Curse Of Blood: Gods & Monsters

Chapter XXVIII - Brenna

The weald that was usually a deep incarnadine by daylight was now steeped in shadows as the moon began to rise. It cast its silvery glow, diffusing the umbrage from the trees, as Brenna trod carefully between the towering boles and thickets. The bowers that had been welcoming by daylight were now well-nigh direful looking in the dusk.

She knew that Renic could not have gotten far, but the fact that no sound played along the breeze only added to her worriment. There should at least have been crickets warbling the livelong night. When she could take the quietude no longer, Brenna called out to him — if only to hear her own voice disperse the silence — yet no answer reached her.

As she moved deeper into the forest the darkness condensed and so did her dread. Something was so very wrong tonight; in this eldritch woodland. She could feel it in the air, the breeze charged with an ominous foretoken. She was just about to turn around, not one to ignore the gift of fear, when a low grunt of pain obtruded the hush and dispelled her anxious weening.

"Renic?" she called uneasily, moving towards the sound despite that he, or it, did not respond; at least, not with words.

The guttural noises of anguish grew ever louder the further along she crept, and as she pushed a narrow branch out of her way she finally caught sight of the owner of those eerie gnars. Renic was stooped over, on all fours, as he wretched violently into the dry leaves on the ground. She knew it was him and not Roth; their auras were as distinct as their personalities. 

And were she not able to discern the wight-like emanation that enveloped all mortals, she would have known him by his raiments, for he always wore blues instead of the greens that his brother preferred. There was just enough light left in the welkin for her to discern that much at least. But not for much longer by the looks of things.

"Renic!" She rushed to him, relief flooding her senses as she instantly dropped to the floor beside him, scattering withered herbage as she pulled his face towards hers.

But upon glimpsing his pain-ravaged countenance she scrambled back in dismay, relinquishing her hold on him almost instantly. He stared sightlessly at her, his pupils impossibly dilated so that there was no color in his eyes but the large, black pits that had so disrupted her composure.

"Are y-you w-well?!" she stammered. "What is wrong w-with your eyes?" They were as black as Helheim itself.

Again, he said nothing. Only stared at her with those great, empty pools as his breathing became stertorous. Renic clutched at the earth and gave another feral moan as he tore at his flesh with blackened, pernicious nails. She could see that his back was mantled with crimson streaks, blood oozing from the wounds as he arched his spine and cried out again. She winced as the sound of his fracturing bones reverberated through the space between them.

Brenna stood up carefully, at a loss with how to proceed. He seemed neither to hear nor recognize her and she wavered between running to the folkstead for help, thereby leaving him unattended to die here as he was obviously doing, or staying to help however she could.

If she left him now he would surely die, for the odd angles of his joints were terrifying to behold — the splintered bone within all but piercing his skin.

Ye gods! How to proceed?! Whatever the causation of his macabre affliction, he was senseless with pain and could not direct her aid to the source. Indeed, he could not talk at all, or so it seemed.

Renic bellowed in agony once again, affrighting her from her indecision and spurring her forward to lay a hand on his lacerated, crooked back.

But when she touched him he snapped suddenly from his throes, growling menacingly and knocking her aback so forcefully that she lay flattened and stunned in the leaves beneath him. Now trapped by his arms the while he loomed over her.