Fang & Bone: “21. Brave Boy”

This is the twenty-first chapter of the Fang & Bone serial; click here to visit the previous installment of Fang of Triseria. Please share your thoughts on the story in the comments, or visit the project hub for more information.

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Garen was alive. Still alive despite everything this fucking town and the surrounding woods threw at him. 

His nimbleness had been his greatest asset, but he would find himself winded, repeatedly, while the unending tide of wandering dead would ceaselessly march on any resting place he would pause at for respite.

Old Gordhurst was a place he barely remembered from his youth, but the central lane from the escape was enough of a landmark to work with. He found himself clambering from ruined home to ruined home, narrowly dodging some hidden ghoul and barely escaping into the spaces between homes. It would have been monotonous if not the most terrifying thing he had experienced since the initial flight from the town years ago.

He pressed further into town, maybe aiming to reach the other side, or find some relative safety in some space that wasn’t already occupied by a shuffling corpse. He wasn’t sure anymore. It’d been at least a day without any food, and his water-skin was little more than some clinging drops and backwashed spittle. At this moment, he found himself at the gate of the old church grounds – it was a house of many gods, and he leaned against the cobblestone frame that made up the gateway of the entrance to the grounds.

He glanced behind him. Several houses away, a crowd of twenty of the undead continued a slow, lurching bead on his position. He coughed as he watched them stumble toward him and swore he tasted iron. He had been pushed for two solid days, or was it three, now? He didn’t know. He took several deep breaths to try to steady his heart and glanced toward the church. He saw and heard nothing within the openings that served as windows and decided to take his chances. It was a sturdy building, and he hoped the door could be opened and shut again.

He also hoped that nothing lurked within the church, either.

He made his way to the door and tried to open it outward, but it jerked suddenly, and the rattling of wood caught him off guard. The door had been barricaded.

He cried and slammed his fist on the heavy wood. He spun around, his back against it, and screamed in frustration. His spear clattered on the cobblestone steps that led to the church.

He gave himself a moment. That’s all he could afford. He collected his spear and approached one of the windows. The church had never been granted glass – it was a relic of an earlier time, and thus it was always open. Garen limped forward and studied the gap in the wall.

He might fit.

Fit or not, the moans from the undead compelled him to try to squeeze through. He leaned his spear against the wall. His head cleared the bottom of the window, and he looked inside. All he saw was darkness streaked with the greenish haze of light that had filled the sky – he had no idea why the sky was green here beyond the influence of the Necromancer.

He knew why, but not the mechanisms of it all; what the dark magic was. Skies were not supposed to be green.

He weighed the options one last time and, with all of his remaining strength, hauled himself through the window, collapsing to the floor. He expended the last of his reserves and climbed up, putting all of his weight on the church’s stone walls, and reached through the window for his spear. He clumsily pulled it through the open window and finally collapsed again, breathing hard through his mouth. His choking and wheezing breaths smothered any other sounds, and he might just as well die here and now – there was nothing he could do at this point. He was done.

He shut his eyes, and the creaking of wood from somewhere within the church forced him to open them again. He tried to get up, or at least roll into a position that could allow him to defend himself, but there was nothing to it. He shut his eyes again.

“You’re alive?” a hoarse voice asked; A man’s voice.

It took so much effort to open his eyes that Garen almost chose to leave them closed. His vision was blurred, and the darkness of the room made details indistinct, challenging to take in. A figure loomed over him, staring down.

“Blink if you’re alive,” the stranger demanded.

“Fuck you” was Garen’s reply as he finally blacked out.

…

Lemmex was quick to drag the boy and his spear away from the wall and toward the cellar hatch near one of the altars. He didn’t know gods anymore, not really, but the beautiful woman sheltered him, her altar next to the cellar. As he lifted the hatch, he took another look at the matron and the lettering on her platform. He couldn’t read. All he saw was a beautiful, nude grey woman with the characteristics of the Florian people – the living plantfolk of the woods and forests. Where there should be hair was delicately carved stone leaves, and her features were smooth in other spots. Where he might normally have expected a nipple, there was nothing, like she wore layers of plant growth, like her body was a flower emerging from the green of a stalk.

He did not know her, but he loved her. 

He kissed her feet, prayed to his unknown lady, and kicked the boy down the cellar hatch. He soon climbed down and shut the hatch off, lifting it again slightly to grab the spear and pull it under.

…

Garen awoke in a room that seemed relatively well-lit and surprisingly warm for what it was – all stone and rotting wood. The room itself was strange and built around the remains of a dead tree.

He adjusted his eyes, staring again. No, not a tree, but made to look like a carved tree. What was this? His head hurt, and he slowly pulled his body up from the floor, putting his weight on his right forearm.

That is when he noticed a small cup and plate on the floor next to him. He grabbed the cup immediately, sniffed it, and, not smelling anything suspicious, he sipped. It was water. He downed the rest of the cup desperately.

He turned his attention to the plate, and it appeared to be strips of some unknown flesh, burned to a crisp. He sniffed it, and it struck a foul note. He was so hungry, though… 

He shook his head and turned his attention back to the room, taking in the surroundings. He about shit himself when he noticed a man sitting in the corner, staring directly at him, his eyes shining in the dark.

“You’re from the town south, yes?” the stranger asked. His voice was brittle and hollow like bird bones.

“Uh, yes.”

“You here to rescue me?”

“I don’t even know who you are.”

“Lemmex.”

“Lemmex?”

“Don’t ask me to spell it. Don’t know how.”

Garen shook his head and sat up straight. His head was killing him, as he’d been sure he’d bumped it. His whole body ached as though he’d taken a fall. He wanted to be home, desperately. Not in this strange space.

Beside the strange, tree-like object built into the stone wall, the room felt like a hovel; a mishmash of scavenged garbage and religious artifacts. There was a small hearth that seemed to feed up into the Helatros hearth that would have normally occupied the church. Ash piled around it, either accumulated from worship long ago in the space above, falling through grates into this cellar, or accumulated from the cooking of Lemmex.

There were also rats, dozens, hanging from their tails across a line of twine stretched across the room. Some had been skinned, and Garen recognized they were going to be food. He glanced back at the plate, and then back to Lemmex.

Garen pointed to the plate. “Rat?”

Lemmex nodded and smiled. Most of his teeth were gone – except those that were rotten or shattered.

Garen pulled the plate toward him and grabbed a small strip. He sniffed it, and it smelled okay. He took some between his teeth, nibbled at it, and, content with the circumstances, ate it. It was gamey and practically burnt to ash itself. He ate everything on the plate.

Lemmex crept closer to the center of the cellar, out of the shadows where he had been hidden. His eyes were wide, yellow, and latticed with stressful red webs.

Garen scanned his immediate area and saw that his spear was not at his side. He glanced around in a daze and saw that the spear had been in the corner where Lemmex had emerged.

Unsure of what to do, Garen held the cleared plate close. He’d seen what a thwap from a plate could do atop someone’s skull from Mr. Goren’s place. It would at least give him a little space to grab something else if it came to that.

“So, did you lot come to rescue me?” Lemmex asked. “I seen your kind here before, but usually the heathens get at you. You all dress the same, so you have to be an army, yes?”

“My kind? Have you seen anyone else recently?”

“Just the dead ones being brought in.”

“Dead ones?”

“Yeah, dressed like you. Must be your friends. They’re dead now.”

“How many?”

“Can’t count. I was just the knife. No need for me to be learnin’ fancy numbers.”

Garen clutched the plate tighter.

“Knife?”

“Oh yeah, me and the boys did the knife work on folks before the town was killed. The road south. Made coin on what people were willing to pay, and made coin if they wasn’t. I was just the knife.”

Garen felt uneasy. The man was clearly a bandit. Had he been hiding here since the night the town fell?

“You live here alone?” Garen asked.

“No, got Stone-Tits upstairs.”

Garen’s head hurt. He felt a sharp pain behind his right eye. “Stone… Tits?”

“Some goddess. Statue of her,” Lemmex pointed above, “ a flower witch. She guards the hatch.”

Garen thought of what goddess Lemmex spoke of, but was not too familiar with the gods himself. He kept the faith in Helatros, but that was about it.

“Aside from ‘Stone-Tits,’ what else can you tell me about her? You said flower witch?”

Lemmex grew agitated and scratched at his cheek, really digging into the matted beard. “The F-florian goddess,” he grumbled, pointing a dirty, thin finger accusingly at Garen, “don’t touch her. She’s mine.”

Garen nodded, “Of course, I wouldn’t touch her. I was just trying to remember her name. I think it was ‘Rootmother.’”

Lemmex stopped scratching at his filthy beard. His eyes grew wide, and he chuckled to himself. He rose from his animalistic crouch and stood up. He did a jig. “Rootmother, eh? Ha ha!”

He stopped dancing and returned to his crouch, looking agitated again. The moment of joy evaporated instantly. “Stone-Tits is better,” he mused darkly.

He flashed a wicked grin at Garen and crept closer.

Garen gulped and nodded. “You’re absolutely right, Stone-Tits is better.”

Lemmex clapped his hands, giggled, and crouch walked toward the lit hearth, away from Garen. Garen released some of the tension in his body, but still held the plate close.

“Hey, Lemmex?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Garen.”

“Good name.”

“Thank you. Can we talk about what is going on here?”

Lemmex sat at the hearth, his body hunched, thin, and his bare back showed scars, including a nasty one near his kidneys. He glanced back over his shoulder.

“I can’t read but I can talk. I like talk.”

Garen rose to his feet and kept the plate behind his back. He stretched a bit. His body was still aching, and his lungs still felt like they were on fire. He took a deep breath and approached Lemmex very slowly. Lemmex turned his head back again, and Garen paused.

“Talk,” Lemmex spat.

“Yes. Can you tell me how you got here?”

…

Lemmex found it hard to remember a lot of things. He thought hard. He took time to put together what he knew. Maybe more would show up when he needed it. He spoke:

“I joined Egg’s band a couple of years before everything went to shit. We were doing good for ourselves. I did the knife work while Eggy did the planning. Smart guy, he was. Real asshole, too. Cracked me a few times, strangled Sylvo to death once on account of him slipping up at a bar. Egg planned to rob a small wagon, and Sylvo squawked and Eghart strangled him – no, snapped his neck – yes, broke his neck like a little chicken. Got rough for a bit and had to lay low. Only ever saw some of the guys try to kick out Eghart after that. We used to call him Egg, you know? They tried to kick him out, and Egg cracked three of them. There was fifteen of us. No, fourteen. Sylvo is dead. Yeah. Egg broke three arms, and then nobody said anything after. Lean times. Mostly knife work and buryin’ folks in the woods. Stripping bodies for what we could. Egg, Eghart, he got us through until all the shit happened. Some magic fucker raised the dead, and our robberies came back to bite us in the asses and we lost more guys. I was a knife guy, so I made it okay. Something wrong with all that. Unnatural, the dead walking, isn’t it? Eghart led us to town, but everyone was leaving in a panic. Then something snapped, Eghart cracked, and he crushed Millin’s skull like it was nothing and drew on us. We tried to fight, but he was an animal and felt nothing. I am good with the knife, and he felt nothing. He tried to stab me, and I ran here. Should have run elsewhere, ha ha. Ran here and found the church. Knifed the priest and locked the door. Heard screaming. Had to get away from Egg, though. Stone-Tits pointed the way to the cellar. Been here since. Got the priest down here, too.”

Lemmex pointed to the remains of the priest in the rightmost corner of the cellar.

“Felt bad about what I did. He keeps me company. Don’t talk much, though.”

…

Garen had originally failed to notice the remains of the priest, having confused them for garbage when he scanned the room. Now he saw the brown custodial robes and the leathery skin stretched tight over skeletal remains – some skin broken at the top of the head where a yellowed skull began to peek out.

All of this was a lot to take in. The mention of Egg alarmed him, of course, but the madman sitting at the fire was the immediate concern.

“Thank you for letting me know, Lemmex.”

Lemmex said nothing and stared into the embers of the hearth.

“I want to thank you for bringing me into your home and giving me some food and water. I am going to leave now. I promise I will send someone back to rescue you. I can’t do it myself. Okay?”

Again, Lemmex said nothing and continued to stare into the hearth.

Garen took a deep breath and edged his way toward the corner where his spear rested, the plate still firmly tucked behind his back.

“Death out there.” 

Lemmex’s low whisper forced Garen to pause. Garen felt sweaty now and cold around the base of his back.

Lemmex rose to his feet, eyes still locked onto the flames. “You won’t come back.”

“Lemmex, I swear, I will. We’ll get you out of here, but I have to leave to do that.”

Garen edged closer to the corner and began to reach out with his fingertips. He was just about there.

His eyes darted back and forth from the corner to Lemmex. Lemmex stood still, and Garen’s fingertips crept ever closer to the spear.

A glint at Lemmex’s hip caught Garen off guard, and before he could quite understand what he had seen, Lemmex had lunged, knife arcing wildly in front of him. He gargled and barked, swinging the blade.

Garen reached out for his spear with his free hand and waved it at Lemmex’s arm as he went in for a thrust right toward Garen’s gut. In the moment Lemmex was caught, he yelped at the redirection of his trajectory. Garen pulled the plate from behind his back and slammed it into Lemmex’s face. The heavy clay shattered into a dozen pieces, and the madman fell to the ground, face-first.

Garen tightened the grip on his spear and stood in front of the ladder, peering above, noticing the hatch. He began to climb and pushed the hatch upward, but it didn’t budge. He fumbled in the dark for the barricade and threw it to the ground, finally lifting the door, climbing back into the darkened church. The eerie green light already told Garen it was late afternoon. Darkness approached.

Garen stepped away from the hatch and observed the statue of the Rootmother. He silently mouthed a “thank you” and found he was still very much winded. Whatever amount of rest he had taken had certainly helped, but it was not enough.

He leaned on his spear, doing his best to catch his breath again. The noise of the hatch, he realized, must have echoed in the stone church, because he heard the barricaded door at the entrance shake. Ghouls had begun throwing themselves at it. Through the glassless windows, he would see ghouls reaching decaying arms into the sanctity of the church.

He spun around, taking in the entire room, and saw a door opposite the entrance, behind the central pulpit. He weaved between the seats and climbed the steps, throwing himself past the pulpit to the other portal. He opened it with little caution to find it was nothing but the chamber of the custodial priest. He grunted and dashed to another chamber door on the opposite side of the pulpit. He threw open the door and found the kitchen. He stepped in, found a door to his left, threw it open, only to find it connected back to the priest’s chamber.

Garen howled in rage.

He shuddered in surprise to hear someone howling back. He stumbled through the priest’s chamber, back into the church proper, and saw Lemmex standing before the entrance. He began to howl again. He smiled, flipped the barricade upward and to the floor, and slit his throat, stumbling into the door as he bled out. His weight fell into the door with such force it popped, creating a crack for long enough for a ghoul to slide an arm through, and soon enough, tattered fingers gripped at the wood, pulling the doors increasingly open against the crush of ghouls pushing toward the church. The very doors once thrown open, outward, to collect the weary, were now a funnel for the damned.

Garen dashed to the cellar at the base of the Rootmother’s visage and threw himself into the hole, looking upon her as he fell.

He landed hard on the cobblestone floor, but wasted no time grabbing the barricade at his feet, climbing the ladder, and locking the hatch. He slid down the ladder and heard clumsy feet walking all over the wood, rattling it terribly.

Garen’s legs gave out, and he slid down the ladder, sitting just below the entrance. He was tired and had to hold himself up using a rung.

He began to cry.

…

It must have been night by now. Garen had drunk more of Lemmex’s water and cooked up some rat. He was surprised to find a wineskin and took a sip.

His first real drink. Hell of a place for it.

He’d tried to drink from one of the cups left by a patron at the inn when he had worked there briefly. Mr. Gorten – no, Uncle Nathan – caught him in the act and slapped the cup out of his hand after barely a sip. To add insult to injury, his uncle had slapped him hard across the ear, which rang until the next morning.

He hadn’t tried that since.

But now, the dead above, in the hovel of a lunatic murderer, he was sure he would be forgiven for drinking something.

He’d fucking earned it.

Above him, there were still sounds, but they’d slowed down and grown less intense. Still, it seemed too dangerous to move back into the church. With little else to do, Garen began to explore the cellar. As near as he had determined, this room was a secret space that was intended for some other faiths. Maybe far older ones than he knew. More private, he supposed. It couldn’t have been storage for the other shrines within. This was a secret place.

There was the stone tree and the smaller hearth. There was also a cracked pillar that held a stone hammer, or most of it – the handle had broken off. There was a tapestry on one wall, hidden behind Lemmex’s filth and scrounging, and covered in grime and dust. Garen could not figure out what it meant to depict.

But two of these hidden shrines stood out to him.

The first appeared to be a carving of a werewolf into ancient wood. The figure appeared to be a woman with a wolf’s head and tail, her body draped in some robe with regalia he did not recognize. He took a swig from the wine skin, taking in the detail.

She looked resplendent yet feral. He considered Triseria to the north. Gordhurst had been close to the border of the kingdom, and as a child, he remembered tales and warnings of the wolves. Triseria had once laid claim to this area, he imagined. Long, long ago.

But the wolf in the carving comforted him in some strange way he could not understand. He continued to gaze at the shrine, nodded to the figure, and poured some wine to the floor. It seemed like the thing to do, like something in his very blood demanded he pay respect in some form.

The other shrine that spoke to him was one he knew was far older than any other here. He saw a stone, largely roughly hewn, but carved from it was the delicate work of a skilled hand, depicting a dragon.

Dragons died centuries ago, as Garen remembered from childhood tales. They gave their souls to Poe, the hero of legend. They’d given their lives to help him to defeat the Void, which ended with a cataclysm that shattered the West. As he understood it, the Void had not fully been defeated. All the dragons were dead. He was here in this godsdamned cellar, staring at some shrine to dead gods and dead heroes.

He sighed and squeezed out the rest of the wine from the flask to the floor. Once empty, he threw it toward the hearth in the back of the room and stood in silence. The silence helped his head hurt a little less. But the silence was broken by something curious – the sound of running water?

He looked around for the source and noticed the wine draining off, behind the dragon shrine. He glanced around the base and followed the flow to the base of the stone wall next to the statue. On a whim, he tapped at the stone and was greeted with a hollow sound. He felt the wall and ran his fingers over the surface, desperate for a seam. He began to search the cellar for something to make a torch. He found a broken chair and pried a leg away, and then made his way to the remains of the priest, nodding solemnly before tearing old fabric from the robes. He dipped his torch into the wine on the floor and lit it in the hearth.

He felt hope as the old robes caught flame.

Under torchlight, he searched for a seam, and finding it, traced the outline of a passage. These were old religions, some of them perhaps forbidden. There must have been an escape in case of an emergency. But pressing on the hidden door did nothing. There had to be some trigger.

He took a look at the dragon shrine again. The placement of the shrine and the door had to have a deeper meaning. But what? He recalled everything he knew about dragons and the legend of Poe, but nothing seemed obvious to him.

As he scanned the dragon shrine, he took in the intricacies of the depicted dragon and wondered if this had been a specific one. He had no idea, but he took in every detail he could notice. This shrine, a depiction of a serpent-like figure carved from a solid stone, emphasized the torso where a human chest might appear had it been a bust of the legendary hero himself.

He thought back on the legend as he knew it. The dragons gave their souls to Poe. Garen’s heart pounded in his chest. He was so close to something. As he grew conscious of his heartbeat, a strange turn of phrases rattled around his brain. A common saying, innocuous enough, really. He thought of Corea, as he always did. He loved his sister… heart and soul.

“Heart and soul?”

Garen took a free hand and placed it on the part of the dragon’s torso that seemed to him where a heart would be, as much as one could interpret the body of a dead dragon. He put his weight against the stone and felt the stone begin to shift and grind as three of the bands that made up the dragon’s underside began to collapse into the shrine under the pressure of his palm. Once the resistance grew too great, he heard a click as the hidden passage popped open. It was a simple wooden door with stone tiles meant to mask it like solid stone, so seamless in craftsmanship.

Garen glanced at the dragon statue and began to cry.

“Thank you.”

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