The Broken Song

Chapter Thirty-One

—Lower Town, Kiverryn—

"Fucking shitty tits!" Lulu groaned as the ground scraped her skin. Thrown through the closed doors of the highly disreputable inn she had found, her body tumbled over the ground, her long hair twisting around her face. The scrapes on her knees, elbows, and arms were bleeding, dirt rubbed deep into the open wounds, but she paid them no mind. The pain was minute and unimportant. What actually mattered was teaching this good-for-nothing sack of tiny mouse balls a lesson. "Hey, fuck-bucket! Don't hit a girl."

The man seemed not to hear her or care what she had to say. He simply reared back, intending to hit her again. Already, she could feel her left eye swelling. But, this time, she deftly avoided the blow, stepping aside at the last second to bring her sword down on his waiting arm. The man screamed, blood pulsing out onto the ground.

"I told you not to hit girls. It's rude you fuck twat."

The man's screams reached new heights as he clutched the severed appendage close, but she didn't let him suffer for long, shoving her sword through his chest a second later. When he fell to her feet, dead, she looked up to find the rest of the patrons in the inn staring at her through the broken doors. The man's friends took a step back as she walked over their friend's corpse and back over the threshold.

"See? No need to be up in arms. Oh, was that too soon? Doesn't matter. Who wants to tell me where I can find this Well I've heard so much about?"

*************

Idelle could feel dark whispers crawling over her skin as she watched the people moving in the street ahead. Everything felt wrong, the air, the sounds, even the ground beneath her feet. It was like the sewers and the night in Isca Kiverryn. Everything felt dark, dead, and haunting. She shivered and made no move to press ahead. The little sylph on her shoulder sensed something too and scurried up to the top of her head.

It seemed darker somehow down that particular street. The air was heavy, stale, and, if she listened closely, there were the faintest sounds of screams drifting through the quiet. The wind began to blow, cold and biting in its fierceness. The screams, she thought, perhaps born of her imagination, but as the wind picked up speed, the screams began to grow.

"You can scream and cry in the darkest hour. But we all end up in the Crooked Tower." Louder and louder, they came until it sounded as though a thousand people were shrieking in her ears. Idelle stepped away, trying to flee in the opposite direction, but the moment she turned, she was met with a horrific sight.

Ephine, impaled by the rusty spear, staggered forward, blood dripping from her mouth as she stuttered to speak. Idelle leapt back in fright, only to be grabbed immediately, a hand snaking around her middle to wrench her backwards. She sheathed her body in ice, forcing the stranger to release her. She whirled around, ready to strike again, but instead of finding one attacker as she suspected, she found, instead, the entire street filled from end-to-end with people.

They all stood motionless, unblinking, unbreathing. Idelle couldn't move, staring back in horror as suddenly, all at once, the bodies burst apart in a gory, horrific mess that made her scream.

But then, a hand was grasping her arm, turning her away from the jarring scene. Idelle stopped short, the scream dying in her throat as she saw it was only Duncan.

"What's wrong, little lady?" he frowned in concern.

Bewildered, she turned to motion to the obvious cause of her distress, but now there was no gore, no mess, only a few people milling about, watching the two of them with furtive, distrustful gazes. The fractured scenes could not be rectified in her mind, and so she found herself at a loss for words, gaping like a fish out of water.