Alyla Franco's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Alyla Franco walked into the tavern with a dead patch of forest still clinging to her boots. The dust she tracked in did not catch the lamplight. It sat on the floorboards like a hole cut into the wood. A farmer at the nearest table saw it and moved his stool away. She set her pink bow on the bar. Her quiver clacked against the wood. Twelve obsidian arrows, cut from scales the shadow beast had shed while grinding through a hillside two valleys east. She had picked them up herself, from ground that no longer held light. Her hair and her coat were still pink. Everything she carried was not. The tavern keeper set down the mug he was drying. He was broad, gray-bearded, sleeves shoved to the elbow. He looked at the dust on her boots, then at her face. "First night here?" he asked. "First and last," Alyla said. "I leave at dawn." He poured a dark stout and pushed it across. "First one's on the house. House rule." "I don't need it, Gareth." "You'll drink it." He did not raise his voice. "Then you'll tell me where you're going." She drank. It was warm and thick and tasted like a fire someone had watched closely. She set the mug down half full. "East ridge," she said. "The dark stretch above the old barn. It's been there three weeks. The horses won't cross it. The farmer lost a foal walking into it." Gareth's hand stopped moving on the rag. "That's the beast." "That's the beast." "People go up there, they don't come back." "I've been up there four times." She tapped the quiver. "That's where these came from." He looked at the arrows a long moment. The obsidian did not shine. It drank the lamp glow and gave nothing back. "Its own scales," he said. "Its own scales." "You think that's enough?" "I think nothing else has worked." She pulled one arrow free and laid it on the bar between them. The wood under the arrowhead darkened where it touched. "It hollows stone. It hollows light. I need something that can hollow it back." Gareth stared at the mark on his bar. He wiped at it once with the rag. The dark stayed. "Finish the stout," he said. "I'll pack you bread." "I don't need bread." "You'll take it." He turned toward the kitchen, then stopped. "Alyla. If those don't kill it, what does?" She put the arrow back in the quiver. She did not answer, because she did not know. She only knew the beast was two valleys away, that the dark was growing, and that no one else was walking toward it. She finished the stout. She shouldered her bow. She stepped back out into the road, and turned east.