Like Rain

Av'elyth did not look back to see whether the others followed.

She kept several paces ahead of them, sometimes more, moving beneath the blackened boughs with both daggers still naked in her hands. Whatever she had read upon the trees had settled over her like another shadow. No one seemed particularly eager to disturb it. Karneth, for once, found nothing worth saying, and even Jaeshu allowed the distance between them to remain. Yet whenever Av'elyth drew too far beyond the reach of Gaz’s amber light, the others quickened almost without thought.

They would give her whatever solitude she demanded.

But they would not give her to The Golden Quiet alone.

The old road wandered deeper beneath the trees before dividing around the remains of a fallen wall. Av'elyth chose the narrower way without hesitation. It climbed gradually toward higher ground, where faded fragments of masonry could be glimpsed between the trunks: the broken crown of a column, a half-standing arch strangled by ivy, the upper stones of some larger ruin hidden farther within the forest. Whatever district had once occupied this part of Ilvarin’del had been grander than the places they had already passed, though little remained now except stone caught between roots and moss. The trees stood closer together here, ancient and immense, their branches gathering so thickly overhead that the last memory of daylight vanished.

Gaz’s staff cast a small amber island around them, and beyond it the forest seemed to begin all over again in darkness.

Navian had stopped calling upon his Light. Almost nothing answered him the last time he tried, and its absence troubled him more keenly than he had expected. It was not merely the loss of an ally, but the disappearance of some familiar warmth he had never thought to miss until it was gone. Oesora walked near him in silence, her own Light long extinguished beneath the canopy.

Ahead, Av'elyth slowed. The others slowed with her.

At first there seemed no reason for it. The path continued toward the ruins, empty but for leaves and old stone, yet the elf had gone still enough that Lunara nearly came upon Jaeshu before realizing he too had stopped. Then a faint sound reached them from somewhere ahead, so small that Navian could not decide whether he had truly heard it until it came again: a broken breath, followed after a moment by another.

Gaz stepped forward and raised his staff.

Upon a low rise ahead, something pale crouched beneath the trees.

From a distance it might have been mistaken for a heap of discarded cloth. A veil, thin and colorless in the dim light, had fallen over a hunched figure until scarcely any shape could be discerned beneath it. Now and again the mound gave a slight shudder. As they drew nearer, the sound beneath the veil separated itself from the quiet of the forest; what had first seemed like uneven breathing became a tremulous little cry, and with several more cautious steps, unmistakable sobbing.

There were words inside it.

Navian could hear them now, though not understand them. They came in fragments between the weeping, hurried and muffled beneath the veil, repeated in a low murmur as though the figure had been speaking to itself for a very long time. Lunara eased her bow into her hand. Jaeshu shifted his footing. Karneth tightened his grip upon Beeps’s reins as the bramblehorn grew restless against the leather, while Gaz’s staff suddenly seemed too bright in the stillness.

No one moved nearer. None suggested turning back.

Av'elyth alone showed neither uncertainty nor fear.

She stared at the veiled shape as though she had found exactly what she had come to find. Her daggers lowered beside her, but her fingers tightened upon their hilts until the leather creaked beneath her hands. Recognition moved across her face first, followed so swiftly by anger that whatever caution had carried her through the forest vanished beneath it.

Av'elyth drew breath and shouted the name. It climbed as she spoke it, gathering force until the final sound was no longer speech at all, but a raw, sustained scream that left her breathless when at last it died.

“Thael'vira!”

The name of the Grand Elven queen tore through the trees.

The sobbing ceased at once. So too did the murmured words, leaving behind a silence somehow deeper for their absence.

The figure remained crouched with its back toward them. Then, slowly, the veil shifted. The mound beneath it rose as though the woman had straightened from her grief and seated herself upright, and for a moment the shape beneath the cloth almost became human: the suggestion of a bowed head, narrow shoulders, a body drawing itself erect.

Then it began to stand.

The veil lifted from the earth.

Navian’s hand went to his sword. He drew it free.

There were no feet beneath the cloth, no legs, nothing at all touching the ground. The pale fabric simply continued upward, its lower folds stirring freely in the air, while something long and wet uncoiled beneath it. Another shape followed, then another, hanging and twisting where a woman’s body should have been. A dim violet haze moved among them, faint at first, threading between the dangling forms like smoke beneath water.

The thing turned.

Oesora caught her breath.

No face waited beneath the veil.

A skull hung there instead, vast enough that the bone itself seemed to constitute the creature’s entire body. Its lower jaw was gone, and from the hollow beneath its teeth descended a writhing mass of dark, glistening tendrils, some trailing nearly to the ground. The veil remained draped across the crown and sides of the skull like the ruined remnant of mourning clothes. One socket was empty.

Within the other, an eye moved.

It found Av'elyth.

She stepped forward before anyone could stop her.

“Vael’thira, sael en varathiel na morath en’thal!”

The veiled skull gave no answer. Its gaze drifted upward instead, toward the unseen branches above them.

“Can you hear it?”

The words came hollowly from somewhere inside the skull, their endings lingering in a faint rattle and tick, as though each sound had to drip its way out through the ruin of her jaw.

Av'elyth’s fury faltered for the smallest instant.

Thael'vira tilted beneath the veil.

“The music.”

The final word did not end cleanly. It clattered on for another breath inside the hollow bone before fading.

A breeze stirred through Ilvarin’del.

It passed high above them first, whispering through leaves, then deeper among the branches where the hanging dead waited unseen. Ropes creaked. Bodies turned slowly in the dark. The wind entered open mouths and hollow throats, found the empty places time had made within ruined chests, and emerged again in long, low tones that wandered through the forest.

The sound was faint at first, but another voice joined it, and then another, until the air above them had become a mournful chorus carried through the bodies of the dead.

The skull began to weep again.

“They still sing our song.”

Its single eye remained lifted toward the canopy.

Av'elyth looked up only briefly, and when she returned to the thing upon the rise, the anger in her face had sharpened.

Navian stepped beside her.

“We have no quarrel with you,” he said. “We only require passage through the forest. Nothing more.”

The elf turned upon him. “Do not speak for me.”

“Av'elyth—”

“No.” Her glare cut toward the skull and returned to Navian. “You came for a road. I came for judgment.”

Before he could answer, the weeping stopped.

The veil stilled.

Then the great skull turned past them.

Toward Oesora.

“Priestess? Of Revmont?”

Everyone looked back.

Oesora stood several paces behind Navian, staring at the creature in bewilderment. Her eyes moved from Av'elyth to Navian and then to Gaz, as though one of them might understand why it had spoken to her.

Thael'vira lifted higher, and the tendrils beneath her jaw slowly spread.

“Light?”

Violet haze thickened beneath the skull, crawling in brighter strands around the hanging flesh. The creature began to drift down from the rise toward Oesora, its ruined veil billowing around it though no wind touched the path.

Navian drew his shield and moved in front of Oesora.

Av'elyth moved first, though scarcely alone.

Shadow swept up from her boots at the same instant Lunara drew her bow. Gaz had already begun his incantation, amber fire gathering around the crown of his staff, while Jaeshu ran to the side with his sword raised and Karneth swung into the bramblehorn’s saddle.

Av'elyth vanished into the dark between one stride and the next.

Thael'vira twitched.

The Shadowstep broke.

Av'elyth was ripped out of it and driven hard against the road, the impact scattering leaves beneath her as one dagger spun into the brush and the other struck stone. Before she could twist upright, some unseen weight forced her flat again, pinning her to the dirt.

Lunara’s arrow crossed above her before she had finished falling.

The shaft entered one side of the skull and passed cleanly through the other, neither slowing nor splintering before burying itself somewhere among the trees beyond. Gaz’s spell followed so closely that the amber flare seemed almost to chase the arrow. It struck Thael'vira full in the brow, bright enough to throw the nearby ruins into sudden relief, and passed through her just as uselessly.

Jaeshu was already charging from the flank.

He had crossed half the ground between them before one of the violet tendrils snapped outward. It curled through the air like a living cord and caught him around the throat.

The ranger stopped so violently that his sword slipped from his hands and hit the mud.

Both hands flew to his neck as the tether drew taut between ranger and skull. For an instant his boots remained upon the road while his whole body strained against it; then his heels left the earth.

“Jaeshu!”

Karneth answered before anyone else could. With a furious shout, the dwarf seized the reins and sent the bramblehorn surging forward, his axe raised high.

Thael'vira barely turned.

A coil of violet force swept across the road and struck Karneth in the chest. He was ripped bodily from the saddle and hurled backward into Beeps just behind the horns. Dwarf and ram crashed together in a heavy tangle of leather, wool, and steel, Beeps rolling onto one flank while Karneth vanished momentarily beneath his shoulder.

Navian had no time to see whether either was hurt.

The creature was still coming for Oesora.

One of its tendrils lashed toward them, half flesh and half violet vapor. Navian caught it upon his shield. Purple light burst across the white surface, and the impact drove him backward two hard steps, pain flashing from wrist to shoulder before he found his footing again.

Behind him Oesora stumbled against Gaz.

Thael'vira rose higher, the veil drawing close about the skull as the tendrils beneath it flared outward.

“RIA-OESORA!”

The name rang through Ilvarin’del and seemed to travel farther than the voice had any right to carry, passing among ancient trunks until the forest returned it in broken echoes. High above, ropes creaked and the hanging dead shifted among the branches.

Oesora stared at the creature, frightened and utterly bewildered.

Then came a strangled sound from Navian’s left.

“Navian—”

Jaeshu.

The ranger still hung above the road. His furious struggling had dwindled to weak, uneven movements, and one hand remained clenched at his throat while the other hung lower, fingers opening and closing without purpose.

Navian rushed beneath him.

The violet tether remained stretched taut between Jaeshu and the veiled skull, pulsing faintly with purple light. The paladin seized the sword in both hands and brought it down across the spectral flesh.

Steel struck with a hard, unnatural jolt that ran through his arms.

The blade left no mark.

He struck again, harder. The edge bit against the tendril and rebounded as though from something stronger than iron.

“Jaeshu!”

The ranger’s eyes found him slowly. His face had darkened, the veins at his temples stark beneath the skin. He tried to speak, failed, and reached toward Navian with one trembling hand.

“Jaeshu! Stay with me!”

Lunara’s next arrow struck the tether and glanced away into the leaves. Gaz sent a crackling bolt along its length a heartbeat later; violet and amber light burst together, but when the flare faded the cord remained unbroken.

Jaeshu’s lips moved again. This time a breath came with them.

“Help...”

Navian looked up.

For one instant Jaeshu’s eyes were clear.

“...me.”

His hand fell.

The last strength left his body, and he went slack in the tether.

Navian’s grip tightened around the hilt.

"No..."

White fire burst along the sword.

It came without warning, racing from guard to point in a single brilliant breath. Every shadow upon the road seemed to flee before it. The clean radiance poured across Navian’s gauntlets and armor without heat, and the sickly violet light beneath Thael'vira’s veil paled before it.

The tendrils beneath the skull drew suddenly inward.

Navian swung again.

White fire struck the tether.

This time it split.

The severed length recoiled toward Thael'vira in a violent spasm, purple light tearing from it as a shriek passed through the forest from no single direction. Jaeshu dropped heavily onto one shoulder and rolled onto his side.

Navian fell beside him.

“Jaeshu!”

For a heartbeat the ranger did not move.

Then his whole body convulsed. A ragged breath tore into him, followed by a fit of coughing so violent that he folded around it. Both hands closed over his bruised throat while air returned in painful, broken gulps.

Across the rise, Thael'vira recoiled.

The veil snapped around the skull as though caught in a sudden gale. Her tendrils gathered tight beneath the bone, and the violet light moving through them flickered unevenly.

Lunara reached Av'elyth as the force pinning her vanished, pulling her back to her feet. Karneth pushed himself upright beside Beeps, bracing one hand against the ram while the other pressed at his ribs. Gaz moved in beside Oesora, and Navian helped Jaeshu onto one knee before standing again with the white flame still burning along his blade.

Without command, the companions closed around Oesora.

Av'elyth recovered one dagger and then the other. When she turned again toward the veiled skull, the fury remained in her face, though one blade had fallen lower than the other without her seeming to notice.

She looked upon the thing she had crossed Ilvarin’del to find.

“You aren’t her, are you...”

Thael'vira said nothing.

The elf's lowered dagger sank another inch. “Not anymore.”

The veiled thing drifted backward. Its gaze remained upon the white flame of the paladin's sword.

“...So be it.”

The violet glow beneath the veil collapsed inward. Bone, cloth, tendrils, and shadow folded together around some point too small to see, and for the briefest moment the veil remained suspended alone in the air.

Then it too was gone.

The road stood empty before them.

For several heartbeats none of them moved.

Navian kept his sword raised while the last of the white fire dwindled along its edge until only a pale seam remained. Jaeshu knelt nearby with one hand pressed against his throat, drawing each breath carefully. Karneth had regained his feet beside Beeps, though one hand remained pressed against his ribs. Lunara stood close to Av'elyth, bow still ready, while Gaz’s staff threw amber light across the place where the creature had vanished.

Nothing returned. No violet glow gathered among the trees, and no tendril came searching from the dark. The forest simply stood around them as it had before, and little by little the sound of their own breathing returned to the world.

The moment was too quiet to trust.

Something struck the leaves far off to their left.

The sound was so soft that no one spoke of it. A second followed somewhere deeper in the trees, and then a third behind them. Lunara turned her head toward the last of them, but before she could speak another faint impact answered from farther down the road.

Then two more.

Then several.

At first they were scattered enough to count, each arriving from some different quarter of the forest. Soon they came too quickly for that.

It had the rhythm of rain now, though Navian felt nothing upon his face.

The pattering crept nearer. What began as soft impacts upon leaves became heavier ones among the trees, wet and irregular. Something struck stone with a dull sound that no storm had ever made.

Jaeshu leaned upon one knee and slowly rose.

The wind moved through The Golden Quiet.

Branches stirred high overhead, and with them came the music.

The same hollow, mournful tones passed through the forest, only nearer now and louder, as air found the open mouths and ruined throats of the dead still hanging within the canopy. Long notes wandered among the branches, some low and resonant, others thin enough to resemble distant voices, overlapping until the forest seemed to sing above them.

Beneath that song, the rain grew harder.

Something fell through Gaz’s light.

A body struck the earth thirty paces away.

Pale limbs folded beneath it with a brittle crack, and the corpse lay motionless where it had landed.

No one spoke.

Another fell among the trees, then a third struck the edge of the road. Above them came the sudden twang of rope giving way, followed almost immediately by another, and another.

Then the canopy began to empty.

Bodies descended through the branches in every direction, some tumbling end over end, others dropping cleanly with lengths of rope still knotted about their throats. They struck roofs long buried beneath moss, shattered against broken walls, crashed through fern and undergrowth, and landed upon the old road with enough force to cast leaves into the air.

Within moments the sound became enormous.

Hundreds of dead Grand Elves fell from the trees.

For a time it truly seemed that a storm had broken over Ilvarin’del, though no water fell from the sky. There was only flesh and rope, branches breaking beneath dead weight, bone upon stone, bodies upon earth and bodies upon bodies, until no single impact could be distinguished from the next and all of them became one ceaseless roar beneath the hollow singing of the wind.

Av'elyth looked upward.

A corpse tore through the branches close beside her and struck the road hard enough to make her recoil. Its head twisted beneath the impact with a sickening crack before the body came to rest facedown among the leaves.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the storm ended.

The final body fell somewhere deep beyond Gaz’s light.

Silence followed.

Not the perfect silence that had come with Thael'vira’s disappearance, but something smaller and more intimate: Jaeshu’s ragged breathing, Beeps’s nervous snort, the scrape of Karneth’s boot against the earth as he turned.

The companions drew together.

Navian stepped backward until his shoulder nearly touched Oesora’s. Lunara moved to his left with an arrow nocked, Jaeshu took the opposite side, and Gaz raised his staff until its amber light widened around them. Karneth came beside Beeps with his axe once more in both hands, bruised ribs forgotten for the moment.

Av'elyth closed the final gap.

They stood back to back in a rough circle.

Around them lay the dead.

“Shit,” Lunara said.

Dozens could be seen within the reach of Gaz’s light alone, pale limbs tangled among roots, ancient robes spread across moss and stone, hollow faces turned toward earth or sky. Some had been dead so long that scarcely anything remained within their armor. Others still bore enough of themselves to resemble the people they had once been.

Beyond the amber glow, the forest was carpeted with them.

No one spoke.

The wind returned as a long breath through Ilvarin’del, and the hollow tones rose once more among the branches.

The corpse nearest Av'elyth moved.

One finger twitched against the leaves.

A second body shuddered beside the road, then another farther among the trees. Lunara tightened her grip upon her bow as movement began to pass outward through the fallen dead like a ripple through dark water.

One elf rolled slowly onto its side. Its head jerked once, stopped, then turned again at an angle no living neck would have endured. Another dragged one knee beneath itself and remained there trembling, arms hanging loose while its shoulders convulsed. All around them bodies began pushing themselves upright upon broken limbs, some clumsily, some with the strange smoothness of puppets lifted by unseen strings.

"Everyone," Gaz said, raising his staff.

Dozens rose.

Then scores.

Then more than the wizard's light could count.

Once upright, they did not advance. They simply stood among the trees while small spasms traveled through shoulders and hands, necks twitching, fingers opening and closing without purpose. One by one their heads turned toward the companions until every ruined face within sight was looking at them.

Farther out, beyond the amber light, the darkness stirred with the pale shapes of countless others doing the same.

Navian turned slowly within the circle.

The road behind them was filled.

So was the path ahead.

Between the trees to either side stood rank upon rank of dead elves, motionless except for the ceaseless little tremors passing through their bodies.

They did not raise weapons.

They did not speak.

They waited.

The wind passed once more through the abandoned ropes above, and the last notes of that hollow song whispered across the dead city.

Hopelessly outnumbered.

The trap was sprung.