"You have to put yourself into the attack," the battlemage shouted, "gather your magic into your fist and make it hard. "

Morey tried to focus and nodded. Magic! He couldn't quite believe that magic existed, and that he could use it!

The language thing was more miraculous though. None of the wizards understood how the ritual had overwritten Morey's understanding of English with Inath. It was frustrating, but at least it let him talk to the natives here. He would never have gotten a decent shower if they had had to resort to pantomiming. This world's sanitation was truly horrendous.

His excitement dampened considerably after fainting in his first attempt. The wizard said he never saw anyone manage to burn out on their first try but Morey still stung with the embarrassment at dinner later.

He felt the magic gathering into his fist and then hardened it. His skin immediately solidified and became as heavy as a hammer, as if his hand was encased in an iron block.

"Then hit the- my Queen! What are you doing here?"

"Relax Etani," Amarante said, "I'm just curious. "

Morey bowed to the queen together with the battlemage. "I'm practicing magic under your knight's instructions. There's no way I can survive a journey to the Sword of Legend without learning how you fight. " And how I can improve on it, he didn't say that.

"In just two days! Truly, you must be the Hero. "

Morey looked down at his frozen hand and shrugged, "I still don't feel like one. Etani here could best me any day of the week in a fight. "

How to use magic was similar to meditation, so there was some overlap there. Was that why he could pick it up so fast? Or was it because he was special in some way that the queen believed.

Morey was finding out that not everyone thought he was the Hero mentioned in Inath's legends. The queen's husband and general in charge of the war against the zombie hordes was one of those who thought Morey ought to earn his keep on the frontlines.

He swung his fist and it smashed through the wooden target without any feeling of pain. "I'll try my best," he said.

Two days later, the tremor came back. No one was eaten, word had gotten around that the tremor attacked movement. The Elkas lead it out of the village with the same trick. Another day later, the tremor attacked again. This time, a stray piyo hadn't been properly locked up on the second floor and the tremor demolished a house, killing three.

Cato sipped the piyo soup in silence. Danine's tail was drooping over the back of her chair. Three attacks in a row had drained everyone's energy.

"It's not working," Cato said, "while you avoid the tremor, somewhat, you can't keep doing this. "

Danine sighed but said nothing.

"Is there a way to lead it out of the valley?" Cato asked.

Irld shook her head, "the Elka's can't bait it through a forest and we're surrounded on all sides. The only way out is using that road, and no one's used it since the Inaths retreated so it got overgrown. "

Was there really no way to get rid of the tremor? "What about killing it? Has anyone done it before?" Cato asked.

"The Inath army can kill tremors quite easily. It hides underground, so normal weapons won't reach it. The Inath battlemages, however, can strike it with their magic. "

Wait, magic?! Cato had never heard of any magic.

"Can anyone use magic here?" Cato asked. Even novices might be able to do something.

Danine shook her head, "the Inath never taught us. They don't trust anyone other than humans. "

Darn. It implied that magic was not something innate, but could be taught. Much good it would do them if they didn't have any idea where to start.

Cato ate the last of the soup and hobbled over to the wash basin. "Then there is only one thing to do. We must study the tremor to find a weakness. "

"What did you see?"

The girl shivered on her bed, dried streaks of tears on her face.

Cato tried again, more gently. "Please, I know it's painful. Your father was right next to you. But we need to know what you saw in that hole. "

She whimpered again.

The girl's mother wrung her hands at the bedside, "she's been like that since the tremor came. She won't even eat. She loved her father greatly. "

"It's ok, we're here," Danine knelt down next to the bed, stroking the girl's hair, "we'll make sure you're all right. "

The girl shied away from Danine's hands, starting to cry again.

The mother hurried over and cradled her, "isn't this enough? Don't push her anymore. "

"Madam, she was right next to the hole. She must have seen where her father went to. I believe it is crucial information," Cato pressed.

"For what? You can't even tell me what you want to know, why must you torment my daughter?"

"Because I want to kill that tremor," Cato gulped, "I need to know everything I can about it if I am to try. "

"Are you a wizard then? No, you would not have run from the reki if you knew magic. You can't fight a tremor without magic, everyone knows that. "

Cato shook his head, "Nevertheless. I will kill the monster. I have decided it. "

Danine raised an eyebrow at him, Cato nodded back. There was no going back now.

The girl responded weakly, "You... can't do it. It's... not even... in this world..."

What? Cato asked, "What do you mean? Why are you so scared of it?"

"I saw nothing... just... a nothing... pure blackness. It swallowed father... it's going to swallow us all..." she burst into tears. No, not just tears, it was despair. "I felt it... it wanted to eat me... "

"It wanted to eat you? How did you know that?"

"I felt it! In here!" she stabbed a finger in her chest and doubled over coughing.

Her mother patted her back and glared at Cato, "please go. She has told you what you wanted. "

Cato sighed and nodded in agreement. At the doorway, he turned around and asked one last question, "can I know her name?"

"Rein. "

Blackness hm? A feeling of malice?

Cato stood over the hole at the gate. There was no blackness in it. And definitely no supernatural feelings of being eaten but then the tremor wasn't around now.

It was just a hole in the soil. A deep and broad one yes, but not so deep that the sunlight didn't reach to the bottom.

Danine helped slide him into the hole. His ankle was starting to hurt again but Cato ignored it. He would be fine.

"It's really just a hole," Danine commented as she slid down after him.

"Mhm," Cato said, feeling the floor. The soil on the bottom didn't feel any different from the top. The earthworms were already chewing through it to loosen the soil.

He looked around and tried to pry a pebble out of the sides. The pebble didn't come out.

What? Danine wandered over and grabbed the pebble and yanked it out in a shower of soil and sand.

Cato frowned. That was... strange. The soil around here wasn't that hard. He padded his way around the hole, touching and poking at the dirt, one large patch was slightly harder than the rest.

He looked up. Hm, interesting. The hard patch lined up with the furrow of ground that was the tremor's trail. It was thrust up, as if something had pushed it upwards. Cato had assumed that it was because of the tremor moving below it, but then the soil would be looser under the trail, not more compact.

Cato picked his way up the steep sides and squatted down to look at the trails. He had half a hunch but a piece was still missing.

"What are you doing this time, boy?" Toal waved to him and walked up. "Geh, you're here too. "

A claw-like hand latched itself over the side of the hole and Danine rose up from the edge. "Slacking off again? Have you finished making the gate hinges?"

"Um. I was just taking a break! They're almost done! I swear!"

Cato interrupted the one-sided argument, "excuse me, but Toal, do you have a spade or some tool for digging?"

"Huh?"

The soil under the houses were more sandy, having been sheltered from rain and plants for decades in some cases.

They stood outside the oldest house that had been attacked. The ruins were still being cleared away for a new house but the hole was already revealed. Two tracks lead to it, one when the tremor went there, and another when the tremor left.

"If I recall correctly, the tremor attacked the next building over there," Cato said, "so this is the trail it left going there. "

He nodded at Danine and Toal, "we dig here. Straight down. "

The three of them scraped and bashed at the hard soil of the road. The pushed up ground soon gave way. The Fukas clearing away the wreckage of the house looked and pointed at them but did not approach.

They dug a shallow hole when Toal's spade rang differently. The blade skittered over the suddenly hard soil and he had to lean on it to cut into the surface.

"Hmm," Cato looked into the hole they dug. The top layer, from the road, was soil. Packed down from years of walking, but still soil. Below it, was a highly compact mixture of soil and sand.

It looked like the soil from underneath the building but squeezed in between the normal soil.

So THAT was where all the soil from the hole was going to. Cato nodded. The tremor sucked up the soil to make a hole and dumped it when it moved.

But then how did the tremor move? It couldn't dig through the soil, or the trail would be even bigger and the soil would be cracked and disturbed. But the soil was perfectly packed down, so tightly that even the spades had trouble.

And what about the blackness Rein had seen at the bottom of the hole?

Cato had a feeling that he wasn't going to get all the answers he wanted. Still, from the size of the trail, the tremor should be about three meters across.

"Hey, what's this?"

Toal said as his spade hit something harder. The tip of the sharp grey spike broke off as the spade hit it and Cato picked it up.

The spike went further down and Toal began to gently but laboriously scrape around it.

The thing wasn't solid. There was a complicated not-quite-honeycomb hollowness, large bubbles of sand and dirt filled spaces. He had never seen any rock that looked like that.

Wait a minute...

"Um, that may not be a-" Too late. Toal had dug around the spike and was finding another shorter broken one next to it.

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It was the bones of a forearm. And only a few days old too, the occasional bits of flesh and tendon stuck to it was starting to rot.

As Toal slowly dug up the skeletal arm, the onlookers whispered to each other, obviously in some distress. The bones stopped just below the shoulder.

"Any idea who it was?" Cato asked, brushing away some sand to look at the bones. Were those teeth marks? Did tremors bite?

Danine shook her head. Of course, there wasn't enough left for identification.

He poked at a squishy tendon. It looked a bit... digested. Strange.

Or actually not strange. Somehow, the tremor was eating them and this was what was left. Maybe it's stomach had teeth or the dirt and people it sucked up went into a mouth.

Still, he could work with that. If it ate people, and animals, then the tremor was a living thing like anything else. Somehow that was a little disappointing.

But, if it lived, it could be killed.

"How do you deal with the dead?" Cato asked, "Do you bury them?"

Danine said with a sigh, "the elder will know what to do. "

Danine showed him through the door into the small house near the center of the village.

The inside was lined with jars and pots along every surface except the floor. There was a complex smell in the air, heavy with strange chemicals and solvents. Cato recognized what looked like a crude distillation apparatus over a cold fire circle in the center of the house.

"Tulore? Are you here?!" Danine raised her voice.

"My ears are still working," the middle-aged woman said as she walked out of the kitchen, drying her hands, "what do you want?"

Somehow, Cato had expected an old crone but no, the woman was only slightly older than Irld.

"We found this under the tremor's trail. I think it's a arm of someone it ate. Is there any last rites you do?" Cato explained, holding out the bones wrapped with a rough sackcloth.

"Not for the taken. I will not have them curse this land. You should not have done that. "

Nope, her style of talking was exactly like he imagined. Not all things were different. She moved the apparatus off the fireplace.

"Done what?" Cato asked. What did he do this time?

"Do you not even understand? The monsters are too dangerous to trifle with. You do not know what sort of danger it might have been, or still might be," the woman took the bones from him and cast them into the circle.

Immediately, the pieces of wood there flared up into open flame.

What?! How did she do that? Cato took a step back involuntarily. Danine just winced.

"Pry no further and pray you have not done any harm. Wash your hands with this, burn the shovels and disturb the dead no more," Tulore pressed a handful of black powder into each of their hands.

"Why?" Cato asked.

"Anti-curse," Tulore said, as if that was any explanation.

"I don't understand. "

"Of course not. Or you wouldn't have done it! Now go!"

She practically shoved them out the door and slammed it in their face. The Fukas outside started to wander away oh so innocently, as if they hadn't been listening with all ears not two seconds ago.

"You sure know how to rile her up. I never seen her get so angry even when Danine has one of her episodes- Gah!" Danine interrupted Toal by jabbing an elbow into his chest.

"I don't understand what she's saying. No, I do understand what she is saying but not why and what it means," Cato looked at Danine expectantly. Surely she knew?

Danine shook her head mutely and started walking down the street. Toal and Cato followed.

"Let me explain," Toal rubbed his chest, "Our Danine here has quite a reputation of troublemaking. The elder doesn't like her because she asks too many questions. "

Ah, and clearly Cato had been asking too many questions.

"So you understand what Tulore was saying?" Cato asked.

Toal shook his head, "She's the elder, inherited from her mother. We just follow what she says. "

Danine sniffed, "Doesn't stop her from explaining when she likes it. "

Cato looked at the black powder in his hands. Better go wash. Just in case.

"So, what exactly does Tolure do?" Cato asked Irld once he, thoroughly, washed his hands.

"She's the elder and you shouldn't call her by name," Irld pinched Danine on the ear, "did Danine do that again?"

"Hey, I don't see what's the point!" Danine squirmed and pried her mother off.

"It's basic respect, Danine. I don't see why you find it so hard to understand. "

"She's just an old woman, I bet half the stuff she says is just made up!- Owowow..."

"Forgive me," Irld said to Cato, "this daughter of mine is a little unruly as you can see. Perhaps if you go back to apologize, without Danine mind, the elder might tell you a bit more. "

Cato sighed, "it's all right. I'd rather hear it from you. The elder doesn't seem to like me. "

"She never likes anyone," Danine complained as she rubbed her ears.

"The elder learnt the craft from her mother. She makes potions and dispels curses. The elder has always defended this village since ages ago, until the Inaths came with their stronger magic and took over, but they just ignored the line of the elders. "

Magic huh. Well, with monsters and demihumans around, Cato had been half expecting something like that. No, actually, that was not a good reason. How did he know what magic was like? He didn't and shouldn't make assumptions.

"What sort of curses does the elder deal with? Perhaps an example?"

"The elders' knowledge is most famous for the death heat. Sometimes, we begin to sweat and our bodies are extremely hot to the touch. The elder gives us a potion, made from secret ingredients known only to the elder line, and it often goes away within a few days. Danine here was cursed too when she was younger, but you couldn't see that from her ingratitude. Without her, cursed children often die. Even the Inaths sometimes ask for potions. "

Danine darted behind him to escape her mother's grasping hand. Cato frowned. Where did that sound familiar?

"You mean, it's a fever?"

"What's a fever?" Irld asked.

Cato shook his head. It was impossible to explain if this was what he thought it was. The germ theory of disease was a bit out of Irld's depth. Well, perhaps the elder might understand, if she was really growing antibiotics. Since Cato himself was alive and breathing, and able to eat this world's food, then their biology was probably somewhat familiar. He should investigate how different it could be but for a situation like this, he could afford to take a chance.

"It's all right, I'll ask her myself. "

Tulore might not be too receptive to him now, but if she had medicine, she might have other things. And Cato had an idea regarding that.

"I'm sorry for the commotion earlier," Cato bowed slightly, wondering if that was how they expressed apology. He had forgotten to ask.

"What's that you have there?" Tulore sniffed the sweet scent wafting from the covered basket under his arm.

"Irld told me to bring this with me, she baked some flatbread. "

Tulore shook her head with a smile. She took the basket and bit into a flatbread immediately, "she knows me too well. Well, what do you want?"

Cato nodded. Tulore appeared much more at ease when Danine wasn't around. And that flatbread had noticeably improved her mood too. "I'm sorry for coming back with more questions. Toal told me you dislike them. But I must have my answers. No one else seems to study the tremor or is even thinking about how to kill it. "

"Kill it?" Tulore raised an eyebrow, "You can't be serious. "

"Why not? If you just lure it away like you're doing now, it will be a threat forever. Didn't you attack the Reki when it chased me here?"

"We can't kill tremors. You can't even attack them. "

Cato paused for a moment. If he had guessed wrong, it might kill a few people. But everyone was just going about their business, taking the monster's attacks in stride. They were... broken, was the best word he could find. There was a look in their eyes, even in cheerful Danine's, that told him that they had given up on trying.

The pause gave him away.

"You have an idea?" Tulore said skeptically, "No one here can use magic like the Inaths. Mine is too subtle for bolts and fireballs. "

And you probably don't use magic. Cato left that unsaid. "Sort of. The bones you burnt were digested and crunched as if they were chewed. I think the tremor eats people. "

"I see, how does that help?"

"If the tremor eats people, it follows that the tremor is flesh and blood like you or me are. It's not a magical stone creature or an even stranger thing. If that's the case, it will be simple to poison it through it's food. "

Tulore paused and put down the piece of flatbread slowly. "How sure are you of this?"

"Quite. Flatbread and piyo meat would serve no point if you were made of rock. The reverse is true as well. If it eats us, the tremor is made of the same stuff as we are. Since you are familiar with anti-curses, I was hoping you have some anti-rat powders. Where I came from, rat poison is extremely toxic. "

"If you're referring to pests, I do have some. But this is highly irregular. Our stories say nothing about tremors being poisoned. "

"How do the Inaths deal with tremors?" Cato asked.

"They shoot it with magic bolts. They shoot everything with magic bolts. "

"Shooting magic must be easy for them, if they can shoot it at everything. "

Tulore shook her head, "it's not that easy, it takes years of training to be able to use magic like that. "

"So for the Inaths, they do have people who can use magic liberally. That might be why you never heard of anyone poisoning a tremor. It's just so much easier to get a wizard to zap it. "

"Zap it," Tulore muttered, turning the word over in her mouth, "an interesting and fitting choice of words. Even so, there's nothing that says how we're going to poison it. Using the Elkas probably will not work easily, they fly too fast. "

Cato grinned, "no worries. I have an idea which I'm quite sure will work. "

After all, there was quite a similarity between the tremor and a certain fictional sand monster...