The forest ended. Devin didn’t remember when he exited it, only came to a realization that he now walked steep, open spaces. There seemed no clear reason why, only that at an exact line halfway up the bald mountain the trees ended, the appearance giving it its name. Snow covered the rocky ground, reflecting the starlight back at him, almost blindingly white. A large number of boulders gathered near the mountain’s sudden, sharp incline. Devin walked toward them, for where else was he to go? “Arothk!” he shouted. His voice echoed throughout the quiet night. “Arothk, are you here?”
Shouting stretched the shredded skin of his face. A strange thought hit Devin. It should hurt far worse than it did. Much worse. Just how delirious was he?
The wobbling of his legs gave him his answer. He collapsed to his knees. A glance at his side showed his coat bathed in blood. It’d be a fool’s game guessing which of his wounds were responsible for which massive stain. Devin tried to stand but his body refused to listen.
“Not good,” he said, his words coming out as a strained whisper. “Not good, Devin. Get up on your feet. Get up, damn it, get up or you’ll die.”
It seemed both his mind and body were just fine with that second option. His vision darkened. He braced his weight on his arms and heaved with each individual breath.
Should have turned back, he thought. Should have… I should… Anwyn, take me into your arms…
A rumbling noise pushed through his clouded mind and brought his gaze up to the mountain. Devin didn’t understand, and he was too tired to try. The boulders were rising before him, snow rolling off stone arms and legs. They rose as his mind dropped low, and unconsciousness blessedly took him from the pain.
CHAPTER 3
The sounds of burning kindling welcomed the Soulkeeper back to consciousness. His eyes fluttered open. A small fire to his left cast flickering light across cave walls. Devin started to sit up and immediately regretted the decision. A dull ache awakened a path from his ankles to his forehead, as if every limb in his body had fallen asleep. Devin slowly breathed in and out as he waited for the numbing stings to subside. His mind felt more alert than any time since the wolf attack, so that was good. He scanned his surroundings as he waited. From what he could tell, he was at the dead end of a cave tunnel. Behind him it continued far beyond the light of the fire, while at his feet, it ended at a wide, rounded wall. So far it appeared he was alone.
“I live another day, Anwyn,” Devin said aloud. “Perhaps you were watching out for me after all.”
Once feeling had uncomfortably returned to his body, Devin sat up and welcomed the warmth of the fire washing over his face and chest. His coat lay to his side, and he was surprised by how little blood remained on it. Had… had his rescuer washed it? He shook his head, the surprise distracting him from more important matters. Devin lifted up his mangled shirt to examine the wounds on his chest.
Clear white lines ran across his tanned skin. Not weeping wounds. Scars. Devin traced his finger along them, awakening a hot, itching sensation. He released his shirt, swallowed his fear, and pressed his hand to the worst of the wounds upon his face. Rough scar tissue greeted his fingers. Whatever work had been done to him was beyond even the most skilled of surgeons. Somehow he was already healed without any apparent stitches or searing of the wounds. So either he’d been unconscious for months… or Arothk’s healing powers were as good as Jonathan insisted.
Devin began every new day with a prayer to the Sisters, and he had no plans for stopping now. He muttered it aloud as he rose to his feet, pins and needles assaulting his waking limbs.
“Blessed be the morn, and the Sister who gave it,” he said, and he let out a tired laugh. “Assuming it even is morning. You’ll forgive me if I’m wrong, right, Alma?”
He leaned against the side of the cave to gather his strength and tapped his belt. Both his pistol and sword were gone. Devin looked down the tunnel leading away from the fire. He had no clue how deep into the mountain he was, nor if it was a straight shot to the surface. Even if he fashioned a torch, he wasn’t guaranteed to find the exit without getting lost. That left waiting for his rescuer to return.
“So we wait,” he said, looking to the fire. He furrowed his brow. He should be drowning in smoke, but instead the tunnel was clear. Devin scanned the top of the cave. Once he knew what he was looking for, he found it easily, a perfectly circular hole somehow cut or drilled into the stone. Whether it led to the surface or other parts of the cave, he could only guess.
“Well, someone’s clever,” he said.
“Not clever,” rumbled a voice behind him. “Only old.”
Devin spun. The voice came not from the tunnel but the curved dead end behind the fire… only now it wasn’t a smooth wall but instead a cracking, shifting surface breaking free of the surrounding stone. Devin’s hands clenched at his sides as he ordered himself to remain calm. He would not cower before the unknown, but instead meet it with his head held high.
A boulder broke from the wall, and then that boulder grew, chunks separating to become arms with three gigantic fingers. Legs emerged with a shattering of stone. A head slowly rolled from the center of the chest to the top of the newly outlined torso. Solid black eyes the size of Devin’s fist peered down at him. The creature said nothing, only stared with what Devin guessed to be mild curiosity.
“Arothk,” Devin said. “That’s… that’s you, isn’t it?”
The creature dipped its head. A thin line cracked across its face, forming a mouth.
“Your tongue,” it spoke. The voice perfectly matched the depth of the mountain they resided within. “Changed. Sloppy. Such shame. Without the Aeryal, you mangle the divine.”
Arothk spoke with a strange accent, one Devin could not place. The s’s and p’s had a scraping sound to them, somehow produced without a visible tongue or lips.
“Aeryal?” Devin asked. “Divine? Forgive me, Arothk, but you speak of things I do not understand.”
“It is Arothk,” it corrected, though for the life of him Devin could not decipher how the pronunciation varied from his own. Its head tilted back, its arms sinking halfway into its body as they crossed over its chest. “Why have you come?”
“The village nearby,” Devin said. Forming sentences suddenly became difficult. Magical creatures didn’t exist. He knew this as fundamentally as he knew the sun would rise and fall with each passing day. They were merely stories, tales of a more whimsical and fantastical past. To witness stone come to life and speak tore at his mind with equal power as the teeth of the wolves tearing at his flesh. “They’ve fallen ill with a disease.”
“Black marks upon flesh?”
“Yes,” Devin said. “Like… like before.”
“Then Viciss wakens,” Arothk said. “Leave. Your village is not safe. Your time of humans ends. More will wake.”
“More?” Devin asked. “More like you?”
Arothk shook its head.
“Not just me. Others. Not humans. The world before the sleep.”
Each answer left Devin with a thousand more questions, but the ancient being appeared almost bored with him. It cracked its knees into itself to reduce its height and then turned to the apparent dead end it had crawled out of. Its hand flattened against the stone, melding into it. The wall shimmered with rainbow light, and then it parted like curtains opening before a stage, revealing that the tunnel led to no dead end but instead to an expansive cavern filled with stalactites and stalagmites reaching toward one another. A river ran deep through the heart, the faint light of the fire dancing across its surface. Mushrooms glowed a dozen effervescent colors beside its waters. The beauty of it struck Devin silent, and it was only after Arothk stepped into its recesses that he remembered to speak.
“Wait,” he said. “The disease afflicting the villagers… you can cure it, can’t you? Like you did years ago?”
Devin swore he saw sadness in those coal-like eyes.
“The cure is of my blood. I have little. Used much on you. Too mu
ch.”
Guilt stung Devin in the chest. So there was a cure, but it’d been wasted on him? His inability to defend himself against the wolves doomed the men and women wasting away in Dunwerth?
“No, please,” he said. “There must be some other way to save these people.”
“No other way,” Arothk rumbled, the first time it had raised its voice. It seemed the walls shook along with Devin’s knees. “The Sisters’ prison breaks. It holds us no longer. Black water rises, and it will not stop. Save your people? Then flee. Leave the sick.”
Pieces of its chest cracked open, revealing a compartment containing his sword and gun.
“Your weapons of war,” Arothk said, handing them over in its wide, flat hand. Devin tucked them into his belt, feeling the creature’s judgment for merely owning them. He wanted to protest but he felt so small compared to Arothk. If only he could have more time to speak with it, to learn the knowledge it possessed. What did it mean, black water? The Sisters’ prison? Viciss? The sleep?
“Please, don’t go,” Devin said. “I don’t understand. What do I do? How do I help them? What do you mean, black water rises?”
Arothk placed its hand beside the cavern opening. The two dark eyes shimmered with a faint ghost-light.
“There was good among you,” Arothk said. “Much good. But Sisters placed you above all. Such shame. We might have found peace.”
The stone closed in on itself, sealing Arothk and the majestic cavern away. The cave turned silent but for the crackling fire. Devin touched the wall as if needing confirmation he’d not just woken from a dream. The stone should have been cold, but instead it was warm beneath his fingers. Breathing. Almost alive.
“Sisters help me,” Devin whispered. “What is happening?”
First talking wolves and now living stone foretelling doom. Deep inside him the foundations of his reality crumbled. The exhausted part of him wanted to kneel beside the fire, clutch his hands to his head, and pray until the conversation faded into distant memory. According to every holy book and scripture, there were humans, there were animals, and there were the Goddesses. There was simply no place for a being like Arothk, no neat little corner for his mind to slot it without potentially questioning every tenet of the Keeping Church.
Black water rises…
Devin slid his heavy coat over his shoulders, the fabric warm from lying beside the fire. He couldn’t stay. Arothk’s warnings were dire, and Devin had no reason to disbelieve them. The world was changing, the circumstances far beyond his understanding. To doubt the ancient creature risked dooming the entire village.
Devin blindly walked with his right hand brushing the cave wall. If Arothk could manipulate the stone, Devin had a hunch it’d be a straight path to the outside. It curved a few times, but his hunch proved correct when the first hint of starlight lit the distant hole that was the cave’s exit. A cold wind fluttered against him, and he tightened his coat to protect against its chill.
The moon was low and the stars fading when he emerged. The bald mountain loomed behind him, the dark forest before. After everything that had happened, Devin had but one silent prayer to the Sisters before he began his trek home.
Please, please, please no more wolves.
If there were wolves, they let Devin be as he made his way through the forest. Morning light soon scattered through the pines. With the reaping hour passed and the landscape lit by the sun, the feeling of watchful eyes vanished like the dew. He reached Dunwerth an hour later, beyond thankful for the quiet trip. Scattered glances welcomed him as he stumbled toward the mayor’s home. He smiled and tipped his hat to the few men and women hurrying about, almost amused by how bruised and scarred he must look. Few offered greeting in return. Their eyes looked sleep-deprived, and their faces hollow. The specter of death was a heavy burden, and it had clearly weighed these people down for weeks.
“Good morning to you, Soulkeeper,” a younger woman said as she passed him in the street. “Have you come for our reaping rituals?”
“I come to prevent them,” Devin said, putting on a brave mask. “Do you doubt the power of Alma’s grace?”
A sneer crossed the woman’s pretty face.
“Alma did nothing while I lost my brother and his wife,” she said. “Seems the only time any Sister notices us is at the reaping hour.”
Devin politely bowed his head, refusing to argue. He needed to save his energy for a far more important discussion.
Jonathan sat in a rocking chair beside the door to his home, a wide hat pulled low over his face to block the morning sun. The man’s snores greeted him.
“Wake up,” Devin said, kicking the chair. The mayor startled to his feet with a huff. “There’s work to do.”
Jonathan followed him into the house. Hacking and coughing assaulted his ears from the entryway, and Devin tried to bury the guilt they elicited. His fault or not, it didn’t matter now. Without Arothk’s blood, he could only act on what he had power to change.
“Did you find him?” Jonathan asked once they were in his room and the door closed.
“I did,” Devin said, tossing the grandfather’s journal onto the side table with a thud.
“I knew it,” Jonathan said, clapping his hands together. “I just knew it! What… what was it like, Soulkeeper?”
Devin tried to find the proper words to describe being in such a creature’s presence.
“It was ancient stone,” he said. “Like a mountain, thousands of years old, suddenly waking. Hearing its words was… humbling.”
“And the cure?” Jonathan asked. The mayor’s eyes sparkled with hope. “What of the cure?”
Devin inwardly winced, for this was the question he dreaded.
“I have none,” he said. “Arothk’s blood is the cure, and he would not give any to save the sick here in Dunwerth. He’d spent too much on me, Jonathan. I nearly died on my trip there.”
The mayor’s anger visibly spread across his entire face.
“Then… then it’s even more your responsibility. You’re a Soulkeeper! Why didn’t you take that blood from him?”
Devin thought of his thin sword and tiny lead shot attempting to pierce the heavy stone that made up Arothk’s being.
“There would be no taking,” Devin said. “Either he gave it as a gift, or he did not. Even if I could harm him, I would not repay the kindness he showed me with murder.”
Jonathan sat down on his bed, his hands rubbing over and over his bald forehead.
“Then what do we do?” he asked. His upper body was trembling. “How do we stop it from spreading?”
“I don’t know,” Devin said. “Truth be told, it doesn’t matter. Dunwerth must be evacuated at once. Head south for Crynn. It might not be far enough, but it’s a start.”
“Evacuate?” Jonathan asked. “Wait, why?”
“Because Arothk insists doom is coming, and if we’re to live we must flee the mountains.”
“No,” Jonathan said. “No, that can’t be. This… this monster must be confused, or lying. Do you have any proof? What, pray tell, are we even fleeing from?”
Devin grabbed the mayor by the front of his shirt and lifted him off the bed. Urgency gave strength to his words. His anger added a dangerous edge.
“You asked me to trust you that Arothk was real, and I did,” Devin said. “Now I’m asking you to trust me. Arothk said to flee if we wish to survive. Give the order. Evacuate the town, or stay here and watch everyone die.”
CHAPTER 4
Devin was assisting the villagers in packing their belongings, focusing his efforts on the elderly, when Jonathan pulled him aside. They stood together beneath the welcome sun, not far off from where wagons were parked in the center of town.
“Soulkeeper, we’ve got ourselves a problem,” he said.
“I can think of a dozen problems,” Devin said. “But what is yours?”
“Well, here he comes now, actually.”
A burly man with hair down to his shoulders and a beard t
wice that length trailed Jonathan down the path. His neck was splotched red with anger, and Devin had a feeling he’d already spent some time arguing with the mayor.
“Devin Eveson, this is Garruk,” Jonathan said. “He has some disagreements with our plan.”
“Damn right I do,” Garruk said. He jammed a finger at Jonathan. “My ma is dying on the floor of your house and you want me to just leave her to suffer?”
“Those in my care can barely stand on their own,” Jonathan insisted. “They won’t survive the trip through the mountains.”
“You don’t know that,” the burly man argued. “But I do know she’ll die if she’s left here to starve. That ain’t a fate fit for no man or woman.”
Devin hid his fury behind a stoic mask. There’d been no discussion the night before about leaving the sick in Dunwerth. The mayor had made this decision without consulting him, and it was a terrible one.
“We will bring the sick with us and pray for their survival,” Devin interrupted. They both turned his way.
“I’ve already floated that idea,” Jonathan said. “Four families have sworn to me they’ll stay if we bring the sick with us, and I wager that number will grow by the time we roll our wagons out. We’re fleeing the disease. It makes no sense to bring the disease with us.”
Bringing the sick with them meant other healthy families might stay behind and suffer whatever dire fate Arothk had promised, yet demanding that all the sick remain in the village alone was cruel and inhumane. Only one option made sense, as much as he disliked the danger involved.
“Then I will stay behind with those who are sick,” Devin said. “Your mother, and all others who are suffering from this plague, shall be under the protection and care of a Soulkeeper. Should they pass on, I will perform the reaping ritual for their souls. Will that suffice?”
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