The Hidden Illusionist (Thieves of Chaos Book 1)

by Deck Davis

  “They’re sick of helping grubs,” said Wisetree. “They get nothing out of it. I thought they were stupid, but they’ve got something going on between their eyes.”

  Xig walked back toward Yutula-na. As he did, flickers of his black form drifted away from him, like dust. It was the time void again. None of the shadow fiends could stray far away from the void of Yutula-na, which kept them alive centuries beyond their normal lifespan.

  Dantis drew spirit from his forge. He sent a puff of it toward Xig, where it coated his shadow form. When the wind blew at him, none of his body drifted.

  Xig turned around. He touched his shadow form with his hands. He smiled. “You help Xig?”

  “If you’ll help me. I’ll keep you topped with spirit, so you don’t have to stay in the city.”

  “Xig explore?” he said, smiling.

  Dantis nodded, excited to come to an agreement with the creature. “Now, what I really need is stone. Wisetree thinks-”

  “Hate to interrupt,” said Wisetree, “But we have a visitor.”

  “More ogres?” said Dantis. Anticipation prickled his stalk body; ogres meant fear, and fear, he hated to admit, was becoming delightful.

  “No, a visitor. He’s out near my western roots.”

  Dantis’s roots didn’t spread far enough for him to reach the man, so he used more of his spirit to grow them, travelling out west until he saw him.

  He found him near a row of bushes capped with thorns the size of a barbarian’s forearm. Juicy, plump fruit sprouted from vines. Or, he thought they were fruit, at first. When one of them swiveled around to reveal dark eyes and a mouth full of teeth, Dantis couldn’t help his surprise. He drained spirit from one, but the energy he got back was bland, much like the weeds.

  Their visitor wasn’t a man, nor was he an ogre. He had the face of a goat, with bronze horns curving around his furry, whiskered cheeks. His body was shaped like a man’s but his skin was weathered and cracked, much like the surface of the Barrens. He had two lumps protruding from his back, and unlike his skin, these were fleshy.

  He was a groat. Dantis had only seen one of them before, back at home. Groats were famous for their love of travel. In fact, it was one of the only things they were suited to. Even though the Fire Isles was a multi-cultural place, some races were liked more than others, and the stern goat-faced groats weren’t sought after as drinking buddies. Even if humans spurned them, they couldn’t go and live with the goats, since they were too clever for that.

  This made travel a perfect pastime. They could wander the fire Isles alone, and the two humps on their back – one for storing food, the other water – meant they could go into the harshest environments for weeks on end. Growing up, Dantis had always wanted groat humps. And when he once told his school class this, they called him ‘Groat Humper’ for three months straight, until Ethan collared one of them.

  He was in his sixties judging by the wrinkles on his goat face. His pure white fur reminded Dantis of his grandfather’s beard, who grew it into braids he decorated with sungems. The groat’s arms, despite his age, were lean with muscle, no doubt earned from dragging a wooden cart stocked full of pans, trinkets, and tools for miles. He must have been a trader as well as a traveler.

  Dantis approached him warily. Even in his human body, life with Ethan taught him to be wary of strangers. Caution was key here. He was a talking plant. How would someone react when they saw him?

  He kept his distance, trailing the trader as he made his way west. The trader wore a wide-brimmed hat to protect from the never-ending sun, and he stopped to drink from a canteen. After gulping water, he chomped his teeth together to make a clacking sound, then he spoke.

  “I know you’re following me. Come on. Introduce yourself.”

  Dantis moved forward, wary of the complete lack of fear or surprise in the trader’s voice. As he got closer, the man didn’t react when he looked at Dantis.

  “Looking to trade?” he said.

  “You’re not…confused about me?”

  The trader swatted a fly away from his face. He chomped his teeth together again. “I’ve seen stranger stuff than you out here. Nothing surprises me, my leafy friend. If it did, I wouldn’t be able to come anywhere near the Barrens. Gotta be prepared for anything out here. I’m Gabreel Hossenwy, of the Rotterwell trade guild. The only bugger stupid enough to travel these parts.”

  “I’m Dantis.”

  “What are ya, then, Dantis? Plant? Man?”

  “A bit of both, actually.”

  “Like that tree over there, eh? The one who plays dead when I pass through.”

  “You know Wisetree?”

  “That his name? I’ve seen all sorts, lad. The shit they conjure in mage colleges…it beggars belief. They can do anything with mana, these days.”

  The traders complete lack of fear made Dantis remember a rule Ethan taught him; if something wasn’t cautious around you, you should be cautious around it. He was talking about forest vippers when he said it, but the rule applied to anything. He’d have to be weary around Gabreel until he got the measure of him.

  Even so, if he was a trader, which meant he must go near towns. Dantis smelled an opportunity.

  “Do you think you could deliver a message for me next time you’re near a town?”

  “Aye, for a price.”

  “It wouldn’t be much. A simple message.”

  “I’m not a carrier pigeon, my floral friend. Everything costs money.”

  Gabreel was bluffing. Surely he couldn’t have expected money from a plant? He was trying to sound him out, but he’d cave when he realized Dantis had no gold.

  “I’ll find someone else,” Dantis said.

  “Who? No bugger comes out here, what with the never-ending desert, and the ogre settlements carving each other up. It’s dangerous here. I ‘eard about a family from Jisolt, out west. They were takin’ their son to mage college, and they crossed the Barrens. Some bugger kidnapped the boy, and they never saw him again.”

  “Kidnapped? By who? Was it a woman?”

  “Nobody knows. They put posters in every town they could; Rotterwell, Iseyard, Wolfpine. Anyhow, between the kidnappings and ogres, nobody comes here. Which makes it a ripe trade route for Gabreel, the craziest trader in the Fire Isles.”

  “Wait – you said settlements. So, there’s more than one?”

  “Three of ‘em, each as bloodthirsty as the next. People say there’s a fourth, but I ain’t seen it. Don’t go near them, my chlorophyll cousin. It’s always the same with the ogres; one cycle of violence after the next.”

  “Why do you keep coming back if it’s so dangerous?”

  “Because I’m the only one who does. You know what that means? I can jack up my prices all the hell I want!”

  Not good. The only ogres Dantis had met wanted to tear his head off. One settlement was bad enough, to know there were three, possible four, nearby? He’d have to do something about them. It was no use trying to attract people here with a dungeon, if a bunch of ogres came looking for trouble.

  “Yeah,” continued the trader. “Ogres round here only know two things. Fighting, and worshipping. They worship the vupyr, you know. It’s some crazy buggerin’ stuff.”

  Vupyr – that meant something. The word reverberated through Dantis’s brain, teetering on the tip of his thoughts. He knew that word, but from where?

  “I better be going,” said Gabreel, tugging on his cart.

  “Wait. Are you coming back this way?”

  “I’ll be doing a few rounds for the next week or two. After that, I’m gone for six months, at least.”

  “Supposing I find something to trade. Could you deliver a message for me?”

  “If it’s worth my while. Who are you trying to reach?”

  “The heroes guild in Wolfpine. That’s a good start.”

  Gabreel shook his head. “Oh no. Sorry, my green chum. The guild is on Klizerd mountain, and they’re tight-arsed about letting people in. I got struck o
ff the approved trader list. That Bander is a stubborn bastard.”

  If Gabreel couldn’t get a message to the guild directly, maybe he would spread word around Wolfpine about Dantis’s dungeon. Gossip would reach the heroes guild, and that would draw them here.

  It was a plan. Just one problem – he needed to build his dungeon in the next two weeks, before Gabreel left the Barrens.

  Xig and his fellow shadow fiends collected stone under the direction of Wisetree, who used his root system to seek it out. Dantis made plans for the dungeon as the stone piles increased day by day. Every passing second made him anxious. Each time the sun set, his time before Gabreel left the Barrens grew less.

  This was his only chance. If he didn’t build the dungeon before Gabreel left, he’d have to wait another six months. Could he stay here that long, alone, wondering where Ethan was?

  By the time Xig gathered enough stone, Dantis was so on edge he could have burst.

  “Thanks, Xig,” he said. “Thanks guys.”

  The fiends stared at him expectantly.

  “Right - you need your spirit dose for today, don’t you? Here you go.”

  He sent spirit their way, all too aware his supply in the forge was diminishing. His supply of fear spirit from the ogres had dropped in part thanks to Dantis breathing it in himself, letting delicious fear rush through him. It was stupid, but he couldn’t help it. If he went a day without it, his head throbbed, and his leaf hands shook.

  Since no ogres had visited for three days now, he kept his supply topped up with weed spirit. It was much weaker than fear, but he discovered he could mix the two together, creating a diluted version of fear. It wasn’t optimal, but maybe he’d have enough to complete his dungeon.

  As Xig and the crew headed toward Yutula-na, Dantis faced the empty barren space where he planned to build his dungeon. Now, where to start?

  An illusion was the first step. His peculiar form of crafting was like building a house. First, you needed a framework. Then, you built around it with whatever materials you chose.

  Dantis’s illusions were the framework. Stone was his material, and his refined spirit would bond them together. This gave him pause. Would building with fear spirit have a different effect on his dungeon than if he were to use, say, happy spirit? There was no way to experiment. The ogres had been terrified at the sight of Wisetree, and so that was the only spirit he got from them.

  Staring at the barrens gave him anxiety. Was this how artists felt when they looked at a blank canvas? Maybe, but this wasn’t art. He wasn’t creating a work of beauty, but a tomb of horrors designed to draw adventurers into its depths.

  He’d only seen one dungeon for real. How long ago was it now? It couldn’t have been more than a month after he and Ethan fled their home, when they were still getting used to life on the run. They were resting in the forests near Rotterwell, when a group of brigands strolled by. At the same time, the sky crackled with thunder, threatening a drenching shower.

  “Over here,” Ethan said. “A cave.”

  He’d led them to a mound of stone surrounded by trees. A darkened hole stared out from it, leading to cramped passageways, where the slightest sound echoed back at them.

  “I don’t think this is a cave,” Dantis said.

  “Sure it is. What else could it be? You’re getting too worked up.”

  Dantis froze. Although Ethan went deeper into the tunnels, Dantis couldn’t move. Fear trembled through him, and his legs turned to water. The cramped tunnels, the darkness…

  …and the memories. Something shook loose in his head, a recollection he’d kept locked. A scream echoed in his mind; it was his mother’s, an agonizing wail chilling him to his marrow.

  Mum? Dad?

  Get out of here, Dantis! For God’s sake, run!

  Ethan came hurtling down the tunnel toward him, with spiders the size of dogs scuttling after him. “This isn’t a cave!” he shouted. “It’s a fucking dungeon!”

  Dantis focused his mana and cast his dungeon illusion in front of him. An outline formed, but it was hazy, and blue mana mists flickered around it. With one gust of wind, it dispersed.

  “You’re not feeling the memory,” said Wisetree. “It’s there, the image in your head, but you’re not in the moment.”

  “How would you know about illusions?”

  “Zaemira might have been the talented mage in our family, but I knew a few parlor tricks. I could cast minor illusions to entertain our guests. Magic doesn’t come from nowhere though. Magic isn’t the mana – that’s just fuel. The heart of magic is dredged from your mind. Do you think when Zaemira casts a fireball, she just imagines a ball of flames? No, she summons a fury inside her, deep and burning, and she lets it engulf her. Only then does she feed mana into it.”

  “And you can’t cast illusions anymore?” said Dantis.

  “Not in this body,” said Wisetree. His branches dropped, and they cast dark shadows around him. Even the glow at the base of his trunk seemed to dim.

  “You miss being human, don’t you?”

  “I try not to. I try like hell, because it took me years to accept what I am. For a century, I wanted nothing more than to die. I even asked Zaemira to end it, but she wouldn’t.”

  “She’s not going to change me back, is she? Even if I do everything she wants.”

  “That’s dangerous talk. Lost hope, and you’ll end up like me.”

  He focused harder. He pictured the stone walls, slick with dew, beetles and spiders crawling along cracks. The wind whistling through the tunnels.

  That had been a scary day, but he would have gone back in an instant because it meant he’d be with Ethan again. Now, he was alone, and the only way to get back to his brother was to conjure the dungeon again; to picture its horribly tight tunnels, and the way the wind ghosted through it.

  “Well done, grub!” said Wisetree, shaking him from his thoughts.

  “Well done? What?”

  And then he saw it. As he’d imagined the dungeon in his mind, his mana got to work, leaking out of his body and transforming in front of him.

  It was a dungeon. A twenty-foot-tall, a tit-shaped mound of stone. Barely large enough for a few tunnels and a loot room, but every potion started with an empty vial, as Dad used to say. He could build this simple structure for now and expand it later.

  With the illusion of the dungeon buzzing in front of him, mana crackling around its edges, he needed to get to work. He could already feel his mana draining.

  The piles of stone. He needed to infuse them with spirit, and imagine them welding with the dungeon illusion, and in that way, it would become real.

  He focused on his forge, thirty meters away in Yutula-na, and breathed in.

  Nothing came.

  He tried again, breathing deeper this time.

  “I told you that you’d use it up,” said Wisetree.

  Dantis slapped his own face with a leafy hand. He’d drained more than he’d thought. He’d wasted all of his fear spirit, devouring it himself to feel the thrill of it, to feed what he had to accept was an addiction.

  What would Ethan think if he saw him now? Not just about his body – knowing Ethan, he’d make jokes about it – but about how Dantis needed to taste fear to feel alive? What was he becoming?

  This was no good. He needed spirit, but the weeds wouldn’t be enough to craft a whole dungeon, and he could hardly wait around for ogres to show.

  He needed to stop using his fear spirit on himself. Using it was just another form of running away; it was escapism, like when he got addicted to mayroot on the streets. It was a prop he used to try and hide from his true feelings. Not anymore.

  “I need creatures,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” said Wisetree.

  “Every dungeon needs creatures to guard it – heroes count them being there. I need to catch monsters to put in my dungeon. When I do, maybe I can drain spirit from them too. I need to go hunting.”

  “Not like that, you don’t,” said Wi
setree.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re a plant. The only thing you can hunt is flies, and even they might knock you on your arse. It’s time you made yourself a new body.”

  Dantis smiled at Wisetree. “Thanks for the help. I mean it.”

  Wisetree wafted his branches dismissively. “There’s not much else to do around here,” he said.

  No, there wasn’t. And even if Dantis got wanted he wanted and returned to his real body, Wisetree would still be here. He’d be alone, left with the barrens and the birds and his dark thoughts.

  He’d been thinking selfishly all this time, only concerned with getting himself out of the barrens. He couldn’t do that and leave Wisetree behind. Somehow, he had to find a way to help his friend.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dantis

  He stumbled against the dungeon wall. He’d only been in his new body for a few hours, and he’d already shattered two fingers, cracked his right leg, and broken a chunk off his torso. Luckily, dirt was in plentiful supply in the Barrens, and it was easy to meld new dirt to his mud body using spirit.

  It had rained in the Barrens that morning, and the breast-shaped dungeon was slick with dew. Bulging dark clouds brewed other the barrens, and once they opened up, they didn’t stop. Rain filled up cracks in the desert ground, washing over until the Barrens darkened from orange to brown.

  He’d created the dungeon from his memory of the one he and Ethan had seen in the forest. As an illusionist, his memories were the paint he splashed onto the canvas on reality. An illusionist couldn’t conjure images he’d never seen until he reached mastery of the discipline, and Dantis was a long way from that.

  His dungeon looked delightfully foreboding, from the dark walls that seemed to absorb light, to the spiders peeking out from cracks. Looking at it spread a glow in his stomach; he’d created this out of nothing but his mind, some refined spirit, and stone. He’d built something new in this vast expanse of barren land, which was home to nothing but the decrepit city of Yutula-na.

  He felt awed. He wanted to take in the seriousness of the moment, to soak in the splendor of creation. He wanted to…