Soraya held the picture book over the warden's wound. Xin’s shoulder looked like it had jumped from the pages of the guide. The book Soraya found explained omens of possession in all manners of host. This strange purple spot on Xin’s shoulder qualified. She flipped through the pages looking for a solution. As she scanned the pages, she tried to soothe the young man’s pain with kind words. Soraya didn’t know if he could even hear her. At a certain point, the words were for herself more than him.
All of the articles of text only took the time to describe the warning signs of possession. None came with solutions to the specific ailments. Soraya dropped the book in her panic and lost the page depicting Xin’s possession. Of course. A gwyll finally attacks and she can’t even read a book to solve the problem. The first page was flipped open, a preamble to the rest of the book. Soraya didn’t mean to read it.
“A forewarning to all readers. Gwyll are tenacious and insistent invaders. No half-measure can solve their nefarious infiltration into otherwise sacred bodies of life. They are blight given volition. As such, this humble writer recommends to all those unfortunate to cross paths with gwyll this remedy; extermination. Excise their presence in that which can otherwise press onwards untampered. If such a campaign should fail, you are called to exterminate that which hosts the vile gwyll. Let not love stay your hand.”
“‘Extermination,’” Soraya spoke the word aloud. Just to feel the sound of it on her tongue. Not the advice she hoped to read. Xin was helpless, writhing in unspoken pain. Was it her station as a warden to kill him? If the possession manifested and Xin became a monster, then he would absolutely have to die. Soraya had never heard of a case of a monster host being returned to health after transforming. Wardens could relinquish their denizens safely, but the permanent change of becoming a monster demanded too much of the host. They could only hope to be put to rest in their original likeness. Was the same true for this early stage of possession?
Soraya stood over him in the guild hall kitchen. Sharpened knives hung from little hooks on the wall. Soraya recognized her place in this situation as a warden. She was charged with the defense of all humans from all monsters. If Xin was already the latter, then she would drive the knife through his heart and beg forgiveness from the boss. If he was still a human, then she needed to do everything she could to keep him that way. Soraya did not tremble when she picked up a long, vicious knife.
Cyril's words answered her panic. "Defend the abbey!" Xin was no monster. He was part of Gwyllion Abbey. A part worth protecting while she still could.
The gwyll’s invasion required no physical entry point, no wound or opening in Xin’s flesh. Trying to cut it out or burn it out would probably only hurt Xin. That was wrong. Soraya needed to exorcise the spirit from Xin’s body. She remembered Cyril teaching her at the quarry how to remove spirits from their physical hosts. The first step was to create a binding circle that could contain the separated spirit. Otherwise, the exorcism would only let the gwyll run wild all over again. She recalled the language Cyril used.
Soraya turned the kitchen knife on her own hand, slicing her palm. She yelped in pain and the blood ran out of her quicker than she thought it would. Soraya focused on the rune’s design to muffle her panic. A coldness swept through her arm, perhaps from the blood loss and perhaps from the fear. Soraya worked quickly, painting the rune on the kitchen floor. Cyril’s work had encompassed the monster that he exorcised, Soraya would need a lot more blood to do the same.
A moment in time returned to her. A memory of her finger painting along with her sisters. They had laughed and ruined their clothes and made great messes. Their mother was upset. Soraya couldn’t imagine what the woman would say if she could see her now. Drawing magic words in her own blood might have sent Soraya’s mom into tears. If innocence was the only price she had to pay to save a life, Soraya would make that deal.
The rune was set. Soraya rolled Xin’s limp body onto the bloody design. Red tears still leaked out of her hand, but the job was not over. The next step was to remove the gwyll from Xin. She raised her uninjured hand over him and spoke the incantation.
“Ah Ahranya!”
The rune under Xin glowed faintly. The wound in his shoulder squirmed and its influence seemed to recede but not disappear. The words had failed. Soraya felt the chill in her arm more fully. She rejected the despair in her mind.
“Ah Ahranya!”
The wound faded and the rune assumed more of its presence. Soraya didn’t know what to do except to keep going. She repeated the incantation once more. Twice more. Thrice more. Strength fled her body. Not just from the gash in her hand, but from the spoken words. It drained her mana to commune with the gwyll in Xin. Her issue was a lack of strength. It would not be an issue any longer.
Soraya followed her teacher’s lessons. She felt the flow of strength, like a river constantly circulating within her body. The power was hers to direct and hers to discover. Soraya visualized the power filling her hands. That was wrong. Wrong again. The power came from her words, not from her gestures. She’d have to yell at Cyril later for not being thorough in his teaching. She pushed the flow of power into her tongue, into her voice and she incanted.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Ah Ahranya!”
The gwyll surrendered Xin’s body. The rune ensnared the nasty spirit. Soraya’s spilled blood glowed brilliantly. Her vision faded. A symptom of mana withdrawal was the loss of natural senses. So, she never felt herself collapse onto the floor.
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Cyril escaped another endless pitfall. The monster opened the ground with ease and the range of its spellcraft was well outside of the warden’s expectations. Cyril had become accustomed to the attack and his enhanced hearing warned him when the ground was beginning to split apart. That was about the only countermeasure his denizen offered against this monster.
“So boring!” Menshen whined. It crossed his arms and extended them outwards. Dozens of holes split open the earth. Cyril skipped between the openings to rush it down. Only to be too late again. The monster’s disappearing trick completely avoided Cyril’s physical attacks. In a desperate effort, the warden punched the spot where he had been standing, breaking up the ground. As if the impact could reach it.
“At least the other wardens put up a fight,” Menshen said. It had popped up again. “Is this really how you want to spend your audience with Mukyrt Menshen, acolyte to the revered Calleacham?”
“You’re a fool to think Calleacham cares about you,” Cyril said. He knew negotiation with a monster was pointless, but if it was this chatty, perhaps he could get it to spill some useful information about its own origins. More ambitiously, he could learn some secret about its powers. Or about its unexpected relationship with the djinn. The gwyll were indeed servants of the thirteen djinn, but since they’d been sealed the gwyll only ever acted wildly for their own self-preservation.
“I do not expect the likes of a god to concern itself with humble acolytes,” Menshen said. “It is our place to serve and expect nothing in return.”
“Sounds like a pitiful existence,” Cyril said.
“Only those who defy the gods can be pitied. For their retribution will be absolute.”
Cyril swept the dust off his knuckles. “So you’re here to avenge your masters?”
Menshen laughed. “Truly, you are deserving of pity, creature of the other side. Vengeance is not mine to dispense.”
“Whose then?”
Menshen smiled fanatically. “The gods of course! I will free them and bear witness to their judgment of the other world!”
The pieces clicked into place. This monster’s ability opened things. Doors, locks, the very ground itself. If it made its way to the Central Continent, it could free the djinn by opening their seals all at once. The monster’s power was far more fearsome than Cyril had anticipated. If it crossed the ocean, it could single handedly summon apocalypse. It also meant that someone or something had told it where the djinn were sealed.
“You think I’m going to let you free the thirteen?” Cyril asked. “You’re never leaving these shores.”
“So pitiful,” Menshen whined. “There are only twelve djinn yet to be freed!”
Cyril’s blood ran cold.
“How do you know that?” the warden roared. Fury blinded and deafened him. Everything he had ever learned about this monster called him to slay it with extreme prejudice. Even if all of Lyrique had to fall to ruin. Mukyrt Menshen would die.
The monster only laughed. Cyril must have fallen for some mind game it was playing. He didn’t care. Menshen reappeared and Cyril gave it no quarter. He somersaulted and brought his heel down upon nothing. Menshen reappeared elsewhere along the street and Cyril tried to kill it there. He followed its laughter, breaking every place where it had been.
Its next reappearance was much further than the others, well out of Cyril’s attack range.
“It’s been mildly entertaining, creature of the other side,” Menshen said. “But, your audience with Mukyrt Menshen, acolyte of the revered Calleacham, has come to a close.” The monster swept its arm across its body. “Tremble at this mere sliver of divinity.”
Cyril’s chest burst. A wound on his chest opened from the inside without any sign of an attack. The monster’s spellcraft had been turned against Cyril’s own body.
Menshen raised its arm to make another sweep, but a pillar of light skewered it. Another followed. Two long arrows of yellow sunlight pierced the monster. Menshen tried to grab the arrows, but their touch scorched its flesh. It yelped like a beaten animal and hissed with the burning pain.
“What… is this?!” the monster screamed.
Cyril looked to the source of the attack. Wounded and not dead was the warden he had carried on his back, Ysidro Ramm. His severed arm had been replaced by a crossbow as large as the man’s body. The power of his denizen still flowed through him. Ysidro pulled the massive cable of the bow backwards. Sunlight filtered down from the sky in shining wisps, filling the space where an arrow would lay.
Ysidro Ramm projected his voice for the monster to hear.
“Tremble…! At this mere sliver of humanity!”
The warden released the arrow. Mukyrt Menshen struggled to disappear underground, but the sunlit arrows bound the monster in place. It could only cry out as a third beam of light stuck its body. Cyril reveled in the sound of its pain.