Chapter 2: Visitations of Light
As the guard captain ran through the forest, he prayed fervently to the Mother Goddess for her protection, to keep the demons away and guide his steps safely home. His grandparents had done so, as had his parents, and for that, his generation had been safe from the Creeping Night for half a century. So the captain shouted his prayers to the night sky, voice echoing through the towering jungle like a call to arms. He called out for his people to hear him and know that the Silent Demon had returned.
Not too far away, the scouts stationed at the edge of Rhessyc heard him. The bass tones of their warning horns reverberated through the night, startling the capital city from its usual nighttime rhythms.
Those horns sounded often, to warn of coming storms, to mark the start of special festivals, or to greet leaders from neighboring cities, but never with these particular tones. Three deep, long notes that shook the very guard towers they came from within. This was the warning that young cosylians often wondered if they would ever hear in their lifetime, and the old feared almost above all else.
And in the central marketplace, where a terrified hush had fallen over the usually lively vendors and patrons, a young human woman paused her conversation with a local barkeep, looking around the open-air establishment in alarm. Her right hand flew to the grip of the gun in the holster at her hip.
"What—" She started to ask, but the barkeep interrupted her.
"Find somewhere safe indoors and stay there. Go, quickly! Or if you have a ship, leave as fast as you can." He told her anxiously. The rest of the locals in the market had already erupted into action, racing to gather their belongings and locate friends or family members before hurrying home. The barkeep made to move away from the woman, his emerald green eyes flitting around his business like it was the last time he would ever see it. She grabbed his arm at the last second.
"Wait! Those horns, tell me what they mean!" She pleaded.
He jerked away as he answered, "It means the Creeping Night had returned, and we are all in grave danger. The city will likely evacuate before dawn. Go, now!"
To his surprise, the woman simply frowned and muttered under her breath, "Not that stuff again." She took one last swig of her drink before she slammed the wooden cup down on the counter and tossed the barkeep a few smooth, orange shells (the local currency). Then she dashed away with a last minute shout of, "Thanks, mate!"
The barkeep gathered up the money without bothering to check whether it was the right amount, watching in stunned silence as the strange woman darted through the panicked crowds. After another moment, he realized that she was headed in the direction of the jungle.
He blinked, and the woman was gone. He started forward in alarm. That visitor would be killed by the Creeping Night if she went into the jungle tonight. He wanted to go after her, to warn her of the dangers, but there wasn't enough time. He had a family to protect, and the city would soon be in the middle of an emergency evacuation. The barkeep left the building and raced to his home. He and his family left not ten minutes later, taking with them only what they could carry.
Later that night, as local representatives of the World Council of Cosylian oversaw the evacuation of Rhessyc, many citizens reported seeing miracles happen before their eyes. Some said they saw a giant golden beast running through the jungle at the edge of the city. Others swore a humanoid figure with glowing golden hair helped them find missing family members or seats on the evacuation transports. Still others recounted hearing only a low, wild growl on the wind that was unlike any made by a creature native to Cosylian.
Regardless of what any of the citizens heard or saw, all of them agreed on one thing: they had been protected by the Goddess, in all her radiant and multitudinous forms. Whether they had heard a sound or seen a figure glowing gold, they had all been saved in some way by Her. Some of them had been working deep in the mines and not heard the horns, or they had been separated from their families in the panicked rush to flee the city. Even the missing captain of the guards was found in time. Terrified and out of breath but miraculously alive, he was discovered by a healer's apprentice at the base of one of the watchtowers and swiftly taken to one of the evacuating ships. All the while, he kept up a breathless litany of fragmented sentences about the Goddess and the fugitive who had disrespected her.
As the barkeep and his family took their seats on a transport destined for one of Rhessyc's sister cities on the Eastern continent, the barkeep looked out the window and saw a golden beacon darting through the jungle accompanied by bright flashes of light. Something about those lights gave him a small sense of hope. The goddess had not abandoned her people to the Creeping Night yet, just as she had not abandoned them when it threatened their survival two generations earlier.