Kell's Legend

his gaze scanned from left to right, then back.
    Nothing moved. No chickens clucked in the yards, no children squealed, no people walked the street, or stood on corners with pipes and gossip. Elias narrowed his eyes, and dismounted. Feeling foolish, and yet at the same time fuelling his sense of necessity, he drew his sword and dropped his mount’s reins. He advanced on the deserted village, sword at waist-height, head scanning for enemy…
    And who are the enemy, mocked his subconscious?
    The Army of Iron? Halting in its mighty conquest of Falanor to annihilate one tiny, insignificant village?
    The answer was yes.
    Elias stopped at the head of the main street, and gazed out, and down, across frozen mud and freshnew drifts of snow, at the corpses which littered the thoroughfare. Elias squinted. He’d thought of them as corpses, but as he peered closer, now that he thought about it, they seemed more like…
    “Gods!” he hissed, skin freezing on his bones, blood chilling in his veins, eyes wide, lips narrow, sword gripped unnaturally tight. “What in the Nine Hells has caused this?”
    He stopped by an old man, face down, frame shrivelled, skin little more than parchment shell over brittle narrow bones. Elias dropped to one knee, crunching fresh snow, and rolled the old man onto his back…only to cry out, stumbling back as he realised it wasn’t the corpse of an old man at all, but a young woman, her flesh melted away, skin pulled back over her grinning skull like some parody of decrepitude and death.
    Elias stalked down the street, his horror rising, his hatred rising, his rage and anger fuelled to a white-hot furnace by what he saw. And he knew; knew without truly understanding the intricacies of blood-oil magick that this this was a result of the dark art; the old art.
    “Bastards,” he said, shaking his head, gazing down at children, shrivelled husks, still holding hands. Their faces were far from platters of serenity; they had died in terrible pain, without honour, without dignity, and Elias stared and stared and cursed and spat to one side of the street.
    “Is this what Graal has in store for us?” he muttered, considering this Army of Iron and its white-haired general.
    Back down the street, a scream rent the air, and it took Elias long slack moments to realise it was his horse. He turned and ran, skidding on ice as he rounded two low-walled cottages, their doors barely high enough to allow a child entry.
    The horse was on its side, in the street, quivering as if in the throes of epilepsy. Mist curled in tendrils at boot-height and Elias narrowed his eyes, approaching warily, searching left and right for signs of enemy. Had it been struck by an arrow? Or something more sinister? He was ashamed to notice that his hands shook.
    “A fine beast,” came a soft, lilting voice, mature and yet…deranged, to Elias’s ears. “Such a shame the source is poor, toxic you understand, for purposes of refinement. Otherwise, we might not have to harvest you.”
    Elias whirled, sword flashing up, to see a tall creature in thin white robes, delicately embroidered in gold and blue. But it was the face that sent shivers down Elias’s spine, and had the hairs on his neck crackling like thin ice over a deep pond. The face was flat, oval, hairless, and incredibly pale. Small black eyes watched Elias with what he considered to be intelligence, and the nose was little more than slits in pale skin. The creature, for this was no man, breathed fast, hissing and hissing and sending more shudders to wrack Elias’s body as it suddenly moved towards him, bobbing as it walked, a display which would have been almost comical if it wasn’t for the aura of death and the stench of putrefaction which seemed to pervade the creature and its surroundings with every living, breathing pore…
    “What are you?” breathed Elias, words barely more than a whisper.
    The creature came close. “I am a Harvester, boy. And you are Elias.”
    “How could you know that?”
    “I know many things,” said the Harvester, and lifted its hand, the sleeve of its robe falling back to reveal long, bony fingers. “I know you are the friend of King Leanoric. I know you seek his Queen, Alloria, taken by the vile Watchmaker Graal…but all in time, my son, all in time, for you are prime fodder, are you not? And you have information which may aid our cause. Come, come to me…”
    Elias leapt, but even as he leapt ice-smoke poured from the Harvester,