feet below. I swam for shore and sat gathering my breath on the sand, watching with fascination as the elephant crabs devoured her ugly skull.
I was on the run for five days when the Bonekeepers found me.
2
I managed to cover several hundred miles in that time. Travelling east across the desolate lands of Skärradness. The region of Hampton was a far cry from the lonely parts I now found myself. Nonetheless, the Barony’s reach stretches far and wide, and I knew I would not be safe until I had crossed the Gundarven Marshes some thousand miles further on. (No easy fete, crossing the Marshes, thanks to its hungry swamp denizens. But it was my hope that those very same denizens would deter any Royal Hampton Lancers or bounty hunters from tracking me across that boggy expanse.) Besides I had friends in the hills beyond Gundarven. I just had to reach them. And go into hiding.
Yet as predicted, I was being pursued.
By the time I reached the Dread Forests on the barren seafronts of Green Scarr the great Barony Hound almost snatched me up in its jaws. By then I was almost beyond exhaustion. I had kept myself awake using the dried Petten Beetles raided from my dear dead mother’s pantry. But I had run dry of them that fifth morning. So, by evening, when I reached the signpost reading DREAD FORESTS: ALL WHO STRAY WITHIN SHALL DIE!! I could barely keep myself upright. But the squeals of the hound are enough to keep anyone wide-eyed with terror and thus with one last burst of energy I plunged headlong into the woods.
3
If I had been but one second slower I would have been caught and wrenched to shreds. Of that there is no doubt. Yet, as I had wagered, as I had prayed, the Hound proved reluctant to pursue me into the accursed woods. As I rolled down the leafy embankment through thick duff and pine needles, I saw it behind me at the very edge of the woods, a gargantuan ragged silhouette against the red sunset, howling madly at the evening stars. I knew then it had given up its chase. For that howl rang with rage, rage that all its efforts had gone fruitless. But it also meant something else: a signal to the Barony Lancers, a full day behind us, a signal that I had at last been cornered.
Then in a rush, the Hound swept away, an empty space bordered by the darkening trees left in its place, and the sound of its hooves thundering away.
4
My momentum came to a rude halt at the bottom of the ravine as I crunched against moss strewn rocks. I sat there panting, catching my breath, taking in my darkened surrounds. I wanted to lie down and sleep. I could feel the pull of sweet slumber. Yet I had no luxury of time, no luxury to wait there and seek rest. These were the Dread Forests after all. The nightmare woods that claimed most who strayed within her. And if by some miracle I sat there idle and went undetected and not gobbled up by any number of the foul beasts of the woods then the Lancers would claim me within a day. So there was an urgency to keep moving; I planned to travel by treetop to avoid the ground dwelling creatures. I would travel under invisibility, both from sight and smell; I had bugs from the Crones that would render me as such.
But first I needed water. I had drained my gourd that morning. My thirst had turned me weak. And by blind and pure luck, there before me a narrow brook gurgling away yonder.
I dragged myself through the thick musky leaf matter to reach it. Cupped my palms into the chilled liquid and guzzled thirstily. Disease, bacteria, virus... any present here would be dealt with by remedies I had swallowed a week ago to see me safely across and back the pois
oned Garkhorst Lake. But slaking my thirst proved almost my demise. A snickering sound from behind me. A reflection of a beast in the water before my face. I feared the barony hound.
Yet as I spun onto my back I found no hound but a giant spiralling snail-shell looming over me, blocking the canopy of the woods almost completely from my view. A Greep, this creature was. A twisted blackened humanoid form with shell, hefting itself forward on barbed, elongated forearms. Its goggling eyes watched me. And snagged inside its jaws, a bloodied, dismembered foot, draped in a layer of torn woolskin fabric.
With deft speed (from the nifty and nimble tricks taught to me by my mother) I dragged my final Fly Trap from my belt and as the jaws of closed toward my face I jammed the Trap between the Greep’s stinking yellow fangs.
I had four seconds to put distance between myself and the monster.
I booted its face aside. Dragged myself into the chilly waters of the brook. Pulled myself fully beneath its frigid hold.
And heard a dull concussion rip through the atmosphere above the water’s surface.
I held my breath a moment longer, making certain all were clear before I surfaced. Then tentatively lifted my head and looked back. Chilled water dripped down my face as I took in the carcass of the monster. It lay smoking and obliterated, its shell turned on its side. Meat and bone and brain were spattered about the shrubs and tree trunks. When I first noticed the thick red swirls in the water drifting passed my cheek I felt victorious. Greep blood!
Yet as I dragged myself from the chilly stream onto the opposite bank I felt considerable throbbing pain below my knee. I turned over and instantly my breath vacated my lungs. My leg ended in bone, not a foot.
I had been dismembered: the lower leg of my woolskin pants had been shredded and with it my right foot had completely gone. Bitten off. Jagged bone poked free of the muscle and the whole ragged wound gushed with blood.
Sodden, I hobbled onto dry earth, through soil and rock and bugs, trailing thick pools of blood out behind me. Looking back at the shredded Greep carcass I observed my stolen foot still clamped within what remained of its jaws. I considered for a second retrieving it. For, I carried materials that would preserve it, knew of souls who wielded enough magic to reattach it. Yet it would now be rank with Greep rot-poison. ‘Have it!’ I told it.
I had short time to stem the flow from my wound; the raw scent of blood would alert Harbingers, Gingerbreads, Gookas. And of course blood loss would kill me outright if I did not tend to it in quick time.
I sat and fiddled through my satchel, clawing at salves and herbs and poultices. My mother’s leather waist-belt was still secured around my linen dress. My hugging woolskin pants and leather boots were all soaked through with chilled briny brook water, causing my skin to flare with gooseflesh. I took out a tight leather pouch and clawed it open; my body were struck with violent shivers. I fingered out the last of my mother’s Serin saplings from a small buttoned compartment. And stuck it on my tongue...
Instantly it responded to the moisture of my saliva, a hundred narrow stems sprouting from my mouth like maddened vipers, suffocating my face, smothering my entire head and as Gingerbreads and Gookas bumbled toward me from the deep dark woods, a crisp bark hardened across my entire body and entombed me completely.
5
I am still uncertain how the Bonekeepers found me. All I know is on that by morning the Serin Tree began to shed its bark and the squawk of the morning birds and the cackle of the tree bound, bug-legged Bearlings came echoing loudly in at me from the surrounding woods.
There was a moment of panic as my eyes peeled open and the sunrise twinkled against my face, seeing the long caravan and the beings all standing there watching me. My fear was I had been caught. That these were bounty hunters working for the Hampton Lancers. I struggled violently from the casing of the tree and made to run, hobbling madly on my single good foot.
‘Do not run!’
I refused to obey, stumbling blindly, thrusting my way through gnarled shrubs and undergrowth—
‘If you wish to survive passed today you would be wise to come with us!’ the voice commanded. ‘Your Hampton pursuers are almost upon us.’
I stopped, holding myself upright with the aid of rotting tree stumps that wriggled rampantly with biting gnats and mites and slaters. Panting, I shook the critters free of my fingers and turned and gazed back through the scrub at the closest of the Bonekeepers.
The one who had spoken was an elder by the looks, with grizzled tusks and sagging scales around his lizard eyes. I had heard many stories about these Bonekeepers. Many strange and wonderful tales.
It is said they deal in bone. Drifting from land to land, realm to realm, collecting bones from battlefields where the war dead lie rotting. Picking out bones from the worm ridden flesh of trolls and ogres in caves and grottos. Scouring seashores where the great sea beasts occasionally wash up deceased.
It is said they enchant their morbid skeletal collections, to cure illness, to wield them as weapons, to spread disease, to yield crops. My father told me as much about these people, how they would arrive in Palemoth in the middle of the night, trading secretly by the light of the stars and be gone again by morning. I saw them once when I was a young lass of eight summers. When one of their caravans passed through my home village of Raethgar, their mysterious train and their elegant horses caught under the elf light of a full moon. And it was not the bones that had captured my imagination but the stories of how they could change their bodies at will. For they say Bonekeepers are the last of the ancient Shapeshifters.
So, here they were. In the Dread Forests; no Greeps threatening, no hint, nor sign, nor sound, nor smell of the deadly Gookas or Gingerbreads or Wraithbies. As if some magical enchantment, some greater force, were keeping all critters of darkness at bay.
I knew the Bonekeepers were no friends of the Hampton Barony. Father explained that the authorities of Hampton had driven the Bonekeepers from the realm of Palemoth two decades gone. Still, was I to trust them? And what choice did I have. After all, my race was run. I had made swift speed these past few days under a combination of natural agility and Sacckin, the war broth of the Crones. And overnight my leg had healed remarkably. (Crone magic never ceases to fascinate me.) There was no weeping, gaping wound, no rancid infection. Just a healed rounded nub.
But there was no doubting my predicament. I would have much trouble walking from these days on with but one foot. Running was out of the question. I had more remedies if I needed. Namely the Ghostweed; black powdery pods full of spores that would afford me a temporary limb, provided I took them, breathed them into my lungs, sucked them directly into my blood stream. I would be gifted the portion of my leg lost, one foot and five toes that would respond mostly to my command. I say mostly for although it would attach itself to me I would simply be its custodian in this world, and temporarily. For, it would always belong to the realm of spirits, the realm from where it would be summoned, and it would consume a small part of me for its trouble.
I gazed toward the clearing where the Barony Hound had perched and howled yester evening. Out there the cloudless blue sky was shrugging off the heavy black rug of night. Somewhere on the plains beyond the yipping wrens and squealing hawks the Lancers would be advancing upon the sunrise, stealing ever closer to the Forests on these desolate shores.
I had no choice. My immediate fate now lay in the hands of the ’Keepers.
6
Their caravan consisted of a train of five carriages. Three were sleeping compartments and living quarters that contained a kitchen reeking constantly with the not unpleasant odours of meats being smoked and spiced; the soft flurries of fumes lifted dreamily into the thickets of the thick dank wood as we rolled through that long morning. A compartment on the fourth carriage was lined with chests and racks filled with the stocks of their livelihood: bones. Skulls. Of all shapes and sizes. Some I recognised as those of Gilgamoths, the lumbering giants of the Heereveen Mountains. And stinking bu
ndles of dried out Ilicas people from the far distant Kitwei Wilds hung like rattling mobiles.
The fifth carriage was an anomaly as far as I saw it. A prison cart if you will. A cell of steel bars. Measuring several metres in length. It was this that initially had me alarmed, believing once I accepted their offer I would be bundled within and escorted back to Hampton. But it stayed unoccupied. And its purpose remained a mystery.
We had been two or three hours on the road, by which time the woods about us were laden with foliage so thick barely a fleck of sunlight filtered through from the sky beyond. Lanterns were lit. The inky brown reaches of the woods filled with our dancing shadows. And the going was not swift (which perturbed me) and I found it difficult to relax. The Hampton Lancers ride fleet beasts: sleek horned cats. Cats with a keen sense of smell. If they dared enter these woods they would be upon us in no time.
The elder tried his best to encourage and maintain my spirits. ‘Do not worry,’ he told me softly. ‘On the plains before dawn we unloaded a trail of Oxuum bones. It will turn their steeds away, disrupt their senses, turn them weak with delirium. At least for long enough to get you further afield. And our Bone-ravens will alert us of anyone approaching long before we are spotted.’ He pointed above us and in rare instances where the canopy thinned or parted I could see high in the blue sky strange grey birds circling on the air above the woods.
‘And what of the smoke from your kitchen?’ I asked. ‘These bones you left on the plains may disrupt their steeds but I fear our location is advertised all the same.’
My new friend smiled and assured me the trees in these woods were a ravenous species, that their appetites for swamp gas, goblin fires, and stove fumes would eliminate any such threat.
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