“What is this?” Grinley jerked back as if stung. “You’ve doomed us all!”
Shadows on the ground webbed around his feet. The tendrils spiked out from where Sayeh’s hands extended. Her eyes were closed, but a smile crossed her lips.
The shadows crawled around Grinley, searing through his clothes and causing his veins to bulge and darken. The darkness spread from his chest and crawled up his neck.
His cries of anguish turned hoarse while he continued to claw at the vines. He collapsed onto the floor as his face turned an ashen color. One last shriek and Grinley covered his face, still as a corpse.
“Grinley?” A wave of shock and sorrow overcame Eldritch. “What have I done? What did I unleash?”
He stared at the curled up body.
Laughter echoed around the room. He thought Sayeh was laughing in his mind again, but the voice was deeper, muffled. It came from Grinley.
“Thank you for releasing my mind,” Grinley said and uncovered his face. A void remained in the holes where his pupils once rested. “I am complete now. I see the secrets of the Nox. The source of the most powerful magic. An entire world behind the veil of ours. I am their servant. They speak to me. I will obey.”
“Grinley?” Eldritch could see dark energies flowing from him. “Are you the Nox as well?”
“I am not worthy to host the Nox. I only serve.” He glanced at Sayeh and flashed his teeth back at Eldritch. “We serve you. The one who has blessed this world with the Nox. Our leader.”
“What of the fae? Can they stop the Nox again?” Eldritch began to panic.
“We will defeat the fae. They must pay for imprisoning us, and together we can conquer all.”
“We aren’t strong enough yet.” Sayeh stood up, sober once again. “We must create an army to overtake them.
“We should let the chosen decide.” Grinley twitched with an unnatural excitement. “He’s the one who set you free.”
“Yes.” Sayeh gave Eldritch the look she had given him so long ago in the bookshop. It filled him with boldness. “What course would you have us take? Should we rest here or continue?”
Eldritch wandered over to a map on the wall. One place, in particular, caught his attention. From the many threads of travel, Grinley frequently visited one area and marked it with a special pin. His origin, the elven woods.
“Grinley, you’ve given us the best source of an army.” He tapped the spot on the map. “We should also recruit others here before we leave. How do we exit this room?”
“Follow me.” Grinley stepped into a shadow along the far wall and held out his hand.
Eldritch grasped it cautiously. Sayeh wrapped her arms around his chest from behind. Her soft nose nuzzled on his neck.
“You can make us stronger,” she whispered. “The fae were cruel to us and must stand judgment for their wrongs.”
Eldritch did not have time to respond as Grinley pulled them through the shadows and back into the streets of Caetheal.
Chapter Fourteen
The sun was at its peak when they entered the center of town. However, no one stirred around the main crossroads. Eldritch wandered toward the tavern, and the other two followed, slipping through the shadows between buildings and abandoned shops.
As he passed the shop where the woman, Bethlyn, spotted him earlier, he peeked inside. She sat alone behind the counter. Hand carved walking sticks filled the store. Her husband must have been in the back or had already left for the day. This was his chance to talk to her. She likely knew more about the fae and the forest, and he couldn’t help but wonder why she and her husband remained in the desolate town.
Eldritch entered the shop, and a small bell chimed to alert the owners of a visitor. Something moved in the corner of his eye, a haze of darkness.
“You’re the guy from the field aren’t you?” Bethlyn said as she stepped around the counter to meet him.
“It is as you say, yet not as you think.” Eldritch held his hands out defensively. “I found myself tricked by the fae. No doubt they tricked this whole town as well.”
“What do you mean? I thought they were supposed to be kind.” She crossed her arms and leaned back. “I guess long ago, I did hear some folks say the fae were going to attack.”
“What do you think of them?” Eldritch asked.
“I don’t know. I always liked them when I was little. It’s why I stuck around here. I think they’ll be back, and it'll be good again. I hope.”
“They’re getting ready to enslave us.” Eldritch noticed the shadow moving closer to Bethlyn. “They have done it before. An entire race called the Nox, gone. The fae didn’t like their powers, so they imprisoned them.”
“I’ve never heard of that. The fae were friendly until. . .” Bethlyn pointed at him. “You! You were out wandering too close to the forest, likely even entered it and broke the treaty. It was you, wasn’t it?” She grabbed one of the sticks from a nearby shelf and waved it at him. “I’ll have none of that in my store. I know there’s someone else in here and you’re trying to distract me while they steal my things. Well, go ahead. I’ve got nothing you want anyway. Filthy thief.”
Bethlyn raised the stick to strike him.
Memories of dark spells swarmed into his mind. Each one wanted to be released on Bethlyn. She knew too much. She would tell others about his trip to the fairy forest and have him killed. She could not be free.
“You will see and obey me.” Eldritch could hardly understand the words he was saying as tendrils like the dark roots of the Nox’s tree shot from his fingertips. They wrapped around her outstretched arm and sunk into her skin.
“No! You cannot bring me down your dark path.”
The same darkness that consumed Grinley’s body spread across her skin. She swung the stick at the tendrils in one last attempt to break free. Her veins hardened. They creaked and snapped like a burning tree. The flesh gave off a musky smoke.
Eldritch tried to shut his hands to stop the spell, but it remained attached. The dark energy coursed through his body and overpowered him.
The tendrils broke like brittle ice at last, but it was too late. Bethlyn’s dead eyes stared at him in an empty, eternal gaze.
“What is happening here?” Her husband stepped into the shop from a back room, brandishing a dagger. “Where is my―”
Sayeh sprung from the shadows and caught him from behind. She wrapped around him, spreading the malicious dark vines faster than the ones that had taken Bethlyn. He had no time to struggle, and his lifeless body fell next to his wife.
“They were foolish and resisted.” Sayeh’s lips curled up in a bestial grin.
A sudden panic caused Eldritch’s hands to sweat. They shouldn’t have died. They should have turned into servants of the Nox, like Grinley. Unless the Nox’s transformation worked solely on the elves.
Eldritch shook off the horror in front of him. There was nothing to feel sorry about. Bethlyn had tried to attack him. He defended himself. That was all.
He quickened his pace as he left the shop. He needed to distance himself from the grim scene and find Grinley for answers.
“Don’t move!” A voice commanded from behind. “We know who you are and what you’ve done.”
An arrow flew past his ear before he could turn.
“I said don’t move,” the voice barked again. “Your friends better be listening too or else they will have a corpse to drag with them.”
A shadow moved nearby with Sayeh’s form. Her face did not show anger, it was fear.
Eldritch searched his memories for the right spell. He had prepared for such an ambush by unlocking the dark book, yet nothing came to mind.
“I shall protect the Nox.” Grinley emerged next to Sayeh and grabbed her shoulder. They vanished into the darkness.
“Wait!” Eldritch called.
An arrow punctured his leg as he reached out for them. The sharp pain forced him down onto his side.
The pack of assailants had their weapons drawn
on him. He cursed himself for not being ready.
One of the attacker’s armor reflected light so brightly, Eldritch stumbled down again. The intensity of it was far beyond regular sun rays.
The shining attacker created a ball of light in his hands. It burned Eldritch’s eyes to look any longer, but he could make out the man’s face. It was no man at all. It was the barkeeper from the tavern, a fae.
The barkeeper’s cosmic eyes widened as brilliant beams spilled from his hands. The wall of light surrounded Eldritch, overtaking his vision. Closing his eyes made it worse. It dizzied his senses. He could not be defeated. Not now.
“Sayeh!” He cried out one last time and tried to reach through the veil of light.
Strong hands grabbed him and lifted him from the ground. A tightness covered his entire body. Even inwardly he felt a force pressing against him.
And then, it released him.
Eldritch fell into the white abyss and slid on a smooth surface. It came to a corner when he hit the bottom. He fumbled blindly in the cage compromised entirely of cold, marble-like rock. He took in heavy breaths from the stale air.
The ground slid from under him, and he crashed into a side of the cylindrical chamber.
Something was moving the entire prison. It shook one final time and stopped. The wound in his leg pulsed with pain.
“From your energy, restore mine,” he chanted.
The skin seared itself and pushed the broken arrow from the puncture. It clinked beside him on the hard ground. The last of the skin weaved together with extreme pain, finishing the process. He collapsed in a fetal position, unable to move.
“Sayeh? Can you hear me?” he called in the echoing chamber.
He couldn’t sense her presence. He’d always been able to. Something was missing. The book!
He grabbed his vest, but it was gone. It must have fallen out during the attack. Grinley should have helped him instead of taking Sayeh away. It wasn’t like her to run from a fight. Unless they too were susceptible to the light from the barkeep.
“What has this spell done to my sight?”
Eldritch closed his eyes and cleared his mind from his frustration, breathing in slowly. The light from the spell faded, and his ears stopped ringing. From outside of the chamber he could hear the muffled voices of his captors.
The last haze from the light diminished enough to make out his prison. A bottle. He was trapped inside a drinking bottle. The brown-colored glass allowed him to see large shapes of those outside when they came close, but that was all.
“These are no giants,” he sneered. “They’ve made me small. This is a wondrous spell, indeed.”
He tried to reach out with his mind to call Sayeh. Only silence returned his attempt. Some protection spell imbued the bottle. As with the dark tree that held the Nox so effectively, the fae’s complex magic was invisible from the inside.
He banged on the glass. The clang echoed in his ears and resounded throughout his prison, but it probably sounded like a fly on the window to his captors. He pressed closer to the glass to distinguish his location.
The bottle sat on a table in what appeared to be the tavern, the area in town he knew best.
“Those fools,” he whispered.
A large arm landed on the table as one of the guards sat down. Eldritch could not deduce where the others were in the room, but this man next to him was an ordinary human. He was not a fairy like the barkeep. It would be easy to defeat him if Eldritch could find a way out.
That’s when he noticed it―the guard’s armor. The mirror polish of it perfectly reflected the patterns of the fae magic encompassing the bottle. Although backward, the spell seemed similar to the one around the Nox’s tree in the forest.
Eldritch moved to the center of the bottle and placed his hands on the floor. The warmth of his spell heated the glass. There was nowhere for the heat to escape. It burned up the remaining oxygen and made Eldritch break out in a heavy sweat.
The bottle quivered as he released the protective spell from it. A circle melted through the bottom and burned a hole through the table.
Eldritch gritted his teeth as his body enlarged back to its original size while he fell.
The sudden force of his mass under the table caused it to flip over onto the guard. The man’s shout of surprise ended with the table collapsing over the bleeding shards of glass on his face.
Eldritch jumped up and didn’t spare a second to look for the other guards or the barkeep. His body hardened like the bark of the dark tree from a quick incantation, and he rushed toward the wall, smashing through it like paper.
Arrows shot around him. One tried to pierce his conjured armor, but it failed to break through. He sprinted to the nearest tree and slid into its shadow.
Instead of retreating farther away, he stopped and turned back to the tavern.
His attackers grouped together and went back inside, likely plotting their next attempt to capture him. They would never expect him to counterattack. Most humans would flee from their captors, but he was beyond human, beyond the elves and the fae. He was something new―something greater.
He stretched his hands out toward the tavern.
The dark vines came out of the ground and crawled over it. They encased the entire building except for the hole he created when he broke through. He lowered his hands and walked toward them.
“Foolish are your plans and pathetic are your attempts to imprison me. I am the shadow. I am the darkness. I am Eldritch!”
He clapped his hands, and the walls closed in on the party inside. He watched their eyes widen with terror before the structure collapsed from the constricting force. Vines rubbed against each other, letting nothing escape. The tangled ball shrunk in size until it could fit inside Eldritch’s fist.
He loomed over the ball and laughed while his foot crushed it into oblivion. The remaining vines sank back into the ground, leaving a patch of scorched earth where the tavern had been.
“You handled that very well,” Sayeh said stepping from behind the shade of some trees. “We would have saved you if you had not freed yourself.”
“The light was too strong for us.” Grinley followed close behind Sayeh, nodding profusely. “Their power can hinder our efforts. We require more souls to aid the Nox.”
“I agree, but first, return the book to me.” Eldritch narrowed his eyes at Grinley and held out his hand. “Then we can gather more followers.”
“In the elven woods,” Grinley said as he produced the book from his garments. “The Nox agrees with this. The elves are easier to sway. My former kin listens to magic. They will feel the Nox’s power and be drawn to it.”
Eldritch took the book and tucked it back inside his vest, making sure it would not fall out again.
“Yes,” Sayeh said stepping between them. “Although they do not become us, they serve us. Such allies will be necessary. Even the fae's blinding light spells could not stop us.”
Eldritch kicked the ash from the tavern off his shoe. He looked beyond the town to the fairy forest. The trees looked taller as the sun passed over it.
“We should wait until the night settles in,” Grinley said, trying to remain in the shade of the trees. “We can move easier, and the fae’s magic is weaker in the dark. They will not be able to track us.”
“How far is the dock to the north? Would we reach it by nightfall?” Eldritch asked Sayeh, ignoring Grinley’s remark.
“That we would, my master.” Sayeh gave him a flirtatious smile.
Eldritch caught himself staring at her. His cheeks grew warm. She had never referred to him in that way. Perhaps he had become stronger than any other caster―except for the fae. He needed more time to protect himself from their abilities.
“Let’s leave now,” Sayeh said and cast a disdainful look toward Grinley. “Do as he commands. I’ll find a carriage to shield us from the sun.”
Grinley nodded while she vanished into the shadows.
Eldritch flipped open the book of t
he Nox and found a story of horses. Without a gesture or spell, they formed through the ink and parchment and stepped into the physical realm, ready to serve. Their manes floated up like a dark fire. The skin and hair of the creatures absorbed the light, creating an inky haze around them.
“These will work fine,” Grinley said. “I have a ship for us at the docks when we arrive there. But we must wait for night before we journey across the open sea. I cannot bear this sun.”
Eldritch pitied the elf who begged for darkness. The horses stood in the full sunlight and appeared to have little fatigue. The transformation of the dark elf must have made him more susceptible to the light. Before he could reply, a carriage floated around the corner with Sayeh behind it casting a levitation spell.
“I see you’ve summoned the horses,” she said. “You are quickly learning our ways. We should leave at once if we are to reach the sea by night.”
“I will show you the way to the northern docks, avoiding the towns,” Grinley called as he ran inside the carriage while Sayeh harnessed the horses.
Eldritch gave one final glance to the fairy forest while he climbed up to the top seat on the carriage. Once they had their elven army, he would never run away again and would unlock all the mysteries of the fae. He tightened the reigns and flicked them. The dark horses let out a shrill whinny, carrying them away from Caetheal.
Chapter Fifteen
“I knew when I first saw you that you understood things beyond most casters.” Grinley moved some containers away to reveal a small box. They had reached the northern docks as the sky darkened. “You learn spells just by watching and read into the words that unlocked a deeper potential. I was never able to do more than a few conjurations myself. I focused on persuasions. But this spell proved to be invaluable. I learned how to saturate an item into something else. This empty box for example.”
Eldritch stepped back as the dark elf created space in the storage cabin. Grinley had built it in a secluded area, away from the other towns along the sea. A handful of abandoned sheds and broken docks lined the shore. The perfect spot for an elf to travel back and forth without being noticed.
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