by Logan Jacobs
Chapter 1
“Maruk!” I shouted over my shoulder. “We could use your help over here!”
I had barely turned back when a harpy dove for my face with its grisly talons outstretched, and I reacted reflexively and smacked it aside with the heavy book I’d picked up moments before. I hadn’t chosen the tome for its potential as a weapon, but it worked in a pinch. The harpy screeched and hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster, then fell with a dull thump and a shower of white powder. Thankfully, it didn’t get up again.
“I’m trying!” Maruk called back from the bottom of the rickety staircase at the end of the room. So many of the boards had rotted away, it had been dangerous enough for Lavinia, Aerin, and I to make the ascent, and Maruk, a seven-foot-tall muscle bound orc and our guild’s shield-warrior, probably weighed more than all the rest of us put together.
As another harpy attempted to dive for us, it was intercepted by a pitch-black hawk, which I knew in an instant was my shapeshifting pet puca, Merlin. He grabbed the harpy in his talons and swerved sharply to slam the trapped monster against a bookcase. There was a heavy, fleshy smack when the harpy hit, and the old wood broke with the impact.
Dozens of books and other relics tumbled to the floor and sent up a cloud of dust that Merlin cut through like a phantom as he swerved back for another attack.
“Ugh! These things reek!” Lavinia complained as she aimed an arrow at the flock, over a half-dozen strong still, above our heads. She released her bowstring, and another harpy fell to the floor with a dark arrow protruding from its throat.
The harpies were each about the size of turkeys, and at a distance, they might have been able to pass as such. It wasn’t until you got up close that you realized that their featherless heads had flat, disturbingly humanoid faces and clumps of stringy hair. Still, they definitely weren’t human. They looked like taxidermy mounts gone wrong, or the type of badly Photoshopped mutant hybrids that would show up on clickbait ads back on Earth.
Unfortunately, they were all too real, and the months they’d spent scavenging this abandoned property hadn’t been kind to them. Their skin was dry, cracked, and covered in sores that oozed yellow pus, and what ragged feathers that they hadn’t already pulled out shedded fine dust like ash wherever the harpies went. Their curved talons were overgrown so much that they could barely walk, but their four-toed feet were covered in dirt and their own slime.
Their heads, especially, were terrible. The skin of their throats was bright red and bumpy which gave the impression that they were wearing collars of raw ground beef hanging around their necks. Their faces were more within the realm of human tones but still mottled with gray and blue, and their actual features, though humanoid, were only just so. The harpies’ noses were all strangely squashed, as though they’d been broken numerous times. Their skin sagged in some places and seemed too tight in others. They had no ears, just holes in the sides of their heads like birds, and their lipless mouths were crowded with crooked, jagged fangs.
As if their appearance and awful shrieking cries weren’t bad enough, Lavinia was right about their smell. It was like raw sewage mixed with rotting meat and mildew, all of which had been left out in the sun for a few days. As I smacked another harpy aside and a shower of that fine gray powder settled down over me, I suppressed a gag and hoped that the odor wouldn’t linger once we’d gotten out of here.
The harpies just kept coming, and as they wheeled to avoid our attacks and dove to slash at us with dirty talons of their own, they screeched and cawed incessantly. It was almost like speech, but it was distorted, as if someone had taken a recording and changed the pitch and speed at random, then played the whole thing backward.
The largest of the harpies and their apparent leader let out a garbled cry as it dove for us, and Maruk made it up the stairs just in time. With a grunt and a mighty swing of one of his gleaming shields, he struck at the harpy.
There was an audible series of cracks as the creature’s hollow bones shattered and its chest caved in, and I caught the expression of absolute shock on its mangled face before it fell to the dusty floor at our feet. Its broken body seemed to deflate then, and blood gushed from an open wound where the molded metal boss of Maruk’s shield had broken the harpy’s flesh.
Only six harpies remained, and once they’d seen their leader fall, they were less inclined to keep up the fight. In their panic, however, they couldn’t make it out the windows to escape very quickly, and Lavinia picked them off easily with a few well-placed shots.
The harpies were hardly more appealing dead, and various bodily fluids leaked from their corpses and formed puddles on the warped wooden floor. Lena, the newest member of our guild and a talented alchemist, crouched down to examine one of the corpses. She didn’t seem to care about the stench, but in the time I’d known the elven woman, I’d realized that there was very little that could overpower her enthusiasm for a unique alchemy ingredient.
“I wouldn’t get too close, these creatures must be absolutely swarming with diseases,” Maruk intoned as his short nose wrinkled in distaste. “Aerin, what are you getting?”
Aerin, our guild’s healer, turned to the orc with an arched brow and brushed back a strand of her bright red hair. “I’m afraid my aura sense isn’t attuned enough to tell what particular litany of plague these things are carrying.” She nudged one of the harpies with the toe of her boot. “Not that I need any special gifts to tell these are basically pestilence incarnate. Anyway, dead things don’t show auras.”
“They came out of nowhere,” I said as I stepped over a puddle of blood and unidentifiable goo that was pooling around one of the harpies. “I don’t sense any special magic about them, it seems like they were just living here.”
Aerin’s gift allowed her to see what sort of magical aura a creature had, as well as tell if someone’s intentions were good or bad or if they were lying, among other things. My own magic wasn’t quite so refined in that respect, but I did have the unique ability to see a creature’s mana and distinguish magical creatures and mages from other living things. The harpies were magical creatures, but there wasn’t anything else special about them that I could make out, no sign of curses or anything, anyway.
Merlin, now back in his natural form, crept up hesitantly to one of the corpses and sniffed at it. Almost as soon as he did, he reared back with an expression of utter revulsion on his catlike face and clambered up to the safety of my shoulder.
“Would have been nice if our dear overlords at the Mage Academy could have been bothered to warn us about the gross monster chickens,” Lavinia grumbled as she pulled her arrows out of the fallen harpies’ bodies. The ranger frowned as blood, pus, and other less easily identifiable substances spewed up from the creatures’ wounds. There were a few dusky feathers caught in her white hair and stuck in the ridges of the dragon’s horns that sprouted from her forehead.
“Maybe they didn’t know,” Aerin put in diplomatically. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway. Let’s just get what we came for and get back to Ovrista.”
“It’s a scroll,” I reminded the others as I made my way over to the books and other paraphernalia that were scattered across the floor. “It might be in a green canister, but check that it has a recipe for a healing potion.”
We spread out across the dilapidated library in search of the proper scroll, but I kept my eye out for other books as well. I was a manipulator, and since the practice and study of my particular magical talent had been outlawed centuries ago after a devastating civil war, I had to rely on lost texts to get any sort of instruction.
That was why we’d taken this bounty in the first place, really. Ordinarily, we would have looked for something more prestigious than a fetch quest to an abandoned library for a sin
gle scroll, but I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity that some of the books and texts that had been left behind here might be useful to my studies, however slim the odds were.
“It looks like they left all the books,” I remarked as I sifted through a few scrolls to see if any were the one that we’d been tasked to recover. “Anyone know why this place was abandoned?”
The bounty documents we’d gotten usually provided us with the necessary information we needed to fulfill the bounty and nothing more. It wasn’t as though I expected a history lesson, but it seemed strange that there was no mention as to why a place like this would be abandoned or why, out of all the texts here, the Mage Academy was only interested in recovering a single scroll.
“I think it was supposed to be cursed,” Aerin replied. “Probably just a rumor, but if this happened right after the war... well, people didn’t want to take any chances.”
“If that was the case, I’m surprised they didn’t burn it down,” I answered as I tucked the scrolls I’d found back onto a random shelf. They weren’t what we needed for the bounty and of no use to me or my guild. “The authorities of the realm have undertaken more drastic measures in the past in the name of keeping people safe.”
“Well, I guess the rumors were enough to keep people away,” Aerin said as she carefully picked through the dust and debris.
“That’s how it is in Morelia,” Lena said solemnly. “People there are very superstitious. Most people believe that if you don’t undo a curse properly, you just make the effects of it worse.”
“Hey, Gabriel, I think I’ve got it,” Lavinia called to me as she jumped down from the desk she’d climbed on to reach the top of a particularly tall shelf. She grinned proudly as she strode over to me and unfurled the scroll she’d found to compare it to the one listed on the bounty documents.
“Yeah, that’s it,” I said as I took the scroll and tucked it safely into my pack. “Good work team, now let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Oh, thank heavens,” Maruk groaned. “That smell was beginning to make me dizzy.”
“Does anyone have any empty jars or vials?” Lena asked. “I’d like to collect--“
Before she could even finish her sentence, the orc rounded on her.
“Don’t even suggest bringing any of that vile stuff back into our home,” he insisted. “It is a shared space, Lena, I implore you to remember that.”
The elf frowned. “I am sorry about what happened to your rug, and I promise, as soon as I develop an appropriate stain-remover, I’ll clean it up.”
“Thank you,” Maruk said with a sniff, “but until then, I must insist that you refrain from conducting your experiments in the parlor and that you do not bring harpy excretions into our guild hall.”
Lena sighed and bobbed her head in a nod. “Alright, alright,” she agreed.
“Which room is the parlor?” Lavinia asked as we filed down the stairs again.
“It’s the sitting room at the back, Lavinia,” Maruk scoffed, exasperated. “Surely you know that.”
The ladona woman cast a glance back over her shoulder. “Why call it that, though?”
“What else would you call it?” Maruk asked. “It’s a parlor.”
“I don’t know, it’s just a room.” Lavinia shrugged. “It doesn’t need a special name.”
“Now what if I said that about all your bows?” the orc countered with a snort.
“That’s completely different!” Lavinia stopped on the stairs, and I almost ran into her as she turned back to face Maruk. “They’re all specialized for different types of shooting, they serve different purposes, you have to be able to distinguish them.”
Just then, the old walls of the library creaked.
“Hey, uh, can we finish the debate when we’re not standing on the decrepit staircase?” I put in.
“There’s no debate,” Lavinia argued, but she turned and continued down to the first floor again.
“She just doesn’t want to admit that she’s wrong,” Maruk said behind me, low enough that Lavinia wouldn’t overhear. I could hear the smile in his voice, though, and I was used to their near-constant arguing. It was all good-natured fun for them, after all.
As Maruk and I joined the others on the ground floor, the building creaked again, and I felt a chill settle in my bones. I knew instantly that the sound wasn’t just the ancient structure settling on its foundation. I couldn’t really explain how I knew except that it was related to my mana sense somehow, but I was as sure of it as anything.
The others noticed the change in my mood, and they all turned to me expectantly.
“Be on your guards,” I warned. “I think there may be more harpies.”
Maruk took the lead then, prepared to draw the attention of any other foes we faced, and Aerin, Lavinia, Lena, and I followed with our own weapons at the ready. Aerin hefted a double-bladed battle-axe that had been blessed by the elven gods, and the shining metal edge glowed softly with the enchantment it held. Lavinia pulled back the set of three arrows already nocked to her bowstring, and Lena kept a loose grip on a pair of small glass jars filled with white smoke. The vapor inside was an invention of her own, and it could temporarily stun just about anything.
As for me, my magic allowed me to control the mana within other creatures, cast illusions, and create weapons out of pure mana. As we walked quietly through the library, I kept my hand on the hilt of the dagger strapped at my waist, prepared to summon a mana blade should any more harpies rear their ugly heads.
The walls shuddered again, and a rain of dust and old plaster sifted down from the ceiling. I realized then that the shaking was coming at regular intervals like something huge was stomping around. The problem was, we’d scoured almost every inch of this place already, and it would have been hard to miss anything big enough that its movement could shake the whole building like this.
The answer occurred to me a heartbeat later. Whatever this was, it must be outside. I wondered if it could possibly be another harpy, though I hated to think of what it would look like if the ones we’d just fought were the babies.
I signaled to the others to wait as I crept to one of the broken windows and took a look out at the overgrown lawn that stretched away from the library. Like the library, the town surrounding it was long abandoned. We’d done a cursory sweep of the area when we’d come in, just to be safe, but the library was on the edge of the town, and on the other side was a forest. The leaves were tinged with gold and red, but enough remained on the trees that it was difficult to see deep into the woods.
The ground shuddered again, and the trees shook in time with it. I could see the leaves rustling as something moved through the forest toward us. I had just opened my mouth to tell the rest of my guild what I’d seen when the monster emerged, and I realized with a feeling of regret that I’d been right... and wrong.
It was a harpy. I’d been right about there being more, but although there was just the one, it was truly the mother of all harpies. The others were the size of turkeys, but this one was as big as a tyrannosaur and as foul as the little harpies had been, this one cranked the ugly up to eleven.
Its face was like a sculpture made of wet lumps of plaster, well, if the sculpture had been run over with a car. Baggy grayish skin and bulbous tumors seemed to drip off its skull, and a particularly massive lump grew over its right eye so that it nearly covered the entire socket. Its teeth didn’t fit in its mouth and jutted out at all angles, and even from here, I could see the bits of its last meal caught between them.
Its feathers were black and shiny like it had been caught in an oil spill, and its wings hung limp and useless at its sides. Its talons were so overgrown that its toes were twisted at grotesque angles as it walked, and the skin of its feet was bloody and covered in oozing sores.
“We’ve got company,” I said quietly, “and it’s not pretty.”
The others came up behind me, and I heard Maruk make a horrified sound in his throat at the sight of the monstr
ous harpy.
“Great,” Lavinia intoned, “I was just thinking how the little ones weren’t awful enough. What’s the plan, boss?”
I watched as the harpy lumbered out of the forest and onto the lawn. Given the recent attack by what I presumed was its brood, I didn’t think this harpy’s appearance now was mere coincidence. Somehow, it must have known we were here. Nevertheless, it didn’t seem as though it knew exactly where we were, and I could already tell that it was too big to fit through the library doors. As long as the building held up, we could use it as a fallback point, but we’d have to engage the monster out on the lawn.
There were enough broken windows and other breaches in the walls that we had a variety of options for exit points aside from the front doors, which was fortunate given that the lawn out front had just become the impromptu set of the world’s worst Jurassic Park remake. We could take a side exit and give ourselves some chance of catching the harpy by surprise. A good first few hits could make all the difference.
“Let’s go out through this window on the right here,” I said as I gestured to a shattered window that overlooked a small garden with a dried-up fountain. “Maruk, you’ll need to get up close and keep it busy. Lavinia, take cover by that fountain, and do what you do best and fill it with arrows.”
The orc and the dragon woman nodded.
“Aerin, keep an eye on Maruk, but try not to get too close. If he needs help, Lena and I will provide a distraction so you can get to him safely.”
I turned to the alchemist. “What all did you bring?”
I knew that in the weeks since she’d joined our guild, Lena had been working with Aerin and Lavinia to develop a variety of concoctions that could prove useful in combat. Her stunning smoke was just one of her inventions.
“I have some incendiary compounds,” the elf answered, and she drew a few round glass bottles from her pack. Each was filled with a bright greenish sludge.
“It reacts to oxygen,” Lena explained. “Just break the glass.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Keep those handy. Let’s go.”
