The Shivers: Exile's Redemption Prelude, #1

By Rey Never

Prelude orgin story for the terrifying magic called "The Shivers." Experience how it started and the chaos is created in the world before finally being tamed.

 

It started in the Forest. It left a wake of gore and horror; not a typical slaughter like a roving band of maurauders, but villages with all adult bodies left in tatters. Corpses littered streets and homes with spines severed, skin shredded, and inky blood dripping off walls and sliding down rooves. It left wailing children. It left chidren alone, until finally it began to consume them too. 

 

The Shivers terrorized all and no magic, mechanics, or warding could protect against it.

 

Terra is alive with magic and mystery where diverse races struggle for independence against a worldwide human hegemony in decline. Magic provides both prosperity and devastation spreading like plagues or blessings across oceans and continents. 

 

Parents teach their children their letters and the Shiver's rhyme,  a nursery song with a deeper purpose to protect them, and everyone they love.

Feared by all but tamed centuries ago The Shivers spread like Blight, like Ruin leaving slaughter, pain, and death splattered black tar. The ubiquitous "Shivers Lamps" are used throughout the world coupled with whispered prayers by families and the sensible keep this forgotten malevolence at bay.

 

""Tallow, Tallow,
sunlight warm,
light the hearth
and fear no harm." 

 

"Fat and splat,
sputtering flame,
sit in sunlight
and don't fear it's name,
shivers
shivers
fade away." 

 

Explore the origins of this violent magic that started in the feared Forest and spread across the globe consuming entire villages and leaving only traumatized children in its wake.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Whisperwind Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393870906

Book preview

Not a ghost breathing on your neck

THE TICKLE ON YOUR back when you shower, the tickle that shivers up your spine, the tickle that laces around your throat like an icicle despite the steaming warmth isn’t the memory of your loved ones, or a spirit breathing on your back. No. Its the Shivers come round slipping through cracks of shadow and blowing whispering madness on winter’s wind. The Shivers whisk through midnight, though gloom and darkness, hovering, protecting, devouring; children’s nightmares manifest like a feasting maw to fight terror with horror. It boils like black smoke. It swims through air like wraiths searching for bodies. It kills all it touches, all it infects, and eventually consumes the child that summons it. Through fear, through nightmare, through temper tantrum and anger the Shivers devours all.

But we are saved. But we are rescued from our own children. We’re protected.

Light your lamp, sing the song, and bake in sunlight until the Shivers bumps fade and you live another day.

"Fat and splat,

sputtering flame,

sit in sunlight

and don’t fear it’s name,

shivers

shivers

fade away."

"HEARTH AND WARMTH

Mason’s flame, bake my skin

and let me feel no pain.

Heat and heart,

and hearth stone’s well lain,

keep me warm and free from stain."

"Tallow, Tallow,

sunlight warm,

light the hearth

and fear no harm."

"Fat and splat,

sputtering flame,

sit in sunlight

and don’t fear it’s name,

shivers

shivers

fade away."

Elery - The First

A Child's Terror

ELERY HATED THE WOODS like all abandoned children. Not that she was still a child. She matured the night her mother shoved her out the window sobbing as the man called father crashed into the thin door to their room. Elery stumbled three steps sniffling in uncertainty before turning back and waiting for her mother to follow. She paused long enough to hear the door splinter then ran into darkness when her mother’s screams chased her into the cold.

Against the cold, against the dark, and against the memory of her mother saying don’t go too far alone she fled. She fled into the dark kissing the edge of their home’s light and huddled behind her favorite tree thinking she was safe. When the screaming stopped she waited for as many cold breaths she could before crawling back to the cottage she called home. Just as she reached the tree line the man her mother called father burst out of the house and called Elery’s name with slurring rage. Elery recognized it as the same slippery lips he used after returning from town.

He sloshed a jug against his leg between swigs, and shouted Elery! over and over before slumping to the ground dripping with sweat and spilled drink. When she was certain the man called father slept, Elery crept back to her mother’s window and stopped with her belly pressed to the sill. Father wasn’t covered in spilled drink, but in her mother’s blood. It was everywhere. Elery’s face drained of it as she trembled with her rib cutting into the raw stripped wood. Her panicked breath heaved in direct contrast to the motionless gaze stuck on her mother’s sightless face, stuck on her mother’s blood spattered lips, on her mother’s crushed nose. Blood spattered the floor, the bed, the walls, and gore spilled from under her dress. What was usually a bruised eye, a split lip, or a lost tooth was now everything. Elery’s mother was a punctured sack deflated on the floor with twisted limbs like Elery’s discarded dolls. The door to their room was shattered and heavy on the floor, knocked off the hinges.

Father’s stray twitch tumbled the ceramic jug and it rolled with a loud hollow sound. It didn’t wake him, though it did wake Elery. She snatched a blanket within reach of the window, only dotted with her mother’s blood, and fled into the woods clutching it close to her nose. She breathed in her mother’s scent. It was the only safety she had in the dark.

That was early fall two frozen, lonely, brutal winters ago. Elery suffered the woods, and only went back to that cottage once since. Once when she was desperate in the crushing cold Elery stumbled to the familiar log walls, the off-kilter front door, and the window, her mother’s window. Father sang her mother’s name as he stumbled inside the hot yellow glow. He sang Elery’s name screeching his rage that they were gone, and how he was going to kill them both all over again when she came back. The sound of madness like the night that sent her shivering alone sent her scurrying back into the frozen trees.

She survived. She survived through tooth and nail, bone and blood until she became a part of the woods. She was as much of the forest as the ants in the soil, the moss on the stone and the birds in the branches.

Stupid toes and furs, Elery muttered stubbing her toe for the first time in sleeps spread by shifting winds and more frequent rain.

Elery didn’t have a concept of week, or month, or year. She breathed with the seasons, with the amount of light snaking through trees, and how deep into burrows she needed to snuggle to say warm against the cold that nipped at her heels and knuckles.

What are you doing there? she asked the protruding root. Has someone bothered you?

Her hand stroked the wetwood tree like it was answering. She ignored the slime coating her nails like an oozing squish that soaked from the grooves in the wavy rough bark. Her fingers traced through the oozing channels like a stream cutting river rocks in a soft moss glade.

She tasted the sap.

Really? So close? But what did they want? Elery’s eyes shifted through the trees lighting on scuff marks that weren’t hers, on branches that wind couldn’t have pushed, or sticks snapped by haste. They shouldn’t be here, these trees, these stones aren’t safe. Don’t they know? Don’t they- She stopped mid sentence feeling the tingle of cold creep up her stomach and wrap around her back.

No, not here, not here, we’re warms and swarms not worried and scared.

She twisted at the waist hoping that the wisping tendrils weren’t rising unseen. She sighed warmed with comfort that nothing seemed to soak from the ground or rise like a shivering fire starting with one worried flame. 

Good, good. Whether she was saying it about the lack of chill or whether she caught the human’s trail wasn’t clear. They shouldn’t be here. Okay, okay. You’re fine, fine. Not safe, no trace. Should flee. She patted the wetwood spraying sap that splashed like gelatinous water.

Elery pushed dark hair away from her eyes oblivious to how the sap coated the lock from scalp to ear tip though it stayed in place after. She patted the other side with the same sap soaked hand before dragging it in a moss coated spread-wood trunk whose canopy branches fanned wide like a canvas tent she remembered from before she suffered first these woods. The woods.

They shouldn’t be here, not here, not now. Not safe to play to step to stomp. Elery muttered her walking song glaring at the tugged roots out of fresh dirt and smashed mosses light green instead of deep vibrancy that soaked the sun like she did when threatened by the cold tingle hand of dread. Shhh, shhh, she breathed as gentle as her finger tips that pushed back a ruptured sod showing black soil and silky roots that should have been pressed wet. There you go, sweet dear, sweet one.

Her voice sang like she was mimicking sound instead of talking. It was more like a parent singing to a crying child.

It took less than a few high branch shaking gusts that blew through twelve to twenty times a day in this light to catch up to the clomping humans. Elery hovered around the edges of their view, blending with the leaves that draped the low branches, that sprouted from the too young growth that wouldn’t survive long unless one of the great ones fell. She soaked into the forest floor like a dark patch of bark, or a still gap in moss. The humans were lost. Elery was certain after watching for a good two heavy gusts. They hadn’t even gone far.

Elery’s nook was very far away and she could get there in less than one wind if she ran. And she wouldn’t rip any roots up or smash apart more moss than she had to.

Shut up! the tallest one roared at the little one, the boy with hair coated to his head from the trickling mist off the heavy leaves. It rained earlier but Elery didn’t notice much other than avoiding the bowl shaped leaves that sagged with retained water. These humans were soaked in unpleasantness and moisture. Stupid humans, Elery thought. We’re not lost! I know exactly where we’re going!

Lost, lost, and hiding fast. Don’t worry, little ones, don’t cry. Elery spoke with the breath of the leaves, the plants, and dirt.

It was to herself as well as to the crying boy and the older girl who sniffled holding his hand.

We’ve been walking for so long and we can’t find the road, the boy said through tears and crying gasps.

I said shut up! the tall one shouted and smacked the child across the face. His filthy clothes sent water spraying away from his skin so fast was his smack.

Hiissss! Elery sounded through bit teeth and bared lips. Fear not, fear not, little one! she sounded like a foot sliding on a wet root just after snows had melted.

Owww, the boy said and started to cry knocked to the ground. In his fall he stumbled into a patch of dirt and roots that had puddled into mud. His wails filled the forest and killed the seeming omnipresent birds and insects.

Come on, you’re okay, the girl said trying to help the smallest up.

Oreth, why? Calm down. You said you knew where you were going but we’ve been walking for hours, for hours, and I don’t recognize any of this.

Dammit Kaily, I don’t know. I thought we were going East, going to the road.

We should have stayed with the group.

Her hair was streaked with dark moisture, but might have been bright like sunlight had it been soft. Elery touched her own matted jelly like hair. Hers was dark like soil, dark like the dirt that clung to mushrooms before she ate them. This human’s, this mother’s hair was like a promise of warmth and food. Elery had a brief flash memory of her own mother singing a wordless song while something raged pounding in the darkness outside. She dismissed it as soon as the tall one started yelling again.

Stay!? They would have killed me! Killed the kids and taken you! We had to go!

We’re lost Oreth! We’re lost!

I know! Wait, no we’re not! And, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing in the forest that can hurt us. He spread his hands and more water splattered around as he spun. Look! We’re safe.

Not safe, not safe, no one is safe, flee and free run from these, Elery said responding to the tall one’s claim.

He didn’t hear over his own noise, or over the waving leaves and he shivering breeze that slithered down the high branches.

See, its the woods, we know the woods. We’ll be fine. We go East, we pick up the road, then its south to sunlight and Howlth.

Oreth... the woman said pushing her eyebrows together in worry, a face Elery had seen her own mother make often when the noises pounding their small cubby got loudest. We should have stayed with the group.

The man looked around still proud of his speech, but looked at the crying boy, then the girl dirty and soaking, then the woman. His face deflated and he shrugged.

We didn’t have a choice.

The woman frowned and searched the woods around them once more. If they couldn’t see Elery staring at them in the open, not even covered in leaves or moss torn off the soft floor, or wiggled into a pincher bush, how could they see a nightripper, a prickly-eyed-toe-nibbler, or a bark-stalker that pushed through the undergrowth even in daylight? They were like food shouting to everything that was hungry, here we are, eat us.

Not safe, not safe, flee and free, run and see the sun, Elery said like a push. They shouldn’t be here. The woods were dangerous, but not because of the things that stalked the floor, or prowled the high branches.

Elery went cold, and she saw the boy’s skin ripple with chill too.

No! Elery whispered.

Fear and cold slithered up her spine, rising off her hackles like the first time her mother shoved her into the woods out the back window and the door to their cubby finally splintered inward. Chill slipped up her neck and rose off her ears like heat shooting off