Silence

  Sitting in my garden, I enjoyed the sweet, oh-so-rare moments of silence. But I felt this serene moment of bliss was about to end. I could hear it.

  I could feel it. Something was coming. Before I could even turn around, it jumped at me, and before I could react, it grabbed me by the neck.

  “Got you, Daddy,” my sweet Ava nearly shouted in my ear. As I felt my eardrums practically bursting, I held back the face of pain I was about to make.

  “You sure did; do you feel proud of yourself scaring your old man like that? What if you gave me a heart attack?” I asked her, half-jokingly.

  “Daddy’s not that old yet! And even if, then Daddy would become a powerful Scherzaaan!” My daughter held her hands above her head as if launching some powerful spell.

  Forgetting she was supposed to hold on to me, she started falling. I, of course, caught her and corrected her. “It’s Schmerzan Sweety, and you focus on not turning into one yourself.”

  Schmerzans were the mages of this world. People could start their journey towards strength through extreme pain, awakening as a mage and forming their mana core. I was never much of a pain guy. Even as a child, I cried over every minor scratch and bruise. My mother always indulged my behavior, which may or may not have made it worse. No matter, I needed no more strength than I had right now to protect my family.

  Why go through pain when I can live my life away from all the trouble?

  “Ashen! Ava! Dinner’s ready!” I heard my wife, Adirae, call our names.

  I grabbed my daughter and put her on my shoulders. “Yay, food!” My daughter laughed and nearly fell off again.

  We hurried back and sat down at the table in our backyard. Our property is big, considering my occupation as the town’s hunter. I hunt wild beasts, from fish to small forest critters, to the occasional big herbivore.

  I even killed a Ferther once. As the region’s top predator, it is quite large. It has thick fur, paws as big as my head, and more endurance than anything I’ve ever seen.

  It’s at least 8 feet tall, has 4 legs, and is way too silent for something of its size. I was lucky, but that is a story for another time.

  “Here, my famous Daar Soup.” My wife placed 3 bowls of delicious-smelling soup before us. Little cubes of bite-sized Daar meat (a Daar is a medium herbivore with antlers and hooves), suspended in heavenly broth, containing carrots, potatoes, and porridge.

  Next to the soup was my wife’s freshly made bread, still steaming. With the sun on my back making the food look even more divine, I could not wait to dig in.

  “Thank you for the meal,” we said in unison as we started our dinner. I tasted the slight smoky aroma, the harmony of all the flavors, as the meat and vegetables danced down my tummy.

  My pleased expression was impossible to hide, and my wife took it as an invitation to feel proud of herself. I let her because she deserves it.

  I know this might sound wrong, but her cooking skills were one reason I married her. Not to say that she isn’t beautiful.

  Her long, blond hair, dark gray, almost black eyes, and astonishing figure were also good reasons. I would not say I was not good-looking, but compared to my wife, I was pretty average.

  Enjoying the meal, I took it all in. I was a lucky guy. I had a beautiful wife, a wonderful daughter, and I was damn handsome. Dear God, if something like that existed, just let it be like this forever.

  After the meal, we cleaned the table and finished the last tasks of the day. Adira was washing the dishes while I got some firewood for our oven.

  Ava picked up a piece of wood that was nearly as big as herself and tried to help me. I laughed as she struggled to lift it, but she managed. She always did. She was a strong girl, and I’m proud of her.

  “See, Daddy, I’m strong enough to go hunting with you soon! Then you can show me how to hunt with the bow as well.”

  “We’ll see about that; how about you try lifting the bow properly first?”

  I set the wood down by the entrance and started looking for my bow, which I usually place next to my reading chair.

  Entering our house, I saw the familiar sight of our cozy little cottage. Our small living room has my chair and a little couch, followed by our bed in the next room and a smaller bed in another room.

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  Our house has too many plants, and I have my wife to thank for that. I walked to my chair and looked for my bow.

  “Honey, where is my bow?” I asked my wife, hoping she was the one that moved it, and it was not me having forgotten it back at my hunting outpost again.

  “I have not seen it, Ashen. Don’t tell me you forgot again. That’s the second time on the same day; how is that even possible?” She teased me.

  “No, I left it there on purpose. Anyway, I will get it now. I’ll hurry.” I said as I opened the door and left the house.

  I kissed Ava on the forehead. “Wait for me; I’ll just quickly go get my bow. Try to stay awake.”

  “I will! And take this. I made it so you won’t get lost.” She took out something from behind her back, her face glowing with smug pride.

  It was my compass that she decorated with some colors and a small hand-drawn picture of our family on the back. She drew it with crayons; although those lines and dots are a bit of a stretch as a family portrait, my sweet daughter made it. How could I not adore it?

  “Oh my god, I love it, sweetie. Thank you so much!” I grabbed her under my arms and started throwing her up before putting her back down.

  “Yay, that was fun. Now hurry, I want to hold the bow!”

  “Okay, okay. I’m leaving. Goodbye, Honey, goodbye, Ava.”

  “If you left it there on purpose, why did you ask— “

  I closed the door. I could have sworn I heard someone question my not-made-up reason. It must have been the wind.

  My outpost is in the forest east of my house. It takes about half an hour to reach it if I hurry and about an hour if I take it slow. Because it was already getting dark, I tried to hurry.

  Entering the forest, I followed the familiar path I created over the years. All around me were gigantic trees, as thick as I am tall and so tall I could not even see their crowns most of the time.

  The occasional rustle in the bushes kept me on my toes, but most of the time, it was just a rabbit or bird. I arrived about half an hour later, as predicted.

  My outpost was just a small wood hut in the middle of the forest, nothing special. As I opened the old wooden door, I saw my bow lying on the ground with the string broken and the wood chewed on. “Tsk, damn critters.”.

  I inspected the string. It looked chewed by some species of small rodent. I vowed to take my revenge, angrily shaking my fist at the sky. I turned around and left my little hut, closing the door behind me.

  As I started walking back, a brilliant flash of light blinded me. I threw up my hands to block the light, but that did not help.

  I tried to take a few steps forward, blinded, but tripped over a rock of some kind and fell flat on my face. As my vision returned, I checked myself for injuries but saw none. I stood back up, still slightly dizzy.

  “What the hell was that? Did that come from—“

  Then I heard something, followed by the tremendous pressure pressing against me. I fell to the ground. No, a massive shockwave forced me to the ground, slamming my body into the cold forest floor.

  I heard something crack inside my body. My brain got smashed against the inside of my skull. The throbbing pain was coming from everywhere, especially in my head.

  A tree crashed to the ground next to me; another one started falling directly in front of me. I rolled out of the way in the last second as the enormous trunk smashed into the ground right next to my head.

  Silence.

  I was deaf. I looked around. The forest was gone. All the surrounding trees were lying on the forest floor, destroyed by the shockwave of that light. The air smelled like freshly cut wood and wet moss, but the cold bit my lungs.

  I attempted to stand up and failed, still disoriented by what had just happened.

  As I tried to stand up again, I felt like I was missing something. Suddenly, my heartbeat quickened to a level I thought impossible. Panic, unimaginable panic, spread through my body, forcing me to my feet at a nearly impossible speed.

  I started running. I ran and ran and ran. Back home.

  I tripped over the remnants of a tree. Before my face reached the ground, I pushed myself up with my hands to keep up my momentum. I ran and jumped and ran even further.

  I saw dead animals everywhere I ran, either crushed by the enormous trees or killed by the shockwave. A rabbit was struggling before me with its lower body stuck under a fallen tree.

  I noticed it too late as I crushed its head with my foot while running. I nearly slipped but could keep my balance. Further away, a Daar was whining, a crushed corpse of a smaller Daar on the ground next to it.

  My lungs were burning, my heart was screaming, and my legs were begging me to stop, but I would not. How could I stop over something as insignificant as pain? How could I pause if my family might be...

  Before I could finish that thought, I felt my stomach tighten, stomach acid, and the dinner threatening to leave my body through my mouth and nose.

  I was afraid. Afraid of being right. The fear hammered against my skull, nearly splitting it open with its intensity.

  My heart felt like it was bursting out of my ribcage, pounding against my broken ribs. Keep pumping.

  My lungs felt like they were tearing apart, the cold air burning like thousands of needles in my body, supplying barely enough oxygen to live. Keep breathing.

  My feet and legs moved at what I thought were impossible speeds as I felt my muscles tearing apart from the inhuman forces I was driving them to exert. Keep running.

  I felt something. Something is carving a passage inside me. It hurt; it hurt so much. But I did not care; I could not afford to care right now.

  It was chiseling my being away to make space for something else. My body felt like it was breaking, invaded by this foreign entity. I did not care. I let it.

  Suddenly, my body changed. My bones shifted back into place. I felt them moving, pushing, and grinding against each other. It hurt, but I kept moving.

  They fused back together under unfathomable pain. My heart moved more blood, forcing my veins to expand, causing agony, making me feel like I was about to burst from the inside out. It hurt too much, but I kept moving.

  My lungs grew, seemingly never stopping. I let out a scream as my lungs practically left through my mouth before they shrank back down. Stronger than before. I felt stronger. But it hurt; it hurt like hell. It hurt so much that I could not even remember the world without pain.

  I got faster. I got faster and faster as I felt my muscles growing back. Denser and stronger. I felt each cell forming, duplicating, like millions of ants biting and crawling under my skin, making me faster.

  My increasing speed blurred the forest, or what remained of it, behind me.

  And then I stopped running.

  Not because I could not run anymore, but because I arrived. The trip that took me 30 minutes before took me barely 4 minutes back. I did not have time to think about why I was so fast, because I arrived.

  Silence.

  “W-What…?”