Black Halo

His back struck the tree and his eyes stopped their fervent flutter, focusing on her as she approached him. Her legs did not tremble as she feared they might have. Resolve flooded her body, turned to iron in her blood, so heavy that, with one more step, she tripped and was sent falling into him, her arms flying out to seize him.

His body was cold, she thought as her hands slithered under his vest, his flesh clammy and sweaty beneath as she pressed against him. She had expected him to be warm. His breathing was quick, erratic and hare-like. As she leaned up, thrusting her lips at him like weapons, she hadn’t expected him to pull back, his eyes fighting against the urge to close and give in.

‘You don’t know what you’re-’ he began to whisper, silencing as she pressed a finger to his lips.

‘I do,’ she replied. ‘I know exactly.’

He pulled back again, but she was swifter. She forced her lips upon his, pried his apart with her tongue. They came loose willingly enough after a time, as she had known they would. The man was, after all, a felon. He wanted this as much as she did. His reluctance was only due to her forwardness.

She confirmed this as his tongue came out to touch hers, hers wrapping about his, searching his mouth with a purpose she wasn’t aware of. His body trembled; she pulled him all the closer. He made a soft moan; she drowned it with a chest-borne growl. She could feel him staring at her; she shut her eyes tighter. She didn’t want to look at him. She just wanted to-

She was spared thinking of an answer as she felt his arms deftly slither up between them, breaking her hold. His hands lashed out with a fury normally reserved for combat, slamming against her and knocking her back. The iron resolve left her, a rush of leaden weakness flooding her and sending her crashing to the ground.

And when she met his gaze, it was not a look normally reserved for companions that he struck her with.

‘I don’t know what happened to you on the ship before I got there,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t even exactly know what happened after. But no matter what it was, you don’t want this.’

‘I do,’ she said, drawing herself up to her knees. ‘It’s my choice. Mine.’

‘Not if you keep doing this, it isn’t.’

‘You’re a brigand,’ she whispered spitefully. ‘What do you care where you get it? You think I couldn’t do better? I’m the one settling here.’

‘And you chose to do that?’

‘It … it doesn’t matter,’ she said, wincing. ‘I need this. I need to know that I can still … that it’s still my …’

‘Not this way.’ He turned. ‘Not with me.’

She watched him stalk away, his shoulders heavy, weighing down his stride. She whispered to him on a breathless, stagnant voice.

‘I have been through …’ She shook her head violently. ‘I’ve given so much. And every time I ask for a blessing, try to take a favour, I am denied.’ She stared fire into his spine. ‘At the very least, I thought I could count on you to do what you always do. I should have remembered that what you always do is fail me in every way conceivable. You’re pathetic.’

‘I can live with that, at least,’ he replied, continuing to stalk away.

‘I hate you.’

‘That, too.’

He disappeared into the forest. And she was left alone. She did not weep.

Who would hear it?

The stream continued through the forest, Lenk discovered, and its whispering voice went with it. It murmured between trees, whimpered under rocky brooks, roared through hard ground, grew softer as it thinned into shallows, grew louder as it deepened. Lenk followed it all, listening to it.

It was probably a bad sign that he was beginning to understand it.

Never long enough to get a complete sentence, sometimes not even a full word; the stream was always freezing as he walked past, its flows and ebbs becoming hissing, crackling ice every time he laid eyes on it. But when his own breath grew soft and the water was thin enough to freeze with barely a sound, he could hear it.

The words were ancient, or alien, or simply incomprehensible. He could not understand them, anyway, but he could grasp the message behind them. They were not happy words spoken from a pleasant voice. They uttered, decreed, spewed messages of hate, vengeance, duty.

And betrayal.

Always betrayal.

Every other word seemed to carry that frustrated, seething hatred born of treachery. It rose from the stream, hammering at the ice with its voice, its words mercifully muffled behind the frigid sheets.

It was probably a worse sign that the voice was familiar.

‘I remember it,’ he whispered, ‘in the forest on my first night here. It spoke of betrayal then, too.’

‘This island is a tomb,’ the voice answered. ‘The dead have seeped into it with all their hate and their sorrow. Most have had centuries to let the earth consume them and their emotions with them. For some hatreds, that’s not nearly long enough.’

‘They sound so familiar, like I’ve heard them before.’

‘One of us has.’

He frowned, but did not ask the voice anything more. He pressed on through the forest, following the winding stream and its angry voice. He couldn’t tell if it was speaking to him. He didn’t want to know. If he did, and if it was, he would want to turn back.

And turning back, returning to them, was not an option.

It never was.

Before long, he found the stream’s end. Like an icy tongue from a great, black maw, it slithered into the shadows of a great cave set in the hillside. Here, the forest was at its deepest stage of decay. The leaves hung black off trees that had been brimming with greenery only a few paces back. The air was stale, stagnant and frigid.

It was most certainly a bad sign that he wasn’t bothered by any of this.

He watched as the ice continued without him, continuing down its freezing, murmuring path into the darkness. His ears pricked up, however, as for a few fleeting moments, he could hear them: words, clear and coherent, echoing in the gloom.

‘Don’t like it,’ a voice whispered. ‘Don’t like it and don’t want to go in there. Not with him …’

‘We have our orders,’ another replied. ‘They’ve got to die, all of them.’

‘They helped us at the battle, though, killed more demons than any-’

‘Don’t act like you haven’t been thinking of it. They’re unnatural. Abominations. Make it swift. In the back. Just don’t look in his eyes.’

‘Follow me,’ a third voice, cold as the air outside. ‘This cave is supposed to lead to a way around the enemy. We will cleanse this earth of their taint. Our duty is upheld.’

His eyes widened at the sound of it, the feel of it. It rang inside his ears as he had felt it ring inside his head before. Its rasping chill was all too familiar, the force behind it all too close to him. He heard it as it echoed inside the cavern.

He heard it as it spoke to him.

‘Go inside.’

‘What will I find there?’ he asked.

‘Nothing good.’

‘Then why should I?’

‘We will only find truth in the dark places.’

‘I’ve gone this far living a lie. It’s not been all bad.’

The voice didn’t need to respond to that. Immediately, the memories of the previous night, of the screaming, of the backs of his companions, came flooding into his mind. He sighed, lowering his head.

‘I’m afraid.’

‘Wise.’