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It was the sensation of returning that shocked him the most. Like reemerging from a peaceful rest at the bottom of a sunlit lake, water dappling the light as it reached ever onwards to the murky bottom where naught but Curran’s spirit dwelled. And then, the sensation of return, of reemergence from the water, shocked him like the arrow through his neck.
Cold, so cold. And pain, in his neck, his chest, his head. His lungs burned as if he’d been holding his breath since the dawn of Umora itself. As if he’d inhaled all that murky, sunlit water and only now did it register as foreign inside him.
He coughed, wracked and ragged, and felt the impact of hard and unforgiving stone. It was loud, then quiet. Smashed stone clattered around him, grainy dust painting the air with false mist.
Before him, boots. Black leather. Devoid of anything, of humanity, of light.
Curran pulled himself to his hands and knees at the base of his ruined tomb and looked up at the King of Night.
“Sir Curran,” the man said. His voice was smooth velvet and lion’s roaring and scraping, hardened stone. His smile was wide. His eyes glowed red like burning embers. “Son of a great bear, who brandishes a tree upon his shield. Your spirit is mine, bound to my bidding until I so mercifully choose to release you from the torment of my gaze. Get up.”
Curran stared, horrified and cold and confused. He remembered— No, no he didn’t remember much beyond this. The road. The battle. The river. The feeling of choking on an arrow and his own blood, then nothing at all. He knew where he was, for the family crypt had been a favorite place of his to hide when father flew into one of his rages, but—
No. No.
“I said get up, little knight,” the Stranger said. His voice reeked of pity and disappointment. “Obey me.”
His limbs moved of their own accord and yet under his power all the same. What muscles there were in this spirit of his being ached and strained as Curran stood, shaking, before the Man in Black before him.
“What have you done?” he managed, his whisper cracking with sorrow and pain.
“What I had to do,” the man replied. His sneer sent fear into the pit of Curran’s stomach. “You are not who I would have chosen, Sir Curran of the Hawthorn. Know that before you know anything else. You are my scraps. My second best. You are a knife for me to twist in the belly of my preferred champion and nothing more. Do you understand?”
“Why me?” Curran asked. Tears began to well in his eyes, and shame curdled his stomach at their appearance. He had always been taught that men such as he did not cry. That never stopped him doing it, but he had tried. Oh, how he’d tried.
The Man in Black sneered again, and Curran marveled at the black emptiness of his face that he could not see but rather sense disdain upon.
“You forget even now?” the Stranger asked. “You forget the little boy you met upon the road and told a story of honor and quests? You do not know what became of the young bear Eursulon? Well, let me tell you, Curran. He is wayshadowed here. Trapped in a world not his own, because of you.”
Whatever heart Curran still had in his undying chest went cold and sick and broken.
“No,” he whispered, because he did remember now. Oh, the little bear spirit. Eursulon. He had… He hadn’t meant to… “No, no, I… Please, let me make amends, let me help him return, that is why you raised me is it not? To shepherd him back? To guide him? Please, I never intended—”
The Man in Black flexed his hand, and Curran felt pain, unimaginable, unfathomable pain. He collapsed to the ground, a choked scream trapped in his throat. The golden armor he’d worn into battle so long ago felt so heavy. The arrow through his neck felt like a collar and a gag.
And… his boots were gone. Yes, that’s right, they’d taken them off him, watched him drown in the river and his blood, and they’d taken his boots just as he’d succumbed to death.
The pain let up, and Curran gasped, knees and elbows on the stone floor, trembling under the gaze of the great spirit before him. He did not raise his head.
“Do not speak to me of what you intended, mortal,” the Man in Black said. His voice was sharp, cutting, merciless. “Intentions matter little in the scheme of so many foolish, selfish actions. Should I speak to you of what became of you after you fell? Should I inform you of your father’s betrayal? Or do you already know?”
“I know.” Curran’s voice broke, and the tears began to spill in earnest. “I knew the moment his forces never came to the battlefield.”
“He betrayed you, little knight. How does that honor sit within you now? How does it feel to know you spun a tale of lies to a young cub and trapped him in this world with your foolishness?”
“Please,” Curran begged, “I didn’t mean to, I can help him, I promise, if you’ll only let me—”
“I will let you do nothing,” the Man in Black snapped, “except what I command of you. You are mine now, Curran. And I intend to use you well. Look at me.”
He tried to resist. He did, he really did. But the muscles in his neck and chest disobeyed his wishes, and Curran sat on his haunches and met the gaze of the King of Night.
The cruel smile on his lips chilled Curran to whatever remained of his bones.
“We have much work to do, my champion,” the King of Night said. “And for this work you will need tools. Follow me to the road and receive the boons of your new station.”
Curran had no choice but to obey.
They walked through the empty and decrepit castle that had once been Curran’s home, his bare feet brushing the cobblestones of the courtyard as he trudged behind the King of Night. When they reached the dirt of the road extending out into the night, Curran thought little of stepping out onto the dark—
—and screamed in pain at the touch of his bare feet upon the road.
He collapsed again, palms shredding and bleeding upon contact with the dirt, and he cried out in the desperate hope that the Pilgrim Under Stars would take pity on him and end his suffering. But of course, he did not. He simply sighed, standing a mere few feet away, and said:
“Cease your incessant cries, little knight. This is far from the worst you will be enduring.”
“You…” Curran said, gasping in pain, “you are… roads are… why? Why do this to me?”
The empty void of his face broke into a vicious smile. “You did this to yourself, Curran, when you shed your boots to walk respectfully upon the forest floor. Now stand. I have some items to give you.”
Curran stood, knees shaking with the pain and fear and exhaustion. Blood seeped out of his soles and into the dust and dirt of the road. His hands healed fast, but the blood scabbed over and stained his skin.
The King of Night watched him stand, and then he pulled out of his black cloak two items, one of which sent a shiver down Curran’s back. The first was his shield, rusted and warped but still gleaming beneath the grime, the outline of a Hawthorn tree upon its face. Curran remembered having lost it during the battle at some point. He hadn’t been holding it when he fell.
The second was a sword, bone hilt and black leather grip, that Curran instinctively knew despite it being sheathed could cut spirit and metal and flesh all the same.
Curran looked up at the Man in Black.
“Please don’t make me do this,” he whispered.
The Man in Black sneered. “Pathetic little boy,” he said. “It’s already done. Take your new toys and obey your new master, or I will show you just how much pain I am willing to make you endure.”
He felt himself compelled, by the threat of pain or the Stranger’s words he did not know, and Curran reached out and took the sword and shield from the Man in Black’s hands. Slowly, methodically, he strapped the sword to his belt and hung the shield off his back, adjusting the items so they rested in as comfortable a configuration as he could manage.
His feet stung, bleeding an endless supply of blood into the dirt. The pain was manageable, but present, unignorable.
The King of Night smiled once again.
“You’re learning, Curran,” he said, his voice rattling Curran’s bones. “Good. Perhaps you’ll be truly useful after all.”
“What now?” Curran asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Now we walk the road, as I have done since the dawning of the world, and you will keep pace behind me,” the Man in Black said. “Try anything at all, disobey me even once, and you will learn what pain and fear I can wield in service of my domains.”
“You are undeserving of your power,” Curran said without thinking. Perhaps it was the only thing he could say, while he still had his courage and his heart. “An honored friend you may be, but one with neither friends nor honor. You will not prevail.”
The Man in Black flexed his hand again, and Curran wailed and fell to the dirt of the road as his ghostly body filled with immeasurable pain.
It lasted for so long, longer than Curran could even imagine. The pain of the road touching his hands, his face, his feet, was nothing compared to the devastation wracking him inside. He screamed until his voice went hoarse, until the arrow lodged in his throat felt as if it’d filled the entirety of his lungs.
When the pain finally stopped, he twitched and spasmed in the dirt, bleeding profusely wherever he touched it.
“Get up,” the Man in Black said.
Curran laid on the dirt in the road and felt tears slip out of his eyes.
“I said get up, little knight. Or must I educate you on the consequences of disobedience once again?”
Slowly, Curran pulled his trembling form out of the dirt, managing only to lift himself halfway, to kneeling. He couldn’t manage to raise his eyes to the face of the King of Night. Instead, he stared at the spirit’s boots, watched them fade and merge and mingle with the shadows stretching behind him.
If he could’ve, at that moment, Curran would have wished for death. But not even death had saved him from this fate, had it?
Perhaps this was simply what a fool like him deserved.
“Stand, Curran, and follow me down the road,” the Stranger commanded. “I will not allow you to waste any more of my time.”
Curran’s body moved, unwilling yet obedient all the same, and the King of Night began to walk into the shadows before them. They trudged along, the pair of them, the Man in Black ahead, Sir Curran trailing behind. Curran’s feet left bloody footprints in the dust, footprints only spirits and witches and the very young could see. He stared down, at the place where the road met the Stranger’s shadow, and wept as quietly as he could.