The final hand around his neck suddenly went slack, and Devin did not want to think about the magic somehow connecting it to its former body. He tore it off and flung it. Clean air slid down his retching throat, finally releasing the agonizing burn in his lungs. The relief was short-lived. The other wounded mute tackled him to the ground, its arms wrapping about his waist. Devin rolled with it, positioning his sword so the tip pressed against the corrupted human’s chest. Their roll continued, the hilt struck ground, and the creature’s own momentum impaled itself upon the blade.
Devin shoved the body off him and then pulled at his sword. No give. The blade was trapped within the rib cage. Devin’s senses screamed warning. The corner of his eye spotted movement. Devin released the hilt in addled panic and rolled to the side. He’d killed only five. The sixth remained. The final mute dove off the balcony, scabbed hands reaching, nostrils flared, eyes wide and overwhelmed with fury. It would land atop him, and Devin had no defense but his bare fists.
A comet slammed into the mute in mid-descent, blasting it aside. Puffy clung to the bald mute, which thrashed on its back as the firekin grew in size, enveloping its body with steady, unstoppable flame. Pale flesh blackened. The firekin’s body grew, and grew, consuming the creature, charring it to bone and fluttering ash. Its final breath was thin and raspy. Once the deed was done Puffy hopped off, shedding much of its size like a snake shedding its skin, except instead of old scales it left behind a great smear of liquid fire burning upon the street.
Devin swallowed down his unease, accepting another solemn reminder that not even his small, friendly companion was as innocent as Devin wanted to believe. Still, there was no denying the firekin had yet again saved his life.
“Thank you,” he said, still weak and out of breath. “I’d be in sore shape without you, wouldn’t I?”
Puffy hopped over to one of the buildings and used a finger that emerged from its side to quickly scrawl a message.
YUWELCOMFREND.
“Friends indeed,” Devin said, and he weakly smiled despite the horror of the day.
It appeared the Goddesses had finally decided he deserved a break, for no more of the mute creatures lurked about as Devin resumed his travels to the tower where he hoped to find his friend. It took him only a few minutes to reorient himself, and he walked the last of the trip with Puffy hopping along the rooftops. Devin wasn’t sure what he expected upon reaching the tower, but when he finally arrived, this certainly wasn’t it. The Tower of the Wise was stone, not wood like the rest of the buildings in Crynn, and all along its base had collected an astounding mound of bone, ash, and rotting flesh.
“What in Anwyn’s name happened here?” Devin wondered aloud.
The Soulkeeper checked some of the more intact bodies near the outer ring of the carnage. One creature lay on its back, its swollen tongue poking out a small hole in its scar-tissue mouth. Burn marks spread from its neck to its lower abdomen in a snaking, treelike pattern. Devin had seen such a pattern once before in the drawings of a textbook. It marked the unique burn scars of a lightning strike. Except lightning strikes were incredibly rare. Devin counted at least two dozen bodies bearing similar patterns.
That wasn’t the only oddity he found in what appeared to have been a battlefield. Many of the corpses looked crushed as if by heavy rocks or bricks, yet no such objects lay anywhere in sight. Most bodies were torched with fire, many down to the bone. Devin could only guess if it was the cause of death or merely applied after.
Puffy looked equally upset by the sight. Devin asked if it would follow, but the firekin refused to step anywhere near the tower.
“I can’t blame you,” Devin muttered, turning his attention to the door. Its thick oak front was heavily damaged and splintered, as if cudgeled from the outside. Devin tested it with his shoulder. No give. He glanced about the many dead and decided if they couldn’t force it open then neither could he. Still, there were other entrances.
Devin circled the tower, searching for the lowest window. The tower stretched four stories, and while there were no windows on the first floor, there were two on the second, one conveniently above a rather thick collection of ash and bone. Devin climbed the pile while doing his best to ignore the macabre sight. Once at the top he tested the bricks of the tower. They were smooth, but not perfectly so. He brushed his fingers along the wall, searching for handholds, and when he found one, he used it to propel himself as he jumped. His other hand caught the window’s edge.
Once he’d pulled himself up, he spun about and waved to Puffy. It dashed across the dirt, leaving a trail of lingering flame to spell its message.
IWATE.
Devin saluted with two fingers, turned on his heels, and hopped down from the sill into a dark, dusty archive of the tower. The light from the window was all he had to see. Multiple burnt-out candles hung from various chains. The archive was small, just a single bookshelf on each of its four square walls, but this wasn’t the only one the tower contained. The Wise were the keepers of local lore, maps, and weather charts. Every city had one, and Tomas was Crynn’s. Should you seek a cure to a snakebite, you came to a Wise and his little book of nineteen different poisonous species. Property dispute over where one’s land ended and another’s began? Seek a Wise. Basically the tower’s entire structure was floor after floor of libraries and knickknacks of questionable use.
Devin climbed the stairs from one floor to the next, a thick knot twisting in his throat. The walls of the tower were tall, and the corruption clearly hadn’t reached the second floor. If Tommy had survived, the tower was where he’d be. One giant if. Devin couldn’t shake his dread that up those stairs he’d find another of those awful blood-mutes…
The final floor was painfully tiny, with room for little more than a desk and a chaotic collection of books covering the floor. Two candles burned on either side of the desk. Devin stepped off the stairs, his breath catching in his throat. A blond-haired man lay slumped in his chair, his hands hanging limp by his sides, his open mouth drooling over the book he currently used as a pillow. He wore a disheveled bed robe and a long pair of soft leggings. A long, gratingly loud snore droned from his open mouth.
“Tommy?” Devin said, grabbing him by the shoulder.
Tomas yelped and jolted upward. His hand brushed Devin’s. A tremendous sound of thunder shook the walls, and a force like a bolt of lightning flung Devin across the tiny room to tumble over a pile of weathered tomes. Tomas spun in his chair, a massive grin of relief spreading across his young face.
“Devin?” he asked. “Goodness gracious, it really is you! Oh, uh, sorry about that, a bit of a reflex I’m still working on. So, um, good news—I can cast spells now. Isn’t that great?”
“Yeah,” Devin said, half-buried in books. Static leapt off him in wild little sparks. “Just… fantastic.”
CHAPTER 10
Their table was a tiny square slab of pine on the second floor braced by three painfully unsteady legs. Devin sat in one of the two chairs, his coat hanging over the back. A tall glass of wine and a half-eaten apple rested on a plate before him.
“I really am sorry about that,” Tommy said. He paced behind his chair, unwilling or unable to take a seat for all his nervous energy. His friend was rambling, not that Devin minded. Hearing a familiar voice was like finding rain in a parched desert. “While most elemental conjurings require a fairly precise reproduction of what I like to call the verbal recipe, some of the simpler ones appear more like reflexes after the initial casting, requiring only mental reproduction of the necessary incantations.”
“Let’s take a pause here,” Devin interrupted. “Before we get into… well, all that, I’d rather know how you’re doing, Tommy. Surviving these past few days had to have been difficult.”
Tommy’s pacing halted for a split second. He drummed his fingers against his sides.
“Yes, it was very, uh. So. Every Wise has a collection somewhere of older scrolls and texts that have been long since discredited—b
ooks on things like alchemy and palm readings.” He wiped at his brow. “Anyway, these supposed instructions for spells are a petty amusement—at least they used to be. I think every member of the Wise tries at some point to see if they can utter the perfect words to conjure a fireball or change a clear day to rain. I considered it a childish wonder, that hope for something magical, you know?”
As his friend spoke, Devin’s worry steadily grew. Tommy’s voice was trembling, and he’d purposefully dodged his question. Devin stood from the table and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, interrupting his rambling. Tommy, so lost in his own mind, jumped at the touch.
“Tommy, it’s all right,” he said. “I’m here now. You’re not alone.”
Tommy froze. His jaw trembled. His hands shook.
“You’re right, you know,” Tommy said. “It’s been difficult, real difficult. No, more than that. It’s been fucking torture.”
The tears finally broke free. Tommy flung his arms around Devin and clung to him like a raft amid a flood. His chest shuddered with every breath. Devin quietly returned the embrace, his stomach sick with worry.
Devin had first met a young Tomas on the eve of his and Brittany’s wedding a decade ago. Tommy, as he preferred to be called, had been a supremely chipper boy who looked the spitting image of his older sister. He had just been accepted into the training program of the Wise, a remarkable achievement for one barely turned fourteen. Three years later he was designated the Wise of Crynn, granted to someone so young because no one else in the program wanted to travel all the way to the westernmost city in Unified Orismund. Tommy had known that was the case but didn’t care.
“I get to read and study for a living,” he’d joyously told Devin and Brittany as the three gathered in an outdoor market drinking oversized tankards of ale and wine. “Can you imagine a greater life than that?”
Devin wondered if that same innocent happiness would ever return, or if it’d be one more thing the black water corrupted and ruined.
After a minute Tommy pulled back, and this time he collapsed into his little rickety chair.
“Sorry about that,” he said, wiping at his face.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Devin said as he took his seat opposite him. “I know this is hard to talk about. If it’ll help, I can start with my story first. I’ve a tale to tell if you’d like to listen.”
“You know I’m always up for a story,” Tommy said, cheering up at the idea. “You’ve got a lot of new scars and bruises, so I bet it’s a good one, too.”
“Empathy, Tommy,” Devin said. “Try to have some empathy, would you?”
Devin started with his arrival in Dunwerth, and he left nothing out of his recounting. Tommy quietly listened, his body relaxing for the first time since they met. His eyes lit up when Devin talked of Puffy, and his excitement was palpable upon hearing that the firekin had stayed with him through the journey.
“Might I meet it?” he asked.
“I guess I could introduce you two,” Devin said, cracking a smile.
Last he came to his arrival in Crynn, and his discovery of the Dunwerth’s villagers and their corruption.
“And that’s my tale,” Devin finished. “So much as it is.”
“The Goddesses’ presence in the world appears to be strengthening to counteract the evil of the black water,” Tommy said, two fingers pinching his lower lip as he thought. “At least, that is my interpretation of these events. The reaping hour needed no ritual from you to take the souls of the dead in the mayor’s home, and what other explanation do we have for the water’s bypassing of Dunwerth’s villagers?”
“It’s a thought that’s crossed my mind,” Devin said. “But I’ll leave that pondering to the Mindkeepers. I’ve told my story, so what of yours? How have you endured since this all began?”
Tommy shifted uncomfortably in his chair, but he seemed much more together than during his initial ramblings.
“The only warning we had were faint tremors indicative of a distant earthquake,” he said. “Not uncommon given our proximity to Alma’s Crown. I was logging it in my daily journal when the water arrived.” He took in a long breath and let it out slowly. “It wasn’t silent like you described in Dunwerth. I noticed its arrival from… from the screams.”
Tommy looked around while wiping his sweating forehead.
“Goodness me, I forgot to get myself a drink.”
Devin patiently waited as the young man hurried over to a cabinet, pulled out two small glasses, exchanged them for tankards thrice the size, and then filled them with wine.
“I think the Goddesses know how much I need this,” he said as he returned to his seat. “Where was I? Oh. Right.” He took a giant swig. “Once I heard something was amiss I went to the window and saw… I saw an ocean of shadow and stars stretching for miles and miles. I didn’t know what it was, where it came from, I just stood there by the window and watched. I think.… I think I was convinced the world was ending. What else could it mean?”
Devin didn’t have the heart to tell him that still might be the case. Instead he took a sip of his own drink and gestured for Tommy to continue.
“When it receded I saw people in the streets, and I thought they’d survived,” Tommy said. “Maybe it wasn’t the end of the world, I told myself. Sure, the houses looked a little worse, and the grass outside the town seemed ready to die, but at least we’d survived. At least we’d…”
Tears were building again. Devin quickly offered him a respite.
“No,” Tommy said, lifting a finger and waving it. “No, I can do this. I was a coward then, but I’ll relive it now. I hid, Devin. I locked and barred the door, then hid under my bed with my fingers in my ears like a child. The people who went underneath that black water? They were changed. They were always bleeding, and they were angry. So angry.”
He took another long drink and then gasped.
“Lyra’s tits, that tastes good. Oh. Sorry for the language.”
“Foul language is the least of my concerns right now,” Devin said. “When we return to civilization, and we’re resting in a nice warm bed in a crowded tavern, perhaps then I’ll make you offer a few prayers for Lyra’s poor offended tits.”
Tommy laughed, and the temporary relief loosened the budding tears in his eyes so they fell.
“Sometimes people screamed for help,” he said. “Other times I just heard them fighting. No one came to my tower. Not at first. If… if they had, I don’t know if I’d have let them in. Not out of malice, just… none of this seemed real. It couldn’t be happening. These awful, terrible, nightmarish sounds were because I was losing my mind. I could handle that. The whole town wasn’t dead or turned to monsters. That was ridiculous. That was insane, so surely I must be insane instead.”
Tommy sighed bitterly at his tankard.
“Near the end of the second day I realized it was all real. I also made my first big mistake. I let one of those bloody things see me.”
The young man sank into his chair and fell silent for a moment. Devin sipped his wine, the scene outside the tower falling into place. Once one of those creatures saw him, others must have started to gather. Noise would have drawn more, to create more noise, to draw even more…
“I think by then I was a little crazy,” Tommy said, eyes snapping back into focus. “When those things first surrounded my tower I hid and begged whatever goddess might listen to spare me. Those things, some of them used to be my friends. These were the people I helped, who came to me for…” He stopped and shook his head as he collected himself. “The more I saw of them the more I knew that though they shared the same body they were nothing like the people I knew. I hated them for it, and as those things continued surrounding my tower I started taunting them. I’ve never been great with, uh, improper language, but by the Goddesses I did my best and then some. I flung old books. I laughed at the ones failing to climb the tower. I might have even, um…” His face flushed red. “Well, I have to urinate somewhere,
you know.”
“I guess that’s true,” Devin said. “None of those things are still alive, so how did that come about?”
“Well, it was during the whole ‘book throwing’ phase,” Tommy said. “The world was ending, so do we really need Wise Dallert’s treatise on proper cartographic principles? I kept the good ones, though. Even then, part of me was convinced I’d survive, I’d help rebuild, and there are some things we should know. So while curating what I’d throw and what I’d save, I came across… hold on, let me show you.”
Tommy hopped up from his chair and hurried to the stairs. Devin rose as well and drifted over to one of the windows. It took only a moment’s searching to find Puffy quietly burning a black spot atop a nearby roof. Devin waved at the firekin to show that he was alive and well. Two smoke rings rose in response.
“Here we are,” Tommy said as he came back down, a small book in hand. It was fifty pages at most, and nothing seemed remarkable about it. The two retook their seats, the tome placed between them. Devin glanced at the burgundy cover. Manipulation and Theory of Aethos Magic, a discussion by Salid Emberson the Wise.
“Aethos?” Devin asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Tommy said as he flipped through the pages. “A lot of it is arguing against an opposing school of thought, and poorly done, I’d wager, given how Salid gives few examples of what that opposing school believed prior to posting his counterarguments. The writer goes into great lengths to argue the proper positioning of the little finger during incantations, at one point insisting that having it fully extended is like asking the Goddesses to turn you into a bullfrog. But he lists examples of ‘Aethos spells’ at various points in the book. I had good reason to believe they would now work, so I studied—”
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