In the Panther's Wake

Chapter 30

My dreams are full of screams and dark shapes. I walk a black desert, all alone, and I can't find Markus anywhere as I call his name, eluding shadows; searching and never finding what I'm after.

I wake up with a jolt, covered in sweat, and the church is dark, but lit with a delicate silvery glow. It's the moon. I slowly stand up and move towards the window, spotting the white sliver sitting high in the sky, clear for my eyes, for the first time in what feels like forever. I watch for a while, until I hear Markus scuffling restlessly, his arms gently flailing.

I return to his side and gently shake him awake, ending his nightmares. He blinks wearily, and I help him sit up.

"How's your ankle?"

"It hurts."

I gaze at him hopefully, searching for a sign of improvement. But his eyes are still yellow, ill, sad.

"I'm sorry, about before. I don't know what happened. I lost it for a second," he says.

"It's alright. I think after everything, we're both allowed to lose it once in a while."

He chuckles but it turns into heavy coughing. I tap his back until he goes quiet.

"I couldn't find a key," I tell him.

He coughs again, clearing his raspy throat. "That's because I have it."

I jerk my head up, fixing on his eyes. He smiles slightly.

"What? How?"

"I picked it up while you were climbing down, along with this letter. Both were inside his robes."

Markus pulls a ring of keys from his pocket; the iron jangles as it hits the dirt. Then he pulls out a piece of paper and unfolds it.

"I haven't read it yet. Where's the satchel?"

I grab the satchel from beside the handless body and toss it to Markus. He pulls out a flare. "We won't need this out there."

I nod and Markus ignites the flare, illuminating the letter in a fiery glow, revealing black letters scratched onto the page.

It reads:

'Lord have mercy on us all, in these, the final days. The black army marches over everything, skies torn with the darkest of metal, the thickest of smog, whilst fire carves away the living, ripping all that is good and green from our world.

'This, our last sanctuary, I protected till the very end, which is nigh, creeping around the desert's edge. Even here I could not escape the inevitable end, and for long I waited. They came in the night, the first travellers in a long time. But they were not from the vast army of masked soldiers—they were others, a sign from you, a message?

'What choice did I have? What else could I have done, my Lord? For you, it seems, are long gone. This waste at our feet is the end, brought on by your own creation, and as souls bleed into the earth, they bleed on empty ears. Horrors I have seen have revealed the truth – you left us long ago.

'Tell me it is not so. Send me a sign of might, or of beauty? Perhaps I have waited long enough now, perhaps I am writing to only myself, perhaps my words will heed no answer, no true purpose, other than to declare my own end.

'The travellers are an offering to the dark army. They cannot escape, cannot leave. And they tried to, so many times. Hurt them—I had to. For without them, surely I would be hacked down in passing, like everything else. Now it is too late, and I cry out for mercy. The evil is too vast, too powerful, and it has taken me with it.