Beastborne- Mark of the Founder Read online

  Hal found his legs answering the smooth voice without conscious thought. He stood beside the body within spitting distance of the Assassin who had turned all his attention from Hal to the body.

  The Assassin crouched and braceleted the corpse’s wrist with his own hand. The hand flopped about as he raised the arm and jiggled it. “I think there’s still some juice left in this thing. Give me your right – no – your left arm.”

  Hal resisted the urge to obey, unsure why he had come any closer to the killer. “I’m good, thanks,” Hal managed to say.

  “Listen kid, I appreciate the brass ball routine as much as the next guy. But I’m kind of in a rush here. There’s a magical otter that will be very cross with me if I miss our date for tea. So give me your hand or so help me….”

  The lingering threat hung in the air a moment before Hal thrust out his left arm. He didn’t see any other recourse. He wasn’t a trained fighter and there didn’t seem to be any doors, so running was out.

  The Assassin slapped the corpse’s still-warm hand upon Hal’s forearm. He nearly had a heart attack when the dead fingers locked tight upon his arm. Whatever trace of fear he had was washed away with the searing white-hot pain that bloomed on his forearm.

  “Yeah,” the Assassin said distractedly. “You might feel a pinch.”

  A scream broke free from Hal and echoed into the wide space around them.

  The Assassin looked at him and chuckled. “Good acoustics in this place.”

  Tears blurred Hal’s vision. Rich golden light spilled out between the dead god’s fingers.

  When it was over, Hal was on his knees. The iron-like grip of the corpse’s hand was beginning to cut off the circulation to his fingers.

  The Assassin poked the corpse’s arm with his pinky and the fingers blasted backward with a sickening series of cracks.

  Hal cradled his arm and rose to his knees. The chubby corpse’s fingers were all bent backward at impossible angles.

  “All done,” the Assassin said cheerily. Checking his wrist where a watch should have been, but most definitely was not, he added, “And just in time for tea!” He motioned over Hal’s shoulder, at the same place the man had been looking before.

  Following his gaze again, Hal could see a swirling mass of autumn colors ten or twenty feet back. It hovered a few feet above the ground and made an ominous sound.

  “Mind the drop,” was all the Assassin said before Hal felt a strange wrenching in his guts and was yanked off the floor like a hooked fish. The gaseous swirl of oranges, reds, and browns folded around him, and darkness closed in.

  1

  Colors swirled and collapsed upon each other. Hot and cold wind blew across Hal’s face from different directions.

  Before his disoriented mind could discern up from down, the ground rose up and smacked into his face.

  Luckily, the soft grass cushioned the fall.

  Hal wanted to lay there for a while longer. He wanted nothing more than to shut his eyes and will himself to wake up on his couch back in his studio apartment in Seattle.

  This is just a bad dream, he told himself, I’ll wake up soon.

  But the reality, the truth of the situation, did not allow for such wishful thinking. It kicked down his flimsy barriers of denial in the form of a snorting, snuffling animal bumping into his hip.

  Hal opened his eyes and shouted in alarm at what he saw. A two-headed wild pig of some kind with a mohawk of spiny white hairs was investigating him.

  Hands pressed to the grassy ground, Hal pushed himself up to his feet. He turned to keep the beast in his line of sight and backed away slowly. The strange creature regarded Hal curiously, two pairs of eyes watching him with too much intelligence for his taste.

  A howling cry echoed somewhere to his left in the distance and the pig creature squealed in fright. By the time Hal looked back in the creature’s direction, it had kicked up a dusty trail and was in full retreat.

  Okay, not a dream, Hal thought coughing as the dust cloud blew over him on a gust of wind. I don’t think I’ve ever coughed or felt like I was choking a dream before.

  The howl sounded again. It had a discordant, ethereal quality that raised the hairs on the back of Hal’s neck. He found himself putting one foot in front of the other in the opposite direction, glad he had collapsed on his couch fully clothed. He had been too tired to even remove his shoes.

  He was in some autumnal landscape. Brown sere grass crunched underfoot. Hills covered in a riot of golds, oranges, and reds filled his vision. Copses of tall trees, oaks maybe – though he doubted he could tell most tress apart – dotted the hilly countryside.

  With no immediate destination in mind, Hal continued down the hill and into the sheltered valley. He climbed the next hill and felt a wave of relief when the howls sounded again but seemed farther away.

  This second hill was taller than the one he had woken up on. As he pressed through the saplings that sprouted between the thick trunks of the trees, he spotted a distant village.

  Not a city, nor a town, not even a suburb.

  A village. The kind you’d see on a quaint tour of Europe’s rural countryside.

  Questions swirled in his addled mind. Everything still felt jumbled and his mouth felt cottony.

  There’s nowhere near Seattle that looks like this that I know of. It’s far too dry. Besides, there’d be a thousand hikers snapping selfies to show their followers how “outdoorsy” they are.

  The only thing that reminded him of Seattle was the dreary sky. Dark storm clouds scudded across a gray, lifeless ceiling. What little sunlight shone through was muted and watery.

  Pieces of recent memories flitted back to him in sharp-edged fragments. They felt like something from a movie. Only, he knew without a doubt that it had been real. He knew, too, that this place was real.

  His dreams always had that fuzzy quality to them. But this was too mundane. Too grounded. A chill wind knifed through his red flannel shirt as he ventured out from the relative quiet of the hilltop to descend to the village below.

  While cold, the brisk wind revitalized him. He pulled out his cracked cellphone, unlocked it, and tried to pull up his GPS.

  The screen glitched and flashed. When it came back, his Maps app was blank. Usually, if he was remotely near his apartment it would still show him the general area.

  There was nothing.

  Hal cycled through several more apps, trying to see if anything worked. So long as it didn’t require an internet connection, it did. Photos worked, his smiling face appeared next to strangers and friends alike.

  More strangers than friends, he had to admit.

  As he swiped through his pictures, he came across one that pulled him up short. It was a picture of the Assassin… in a treehouse. And he wasn’t alone.

  The tall man squatted on a small plastic stool and sipped from a tiny teacup, one pinky out. Across from him, looking perfectly pleased, was the most adorable little otter, also drinking from a teacup.

  Hal blinked and swiped to the next photo. There they were again. He swiped again and again. Each image was like a frame in a flipbook. As he swiped, they put down their cups. Poured more hot tea and continued sipping.

  After the twentieth photo, the otter seemed to notice the camera. It hopped down from its seat and waddled toward the camera, then covered the lens with a paw.

  The next images were black.

  And then his normal photos resumed. Hal tried to swipe back to the dozens of photos that should not have been on his phone. But when he did… there was no trace of them.

  He put the phone away and tried to forget about the photos. He wasn’t sure what was going on with him or where he was but he needed to get moving. Standing still in the wilds, no matter where he was, wouldn’t help him.

  No cell reception. No food or water. The air smells weird, everything seems off about this place and there’s a village ahead. Oh, and yeah I saw some crazy Assassin murder some baby-faced guy who looked like he was cosplay
ing as a Greek god.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and forced himself to take a deep breath. The village ahead was nestled between two of the larger hills in the distance. As he made his descent, he could keep it in sight as long as he took a slanting path to his left.

  Try as he might, Hal was having trouble remembering precisely what happened in that large room. He had smacked into the hard marble floor of the place in much the same way as he arrived here.

  But the rest of it was all jumbled with fear, pain, and haze.

  The image of the Assassin stood out clear in his mind, though. The jean jacket, red hoodie, red sneakers, and fingerless gloves were hard to forget. But for the life of him, he could not remember the face.

  There were only glowing eyes that strangely reminded him of old TV scanlines under that hood.

  Hal had the strangest feeling like the Assassin wanted to help him. Though he couldn’t imagine how. It was another mystery he hoped to solve in the town below.

  As the town grew closer, more of the strange meeting began to unravel. The Assassin used Babyface’s dead arm to brand him. He clearly remembered the savage pain, though his left forearm felt perfectly fine now.

  Pulling his sleeve up, Hal’s breath hitched in his throat.

  He had a glowing tattoo. It was astonishingly intricate. He was so consumed with the mark on his otherwise unblemished skin that he nearly ran right into a boulder as big as a horse.

  When he poked the skin, it felt as normal as any other part of his body. The only difference was the glowing golden ink. It caught the pale light of the midday sun filtering through the thick cloud cover and reflected it in a gilded shimmer.

  The tattoo was a series of triangles with intricately inscribed lines within each shape. It resembled a twenty-sided die, a d20. Except it was flattened and spread out.

  Without the strangeness of the Assassin and Babyface, he might have been able to believe that he got drunk. And so inebriated, got a tattoo of the triforce he always secretly wanted but never dared to follow through on.

  The six extra right-angle triangles surrounding the four in the center refuted that idea. Not to mention the triforce had an empty spot in the center. Not another triangle filled with curious marks.

  Pushing his sleeve back down, Hal pressed on toward the village hoping to find answers there.

  Hours had passed since he first checked his phone for a signal. He was fooled by the initial distance to the village. While it couldn’t have been more than a few miles away, those miles were over tremendously hilly terrain.

  Where a single mile of walking might only cover a quarter of that toward his destination.

  After descending the final hill, the village spread out ahead of him. A low stone wall served as its border. Not even tall enough to stop somebody from stepping over it.

  People milled about in strange clothes that made Hal wonder if he had somehow stumbled upon the ren faire. Men walked about with swords belted to their hips and in similarly strange clothes.

  But rather than an air of frivolity and fun, everybody looked dirty, angry, and eager to be about on their business.

  So it came as a welcome surprise to Hal, checking to make sure there wasn’t at least a Wi-Fi signal, when a broad-smiling man motioned him over. The man stood between two leaning buildings – more like rough shacks – away from the main dirty road thoroughfare.

  Once he got close enough that Hal didn’t need to shout, he held up his phone and pointed to it. “No signal around here, huh?”

  It was a common enough ice breaker and relatively benign. So his shock was complete when the ruddy-skinned man – still smiling – reached out and grabbed his wrist. Hal was jerked off his feet with superhuman strength. The man flipped Hal over and dragged him deeper into the darkness.

  Stunned and dazed, Hal fought for breath that wouldn’t come. He wheezed, feeling hands darting all around him, turning out pockets and rolling him over until he was face-down in the dirt.

  Head still ringing, a flash of words appeared in his vision. A small red bar in the bottom left shrank a little then faded away.

  The [Broken Thief] uses Mug.

  You take 2 points of damage.

  Your items are stolen!

  What the-?

  By the time Hal gathered his wits enough to understand he was just mugged, the man was already gone. And so was the strange text that appeared.

  The whole affair couldn’t have been more than ten seconds. Not that he could check. His watch and his phone were gone. Along with whatever else he had in his pockets.

  The longer he was in this strange place, the more ephemeral his thoughts felt. Like rapidly vanishing mist, he was having trouble making sense of things that should have been fairly obvious.

  Groggy and still reeling from what happened, Hal got to his feet with the aid of the nearby splintery wall. People walked by, a few glanced his way but were quick to mind their own business.

  Did nobody care he was just mugged?

  A fire lit in his belly and bruised as he was, he rushed out from the shadows of the two buildings and onto the dirt road in pursuit of his mugger. It should have taken him seconds to realize he wouldn’t find him with all the foot traffic.

  Instead, he spent several fruitless minutes searching until he understood the futility of it. Why couldn’t he think clearly?

  With no money, no ID, and no means of getting home, his only hope rested with a police officer or a sheriff of some kind. If this was a ren faire, they would have one, wouldn’t they?

  In the back of his mind, he knew something was wrong. With himself, with this place. There were too many crazy things that had happened to him to refute. And so, like the rest of the well-to-do Williams family, he blocked it out and shoved it into a dark corner of his mind.

  Once he was safe, alone, and had plenty to drink, then he could try to face it. But not until then.

  That was the Williams’ way, after all.

  A tall, broad-shouldered man with a mop of greasy black hair stood watching the crowd of people go about their business. A guard, he guessed judging by the stained dark-blue uniform he wore.

  This part of the village looked better than the rest. With dirty, pitted cobbles that shifted underfoot and buildings with signs on them. It was a definite step up from muddy streets.

  Somebody had changed the lettering to some archaic font, to the point he couldn’t even read it.

  But the images that were carved and painted alongside the words served well enough. There was a tavern, an inn, some kind of general store he guessed to be the gift shop, and another shop he couldn’t identify.

  Hal approached the guard. The man’s deep-blue tunic sported tarnished brass buttons that had clearly seen better days. The sword he had belted on his hip looked old and dirty with several deep nicks.

  No smile from this man, no form of greeting. Hal cleared his dry throat, remembering suddenly that he had been walking for a couple of hours without food or water.

  Hiking a thumb back the way he came, Hal meant to say, ‘I was just mugged over there! He stole my phone and my wallet.’ Instead, what actually came out of his mouth was, “Dirty man do bad thing.”

  What!? That is not what I said!

  He cleared his throat once more and tried again, except this time his voice jumped several octaves until his words came out as a shrill, “VERY BAD MAN TOOK PRECIOUS!”

  Hal just stared blankly at the man, hoping he was having a stroke and would just die already.

  The man looked down his long, many-broken nose and squinted at Hal. He spoke in a strange language he never heard of. It sounded like a cross between French and Arabic.

  Hal shook his head and spread his arms out wide, trying to mime that he didn’t understand him. Which meant he immediately started doing the chicken dance. Tucking his hands under his arms and flapping them like little wings.

  What the flork is wrong with me? Wait. What? I didn’t say flork, I said flork. Oh come on, I can’
t curse? Florking wonderful!

  The guard reacted to the display with immediate prejudice. Hal could hardly blame him.

  Before Hal even noticed the movement, the guard grabbed his left arm and squeezed painfully hard on his wrist as if feeling for a hidden dagger.

  Confusion passed over the man’s face. He gave a casual yank on Hal’s left sleeve, the hearty flannel ripped as easily as tissue paper.

  And out from that rip came a faint golden glow.

  The guard’s gray eyes were dazzled by the display. He gingerly parted Hal’s torn sleeve to view the golden tattoo in full. His eyes went wide and he began to gibber incoherently.

  The man’s voice was pitched high in abject terror.

  A dark stain spread across the guard’s pants. His lips flapped uselessly trying to form words but only a stream of babble came out. Hal was frozen by the display, unsure how to take the sudden turn.

  Their eyes met. Hal’s dark brown to the man’s light gray. The man shook and stepped back, his hands flew from Hal as if suddenly burned. He turned and fled, wailing and laughing in turn.

  Confused, tired, and afraid, Hal hurried away as fast as he could.

  At first, he walked. But the many stares and pointing fingers of those that had witnessed the strange display followed him. He wanted to be gone from this horrible place. So he ran, and shortly put the scene and the growing crowd behind him.

  Hal continued to jog, wheezing the whole way, as he broke into the low foothills with a thick forest of dark trees. He only stopped once he had crested the second hill.

  He leaned tiredly against the bark and tried in vain to catch his breath.

  It didn’t surprise him as he looked down toward the village he had just fled from and spotted tiny flickering torchlight heading his way in the darkening afternoon.

  A storm rolled in soon after Hal began his continued flight into the wooded foothills of that horrible place. With no idea where he was and no help forthcoming, Hal was forced to rely on his survival skills.

  Of which he had none.

  He didn’t know which plant to eat. Which plant would kill him, and he suspected that many of the plants were unknown to even the most esteemed botanist.