Episode 3 Part 3 Sneak Peek #10

“Wait.”

He hesitates. Before he can answer, you shoulder past him and approach the maw of darkness undulating before you. The white eyes waver, following your movements. For a moment, you catch a faint stir in the air—the wind dies, the gnawing hum fades, and you are cloaked in groaning silence.

“What are you?” you call and your voice evaporates into nothingness.

You hear nothing at first. Then a sound so faint you are certain you are imagining it—a choir of a hundred voices and pitches, intoning together in dissonant harmony. But it grows, the sound niggling at you like a whisper across the room you can’t quite hear, catching the hard edges of consonants just as the soft shape of its vowels are lost.

The air has become oppressively stale. Beneath the hollow mustiness, a foul stench brews. The smell of ancient decay. The smell of something rotten. The smell of something that has lived beyond its time.

The voices fade.

To your surprise, Aeran remains silent. You expected him to interject, to carry on despite your objection, but he has fallen still, the dagger all but falling from his grasp.

“Do you understand me?” you shout, a desperate edge to your voice. If this thing can speak, if it can communicate… that changes everything. You don’t know what the call is, or if it is even yours to make. Do you find a way to reach it? Or do you kill it now, while you still can? “What are you?”

The choir rebounds, louder than before. You focus, gaze locked on the wavering white eyes, and pick apart the sounds within the chorus. The words that are sung are not ones you can comprehend. Its language is beyond you—too old, too foreign, vibrating with impossible timbres beyond the physiology of any known ancestry.

Debris swirls around you as more and more of your surroundings are pulled from their foundations and sucked into the storm. You do not have long. Sooner or later, stone or wood or glass will be hurled in your direction. You have no doubt the blow will be lethal.

And yet your position on the promenade is safe for now. Is it giving you a chance? Or is it toying with you, delaying the inevitable?

1. Relinquish your sword. You may not understand its language, but perhaps you can find some common ground.
2. You cannot understand it and there is no sign it can understand you. Kill it now—before it has the chance to strike.