Kelc felt not only the emotion, but the tension that it gave off, the waves it sent though the physical world that allowed a person to realize when they’d just entered a tense situation.
If such could be true, he now knew the taste and smell of anger, every aspect of it to both the spirit and body. It permeated his every fiber, speaking in vibrant detail.
These people lived well. They did all that they should to meet their needs, those of their family, their beliefs and their nation. But an evil befell them. Their anger came from frustration, from disbelief and hopelessness.
They died, each of them, not understanding why, watching those around them falter, weaken and perish. No reason, no explanation. No remedy. They felt cursed and beyond help, and when only hope remained to cling to, no aid came for these souls. Only a meaningless lonely death.
All that they had known promised of a hard life well lived so long as dedication to a righteous faith was observed. And now, they felt no hope, no fulfillment in their shortened lives, no contentment in their accomplishments. They felt anger.
They marched in defiance, clinging, it seemed, to Kelc and Shaia. They walked with them along the lane that cut through their abandoned community. As one, these spirits, their faces turned forward, their eyeless faces gazing ahead to an unknown destination, accompanied the living, reached out to them, their anger pressing in on their very essence.
Kelc surveyed them, looking from face to face as if he should recognize some among them, watching as their heads lolled to the side as one.
As his torso gently rocked forward, the faces of the dead turned to face he and Shaia, the dark craters where their eyes once dwelt focused unerringly on them. Their heads all bowed, dropping their withered chins.
Hair drifted from some of their heads as skin began to peel. Several among them began to shake erratically. The girl nearest Kelc, clutching his foot wrenched her head upward as if beseeching the gods above. Her lips split and shriveled away, displaying her gums. They too receded from her teeth, cracking as they dried taught and drawing back into sinewy blackness that crusted along her tiny decaying teeth.
As one, the entire village collapsed to the ground, their bodies decaying at an enormous rate.
Kelc stared into them, at the delicate foot of the little girl so near to him, her leg not intertwined with those of the spirits that had walked before and after her. He watched as the flesh receded, exposing dark ligaments and tendons. He watched as even those diminished to little more than tight dry cords of sinew that cracked as the last moisture fled them.
At once, the stink of death surged through he and Shy. Both recoiled so forcefully that they broke their grip, their eyes lurching open even as they hunched forward, stomachs cramping in desperate effort to heave their contents.
Kelc fought the urge, lurching backwards, forgetting where he sat. He smashed into Freska’s rump even as his right foot fell free of the stirrup. Choking, he tumbled off of the side of his horse, left foot trapped in the loop, smashing face first onto the unforgiving cobbles of a well-built street.
He shot his arms out, grasping for anything but recoiled as soon as he hit bones, some still wrapped in swollen black flesh.
“Shy,” he cried out, but she lay slumped forward on her horse, retching. “Shy,” he mumbled miserably, tears leaking from his eyes as his own stomach strained. His foot still trapped, Kelc barely managed to rotate in such a way as to vomit without choking on it, his arms lifting him just enough. Even still, his nose burned.
His sister, impaired as she was, reached back and swatted Kay’s rump softly. Her hands returned to her stomach as the horse walked forward, picking her own path across the cobbled square.
Freska followed, dragging Kelc who still fought with the rancid stink of decaying flesh, unable to concentrate, his body sapped of all strength. He struggled to keep his face off of the stone, but that soon became impossible.
He banged into body after body. Freska stepped over them, but Kelc, hanging from one stirrup, had little choice. Time and again he slid over the dead, wrenching his face away, using his hands to free the more emaciated and smaller bodies which his girth would simply push along the ground.
His face hit rock time and again, scraping him and cutting into his skin. Death filled his nostrils and mouth. He heaved even as he fought to keep himself up off of the unending number of bodies.
As his strength finally failed, he gave up. His head bounced along the ground and his body slipped up and over dead reeking forms. He simply lived. He crushed his left eye closed, but his right remained open, bloodshot and horrified.
The dismal trip ended when it ended. The taste of death receded somewhat and he found Shaia before him. She fought with the stirrup, ultimately unleashing it and letting it and Kelc’s foot fall to the ground.
She then led Freska to Kay, tying them both to a nearby door handle before returning to her brother. “Kelc,” she wept. “Are you awake?”
His eye twitched to look more in her direction but he felt he could say nothing, not even a guttural sound. He felt violated, his body assaulted by death. He could smell it, taste it. It coated him.
Shaia reached down and began wiping blood from his face with a cloth before opening up the healing bag. “What is this greeching place?”
“Wemmerton,” answered a deflated voice from behind her. Shaia leapt to her feet, spinning. Kelc could only see her boots rotate against the cobbles. “And you’ll likely never leave here.”
The man sounded like any resident of this place should: defeated. But Kelc could feel him. Without exerting any effort whatsoever, he could sense that the nature of the newcomer was predatory.
“Shy,” he croaked, forcing his arms up under his torso to climb up off of the ground. But his body seemed hesitant, slow to respond, too ill-treated to serve Kelc as he asked.
His right arm worked almost normally, but his left felt weak and rubbery.
His sister glanced at the man who stepped from a nearby doorway, but then squatted next to her brother where he struggled on the ground.
“No,” Kelc hissed, realizing that everything he meant to do worked against him. His efforts at rising failed and pulled his sister’s attention away from this obvious danger. “Shy,” he spat again, his throat dry and coarse from calling out while he’d been dragged across the paving stones.
“Here you go,” said the newcomer helpfully as he brought some sort of bludgeon into Shaia’s temple.
She landed just before Kelc, her unconscious eyes closed just before his. A pale hand clutched her beautiful face and callously shoved her away from him where he still struggled to get up.
“Bastard,” he hissed at his assailant as he let himself flop back to the cobbles, trying to reach his skiver, which remained in its scabbard on his left side. But his right hand couldn’t do it. He slapped feebly at the scabbard twice before the man that attacked his sister lowered himself to the ground, kneeling, his eerie eyes looking straight into Kelc’s.
“My name is Micah,” he said, his eyes unblinking, the irises within changing color, turning from their native brown to a pale reflective yellow as the man shifted somewhat in the pale light. He held a black-lacquered club over Kelc, ready to pound him. “Micah Gabriel Cadderson,” he continued, bobbing his head as if pleased by his name. Micah’s free hand snaked out and clutched Kelc by the chin, one of his fingers digging into the soft flesh under the boy’s jawbone. No sooner did he make contact than he recoiled, instantly rolling each of his fingertips across his thumb as if they’d been burned.
His mouth fell open as he let his distaste for the young Symean hiss out into the wintery air. “I’m a curse to all who know me,” said the gaunt man, his cheeks pulled in tight against his high cheekbones. Again his eyes shifted to a pale yellow as he lifted his head enough to look past Kelc for a moment, distracted for the briefest moment. “But what in all the Hells are you? Can’t leave you with your mind working and your hands free.”
Before K
elc could have explained, the club came down, cracking hard against Kelc’s skull.
A draft slithered past his feet, the cold air a shock that he’d not expected. His first thought, boots. I have no boots on. His breathing sped up and grew shallow. A shiver rolled up his body, starting at his exposed toes, leaving a sense of exposure and vulnerability in its wake.
Kelc’s eyes snapped open but only an unfocused gray-brown haze shone before him, accompanied by an intense ache in his head.
He felt every heartbeat in the front, back and left side of his skull. Each pulse felt as if someone still hammered on him repeatedly.
He opened his mouth but his dry throat felt as if it cracked inside, leaving him to choke. He coughed and as he did his head shrilled like a raw nerve.
“Ughn!” Kelc crushed his cough, his eyes slammed shut. Each hoarse breath came out of him with a moan as he struggled to orient himself. He focused on simply breathing until the pounding in his head reduced somewhat and his breathing eased into a less panicked course.
It seemed hours before he finally allowed his eyes to slide open again, again looking forward into an unfocused brownish gray. Worse still, his head felt locked into position. He couldn’t even look down or turn his head to the side.
His arms seems rooted where they were, tied down or fastened somehow to a smooth surface. His rump rested on something though Kelc also discerned that a rope or belt wrapped around his gut, holding him in place. His legs felt mostly numb. He could still feel his cold feet, though they dangled in open air, unable to reach the ground.
The only part of his body that Kelc could move, he rocked his feet forward and backward a bit, desperate for any measure of his current straits. Gaining some measure of comfort from the distraction, he swung his legs more forcefully.
His toes banged into the wooden wall with a dull thunk, bringing keen awareness to his senses. The powerful ache in his forehead and his inability to focus his eyes gained explanation, allowing his foggy mind to place him.
Strapped to some type of chair or something, he’d been set against a wall, his entire weight resting on his forehead, his unsteady eyes trying to focus on a wooden wall that stood less than a knuckle before him.
“Eh,” he grunted, struggling against whatever held him, whatever cord or rope that effectively strapped his head, chest, waist, arms and legs into position. He could make them slide perhaps a knuckle or two but he felt nothing that suggested he could free himself from his bonds.
He sucked in a deeper breath to make a better show of breaking whatever held him but his dry throat intervened, again choking him. He coughed a few times, reigniting the throbbing in his head.
For a second time, he fought to calm his body, reducing his breathing to shallow measured pulls that posed no threat to his arid throat.
The repetitive complaint in his skull slowed after a time, leaving him right where he’d begun. Kelc clinched his teeth and shut his eyes as his anger mounted.
Imbecile, he yelled in his mind. The town obviously suffered. He’d felt it. Why did we come here? Why didn’t I just go around? Greeching Hells! So easy to just ride around, but here I am, trussed up and leaned in the corner like a greeching broom.
Within him, his anger blossomed. He felt his face burning with rage and his hands seemed to warm. And Shy! His thoughts howled. Where is she?
The very air vibrated around Kelc as every muscle in his body seemed to flex against his prison. “Shy!” he croaked.
“No!” a man’s voice called out behind Kelc. “Don’t…”
His arms and legs ripped away from where they’d been confined as an invisible wave exploded away from Kelc.
A sharp crack filled the air as splintered wood flew in every direction, the pieces little more than those one might use to pick at his teeth.
Even as Kelc suddenly fell free, his fall so slow to his senses, the spiritual blast he created kept moving.
He couldn’t see anything but what happened just before him, where the wall simply disintegrated before the force of the surge of spirit, flying away with no more effort than might feathers, letting too-bright sun further assail his eyes.
Within the space of a thought, the wave crashed into the building next door, crushing into it with almost equal force, knocking its exterior wall down as a single piece, rocking the entire structure away from Kelc.
Simultaneously, a man howled for the briefest moment, just ahead of yet another crash behind Kelc.
As if time suddenly resumed at normal speed, Kelc hit the floor, landing artlessly on the hard dirt with a hoarse grunt. He thudded on his backside, a sharp pain rattling up his spine before he collapsed onto his back.
Above him, he could see the top of the building, devoid of walls or support, coming down to him.
“Hells!” he hissed, trying to scramble in whatever way he could, but his body, bashed and beaten, weakened and almost atrophied by recent treatment could do little. He rolled to a side but slammed into the blasted ends of what used to be the floor. Kelc collapsed to his back again as the wooden ceiling and roof crashed down on him.
A gust of wind passed around him where he lay and dust filled the air, the cloud so thick he could feel it in his mouth, nose and eyes.
He coughed again, this time unable to stanch the fit, aided by the dust. His head threatened to explode. It felt as if he bore open wounds in his scalp and each successive rasping bark spilled his health to the thirsty ground.
Yet he lived.
With interminable slowness, his coughing abated and the dust settled. The framed top of the building, now mangled from its plunge to the ground, allowed filtered sunlight through, each ray alive with motes of dust, all of it adrift on cool winter currents that now invaded what used to be an inn of some kind.
Kelc saw immediately in every direction that the floor, a raised wooden platform, saved him from further injury or death. His spirit explosion had dug under him as well, tearing a hole in the floor, digging an alcove which he then fell into, keeping him just beyond the falling roof’s reach.
Kelc closed his eyes and tried to see with his other senses. He slid into his vision and could suddenly sense spirits all around him.
Lying just next to him was an old man, holding to his living form, his eyes open and looking into the fallen roof as if he could see the sky above.
Standing within the timbers that now trapped Kelc into the floor he could sense any number of people’s souls. He suspected that many of them were the very same that escorted him through Wemmerton when he’d first arrived.
As he focused on each, the individual specter turned to him as if becoming aware of him, each of their jaws hanging just ajar, their emotionless eyes turning into murky darkness as they looked upon him.
A chill filled him. With the soft blasted ground against his back and the dead standing all about him, Kelc felt as if he now lay in his own chance-made tomb.
“Shy,” he whispered, almost as though the thought was not his own. He locked his eyes on a small girl, her hair tied in two large braids that gathered behind her head, tied with ribbon.
Her eyes became dark pools as she nodded, her right hand rising through a crossing beam of a wooden truss, unaffected by the wood, pointing.
“She’s that way?” he said, though no sound left his mouth. The girl nodded only once, languidly, her chin needing an eternity to drop and return to its starting position. “I can’t get free,” he told her, but she did nothing, offered no inference of understanding. No shrug, no motion. Her unsettling dark eyes unmoved. “I can’t…” he began again, considering the few times he’d wielded spirit energy.
“Take me there,” he commanded, envisioning the small girl somehow hurling the giant wooden structure from above him.
Her mouth fell open, her teeth seeming to grow in her mouth until they stood out, pronounced as if she screeched for her very survival, though not a single sound emitted from her.
All at once, she dissolved into tiny black speckles, the
collection of them looking like tiny insects as they continued to move within her defined form.
Before Kelc could inspect them further, they hurtled in the direction of Shy, erupting through wooden studs and panels, parsing it into little more than heavy powder that exploded before the force of her, leaving a sort of tunnel through the blasted roof into a narrow street or alleyway.
Kelc retreated from his spirit vision in disbelief. “Greech,” he cawed, stunned by both the power and the fact that he still remained unable to so much as walk.
He had his escape. He expressed thankfulness, holding at the very core of his mind how much he appreciated the girl’s efforts, hoping that it would reach her, if she yet existed. Perhaps any spirit in this cursed town would have helped him, but he felt as if it was the innocent decency in the girl that allowed her to so quickly decide to help him and use every bit of potency to do it. As if she were plucking an injured baby bunny up from the ground, determined to find help, she made up her mind and began.
He suddenly thought of Henna Lanch. He remembered how she sat on her chair, happy to be with her mother, free of her father’s abuses.
Emotion overcame him and tears carved a path down each dirt-caked cheek. Kelc felt weak before his sudden gratitude and sadness as they mingled in him. These girls, he thought. What did they do to earn their deaths? So kind, so innocent. “Hells,” he gurgled. How wrong the world felt to him.
Kelc crushed his eyes closed. “Okay,” he mouthed, afraid that making sound would lead to another coughing fit. He forced his emotions aside, awake to the need to escape and repair his body.
His eyes shot wide as he realized his own past abilities. His head lolled to the side where he knew the old man lay. “Join me,” he said softly, though he backed it with his will. “Enter into me. Heal me and allow me to leave this place.” Kelc formed each word in his thoughts.
Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One Page 25
