by Adam Bennett
“Keep following me,” Skull urged.
The feminine laughter rose again, and the boy reacted by pointing ahead. “There!” Ahead they spotted the wispy, fair form of Fox, who kept still in a crouch before she giggled and pointed back. “She’s right there!”
“I oughta blast her right now,” Minora squeaked. “Trap her in crystal!”
“It won’t work,” Skull advised.
As they drew closer, Fox ran off and Skull followed. The trio slowed to a stop, exchanging worried looks.
“He left us. The little turd left us,” Pumpkin spoke through a trembling voice.
Do not be afraid. I am peace. I am salvation…
The women fretted and fought to keep their composure. Minora was on the verge of tears and Masaka gripped her blades tighter.
“Okay, who said that?” Pumpkin whined before she corrected her tone.
“If we die,” Minora babbled, “I just want to say, I ate all of the candy hidden in your cupboard!” Pumpkin stopped in her tracks and gave the fairy a death glare. “I was hungry!”
“I was the one who sucked all of the cream filling out of the pastries in Mr Bagfeld’s shop,” Masaka fessed up.
“Wait, you’re the reason we got banned? Oh, my damn, I don’t know you anymore!” Pumpkin was flustered, but she had her bearings back. “I swear, I’m gonna get you both when we get out of—holy crap!”
Skull stood motionless in their path, holding his hand up to stop them. “She got away.”
“Really?” Masaka said in a sarcastic tone.
“Ya don’t say?” Pumpkin followed up.
Now the gate has been unlatched, headstones pushed aside, corpses shift and offer room—a fate you must abide!
“Who is saying that?” Pumpkin inquired.
“The Candle Man. He’s trying to drive you crazy,” Skull didn’t hesitate to answer.
Masaka cracked her neck to collect herself. “That girl that rabbeted, was that your sister?”
Skull lowered his head slightly. “I believe so. I don’t think she’s herself. She went to play quis venari last year, when she was spirited away by the Candle Man.”
Masaka pressed her thumb against her chin. “I’ve heard of those rumours. I want to look into them more—”
“Can we save the chatter?” Pumpkin interrupted. “I want to finish the job and get the heck out of here.”
The group moved through the distillery, navigating the ins and outs of the facility. Apparitions spooked them, but on they pushed. Fox made herself known several times, forcing them to give chase. Pumpkin started to convince herself they were chasing the wind.
As they rounded a corner, they were greeted by a new sight: a large apparition in a narrow hallway bearing the only source of light, coming from its hand. Minora gasped and Pumpkin clamped her hand over the fairy’s mouth. The apparition appeared to take up most of the hallway, towering twelve feet tall with no discernable features. It didn’t seem solid, the light in its hand casting a pale blue glow around it, but the group was unable to see past the figure.
The sound seemed to drain from their surroundings. Pumpkin’s eyes darted frantically, as she couldn’t hear herself think. She resorted to hand signals to tell Minora to calm down and Masaka to back away slowly.
Children’s laughter marked a return to sound, yet it was the only sound present. Pumpkin was the last to back away and she saw five lights transform themselves into five individual children with glowing pumpkin masks.
“Will o’ the wisps,” Skull commented. As he spoke, the wisps turned in their direction, prompting the rest to run in the opposite direction.
“Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap!” Pumpkin sputtered as she held on to Minora and ran full tilt down a corridor. Masaka sped past her and immediately slipped on the ground, her footing lost from some sort of fluid sprayed in their path.
“That smells like… rum? Pumpkin, wait!”
Pumpkin heard too late as she slipped and tumbled head over heels, Minora hovering in the air.
The witch smelled herself. “Ugh, I smell like that weird guy behind the herbs shop that winks at people.”
“Better than that one guy who farted as he—”
Footsteps ceased their reminiscing as the trio turned, looked and saw the Candle Man standing there with a ring of blue fire in its right hand. It spoke not, slowly lowering its hand to ignite the fluid on the floor.
Pumpkin and Masaka clambered onto their feet, quickly swiping the rum from their clothing. The corridor was coated with fire and Pumpkin twirled her sceptre to cast a water spell, spraying it with a high pressure cannon. It only managed to briefly ebb the sea of flame.
“Okay, he’s trying to kill us!” Pumpkin noted. They turned to run in the opposite direction and immediately skidded to a halt.
I am a timeless chorus. Join your voice with mine, and sing victory everlasting… The voice came from the wisps, who collectively blocked their path.
Pumpkin waved her sceptre, Minora exuded her deep glow, and Masaka brandished her knives. Out of thin air, Skull appeared and urged them to follow. Masaka wasted no time in zipping past the wisps faster than Pumpkin’s eyes could process before she dashed down the corridor he pointed her to. Pumpkin followed suit, followed by Minora; the witch slammed two lantern bombs into the wisps and jumped clear as an explosion consumed the corridor.
Skull approached Pumpkin with an object in his hand. The darkness made it difficult for her to make sense of what it was. “I am sorry for what you’re going through. I found this to make you feel better.” He handed her a bottle of rum.
Pumpkin’s eyes lit up brighter than fireworks. “Vintage Artemis Dragon Spice rum?”
“I found an entire case down bel—”
Before he could finish, Skull found himself yanked along as Pumpkin ran in the direction he pointed. The group found themselves in the main production section and Skull motioned towards a small box. Sure enough, there were unbroken bottles of vintage rum there.
“Oh, my goodness! Enough for three weeks!” Pumpkin tapped the box with her sceptre and it shrunk until she could fit it in a plastic bag.
They heard clinking, drawing the group’s attention upwards. Like a nightmare, the Candle Man was perched on an overhead ledge, Fox standing next to him. The ring of blue flame still burning bright, the apparition laughed a deep, horrid laugh.
“Give her back,” Skull ordered.
“I’m not yours anymore,” Fox responded, acting as the Candle Man’s voice. “I’m not anyone’s. They can’t hurt me anymore, Brandon. Just like they can’t hurt you.”
“Are we out of the loop here or what?” Pumpkin asked.
“Yep, totally lost,” Masaka commented.
“Shh… I’m trying to listen!” Minora ordered.
Fox jumped down and landed in front of Skull. They both removed their masks...to reveal nothing underneath. The trio’s eyes went wide in surprise and horror.
“He changed us both,” Fox announced.
“I should’ve never played the game with you. We’re both damned.” In his hand he held a bottle of rum; Skull shattered it between them, smearing the ground with alcohol. “Pumpkin, do what you do best, and thank you.”
“Gladly,” the witch said as she ignited a lantern bomb large enough that she needed to hold it with two hands. The Candle Man moved to react, but Pumpkin flung her attack at his ring of fire, the resulting explosion snuffing out the candles.
“Ha!” Pumpkin screamed triumphantly. “Find your own hell, jerkface!”
Skull ignited a small flame in his palm and tossed it to the floor. Before Fox moved, he grabbed her and held tight while the apparition wailed like a wayward banshee.
All happened in the span of a thought.
The world around the trio changed as the darker shadows receded and the hair on the back of their necks returned to normal. The energy around them lessened into the calm, cool October night they remembered from earlier in the evening. Minora hovere
d about, pleased that the night sky was back to normal. Pumpkin and Masaka slapped each other high five.
“Hey guys, look!” Minora directed their attention skyward and the trio saw a boy and girl walking off into the stars, their backs turned to them.
“Wow. After all that, we still don’t know what he looks like.” Pumpkin commented as she pulled out the small bag with the shrunken rum. As she examined it, she noticed the bottles were broken. “Oh, son of a—”
Masaka stopped Pumpkin’s prepped swear short by holding out an untouched bottle of rum. Pumpkin shook her head and sighed harshly.
“Well, I guess one’s better than nothing,” the witch noted.
“Plus, we’ve got money now. Enough to do whatever we want. Well, whatever you want; I love dungeon crawling too much.” Masaka chuckled as she turned to walk back to Hollowmore.
“Yeah… What am I going to do now?” Pumpkin said to herself, trailing off as she looked at the stars.
Skull and Fox were gone, and only the moon looked back at her, offering some solace that the night ended favourably. Time to go home, Pumpkin thought, back to her father the Pumpkin King, and her mother, who would surely have some choice words for her after discovering she’d been out playing quis venari.
Blightborn
Nicholas Catron
“How can you sit there and do nothing? You know we can fight back! They come, year after year, we die in their battles and yet you do nothing. They steal our blightborn and still, you do nothing. Will there even be any of us left after the next time? Cowards, all of you,” Dimas said, his voice rising above all others in the common house. The long fire pit crackled and popped, echoing the rage that had built inside of him.
The townsfolk went silent. Dimas looked around, he didn’t expect even half of them to hear, let alone care about what he said.
“What do you expect of us? We can’t fight the wizards or the witches, let alone both at the same time. It doesn’t matter if they’re fighting each other, we still die.” Dimas couldn’t see who spoke up, but he knew the truth in the man’s words. Every year, when the harvest moon rose high in the night sky, armies of wizards and witches converged on their small village and waged war with each other, fighting over the blightborn.
Dimas walked around to the far side of the fire, where the voice had come from. His small frame and gaunt features didn’t exactly command respect, especially not among the soldiers or craftsmen. But, he was a blightborn, one of the few that hid his innate magical essence long enough to grow into a man without being taken. “Imagine you’re a child, ripped from your home and taken up to one of the wizard’s towers. They strap you into one of those wretched spires, sucking the blight from your body until you’re nothing left but dust and ash. Or even worse, taken by the witches, who eat you.”
“You don’t know if that’s true,” a woman shouted from the other side of the fire.
“And you don’t know if it’s not. It’s legend, which means, in the very least, it’s based on truth. I will not sit around and do nothing. Not anymore. We need to stand and fight back. Kill them as they kill each other. We can’t hide and hope to survive, this isn’t living.” Dimas marched back across the room and moved toward the door, people backing out of his way as fire raged in his eyes.
As he reached the door, he put his hand out, commanding the door to open. Stepping through the threshold into the chill night air, he heard someone yell after him, “We’re not all blightborn like you, can’t fight back against them!”
Shaking his head, he twisted his wrist and the door slammed shut. Walking into the gloom, toward his small home, he stared up at the moon. He knew they were right. How could they fight back? They were afraid, and rightly should be. The Reaping had been going on for centuries as the eternal war between the wizards and witches raged on, neither side gaining an upper hand, both sides harvesting the blightborn for their own needs.
Only a few more days, he thought, as he looked away from the sky. There were others, like him, who survived the Reapings and grown into adulthood. Most had left the village, moved as far away as they could. The few that stayed behind, did what everyone else did; hide and hope to live.
Not this year, not this time. He was going to fight back and get as many as he could to help.
He reached his house. A small round shelter built out of rocks he carried up from the river and dug from the ground. It had a thatched roof that did well for keeping him dry, as well as a sturdy fireplace. He couldn’t have asked for anything more.
Inside, he tossed himself on his bed of matted straw and closed his eyes. He could hear the other townsfolk in the common house, singing drunken songs of the Reaping, much as they did every year. He could have joined them, placed bets on whose kid would be taken that year, and who would die in the crossfire, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Though everyone had to suffer through the Reaping, there was something different knowing that you yourself were the actual target.
It didn’t take long for sleep to overcome him, bringing with it vivid dreams of witches dragging children into the forest, eating their flesh and drinking their blood, while wizards carried away the others, chaining them to mighty spires of magic that would suck the life from them. His fingers sifted through the ashes that were left behind.
He woke, drenched in sweat, clutching his thin blanket, a scream dead in his throat. Sleep didn’t find him again that night.
The next day, Dimas made his rounds, using his magic to help the crops grow, enchant the well water to stave off sickness and help in any way he could. Around midday, he decided to find some of the other, older blightborn. Heading down one of the paths leading east, he found Janus and his wife, Melanie, working on their small cottage just outside of the village. Both were blightborn, and every year, did their best to hide as many children as they could, in their root cellar.
“Dimas,” Melanie called, her back to him as she pulled weeds in her vegetable garden. He was still close to fifty yards off. “Have you come for lunch?”
Trotting up to his old friend, he dropped to his knees and started helping. “No, but I could do with some. I think you know why I’ve come.”
“The Reaping,” Janus said. Glancing up, Dimas found Janus sticking his head out of the cottage window above him. The man’s smile was wide and welcoming. “You want our help in fending off the reapers.”
Dimas couldn’t help but laugh. “You know me so well,” he said.
“No, we just read your mind, is all,” Melanie said, standing to her feet and dusting herself off. Janus ducked back inside the cottage and came out the front door, a slight hop with each step. The pair stood next to each other, Melanie’s arms draped around her husband. Dimas smiled. If there had ever been a happier pair of people, he had never met them. Even as the Reaping approached, they radiated with life and joy.
“Yes, now is the time to fight back. To end the Reaping once and for all. We can’t allow them to take anymore, to kill anymore,” Dimas said, his hands emphasizing each word as the urgency in his voice grew. The familiar tickle of the blight spread across his skin like a flock of geese, as he poured magic into the very air around him, electrifying it.
Janus and Melanie burst into laughter, their own magic saturating the air and drowning out his own. Instead of electricity, the air was filled with the scent of flowers and rain. Dimas frowned. “Why are you laughing, this is serious.”
“Yes, we know Dimas, we know. And we are serious, but you’re just too cute when you’re passionate,” Melanie said, her laugh tapering off.
“Of course, we will help you, but we will die. We can’t expect to win against an army of wizards or witches. Unless of course, you go get help,” Janus said, no laughter or joy in his voice. His eyes narrowed, and dark clouds rushed in, blotting out the bright sun and bringing with it a chilled air. Dimas shivered and looked around.
“What help do you mean? The others?”
Melanie stepped forward and took Dimas’s hands into her
own. “Yes, you will need all the others, but not just them. The wizards burn for our power, addicted to it. Sure, we might be able to hold them at bay, while they’re fighting the witches, but not if they focused on us. With the witches, it’s the same. They need us for their power. We are their power.”
Janus took back his wife’s hands, kissed her on the lips and she turned and went back to the garden. The smell of rain intensified as a few drops made their escape from the clouds above. Glancing up, Dimas let the rain patter his face.
“If you want this end, Dimas, we will need to kill all of them, at once. Even if we gather the other blightborn, we will be no match against them. But, there is a way.
“The wizards steal our power by strapping us into a chair and stabbing a stone into one of our eyes. It’s called a blight stone. It sucks the blight from us, leaving us nothing more than an empty husk when it’s finished. They attach those stones to their staves and are able to cast their spells from then on, until the stone is drained, and they have to refill it.
“The witches do something similar. If you want this to end, you need to get as many of their blight stones as possible. We will gather the other blightborn. Get back here the day of the reaping and we shall wage a war against them they have never dreamed possible.”
Dimas was silent, looking at Janus and absorbing all that he said. How was he supposed to get those stones? Just sneak into their towers and forest cottages and take them, without being noticed?
“And how am I supposed to do this?” Dimas asked. He knew it would be impossible, what Janus said was crazy.
“It’s simple, Dimas. Use your blight, outsmart them all. Grab what you can and return with haste. You know where the towers are, just look toward the mountains and you’ll see them. As far as the witches are concerned, well, everyone knows they live deep in the forests. Usually by rivers and streams. If you want this to end Dimas, you must do this. Or, we’ll forever be their crops, waiting for the harvest.”
Janus was right. He had to do it. Who else would? There were only a few more days. Janus reached out and put his hands on his shoulders, his eyes grew white for a moment as he whispered a few words. The smell of rain saturated Dimas and he felt a growing thunder under his skin. “I’ve blessed you Dimas. All you must do is speak one word, and one time only, you’ll be returned directly to me. Do this only when you’re in grave danger or have all the blight stones you can carry. Say ‘Home,’ and you’ll be instantly with me.”
