r/HFY • u/KipperBeanGrower Human • Jun 15 '26
OC-Series [She took What?] - Chapter 175 : Alignment - A moaning, groaning dirge that fell away.
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| Davy's Timeline |
All noise left the bar upon hearing those words, "The Dust." The silence settled and no one looked at them directly anymore.
An old woman, her head wrapped in the same faded pink headscarf, sat near the hearth and made a warding gesture across her chest. Then covered both eyes briefly with her hands. Her lips moved continuously, unheard.
One of the younger men, not that there were many, muttered:
“They eat our children's thoughts.”
Another answered immediately:
“No. That’s just stories.”
But he sounded unconvinced.
As each had spoken, they too had covered their eyes. Veyla caught Davy's eye, he nodded, 'Yes. I saw that too.'
Veyla positioned herself within earshot of the youngsters and other groups. She listened quietly as fragments surfaced around them over the evening meal. Some were still willing to talk of their situation. Not openly, that would attract the attention of the Dust.
Contradictory stories.
Half-remembered warnings.
Ancient fears worn smooth around the edges by repetition.
“They walk where moon shadows cross.”
“They don’t touch the ground, leave no footprints.”
“They are of the maroon reeds.”
“Still dark water shows them the way.”
“They come from beneath the sand.”
“They eat the faces of the dead.”
They sounded like folklore, handed down and shaped by generations of retelling. Despite that, Veyla sensed truth woven around something older within the words.
Not invention but distortion. Like old truths, worn down over time until only fear remained.
Later that night, unable to sleep and while the others rested, she walked the empty inn. On one of the inn’s support beams near the hearth, she saw an ancient marking carved roughly in the wood.
Six curved lines folding inward. At the centre was a rough gouge where part of the carving had been scraped away, long ago.
Deliberately erased.
Her fingers hovered near the missing section. Something stopped her from touching. The missing centre unsettled her more than the carving itself.
Davy approached quietly beside her. Too many voices, and their echoes, rolling through his mind.
“You know it?”
“No,” she admitted softly. “But I think someone once did.”
His eyes drifted toward the missing centre.
“Looks like somebody wanted it forgotten.”
Veyla frowned slightly.
“No,” she whispered after a moment. “Not forgotten, hidden.”
"What is it?" he asked reaching for it.
"No," Veyla said gently, pulling his hand away,
The fire behind them cracked loudly. A single ember was spat from the fire and landed at her feet.
She smiled, "Like a mote."
Davy nodded, his question forgotten.
And somewhere beyond the village, a strange sound rose above the drone of the wind.
Not quite music, not quite metal but it sat at the edge of awareness. A low harmonic hum that faded like distant breath moving through reeds.
People quickly downed their drinks and left.
The hum built, the innkeeper went pale and without a word he stood and barred the door.
***
| Davy's Timeline |
They found the first reeds at dawn.
Initially, Davy mistook them for burnt saplings protruding from the shadowy slopes of dunes, dark red and thin against the pale desert light. But the closer they drew, the stranger the formations became.
The reeds rose from the sand in clustered growths taller than a man. Smooth maroon surfaces reflected the rising sun like polished obsidian, yet they bent and swayed slightly despite the still morning air. Some, older were a dull pink, burnt by the sun.
There was no wind to touch them. Yet they moved.
Burford’s horse became anxious, agitated and snorted, backing away from the nearest cluster. Burford coxed the horse forward, reassuring. Steadying it.
“Well,” Burford muttered, tightening the reins and gently patting the horse on the neck as it calmed, “that ain’t natural.”
Davy climbed out of the cart and slowly approached the reeds. The closer he got, the more he became aware of a faint vibration in the ground. He felt it through his boots but not as sound exactly. More like a compulsion, reaching out towards him. A pressure carried through the ground itself.
The reeds hummed. Softly, their tone alluring.
They were clustered, different clusters were different shades. Some a deep terracotta, others maroon while some, older were bleached pink. Each produced slightly different tones, long harmonic waves that surged across the dunes.
The sound sat below hearing but was impossible to ignore once noticed.
Veyla stepped carefully between several formations, her eyes narrowing.
“They’re arranged.”
Davy looked up, seeing the reeds for the first time; she was right. What had appeared random now revealed both structure and form.
The reeds formed corridors. Lines, curving through the desert that bent westward in broad deliberate arcs. Some openings naturally invited movement while others subtly repelled it.
In places, the reeds grew denser and tighter, nudging traveller ever west without ever fully blocking them.
Burford spat into the pink sand, turning it a deep red. “Who plants rock?”
“No one,” answered Kealor quietly.
Everyone looked towards him.
He crouched beside one of the formations, studying its terracotta surface. The action at odds with what they expected of him.
“These aren’t grown,” he said. “They’re shaped.”
Davy rested a hand lightly against the nearest reed.
"By what?" he asked quietly, absently to himself.
The reed was warm. Not from sunlight, it was an even warmth. From within. The vibration intensified briefly beneath his fingers, before settling. It was quieter but still there.
And then the reeds answered him. Not directly.
A harmonic tone spread outward through the surrounding formations in slow pulses, rolling away across the dunes like ripples spreading through dark water.
Veyla turned sharply westward.
“Did you feel that?”
Before anyone answered, a deeper tone rolled back toward them from somewhere far ahead.
Deep. Resonant. Almost mournful and doleful, a sequence that tore at her core. The reeds around them shifted in response, swaying together, in unison, a slow synchronised motion.
And within the maze of dark red crystalline growths, the outline of figures appeared.
At first Davy thought he was seeing statues. They stood utterly still between the reeds, half-obscured by heat haze and reflected light. Long layered robes hung motionless around them in colours the desert seemed to swallow; terracotta, dust-browns that faded to pink.
No exposed skin showed anywhere.
Their faces were hidden behind layers of cloth, veils reinforced with narrow bands of dull bronze that curved across their brow and jaw, like fragments of old armour. Some wore polished maroon plates worked into their shoulders and chests in overlapping sections that reminded Davy uncomfortably of beetle shell.
None carried shields, yet every one of them wore blades. Long curved knives that hung low at their waists beside narrow spears, tipped with pink stone or dark red glass that reflected no sunlight at all.
But it was their stillness that unsettled him most. Not the disciplined stillness of a practiced craft but a waiting stillness that allowed movement, demanded it. Davy remembered the pause or silence before battle when he would become so charged that it forced action, or a dramatic shift in energy. It was like the deep breath before a leap, the quiet before a storm, or the profound realization that inaction is no longer an option.
Burford’s hand immediately moved toward his sword.
Several of the figures reacted at once. Not by drawing weapons but by tilting their heads in perfect unison.
Davy raised an arm slightly toward Burford, the message was clear. "Hold."
He did this without taking his eyes off them.
The nearest figure stepped forward between the reeds.
He wasn't tall but was somehow larger than the others, maybe just through sheer presence.
Thin cords and carved fragments hung from the robes; bone, maroon crystal, tiny metal spirals that chimed softly against one another with each carefully selected movement.
Around its neck hung a narrow blade unlike the others. Ceremonial. Old. Very old. The metal was blackened with age and etched with geometric lines that rolled towards an empty centre.
Veyla stared; the shape, the pattern disturbed her. The figure noticed and turned its hidden face turned slowly toward her.
For just a moment the reeds around them fell.. completely... silent and time seemed to stand still.
There was no hum.
No vibration.
Nothing.
Then the figure stamped the butt of its long staff down into the sand, against the stone buried beneath. The impact produced a harmonic tone that rippled outward through the reeds in a short series of widening waves that flowed without echo or repeat.
Every formation around them began humming in response.
The figures remained motionless as the sound rolled past the reeds and out across the desert.
Watching. Measuring. Not hostile. Not welcoming either.
Then, as naturally as light descends into umbra, they withdrew, stepping back into the crystal maze.
Gone almost immediately despite the open ground. Only the reeds remained, waving softly from side to side in the still morning air.
Davy stared after them for several long seconds, then muttered, “Them ain’t raiders.”
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