by DB King
“If we damage one and let it go, we might be able to follow it to the Death Druid,” Raphael reasoned.
“Have any of you fought sanguine treants before?” Sylvia asked.
They all shook their heads.
“They’re not mindless creatures utterly at the whim of their creator, like animated skeletons or zombies, but they’re also highly aggressive and will fight until they’re completely destroyed rather than flee,” the elf explained.
“So letting one go and following it won’t work, then,” Fenix said, sighing. His eyes lit up a heartbeat later, though. “But if we destroy a few, we can—”
“Trace the magic that animated them back to their creator!” Sylvia finished. “Ha! That was my idea! I win!”
“No one was competing with you,” Eliza grumbled.
Fenix rolled his eyes. “If grabbing for low-hanging fruit is all you’re good for, it’s all yours, oh brave and fearless Captain.”
“Sounds like you need a kicking in your not-so-low-hanging fruits, Fenix,” Sylvia growled.
Despite the daunting challenge ahead of them, Raphael felt a big smile creeping across his face. The entire exchange had been one of the most fun things he’d ever done in his life. All his life, Raphael had stood apart from other children, because they could not do what he could, even if they’d all spent many hours running around the junkyard and the marketplace together. As he grew older, the fact that he was different became more and more obvious. First one schoolmate, then another, had drifted away, and though no one had ever shunned him directly, neither had they ever fully accepted him, giving him little more than a nervous nod or forced grin whenever they ran into him.
Because he was this Dragon Magus thing, whatever it was. He was far faster, stronger, and tougher than the most hardened thug at the marketplace, and his mind went places others’ couldn’t. He recalled the meeting with little Tessa outside the hospice. She’d greeted him cheerfully, but her parents had pulled her away, their faces heavy with mistrust. Soon, as the years passed and his strangeness became more evident, she, like everyone else, would have neither a smile nor a friendly word to spare for him when they met.
But it was different, now. Fenix, Eliza, and Sylvia didn’t share his abilities, but they brought their own, and they stood alongside him, accepting him as one of them. Raphael had never experienced anything like that before.
Was this what it meant to have friends?
“Well, I’m glad someone is so cheerful,” Eliza snapped, glaring at him. Raphael realized that his cheek was still pressed against Sylvia’s breastplate. The elf hadn’t lessened her hold around his neck at all. In fact, it seemed to have gotten even tighter.
“Aw, do you want to hold him too? Here you go!” Sylvia unwrapped herself from Raphael, hooked her heel deftly over his shin, and gave him a neat shove at the base of his skull. It was a masterful sweep, one that Raphael had no hope of reversing or recovering from, and it sent him stumbling face-first right toward Eliza.
The younger woman obviously saw it coming, though. She lowered her posture and caught Raphael’s chest on her shoulders, digging her heels in to absorb his momentum and placing her hands on his shoulder blades to steady him.
“If you’re quite done playing around, Captain, we should head out, especially since it’s still early in the morning,” Eliza said.
“Says the one with her arms wrapped around the boy she’s had her eye on,” the elf tittered.
Eliza unentangled herself from Raphael and stepped back hastily. Her face was bright red, and she didn’t seem to want to meet his gaze. After a few silent moments, Eliza opened her mouth to speak, but Fenix stepped in to spare her further embarrassment.
“Mr. Bernardi, with your permission, we will commence with your request,” he said to the mayor, who’d been watching the entire exchange with a smile that contained as much bemusement as it did anxiety. “We are the war party of the Captain of the Ninth Seat, and we shall kill for wealth and slay for glory!”
Mr. Bernardi blinked. He gulped nervously before replying. “Yes, yes. What were the words again? Ah. Go, Hell Drakes. Kill for wealth and slay for glory!”
The portly man even managed a semi-enthusiastic fist pump in the air.
“That’s a strange thing for both of them to say,” Raphael murmured.
“It’s Guild protocol, but it also activates the enchantment on this receipt,” Eliza explained, holding up the small piece of paper that the mayor had just signed. A small red rune stamped above Mr. Bernardi’s inked scrawl pulsed briefly with light, then turned blue.
“There. That means that half of the gold deposited by the mayor in Lucia City’s bank has now been transferred to the Guild,” she continued. “When we are done, the mayor will say another set of words, and this other rune beside the Guild Master’s signature will do the same thing. The Guild will get the rest of the money, then.”
“I see. So if the mayor isn’t satisfied with what we do, the Guild won’t get paid.” Raphael nodded.
“And we’ll have a lot of explaining to do, if we’re still alive, that is,” Fenix said, his voice grim.
“Ah, it’ll be fine,” Sylvia declared. “I took this assignment from the Guild Master because I wanted to put our promising new battlemage through his paces, break him comfortably into the lifestyle with a stimulating, yet entirely manageable experience, you know? As it turns out, I have not one, but three diamonds-in-the-rough to polish, and I’m eager to get started.”
“Thanks, Sylvia,” Raphael said, meaning every word. “We won’t let you down.”
“You’re welcome, kid, I…” Sylvia narrowed her eyes. “What? Why are you two looking at me like that?”
Eliza shook her head disbelievingly. “I’m surprised. You actually said something that was halfway decent and considerate.”
Fenix grunted. “Hold your breath and enjoy the moment, because she’s going to ruin it with whatever rolls out of her mouth next.”
“Yes, Fenix. Hold your breath,” Sylvia shot back. “In fact, you should do it permanently!”
“Uh, I’ll get the gates open,” Mr. Bernardi said, beginning to slink away from the elf and battlemage’s latest bickering bout as discreetly as his unwieldy frame would allow.
“I’ll come help,” Raphael offered.
Chapter 18
Another quarter-hour rolled by before they were finally beyond the town’s wooden walls and walking into the woods down the main logging path. Sylvia led the way, humming a jaunty melody. Her sword floated beside her, bobbing and weaving in tune to the music.
Fenix followed next, affecting a casual saunter that failed to hide his tension from the Dragon Meridian’s light.
Eliza kept pace several feet behind him. Her eyes were wide, and she had a hand on the hilt of her sword. She noticed Raphael looking at her, and she shot him a shaky smile over her shoulder. “Just a bit of nerves. I’ll get over it soon enough, like I did before I charged into the junkyard.”
Raphael returned her smile. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to sneak up on you with me as the rearguard. I’ll keep everyone safe.”
“I know. I’m glad you’re here, Raphael,” she replied, before turning her attention back to the path.
The plan was simple. They would scout the area for any clues that might lead them to the Death Druid. If they couldn’t find any by nightfall, they would make camp and invite the sanguine treants to attack them. They would then destroy their attackers and use their remains to find their creator.
Raphael didn’t expect them to fail. From what he’d gathered through his conversations with Eliza about various monsters, he figured that sanguine treants weren’t much more formidable than the night-fiends he’d tussled with in the junkyard. Besides, after igniting the Third Draconic Brazier and undergoing Sylvia’s training, he was much stronger than he’d been even just over a week ago.
The only unknown factor was the Death Druid himself. Raphael couldn’t fathom what could drive a man to such wickedness
. He’d fought bullies aplenty in the marketplace, and both Eliza and Fenix had been less-than-friendly when he’d first met either of them. Still, Raphael had never heard of anything as vile as creating monsters and using them to kill people horribly.
I’ll stop him, he promised himself. I won’t let him hurt anyone else.
The air cooled down noticeably shortly after they entered the shade of the trees, which grew tall and broad and were crowned by large, sweeping leaves. Sunlight could barely break through the canopy, leaving the interior of the woods as dim as the early onset of evening. Silence hung heavily in the air, broken only by the crunch of their boots against the gravel of the logging path.
A thought struck Raphael.
“It’s too quiet,” he said. “Places with trees shouldn’t be so quiet. There’s no birdsong, and I can’t hear any bugs, not even with my senses heightened by the Dragon Meridian.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely not a good sign.” Fenix grimaced and flexed his fingers. “It goes hand-in-hand with what I’m picking up with my mage sight, though. Everywhere I project it, I can see the traces of a massive, sweeping spell that was cast over these woods.”
“Is it Nature Magic or Necromancy?” Eliza asked.
“Both,” Sylvia replied. “But we expected that. Tell them what we did not expect, Fenix.”
“There’s no Spell Dust residue anywhere,” the battlemage said, his shoulders tight with tension. “Someone, or something, cast this powerful spell, and possibly many other spells as well, without using Spell Dust.”
“Could it be True magic?” Raphael ventured. “The kind I heard Sylvia mention before, which doesn’t need Spell Dust?”
“That’s impossible!” the elf snapped, her tone cold and utterly devoid of its usual whimsical drawl. Her features were tight and pained, and though she’d turned to face them, her gaze seemed to be directed at something far, far away. “True Magic is gone. It’s…”
Rayne popped its head out of Raphael’s pocket, then. Sylvia’s words died in the air. Raphael petted the faerie dragon gently. He didn’t quite know how and why Wormy’s Spell Core became the egg that would eventually hatch Rayne, but he did know that True Magic had been involved, then.
The haunted look on Sylvia’s face softened, then, and the faint ghost of a smile tugged at her lips. “No. It’s not gone. Hope beyond hope, perhaps it’s still out there, waiting for us to reach it once more. Or perhaps all that’s left of it comes to us in little miracles, just like the one in your pocket, Raphael.”
“Keep moving!” the elf ordered, turning away. “I want to be deep within these woods by the end of the day. If that doesn’t draw the sanguine treants out, then we’ll start hunting them ourselves!”
The resolute note in her voice spurred Fenix and Eliza to action. They fell back in line, following in Sylvia’s wake. Raphael did the same, adjusting his grip on his glaive, as the logging path became narrower and narrower, and the trees seemed to close in more with every passing moment.
I’ll have to use my glaive as more of a spear, then, Raphael thought, reflecting on the week’s training with Sylvia. Can’t swing a long blade around here in such tight quarters.
His next footstep was a soft, dull thump rather than the grinding crunch of those that preceded it. Raphael looked down. The gravel path beneath his feet was gone, replaced by mossy soil.
“Wait! Stop!” he cried, and the rest of the war party turned to him.
“The logging path is gone,” Raphael said, pointing downward. He looked behind him, only to find a wall of closely packed trees barring the way they’d come from.
“No! How?” Fenix swept his gaze around frantically. “Did someone use Nature Magic to move those trees? I didn’t pick anything up, and I know I couldn’t have missed any spell being cast in my vicinity!”
“You didn’t miss anything, Fenix,” Sylvia said. “No spell has been cast since we entered the woods. There’s only the large, sweeping one covering this entire region, and it’s at least several weeks old. The Death Druid didn’t move those trees. They moved themselves, as did the ground on which we stand.” Sylvia grinned. “Interesting. What I’d figured to be an easy orientation to mercenary life is turning out to be far more than that.”
“If the woods are doing this themselves…” Eliza began.
“Then it seems like an Awakening ritual is underway,” Sylvia continued. “Our Death Druid wants to turn these woods into a geomantic loci.”
“What’s that?” Raphael asked, noticing the sudden pallor that had come over Fenix and Eliza’s faces.
“A geomantic loci is a sentient location, given awareness and malevolence through dark magic,” Eliza explained. “Once it awakens, it enslaves the minds of all living creatures within its borders. Then it will seek to expand itself and the number of thralls under its control.”
Strange, Raphael thought. If the junkyard is similar in some ways to this forest, is the junkyard also a place of dark magic?
Before he could consider it further, Fenix spoke.
“This… this is way beyond our league,” the battlemage said, gritting his teeth. “The wise thing to do now would be to withdraw and warn the Guild Master.”
“Ha!” Sylvia put her fists on her hips. “And are we going to do the wise thing, Battlemage Hellstorm?”
Fenix clenched his fists and mirrored the elf’s grin as best he could. Though beads of sweat rolled down the battlemage’s cheeks, his eyes were bright with resolve. “No. Think of the glory we’d enjoy if we defeated a geomantic loci. Our names will echo through eternity.”
“Spoken like a true Hell Drake!” the elf cried, walking over to Fenix and clapping him heartily on the back. “No wonder the Guild Master was so impressed by you!”
“Are the two of you insane?” Eliza demanded. “A geomantic loci is extremely powerful! On top of its mind-control abilities, it can also freely manipulate space and time within its borders.”
“Of course it can,” Sylvia nodded at the freshly placed trees. “How do you think those got there?”
“Wait. How much time has passed since we entered the woods? What if we’ve blundered into some temporal distortion and hundreds of years of real time have passed already?” Fenix asked.
“No, that hasn’t happened,” Raphael reassured him. “I don’t know how I know, but I’m sure nothing of that sort has taken place.”
“Is it because of the Dragon Meridian?” Eliza strode to Raphael and caught him by the shoulders. “Can you still guide us back to town?”
“Yes. And yes.” Raphael nodded to his left. The light of the Dragon Meridian shone bright and clear, illuminating the path he had to take if he wanted to leave. “If you want, I can lead us out of these woods right now. Something will have to physically bar our way to stop us.”
Like trees, he thought, but he didn’t voice this to everyone else.
“We should go!” Eliza said, directing her words to Sylvia and Fenix. “We can send a messenger pigeon to the Guild Master in town, and I’m sure he’ll send reinforcements. If a geomantic loci is involved, the King himself might intervene by dispatching the royal army.”
“Eliza, wait.” Raphael put his free hand over the one Eliza had placed on his left shoulder. “This geomantic loci thing isn’t awake yet, right? Because if it were, then it would have taken control of our minds already, and before you ask, I’m also completely sure that hasn’t happened. Am I right, Sylvia?”
“You are,” the elf confirmed. “The Awakening ritual isn’t done yet. It’s still missing a few components, but it’s well past its opening stages already.”
“So if we leave now and wait for reinforcements, they might not arrive in time. What’s going to happen to Vitoria and all the people who live there, then?” Raphael continued.
“They’ll probably all die and become sanguine treants,” Sylvia speculated. “Then they’ll be used as pawns for the geomantic loci’s invasion of other regions.”
“We can’t let tha
t happen. We need to stop this ritual,” Raphael declared. “We must find the Death Druid quickly.”
“Much as I’d like to test myself against something as mighty as a fully awakened geomantic loci, that’s probably our best course of action right now,” Fenix said, pulling a handkerchief from his leathers and dabbing at his damp cheeks. “We can’t afford to risk our clients’ lives.”
Sylvia chuckled. “Weren’t you raring to fight a geomantic loci just now? Where did all that bravado go? Turns out Mr. Hellstorm is a bit of a yellow trickle instead. But all levity aside, I agree. We’ve been hired to protect Vitoria, so that’s what we’ll do, and the best way for us to do that is to stop the ritual.”
Raphael smiled. Despite the elf’s flippant words and unpredictable behavior, she cared about protecting people too. I shouldn’t be too surprised, really. After all, she did try her best to help Koshi, even though she didn’t need to.
Eliza nodded. “You’re all right. We don’t have enough time to wait for help, and we can’t leave all these people to their fate. We must stay the course and hope for the best.”
“So back to the original plan, then?” Fenix asked. “We wait to be attacked and then trace the sanguine treants’ Spell Dust back to their creator?”
Under the Dragon Meridian’s light, another piece of the puzzle fell into place within Raphael’s mind. He turned to Sylvia. “When you say that the ritual is missing something, what could it be? What else does the Death Druid need?”
“What do all dark magic rituals need?” the elf said, spreading her arms in a sweeping gesture. “Blood, death, and suffering on a large scale, usually accomplished through mass human sacrifices. But other methods will do, too, such as war, disaster, or pestilence. So basically, any event that results in immense misery can be harnessed to complete the geomantic loci’s awakening.”
Raphael turned and pointed into the trees. “The dry river is about a half-hour’s walk in that direction. Walking down the path, we’ve been progressing alongside it up until now, when the woods decided to place us elsewhere.”