by HDA Roberts
Whatever it was, it was in all his major organs, including his brain. If I had to describe it at all, it would be almost like a kind of carnivorous amoeba... only it didn’t look anything like an amoeba.
If anything, the invaders looked like brain cells. Neurons, to be specific. Aggressive neurons; a big head with long tails that were connected to others like them in a terrible, constricting web.
And what they were doing...
It was like he was being eaten alive from the inside out. The organisms (I suppose you could call them parasites) were smaller than standard brain cells, but they were everywhere, shredding his tissues and gobbling up the remains to produce more of themselves, leaving him open for secondary infections, which had taken a further toll.
I reinforced my Shields and banked down to come in for a landing a safe distance away from him. Now that I was watching for those little buggers, I doubted that I could catch them, but I wouldn’t have thought any Magician could, so I wasn’t taking chances.
The stranger threw a second lightning bolt and it barely flickered my Shields. It wasn't all me, though, his attacks were quite feeble and the second hadn’t half the force of the first. It was amazing he'd gotten the range to hit me at all while I was up in the air.
I put up my hands, trying to appear non-threatening, but the man was delirious. He tried to call more energy, but the effort caused something to go terribly wrong in his brain. Weakened arteries and nerves came apart like a ball of wool unravelling. Blood and pus spurted from his nose and he collapsed, dead before he hit the ground.
Even at my best, there was very little I could do to fix that sort of trauma.
The parasites just continued their chewing. They didn’t care that their host was dead. In fact, that seemed to make them even more aggressive. It was horrifying.
Whatever these things were, I needed to find the source and eradicate it fast. If they could do that to a Magician, there was no telling what they could do to a Pureborn.
I walked towards the camp, hoping for a clue as to what had happened.
Mage Sight showed that there were thirty-one living people there, but all of them were afflicted with the same malady as the man who’d attacked me. They were scattered throughout about a dozen tents, set up in a circle around a fire pit lined with rocks; a few embers still alight within. The tents might have been white once upon a time, but they were now so smeared with all sorts of things that it was hard to tell their original colour. The smell was awful, a sickening combination of rot, blood and waste that left me gagging. The worst of the rot-stench came from a pit, dug about a hundred yards to the west, where there were more than a dozen corpses wrapped up in soiled sheets, all of them still disintegrating under the relentless, feeding organisms.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, things got worse as I got closer to the tents. I started to feel something floating around the camp. At first it was completely foreign, but then I started to get little flashes of familiar things, a bit of Flesh Magic here, a trace of something like Telepathy there...
And underlying it all, intelligence. Not sentience, by any means, more like an animal, terribly hungry and vicious, definitely alive.
And alert.
It noticed me.
With no other name for it, I simply started calling the presence ‘the Hunger’ in my head. That was the overwhelming feeling I got from it, so that seemed appropriate. It wasn't smart, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t... stupid, either. It was very hard to pin down in a way that I could actually understand it, but from what little I could tell, it was a collection of those brain-cell-like organisms, linked together in a sort of animated cloud, given animus by Magic.
I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was after, but the hunger practically oozing off it was a bit of a giveaway. It was likely seeking out hosts and raw materials.
That’s what it ‘saw’ the instant it sensed me.
It. Not ‘they’.
One thing that quickly became very clear was that this presence wasn’t an alliance of cells working together, it was a collective of them. Each one added to the whole, millions and millions of them, if not billions, in a connected web; even the ones in the people and the corpses were part of the whole. It was like someone had managed to split a brain into its individual cells and yet allow it to continue functioning, growing, even.
Which led me to a conclusion that rather terrified me. It only took about a hundred billion brain cells to make a human-level intelligence.
What happened when there were that many of them? It could already use Magic, even if in only in a limited, instinctual way...
Before I had the chance to think about that too much, the Hunger surged, and the cloud struck at me like a snake.
It didn’t get very far. My shields were more than proof against them, and an application of my Will sent the tendril back the way it came. The Hunger recoiled from my Magic, slithering back, but I didn’t let it get away entirely. I gathered up a clump of the cells into a static field so I could examine them more closely.
I kept one eye on the greater cloud, in case it should come back, and then I reached out for the organisms I’d captured, letting my new senses seep into them. I also took the time to cast Flesh Sight, the medical version of Mage Sight, which was good for looking into bodies and examining biochemistry.
Even with a clump of them in my hand, and their entire nature laid bare for me to see... I was still stumped.
I tried focussing on a single one.
It was definitely a neuron... and also very definitely not. It shared characteristics with phagocytes and natural killer cells, as well as having certain invasive amoeba-like parts as well. It was like somebody had pulled together all the ways of ripping apart biology and tried to give them intelligence.
And then there was the Magic linking them together, binding the individual parasites in just the right places so as to produce that pseudo neural network, one of them linking to a few more which then linked to more and more. There were only tiny amounts of Magic in each organism, and yet the end result was so terribly complex. And also self-sustaining. The Magic was transferred as the parasites reproduced.
If nothing else about this was impossible, that certainly was. Sure, you could force an Enchantment into a living thing, but actually passing it on from one generation to the next?
Not possible.
And yet, there it was.
It was a truly ghastly bit of Magic, but not just because of what it did. To see such beautiful Spellwork, so intricate and involved, turned towards an act of complete barbarity was truly abominable. I’d never even conceived of something like this. That someone had was terrifying, and if someone could do it once, they could do it again.
Either way, if I’d encountered this thing before Camelot, I might have had real trouble. Only my enhanced Flesh Magic Affinity had let me feel the miniscule Enchantment and stop the things from infesting me. Fighting it from the inside would have been hard work, especially if I hadn’t noticed it was there before it got a foothold in my soft tissues.
Now that I had a basic idea of what I was dealing with, I started moving towards the tents again. Any other investigations could wait until I’d done what I could for the survivors.
I knew a wide variety of Spells that could deal with airborne diseases, and they should be (relatively) easy to adapt for dealing with something like this. I was very grateful that my new Affinities let me cast them more quickly, though. From the look of some of those poor souls, at least half of them would have died in the time it would have taken me to cast them normally.
I started with my handful of the offending organisms. The Magic linking them to the rest of their kin actually made this first part much easier. I took what time I thought I could spare crafting the proper Spell. It was complicated, as I needed to both neutralise the Enchantment giving the network animus, and draw it out of its hosts without causing them too much more harm.
There was also the ad
ded pressure that I dared not leave even a single parasite intact, or they would just spread again.
Finally, I cast my Spell and the first construct darted out into the Hunger’s Enchantment, splitting into dozens of streams, one for each victim, plus more for corpses, spilled fluids and the cloud that was still circling me like a shark would a sickly minnow. The task for this part of the Spell was relatively simple; it just had to locate all the stray pieces of the Hunger and Magically tag them for the second portion of the Spell to work on.
I monitored the patients closely as my Spell entered through their mouths and noses, making its way into lungs, where sub-constructs spread out along all the internal membranes and then into the bodies proper.
Poor bastards. Their tissues were badly shredded, seven of them were on the very edge of death from internal haemorrhaging. I cast a series of Basic Triage Spells down the links. Hopefully that would be enough to keep them alive until I could get to them.
It took a few minutes, but eventually every single invading cell was located and the second part of my Spell went to work. My constructs started drawing the Hunger out of blood, cell and organ using their own link to pull them away. It started as a trickle, until I was sure nothing was going wrong, and then I increased the flow until there was a steady stream of parasites flowing from the victims and into my outstretched hand, where a fireball was waiting for them.
The Hunger may not have been smart enough to fight me directly (thank God), but it knew that something was wrong, and that I was the cause. It started to thrash at me. The cloud coalesced and tried to infest me over and over again in a desperate attempt to stop me from killing it.
When that didn’t work, the individual cells started holding on tighter, burrowing in deeper and latching onto their hosts all the harder. I was having none of it, and increased the power of my Extraction Spells.
As it burned, I felt the presence die, one piece at a time, the intelligence diminishing bit by bit, the hunger replaced by rage and then fear as too many parts of itself were lost, and it was unable to maintain what passed for its mind.
It took about half an hour to clear all of the Hunger away, but, finally, the last of it was ash. I wish I could say that my day was over there, but it was only beginning. I still had thirty-one very sick people to deal with.
I would have called for help, but you wouldn't believe how hard it was to get a mobile signal in the desert. I might have actually gone for help, but with my sense of direction who knew if I’d be able to find the place again before someone died?
I started my work.
I began by going around the most critical cases and placing a Suspension Charm on their bodies. It created something like a protective coma, greatly slowing down all their body functions, one heartbeat every minute, that sort of thing. It bought me time.
My first patient was suffering the worst, on the very verge of expiration. Her insides looked like shredded beef, and the secondary infections would have killed her within the day even if the internal bleeding suddenly stopped.
She was a tall woman, of African descent, much like the Wizard who'd blasted me. Just like him, her skin was ashen where it wasn't covered in weeping, infected sores. She laid in one of the tents on her own, covered in filth, in a coma long before I got to her. I saw through Mage Sight that she was a low-level Sorceress with a Time Magic Affinity, something which was very rare. Including Kron, this made two true Time Mages I'd seen.
Thankfully, she hadn't been starving before becoming infected. She had a little fat on her frame, as well as muscle to spare. The extra resources had likely made all the difference.
I began with her lungs and heart, casting Spells that slowly pulled the torn tissue back together and filled in the holes with fresh cells. While that was working, I sped up her metabolism and reduced her body's inflammatory response, which in turn reduced the stress on her system. Then it was just a matter of fixing the damage one piece at a time.
Healing that poor woman took a long time. I'd never worked on someone who'd had so much wrong with them before. It was like every organ in her body had been chewed on by the Hunger. Fixing the internal bleeding alone took an hour, as I dared not stress her heart by just throwing Magic at her body and hoping for the best.
It took so long that I had to stop and drop two more Suspension Charms into people so they wouldn’t die while waiting for care.
Finally, though, she was healthy enough that I could wake her up. She’d be a bit weak, both physically and Magically, after what she’d been through, but once she’d had a rest and a few good meals, she’d be fine.
I cast the appropriate Spell, and she stirred. Naturally, the first things she did when she opened her eyes were to scream at the sight of me and then kick me in balls.
"Owww! Why?" I squeaked as she skittered away from me to snatch up what looked like a truncated spear with some nasty Enchantments on it.
"Who are you?!" she snarled, suddenly crouched in a fighting stance, that weapon pointed at my neck. Shields popped into place around her soon afterwards, overlapping and powerful. Combat Shields; the woman knew what she was doing.
"The man who saved your life! And seriously, ow!" I was dimly glad that she spoke English, which would hopefully make things easier... once my testicles had re-descended.
She glared at me, and then took an experimental breath. She swallowed, her frame braced for pain. When none came, relief flooded her features, which seemed to confuse her for a moment. Finally, she turned her dark eyes on me and I felt her cast Mage Sight. That impressed me; it was a skill few bothered to learn.
Unfortunately, she took one look at me and panicked all over again, bringing the tent down on us.
I decided to step back from that mess and just go on with my work while she got herself together. I was quite near the flap of the collapsed tent, so getting out wasn't especially hard, nor was finding the next most critical patient.
I decided to treat their two Flesh Magicians next, leaving the critical victims in semi-stasis. I hoped that the Flesh Mages knew enough Medical Magic to help me out with the mess. I'd been at it for four hours already and had only cured one patient, I could only imagine what Cassandra was going to do to me when I got back...
My next patient was also dark skinned, but not quite so dark as Ball-kicker, who was still engaged in mortal combat with the tent, by the way. This one would be pretty when she was healthy again. She was Middle Eastern in ancestry, wearing a scarf around her head which had come loose in what had likely been some uncomfortable thrashing.
She and the other Flesh Mage lay in the two most filled tents, presumably staying with their patients even as they succumbed to the Hunger. Her temperature was horrifically high, but that was easily fixed. Aside from her internal injuries, her biggest problem was a nasty strain of bacteria in the sores that had sprouted in her stomach. That was killing her just as effectively as the Hunger would have. I got rid of them first and then simply repeated what I'd done with Ball-kicker.
By the time I was a quarter done, my first patient had finally disentangled herself and was peering through the tent flap as I worked on her friend (I was just assuming).
"Relax, I mean no harm," I said gently as I moved from my patient's lungs to her liver, which had developed a nasty bleed near the feeding arteries.
"If you did, I doubt I could do anything about it. Are you... are you an Angel?"
"How many angels do you know who have a red eye and pentagram scars on their face?" I asked jovially, trying to put her at ease (I didn’t want her kicking me again).
"I'd imagine at least one might have red eyes," she replied, approaching slowly, like a skittish kitten... with a spear, "and that wasn't a ‘no’."
"Archon, if you must know."
That startled her, and she nearly keeled over again. I had to catch her with a Shadow.
"I met Lady Kron, a long time ago; I know that Archons aren't as strong as you."
"A slight accident with a divine
knife gave me an extra power or two."
Ball-kicker came up next to me and fixed the Flesh Mage's head scarf as well as her dishevelled robes. I paused for a moment to draw the filth and fluids from them, and from Ball-kicker's clothes as well.
"Thanks," she said quietly before gesturing at my patient. "She would not like to wake with a strange man standing over her and her skin on display."
"I understand and I certainly wouldn't want to risk a repeat of your awakening."
I shifted away from my patient's fists and feet, though, just to be safe.
"Sorry about that," she replied.
I shrugged.
Scarf-girl wasn't as badly damaged as Ball-kicker had been, so I was able to place some generalised Regeneration Spells on her and let them work while I went towards the next tent and the second Flesh Mage.
"Can you tell me what happened here?" I asked Ball-kicker, who had followed me.
She nodded towards what looked like the mouth of a cave about a hundred metres away.
"My Lord sought out some ancient mysteries in that cave; brought his whole household out to get it, too. He came out with the... malady."
"Would that be him over there?" I asked, pointing at the man who'd fired on me.
She shook her head, "No, Lord Tarun was the first to pass away. He's at the bottom of the pit over there," she said, pointing at the mass grave.
"Sorry."
"He as good as got us all killed, and for what? Wealth? Power? Idiot. Glad he's dead."
I didn't have much to say to that, so I just made my way into the second large tent. The second Flesh Mage was a young-looking man, maybe twenty-five years old. His short, curly hair was streaked with white, and his eyes were full of blood. He was still shivering and his teeth were chattering, not all the way gone yet. He was even using his powers, though it was more in a last-gasp, automatic sort of way, Magic just ploughing through his body regenerating the wrong things while leaving the major trauma unaffected. Now that the Hunger was gone, though, he may well have healed just fine on his own, given enough time.
