By The Sword - Homepage

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Guard duty. The extra specific task that Lorah had just for me was fucking guard duty.

I paced around the side of the lodge, the soft sound of my footsteps on the dirt echoing through the night. I flicked my eyes across the field, trusting in my near-perfect sense of sight. It was still empty.

No matter how many times I watched it, or listened, it was always the same. The large open field from the lodge to the tree line was empty and completely void of danger. I let out a groan, hoping, wishing that I could’ve been doing anything else.

Guard duty was little more than walking around and watching for threats. It wasn’t a very difficult task, but it wasn’t a very exciting one either. Lorah had chosen me for guard duty, though. Because it gave me something to do. Guarding the lodge was a very low-visibility task and it didn’t require me to get my hands dirty—unless we had much larger problems. She’d said it was an important job and, with the way the town viewed me at the moment, the one that would cause the least trouble.

I didn’t doubt her, but that didn’t mean I liked it.

It needed to be done, I told myself. I could at least make that case, but it was more of the same. I’d spent the past few weeks doing nothing but sit around while the town that I now called home changed around me. Going out was trouble, the looks I got—the threats in the eyes of people I’d known, made that all-too-clear. But just sitting around was boring, and I was itching for action.

I’d known my life was stale when the highlight of my day became dealing with Jason. As annoying as he was, he was much easier to talk to than the rest of the rangers. And even I had to admit, hearing him tell story after story of his miraculous hunting conquests was still more entertaining than lying on my ass. It was a break in the monotony, at least; even with as dull as it was, it still cut through the mind-numbing boredom I would’ve felt otherwise.

The first few days after the incident—that’s what Lorah had gone to calling it—had been nice. I’d slept in as much as I wanted, relishing in the comfort of my bed. I hadn’t had any obligations, but I’d still been able to fill the time. Those were the days before Kye had left and they’d been a lot more fun. Making jokes and listening to stories with her was a thousand times better than sitting around, practicing my stances and maneuvers. I already knew them; I already knew them by heart. I just had to train. But I’d done that already, in my old body.

I rounded the corner of the lodge, the lit torch next to the front door warming me with its light. My fingers brushed together briefly as I pulled the light but very snug cloak tighter around me. If I had anything to be thankful for in my new life, the high-quality clothes were definitely it.

When I’d arrived in Sarin, it had felt like the spring weather I’d experienced back in Credon. It hadn’t been too warm, or too cold. It had been the perfect weather to just forget about as I’d hopelessly tried to adjust to a whole new life.

But since then, it had only gotten colder. Feeling the nearly frigid air seeping even farther into my hands, arriving in Sarin felt like little more than a distant memory at this point.

The wind slapped me in the face, bringing me back to the present. I rubbed my nose, hoping whatever little warmth was left on my hands would transfer to my face. I walked closer to the front door and closer to the small fire that came with it. I had to be glad they’d put it up. They almost hadn’t, with Myris’ ‘worry’ that it would attract unwanted attention to the lodge.

“But that’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?” I’d asked. He’d shut right up after that.

“He’s just giving you a hard time,” Jason had said with a smirk in Myris’ direction. Jason’s unbiased arrogance was always a comfort. I’d known he was giving me a hard time, but that didn’t make it much better. Myris was, to put it bluntly, an asshole, but he only was that way to me.

The older ranger was bold and he always made the case that he knew everyone in town. It made sense, in a way, because he’d lived here for so long. I’d never asked his age, but Myris had to be at least older than forty, somewhere around the age my dad had been when he died.

Myris was friendly with everyone but in a guarded sort of way. I’d always see him, or more often, hear him talking loudly with other rangers, sharing stories or discussing the happenings in their life. He never started a conversation, that I could say for sure, but if one was started with him, he became a fucking knight in charming armor.

That was, unless the conversation involved me.

Whenever I tried to talk with Myris, or on one of the rare occasions that I had an assignment with him, he always ignored me the best he could. Anytime we did talk, it was the absolute bare minimum, whatever was necessary for the moment or whatever he thought he had to say to get me off his back. Myris had been a ranger for a long time—another thing he reminded me of constantly—and he was set in his ways. He didn’t like the fact that I’d become a ranger so quickly or the fact that soon after I did, everything in the town had gone to shit.

But both of those reasons were true, so I couldn’t really have blamed him for that.

I laid my head back on the wooden wall behind me. My feet complained in a half-hearted way as if my muscles themselves were too bored to feel tired. It was good to know that I wasn’t the only one. I rolled my eyes to myself as the memory of only about an hour prior played out in front of my eyes.

“The cycle is really unstable right now,” Jason had said while they were preparing. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Me neither,” Myris had cut in before I could even say a thing, his eyes bearing down on me. “We don’t know how bad it could be this time, so we have to stay on our toes.”

“Right,” the third ranger had said. Carter, I think, was his name. “And keep our minds sharp. We can’t allow any of their tricks to get to us this time.” That had earned a heavy nod from Jason. “For whatever reason, they’re here now. Even if their scourge usually holds off until after winter.”

I’d asked them then what ‘scourge’ they were talking about, but I hadn’t gotten a good answer. In fact, I hadn’t been able to get any answer, even if Jason had tried.

“We don’t have time to be explaining things that you should already know,” Myris had said, cutting Jason off before he’d even started. That had earned him a glare. “This is why you’re on guard duty.”

“Asshole,” I breathed into the cold air with a laugh, my words dying instantly in the wind.

The best idea I’d gotten was that every year some... ‘things’ would spread in the forest, almost like a blight. From what I’d gathered, these things were almost like unstable beings of magic that fed off fear. Whatever they really were, they’d played them up as extremely dangers. And apparently, they were dangerous enough that I had to stand guard. When I really thought about it, it sounded ridiculous, like it was being completely overblown; it sounded like some old piece of folklore I would’ve been told as a child. But I knew they were actually dangerous. Their last warning had told me that.

“Whatever you do, don’t get lured into the forest,” Jason had said. “If you hear a sound out of place, ignore it. If you see movement in the trees, anything that seems just out of reach, ignore it. Whatever you do, don’t get lured into the forest.”

A shiver raced down my spine as I leaned against the lodge, just as it had when I’d first heard the warning. A sudden coldness settled over my soul, one completely unaffected by the fire softly burning to my side.

I shook my head, trying to clear the fear from my mind. Jason’s voice had just been so... serious, more serious than I’d ever heard him before. I didn’t know what the warning meant, but that didn’t matter. After the way he’d said it, I was following his order no matter what.

My hand gripped tightly on the sword by my side, the weight of it comforting me as I pushed myself off the wall, ready to make the rounds again. It grounded me, kept me on my toes. The fact that my blade was so close at hand was enough to ward off any worry that could seep into my mind.

The wind blew over my face, pushing the brown hair I’d come to know as my own in front of my eyes. I brushed it away, feeling the cold air on my skin as my head tilted up. My curiosity was suddenly sparked, and I didn’t tilt my head back down. Instead, I looked further up, my slowly relaxing gaze staring out into the night.

The stars stared back at me as beautiful white dots, ones that, as I realized quickly, I had never truly seen.

I ended up just standing there for a while, my eyes wandering the skies. I’d looked up at the stars before, but that had been before I’d died. Since I’d been tricked by the beast, cursed with a life that wasn’t my own, and thrown into conflicts that were far from my own. Everything recently had just happened so… fast. I hadn’t gotten time to appreciate even the beautiful night sky.

A loud howl of the wind stung my ears and the frigid air blasted into my face, ripping me from my thoughts. I tore my gaze back to the ground and shook my head. I didn’t have time to be looking up at the stars. They had only been gone for an hour at most. I was still on guard duty.

I reminded myself of my duties and of who’d given them to me. My leader, the woman who’d allowed me to even become a ranger, that’s who’d given them to me. I wasn’t going to be wasting my time, I couldn’t just be wasting my time. No matter how boring it was, it was still my duty, and it was something I was going to fulfill.

Reasserting my resolve and pushing back the foreign thoughts of beauty, I pushed myself back around the corner of the lodge. The same field and the same set of trees filled my view as I scanned my designated area again. Seeing that it was still empty, my resolve weakened a hair. Nothing had changed.

My hand relaxed on my sword and I moved my eyes to the ground. A groan started to slip from my lips, but it didn’t make it all the way out. My breath caught in my throat as something flashed in the corner of my eye.

Movement.

I twisted, already reasserting my grip over my sword. My eyes stared through the dark, piercing it with any sliver of light they could find. I waited for a second, watching the still trees, but nothing was there. I furrowed my brow.

I’d seen movement, hadn’t I? Had I been mistaken? Was I imagining things purely out of boredom?

Jason’s warning played through my head. I straightened up and widened my eyes, scanning the trees again. It didn’t matter if I was imagining it. If there was even the smallest chance that the movement was there, I had to stay alert.

My eyes glided over the tree line as slowly as I could make them. The cluttered, gnarled trees stayed exactly where they were, not even swaying in the wind. As far as I could tell, there was nothing hiding in their shadows. The realization solidified in my mind, working to keep my feet on the ground, but from somewhere deep in my mind, it was getting chipped away.

My ears perked up, a sound registering at the edge of my hearing. I strained myself, focusing on the forest before I heard it again. The single sound sent a shot of pure ice straight through my veins.

The rustling of leaves.

I didn’t know why exactly it made me so scared, but with the cold wind freezing on my skin and Jason’s warning spinning in my head, I could only think of the worst.

Movement flashed again and I snapped my eyes to it, hoping to catch whatever it was in the middle of the act. But as my eyes focused on the position where it had been, I didn’t see any movement. All I saw were the trees.

My breathing quickened as more and more of my resolve was scraped away. My mind started spinning, dozens of possibilities all fighting for their chance to be rationalized. I pushed them all back. My body moved closer to the lodge, trying not to focus on the increasingly solid ball of dread in my chest, and I continued my watch.

The thundering of my heart was as much of a distraction as the sounds had been. Every few seconds, my eyes would scan over the forest, hoping to catch a deer, or a wolf, or a bird flying out between the leaves. Anything normal, that’s what I hoped for. Anything normal.

A loud thud echoed through the night. I froze, slowly turning my neck toward the sound. My eyes scanned the woods, watching the trees as carefully as I could and—there. A couple dozen paces away from me and just barely within the forest, movement rustled the brush. I focused on it, hoping to catch what it was, but all I got was the black blur of its shadow as it moved on through the trees.

I could almost hear the way the fear in my mind sharpened with every passing second.

“Help!” a voice yelled. My hand gripped my blade and I instinctively took a step forward. The voice sounded soft, softer than a yell should’ve been, and it sounded hollow. I stopped myself, furrowing my brow and keeping my feet from taking another step forward.

“Please! They’re coming, please, please help!”

The same hollow voice echoed in my ear, pulling straight at my mind. I grimaced, clenching my jaw as I forced myself to take a step back. It sounded like they were lost. It sounded like someone who easily could’ve been from Sarin. It sounded like a person. But I didn’t rush to their aid.

Jason’s warning repeated in my head. My breathing quickened, but I took a step back. No matter what I heard, I couldn’t get lured into the woods.

I ignored the sounds, going against every moral bone in my body, and walked back toward the lodge. The voice didn’t belong to a person, I told myself. It belonged to whatever they were already hunting. I couldn’t fight it, that’s why I was the one on guard duty, and I couldn’t let it lure me into the woods.

I leaned myself back against the side of the lodge and closed my eyes, trying not to focus on all of the thoughts scraping against my skull. The voice hadn’t even been convincing, I told myself. It had sounded distressed, but it hadn’t sounded real. I repeated Jason’s warning one more time, trying to force my breathing to be steady. This is exactly what he’d been talking about, a fake noise meant to lure me to my death.

“Agil!” a voice screamed after almost a minute of silence. I recognized the voice in an instant and snapped my eyes open. Distantly, somewhere beyond the tree line, Jason had called to me. I blinked for a second, my mind already doubting the sound.

“Agil!” Jason yelled again. “We killed the scourge, but the fight took us too far from the lodge. One of us forgot the fucking way back!” The horrible scraping of my fear only got louder as I listened.

I stepped forward on instinct but I hesitated for a moment after. The voice sounded authentic, it sounded exactly like Jason. It wasn’t hollow or unrealistic like the other one had been, it was the real thing, as if picked specifically from my mind. I furrowed my brow, unsheathing my blade in silence, and watched the woods.

I heard Jason grumble loudly somewhere in the distance. “Disregard my warning for now, that’s over. I don’t want to be stranded in here all damn night!”

Another step forward, drawing me closer to the woods. Frustration had entered Jason’s voice in the exact way it always did. And that sounded like something he’d say. Right?

I nodded to myself, rationalizing it in my head and trying to push the fear back further. It sounded too real, it had to be him. And I didn’t even want to think about what would’ve happened if I didn’t help him, that was a whole other set of fears. If he made it back, I’d see hell, and if he didn’t, I’d have to live with it forever on my conscious.

I shook away the worries of the future, barely even noticing the sharpened scraping of my fear, and pushed myself forward. If I didn’t help them, and they didn’t make it back… I didn’t even want to think about it. My grip tightened on my sword. I’d help him out, I told myself, I had to.

My footsteps rang out like muffled thuds in the night as I made my way across the field. Doubt screamed at me the whole way, but it could barely be heard over the raking behind my eyes or the howling of the wind. Multiple dozen paces became one dozen, and one dozen become one as I pushed myself closer and closer to the woods.

“Jason,” I hissed, my voice drowning out the terror for a moment. I tried to keep my tone as quiet as possible. Movement flashed somewhere further in the woods, moving almost the exact opposite direction of me. I cursed, my doubt giving way to action as I pushed into the forest.

The darkness around me was oppressive as I stepped through the trees. I’d hunted at night before—a horrible memory welled up fast before I could push it down. The sight of the kanir overtook my eyes, the looming, pale skin burned into my memory. I stopped in my tracks, almost running all the way back, but the thought of Jason, and Myris, and Carter still looking for me out in the wilderness forced me on.

When I’d gotten to the part of the forest where I’d seen the movement, I looked around, keeping my blade close at hand. Everything around me was still, the near pitch-black darkness challenging even my eyes. I blinked, trying to adjust as my eyes caught what looked to be shimmering in the shadows.

“Jason?” I asked the air, louder than before. I got no response.

The only thing in the forest for a moment was silence and it told me everything I needed to know. The realization hit me all at once, running through my mind like a chariot. There was nothing here. I whipped my head back, seeing the distant moonlight where the forest opened up to a field. I’d made a mistake, I’d made a huge mistake.

And when I tried to run, I found myself locked in place as hands colder than the air around me grasped at my ankles. A familiar memory, one that I barely recognized at all welled up in my mind. I turned around, keeping my eyes as sharp as I could, and swung at the thing grabbing me.

But my blade swung uselessly as the ground came up under me. My horrible, blood-curdling scream rang impossibly through the woods when my back hit the ground and I was dragged, far too quickly, out into the night.