Memoirs 505 - Masked stranger (Patreon)

(Ended up delaying chapter a bit because I felt it needed a couple of rewrites)

Evelyne turned on the spot, her boots scuffing through the sand as her thoughts raced.

The how and why pushed immediately to the front of her mind, but she cut that line of thought short and forced herself to focus. Autumnwell and the attack on Dawnlight Palace had taught her at least that much. When something went wrong, the first priority was figuring out what might keep you alive.

She needed to suppress the shock.

And the fear.

The dry air scraped at her throat as Evelyne drew in a slow, deep breath, trying not to let the frantic beat of her pulse dictate what she did next. First, she needed to determine where she was and how much danger she was in. After that, she could worry about finding a way back.

A strange, wheezing shriek carried past her on the wind.

Evelyne narrowed her eyes at the dunes spreading out before her and went through the places she knew that might fit.

The Wandering Realm was known to whisk mortals away from time to time, and there were plenty of stories about people finding themselves stranded in deserts and wastelands that seemed to stretch on forever. Considering Scarlett had only just encountered something connected to the Wandering Realm herself, it wasn’t impossible that Evelyne had somehow been caught up in something similar.

Desolace was also sometimes described as being largely covered in desert, but the Blaze of Endless Ruin was home to countless demons and supposedly not somewhere an ordinary mortal could even breathe without suffering for it.

In the material world, Baajirr was said to contain the largest desert known to man, and some stories tied parts of it to the Wandering Realm. Evelyne had also heard of the Charmed Flats in the Luicean Torrential Belt, which was an island of dust surrounded by sea where strange voices were said to travel on the wind.

But the possibility that worried her most was the one she had grown up hearing horror stories about. The place the empire had guarded itself against for generations, and which somehow had ties to Scarlett that Evelyne only partly understood.

The Unresting Steppes.

If that was where she had ended up, then exposure and the lack of any civilisation were the least of her problems.

Another screech echoed from somewhere far away.

The rush of blood in Evelyne’s ears grew louder despite her attempts to stay calm. She turned, trying to pinpoint the sound, but there was nothing around her except the same dull sweep of sand baking beneath the merciless sun.

Then the ground trembled.

A sheet of sand slid down the face of a nearby dune, spilling almost to Evelyne’s feet. Something tightened in the air around her, and a prickling pressure crawled across her skin.

A second of silence passed.

The entire dune split apart.

Something enormous burst through the ridge. Sand exploded into the air, obscuring most of the creature, but Evelyne still saw enough. A huge maw opened through the falling curtain of grit, rows of jagged teeth filling her vision as it surged straight towards her.

For one instant, her mind stopped.

She thought she saw her own grave. Father stood before it. Mother beside him. And Scarlett, watching with that same unfeeling expression Evelyne had spent so many years trying and failing to understand.

There were so many things she had never said to any of them. So much time wasted circling old memories, nursing old hurts, waiting for some better moment that might never come.

Evelyne’s hands moved.

She reached for her mana and tried to force it through channels that still felt sluggish. The maw rushed closer. Her body wasn’t moving fast enough. The spell wasn’t even halfway formed.

Emberheart Conv—

The jaws snapped shut around her.

The sun vanished.

Evelyne squeezed her eyes closed, bracing for pain.

Instead, there came a wet, brutal crunch.

Something shrieked.

The sound was so high and ragged that for an instant it reminded Evelyne of the stories about the Flayed Souls of Torment. Then came another tearing crack, followed by several heavy impacts against the sand around her.

The thick, metallic smell of blood flooded the air.

But there was no pain.

Slowly, Evelyne opened one eye.

The maw was gone. Sunlight beat down on her once more, and the sand around her had settled. What remained of the creature was dispersed across it.

Although, calling those things remains almost felt too generous. Great slabs of flesh lay torn apart across the dune, some still twitching, others slit open to reveal ropes of viscera and shattered lengths of bone jutting through ruined meat. Dark blood soaked into the sand in spreading patches while a strange black smoke rolled over everything in dense, grain-like clouds, clinging to the carcass as if it were eating through it.

Parts of the creature looked crushed. Others looked spliced apart so cleanly that she could see the different striations of muscle and glistening tissue before the black haze swallowed them. One section of jaw lay several metres away, still lined with teeth, while something that might have been an eye had burst against the sand only a couple of steps away.

But somehow, all of it had missed her.

Evelyne recoiled, one hand flying to her mouth as her breakfast threatened to come back up. She turned away, fighting the spasms in her stomach.

When she cautiously looked back, the black smoke was gone. Right before her eyes, what remained of the creature started to disappear. Muscle slowly shrivelled and sank into the sand. The ruined eye collapsed in on itself. Strings of intestine darkened, dissolved, and vanished until all that was left was a loose scattering of broken and severed bones.

Evelyne barely had time to process what she was seeing before a figure entered her view.

Someone had appeared atop the nearest dune.

Their frame was wrapped in tattered, sand-coloured robes that fluttered in the wind. Straps and belts crossed their chest, hung with chains and small metal ornaments. A ragged hood hid their face, but beneath it was a black cloth that had been marked with the rough shape of a serrated mouth and narrow eyes that burned with a deep, chrome light.

The figure descended the dune towards Evelyne and stopped only a few steps away.

Their attention settled on her, and the eyes shifted across the fabric.

“Girl,” they said. “What is your name?”

It sounded like a man, but his voice was deep, gravelly, and almost unnaturally resonant. A faint crackle ran through it, along with a hollow, almost doubled quality, as if there was another voice speaking just beneath his own.

The hairs on Evelyne’s neck rose.

She stared at him, taking in the eerie mask, the frayed robes, and all the strange objects hanging from them.

A masked mage with an oppressive presence and an unnatural voice, appearing in the Unresting Steppes…

Was he a member of the Undead Council?

If so, was Evelyne any safer now than she had been at the brink of that monster’s maw?

“Speak,” the figure said.

Something in the command jolted Evelyne’s mind back into focus.

If she wanted any chance of surviving this, she couldn’t afford to freeze up again.

“My name is Evelyne,” she replied. “Evelyne Hartford.”

For a brief moment, she had considered giving him a false name. But if this man was as powerful as she feared, lying to him might be more dangerous than whatever the truth could reveal.

“Hartford…?”

The marks across the fabric covering his face changed slightly again, the shape of the mouth falling into a thin line.

Had she made a mistake?

The Hartford name didn’t have many enemies throughout the empire, but Scarlett had a talent for drawing the attention of people and groups Evelyne had never even heard of. If this man really was part of the Undead Council, it was entirely possible Scarlett had crossed him before.

Evelyne readied herself to cast if she had to.

The man moved.

Her body stiffened.

But he only gave a small shake of his head.

“How far your kin has fallen.”

Evelyne blinked.

Somehow, she got the distinct impression that the words hadn’t really been meant for her.

“What do you…?”

“How did you come to be here?” the man asked, cutting her off.

Evelyne closed her mouth, then opened it again. “I don’t know.”

“Do not try to deceive me, child. I will know.”

Her heart beat harder. “I-I really don’t.”

He studied her. The glowing eyes narrowed into thin, lucent slits. Evelyne’s breath caught as it felt like his attention passed straight through her skin and bones to what lay beneath it all.

Finally, the pressure vanished, and the eyes returned to their original shape.

“You are fortunate that I was the first to find you,” he said. “Had it been someone else, death would have been among the kinder endings available.”

The man raised one dark-gloved hand and made a small, almost careless motion between them. It was deceptively casual, yet the world suddenly changed around them. Dunes still surrounded them, but now they stood near the top of a tall ridge, with no trace of the creature that had attacked her anywhere in sight.

The sudden displacement caught Evelyne so completely off guard that she nearly stumbled. She had only ever travelled through Kilnstones before. This was the first time she had experienced spatial transportation through a spell, and she hadn’t even felt the man’s mana move.

While she tried to regain her balance, he simply turned and started climbing towards the crest, showing no concern for whether she followed.

Evelyne stared at his back.

Was that…it?

She looked around again, but there wasn’t a single landmark visible in any direction. She had hoped the Everdust Barrier might be somewhere on the horizon, but without it, she had no way of knowing how far she was from safety. All she had was a vague sense of direction based on the sun.

Her attention returned to the faceless man. His robes tossed in the wind as he reached the crest and kept walking, still without so much as glancing back.

Evelyne bit her lip.

After another moment’s hesitation, she pushed her apprehensions aside and followed.

“You were the one who saved me, weren’t you?” she asked as she struggled up the ridge, sand slipping beneath her shoes and making every step awkward.

She was wearing footwear meant for carpeted mansion hallways, not trudging across sun-baked dunes.

“I was,” the man replied.

“Thank you.”

“I have no need for your thanks.”

“Then why did you save me?”

“Because I thought you might be of use to me. You are not.”

Evelyne frowned as she tried to make sense of that. Was there something about her not understanding how she had ended up here that made her useless to him? If so, what had he expected her to know? And if she had known it, what exactly would he have done?

She slowed once she caught up, keeping a few steps behind him while trying to ignore the added weight in her shoes and the unpleasant feeling of warm sand grinding against her woollen stockings and the skin beneath.

A tense silence settled between them, but Evelyne had no desire to break it.

She was already reconsidering her decision to follow him. Perhaps it would have been smarter to simply head west and walk for as long as her body could carry her. But how long would that be? What were the odds of reaching the Barrier in time, or finding any other form of safety? The Unresting Steppes were infamous for claiming the lives of countless people foolish enough to venture into them, even when prepared.

At least this man had already proven himself more than capable of defending himself. More importantly, he seemed to care very little about Evelyne one way or the other. Undead mage or not, indifference was much better than hostility.

They continued walking until they reached the bottom of the dune, where a narrow trough wound between several taller ridges. The robed man followed it without hesitation.

Evelyne had argued with herself about what she was doing at least half a dozen times by then—this time wondering what she even hoped to accomplish or find by trailing behind—when he finally broke the silence.

“You will find nothing by following me.”

Evelyne’s eyes widened slightly.

He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, could he?

“My apathy towards you doesn’t mean I cannot spare an iota of strength and leave you as I left that Gravewurm,” he continued.

Evelyne swallowed. It seemed unlikely, but she couldn’t entirely dismiss the possibility that he could somehow read her thoughts. Scarlett had warned her more than once about someone in the Hallowed Cabal who possessed an ability much like that.

“Youth is to intellect what floodwater is to a riverbed,” the man said. “For all its turbulence, it remains remarkably obedient to the shape of the land. Place it between certain death and the faintest prospect of refuge, and its course is all but inevitable. Your actions do not surprise me, child. They never could.”

Evelyne stopped walking.

What was he trying to tell her?

For one final time, she contemplated what her best option actually was. In the end, she reached the same conclusion as before. There wasn’t truly much of a choice.

“I have no other way home,” she said, starting after him again.

“Astute observation.”

“Do you know anything about what brought me here?”

He did seem to have come looking for her specifically.

“I know what brought you here. But since you do not know the why, you are not what I need, and I have no reason to share it with you.”

Evelyne was silent for a few seconds. “Is there a way back for me?”

“Dozens,” he said. “None that your meagre abilities can bring about.”

She had no response to that.

They walked for several more minutes before the man abruptly stopped. His head turned slightly to the left, and without explanation, he began climbing the nearest dune. Evelyne followed him to the top and peered out across the landscape, trying to spot whatever had caught his attention.

There was nothing there. Just more desert.

Then he turned to face her.

“Girl. You are of little use to me, but that doesn’t mean you would be equally useless to those who oppose me. I have no intention of leaving you to wander these steppes until you inevitably find yourself at their mercy.”

Evelyne’s throat tightened.

“However,” he added, “I will permit you a choice. I can extinguish your existence here and now, sparing you the indignities that might otherwise await you. Or you may take your chances. If you choose the latter, then fight for what little life remains to you. Earn your survival.”

Evelyne met his gaze.

The light burning within the fabric of his mask bore into her. There was no malice in his words, nor any hint that he was trying to intimidate her. He had presented the options with such matter-of-fact indifference that she couldn’t help but feel that he genuinely considered them equally reasonable.

For a moment, she struggled to find her voice.

“I...” She swallowed. “I want to live.”

The man regarded her in silence.

“Then you would do well to cast off the shackles that bind you.”

“Shackles…? What do you mean—?”

Evelyne stilled.

She was standing in front of a member of the Undead Council. When he said shackles, did he mean…?

Her body reacted before she had properly thought it through. Mana surged through her tense channels as she raised both hands, preparing a spell even though she knew it would be largely futile.

The man made no move against her.

Instead, he raised one gloved hand.

An intricate construct appeared above his palm. It consisted of a dozen intersecting rings of argent light revolving around a lightless centre, each one crowded with minuscule inscriptions that shifted and rearranged themselves as the rings turned. At irregular intervals, every ring aligned perfectly, and the darkness at the centre seemed to iris open, revealing a pinprick of golden radiance trapped deep within before the rings moved apart and concealed it again.

The man lowered his hand, but the construct remained suspended in the air between them.

“Let’s consider this a debt repaid,” he said. “Not one I am under any obligation to honour, but I’ll do so regardless. Simply don’t mistake this for some misguided display of sentimentality. There are few things I find more offensive than talent left to languish — to see the possibilities of a capable mind strangled by an ignorance not of its own making, and an ambition never allowed to kindle.”

Evelyne looked from him to the revolving construct, then stepped closer and studied it more carefully. She had no notion of what it was supposed to be, much less what its function was. The inscriptions covering its rings weren’t Zuverian glyphs or any other script she recognised from the older magical devices she had seen, but the thing gave her the same impression as some of Scarlett’s artifacts.

It was powerful.

“What is it?”

“That is for you to learn.”

The man left the construct hanging where it was and started down the slope ahead of them. Evelyne remained at the crest for several seconds, hesitating.

Finally, she reached towards it. As her hand drew close, the rings slowed. The inscriptions dimmed one after another until the instant her fingertips touched the outermost ring, when all of them stopped at once. Their argent glow vanished, and the construct collapsed in on itself, the rings condensing around the dark core into thin bands of dull metal.

It dropped into the sand with a soft clink.

Evelyne crouched and carefully picked it up. Nothing happened. Even when she held it flat in her palm as the man had, the rings remained lifeless and still, showing no sign that they had ever been anything more than metal.

Her brow furrowed.

Eventually, she cradled the unfamiliar object between both hands and hurried after him.

“Who are you?” she asked.

His words weren’t kind, but he didn’t quite match the monsters Evelyne had imagined whenever she heard stories about the Undead Council. Was he even truly one of them? Perhaps he was some other mage who had made these dunes his home.

“You know me,” the man answered simply as she caught up.

“I don’t,” Evelyne said. “I-I understand if you don’t wish to tell me, though. You don’t have to—”

“You know me.” His voice cut across hers with an intensity that made Evelyne flinch. “Even if you are not aware of it, you know who I am.”

She…knew him?

He said it with such certainty that Evelyne found herself searching her memory despite knowing there wasn’t anything there. He hadn’t known her earlier, so they clearly had never met. Unless he meant something else. That she knew of him.

Someone famous enough that the distinction barely mattered.

Evelyne stopped fully.

A chill passed through her as she remembered what Scarlett had told her about the members of the Undead Council. About their leader, and the name that had carried more weight through the history of imperial magic than perhaps any other.

She stared at the man.

Was this Ustrum?