Unbound

The streets stank of rain and blood.

Jeneve knew both of them well. Amaranth was often afflicted by southern rains, enough that the streets often ran like rivers in the wettest of months. As for the other—her father was a butcher, and she was a helpful girl.

“Come, dear one,” her father urged. “Only a little farther.”

Her arms were tired and her legs ached, but she plodded along behind his larger boots. A rucksack hung heavy from a single thin shoulder, filled to the brim with food and a few pieces of spare clothing. The burlap dug into her skin with every swaying step, especially when she walked around the large puddles that soaked the cobbled streets. Jeneve refused to complain, however—it was nothing compared to her father’s burden…and she was a helpful girl.

The streets were filled with folks and their belongings. Carts, wagons, and packs piled high with all that they could carry as everyone Jeneve knew hurried toward the shelters. The midmorning sky was bright, though it was a flat gray that threatened more rain, and it shed light into even the darkest allies—but that only made people hurry faster. It was as if those narrow lanes no longer existed, for all that she had played in them for years. People passed them by, red-rimmed eyes staring straight ahead and hands locked around their precious cargo.

No one wanted to linger over the bodies of betrayers.

“Don’t mind them, Jeneve.” A gentle hand pressed against her back as her father scooted her closer to himself. “They embraced the Night and paid for it.”

“I see the Culvers—”

“I said don’t mind them.” Her father’s voice hardened, as it did more often than not. “They wouldn’t listen to the Lady’s law and reaped what they sowed. We must—”

A hush rippled through the crowd as everyone slowed their maddened pace. It was like they’d been trapped in tar or waist high water, save that all of their faces were turned—fixed on the narrow join between two storefronts. Not a street nor an alley; barely more than a crack.

A shadowbeast slipped through and into the blessed daylight.

No longer blessed.

Her father had said that before, after the sun had gone dark. When they’d lost…she shook her head. Jeneve was positive her father hadn’t noticed her there while he cursed at the heavens, nor for days afterward as they dealt with the aftermath. Nothing had been the same since then.

The shadowbeast moved down their street. Jeneve clutched her rucksack tightly, crushing a hard loaf of bread against her chest as if it could shield her from the thing. She knew it was unwise, but she couldn’t help but stare. The monster had flesh like black oil, and though its form looked like a prowling hound, it had twisted, half-formed wings sprouting from its back. Lumps like tumors rippled across its body, shifting with every step, and its face angular, like the head of an axe.

Not a hound. That's a beak!

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“Malformed monstrosities," her father muttered. "Come, Jeneve, we mustn't tarry. The Priests won't wait forever."

The two of them hustled forward, and it was like a spell had been broken upon the street. The crowd moved, shifted forward in the direction of the shelters, all of them trying valiantly to avoid the beast. Every adult she spied looked away, studiously studying the ground, the air, or the backs of their fellows before them—anything to avoid looking at the shadowbeasts. Jeneve's eyes couldn’t be torn away. The thing was anathema to the Pathless, and yet it prowled the city. She still couldn't understand why.

"Will they truly protect us from the Fiend?" she asked.

"You heard it as well as I did. The old gods—" Her father grimaced through his mustache, and his voice croaked like an old frog's. "The Shining Lady has declared them her allies. For now.”

“But you said they were liars and—?”

“Quiet!” his hand clamped painfully across her mouth. His voice dropped to a low rumble. “They are treacherous and foul, but her declaration was clear, dear one. We can do naught but believe her holy word."

Jeneve had heard the announcement too, put out by the Hierophant or herself only hours before. But so much had changed in the time that it felt like days had passed sinced then. She glanced down another alley, but her eyes shied away from the crimson mess within.

The dark days were coming, the Hierophant had said. The chosen of the Pathless were to secure their own futures. Her father had said the Shining Lady’s words made him feel safe, but Jeneve hadn't felt safe since her mother had gone. She had died on the Day of Black Sun. Her father had barely survived, his core space only saved by the Hierophant's magic.

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Jeneve's mother, though, had only been across the room, but the Shining Lady's power had stopped, only a stride from where her mother writhed on the floor. A great huffing cut into her thoughts. The shadowbeast stopped, sniffing in her direction. Jeneve froze, unable to move even as her father tugged on her arm.

He looked fearfully at the beast. "Jenni, we must keep moving—" His words died in his throat as the beast stepped closer.

The creature's slick lips parted, revealing teeth as black as its gums. Thick drool dribbled from between them, and hot breath like a furnace washed over her, stinking like a midden pit.

"We are faithful," her father said, his voice dry as kindling. "We follow the light."

Father. Jeneve couldn't speak, she couldn't even move. It doesn't care for the light.

The creature drew nearer, its eyes dark tunnels into its depthless skull. They looked like caverns, holes into something else—somewhere else. They drew her in, pulling her Mind toward it like the last sweetmeat at the festival. Yet instead of joy, it offered only the dizzying promise of an endless dark—as if the Void itself were yawning open, ready to swallow her whole.

The shadowbeast growled, and its head whipped upward. Jeneve gasped, her awareness suddenly released, and she took two rapid steps back from the great creature. Her father did likewise, his rugged face pale and hollow cheeked. The thing tilted its thick neck, and pieces of its slick skin prickled as if it were fur, standing on end. Jeneve followed its gaze.

Wha—What am I seeing?

Above, the clouds had cleared, thinning above them as if shredded by some terrible hand. It revealed a pale expanse, where five moons hung like jewels, bright yet faded by the blue distance. One of burnished bronze, two of leaden blue, one a dark yellow, and finally, a singular moon of silver white.

A force rippled across the heavens, and the clouds spread open like a gaping wound. Darkness flinched, and a terrible, howling sound ripped across the streets, pouring from the shadowbeast's throat as if it were being squeezed. The creature cowered, its liquid flesh oozing onto the cobbles all around her, and Jeneve clutched at her ears. She fell to her knees as warmth seeped between her fingers.

"Jenni—!" Strong arms gathered her up, and through the ringing in her head, she heard others screaming. People were panicking.

Her father held her, and they were running. The cart was abandoned, and she was unable to tell if she even had her own rucksack any longer. Jeneve couldn't make sense of anything she saw. People were screaming. A family had fallen into the mud, their cart overturned in their mad dash, while others fell atop them, trampled to the ground. Her eyesight was blurry, her ears were ringing, and through it all, there was a trembling tenor in the air—a sound beyond sound she didn't know how to hear, let alone understand.

Her father held her tight, pulling her around a corner, and nearly headlong into the chest of what could only be a massive—

Dragon!?

But no, she was wrong. It was yet another shadowbeast. Its angular face and twisted, almost strangled-looking neck was curled upward toward the sky. Its mouth was open, and crimson flashed within its depths as its stunted wings trembled. Her father cursed, almost falling down.

"What is this?"

All of the shadowbeasts, at least a dozen on the street before them, were howling at the sky. His boots miraculously found traction, and he stumbled around the creatures, twisting so that she was far away from their twitching claws.

"The Fiend comes for us!"

"The Ruin—!"

Countless voices lifted around Jeneve as they joined a crushing mass of bodies, all of them straining to enter the shelter a half-block distant. It was madness.

"The sky—it’s torn—!"

She turned, trying to see, but her eyes were still too bleary with tears.

ENOUGH.

The howling went silent. Jeneve blinked, unsure where the voice had come from, but no one else seemed to notice. Their voices were still raised, their limbs outstretched toward the alabaster columns of their salvation. Golden doors hung before them, each twice the size of a normal person, and carved with strange, confusing shapes. All at once they slammed open, and it was like thunder cut across the world.

The crowd hushed.

Crimson-armored paladins marched from within the dark, stomping out until they lined the thoroughfare, hemming in the crowd and calming even the most panicked among them.

"The House of Alabaster welcomes you all. Enter, and leave the worries of the heavens behind."

Her father sighed. "We've made it, Jenni. We'll be safe."

Jeneve swallowed, the ringing finally fading from her hearing, but her heart still pounded. She didn't sense calm from the Paladins.

They're more scared than I am.

The crowd pressed closer to the gold and white doors, her father holding her aloft along with what remained of their supplies. His large hands hugged her close, squeezing a touch too hard on her thin shoulders. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Jenni, I—"

"Move along," the nearest Paladin shouted. "All faithful are welcome within."

Her father started, and she realized he had been staring up into the sky.

"Fear not, Jeneve," he said, taking a large, unsteady breath. "The Lady holds fast the very heavens themselves for us."

Jeneve loved her father; she trusted him with her life. Still, she couldn't help but blink back her tears and look up—up where the clouds had scattered, where the shadowbeasts still stared, and where five moons had once decorated the faded blue.

Then what happened to the silver moon?