Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The dark fog of night was pressing in, blurring the world from normal eyes. The tension of the rope pressed against my back was tight and heavy. My breath caught in my throat, stuttering its way down as I tried to calm my nerves. Listening for their footsteps, I pressed myself further into the darkened corner as my heart pounded away in my chest.

Escaping the walled city was the last thing I thought I’d be doing. I was sneaking around at night like some criminal. Which I wasn’t… not usually anyway. The clinking of their boots echoed off the empty alley. I hid behind the hay-filled carriage as I tried my best to slow my breathing. If they didn’t hear me, they didn’t see me. The two men were gossiping about a new barmaid down at the nearby pub. They weren’t even aware I was there.

Rounding the corner, they finally got far enough away that I felt comfortable enough to pry myself out of my safe spot. Looking behind me, I saw the bustling street full of patrons readying themselves for an evening of fun. The hum of life was like a blazing fire, pulsing and vibrant only a few feet away as I scanned the darkened area ahead. The guards would patrol the top of the wall soon to keep that throbbing life safe inside the city. Even more importantly, they were charged with keeping the darkness out.

In reality, everyone knew they weren’t really that keen on doing their jobs anymore. There had been no vampire or hollow attack in ages. Their actual job was to keep out who the Lightbringers deemed as undesirables. We rarely even saw these so-called undesirables anymore, so really their jobs was just being glorified guards. Tonight I was going to be fleeing the safety of the city, not seek it out as so many have done.

Dodging the patrols was easier than I had thought it would be. I don’t even know what they were truly looking for and I highly doubted they did either. I passed by another patrol earlier in the evening as they were gabbing about produce prices, they were never the wiser I was even there. If anyone wanted to actually invade Silver City, it wouldn’t be that hard to accomplish with this sort.

Looking back down the alley, I waited to see if anyone else was going to invade my space. Picking this area of the city was a strategic move. I had been scouting it out for weeks. The lighting was poor, the nighttime travelers mostly ignored the path, and the guards didn’t even bother to walk down it too often most evenings. It was the perfect spot to make my escape.

Swinging a rope around my head, I threw it with all my might. Letting the weight of the hook pull itself through the air, I tossed it over the top. I heard a clatter and pulled with all my might to secure it into place. The heavy hook came crashing down, nearly hitting me in the head as I scrambled away.

I never claimed to be the best at adventuring. This was the first time I was attempting anything of this nature. I read about it and I wrote about it. Actually doing it? That was entirely new to me. Luckily for me, no one was around to nearly see me impale myself before I even left.

With more determination, I threw the hemp rope over the stone edge again. Hearing the clink of metal, I tugged on the rope and heard the clatter as the heavy hook caught on something. It didn’t come barreling down on my head this time. I let a smile crawl across my face before I shook my arms out to climb the wall. They say that a person always needs to stretch before physical activity. Right?

Scaling walls in the dark wasn’t something I normally would do either, but they wouldn’t let me leave through the gate at that hour. Digging in the dirt all the time provided me with more muscles than would have been normal for a woman my size. So hoisting myself up and over the top of the wall was easier than I had expected. Normally, I only used those muscles for gardening, but I guess I could add rope climbing as a new skill set when asked at dinner parties what I’m good at. Not that anyone ever invited me to dinner parties, but at least now I had an answer. I should make some friends to invite me to dinner parties.

In the daylight hours, people would just see me as the gardener Sylvia Ott who was growing herbs for the various restaurants in town. No one would expect me to be scaling the outer walls, not in pants and not with a hood covering my head like some criminal. If anyone caught me, they wouldn’t know I was that polite gardener with the greenhouse over on Luna Way.

It took me a long time to figure out how to leave the city unseen. I had been preparing for this day for weeks. I even watched the skies to make sure I had light. Looking above me, I gave the moon a wink as it was rising higher in the sky, full and glowing tonight. I had tasked the moon with the responsibility of guiding my way. I’m not sure if the moon would agree to this, but they didn’t have much of a choice so it would have to get over it. The moon being at its full strength was the best time for me to see what I was doing, and really, I did not know what I was doing. I needed all the help I could get.

No amount of preparation could replace the act of actually doing something. I stood atop the wall with the moonlight shining behind me and I felt a small gust of wind on my back as I looked out at the city that had trapped me for so long. My whole life had been there, my whole world. Seeing it from this perspective was humbling. It sprawled across the horizon, the peaks of buildings fading into the darkness above.

Its icy touch blew my hood further over my head as it bit into my resolve. It wasn’t a sensation I was used to. Being so high up and able to look down on the world beneath me was awe inspiring, but also a slightly terrifying feeling. The ground was firm and solid, and I now realized that I much preferred to be on it.

I pulled the rope up from the inside of the city and flipped it over to the outside. Scaling down a wall was much more fun than going up. Bouncing off the stone, I quickly made my way down. My feet made a thud as a puff of dirt whisked around me when I hit the ground. Crouching down, I waited and listened to see if any of the guards heard my grand escape.

Nothing.

Letting the cool evening air inflate my lungs, I cracked my neck in preparation. With a jolt, I took off. Sprinting as hard as I could into the darkness, I desperately tried to make it past the clearing and into the tree line. One foot in front of the other, I pushed my body as hard as I could to get to the forest, to get to safety. Just as I reached it, I slid across the earth, kicking up more dust to billow into the air around me. Scattering across the ground, I pulled myself up behind a tree and laid as flat as I could against it. A beam of light moved across the tree line, controlled by the Lightbringer at the gate. The light illuminated the world, spooking any sleeping critters as it crawled across the forest.

My chest was tight, near bursting as I held my breath while it passed by. Normally, I would fully appreciate everything they were doing, but tonight, I hoped the lazier soldiers were on duty. I only had so long to get to the grove and having to worry about guards was only taking up more time. With a dramatic sigh, I let out my frustrations at even having to lurk around as I was.

After the light passed and was making its way further down the tree line, I took off again. My body was not used to the amount of running and the fire in my lungs crawled to the surface. My feet pounded across the forest floor, pulling me closer to my destination and further away from the city. Exhaustion was worming its way up my legs and into my chest. I had to slow down and catch my breath.

Plants, I knew plants. I knew how to cultivate them, how to splice them, and I even knew how to use them. Running through the woods at night, or even running at all, was not something I was familiar with. Avoiding authority, though, I was familiar with that.

This whole adventure started one day when I found a book. It spoke of a wonderful, rare plant, and it enthralled my imagination. I regularly got books about different botany from the local bookstore. It wasn’t a studied field, not really. I was determined to learn as much as I could about it without having to succumb to the Lightbringer order to do so. As long as I supplied the owner of the bookstore with the best tea leaves you could get in our region, he was happy with procuring me any book to further my education on all things plants. It seemed to be a good trade-off for the both of us. He was also just a really nice guy. Those didn’t come around too often, not in my life anyway.

This book wasn’t anything special, not really. Most people would have found it to be dry and dour. It was a journal of an older Lightbringer monk in the area. Nestled deep in the mundane day-to-day scribbles, the monk mentioned a specific flower they found not too terribly far from the city. A normal reader would have overlooked the details, but not me. No, it caught my soul afire.

There was this small mention of a flower. Just a flower. Of course no one really paid much attention to this in the journal before me. Its description was vague, the coloring being red with drips of white. What perplexed, confused, and intrigued me was when it bloomed.

It bloomed at night.

The monk doesn’t mention it ever again. Just mentions it blooms at night like that is something flowers do every day and moves on to more mundane talks of what he had for dinner. He only made a few more entries after that anyway, so I don’t think he lived too terribly much longer. The idea of a flower that bloomed at night was exciting. It made my heart race as I tried to piece together what type of plant it could possibly be. It made no sense. What kind of pollinators would even be around at night? Flowers open to get the warmth of the sun, not the stars.

The monk didn’t even name it, so in my mind, I had simply been calling it the Night Flower. Piecing together everything he had written about where he found it, I thought I had pinpointed it to a specific grove. It took me a while to translate the nonsense of the monk’s day-to-day life, but I was mostly confident I figured it out. It was quite a distance away from the city, but close enough someone could make it there and back in one night if they were truly determined.

I was determined.

If it only bloomed at night and in certain areas, it was no wonder that no one else knew about it. No one went out at night. No normal people anyway. Only Lightbringers even dared to. Well, Lightbringers and myself, apparently. I needed to see it, or maybe even bring it back with me. Patting the makeshift carrying case strapped across my shoulders, I smiled at the thought of bringing the illustrious rare specimen to my greenhouse. I had the perfect spot for it, too.

Part of me wanted to be known for something other than just the grower of herbs and tea. If I found and discovered a rare plant, people might give me some needed respect. Who knows what medicinal properties it might provide. It could help turn the tide against the sickness that seemed to grow in the slums. The one that made people lethargic yet hungry. They had no energy but had insatiable appetites. They would eat and eat but continue to lose more and more weight, never holding onto all the nutrients they consumed.

My thoughts were mulling over the possibilities, and before I knew it, I was in complete, utter darkness. The trees were a thick canopy above, blocking out all moonlight. I didn’t realize how thick the fog of darkness was out there. It pressed in around me and a nervous sweat developed on my brow. Seeing it in person was a little disquieting. I knew the misting darkness was out there, but walking through it made my nerves crawl and worm through my body.

Wincing at the fire as it burned my fingers, I tried to light my small lantern, but with every flick of flame, the misting darkness sucked it away. I watched as tendrils wrapped around the fire before consuming and extinguishing its light. No light could thrive in the fog, no beacon could penetrate the abyss. I fumbled the lantern back onto the clip at my hip through touch alone.

I could feel a tingle of terror working its way across my arms. Shoving the anxiety down with a hard swallow, I tried my best to think of anything but the darkness that was wrapping around me. It was cold and I swear I could feel it lightly pulling at me. It may only be in my head, but my head was making a very convincing argument for me to turn back.

The fog of darkness had been a present thing for most of my life. I can’t really recall it not being around. The Lightbringers brought their runic torches to town when they took over. They were the only flames that ate away at the darkness of the night. The fog made traversing at night extremely difficult and, more importantly, it made it extremely dangerous. Vicious creatures caled it their home. I knew the hollow existed, but I had never actually seen one.

For a long time, I had assumed they were merely an old wives’ tale. That their existence was pure fiction. Just a tale so people would stay inside at night to keep crime down. That was until they called me in to treat an injured traveler with some medicinal herbs I had in stock. I saw what those horrid creatures could do to a man, and I did not want to run into such a creature out there. Recalling the incident wasn’t helping the situation as my breathing got more ragged.

It still burned images into my mind of that night. I tried everything I could to stop the dark infection. Every salve I had, every herb and plant in my possession. I watched as the dark tendrils crawled up his veins, coloring his arms in a sooty black infection. The man was losing too much blood as it leaked all over the floor, soaking my soft shoes. His body was already giving up before I had even arrived. Being alive with so many lacerations on them was a miracle in itself. It was torture to even attempt to keep him with us, but they were trying. That’s why they brought me in as a last resort. The immense pain of survival would have immediately killed lesser men. Luckily for him, he didn’t last long.

Darkness fell as normal when night arrived, but when it had, the cold, dark mist would fill in the voids that light couldn’t reach. That’s where they said the hollow thrived. That’s where I currently was. The only sound I heard was my own crunching of leaves beneath my feet to bring me back to my current situation. My head was feeling light and dizzy from my shallow breathing, but I couldn’t control my fear. I didn’t know if the fog itself was pulling all the other sounds away or if it was just that still at night. I had little experience in it and neither did any of the books I read and I read a lot of books.

The land got more rugged and the dark canopy above opened up, letting the moonlight shine in again. As it beamed down, it was illuminating my path and burning the fog away. It was miraculous how it pierced through the veil and the fog dispersed. I had heard that it was best to travel during a full moon, but now I actually knew why. The moon did have my back. Looking up at it once again, I gave it a knowing smirk before trudging on.

Pulling myself up a small hill, I scanned the area to see if I could tell where I even was. I squinted in an attempt to see through the darkness with little result. My shoulders fell. I was probably lost out here. A crack of a branch sounded behind me, and I dropped to the ground, hugging the dirt. Hope was all I had that whatever it was hadn’t seen me yet.

My heart was beating hard, blood rushing into my ears. I tried my best to keep my rapid breaths as quiet as I could. Another noise to my left and I let out an audible gasp.

The forest wasn’t entirely empty.