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spookyspaghettisundae · 5 years

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Embers Rising Skywards

She was frozen in terror. He had found out so quickly. Found out that she had escaped.

“Why are you running away, little sparrow?”

Xigurd’s question lingered in the air, distorted through the mirroring surface of a puddle in the streets. His voice had carried through it, piercing her mind. Fade stared into the thin body of water, seeing not her own reflection but that of her sorcerous father. Bitterness and rebellion bubbled to the surface, breaking the fear that had paralyzed her.

“Do not call me that. You used to call mother such.”

“I just want to protect you. You are my child.”

Fade spat into the puddle and the ensuing concentric ripples disrupted the image of Xigurd for the time of a few heartbeats.

“Liar. You lie.”

She frowned, disappointed over herself. Fade was a grown woman of over twenty-five winters yet her father always managed to make her sound like a child when he found a way to upset her.

“No, ‘tis no lie. You are more important to me than my own eyesight.”

Fade knew there was a kernel of truth to those words, for Xigurd sought to transfer his soul into her body when the time was right. She knew because she had found his research-filled tomes. Every one of her siblings had died before her birth, every one of them having been meant to fill the role that Fade was now predestined for.

A living vessel. A shell for Xigurd to assume when the time had come. All of her siblings before her had been “failures.” In the words that he had recorded. All manner of words that always meant one thing: they had been consumed by fatal experiments.

“Aye. But you need me. I am—I am surprised you have the gall to pretend it is love that drives you.”

She averted her eyes from her father’s image. The thought pained her. The envy of her friends who had known the love of their parents had always eaten at her.

“Fade, I—“

“Be silent.”

She now despised the name he had given her. How cruel he had always been in her upbringing, how merciless he had pushed her in her training. What pain he had put her through when he had transfused his accursed blood into her body, what horrible insult her name meant to him.

I name you Fade, for with your coming, she passed. Her life faded away quickly and she smiled—smiled—at your newborn countenance. Unknowing how your coming had marked the end of her life. And the end of my hopes. For with your coming and her passing, my legacy fades, he had admitted upon her thirteenth birthday. Never having explained why he had bound Fade to a table and fed her strange alchemical potions and put her through waves of horrible agony. But now, she knew.

Now, she had heard enough and turned to walk away from the puddle in which he projected his image. She knew she had to flee the city and leave her horrible father behind. Nothing held her here anymore.

Haunting her like a scornful ghost, his face appeared in the reflection of a window she walked by. His words carried to her like whispers but with a fury that swelled with every word he spoke, “If you do not return home, I will take you back. By force.” His mien darkened as she continued on, accelerating her pace and pretending to brush off his not-so-idle threat.

“You cannot escape. I have seen your destiny.” The threats he spoke sounded both like the wind and the hissing of a scornful spirit. She had learned magic under his wings—and it came easily to her—yet she knew not what spell he was weaving now. She knew not whether others might hear his projection or not, or if he was projecting himself directly into her mind.

She raised her spear and used the butt of it to smash in the window. Even though she knew it would not dispel his magic, she had acted out of a burst of blind rage and not thought—one of the many traits she had inherited from her father, something that fueled a measure of self-loathing. Instead of her own reflection being splintered in the shards of glass on the muddy ground, she saw his face instead—saw his lips curling into a sneer. Her jaw quivered.

Fade broke out into a jog, racing from the back alleys into bustling streets and pushing past any people who got in her way. Xigurd’s voice arrived from multiple sources—from the water in a trough outside a tavern, “I own you.” Another puddle disturbed by a passersby stepping into it, “And I will take.” Even in the whitening eyes of an old beggar with a disease-pocked face who stared at her from the roadside, she saw her father’s reflection, and the old man spoke in her father’s voice, “I will take what is mine.”

The raggedy old man glared at her with expressions that went back and forth between malice and confusion, baring yellowed and decaying teeth in angry sneers and slack-jawed dizziness—unknowing of how he was being used as a conduit for Xigurd’s spell. Fade stopped dead in her tracks and stared at him.

The old man’s leprous hand reached out to her, trembling with an uncertainty born from him unconsciously fighting the sorcerer from controlling his mind and body.

Using the blunt end of the spear she carried, Fade suddenly struck the man in his belly. He cringed and gripped his lower torso while he slumped down onto his side on the ground, curling up into a fetal position.

Fade muttered a curt “sorry” and continued on at a pace so fast she might as well have run along, hoping to not be stopped by any of the people whose heads and eyes had all turned to see her—some hooded stranger strike an old man down. They were either too absorbed or apathetic to act upon it, but she escaped the murmurs and accusatory stares as she moved along and blended into the next cluster of people crowding the streets near the city gate.

The soldiers flanking the open stone archway shot suspicious glances at her weapon and then herself, but cared little about people leaving the town right now. A tall and strong-looking woman clad in a heavy coat and carrying a long spear in this day and age was not all too extraordinary, she thought. And she continued to move quickly, hoping that Xigurd would struggle to track or follow her in any way. Her fast pace took her farther and farther away from the west gate. She wandered into rolling hills littered with sprawling vineyards.

Minutes passed and turned into an hour. Fade marched deeper into the countryside, passing by a camp of mercenaries she would have fit into, beyond farmsteads where people toiled away at tilling the fields and paid little attention to her walking by. Between rocky outcroppings where the path grew narrow, down dirt paths where the number of people on these same roads thinned out. Until she saw no other person in sight—and the edge of the great dark forest.

A place that the many superstitious people feared and avoided.

Fade hoped that none of the mercenaries or bounty hunters Xigurd may hire to pursue her would be willing to follow here without bleeding her father dry for hard currency.

He had deep pockets, though, she thought grimly while pushing through a thicket and leaving even the least-traveled roads behind her. Xigurd would not let this go, but she refused to make things easy for him.

She would never let the bastard take her alive, now that she knew what he had in store for her. Now that he knew that she knew. He would want her retrieved—as unharmed as possible. But if he had his way, anything but death would become a living nightmare.

Death would be a mercy.

A profound sense of loneliness set in by dusk, when she sat by her campfire. With all this time to ponder and wonder and reminisce, she already missed the days of innocence. Of not knowing. Of escaping from Xigurd’s tower on a lark and spending time with the theater troupe. Fade was not good at it, but she loved dancing with them. And the music. And the flowers that the handsome actor Pavel used to give her in his seductive attempts at courting her attention.

The crackle of fire and embers exploding from the flames kept her thoughts from wandering too far. The absence of human company was something she had grown up with for the majority of her life. Now she missed nothing more than the jovial jabs and unfettered laughter of good company. Only a day out of the city, and the silence felt oppressive. A moss-covered rock next to her fire looked like an empty spot for someone to sit in. For someone to talk to.

“The night is young,” she said to the empty spot. Of course, the emptiness did not respond.

There was only wind in the leaves, rustling like whispers, and the crackle of the fire, and the snapping of a twig in her idle hands—lonely, small sounds that became deafening in this quiet solitude.

The sun set but she did not feel like sleeping. Not just for the nip in the air, but for not knowing what awaited her out here. In fact, the prospect of night—and being alone in this darkness—frightened her almost as much as the thought of Xigurd. She recalled the dark tales of fair folk that tormented innocent people for sport, of rogues that scoured the woods for victims to rob and do worse things to, and of ghosts that drank souls and trolls that feasted on human flesh.

Which of those things might be real, she knew not, but she would not find out.

When she heard a branch crack, her hands darted to pick up her spear. She clutched it with such fierceness that her knuckles turned white.

Her eyes went wide as she stared out into the woods that surrounded her humble campsite. She turned slowly, pointing the spear’s tip out towards the dark. Fade held her breath with anticipation and not knowing what to expect, and she dreaded what might emerge from the shadows dancing between those trees.

Another branch cracked and she swiveled to follow the direction it came from, keeping the spear at the ready for anything. She had been in some fights before, but nothing serious. Nothing that resulted in serious injuries or anything that involved monsters. Nothing with life or death at stake. Now, anything was possible. Now, her every muscle and fiber tensed up with anticipation.

The leaves rustled, sounding like raspy whispers once more. The wind carried something: breathing.

Something was out there. Fade felt watched. Something observed her while she strained her eyes to see anything approaching.

Much worse, whoever or whatever it was, it kept its distance. For now.

Right while swallowing down a gulp of cold air, it got stuck in Fade’s throat when she spotted two silver dots in the darkness. The campfire reflecting in eyes, sinister eyes that watched her. A malevolent intelligence beyond any simple beast, but something non-human. Definitely not some mere mercenary. Something old.

The eyes moved to the forefront and a figure entered the unsteady red glow cast by the flames. The creature strutted on equine-shaped legs and hooved feet but rather than being hairy, the surface of its skin appeared scaly and smooth and it reflected the fire’s light up close. Horns grew from its head and its mouth featured an unsettling triangular grin full of pointy teeth.

It hunched forward as it moved, huge clawed hands balancing it against the ground as it moved with a grotesque litheness. It approached with careful steps.

Then the stench hit Fade’s nose—the smell of rotten flesh mixed with that of a ripe latrine. It caused her to recoil. The cloud of stench wafting over to her as the creature approached, making her wish she had a third hand just to cover her nose while allowing her to grip the spear as she did.

“Fear not, little sparrow,” it said in a deep baritone. Its voice rumbled from hellish bowels infused with infernal fires. It sounded amused. It made her skin crawl to hear that label in a voice that was not her father’s, and worse, a voice so evil and twisted as what emanated from this being. “I am to bring you alive and as unharmed as can be. Why do you not put that weapon down before you get hurt?”

She slid her heels against the dirt as she backed up half a step, assuming a stance that one of the theater troupe’s guards had taught her—a stance meant to impale anything lunging at her, be it any manner of armed man or ferocious beast.

This demon was neither of those things.

It whispered more to itself, but with melody, “I think I can sample a simple bite. Just a little taste of a feast that could have been.” A forked tongue slithered out of its mouth and back in, followed by its mouth stretching into a hideous grin that suggested its horrible facial features smiled perpetually with different degrees of deranged pleasure. “All contracts, uncarefully worded, allow for some leeway.”

A blood-curdling, revolving sound spilled from its throat—a deep and thundering laughter.

Fade took a step back and shot a glance down to her feet. She made sure that her stance was as she had been taught. She splayed her fingers and readjusted her grip.

Then the moment of clarity came. The insight—that this fiend’s arrogance misled it into giving her time. She closed her eyes for a brief moment and released a hand from the spear’s shaft, waving it in arcane gesture to conjure mystic power, ensued by a whispered word of magic she had learned and prepared that morning.

“Tuovrusrath.”

The creature hissed menacingly and her eyes shot open with the same speed that her free hand returned to the weapon. The demonic being had hunched over and recoiled, ready to pounce like a predatory cat.

As she felt a wave of supernatural strength surge through her body, her spirit rose. A courage coursed through her veins and gave her soul wings.

Fade was now ready to fight. Even should she lose, she would make this filth remember the scars she inflicted upon it.

It lept at her but she dodged aside and thrust the spear forward, tearing through scales and flesh and causing the monster to shriek. It paced away from her in a half circle while she kept the spear’s tip pointed at its awful face. The demon cackled and swiped a claw through the air at her, just enough to instill an air of menace and murderous glee, but not close enough to brave the distance that the polearm maintained between them.

More than that, Fade read uncertainty in its movements. No—fear. This damned thing was not used to fighting to capture. Xigurd, as its summoner, had tasked it with something unconventional. These infernal scourges excelled at pain and destruction—but apparently struggled all the more with a mission such as taking a captive.

She lunged forward, only missing by virtue of the creature swiftly side-stepping her spear’s thrust. Instead it grabbed the weapon and flung her past itself, sending her tumbling over the campfire.

Amidst an explosion of embers bursting into the air like a swarm of fireflies, she rolled back onto her feet by a stroke of luck. Just in time, as this demonic ball of fury and evil jumped at her once more and she reacted blindly, striking the demon in its jaw with the blunt end of her weapon, resulting in the sharp sound of a crack.

It dropped its feigned harmlessness in whisper and tone that it had used and regained its composure just to arch backwards and emit a blood-curdling roar. Fade shivered as it shook her down to the bone, but she stood her ground and assumed the offensive stance now.

With the newfound strength her spell had lent her, she unleashed a flurry of jabs at the demon. They did not hit their mark, but provoked it to swat the weapon out of the way when it dared and then triggered it to growl and lunge at her again.

Fade had waited for this moment and let herself fall backwards while keeping the spear steady with her magically induced might. She had gambled for this opportunity.

The demon impaled itself on her weapon and its rage and own force drove it right through. She kept it at bay by kicking into it with both legs and stemming its tremendous weight—what she imagined to be the heft of a grown stallion—while it clawed at her with its thick yet short arms.

Claws swung at her and only scraped against her coat. By the time the demon had found the shred of clarity it needed to sink its talons into the flesh of her leg, its strength was already waning.

The pain of those knife-like fingernails digging into her thigh—and twisting—drove tears to well up in the corners of Fade’s eyes. She refused to scream in agony and gritted her teeth; she would not give the demon the pleasure of knowing any sort of victory, no matter how small. It should know the humiliation of defeat. Instead, she withdrew her legs and then kicked the creature away from her.

It fell off of the spear with a squelching sound as the spearhead came out of its chest. The demon’s legs buckled and it stumbled backwards and tripped. Right into the fireplace, where it writhed with feeble motions while the flames licked around its sides and bathed it in an eerie orange light. When its scaly flesh began to blister and burn, Fade lunged forward without as much as a peep and sank the weapon right back into the monster, impaling it once more and nailing it to the ground.

Despite its fleeting strength and lethal injury, a new wave of might surged through it and the demon thrashed wildly. For a brief moment, she wondered if she caught a glimpse of Xigurd’s cold and unforgiving gaze, channeling through the slit and lizard-like eyes of this fiend.

Fade kept her jaw set and her face darkened at the thought of that possibility.

She removed the spear. And then stabbed the monster again. And again. And many more times over, until it stopped moving.

Through the haze of fury that consumed her attention, the smell of burning flesh finally hit her nose. As if only registering it with delay, the thick black smoke and foul smell caused her to cough and finally back away from the burning body.

Fade let herself fall down into sitting on the rock nearby. Her shoulders sagged and she let the spear slide from her hand and slump back till it hit her collarbone and came to rest against her neck.

As the minutes passed, she stoked the demonic corpse, feeding the remains into the fire so they would burn up in their entirety. Fade tore some cloth from her sleeves to bandage up her leg where the demon had sunk its claws into her flesh, wondering if she shouldn’t seek a healer to mend those wounds—who knew what diseases that hellish thing may have delivered? Its stench had spoken volumes of contagion.

She stayed awake and watched for hours, not resting until the creature had been fully cremated in the fire. Saves time looking for firewood, she eventually thought. A lopsided grin flashed across her visage.

Then everything hit her, all at once. She buried her face behind both hands and sobbed.

Xigurd had not only ruined her life before it had even begun—he had taken everything from her. He could try to beget more offspring, but age and time was not on his side. He would pour everything into having Fade hunted down and brought back to him.

This demon was only the beginning.

Her shoulders stopped heaving. She wiped the tears from her reddened eyes. Fade looked up at the nightly sky, oblivious to the majesty of the embers still rising towards the dark and cloudy canvas before vanishing from sight. Would she ever be able to appreciate such displays of beauty in nature again?

She found determination in the thoughts that swirled in her troubled mind, rising to the surface like those embers drifting skywards.

Fade would need to grow stronger. Master magic beyond what she had learned from Xigurd’s dusty old tomes. And find allies to help her fight her father—and kill him.

Her hands balled into fists. She wanted to pay Xigurd back.

Then a branch cracked.

She jolted back up into standing, clutching the spear once more. The spell of strength had worn off, and her magic reserves were not boundless. As fear gripped her heart again, she conjured a shield of invisible energy to ward her against whatever horror awaited her next—whatever it was that now creeped up on her, twigs snapping under its weight, just outside the light of her fire.

Though feeling fatigued and the pain of her first injury, Fade was ready to fight once more. The question was: for how much longer? How much more would she have to endure? What all would appear to haunt and hunt her at Xigurd’s behest? Her strength would eventually falter. Despite everything, she was still only human.

And the night was still young.

—Submitted by Wratts

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