Scorched Earth

by Randall Pine

  “Not okay!” Simon cried. He scrambled backward, then turned and pushed himself to his feet. He dodged behind a thicket as the miner lifted the axe to his shoulder, ready to strike again. Virgil’s fist began to glow, and he shot out a powerful energy beam that exploded through the miner’s left leg, severing it completely just above the knee. It threw the mud-man off balance, but only for a second; the earth rose up beneath him and connected to his amputated leg, forming a new, strong leg.

  “Am I the only one who can’t regrow his limbs?!” Virgil cried.

  The miner growled with anger and lurched toward him. He swung the pickaxe at Virgil’s torso. Virgil threw up a shield and blocked the blow, but the pointed end of the blade struck through the kinesthetic orange substance and cracked the whole thing in half.

  “I have got to get better at making these things,” Virgil grumbled.

  He shook out his hand, and the shield disappeared. He danced back out of the way as the miner’s axe came free, just barely missing the blunt end of the mining tool as it careened through the air. He dove behind the thicket where Simon was crouched. “We have to do something,” he said.

  “Oh, you think?!”

  They peeked over the top of the thicket. The mud-miner stood maybe twenty feet away, his feet planted. He raised the axe above his head, then he brought it down hard onto the forest floor. The earth opened up before the blade, cracking toward them like a fissure in a cartoon earthquake. Simon and Virgil dove out of the way as the ground broke open under their feet, crumbling away into a chasm that swallowed the thicket into darkness. Virgil slipped as he jumped, and the ground gave out beneath him. His feet fell into darkness, and he screamed as he reached out and grabbed the trunk of a sapling. The small tree bent forward, bowing under Virgil’s weight. Virgil clung to the trunk for dear life, dangling over the pitch-black canyon. “Simon!” he cried. “Help!”

  The miner was resetting himself, hoisting the heavy axe back up to his shoulder. Simon powered up his hands and shot two big energy blasts at the mud-man. The first one went wide, but the second one caught him in the shoulder, tearing a small hole in his upper arm. The miner reeled back a couple of steps as more mud crept up from the forest floor, flowed over his body, and filled in the gap in his bicep. It was only a few seconds of distraction, but it was enough. Simon ran and leapt over the chasm, skidding to a stop on the far side. He grabbed Virgil by the arms and dragged him up, back onto solid ground.

  “Thanks,” Virgil breathed.

  “I have an idea,” Simon replied. He outlined his plan as the miner mended his arm and lumbered back toward them. “Think it’ll work?” Simon asked when he was finished.

  “Not really,” Virgil admitted.

  “Great, let’s try it.”

  “Sure, why not.”

  Simon gave his friend a hard pat on the shoulder, and they nodded at each other. It was a last, unspoken goodbye, in case the plan didn’t work. Then Simon ran off through the trees, circling wide around the clearing.

  The mud-miner watched him go, but ultimately decided that Virgil was the easier prey. Virgil was perched near the edge of the crevice that the miner had opened in the earth, which put him in a perilous position. The miner growled, gritting his earthen teeth, and lumbered over toward Virgil, swinging the pickaxe to knock down the smaller trees in his way. The miner opened his other hand, calling up more mud and dirt from the ground below. It flowed up his body and collected in his palm, forming into a second axe. The miner gave the new tool a few practice swings, then he held both axes up and smashed them together.

  Even though they were made of earth, their heavy blades rang out like metal, and Virgil suddenly felt the urge to wet himself.

  “This had better work,” he grumbled under his breath.

  He backed away from the miner, watching from the corner of his eye as Simon edged around the trees. Once Simon was safely out of the mud-miner’s vision, he cut into the clearing, sprinting to the far edge until he stood directly behind the earth-creature. He waved his hands at Virgil, and Virgil nodded.

  Here goes nothing, he thought.

  He still had enough safe distance between himself and the miner, and he closed his eyes and accessed his psychic vault. He spun the dial open in his mind, opened the door, and retrieved Gladys from her spot on the shelf. When he opened his eyes again, the weathered wooden ball was in his hand.

  He looked up and was startled to see that the miner had closed the gap between them. The miner swung both of his pickaxes, and Virgil yelped in surprise as he tumbled backward, just out of reach of the swinging blades. They whizzed by his chest, missing him by inches. Virgil struggled up onto his elbows, and with a warrior’s cry, he threw Gladys as hard as he could.

  The wooden ball zipped across the forest, exploding through the miner’s torso, carving a circle-shaped hole in his belly. Gladys struck with such force that the mud-miner reeled backward a few steps, and he rooted himself while the earth under his feet rippled up his legs, crawling over his waist and filling in the gap in his middle.

  Meanwhile, the wooden ball careened across the clearing, heading toward Simon, flashing through the air like lightning.

  Simon closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. This was the part of the plan he was least sure about. He’d never held Gladys before, much less tried to catch her at her screaming top speed. He threw up his hands and waited for the impact.

  Gladys screeched to a stop just in front of his palms. She nuzzled gently into his hands, pressing against them, as timid as a kitten.

  Simon opened his eyes. He was holding Gladys, and none of his bones had been broken. He exhaled with relief. “All right,” he said.

  Then he wound up and hurled the ball back toward Virgil.

  Gladys barreled through the clearing, smashing into the small of the mud-miner’s back and bursting out through the front. She careened through the trees, then slowed down and floated gently into Virgil’s waiting hands. More mud crawled up from the ground, filling in the new hole, but before it could fill in all the way, Virgil fired Gladys back in Simon’s direction, and she tore a new hole through the miner’s chest.

  Simon caught Gladys easily, then threw her back. She ripped an opening in the miner’s left leg, just above his kneecap, and as soon as Virgil caught her, he fired he back again. She smashed through his ribcage, cleaving open his side before the hole in his leg could even begin to fill.

  Back and forth, back and forth, Gladys zipped across the clearing, punching holes in the supernatural mud-monster. By the time he filled in one of his holes with more mud, three new holes had opened up in his body. Gladys zipped through the air with incredible speed, becoming a soft brown blur as she rocketed back and forth between the two young apprentices. Dirt and shards of earth-stone exploded from the mud-miner as the wooden ball ripped it to shreds.

  Virgil snatched Gladys out of the air and held her close to his chest. The air was still and quiet as Simon and Virgil held their breath, watching the monster with trepidation.

  The miner broke the stillness by bellowing in frustration as the weight of his shoulders buckled down on the holes in his body. His left leg briefly hung together by a thin sliver of mid-shin, and then it collapsed. The miner went down hard, his right leg buckling at the knee, his left arm dangling by a thin root lodged in the mud of his shoulder. His chest was more air than earth, and his right cheek had been torn away. More mud flowed up from the ground, rushing to fill in his holes, but there were too many holes to fill. The miner crumbled down into a heap of earth, perched near the edge of the crevice he’d torn open in the ground.

  The dirt around the fallen miner’s form continued to bubble up and ripple along the ruined form, filling in the open spaces like spackle. The miner was slowly being rebuilt from the ground up.

  “Simon! Now!”

  Simon had already recognized the moment and had shifted into t
he final step of the plan. He closed his eyes and focused his energy. He held out his hands, palms facing outward, his wrists pressed together, his fingers fanned out to either side. He grunted with effort as he pushed his energy out into his hands. The air before him sparked to life with orange light as the kinesthetic magic formed into a thick orange shield with three circles of power runes rotating oppositely around the edges. Then, with his eyes still closed and with his teeth bared, Simon tried something he had never attempted before; he curved his fingers, straining against the orange light. The edges of the kinesthetic shield gave grudgingly to Simon’s force, bending slowly forward until the it was bent into a wide U-shape.

  Simon opened one eye nervously, peeking down at the shield. He sighed with relief when he saw it bending.

  Then he looked up, and a gleam filled his eye as he saw the mud-miner struggling to regain his footing across the clearing. With the shield held out before him, Simon broke into a full sprint. He ran directly at the miner, and somewhere along the way, he found himself opening his mouth and screaming with determination. He slammed into the mud-monster at full force, and the shield held strong. Simon pumped his legs like pistons; still screaming, he pushed with all his might. The kinesthetic shield caught the miner like a plow, its curved edges keeping him contained in the center of the shield. Simon surged forward, and the miner went skidding before him, scraping against the ground and crumbling like a pile of stones. With one last, hard push, Simon shoved the mud-miner backward, and the creature toppled backward into the open crevice. His mud clods fell in after him. The ground sensed the miner’s peril; the entire earth shook, and small pieces of dirt broke free from the ground and tumbled into the crevice behind him, searching to make him whole again. So much of the shaken earth rolled into the crevice that soon it was filled to the top, and the forest floor was whole again, with the mud-miner buried deep below their feet.

  Simon collapsed onto a boulder, exhausted. Virgil joined him near the edge of the trees.

  “I think the clearing was booby-trapped,” he panted.

  Simon snorted. “No kidding,” he said.

  “I also think we’re going to need a little help from the Scooby Gang. This whole thing might be above our pay grade.”

  “Yeah,” Simon nodded. “Let’s go see Llewyn. He’ll know how to help.”

  Chapter 17

  Llewyn opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor in his hallway, and the pain was excruciating.

  But he couldn’t dwell on the agony that was ripping apart his body.

  He didn’t have the time.

  He groaned as he pulled himself to his feet, his legs trembling with the effort. He felt as if he’d been broadsided by a dump truck. He took in the world around him and found his infinite mansion in ruins. The walls were crumbling; the floor stones were broken. The ceiling sagged, and the doors were rotting off their hinges.

  The world blurred, then split into a vision that was half-sight, half-darkness. Llewyn blinked his eye hard and brought everything back into focus.

  Then he looked down at his feet, and he let out a quiet sigh of helplessness.

  Abby lay in a contorted heap on the hallway floor, her arms and legs bent and frozen in mid-spasm, her skin as gray and lifeless as lead. One glance and he knew exactly what had happened: Abby had found him here, nearly dead from Morilan’s dark blade, and had used her powers to draw the mystical toxin out through his pores. It was her intervention that had pulled him from the brink of death and snapped his consciousness back from the evil wizard’s mortality prison beneath the Carpathian Mountains.

  Abby had absorbed a lot of the black magic through her own skin...too much of it. The poison had seeped into her core, and though she was still breathing, she wouldn’t last much longer against the potency of Morilan’s spell.

  Llewyn wheeled around and grabbed the handle of the nearest door. The door broke off its hinges, and Llewyn stumbled forward, off-balance. The door crashed to the uneven stone floor, and Llewyn tumbled through the doorway. He threw out a hand and caught himself on the jamb before he crashed to his knees. He held himself up, his arms and legs trembling, and stepped uneasily into the potions room.

  The chamber was shallow but wide, almost half the length of a football field. The walls were lined with sturdy wooden shelves from floor to ceiling, and each of the shelves was filled from end to end with vials, bottles, beakers, and jars. The glass containers held liquids of all properties, colors, and viscosities. They were sorted by attribute, and Llewyn knew each of their locations by heart. But the deterioration of the mansion had caused some of the shelves to break and shift, and some of the vials had slid down and collected in jumbles at the ends of their shelves. Others had pitched off the wall altogether and smashed onto the floor. Small tendrils of steam curled up from some of the more acidic potions, while others had begun to bubble and expand. One of the potions, a teleportation serum, had ripped open a portal in the floor near the far corner, and judging by the way the bottles on that end of the wall were shaking, Llewyn guessed that the portal led to a hyper-gravity singularity on the other end. Within a month, the entire mansion would be sucked through the portal. In less than six months, it would claim all of Templar.

  Given a year, the entire planet would be sucked through the spinning doorway.

  Llewyn lurched into the room. He felt an unfamiliar dread knit to life in his stomach. If the potions he needed had fallen off their shelves and shattered on the floor, then all was lost. Morilan would claim his evil victory, and Llewyn would be his tortured prisoner for ages to come.

  The dark magic inside of him was reassembling its strength. He could feel it pulsing in his veins, growing thicker, suffocating his blood. He inspected his chest and saw that although Abby had drawn out enough of the mystical venom to drain it away from his heart, it wouldn’t stay away long. He looked down at the floor and saw what he had feared: a thin trail of oily black liquid was flowing like a rivulet into the room.

  Morilan’s curse was draining from Abby’s pores, leaking back out through her skin like sweat, and flowing back to the object of its malevolent intent.

  The inky blackness would be upon him soon, seeping back into his skin. It would join the liquid already inside of his veins, and it would return to his heart, sending him straight back to the edge of death, and to Morilan’s cavern. And though a magic spell to stop it did exist, Llewyn didn’t possess as much as a tenth of the strength he would have needed to cast it.

  Not nearly as much as that.

  He stepped toward the back shelf, away from the oncoming stream of poison, and his foot failed him. It fell limply onto its side as he settled his weight on his ankle, and his whole leg gave out. He fell down on his knee, hard, and bright lights of pain exploded in front of his eye. He cried out, but immediately set to work pulling himself back to his feet. Sweat poured down his face, and his vision kept swimming in and out of focus. He stumbled, pushing his wet, matted hair out of his eyes with a clammy wrist. He fell forward and reached out with one hand, steadying himself on the wall with his palm, nearly taking down a whole shelf of potions in his clumsiness.

  He leaned forward and peered at the labels on the small vials. He tried blinking harder in an effort to clear his vision, but he was so taken with fever and fatigue that he couldn’t make out the words. He moved his eyes closer to the lower shelf, and he tried to ignore the feeling of cold, wet ink he felt kiss the skin of his calf, just above the lip of his boot.

  The stream of poison was upon him now.

  He was running out of time.

  He scanned the shelf for the potion marked “stasis,” but it wasn’t there. He shuffled along the wall, searching frantically, and when he took a step, he heard the crunch of a glass vial under his foot. His heart sank, and he looked down with despair to see the stasis potion crushed beneath his boot and sinking into the cracks in the stone floor.

&nbs
p; Llewyn muttered a curse so vile that he had not used it in at least two hundred years.

  He swiped clumsily at the next vial in the row, the one marked “cryo-stasis.” It wasn’t his best or favorite option, but he didn’t have the luxury of time to be choosy. He gripped the small glass jar with its crystal-blue potion and held it close to his chest, and as he did, he could feel the heat of infection radiating through his skin. The cold, black poison continued to crawl up his leg, crossing the threshold of his waist. It wasn’t even bothering to seep into a vein and let the blood flow carry it eventually to his heart; the curse was going straight for the heart itself.

  He lurched back across the room, slamming into the wall, actually taking down two shelves with his shoulder this time. Jars and vials crashed all around him. Through his blurred eye, he saw the telltale bright red of the second potion he needed as it hit the ground and, mercifully, remained intact. It rolled away from his feet; when he reached out to grab it, he fell forward and hit the ground like a sack of flour. He reached out with a trembling hand and closed his fingers around the vial.

  The poison was creeping up his stomach now, slithering higher like a snake. He was almost out of time.

  He groaned as he struggled up to his feet once more. The room began to tilt, and he couldn’t tell if it was his dizziness or if the mansion was actually collapsing. He reeled to his left and tumbled out the doorway, back into the hall. He looked down at Abby and blinked hard to get his vision straight. Most of the poison had left her body, though there was still enough to give her skin an ashen tone. He didn’t envy her the sick and wrecked feeling she’d have upon fully waking. For at least three or four days, she would feel as if her body was suffering the worst flu of its life. But she was alive, and she was coming back to consciousness, and that was good fortune.

  He felt the poison spread over his chest. It stabbed his skin like needles as it began to sink beneath the surface. He pulled the stopper out of the vial of bright red potion and poured the viscous liquid into his hand. He whispered to the potion, his voice thick and clotted with fever, and he prayed that the words were coming out clearly enough. Then he pressed his palm against the wall, smearing it in a circular smudge.