Elegy for a Star

The only source of guidance through the blizzard was a red light in the distance.

Gwen tried to shield herself from the cold with her cloak, but the wind was stabbing through her like knives. She couldn’t even hear the slow crunch of her boots through the snow with the rush of air deafening her. As long as she could see that light though, she would be fine.

Or so Gwen told herself. In truth, her movements were growing more and more sluggish, her feet were aching, and she couldn’t feel her fingers all that well. She was close, though. Close enough to take another step forward. Then another.

The young swordswoman had been traveling for weeks from Dewhurst to Mournstead, and she still had days left to go. It was just Gwen’s luck that something like this would intervene. She was lucky, however, to have been close enough to some sort of civilization so that she at least had a chance. That wasn’t often found on the road, in between Flames. Normally something like this would be a sentence, and she knew that many around the world were having a worse time than she was having right now. All she had to do now was persevere, just as she’d learned in the temple, and she would be through. Aros protect me, she prayed.

The crimson light turned out to be just what she needed: refuge. A stone hovel, a single window with its shutters torn away. It took Gwen a moment to figure out where the light was coming from. It seemed that the entire room was glowing. As she neared the eroded stones and the snowdrift at the doorway, she spotted the source of the glow. A trapdoor—its rug covering shifted aside by the wind—filled the room with shafts of red rays and illuminated its surroundings. A pittance of decrepit furniture and a few windswept carvings were all that filled the room.

Gwen approached the light. The red light. Red light was bad. She tried listening beyond it, but the wind was too loud. On the bright side, she felt warmth, and warmth was very good right now. Very, very good. But what was behind it? It was either find out or freeze, and Gwen knew the choice she had to make. Fingertips digging into the groove around the door, she found some purchase and pulled upward. It was a clumsy effort with how numb her fingertips were, but after a few failed attempts, she managed. The moment the door was open wide enough, Gwen slipped through and pulled it shut behind her.

The red light was almost blinding in here. It must’ve been, Gwen had figured, for its ambience to shine so far, and through so much. Though she had escaped the sound of rushing wind, she entered into a loud, droning bass that shook her to her core. Just what was happening? Gwen shrugged off her rucksack and brought a gloved hand down to the hilt of her sword. She quickly realized that she couldn’t feel anything in her hand. There was no way she could hold a blade right now. Instead, she lifted that arm to block the source of the light so that she may more easily glance around its periphery.

The basement that she’d slipped into was a little wider than the hovel above. It smelled musty and fetid. Just what was going on down here? With the brightest of the light blocked by her arm, Gwen could spot a silhouette of a crouched person just ahead. As she approached, it began to fill out as the shadow of a woman upon her knees, arms outstretched in the air.

“What is going on?!” Gwen shouted to her, but there was no response. She rounded the woman, putting the light behind herself, to see the figure’s face. She was a pretty woman with sharp and exotic features. Even bathed in red, she could make out her dark hair, porcelain and unblemished skin, and the full eyebrows, raised in awe. Dark make-up looked as though she’d only just applied it. Gwen waved a hand in front of her face, before dark pool-like eyes sprung open.

A hand shot up—a fist, a claw—from the woman’s lap. Her claw-like fingers were wrapped in shadow and looking for a quick kill. Gwen fell backward just in time to miss the strike, but she felt that rush of air just beyond her chin and lips. She landed on her rump with a thud. She cursed, rolling to the side and up onto her feet. She’d left her heavier mail in the pack. It’d be too cold to wear in this weather, not to mention too heavy for a march. She was only wearing heavy layers of wool and a sheepskin cloak and while that may work for what may amount to scrapes and bruises, but against magic she wouldn’t stand a chance. She’d prefer to not have it on at all. The best defense against magic was to not get hit in the first place.

“What are you doing here?” The woman hissed, getting to her feet. Her hands were like sharp knives; a black haze surrounding them. They weren’t like that before, were they? By now, Gwen’s fingers were aching from the thaw, and she risked drawing her sword. The ring of steel echoed in the small basement. Thankfully, it stayed in her grip, too.

Gwendolyn’s blood was pumping, heart was rushing. She adopted a proper stance for fighting Wyrden—that being a stance that would allow her to be mobile, which was difficult in these tight spaces. Regardless, she retorted, “I could ask you the same thing. What is this?”

“Something far too important for you to interrupt,” the woman replied. It sounded as though she were trying to convince Gwendolyn of this fact, rather than just posturing. Gwen’s eyes narrowed, and she glanced through the glare of the light. The figure was standing in front of the brightest portion, which allowed her a bit more of a view. Beneath the source of the light, there was a ritual glyph. Powders of some kind were arranged upon the ground in very specific ways there, in order to power some great magic. She couldn’t tell which patterns or materials from this distance, which was unfortunate. If she knew anything about the ritual’s preparation and reagents it may have given her a clue as to what it was supposed to do. Whatever it was for, it was in progress, and someone she didn’t particularly like wanted to complete it.

“Who are you?” Gwen asked.

Gwendolyn’s question was answered when she saw the woman’s hand rise toward her. Instinctively, she moved to the side, just as shadowy tendrils jetted toward her. They struck the wall behind her, tearing stone and breaking it into chunks that went crumbling to the ground. Gwendolyn gathered her feet underneath herself and launched toward the figure. She slashed her blade into her, cutting cleanly across, only to find the woman had turned to black mist.

The mist regathered behind her, coalescing back into the figure Gwen thought she had cut. With a backhanded swing, she brought the blade to the woman’s neck, only for it to be caught by the mage’s claw. She struggled with her for a moment, trying to overpower her with both hands, though she couldn’t get the figure to budge. The ritualist simply watched her, serious, perturbed, like she was little more than an annoyance. She realized that frost was forming along her blade, and before she knew it, the steel snapped like a twig, splintering into shards before the Wyrden’s uncanny grasp.

“What are-..” A pushed the air from Gwendolyn’s lungs and compressed her stomach. She was on her back in seconds, her head striking the ground and causing her vision to grow blurry. Pain shot through her head like a vice. Where was her sword? Hadn’t it been in her hand? What happened to her?

Gwendolyn thought for a moment that she was done. That it was over. Her gut churned at the thought that she hadn’t amounted to anything in her short life. That she would die and not even know what she’d been killed for. Wrong place, wrong time. Resentment twisted her lips, and as her opponent took a few steps forward, Gwendolyn turned onto her stomach and began to crawl away. Her head pounded, and were she to try and stand, she would have certainly fallen over.

Fuck this, she thought, Fuck all of this.

“Just where are you trying to go?” The figure chuckled, thumbing over her shoulder, “You’re going the wrong way if you want to leave.” As she closed the distance between her and Gwen, she planted a boot upon the swordwoman’s back. “I never understood why insects skitter and struggle even when their wings have been torn and their legs plucked, but it will never get old to me. Accept your end, warrior. Turn over and let me watch the light fade from your eyes.”

Gwendolyn coughed and swiped her arm out wide. Her palm smeared through the ritual glyph, scattering its powders and dusts across the floor. The design, which commonly required precision to an obsessive point, was ruined. The woman hadn’t even realized where she’d crawled to, and was in shock as she saw her work undone. Spoiled.

“No..” The figure breathed, taking her foot away from Gwendolyn. The red light began to ripple, pop, and started to expand. “What have you done to my work? To the people of this world?” Gwendolyn hoped that it’d been some world-ending ritual that she had interrupted, to make her approaching more meaningful. She somehow doubted it, but still, she hoped. It gave her some small measure of peace.

The light grew and grew, forcing Gwendolyn to bury her face against her arm, eyes squeezed shut. The droning grew to a crescendo before it all just burst with a rush of air. The droning turned to naught but a damaged ringing in her ears. The light faded to a dim blue light of a glowstone. For a moment she wondered if she was just dreaming, or if this were what hypothermia felt like. Maybe she was freezing in a snowdrift right now, imagining all of this. Once again, she doubted it. Gwen rolled onto her back to look at what had happened. She saw the woman she’d been fighting, mouth agape, eyes wide. Whatever she was feeling, this was catastrophic to her. Gwen followed her eyes to where the light had been, but at floor level, she only saw a pair of bare feet.

As she lifted her head, she saw a naked woman in the center of the room, standing just above her, looking just as surprised as anyone else.