She used to sneak out of her bedroom when her mother was still alive, just to watch them dancing. They would twirl until her mother’s skirts were nothing more than a blur and she had to press her laughter against her father’s shoulder. They never knew Amicia was awake, watching them from the stairwell.
A final heartbeat, thudding against her ears like a great bang. Chiming that her time was up.
Her father, staring up at her with blood splattered on his cheek and pooling around his torso. He couldn’t survive this. Even if she could lift the boards. Though they could solve any mystery together, it appeared this was the one that would best them.
She couldn’t leave him here to die alone.
Black spots danced in her vision.
She was his daughter. He deserved more than the cold and mud.
Should she put him out of his misery? Could she...?
A rock would do it, but she wasn’t strong enough to hit him just once and…
No. She couldn’t do it, and that would become the greatest regret of her life. Amicia stumbled to her feet. “I’m sorry,” she whimpered.
He breathed out a long, pitying sigh. “I never asked. Now go.”
Casting one last look back to her father, Amicia ran through the streets once more.
She traced her journey back to the house through eyes blurred with tears. She hated the monsters. Every last one of them could burn in Hell for all she cared after what they had done to her city and all the people she loved.
The beating whoosh of wings in the air heralded another Dread who wanted to snatch her off the street. Amicia ducked underneath an overhang outside one of the houses, narrowly missing the clawed hands that reached for her.
Chest heaving, she stared at the Dread as it landed on hands and knees just down the street. Like the other, this one was monstrous. The creature stood, granite skin rippling, then turned to stare back at her.
Slitted yellow eyes bore into her soul. It flared its leathery wings wide and let out a low hiss as it stepped toward her on legs that were wrong. Its feet were elongated, creating the illusion of knees that bent backward.
Rage burned her chest. She would not be afraid of this one.
Baring her teeth, she hissed, “You must be faster than that, monster.”
Amicia reached behind her, twisted the doorknob, and disappeared through the home. She didn’t look to see if the inhabitants were still there. She knew this place like the back of her hand.
Their garden connected with hers. She could run through this house, out the door, over the fence, and already be inside her father’s… her… her quaint home before the creature thought to fly up and over.
A great banging knocked the front door off its hinges. It fell with a crash, dust buffeting up from the ground.
Amicia’s breath sawed out of her chest as she burst into movement. Ten steps and she was at the back door, frantically shoving it open and racing out through the mud. The creature, however, was stuck within the house. She heard the flipping crash of the family’s wooden table and the blast of plates shattering on the floor.
Just a little farther now.
Amicia placed a hand on the fence and rolled over the top, falling onto her behind hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs. Wheezing, she got back to her feet and ran to the back door of her home.
Plunging into the darkness, she slammed the door behind her and turned the lock. That would take the creature a few minutes to figure out if the door could hold.
Amicia spun, skirts whirling in a wide arc around her, and raced up the spiral staircase to her father’s room.
She ran down the hall, past her own bedroom where there were items she would love to grab. Her mother’s hairbrush. Her first kit of tools that her father had given to her on her sixth birthday. Things that had become dear to her heart.
The door downstairs cracked. When wood splinters hit the ground like rain, there was less time than she’d imagined. The solid wood held, but the creature would soon render it to pieces.
“Think, Amicia,” she scolded herself. Legends said the creatures could hear better than they could see. Which meant the bat-like Dread would search for her by listening. Perhaps the sound of her breathing was too light, so she would need to stay quieter than a mouse.
She slowed her thundering steps and tiptoed to her father’s room. Though the banging on the door made her wish to sprint away, she knew better.
The door creaked under her hand. She winced, but pushed it open and slipped through once there was enough room. Then she turned to the beloved chamber where her father had always been.
His tinkering table was in the corner, taking up most of the space. The window above it revealed the night sky beyond. Moonlight highlighted a wooden desk that had seen better days, chipped by countless hammers and metal. A bookshelf stood beside it, filled to the brim with diagrams and books on the human body. Her father liked to learn whatever he could, even if that meant his cot was shoved in the back corner.
She hadn’t known “heartbreak” wasn’t just a dramatic term. It felt as though the organ was splitting in two within her. Every inhale was an agony when she didn’t know if this was the moment when her father died.
Would she feel it? She had left him alone in the street, but would she know when he passed?
Hands shaking, she walked to the desk and scooped up her father’s greatest possession. The locket had once been her mother’s. The portrait within it had faded greatly in the years since her passing. Her father and herself, the two people her mother had loved more than anything else.
Amicia secured the necklace around her throat. Now, she would have them both with her forever.
Move the bookshelf, she heard her father’s voice in her head. All she could wish was that she’d asked him how.
Downstairs, a crashing roar made the walls shake. The door had fallen, and the Dread had entered her home.
Amicia was running out of time. She placed her shoulder against the side of the bookshelf and shoved. The great screeching of metal feet hurt her ears, and worse, let the Dread know where she was.
“Come on,” she muttered as the clacking of claws started up the stairwell. “Come on.”
Finally, it shifted enough to create a gap in the stone wall. A small one, perhaps, but enough for her father to have placed a lever.
Another door hit the stone, nearer this time. Perhaps her smell was stronger there. Whatever the reason, the creature had unknowingly given her enough time to do what her father had wanted.
“Please help them,” she whispered, then grasped the lever and pulled hard.
At first, nothing happened. She lost all the breath in her lungs. Had she not done it right? Had she failed her father?
Then a creaking noise that rocked through the city and filtered through the windows.
She rushed to her father’s desk, clutched the edge, and stared out the glass at the braziers surrounding her home. The fires that were supposed to keep out the Dread.
The braziers, which lit Little Marsh as the beacon of the North, all fell as one. The oil that filled the great cauldrons spilled out onto the streets in rivers of fire. The fortress at the center of the city was engulfed in the distance.
Thus, the city of Little Marsh burned.
Wind blew through the window and screams rode upon it. Screams of the dying. Screeches begging for help that would not come. Wails of her people damning her for eternity.
The Dread rose in a great wave of darkness from the fortress. Hundreds of them, lifting as one into the air. She hadn’t even seen them attached to the silhouette but now could see how many had been attacking her home.