The Hidden Illusionist

by Deck Davis

  “Ethan?” he said.

  No answer. He’d probably gone to find them some food. Mornings were the best time for that, he always said, so they could devote all day to theft. He’d be back soon.

  Memories hit him like punches to his face, one after another. The auction, the acolytes, and the final blow; Zaemira and her poisoned-tipped bone. Ethan wasn’t coming back. He was at the heroes’ guild, while Dantis faced something much worse.

  What am I doing outside? Where’s the tomb?

  The sun beat mercilessly over the barrens, a bath of burning rays. To the east, it shone over the ancient ruins, the stone buildings of mystical architecture.

  In the north, it glared over a small lake that made him wish for a fishing rod and a carefree afternoon. East of him was a giant, gnarled tree, with bare branches pointing in different directions. Sparse weeds covered parts of the barren lands, no thicker than a combover on a balding man’s head.

  A mile further, there was a patch of trees large enough to be called a forest. Bandits lived in forests, so he and Ethan usually gave them a pass. Now, he’d do anything to shake the hand of a bandit. Anything for a face that wasn’t Zaemira’s. It was so desolate he would have bought his worst enemy a beer - if there was a tavern nearby. If only this barren hell contained anything but weeds and dirt.

  He tried to stand, but he couldn’t feel his legs. Maybe he was still under Zaemira’s spell, a puppet for her to command at will. What did she want with him?

  She wasn’t around. If he was going to leave, now was the time, but where was he? The Road of Repent began fifteen miles from Wolfpine, and they’d gone north on it. After the chaos with the acolytes, they’d travelled most of the day.

  That’d place him…where? In the Azure deserts? Towns and cities in the Fire Isles clustered in the South, West, and East, leaving the vast northern deserts as an unclaimed frontier, endless plains of cracked earth, with little water, no pasture, and no shade from the relentless heat.

  Not only that, but he’d slept for the latter part of their journey. He guessed they’d travelled just a few hours, but who knew, maybe he’d slept through the night and all of the next day. He could be so far in the northern deserts that trying to leave without having supplies was suicide.

  “My lips,” he said. “They’re so cracked. I’d fight a troll for some water.”

  People died in places like this. Sweat drained from them, their skin shriveled, and their organs shut down. Their urine left them as more like treacle than liquid. Without water, he’d die here. Man, he didn’t want to cop it here of all places.

  Wind rushed at him again. Thank you, he thought when the breeze cooled him. Again, he had the sensation something wasn’t right. The way the wind blew on him, it felt…

  He looked down. What the hell?

  His body was gone. Gone, or changed, whatever. Either way, he’d lost a hell of a lot of weight. He sported a thin, green stalk where he used to have a human torso. Instead of legs, his stalk sprouted into a root system at the bottom, with hair-like tendrils connecting it to the ground.

  Half of this weed-like root system lay above ground, with half of it buried. It centered at the base of his stalk body, but thin tendrils of roots ran north, south, east, and west of him across the barren landscape. They ended around twenty yards in each direction.

  “No, no, no,” he said.

  Vertigo hit him, though he hadn’t moved. His stomach lurched, and his head was light enough to float away. Every time he glimpsed his new self, his brain cut out. This – whatever this was – couldn’t be him. It wasn’t possible.

  It must have been a dream, or an illusion. Magic, maybe. Poison affecting his brain.

  He remembered Zaemira approaching him with her long, sharped-tipped bone. He pictured the incredible aura of energy building around her. She’d done this to him. She’d transformed him into this plant-like freak.

  Calm down. What would Ethan do here?

  He’d completely, utterly lose his fucking head. Anyone would. I’m gonna be sick.

  “Calm yourself, grub,” said a voice.

  “Zaemira?”

  His stomach – or what felt like his stomach, lurched. Weakness spread through him like a toxin corrupting his veins. It was a fight to stay conscious. Was this shock, or something else? It seemed to go beyond shock.

  “How are you today, grub?”

  “How do you think I am? And why are you calling me grub? My goddamn head is throbbing. What the hell have you done to me, you psycho bitch?”

  She sighed. “Such bad language. I really didn’t expect this of you. I can’t talk to you when you’re in a mood like this.”

  The way she spoke was business-like, her tone dull. Despite that, her expression as strained, as though she was holding her emotions back.

  “Then give me my body back.”

  “Too much work for little reward. I’d rather just change your mood.”

  Holding her hands out, she pinched her middle fingers and thumbs together, and then rotated her hands to the side, as if turning off a tap.

  A cloud entered Dantis’s mind; an invading presence in his brain. The sensation of having something else in his skull made him woozy. The cloud spread out, and it soothed the tendrils of his mind, massaging the knots of tension from him.

  His worries dissolved. A light feeling spread through him, a warm glow like the sip of a knock-you-on-your-arse beer. He was stuck in the Barrens? She’d turned him into a plant? Well that was fine! Just fine!

  At the same time, her spell hadn’t controlled his mind completely. His anger lurked on the outskirts of his magical calm acceptance. Two emotions met in his head and seemed to come to an understanding; her could remain angry, but he had to be calm as well.

  “That feels great,” he said. “Thank you Zaemira…you sorceress slut.”

  Slut? Where did that come from?

  “You’re fortunate I know it is the magic talking, my precious grub,” said Zaemira, with a smile. “Now, I normally let my grubs figure their predicament for themselves, but you helped me with the acolytes and for that, I owe you some small reward.”

  The sky rumbled. Black clouds seeped across it, smothering the blue, making it seem like night was approaching. They bulged with rain, and blue sparks zapped within them. Zaemira stared away from him, and she gazed wistfully at the stone relics in the distance.

  “A storm,” said Zaemira. “They are rare here, but when they come, they are disastrous.”

  Something cracked. Jagged shocks of blue hit the ground miles away. Dirt exploded, then showered down. Seconds later, a giant rumble drowned out everything else.

  “It’ll only get closer, said Zaemira. “I suppose I should do something about it.”

  “An umbrella would be great,” he said, “You magical whore.”

  Where was this coming from? He never insulted people. Her magic, when it met his inner restraint, was creating a toxic mix inside him, and he didn’t like it.

  “Whore? Really? Should a person’s sexual proclivities define them?”

  Raising her hands like a preacher in a pulpit, Zaemira cast black light to the sky, where it mingled with the bulging clouds. Zaps of lightening met with crackling mana, and the clouds thinned. Blue crept back into view until soon, the sky above them was free of the storm. Miles in the distance the sky looked angry, but their little part of the barrens was enjoying nice weather.

  “Thank you, Zaemira,” he said, “You curly haired, spell-shitting trollop.”

  “What a creative use of language. You really must master those emotions, because my spells only work so much. Your anger must be great if my mana cannot conquer it.”

  He wanted to scream at her, to leap on her and tear her eyes out. Not only would his new body forbid it, but Zaemira’s mind spell wouldn’t allow him the aggression.

  A shock of pain wracked through him. He convulsed. The shock passed, leaving him weak.

  What was that?

  “I feel horr
ible,” he said. “When will this stop?”

  “You’re weak because you need spirit. Quite urgently, in fact. You’ll die if you don’t get some soon.”

  “I’ll die? You should be treating this damn well more urgently,” he said, juggling the calm and the anger.

  “Come here,” she said.

  “How?”

  “The same way you used to walk. Will yourself to move, and your nerves will take care of the process.”

  He tried to move, but nothing happened. “I’m stuck.”

  “You are still thinking like a person with legs,” said Zaemira. “Focus not on what you were, but what you are.”

  His rump ended in a circular bulb that hooked into his roots in the ground. He imagined the bulb moving along the roots.

  Sure enough, he began to roll along his root system, taking a path along the northern tendril. He went faster and faster, before stopping.

  “Well done, grub!”

  His stomach lurched like a boat battling waves. The sensation of rolling along his root system disorientated him, and he couldn’t get used to the weight of his new body. It reminded him of the time he and Ethan stowed away on a tobacco ship, and the way the boat rolling back and forth made his stomach watery.

  “This is how you travel,” said Zaemira. “You can follow your root tendrils and move wherever they are planted. You will add more and more root tendrils, and you will add more epicenters, so you can travel great distances in seconds. Beware; you are bound to your root system.”

  “Do me one favor,” said Dantis. “Tell me why you’ve done this. If I had a reason to cling to, I could start to…maybe not accept it, but work with it.”

  “The Barrens must be given life again, my dear grub. They must be restored, and you are the one who will do it.”

  “How?”

  “To do, is to learn; to be told, is to forget.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up.”

  Another tremor hit him. This one was going to tear him apart. Gods, what was that?

  “You’re weakening. Drain some spirit, before it gets worse.”

  “Stop being so cryptic. What the heck is sprit?”

  Zaemira pointed at a thin layer of weeds covering the rocky terrain. “Drain the spirit from these weeds.”

  “Okay…”

  “Focus on them, and breathe using your mind, the same way you would take air into your lungs. Nothing more to it than that.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  He stared at the comb-over weeds and, as Zaemira instructed, he imagined breathing in using his mind.

  Did something flow into him? He couldn’t see it, but it swam around him and seeped into his brain. Through this feeling, a mental image of it formed in his head. He pictured swirls of a cream-colored light.

  A small patch of weeds near him had turned a dark shade of brown and looked brittle, as though draining spirit had weakened them.

  “This is spirit? The stuff in my head?”

  Zaemira nodded. “The weeds you drained spirit from are dying, since you have taken their essence. To use your spirit, you must refine it. Turn around.”

  He rotated on his bulb, turning 180 degrees. A six-foot tall mount of stone was nearby. The stone was dark blue like an angry ocean, with 16 grooves cut into the face of it.

  “I’m guessing there’s something significant about the stone?”

  “That…is your spirit forge,” said Zaemira, drawing out her words to add mystique.

  “It looks great,” said Dantis.

  “Deposit your spirit into it, so it can be refined.”

  This time, he didn’t need to ask how to do it. If he drained spirit from the weeds by taking a mental breath, he could breathe out to deposit it into the forge.

  When he imagined mentally exhaling his spirit in the direction of the forge, it left him the same way breath left his lungs. One of the grooves in lower left corner of the spirit forge lit for a second.

  A spark of light shot out from the stone. A bitter burning smell drifted from it and clogged his throat. Pressure built in his head as though all the blood – if he even had blood now – rushed to it. It built into a pain, a throb of agony that made him close his eyes in the desperate hope it would stop.

  Holy hell. A drumbeat of pain resounded in his skull, stronger than the nastiest hangover.

  Little by little it drained away. He had been holding his breath during the agony. Now that it was gone, he tried to calm himself.

  “You deposited too much,” said Zaemira. “Your spirit forge is linked to you. It grows when you do. Be careful not to put too much spirit into it until you know its limits. The last thing you want to do is crack it.”

  “Will that happen every time?”

  She shrugged. “If you don’t control yourself. Worse, you might die.”

  “Reassuring.”

  “The energy you deposited will be refined now. Breath it in.”

  Invisible energy left the spirit forge and headed his way. It registered as a tug on his stalk body, as if the forge requested his attention. Soon enough, he breathed in a plume of spirit.

  This time was different. It was fuller, and bursting with energy. He liked the feeling; it reminded him of the dull glow he used to get in his stomach after a shot of whiskey.

  With his weakness gone, his mind cleared. He had to think things through, he couldn’t give in to his emotions. Zaemira wasn’t perfect; she would slip up, and he had to be ready for it. The best thing he could do would be to play along, earn her trust, and then poke holes in her weaknesses the first chance he got. Catch her off guard and find a way to force her to change him back.

  “Force me to change you back?” she said, grinning. “You’re optimistic, if a little stupid.”

  “Holy goddamn hell. You can read minds, too?”

  “Does that surprise you? If you could somehow force me to change you back, it still wouldn’t work. Your body is gone. Destroyed.”

  “It can’t be. You-”

  “It’s gone.”

  Panic flared in him. It surged in his skull, casting out Zaemira’s spell. He wanted nothing more than to run. He needed to be away from Zaemira, to have space, to leave the Barrens.

  He zipped along his roots, then stopped with a lurch when he reached the end of the line.

  Huh. I can only go as far as my roots.

  But what if I had more roots?

  He could see it now; a sprawling network of roots and tendrils spread far across the Barrens. Creeping by the lake, snaking through the abandoned stone city, reaching far into the forests.

  The image left his head, transferring into an illusion in front of him. It didn’t capture the grand network of roots he’d pictured in his brain, instead matching with his own inner illusionist limits.

  The spirit he’d taken from his forge bubbled inside him. It pressed against him, begging to be let out.

  Is this how I craft things?

  He let it out, and his spirit flowed from him and over the illusional roots, combining with them, covering them like color on the pencil outline of a painting. They crackled into life, twisted outwards, took shape, until they became real.

  Did I just do that? Really?

  He surged forward over them, exploring his new network of roots. He headed toward the lake in the distance.

  Something pulled him back before he could reach the end. It was a lurching feeling, like a hook dragging him away. Needed of pain prodded him. When he tried to push through it, it grew into agony. It coursed through him, made him dizzy, sick.

  “Now,” said Zaemira. “It’s time I showed you what spirit can really do.”

  With this, she wandered over to her carriage, disappeared inside, before emerging with the sick child in her arms. She carried him across the Barrens and laid him gently on the ground.

  “Spirit is a beautiful thing,” she said. “It can heal that which doctors can’t.”

  “How is he?”

  “Not at his best,
as you can see.”

  She leaned over the boy, covering him from view. The air around her buzzed, and Zaemira pushed her face close to his. She stayed that way for a few seconds, before standing up, and stepping to the side.

  Dantis looked at the boy and felt sick. The child’s skin was dried up, like parchment, his bones sticking out where his skin once was.

  “What have you done to him?”

  Zaemira took a breath, then blew toward Dantis. Spirited misted in the air, before wafting over him. His pain and nausea left him.