Wander West, in Shadow

Elyse stood within the musty, dust-covered confines of her mother's yurt. The smell of spices and herbs filled the air; a familiar scent that bought with it long, dim traces of memory.

No sunlight streamed through the windows. Only darkness lay out there, a black darker even than night - no stars, no moonlight. Dozens of black candles lit the interior, their light dancing over the richly polished tables and plush armchairs that furnished the place, the shadows cast by the dangling clusters of dried fruits and swampvines hanging from the thatched roof stretching long against the walls. All so very familiar to her, and heavy with the dread that she had felt living with her mother.

But there was something...strange, here. Elyse looked down at the thick rug that covered the floor, large and long, woven through with threads of various reds, greens and blues in a series of intricate, symmetric patterns. She remembered, as a child, she would lay on that rug for hours in her boredom, tracing the patterns with a finger, always twirling ever-inwards on themselves, seemingly no end to them. Now, before her eyes, the shapes and designs swam and changed, merging with each other, splitting apart, in an endless, rolling dance, entrancing.

Elyse shook her head and tore her eyes away, a buzzing in her skull. She glanced about the room, peering deep into the shadows that the candlelight did not touch. On one of the finely polished tables, beside a black candle, lay a grinning skull. Two brilliant red roses bloomed in its eye sockets. That...didn't belong here. Did it? Her mother had kept skulls, but...never one with flowers growing from it.

She found she could not take her eyes away. It was yellowed and ancient, teeth missing, cracked and worn, but those roses in its eyes almost seemed as if they glowed with life, bright and intense. A strange hum filled her head as she stared, and those roses, so brilliant they almost hurt to look at, seemed to stare back -

Suddenly, she was ripped from her entrancement with the skull by a loud banging.

Across from the door that led out of the yurt, on the far wall, lay three doors. The one on the left led to her room; the one on the right to her mother's room. And the one in the middle led to many places. As she watched, the middle door, sturdy wooden planks and black iron bracing, rattled in its frame as something beyond pounded upon it yet again. She backed away, panic, filling her, as the door shook hard enough to splinter the wood.

With a tormented squeal, the lock broke, wood shattered, and the door slammed open. And there in the doorway stood the Bogge-man, eyes blazing against the shadows in the room.

Elyse screamed, scrambling backwards, as it stepped towards her with a snarl. But she found her fear quickly replaced by anger, even as it drew its cruel, curved sword. This thing - it was supposed to be dead.

No sooner had she thought that than the Bogge-man...shifted. Its form flickered, unsteady; the edges of its black cloak bled upwards, as if drifting away. Its teeth chittered and clacked, its burning eyes flashing, as it moved swiftly towards her. But as her fury rose, a strange, discordant tune filled the yurt, as if played on some stringed instrument - strange, and yet oddly familiar to her. It rose in intensity, until it seemed as if the very walls of the yurt itself vibrated in tune, and Elyse stumbled backward as the Bogge-man screamed, long and shrill and panicked, as it burst into black flame, tripping over herself, falling to the ground as its outrage, pained cries filled her ears-

And when she rose, she was no longer in the yurt.

She was, instead, in the midst of a dark forest in early autumn, the leaves on the trees a brilliant blaze of yellow, red and orange, but not yet completely fallen, though the forest floor was covered in a rustling blanket of dried leaves. Dusk was coming on, the dying light of day filling the forest with murky shadow, an utter silence except for the whisper of the wind leaving her feeling uneasy.

She glanced down at herself, curiously, as she realized that her pointed witch's hat and tattered black robes were gone. Instead she wore - how strange, she thought - a very elegant, purple, flowing dress, that left her shoulders and much of her back bare. She could not tell what the fabric was made of - it felt like silk? But it clearly was not - though it was purple, it shimmered with brilliant greens and blues as it caught the light, dancing with ever-shifting color.

She heard the gentle babble of a nearby brook, and followed it, her long skirts dragging in the leaves around her. Presently, she found its source - a small trickling waterfall, dancing down a rocky outcropping of black boulders thick with shaggy moss, into a cool, tranquil pond, its surface flat like glass, reflecting the sky and the forest around her.

Elyse glimpsed at herself in that quiet pond's surface, and gasped at what she saw.

She still looked like herself, but in addition to the shimmering, purple dress, her long dark hair framing her face and shoulders was decorated with fanciful ribbions, broad and flat, and patterned like colorful butterfly's wings, their detail so exquisite that they seemed almost alive. It was just...a shock, to see herself in such a dress. She had never paid much mind to how she looked, in the past - though since leaving home, she had grown fond of ribbons in her hair - but this...

"I...look beautiful," she murmured to herself, her cheeks burning. Where in the world had this dress come from? Why was she dressed like this...?

She heard a small titter from behind her, and whirled around, leaving her lovely reflection forgotten. There, at the edge of the forest surrounding the pond, peering out from beneath the shadow of a red-leafed oak, stood a fae.

Tall and lithe, the fae was, a slender woman, with pale skin, and hair like the yellow of a faded autumn leaf, her eyes a brilliant, blazing green. Her dress seemed made of autumn leaves, melting into the forest floor around her, and she had cat's ears instead of normal ones, twitching curiously as the fae watched on.

Elyse felt a cautious fear seep into her blood. She had never seen a fae, but she had heard tales of them. They came in all shapes, but...you knew one, when you saw them. Secretive, and mysterious, they had a reputation for being tricksters - though their definition of a prank could seem chilling, at times. She had read tales of fae stealing children, as a joke, or luring travelers to their deaths through entrancing song. Though there were also stories of them offering boons to folk, and just as suddenly deciding to take it back, on a whim. Unpredictable, fickle and wild; you should never trust a fae's promise, for they would always find some way to break its spirit while sticking to the letter.

The fae woman tittered again as Elyse stepped back from her, nearly falling into the pond. "You wear the fairy garb well, little witch," she laughed, lips curving upward in a mysterious smile. "Oh, so pretty. I wonder, which of them will give it to you?"

Still laughing, the fae woman stepped behind a tree, and vanished.

Elyse stood still for a moment, nervous, anxiously watching the treeline to see if the fae would reappear. With some trepidation, she stepped forward cautiously, to where the woman had stood, peering behind the dark and black trunks that surrounded her. But there was nothing. The fae was gone.

She remained there for a while, lingering, peering through the trees, listening over the sounds of the rustling wind for footsteps. Nothing.

A flash of red caught her eye, and she glanced upwards. There, darting among the treetops, a brilliant crimson, was a small cardinal. It paused, as she watched it, alighting on a gnarled black branch, and trilled at her, black eyes beady and dark.

"Flit...?" Elyse said, wondering. But the cardinal did not answer her. Instead, it fluttered to another treetop, and then another, moving away from her.

Elyse lifted up her skirts and ran after it, bare legs flashing in the shadows of the forest, stumbling as she kept her sight up among the treetops. The little cardinal was barely visible, sometimes, amongst the red autumn leaves. But she managed to keep up with it, as it led her on a winding path through the dark and shadowed forest, the dying of day dappling the ground as she ran.

Eventually, as she ran, the forest thinned, the trees not so close together, their gnarled roots not so tangled with each other, and then fell away completely as she came to a clearing, slowing down as she reached the edge of the forest, lingering by the treeline. One of the trees by the edge of the forest had gone dry and dead, fallen over, and on the twisted remains of the stump sat a yellowed, ancient skull, with bright red roses in its eye sockets.

But Elyse only glanced at this. The clearing before her was covered in yellowed, withered grass, leading off to a steep cliffside. It offered a fantastic view of the land before them, plainslands and hills rolling on and on as far as the eye could see. Six hills, in particular, rose up high above the landscape, and on each of these sat a castle, looking almost like toys from this distance, casting long shadows across the land in the dusklight.

And there, by the edge of the cliff, looking out over the land, down towards the castles, was a man. He stood in shadow, silhouetted by the setting sun, so that most of his features were not visible. But what was were the set of wicked-looking stag horns curling from his head, each point like a black thorn.

And there, not ten feet from her, looking out towards this stag-horned man, was-

"Martimeos?" Elyse called.

The wizard stood with his back towards her, not moving as Flit fluttered from the trees to alight on his shoulder, his black-furred cloak flapping in the wind, long hair wild and whipping around him. One hand rested on the sword by his belt; he stood unmoving, even as Elyse drew closer behind him, not bothering to be quiet. "Martim...?" she called once more, cautiously.

The wizard spun around to face her, and Elyse gave a small gasp. Martimeos had the green eyes of a cat, almost seeming to glow in their intensity, the pupils narrow, dark slits. His face split in a mysterious, tricksome grin. "I found him, Elyse," he laughed, gesturing toward the shadowed man standing at the edge of the cliff. "I knew I could."

With that, Martimeos turned his back to her once more, and began walking towards the stag-horned man standing by the cliffside.

And as Elyse watched, as Martim walked away from her, that stag-horned shadow of a man lifted his arm, casting it out across the valley stretching below him. And as he did, the hilltop castles of the valley burst into roaring, screaming flame, flame like she had never seen, great smoke-billowing infernos that blackened stone and crumbled brick, leaving the castles as great skeletal pyres crowning the valley's hills in an instant. The intense, white-hot flames spread quickly from them, racing down the hillsides, consuming the valley in a blaze so great that she could feel the heat of it from here.

"Wait," she cried, lifting her skirts once more to follow after Martimeos. "Fool wizard, be careful. We-"

A sudden growling from her side interrupted her. Elyse glanced down towards her feet to find Cecil. Her familiar's striped and spotted grey-and-yellow fur was standing on end, his back arched, ears flat against his head, eyes narrowed, as he prowled around her, hissing and spitting in Martim's direction.

"Cecil!" she snapped, as the cat seized the edge of her dress in his teeth and began dragging her back towards the forest. "Let me go, I need..."

What...did she need? Her head swam with a thousand jumbled thoughts. Where was she? What was she doing here?

She turned to face Martimeos again. The entire valley below, now, was aflame, long, blackened scars twisting through it, the castles nothing but collapsed rubble, sparks and ash swimming upwards through the air like fireflies to disappear into the twilight. Heat, furious heat, baked off everything, withering the grass beneath her feet. Martimeos had nearly reached the stag-horned man by now, who still stood on the cliffside, staring down at the ruined valley.

A great gust of wind blew up black smoke in a plume all around her, choking everything, carrying with it bits of hot ash that alighted on her skin with stinging burns. She couldn't see anything, except the great burning clouds of smoke - she coughed, trying to breathe, as her vision blurred and doubled -

And suddenly, the smoke was swept away, clearing swiftly, now driven away by biting cold.

Elyse looked around herself. The world had changed once again. No more burning valleys and castles, no more dark autumn forest, no more Martimeos. Now she stood knee-deep in thick, freezing snow. A bittter blizzard raged around her, whipping stinging, ice-sharp flakes into her skin, beneath a dark gray sky, the clouds so thick that no sun, moon or star could be seen. Pine trees clustered around her, looming, creaking and swaying in the harsh wind of the blizzard, though she could barely make them out - she could not see more than their dim shadows for the might of the blizzard.

Her fine purple dress was gone, as well, and she was back in her tattered black dress and pointed hat, the latter tied beneath her chin to prevent it from flying off in the gale. She also had a woolen cloak wrapped around her shoulders; this she drew closer around her, shivering. This storm was cold, even for her and her hot blood. Cecil, at least, was still by her side, frost already riming his thick fur, though he did not seem to suffer too much from the chill.

She struggled to lift her legs above the snow and move forward, cursing her short stature as the snow only piled ever-higher around her, in some places nearly coming up to her waist. Her long dark hair whipped behind her as the wind howled, and she could feel it quickly becoming matted and frozen. Cecil leapt and bound through the snow drifts, not sinking into them as far as she did, shaking the snow from his fur and flicking ice from the end of his tail.

She had not walked far when she came upon the first corpse.

It was a Crosscraw man, half-buried, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, dressed in white and red fur hides. Headless, skin gray and frozen, he still clutched a stone-carved axe tightly in one hand, fingernails black. His head was nowhere to be seen, though, Elyse thought, who knew how deeply it might be buried in the snow by now.

This was only the first, though.

More corpses dotted the snow as she trudged on, struggling against the blizzard; the dim shapes of clawd hands and contorted limbs peeking above the drifts, the sight of them growing ever and ever more frequent. Men, women, even children, young and old - all Crosscraw, dressed in furs and leathers, and all slain, headless, their corpses lying broken in the snow. Brutally, and mercilessly killed. She saw one woman's body, curled around her child's, as if to protect it; she wondered which of them had died first. Elyse did not know whether it would have been worse for the mother to watch her child die in her arms, or for the child to watch its mother die trying to shield it.

It seemed, too, as she walked on, that the corpses grew not only more frequent, but more fresh. Not buried nearly so deeply, and fresh bloodstains painting the snow crimson, great splashes and arcs sprayed wildly, as if by some mad painter across a fresh canvas.

Elyse had seen death before, but as the corpses littered the ground ever more thickly around her, she felt bile rise in her throat and tears come to her eyes, freezing to her face against the cold wind. This was...it was not merely death. This was a massacre, an extermination. She turned away, coughing, horror filling her, from the twin corpses of a mother and a babe, the woman still clutching her infant in her arms. What was the point of such wanton cruelty? She had read, in stories, of acts of villainy such as this - villages burnt to the ground by wicked lords, with everyone within slain - but never did they speak of the deep and utter sense of sickness she felt, looking at this carnage.

Her mind went back to the day that her mother had destroyed the logger's camp, all those years ago, and slain the men there. Elyse had thought her mother was very cruel for that - as cruel as cruel could be - but even her mother had let the men flee, if they could. Elyse had never thought she would bear witness to something that would make her mother's cruelty pale in comparison.

She saw a dim shape looming in front of her, through the snow that filled the air. She froze, squinting, wondering what it could be. When it did not move, she cautiously picked her way forward through the corpses, drawing nearer - and then shouted in horror at what she saw.

It was a great pile of heads. Wide, and taller than she was, and each one with flame-red hair, frost-rimed and bloody, dull pink, frozen icicles running down them, over the heads of men, women and children alike, each one with a grotesque look of fear frozen on their faces in their final moments. Mouths twisted and agape, eyes white and frozen in their sockets, piled upon each other, more than she couldd possibly count.

Elyse could take it no more. She sank to her knees in the snow at the sight of this, wrapping her arms around Cecil as he curled around her, burying her face in his fur and weeping bitterly. She had not known the Crosscraw, but trapped alone here, with this monument to death, so much death, she could not help but weep at the sickness and depravity, the utter ruin of it all, even as the snow piled around her and she grew numb from the chill.

"His work is nearly done," came a soft voice from beside her.

Elyse glanced up. Beside her - she did not know how, she had not heard him approach - stood Kells, his harsh face staring grimly at the mound of heads, leaning against a spear he gripped in both hands, driven deep into the snow. The soldier was dressed much as his uniform of the Twin Lamps town guard - a shining breastplate cuirass, flaring green pants, and black, knee-high boots. But now, in addition, he had a kettle-helm strapped about his chin, small icicles forming on its brim from the blizzard, and a white cloak that flapped furiously in the breeze. Curiously, he had a tabard over his breastplate, though it was not marked with the symbol of Twin Lamps, the two black suns on an orange field. Instead, it was dark blue, and marked with a blooming white rose, ringed about with three white doves touching wingtip to wingtip.

Elyse had not had a chance to answer him when another voice came from her other side, and she whipped her head around to find Martimeos standing beside her as well, looking paler than usual, his lips blue from the cold. He wore blood-soaked bandages wound around his right arm and right leg. By his feet, Elyse noticed, lay a yellowed and ancient skull, with bright red roses in its eye sockets. "It won't be long now," he said quietly, as he too stared up at the pile of heads.

Elyse struggled to her feet, trying to wipe the frozen tears from her face as she did so. "Martim...what is happening?" she asked. "Of whose work do you speak?"

But the wizard did not answer her. Instead, he merely turned away from the horror of the head-pile, and pointed. Back in the direction where she had walked from. Elyse turned to see where he was pointing, and moaned in terror.

All the corpses she had passed no longer lay still in the snow. Instead, they stood upright, silently, unmoving, unfeeling of the blizzard that surrounded them, their hands still gripping weapons, a dim, blue fog where their heads should have been, endless, uncountable corpses.

And beyond them - hidden by the blizzard - there was the hulking shadow of...something. Something blacker than night, dark as sin itself. Some shadow whose every movement spoke of a predator, of violent malice. Something that let loose a bellowing roar that echoed among the pines, raw and deep and full of animal rage, the strange, alien cry of some unfathomable beast.

Martimeos and Kells stepped in front of her, putting themselves between the shadow and her.

"Idiots!" she cried, tugging at Martim's arm. "What do you think you are doing? We must flee!"

"We'll buy you time to make your way out with our lives," Martim told her, giving her an impudent wink. "'Tis the least I could do for a pretty face." Elyse's eyes widened, and she wound her hand back and gave him a furious slap for that, but the wizard just laughed at her.

"Kells," she pleaded, turning away from Martim, but the soldier just shook his head grimly at her.

"Born to Die," he said simply.

As she begged with them, the shadow roared again, that long, outraged howl that seemed to twist her very soul, and then with astonishing swiftness it came screaming at them through the blizzard, darkness and fury and black and bloody claw like shadows swimming through the air, and Elyse knew, as its awful shriek filled her ears, that it came for her head-

With a scream Elyse awoke, blind fear filling her, thrashing and fighting. It wasn't until she fell off her bed in her struggle that she realized she fought with nothing but her blankets.

She lay there, upon the cold hardwood floor of her room in the White Queen inn, feeling the fear drain out of her blood as she stared up at the rafters. It was still dark out - only a little gray light shone through the window to light the room, the dawn just beginning to arrive. She heard Cecil, from the bed, give a small mew, half of concern, half of annoyance at being woken up by her thrashing. The fog in her head slowly cleared - the dense and thick horror that had stuffed her skull like wool during the dream dissipating as the feel of the wooden floor bought her back to reality.

She rose, rubbing her sore bottom, the memories of the dream still playing in her mind as she looked at her familiar. He still wore a cast on his rear leg, but she thought very soon - within the next day or so - she would remove it. He was recovered, and thankfully without a limp or lasting damage.

It had been nearly two weeks since the Bogge-man had been slain in Twin Lamps and the celebrations had ended; it was almost surprising, to Elyse, how quickly people had gotten on with their lives. The farmfolk had returned to their homes, the decorations and feasts had come and gone, and now - it seemed as if you would have barely known that less than a month ago the town had lived under a pall of terror. Normalcy had returned quickly.

Quickly for everyone, that was, except for Martimeos, Kells, and herself.

They had not noticed anything wrong, at first. Perhaps their minds had simply been too occupied by the celebrations. But once the feasting and drinking had died down, they had each begun to notice.

The Bogge-man still lived in their thoughts. Despite its destruction, it still appeared in their memories.

It had been easy to ignore, for a few days. Elyse had thought that perhaps it was simply the effect of having fought the Bogge-man so recently. And it had seemed to recede, a bit. She had thought that perhaps, given time, it would fade from her mind entirely. But over the past week, it had gained strength, and now - this dream - it was the most vivid she had had since the Bogge-man had died. What she had initially worried about, she was now all but convinced of - the Bogge-man's mark persisted past its death. What this meant, she...did not know. Nor did she have any idea what might be done about it.

Martimeos had suffered from this, and Kells too, though the two of them had tried hard as they might to ignore it, as if they could force the Bogge-man from their heads by sheer force of will. But it had eventually gotten bad enough that poor Kells - who had returned to his service as a guard - had woken up half his barracks, a few nights ago, with his shrieks from a nightmare. And then again, the next night. Humiliated, he had been told to take leave by the mayor himself. With nowhere else to go, Kells had rented a room on the bottom floor of the White Queen inn, hoping to find a solution from the two others he knew to be suffering from the same affliction.

Though, Elyse mused, the appearance of the Bogge-man had certainly not been the strangest thing about her dream. It had been so vivid, crisp and real, too. Normally, her dreams were foggy, murky things, vague impressions that fled her mind as soon as she awoke, but this one remained as fresh as if it had happened only moments ago. She occasionally had dreams such as these, but had never known what to make of them. Nonsense and dreamstuff, most likely, though she wondered-

Her thought was interrupted by a rapping at her door. "Elyse?" she heard Martim call, from the other side, his voice low, so as to not wake the other guests of the inn. "I heard a scream-"

"Come in," Elyse replied, her voice low. For Martimeos to have heard her, he must have already been awake himself.

Martimeos entered, closing the door behind him, the wizard barely even raising an eyebrow at her nudity. He wore his tunic, himself, untucked from a pair of loose woolen pants, and no shoes. His shadowy green eyes had dark bags beeneath them, as if he had not slept, and his dark brown hair was wild and disheveled. "A nightmare?" he asked her, seeing her pile of tangled blankets upon the floor.

"Yes." Elyse ran her hands through her hair, combing long locks of it away from her eyes. "And from the looks of you, you've had one too."

"Aye," Martim muttered in reply.

Silence fell between them. Despite herself, though she had never been shy about nudity in front of him before, Elyse felt her cheeks burning as he stared at her. Martimeos had been acting...oddly, even before the Bogge-man had returned to their thoughts. Glum and depressed, though he kept it to himself; she could tell his mood was dark. And on the last day of the celebrations of the Bogge-man's defeat...that night, he had come to her room, drunker on wine than she had ever seen him. And between his slurs and stumbles, the wizard had asked to share her bed.

Elyse could no longer deny that she simply enjoyed sleeping with him. Though her mother had kept her isolated from men, she had not been able to stop Elyse from wondering what it might be like to lie with one. Even before she had met Martimeos, Elyse had been curious, and as it turned out she enjoyed the feeling of arms wrapped around her, of her skin pressed against his, of hearing his heartbeat as she laid her head against his chest. As dangerous as it might be - as much as it might tempt her into things she knew she must not do - Elyse could not resist the chance to enjoy those feelings.

Martimeos had not lied - he certainly was affectionate when he was drunk - and that night, for a moment, as she lay with him, Elyse had thought she might lose herself, feeling his hands run up and down the bare skin of her back. But Martimeos had only wanted to hold her tightly, and sleep. And in his sleep, she had watched as a few tears fell down his face, and heard him when he muttered "I'm sorry, Vivian."

Vivian. Elyse had wondered that night, and wondered still, who that was. A lover? Was Martim being unfaithful, by sharing a bed with her?Would that, Elyse wondered, even count? Despite it all, the wizard had never done anything more than simply lie with her. And in spite of herself, Elyse found the idea a little funny. Was she a...temptress, to Martim? It was almost enough to make her laugh. And truth be told, it made her feel a little dark excitement.

All these thoughts ran through her head as she and Martimeos stood looking at each other. The wizard was the first to break the silence. "There is no use denying it anymore," he muttered, voice grim. "We must...speak to Maddie. See if there is anything that might be done about the Bogge-man in our heads, before we depart for the mountains."

"A fine idea," Elyse replied, crossing her arms, "And probably something we should have done by now."

"Hm," Martimeos grunted in reply. He rubbed the back of his head, staring with bleary eyes at the dim and weak dawnlight coming through the window. "Morning already," he muttered. "I don't think I'll be able to get back to sleep."

"You should try. You look awful."

"Thank you," the wizard replied wryly. "But I don't think after the nightmare I had I will be able to relax."

"So," Elyse said softly, "Stay with me." And she held out a slender arm, inviting Martimeos to her bed. Part of her screamed that she was a fool for this. That she knew what this may lead to, eventually. But part of her enjoyed it too much, and found it too darkly amusing, to leave well enough alone. "I would like a pillow. And I know my embrace soothes you, wizard."

Martimeos stared back at the witch, her naked curves catching the gentle light of dawn and her invitation. Her eyes were dark and mysterious, her smile wicked and bemused. "Very well," he said quietly.

Elyse bit her lip to stop the mirthful laughter that threatened to bubble up from somewhere dark and crooked within her.