Gerald of Humanity's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Gerald of Humanity stepped into the bog with the last king's skull tied to his belt. He needed more bones to finish the crown. The burial mounds rose from the black water ahead. His armor hissed softly, steam curling where the muck touched the burning metal. A huge iron cage marked the center ground. Skeletons hung chained inside, green with algae. Around it, staffs had been driven into the mud. Each staff held a pale orb that breathed out a slow, drifting fog. Gerald felt the fog press against his thoughts. He kept walking. She came out of a tree. Its roots made a hollow door, and she stepped from the dark inside it. The bog-witch was small and gray and very old. "These dead are mine," she said. "Turn back." Gerald drew his claymore. "I need their bones. I will take them." He did not raise his voice. He spoke the way a man names the weather. She lifted a staff, and the fog thickened. Gerald's vision bent. He swung anyway, by memory, where her voice had been. The blade struck the staff and split it. The orb burst. The fog snapped back into the swarm of glowing things it had hidden — fireflies, burning bright, swirling around her in panic. They caught on her wet robes and went off like sparks in dry grass. She screamed once and fell. Gerald wiped his blade on the moss. He walked to the iron cage and pulled the chains loose. Bones clattered into his sack. The tree behind him still stood, hollow and waiting, and he marked it in his mind. He had what he came for. Now he needed a fire hot enough to shape it.