Garren assessed his options. He could head back the way he came, and with luck come across a traveler to hitch a ride with, but it was getting late. The sun would set in another two to three hours, and the chances of stumbling upon somebody were slim.
He was just inside the edge of the Phantom Wood, and he had been told, rather earnestly, that a small town called Sardorf lay somewhere within. However, a small part of him still wondered whether the outlandish story he was told held any truth. He had done his research, but the doubts still crept into his mind.
Garren glanced at the endless forest behind him, full of thick fog and monstrous evergreens, then back toward the road in front of him.
“The Phantom Wood,” he mused for the second time this day, narrowing his eyes as he peered back into its gloomy depths. He felt oddly drawn to it, as if it had called out his name, beckoning him within.
This forest was the very reason he had traveled North. Its legends were ancient, each one dark and harrowing. It had all started a fortnight ago during an odd encounter with a man just south of the Red Dunes in Sangalia. Something about the man–his unique looks and the way he told his story–had Garren believing every word he said, so much so that he had ventured all the way north to the Phantom Wood itself.
After being hired to kill a rather remarkably small demon that had nestled itself deep in a mine of underground tunnels beneath Sangalia, digging its way directly into the homes of the city's residents for nightly feasts, the elderly man had pulled Garren aside. His eyes were a dark sapphire rimmed in violet. The strangeness of the desperation within them had drawn Garren’s full attention.
“Deep in the Phantom Wood, far north of here, there is a small town. It is called Sardorf,” the man had said, voice heavily accented in a garbled sort of way, running the words together until they formed a single word.
Garren had combed through his mind for anything he might know about the Phantom Wood, but had come up empty. He knew nothing of the forest, nor of the town within it.
“The town has been trapped within the forest for centuries, thought to have been long ago abandoned, forgotten through the centuries. No one knows it, but it is still there. Isolated, but there,” the man continued.
“And how do you know of this town if, as you say, no one knows it still exists? I myself have not seen it marked on any map.”
The man had reached out, gripping Garren’s tunic with more strength than he would have expected the old man to have. “Because it is my home.”
Garren had examined the man, noticing his unusual clothing, the reddish hue of his graying hair, and back again to those peculiar eyes. “Tell me more,” was all he had said, and the man regaled him with a long tale of an age-old demon, full moons, all within the mysteriousness of the Phantom Wood.
What seemed like hours later, Garren had been thoroughly convinced to make the long trek north and attempt to find the lost village of Sardorf.
The man spoke of a bloodthirsty monster that attacked the town every seventy-five years, on the eve of every blood moon. The old man had entered the Phantom Wood, trying to find a way out, desperate to find a way to help his kin, unwilling to let them suffer on the eve as he had. He said that the beast moves swiftly, leaving no living creature in its path, that it would massacre half of his people when the red moon came.
“Where does this monster go between red moons?” Garren had asked.
“No one knows. It hibernates somewhere, possibly in the Phantom Wood, waiting until it can kill again.”
The man went on to tell Garren of how he had been lost within the maze of mist and trees for days, his mind foggy and addled until he somehow finally stumbled out at the edge of a Loch. Weak and exhausted, the man had staggered his way along the edge of the Loch, making sure to never step foot back within the forest lest it take hold of him and he would be lost once again, possibly forever.
When he had finally spotted the telltale signs of a town, he wept in relief. He then began his hunt for a savor, for any form of help he could find for his people. The search had led him to Garren.
Garren winced at the aching pain in his side. Far to the east down the Daylight Road was Varian, the Sovereign City, but it was a much greater distance than he could go on foot, especially while wounded. Randier was closer, but still a considerable distance that he wasn’t sure he could make. But all that set aside, would he even be able to find this town of Sardorf? What if it truly was a myth–an elaborate fantasy conjured up in the man’s aged mind? As soon as that thought sprang forth, a feeling settled deep in his gut that said otherwise, and instinct had not failed him before.
Garren closed his eyes. “Shit,” he cursed into the sea of mist and trees. “I guess it’s now or never.”
He clutched at the gash, blood still leaking through his fingers and down his side. “Right then. Just don’t die,” he said before walking straight into the Phantom Wood.
5
Oriana
1st day of the Second Month, 1100
Dusk had given way to dawn, and Oriana sat in a ring of flesh and blood.
The night had been a ravage of death. Unable to move, her eyes remained frozen on the shredded corpse of the last person she had devoured. She knew very well that any survivors would be cautiously making their way outside as the sun climbed its way into the cloudless sky. She couldn’t be here when they did.
Her hair was matted with the gore of her victims. The gown she wore–once a vivid azure–was now soaked through with a rusty red. Blood. There was so much blood. Unlike the last time, when she remembered only bits and pieces about her night of bloodshed, tonight she remembered everything. Every face, every scream, every thought, and every taste.
It was as if she had been trapped in her own mind, watching the horrors unfold through her eyes, but her control had been severed like a head from its body. Watching her own curved, talon-like nails tear into flesh. She had tried miserably throughout the night of carnage to stop it, to take back her control. But when she finally realized the effort was hopeless, she did the only thing she could. Oriana cowered, forcing herself down into the cavernous pit of her soul, clinging to any good thought, any good deed she had done in the past, desperate to shut out the ravenous slaughter of her bloodlust as it continued to rage through the town.
Her magic had vanished like a breath in the wind, and her bloodlust’s whims of death had held her prisoner. Every horrific detail of the night was now forever etched into the forefront of her mind, where she knew it would play over and over again on an endless loop.
Oriana stood, hands shaking and legs wobbling like that of a newborn foal. Anthes had thrust a ruthless curse upon her, and ruthless she had been.
