Avengard: The Fall of Senvia

Chapter 16 - The Dark

There's a funny thing about breathing in the dark.

It's the only thing you have to focus on. There might be sounds and smells and the cold wood pressed against your cheek, but your breathing is louder all the same, slamming against your ears like a panicked drum.

When you breathe in the dark, you're little more than a wild animal, running for its life from the thing three times its size that somehow manages to be just as quiet.

In the dark, you have no eyes. Only your breath.

In the dark, nothing can move. Until something does.

My breath lapped against the wood, washing back at me like the crests of a wave dancing against the shore. Had I been one to require spectacles, they would have fogged up instantly. It wouldn't have made any difference. Little did. I could hear my breath, and my heart pounding, but the more I focused and enhanced my hearing, the less effective it was. I knew Eskir and Jenny were there with me. My leg lay on Jenny's hair, and Eskir's thumb was pressed into my spine, for what I could only assume was his own reassurance that I hadn't vanished for good.

It hurt.

But that's the other thing the dark tends to do. Everything hurts so much more. You stub your toe, you're going to feel it. Even this, Eskir's thumb, wasn't something that caught me off guard. It was persistent. But still, it hurt more than it would have in the daylight.

But it wasn't the pain of his thumb that let me hear my own heart pounding in my chest, even without any augmented senses. That was steady beat of charging feet, a prelude to the all-out clash of swords that would follow it. A full brawl that would definitely, absolutely kill Eskir and Jenny if they stuck their heads out, and would most likely leave me a broken, battered body. If I was lucky.

This spell, this darkness, granted the ones marked by it their vision. Otherwise, everyone else was drowned in it, left to carry torches and hope that a few steps of light would be enough to save them.

It wouldn't be.

I didn't know which side cast the spell. Durn or Merity Point. Either way, it was almost certainly Hunak. It meant occlude in Astivian, one of the languages, one of the original peoples, of Durn. But the Durnians frowned on it, old taboos and ridiculous superstitions. Hunak was a primal spell with many variations, but it excelled at the dark.

When their blades met, it was not metal on metal, but metal on bone and flesh. Spears carved through the cracks in armour, nearly unimpeded by the need to aim for the gaps. Their opponents could barely even see them, let alone defend themselves.

Still though, to come in with such speed, carving their way through the army... That was when the realisation came to me. They were Kindred. Nearly all of them, far more than Durn would muster for a single attack. These were from Merity Point, a fairly young province carved from the hills that once belonged to Durn, and so rich with gold, it could likely have hired out all of Eaden Helm.

Hunak was not to give them any manner of tactical advantage. It was to blind them. Rob them of their safety. Make them feel fear, to leave an impression in the memories of any survivors.

The battle didn't land directly on top of us, or we would have died with no way out. That part was nothing short of a miracle, as we'd stopped directly on the path. Instead, they crashed into each other in the forest, by my best guess a fair distance away, but the pressing force of Hunak drained my hearing too much to tell.

I felt Jenny's hand reach up to my leg, then feel its way upwards, trying to find the shape of my body and crawl her way up.

"Jenny?" I whispered, still wanting to verify it was her, even though her movement required my leg to lift up and free her trapped hair.