The Tome of Whispers - Teaser
The path had dissolved into a lie an hour ago, leaving me to stumble through the grasping fingers of the ancient wood. Twilight bled through the canopy, painting the forest in shades of bruised purple and deep grey. It was then that I saw it - a jagged silhouette against the fading sky, the bones of a ruin long forgotten. A shortcut, I hoped, or at least shelter.
Drawn by a flicker of light, I crept closer, peering through a gaping wound in the stone wall that might have once been a window. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and decay, but something else, too. Something sweet, like night-blooming flowers and ozone.
Inside, a single column of moonlight pierced the gloom, illuminating a scene of bizarre solitude. A woman, slight and pale as a moth's wing, stood before a massive stone lectern. She had small, delicate antlers that caught the light, and her focus was entirely on a great, ancient-looking book spread open before her. I watched, hidden in the deepening shadows, as she dipped a long feather quill and wrote something upon the page. Her movements were graceful, deliberate.
Then, to my utter confusion, she began to undress. Her thin, silken garment slid from her shoulders and pooled at her feet, leaving her completely bare in the ruin’s chilly air. I froze, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. What sort of ritual was this? My instinct screamed at me to leave, but my feet were rooted to the spot, my gaze locked on the strange, moonlit tableau.
That's when it began.
One moment she was standing still, the next, she was seized by an unseen force. Her body was flung backward as if struck, her head snapping back. Her limbs thrashed, her entire form lifted from the floor to hang suspended in the air, twisting and contorting as though in the grip of a violent, invisible giant. It was a horrifying, silent battle against nothing I could see.
Then came the sounds. No words of desperation, but raw, guttural cries that echoed off the crumbling stone. They were screams of agony, ripped from her throat with a chilling intensity that made the hair on my arms stand on end. She was being torn apart before my very eyes.
A primal urge to help, to do something, finally broke my paralysis. I burst from my hiding place, scrambling over fallen stones and pushing through the skeletal gate of the ruin. "Hey!" I yelled, my voice cracking. "I'm coming!"
Her screams grew louder, more desperate, guiding me through the darkened halls. I burst into the central chamber, weaponless but ready to fight whatever monster had her in its clutches.
But the room was empty.
She was gone. The lectern stood silent, the great book upon it gone. There was no sign of a struggle, no trace of an attacker. The air, however, was heavy with that cloying, sweet scent. And there on the floor, directly beneath where she had been thrown about in the air, was a large, dark, wet stain, gleaming slickly in the moonlight. I stood there, panting in the oppressive silence, my mind refusing to accept what my eyes had just seen.
--
Do you wonder what happened there?
To glimpse inside the ruin, and to discover what Whispren was doing with the book - wait for the full story!
Coming this Monday for Circle of Silk and above, or in a couple of months for Archivists. ~♥
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