Unsleeping Patron - Blood-Lantern Covenant

Rising like a spine of broken teeth, the Ash Hills jagged out out of the grey shale.Silas climbed with his head down, using his palms to brace against the jagged slopes whenever the gravel slipped beneath his boots. The rot in his chest had settled into a dull, rhythmic throb that pulsed in time with his breathing, leaving a slick, copper-tasting film over his teeth. Every fifty yards, he had to stop, consult the yellowed parchment map inside his head, and manually force his limbs to steer against the warped horizon of the Miasma.Dusk came without a sunset. The grey fog simply thickened, taking on a bruised, purplish tint that smelled of wet slate and stagnant bilge.He reached the crest of a narrow saddle between two shale mounds. The Parchment’s internal radar showed two miles left to the Asharto territory, but the terrain ahead fell into a deep, bowl-shaped depression filled with standing fog so dense it looked like wet lard.Ten yards down the slope, a figure was standing.Silas froze, his boot slipping an inch in the loose gravel before he caught his balance.The figure was tall and unnaturally thin, draped in tattered strips of crimson cloth that hung like wet ribbons from its frame. It had no skin. The muscles along its arms and shoulders were exposed to the cold air, wet and dark as salted beef, glistening with a thin sheen of yellow fat. In its right hand, the thing held a lantern.The frame of the lantern was fashioned from four interlocking human ribs, welded at the joints with dark, tarnished iron. Stretched across the bone ribs was a sheet of pale, translucent parchment that looked like dried human hide. The reservoir at its base was empty, completely dry, but a faint, cold ember sat at the center of the frame like a dying coal.The entity didn’t turn its head. It faced north, motionless as a wooden fence post.Silas’s chest tightened. He didn’t have the Mind-Light to fight another monster, and his throat was too dry to swallow the sour spit pooling beneath his tongue. Slowly, keeping his eyes on the skinless shoulders, he began to step sideways, intending to circle wide around the eastern rim of the depression.He shifted his shoulders, turning his back toward the entity as he stepped down the slope.The air behind him dropped thirty degrees in a fraction of a second.Silas didn’t even hear a footstep. A cold, iron band clamped around his spine, snapping his vertebrae straight. The breath in his lungs froze mid-exhalation, locking his ribs in a tight, agony-filled vise. He couldn’t drop his hands. He couldn’t turn his neck. His legs turned to stone, his boots glued to the shale as if he had been poured into a mold of solid lead.His eyes were locked on a jagged piece of grey rock three feet ahead. He couldn’t even blink. The damp cold began to creep inward from his skin, racing through his nerves toward his heart like liquid nitrogen poured into an open vein.The rule, a cold thought echoed through his mind.In his head, the yellowed surface of the Parchment flared into a brilliant, blinding gold. The quill moved with violent speed, tearing through the hide surface as it gouged out dark, dripping letters.Rule of the Lantern-Bearer: Never present your spine to the Skinless. It hungers for the marrow of the turned. Offer the oil of the rot, or let the frost claim the shell.Oil of the rot.The black blood. The necrotic fluid pooling in his decayed stomach.Silas couldn’t move his neck, but his internal organs were already rotten. He forced a spasm through his diaphragm, driving his abdominal muscles upward against his ruined stomach.The pain was excruciating a hot, tearing sensation that felt as if his liver had split down the center. A thick, ink-black surge of fluid rushed up his esophagus, bursting through his clenched teeth and spilling down his chin.The moment the dark, sulfur-smelling blood dripped onto the stone before him, the iron grip on his spine loosened by an inch.Silas dropped to one knee, his lungs expanding in a loud, ragged gasp that sounded like a torn bellows. He didn’t turn around. Remembering the Parchment’s warning, he kept his chin faced squarely toward the skinless entity behind him as he reached up and dragged a hand across his bloody lips.He cupped his palm, letting the thick, necrotic fluid pool in his skin, and extended his arm backward over his shoulder without turning his head.”Take it,” Silas hissed through his red-stained teeth.A cold, wet touch brushed his knuckles.It felt like being scraped by a strip of raw leather. The skinless entity took his cupped hand, tilting its iron-bound bone lantern beneath his palm. The thick, black blood trickled down his wrist and poured into the empty iron reservoir at the base of the lantern.The moment the dark fluid hit the dry metal, the cold ember inside the hide frame erupted into a bright, blood-red flame.A crimson light surged outward, sweeping past Silas’s shoulders and slicing through the grey Miasma.The skinless entity let out a low, satisfied sigh a sound like dry leaves scraping across slate and its raw, muscle-bound fingers slipped away from Silas’s knuckles.Silas turned his head slowly, keeping his eyes locked on the lantern.The entity was gone. Only the lantern remained, hovering three inches above the stone, its bone frame now burning with a steady, unquenchable crimson glare.Silas reached out and gripped the handle. The bone was cold, but the moment his fingers wrapped around the ribs, a warm, rhythmic pulse traveled up his arm and settled into his chest.The Blood-Lantern was bound.He held the lantern up into the dark. The crimson flame didn’t just illuminate the shale; it cut through the thick Ash Miasma like a hot blade through lard. The grey fog rolled back, opening a clear, circular line of vision that stretched two hundred yards in every direction.Through the clear red light, Silas could see the contours of the Ash Hills ahead the jagged ridges, the hidden sinkholes, and, three miles to the north, the massive, dark silhouettes of the Asharto herd moving slowly through the valley.