Farcastles

FARCASTLES: CHAPTER SIX – FLAME AND MEMORY

They were seated around the long table in Daggerpoint’s town hall, light filtering through cracked windows, dust dancing like ghosts in the beams. The old woman who’d stopped the confrontation stood at the head, her hands wrapped tightly around a carved cane that looked older than anyone present.

“My name is Alder May,” she said. “Once a mediator between the Castles. Now… keeper of what’s left.”

Torv leaned forward, arms crossed. “So what happened here?”

Alder May closed her eyes. “The banners came down. That was the first thing. No decree, no battle. Just… gone. One day the Red was missing. Next, the Blue. People whispered, then stopped whispering. Then they left.”

Probably sitting on a stool | Shower thinker | Collaborative Worldbuilding | Community Games

/farcastles /brians-rescue

A tremor rolled under their feet.

A low groan followed—a sound like thunder being dragged through gravel. Dust shook loose from the branches.

Then came the fire.

A roar split the afternoon. A jet of flame tore skyward from the Hollow, setting the orchard ablaze. Windows shattered. Smoke churned upward, thick and acrid.

Villagers screamed. Chaos bloomed.

Sarra spun toward May. “What is it?”

“Not what,” May whispered, “but who we left behind.”

Myrr moved first, hands rising. Threads of violet shimmer spiraled from their palms, forming a curved shield—thin as silk, strong as steel—that caught a rain of flaming debris midair.

“Go!” Sarra barked. “Gellon—right flank! Torv, with me! Ern—”

She didn’t finish.

Ern was already moving.

Not fast. Not brave. But forward.

He thought of his uncle’s voice, sharp with drink and years: “If fire’s coming, boy, don’t be clever. Be gone.”

But Ern wasn’t gone.

The creature rose from the Hollow like a memory that refused to fade. A twisted mass of bone and root, limbs shaped wrong, stitched with rusted armor and tattered flags. A Red gauntlet jutted from its shoulder. A Blue banner hung like a noose around its neck. Sigils of both Castles were branded into its hide, glowing like coals beneath rotted bark.

Where a face should have been, there was only a gaping mouth—wide, wailing, echoing old war cries in broken fragments.

“Hold the line!” Sarra shouted.

Myrr summoned vines from the ground—some fresh, some long-dead—twisting them into a wall of thorns that slowed the creature’s advance.

Gellon charged low, sword flashing. Torv moved like smoke, striking at the joints. Sarra flanked right, each swing deliberate.

“Ern!” Gellon shouted. “Left side—now!”

Ern had no sword. No orders. Just a banner pole tipped with rusted iron, discarded in the dirt.

He grabbed it.

He ran.

As the creature broke through the vines, Ern drove the pole into its flank—deep into rot and bone, until it struck something that gave way with a wet crack.

The beast screamed.

Not from pain.

From confusion.

Its voice fractured. “For… the… Crow…” It choked on the last word, as if it no longer understood it.

Sarra lunged, her blade slicing into its neck. Gellon leapt, Mercy cutting a clean arc. Torv severed a knee joint. Myrr raised both hands, and the roots beneath the creature’s feet surged upward, binding it mid-thrash.

Ern held the pole steady. Not like a spear.

Like a flag. Like a line in the dirt.

“Stay,” he whispered. “Right here.”

The creature convulsed once. Twice.

Then collapsed.

Ash fell like snow. Smoke curled upward. The world exhaled.

They stood in the wreckage, breathless. Gellon clutched his ribs, laughing weakly. Torv cleaned his blade with mechanical precision. Myrr stood very still, steam rising faintly from their cloak.

Ern looked at his hands. Blood.

He didn’t know whose.

Alder May stepped forward and knelt beside the ruined thing. She touched a patch of burned cloth.

“It knew a name once,” she murmured.

From behind a shattered fence, a child peered out. A mother clutched her closer. Somewhere, someone whispered a prayer.

Sarra turned to Ern.

“Still standing?”

He nodded.

“Good,” she said. "That was only the warning shot."

“Left for where?” Ern asked.

“Some for the woods. Some to the east. Some just vanished. And then the Hollow took the rest.”

Sarra’s brow furrowed. “The Hollow?”

May nodded toward the shuttered window. “The gap just beyond the orchard. Was a ravine once. Not anymore. It grew. And it remembers.”

Ern shivered. Not from cold.


---

They followed her outside, weaving past abandoned carts and hollow-eyed villagers. The orchard ended abruptly at a black wound in the earth—wide, jagged, pulsing faintly at its edges. The ground smelled scorched. No birds. No wind.

It felt like the world was holding its breath.

“My brother fell into it,” May said. “Didn’t scream. Just vanished. When we threw down a rope, it came back burned.”

Torv stared into the dark. “What’s down there?”

“Not what,” May repeated. “The war. Its rot. Its memory.”