#acks

Desolation of Kuresu Wandering Monsters (3) - No

Later that night, the moon still mostly dark in the sky, the Hammers huddle around their small campfire. In the breezy silence, Answild unfolds a tale of a time from her earliest dedications to the goddess when she was barely in her teens. Every bladedancer of her order is required to undergo a series of tests to prove their faith in the night. The particular tale she unfolds is one of a much colder place.

Answild had been instructed to spend the night praying. The sky overhead was cloudless and she was left defenseless without even a knife in the snow outside of a frost-rimed cave. The goddess was the night and therefore, she’d been told, how could any harm come to her? Darra shone down between the bare tree branches and brightly lit the snowy ground.

Time passed and her prayers continued fervently, though shakily through shivering lips. The goddess rode the sky, but slowly it seemed to Answild, which was a bit bewildering. A special night. No doubt the goddess was providing her with a blessing. From the north, a chill wind blew, and with it, foreboding clouds spread their inky dark tendrils across the heavens.

Just before the last of the clouds covered the moon, she noticed long, deep gouges on the nearest tree. Answild looked to the cave and then back again to the tree, devoid of its bark and leaves. What creature, what thing, could leave such terrible rents?

Daring to pick herself up, she nearly fell on her way to the tree. Her legs and feet had gone numb in the cold. In the snow, she stumbled her way over and pressed her fingers into the grooves. They fit easily and then some. Suddenly, she felt more vulnerable than ever she could remember. She was a child again, and something huge loomed at the edges of her mind.

A bellow exited the cave mouth. As she spun, she knew that whatever dreadful throat had issued that cry, it was nothing natural. The sound reverberated through the vale as it leapt wet and gurgling through the still night. As much as she wanted, she could not back any further into the scored tree.

The echo of the cry died out and was not followed by another. All was quiet once more. A minute passed. Two. Had it been pain she’d heard in that howl, or something more? Something deeper and more sorrowful? Just when she had convinced herself that she’d imagined the roar in all of its terrible fury, something stirred in the shallow recess of the cave.

Answild’s eyes widened, desperately failing to take in more light than was present. Damn the sudden clouds. There it was again… a movement that she could just make out, though not quite sure of what it was or how she could tell. And then it stepped out of the rocky cavern and onto the snow where she could see.

It was the foot of a maiden, but somehow not. It left no print where it touched the icy ground. Spidery veins climbed its arch all the way up past its ankle and onto its smooth yet ancient withered leg before hiding under the tattered hem of the thing’s shift. No, not a thing… a woman. A hag, but beautiful, terribly beautiful. Answild closed her eyes, wanting to disbelieve what she was seeing in the darkness. It didn’t look real. It couldn’t be real, but it was there and ever so slowing, it was getting closer.

She fell to her knees, ragged breaths interspersed amongst her renewed and more fervent prayers. She was seeing things because she’d displeased the goddess. This couldn’t be real. Why would the sisterhood leave her out here alone with this creature? A sacrifice? The bladedancers of the temple didn’t make human sacrifices.

Get hold of yourself. This is the test, she thought. Of course! A vision given to her by the goddess to try her faith for the dedication. On shaky knees, she stood once more. It wasn’t until the freezing fingers wrapped around and under her chin that she realized her error. Answild was too terrified to open her eyes, knowing that the end was near. The thing’s fingernails, which felt more like claws, tilted her face up. Were these the same nails that gouged the tree? Its breath came in moist, wheezing fits and was more foul than anything she’d ever smelled before or ever would again.

Answild thought about all of the silly things she’d done. All of the wrongs done against her, and that she’d inflicted on others. She lamented that she didn’t feel like she’d really done anything of consequence in her short life and here she was at the end. The gnarled grasp shook her from her rueful reveries, first gently and then with more force.

“Look,” it said, the voice cracked and dripping with malignancy. Answild resisted a moment more and then opened her eyes. A sight more terrible than she imagined met her gaze. The face was a rotting sore, flesh missing in glistening chunks from its cheeks and throat. A black tongue roiled inside the cavity behind blackened teeth where any remained. The lower half of its nose was missing, and its sunken eyes peered back into hers with an intensity that revealed a hatred she could not fathom. Quickly glancing down, she noticed the devastation of the creature’s chest through its ruined night clothes, noting a nasty-looking scar that trailed from its left shoulder across its shriveled breast. She looked back up, compelled once more to meet the hag’s stare.

There was something familiar in those cold, blue eyes. Something intimate. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she saw something, someone, that she knew. “Yes,” it replied to her unspoken question. The crone-thing grinned and nodded, tendons somehow still working in its leathery jowls. Suddenly, the moon shot through the cloud cover, its beams bathing the two of them in their divine illumination. What then stared back at Answild was nothing terribly at all. Rather, it was a beautiful, strong woman in her prime who tenderly cupped her face.

The woman tilted her face this way and that, considering the nascent blade-initiate. Its gaze never left hers, and she realized that the woman was admiring herself in the reflection the moon made in Answild’s eyes. And then the light was gone once more, trapped behind the darkening pall above.

The hag had returned to its true appearance and howled in a fit of rage at the cruel loss of its loveliness once more. Answild wanted to run and hide, but she was petrified and couldn’t move an inch. A final shriek, filled with an unknowable sadness and more terrible than the first, filled the emptiness.

The thing struck out at her. Clutching at herself in sudden agony, Answild was left bewildered. The gnarled hand was gone from her face. The creature had disappeared as if it had never been… an apparition though its cry still echoed in her mind. It had been real, of that she had no doubt.