Paul Kemp: Shadowrealm

"Commander…" Kelgar said.

Reht threw back his hood and stared at the warpriest. "You see what this is as clearly as I. There are no Shadovar here, priest. This is something else and we need to get clear of it. Now, follow your orders."

Kelgar stared back, nodded. "Aye, General."

"I don't know if we'll be able to get out," Mennick said.

To that, Reht said nothing. He did not know either.

Word spread but slowly in the rain, in the darkness. The line stopped at last and reorganized for a march out of the storm. Horns sounded, their clarion strangely muffled.

"On the double quick!" Reht said to his runners. "Pass it on!"

"The scouts?" Mennick asked, his horse blinking in the rain.

They had not had word in hours. The scouts were either lost or… something else. Reht shook his head, refusing to give voice to his concerns.

"They will have to catch up with us."

Mennick nodded, and looked back into the darkness.

Orders carried through the pitch, the men prepping to move out on the double quick. The rain abated and some of the men cheered. The darkness, however, remained unrelenting.

Reht found the absence of rain more ominous than comforting. Black mist curled around the muddy ground, around the twisted dead trees, and around the nervous hooves of their horses, who pranced and neighed. For the first time, Reht realized that he had not seen a wild animal in hours. He stilled his heart and forced calm into his voice.

"On the double quick! Move!"

The wind at their backs swallowed the last of his order as it picked up, howled, and took on a strange keening. The line lurched forward as the cold deepened. Reht's teeth chattered and the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end. He felt eyes on him, looked over his shoulder, but saw nothing save the darkness. His instincts screamed at him to run, told him that something unforgiving out there in the darkness was coming for him. He saw the same sentiment reflected in the alarmed faces around him.

They were moving too slowly.

"On the double quick! On the double quick, damn it!"

"There!" someone shouted, the word nearly lost in the wind. "There!"

Shouts erupted along the line and carried through the black. Reht turned in his saddle to see thousands of coal red points of light floating in the darkness, as numerous as the stars.

Eyes.

The darkness was coming for them.

The keening sounded again, a mistuned longflute, and Reht realized it was not the wind. It was the creatures, shrieking at them, closing on them.

"Around and hold formation!" he shouted, and hated himself for the tremor in his voice. "Around and hold!"

The shouts of commanders carried through the darkness, echoing his words. Horns sounded again, making a cacophony with the keening.

The army scrambled into formation as the wind turned to a gale and the creatures sped toward them. A few men deserted, fled with their horses at a dead run. Reht cursed them for cowards.

Armor chinked, men cursed, and weapons were readied. Hundreds of crossbows and bows twanged. A swarm of bolts and arrows flew into the darkness at the eyes, veering wildly in the wind. The creatures wailed again, apparently unharmed, and closed. Soul deadening cold went before them.

Reht drew his blade, readied his shield. His magically augmented vision allowed him to distinguish the creatures as they neared, but barely. Vaguely humanoid in shape and composed of living shadow, they rode the wind and flew like arrow shots through the night. Red eyes glowed with malice.

"Shadows!" Kelgar shouted, and clanged his blade on his shield.

The darkness deepened as the throng of shadows closed. Some darted into the earth and disappeared. Others flew high and circled around the army. Still others flew directly for them. There were still more behind the initial wave, so numerous they blotted out the storm. They seemed unending, filling the air with their cold, their shrieks, their hate.

They hit Reht's army and men and horses began to scream. Beside Reht, Kelgar roared a battle cry and galloped into the shadows. A lightning bolt shot from the war priest's outstretched hand as he charged the undead. Two other Talassans followed him, whooping battle cries.

"Hold your ground, dammit! Hold!"

The darkness prevented a large-scale organized response and the battle turned into a series of isolated melees. Shadows darted in and out of Reht's field of vision, merging with the darkness in the air. Red eyes flashed past him, around him, over him, under him. He slashed and stabbed at any within reach, heard the men near him do the same. His horse reared, kicked, whinnied.

He and a dozen other men formed a circle, but it proved useless. The incorporeal shadows moved as freely through the earth as through the air. He and his men were attacked from all sides no matter their formation. The cold hand of panic gripped some of the men, more.

Magical globes of light formed in the darkness but lasted only moments before the shadows blotted them out. Screams sounded from all directions, muted shrieks, all of it an eerily beautiful symphony for the dying.

Reht's mount neighed and bucked as a throng of shadows burst from the ground under it. The movement threw Reht, and he hit the ground in a clatter of steel. His mount wheeled, nearly trampled him, and darted off in a panic.

Reht scrambled to his knees, to his feet, slashing, shouting. Men fought and died beside him, around him. The shadows nearest him focused their dead, glowing eyes on him and in the otherwise blank holes of their faces he was able to distinguish features.

"Lorgan?"

His fellow commander's expression wrinkled with hate. Reht saw other faces he recognized and understood what had happened to Lorgan and his men.

And what would happen to Reht and his.

"Find peace, old friend," Reht said, and charged Lorgan.

Lorgan shrieked and his features dissolved again into indistinguishable darkness. Other shadows darted in close, reached through Reht's shield and armor, cooled his flesh, diminished his soul. He screamed, and slashed at Lorgan. His enchanted blade bit Lorgan's shadowy form and sent streamers of deeper darkness boiling away into the air, but Lorgan reached into Reht's chest and nearly stopped his heart. Reht staggered backward, gasping, his vision blurred.

In the distance, he heard the sound of chanting, the Talassans calling upon the power of their god to fight the undead. Reht glanced around, saw men and horses dead and dying all around him. He heard their shouts, screams, and whinnies, but he felt isolated, alone in a cyst of darkness warring against his own personal shadows.

The surrounding sounds diminished then went silent. He heard only his own labored breathing, his grunts as he swung his blade, and the sound of his own heartbeat keeping time in his ears. He slashed, backed away, stabbed, twisted, stabbed again. Shadows emerged from the ground and passed into and through him. Others flew, heedlessly, at and through his blade, reached into his chest to his lungs and heart, stole his breath, his strength. He staggered, still breathing, still fighting. He looked around for a mount, any mount, saw none. He tripped over a corpse and fell on his back.

Shadows swarmed him. He felt so cold he could not breathe, felt his heart slow. He saw Lorgan's face in one of the shadows over him, Enken's on another, both of them caricatures of the living men they once were.

They reached for him. He felt himself drifting, floating. He reached for the maps at his side, thinking of his father, and the cartographer to whom he should have been apprenticed, the life he should have led. Cold filled him and he gasped. He could not see anything but red eyes and darkness.

He died thinking of maps and regrets.