Chapter Text
“Driver!”
That had to have been at least the fourth time she’d called out to him to no response. Sure, the clattering of horses’ hooves and the trembling of wheels may have obscured the sound of her voice to some degree, but surely he would have heard her by now? It wasn’t so loud that she couldn’t make herself heard. Something was wrong.
She threw back the curtain to her right and looked out the window for a moment, her eyes met with pitch blackness. Not a single form, not even a shadow, could be made out in the void that occupied everything outside the carriage. Not even to her, who had quite the eye for even the most minute of details.
Suddenly, the whole vehicle jerked to the right and she was thrown off balance for a moment, grabbing anything solid within reach to prevent herself from tumbling right out the door. The left wheels must have left the ground by at least a foot. If he kept driving like this, like he had been for the last five minutes or so, he was going to throw them right off the mountainside.
That was it. She began the treacherous process of moving to the front of the carriage and pushing open the curtain that separated her from the driver’s seat and the outside.
“Driver, will you slow down?! You’re liable to get us killed…”
It wasn’t exactly the sight that greeted her when she opened the window that caused her to lose all the strength in her voice and her eyes to go wide.
Rather, it was the lack of one.
The driver was gone.
Despite this, however, the horses continued to pull her along the path, also despite the fact that the two oil lamps hanging out the front corners of the carriage did absolutely nothing to light up anything in front of the horses themselves.
Neither did the moon, which had all but disappeared.
There was something wrong with the horses’ movement, too. After they’d left town, the driver had kept them under tight control and the ride was smooth. Then, they went absolutely haywire. But now…
Now they moved in exact, perfect trajectories and without the slightest hint of deviation or unnecessary movement. They hadn’t been this graceful even just after they’d left town. It was as though they were machines.
But none of these things were what made her blood run cold. None of that caused her to clad the windowpane in her iron grip and wish that she’d listened to the desperate begging of the villagers not to leave.
Rather, it was this:
The pass had been crossed. The road was at its end.
And the moon had finally come to illuminate what awaited her at the end of the path.