It was as if the shrill of the flute had put the entire town to sleep. Shadows of slacken faces reflected through the dirty windows of the houses, and the men and women who had managed to make it out their doors appeared as if their souls had been sucked from their bodies.

I froze at the edge of the street in horror. There was an old man glaring down at me from across the street. His eyes were as dark as the earth that no trowel could touch; his face was blanker than a starless night. He walked with a worn, oak cane, but as I watched, the walking stick slipped from between his fingers and fell to the ground in a small spray of gravel.

The man continued hobbling for a step or two before his left leg twisted out from under. It happened with such a loud snap, that the only thing it could have been was the shattering of bone. He failed to cry out as he followed his cane to the dirt.

None of the half dozen people other people ran to his aid -- none, including the old man himself -- even appeared to notice. Instead they all just continued to trudge toward the south entrance of the village, wearing their blank expressions the way one might wear a cloak -- covering all and surfacing nothing.

I blinked hard before turning my eyes toward the sky. A handful of Atrixes shone white against the rumbling clouds, circling like vultures. I followed their gaze toward the ground and with a flash, Taurus's words echoed back to me.

Atrixes would eat anything.

Before I really knew what I was doing, I was running. I ducked around the comatose people and and shook on the shoulder of their elder.

The old man's face washed with pain the moment I touched him. Despite his grimaces, he seemed almost relieved as I helped him lean back against the door of his house.

He turned his eyes to the Atrixes momentarily before shooting them a toothy grin of contempt. "They ain't gonna get me to today. Nah they ain't." Then he shook his head when I offered to go find him help. "Their dancing spell is spread too thin and they ain't gonna do anything more to alert the North. We can get them out of this trance, any disturbance will work. Go."

"Dancing spell?" I repeated incredubleouly.

"No time to explain now." He coughed loudly, causing his ratty hat to fall low over his eyes. "Go, wake everyone else -- like you did with me. I'll be alright."

The East had declared war...

The words rang endlessly in my head as my feet slammed down against the dirt. Suddenly everything seemed to spring into motion. Children flooded the streets and started smacking their parents with everything from paddles to books. The small ones appeared immune to the ashen trances that had befallen their elders.

One by one, the adults blinked out of their hazes -- some looked confused, while others showered praise upon the kids for doing the very things they would have been scolded for before.

Shouts rang out over the street as the spell cracked deeper with each person that awakened.

It all made little sense to me. Why all the kids were unaffected by the high note while their family trudged in a daze. And then there was me. I had to be several years older than the eldest child who ran the street. Yet for some odd reason, the trance had no effect on me. I had no urge to trudge toward the town ends, nor to let an eight year old beat me over the head with a broom.

Maybe it was luck, maybe it was mindset, but either way, I was free and I needed to make sure our guide stayed that way too.

The crowd of the entranced slowly began to disperse off the street, as the imminent danger became apparent. Parents ushered their kids away from the open, casting guarded glances at the sky as the Atrixes twirled and screamed. Doors closed and suddenly a new pocket of silence filled the air.

I rubbed my ears nervously as I ran. The constant background noise that had accompanied me in the past couple days faded in the presence of the flute trill. Out of the corner of my eyes, I caught the briefest flash of green against grey, but when I looked again, it was gone.

Motion began to return as I quickfooted the sidelines. A boy about my age -- once woken from his trance by a girl no older than Cwen -- peered up at the Atrixes before expertly drawing his bow from the quiver on his back and started shooting up at the sky. The arrows flew higher and longer than any I had ever seen, flying straight into the clouds and out of sight.

A moment later, a wide smile spread across the boy's face as an Atrix roared in pain. "Good one," I coughed when he met my eyes.

"Thanks," he nodded before disappearing into the crowd. As quickly as they dispersed, the villagers returned, and this time they were armed to the teeth with anything that could be used as a weapon.

Some weilded artfully forged swords with blades that gleamed in their own sharpness, while others carried makeshift spears and clubs tied to the ends of broom handles.

"We won't go quietly," Hyde's voice echoed behind me and I turned to find him standing with the crossbow balanced in his arms and an iron pipe tied loosely to his belt. He motioned for me to step aside with the crossbow.

Together we moved over to clear the mouth of the alley we were standing in. I watched in silence as two boys, both older and larger than me, dragged a thin man down the alley and into the square. The man's bare feet scraped horribly against the graveled ground and everyone's words faded into the wind as they each turned to watch .

Everyone gave way for the prisoner, glaring and snarling like he was something less than human -- or like they were. They stepped aside and formed an I'll ring as the boys dumped their catch into the middle of the street.

I recognized the man as a soldier from the wagon train, though his face was badly beaten and his limbs looked terribly weak; he wore the same regal uniform as the ones who had burned my home.

The ones who sent Atrixes on the innocent.

The ones who had take my family.

The anger of the village started to burn in my chest.

The boys who had brought him forward had his weapons strapped to their bodies. He had been stripped of his winter cloak and the whistle sheath hung empty at his side. The soldier glared at the ground with beaten eyes.

The man who had greeted us when entered the town, Chansor, stepped forth with a ruddy knife clutched in his fist. It seemed like the entire town held their breaths as he approached the downed soldier. "What are you doing here?" He demanded.

"From the look of it, you already know why I'm here," the soldier spat. "So what sorcery have you brought down upon this groveling place to evade the great power of the East Ca --"

"We're giving you a chance to walk out of here with your life," Chansor interjected calmly before the soldier could monologue every citizen to their death. "You're a scout, you're not here for fighting. Tell you superiors to move on. Leave Hbéakut be. We want no quarrel with you."

"Give us every man, woman, and child with the experience of twelve or more summers and we'll leave peaceably," he hissed back. "We'd rather you not fight us, Come willingly. We are going to change the world."

"Rubbish!" I spat, causing the man to pry his eyes away from Chansor.

For a moment his gaze wandered the crowd until it finally, fell down upon me. "How would you know, boy? Your home is a just a tiny part in this ever expansing land. How would you know?"

"I know you're talking to save the skin on your back," I fired in retaliation. "I know your people didn't give any of the other cities a right to choose."

"How would you know?" He repeated, appearing to glower at me through his puffy, bruised eyes.

I huffed and stepped back into the crowd, at last noticing that I had been creeping forward in the encounter. Chansor barked, and forced the the man in green to look back at him. "I'll say this once, call them off and your life is yours."

In a movement quicker than the eye could see, the soldier lunged forward. The boys yelled out and three people ran forward to help wrestle the man back to the ground, but not before he could grab a knife from someone's belt. The crowd tensed, waiting for him to lash out or attack, instead the soldier brought the blade to his throat. "My life means nothing to me," his fingers tightened angrily around the knife. "You all have chosen." And before he could be stopped, his wrist flashed across his body and a deep line of red started powering into the neck of his uniform.

An atrix screamed from above.

The air flew from my lungs like I'd been punched in the gut. No one moved, all apparently as shocked as I that the man had taken his own life. The crowd remained frozen as the body fell forward in the dirt with his face tilted up toward the sky. The defiance lingered in his eyes even as a trickle of blood slid from the corner of his lips.

Everyone remained still for a second.

Two seconds.

Suddenly one of the the prison guards -- a boy barely older than myself -- tensed like a spirit was breathing seductions into his ears. There was a flicker of movement from behind him. I gasped and extended my finger as another soldier disappeared behind a hutch. The boy fell facefirst to the dirt; there was an arrow protuding from his back.

"Easterner!" I yelled and vaulted the cooling bodies. Nothing else mattered, because they were here. I barreled toward where I had seen the green soldier. At that moment, it didn't matter what the vision from the night before said, if there was any chance that they were here... For Barric... Ismay...

I ran.

A/N

Welcome to the author's note. Anyway, long time no update. It's been a while, but don't worry, I at least have another chapter prewritten because I wanted to make this chapter one long chapter, but it ended being three times longer than I expected.

Nothing like Atrixes and Easterns to kick off a battle.

Where do you think Aldyth is?
Is Eli ever going to get around to finding Taurus? Is Taurus okay? What was up with that whole Night-of-the-living-Dead trance?

Also I'm writing a new story called Songless, which is a fairytale retelling told from the eyes of a young, female death, who also happens to be the daughter one of the most overlooked murderers in the fairytale kingdom.

#DeathLikeAFlute