Free The Bones of the Earth (The Dark Age) by Scott Bury

take our chances, and we need some water to tend to your wound. I don’t fancy sitting on this mountain all night long.”
    They stumbled down the mountain through the deepening darkness. Soon the nearly full moon rose, and in its pale light they managed to find a relatively flat area. “See if you can build a fire,” Photius suggested. He put down his pack and pulled out little sacks and a wooden bowl. He started mixing powders and water from a skin into a strange-smelling paste in the bowl, while Javor limped to find firewood.
    When he had gathered a small amount of dead wood, he realized he had no way to start a fire. Photius poked the tip of his long walking staff into the midst of the wood and a bit of smoke rose. Soon, a campfire was burning, merry in its own way in that wasteland.
    Photius rubbed the paste onto the wound, as gently as he could. “I’m sorry, my boy, it’s the best I can do out here,” he said as Javor flinched and gasped. But when the old man was done, Javor was surprised that his leg actually felt better.
    So he let his frustration out. “Don’t give me any more round-about answers. How long have you been searching for this monster?”
    Photius allowed his staff to dim, and the night closed around them. “Very well, I’ll tell you what I can.
    “ I have been searching for quite a long time, following tales and rumours of evil and destruction. This monster, whose name is Ghastog—at least, that’s what my order has called it for over a century—has destroyed many villages and towns, and burned down a substantial portion of a city in Greece, too. For the past decade, it has travelled about Dacia and Sarmatia, taking life where it wants, and it has also wandered far from here at times. During that time, it gathered other evil forms to it, like the cold-drake you killed yesterday.
    “ Two monsters in two days! What a warrior you have turned out to be, Javor!”
    “ Never mind that, old man. Tell me what you are doing here now!”
    Photius sighed and gazed into the fire. “My mission was to find the monster and find also a warrior fit to destroy it and all its foul brood. For it was more than wild and wanton, Javor. It was purely evil. Look about you: it exuded an evil spell that sickened, weakened and killed, sooner or later, anything in its vicinity. That’s why there is nothing living around here, save other evil creatures like it, and they spread around devouring what they need to live, and so their circle of evil spreads.
    “ Creatures like Ghastog are old, Javor, old. Many centuries of centuries, older than you can guess. They may be older than the world we live in. They hate humanity, and fear us and are bent on destroying us.
    “ For over a century now, their numbers have been increasing alarmingly. They seem to come from some source far in the east, in farthest Asia or the legendary islands beyond it. There is great evil coming from the east, Javor: pestilences and foul airs. That is why Rome has been overrun by wild barbarians from across the steppe lands—they are running from others who are themselves running from the evil that seems to have vomited from the doors of Hell itself. And that’s not all: the seas are rising. Whole coastlines around the Euxine Sea have been submerged, villages and towns drowned. It is as though the Earth itself was striving to destroy the human race.”
    Javor shivered and leaned closer to the fire. “How do you know all this?”
    “ I belong to an order of scholars and priests from many lands. We have many different beliefs, worship different gods, but we have drawn together to try to avert this threat to civilization, to humanity. We seek the Answer to the riddle of the nature of the world and these plagues and how we might destroy them forever. We are working together, as well as we might, to gather knowledge of these calamities, to share it and to fight them. We search for heroes, for dragon-slayers and monster-killers to remove this evil