The few survivors took it as an omen that the Gods were angry with their celebration because it was of the new year and not in honor of the Gods.
That was a night she wished to forget, but the visions swam behind her eyes every time she shut them.
Oriana could not shake the memories loose, could never stop the remembrance of her killing from remaining at the forefront of her mind. She brought herself back to the present and continued pulling the large man along to what she could only hope would be his salvation.
By the time Oriana and the wounded man stumbled their way out of the forest, the sun had almost completely retreated behind the White Giants.
Standing at the edge of the tree line, Oriana could see that lanterns were being lit, illuminating the town of Sardorf as the impending darkness of the evening crept in around them.
“There’s the town. See that gray building there?” She pointed. The man’s gaze moved slowly, a fog hovered over his eyes. “That’s where the village healer is. Go there and she will help you. This is as far as I can take you.”
She let go of him and he instantly crumpled to the ground. Oriana cursed and crouched over him, shaking his shoulder. “You have to stay awake. Open your eyes. You have to walk the rest of the way on your own.” He didn’t respond; the delirium of fever had fully overtaken him. She cursed again, frantically looking at the sky; it was only moments before the full moon and she needed to get far inside the forest before it was too late. But this man wouldn’t make it that long.
She snarled, huffing at the stupidity of what she was about to do. Throwing an enchantment back over her features, she wrapped her arms around the man’s torso and began dragging him to the healer’s cottage.
9
Garren
2nd day of the Eleventh Month, 1774
Garren wiggled his toes as they sank into the soft orange sand of his homeland, Cirus. The vast desert spread out farther than the eye could see, nothing but dunes for miles. He spun, looking for his parents’ home, but each way he turned there was nothing but more sand. The blazing sun beating down upon his back urged him forward. With each step, his feet sank further into the velvety sand, slowing his progression. He grunted with each step as he was only dragged further beneath its soft surface until he was waist deep, struggling to move within the sand’s firm grip.
Garren grabbed for purchase to break free, but with each movement, the sand continued to swallow him. He frantically dug with his hands, but those, too, were sucked beneath the surface. He writhed and cried out for help as the sand crested his head. Closing his eyes and holding his breath, he awaited his impending doom, but it never came.
Garren opened his eyes to discover that he was standing in a room, one he knew well. As he scanned the living room of his childhood home, his eyes landed on the kitchen table, and he cried out, falling to his knees and vomiting up the contents of his stomach.
Before him sat his mother and father, their skin tinged with the pale gray hue of death. He looked into their lifeless eyes, terror still frozen in their milky depths. As his eyes traveled down further, Garren vomited once again. Their chests revealed what had killed them in the form of large gaping holes where their hearts should have been. He let his gaze travel even further to the table they sat at, where their hands sat, an eating utensil still held in each of their grasps, but what lay on their dinner plates was not a meal. It was their missing hearts. Blood oozed from the no longer beating organs.
Suddenly, his father’s hand moved limp and lifeless, like a puppet on a string, toward the plated heart. His eyes shot up to his father’s face and, to his utter horror, he spoke. “You could have saved us.” His father’s voice was heavy and garbled as thick, dark blood leaked from his lips. “You should have saved us.”
And then his mother’s head turned to him, lolling like a rag doll’s as she spoke one small word, “Why?” But Garren hadn’t the time to respond to either of his parents before the ground beneath his feet turned to sand and he was sinking once again. “No!” he yelled, struggling to pull his feet out from the sinking sand, but it only dragged him down faster. “No!” he cried out once more, catching a final glimpse of his parents’ butchered bodies before he stood on solid ground again, this time in complete darkness.
An arm wrapped around his neck from behind, cutting off his air supply. He choked, gripping the arm. It was cold as ice, skin slick as glass. Hot breath steamed at the nape of his neck as something wet licked behind his ear. A fleeting sideways glance revealed a wide mouth of pointed teeth ready to puncture his throat and a large set of feline eyes, alight with exhilaration.
It was her. The demon from his father’s smithy all those years ago, and it wanted revenge. Garren ripped the demon’s arm free of its hold around his neck, yanking the creature over his back as he bent forward. It hit the floor with a crack, letting out in a shrill, high-pitched wail that sent his ears ringing. He stalked toward it, but suddenly it vanished and in its place were his parents' bodies. They writhed on the floor as if possessed, and he stumbled backward.
“Mother? Father?” he called, his voice echoing around him.
Finally, they stopped moving. He walked tentatively toward them. “Mother? Father?” he said once again, kneeling between their inert forms and reaching a hand out toward his mother. Her hand shot out, gripping his wrist as she sat up. It was not his mother who stared back at him, but the demon who had killed her. “Hello, Garren.”
Garren gasped for breath, bolting upright, ripping himself from the horrific dream. Sweat trickled down his forehead and chest as he breathed in a heaving lungful of air. His head was pounding. The ceiling above moved in circles, making him feel nauseated. It had been many, many years since dreams of his parents’ deaths had plagued him. Yet even twenty years later, he still couldn’t get that horrifying scene from his mind. It was on that fateful day that he swore to dedicate his life to fighting the demon filth tormenting Svakland.
Garren blinked the sleep from his eyes, rubbing them until he could see properly. Where am I?
Garren groaned and attempted to push himself up, but a small, wrinkled hand shoved him back down. An elderly woman leaned over him. “You need to rest,” she clicked. “You’ve had a nasty little accident.”
“How long have I been here?” he croaked. His throat felt as if he had swallowed hot coals.
The old woman offered him a cup of water, and he took it gratefully. “You’ve been here two days. Your fever has finally broken, but your wound has not healed enough. Although,” she said, “it seems to be healing much quicker than I would have thought.”
“Where am I?” he questioned, eyes searching the small room around him. By the door was a wooden chair, along the opposite wall was a worktable, and above that a small window, the only source of light in the compact space. “How did I get here?”
“You’re in Sardorf. My young helper, Oriana, brought you here. She’s come back each day to see how you are faring.” The woman took the cup of water from him and walked over to the workspace. “She found you on the edge of the Phantom Wood. What were you doing in that place on the eve of the full moon? Bad things happen in that forest during the full moon. It is a cursed place,” she mused, concocting an ointment at the table, which was covered in dried herbs and various jars of colorful liquids.
Garren didn’t respond. It hadn’t been the night of the full moon when he’d gone into the Phantom Wood. He had heard the legend, knew the lore of the place, and knew that to go into that forest on the night of the full moon was a death sentence. Had he really been in the forest for almost two whole days?
His trek through the forest was a massive blur. He remembered very little aside from a pair of stunning bright eyes the color of fresh spring leaves.
