A dark fairy tale about traps, lures and falling for shadows.
When you see an eldritch dark horror made of shadows by the side of an old cursed trail that no one dares to go, you expect it to be less charming as it tries to trick you with deceitful...
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Art by James Fenner (@JMFenner91 on Twitter)
I woke up alone, lips bruised, body aching and battered, while my sheets lay drenched with blood and sweat. Memories of last night blurred and merged in my head, I couldn't tell the difference between what had happened and what had been a dream
I looked around. The brightness of the room hurt my eyes, making me squint at the window when I glanced at it to assess the time. I had slept through the entire morning, it seemed, because the sun was already at its high in the sky.
There were no signs of Erebus ever being in the room. The bracelet hung loosely on my wrist, smooth and non-threatening. I sat on my bed and gathered the pieces I remembered from last night... the tavern, the drinking, the ambush in the back alley, the confrontation with Doyle's sons, the walk back home, and the dream with Erebus.
I shook my head and pushed them all to the back of my mind, where I wouldn't have to think about it. At the moment, my attention had been directed fully to the pain I was feeling. My whole body hurt, and the wound in my chest opened again, probably from the fight with the Doyle boys at the back alley last night.
It had left blood smeared all over my chest and my bed. I quickly slapped a bandage over it and spent a few minutes mulling over going to the healer's cabin to ask for help. The last time we spoke, she hadn't left in the most amicable terms.
The wound wouldn't stop bleeding though, and the bandage I'd put on kept peeling out and falling off. After the third sloppy attempt to put it back on, I realized I had to swallow my pride and head to the healer to see if she could try to stitch me back up again, or at least wrap some proper bandage in place.
Even though it was past midday, the village was eerily quiet and strangely deserted, but I paid no mind to the strangeness that I was sensing lingering in the air. Maybe everyone had decided to wake up a bit later today, or maybe there was some festivity going on around that I didn't know about and that was all there was to it.
These doubts vanished from my mind when I reached the village's outskirts, as there weren't as many huts and houses in sight anymore to worry me. The villagers' waking habits weren't of concern to me anymore as Wolly's hoofs stopped clapping on cobblestone and entered the soft grass of the trail that led to the healer's cabin.
The sun was shining brightly as I reached my destination. I tied Wolly near the hitching post beside her cabin and walked up to her front door, but I didn't get to knock more than once before she yanked the door open, eyes wide and alarmed, searching around the small dirt road I had come from.
"You look like you've been dragged to hell and back, son. What happened to you this time?" She asked when she saw me standing by her doorstep with an arm wrapped over my chest and a pained expression on my face.
