“Hey, man.” Jacob stuck his head into the kitchenette. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m saying goodbye.” He grinned and flipped the lights off. “I don’t want to be mushy, but…in case no one’s said this to you yet, I think your grandmother would be proud of what you’re doing right now.”
His friend blinked a few times. His eyes were suspiciously bright but he didn’t make any mention of it, so he also pretended he didn’t see it.
“Thanks, man,” Jacob said finally. His voice was a little rough. “That means a lot. I like to think you’re right.” He beckoned to Nick. “Come on. There’s only one thing left. Once the pod is installed, we’ll all go get some sleep.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
With their treasure safely stowed in the cart and Lyle chatting amiably with the blacksmith, Justin’s dreams were pleasant ones of soft beds and feasts. He’d had enough turkey legs to last him a lifetime in this world. Right now, what he wanted was mashed potatoes and some of his grandma’s dinner rolls.
And mac and cheese. God, he’d kill for mac and cheese.
He wasn’t sure quite when his dreams began to change but slowly, the feasts began to turn darker. The beds were prickly, the food tasted like ashes, and he looked around at skeletons seated in the chairs nearby.
The air was clammy when he woke with a start. While he’d been asleep, a heavy fog had rolled in. Zaara slept with one arm thrown over her eyes. She snored softly, and he leaned against the side of the cart with a sigh. They’d certainly seen enough terrifying things to warrant a few nightmares.
He stiffened when he saw something moving in the mist.
The hair on his arms stood up and he sat bolt upright. He peered into the fog behind the cart until his eyes ached, but the shadow didn’t return.
Still, his instincts prickled alarmingly.
Quietly, he clambered onto the back of the cart so he sat directly behind Lyle and the blacksmith. They had stopped singing folk songs at some point and both of them looked at him warily when they heard him approach. He couldn’t tell whether he felt better or worse to know that they were both spooked as well.
“Did the silence wake ye?” Lyle’s voice was unusually subdued.
He shook his head. “Nightmares.” He tried not to speak too loudly and turned his head quickly when he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. If there had been something, it was already gone.
Or it had been nothing and he was jumping at shadows.
Lyle dashed that hope a moment later. “There’s somethin’ out there,” he said in a tight mutter. “It came with the fog.”
Justin made a snap decision. “I’ll wake Zaara.”
The blacksmith and Lyle both nodded, and his heart sank. He climbed down as quietly as he could before he shook Zaara’s shoulder. When she turned her head and started to wake, he picked her arm up and put a finger over his lips. Her eyes opened and she frowned when she saw him.
He motioned for her to sit and peer out the back of the cart. It took long enough for them to see anything that she looked at him curiously a couple of times, but finally, something black flicked through the fog. He could almost imagine it was a tail, something impossibly fast.
She pushed herself back with wide eyes. Her face had gone pale and when she looked at him, there was genuine fear in her eyes.
That, in turn, worried him. He hadn’t even seen her afraid in Sephith’s tower. Angry, yes. She was easily moved to anger and contempt for those who hurt others but she was rarely afraid. Tense and fearful, she looked at him, and then at Lyle, who nodded to her and showed her his fist. Whatever was coming, the dwarf was—as ever—ready to punch it.
Zaara drew both her daggers quietly, and he went to get his sword.
They all knew they were waiting, and Justin thought not knowing what they were waiting for was the worst part. He found out very quickly that he was wrong when the first beast broke through the fog in front of them.
He honestly could not have said what it was. At first glance, he swore he saw something like the witch. Arms waved like an octopus and lashed toward him. The creature blazed closer so fast that Justin and Zaara, perched on the back of the cart, tumbled into it with a clatter of gold coins. The horse screamed and dragged the conveyance in wild jerks, and the blacksmith gave a full-throated yell.
The beast hurtled overhead. It was long, possibly scaled, and perhaps as slimy as a slug. It was gone too quickly for Justin to tell—either what it was, or how it flew. He was left with the impression of fangs and a long tail, something he decidedly would not want to meet in a dark alley.
Or anywhere, for that matter.
On the bench, Lyle yelled something. The blacksmith was hunched over his arm but still tried to calm the horses.
“He’s wounded,” the dwarf called to Justin. “Drive the cart.”
“I don’t know how to drive a cart,” he responded and tried to push panic aside. “Zaara?”
“I’ll do it.” She clambered up the side and onto the bench. He heard her sharp intake of breath and a sudden oath to several gods. “Lyle, get him in the back—oh, shit.”
“What?” Justin demanded. He scanned the road behind them for the giant snake-monster. “What is it?”
Lyle jumped into the cart behind him with a thud and a second, less graceful thud heralded the blacksmith joining him. Justin looked back and froze when he saw what Zaara had been looking at.
Whatever the beast was, it had claws of some kind and they had inflicted a long gash in the blacksmith’s arm—he must have put a hand up to shield his head, he thought. The gash, however, was far from the worst of it. The skin at the edges of the wound had turned a deep black, a dark liquid oozed from the cut to mix with the blood, and from the hissing sound and the blacksmith’s bone-white face, the pain must be horrific.
He ran to help Lyle lever the man down, who hardly seemed to notice them. His breathing was shallow and a thin film of sweat covered his face.
“Zaara!” Justin called. “Get the horse running as fast as you can. We need to get him to town.”
Her reply, however, was drowned out by another scream from the horse. Above them, the beast slithered through the fog, and the clouds parted in front of the cart. What stood there, all fangs and claws and dripping blood, looked like the army of hell. The creatures were far from human and barely close enough for their appearance to be utterly horrifying.
Zaara, thankfully, did not hesitate. She whistled sharply and yanked on the reins to guide the horse into a wide arc. The cart plunged off the edge of the road into the tall grass with a jostle that made the blacksmith hiss through his teeth and circled to try to get behind the creatures.
The horse, all things considered, seemed happy to flee. She did not crack the reins—indeed, she had to pull back on them to keep the animal from running wild. The cart jostled over the ruts and her entire focus was fixed on the horse and the bumpy landscape ahead.
She spared only a moment to say, “We’re still closer to the bandits’ hideout and we can’t get through that army.”
Justin responded with a curt nod. Behind him, the blacksmith gasped with pain while Lyle yelled something. It didn’t take a genius to guess what. With his heart sinking, Justin turned and unsheathed his sword.
The army pursued them with preternatural speed. Whether on two legs or four, each of the creatures seemed to be made of thick tar, melting slightly at the edges as if formed out of a void and a wish that didn’t quite hold together.
He could easily bet that he knew whose wish it was.
The first to reach them looked something like a cat. Giant whiskers trailed away from its face and an all-black maw opened in a snarl as it leapt onto the open back of the cart.
Without hesitation, he swung a heavy downward slash that passed cleanly through but left a dent in its head when the tar reformed.
“That is disgusting,” he muttered. He took a half-step back as it lunged and pressed forward again, slashi
ng and thrusting.
“Justin!” Zaara yelled. A knife thudded into the cart near his foot.
“Thanks, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to throw knives and drive at the same time.”
“No!” she yelled, exasperated. “Say the spell to light it.”
“Oh.” He dove to retrieve the knife, delivered an awkward, one-handed swipe with his left hand, and yanked the weapon out of the floor. “Ignis!” Before the cat-creature could react, he drove the dagger forward into the place where an eye should be.
It went up in flames so fast that his sleeve caught fire. He swore and flailed his arm, only to be entirely doused by a jet of ice-cold water in the next moment.
“I can’t look right now,” Zaara called. “Did I put the fire out?”
“Yes.” Justin shook his head and brushed away the water that dripped down his nose. “Boy, this isn’t gonna be one for the history books, I tell ya. If they’re vulnerable to fire, though…”
He threw his sword to the side, kept the flaming dagger in his right hand, and began to conjure fire in his left. The army had scattered as the flaming corpse tumbled off the back of the conveyance but had now begun to reform—and they were pissed.
“Lyle!” Justin nudged him with his foot. “Go drive the cart. We need Zaara throwing fireballs.”
“Someone has to keep him from bleeding out,” the dwarf shouted in response. His hands were pressed against a wad of blood-soaked cloth. On the floor, the blacksmith had passed out. His face was an unhealthy gray.
“There is no time,” he snapped. “Brace it with something—a chest, whatever. I don’t care. We need to get to the bandit hideout and we need to keep these things at bay.”
Lyle hurried to obey. He wedged the blacksmith in the corner with impressive—and, frankly, worrying—strength and climbed up to switch places with Zaara.
She dropped down with fire brimming in her palms and threw her first firebolt a second later. He thought it had gone wide until he saw the faint red glow in the fog above and a flaming bird-creature tumbled out of the sky.
He shuddered and returned to his fireballs.
By now, he was sure these creatures were not sentient. Anything that could think would know better than to pursue two humans who lobbed fireballs with wild abandon. Even chickens, he thought, were smarter than that. The beasts didn’t seem to care, however. They pushed closer and closer and threw themselves into the path of the fireballs in order to give one another cover. They moved in twos and threes and some swooped down to distract the two defenders long enough for others to clamber onto the cart.
They would die there. The realization chilled him to the bone despite the heat from the fireballs that seared his face. The amulet the bandit had given him lay heavily against his chest, a reminder that he would almost certainly come back
But Zaara wouldn’t and Lyle wouldn’t.
With a roar of fury, Justin stepped in front of her.
“Ignis!”
He didn’t have a word for the spell he tried to do. In fact, he wasn’t sure if it was a spell. Still, he yelled, he drew on his magic reserves, and he pictured what he wanted. Against all odds, his vision appeared in his hand.
The sword was made of pure flame and bigger even than a claymore.
His palm seared against the hilt but he swung it anyway and whipped it viciously with a whoop of glee. The fire was so light that he might as well be swinging air despite the sheer size of the blade.
“Get—the fuck—back!” he bellowed. “Or I swear to God, I will kill you, and find you, and bring you back, and kill you again. Painfully!”
In the back of the armored truck, several Diatek employees stared, wide-eyed, at the monitors.
“Um…” one of them said faintly.
“Hmm?” DuBois, who had snored quietly in one of the seats, straightened with a jerk. He peered at the monitors and nodded vaguely. “That’s normal, don’t worry,” he said.
Unperturbed, he rested his head again and went back to sleep.
The cart clattered into the bandit hideout with Lyle screaming hellos at the top of his lungs and Justin yelling threats at the top of his. To everyone’s surprise, the army practically flattened itself against thin air as soon as they were inside. Beasts melted into goo and re-formed, howled, and clawed at a barrier Justin could not see.
“What the hell?” Zaara panted.
“Don’t question it,” he responded. “Just…you know…give thanks.”
Bandits rushed out of the buildings around them and the leader shoved them away to reach the front. At Justin’s urgent wave, he hurried to the back of the cart and his eyes snapped together when he saw the blacksmith.
“We’ll take him inside.”
“Wait.” He removed the amulet and laid it around the blacksmith’s neck. “He needs this more than I do.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Zaara asked rhetorically.
“Because we were throwing fireballs at monsters,” he said. “It’s the same reason I didn’t.”
“Right.” She stood aside as the bandits lifted the blacksmith down and carried him inside.
“I’m sorry to impose,” he told their leader. “We…had nowhere else to go.”
“You chose well,” he said bluntly. “Something is wrong out there, and it seems we’re safe here. Why, I don’t know—and I don’t know how long it will hold. Come inside. We’ll explain there.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
The man led them to what looked like a half-finished throne room. A massive stone pedestal stood in front of two tall windows. Some of the panes had shattered and the glass had, with efficiency, simply been pushed against the back wall. A fire burned in the hearth and a large table, roughly made from scrap lumber, had been placed in the center of the room. Around this, an odd assortment of chairs and stools had been placed.
Their host led the three adventurers to the hearth. “Sit and eat while I explain.” He saw them look toward the door and smiled grimly. “No one will touch the goods in your cart by my order. We may not have always been friends, but without you and yours, this group would still be cursed. They know that.”
Justin settled and accepted a bowl of stew. He was surprised to see both Zaara and Lyle rummage through their packs and put something in the stew pot—a piece of meat and a potato. She gave him a meaningful look and he dug out an onion and a carrot, as well as a strip of dried meat. He felt foolish. Once he had seen the custom, it seemed intuitive enough, but he had almost blundered badly.
He had never been much of a one for etiquette—all the gestures seemed meaningless and empty, merely a way to hide the truth about a situation. He had to say, however, that he had begun to appreciate social customs more since he had been in this game. When even former enemies shared food, there was something to be said for it. We might not be friends, but we’re all trying to make our way in the world. I’ll give you what I have and you give me what you have.
“So,” the bandit leader said and leaned back in his chair. “The curse has been lifted. We know that to be true.”
Justin paused, his spoon partway to his mouth. It didn’t take a genius to see the but coming—which was good since he wasn’t one. He was, however, a person who had fought a nightmare army on the way there.
“Something is…not right,” the man continued. He shifted a little and stared at the flames. “What is coming back is still strong. The grass grows as it should and the sun shines. But…it is as if our nightmares grow as well. When the witch was here, her spells drained the life from the land. Now that she is gone, the land thrives but it seems some of her evil remains.”
Zaara looked at Justin, and the bandit caught the look.
“What? What do you know?”
“Well, for one thing,” she said delicately, “we don’t know your name. I’m Zaara, of Riverbend. This is Lyle, of House Stout. And Justin, who comes from very far away indeed—and whose mother is a sorceress of no small power.”
“A
nd I’m Hildon,” the man said. He smiled. “Apologies for the bad manners, Mistress Zaara. Events are unsettled here. Now, will you tell me what you two were looking so meaningful about?”
She nodded at Justin, who considered what—and how much—to tell him.
“I told you that the witch collapsed into a pile of goo, yes?”
“Yes,” Hildon said drily. “I remember that being a particularly evocative way of phrasing it.”
“The reason I said goo was that she wasn’t, er…human…by the end of the fight. She was green. There were tentacles. I killed her—it—and there weren’t any bones like you’d expect.” He left out the part where the body had been gone when he went back to look but added, “If it wasn’t human, can we expect all its power to go with it?”
“That isn’t good.” The man considered this but glanced at them. “Would you like more stew?”
Justin, luckily, had the good sense to know the answer to this. He patted his belly and shook his head. “My belly is full, thank you.”
“That army seemed like it wasn’t all…there,” Zaara said thoughtfully. “I almost wonder if we saw the same creatures or if they were simply echoes of our personal nightmares.”
Hildon raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
“What else do we know?” she asked. She looked at Justin.
“They were vulnerable to fire.” He ticked points off on his fingers as he thought of them. “They are growing even as life comes back to the forest and marsh, and they have outpaced the original dead zone.” He looked at their host. “And there was trouble here too, apparently.”
“Creatures in the dark,” Hildon said shortly. He nodded at Zaara. “As if from a nightmare like you said—and disappearing so quickly that no one could tell what they saw. They never came over the walls, which we realized soon enough. But we didn’t notice them before some of our hunters and foragers went missing.”
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