The Contracted Soul

by Luke Antony Baker

  “No! Wait! I’ll agree, just don’t do it!” Umbra pleaded in desperation. The demon eyed him up and down, relinquished his finger of fire and stepped towards him; each step rotted the grass beneath his feet.

  “You have three years! Then I will return to claim my prize, your soul. Here’s a small reminder,” the demon’s eyes glowed and Umbra’s hand burst into fire.

  “Aaaaaargh!” Umbra screamed as he rolled around on the damp grass trying to put it out. The fire faded to a glowing ember, leaving a strange scar on the back of his hand. A symbol had been burnt into it.

  Before Umbra could ask what it was, the demon was gone.

  Still clutching his smoldering hand, Umbra peered into the grave which was now filled with smoke. Something was moving under the smoke!

  “Mother!” Umbra called out like an expectant child no longer caring who heard him. His scar still glowed like a burning ember.

  A hand emerged, but there was something seriously wrong, Umbra’s expectant smile faded.

  The hand was still withered and rotting! Next the head emerged; lifeless glassy eyes stared back at him. The corpse had only been animated into a mindless monster!

  This creature that resembled his mother climbed out of the pit and crawling towards him now, its bones cracking, bile spewing as it moved. The foul smell had worsened and the twisted, grotesque figure terrified Umbra, paralyzing him with fear, his eyes laden with tears.

  “Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssson” it gurgled. Then it let erupted with a bone-chilling shriek that echoed around the town. Umbra dropped to his knees covering his ears as the sound rang out. The noise was deafening!

  Lights flickered on as candles were lit in the houses around him. Talking was heard and doors burst open revealing horrified villagers.

  Before long, villagers were outside with lanterns and axes. The smoke still rising from the cemetery, clouding over the moon, it was obvious where the sound originated from.

  They formed a mob as they marched; the cemetery was lit up like daylight by all the searing torches. Condemning yells with angry faces, and pitchforks waved as the mob grew in size, barely squeezing through the old iron gates.

  The villagers saw Umbra with the figure surrounded by the ritual arrays and quickly realized what had transpired.

  “Explain yourself; boy!” demanded the mayor, standing at the front of the pack, still in his bed-clothes.

  Umbra was lost for words as he stared back at the mayor with terrified eyes.

  “Monster!”

  “Heretic!”

  Accusations filled the air from the angry citizens.

  They swarmed Umbra, holding him down as others hacked up the shambling monster with their axes, blood showering on the mob. They turned their attention to him, and he was lifted above the crowd. They were now carrying him towards the hills.

  Wait a second! That’s where they hang criminals! Umbra realized.

  Umbra screamed and pleaded as he kicked and struggled in vain, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. The swarming mass of angry villagers yelled condemnations and threats as they carried Umbra up the hill. The dark landscape lit up around them as they marched; the roaring fire of their torches was matched only by their burning fury.

  The world around him blurred, his head spun and the smell of rot still clung to his simple, grey clothes. Luckily for Umbra, a small glass vial of blood remained unnoticed in his pocket as the mob carried him to the gallows atop the hill.

  The old wooden gallows stood at the edge of the woods, blood-stained ropes hung there, swaying in the gathering winds. Rain was pouring down now, the sky clouded and thunder cracked.

  The mob’s roars and chants filled the air around. I’m done for! Umbra thought to himself as his hands were bound behind him and he was placed in the noose.

  Just before they pulled the lever to release the trap door beneath his feet to let him hang, he uncapped the vial in his back pocket. He furiously scribbled a symbol on his back under his shirt with a bloodied finger. His face went pale and his body went limp. He had died there, condemned as a heretic.

  A day later he awoke in the woods, he had been dumped there in a reeking ditch with the corpses of criminals.

  The ground was soft and squishy, but it wasn’t soil. Umbra’s stomach turned as he clawed his way up the muddy hill out of the corpse pit, the worms writhed under his fingers. A severed noose still hung around his neck.

  His escape plan had worked: resulting in temporary death! He technically was dead, killed by his own magic but only for twenty-four hours. During that time he had been as cold as ice and pale as snow. It was one of the simpler spells he had found in his dad’s occult books.

  He lay there on the wet ground, covered with dead leaves and smelling of rot. He began playing over the events in his head, barely believing how badly things had gone wrong. He lay there in the middle of the forest looking up at the night sky. A grim realization dawned on him: he had nobody.

  Umbra awoke covered in a cold sweat to the familiar, dank surroundings of Lady Crow’s shack.

  The familiar iron chandelier swayed in the light breeze while the noises of the swamp still chirped predictably. At least here he had Micah as company. He rolled over to see Micah sleeping soundly on the other dusty couch, and decided not to wake him.

  FOUR

  Umbra lay silently in the darkened room staring at the unlit lantern on the table. Just as he was drifting off back to sleep, sounds of growls erupted from Lady Crow’s room down the hall. The first startling him, the noises grew louder.

  Umbra sat up and listening carefully to the muffled noises, barely making out making out what was being said.

  “No! You can’t. I won’t! Hissssssssssss, I will, you can’t hold me forever! I will be free again!” echoed from down the hall.

  Micah was a heavy sleeper and didn’t even flinch, and remained sleeping silently on the other dusty couch across the room from Umbra. Was there another person in Lady Crow’s room? Umbra wondered as his curiosity grew.

  “Hisssssssssssssssssssssss!” echoed a cry from down the hall, the walls seemed to shake and the house pulsed.

  Umbra climbed to his feet, pulled on his grey tunic and lit a nearby lantern with a simple spark spell by clicking his fingers. The room glowed dimly under the light as Umbra crept out into the hall, careful not to tread on the creaking floorboards.

  “No! I won’t… You can’t!” echoed Lady Crow’s voice from down the hallway.

  Umbra crept down the narrow hallway lined with peeling navy wallpaper. Dotted pictures of a family resembling Lady Crow hung on the wall in old wooden frames. She had never mentioned having a family, let alone any specific details of her exile to this swampy shack.

  When Umbra had asked her about it she would snap at him and assign him a difficult task.

  Still, Umbra crept until he got to the bleached wooden door at the end of the hallway, carefully pressing it open a crack to peer into Lady Crow’s bedroom.

  There she was, kicking, and groaning in her sleep under her navy bed-sheets. Umbra held up the lantern, shining a slim beam of light into the room.

  There was something wrong!

  Lady Crow’s eyes were wide open, yet she was undoubtedly asleep, even stranger there were no pupils, only solid white in her eyes!

  Umbra stepped back into the hallway and stood quietly for a few moments trying to make sense of it all.

  The noise had died down now and Umbra figured it was just her having a bad nightmare. But, he had to be sure. He pushed the door open just enough to slip into the room.

  Surely she would have something about this in her books. He looked over to the modest shelf opposite her bed. He crept carefully across the hardwood floors, being sure not to make noise, his lantern turned down almost all the way.

  He final
ly got to the shelf. The books were dusty, just like everything else in this house, but one wasn’t. It had been recently moved.

  How strange! He thought as he slipped it out of the shelf and examined it under his lantern: Grimoire Demonus it read, it was a small leather-bound book with a lock, but the lock was open!

  He opened it to the first page and instantly recognized the nature of the book. It was a book on demonology! Even stranger—it had a bookmark in it!

  Umbra flicked carefully over to that section. Exorcism rituals! Under that passage was one on astral projection into dreams of a sleeper.

  Perfect! I can see her dreams and try to figure out what’s going on here.

  He read through it carefully. It required a rare herb. Luckily he had seen this herb growing in the swamp: Dragon’s bane, a small thorny plant as red as blood. It also required salt and blood, simple enough! He carried salt on him and Lady Crow gave them animal blood in vials to use for spells.

  So he decided that the next night he would check to see what was going on inside Lady Crow’s head!

  “What are you doing!?” yelled a voice, it was Lady Crow! Umbra spun around, concealing the grimoire under his shirt. “Well boy, you better have a good explanation to be sneaking around my room late at night!” she barked. She was furious as she climbed out of bed to her feet.

  Umbra couldn’t get over how grotesquely old she was, it was enhanced by the dim lantern’s light.

  “I uh, wanted um…” Umbra looked around to see a small blanket curled up in the corner. “A blanket! I was cold you see and…” he lied.

  “Get back to bed!” Lady Crow ordered almost at the volume of a scream. “Tomorrow you will be collecting fire-wood, alone!” she barked, pointing out the door. Umbra hung his head and walked back into the hallway and towards the couch carrying his lantern. Lady Crow slammed the door behind him.

  Umbra tossed and turned on the couch. Finally, under the lantern’s faint light he flipped open the grimoire to the passage on astral projection, analyzing it carefully. He looked up to see Micah fully asleep. It was amazing what that guy could sleep through.

  After about an hour the same noises started up again from Lady Crow’s room. Umbra tried to ignore it as he slid the grimoire under the couch and curled up again to try and sleep.

  It seemed like forever as Umbra waited for the sun to rise.

  When it finally emerged, light peered around the folds of the ragged curtains hanging on the dirty windows.

  Finally, Micah rose out of his comatose sleep and rolled over, rubbing his eyes and yawning. “Had another nightmare did you?” he inquired.

  Umbra nodded; his eyes darkened and puffy from the fatigue.

  Sure enough Umbra was tossed out of the shack by Lady Crow without breakfast to go fetch firewood while Micah was to receive “special training”, whatever that was.

  It was tough to find firewood, it was a swamp after all, dry wood was scarce and something was always waiting in ambush. There seemed to be nothing but slimy trees and soft ground everywhere as Umbra trekked off down a hill.

  FIVE

  Firewood was only a secondary goal; he was looking for some Dragon’s bane for that astral projection spell. For hours he walked through the filthy muck, spied on by critters in the brush.

  Umbra hiked through the soft ground of the mire, walking through the rough terrain. He came to the edge of a steep pit filled with tangled wood and large mushrooms. Umbra peered down into the muddy pit; his eyes catching a view of red petals.

  He had finally stumbled upon those red thorny plants. They grew out of the trunk of a felled tree, at the bottom.

  Umbra looked around to see if the way was clear before stepping over the edge and attempting to slide to the bottom.

  His foot caught a tree root and he tumbled down the muddy slope, landing face first at the bottom.

  “Typical!” he grumbled as he picked himself out of the mud, and shambled towards the Dragon’s bane. He wrapped his cloak around his hand and pulled a few out.

  “Ouch!” he yelped as the sharp nettles pierced his hand through the cloak. “Damn those things are sharp!” he moaned as he dropped them into his herb sachet.

  “Hold it right there!” ordered an unknown voice. Umbra spun around to see an armor-clad young woman with a taut crossbow aimed at his head! She had emerged out of nowhere; obviously well-trained at hiding her location.

  “Who are you?” she inquired as Umbra raised his hands, a scary frown shadowed the woman’s face. If she wasn’t ready to kill him, he would have thought she was beautiful. Her red hair was tied in a bun, she was very athletic and her armor was very revealing, probably for mobility. Umbra couldn’t help his eyes wandering.

  “My name’s Robyn, but that’s not important. I am the slayer that is going to kill you where you stand!” she threatened raising her crossbow.

  “Why?” protested Umbra, gesturing wildly, mud flinging off his caked clothes.

  “Simple, you are a necromancer,” she declared, noticing his clothing. “. . . and for that your punishment is death on sight!”

  Umbra had heard of slayers before, they were notoriously cruel and single-minded. They were often hired as mercenaries, but most of the time they were rogues with a vendetta against anything unusual. They would kill anything they saw as unnatural: Unicorns, pixies, sorcerers, dwarves, you name it.

  They were responsible for wiping out countless creatures, and they were rumored to have hunted dragons to the point of near extinction.

  How had this slayer found her way into this desolate swamp? He wondered as he reached slowly into his pocket.

  “Hands behind your back!” she barked. Umbra tried to conceal his smile, a perfect opportunity to retaliate! He scribbled a blood symbol on his hand and concentrated as it lit up. “What the…?” Robyn queried.

  Umbra sprinted towards her and grabbed her crossbow with his illuminated hand then adeptly slid through the muck to get behind her. The crossbow lit up a bright white and sizzled with immense heat.

  “Ahh!” yelped Robyn, dropping it into the mud. Umbra quickly grabbed a nearby stick and whispered an incantation, the stick reformed into a spear in a flash of red light. “So that’s how it’s going to be?” Robyn frowned as she drew a cleaver from behind her back.

  There was a multitude of weapons at her disposal, Umbra gulped. She charged at him swinging her cleaver wildly, Umbra was barely able to parry her blows as his wooden spear started to buckle under her relentless assault. The spear was breaking apart!

  I need to finish this fast!

  He rolled out of the way and with one hand reached for a handful of salt to perform a blinding spell on her. Before he could do so she rushed and sliced across his arm. His sleeve fell off and the scar on his hand was revealed.

  “Argh!” grunted Umbra as he clutched his arm, blood trickled down. She is good!

  He was running out of ideas. Maybe the twenty-four hour death spell, he thought, but he realized she would most likely chop him up anyway.

  Robyn returned her cleaver to its sheath and drew a razor-sharp steel boomerang; it glowed with an eerie blue aura. It had been enchanted! Umbra’s eyes widened.

  “I hope you’ve made your peace!” Robyn declared as she tilted her arm back to toss the boomerang. Umbra turned and fled, his arm still dripping from its wound. His movements were getting clumsy as he stumbled on exposed tree roots and dips, the boomerang whistled towards him.

  Suddenly Umbra had an idea. He dived into the nearest marsh, hiding in the slop and mud.

  I hope this is worth it.

  The boomerang flew straight past him, before turning to return to Robyn’s hand. It clanked as it landed in her gauntlet. She stepped forward out of the green mist, scoping out the slimy trees and rotting wood around her.

  “I’ll f
ind you, necromancer!” Robyn yelled, her growling voice echoed. The wildlife itself dared not stir. Umbra remained hidden in the muck. There he lay silently. After a few minutes Robyn went to look elsewhere. “I’ll find you fiend!” she called out, as she walked away, disappearing into the green fog.

  SIX

  Later, after waiting for a long time Umbra emerged, and cleaned himself off with a little magic. He sped off back towards Lady Crow’s shack, hoping not to bump into Robyn on the way. His arm still throbbed from the wound even worse—he was getting light-headed as he dodged the twisted branches and exposed roots of the mire.

  The house finally appeared through the fog as he raced over to the old wooden porch and peered in through the front door. Lady Crow hadn’t bothered to close the door when she left.

  “There wasn’t much point worrying about theft in this swamp; nobody in their right mind would trek out here to steal all this dusty old crap,” Umbra muttered, tying off a black scrap of cloth around his arm to cut off the bleeding.

  “Hello?” Umbra echoed from the threshold, peering in with squinted eyes. No sound. Nobody was home.

  I wonder what this special training is. He thought as he sped off towards the training ground.

  The training ground was simply a small, relatively dry clearing within walking distance of the shack.

  “Now boy, make a circle with that blood vial!” Lady Crow instructed Micah, her voice was a little deeper than normal. It was almost like she had a cold.

  Umbra peered curiously from behind a nearby bush. Micah was obediently making the circle.

  He held a long bone in his hand. Was that a human femur?! Umbra wondered as Micah laid it out in the middle of the strange spell circle he had carved into the ground.

  “Good, Child! Now you just need a drop of your own blood on that bone and the ritual will commence,” Lady Crow urged. “You will have that weapon you crave in no time.”

  Lady Crow was abnormally enthusiastic about this. Umbra thought as he spied her poised stance. She was normally apathetic to them, rarely showing any interest in their successes.