Masis sat up with a groan—damp, stomach cramping, and with a lingering feeling of malignant wrongness. He clutched his head. His brain beat on the back of his eyes like feet stomped the ground at an autumn festival dance. One hand went to the sand to steady himself as the ground swiveled and rotated as though balanced on a flimsy tree branch. The ever brightening sunlight did little to help it. Eyes squinted to slivers, he tried to stand but the ground gave out beneath him. What little he had in his stomach reacted violently to the sudden jarring. He snapped his head to the side and retched, and what did come up scorched and singed his throat. Coughing haggardly, he tried to dislodge the pain.
The burn cracked the previous night back into his mind.
The nightlings had laid waste to the Shadows. Necks had snapped. Others had been thrown into the lean-tos' rocky exteriors with sickening crunches. Some wights had banded together to throw their victims high into the air and laugh as they flailed back to the ground.
Those were the lucky ones.
Some of the monsters had thought it great sport to maim a few Shadows. Those nearly lame souls had fled, broken legs dragged behind them, with all the speed they could muster. But it was vain. The nightlings would give them a little lead and howled as their prey slipped and staggered across the slick sod. Then they would appear before the bedraggled Shadows and drive them back the way they had come. Lean-tos had been pulled down on others. While those that had run fast enough to clear the colony's boundaries would rend the night with their screams as wighties fell on them.
So many screams. Masis squeezed his eyes shut, entirely. Only a clean, new scent lingered over the place. The rain had done its cleaning duty with natural efficiency.
He retched again. His body wracked itself trying to expel something that would not come loose. Whatever Charlan had wrought upon him would not be dislodged in that manner. She had pushed something into his inner workings, something vile that had clogged his mind and robbed him of his will. All control over his body had been wrenched from him, another's thoughts had overridden his, and he had been forced to watch the nightlings' grisly work.
That skittering, foreign element, like a parasite lurking beneath a tree's bark, still clung to his core. Though he had regained control over his faculties, it still skulked within, ready to topple him from the inside.
His frame shook with revulsion. Oh, Wilo cleanse me.
The earth had righted itself beneath Masis, so he creakily got to his feet and swayed as his body found equilibrium. He cast his eyes out over the rest of the colony.
Carnage surrounded him. Bodies littered the ground. More than half of the lean-tos had been toppled. From among their remains a few beleaguered moans arose. Some of the very lucky that had survived unscathed worked to free those trapped in the ruined shelters. Others went from person to person checking to see if any life remained within them. Some roused when prodded. Most did not.
Masis stood dumbly by. He wiped his mouth of the remnants of his vomit, its acrid scent still stung his nostrils. He staggered from beneath the pavilion only to pull up short.
What can I possibly do? His body sagged with the query. Do they even want my help?
Wilo barely crested the horizon, sending piercing lances of light across the green, moist stretch. Under those confessing beams, every twisted limb, every frozen terror filled eye, every corpse rigored in its place stood out clearly. The shimmering moisture that ascended in the sun's heat softened the edges of this grotesque scene, dampening the horror with a dreamlike haze. Any moment anyone of the dead would stand and laugh, drawing in the morning's bitter-sweet air, simply a figment of Masis imagination.
Clouds came over the horizon and killed the gilded effect. None stood. No laughter came. Only grey death surrounded him.
Clasping his hands, Masis strode out fixed on helping however he could. His body went to the exertion with a will while his mind remained dormant. The roughness of the stones and the moldy stench of the mortar imprinted on his senses as he removed rock after rock, searching for those that might have survived their sudden fall. He removed body after body. Some feeble survivors clung to him as he aided them to the benches under the pavilion. None who worked with him or clasped at him for support protested his presence. None seemed to care while hoisting corpses that he was their failed hero. Their failed Night Slayer. They just worked. They piled the dead and shuttled the shivering survivors to a seat.
Masis and another man finally came upon Ekkehart's remains. The man who had wanted to use Masis, wanted him to slay every nightling that threatened the colony, threatened him, lay there dead, his mouth locked open in a perpetual shriek. A fly landed on his nose and crawled to his shadow mark before it took wing again. Not a twitch of life. Grabbing under his knees while the other man grasped beneath his arms, Masis and he hauled Ekkehart's body to the ever growing pile just beyond the ruined remains of a lean-to. The pile stood downwind of the colony.
By the time Wilo stood overhead, they had finished their work. Sweat rolled down each person's forehead, each body was ripe with its own odor. Some thirty souls who had survived gathered near the mass of bodies, their marks standing out darkly under the sun. Masis' companion worker approached and carried a torch, its flames streaking in the direction of the balefire with the wind, hungry to be about its work. He rambled up to Masis and offered him his burden.
"Do it." His voice betrayed no anger nor did his eyes. Masis had to bear this burden. "You might want to say somethin'."
Masis accepted the torch, his hand hesitating only briefly. It did not waver while in his grip. The wind kept gusting over the heap of bodies, so it carried Masis' words over it as a benediction, a soft layer of sentiment to send them on their way.
"They were all good people," he said, his words quavering with his eyes. "Their only crime was to have survived...to have survived an encounter with a night wight, to have been marked for death and left to rot in this prison. May they find peace in the Grand Palaces Beyond."
Those behind Masis mumbled their assent.
Masis stepped forward and thrust the torch into a hollow amongst the limbs. The flames slowly spread, first catching on the clothing then turned carnivorous and seared into the flesh.
All present stepped back. While the wind carried most of the smell away, the bitter reek of hair and flesh still reached Masis. The smoke, heavy and greasy, creeped along the ground as the wind drove it on its way, never rising far from the earth as though their Shadow marks still bore them down and imprisoned them in the Beyond.
Most stood for a respectful period by the pyre. But after a time most began to filter away. First a few. Then in groups of three or four. They went until only Masis remained.
He stood there as the fire did its work, the wind tousling his hair as his mother once had. His arms hung at his sides. Tears, long since dried, had left trails in the film of dirt covering his face. None had seen his face, but he had cried. No sobs wracked his body. No sound escaped his mouth. But he had wept. The sheer number of deaths pulled the tears from his eyes.
Masis had never gotten to visit his ancestral mausoleum, an ancient oak, where his family had been laid to rest, before he left Hyrbn. When he was a boy, his family had gone to that imposing edifice to visit the graves of ancestors long past. Candles always had burned in small alcoves set in the walls. His father had shown him where the family would one day be interred, several outcroppings that would be magicked closed when filled, their names neatly magicked into each.
Masis' family laid there now. One spot was still empty. One for him. He would never fill it. Death had separated him from his family and it would keep them apart forever.
A lone figure crested the rise over which the smoke disappeared and drew Masis' eyes to it. Skinner stood tall upon its peak. His chest rose and fell as though he had just been running and his eyes darted about the scene below him. Eventually, his eyes fell on Masis. The smoke obscured Skinner for a moment only to be cleared away with a sudden gust. Skinner sprinted straight for him. His steps thudded into the ground.
"Masis Domrae!" screamed Skinner, voice sharp with pain and accusation. "Masis Domrae!"
Masis didn't move. His dull eyes inside a numb head supported by a spent body simply tracked the tall man's movements.
Maybe he'll kill me, thought Masis. Maybe death would be better than this.
What did it even matter?
Skinner barreled into Masis and tackled him to the ground. Grasping Masis by the front of his jerkin, the lunatic man pumped him up and down, ramming him repeatedly into the ground.
"What have you done?! What have you done?! Didn't I tell you something like this would happen?! Didn't I tell you?"
Masis didn't fight back. He let his body flail about under the man's mad assault. The back of his skull thwacked into the earth repeatedly, and lights sparked through Masis vision, as a ringing blared in his ears. Still Skinner drove on.
"Didn't I tell you, you arrogant nightling?" His voice cracked. Tears formed in his eyes. "You stupid boy... why didn't you... why didn't you just listen."
He fell off Masis, clutching his hands to his eyes. First sobs eked out. Wails followed. He lay there choking on his grief, his cheeks wet with the tears his hands had spread.
Masis lay where he had been tackled, his back aching, his head still protesting the abuse, but he paid little attention to either. The man he had come to respect from that first slap now lay next to him reduced to blubbering like an infant, its cries one moment feeble and modestly plaintive and the next ear-rending and demanding. He had caused it. His brash actions had felled this stalwart man.
What else will I ruin? Masis asked himself. What other lives will I destroy just by living?
Next to him Skinner quieted. Shuddery breaths rattled out of his chest until they faded into even breathing. He rose, turning back to look at the funeral pyre. His eyes fixed there for some time. Deliberately, he cast his gaze back to Masis on the ground whose eyes had never left Skinner.
"Leave," said Skinner. "I don't care where you go. I don't care what you might do. I don't care what company you might keep. Go to the wighties for all I care. But I tell you now, if I see so much as hide or hair of you after today, I will kill you."
Masis nodded. What else could he do?
"You're a curse," spat Skinner, "Masis Domrae. You killed these people. Not the nightlings. Not Ekkehart's foolish hope. Not Manu herself. You did. You bring death wherever you go. And what's worse you think you have a right to, you damn nobleman. You probably killed your family. Night wights seem to come to you like fish to flies. I hope that every one of these deaths follows you into the Grand Palaces Beyond. Curse you! May Manu take your soul."
Skinner's words ended and his long strides carried away toward the pavilion, leaving Masis where he lay. The weight of those words kept him there.
I probably did kill my family, thought Masis, his mind mired and spiraling.
The wights had only left him alive. Somehow, he must have brought them to his family. He must have.
I killed them. The thought twisted a queasy panic and despair in his stomach.
He rolled over and drew his knees to his chest. His forehead pressed into the grass and soil. Their solid smell filled his nose but offered no solid relief. Each breath was strained as his legs impeded the expansion of his chest. Somehow, he dragged himself to his feet and made his way to his lean-to, one of the few that had survived the previous night's attack. He gathered and packed his possessions with no real conviction, no real care. His cloak and a single strap of his pack sat precariously close to slipping off his shoulders.
Under the cover of the pavilion, some of the Shadows had started a fire and, from the smell that wafted from the steaming cauldron, were making fish soup. Some turned their heads toward him. Others ignored him entirely. Skinner's back faced Masis. He never turned around.
Masis plodded toward the small paddock over a rise where he had kept Ava. He arrived without even noticing he had covered the distance. The tall grass concealed the fence almost entirely. Only the empty space revealed its location. Ava was not within. Masis stopped. His numb mind awakened. After all the confusion of the raid he had not thought to check on Ava. His throat constricted shut. He broke into a sprint. The long stalks tore at his skin slicing angry stripes along his forearms and hands. He slammed into the paddock's fence. Hands grasping at the wood, his eyes fell on his horse's corpse.
Ava's bloated body had already begun to attract flies. Those buzzing insects carpeted her still open eyes and her legs stuck away from her rigid body not resting on the ground. Both Masis' mouth and nose filled with the unpalatable air wretched with decaying flesh. In all the chaos of the previous night a cursed wightie must have done the deed.
His bag fell from his shoulders, taking with it his cloak, as it slipped past numb fingers. Legs buckling, heart failing, Masis fell to the ground, wadded up like his belongings. A chill turned his skin to gooseflesh even as the sun bore down on him. No tears formed in his eyes, but his head wobbled as the blood retreated and decimated his equilibrium. He teetered. Shock rocked him about.
I killed them. I killed them all. It was me. It was my fault. His thoughts only followed that line and branched out from its main trunk into innumerable variations.
I'll just do more harm if I go on. As soon as that thought fully registered, his breathing steadied.
He breathed in.
He breathed out.
In.
Out.
Rising, he looked at Ava one final time, before he turned from the scene and trudged toward the sea.
*DON'T FORGET TO VOTE*