Sir Devon's Arc

Chapter 2 of 7

Devon pried the black stone from under the dead bear and felt the cold change. The air went dead and wrong. Snow near the stone turned grey and soft, like meat left too long. The rot spread from the mark in the ground and crept toward his camp. His men backed away, spears shaking. "Off the pass," Devon said. "Now. Before it reaches the tents." They ran through a row of dark pines toward a frozen lake, boots breaking crust. Behind them the grey rot ate the snow and followed. Devon led his men onto the ice, thinking open ground would slow it. He was wrong. The rot touched the lake edge and the pale surface split with black veins. A broken pillar of dark stone leaned from the far shore, half-buried, older than any road. Devon had not seen it before. He knew then that he had not just disturbed a stone. He had woken a place. The snow lifted. A swirl of white flakes spun up from the ice and did not fall. It hung in the air, turning, and inside it stood a woman. Bare feet on the frozen lake. Long black hair. A red stone at her throat that caught no light. Her eyes were burned black to the edges. "Knight," she said. "You dug where you shouldn't." Devon raised his sword. His men formed a line at his back, spears out. She did not flinch. She looked past him at each face, slow, counting, the way a butcher counts. "Who are you," Devon said. "Drusilla Vex." She tilted her head. "I look for my master. He sleeps under that stone you moved." "Then he stays buried." She smiled. Her teeth were sharp. "You're showing him your men. He likes to know a number." Her fingers touched the red stone. "So do I." The rot crawled to the edge of the ice near Devon's boot. He understood. She would not fight. She had come to look, and the looking was the danger. She was measuring them for something worse. Devon drove his sword into the frozen lake at the black vein's root. The ice cracked wide. Cold water swallowed the rot with a hiss, and the grey stain sank and died. The spreading stopped. His camp was safe. But Drusilla did not sink with it. She stepped back into the swirling snow and it closed around her like a door. "You saved your tents," she said. "You didn't save the count. He has it now." The flurry scattered. She was gone. Devon stood on the split ice, breathing hard. He had stopped the rot. But the witch had seen every knight he had. She served something buried and awake, and it now knew the size of his order. He wiped his blade. The Frostborn were no longer hunting the dark. The dark had started hunting them.