Crux Ander always felt most alive in the early hours of the morning, before the sun rose and the world woke up. On the day she had won the tournament at the Festival of Three Springs, she had stayed awake all night on the green at Rainsreach, more interested in reveling in her success than retiring to her meager accommodations at the Early Bird. On that night, not even the news surrounding the murder of Lee Sablehame could dampen her spirits, not totally anyway. She had lain on her back in the cool grass, looking up at the same stars she had seen since childhood- the same stars she saw now.
Those stars were hers. At this hour, when no others stirred to challenge her, everything was hers. Pulling her hair into a topknot, Crux gave one last surveying glance around the humble grounds of Shodstep Farm. The land that was now paid for, the frontier home that was steadily being rebuilt, the livestock, the water shares ….all hers. Most of all, Mortuus was hers, her guren-band, whom she had loved since childhood. In these rare hours between midnight and dawn, all that was hers seemed complete and perfect. Perfect. Almost.
There was, of course, that…thing; the empty ghost that now followed Mortuss and was a part of their life. Mortuus had returned triumphantly from his journey to save the homestead, with a newfound vigor for life and vision for his family. But he had returned as well with an unliving apparition wrapped in a man’s cloak. The wraith had no features beyond those that its robes granted it, and in the folds of its hood a set of pale eyes were all too visible in the darker hours of the evening. It was not natural, and was not good, and Crux knew this and hated it.
To Mortuus, the wraith was simply a product of his life’s work in the study of the occult. It responded to the gauntlet he had forged in the ashes of the forsaken city, an endeavor that had cost Mortuus more than a little of his own sweat and blood. Whenever he removed the gauntlet, the wraith collapsed and was gone. Yet Mortuss had taken to wearing it constantly, reasoning that the extra help it offered was needed to set the homestead in order before the colder months arrived.
“It is an extra set of hands, my love,” Mortuus had joked with her on the day of his return, “even if we cannot see those hands.” His words had not allayed her uneasiness, but his reasoning had made sense. “We do not need to feed it, do not need to pay it, or even provide it with boarding. Between myself, you, and the boy, we are already stretched thin with work. This way, with a little luck, we may even have a barn ready by harvest time.”
“We are certainly due a little luck,” Crux had conceded, too filled with joy at Mortuus’s arrival to fret long over one setback. She had overcome much in her short life thus far, and she would overcome this as well.
As far back as she could remember Crux had seen hunger, sickness, and ostracism. Born an unwanted member of the lowest family in Evenhearth, the Vale’s poorest town, she had not known many easy days prior to her victory at the Three Springs. Neither had Mortuus. He was the son of Pon Shodstep, a wandering adventurer who lived in service of the poor of Evenhearth. Mortuus’s father had been the voice of those that had no voice of their own, including Crux, and he was as revered by the low families of that town as he was despised by its prosperous and wealthy. Yet he kept his half-orc son at an icy arm’s length; the oft neglected shadow that haunted his every step with gaunt eyes and thin frame. Crux had loved Mortuus since the first time she saw him, even going so far as to brave hated needlework to sew him a cloth favor. “Guren-band,” she had named him, and painstakingly stitched an image of herself and the half-orc under a starry sky. She had never guessed it would be many long years before she could give it to him.
When his father died, Mortuus had packed his few belongings and left the Vale. He had traveled east and been ensnared by the dark beauty of a fisher-woman named Tyla, who had born him a son before dying unexpectedly. Mortuus spoke little of her to Crux or anyone else. In fact, in all their time together, he had given her no real information about his dead wife beyond the fact that she would often cook for him while he slept, so that he woke to the savory smell of a platter of roasted fish at his bedside. Crux thought that was strange.
“Why would you want to eat fish for breakfast?” she had asked him, pressed against his chest in the shadows of their little room.
“I didn’t,” Mortuus had laughed. “But she always brought them anyway. I think it was just her custom.”
“Swordwives know what a man wants when he wakes.”
“They certainly talk more.” Mortuus could make a joke of anything.
Inhaling one last breath of the world that was hers, Crux stretched out her arms and pulled open the door to the little farmhouse. The house was lit only by the thin starlight that snuck in through the windows and spaces between the planks. With a shiver, she forced herself to look into the boy’s room. He was alone, asleep, face-down on his thin mattress. Crux let out a breath. Too often the wraith made its way into this room while the family slept. When she had told Mortuus of this, he had given it little concern, but said that if it bothered her he would try to not fall asleep while wearing the gauntlet. Tonight at least it seemed that he had remembered.
Content that the house was safe and in order, Crux at last made her way to the bedroom. Thinking about sleep forced her to yawn deeply and stretch her arms. Sleep, like the stars, was a luxury enjoyed by rich and poor alike. Crux wondered which she was now, and then…she froze.
From the darkness of the bedroom, two pale eyes flashed towards her. The room rushed into contrast against Crux’s quickened heartbeat, and she saw to her horror the outline of the wraith. Mortuus she saw as well, sprawled out on the bed in his work clothes and gauntlet. He was fully asleep and unaware of the wraith’s arms that hovered suspended over his outstretched neck.
“Get away from him!” hissed Crux. Without thinking, she crossed the room in two strides and was upon it. She grabbed at its arms and felt them like hollow stone between her fingers. The wraith flailed and writhed in her grip, and in the commotion flung itself into the small side table that sat up against the bed. Crux crashed to the floor, along with a plate that fell from the table. It broke and scattered its contents along Crux and the floor.
Instinctively, Crux reached for her sword from where she kept it sheathed beneath the far side of the bed. In her panic and anger she failed to find it, her hand landing instead on something small and slimy and cold. Frantically, she tossed it away and pushed herself beneath the bed’s frame, finally reaching the blade in its large rough-hide scabbard. In an instant, Crux had sword in hand, crouched on one knee next to the wraith that kept both pale eyes trained on her.
“Get away, monster,” Crux growled. Only pale eyes met her demand. The wraith’s hands hung in the air again above Mortuus. “Move away or you end here in this room!”
“Crux?” Mortuus’s voice croaked dryly as he cleared his throat, awaking to see his wife with sword in hand. “Crux what are you doing?” The wraith’s hands made a grab for Mortuus and Crux struck. Her swing took the apparition in the sleeves of its robe and it screamed.
MMMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Crux’s world fell apart. Her head filled with a pulsing pain that she had never imagined possible.
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Her sight left her and the hairs on her skull felt as though they were yanking themselves free of her skin, until the strength left her legs and she collapsed in a puddle. The wraith’s wail was something beyond anguish, beyond suffering and despair. Beyond this place and it’s broken plates and shabby wooden walls.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!!!
And then it was over.
“Crux!!!” yelled Mortuus. “Crux! Crux!” He slid from the bed and cradled her. The wraith grabbed at its arm and looked at the both of them with cold eyes. “Get away!” commanded Mortuus with a stern voice, motioning with the gauntlet . The wraith shrunk back to a corner and huddled against the plank walls.
Crux choked and shook. She refused to cry. Warriors of Evenhearth did not cry. Battle commanders did not cry. Through anger and pain she found her voice. “I want that…thing….gone.” Though thick with ire, her words barely broached a whisper. “It was in our bedroom, Mortuus. It was reaching for you. No price is worth this. We do not need it. I want it gone.” Her eyes filled and blurred.
And through that blur she saw the gleam of Mortuus’s keen orcblack eyes. Eyes that saw more clearly in darkness than in light looked past her to the floorboards; went wide with…shock? Fear? Crux had never known Mortuus to be afraid.
With a free arm, Mortuus reached out and gathered the mess from the broken plate, shoving it all under the bed. Then he scooped up Crux and helped her to her feet and brushed the hair from her face. His eyes moved almost unwillingly towards the wraith, still wide with trepidation.
“I think, perhaps, that you are right,” said Mortuus. And with that he took the gauntlet from his arm, and held Crux close to him. Though she could not see it, the stars that were hers danced through the gaps in the walls and played along the silvery surface of her blade. They never touched the smooth scales of the roasted fish that now lay tucked away neatly, beneath the bed.
