A few hours earlier, and long before full-dark, a flour-dusted woman with a long red braid tugged the shutters closed on her window to keep the night breeze away from chilling her home. Warm and cozy in the comfort of her modest little cottage on Crescent, Harriet Cadlen had finally managed to sneak away to pour herself a cup of hot-spiced nog, unaware of trouble brewing outside.

Another long day of tending the ovens, minding the bakery, and keeping an eye on two energetic children had worn Tatty out to the point of exhaustion. There was only one venture that Harriet could conjure enough energy to do tonight, which included her favorite past-times; reading by the fireplace and rocking in her old wooden chair.

The weary woman threw another small log into the fireplace and gave the flaming timbers a good poke to keep them burning properly before settling down to her routine. With her fire stoked and toasty beverage at the ready, Tatty slumped into the comfort of her rocking chair to read the weeklies by the flickering firelight. She unfurled the scroll with immense pleasure and feasted on the contents within.

Harriet Cadlen was a fiend for the gossip scroll published at week’s end. One of the local punters who came around auntie’s bakery started bringing one in for Harriet to read, in exchange for an extra sweet roll added to his regular order. Harriet had been hooked ever since, devouring the local news like a starving marsh hound. This week’s scroll included a listing for the upcoming festivities for the most anticipated of events—the Feast of Merkander.

How exciting! Tatty pronounced as she reviewed the highlights of this year’s event. There were games, contests, dances, and bounties of harvest riches to anticipate, which encouraged Harriet to read on with great interest.

The feast was a combination of celebrations, which included a hallow’s eve and three-day giving of thanks, which practically every citizen of Cheapside and Holloworth participated in. Tatty smiled at the prospect of bringing her two young children to their first harvest festival, and she took another swig from her spiced nog to take in the spirit of the season. With luck, auntie would run the food stall this year, leaving Tatty to celebrate with the children.

“Oh aye, the costumes,” Tatty muttered to herself. “I’ll ‘ave to make costumes up for the wee ones.” With everything that had been going on recently, Harriet hadn’t had time to make anything for Alix and Sprig. Tired or not, she couldn’t let the children down.

Harriet took one final drag from her mug and hopped off the old rocking chair to see if she had any costumes that would work for the festival. Though not strictly required, most children dressed up in festive outfits and visited special food stalls to receive sweets and harvest snacks. It would be a terrible shame if the children weren’t able to participate due to Tatty’s failure to prepare disguises for them.

An' I’ll ‘ave to save some aside for Miss Khazmine’s little brothers, Tatty thought to herself. The outcast hadn’t mentioned how old the two boys were, but Harriet surely had something for the lads to wear, regardless of age. Rummaging through her late husband’s old cedar chest, Harriet dug through the strata of memories until she found several old costumes that would suit practically anyone.

With her arms full of old clothes, Tatty snuck into the side room she’d been cleaning for Khazmine and her family. It was a cramped space with little furniture, but would do just fine for a young outcast and her little brothers, as far as Harriet could see. The only thing that was ready so far was the bed, which now had an array of disguises spread over its surface.

Tatty examined the clothing with a critical eye, making a mental note of the mending needed for each costume. Remarkably well preserved, Harriet’s haul included a spotted swarmstinger, a dark-gray house panther, an orange gourd with leaves, and some star-spangled magician’s robes.

“We’ll do a stinger bug for Sprig, and the magician for Alix,” Tatty pondered aloud while re-folding her children’s costumes. That left a too-large gray house panther and the teeny-tiny orange gourd costumes. With luck, they’d fit Khazmine’s little brothers. If not, then perhaps one of Mychal’s old outfits would work.

Mychal…

Harriet flinched once she started thinking about him again. It had been almost a year now since she’d received word that her husband’s caravan was attacked by persons unknown. And this would be her first festival without him, too.

The loss of a husband was devastating for Harriet, who’d finally managed to build a life for herself in bustling city of Old Sarzonn. Mychal had promised deliverance from Tatty’s horrible auntie a few years back, a new home of their own, and a chance at finding meaning in their lives outside of the bakery’s long shadow. Harriet’s family had ended up in a cottage that was older than most of the city around her, having pre-dated construction of all but the Forbidden Ruins.

“Well, it may be ancient but it ain’t bad,” Harriet remarked with a smile. “Who knows, eh? Maybe it’ll cheer up some with company in it…”

Her last task finished, and too tired to read any more of her weekly scroll, Harriet toddled down the hallway toward the master bedroom. On the way, the bread-peddler’s niece lingered by the cracked door leading to her boys’ room, and Tatty peeked in to make sure they were both asleep. It was a wonder that Alix and Sprig got to bed at all, what with how excited they’d been for the upcoming festival.

Harriet could hardly blame them for being young and spirited, but she couldn’t help but feel especially worn out recently. Perhaps it was the boys growing up and becoming more adventurous, or maybe she was just getting old herself. Regardless, Harriet wouldn’t trade a king’s ransom for her outdated home and her rambunctious babies, no matter how lonely or tired she was.

The bread-peddler’s niece tucked herself in and snuffed out her candlestick, quickly falling prey to a deep slumber. Her dreams were filled with candied fruits, fanciful costumes, gallant knights, and festive dances. There was no room for weariness or despair in the festival of her mind. The musical rhythm of clashing swords and lyre-bard’s song drowned out all intruding worries and sounds, save for a strange, uncommon noise that started well past full-dark.

A haunting pattern of loud, bracing chimes rang out in the night, causing Tatty to stir from her fancies. Not only that, but her little black-haired Sprig had hopped right onto her legs to wake his mother, causing Harriet to bolt upright at the startling sensation.

“Oy now, wee Sprig,” Harriet exclaimed, still in shock. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Too loud! Too loud, mama!” little Sprig bellowed with his tiny hands clamped to his ears. “I can’t sleep, mama. Too loud.”

Moments later, Alix joined in as well, with equally articulate complaints to make about the Grand Cathedral’s foolhardy bell-ringing. The holy house surely had more sense than to wake all of Old Sarzonn for no reason, so Harriet calmed her two children by snuggling the pair in her ample arms, smothering their complaints.

“Shhh… Hush now, loves,” Harriet insisted. “Mama has to hear…”

Reclaiming her wits, Harriet listened intently to the banging of cathedral bells in the night. There were no holidays or blessings ceremonies to be had, nor was any holy house moronic enough to host mass this late at night. Harriet brushed sleep from her eyes and tried to figure out what the regular rhythmic pattern might mean.

The bells tolled on ad nauseum, echoing the same dirge. Bumpy gooseflesh crawled up Tatty’s arms and legs as the realization seeped in. The warmth from her blankets and toasty little cottage leeched out of her body, leaving poor Harriet shivering in fear. Without a moment to spare, the widow Cadlen abandoned the sweet dreams of Merkander and braced herself for the arduous nightmare ahead.

They had to flee immediately.

***

Gods old and new, where in blazes are the Star Guards? Jaycen Mevralls asked wordlessly as he raced through Cheapside with Khazmine and Pavo tucked into his armored embrace. The Grand Cathedral’s bells tolled repeatedly in the full-dark of night, slamming into his ears like shocks of thunder. Despite the ceaseless peal of church bells, the holy house’s beloved Star Guards were nowhere to be seen.

D*mn It all! Jaycen stopped short of another intersection that was infested with sick, coughing wanderers from The Dregs, plus a throng of Cheapsiders fleeing their homes in terror. Pivoting to double-back through the alleys, Jaycen hugged Khazmine and Pavo closer to him, as their bodies had gone fully limp. Stay with me, you two.

Moments before, the outcast had seemed perfectly fine, until Jaycen saw her clutching her pale-lilac ears in agony. Poor Khazmine screamed something about “the voices,” and the outcast started bleeding from her nose before passing out in the street. Jaycen had scanned the area, but couldn’t hear anything—nothing at all beyond the ringing of those horrid bells and the terrified panic of fleeing Cheapsiders.

Khazmine’s abrupt fainting spurred Jaycen to make haste back to Rida’s hovel at his best speed, boosting his strides with ether along the way. The frequent discovery of sickly wanderers hampered his progress, however, causing the Solanai to back-pedal through alternate routes.

A troubling pattern emerged as the trio ducked through back-alleys and side streets; the further south they went, the more of these pus-covered wanderers they encountered. Jaycen knew precious little about medicine, but he knew disease when he saw it stagger out from the darkness, vomiting blood and bile before dying out on the cobblestone streets.

Jaycen’s mind briefly sought a reason for the sudden influx of sick people. He hadn’t heard anything out of the ordinary, and none of the other lieutenants had reported more than a slight uptick in corpse carts leaving town. As it was, Jaycen didn’t have enough information to be sure of anything, other than that whatever these people had, he didn’t want any part of it.

There’s too many of them. Jaycen spotted another pack of Doomsayers scraping at doors and windows of boarded up houses, desperate for help. Their mindless, frantic motions reeked of brain fever or madness, such that Jaycen had never seen before. He’d fully lost count of the number of sick people who were shambling through Old Sarzonn, giving up after counting fifty-some heads.

In fairness, Jaycen couldn’t be sure who was sick and who was merely fleeing. The main streets had become a congested chaos, filled with people flooding east toward the Grand Cathedral, seeking safety from the sickness that lumbered through town. Even his fellow on-duty Solanai were overwhelmed, unable to wrangle the masses without risking injury to the panicked citizens. As troublesome as this back-tracking was, it was still safer to choose this path over joining the mob and risk getting exposed to illness that way.

Sh*t, not again! Lieutenant Mevralls came to a sudden stop at yet another obstructed passageway. Crates, debris, and leftover monsoon sandbags were piled high in one of Cheapside’s housing rows, blocking off another escape route.

The Cheapsiders on this side of town must have heard the chimes of the Grand Cathedral and hunkered down where they were to avoid whatever danger lurked outside. This unfortunately limited the Solanai’s options as even more sick wanderers from The Dregs shambled toward them. This is a bloody nightmare!

Much too close for comfort, a skeletally-thin man and his equally frightful partner closed in on Jaycen as he swallowed hard, unsure of what to do. He could send out attacking ether spikes to dissuade them, but that would almost certainly kill both wanderers as effectively as a barrage of crossbow bolts. If he did, Jaycen would expend even more of his dwindling ether, and would be unable to boost his strides without rest.

“Stay back!” Jaycen commanded, though he couldn’t be sure these wretches could understand him. Their putrid coloration and glaze of their eyes betrayed what little humanity either of them had left, forcing Jaycen’s hand. “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll—”

As the skeletal man’s fingers grazed Khazmine’s hair, Jaycen clenched his eyes shut and released a volley of ether spikes at both attacking wanderers. Instead of invisible, passive scanner spikes, these shot out from Jaycen’s body like fluorescent blue-green pin missiles, which embedded into his targets just as the lieutenant had predicted. The two attacking wanderers fell backwards with a gasp on impact, landing like ragdolls on the pavers.

Exhausted and desperately low on ether, Jaycen nearly dropped both Khazmine and Pavo while wrestling for control over his dwindling strength. There was no more ether to defend them, nor energy to run—this was as far as Jaycen Mevralls could go, and it wasn’t enough. Without intervention, the Doomsayers would overtake the exhausted trio long before they could reach safety.

But all was not lost. Through the peals of horrid bronze bells, Jaycen could barely detect the urgent pleas of an insistent, accented voice from across the street.

“OY, MISTER!” a strange woman with a long, red braid called again from her archaic, lopsided dwelling. “IN HERE, QUICK!”

Here's wishing you a very Happy Halloween on Earth, and a safe Feast of Merkander on Chromaldus. 

As a special bonus, please enjoy some artwork of Aranthus, dressed as a dark-gray house panther for the holiday. 

Looks like he's got quite the stash of goodies already. Thanks again for reading, and enjoy the festivities!