My eyes were wide now; fear had replaced my confidence.
The new light showed a hideous scene; Sadie Tanner’s body lay in two parts upon the ground, both still moving, struggling to reach me. I tried another fire spell and it disappeared as quickly as the first. The moment my magic touched the grotesque thing on the ground the fire winked out of existence. “Penny! Are you ok?” I called.
“Yeah, I just hit my head,” she answered, sounding tired and disoriented.
I moved toward her, making a wide circle around the creature still writhing on the earth. “I think we found it,” I said. What an understatement… it had found us. A thought occurred to me and I checked my blade. To my relief the magic within it still glowed in my sight. Why hadn’t it been extinguished as well? This shit just keeps getting weirder, I thought.
I reached Penny and ran my hand over her, making sure she was still in one piece. As a precaution I examined the landscape around us with my mind, and this time I was looking for holes, empty places where nothing existed. Finding none I began to relax. “I think this is the only one,” I said to Penny.
“You don’t sound so sure of yourself,” she replied.
“I’m not. That thing walked up on us without me sensing anything.” I created several more globes of light, spacing them around us at a distance of ten yards each. We wouldn’t be surprised again, and then I started thinking.
I took a moment to methodically cut Sadie’s body into several more parts, separating arms and legs from the rest of her. There was very little blood, and what did seep forth from the severed pieces was thick and black, like old blood that has already begun to congeal. My sword still showed no sign of being affected by her ability to consume magic. I tried my staff as well, poking the torso, and its enchantments were unaffected as well, yet when I conjured a light globe near the body it went out like a lamp that had been doused. Maybe it has something to do with the structure of enchantments, I thought. To test my theory I set a light within the head of my staff, where it would be held by my variable enchantment, and then I touched the torso with it.
Nothing happened, the light persisted; whatever it was, it could eat magic, but not enchantments. I could only guess that the rigid structure that contained their magic also protected them from being absorbed like my normal spells had been.
Penny spoke up, “As interesting as this thing is, we can’t leave a bunch of twitching body parts lying around here.” I loved her pragmatic nature.
“Alright, I have an idea,” I replied. I gathered up some dead wood and leaves, piling them around the still moving body parts. Using my power I set the makeshift pyre ablaze, till the wood was burning brightly. The fire consumed the flesh that lay among the wood, and what magic couldn’t accomplish normal fire did. We continued to add fresh wood until there was nothing left of Sadie Tanner’s body. I learned an interesting lesson that night… it takes a lot of wood to burn a body completely to ash.
“What was it?” Penny asked while we watched, but I didn’t have an answer. With more questions than answers we headed back home, too tired to do more that night.
Chapter 2
The sun rose entirely too early. I wish I could have found the fellow who arranged that, he obviously had a poor sense of humor. Despite our late night Penny and I both woke not long after the sun came up. I think we were both anxious.
Sleep and some early morning thinking convinced me that there had to be more of those things out there. To begin with, Sadie hadn’t been like that before she disappeared, and something had to have taken her. If something similar had happened to the others that meant there were at least three more of those things out there… that we knew of. It was a chilling thought.
The only good news was that no one else had been taken, though I felt sure that there would have been, if we hadn’t encountered the creature first. Penny and I discussed what had happened but neither of us could understand it. In the end we decided to keep it to ourselves to avoid a panic.
I wrote two letters, one to the Duke of Lancaster, detailing everything that had happened, the second I addressed to Dorian. I hoped he would be free to come stay with us for a while, if magic wasn’t effective against this new creature his sword would certainly be more useful. After that I went looking to see if I could find a farmer or someone heading toward Lancaster.
As things worked out there wasn’t anyone planning a trip that day, but I ran across Joe McDaniel and he offered to go if it was urgent. Joe was a transplant from Gododdin, the neighboring kingdom. He didn’t talk much about his past, or his reasons for leaving, but I gathered it must involve the change in government there.
Technically Gododdin wasn’t a kingdom anymore. The royal family had been thoroughly exterminated some time before I was born and the country was now a theocracy, controlled by a cult known as the Children of Mal’goroth. Joe had never had anything good to say about them.
“I don’t mind going for ya Lord Cameron,” he told me, “I was planning to go in a few days anyway, to order a new cask of ale.” Joe was working to build a tavern, the first Washbrook had ever seen. At the moment it consisted of a few benches scattered around his house where he sold beer in the evenings. Being a beer enthusiast myself I had thoroughly supported his efforts.
“Thanks Joe,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. Once he had gone I began walking toward my father’s smithy. Someday soon I was going to have to start hiring a staff of some sort, such as regular messengers. It was quickly becoming apparent that I could no longer do everything myself anymore.
“You looked troubled son,” my father commented after I came in. He was a quiet man, which might be why he was so perceptive.
“There was trouble last night,” I explained, and then I told him what had occurred the previous evening. I also described the creature’s effect on my magic. Dad didn’t have any magical talent of his own but he was very intelligent and I had come to appreciate his advice when I had been testing different ways to enchant things.
My story alarmed him, but you would have had to know him to tell. He had always been a difficult man to read. Rather than spend his time talking about his worries, he moved on to practical matters. “Looks like we have a lot of work to do,” he said and then he walked over and drew out the stack of sheets he used when he was planning a design for something.
Naturally I was curious. “You’ve already got an idea?”
“You said when it touched you everything went black right?” he replied.
“Yes.”
“But… Penny was still able to fight it,” he reminded me.
Damn! I hadn’t thought of that. The merest touch had rendered me insensible, but although it had been steadily drawing her life out she had retained the ability to struggle.
He went on, “And it wasn’t able to draw the magic out of your enchantments, like the sword.”
At last it came clear to me. “The amulet! It must have protected her mind even while the creature was sucking the life out of her.” That thought had a lot of implications; it meant I had a way to protect people, at least partially. Penny’s amulet wouldn’t have saved her life, but people would be much more difficult to prey upon if they weren’t immediately paralyzed at the first touch of these creatures.
“Not just the amulet Mordecai, you could enchant your clothes, or armor, to more fully protect yourself. Anything to keep them from touching you,” he replied.
“There’s no way I could enchant enough armor or whatnot for everyone in the village, it would take years!” I argued, for the thought was daunting.
“Not them! For you boy! If something happens to you, none of us will be able to protect ourselves.” He gave me a look that spoke volumes, “You’ve got to start thinking like a lord and less like a footman, you’re important now.”
I didn’t completely agree with him on that, but in any case there was no way we could afford to produce armor for everyone. Besides, no one could work, farm, cook or anything else while wearing armor all day. The idea was ludicrous, but I still wouldn’t give up on the idea that we could do something for them. “Alright, I agree with you to a point, but we’ve still got to do something for the people.”
