Cyril explored the edges of Lyrique for more evidence of this gwyll. Near the inlet bluffs, he suspected its strange power incited chaos. In the spirit’s wake, objects seemed to mysteriously open. Cyril ran along the eastern edge of town. There hid forgotten houses from Lyrique’s days as a mining hub. These shacks were the first to be abandoned when ore became scarce. Insistent bushes and invasive vines creeped up the sides of old wooden boarding houses and forgotten businesses.

The day was probably the first that had cooled off from the incessant summer heat. Without a cloud in the sky, it was the perfect day for spending some time outdoors. Cyril only wished he had a better excuse to be there.

The warden had been following a trail of open doors and windows, but changed course to pursue some voices instead. His transformation allowed him to eavesdrop from a fair distance away. Beneath the distant bell’s tolling, Cyril could hear what sounded like an interrogation.

“Stop there! Flee that body immediately!”

Laughter rang. It was pitched deep. Cyril accelerated towards the sound. The voice, masculine and gruff, kept trying to make demands of something. Based on what he was saying, Cyril was sure it was a monster. He tried to reach the pair of them before something bad happened.

Another voice, not the gruff one, but the laughing one, spoke. “You can blame your death on this uninvited guest.”

“Who? No. Please-!” Something pierced flesh. The meaty noise of blood splattering and skin tearing reached Cyril's ears. Cyril couldn’t move any faster. No more words were spoken. The warden prepared to fight whatever he found, but it was too late. He only found the victim.

A man, yes. Layers of armor had done nothing to protect him. A helmet had been thrown off of his head, revealing long, graying hair. Cyril recognized the uniform as belonging to that of the Lyrique city guard. A medallion on the fit man’s hip identified him as a warden too. Most astonishing of his appearance was his left arm, removed from his body quite recently. Blood spilled from there and a deep wound on his belly.

Cyril tried to find the monster responsible, but he could hear no trace of it. He maintained his transformation, cautious of its reappearance. Cyril knelt at the guard’s side. Blood had crept out of his mouth and into his beard. Cyril didn’t know where to start in patching the old guy up. He addressed the wound on his chest first. From the old man's clothes, Cyril tore a stretch of fabric to press into the bloody pulp.

The pain stirred the old man awake. He blinked through something to get a look at his rescuer.

“Who…?”

“Don’t try to speak,” Cyril advised. “I’m a warden from Gwyllion Abbey. I’m going to get you some help.”

Something Cyril had said made the old man smile. He moved his one arm from his wounds and felt for Cyril. The old guard was trying to grab him, but didn’t have the strength. Then, he tried to speak. Heavy breathing and the bell’s tolling muffled his words to Cyril’s heightened hearing. Cyril leaned in to hear him better.

“-Abbey. Get… get…”

“I’m going to get you help. I just need to stop the bleeding.”

The man squeezed his face in pain. Cyril was trained once by a surgeon on how to address wounds in the field of battle. How to stop bleeding, how to stitch wounds, how to set broken bones. This level of injury required more from him. More medical equipment, more hands. Wardens were a hardy lot. The mana flowing through their body made them harder to kill and wound, slower to die even. But, there was a limit to what any body could survive.

Yet the strange old man protested. “Forget… me!” His words pained him to say. He kept speaking. “Go… get it!”

“Get what?” Cyril only needed to think for a moment. If he was torn to pieces like this guy, what would he want? His arm back for starters. “The monster?”

The old man nodded. “Kill… it.” He tried to speak more, but something happened that sapped his focus. His complexion was losing color. The man mumbled words that bounced around in his head incoherently. “Abbey… kill… it…”

For a warden to be employed by a city directly, they had to be very talented. They had to be strong enough to respond to military and arcane emergencies of any kind. They also had to be willing to sacrifice quite a bit of money for not working with a guild. This old man was strong. And he had been undone by this monster. One that could disappear without a trace from Cyril’s senses. Even if the dying man hadn’t warned him, Cyril understood the imperative of slaying this monster.

If he was laying in the dirt there, in the man’s place, Cyril might have the same nobility. The nobility necessary to cast aside self preservation and treat this monster as the highest priority. Cyril was fortunate not to be in that position. And he considered himself strong enough to pursue this threat while not abandoning the guard. Cyril peeled off his jacket and hefted the old man onto his back. With one hand under the guard’s rear, Cyril tied his long coat around them both, binding the two together.

“Your job isn’t finished yet!” Cyril barked at the dying man on his back. “So don’t die before that thing!”

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Soraya discovered but did not understand the source of Xin’s agony. Between his neck and shoulder, Xin had grown a deep, purple bruise. The wound discolored Xin’s veins, turning them dark. An infection? But, there was no evidence of an injury. It was like something inside Xin’s body was revolting against the teenager. Xin was sweating and breathing heavily. He still did not respond to Soraya’s words.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“I know you can hear me,” Soraya lied. “Come on, come on… aren’t you supposed to be smart? Explain this to me! What’s happening to you?”

The girl was panicking. Lost for a way to help Xin, she doused the growing flames with the hot tea water. Steam and smoke flew above their heads, escaping out of every open window. Soraya wondered if the heat would soothe this mysterious disease. She knew they kept a block of ice in a metal chest to preserve food. Could she shave some off and apply that? Soraya didn’t know if either would make the problem worse. Every unknown enveloped her in a dense forest where no direction seemed right. She was lost and useless.

Soraya ran out to the front of the guild hall, screaming for help. No one came. They had been left behind. The useless ones. Nobody was coming. Where was Master Cyril? Cyril. She remembered his last words before departing for town. His orders were to defend the abbey. Well something was attacking the abbey. Its members. She needed to find out what.

The boss’ office was useless. She looked for any books or texts that might explain this wound. A medical journal or a surgeon’s guide. Nothing looked useful. She tried Cyril’s room, but his bookshelf was empty. Then, she thought to check Xin’s room.

Soraya knew he stayed on a dorm on the second floor, right in front of the stairs. She spun the knob, but it was locked. Soraya didn’t even know the rooms had locks. She braced herself against the door frame and reared her leg back to kick open the door. As a younger adolescent, Soraya once had to break down a door when her sister had locked herself inside. She had been unable to save her and needed to call the servants to assist her. Soraya had no assistance here.

One kick blew open the door. Soraya spared half a moment to marvel at her own strength. Even if she was useless when standing next to Piper and Wakahn, she had grown strong. The realization calmed her mind a bit.

Xin’s room was unexpectedly messy. The fastidious young man did not apply his own personality to the upkeep of his bedroom. The closet barely contained a heap of unfolded clothes at the bottom. The bed was not made. The bookshelf was not organized and two mugs had been left on it. The desk was the most ruinous. Shreds of paper were practically falling off the border of the desk and the floor was littered with similar refuse. Why had Xin been keeping all of this trash?

Soraya pulled out every book on the shelf. Historical account. Romance novel. A guide to economics. Romance novel. Historical account. Romance novel. Romance novel. She tried not to think about the contents of some of them. Soraya found a thin leatherbound tome with no title. She flipped it open to the first page to read, “Auspicious Omens: The Signs of Possession.”

Possession. Could wardens be possessed? Soraya flipped through more pages. It was like a grotesque picture book. Every other page described a sign of possession in animals, objects, vegetation and humans. Color illustrations accompanied the articles of text. Soraya never tore through a book as fast as she did that one. Finally, she found it. Xin’s wound. A purple spot that darkened the host’s veins. An infection from no wound.

Soraya had discovered the answer. But, on her way out of the room something else captured her attention. She spared herself only enough time to snatch that something off of Xin’s desk and stuff it into her pocket. The girl raced back to Xin with the book in hand.

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Piper brought her fists down upon the monster’s tusks. The horse’s skewers tore into the earth, halting its charge. Piper brought her third arm over her head and clubbed the monster’s face. Inches from her heel was the unconscious young boy from the smithy. Wakahn could only watch. He nursed the wounds on his arm, trying to restore his transformation. His arm disobeyed and could not maintain the change.

The monster whipped about. Its several tails moved like tentacles, all fiending for a bite of Piper’s flesh. She rolled under the horse, popping up on its other side. A hoof came within inches of pulverizing her head. She channeled mana into one hand and a small flame ignited. Piper shoved the fire into the horse’s side, singing its pretty white hair. The horse roared in pain with an unnatural voice. Piper had hardly wounded it. She was doing a pretty fair job of annoying it though.

Wakahn’s mind raced for a solution. His power was hampered by his injury and he did not believe Piper was strong enough to defeat this monster alone. He didn’t really think the two of them could beat it together. Something about that girl just made him hate to back down while she was watching. It was as if doing so would prove her right about him. Wakahn hated that the lowly girl had any influence over his actions. Nobody could make him do or prevent him from doing something at all. So why could she?

The horse aimed its tusks at Piper again. It dug its hoof through the dirt. It was about to charge again. Piper braced herself to deflect its tusks.

“The boy!” Wakahn yelled. The monster’s tails swam over the unconscious child, circling for a feast. Wakahn produced a bubble from the hollow in his single transformed hand, but it moved too slowly. It wouldn’t protect the boy. He was going to fail. Fail in front of Piper. The image of her face flashed in his mind, mocking him for failing. Truthfully, even more than the fear of this poor boy dying, the thing most on his mind was avoiding that face on that girl.

Wakahn would not let that future come to pass. He stretched his injured arm towards the slow moving bubble. He could only bring about his transformation for the blink of an eye. It was enough. The force of his mana propelled the bubble towards the child. It skipped along the dirt once, twice and on the third bounce swallowed the boy whole. The horse monster’s tails descended upon the boy, but bounced off of Wakahn’s barrier harmlessly.

He’d done it. The transformation on the rest of his body reverted. Wakahn had over extended his mana or the power of his denizen. He didn’t know. The horse had its meal stolen and it charged at the helpless Wakahn.

“There is absolutely zero chance I’m letting you die a hero!” Piper roared. She ran alongside the horse monster and grappled its midsection. Again, she stopped the horse’s charge. Both ends of the monster gnashed their teeth for purchase against Piper’s flesh. Both ends failed. Piper couldn’t generate any fire with her hands against the monster. She had two helpless brats to protect as well.

Piper sunk her hips low and threw the horse monster with a strength unfamiliar to her. Her three arms actually pulled the monster off of its hooves and back into the broken smithy from which it had first burst.

Wakahn, that daddy’s boy, silver spoon, upper crust brat had made up for her mistake. Piper got queasy just imagining the guy rubbing that in her face when they were done here. It was her mistake, her thoughtlessness that had put the little boy in even more danger. Even worse, Wakahn saved him while injured. Piper had to save face. It was horrible, maybe, but spite was the engine that burned in her chest. Brighter than any other flame, resentment egged her on to fight harder.

The feeling augmented her transformation. Opposite the place of her third arm, a fourth seemed to bud from above her shoulder. It was a knot of bulging muscle until Piper pushed her mana into that place on her body. A new arm grew out of her shoulder. A more complete transformation. The horse monster scraped its hoof against the floor of the shop. It would charge her for a third time.

“Come on, then!” Piper roared. She noticed her voice had changed. Had it gotten deeper? Who cared? “I’m gonna burn. You. Up!”