Nate Ludwig
The Bog
He could feel it, like a tether wrapped tight around his chest. It tugged him forward as his stumbling feet took him closer to that dark treeline. The whisper, the invitation, came from within those dark woods. The Bog was calling him home.
Glancing briefly over his shoulder, he saw the white tower rising from the grassy plains behind him. He was far enough away now that it appeared as an alabaster spear in the distance, its tip reaching to stab the clouds. The murder of crows continued to circle lazily above him, their wings casting a ring of fluttering shadows on the grass around him. They were silent, not wanting to interrupt the voice in his head.
As the man approached the treeline that encircled The Bog, he took note of the discarded remains of civilization that lay scattered amid the overgrown grass around him. A bunkhouse for those that had once tilled the fields sat abandoned, its wooden structure nothing more than a wind-swept skeleton. A well stood beside it, its stone foundation mossy and weathered by years of rainfall. The water bucket still swayed in the wind that flattened the knee-high grass around it, rusted and pitted from the passage of years. Nearer to the treeline, a plow lay on its side in the tall grass. As he approached the man saw the grass twitch and rustle as a family of mice ran from beneath it, hairless tails wriggling like tiny snakes as they fled.
This place had been alive once, though he couldn’t remember when. That memory was lost to him now, as forgotten as his name or where he had been before. There was something about that tower… a fall, a jolting impact, then… nothing. But that didn’t matter now, the whispering voice told him. The Bog was calling to him, like it had to those that had lived here so long ago. Like them, he was answering the call.
The wind touseled his long blond hair and buffeted the tall grass in waves that lapped against the forest's edge. His flowing, white robes whipped around him, and he absentmindedly wished he’d worn something a bit more appropriate. He didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of her. The hairs on his arms stood on end with giddiness at the thought of her. It felt so right.
As if sensing his elation, the crows above stopped circling and descended into the trees, guiding him onward. The man followed them a moment later and felt The Bog pull him into its embrace. It had him now, and it would not let go.
Briefly, the man turned to peer back the way he’d come, but saw only more trees. There was no field, no tower. There was only the Bog and the crows that watched him from high in the branches of the decaying trees. A spark of panic flickered in his mind, but the whisper told him to ignore it, and so he did.
Around him, the Bog hissed and spat. The trees were alive with the sound of bubbling mud and the scent of rotting wood and sulfur. He found this strangely comforting, even as some small, dark corner of his mind screamed that he should not be here.
Then the voice came again, whispering softly that it was alright, that this was all part of the journey. Love was at the end of this trek, a love so deep that the man’s heart raced at the thought of it. Of her.
Walking carefully through the mire to avoid tripping over the gnarled roots in his path, the man thought he saw someone. Another person, here? The human shape sat with its back against a tree, beside a shallow brown pond. It was a corpse, the man realized, a corpse with no face. What had been a person was now a decaying mass of flesh, its chest torn open, no heart where there should be one. The corpse was male, but the red mass where its face had been offered no clue about its identity.
The man felt a scream of horror well up within him, but the whisper told him that even this was only part of the journey. This man had followed the call, had found his own love in the Bog, and was now part of the greater whole. This was only the Bog taking that which it was owed. The nameless man’s scream turned to a laugh as he realized the voice was right. This was all the way it should be. The way it had to be.
He walked on, following the dark shapes of the crows until finally they stopped, alighting on the branches high above and staring down at him. Ahead of him sat a small cottage, its rotted wood foundation half-sunk into the steaming mire, its front door yawning open. She was inside, she had to be. The man began to run forward, heart pounding in his chest.
Above him he heard a shrieking cry, then another as the Bog came alive with the sound of the crows’ triumphant screeching. Though his legs burned with the effort he sloshed through the waist-deep mire up the bank to the small cottage. His white robe was stained with mud and mire scum, but he no longer cared. Flinging the door open, he stepped over the threshold. His heart leapt into his throat as he saw her, leaning over the old dead fireplace in one corner, her back to him.
How I’ve waited, my love. Come to me, my love. Fall and be mine. Journey the fields and be mine. Walk the woods and be mine. Come to the hearth and be mine. Be mine be mine be mine.
The whisper became a chant, and that chant rose around him along with the rush of wings as the crows took flight outside. The Bog rejoiced with the sound of a thousand fluttering wings and the cries of the birds echoing the whisper in their own harsh voices. This was the most important moment of his life.
He walked across the room to where she stood, white laced gown billowing as her slender, pale neck turned and he saw her face. She was as beautiful as the day he first met her, all those years ago. His hands trembled as he reached for her, her perfect lips turning up in a shy smile as she stepped forward into his embrace. He held her, tears of joy running down his face as he stared down at her. His fingers lingered on her head, tangling with her dark hair, and their eyes met for the first time.
Her eyes were black, twin pits of darkness against the stark white of her face. A crow’s eyes.
“Be mine,” she whispered, as that small, insignificant voice in his head wailed in terror. But he was here now, and he was hers, just as she’d asked. He gazed down at her with a rush of unabashed love as her mouth opened wider, and he saw that she had no teeth.
But this was perfect, she was perfect. He stroked her hair as she wrapped her long, slender arms all the way around him, enveloping him. Her mouth stretched wider still as she gazed at him with crow’s eyes, and he laughed with joy as her hair turned downy and soft in his hands. He squeezed her tight as her jaw unhinged, her upper lip stretching out until it formed a beak and she leaned toward him for a kiss. The crows shrieked, and she shrieked, and he laughed as her taloned hands bit into his shoulders. It was all perfect.
* * *
Till was unhappy, and he was about to make it somebody else’s problem.
The early morning air stank of sulfur as Till exited the Hallits’ cottage, like the dog kennel after one of the fool creatures ate something they shouldn’t have. Even after years of enduring the scent it still made him want to gag. Behind him he could hear Mrs Hallit weeping softly through the open window. The newly-widowed Mrs. Hallit, if Till’s gut feeling was correct.
Till took a deep breath then let it back out, trying to calm himself as he walked stiffly up to Pearson’s door. When he knocked, he tried to do so without any anger, though he certainly hadn’t knocked that hard on Mrs. Hallit’s door when he went to give her the news.
There was no answer, and Till clenched his teeth and hammered on the door again, this time smacking the wood with his flat palm. Till heard nothing but the telltale scrape of wood against wood from within the cottage, and though he had no wish to wake the rest of the settlement, he needed answers.
“Lad, I oughtta beat your skarvin’ door in,” he called, sure Pearson could hear him. “I’m about to make you wish I was the Swamp Girl come knockin’ if you don’t open the Godsblighted door.”
There was a long pause, then Till heard a small, timid voice from within the cottage.
“Till, that you?”
“Who else?” Till sighed and reigned in his frustration. “Look, I want to talk to you about whatever happened last night. You knew this was coming, and I’ve no idea why in the five hells you didn’t tell me first, but I’m here now so open up.”
Till heard the sound of a deadbolt being slatted to the side with shaking hands, and the door opened a crack, revealing a mousy-haired young man with wide, gray eyes. He was visibly shaking, and Till took a deep breath to compose himself. The lad was terrified, and shouting wouldn’t help the situation.
“I-I’m sorry Till, I-”
“Ren Hallit’s missing, lad. But you knew that already. You were the last one to see him on watch last night.”
“I was just-”
“I just gave Mrs. Hallit the news. I’m not here to give you a thrashin’, but I need to know what happened.”
Pearson opened the door wider, and Till could see the heavy bags under his eyes. The boy hadn’t slept. Pearson stared at what must have been a particularly interesting speck of rot on a patio floorboard at his feet as he spoke softly.
“I don’t know. I left him on guard while I went to get some fresh air.”
“Not much of that round here, is there?” Till replied. “No, I think you were payin’ Molly a visit.”
Pearson refused to meet his eyes, and Till knew his assumption was correct. “But that can be addressed later. What happened when you got back?”
“I don’t know,” Pearson said, scratching his forearm the way he always did when he was nervous. In a community this small, Till knew every tick, tell and twitch like the back of his hand, the same way one picks up on a close friend’s mannerisms. They were more than his friends, and he could read them all like a book.
“I think you do. And I think you’re scared that tellin’ me is goin’ to make things worse for yourself. But it's not. So talk.”
Pearson was silent a moment longer, and Till sighed in feigned disappointment. “What do you think you have to lose, lad? Some skin off your back? Maybe, but doubtful, you know how I feel ‘bout whippings. I’d say ya got nothing to lose but your dignity, and maybe your spot on the watch. But if you don’t fess up, both those go away on their own, and I won’t even lift a finger. But you know what means more to me than any of that?”
Pearson finally met his eyes, and Till saw the path a tear had traced along the younger man’s grimy cheek. “Family,” Pearson said, voice trembling.
“Right,” Till said softly with a nod. “‘Cause that’s all we got. Nothin’ else matters. When we all wandered in here and left our lives, our memories- hell, our names out there, we kept each other alive. For all we know, we were perfect strangers on the outside.. But here in the Bog, we’re family. The Bog holds to us, and we hold to each other. And I’m sick of losing my family to a damn swamp.”
A second tear ran down Pearson’s face, and Till put a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“I- I saw him walk away from the perimeter when I came back from… from Molly’s place,” Pearson said, shaking. Till thought he was about to start sobbing, but the younger man held it together. “I followed, like you taught us. ‘Nobody left alone at night’ and all that. Thought maybe he’d heard the whispers, but I didn’t see any crows. I called after him but he kept walking, right up to the water.”
Pearson paused, and Till tapped his foot impatiently. “Then what? You grab him, try to hold him back?
Pearson shook his head and wrung his hands, and Till felt a knife of ice shoot up his spine as the man’s eyes grew unfocused, as if staring through Till.
“No. The birds came then- whispers got louder. Talkin’ bout my Ma, how I had to find her, how she was in the pond. Told me to dive in, all the way to the bottom to get her. How there was another world down there that was better than here, and how Ma found it by breathing the water. Told me I could too, if I wanted to find her."
Till tried not to wince. “You ran, then?”
Pearson covered his face with his hand as his shoulders began to shake. “Aye, I did. I ran, Till, like some skarvin mouse. Left Ren standin’ there by the pond. The voice was startin’ to make sense and I- I was next to Ren, ‘bout to jump in with him. If I’d just stopped him from runnin’ in the first place he’d still be here.”
Pearson was crying now, and Till gave his shoulder a squeeze, then pulled the man into a strong hug.
“Family, Lad, that’s all we got. Even if it gets smaller some days, we still got one. It’s not your fault.”
But it was his fault, and Pearson knew it. The whispers touched one at a time. Only once the thrall was set did the whispers move to the next target. If Pearson had been around to restrain Ren, the thrall would have passed by morning.
Stepping away from Till, Pearson sniffed and wiped his eyes. “Only fifty-two of us now, thanks to me.”
“We don’t know that. He could still be out there. I’ll send Val after him, now that I know where last you saw him. If anybody can find him, she will.”
“She won’t,” Pearson said softly. “The Crow-Eyed Lady has him now.”
“And the Bog has all of us. Is Seline in there?”
Pearson nodded, red-rimmed eyes staring straight ahead. “Sleeping before her watch. Haven’t told her yet.”
Till nodded. “Do so, and tell her she’s not on duty tonight. Barston’s doin’ it instead, and I’m takin’ his shift tomorrow. You need sleep and you need her, and you’ll not get either if she’s out there tonight.”
“Thank you,” Pearson mumbled, and Till gently led him back inside.
“Don’t forget your locks,” Till said.
“Never,” Pearson replied hollowly before the door clicked shut.
As Till reclined in his chair that evening, the fading warmth of the fireplace comforting his aching knees, heard Erhinn approach behind him, her small feet creaking on the floorboards.
“You lock up, Pa?”
He nodded, smiling at his daughter as Mell laid a soft hand on her shoulder and turned her toward the bedroom.
“Time for bed, sweet girl. Stop avoidin’ it.”
“Did the Crow-Eyed Lady take Ren Hallit away, Ma?”
“I don’t know love, he might just be lost. You know how confusing the trees are. He might come back, long as he doesn’t try to leave the Bog. They do, sometimes.”
“I hope so. I don’t like it when the trees move,” Ehrinn said.
“Me neither. Now get to bed. It’s late.”
“But what about the Swamp Girl, Ma? Won’t she get Ren Hallit, like she got Darren O’Leery and Wes?”
“Hush child,” Mell said softly to their daughter as Till sat by the fire. “The Swamp Girl will do her knockin’ but Ren Hallit’s a quick runner. Da’s going to send Val after ‘im tomorrow mornin’.“
“Is Da goin’ too?” Ehrinn asked softly.
“No dear, I wouldn’t let ‘im,” Mell said. She smiled thinly over her shoulder at Till, who returned his wife’s smile and raised an eyebrow, gesturing to the two deadbolts on the front door. Both were locked, but she understood his meaning and briefly mouthed ‘thank you’.
“Ma, if the woods are safe during the day, can I go out to play with Riley tomorrow? He said the Crow-Eyed Lady only comes at night, and leaves children alone.”
Mell stopped and Till turned from the fire to find her looking at Ehrinn, hands on her hips.
“Might be there’s other things out there though, dear,” Mell said sternly. “Ya know, before we all came here and forgot everythin’, this place was haunted. Cursed by Gods. A little girl ran in here, got lost in the woods. A wicked girl who didn’t listen to her parents, who didn’t respect the gods. In the Bog, she met the evil spirit that made this place its home. It whispered sweet things to the girl, and she asked it for food, ‘cause she was lost and cold and hungry. The spirit cursed her, made her call to others. Made her eat them, to make the evil spirit stronger.”
Ehrinn looked horrified, and Till scowled.
“The Bog’s no place for children, day or night, and you can tell yer friend Riley the same. You’ll not leave the village ‘til you’re older, y’understand? ‘Less you want to end up like the Crow-Eyed Lady.”
“I don’t,” Ehrinn squeaked, and Mell knelt and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Good. Then go to bed, dear. And don’t be wanderin’ off tomorrow.”
Mell turned Ehrin away from the hearth and walked her to bed. She returned a few minutes later and handed Till a small, roughly-made key. Till passed her his own key for the second lock, and turned away as she hid it somewhere in their room. He frowned and tossed the key she had given him into the dying embers of the fire before shoveling ash and charred bits of log on top of it with his boot. He glanced over to the front door, just to double check the deadbolts, locked in place from the inside, and found them locked as he had left them. The two keys were hidden, with neither he nor Mell knowing the location of both. It was a tedious nightly ritual, but a necessary one.
He sat at the hearth for a time, waiting, knowing it would come. It always did the night after one of their own was taken by the Bog, like some sort of mocking celebration.
He didn’t have to wait long.
“Let me in,” the voice whispered, just outside the front door, from the patio. It was a child’s voice, not so different from Ehrinn’s.
“Please. It’s cold out here. Let me in. Let me stand by the fire.”
The tapping at the door was soft, but insistent. Till found himself reaching for the key in the fireplace, trembling fingers brushing against the stone of the hearth. She just wanted to be warm, surely that wasn’t such a bad thing, was it? He’d have to restart the fire, but-
“Let me in. Please. I can’t find my Ma.”
Till yelped as his knuckles brushed against the still-searing metal key amid the embers and scrambled away from the fireplace, the whisper fading into the night breeze and creaking timbers of the cottage.
“You alright love?” Mell called from their room.
“Fine,” Till replied, standing and heading to bed. “It tried.”
“I knew it would,” Mell said as he entered the room and lay beside her. “But you’d never find the second key.”
“Couldn’t even get the first one,” Till said as he rolled unto his back, trying to get comfortable.
“I wish ya wouldn’t tell her that story, Mell,” he continued. “We don’t want her stayin’ awake all night. She’s gotta be a hunter some day, I don’t want her terrified of ever leavin’ the village.”
“And I heard the same story when I first got here, no memory of my own,” Mell replied coolly. “I was still a hunter for near ten years. You ended my hunting when ya gave me Ehrinn, so I don’t want to hear it.” She paused, then spoke more softly. “Our daughter’s tough, dear. One story ‘bout the Crow-Eyed Hag won’t stop her curiosity.”
Till sighed, then rolled over onto his side and yawned. “Fine, fine. Ren’s just got me worried, less I hear ‘bout the swamp girl the better.”
“Always thought it was odd though,” Mell continued. “We don’t remember anythin’ ‘bout our lives outside, but that one story… everybody knows it.”
Till closed his eyes, eager to sleep. “Maybe The Bog wants us to remember. I don’t know, Mell.”
“Maybe it’s our punishment, for lettin’ that poor girl wander in here and not lookin’ for her. Maybe… it’s our fault and she knows that. That’s why she hunts us.”
“Maybe,” Till replied absently. It didn’t matter much to him, after all. They were here now, had been for years, and the reason for all of it wouldn’t change that. “Night, love.”
“Goodnight,” Mell said.
The whispers continued, but softer now, easy to ignore if he focused on the throbbing in his hand and Till found himself drifting off to sleep in spite of them. It would pass. It always did.
* * *
Val decided she must be losing her mind.
Till had tasked her to search for Ren, a fool’s errand but one that Val accepted anyway. They’d searched for her when she’d been lost, after all. It had been half a day and a night since he’d disappeared, but people had been found wandering after longer periods of time. She wanted to leave when Till had first given her the assignment, but he convinced her to wait until daybreak.
She’d started at the pond Pearson mentioned, a vile, brown hole of bubbling sludge that reeked of rot and decomposition. Wrinkling her nose, she had taken the longspear she’d brought with her and probed around in the murk. It wasn’t deep, and the butt of the spear slid smoothly across the marshy bottom. He wasn’t in there, then. Vague, barely discernible bootprints led away from the pond, though how fresh they were she didn’t know.
Before long, she found herself at the edge of the Bog. Through the trees ahead she could see the familiar shape of the tower, rising pale and proud in the distance.
The tower was sacred, said the mad swamp wanderers. Gods lived there, said the townsfolk. A bunch of boar dung, said Val. Nobody lived there, because it wasn’t real.
No matter which direction you went, you always found yourself facing the tower , always visible through the dense foliage. It marked the edge of their world, past the treeline that so jealousy penned them in. The enormous white thorn jutted up from the center of a wide field, flat and dry with long grass that twisted in the wind. Perfect. Idealistic. A lie.
Reaching the tower was impossible; as soon as she tried to leave, she knew the wind would blow, the branches would rustle, something would catch her attention, and when she looked for the tower, it would be gone. She would be lost, and have to search for a landmark to reorient herself. There was no outside world, not really. Outside was a myth they told their children, a fiction built on false memories. There was only the Bog. The tower was a tantalizing, unreachable place that only served to disorient a foolhardy wanderer, like the whispers. But she had been trained through a hundred hunts. She knew the tricks of the trade.
Keep a knife at your thigh to prick yourself when the whispers start. Keep your eyes off the tower at the swamp’s edge if you want to keep your bearings. Never hunt at night. If you see the crows, run like hell. It was always worse at night when the Crow-Eyed Lady walked the woods, but even in the day Val knew to stay on guard.
Her peaceful introspection was abruptly shattered when the crows flew, like a silent black cloud, through the low branches of the forest’s edge and alighted, hundreds of them, on the trees around her. Val froze, terror clutching at her thumping heart as a thousand dark eyes suddenly stared down at her. Her mind screamed at her to run, but her gut told her it was too late. Where had they come from? And why were they here in the middle of the day?
Then she found her eyes drawn to a sight so bizarre that she had to convince herself she wasn’t just imagining it. A man stumbled from the trees ahead of her, out of the plains and into the Bog. Her jaw went slack in disbelief as the man grinned at the Bog around him, his eyes sweeping the area and passing her by as if she wasn’t there. He was startlingly handsome, with golden headband darker skin, kissed by the sun as the older villagers were. He wore strange white robes that hung loosely from him, and he seemed at ease with the terrain around him. Val gawked at the strange man as he smiled up at the crows, who began to take flight, leading him deeper into the forest.
Val almost screamed at the man not to follow, but bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself. The birds had ignored her, but if she screamed, she doubted they’d continue to do so. And so she watched in frozen horror as the man followed the birds, glancing over his shoulder only briefly before disappearing into the dark trees.
It shouldn't have been possible, but she had just witnessed it with her own eyes. He had come from outside.
What did this mean for the village? She’d have to tell Till as soon as she returned. If the outside world still existed, as the older folk in the village claimed, then… what? They were still stuck inside the Bog. They were no closer to reaching that world beyond the trees than they had been before. At the end of the day, the outsider was an anomaly, but nothing more than that. She pushed the thought from her mind and continued her search, determined to take the crow’s distraction as the Gods-given opportunity that it was.
She found Ren not too long after. Amid thorny bramble and silty water, Val found a small clearing, and had to glance away from what she saw at the center to avoid losing the breakfast she had eaten that morning.
Ren Hallit, or what remained of him, was leaned up against tree, arms outstretched to either side of him as if offering an embrace. The mud beneath his broken body was dark with blood and bits of something that Val preferred not to identify. His brown, rough tunic hung in tatters around him, his flesh rent in a dozen places. Like so many Val had seen before, his face was gone, pulled away from his body to expose the skull beneath.
Her heart hammered in her chest, and it took every bit of Val’s resilience not to vomit. She’d seen this before. This was the Crow-Eyed Lady’s work, no doubt about it. The removal of Ren’s face, the savage way his chest had been torn open, she’d seen enough to know.
‘Beware the Swamp Girl in the dark, she’ll steal your face and eat your heart.’
An awful song, Val had always hated it. The children liked to sing it, voicing their fears in a way that diminished the threat, made a dark joke out of it. But Val had never found it particularly funny, even less so after seeing for herself how true the words were.
‘To the whispered knell we all shall race, to feel the warmth of Her embrace.’
Val took her trowel from where it was hooked on her right hip and began to dig in the mud. Swamp ground was soft, and it was not yet afternoon. She had time. She would make time for Ren.
‘First one, then two, hide keys to locks, for in the night the Lady walks.’
An hour passed, and Val’s muscles ached from the digging. It would be a shallow grave, but better than leaving him here for the beasts. Or the crows.
When she had finished, she stared down at her handiwork, wishing she could do more for the poor man. But it would have to do. She heaved Ren’s body into the mud, covering it as best she could, before leaving the old man to his rest.
She headed back the way she had come, retracing her steps and doing her best to quell her growing anxiety as the afternoon light around her faded to a miasmic orange glow. It was evening, and she still had an hour’s journey to the village. Though if she wasn’t losing her mind and really had seen the crows earlier leading the outsider into the Bog, then maybe it was already too late. If the crows could move during the day, if the witch had grown strong enough to move in the light, then they were all dead anyway. For all she knew, there was no village to return to.
Val was so caught up in her thoughts that she almost didn’t register the movement out of the corner of her eye until it was too late. Something walked through the trees. Toward her. Val ducked behind a nearby trunk, heart hammering as she peered out to see the same man she had earlier. He still wore those strange, white robes, but they were torn now, stained red and hung off him loosely. And yet… he was smiling.
Val’s stomach flipped and she began to breathe harder as the man’s smile widened.
‘If you wander at night, embrace your fate, for we’ll see you again when she wears your face.’
The man from outside looked past Val, staring at the treeline. As he neared her hiding place, she heard him humming softly to himself. That same melody echoed throughout the forest, harsh, distorted, as hundreds of black wings descended from above. The crows followed the man, flying in by the hundreds from the direction he had come. The trees were alive with the harsh, throaty screeches of the birds as they repeated the tune the man hummed.
As Val watched, holding her breath, the man walked up to the edge of the Bog and touched one of the trees that stood there. The crows screeched louder, and Val threw her hands over her ears as a deafening roar split the forest. Wind gusted around her, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once, and suddenly, with a great crack, the cacophony ended. Val’s ears rang as she peeked out from around the tree to find the man smiling as he turned and stared directly at her.
Val’s heart seemed to fall into her stomach as the man’s eyes, once blue, flashed black for an instant, his mouth opening in an obsidian grin as he stared at her. Silently, he raised a hand and pointed past her, in the direction of the village.
“Run along now, my dear,” he whispered in a voice like rustling leaves. A woman’s voice. “Your family misses you. I envy you that.”
And then he was gone, stepping out of the trees at the edge of the Bog and into the grassy plains beyond. The crows followed, and Val was left in stunned silence. He went outside.
Val ran, her world crashing down around her as reality suddenly ceased to make sense.
She had to tell Till.
‘Among the trees, among the mires, dark and dour and hazy,
If into the Bog you run, beware the Crow-Eyed Lady.’
* * *
Eltrice stepped out onto the ramparts into the waning light of the evening, hands balled into fists as the man beside him babbled incessantly.
“I- I don’t understand it,” said the young sorcerer, who’s name Eltrice vaguely remembered was Sindry.
“My instruments read a null output from the magical barrier, and there’s no way that should be possible. I mean it’s been decades, and in all that time I’ve never seen anything like this. Lord Farris-”
“My father knew exactly what he was doing when he made the barrier,” Eltrice snapped. “Are you certain the instruments aren’t faulty?” Sindry had bothered him with what could be a simple oversight on the engineer’s part, and worse, the news had interrupted his cousin’s semi-annual birth celebration.
“The instruments have read the same output every day for the past thirty years, my lord. I check whenever I awake in the morning. I’d not have bothered you if it wasn’t an anomaly.”
Eltrice sighed, staring down from the alabaster tower ramparts at the dark, ominous shape of the trees in the distance. The Bog looked as it always did in the waning light. It sat like some abhorrent blight on the land a mile or so away, across the vast fields that had once served as the tower’s source of food. Those fields were barren now, empty of the farmers that had once labored there. The Bog had called to them and they had answered, abandoning the fields and walking into the dark woods. Not that it had mattered, in the end. The tower had been self-sustainable for decades now, with indoor agriculture that ensured none of the sorcerers who called it home ever had to set foot outside the walls.
“And the barrier on the tower?” Eltrice asked sharply.
‘Still intact,” Sindry said.
That, at least, was a relief. Eltrice heaved a sigh. As if he didn’t have enough troubling him already. With Tormir’s disappearance a day before he was already in a sour mood. An accident, his mother said, brought about by too much drink and too little common sense. A mere hundred foot fall wouldn’t kill one of their noble lineage, but then Tormir had inexplicably wandered off, into the Bog where the laborers had disappeared all those years ago. By the time the magical ward on the tower had been lowered, Tormir was long gone, and Eltrice knew better than to send his underlings into the trees after him.
It had been so long since any of them had left the tower that most of the other Pantheon heads were utterly flummoxed as far as what to do. There were protocols, of course, but they were decades old.
“Do you think the barrier around the Bog breaking has anything to do with Tormir?” Sindry asked quietly, as if echoing Eltrice’s own thoughts.
“No,” Eltrice snapped. “Breaking that barrier would take half the tower’s mages. It was created to contain something far stronger.”
“True, I suppose,” Sindry said with a nod. “But then what if that… thing breaks out?”
“It won’t,” Eltrice snapped. “We will restore the barrier tomorrow. And even if it does, it won’t matter. The tower’s field is absolutely impenetrable.” Of that, at least, he was confident. Only one of their lineage, a true blooded sorcerer, could enter through the gate.
Sindry sighed in relief. “Well, maybe he’ll come back then. Maybe, if she’s still in there somewhere, Agria will-”
“Be silent,” Eltrice hissed, his temper flaring. “You’ll not speak that name if you know what’s good for you.”
He was suddenly overwhelmed with a memory of a small adolescent girl sitting by the window, a crow perched on the sill as she crooned softly to it. He felt bile rise in his throat.
‘Talking to your only friend again? You vile little witch, Father said you were not to bring your disgusting familiars into the tower.’
He had said that. Her tear-streaked face stared back at him in the hazy memory. He had killed the wretched bird, hadn’t he. It seemed cruel in hindsight, but then Agria was cruel in her own way. His own familiar, his wolf, had fallen from the tower wall a fortnight later. The little witch had done it, of that he was sure.
Agria had never gotten along well with the other children. Sure, Tormir had liked her well enough, even said he’d marry her when they were younger. Eltrice could still remember how angry he’d been that night, when he saw the two of them, both adolescents then, some decades ago now. They danced by the fireplace, the flames casting flickering shadows about the room, their smiling faces seeming to mock him. Tormir was his friend, she could not have him.
“I apologize, my lord,” Sindry said, bowing nervously.
“Leave me,” Eltrice responded coldly. “We’ll restore the forest barrier in the morning.” Sindry nodded sullenly and left, and Eltrice found himself staring again at The Bog in the distance, another memory teasing the edges of his mind.
‘We’ll play a game, see? You run into the trees and hide, and I’ll come find you with Tormir.’
‘But father said we can’t-’
‘Are you a craven as well as a witch? Your crows will guide us out. Go on, I’ll be right behind you. It’ll be fun.”
But he had known better. In those days, they had been allowed to leave the tower, but the forest was forbidden. Lord Farris had conducted experiments there that would have shamed the Old Gods themselves, were they not long dead. To the Otherside he had called, and a Devil had answered. Only after this abhorrent creature had been brought into the world, into the Bog, had Eltrice’s Father realized his mistake. The monster was uncontrollable, and hungered for the souls of those that had brought it in. The creature gained strength in devouring men, and sought to make a pact with Lord Farris, who had refused and caged the vile thing in the swamp. Years later, when the whispers started after Agria’s disappearance, Lord Farris had erected the ward around the tower.
Nobody had ever searched for his sister. Though a powerful sorceress in her own right, even at such a young age, Agria had always been odd, a source of embarrassment for the tower’s ruling family. Whether or not his parents had ever admitted it, they didn’t seem particularly upset at her disappearance, nor had they accused Elrtrice of intentionally leading her into the Bog.
He’d wanted to be rid of her, but when he had realized he’d succeeded he felt no elation, no triumph. Only that hollow guilt that gnawed at him. With Tormir gone, it suddenly felt as though that day was coming back to haunt him.
“Lord Eltrice, someone’s approaching the tower!” A sudden call rang out from one of the wall sentries, and Eltrice rushed over. It was dark now, but even in the dim torchlight he could just make out a figure approaching the tower. As the figure got closer, Eltrice felt a rush of relief fill him.
“It’s Tormir!” he exclaimed, and gave the sentry a hefty slap on the back before rushing away.
The sentry had spotted Tormir leaving the swamp half an hour ago, and as Eltrice watched the small shape in the distance wandering through the fields he smiled.
Tormir was home, and Eltrice would be damned if they didn’t celebrate. Rushing to the stone lift that hovered in place within the central spire, Eltrice descended the tower and rushed up to the alabaster gate as it groaned and swung wide.
Tormir met him there a short time later, the flickering torchlight casting shadows across his white robed form. He was covered in mud and reeked of the Bog, but Eltrice was relieved to see that he was unharmed.
Eltrice grinned at his friend, and Tormir returned the smile.
“Welcome back. Had a nice stroll, I trust?” Eltrice said with a smirk. “You missed quite the raucous night.”
“I’m sure,” Tormir said flatly, surprising Eltrice. He figured Tormir would be relieved to be back.
“How did you break the spell, my friend?” Eltrice asked, still grinning. “Father ensured the bond placed on the swamp was strong enough to resist the might of half the sorcerors in the tower combined. Do tell; I must know.”
“I became strong,” Tormir said calmly, as if this explained everything.
Elteice waved his friend's vague explanation away. “A story for later, I suppose. Come, I believe a celebration is in order,” he said.
“You do that a lot,” Tormir said in that same, calm monotone. “Celebrate. Here in the warmth, the light.”
Eltrice stared at him, puzzled.
“Of… course we do. This is paradise. Every day is a celebration.”
“I remember,” Tormir said. “The debauchery, the carelessness. The disdain for those trapped in a prison of your creation. They are kin, in their suffering. In their imprisonment. But not here. There is no family here.”
Eltrice was beginning to grow frustrated with the way his friend was talking. “What nonsense are you spouting now, did you hit your head in the Bog? We’re all family here. Your family.”
Tormir shook his head, almost sadly.
“No. No, I don’t think you are. Once maybe, but no longer. But not to worry. I brought mine with me.”
A crow landed, appearing seemingly out of thin air, on the open gate to Eltrice’s right. Another dark bird alighted on the bastion wall. Then another, landing on Tormirs shoulder. Eltrice took a step back, staring in growing concern at his friend.
Tormir said nothing, just stared at Eltrice and grinned.
That was when Eltrice saw the blood. Tormir had tracked the unsightly mess in on his boots, leaving red footprints on the pristine white floor. The dark stains on his robes that Eltrice had initially mistaken for grime suddenly took on a more ominous meaning. Eltrice stared in horror and nearly vomited as he saw the ruin that lay beyond the slowly closing stone gate. Two sentries, their corpses a twisted mass of rent metal and flesh, lay beyond.
“Tormir-”
“You left me outside, in the cold,” Tormir said. “It was so very cold.”
Then the world around Eltrice exploded in a deafening scream.
The cacophony was the sound of a thousand crows, shrieking in unison. The hallway came alive with dancing shadows of black wings, flying in from outside the gate. Eltrice yelped as the first beak pit into his forearm, the next into his ankle. Then they were all around him, engulfing him in a dark mass of feathers and shearing talons and steel beaks. He was on the ground now, clawing bleeding fingerprints into the white alabaster floor as those beaks plunged again and again. They took his left eye, his nose, his lower lip, his fingers. Howling and writhing up to his knees, Eltrice stared at his old friend through his remaining eye as Eltrice stared back at him. His face changed, blurring and melting, growing gaunt and thin as his hair turned dark and long. And suddenly he was staring at a ghost, a memory of dark woods and dancing firelight.
“Agria,” he gurgled through a torn mouth. Her eyes were hollow black pits.
“I’m home, dear brother,” a thousand crows screamed.