Sir Gareth paused before the grand gates of Castle Astarda, named after the family that had ruled the heavy brick and stone fortress since the dawn of God-King Vaan’s rule. It towered above the nearby plains, defiant and proud. The walls of its battlement stretched for half a mile to either side, eventually merging into the rising stone of the Frostbound Mountains. If one sought to travel between Vestor and Inner Emden, it was through here, and here alone.

  “Welcome, Sir Gareth,” one of the soldiers inspecting traffic said upon waving him over. “I trust all is well in Greenborough?”

  “As well as one can hope,” Gareth said, feigning a smile as he passed. Unlike the others in line, he did not need to suffer the tedious indignity of a search. Villagers and traders often sought to smuggle in goods without paying taxes, hide their stolen nature, or even carry heretical tracts to and from Vestor. Sometimes people tried to scale the mountains farther north or south. It was then they discovered just how many beasts and monsters of forgotten times still hid in the snowcapped peaks and the dark, uncharted caves.

  An enormous road split the castle interior, though with so much of it empty, it felt grotesquely wide and downright depressing. There had been a point, when Gareth was a child, when this road had been overwhelmed with people. Stalls, currently empty, were once filled with men and women hawking their wares. The smell of bubbling rabbit stew and freshly baked sourdough had wafted from multiple buildings beside the trade road, an enchanting variety for young Gareth to choose from. Fruit pies baked with blueberries picked from southern Vestor. Tarts slathered in honey and filled with apples picked from Emden’s sprawling orchards. Beer blessed by priests and priestesses all the way in Castle Goltara and then shipped in barrels throughout Yensere.

  Now traffic on the streets was sparse, the largest crowd at the entrance, where beggars marked with signs of blight sought relief from travelers.

  It was not all dire, though, with the roads growing livelier the closer he came to the keep in the heart of the walled city. A young girl with her red hair tied into two buns waved at Gareth from her little stall as he passed. He did not know her real name, nor had she ever offered it, so he called her “Beans” after the produce she sold, to her great amusement.

  “How’s business today, Beans?” he asked.

  “Business is business is business,” she said, her favorite response to the question he always opened with. She gestured to a little box filled with winged greens layered in oil and powdered with cracked pepper. “Care for some pepper fingers? Made fresh, and extra spicy!”

  “Not today, Beans,” he said. She stuck her tongue out at him and scrunched her nose. His laughter immediately died, replaced with dread.

  The faintest shadow of black coated the back of her tongue.

  Gareth stumbled away, wishing he had never seen it, wishing it could have befallen someone, anyone else, not a young girl full of such life and wit. A vision of her wearing one of those smeared-ash signs haunted his mind. Years of practice, of seeing those he cared about fall victim, allowed him to shove it away. Clamp it down. Pretend it would take time, years even, before the change came.

  “You poor girl,” he whispered. “Must the blight claim even the young?”

  A lengthy line spread out from one of the few bread makers still open. Gareth held back a sigh. The blight had wrecked so much of the west. What crops were harvested barely fed the villagers harvesting them. Few afflicted possessed the motivation, or clarity of mind, to craft anything beyond rudimentary tools. Only Greenborough and Castle Astarda endured, their people mostly spared the blight, and because of this, all of Vestor’s trade flowed directly through them eastward, to Inner Emden.

  But neither city would be free of the blight forever. Its march seemed inevitable, and his most recent letters from his mother in Inner Emden’s capital of Avazule fearfully mentioned increased sightings of the afflicted. If he thought she would leave her home of twenty years, he would have begged her to travel east, to Castle Goltara itself if she must, to escape the danger.

  “A bit of pie for a soldier of the god-king?” a woman shouted from the window of her store, stirring him from his thoughts. Her hands were wet from grease, and a bit of flour still clung to her face. Gareth’s stomach rumbled at the smell of freshly cooked lamb.

  “The road has been long,” Gareth admitted, having already regretted not buying any of the pepper fingers. He dug his hand into his coin purse. “Perhaps I will.”

  Gareth ate the pie as he slowly walked the road. A second wall sealed off the entrance from the east, and in the center between those two rose the castle keep. It was that rectangular edifice Gareth approached. Lord Frey Astarda ruled from within the fortress, as had his father, and his father before him. Gareth’s stomach clenched, and it wasn’t from the spiced grease dripping off the lamb.

  Lord Frey will not take kindly to your failure, a dark, cowardly voice whispered in Gareth’s mind.

  Gareth pushed the intrusive thought away. The outer villages west of Greenborough were his responsibility, as was the safety of the slain Baron Hulh. He would not cower from the consequences of his duties.

  “Greetings, Sir Gareth,” the soldier protecting the keep entrance said. “Shall I alert Lord Frey to your arrival?”

  “Please,” Gareth said, shifting uncomfortably in his armor. Though his wounds had healed during the travel to Castle Astarda (a blessing of strength from the god-king himself), they itched fiercely, and would until the scars faded.

  Once inside, Gareth waited at the center of the guardroom, chatting politely with other soldiers until a servant exited the stairwell and beckoned.

  “He is ready for you, sir,” the young woman said.

  Gareth followed her up to the third floor, through a furnished waiting room, and into the den of the keep’s master.

  Lord Frey was an imposing man despite his age. His shoulders were broad, and his chest and arms thick with muscle developed over a lifetime of swinging a sword. His hair was just starting to turn a shade of silver, and he kept it pulled tightly back and bound behind his head with a knot of thread. It added severity to an already severe face, which bore a permanent frown from the wrinkles around his mouth and a narrow gaze from the crow’s-feet around his green eyes.

  “Welcome to my home,” Frey said, rising from the chair beside the fireplace to greet him. “Your timing, however, is a bit poor. You arrive just in time for a feeding.”

  Frey’s wife sat in a chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, a blanket covering the lower half of her body. A young babe lay in her lap, and she had opened her blouse so he could suckle.

  “At least I did not wake the little lordling,” Gareth said, and flashed his widest smile. “I pray you fare well, Lady Jeanne?”

  “To wake him, he’d need to sleep first,” Jeanne said, and smiled back. “And I’m fine, other than a great deal of tiredness.”

  Jeanne was a welcome burst of sunlight within Castle Astarda, and her golden hair and yellow eyes seemed to match Gareth’s sentiment. She was a good twenty years younger than Frey, and their marriage was most certainly first about securing him an heir. The two seemed to get along well enough, at least according to what Gareth saw on his occasional visits to his liege. The people liked her, too, and there was even talk of her assuming Frey’s post should something happen to him before their child, Gestolf, came of age.

  “My lord, forgive my haste, but I must speak with you on important matters,” he said.

  “Whatever you wish to say, you can say it in front of my wife,” Frey said, leaning forward in his chair. His eyes seemed to sparkle with life, as if he relished the thought of news, however dire it might be.

  “Very well,” Gareth said, and cleared his throat. He began with his arrival at Meadowtint and the news of murder committed by a demon. He held back fully describing the methods, keeping it vague whenever he could. Jeanne shuddered when he described the ferocity with which the demon, Nick, hounded the people of Meadowtint, sneaking in through windows and ambushing them from within their wheat field, all to kill the unsuspecting. Then he detailed his chase eastward and his discovery of the slaughter at Baron Hulh’s manse.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Poor Hulh,” Frey said, shaking his head. “A good man, kind to those in his care, and trying his damnedest to slow the spread of the blight. You are certain this Nick had a helper?”

  “Two helpers,” Gareth said. “And I know because I fought them.”

  Despite the deep pit of shame he felt in admitting so, he detailed his encounter in Greenborough, their brief clash, and the trio’s ensuing escape. He described the magic of all three and did not hold back his despair at seeing Nick’s rapid growth in power.

  “I should have crushed him in Meadowtint,” he said when finished. “Forgive me, my lord. I thought I had broken him, but every death seemed to make him that much more fearless and cunning. I spoke with our god-king in prayer, and though he sends a Harbinger west, he insists I continue my hunt to bring the demon low.” He lowered his gaze. “And yet I have lost his trail once more. I am failing, my lord, failing the one trial put before me by his holiness, and I do not know what to do.”

  Frey glanced at his wife, his frown deepening.

  “Jeanne, would you kindly take Gestolf to our bedroom?” he said. “I suspect the both of you could use a long nap in warm blankets.”

  Jeanne pulled Gestolf away from her breast and lifted her blouse despite the bit of milk that wet its interior and darkened the fabric. Gestolf grumbled, his mood quickly souring as he flailed his arms and hunted for the vanished nipple with his eyes closed.

  “Of course,” Jeanne said, and she dipped her head toward Gareth. “It was nice to see you again. I hope you meet Gestolf once he’s fed and slept. He truly is the sweetest thing.” She winced, then laughed when the babe let out an angry cry.

  “Enough, Jeanne,” Frey said, the sharp crack of his voice upsetting the baby further and robbing his wife of her smile. She hurried away. Gareth refused to watch her go, instead focusing on the carpet as he knelt before his lord.

  “Stand, my friend,” Frey said once they were alone. “I would have you accompany me.”

  The two returned to the stairwell, descending to the guardroom floor. Once there, he followed Frey to a plain, unmarked door. Beyond it was another staircase, slender and steep. His curiosity growing, Gareth followed Frey some twenty more steps, the keep growing darker as the only light came from small black lanterns lit with tall, thin candles. The stairs ended at a locked door, and a soldier keeping watch who was immediately dismissed.

  “Do you trust me, Gareth?” Frey asked, his hand upon the door once the guard was gone.

  “I do,” said Sir Gareth. “In all my life, you have sought to protect those under your rule. You have judged fairly, and without cruelty or malice. Whatever promise or vow you need from me, ask it, and I shall give it freely.”

  Frey’s fingers drummed against the door as those green eyes of his pierced into Gareth.

  “Swear it, then,” he said. “What I am about to show you must remain between us alone.”

  “I swear it,” Gareth said, his curiosity mixing with dread so that he both feared and needed to know what was beyond that door. “You are my lord, forever true.”

  At last, Frey smiled.

  “Then come with me, and see the real power of the west.”

  He used a key to unlock the door and then pushed it open to enter a small room underneath the keep. No windows. No light beyond what Frey’s torch cast. The air hung thick and damp within his nostrils.

  “What…what is this?” Gareth asked as Frey lit two more torches hanging from the wall.

  “This is the truth the god-king would deny.”

  Between the two torches was a stone statue of such ill visage merely looking upon it made Gareth’s insides twist. The upper half was of a man, his chest well muscled and wrapped with more than a dozen gemstone-laden necklaces. He bore four arms, two lifted high, two curled low. Instead of hands, the lower two bore paws like those of a dog, while the higher shifted into insectoid pincers starting at the wrist. The man’s face was perfectly smooth across the front, lacking eyes, nostrils, or a mouth, as if it had all been sliced away. Twin horns curled around the sides of the head, as black as coal and curling toward sharpened points akin to a bull’s. As for the legs, well…

  There were too many of them, some curved, some tentacled like a squid, and some bent like a roach. None were human.

  “Who is this?” Gareth asked, though he feared he knew the answer. “What is this?”

  “This is the god of the Sinifel Empire,” Frey said, and the reverence in his voice raised the hairs on Gareth’s neck. “Eiman, Beast of a Thousand Mouths, bringer of the needed calamity.”

  Gareth fought back an impulse to reach for his sword.

  “This is heresy,” he said.

  “Yes.” Frey turned to face him. “It is.”

  Gareth’s throat tightened.

  You vowed to tell no one, he thought. Does that vow hold even against such a crime?

  Frey smiled at him, and it seemed he was aware of Gareth’s debate.

  “Hold true to me,” he said. “Do not revoke your vow, not until you hear my words. You owe me that at least, my friend.”

  Gareth stared at the statue and its four-armed glory. In the polished surface of its non-face, he saw his own horrified expression gazing back.

  “You have my ears,” he said, his voice rough and unsteady. “I promise you nothing more than that.”

  Frey put a hand on Gareth’s shoulder, the contact startling.

  “The Sinifel may have been cruel, but they carried wisdom the god-king would abandon,” Frey said, and he gestured about the room. The light of his torch fell across multiple paintings, each one showing places throughout Yensere, from calm meadows split by a river to a sprawling city whose streets were overrun with people. The one commonality was the darkened sky, and swirling in its center, the black sun lined with blue fire.

  On the opposite side of the room were four chains bolted to the wall, all ending with thin iron manacles. Beside them was a table. Multiple artifacts rested atop it.

  This room, Gareth thought, filled with a desire to flee. This room is a shrine to sin and heresy.

  But a vow made in honor compelled him to stay, and so he stayed. He listened as Frey picked up a wicked-looking knife whose edge was permanently stained with blood.

  “Vaan has broken that which should be whole,” Frey said, inspecting the knife. “His arrogance in conquering time and halting the black sun has directly led to the rise of the blight affecting the outermost reaches of Yensere. He demands our worship, but it is a false faith, forced with a dangling blade just above our necks. A cowardly faith. Bend the knee, or our brutal god shall relinquish his grip, and all the world will be swallowed in the destruction the Sinifel revered.”

  He slammed down the knife.

  “But it is his actions that cause us to suffer. You, more than any of us, have seen the brutal curse of the blight. The way it slowly deprives a man of his dignity and honor. A stripping away of thought and motivation until only rote movement and memory remain. It must be stopped, and we all know Vaan is helpless to stop it. How could he, when it is born of his own misdeeds?”

  Gareth turned back to the statue, wishing it would horrify again as it had when he first looked upon it. The blight had been spreading since long before Gareth was born. The god-king had done nothing to prevent its spread as he ruled deep in the core of Yensere within Castle Goltara. No aid came. No wisdom. If anything, the rhetoric from the inner lands had shifted over the last decade, casting blame upon those suffering in the outer reaches. Whispers, cruel and callous, that the people suffering the blight must have done something to deserve it.

  “It is one thing to denounce the inaction of Goltara in regard to the blight,” Gareth said. “But it is another to claim Vaan is the cause of it. Have you any proof?”

  “Proof beyond the obvious?” Frey asked. “I have studied for years, scouring the Sinifel ruins all throughout my realm. There is a reason Vaan has declared them heretical and sought their destruction. They illuminate the truth of his failure! The calamity must happen, Gareth. If time remains conquered, all of us will suffer.”

  “Truth, that the world must end?” Gareth shook his head. “How…how can you believe this, my lord? What could you possibly gain from delving into that which was forbidden?”

  “Because it is through Eiman’s power I sired an heir.”

  Gareth struggled to contain himself. This went far beyond a curiosity about the past, or disdain for the god-king’s rule.

  “How?” he asked, his throat painfully dry.

  “Through my prayers,” Frey said, and he pointed to the floor before the statue. “And by making love right here, before the altar. Oh, Jeanne was blindfolded, I made sure of that. Young and simpleminded as she is, I fear she is not ready for this truth. Not like you, Gareth. Not you, who have seen the brutal face of the world, the misery of the blight, and the torment of demons.”

  Frey put his hands upon Gareth’s shoulders, an act of fellowship more intimate than he had ever shown before.

  “Eiman embraced what our foolish god-king has denied. He looked upon our lives, meager and cyclical, and extended that harsh truth to its natural conclusion. Life? Death? Civilization? Ruin? They are not opposed. They are not enemies. They are partners in a dance, and Eiman has reached out his hands to us. Let us dance with him, Gareth. Let us shed fear of the heretical and see with open eyes the true nature of our world.”

  “You…are asking me to turn against my god-king?” Gareth asked, pushing away those hands. “He who has given me power to protect the realm?”

  “Was that power enough to stop the demons and their allies? Or did it fail you when you needed it most?” Frey crossed his arms. “You need more? So be it. Then let me offer this. The blight? Vaan cannot stop it, but Eiman can.”

  Gareth recoiled as if struck. “You lie.”

  “I do not.”

  “Then…then why have you not spread the cure throughout Vestor?” Gareth asked. “Why not spare the people I protect, people suffering like those in Meadowtint?”

  Frey’s visage hardened.

  “Because the prayer and sacrifice go to Eiman, not Vaan. What do you think would happen if I did as you asked? If word spread throughout Yensere of a miracle cure of the blight? The god-king would send one of his Harbingers, and I would be a corpse before the month’s end.” He shook his head, frustration turning to bitter acceptance. “And so I do what I must in secret. You are one of few I have told, Gareth. One of very few I am willing to trust with my life. Will that make you listen? Will that allow you to finally understand?”

  If his claim was true, then it was enough. Gareth knelt before the statue, and he looked upon it, truly looked upon it, for the first time. The mixture of insect and animal across Eiman’s body seemed strange, but they were each natural, and part of the world in some manner. The face, unsettling because it was so smooth and void of features, only meant he saw himself, and he suspected that was the point. Four arms, two raised heavenward, two lowered toward those kneeling. Thought and care had gone into this representation. Should Eiman exist, Gareth suspected he looked nothing like this. The Beast of a Thousand Mouths? Symbolism made manifest. An entity representing the Sinifel people’s belief that the world would, no, must end if it were to be reborn.

  But if the god did exist…if he did contain power, and could defeat the blight and halt its spread eastward, then Gareth’s heart had been pledged to a false deity ever since he was a child. There was only one proof Gareth would accept, indisputable evidence performed before his very eyes.

  “A girl,” he said. “There’s a girl here, stricken with the earliest phases of blight…”