In the Throes of Madness

Wispwood tore itself apart.

Bodies lay in mangled heaps — men, women and children alike cluttering the narrow village streets. Fires raged in the distance, the sky illuminated with an ominous orange glow that suffused the dense clouds of blackened smoke. From the window of his bedroom, Soren watched the chaos unfold.

Missus Alva, the village’s healer, shot past, her eyes wild and frantic as she swung an axe at a passing farmer. The head bit into the farmer’s neck, and with one fell swoop, she cleaved it from his shoulders. The victory was short-lived. Not a second later, Missus Alva’s own daughter drove a fire iron through her back.

The senseless slaughter only continued from there. Missus Alva’s daughter fell prey to an adventurer in dented armor, who then met his end at the hands of a milkmaid armed with a pitchfork. A pair of men stumbled through the door of the building across the way, one armed with a rolling pin and the other a cleaver. It had been thirty minutes since the slaughter began, and it showed no signs of slowing.

Soren promptly yanked the curtains closed and hurried to the other side of the room, nearly tripping over the worn canvas rug on the floor. He wrenched the cabinet next to his desk open, his sweat-slicked hands fumbling to grip the brass knobs. Inside, his sword — a cheap thing of tempered iron that had been neither polished nor sharpened in recent memory — sat propped against the back wall. No sooner than his hand curled around the stiff and unyielding leather of the hilt, the insidious whispers returned.

He dropped the sword and clamped his hands over his ears. It didn’t do him any good. The sound, an unsettling combination of discordant humming and incoherent screeching, was both in his head and thrumming through the surrounding air. He could feel it pressing down upon him, a solid, vile wight begging its desperate, insatiable plea for more violence, more bloodshed.

More death.

Soren gritted his teeth. The urge remained — the inexplicable, underwhelming desire to bury his blade into the nearest mass of flesh, gripping him with such ferocity that it nearly stole his breath. He forced a shuddering exhale through his nose, and with a sharp jerk of his head, he cast those horrid voices aside.

The tide receded, whispers replaced with a disconcerting silence as his mind became his own once more. It was then that he noticed the weight slamming against his bedroom door. The half-rusted hinges groaned in protest, and the latch, firmly locked in place, rocked in its bay.

He unclenched his jaw, the joint aching from the sheer force it had endured in those scant few seconds, and reached for his sword once more. It felt heavier than it should have, burdened by the unrelenting tremors in his hands, and the knowledge that, for the first time in his life, he may be forced to use it against those he’d known since he was a child swaddled in his mother’s arms — that he may be forced to use it against his own family.

He had not seen his father since he threw him into the room and barred the door. Not a sound had come from his younger brother’s room, which was just on the other side of the interior wall. Soren had no way of knowing if they were still alive, or if the madness had gripped them as thoroughly as it had gripped the rest of the village.

The door rattled again, and a sharp curse rose from beyond it. A brief, twisted sense of relief settled over him. He didn’t recognize the voice.

Reality quickly reasserted itself. He may not have to run his own kin through, but he may still have to turn his weapon on someone. The mere thought of it was enough to leave his stomach in knots. Soren knew his way around a sword — his father made certain of that — but he hadn’t seen fit to use it since those lessons. There was never a need to.

Wispwood was a quiet town, unburdened by the problems that plagued most Wildlands settlements. Beyond the odd goblin pilfering the storehouses and the occasional spider that crawled out of the Widowwood, little of consequence happened there. Axe were for lumber and bows for hunting. Knives were tools for the kitchen and the fields. Guards were a formality rather than a necessity.

Never in the twenty-five years he’d been alive had Soren ever had to consider the possibility that his sword was anything other than a trinket taking up space in the back of a cabinet.

Swallowing the sudden lump in his throat, he dove into said cabinet and pulled the doors closed. At just over six feet tall and decidedly lankly, it was a tight fit. He sat on the balls of his feet, his knees tucked as close to his chest as they would go. His neck ached as he pushed his chin between his legs. There was barely a hair’s breadth of space between the roof and the crown of his head, and his toes stuck out just a touch too far, preventing the doors from closing fully.

He did not have time to readjust. No sooner than he disappeared into his hiding space, the door to his room gave way. A man as tall as him but twice as wide, dressed in thick plated armor and lugging a massive spiked flail, stumbled past the cabinet. Four holes dotted the chest piece, the metal warped and puckered and tinge with read. Streaks of blood turning the mop of sandy waves atop his head and the dense beard covering his chin orange.

A feral cry tore from the man’s lips as he suddenly spun on his heels and hefted the flail in a wide arc. The striking head slammed into his desk, the thick spikes tearing through the wood. Papers flew. The inkwell spilled. Soren’s journal, a raggedy old thing shot into the air and burst into a shower of yellowed pages. The bookshelf went next, his mother’s collection of historical tomes and old novels buried beneath a pile of splintered oak.

The man, who looked to be some sort of adventurer, stumbled after his weapon. He came to an unsteady stop in the middle of the room, his chest heaving. There was a brief pause, and then, with a guttural shriek, he brought the flail down upon the straw-stuffed mattress of Soren’s bed. With a resounding crack, the frame gave way.

“I know you’re in here,” the adventurer said. The sound that left his lips was horrid — an inhuman noise that landed somewhere between a sputtering hiss and a deranged cackle. His tongue darted out to lick the blood from his chin. “I can hear you breathing.”

Soren clamped a hand over his mouth as a surge of dizzying panic took hold of him. The striking head of the flail was as long as his thigh and twice as thick, bits of flesh and bone clinging to the base of the spikes. A single blow from that would be all it took to split his skull — and he could do nothing to stop it. His sword was wedged between his legs, and there was not enough space for him to pull it into his hands without revealing himself.

He could do nothing but sit there and pray to every god in existence that he wasn’t noticed.

Those prayers went unanswered. The adventurer turned towards the cabinet — the last standing piece of furniture in the room — and took a wobbling step forward. He grinned, displaying a row of bloodied teeth, but it was his eyes that caught Soren’s attention. They may as well not have existed, his pupils blown so wide they nearly eclipsed the entirety of his irises. He was not staring into the face of a man, but into a gaping black void of unadulterated madness.

“You thought you could hide from me, did you?” the adventurer asked as he lifted his flail, the chain rattling. “You—“

Soren could barely keep track of what followed.

Before the adventurer could finish, a blackened blur shot into the room and slammed into his side. The adventurer stumbled. With a frustrated snarl, he swung his flail in a wide, sloppy arc. Rather than collide with the shadow, it slammed into the wall behind them, ripping a chunk of the daubed paneling free and shattering the wooden framing inside. Cold, smoke-choked air flooded into the room, and through the hole in the wall, Soren caught the flow of a fire far too close to his liking.

Beneath that light, Soren glimpsed the shadow — or rather, the man hidden beneath it. He was smaller than the adventurer, perhaps a head or two shorter, and wrapped in blackened leathers that seamlessly blended with the cloak thrown over his shoulders. As the shadow ducked beneath another wild swing of the flail, the hood of his cloak shifted to reveal a pair of eyes, so bright a green they seemed to glow beneath the light of the raging fire.

Rather than frenzied mania, there was nothing but cold, blistering indifference in his gaze as he sidestepped a clumsy lunge from the adventurer. His hand shot towards his thigh to pluck a dagger from his belt — or Soren assumed it was a dagger. Faster than he could blink, the blade left its scabbard and shot through the air, offering only the barest flash of metal before it buried itself in the narrow gap between the adventurer’s knee and thigh plate. The adventurer stumbled, his leg buckling.

Then, with a sort of magic he’d never witnessed before (not that he had witnessed much magic to begin with) the cloaked man disappeared into a burst of shadow. The adventurer snarled and wrenched the dagger from his knee, hurling it towards the space where the cloaked man had been moments before.

The adventurer staggered to his feet and wrenched the dagger from his knee. He swung his flail again, the striking head passing through the space the cloaked man had occupied seconds before. The momentum of it sent him careening to the side, his wounded knee giving out once more.

The fight ended as quickly as it began. In another burst of shadow, the other man appeared above the adventurer. With a well-timed twist of his body, he brought another blade down onto the back of the adventurer’s neck. The adventurer let out a strangled gasp, and tumbled to the floor in a haphazard heap, limp and unmoving.

The cloaked man stepped over the body, barely sparing it a second glance as he approached the cabinet. His steps, measured and deliberate, made no noise as he closed the gap between them. Soren remained silent, his hand still clamped over his mouth. While this man did not exude the raving madness the adventurer had, the cold indifference in his gaze was almost as concerning. He could not help but wonder if he’d traded one form of insanity for another — because no sane man could end the life of another with such brutal, unnerving calm.

The man stopped in front of the cabinet, pausing for only a second before he wedged his boot beneath the crack in the door and pulled them open. Soren lurched backwards, his rear slamming into the base of the cabinet. The sudden movement sent his sword clattering to the floor.

“I’m sane!” Soren cried, throwing his hands up to cover his face. “I swear to ya, I’m sane!”

The man tilted his head, a dark brow rising into the shadow of his hood. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but a heavy thud, promptly followed by an enraged shriek just outside the window, stopped him short. After several moments of tense silence, he jerked his chin towards the door and stepped aside.

Soren shuffled forward, his movement awkward and unsteady as he slowly extricated himself from the cabinet. He kept his gaze on the cloaked man, watching both him or the dagger in his hand for any sign of movement. Once on his feet, he braced his hand against the wall and shook the feeling back into his legs.

“Who—“

“Later,” the man said, his voice quiet but laced with an unmistakable undercurrent of authority.

Soren swallowed and glanced around the room, the message received. This was not the time nor the place for a discussion. The chaos in the street outside had waned, but he could still hear sporadic screams and the distant sound of fighting above the roar of the inferno blazing just beyond the wall of his room. Fire or the deranged — the longer they lingered, the more likely they were to encounter both.

He followed the man into the main room, where he found the house in utter disarray. The front door hung from a single hinge, the bottom half missing. Glass from the windows littered the ground, several of the larger shards strewn with drying blood. There was not a single piece of furniture left untouched. Yet, among the wreckage, he saw neither his father nor his brother.

It was a small mercy, perhaps, but a mercy nonetheless. He didn’t dare consider their fates, for he doubted they survived. His father would not have abandoned them willingly, and had they survived, there was no guarantee they were still sane. The lack of evidence of their demise gave him cause to assume otherwise.

If he didn’t, he might not have found the will to take another step.

The moment they stepped into the streets, what little courage he mustered sputtered out. Homes sat half destroyed, their roofs collapsed, and the walls pocked with holes. Carts, wheelbarrows, and hauling wagons lay in toppled heaps, crushed and splintered beneath the weight of a massive drought horse. Further down the way, they passed a small cluster of slain villagers, in the center of which lay an elven woman garbed in elegant gold and green leathers. Blood trickled from the horrendous gash cleaved into the side of her neck, her golden eyes dulled with death.

His stomach lurched. As they made their way further from the village center and towards the outskirts, the scale of the devastation sank in. There would be no other survivors. Those who had not yet perished would soon enough, their wounds far too grievous to tend to. More than once, the cloaked man stopped to bury his blade into someone’s chest — a grim sort of benevolence that left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Sensing his silent protest, the man glanced at him over his shoulder. “It’s crueler to leave them to suffer.”

Soren pressed his lips into a thin line but did not argue. It was the same sort of grim benevolence his father would’ve insisted upon. Still, there was a vast difference between putting down a horse that could never walk again, and watching his friends and neighbors leave the world one after another.

Pushing that thought aside, he asked, “Where are we goin’?”

For several moments, the man didn’t answer. The only sound between them was the distant crackle of the fire, the dying wails of villagers, and the weighted disquiet of a forest that had gone eerily silent. Only once they’d entered the meadow that bordered the Widowwood, where a pair of black stallions grazed on the high sweet grass at the base of the old, gnarled trees, did Soren receive an answer.

“Inverness.”