Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 26

Marian a

Inhuman roars echo across planes of green and farmland, shrouded in the dark of night. So faint, they fly underneath the wind. I almost feel them across the hair on my arms. They ring and grate across every nerve—nerves that already sit on high ledges.

Rebels. Traitors to the Crown.

The title feels like an honor and a noose.

That’s what we all are now.

Last year, our town was nearly six hundred. The Crow’s sadistic hunting of us and the many that have peeled off in the night, searching for a safer place to live out their life has thinned the herd. A hundred or so of us remain. A hundred and Eldrick’s dog. The wiry-haired hound weaves through the company at knee-height, tongue flopping about in ignorant glee. He periodically comes to walk with his master, shoving his head beneath Eldrick’s hand which swings tiredly at his side. The sight begrudgingly pulls the corner of my lip upward.

We’ve traveled across Surin soil these past several weeks, picking our way in the dead of night slowly. Now I know what it is to be mourning while also feeling hopeful.

“The Banshee,” Mom leans over to whisper in my ear, our red hair tangling slightly in the wind. “Her cries supposedly ring in the silence before death, that’s what the locals claim at least. Let’s hope they’re wrong.” She wiggles her eyebrows at me.

I smile placatingly and shake my head.

The Mounds. Leagues away they loom, the cries echoing from them. They are gargantuan shadows, even in the night, obscuring the starlit sky. Treeless specters, coated in smooth lush grass, they protrude without reason from the flatlands near Dun.

“The entrance to Hell, they claim. Fitting that the banshee would be calling souls to the underworld from such a place,” She goes on, boredom forcing the whispered chatter. She never could stand a quiet moment.

“Maybe Hell would welcome us. Maybe they could be our allies,” I whisper back sardonically.

My mother shakes her head in amusement, but defeated worry flickers across her fair features.

We have no allies. We have nothing but our fire, a tiny flickering flame of rebellion, hoping the winds of oppression don’t snuff it out.

While we believe we burned all of the Crows of Comraich to the ground, there is bound to be word reaching the king soon. Bound to be whispers in taverns and gossip returning to nearby posts. Enough gossip to warrant a nearby troop to wander through Wynedd to confirm or deny.

So we keep a low profile, seeking a stronghold. Seeking a hearth in which to build a true fire. People argue for fleeing to Ashvynd for sanctuary or to join their raiders—try to channel their energy into something more productive. Some say we should flee to the eastern continents, seeking asylum. Some say we should go straight to Raith and start a war—rally the people and rise up.

Some people are fools.

Grasping at shadows, betting on poor odds—we all know it. It makes the days long and tense at camp, and the travels at night full of whispered arguments. It makes our numbers dwindle with every coward that flees.

Fleeing to where?

There is no safe place in Suri.

No relief comes with the dawning of the light. Lilac skies only make the mounds to the northeast feel larger, darker through the large barn window. The cries have gone silent with the growing sunlight, allowing some semblance of peace to fall over camp. We found the barn on the edge of a farmer’s land, no livestock currently occupying the stalls, so we all huddle in, lying down on bales of straw, finding rest where we can.

It’s nice. Aside from the smell of shit.

My father sits with his circle, the carrier of our little flame, my mother at his side, tucked into his broad shoulder. I sit to his left, maintaining a united front—something solid in the ever-changing tides of our reality.

I stare at the golden sun as we have a variation of the same argument we have every night. I listen to the birds sing their morning songs.

“Those men are savages. We should surpass them and fall in with the Dragon King’s cause,” Eldrick argues. He’s speaking of the ‘savage men’ of the Ghael mountains, the Reaper their savage leader .

“And trade one tyrant for another?” My father is as tired of the argument as I. “We stick to the plan. The Dragon King has his own agenda. He knows no morals. He will not be fighting our war. He will be fighting his own.”

“How could you possibly know that? Besides, does it matter? If we have a common enemy, it makes us allies,” Eldrick keeps hammering, running his hand over his furry companion’s head. The dog sleeps—blissfully unaware, last I checked.

“Because I know.” My father’s voice is firm. Hard, because, while people noticed our fighting in the escape, none have received answers as to how we can do such things with such skill. Nobody needs to know right now—better to play our cards close. “And we are allies until we find ourselves under another regime of terror and control. We are allies until he places himself as the Pretty King’s successor before his body is cold. I don’t know about you, Eldrick, but that is not the future I am fighting for.”

The silence is pointed.

“What are you fighting for?” Sara asks from her spot beside her neighbor. Her curly-haired child sleeps tucked into her side. We had thought him a goner after everything with Alyx and Diana. Without a healer, his mother was sure he would die, but the strong boy pulled through and is now healthy as can be.

My father’s eyes soften slightly before he says, “Safety, freedom. I fight for my daughter to live however she wants, without fear. I fight because I want to wake up and not be crippled with fear that today is the day they’ll make an example of me, my wife, my child. I fight against the dying of hope. We will not find that in the Dragon King’s war.”

I fight the urge to pinch his side when he calls me his child . As if I’m not twenty .

The words are my mother’s, I hear her in them. I’ve heard her whisper them to him when they thought I was asleep. But people will only listen to them in the tenor of a man’s voice. So we follow suit. Maybe this new world would be different, but until then, we pick our battles.

Maybe that’s what all new empires say. “Don’t try to force too much change, it will make you fail.” “Don’t take a stance too radical, it will lose you support. It will lose you allies.” And now here we still are, no progress having been made. My mother, who is every bit as capable and strong and smart as my father, is silent at his side, relying on him to say what she wants to say. Thankfully he does, because what would she do if he didn’t?

Suddenly it all feels like an excuse—a pile of shit.

I drown out the sounds of more discussion. Who else will ally with us? Where will we strike first? With what? We seem to be getting a little ahead of ourselves.

Through it all, I watch the long wheat sway in the breeze, and let it begin to lull me into dreams of more than this—more than hiding in barns and whispered hopes.

Shadows lurk in between the stocks of wheat. They move with the wind. Rhythmic and worldly. Ominous.

They shift, grow and shrink. That’s when I notice them truly. They have their own movements. And the violent orange of dawn has nothing to reflect on, so why is there something of glittering red moving through the grass?

I jolt to my feet and walk slowly to the doorway.

Silence falls behind me, except the quiet sounds of my people rising to their feet.

The birdsong has quieted.

They are perhaps three quarters of the way through the field, the wheat parting with their smooth advancement.

“There is something out there,” I whisper. “They’re stalking towards us.”

Hunted. We are being hunted.

Swords scrape against sheaths as we prepare to defend ourselves against…something.

I quickly wake our people, quieting all of their rumblings with a look.

We shuffle out a stall opening in the back, nothing but an open field and the light of day awaiting us.

My father forces us all to take the lead, him falling to the rear, ready to defend against whatever pursues us. My mother and I are at the head, swiftly jogging towards a small wood far off the edge of the field. The wheat whips against my arms, the ground beneath my feet uneven from the bunches that grow together.

We crest the top of a hill and stop dead in our tracks.

Crows. Tens of them advancing up the hill, waiting for us. Their mounts wait at the bottom in armor fit for a king’s steed.

They were herding us.

The bald Crow, unburnt, is leading the troop up the hill, his smile twisted in malicious anticipation.

Commotion from behind forces me against my mother, brushing my arm along hers, sliding together, back-to-back. I see them.

Monsters of the darkest kind. Snarling, red-eyed hounds, their jet-black coats consuming the light. The eyes I saw glittering in the wheat.

Dad, sword drawn, engages with one on swift feet. It morphs before my eyes, shifting and twisting onto two feet, front legs elongating into spindling long-fingered claws. Maintaining nothing but its night black coat and red eyes. It swipes, moving with inhuman speed and strength, slashing right through my father’s leather vest, gouging long scratches that pour scarlet.

I try not to let my mom feel my jagged breathing as Dad, battling his own terror strikes swift as a serpent. His movements are well-honed and decisive.

Four more of those things slink towards us in the long wheat.

I look back at the Crows, who stare at their hounds in glee. Several of them watch in concentration, muttering to themselves.

My mother moves against my back, the sound of blades clashing rings out.

I turn against all instinct, giving the monsters my back. The men are closer threats.

Taking a centering breath, I unleash myself upon them.

These opponents seem to ooze brute strength and power.

Every slash of mine is met with greater strength and swiftness than should be possible. I push myself to the edge, battling with every thought, every movement driven by instinct.

The few people behind me draw their own blades and give it everything they have. Their lives depend upon it. The blade is metaphorically and physically at their throats, and they resist it.

The little training we have done in daylight hours these past few weeks is not enough. They begin to fall—quickly.

My ire blazes, providing much-needed strength to my blows.

A distracted Crow, one without a blade drawn, watches the hounds decimate our group from behind.

I take the killing blow.

His life ends with a blade through the heart and a wet fluid-filled breath, the sounds slating my thirst. I hear a yelp behind me and chance a look back. A hound stumbles around, running from an injury that doesn’t exist. Bits of it peel away; flecks of black, like ash from a fire, float away on the dawn breeze until it is nothing but a memory of horror.

I look back at the Crow I just ended, a theory forming. A quick glance around tells me more. Another Crow lies dead, no wound on him. One of the ones that muttered. One of the ones whose hound my father killed.

“Where are the fucking humans?” they had said as Comraich burned.

“…Humans.”

“The fucking humans… “

I had thought about it many times. Finding the wording odd.

But now I don’t.

These things, these Crows and hounds live by rules outside of humanity.

My new targets are the other two that stand behind the other battling Crows, my theory giving me a renewed vigor.

I have no time to search for Mom and Dad. They can handle themselves.

A shadow falls over me. The bald Crow, the leader, steps into my path of destruction. My head meets his pectorals and he is easily three times my weight.

I lunge without hesitation.

There is no humanity in what meets me.

He battles lazily, as if toying with me.

He rushes forward, swinging wide to keep me from escaping, from rolling out of reach. Clearly hoping to scare me with his size and strength.

I duck towards the blow, just under it. His broadsword catches only the ends of my flying hair, trimming it slightly.

The slight tug of my hair happens at the same time I slice through the tendons at his heels .

They give out in a powerful snap just as his hand comes back to tangle in my flowing hair, jerking my head back and down to the ground as he falls forward.

The world spins from the impact, I try to roll away despite the daze, but his hand is fisted in my hair. I aim to slice it off. Either my hair or his hand, I have no preference, but he yanks me up and I cry out, my blade missing either target.

His sword comes to my neck as I settle against his broad chest, somehow cold against my back. We are both sprawled in the wheat.

“You flaming bitch!” he grits out, yanking my hair in rage.

His blade presses so hard, quaking with rage, that blood begins spilling down my neck, wetting the tunic around my collar bones.

Something claws in the back of my mind, making the air freeze in my chest. He has a grip on something inside of me. It feels like freezing pressure, pulling on my chest. The edges of my vision blur.

A cry of rage so fierce rings through the air just enough to pull his blade from my neck.

A cry I recognize as well as my own.

That internal hold releases with his physical one. I gasp for precious air, rolling away from him.

He gets up just in time to meet my father as he descends upon him.

My father is everything I’ve ever striven to be, as he not just handles the attacks, but puts the leader on his back foot. Driving him far from me, down the hill. He stumbles over his bad leg, severed tendons rendering it unusable.

I don’t squander the opportunity he has given me, dispatching the few Crows linked to the hounds, proving my theory as the hounds dissolve in the wind.

Dad and the leader still battle at the bottom of the hill. Blow for blow, neither giving nor wavering. It’s an impressive feat, that the leader can even fight back with one leg.

I stalk down the hill towards them.

A pool of shadow grows from nothing behind the bald Crow. Eating and consuming all that lies underneath it.

And from it a hound claws its way out.

I start running down the hill.

It is no use. The hound leaps on my father’s back, clamping its jaws around the back of his neck.

I’ve never heard my dad scream before.

Shrieks tear from him, born from more than just pain, but terror.

I’m sprinting, then tripping, then rolling down the hill. Springing to my feet and sprinting harder.

Through whatever terror my father is living through, he pulls a dagger from his belt and slides it between the beast’s ribs. Over, and over, and over again.

The bald Crow, having stood back to watch, slices through something inked in the skin at his forearm, somehow releasing the hound that has only just released my dad. It’s too wounded to continue. It dissipates like the others, floating away in flecks of nightmare.

I won’t ever remember the last steps I stumble down the hillside, the bald Crow kneeling in front of his conquest locked in my gaze. Pleasure suffusing his expression as he does… something to him. My father’s corpse desiccates in a blink.

There are no thoughts as I reach him, nothing but purpose as I pull his own dagger from his waist.

There is nothing .

Nothing.

Nothing.

Except fire in my veins.

As I leap up his body, wrapping my legs around him from behind, and plunge the dagger straight into his eye, carving it from his skull.

He throws me off him as one would fling a cat, but I keep my hold on his dagger. His eye, torn from its socket, is nothing but a round bit of blood, flesh, and jelly in the dirt.

Satisfaction and disappointment leave a taste so disgusting in one’s mouth.

He stumbles back to his mount, blood pouring from his face, and takes off.

There are no Crows left to follow him. No hounds left to terrorize.

It’s so heavy. So, so heavy now. And he’s not here to help me carry it anymore.

I don’t know how long I stare at his figure disappearing over the horizon.

I don’t know how long until my mother finds us, falling to her knees before Dad.

I don’t know how long she screams or how long I stand there, a ghostly specter clutching the dagger of my enemy.

I don’t know how long it takes us to burn the corpses of battle, my father’s amongst them on that field.

I know the sound the Crow’s eye makes sizzling in the flames.

I know that dusk’s sun melts into the horizon when I finally get up from where I kneel.

I know that there is no beauty in this ending.