Donna Quixote: the Legend of the Myth of the Golden Acorn

The Dawnlands: The Moors of Castellion

In which we witness the trials of faith and the triumph of practice.

 

Perwal shifted uncomfortably on the coach seat, wincing as his jeweled belt bit into his legs. Priestly clothing and accessories were not designed for coach rides; so far as Perwal was concerned, the journey to the Morninglory estates could not end soon enough.

 

Most of the high noble families lived near the capital, even if their ancestral lands were far distant. It simply made more sense for the governing families of the Empire to be near the palace and the courtiers and papal influencers that truly ruled. Perwal considered the distance between the palace and his destination. It supported the Chamberlain’s words: the Morninglory family did not concern itself with the trappings of court Their holdings were vast but of questionable value. There were farms but they were small, serving the villages that had inserted themselves between the hills and marshes wherever the ground was solid enough to support a barn. There was a single town, Brumbledun, which had been home to a baker, a spinner, a potter and two blacksmiths, as well as having a small market for the local wives to sell honey, soaps, or knit goods. It was the kind of town that one enjoyed briefly on a summer’s day while headed to some other destination.

 

At least the roads are well kept. Reclusive, perhaps, but the infrastructure was maintained. Looking out to the rolling, misty moors beyond the edge of the road, Perwal could understand the necessity. Everything looked soggy, the trees felt hostile, and the fog actively lurked.

 

Perwal pulled the curtain. The day was waning, and the afternoon sun was pulling like slow, yellow taffy across the landscape. The warmth of the interior threatened to convince Perwal of a nap. His eyes closed and hands folded across his belly. Instead, Perwal rehearsed his instructions once more. The letter writ to him by the Viceroy Chamberlain had been burned to ash, but the memory of it remained vivid in Perwal’s mind.

 

Like all aristocratic families, the Morninglory clan considers themselves to be indispensable to the health of the Empire. What distinguishes them is that they are willing to prove it. Their pride is earned from two thousand years of service, and the roots of their family tree go unfathomably deep within the Empire. It is fair to say that the Empire would not be what it is if not for them.

 

The Viceroy Chamberlain had provided some examples, but the overall tenor was the same: the Morninglory family defined itself by their devotion to the Sun Goddess, and couched that belief by serving the nation that was all too happy to employ their skills. All generations of the family had more heroes and near-heroes than Perwal felt was proper, like they were being unfair by hoarding all the bravery for themselves.

 

But for all of their ancestral greatness, they are relegated to these accursed lands? What is it about this family that His Brightness has not told me?

 

“Ya holiness! Holiness?” Thomp thomp thomp! The driver pounded the side of the cab, and pulled Perwal from the shores of the sea of dreams.

 

“Eh? What? What is it?”

 

“There’s a woman on the road, Holiness!”

 

“Well? Is that unusual?”

 

“She doesn’t look well, Holiness. Oh, she’s fallen!”

 

The coach pulled to a stop. Perwal heard the driver dismount. If someone is injured, I could be of service, was his dutiful thought, and so he followed suit. Pulling his holy symbol from its pouch, it gave off its gentle glow as Perwal joined the driver in the wet heat outside.

 

The woman was very badly off. Pale, unblinking, with a number of deep wounds, she mumbled something in a stuttering whisper. The driver held her close to listen.

 

“Help. They. Reginald.” A long pause, then the driver looked up. “She keeps saying to help Reginald, they got him, so many of them.” The woman went limp in the driver’s arms as she moaned a single, last word.

 

“Zombies.”

 

The driver and the priest exchanged a dense helping of silence. Perwal gulped, then gripped his holy symbol more tightly. “Zombies,” he squeaked.

 

I am trained for this! I am a priest of Aurora, the Immortal Sun, Queen of the Heavens! Zombies are only flesh eating, viral undead corpses filled with mindless hunger and rage. A deep breath and he reminded himself, though much more quietly: I am trained for this.

 

“Stay with her. I will go and… and see if. If I can…” His words fell silent, but the driver had not been listening anyway. The ragged, unconscious woman was carried to the coach as Perwal looked at the road ahead. He could see a circling of crows around a tangled copse; if their cries signaled alarm or opportunity, he did not know.

The trees were clumped together in hoary, brambled knots for safety and warmth. Weeds, thick grass and thorn-vines choked the bases of the unkempt cottonwoods. The sounds came from behind one such cluster, a stone’s toss from the roadside. Perwal clutched his casual treasures more closely to silence their jangling.

 

He walked forward, not feeling the road. The distance slowly, tremulously peeled to closeness. The crows were loud now, as was the new sound: a skittering, wet sound, like stones at a beach tumbling on themselves in the ebbing tide. Occasionally, there was a crunch or a slurp. Another step, and there was the smell.

 

Instantly, dread settled on his heart. It caught him unprepared and he fell to the ground in a clamor of metallic din.

 

Everything fell silent, even the crows, but his heart was thunder in his chest and his head. The world spun as panic took a strangle hold of the priest’s mind.

 

They’ll come now. I hope it’s the slow ones! Please let it be the slow ones.

 

But nothing walked out from beyond the shrubs. Perwal writhed and rolled to his feet even as he tangled in his chains. He kissed his holy symbol, whimpered his thanks to the goddess, and stepped forward.

 

If it’s a Shambler, I will be fine. If it’s a Stalker, I’ll be fine. She holds me in Her light. She guides my path to Her comfort and grace. I will not be eaten today.

 

He found Reginald. Rather, he found what was left of Reginald.

 

The priest lowered his head to utter rites of Graceful Passing… and choked into silence. On the ground several feet away was a squirrel. He hadn’t noticed it at first. It was clearly dead – a good bit of the rodent had been eaten, and half the skin of its skull had been bloodily torn away. But it stared up at Perwal nonetheless.

 

“What in the name of—” Having seen one, Perwal then saw the others. He had so expected undead people that the priest had almost overlooked the horde of undead squirrels. Nearly a dozen of them peered at him from beneath Reginald’s mutilated body. More stared at him from the tree branches. Beady eyes glared from the stones and moss. All of them were in various states of decay.

 

Perwal’s feet felt as heavy as his gold. But somehow – surely by Her divine favor, praise Her – when the squirrel horde began to advance the priest found his cowardice.

 

He screamed as he ran. The squirrels boiled and tumbled together in a horrible knot of ragged fur and broken incisors and raged in the priest’s wake, and their high-pitched squeaks of doom scraped at his sanity.

 

Panic and adrenaline helped a lot, but ultimately were no match for a lifetime of sedentary contemplation. Perwal’s burst of speed quickly drained and within seconds the priest was gasping; his legs burned with acid and his heart threatened to explode. Desperately he clutched his holy symbol and wheezed.

​

“By the. Burning wrath. Of. Her divine holiness! I command! You! To be! Returned to! The hellsfromwhenceyoucame!” He pushed the words with his last reserves of air as he fell forward over a low knoll. The priest was dimly aware of an enraged squeak behind him and a smoldering burnt-hair smell. A ray of hope invited him to look behind him. His momentary triumph turned to grief as he saw the rush of the remaining dozen squirrels.

 

I only got one. I am a worthless priest. Forgive me, Gracious Lady!

 

“Up See, Day See!”

 

The onrush of rodents was only a few seconds away when, quite suddenly…

 

                                                                          d and rose rapidly.

                                                                     e

                                                              d

                                                        n

                                                 e

                                         p

                                  s

                          u

they were s

 

​

 

A tiny, biting face was inches from Perwal’s sweat-beaded nose when it lifted away, leaving the priest on the ground. Perwal’s mind went entirely silent. When the squirrels were little more than wriggling specks of black against the gray sky -

 

“Obliterate!”

 

-they unceremoniously popped.

 

The voice was feminine and echoed with deep power. Perwal turned to see a large, pointy hat with a wide circular brim, underneath which was a great deal of red hair and a collection of too many pouches. A slender arm held aloft a thin wand. As he watched, the hat brim lifted to reveal a long face full of freckles and pride.

 

“Yes!” she hissed.

 

Squirrel bits and globs splattered across the immediate area. Perwal joined her at the road side in time to be miss by some incoming innards. He panted heavily, and was momentarily overcome with the relief as his feet touched the cobblestones, safe once again.

 

“Goddess bless you, child,” he sighed, lip trembling.

 

“Wizard.”

 

“What?”

 

“I’m not a child. I’m a wizard and, officially, I am ‘Apprentice’ and I would appreciate-.”

 

“Of course, of course. I apologize.” A wizard, yes. That made sense. No one else wore hats like that. Perwal did his best to keep distrust from his face but his best was a poor job, so the girl smirked somehow even more smugly than a moment ago. “I got one,” he murmured defensively before he could stop himself.

 

“I saw. Pretty great, I have to admit, considering you tripped on yourself while praying, which I completely understand because, I mean, wow! Exciting, right? This was my first squirrel fight! Was it your first fight, uh, ever? It sort of seems like it because you just went ahead and stepped off the road, didn’t you? And you were clutching your necklace right up until you screamed and ran and flipped up the hill—ten out of ten on that, by the by—but that still was disappointing, though. It’s always the stumble, isn’t it? Lucky for you that I came along! ” The wizard sparkled with giddy joy. “Zombie squirrels! I mean, have you ever even seen one? Which reminds me that I should collect some of these for study later, so excuse me.” The girl went around Perwal for a moment and peeled something from the back of his golden robes. “Well, it’s not a whole one but it’s most of one. Why do you have to wear all that gold and stuff; it’s clearly not meant to be worn.” The grisly remains and the gloves used to handle it were all stuffed into one of her many pockets that was clearly too small for the job. No one informed the pocket of that, however, so the contents fit without any protest.

 

Perwal took a minute to steady himself, as much from the weight of his burdens of office as the onslaught of verbal projectiles volleyed by the wizard. “My vestments of rank. I used to wear more when I was but an acolyte. New priests are so laden with gold and jewels that ankles sometimes break. It’s a metaphor, meant to be instructive and humbling.” he concluded. A wizard would never understand.

 

With a small shake of her head (which did nothing to disturb the inertia of the hat), the young wizard bent down to pick something up from the road. It was a rug, the sort you might find lying just inside the door of your grandmother’s house. It didn’t even have tassels, it was just tightly woven and plain. She shook it, sending a wave of debris that peppered Perwal’s shins and sang tiny chimes against his treasures.

 

“You almost got yourself killed and not metaphorically so maybe you ought to consider that sometimes the literal situation is, you know, enough of a burden and that maybe metaphors can wait, right?”

 

The rug was laid out over the road—about three inches above the road. Penelope was quick to step onto it. There was barely a wiggle of fabric beneath her weight. In typical wizard fashion, she did not offer Perwal a ride.

 

“I’ll meet you back at your coach because I can go faster so I’ll just check on that lady and you come along, just stay on the road, right? Stay on the road.” At which point she floated away.

 

With a flinch of vertigo, the priest caught himself from tipping over and his brain shut down for emergency management. The wizard…well…it wasn’t as though she was flying and to be honest even “floated” didn’t quite capture it. Nothing about her moved and there was no sense of acceleration. No wind ruffled her hair. No flutter of her robes made it seem as though she unsettled a breeze. It was in fact he, Perwal, who was moving away from her, along with all the rest of reality. His inner ear had reacted to what it had sensed was the truth behind the wizard’s movement.

 

With an inhale and a check on the status of his small clothes (he had managed to only dribble a tiny bit, despite the Wizard’s account of things, praise the Goddess), Perwal shuffled his heavy way back to the coach, the driver, and the new madness of his existence.