Kilwin knew they’d be back. He could feel it deep in his bones, the primordial fear and foreboding that rose up no matter what he did to quell it. He knew he was no coward. He had fought in many a battle. He had driven off the invaders from the East as well as the fish men of the West. He had many wolf and saber teeth lining his necklace of record at home. Not to mention the many skulls of enemies he had lining the walls of his hut.
No, Kilwin knew he was no coward yet he could not shake this feeling. These enemies were different, they were of a different mold entirely. Maybe they were from the lands to the Southeast, where it was said that higher beings walked around and mated with the daughters of men, creating abominations. Kilwin knew and cared little for those lands.
As long as his land and his tribe was safe that was good enough for him. He turned behind him to see Bradach his son kicking at the ground and sniffing.
“Pay attention boy.” said Kilwin.
Bradach’s head snapped up “Sorry father.”
“They came from there.” Kilwin pointed with his spear across the field of tall grass that went up the hill in front of them.
“I know father, I was here.”
“Where did they come from before that?”
“The Northern lands father.”
“What makes you so sure of that?”
“Because they came from the North?”
Kilwin shook his head “You think those creatures could have survived so far North?”
“I don’t know father.”
“Come.” Kilwin started up the slope.
The two walked over the hill and looked down at the lands beyond. The tall grass went on to the base of the hill where a thick forest grew up. Further than that a great snow capped mountain dominated the horizon.
“They couldn’t survive in the cold.” said Kilwin.
“What if they’re not like those of the ground?”
Kilwin shrugged “They came from this hill.”
“But where?”
“Either inside it or with magic of some sort.”
“Magic?”
“Yes.”
“What can we do against creatures of magic?” asked Bradach.
Kilwin turned to his boy and studied him up and down “What would you do Bradach? If beings of magic came to slay you and all you know?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.” Bradach looked down.
“Would you not fight?”
“Of course I’d fight.”
“Then you know.”
Bradach didn’t respond.
“Beings of magic or not they fall before the spear. Organized and prepared we can meet them and defeat them. It’s if they take us by surprise again that the tribe will be in trouble.”
“But how we can be ready for something we don’t understand?”
Kilwin smiled “A good question, which is why we’re here.”
“For what?”
Kilwin frowned “For understanding.”
Bradach looked around “It’s just tall grass father.”
“No…it’s something more, though I don’t know what, not yet. Come, it’s getting late we’ll figure this out.”
______________________________________________________________________________
Kilwin watched as the women around the fire began to spin more and more. Around them the men cheered and drank. Only Kilwin seemed to not take part in the festivities.
“Kilwin!” Kilwin turned to see Riach, a fellow warrior.
“Riach.” replied Kilwin nodding in the man’s direction.
“You look as if you’re at a funeral. Come drink and be happy for we have victory!” Riach slapped Kilwin’s shoulder and smiled.
Kilwin simply nodded “Yes, we have.”
“Then why are you brooding? Come Kilwin, I have never known you to be one to miss out on a celebration.”
“Go and be happy Riach. Forgive me, for I am thinking.”
“Thinking?” Riach shook his head “I don’t always understand you Kilwin but I’ll leave you be.”
Riach went off into the celebration cheering and clapping many shoulders.
The dancing ended and food was brought out and set before the families.
“You still think of them.” now it was Kilwin’s wife Rea by his side.
Kilwin nodded.
“But they are gone and defeated. You have not given such heed to others enemies slain.”
“No, but these were different.”
“There are many different creations in this world. They were not men but surely they were no different then the fish people that came from the sea?”
“These creatures were different. They had a different essence to them. Some of the other warriors felt it.”
“But they are gone now, so why worry?”
“Because I feel that they will come back.”
Rea’s eyes widened with fear “Come back? Why do you think this?”
“Something about the energy of that place. Something is off about all of this.”
“Surely you are just tired from battle. Those creatures are slain and we can be at peace for a time…surely.” Rea’s eyes pleaded with Kilwin.
“I don’t know. I will journey back to the hill tomorrow and see what I find.”
“Take men with you, do not go alone or just with Bradach. Please, in our life together there has been little you have been wrong about, these feelings you have worry me.”
“It could just be a feeling.” replied Kilwin.
“Maybe, but be careful.”
“I will wife.” said Kilwin pulling Rea onto his lap and laughing for the first time that night.
______________________________________________________________________________
Kilwin stood with his warriors spread out through the tall grass in front of him. Bradach and Riach stood by his side.
“You wish to camp here for the night?” asked Riach.
Kilwin nodded.
Riach shook his head “If you wish, though I don’t see why. They’re defeated, what use is sleeping on this cursed battlefield where so many of our own were lost.”
“Because something still stirs here, though I don’t know what.”
“Maybe it is our own, calling out to us from beyond the horizon.”
“It’s something more, something dark.”
Riach sighed and looked around at the men “How can a place where so many loved ones were slain, be anything but dark?”
“A good point, but still…there is something more. Come let us make our beds and get ready for whatever the night has to offer.”
A fire was made as the men found spots in the tall grass to sleep. Kilwin lay down and looked at the many stars gleaming overhead. Staring up at them he felt sleep start to gnaw at the edge of his consciousness. His eyes opened and closed as the stars above seemed to shift in position.
Then he heard a rustling in the grass, he sat up and looked around. The fire had burned low and no one was awake to tend to it. Kilwin got up and walked around to each place of bedding but the men were gone. With panic rising he went to where he had seen Bradach lay and stifling a gasp saw that he was gone.
“Bradach.” Kilwin looked around for his son.
He searched through the grass looking for any signs of a trail or movement, but found nothing. It was as if they had all just vanished into air.
“It’s this place.” said Kilwin looking up towards the top of the hill.
Then he froze, something moved near the summit. The tall grass was moving at the top. Kilwin grabbed his spear and set off towards it, crouching low and trying his best to not make much noise. He kept popping his head up every now and then to check and make sure that the grass was still moving.
Confirming that it was he would take a few more steps getting closer and closer. Finally he was within a spear’s throw from it and shifted his spear overhead, ready to throw or strike if needed. The grass continued to waver in front of him. He closed the distance and then shot into the space spear raised.
But there was nothing there. He looked around him. The grass still swayed and it was more than just the wind blowing it, but there was nothing there. Giving up Kilwin walked the rest of the way up to the summit of the hill and looked down at the land around him. The landscape seemed to be bathed in an aurora like light that wasn’t coming from the moon.
Shades of purple, pink, and sometime green and blue shimmered off the rocks, in the trees, and was reflected in a running stream off the hill’s side. Kilwin placed the butt end of his spear down and sat a top the hill watching all around him. It was beautiful but there was an eeriness to it at the same time.
Like something close to this world but not of it. He looked back down towards where the camp had been but could no longer see it. He shook his head to clear it but still the camp wasn’t there. He started to go back down the hill towards the camp when he heard movement down at the other side.
Kilwin’s head snapped around as he readied his spear. There was movement in the tall grass towards the opposite base of the hill but he couldn’t make out anything.
“Playing tricks on me are you?” asked Kilwin as he began slinking down the hill.
Again the grass rustled as if challenging Kilwin, beckoning him forward. He made his way down and stopped as a form began to rise from the grass swaying back and forth. At first it looked like it was a large blade of grass that was growing and growing.
But then the grass took form and Kilwin saw that it wasn’t grass but rather a great snake rising up from the ground. The head went above Kilwin as a scaled human like body rose underneath it.
“I slew your kind once on this field and I will do it again.” said Kilwin.
But the snake figure didn’t respond, it just continued to waver as if it were half of the dreamworld and half of the waking. Kilwin had his spear at the ready but did not strike. Something was staying his hand though the man couldn’t say what.
“You have something to say?” asked Kilwin.
Then other blades of grass rose up around the first and started transforming into the snakemen. All turned towards Kilwin closing in on him. He began backing up the slope of the hill keeping his spear before him. More and more blades of grass detach and then grow up into the creatures with every step he took.
Kilwin topped the hill and looked down at a swarm of thousands of the creatures. He turned around back towards where the camp had been and saw a mirror image on the other side. All around him the entire grass of the hillside had turned into the snakemen that had terrorized him so.
Kilwin felt his spear drop from his hand and go rolling down the slope. There was nothing that he could do against so great a force. He would be killed but even worse than that, these things would go on and destroy his tribe and people, if not all the peoples of the world.
“Man is not strong enough to face this, what am I to do?” cried out Kilwin to the starry night sky.
Slowly the snakemen made their up the hillside hissing and snapping their jaws. Kilwin looked at his spear which lay a few feet away. He rushed to the weapon and snatched it up, leaping back as a snakeman’s jaws snapped down where he had just stood a moment before.
Kilwin fell back up the hill stumbling, his heart hammering in his chest. He readied his spear as the mass began to close in.
“I’ll take at least a couple of you with me.” said Kilwin raising his spear above his head and giving a great shout.
The first snakeman came in range. Kilwin leapt down and drove his spear through the beast’s chest but the spear simply went through as if he had been striking at air. Kilwin pulled the spear back and looked at the snake head rising above him preparing to strike.
He waited wondering if it was real when a deep instinct inside him told him to leap for his life. He did so as the jaws snapped shut drawing blood on his arm. He looked as his arm in disbelief.
“What is this?” said Kilwin touching the blood with a finger.
He jumped back as another snakeman struck for him.
“What am I to do?” cried out Kilwin to the sky above him.
He looked down and threw his spear with all his might into the approaching mass. The spear passed through each snakeman in its path before thudding into the dirt far below on the hill. Kilwin sunk to his knees and buried his face in his hands.
“What is to be won by this? I am but one man. Why such a force against me?”
Now he had nowhere to run and the snakemen closed in readying to strike. No matter what direction he went he couldn’t avoid the mass.
“I will still die on my feet.” said Kilwin rising from the ground and picking up a stone.
He threw the rock through the closest snakeman and again it sunk through the beast and others before clunking to the ground and then rolling down the hill.
Kilwin looked up to the sky “If any of the gods are listening give me something to fight, that I may at least entertain you and die an honorable death.”
Suddenly there was a flash in the sky and something came shrieking down towards the top of the hill. Kilwin shielded his eyes from the light as the snakemen took a few steps back. The bright light crashed before Kilwin. The man opened his eyes and saw a small white fire there. He reached down and felt for a stick that was in the fire. Raising it he saw that it was a torch of some sort, burning with the strange white flame.
Immediately he began swinging the torch in front of him and saw that the snakemen would retreat from it.
“So you have a weakness!” shouted Kilwin.
He went about setting fire to the snakemen around him. He laughed with glee as the figures began to burn, their screams filling the night sky. The man worked with a feverish pace determined to burn all of the snakemen. To save himself, to save his tribe, and to rid the world of such creatures.
The world around him turned from green to red as the creatures went up in flames, flame that spread to the creature next to it and so on down the line. Kilwin paid no heed to the heat he felt on his own skin, the burns he was accumulating, or the smoke that began to choke his lungs. He was set on his task and nothing would turn him from it.
Slowly reason returned to Kilwin as the last of the snakemen went up in flames. It was then that he realized that the flames had surrounded him. Panic began to set in when he saw he had boxed himself in. He went forward and suddenly the flames seemed to burn hotter than ever before. Every way he tried to run he was blocked.
He moved back up to the center of the hill and waited as the flames slowly got closer and closer. He got down to the earth to try to avoid the smoke but he knew that his time was at an end. He looked over and saw that the torch that he had been using had burned out and that down at the base of the hill the white fire was starting to go out. But it was too late for him, he felt darkness descend and then nothing more.
______________________________________________________________________________
“What?” asked Rea as tears began streaming down her cheeks.
“It’s as he said mother. Father just went mad during the night and burnt down all the tall grass of the field. He got stuck in the middle and we couldn’t reach him before he collapsed.”
“No, not Kilwin, not my husband. He would never act in so foolish a manner.”
“It must have been that place.” said Riach.
“No, it can’t be.” said Rea slumping forward.
Bradach caught his mother and escorted her towards their home.
Riach turned to the men “What do you make of what happened before he collapsed?”
“Of the creatures we saw in the flame?” asked a warrior.
Riach nodded.
“Hallucinations Riach, nothing more and nothing less.”
