“You know,” I said, my voice a little too loud in the sudden quiet, “for a place called the ‘Whispering Woods,’ it’s remarkably silent.” I kicked at a loose stone on the path. “Honestly, a bit of a marketing overreach, if you ask me. I was expecting at least some light ASMR, maybe a few spooky secrets on the wind.”
Bartholomew, who had been padding along with the silent, liquid grace only a cat can manage, stopped dead. He turned his head slowly, his yellow eyes pinning me with a look of profound disappointment.
“One would imagine that a purveyor of ‘communications’ would possess a more nuanced understanding of nomenclature. The whispers, Miss Hawking, are not a complimentary feature offered for the amusement of travelers. They are a warning.”
“A warning about what? Aggressive squirrels? Poison ivy with an attitude problem?” I kicked an acorn and watched it bounce down the path.
“A warning that you are being listened to,” he said, his voice a low, serious rumble. “And that it would be monumentally foolish to provide the listeners with the sound of your own voice, particularly when it is engaged in such flippant drivel.” He turned and continued on, tail held high like a furry banner of disapproval.
“Right. Got it. Stoic silence and brooding introspection from here on out,” I muttered, mostly to myself.
We walked on. The path, which had been reasonably clear, began to dissolve into the forest floor, forcing us to navigate around the gnarled roots of trees that looked old enough to have voted for feudalism. The silence Bartholomew had insisted on began to feel heavy, pressing in on my ears. It was the kind of quiet that isn’t empty, but full of things not being said. Or things being held back.
And then I heard it.
It wasn’t a whisper, not at first. It was more like the rustle of silk, a sound that didn’t belong among the damp leaves and rough bark. It was just at the edge of my hearing, a single shhhh that made the hairs on my arms stand up. I glanced at Bartholomew. His ears, two perfect triangles of grey fur, were swiveling like radar dishes, tracking something I couldn’t see.
“Okay, that was definitely a thing,” I whispered, failing my vow of silence spectacularly.
“Indeed,” he replied, not breaking his stride. “Maintain your course. To acknowledge them is to invite them.”
“Invite them to what? A potluck? Because I am fresh out of seven-layer dip.”
My attempt at humor felt thin and brittle. The rustling came again, this time from my left. It was followed by another sound, like a soft, dry chuckle. I whipped my head around, but saw nothing but an endless colonnade of dark trees. The shadows here were deeper, somehow. They didn’t just lie on the ground; they seemed to cling to the tree trunks, pooling in the hollows like spilled ink. They looked… thick.
Then the whispers started for real. They weren’t just random sounds anymore. They were words, slithering through the air and coiling right beside my ear.
…thought you’d do more with that degree…
I stumbled, catching myself on the rough bark of a tree. My heart hammered against my ribs. “Who said that?”
Bartholomew stopped and looked back, his expression grim. “They have your scent now, Paige. They feed on doubt.”
…so much potential, all wasted…
The voice hissed, sounding disconcertingly like my old guidance counselor.
…you can’t do this. A hero? You can’t even parallel park…
That one was my own voice, twisted and cruel.
“Okay, this is officially beyond creepy,” I said, my voice trembling slightly. I quickened my pace to catch up with Bartholomew, practically stepping on his tail. “This is like my entire anxiety-fueled inner monologue got a guest spot on a horror podcast.”
The shadows around us seemed to deepen, to stretch and writhe as if they were alive. Figures began to resolve from the gloom—tall, thin shapes with no discernible features, just vaguely human outlines made of pure darkness. They drifted between the trees, their movements silent and unnatural.
…she’ll get you killed, Warden… a new voice whispered, this one a low, gravelly rasp that seemed to vibrate in my bones. …another failure to add to your long list…
Bartholomew let out a guttural hiss, a sound more ferocious than I thought possible from a creature so fluffy. His fur bristled, making him look twice his size.
“Vile things. Eaters of hope. They are fragments of the Shadow Lord’s despair, given form.”
“Great. So we’re being haunted by weaponized depression,” I breathed, pulling my cloak tighter around myself as if it could offer any real protection. “What’s the plan? Do we have a magical spray for this? A holy water super-soaker?”
One of the shadow-figures drifted directly onto our path, blocking the way. It was taller than the others, its form less defined, like smoke in the shape of a man. It tilted a head that wasn’t there.
…you don’t belong here, little mismatched piece… it whispered, the sound now coming from directly in front of me. …go home. Give up. It would be so much easier…
The thought was seductive. The idea of my apartment, of Netflix and takeout, of problems that could be solved with a credit card instead of… whatever this was. My feet felt heavy as lead. My resolve, which had been a flickering candle flame at best, was threatening to gutter out completely. I could just sit down. I could just… stop.
“Paige!” Bartholomew’s voice was sharp, cutting through the fog of despair settling over my mind. “Do not listen! Your story is not for them to write!”
My story. The words struck a chord. I thought of my communications degree, the one the whispers had been so quick to mock. I’d spent four years learning how people build narratives, how they frame arguments, how they use words to create a reality. My professors had called it rhetoric, persuasion. My parents had called it a one-way ticket to a barista job. The whispers called it useless.
Maybe they were wrong.
I lifted my chin, looking directly at the smoky shape blocking our path. My voice was shaky, but I forced it to be steady.
“You know, for creatures made of pure dread, your material is a little weak,” I said, taking a small step forward.
The creature seemed to recoil slightly, the whisper that came next sounding confused.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
…what…
“I mean, come on. ‘You’ll fail.’ ‘You’re not good enough.’ That’s C-list villain monologue stuff. It’s the oldest trick in the book. You’re preying on basic impostor syndrome. Have you got anything original?”
The shadow writhed. …you are nothing… a lost child…
“You’re right. I am a lost child. A lost child who knows a weak argument when she hears one,” I shot back, feeling a strange surge of adrenaline. I was arguing with a shadow monster. My life had officially become an avant-garde theatre production. “You’re not telling me anything my own brain doesn’t scream at me every Tuesday at 3 a.m. The difference is, I know my brain is an asshole. What’s your excuse?”
Beside me, Bartholomew began to glow. A soft, silver light emanated from his fur, pushing back the encroaching darkness.
“That’s it, Miss Hawking!” he urged. “Defy them! Their power is in the belief you give their words!”
Emboldened, I took another step. The shadow-thing wavered, its form becoming less stable.
“You feed on doubt? Fine. Let me give you something else to chew on,” I said, my voice gaining strength. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I am completely and utterly unqualified for this. I’m scared out of my mind, and I’m pretty sure I have a stress rash forming. But I am here. And you are just a bunch of sad, smoky bullies who are afraid of a cat with a nightlight function.”
The main shadow let out a shriek that sounded like tearing fabric and dissolved into a puff of black vapor. The other figures shied away from Bartholomew’s light, melting back into the deeper darkness between the trees. The whispers died, and the oppressive silence returned, only this time, it felt blessedly empty.
I stood there, chest heaving, hands balled into fists. The silver light from Bartholomew faded, and he was once again just a very fluffy, very serious-looking cat.
He regarded me for a long moment, his green eyes unblinking. He gave a single, slow blink.
“A passable refutation,” he conceded, his tone as dry as ever. “Your rhetorical strategy was unorthodox, but apparently effective.” He sniffed the air. “However, I would advise against antagonizing every malevolent entity we encounter. My luminescence is not infinite.”
He turned and continued down the path, now clear. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. My knees felt like jelly, but I was standing. I had faced down literal shadow-demons with sarcasm and a liberal arts degree.
With a shaky grin, I jogged to catch up. The dread was still there, a cold knot in my stomach, but it was joined by something that felt a lot like the exhilarating, terrifying relief of having survived. The Whispering Woods were still whispering, I realized. But for the first time, I felt like I might just have something to say back.
But my grin felt brittle, stretched thin over a face slick with cold sweat. I trotted after Bartholomew, my second-hand (second-foot?) boots already looking inadequate for adventuring, crunching on a carpet of dead leaves and twigs. The whispers of the woods hadn’t ceased, but they’d changed their tune. Before, they were insidious, personal attacks disguised as rustling leaves. Now, they sounded more like gossip—the hushed, speculative murmurs of a hostile audience that had just witnessed a surprisingly decent opening act.
“So,” I said, my voice still a little hoarse. “Is ‘luminescence’ fancy cat-speak for ‘glow-stick mode’?”Bartholomew didn’t deign to look back.
“It is the outward manifestation of a warden’s protective aura, a beacon against the encroaching dark. And kindly refrain from reducing ancient, powerful magic to the level of roadside emergency supplies.”
“Right, right. My bad.” I side-stepped a root that looked suspiciously like a grabbing hand. “So, what’s the plan? We just keep walking? Is there a magical Uber I don’t know about? A griffin-share program?”
“The plan,” he stated, his fluffy tail held aloft like a furry banner of disdain, “is to traverse these woods. It is a mere perambulation. Consider it a salubrious exercise.”
I considered it a one-way ticket to being digested by something with too many teeth, but I kept that to myself. For a while, the only sounds were my breathing and the crunch of our passage. The phantoms, true to their fleeting nature, were gone. I was just starting to think this whole ‘hero’s journey’ thing might be manageable if it was just long walks and verbal sparring with a cat, when a low growl ripped through the trees to our left.
It wasn’t a whisper. It was guttural, hungry, and very, very real.
Bartholomew stopped dead, his ears swiveling like radar dishes.
“Ah,” he said, with the mild annoyance of a gentleman discovering a stain on his waistcoat. “The local fauna.”
I peered into the gloom, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Two points of light ignited in the shadows, like smoldering coals. They weren’t friendly. They were attached to a shape that was all sinew and mangy, black fur, detaching itself from the darkness. It was a wolf, if wolves were designed by a horror movie director on a bad acid trip. Its body was too long, its legs too gangly, and its teeth, glistening with a black, viscous saliva, were way too numerous.
“That’s not ‘fauna’,” I hissed, taking an involuntary step back. “That’s a hellhound. That’s Cerberus’s angsty teenage cousin.”
“A Gloomfang Wolf,” Bartholomew corrected calmly. “Territorial, aggressive, and decidedly corporeal. Unlike our previous encounter, your witticisms will have no effect on this particular adversary.” He glanced back at me, his green eyes glinting. “I trust you recall that you have something that at least looks like a blade?”
My hand instinctively went to my hip, where my rusty goblin short sword hung in the frog I’d bought from the smith in Oakhaven. I’d named it ‘Rusty’. Seemed fitting if not particularly original.
I’d never held a sword in my life, outside of a plastic one at a Renaissance Faire. At least, that was true until yesterday.
The Gloomfang Wolf crept forward, its claws making soft, scraping sounds on a flat stone. It lowered its head, the growl intensifying into a chest-rattling snarl.
“Okay, okay,” I stammered, fumbling to draw the blade. It was heavier than it looked, and the cold steel felt alien and deadly in my grip. “What do I do? Pointy end goes in the other guy, right? I learned that from movies.”
“A sound, if rudimentary, tactical assessment,” Bartholomew conceded. “Attempt to avoid its primary means of attack—the maw—and create an opening. Its underbelly is least protected.”
“Easy for you to say! You’re bite-sized! It probably thinks you’re an appetizer!”
The wolf didn’t wait for our strategy session to conclude. It launched itself forward, a blur of black fur and snapping teeth. I shrieked, a high, undignified sound, and stumbled backward, swinging Rusty in a wild, desperate arc. There was a clang as steel met tooth, a jarring impact that shot up my arm and made me drop the sword.
I hit the ground hard, scrambling away on my hands and heels as the beast shook its head, a chip of metal flying from its mouth. It snarled, genuinely angry now, and lunged again.
This was it. Eaten by a goth-wolf in a magical forest. My obituary would be weird.
But as it leaped, a flash of grey fur shot between us. Bartholomew, his placid demeanor shattered, hissed with the fury of a demon. He swelled up to twice his size, back arched, fur standing on end. He wasn’t glowing, but for a split second, the wolf flinched, momentarily confused by this tiny, spitting creature.
It was all the time I needed. I lunged for Rusty, my fingers closing around the worn leather hilt. The wolf swiped at Bartholomew, who dodged with an agility that defied his fluffiness. Its attention was diverted. Its side was exposed.
Underbelly, his voice echoed in my head.
Adrenaline was a fire in my veins. I surged to my feet, screaming a wordless roar of pure terror and defiance, and drove the sword forward with both hands. I wasn’t aiming. I was just shoving, putting all my weight, all my fear, into one clumsy, desperate thrust.
I felt a sickening, wet resistance, then a sudden give. The wolf yelped, a choked, wet sound, and its weight collapsed onto me, driving me to my knees. Its hot, foul breath washed over my face. For a heart-stopping second, I thought it was going to tear my throat out in its death throes, but its head just lolled sideways, its smoldering eyes dimming to black.
I shoved the carcass off me, gagging. I was covered in something thick, dark, and foul-smelling. I was shaking so hard I could barely stand.
“Get up, it’s not over,” Barty said from somewhere nearby. His voice was deeper than usual, more like Frasier than the usual Niles, which led me to assume he was still larger than normal. I clawed my way up a nearby tree and onto my feet, wobbly from adrenaline, as two more wolves appeared from opposite directions. Rusty was still buried in the gut of the first wolf, and I ran for it. My hand met the leather, now slick with blood, and I yanked, but all it managed to do was pull me off-balance. I yanked again. This time, the blade came free and I turned to face the wolf snarling behind me.It lunged as I turned, and purely by accident, I managed to get the sword up in time. It met resistance before sliding through the animal’s neck, the tip just protruding below the base of its skull. Rather than be crushed again, this time, I turned as the wolf hit, letting it fly past me instead of onto me, and its own weight pulled the blade free. I searched the clearing for the third and final wolf, only to find Bartholomew sitting atop a third corpse, breathing heavily as he shrank back down to normal size. His gray fur was matted and covered in blood, but that too faded as he changed.
Then, a sound chimed in the air, clear and pure as a crystal bell.
[Gloomfang Wolf Defeated!] [x3] [Reward:] [Gloomfang Pelt (Poor Quality) x3][Vial of Gloomfang Venom x3][+450 XP]
“Bartholomew,” I said, my voice trembling. “What the hell just happened?”
The cat was calmly grooming a patch of fur the wolf’s claw had ruffled. “We survived,” he said, not looking up. “You are succeeding.”
Before I could ask what that meant, a brilliant flash of light enveloped me. It wasn’t painful; it was warm, invigorating. The exhaustion, the terror, the lingering stench of wolf blood—it all seemed to recede, replaced by a surge of vitality. The blue boxes reappeared, bigger this time.
[LEVEL UP!] [Paige Hawking has reached Level 3!][All Stats Increased!][New Skill Unlocked: Mana Manipulation]
My brows furrowed as I read the last line.
“Mana Manipulation?” I said the words aloud. They felt foreign, ridiculous on my tongue.
“Indeed,” Bartholomew said, finally padding over to me. He looked from the shimmering notification, which only I seemed to be able to see, to my face. “The fundamental building block of all arcane arts. The ability to feel and shape the ambient energies of Eldoria. Most novices must study for years to even sense it. Your rather unique circumstances appear to have provided a shortcut.”
My ninety thousand dollar piece of fancy paper had taught me how to de-escalate a PR crisis and write a killer press release. It had not, in any of its four long years, covered ‘Mana Manipulation.’
Hesitantly, I held out my hand, palm up. I tried to focus on what the words meant, on the feeling the level-up light had given me. I tried to feel it. For a moment, nothing. Then, a tingle. A warmth that started in my chest and spread like honey through my veins, down my arm, and into my palm.
A tiny, brilliant blue spark flickered to life above my skin. It danced for a second, a miniature star born of my will, before winking out.
I stared at my hand, then at the dead wolf, then at the fluffy, talking cat who was my guide. I took a deep, shaky breath. I had a sword. I had loot. And I had magic. That had to count for something. I looked at Bartholomew, a slow, slightly manic grin spreading across my face.
“Right,” I said, pushing myself to my feet and grabbing Rusty. “Magic. XP. Loot.” I gestured with the bloodied sword into the deeper, darker woods. “Let’s go find something else to kill.”