Chal spit ash and poison. Swarms of speckled dots of abyss rained on him from above and scorched him in dark. “This is it, my end,” he thought. He was a knight of Lostria returning home, to his wife, to his son. Chal saw the city burn in pillars of churning shadows, its citizens turned to husks all around him. Every step he took closer to his home made the painful shadow winds more intense.
Something next to him exploded and he fell. A stillness wrapped around Chal. There was a girl untouched by dark who had not been there before. Around her radiated purple chaos, an orb of denying warmth. She looked surprised and terrified, with trembling arms and palms full of umbral energy controlled as well as chaos could be. The girl saw Chal, and screamed panicked words Chal did not hear. “Don’t breathe? Hold my breath?”
There was a rapture of light around them, then Chal was spirited with the girl through a pinhole in the verse. The girl walked as few can to another world, and dragged Chal behind her wake. It was a cool, starlit night, the clean air a blessing. Quiet except for the girl’s heavy gasp and crickets in the distance. Grasses soft and green over endless hills. Chal could feel his skin turning to husk. His body smoldered away into ash as his mortality evaporated and he fell back onto the grass.
Echo of Chal I • Echo of Chal II
Originally published in Faerie Solitaire Harvest