Shadow Phantoms - H.P. Mallory Page 0,53
the forest. It was surrounded by jagged and large rocks. A strange, gelatinous fluid dripped from the mouth of the cave, in rivulets of bright green.
“Where does that cave lead?” I asked my witless companion. Chances were he would not know.
“To Fatalia,” Scrote answered immediately, sounding nervous.
“What is that?” I was surprised I had not heard of it, but then the Abyss was a large place with settlements and villages dotted along the awful landscape.
“A place ye want nothin’ to do with,” Scrote responded. “Caverns an’ tunnels all interconnectin’ an’ stretchin’ as far as the eye can see,” he finished. I noticed with interest that he did not stutter once.
“A way out,” I said as I eyed the mouth of the cave with renewed interest.
“No!” Scrote nearly yelled. “Not a way out!”
“Why?”
He began shaking his head with severity. “If ye go into Fatalia, you’ll never come back out again.”
“Why?”
“There are horrors within the belly of this land,” Scrote responded, his dour yet knowledgeable expression one I had not seen upon his face before. ‘Twas almost as if some other person embodied his form. “The wicked roam the endless caverns an’ the good are lost… forever.”
His story seemed dramatic and based on anything but fact. “Ye dinnae know that for sure, do you?” I asked, eyeing him with one brow drawn. He scratched the thinning patch of hair upon his head as I chuckled in spite of myself. “Ye are just repeatin’ what you’ve been told, aye? What the numpty neepheids have long been tellin’ ye.”
He nodded. “I…I… I admit I haven’t been to Fatalia, but the stories I’ve heard are enough for me to k…k… keep my distance.” He paused. “It’s the land of the Unseelie.”
“Stories you’ve heard?”
“Yes,” he began nodding enthusiastically again. “Stories of death an’ monsters an’ imprisonment an’ creatures that defy logical explanation.”
Unlike Scrote, I was not easily convinced by stories. No, I did not regard the cave as anything other than a possible way out of this forsaken place and a way back to the mainland. A way back home.
###
Two Hours Later
The only approach to the cave was through the forest and up the mountainside. No matter.
“Morse, I must repeat this… is madness!” Scrote called out behind me even as he daintily gripped hold of the face of a rock, pulling himself up behind me.
“Ye dinnae have to come with me if ye dinnae care to!” I hollered back, not bothering to glance behind me. We had already had this conversation mayhap an hour ago and Scrote had decided to take his chances in the cave rather than with the inhabitants of Mayhem. I believed it a wise decision.
Of course the wallopers had had other ideas. As we left Mayhem, they threw their insults at us and bits of decaying and rotted meat as they danced and carried on in the way of madness, creating quite the carfuffle.
“Where you goin’?” one of them yelled. “To Fatalia? You’ll never come back!”
“Fools!” someone else called. “Ye’ll be captured an’ sold by the Unseelie!”
“Or eaten by monsters an’ ghosts!”
“Aye, good riddance!” another yelled.
I paid them no heed.
“W… what if we…we… we don’t come b…b…back?” Scrote started, his voice soft.
“Dinnae fash yourself,” I said, facing him with stern reserve. “Ye dinnae want to leave this place a feartie, do ye?”
“I… I don’t… don’t know what… that is.”
“A coward.”
He did not respond as he caught up with me. The second moon was starting its descent in the sky, basking the land in dark rays of milky blue. We both had packed as many rations as we could within our knapsacks, including dried forest meat, salted and dried fish and water. The water was carried within the cleaned intestine of the same forest animal that had provided our meat. Our knapsacks, which were simply worn pieces of clothing we had snatched from two dead bodies before they joined the pyre, were filled to the brim.
“The rock face is somewhat loose here,” I called to Scrote. “Proceed carefully!”
Holding my knapsack far above my head, I hoisted my arm back and then released the bundle, watching as it flew through the air and landed at the mouth of the cave. Scrote caught up to me and handed me his bundle in order that I should do the same with it. I had fastened two intestine jugs around my sporran and there they remained.
“Right b… behind you!” Scrote shouted.
“Are ye right?” I asked as I eyed him. This trip would either toughen him up or