by Dante King
I thought for a moment. “There’s this.”
I pulled the strange dagger from my belt and held it out to her. She took it reverently, and we slowed our pace as she examined it.
“This is obviously very old, and it’s very strange—I’ve never seen anything like it before—but I don’t think it’s a vector for magic. It has no spell runes, for one. Where did you come by it?” She handed it back to me.
“It was a gift.” I felt suddenly reluctant to share the story of my foster-father with her. Not just yet. I took the precious dagger back and pushed it back into place at my belt.
“Well, you must have some kind of power,” she said. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing what you did back there. And I’m a scholar, so if it was possible, I should have heard about that by now.”
“You say you’re a scholar, and I know you’re an Elemental Sensitive, like me. We’re allies now, surely. Why won’t you tell me what you were doing out here on the high road alone?”
Amelia sighed. “I can’t explain that to you right now. I’m sorry, it’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just… Well, I was doing some research. It’s all pretty sensitive, and I could get in a lot of trouble if I shared too much information.”
I held my hands up in mock surrender and smiled. “All right then, keep your secrets. I won’t hold it against you.”
She laughed, relieved. “Thank you. Perhaps once we get to know one another better… wait. Did you feel that?”
I felt nothing. “What? There’s nothing there.”
“I can sense something approaching.”
A sudden chill smote me. I gave a convulsive shudder, as if someone had poured iced water down my back.
“I feel it now,” I said. “What is that?”
“I believe it’s a Magical Beast,” Amelia replied. “You and I are both Elemental Sensitive, so we can sense such creatures. It’s the entire purpose for which we were enslaved.”
Magical Beast? That didn’t sound good. While I had never seen such a creature, I had heard many stories of them. Magical Beasts could take many forms, from fairly normal-looking creatures to nightmarish horrors, but they all had powerful Elemental abilities. If one of those was on our track, we were in for a ride.
This was the wrong spot for an ambush. We stood in a clearing, surrounded on all sides by steeply rising land. The trees were shorter here, and closer together, and the undergrowth made an effective barrier to our escape.
I heard a rustling in the bushes about 20 yards from us on the edge of the clearing, accompanied by a loud snuffling noise. It sounded like something big was pushing through the undergrowth toward us.
“Get down,” I said to Amelia, pushing her behind me and crouching down in the long grass. She obeyed me, sticking close, still clutching her heavy book.
For a moment, we waited, holding our breath. Then, the large animal pushed out of the bushes on the edge of the clearing.
It was a wild boar, but it was not like the boars I’d seen in the woods back home. It was huge, easily twice the size of a regular boar. A ridge of vicious-looking sharp spines as long as my forearm ran the length of its back. With its great size, it stood nearly as high as my shoulder. Long, curved tusks protruded from powerful jaws. Its little red eyes were focused on the ground as it snuffled its way forward.
As it ran its nose along the edge of the bushes which lined the clearing, sniffing for food, clouds of freezing white vapor flowed from its nostrils, leaving what looked like a layer of frost behind it as it went. The tall grasses whitened and stiffened in the boar’s wake as a thick layer of frost coated their stems.
I looked at Amelia, puzzled, and kept my voice as low as possible as I spoke. “What’s it doing?”
She’d been watching too, but she just shrugged. She was staring at it intently though, especially as it breathed frost out on the ground.
Boars were not normally aggressors, but they were territorial. I knew it was only a matter of time before it would pick up our scent and head this way.
I drew the belt knife I had taken from Boris. It felt very small in my hand, and my only other weapon was my delicate stiletto dagger. Hunting parties for boars were never less than four men, and they went armed with bows and long spears. They didn’t take any chances that a boar might get near enough to gore them. And all I had was a knife and a dagger to defend myself with. If it attacked us, we’d be finished.
Balancing my knife in my hand, I stiffened, ready to spring as I crouched in the long grass. My pulse was racing, and my hands trembled as I gripped the weapon. This was not how I’d hoped for my freedom to end. I looked at Amelia crouched next to me. She was staring at the Beast in fascination. She probably had no idea what sort of danger she was in. Her naivety was what had got her in trouble yesterday too, asking slavers for directions. I couldn’t let something bad happen to her again just after freeing her.
I squared my shoulders and got ready to leap out from cover. The Beast was ten yards away. I’d have to run and hope to surprise it while its guard was still down. Stabbing the Beast seemed like a pretty useless attack, but I couldn’t see any boar spears lying around, and we would never be able to outrun this monstrous Beast if it decided we looked like dinner.
I’d have to kill it or be killed.
Just as I was about to charge the boar, Amelia put her hand on my arm.
“Wait,” she whispered.
I turned my head to look at her. “What is it?”
“That boar. It’s not a regular animal. It’s a Magical Beast. It could have incredible abilities. Can we flee somehow?”
“There’s no running from it,” I said as I stared at the creature. “It’s much faster than us. Either we kill it, or it kills us.”
“Do you know anything about killing magical creatures?” Amelia asked.
I shook my head. “You?”
“That Beast has an Affinity for the cold element,” she went on.
I frowned at her. “The layer of frost it leaves behind with its breath?”
She nodded. “When it attacks, it will likely use the cold element. It also means that it’s vulnerable to heat.”
I nodded. “Fire magic.”
“Can you attack it with fire like you did to the slaver?” Amelia actually looked excited at this prospect. I might have to explain a few things to her later about appropriate responses in life and death situations.
It was worth a try. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The Beast was still shuffling around in front of us, and there would be no way out of here other than through it. At least the boar hadn’t yet picked up our scent, so I had a few precious seconds to attempt to recreate whatever magic I had used to burn the slaver’s face.
I looked at the knife in my hand. Maybe I could heat the blade? I’d managed to burn ropes with my hands, not to mention the slaver’s face. I wasn’t sure how this worked, but if I could make the blade scorching hot, it might do enough damage to slow that Beast down and give us a chance.
Just then, the Beast gave a snort, and a puff of frosty air came out of its nostrils. It turned its head in our direction.
This was it. The Beast had picked up our scent.
It pawed the ground with one massive front hoof, its beady red eyes searching the long grass for us. It was readying itself to charge.
I concentrated on the knife, trying to determine what I’d done before. I still didn’t know how to control my ability, but I could feel the Mana flowing into the weapon. The knife started to glow a faint red color. That would have to do.
I looked at Amelia. “Get ready to run.”
Chapter Two
I jumped out from my hiding place in the deep grass. The boar lowered its head, and I started to run toward it. The Beast dug its hooves in, preparing to charge, and roared. A wave of cold air flowed out from its nostrils, blasting the grass and coating the whole area in front of the boar in a thin sheet of ice. My feet lost their purchase, and I slid out of control, landing hard on my ass.
The Beast roared again, and this time its blast of frost hit me in the left side of my chest.
Pain washed over me in waves, then a deep numbing cold spread through my side and my left arm. I looked at the knife in my right hand. It was still glowing faintly. Would the heat I’d poured into the blade be enough? The pain made it hard to think.
The boar charged straight for my head. I kicked against the ground, and my body twisted, sliding across the ice. The boar’s tusks missed by an inch, and I brought the knife up, plunging it into the coarse fur at the side of the creature’s neck. The wound hissed and sizzled as if I’d dropped hot iron into cold water and steam billowed from the spot where my knife was buried in its flesh. The monster writhed convulsively but didn’t stop moving, and I was dragged along beside it, clinging to my knife and trying to wrench it free while avoiding getting trampled by the thundering hooves.
The boar screeched and belted out another wave of ice over the clearing. It missed Amelia’s hiding place by a couple of feet. With a suddenness that sent me flying, my knife came free. I rolled, yelling out at the pain as my left side bashed against the ground, then staggered to my feet.
The monster was circling at the edge of the clearing. It was limping, and blood poured from the side of its neck. Stabbing it with a hot knife appeared to wound it. I’d have to try it again.
The Beast turned, focused its raging red eyes upon me, and lowered its tusks to face me again.
This time, I could feel energy coming from my Mana pool as I willed the knife to burn hotter. I focused on that energy and poured some more into the knife.
As the boar began its lumbering charge, I thrust the dagger forward. Bright flames flowed along the knife and flashed out from its tip.
The boar squealed in fright as fire licked along the edge of the blade toward it. It changed tack, shifting its path so it would pass me rather than hit me head on. A wave of ice blasted from its nostrils, but this time I managed to jump sideways to dodge the elemental attack. The boar lowered its head, ready to buck me with its tusks.
I wouldn’t get another chance to take the creature down.
I leaped at the creature, just dodging the cruel points of the huge tusks, then grabbed a handful of the course fur and slammed my red-hot knife into its neck again and again. The boar bucked and screamed, and blood erupted steaming and boiling from the wounds. I clung on grimly and stabbed my knife deeper into the thick fur, tearing at the flesh beneath. Steam billowed off in clouds, and the blood bubbled and hissed as it evaporated.
After what seemed an age, it tottered forward a few more steps, stopped, then crashed to the ground. I leaped away from it as a final wave of freezing mist wreathed the creature’s monstrous corpse. It twitched and convulsed a few times before finally laying still. I stood, panting from the exertion, the boar’s warm blood coating my hands and steaming off the still-hot blade of my knife.
Amelia stepped out from our hiding place. She clutched her book to her chest and looked at me with a pale face and wide eyes. “That was really something! You used your magic to kill it!” She sounded impressed, and that felt pretty good.
“Yeah, I did.” I held up the dagger in my hand and looked at it.
I was feeling lightheaded again, and my head throbbed a bit, but nowhere near as badly as before. I suspected it was from pulling that energy from my mana pool, but I was also starting to feel like every time I used Mana from my pool, more came back than I had used. I wondered if the Mana pool was like a muscle—the more you used it, the stronger it got. That made sense, I thought.
Amelia seemed a little shaken as she looked at the corpse of the monster. “A Magical Beast… and so far from the mines! This doesn’t bode well, and it confirms my fears…”
As if realizing she had spoken her thoughts out loud, she snapped her gaze up at me. When she did so, her eyes widened in surprise.
“Your arm is glowing.” Amelia pointed at my left arm, still hanging loosely at my side.
I lifted my arm to see. It was feeling less numb as the sun coming through the treetops warmed my skin, but it still hurt a lot. The skin was bluish, so I figured that the breath of the Beast had almost given me frostbite.
But one patch on my arm was still pink. The tattoo on my wrist and forearm was not frozen.
“Gods, what is that?” Amelia asked, her hand to her lips as she stared at my arm intently.
I shrugged. It didn’t seem important. “Just some old tattoo I got a while ago. I don’t know why it didn’t get frozen like the rest of my arm, maybe that spot was protected from the blast.”
“That’s strange,” Amelia said.
Now I thought of it, it certainly was. I couldn’t explain how every part of my arm had been almost frozen except for the skin beneath my tattoo.
Amelia walked over to me, and the interest and excitement of the scholar glittered in her bright, eager face. “What you did today; have you been able to do it before?”
I shook my head. “This is the first time.” I rubbed my hands together, trying to get some warmth into the left one. As I looked at it, I remembered that my hands hadn’t been scorched when I’d burned the ropes in the slavers’ wagon.
That gave me an idea.
I concentrated on the energy in my Mana pool and pushed a bit into the tattoo on my left hand. It seeped slowly through, like water through a sponge, the warmth of the magic radiating from the tattoo and into my palm and through my arm. I rubbed my arm and my side, enjoying the sensation of warmth as feeling returned to them. Obviously, the damage hadn’t been deep. Before long, my skin looked healthy again.
Amelia stared in amazement. “How are you doing this? Are you sure you don’t have some enchanted item hidden somewhere?”
I shook my head. “I feel like I’m pulling energy from inside myself to do this. Come to think of it, it seems to come from the same place where I sensed Mana earlier today.”
“You’re manipulating a Mana pool?” Amelia asked.
“I think so. I never really thought of it that way until today. When I was younger, it just seemed natural. When that boar attacked, I was so caught up with the danger that I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it. The same with the slavers. It was instinctive—I just knew what to do and then did it. It was only once I’d used some of it up that I really noticed it. Using too much made me feel… lightheaded, strange, but now that I’ve used it a bit, it feels like my Mana pool is getting stronger.”
Amelia shook her head slowly, eyes wide with disbelief. “This doesn’t make any sense. No one can channel Mana without having an enchanted item to use as a vector, and yet what you’re describing is exactly how Mana works. As you use it, you regenerate more and more, getting stronger with use like a limb. How can this be? Show me the tattoo.”
I held out my wrist to her. She took my hand firmly in hers and bent over my arm to examine the tattoo closely. I could feel the warmth of her breath on my bare skin as she spoke.
“This is a simple Fire rune, exactly like the one that Mages use as a base for Fire spells. See here, it’s a simple representation of a flame. The spear going through it normally allows Mages to cast fire as a projectile. It’s the same kind of rune that would be added to an item to allow a Fire Mage to use it as a vector. But people can’t be used as vectors—only items. Where did you get this symbol from?”
“It’s just something I saw on some basic weapons when I was in Aranor.”
“How peculiar,” she murmured. “No one can manipulate Mana just like that.”
“Well, we’ll have to work that out later,” I said. “The noise I made fighting that boar may have caught the attention of the trollmen. We need to keep moving.”
Amelia started at the mention of the slavers. “Yes, let’s get going.”
We began to walk out of the clearing, but as we passed the corpse of the boar lying there again, Amelia held out a hand to stop me. “Wait, we have to retrieve the Cores from that Beast first.”
�
��The what?” I looked at the Beast. “Oh, right. This is a magical monster. This is the first time I’ve seen one, let alone fought one.”
Amelia stooped to examine the corpse, laying her book on the ground beside it. “I’ve never actually seen a monster in the flesh before either. But the Beast Core should be where the heart is on normal animals.”
I stooped as well, the belt knife in my hand. “My guess would be here then.” I lifted the front leg of the boar and held the knife over a spot in the middle of the chest.
“Are you certain?”
I shrugged. “That’s where the heart of most animals is located. I would know; I had to kill my share of animals back in the village when I was younger.”
I plunged the knife into the Beast’s fur and drove it into the flesh. Amelia gasped at the squelching sound as I dug into the chest cavity, but then I heard a clink. I dug some more and could feel a hard object on the end of the knife. Amelia stood up and watched from the side.
With some effort, I cut away a chunk of the flesh and managed to scrape the object out with the end of the knife. This Beast Core looked like a round, bright blue stone about the size of a walnut. I felt a tugging sensation in my mind. My Mana was being attracted by the Beast Core.
“That’s it!” Amelia jumped up and down a couple of times in her excitement. That was pretty endearing, as was the way her breasts moved under her soft tunic as she jumped. I smiled at her and picked up the Core. It was still warm from being inside the Beast.
“What do we do with the Core?” I asked.
“You have no idea how valuable these are,” she said, stooping again to look. “These can be sold for vast amounts of money. There’s a fluid inside them that is highly valued as a powerful magical ingredient. I don’t know how strong this Beast was, but it may have more than one Core, especially since the one you hold is on the smaller side. See if there are any more.”
I dug the knife inside the wound I’d made again and heard another clink. Then I scraped away inside the chest for a bit longer, doing my best to hurry. We’d put some distance between ourselves and the slavers, but there was the possibility they would still be looking for us.