Banshee

A mournful wail escaped the mist. In its wake a female voice sobbed in distress out in the forest.

The Old Svalich Road was a scar of gravel and mud, the only division between the two suffocating walls of the forest. The trees, ancient and black, clawed at a sky the color of a fresh bruise. Dusk was not so much falling as it was congealing, thickening the ever-present mists that clung to the road like a shroud.

Kaelen held the lantern high. Its feeble, oily light did little more than illuminate the panicked condensation of their own breath. He walked point, his plate mail groaning with every step. Behind him, Renn, ever-lithe, scanned the treeline, his leather armor dark with damp. Bringing up the rear was Elara, her hand never straying from the silver holy symbol of the Morninglord at her neck.

"The air is... sick," Elara whispered, the sound swallowed by the fog. "There's a grief here so old it's turned to poison."

Kaelen grunted. "This whole land is a grave, Elara. Keep your prayers ready."

"I don't like this," Renn muttered, stopping. "The road's too open. But the woods..." He shuddered. "The woods are worse."

As if summoned by his words, a sound pricked the silence.

It was the sound of someone weeping.

A woman's sob, thin and desperately sad, drifted from the black pines to their left. It was a sound of profound, bottomless loss.

Kaelen’s hand tightened on his mace. "A trap."

"Or a victim," Elara countered, her face pale. "Kaelen, that sound... it's pure agony."

The weeping hitched, then continued, seeming to move slightly deeper into the trees.

Renn's sense of danger suggested it was a lure, as blatant as a baited hook.

"We stay on the road," Kaelen commanded, his voice a low growl. "Nothing good comes from leaving the path in Barovia. If she needs help, she can come to the light."

He took another step. The weeping changed. The sorrow curdled, sharpening into a note of frustration.

Then it tried a new tactic.

"Renn..."

The voice was no longer a sob, but a spectral whisper that seemed to slither directly into the ranger's ear. He froze, his head snapping to the left.

"Did you... did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Kaelen said, turning.

"It... it knew my name." Renn took an instinctive step toward the treeline. The whisper came again, laced with a terrifying, intimate knowledge of his own private fears.

"They're waiting for you, Renn... lost... just like you..."

"Renn, no!" Elara cried out, but the ranger was mesmerized, his foot already on the soft, black earth off the road.

"It knows me," he breathed, his eyes wide.

Kaelen lunged, grabbing the back of Renn's tunic and hauling him back onto the gravel. The ranger stumbled, shaking his head as if waking from a dream.

The lure had failed. The attempt to isolate one of them had been thwarted.

For a heartbeat, the forest fell into an impossible, deathly silence. The mist ceased its swirl. The very air seemed to hold its breath.

Elara’s eyes widened in terror. "It's coming."

The sound that erupted from the woods was not a sound at all. It was the absence of life. It was the auditory shape of an empty, lightless abyss. It was the shriek of a soul flayed, murdered, and left to rot in eternal, agonizing memory.

It was a banshee's wail.

Renn clapped his hands to his ears, a scream of his own dying in his throat as the sound threatened to stop his heart. Kaelen roared, planting his feet and raising his shield, but the wail bypassed armor. He felt his very life force drain, a paralyzing cold seizing his limbs as if he'd been plunged into a frozen lake.

Elara, protected by her faith, chanted a desperate prayer. The sound tore at her, but her divine magic held it at bay, a tiny, flickering candle in a hurricane.

The banshee flew from the trees.

She was not a body, but a suggestion of one—an apparition of moonlight and grave-shrouds. Her long, pale hair whipped around a face hollowed by a permanent, soundless scream. Her eyes were black pits from which silver tears flowed like mercury. And in her spectral form, they could make out the long, pointed ears of an elf. A Dusk Elf.

Her existence was pain, and their lives—their warm, breathing, hopeful lives—were a personal, agonizing insult.

Her rage was absolute.

She had failed to draw them into the trees where she could hunt them in the tangled darkness. Now, she would end them here.

She streaked across the road, ignoring Kaelen's sluggish, pained swing of his mace. The weapon passed right through her, the metal frosting over with a spiderweb of ice. Her target was the one who had thwarted her.

She dove at Kaelen.

"Kaelen!" Elara screamed.

The banshee's hands, skeletal and glowing with a faint, necrotic light, plunged toward the warrior's chest. But Renn, recovering his wits, was faster. He shoved Kaelen hard. The warrior tumbled back as the banshee's chilling touch grazed his shoulder pauldron. The metal didn't dent; it dimmed, the steel turning a dull, lifeless grey.

The banshee shrieked in frustration, wheeling in the air. She was too exposed on the road, but her fury was too great to retreat. She drew in the cold air, her jaw unhinging for a second, more potent wail.

"The light!" Elara shouted, her voice raw. "She hates the light!"

Renn didn't hesitate. He unslung his bow, nocked an arrow, and fired not at the spirit, but at the lantern Kaelen still held.

The arrow shattered the glass. The lantern fell, spilling its oil across the gravel. With a whoosh, a barrier of bright, hot fire erupted between the party and the monster.

The banshee recoiled, her scream turning from rage to a piercing, terrified agony. The firelight was anathema. It was the heat of life. It was the memory of the sun. It was everything she had lost.

"Be gone, lost sister!" Elara commanded, stepping forward. She raised her holy symbol, which flared with reflected firelight, projecting a brilliant, silver radiance. "Your war is not with us! Your murderer still walks this land, but we are not him!"

The banshee hovered at the edge of the flames, her face twisting. For one fleeting, heartbreaking instant, the monstrous mask of rage dissolved. The party saw not a monster, but the face of a young elf-woman, her eyes wide with the terror of her own death, her mouth open in a plea that had never been answered.

She looked at Elara. The silver tears streamed. The hatred was gone, replaced by a grief so vast it threatened to drown the world.

Then, with a final, shuddering sob that sounded like the wind through a broken tomb, she turned. She fled, not into the trees, but through them, her spectral form dissolving back into the mists that had birthed her.

The wail faded, leaving only the crackle of the fire on the road and the ragged sound of three people breathing.

Kaelen pushed himself to his feet, his face ashen. He touched his pauldron. The metal was cold as death, and the grey tarnish remained.

Renn retrieved his arrow, his hands shaking. "Gods... what was that?"

Elara stared into the dark forest, her own tears tracking through the grime on her face.

"All that remains," she whispered, pulling her cloak tight. "She wasn't trying to kill us, not really. She was just trying to make us stop. Our hearts... our breathing... it hurt her. It reminded her."

Kaelen stamped out the last of the fire, his movements stiff. He picked up the broken lantern and stared at it, then tossed it into the woods.

"We walk 'til dawn," he ordered, his voice hollow. "And we don't stop. For anything."

They moved on, leaving the patch of scorched gravel behind. The mists closed in, silent once more. But now, they all knew, the fog was not empty. It was full of memories. And the memories had teeth.