by D M Fike
The clouds above became thick and navy blue, creating a nighttime ambiance in the middle of the day. As raindrops hit my hoodie, I drew a triangle with overlapping waves to keep dry. My bare arms and legs brushed against rocks whenever possible, gathering earth pith as a stabilizing presence in my pithways. My pulse quickened with this renewed energy. When a bright flash detonated in my periphery vision, I knew it was time.
The storm had begun.
The first rumble of thunder followed after several dozen seconds, still many miles away. I turned toward the flash, and the rolling clouds instantly rewarded me with violet sparks high up in the air. The wind picked up, lending me extra air pith as it hit my face. I squinted against the dust that rose in the air, which sharpened my focus just as a branched lightning strike hit the ground. The earth trembled from its vibrations, and it only took a handful of seconds now for the accompanying sonic blast to jolt my eardrums.
Ba-Boom!
This was it. I spread my legs apart in a sigil stance, planting myself firmly into the dirt. My rubber-soled boots wouldn’t exactly stop the lightning from bursting out the bottom of my feet, but it did give me a little added electrical resistance. I raised both hands in front of me, stretching my fingers out toward the approaching lightning. I reached for those unbearable pinpricks of light, thunder roaring all about as the storm surged toward me.
Straightening my shoulders, I opened my pithways to absorb the lightning.
I only intended to siphon off a little, not absorb a whole strike like I had with the whale. I breathed methodically in and out like Guntram had taught me, attempting to calm the various pith flows inside me, but like before, it did little good. Unlike the other elements, lightning demanded full range of my functions. The jolt sizzled and cracked as it entered my pithways, consuming my senses. Every fiber of my being hummed with static electricity, and I could hear mini booms inside my blood. When my vision went stark white, I had to release it before it tore apart my body. I painstakingly etched the sigil I had learned the night before—an intricate cross with dozens of lines bursting on top—then set my sights on a rock pile not far away.
They say Thomas Edison discovered 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb. While I had a long way to go to match his record, what I lacked in numbers I made up for in pure spectacle.
Instead of a controlled blast, lightning shot out of each of my fingers, zipping about in all directions. They zigzagged across the desert—two arching back upwards, two others striking various boulder formations and smashing them to pieces, and one striking the ground near my feet.
The combination of the nearby blast and the release of all that lightning pith sent me flying backward out of control.
I zipped through the air for several horrifying seconds, air whistling past my ears. Fortunately, the desert plains were full of hardy sagebrush, and I landed squarely in one of them. Hard. I kept my mouth hanging open like an idiot, bits of plant brushing as far back as my uvula. In case you were curious, sagebrush tastes like an old mop after you’ve cleaned the kitchen floor.
I lay there stunned for a few minutes, senses all out of whack. The storm pounded overhead, pelting fat drops over every square inch of my body. The effects of my dryness sigil had vanished in my stupor. I couldn’t see much except for the gyrating strobe lights above, everything else a dull rumbling in my deadened ears. Add in some bad dubstep, and I could have been a drug addict at a rave.
Even though I wanted to get up, I knew better than to stand. This wasn’t my first rodeo. I’d been in this very same ridiculous situation before. I once got up too quickly and collapsed, hitting my forehead on a rock. I was passed out for hours. When I returned to the homestead with a concussion, Guntram wouldn’t let me out of his sight for a month.
Instead of standing, I slid down to the ground, spreading my bare legs and arms out like a starfish in the mud. This allowed me to absorb a maximum amount of earth pith below, air pith above, and rainwater all around. As the storm slowly drifted away, those natural elements pooled where the lightning pith had fried my pithways. My full eyesight came back. Then my hearing. As I combined the other three elements to form fire pith, the rain died down to a dribble, the sound of thunder distant on the horizon.
With the storm now gone and my senses back, chills ran up and down my spine. I used my index finger to draw a triangle with a cross over the top, channeling my fire pith to send a flood of comforting heat throughout my extremities. I may not be awesome at fire magic, as my awful attempt at manipulating the fire sigil to contain lightning demonstrated, but inner heat’s a pretty basic sigil. Shepherds would die of exposure on a daily basis if they didn’t master that one right away.
My brain jumpstarted as my body temperature rose to a comfortable level. I finally rose to my feet, aching all over from electrocuting myself. Despite feeling like someone had wrung me out like a towel, it wasn’t all bad. The rubber soles of my boots had remained intact, so I didn’t need to buy new ones. I drug my sorry carcass back in the direction of the wisp channel, my limp relatively light. I retrieved my phone from under the pine needles where I’d buried it, then thought about my next pit stop. More than anything, I wanted to go back to the homestead and soak in the hot spring, but that would raise Guntram’s bushy eyebrows.
Time for Plan B.
It only takes fifteen minutes via two wisp channels to get from Derrick Cave to East Lake, one of two twin bodies of water inside a nearby caldera. The lake held a natural water source that, while diluted, could still heal shepherds with its magma-fueled waters. I avoided the lake’s campgrounds and found a secluded spot on the western shore to strip off my clothes. As my exposed skin soaked in the water, the soreness caused by the lightning pith slowly ebbed from my nerves. I continued to absorb all four types of pith to recharge my depleted resources, even the natural fire offered by geothermal energy.
I would have stayed the better part of the day, but the beach was closer to the campground than I had calculated. Some jerk with a modified sports car decided to rev his engine several times to compensate for his small genitalia. I couldn’t risk getting caught skinny-dipping. I finally lifted my aching bones back to shore and got dressed, wishing the whole time I could use earth pith to shove that stupid car off the road. Shepherds don’t abuse their magic like that.
Besides, I had stuff to do, much as it pained me.
CHAPTER 6
WITH A SENSE of déjà vu, I found myself back at the cliffside where we first saw the possessed whale. I may have some authority issues, but I needed to finish drawing defensive sigils at Cape Perpetua. After nibbling on half a hard tack (yuck) to quiet my rumbling stomach, I took a quick survey of the forest without defensive sigils and groaned. There was easily three days’ worth of work for two people, stretching over several miles of coastline. As usual, Guntram made it sound so easy, vastly underestimating how long it would actually take a newb like myself to accomplish.
Well, these sigils wouldn’t draw themselves. There was nothing to do but plug away. I slapped a palm onto the ground and absorbed earth pith, then released that energy as overlapping circles on several landmarks. I repeated this process over and over again, my mind going numb as the morning dragged into the afternoon. By the time I stopped for lunch, my index finger ached from rubbing against bark and rough stone, and my back protested from bending over so much.
“Squat at the knees, you doofus,” I chastised myself as I plopped against a tree. “You may look like a teenager, but you’re not thirteen anymore.”
Even though it did nothing for my palate, I wolfed down the rest of the nuts and hard tack. I knew enough about edible wild plants that I could have foraged for food but decided against it. I figured food would give me a reason to return to the homestead if I hadn’t finished all the defensive sigils tonight.
As it turned out, I wouldn’t need a lame excuse. A perfectly good one manifested itself in the form of howling seals.
I heard them not long after lunch. With an o
ffice like the coastline, I normally ignored the chatter of seals as background noise. They occasionally congregate on offshore rocks or sandy beaches to chillax out of the water. Even so, they rarely screech like they were doing now. It reminded me too much of Ronan’s calls for help.
I braided through the dense underbrush toward the ocean. Once there, I couldn’t see them, only hear their echoing barks to my left. I cut a path toward their cries, which morphed into a mad dash as the squeals crescendoed in terror.
Something was definitely not right.
The cliffs had sloped downward almost to the shore before I found them on a remote beach with no roadside access. Dozens of them herded together underneath an archway of weather-beaten stone, hemmed in by low tide to the west and the forest to the east. Most of them raised their blubbery heads, a sign of alarm, as they flailed and shouted at one another. I couldn’t pinpoint what had startled them, but I did make out an enormous gray coat with bright blue lines and stubby antlers in the center of the mass. Ronan was guarding the herd. That wasn’t so strange, since that’s what dryants do, but usually their presence calms the other animals, not agitates them. I couldn’t figure out why the seals were freaking out.
I cupped my hands over my mouth. “Ronan!” I called. “What’s up, big fella?”
The dryant seal arched his large head above the others, eyes wild with panic. He let out a distressed yowl, then flung his flared nostrils to point toward a spot in the pod where the seals seemed strangely frozen in place, unmoving statues in mid-bark.
That’s when I caught sight of a slithering lizard tail. A spiky red crown bobbed among the frozen seals, a faint clicking reaching my ears.
Another cockatrice.
It made absolutely no sense. I’d already banished the enormous cockatrice, and with the Sassy Squad working on closing the breach, they should have spotted any newcomers long before now. This cockatrice was so small, though, barely larger than a baby bunny. Perhaps it had slipped past unnoticed due to its size.
“Time for a chicken fry.” I crouched low to the ground, gripping a handful of sand to absorb more earth pith into my pithways. I slowly edged along the outside of the seal herd, my back to the sea, trying to get as close to the cockatrice as possible. The vaettur hadn’t spotted me yet, and if I kept it that way, I’d banish the little sucker before it even realized I was there.
I approached as close as I dared without breaking into the seal pod. The cockatrice darted in between the frozen seals, snapping at them with its beak, but unable to break their skin with its feeble bite. I slowly rose, index finger drawing half of a five-pointed star in the air.
“Hey, you!” a voice yelled across the panicked seals. “Get away from there!”
Startled, I glanced up to find none other than Vincent Garcia emerging from the tree line on the southern end of the beach. He must have passed his MRI because, besides the black eye, he looked as good as new in his ranger uniform. He dashed like a Hollywood superhero toward me, windswept hair and all.
The cockatrice also noticed his heroic entrance. It lifted a scrawny chicken neck and released a rapid series of clicks at Vincent. This put me in its periphery, and it suddenly whipped its fixed gaze in my direction. The earth in my pithways froze as its clicks rose to a goosebump-raising level, but it couldn’t stare at both Vincent and me at the same time. As it peered back over at Vincent, my body lightened and I could move again.
I took the opportunity to lunge straight into the herd for it.
Recognizing its poor strategic position, the cockatrice launched itself in the air, hooked wings outspread to catch a breeze. It got lucky and spiraled into the forest toward the north, away from me.
“Just peachy,” I hissed as I ran in pursuit. The park ranger had the absolute worst timing. The frozen seals resumed their normal movements with the cockatrice gone, which was good, but that also meant more fluid flesh to dodge as I chased the squawking vaettur.
Ronan understood my dilemma and threw his head backward almost parallel to his spine, sending out a great roar which galvanized the frightened seals. They created a path for me so I didn’t trip over them.
“Stop!” Vincent yelled, now at the edge of the seal pod. “You need to answer some questions!”
“Thanks!” I saluted Ronan as I passed. “Think you can take care of our bumbling friend back there for me?”
Ronan turned his attention to the incoming Vincent, belting out a rapid series of barks like a goofy, flippered tee ball coach. The harbor seals nearest to Vincent suddenly flung themselves in his path like oversized beanbags. The ranger wobbled as if he’d had too many beers, dodging the flopping animals, a difficult task as more piled on in his direct path.
“Seal you later!” I called to the trapped ranger as I ducked into the forest. Just because I had a vaettur to catch didn’t mean I would waste a totally good pun.
The small cockatrice had a good head start, but its fear made it erratic and noisy. It clicked as it clawed its way through the canopy, swaying branches marking its path. It headed uphill, back toward my recently drawn defensive sigils. I didn’t expect any protective sigil to stop a vaettur with the power to burst through a breach, but if I was lucky, they could slow it down.
I watched my theory play out a few minutes later as the cockatrice flew toward a Sitka spruce I had emblazoned. The vaettur whizzed by it, a wing brushing against its bark almost a hundred feet up. I expected the vaettur would slow down, or at best, flinch as if stung by a bee.
The cockatrice emitted a high-pitched whistle of surprise as it crashed to the forest floor. It writhed on the ground, clicking faster than an expert typist on a keyboard, obviously in severe pain.
I should have banished it right then and there, but I paused. Why had a simple defensive sigil hurt this vaettur so much? I’d observed other vaetturs hit a defensive sigil and not so much as blink. Maybe it had to do with its size? The previous cockatrice had been gigantic, but size doesn’t always correlate with magical ability with vaetturs. Besides, anything that could get through a breach shouldn’t be this fazed.
I took too long pondering this mystery. I heard another click, but this time a mechanical one directly behind me.
“Freeze!” Vincent yelled several yards away. I slowly shifted my head to find myself on the wrong end of a handgun barrel.
I threw my hands up in frustration. “Seriously, man,” I grumbled. “Back off!”
Vincent took a half-step forward, inching the gun closer. “I said freeze! That’s an order from the police!”
Although I’d never been shot at, Sipho had reassured me a long time ago that my defensive charm could protect me from most physical harm, even a bullet. Still, I wasn’t keen on testing it out right at the moment. I kept my hands up where Vincent could see them.
“You’re just a park ranger,” I told him. “You can’t arrest me.”
“I’m a game warden,” Vincent corrected me, an edge of anger to his voice. “In Oregon, that means I’m a state trooper.”
I examined his beige ranger hat and uniform. “You don’t look like a cop.”
A snarl rose in his throat. “I have different uniforms for different duties. This one’s for investigating illegal hunting activity. And now that you’ve shown up conveniently within yards of two unnaturally deceased animals, I have a right to detain you for poaching.”
“Poaching?” I allowed myself a chuckle. “You think I somehow managed to hunt a sperm whale without a boat?”
Vincent readjusted his stance. “I think it’s too convenient that you were around at all. Just like you showed up in the middle of those harbor seals after I found a dead one a half mile away.”
A dead seal? With the Sassy Squad running around? “How did it die?”
“I’ll ask the questions here.” Vincent took a slow step toward me. “Like why did you show up at the hospital? Were you hoping to intimidate me?”
This time I let out a full-on belly laugh. “You sure think a lot of yoursel
f. I have no reason to hurt a nobody like you.” I could tell I was making him mad when his ears turned red, but it’d been a helluva day and I didn’t particularly care. “If you must know, I wanted to make sure I hadn’t killed you with the lightning strike because I didn’t need that on my conscious.”
“Are you suggesting that you somehow summoned lightning?” Vincent sneered. “With what? Magic?”
“I don’t care what you believe.” I caught movement in my peripheral vision. The cockatrice had finally gotten its bearings, rising to all four legs. It arched its back like a cat, hissing as its wings billowed behind its head, fluffing itself up to appear bigger. That wasn’t nearly as effective as its gaze, which I could feel weighing my earth pith down to a near standstill.
Vincent must have experienced it too because he yelled very languidly, as if on slow playback, “Whaaaaaat issssssss thisssssss?”
I couldn’t tell him it was an invisible monster messing with his inner pith, which all life contains. I focused instead on the vaettur itself, my fingers almost frozen in my prone ‘hands-up’ position. I jerked my entire arm and managed to break it from the vaettur’s hold from the elbow down. I quickly sketched a five-pointed star with what little pith I could still access and flung it forward, not thinking it would be enough.
But it did the trick. The cockatrice clicked one last time before evaporating into a plume of smoke. That tiniest bit of pith had banished a vaettur. But if the cockatrice was so weak, how had it traveled to Nasci’s realm in the first place?
I didn’t have time to contemplate this contradiction as a loud boom issued behind me.
Sipho was half-right about her defensive charms stopping a bullet. Although it technically didn’t penetrate the skin, it ricocheted off my barrier, transferring a painful pinpoint of energy into a concentrated spot on my right shoulder. It knocked me to the ground at the same time as the defensive charm around my neck shattered into several metal splinters.
I let out a string of curse words as I fell, clutching the beginnings of a humongous bruise along the whole right side of my body.
