As Above, So Below

-Prologue-

Every step was agony. Every step was a betrayal to those she had left behind. Every step forward was her cowardice manifest.

“Run!” Connie screamed. “Hurry!”

Nightfall had come on fast, faster than anyone had expected. Faster than Jak, the financier of their caravan, had accounted for. But of course, he paid the wages, he made the decisions. Connie had known better, yet she never said a word when he insisted on running the wagons up to dark.

“Stupid. Connie, you stupid, stupid, twit,” she chided herself, then over her shoulder, she screamed, “I said hurry!”

“I know!” Jak huffed. Sweat glistened across his purpled face. “I – fucking – know!”

She didn’t doubt for a moment that he knew the trouble they were in. Still, the distance between them kept growing.

The shadows stirred behind. Dark figures, even darker than the black landscape of the single moon night, surged on their heels.

Guilt tinged at her throat as she pulled farther and farther away from Jak, but she just had to keep running. That’s all there was to it.

The first wall was within sight. She could see the torches. She could see the guards jumping to action, readying arrows.

They were close. It was doable. Just a little further. They would make it. They would make it!

That’s what she told herself, and The Spirits knew she needed all the encouragement she could get.

“Keep it up,” she huffed. “Keep it up. Keep it up!”

Her leg jolted as she stepped awkwardly.

Pain shot through her ankle and to her knee, but she ignored it. She had to keep running.

“Fucking dark night… Fucking open field!”

She glanced back to Jak. He wheezed and puffed, his rolls of fat flailing with his arms as he trailed behind.

“Dammit, Jak! Keep up!”

“Trying!” he heaved, but clearly it wasn’t enough.

They were so close. So close… but still too far!

Chitter. A sound like bone grinding and digging into more bone echoed from the darkness.

She hoped it was all just The Dream. A nightmare. One from which she desperately wanted to wake.

Chitter. Chitter. The sound lashed out, vibrating through her very bones. It came from behind them. From all around them.

A really bad dream. The most terrible dream of her life. That’s what it was.

Moisture boiled at the edges of Connie’s sight. The tears burned the already raw flesh rimming her eyes. How could she still cry? How had she not yet shed all the tears possible?

A trumpeting screech sounded from the darkness. Then another. Then a dozen!

It was most certainly not a dream.

“Shit!” Jak moaned between labored breaths. “Shit, shit, shit! Spirits Above, save us!”

“Just don’t stop running! Whatever you do, don’t fucking stop!”

Two hundred paces. They could make it.

The guards beckoned them on. Mouths shouting, arms waving for haste.

The gates opened. Not much, but enough. Just enough for two people to slip in.

Connie’s chest swelled with hope. They were going to make it. They were going to make it!

Even after Jak’s greed made them travel so late. Even after they were attacked, and all the caravan hands were slaughtered. Even after Smae, her friend, her business partner, her lover, had been torn to pieces. After everything they had endured, they were going to make it. Despite all odds, they were going to –

“Gah!” Jak’s voice cried out.

Connie felt suddenly cold.

“Ahhh! No, no, no!”

She looked back and regretted it.

“Jak…?” she breathed, her stumbling feet still carrying her forward even as she slowed. She couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t stop. No matter what.

“C-Connie,” Jak wheezed from the ground, his leg twisted unnaturally. He reached out to her. “Please…”

Before she could acknowledge the man’s plea, a flash of motion struck out from the darkness. A sound like leather ripping filled her ears. Blood sprayed as Jak’s outstretched hand, no, the whole arm was torn free and slung into the void of night.

He didn’t scream. He didn’t even have a chance.

Dark, gnarled things lashed out at Jak’s motionless body. A dozen limbs, curved like evil sickles, shredded through meat and sinew and bone.

Crack. Chitter. Crack, crack. Chitter.

Jak’s head was cut free, then burst into bits like a smashed melon. His fat, swollen belly was slashed open, guts and blood sloshing out like an overturned stew pot. His pale corpse writhed and violently jerked about as it was torn and devoured.

“Jak…!” Connie cried. “Jak!” Shock and horror and disgust knotted in her stomach. It didn’t matter how many times she’d seen someone die that way, there was never any getting used to it. At least, she hoped she never would.

Her body went numb. Another person, and, even with all his faults, another friend, was dead. She screamed, all of her emotions pouring from her like water breaching a dam. Fear. Sorrow. Frustration. Rage. She howled everything she had at the beasts, at the night, at Jak.

“Hurry!” a guard’s faint voice called from the wall. “Hurry!”

Connie stifled her sobs. Her hands clamped over her mouth, holding in the sick trying to come up even as more tears burst forth.

She ran. Not as fast as before, but as hard as her trembling legs would let her. It was the only thing she could do.

A hundred paces away.

She hadn’t even tried to help. She told herself she couldn’t have done anything. She knew she couldn’t have. But she hadn’t even tried! She just ran, like always. When things got rough, when the walls started falling in, Connie did what Connie did best. She ran.

“Move, move, move!” another guard shouted.

She choked down her wallows and focused. She still had a chance. She could make it. She didn’t want it to end this way!

Chitter. Chitter.

She didn’t dare look back. She knew what would be there, what sort of death licked at her heels.

Chitter. Chitter.

“Run faster,” she panted to herself. “Run. Faster!”

Chitter. Chitter.

“Run faster you stupid bitch! Run fas- Oh!”

The world tumbled around her as she tripped, rolled, then laid out flat.

Her first thought was to stay there and take a rest. She deserved it, right? She’d been pushing herself hard lately. All the running. All the work. All the travel. She had earned a good rest.

Her second thought was how pretty the sky was that night. The glittering stars blinked their smiles her way through glowing cosmic clouds of green and orange. The pink moon shined proudly. It was a rare but wonderful sight to have just The Dwarf out alone without the other two.

Then she heard them.

Chitter.

She sat up, back stiff. The frantic voices of the guards called to her, though she couldn’t make out what they said. She stared into that darkness. The shadows crawled closer, reaching out to consume her. She watched anxiously for what she knew was coming.

She pushed herself back, climbing to her feet to finish her sprint. She was so close.

She slipped and stumbled. “Shit!” She tried again, and again she flopped to the ground. She glared down accusingly at her leg – At where her leg used to be.

Where had it…? When had it…?

Motion. The shadows stirred.

Chitter.

They were on her.

Connie laughed. She had truly thought she could avoid the inevitable. Deep down, some part of her had known this would happen. She had known from the moment the caravan had been attacked that things would end this way. But she’d allowed herself to hope, to try, to struggle. What a fool she had been.

She stared at that jagged stump where her leg ended and laughed. A crimson pool oozed forth. The throbbing of her body grasped at her throat like a noose. But she still laughed.

The sky lit up bright. Was that the stars, twinkling encouragement for her? Was that The Spirits, come to save her in her time of need like in the story books?

Orange streaked from above. Little clusters of warm light whistled and fell all around.

Fire. Arrows.

She could hear the creaking of the gates sealing shut once again. The guards had given up on her. They’d seen her condition and realized their only option was to protect themselves.

She didn’t blame them. She’d have done the same.

She propped herself up and watched as lines of flame danced across the pitch of night, bringing an ominous glow to that which moved in the darkness.

She’d never been much the believer in things such as fate or destiny, less even in The Faith. But she knew as well as any what The Doctrines said. She knew that prophesies told of the time when the thirteenth Daemon walked among men. That all things would fall. That The Above and The Below would spill over to The Between.

Absolute nonsense. Rubbish tales told to scare children. That’s what she had always thought. Though, as she lay there, Connie was coming to the sobering realization that there might be something to those stories after all.

It all had happened before her very eyes. Smae. Jak. The hired hands. Dead. Torn apart by unholy monsters. And for what? Fate? Destiny?

Were they simply the unfortunate? Had it all only been a matter of luck? Was it truly the end of times? Was this what the prophecies had spoken of?

As Above, so Below, and Between.

She laughed, the madness of it all tickling her as pink as the moon.

Blood pounded in her ears. Her heart raced, faster and faster and faster still! Connie couldn’t hear from the rush of it all, but even so, she laughed. She laughed. She screamed!

She screamed and screamed as loud as she could.

The shadows closed around her. All fell silent. All but one sound.

Chitter.