The little ones scratched over Kalyth’s shoulders, bubbled beneath the bark of her back. ‘I just need some rest,’ she said, and hoped against hope Idrelle believed her. When it was all over, she would tell Idrelle all about it. She would let Idrelle baby her and nurse her back to health. But for now, she needed to keep the truth of it to herself, for Idrelle’s sake. For everyone’s sake.
There were so few of them left.
As night settled over the forest and Idrelle nestled beside her in the grove, Kalyth told herself it was all for the best. Some secrets needed to be kept.
But she could still hear the Bright One whispering as she fell asleep.
Let us stay with you. You’re so warm. And we’re so cold. So hungry. We’re starving. We’re dying. We need you. We want you. Help us.
Please, help us.
In the dream, Kalyth stood in a pale field.
Tall grass rippled around her. Shadows hovered at the edges of her vision, though the sky was cloudless and lit by an indistinct sun. The air was hazy and thick. And everything, everything, was white.
Kalyth inhaled. The thick air slid into her nose and mouth like oil. It slicked the back of her tongue, rolled into her belly. Kalyth’s chest tightened and she retched, but every time she opened her mouth, the liquid air poured in until everything inside of her sloshed.
But she could breathe. Her body pulled oxygen from the syrupy air like a fish inhaling water. Shuddering, Kalyth stilled herself and tried to concentrate on that. She wasn’t dying. There was life flowing through her.
She reached for the Spirit Song, but it was slippery and she couldn’t grasp it.
And then she realised she wasn’t alone.
The parasites inside of her, those thousands of tiny squirming somethings, were all around her now, a slowly churning carpet where the grass had been moments before. Their bodies were bloated and gelatinous. Branches sprouted from their sides, tender new shoots above their stunted arms. Their heads wobbled on thin necks, their faces were wide-eyed and gaunt. They gazed up at her as they caressed her feet and ankles. They crawled up her legs and curled their tiny hands against her bark. They pleaded with her silently, vibrating with hunger and need, shaking desperation into her arms and chest.
They were so cold.
They were so hungry.
They needed blood.
They were dying.
They needed blood.
HelpusHelpusHelpus.
They needed blood.
The sea of tiny, bloated bodies quivered, and in the distance a mound rose from the earth beneath them. It ploughed languidly towards her, a giant rolling wave in an ocean of squirming bodies. It slowed to a stop in front of her and the Bright One emerged from beneath the blanket of his tiny siblings, letting them fall away from him as he stood, eye to eye with her. His skin glistened, his branches, so familiar, so much like a sylvaneth’s, shimmered. His eyes shone.
A scar puckered the side of his face like a long, sideways grin.
We’ve been waiting for you, the Bright One said. The words coiled through Kalyth’s mind, slow and steady. His lips didn’t move. He laid his hand over his chest, fingers ticking over his colourless skin as if searching for something. He paused, grinned, and sank his fingers into himself, hand disappearing into a gummy wound. The Bright One’s eyes fluttered, his grin widened, and when he slinked his hand back out again, he held an axe.
The axe was dripping when he handed it to Kalyth. A gory umbilical tethered its haft to the hole in his chest. The axe throbbed, that same slow thrum Kalyth had felt when the Bright One was inside her; a distant rhythm, a second heartbeat.
The little ones began keening. Wailing. Crying. They were so hungry. They needed her help. They wanted her help.
The shadows at the edges of the landscape detached and elongated, twisting and turning and growing, until they became bodies, faces, the servants of the Dark Gods rising from the pale earth.
Kalyth gripped the axe more tightly. How many of her brothers and sisters had these monsters killed? How many forests had they burned?
The Bright One stroked a smooth hand over her shoulder. You know what you have to do, he said.
Kalyth raised the axe.
The little ones clamoured up her legs, onto her arms, clung to her, dug their fingers into her. Thousands of needling hands, thousands of hungry, open mouths.
Kalyth rushed towards the nearest enemy, the Bright One beside her. There was no resistance when she swung, the blade cutting through armour and flesh as if through water. The dream world shuddered. Kalyth drew the blade out again. Blood fountained from the wound. The little ones scrambled off her, gleeful and diving into the river of blood, burrowing and sucking with their tiny, starving mouths.
The Bright One pressed against Kalyth. The axe, still tethered to his open chest, burned in her hands.
Again, he said.
Kalyth charged and swung. The world gushed red.
Again.
Blood rushed over her, hotter and faster, frenzied and full of jubilant need. Again she attacked, laughing, screeching, howling. It felt good; it felt so good, to finally do something. To attack, to let her rage bubble up and over like a spring. A geyser. A volcano.
When Kalyth finally stopped, gasping, blood raining from her branches, the ground roiled with parasites, their bellies pulsing red with gore. They cooed and purred, wriggling happily over her feet.
The axe hummed in her hand and Kalyth closed her eyes to let the rhythm of it settle into her, steady and powerful.
The Bright One nuzzled her ear and, even though there was nobody left to kill in the dream world, he breathed, softly, sweetly, Again.
Kalyth woke in the grove, the moon bright and full. The ground beneath her wasn’t soaked with blood. Not yet. But she could smell it all around her, salty and sweet. Beside the frantic beating of her heart, Kalyth could still hear the Bright One whispering Again. Kalyth’s hands clutched for an axe that wasn’t there. Trembling, she sat up.
