To Feel Fear

Dancing With Death: Part Seven of Ten

Dancing With Death is the sixth in the Tales of The Lesser Evil and this is the seventh chapter.

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This is a fantasy series—not quite grimdark, but dark nevertheless—with complicated and believable characters doing their best to survive in a world simply indifferent to their existence.

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To Feel Fear

Later, Flin could not explain why she had accompanied the boy, Peither, and Mart. She knew her natural curiosity, her urge to seek material for true stories, was a part of it. Another part she blamed on the mushrooms and how they had reacted with the beer.

As she followed the pair, she felt trapped inside someone else's body, watching events from behind a mask not her own, noting details and filing them away dispassionately. She was lucky she could run fast; the others took off so quickly she barely had time to see which corridor they ran along.

She chased them down a level, taking steps two at a time, then through a door painted with red and white stripes. The next corridor had similarly striped doors, but each with an added stylised animal. The one after with intricate images of trees in winter. Finally, they went down again, far down, the steps wide and deep and dim.

Flin sensed her own terror, just below the surface, and found she could somehow easily push it to one-side, bury it. She felt strange, somehow strong and resilient, as a tall tree bending to a storm, her will powerful and her body the same. She shook her head, but the sensation did not diminish. To feel fear, to know it was there but not in control, that was a new sensation.

The next tunnel was long and rough, with no doors to be seen, only gaps where other corridors joined it and unlit chambers echoed with their pounding footsteps.

Flin almost collided with Peither, he had stopped so suddenly. Then she spun around, sure she had heard someone approaching from behind, but the sparse lantern light showed an empty corridor, motes of dust hanging in the wake of their passage.

‘Where now, Peither? Where?’ Mart asked, pulling out the pair of knives he had mentioned. They were clearly well made, balanced to throw with a lightly curving double edge. Flin hoped they were enough.

‘The tunnel, it crosses this one, just ahead, there... Dinavi and Long Rik sent me to find you, they…’

His terror was palpable, and he could not finish what he was saying, instead turning and fleeing back the way they had come. Flin’s curiously detached mind noted that this seemed very wise. Her gaze followed him.

‘You did not have to come, Flin. You can go, if you wish?’

She waved her hand from side to side and shook her head.

‘No, I want to see.’

‘Then stay behind me, and run if anything goes wrong, tell the staff what happens.’ He did not seem to have any outward fear, checking the edges on the knifes and walking to the tunnel Peither had pointed out.

Flin followed at a short distance, surprised to realise her own small knife was in her hand. She had not remembered drawing it and knew it would be of little use. The green stone amulet she wore was warm and she raised a hand to it, but was unable to trap the thought it triggered before her attention was pulled to the horror in front of her.

The next corridor was a mess. In the poor light of the lanterns, the black of the rocks shone and it did not take Flin long to realise the gleam was fresh blood.

A man was propped against the wall, face drawn and haggard, looking old and somehow hollow, his clothes were heavily stained with blood and his face smeared with it.

‘Dinavi, where is Long Rik? Where is it? The monster! What happened?’

The man pointed through an opening a short distance away, but said nothing, his breathing ragged. His eyes were wild and white, terror in control of twitching limbs, chest rising and falling too fast.

Mart asked no further questions and immediately walked forward—the man was clearly brave, or perhaps simply foolish. In Flin’s experience, bravery was a questionable pastime.

The chamber they entered was brighter and tall, a set of stairs ascending in a spiral at the centre, light entering from somewhere above. Then Flin noticed two things.

Firstly, a man hung in the air, barely visible through a swirling cloud of blood. He was still moving weakly, arms and legs jerking as though he was trying to run in midair. His head was limp.

The second thing she noticed was the figure on the stair.

It looked human, or at least human-shaped. It was clothed in rags and dirt and blood, hair lank and long and fingernails closer to talons. It had bare feet and its eyes were closed, head tilted back and a smile on its face, as though experiencing something wonderful.

Mart threw his knife, then the other, arms whipped back and forward, very, very fast. Both found their target, the first slashing across the creature’s neck, opening a wide cut, the other burying itself deep in its chest with a solid yet somehow hollow sound, echoing across the chamber. The first knife crashed to the ground and was closely followed by the drained body of the man Flin assumed had been Long Rik.

The blood hung in the air still.

It opened its eyes and looked at them, blinking as though awakened from a deep slumber. It staggered back a step, then reached down to touch the knife hilt sticking out of its chest. Slowly, so very slowly, it pulled it out and turned its gaze on Mart. He pulled a short sword from a sheath and, leather coat flapping behind him, ran to the vampire. Then he stopped abruptly, as though he had hit a wall.

And the creature screamed.

It was nothing like a sound any human would make, nothing more than a simple animal noise of pure fury, rage encapsulated in every moment of the rising call. It sank to its knees and the cry ended as its head dropped to its chest.

Flin felt a surge of hope, then realised that Mart was held by an invisible force, unable to move, incapable of escape or attack. She looked more closely at the creature and realised the gash on its neck was knitting back together, that it was somehow healing itself. She had to do something, had to help, but she could not think what. Flin looked at her hand holding the knife and back at the monster, paused, and threw it.

Her aim was true but a hand lashed upward and caught the handle bare fingers from its face. It peeled back lips in a mockery of a smile, hissed and stood.

‘Fuck.’ Flin was rooted to the spot, not by any unseen magic, but by simply having no idea what to do next. She just stood there, waiting, the amulet she wore hot against her chest and her mind remaining detached, the mushrooms still in her system, somehow simultaneously dulling and heightening sensations and emotions all at the same time.

The creature—the vampire—leapt straight up, higher than any normal human could jump, twisting in the air and passing through the static cloud of blood from Long Rik. It landed behind Mart, reached out with one thin, bony arm and threw him across the chamber. Flin watched as he cartwheeled through the air, crashing into the wall and slumping to the ground. She noticed he was still moving, somehow not unconscious, somehow still aware of what was happening. The man was tougher than he looked.

‘Fuck.’ She said again, as the monster walked to her, covered in blood, licking it from its lips and making a strange, mewling sound.

Flin could not tell if it was a man or a woman, the dirt, the blood, the ragged clothing and the changes wrought to its body disguised any hint of gender. She stood still as it came to her, nose picking up its scent of decay, of coppery fluids and ancient graves. Its eyes were clear, with no colour to the irises, just small black pupils staring at Flin, staring at the amulet around her neck. The bony arm reached out again and the hand grasped the tiny green stone hook she had received four years ago, just outside Youlbridge.

It screamed again—a different scream—tearing charred and smoking flesh away, leaping back. Somehow, the stone had burnt its hand and the action broke whatever spell held Flin entranced. She turned to check on Mart and noticed him sitting up, slowly pulling another blade from the small of his back, shaking his head to clear it, then she felt herself lifted off the ground, slowly, one hand span, then another.

Before she had been raised above waist height, she fell and the monster in front of her catapulted away to crash into the stairs, as though it had been fired from a giant bow. Somehow, it stood and staggered away into the darkness, one leg dragging, one arm bent at a strange angle.

Flin looked back at Mart, wondering what he had done, but he was still sitting on the ground, hand holding the knife, ready to throw. Beside him, at the entrance to the chamber, stood a tall woman—a tall woman with tattoos winding up bare arms. The sword she carried on her back was still sheathed, but she held a fist out in front of her, as though she had just punched the monster. Like everyone else, she was dressed for the warmth of the Caverns, wearing little more than a leather vest, partially open at the front, a short kirtle around her waist and soft, knee-high boots on long legs.

‘Flin. I’m going to need you to help me.’

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