by Dante King
Lyra still looked wary, but there was a definite hunger in her eyes. “Well, as long as you can change me back like you did the first time, I’m in. I’d much rather get to the point where I can actually remember what happens to me when I’m a spear, instead of everything being a blank.”
“Yeah?” I asked. I’d already started concentrating, reaching out for the Mana in the growing things around me. “You sure?”
“Who knows?” Lyra said with a shrug. “I might need that spear form to defend the Hungry Herb someday. Just because I’m a Cultivator now, it doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on making the old girl the best place to grab a drink and forty winks in the Zone.” She squared her shoulders, giving the garden one last look. “Alright. Make it happen!”
I pushed out with my powers. A wave of psychedelic light washed over Lyra’s body, the colors subtly different from what I saw every time Anna transformed into the scythe. As Lyra’s form began to shimmer, she rose into the air and floated over to me. By the time her transformation was complete, the Snake Spear rested in my palm, ready for action.
“Lyra?” I thought the word, sending it into the spear with the same mental muscles I flexed when communicating telepathically with Anna’s weapon form. “Any chance you can hear me…?”
For a long moment, there was nothing. Then a vague rustling noise filled the back of my brain, like someone walking barefoot through dry leaves, or the click of a guard dog’s claws on a cement floor. There was a presence in my mind. It hadn’t reached the point where it was capable of speech yet, but the contours of it remained unmistakable.
“Hey there,” I whispered, twirling the spear between my hands. “Good to have you with me. Let’s see if you remember this by the time I’m done.”
I moved around the garden like a dancer, flowing from strike to strike. The Snake Spear felt good in my hands, like it belonged there. The prongs of the forked tongue along the tip whistled with every strike, almost like a teakettle on the verge of boiling. More high-pitched whistles filled the garden as I did a running strike, launching myself off one of Lyra’s chairs to strike through the throat of an imaginary enemy.
“Wow!” Anna yelled from behind me. “Good God you look sexy when you do that, Eric!”
I found myself grinning from ear to ear. I’d practiced with Anna in scythe form several times, but it had always been a solo venture. I’d never moved from step to step with a female observer cheering me on before. I liked it a lot.
Dropping to the dirt, I spun the Snake Spear in a whistling arc over my head, finishing with a flourish. It was the kind of move I’d do when surrounded by unarmed enemies, and just from the practice strike I knew it would sever tendons and bust through kneecaps. I made a mental note to try it out when we eventually were forced to face down the Hollow Frog Guild.
“Okay, that’s the melee,” I said, shifting the spear to a two-handed grip. I held it in front of me like a barbell, with the snake-head tip to my left and the heavy cap on the right. “You think Lyra would be upset if we gave her garden a little watering, Anna?”
A wicked look spread across my girlfriend’s face. “Those plants look mighty thirsty,” she agreed, stepping back from what she knew was coming. “God, if it feels as good for Lyra as it felt when you channeled through me, I’m jealous! Poor woman’s going to need a cigarette by the time you’re done with her.”
Grinning, I reached for Lyra’s power. The knowledge of the entry-level Spout spell flowed through me, and I flipped the spear to one hand and pointed the snake’s head tip at the nearest crop of plants in the garden. I expected to see a spray of water come from the snake’s mouth, like a garden hose, giving the plants a nice pick me up.
Instead, a different set of words appeared in the air:
Eric Casts Hydro Blast!
Hydro Blast!? I barely had enough time to think the words when a geyser of frothing water exploded from the head of my Snake Spear. The force of it shot me backward, slamming into Anna and knocking the poor girl off her feet. We both went down in a heap, but by then we were barely in a position to notice. All our attention was on the water.
Imagine a dam. Picture a solid wall of stone, holding back thousands upon thousands of gallons of ocean water. All that pressure, all that potential energy, waiting to be unleashed.
Now imagine someone broke a tiny, fist-sized crack in that dam.
That was what exploded from the head of my Snake Spear. It was less a garden hose than a water cannon, an absolute explosion of pure H2O. An ocean wave washed over Lyra’s backyard garden, uprooting plants from their boxes and shaking the trees.
The Snake Spear vibrated so hard in my hands that my fingers went numb. By the time the Hydro Blast ebbed, the entire garden was drenched in copious amounts of water. My robes were soaked through, and Anna’s didn’t look much better. It looked like a hurricane had just torn through the secluded space behind the tavern.
“Good… lord,” Anna gasped, on her hands and knees. Rivulets of water streamed down her face, her matted hair clinging to her forehead. I loved seeing my girlfriend wet, but not like this. “I thought you were going to cast Spout!”
“I did,” I muttered, looking up and down the Snake Spear as if it were an actual snake—one that might bite me at any moment. Tentatively, I gave the awareness in my brain a mental push, as if to say: You in there, Lyra?
Again, there were no words. But that crackling presence quivered, bristling with pleasure. Yeah, I thought. She liked that.
So both Anna and Lyra got off on causing chaos while they were in the form of a weapon. I could get with that—it made a strange sort of sense. But before we caused any more by mistake, I needed to get Lyra back into her own body.
Concentrating hard, I summoned that wave of bright light. It washed over the Snake Spear, erasing its silhouette in a wavy shimmer. When the light faded, Lyra stood before us—cool and dry, unlike the rest of the garden and its occupants.
Her eyes widened at the mess. Half the plants in the garden—particularly the ones nearest to us—had been uprooted and torn from the ground, laying in heaps like a lazy man’s harvest. The trees had mostly weathered the blast, though their branches now stood without the multicolored leaves that had so enchanted us on our first visit.
“What… what happened!?” Lyra clutched the side of her head, as if trying to remember. “Everything was so strange. So sharp. Then I felt so good!”
I wiped my wet face and grinned up at her. “You did a hell of a lot more Cultivation than I expected,” I said, gesturing around the garden. “I tried channeling the Spout spell through you while you were a spear.” I nodded at the torn-up foliage. “This was the result.”
Lyra looked upset to have done so much damage to her garden—yet, with my enhanced senses, I could tell that underneath it all she was secretly pleased. To think that her powers of Cultivation amplified mine so much!
“I’ll have to get Kij and some of the others out here in the morning to clean up,” Lyra said, shaking her head. “Hopefully most of this will dry up overnight. Those plants though, those will have to be replaced. They won’t go back into the soil like that, I’m afraid.”
Anna and I felt a little bit bad about that. But the awkwardness of destroying a portion of Lyra’s garden was overshadowed by the joy the older woman had found in Cultivation. She could cast spells now, she could expand her knowledge of the universe—and in my hands, she could become a fearsome weapon.
It wouldn’t be long before I’d be putting my new Snake Spear to the test.
Chapter 18
The morning after our adventure in the garden, Lyra didn’t come down to breakfast.
“The Mistress is sleeping in today,” Kij explained, serving us not on the veranda behind the Hungry Herb Tavern but at a booth near the back of the common room. It gave us little in the way of privacy, and many townsfolk coming in to get a hot breakfast before heading to the fields or the forge gave us interested looks as they passed.
&nb
sp; “She had a busy night, huh?” Anna said, winking at the serving girl over her steaming mug. Black tea today for both of us—no alcohol. We’d partied too hard recently, and we needed our senses sharp for later.
Today we’d be helping the man we’d met in the market. Together, Anna and I would be putting down his deranged animal. A good deed for sure, but one I didn’t feel exactly heroic to be undertaking.
“You should know,” Kij said, bumping my girlfriend a bit as she headed off to another table. She shot us a wink from a short distance away, then began pouring tea for a trio of merchants.
“She’s gonna want all the dirty details later,” Anna purred, pushing away the last few remnants of her meal. “That girl’s like a bottomless pit when it comes to gossip. Totally insatiable.” She glanced over at me. “Shall we?”
I was already done with my meal. Together, we headed back to the fountain where we’d first met the man. Far fewer people walked the market square as we arrived. Most of the vendors were busy setting up their tents, or getting their stoves full of baked sweet treats ready for the morning rush. The whole place had the air of the calm before the storm—or maybe I was just thinking of the downpour Lyra and I had unleashed behind the Hungry Herb Tavern last night.
A half-dozen people lounged around the fountain and the newly flowering tree I’d invested with magic the day before. The man was one of them. He still chewed a bundle of leaves between his teeth, and I had no way of knowing if he’d switched it out or still chowed down on the ones from yesterday. Probably they’d have been paste in his mouth by now if he didn’t swap out from time to time.
“There ‘ye are,” he said, making his way over to us. He seemed agitated, which, considering his situation, I supposed he had a right to be. “Thought I’d be waiting the whole morning for ya!”
I glanced up at the sky, frowning. The day couldn’t have been more than an hour or two old at this point. “We ate breakfast and came right here,” I said, trailing off as I realized the man wasn’t even listening.
“Come along, come along,” he said, gesturing down the lane. “My place is over thataway. Won’t be but about a ten minute walk or so.”
We were just about to leave the square when a female voice cut above the thin crowd. “Eric!”
I turned—and saw Lyra making her way over to us. In the morning light, the proprietress of the Hungry Herb Tavern looked like a harvest goddess in full bloom. A long, silken dress in spring colors hung from her curves, with a narrow but low V-cut in the front. She held a wicker basket over one shoulder, half-full with fruit from the market. “Fancy seeing you two out this morning!”
I couldn’t help but notice how the man’s eyes widened at the sight of Lyra. Did he know her?
“Kij told us you were sleeping in,” I said, pulling Lyra into a hug. The intimacy of it drew a few stares from passersby, but I didn’t care. Considering what gossips the girls at the Hungry Herb were, it would’ve surprised me to meet anyone in the town who didn’t know what went on between Lyra, Anna, and me last night.
Lyra shoved the suggestion away with a wave. “Waking up this morning was like a Spring Festivals,” she said, her eyes flashing with excitement. “Look!”
She held up a hand. Droplets of moisture formed beneath her nails, dripping to the ground below. Merely a trickle of Cultivation flowed through her in order to do it, but for Lyra, that tiny amount of power was the difference between a regular life and an extraordinary one.
“That’s incredible,” I said, putting her hand in mine. Her face beamed with pride. “We were just heading over to help this gentleman out. He’s got an animal that’s gone rabid and needs to be put down.”
Lyra looked over my shoulder. Her nose wrinkled with distaste, her eyes turning to narrow slits. “You’re running an errand for Jalen?”
Belatedly, I realized that neither Anna nor I had bothered to ask the older man for his name. “I suppose so,” I said, jerking a thumb back at the man. “The fellow who likes chewing.”
The worry on Lyra’s face deepened. “I think I ought to come with you,” she said, “just in case. Jalen has a bit of a… reputation among the merchants in the town. It might not be a bad idea for me to tag along.”
Anna and I shared a look. “We’re supposed to fight a rabid beast,” I explained. “I think his dog got bit or something like that. I’m sure you can handle yourself perfectly well, but I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you.”
For a moment, confusion reigned on Lyra’s face. Then she laughed. “Trust me young man, just because I can only do a tiny bit of Cultivation does not mean I want to become some kind of hero! I’ll stay well away from such a creature, don’t worry. You and Anna can handle it.” She leaned forward, dropping her voice. “It’s you two I’m worried about.”
I nodded to show her I understood. “Jalen,” I said loudly, turning back to the man. “Lyra will be accompanying us to your home.”
He made a disgusted face, chewing harder. “‘Tis not my home,” he admitted, either unable or unwilling to meet my eye. “It’s my place of business.”
I felt a deep frown tugging at the corners of my mouth. “I thought you said it was a barn?”
“I distinctly heard that,” Anna agreed, her hands going to her hips.
The man sputtered incoherently for a moment. “Look, I’m trying to protect what’s mine,” he grunted, already starting down the lane. “My wife—my kids!”
Lyra looked as if she were on the edge of laughter. “He doesn’t have any children,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But I’ve never seen him like this before. Jalen is known to be… agitated, but this is rather extreme.”
“Whatever’s going on, there does appear to be a serious problem,” I decided. I’d already given the matter some thought, and realized that even if Jalen was leading us on—which, I had to admit, seemed likely—there was still a rabid animal about. If it escaped his place of business and attacked someone, neither Anna nor I would ever forgive ourselves. “Shall we?”
The three of us followed Jalen through the winding streets of the city.
Soon, I was panting with exertion, even with my Cultivation. The man double-timed it like someone attempting to run from the police, as if putting enough distance between himself and us would forestall any other questions we had.
Finally, we arrived at a warehouse in the commercial district of the town, where the buildings were tall and plain.
“This is it,” Jalen said, stopping before a large wooden door. It really did look like the broad side of a barn, which is probably why he’d used the sobriquet to refer to this warehouse. “The, ah, creature is inside. I’ve got it locked down in a stall in the back.”
“We should be able to make quick work of it, then,” I said, considering the reach of Anna’s scythe. In close quarters, it wouldn’t be terribly effective, but if I could get the scythe over the rabid animal, I could slice it from behind and put a quick end to its suffering.
Jalen looked around furtively as he fit the key in the lock. “Stay with me,” he warned, his face a parody of a stern parent’s gaze. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t look at anything if you can help it.”
“We’re just here for the beast,” I said, holding up my hands. “Relax.”
It didn’t take long for us to figure out why he was so guarded. As the wooden doors opened, broad aisles full of various goods greeted us. Some of the boxes stacked on top of each other seemed obvious—full of bottles of dark, rich liquid—but others made very little sense to us. As we followed the man into the darkness, Lyra’s eyes grew wider and wider.
“I always wanted to know what Jalen was up to in this warehouse,” she whispered, her voice low enough that Jalen himself wouldn’t hear. “Now I know. He’s a smuggler.”
It didn’t matter much to me whether his goods were purchased legally or not. Jalen’s mood grew more and more agreeable as we followed him through the warehouse—likely because we hadn’t brought up any of the th
ings we’d seen. Only now did I properly recognize the tension in the set of his shoulders, the forced grin on his greasy, aged face. This man thought we were going to turn him in.
Considering what I knew about the Guild-appointed Cultivators in this area, I couldn’t blame him for his distrust. I wouldn’t have wanted to show my ill-gotten goods to the Hollow Frog Guild, either.
“It’s just back here,” Jalen said, turning and walking backward for a few steps. “Honestly, I have no idea how the rabies got into my warehouse. Possibly a bat or something—some kind of pest…”
The shelves next to Jalen rattled. A moment later, a tremor passed through the ground, nearly throwing Lyra off her footing. Anna took the moment to stumble against me, the curves of her breasts pressing invitingly against my chest.
“What was that?” I asked. That was big, I thought.
“Huh? I have no idea,” Jalen said unconvincingly. His smile grew big and wide—the look of a man trying to hide a terrible poker hand with false bravado. “One of my employees must have knocked a box over or something…”
“Help! Help!”
The voice belonged to a woman. As we turned toward its source, a middle-aged lady burst from between the stacks, her face filled with panic. She glanced over her shoulder as she ran, her arms pumping like a track runner as she bolted as fast as she could.
“Regina!” Jalen’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “What are you doing, you damn fool woman—”
“The monster is loose!” Regina tore past Jalen without a moment’s hesitation, her long black ponytail swaying behind her dress. “It broke through the lock, Jalen! It’s in the main warehouse!”
A shelving unit further down the stack tipped over, spilling bottles of wine all over the floor. A long, black creature stamped them into the dirt, snuffling and groaning as it stepped into the light.
When I’d agreed to take Jalen’s job on, I’d pictured a rabid dog as the source of his trouble. Perhaps a cow, or a horse. Some cattle animal that had taken sick and been driven mad by a bite from a rabid creature. The thought of his ‘pet’ being some sort of fearsome creature—maybe even a creature too powerful for me to handle—hadn’t even occurred to me.