Chapter Fifteen: A Step into Madness
The vision of the past reveals the militia’s arrival in Bodra. There is apparent tension between the militia members, but it is made trivial by Zifa and the monster, now working together, launching a vicious attack.
Tyruc sucked in air with a wheeze, his lungs confused from him having held his breath for just a moment in reality but over two weeks in his perception. Lightning flashed to illuminate the ruined settlement, and thunder rumbled a moment after. The rain had not let up in the days-long moment during which Tyruc had been preoccupied.
“I hated that. A lot.”
It was necessary, the voice replied. Now you can proceed with the knowledge you need. There are people here who need your help. You asked before why Som had not intervened? He is intervening now by bringing you here.
Tyruc coughed and shook his head, deciding to save what little breath he had for focusing on the task at hand. He drew his blade and took a tentative step forward, finally moving beyond the front gate and into Zifa’s Farm.
The moment his foot landed within the settlement, a shout came from beyond the buildings to Tyruc’s left, opposite the windmill. He ran toward the noise, a dry part of him remembering distantly that the old Tyruc would be running in the opposite direction. He rounded the corner of a cabin to see a man on the ground a dozen paces away, one arm bloody and bent and the other held up feebly to defend himself.
Over him stood Zifa, her hatchet raised in both hands above her head.
“Zifa, stop!” Tyruc shouted.
And she did. Her arms still aloft, she looked at him in genuine bewilderment. She had no idea who he was, of course, but he had shouted her name with confident familiarity. Indeed, Tyruc felt he did know her.
In watching her descent into madness and her fruitless struggle against it, he knew her perhaps better than any of her neighbors had. In that moment, Tyruc knew why he was there.
He had not been sent to this settlement just to save the innocent families from a monster and a woman sent berserk. He was there to save her, too, if salvation could still be brought to her.
Zifa squinted at him through the rain, and as she cocked her head to the side, Tyruc dared to hope, but that hope was dashed when the man on the ground moaned in pain.
Zifa’s eyes snapped back to her victim. The hatchet bobbed upward before beginning its fatal crash down toward the defenseless man.
By reflex, Tyruc thrust his hand out as though to intercept the blow. But it was not just his hand that moved forward. The rain falling between them formed a watery wall that crashed into the woman, knocking her off balance and bringing her deadly blow to the ground next to the man’s head.
What...? Tyruc began to wonder, examining his hand.
No time for your questions, the voice roared in his mind like a surging shore.
Zifa readied another swipe of her hatchet at the injured man.
Tyruc rushed forward and swung his hand in a slapping motion, and the rain around Zifa splashed into her with enough force to tumble her away.
“Come on!” Tyruc shouted at the man, grasping his good hand and pulling him to his feet. A myriad of lacerations crisscrossed the poor fellow’s face, arms, and torso.
The man leaned heavily on Tyruc, managing to wheeze, “The windmill!”
Tyruc shouldered as much of the man’s weight as he could. A frustrated howl came from behind them, hastening their stilted run into the settlement’s square. With each awkward step toward the windmill, Tyruc expected Zifa to dig her hatchet into one of their backs.
He hazarded a glance over his shoulder to find she was not within sight.
“Look out!” the man cried.
Something crashed into them from above. A confused scuffle commenced. Gray flesh stinking of rot enwrapped Tyruc’s vision, offering him only glimpses of talons and feathers. A collection of sharp points dug into his shoulder and lifted him off his feet.
With Tyruc’s ascent, the gray thing slid away from his face and then beat against the air. It was a leathery wing like that of a bat. Two other wings also flapped around him in disjointed fashions, and though they were both feathered, they were mismatched in color, size, and kind.
Tyruc’s shoulder screamed in agony. A scaled foot with too many taloned toes hoisted him skyward, and the other foot struck out to claw at his face. He brought up his sword to defend against the blow. Steel bit into flesh, spilling a dark green ichor onto Tyruc.
The creature carrying him released an explosion of sound, impossibly loud with dozens of voices shrieking out of it, and it released its hold on him. As Tyruc fell back to earth, lightning flashed to finally illuminate the thing that had tormented Zifa, broken Gillibrand, and changed the lives of the innocent folk of the settlement forever.
The bird-like feet and misshapen wings were attached to a bulbous torso. Atop the torso sat an angular, beady-eyed head. Its upper jaw curved like a beak while the lower jaw was filled with teeth jutting out like broken glass.
The cacophony of screams pouring from the creature did not come from its dreadful mouth. Instead, the torrent of noise spilled from pulsating openings across the thing’s porous chest. Each hole glowed in sickly shades of green, as though the sounds it made were pustulant and infectious.
A harpy, the voice in Tyruc’s mind named it. One of Johz’s favored daughters of envy and chaos.
Tyruc‘s back impacted against the roof of Zifa’s cabin. He rolled painfully across its slope, his sword skittering away as he slid off the edge to land at the front of the cabin.
That could’ve gone better.
A clattering came from the nearby windmill. Its double doors parted slightly, and two small faces peered out. They looked at the sky and around the clearing, then at each other.
No, Tyruc thought, tasting iron and unable to voice his concern. Stay back!
They did not heed his silent plea. Two children, followed soon by a third, darted out from the windmill’s doors. The oldest was the dark-skinned lux boy Tyruc had seen confronted by Zifa in his vision. The girl looked to be his younger sibling, and the other little boy was a dwarf child of no more than six years old.
The younger boy grabbed the hilt of Tyruc’s discarded sword, which was longer than the boy was tall, and dragged it back toward the windmill.
“We’re here for you, Sir Wolf Rider,” the older boy said in a hoarse whisper, his voice cracking. Tyruc tried to shake his head, to warn them of the danger, but the boy and girl each took an arm and pulled.
“He’s too heavy, Talfen,” the girl complained.
The boy scoffed. “He’s not any heavier than dad, and we got him in. Hurry up!”
Tyruc was soon pulled through the windmill doors into the inky darkness beyond. Figures shuffled about unseen, and high-pitched rustlings of young voices still untrained in how to truly whisper surrounded him.
“Who is he?”
“Is he here to help us?”
“I’ve got his sword!”
“Put that down before you hurt someone, dummy.”
“Don’t call him a dummy, dummy.”
A calming shhh came from an older source, one with an authority that cut the chatter short. A woman said, “Lillias, give us some light.”
“Yes, Momma.” A flash shone too bright at first and flickered wildly until the girl who had helped pull Tyruc to safety molded the light in her lap into a little orb. It glowed softly and illuminated the crowded windmill’s interior.
“Attagirl. You’re getting better with it every time.” The woman had the same Plainfolk features and dark skin as two of the children who had come to Tyruc’s aid. She sat on the ground nearby, cradling the head of the portly man whom Zifa had attacked first.
Tyruc rolled onto his side, grunting against the pains in his legs and ribs. Once he managed to pull himself into an upright position, he asked, “Is he okay?”
The woman had a pained smile plastered on her face. “He’s breathing,” was all she said, her eyes fixed on her husband’s face. “You have come to save us again, Sir Wolf Rider?”
“Again?”
The woman sniffled and nodded. “We were in Bodra for the harvest festival when the jackals invaded. Came home the next day.”
Out of the fire and into the pan.
“Everyone’s going to be okay. That’s why I’m here.”
Tyruc studied the occupants of the windmill huddled around the support posts and creaking wooden gears. Three women each tended to their unconscious, bloodied husbands, including the man Tyruc had just saved from Zifa. Eight children, ranging from toddlers to those just entering their teenaged years, gathered in pockets and consoled each other, the older ones bearing brave faces for the younger.
Tragedy ages everyone it touches, but none so much as children, came the trickling voice in response to thoughts Tyruc could not form into words.
Tyruc’s scan roamed upward into the crisscrossing beams of the windmill and landed on the ash-gray skin of the young militia member named Thochag.
The orc youth crouched on an overhead platform that was once a hayloft. He held his axe in his hands and stared at a panel in the wall. The panel, if opened, would be a wide window to the upper floor.
“He’s been our guardian since last night,” the Plainfolk woman said. She beckoned Tyruc closer with a tilt of her head and lowered her voice to an even softer whisper to confide, “The boy is hurt, Sir Wolf Rider. He won’t let anyone take a look at it. Please…”
Tyruc nodded. “I’ll take things from here. And I mean everything. It’s going to be alright.”
“Thank you, Sir,” the woman said as she slowly returned to the man cradled in her lap, “but that would truly take a miracle.”
Coming up in Chapter Sixteen:
Tyruc meets Thochag, the missing member of the militia. Meanwhile, the harpy and its thrall bide their time outside his temporary sanctuary.