by Ty Arthur
Knowing his trade the way he did, the hunter expected the freshly dug earth to house human remains, perhaps even the owner of the cabin. If he was lucky, someone had already completed the job for him, and there would only be a few minutes of digging before he could return home. Instead of a body, the burial site featured only the tome now in the hunter’s hands.
They say that the Farwalker works in mysterious ways, but that all things work towards a divine purpose. They seem more devilish than divine to me.
Much of the tightly-packed script was rambling and incoherent, but as he scanned the words he became convinced his prey had written it. First the thoughts presented in the journal were innocent questioning, but as usual that gave way to heresy as lowly man indicted mighty god for the many sorrows of the world. It was endemic of men everywhere in any kingdom, even here where superstition and religious belief flourished.
Turning back time… not even the mighty Farwalker can claim such a feat, for when has god ever undone the works of man? Who among us doesn't desire such power? I wonder how many would truly use it if they knew the great cost. To my great shame I must admit I dreaded the approach of that day as Trin’s belly continued to swell. All that changed in an instant when June arrived.
The hunter flipped past several pages, uninterested in the heretic's regrets or the particulars of the blasphemies that had led to his condemnation. What he needed was a lead, something to tell him where this dead-man walking might have fled.
An ill omen they’d said, a sure sign of the Farwalker’s disfavor. A stain that must have been caused by our sins, perhaps even a sign of possession by foul things from the darkness of the eternal void.
Another angry soul disenfranchised by the all-too-worldly actions of priests; it was nothing the hunter hadn’t already heard a hundred times before, and it meant no more to him than the ramblings of the priests themselves. A contract had been issued, and the prey would be brought down, whether he was an evil magician working loathsome magics or a soul without blemish whose only crime was to upset the delicate sensibilities of the church hierarchy.
I thought it was fitting; after all, it was where June was brought squalling into this world and where she was laid to rest in death. There will be no more celebrations there now.
Celebrations? That struck a chord. A merchant on the road while traveling out to these backwoods had mentioned a gathering place where the locals met at midwinter and high summer for their seasonal festivities. Besides holy days, any time some farm boy wanted to make his night-time fumblings with a local maid official, they would gather at an ancient pine that towered above all others in the forest. The tree was surrounded by a small clearing just large enough to house the gathered trappers and farmers in the area.
Almost as an afterthought, the hunter tucked the journal into the pouch tied to his belt as he scattered the ashes of the fire and went about the proper chants and invocations to call upon his mystical warmth. Opening the cabin’s doorway, he saw the night had brought a redoubling of the winter weather’s efforts.
The heavy snowfall made visibility poor, and the clouds obscured the sliver of moon overhead, but the hunter found the prospect of sleep held no interest. It was time to find this apostate and be done with it.
Part 2 - Discovery
Trudging through knee-high snow, the hunter cast about for familiar markings to get his bearings. He’d surveyed the giant evergreen tree from a cliff face several days ago while scouting the area, but hadn’t traveled to it yet, as the gathering point had no shelter or buildings protruding from the snow. He shot a glance back into the darkness, worrying that perhaps he should wait for morning, but his unnatural heat would leave a trail to the cabin, assuming the flurry didn’t cover it over by the time he returned.
After years of tailing marks down back alleys and hunting prey from rooftops in the pitch black of night he found the darkness to be an efficient medium for his work, and slowly but surely made his way through the wilderness. Before long, the landscape began to change in ways that hadn’t been noticeable from his vantage point upon the cliff high above. Beneath thick foliage the snow couldn’t penetrate as deep, and scars of deepest black stained the earth, as though some fire had ravaged the ground in straight lines.
The bases of thick trees that had stood for centuries were charred a ragged black, and it seemed likely the mighty green behemoths would fall in the coming weeks as they died. Whatever caused the devastation wasn’t clear to the hunter, but it must have been connected to the disappearance of the local woodsmen.
Coming closer upon the great pine, he stopped when the scorched black color along the ground gave way to a dark red. Whispering a mantra that forced his thoughts to settle on the brightest midday sun, he pulled away some of his internal heat and siphoned it into a small locus of illumination in his palm, exchanging heat for light. There was no question about it – a large amount of blood had been spilled, soaking into the ground as it dried, and it led further on. It was possible an animal had been slaughtered for a feast, but as the trail of blood stained ground went onward an uneasy feeling began to grow in the hunter.
There was a sudden sharp sound, off to the right, like someone had plucked a single string of a violin. In an instant the light was extinguished and the hunter’s short blade was pulled free from his boot as he crouched down, ready to strike or flee as the situation warranted. Off in the distance, just at the edge of his sight, was the first flash of movement he’d seen in days. It was a dark shape, too large to be any of the local game and too small to have been a bear come down from the higher climes in search of food.
Something was out there, picking at the ruins of this once sacred place. Staying low to the ground and silent as a cat, he stalked forward, seeking the source of the sound. Whatever it was either hadn’t noticed him yet, or it was choosing to ignore him. Creeping closer, the shape took form into the vague outline of a man, wandering alone in the darkness. The hunter stopped to blink and rub his eyes, certain they were deceiving him.
Beneath the snow-shrouded boughs of the massive pine paced something in the shape of a woodsman, but it was more a hazy stain on the landscape than a solid form. Completely translucent, even in the darkness the hunter could see through the thing’s body to the blasted trees beyond. Involuntarily he let slip his blade to the ground and stepped back in shock, then cursed himself and hastily retrieved his only weapon.
The apparition continued its path, circling something lying in the light dusting of snow that penetrated the pine’s cover. It flickered in and out of view momentarily as it flitted across the ground, like a shadow that stood tall rather than spreading across the snowy landscape. Whatever it was seemed oblivious to its surroundings, and the hunter steeled his resolve as he decided his course. Deadly wraith or some unknown trick, the lucent man-shape was his only hope for answers.
With a white-knuckled grip on his dagger the hunter strode forward, summoning that warmth from deep inside and preparing to shunt it forcefully into his limbs. It was a tactic he’d learned by mistake when a mark had proven more than he’d bargained for, and it was to be used only in desperate situations. While it would speed his reflexes momentarily, just long enough to get the upper hand against an assailant or flee away from a losing fight, he knew his arms and legs would burn with a searing exhaustion immediately afterwards.
With his heat tied up in preparation to be used for other purposes the cold poured across his bare skin, and much stronger than he’d expected, chilling him to the bone. Immediately his fingers began to numb, and he suppressed the need to shiver as he walked into view of the man who wasn’t really there, standing directly in the path of its pacing. Finally noticing it wasn’t alone, the ghostly outline stood stock still, continuing to flicker every few seconds as though its hold on substantial reality was tenuous and unsure.
Tense as a tightened coil waiting to spring, the hunter waited, unwilling to make the first move until he determined the extent of its capabilities and kn
ew whether the wraith meant harm. The shape's arm finally shot out, but not towards the hunter, instead pointing at what lay at the center of its circling. In a rare patch of bare ground lay a huddled mass of wrinkly pink flesh curled in on itself for warmth. Even more bizarre than the translucent man-shape was its charge; a baby girl, clearly a newborn or an infant in an extreme state of malnutrition.
Glancing back at the ghostly shape, the hunter saw that now its mouth was wide open, trying to yell something, but there was no sound pouring out. Flickering in and out of eyesight, suddenly its arms were held outstretched in a gesture of self-defense, as though trying to block some unseen assault. A huge crack burst up and down the length of the phantom, rending it solidly in two before the apparition suddenly fell apart into a thousand tiny motes of insubstantial shadow, leaving the landscape once more undisturbed by its presence.
The hunter finally relaxed his grip as several tense moments passed when it became clear the specter would not reappear. His mind flew back to the few brief clerical lessons before being given his first assignment from the church, when the priests had warned him about things dead but yet walking, things that carried the stink of death but remained among the men still living.
The lectures hadn’t prepared the hunter for a face to face confrontation with something echoing from the other side of death. Every sense alert, every hair standing on end, the hunter waited for the desperate pounding of his heart to subside before considering what the ghostly appearance meant for his hunt. Looking back to the tiny form on the ground, he realized that wasn’t the most pressing matter, as the child still lived, and began to pitifully cry for a mother nowhere to be found.
In a foreign situation and unsure of himself, the hunter scanned the edges of his vision in the darkness before scooping up the mewling bundle, clutching it awkwardly. The madness of the night may have come to an end, but the storm was only beginning its furious descent from the sky, and now piles of white fell down from the branches above as the weight of endless flowing snow became too great for the tree to hold.
Part 3 - Arrival
In these ancient woods, the trees frequently grew wide enough at the base that two men couldn’t wrap their arms all the way around. Less than a mile from the celebration site the hunter had noted in his search nights before one such behemoth hollowed out on one side. Clearly designed to be a shelter for trappers stuck in the wild, now it would have to serve as hearth and home for hunter and child until the raging storm died down.
Marching through the swirling flurries of cascading snow while searching out the tree, he clasped the child close and focused his warmth on the frail and naked form, carefully raising its temperature without burning. The hunter’s pace quickened when he heard no more crying and realized how still the child was in his arms.
Taking shelter in the hollowed out tree, his ears began burning as the warmth crept back in and the cold was pushed at bay. Knowing his internal heat would dissipate when he finally succumbed to exhaustion, he removed his shirt and hastily wrapped it around the child. Unsure of what to do, he held it close to his ear and waited, pressing one hand over its chest seeking out signs of life.
After a handful of heartbeats that dragged agonizingly on, he heard the first short ragged breath, followed by another, and then another. As they became more frequent he relaxed his grip and settled against the side of the hollow, wondering how he’d found himself in this situation. Setting aside useless musings he considered what he could do next, as the hunter had nothing with which to nurse an infant, and it already seemed grossly underfed.
With no options until the storm passed, he siphoned off the edges of his heat into a soft glow and pulled the heretic’s journal from his belt. Flipping through the pages, he considering tearing it apart to use for kindling when he reached a passage where the script abruptly changed. Although still clearly the same hand, the writing was no longer packed together as though written hastily in an attempt to put as many words as possible on the page. Instead, it flowed across the paper evenly, like the author had lost his sense of urgency.
The same priests who would have put us to death had she taken the herbs to flush the child from her body prematurely were now eager to snuff out June's fragile new life themselves. It is my greatest failing that I was unable to prevent their fell desires.
So there it was, the blasphemer’s reason for committing whatever deed had earned the church’s enmity. A dead child, one of many in a cruel world, but this one had apparently been the work of the clergy. Although a rarity, it was not unheard of for the church to decree that an infant's life would not be allowed to continue. With its doctrine of purity, the church could not abide signs of demonic taint in newborns, and while it seemed unlikely in this backwater, there was always the possibility the child’s bloodline was a political inconvenience.
Grief became my closest companion, and Trin’s river of tears flowed without end. My own desires no longer mattered. I couldn’t let it out, not yet. It had to be saved for a greater purpose.
Just what had this heretic done? Word would have spread if the farmer had murdered some local bishop or even the under-priests.
The old ways are still the best ways. There was another god that our people worshiped once, but his name has been forgotten by many. Drungomet, called the Black Gauntlet. The Unmaker. The Void of Dead Light. The Watcher in the Darkness.
The chill that struck the hunter had nothing at all to do with the cold. He couldn’t say why, but what had seemed like the ramblings of an incensed apostate were suddenly deadly serious. Followers of false, cast-down, and debased religions had been his targets before, and the hunter had never hesitated to fulfill his duty. He’d heard every litany and chant any cult cared to engage in, but something about the names written across the page worried the hunter more than the apparition he’d seen earlier that night.
The text in the old shrine had warned that the echoes of my actions would continue for some time, but it’s still unsettling to see the shades re-enact their demise night after night. It’s part of the price to be paid.
The hunter bolted upright involuntarily when he remembered the ghostly figure seen out in the woods, walking a circular path and acting out its own destruction. The sudden motion sent the infant into a fit of tiny cries that erupted far softer and more uneven than from any healthy child. Curling up in the hollow’s corner he attended the infant as best he could, unsure of himself for the first time that he could remember.
He cradled its head against his bare chest and tried to make comforting sounds and gestures. Before long it returned to silent slumber, but the hunter worried it was exhausted unconsciousness and not restful sleep.
Would that the priests could have begun the call! Desire for revenge had to be cast aside, as the rules of the summoning are clear: it must be innocents all, ones whose hands were never stained by blood. The Farwalkers lackey’s are unfit for such a purpose. A guilty soul serves only to undo the calling, and while a few less priests would make for a better world, it would not correct this injustice.
Where he found the infant, and the reaction of the shade, made it clear: the child appeared to be connected to whatever black magic the priests had decreed worthy of death. The hunter was struck then by a truly unexpected thought. He wouldn’t snuff out the child’s life, even if the order came down from the cardinal. The sudden realization was jarring to the hardened killer.
There wasn’t enough gold, nor a cause strong enough, to bring him to violence against the tiny life defiantly continuing in his arms. By all rights the girl should be dead, and yet she clung to existence despite the odds. Admiration at the tenacity to continue carrying on was at the forefront of the hunter's mind as he slipped into sleep alongside his new charge.
Sometime later as the cold bit at his extremities the hunter awoke, still clutching the tenacious child close to him. Quickly calling on his warmth he blearily stumbled towards the entrance to the hollow to find the state of the outside world.
/> Not a single shaft of light pierced through the clouds or the canopy of trees above, but at least the deluge of heavy white powder had ceased. Stepping out into the snow that reached nearly to his waist, the hunter set off back towards what he hoped was the direction of the cabin, but with so much of the landscape covered in white it was difficult to be sure.
Soon the hunter found himself back at the ancient pine, visible only due to its sheer size after the snow accumulation over the night. The shade he’d seen the night before was nowhere to be found, but he stopped in his tracks nonetheless when he saw the base of the tree, now covered in struggling forms. The three translucent figures fought against their equally ghostly bindings, trying vainly to scream through gags that weren’t there anymore. Instinctively the hunter pulled out the journal and read the next passage in its explanation of horrors.
