Marta Roussel Perla: febrero 2022

Black Widow:

He had always been a daydreamer, maybe because this world looked like a broken and dusty reflecion of a promise that never came true. There must be something else. How could this be everything it was?

Death swifted accross the fog, those corpses were staring beyond the void, standing still, as though they were banners warning not to go one step further.

He looked up: the death body of another warrior stood on the grass, covered in blood and without one arm, seemed to be gazing right at the other side of reality.

It was the work of who, as rumours claimed, were the most powerful necromancer since the Academy foundation: the one called Black Widow. How could they even think of defeating him?

“Why are they not moving?” his partner demanded.

Einar managed to get out from the spider web of his thoughts, confused.

Stench hit him, returning him back to his surroundings.

His partner Heike was observing those living dead through the dense mist, fresh corpses showing terrible wounds. One with no legs, another with ruptured tendons, another one with a whole on his chest so big one could see through. All those corpses belonged to the Death Church warriors, all of them clad in the order armour and attires. Some of them even holding their weapons.

“Be careful, Einar,” Heike said, stopping him with her arm. “I don’t understand why are they not attacking us, quite possibly it’s some kind of trap, more intelligent than my ‘hit them until they don’t hit you’ protocol.”

“I don’t think it’s a trap, it looks rather like some kind of dissuasive measure…” he commented bemused, “Do you think it’s the Black Widow?” he added in a dubious tone.

“Do not low your guard” she commanded, taking her battle axe with both hands, “I don’t want to end up like our sisters” she said, speaking about the warrior corpses.

Einar held his twin swords tight, he was scared.

Heike looked at him, she was also terrified. She didn’t show it though, but Einar had been with his partner for too long to not know that when Heike was worried, she repeated some kind of high murmur as if she was some kind of feral beast. And now she didn’t stop with her whispering.

“Do you see the house?” she asked.

“Wait here, I will go round it”

Heike saw how Einar was engulfed by the mist. She had some living dead at her back, making clicking noises and guttural noises that were not reassuring at all.

After some seconds, Einar came back from the other side.

“The windows are too narrow and there’s no other entrance” he muttered.
“Shit,” she replied at the same volume.

He sneaked towards the house, she followed him. Einar hold the door firmly and opened it slowly, avoiding any creaking sound.

He saw some sacks leaning on the wooden wall, plough tools, a loft with haystacks on it and a door to another room.

And on that other room there was a little girl, possibly she was seven years old.

She was reading a heavy book, sitting next to a candlelit table.

“They always come in more numbers…” she sighed to herself. She left the book aside, the girl looked exhausted and on the verge of crying.

Einar, who had always been especially sensitive to it, felt magic fluctuating about, it was so intense he could perceive it clearly as tentacles waving around that little girl.

“It cannot be,” he managed to say.

“If you cross this door, you will die. Please leave,” she begged.

“Is that girl the Black Widow?” Heike probed in bewilderment.

“I think the girl is right, we should go,” the warrior said.

“There’re two of us, what chances does she has of defeating us?” his partner complained.

“Well, about that… I think that entrance crowded by corpses is the most eloquent garden I know, Heike.”

“We have come here to investigate our sisters’ disappearance,” she remembered him.

“And we have found the culprit,” Einar insisted, taking Heike by her arm. “We can go now.”

“Please,” the little girl implored. “I don’t want to have more nightmares…” She sobbed.

“The Black Widow has killed how many? Fourteen, fifteen warriors?” she blurted out. “She’s a monster!” Heike sentenced, full of anger.

She violently broke free from her partner’s grasp and crossed the door. Einar barely had time to shout.

When she went through the threshold, her axe and armour got torn open and disintegrated upon contact with the magic field the necromancress had summoned. Her body exploded in a rain of blood.

The little girl was bitterly crying.

She cried like someone at the edge of her truces, with her trauma learning how to scream.

She cried like someone who doesn’t understand why still has to bear on her shoulders the heavy weight of so much pain.

She cried like someone who wants to stop living, not because she wanted to die, but because she wanted to put an end to her suffering.

She cried like someone with all her reflections at war.

“Why do you do this to me?” she asked, baffled, with a thin voice.

“I will say I have put you to death” Einar decided. “That will give you time until rumours get kindled again. Try to hide and go to the north, I know there are wise people over there that can heal the day and night bad dream” he added, not knowing what to do, but knowing such gesture was naïve at its best. He left.

Some hours later, by night, he understood what had happened during that day and cried for the two, thinking he would cry for days.

Perhaps considering this world as though it was some kind of simplistic battlefield prevented people from seeing humanity in who’s different. And considering somebody could be a correct human being, prevented people from seeing difference in humanity.

Maybe that’s why the world is the way it is, he thought, because there are men like me.

He went to the north.