Content warning: contains some profane language, death, and violence toward undead children.
Content warning: after this section, there is mention of violence toward children. If this is triggering, please do not read further.
Shale rolled over in her sleeping furs as the first rays of light peered through the curtains. The smell of slightly musty hay and crisp air greeted her upturned face.
“Good morning,” Kelek murmured. He wrapped her in his strong arms, planting a smattering of kisses over her face.
“I have to go,” she murmured, pushing him off with a reluctant groan and dressing. He watched her for a while, content to lay in bed.
“When will you be back?” Kelek asked.
“Tomorrow afternoon at the latest,” she told him, pulling back her black hair and weaving it into a thick braid. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Get the children up before I leave.”
Kelek mumbled something and went to do as she asked.
They ate breakfast together. Shale leaned in and kissed her children each in turn: Lonnis, the oldest, her seven-year-old son with a constant grin on his curious face; then the two girls, Farin and Ki. Though they were near in age, their personalities were miles apart. Her sweet middle daughter, Farin, was the fighter; five years old and all ferocity. Then her youngest, Ki, the girl with a thousand dreams; always imagining up another world in her three-year-old mind.
“I love you,” she told them all, and then she left.
Shale made the trek home with extra weight jingling in her pocket. Being a forest guide didn’t always pay as well as these noblemen had, hiring her to take them the shorter route through Stoneloft forest; she was already thinking of how they could use the silver to fix their broken wagon.
The day was bright and sunny and Shale’s stomach rumbled as she skirted the southern edge of the town to avoid the foot traffic on the road.
She was almost home when she heard the screams.
Shale dropped her pack and sprinted toward the town.
She smelled the bodies before she saw them. Men, women, and children–bloodied corpses scattering the field, half-dragged from their homes. She didn’t stop to look at their faces. Home. Have to get home.
She pulled to a stop on the next street over. The bodies on the ground–the bodies of neighbours and friends–they were… moving. Stirring on the ground, though many had arrows in them, and others had their skulls smashed in. Blood and brains and guts leaked out of the corpses as they stood, shuddered, and began lurching toward the centre of town. Shale went silent, not sure what would draw them to he,r if anything.
No, no, no, she thought, throwing herself against the side of a house to keep from view as a few more corpses shuffled by.
She saw Maydeen, the kindly old woman who’d always shared her garden potatoes with them. She was moaning, a large gash across her throat bubbling crimson. Shale gasped and the woman turned her dead eyes in her direction. She ducked, cursing herself, then waited until she heard the corpse move past.
She caught a glimpse of Anear’s thirteen-year-old son, face pale and unblinking, his hand twitching and mouth moving without words. He was on the ground at her feet, but he was starting to Turn.
She clambered over a tall fence and ran through Maydeen’s garden, then climbed the other side and landed in her garden. “Kelek?” She whispered hoarsely. “Kids?” She crept into her dark house and strung her bow.
It was empty.
“Idiot,” she hissed. The children would be in lessons across town. Kelek would be at the temple, helping the men fix the roof. The temple, near the town square.
Not daring to put the thoughts in her mind, she bolted out the front door and ran through the town, the streets almost empty as all the undead gathered in the town centre. For what, she had no idea. She saw no sign of what creatures had killed them, nor if there were any living survivors.
Stop. There are survivors. Her family was smart. They would’ve gotten away. The teachers would have taken the children into the cellar at the first sign of danger. Kelek would have hidden inside the temple.
She slowed as the density of undead became too many and crept through alleys. From the centre of the horde, she heard a booming voice speak out in a harsh, guttural language she didn’t know.
Shale hid and glanced out to get a look at the one who had destroyed her home.
Though he was far away, she could see he was a man, floating several feet above the shuffling undead. He had pale skin and a bald head inked with black tattoos, though it was hard to make out his facial features. Around him floated a crimson red robe, and in his hand, he held a flashing orb of light. The corpses looked up at him with dead eyes and listened to his foreign speech.
Shale tore her eyes away and crept through back alleys until she reached the school. The front door had been smashed in. Forcing the tears away, she leapt through the splintered wood. It was dark, the lanterns gone out. “Lonnis? Farin? Ki? Kids?”
There was a thump, and she raised her bow instantly as a figure rose and moved into the light.
Kelek.
His eyes were white.
Dead.
No.
His dark skin was a sickly colour, and a few arrows feathered his back. He looked at her without seeing, lumbering, limping toward her. She stumbled back she hit the wall. “Don’t,” she croaked, tears streaming down her face. “Don’t, Kelek. I—I love you. Please.”
Kelek opened his mouth as if to scream, then jumped toward her with supernatural speed. Shale dropped her bow as he slammed into her. He was stronger than her, even in death, and she felt his arms clawing at her neck.
She gasped and fumbled for her belt–for her dagger. She felt the hilt and grasped it, lashing out and stabbing Kelek’s strong arms where he held her. He screeched inhumanly and pulled back, enough that she rolled on top of him and stabbed him in the chest and torso, over and over, the blade sticking as she drew it out and slammed it down. Drew it out, slammed it down. Her arms were soaked by the time her husband’s white-filmed eyes finally stared up at nothing. His hands dropped; his mouth went slack.
Holding back a sob, Shale kicked off him and crawled away, toward the cellar door. Closed. Standing shakily, dagger still clutched in one hand, she turned the knob and the door creaked open without resistance.
Shale half fell down the stairs into the cold basement, but there was no movement. She called for the kids. No response.
Numb, she climbed the stairs, streaks of Kelek’s blood following her up the wall. She stepped through the shattered front door and came face-to-face with Paelor, the children’s lesson master.
His eyes were white and dead.
He lashed out when he saw her and she cursed herself for forgetting her bow. She kicked the elderly man to his knees, then grabbed his head and turned it, severing his spine. The corpse dropped, and she saw his original stab wound in his back.
She heard a moan and turned her head as several figures shuffled out from around the building.
“No!” Shale’s scream broke. “No, no, no, no,” she sobbed, clutching the dagger in sticky, blood-covered hands.
Lonnis, Farin, Ki, and several other children, all with dead eyes, all pierced with arrows, dragged tiny feet toward her. Dead. Undead. They reached for her as they moved forward.
Shale dropped to her knees and waited for them to come. “This is it,” she sobbed, letting her dagger clatter to the ground. She forced herself to look up, to meet each of their eyes with her own.
Ki. The three-year-old with the fanciful dreams, still unsteady in the way she walked.
Farin, the fierce one, her hair now matted with blood.
Lonnis, the boy who never stopped asking questions, his jaw broken and a deep gash along his forehead.
Shale raised her chin to the sky and closed her eyes, waiting for the pain to end.
No. She heard the voice in her head. It was a voice she hadn’t heard in a decade. It was the voice of her god. The god of the forest.
Ellindael?
Get up, Shale. Don’t let it consume you.
Then, everything went quiet.
Shale’s mind cleared and she opened her eyes. She dropped her hand and darted for the dagger again, the wet hilt slipping in her hand. As Lonnis raised a dead hand at her, she grabbed her son by the neck and thrust the blade into his un-beating heart.
It was at that moment that the darkness, and the madness, claimed her.