by Deck Davis
“The Black World?”
“Beyond the sky. Some people call it the Aurae. There’s a whole bunch of mages that worship it. It’s all dung-scented hokum. To me, it’s just a big, black, nothingness.”
The Black World must have meant space. Or whatever passed for space here. That was interesting. It led to the question of where the world of Sarametis actually was; did it occupy the same universe as earth, but at a different point? If that were the case, it meant there could be another way home. One that didn’t involve portals. All he’d have to do would be to master rocket science and astrophysics, and then build a spacecraft. Easy.
Ridiculous escape plans aside, there were issues from a biological standpoint. How could Jake breathe the air here? Sure, with an infinite number of planets it was likely some of them would have oxygen rich atmospheres, but how likely was it that an alien planet would have an atmosphere so similar to Earth’s that Jake didn’t feel the slightest discomfort when he breathed? And how come everyone here was able to see stats about their life and level up and that kind of thing?
“Faei,” he said.
She stared into the fog as though her spectral archer sight could penetrate it. “We better get moving.”
“I just have a question. A simple one, really. Should only take a sec to answer.”
“Okay….”
“What’s the deal with everything on this planet?”
“Is now the time for this?”
“How come everyone in Sarametis has classes and skill levels and everything?”
Faei looked at him in a way he hadn’t seen before. “I actually never thought to ask that. It’s just something that we grow up with, you know? It always has been, always will be. You get your class when you’re a year old, and that’s it for life.”
“You’re born with it? I guess that means it must be something in your body when you’re born. Or something in the air, maybe. There has to be a reason.”
“We better move, Mr. Philosopher. Save the tough questions for Cason.”
“So that he can tell me to piss off?”
“Exactly.”
When she was right, she was right. It was better to leave the big questions for now and focus on getting the herbs Cason needed.
Jake couldn’t see much in front of him aside from the curved pit where the meteor must have hit. The thick layer of fog made it difficult to pick anything out.
“I know this looks bad,” said Faei, “but worse things happened on the mainland, trust me. Have you heard of the Barren East?”
“Cason might have mentioned it. Or maybe I saw it on the map in the shack.”
“It used to be a Tropicana. It was flourishing, and rammed full of mana-cities. Then, there was an accident. Some people think it was a bomb, but if it was, it must have been the biggest bomb ever made. They say a burning flash of light passed through the land and ripped everything apart. Then, smoke rose up and covered the sky for miles around. Some people say it was shaped like a mushroom.”
A mushroom cloud? Did that mean it was an atomic bomb? Impossible. There was no kind of technology here that could have made an atomic bomb. Or maybe…did a portal open in the barren east? Maybe during a nuclear test, or something?
“Come on. We’re losing light.” Said Faei.
As they got closer to crater, they passed through the fog. It was so thick that Jake could taste it, and it had a faint sulphury tang to it, like a burned-out matchstick. The mist was cold on his face, as if it were a sheet of freezing wind that had stopped blowing and instead just hung there.
The crater dipped down on a gentle slant, and it was six feet deep at its centre. In bad rainstorms, the place probably filled up like a swimming pool. It was hard to imagine that a village had once stood here. He couldn’t see much due to the fog, but even if it lifted he guessed there wouldn’t be much to look at except a mile circle of the crater.
Jake looked around. The herbs Cason needed were supposed to be around here somewhere, but he learned that wandering around the crater was dangerous when he saw little holes dotted on the rocky ground.
He crouched by one of them and he saw a little creature hiding inside it. It had long legs like a spider’s, and long pincers in front of its bulbous eyes. Whatever it was, it looked nasty. He moved away from the hole, and then was horrified to see that there must have been hundreds of them around him.
Aside from the creatures that came straight from an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare, the ground around them was barren. It didn’t seem like herbs could even grow here, and even if they could, the fog would make it impossible to find them. He couldn’t help feeling this was a case of Cason sending him to do the work he couldn’t be bothered doing himself.
All in all, it didn’t look good. His field of vision was limited to a foot in front of him, which meant he’d need to stumble through the sheet of mist to find anything. Added to that was the danger that if he saw an herb and reached for it, he might unwittingly put his hand near a hole and get bitten by whatever the hell those little creatures were.
“I can see why Cason sent us instead of coming here himself,” said Jake.
Faei crouched over one of the holes. She took a long, serrated knife from her belt and in one swift motion stabbed it into the hole. Jake heard a sound like a balloon popping, and when Faei withdrew her knife, she pulled the dead body of one of the creatures with it. Its legs, fully stretched in death, were longer than Jake had thought; they seemed to reach two feet. Yellow goo dribbled down Faei’s hand. She studied the insect for a few seconds, then threw it to the ground. She wiped the goo on her leathers.
“Don’t worry about them,” she said. “They’ll tear a hole in you with those pincers, but they’re not poisonous.”
“That’s reassuring. Any idea where we should be looking? I’m struggling to find the herbs.”
“Cason gave you a rune, didn’t he?”
Jake patted his coat pocket.
“Set it down, will you?” asked Faei.
He pulled the rune out of his pocket. Although it was misshapen, it formed a rough triangle. The stone was purple and looked like it should be cold to the touch, but instead it gave off a faint warm glow. He considered using it as a hand warmer, but reluctantly set it down on the earth.
The rune lit up. Yellow light washed over the surface of it and then spread out like webs from a spider’s spinneret. They crept vine-like across the ground. Gradually, flowery shapes began to light up yellow amidst the fog. It must have been the herbs. There was a bunch of them ten feet away from him, and then even more toward the centre of the crater.
“Okay,” said Faei. “We know what we’re looking for. Get to it then, tough guy, and I’ll keep guard.”
“Keep guard for what?”
“You know…stuff.”
With that, Faei reached into her bag and pulled out a long pipe and a little pouch filled with herbs. She stuffed some green weeds into the pipe, then lit it using a small, round stone that began to glow orange when she rubbed it with her thumb.
“You smoke?” said Jake.
“It’s pecee root. Keeps me calm. The calmer I am, the longer it takes for the demogoth to take hold.”
“I guess I’ll go get the herbs, then. Enjoy your pipe.”
He followed a thin line of light that ran toward the nearest bunch of herbs. The spider-web light of the rune made it easy to see the herbs, but it didn’t light up much else. He needed to be careful.
The further away he got from Faei the more a feeling of dread crept up on him. He fastened his coat tighter. The fog felt cold as he walked through it, and there wasn’t a sound around. It wasn’t like he wanted to hear anything, since around here any noises would probably mean trouble, but there was something about utter silence that made him want to clutch his dagger.
When he reached the first bunch of herbs, he found that getting them was a tricky process. They had thick stalks that were covered in thorns, and each had two large leaves that dropped down
to the sides. He didn’t know if Cason needed to stem or the leaf, so he was going to have to take both. That meant cutting off the thorns with his knife, then hacking through the stem. It wasn’t just a case of grabbing a bunch of them and pulling.
He cut and packed the first lot of them, then looked to his right. The next bunch seemed to be toward the middle of the crater, where it reached its deepest point. The mist seemed to magnify how deep the crater looked, giving him the unsettling feeling that it could go down miles and miles until the surface was just a memory and you could shout for help until your throat dried up, but nobody would hear you. Thanks to the rune, little spindly streams of light stood out in the fog and reached the crater core. The depths beyond them were dark.
Hmm. Maybe the rune had a limit on how far it’d reach. He decided that he’d go to the centre, pick the herbs there, then go take a break with Faei before pushing on.
He followed a thin trail of yellow than ran across the ground, leading a hundred feet ahead to the nearest herb bunch. When he was just thirty feet away, he heard something.
He stopped dead. A cold dread washed over him; the kind of feeling that creeps down your back when you find out you’re not as alone as you thought.
He heard heavy breathing. Long, raspy intakes and exhales of air, mixed with the occasional grunt. There was something nearby, but what? And was it hostile?
Stupid question. This was Sarametis; of course it’d be hostile.
At first, he couldn’t see anything. Then, by the faint glow of the rune light, he spotted it. There was a beast of some kind curled up on the ground not far north east of him. It was sleeping so close to the herbs that Jake couldn’t get closer without waking it.
He crouched down so he was level with the beast. He began to pick out minute details of it. It was asleep in a ball on the ground. It was the size of a cow, with a curved back that was out of proportion with its body, sticking out like a camel hump made of muscle. As for the rest of it; it had a particularly fleshly look about it. Its skin looked almost rubbery, like jelly that had hardened a little. It looked as if it would wobble if you poked it.
Despite resembling a beast made of trifle, it was dangerous. Jake soon discovered, with a sense of horror growing by the second, that dozens of corpses surrounded the monster. There were two dead hares, a sheep, something that looked like a gorilla, and even three people. It was sad to see a man, woman and young boy laying pathetically in the fog filled crater, having fallen victim to whatever the hell this thing was. He couldn’t imagine how a family would just stumble into this mist-filled hell.
He turned and followed the route back to Faei. She’d finished her pipe now and was reading a book titled ‘Calm in a Chaotic World.’
“Done already?” she said.
“Sorry to interrupt you reading, but we’ve got a slight problem. There’s some kind of weird, fleshy fog beast over there. The nearest herbs are a few feet away from it, but the damn thing is surrounded by corpses.”
After blurting it all out, Jake caught his breath. The adrenaline that had shot drained out of him after seeing that the beast was leaving, and now the cold of the fog latched onto his skin. Man, Sarametis was a lot colder than back home.
Faei closed her book and put it in her leather bag. “What did it look like?”
“I don’t know. Sort of rubbery. Big. Real big. I didn’t think it was all that worrying until I saw the bodies.”
She put her hand to her chin. “Bodies? Were they half-eaten?”
He thought about it. “Hard to see through the fog.”
“Could be a flub dork or a sassinatch. Hard to say which.”
“You pulled those names out your ass.”
Faei grinned. “Yeah. Seriously, we might be looking at a myst-scife. If it is, then a fire-tipped bolt would do the trick in a second. If it isn’t, then the fire won’t do squat. It’s hard to know.”
“I’m not too good on my Sarametis zoology. All I know is it’s big, it has four limbs, and it’s made of blubber.”
“Maybe we better head back. Cason’s an ass, but he won’t want us risking our necks.”
“You heard what Thotl told him,” said Jake. “One of Cason’s friends is gonna die. If it were just our own necks on the line, believe me, I’m not above getting the hell out of here. But it’s not our backsides dangling over the meat grinder.”
“Fine, but we better play it safe,” said Faei. “This crater is big enough for us to sneak around whatever it is. If we set the rune down on the other side, there should be plenty more herbs to pick that won’t involve us getting into a fight. You happy with that?”
“Ecstatic,” said Jake. “Let’s do it.”
After collecting the rune, he rejoined Faei. The yellow trails of light had disappeared now. They crossed through the crater, pausing every few seconds so their eyes could adjust to the mist. Every so often, Jake stopped and set the rune so that he could locate the herbs near the fog beast, which would give them an idea where the creature was. The last thing they wanted to do was stumbled into it by accident.
The creature was directly ahead of them, just a hundred and fifty meters away. They altered their course far to the left to give it a wide berth, and the nearer they got, the slower they walked. Soon, he could hear it grunt in its sleep. Every instinct in Jake’s body told him to hurry, but the slower they went, the quieter they were.
He set the rune down to get their bearings. The ripples of rune light spun across the ground, before lighting up the herbs way over to their right. They were level with the creature now, though they were far enough to the side that they could pass undetected.
That was when someone shouted.
He didn’t catch the words, but that didn’t matter. Who the hell was it? Had they been following them?
It was a man, he knew that much. The fog had such a disorientating effect on him that he couldn’t tell if the noise had come from his left, right, or even behind him.
Faei drew her bow and nocked a bolt within the span of a second. Jake envied her quick reactions. He tugged his dagger from his belt, yanking on it when it got stuck.
He set the rune down and let its spindly light creep out. He glanced over at the creature. Holy hell.
The light from the herbs glowed, revealing parts of its silhouette in the fog. It was upright now. It rested back on its hind legs, while spreading its forelegs in front of it. Its paws were capped by claws almost as big as Jake’s hand. He couldn’t see much else through the fog, but it didn’t seem to be moving yet. Maybe if they stayed quiet…
“Get him!” shouted a voice. It was a rough voice. Scratchy and deep.
Suddenly, they were surrounded by four leather-clad warriors. Each of them held longswords. One of them, evidently the one in command, wore a metal chest plate and leather greaves. His black hair was stringy, and his beard was thick. He had the piercing stare of a man who knew he was about to fight.
It was two versus four. Not only that, but it was four heavily-armored and armed men versus a spectral archer and an alchemist with a dagger. Not great odds.
Their already-worrying odds got worse when the fog beast let out a loud grunt. Jake heard the sounds of it pounding across the crater ground toward them.
“Grab the lad and get out of here,” said the warrior with the stringy hair.
Jake didn’t think of himself as a lad, but confusion over his age aside, it was clear the warriors wanted him and not Faei.
One of the warriors, lean but holding his longsword without trouble, stepped forward. With an imperceptible movement of her finger Faei let her bolt fly, and the arrow lodged in the man’s throat. He fell to his knees, rasping and trying to tug the bolt free, before falling face first into the ground.
“You’ve really got a thing about throats, haven’t you?” said Jake, remembering the goblin she’d killed.
“Stay close to me. And pick up the rune.”
He grabbed the rune, removing the only dim light they had.
/> “Can you aim without the light?”
“I’m a spectral archer. Course I bloody can.”
He heard the men moving forward, but it was hard to see them through the fog until they got nearer. He gripped his dagger and listened, trying to pick out which angle they’d come from. It was three versus two now; still bad odds, but an improvement.
The problem was the fog beast. It was close now. He heard its hoarse grunts, and its feet clomping on the ground.
Faei stroked the length of another bolt she’d nocked, and an orange flame grew across it. She fired it in front of them, before nocking another, stroking it with flame, and then firing it to their right.
