It was a cold evening in Rostalion. Thin grey clouds stretched across the sky and a cold wind howled through the streets, setting the guard’s cloaks fluttering in the breeze. Each guard wore a ragged grey cloak emblazoned with a black moon and arrows, the symbol of House Tethir, the current lords of the town. High atop the keep in the centre of town flew their grey ragged banner with the same symbol. The banners and cloaks were ragged by design, the Tethir liked them best that way, they were supposedly more intimidating. The Tethir were all about being intimidating.

Rostalion was a town built around a keep at the edge of the world. It was the last town on the Grey Road before Three Kings Pass and the wilderness beyond. Various strange things often walked out of that wilderness. Things that looked like men but were no more than shadows, things that looked like shadows but were men armed with knives, and some things that were neither man nor shadow but walked all the same.

Rana had seen one of them not too long ago. It had two legs and walked upright, like a man, but it’s body was long and hunched and thin and ended with a face with a snout far too long to be human. It had skulked about the edge of the forest, watching her at her post with its beady black eyes. Then it had retreated back into the forest and she hadn’t seen it again.

Rana didn’t get easily spooked, she had been sent out to Rostalion because of that. But when the creature had watched her for two hours she had begun to grow worried. So she had come to the chapel they kept at the bottom of the keep. The creature was probably harmless all the way out there in the woods, but there was no harm in trying.

The chapel had been built long ago along with the keep. It had all been built from old grey wood out of the wilderness to some ominous wilderness god. There were still some folk in the town who still kept that god, Auriomauch they called him, the god of birds and death. But when the Tethir’s had come to Rostalion they had had no place for this dark god. So they had repurposed the chapel, covering the ornate bird carvings with draperies and hangings of their own, stripping away the vines and creepers that made the chapel so dark and oppressive. They had turned it into a chapel to their own god, Vestus, the god of strength and hunting.

Rana wasn’t particularly religious, she looked up at the shrine of Vestus, a huntsman with the head of a wolf, and wondered what to say.

‘I do not know what manner of creature stalks the woods,’ she thought. ‘Maybe it is harmless, maybe it is not.’ She looked into the statue’s eyes, they were kindly eyes, not the savage eyes of a wolf that the Tethir’s had probably wanted. The woodcarver who made the statue likely prefered kindly wolves to fierce ones.

‘Ever since I have arrived here it has been an ominous place, and now, being watched by this creature, things are worse. I hope the creature leaves me be. Maybe I am a coward for hoping so, but I do not wish to face creatures that are not human in battle. I fear the forest and what may be hiding in it.’

The wind howled outside. The statue didn’t respond to her attempt at praying. Rana stood up after a while, trying to get a handle on her thoughts. Then she left the chapel and returned to her house. As she was preparing for bed the horn sounded, far away at the gate to the wilderness. Rana was not on duty tonight and that horn wasn’t for calling the guard, but she went anyway. She was curious and her head was too full of creatures to sleep.

There was a commotion at the gate as it was opened and some guards rode out to get something. They rode back shortly afterward carrying a body with two arrows in it. But it was not the body of a human, it was the body of her creature. Long and thin with that inhuman snout stretching out from its nose. The guards laid it down in the middle of the road and all the onlookers stared at it. Whispers went through the crowd as the guards decided what to do. They knew there were strange creatures in the wilderness, but they had never seen any up close like this.

“What happened?” Rana asked one of the guards.

“It was trying to sneak up to the wall. It wouldn’t identify itself so we shot it.”

“Was it armed?”

“No.”

Rana knelt by the creature and examined it. It was definitely her creature, it was the same shape and had the same beady eyes. It wore little clothing and what it did wear was stained with blood, some of it fresh from the arrows, some of it much older. Under its long snout tusks sprouted from its mouth and a long tongue lolled out onto the ground. Rana looked more closely at its mouth. It was hard to tell in the darkness but the mouth looked strange, much darker than everything else, like a child who had been eating dark berries.

The Lord of Rostalion arrived, Jul Tethir, a tall man atop a tall horse. He dismounted to look at the creature, Rana stepped back.

“Does anyone know what this is?” he asked. There was mostly silence from the crowd.

“Paka will know,” someone said. They all turned to look at him and he shrunk back at the attention. Jul nodded, it was a small town and everybody knew everybody else. Paka was an old healer who had lived in Rostalion his whole life, before the Tethir’s had arrived.

“Let’s take this to Paka,” Jul said and the guards picked it up, following their lord through the streets. The crowd mostly dispersed but Rana followed as well. This was her creature, she wanted to know what it was. It didn’t seem nearly so scary now that it was dead.

In Paka’s hut the old healer cleared a space on one of his working tables by carelessly sweeping a huge pile of potions and bottles to the floor. Several of them smashed but he seemed not to notice. The guards placed the body on the table and he looked at it with a mad smile. Rana had never noticed before, she’d never really checked, but Paka’s lips were dark too. Not as dark as the creature’s but darker than his skin, dark blue, almost black even.

“It is a magrend,” Paka said dramatically, waving his skinny arms in the air. He was much shorter than them and his arms didn’t reach up very far. “Oh I have never had such an opportunity to examine one so close before.”

“Is it dangerous?” Jul asked.

“Don’t worry brave Lord Protector,” Paka said, bravely standing between the lord and the corpse on the table. “If it moves I will protect you.”

Jul rolled his eyes. “Are magrend’s dangerous?”

Paka moved back to the table and sniffed at the magrend’s clothes. “I wouldn’t say so. There aren’t too many of them out there and they aren’t aggressive. I’ve never seen one fight anything though.”

“Why did it come here?” Rana asked. “Was it looking for something?”

Paka considered this. “Hmm, good question, very good question. I don’t know. They haven’t come down from the wilderness since the time of Old Yoss. He had a big campaign, killed everything he could that was close to the city. Very violent, very bloody. Then you lot got here. Not much left for you to fight.” He paced around, stroking his chin. “Maybe it was lost, I doubt it had nefarious intentions, magrends aren’t very nefarious.”

“It didn’t stop when we told it to,” one of the guards said defensively.

“It wouldn’t have understood your language. The magrend have their own language.”

“Will more come?” Jul asked.

“Perhaps. Who knows what could be going on out there in the wilderness.”

“Do you think it was lost?” Rana asked seriously. She didn’t think a lost creature would go toward a town full of different creatures.

“No,” Paka said sadly. “The last time the magrend left their homes was when Old Yoss drove them all out. If this one left its home something else must have driven it out.”

“Do you have any idea what that might be?” Jul asked, worried.

“No,” Paka shook his head. “I don’t know much about what’s out there, from my understanding everything tends to leave everything else alone.”

Jul nodded, expecting as much. “We’ll send out a scouting party. If there’s something out there I want to know what it is. Paka do you speak the language of these creatures?”

“Nope, nobody does anymore.”

Rana felt sad at that. She was no longer scared of the magrend, it would have been nice to know more about it.

The next morning the scouting party left. Rana was in it, along with four other guards and Paka who insisted he was not too old to travel the dangerous wilderness at all. They set off down the Grey Road toward Three Kings Pass and left the town behind them. There had been scouting missions before of course, they were a key part of being a guard at Rostalion. But they’d never found magrends on one before. Rana was oddly excited.

Before she’d left she’d dug out the little old idol of Vestus she had. She didn’t think it would do much good but it was better to be safe than sorry.

As they rode Paka told them all about what the wilderness had been like in the old days. As far as Rana could gather it was much the same as now with a few more strange creatures. There were still lots of human tribes and the ones closest to the town still traded with them. A few of the tribes had changed around after some had been wiped out by Old Yoss but most were still the same. They were going to see one of those tribes now, the Shairuk, hopefully they would know what was going on.

It took three days to get to the closest Shairuk outpost. They likely could have gone faster without Paka but they didn’t mind too much. He was quite entertaining, rambling on about all the plants and animals they passed, and waving his arms in the air excitedly. They didn’t see any more magrends, or any strange creatures. Paka claimed they were all hiding but were definitely there. Rana asked him about all the different creatures and he told her about new creatures every time but some of them she was sure he was just making up, and the details for each creature changed constantly. When she asked him about it he’d just smile his dark lipped smile and chuckle to himself.

She’d asked about the dark lips, about the stain around the mouth of the magrend. He’d smiled at that too and told her to look in a stream the next time she was at one. She’d been curious about that but had done it anyway and while at first she found nothing as she looked closer she noticed that her lips too, were beginning to change. To grow darker on the inside just around the mouth, like some infection spreading from within her.

She’d been horrified at first but Paka had assured her it was natural, something to do with the food around here, the other guards had it too. She hadn’t known what to think of that, she would have liked to know more about it.

On the third day they arrived at the Shairuk outpost and found it empty. All the huts were still there but almost everything else had gone. All the livestock, all the food, all the weapons, and all the people. Silence descended on their little group and they began to move through the small village, peering into windows from their horses and around corners. It didn’t take much to ensure that the village was abandoned. There were tracks of a large number of people heading off into the forest, away from the Grey Road.

They all gathered back in the middle of the town and began to talk quietly amongst themselves. It felt wrong to talk loudly in the middle of the abandoned village.

“They must have been fleeing from something.”

“The magrend must have been too.”

“But we don’t know what. We’ll need to keep going.”

“We-”

Then there was a shout and they spun around. Out of the trees came a man, a man dressed in ragged black clothes with a mouth so black it was hard to see the horrible scars all around it. The scars were still dark and red with blood, one on each side of his mouth as though his cheeks had been cut lengthways. They all moved back in shock.

The guards formed a protective circle around Paka and pointed their weapons at the man. They were on horseback, he was on the ground and unarmed, but Rana still felt worried.

The man staggered to a halt and looked up at them with frenzied eyes. “You are completely safe,” he said, the panic and desperation in his voice and face implying otherwise.

“Who are you?” Rana asked.

The man looked up at her in desperation. His black lipped mouth opening and shutting a few times before finding words. “I am not Rezeral of the Shairuk, I am not the father of Merin nor the husband of Ashai.”

Rana furrowed her brow in confusion. “Well who are you then?”

The man was almost weeping in desperation now. Then he found something to say. “I am the herald of the Inkdrop Queen,” he said triumphantly. “I... I am the herald...” he trailed away as he realised they still had no idea what he was talking about.

The guards began to talk amongst themselves. Some of them wanted to kill him, he was very unsettling. Paka stayed silent, maybe he was scared too.”

“Who is the Inkdrop Queen?” Rana asked, trying something a different tactic.

“She is... she is...” he trailed off again. “She is far away,” he settled on, seemingly angry at that.

“And you’re her herald?”

“Yes,” he said, clinging to the word.

“Is she what drove these people from their homes? Is she why the magrend left the wilderness?”

The man’s eyes filled with tears. His black mouth closed and he looked so sad and pathetic.

“Answer me!” Rana waved her sword at him.

He staggered back in surprise. “No,” he said weakly.

“Then who did? Why did these people leave their homes?”

“I...” he began. “I don’t know.” He looked at the ground and slumped his shoulders.

“Then are you of any use to us at all?” Rana asked, sounding harsher than she intended, she was still a bit unsettled.

Tears dripped from the man’s eyes, they weren’t black which Rana was thankful for. “No,” he said and sat down on the ground in a weeping pile.

The guards began to talk amongst themselves.

“What should we do?”

“He said he doesn’t know anything.”

“He must know something, he knows more than we do.”

Paka what’s the matter with him. What’s wrong with his mouth?”

“I don’t know,” Paka said sadly. “I wish we could help him.”

“He might be dangerous, we should be careful.”

They couldn’t decide what to do so they instead stayed in the town, hoping someone more helpful would turn up. Rana tried talking to the man but he wouldn’t answer any of her questions. All the frenzied desperation he’d had originally had gone out of him, now he was just resigned to something, but he wouldn’t tell her what.

That night Rana slept in one of the abandoned buildings. She took out her little idol of Vestus and looked at it as the sun set outside. She prayed that she would get home safely, she prayed that whatever happened out here it would all be okay, she prayed for herself and for her family far away beyond Rostalion. She even prayed for the unsettling man outside, the herald he called himself. She hadn’t prayed since leaving Rostalion but meeting such a man in the empty village had scared her. She hoped Vestus would give her the strength to get home.

In the night she was woken up by a scream from the herald. The guard on duty was trying desperately to calm him down but it didn’t seem to be working. Rana grabbed her sword and walked outside, still wearing her clothes from the day before. The herald was cowering before the guard looking up at him pleadingly. When she emerged he looked to her.

“The Inkdrop Queen is far away,” he wailed. “She is so far away!”

“How far away? How many days?” Rana knelt down next to him, looking into his panicked eyes, trying to avoid looking at his black scarred mouth.

His eyes went wide and he thought about it for a second. “One. One day.”

“One day does not seem that far away.”

“Yes it does.”

Rana frowned down at him. “No, it-” Then she stopped, an idea was beginning to form. But no, that was ridiculous.

“What was your name again? Rezeral something?

“I am not Rezeral of the Shairuk, not father of Merin and not husband of Ashai.”

“Why would you say that?” the other guard asked. “He doesn’t make any sense.”

“No,” Rana said. “He doesn’t.”

“We should just drive him off. With the racket he’s making he’ll likely attract whatever it is that actually scared off these people.” Rana looked back, the other guards were all standing there and most of them seemed to agree with that idea. She didn’t though.

“You said you were no use to us at all?” she said to the herald. “I asked if you were and you said no. But if we forced you you could carry our packs for us, you could cook our food for us, we could sell you as a slave to one of the tribes around here. We could find uses for you I’m sure. So are you any use to us at all?”

“No,” the herald replied.

“How many days away is the Inkdrop Queen?”

“One.”

“Is the Inkdrop Queen two days away?”

“Yes.”

One of the guards stepped forward. “Now come on one of those was a blatant lie-”

“Is the Inkdrop Queen three days away?”

“Yes.”

“Is the Inkdrop Queen zero days away?”

“No.”

“Is the Inkdrop Queen here now?”

“No.”

“What’s going on?” one guard said.

“Get on your horses, get this man a horse. We’re leaving now!” Rana shouted. She rushed back inside and grabbed her pack then dashed to her horse. Sure enough the horses were skittish, rustling about in their tethers.

“Why are we leaving?” one of the guard’s said, slowly picking up his pack. “He said the Inkdrop Queen wasn’t here now, whoever that is. So why-”

“He’s lying!” Rana shouted and shoved the man toward the horses.

“But if he’s lying why-”

An arrow shot out of the forest and slammed into the side of the building, just missing both her and the other guard. The guards didn’t need much more encouragement.

Paka emerged and Rana grabbed him. “You understand what’s going on? You think you can talk to him?” she asked, nodding at the herald. Another arrow narrowly missed them.

He nodded slowly. “It will be hard, but I’ll figure it out.”

“Good, now go!” She spun around and tossed her pack at the herald who was getting to his feet. “Get on my horse!” she shouted, pointing at her horse. “I want you to escape, I’ll hold them off.”

The man looked at her with tears in his eyes, but they were happy tears this time. And for the first time since she’d seen him, he smiled. It was an awkward smile but it was a smile nonetheless. She’d understood him, she couldn’t imagine how good it must feel for him to know that.

The guards, the herald and Paka all mounted as soldiers swarmed from the forests. Arrows flying over them. The guards all pulled up their shields and in the dark most of the arrows missed. But the soldiers on the ground were a different story. They didn’t wear rags and hides like most of the wilderness folk. They wore plate armour, and dotted all across it was a regular pattern, a regular pattern of inkdrops.

The first soldier didn’t see Rana hiding behind a village house as he rushed to stop the horses. She stabbed him in the back of the neck and then spun around to face the next one. The soldiers stopped running and turned to face her, surrounding her as she stood defiantly, her back against the building wall.

But as the last few arrows flew the rest of her party got their horses underway and took off down the Grey Road. Rana stood there, surrounded by enemies and watched them leave. Maybe she could have gone with them, maybe there had been enough time. But she had stayed behind, and now she’d have to deal with the consequences. Whatever those consequences were.

“Surrender,” a female voice said. “You cannot resist.” The owner of the voice strode into view, she was a tall and graceful woman wearing a beige tunic and cape with the inkdrop pattern on them. Atop her head she wore a black crown, a crown that seemed to drip and glisten with ink. Droplets of it curling down all the way to her head. In her hand she held a sword made of the same stuff as the crown, except the curling droplets were actually there, actually moving. Rana watched fascinated as one dripped off the blade and splashed onto the ground.

“If I surrender will I be unharmed?” Rana asked cautiously.

“Of course,” the Inkdrop Queen replied. “We have nothing to gain from hurting you.”

Rana nodded and tossed down her sword. She had nothing to gain by fighting, she couldn’t win.

The soldiers lunged forward and grabbed her, wrestling her arms into helpless positions and marching her toward their queen. The queen ran her sword along her finger thoughtfully, one of the inkdrops coalescing on her fingertip. She flicked it away and reached up to grab Rana’s face, drawing her sword back with the other hand.

Rana panicked and struggled. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me. You said-”

The Queen smiled. “I lied.” Then she slashed through Rana’s mouth horizontally, giving her the same red scars, the same terrible injury, she’d given the herald. The black ink sprayed everywhere and Rana felt it and blood fill her mouth and throat. She coughed and spluttered and struggled but could do nothing but hang there and bleed.

The Queen laughed. “Do you fear the wilderness?” she asked softly.

Rana spat out a glob of blood and ink but she’d already swallowed too much. It was too late. “No,” she lied, for lying was all she could do.