A smile crossed Norman’s face as he looked at the results of his newest spell. The dark liquid sloshing around in the glass vial could easily be mistaken for poison or a very odd potion. It was anything but. It was an active spell, one designed to infect an individual and slowly hide their life force. In every other aspect, the spell left no telltale signs.

He handed off the three vials to the Wraiths.

“A single drop per person will do. But if you can slip it into their food and drink, even better.”

One of the Wraiths eyed the bottle. “Sir, is there any concern with cross-contamination?”

“With the water perhaps. So you will need to exercise your best judgment there.”

“Sir, I don’t mean to second guess you here. But I don’t understand how this will get rid of the Empire forces. Won’t this just cause a panic?” The same Wraith asked.

It was a new Wraith member, one who had previously been a Marine. Unfortunately, Norman didn’t know his name.

“It shouldn’t. It is a slow-acting spell. For the insectaurs, it should appear like a disease. They will distance themselves from the ‘sick’ and call in the outcasts to deal with the problem.”

“Ah,” the former Marine replied.

All of the Wraiths were aware of how the outcasts dealt with the sick and dying. And that was swiftly and violently. They were after all the only members of their species normally capable of handling a threat. They went about their duties with the same insane drive as the other members of their species did to avoid the dead and dying. It was too bad Norman couldn’t harness this single-mindedness.

Considering how important the outcasts were to their species, maybe they weren’t a genetic anomaly like he had originally thought. Perhaps they were a genetic necessity. The white blood cells of their species.

The three Wraith saluted before vanishing.

With the teleporter it would take them no more than an hour to cross the distance to the edge of Normenia, then the Wraiths would quickly move into the insectaur territory to release the Elixer of False Death.

By this evening, if everything went to plan, all of the Third Prince’s forces remaining in that zone would be dead or on the run. And those wouldn’t get far with his Death Knights lying in wait.

Norman wished he could be there, could administer the spell himself. But he had to delegate stuff like this to people with far more experience than he had.

Not that he minded, he didn’t relish having to kill people. Even if he knew their souls would live on. It just felt wrong somehow to ask others to do his dirty work.

He pushed those thoughts off to the side. His meeting with Grobert and Eugene had been fruitful. After speaking with both men, they approved of the plan he had proposed with only minor changes.

During the meeting, Grobert brought up another matter he had overlooked. “What about the other zones around Normenia?”

Honestly, Norman hadn’t spared much thought about them. He knew Grobert had explored into a few of them, but not very far. Given that threats seemed to keep coming from his borders, it was probably time to make sure nothing else was lurking beyond the fog.

He itched to explore these places himself, but he knew his advisors would never agree to that. It was one of the burdens of leadership that he despised. He could always just push the point or vanish in the night, nobody could stop him. But he wouldn’t do something so irresponsible. Not when he was one of the major deterrents against threats. Plus his disappearing would not look good to the people.

The task was in good hands though. It was given to the same group that had initially been tasked to root out the Empire’s people. Since they were already in human form, they could blend in better. He did have to give them amulets to keep the imatti specters at bay, but that was easy and cheap now that Saliu and his team of enchanters, especially Kalia, had cracked the problem with requiring solid gold to craft them.

But he wasn’t sad to see the Death Knights ride off this time. For he had stumbled across something with one of his spells that allowed him to experience being there in person.

***

Norman blinked open his eyes, feeling slightly weird.

“Sir?” one of the Death Knights asked.

“Yes,” his voice squeaked from vocal chords not designed for human speech.

He had discovered that his command spell didn’t have a range limitation. Or if it did, it was well and truly farther than he would ever need. He could also cast any spell of his through his puppeted individual.

“Well… I- I honestly didn’t think that would work.” The group leader said in surprise.

“It was a fifty-fifty shot,” Norman admitted in his squeaky rodent voice.

He had given the group a dozen of his prepared Command spells. All they had to do was drop some of his blood onto them to activate it and allow him to possess a nearby creature. He had even programmed the spells to seek out smaller animals to inhabit.

While he could take over the body of a human using the spell – as he had learned – it was far more taxing on his mana. He chalked that up to the inherent mental strength that an intelligent being possessed. Or perhaps it was the strength of their soul.

The creature he was currently inhabiting was about the size of a small dog, but it had six legs all with opposable thumbs.

“An interesting choice,” he remarked as he examined his paws.

“It was all we could find, Sir.”

Norman waved away the man’s concern, which must have looked extremely odd coming from this creature.

“Don’t worry about it. I assume you summoned me for a reason?”

The group leader nodded. “Follow me, Sir.”

Norman loped after the much taller man, his body struggling to cross the ground. It seemed this creature wasn’t well suited for this type of motion, perhaps it was a tree dweller. It would make sense given the massive trees he could see all around him. Then again his sense of scale was way off in this form.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

They didn’t go far before the group leader pushed aside a bush. Norman could see indistinct blurs moving in the distance but other than that, not much else.

“You’ll have to tell me what we are looking at, Gabriel, the eyes on this thing are awful.”

“Oh, sorry, Sir. Six large bipeds, approximately eight feet tall. They kind of look like Bigfoot. We spotted the smoke of their camp a few miles back and decided to investigate.”

Norman turned toward Gabriel, trying to put on a surprised expression. It seemed it didn’t translate.

“Um… I’m not sure what you’re doing, Sir.”

He sighed. “I’m trying to look shocked or surprised.”

“You look more constipated,” the man replied in a flat tone.

“Fair enough. I assume there was something else about the Bigfoots you wanted to discuss. Or is it Bigfeet when there is more than one?”

The man chose not to comment on Norman’s plurality dilemma. “I’m sure we could take the creatures. But it’s the four people trapped in the crude cages I’m concerned with.”

“Humans?” Norman asked in surprise.

“SAS if my eyes aren’t deceiving me. Although they are banged up good and their clothing is pretty ragged.”

“Those are the British ones, right?”

Gabriel nodded.

Norman only noticed the man nodding thanks to his host's wide cone of vision.

The question was, where did these people come from? They couldn’t have come from this zone. It was clearly alien in nature. That likely meant there was a human zone on the far side.

There was a scream and he saw Gabriel wince and let the bush fall back into place.

“What was that?”

“Seems like dinner.”

“… Oh. Well, shit.”

***

The spell wore off and his people had to cast another one, this time they were much closer to the camp and it was quite a bit darker. A plan had already been discussed before his previous spell expired.

They could risk attacking these creatures, and possibly getting the remaining hostages killed, or Norman could stride into camp and deal with the creatures.

It was an easy choice since Norman was perfectly safe in this form. He just had limited time. But it would be enough, especially with how fast he could move amongst the trees.

***

The group of hunters sat amongst their camp, the fire burning low as they chewed on the tough stringy meat of their prey.

“Barr, this meat is awful, I told you you should have grabbed the smaller ones.”

“I didn’t see you helping with the capture, Nan. Maybe next time you can go sticking your arm down their warrens,” his fellow hunter spat back at him.

“Bah, you’re just afraid after what happened to Gek. That fool stuck his head down there and got what he deserved.”

The others laughed at their fallen comrade's fate. To die to a stupid human with a pointy stick.

One of the others slapped Nan on the side of his arm and pointed to a nearby tree. “Look, it's a tresul.”

“It’s rare to see them out of the trees, It’s good luck,” One of the others spoke.

Nan snorted and stood. “Fuck your good luck, they are good eating.”

He stomped toward the small six-armed creature as it plopped against the ground and turned to face him. The dumb thing didn’t even have a hint of concern as Nan raised his large club. It was only when Nan had his club high over his head that he noticed the creature had something clasped within one of its hands. And that it was wearing a crude bandolier.

***

Up close, the large hairy creature was quite imposing. Had this been Norman’s true body, he might have even been slightly afraid. Eh, probably not. He had faced much more dangerous things than this silly creature.

He cracked the spell anchor with a thought and the Death Ray shot out, hitting his target.

The others in the camp didn’t even react as they watched their fellow drop his club on his own head and then collapse into an unmoving heap on the ground. Instead, they started laughing. It suited Norman just fine as he pulled out another spell anchor. It wasn’t until the third creature dropped that they realized something was very wrong about this small tresul. By then it was far too late.

Norman hopped over to the cage just as the Death Knights arrived at the outskirts of the camp. Nobody looked too closely at the meat roasting over the fire, they all knew what it was. Norman had grabbed a sample of the blood from the remains, but he didn’t want to make it known that he was a necromancer just yet.

Since his people were currently in their living form, he would let them deal with the unconscious survivors. His attack had been so quick and quiet that it hadn’t awoken any of them.

He turned toward Gabriel. “My time is almost up, so I will leave the rest to your discretion.”

The man nodded and gave a quick salute before Norman scrambled up a tree after removing the woven bandolier from the creature. Soon after the spell ended and he found himself back in the castle. He sighed. His escape from reality had been fun while it lasted.

***

Gabriel just shook his head as he watched his boss, a literal Wizard King, crawl up a tree in the form of some furry mammal.

“It’s been over ten years, but this magic shit still freaks me out sometimes.”

The rest of his team just nodded.

“So, when are you going to stop pretending to be unconscious?” he asked, turning toward the cage.

One of the trapped SAS got to his feet, a makeshift shiv in his hand. “What gave it away?”

“I heard you suck in a breath when our boss started talking.”

The man in the cage chuckled. “Yeah, that was a surprise. So are you going to kill us?”

Gabriel watched the man, it was clear he was prepared to die, but he could tell the man would not go without a fight. It was a good thing they weren’t here to fight. With a swift flick, his spear sheared through the cage door.

“Nope. Name’s Gabriel, U.S. Marines or former I suppose. How bout we get you guys patched up and you can tell us how you ended up here,” he said, gesturing to the camp and the dead Bigfeet.

The man’s tense demeanor immediately changed and he nearly sagged in relief. “We would appreciate that.”

The man was quite emaciated but that didn’t stop him from stepping outside the cage and offering his hand. “Captain Avery. What you see here is the last of my people.”

Gabriel winced at that, if this man was a captain, he likely had sixteen men under his command. The fact that only three remained meant they ran into some nasty shit.

“Yeah, it was bad,” Captain Avery spoke quietly after seeing Gabriel’s reaction. “The area where we were stationed was cut off from home and we were surrounded by aggressive neighbors on all sides. Over the years those neighbors have been steadily pushing in and forcing us on the defensive. Our Commander decided to send us out to investigate and see if we could find a path to safety or at least another human settlement. Well, we ran into a human settlement, if you can call them that.”

“Not quite Earth-like,” Gabriel responded with a knowing smile.

“Quite Right. …You don’t seem all that surprised.”

“I’m not. We’ve run into a few other hum species. Even ones that were mostly aquatic.”

“Well, these were not aquatic, thankfully. But they did need our help. We stepped in and drove off these hairy bastards. There were ten of them. While we were escorting the survivors back to our base, they surprised us. Our bullets did little to harm them and they killed most of my men and captured five of us. A few of my people managed to get the civilians into a series of rocky caves where these large bastards couldn’t follow. But I’m afraid that was the last I saw before I was backhanded into a tree. That was a week ago.”

Gabriel rubbed his chin. “I don’t suppose you know what direction you came from?”

Avery waved vaguely in one direction. “Back that way. I was out for most of the first day so that’s the best I can give you. By the time I came to, they had already carved up one of my people for a meal. I was going to try and fight my way free before they took Haskins but I passed out due to hunger. I only woke again when he started screaming.”

“Sorry, we couldn’t get here sooner.” He fished a potion vial from his pack and handed it to the Captain. “Drink it, it will restore your body.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about, Gabriel,” the man responded before downing the potion.

The effect was almost instantaneous as his body seemed to swell. The man staggered a bit but managed to catch himself. “Bloody hell, that’s got a kick to it.”

Gabriel chuckled. “Won’t do much for the hunger, but it’ll get you back into fighting shape.”

While Gabriel was talking with the Captain, the rest of his squad was assisting the others and handing out rations. At the moment, their mounts and armor were stored. Lord Norman wanted them to remain a secret unless absolutely necessary. It would mean a lot of walking, but they were Marines, they were used to it.

“This may sound like a strange request, Captain, but you don’t happen to have something with your man’s blood on it? The one that was…”

“Eaten?” The Captain finished.

Gabriel nodded.

The man didn’t question the strange request as he looked around the camp. He motioned at one of the dead creatures. “That one has scraps of his uniform. If there is any blood, it’ll likely be on them.”

Gabriel searched the corpse, finding many torn pieces of uniform. He got lucky with one having a small bloodstain on it. He couldn’t be certain it was the man’s blood but it was the best they could do. He tucked it away in a plastic bag and stood back up.

Already he could see life returning to the rest of Avery’s people. “Well, how bout we go save some civilians?”