Hungry. Hunted. Hated. Haunted. ‘Eat or be eaten. Live or die. Thrive or fail. Conquer or surrender.’

There was no safe place anymore. Doors stayed locked against those desperately seeking refuge, hoping to save their own skins for a time. Everywhere they traveled, death and decay were evident in the streets lining the city. Corpses, dressed in threadbare suits and dresses so worn they were a drab comparison to the cheery color they'd once been, hung decaying from trees with coils of rope knotted around their neck and piled in alley ways attracting mice.

It made for a gruesome sight, but the stench was by far the worst. It resembled curdled milk mixed with molding juice thrown over horse feces, cow feces, even human feces. Most of these people had been going about their daily routine when the city had been sacked, though the marauders had long since abandoned their search. Not that this little tidbit would buy them their lives back. By the looks of them all, they were probably dead for a month, maybe more. That meant he was behind.

“Search the houses. Take whatever you need, not whatever you want. Coin is paramount. If I find you’re hoarding anything that the company could use, I’ll flay every strip of skin from your bones, until you’re bleeding and crying out for mommy.”

Hunched and mangled, they moved to obey his words without question, feet shuffling against the cobbled road, kicking bodies out of the way and sending a spray of flies into the air. One paused in its shuffling once it had drawn level with him. “What’re we lookin’ for? My lord?” it rasped, boney fingers bent like claws, tipped with sharpened black nails like ten tiny knives.

He didn’t want to look at it, so he studied the blackened face of a dead woman to his right. Crows had long since pecked her eyes away and torn the flesh from her cheeks before it had rotted away to almost nothing, but he suspected she might have been a comely woman once. “We have to find it. The Amethyst. If we don’t, they will, and all hope will truly be lost.”

It bobbed its head up and down as if it understood. Maybe it did. Once, the Talakka had been real intelligent creatures, before the plague had turned them into undead. This one had more smarts than the others. “Rory will find it. What it be lookin’ like? My lord?”

Rory was its name, the name it had been given two years ago when it had come into his service. It had a broader vocabulary than the other Talakka, though Rory had a nasty tendency to make its ‘my lord’ sound like another question, as if it were questioning his position over them. “Purple. You do know what purple is, yes?” Rory bobbed its head in its usual manner of yes. “It’s purple and round, like a ball. It should hum.”

“Hum? My Lord?”

“Yes. Now go. I’m sick of looking at your ugly face.”

Once again, that malformed head bobbed up and down, wispy strands of blonde hair flopping over the hole where Rory’s nose had once been. It no longer breathed except to speak, but every now and again as the air left its dead lungs, the hole in its face would emanate a high whistling sound. “This one will find your purple hummin’ orb. My lord.”
And so Rory shuffled away, scrape scrape scrape, kicking aside bodies with those great feet of its and disappearing into the nearest hovel, listing heavily into the building beside it. If it should collapse, Rory would be trapped inside. He supposed he would miss Rory’s company some. Ever since Lana and her brother Lyonel had rode off on their own with some Talakka a fortnight ago, he found himself missing their jovialness and constant bickering. He hoped they were doing fine on their own. The two of them had been assigned to him because he was senior ranking, the best Ranger the company had at current time, and they were only new recruits. The Talakka should keep them safe at all costs, since the fear had been leached from them with the life they previously had cherished, but anything could go wrong.


Talakka shuffled from every crumbling building to every pile of rubble and sifted through the belongings on each dead person. The entire process took those shuffling monsters nearly seven hours. The sun, which had been at its highest peak when they’d arrived, was disappearing over the horizon, casting out a dull orange glow. At his feet they set pouches of jangling coin, fur pelts that were moth eaten yet still valuable, and rusting weapons. Some of the Talakka were sporting new coats and shoes and hats. Dead they might be, but even the dead could get a chill and die again in these times. The Talakka were the only defense he had until the Amethyst was found.

Although they were proud with their findings, each one was empty-handed of the one thing he actually wanted. He checked each pouch of coin, counting out the amounts, before dumping them into the saddlebag his horse wore. “Good job,” he said. Cracking grins began all around, broken lips peeling away from rotting teeth. What a terrifyingly ugly sight. Still, it was good to see he had brought them some sort of feeling of accomplishment. The best way to keep your servants was to make them believe they had served.

Just as he swung into his saddle and moved to whip the reigns, Rory shuffled forward, something held in its outstretched hands. “It hums. My lord?” Rory rasped. He leaned down to get a better look at what it held. Hummed? What was it that he had told Rory earlier about the orb? Did he say it hummed? If what Rory said was true… Now that he thought about it, Rory hadn’t presented anything to the pile.

Eager like a child, he snatched the circular object from the creature’s pale and flaking hands, cradling it to his chest. It couldn’t be. It was another false one, planted by the marauder’s who had come through here before him. There was no chance his endeavor would end, not so soon. He had been prepared to pursue it for years, if he had to. Could it finally be over?

He was almost afraid to pull away the rough linen fabric it had been wrapped in. When he twisted it in his hands, it felt like the orb he’d touched only for a fleeting moment all those years ago. Just as Rory said, it seemed to hum with power, just as it had done then. Could that be his imagination? There was no knowing until he opened it. Should it prove to be false, however, his hopes of ever finding it would be crushed again. It was impossible the Sons of Asamat wouldn’t have found the orb, this city wasn’t all that large…

“Where did you find this?” he whispered.

Rory’s dull gray eyes almost seemed to sparkle in the dimming daylight. “Under some floor boards. My lord? Heard it hummin’ under my feet, so I tore ‘em all away and found it in a locked box o’ shinin’ gems. Wasn’t no problem openin’ it. My lord?”

That sounded like a likely place that someone would hide it. The Talakka were more sensitive to touch than any other creature alive or dead, and he was almost certain the Sons of Asamat didn’t have any Talakka in their band. They weren’t too bright either, the Sons. Likely they had never even thought about ripping up some rotten floorboards. “If what you’ve given me is real, Rory… We could see the Holy Men right away and see about you getting your life back.” So caught up in staring at the brown cloth in his hands, he didn’t see the flicker of uncertainty in Rory’s eyes.

For a fleeting moment, he lifted his eyes, and from atop his horse he could see riders silhouetted against the sunset. He stuffed the object up his sleeve and reached for his sword with his right hand, ready to draw it from its sheath, until one of the rider’s lifted its arm in the air and called a friendly, “James!”

It was only Lyonel and Lana, the blonde twins he hadn’t seen in so long. Despite himself, James spurred his horse forward until all three of them had drawn level with each other. Their Talakka greeted each other with fist bumps and shoulder grabs, though Rory went around and said a quiet welcome to each of their returning comrades. “Were you followed?” was the first thing he asked.

Lyonel with long honey blonde hair braided and draped over his front, decorated with glittering emeralds as dark as onyx, and crystal blue eyes, twisted in his saddle to look behind him. “There were a frightening amount of those Talakka monsters following us for a time, but it seems we’ve lost them now,” he joked, but the rest of his jokes caught in his throat when he saw the taught excitement in the wrinkles of James’s suppressed grin.

His sister Lana, as manly as her brother was feminine, with close cropped wheat blonde hair poking through the forest green helm she wore, her ocean blue eyes small and suspicious, caught the look the same as her twin brother did. “Have you found it?” she said, all seriousness.

“I believe so,” James croaked. He licked his lips nervously and touched the bulge on his forearm from where he’d stuffed the orb. “This could be it. We can finally defeat them. We can make them stop.”

Ever the critical thinker, Lana pursed her lips. “You’ve said that the last three times we thought we found what we wanted, James. This one is probably a fake like all the rest.”

“Don’t be such a killjoy,” Lyonel scolded, shoving Lana. She, nor her horse, suspected it. She fell sideways from the saddle and onto a Talakka, which squawked in alarm beneath her, in turn causing others to squawk loudly and obnoxiously. The shaggy gray horse she’d been riding reared, knocked heads with James’s horse, screaming loudly. All the noise agitated Lyonel’s horse, who danced away and whinnied.

‘We’re going to attract something with all this noise.’ James attempted to reel in his horse and luckily got the poor frightened creature under control. Lana lifted herself away from the Talakka with a look of disgust as she plucked pieces of its flaked skin out of her fur lined parka. Lyonel leapt from his horse to cajole her, while Rory went around to the squeaking Talakka and soothed their alarms.

Silence fell once again. The sun had set. With the Talakka so close in company, he dare not light a torch. They were quite flammable. As well, a flame would make them easier to see than the moon on the blackest of nights. Each of the company looked around anxiously, straining their eyes at every dark shadow to see if they moved. Enemies could be hiding in every corner. The world wasn’t safe.

After a few moments of standing completely still, James gestured to the others that there were no visible enemies and signaled for them to move very, very carefully, as quietly as they could manage. If they got caught now with the Amethyst, the Sons would kill the entire troop and steal the Talakka for their own.

Pressed up against his skin, he could feel the orb warming almost to a burn as it purred, seeking a way from its linen prison to join forces with its master at last. The Amethyst was an entity of its own. A man couldn’t simply chance upon the Amethyst, bond with it and become all powerful for no reason at all. After a time, the Amethyst will kill its old master and search for a new one. Anyone who wasn’t the person the Amethyst chose that tried to bond with it was killed, either from the sheer amount of power it held or by being rejected by it. James knew the Amethyst was meant for him. He was that one man the Amethyst had been searching for these last hundred something years, and now he had it in his possession. With it in his power, James could fulfill the prophecy and destroy the Sons of Asamat, as well as restore some sort of peace to the world that was slowly dying around them.

Victory was still far away, but with the Amethyst, he could almost taste its sweetness. They would glorify him, bask in his greatness, rejoice to his good deeds and dedicate a day of honor to him, like they did to Barl the Blessed and Calix the Courageous. James could be known as James the Amethyst or James the Gallant or James the Glorious. He wasn’t sure which he liked best, but any name the common people gave him would be better than James of the Marsh.

He could see it now. The city of Cadium hadn’t been sacked or touched by plague, so it became the central refuge point where most of the surviving population congregated. There, in the center of the crystal white magic city, a statue in his honor was being raised of purple marble with a striking likeness, where it will stand for thousands of years after he died. People would rub his statue’s boots for good luck, for strength. Books would be published, fat and full of big words describing all of his valiant deeds after acquiring the Amethyst. Maybe he could write an autobiography before he died, about how a comely lad from the Marsh – a stinking, nasty pit in the earth where people died of disease before there was a plague – rose to do great things once power had been given to him.

James pressed his hand eagerly into the lump on his arm once more. All of that could be his, if he just unwrapped the Amethyst and gave it a good squeeze. How marvelous it could be to be revered like a god. They would look to him for guidance, where once they had looked down at him. Confidence swelled in his chest.

… and then pain bloomed in his shoulder as a poison tipped arrow fletched with crow feathers slammed full force into his shoulder, the head bursting free out the front. James cried out in surprise, in pain, in disbelief, as the pain and the poison slammed into his blood, quickening his heartbeat.

“Get down!” Lana screamed, but he was already kneeling, somehow. When did he fall? When he was hit?

Arrows rained down on them from above, the tip of each bubbling with disease and poison. Beside him, Lyonel was frothing at the mouth, a color mix of sickly green and crimson red. An arrow was protruding from his neck. Lana screamed when she saw him like that, but they were drowned out by his own screams when another arrow caught James in the leg.

The noise had probably drawn a second company of Sons of Asamat, bringing their wrath upon them. They knew who James was. He was the Life Bringer, the hope where none had existed. Now, the life sizzled away from him, just as hope for his world’s survival would. The Sons of Asamat would crumble the cities to dust, burn them to ashes and raise a new civilization under their reign.

The arrows stopped. From the corner of his eye, James saw Lyonel’s blue eyes, empty of life, the arrow sticking from his neck. Lana was draped across his chest, her helmetless head pressed into James’s arm. Three arrows were sticking from her back. The horses were all dead or dying too. He could faintly hear their screams over the bubbling in his ears. Why was he still alive? He’d taken two arrows himself, yet life still stuck to him. Did it have something to do with the prophecy? Was he truly invincible?

Knees thudded down beside him. Bone thin fingers tipped with tiny little daggers clawed through his hair with all the gentleness of a tiger, but James was far from feeling pain while poison coursed through his blood. “Finally, it has ended,” cackled a rough voice inches from his ear.

“Rory,” James gurgled. He coughed and blood spattered his lips, chin and cheeks.

Rory cackled again and tore a hole through James’s jacket sleeve, snatching away the Amethyst. He removed the linen and, for the first time in eight years, James saw the Amethyst in all its glory. Light danced on its surface, but it was a dim light, nothing like the brilliant rays he had witnessed once. If only James had known to bond the Amethyst then. This all could have been prevented, the Sons of Asamat squashed before they could grow. “You’re a pompous idiot, James.” Rory stood, hunch gone, skin tan instead of flaking gray, hair thick and brown.


“Betrayed…” James wheezed. All this time, Rory had been his companion, something to talk to when Lyonel and Lana were away. But Lyonel and Lana were dead, and he was dying, and the Amethyst was taken from him.

James’s dreams of being a revered hero died then and there with him. No one would know of his failure because no one knew of his destiny. Humanity would be erased, history destroyed. The world thousands of years from now would never know there had been one man that could save them, one man who had died on the cusp of greatness, his source of power literally in the palm of his hands.

Desmond “Des” Tiny, known as Rory the Talakka for the last two years, looked down at the fallen hero who had never risen and chuckled. “Plot twist,” he told the three dead men. “There is no happy ending.”