Interlude Nine - The Silence of Ravengro

Thunder rolled across the laboratory ceiling like the footsteps of angry gods, and Alistair Clancy barely noticed. His fingers moved with practiced precision through the maze of copper wire and etched crystal that comprised his latest attempt at functional legs, each gesture trailing faint sparks of light that danced between the arcane glyphs carved into the metal framework. The storm outside pressed against the shuttered windows with violent intent, but inside, surrounded by the controlled chaos of his workbench, Alistair existed in a bubble of absolute concentration.   The leg braces sprawled before him like the skeleton of some impossible creature. Where traditional arcanists would have used silver and sanctified oils, Alistair had substituted brass gears and lubricants that glowed faintly green under the workshop's flickering lamplight. Each joint articulated with mechanical precision, while veins of crystallized mana ran through channels he'd carved himself, creating a circulatory system that pulsed with arcane life.   He lifted a particularly delicate knee joint where three separate runetech enchantments had to overlap without interference, and held it up to the light. The runes shimmered, their meaning shifting depending on the angle of observation. Perfect. He'd spent three weeks calculating the exact harmonic frequencies needed to prevent magical feedback, and now, finally, the mathematics sang true.   "They're getting closer," Leonard's voice cut through the laboratory's hum. The former governor-mayor of Ravengro stood pressed against the wall beside the window, one eye peering through a crack in the storm shutters. His knuckles had gone white where they gripped the wooden frame, and sweat beaded on his forehead despite the room's chill.   Alistair didn't look up from threading a particularly stubborn wire through a brass eyelet. "They're always getting closer. That's what the dead do. They shamble forward with all the enthusiasm of civil servants on a Monday morning."   "This isn't funny, Alistair." Leonard's voice carried that particular strain of authority that had served him well in town meetings but meant nothing now. "There must be thirty of them in the street."   Lightning split the sky, and for one brilliant moment, the laboratory blazed white. Through the cracked shutter, Leonard saw them clearly. Bodies that had once been neighbors, friends, constituents. Their skin hung loose and gray, split in places where fat, green worms writhed through the gaps. The dwarf blacksmith Thrain Stoneforge stumbled past, his jaw hanging at an impossible angle, green tendrils spilling from his mouth like overboiled pasta. Behind him, what remained of the Garrett twins moved in perfect synchronization, their heads tilted at matching angles, tracking something only they could perceive.   The worms were the worst part. Not the decay, not the shambling gait or the vacant eyes. The green worms that puppeted the corpses with alien intelligence, burrowing through flesh and bone with casual efficiency. They glowed faintly in the storm light, phosphorescent threads that wove through their hosts like living embroidery.   "They'll see you if you stay there," Alistair said, finally glancing up from his work. His eyes, sharp as broken glass despite the exhaustion that lined his face, fixed on his brother with clinical precision. "The worms respond to movement through glass. Something about light refraction—I haven't had time to study it properly, what with the world ending and all."   Leonard jerked back from the window as if burned, stumbling over a pile of discarded mechanical parts. A gear rolled across the floor with a sound like distant thunder, and both brothers froze, listening. Outside, the shambling footsteps continued their mindless rhythm, neither faster nor slower than before.   "How can you be so calm?" Leonard demanded once his heart rate approached something sustainable. He slumped against a workbench, sending a cascade of small screws rattling across its surface. "The town is dead. Everyone we knew is out there, infected or fled or—"   "Or in here, building new legs while you panic at windows." Alistair's grin held no warmth, just the sharp edge of a man who'd replaced fear with purpose. He secured another enchantment into the brace's framework, the rune flaring briefly before settling into a steady glow. "Being mayor of a dead town doesn't give you any special privilege over them, Leonard. They'll eat you just as enthusiastically as they ate the street sweeper."   The words hung in the air between them, harsh but not cruel. Alistair had always possessed the ability to strip away comforting illusions with surgical precision. In the before times, it had made him insufferable at dinner parties. Now, it might keep them alive.   Leonard's shoulders sagged, the last pretense of authority draining from his posture. "I spent ten years building this town's future. A decade of development proposals, tax incentives, and infrastructure improvements with mining consortia and the trade guilds. For what? So it could all rot in a week?"   "Progress in Ravengro was always an illusion," Alistair murmured, attention already returning to his work. He lifted a small hammer, its head inscribed with binding runes, and began tapping the final connections into place. Each strike rang with unnatural clarity, the sound somehow both metallic and musical. "Unless it was pissing contests between you and Boniface Halbert. Looks like you came out ahead on that front."   Leonard bit down on his replay and spun the top off the whisky bottle he'd hidden behind a stack of theoretical enchantment texts that Alistair would never voluntarily touch. His hands trembled as he poured, the amber liquid catching the workshop's unsteady light. The bottle's neck rattled against the glass rim, a sharp sound that seemed enormous in the laboratory's tense quiet. He'd been governor-mayor long enough to know that some conversations required liquid courage, even when the town you governed had ceased to exist.   He lifted the glass with both hands, studying the whisky as if it might hold answers to questions he couldn't quite articulate. The liquid trembled, creating tiny waves that lapped against the glass walls, and he realized his hands hadn't stopped shaking since the morning he'd watched the Blackwood family claw their way out of their own graves, worms spilling from their mouths like unholy prophecy.   "Why did this happen?" The words escaped him in a rush, raw and desperate. "How did the worms infect so many so fast?" He took a burning sip, letting the alcohol trace a line of fire down his throat. "Why did no one stop it?"   Alistair's fingers stilled on the glowing rune he'd been adjusting. For a moment, the only sound was rain hammering against stone and wood, a percussion that seemed to grow louder in the absence of his brother's constant tinkering. Then, with deliberate slowness, Alistair leaned back against a metal cabinet that housed his more volatile experiments. The cabinet door bore warning signs in three languages and one purely magical script that translated roughly to "Opening This Will Ruin Everyone's Day."   "The priests knew first," Alistair said, his voice carrying that particular evenness he adopted when discussing the truly catastrophic. "Every priest of Pharasma started screaming about the same vision. Rivers of worms beneath the earth, they said. An endless writhing mass that had been sleeping since before the first cities rose." He paused, adjusting one of the leather straps on his useless legs with absent fingers. "They tried to warn people, but who listens to death priests raving about apocalyptic worms? Everyone assumed it was some new theological metaphor."   Leonard's grip tightened on his glass. "The Temple of Pharasma went silent last week. No bells, no services, nothing."   "Because they're all dead or mad," Alistair replied with the same tone he might use to discuss the weather. "Sister Catherine hung herself from the bell tower—I saw her body swaying there two days before the worms took it. Brother Harmanas set fire to the temple records, claiming the words were growing worms of their own. Father Sullus..." He trailed off, a shadow crossing his features. "Well, let's just say he found a particularly creative interpretation of returning to the Lady of Graves."   "What about Iomedae's faithful at the Garrison?" Leonard pressed. "The paladins, the clerics? Surely they would have acted?"   A bitter laugh escaped Alistair, sharp enough to cut. "Oh, they acted. They acted on the visions their goddess sent them of a great evil rising in the south, so they marshaled their forces and marched toward the sunrise, leaving the rest of us to face what was already beneath our feet." He pushed himself away from the cabinet, wheeling closer to his workbench with practiced movements. "The troops were three days gone when the first bodies started walking. Impeccable timing, really. Almost like someone planned it."   The implications hung heavy between them. Leonard drained half his glass in one desperate swallow, coughing as the burn hit harder than expected. "But surely someone outside the town walls would help. Caliphas, the—"   "Caliphas is dealing with its own problems," Alistair interrupted, his fingers already returning to the delicate work of enchantment integration. "And everyone else?" He shrugged, a gesture that somehow conveyed both resignation and contempt. "They're doing exactly what we're doing. They're protecting their own families, boarding up their doors, and praying the nightmare passes them by."   "So we're alone." Leonard's voice had gone hollow, the weight of genuine understanding finally settling on his shoulders.   "We've always been alone," Alistair corrected, threading a silver wire through a gap so narrow it barely existed. He glanced up, meeting Leonard's eyes with uncomfortable directness. "I'm protecting you because you're my brother. That's the only truth that matters anymore. Not your title, not your civic duty, not the grand promises we made about tomorrow. Just this: you're family, and I'm still breathing, so I'll keep you breathing too."   The words should have been comforting, but they carried an edge that suggested comfort was another luxury they'd lost. Leonard studied his remaining whisky, seeing his own distorted reflection in its surface. "How long can we last here?" he asked, though he suspected he didn't want the answer.   The thump against the doorframe arrived like a physical blow, rattling the heavy oak in its hinges and sending a cascade of dust from the ceiling beams. The sound possessed a wet, meaty quality that suggested something large and formerly human had thrown itself against the barrier with mindless persistence. Leonard's whisky glass hit the floor, shattering into glittering fragments that caught the lamplight like broken stars. The governor-mayor's ceremonial blade that had never drawn blood appeared in his hand, gripped with the white-knuckled urgency of a man who'd watched his world eat itself alive. The leather-wrapped handle felt slick against his palm, though whether from sweat or the persistent dampness that seemed to permeate everything since the dead started walking, he couldn't tell.   "They've found us," Leonard hissed, the words barely audible over his hammering heartbeat. Another impact shook the door, this time accompanied by a sound like wet fabric tearing. Through the gap beneath the door, something green and segmented writhed briefly into view before withdrawing.   "Stay calm." Alistair's voice cut through Leonard's rising panic with surgical precision. His hands never paused in their work, fingers dancing across the final connections with the same steady rhythm they'd maintained for the last hour. "I'm almost done."   The casualness of it, the absolute refusal to acknowledge the immediacy of death slobbering at their door, sent a spike of anger through Leonard's fear. "How are new legs going to help us now?" The question emerged as a challenge, almost an accusation. "That door won't hold forever, and you can't even stand!"   "Not yet," Alistair agreed, tightening the final arcane bolts with movements that suggested he'd rehearsed this moment a thousand times in his mind. Each bolt clicked into place with a sound like breaking bones, the enchantments flaring to life in sequence—blue, green, gold, then a color that hurt to perceive directly. "But in approximately thirty seconds, that will no longer be true."   The leg braces had transformed from elaborate sculpture to something almost alive. Where the braces met flesh, Alistair's useless legs began to twitch, muscles that hadn't responded to his will in several years suddenly remembering their purpose.   He snapped the lock closed on the last enchantment, and the sound rang out like a bell struck in an empty cathedral. The braces contracted, molding themselves to his legs with an intimacy that looked almost painful. Alistair's jaw clenched, a grunt escaping through gritted teeth as nerves that had been silent suddenly screamed back to life. His hands gripped the workbench edge hard enough to leave impressions in the wood.   "How will walking help us escape?" Leonard demanded, his voice rising toward hysteria. "You've seen how many there are. You've seen what they've become!"   "They'll let me outrun the dead much faster than this chair ever could," Alistair answered through teeth still clenched against the sensation of rebirth coursing through his lower body. He pushed himself up from the chair with trembling arms, and for the first time in years, his legs bore weight. They held. The braces hummed with barely contained power, each step potential energy waiting to be released. "Speed is our only advantage now. They're strong, they're numerous, but they're slow. Predictably, methodically slow. " Alistair forced the grimace into a smile. "I'm also a powerful wizard, so there's that."   Another impact, harder this time. The door's upper hinge groaned, metal twisting against wood that had been treated to resist magic but never considered the possibility of the unwilling dead. Through the growing gap, Leonard could see shambling silhouettes backlit by lightning, too many to count, all moving with the same horrible purpose.   Alistair took an experimental step, then another. The braces responded perfectly, translating will into motion with an efficiency that bordered on precognition. He moved like a dancer learning new steps, uncertain at first but gaining confidence with each movement. The enchantments pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, creating a feedback loop of magical and biological systems that shouldn't have been able to coexist.   "This is impossible," Leonard whispered, though whether he meant the legs or their situation or the entire cosmic joke of their existence, even he couldn't say.   "Everything's impossible until it isn't," Alistair replied, but his eyes had fixed on the door with an intensity that betrayed his calculated calm. Rain lashed against the windows with renewed violence, and in the intermittent lightning flashes, twisted shapes pressed against glass, searching for ways inside that the living had forgotten to guard.   He watched the door bow inward with each impact, calculating angles of force and structural failure with the part of his mind that never stopped measuring the world in mathematics and probability. The wood would hold for another three minutes, perhaps four if they were lucky. The windows, probably less than that. Glass was always the weak point, no matter how many protective wards you carved into the frames.   Alistair's newly functional legs trembled, not from weakness but from potential energy demanding release. He could run now, yes. He could outpace the shambling horrors that had been their neighbors. But running only delayed the inevitable unless you had somewhere to run to, and in a world where the dead outnumbered the living and gods sent their champions chasing shadows while real evil rose from below, where exactly did salvation wait?   The door shuddered again. A crack appeared in the center panel, spreading like veins through dying flesh. Through the gap, something watched them with eyes that glowed the same phosphorescent color as the worms. "We need to move," Alistair said, though the words felt like admitting defeat. "Now."   But even as Leonard grabbed what supplies he could carry and Alistair tested the full capability of his restored mobility, both brothers knew the truth that neither would speak: they were merely choosing the manner of their ending, not preventing it. In a world where death had learned to walk and the ground itself bred abominations, survival had become just another word for delaying the inevitable embrace of whatever horror would finally claim them.   The laboratory door gave its final groan of protest. Time, like hope, had run out.