Shapes in the Mist by AdmirableMonster

Fire laughs.

I feel the flame crackling beneath my skin, consuming me.  Pain.  I scream, but my body does not.  It rests quietly beside the fire, where my sibling tends it.  I cannot feel the cold stone beneath me, but I know that it is there.   My tongue burns in my mouth, and I cannot speak.  All around me ash is floating on the wind.

It swirls and parts.  I forget my name. I forget myself. I forget my family.  

I am Ambaba, husband of Ushini, secret husband of Salmi, and grandson of Yshenaavsh.  I am afraid.  There is a great roaring and rumbling in my ears, and the air sparks with embers.  At the horizon, red firelight shimmers on golden scales, but it will not remain long at the horizon.  It is coming—it is coming.

I am a warrior.  I have been sent to fight the lamp-eyes, with their limbs like sticks, fey monsters that cannot die.  I fight for the lord of my hearth, distant and far away.  I fight to return to my family, whom I have not seen since the campaign began.

Fire spreads along the horizon to both sides.  We must turn the fire against them, our hearth-lord said.  They brought fire to this land, which was dark.  The stories tell of a spirit of flame that killed a thousand of our ancestors and set a fire in the sky that burns to this day.  But the hearth-lord reached into the sky and stole a part away, and he and his servant labored long in the forge until they created Fire-that-walks.  This is our fire, but I fear our fire, too.

The lamp-eyes are upon us, melting out of the grass on either side.  The air is heavier with smoke than I realized, and they ride almost silently, a whisper on the wind that carries death.  One of them looks up towards the fire, and they blanch.  They reach out a hand to me and speak in their reedy, nasal tongue.  I do not understand the language, but I understand the offer.  The fire will devour all of us, and make no distinction.

It would not be right to ride with the monsters who slaughtered my kin, but I want to see Salmi again.  I take the hand, and I am lifted into the saddle behind the lamp-eyes.  Whether it is our fire or our enemies’, it will consume us all the same.  We will choke and die upon the same smoke.

I feel the cold stone beneath me.  I open my eyes.  Above my head shine the myriad white pale eyes of the hidden mother, who watches but cannot save us. I am Yazgash, sister of Mozhak, grand-daughter of Zashgtesha.  I have taken my first step into the world of spirits.

Deep, wet darkness yawns all around me.  The rain has ceased, but the clouds above still hide the stars.  The storm season came upon us early this year, and the swelling of the Big River parted us from our companions.  We clashed with a party of lamp-eyes in the hills, but we did not match their number, and they do not take prisoners, so once our captain was felled, I called a retreat to save those of us I might.

I am Urbwaštai, sibling of Ešekula, apprentice of Nasusara.  I am not a warrior, nor have I the honor to call a retreat, but they listened to me because I am a keeper of knowledge and a healer who has almost attained my mastery—and they were afraid, and there was no one else.  We fled the lamp-eyes and waded through mud all day, the storms unceasing.  At least the water washed away our scents and our tracks, but we lost another companion before finding a stand of gnarled willow trees at the bank of the Big River.

Now there is no light but what we can generate with the rushlights in our packs.  Many of them are soaked and may be useless, and the others may burn for ten minutes or an hour—it is hard to know.  Even with our vision that is so much better attuned—ironically—to the darkness than those of the lamp-eyes, without the fire, this darkness is impenetrable.  Dim light we can use to see by, but beneath these thick clouds there is no light at all.  The air is thick to breathe and stinks worse than an Angband dungheap.

I must use the light—two of the injured have wounds that are deep and unclean, starting to rot rapidly in this heavy damp.  I do not trust our alcohol stores, and I do not trust myself to be able to clean them well in these conditions.  So instead, I will use the light to find some gentles, and let them do the cleaning instead.  It was not Nasusara who first taught me of them, but my mother, I think—I do not remember her face, I do not know her name, but I remember her spread hands, the white gentles like specks of bleach across her dark palms.  Friends, she called them.

They will be our friends tonight, if I can find them, for they devour the dead flesh and leave the living.  Some say our lord breathed life into them to eat our sins, while others claim they are children of the hidden mother from before she went mad.  They have so many beautiful eyes when they grow, after all.

I raise my rushlight high, searching for our friends.

“Return,” Mozhak whispers to me, and I rise through the thick darkness to the mother’s distant gaze, shedding Urbwaštai’s skin like a gentle splitting its molt and spreading its new gossamer wings over its shimmering green body.

Chapter End Notes

"Gentle" is another word for a blowfly larva.