Alone in the Dark

Eternal Ruins

Tomei moved forward through the snow, inching her way under the boughs of the silent trees of the dark forest as she neared the top of the ridge that she had set as her goal before turning back for the night.

She was used to scouting and tracking targets within cities, she could move unseen through crowded and empty streets alike without breaking a sweat. 

But, in the last couple weeks she had been hard pressed to apply those lessons to the forbidding, monster filled woods she had been tasked to search. Some things were quite similar, but not nearly enough to allow her the confidence of moving like she did at home. And the snow was never this deep at home, the air not nearly as cold. And darkness, without the aura of city lights or the distant sound of some other people, was far more complete than she had ever experienced.

But Tomei was a quick learner, and she had pushed herself to excel in this task, to prove herself to the leader of the Cat.

If she could keep her movements smooth, try to blend in to what's behind her and stick to the shadowed corners where details are blurred, she could fade into a forest as quickly as a sea of people. But the silence was harder to imitate. There wasn't the chaos of the city with a thousand sounds and people creating a din. Still, Tomei had learned that there was the steady hum of the forest, which was hard to meld into when you weren't naturally part of it. But she was getting better at understanding how the trees moved and to predict the difference between a natural noise and something made by a human.

And Tomei had been told to listen for when the noise stopped.  Not just in the way that the animals stilled when a human was too loud when passing by. She had heard that and gotten used to it. But according to Keana, there was a worse silence, one that she feared to hear.

Tomei had been tasked to search in this direction for the last several days, told merely to look for an old town or ruins of some sort that would indicate that there was once a palace here. She had doubted that she would find anything close to the sort for the first couple of days. She had trouble imagining that a place the size of a palace couldn't hide for hundreds of years without people finding it.

But she had eventually started finding signs of ancient civilization. It had started with her stumbling upon old roadways that had been broken up and hidden by forest growth. Then she had found fabricated stones clustered together as if they had once been a part of a house or wall of some sort.

It had taken a while, moving stealthily like and searching systematically through the valleys and trees like she had but each day she had could move to where she had finished the day before, her movements still silent, but more sure through the area she had already been.

Today she had decided that she was going to push to the ridge, and she was now inching her way up to that goal. She still had a couple hours of sunlight left, as the days were getting longer in the march towards spring. But the shadows of the forest were already getting long, and Tomei didn't share the confidence that the monsters in the woods didn't come out during the daytime. She moved as silently as possible, doing her best to be as inconspicuous as she possibly could.

Had not all this started during the daytime?  She was out here because a Lordling was riding with a full complement of soldiers, rumoured to be some of the best fighters in the nation? Didn't a dozen of them die horrible deaths, to be hidden in the trees until Keana stumbled upon them with his gift?

She let out a slow breath and pulled herself up to the ledge, staying low as she let her head move over the rocky ledge, taking in the valley that spread out below her. There, in a tumbling ruin, was the remains of an ancient castle. The earth had taken it back in places, for it was covered with moss and the trees had begun growing up around and through it, but she could see the tall walls, the towers and the buildings that appeared solid enough that there was no mistaking what it was.

It had an air of abandonment, and a feeling of depression swept over her as she watched it, even from a distance. There was something about it that was breaking her heart. The very place seemed to be the location sadness came from. Tomei couldn't shake the feeling that something had happened down there, and it had been so terrible that it had leached into the very walls and floors of that castle. Someone's grief had been so real that it had stayed behind even as the stones crumbled away to dust.

Even as she contemplated the lost history of the ruins, Tomei saw the shadows move in ways that shadows should not and her body froze in terror. She lost all control of her rational mind as she watched three tall forms walk along one wall. Then the forms separated from the darkness and took the shape of monsters. Her eyes kept trying to assign them human features, but their skin was a mottled collection of browns and greens and reds. Their features were more predatory than any person she had ever seen, and their hands, even from a distance, appeared clawed and savage. These weren't human, these were the monsters she was looking for, and the very sight of them made her whole body tremble with a primal fear she had never felt before.

Tomei wanted to throw up.

She wanted to run screaming in the opposite direction.

She wanted to curl into a ball and piss herself, crying for parents she had never needed.

All those emotions swept over her in battering waves as she watched the creatures move across her vision. Her reaction was uncontrollable, as if her brain had recognized the monsters from an ancient memory that told her these were humanity's primal predators.

It wasn't until they disappeared back into the stone walls again that Tomei realized she had been holding her breath and her body was vibrating with the terror that coursed through her. Once she was no longer seeing their forms, her brain released her and allowed her to process everything that had just happened.

Tomei forced herself to take a couple more minutes to watch for more movement, then crawled backwards back the way she came. It took all the control in her body to not run haphazardly away, fearing that if she was not careful, those hunters would be on her.

Once she was near the others, Tomei signalled to the others in her group to fall back and together they ran back towards where they left their horses. It wasn't until they had made it back to the road and were galloping back towards town, racing the setting sun that she told them in gasping breaths what she had seen.

There wasn't doubt in the other's eyes, but none of them truly understood what she had seen. Not that she could blame them.  She would not have been able to imagine those fearsome monsters without seeing them herself.