Chapter 14 – Ash and Straw
The back door of the Hollow’s tavern creaked open.
One by one, ten figures stepped out into the cold night air. They were scarecrows—but not the kind stuffed by farmers. These were creatures laced with old malice and darker spellwork. Their eyes glowed like coals buried in ash. Joints creaked with the grinding rhythm of rope and bone.
Above the door, a rusted bell rang with each departure: Ring... ring... ring... A sound like a heartbeat. Like a warning.
Inside, beneath flickering lanternlight, the Drow—no longer wearing his Marten guise—watched from the cellar stair. His violet eyes gleamed through the woodslats as the last of his silent soldiers vanished into the violet mist.
“Find them,” he whispered, voice low as rot. “Find the three. Kalo. Red. Lukan.”
He raised a hand marked with runes that pulsed faintly. “Kill them. Leave no trace. Do not return until this is done.” His whisper became a command etched in iron: “Failure is not an option.”
And so the scarecrows ran—not stumbling, but sprinting. Graceful, inhuman. Limbs bent at unnatural angles, straw-wrapped and blood-bound. They vanished into the mist like nightmares taking form.
Chapter 15 – The Violet Breaking
The Mist-Split Path
Somewhere at the forest’s edge, the air had changed. The fog was violet now—thick, choking, almost oily. It pressed in around Kalo, Red, and Lukan from all sides.
Even the birds had gone quiet.
“Lukan?” Red called, panic in his voice. No answer. He turned, spinning in the haze. “Kalo, he was right here—”
“Don’t stop moving,” Kalo growled. “They want us separated.”
The Evoker’s broom hovered just above him—its bristles twitching, as if sensing danger. Kalo’s hands were bare, fingers twitching with latent power. His eyes kept darting through the haze.
Somewhere behind—or ahead—a laugh rang out. Thin and high, like a child’s voice played backward. Then it was gone.
Wind and Fire
Kalo raised his hand to the sky. His voice cracked the veil of silence: “Thil drakkael—venthos kiraal!”
The wind obeyed.
It screamed down the hills like a beast uncaged, tearing through bramble and mist. The fog parted, shrieking, stars breaking through the veil above. For a heartbeat, they could see again.
And then— Rustling. Not leaves. Straw.
Shapes moved through the mist. Angular. Wrong. Heads like sackcloth masks, stitched with malice. Straw spilling from their joints, limbs too long. The scarecrows had arrived.
Ten of them.
They screamed without mouths. Button eyes glowed the same red once seen in the Hollow’s lanterns. They charged.
Lukan’s Last Stand
The trio was overwhelmed.
Straw shrieked as it burned. Red darted beneath slashing claws, narrowly dodging. Lukan struck first—spear high, teeth bared—cutting into one scarecrow’s throat. It crumpled.
Three more replaced it.
“KALO!” Red cried out.
Kalo raised both hands, and the words thundered again: “Arosh vel'thaal—wharuum galeen!” Wind burst forth in a spiral, flinging scarecrows into the air. His asp familiar, Sprig, leapt from his shoulder, fangs flashing.
More scarecrows fell.
But not enough.
“Red—GO!” Lukan roared, grabbing the squirrel and hurling him upward into a hawthorn tree. “Climb! Don’t stop!”
Red obeyed, heart hammering.
Below, Lukan turned to face the onslaught.
Four scarecrows lunged. He met them head-on, claws slashing, teeth tearing. He fought like a storm. One scarecrow bit into his shoulder. Another wrapped its limbs around his legs.
Their eyes turned white. No mouths moved—but a chant rose, a silent heat that built to a crescendo.
And then— FWOOM.
Flames.
All of them—scarecrows and otter—ignited at once in a fireball of straw and fury. No screams. Just a flash of cursed vengeance.
Above, Red screamed Lukan’s name.
The Broom Returns
Kalo, bloodied and staggering, fought on. Sprig hissed, emerald fire licking the air. He spoke again, voice trembling with power: “Byrraan'thul! Faraaz veylaa!” A column of wind and light erupted, shredding three more scarecrows into ash.
Then—
WHOOOOSH.
The broom returned.
Like a comet from the heavens, it sliced through the fog, bristles sweeping up two scarecrows and flinging them into the trees. They exploded midair in bursts of straw and burlap.
The last scarecrow lunged for Kalo.
“Too late,” he whispered.
Sprig leapt. Kalo cast.
A flash of blue. A shriek. Then silence.
Aftermath on the Heath
The violet fog lifted.
Straw littered the heath like autumn leaves. Limbs, buttons, splinters. The field smelled of burned cloth and wet ash.
Kalo fell to one knee, panting. Sprig curled around his arm, trembling.
Above, Red sobbed in the tree. He could not come down. Not yet.
Below him, Lukan lay still in the blackened grass. His paw reached skyward— As if still holding Red aloft. As if he hadn’t let go at all.
Lukan the otter was gone.
The Bend in the Straw
By morning, the mists had thinned.
At a bend in the trail where the river curved and the reeds grew tall, Kalo and Red dug a grave with their hands. They laid Lukan down beneath willow roots and sang no songs. They had none left.
Kalo whispered an old Koopling benediction. Red placed the otter’s favorite shell—smooth, white, and flat—at the head of the grave.
They stood in silence, straw vengeance in their hearts, tears in their eyes.
Then, without another word, they turned for Grimthorn Hollow.
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Chapter 16: The Hollow Made Hollow
Grimthorn Hollow lay still under a sky the color of scorched iron. Smoke curled thin and grey from crooked chimneys. No hammer struck nail. No shutters swung open for morning light. No voices called. The town was not asleep — it had been emptied.
And it now belonged to the Children of the Night.
At their head moved the Drow, tall and terrible, wrapped in a shawl of shadow-thistle, his silver hair pulled back in a cruel braid. Stoats with sunless eyes, weasels in stitched-leather armor, and ferrets with sharpened teeth and soft, whispering steps followed him like dogs to a master. They didn’t rebuild. They infested, slinking into homes like mold into bread.
Atop the flour mill, lookouts crouched in the upper beamwork, crossbows resting lazily in clawed hands. On rooftops, dark shapes sat still as statues. Even the old water troughs had been overturned and searched. There was no one left to resist, but still, they prepared.
The Drow had claimed the Thorn and Thistle Tavern — and it suited him.
Dust clung to the air, thick with the smell of ale gone to vinegar and forgotten meals turned to mold. He had been using the upper rooms as his lair, his table covered in half-burned maps and candle-stub wax, but today, something new drew him upward.
Behind the hearth in the private room was a panel hidden behind a rack of old casks. A latch — cleverly worked — popped with a push of a gloved thumb.
Stairs coiled upward behind the wall. The air changed.
At the top, between twin shuttered windows that overlooked the town square, was an ancient defense: Veln’s Arbalest, a multi-firing, geared crossbow set into a swiveling frame, long forgotten. Crafted in brass, leather, and oiled oak, it clicked faintly when touched — a marvel of precision.
The Drow traced the winding cogwork with his finger.
“He left it for me,” he whispered, smiling thin as thread. “How considerate.”
He fired a single quarrel through the shutters. A clanging weathervane fell in the street below.
The Children of the Night howled with glee. Their new lair was armed.
Chapter 17: Through the Broom’s Eye
Kalo and Red sat beneath the bramble eaves of the old pinewood ridge, facing the direction of Grimthorn. Red’s tail twitched anxiously. The morning mist clung low to the field’s edge like a waiting breath.
Kalo reached into his satchel and pulled out the golden rune, ancient and cold as river-stone. It glowed faintly in his palm, inscribed with a spiraling script lost to all but the most learned of the Koopling tongue.
He whispered to it: “Orro-lem. Suth-ka-vay-el.” (Eyes unblinded, speak the seen.)
But this time, his vision did not stretch out from him — it rose, spiraling upward like a thread on the wind, until it snapped into the broom.
His broom — the enchanted one — which circled high above in lazy arcs, unseen by those below, now served as his far-seeing lens. Kalo saw through its eyes.
And what he saw made him go still.
Grimthorn was choked with movement — not of life, but of infestation. The Children of the Night scurried like rats, patrols sweeping from house to house. Roofs once home to drying herbs and windchimes were now crawling with stoats in harness, signal flares strapped to their backs. The flour mill had become a watchtower, flags torn down and replaced with dark banners bearing claw-mark sigils.
And in the field beyond the town… A mass grave.
Mounds of lime-choked corpses — the townsfolk. Children, elders, kin. Ferrets and stoats were digging, shoveling lime into the pit with rhythm, humming some broken nursery rhyme. Bodies were covered. Buried. Erased.
Kalo dropped the rune. His hands shook. Red clutched his wrist. “We can’t… We can’t go in.”
Kalo nodded grimly. “We go to the Faraway Tree. We find the hobgoblin.”
They turned away, hearts thundering, feet soft in the moss.
But behind them, near the ridge, a flicker of shadow peeled from a tree. It hissed into shape — tall, tattered, and laughing.
The Drow. Not real, not quite — a phantasm of hate and shadow, flung from a glyph left in town to mock their eyes.
“That’s right,” it sneered, voice warping like wood in fire. “Run, little ones.” “I will have my time. I can wait.”
Then the illusion tore apart in a sudden wind, leaving only silence.
The broom circled once, then rose higher. Kalo whispered a word in the old tongue, and it vanished northward — ahead of them — scouting for what came next.
And in the shadow of that cursed town, the Hollow held its breath.
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