by DM Fike
Rising Scorn
Magic of Nasci, Book #6
DM Fike
Avalon Labs LLC
Copyright © 2021 DM Fike
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ASIN: B099MSFV3Z
Cover design by: Avalon Labs LLC
For Grandma. 100 years wasn't long enough.
BOOKS BY DM FIKE
Magic of Nasci Nature Wizard Series
Chasing Lightning
Breathing Water
Running into Fire
Shattering Earth
Soaring in Air
Rising Scorn
Gathering Swarm
Howling Storm
Legends of Llenwald YA Portal Fantasy Series
Magic Portal
Magic Curse
Magic Prophecy
CHAPTER 1
JUST WHEN YOU think you’ve seen it all, life throws a jackal with bat wings at you.
To be fair, I’m not most people. I’m Ina, a nature wizard that just earned her full stripes a month ago. I’ve been training for years to manipulate elemental pith in the form of earth, air, fire, and water. After a few major screwups, I managed to prove myself to the goddess who inhabits our planet to become a full-fledged shepherd of Nasci. Now, despite a lot of people who think I should get booted from the club, I’m here to stay. I protect all living creatures from nasty monsters called vaetturs who portal in from another world to hunt on our turf.
Right now, that meant backing up the dryant Sova. Once a regular northern spotted owl, she had been imbued with vitae, Nasci’s lifeblood, and transformed into something straight out of a CGI-riddled movie. She screeched out a war cry as her thorny talons raked toward the jackal bat. The metallic mauve streaks of her wing tips shone against mossy trunks as she clashed with her enemy. Positioned beneath silver eyes, her almost eagle-like beak flicked in and out around the jackal’s muzzle.
The jackal was clearly outmatched by Sova and chose a defensive counter maneuver. With the skeletal structure of a flying squirrel, the jackal’s leathery wings jerked to and fro between its front and back legs, little gusts of wind keeping it sky bound. Maintaining a hovering position, the jackal folded its head into its neck, scaly triangular ears protecting vulnerable flesh. In this shield stance, I lost sight of the baby bird it had stolen, still trapped unconscious in its jaws.
“Careful!” I yelled to Sova as I scrambled to catch up. “Don’t let it drop the owlet until I get into position!”
Sova kept up her audible attack but tucked her talons into her body. I gathered lightweight air pith into my palms as I ran, ready to cushion anything falling with a counter burst of wind.
I had no way of knowing whether the jackal had already killed the owlet it held in its mouth. I’d been traveling through the secluded trees of the Siuslaw forest, far away from human civilization, using tree portals called wisp channels. I’d been on my way to the coastal town of Florence, Oregon when an unnatural gust of wind burst past me, and I heard an awful commotion in the canopy. When I poked my head above the treetops, I spotted the jackal with the limp owlet in its teeth. The only thing that had kept it from draining the poor owlet dry of pith had been Sova’s swift aerial pursuit, which I followed as best as I could on foot.
Things looked grim, but we had one distinct advantage. This had to be a pretty weak vaettur not to fight back against Sova. The owl dryant was more powerful than a normal bird, true, but she had only minor magical capabilities. Any vaettur with substantial chops would have chosen to test her mettle by now. Instead, this one had fled and then curled up into a ball when push came to shove.
Praying we were not too late, I raced to stand underneath the hideous vaettur. My body curved into a sigil stance, legs roughly shoulder width apart and limbs arched to absorb the elements around me.
“Sova!” I commanded as I slid into place under the jackal bat. “Now!”
Sova flew away several clicks. I wondered briefly why she would retreat until she flipped back around and spread her impressive seven-foot wingspan. Summoning a gust of wind to aid her, she dive-bombed toward the flailing jackal bat, who still had its head shielded and therefore did not see her coming. A massive bowling ball of avian muscle slammed into it. The vaettur yipped like a pitiful puppy as it fell downward, dropping its prey.
The owlet cascaded down toward me as a ball of downy white fuzz. I drew a sideways S and launched him upward, the updraft slowing down the baby’s fall. Grabbing onto the thin slat of metal around my neck, I pulled more air pith from my charm necklace to continue releasing gusts upward. The owlet fell more like a deflated balloon than a rock, so I could reach up and pluck him out of the air.
Cradling the child into my arms, I cooed. “Hey, there. You okay?”
His fluffy body felt warm in my fingers, but that didn’t mean anything. He was still covered in lukewarm jackal slobber. Casting off the slime with a water sigil, I pressed my thumbs gently around his feathery chest for a pulse.
His heart beat, steady and strong. I let out a relieved breath.
A shadow passed overhead. Sova crashed into me, talons digging painfully into my shoulder as she used me as her personal perch. As I wobbled to regain my balance, she screeched loudly into my ear, the desperate cry of someone who needed answers.
“He’s fine!” I yelled past the ringing in my brain. I lifted up the crook of my elbow to give her a better view. “See?”
Sova stabbed me a couple times as she trekked down my hoodie sleeve and poked her beak at the owlet. Her weight became too much. I kneeled down on the ground, laying the owlet in a patch of soft dirt. Sova hovered over the sleeping baby like a knight-at-arms.
I pulled pith from all over my body to ease the scratches Sova inflicted on my arm. I didn’t have time to scold her as a skittery bark echoed around us.
The jackal bat. It had landed among a bunch of ferns at the base of a Douglas fir. It scrambled onto its skinny legs and took off at a decent clip into some nearby bushes.
Sova shrieked, wings thrusting outwards to take to the air.
“No!” I snapped at her. She turned her head toward me, twisting around at a painful human angle. I love owls, but still. Ouch.
“You stay with the owlet. I’ll take care of Yappy.”
I didn’t know if she’d obey, but as I dashed into the underbrush after the vaettur, I didn’t hear the fierce beating of wings behind me. Good. Sova could protect animals, but only shepherds could send the thing packing for good.
I wasn’t worried about confronting the jackal vaettur, but it did manage to evade me for a while. I kept hearing it scurry around in the thickets, but whenever I’d reach a trembling bush or shaking vines, it fled yet again. The vaettur might not pack a punch, but it was smart. It knew if it took to the air, I’d catch it and smack it back to its own dimension.
I cursed as the chase stretched into a half hour. The dense trees left little room for a clear shot to get rid of this pest. Much as I loved hanging out in the forest, I had better things to do with my time. I needed a better plan than just follow this evasive jackal and hope for the best.
I took stock of my surroundings, scrutinizing everything in the 360 degrees around me. My ears strained for the so
und of a creek, where the trees would give way to the water’s path. Nothing. I then glanced upward and caught a break. Above me to the northeast, I could clearly make out blue sky and lots of sunshine. Bingo. Even better, the vaettur was already heading to the north through a bramble of blackberries. I just needed to guide him slightly eastward, and he’d stumble out into an open area where I could banish him.
Crouching to the ground, I dug both hands deep into a bare patch of dirt. Heavy earth filled my pithways, giving me a bit of extra weight. I absorbed it until I could feel it sink into my gut, then lifted one hand. I waited until I could pinpoint an exact spot that the jackal would pass ahead. When the vaettur walked over that spot, I drew a simple sigil—a square with a slash at the bottom—then released it underneath my target.
Bullseye.
I launched the ground under its paws into the air. The vaettur yelped and shot up a few feet over the thorny blackberries. Ouch. It landed back into the brambles, scurrying to get away. With one hand still buried in dirt, I continued to explode mini-landmines below it, corralling the vaettur toward the clearing. Within a few minutes, its sleek brown fur darted out into the open.
“Gotcha!” I yelled, sprinting after the jackal bat. I had no idea how big the field was, so I didn’t want to risk the vaettur running to the other side and putting me right back at square one.
But as I entered that wide open space, a dark foreboding came over me. Something about that clearcut swatch of land sent a tingle down my spine. I recognized this place.
This was where a lava crevasse once stood. The place where Rafe had almost killed me.
My mind tumbled back to that terrible moment. Rafe was a bound shepherd who’d tricked my stupid, gullible self into absorbing vaettur pith for him. He convinced me he’d only been serving Nasci’s will, but in fact, he’d been a fanatic who believed he should serve as judge and executioner against human beings. He’d thrown me into a miniature pit he’d created, full of Nasci’s magma lifeblood, believing I would die in it like another shepherd before me.
But I hadn’t. I’d survived and stripped him of his ability to wield any pith ever again.
It took my startled brain several seconds to register that Rafe wasn’t here, to let logic overcome fear and bring me back to the present. I had a jackal bat to banish.
I came out of my stupor, finding the vaettur jumping oddly about in the center of the field. Gone was the fleeing coward of before. It whipped around like a bull at a rodeo, back arched, legs kicking, and gaze deranged. Growls vibrated from its throat, menacing.
I gaped at it. “What the hell?”
The sound of my voice caused the vaettur to snap its head toward me. It charged, giving me only a split second to throw up my arms in self-defense.
My vision became clouded by fur, snarls, and teeth. I had no idea what had changed the jackal bat into a rabid dog, but if I hadn’t gotten both hands around its throat and pushed back, it would have ripped off a good chunk of my face. The vaettur’s eyes burned a deep, sizzling red as I kicked at its wings with my boots. I even managed to plow a heel into the joints of one wing, crunching the bone. The injuries didn’t even faze the rabid beast as it spat in my face.
I expected the wet sting of slobber, but instead got a mouthful of a sweet-smelling gas. My vision immediately went out of focus. My eyelids grew heavy, my brain even more so. I felt a drowsiness like when you stay up way too late reading a book but desperately want to finish the last chapter. Only I wasn’t curled up with my favorite novel, but with a snapping vaettur who, if I let go of my grip, would tear me to pieces.
It’d cast some sort of sleeping spell on me.
If it wasn’t for my mentor’s teachings, I would have succumbed to slumber right there and died. But Guntram had put me through the wringer for this specific scenario. I’d gone through a whole’s week worth of him putting me to sleep with a sigil, over and over again, until I learned to fight it off. Instinct kicked in, pooling air pith to my brain as I drew the counter sigil, a backwards S with a slash through it, to dispel the gas.
I was left breathless, but my mind was once again sharp. The jackal’s teeth missed sinking into my cheek by a hair. I needed to finish this. Now.
I grabbed onto the largest energy source at my disposal: my lightning charm. The former lithium battery with its various etchings immediately sent a buzz into my pithways. I opened myself up to the electrical energy, letting its raw sparks drown out all other sensations. My finger traced a jagged five-pointed star, then aimed at Yappy.
I think I told it to go copulate with itself, but my words got lost in the all-consuming flash of a lightning bolt.
CHAPTER 2
I USED TO have absolutely no control when I cast lightning. I blew up a beached whale once and have exploded more innocent trees than I care to admit. My lightning charm helps me control my aim a bit better, but playing with electricity is still pretty volatile and packs a powerful punch. Zapping something right in front of me didn’t help matters. So, while the jackal bat did disintegrate into a violent puff of smoke back to Letum, the bright discharge also pounded me backward into the ground like a hammer.
Like an infant under a mobile, I stared transfixed at the swirling puffy clouds above me. Coherent thought had fled, replaced only by a vague physical sensation. The breeze rustling my hair. The solid ground heavy beneath me. The humidity caressing my skin. I absorbed them all via osmosis, and I reflexively mixed them up into fire, letting all four elements skip around my pithways.
Sova found me in this half-comatose state. She carried the now squeaky owlet in her talons, gently placing him on the ground before landing herself. Wobbling about unsteadily on the ground, the dryant hooted at me.
Her sharp cry restarted my fuzzy brain. I pulled myself up into a sitting position, knobby knees knocking as my circulatory system repumped blood to all the right places. “I banished the vaettur. What more do you want?”
But Sova hadn’t come to scold me. She hopped close to me and thrust her beak into my hoodie, pulling away the sticks and various debris that had gotten stuck in the dark fabric. She was grooming me, a sign of affection for a job well done.
I scratched her lightly on the head. “You’re welcome,” I told her. Then, bracing myself with a groan, I rocked up to stand on my boots.
I’d electrocuted myself much worse in the past. The grogginess went away fairly quickly. Sova waited until I walked several solid steps before flying to perch on my shoulder. Her feathers tickled my cheeks as I made a mental list of what to do next.
I pointed down at the chirping baby owlet. “You know whose baby this is?” I asked Sova.
She rumbled low in her throat, then flew off toward the west. I took that as a ‘yes.’ An owl can’t easily lug passengers. She flapped her wings, waiting for me to follow with the owlet in tow. I complied by scooping the fluffball into the crook of my arm, then trailed the dryant deeper into the woods.
The baby bird, though shaken, seemed to take our journey in stride. He did not fight me as I struggled to keep up with the much faster Sova. Animals recognize shepherds’ unique bond with Nasci and treat us with respect, instead of fear like the rest of humanity. It was a good thing too because transporting a panicking owlet over two miles would have been next to impossible.
Eventually, Sova swooped high up into a grove of lodgepole pine and roosted near one trunk. The expansive nest hid in the shadows, neatly camouflaged by crisscrossing branches from below. No hoots emitted from it. Although it was daytime, it struck me as odd that a frantic owl mother hadn’t met us approaching her home. The owlet clambered restlessly in my arms, though, a sign Sova had found the right place.
The trunk didn’t have many branches for me to climb up, so I had to take the magical route. I kicked off my boots and shrugged out of my socks, ignoring the needles stabbing my bare soles as I gathered air pith in them. A long string of spiraling Ss later, I went soaring upward.
I’d only just mastered the soaring in
air sigil, so I floundered a little as I shot sixty feet up. I landed on a wide branch below the nest, toes gripping the rough bark. I reached up over my head and pushed the eager owlet back into the nest. Then I pulled myself upward for a closer look.
I found the rest of the owl family huddled up together like a bunch of dolls, two adults and two other babies. All eyes were closed tight as they leaned up against each other on one side of the nest. Their plumicorns, the characteristic tufts of feathered “horns” that looked like ears on either side of their heads, rose and fell in a steady rhythm with their breathing.
The rescued baby ran up to them, screeching, clearly happy to see his family. His happiness faded into cries of alarm when they refused to wake up. Owls may be nocturnal, but they react to stimuli just like any other animal.
Sova flapped her wings, hooting behind me.
“Yeah, I get it.” The pieces of the puzzle suddenly came into place. A coward like the jackal bat wouldn’t attack animals directly. It would cast the same sleeping spell it tried on me, then steal a weak baby for a snack.
I didn’t have a lot of air pith left, so I took a few minutes gathering more from the winds blowing around me. When I had enough, I drew the anti-sleep sigil again for the owl family, then replaced their pith with mine by stroking their downy feathers.
The adults woke up first, groggy initially but then jerking awake as memories returned. They bolted into the air, talons raised in alarm. I tried to console them, but it was Sova’s deafening bellows that got them to realize the danger had passed. They settled back down, counting their offspring as the two little ones awoke from their magical slumber.
Once everything appeared under control, I gave them a little wave. “My work here is done,” I told Sova, glancing at the ground to gauge how much air pith I’d need to land safely back down.
Before I left, the rescued owlet leaped to butt his beak into my arm. He gave me a light scratch of appreciation.
