Hills. Valleys.
Whatever you prefer to call it, it's all the same crap when you've walked your feet off. At some point, you won't feel the prying of sore callouses beneath your feet.
Incline. Decline.
Incline again.
I started to wonder how that sly fox managed to trick me into doing her dirty work. Why would I be the one helping her kill an undead woman --let alone someone in mourning?
Maybe it was how enigmatic her voice was; or, it was the confidence she carried throughout the conversation. Or, perhaps there was something to her purple prose: the charm in dramatic narration whilst piercing clams and bread.
The further I walked from the tavern, the more Chrisanta's buttery voice nagged at my head.
"Put an end to this madness."
Incline. Decline.
"I'll take care of your wagon. Don't worry, I'm not stealing anything. Blue rocks aren't my thing, anyway."
Incline. Decline.
"How you do it is up to you..."
Incline.
"Just make sure the bitch is dead."
Incline.
—————————
The view from the top of the hill was... underwhelming.
It was hardly a vantage point. I could barely make out the landscape of the windmill. At night, it seemed a bit smaller than its original tall, towering composition. Perhaps it looked humbler without a large shadow to cast.
Not so scary.
However, being the new errand boy to a snake-eyed priestess, I was prepared for what would come.
Or, at least I should have.
Even if I had the general mappings of the landscape and all the preplanning advantages afforded to one by a priestess of the Water Goddess, it's impossible not to be scared.
No one is unafraid of sneaking.
Anyone who doesn't feel the beads of sweat that form on one's palms, or the thumping of one's violent heart, isn't human.
Yet again, maybe that's what it takes to hide in the shadows with your life on the line: the insanity of being inhuman.
Just beyond the rolling hills, one could make out the subtle glint of the plate and chain mail twinkling in the lunar light. There were guards and soldiers. But, from afar, they were just glimmering stars in a sea of hills.
Well, really, they seemed to be a scatter of them. It didn't really even seem to be a formation or garrison of any kind. In fact, upon closer inspection, they seemed to be just peppered about arbitrarily.
"What could they be thinking?" I thought.
I trod the fields of tall grass, inching nearer —careful not to let my head peek out too high.
The distance was actually shorter than I thought. But, by the time I reached ground level with the windmill just a short distance away, I realized something.
Upon closer inspection, I was wrong. I was very wrong.
Incline. Decline. Incline again.
—————————
Those were not guards. Those were not knights.
They were… something.
What would have been an uncoordinated phalanx of leather, chain, spears, plates, and other *clickity* *clanks* became looming suits of armor.
Well, to call them suits would have been a horrible misrepresentation.
The bodies of carved armor resembled more towers than suits meant for human wear. They stood 7-8 feet tall and had a thickness to them that neither ballista bolts nor arcane fire artillery could reasonably scratch.
But, what's weirder about them was this: no one was wearing them.
In fact, there was nothing inside the towers of metal. The suits appeared to just… levitate, just slightly off the ground as they paced across the land, leaving trails of dirt and small smoke their way.
There are a plethora of ways I could describe fear. There's disgust: the thought of long, crawling insects with their many wire-like fingers. There's alarm: the jump we get when the fabric of order has been torn, and everything we knew is not what we thought it to be.
Then, there's dread: the feeling that something, some "thing", is going to happen, or come, or appear, or manifest, or… anything. Any "thing."
But, not the thing. Rather, the feeling before it happens.
That is dread. And, I was dreading. Dreading the thought that those inhuman, otherworldly "things" would turn their helmets in one, loud, cacophonous *creeEEAAAK*.
It's that fear that gives me strength. It's that dread that gives me focus; focus to move past the grass, to stay close to the walls, to follow that emerald-eyed priestess and her wicked words by every instruction, every word, syllable, phoneme, and touch of her tongue as it reaches the top of her palette and falls gently down her mouth with the tip reaching resting on her front two teeth to sound out the final word…
"Kill."
And, there it was. Standing before me. The looming construction of the windmill with its two mahogany doors standing guard.
I reached my hand toward the handle, grasped the iron grip, and pushed.
*creeEEEAAAK*
—————————
To my surprise, my opening the door didn't alarm the ghostly suits of levitating armor. They seemed almost complacent to the noise.
"What if I didn't even need to sneak around at all?" I thought. "What if all that stress was for nothing?"
It was pointless ruminating over details of the past.
What was important was whatever that sly green-eyed priestess was leading me to. I couldn't really even remember it. What was it? Trapdoor? A key? Some room for a Mr. Rutherford or what's-his-name?
Wasn't one of them bald…?
"uuuuuuUUUUOOOOOOAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH"
Like the sound of groaning, slow thunder: a guttural roar creaked from the outside.
It was not human. Hardly. It was something. Something? It's hard to even call it that.
"UUOOAAAGGGHHHHH"
Then, I felt it.
It was a feeling I didn't think I'd ever feel again.
Fear. No, dread.
The dread that creeps up one's toes and reaches the veins crawling up my thighs, invading my lower body, pulsating into my chest.
Was I scared?
I think so.
*CRUNCH* *CRUNCH*
*SCRATTTTCCCHHHH*
There was no doubting it.
It was those "things" from the outside. They were scratching their hollow, floating gauntlets across the wooden doors and leaving flying splinters in their wake.
Should I have hid? Where would I have gone?
What was I even doing?
Mr. Rutherford? A baldie? Keys?!
Some vampire?!
*SCREEEEEECH* *crunch* *crunch*
The next 5 seconds --5, was it 5? It's hard to say at this point...-- blurred into a flurry of things. Things? Yeah, yeah. Things. That's the best way to describe it: a flurry of things, from the groaning wood beneath my feet almost giving in to the bolted doors behind me really giving in to the scraping of hollowed-out suits of armor; from a shade of brass manifesting from the corner of my eye --the key? yes, the key... yes, yes!-- to it narrowly bouncing off the tip of my fingers and dropping to the floor; from the groans of empty suits of armor, seemingly defying all sense of physical manifestation, to the thoughts of some emerald-eyed priestess and her wicked tongue's instruction, every word, every syllable, every phoneme running through my ears like ice.
A trapdoor. Wait... a trapdoor? Yes, there it is!
*CLANK* *CLANK*
No time to think.
I slide down the trapdoor, pulling it closed behind me. Resisting the push of the screaming... thing, I pulled the door closed with all my might --my fingers turning purple with the metal handle digging through the insides of my hands. Every bang against the trapdoor felt like the hinges would give in. Luckily, I managed to slip the key through the keyhole and lock it shut for good.
Then, the noise stopped.
Just like that, with just the turn of the lock, the banging, screaming, and clanking chasing me ceased. All that was left was to look past it and run far, far away from the trapdoor, where I'd find what was awaiting me.