THE LANDS FORSAKEN | DUNREACH VILLAGE | CHIEF’S COTTAGE

  600

  “Don’t waste yer fear on yer grandmother’s tales because reality is worse than yer imagination. The monsters of lore haunt the mind, but that’s about the worst of it. Even the cruelest of those fairytale things exists to serve you—to teach you a lesson with evil.”

  My grandfather stopped at the door frame as he was leaving the room. “But in all my years of living, I’ve found that the darkness of this world don’t intend to teach ya a thing. The only thing to be learned from hell is that hell is never-ending.”

  His shadow was unmoving in the candlelight, words slithering under the covers and penetrating ears all too receptive.

  I’d woken myself up in tears from a nightmare about a monster from my grandmother’s stories. I’d been relieved to hear his heavy boots slam against the ground. But first glance at the shivering mess that was his grandson, the village chief shook his head with distaste.

  Furthermore, I then foolishly asked for my grandfather to vanquish the creature in a story.

  To me, he was the only one who could.

  Instead, the old man stood in the doorway, revealing the breadth of his world-carrying shoulders. “Go to bed, son. If a shadespawn broke through the barrier and made it past the fence, there's nothing you or I can do about it now. Might as well do yerself a favor and let it kill ya in yer sleep.”

  THE LANDS FORSAKEN | THE FORSAKEN LANDS OF GENèSE

  600

  Funnily enough, Solvanel found himself agreeing with his grandfather’s words more and more each day. There was a monster under his bed that night. But it wasn’t the bridge troll of a thousand riddles.

  The village thought the missing bouchère’s return a rare cause for celebration.

  Her body’s discovery inside a shifter's den led to a night of bloody confusion.

  Turns out, the oldest man was right about that, too.

  While it’s customary to bury the dead with a symbol of their life’s devotion, they never did find her missing cleaver. However, it was clearly what had been used to take her life.

  Regardless.

  In a world of creatures that can take the form of their victims, there was little need for monsters of the mind. As his grandfather said, the Lightbringer’s stories ended with a lesson on vice or virtue.

  They were not meant to scare him into sleeplessness, for there was plenty enough in the real world to do that on its own.

  That being said, there was one tale circulated in their village.

  And like the best of them, the contents varied with the shape of the lip.

  The Forsaken Land of Genesis is the land upon which the gods waged war against the primordials.

  A once flourishing jungle in which the first human civilization thrived.

  It is the birthplace of evil.

  The gateway to the underworld.

  It is where the garden serpent bled out after it was banished from Eden.

  Somewhere in the Forsaken Land lies the key to immortality.

  But if you step into the Forsaken Land, you will shrivel up and die.

  Despite its name, all the tales of the Forsaken Land had one thing in common.

  It was a land of absolute finality.

  A land of the end, rather than the beginning.

  As for Solvanel, he didn’t believe in those stories at all.

  But now, he was certain its existence would be the end of him.

  The younger and larger of the twins, Albane, bounded across the sands. His breath grew more ragged with each step. Further hindered by a continuous wail of blubbering terror ever since he’d grabbed hold of Solvanel and taken off.

  One that cut through the vast silence of the Forsaken Lands like a comet through an otherwise empty expanse.

  Solvanel’s protests were ripped through as well. The shepherd’s crook, he used to whack the fool over the head a thousand times—if not, plus one.

  The giant’s stamina was terrifying. Paired with his injuries, the speed at which he was moving should have rendered him immobile long ago. But instead of dimming due to fatigue, the divine breath inside of him was expanding and growing brighter, still.

  The shepherd was atop a raging bull, barreling into the greatest unknown.

  He could not afford to die just yet.

  Solvanel kicked into the giant’s side mid-stride.

  Albane screamed as a calf slung by a rock. The two of them tumbled across the barren floor of the Forsaken Land, carving streaks of red into the lifeless gray sands until their momentum finally died, leaving only the sound of wind and the faint hiss of settling dust.

  “What the fuck have you done, you damn oaf?” hissed the old man, Solvanel.

  He brushed himself off.

  Albane wept silently on his side.

  Solvanel’s sacrifice was meant to create an opportunity—slaughter at the expense of his greatest treasure. Now his grandmother’s finger was a useless ornament left behind, and for what?

  Five of his adversaries paralyzed at the edge of a forest.

  Yet here, his bony hand, when it should have been slitting their throats.

  But why five instead of six?

  He never was proficient in using the ten catalysts, the digits left behind after her passing, but his resolve was steel when he activated the ring finger’s paralysie—the touch of the first digit.

  Stop those whom I consider my enemies.

  The younger Boulder Brother should have been frozen alongside them.

  The big red oaf panted while doubled over, holding his bloody side. “I wanted to save you. Brothers… don’t… fight.”

  Solvanel didn’t know whether to laugh at his stupidity or weep for it. “Don’t call me your brother. For I have no such thing. Besides, it is your actual brothers who need saving. From themselves…”

  The words rose like bile in his throat, burning on their way up. He tried to swallow them, lips pressed tight, but the old man’s stubborn tick won out in the end. “…fuck-face.”

  Twenty-three grayish flames arrived similarly. They collapsed at his feet one by one, panting and keeling over, the scent of ash and exhaustion hanging heavy in the air. Their skin gleamed faintly with soot, their breath rattling in the desert’s stillness. For a long time, none of them spoke; the air itself seemed to weigh too much for words.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Then, a whisper broke through the quiet.

  “The Forsaken Land…” one of them breathed, voice thin.

  A ripple went through the others. Someone began to sob softly, another laughed—a short, hollow sound that cracked halfway through. The rest only stared at the horizon, where black sand met black sky in seamless despair.

  Another shook his head, voice breaking. “This place isn’t real, is it?”

  The answer stretched endlessly in every direction, devouring the horizons. There was a chill in the air that sought refuge in their spines. Smoke’s bitter remorse hung faintly about—a pitiable apology for the ash suffusing the sand.

  So as the prisoners shifted their feet did the sand breathe a glimmer, visible only to a certain pair of eyes attuned to its sorrowful gray hue.

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  “Tell us something!”

  “What’s going to happen to us?”

  Their voices layered over one another, panicked and pleading. Some were tenderly caressing the burns left behind by their chains, though they had already melted away, as if grasping the memory of bondage for safety.

  But Solvanel only stared up, following the streak of the comet across the void.

  “This way,” he said, stepping over them.

  “No!” exclaimed an incredulous escapee. “W- we shouldn’t have run away. If we turn back now, who knows? Maybe they’ll see how loyal we are and have a change of heart about how they’ve been treating us.”

  The captive, a brown-haired woman of unremarkable appearance, looked desperately between Solvanel and the burning remnants of the camp behind them.

  She trailed off, her disfigured wrists leaking blood and pus as she clasped them over her chest. “They’ll understand, won’t they?”

  He looked into her.

  And then, without pity or softness, said, “Surely. If that’s what you believe, then it must be so. I’ve no intention of going back, so those of you who wish to go back, please do so now.” He then gestured forward with his crook. “And those of you who wish to be saved, salvation is that way.”

  “How do we know that?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Birds of a feather—isn’t that how it always goes? You’re all from the same village, aren’t you? You were buddy-buddy with the worst of them. So how do we know you’re not worse? I’ll bet you’re just hungry, is all. You just wanna use your devil eyes to steal our souls.”

  “If that’s what you believe, then it must be so,” he said again, of his eerie calmness and the old man's raging temper. “I don’t give a fuck about your fucking certainty. You will find it only in death. You begged for freedom, and your pleas bore fruit. The chains melted around your wrists and set them ablaze. Does the price of freedom ruin the taste?”

  A pause. “If so, perhaps you were never hungry enough to begin with.”

  “See? He sounds just like them!” the captive exploded, voice strained and brittle. His flame was in complete disarray—flickering, writhing, barely holding form—fed not by rage, but by the burning in his wrists. “What you’re saying is exactly what I’m trying to ask you. We were freed at the cost of our hands, so why keep following the path they laid ahead of us? Sacrifice our only life for some noble goal when we can just choose another path, maybe hide until they go by, then return through the forest when they’re gone?”

  A tense silence followed—too jagged to be peace, too hollow to be comfort.

  Without flinching, the Solvanel let the words settle like dust. “Those who see tomorrow spend all their yesterdays in preparation. I’m not your benefactor. I’m not your friend. I’m not even your answer. But if we follow that comet,” he nodded toward the streak in the heavens, “everything will be fine. That is what I was told.”

  “By whom?” someone spat. “Your stinking heavens?”

  “No. I no longer believe in such comforts. This time, it was a demon who came to me in a dream.”

  Gasps rippled through the crowd like cracks in ice. A few stepped back, unsure if he was mad, blessed, or simply broken beyond repair. The gold-haired fool had said it with such certainty that it left no room for argument.

  A breathless laugh, more disbelief than humor. “You’re out of your mind…”

  “You’re out of your mind!” The captive’s voice rose, cracking as his frustration boiled over. “You expect us to follow you into the dark on the word of a demon? Do you even hear yourself? First, you act like some saint with a death wish and get Oscar killed, then you talk about dreams like they’re commandments! You say we’re free—but look at us! We’re starving, we’re hunted, probably about to lose our hands, half of us can barely stand, and you want us to put our faith in you? In your dreams?” He asked, giving Solvanel just enough time to think that he actually wanted an answer.

  “Ye-”

  “In your dreams! So what—this demon just showed up in your dreams and handed you a fruit on a silver platter? No strings attached? Out of the goodness of its heart or some shit? Oh, wait, let me guess. It was actually a good demon who wanted to help us! To help you be the hero you’re destined to be! It wants to atone for its sins and change the world for the better. Is that it?”

  Solvanel didn’t blink. Didn’t break. His reply came steady, sardonic, final.

  “Surely. If that is what I fucking believe, then it must be so.”

  Underneath his wrappings, his eyes passed over them like fog, lingering nowhere, yet seeing everything. There was a cold stillness to him now. Of which belonged to someone who’d finally accepted he’d never be understood. “I still intend to save you and to prove that I am nothing like those who killed me.” Solvanel frowned, shaking his head in an attempt to clear his mind. “Who killed the old man—Oscar, I mean. But you are under no obligation to take my path. So, if you have better, then do better. But if not…”

  He turned away.

  “May the darkness take you gently.”

  And with that, he walked on.