Oathsworn: The Nameless | Prologue: Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?

She was running.

Time dilated around her, slowing until all she could hear was the drumbeat of her heart and taste the cloying rush of air into her lungs, as she urged herself on.

Rubble turned under her bare feet, bruising the skin, sharp edges digging in viciously, making her already-short breaths catch in her chest with every footfall. She pushed the pain down, ignoring it. Worse if you’re caught.

She almost missed the corner she needed and turned too sharply, cutting her foot on an errant shard of glass and slamming painfully into the wall, but she dove towards the gap she knew would be there, shoving her bony frame past the rubble and debris.

She felt something sting as It grabbed for her foot and missed, the whisper of something sharp - a claw? Don’t think about it! - drawing yet another spot of blood. She yelped slightly as she pulled her feet in behind her and heard it let out a growl of frustration, before the unmistakeable sound of the barricades being pulled down rattled their way through to her. She flattened herself, crawling and sliding her way through the tangle of concrete and metal that kept her home safe.

Her child’s frame was her advantage, and she wriggled through gaps It would never be able to clear.

There was a whistle, and suddenly small hands were grabbing, pulling at her arms, dragging her the rest of the way through. Many hands make light work, that was what Brick was always saying, and here, it was true - as she emerged, she could see no fewer than 5 kids hauling on her arms, towing her clear with swift efficiency. As soon as she was through safely, she heard the distinctive clatter and rumble of more debris - the entry had been collapsed behind her.

She rolled to a stand, wincing as she put her weight - slight as it was - on her battered and bloody feet, and began limping purposefully towards a way out of the Alley.

She couldn’t pause for the breaths that she wanted; all around her were kids faces, dirty yet determined, most of them already scattering through the Alley, back into hiding spots. They’d hunker down, and wouldn’t come out until someone sounded the all-clear. They’d practised the alarms: generations of kids, raised by slightly older kids, and even the tiniest among them knew to stay quiet when one of their own was running bait.

She wasn’t much older than them herself. Double-digits to their singles, maybe. That put her as one of the ones who had to do the protecting, especially when the really big kids were out of a scavenging run - they wouldn’t be able to come back until the coast was clear, so she had to clear it.

She wasn’t particularly big, or strong, but she was one of the fastest, and she needed to use that now.

Hurrying through the Alley, she felt the cool, reassuring weight of iron as a short bit of rebar was pressed into her hand. Without stopping, she ducked her head to nod her thanks, and caught a brief glimpse of a frightened but determined face before they, too, vanished into the safety of the gloom.

She’d lost enough time; by now It would have given up on trying to dig its way through the freshly collapsed rubble, almost certainly trying to find a way around. It was fast, almost as fast as she was, so she needed to make sure she was out and running again before It got too close.

She didn’t know where she was going, not yet, and running without a plan was stupid and dangerous. You’d just get caught that way. Her eyes flickered as she mentally plotted the surrounding streets, trying to remember good places she could lose her pursuer in, or even outright kill It. She didn’t want to kill anything, but It knew where the alley was now, and It had come sniffing around before. She had to get rid of the threat - for good.

A breeze picked up down the Alley, brining with it a scent she could only describe as green - and there was only one place in the whole of the city that smelled like that.

With a horrible sinking feeling, she knew the best place to lose her pursuer. She just had to be faster, smarter, nimbler. It was bigger than her stronger, more vicious – but It was also hungry, and desperate. It wouldn’t be thinking straight, seeing her small stature as an easy target - which she wanted, needed for this to work. She’d have felt sorry for It - if It wasn’t trying to eat her.

She felt the weight of the rebar in her hand and gripped it tightly. It was something, if the worst came to the worst.

Don’t be afraid of the Big Bad Wolf.

That wasn’t what It was, of course, but it helped to think of It as something out of a story. In the stories, the Big Bad Wolf almost never won.

Almost.

The end of the alleyway was near, and here she finally allowed herself a pause, forcing her breathing to slow as she strained to hear any movement beyond the safety of the walls.

There was nothing. No skitter of rubble getting kicked, no crunch of broken glass underfoot, no whisper of cloth against skin that would betray an ambush waiting for her. No ragged gasps as her pursuer tried to catch Its breath as It waited.

It might also have gotten there before her, with enough time to stop, catch It’s breath, wait in patient, agonising silence. She might be running head-first into a trap, and leaving the kids with no-one to protect them until Brick and her team came home.

Another pale, smudged face stared at her from the shadows next to the door, waiting for her signal. He was good at being still, and quiet, and was ready to open the door or drop the rubble to bury it as the situation needed. He raised his eyebrows questioningly, one hand on the pulley that would raise the door to let her out.

With one last breath, she nodded at the kid standing guard. He nodded back and pulled down as hard as he could, the metal flying upwards with barely a whisper of metal on metal. Out she stepped, straight into a sprint, hearing the door slam behind her and the locks engage, hearing the shout as It rounded the corner from going the long way around and spotted her. She heard the crunch of gravel as Its feet pushed down, and It gave chase once again.

Watch for the yellow pebble-dash and hang a left. Jump the half-collapsed shelter where they found little Ben under the table, parents nowhere to be seen. She heard a snarl behind her and smiled grimly – the crater was full of traps, and it sounded like the Thing after her had taken a leg full of barbed wire for Its troubles.

Scramble up the embankment that used to be a street, with people and children and dogs and parents and neighbours and love, don’t think about the bones that crumble under foot, and then hang a right and keep running along the edge. Silhouette stark against the ruined sky, make sure It knows to follow.

It started gaining, and she knew the dash along the top of the embankment had been a risk. But she needed to let it gain so it wouldn’t give up the chase so easily, and when she could hear Its panting breath and ragged gasps, she flung herself to left and slid down the side of the embankment.

A skid and a crash came from behind her as It tried to turn sharply and fell. Another snarl at the delay, then the sound of tumbling rubble as It followed her path down.

Now she was in the Mazes, the houses that were where the poor, the working class, the poverty-stricken had lived. Small houses, all in rows, wedged together and cramped, the tumbled-down walls behaved like a labyrinth, leading the unwary around in circles if they weren’t careful. She’d never known them as houses - they’d been bombed to half-tumbled memories long before she’d arrived in the alley - but some of the older kids remembered.

She needed this, to gain the ground she’d been forced to concede. She needed to pull ahead again, just a bit. Her lungs were starting to burn from the effort and she pushed on. Not far now. The trees aren’t far at all.

Exploding out of the Mazes, she risked a glance behind her. To her dismay, It had bypassed the structure completely, clambering atop the walls and stepping across carefully to follow her in a more or less straight line.

It landed, and as their eyes met, it grinned nastily. Her heart dropped like a stone. Between that and her looking back – never look back! – she had lost all hope of retaining her lead.

It snarled again and lunged forwards, and she picked up the pace once more.

There was nothing else between her and the trees, no hope of delaying the inevitable; the only hope she had left was to run faster than the Thing behind her.

She heard the gasp and instinctively banked, remembering what one of the older kids had told her: “your legs are short, and still quite bendy; you can turn sharply, sharper than most of the Things that’ll try to get you out here. If they get close, if you think they’re going to grab you, duck and turn. You run in a zig-zag, not a straight line. But don’t stop running.”

She felt something scrape along the nape of her neck and banked again, this time whipping the rebar in her hand out behind her. She heard a yelp as she connected, and put on a burst of speed, hoping to make up some distance.

The trees loomed ahead of her, so tantalisingly close. They weren’t safety – tall, broad, and lusciously green, they’d been a strange sight in the ruined city for as long as she or any of the others could remember. Some of the older kids said they’d been inside, stepped past the imposing trunks to stand beneath the canopy, and heard all sound get cut off. The silence had scared them so badly they’d never gone back.

There were stories of people who had gone deeper, and never been seen again. She hoped that would happen to the monster at her heels.

That means you probably won’t get out again, either, a small, sly voice in the back of her mind spoke, and she shoved the thought away angrily. She was fast. She just needed to make sure she was faster than the Thing behind her.

The panting behind her was sounding increasingly desperate, and she twisted and rolled as she felt the sharp, broken nails hooking their way into the back of her shirt. It couldn’t get a solid grip, and finally she dived between the trunks of the trees, into the gloom beyond.

It was just as unnerving as she thought it would be, stepping between the trees, and she reflexively pulled up short, stopping in place. Just like the stories, the silence that fell was alarming; in the city, there was always the distant sound of fighting, calls from birds or fair folk, and once, a roar that could only have been a dragon. None of that penetrated here - it was as silent as it was dark.

A faint light caught her eye from further in the grove, and before she realised what she’d done, she’d taken a few steps towards it.

“Little one,” the rasping voice behind her felt like iced water on her addled mind, shaking her out of the strange reverie, and she shivered as all the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She whipped around, rebar held out, ready to swing. It hadn’t stepped between the trees yet, hanging back, and looking towards her with an expression of longing that warred with the obvious fear. It licked thin, bloodless lips, and spoke again. “Come out, little one. It’s not safe in there.”

Now that they were both stationary, she could finally get a good look at It. Sharp’s words came to her, from a lesson long ago:

Sometimes, you don’t know who are monsters until they try to hurt you, and then its too late, so we have to be wary of everyone.

It was thin, so thin she could see the pointed structure of bone under sallow skin, see ribs move as Its chest heaved with every breath. It had matted, filthy hair, and even across the distance she could still see the trembling in Its arms and Legs as it battled exhaustion.

Just like Sharp had warned her, this one looked like a person, as if one of the kids was all grown up, hungry and feral. But It had tried too hard to catch the kids going in and out of the Alley, so It obviously wasn’t a person. Only monsters tried to hurt kids. People wouldn’t, no matter how hungry or desperate they got.

She was seized by the urge to laugh, but bit her lip to keep a lid on it. Laughter made your arms and legs go all wobbly, even if it wasn’t funny laughter, and she might still need to be able to run.

“It’s not safe with you, either,” she replied, hoping the tremble in her voice wasn’t too obvious. Who’s afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf? She wondered which story this was, and whether she was a piggy or a girl in red. Not a wolf. Not a person. Just a Thing. An It. Trying to hurt the kids.

It laughed, filthy hands curling and uncurling reflexively, and she tried to suppress a shudder at the memory of those claw-like nails dragging across her skin every time it had almost caught her. She’d been faster than It - but not by much.

“I’ll get you, one way or the other,” It promised, voice sounding more and more like a person, and not a Thing, and took a menacing step closer. She mirrored it, stepping back further into the gloom, and watched as uneasy fear flickered across It’s face again. “I’ll come in after you, and I’ll get you, and you’ll wish you’d made it easy. You’ll wish you’d just come out.”

It stepped forwards again, almost at the edge of the trees, and she stepped back once more. She could feel the strange light at her back, a tantalising far-off warmth rippling at the edges of her senses, and for one terrifying second she nearly dropped the iron and walked towards it.

“I don’t think you will get me,” she said, trying to sound as scornful as she could manage. “I think you’ll go hungry tonight as well. I think I’ll be just fine here, because if you couldn’t catch me out there, you can’t catch me in here.”

It took one more step forward, almost all the way into the copse, and she could see the frustration as it forced itself to override that primitive instinct to run away. She could feel it herself, some small, frightened part of her screaming at her that this was a Bad Place and she needed to run. The trees were too tall, too wide, too green, and they were wrong somehow, all wrong, and that meant trouble.

She forced herself to let the arm holding the rebar drop to her side. She gave a disdainful shrug, hoping it was convincing enough, and with exaggerated casualness, turned her back on It, and began walking away.

It howled, enraged, and she heard the slightest scuff of jagged nails on unnaturally smooth bark as It finally overcame Its fear, and followed her in.

The sound was all she needed, and she took her own leap forwards, falling into a sprint one last time. Her feet took up their shrieking mantra again as she forced herself on past the pain, holding in her head the names of all the kids she’d be saving if she could just get the attention of whatever was in here that made people vanish.

The light that she’d spotted earlier was ahead of her, and she angled herself towards it. There was a strange ringing sound as well, like the echoing of metallic shelter doors as they clanged shut in the tunnels, and the closer she got to the light, the louder it got. She wished she could shut her ears the same way she could shut her eyes.

She heard the growl, closer behind her than ever, fetid breath blowing hot at the back of her neck, and swung the rebar out desperately for a second time.

It met resistance again, but this time there was a hard yank on the length of iron, wrenching it out of her grasp and almost making her stagger backwards into her hunter. She let go abruptly and pushed on, not bothering to slow or turn and look, forcing as much as she could out of her tired legs and bruised feet.

There was a dull thump behind her, and she briefly dared to hope the thing had fallen, but the panting right behind her told her otherwise. It must have tossed the iron, she thought. Maybe It’s one of Them and can’t touch iron for long.

The treeline ended abruptly, and burst out into a clearing filled with a strange shifting light that rippled across the ground and up along the tree trunks. It could have been a trick of the light, but the trees nearest to the blinding centre of the light seemed to be leaning in slightly, almost reaching for it. Too bright to look at directly, she couldn’t see the source, so she focused on the ground and ran straight towards it, hoping the light would slow or even blind her pursuer.

There was a strange smell in the air that she couldn’t quite place, a smell that reminded her of storms and burning, and just as the thought crossed her mind she felt the close-cropped hair on her head standing on end.

The light was everywhere now, so bright she couldn’t even stare at the ground without squinting painfully. The air was heavy, and it felt like she was trying to run through sludge, but still she pushed forwards, battling the charged air, the blinding light, the primitive voice that screamed at her to turn and run away.

Something hooked into the collar of her threadbare shirt, and she heard a grim, triumphant chuckle.

No!

Refusing to let its hold on her get any firmer, she gathered the last of the strength she could force from her exhausted limbs, and flung herself forwards.

With a strange tearing sound, the air around her lost all resistance, and she stumbled into the light.

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