The Dark of the Angry Sand

[Brodon Windriver]

Brodon could not restrain the hairs on his nape from rising. He felt the presence of a life ended, an ended life clinging to something, a life obsessed! Such a focused manifestation of purpose would be a terrible threat. Brodon had heard tales of possessions and furious whirlwind assaults of thrown objects. He'd also heard of some kind of craft that was developed to keep them in check. He knew nothing about it himself, though, and felt completely vulnerable.

But worse was the fear of losing himself, his identity, his knowledge of himself as Brodon Windriver, son of Warem Windriver. His knowledge of himself as the son on a mission to save his father from an affliction of unknown origin. He scrambled back from the girl, sweat breaking across his brow. His terror of having his persona buried in some psychoses borne of a demented mind driving his legs unbidden. A mind determined to reject rebirth to follow some doomed course of a tragic fate for eternity. A mind bent on dragging him down into some private, endless emotional torture.

His mind whirled. 'Do ghosts do this for company against the loneliness resulting in their rejection of fate? Their contempt for the course of events life has preordained for them? Their belief they can overrule the gods' designs? Do they do it to bolster their belief in the righteousness of their refusal by forcing a corroborator to their side? Will the gods hold it against me if I fail to resist?'

A wail of horror at the feared invasion and occupation of his soul rolled from his lips as the girl approached relentlessly, giggling as if he was playing some game with her. Her feigned innocence mocked him, as she held out her hands like an invitation to dance. Her extended hands swung before Brodon's face like the doorways to madness. He rolled away for room, and cocked the staff for a swing.

The wind wailed in alarm and a force tugged the staff from his grip and sent it flying into the sand. He turned to see an ethereal shimmer of pure anger. The edges of the apparition distorted and he felt contact, hard contact, slam his chest and send him with bone-jarring impact into the side of the building. His throat constricted with killing intensity and he could not draw breath. Spots swam before his eyes and an irresistible tugging slammed his head into the wall again and again.

Dizzy disorientation consumed his consciousness and he thought his skull must have split. His last conscious thought was that it was better this way than having his soul corrupted to spend eternity in a pit of shattering madness.

[Brodon Windriver]

He awoke in cool dark. The discovery of a nasty lump on his head was accompanied by a nauseating pain for touching it. He lay for a few bells, finding that his attempts to rise from the bed...'Bed?'...he was on made his skull feel as though it was unscrewing from his spine. By the time he felt that the disorientating pain could be handled, it was clearly the early bells of morning, the sky already showing hints of orange to the east.

There was wind that surged occasionally outside the room with the bed, and it, too, bore the echo of a voice. But his time it seemed lower, a man's voice. Brodon staggered slowly to the door, trying to understand what was going on. He saw that he was inside the hut. He had guessed this, but confirmation was always helpful. The floor of the central room seemed to throb along with his head, but calmed as he reached a bench to sit on, panting heavily with the effort.

He started suddenly as he realized it was full day. A knock came at the front door and he felt a moment of panic. He did not know whose house this was, or what strange events he'd been caught up in. He had no idea who would be knocking, but the door opened, slowly, without a second knock. The girl poked her head around the door and caught sight of him. His heart began to race, bringing pounding pain to his head. He knew he could not protect himself in his debilitated condition.

Then the girl smiled, her eyes sad, and spoke to him. The language was Shibur, and he did not understand it. He shook his head to indicate this, and the pain surged to where he thought he might pass out. The girl put her hands up, waving them in an 'it's okay' manner. Then she ducked back outside and Brodon sat, more puzzled than ever. First she manifests as some kind of vengeful desert spirit, beating him almost to death, and now she's all smiles and kindness.

He made his way to the window and saw, to his surprise, Lovaak, calmly helping himself to the water trough, Arrow perched on the shield, tied to the yvas bags, that he always used for that. The child was pumping water from the gadget he'd seen the day before, if it had only been one day...

He watched, in growing appreciation as the girl made her way around the "farm", watering a variety of vines and herbs, some in small fields, others on trellises. She gathered up some kind of grain from another field and went into the shed with it. A bell later, she came out with a basket full of kernels and and a bag of husks and chaff, which she gave to a trio of Bowbacked Goats.

Before long, he drifted off to sleep, the heat keeping him accommodatingly sleepy. He awoke when he heard her returning. As she neared the hut, Brodon could hear contented humming. Once again, the skin crawling of dread seized him. It was a woman's voice humming...

[Brodon Windriver]

Live and vital or not, the little girl seemed like the presence of a walking dead thing to Brodon. Playing host to some spirit that clung to an existence it no longer had. Why would she do this? Brodon knew nothing of Spiritism. He only knew this girl rarely looked at him with "innocent" eyes. There was a depth of longing and a lack of acceptance of death that put her at odds with life. And at night, when she left the hut, he saw an avarice that sickened him.

His head wound made his sleep schedule sporadic, so, as the days passed, he saw the unsettling pattern emerge. He saw the child, at times, in the early morning. This was one of the times where she seemed normally disposed of a child's open trust and kindness. But a transition always soon occurred, accompanied by a "distortion" that swirled around her for a moment, that brought out the jaded, world-weary features that did not belong on the face of a child. And those eyes looked back at him and knew of his perception.

It was like they sought to look into his soul and greatly resented his resistance to accommodate them. 'Is the girl insane?' he wondered, 'Has she suffered some horrible tragedy that keeps her awareness shifting to keep some horrific event at a distance, unwilling to face it?" it seemed possible, but it didn't explain the very real, very unnatural voices that blended with hers at times.

He could not explain the sensation that someone else was living a lost life through her. He could not comprehend her seeming acceptance of it. It had been at least a dozen days now, and he never saw her show any degree of trepidation to meld with whatever was possessing her. As much as his inconsistent wakefulness could confirm, she spent her days hosting an obsessed woman, and her nights with an angry man.

She had been taking care of him all this time. Only once had she come in "wearing" the experienced expression of the grown woman. Brodon could not help himself. He had cringed and pushed himself away, trying not to scream, but unable to stop a moan of horror from passing his lips. The girl had narrowed her eyes dangerously, then huffed in disgust and left the room. A chime later she had come back, all innocence and smiles. Of course, the emotional upheaval had strained his concussion and he had swooned into a dark slumber of taunting images and half-seen threats.

He'd awakened bells later to find "the child" caressing his head with a cool, damp cloth. She held a bowl of an unsavory smelling liquid and pantomimed a horrible headache, the drinking of the bowl's contents, and the sudden relief from the pain. He'd tried to speak with her, in common AND Pavi, but she had just shrugged and spoken what he recognized as Shibur, but didn't understand. He even tried his few comprehensible bits of Nari, but she just laughed and whistled back, obviously not understanding that it was actually a language. But he drank the liquid and found that it greatly eased the pressure and nausea.

AS the days passed, he slowly grew to accept the presence of "the woman" as well, as she likewise did him. No longer did the wise eyes seem to harshly judge him, so much as cautiously wait to see what he would do. He had no idea what it was "she" did or didn't want him to do, so he, likewise, waited out the days, slowly recovering his strength.

The heat still oppressed his concussed brain too much to search for his iron staff. It was the one thing that got no response, from either child or woman, when he pantomimed his desire to recover it. He knew approximately where it had been thrown at first, but he had no idea if it was still there. He felt that time was strangely on his side though. The day would come.

In the meantime, however, there were the nights...

[Brodon Windriver]

Where he often felt a revulsion towards the girl, as she wore the look of being possessed by "the woman", at night his spirit filled with dread of her. At dusk, she would sigh and go to the front door. She would always pause, as if she wished she could forgo this apparent necessity and stay in the relative comfort of the hut. Then she would shake her head with a slight slump and proceed through the door into the yard beyond.

The only variable in the pattern of events was whether the girl preceded the actual last ray of sun slipping over the horizon before exiting, or if the agitated swirl of wind and sand engulfed her immediately. While he was still more or less bedridden, he only heard the call of the wind, and it was disturbing enough to make him shiver. The girl's voice was, of course, present in its hollow depth, but there was more. The image of a giant wood flute, its bore designed to produce deep low tones, fixed in Brodon's mind at the sound. Unsettlingly embellished by its seeming ability to form barely distinguishable syllables.

Though they were in Shibur, the tone and resonance of them echoed malice against the stone of the hut and rattled his bones, and made the general meaning of the "words" clear enough. It was hate, and a promise of uncompromising victory over...what? Then, for the rest of the night, there would be howling winds and steaks of flashing, booming light and thunder. Often, these phenoms would push the boundary of sanctuary within the house, bringing Brodon to the brink of running for escape across the open sands in futility.

This was greatly, and terrifyingly, magnified upon his partial recovery when he made the mistake of going to the door to try to convince the girl NOT to go outside. The reaction was instantaneous. The girl flashed a wide-eyed look of shocked concern that he was there and the swirl of wind paused for an unprecedented moment before engulfing her. Her sweet, concerned face transformed suddenly into ugly mask of raw fury, eyes blazing with blood red wrath as her hands whipped to extend in his direction.

A sudden presence blew by him, knocking him painfully to his side, as the door slammed shut of its own accord. There was a deafening crash and blinding light and the smell of ozone and charred wood. The rest of the night seemed spent in the fist of Zulrav gone insane, the wind bellowing untranslated threats and fearsome taunts of their inevitability. These, and the heart rending sounds of Lovaak, neighing in terror and pounding the sand to vacate the area. Always he returned by morning though, and it burned Brodon's heart to know his beloved mount was staying faithfully despite his nightly ordeal.

But morning always came and the hut always stood, though the door bore the signs of the wind's anger. Also, it was at that time that Brodon began to sense that "the woman" was not truly his enemy.

[Brodon Windriver]

Over time, the little girl's sighs became pleadings. Brodon could not understand the words, but the attitude of desperate begging was all too clear. As was the cold indifference of the possessing entity that dominated the night. The girl continued to submit. Brodon did not know if she had the ability to resist. Brodon was sure that with his head injury, he would not be able to, but the spirit never made an attempt to do that.

But it made numerous attempts to attack him. Always the more passive entity of what he assumed was the 'mother' intervened on his behalf. Brodon did not know why, given that this other entity had also attacked him originally. But amidst the sizzling spears of energy that smote the outside of the hut, and the occasional swarms of flying objects inside, there was a defensive fury that rose to protect him. Brodon got the intuitive impression that an agreement of some sort was being violated by these nightly assaults.

The girl's demeanor became more and more distraught as she returned in the early mornings. Sleep came harder for her as she tossed and turned in anguish. It came harder for Brodon as well. He felt somehow guilty about what was taking place, as if he had been an unwitting catalyst that had breached some uneasy truce, that was now escalating out of control.

But he could not communicate with them. There were occasional images that haunted his dreams. A mother and father and child, happy together despite a hardscrabble beginning that they had managed to overcome. A dispute about something. The mother dying as some sort of indirect result. The father going further with some pursuit. The daughter begging him not to. Her ill-fated attempt to prevent him. Danger to her as a result. The father destroying himself by directing the backlash onto himself instead of her. Her terrible guilt and inadvertent self-created abandonment.

He understood now that the mother and father had resisted passing on to Lhex' domain to save their daughter from a slow wasting death in the unforgiving desert. Splitting time spent with her, the mother taking the day, the father the night. But he didn't understand what it had to do with him. Why had his arrival shaken things up so much? What was bringing such hostility out of the father?

It was not long before he discovered.

[Brodon Windriver]

For the next two days, the girl did none of the chores Brodon had gotten used to seeing her do around the grounds. Instead, she spent the time writing in a book. It appeared to be in Shibur, as near as Brodon could tell. He was feeling better now, so he set out to perform the tasks he had grown accustomed to seeing her do.

He got through a number of the less demanding ones with no problem. His head began to pound in the heat trying to do some of the more physical tasks, however, and he went to get some water. As he reached the trough, he recalled his initial encounter with the girl. He experienced some embarrassment at how he had been horrified by the sudden appearance of the girl. He had thought her a ghost. But then he'd realized that there WAS a ghost, inhabiting the girl, and unreasoning terror had taken hold of his actions.

It was hard to think through the memory of his fear, but he recalled that he had swung the iron staff back to club the child. Shame consumed him. It was no wonder "the woman" had attacked him. But couldn't she realize the danger of approaching him in such a startling way? He had no idea what capability the child had while possessed. He was only protecting himself, his self-identity, his soul!

Yet the girl had been laughing. He tried to remember specifics of the nature of the laughter. Try as he might, he could not now convince himself that the blended identity, present in the girl, had displayed any malice, or madness, towards him in the laugh. Looking back, it seemed now that it had been pure simple joy. What had he been thinking? There were many ways in which belief in the spirits of ancestors permeated cultures. The Drykas were no exception. Why should the thought of a girl and her mother, embracing in such a way, disturb him so? Or the thought of the joint embodiment touching him fill him with such dread?

But his thoughts of the night answered him. The anger present, filling the girl, her eyes ablaze with it, as the spirit of her father took command. He was stealing her childhood from her! So was "the woman", during the day, but at least her possessions seemed intent on helping the girl survive, to work the farm, if only for enough to feed one small child. It was at least benevolent. The father seemed to be blatantly using the girl's body to enable himself to practice wind magic. He assume it was such, due to the shafts of bright sizzling energy that accompanied his visitations. He had had an encounter with such a djed wielder before and seen the same thing. He had manged to turn the burning force against that man, with a great deal of luck. But he could not do such a thing with the man inhabiting the body of the little girl.

He suddenly became aware of a shadow stretching beyond his feet, from a source that he could not account for. His skin began to crawl again as it waved, and he turned slowly around, mentally preparing himself for what he was sure he would find.

[Brodon Windriver]

"The Woman" stood before him now, her spirit manifested in solidity, her gestures easy and non-threatening. She looked at him with a sad smile as she steepled her hands before her and dipped a deferential bow. She took a tentative step towards Brodon, who instinctively backed an equal pace. She held up her hands, empty palms out, and her face took on a pleading look, desperate and regretful.

Brodon trembled in primal terror, but managed to hold his ground as she took another step, and paused to see if he would back away again. Sweat broke on his brow, but he stayed put. She took another step, and another. Brodon's inability to avoid leaning away from her took him off balance and he backed up a step as a result, but she continued forward slowly regardless. She held one hand up higher than the other and Brodon could see that her gaze was now directed at the ugly bruise he had on his head from where she'd slammed it against the stone side of the hut.

Brodon thought he might scream in fear of damnation as she touched the spot, but only a slight wailing moan escaped his lips as endured the touch of the living dead thing before him. She backed away, her gaze down, as if ashamed of what she had done. Brodon exhaled heavily, not realizing he had been holding his breath.

Unexpectedly, the woman crouched before him. Brodon was suddenly astounded and confused. His fear waned considerably, and it occurred to him that he, likewise, had been ashamed of what he had nearly done when the girl first appeared behind him. He found himself compelled to crouch down as well, suddenly sensing that this apparition may not be so far removed from human sensibility as he had assumed.

Then she began to trace outlines in the sand, crude but recognizable. The figure of a man was first, and she then pointed at Brodon. That was easily understood. A second smaller human figure with the stereotypical long hair of a girl, also easily understood. Then she drew the man, with arms extended, empty. She looked up at him for a moment, then added the girl sitting on his arms. Brodon was somewhat perplexed. 'Does she mean for me to carry the girl? Where to?' The woman held up her hand to hold his speculating. Then she drew a horse beneath the two and it suddenly started to become clearer. 'I am to take the girl on my horse? Where? Away? Am I to bring her back? And if so, when?

The woman then drew a bit of fence and the hut itself, adding a circle above, with lines radiating from it. 'Okay,' he thought, 'the farm, during the day.' He nodded and swept his arm around him, indicating the overall scene. The woman nodded, her expression becoming more determined as the two realized they were actually communicating. Brodon didn't notice it just then, but he was no longer afraid of her.

She then rubbed out the image of the fence and hut, stepped a few feet away and drew them again, she came back and did the same with the representation of Syna, positioning her now lower in the sky. Brodon nodded tentatively, gleaning from this change that he was now shown further from the farm at a time later in the day. She repeated this process many feet further away, and Syna now halfway obscured by a line obviously representing the horizon.

Brodon now held up a hand, and pointed to himself. He went to the setting image of Syna and drew an arc below the "horizon" swinging her back up into the sky to indicate the next day. He then walked to the image of himself and the girl, on his horse, and drew a line showing them turning around and coming back, drawing them again, complete with fence and hut. Then looked at her and shrugged questioningly.

She noticeably sighed, blotted out Syna, drew a blob with an angry face fairly close, paused for a second, then suddenly and violently drew a fast harsh line from it to Brodon. Then she gave him a very pointed look as she rubbed out the image of the man and his horse. She then completed the drama, by putting a sad face on the little girl and a wickedly happy face on the blob.

Brodon understood. How could he not. He was to take the little girl away, and if he ever returned, the angry night spirit would kill him. 'But will the girl go?'

[Brodon Windriver]

During Brodon's meeting with the "woman", the little girl had gone about several of the chores and duties she performed most every day. She approached the two of them hesitantly, apparently unsure of what level of contention may be occurring. Brodon saw the spirit before him suddenly look beyond him and her face warmed with love.

He turned, and the little girl stopped, her face growing apprehensive. Brodon backed out of the path between the two of them and tried to smile benevolently, but his shame at his discovery of how he had misjudged the relationship between these two made it a little less pleasant. Fortunately, the little girl seemed to realize what had changed and ran laughing into the "woman's" manifested arms.

The spirit dissolved into a misty form and melded with the shape of the girl. It still creeped Brodon out to see a blatant possession, but now that he knew it was a willing and loving joining, it seemed a little healthier. He was just considering how different the nightly episodes were when he was shocked to hear the little girl suddenly scream in anguish. The mother's form was forcefully ejected from the girl, who backed away shaking her head in wide-eyed disbelief, her hands covering her mouth as she moaned a few repeating syllables.

She suddenly grew furious and started shouting, the mother spirit becoming the image of pleading desperation. Tears streamed down the child's face and her gaze flashed toward Brodon with a look of betrayed loathing. All he could do was stare and shrug in confusion and defensive innocence. The girl turned and ran toward the shed, the mother suddenly looking horrified and gliding after her.

She came out again, carrying what was immediately obvious as Brodon's Iron Staff, wrapped in a blanket. She started to unwrap it when some unseen force suddenly compressed around it and pulled it from the girl's grip. It flew in Brodon's general direction and he hurried to grab it, lifting it out of the approaching girl's reach. She threw an angry tirade at him, and he recognized one or two unflattering terms he had heard in Yahebah among the stream.

She turned back to the mother and threw a last barrage at her, turning then to storm into the hut. Brodon started to go in after her, not knowing what else to do. But the mother hurried to cross his path, shaking her head, pointing at the staff, and then folding her hands pleadingly in front of her. She actually dropped to her ethereal knees before him, shaking her head desperately.

Brodon would never have thought his heart could go out to a ghost to such a degree, but he slumped and gave a nod of surrender to her request, though he did not know what else he should do. She stood up, gave him a sad, sympathetic smile and looked around for an answer. Her gaze did a double take on the shed, and Brodon rolled his eyes and nodded with a grin. The woman's face beamed with gratitude and Brodon found he was beginning to genuinely like her.

He knew that, now that he had his staff, he could have simply rode out on Lovaak and left this whole uncomfortable situation behind. But he actually felt an obligation to it now. The girl clearly needed to get away from this, even the mother had now acknowledged it. But it was clearly going to take some time for the girl to realize it. But he was unsure how long he would be willing to wait to see it through.

it turned out be a very short wait.

[Brodon Windriver]

Brodon was sitting in the shed, pondering what he could do to communicate with the girl. It had only been two bells since she had stomped into the house in a huff. The shadows were growing longer, as were Brodon's apprehensions about what the night would bring. Before Syna even caressed the horizon, he heard laughter. Deep, sinister laughter that spoke in the universal language of malice.

Brodon raised himself up just enough to peer out the shed window. There was a new figure standing in the area in front of the hut. Male, angry, domineering. The father come for his nightly session. But this time he was manifested as the mother had been. And he was staring at Brodon with sadistic anticipation of the impending possession.

Then he suddenly transformed. All the anger and hate drained from his face to be replaced by kindly welcoming joy. The little girl ran from the hut into his arms, distraught and filling his ears with news. Brodon could not really understand, but he could imagine. Something about the strange man that had tried to hurt her, and how Mommy was trying to make her go away with him.

The father's demeanor was all calm reassurance, hugging the child and repeating gentle words. The look he cast at Brodon, however, was pure poison. Brodon ducked as the image of the man wisped into dust and the air shimmered around the girl. Her eyes immediately burned red and she turned to the shed with a full-arm-length gesture.

The shed was suddenly filled with wind. It tumbled Brodon into a back corner and sent buckets and small hand-held tools his way. The bruises and cuts he got as a result did not distract him from the sudden ignition of the oil lamp and the resurgence of wind making it sway precariously on its hook. Brodon grabbed his saddle blanket and unfurled it with a snap as the lamp came flying to crash in a burst of flame, throwing spouts among a half bale of loose hay. A conflagration would have resulted, but Brodon dove atop the igniting hay with his blanket and smothered it before it could get started.

The wind was pulling at it though, and brief flares burned his arms, legs and hair. He knew as soon as he got up, the blanket would be whisked aside and the oil would reignite. He rolled off and slid along the front of some shelves as flames roared to life inches from his face.

An idea occurred to him and he grabbed a large burlap sack as he rushed to the door. There was a thump and a clang and it felt as though a line of fire was drawn across his back. He tumbled out the door as a scythe swung by, stunning him as it laid his scalp open. It had only been random chance that his arm movements had brought the iron staff up in position to partially deflect the scythe, or he might have been beheaded.

The image of the man shimmered briefly around the little girl and he thought he saw her staring in shock at the near death blow. The blow to the head had him dizzy enough that he was unsure of anything right then. He fell back against the outer wall of the shed in his disorientation as the father fought his way back into control. Brodon tried to run for the hut, thinking the mother influence there might help him again. Wind spun him around and slammed him face-first into the wall.

He saw a wide diagonal smear of blood where he had leaned and realized his back must have also been laid open by the scythe. Now he felt it as well, a wet burning, his clothes sticking to him. There was an odd scream, part girlish horror, part deep rage, and he saw the girl standing horrified before him, hands to her mouth, eyes wide as she shook her head no. The father's essence surged back again to surround and infuse her. She tried to fight him off for a few seconds, but failed. The brief respite, however, gave Brodon time to catch his breath and launch himself forward, opening the sack and pulling it over the girl's head just as the father took control. He fell as he pulled the sack fully over her, bringing the bag to her feet as his momentum knocked her over.

[Brodon Windriver]

Brodon had seen that the father needed to possess the girl to work his wind magic. When the father "ghosted" out of the girl's body and the burlap bag, Brodon thought he had won an additional respite. The girl was struggling in the bag and Brodon turned to pick her up. He didn't know about which talents ghosts possess naturally and which require possession. The power the mother had used on him that first day and been largely forgotten, the power to fling foreign objects.

A fence post struck him in the corner of his forehead and dropped him in a twitching heap. There were swirling sounds, meaningless to him at first. A little girl's repeated cries, the metallic swish of a sliding blade in the distance. Laughter, the laughter of a heartless victor over a helpless victim. His situation strained to be recalled in his dazed mind. Some fuzzy part of him knew it was important. Again the girl's crying, more desperate now. Then a deep voice, shouting a single word, accompanied by a loud slap and the girl's scream.

That brought more of his predicament into focus and he strained to raise his head, which pounded furiously with the effort, verigo standing the world on its side. A shadow blocked the last rays of Syna's hope, and he perceived the outline of a man, hoisting the scythe for a killing blow. Somehow he still couldn't relate it to himself as he stared dumbly at it, his head swimming in disorientation. Just then, a second figure slammed into the man, the woman's voice screaming along with the little girl's, the man shouting back.

A grappling swirl of bodies, misting, manifesting, merging and wrestling, writhed and coalesced before his eyes. The girl was begging, the mother demanding, the father glaring in rage beyond words as his grip whitened on the handle of the scythe. it seemed like slow motion as the father's expression finally broke into cold madness and he swung the scythe back as the girl wailed piteously.

Lovaak screamed along with the girl, unbroken, horrified shrieks as the father drove the blade of the scythe right through the mothers midsection, twisting it and tearing it out her side, rearing it over his head to slam it like a pickaxe into her body over and over as his roars of rage provided a hateful counterpoint to the high shrieks of the girl.

Brodon's focus was back as he fought off his shock at the horrific scene and he grabbed the girl, who seemed oblivious to his actions and kept screaming over and over. He ran to Lovaak and set her into the yvas as the father suddenly bellowed in fury. "HOLD ON!" he shouted into her face. For a moment, she just stared at him uncomprehendingly. Suddenly her eyes widened, focusing behind him. He didn't wait to ponder. He slapped Lovaak's flank, shouting "GO!" and launched himself backward blindly.

Brodon managed to get inside the arc of the swinging blade but the handle still knocked him aside. He spun on his back to face the manifested spirit as it aligned its next strike vertically, its face a grimacing mask of killing hate. Brodon swept his legs into the thing's ankles and rolled, hearing the blade sink into the sand a few inches to his side. He rolled back and grabbed the handle, using his arms to support his leverage as he kicked up into the stomach of the manifested father.

He jumped up and ran to where his iron staff was lying in the sand. The fence post that had smacked his head was lying close by as well. He swept the staff up and spun in time to deflect the scythe. Sparks flew as he backed himself away. Fighting purely defensively, he didn't have too much trouble blocking the unwieldy attempts by the father, who was clearly tiring from possession and repeated manifestations.

Eventually, he simply broke off and ran from the farm in the direction Lovaak had bolted with the little girl.