Keeper's Justice
Copyright© 2025 by Charly Young
Chapter 1: The Forging
Anna the Hedgewitch shook Lachlan Quinn awake at dawn on the day of his seventeenth birthday and bade him get dressed and follow her. He was to curse himself daily in the weeks, months, and years that followed for having so blindly obeyed her.
He followed her into the Opari. He tried to ask why but found he could not speak. Hours? Days? Later, they came to a strange, blighted part of the Opari. A mist swirled around long-dead trees that were swathed in a lacy black fungus that smelled of rot. An errant breeze cleared the mist to reveal a huge rift in the very fundament of the world; a chasm so large that it beggared description.
“Down there lies the Murk,” Anna said. Her right hand was clenched white-knuckled on her gnarled black thorn walking stick.
She is scared. I wonder why.
The mist cleared some more to reveal a small clearing on the edge of the chasm. Three dead cedar snags stood like sentinels, their fungus-laden branches twisted skyward like arthritic fingers.
And young Lachlan Quinn saw something that made his blood run cold.
Three black-gowned troll women squatted around a small campfire. A black iron teapot hung from a steel tripod. The eldest, the one he instantly recognized as Malak the Seer, beckoned him forward. He obeyed; he had no choice—his legs moved out of his control. He was whimpering a keening wail of terror.
Young Lachlan well remembered these beings.
There was Malak, gaunt-faced, with blind eyes a total white, her hair a mass of lank gray tresses. Vusa the Warrior, broad-beamed, her arms corded with muscle, her face ribbed with scars from some ancient torture. Her eyes innocent and gentle as a child’s. The third was the most unsettling—smaller than the others but radiating a malevolent smile. Zeba, the Healer. She held a fire-charred stick maybe four feet long. It glowed and sparked with lightning.
“So,” the gaunt one spoke, her voice like grinding stone, “you have come.”
“Unwillingly,” Anna said, her mouth twisted with disgust. “The Keeper asks that you keep your bargain.” With that, she turned and quickly walked away. Her form quickly disappeared into the mist.
Lachlan watched her go. Stuck dumb with terror now, he whispered, a tiny whisper, “Anna, please don’t leave me with them...”
“Up,” commanded Zeba the Healer. Her coal-ember eyes held no warmth; her mouth grinned.
“What—” Lachlan began, scrambling to his feet.
“Run, boy.” She pointed to a path that led down into the chasm.
“I don’t understand...”
Zeba tapped him with the black rod. Pain flared. Pain like he’d never felt before. “Run,”
“I don’t understand—”
She struck again.
He fell, curled up to avoid the stick.
She struck again and again. The pain was horrendous.
“Run, little rabbit, run.”
He got up and ran.
What followed was a time out of a nightmare. The three gave chase like hounds of hell, their footsteps somehow thunderous, shaking the very ground, spurring him to flee pell-mell down the narrow trail into the depths. They moved with impossible speed, sometimes running on all fours like beasts, shrieking and bounding through the rot-decay-smelling air.
He ran until his legs gave out, then crawled until his hands bled, then dragged himself forward on his belly through mud that reeked of rot. When exhausted unconsciousness finally claimed him, they stepped out of the mist and kindled the fire, set up the rack for tea and a kettle of delicious-smelling stew.
They communed silently as he ate. Then he slept, sodden with exhaustion. Zeba healed him of his cuts, scratches, and bruised muscles. The other two whispered lessons inside his sleeping brain, reliving the day’s chase, correcting his form, pointing out the dangers of the flora and fauna he had encountered in his headlong descent into the abyss.
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