by Adam Thomas
Alurel scowled at him and returned her attention to the awakened mushrooms. “We’re looking for basilisks. Can you point the way?”
The mushrooms shook a bit as they responded. “What eez a basilisk?”
Alurel paused, worked her lips a few times, then looked at her audience again. “Help me describe a basilisk to these mushrooms.”
“Big lizards. Enjoy stone,” Jeral said. “Was my demonstration not clear enough?”
Alurel relayed these details to the mushrooms, and they said, “Pleeze wait. We are consulting our network.”
“Of course,” Alurel said. “You’re all connected, all one. Take your time.”
“It eez but zee work of a moment. Ah, voila! Zeez creatures you seek, ’ead to zee pond. We will show you zee way. Follow zee shaking mushrooms.”
Alurel thanked the truffles, stood up, and dusted herself off. “Follow the shaking mushrooms,” she repeated.
The others gave each other quizzical looks, but queued up behind Alurel just the same. Every dozen yards or so, they spotted another cluster of mushrooms shaking, leading them deeper into the jungle. They walked on for a few minutes. By the time Alurel’s spell ended and the mushrooms went still, they had a general sense of which way to go.
“The pond must be this way,” Alurel said, but her voice was drowned out by the sound of distant hooting coming nearer.
In the branches of the trees behind them, dozens upon dozens of monkeys now stood and swung, watching them and hooting to each other. They appeared curious more than aggressive, but there were enough of them to make the party’s day interesting if they so desired.
Alurel held up a hand to the monkeys and cast her spell again. “Greetings, fellow primates, you have our gratitude for letting us hike through your jungle.”
“Let? We didn’t let you do anything.”
“You never asked us if you could hike here.”
“You should come with us to meet the Big Gorilla.”
The monkeys talked fast and spoke over one another in a jumble of voices. And they never stopped moving. They were now spreading out and encircling the party.
“Yes, yes, the Big Gorilla will want to meet you.”
“Especially the little one. What a good tribute for the Big Gorilla.”
“We are always looking for things to bring to the Big Gorilla.”
Alurel glanced sidelong at Emric. “They want to feed you to their chief, I think.”
“Pardon?”
“The negotiations are not going well,” Alurel said.
“Shall I try music?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
Emric brought his flute to his mouth and began playing. But before he got more than five or six measures into the song, the monkeys began throwing their feces at him. Emric threw up an arm to shield his face. “Tough crowd.”
“Ignore them,” Shonasir said. “Keep going.”
Alurel turned her back on the monkeys and headed off in the direction the mushrooms had indicated. The monkeys followed and some dashed ahead through the branches, feces at the ready.
“Does anyone else get the feeling they’re herding us,” Rhys shouted over the din of the monkeys.
Shonasir pointed off to their right. “Looks like they want us to go to the big tree.”
Through a break in the canopy, they could all see a tree towering over the rest, its trunk wider than any three other trees put together.
“The Big Gorilla,” Alurel said. “Someone do something.”
Emric ran his fingers up and down his flute in a fervent arpeggio, and as the waves of musical magic hit the monkeys, he yelled, “Stay!”
The dazed monkeys stopped hooting, stopped swinging, stopped everything.
“Go, go, go,” Emric called. “They’ll only stay hypnotized for a minute.”
Alurel tacked back to the correct path, and the party raced through the underbrush, ignoring the thorns clawing at them and the clatter their crashing feet made. They could hear the instant Emric’s spell wore off because the monkeys’ hooting grew louder and angrier.
Suddenly, the party broke through the edge of the trees and tumbled down a gently sloping embankment. They had found the pond, and indeed, clusters of mushrooms clung to the mosses and tree roots that drank from it.
And there, bathing at the far end of the water, were six fully grown basilisks.
“Don’t look them in the eyes,” Alurel called, and she turned her back on the pond. “I’ll take care of the monkeys.”
Her panther form bounded up the embankment and released a threatening growl that echoed into the trees. The monkeys’ hooting changed timbre. Aggressive calls turned fearful, and the simian band scattered.
On the shoreline, the basilisks had noticed the party and were stalking towards them. The huge lizards moved slowly, lumbering forward on ungraceful limbs. Indeed, they had no need to be quick, as they usually petrified their quarry from afar with merely a glance.
Rhys had twin swords in hand and his eyes closed. But he couldn’t resist a peek at the strange beasts. One of them caught his eye.
“Ah, I’m going numb,” he said, as ashy grayness began eating down his arms. “This is fairly alarming. Someone please help!”
Emric rushed to his side. “Fight it, Rhys. Your body does not want to turn to stone. It can reject their magic.”
Rhys concentrated on the desire for his arms to be flesh and not stone. He gritted his teeth. Beads of sweat dripped from his forehead.
“You can do it,” Emric encouraged.
Rhys’s swords vibrated in his hands as he willed away statue-hood. The ashy grayness receded, and he gripped his blades, ready to fight blind.
But there was no need. Jeral smiled at his companions and said, “Watch this.”
From his outstretched claws, a gout of shadow flew and encircled the basilisks in magical darkness. No one could see into it, and more importantly, the basilisks could not see out. Sounds of grotesque slurping emanated from the darkness, and they could just make out a series of milky white tentacles ringing the circle like the fronds of a giant anemone.
“What spell is that?” Shonasir said, as they sighted along an arrow shaft, though the darkness made it impossible for them to see their target.
“I don’t know what it’s called. I just know I can do it,” Jeral said. But in the back of his mind, a cold fear gripped him. His shadowy patron’s laughter filled his head. The more of my power you use, the more my puppet you become.
“I can’t hold it forever. Do something,” Jeral shouted, and he began trembling violently as his patron kept speaking. Open yourself to the Shadow. I will fill you. I will be you!
Emric conjured a bead of concentrated fire in his open hand and hurled it into the center of the darkness. It exploded in a fiery conflagration that they could hear but not see. The smell of charred basilisk meat found their nostrils, and they all backed away as the sickly odor assaulted them.
Shonasir shot their arrow into the darkness and awakened a flame. A moment later, the Flame burst out in a second fireball. Smoke rose into the air above the magical darkness. For good measure, Rhys shot a few bolts of fire from his karest, but he did not know if he hit anything.
While the others were playing with fire, the effort of maintaining his spell dropped Jeral to one knee. You are weak, but I can make you strong. Drink in my power. Soon we will meet, you and I, and then we will become One.
“No!” Jeral screamed, and he sliced through his connection to the magical darkness. It vanished to reveal six roasted basilisks, all unmistakably dead. Jeral hugged himself around the middle and muttered under his breath. “I didn’t ask for this. I never asked for this. I just wanted out of there.”
The others were too taken with their dead quarry to hear Jeral’s manic whispering. All save Alurel, who came up behind him
and nuzzled her panther’s head under his arm. Jeral swallowed back his fear and scratched the sleek black fur between Alurel’s ears. His breathing slowed as her steady purring calmed him. They watched from a distance as Rhys, Emric, and Shonasir went about the gruesome work of butchering the basilisks.
An hour later, they had managed to retrieve four of the six venom sacs from the basilisks’ throats. The other two were too badly burned to salvage.
“I can honestly say this is the grossest thing we’ve ever done,” Emric said. “And that includes fighting a corpse flower.”
Rhys held up a venom sac. “What do you think would happen if I drank some of this?”
Upon hearing these words, Alurel took her half-elven form and yelled, “What did I say about the mushrooms!”
fourteen
Selenel’s Secret
The companions raced the setting sun back to the beach, and arrived just as full darkness set in. On their quick march back through the jungle, Shonasir had taken to the air and spied the tall tree towards which the monkeys had been driving them. The upper branches shook and swayed even though there was little wind. Shonasir thought they may have seen a gigantic furry limb poke out between the branches, but it may have been their imagination.
The party made camp on the beach. Jeral and Alurel stayed up long into the night, watching the tree line and speaking in hushed tones about Jeral’s patron. He had welcomed its presence when he needed to escape the orcs’ forced breeding program. It had seemed his only way out. But today he used more magic than he ever had before, and it scared him so much. The Shadow was eating away at him from within. And he was terrified that even if they succeeded in making the potion to restore him to his true outward identity, there would be nothing left on the inside. His patron had threatened him if he spoke to anyone about their arrangement, but Jeral was even more afraid of keeping the secret bottled up inside. Alurel had no words of wisdom for Jeral’s predicament. She could only listen and console, which is all he desired anyway.
Shonasir, fresh from their elven trance, relieved them at midnight, and Jeral managed to fall into fitful sleep that was, thankfully, dreamless.
The next morning dawned hot and humid. Shonasir set a fire on the beach to alert Selenel. Alurel and Emric buried Rhys in the sand. Jeral sat off by himself, brooding and muttering, until the others cajoled him into being the next burial victim. He protested that he did not like sand in his scales, but they would not take “no” for an answer, and he acquiesced.
Rhys and Alurel tramped back into the jungle to collect more mushrooms – safe ones, as far as Alurel could tell – and the morning passed in ease and recreation. That is, until the foragers felt a tremor move under the feet.
Alurel ran her hand over the moss next to the mushrooms she was plucking. “What was that?”
“I don’t know.” Rhys’s hand went instinctively to his sword. “Either a little quake or a big creature.”
In the distance, they heard a cacophony of hooting, and they took off for the beach. “Where’s the boat?” Rhys yelled when they emerged from the tree line.
“Just there,” Shonasir said, pointing out to a dark splotch on the horizon.
“Not close enough. Everyone in the water, now! Gather your things and go, Go, GO!”
The combination of panic and command in Rhys’s voice spurred the others to action without delay. They scrambled around the campsite throwing their gear into their bags and kicking sand on the fire. Four of the five adventurers dashed into the surf, but Emric was not with them. They looked back and saw the dwarf standing on the water’s edge, his flute in hand and a look of pure terror on his face.
Emric’s eyes went glassy and for a moment he was gone, transported back to the day it happened.
The rushing river.
The waterfall.
Plunging down, down, down.
“Astrid, Lorn, no!”
Emric was insensible to his own shouting and to the imminent danger and to the strong hands that picked him up and flung him over a shoulder. Rhys bounded back into the water just as the monkeys broke onto the beach. The companions waded deeper until Alurel and Shonasir were treading water.
And that’s when they saw it. The Big Gorilla burst through the trees, shattering limbs left and right. As tall as he was, Rhys would not have reached the top of the gorilla’s hind legs. It grunted and hollered, and each time it stamped its massive feet in the sand, the water around them vibrated. Thankfully, it did not seem to like the ocean.
The party swam further out, beyond the drop off into deeper water. Emric clung for dear life to Rhys’s shoulders. He was still babbling gibberish and thrashing about and calling for someone named Astrid.
They were a quarter mile from shore when Selenel picked them up. Shonasir’s sibling was as terse as ever when they looked at the throng on shore and said, “Looks like you made some friends.”
Three days later, the wind had vanished. The Freedom’s Wake sat becalmed in a mirror-still expanse of ocean less than a day from their destination, Avilee, the capital city of the Twenty Tatters. The sun was sinking fast, and Selenel paced back and forth in the bow with Shonasir by their side.
“I was afraid this would happen. I should never have taken you on this voyage.”
Shonasir leaned against the railing with their arms crossed over their chest. “You’ve been worried about the calendar since before you dropped us at Starfall. What’s so important? Are you going to miss an engagement of some kind?”
Selenel stopped and looked at their younger sibling. “An engagement? What do I look like, some Arcan dandy filling up their social calendar?”
“You were going to tell me something when you picked us up, but it’s been three days and you still haven’t.”
“First off, I thought you were going to die in the jungle, which would have let me off the hook. Second, I thought we’d make it to Avilee in time for it not to matter.” Selenel looked up at the purpling sky. The moon was just beginning to peek over the twilit horizon. The big elf grabbed Shonasir by the shoulders and shook them. “Whatever happens, you need to know that I will not be myself. I might have resented you when we were younger, but I’ve never desired to hurt you in any way.”
“Othayo va, Shiskan?” (What are you saying, my sibling?)
“Het ilsayo. Aftunim selen!” (Listen now. The moon comes!)
Shonasir looked over Selenel’s head where the full moon was rising, framing Selenel in a halo of silver light. Their body began to shake. They pulled away from Shonasir and staggered to the opposite side of the bow. “Het ikeyo!” (Go now!)
Shonasir took a step toward the trembling Selenel and reached out their hand. The big elf batted it away with their own hand, which was growing gray and triangular. Their head was growing too, elongating into a pointed face with a mouth full of rows upon rows of jagged teeth.
The wereshark lunged at Shonasir, and they were too stunned to back away. Their leather armor took the brunt of the shark’s jaws, but the bite was so strong that it forced the air out of Shonasir’s lungs before they could cry out.
Emric had taken to spending his days in the crow’s nest (“Because it’s as far from the water as I can get on this ruddy boat”), and he saw the whole gruesome transformation.
“Help! Help Shonasir!” he shouted, as he began scrambling down the rigging.
From across the boat, Jeral let fly twin blasts of energy, which took the wereshark in their flank. They dropped Shonasir to the deck, and the elf rolled away, broken and bruised, but still alive.
Rhys’s swords were in his hands, and he leapt to the bow. But before he could attack, Shonasir cried, “Don’t hurt them. It’s Selenel! It’s Selenel!”
Without thinking, Rhys dropped his swords and bear-tackled the wereshark. He tried to clamp his arms around the jaws, but the shark thrashe
d and got Rhys’s forearm in its mouth. Rhys’s blood arced out into the water.
And a moment later, something rammed the boat. Still clambering down from the rigging, Emric saw a trio of telltale dorsal fins streaking towards the Freedom’s Wake.
“Sharks! Sharks!” Emric gasped.
There were four of them, each half the length of the fishing boat and each drawn there by the blood and by a mysterious attraction to the cursed Selenel. The passengers felt two more shudders, and the boat began rocking in the calm waters.
“They’re trying to capsize us,” Jeral yelled as he sent more blasts of energy at the encircling predators.
“They’ll have to catch us first,” Alurel said, and she concentrated on the still air around her. A sudden, brisk wind came up and filled the sails. The Freedom’s Wake leapt forward, and the sharks gave chase.
In the bow, Rhys had managed to pull his gashed and bloody arm from the wereshark’s mouth. Emric finally reached the deck, and he stumbled towards them, playing a hypnotizing melody on his flute. The wereshark’s eyes flashed pink, and they went limp. Jeral lashed out with his whip, pinning the shark’s fins against their body.
“How long can you keep up that spell, Emric?” Shonasir called between ragged breaths.
“Only a minute. It’s the same one I used against the monkeys.”
“I have an idea,” Rhys said, and he reached his good hand into his side pouch. Drawing forth a handful of mushrooms, he stuffed them into the wereshark’s open mouth. Selenel swallowed them, and by the time Emric’s hypnosis wore off, the big elf-turned-half-shark was slumbering on the deck.
“How did you do that?” Alurel called from the stern. “All the ones we picked were safe.”
Rhys managed to look chastened in the midst of his triumph. “All the ones you picked.”
Alurel glared at him and shook her head. She continued to send wind into the sails as long as she could, and after several minutes, the other sharks broke off their pursuit.
“I was bitten over twenty years ago,” Selenel said.
It was the next morning. Shonasir had stayed by the unconscious wereshark’s side all night, and, as the sun rose, they had watched the transformation in reverse. Their beautiful, strong elven sibling had returned, bare-chested and breathing shallow breaths. Now, a few hours later, the whole party sat amidships and drank beverages Emric had made hot with his magic.