By The Sword - Homepage

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A loud, stifled scream echoed out through the night.

I froze, all of my thoughts grinding to a halt as my blood ran a frigid course through my veins. I glanced at Kye. She met my gaze in an instant, confirming that she’d heard it too. We both shared a nod, the unspoken statement hanging perfectly in the air between us.

We needed to pick up the pace.

After Myris had left, running off through the woods on his own, we had—or more accurately, Kye had been tracking him simply through the distant sounds of his footsteps and the movement he produced in the trees. With only those things to go off of, we hadn’t been able to move that fast, choosing instead to make precise movements over quick ones.

But with the scream still echoing through the trees, all that had changed.

A pure silence followed the scream—silence not even populated by the footsteps we had been tracking. Even the wind stopped, just letting its frigid stillness seep through my cloak and prick against my skin. I furrowed my brow, holding my breath in tandem with the world until the wail came back.

Then it came back.

A loud, gargled, and pained grunt split the night, sending shivers of fear to my core. The sound was distinctly human, and with how loud it had been, I could hear the low, gruff undertones that told me exactly who it belonged to.

We’d found him, I told myself in faulty reassurance. But, with the terrible sound repeating in my ears, I didn’t exactly feel reassured.

“This way,” Kye said shortly, already moving away from me through the trees. I blinked, standing frozen for only a moment before I shook the fear away and pushed on in her wake.

She walked quickly, bobbing and weaving through the trees with ease. I followed her, pushing past the frigid burn in my legs in a desperate attempt to keep up. The longer we walked, the quicker she got and the more purposeful her steps became until eventually, she broke out into a run.

I swallowed a groan, pushing past the pain, and ran along after her. I had to keep up with her—I had no choice. After all, if I lost her too, I was way more than screwed.

By the time she stopped, I could see more exhaustion in her eyes. Her shoulders were rising and falling at an accelerated rate, and the stoic, focused expression she wore was cracked a bit. I, on the other hand, was having to stifle my heavy breathes. And despite the fire still pumping in my veins, I was rapidly growing way too cold for comfort.

“What the hell?” I hissed as I finally caught up with her, the question little more than a breath on the wind.

Kye held her hand up again, silencing me in an instant. “He’s close. It’s close. Keep your wall up.”

My eyes widened at the mention of the source and any complaints I’d had died at my lips. The sharp fear that I’d experienced less than an hour before made me wince at the simple memory of the pain—the memory of the images they’d made me see.

I kept my wall up.

After only a few seconds of relief that my burning limbs relished in, Kye continued even deeper into the woods. She was moving more slowly this time, carefully choosing her steps as if following a specific path. For a moment, I wanted to complain, but my training kicked in far before I could.

Her eyes narrowed and her ears twitched, as if she could see and hear things that I couldn’t. When I scanned the trees, I didn’t see anything particularly special in the blur, and since we’d starting running, we hadn’t heard Myris again. But with Kye’s magic still working and her senses probably leagues ahead of my already near-perfect ones, I didn’t doubt her in the slightest.

In fact, as we continued to walk forward, I saw more and more what she was getting at. The trees around us started to become less sparse and more… organized. They seemed to break and twist together, growing away from their original spots as if forced into some sort of shape.

The trees around us looked like they were forming the rim of a circle, acting like thick, naturey walls that kept outside influence away and protected the clearing within.

Through the small gaps in the trees, I saw a blank, dirty clearing sparsely populated with bushes. A shiver crept down my spine at an impossibly slow pace as I realized just how similar it looked to the clearing we’d just come from.

Then, I heard what she’d been hearing too. Distantly, just beyond the wall of trees, the brush was being rustled and there were even more footsteps being made. Actually, as the sound revealed itself more and more, it sounded like a crowd, a group of impossibly soft steps both moving in perfect coordination and colliding with each other at every turn.

I forced my wall up, taking a singular moment to remind myself of both my body and mind. And as I felt the soft, ambient scraping of fear starting to invade my mind, I knew I’d made the right call.

Kye drew an arrow from her quiver, slowly notching it in her bow so that it made no noise. She pulled the string back, keeping it as steady as she could as she poked her head out between the trees and looked into the clearing within.

Within less than a second, she snapped her head right back and, with her bowstring still taught, pressed her body up against the bark of the tree. Her eyes were wide, further cracking the focused mask she’d previously had displayed.

I opened my mouth, ready to ask her what she’d seen, but she didn’t even give me the chance. She shook her head firmly and violently, betraying a grave seriousness that made me snap my mouth shut.

She nodded to me, making sure I met her gaze, and gestured to the tree next to her just on the other side of the gap. Without even thinking, I followed her command, pushing myself up against the bark and shying away from the hole, my sword clutched tightly in my hand.

I shot her a sidelong glance and angled my brows upward, asking her all of the questions that I couldn’t let escape my mouth. She shook her head. I swallowed hard, even the sound of that sending a shiver down my spine.

After a few hour-long seconds of silence, Kye regained focus in her eyes and glanced back at me. I met her gaze in an instant. She held her bow up, tugging the bowstring back and aiming through the gap in the trees before angling her head and gesturing toward it. I didn’t need more than a moment to know exactly what she meant.

Collecting my thoughts and keeping my wall firm against the passive fear I could already feel intruding, I poked my head out.

Inside the clearing… I didn’t see anything. All I saw was the half-dirt, half-grass ground that was littered with rocks and bushes. It wasn’t any different from the glimpse I’d gotten as we’d approached.

For a moment, I furrowed my brows and thought about poking my head back out to question Kye. But remembering the fear still scraping against my skull, I stayed vigilant and continued to scan the trees.

Then, slowly but surely as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I finally saw what Kye had seen. On the far side of the clearing, in a nearly pitch-black part of the forest visible between the gaps in the trees, I saw movement. Large, blank forms shuffled past, creating quiet clamor of footsteps in their wake.

My eyes bloomed outward. After I saw one, a switch seemed to get flicked, and I started noticing all of the other terrors hiding out in the clearing. Every gap in light, every shadow, every scrap of darkness, was hiding a terror in it, and the thin silver scars shined horribly off of all of them.

I felt the scraping grow louder and my heart nearly stopped. I whipped my head around, pulling it with the force of all my fear back out of the gap in the trees. A glint of something familiar caught my eye, but within less than a second, I’d pressed myself firmly back up against the bark.

I blinked, the afterimage of what I’d just seen playing back on my eyelids. To the side of where we were, in a shadowed part of the clearing, I’d seen the glint of silvery light. My eyes snapped open, instantly squinting in confusion. What I’d seen just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the clearing.

The silver light could’ve been from a terror’s scars, but that answer didn’t satisfy me. As I played the blurred image again in my mind the best I could, it looked… different—more familiar than that of a terror’s scar. It almost looked like the gleam of something metal.

Kye tilted her head and I saw her lips starting to move, but I paid it no mind. In a moment of pure instinctual curiosity, my head whipped back out, forcing my eyes to focus on the scene.

For a moment, all I saw was the same dark, blank clearing as before. But as the minute-long moments bled together one after the next, the forms showed themselves once again.

There, in the shadowed place I’d been watching only seconds before, was the hulking form of a terror. It actually could’ve been the forms of multiple terrors, but in the distant darkness, I could barely make it out. What I couldmake out, though, was the silver gleam of metal that I knew I’d seen before. Lying on the ground, twitching with movement every couple of moments, was a sturdy metal boot—one that I’d recognize in a instant.

Something touched my shoulder and I whipped my head out. My grip tightened on my blade and I brought it around quickly, slicing through the air right next to my shoulder. Feeling no contact, I blinked away the blur and focused again in the dark.

Kye glared at me, annoyed curiosity plain in her eyes. Her fingers twitched, threatening to curl into a fist as she stared at me. She raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes, making sure I saw the movement. My eyes widened as I realized what I’d just done and I instantly parted my lips to apologize.

Kye shook her head, the intensity of her gaze shutting me up right there.

Taking advantage of our locked eyes, Kye gestured back away from the circular treeline, pulled her bowstring back again, and all-but ordered for me to follow her lead as she scurried away. I went along in a heartbeat.

By the time we got far enough away to speak, Kye was glaring at me. No, she wasn’t glaring at me, she was glaring past me, gears slowly turning in her head. I saw it in the way she squinted, in the way her mouth twitched with half-words. She was trying to figure out what to do just as much as I was.

“Did you see him?” she asked, finally breaking the painful silence.

I squinted, the image flashing in my head once more. “Yeah,” I said, instantly unsure. I’d seen a metal boot—themetal boot worn by all rangers. But I still wasn’t sure. What if it hadn’t actually been him? It could’ve been some other metal boot. What if the terrors had manipulated my mind again?

“Good,” Kye said, interrupting my spinning thoughts with firm certainty. She locked eyes with me finally and squinted again. I was still unsure, but seeing the calmness she seemed to produce in spades, I felt a little bit better. If my observation was good enough for her, it was good enough for me. It had to be.

“What are we going to do?” I asked. Kye’s eyes narrowed farther, her hands relaxing on her bow.

“I don’t know,” she said. “If he’s in there, he’s probably surrounded by terrors... And given how bad they are this cycle, I don’t know how many of them we can take.”

I winced, swearing softly into the air. I didn’t even have time to relish in the mental clarity I’d been given by moving away from the terrors. The incessant scraping had dimmed so far that it was barely even noticeable.

“We have to get him out.”

Kye glared at me. “You think I don’t know that?” Her now-free fingers clenched into a fist. “We will. I just... don’t exactly know how.”

I ground my teeth, flicking my eyes back toward the clearing. Even dozens of paces away and through the dark night, I could still see the distinct, unnatural circular rim of the clearing. And despite not changing my distance, I could feel the sharp fear probing further and further into my mind the longer I stared.

“We need a plan.” Kye’s words ripped me from my thoughts. I turned back to her, my off-hand instantly moving to the back of my neck.

“Right,” I muttered, trying to force the situation through my skull. Myris was in that clearing, surrounded by terrors, and we had to save him.

Frustration flared up in my mind and my hand clenched into a fist. We had to save him on his own mission. All because he wanted to find the source so badly that he ran off without us.

I shook my head, letting the frigid air steal my thoughts away. Anger wasn’t going to help me right now. Whether I liked it or not, Myris had run off on his own, and he was in trouble. I could yell at him for his hypocritical ignorance after we got him the hell out.

“They haven’t noticed us yet,” I started, the dregs of a plan forming in my mind. “And as long as they continue not to, we’ll have a much better chance.”

Kye nodded, urging me to continue with her eyes.

“All we need to do is get Myris out and kill the terrors guarding him without alerting any of the others.”

The enthusiasm that had built in her gaze dropped in an instant. “Simple.”

I cringed at the sarcasm in her voice, but I didn’t have a rebuttal. “Right, simple. We’ll just have to drag him away and get out quicker than they can get on us.”

Kye nodded again, reluctantly agreeing to my plan. A grin grew on my face, attacks and maneuvers already playing back through my mind.

“I’ve only got three arrows left,” Kye said, thumbing through her quiver.

I nodded. “So we better make them count.”

Kye’s eyes flicked back to mine and she nodded as well. For a moment, silence hung in the air as the simple plan we’d just made solidified along with the stakes tied to it. It wasn’t that complicated of a thing to do, but feeling the fear still probing my mind, that didn’t comfort me all that much.

It was simple because it had to be, I told myself as I looked back toward the clearing. Myris may have been alone, dying at the hands of unspeakable fear, but we’d save him. We had to.

Kye raised an eyebrow at me, a question in her gaze. I furrowed my brow and held my sword tight, signalling that I was ready to go. It took multiple seconds of us standing in silence before I finally understood.

I was the one who’d seen where Myris was, and I was the one who was probably going to pull him out. She was expecting me to take the lead.

Right, I told myself with as firm of a nod as I could muster. Trying to move past the uncertainty, I shot Kye a hard gaze and, turning back to the clearing, I took the lead.

Out footsteps rang out as softly as humanly possible as we pushed back through the woods. Each step was a cannon shot of impossible quiet that quickly collided with the world around us and died in the commotion. Pace after pace, the shots continued to fire, pulling us with newfound purpose closer and closer to the circular clearing.

The soft thuds in the dirt slowed to a crawl as we neared the curved treeline. Through the gaps in the bark, I still saw the shadowy clearing, seemingly completely empty in its presence. But with the scraping creeping its way back tone by tone, I knew better than to believe what I saw.

I gritted my teeth and clenched my blade again, moving around the trees over to where I’d seen the glint of Myris’ boot. Doubt carried me the whole way there, screaming at me in tandem with the increasing fear that I was wrong. It told me that I’d seen it wrong, that Myris actually wasn’t in the clearing at all. It told me that we were off, so far off, and that he was still somewhere deep in the woods, dying at the hands of something more horrible than even a terror.

I shuddered at the thoughts, trying to keep them outside of my wall. The light sounds of incoherent mumbling lilted to my ears on the wind.

The closer and closer I crept toward the side of the clearing where I’d seen the boot, the louder and louder the mumbling became. Each new string of pained sounds only made me clench my jaw harder.

Every single step felt like forever as I approached, the soft, gruff voice that I was all-too-familiar with. He was there. I wasn’t just imagining things.

I pushed away the exhaustion, pushed away the doubt and the pain, and pushed away the scraping fear. All that was left as I walked up to the gap was me—my complete, disciplined self with only one singular goal on my mind.

I took a deep breath, letting the cold air flow through my lungs before I pressed myself firmly against the wooden bark and poked my head through the gap in the trees.

The sight that I got wasn’t like all the others. I didn’t get the blank, basic clearing. I didn’t have to adjust to the darkness. I didn’t get the realization that there were things in the shadows. As fear spiked hard in my mind and my fingers started to shake, I was met with the blatantly horrifying sight of terrors up close.

Standing only a few paces away from the treeline and slowly hobbling its way in the opposite direction of me was a tendril-covered terror. Its half-humanoid body was similar to the terrors that I’d seen before, but it was also inverted. The bottom half of it had pitch-black human-like legs covered in thin grey scars, but its top half was covered in too-dark tendrils that flared and twitched unnaturally in the air.

My heart thundered in my chest as I watched the horrid thing slink through the shadows, moving from one dark spot to the next in its trip across the clearing. I quickly shook my head, forcing the fear away and my attention elsewhere.

Closer to the trees—close enough that it could’ve easily heard me breathe—was another terror. And this one was looming over Myris’ body. My heart jumped as I saw it, the small, wolf-like terror looking down at Myris’ cold, pale skin.

The terror looked small, and with the number of scars covering it, it looked easy enough to kill, but I could barely pay it any mind. All of my attention was instead focused on the experienced ranger it loomed over on the ground.

Myris’s body was sprawled uncomfortably on the dirt floor, his arms and legs positioned in just the right position to keep him engulfed in shadow.

The smallest ray of moonlight split the canopy for a moment, gleaming off Myris’ metal boot and right into my eye. The corners of my lips ticked up just a bit. He was still wearing his uniform. Despite his body being clothed the same, however, Myris’ face was completely different.

Where there was normally a stoic expression or an all-too-confident smile, the older ranger now wore a pale, permanent grimace that shifted every time his lips twitched to let out another incoherent mutter. The terror lording over him twitched every time he spoke, almost shivering in pleasure as it took more and more fear from his mind.

I swallowed hard, anger flaring out from my core. The terror was there, feeding off of his fear and manipulating his mind just like it had done to me. But he was so close. If I wanted to, I could almost just reach out and grab him.

Then, as his face shook in terror once more, a pained yelp escaping from his lips, I took my own thoughts with an iron grip. Without sparing another second to think, my body surged forward and I grabbed my fellow ranger’s leg.

The terror looming over him looked up, its blank, wolfish face hissing at me in an instant. I ground my teeth silently and swung my sword out, catching its blank skin on my blade as I pulled Myris swiftly out of the woods.

A broken hiss split the air near my ears and I cringed, the sharp blade of fear bashing ever harder against my wall. A pulsing wave of mental pain washed over my head. I pushed my feet into the ground, pulling fuel from my growing anger.

The terror charged at me, hissing the entire way, but my body was far quicker. I dodged to the side easily, my feet not missing a beat, and swung down at its head. My blade dug in deep, forcing its way through the vile thing’s neck and leaving a silver scar in its wake.

The terror hissed wildly, its tendril-like arm flinging toward me in the air. I ducked it in an instant and pushed back, keeping my body firmly planted between it and its former victim. For a moment, I thought about pulling my blade out—about dancing around for a little while longer before I could land another strike. But as its thrashing did nothing to lessen its pain, I changed my tune. Pulling whatever scraps of rage-fueled power I still had left, I forced my blade further in and relished in its hisses as it was pushed to the ground.

I brought my blade up, tearing it wildly out of the dying terror and stood there seething. Fire still pumping in my veins, I flicked my eyes back into the clearing and watched the shimmering shadowy forms move more rapidly out of the dark.

The once-still space was quickly filling with movement as the terrors crept out of the shadows, probably following the sounds of their own. Bile rose in my throat and I forced it down, my eyes stuck on the scene. On the far side of the clearing, too many terrors to count spilled out. Each and every one of them looked distinctly different yet horrifyingly the same, and with each set of twitching grey scars, more and more fear piled on.

Through the dark blur of blank surfaces and silver scars, however, something else flashed in my vision. Distantly, on the far side of the clearing, I saw something that registered somewhere deep in my mind. Above the terrors, I saw what looked to be black hair, and towering beside that black hair, I saw the tops of what looked to be grey, bony… wings.

I squinted at the sight, my heartbeat slowing to a crawl as my thoughts spun in a frenzy trying to place the image. I’d seen it somewhere before, I knew I had, but no matter how hard I tried, it was always just out of reach. If I could just get a closer look, I told myself. Maybe I could—

“—Agil!” Kye hissed from behind me, ripping me from my thoughts. I blinked at the air, pushing back the mountains of foreign fear entering my mind. My breathing accelerated in an instant as I saw just how close the terrors had come to me.

I twisted my neck, whipping my head back toward where Kye was standing behind me. She was about half a dozen paces back, an arrow strung in her bow, and a concentrated look on her face. Her eyes flared out as they met mind, as if desperately calling for me to get out now.

And as I heard her breathing quicken, with a wave of sparks flying off the tip of her arrow, I quickly took the hint and, picking up Myris’ body with whatever strength I had left, I scurried away from the clearing.

The twang of Kye’s bow split the suddenly silent night.

And a symphony of hisses accompanied the bright flash of light that signalled our escape out into the night.