Malefic Matching#9 Finale

Halloween Seasonal Quest

PREVIOUSLY; Part#1 , Part#2 Part#3 Part#4 Part#5 Part#6 Part#7 Part#8

You woke with a start, the sounds of Vaelpurgis reaching your ears, cries of madness.

Hurriedly not washing, changing clothes or packing, you took a candle holder and fled your rattling house, the shadows and darkness of which were already taking grinning forms.

A moonless nightsky, lonely a faint halo of moonlight around a wriggling morass hanging in the sky. You didn't dare look at it. Tried not to acknowledge it, lest you catch the gaze of beyond.

Silence was absent too, the air filled with maddened cries like grotesque birdsong, and with madness so too despair.

In the wake of your flight, the ground squirmed, hooting laughing forms lazily loping after you. They didn't pounce on you instantly after all, what they loved was to surround, only feeding on flesh at the end of Vaelpurgis, before that they would torment.

A crowd of indistinct forms was soon trailing you only the Curse of your father kept your legs moving, from grasps that were hand, that were paw, that were tentacle.

Was it Luck that in the strange half-minds of these ghasts of Vaelpurgis they already thought you claimed? It certainly entered your head that begging shelter the day before would have been wise.

Hope filled your heart as you caught sight of the smithy light spilling from it. Hamlish evidently saw no further point in hiding forgelight. The rhythmic breathing of his forging no longer sounded, but...

The cries thar filled the air were muted. Your way however was blocked, a horde of ghasts lurked uneasily around the edges of the forgelight. They saw you. Smelt you. They would touch you. Hold you.

You cried out to Hamlish, begging for his aid.

Out he came, dressed in full, no sight of the horrific form he had while forging. He had something gripped in his hand, but even though he was in light, haloed by it, you couldn't make out what he bore.

Not even when he grasped it in both hands, raising it above his head, it looked as if he was miming holding some weighty weapon, but all that could be revealed to your eyes was air.

"I am man, mortal, I am no longer child of Fear, having Silenced it. So I end my words, I am child of Silence!"

He shouted at first, you could barely hear this shout, then he finished with a deafening whisper.

Unseen blade descended, and ghasts were silenced. In measured stride he carved a path to you, face stern and silent. In mute dismay the ghasts fled his approach.

You tried to thank him, weeping as he took you in one arm, but no sound came though you spoke. He simply gave you a smile and helped you towards the light of the forge.

The Silence was cut by fleshy gurgle.

"She was promised to me, this is your fault, all your fault. All I had to do was give it my child, now look at me, look at me! hahaha!"

It was something that looked vaguely like the village idiot Rackle, but at once it was too corpulent, too thin and in turn too featureless, each blink of the eyes would reveal a new distorted form of the human who was once called Rackle.

"Give her to me, if I lie with her, it'll give me back my body, it promised, it promised!"

Fleshy tears from eyes back into body.

Hamlish let you go and pointed to the forge, with worry in your cracked stone heart, you watched the confrontation.

Rackle continued to rave, but it was obscure babble and not normal words. You had to go to him, to help him, lie with him so that he might be human again, that you might receive ITS child.

Soundless roar, Hamlish silenced the voice of the Abyssal abomination, your mind no longer enchanted by it, you shuddered as you found you had strayed from the forge. You retreated once more as Hamlish lopped limbs off, but still the thing that once was Rackle stood and flailed fresh arms.

Hamlish took greater care, for as soon as he cut limb, another would be reaching for him. It still had distorted form of man though it scuttled and lept as a spider. With a mighty blow, Hamlish severed head, and the body crumpled, but the abomination quickly crawled out of the stump, relentlessly chasing Hamlish.

Faced with such a being, that remained even when cut by unseen blade, Hamlish was pushed back, and the being grew more frantic throwing its flesh on that blade such that in blood and flesh became it became visible.

Of all things, Hamlish facing this frenzied assault pulled his blade back and kicked the fool away. He quickly shook the blade, making it unseen once more. He raised it high, his lungs swelled, making him look inhuman once more.

When he opened his mouth you heard nothing. Not the cries of Vaelpurgis, muted, Not the feet of what was once Rackle, not that abomination being split from crown to navel, not it struggling to come out from the severed halves.

It was silenced.

Silence won.

...

You never again heard Hamlish speak. The forging of his blade had cost his voice.

With Hamlish's might and compassion you passed the Vaelpurgis whole and human, but you didn't move back into your own home.

Never again did you see Petyr or the knight whose name you never learned after the Vaelpurgis.

When a few haggard and haunted villagers returned, you married Hamlish, Taemaeus presided over the marriage.

Later though as the village was replenished by new life and survivors from elsewhere, you and Hamlish had to flee while you were heavy with his child.

Taemaeus revealed himself to be a vampire, but just as Hamlish was a human child of Silence, the vampire priest was a child of his goddess Curse, not Night.

In the end, the whole village was claimed by Curse, and you and Hamlish found refuge in town owned by another vampire, but all she took was a light blood tax, collected by humans. She didn't assimilate with devotion, altering forms in Curse.

Your heart was lifted from your father's curse.

One might wonder what Curse might have thought about it, but you Ludmilla, with your silent husband and child, didn't worry.

In Silence you found peace.

GOOD END

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