by Ross Turner
All around him he heard the wind and the rain pelting down, barraging him endlessly as he stumbled blindly through the forest.
He had lost the rest of Tyran’s troop, quite purposefully. It hadn’t been difficult. After they’d found Marcii in the cave with the demon, utter chaos had ensued.
Even though he now found himself alone in a strange and dangerous place, threatened by hypothermia and undoubtedly any number of forest dwelling creatures, Kaylm feared only for Marcii’s life.
He had to find her before any of the others did.
The demon had her.
He had to get to her before it killed her.
Though, the more he thought on it, the more he couldn’t help but remember how the demon seemed to have been protecting her.
Surely if it had wanted her dead, it would have already killed her? Or just left her to die at the hands of Tyran’s men?
He didn’t know.
Young Master Evans wasn’t really sure of anything anymore.
All he did know was that Marcii was out there somewhere, and he would not stop until he found her.
He continued on through the forest, hoping desperately that he would stumble across some sign of her, or the demon.
Anything.
But it seemed the monster was too experienced in evasion, or Kaylm was too inexperienced in tracking. Either way, after hours of searching and mindless wandering, Kaylm had found only exhaustion.
His exhaustion and fatigue turned, as they usually will, into frustration, which itself manifested into hopelessness and despair.
Such things are often an endless, inescapable cycle.
In his desperation Kaylm didn’t notice the figure watching him from afar, off between the trees in the darkness. As he tripped and stumbled on the looming shadow in the distance kept pace with him effortlessly. It made no effort to remain unseen or unheard; Kaylm was simply too weary to pick up on it.
As he continued on, tripping over protruding roots and misplaced rocks, the silhouette mirrored his every step perfectly, marking time in the darkness.
At last, after many missed opportunities, as is often the way, Kaylm finally noticed a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye.
His head snapped over his right shoulder and his eyes shot across the dense, bare forest. Scanning the trees, his gaze settled immediately upon the figure that had been following him, for still it made no attempt to hide.
As he looked upon it for a moment it froze perfectly still.
“What the…?” Kaylm breathed into the night, trying to make out the ghostly outline in the darkness. “Marcii…?”
Fleeting shards of hope raced through Kaylm’s bloodstream and he surged forward with vigour anew. But even as he started towards the figure it slipped in and out of sight between the trees, moving swiftly away from him.
The faster he ran, the faster the figure moved, and soon Kaylm found his tired legs practically sprinting through the trees, carrying him as fast as they possibly could.
He wasn’t sure how long he was chasing after the strange silhouette for, hoping desperately that it was Marcii, but it was long enough for his heavy legs to be burning and his cold lungs to be heaving.
The shape ahead of him shifted and moulded through the forest like it belonged there, perhaps even more so than the trees themselves. The very idea of that seemed impossible to Kaylm, but it happened anyway.
Eventually, just as his body was about to give up, the figure slipped between two trees and vanished from sight.
“Wait!” Kaylm cried out breathlessly, but there was only air enough in his drained lungs for that single syllable.
He followed the silhouette as far as he could, but once it disappeared from view he had nothing left to go on. All of a sudden Kaylm found himself face to face with nothing but a steep sided ravine. The tall walls of the gully were harsh and rocky and the rainwater ran off them in great torrents, feeding into the base on the ravine and turning it into a deep, boggy marsh.
The peaty ground was churned and mashed almost beyond recognition, even as more and more water poured in. It took Kaylm a little while to discern what he was actually looking at.
Footprints.
Waterlogged and pulverised admittedly, but footprints nonetheless.
Enormous footprints.
“Marcii…” Kaylm whispered to himself again, gazing yearningly through the ravine in the darkness.
He could see quite clearly the tracks left behind by the monster Reaper, even in the darkness, as they crossed straight through the impassable bog and off into the distance.
“West…” Kaylm gasped, sudden realisation flooding through his exhausted body. “Ravenhead…”
Vixen watched from some ways off between the trees as the young boy Kaylm Evans made his insights and revelations. She had led him this far, but that was all she was able to do. He would have to make the journey without her.
He was certainly determined enough; she could see that quite clearly.
In just the same way as she had done for Marcii, several times now, Vixen remained the figure concealed in the background. She was the silhouette hidden amongst the shadows, and there was much more to her than could ever possibly meet the eye.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ravenhead was a ghostly place.
At first glance it seemed stripped bare of all life and shape and form: a mere shell of its former self.
But the more that Marcii and Reaper explored, passing through the abandoned streets with their shadows pressing upon the cold, grey stone, the more the young Dougherty came to realise exactly what this place was.
Though there was no sight or sound of even a single soul, not yet anyway, Marcii couldn’t help but feel like she was passing through a deathly silent home. But as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, equally she couldn’t help but feel a soul’s presence, still resonating in this eerie, abandoned ruin.
It was a mining village, or it had been at one time.
Now left desolate, the hundreds upon hundreds of rows of tiny stone houses had vines and grass and trees growing in them, twisting through every crack and bursting from every weakness they found within the stone. Some buildings clung as best they could to all that remained of their slate, tiled roofs, whilst others had lost the battle long ago. Those that hadn’t managed to remain standing were left exposed. Inside and out they were unprotected against every aspect of the harsh and ever changing elements that engulfed the land.
Where there had once been roads the ground had in many cases been committed back to nature. In some places they had survived, but in others the cobblestones had been split and cracked into great shards as Mother Nature had claimed back what was rightfully Hers.
“I’ve wanted to come here for years…” Marcii admitted suddenly, breaking the silence that had clung to them.
She and Reaper had paced without a sound through the forsaken streets so cautiously that the echo of her voice seemed to shatter the very air itself.
Reaper did not reply.
Instead, in the dark of the very early morning, only an hour or so before sunrise, memories that he had long since tried and failed to forget came flooding back to him in droves.
But, as ever, he did not speak on them, and Marcii did not pick up on his unspoken suffering.
“When things were bad…” She went on. “I used to think if I ran away, if Kaylm and I ran away, we could come here. We could start a new life. We could forget everything about Newmarket. I could forget my family; he could forget his. We could just be happy…”
Her words continued to echo through the dark streets and reverberated off in every direction as if they didn’t belong anywhere.
It was the first time in her life, aside from her and Kaylm’s brief, fleeting, desperate conversations about running away, that Marcii had actually ever admitted just how badly she’d always wanted to leave Newmarket.
Reaper listened to her words, hollowed over the years by unhappiness, a
nd more recently by fear too.
To a certain extent he understood Marcii’s painful longings, but perhaps from the opposite end of the scale.
His earliest memories were of Ravenhead, and of his family.
This was his home.
He had never wanted to abandon this place.
But, just as quickly as he’d arrived here, he’d been forced to leave, by powers completely beyond his control.
And then, even after that, yet more pain had Reaper been forced to endure, for his family were soon stripped from him, leaving him all alone in the world.
The colossal creature looked down at Marcii Dougherty then through the dark of the very early morning with a strange mixture of emotions painted across his beastly face.
In more ways than she could possibly imagine, though it was by no fault of her own, it was Marcii who was responsible for Reaper’s loneliness.
But there was no way she could have known that.
Not yet anyhow.
She didn’t even know what he was, let alone why he was.
But Reaper was not bitter; not in the slightest.
If he had been, he would not have saved her from Tyran’s men in the forest, when he’d found her half frozen to death.
He would have just let her die.
“I used to hear stories about this place…” Marcii recalled, her voice interrupting Reaper’s thoughts, though probably for the better.
He looked away again and surveyed the ruins around them. Although this was his home, he had never seen the place thriving with life. He had only ever witnessed the desertion.
He’d seen it right from the very beginning, when the townsfolk had all first fled.
“I’ve heard lots of stories…” Marcii went on. “But I don’t think anyone really knows why it’s abandoned…”
The ironic contrast of Marcii’s words against Reaper’s thoughts was more than a little painful for the enormous creature, but even still he did not speak on it.
He knew the time would come, but as of yet nothing had changed; it was still no more his place to say than it had been before.
He simply listened as they walked. Marcii told him of all the stories and folktales she’d grown up hearing about this desolated place, however wild they might have seemed.
Reaper tried his best to hide the pain that cut so deeply through him, further and further with every word that Marcii breathed. But the more that she remembered, indeed so too did the enormous creature at her side.
Poor Reaper struggled more and more with every step to conceal his ever growing agony from the young girl.
Her recollected words struck at his heart and became truer and truer by the moment.
Even so, as the morning rolled slowly and agonisingly in, Marcii was unware of Reaper’s anguish.
It may not have been entirely her fault, but at least some of his suffering was Marcii’s doing.
Surely, without a shadow of a doubt, there was no force in the world that could change all that he’d lost.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I remember hearing once that it was an epidemic of some kind…” Marcii recalled, thinking back many hazy years to even the smallest, most fleeting moment that she could recollect. “A plague of some kind…” She went on. “Brought to Ravenhead by rats, I think someone told me once…”
Reaper nodded, listening as Marcii regaled him, telling him of all the things he knew not to be true.
“Someone else told me it’s because the mines were too dangerous…” She continued. “One day there was a terrible collapse. It killed hundreds of people, and trapped hundreds more…”
They had not yet reached the entrance to the mines and still wandered the abandoned streets like two stars lost in the endless universe. Marcii glanced about on a whim, looking for the mines with her eyes, though unconsciously searching for something else entirely.
“But then I’ve always wondered if that’s true…” She breathed, distracted, her words trailing off as her eyes eventually settled upon what they sought.
Raven’s Keep came into view.
Marcii’s eyes widened and Reaper’s heart sank.
His hands made not even the slightest motion as his eyes too settled upon the familiar sight.
Remaining silent as ever, he listened to the inaccuracies of all that Marcii had been told of this forsaken place over the years.
That wasn’t what had happened at all.
“But what if it was something else…?” Marcii contemplated aloud, though her words trailed off again as her breath faded.
It was as if the shared vision of Raven’s Keep had somehow joined their minds for the briefest of moments, and Marcii’s wandering thoughts stepped a keystone closer to the truth.
“What if it was something that happened here…” She whispered, her eyes widening. “And not something that came from elsewhere…”
How close to the truth Marcii was growing surprised Reaper somewhat, but then, he supposed he should have suspected it would happen in time, considering what she was.
Marcii’s train of thought took another turn then, steering directly towards the tower from which she could not tear her gaze.
“I’ve heard stories about Raven’s Keep too…” She whispered, barely loud enough to hear even her own words.
Reaper, of course, heard her every breath, and hung on each sound just as heavily as the last.
“Kaylm and I wanted to run away and watch the sun set from the top of the tower…” The young Dougherty admitted with a slight chuckle. Her laugh was followed by a weary sigh however, knowing she would likely never see him again, able only to pray that he was still alive.
Reaper remained motionless as they wandered even still, though his chest balled into a tight fist that threatened to suffocate him, for he knew where Marcii’s words were leading her.
“I’ve heard even more stories about Raven than I have about why Ravenhead is abandoned…” She mused aloud.
Reaper grimaced.
“I heard she was the most beautiful woman in all the land…” Marcii breathed, turning at last to Reaper, forcefully tearing her gaze from the tower.
She looked him dead in the eye.
In an instant, more to conceal his anguish than for any other reason, Reaper’s hands stirred into motion.
They flickered and danced and Marcii smiled as she watched his words form before her.
He told her that true beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.
“That’s true…” Marcii agreed, smiling warmly at the silent, enormous creature beside her, thinking a thousand and more tumbling thoughts.
Reaper’s enormous hands dropped back to his sides and Marcii took a deep breath.
“I used to hear stories that when Raven lived here, in her Keep, that people flocked from miles and miles around just to catch a glimpse of her…” Marcii recalled.
She looked up again at the tower, dotted sporadically here and there with a few weathered potholes, but no beautiful young woman.
Marcii looked to Reaper again and once more his hands spun into motion.
He asked if her parents had told her the stories.
The young Dougherty laughed shorty, and rather curtly, though then she looked apologetically up at reaper.
“No.” She replied simply. “My mother didn’t care for stories. Once or twice my father tried to tell me a tale or two, but my mother made his life difficult whenever he did.”
Reaper asked her why, admittedly a little shocked by Marcii’s reaction and response.
“Because she didn’t care much for my father either.” She replied, shrugging her shoulders a little as if such things were commonplace.
Sadly, it is likely that they are; probably much more so than they should be.
Marcii sighed again.
“I bet Raven wasn’t like that…” She mused, and the pain that seared through Reaper in that moment was like none he had experienced for a very long time.
And it just so happened
that as she spoke Marcii glanced back up at Reaper and saw upon his face an expression that she had never before witnessed.
Though he gave very little away, it was the first time he had let slip anything at all of how he felt.
It was obvious that the concealed look on his face was one of sorrow and pain and regret.
Marcii saw that the mere mention of Raven’s name brought her enormous, demonic friend almost unmatched sorrow.
The young Dougherty realised all of a sudden that there was yet even more to Reaper than she’d first thought, and that in fact he might indeed know what happened in Ravenhead, and why it was abandoned so.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The demonic creature Reaper rose to his full height as menacingly as he could. His enormous legs rooted into the ground and his massive shoulders and arms flexed threateningly.
Marcii cowered back, afraid.
She had never seen Reaper like this. Even when Tyran’s men had invaded his cave he had been unsure.
Clearly something had changed, and it had been so ever since they’d arrived at Ravenhead, only three or four days earlier.
Reaper seemed to be so on edge and filled with angst so deep rooted that it was simply unshakeable.
And now, far in the distance, too far for Marcii to see yet, Reaper had seen somebody, or something, approaching their abandoned haven.
The young Dougherty did not need Reaper to tell her it was someone from Newmarket: one of Tyran’s underlings no doubt. She could see by his reaction he was ready to fight, and to the death it seemed.
She couldn’t believe how quickly things had gotten to this point.
It was as if Reaper had nothing left to live for. As if, whatever it was from his past that still plagued him, that he’d lost, it had been stolen from him all over again.
The figure in the distance approached steadily and was soon close enough for Marcii to distinguish its shape against the rolling hills and sporadic islands of bark and branches. It was definitely a person, but they weren’t yet close enough for her to make out enough detail so that she might recognise who it was.
