by Eddie Patin
As Morgana weaved through the silent stalls of the market, watching the fog-filled sky and keeping an eye out for townsfolk in the windows of the houses around her, she suddenly heard a man shouting. His deep voice bellowed and raged, then a small child screamed with a piercing keen.
The woman ran after the sound.
Dashing through the misty streets, dodging around slop and mud and leaping over fallen chunks of stone and roof tiles, Morgana rushed toward the noises. She had to make it there before—well—she knew what was coming. If it was a man and a child out in the streets, then they'd be under attack by the monsters. She would hear them screaming more urgently soon: the wet, primal screams as they were being torn to pieces. The monsters would probably kill the child first after cutting the man's hamstrings to make sure that he'd watch. She'd seen it before. The beasts were horrible. They'd torture her people to death with grinning, silent mouths of stony fangs. Were the victims rebels? Or just some unfortunate souls who—
There was a third scream from up ahead. A woman.
Dear God, it was a family. Another whole family!
Morgana ran harder. She felt the hilt of Dawnbringer there in the space between space, so close that her desire to hold it made her palm and fingertips buzz.
When the young woman turned the next corner, she saw a horrific scene. Three of the grey and spiky creatures were there in the street, one of them circling just above on nimble wings, all harassing a family of four. The man—a rebel she recognized by the name of Nathan Platt—was trying to pull a thin, teenage boy out of the grasp of one of the monsters. Its hooked claws held the screaming boy like a cat clutching a frenzied bird. There was a woman, his wife, banging on the door of their house, keeping a small child close to her legs.
Through the windows half-covered in broken shutters, barely visible through candlelight, Morgana could see the imposing and masked faces of the Chosen; the soldiers of the Communion. Their golden facemasks gleamed from inside the house as they watched with glittering eyes.
Nathan was unarmed and dressed in sleeping clothes. He bellowed at the beast holding his oldest son as if the man was a bear, frantic and making animalistic sounds without words as the child screamed. Then Nathan cried out in agony as the gargoyle holding the boy suddenly wrapped its stony fingers around his son's neck and tore off his head.
Morgana gasped. Her heart plunged into a cold abyss. She put a hand over her mouth, feeling her eyes well with tears immediately.
An instant later, the two other gargoyles pounced on the stout, hollering man—one descending from the air—and they tore him limb from limb, splashing the street and his wife and younger child with blood. Morgana watched with disbelief. She felt a surge of fear when poor Nathan's blood splashed over the window of their home, the red glass coloring the golden gleam of the Chosen soldiers' masks. The soldiers standing there didn't seem shocked. They didn't move.
Then the woman ran. She seized the small child by the hand and fled, sobbing and screaming. The young boy screeched with a long, high-pitched wail as the two of them flailed down the street away from the grisly scene. They ran past Morgana's hiding place and kept going, eventually turning into an alley.
An instant later, the three gargoyles were after them, quick and agile on the wind, stone wings beating powerfully and their long, barbed tails whisking behind them.
Morgana burst from the shadows in the corner, sprinting after them all.
When she reached the alley, praying that the Chosen down the street hadn't seen her, the young woman rushed after the family's pursuers and pulled Dawnbringer out of the space inside her father's smuggler's ring. Morgana stopped in the middle of the alley as the sword shone its bright, golden light. The blade appeared clutched in the woman's right fist, its edge silvery and its red-gold guard gleaming. Dawnbringer's brilliance was like a shining beacon in the dark fog...
"Stop!" she shouted into the night. "Creatures of darkness! Turn and face your destroyer! I am Morgana Soloster of the family Soloster, and the woman and child are my wards!"
The fleeting shadows of the flying beasts chasing what remained of the Platt family paused and hovered for a moment. Morgana gave chase, sprinting after them with Dawnbringer low and ready, lighting her path with the golden glow of the rising sun.
One of the beasts broke off from the others and circled around to intercept her.
The other two continued after the woman and child.
Shit.
A cold dread tumbled through Morgana's guts. She knew that she could defeat this creature. Her father's sword could easily cut through the flesh of any creature with malice in its heart—flesh made of stone or otherwise. But those innocent Platts would be easy kills for the other two beasts and they would definitely suffer the evil of those foul creatures' terrible appetites.
The gargoyle swooped in at her with great speed.
Morgana stopped—her boots scuffling on the dirt floor of the alley—and prepared herself with a defensive stance that she had learned from Captain Bill Harper, the leader of the town's old guard before the Golden Lady's Communion took over three years ago. Old Bill Harper was dead now, killed by the beasts while hanging overnight at the Crossroads a year ago. He had trained Morgana well, back when she'd found the ex-guard captain leading a small cell of resistance sometime after she was released from her imprisonment.
As the dread creature touched down in front of her on sharp stone talons—its tail whipping around its wiry, grey body and its wings tucked in against its spiky back—Morgana took a high guard, expecting the monster to come at her with its claws. They always used their claws first. Her long, dark hair swept in front of her face, so she flung it aside with her free hand.
The gargoyle's face was long and cruel with spikes sticking out from its pointed chin and cheeks. Curling horns extended from its stone skull. Its eyes glowed with a fierce red fire. It opened its terrible mouth as if it was hissing or snarling at her, but the beast didn't make a sound other than the constant grinding of stone on stone.
Darting in with ferocious speed, the creature swiped at Morgana with the long, hooked claws of its right hand.
She met the claws with Dawnbringer's gleaming edge. The stony arm continued past her harmlessly, its grey fingers lopped off and tumbling to the ground.
With a twisted look of confusion on its silent face, the gargoyle looked at its half-amputated hand for a moment, then grimaced and pounced at Morgana; its narrow, fanged mouth wide, the claws of its left hand splayed open. Its eyes burned with red fury.
The woman dodged to one side to avoid the beast, turning Dawnbringer to let its edge protect her. As the gargoyle shifted its leap in midair to catch her, the beast met with the blade instead, and Morgana swept the deadly edge along all parts of the monster that connected with it.
Even though Morgana's mind was calm and focused on the fight, her heart was suddenly choked with dread when she heard the small child scream loudly from deeper in the alley. The mother's cry of terror was quick to follow.
Spinning out of her defensive move to face the creature—it had barely avoided crashing into the dirt—Morgana felt desperately torn. She had to save the Platt woman and child.
She was out of time.
Her gargoyle opponent was split open in several places along its arms and chest; a strange sight with a body made of stone, like a statue with clean, chiseled gouges running along its length. In the golden light of her magical blade, Morgana saw the creature's red blood running out of the wounds, already congealed.
It glared at her, its left arm now mangled along the bicep and forearm.
Morgana glared back at the monster, tossed her hair out of her face, then lunged in with Dawnbringer, stabbing it through the chest. The gargoyle threw its head back in a silent, grimacing cry, and—before it could react—Morgana withdrew her shining blade and cut off its head.
By the time the creature fell to the dirt, the young woman was already running toward the screaming. Nathan's wife
wailed as if out of her mind with fear.
When the golden light of Dawnbringer pierced the fog and Morgana caught up to the attack, she saw one of the beasts beating its wings in the air far out of her reach, holding the small child by the arms with its fearsome claws. The little boy screamed like a trapped rabbit, reaching for his mother. She reached for him, sobbing and insane with horror.
Just then, as Morgana broke into their midst, the other gargoyle snatched up the woman by the arms just as easily, and the two creatures—one carrying the child and the other carrying Mrs. Platt—rose above the roofs of New Bozeman into the thick fog.
"No!" Morgana screamed. "Come back! Leave them and fight me!"
The beasts didn't listen, or they didn't care. They flew away into the night toward the south. That's where they always took them; the south.
Nathan and his eldest son were dead, and now his wife and youngest child were taken by the necromancer's monsters. Morgana watched the struggling forms of the Platt woman and the small child in the claws of the departing gargoyles. They flew higher and higher into the misty night. Her skin buzzed. If she could have killed the beasts with her eyes, she would have. Her helpless glare stabbed out at them through the mist, but it was no use.
Then Morgana's heart dropped when the gargoyle carrying the little boy suddenly released the child from up high.
His tiny, flailing form plummeted to the streets...
"Oh my God!" Morgana cried, feeling tears suddenly tickling her cheeks.
The woman broke into a run back to the main roads. It looked like he'd been dropped near the market. Morgana tucked the brilliant blade back into the space between space of her smuggler's ring and burst out into the street, immediately thrust into grey darkness again with her heart hammering and gorge rising in her throat.
Morgana flew through the streets to intercept the poor boy.
She hoped that she wouldn't find what she expected. She prayed to any God that would listen that the boy had fallen into a hay bale or the awning of a market booth or anything other than...
She found his broken body on the cobblestone street, burst but held together by skin and torn flesh. The ruined and splattered little boy was Nathan Platt's youngest son. His face didn't even look like a face anymore. There were lengths of slender arms and legs that she could imagine his mother caressing; a large piece of scalp with fine blonde hair. She couldn't believe it. The sight didn't make sense.
Morgana's heart hurt like a spike was driving deeper and deeper into her chest with each panicked breath.
It didn't feel real.
That whole family; gone.
She hugged the wall of the nearest house and sobbed. She scratched her fingernails at the old stone bricks, eventually tearing her eyes away from the child's corpse. She couldn't look at the body anymore. She'd seen so many damned bodies; so many good people snuffed out and ripped and broken.
The poor boy. Oh God, the poor boy...
Morgana looked up at the building she clung to as her insides heaved and a crushing weight smothered her chest. It was a structure a hundred years old from back when her family helped build this town. Her great-grandfather, Lionel Soloster, had led the people here and built the great stone walls that encircled the village.
But now, just like the poor, young Platt boy, New Bozeman was a corpse; a tortured, bloody shade of what it once was. Its people were mostly under the sway of the cult, and the families that still believed in the Soloster family as the leaders of New Bozeman were few and dying every night.
The streets were empty.
Two fleeting shadows suddenly passed by overhead in the fog with a whoosh.
Morgana shrank out of sight.
Nathan was a good man and had looked up to her. He expected the Soloster family to protect them; to eventually retake control of the town and lead them into prosperity again. But no one of the Soloster bloodline remained, aside from Morgana. She was the only Soloster left alive ... if one could call this living.
She turned away, unwilling to see the little boy again. The young woman cried, hiding under a crumbling eave and praying that she was out of sight of the beasts.
Then, trying her best to keep her senses sharp and Dawnbringer at her fingertips, Morgana made her way home.
Morgana entered her family home through the back door of the kitchen. Ever since the Communion had started cracking down on the rebels, the woman figured that they might be watching her. Hell—they'd captured many of the resistance. She'd be amazed if they hadn't tortured Morgana's name out of at least a few of the poor folks condemned to the crosses in front of the church.
Estren and his damned Crossroads, she thought, slipping into the dark kitchen.
Finally inside and feeling safe, Morgana realized that she was shaking. Her insides all seemed to quiver, either from stress or from fear.
She hardly slept anymore. How could she, knowing that her people were being slaughtered and kidnapped in the streets? It was bad enough when the monsters broke into houses to attack the townsfolk—brainwashed by the cult or not—but even worse now that she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that rebels were being targeted and given to the beasts at night.
Morgana knew.
Those were Chosen soldiers behind the window watching the Platt family slaughtered in the street. It was definitely no coincidence that her people—those still loyal to the Solosters—were being taken out more quickly.
The woman walked across the kitchen on shaky legs and emerged into the large, dark dining hall.
Lillian was sitting at the table, reading by the light of several candles.
"What are you still doing up?" Morgana said, holding herself steady against the doorway.
Her sister-in-law turned and stood with a cup of tea in her hands. The curls of Lillian's blonde hair were pale against the dark room in the light of the candles. Her blue-grey eyes were wide and her face animated into a look of surprise, then clear relief.
"Oh, Morgana!" Lillian cried, her voice echoing in the quiet hall. "You're alive—thank God!"
Morgana sighed, stood away from the doorway, then approached the table.
"Of course I'm alive."
"Sister, why must you go out in the night like that?" Lillian asked, her face a portrait of angst. Her small mouth and eyebrows brimmed with stress and fear, but her eyes were steady. "You could get yourself killed! And for what?!"
Morgana leaned against the table and crossed her arms. She was sore all over. Lillian approached, setting down her tea, and pulled the Soloster girl's stray hairs together like a mother would do to a child. She put Morgana's long, dark hair behind her shoulders. Morgana could smell the tea and her stomach churned in hunger.
"I have to," Morgana replied. "I have to try."
"Try to what?" Lillian said with a small, nervous laugh. "What could you possibly do against the Darkness?"
"It's my responsibility. I have to try to make a difference. The people depend on the Soloster family."
Lillian scoffed and smiled warmly at Morgana. "But how can you make a difference, Morgana? What can one person do?"
"I killed one of the gargoyles tonight. I was trying to help a family."
"You did?" Lillian replied with a gasp. "What family?"
"The Platt family."
Nathan Platt was one of Morgana's rebels. The Chosen had pulled him and his family out of their home and forced them into the street to be killed by the Darkness. Nathan, like many others, had resisted the takeover by Magister Estren and met with Morgana and the rest of the resistance in secret from time to time. They all helplessly and often-hopelessly plotted to return New Bozeman to how things were before the Golden Lady's Communion. Before the Darkness. Before Morgana's father was killed.
"You rescued them, then?" Lillian asked, setting her lips into a thin line, apparently worried.
Morgana sighed and looked down at the long, heavy oak table. "No," she said. "The beasts killed Nathan and both of his children." Thinking back to the s
cene threatened to choke up Morgana's throat. She felt tears well up again in her eyes. "And they took his wife. They flew away with her."
Lillian sighed and cocked her head. Her eyebrows squiggled up in concern, and the older woman reached out to grasp Morgana's shoulders. She reached up and wiped the tears from the younger woman's eyes.
"That was terrible and foolish of them to be out in the night. It's very dangerous out there. The monsters come in with the fog each and every night—what was Nathan thinking?"
"They weren't out for no reason," Morgana replied. "The Chosen were in their house. They locked them out ... with the beasts."
"What?!" Lillian asked with a scoff. "That's absurd. Why would they do that? You couldn't have seen that. You must be mistaken..."
"I did."
"Oh, Morgana," Lillian said, pulling the younger woman in for a hug. She caressed the back of Morgana's head. "It must be terribly frightful out there and with that fog? You must have been seeing things, girl."
Morgana pulled away. She hated it when Lillian called her girl. She was twenty-five. It was ridiculous. And she sure as shit wasn't seeing things.
"I know what I saw, Lillian."
Lillian gave her an understanding smile then picked up her tea again. She took a sip and closed the book she'd been reading. "Morgana," she said. "What responsibility do you still have as a Soloster, hmm? You're the last Soloster—well ... you and me anyway. Things are different now. Ever since your brother made that deal with the necromancer and gave up on the town ... and your father was killed, then Damien ... now Edward gone too? This is folly, Morgana. I don't know why you hold on and try to—"
"Call a meeting, Lillian," Morgana said. Her skin suddenly felt hot. She always felt heated whenever anyone ever mentioned Owen's betrayal of the family and New Bozeman. "I know now that Estren is targeting the rebels. There's something wrong. Someone's—"
"Morgana," her sister-in-law replied flatly. "If you keep playing rebel with the Communion, you're going to get in big trouble. Do you want to end up on one of those crosses?"
