The Warden

Chapter 20

Masis sat up with a groan—damp, stomach cramping, and with a lingering feeling of malignant wrongness. He clutched his head. His brain beat on the back of his eyes like feet stomped the ground at an autumn festival dance. One hand went to the sand to steady himself as the ground swiveled and rotated as though balanced on a flimsy tree branch. The ever brightening sunlight did little to help it. Eyes squinted to slivers, he tried to stand but the ground gave out beneath him. What little he had in his stomach reacted violently to the sudden jarring. He snapped his head to the side and retched, and what did come up scorched and singed his throat. Coughing haggardly, he tried to dislodge the pain.

The burn cracked the previous night back into his mind.

The nightlings had laid waste to the Shadows. Necks had snapped. Others had been thrown into the lean-tos' rocky exteriors with sickening crunches. Some wights had banded together to throw their victims high into the air and laugh as they flailed back to the ground.

Those were the lucky ones.

Some of the monsters had thought it great sport to maim a few Shadows. Those nearly lame souls had fled, broken legs dragged behind them, with all the speed they could muster. But it was vain. The nightlings would give them a little lead and howled as their prey slipped and staggered across the slick sod. Then they would appear before the bedraggled Shadows and drive them back the way they had come. Lean-tos had been pulled down on others. While those that had run fast enough to clear the colony's boundaries would rend the night with their screams as wighties fell on them.

So many screams. Masis squeezed his eyes shut, entirely. Only a clean, new scent lingered over the place. The rain had done its cleaning duty with natural efficiency.

He retched again. His body wracked itself trying to expel something that would not come loose. Whatever Charlan had wrought upon him would not be dislodged in that manner. She had pushed something into his inner workings, something vile that had clogged his mind and robbed him of his will. All control over his body had been wrenched from him, another's thoughts had overridden his, and he had been forced to watch the nightlings' grisly work.

That skittering, foreign element, like a parasite lurking beneath a tree's bark, still clung to his core. Though he had regained control over his faculties, it still skulked within, ready to topple him from the inside.

His frame shook with revulsion. Oh, Wilo cleanse me.

The earth had righted itself beneath Masis, so he creakily got to his feet and swayed as his body found equilibrium. He cast his eyes out over the rest of the colony.

Carnage surrounded him. Bodies littered the ground. More than half of the lean-tos had been toppled. From among their remains a few beleaguered moans arose. Some of the very lucky that had survived unscathed worked to free those trapped in the ruined shelters. Others went from person to person checking to see if any life remained within them. Some roused when prodded. Most did not.

Masis stood dumbly by. He wiped his mouth of the remnants of his vomit, its acrid scent still stung his nostrils. He staggered from beneath the pavilion only to pull up short.

What can I possibly do? His body sagged with the query. Do they even want my help?

Wilo barely crested the horizon, sending piercing lances of light across the green, moist stretch. Under those confessing beams, every twisted limb, every frozen terror filled eye, every corpse rigored in its place stood out clearly. The shimmering moisture that ascended in the sun's heat softened the edges of this grotesque scene, dampening the horror with a dreamlike haze. Any moment anyone of the dead would stand and laugh, drawing in the morning's bitter-sweet air, simply a figment of Masis imagination.