Tower of the Banshee. (Iron Age Prompt, 'The Calm' for 27/12/2023)

Image of (The Tower) by Blake Rottinger from Fantasy Art Watch

Aes slept soundly, releasing only the smallest noises with each exhale. Bundled tight in heavy layers of linen and wool cloth. She held the magic lantern close to her chest. It’s meager heat was enough to circulate warmth.

A subtle, icy wind blew down the stone walls. A faint noise of something that sounded like a fading cry was carried along with it. Aes snapped her head up from her slumber, visually scanning the corridor with wide-open and heavy eyes.

”What was that?” She asked, with an uneasy whisper. Pulling the lantern close to her lips.

"Hmmm... lost spirits or shades, perhaps.” Gloam replied. Aes stared down at the lantern with a frown.

”That’s-not-fun-nny!” She growled with a whimper

”T’wasn’t a jest…” Gloam responded grimly, peering down the hall.

Aes squinted her eyes to scan the long, dark stone hall. Watching and waiting for another sign of something, anything. Her heart beat loudly within her ears, sitting still and quiet. The uneasy moments passed by painfully slow. She took a deep breath and stood up from the floor, lifting the lantern up to illuminate the dreaded hallway.

”Ya should go back ta sleep De’ah” Gloam told her

”I can't. I’m too awake now…” Aes replied with a long, irritable sigh

Aes moved cautiously through the stone halls of the tower. The light from the magic lantern repelling the thick shadows. The darkness gradually recoiled like thick ink. Moss and mold decorated the dampness of the structure.

Her resolve rewarded her as she chanced upon a set of carved rock steps that spiraled up to the next floor. With a deep breath, she lifted her green wool skirt up a few inches and took each step one at a time.

The gentle echoes of her shoes treading the stone floor created a faint audible illusion. Often, she stopped to look back behind her, then back up with the hairs on her neck, standing strait. Gloam noticed the shaking of his lantern prison as Aes struggled to stay composed.

”I swear it…it sounds like something is following me.” She whispered to Gloam as she continued on to the next level of the tower.

The path snaked in odd directions. Left. Right. Right. Left. Left. Right. Right and Right again. Aes sneered as she tried to mentally map out the pathway. Her concern left as she spotted down a short hall, an archway with a wooden door. It would have been more secure had it not decayed from the dampness and rot. It squealed something horrible as Aes pushed it open. Her shoulder’s tightened as the noise.

”God, I hope that was all that I heard before…” she murmured to Gloam

”If’n it was. What opened it?” he responded. She glared at him again.

”Can you shut up, please?”

Aes lifted the lantern high to explore the new room. A glimmer in the dark caught her attention. She choked down a gasp of sharp air. Several heinously evil faces stared at her from the stone walls. Their eyes were hallowed and vacant. Hateful, sadistic grins with deformed features and eldritch maws.

”Totems!” Glaom interjected quickly. “Simple wooden carvings!” Aes blocked her sight of them.

”Friggin nightmare fuel!” Aes hissed, using her left hand to block her sight of them and desperately continuing to leave the room.

The stone hallways ahead continued to turn, twist, and bend in bizarre ways that made little logical sense. A few times, Aes looked forward and back. She gestured with her hand as if to calculate something. Choosing and changing her mind after each failed and frustrating decision. She grit her teeth and rubbed her temples.

”That way, De’ah!” Gloam directed.

”Didn’t I just come this way?” She asked, nibbling on her hair

”No, De’ah… “ He confirmed

”Are you…tsh, whatever"“

Aes took Gloam’s instructions, turning several corners of the dark and whispering stone halls. She tightened her cowl and hood as waves of damp air brushed across her face. A stream of visible air lifted from her lips as she exhaled.

”Geez! It got cold out of nowhere.” She whispered to her spirit companion.

The heavy wooden door shrieked open. The room before them was large. Worn shelves of aged books, scrolls, strange tools, and other implements reached the ceiling and covered every inch of the room. Several ivory chandlers, caked with thick chucks of melted wax, hung from the ceilings.

”Is this what we’re looking for?” Aes asked, approaching the shelves.

”Mara willing…” Gloam responds. “Bring me clos’ah De’ah!” Aes lifted Gloam closer to examine the shelves for exploration. He squinted as he read the bindings for clues.

”I cant desipher; start bringing scrolls, de’ah.” Aes rolled her eyes with a huff as began to take set of books and scrolls to the large table to look over

Aes hung the lantern up on a hook. Taking sets of scrolls and books, she laid them out on a large oak table for Gloam to inspect and read over. Each tome was thick and heavy. The scrolls were fragile and torn. Some books were impossible to open, having odd and intricate locks. Some scrolls fell apart at the mere touch of Aes’s hand.

Time seemed to slow down to an agonizing halt. Stacks of books slowly grew from one side to another: those to be read and those already studied. Aes sighed with boredom, waiting for Gloam’s command to turn the page. Her eyes grew heavier. She leans more on her palm as her eyes glaze over.

Before Gloam could ask, Aes sat back up. With a strained, elevated awareness. She looked between the archways on opposing sides of the study. The air had frozen bitterly in place. The pores on her arms peaked. She felt a heavy and hard beating in her chest.

Gloam also appeared to have stopped moving. The flames from his lantern paused in a single dancing shift. Aes whispered to him, gently tapping her fingers upon the glass. There was no response, nor was there any sound. Not even the glow of the lantern’s light shifted as she moved.

Aes stood slowly from the table. Her blue eyes stared into the motionlessness of the stone-walled study. She turned slowly to the archway to her left, trembling her hands as she feared what might be there, waiting and watching. There was nothing.

She snapped back to the second archway behind her, the one she had entered before. Still nothing. She hurried to the wooden door, grabbing it’s old, worn latch. She tried to pull, but it was frozen in place. She pushed, shoved, and pulled. It didn’t budge.

She cried out to Gloam, or tried to. No sound came from her lips. She grasped her neck, feeling the muscles move as she struggled to make noise. Nothing.

Goose bumps formed on her arms and neck with more intensity. A strained feeling from the motionless air pricked her back. Aes turned around to face the dreaded force. Within the dark archway, nothing.

Her pupils pulsed with dilation. Emotions swirled on her face: Confusion. Anger. Fear. She took slow, hesitating steps towards the open arch. Determined to control her erratic breathing, she inhaled slower and deeper. A trembling shake with each exhale.

Though no sound exited her lips, she mouthed the words, ‘I know your there…’ Resting a wool glove on the door rim, she stared idly into the darkness. Her chest heaved with several forced inhales. Nostrils flaring with an intense fire in her eyes. She turned the shadowy stone corner to confront the source of her fears.

There was nothing…

only the stillness of an unnatural calm.