The scenery in the city, ghastly and still, evoked the sensation of a city locked in time, an alternate, macabre reflection of another Beregost-that-might-have-been. The rising blood red sun glinted off of the pooling red ichor in the streets, dripping malevolently from the frozen spires and mounds piled high in the streets, over doorframes, weighing heavily on rooftops ill suited for the out-of-season blizzard. Not a soul moved in the streets, not a single person to be found.
The sky was clear, but the air hung over the grisly scene like a thick web, a choking invisible smog of utter stillness and silence. Only the tiniest, arhythmic
drip... drip... ... ... drip... gave any impression that time itself was still passing.
...c-c-c...cr....cr-r-rra-a-a-ack!
The quick, sharp crescendo from silence to the whiplike cracking of ice echoed through the alleyways, startling a flight of confused birds from their perches in a tree near the town square, sending another red-tinged flurry to the slickened roads from its bowed, prematurely withered branches. The door to the Risen Phoenix Inn shuddered beneath the cracks forming in the ice, and lay still.
BANG.
BANG.
Another shudder. The silence around the dull thuds behind the door contrasted so sharply that, were anyone nearby to hear, the sound of a mouse scampering across the cobbles between the sounds would have been deafening.
CRUNCH.
The door flew open, sending jagged shards of ice, like that of a shattering, bloody mirror, out into the streets to explode into thousands of crystalline fragments. From the gloom of a dying fire within, a handful of the townsfolk shuffled forth, squinting and blinking in surprise at the dull red-and-ochre glow outside that greeted them, contrasting with the brilliant sheen of the morning sun they so expected. The tavernmaster and innkeeper Samuel, leading the group, surveyed the nightmare before them, stepping out of the doorframe and rubbing at his forehead worriedly. The town drunk stumbled out, Radger the badger cradled protectively in his arms, blinking and placing his footfalls carefully on the ice-slick roads. No one spoke. Barely anyone could even *breathe* for want of the words to waste it on. There were none.
Nothing could have prepared these people for this.
Amidst the group, an auburn-haired, hazel-eyed young woman came forth, guiding an aged woman into the air with an arm about her waist, holding her hand. The poor old thing looked to be in distress, holding a thick blanket tightly about her shoulders, clutching the young woman's hand with her free one and wailing softly about her children. The younger woman spoke in soft, but harried reassurances to her, patting her hand, guiding her steps. A taller Ffolk man in an overcoat and a wide-brimmed, feathered hat walked just before her, leading their way. He was not four steps beyond the door before stopping to stare in a slow pan about what had become of the town in horrified disbelief.
"Carah..."
Carah looked.
And she stared as well.
============
It had begun as a single, excited cry.
Carah sat at the desk in her and Emrys's rented room in Beregost, slumped with head resting in tented fingers as she pored over yet another ream of paperwork for the land purchase in town. The fading light from the window had necessitated a candle to be lit, and she rubbed at her eyes. That's when she heard it.
"Look, Mother... it's snowing!"
She was certain she'd heard that wrong. She was getting tired, and besides, it wasn't in her to eavesdrop even on conversations just outside of her window, particularly not those shouted by excitable children. But then she heard it again. And the gasps of wonder that followed, many of which were adult voices.
And then had come the screams.
When Carah had run to the window, slamming her palms against the sill to watch slack jawed and wide-eyed at the sight of
red snow, in Flamerule, no less, an icy chill ran up her spine. And then she had felt the draft on her fingers, the harsh winter wind blasting in from the cracks in the window frame. A horrible, profound sense of
wrongness wormed its way into her very core, eating away at her insides where she was powerless to get at it. Distant peals that sounded like thunder... or like
collisions... echoed deep in the distance, the blood red sky permeating everything with an unmistakable stain of dread.
Horrible, unsettling memories locked deep within her mind clanged away at their prisons, like unseen beasts banging rhythmically against iron cellar doors behind which they had been sealed, slumbering away until awoken just now.
Scrambling with fumbling, shaking fingers amongst the myriad trinkets hanging by various small chains and leather throngs about her neck, she turned from the window, holding one amulet's medallion before her lips. She whispered the command to activate it... and nothing happened. She closed her eyes, drew in a calming breath, and tried again. Still nothing.
Desperately railing against panic, she steeled herself, trying to block out the confused shouting and screaming that came from the terrified townsfolk without, concentrating deeply on the magic of the Sending amulet. There was a tickle, a tingle not unlike the feeling of an insect crawling across the back of your hand just in that gray moment the instant before you fell asleep, pulled back into your waking mind without truly knowing for sure if the sensation was real or imagined. Either way, however, the connection was not established, the magic didn't burn, the familiar echo in her mind never came. It wasn't the amulet, she could sense...
it was as if the Weave were not even there.
A sharp rapping on the door startled her so badly she clipped off a shriek, whirling to face it before swallowing hard, annoyed at herself for being so jumpy. Marching to it, she flung it open, and looked hopefully
past the innkeeper's face when she saw him standing there.
"Miss Kerr, everything all right up here?" the man asked, insistently. And though he was doing his best to appear put together and in control, Carah could see it written all over his face that the poor man was just as confused, harrowed, and lacking in explanations as she was.
She nodded. "I'm fine, Samuel. What's going on?"
"Nobody rightly knows," the man replied, running a hand through his hair, nervously. "It's right
panic out there right now, ma'am. Red snow and freezin' winds in the middle of summer? Strange
empty feelings by everyone sensitive to the Weave? Bloody hells, even the priests across the way look like they're panicking."
Carah's eyes widened further, feeling a cold iron hand tightening around the pit of her stomach. This was sounding worse and worse by the second. She flicked her hazel eyes beyond the man once more and down the hall, hoping against hope to see her husband running up behind him, and again, she found herself met with disappointment.
Samuel noticed. "Emrys should be back before nightfall, ma'am," he reassured her. "He always is, you know that."
Returning her gaze to the innkeeper, she managed a single, tight nod, exhaling sharply. And although she found suppressing her raging worry to be impossible, the face she put on must have been satisfactory enough for the older man. "Tell me what you need help with, Samuel," she asked, insistently. She knew her husband to know he had the good sense to come straight away if anything like this was happening elsewhere, and she wasn't going to do something so useless as pace back and forth by the fire in the meantime. Not while there were people right here, right
now who were lost, afraid, and ill-prepared for an out-of-nowhere winter blizzard.
