Yann walked away from Eliska and headed for the stream to clean the bowl.

  He planned to go get the bowl Neils used to serve Marine and clean that, too. Then Yann would carry both bowls wherever it was the Watch traveled to next.

  Yann got halfway to the stream when he spotted his father standing off to one side. Yann didn’t see anything unusual about his father’s behavior except that Yvan didn’t get involved in the work of packing up the camp.

  He usually went from man to man helping out or giving orders wherever the Watch needed him to. He never stood off alone like this—not ever.

  He stood farther down the riverbank and he definitely did keep his back to the group. He didn’t turn around or get involved when the men laughed, talked, joked, or even argued.

  Yann went over to him and approached from behind the way he approached Eliska.

  Yann realized long before he got there that something was very wrong with his father. Yvan kept jerking from side to side and letting out little gasps of strained breath each time he did it.

  “Father?” Yann asked.

  Yvan spun around fast. His crazed eyes barely registered his son standing right in front of him.

  Yvan jolted away. His eyes darted the other way and he panted again. “They’re here!” he whispered. “They followed us here!”

  Yann’s stomach dropped into his shoes. “Father….you can’t be…..they aren’t real. They aren’t here. You’re seeing things. It isn’t real. Father—look at me!”

  Yvan barely responded at all. He spun around to the other side. “They’re coming for me! They’re coming after me!”

  Yann stared at his father in mounting horror. Watching this happen to Rien and then Barsali was bad enough.

  The Watch couldn’t lose Yvan. Everyone relied on his steady, unshakable leadership.

  What would Yann do without his father? He couldn’t even let himself think that.

  He wasn’t the only one to notice the Watch Commander’s absence. Omer came over followed by Niyazi.

  “We’re ready to go,” Omer began. “We can move out whenever you give the….”

  He broke off when he saw the way Yvan was acting. Omer scowled.

  “No!” Niyazi breathed. “No! Not him, too!”

  Yann couldn’t bring himself to speak to explain this. He didn’t have to.

  Omer stepped forward and tried to clap his hand on Yvan’s shoulder. Yvan yanked away, but not because of Omer.

  Yvan whirled in the opposite direction to face away from the three men, raised his hands in front of his face, and cringed from something that wasn’t there.

  Then he wheeled to the other side and gasped out loud when he reared away from some other invisible enemy coming at him from there.

  “Now what are we supposed to do with him?” Niyazi asked.

  “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do with him.” Omer rushed the Watch Commander. Before Yvan realized what was happening, Omer pulled the Watch Commander’s weapons from his belt.

  Omer handed Niyazi the Watch Commander’s swords, the long one and the short one. Yvan kept jumping, spinning, and letting out little pained gasps of fright while Omer caught him a second time and pulled the small dagger from Yvan’s boot.

  Omer stood back and slipped the dagger into his own boot. “It might not stop him from trying to fight them, but at least he won’t put the rest of us in danger.”

  The others noticed something wrong and Vidal, Rien, and Barsali came over followed by Neils.

  “What’s wrong?” Rien asked and then saw Yvan. “Oh, no!”

  “We just have to keep going and hope he comes out of it the way you did,” Omer decided.

  “But not the way Barsali did,” Neils pointed out. “How do we even know the Watch Commander will come out of it? The Dark might take him the way it took Barsali and we wouldn’t have…..”

  He broke off when he glanced in Eliska’s direction. Yann didn’t trust her to save a second Watchmen—not when saving Barsali cost her so much. She probably wouldn’t survive a second dose of the same Darkness infecting her.

  Omer straightened up to look over all the Watchmen’s heads. Anríq squatted across the camp sharpening his axe.

  “Go get him,” Omer told Yann. “See if he can do anything about this.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Yann walked away gulping down miserable despair. Nothing better happen to his father. Yann couldn’t live with that.

  He walked over to Anríq. Anríq didn’t look up. “Will you please come over here?” Yann asked.

  Anríq kept passing his sharpening stone along his axe blade. “What’s up?”

  “My father…..” Yann couldn’t finish.

  Anríq’s hand froze on the blade. He went silent for a minute and then stood up.

  He slipped his sharpening stone into one of his bags and slung his axe over his shoulder on the way back across the camp to rejoin the group.

  All the Watchmen stood around staring at Yvan. They parted to let Anríq through and he frowned at the Watch Commander, too.

  “Can you do anything?” Omer asked. “Can you bring him out of it?”

  Anríq studied Yvan for a minute. Yvan didn’t stop jumping away from Darklings only he could see.

  “Hold onto him,” Anríq replied. “Take his arms and hold him.”

  Niyazi and Barsali moved in on Yvan from both sides. Then they rushed him, grabbed his arms, and clamped him in a tight grip to stop him from getting away.

  He jerked and struggled against their hold, but he didn’t see or even seem to feel them. He completely lost awareness of where he was and what anyone else was doing.

  Anríq placed his hand an inch above the Watch Commander’s chest. Then Anríq did the same thing above Yvan’s head. Yvan didn’t notice that, either.

  “The same thing is happening to him that happened to Rien,” Anríq announced. “There’s nothing wrong with him physically or even anything magical that I can heal. He’s whole.”

  “Does that mean he’s seeing something real?” Yann asked. “Does that mean the Darklings are real—and the rest of us just can’t see them?”

  “That isn’t possible,” Neils pointed out. “If they were real, they would affect all of us the same way.”

  “They are affecting all of us the same way,” Niyazi pointed out. “They already affected Rien and Barsali. The Darklings are just affecting us one at a time. That should be obvious.”

  “Then how can they be real?” Neils asked. “If they’re so real, their presence should affect us all at once.”

  Anríq stepped back. “I can’t do anything for him. I’m sorry. Whatever is wrong with him just has to run its course.”

  “Why is this happening now and not in the other Islands?” Omer asked. “Why haven’t these armored Darklings come for us before?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Anríq replied. “I don’t understand everything about the Coil. We may be in a Layer these armored Darklings inhabit—or we may be traveling through several Layers these Darklings inhabit. That may be why we keep traveling to different Islands but the same thing keeps happening.”

  “Could the Voyant be the one doing all of this?” Yann asked.

  “I couldn’t say for sure,” Anríq replied. “As Omer says, I don’t know why he would do it now instead of sending all his power against you from the beginning. You were weakest then—when you were in Middleborough. Wesh, Eliska, Marine, and I have been helping you since then—or perhaps he sees that we’re helping you and thinks he needs to send more powerful forces against you. I can only guess. I’m sorry.”

  “What if we ask….her?” Neils shot his eyes toward Eliska again.

  “No, leave her alone,” Anríq replied. “She’s done enough. Getting her involved in this will only hurt her more.”

  Omer sighed. “Let’s move out. We’ll head for this area of magic Anríq mentioned. We may find some resources there.”

  The men drifted away and went back to work. Yann stayed near his father. Yann didn’t want to leave his father alone, but at the same time, Yann didn’t want to be anywhere near Yvan when he was acting like this.

  Omer didn’t leave, either. “I’ll take him in hand on the way,” Omer murmured under his breath. “I’ll make sure he stays with us and doesn’t get lost.”

  Yann couldn’t answer. He didn’t want to look at his father going insane before his eyes, but Yann found it impossible to look at anything else.

  “He’ll come out of this,” Omer murmured. “You’ll see. He’s strong. He’ll find a way to come out of this.”

  Yann gulped. He wished he could believe that, but as Neils pointed out, Barsali wouldn’t have come out of it without Eliska’s intervention.

  Omer bumped Yann’s elbow. “Go back to work, young one. Leave him to me. We may find help soon. Go on.”

  Yann turned away feeling sick. He crossed the river and retrieved Marine’s bowl.

  Yann refused to look at his father. Yann squatted down by the stream to clean both bowls the way he originally planned to. He didn’t look to see what Omer was doing with Yvan.

  Yann should have been the one to take care of Yvan, but he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t cope with the sight of his father losing his mind. Yann couldn’t even force himself to accept it.

  He finished cleaning the bowls, shook them dry, and took them back up the bank. He planned to arrange some kind of carry bag like Anríq’s to carry the bowls in.

  He didn’t get a chance to before Anríq came over to him. “Give them to me,” Anríq told him. “I’ll carry them.”

  Yann handed them over. He couldn’t argue with anything right now. He didn’t want to deal with any of this.

  The other men stood around waiting. Omer told them to move out.

  Anríq went in front to lead the way. He was the only person who knew where to go. Yann made himself go to the front, too. He walked right behind Anríq.

  Their path led around hills and bends in the stream. Anríq followed the watercourse for a while heading upstream toward some mountains in the distance.

  Yann tried not to be aware of anything going on behind him, but he wound up seeing anyway. The hills and riverbends gave Yann more of a view than he wanted of the party’s formation.

  Omer took hold of Yvan’s shirt and half-pushed, half-dragged the Watch Commander after the rest of the group.

  Yvan kept jolting every few seconds. He tried to jerk himself away from Omer, but Yvan still didn’t see the man holding him.

  Omer closed up his already stern face in a mask of stony determination, looked straight in front of him, and marched Yvan away whether he wanted to go or not.

  Marine scuttled after the group still yowling, snarling, and biting at the air. She scampered over the countryside a lot faster than she usually did.

  She didn’t take so many pains to keep her distance from the group. Sometimes she ran fast enough to almost overtake Omer and Yvan. Then she dropped back to spasm and contort in place for a while before she caught up again.

  The group traveled for over an hour before Anríq led the way into a side valley heading inland. The Watch left the stream and started winding into the hills.

  The two boys turned another corner and Yann happened to glimpse a lone figure silhouetted against the sky. The figure stood on a high hill at a distance from the party.

  The wind caught long black hair and a black cloak. The wind blew both out to the side. The figure held a staff in one hand and used it as a walking stick.

  Yann stopped to stare up at her. She followed them after all. Part of him always knew she would.

  She didn’t catch up. He only caught brief glimpses of her from a distance for the rest of the journey.

  He couldn’t even feel happy that she decided to stay with the group. He just wished like anything he could get her back—back to the way she was before this happened.

  End of Chapter 17.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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