Splintering Veil

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished.

The subsequent calamity was an expected consequence of nature going against itself. Floodings and landslides were all-encompassing and the effects on wildlife were cataclysmic. Species eons old wiped from the land in an eyeblink. Geographies forever changed.

Yet One knew, it was by far the least severe such an event would have on the world of Arden.

As with all worlds, humans, while hardy were ill-prepared to adapt to such drastic shifts in their environment. Thousands died in the first week. When Famine and Disease woke from their long slumbers, they feasted, and people died by the score. By the first month, tens of thousands had perished. The next month, five times that many people had been taken into Death’s cold, unrelenting embrace. Such was the expected result of a land now governed by Chaos.

Though tragic, had that been the story, it would have remained nothing more than a tragic blip in a reality of similar catastrophes throughout Existence. But there was a greater impact. For the creation of such an imbalance splintered Arden’s Veil, the curtain protecting the world of men from nameless things from outside Reality. Unknown to most inhabitants of the relatively insignificant world, Celestia was a queen whose lineage was directly tied to the bloodlines of the Elder Ones, beings whose lives were counted in millennia. In that, her tie to the land—to the very world of Arden itself— was far greater than any before her. Greater than even she understood. Most definitely greater than the fools that absconded with her to settle some trifle feud. They would soon understand their folly, though by then, it was too late.

As One watched the ruin grow, it soon became more than the potential end to an insignificant world. It was a reminder that, in this wondrous existence, a single nudge can cause a chain reaction felt far beyond the prison of a single planet.

**

Dane ran through the forest, his fatigued muscles powered by terror. The ache permeating through his body and the fear that soiled his mind were nothing compared to the schism that cleaved into his heart. How could he do that? Leave his brother to die? Kalil had always been there. When Father died. When their mother could no longer take care of them…

You’re a coward, Dane.

For the second time, he fought the instinct to turn around and go back for his brother. But not just Kalil. Terese was back there too. He’d just started courting her and he didn’t even try to fight for her? And then the children. Terese had pulled them from the burning wreck of their village and now, because of his cowardice, only he remained.

Dane shook his head, trying to fight back the images of things composed of black mist and sludge, things that had slithered from the Western Wood and descended upon Brevin like vultures to a battlefield. The things they had done, to those they’d savaged. Even now, his mind couldn’t comprehend what they were. What they did to people. People he’d known his entire life. People he called friends. Had they been mauled, as tragic as it would have been, he could understand it. But there’d been no blood. Instead, the broken bodies were transmuted into vile things. Things from the darkest corners of the mind. Things that didn’t make sense.

Will that happen to me? He wondered and glanced down at his arm. The slash where one of those creatures had cut into him had blackened and a spiderweb of veins slithered up his arm. His motor control of the limb was gone though he felt a burning throb as it spread…what to even call it? A disease? Plague? Possession? His panicked mind screamed for him to use the sword and strike the infected limb from his body, but he couldn’t do it. That would require courage and if his recent actions had proven anything, it was that he was weighed, measured, and left wanting.

There was no other choice.

Kalil had saved him. A creature that was the dysfunctional amalgam of a man, snake and bear with spidery disfigured limbs and moved with no discernible rhythm to the whole had leapt from the trees. It had wrapped its broken and disfigured fingers around Dane’s arm. The pain had been overwhelming but then it was gone. Hobbled as he was, Kalil had closed the distance and lopped off the creature’s arm at the elongated wrist. Its shriek had driven Dane to his knees with far more alacrity than the pain of its touch.

The memory of Kalil being overwhelmed by jackal-like monstrosities with the distended faces of men surfaced, was like a physical blow and Dane stumbled then caught his foot on a root.

When he hit the ground, all the air was driven from him. He tried to rise but his body refused the command; instead, a feckless moan of surrender dribbled from his lips. For several minutes, Dane lay there and the tears—those of fear, shame, and frustration—fell unbidden down his dirty, blood-stained cheeks.

It had been years since he last cried but once he started, he couldn’t stop. He cried until his eyes hurt and his heaving chest forced the bile from his empty stomach. He stared up at the moon and whispered a prayer his father had taught him; one towards the gods of Old.

Guard me with your spear, Lobon. Bring truth to me, Aletheia. Oh Great Azathoth, release us from this nightmare.

The gods, as they often do, ignored his pleas.

It took him another minute to regain his composure. He absently wiped the bile from his beard and marshalled the strength to rise though his legs shook with the effort. He shuffled over to his brother’s sword and picked it up. As he stood, the moon disappeared behind the clouds and, behind him the Wood darkened ever still. He felt something back there. Something hungry and terrible whose sights were set upon him. It was only by force of will that his nerveless fingers maintained a hold on the sword. Laughter that sounded like that of breaking bone and shearing skin came from somewhere close behind him.

Dane ran.

Fear temporarily fueled his exhausted body, and he tore through the woods in frenzied terror. His arms and face were slashed by branches and thorns, but he felt none of it. He was only aware of that fear and the thing in the dark that mocked his fruitless flight. He ran on and on as it closed the distance with a purposeful deliberateness that bordered on cruel. Hope surged when he caught sight of Ebbens Field. He was nearly out of the Eastern Woods now and though it made no difference, open air and sky was his sole purpose.

He was twenty meters away when he heard the voice.

He won’t make it. It sounded in his mind and rebounded his skull as if he’d taken a blow. The shock of it slowed his strides. He tried to regain his momentum, but it was too late.

A whip of venomous fire streaked across his back. Dane’s mouth opened in a wordless scream, and he fell to his knees, his body locking up in a spasming paralysis. That sinister laugh behind him was so close now and Dane tried to close his eyes, too cowardly to face his own death but his eyes remained open and seeing.

It was as such when two hooded figures stepped into the woods and into his line of sight. Their black robes thrummed with an ethereal power. The one on the left was tall and wide, no doubt a warrior. Resting across his shoulders was an enormous mace of glittering gold. The other was far smaller, perhaps a head taller than a child of ten. They raised a hand, and a white, silvery light bubbled and swirled from a gloved palm. The light sunk into the figure’s palm and, for a moment, there was nothing but the silence.

Then light exploded from the figure’s hand and rushed towards Dane. It seared his eyes, his body, his very soul. His body spasmed with an overflow of energy that ripped him from the ground, blowing him back into a tree. He landed limply and though he felt everything, Dane could not stave off his fleeting consciousness. Thus, he heard a surprised and rageful scream of an inhuman thing behind him. Dane smiled.

Then the darkness swallowed him.