The Ancient and Exalted
A young man goes on a dangerous journey to confront his grandmother who is afflicted by a terrible magical malady. A fantasy-horror short story
Twelve figures in golden armor came to our farmstead at night. They were here for Gran, of course. In the last years she had fought with the priest every time she visited the village. More and more of the forest she loved so much was being felled, the timber carried away. Yet as it diminished, the Temple grew more and more opulent on the profits, she had told me with growing anger.
My parents sent me to her with baked goods, as well as spices and seeds traded from the far reaches of the Empire sometimes. I never complained about going far into the woods to visit her cottage, because I loved the forest too. Gran had taught me everything I knew about it, and the creatures in it.
Four years ago, Gran escaped on the night before her sixtieth birthday, the age of Exaltation. Like all righteous men and women she was supposed to take the ceremony at the Temple that would have given her a peaceful, dignified death through poison. In her mind, it would have been a final insult, to meekly take the fatal chalice from the priest. Instead she had run into the deepest parts of the woods and hadn’t been seen since. Gran had always been headstrong.
Scripture was clear on the fate of those whose pride led them to believe they could live beyond the number of years the Gods bestowed. They became mockeries of their former self, so much stronger in their power but their minds turned to nothing but destruction. The very land around them became cursed.
The Temple posted a bounty on Gran’s head, to kill her before her growing power turned the whole forest into a nightmare of monsters and strangeness. First some of the local woodsmen tried to apprehend her, and when none of them came back, the Temple increased the bounty. Mercenaries from further abroad arrived in the village and, after bragging greatly about easy money gained and making a nuisance of themselves in general, entered the deep forest. We never saw them again.
Gran had always known every turn, every glade and clearing here like the back of her hand, had been famous for it, in fact. I think I inherited my own blessing from her. We lived far from the cities of the Empire, but the tales of talking wolves, walking plants and other strange things that come out of our forest had spread, and the priest finally sent out a call for the Guardians of Exaltation to find and destroy what Gran had become.
The Guardians were all old, likely only a few years away from their own Exaltation, the men’s beards long and grey and so was the women’s braided hair under the golden helmets. Their powers were strong but not yet uncontrollable and their minds still unclouded.
Few could stand up to those who had defied Exaltation. Only those who were at the very peak of their strength stood a chance, which meant men and women who themselves were nearly at the age of Exaltation themselves. Only the most devout, capable and brave chose the path of the Guardian. They were revered and feared in equal measure. Both the Empire and the Temple gave them whatever they requested, because nearly any price was worth getting rid of Abominations.It pained me to think of Gran as such, but that was what she had become.
The Guardians wore shining armor such as I had never seen, made of golden metal that was painted in motifs of plants, birds and other animals. Rather than being applied with brushes the colors seemed to have somehow burned into the metal itself. I learned later that these were the product of Artisans, a very rare godly power that only one in a thousand-thousand possessed. Guardians were given such treasures to wear, so that none would doubt their authority. None of them gave their names. We were only to address their leader, and even him only as the Eldest.
The Guardians conscripted me to lead them into the forest. Papa had shouted, Mama had cried, but you did not deny Guardians. My parents were devout people who were deeply ashamed of Gran’s sin and knew their protestations were in vain.
I was only seventeen then, but the Forest Reckoning the Gods had blessed me with was as strong as in someone twenty years older. I could feel the land for miles around as if it was part of my body, and I always found the best path through it. Living creatures nearby were like spots of warmth to the Reckoning, and few animals, or people, could hide from me under the forest’s canopy.
The Guardians had questioned the priest on everything he knew, and he told them about Mama and Papa, and me. My talent was well known in the village even then, and I cursed my youthful bragging about it that now set me on a path to help those tasked with killing Gran. A few of the Guardians had some ranging skill, but not of the magical kind. They thought I stood the best chance of leading them to their quarry quickly.
I understood the depth of her sin even then but still it pained me to think of Gran as a mad Abomination, and I could not bear the thought to see what had become of her, but I could not defy the Guardians. We set out early in the morning, before sunrise.
Around noon we were deep into the forest. I felt through my Reckoning that Gran was somewhere westwards, toward the mountains. Her power was like a distant fire to my magical senses, indistinct but undeniably present.
As we wandered further, the land slowly changed. The trees had strange, twisted shapes. We observed a fox standing in front of a rabbit burrow, waiting quietly as a mother rabbit carried out her kits one by one and piled them in front of the predator. Neither animal paid us any heed when we approached.
The fox died without making a sound when one of the Guardians ran it through with a spear. He died himself a little later when he stepped on a bright green vine that suddenly sprang up and wrapped itself around him. Flower and roots sprouted from the plant as it engulfed the man, and their searching tendrils found the gaps in his magnificent armor, then dug into the flesh.
I saw the vine turn bright red as his blood was sucked out of his body, and heard the sound of breaking bones as the plant grew inside and through him, pushing aside muscle and organs with tremendous force like a sapling breaking through a pavement stone. For every hack and slash from our blades it regrew more vines and tendrils so fast that our attacks made no difference.
Then one of the Guardians laid their hands on the vine and chanted words I did not understand. These were powerful abjuration spells that stopped the plant from regrowing, and only with their aid were we able to cut the vines apart, but it was already too late. I panicked when I saw the twisted lump of flesh, plant matter and bent metal that had been a man only moments ago and tried to run away, but the Eldest moved with speed I would not have thought possible in one so old and caught up with me in the blink of an eye.
I fought to get free but my punches did not even seem to cause him pain. Defeated, I had no choice but to lead them further. I consoled myself with the thought that if Gran was not stopped the entire forest might become a haunted wasteland, and we would have to abandon our village.
Gran’s great power had been her influence on living things. She could heal both plants and animals, and make them grow in ways far beyond what mere breeders and farmers could achieve. Her garden had been a place of wonders, and the animals she kept were perfect specimens. Now this power that had been so benevolent had become the stuff of nightmares.
We grimly marched on, until night fell and we had to set up camp. One of the Guardians drew a magical circle of protection around the campfire. She walked around it, strewing the ground with a powdery substance that looked like chalk with flecks of red and black in it.
Then she gave each of us a small pinch of the stuff and told us to swallow it. Her fellow Guardians did so without question or complaint, but when I hesitated she told me that once she spoke the word to seal the spell anything alive inside the circle not protected by consuming the powder would instantly burn with fire so hot it would melt steel. I swallowed, trying not to gag as the dry, bitter stuff went down my throat.
We would be safe for the night, provided everyone stayed inside the protective circle. They told me to rest while they would take turns standing guard. It would not stay quiet long. I managed to doze off fitfully and awoke suddenly to the sound of my mother’s voice calling.
It was pitch dark, and only a small fire in the middle of the protective circle provided light. Heavy cloud cover hid the moon and stars. I heard my mother in great distress, shouting to her son to help her, clearly in fear for her life. So convinced was I that I sprang up and tried to run to her aid, but the Guardians wrestled me to the ground before I could exit the circle.
My mother’s cries suddenly stopped and instead there was a long, piercing shriek as if from a wounded animal that made my spine turn to ice. On hearing it several Guardians cried out joyously and ran outside the circle, as if they had heard their most beloved calling to them. Two were killed when they tried to restrain their maddened fellows. The others we never saw again, though we heard screams in the distance, of men and something else.
In the morning we counted seven lost. We only found one body nearby, it was the female Guardian who had conjured the circle of protection. Her body was torn to pieces, parts of her and her mangled armor strewn over the forest floor. What remained of her face looked like it had been hacked by a giant bird’s beak until it was nothing but ruin. I can not say what manner of creature had been responsible but we found a few feathers that looked like a mockingbird’s, if a mockingbird were the size of a bull. I had never heard of such a thing’s existence, not even in the darkest fairy tales, and would never encounter anything like it again.
The remaining four Guardians and I marched on in the morning, haggard with lack of sleep and trembling after the terrors of the night. I tried to convince them that it was too dangerous, but the Eldest was implacable. He could not entirely hide his own fear though. Sometimes he would take his huge golden battle axe out of its scabbard and hold it menacingly, only to put it away again moments later.
As the sun came up, we saw that the sky was an odd half-green half-blue color, and strange stars could be seen wheeling there despite the brightness of the sunlight. We had to walk slowly and cautiously, because the very ground was changing. One Guardian simply sank like a stone in what at first looked like an unremarkable piece of forest floor, but as he stepped on it it became liquid, and he was gone without a trace. I could feel something was shadowing us, and the Eldest started shouting abuse and challenges into the forest.
I led them onward, but my Reckoning failed me and we somehow wandered in a wide circle twice. I didn’t know if this was because of Gran misleading us intentionally somehow or if her mere presence affected the forest. We lost another Guardian on the way, and when circling back we only saw his skeleton lying inside faded and stained armor, as if he had lain there for a decade. Only the Eldest and his lieutenant, a towering brute of a woman, remained.
We wandered on when suddenly the lieutenant yelped in pain, slapping her big, meaty hand against her exposed chin. I saw a stain of blood there, her own. She grimaced in disgust and held up the thing that had stung her. It was a huge gnat, but with the tail of a hornet, and three pairs of wings. It’s hind quarter was torn because it had left its barbed stinger inside the woman’s chin, with a poison sac attached that was still convulsing and pumping its content into the lieutenant’s blood.
She screamed for us to burn out the wound and I quickly kindled a fire. The Eldest heated a dagger and cut out a chunk of her flesh around the stinger which was lodged so deeply we could not pull it out. We bound the wound as well as we could manage.
Through all this the powerful woman would not shed a single tear or barely even complain. I knew the pain alone would have made me weep like a child, but this Guardian who must have had the blood of the great Northern tribes was almost entirely unmoved and she seemed to be able to carry on as if nothing had happened. The flying monstrosity’s poison was in her body though and her demeanor became more and more erratic, and then she suddenly foamed at the mouth, yelling nonsense, and tried to strike the Eldest with her war hammer.
We shouted at her, hands raised, and when she wouldn’t relent tried to wrestle her to the ground and bind her, but I was barely even able to hang on to her as she raged and threw me around like a rag doll. She would not listen to reason, might not even have been able to understand. Finally the Eldest drew his battleaxe and split her skull before she killed both of us. I lost all sense of time after that.
With only the Eldest and me remaining we finally reached a clearing where we found a hut on top of two scrawny, bird-like legs as tall as trees. When we approached cautiously, the hut turned out to be a monstrously bloated, hollow acorn many yards across, with holes gnawed in it like windows, and the legs were gnarled, twisted wood that grew out of the underside.
The Eldest walked towards it purposefully, battleaxe drawn, shouting to whoever was in the acorn hut to come out. There was no reply, and the Eldest took something long and gleaming out of his satchel and pointed it at the hut. A blast of fire shot from the thing in his hand, setting one of the legs aflame. I heard a feminine shriek, and the hut started moving. It flailed its huge legs, and stomped towards the Eldest, who turned to run, but even he was too slow. The hut kicked him like a child’s ball, and he flew twenty feet and smashed against a tree.
Any other man would have been slain instantly, of that I was certain, but his magical fortitude kept him alive. I watched from a distance, too afraid to move from my hiding place in the shadows. The Eldest lay there, specks of blood blowing from his mouth with every breath, while the hut fell over, consumed by the flames.
I hid in shock, too tired and confused to run. The Eldest was still alive, but breathing shallowly and not moving. In time, I heard a buzzing noise that came nearer and nearer. My Reckoning was very weak and yet I felt a powerful presence approaching. I cowered there at the trunk of a tree, waiting, unable to move.
A cloud of bees, beetles, wasps, flies, dragonflies, and gnats was swarming around me. From beyond the trees, even more were appearing, and at the center of the cloud I saw a figure. It was Gran, stark naked but for a shroud of crawling insects that covered her in a mass of thousands of gleaming little bodies. She stalked towards the Eldest, cat-like, walking on all fours like a beast.
I still could not move, and watched as she sniffed at him, darting forward and then back again like a hungry animal, her circling cloud of insects making her look like she was in the center of a small storm. The Eldest was barely alive, but I saw fear in his eyes. He went for something gleaming hanging around his neck with his one good arm. He fumbled with the object and it kept slipping out of his blood-stained fingers.
Gran made a growling noise, deep and much louder than I could have imagined, like an angry bear, and looked about to pounce and tear him to pieces. I gathered all my courage and stood up, crying Gran’s name, drawing her attention from the Eldest to myself. She turned to me, drawing her lips back and flashing her teeth, teeth that had always been straight, white and perfect. They still gleamed white but now they were sharp and long, the fangs of a predator. The sight of it, the wrongness of it in that familiar face, dropped me to my knees.
Fat, armored beetles hid most of her, but where I could see it, Gran’s wrinkly skin covered arms and legs that were rippling with muscle and resembled a cat’s limbs. Her fingers were longer than they had been, and I could see curved claws sliding out of sheaths at the tips. This hideous apparition that I could no longer think of as the Gran I loved approached me, to disembowel me with a single swipe and tear out my throat with those fangs.
Resigned to my fate, I waited for death. The insects flying all around were settling on everything nearby, crawling over my body and my face, but I barely noticed them. When her face was just inches from mine I looked into her eyes and I thought I saw a glimmer of recognition. She must have felt some kinship, or I knew she would have torn me apart then and there.
She spoke to me, and I recognized her voice, but the words made no sense. Living past Exaltation must have scrambled her tongue. I could only stammer her name as she examined my face, as if trying to remember if she knew me, and why.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Eldest stand up, using the broken shaft of his battle axe as a crutch. He started walking toward us, dragging a broken leg, with one hand holding the gleaming object that had been hanging around his neck. His lips moved as if he was speaking a prayer, or maybe it was an incantation, and the gleaming thing started to give off light.
Gran must have seen his reflection in my eyes, and whirled around, sending the beetles covering her into a frenzy. Their buzzing was like a storm in my ears. The Eldest threw himself forward with his incredible magical strength and embraced Gran in a bear hug.
They roared and screamed as they fought, and I desperately looked on. Gran’s wicked talons gouged long, bright scars into the Eldest’s armor, who somehow still held onto the thing in his hand which was now glowing as bright and gave off heat like a campfire. Gran must have realized that the glowing stone was dangerous and tried to get away from the Eldest, but he clamped onto her with all his might and she could not disengage.
As strong as the Eldest was, he had already been injured and I could see he was succumbing to her onslaught. He screamed at me, trying to jolt me out of my stupor. As I saw the old man bleeding from many wounds, half broken, with the Abomination that used to be Gran tearing at him, I had to make a decision.
I drew my dagger and jumped into the fray, trying to get a hold on Gran, but the swarming, biting beetles on her body made it nearly impossible. I plunged my dagger into the mass of insects over and over and could feel the blade deflected every time on their gleaming, black shells, leaving Gran’s flesh unharmed.
The three of us fought under the strange, blue-green sky while the gleaming object in the Eldest’s gauntleted hand heated up until it was like standing next to a forge. With a roar of defiance the Eldest shoved the object into Gran’s side and its heat killed or sent fleeing the beetles of her living armor.
Seeing the opening I rammed my dagger into Gran’s exposed, bleached looking flesh. I felt her weakening but even this wound did not stop her. I pulled out the dagger and stabbed her again, over and over, yet she would not die. Run, screamed the Eldest, and I let go, leaving the two titans of magical power embraced in their struggle.
Gran was shrieking like a demon, surely from physical pain, but I could feel the pain of betrayal in that sound. The last I saw of both was how with a vicious swipe the Eldest’s face tore like moldy linen, his jaw suddenly loose in her hand, yet still he held on to her somehow, preventing her from getting away. I ran, the light from the gleaming object burning as brightly as a summer sun behind me.
I was not very far yet when a noise that was so loud I felt it more than I heard it shook me and threw me for yards. I think I passed out because when I came to the entire forest seemed on fire. Trees had been turned into little more than sawdust and smoldering bits of bark by the blast. Where the battle had been was now a wall of roaring fire. Miraculously alive, I ran towards home, my Reckoning working again. I knew Gran and the Eldest were both dead.
This happened more than forty years ago. In the years after Gran’s death I prayed often at the Temple, for her soul and my own, and I prayed to the Gods that my own parents would not be so foolish as to flee their Exaltation and would devoutly drink the chalice of poison on their sixtieth birthday. They both did, eventually, and I was there to kiss them farewell, and we smiled at each other knowing we would meet again in the House of the Gods.
I joined the order of the Guardians of Exaltation, where my Reckoning was useful uncounted times in our search for sinners that had fled. I am the Eldest of my cohort now, only a few years away from my own Exaltation.
I carry a Luminous Device on a silver chain around my neck, the last resort when everything else has failed. We have orders to find an old hermit who disappeared more than a decade ago, his current age rumored to be seventy-five. The mountain where he is hiding is shrouded in an eternal rain of grey ash. May the Gods protect us. My fellow Guardians are nervous, despite their great age and power. I am ready. We leave in the morning.
