A wide path had been trampled flat by the passing of a horde of beasts. Whatever had been growing in the rest of the field had died, the plants that hadn’t been in the direct path of the beasts turning black and twisting in on themselves. Through his plant sense, Lucas could feel the way the chaos had warped their natural mana, turning it off-coloured and sickly and wrong.
It somehow only affected this field. It was like the beasts had just decided this one area in particular needed to be obliterated by chaos then moved on. Further along and behind on the beasts’ trail, the fields looked fine, save for the path the beasts had pounded flat in their cross-country charge, scoring a line that stretched for miles through the grasslands.
The affected field wasn’t a huge one, at least. The beasts were moving in a mass that didn’t span more than three lanes of traffic wide, and the field was maybe five lanes wider than that, and as long as a few football pitches. It was in the variety of different tracks where they saw just how many there were.
It was difficult to tell them apart, and even then a single beast could make a dozen different tracks by itself. For all they knew, this could’ve been done by one huge monster with hundreds of different legs.
But they were prepared for the worst, and the worst case scenario, after a thorough inspection, was determined to be a pack of thirty beasts.
“What do we even do about this? What can we do?” Lucas asked quietly, horrified. Sixteen had been bad, and had almost gone terribly even with support from an experienced Wandmaster and a Bowmaiden who’d apparently once been an apprentice to some elite archery unit. Aly was skilled, but she was objectively a downgrade. The step down between Jyn to Lucas was similar.
Valerie stared at the tracks, expressionless. One fist was clenching and unclenching. “A warning needs to be sent out, at minimum.”
“So we head for the nearest town?”
“It isn’t that way,” Aly murmured, pointing along the beasts’ trail. “This pack is moving south-east. The town is south-west.”
“Is there anything else in that direction, Ser Aly?” Wick asked. He was standing apart from the group, shields out and watchful of their surroundings. The grasslands around them were mostly flat, the closest forest miles away, so it was unlikely anything could sneak up on them. The shieldmaster refused to let down his guard anyway.
“Not close,” Aly said. She grimaced. “But if they keep heading that direction, eventually…”
“Harwyck,” Valerie finished for her.
Aly nodded.
The name rang a bell. “Didn’t Jyn say something about Harwyck? That he was worried it might end up falling to the demons?”
“I can’t imagine a scenario where the Order allows Harwyck to fall,” Valerie said.
“Many people said the same about Duskpoole back in the day, I’d wager,” Wick said with some venom.
Valerie glared at him. “If the demon forces take Harwyck and either kill the population or force them to flee, the Blight would be free to spread through Steffonshire and a significant distance into Harwyckshire. It would be a disaster.”
“Even from the very top of the Moontower, one cannot see the entire world,” Wick said. “And Lady Claire is not currently on her perch, according to you. We could indeed be looking at a serious crisis. We’ve been seeing the signs for a while. Recall when you said we hadn’t encountered as many animals as you would have expected, Captain.”
“So what do we do?” Lucas asked.
Valerie’s gaze flicked to Aly, then back to Lucas. “I am reluctant to commit our party to a hunt for beasts, considering our current circumstances.”
“Can we really leave this alone?” Lucas asked.
“We must think long term,” Valerie said, as if she was trying to convince herself. She was tenser than he’d ever seen her, practically grinding her words out through clenched teeth.
“You don’t want to leave this alone,” Lucas said, certain of it.
Valerie blew out a sharp breath through her nose. Her eyes were darkening. “Of course not. I’ve fought for years to prevent just these kinds of catastrophes from occurring. But as devastating as this situation with Harwyck may potentially be, if it goes as badly as it could, there are far worse losses we could take.”
Lucas flinched back as if she’d stabbed him. Equating his life to however many thousands lived in what sounded like an important city—a county named after it, and all—would never sit right with him. He understood her perspective; if he was destined to be incredibly powerful, it made sense to keep him alive. His power was worth more than a city, if it took him to heights great enough to defeat this omnicidal Demon Lord. There were millions of lives on Aerth in the balance, after all.
It still made him a little ill. This kind of cold calculus wasn’t meant to involve someone like him.
“We can’t chase them down,” Lucas said.
Valerie shook her head robotically. She withdrew her white pendant, but kept it clenched in her fist rather than holding it up.
“You wanted to fight them?” Aly asked with a disbelieving look.
“I am a Captain of the Order of Five. It is my duty to protect the people of Aerth from the evil that plagues our lands,” Valerie said. “But I have greater duties that supersede even that.”
Aly clutched her bow in a white-knuckle grip. “Like what?”
Valerie muttered something too quiet for Lucas to hear. Her fist clenched so tightly around her pendant it trembled, but after a moment she composed herself and tucked it back beneath her cloak. To Aly she said, “You must lead us to the nearest town.”
“Yeah. I was gonna. Gotta warn the people who paid me to scout.”
“How far is it?”
Aly hesitated, looking off into the distance. “Too far to make it before sundown. And if there’s this many beasts lurking about…”
“Do you know a defensible position we could stop in on the way?” Wick asked.
Aly nodded slowly.
The party was grim as they set out, parting from the beast tracks and heading south-west from the next field over, bearing them to the edge of the forest in good time. Aly took the lead, bare-footed steps leaving no disturbance in her wake. Wick was close behind her, shields still out, prepared to protect her from any lurking beasts if needed. Lucas was behind him, head on a swivel and his pyromantic sense searching for anything that might be hidden. Valerie took up her customary position at the back of their procession, and he didn’t dare look back at her for fear of what expression he’d see on her face.
Conversation was nonexistent. Not a word passed between them all the way through the forest, or across the next stretch of fields that descended into a valley and then up the next hill. Lucas marvelled at his improved fitness when they reached the top of the steep incline and he barely felt winded.
Aly led them over a stretch of rolling hills, then on a winding path picking their way through a smelly peat bog, across another chess board of fields, before finally spying their destination when they crested another rise.
For some reason, none of them had questioned where, exactly, she was leading them. The assumption in Lucas’ mind was that she’d show them to a hill with a good view in all directions or something. In retrospect, he should’ve expected this.
He hadn’t noticed how tense Aly was until her shoulders slumped and she let out a trembling breath at the sight of the farm houses in the distance. The place was in a natural basin surrounded by mismatched hills. Three buildings squatted in the centre of a grid of four small fields; two of the buildings were grey one-story affairs with thatched roofs, while the third was a little taller and constructed from dark wood, presumably a barn. The fields were dotted with a dozen or so fluffy sheep in one corner—though Lucas wasn’t going to take for granted they were the sheep he was familiar with. They could end up being carnivores with canine heads and cloud vapour instead of wool for all he knew. The other fields were crops of various types Lucas couldn’t identify. Farm stuff wasn’t his forte.
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Faintly visible in the patch of field on the direct other side of the farm from them were a few figures. One taller man, seemingly working with a long tool of some kind in the waning light of dusk. Two smaller silhouettes danced around him in circles. Even from this great distance, they could hear the childrens’ laughter.
“They’re okay,” Aly whispered with a hint of a tremor in her voice.
“This is your farmer friend, I take it?” Lucas asked gently.
“I told him it’s getting dangerous out here, but he doesn’t want to leave this place. He said his grandfather’s grandfather lived here.” She paused. “And his wife is buried here, too.”
“Endangering his children for sentiment,” Valerie said.
Aly shot her a glare. “Some people don’t like to move around. That’s good. It’s nice to have people be in the same place I left them.”
“We should approach,” Wick said. The farmer in the distance had stopped working, his children rushing over to him. He appeared to have noticed them, staring in their direction. “We don’t wish to intimidate the man.”
“Lead on, Bowmaiden,” Valerie said.
They started down the hill, and the farmer mirrored them, moving back towards his home with his children skipping ahead of him. The sun was getting lower in the sky, throwing long shadows across the plain like creeping fingers and burning the opposite hills a rosy red. There was a pleasant breeze coming from the south, carrying the sound of bleating sheep and childish laughter. The scent of live animals and grain filled the air.
Aly’s anticipation seemed to grow as they got closer, and she practically broke into a run when the farm buildings obscured their view of the farmer. The rest of the group followed at a more leisurely pace, giving the girl time to explain the situation to the farmer.
Lucas zoned out a bit as they crossed the long distance to the farm, Aly getting further and further ahead of them. The landscape was yet another beautiful vista. It was like every time he turned around, there was a breath-taking view.
But it was difficult to appreciate such things with the sharp blade of knowledge hanging over his head. There was a pack of maybe 30 beasts out there. A part of him hoped they’d gone on to Harwyck after all, which was a horrible thought to have. The idea of an entire city ravaged by an army of beasts was horrifying. Thousands of people torn to shreds like those poor nine just this morning. His stomach lurched just thinking about it.
Thoughts of the beasts itched at his brain, making him paranoid. Looking at the farmstead, he found himself picturing a group of them lying in wait, hidden in the shadows beside one of the stone buildings, or waiting within the barn. Among the flock of sheep he visualised some smoky wolf monster blending in, waiting for the right moment to strike. At the apex of one of the distant hills, he imagined a massive five-headed centipede rearing back, preparing to charge.
It was only when Valerie let out a shout of warning and broke into a sprint that he realised he wasn’t imagining that last one after all.
The screams hit him next. Both beast and human.
The Skycloak was halfway to the farmhouse with her soulbonded sword shining before Lucas even reacted, charging after her with a muttered curse. Wick stayed at his side, shields hefted, armoured footsteps thunderous. Aly’s cry of alarm drifted over to him, the girl nocking, drawing, and loosing long arrows rapid fire even as she ran. Valerie soon overtook her, and then the Skycloak was past the farm buildings and out of view.
The scream of the distant beast rose to an ear-splitting pitch, battering at his soul and setting his mana pathways trembling before he snatched them in his spiritual hand and held them in place, drawing on the righteous anger that was becoming so habitual now. Fuck, he hated beasts with everything he had. It burned at him hotter than fire mana ever could hope to. Mercifully, a searing white light lit up the dark of dusk, and the creature fell silent.
Lucas’ heart didn’t stop thundering, and he kept moving forward. He didn’t trust for a moment there was only one beast out there, not after those tracks they’d seen.
It took agonisingly long seconds to pass the farmhouses and see the scene beyond. Valerie was already running back towards them, the two children thrown over her shoulders as the farmer sprinted behind her.
Two more beasts were barrelling down the distant hill, wailing their song of chaos at the top of their eldritch voices. One was far ahead of the other; it looked like a tree’s roots had been fashioned into the approximate shape of a three-tailed scorpion with tentacles instead of pincers, and an amalgamation of the upper halves of four animals fused together to form mandibles. Lagging behind was a hideously overweight wingless bird monster that dragged its grotesque, bulging body along with eight bent spider-like appendages with tips like long spears.
Aly kept firing her arrows, each one striking true. She was aiming for the legs, making the creatures stumble and buying the farmer time. He was much slower than Valerie even with the children burdening her, thrashing and crying in her arms. Lucas took aim, then stopped himself. His pyromancy didn’t have the range for this. Would it be better to use floramancy?
Behind him, the sheep were stampeding in a frenzy, running about all over the place. Some of them were writhing on the ground, and their bleats were full of such fear it wrenched at Lucas’ heart. These poor animals had no good way of protecting themselves against the beasts’ chaos-inducing scream. It was driving them mad. Or, Lucas realised as he thought back on how the beasts had affected him before, it could be even worse than that.
Trusting that Valerie and Aly would have the oncoming beasts covered, Lucas turned and ran back into the field they’d just come from. Wick cried out after him, but his heavy footsteps soon followed. Fire mana coursed through him, and he slowed it like he would his regular mana when he wanted strength. Scorching heat filled his pathways, and the air around him began to shimmer. His firehand’s fingers fused into a white-hot mass.
Quite unexpectedly, Jamie leapt from his chest in tabby cat form and darted ahead. Lucas gawked at the monstercat, truly baffled as to why he would do this, but couldn’t focus on it for long.
He reached the first sheep in a matter of seconds, and lunged for it with his flesh hand. The animal panicked, but Lucas wrestled it down. Its woolly coat was surprisingly rough to the touch, and it was stronger than he expected such a small thing to be. Nothing that threatened him, but its terrified thrashing forced him to put his back into pinning it down; he was off-balanced as he didn’t want to burn it with his firehand. His flesh hand pinned its head to the grass while he straddled it. He would’ve imagined that would be the end of its resistance, but the beasts’ screams had put it into fight or flight mode, and it was thoroughly settled into the former.
Now, he was faced with a moment of indecision. Ultimately, he'd taken action because he feared the sheep would turn murderous—or, worse, into another pack of beasts—and now he was faced with figuring out what to do about it.
The easiest, safest option was to kill it. Snap its neck, or stab it with his stick, or melt its brain with a concentrated burst of fire, and move on.
Fuck me, Lucas thought, staring into its black eye. It looked so scared.
Growling with frustration at himself, he reached out with his mana. With his heart’s flame burning, his pyromantic sense gave him a 3D view of the sheep’s heat. Snug reds stuck out beneath its woollen coat, and Lucas delved deeper into it, picking out the hot blood pumping through its veins far too fast to be healthy. Its heart was hammering.
And he could see how the creature was already warping. It was subtle—the chaos effect was evidently distant enough that its effects were slow acting, and a flash of white light behind him indicated one of them was already dealt with—but there were slight bulges in its skin, like tumours growing in fast-forward.
Lucas acted without thinking too hard about it. If this didn’t work, he told himself, he’d have to kill it anyway, so the inherent danger didn’t matter all that much.
Through the connection of his flesh hand against the sheep’s neck, he started pumping fire mana into the creature, blindly fumbling for its pathways. The sheep let out a piercing bleat and thrashed twice as hard, but Lucas’ body weight proved too much for the small thing to buck off. A familiar pattern started lighting up in the sheep’s heat signature. In seconds, a tangle of white lines was highlighted throughout its body. It was trembling under the force of beastly corruption, and Lucas let his fury flow through his connection to the beast, snarling with his anger that the chaos had no power here.
The sheep stilled along with its pathways. A smouldering ember started to glow in the centre of its dark eye, and it fixed on Lucas, watching him with something like curiosity. Soon, he didn’t need to shepherd the creature’s mana, for it immediately took his hint and started holding its mana pathways in place itself. The next bleat it let out sounded almost angry. It was a strange sound, but a far better one than the terrified warbling from mere seconds before.
Taking that as a success, Lucas leapt away from the creature, took a second to pick another target—assessing which sheep looked like they were having the hardest time with the chaos—and ran off to hunt it down. Wick had been standing over him, and seemed to guess what he was up to as he pinned another sheep. By the time he’d repeated the process with his fire mana, he looked up to find Wick had a third sheep pinned nearby, ready for him.
Helping the sheep got easier each time he did it, but the beasts’ screams had quieted before the time he got halfway through the flock. The ones he hadn’t been able to get to were still panicked, but without the chaos corrupting their pathways there was no vector to show them how to fight it off. In the end, he was left with five sheep with the hints of flaming fury in their eyes, two that looked merely confused by his fire mana’s attentions, and eight more that had, miraculously, been rounded up by Jamie.
They were packed in a little huddle at the corner of their field, with the tabby cat sitting on his haunches before them, staring with unblinking red eyes. Lucas eyed them for a moment, then looked at the cat. “You didn’t eat any of them, did you?”
Jamie looked at him, somehow managing to convey disdain.
“Right,” Lucas muttered. He looked at the fire-eyed sheep. The firesheep, he decided to call them. They were loitering around nearby, and he was starting to think the spark in their eyes wasn’t going to go away.
Wick appeared at his side, watching the firesheep with equal trepidation as Lucas was feeling. “Unlocking magic in animals is a dangerous thing, Lucas,” he said softly, his voice coarse as gravel.
“Didn’t know what I was doing, to be honest,” Lucas murmured back. “Just… didn’t want to be dealing with fourteen sheep beasts.”
“It probably wouldn’t have gone that way. More likely they would’ve gone mad.”
“Wasn’t keen to deal with something like that, either.” Lucas sighed. “Would it have been better to kill them?”
“No,” Wick said. “Every creature deserves a chance to live.”
Lucas nodded.
They moved back towards the farm houses with Jamie trotting along beside them, glancing periodically back at the firesheep over their shoulders. The five newly-magical creatures watched them go. Lucas could have sworn one of them nodded at him.
What the hell did I do?