Shades of Grey

AUTOMNE DE FLEURE— MARCH 1843

Over the next several weeks, Forma and I quietly researched and discussed our theories, remaining as discreet as possible, but all that resulted from our investigative exploits were resoundingly painful headaches. Not that sleep was ever a welcome escape: my mind was continually plagued with strange dreams, each of which was followed by the same terrifying Romanian voice that awoke me with a jolt of fear…

“Vei muri acesta noapte!”

Each night Evan would shout the Romanian phrase at me, the scene would burn away and I would jolt awake, screaming in a violent fit of terror. Forma had mastered the routine after the first few nights and now sat poised and ready with her hand to cover my mouth and silence my outcry.

“Grey, they will throw us out if you continue to scream so loudly,” she whispered one night about a month after we had arrived in the village. “Despite the fact that they’ve almost entirely ignored us for the past month…but if you keep this up, they’re likely to revolt.”

I could not respond; I could only shake in panic. His horrible voice never got any easier to hear. It could still educe the same amount of pathetic fear from within me. This was NOT behavior befitting of a Creature Hunter at all…

Forma helped me to sit up and then opened the window, letting in a blast of cold air. My body stiffened in reflex when something else then entered my senses: a solemn song that I had been taught to fear since year four. The missing children stories then all made sense.

The song was a hauntingly soft verse that made my muscles tense upon hearing it. I remembered only one race of Creature that sings in such a manner: Caedes victims, known collectively as the Letum.

Caedes was a terrible disease that had ravaged the Elven village of Leto a century or so earlier. Leto was populated by a wild, savage group of Elves that delighted in licentiousness and partook in wild acts of violence and carnal pleasures: Saturnalia incarnate. A well-known Hunter named Gryphon von Drakken attempted to eradicate them, but instead he unintentionally inflicted them with particles that would soon mutate into the Caedes virus and create an entirely new breed of Creature.

Once contracted, the virus attacked the hormones in the brain causing victims to experience a range of radically different symptoms: some grew rapidly in height, others shrank; some experienced rapid hair loss, others rapid hair growth and sometimes the virus manifested as merely a cold. Since the symptoms were so vastly different and unconnected, no cure was ever recorded and it led to the eventual extinction of the Leto Elves. Now, their ghosts were said to wander the earth, restlessly haunting the humans and feeding on the energy of their children. Forma became tense as she arrived at the same conclusion.

“Is it the Letum?” she asked.

‘’Yes,’’ I replied. ’’You wouldn’t happen to remember anything about how to defeat them, would you?”

“Just that the stroke of a Flamesword will not be enough,” she said quietly.

“Right, I thought as much.”

There was a brief pause as we processed this.

“D’you think the time is coming when we’ll actually be able to recall the information we’ve spent ten years learning?” I asked.

“I sure hope so…” Forma replied with minute levity.

As the final verse of the spectral melody faded, I turned to my bandoleer on the table, searching my memory for the proper weapon.

“Well, they’re not completely translucent, but not flesh either,” I mused to myself as I studied my weapons.

“So, where does that leave you?” Forma asked, increasing to her human size. She often changed abruptly to average size when she wanted my attention and respect. She also often did this when she knew that she had the right solution and I did not. It had gotten very irritating over the years.

I gave her an annoyed glare.

“Do you have a suggestion?” I asked in irritation.

“Yes,” she replied hotly.

“Then why did you not say anything when I asked you before?”

“I wanted to see if you would get it on your own.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed in fractious aggravation.

“Alright, what is it?”

“Who was the first to spread the disease?” she probed.

“A Creature Hunter,” I said slowly. “He was trying to wipe out the Leto Elves, but his actions resulted in a poison entering their systems and dooming them to their eminent fate.”

“What is the one thing that can completely destroy a ghost?” she continued.

“Contact with human blood,” I said, frowning in dark remembrance.

“On whom did the Letum swear vengeance all those years ago?’’

“Creature Hunters...”

“What kind of human blood will destroy a Letum?” Forma pressed.

“Hunter blood,” I finished. I stared at her in exasperation. “What does that mean I’m supposed to do? Dump my blood over every ghost? They travel in clans of thousands, that’s impossible!”

“Use the weapon that can aim and reproduce liquid ammunition,” she said slowly.

I ignored her patronising tone and looked at the Ampoule Pistol with its many accompanying needles, shuddering briefly at the sickening proposition.

I reached over for the ominous ampoules and readied to extract some of my blood when I heard a sudden commotion down in the streets, lit only by the barest sliver of sunlight creeping over the distant horizon.

“What’s happening?” I heard several people outside ask.

Forma and I rushed to the window and immediately I saw what I recognised to be one of the Letum utilising their legendary power of disguise. The spirit had taken the form of a young, injured man and was attempting to gather the attention of the townspeople. I saw the danger immediately, but Forma urged me to remain still.

“Do not attack just yet,” she whispered. “Find out his intentions first, see what he tells the people. Then perhaps we can use it against him.”

I looked down to the slowly forming crowd, my senses on edge, and tuned in my hearing to the ghost’s words.

“Please help me! Somebody help!” he cried, collapsing. The people gasped and attempted to inquire about his injuries.

“Keep him steady!”

“Hold his head!”

“Fetch the doctor!”

Curious, I stood just to the side of my window looking through the curtains at the injured man. His face was slowly draining of colour and I noticed blood pooling on the ground near a particularly large chest wound.

“What’s your name, son?” asked one of the older men, trying to keep the younger man awake.

“My name is Simon,” he replied in a whisper.

“What happened to you, Simon?” asked a nearby woman.

“I was attacked by a mad Hunter just outside the city!”

An audible gasp went through the crowd.

“A Creature Hunter?”

“Are you sure?”

“What did he look like?”

“It was a young woman!” Simon cried with fervid horror. “A Tyrohunter! Her...her hair was long...dark and wild. Her eyes were a stark gray colour and her skin was so pale, she resembled a ghost!”

I shook in anger as the damn spirit described me to a tee. Forma felt my trembling rage and changed into a sleek black cat, rubbing against my legs in a fruitless attempt to calm me down. She leapt onto the windowsill and sat very still, looking at me with her bright yellow feline eyes.

“Relax, the time will come when you can eliminate him!” she cautioned. “Not yet!”

Insolently, I clenched my fists and I continued to listen to his ridiculous claims.

“She came at me out of the dark and began swinging her Flamesword at me, blaming me for killing someone named Rodag!”

“Was she really insane?” asked someone towards the back of the crowd.

“She was! She was wailing and making such strange sounds!”

Simon looked truly horrified and I found myself applauding his acting. It was a shame I would have to destroy him.

“Where is she now?” asked someone else.

“In a cave outside the city. Don’t go near her! She’s an absolute lunatic! She ate her own Maisling!”

It took every ounce of willpower in my body to not attack him at that very moment. To speak of Rodag’s death so blatantly, to accuse me of cannibalism, to call me an inexperienced Hunter and to use my own emotions against me... when the time came, he would pay a very heavy Tiresian price indeed.

The following afternoon I stood infront of the mirror under the Pallitus, modelling the dressed up disguise I had chosen to attend the ball Christopher had mentioned to us.

“Are you even going to inquire about Simon?” Forma asked as a mouse from the table.

“No. I’m sure someone will tell me,” I said, snuffing out the two torch lamps by the large bay window.

“Of course, because you are so well loved in this village,” she replied sarcastically. “Grey, no one will tell you anything!”

I glared at her.

“We’ll see about that tonight.”