“Oof!” Penny had just tripped over a root and almost went down in a sprawl. I stifled the urge to laugh. I could have provided light but I had the wonderful excuse that we were trying to avoid tipping off our quarry. My magesight gave me a distinct advantage in the dark.
“Stop it,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re laughing at me… I can tell,” she answered.
“I was just wondering how you’re going to see to shoot that bow if something happens.” It was so dark there weren’t even shadows. She declined to answer so I dropped the subject and we kept walking. Soon enough we had reached my spot.
It was a location without anything to recommend it. There was nothing particularly comfortable about it, but it was in a place where, by stretching my senses I could cover most of the area that had lost people. We sat down, back to back and I began to relax. The art of sensing a large area requires a lot of effort, but most of that goes into not tensing up. I had to calm myself and let my mind expand, feeling as much as I could around me.
The first hour was the worst, after that we both gave up thinking about our daily lives and it got easier. I wasn’t sure but Penny might have gone to sleep. There really wasn’t anything else for her to do, and nothing could sneak up on us as we were. I could feel a field mouse moving around half a mile away.
Another hour drew slowly by and I began to wonder if this would be a repeat of the previous night. My thoughts were drifting, but my mind was still alert. If anything had moved I would have felt it, but I had no idea what I was looking for… I would learn that later. Penny had begun snoring, which probably hid the sound of its approach. Even if she had been silent I’m not sure I would have noticed. It was very quiet.
The first indication things were not as they seemed was the sound of a twig snapping not five feet behind me. The sound would not have been so surprising, except I knew there was nothing there, no animals, no life at all. I came awake suddenly and then I felt it, an absolute emptiness. It was as if something had carved a void in the air behind me, a place where nothing existed.
I stood and whirled about, the darkness was absolute so my eyes were useless; yet I could feel the empty place with my extra senses. I reached for my sword but a hand grabbed my arm. It went through my shield as if it didn’t exist and when it touched me the world changed. Everything vanished... my sight was gone, and I could sense nothing but a vast void drawing me in. It was absorbing the light within me, and crushing the light from the world as well. A few moments longer and I would have been lost.
Something knocked me sideways, breaking the contact, and the world rushed back in at me. I could sense Penny there, grappling with something so black my mind could not reveal it, something that was sapping her energy. Her life force wavered in front of me, being drawn rapidly away, like a candle guttering in a strong wind.
“Lyet,” I spoke, conjuring a ball of light, and then I could see it. In the stark light I saw Penny struggling with Sadie Tanner. Ordinarily Penny would have easily overpowered the smaller girl, but now her strength was waning quickly. Whatever this thing was, it was a mockery of the girl we had known. It looked like Sadie, but the emptiness revealed by my magesight made it clear that she was nowhere within the creature we faced now.
“Sadie?” Penny exclaimed.
“I don’t know what that is… but it isn’t Sadie,” I yelled back, and then I continued in Lycian, “Stirret ni Pyrenn!” A line of fire lanced from my outstretched hand. I had learned to focus my power in such a way that it would burn a hole through the thing... yet my fire disappeared the moment it touched the thing.
Sadie, the thing, whatever it was… looked at me then, a hideous grin on its face. With a shove it threw Penny back six or seven feet, to strike a tree, and then it reached for the ball of light I had created. As it touched my spell the light vanished, winking out as suddenly as it had appeared. I felt a sense of shock. This thing, whatever Sadie had become, consumed my magic as quickly as I had summoned it.
I drew my sword and lashed out at her even as the light disappeared. I hoped cold steel would do what magic could not. I felt the blade meet resistance and then it passed onward. Stepping back I conjured more light. 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
