Darkness Named

by Riley S. Keene

  But when night actually came, it did so suddenly, drawing a grimace to Tanisha’s face. It fell across the land like a blanket settling on a flat surface. All the light just bled from the world. Tanisha directed her chair to stop, and looked up at the sky. There didn’t seem to be a moon in the False Lands, and the stars seemed to provide no actual light. Her eyes wouldn’t adjust. She was swallowed in pitch blackness, unable to see her own hands in front of her face, except when they passed between her eyes and a UI element.

  Most of her UI was nearly invisible in the dark, since it was almost all black text. She could still see her status meters, though. Which was a problem. The purple bar of her stability was rapidly falling. The words of the tutorial echoed back to her, and Tanisha realized she’d made a terrible mistake.

  She should have known better. Darkness always increased stability drain. On the mobile version of the game, it was a generic, steady drain after a certain time of day. Just to encourage folks to put their phones down and actually get some sleep. But here? There seemed to be an increased drain. Perhaps to encourage sleep, once again. But she was also panicking. And that was draining her stability as well.

  Tanisha didn’t think of herself as being afraid of the dark, but the absolute enclosure of the darkness was creeping her out. She’d been out in the woods at night before, miles from civilization. Complete darkness wasn’t something new. But this seemed different. Perhaps it was because she didn’t have a lightsource nearby. Or because there were ferocious things lurking in the shadows that she couldn’t see…

  Urged by her own imagination, Tanisha quickly fumbled open her inventory. But she couldn’t see it. The nature of the menu was that it was semi-transparent, so in absolute darkness she could only frown at the air in front of her and lean on memory.

  “There were sixteen boxes,” she said in a very low voice. “In the first eight I had crafting materials and my axe, and then—”

  Something in the darkness made a low noise, like a mix between a whisper and a laugh. Tanisha jolted and grabbed at the box she thought was her torch. There was an immediate and blinding flare of light that almost made her drop the glowing stick. Tanisha tried to not notice the massive chunk that fell off the end of her stability bar.

  She could see—and that’s what mattered.

  The light illuminated her inventory boxes and everything in a narrow radius around her. It wasn’t much, but it threw back the darkness nearby. But the shadow seemed to press against the light, fighting it as if it was oppressively trying to overcome the obstruction. Which didn’t make sense. As hers was the only source of light, Tanisha should have been able to see a fair distance out into the night, at least enough to see the dull shapes of distant trees. Instead, there was an illuminated ring, barely thirty feet wide, around her.

  Seeing was almost worse than not. Because now she still couldn’t see where she was going, but now things could see her. Even something with terrible night vision would be able to see the beacon of her light, and there was a good chance she wouldn’t be able to see it until it was too late. She tried to ignore it, but she just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something just beyond the limits of her sight, watching her.

  Tanisha shuddered. She missed her tutorial-mandated sword, even if the thing had been two hits from destruction. It would have at least deterred something from seeing her as an easy mark, or would have made dealing with any attacker so much less painful. Her axe would get in the way, more than it would save her.

  “Get yourself under control,” she said, and the sound of her own voice startled her. “Your stability is dropping way too fast. Keep moving, and just keep calm.”

  She wasn’t tired. Stopping to rest wasn’t an option, anyway. It would require building a structure to keep her safe, and building would need materials. Those materials she didn’t have, couldn’t find without her torch, and wouldn’t be able to farm since she’d need both hands. And at any rate, every bar but her stability was nearly full.

  So she moved forward—kept her heading and kept moving.

  Tanisha wasn’t sure exactly how long she’d been traveling for, but every moment of traveling through the darkness was like a thousand hours. Shapes loomed in the dark, and while they were revealed to be trees, tall grass, or boulders, or other mundane things, every new shadow raised her hackles. What if the next one was some sort of monster? Something with razor fangs and glowing eyes that would see her as an easy meal?

  As she moved, she kept an eye on her stability meter. It wasn’t draining as fast now as it was when she was in the absolute darkness, but it still moved at a rate she was very uncomfortable with. There was a moment where it hovered just above half and Tanisha thought she’d be okay, but then it dipped below.

  That’s when they showed up.

  In dARkness: Online, dataminers had found them to be called Stick Folk. They were an incentive to keep your stability meter high, and since stability was one of the easiest things to game in dARkness, the Stick Folk were little more than visual clutter. When they did show up, they were an annoyance. They would intercept menu clicks or attacks, and could ruin entire strategies.

  But here they weren’t an annoyance. Here they rose out of the darkness and melted away as she approached. She could hear their whispering chuckle, like handfuls of gravel being rubbed together.

  Tanisha found herself glancing about as her chair skittered onwards. She could see the humanoid shapes lurking off to her sides. Behind her. Forming out of the darkness as the torch light retreated. Vanishing into the darkness left in her wake.

  She tried to keep her breathing steady. They were just an annoyance, she told herself in her mind, too afraid of what her voice would sound like to speak the words out loud. The Stick Folk could do nothing to harm her. They were just going to slow her down and spook—

  One came from the darkness. But it stayed solid as the torchlight approached. Tanisha stopped her chair dead. She felt a chill run over her ribs and down her arms, raising goosebumps on her skin.

  It wasn’t moving.

  The featureless humanoid figure just stood there, looming. Unafraid of the light.

  She couldn’t tell which way it was facing, although her brain shrieked it was staring right at her.

  “H-hey,” she said, her voice thready and thin with fright. She stopped and cleared her throat before trying again. “Hey! Move it!” She held her torch out towards it, waving the flame back and forth. In response, the shadows warped and wiggled in a way that made the hair on Tanisha’s neck stand on end. “I got places to be and no time to be playing with you.”

  But the figure didn’t move back. It didn’t blend away.

  Instead, it did a thing she’d never seen a Stick Folk ever do.

  It stepped forward.

  Tanisha yelped and jolted back, and the torch dropped from her fingers. The light went out as soon as it hit the ground.

  Chapter 19

  Inky blackness enveloped Tanisha. In the dark, she could hear the whispering chuckle of the Stick Folk. But it was drowned out by her own gasping breath, which seemed to echo around her as if the darkness was a physical thing. An oppressive force that walled her in with the creature of nightmares.

  Tanisha tried to tell her chair to kneel down so she could grab the torch again.

  But nothing happened.

  Or, at least, if it did, it was too smooth for her to notice.

  Her own fear kept her from sliding down out of the chair. If the chair hadn’t lowered, getting back up into it would be a real issue. And that was assuming she didn’t break something on the way down.

  She reached forward in the darkness. Perhaps she could figure out if the ground was in reach before she got out of the chair. Every inch she moved though was terrifying. Her eyes were glued on the spot where the creature had stood, even if she could no longer see it because of the darkness. She didn’t know they could move. Or do anything besides float ominously in place.

  But it had moved.
It had stepped towards her. And if it could do that, it could be capable of anything.

  How did one fight something made of shadows and terror?

  In the stories of her youth, Stick Indians (as they were actually called) kidnapped or even molested women, and sometimes ate the flesh of those who fell victim to them. But they were pranksters, harmless unless provoked. Had she done something to provoke this one? She’d told it to move, but that hadn’t seemed to be true provocation to her.

  Tanisha strained to listen past her own thudding heart. The woods around her were silent, aside from the cackle of the Stick Folk and the distant noises of the False Lands various fauna. She didn’t hear any rustle of grass, or even the tumble of a kicked stone.

  But would the Stick Folk interact with things in such a way? Or would they be more akin to a spirit, taking revenge against her disrespect in the silence of the night? She didn’t know. But one thing was for certain—she couldn’t sit still and let whatever was going to happen, happen.

  Tanisha resumed reaching out, emboldened by her absolute terror. There was no other choice.

  When her fingers finally brushed across the soft blades of grass located an arm’s length away from her, Tanisha nearly shouted. She had to swallow the sound. It would either come out of her as a joyous cry, or a shriek of terror. There would be no in between.

  The chair had lowered. She just had to find where—

  A hand closed in around her exposed wrist.

  But not just any hand. It was like being touched by partially decomposed grass, where the surface felt like slimy raw meat.

  Tanisha didn’t yelp.

  She shrieked.

  Recoiling away from the sensation, Tanisha slapped wildly at the air around her. Her hands found an arm attached to the hand grabbing her. She kept on screaming, shoving the arm away and lashing out with her fists.

  “No! Get back!”

  Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It was higher pitched, for one, but there was a terror to it she couldn’t seem to control. A fear she couldn’t combat.

  All of her flailing seemed to work, however. The grip on her arm loosened, and when the slimy pressure was gone, Tanisha dropped her hands immediately to the sides of her chair. And urged it to go forward. But not just walk. To fly. She wanted to be gone from here.

  The chair lunged and broke into a four-legged sprint. There was a bit of an uncharacteristic bump in its gait for a moment, and Tanisha wasn’t sure if it was the chair running over the shadowy humanoid, or if the thing lashed out at the chair as it bolted away.

  But even after it was behind her, Tanisha didn’t stop screaming. Not until her breath ran out, and she couldn’t gasp for more. But even then, she didn’t slow down. She just urged the chair to run blindly through the pitch blackness, trusting whatever mechanisms that controlled the legs to stop her from blundering into something solid in the dark.

  It felt like her chair had been running for an eternity through the night.

  Tanisha’s eyes felt dry and irritated. She refused to close them, even for a moment. Instead, she just kept trying to desperately penetrate the inky night with eyes that refused to even show her a finger against her nose. She’d lost hope long ago that she would be able to see any of the Stick Folk if they were still around her. But she fancied that she could see the thick columns of tree trunks. Enough to move out of the way, at least.

  Whether she could or not, her chair didn’t bump into any trees. Or anything at all. It just kept moving. Ever forward. Always away from those who followed.

  If she slowed down, or even stopped, the Stick Folk could catch up. Or they could surround her. But nothing could keep up with the sprinting chair, so as long as it kept going she was fine.

  The only issue was, in her fear, Tanisha had forgotten about keeping track of her heading. She was still moving in roughly the same direction, but she couldn’t be certain if it was truly the same. With no compass to direct her, and no landmarks she could see to guide her, it was all instinct.

  Tanisha briefly entertained the idea of stopping to craft another torch. But even if she had materials, trying to find her way around the menus would be awkward. It would take too much time to successfully navigate to the blueprint. And then following it would be a nightmare.

  The only thing she could see in the darkness, besides the occasional vague shape looming out of it, was the bars in the bottom corner of her UI.

  And they were depleting.

  Rapidly.

  “Just until dawn,” she whispered to herself. But instead of being a thing she said once to remind herself to stay calm, it became a feverish mantra, repeated over and over in increasingly frantic tones. “Just until dawn. Until dawn. Just until dawn.”

  She felt out of breath, but that was impossible. The chair was doing all the running. So, it was just panic. A dangerous thing.

  “As soon as I can see, everything will be manageable. I’ll make a dozen torches. Never again. It’ll never again be this bad. That’s all it takes. Just a little light. It’ll be better at dawn.”

  Tanisha shook her head, at first just to clear her thoughts, but then a second time as if she were able to shake away the fear.

  “Just until dawn.”

  Morning came eventually.

  Dawn’s light settled over the forest slowly, and then all at once. Just as Tanisha had started to think it would never come.

  As soon as her eyes could perceive the world around her emerging from the blackness, she believed—for just a moment—that everything would be alright.

  It wasn’t.

  All the light did was reveal the Stick Folk. They surrounded her, walked with her. Kept pace with her sprinting chair. More than half-a-dozen shadowy figures lurked in the immediate area around her. Some stuck to the shadows of the trees, but most walked brazenly in the daylight. But those seemed thinner than they had in the night. And even the ones fully immersed in shadow seemed less threatening.

  Tanisha brought her chair to a stop, and they too stopped. In fact, none of them moved. They just watched with featureless faces and laughed their whispering chuckle that bore into the depths of her mind.

  But the creatures stayed still, neither progressing towards her or vanishing. It was enough, however. Tanisha felt her racing heart finally start to slow to a more normal pace. The daylight weakened them. Or, so she hoped. But there was a possibility her still-draining stability would strip her of that protection in time.

  And her status bars were a mess.

  Her health was still full, since she hadn’t taken any damage. Not even from the hand in the darkness. Her stamina was also pretty okay, coming in at just over the halfway mark. But the other two were in a sorry enough state to concern her greatly. Her stability was barely a fifth of her maximum, and just looking at it made her anxious. Which increased the drain on it, ever so slightly. Lastly, her hunger bar was nearly empty, and she could feel a pinching pain in her gut as she stared at it. The status bar was not wrong. She was definitely hungry, and she didn’t have a single way to deal with it.

  In the daylight, Tanisha could confirm she’d lost her heading. The shadows cast by the trees were in the wrong direction, if the sun had risen on the opposite side of the sky from last night’s sunset. They pointed behind her, but straight back, instead of at the expected rightwards angle.

  “Well, that sucks. Directions are a lost cause,” she whispered to herself, the way she did when she was out in public. As if the Stick Folk were people who would judge her for talking out loud to herself. “But I need to deal with these bars. And get back to normal. Then I can think of another way to get to Otekah’s castle.”

  The forest around Tanisha had changed a lot from where she had been before. It was denser, for one, and she could hear—but not see—a river somewhere nearby. But not the little creek from the tutorial area. This was a full-blown, not-quite-rapids river. The undergrowth was also thicker here, interspersed with dense bushes carrying bundles of little orange be
rries. Many of them appeared to have one of the Stick Folk close by. So many of the bushes were protected by one of the lanky shadows, and Tanisha briefly entertained the idea that they were guarding the bushes. Perhaps she was just being paranoid… but it sure seemed so.

  Just the same, before moving to a bush that didn’t have a Stick Folk lurking ominously behind it, Tanisha opened her inventory and made a torch. And then a second. They were all the materials she had. She deposited them both into her inventory, but she did it slowly while casting a glare around herself. The Stick Folk didn’t move in regards to her silent threat, but it still made Tanisha feel better. She meant business. Even if they didn’t recognize it.

  Was she posturing for a bunch of spooky shadow puppets?

  Whatever. The torches made her feel better, at the very least.

  Nothing stopped her as she approached the bush. She was able to easily harvest a small handful of the berries. They were almost conical, with a small dimple at the top from where they were connected to the plant. The berries were an unnerving orange color. In the real world, that meant they were likely poison. Maybe underripe. But she had to push past that worry. This was the color they were in dARkness. Berries were a base recovery item. They would help, not hurt.

  She stared at them, regardless. It took a moment of gathering her courage before she could lift one to her lips. They looked a little like blackberries. She’d grown up around wild blackberries, and there was a brief period as they ripened where they were about this color. They’d turn from whitish green to pinkish orange, and then to red, before darkening to their purple-black color.

  When real blackberries were this color, they were hard as rocks. Almost entirely inedible. And if you did manage to gnaw into one, your reward was nothing but an intolerably tart and gritty mess. She didn’t know if she could actually force herself to eat one without expecting a mouthful of rocks that she would have to grind down into sour sand.