The Lightsworn

Bone-dry straw scrunched and crunched under her boots as she tried ever so carefully to sneak back through the stables and away from the chicken coop. Her stomach twisted. Guilt or hunger, she wasn’t sure which, as she slipped the warm eggs into her coat pocket. She hadn’t eaten in days.

Gross, she thought as the stink of fresh horseshit wafted into her nostrils. Then the smell curdled and grew unnaturally foul, a humid bouquet of decaying flesh and sickly-sweet fruit. It stung her eyes and kicked her in the back of the throat.

A fly brushed her cheek. Then another. And another. In seconds, the entire stable was thick with them, their buzzing so loud it drowned out all thought.

Horses erupted in the stalls, screaming and kicking. The stable master and his stable hand rushed in, faces stricken with horror, until they saw Vivian still standing frozen in place on the far side of the room.

The stone floor heaved, splitting open in a gooey, messy dark rupture, as if the earth itself were bleeding. Pale hands reached out of the ooze. They ripped and clawed at a thick, rubbery outer layer, and then the creature birthed itself into the world. It collapsed to the ground, dragging its hairless, glistening torso up through the muck.

Vivian was cut off from the exit. There was nowhere to run.

“Damn you, girl, get out of here!” the stable master shouted.

Pitchfork in hand, he lunged forward, but the beast was too fast. It caught his leg and yanked him down. Wood splintered as the pitchfork shattered against its hide. The stable master shrieked and then went silent, the beast mauling him with ferocious speed.

The stable hand didn’t run for the door. He tried to reach her, to save her. But the creature turned almost lazily, and its mud-caked jaws bit deep into his arm.

Vivian’s heels shot out from under her as she fell backward, knocking over an empty feed pail. The hollow thud and clack caught the beast’s attention, and it whipped around to face her. She skittered on her bum until her spine hit the outer wall. Trapped. The creature let out a piercing shriek, then galloped on all fours toward her. She closed her eyes, breath held.

She flinched at the sound of a sharp blade slicing through wet meat. A moment passed before she realized she was still alive. She slowly opened one eye as if opening both would be too overwhelming. And there he was. Donald Brooks.

He was standing over the creature like some fabled avenging knight. Its body, slumped into a heap, began to sink into the earth, its oozing black insides draining back into the cracked floor like water into sand. In its place, a bloom of pale maggots, dozens of them, blind and writhing over the stones. He wasted no time stomping them into dust.

Vivian exhaled, a shaky half-cry as her fingers unclenched from her thighs. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” she whispered, her voice cracking as the tears finally came.

He turned. “Don’t give up, Viv. Things are getting better. This was only the second breach this week. A month ago, we’d have had more than that before breakfast. We’re going to survive this.”

Donny. They’d been best friends since before she even knew what that meant. Seeing his big, dumb face reassured her. He wasn’t an avenging knight. Heck, he was barely a man. She smiled to herself. On his best days, he could barely wrestle his own feet. Yet here he was, offering his hand as she barely had the strength to stand.

The stable hand screamed.

He was on his knees in the straw, clutching his bitten arm. The flesh around the puncture had turned gray and flaked. It crept up his wrist like hoarfrost.

“Help him, Donny!” she yelped.

Donny was already moving. He knelt and looked at the creep of gray. It had reached the forearm now, and the boy’s fingers had gone stiff as fired clay.

“Wait—” the boy cried.

Thwack.

One clean stroke, no hesitation. Severed at the elbow, it hit the ground with a soft puft and vanished in a cloud of ashen dust. The stable hand fell sideways, clutching the stump. Donny picked up the empty sleeve, dusted it off, and tore it into a makeshift tourniquet. When they were kids, he couldn’t gut a fish without gagging. Now, Vivian watched him attend to a battle wound without flinching. Something was different about him.

And that’s when she finally noticed it.

His hood had fallen back. On his forehead, an ancient rune. It glimmered, faint and cold, like stardust caught under the skin. She recognized it immediately. It was their mark, the mark of the Lightsworn. And just for a moment, she was mesmerized by its beauty.

Then the light shifted as he stood, and a shudder ran down her spine. The glow sat too high on his brow, throwing its shadows down, and his eyes looked like black holes above the pale, sharp ridges of his cheeks.

“You did it,” she snarled. “You actually fucking did it?” She was backing away from him and hadn’t decided to. “How could you, Donny? They’re a bunch of zealots.”

He wiped the black gunk off his blade against a handful of straw, a mischievous cockeyed grin on his face. “Well,” he said. “This zealot just saved your life.”

###

Outside, everything was caked in a fine, choking layer of gray ash. It hadn’t rained in months. The earth beneath their boots was dry and splitting, dotted here and there with dark mounds of dried mud where some creature, or some poor soul, had been cut down. There was never any blood left behind. Just ash and mud. Vivian couldn’t remember the last time she had felt the sun warm her face.

“The Day of Judgment is upon us!” shouted a town crier. But no one was listening, not that they ever had.

A lineup for the local granary wrapped around the corner. It was already twice as long as yesterday, which was twice as long as the day before. A street merchant was selling sparse skewers of rotisserie rat and demanding more coins than most families saw in a week. Vivian’s mouth watered at the smell.

The local pickpockets and cutpurses who prowled here seemed to scurry back into the shadows the moment she saw them. They looked scared. Then she remembered, dumbass Donny, and the glowing rune on his forehead. It was strange to see them hiding. Only weeks ago, he was one of them.

Her stomach panged. Reaching into her coat pocket, all she found was the cold slime of the broken eggs. “I’m so hungry, Donny,” she murmured.

He reached into his satchel and pulled out a dark crimson apple, a vivid burst of color in the sea of gray. He held it in front of her.

Vivian didn’t think. Her eyes went wide, and she desperately snatched it from his palm.

Donny let out a soft laugh. “Viv, come with me. Come to the Hall of the Lightsworn. You’ll never be hungry again. They have more than enough.”

She hesitated, staring at the perfect red skin, before sinking her teeth into it. The loud, crisp crunch echoed down the quiet street. A few passing citizens turned, their eyes lingering on the fruit, but they didn’t dare make a move, not today. Not with Donny at her side. She felt terrible about how safe she felt.

She chewed with her mouth open and let out a purr-like moan with every bite. Donny couldn’t stop staring at her. “What?” she asked, sticking out her tongue still covered in half-chewed apple.

He smiled and leaned over, reaching for her face. She recoiled and slapped his hand. “Whoa, buddy.”

He laughed. “Oh, get over yourself, Viv. You got a chunk of apple and slobber right there.”

“I do not!” she said, wiping her chin with the back of her sleeve.

She noticed a little girl sitting and sobbing in a doorway, her ribs showing through a tattered smock. Vivian stopped and broke off a thick chunk of apple, pressing it into the girl’s small, dirty hands. She turned back to Donny. “If they have so much food, why are they letting everyone else starve?”

Donny’s face hardened. “You know why, Viv. No one gets a free ride.”

Just ahead, there was a commotion. People arguing in the street, pointing at a bunch of vandalized doors. A whole row of them along Tanner’s Lane, marked with slashes of crude yellow paint. Most were just jagged X’s. But on the third door, someone had taken their time and painted the word COWARD.

“I hope you’re not involved with that,” Vivian said.

“Of course not!” he blurted out, refusing to make eye contact. She moved in front of him, stopping him midstride. He continued looking right past her. Grabbing his hands, she found it, a fleck of dried yellow paint.

“I’m, well—” he stammered. “If they aren’t going to help themselves, why should we?”

She shoved him with both hands, hard enough to rattle his shoulder guards. “Because you can.”

He rolled his eyes. “You can’t keep calling down everyone who takes the oath and then turn around and expect them to help. That’s pretty selfish, Viv.”

“But you were there for me,” she said, sugar-sweet, batting her lashes. “My big strong man.”

A bark of laughter snuck up on him. “Shut the fuck up.”

She leaned in and knocked her shoulder into his arm playfully. He knocked back, gently, and for the length of one street he was just Donny again.

###

Columns of recruitment tents filled the town square. Impossibly white canvas tents. Against the perpetual gray, they seemed almost blinding. Banners hung dead in the windless air, each stitched with the same rune gleaming on Donny’s forehead.

Beneath the banners, a swelling crowd of the desperate shuffled toward the tents seeking food and shelter. Young and old, man and woman. The desire for safety was universal. They clamored forward, pushing and shoving to reach the tables, their faces frantic with a wild, hungry fervor.

Along the perimeter, those who refused the oath stood on overturned crates, heckling and screaming at their old neighbors. The air was charged with a collective intensity, hot and contagious. And beneath it all, a low hum reverberated through the cobblestones.

As they approached the center of the square, a familiar figure threw himself in front of the soon-to-be recruits.

“Do not do this!” Father Joshua’s voice struggled to pierce the crowd’s drone. He was a gaunt older man. His black robes were smeared and dusted gray. “Do not trade your soul for comfort! Pray for your salvation.”

Donny broke from Vivian’s side before she could grab him, as if the buzz of the crowd had compelled him.

“We did pray, Father.” He planted himself in front of the old priest while people turned to watch. “We prayed until our knees bled. And our prayers were answered. He sent us the light. Now we can survive this.”

Father Joshua’s fingers hooked into Donny’s collar like briars. “But at what cost?”

“At any cost!” Donny tore the priest’s hands off him. “I will do anything to keep my family safe. To keep them alive. That’s my duty. That’s all of our duty.” He stepped in close, looming, and the rune on his brow flared. Vivian saw the old man flinch from the light of it. “You talk about pride, Father, but how proud are you? You’d rather every soul in this city die than admit your God has forsaken us?”

“I am trying to save your bloody soul, boy!” The priest lunged for him again.

Donny shoved him off with a shrug, but Father Joshua was so frail he went down hard on the cobblestones. A ragged cheer rippled through the recruits, and the hecklers started throwing stones.

Donny froze. The righteousness fell off his face like a dropped mask, a sudden panic breaking through. “I—” He put his hand out. “Father, I didn’t mean—”

“Get away from him!” Vivian was already past him, already on her knees in the dirt.

When she took his hands to help him up, they were bleeding. Twin scrapes from the stones, one in the heel of each palm, welling red through the gray ash.

“Are you hurt, Father?”

“I’m fine, my child. I’m fine.” His eyes seemed to search her face for something she couldn’t see. “There is a kindness in you, Miss Lang. A warmth far too uncommon in these troubling times. Please don’t ever lose yourself.” His voice dropped, urgent, meant for her alone. “I beg of you. Damnation is far worse than death.”

Behind her, Donny had recovered enough to be embarrassed and cruel. He waved a dismissive hand at both of them. “See? If he had his way, Viv, you’d already be dead.”

She opened her mouth to tell Donald Brooks exactly what she thought of him.

But then the trumpet sounded.

###

The sound seemed to come from the sky above. It was deep and resonant, and she felt it before she heard it. And then, the city hushed, as if a heavy blanket had suffocated all the land. Even the humming in the stones stopped. All she could hear was the ringing, deafening absence of sound. It was the loneliest sound she’d ever heard.

At the far end of the square, the crowd began to part.

He rode in slowly, on a stallion so white it looked like moonlight. His armor was even whiter still. There was no sun. There hadn’t been for a year, and yet he appeared bathed in radiance. A crimson cape flowed from his shoulders, floating on the still air as if carried by some otherworldly breeze. It rippled behind him like a trail of flame. A sword of pure light hung from his hip, and where he passed, the ash in the air surrendered. She could see the cracks in the cobblestones and colors she had long forgotten.

When the light reached her face, it was as warm as a summer’s day. She closed her eyes and for a moment basked in it. When she opened them, others were doing the same, an entire square of gray faces tilting toward him like flowers to the sun.

“The Light Bringer,” Donny whispered, tears welling in his eyes. “He’s here.”

Beside her, Father Joshua rose and steadied himself with a hand on her shoulder. She felt it trembling, and when she looked at him, the kindness in his face had soured into sadness.

“Helel Ben Shahar,” Father Joshua breathed, “brings only more darkness.”

Up ahead, a herald in silver stepped forward. When he spoke, his voice carried to every corner of the square.

“Brothers and sisters! Rejoice! For our fight here is nearly won. Our Morningstar, Elder Shahar, asks now what he has always asked. In the battle to come, will you fight at his side, as he has fought at yours?”

The recruits surged forward, and the Lightsworn at the tents spread their arms to receive them.

Donny turned to her, face still lit by the rune, and held out his hand. “Viv. Come with me, let me protect you.”

Father Joshua stepped into her line of sight, holding out his own hand, still weeping red where the stones had opened it.

“Miss Lang,” the priest said, his voice a ragged whisper. “There is still a place for you with us.”

The world seemed to shrink to just the three of them and the choice she had already made.

Her hand, unsteady, reached out as the trumpet sounded again.