Villains (3 page)

Chapter 2

Weeks passed and the star cloud grew. It grew until it covered most of the sky at night and made it difficult for villagers to sleep. It grew until it became the talk of the town, story upon story being told around the hearth fire. Tor listened idly to their blasphemous tales, knowing the truth but unwilling to speak it. He watched the cloud each night as streaks of yellow and green shifted, forming into new things. One time it painted a symbol he recognized. The people interpreted it as the harvest. Tor knew better, Tor knew the symbol meant scavenge, it meant to strip the land of what it had. Harvest seemed so happy in comparison to the desolation the Valtanyana brought.

Tor let himself up from the logs and away from the bonfire. He trailed towards the beach, an ever-gradual descent making his shoulders shake. Once he cleared the mainland he stood on the sand and picked up a stray rock. The sea was tumultuous tonight, a midnight yellow in the wake of the star cloud. He tried to skip the rock through the crashing waves but it plummeted to the bottom. That’s what he felt like on the inside: deflated, defeated even though he hadn’t faced them yet. He gazed outwards, finding the line of the horizon and his breath caught in his throat. At the far recesses of his vision, a large wave roiled across the ocean. The sky turned a deep dark gray, the star cloud dissipating as the wave gained ground. Tor watched, his heart thumping wildly. He scrambled up the path and skirted around the shrubs lining the bonfire.

“They’re coming!” he shouted. Skeld, the tallest, adorned in a long embroidered animal skin called the people, keeping them calm and focused. Tor nodded his appreciation. Skeld was like the others, elongated ears, prickly white skin and piercing hazel eyes. He had no hair on his smooth head, and his nose was one of the biggest Tor had seen. Skeld was lean, nothing but a pot belly setting him apart from the others. They scattered to their homes, lighting sage, thinking it would protect them against these foes. Tor took towards his home with Desaunius. All he had to do was enter the tent and she was in front of their altar, hands clasped to her chest, head bowed.

“They’re here, I can feel them,” she said without looking up.

“Let me handle this.” Tor grabbed his walking stick and left the tent.

It wasn’t long before their forms approached from the beach, the same waves that rolled across the ocean creating storms around their ankles. There were only three of them, and Tor let out a sigh of relief. It could have been all eleven, this was only a test. He recognized each of them as they approached. The one on the far left was Cassareece, a woman with long white blond hair and a navy blue gown falling to her feet. Beside her was Joviasson, a kraken shaped beast in bipedal form. Tentacles hung from his chin, his mouth a round void of tiny sharp teeth. His eyes were slits, using clairvoyance to walk. He wore a tailored black jacket that fit his form as thought it was made for him, it opened up at the waist and created a cap around the lower half of his body. Tor glanced briefly at the breeches and shin high bronze boots adorning his disfigured feet. He peddled across the path at the same gait as the others, staff in hand, his limp not hindering him at all.

Beside him was the one Tor was the most worried about. Darkesh wasn’t like the others. He was on two feet, but they were demonic, black scales, long black talons. He had a slim waist, but thick thighs. His chest was monstrous, along with his shoulders, and his clawed hands. Back home they called him a draconian, a humanoid version of a dragon. His head was a smaller version of a dragon’s skull, complete with horns. He had a tail, spikes at the edges kept marking the ground as if warning those who came after him. They stopped at the foot of the walkway and stared Tor down, their lightning eyes crackling as each second ticked by.

Cassareece folded her arms across her chest. “You know why we came.” Her voice was syrupy sweet, but it made Tor sick to his stomach.

“I refuse.”

Jovaisson laughed, a gurgling sound erupting from his throat. “You cannot deny what you are forever.”

“I refuse,” Tor said, narrowing his eyes. He knew perfectly well what they wanted him to do, but he wouldn’t.

“Think of the glory—with you we will be unstoppable. Not even the dust will dictate what we do,” Darkesh said, his vocals emitting a series of clicks that despite their incoherency, Tor understood.

Tor’s eyes blazed. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Cassareece laughed and it was a terrible sound. “You cannot be serious. You would give up the Great Hall for this?”

“I’m not giving up anything I didn’t own in the first place.”

“Ahh, you are being so difficult, Toraque. Will you not use your head to see what will happen if you do not comply?” Joviasson sneered. His body twisted constantly, the tentacles looking for somewhere to settle.

Tor shook his head. “I am no king.”

Darkesh growled and the ground shook. “You are the twelfth!” he roared. “You will join us or you will pay the price.”

Cassareece looked stricken, as though the consequences Darkesh could unleash were something even she was afraid of. “Agree to our tenet, Toraque. I will make it worth your while.” A sweet smile spread across her face, which was both beautiful and dark at the same time. Her blue lightning eyes crackled. “Do it before it’s too late.”

“No.” Tor made eye contact with her, making sure his words struck her. It was more than a no to join them, for Cassareece it was no to being with her, no to being one of them, no to everything she was that he was. It was the utter denial of everything he had come to know.

A shadow crossed her face, a faint redness tickling her cheeks. She lifted her chin and Tor laughed on the inside, watching her hold back tears. “You will be sorry for this Tor, mark my words. I will make sure nobody on this land eats for an entire year.”

Tor’s eyes widened. “That will kill them!”

Cassareece sniggered. “You should not be so careless with your decisions.”

Tor glanced at Joviasson and Darkesh, but their faces were masks of glee and terror. Cassareece stepped away first, going back the way they came. Even as she became a silhouette in the dark, her laughter rose, traveling with the wind and chilling Tor’s insides. He let out a breath when he could no longer see their threatening forms and ducked into the tent. Desaunius knelt in front of the altar, rocking back and forth, holding her hands close to her chest, a rough diamond in her palms.

She glanced at him, her eyes bloodshot, and cheeks splotchy. “They cannot take you when I’ve only found you.”

Tor rushed to her side and knelt beside her, pulling her hands away from her chest and placing the diamond on the altar. He wrapped his arms around her as she pressed her forehead to his shoulder, tears thickening and streaming down her face. “They can do their worst, I won’t leave.”

Desaunius shook her head against his shoulder. “I don’t understand what they want. Why you?”

Tor held her tighter, his stomach groaning. “I’m the one that can change the way things are.”

“Will you?”

Tor smiled. “Aye.”

Tor heard the screams before he saw the fields. They began as back of the throat cries and melded, becoming blood curdling screams that startled Tor out of his floor-ridden cot. He threw on a beige tunic and didn’t bother with the sandals. Desaunius tried to stop him but his big arms pushed her aside, making her fall into a heap on the animal hide.

“It’s madness out there!” she shouted after him as he pushed open the canvas and jogged down the trail. He moved westward across the village, passing the familiar walkways, morning smudge hastily lit. He skirted around the bonfire and continued down the winding paths between the trees, bushes and tents, the yelps only gaining more agitation as more and more villagers found their way to the crest of the hill overlooking the fields.

When Tor reached it there was a crowd perched there, shoulders sagging, tears streaming down faces, hands covering eyes. He shouldered his way through them. Blackness skated across once green grass, creating track marks in the soil. Fire covered most of the fields in treachery, taking with it the leafy green leaves that housed the silver quenny fruit.

He followed the lines of fire as far as his eyes could take him, past the first squares of field and the path of trees on the south side, all the way to the gray streaked horizon, smoke making an artificial fog in the distance.

There was movement rustling behind him, a jangle of feathers, fur and beads. Tor heard a staff press into the ground, a dull thud, thud, thud across the grass. Villagers moved out of the way until Skeld stood beside Tor, a mournful expression on his face. They stayed that way for a long time, Skeld watching fire take the fields and Tor feeling nothing but agitation and anger folding into him.

“Was saying no worth this?” Skeld asked.

Tor clenched his fist. “This is nothing.”

He didn’t give Skeld a chance to respond as he pushed past the villagers and wended his way to the field with the lake. It was untouched. He quickened his pace across it and ducked into the haunted forest without thinking about the screeches. They pierced his ears, but he forced himself to withstand the sound, knowing that if Aria was safe, nothing was lost. He avoided the call of the pretty pink, purple and white petals of poisonous flowers, ducked under low hanging branches, white matter curled around it like tufts of summer clouds and hopped over the patches of slippery mud.

He found the cairn rising out of the ground like a giant eyesore in the middle of the dead forest. He knew they would come again, and they wouldn’t take no for an answer. Cassareece was vindictive, but she wasn’t like the others, the things they could do were worse and he wanted to make sure his secrets stayed hidden.

He slipped through the crack between the rocks and when he turned around Aria stood. She brushed off the front of her illusory dress, sorting out imaginary wrinkles. She looked better than the other day, her skin thicker, less transparent. She had the same shimmery hair and liquid violet eyes. Today they were full of worry and sadness.

“You came back,” she said.

Tor worked his hands so they didn’t feel so stiff and archaic. “I said I would.”

“You took a long time,” Aria said.

Tor shook his head. “Time is as long as you make it.”

Aria looked at the ground. She pulled her foot up and stuck her toe face first to the mud, almost like she was trying to perch herself on it. “Time moves slowly.”

“And what did you do while I was gone?”

Aria smiled and dropped her foot flat on the ground. She pulled her hands out from behind her back, a single poisonous violet flower floating near one of them. These flowers were gaudy, pastel purple, tear drop shaped petals, a yellow pollinated center, a snaking green stem. “The forest is alive.”

“That hardly seems important.”

Aria dropped the flower and watched it float to the ground like it was a feather. “I coaxed souls into more comfortable positions in the trees. I told the wind to stop aggravating them.”

Tor shook his head and glanced behind him at the crack. What was his greatest achievement weeks ago now seemed like his biggest failure. “How exactly will that help me?”

Aria shrugged. “It won’t, unless the war you’re fighting is too big for you to fight by yourself.”

Tor gestured to the weapons that looked like they hadn’t been touched. “I have those, don’t I?”

Aria followed his gaze, a curious smile playing at the edges of her mouth. “They won’t work for you if you don’t work for them.” She skipped over the poisonous flower and pirouetted to the opening in the cairn. Now that she wasn’t standing guard, Tor stepped forward and looked them over. He tried to call the essence of himself, the dust living within him while the rest stayed in the chest. He ran his hands over the weapons, hoping to make them do what Aria did, but they remained dormant. He glanced at each of them, pouring over them with his senses, trying to work with them.

He stopped at the ruby sword and his eyes locked with the red jewel on the hilt. It wasn’t glowing, but even without the glow it emitted a pulse, a wave if one tuned into the item. He kept his eyes fixed on the hilt, and reached for it slowly, wrapping his fingers around it and lifting it off the stone. The moment it was upright, Tor worked it back and forth, attempting to get a feel for it. Red light shot through it, covering it in flames that roiled off it in anger. It stuttered and sparked, heat lighting the blade an orange color before it flared like the sun, a wisp of red flames hitting the wall square on. A crack appeared in the stone, Tor yelped at the pain it caused, as though struck by lightning. He fell back, the sword dropped on the ground. Aria crossed the floor while Tor held his hand, scarred with a large throbbing red welt.

Aria went to put the sword back in its place on the stone slab, but found she couldn’t grasp it. She turned to face him. “You will need others to fight with these weapons if you plan on winning.”

Tor pulled his knees to his chest. “I don’t need anyone,” he mumbled.

Aria sighed. “You need me.” She went to the table and went to take the seashell in her hands but that didn’t work either. She turned to Tor and pointed at the seashell. “Take this, and when you need me, sound the horn.”

Tor looked at her blazing amethyst eyes, the thing he created by accident. Feeling defeat, he brought himself to his feet and hung his head, no longer able to meet her eyes. He held the shell with both hands as he left the cairn.

The second time they came night fell across the sky, but the star cloud was replaced by a black night, stars invisible behind a shield placed over the village. Tor sat at the bonfire with the other villagers while they danced and chanted, futile attempts to make the sky show itself. He waited, watching their concerned faces as blackness grew blacker and the bonfire became the only beacon of light in their midst. After what seemed like hours a rustle through the trees followed by a high pitched scream startled them. Tor stood, fists clenched at his side, eyes scouring the bushes. Villagers huddled together on the other side of the bonfire in fear, Tor regarded them cowards. Everything they ever worked for was in jeopardy. Their crops burned, their sky taken, and yet they were like timid frightened children, cowering from monsters.