Nef lay a little over an arm’s reach away, her back turned to him, shoulders rigid, and knees tucked to her chest. The distant drip of water and howling wind cut the eerie silence. Vesper squeezed his eyes shut and fought the cold by allowing thefrustrations of the day keep him warm. His heart calmed as he fell into fitful darkness.
Nef’s sniffles yanked him from sleep.
“Are you alright?” he whispered into the dark, his voice seemingly too loud as it echoed off the walls.
“Y-yes.” Mixed with her tears and shivering, her voice quaked.
Vesper's gut twisted. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” The word wasn’t abrupt, but sad.
Vesper sighed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He shifted his bedroll to butt up against hers and laid a hand on her shoulder. Nef shook so violently, the rattle reverberated through him, too.
Fuck. So, not knowing what else to do, how to comfort her or fix this, he pulled her against him, and let her cry.
Nef’s horse wouldn’t open its eyes. When Vesper's magic lunged toward it, that told him only one thing.
It was dead.
Nef laid her hand on its muzzle. She whispered something resembling a prayer, practically a song, with the words strung together in a soft rhythm.
Vesper didn’t have the heart to ask if she wanted her horse reanimated, just to get them through the pass. It likely would’ve been a no anyway.
After Vesper mounted Balthasar, Nef begrudgingly climbed on too, and tucked herself against his front. From the look of Nef’s puffy eyes, her tears had continued through the night, and her coughing had grown worse, but maybe it was the cold. He didn’t know if he should push or let her come to him, so he gave her space. As much as one could give while on a horse together.
The monotonous tunnel stretched in a series of blank brown walls that expanded and shrank, but they never once needed to dismount.
Then, there was light—a beacon for which their paces quickened.
Snow scattered the frozen floor as they exited the mouth of the cave. Squinting his eyes against the blinding white, Vesper took in the vast landscape of mountains and fields, an area far larger than he had dreamed. From this high altitude, clouds shielded much of the ground, but from what he could tell, it stretched further than any of the maps in his father’s study or the one tucked in his pocket. Vesper retrieved it, surveyed the tiny clusters he could make out below, and traced the red lined path with his gaze as if he could replicate it.
Nef’s hazel stare widened, a spark of wonder within that made him grin.
They continued on the path that wound around the mountainside, and treaded with great care since it had been eroded over time. At some point Vesper had begun to clutch Balthasar’s reins. He only noticed when his hands began to ache. As rocks skittered beneath their feet he noticed this strange red … stuff? He couldn’t quite tell what it was. It threaded the ground like streaks of red lightning in the soil.
After what seemed like an eternity on the trail, a town appeared on the horizon out of the shield of clouds. As they descended the final incline and poked out from a cluster of hills, Vesper squinted into the distance. His stomach tightened. Because from what it appeared—
Something wasn’t right.
And it wasn't the masked people or the sheer size of the collapsed brick walls surrounding the town that made Vesper’s breath catch.
It was the land.
Barren was the only way he could describe it. Barren andfestering. It had been impossible to see from the sky-high view, but now that they’d reached the mountain’s base, the situation was clear.
A thick film of red, sticky cotton-like substance coated the ground. The webs that penetrated the cracked soil appeared like they leached sustenance from the land and left the earth entirely devoid of life.
Bloody Hollow. This had to be some twisted joke.
Vesper nudged Balthasar into a trot, and Nef jostled against him as the spores of whatever claimed the ground cascaded into the air.
Nef covered the lower half of her face with her sleeve. “It smellsawful.”
She was right. The distinct scent of carrion and mould carried on the stagnant wind. He, too, covered his mouth and nose with his tunic then halted Balthasar and slid off his back. When his feet struck the ground, the red substance stirred into the air. It floated around him like some fucked up pollen.
Vesper kneeled down and sifted a hand through the red cotton. The pestilence seemed to reach with tiny stringy fingers and latch onto his glove. A gasp wrenched from his throat and he recoiled as if he could escape it. As if whatever this was didn’t cling to his boots and yank him down into the dead earth.
Nef and him shared a look of horror.