Scorched Earth

by Randall Pine

  “Simon!”

  Virgil hurried forward, losing his footing and crashing to the ground next to his friend. Something cracked in his hip, and he felt a sting, but nothing felt broken. He pushed the small pain away and reached out, turning Simon onto his back. He patted his friend’s face, trying to wake him up. “Simon?”

  Simon’s eyes fluttered open. He looked over at Virgil.

  He smiled.

  “What happened?” Virgil asked, helping Simon up to a seat.

  Simon brushed himself off and raised himself carefully to his feet, then he pulled Virgil up after him. Simon inspected his friend in the moonlight, and he frowned. “You got old,” he said.

  Virgil touched his face, and he winced at the papery feel of his skin. “I thought I felt different,” he said miserably. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He turned on the camera and took a picture of his face, blinding himself with the flash. Once the bright spots had cleared from his vision, he focused on the image, and he gasped. “I look like an adult!” he said.

  Simon couldn’t help but laugh. The moonlight had been a little deceiving, and in the brightness of the camera flash, he saw that Virgil wasn’t quite as far gone as he seemed at first. His skin was dry and would need some serious attention…he had wrinkles around his eyes that were probably there to stay. “You’re going to need some moisturizer,” Simon said, and he couldn’t suppress a grin. “Probably a little calcium for those old bones.”

  “I hate milk,” Virgil groaned. “It makes my mouth all gummy.”

  “Your hair is probably beyond hope.”

  “I think the streak makes me look distinguished. And I think I’m missing a tooth…”

  “You should probably see a doctor.”

  “Yeah, I’m going to Urgent Care tomorrow,” Virgil agreed.

  Simon reached out and gave his friend a hug. He couldn’t help it.

  “All right, all right,” Virgil said, clapping Simon on the back. “But seriously. What happened?”

  “I realized couldn’t destroy the Refracticore,” Simon said. Then, before Virgil could say anything, he added, “Just like Reddit said, I know, I know.”

  “Reddit knows everything,” Virgil grinned.

  “I couldn’t destroy it, so I didn’t,” Simon continued with a shrug.

  Virgil looked around suspiciously. “You didn’t destroy it…but it’s not here anymore,” he observed.

  “Correct. I couldn’t destroy it, so instead, I locked it away.” Simon allowed himself an immensely satisfied grin. His face beamed with pride as he said, “The Refracticore is locked away in my psychic vault.”

  Virgil’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry, it’s what?”

  “It’s in my vault,” Simon repeated, the grin now spreading into a full smile. “I threw everything I had at that stupid rock. I mean, everything. You wouldn’t believe…well, I’ll tell you about that later. But in the end, I realized I didn’t have to destroy it, I just had to remove it from the situation. So I opened my vault, walked up to the stone, put my hand on it, closed my eyes, imagined I was in front of the vault—”

  “—and the Refracticore was there in your hand, just like Gladys, or your key,” Virgil said with awe.

  Simon nodded. “Yep. I figured if it works with those magic objects, maybe it’ll work with other magic objects, too. And it did.”

  Virgil shook his head in wonder. “Wow.”

  “So I threw the Refracticore inside, slammed the door, and locked it. I am now the proud owner of an indestructible, dark-magic Refracticore.”

  Virgil frowned. “Well is it still…you know…refracticoring? What’s going to happen when you open the vault again?”

  Simon hadn’t thought about that. He furrowed his brow. “I guess we’ll see,” he finally decided.

  Virgil looked around the clearing. “And the Cocoon Club?” Virgil asked. “They just…left?”

  “Yeah,” Simon nodded. “I kind of blacked out, but the last thing I saw was the woman in the cloak getting everyone in the van and tearing off. I…think I might have freaked her out. There were fire streams and attack flowers,” he explained.

  “So she’s still on the loose,” Virgil sighed.

  “She is,” Simon confirmed. “But we know she’s connected to Furtive Hills, whatever that is. If we can find that, we can find her. Think you can connect with that guy on Reddit who posted about the van disappearing?”

  Virgil gasped. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “If we find Furtive Hills, we find her. And if we find her, we might find this shadow…thing.”

  “Shadow Lord,” Virgil informed him.

  Simon raised an eyebrow. “Shadow Lord?”

  Virgil nodded. “That’s his name. I decided.”

  Simon sighed. He was too tired to argue. “Okay, so if we find her, we might find the Shadow Lord. And if we find him…maybe we can stop the darkness from taking over Templar.”

  “He does seem to have his fingers in a lot of pies,” Virgil observed.

  “First Neil, now this…who knows what else—or who else—he’s controlling.”

  “And Neil isn’t the only one that he’s ‘chosen,’” Virgil pointed out. “We can pretty much bet all these not-quite-so-old-anymore folks are solidly on his side.”

  Simon nodded slowly, turning all these thoughts over in his mind. “Well,” he finally said, “this is a discussion for another day, when you’re in full health, and when we have a wizard back on our side.”

  “Oh, right. Llewyn’s an ice cube,” Virgil grimaced.

  “Maybe not. Let’s head back and see if Abby had any luck summoning Morgaine.”

  “Okay,” Virgil agreed. They started back toward their car, Virgil leaning heavily on Simon as they hobbled through the dark woods. It was slow going, but they didn’t mind—darkness or no darkness, it was nice to be outside, in the fresh air, without the threat of a new piece of scorched earth lurking on the horizon. “Hey,” Virgil said, giving Simon’s shoulder a squeeze, “by the way…thanks for saving my life.”

  Simon smiled. “No need to thank me,” he said. “It’s just what a hero does.”

  “It’s what a friend does, too,” Virgil said.

  Simon smiled at that.

  Chapter 30

  Abby cleared her throat. Here we go, she thought.

  The tent flap lifted, and Simon and Virgil ducked into the mansion. They stepped into the light, and Abby gasped. “Virgil! What happened?”

  Virgil turned to Simon and frowned. “She doesn’t think I look distinguished,” he said.

  “What can I say?” Simon asked with a shrug. “You’re not everyone’s taste.”

  “I assume you’ll give me a full rundown later?” Abby asked weakly, crooking an eyebrow. She was still wracked by the poison-fever, and when she thought about it again, she didn’t have the energy for one of Virgil’s explanations.

  “Later,” Virgil confirmed. “But everything’s good. Promise.”

  “Well,” Abby said, measuring her words. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that.”

  “What do you mean?” Simon asked.

  Abby took a deep breath. “You know how I said I’d find a way to summon Morgaine.”

  “Right…” Virgil said suspiciously.

  “Okay, well…everything’s frozen, so…you know, I wasn’t sure how to find more information. So I wandered around a little, and I went into the potions room, and there was this thing in the corner called a spell sponge. Have you ever heard of a spell sponge?”

  “No,” Simon said.

  “We’re new at this,” Virgil explained.

  Abby cleared her throat uncomfortably. She wasn’t quite sure how to explain everything, and her brain was still feeling fuzzy, which wasn’t helping matters. So she just started talking. “Well, ok
ay. So a spell sponge is this thing...it’s a sponge, basically, like a bath sponge. But instead of water, it soaks up magic. Which I’m guessing is why Llewyn had one in the potions room, so he could clean up any magic potion spills. So there was one in there, and the thing about it is, even if it’s frozen, it still works. It’ll still suck up the magic, as long as the magic itself isn’t frozen. And if you’ll recall, there is exactly one thing of Llewyn’s in this mansion that didn’t freeze when he did.”

  “The red letters,” Simon said with sudden realization. He hadn’t even considered that before, but the red paste on the wall hadn’t formed into letters until after Llewyn had frozen. “Whatever he used was still…I don’t know…active.”

  Abby nodded. “Right. So I used the sponge and soaked up the words. Then I wrung the thing out, and the red liquid dripped onto the floor. I did it just in case maybe Llewyn had planned for this, and had put more magic inside his magic. And it turns out…he did.”

  Virgil screwed up his face in confusion. “I’m going to go ahead and say that I understand what you’re saying, but I want to make it clear that I do not.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Abby said dismissively, pushing back a lock of purple hair that had fallen into her eyes. “The point is, the potion or paste or whatever that he had used to make the words ‘summon Morgaine’ hit the floor, and they made new words. And those words gave me step-by-step instructions on how to summon her.”

  “So Morgaine is a her?” Simon asked. “That’s part of the mystery solved, at least.”

  “She’s not just a her,” Abby sighed. “I think she’s her.”

  Simon furrowed his brow. “I might be too tired for this conversation, but I don’t know what that means.”

  Abby clicked her teeth together thoughtfully. “She goes by other names,” she finally said. “You…might know one or two of them.”

  Virgil squinted suspiciously. “Who is it?” he asked.

  Abby didn’t know quite know how to put it. “Look, let’s just say, I’m a little confused about why Llewyn would have asked us to bring her here. You should see for yourself, but…she’s dangerous. I mean, dangerous. And for him to ask us to bring her into his house…I have to imagine that she is literally the only person who can free him from the ice. Otherwise, he’s put us all at extraordinary risk for nothing.”

  Simon found himself squirming. “Well…what if we don’t summon her?” he asked. “I mean, maybe she is the only person who can set him free, but maybe we should exhaust every other option first. Really make sure, you know?”

  Abby pressed her fingers to her forehead and rubbed her temples hard. “It…might be too late for that,” she said.

  Virgil started. “Did you already summon her? On your own?”

  Abby frowned. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she said.

  Simon looked around the mansion’s sitting room. “Where is she?” he asked. “Is she working on Llewyn? Is she back there with him?” He started walking toward the back hall, and Virgil followed.

  “Not exactly,” Abby said, hurrying to keep up with their long strides.

  “What does that mean?” Simon asked, walking faster as a strange panic started to creep up in his chest. He climbed over the rubble in the hallway and pushed through the door. “Abby, what are you—?”

  He stepped through the doorway, and he froze. He gaped down the hall at the thing that now filled the space between the walls, just past the frozen figure of Llewyn.

  It was a long, narrow box hammered together from heavy, ancient wood—a coffin, old and worn, and bound with four different chains, each one heavier than the last. They were secured with heavy, rusted padlocks, and in case the chains weren’t enough to hold whatever creature was inside, the whole casket had been tied shut with a thick, winding rope, and all the seams in the coffin had been sealed with thick red wax.

  Simon gasped as he read the true name of the woman inside, which was scratched into the surface of the weathered wood.

  “Guys,” Abby said awkwardly, gesturing toward the box, “I just summoned Morgan le Fay.”

  Author’s Note

  If you enjoyed this book, please take a moment to leave a review on Amazon. Reviews really do make or break the success of independent authors, and your support would be truly and greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time, and for enjoying the Dark Matter series!

  •

  The Dark Matter series will continue in Book Three:

  Shadow Realm

  •

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  Dark Matter Case Files

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  About the Author

  Randall Pine is a Midwestern author who was raised on comic books, The Twilight Zone, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He lives with a very encouraging wife and with two cats who have not yet revealed any dormant magic powers they might possess. But hope springs eternal. Scorched Earth is his second novel; Dark Matter is his first series.

  Visit him online at RandallPine.com