by John Mangold
Leaving no time for fate to take a turn on his scheme, Festus wrapped his grimy, stubby fingers around the man’s throat, dropping the bulk of his weight down to keep his victim from gaining his feet. To his surprise, the man barely struggled at all, only grasping at straws beneath his scraggly body before gasping out his last.
Festus gave the cooling corpse an appraising glance as he lifted himself up from it.
The wretch is far bonier than I thought. He must have been half-starved already. Well, he will give up a morsel or two before I dispose of the rest.
Turning his attention now to the woman, he was startled to find her awake and sitting placidly in the shadows. He expected her to scream, but she hardly appeared alarmed. She merely sat there, regarding him with a silent expression that spoke more of frustration than horror. Something told him he should be afraid of this woman, but he dismissed this as the fading wisps of his long-dead conscience.
As he leered at her, Festus could see steam drifting up from her sopping garments. Her crimson hair hung in bunches, obscuring much of her ghostly pale face. She did not tremble. She did not whimper. She just stared, a bit of drool glistening on her chin, betrayed by an errant tendril of light. Festus began to conjure up some words to soothe her, put her off guard for a moment, but he barely got the first few syllables out of his mouth before she leaped.
He was unsure if she was swift or if his reactions had atrophied horribly in his accumulating years. Whatever the case, as she flew at him, he found his arms would not respond. It was almost as if two colossal weights had been tied to his fists, pinning them to the floor below.
As her hands grasped his neck, he could feel their bony fingers grow, wrapping around his throat like barbed vines. He struggled to yell out, but the darkness around him coagulated, flowing into his lungs, displacing what oxygen they held. With a sickening scrape, he could feel her teeth drag across his skull, her powerful jaws shredding the thin flesh of his scalp. In a few ticks, incisors broke through, sinking into the soft tissue within. He felt his life’s energy fade, like water draining from a basin.
Festus Marquee’s last thoughts were of the woman’s emerald eyes and the horrible hunger that burned within. He had thought to make his fellow travelers his meal, finding instead one whose appetite was more ravenous, more savage than his own. Lady fortune had indeed smiled upon him when he climbed inside that boxcar, and she was laughing still as he died.
15.
A Parley of Souls
Maluem sat in a clearing close to the group’s encampment. Torrez had his work to do, and she doubted that her assistance would be required. This seemed an ideal time to get in her daily meditations. This routine was necessary for her continued sanity, allowing Maluem an excuse to put some distance between her and her travel companion, isolating her from questions he was sure to ask.
Maluem knew there was still an unresolved issue between her and the Entwhistles, the possibility of the pair becoming her Acolytes. She had hoped her speech to them the previous night would instill enough fear that they would alter their plans. From the discussion she had with Torrez earlier, this was clearly not the case. He had not come out and stated their decision as such, but their willing intent was still there.
This left Maluem to consider what sort of answer she should give them. On the surface, it seemed like an easy matter to simply refuse them as Acolytes. But, as she thought over Torrez’s words, her explanations for refusal felt weak. These two were quite desperate, as their rejection of her dire warnings clearly showed. She had to come up with something more potent if she was to steer them clear of the ruinous path they were on.
As she pondered this, her hands unconsciously caressed the Collar in her lap. Within a few pulses, she began to sense a slight increase in the device’s temperature. Looking down, she could almost perceive a slow growth in its blue glow. Her mind immediately returned to Torrez’s theory. Could the collar have absorbed…
“Volo, is that really you in there?” Maluem whispered as her fingers traced the ornate runes along its side. “Could you really be trapped in this arcane ring? But how could you have ended up in there when I saw your body devoured before my very eyes? It was during that fight against the Leviathan when your crystal shattered. I remember the brilliant light, and the shards of glass creasing my chin, and that burning at my side...
“The burning! Torrez said the heat which melted the core had to be intense. That must have been it! The Collar. It must have absorbed all the energy released when your focus exploded, and you with it. I’ve never heard of such a thing, but what else could explain it?”
This thought flooded Maluem with hope, followed quickly with an overriding sense of guilt.
“But if that’s true, you have been imprisoned in this thing since the crossing. How could I have seen you? Were you projecting yourself somehow, revealing yourself to me when the collar had gathered sufficient energy? If so, you really did save me from my infection, and then from that blaze!
“I’m so sorry, Volo. I just could not believe you were there. I thought you were an illusion brought on by that hideous infection, another false shadow of hope, evaporating from view the moment I dared believe.”
The collar seemed to warm beneath her fingertips.
“I wish I could speak to you now. I do not know what to do with these Entwhistles. On the one hand, they would have me believe that they are in desperate need. They certainly require guidance, and it is unlikely that they will find any in this country, or any parts north of here, if what Nia has told me holds true.
“Yet, even if they make it across the border to Camilos, it will be no easy task to find a master quickly. The best school in the nation is in the Azbel Temple, but that facility is located on a barren island off the western shoreline. It would take months of travel to reach it, even under the best of conditions. Otherwise, they would simply have to be lucky enough to cross paths with a Rogue Sorcerer in need of Acolytes. If they should fall under the tutelage of one like old Master Dominic, they would likely be dead within a fortnight.”
The collar seemed to grow a bit colder, shuddering slightly in her grasp, echoing a sensation passing through Maluem’s bones. As bad as Dominic was, she knew many Rogue Sorcerers who were not nearly as conscientious as he. To the least scrupulous of their profession, Acolytes were mere pawns for the master to use and dispose of as needed. She knew all too well that the wilds of Camilos were littered with the unmarked graves of spent students. She could not bear the thought of seeing them in the thrall of such a fiend.
“They could surely do worse than me as a master. Yet, in all reality, what can I teach them?” Maluem posed to the inanimate object. “Torrez has studied under a Sorcerer of sorts. Even if he was not instructed properly, he has taught himself a great deal. Besides, what of this wife of his, Shelia? I am told she has some talents, but to what end? Other than the fact she has an affinity with music, I know nothing of her skill. How am I to judge their worth? How did Master Valde know, or Master Dominic?
The collar warmed slightly yet shuddered once more.
“Yes, yes, Dominic did have his trials,” Maluem ceded to the Collar. “But I never knew what separated success from failure. We both know how you passed Volo, but my trial was not so straight forward. Your willingness to put yourself in danger for the good of another was put to the test. Mine, on the other hand, well, it is best not to go into details about that. Sufficed to say, mine was more of an assessment of my ability to restrain myself. As you might not guess, I nearly failed. I was two and a half pulses from walloping him in the…never mind.
“But why were our tests so different?” Maluem paused to ponder this before continuing. “Maybe he was not testing us. Maybe he was testing himself. Maybe Dominic wanted to determine if he had assessed us properly, to see if he could predict our actions under stress. It was not the student who passed or failed, but his preconceptions of the student’s shortcomings. That old goat! He knew the outcome all along, watching us
sweat through his trial for his amusement. Now I wish I had struck him!”
The collar grew cool and still.
“Very well, yours is a fair point,” Maluem added with a nod. “So, I should not worry about testing them for their worth, as much as checking myself as to how well I know them. I will interview them separately to discern the truth. I must divine their motivations, what drives their thirst for sorcerous knowledge, to what ends shall they apply what they learn. I have scratched the surface of Torrez, but there is more I must know. Then I shall pull Shelia off, investigate the intents that drive her path. Only then will I make my decision!
“Well, that is it. I know what I need to do, and I better get back fast if I want any time to speak candidly with Torrez before Nia and Shelia return. Thank you, Volo. This talk has helped me beyond measure,” Maluem added, caressing the collar and feeling it warm in response.
With that said, Maluem rose from the ground to stride back into the center of their camp, leaving a clutch of bewildered Musk Squirrels to ponder the bizarre scene they had just witnessed.
***
As she approached the campsite, Maluem was greeted with a wave of obscenities flowing steadily from underneath the B.B. Torrez soon sprang from under the carriage, covered in black stains, cussing as he moved. Maluem could barely restrain her amusement. She had not witnessed such advanced skills in the arts of vulgarity in quite some time. Some combinations were indeed original to Torrez, most with no literal translation imaginable. She made a mental note to have him explain these at a later time.
“Torrez,” Maluem said during a pause in his outbursts. “What is the meaning of all this? Surely our current condition demands at least a modest amount of stealth, or was your plan to scare any would-be attackers away through linguistic brute force?”
Torrez stopped in his ranting to stare at Maluem as though she had just sprouted wings. His only utterance was comparatively subdued.
“What?”
“What are you yelling about?” Maluem summarized.
“This chudmonkey piece of trash!” Torrez bellowed.
Now it was Maluem’s turn to appear confused.
“What?”
“The B.B.,” Torrez explained with exasperation. “That piece of chud! The engine won’t stop knocking, and I can’t figure out what’s causing it! I checked all the runes and fluids. Everything is in check, hitting all the marks the stats say they should, but the chud pile of an engine keeps knocking like it’s about to come apart! Not to mention the Trans-Shaft is wobbling so bad I can’t even shift the skrakking thing, and don’t even get me started on the Fluid Pump- ”
“Alright,” Maluem interrupted. “I am assuming a great deal of the terms you just used are foul, such as ‘chud.’ Am I correct?”
“Well, yes,” Torrez mumbled.
“Very well, stop using them around me. I do not know what those words mean, but I am certain I would find them offensive if I did. Now, the ‘engine’ as you call it is ‘knocking,’ is that correct?”
“Yes,” Torrez repeated.
“Alright, let us start there. So, in your experience, what might cause this?”
Torrez looked at her with an odd expression, scratching his scalp with a rather filthy looking tool of some type.
“Well, if I knew that, I would have fixed it,” He finally managed in frustration.
“So, you are telling me that you never witnessed anything like this before? I thought you said you knew all about these contraptions. Did you not say you built one for some form of a test?”
“To become an Auspex,” Torrez answered.
“Well then, this should be easily accomplished. Tell me, what makes an engine knock?”
“Geeze! You want a list? Broken tilt arms, bent wrist cams, fouled bearings, or if the central Crank got its Hardening Runes scratched somehow-”
“Torrez,” Maluem broke in. “Let us suppose I have no idea what you are speaking of. Just give me the most likely culprit for this dilemma. If you were to hear this sound for the very first time, what would you guess was causing it?”
“I don’t know…” Torrez growled with a dark look in his eye. “Timing Runes! If they were to become corrupted, the internal workings-”
“Excellent,” Maluem interrupted once more. “Why not start there?”
“Because they look fine, I checked them at least three times already!”
“Torrez, I thought you said you did not know the exact meanings of runes,” Maluem reminded him.
“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize the right one from the wrong one!”
“Well, kindly show me these runes and let me satisfy my curiosity. After all, I have never seen one of these ‘engines’ before. It could prove quite fascinating.”
With a few mutters, Torrez led Maluem around to the front of the carriage. With a flick of two metal clasps, one either side of the buggy’s front end, a metal hatchway opened rather quickly, revealing the contraption’s innards. They were rather elementary, if filthy, coated in the same black goop that covered Torrez’s clothes. Maluem later learned this slick, foul-smelling substance was called ‘grease.’
“See, on the front crank cover?” Torrez remarked as he pointed with a grease-covered finger. “These are called the timing runes. They make sure everything within the engine spins and clicks at just the right time. If they become damaged-”
“The engine knocks,” Maluem cut in, annoyed at his slightly patronizing tone. “So, they look correct to you, is that right?”
“Of course, just like the Tech-Manual says, or what I remember of it anyway,” Torrez replied.
“Tell me, how does this particular Rune affect the machine?”
Torrez peered past her finger to the inscribed mark she had wiped the grease from.
“Oh, that one makes certain the valves open at precisely the right time. You see, when the piston is pulled downward, it causes a vacuum-”
“So, it is linked to another rune, I take it, designed to activate a pull spell when the previous spell completes its activation?”
“Huh? Well, I never thought of it that way, but yeah.”
“Well, are you aware that this is a ‘Push’ Rune?”
“What?”
“See how the final line comes up to complete the outer arc? Well, in a pull rune, the serif at the end should be pointing down. This one is pointing up, thus making it a push rune. Half of your ‘Valves’ have been going the wrong way if they were moving at all. Furthermore, the Rune before it is borderline malformed. It barely signifies a Spark Spell, which I am sure is making it sporadic at best. These marks here and here need to be made much more robust to get an accurate cast. Who made this Mortog scratch?”
“Probably the Vehicle Master at the military base this came from,” Torrez replied slowly, still tracing the Rune with his eyes. “I think they replaced the Crank cover recently, so it probably isn’t factory spec.”
“Well, whoever cast these is a master of nothing. I have seen better striking from a first-year Acolyte. Can you recast them?”
“Sure! If you can show me their correct shapes, that is.”
“Certainly,” Maluem replied with a smile, “and as a bonus, I will show you what these other Runes mean, so that should you run into like troubles again, you will know their proper translations and forms.”
Moving from one issue to the next, Maluem defined the Runes for Torrez while he re-worked the rune castings. As the pair progressed, Maluem learned a great deal about technology in Enox in general. As Torrez explained, the closer one got to the country's borders, the more fickle the machines became. One day, purely mechanical devices worked flawlessly while Mystical contraptions floundered to a halt. The next, Mechanical devices failed horribly, while Mystical ones hummed along effortlessly. From what he told her, there was no way to predict it. The best solution was to modify mechanical devices to pull from whichever energy source the fates favored that day.
“What of North o
f here?” Maluem asked as they struggled with the carriages’ Fluid Pump. “Does technology work as imperfectly there?”
“Not at all,” Torrez replied. “In Santilis, technology and Magic flow together like merging streams. It has gone far beyond anything you will see in Enox, or anywhere else in the world, short of Furaxis.”
As he said this name, Torrez spat suddenly on the ground, though he appeared a little puzzled at doing this.
“Their machinery is not just what you operate manually, but often is part of your body. You will find very few people up there that have not had parts of their bodies replaced with mystically driven technology. These augmentations can increase strength, improve vision. The possibilities are almost endless. To the ignorant masses, technological advancement is all the proof they need that the society of Santilis has finally risen above its savage foundations. Not that the war would prove that…”
“If this augmentation technology is so wondrous, why do you and Shelia not have any signs of it? Surely a ‘Neophyte’ would require such devices in his daily work.”
For an answer, Torrez rolled up his sleeve to reveal his arm. All along its length ran hideous scars leading to ragged patches of skin that were pale compared to the flesh surrounding them.
“These are the lightest of my scars. I will spare you the more gruesome ones. When Shelia and I came across the border, the devices implanted within us stopped working. Fortunately, we had been informed of this phenomenon before we made our move. That is how we first heard of Nia Fyfe. She operates one of the only centers that deal with surgical tech removal. She coordinated our crossing, starting the healing process before we took our first step into Enox. If it had not been for her, we both would be dead.”
“So, Nia is known of in Santilis?” Maluem asked.
“Known of?” Torrez scoffed. “She is a legend! Those emblems Nia gave you were her marks of office not so long ago before abandoning the Santilis Military. She was one of their most prized Military Doctors, being groomed for a spot in high command. Nia made more than a few enemies when she renounced her commission. Some up North consider her as much a traitor to Santilis as Kaedis, but that is going too far. She is a saint as far as we are concerned. We owe everything to her.”