Eliska woke up hearing a strange noise in the middle of the night. She stared at the ceiling trying to figure out what it was.

  She sat up in bed. Marine lay sound asleep in the bed next to her.

  The two girls shared a bedroom on the upper story of the house the Tenby townsfolk gave to the Black Watch.

  The other Watchmen paired off into the other bedrooms with Yann and Anríq together next door.

  The sound didn’t come from there. It came from farther away.

  At first she thought it sounded like some kind of animal, but that couldn’t be right.

  She hadn’t seen a single animal anywhere in Tenby, not even pets or livestock. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t even remember seeing any birds in the sky or insects buzzing through the air.

  She eased out of bed and tiptoed across the room so she wouldn’t wake up Marine. A beam of faint light streamed through the window and gave Marine an angelic glow. Marine always had an angelic glow.

  Anyone looking at her might think nothing bad could ever happen to her. No one would ever believe she spent so much time communing with the Dark.

  Eliska let herself out of the room and eased the door shut. The sound definitely got louder out here.

  She followed it to a different bedroom down the hall. It was the room Neils shared with Niyazi.

  The door stood ajar, but just a crack. The sound came from inside.

  She nudged the door open just a little farther. Neils and Niyazi sat side by side on one of the beds.

  Neils clutched his head in both hands. The sound came from him.

  Niyazi rested his hand on Neils’s shoulder and murmured low in his ear. “It’s all right. It will pass. Don’t worry. Everything will be all right. You’ll see.”

  “Make it go away!” Neils moaned. “I can’t stand it!”

  Niyazi noticed the door swinging inward if only a little bit. He looked up and saw Eliska standing out in the hall.

  She couldn’t exactly run away, so she stepped into the room and approached the bed. “Did you have nightmares?”

  “They’re everywhere!” Neils whimpered. “They’re right here in this room right now!”

  “The same thing happened to me,” Niyazi murmured. “It will pass.”

  “You didn’t say it passed!” Neils countered. “You never said it went away!”

  Niyazi lowered his eyes to the floor. “No, I never said that.”

  “So you still see them?” Eliska asked.

  Niyazi nodded at the carpet. “I just pretend they aren’t there, but they are.”

  “Do you still see them in this room—right now?”

  Niyazi tried to shrug and looked away. “They’re always there.”

  “You see?!” Neils blurted out. His eyes darted around the room. “So it won’t pass! It will never go away! I might as well end it right now.”

  “Don’t say that,” Eliska murmured. “Rien came around and so did the Watch Commander. They’re both okay now—and Barsali was okay before the Dark took him.”

  “You don’t know that!” Neils’s voice started rising. He would wake up the whole house pretty soon. “Maybe they just learned to live with it the way Niyazi says.”

  Eliska opened her mouth to say something. She really didn’t know what to say to either of these men. She couldn’t do anything without her magic.

  She might not have been able to do anything even with her magic. Anríq hadn’t been able to heal any of these men even during the times when he got his magic back.

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  He always said the men were whole. No one would be able to heal them if these invisible Darklings really were real.

  She didn’t get a chance to say anything before Yvan barged in. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  “Neils is having nightmares,” Eliska explained.

  “Oh.” Yvan frowned at Neils and Niyazi. “That’s not good.”

  “What are we supposed to do?” Niyazi asked. “We can’t function like this.”

  “You functioned just fine yesterday,” Eliska pointed out.

  She considered asking Yvan if he still saw Darklings everywhere, but she decided not to.

  He saw her studying him and his eyes locked on hers. The connection between them kept growing and getting deeper.

  “You can’t do anything about this, can you?” he asked. “None of you can.”

  “Do you still see them?” she asked. “Do you still see these Darklings even when you’re awake?”

  He squirmed in his uniform. “That doesn’t matter. Someone has to defend this town. I’ll keep standing the watch until something kills me. I don’t care if I’m seeing things.”

  “Don’t you see, though?” she countered. “If you’re seeing them….and Neils and Niyazi are seeing them….and Rien is seeing them….then that means you’re almost a majority of the Watch that sees these Darklings. What happens when Yann, Vidal, and the rest of us start seeing them?”

  “I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” he replied. “What will happen?”

  “Then none of us will be able to claim anymore that the Darklings are invisible because they won’t be invisible. We’ll all be able to see them the same way we can see every other kind of Darkling.”

  “Then how do you explain the fact that only some of us can see them now?” Niyazi asked. “How can some of us see something that’s there and some of us not see it?”

  “I can’t explain it, but if I’m right and these Darklings really are real, then pretty soon we’ll all be able to see them and we’ll all have to deal with them.”

  “But these Darklings haven’t attacked us,” Yvan pointed out. “They’re just there. They just hang around not doing anything.”

  “They attacked Vidal,” Eliska pointed out. “Maybe they have to reach some kind of threshold before they attack in force.”

  “So what are we supposed to do about that?” Neils asked. “We can’t do anything because none of you has any magic.”

  “I don’t know what we can do, but we should probably do something before they get too strong for us to defeat them at all.”

  “What do you suggest?” Yvan asked.

  Eliska turned back to Neils. “Have you ever seen these Darklings before? Have you….?” She broke off when she glanced over at Niyazi.

  “Neils is an orphan, too,” Yvan told her, “but he was born in the Coil. His parents were magic-users and they got killed in the Coil. Some travelers found him and turned him over to the Watch. If he was remembering something that happened when he was little, don’t you think he would have remembered it before now?”

  Eliska opened her mouth a second time. She was about to suggest that the group go back out into the magical Layers. At least Eliska and Anríq would be able to fight the Darklings there.

  Yann walked in just then. He squinted at the four people sitting up awake. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Yvan replied. “The sun will be coming up soon. All of you get ready to go out on watch. You come with us, Eliska. I want you to take a look at the instability and see if you can tell us anything about it.”

  The group split up. Yvan left first followed by Yann. He studied Eliska and then Neils and Niyazi. Of course Yann could see that something was going on regardless of what his father said.

  Yann didn’t ask. He probably already knew.

  Eliska stayed in the room with Neils and Niyazi, but when neither of them said anything else, she left, too.

  She heard both men talking as soon as she left. She really would have liked to do something for Neils—and all the rest of them.

  The commotion roused the rest of the house. Rien, Marine, Vidal, and Anríq all woke up from the noise. Yvan gave orders for all of them to get ready for the day.

  Eliska returned to the room she shared with Marine. Marine woke up as chipper as usual. Eliska didn’t have the heart to ruin Marine’s mood along with everyone else’s.

  Eliska finished getting dressed and headed for the stairs to go down to the kitchen. She already heard pots and pans banging around down there. Was Anríq cooking again or one of the Watchmen?

  Before she got to the stairs, she heard Yvan talking in a room nearby. It was the room he shared with Rien, but Rien wasn’t in there. Yann was.

  “I don’t like to put this on you, son,” Yvan was saying. “I don’t know what else to do about it.”

  “What can I do about it?” Yann asked. “What can any of us do about it?”

  Eliska inched closer to the door. It stood all the way open, so she wasn’t exactly eavesdropping.

  Yvan paced around the room running his fingers through his hair. He didn’t see her.

  Yann stood with his back to the door watching his father stride back and forth in obvious agitation.

  As soon as Eliska spotted them, Yvan pulled up short and got in his son’s face. “You’re the only man of the Watch who hasn’t had nightmares.”

  “What about Vidal?” Yann asked.

  Yvan waved that away. Was Vidal having nightmares that no one knew about?

  Yvan lowered his voice to an undertone. “The time may come when you have to take command of the Watch, son. I know you’re young, but I trust you to make the right call for all of us.”

  “If you can’t do anything and Eliska and Anríq can’t do anything, I won’t be able to, either,” Yann pointed out. “Whatever is happening to all of you will happen to me, too.”

  “Whether you can do anything isn’t as important as just taking charge. If all of us go down to this thing, we’ll need one person who can still think straight. You’re holding up the best of the whole Watch. If that happens, don’t hesitate to step in—even if it means taking one of us off duty. Do you understand, son? That includes me.”

  Yann dipped his chin once. “I understand. I won’t let you down.”

  “I know you won’t.” Yvan gripped Yann’s shoulders with both hands. “I’m proud of you, son. You’re a Watchmen any Watch Commander would be proud of.”

  Yvan pulled Yann into a quick, rough hug and Eliska hurried away. She didn’t want them to catch her listening to their conversation.

  End of Chapter 33.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

  I post new chapters of The Corrupted Coil series on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday PST.

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