by Troy Hooker
Most of what she said was only half understood, but everyone knew she was babbling out of fear on behalf of all of them.
Then she huffed around the clearing, cinching her backpack, tying and retying her shoes, and putting her hair up into a tight bun. They watched her stomp about for nearly a minute before she stood straight, facing the Darkness, an obstinate look now on her face.
“Let’s get this over then, shall we?”
She ignored Gus’s suggestion to lead and stomped down the knoll toward the darkened trees in front of them, the others falling in single file behind her until they reached the tendrils of Darkness spilling into the knoll, which they circumvented, entering the woods to the left. They picked their way beside the sea of black through the forest, around huge fallen timber and thick mossy rocks that poked out of the needle-laden forest floor. It was almost surreal to watch as the thickness flowed and oozed like it was alive, not unlike the Lazuli light of the pool below the City.
Then, as they pushed through the trees into another field, they gasped, suddenly unable to speak. There, rising out of the trees like a great monster, laid the source of the Darkness—a cloud greater by a hundred times than the first.
Chapter Thirteen
The Darkness
The massive wall of black stretched high into the sky and crested like a giant wave about to curl on top of them.
Frozen, the four stood watching the Darkness ebb and flow while it vomited out smaller waves near its base that rolled forward like a great tide into the trees behind them.
It was Lillia that made the first move this time, forcing herself to move forward into the field with the giant before them.
The rest followed after her, stepping forward cautiously, no one else daring to take the lead. The air was eerily calm and balmy as they walked toward the dark wave.
The few hundred meters to the wall were made in silence. The only sounds heard were the soft crunching of pine needles below their feet and the occasional bird behind them singing warnings of the danger they were about to behold.
As they moved closer, the wall of the cloud began to take on a curious shape, almost like that of many thousands of faces trapped in agonizing torture within the Darkness.
“Oh my,” Lillia breathed, echoing the sentiments of the other three.
A few meters from the wall, they stopped, watching the oozing black belch out more agonizing faces. No noise came from the Darkness, but a curious odor was evident to all of them. Not a bad odor, but quite the opposite—an enigmatic smell that drew you in, craving more of whatever it was.
Before they would allow themselves the pleasure of it, however, they focused on where the Darkness was thinnest and quickly chose their path through.
“We have to do it,” Emma said, watching an especially horrifying face emerge from the Darkness and contort its features into transitions of fear, anger, and rage before unwillingly dissolving back into the cloud. “We have to go through.”
Sam couldn’t explain what he did next. For some unknown reason—perhaps out of anger over his past, or because of the deception and confusion of being brought to this place, or maybe it was the appeal of the enigmatic smell of the cloud before him—he cinched his pack and walked straight into the Darkness.
He walked blindly, eyes closed, doing his best to block out the deafened calls and shouts coming from his friends behind him.
At first, the air choked him, doubling him over, expelling air and mucus from his mouth before allowing him a limited breath or two. He no longer heard the shouts behind him. There was only the thick, stifling silence.
For a few moments, he allowed himself to adjust, then forced his body upright to continue walking. He expected the others should be right behind him.
Inside the Darkness there was little light, similar to a cloud-covered moon at twilight, but he could see ever so slightly, and what he saw made the hair stand up on his neck.
Trees were only charred black remains of what they once were, and those that were alive barely clung to life as they were strangled by huge rope-like vines snaking up their trunks and squeezing the life out of their branches.
There were bones all around him—carcasses of animals once having the spark of life coursing through their veins, but now just remains of decaying flesh. He sat, closing his eyes for a moment to try and slow his breathing a little.
You will always be alone, a voice whispered softly in his ear from behind him.
He whirled around, searching for the verbal assassin, but there was no one there.
Your friends are using you, the voice jeered.
He covered his ears, but it was as if the voice penetrated his very soul.
Lies … all of it.
Unable to breathe the vile air any longer, he vomited up the contents of his stomach and doubled over, sucking in the sickened air of the Darkness around him again. He had to get out.
He was so consumed with his senses that he didn’t even notice the muffled yells of his friends behind him.
“Sam!” Emma ran to him, grabbing his head in her hands. “Are you okay? We were worried sick about you! Why would you run off like that?”
“I didn’t run,” Sam coughed, trying to fight his nausea.
For some reason, he felt sudden anger toward the others, almost like they were deliberate in leaving him in the Darkness alone. But he knew the truth, and still couldn’t explain why he did it.
“I just walked through. You apparently didn’t follow me.”
Gus stood in front of him, blue lantern in his hand, hazily lighting the scene.
“Sam, you are almost a kilometer away from where we stood in front of the cloud. You have been gone nearly an hour.”
“What?” He was confused, flopping exhaustedly against one of the trees that struggled to stay alive. “That’s not true, I was only here for a couple of minutes.”
Emma picked up his face and looked directly at him. Her emerald eyes were perhaps the only thing of beauty in the haze of Darkness.
“We thought we lost you. I thought I lost you,” she said, fear splashed across her face.
“The Darkness must be altering time, perhaps distance as well. We will need to make sure we are staying very close to each other the rest of the way,” Gus said.
Sam was instantly angry, but he didn’t know why.
“You want to keep going through this? Have you seen the bones lying around?”
They were silent, except for Emma who was still holding his face in her hands.
“Sam, there are no bones.”
He forced a look around and saw no sign of the deteriorated bodies or piles of white carcasses. What was this place? There were bones just moments ago—he saw them. Now there was nothing.
“Sevel … Darkness. It is said to be a being of its own,” Lillia whispered. “It affects everyone differently.”
Gus’s voice seemed suddenly more muffled than the others’ as a particularly dense cloud settled around them.
“The Dark-ness affects all of us dif-ferently. It must be taking a larger toll on S—am for some reason,” Gus’s voice sounded distant, surreal.
“Well let’s k—eep going so we can get outta here,” Sam said, his voice suddenly sounding disconnected from his own body. He felt lightheaded once again, but found enough strength to hoist himself up against the trunk of the tree.
“Yes. Lu—cky for us, Gus kept track of which way we needed to go,” Emma’s voice was miles away.
Both Emma and Gus helped him to his feet, although he could see both of them were suffering from the effects nearly as much as he was. Gus’s face was as white as a sheet, and he was sweating profusely. Emma’s face showed more color, but she looked strangely tired and could not stop stumbling. Lillia looked as pale as she always looked, but her eyes were sunken and showed rings of exhaustion around them. She
seemed to handle the Darkness better than all of them, but it still took its toll.
“The Dar-kness affects People of Light negatively—but Metim draw from it, us-ing it to wield just as we do with the Li-ght.”
Gus talked as they stumbled along, mostly to keep the silence at bay.
No one was annoyed by Gus’s rambling, for the small comfort of having someone talk as they pushed their way through the soupy black was better than the eerie silence that would take its place.
“When someone opens him-self up to the Darkness, there are all sorts of alterations they go through—physical distortions and such—that ultimately changes who they once were.”
“Th-ey look like fre-aks,” Lillia interjected, her voice weak and muted.
“Freaks, uh—yes,” Gus said, “but ultimately they are just people—who have chosen the Dark over Light for one rea-son or another.”
“Ha-ve you seen one?” Sam was able to walk on his own now, but still stumbled along with Emma holding his arm and him holding hers for mutual support.
“Only in the Watcher Press,” Emma said. “A—guy a few years ago who brought a Met-im to the Council to try to convert him back to Light—but he ended up esca-ping in town and causing all sorts of havoc.”
“Max Lemon—bout,” Lillia recalled. “No one kn-ows how Max got the Metim inside the City, either.”
“What hap-pened to the Metim?”
“They killed him,” Gus answered. “Max got in the way of a PO agent who used a bolt on the Metim, and both were dead instan-tly.”
“So Max believed he could change the Metim back to the Light,” Sam said.
“Uh huh. When they turn they are gone for-ever. All hope of bringing Light back to a Metim is lost when they allow the Darkness in.”
“I sti-ll think there’s hope.” Emma looked as though she would suddenly collapse.
“Look!” Lillia pointed off to the left in the black fog, her voice barely audible.
It was the first sign they had seen of a break in the Darkness. Clear, blue sky could be seen where she pointed, like a beacon of light guiding them out of the gloom. Sam could smell and taste the fresh air before they were even there.
They walked through the charred remains of trees, stepping over the oozing black vines littering the landscape. Every so often they could hear a strange combination of sounds coming from the vine’s tree-strangling fingers that sounded like sticky sandpaper sliding over wet rocks as it reached out to snuff any remaining life within its grasp.
Sam knew the others were suffering as he was, but for him, it was a mix of emotions being in the Darkness—the strongest being loneliness. It was almost as if the others weren’t even with him. Sam drifted between feelings of anger, emptiness, and deep resentment.
There is no such thing as real love. Everyone will always leave you. These things kept recurring like inaudible whispers in the back of his mind, and giving in to them would be so easy …
When they neared the perimeter, the Darkness seemed to do its best to keep them in its grasp. The closer they came to the fresh sweet air, wave after wave of dense clouds descended upon them from above, forcing their every step to become labored and slow as if time was unhinging itself from its constraints in an effort to delay them.
They huddled together and walked through the thickness, unable to see or breathe in the toxic fumes as they gathered strength. The light from the tiny lantern was the only light to guide them, but even it struggled to offer any help. The air was like tar—when they tried to inch forward, more would close in around them, clawing at their eyes and noses, refusing to give any leeway as they pushed forward.
Just as they believed they would be prisoners of the unforgiving cloud for eternity, a brilliant flash flooded the group from somewhere ahead of them in the blackness, forming a luminescent bubble around them and quickly dispelling the Darkness that suffocated them.
Gus led the way with the shield as a cover the last few feet to the edge of the cloud. With a final push, they burst through the shell of Darkness into the bright sunlight, the shield vanishing without a trace of Light anywhere.
***********************
Gus, Lillia, Emma, and Sam fell gasping for air into the tall field grass outside of the massive black wave of distorted faces. The sunlight hurt their eyes as they attempted to adjust them and search for the origin of the protective shield that aided them.
“Who’s there!?” Emma called into the blinding rays of sunlight, but received no response. “Who are you!?”
Gus was wheezing loudly next to Sam, and Lillia was doubled over, coughing up phlegm. As the dizziness subsided, Sam reached over to where he believed Emma was panting heavily next to him and grabbed her arm. She immediately shook from the touch, but then sensing that it was him, gripped his hand tightly.
“That wasn’t your shield?” Sam asked her.
Barely opening his eyes, he could see the sky above him was the purest of blues, and there were large rocks all around them. The wall of Darkness loomed darkly beside them, the cloud of faces looking even angrier now that the four had escaped its grasp.
“No.”
Strangely, Sam felt an odd longing for something within the Darkness again. Even after he and the others were able to stand and have a look around, he couldn’t shake the need to turn constantly and look again at the wall of faces. He tried to shut it out, but it kept returning. The only thing he could do to put it out of his mind was to keep focused on the map Gus laid out in front of them.
“Those trees here on the plateau … they have to be the Woods of the Ancients. I recognize them from the map,” Gus pointed at the large clump of trees near the City, the tops of which dwarfed the other trees drawn anywhere on the parchment. “From what I can tell, we are on the far side of the plateau from where the Old City sits. We are on the steepest side, so we may have a tough way of it ahead.”
Emma pointed to another spot on the map near the left side of the Woods of the Ancients, just to the left of the entrance to the City.
“Isn’t that the Light Springs?”
Gus nodded.
“Sure is. It’s the second reason they built the City here—other than these.” He pointed at a series of what looked like ponds behind the entrance of the City. “Large deposits of Lazuli, and the springs were just an additional benefit—known to be the best tasting water around.”
“And that must be the Graves of the Renown,” Lillia pointed to a circular spot on the map just beyond the trees where they were with many half-circle shapes inside of it.
“It must be!” Emma was regaining her excitement little by little. “Look! There is the Forever Lamp on that pillar in the middle!” she exclaimed, at which point everyone hushed her, and reminded her that they wished not to draw attention. “Sorry, I’ve just heard so much about it. Do you think it is still lit?”
“Not sure. According to records, it should be,” said Gus.
Sam wasn’t paying attention to the lamp, nor the graves. The closer they came to the Old City, the more his mind shifted back to the old woman and what she said, back to Julian Lawrence, Chivler, and the Dark arch from his dreams. Could what he had been seeing in his dreams really be a Prophecy? And why him? Was he considered a prophet like Julian? It didn’t make any sense. He was no one of importance. He was only here because they thought him to be one of them, but he had shown no evidence of Light manipulation.
It was strange, however, because every so often Sam felt something deep inside him, like someone was calling him. To where? He had no idea. Ayet Sal she had said. Boy with the shadows. There was no way a place like Ayet Sal was calling him. That place was reserved for the imprisoned Dark Lords.
At the thought, the faces of the three Dark Lords popped back into his mind—faces of evil, of whom he hadn’t told the others about, and the time may come when he may have to. One—perhaps th
e most dangerous of them, Kachash—was still at large, and according to Mr. Sterling, they could be planning something terrible for Lior with him in charge.
Being on the Council and involved in the affairs of the Protector’s Office, Mr. Sterling may know more than he led them to believe. One thing Sam knew for certain—this was more than he had ever had to deal with in his entire life.
But whatever called him did not feel like Darkness. The Darkness was different—alluring, yes, but provocatively, in a way that made him feel empty inside, almost guilty. No, this calling was strangely more subtle, like a whisper just beneath of the sound of waves crashing on the ocean. A whisper, calling him softly, gently toward it, whatever or whoever it was.
***********************
By the time they were ready to go again, the sun was just beginning to dip toward the afternoon. Emma had passed out a simple lunch of bread and honey butter, which they ate in silence, the black wall of Darkness still in sight from the spot where they chose to eat. A small spring bubbled happily next to them, converging with a small stream that eventually made its way to the Darkness where it faded out of sight in the mass. Gus had, luckily, mapped out the best spots to find water away from the terrible effects of the Darkness, so they made good use of the spring by filling their canteens while they could.
At first, the way toward the Old City was easy, and they wove their way up the grassy terrain toward the sheer face of the plateau. As they neared, the path took a sharp turn to hug the plateau’s lofty rock wall, becoming more dangerous with every step. They wound their way up the once well-carved steps, now crumbling and blocked from loose rocks tumbling down the face until the four stood level with the height of the Darkness swirling beside them.
Finding a rock suitable to sit and rest, Gus took off his backpack and sat for a moment, sweat beading on his brow.
