Arc 3: Chapter 12: Thaw
Spring came to Urn like the ending of a long, strange dream.
I felt it in the stilling of the bitter winds off the heights. I smelled it in the air, in the ghost-scent of budding leaves to come. I heard it in the murmuring dreams of the trees.
There are times it’s not so bad, being an Alder Knight. The Sidhe gave me the power to hear the land, and it can be a blessing.
Urn is colder in the south, and warmer in the north. Traveling north felt like chasing the spring, and indeed the fields grew greener as we went, the crawling carpets of snow thinner. The north is also more populated, and soon enough the villages and walled townships became more plentiful, the sight of high white castles reaching for the bowl of the sky the norm rather than a rarity.
We skirted along the edges of the Bannerlands, keeping to the tall hills along its eastern edges so the fertile fields and crystalline lakes of that country spread out below like a rich tapestry. Then, taking the Pilgrim’s Road straight north, we made way for the coastlands.
We were three weeks from Oria’s Fane when I caught the scent of the sea on the wind, and felt the sharp anticipation of an approaching storm.
That spring brought violent storms.
***
The nightmare slipped from behind a tree. Standing ten feet tall, it looked hardly real — its flesh was a hazy gray, like a frozen blur, its spindly arms hanging almost to the ground. It had too many fingers, a swollen belly like a starved man, and flesh that hugged tight to gnarled bones. When it blinked down at me, it did so with mournful white eyes veiled by stringy gray hair, set in a bald, shriveled head too small for the rest of it.
Emma went for her sword, but I stopped her with a gesture. My eyes remained on the emaciated thing. It had moved onto the path to block our passage across an ancient bridge of moss-covered stone. The scent of mildew and feces hung heavy in the air.
The creature let out a rasping moan, staring down at us with a sullen blankness.