by Eric Vall
“Sounds good,” I told the mayor with a final shake of his hand.
His joy was palpable, and it made me feel a little better about our decision to help. Though we were specifically on a mission to capture Gawain, how could we call ourselves Academy mages if we didn’t stop monsters wherever possible?
We walked onward while the mayor huffed ahead of us at a jog as he ran to his office to make his list of the missing.
“Do we all feel up to fighting?” I asked the rest of the group.
It was odd to stop in a town without dropping our things off at an inn immediately, but I figured we’d rather have all of our gear with us anyways if we were going spelunking.
“Ready for anything!” Layla chirped. “I got such a good rest on the airship.”
Varleth nodded and Cyra agreed with gusto, so I let my worries subside.
The outpost seemed just as quaint as it had been the last time I was here, though I hadn’t gotten a good look. Phi had used a pyrewyrm in a ritual to create a rift that merged the Shadowscape version of the town with the real world version, and the result had been horrific to witness. It was only thanks to the combined efforts of my team that we were able to find the catalyst and close the rift to save the outpost.
Varleth had been in the thick of things to close the rift. Cyra and Maelor were visiting Bathi Highlands at the time, so I’d been sick with worry that the two of them would be killed before I even arrived with the rest of the response team, but they’d held their own pretty well.
“What do you think?” I asked Cyra. “You and Maelor originally came here to visit the crystal caves. You said the attack started while you were inside one, even. Could a rift have formed inside the tunnels? Or maybe the crystals are unstable, and the monsters inside are getting released?”
“Hmm,” Cyra murmured thoughtfully. She reached to her shoulder with an absentminded gesture, and Kalon emerged from her thick curls to nuzzle her finger. “Kalon here is from the crystal cave, but I imagine she would’ve stayed in her crystal forever without a summoner to release her. No ordinary jostle or drop is going to summon a monster, so I doubt a cave-in could’ve released them. It takes mana to pull a monster from a crystal.”
“Oh, right,” I realized sheepishly. “So, a summoner would have to intentionally use magic to release them all. Seems unlikely.”
“I’d bet money on a rift,” Varleth said. “Away from moonlight, it might even be able to stay open every night, too.”
“That’s possible?” I asked with wide eyes.
The banisher shrugged. “I’m not a scholar, so I don’t actually know.”
I sighed but filed away the potential of a night rift. It meant if we were out past sundown, we should avoid sleeping in the caves, or we might not wake up alone, if at all.
The statue the mayor had mentioned was a small, impressive, marble sculpture of a miner holding an enormous crystal in one upraised hand. The plaque beneath it detailed the historic discovery of the mines as a grand advancement for the technology of all of Mistral. Varle Enclave benefited the most, since crystals from the Bathi Highlands mine powered its trains, lifts, and biggest airships.
“What’s it like in there?” I asked Cyra with a gesture toward the mountains.
She tilted her head. “Most of the crystals are empty, like the ones we use to capture new monsters. Some of them have monster essence in them, so those would be used to power things. Did you notice the lights around this outpost aren’t gas-powered?”
I hadn’t, in fact, but now that I looked at the fixtures along the nearby street, they did seem much more complex than usual. It was funny how even a relatively tiny place like this could afford some of the richest luxuries just because of its resources.
“Right,” I said with a nod. “And crystals with monsters themselves are the rarest? It’s just like when you defeat them, I suppose.”
“Exactly,” Cyra said with a smile as she petted the silver and pink dragon on her shoulder. “I got lucky with Kalon, here.”
The mayor arrived shortly with a piece of parchment fluttering from one hand as he wheezed up to us. He also had a new leather bag slung over one shoulder that clunked noisily at his side.
“Here’s the list I promised,” he rasped.
I took it and scanned the cramped, messy writing, but the descriptions seemed good. They included ages and facial features as well as hair color, height, and identifying items like painted miner’s hats or unique bags.
“Wow, this is very detailed,” I complimented.
“I care about my people,” the mayor said as he puffed his chest out. “I’ve been getting ready for you mages to arrive, but I had to find things to do from my office. I also have these for you.”
He reached into his bag and handed over two small gas-powered lamps and a stack of hard miner’s hats with a circle of round glass at the front of each one.
“What do these do?” Layla asked as she peered over my shoulder.
“They’re powered by crystals,” the mayor explained. “Flick the switch on the side, and they light up just like lamps.”
I handed the hats out to my team and gave Varleth one of the gas lamps, then put the other into my bag along with my hat.
“Thank you,” I said in surprise.
Maybe I’d underestimated this mayor. The man was no fighter, but he really cared, and I was sure this was the only thing he’d focused on for the past few weeks.
As if to underscore my point, the mayor wasn’t quite done giving us things, and he rummaged inside his coat for a while before he pulled out a small leather pouch.
“Here,” the mayor said as he handed the pouch over with a telltale jingle of coins. “This is for your trouble, it should cover the airship at least.”
“Oh, you don’t have to,” Layla said sweetly.
We all tried to refuse, but the mayor wouldn’t let us leave until we’d accepted the money. It would actually help to replenish our funds that had slowly drained during the chase after Gawain, so I took it with an aggrieved sigh and tucked it safely inside my travel bag.
We thanked the mayor, said our goodbyes, and turned to start our journey into the mountains.
It wasn’t a far walk, maybe a little over a mile, but as we drew near, the Bathi Highlands seemed more and more appropriately named. The mountains stabbed into the sky like a row of teeth, and the tallest of them even had stark, snowy lines near the top where no trees grew.
Layla whistled and pointed excitedly ahead. “That must be the cave mouth!”
“There are more openings than just this one,” Cyra informed us, “but I think this is the most popular one. It’s a good place to start.”
I turned to ask her which one she’d found Kalon in, but I was distracted by a flash of movement over her shoulder.
“Get down!” I yelled as I pulled Cyra off her feet just as a bandersnatch soared over our heads with gnashing teeth and a long, purple tongue that dripped with drool.
The monster landed and snarled at us as it exposed an abnormally large muzzle filled with small, yellowing teeth. A thin layer of wiry, black fur covered the bandersnatch’s back, and the hide that showed beneath was purplish and tough. It had long legs and curling claws that scraped deep furrows into the earth as it moved.
Varleth and Layla surged back out of their crouches and readied their weapons. Layla threw down the crystal for her hyppocrans, which emerged with a roar and a whirl of smoke, while Varleth unsheathed his blade and coated it in dark, swirling essence.
The bandersnatch snarled and leapt unwisely at Varleth, but he neatly sidestepped and cleaved its head from its body.
The head rolled a few feet before it stopped, and we turned expectantly to the thicket where the bandersnatch first emerged. Layla’s hyppocrans crouched in preparation, and I threw out my roosa crystal to join it.
My scorpion monster emerged with a chitter, and its metallic body gleamed in the sunlight. It was raring to tear up some enemies, and it snapped its
claws in anticipation.
But nothing happened.
“Maybe that was the only one,” Layla suggested.
Then the bushes rustled, and a fat, froglike head emerged in front of a serpentine body. Gray scales glittered in the dappled sun, and two sickly green, muscular arms knuckled across the ground from right behind the head. It moved with an unnatural jerky slither that made me shudder in response.
“A gray prowler,” Layla squeaked.
I hadn’t seen one of these since my first few weeks at the Academy, when my summoning teacher, Rori, brought one out to fight against me. At the time, he’d been overconfident and drunk, and I’d managed to defeat his monster with nothing more than wallerdons and daggerdillos.
The gray prowler was a rare and terrifying sight, but I knew I could beat it.
A shrieking roar split the air like a dying sheep, and I slapped my hands over my ears. It was the classic sound of a gray prowler, but it emerged from the bushes to our left.
The one in front of us hadn’t made the sound.
All at once, the fight exploded into motion as gray prowlers shrieked and lunged from the bushes around us. I lost count at six as I spun around to look, but there must have been at least ten.
I threw out wallerdon crystals in a hasty handful as I tried to stop the ambush, and several gray prowlers slammed into my monsters.
One prowler slipped through, and it unhinged its jaw before it stretched its slavering, leathery tongue toward Layla’s neck.
My roosa slammed into the attacking prowler before it could take another step. The roosa’s metallic pincers seized the monster behind its muscled arms and ripped through its greenish flesh like saw blades through wood.
“Nice work, Gryffie!” Layla cheered me on.
I wasn’t done yet. Another prowler slipped past to get at Varleth, but Kalon met it with an impressive roar.
She’d grown to a size about halfway between my roosa and the prowlers, but it was still plenty big. She clamped her fangs over a prowler’s neck as it spattered sizzling acid from its mouth to the ground. It twisted its serpentine body in a frighteningly powerful motion and tried to attack with its rows of tiny, sharp teeth, but Kalon tightened her grip over the prowler’s neck.
Then the dragon unfurled her pink wings and flapped them in powerful beats that sent my cloak fluttering. To my astonishment, Kalon began to rise into the air with the prowler still in her grasp.
“How’s that possible?” I exclaimed despite myself.
“Magic!” Cyra answered with a grin, and I shook off my stunned reaction to turn my attention back to the fight.
The wallerdons would soon not be enough to keep the wickedly fast prowlers from reaching us, so I threw out my kalgori with a command to multiply and encircle us. Usually, I would tell the butterflies to swarm an individual enemy, but I was getting better at controlling them. I kept them from turning their hungry knives on my team inside their radius, and I commanded the kalgori to attack anything from the outside that tried to enter.
My whirlwind of kalgori rotated quickly, and within a few moments they turned into a flashing shield of razor-sharp knives. Inside the whirlwind, my roosa, Layla’s hyppocrans, and the four of us humans waited in complete safety while the gray prowlers stalked the perimeter as they searched for an opening.
One decided to take its chances, and it slowly inched toward the storm of blades with its muscled arms stretched out. The kalgori surged to meet it while they snapped their metal-edged wings, and the gray prowler shrieked as it pulled back its bloody, slashed fists.
My shield worked like a dream.
I grinned and celebrated with Layla as we high fived. Cyra came over to share in the victory, and she directed us to look up to the sky with a point of her index finger.
There, Kalon flew with the gray prowler still in her grasp. She’d gotten far enough upward that I could barely see the details of either monster, but the gray prowler still thrashed weakly as it tried to escape.
Kalon granted her victim’s wish as she released her fangs and talons from its neck. The gray prowler plummeted like a stone and shrieked the whole way down before it impacted the ground with the audible crack of bones, and we all winced at the grisly sound.
“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Varleth commented blandly.
Cyra winked back. “Kalon’s pretty incredible, isn’t she? This ought to be a piece of cake.”
Of course, as soon as she said those words, two prowlers took their chances simultaneously and leapt with bloodcurdling howls straight through my kalgori wall.
They came out the other side bloody yet mostly unscathed, and we stumbled back in a panic as they turned their yellowed eyes to us. I could hear the prowlers’ acid sizzle as it dribbled sluggishly from their distended jaws.
One snarled and surged for Layla and Cyra, and I stepped in front of the girls as I tossed out a handful of daggerdillos. Their crystals shattered against the prowler’s face, and one crystal even slipped past its wide jaws to disappear down its throat. Metal spikes sprouted like deadly flowers as my daggerdillos emerged from each crystal, and the prowler gargled in pain as the one lodged in its throat punctured through the soft flesh inside.
It collapsed at our feet as it died, and I pulled out my rhin dagger to finish it off with a quick slice to the monster’s neck.
I turned to take care of the other one, but Varleth and Layla’s hyppocrans already had it covered. The hyppocrans raked at the gray prowler’s back with its snake-like jaws, and it held the struggling monster in place while Varleth circled it. With a precise strike of his swirling blade, the banisher sliced a deep cut across the prowler’s flesh, and it collapsed as the life force drained from it.
It must have been pretty handy to not have to inflict a serious blow in order to take a monster down. I realized using his sword like that drained mana, but I was still impressed by the power a banisher could wield with their dark magic.
I examined the prowlers outside my kalgori shield and counted only four remaining. They clumped in a pack like wild animals, and I considered possible ways to get them to seperate. We had little hope of killing them safely if they stuck together.
“Can Kalon actually breathe fire?” I asked Cyra.
“Oh!” the tawny-skinned summoner replied. “Just a bit, but she hasn’t mastered the skill yet, so it mostly comes out as lots of smoke.”
“How about you smoke those prowlers out?” I requested.
She grinned and agreed, so we watched as Kalon swooped low over the prowlers as she opened her mouth. Smoke billowed forth at an impressive rate, and I caught a few hints of sparking flame within, but it was nothing that would damage the gray prowlers.
Still, no living creature with lungs enjoyed breathing in an enormous cloud of smoke, so the prowlers scattered with growls and shrieks. The wind from my kalgori swarm mostly kept the cloud from reaching us, but I still coughed a little into my elbow.
“Now!” I hollered as I dropped my kalgori shield.
A prowler emerged from the smoke with eyes that wept fluid as it shook its head in confusion. Layla’s hyppocrans met it with a snap of its snakelike teeth, and my roosa punctured it in quick jabs on the other flank as it attacked with the venomous stinger on the end of its tail.
The prowler collapsed as the venom slowly took hold, and our monsters left it to die on its own.
Another prowler shot out from the smoke blindly as it shrieked in irritation. I directed my kalgori to take care of it, and they flittered to surround it in a storm of voracious bloodlust. A number of my monsters perished in their onslaught, but the few that remained finished off the carcass and left the gray prowler as nothing more than a pile of bones and cartilage.
Once the kalgori got a real taste for blood, they always seemed more difficult to command precisely, and I didn’t want them going after one of my allies. So, I recalled them and focused on the billowing smoke as it cleared.
Nothing moved, and I furrowed my
brow in concentration. Then two prowlers burst from the cloud and lunged for me in tandem as if they’d planned and coordinated the attack.
I summoned my bullet bass and coated myself in metal just as one of the serpentine monsters lunged for me. I dodged its mouth, but the monster twisted and snaked its coils around me like a python.
It began to squeeze shut in a dangerous vice that threatened to crush the air from my lungs.
I gasped as I reached for my two daggers, and my hands trembled as I managed to barely maneuver the blades into position.
The sharp daggers cut deep into the gray-scaled flesh around me, and the gray prowler hissed in pain as I sliced open twin wounds in its soft underbelly. Its grip around me loosened slightly, and it gave me the space I needed to reach the speed slug crystal at my side.
I slapped the speed slug on the back of my neck and used the boost to vault myself out of the tightly coiled prowler. It snapped at me as I left, but I used my extra speed to avoid the teeth and the splatters of acid that flung from its maw.
I landed on solid ground without a stumble and returned at a sprint to fight from behind my roosa. Then I ripped the slug from my neck and transferred it to my monster, who leapt forward with terrifying velocity as its pincers snapped at its prey.
The gray prowler that had nearly crushed me was no match, and it barely managed to lift a muscled fist before my roosa bowled it over with a flash of metallic pincers. The prowler struggled as my roosa’s claws bit down into its torso, and its snakelike body thrashed in death throes as it perished.
In its last moments, acid gushed from between its jaws and spattered across my roosa’s body, which took us both by surprise.
My roosa chittered in pain as the acid ate through its chitinous body, and I recalled my monster with a mental thanks for all its hard work.
I turned my attention to the final gray prowler, but there was no need. Its elongated ribcage had been crushed by the heavy blows of the hyppocrans’ forelegs, and dragon claw-marks marred its face. As I stared, Varleth attempted to extract his banisher blade from the prowler’s skull, where the sword was buried directly between the monster’s eyes.
