When Aelfric reached a point where the hill leveled off, he finally noticed that he could no longer hear the clashing of swords or the yelling of men. His chest heaving, sweat nibbling at his eyes, he allowed himself to turn around.
From this vantage point, he could see parts of the clearing but none of the men. He did not see anyone following him. He slumped down against a tree, unsure of what to do.
The king is dead!
What if what the captain of the guard said was true? What if Father had died? It felt like a heavy stone settled where his heart was, making it hard to breathe. Or maybe that was just all the running.
What could he do?
He didn’t really know anyone outside the castle. And today’s events had proven that he couldn’t really trust everyone from the castle, either.
He looked at the sky. It seemed darker. Maybe it was the canopy. Or maybe it was growing late. He couldn’t tell. His mind was a whirlwind. He didn’t know where to go but he couldn’t just stay here.
Socyron will reward those that show loyalty.
Socyron. Father’s most trusted advisor. The one taking care of him when he became ill. Aelfric had a sick feeling in his stomach.
He got up and ran, his footsteps digging into the soft undergrowth. Leaves littered the forest floor, moist from recent rain, yet still crunching underfoot. He didn’t know where he was going. It seemed that, no matter which direction he went, he wasn’t getting any closer to where he wanted to be - or any farther from where he didn’t. He tried to get away from it all - the guards who all of a sudden wanted to kill him, the stories of his father dying…
He stopped in his tracks and retched.
Falling to his knees, his stomach convulsing, his hair wet with sweat and sticking to his face, he tried to regurgitate the day’s events.
The sour odor of vomit mixed with the sweetness of fallen leaves and the sharp scent of pine. The earthiness of mushrooms hung over it all. Aelfric had thrown up right by a giant puffy mushroom that was about half his size. He had never seen one so big.
Suddenly, Aelfric heard a voice. Not a human one. But rasping, high-pitched, and guttural.
He turned around and saw nothing there. He pulled out his dagger and pressed himself firmly against a tree. Hesitantly, he scanned his field of vision. Nothing.
His heart pounded in his chest. He realized that his throat was sore from vomiting. Hearing a stream trickling nearby, he looked around the trees and saw it pooling into a pond not too far away, surrounded by pine trees, with several of the giant mushrooms attached cozily.
Coming closer to the pond, he observed that the mushrooms actually formed a circle, with this pool being more or less in the center of it.
It was really getting dark now. Aelfric noticed that he was crying, his tears doing as much as the twilight to blur his vision. He knelt by the pool and washed his face.
Not far from where he knelt, Aelfric spotted a large scorch mark burned into the ground - much larger than any campfire. No shrubs grew near it. There weren’t even any leaves. Or stones. The air smelled like lightning. It seemed that, as he looked at it, he could hear whispers around him.
It was almost like the mushrooms were talking.
He shifted his gaze from the charred circle to the sky above. Both moons, Aldoryn and Zephyra, shone in the twilight. The canopy seemed to deliberately open to allow an unobstructed view of them. Their reflections basked in the pool. Swaying in the ripples, Aelfric saw a face still dirty from tears and forest. He bent down to wash it again.
And screamed.
Staring at him from the pond, in-between floating leaves, was a twisted toothy figure with sharp features and red eyes.
Whirling around, dagger in hand, he was horrified to see that there were two gaunt, withered creatures grinning at him. They vaguely resembled the gnomes in his nanny’s scary stories. Except that they were only about a head shorter than he, with jagged teeth exposed by menacing grins. Their eyes looked empty and mischievous. In their hands they held thick branches and crudely fashioned dirks.
He saw a third climbing down a tree like a spider, holding a blade with his teeth. Shrill cackles behind him.
One of the creatures lunged and poked him in the belly with a branch. Hard.
Aelfric stepped back away from him, frantically feeling for footing. Another jumped at him from behind the tree, waving a rusty dagger. He slipped on some moss and fell backwards, bumping his head against thick tree roots.
Struggling back up, his head spinning, he could see that some of them held torches. How many of them, he wasn’t sure. They slowly circled him, occasionally chittering in their strange tongue. One approached, waving a torch at him. Aelfric backed away. Strangely, the group parted to let him through, though they continued to give him sharp jabs with their sticks.
Aelfric was now almost in the scorched circle. A sick feeling settled as he recognized that they were driving him towards it.
Aelfric swung wildly with his dagger, trying to scare his way through the creatures. They would not budge. One of the twisted imps conked him smartly in the head. He stumbled backwards onto the burned earth.
In the distance, some others began to chant. High pitched yet throaty supplications for some unfortunate occurrence.
The earth began to vibrate.
Suddenly, there was a sickening crunch and a few of the gnarled creatures were airborne - landing in more than awkward positions in the scorched earth behind him, their dirks and spears clanking off of stones and trees almost out of earshot.
If he wasn’t dazed from all the blows to the head, Aelfric could have sworn that the tree branch had moved on its own.
In the distance, fervent chants turned to fevered shrieks. The silhouette of a man had appeared and was drubbing the howling rascals with a hefty wooden staff.
Twisted, screaming creatures darted about in disorganized frenzy. Aelfric saw one get knocked in the head, launched against a nearby trunk and collapse at the base of the tree, his feet twitching.
Then something began to happen. The charred earth he was sitting on started to hum. A deep, heavy buzzing not unlike what a bee might sound like if it were the size of cattle. The circle was glowing. Looking up, Zephyra, the smaller and by-far faster of the two, approached the center of her lunar brother.
“Get out of there!” the burly man demanded.
He was now much closer. It seemed that he was beginning to tire from the skirmish. Some of the creatures also sensed this, and those who remained hesitantly approached him, their shoddy weapons at the ready. Aelfric gripped his dagger tight and moved closer to help.
Just then, as the man plunged his quarterstaff into the ground, a trembling current drummed from the earth.
The roots had come to life.
Perhaps in a dozen different places, thick wooden tendrils impossibly exploded out of the ground and wrapped themselves around the legs, midsections, and throats of the scraggly, misshapen fiends. They stabbed and clawed at the ground as they were pulled - amidst pitiful screams - towards the shimmering, pulsating circle. One of them grabbed a hold of Aelfric’s leg, pulling him along. With equal parts disgust and distress, Aelfric buried his blade in the creature’s shoulder. It finally let go. Aelfric marveled at the blood on his blade, black in the moonlight. He had never stabbed a living creature before.
Then, from his seat on the perimeter, Aelfric saw the truly inexplicable occur. A stunningly bright light filled the entirety of the area where the charred earth had been. It was as though a white column had materialized from the earth, incinerating the pitiful screeching creatures.
Just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone, leaving behind only the thick, sweet, and metallic odor that he could only faintly notice earlier.
Turning to look behind him, he saw the man slowly limping over to him, leaning heavily on his staff.
“I owe you my life, sir,” Aelfric said.
“I’m no sir,” the man replied, catching his breath. “Wretched goblins ate my chickens.”
Great 2nd chapter!
I like how the end takes a turn there, the stranger who saves him was only after the goblins because they ate his chickens. Really unexpected!
I love the buildup so far and my imagination is helping me paint the picture. I also noticed that Aelfric’s name was repeated a lot in this chapter, don’t know if you did that intentionally to point him out instead of using He.