“My lord, even with all of the dragons that were sent against them, the human race could not have been decimated in a day, or even a year. Do you agree?”
“I do, actually. I've always wondered how seven billion people could have been destroyed by a few thousand dragons and their minions, the drakes. Of course, once technology was rendered useless, that made fighting back almost impossible. Still, that's a heck of a lot of people to wipe out in a very short time.”
“Yes, sir wizard, it is. But you see,” her voice lowered and Simon leaned forward to hear her better, “they weren't wiped out. Not entirely. Some were Changed by the lords of Light, like yourself. Others...well, others were Changed by the gods of Chaos. At least that is my belief and the belief of many of my kind.”
And she reached down and tapped the drawing of the goblin.
Simon hissed between his teeth and drew back in shock.
“You're telling me...”
“I am telling you that your people were not all wiped out. Some were mutated into these monsters.”
“Oh God,” the wizard muttered and covered his face with his hands.
The idea of being Changed into a creature as horrible as a goblin was almost impossible to wrap his head around.
Something occurred to him and he dropped his hands and stared at the air elemental.
“Do they know?” he asked in quiet desperation. “Do they know what they've become?”
“It is...possible, my lord. But if they do, I believe that such knowledge would have driven them mad long ago.”
“Just how many goblins are we talking about?” Kronk asked her.
Brethia only shrugged.
“There is no way to know without doing some sort of census. I would not recommend that. Getting too close to these creatures can only result in the destruction of the one attempting to spy on them.”
She shook her head sadly.
“I believe that is what happened to my companions,” she added.
“Goblins killed them?” Simon asked blankly. “But how? I know how hard it is to harm an air elemental. Physical attacks don't work. Your people can't even be touched by normal weapons.”
“That is true, my lord,” Brethia agreed. “But do not let my illustration lead you to believe that these creatures are mindless beasts; they are not. They are twisted and perverse, but they are not stupid. Goblins can wield power, much like you can. They enchant their weapons with foul, dark magics. And those weapons can harm or even kill elementals, even my people.”
“Is that true, Kronk?” Simon asked, feeling a bit dazed. “No offense, Brethia,” he hastened to add.
She smiled a bit for the first time.
“None taken, my lord.”
“Yes, that is true, master,” Kronk said reluctantly. “There were many stories of goblin magic-users in the old days. There were even rumors that, occasionally, a goblin wizard would rise among them. The wizards back then scoffed at such tales, but then, they were quite an arrogant lot, if you will forgive me for saying so.”
Simon smiled at him.
“From everything that you and Aeris have told me, I believe you. My God,” he muttered to himself. “Magic-wielding goblins.”
“That is not all, my lord,” Brethia said. “Even a horde of goblins does not account for all of the humans that might have escaped the dragon attacks. I believe that the dark gods used your people as, forgive me, raw material to unleash other horrors into this world.”
“Oh great. Like what?”
“I have no idea, sir wizard, but it makes a sick kind of sense, don't you think? Monsters such as ogres, trolls, banshees, dark faeries, pixies; all of these creatures existed in the old days of magic. As did wights and even wraiths. The gods of Chaos want to reshape this world so that they can be released from the Void. The only way to do that is to recreate the world of the past.”
“Damn. And here I thought that all they had to do was eliminate my people and they could just sail back in.”
“No offense, my lord, but that is a rather simplistic notion.”
Kronk frowned at her but Simon nodded slowly.
“I'm starting to see that.” He blinked as a horrible thought caught up with what Brethia had just told him. “Then that means that the wights that attacked us were...Changed humans?”
“Assuredly, my lord.”
The wizard got to his feet, feeling numb, and walked over to stare out of the window near the door. There was a small hole in the thick ice on the glass and he looked out blankly at the bright world beyond.
Brethia's report was a revelation. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, it had always felt wrong that the human race had been decimated so quickly and easily. And now it seemed that it hadn't. What could those damned Chaos lords have turned his people into? Monsters, obviously, but what else?
Uneasily, he realized that the question should be turned on its head; what couldn't they have been Changed into?
Simon rested his forehead on the window for a moment, the cold burning his skin a little. If Brethia was correct, the wights that he had destroyed weren't undead after all; once they had been human. And then they had been twisted and perverted into insane monsters.
He pulled back his head at that thought. Or had the transformation actually sent them into madness? It was a horrible idea that made him shudder.
The wizard moved to the clothes cabinet, took off his boots, left them on the mat next to it and put on his indoor shoes.
“Brethia,” he said as he walked back to the counter to make more tea. “Are you absolutely certain that the other air elementals were destroyed?”
“I am not positive, my lord, no. But we had agreed to meet at the northern border of Mexico, the one from the map you showed us, at a certain time and no one except for myself showed up. I waited many hours, but none returned. We are very punctual; it is part of our nature. I assumed that they did not meet me because they had been killed.”
Simon made his tea, looked at the two elementals and cocked his head to the side.
“Well then, why don't we find out for sure?” he asked them. “Come on, I want to try something.”
Chapter 11
Simone led Kronk and Brethia upstairs and into his study, teacup in hand. He sat down at his desk and the elementals climbed up and moved to stand side by side in front of him.
The wizard opened a drawer, rummaged around inside and pulled out a sheet of paper.
“These are the names of the scouts that went south,” he told Brethia. “Could you show me which ones were with you when you began your mission in Mexico?”
She floated closer and the wizard turned the paper so that she could read it.
“These ones, my lord,” the air elemental said, tapping four names on the list.
“Okay, good. Thank you.”
Simon put down the paper and motioned for Kronk and Brethia to move to his side of the desk.
“Now, let's see what happens,” he said, a fist of tension tightening his stomach.
He looked at the first name on the list.
“Asteer, I need you!” he said loudly.
There was a long moment of silence and Simon saw Brethia's face settle into lines of despair.
He hissed between his teeth and his eyes moved to the next name.
“Orriss, return to me!”
There was no reaction and Simon cursed quietly. His shaking finger slipped down the list.
“Sessa, come back!”
They waited and nothing happened.
“I think you were right, Brethia,” he began to say and then stopped and looked around curiously.
The air in the room began to vibrate and Simon felt pressure in his ears, as if he'd suddenly dropped twenty floors in a high-speed elevator.
“What?”
There was no thunder, no flash of light, but slowly, painfully, a small figure appeared, curled up in the center of the desk.
“Sessa!” Brethia exclaimed and flitted over to the motionless elemental.
She knelt down next to him and gently rolled him over.
Sessa flopped on to his back like a rag doll and lay there, apparently lifeless.
“Is he alive?” Simon asked as he leaned forward, desperately hoping that she would say yes.
“He is, master,” Kronk told him as he knelt next to Brethia, who was examining her fellow elemental. “If he was not, he would not have responded to your summons.”
“Yes, of course.”
As they watched, Brethia placed her hands on either side of Sessa's head and bowed her own. Simon held his breath, wondering what she was doing. He knew instinctively that he shouldn't interrupt, whatever was happening.
The shimmer of light that all air elementals seemed to emit in times of stress slowly drained from Brethia. It traveled down her arms and into the body of Sessa, which began to shudder and shake, convulsing as the power engulfed him.
“Is she healing him?” Simon asked Kronk quietly.
The little guy nodded silently as he watched the procedure closely.
It felt like hours but only a few minutes had passed when Brethia sat back on her heals with an audible sigh of exhaustion.
“How is he?”
She looked up at the wizard and smiled weakly.
“You may ask him yourself, my lord,” she told him.
Simon watched in amazement as the injured elemental lifted his arms to his head in a very human gesture of bewilderment.
“What has happened?” he asked in a surprisingly deep voice. “Where am I?”
“You are safe, my friend,” Brethia told him as she stood up. “You have returned to the wizard's tower.”
Sessa sat up slowly and looked around. He smiled tentatively up at his friend, then he saw Kronk and nodded. The earthen returned the greeting. Finally, the elemental noticed Simon and immediately leaped to his feet, nearly falling over in his haste.
“Easy there,” the wizard said quickly. “You've had a rough time. Take a moment to get your balance.”
“Yes, my lord. Thank you,” Sessa said with a ragged bow. “But I would not lie down before you and shame myself. It is my duty to serve.”
Simon did his best not to roll his eyes.
Kronk's spiritual twin, he thought with faint amusement.
“Serve me? That's fine, if you choose to. But die for me? No way. Now, are you able to tell us what happened to you?”
Sessa put a hand to his head again. He was still standing on the desk instead of hovering above it as Brethia was doing, which Simon assumed meant that he hadn't recovered his strength yet.
“It is very disjointed, my lord. I was assigned to scout the most southern section of northern Mexico. Halfway through my sweep, I came across a very large structure. I had never seen anything like it before.”
“Really?” Simon looked at Brethia. “I thought that you were familiar with those mounds?”
“I am, sir wizard. But Sessa is quite a bit younger than I. He was created long after we were denied the ability to visit this world. He has no experience with such things.”
“Now wait just a moment,” the other air elemental protested. “I have studied with our older brethren. I have learned what I needed to know to become a good scout.”
Wow, Simon thought. The air elementals have a school for scouts? Cool.
“Have you?” Brethia asked. She seemed amused. “So why did you not recognize that structure?”
“I...”
Sessa frowned and looked down. He finally shrugged and looked at them.
“I do not know. I will have to inquire when we get home.”
“Good idea,” Simon told him. “But for the moment, please just tell us what happened.”
“Oh! Of course, my lord. I beg your pardon. But if I may inquire, what were those creatures that I encountered?”
“Goblins. You were attacked by goblins.”
“Goblins,” Sessa repeated in amazement. “So that's what they were.”
He drew himself up and rose from the desk an inch or so, which Simon considered to be a good sign.
“I was on the third day of my mission when I first spotted the mound, my lord. Up until that point, I had seen no signs of life except for plants and trees. And birds; many, many birds. It seems that the flying creatures have survived the depredations of both dragons and goblins down there.”
“There aren't many in this part of the country anymore,” Simon interjected. “But last year we saw a few Canada geese fly by heading north to nest and then, three months ago, a few more flew by to winter in the south. It was thrilling, to be honest. There were more chickadees and robins around last summer as well.”
Sessa waited patiently while the wizard spoke, nodding silently.
“They are surprisingly hardy creatures, it seems,” he said when Simon was done. “At any rate, there were no animals to be seen that did not have wings. It was disquieting.”
He floated slowly over to the picture of the goblin and looked at it pensively.
“I approached the mound carefully, invisible. The one that I encountered was massive, hundreds of feet in circumference and perhaps a hundred feet high. Along the base were numerous round openings leading into darkness, but I avoided them. The warm stench that rolled out of them was revolting; like mounds of rotting corpses and garbage had been left to putrefy in the sun. Instead I made my way carefully to the top of the structure.”
He looked from the elementals to Simon and then pointed at the drawing of the mound.
“That arch on top in the sketch was also atop the one that I was scouting. I was intrigued and wanted to examine it more closely.”
“Oh my friend,” Brethia said gently. “That was such an error in judgment.”
“Yes, I know,” Sessa said and hung his head in embarrassment. “As you and I are the only ones of our kind I see here, I may assume that the others were captured as well, perhaps by being, like myself, overly curious.”
“You were just doing your job,” Simon told him, trying to sound encouraging. “How could you have known how dangerous it was?”
“I should have known, my lord,” the elemental replied wearily. “We all should have known. Brethia is the oldest among those sent to scout. She knew. We should have too. But we did not.”
“At any rate,” he continued, “I made my way to the top of the structure to examine the arch. It was an amazing thing, made of some sort of blue stone, shot through with veins of gold; quite lovely actually. But around the arch were the remains of dozens, possibly hundreds of animals. And not just animals. There were many rotting goblin corpses as well, their chests split open, headless, mutilated in numerous ways. I did not recognize these creatures; if I had, I would have retreated at once.” He sighed. “I should have done so anyway, but I was confused. I wondered why there were bodies lying around the arch, exposed to the daylight. It was very perplexing to me.”
“Ritual sacrifice,” Brethia said flatly. Sessa stared at her in horror. “They use the power released by the physical body at the time of death to infuse their spells with energy. It is the darkest, bloodiest sort of magic there is.”
She looked at Simon.
“Sir wizard, I was pursued by a goblin patrol while I was waiting at the rendezvous point; that is why I was so exhausted when I returned. They used spells to detect my presence and to attack me. It was only by sheer luck that I managed to escape and make my way back.”
She tapped the picture of the mound.
“Goblin magic is crude and weak at best, unless they perform these rituals to boost their power. Then it can be truly dangerous.”
“I see,” Simon said thickly, disgusted by what he was hearing. “Please go on, Sessa.”
“Yes, my lord. Well, I could make no sense of the carnage that I was seeing and finally decided that it might be best to get a safe distance away from something that was so obviously dedicated to the dark gods. Unfortunately, I had waited a moment too long. As I was turning to descend the mound, the arch
began humming; a weird, eerie screech of sound. It was glowing a dirty purple color and I found myself unable to move. Then a streak of this thick, dark light engulfed me and I found myself...elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” Kronk repeated. “You did not know where you were?”
“No. I can only surmise in retrospect that I was transported deep inside of the mound itself. I was bound to some sort of stone table by chains of pure energy and surrounded by creatures very similar to the one in the drawing. They were all gibbering and laughing insanely. The smell was beyond description. The crude walls were decorated with bones and flayed, dried skin and lit with guttering torches. My invisibility had been negated and I was essentially helpless.”
“What happened?” Simon asked as Sessa seemed to be drifting off into the horrible memory.
“Someone else entered the small room. The goblins ceased their capering and hooting and stood back respectfully and let the figure pass. It was another goblin, but this one wore robes of dark red. By the smell, I can only assume that they had been dyed with blood. It held a crooked staff and its skin was hanging in folds off of its face and body. The skin was green, as if the creature was laced with gangrene.” Sessa shuddered. “But it was the eyes, the insane, glowing red eyes, that caught and held my gaze. The magic-user, for that was obviously what it was, began to chant and power lashed me like a burning wire. I have never felt such pain. And over and over again, it kept asking in words that I barely understood where I was from and what I was doing there. Over and over again. And every question was followed by a whip of agonizing power.”
Sessa turned away from them, shoulders hunched, and floated across the desk to hover at the far edge; a sad and broken-looking figure.
“And what did you tell them?” Kronk asked harshly.
Simon looked at him in surprise.
“Kronk, go easy on him. After what he's been through...”
For the first time that the wizard could remember, the earthen ignored him completely. He tapped across the desk, peered into Sessa's face and repeated the question, his expression not one of anger, but of fear.
“Tell them?” the air elemental repeated weakly. He drew himself up, looking almost like Aeris in that moment, proud and bold.
Tales from the New Earth: Volume One Page 133
