A Roadsign. It was a wooden pole stuck in between two shimmering bricks and it bore two likewise wooden arrows pointing in opposite directions. 'Village', one said. Gillan read the other. And remembered.
"Of course!" she exclaimed. "The other end of the Road leads to the Singing Hills!"
Katsugi would've been very happy to know that information, had he known what the Hills were. So he asked.
"It's the home of the troll-folk, the Tall People. This," Gillan made a Forest-encompassing gesture, "is the home of the fairies — the Little People. And while we call them the Good Neighbours, the fairies I mean, it's the trolls that are actually, unambiguously good."
She had fully repressed the incident by now. It was a coping mechanism and it worked. For now at least.
The Knight nodded in understanding. "And how could they help me...us?" he asked.
"I...honestly don't know," Gillan confessed. "But I've heard they're kind and all, and they'll help us. Somehow. They're trolls. That's magic, right?"
Katsugi shrugged.
"And if there's something we need to get you home it's magic." She finished. A smile of cosmic bliss wandered onto her face. The Knight sneezed.
Both stopped in their tracks. Gillan looked to the left, Katsugi to the right. Then both looked behind. And saw eyes.
Though it was midday and everywhere was visible, a pair of eyes still managed to emerge from the darkness. And then another. And another.
The darkness itself was like a black fog. A cloud of blackness, seething and wriggling in mid-air. And it had wolves coming out of it. They walked slowly and formed a line, each of the new ones standing a pace ahead of the previous one. There were twelve of them, an even dozen. With some help, Katsugi could manage that. With some luck, he'd even come out alive.
The cloud then shifted, moved. It morphed into the same cloud as before, only now was made of jet-black slime. It changed some more and adopted the form of a river. It spiralled, alone, in the air, then washed out onto the Road. A river of darkness flew towards the travellers. And wolves ran alongside it.
Gillan and Katsugi turned and bolted in the direction of the Singing Hills. Twelve wolves were manageable, but a river was not. Besides, how do you even fight a river? The trick is, you don't. You wait for it to turn into a dragon.
Flaking scales, rotting flesh beneath. Broken fangs, a dwindling tongue in between. Eyes shadowed by spores of decay. A long, serpentine figure emerged from the rushing stream. It roared, the sound so vile and foul to the ears the two had to look. And they saw.
That thing wasn't a dragon anymore. It was a snake, even less than that, it was half a snake. From its head there were a few paces where the body looked fairly normal — at least for a rotting wyrm — but then it just cut off. As if its tail had been ripped off by an unimaginable amount of strength.
The dragon huffed as it locked its eyes onto the running pair. That's a lie. Its spirit, just like the body, was decaying too. The only shred of willpower it had left was the drive to survive. To move. Forward. To eat, consume, devour. And it did.
Guided by the dozen wolves — with the canines biting the dragon's sides to steer the giant beast — it shot towards them. Its ripped body flailed madly, still retaining the memory of how to advance in the form of a gargantuan serpent. With blindness plighting its eyes, the dragon knew not where it was going. But it could smell man-flesh, it could smell food. And just like that — starved, fully rotten, and half dead — the once-mighty beast was but a tool to the wolves. And the wolves were but a tool for the fey. And for what? For this.
