An Encroaching Darkness
The beginning of the end
Matthias looked over the top of the battlement, peering down the hill to the south. Where once there had been a lively, noisy village, now there was only darkness. Despite the noonday sun threatening to cook his head inside his helmet, Matthias could not make out even an outline of one of the many miners’ homes whose roofs he knew so well, if only ever from a distance. Where that impossible dome of inky blackness had come from, he could not imagine, but impossible or not, there it was: silent and unmoving as a mountain, and nearly as tall. Matthias glanced over his shoulder at the peaks that sheltered Carbrum on the west and north and then back at the opaque, obsidian monstrosity whose bottom was half a day’s walk away. And he shuddered.
“You think it’s gotten closer?” asked a raspy voice from beside him, snapping Matthias out of his reverie and causing him to start. Petrus paused to drum his fingers on top of the battlement, matching the rhythm he was constantly tapping on his sword hilt. “I think it’s gotten closer.”
Matthias blinked, processing his companion’s casual tone with no small amount of bewilderment. Not bothering to wait for a response, Petrus shrugged and continued his route along the wall, leaving Matthias still grappling with the prospect of that ominous pall oozing inexorably closer to his home.
“You aren’t worried about that?” he found himself calling after Petrus as he jogged to catch up to the older guardsman.
“What? Of ethereal darkness swallowing us whole?”
“Yes.”
“Eh, either it’ll happen or it won’t. No use fretting about it.”
Matthias spared another glance for the inexplicable veil that had swallowed Laithia five days ago. Three days since Carbrum had sent a small scouting force. Two since a lone villager had run up the road and pounded on the city gate, or so he’d heard.
“Whatever happened to that man that escaped?” he asked.
Petrus just shrugged without breaking stride. “I’m sure he’s fine.”
“The notion that he might be the only survivor from Laithia hasn’t occurred to you?”
Petrus stopped, turned, and looked up to meet Matthias’ gaze. “Matthias,” he said, “You have been watching that darkness approach for six days. I have been awaiting its arrival for decades.” Without bothering to explain further, he turned on his heel and resumed his patrol.
Matthias blanched, rooted to the spot where he stood, trying to grasp the enormity of what he’d just heard. Was Petrus some sort of prophet? Or were his words those of a fatalistic man at the end of his long life?
“You meant that metaphorically, right?” he asked as he once again hurried to catch up with Petrus.
The older man chuckled. “Would it matter if I did not?”
Before Matthias could think of an answer, a drumbeat sounded, snapping both men to attention, tilting their heads toward the command center from which the sound issued. Petrus recognized the rhythm before Matthias did.
“It appears that you’ll get your answers firsthand, my friend.”
