Clothed in sun

By Noel Hansen

It was a hot summer. The hottest summer there had been in a while. The crops had taken a beating; all the grass was brown and shriveled, the forests full of dead trees. It had been a rough year in the land. The recent wars abroad had gone poorly, news from travelers in the tavern said, and the soldiers had come back home broken and bitter, disillusioned with the fighting and with their leaders. The empire had expanded just about as much as it possibly could without cracking, and so all that aggression turned inward. Various parts of the country where growing restless, disgruntled at the lack of improvements, even though they knew much treasure was brought from abroad. The rulers in the Council were nervous as well, tales told; nervous about political unrest, nervous about enemies around them that now knew the full extent of their power (the ever increasing power beforehand having previously kept such foreign belligerents in check), and nervous about something else; some other unidentifiable, unshared thing. Perhaps it was simply bad dreams, but the travelers say it is undoubtedly weighing on their leaders minds.

Eunice heard all these tales and more that summer, working in the tavern. Usually she loved that part of the job; however, all the talk had started to put her on as much an edge as everyone else in the town. Eunice had been working at the tavern for a few years now, ever since she came of age. It was never going to make her rich, but she rarely had worries about food, she had a dry place to sleep in the loft of the inn. Even if the clientele of the establishment could get rather rude and rowdy at times, she nonetheless enjoyed all the tales, songs, poems, and news that came to her from talking with people from all over. The tavern and the town surrounding it sat at the crossroads between three major highways that spanned almost the entire kingdom, and the town was the site of many comings and goings from one part of the empire to another. It attracted merchants, soldiers, and messengers by the score. Indeed, that was half of the town’s income, the other half coming from the farm land all around the town that took advantage of the nearby river to irrigate the place.

The river had run low that year however, and nobody could get as much water as they needed. Everyone was thirsty and everyone was frustrated and everyone was angry. The bar was full of miserable people every night, and it made Eunice miserable in return. In spite of the light persisting long into the night, everyone was dark; the moods were dark, the tales were dark, the deeds even were, at times, dark. Yet in spite of this, the tavern was packed every night this summer, partially because of the much greater than normal numbers of travelers on the road and partially because all the farmers and craftsmen and merchants needed a place to let off steam at the end of every long, hard, sweltering day.

It was on one of these sorts of nights that a trouble of a deeper, more significant sort started brewing. The evening started in much the same manner as the rest of the evenings that week; regulars and travelers alike where slowly filtering in, coin was being exchanged, and drinks where being drunk. Eunice was on her toes all night, running back and forth from the keg in the corner, filling and refilling mugs for the thirsty and weary patrons, engaging in the small talk and chit-chat that was expected from someone working as a server in a tavern, and picking up the occasional abandoned ale mug. Some travelers in long, dark cloaks with strange seals upon their backs came in; this in and of itself was not an unusual sight, as all sorts of people from many far off, mysterious lands (mysterious at least to Eunice, who had never been far from the town she grew up in) came into the bar and partook of its ales. These individuals where different than the usual travelers however; they barely showed their faces, preferring instead to stay under their travelling cloaks with the hoods pulled down, despite the hot sun still working its power at this point in the evening. They did not talk to anyone else at the bar either, ignoring all the attempts by the friendly local souses to engage in some banter or tell a tale. And they all had a strange smell about them, a smell that wasn’t exactly bad, but stood out nonetheless above the various normal tavern smells that permeated the establishment and usually made it impossible to smell anything else.

The strangers quietly went to an empty table in the corner of the tavern and set up shop. Eunice walked over with mugs of the local brew for the travelers, hoping she could extract some information about their origins and destinations. She placed a mug in front of each traveler, all 4 of them. They barely moved and made no acknowledgement of her presence as she did this, but as soon as all the mugs where placed, the travelers immediately brought the mugs up to their hooded faces and began to greedily drink, as if they were men who were trapped in a dessert and had not seen a drop of water for days.

“Woah there! You folks must have had a long day’s journey I imagine, from the way you are treating that ale! Would you be needing any beds for the evening?”, Eunice remarks to the strangers, bemused by the aggression and desire with which they have tackled their drinks.

The strangers remain silent at her remark however, and that perturbs Eunice. She has had rude patrons before, certainly, but most of the rude patrons are rowdy, or aggressive, or handsy. These men are different; completely silent except for the sound of their shifting clothing and the gentle clink of their glasses on the table, and that disturbs Eunice in a way that a man nearly twice her size screaming in her face over a tab dispute has never disturbed her. Eunice quickly moves away and, noticing a table of young farmhands is raising their mugs above their heads in symbol that they want a refill, and sighs in relief at the distraction and moves to collect their mugs.

More time passes in the bar and the evening progresses on. More and more patrons file in, and soon the bar is packed, and Eunice finds herself constantly on her feet without a second for a break or to even think. There is a group of traders in the corner singing patriotic songs that has been joined by a few of the off-duty town guardsmen, there is a group playing a card game in the corner that absorbs them for hours. There is even the brewing of a fight at one point that needs to be broken up, as there is some drunken disagreement between the smith and the baker about whose wife is the prettiest. This is all fairly typical for a hot summer evening (albiet less violent that some in the recent past), and this puts Eunice more and more at ease as the evening progresses. The group in the corner continue to stay silent, ignoring all attempts at socialization or tale-telling requested by the other patrons of the bar that evening, and after they quickly quaffed down their first beer, they nurse their second and third, as if they needed something to numb some unknown pain, then only got the successive beers for needing some excuse to stay around people. Eunice doesn’t try to interact with the group further, and simply refills their beers when they need it.

The night wears on and customers start filtering out of their bar, back to their homes and beds. Soon just a few remain, mostly regulars who live nearby in the town who often stay late. The one exception is the silent group of strangers in the corner; Eunice has decided it is best to just leave them be. However, one of the patrons, the apprentice of a local smith, has taken an interested in them.

“So, who are those blokes over there? I don’t recognize the clothes and I have not seen them talk to anyone else. Have they talked to you?”, the apprentice remarks to Eunice, an air of disgust in his voice as he slurs the words; he is obviously quite drunk and will have a hell of a time the next morning.

Eunice gives the apprentice a sidelong glance after he asks the question; she anticipates him making a dumb move, regardless of what she says in response to his inquiry. “No, they haven’t talked to me all night, just made gestures when it was time for a refill. Now don’t you go messing with them blokes Charlie, they haven’t done a thing to anyone all night, they have just kept to themselves, and they don’t need a jostling” she responds after a second, pondering if there was any way she could talk down Charlie.

“Don’t worry Eunice, I just am going to go over there and ask them a question, I just wants to know what they are about, what their business is, fings like that”, Charlie says to Eunice as he gets up and starts walking toward the group, drunkenly swaying back and forth ever so slightly. Eunice sighs to herself and steps from behind the bar to follow him, fully prepared to have to apologize to the strangers if Charlie gets it in his mind that he needs to prove something to the group.

Charlie stumbles a little as he walks up towards the group, and this obviously flusters him before he begins to speak. He stands up straight though, and smooths out his clothes in a self-conscious attempt to appear slightly more sophisticated than he actually is. “Good evening gents!”, he remarks to the group, with no response. This obviously flusters him again; as he is a man of considerable size, he is not used to being ignored.

“I said, Good Evening!” he remarks again, a slight bit of anger entering into his voice. There is still no response from the group, and this obviously flusters him more, but he visibly takes a second to try and cool himself down before continuing.

“Where are you blokes from? What’s your business being on the roads?” he says again, to no response. This is obviously the final straw for Charlie, and his drunken blood has begun to boil over. “Hey, just who do you think you are, ignoring me like that?”, he exclaims angrily. Before Eunice can react and stop him, he reaches forward and grabs the hood of one of the travelers and pulls it down, wanting to see him eye-to-eye. The sight that is seen as soon as he pulls it down stops him dead in his tracks; as soon as he sees it, Charlie turns and runs out the door of the tavern. An audible noise of vomiting is heard outside as Charlie evacuates the contents of his stomach on the taverns walls. It is clear to Eunice this isn’t just the work of the drink, as she gasps when the strangers head is revealed and finds herself a little sick to her stomach as well, despite not drinking all night. Underneath the hood the man’s skin is horribly burned and scarred, has if his entire head and been engulfed in flame. There is no hair anywhere on him, and the skin is criss-crossed with patterns of scars that suggest he was burned almost in a straight line at multiple points on his head. There is even one patch where there is no flesh left and his bare white skull is clearly visible through all the skin that was burned away and has not yet grown over the wound. This is the head of a man who has obviously seen pain beyond anything it is possible for Eunice to imagine.

The man at the table turns around and looks out the door. From this angle Eunice can see his eyes and notices that they are a light grey; so light they almost blend in with the whites. The effect is uncanny, making it almost look like he only had pupils. The scarring and burns continue the front of his head, to his neck (and presumably beyond). He has no eyebrows, no eyelashes. The worst is his lips, as almost all the fatty tissue has been burned away, leaving just a thin line. Eunice finds herself wondering if the scars continue over the rest of his body and finds herself shuddering, instinctually turning away from such horrific contemplation. The man grins, obviously amused by Charlie’s plight, and Eunice notices that the burns even continue to the inside of his mouth, his gums receding noticeably from his teeth, making his teeth seem longer and his mouth seem bigger than it actually is. The overall effect remains horrific, painting a picture that doesn’t resemble a man so much as a skeleton or some sort of beast out of the tall tales that the local hunters tell about the old times and the monsters they claim pop up in the distance every now and again in the forests. In spite of herself, Eunice finds her morbid curiosity growing, wondering just what horrors this person has seen that did this to them, and what brings them here.

The man turns to face her and remarks “Hey got more than he bargained for, eh?” The man’s voice is horrible, low and cracking like an old rotten-through tree about to collapse in a windstorm.

Eunice is be amazed about how every successive thing about these travelers makes her taken aback, yet taken aback she remains by the mans voice. It is a second before she replies. “Begging your pardon sir, but he has a point. We get all sorts here in this tavern, as should be obvious due to its location being so advantageous-like, but never someone who acts like you lot. And certainly nobody who looks like you lot, who has had as hard a time as you obviously have!”, she stammers, trying to avoid looking the man in his gray eyes while also trying to avoid looking at the scars that cross all over his head and face.

The man throws his head back and laughs, his laugh sounding like booming thunder in the middle of a rainstorm. It is not a laugh that is full of mirth and joy. Low chuckles emit from under the hoods of his companions at the table, who have still not lowered their hoods or uttered a word during the entire encounter thus far. “You want to know where we came from, eh? Where we’ve been, what we’ve seen? We have seen too much, I tells ya. Too much for a lifetime, hell, too much for multiple lifetimes, and suffered more than we have seen, we have, though I suppose with these scars that’s a bit obvious”, the man remarks, a wry grin on his face.

After finish his remarks, his face turns downcast, and he stares at the floor. “Too much for a hundred lifetimes…” he mutters, obviously remembering some old wound. The man is silent for a moment before continuing. “I guess there isn’t much harm now in telling. We was soldiers, we was. Soldiers in the south, fighting for the kings out in the desert.”

Eunice gasps in shock. “The kings in the desert? But we were at war with you lot for the longest time, up until recently leastways. You were great fighters all of you, you really gave our boys a run for their money. I was surprised we ever defeated you, I still don’t know how we did it”, she remarks in response.

“I don’t expect that is a tale your lords like telling, ain’t it? The same reason we was conquered by you lot is the same reason we all have these scars. Your lords are evil bastards ma’am, no offense, and they confer and collaborate with things they best shouldn’t, for everyone’s sakes”, the man continues, a hard glare entering his face.

“Poppycock and fooey!”, Eunice exclaims. “Our lords is good and wise and they have never done wrong by us here. I can understand some soreness at being beaten, but fair’s fair, and they obviously haven’t stopped you lot from travelling in the kingdom, so I says they are being more than fair, they are being downright generous”, she continues, losing her temper a little.

The man’s eyelids lower at this outburst, obviously displeased. ”Don’t make comments about things you don’t know missy. Things aren’t always as they appear; sometimes it’s easy to do awful things in lands far away because nobody will ever see it. Or they think they won’t leastwise. And believe me, your bastard lords have done much to my people and my land that would make your blood curdle and would break the minds of lesser men”, he says in a low, angry voice. “They have agreements in places with things they best shouldn’t even be thinking of, let alone contact with!”, he continues, standing now. “Things unnatural, things not of this world! Mark my words, before long their bargains with these devils will come to final fruition, and you will pay a price you never agreed to, and you will be dearly rethinking your current unwavering allegiance to those thrice-damned whoresons!”, he yells, gesturing wildly.

His gaze turns downwards for a moment, and then he turns back to look at his drink, still on the table. Slowly he turns, walks back to his seat. He sits down, and turns his chair to face the table again. “Just leave us in peace”, he murmurs out after he takes a sip from the now-warm beer. “You and your kind have done enough to us. We are in your power and have been for a while. We just want peace, and distance, and never to have to care about you again. Leave us alone and we will leave you alone”.

Eunice is taken aback by this outburst, both by the words the man has said and the implications behind them. All this talk of “prices” and “things best not thought of” is making her mind swim and are also making her scared and afraid of what the future could hold. All her life so far has been marked by constant growth, constant improvement, constant expansion of the empire, and the suggestion that not only what the empire is doing might be unglamorous and amoral, but also might come crashing down, perturbs her. She has never heard people talk critically about the empire, and the seeds it has planted in her mind trouble her. She walks back behind the bar and starts cleaning some of the glasses, still troubled by these suggestions.

Eventually the bar closes for the night. All the patrons finally file out, and head back to either to their rooms, or to their homes. There is no further sign of Charlie after his spectacular exit. Presumably he was so sickened by what he saw, he decided to retire early for the night instead of bothering Eunice all night as he often does. Eunice breathes a silent sigh of relief at that, and finds herself softening to these strangers ever so slightly because of the fright that they gave Charlie. The strangers themselves have all filed up to their room without another peep soon after the encounter with Charlie. The one who spoke to Eunice had flipped the hood back up over his head before they moved on, so that when they went up the stairs to the rooms on the second and third floors, Eunice was unable to tell which form was his again; all their clothes were so bulky they were indistinguishable.

Eunice locked up the bar and walks up the long stairs to the loft for some well-deserved rest. As she does this, she finds herself still troubled by the words of the strangers. Questions are growing in her mind, and she finds herself in need of answers to them. But where do the answers lie, she wonders? Where can she possibly find someone who can illuminate her to the history of the conflicts that brew both all around her and also so far away? The strangers are obviously untrustworthy, as they have their own history and biases, she cannot rely on them; who then can answer her questions?

The strangers leave early the next morning without saying another word; they simply walk out the front door, right past Eunice, and leave their payment in a neatly arranged pile of coins on the bar, not a penny off. Their rooms are similarly neat and tidy, a sight which causes Eunice further pause when she stops to consider her opinion on the strangers. The strangers are never seen in the town again, leaving Eunice to sit and stew on her further developing thoughts.

The next day is the holy day, Eunice’s only day off (the local religious customs dictate that no drinking should occur on the weekly holy day). That morning Eunice packs a basket full of fruit and baked goods, before heading out. She walks out of town, following one of the many paths into the woods. At the end of this particular path lives one of the oldest people in the village, Old Man Johnson. He has a good 20 years on next oldest man in town and has acquired much knowledge in his time (being that he has the somewhat special skill of knowing letters and used to be a travelling merchant when he was a much younger man, with connections far and wide), and as such is often used as a reference by those who seek to understand some piece of history, local or otherwise, better. He is generally known as somewhat cantankerous, and will likely turn all visitors aside, preferring to read his books that are still routinely delivered to him. He can, however, be easily plied with fruits and sticky buns.

The walk down the path is uneventful and soon Eunice finds herself at Johnson’s front door. She knocks and is met with no response aside from the sound of some shuffling on the other side of the door. She knocks again, and slowly the door opens. Out behind it appears the withered, frowning face and stooped form of Old Man Johnson, clad in a loose tunic and leaning against his cane. He spies the basket she is carrying immediately and without saying anything or changing his expression, he gestures for her to come inside. She heads inside at his bequest, and he closes the door behind her.

“Just put the goods on the table by the stove there”, he says, gesturing with the hand that isn’t leaning on the cane to a small wooden table to the left of the currently cold hearth. She walks over and places it on the table, then turns around to see that the old man has sat down on his chair in the corner of his house, surrounded by his shelves of beloved books.

“Well? Out with it. I know you are here for something, hoping to ply me with sweets for my painfully acquired knowledge. So skip the pleasantries and just be out with it”, he says gesturing at her to sit down at a stool placed near his chair (presumably for exactly these sorts of visits).

Eunice walks over to the chair, sits down, and clears her throat to signal she intends to begin speaking. As she does this, old man Johnson rolls his eyes, obviously slightly disgusted at the formality and pleasantries, but doesn’t make a move to stop her. “Well sir, being as I am just a simple barwoman, and I have never lived anywhere else but here, I don’t have any particular knowledge of any other lands or history asides as relates to the bar, the town, and the lands around it. I hear many things, as you can probably gather, just due to our location at these cross roads of the empire, but they is just that: things sir, disconnected little tales and bits of information that don’t amount to anything. I can’t place them into anything larger, and I don’t understand how they came to be. And many of the things lately sir, they trouble me deeply, trouble me so much I don’t know up from down anymore it feels”, she says, obviously holding back and trying to be respectful in front of her elders as she was taught.

“Oh just stop with all this build up and get to your questions. What do you want, a history lesson? You want me to give you a plan so you can know where to put these ‘pieces of information’ in relationship to each other and some larger whole, is that it?”, old man Johnson says, rolling his eyes and leaning back in his chair.

“Not that complicated! I mean, I would like that, but I get the impression that sort of thing would take ages to get right”, Eunice says.

“On that you would be right, work of a lifetime it is”, Johns mutters to himself in response.

“No sire, more what I was wanting to know is… well, do you know how the wars with the kings in the dessert ended? What we finally did to beat them, absorb them with us? What our lords did sir? So many bits and pieces exist sire, and so many of them trouble. I don’t want the whole plan, just the plan to this one piece, and then I might be more satisfied with things I am thinking sir, because so much of what I hear from strangers down that ways troubles me”, Eunice says, concern making its way into her voice.

Johnson looks shocked for a moment after Eunice utters the question, but suddenly a dark look crosses his face, and he leans forward. “Where did you hear about such matters girl? Who has been filling your head with such suggestions?”, he says, voice so low he is almost whispering.

Eunice leans back, taken back by this reaction. “Only travelers sir! They stopped at the inn and where mostly silent and mysterious, content to keep to themselves until Charles, one of the local apprentices, tried to bully them. They gave him an awful fright, mostly accounting to their terrible visage. They were covered in scars sir, of the most horrid kind that I am not even sure what kind of injury could do that to a person. And after Charles left sir, one of the men started talking to me, talking about the Kings of the Desert and ‘deals with things unspeakable’, as he said sir”, Eunice says, her voice faltering a little as she gives her explanation.

Johnson sits back in his chair, and suddenly looks far more tired and older than Eunice had thought it was never possible for someone to look. “Aye, that makes sense. I did not expect any would survive, though it makes sense a few would; albeit I wouldn’t exactly call it living, and neither would you I reckon, since you saw them for yourself”. He leans back and stairs at the ceiling for a moment before continuing. “And aye, I know the tales, at least. None of this is confirmed, mind, but simply what reaches an old man who has the right connections and likes to be informed of the news”. He reaches over and grabs the pipe that had been sitting on a table next to him and lights it. After one or two puffs, he continues.

“The war was going badly, they say. Very badly. The lords had bit off more than they could chew when they challenged the desert kings, and they knew it. They were losing men by the bushel, the desert kings had complete mastery of their lands and everything the Lords knew how to do just made matters worse, made them lose more men, whether it be to the elements, dangerous animals, enemy attacks, or just via desertion from plummeting moral. To be short: it was a mess, a damn big one. One that could finish the empire if they did not solve it

“But they could not pull out either. The big bad empire, pull out of a war they started? Hadn’t happened. It would cause not only unrest at home, but unrest at the borders. It would show weakness, it would show them not as a beast, killing at its prime, but as one just past the peak, ripe to be pecked at to death from a thousand small barbarian tribes or internal strife. It was unacceptable to the lords to show weakness to those around us, and to show weakness inside

“Now, that is all documented fact. Not the lords’ opinions or concerns per se. But the facts of the war are out there, and well known to all who want to know, to all who have kept an eye on news at the ever-expand edges of the empire. But what the lords did next, well… this is something I have had to piece together form hearsay and speculation amongst those I know who would be in a position to know, so keep that in mind.

“The rumors say the lords had certain tomes in their possession that had been passed down for generations. Apparently these tomes had first come into the Empire’s possession long ago, when they were conquering a distant land, and these tomes were ancient even then. The soldiers at the time, they say, broke into a half-decayed temple in a far-off corner of this forgotten kingdom and ordered the priests to bring out all the valuables. The priests would not listen however; in fact they were quiet feral and the soldiers had to slay the lot of them, even though the priests seemed to keep coming, not fearing death or pain (likely because, as the tale goes, they were horribly scarred), attacking with their bare hands. But they were no match for a number of sturdy, armored men with swords and spears and bows. After they slew them all, they searched the temple and found nothing of value aside from some old tomes written in a tongue few in the company knew. It was a mystical tongue, and described various ways by which one could contact… well, let’s say non-human intelligences.

“Anyway, these soldiers brought these tomes back to the capital and they were locked in the vaults ever since. One of the lords, apparently, had the great idea to haul them back out and use them to talk to these intelligences. We had already run out of every possible help or allies, it is said, so what was the harm to try and at least contact them? Well, apparently contact was indeed achieved, and some sort of agreement was struck. There is lots of vague talk about something that happened at one stormy night at the capital, lightning and thunder and black magic sorts of deals, though who is to say if there is any truth in that. Could be they just dispatched a courier to follow directions written down on some old map!” Johnson leans back and laughs heartily to himself at this, slapping is knee. “Well, after contact was made, luck suddenly started turning in the war. Groups of soldiers would stumble upon enemy encampments that were abandoned in a hurry, or destroyed completely. They would come across villages, bases, even whole cities abandoned, often times with signs of significant fire damage; houses burned down, charred bodies littering the streets. Even a few times they came upon houses where it was as if everyone inside was just… well, cooked alive in an instance. When they would come across people, they would appear scarred and cowed in front of them, making no resistance. The entire country fell quickly after that, with little to no resistance, and soon the whole thing was brought into the fold and that was that. It is messy, dark business though, and it isn’t wholly over yet.” Johnson leans back in his chair and looks out the window after finishing his long, dark tale.

“Why is that?” Eunice says, concern once again crossing her face, leaning forward.

“Well, whenever you bring allies into a war, especially new allies, they often want payment of some sort. Nobody does anything for free; you don’t serve thirsty men for free, I don’t tell tales for free. Some payment will come due sooner or later, mark my works, and I hope I don’t live to see what sort of payment these powers intend to collect”, Johnson replies, continuing to look out the window.

Their transaction concluded, Eunice stands up and thanks the old man again for her time, collects her basket after transferring its contents to the table (much to the greedy delight of the one it is intended to pay), and leaves back down the path to town. She finds herself satisfied, in a way, to know some more of the story of such dark travelers, but finds herself troubled further by all further tales of unknown horrors. She had hoped her fears would be assuaged, but now they have only magnified tenfold.

The next few weeks proceed quite calmly. There are no unusual experience, no new excitement in the bar (aside from the usual day to day excitement somewhat inherent in the bars location). No new strangers like the others come by the bar, and Eunice is relieved. Slowly the fears and anxieties that had plagued Eunice leave her mind, and he finds her sleep at night growing more and more peaceful, and is glad.

This all begins to change however, one day near the end of summer. It had been another hot day, and the bar was full of farmers from the surrounding fields, seeking something to cool their throats and ease their weary limbs after long days of harvesting in their fields. The crowd is loud and jovial, but not too rambunctious, due to the efforts everyone is trying to save for getting the crops in on time. Eunice likes this time working at the bar the most. She gets to meet the most people, catch up with those regulars she has not seen in a while, and the bar does fantastic business on top of it all.

But all is not well today, all is not jovial. It started when one man came into the bar, one particularly haggard looking farmer, demanding a drink (which was quickly supplied by Eunice). The farmer took up position on the bar, at an end near the door. The bar was crowded, but he managed to squeeze in between two other patrons. He quickly started talking to both of them in hushed tones, Eunice noticed, and though they looked disinterested at first, they quickly started to look more and more invested in the conversation, as they slowly started turning more and more pale, as if they were receiving some particularly concerning rumors.

Eunice tries to wipe the strange activity from her mind, continuing to serve drinks to the many patrons in the bar, but as she continues to dish out ales, she can’t help but notice a dark cloud starting to settle over the crowd, as the men the farmer at the bar talked to split off and began to talk to others in the crowd, who began to talk to others. It was like seeing a rumor spread and a tale be generated all at once, and Eunice found the interplay fascinating. She was also starting to get achingly curious about what exactly it was that the farmer and the others were talking about.

Eunice, back behind the bar now, leans over to one of her patrons and asks him. “So, do you know what all this news is about? I see something going through the crowd, but it hasn’t reached me yet”, she says to a slightly grubby looking farmhand who is already on his 4th ale of the day. The farmhand looks up at her from his drink; he is bleary-eyed and looking like he is worlds away, like he has slipped out of our reality. He does not respond and returns to his drink.

Eunice looks over at the man sitting beside him who had obviously heard what she had asked, a peppy looking traveling merchant in colorful clothes befitting his profession (albeit somewhat dimmed by the dust of the road he has spent his day walking). The man looks startled for a second, but starts to get his nerve again and begins to speak.

“Well, I do say, the bloke from what I could overhear as I walked past, was going on about a variety of dreadful things. He mentioned how his animals had been acting funny lately, and how something has been picking off some of his herd, but he couldn’t find anything that would have done it. He is very concerned about this, as he made evident to those he talked too, much hullaballoo about how much money he is losing.

“He also mentions strange signs that appear in the ground, strange marks and symbols that have been appearing in his pastures. He has also been mentioning strange sounds he hears at night as well, sounds that sound almost like the roar of a great bear, but with a fury and a coarseness beyond that of any bear cry he had ever heard, and a strange nature about the cry such that it sounds both like a whisper from far away, and shouted up close all at once. And then there is the business about one of his landsmen, a hunter hermit who he permits live on the edge of his properties, in the woods. Well, this fellow hasn’t been seen for days either, allegedly, but when he went into his shack he found all his things there, complete with a simple meal all set out already! As if the man had just disappeared or been spirited away somehow, but without signs of a struggle! Nasty, disturbing business I tell you, I have never heard anything like it, and I hope I shan’t again before my travels are over”, the merchant finished, before taking a huge draught from his mug of ale, as if he was hoping that he could clear out any worries in his own mind with the assistance of the drink.

Eunice thanks the man and returns to serving the other customers, refilling all the empty mugs in the inn. The continued conversation she overhears as she walks by continues to disturb her. Apparently many of the farmers have started experience similar occurrences as well, talk of missing livestock and strange noises and mysterious signs are common, as well as reports of individuals who have gone missing in the previous weeks. Apparently much of this started slow at first, but has been building, with more and more livestock and people disappearing, as if summoned into heaven, leaving behind everything undisturbed. Eunice also picks up talk of strange smells, a smell as if everything rotten is burning, a sickly sort of smoke that has been scented in certain parts of the surrounding lands, with nothing that points towards its location.

The combination of all these various clues and portents, and their similarity to the story she heard from Old Man Johnson, is not lost on Eunice, and has her on edge all the rest of the evening and even into bed. More thoughts and fears start filling her mind, and it is almost more effort than she has to go to sleep (and even then, her sleep is light and broken often by nightmares and often she finds herself unable to return to slumber due to the fears that won’t leave her mind). This continues on every night thence, the tossing and turning and horrible dreams and anxieties at every little noise. Has the doom come for her? She constantly finds herself thinking. Has the shapeless doom come for her at last, as it has for so many others? The thoughts come unbidden, even as she tries to push them away, to get some semblance of rest, but rest never truly comes.

And it isn’t just Eunice that has the feeling of doom that has come upon her, it becomes apparent. As the week goes on, more and more people in the bar appear as sullen and as brooding as the farmer was. The crowd beings to thin out as well, as more people go missing. The townsfolk begin to get more and more tense, stories and songs become less commonly heard in the tavern, and when they are heard they are of a dark and melancholy nature. Fights start to happen more and more often, and the constables find themselves overworked breaking them up. The impression Eunice starts to feel is that of an invasion by some mysterious outside force, but not so directly as to have soldiers marching in the streets and burning houses. The only soldiers and burning here are metaphorical, soldiers marching through the minds of the townsfolk, burning down their sense of peace and security. The only exception to this are the mysterious events, the burn marks, the missing people, the dead animals, that increase in number as time goes on, until it doesn’t feel safe to leave town anymore, for fear of being caught by whatever it is that stalks the fields and forests just out of view.

Eunice resolves that she must figure out what is going on, no matter what. She cannot continue to live like this, see everything slowly fall apart like this. She needs to at least know the shape her inevitable doom will take, and the only way she can figure how she will know it ahead of time is to yet again visit Old Man Johnson. She gathers together what fruit and pastries she has on hand (scant few, the baker and grocers of the town have been as effected as anyone and their output has significantly dipped), puts on her cloak, and hurries down the path out of town, towards his cabin, looking over her shoulder as she goes.

Quickly she comes to the cabin, and is relieved to find it still standing, seemingly normal. She takes a minute to compose herself, and walks up to the door, then knocks.

“Hello, Johnson? I need to speak to you”, she says, knocking gently to no reply. She begins to bang harder. “Hello? Are you in there? Please, I just need to know, I just need someone to tell me what is going on!” She knocks harder and harder, to the point where it is beginning to open her hand. Frustrated, she yanks the door open.

Inside, the house is the same as it ever was, but it is obvious nobody has been here in days. There is a layer of dust all over everything, and a cold fire in the corner. Food is laying out on the table and has gone rotten. Worst of all, one of Johnsons precious books is laying open in a corner next to his chair, face down on the ground, as if it was flung to the ground in a hurry as its owner raced outside. Eunice weeps, as it is obvious Johnson has been taken in the same manner as many of the others from town, and she slowly closes the door and leaves the cabin, heading back down the long path to town, albeit taking things more slowly this time.

As she starts to approach town, she notices something off. This sense is subtle at first, but grows as she gets closer and closer. It starts as a noise she can’t quite identify, that sounds almost like ocean waves far off in the distance, but grows louder and louder and she gets closer to town. Then, an acrid smell hits her nose, a smell not too dissimilar to meat being roasted over a fire, but fouler and sourer, as if both the meat and the wood have gone horribly rotten. And despite the advancing time of the day, the sky seems to be growing brighter and brighter, as if it was morning advancing to noon. She starts to hurry now, fearful of what she will find but knowing she can’t put off seeing what is at the end of the trail.

When she comes to the end of her path, she instantly falls to her knees. She had some idea of what she would see, but nothing she imagined would have been as horrible as all this. The entire village is in flames, every single house is engulfed. The fire and smoke covers her entire field of vision, nothing can be seen beyond it. All she can hear is the roar of the flames and the cries of the dying, trapped inside in their houses or laying in the street burning, the pain too much for them to even move. All the sound drowns out her own screams and sobs of horror.

Beyond the town, a giant fat thing sits, bellowing above all the carnage, spitting more and more flame whenever it seems a patch that is not already fully covered. It is a hideous thing, bigger than the tallest tree, as big as the biggest hill in the area, a great beast of scales that seem both slimy and rotten and dry and desiccated all at once. The way it moves in the light it is hard to tell the color exactly; it turns this way it’s a sickly orange-yellow, it turns the other way it is a hideous shade of purple similar to bruised flesh. But the overall color that is always visible is red, red scales, red underbelly. It has a squat fat belly, powerful legs and arms, like a wolf or a bear, with claws to match. It has a long neck that moves unnaturally, like a snake, with a long head full of sharp teeth, each tooth the size of Eunice’s fore-arm. It is enshrouded by two massive, leathery wings, that with every flap only stoke the flames higher and higher. Every time it opens its mouth it roars and sounds like the world is cracking open. And yet it laughs! It laughs at all it sees before it, a hideous, retching and coughing sort of laugh, a mockery of true mirth, and it laughs all the same, as if the burning of these things that are like ants before it amuses it.

And suddenly, just as soon as it appeared, it is off. With one great flap of its wings it soars into the sky, higher than Eunice can see until it is just a speck, and then even the speck vanishes it is so high up. And she is just left with the burning village in front of her, everyone she has ever known and loved dying. She collapses and loses consciousness.

A few days later, as soldiers march through the village on their way to yet another distant war, they come across Eunice, crawling through the midst of the rubble, laughing and screaming. One solider turns to the other and says “Let the old mad woman be, she is clearly an unfortunate wretch who has lost her mind, the poor soul”.

The other soldier replies “Aye, we need the lords to sort such as them out. That is what happens when you don’t trust in them, you fall into such a state”. The soldiers both shake their heads and follow their commander as the company continues to march through the village.