A Wordler once quested for a five-letter word to protect her village from a wizard’s curse. She failed. NIGHT has fallen, and the survivors of a shattered homeland must seek refuge in an unforgiving world…
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Celebrants waited at every road into town. Preparations had been made for an evening feast. The streak of victories was long, and the residents of Wordler Village had high confidence that good times would continue. One more day, one more day, one more day. That was the mantra of the QUEEN, as she sent brave Wordlers on their daily quests to protect the village from the Word Wizard’s curse.
One.
More.
Day.
Esme and her brother stood with the crowd at the northern entrance to the village, which was marked by a granite pilar. It was said that Cleopatra had used pillars like this one to mark the extent of her empire, although hers were probably more than four feet tall and would have been covered in elaborate decoration. Perhaps, thought Esme, she could go home and get her paints.
“Any moment now,” said Rick.
The sun had reached the tree line in the west, and the light was starting to fade. Some of the celebrants were growing anxious. Mutterings began that perhaps it was time to seek shelter, in case the Wordler didn’t make it back. But that was silly, thought Esme. The daily Wordler had almost always made it back to the village with a magic Word to stave off the curse, and on those rare days of failure, some loophole or another had spared the village from serious consequence.
Rick gripped her hand a little too tightly.
“I should scout ahead for her,” Esme offered.
“No need. She’ll be here. She’ll have the Word with her. Any moment now.”
Esme pulled her hand from Rick’s grasp before he could snap her finger bones. “She’ll be tired after her long quest. I’ll bring her some water and walk with her on the last stretch of road.”
“That’s silly,” said Rick. “We don’t even know for sure that she’s coming from this direction. In fact, she probably came from another direction. She’s probably in the Village Square right now, getting her laurel from the QUEEN.”
“We would have heard the fanfare,” Esme stated. Without another word, she broke from the crowd and started jogging north along the road.
She didn’t need to go far. About a half-mile from the pillars, Esme spotted an approaching light. Some quality of the light filled her with dread, and caused her to make a decision that probably saved her life. She left the road and hid herself in the brush.
A skeleton approached. Its bones glowed with unearthly light and its entire body burned with greenish flames. It walked with deliberate steps down the road, toward the granite pillars, toward the village.
Toward Rick.
The monster stopped, not ten feet away from where Esme was hiding, perhaps in response to her gasp. Esme concentrated on remaining perfectly still, not breathing, trying to will her pounding heart to quiet down. The skeleton sniffed the air before turning back to its journey.
Esme couldn’t stop shaking. She had recognized the tattered clothing the skeleton wore. It was Wordler 388. She had failed her quest, and Wordler Village was doomed.
Esme could have stayed for the ensuing carnage. She could have—no, she should have—gone back to be with Rick. But in the end, she’d run away as fast as her legs could carry her.
That was two days ago. Since then, Esme had heard the horror stories that had reached the small town where she’d taken shelter. She had no money, but a kindly family of a shoemaker had taken her in and given her a closet to sleep in. She’d be all right, and she was sure that Rick had also managed to escape, but the longer the two siblings remained separated, the longer Rick would be worried sick about her.
A knock on the closet door woke Esme a cramped half-sleep.
“Yes?” she asked.
The shoemaker’s wife had an odd tension in her voice. “Miss Esme? You have…a visitor.”
Esme emerged from the closet and stretched out her achy limbs. Her feeling of dread increased with every step as she followed the woman down the hall, down the stairs, to the front door where something glowed with an unearthly green light.
The skeletal remains of Wordler 388 stood in the doorway, still in its tattered clothes and still on fire. It pointed a boney finger at Esme. “I dub thee Wordler 390,” it intoned.
“What?” asked Esme. “But the curse is over. The curse was victorious. This has to be a dream.” Her belief that she was dreaming gave her the strength she needed to face this monster. She was still in the shoemaker’s closet, asleep. Or maybe she was back in her own bed, and the fall of Wordler Village itself had just been her own personal nightmare.
“I require a five-letter word from you,” said the skeleton. “I will give you a hint if you’d like.”
Esme nodded.
Although lacking lips or muscles, the skeleton somehow seemed to grin. “When I met your brother on the North Road, which of his internal organs did I consume first?”
Esme recoiled in horror. She pinched her arm, again and again, but this nightmare remained her reality.
Wordle 390 4/6
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LIVER
Art and Text ©2022 Greg R. Fishbone
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