NaNoWriMo - Cymru 7

DYLAN

The promised inn seemed like a good place to start. Dylan found it without too much trouble or too many guests; when he opened the door the bar keeper actually levelled a crossbow at him, which seemed an unwise business strategy.

"I'm sorry," Dylan said, freezing. "You don't want guests. I'll go."

"No," the innkeeper said, her face strained and unsmiling. "Stay. But turn around first. Let me see all of you."

Nervously, Dylan did as he was told. One twitch of her finger on the trigger and he was a dead man. He did a full rotation on the spot, slowly with his hands up, and then met her eye. She stared at him for a few moments more before nodding and, to Dylan's eternal relief, lowering the crossbow.

"You're clean," she said, and put the weapon under the bar. Dylan wondered if anyone had ever tried to rob this place. It seemed ill-advised. "Welcome in, Derwydd, although you may not want to stay. What brings you here?"

Dylan cautiously walked nearer to the bar. Now that he wasn't staring at potential crossbow-related termination he could see the room properly; a woman sat huddled in blankets by the fire, eyes blank and trained entirely on the flames. Closer was a wooden table that smelled of beer and metheglin around which sat three men, fully armed and watching him with unfriendly eyes. An old man sat at the bar itself, grey head bowed and staring into his drink. The innkeeper herself was rubbing a filthy cloth around a tankard, watching him. She looked to be in about her forties or fifties, her brow heavily-lined but her hair still surprisingly red.

"Um," Dylan said. "Whatever's gone wrong. I mean... the Urdd sent me to find out whatever happened on the Ysbrydnos." Why was he so poor at expressing himself?

The innkeeper stopped and stared at him, and Dylan was uncomfortably aware of himself becoming the sole focus of the room.

"It's happening elsewhere?" she whispered. Dylan nodded.

"Yes," he said. "That is... something has. We don't know what. I'm - "

"But it's not just us?" one of the men at the table said. He had a beard Dylan probably could have hidden in. "It's not just happening to us?"

"I... no." Dylan wished he was better with social nuances. There was a question here that these people weren't quite asking, and he was rather afraid of answering it wrongly. He had no desire to see that crossbow again. "I mean, I don't know exactly what's happening, but the energies are wrong everywhere. Across all of the ley lines. More in some places."

"The energies are wrong," the man said. He stood up and crossed over to Dylan, gripping his arm tightly. "Tell me, Derwydd. Tell me it wasn't us."

"Oh, gods no!" Dylan exclaimed. So that was what they were worried about. "No, it wasn't anything any of you did. It - "

"But how can you know?" whispered a broken voice from the fire. The innkeeper cursed and grabbed a flagon of something, hastening to the woman sitting there, her eyes still transfixed on the flames. "If you don't know what happened how can you know it wasn't us? How can you know our children - ?"

The innkeeper reached her and gently slipped the flagon between the woman's lips. She drank thirstily, and when she stopped she was quiet again.

"It came from the void," Dylan said. "Whatever it is. It came from between the worlds, between here and Otherworld, and it wanted to get through. I think it has for a while."

"You mean 'they'," the innkeeper said, crossing back to the bar. Dylan blinked.

"I'm sorry?" he said. The man still gripping his arm answered.

"'They' wanted to get through," he said, eyes hollow. "Not 'it'. There are so many, Derwydd, every night."

There was more than one now? How? Why couldn't he sense that? Was that why the pendant made it all splinter? What was happening?

"I'm sorry," Dylan said quietly, trying his hardest to pick his words carefully. "I'm so sorry. But I need to ask you all for details, if you have them. What has happened here?"

"They came," the woman by the fire whispered. Her eyes looked suddenly manic, glued still to the fire. "They came through the flames, dancing and laughing, the Beautiful Ones and they stole us and stuck to us," her voice rose rapidly while everyone present was suddenly up on their feet and rushing to her, "and they laughed and laughed and they're claiming us one by one for our sins, they have to make us pure and beautiful like them and they're in the fire, in the flames - "

She was cut off as the innkeeper finally got the flagon back in her mouth, three burly men holding her down and one old man holding another flagon ready. Dylan, though, leaped to his feet and all but ran to the fire, dropping to his knees in front of it and closing his eyes -

- purity, there must be purity, the forms are wrong and we're not quite there -

The signal fractured and Dylan lost the focus, his eyes snapping open. Hands in the flames flickered and were gone. He swore. The world was breaking, and he was losing the ability to do the one thing that could have saved it.