Death above, the end below

Endless ways, a path to know

Soul adrift, tales of woe

Realm of the Lost, hope hollow

Translation from Effylscript found on the Nirvheir Portal in Hyrfvar.

Can we even hurt it?” Kollyn asked anxiously as he drew his own sword. “The Ylfru told us our weapons won’t have any effect on them in Iodigar!”

“Well I’m not dying without giving it a try,” Tirril retorted.

Kollyn found it difficult to argue with that statement. “Just be ready to dodge and run if necessary, don’t expect your sword to stop anything.”

Tirril gave a reluctant nod as the Vren reached the outer ring of the boulders. With a set of measured leaps, it launched itself on top of a lower boulder only thirty feet away and crawled its way up. It screeched again, chilling Kollyn to his bones and causing him to waver in his resolve. What could they do against a soul with mere steel?

The Vren rushed forward and jumped again. Kollyn and Tirril darted opposite directions just in time to avoid the creature’s impact. For a second, Kollyn got a good look at the mutilated soul. Its features were still humanoid, but its arms and legs had grown significantly and ended in claws rather than hands and feet. On its face was a mixed expression of pain, agony and anger, all expressed in a single snarl and two, lifeless eyes.

Kollyn recognized those eyes in a heartbeat. This was a Vren in soul form.

It struck towards him with its claws, missing only barely when Kollyn jumped back just in time. Instinctively, he moved his sword with the intention of cutting the arm clean off, but when steel met soul it moved through as if hitting air.

The second of surprise was enough for the Vren to move in closer and hit Kollyn straight in the chest. Claws glided through leather armour and found their way into his flesh. The force of the hit was strong enough to send Kollyn flying backwards. A stain of blood swelled up on his shirt as the claws were pulled out and Kollyn was sent tumbling down the boulder onto the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of him and nearly rendered him unconscious.

From above, he could hear Tirril shouting and screaming as she no doubt tried to evade the creature’s merciless assault. Forcing himself to ignore the pain and get back up, a thought occurred to him as he saw his shirt. There was blood, but the fabric was not cut in the slightest.

“Tirril!” he tried to shout, his breath still recovering from the impact. “Tirril! It can touch our flesh! Use your arms and legs to fight!”

He had no indication if she’d heard his words and the shouts grew more distant until only the Vren’s shouts still filled the air. Moments later, Tirril emerged from between a set of boulders on the other side of the circle and ran towards him just as he stood back up.

“It’s looking for me,” she panted. “I managed to kick it down and then jumped down the other side myself. Thanks for the warning about using my arms and legs.”

“You kicked down that thing?” Kollyn asked incredulously.

Tirril grinned. “I told you I had experience. Come on, we should hide before it walks in on us.”

As they left the inner circle, Tirril cursed and pushed Kollyn behind one of the boulders. She held a finger up to her lips and pointed towards the other side of the circle where the Vren had just emerged. It was calm now, its gaze firmly focused on the obelisk in the centre. It approached the strange object and placed a mutilated hand on it.

Both Kollyn and Tirril gasped as the Vren disappeared into nothingness, a puff of red smoke left trailing in the air where it had stood.

“So that’s how they get back,” Kollyn whispered and Tirril nodded.

“I pity anyone who encounters it, but I can’t say I’m sad to see it go.”

As she finished speaking, a screech resounded in the distance. It was answered by a second one in the opposite direction and then a third from elsewhere yet.

Tirril cursed. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“The screams must have alerted them,” Kollyn said, a sense of dread reverberating in the words.

“We have to stay calm,” Tirril said. “The Vren went placid the moment it saw the obelisk and we were out of sight. If we can avoid running into the others, they might just pass us by without any issue.”

The thought was reassuring. Moving quickly, they searched for a suitable spot to climb onto one of the boulders. Spotting a scalable side, he offered his hands to Tirril and pushed her up by her feet. In turn, she reached down and pulled him up just as a red, translucent Vren appeared on the path below.

The creature moved slow but with purpose, his head turning to all sides violently as if picking up a smell. As silently as he could manage, Kollyn crawled after Tirril further up the boulder and out of sight. They reached a small notch in the boulder’s surface and huddled into it, effectively hiding them from all sides but up.

“One just passed us below,” he whispered, barely audible to even his own ears.

Tirril gave the slightest of nods, her hands firmly grasped around her sword’s hilt despite its uselessness. They were trembling, he noticed, as were his own hands. He’d thought the Vren would no longer be able to shake him this much, but that was when he hadn’t known of the ones roaming Iodigar. How were they supposed to take them on when only flesh could touch them?

Choke them to death? He chuckled slightly at the thought, earning a strange look from Tirril. How did you kill a soul that had no body? If not for the obelisk, he dared not think on what would have happened.

As they lay waiting, Kollyn was reminded of the dream he had only just awoken from. Never had the power spoken to him like that. Its voice had sounded familiar to Kollyn somehow. Like an old friend who he hadn’t spoken to in years. Except this friend was no friend at all, he knew, despite its final kinder words. The things it had done through him...

Who or what was this Feill-Dar-Lhef it had spoken of in such accusatory tone? Could it be the cause of the increase in Vren? And how was the power related to this entity? Kollyn tried to arrange his thoughts and make sense of it all, but there was too little to go on.

On the bright side, he thought, at least it offered to help me.

They stayed put for what must have been at least an hour before Kollyn risked crawling to the side of the boulder and look upon the centre of the circle. The obelisk stood alone in the small field, thin tendrils of translucent fog swirling around the base. The eerie silence sent shivers down his spine.

Had the Vren gone through? Or where they still searching for prey amidst the boulders?

“Any sign of them?” Tirril asked as she joined him. He nearly jumped; she’d been perfectly silent.

“Nothing,” he whispered back.

Tirril gave a small nod and reached for a small stone that lay nearby. Crawling to her knees, she threw it to the other side of the circle. The sound of stone hitting stone resounded across the field, but even after a few minutes nothing happened.

“They must be gone.” Tirril determined. “And so should we before more arrive.”

“Can’t argue you there,” Kollyn answered and, still cautious of their surroundings, they stood up and walked across the boulders to the outer edge. When no other Vren were to be seen, they climbed down and continued their trek alongside the endless line of souls.

Where they had been careful before, they were even more so now. Twice in the next hour they had to search for cover as a Vren appeared in the distance. Something else had caught Kollyn’s attention as well. Now and then, a soul would disappear from the line and seemingly evaporate. Tirril argued the soul was passing on into the afterlife and had finally died for real. Kollyn did not know the truth of it, but for one he was glad that was one soul less to turn into Vren.

They ran for what felt like days, their rations diminishing with every rest. The further they ran, the more frequent the Vren encounters became but all were spotted in time and avoided. Then, after a full night’s rest and a discussion on whether to refill their water from the black rivers, the mountains that had always seemed so distant suddenly were mere miles away.