Dust

He peels away the torn fabric covering the box. His hands, covered in mud, tremble as they brush against the damp wood and find the cold metal of a lock. 

He pauses. His eyes flicker and search his surroundings. Thin trees stretch from the deep mud and tussocks of the marshland, intercut by streams of murky water. Heavy mist swirls and engulfs everything. Like a curtain drawn over a window, it blotted out the light of the burning red sun beginning to rise over the horizon into a dusty orange sky.

Wind rakes through his hair and rustles the dry leaves around him. With every breath, he can smell the harsh bite of smoke. 

He turns back to the box. It is stuck within the rotting roots of the dead tree he buried it under. Several strained tugs manage to pull it free. The wood has been stained a dark brown, undoubtedly from the dirty water and unending mud above it. The iron lock, now caked in rust, has managed to keep the lid shut tight. 

Coughing, he opens his rucksack. The wind picks up and the stench of smoke only grows. The northern winds that blew from the Whispering Sea toward the jungle were common. There was an old belief amongst the locals that the marshlands surrounding the jungle were once pieces of the Sea, ripped from their original home in a colossal storm and thrown to the ground before the jungle, where they took root and started anew, free from the salty, inhospitable waters of before. 

Now the winds bring nothing but ash; the remnants of the buildings torn from their foundations and scattered across the Whispering Sea by a storm of dust and gnashing teeth. 

The first whispers of the monster arrived just as the first specks of ash did. Dancing on the wind, it had settled on the thatched rooves and stayed there no matter how thoroughly it was brushed away. Some said it was part of the monster itself; the winds a remnant of the colossal storm that some of its crumbling body had clung to. Most were quick to realise that the ash was all that remained of the villages devastated by the bone dust dune; the broken timbers inadvertently set alight in the monster’s wake and left to burn. 

The villagers discussed the latest threat to Ivras suprisingly openly. Before, when the ravenous beast was still lurking in the shadows, the idea of it trampling their tranquil village was never more than an anxious whisper. It must have been nice, for once, to quietly get on with life while a monster destroyed someplace else. 

He never had to fear a monster. The rivers within the jungle wind on for miles; there would always be somewhere else to fish. But the villagers of Bratu? Would they take as easily to the water as he did if their homes were crushed underfoot? 

He had not intended for Bratu to become home. He had told himself that he would never have one again. Yet, slowly but surely, Bratu was the place he always seemed to steer his boat towards. He told himself it was the generous amount of coin offered by the local merchants for his catch, not the welcoming smiles on their faces as he dragged his nets onto the dock. Standing beside the colossal bonfire they lit in the centre of the village on feast days was a warmth he knew he didn’t deserve, but they insisted he stay, at least for a little while, to dry his hands and have a cup of mulled wine.

When he clambered onto the dock that day, and seen the ash and dust gathering on the rooves and muddy lanes, the faces of the merchants coughing from the smoke as they tried to set up their stalls, he quietly walked into the marshland surrounding the village. 

The rotting corpse of a tree, half-buried in the earth, had been standing in the marsh for years. Why would anyone struggle across swathes of marshland to look at a hollow tree?

Yet here he was, staring at the box he had buried all those years ago. 

He produces a key from his pocket. It is still well-polished and unchanged from the day he shut it in its own box.

With a shivering hand, he tries the lock. At first, the rust hinders the mechanism, but it swiftly begins to turn and the lock clicks open, falling into freshly dug earth. 

He takes a deep breath, and he shudders as he releases it. The marsh is quiet. Not even the wind will comfort him now.

He opens the lid. His hands know exactly what lies beneath the bundle of cloth within; they spent many hours clutching the rough wooden handles of his chosen weapons. Acting on their on accord, his hands push the fabric away from the pair of horseman’s picks that have laid in waiting for this moment. 

Freezing, he can’t take his eyes off them. A thousand memories rear their heads and he has to crush them back down before they escape him. 

Horseman’s picks are a simple weapon; a war hammer with an unsually long spike designed to tear combatants from their mounts, the spikes like the talons of a hawk, hooking onto plate armour and not letting go. This, however, was all it was good for in the hands of an average soldier. The hammer blows were not enough to kill an enemy, and they were too heavy to swing with any speed.

Not for Moacir. If he had tried to fight as a normal man wielding them, he would be outmaneuvered and struck down. But when blood was involved?

His hammer blows could cave skulls in as easily as crushing a snail underfoot. One after the other. The thought of it made his stomach turn.

The only reason he hadn’t turned and bolted away was that perhaps, the next time he took them into his hands, they wouldn’t be used to draw innocent 

The bone dust dune. Roaring its way across the whispering sea and taking life with no thought. 

All too familiar. 

For years he had stood by the wayside as countless brave souls threw themselves at monsters. Most died. For years, he knew he could have stood where many couldn’t and challenged them on equal ground. But he’d hidden away, like the irredeemable coward he knew he was. He knows someday his repulsive innards will burst outward and he will become nothing more than a monster to be killed, that promising young mages will kill only to fall for the same cycle of endless violence that he had.

But for a moment, he is standing in the marsh. He sees the faces of the villagers who have taken care of him. 

They are afraid.

He stares down at his weapons; reminders of a bloody legacy slowly fading into the past. 

Should his story end that way? As a cruel, bloodthirsty creature dying alone in the dark? Or, however impossible it felt, could he try to heal the wounds he had left behind? Could he find himself in the whispering sea and face down the storm before it took anything else?

Reality grips him. Terror surges down his spine and in an instant the box is shut and he is frantically throwing the earth over it until he can see it no more. 

He cannot fight. If he fights he will start a cycle of violence he isn’t sure he can stop a second time. 

Standing, he stares at the dead tree before him. Behind it, burning through the thick mist, is the light of the village’s lanterns swinging in the wind. He begins to drift over the marsh toward it, branches of the tree scraping against him. 

But if he fights… there is a chance, however small, he resists it. Perhaps he wouldn’t just end the cycle of bloodshed.

There is a chance for him to break it.

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