He broke free a candle from where the base had melted to a thick tome and relit any others that had snuffed out. Then, putting the candle aside, trembling hooves touched the edge of the map over the freshly-lit wicks. Their flames stretched fiery tongues, desperate for a taste.
“What are you doing?!” Regina shrieked.
“You haven’t the slightest inclination how much danger this parchment puts us in!” Astral roared. “Do you know what this map is? What it indicates?! If it were ever found, the Alliance will mark you and Dwain traitors to the Zuut – and I will not allow you to be naively responsible for your own destruction! If this map were found out, and dotted connections made, Dwain could be hanged for this! Do you want that? Do you understand?!”
“What?! Wait – no!” Regina threw herself at him, but it was too late. Flames crept along the bottom edge of her papa’s map, eagerly devouring the countless hours of hard work, the forever-etched scent of lavender and duskroot, the last remaining treasure left of…
Regina rushed over and batted the map out of Astral’s hoofs without even thinking of the consequences. The map drifted beneath the desk, touching flame to the wood planks underneath. She tugged free one of the many cloaks draped over the bench by the door, and threw it over her papa’s map, stamping away the flames until only smoke remained.
Astral struggled towards her, using the edge of the desk for balance. He squinted behind a wince of pain and reached to undrape the cloak. “Regina—”
“Don’t touch it!” She pushed his hooves away, scooped the remnants of her papa’s map into her arms, and backed away from Astral with her tail raised high, eyes wild and brimming.
“Regina…” Astral stared at her, stunned. Not since she was a kit had Regina reacted in such a way. Not since that time when … “Regina, please! It is for your own good!”
“If it’s for my own good, then prove it to me. Really prove it to me,” Regina dared him. “Take me back. Take me back to Altus Village so that I can see for myself. So that I can see that I was born of terrorists!”
Astral blinked, astounded into bewildered silence.
“Take me back!” Regina said again, louder. “If what you say is true, if what everybody in Keeto Town says is true, then is it not appropriate that I, myself, bear witness with my own eyes?!”
“Reg … Regina … Listen to yourself…”
“Did you know this whole time?” she demanded. “Is that why, despite all the humming and hawing you made about whether you should take us to Keeto Town, you let us wander the streets alone as children? Did you wish for us to find out, as young and innocent kits, just how darkened and corrupt our families, our neighbours, Dwain and I were?! We would simply stumble into a place like the Fallen Alder, asking all sorts of questions, only to come face-to-face with reality? Of what sort of monsters we truly were?!”
“Regina, stop this!” Astral commanded, despite the arm he used to shield himself.
“Fine! I’ll go, myself, then!” Regina threw herself towards the cabin door, drawing free Dwain’s old walking staff from the tin of canes by the bench.
“Regina! No! That’s not—Regina Lepue! Get back here this instant! You misunderstand—”
But it was too late. She fled into the night, slamming the door behind her.
28. The Lost Souls of Altus
Little skunk heels splattered through muddy puddles that pocked the forest road, flecking moist earth all across Regina’s rain-absorbed poncho. Its wool was heavy from bare exposure, and weighed an unbearable burden on her petite shoulders. But she didn’t care, just ran – fled from the Hollow as far as her little skunk heels allowed.
You haven’t the faintest idea what danger this map puts us in …
Her father’s gentle smile. The smell of lavender and duskroot, corrupt with the stench of singed parchment. His face. Cloudy eyes. Breathless lips. Arrow-laden skies amidst fiery rooftops.
… I will not see the rest of my days to you flitting about in my gardens without purpose …
The crop-guardian, fierce glass eyes and a flesh-hungry snarl, leaping out from the corn stocks. Shrill screams, a lantern snuffed out as its glass shattered against the grass.
… Why – no harm will come to you while I am near … Trust me, Regina Lepue – all will be made right …
A distant flash of lightning clawed across the purple skies, reached for blustery hilltop firs far beyond. Regina used Dwain’s staff to hop across a vast murkiness in the road, stopped to catch her breath in the shade of a cave-like cleft within the trunk of a hemlock tree.
Rain hissed all around her. Leaves and branches swayed and fanned to the whimsy of howling winds. Such fierce storms terrified Phalanx, Regina thought. No longer could she hear him bray for reprieve in the distance. The Hollow was far from her, now.
Good. Begone with it.
As she thought this, a roll of thunder trembled through dark, hateful, clouds.
Regina withdrew her papa’s map. Thomas Lepue’s lavender scent was smothered by the stench of burnt parchment. The entire bottom portion was almost completely destroyed; the location of Altus Village was scorched into nothingness. Pieces fell away between Regina’s paws, turning to an ashy powder that smeared the pads of her digits. The wind carried off whatever else didn’t crumble away.
“Oh, Papa...” Fresh tears dotted the map. Regina clutched the sole surviving relic of the Lepue clan tight to her chest for a long time. And, for the first time in too many years, she allowed grief to consume her.
A long howl sounded from somewhere deep within the woods. Regina gasped. A coyote, a wolf, maybe. She searched the rainy darkness for flashing eyes, canine features, but realized after a moment that it was just the wind at her ears.
He wanted to destroy the most important treasure of your childhood – the only heirloom left by Mama and Papa.
How could Astral have done such a wretched thing? How could Regina ever in a thousand eons forgive him?
He refused to bring you and Dwain to find aid in Keeto Town straightaway. When the time came, any news was too long forgotten … the canines had gotten away.
Hateful thoughts plagued her, pounded away at her nerves, all the louder, stronger, with each boom of thunder, every crash of lightening.
Because of him, nobody lived.
Because of him, you have nowhere else to go.
Because of him, Papa’s last remaining piece of work has been forever scarred by the very scourge that tore your lives apart.
Astral never loved you, only used you, took advantage of you and Dwain.
Yes! it was all for him!
To maintain the Hollow, to maintain the garden … lazy and disrespectful, always with such complaints…
He never loved you … only used you … and now your use has expired…
“I’ll go, then,” she whispered. “I’ll go and won’t ever return. I’ll find Dwain in Warminister, and together we’ll start life anew.”
Regina tucked the map carefully down her poncho and darted out from the safety of the hemlock tree, pulling her hood overhead. Harsh and icy wind followed, pushed at her backside and tugged at her clothing.
The wind guided her forcibly through the forest, calling her name, whispering sweet dripping regret and anger into her memories. Before she knew it, the forest had grown darker with trees that crushed the dwindling path with each twist and turn.
…Regina…
…Regina…
Regina beat back jagged branches that clawed for her poncho, scratched at her face. The wind howled a banshee’s cackle overhead, but she followed it as Dwain taught her so long before. The wind called to her, beckoned her deeper and deeper into the Keeton Woods. She tripped and stumbled over exposed roots, her footpads sank into deep and muddy pocks in the earth, but Regina pushed on with all the might in her little soul, sure that the Hollow was a forever’s trek behind her.
…Regina…
She stopped to catch her breath by the edge of a steep, downwards-s
loping hill lined with dark firs. They were so tall, she mused, stretching high enough to merge with the stormy malice of the night.
…Regina Lepue…
Her stomach started to hurt. It was a dull pain at first, rhythmic like noxious waves that settled quickly, but felt worse as the minutes passed. What felt like invisible knives scored her insides. Regina doubled over in agony. Vertigo and nausea set in, and before she knew it, the little skunk lost her footing and fell head-long down the great expanse of fir trees.
The hill carried her all the way down, down and down, until she was swallowed up beneath the slick embrace of high grass. Regina lay there for awhile as shock took its hold, totally numbed the misery of her abdominal pain until it was a forgotten memory.
Dewy growth tickled her face. Regina mustered the strength to climb to an unsteady stand, only to see dark blots and blurs before her. She found her spectacles hanging round her neck, where they always were when they slipped away.
Steep coniferous hills surrounded her at every turn. The mother moon spilled fresh rays into the pit, like spotlight. Regina patted away red and muddy pine needles that smeared the front of her poncho as she looked straight above, into ink-black clouds that roved the plum dark skies like war-bound airships from Doblah Province.
“Oh, dear…” Regina flashed sturdy glances up each hill. They were miles high, with little to aid ascension back where she had fallen from. Despite this, she tried, but each attempt to climb the steep hills only resulted in splintered shins and mouthfuls of pine needles.
She was trapped.
Faint rain pattered all around her as the storm finally broke. Somewhere, crows cackled. Regina’s little alert eyes found the reflection of a lost and terrified skunk in the rain droplets that splashed into a patch of soil from a nearby low-hanging sycamore branch.
Something else caught her eye. The shadows of the hillside pine trees kept mostly hidden a fallen log within the regolith at the far end of the pit. It was moss-covered and home to large flat-headed mushrooms.
Regina weaved through the high grass, taking wary steps into the middle of the clearing. Familiarity drew across her mind. With it, came dread she hadn’t felt in years; dread she had all but forgotten.
—follow the wind, yeah, and she’ll guide ye back home, yeah—
Dwain’s face appeared before her.
“Keeto Town shouldn’t be too far from here, yeah. If we’re to find our way out of these forsaken woods, we’ll need to climb these hills, yeah. Last thing to do us good is to run into any canines!”
Then like ash upon the wind, he vanished into the post-storm ether. The visage brought back awful memories of their escape from the Altusian ruins. The stench of burnt hay, the blinding smog so thick, so harsh, as it billowed through streets littered with the dead and dying.
Regina could hear them, could smell them, the heat of their bodies, the taste of their Life Energy as stifling darkness swelled around her … gave her shelter …
There was only darkness, then. And with it, the groans, wails, and gurgles of a thousand trapped and tortured mammals.
“I don’t wish to be here,” she whispered aloud.
Her eyes met the fallen log. She stood mere inches from it now, its earthy pine smell so strong in her nostrils. Its face bore the cracks and rings of many ages long since passed. Regina slowly touch it.
Flat, seamless – perfect.
It was a door. She remembered now, and the difficulties she and Dwain had rolling it open. On other side lay a tunnel. And where that tunnel led to was a place where only—
…Where only ghosts resided.
Regina shuddered, stepped away from the log.
…Regina…
…Regina Lepue…
She turned around just as the clearing became darker with the overcast sky. The hills all around her seemed to close inward. The smell of death and decay began to permeate inside her nostrils.
“I don’t wish to be here!” Regina cried out.
Crows shrieked at her, jeering and heckling from atop their treetop roosts. Regina darted back across the clearing and tried her best to scurry up the blood hills. Loose regolith brought forth scarlet pine needles that carried her back to the base, no matter what.
…Regina…
…Why did you abandon us…
“I didn’t!” she shouted.
…Why did you leave us here … to rot…
“I didn’t!”
…Why, Regina … why…
Regina swung around and came face to face with a menacing skeletal corpse. Whatever flesh still clung to its skull was rotted and taut, and creaked when its jaw bones parted to whisper nonsensical clicks and chitters in her ears.
She screamed and threw herself backwards, spinning to evade the horrific sight. Her ankle caught on a rock and she fell into a heap amidst the high grass, only to find a clutter of corpses at every gaze. Some lay on their backs with paws curled over their hewn-open torsos. Others sat propped against mossy boulders, stuck with arrows that quivered in the icy wind.
Regina was surrounded by the dead, confounded by their whispers, their jeers, their tortured moans for reprieve as they lay motionless, all eyes aimed her way. Regina knew these mammals. She choked back screams of fright as her eyes feasted upon the hateful stares of Marta Adams, and Grimmish Solomon. Tyrael Ravenoth, and old Mrs. Brixby. Lydia Harding, and the Genus family. Even Maelin and Griswold Spikeclaw cast gazes of ghostly judgement her way as they cuddled their three dead children close.
“You did this.” The skeletal corpse from before towered over Regina, gravitated towards her on unmoving limbs. The tattered cape around its shoulders flapped with slow grace against a brilliant glow produced between the trees behind. The cadaver’s sinewy, fleshless, arms spread as it descended like a swooping eagle upon Regina.
“What did I do?!” Regina cried out. “I have done nothing! I haven’t known this place for years!”
The monster reached for a drooping scabbard at its hip. Steel shrieked gleeful malice against the blinding radiance. “You have let us here to rot. You have let us here to the silence of the wetlands. For without our testimony, the Evil in the Mountains spreads, spreads, its reach wide.” A mud-stained long-sword passed before Regina’s eyes.
“No … please, don’t…” Tears flowed down her cheeks as she crawled backwards, tried to scramble her way up the incline. But the hill pulled her back down and the tall grass held her firm to the clearing floor. Regina covered her face and screamed, as raspy words of the long-since dead rattled through her very being.
“The rites of our tribe have deemed your soul a curse’d wanderer. Southward you shall walk, until the Four become the One.”
The tarnished long sword gleamed, passing before Regina’s eyes again. She caught sight of her terrified reflection in its edge, before the ghastly apparition brought the weapon level with her chest. An invisible force pierced her heart, injected her with searing hellfire. Regina swung her paws at the sword, gasped on choked words that begged for help – but her digits only passed through the sword like it were mere vapour.
Magma flowed through her veins. Consciousness faded to the warmth of amber radiance. All that remained was the hate of the Altusian ruins, the ghosts of soulless vengeance.
Be gone, witch-child, for until your death, ours shall be restless. Through the oblivion of a hexed life comes rebirth. Purity, regeneration – LIGHT.
29. The Heretic
Regina regained consciousness within high grass, without thought, except for the acknowledgement of her own existence. The feel of the uneven ground beneath her, the smell of dewy soil … bright rays raked through breezy grass blades directly before her, just close enough to make out their shimmer. Overhead, birds chirped amidst rustling leaves caught in the forest coolness.
Regina pushed up on her arms and squinted against blurry amber shadows all around her. She found her spectacles and discovered herself still in the pit at the bottom of the blood hills. She was
alone. The spirits – whether they were real or not – were no longer there to torture her.
It’s morning, she realized. I’ve been away from the Hollow … all night …
Regina searched around the grass for Dwain’s staff and found it near a patch of huckleberry bushes not far from a small formation of boulders. She stabbed into the side of the hill with the staff and began a slow and semi-steady climb up the blood hills.
Never should have left…
Never should have gotten so angry…
But papa’s map … why would he want to destroy it?
What was he trying to protect me from…?
When she reached the top, Regina threw Dwain’s staff into some nearby loose leaves so that she could claw her way up the rest of the way. She rose to a stand, panting desperately for air; patted pine needles off of the front of her poncho and gazed around.
Unmarked woods faced her at every turn.
Regina cupped her muzzle and shouted into the woods. “Hullo?! Is anybody out there?” But only her echoes on the wind replied.
Crippling fear clawed at her.
She was lost.
Regina took up Dwain’s staff and broke into a run with thoughts only of Astral’s ailing health. Oh, Goddess – What have I done?
She ran and ran, chasing the eastern sun as it fled through the treetops. Dehydration turned to vertigo, but Regina pushed on, drawing strength from the prayers she uttered between ragged breaths.
She thudded through thorny shrubs, trampled fallen twigs and branches, until she snagged her toes in exposed roots. Regina tumbled out from the brush, and fell into a heap on the edge of a dirt path, exposed to open sky.
She groaned, closed her eyes, and waited for her brain to catch up with the rest of her body. There was no energy left to stand, to even move. So she lay there at the edge of the road and let abstract thoughts consume her.
She closed her eyes and waited there to die.
Rapid hooves sounded in the distance, sprinkled with the whinnies and brays of fierce, able-bodied, fell ponies. Regina dragged her cheek in the dirt and saw a small cavalry headed her way from a bend in the road around a jut of cedar trees. She closed her eyes again, caring not if they trampled her to dust.
The Book of Wind: Page 21
