Page 3 - Wild Times in Coalpass

At least Elayne and I won’t be the most miserable one out there tomorrow.

The words bounced around Elayne’s head as she tried not to freak out. With her back to Coalpass’ outer wall, not freaking out felt almost impossible. Her nerves were frayed after their entire afternoon was consumed by crawling, hiding, and sprinting through a kilometre of corn fields. Their short rest had helped until they’d needed to wait five hours before they could move again to sneak through the few houses that were dotted around the town’s gate. Now sitting in a shallow ditch at the bottom of the walls, their time had come to enter the town filled with horrors beyond her comprehension.

It was where they needed to be and the beginning of the end for their excursion but, as night firmly pressed down on them, Elayne dreaded finding the Wild Node. Ten metres from the partial open gate, her only option until Harlea gave the order was to watch what little of the road she could and try not to stare at the clouds. Once the sun had set, a gentle red hue had settled over them, lining the edge of the clouds as they drifted high above them.

Harlea, Fiona, and she waited, seemingly for eternity. Areli had taken the lead, making Harlea swear he’d not head in until he returned with a better idea of the lay of the town. Leaving Elayne to sit, wait, and mull over their particularly exposed position.

On their way to Coalpass, Harlea had assured her that they would figure out their plan when they got there. Then, once they found a place closer to town. And during their rest, Fiona had told her to trust them that everything was going to be fine.

One breath in, one breath out. Rubbing her temples, Elayne focussed on listening for anything near them. It was tempting to sit up onto her heels to peek over the lip of the ditch they were in, but she knew better than to tempt fate. The only sound around them was a gentle intermittent scratching noise that had followed them since they’d left the pottery. It was disconcerting to hear the rasping, sharp scratching at the edge of her hearing, Fiona had assured her it was just Wild magic at play.

Closing her eyes, she made the triangle of the Good Gods over her heart again: peace from Daelos, discipline from Fillienne, and compassion from Telli. The Good Gods watched over her, surely pleased to see her cleaning her homeland from the corrupted magic and she could trust that this was the path they would want for her. When she opened her eyes once more, she found Harlea watching her from his spot over the way.

<prayer>, Elayne mouthed to him as she made the prayer sign again and ignored his smirk.

Mimicking the sign of the three on his chest, he worked his way up into a crouch and looked out over the edge. Seconds dragged by and he swivelled around, tutting as he went.

Watching him only reinforced how stupid it was to check where they’d come from. Not that it would help nagging Harlea about it. The whole Wild plains was weird with how sounds distorted around them, sometimes deafening their words, other times amplifying a whisper into a shout many times louder.

A shiver ran up Elayne’s spine and she pushed the thought to the back of her mind. The Wild Nodes had plagued the north since records began, with every kingdom that rose and fell around the Dark Forest trying to deal with them as best they could. When she was young, she’d thought that the fairytales about the brave chevelieres who would enter the demonic badlands were ridiculous. Her mother had warned her not to fall prey to the overly romanticised tales of chivalry and selflessness of the easterners and and the tales of Jo’Anne were perfect examples of their self-indulgent, self-aggrandising behaviour. When she grew older and she’d heard from adventurers about their experiences of the Wild plains, her doubts were assuaged to some degree. Upon entering the Wild plains around Coalpass, she wished Jo’Anne of Arkh was here instead of her.

Elayne swivelled her bag around to her front again, fussing with the main compartment’s drawstring. At the top of her gear was her handcrossbow, neatly packed with her bolts like she had planned. She took out her hand crossbow again, using the hook on her shortsword’s hilt to pull the crossbow taut with practised precision. It wasn’t ideal to keep the string under pressure but being prepared made more sense than being chary. She traded one of the daggers on her belt for four bolts and carefully packed her dagger into her cloak at the top, blade facing away from the back of the bag.

Everything was quiet on the road in front of the settlement at least, now that Areli had cleared it. He’d been able to take out two of the Wildfolk at the gate entrance without any of the others’ help. Both of the corpses lay face down on the road in front of them, tortured and malformed like the others.

“Mmm.” Harlea grumped as he shrunk back down onto his ass. With his thumb on his nose, he snorted out a clump of snot onto the ground and frowned.

She ignored how revolted she was and pointed at the gate when he looked at her. Shuffling forward, she tried to see if she couldn’t get Fiona’s attention as well as Harlea motioned for two more minutes.

Two minutes longer than she wanted but Elayne didn’t complain. She couldn’t. Left hand, crossbow; right hand, short sword. She had a dagger on her belt and another in her bag, along with the sling in case things got truly dire.

By the time Elayne checked on Harlea again, he was rummaging through his bag for something. The urge to poke him again was present in her mind but she knew he couldn’t tell him what was going to happen once they entered the town.

It had been five years since Coalpass had been abandoned, according to their contract dossier, and the Wild Magic created physical and mental mutations. There was frustratingly little else in for her to read about the corrupted town that was helpful: River town with the river splitting the town in two, uninhabited and a quarantine zone for a kilometre in every direction, and House Hilan desperately wanted the situation resolved so they could resume trade downriver.

Elayne sighed quietly and got Harlea’s attention again from the hushed sound. Cracking his neck, he shuffled back around to Fiona to poke her square in the back. Fiona jumped, spun quickly to give him a dirty look.

“Areli?” Harlea whispered loudly.

“How would I know?” Fiona snapped back at him before catching Elayne’s eye, “He’ll be back soon.”

Elayne took her word for it but felt her feet getting itchy. To distract herself, she checked her weapons again; sword, dagger, crossbow. Slipping the bag off her right shoulder, she readjusted the small metal buckler attached to the outside straps to refasten it. The buckler added a lot to the weight of the bag but there was no way she wasn’t bringing a shield. She demanded that she was ready.

Ready for what came next. Ready for whatever the Wilds could throw at them. She hoped at least. They knew next to nothing about the whole damn place.

Fact one: The people were horrific scaly abominations for the most part. Two: They bled buckets of blood constantly as they stumbled around Wild plains. With ugly sores and tentacles growing all over their disgusting bodies. None of them moved quickly and those that had the tentacles had terrible balance. Areli had killed several of them so far but had told the others not to engage any of them unless their lives depended on it.

Wild Node contracts. They were way down her list of contracts now. She squeezed her hands together and breathed her breath into them, clutching at the warm air as it slipped through her fingers. The red tinted fog that had settled over the town was freezing cold, soaking through their clothes as soon as the sun set and leaving Elayne perpetually shivering. Less than a kilometre away to the west, their campsite was sitting with her bag of fresh, dry clothes just waiting for her.

“We get in, we find the node and we put the rune into it. Then, we are done, El. No more monsters, no more magic, and we go home.’ Harlea whispered next to her.

She shuddered and gave him a nod. She was capable. Calm, capable, and dedicated to doing good.

“Good,” Harlea gave her a hearty thump on the shoulder and turned back to Fiona. He reached out but stopped himself before he poked her again, “Fiona, you have the compass?”

Fiona shuffled around to face them and reached into her shirt to produce the compass on its makeshift necklace. The bizarre device was bulky and gnarled with its dented iron casing and a simple metal latch. Fiona made short work of the latch to reveal the small needle housing inside for all three of them to see.

“Scarred, scaled, crazy and cruel. Shamans eat children in their gruel.” A whisper from behind her kissed the nape of Elayne’s neck as it drifted in on the fog.

She lurched forward instinctively into Fiona and felt Fiona’s hand shove her sword hilt down towards the ground as Elayne recouped.

“El.”

Elayne looked into Fiona’s eyes and took a second to breathe. Risking a look behind her, she found nothing there. No floating woman, mutant human, or terrifying Karitian shaman coming to drain her body of blood. As peculiar as it was for her to be afraid of a shaman, she pushed the thought to the back of her mind before she gave Fiona and Harlea as big a smile as she could muster.

“Ok, map.” Harlea held out his hand to Elayne.

Elayne swivelled her bag around and grabbed the map from the left side where she’d packed it. Handling it to Harlea, she shuffled in so she could get a better look at the compass and the map.

Harlea unfurled the entire map and then refolded it so it only had the part they needed, “This is us here. We head in quiet, we move along the town wall and look for Areli. If anything happens, we meet in the rendezvous spot in this house.” Harlea traced a path on the map to one of the smaller houses in town near the river, “Then, we get our bearings again.”

“Do we go now then?” Elayne asked, almost ready to head in without them if they had to wait any longer.

“Yeah, come on.” Harlea replied as he folded the map and gave it back to Elayne

As she took it off of him, he twisted around and took out one of his axes. He crept towards the end of the ditch and Elayne carefully refolded the map correctly before forcing it back into the side of the pack how she liked.

Passing through the gate, Harlea didn’t spare a single look back. Next, Fiona moved and Elayne wasted no time joining them.

The town sat in a muted slumber. Time had forgotten the wide paved roads of the little town, with the smattering of weeds breaking through the cracks in the pavers and the neglected houses accenting the red fog that rolled through the town. There was no sign of struggles on the outskirts and in the front end of town. The bridge looked in good condition down the end of the road, but not without a few notable figures stumbling through the fog between them and the river.

Elayne shuffled to the right to join Fiona as she hopped over a short stone wall that surrounded the first house and its backyard. Four more Wildfolk appeared in the houses around her, shuffling aimlessly as they went on their way.

Five folk she’d need to keep an eye on before they got to the river. Five she could see. Of the five, two were gigantic bloated figures with large bellies and one with a long tentacle coming out of his face. The other three were slighter, with the closest one being a scrawny little boy who wandered happily fifteen metres from where she squatted. His teeth gleamed in the night and Elayne felt the all too familiar sound of the sharp scraping noise play in the back of her mind.

Elayne focussed on joining Fiona instead, vaulting over the fence and working her way quickly along the perimeter to join her two friends.

In the yard, there was little of interest. A veggie patch, several unkempt fruit trees, and no Wildfolk. Elayne stayed on the path that hugged the perimeter fence and tried to keep low. Letting out a slight hum of a song she’d never heard before, Elayne enjoyed the cool touch of the stones jutting out of the wall as they undulated along the wall.

“Elayne.” Fiona hissed as she spun around and smacked Elayne on the hand.

The impact snapped Elayne back into reality, taking her hand back off the stone and going quiet again. She had no idea why she had started humming and she shook her head to Fiona as she watched her expectantly.

Then, Fiona turned back around and left Elayne to her own devices. The sound of thin raspy breathing joined the light sound of the same song that Elayne had been humming. Both could have been in her head, with the fog crowding her and muffling all other sounds.

As Harlea began to put real distance away from them, Elayne picked up her pace. Nothing good would come with lingering and the last thing she wanted to do was lose Harlea as well as Areli in the fog. Half-stepping Fiona as she trudged through the mud, Elayne stayed as close to Fiona as she could and willed her to go quicker.

Fiona paid her little mind, pausing intermittently to look at the fence and mumbled something about the winds. Once she mentioned it, Elayne could feel the wind buffet her from the side of the wall. It worked in between Fiona and the narrow space between the wall and forced her to sink deeper into the mud to keep herself set.

Her jacket flapped at her sides as the wind picked up and Elayne grabbed onto Fiona’s side as she stumbled to the side. Water seeped through the small hole in her boot and soaked her new, clean socks in a matter of seconds.

The squish between her toes was horrific but it gave her something else to think about as she forced her and Fiona forwards. The wind put up a lacklustre attempt at slowing her before it petered out as fast as it had come.

Elayne didn’t care to stick around to figure out the intricacies of the wind; shoving Fiona up to the front porch of the first house. Reaching the footpath to the house, Fiona let Elayne pass with only a slight murmur as she crossed her path. Harlea had reached the side of the house and she shared his enthusiasm for keeping moving.

Over the fence he went before she arrived. Elayne hit the fence at speed and vaulted over with the butt of her left hand on the top of the fence, clearing it with ease. Solid flagstones greeted her on the other side, squeezing the dirty water out of her socks as she landed on her two feet. With a quick shuffle, she made space for Fiona and checked her crossbow. Using her left hand was a bold choice but she’d not lost the bolt nor the tension in the string luckily enough.

The front yard of the house was sparse and still in good condition, despite the years. The whole place was rather lavish with a variety of pot plants sitting dispersed on the well-made pavers. Elayne brushed the back of her hand against the wall and scowled, not that it gave them much space to hide if they needed, with the pot plants evenly spaced and no clutter to hide behind. Twisting around, Elayne spotted Harlea halfway down the alleyway between the house and the fence. He’d paused mid-step as they both waited for Fiona to make it over the wall.

The decision to look over the wall again wasn’t an easy one but Elayne preferred it far more than waiting in the open.

Standing up just enough to get vision of the first house, Elayne spotted Fiona immediately, all the way back at the gate and waving to two figures who were slowly lumbering towards her.

“Oh shit, Fiona!” Elayne called out to her quietly, “Get over here.”

Fiona turned back towards Elayne and gave her a blank stare. Mouthing something silently to Elayne, the sounds distorted and made no sense as they hit her ears.

Five metres out, the small boy was hobbling towards the gate, his right leg flexing unnaturally as he moved. A shimmering bloody trail followed him as he limped forward but he seemed unaffected by any of it. A surreal, impossible grin stretched up to his ears with bright white teeth gleaming as he spoke.

Elayne made sure to keep her crossbow level as she leapt back over the wall. Despite the urgency, she stayed low as she raced towards her friend and ended up ramming her shoulder into the gate as she joined Fiona.

Fiona put up little resistance as Elayne grabbed her by the hand and yanked her back towards the second house, “Fiona. We have to go. Now.”

Fiona turned towards her, took in a long breath through her nose, and then began to hum the same tune that had been playing deep in the back of Elayne’s mind.

Elayne grabbed Fiona by the face, right hand covering Fiona’s mouth and her left pinching her nose. Fiona lurched backwards, instinct kicking in and making Fiona cuff Elayne hard in the ear as she tumbled.

As her butt hit the ground, Fiona bounced back onto her feet and scrambled past Elayne to the fence. Elayne wasn’t far behind, tripping as her feet rushed to get back from the gate. Fiona waited for her as she skidded to a stop next to the fence. Her hand went to her pocket while the other went behind her back. Alarm rippled through her face as she looked behind Elayne, “My bag, El!”

“Leave it!” Elayne replied as she took her last two steps. Pivoting perfectly, she rounded back to watch the gate just in time to see the boy arrive.

First, it was his hands, reaching around the gate and wrapping slowly around its edge. Then, the gentle lilting voice carried on the frigid air between them, “In a garden green and fair, Lives a girl with golden hair. She skips and twirls, oh so bright, were her curls.”

As the gate swung open, the boy’s face gleamed in the gentle twilight. Sharp rows of teeth protruded from his face, drenching his front with a waterfall of thick, glistening blood. Lurching forwards, his legs barely kept him up as he stumbled on his ruined left leg.

Elayne needed no further encouragement to leave. Releasing her crossbow’s bolt in the general vicinity of the boy. There was no scream nor inclination that the bolt had landed. Elayne would’ve checked to see what had happened to it but she was already rolling over the wall.

“Time to go.” Elayne landed lightly on the other side and gave Foina a light shove to the alley. Her hand reached to her dagger pouch and fumbled with her second bolt. At some point, the scabbard’s latch had clasped again and Elayne had better luck skewering herself than working one of the bolts out.

Fiona reached for the alley like planned and only slowed once she was far into its middle. Looping both straps of her backpack through her left arm, Elayne settled it further up her arm and tried to work on the crossbow’s bowstring once more. Three steps in and two more the alley’s entrance, Elayne heard the boy launch herself high over the wall behind her.

His body flailed as he sailed through the sky before colliding heavily with one of the larger pot plants as he landed. The force shattered the pot plant on impact sending pieces of ceramic shrapnel through the yard, raining down onto Elayne as she leapt backwards.

From the shattered remains of the pot, the boy rose with several pieces of the pot and a tree branch stuck into his thin frame. He crawled quickly, on his hands and knees and pitching to the left side as the bones in his left arm snapped and reshaped to support his weight once again. With a flick of an abnormally long tongue, he lapped up the blood that fell from his chin and sneered at Elayne as she backed away.

Thinking fast, she tossed the crossbow at him as he charged towards her. She was a rubbish throw but managed to catch him right in the face. The precious second it gave her was wasted if she tried to run. She steadied herself and placed herself at the entrance to the alley. Her bag slid down onto her forearm and she secured with practised efficiency. Her short sword in her right hand gave her small comfort as the boy closed the distance.

The shards of ceramic shifted and fell as his body realigned itself. Muscles rolled over bones, cracking as his shoulders relocated and blood and sinew solidified to accommodate for the bones that were too far gone. His body compressed as he picked himself back up, the branch running along the remains of his left leg. Letting out a growl, his hands slapped on the ground in front of him and he dragged himself forwards. The first two steps were slow, his body shimmering with a patchwork of scales on what little intact skin he had.

Hunched low with her shield at her front, Elayne felt comfort even in the face of the hellish child in front of her.  His gait was uneven as he picked up speed, and while his appendages held as they hit the pavers, they were impeding him.  A low snarl rolled through the boy’s chest before he opened his mouth and let out a misplaced, high pitched voice, “They’re coming for us. You can’t let them get you. They’ll rip out your eyes and feast on your innards.”

It was the voice of a young child, boy or girl, of the right sort of age of who the child would have been before. But this creature’s mouth didn’t move as the words came out of its gaping maw. Elayne steeled herself. It being creepy didn’t change what Elayne needed to do. She met him mid-leap as he charged her, catching him mid-bloodcurdling scream.

Even mid-stride and nowhere near full speed, the Wilded child hit her hard enough to stagger her. Bones snapped on Elayne’s buckler as they collided, his light frame shuddering from the power of their collision.

Elayne recovered quicker, shifting her sword to the side of the bag to stab deep into his waistline. Ripping the blade across his hip, his rotten flesh rending easily as she forced her sword through him. Her left arm forced him high on his legs, the bag and buckler holding between them as she moved him.

With the momentum in her hands, Elayne shoved him hard into the fence with grim satisfaction. Her sword sunk into his shoulder, tearing through his deltoid instead of the joint like she was hoping. A slight intake of air into his lungs, the boy grinned as they came face to face. His hands worked through the folds of her bag searching desperately to rip into her arm, with him letting out a raspy chuckle as his claws slipped past her buckler.

Elayne was having none of it, ramming him into the house before whipping him into the fence afterwards for good measure. His head smacked full force into one of the protruding pieces of stone. He recovered more slowly than she’d anticipated, his hands flattering for long enough for Elayne to get her sword back into position.

As soon as he tried to bite at her, Elayne gave her bag a sharp twist to force him to the right before she plunged her sword deep into his left armpit as he scrambled to free his arms.

The arm gave way quickly, with the boy’s left arm becoming limp as his right tried to force its way through the space between them. Another twist of the bag and Elayne got a hold of the top of his forearm with her left hand. She ignored the stinging pain that came as she pulled his arm down to meet her knee. With a mighty snap, his arm right angled against the top of her thigh and he let out a shriek.

Elayne let him pull back, as relieved for the space as she was seeing his arms hanging limply at his side. He swayed as he stepped half a metre back, with a fresh torrent of blood following him as he fled. It ran down his side as his uneven legs struggled to keep him up.

Surging out of the alley, Elayne went shield first into the boy, barrelling him over as she ran him into the ground. She didn’t dilly dally, hopping back a step before she over stayed her welcome. A gentle sizzle drowned out the other ambient noises that existed in her little slice of the ninth hell. The front of her bag was drenched in a thick, congealed swathe of blood that let out a gentle hiss as it ate through the thick padding of her bag’s outer pockets. She readjusted her buckler’s straps as she fled back into the relative safety of the alley, noting Fiona at its very end with Harlea nowhere in sight.

She let the bag run along the side of the wall as hit the mouth of the alleyway, rubbing what she could of the boy’s acid blood onto the stones as she fled. The pockets on the outside of her bag would either hold or they wouldn’t; there was nothing to be done with it now. At least, she’d placed nothing of import in the pockets anyway and if it saved her arm from the blood and the boy’s claws, then all the better.

Halfway through the alleyway, she heard the boy call out for her again. Seven steps in, she heard him growl as he began to move once more. Three more steps and she looked back to watch him bound on all fours towards her, eating up the distance between them far quicker than she could create it.

Two steps and she rotated to meet him head on once more. One step back was what she had planned as she fell backwards, through the exit of alley and into the backyard with little regard for what fresh horrors were awaiting her. A metre away, the boy left for her once more. This time, she watched in slow motion as her shield came up too late, her sword hung hopelessly at her side, and she was left with no time and no plan for how she was going to survive.

“Duck.”