OctaviaTheYoungest

The More than Mortal

“Can you hear it?”
- Oherod

For three days, Oherod walked. He walked though the days, the blistering sun wilting the trees and wildlife all around, but not touching him. At night, the moon was his guide and he kept walking. He did not feel the chill in the air, nor any fear at the strange shadows cast all around him.
Oherod traveled through words of pine trees. The terrain was rough, thickly wooded. Any paths that had ever existed had been erased centuries ago. Or they had yet to be cut, depending on how one looked at it. Fortuanity, there was enough space between the trees to make traveling easy without one.
Oherod encountered no other travelers on the first three days. Once, at dusk on the second, he saw grey smoke rising in the distance. A campfire, or the remains of a massacre? He looked for it the next morning, but it was gone.
He wandered west, towards the sunset. Kazar was gone, and without any clues as to were, one direction was as good as any. He had hoped for some clues at the school, but had been out of luck. That didn’t bother him. His sister often came and went without leaving tracks. He would find her again. The world was wide, but an aeon was long.
On the fourth day, the trees around him began to fall away. No longer towering above him like giant fingers, they gave way to smaller and smaller groves. By the end of the day, the landscape had been transformed into wide, open planes. Tall yellow grass stretched as far as the eye could see. It was the colour of not-quite-ripe corn. The hills rolled on like waves in a frozen ocean. In the distance, Oherod saw hills stenciled into the horizon. They, he decided on a whim, were his destination.
Till day broke, and then plunged back into night again he pursued them. The stars looked down on him. The air on the planes was brisk. It gave the night sky a clear feeling, like polished glass. The moon turned the tall-grass the colour of ghosts, and the wind made it whistling whisper. Oherod listened to the winds for a long time, but its voice told him nothing of Kazar.

He met the rider just as he was reaching the foothills. The land crept slowly upwards. The grass was replaced by stone. The pines died out and boulders took their pace. There was a single trail worn into the hill. Stepp walls flanked it. Oherod heard the rider before he saw her. Small pebbles came rolling down the hill, kicked loose by the hoofbeats of her horse. They announced her presence like the advanced guard announcing the presence of an army.
Oherod paused where he stood, not far from the mouth of the pass. It was for her sake that he stopped, not his. He didn’t want to startle whoever it was.
A horse trotted into view slowly. The ground was uneven, and gave way at the slightest pressure, so the rider kept a very tight grip on the reins. Her face tensed as she saw Oherod, clenching like a vice. In any other situation, she might have gone for the gun at her side. But she didn’t dare risk taking a hand of the reins on such unsteady ground. Oherod, who wore no obvious weapons of his own, raised his hands, pals open. It did nothing to relax her face.
She was, Oherod saw, very young. Fourteen,give or take a year. Children grew up faster durinng downward spiral, but they seemed so much smaller. Thin as a twig, she wore cloths taloged for someone far bigger. Her trhouses, blue denim, were doubled up almost to her knee. She nearly drowned in a dusy overcoat. Her horse was huge. Twice as tall as she was, the child kept it in line with two steady hands on the reins. Oherod noticed a narrow black ring. It might have fit the index of a larger person, but the girl wore it on her thumb.
The long barrel of a revolver jutted out beneath her belt. Bullets, wrapped in leather, covered the belts that criss-crossed her chest. She caught Oherod eyeing the pistol.
“Lord bless you and keep you, stranger,” She said cautiously, slowing her horse. Oherod kept his hands where she could see them. The ground beneath was still too rocky to dare firing something, but Oherod didn’t want her to take that risk. Doing something rash could mean the horse bolting and her falling. The ground was so uneven that landing was likely to damage something.
“Greetings,” Oherod said slowly. Like a beast in a corner, the girl looked on edge. He sought to cool her. The wide brim of his floppy hat covered his eyes. He removed it.“My name is Oherod.”
“You’re traveling light for someone coming out of the plane,” The girl noted. Her eyes were brutally sharp. If he reached out, Oherod suspected her soul would be as well.
Looking back across his shoulder, he said. “I suppose so.” He shrugged his shoulders, drawing attention to the rucksack full of soul sand. Her face said she didn’t believe him.
“Awful small bag,”
“It’s big enough,”
“You a trader?” The girl asked him, leaning forward on horseback. Oherod would have felt much better if she got down. The horse wobbled endlessly on legs long as stilts.
“I’m a storyteller,” It was the oldest of Oherod’s lies. Whenever he was, whichever aeon he found himself in, he had learned that storytellers remanded pretty much the same.
“They won’t have much use for storytellers that way,” The girl said, flicking her eyes back over her shoulder.
Oherod tilted his head.
“On account of them all being dead.” The girl spoke with the coolness of a killer. The coolness of a gun barrel once all the smoke had drifted away. Without saying a word, he reached out with his mind's eye. He felt the long barrel of the girl’s wepion. He found it cold. It had not been fired. That relieved him, on some level.
“What’s your name, little one?”
“Charlotte Marie,” She announced, taking some offense at the epithet Oherod bestowed on her. “Now, if you don’t mind, please remove yourself from my parth.”
“You're in a rush?” Oherod still wanted answers.
“I’m on the trail, and I have no intention of letting it grow cold,”
Oherod pursued his lips. Then stepped aside. Nodding her sunburnt face, the girl flicked the reins. She refused a smile as she passed. Oherod, hands on his hips, let her get a few paces from him before he called to her.
“What is it that killed the towns back this way?”
Charlotte Marie, keeping her horse at a steady pace, turned to speak. “My people called him Pale Wing when he lived among us,”
“Your people, they got a name?”
“They were from the planes of the Moon, near Willow River,” She said, the names meaning nothing to Oherod. Wherever he went, he found the old places gone, and new ones rising to fill the gap like reverse quicksand.
“Where would I find this Pale Wing?” He asked. “If I was looking?”
Upon hearing the question, Charlotte Marie finally stopped. Though there were about twenty paces between them, she spoke quietly. “What’s it to a storyteller?”
“Perhaps I’m just curious.”
‘Get curious with the wrong man, and your like to wind up dead,”
“Is that what you're doing?” Oherod asked pointedly, “Getting curious?”
Charlotte Marie paused for a long time. On her youthful face, Oherod saw a struggle beyond her years. What did she know? Not for a moment was he tempted to reach out and pluck the knowledge from her mind, though it would have been as easy as raising a finger. If she wanted to tell him, then she would. If not, then he was sure that he could find his own way to this Pale Wing.
“If you’re looking for Dark Wing,” Charlotte Marie said when she was ready, “Then you’re heading the wrong way.”
“Is that so?”
Charlotte Marie nodded. “He came over these mountains a few days past. At least that’s what I heard from a little mining settlement up the hill. He stayed when them awhile, but was moving north east across the planes.”
“You know a lot about his movements,”
“I should,” The girl said calmly. “I mean to kill him,”
Oherod’s response was a fraction slower as he thought of a response. When it came, it was as flawless as any words he ever said.
“Might we travel together. If they’re as dead as you say that way, then they’ll have no need of a storyteller.”
“Can’t say that I have much use for one either,” Charlotte Marie shrugged. “The planes are hash, and I mean to travel as quickie as I can,”
“I can keep up”
“You have no horse,” Charlotte Marie reminded him, as if she was really saving him from some struggle. “And few provisions. Go over these hills. Most of the mining towns still have a population. You’ll be doing them a world of good, bringing some stories to their world.”
Once again, Oherod ignored the urge to bend her will. A slight shifting of the strings in her soul, and she would invite Oherod along. All the walls she had hauled up would turn to less than dust. Yet Oherod would not do it.
“I won’t slow you down,” Oherod promised. “And who knows when you might need a storyteller.” Seeing she was still unconvinced about taking a stranger with her across the planes, he added, “It won’t be forever. Just until I find somewhere else,”
Beneath her, Charlotte Marie’s horse fidgeted. The same agitation played with it’s ridder. As if my impulse, she looked out at the planes. Opportunity was rotting.
“I promise not to get too curious,”
“You can tag along,’ Shd decided in the end. “But I won’t be slowing for you. If you want to come, you’ve got to keep up. And don’t think I’ll be sharing any raitions. I hope you’ve got enough in that little bag of yours,”
“I’ll survive”
“Don’t expect me to stop for you if you collapse . Thunder’s a strong horse, but she’s mine. I’m not big on sharing.”
“Are you done?”
Charlotte Marie huphed. “Alright. Let’s move.” As if to prove her point, she gave the reins a hard flick. The horse began trotting through the tall grass. Oherod trailed behind. In no desire to catch up, nor losing no ground as he went.

Very little was said between them that first day. The air was hot, and the sun wove nooses around their necks. Oherod, who could ignore the heat but not the feeling, found himself worried for Charlotte Marie. Well into the afternoon, she kept up her trotting pace. The horse gasped for air in ragged, saw-like breaths. If the girl noticed, she paid no mind. She couldn’t have been too comfortable herself, either. Sweat beaded her face, forming necklaces of pearls around her neck, and a crown of sapphires.
Oherod, who had remained more or less the same distance behind her, said nothing. Her condition worried him. Alone, he hadn’t noticed the heat of the planes. Now it was all he noticed. They sailed over the waves of brown and gold, Oherod not really seeing the landscape. Instead, his eyes fell straight forward. Any slipping in Charlotte Marie’s posture, or other signs she was about to fall, and he would catch her.
But she didn’t fall. Not that day, nor the next, although the air remained hot. The grass here was tall, and spindly. It came up to his chest.. Huge clouds, drymatic as a vengeful specter, hung motionless above the horizon. So far in the distance that it looked like something from a dream, Oherod knew that when it did rain in these parts, it would drown even the tall grass. He prayed that they cleared the planes before it came.
It was on the second day, when they paused to set up their little camp, that Oherod first fel the true scale of the planes. During original crossing he had cut though the smallest corner of it. A mere drop of water compared to the ocean they had embarked across. Now, he and Charlotte Marie ventured right to it’s heart. Far as the eye could see and the heart could feel, it stretched on. Stretched, he decided, was the right word. It was as if someone had taken a savanna and pulled it thin until it was twice its original size. Ten times, Oherod decided, might be more fitting. The very sunset seemed further away. The stars, by comparison, seemed closer. Lower.
Oherod sat opposite Charlotte Marie. A fire of flaxy grass divided them. Nothing she said or did implied that she would have preferred a more talkative companion.
With the same single-mindedness that she performed all tasks with, she sat munching on an oat-cracker. Her eyes were fixed firmly on the females. The tall grass burned quicker than wood, and the fire ocasinaly flashed with the rainbow slickness of oil. Oherod didn’t think it was toxic. Grey-yellow smoke drifted pillar-like into the open sky, a smear of soot on the otherwise painterly mixture of blue and orange.
The silence bothered Oherod only in an abstract sense. It wasn’t the silence itself that bothered himIt was what it represented. The coldness that came with it. He had known warm silences, where two people have found enough comfortable ground between them to not need words. This was not that. Between Oherod and Charlotte Marie there was a deep, fast flowering river that she had no intention of crossing. Perhaps that was what bothered him. The intention.
She finished munching on her meal without a word. The sky was quickly draining of colour. Laying her huge jacket out beneath her, Charlotte Marie wriggled about until she found the most comfortable position the ground could offer. Then she lowered her hat over her eyes. Nights on the planes were warm enough to not need a blanket.
On his own, Oherod would have walked through the night. Around Charlotte Marie, he opted to keep up a less immortal act. He lay on his back, looking up at the stars. It was the closest he came to dreaming.
Oherod returned to himself just as dawn was breaking in the horizon. Charlotte Marie, already awake, was saddling Thunder. She grunted when she saw he was awake. That same, lonely sadness struck Oherod.
Charlotte Marie swung herself onto Thunder, cracked the reins, and the day began again. Judging how far they had traveled was a challenge. The foothills where Oherod had first met Charlotte Marie had folded away into the haze yesterday. Now, there was nothing to mark their passage. No landmarks. Not even a tree for measurement. Oherod was only vaguely sure that they were traveling in a straight. Yet Charlotte Marie pressed forward with the force of a train. For her, she was as sure of her footing as if the path had been laid out in stone. She was, as far Oherod could tell, finding their way with the sun. Every hour or so she would look up, around, and then slightly redirect their parth.
“Have you crossed the plains before?’ Oherod asked, increasing his pace so he now walked even with Thunder. From the beast's back, Charlotte Marie looked down at him. Until then, the silence had hung between them thick as smoke. Oherod had blown that cover away now, like a strong wind.
“It’s not so different from my home,” she said, giving a noncommittal shrug. She looked around, “East and west of the mountains. It’s all the same.”
“Tell me about your home. Willow River?”
Her eyes tracked the horizon. Oherod kept his on her. They went to her hand“What about that ring, there must be some story behind that?”
The strangeness of the ring was more pronounced in the light. Smooth as shell, it looked almost natural. Sunlight danced around her fingers as she rode.
“You’re the storyteller,” Charlotte Marie said bluntly. Oherod felt he’d struck a nerve. The silence set back in.
Although Charlotte Marie tried her best to hide, Oherod’s comment clearly played on her mind. Her finger turned the ring round and round, over and over. She rolled it until sundown. The moon, full and fat as solid silver, lit their way. It was waxing, though still had enough of it’s white fuel to give them another night's travel.
Another night blanked beneath the stars. Another night of silence, although this one was perceptibly different. More fragile, less sure of itself. Oherod caught sad looks in Charlotte Marie’s eyes. Sometimes she opened her lips, or turned her head to say something. She killed whatever she had to say before if fled her mouth.

The next day, just as Oherod was beginning to wonder if any part of the world had survived after fall, a town crept into view. At first it was nothing more than a smudge against the skyline. A knot in the lasso loop encircled the pair.
Charlotte Marie spotted the town without a word. She adjusted her parth so they might intercept it. Oherod understood why. Her water flask had been near full when he met her. Just two days later and it now hung limp like a punctured lung. The little water that was left sloshed about, matching the rhythm of her riding. springs. Nor could he smell any water on the air, beyond that which they carried. If they were to keep up the pace, they would need to resupply. Soon.

What was a blip on the horizon slowly turned into a mass of buildings. A wide, dust beaten road separated one side of town from another. The buildings were huge andgrouses. Overgrown, was the word Oherod would have used. One wooden mass had been hammered into the other. The whole town gave off the feeling that it was somehow a mistake. Like it was something that shouldn’t exist. In it’s shame, it had fled to the depths of the planes.
Alone in the town the church stood opulent. Though it’s beams were as sunbleached as the rest, and it’s nails just as rusy, something about it was undeniably imposing. It imprinted itself on the town, it’s weight suppressing everything else around it. A cross, nothing more than two planks nailed together, hung over the door, that gaped open like a wolf's mouth. Oherod, who knew religion, shuddered at the sight. It had two slanting roofs and walls, giving it a tringagur shape. From the belly of that beast, a thin man stepped out. He wore a long black shift, and a maiy laid chain around his neck, marking his profession. A hat with a brim even wider than Oherod’s shielded his face from the sun.
“The Lord bless you and keep you, tralvers,” He said, smiling at Charlotte Marie. Looking into the face of the Father, Oherod saw only shark teeth in the smile. But it wasn;t the teeth that made him most uncomfortable. The eyes were dead and lifeless. They looked blind, unblinking in their gaze. Yet the kind god finished the greeting despite the strange look.
“And may he watch over your house, as the father watches over the children,” Charlotte Marie stared daggers into Oherod.
“We are from the hills to the west,” She said flatly. “We need water, food, and a place to rest. Then we’ll be on our way. I’ve no gold on me, so you’ll have to take silver,”
“No payment is necessary for a stay in the house of the Lord,” The Father said, licking his lips while adding, Oherod was ready for him to suggest an alternative payment. But he just kept smiling.
The Farther led them inside the church. Oherod crossed the threshold and felt the weight of prayer all around him.
The Father gave his name as Paul, “We house a lot of travelers, you see. The church is a waystation of sorts. A shelter were the Lord may see to the rest of his flock.”
“Praise be,’ Charlotte Marie muttered. Did Oherod hear irony? Father Paul didn’t. The interior of the church was dark. Curtains, thick as rungs, hung stretched over the windows. Almost no light crept in. The rafters were thick with the waxy scent of candles. Running his finger over a pew, Oherod found it surprisingly clean.
Their accommodation turned out to be no worse than they could have preyed for. Father Paul took them through the pews, around a rough cut altar, and into a back room. Tight as a ship's cabbin, it was dark and dry. The only light came from a round window on the far wall, built so high up that seeing though was impossible. Three dirty bunks, one built into each wall, were supposed to be beds. Father Paul shifted the pair in with his hands.
“This will do very nicely,” Oherod assured the pastor, hoping that Paul might leave them alone. He expected that it might have taken some silver to finally get rid of the old man, but he just slipped away. Neither Oherod nor ​​Charlotte Marie said a word until they heard
“Repulsive,” Charlotte Marie muttered once he was gone. Oherod, surprised the girl had spoken, nodded. “Oh I don’t know. There’s something charming about
The animosity between the pair was, slowly and surely, melting away. Oherod’s suspicion was confirmed when ​​Charlotte Marie asked, “I’m supposing you’ll want to keep traveling through here?”
“Good guess,”
“Well stay the night, and be on our way at dawn. I’m going to go see to Thunder. You find us some water.” She commanded.
“Received and understood,” Oherod responded in mock military tones.
Oherod tossed his floppy hat onto the bed. His pouch followed quickly after it. ​​Charlotte Marie hauled off her pack, dropped it onto the dusty ground, before a booted foot sent it under the bed. The pistols stayed in her belt. She made for the door, her boots tapping loudly on the floor. Just before she got out the door, she paused.
“Be careful,” She told Oherod very quickly. “I don’t much like the feeling of this place. You should take one of these.” With liquid smoothness, she drew one pistol. Flipping it as carelessly as one might a coin, she held the short barrel and offered the grip to Oherod.
He pushed the butt away. “You hold onto it. I’m an awful shot,”
“Suit yourself,” ​​Charlotte Marie left. Oherod followed not long after. He made his way back out of the church, though the pews. Father Paul was, nowhere to be seen. Though the sight of the man made Oherod shiver, he would have rather the man was in the church. Then at least Oherod would know were he was. Oherod didn’t like the idea of the man slithering around the town. It was those dead eyes of his. The ones that made him seem blind. They were like nothing Oherod could remember encountering.
Stepping out from the darkness of the church, Oherod had to shield his eyes with his palm. He had almost forgotten how harsh the desert light was, compared to the dim church. Why was it so dark? With Paul absent, he had no one to ask. Not that he would have, had the Preist been present.
He spotted ​​Charlotte Marie leading thunder down towards the entrince of town, were they had come in. He went the opposite way. The nearly empty waterskin flaped at his side, waving like a ragged old flag.
Though he wandered from one side of town to the other, Oherod found no water pumps. No wells either, which he would have expected in their absence. Nor did he see any people. The town was small, to be sure, but large enough that he would have expected to see at least someone going about there errands. Perring at the buildings he passed, all the windows had the curtains drawn. Or, in the case of many, no windows at all. The doors hung open on broken hinges. Oherod tried to look inside, but the shadows were woven too thick for him to see more than a few feet in the door.
A disturbance of the dust behind him. Oherod turned to find themselves eye to eye with a small boy. No older than five, he wore dirty denim overalls. His hair was sandy, his face unwashed. Oherod gave him his most grandfather, approachable smile The boy was frozen. The features on his face reminder Oherod of a animal caught in a trap, torn between fight and flight. The boy stepped back. It was then that Oherod noticed that the boy wasn’t looking at him. Not really. Instead, he had tilted his head and was peering past Oherod. Oherod, testing, waved a hand. No reaction from the boy. Waiting a moment, he said, as kindly a he could “Hello,”
Snapping into position, the boy locked on Oherod. His expression changed only slightly, though nothing in his eyes moved. They were like frozen storms, waves caught mid swell. They never moved on their own.
“Adam!” A voice called from inside one of the houses. A woman, a mother, burst though the half open doors and came crashing out onto the pouch. “Adam!”
The boy, Adam, dashed into her open arms like a bull. Oherod, smiling, stepped closer. It wasn’t until he did that the mother looked at him. She stood in the shadows of the veranda, features hidden.
“Your son?’ Oherod asked, stepping a foot up onto the wooden porch. Adam clung to the long dress of his mother. Even in the shade, Oherod saw how faded and torn the thing was. A shapeless sack of fabric, thrown over a body more bone than fat. It swayed soft, drifting ghosts-like in the hot air.
The woman was daily ghost-like herself Pale, even in the shadows, she looked as if a strong breeze might threaten blow her away. Her smile was thin. “Yes, he is.”
“Lovely name,” Oherod remarked. He had known another man by that name. Another man, from another aeon. The smile grew even tighter, as if it was locked in a vice. “Yes, it is,” Then, to the boy, “Adam go inside,”
Banished, Adam wandered into the house. Oherod was left alone on the porch with the mother. The vice twisted again. The smile became a warped grimince. “Why can’t I hear you?”
“Excuse me?”
She took an awkward step forward. Her feet were bare. “Why can’t I hear you?”
Oherod stayed where he was. “What do you mean?,”
“Your heart!” The woman snapped as if it were obvious. “I can’t hear it. There's nothing there!” Fear struck Oherod like lightning, touching every nerve in his body.
“Who are you?’ He went to ask. His question was decapitated by a louder voice. “Margrit!”
Pacing down the long porch between houses, moving like a man on a mission, came Farther Paul. His black habit rustled viciously about his knees as he walked.
The mother didn’t turn around. With the stare that is not sight, she looked at Oherod. The world around him was slowly losing all meaning to her. What was that expression haining like a mask over her face? Desire? A hungry, driven by the enegen of beast instincts.
“Who are you?” The woman asked one more time. Paul stepped into view andl put a hand on Margrit’s shoulder. He spoke softly. Enchantingly was the word Oherod would have used. “Margrit, this is our guest. He’s a traver from the east.” Paul looked at Oherod, “What did you say your name was?”
“Oherod,”
“Oheord, that’s right,’ Paul spoek softing into her ear, and with those words the hunger disappeared. It subsided, sinking away until the usual features remanded. Oherod caught only fragments. “He’s our guest. Our guest,”
Each word unraveled more and more of whatever was inside Margrit. It was soon all gone. Oherod was left looking at the pleasant, if strained, face he remembered. The smile had never disappeared.
“Why don’t you go inside?” Father Paul suggested. He guided Margrit like a child. It took only a gentle nudge, and Martrat stumbled back inside. Her steps were uneven, as if she walked on the deck of a ship tossed about in a storm. Oherod was surprised that she made it inside without collapsing.
Father Paul hardly waited for her to leave before scolding Oherod. “What did you say to her?”
“Not a word”
“Don’t you start pestering her or the boy,”
“I didn’t say anything,” Oherod fought back. It didn’t make any difference what, if anything he had said. Paul demanded, “What are you doing out of the church?”
“Looking for a place to refill this,” He waved the water-skin, “I wasn’t able to find any pumps,”
“We don’t have any pumps,” Father Paul was quick to correct Oherod’s mistake, although not with any kindness. “Our water comes from the caves beneath the town,”
“Caves?”
“That’s right,’ Paul snorted, as if the idea water could come from anywhere else was laughable. “Beneath the town. Give that to me, and I’ll take it to one of the cisterns.”
Oherod handed him it to him. Paul took them eagerly. He practucly snatched iut from Oherod’s hands. “I’ll deliver them to you at the church tonight. We’re having mass at dusk. Perhaps you and your friend might join us?”
“My friend is unspoken for,” Oherod told the Father, “I’ll be there,”
Father Paul smiled. “You just have to be sure to tell her she’s welcome.”
“Don’t you worry, I will,”

On the far side of town Charlotte Marie was still to find a stable. Her expectations had been to find one on the main street. Nothing. So she began searching the mass of alleyways that passed for backstreets. Narrow, dark and scraped, Thunder had to be dragged through them like a child. Charlotte Marie couldn’t blame the beast. Even she was half afraid she would become lost in the labyrinth. The backstreets, she found, had been tossed out like sticks onto the dust. Alleyways narrowed into nothing, or else were cut off awkwardly by walls. Were she would have expected a crossroad, she found only a single path. Dead ends snuck up on her, abusing her. She backtracked and circled around so many times that she was truly lost.
In the end, Charlotte Marie surrender. She hauled herself and Thunder out of that maze. It was only half by dumb-luck that she manged to get out at all. She was relieved to feel the sunlight on her face. Had it really been as dark as it felt?
Charlotte Marie looked about. She was in a strange section of the town that she did not recognise. She didn’t like it. Where the buildings on mainstreet were rundown, the ones she was looking at had hardly been constructed to begin with. Wood and nail had collided in enough places to keep the structures from collapsing, but there was no hint of intelligent design anywhere. The roofs were uneven, and the walls had holes, gaping like black scars. She was in a little courtyard, buildings surrounding her on all sides. There were no windows in any of them. Nor doors.
Toxic black tar began filling her belly. Heavy as led, it’s presence could not be ignored. Without thinking, her hand went to the gun at her side. It slid silently from the well-oiled holster. Gripping it tightly, ignoring the weight, Charlotte Marie raised it. With a careful thumb, she threw the hammer back like a bow-string. There was a metallic click. Thunder.
“Hello,” A unsure yet warm voice asked from behind Charlotte Marie. She turned around, keeping the weapon low. Her finger never left the trigger.
Standing in the darkness that Charlotte Marie had just come out of was a very beautiful woman. Though she wore a faded blue dress, embroidered with yellow splodges that might once have been flowers, she was beautiful. Her skin was pale as cream. Her eyes were wide, and started towards the gun.
“You wouldn’t be holding a gun to me, would you?” The woman asked lazaly. Her tone put all of Charlotte Marie’s fears to rest. Flushing red, she lowered the barrel. The hammer clicked back into place.
“Sorry,” She blushed.
“Oh it’s alright,” The woman’s voice was warm as apple cider. Charlotte Marie felt it disarming her. Each word took another bullet from her gun. “Our home can be… strange,”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Charlotte Marie, who was trying to make it up to the woman, shared more than she might have. “My home is nothing like this,”
“Where is your home, darling?”
“My people are from the Planes of the Moon. On the far side of the mountains,” Just saying there names, Charlotte Marie was hit with an almost nauseating wave of homesickness.
“And what’s your name?”
“I’m Charlotte Marie,”
“A delightful name,” The woman said. “I’m Elizabeth.” She extended a hand, reaching like a tree branch. Charlotte Marie took it. It was cold as bone. This close, there was no hiding the strangeness of her eyes. Charlotte Marie shuddered. Strange stories were told about people who lived across the mountains. Having a small imagination, and no natural sense of wonder, Charlotte Marie had often dismissed the stories as myths. Now she was reconsidering that position.
Elizabeth nodded to Thunder. “You looking for a place to keep him?”
“I couldn’t find the stables,” Charlotte Marie expanded sheepishly.
“We don’t have one. Not a proper one at least. But there's an old shed you can use. I’ll warn youi, it’s not luxurious,”
“You don’t need to worry about that. He’s not used to luxury,”
Elizabeth smiled. “I didn’t think so. Come on, I’ll show you,”
Charlotte Marie was thankful for any directions. Elizabeth led her, while she led Thunder. The trio reentered the cross-stitch web of alleyways. They passed under bridges, narrow as corridors between the houses. She must have been staring.
“Still not like your home?” Elizabeth asked.
“It’s like…” Charlotte Marie began, before warming with embarrassment. “Well it’s like it’s all one building.”
“Most of it is,” Elizabeth spoke as if there was nothing strange about it.
“So all the families live together?”
“Here,” Elizabeth expanded, “We are all one family. With one father,” Charlotte Marie heard religious devotion in the sentiment. She nodded, as if that was justification. Perhaps it was. She had always thought her family close-knit, when her uncles and cousins lived as far away as the next farm over.
“So, your companion, he’s your father?” Elizabeth asked, the conversation taking a similar tone.
“He’s no relation”
“You're a little young for a husband, and he’s a little old for a lover,” Elizabeth’s smile was coy, “So who is he?”
“We’re just traveling together,” Charlotte Marie disliked the questions more and more.
“You don’t know who he is?”
Charlotte Marie felt the prodding and probing of the questions. Each one was a different tool. Mining her for clues. What were they looking for?
“I don’t know anything about him,” She admitted. Not wanting to seem totally clueless, and in return to the kindness Elizabeth had shown her, she added; “He’s just…. Strange,”
“Strange?” Elizabeth asked. They were out of the alleyways now, and stepped back onto mainstreet. How their route had twisted or turned and been warped to get them back there, Charlotte Marie didn’t know. Nor care. Elizabeth felt the same. She was focused on ​​Charlotte Marie’s answer. Her face hung still, waiting for an answer. “Strange how?”
Charlotte Marie signed.
“Where I come from, everyone knows everyone else. No, everyone knows everything about everyone else. It’s all so close. My uncle’s the butcher. The parish Priest was the schoolmaster. My grandfather the lawman. My cousins ran the next ranch over from ours. It was all like a big web. Everyone connected. I don’t know what i’m saying. Just that Oherod dosen’t feel like he’s part of any web. That he’s all on his own.” She paused, aware she was rambling. She cut the train of thought off, “I don’t know anything about him,”
“Well you be careful then. There's plenty of reasons for a man his age to travel with a girl, and few of them decent,”
“I can look after myself,” Charlotte Marie assured the older woman. She taped the six-shooter at her belt. Elizibeth looked down at them.
“Of course you can,”

They came to a barn. The door hung open on rusty hinges, stiff and locked in place. It was dark inside. Shards of sunlight cracked though the wounds in the walls and created strange shapes on the far wall. The room tasted of mold and rot. Hay, more green than yellow, covered the floor.
“You can leave him in here for the night,” Elizibdth said, standing in the corner. “No one’s going to steal him.”
“You don’t have any horses of your own?” Charlotte Marie asked, tethting Thunder to a post. There were no signs that this place had ever had any other inhabitants.
“We have no need for them,”
“But how to your traders…trade?”
“We have no traders either,”
“But…” Charlotte Marie wasn’t sure her and Elizibeth were having the same conversation. She didn’t ask the next question, though it was on her lips. There were no fields around the town. None. Not even the hard corns that could grow without any water, or wheat that drank up dust. Nor was there any livestock. No pens of pigs. No coops of chickens. If these people didn’t send traders for food, what did they eat?
Charlotte Marie shivered, and not because of the damp air. She felt cold, wet hands around her throat. She wanted to be outside again. Elizabeth was standing very still. Her face was plaster white. Her mouth hung half open. For the first time, Charlotte Marie saw beyond the smile. Inside, the teeth were sharp. VIthois and long, like daggers. Charlotte Marie was shocked to see such hunger warping such beauty. It all washed away, like pait in the rain. It ran down her face in streaks. It pooled in her eyes like bad make up.
Then the spell was broken. Elizabeth shook her face, and it was clear again. She summoned a smile to her lips. Already Charlotte Marie couldn’t be sure what she had seen? A trick of the light?
Charlotte Marie wanted to get back outside. She was relieved when Elizabeth waved her to the door.
“You’re staying in the church?”
“With Father Paul, that’s right,”
“Paul is a good man,’ Elizabeth said, rather abruptly. “He led us out of the darkness and into the light. He speaks to the Father sometimes. You couldn’t ask for a better host,”
“I’m sure,” Charlotte Marie recalled the priest's face, along with all the people she would like to have as a host. Her uncles Jack and Quinton. William, who had been both teacher and Priest to her. Her father, the man who had taught her to shoot. Paul was not on that list. He had the same pale complexion as Pale Wing. They shared the same bloodlessness. Recalling the sorcerer gave her another question.
“Have you had any visitors passing through your town recently?” She asked, “Strange ones, that is. He might have used the name Pale Wing. He would have been traveling lightly, and would not have stayed long.”
Elizabeth said nothing. Charlotte Marie assumed that she hadn’t heard enough.
“I’m only asking, seeing as he’s the reason I’m traveling. I’m looking for him and would be much obliged if you could tell me anything that you knew,”
“You and your storyteller are the first travelers we’ve had in a long time,” Elizabeth’s lips twitched. Charlotte Marie recognized the tick. Her own mother made it when she told her little brother that the hens had all run away after the fox got in their pen.
“Excuse me,” She put her foot down, “But if you know something then I’d much rather you tell me. It’s very important that I find him, you see.”
Elizabeth was taken aback by the child’s outburst. For a moment, she was silent. Something about the almost polite way Charlotte Marie asked, firm as an iron hand in a velvet glove, had thrown her. Her voice wasn’t quiet as sure of itself. Though she tried to sound relaxed, it came off tense.
“I’m sure I’d remember if anyone had come though dear,” She said. Then she turned the conversation before Charlotte Marie could say anything more, “Now, will I see you at mass tonight?”
“I suppose so,’ Charlotte Marie saw that, regretfully, the conversation was over. The door had been closed. Slammed in her face. Elizabeth smiled, and nodded. ‘Well until then,”
Charlotte Marie returned to the church feeling that something had been started, but not finished. Entering, she passed the rows of pews and said a silent thank you that Farter Paul was not there. She found Oherod in the back room. He was lying across his bed, legs folded. He removed his silly hat from over his eyes. In the high strangeness of the town, she had almost forgotten how strange her companion was.
Charlotte Marie found herself asking herself the same question that Elizabeth had. What did she know about Oherod? Nothing really. Less than nothing. What she did know didn’t make sense. A storyteller who slept little, drank little and ate less. Walking past him to her bed, she ignored his gaze. It wasn’t quite a state, more of a soft observation. There was something innocent, or childish about it. It was the way little Timmothy might look at a dust-devil.
“Did you get the water?” She asked, to ease the tension. She pulled out her ruck-sack from underneath her bed. Opening it, she pretended to rummage around for something. Really she was just avoiding Oherod.
“Father Paul said he’d get some for me,” Oherod said. “Their water comes from cisterns under the town.”
“That’s odd,”
“Not really,”
“That there are no wells at all?” Charlotte Marie. Then she decided to ask the question she had turned away from before. “And that they have no livestock or crops either. I’d say that’s odd.”
Oherod looked at her, “I suppose you’re right,”
“I’m leaving. Now” Charlotte Marie asserted, although she did her best not to sound afraid. She didn’t want to give Oherod to think she was running away. To make her point about being prepared to leave, she began organising things in her bags.
“You don’t trust this place, do you?”
It was Charlotte Marie’s first reaction to lie. To say she found nothing strange. To project an image of strength. She wasn’t sure why. Back to Oherod, she opened her mouth to give a flippant, dismissive no. Instead, she pulled her head from the bagage, and turned around.
“You feel it too?”
Oherod nodded. “I had a rarther strange encounter with the locals,”
“That makes two of us,” Charlotte Marie signed, “There's something about the way they look at me that just doesn't seem right. Like they’re not really looking at me. Did you see that they don’t have any crops,”
“Or livestock,”
“Yes!” Charlotte Marie said, glad Oherod had noticed, even if he seemed calmer about this all than she did. She turned around. He was stroking his short beard, thinking. Why didn’t he move?
“We need to go,” She reminded him, hands on hips. “Now!,”
“Not yet,”
Charlotte Marie’s eyes darted to the door. She hadn’t seen Paul, but the church was so dark it was imposable he could be lurking anywhere. The thought made her tense.
“If we leave it to liong, the alternative is not leaving at all,”
“We don’t know that,” Oherod cited her. Charlotte Marie hated the idea that she was just a child, overreacting to something she didn’t understand. Charlotte Marie got angry.
“I don’t want to find out!”
She had expected a flaming response to her flaming outburst. She was disappointed. Oherod wasn’t going to fight fire with fire. He paid her back in a different, softer coin. In a slow, lilting voice, he asked, “Do you know what the worst thing you can do is when you put your foot on a trap?”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte Marie answered sarcastically. “Get stuck?”
“The worst thing to do is step out. More likely than not you’ll just set it off. You have to be patient. If we run now, who knows what Paul or the others might do.”
“So we’re just supposed to wait for them to….do whatever they’re plotting,”
“Perhaps they are plotting nothing at all,” Oherod remarked. “We don’t know. So we will wait until we know more. But until them, we won’t be idly. We can prepare.”
“Says the one with no weapons,” Charlotte Marie muttered.
“You have your pistols.” Oherod remarked. “My talents lie..else were,” Charlotte Marie grunted. She briefly considered striking out alone. If Oherod wanted to stay here, that was his decision. Before she met him, she had been traveling alone. On Thunder she could make better time if she wasn’t aclpnonted. Yet, she didn’t want to move on. If she left, she was leaving Oherod in the hands of the villagers. Charlotte Marie didn’t know why that bothered. He was old enough to decide for himself what he wanted to do.
“Paul still has the water bags,” He reminded her, without implying anything. “If your going to go, make sure to get them off him,”
The reminder trapped Charlotte Marie as surely as if her feet were stuck in cement. She saw how right Oherod was. Slipping away in to the planes was impossible. She'll practically have to ask Paul for permission to leave. Of course, he might give it to her. He might hand her the water bags, wave her off, and watch as she rode towards the horizon.
That didn’t seem likely. Oherod was, she had to admit, rightTry to leave, and the trap would spring.
“Father Paul said he’d return the water flasks at mass?” Charlotte Marie asked.
“That’s right. The cisterns must be very deep.” Oherod’s voice was dry, tinged with sarcasm.
“Or he has a surprise waiting for us then,”
“I’d keep your weapons handy this evening,”

The remains of the day drifted slowly away, like ash floating in the air above a fire. The sunlight shifted angel as it passed though the little window into the little room. Oherod and Charlotte Marie sat very still, not speaking much. Oherod felt the anticipation of a coming battle. He had felt it before, besieged someplace, waiting for the assault. If this little back room wasn’t the fortress he was used to, nor the small village the attacking army, the feeling didn’t reflect the differences. A tightness in his chest. A clearness in his eyes. Everything held a heightened sense of importance before a fight. He saw the smallest movements, and saw them in isolation. He watched a spider weaving its web. He watched
Charlotte Marie, to whom the feeling was new, didn’t cope as calmly. She polished and cleaned her guns. The process was meticulous, almost mechanical. Yet it was not calm. Her hands moved with a will of their own, yet they shook. Ever so slightly, but enough of a tremor to disrupt the whole process. More than once the girl dropped a piece of the weapons, or slipped her hand along the barrel. Oherod pretended not to notice. For her sake.
At dusk, they heard the sounds of parisishersing shifting into mass. Oherod lent in the doorway, watching. It looked as if the whole coven had turned out. Father Paul stood at the door, greeting each one with a firm handshake. Oherod notced nothing too out of the ordoary about the procession. Men and women, in equal numbers. Most looked just as, if not more, run down as Elizabeth or Paul. They were dirty, with stringy hair and unwashed tatters for clothes. Oherod was careful to examine each one. Each one had the same lifelessness as Pauls. They were like stones with imitations of eyes on them. Less than dead, Oherod sensed that they had never really been alive at all. That they had been born still.
The time the pews filled up. By then, the sky outside was the colour of blood. Ash-could clouds tainted the sky. The sun sunk slowly downwards, a sinking ship .
The orange light died before penetrating the church. Thick, carpet-like drapes pinned across the windows kept out even a hint Oherod didn’t like it. Why was it so dark? He had expected some lanterns or candles for a dusk service.
Why did they pray in the dark? What did it all mean? Oherod knew it was important, the way that you could tell a regular cough from cancer. The nameless sense told him what, but not why. It told him when, that was soon, but not who. Paul?
The last of the pews were full, and Father Paul shut the doors. They closed with a fatal click. Light itself had been barred entry.
Paul walked through the masses of his parishioners. The darkness transformed them. The shadows stole their identity. Becoming a single mass of silhouetted heads, they felt like one being. One creature, dominated by a single heart.
Paul stepped behind the altar. He stopped. Twisting like a screw, he turned to Oherod and Charlotte Marie.
“Friends, please, join us.”
An opening appeared in the front row. A yawning abyss in the ranks just begging to be filled. The pair stepped towards it.
Those in the back of the church become totally invisible. Oherod could sense the outline of the building, although the shapeless mass of people confused the sense.
Charlotte Marie, even blinder than he, was terrified. He could sense it. Her entire being was tense as a bow-string. The slightest movement might set it off. Concealed in the folds of her long coat, Oherod knew there was a gun. He was glad at least she had the witts to hide it. The air was cold enough to justify wearing the coat, and Oherod doubted the Father would allow the weapon in mass.
They stepped into the spot on the first bench. Charlotte Marie took the aisle. Oherod was left with the inside space. He squeezed in. Flanking on his right was the outline of an-oldish man. He was thin. That was all Oherod could tell about him.
The figure of Paul loomed above the altar. Oherod wondered how anyone two pews back could see him. But seight, he was to learn, was not the sense of the evening. It was hearing. I was Paul’s voice that defined the darkness. Not his words, for they were early messages. Vessel for real meaning. The very tone of his voice shaping the very texture of the room. It was a strange sensation. Oheros was so used to light defining how he saw something. The colour of the room, or the way sunlight played on a surface. It changed the aura of the space. That night, in the church, it was the Priest's words that dicated how he viewed the world.
“Brothers and Sisters, we are gathered in the hall of our hands to worship the Father. For centuries, our ancestors have lived in the folds of our Father. In his body that is the earth below us. He shelters us from the harshness of the world beyond. He protects us. And in turn, we guided to him a feast.”
Beside him, Oherod felt the Charlotte Marie shift restlessly. It was as if she was fighting against unseen ristrants. Oherod wanted to calm her. To sooth her soul. But more pressing was the sermon. He gave it his undivided attention.
“Two strangers from the planes are with us today. Travelers. Outsides. People who are not of the Blood. We welcome them into the embrace of the Father, that their life might feed his,.”
Now Charlotte Marie was really worried. Oherod listened as breathing breathing was getting louder. The infernal darkness! He needed to see her. Why was it so dark? How did these people see?
Enlightenment struck like lightning. Oherod listening to Paul drone on about the Farther, put it together. Silently, he raised a hand. No reaction from the man next to him. He waved it about. Still nothing. In the dark, it was possible no one had seen it. The man next to him certainly hadn’t. He gave his undecided attention to Paul’s endless speech.
Careful not to make even the smallest sound, Oherod lowered his hand over the man’s eyes. Nothing. No reaction. The thin man didn’t so much as blink.
His suspicions confirmed, Oherod was suddenly aware of every sound in the room. Every sound in existence. The faint undercurrent of wind outside. The sermon, blasting across the church like cannonfire. The short, shallow gasps of Charlotte Marie. The long, dry drawls of the thin man. All of it painted a picture in Oherod’s mind. A picture so intense that he could only see the results, not the individual brushstrokes. Paul’s words were lost like tears in an ocean.
Then he stepped back. He reminded himself that nothing had changed. Paul went on, as Oherod looked for a way out.
“Brothers and Sisters, we are blessed. The feast has been brought to us! Rise and take it,”
The room grew very still. Oherod held every mustel in his body absoutitle still, refusing to let it move even an inch. Then things were set in motion. It began slowly. A pebble tossed down a canyon, rolling towards the bottom of the valley. It picked up speed. In the corner of his eyes Oherod saw shapes moving. He heard snarls all around. Soon the pebble had become bolder. It rolled on, faster and faster. Paul remanded at the altar, a black knife slit. Now it was a landslide, crashing down. Everything was burred beneath it’s tide. The parishioners rose, like shadows under the setting sun. Their teeth gleaned bone white. The landslide came to a screaming halt.

Charlotte Marie tripped upwards, and landed on her feet. She staggered forward a few steps. As one hand tried to keep her upright, the other tugged on the cold iron in her bel. Her hand was week. Gripping became an impossibility. The oiled wood of the handle becamealene, as the familiarity of the grip disappeared. The motion that she had made a thousand times was gone.
Spinning around, managed to get the gun out. By some miracle she didn't drop it. Two hands weren't enough to stop the shaking. The cold iron felt heavy. Heavier than she had ever known it to be. The barrel sunk into the darkness. The shapeless mass of parishioners growing tighter around them.
Oherod followed her to his feet. Charlotte Marie felt a strong hand push her behind him. She was too surprised to resist. Oherod moved her with the force of a gale. Resistance was impossible.
A flash of light filled the room. The air cracked like old leather. Charlotte Marie cried out. Her eyes burned like open wounds. The darkness became bright, but equally blinding. The sharling was replaced by a dog-like whimper. Charlotte Marie saw the horror of the room.
The townsfolk really looked half-wild now. Their mouths hung open, revealing row after row of white fangs. Their arms hung down like animal claws. Their faces spasmed with hunger. Charlotte Marie had never seen anything so horrifying. Her first instinct was to run. She might have, had the opportunity presented itself.
Oherod stood tall, apparently unafraid of the things. “Stay back!” Whether it was a command to her or the townsfolk, Charlotte Marie couldn’t say. If it was the prior, she needed no encouragement.
Paul was the only townsman who had retained any of his humanity, although his skin was a pasty grey under the silver light. He smiled that horrible smile. Gressly and dark, he stepped down towards Oherod. His neck was twisted strangely. It bent away from Oherod’s light, as if repulsed, but curious.
“So, it’s true. You are something special aren’t you,” His voice was like oil. “Margrit was right when she said she couldn’t hear you. Your not like the rest of hem,”
“Keep your distance fiend!” Oherod snapped. He swung his arm around, the light flaying the Priest. He stepped back. Paul squealed in pain. For a moment it was as if he had been lashed. His face spasmed. His entire body locked. He stepped backwards. For a moment Charlotte Marie was afraid he would lunge for them. But he regained control of himself. The smile returned like a vengeful spirit.
“We have no quarrel with you, whatever you are. You have no heart, and no blood. You cannot feed the Father. You may leave.”
“I think I will be leaving,” Oherod spoke to the entire room, eyes flicking from Paul to the door ‘And I’m taking her with me,”
“She is for us,” Paul asserted. “Swept in from the planes. Fortune brought her to the Feast. She is touched by fate. She must stay.”
“She is coming with me,” Oherod said, for the last time. Charlotte Marie, who had left her village to hunt Pale Wing, who had struck out across the planes alone, who had left behind Little Timothy and her Mothers and her uncles without once looking back, finally felt afraid. She could hardly bring herself to look at the room. The gun was useless in her hands. A fat lump of metal.
Paul sighed like a crashing wave. “Such a shame Oherod. You might not feed us, but we will kill you nevertheless. Such a shame. Such a waste.”
“I hope I haven’t let you down too much,” Oherod shoved Charlotte Marie backwards. The world turned upside down, a sensation made only more confusing in the darkness. The wooden floor beat her face with a thud. Orientation herself, she saw she was back in the little room. Oherod stood in the doorway. His frame walled off the entire room. Beyond him, like the marauders outside the gates, Charlotte Marie saw the faces of the townsfolk.
“Seize them!” Paul cried.
The word exploded. Charlotte Marie cried out. Her eyes slammed shut like castle gates. Even closed,her eyes were spotted and scared by the fierce light. She heard footsteps, a door slam, and then more footsteps. Oherod stepped into the room with her.
Back pressed hard against the far wall, Charlotte Marie was immobilized as her sight returned slowly. Though fuzzy eyes, she watched Oherod move quickie around the room. First, he tossed Charlotte Marie her sack. Then he picked up his own stachal.
Outside, Charlotte Marie heard the moans of the townsfolk. They knocked on the door, an endless beating and scratching. The lock looked ready to burst, bent as a bow. Oherod offered her a hand. Her balance still shaky, Charlotte Marie took it. She was uneasy.
“What were those things?’ She asked. Oherod didn’t have time to answer her. Moving like a shadow, he flew about the room. “How are we going to get out”
“We’ll find a way,”
Outside, the knocking was getting louder. Oherod didn’t notice. He was pressing his hand against the back wall, as if feeling for some invisible latch. Charlotte Marie’s heart pounded like a piston. The room was small, suffocating. It’s presence was like a gag in her throat. She choked on something unseen and unfelt. The knocking grew louder. The door strained like a old bridge. In her mind, Charlotte Marie could already see it snapping. Hear ears were alive the sounds of snapping wood, as the air filled with splinters and shratpal.
What was Oherod doing? They needed to get moving. He was still pressing the wall. Though he had found time to put his big hat on again, it seemed only so that he might not die underdressed.

Oherod’s hands brushed the wall carefully. Then they stopped About halfway up. He had found whatever it was he was looking for. He became very still. “Stand back,”
Obeying by instinct, Charlotte Marie took a step away from the wall. Oherod kept his hand where it was. For an instant, it glowed, as if a lantern was burning beneath flesh. Then there was the sound of snapping wood. The wall exploded. There was no fire, no smoke. Only the sharp sounds of breaking wood, and a hole in the wall.
How Oherod had done it wasn’t important to Charlotte Marie. Not then. He pulled her out of the church. They ran out of the church. Without slowing, he rounded the side of the building. They came up on mainstreet. There, nothing moved. It was quiet as the grave. The town looked like a mausoleum in the darkness.
“You need to get Thunder,” Oherod whispered to Charlotte Marie, holding her still. “Can you do that?”
Charlotte Marie spluttered. Could she find her way back to the barn? Elizabeth had been leading her last time. Now she was alone. Oherod didn’t give her much of a choice. She said, “I think so,”
“Then go,”
“What about you?”
“I have to see the townsfolk,'' He pushed her away, “Go!”

Charlotte Marie went. Her feet were like windmills, running around and around. She didn’t think, just ran. Reaching the opposite side of the street, she paused. Where was the barn? Wishing she’d paid more attention before, her head snapped from ally to ally. Which one had it been?
Her legs burned beneath her. Not from the running, but because she wasn’t. Standing still felt impossible In the end, her body took control. Darting towards an ally like a bullet from a gun, Charlotte Marie felt her feet ponding the dust. Each twist and turn in the narrow street was another narrow miss with crashing into the building.
The shadows ran her in circles. They lied to her about were paths led. They wove one lane into another. It was like tracing a ball of string.
Charlotte Marie kept going. The world blurred around her. Nothing felt real. In fact she harden;t felt anything at all. A dull ache behind the eyes, the signature of Oherod’s light.
Had that been real? It looked real. The pain was certainly real. But how could it have been? Oherod hadn’t carried any weapons on him. He had been defenseless. How had he done it? Was it some trick? She had seen fireworks once. The light had vaguely reminded her of those. Was Oherod’s trick something similar? The questions lingered, unanswered.
Charlotte Marie must have covered every inch of the alleyway before she found the barn. Her legs felt like it. When she did finally spot the building that Elizabeth had led her to, she almost dashed past it. It was only because she stumbled that she stopped long enough to notice it.
Charlotte Marie whipped a line of sweat from her brow. Her entire body burned, yet shook with a chill. Fear had turned every nerve in her body into a living live wire. Sparks flew through each one.
She put her hand on the door as she entered. Stepping inside was like stepping into shadow. For a moment, all was darkness. Waiting for her eyes to adjust, she relied on her ears. The silence struck her. Why was it so quiet? Thunder should have been breathing, and she should have been able to hear it’s breathing. Where was Thunder?
Feeling her way forward, Charlotte Marie pressed deeper into the barn.
Her feet kicked against something soft. Something fleshly. There was a pained sound. Charlotte Marie recognised it with a gut-wrenching slap. She fell to her knees, using her hands to feel the horse. It’s skin was soft, if knotted. Her first feeling, in that moment as she realized Thunder was dieing, was a wave of regret that she hadn’t given him a brush.
“Shuush, shuush,” Charlotte Marie whispered, “It’s alright,”
Her hand waited on his chest until she felt it rise. Slowly, unsure of itself, the chest rose. She pressed her head against its mouth. Yes, he was still breathing. It was rasped, like air escaping a straw, but it was there.
Continuing to whisper, Charlotte Marie looked for what had brought Thunder down. She had adjusted enough to the darkness now to make out Thunder’s outline. No wounds were immediately obvious. She felt around for any. No cuts or gashes on his side. No wounds on any of his legs. Then her fingers moved up to the neck, and brushed against two holes. The texture made her sick. Bile pooled in her stomach.
Investing with her finger, Charlotte Marie felt that they were very narrow, and very deep. But clean. There was no blood around the wounds.
Charlotte Marie stood up. The lighting feeling was back again. Her entire body was a conductor rod, like the one Uncle Harry had on his water town. She had seen lighting strike it once. It had been in the middle of the storm session, when the rain was omnipresent and fell with untempered wrath. But there was a fragility about the whole thing. The lighting lashed like an angry voice, but died just as quickly. It didn’t last. Couldn’t last, by its very nature.
She never felt the blow. One moment she was rising, the next she was falling. She was on the floor. The shook stole a few seconds from her life. She felt nothing. The storm was gone.
She had been struck. That much she could figure from the dull ache on the back of her head. Pain bloosed outwards from the point of contact. Her one fear was of a second blow. On the ground, she was helpless. She pushed herself up. Her vision was gone. If she could see at all, it would be dobble. Charlotte Marie felt the back of her head. Her fingers became sticky. Her close cut hair was laced with blood.
“Careful,” A shrill voice said. ‘None of it must be wasted. It is for the Farther,”
“He has the beast already, how much more does he need?” The second voice was both more human, and vaguely familiar.
“Pah!” The first thing spat. “Filthy, dirty animal blood. Like vinegar to wine.”
“I couldn’t taste the difference,”
“You are not the Father!” The thing cried, it's voice like an axe. A single fell swoop, and Charlotte Marie’s head was spinning again. “You had the beast, now do as your shoulder and bring her into the Farther,”
Charlotte Marie heard the thing leave. Her head throbbed. The pain now encompassed her entire skull like a metal cage. She felt the second presence nearing her. She wanted to fight, but her body was full of crossed wires. Like a puppet whose strings don’t line up. She tried to move her feet, and found her hands moving instead.
“Don’t fight, you’ll only make it worse,” The female voice said. As the fog filing Charlotte Marie’s head and heart parted, she recognised who the voice belonged to. Elizabeth was peering down at her. Her face was lost somewhere halfway between sympathy and hunger.
“Elizabeth?” Charlotte Marie’s voice slurred, as if drunk. Her question rose into the air like smoke, disengaging without an answer. Hands, thin and bony, wrapped around her. Displaying surprising strength, Elizabeth hauled Charlotte Marie from the ground.
“It’ll all be over soon,”

Oherod walked slowly back into the church. There was no need for subterfuge. Not any more. He swaggered straight though their front door without bothering to avoid the creaky floorboards. He matched over them proudly. They announce his presence, like the heralds of an aeon yet to pass.
Oherod made it halfway down the pews before the first to the townsfolk noticed him. He watched. The mass of townsfolk were still at work on the door. Father Paul hovered from a distance. His presence dominated the room. While the rest of the townsfolk were pulled by simple desires, hunger and fear, he seemed above that. Or at least as if he was able to keep it in check. Or perhaps it was the inverse.The fact he was Priest raised him above the others.
He was the first to turn. Head twitching away from the door, Paul surveyed the room. Oherod knew he would have a hard time “seeing” him. A heartbeat. That was how theses things hunted there prey. Without one, Oherod could only be found by his footsteps. A weakness that made Oherod harder to track, if not invisible.
His theory, first suspected while waving at the boy Adam, had been proven true.
“Having a hard time hearing me?” He asked the assembled masses. They paused, heads twitching. Some sniffed the air.
“Oherod,” Paul did his best to suppress the slight element of uncertainty in his voice, “I was hoping we might have a chance to speak before you left. Where is the girl?”
“Beyond your reach, Farther,” Oherod took another silent step forward. The sound was like a war drum. The shapeless mass of village heads snapped to his parth. Jaws hung open, as if caught in a perpetual yawn. “You’ll just have to make do with me.”
“You have nothing to interest the Father. You have no heart, and no blood.”
“Well this Father is of interest to me,” Oherod prowled closer. “Tell me, do you feed him the blood of any passing strangers, or are virgins more to his taste?”
“All mortals alike feed the Farther,” Paul went to step down from the alter. Oherod wasn’t having any of that.
“Stay where you are!” He projected his voice so that it seemed to come from everywhere at once. The effect was intoxicating. It was as if the very building had given the command. The effect was instantaneous. Paul froze, along with the rest of the townsfolk.
Oherod smiled sweetly. The action was lost on the sightless things, althouggh the sweetness carried over into his voice.
“Much better,”
“You are a fool to get involved in what you do not understand,” Paul, for all his brave words, remained where Oherod had told him to.
“Oh I wouldn’t say that just yet.” Oherod stepped forward, “And besides, I’m all ears if you want to help me understand.”
Paul spat at him.
“Well, let’s start with the Father. Where is he? Can I see him, or is he harder to contract?”
“One cannot ask to see the Farther,” Paul’s voice was high and sharp as a white. Words spewed out with splatterings of power, but lacked any real force. Oherod sighed. “This posturing if getting awfully hurrying. I will ask to see him once more.”
Paul hesitated. The entire town held it’s breath. The moemnt was caught in the balance. It could still swing either way. Oherod wasn’t about to let the dice fall wrong. In a quick moment, he threw a few
Oherod held his hands up together. “I’m willing to go bound, if you’ve any shackles lying around,”

Charlotte Marie knew what it was to be helpless. To be so lost you couldn’t say what you needed to get to, or where you had come from. To feel totally cut off from every other version of yourself, past and present. The future became something that happened to you. The past a string of failures.
Helplessness was hell.
She was cold. Elizabeth’s arms were like bone. The air was almost hard, frozen solid. Her eyes, hanging open on hinges, saw nothing. Places and objects passed by without so much as casting an impression on her eyes. She was lost.

Charlotte Marie felt no pain. Physticaly, at least. For all it’s coldness, Elizabeth’s embrace was gentle. She wasn't sore. She wasn’t even afraid, really.
Elizabeth spoke to her. Charlotte Marie couldn’t make out words. Even sentences merged were training to the melting pot of her mind. The world had been reduced to emotions. Raw feelings. The building blocks of psyche.
Whatever it was Elizabeth said, Charlotte Marie felt it calming her. Her heart beat slowed down. Helplessness. Defenslesses.
But it didn’t have to be bad, did it? Surender? The brave could surender. A warrior could put down her arms. Why couldn’t she?
Her head was fuzzy. Thoughts came from far off, like a voice though static. Static. An obsolete word in the new world. She had picked it up from her grandmother. On good days her grandmother would tell her fables of a world that had yet to turn a corner. A world that was static meant what it always had. Before a new world gave it a new meaning.
Fog. Confusion. Bouncing lightly in the branch like arms, Charlotte Marie embraced the static.
Helplessness was only Hell if she made it. Only if she fought. It was like a river, really. She could push against the current. A force that would never stop pushing, no matter how hard she did. Or, she could accept what already was. If she gave up, it had no hold on her.
You can’t lose the game you don’t play.
The temperature dropped. Charlotte Marie shivered uncontrollably now. Though she could tell almost nothing about her surroundings, she felt a sense of downardness. It went on for so long. And the deeper they went, the colder it became.
They were plugging into the very heart of the earth. They must have been.
Charlotte Marie felt her soul tucking away. Back home she had seen devil-rats scurry away into there invisible homes when scared. She felt like those rats. Running into placesDeeper and deeper. Down further and further, until she wondered how there could be anything deeper to go down to.
Elizabeth laid Charlotte Marie down. Their was cold stone beneath her. Elizabeth was silent now. No, not silent. Just different. Charlotte Marie calibrated her mind to the new tone. Lying there, she was able to make out the words.
“Farther, I have brought you the blood,” To Charlotte Marie, the words might as well have been forigne. She could glean a basic meaning. Images of the townsfolk, still imprinted on her mind, mixed fruitlessly with what was being said. Her blood. They wanted it. Somehow, this didn’t bother her as much as she thought it should.
It didn’t bother her at all. Helplessness was only hell if you let it be. She had the key. Everything felt heavy. She didn’t want to fight. Elizabeth was rising away now. Charlotte Marie could, from her low point, see the face rising into a semining eternity. It drifted away like clouds on a sunny day.
She didn’t want it to go. Her hands scraped upwards, reaching for the heavens. They fell short. Charlotte Marie caught nothing but cold air. Her fingers twitched inconsolably at it’s absence.
Elizabeth moved away. Charlotte Marie tried to follow. Though only half away from herself, she turned onto her side.
Before she could get any further, a blut pain in her gut froze Charlotte Marie. It stopped her in her tracks. Before she could get any further, she flopped back onto her front. The pain subsided. Her hand slipped down to her gut, where the pain lingered like like the damp after rain.
Fingers brushed against ivory. It was cool against her skin. A different child of cool to the dank air around her. It was fresh. Clean and pure. Next she felt the iron. It was harder than the ground beneath her. She wrapped a numb hand around the weapon. Her finger slid through the trigger gard, and rested on the trigger. Her hand slid into place like a puzzle piece. Her thumb rose to the hammer. It felt good. It felt powerful.
Elizabeth was walking away. Charlotte Marie’s hand was on the gun. It beat like a second heart, pumping power though her body. Memories flowed with it.
The gun was no longer in her hand. It was instead on her father's hip. He wore it with confidence, as a badge of sorts. She saw his hands, weathered and worn as old leather, grasping the polished ivory. With cold-like fascination, she watched as he disassembled the pisces, cleaned and oiled the weapon, and put it back together. The process was hypnotic. Everything had a place. He was so sure of where even the smallest bits belonged. Her father knew them intimately, and was as close to those strips of metal as his children. They were part of him. The gun in her hand felt like it belonged to someone else.
But the memory of her father had started something inside her. Something that wasn’t about to stop. Her hand moved without her will. Not mindlessly. It was something else that carved out it’s parth. Memory?
Charlotte Marie could remember her farther only shooting the guns at a man once. For all the hours spent cleaning, disassembling and rebuilding them, their was only one shot. For all the years he wore it, carried it with him wherever he went, it was used only for a moment.
Pale Wing had been the target. He had been coming out of the barn. Blood marred his hands. He had looked so calm about the whole thing. Like he was merely going for astrole in the dusk. Their was an idle smile on his face as he shut the doors behind him.
Charlotte Marie never saw her farther draw. She never even saw him pull the trigger. By the time she heard the gunshot, it was all over. The moment was still as a painting. Nothing moved.
Charlotte Marie wanted for Pale Wing to fall. For him to collapse to the ground and die. It was what he deserved. It was what should have happened.
She almost didn’t see the smoke rising from her father's mouth. Pale Wing didn’t move. He stood just outside the bar door. Why didn't he die?
Charlotte Marie saw her farther die out of the corner of her eye. Like the gunshot, she missed it. Smoke billowed from his face. His mouth noses and even eyes had all become chimneys. Sot black, the smell made Charlotte Marie rench.
Pale Wing stepped away from the door. He looked down on what he had done. His face was so still it might have been a mask. Charlotte Marie, who had felt so close to the action, now couldn’t have been further away. It was only a few yards from where she stood to her father, but the distance seemed immeasurable. Dashing across the yard of the homestead, she watched as the smoke disappeared. It stole away into the sky like a thief. It carried her farther with it.
His hand was still on the gun. Charlotte Marie tore it from his hand. Pale Wing hadn’t even run. He just stood there, looking at her father. His expression was almost pizzled.
Charlotte Marie didn’t even think. She amined with only the faintiest trace of sense. Her fingers beat the trigger. Her thum pumped the hammer after the shot. Over and over.
The chamber employed with a click.

Elizabeth fell without a word. The echoes painted white noses across the carven. Charlotte Marie’s head felt like a bell-tower. Her hand collapsed like a cut rope. The six-shooter came free. It slid away onto the ground.
You couldn’t win the game you don’t play.

Oherod was brought into the chamber a prisoner. Townsfolk flanked him on all sides. Though most of them were small, they possessed the strength of steel wire. They might bend around him, but would not break.
To them he was a threat. They eyed him suspiciously, and growled at every movement he made. If he had so much as coughed, they would be on him in an instant. Piling up over him like earthworks. Breaking out would be no mean feat.
Their parth took them from the church and into the spralling mass of building that was the rest of the town. The interior was no better maintained than the outside. Everything was dark and dirty. The change from gapping chambers, so huge the roof disappeared in fog to narrow corridors tight as mine-shafts gave Oherod whiplash.

Twisting and turning like an intestine, their parth was so confusing that Oherod soon lost all sense of direction. Paul, who led the macabre procession, faced no such confusion. He never took a wrong step. Marching forward to the Farther, he held his head high. The townspeople flocked behind like, forming a thick river of horror. Oherod was unsure whether they had some part to play in what was awaiting him, or if they followed out of morbid curiosity.
They began descending. Paul led the way down the narrow staircase. Black as tar, there was no light. Oherod felt his way down. The stares, cut in roguth and almost always uneven chucks, did him no favors. He came close to falling a few times. Each time, his honor guard was always there to stop him.
The air in the cave was dead. Frozen in the way that only something that had never felt sunlight could be.
Just as Oherod was beginning to wonder how deeper they could go, the steps stopped. They had arrived.
The change in the air suggested a wide open space. Their was dripping in the depths of the cave. Stalactites dripping down into stalagmites, the hour glass of the aeons.
He stepped into the darkness.
“Farther!” Oherod called. “Show yourself”
He turned on the light. An electrical crackle filled the air. A neon-flame from his palm revealed the carven. Though small, it cast powerful shadows.
The chamber was indeed large and round. In the center was a slab of rock. Though it bore no signs of craftsmanship, Oherod regnosed it for what it was. An alter.
While behind Oherod the space was filling up with the townsfolk, opposite him were the creatures from below.
They were black and lean, without any skin or mustels to speak of. Oilily, their then membrane-like skin glossed in the light. Like statues of shadows, they stood perfectly still. While the townsfolk moved with restless energy, these spectres only movement was a soft swaying. So close to death, Oherod had to see their souls to know they were alive. Their over-sized jaws jutted out from their face like cancers.
Oherod knew what he was looking at. The children of the Father. The descendants of the Townsfolk. The future of the townsfolk. The next step in the their evolution.
Before Oherod could speak, something caught his eyes. He saw who lay on the stone. His heart, the one that made no sound, stopped. Charlotte Marie. Alive? Yes, he could feel her pulse. Not dead. Held in life by a hair strand, her breathing was shallow.
The same could be said for a single body that was sprawled out across the ground, between Oherod and Charlotte Marie. She looked like one of the townsfolk. Five holes in her told Oherod how she died. Charlotte Marie? He spotted the gun, lying just out of reach of her hand.

One of the eyeless things hovered over Charlotte Marie. Her hand rested on Charlotte Marie’s throat, like a sword suspended by a rope. Black nails bit into soft flesh. Not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to make the threat plane. Oherod froze.
The eyesless things called at Oherod’s reaction. A laugher that could flay flesh from skin. Oherod felt it like a whip.
“Let her go,’
“You have come to barter, yet brought nothing,” The thing said. Her voice bubbled like a cauldron. The transformation that had so broken her body had not left her voice untouched. The jaw was not made for speaking.
“Where is the Father?”
“He will not see you,” One of the creatures snapped. Their voices seemed part of the cave, like steam rising from the vents in the earth. “You are nothing to him.’
“When he and your kind are dust, we shall see about that,”
“Who are you?’ The cave asked. Oherod couldn’t tell if it was the same voice that spoke, or another one. Their mouths worked like alien machinery.
“I am Oherod,”
“What is a name to us.’ Oherod thought it might be a third voice. The creatures, still to move, spoke with one voice.
“But I know yours. I know your Father.”
No response. They waited, listening. Oherod had struck first and subsided them. His eyes flicked over Charlotte Marie on the stone. Just for a moment. Just long enough to remind him what was at stake.
“So who are you then,” He asked of the demons. “To the Farther I mean? You’re his soldiers? Disciples.”
‘We are his children.”
“And what does this father ask of his children?”
“That we bring high a feast, so that he might be forever young.”
“And what comes next?” Oherod asked Lazaly “After you’ve brought him his feast, and he’s devoured and all of you stay young forever, what happens next?’
The confusion was visible, even on the disfigured faces. There answer “You are stalling for time,”
“I’m trying to warn you!” Oherod shouted back at them. His outburst was like gunfire.
“Warn us?” The voice sounded insulted by the idea. “What could you warn us of, stranger?”
“Immortality,”
“You speak to distract us. We will take her life, and you cannot stop us.”
“Alright then. Sounds like you’ve got this all planned out,” Oherod appeared totally uncovered. “Expect for what comes next.”
The silence in the cavern was tight as a rope. Oherod wondered if it was a line to safety, or a noose. Either way, it would be of his own making.
“I mean, you're not going to be satisfied lurking down here for eternity are you. No, one day you're going to climb out of this cave and step into the light. And it’s going to terrify you.”
“Nothing scares someone as much as becoming immortal. Because immortals not immortal. Out there, there are people ready to kill just about anything. There are monster hunters who’ll track you down. Self righteous adventures are going to come knocking on your door if even a whisper of what you do here gets out. So you’ll have to do something. Destroy all the weapons, hunt the hunters and burn the righteous. But soon you’ll realize it’s quicker if you get to the problem at the roots. So you’ll begin conquering. Squashing any hunters before they even raise a weapon. Hey, it'll be great! If I had to choose between being a conqueror and living the rest of my life hiding in the dark, I’d make that decision in a heartbeat!
You’ll also need to make sure you never run out of blood. Right now you can satisfy your hunger with a few killings, here and there. A bit of blood. But then you’ll want more. You’ll get proactive. Start storing it in vials, then vates. Before long, you’ll have rooms full of it, just in case you ever find it in short supply. But that’ll end as well.”
“You underestimate the power of the Father,”
“No, you underestimate time,” Oherod spread his hands in frustration. Why couldn’t they see! If he could just open their eyes, He said;
“If you live for another thousand years, you won’t have won. You won’t be any more ready to die. You’ll just be a thousand years older. Ten thousand years, you still won’t have won. All it’ll take to end your existence will be one shortage of blood, or one lucky assassin and you’ll be gone. Perhaps you won’t all go at once. If you want to live forever you have to win every fight you ever get into. You only have to lose once to die. One time in a million years.”
“You’ll disappear. You’ll all die. Every one of you here! No matter how many people you conquer, or how much blood you store, it’s only a matter of time and luck. Two things no empire has ever managed to get a handle on. And once you're all bones and dirt, do you know were you’ll survive? The peoples you conquered. You’ll become the devils in their religions. The bogmen in their stories. Old mothers will scare their children with the legends of the eyeless things from the depths. That will be the only hint of immortality you ever achieve,”
The candle in Oherod’s palm had been growing as he spoke, like when one turns the gas up on a old lamp. It burned enough to light up the furthest depths of the cave. Nothing was hidden anymore. Everything was on the table.
He could see the creatures in detail now. Oherod made himself look. They were sad things, really. Delicate, to the point the light made them sensitive. Whatever faces they possessed as humans had been broken up like plowed fields by their metamorpus. There bodys looked half-broken, limbs jutting on harsh angeles unusual in nature.

For what felt like an eternity, no one moved. For the first time the townsfolk were still. Oheord’s speech had cooled whatever burning sensation drove them to always move. They swayed like tree-tops in the breeze. Oherod couldn’t tell what would happen next.
“What’s going on?’ A high voice asked. It sounded like a trepeeses wire, suspended between two rocky towners
“The stranger is here, Father,'' one of the eyeless. “He comes to poison your feast,”
“What he said,” The high voice asked. “Is that true?”
“No, not a word,’ Paul assured whoever it was that spoke.. It was the first time the Priest had spoken up. “We have seen the world above. So long as you find blood, you will live forever. We all will. And you have all that you could need on the stone before you,”
There was no response from the Farther. Oherod, who could feel the heat of the townsfolk restless growing behind him. The awe of his speech was waring off. “I think it’s time I met you Farther!”
Then he really turned on the gas. Light exploded into existence. Thunder boomed across the carven. The chamber became bright as the planes at midday. Every shadow was obliterated. They found nowhere to hide. Not in the crevasse, nor the cracks of the cave were deep enough to hide from him.
Both the townsfolk and the Deep Ones curled up like paper in the sun. Like scraps tossed into a fire. Hands flew about to cover faces. Some fell to the ground, perhaps hoping to avoid the worst of it. If they had eyes, they would have been blinded. Oherod’s thunderclap had the same effect. Scolded and confused in one moment, Oherod didn’t let up. Radiant and resplendent, he walked towards the Farther, arms spread.
The eyeless things were the worst affected. Screaming, they tried to flee. They had no more luck than the shadows. Oherod gave no quarter. He pressed them, trying not to consider their pain. It was like holding their faces to the fire.

A child stood before him. Illuminated by Oherod’s light, he saw the boy for the first time.
It was Adam, the boy from before. Standing their, body writing as if servants lived deep beneath his skin, his pain was clear. So great was it that he couldn’t even fall to the ground. His face looked like it would burst.

He snapped his fingers. The cavern went dark. The light was gone, as quick in retreat as it was in assault. Not quick enough for Oherod. Even before it had fully flead, he caught the boy in his arms. He was limp, like a sack of sticks. Blistering burns made mountains and cannons across his skin.
“It….it hurts,” Adam said softly. His charred throat produced only a narrow sound with the texture of sandpaper. “They told me…..nothing could hurt me,”
Oherod held the Farther in his arms. Eternal youth. The poised gift. Everlasting life tainted by childish innocence. Why hadn’t Oherod seen that? The one child in a village that had claimed to have found the secrets of youth. “You’ll be alright,”
“It’s so hot,” He wiggled like a prisoner in chains. “Why is it so hot? It’s hot, I’m burning,” Oherod knew what needed to be done. He pinched a handful of dust from the cavern floor. The grey chalk crumbed between his fingers.
With a steady hand, he held it above Adam. Then he turned his hand. Grey dust floated softly down.
The miracle set in as soon as it touched Adams' skin. It was like watching it burn in reverse. The blinsters shrank away. The scars crawled into themselves, without leaving a hint of their existence. The valleys and the mountains of the burns levled out. Nothing of there existence remained.
Adam’s struggle subsided. His breathing slowed, then deepened. He was not closer to sleep than unconsciousness.
“Thank you,” The words escaped his lips like smoke from a vent. It was so soft Oherod almost missed it. But he was glad he didn’t. The words brought him as much peace as the dust had.
Paul was the first back of the on his feet. The light had left him with a pair of scars, slashed though where his eyes should have been. He walked with a limp in his right leg.
“Come away Farther!” He sounded desperate. Oherod’s eyes shot up to him.
“Keep back,”
“You corrupt the boy!”
“You’ve done enough of that on your own, I think,” Oherod’s voice was quiet, but furious. He looked at the eyeless ones. They had yet to rise. Years of life in the carvens had left there skin sensitive to even hints of light. Though he had not killed them, Oherod knew they would be incompastated for a while to come. Yet Paul took up their cause.
“Farther! Farther you must come away,” He called. He limped forward. Pain jolted up though his entire body with each step, as if he stood on a landmine. Strength leaked from his body like a bucket with a hole in it. Each step and he only became weaker.
Adam stured softly. He muttered something. Twitching, it took him some time to find his limbs. He sat up in Oherod’s arms.
“Why don’t you have a heart?”
There was such innocence on his face. It was an alien in such a hard place. It propelled Oherod to explain. “I’ve never needed one. I’m not mortal”
“You’re like me,” The boy was excited, in a childish way. Oherod wanted to say yes. To nod and tell the boy that yes they were alike. He realized then how lonely the boy must be. The feeling was familiar to him. Prehaos that was why he found what he said next so hard to say.
“I’m really nothing like you. You’re the lucky one. You can grow up, if you want. You can get old if you want. Die even,”
The word caused an almost chemical reaction in Adam. He tried to get up from Oherod’s arms. “Why would you say that?”
“Because one day you will, Adam. No amount of blood is going to stop that,” Holding the boy still was no challenge. Physically, at least. It felt to Oherod like he was strangely the boy. It was why he didn’t hold on as tight as he could have.
Adam screamed, “Stop it, stop it!” He broke from Oherod’s grasp and ran straight for Paul. The Priest was more than ready to take him into his arms. Adam threw his arms around Paul’s legs. Paul put a hand on his head.
Oherod thought more carefully about his next move. He had scared the boy enough. No, he realized with sudden insight. Not enough.
He matched towards Paul. Three heavy strides and he was on them. Paul was defenseless. In a swift motion, Oherod tore Adam from the Preists arms. It was like tearing a branch from a tree. Done with him, he threw Paul away as if he were no more than a toy.
He pulled Adam by his arm, ignoring the boy's pleas. Each cry was a needle in his spine. But he didn’t stop. This might hurt Oherod, but it needed to hurt the boy.
Charlotte Marie had yet to sturr. She lay, near dead, on the rock. Adam was tossed carelessly at her feet. Striking the ground, he cried out. Oherod didn’t flinch. Hovering over Adams shoulder, his voice was that of the commander. The kind that inspired imideat action and totally obedience. The kind that few could disobey.
“Can you hear her?” He demanded. Adam couldn’t find the words. Oherod tossed more fuel onto the fire. WIth a iron hand, he pushed Adam’s ear to her chest. It was a risk. The boy had teeth as wickard as the Deep Ones. The flesh of Charlotte Marie’ neck was exposed. Vulnerable. Oherod griped the back of the boys hair with a closed first. “Well? Can you hear her?”
“Let me go,” Adam sobbed, “Your hurting me,”
Oherod pushed him closer. “Can you hear her? She has got a heartbeat hasn’t she?”
Adam eventually spat out a sad; “Yes,”
“And you can hear it?”
Another blaber that was vaguely affirmative. Oherod pulled Adam back to his feet. The boys legs were like twigs, and Oherod held him aloft. “Once you’re finished with her, you won’t hear anything. It’ll be silent. Like mine. You want that?”
“It’s how it has to be!,” This was Paul, chiming in. Without looking, Oherod pointed a finger towards the Priest. There was a sizing sound like burning fat. Then a cry. Paul collapsed. Clutching it tightly, he stared madly at his hand. In the center of his palm there was a hole. It was the size of an old-world dollar.
“Stay down,” Oherod nodded at the Priest. “Or the next one’s through your head.” He held his finger up in warning.
Paul didn’t need to be told twice. Adam, who could only have heard Paul’s pain but not seen the wound, broke down even more. What images did his mind dream up of this stranger, who spoke of death and buried the village? How did he picture Oherod, the one who cares?
“Please don’t hurt me,'' he said, over and over. The words rolled around and around like a wheel, spinning endlessly off into the distance.
“I’m not going to hurt you. The question is, are you going to hurt her?”
Adam was incoherent.
“Are you going to drain her, and toss her away? It’s what you do, isn’t it? It’s what you’ve always done. Did you ever look at who you were killing, Adam, or were they not worth that?”
“I didn’t want to hurt anyone,”
“But you did, Adam. You do, it’s what your people do. And for what? In the naming of never growing up? Of never getting to let go of life? When does it end, Adam?”
To the child’s mind, the question wasn’t rhetorical. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,”
In the corner of his eye, Oherod caught a glimpse of a shadow moving across the cavern walls. An instant later, thee way the sound of lighting. The shadow collapsed. A eyeless one lay on the ground. Steam rose from a hole in the it’s misshapen skull.
“I think it’s time that you all started still,”
All of them had gone still. If they made the slight movement, they could share their fallen brother’s fate. They had always believed themselves quick. Deadly. Now they found Oherod quicker and far more deadly.
“I think it’s time you all were silent, and let the Father you’re so proud of think for himself. Wouldn’t you like that Adam? To make your own choices?”
He nodded. All the words were gone. Exhausted, like spent bullets. Oherod’s chamber was nearly empty too.
“Would you like to grow old? To live without being afraid. To stop all this!”
Oherod waved his hand around the cave.
“So that when death does catch up with you, you’ll be ready to meet it. No one dies and wishes they spent more time killing. That’s not what’ll get you ready for it.
You can meet death two ways. Running from it, or on your own terms. Wouldn’t you like that? Wouldn’t you like to stop running?”
There were tears in Adams' eyes. For the first time, Oherod saw that they were not dull like those of the townsfolk. Blind, he might be. But he had been human once. He had human eyes. Sad eyes, with the look of a defeated soldier in them.
He wasn’t incoherent any more. He wasn’t rambining. Just quiet. A nod was all he could manage.
“I thought so,’ Oherod said softly. He knelt down. Suddenly the god didn’t seem quite so tall. He put a hand on the boy’s soldier “I thought so.”

The townsfolk moved, slowly at first. Paul got to his feet. Still clutching his crippled hand, he looked towards Oherod with spite. “It’s our nature to feed. It’s how we live. You think you can change something but you can’t.”
“Nothing can’t be changed,” Oherod stood to face him. The two were eye to eyeless scar. “If your not too scared to change it,”
“Your a fool,” Paul’s reasoning was gone now. Spite was his only motive. “You think we’re scared of change? We’re scared of you! Anything that you change won’t be real change”
“If you're more scared of me than dying, you’re a fool,” Oherod said sadly.
“It won’t last,’ Paul’s screech was electric. “You’ll have to kill us before we change. I won’t change, no matter how many minds you change. You’ll have to kill me!,”
Oherod wasn’t about to make any mayters. As Paul lept towards him, hands outstretched and fangs on full display, Oherod casually raised his hand. Paul’s trajectory changed as suddenly as if he’d hit a wall. He fell to the ground with a bone crunching crack. He lay their, twitching.
Adam gasped. “Is he dead?”
“No,” Oherod said, “That would have been too easy.”
Adam’s face was crossed with confusion. He didn’t understand. Oherod didn’t expect him to. “He wasn’t wrong though Adam. Change is hard. You're the only one of your kind who can turn blood to youth, is that right?”
“I think so,”
“Then it’ll rest solely on you to change your people. Paul might be the loudest, but he’s not going to be the only challenges you’ll come across. Do you think you can do that?”
“I think so,” Adam said. Oherod looked at the boy. Was he a boy? Eternal youth, what a kicker. How old was the creature he was looking at? Older than appearance suggested, at least. So old that he had watched at least a generation of townsfolk twisted into the eyeless things. But Oherod had one question.
“You're the Father of these creatures, is that right?”
“I was,” Adam said slowly, “I think.”
“Was there ever a mother?”
“A mother?” A child couldn’t be expected to know what Oherod meant. He scoffed it as much as he could.
“Someone who gave birth to the children?”
“A long time ago,’ Adam’s voice was even slow as he drilled down through his memories. “I was older then. She could do things. Things I couldn’t explain.”
“This woman, did she have a name?”
“I don’t remember”
Oherod reached out a hand. “Might I have a look?”
Adam nodded slowly, more out of impulse than understanding. Oherod put his palm against the boy's forehead. And opened his soul.
Instantly, Oherod was falling up a long tunnel. He sat the eye of a whirlwind of memories. Riding the calm in the center of that sorm, he plunged into the past. Visions flashed past him. In benefit glimpses, he saw the faces of the townsfolk. Oherod also witnessed the rituals of blood. The source of the eternal youth. Paul, he noticed, had driven them. Under his supervision, they had become more common to the point every traveler coming in from the planes was sucked dry. Men and women. Children too. Entire families swooped up, while the townsfolk gorged to the point of wastefulness. Adam drank more and more. He became younger and younger, until he was hardly more than a child. Given time, one could only guess how far back the boy would have gone.
Oherod found what he was looking for near the base of the tunnel. Images of a life, now forgotten, flashed across his eyes. All of it was obscured by the fear. It was palpable in the memories, hanging over. It was like a glass tinge, alternating the colour of everything. The fear of growing old. The fear of his slow death. The inside rot. Oherod felt them all as powerfully, as visiraly, as Adam, or the old man who Adam had been, had. Which made what came next seem natural. Rituals under the moon. Candles burning over arcane books.
A pact of blood, signed in blood, and forefulded in blood. Adam held out his hand. Oherod’s sister took it. Kazar was as pale and dark as he was blond and round. Her smile was evil.
But it was her eyes that hurt the most. Those eyes laughed at him through the centuyes as she handed Adam his gift. The kind that could keep a person young for an aeon. The kind that came with a heavy price tag. Adam watched as Kazar birthed the Deep Ones in the same carven. Her cackles echoed off the cold stone walls. Oherod could still hear it as he climbed out of Adam’s soul. The boy looked confused, as if he had tasted something funny. Not a strange reaction to a soul searching.
“What did you find?”
“What did I look for.” Oherod patterned his shoulder. If Adam wanted anything else said, then he didn’t say. It wouldn’t have been unusual not to. The fear that had driven an old wizard to seek out Kazar was still inside Adam.
Adam looked over at where Charlotte Marie lay. “Your friend, will she be okay?”
“She’ll live,” Oherod smiled, “She’s tough.”

Charlotte Marie woke with the sun in her eyes. She was lying on the ground. An ache at the back of her neck throbbed like a vein. She brushed it gently, expecting to find a wound. There was no blood.
Memory returned to her like a slow train, seen in the distance first, and then growing. She remembered being somewhere dark. Somewhere damp. Cold hands cradling her. Voices. A flash of light. Voices again, the same but different. Then silence, and dreams thick as honey.
Charlotte Marie rolled onto her side, shielding her eyes with her hand. She was on the planes again. It was midday. The village was nowhere in sight. Sitting to the west, the mountains seemed closer now. Their huge peeks seemed even taller up close.
Near her, a pile of tallgrass hissed with fire. It set sick, yellowish smoke billowing into the otherwise completely blue sky. There were no clouds. Somewhere, not far off, she could hear running water.
She looked around for Oherod, but saw only his leather pouch. She should have looked for him, but instead remained were she was. He was close. Something she couldn’t name told her that. He would return in good time. In his own time.
Charlotte Marie savored the stillness. She bathed in it like a pool. She had been traveling for so long she had forgotten what it was to be still.
Yet even, her mind was alert. Oherod was somewhere close, which calmed her. As did the fact she was still alive. But regardless, questions stil assaulted her from all sides. How had she gotten here? What had happened in the village? Her mind felt like a sieve.
“You're awake,” Oherod said, from over her shoulder. She rolled onto her opposite side, propped up by her elbow. He stood on a slight rise, relaxed. The wind blew the folds of his coat around him. A bright smile flashed out from underneath the shadows cast by his big hat. Charlotte Marie wasn’t quick to return it.
“Where are we?” She asked.
Oheord looked around, searching in mock for a signpost. “I can’t rightly say. Somewhere a lot safrer than before, I think.”
“How long was I asleep for?”
“We left this morning?”
“The village?” Charlotte Marie didn’t know what the question there was. Oherod seemed to understand regardless. He looked her in the eyes and said,
“It’s settled,”
“I saw things…” She began, thinking back to the voice. She corrected herself, “I heard things that…I can’t explain/”
“I thought you might have,” Oheord signed. He sat down beside her. “Anything worth sharing?”
“I don’t know,”
“Then tell me what you remember and I’ll decide,”
“I remember getting hit on the head. I went to find Thunder, like you asked. When I got there, someone was waiting,”
“Elizabeth?”
“Yes, that’s right.” She turned to her companion. He watched as her expression rotted, like fruit left too long on the ground. “How did you know?”
“She spoke to me before we left,”
“She’s alive?” Charlotte Marie tore at any moursuls of hope. She kept her voice neutral. If she hoped, then it would only mean disappointment if she was wrong.
“Despite your best attempts, she lived.”
Charlotte Marie let out a long breath.
“I should have said I was sorry,”
“You where’t in a fit state to be telling any body anything,” Oherod laughed, “Although I somehow think she knew. She spoke to me before we left. I’m suspoed to tell you that she had seen the man you asked her about. Pale Wing. He passed through a week ago. They’d meant to do do him what thye were going to do to you, but he didn’t stay long.”
“It’s good to know he’s still running,” Charlotte Marie grimaced. “Although it might have been nice for him to meet his end in that cave,”
“You remember the cave?”
“I remember it being dark and cold, and then…light?” She kept the accusation out of her voice, “Did you kill them?”
“No,”
“You left them alive?” Charlotte Marie asked. “After what they did?”
“What they did was done and all I could do was choose what would happen next.”
“They would have killed us! I saw them in the church?”
“I saw them.” Oherod countered. “And I listened to them. I head their fear. The boy, Adam, hadn't always been so young. But he had been afraid once. I’m not going to punish him for a moments fear,”
Charlotte Marie shook her head in disbelief. “Someone had to stop them. I saw what you did to that wall. You could have killed them, couldn’t you”
Oherod admitted, “I could have, but it wasn’t my place.”
“So what, you just let them get away with it?” She demanded. Oherod didn’t answer. Charlotte Marie said, “Sometimes you have to make it your place to put something right in the world,”
“And sometimes you can put something right without these,” Oherod held a pistol in his hand. Her pistol. Charlotte Marie scratched them back.
“Those are mine,”
“I was only looking after them,’ He said, “I didn’t want to shooting your foot off in your sleep,”
“They have a catch,” She told him pointitly. Defensively, she ran her hands over the cold steel. Petty, she knew. a\a little embarrassed at the outburst, Charlotte Marie tried, in her flawed way, to apologise.
“Thank you.” It sounded too sudden, even in her own ears. “For looking after them I mean,”
Oherod had no complaint about the apology. He smiled sympathetically. “One of us needs to be armed, I suppose.”
“Well you're not as helpless as I thought. I saw the things you did to those creatures.” Charlotte Marie would not ask outright what it was she had seen. She was more than a little suspicion of Oherod. Sourcers and warlocks only remind her of Pale Wing. Pale Wing only reminded her of what had been lost. She didn’t go any further down that road.
“What were those things? Did Pale Wing create them?”
Oherod assured her. “No, not Pale Wing. They were far older demons than any he made. As for what they where, they were the spawn of a powerful being and Adam,”
“The child?”
“Yes, although he had been older once. He was “gifted” the youth, fueled by blood. So long as he kept drinking, he could starve off age.”
“And those things were his children?”
“Yes, although in time I suspect as he became younger they began to see themselves more of his gardeenes. People like Paul, not quite yet fully devoured by hunger, but still with enough animal instincts to drive him to feed.”
“But why did they need him then?” Charlotte Marie asked, “And why stay in their village?”
“The creatures can’t survive long in the sun. You saw how the faintest light affected the townsfolk. Imagine how the true deep ones would have reacted. Traveling at night wasn’t an option. From that town, there's nowhere you can make it in one night. It’s like an island.’
“And the first question?”
“Blood magic is, by its very nature, bound to a single person,” Oherod said. “If the creatures or townsfolk had taken the blood, they would have just been sucking a person dry. Adam was the key. He could turn that blood into youth,”
“He’d have a lot of blood on his hands then,” ​​Charlotte Marie fingered the trigger on her wepion.
“More in his stomach,”
A glare told Oherod his comment wasn’t helpful. To cool the tension, he said, “I take it your going to keep following Pale Wing?”
Charlotte Marie looked at the mountains in the west. She pictured Pale Wing, white coat flapping around him in the heights, hands scrambling as he crawled up those mountain rocks. She could hear the tundra whipping all around him. She smelt the cool mountain air. Felt the rocks scar his hands in his mad scrabble towards heaven.
Charlotte Marie shoved the pistol into her belt. “We’re losing time,”

And so the pair marched towards the distance. The silence between them had thawed away, like the snows under the summer sun. Yet it was not filled by words. Endless word, that could run a tongue dry and still not have said half as much as a silence.
The world didn’t seem as dark, even when the disappeared and the moon transformed the entire world into a silver ilusion. They camped that night under the watchful eyes of a thousand stars. Oherod sat late into the night, watching the last of the fire die away. The soft sound of Charlotte Marie’s dozing was the only disturbance in the otherwise still night. Her hand rested calmly on the butt of the gun. Oherod smiled sadly at how comfortable it was in her hand. She would be a killer one day. Today she had been spared that fate. But tomorrow?
Pale Wing was somewhere in her future. Oherod felt that. He also felt the rage inside her. What his crimes were unknown to Oherod, the effect they had on the girl was not. He looked across at her. Half of her face was illuminated by the fading members, while powerful shadows lurked on the far side. She’d meet those shadows one day. Come face to face with them.
Oherod’s only hope was that he’d be there to guide her through it.

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