Chapter II - Horrors In The Night

Now we move onto Chapter 2. Hopefully the scene has been set enough that the reader is familiar with Castelmaine, the surrounding lands and has a general feel for the world of Evalaria. I'm hoping that readers have a few questions as to the nature of certain characters and their motives, certain events that have happened and interest piqued. Now it's time to start raising some more questions and upping the pace. 

This section was a lot of fun to write, as I get to reintroduce one of my personal favourite characters, the nameless man in the first section, and I get to write about something truly disturbing. Again, I'm not great at description, and I'll never live up to the likes of H.P. Lovecraft when it comes to horror, pacing and suspense, but it's fun to try regardless. I hope it comes across, and that you enjoy the effect.

As they say in theatre, on with the show!




The hours of twilight had passed and the shadow of night had fallen over Old Town. The uneven and damaged streets were dimly illuminated by twinkling magelights, candle-less street lamps that cast an orange hue across the winding streets. Long black shadows stretched from stacks of crates and barrels and cloaked figures moved through the alleys. After dark Old Town had a reputation that kept wealthy and opulent folk at bay, much the better for the inhabitants who held a mild distrust of the mages. The reputation was, of course, not unfounded, but to believe that Old Town was a seething anthill of thieves and turncoats was to do a great discredit to the district. Certainly, the alleys and narrow streets were best walked swiftly and with purpose, and the locals had developed an attitude of keeping oneself to oneself, and avoiding certain streets after dark. 

Iron Bar Lane was just one such street. Barely wider than what most would call an alleyway, the buildings either side were high with steep roofs of greyish-black slate with iron cresting along the pinnacles supposedly to stop people like him from walking along them, but his footfalls were too gentle to disturb the loose stonework and too sure to slide down the sharp incline to the streets below. He watched from the darkness, a cold moon barely visible from behind thick dark clouds silhouetting his figure. A long leather duster jacket with a split back flapped in the nights breeze, and the tips of jaw length hair danced from beneath a wide-brimmed hat. His gaze was held, unmoving on one of the doors below, wood and iron with no windows. What few openings the rest of the building had we're boarded up so that the place appeared abandoned to casual glances, and the candlelight dancing around the edges of the door frame betrayed what he already knew. The building was indeed abandoned, once a curiosity shop. He remembered it, with its dusty shelves of mildewed books and dirty jars of unknowable contents. Abandoned, but not uninhibited.

The candlelight flickered out and the door creaked open slowly. A head came around the doorway scouting both directions, before the door opened fully and two figures emerged. Leather jerkins and riding boots, uniforms, and the weapons to match. He wasted no time. His boots came down hard in the shoulders of the second man, smashing him face first into the cold stone of the lane. The first man made to reach for his sword but a gloved hand clasped his throat and spun him around, slamming him full bodied against the wall. The first man looked at his assailant wide eyed, gasping for breath to scream, but his breath caught in his throat as a choking gargle. 

"Well, well... Huszari caught unawares?" He said with a dry and whispery voice like velvet across smooth pebbles, "That doesn't seem fitting for men of your calibre and conviction. Unless..."

He left the sentence hanging and ground his heel into the chest of the second man on the floor who had begun wriggling. In one smooth and swift motion, he released the first, stepped back and held the tip of his rapier to the firsts throat, pinning him back against the wall, one boot still firm on the neck of the second. The rapier had come to his hand so fast. So inhumanly fast.

"So," he said calmly at the pinned man who was gulping sweet air into his lungs and sweating and wriggling uncomfortably, "What would bring two of Castelmaine's finest to these dark streets so late of hour? And," he tilted his head slightly to address the prone guard, "I would advise you to answer truthfully, lest I press my boots firm to the street."

"What are you?" Asked the first, swallowing, still squirming under the business end of the silver rapier.

"I believe I asked my question first, sir, and some would consider it rude to deny me my answer." He grinned widely, licking his tongue slowly and deliberately across two large, sharp incisors "Others would call it unwise."

Folk awoke with a start, suddenly upright in her bed, clinging her sheets tightly to herself. The rest of her dormitory were sound asleep, idly snoring and murmuring in their slumber. She wasn't sure what had roused her so suddenly, she couldn't recall any dreams, nor did she think she'd heard a sound. Still, something had forcibly roused her from her slumber and filled her with dread. She looked around herself, eyeing every bed, every shadow and window for sign of what had disturbed her. She saw nothing, but she couldn't shift the feeling. Slowly and quietly she slid from her blanket and placed her bare feet onto the wooden floorboards. She pulled her night robe tight around herself and tied the waist cord before padding softly down the length of the dormitory to the large wooden door at the end. It was slightly ajar as usual, and a gentle warm light spilled a little into the room.

She creaked it open just enough to peer around it. The corridor was deserted in both directions, but I'm the distance she could hear the echoing footfalls of the night matron as she made her rounds. Something inside her told Folk to head the other way, so with a quick second glance into the dormitory to ensure she had not been seen, she sidestepped out and jogged lightly towards the stair well.

As she moved down the halls and passed the other dormitories she neither saw nor heard anything unusual, yet the feeling of dread still curled within her. The silence of her home had changed from the usual welcoming quiet after a days study to an enveloping presence that seemed to wrap around her and numb her senses. Everything appeared the same yet somehow wrong, almost as if she had somehow stepped through a mirror. The familiar suddenly felt strange and alien.

She reached the stairwell and took a gulp of the cool breeze that drifted up the stone descent, and pressed herself against the cool iron handrail, hanging over it loosely and gazing down to the distant floor. She had half imagined to glimpse shadows coming up the steps, nightmare creatures all slinking and slopping, sliding and slithering up for her, with maws of gasping tentacles and eyes of piercing electric blue. The stairwell was as empty and silent as the rest of her journey had been. Somehow, she felt disappointed. At least then her fear would be tangible, and she could flee it. She hated this blind stumbling, fearful into the unknown.

She took a deep breath and swallowed her fear as best she could then, still gripping the handrail tightly, took her first step downwards. The steps were steep and her legs only little, so that each step was a drop, and progress was slow. She had almost made it to the third landing when a deep moaning sigh of air rushed upwards and nearly took her feet from under her. She clung tight to the rail, full body and waited for it to pass. Another deep breath. She could hear her heart in her ears, pounding like war drums, pulsing and thumping as she continued her way down. Down, and down she went, faster than before. The stairs didn't feel safe anymore, her mind was aflame, dancing with inspired madness.

There was a thud below, a wet thud like rotten fruit falling from a traders cart, then a piercing, wailing shriek. She froze, her eyes flared and her limbs turned to lead. Her breathing, moments before so heavy and slow, now came rapid and shallow, and the thumping of her heart in her ears crescendoed to a deafening battery. The sound came again, a wet thud, then a sort of sliding scratchy noise. A wet thud, then the sliding scratchy noise.

When feeling came back to her limbs, the numbness faded and was replaced with a white hot burning. She wanted to run, she wanted to scream and close her eyes and wake up, but she knew she couldn't. She slid carefully to the edge of the stairs and slowly, ever so slowly, peered over.

There it was. About two floors below her, sliding up the steps. Two elongated and gangrel spider-like arms with slender, angular fingers were dragging along a corpulent and lumpen body not unlike a slug, but dry. Razor sharp talons were grating against the stonework with every ponderous drag. A near featureless head, smooth with deep sunken and hollow eyes, like a pillow case drawn tight over a skull, leered from side to side as if searching for something. It's great drooling maw gaped open, showing row upon row of razor sharp teeth as the creatures lolling tongue lapped from side to side.

The fiend was climbing the stairs slowly. Folk made to scramble back, but her bare feet merely scraped helplessly against the stone of the stairs, her limbs made jelly out of fright. The scuffling seemed to grab the fiends attention; it fell still and it's head snapped towards her, and then she saw that the eyes weren't empty sockets. As it stared at her, two pinpricks of faint light stared back at her from deep within its hollow sockets. The two stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, Folk desperate to turn and run but unable to ear her gaze away from the horror before her. Then the fiend sprung into action.

Now with purpose, the creature let forth another piercing wail, and lumbered up the stair it's limbs a motion of frenzy, gouging great rents into the stone work as it flailed up the stairs, suddenly possessed of a hysterical furor. Folk tried to scurry backwards and to her feet, but her legs weren't listening to her and it was all she could do to scream as the creature bounded closer and closer. It was on the landing below her now and closing fast. She screamed louder, out of blind terror and frustration, kicking her legs wildly to try and get as much ground as she could between her and the fiend, but only managed a handful of stairs before it was upon her. A slender and twisted arm reached forwards and grasped at her leg, clamping around her shin. Blood ran down her ankle as its talons punctured her leg, and it let out another wail-scream, it's mouth distending backwards and those horrid soulless pinpricks of light stared at her. Stared into her.

The creature had frozen. It's lunatic gaze was piercing into her very soul, but the creature had... Stopped.

"Folk?!" came a mans voice down the stairs from above, distressed and shaky. Familiar.

She found she couldn't move. Her limbs were frozen utterly, she couldn't even turn away from the monster. Those eyes, those endless eyes...

Then the nightmare seemed to evaporate. The fiend almost seemed to become a cloud, a fog, them it drifted and faded. She could move again, and the pain of her wounds came crashing upon her. She cried out and fell backwards, into the arms of the matron. Next to her stood Gideon.

"Is she injured?" He asked her hurriedly.

The matron nodded, looking down at Folk's leg and the deep puncture wounds that were running its blood. "She's wounded, Gideon. What on the planes was that thing?"

Gideon shook his head, his face wearied and worried, "Get her somewhere safe and tend to those wounds. I need to make sure there are no more of those... Things wandering around. Maybe see what I can find."

Being lifted by the matron was the last thing Folk remembered before darkness overcame her and her consciousness failed.