Chapter Twenty-One

Growing up, Janice often heard the story of an old hunter. This hunter had fought and killed just about every prey known to man. Before he’d turned gray, he’d exhausted the lands of Ardennes of any challenge. Every last boar, fowl and deer fell before his spear and bow.

And so he left. He hitched a ride on caravans. Snuck aboard boats sailing the great seas. He traveled farther than any merchant ever had. He set sight on foreign cities and structures no Ardennes dignitary nor missionary had ever dreamed of seeing. No explorer had the drive to go as far and wide as this hunter.

His hunger for more at long last brought him to the coast of Sol Dakar. It was a land of desolate plains where the main source of food were the many beasts dotting its landscape. Nothing existed for as far as the eye could see that was not a hunting ground, making a hunter of even the youngest among the land’s tribes.

But there remained one beast, even the locals dared not target. They called him the Dakar Sayyid. Lord of the plains. The largest, fiercest lion to ever live. Tales reached the hunter far and wide of the Dakar Sayyid’s feats. Destroying 20-men hunting parties without taking a single blow. Devouring whole men in one gulp, slurping them down his massive throat like a snake. Some said he was the size of an entire building. One claw alone was the size of an entire man’s head.

The hunter could not help himself. And so he answered the call of the hunt and plunged himself into the seemingly infinite expanse of those sun-drenched plains. For days he roamed, running out of supplies on the tenth. But he remained. He continued to track, continued to hunt, continued to thirst for blood unlike he ever had before.

He slated his external thirst by drinking from muddy water pits even the hyenas ignored. At night, he roasted antelope to curb his hunger and used their blood as bait for the Dakar Sayyid.

It is unknown how long he persevered in this way until at long last, he spotted his prey. Or perhaps, as the story was often told, he had, in fact, become the prey spotted.

The hunter had entered the plains young, virile, with long flowing locks of luscious blonde hair. Standing atop a giant hill where he could see the land disappear over the horizon as the sun solemnly set, the hunter, now at the story’s conclusion, beard fiercely gray and thick, wrinkles spreading like spider’s webs under his eyes, watched the Dakar Sayyid skulking along the bottom of the hill.

It slithered among the shadows as the heat pounded into the hunter’s sunburned neck. Its nostrils flared and snorted as the hunter’s eyes stung with tears. Its tail wagged. It bounded from craggy rock to dusty mound blowing fumes of dirt into the air.

And the hunter’s anger seethed like never before.

He would not be ignored.

He raised his spear into the air, bellowing the mightiest roar his throat could muster, ignoring all pretense of subterfuge or skill. This was to be a battle of the most base martial prowess. Spear vs claw. Man vs beast.

The Dakar Sayyid met his challenge and bounded up the hill as the hunter’s scream rose in volume. He screamed until his voice was nothing more than a guttural, savage roar. The Dakar Sayyid never roared.

Janice always remembered that detail. It was the most important one. The lion never made a sound. It didn’t need to.

The clash was swift and beautiful in its simplicity. The tip of the spear, aimed with years of expertise and steely cold valor, broke upon the massive beasts skull as claws sunk deep into the hunter’s thigh.

The lion slowly turned back upon the hunter, who fell to his knees. Blood seeped down the beast’s eyes, yet it did not seem to obscure its vision. The hunter laughed.

He had at long last found his match.

“C’mon, you son of a bitch,” he shouted.

The lion approached, and the hunter could feel its hot breath blowing viciously upon his cheek with every exhausted breath snorting from the beast’s black nostrils.

The hunter clung desperately to the shattered end of his spear. He could envision himself plunging it into the lion’s neck, feel the blood pouring down his chest. He could hear the eruption of applause among his peers as he finished the tale of how he slew the mighty Dakar Sayyid. The largest lion ever seen by man. The deadliest beast to ever roam the whole of the world.

He could see himself dying, old and safe, plastered in gold, showered in praise. The greatest hunter to ever live.

He thought all thought all these things as the Dakar Sayyid’s teeth crunched into his cheekbones, and he continued to think them as his head slid slowly into the beast’s gullet, his entire body soon slipping into that seemingly endless expanse.

Janice often heard that one’s life flashed before their eyes at the end. How fitting, that for the hunter, his life flashed forward. Fitting, for the hunter’s tale was often told as a cautionary one. To not aim your goals too high, or you will be swallowed whole. Or something to that effect.

Janice often dreamed of the hunter and the lion. She watched from afar, wondering what might she have done in his place. What he could have possibly done to slay the monstrous beast. It was only a story, often told with little detail. But with each subsequent dream, she added more backstory, more flavor to every moment in the tale of the hunter and the lion.

But in the end, the hunter always lost. Even she dared not divert from that one, existential truth. Light is always swallowed by the abyss.

Janice’s eyes darted open. She had not remembered falling asleep. And panic took hold, as she arose to an unfamiliar bed, a room too small and unfurnished to be in her father’s home.

She thought for just a fleeting second she was back there. But then she remembered what happened. The memory of the past several days groggily came back to her. And fear once again gripped her heart.

She remembered the woman at the burning stake. And she remembered the hideous screams through the night of the dying. They followed her throughout her desperate flight through the trees as she followed the naked woman she had saved and who now promised to save her in return.

In that race through the trees, that did not seem to be the case to Janice though. She struggled to keep pace, and at times, it appeared as though the woman would disappear entirely into the thickness of the forest foliage, abandoning Janice to the unknown horrors, who’s screeches never seemed to get closer but never seemed to retreat into the darkness either.

But Janice managed to keep pace, and though her muscles ached from the past week’s travels, she never once slipped or tripped. She bounded effortlessly over every branch or bush that threatened to impede her path. She would not be deterred from reaching her target.

When at last, the stranger came to a stop, Janice found herself in front of a quaint cabin tucked into the side of a giant rock face, blockaded on all sides by towering spruce trees.

Janice wordlessly followed the stranger inside the decrepit, moss-covered walls of the cabin. Once inside, the stranger opened a door into a small room and motioned to a bed inside.

Janice remembered the flowing curls of the stranger engulfing her upper body, obscuring any attempt to get a lasting attempt at studying her face. But Janice did not have the energy to try too hard. With the screams of the still unknown monsters in her ear, Janice was too exhausted to ask questions or to scrutinize her situation. And so she looked at the plain, unadorned bed with a creaky wooden frame and thin, flat mattress, and she lost herself in its creases. And sleep came in a whirlwind.

She did not know how long the sleep lasted.

Remembering herself and her situation, Janice took careful accounting of her body and all her possessions. Two hands, two feet, a nose, a dagger. Her satchel and all her herbs and spices. She found the obsidian stone in her pocket and gripped its edges until it no longer felt smooth but rough and biting upon her calloused fingers.

And for just a moment, she was glad her father was dead.

And for just a moment, she couldn’t understand why such a thought would overtake her.

And for just a moment, tears came.

When Janice found the resolve to compose herself, she arose from the bed and began to study her surroundings a little more closely. There was no window. No art adorned the walls. There was a bookcase but only a smattering of old, decaying books that appeared to have been abandoned for centuries.

She looked back upon the bed she had just been sleeping in and noticed the dark stains upon what must have once been a pure, white mattress. But now it was brown and musty, soiled again and again by fluids Janice did not have the stomach to think about.

She approached the door grimacing at the sound of the floor groaning with every step. She wished to be silent but could not intellectualize a reason why. Surely the stranger did not mean her harm. She listened and heard little other than the slow, steady breath that escaped her lips.

She focused on her breathing, hoping to control the pace and sound of it. Hoping that, if nothing else, her existence here would not be betrayed by her body’s need for oxygen. As though a monster awaited just outside the door, awaiting any sign of life to come pouncing inside and to snuff that life out.

Janice thought of the stranger, who had led her here. She thought of her powerful body and glistening skin. The head of dark curls Janice wished she had possessed instead of the long strings her grandmother lovingly called a mop-top.

She listened again, focusing beyond her own breathing. The screams had gone away. Perhaps it was daytime. But Janice thought it unlikely she could have slept an entire night away. But judging on the alertness of her eyes and spryness of her limbs, perhaps she had gotten a full night’s rest for once after all.

With her body fit and the screams of the dying a distant memory, Janice summoned the courage to open the door and fully explore her surroundings.

She slowly turned the handle, wincing as the old cabin once again proved to be impervious to creeping.

“No need to be shy,” came a voice in her head. The same as the stranger’s from the previous day.

“Where are you,” Janice replied timidly.

“Down the hall, in the den,” came the stranger’s voice, this time an external shout from the dark hallway before her.

Janice looked to the door to her left. She remembered it being the front door. An easy path to freedom. Were she a coward.

I am no coward, she told herself, as she squared her shoulders and stomped forward into the darkness of the hallway. The darkness soon gave way to candlelight as the hallway opened up into a large room.

A fur bear rug with the mighty beast’s face still grimacing at its edges lined the floor where the stranger sat, cross-legged, sword in one hand, sharpening block in the other. She was fully clothed now, armored in what must have once been a beautiful lavender gambeson, emroidered with the visage of twin golden lions clawing into the air in opposite directions upon the breast. Multiple tears ruined the stitching, and it appeared the sleeves had been destroyed with only the faintest of fraying near the collar hinting at their previous existence.

Soot stains from the pyre still caked the stranger’s bare arms, as she wordlessly slid steel against block, watching her work with careful attentiveness.

Janice stood at the precipice of the room, taking it all in before she dared enter, almost as if she were awaiting permission. Unlike the room she came from, this one was adorned with all manner of art and bookcases. Tapestries cascaded down the walls depicting a myriad of colorful tales, while bookcases rose to the height of what must have been a 20-foot tall ceiling, filled to the brim with immaculately bound books with pristine leather and carefully etched titles.

Janice was in awe that such a room could exist within the drabby old cabin.

She found herself drawn toward one tapestry in particular and walked toward, forgetting all about her strange host of whom she still knew nothing about.

Unlike most of the tapestries depicting multiple people in a grand collage of action and violence, this one depicted a singular figure. A woman from the chest up, her face turned to the side almost as if she were too embarrassed to look forward. Her skin was dark and embraced by shadows while a pair of disembodied eyes studied her from behind.

The colors were what initially drew Janice in. Not garish and seemingly splashed with every color in the rainbow, this work was absent of color almost entirely. The whole piece elicited a dark and foreboding feeling within Janice. But it was the eyes that really did it. Not the disembodied ones, but the eyes of the woman depicted. Fierce but calm. Their soft green the only color in the peice. A light within the storm of her surroundings.

“That’s Loa,” the stranger said, still not looking up from her work, the slice of her sword against the stone resounding throughout the room.

“What’s Loa,” Janice asked, as she stood before the tapestry, studying its every curve and corner.

“Loa is a type of spirit. You don’t get many of them around these corner. Especially not these days. But Loa still listen. If you speak to them.”

Janice turned to the stranger. “Do you speak to them?”

The stranger nodded. “Some.” She paused and looked upon Janice. Those eyes. “Though perhaps I should not have. Not this time at least.”

The stranger returned to sharpening her sword as Janice continued to walk about the room, this time admiring the books, studying their names. The Secret Life of Sunflowers. A Certain Hunger. Between Two Fires. Women Who Fly.

“There’s no time for reading, I’m afraid,” the stranger said as she finished her sharpening and stood up, sliding her sword into its scabbard, equipping it at her side.

“Who are you,” Janice finally asked, wondering to herself why it had taken so long. She looked upon the woman feeling a stirring of remembrance as though she had known her already. But she knew she hadn’t. Looking fully upon the stranger now, studying her every movement, Janice knew what that stirring was. She looked upon the woman Janice wished to be.

“My name is Chigusa.”

“Chigusa?” Janice stared at her dumbly. She knew that name but also knew that it could not possibly be the very same person who stood before her. “Lioness Chigusa?” she asked meekly.

“You know me?”

“Do I know you?” Tears welled in Janice’s eyes. “I adore you! You and Tiger Marie! Marius’s Marauders! Thirty-seven kills in the Crossroads! I...I…”

“Never thought I’d find a fan this far out in the middle of nowhere,” Chigusa said with a chuckle.

“I’m your biggest fan,” Janice gushed. “I want to be just like you.”

“No. No, you don’t,” Chigusa said with a stern look, freezing Janice in place, as she turned to leave.

“Where are you going?”

“It is still night, and I must hunt,” she said with her back to Janice.

“Those things from before?”

“Those are not things. They are people. Living and breathing just as you and I do now. They turned into what you heard by my Loa.”

“That’s awful,” Janice said. “Can I help?”

Chigusa turned to face her.

“These people are no longer who they once were. They are nightmare versions of themselves. Only thinking enough to claw and gnash their way into the heart of any living creature they come across. They do not listen to reason, and they will not take pity on a helpless child.”

“I’m not helpless,” Janice quickly replied with iron in her voice.

“You are not? Perhaps this is so. You must have traveled far by yourself to be here. And you are no stranger to steel.”

Janice reached into her boot and found that the dagger had been returned to her.

“I don’t have a sword anymore,” Janice hesitantly said.

“I can lend you one. But I will not be responsible for you. These creatures move with speed and ferocity. We must be their equal. And to do that, we must act without thinking.”

“Act without thinking?”

“You will die if you come with me,” Chigusa said bluntly.

“I’ve made it so far already,” Janice said. She stared at the warped and scruffy floorboards thinking of everything those words meant. She thought about Lawrence and Alistair and if she had been correct in abandoning them.

She thought that if she had not been so eager to abandon Lawrence the first time, perhaps her father might yet live.

Certainly if the Lioness had been there. A true hero. A woman. One of the few to have made a name for herself during the 20 Years’ War.

“You will be here when I return,” Chigusa said. She did not ask it as a question. Janice watched her lithe, limber figure bound steadily for the exit. Screams of anguish erupted from the darkened abyss of the outside as she opened the door, before disappearing into it.

Janice thought for a moment of following. She imagined the grit and determination it would take to do so. The plucky young warrior, following alongside her idol. Not taking no for an answer. It would have been the beginning of a true hero’s tale.

But Janice was tired. And she was beaten. And she did not have the fire to be the hero of her own story. She wondered if any of them ever did at one point. Had Chigusa, when confronted with her first duel at the Crossroads, hidden behind her fellow warriors, resting for the next day of stress and uncertainty in the trenches? Or did she fight at soon as the opportunity presented itself?

Janice did not take long to ponder these thoughts. The more the debate raged inside her, the further Chigusa no doubt moved from the cabin. The further into the abyss she sank, and the opportunity for Janice to fight and survive slipped away. The more she thought, the more certain her death became if she stepped a single foot outside the cabin.

The door was open, Janice staring into the abyss for far too long. Until finally, she reached out a hand and shut it closed.

There would come another chance to fight. And plenty more chances to die. Of this, she was certain. But not before she found her sister. And not before she felt her stomach full one last time with a warm meal and soft bed.

Janice shut her eyes as the door creaked shut, deafening the sounds of horror the forest provided. She returned to the stained, dilapidated bed and collapsed. It did not take long to sleep.