After news spread of the outsiders’ plans, the worker bee drotlings set aside all their other tasks to focus on building the giant corral trap, or, as Akemi had begun to refer to it as:

The Warthog Wrangler.

It was a marvel of resourcefulness: pieces of houses and shop stalls were torn apart and repurposed to be the trap’s wooden frame, and pulley systems were assembled using vines. The drotlings hardly ever had to communicate aloud what they were intending to do; neighbors wouldn’t blink an eye as someone peeled a tile off their rooftop.

Bamo and Akemi offered to help where they could, but without access to the drotling hivemind, they were pretty useless. But, as dusk neared, Akemi was approached by one of the stranger looking drotlings; this one wore a white cloak, white gloves, and a little circular hat atop his head. A mage’s outfit, by her estimations.

“The structure is nearly complete,” he said, without pretense. “But, it will fail.”

“Oh,” Akemi said, and laughed in surprise. “Well, that’s great news.”

The child gave her an unimpressed look. Akemi should have known better. There likely wasn’t a concept of sarcasm in their language. He probably took her for an idiot.

“Why will it fail?” she amended.

“The beast will enter the cage, but there will be nothing to stop it from leaving,” he explained. “The structure is too weak.”

Akemi cast a glance at the giant wooden cage. It looked moderately sturdy, but the mage wasn’t wrong; if the warthog really was as big and strong as they claimed, it would have no trouble breaking out. This wasn’t like Gabriel’s rooster prison back on the farm—that one had been made of strong metal bars and locked with magic.

“How about a Locking rune?” Akemi offered. She realized that she had seen Pyre trace it enough times that she had memorized it herself. “Would that affect the strength of the wood?”

She remembered the way that the chimeras back at the palace had been repelled off of the Viscount’s door after trying to open it. They were big creatures, and yet they had been repulsed by the door like birds caught in the wind. That made her think that the rune created a magical barrier around the surface it was bound to, regardless of the material.

The drotling mage considered her proposal for several seconds, which seemed like a good sign. These creatures were like search engines—if your question didn’t have a straightforward answer, they’d have to flip a few pages back until they found something suitable.

“It would improve the strength, yes, but not enough. The potency of a Locking rune is a mixture of the artist’s level and the material they are drawn on,” he said. “I can draw a Locking rune of Intermediate quality, but on a wooden surface, it will still be lacking. It would require something substantial in order to keep a curse like him inside. Something more than birch.”

“But what if we coated the wood with that something?” Akemi said, jumping to the end of his sentence. She was growing impatient. Their method of speaking was direct enough, but it lacked the human engine of imagination. If they hadn’t seen something work before, it would never occur to them to try it.

To her annoyance, he shook his head again. “We have been bled dry of our magic materials by this beast. All our good furs and skins have been used protecting what’s left of our shelters.”

“What kind of furs and skins?” Akemi said. “I can send my bat assistant out to get some for us.”

The mage looked over the fence, where the sun was hovering at the horizon line.

“There is not enough time. You would have to hunt down a magical animal. Furs and skins of enchanted beasts are best, but they are hard to come by. And you do not look like a hunter.”

“Oh yeah?” she said, feeling strangely offended. “Would a not-hunter come prepared with this then?”

She whisked her hand in the air, tabbing through her inventory. A moment later, two meters of enchanted snake skin fell at the drotling’s feet. Even if it wasn’t enough to cover the whole trap, it was more than enough to inscribe a dozen Locking runes on.

The mage’s eyebrows shot up, and he fell to his knees, picking up one of the skins. Holding it up in the air parallel to his body, it was nearly the height of him. It was too bad she had to waste it on this, really—she had been saving it to craft some sort of stylish armor, or a fancy cape.

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

He hugged the viper’s skin to his chest and looked at her with the smallest amount of gratitude the human face could muster.

“This will do,” he said.

– – –

As dusk fell over the drotling enclave, the furious preparations came to a halt.

The elder of the village—a title Akemi found hilarious, given the circumstances—stood in the middle of the enclave, by a roaring fire. He was a child like the rest, nearly identical in features, but he wore the pelt of a red fox around his neck to distinguish himself.

Wearing animal furs was seemingly how one showed prestige around here; from what Akemi could glean, animals were taken in high regard by the drotlings, and seen as a very precious resource. Wearing one, instead of using it to craft or to trade, was an honor doled out to very few.

“Tonight,” the boy said, slamming a small twig of a staff on the ground. “We will not sit in dread like previous nights. Tonight, we will leave our doors wide open. The beast will enter the village, chase its prey, and then fall victim to our trap, where it will rot under the Dark Lady’s gaze until the sun claims it.”

A small, middling hurrah echoed in the crowd. It was said in such a monotone way that it sounded sarcastic.

“Did he just refer to me as prey?” Akemi muttered to Bamo.

He snickered. “They’re just a factual species. You can’t be mad at them.”

“Factual or not, they’re starting to get on my nerves. I’m itching to get into that fjord,” she said, glancing behind her. There was a part of the enclave that was curiously barred off, and she could take a guess where it led.

She lowered her voice into chimeratone. “If this plan doesn’t work out, we’re making a run for it to the fjord and letting the drotlings sort it out amongst themselves, alright?”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“Well, I’ve given all my excellent ones away to the kids,” she said, crossing her arms. “You’ll just have to make do with the leftovers.”

A deafening roar broke through the silence of the evening. Hearing it, the drotlings jumped into action, not wasting a second. The few of them that were responsible for manning the trap climbed up the sides of houses, standing on rooftops and grabbing onto bundles of rope.

Galloping steps like thunder claps echoed through the forest, and before Akemi could say another word, the beast was on their doorstep.

Holy crap.

The kids hadn’t been kidding.

Warlock-Cursed Warthog | Level 21

The warthog was almost as big as a car. It had dark, midnight fur, amber eyes, and its face was a herd of clustered wrinkles, skin mushed into skin. It was terrifying enough just by its size, but then its husks elevated it to another level entirely—protruding like sharpened, elongated daggers from its frothing mouth.

Its eyes began to wildly dart around the scene, trying to grab onto its target. Most of the drotlings were out of sight, but the ones on the rooftop were exposed enough that the warthog could reasonably spot them. But that couldn’t happen—they were counting on Akemi to grab its attention before it noticed them.

Only, Akemi had no intentions of risking her own skin here. Not when she had the perfect skill for this sort of situation.

She ducked behind a barricade and cast [Conjure Illusion] right in the middle of the enclave, just where the trap opened. The trap itself had been disguised under mud and mulch, giving it the appearance of a cavern entrance.

“Hey! You big pig!” she shouted, giving a voice to the illusion. “Over here!”

With no other targets in sight, its eyes affixed on the faux-human. It approached, no, it hurtled at it, diving like a rocket straight into the open maw of the corral trap. It grabbed the dummy into its jowls like a puppy clamping down on a toy, tearing at it mindlessly.

Akemi grinned. It’s in the perfect position!

And yet, the trap door wasn’t closing. Confused, she looked to the drotlings on the rooftops. They were struggling with all their might, but there was a snag in the rope. The warthog had trampled over one of the attachments on its way inside, and now it couldn’t close properly. The wooden slab just kept jittering on the ground, noncompliant.

Akemi’s face fell.

Someone would have to close it manually.

Knowing her illusion would dissipate in about two seconds, she ran straight towards the trap door, not giving herself even a moment to contemplate her own mortality.

The warthog, eyes closed in enjoyment as it crunched down on its chew toy, failed to notice as she messily scooped the wooden door from the ground and lifted it upward. It was only the whine of the hinges as the door rotated into position that gave her away—in that last moment before the door clicked into place, she saw the boar’s red eyes open, and lock onto hers.

A violent cry echoed from the inside of the trap, followed by the creature ramming itself hard into the door. The structure shook, and Akemi lost her footing, scrambling backward in the dirt. But the trap door held; she could see the faint shimmering of blue around it, all tracing back to the Locking runes that were etched onto snake skin.

My plan actually worked?

Just as she was about to celebrate, she heard a voice echo from inside the trap.

“Vile manling,” it cried. “I will slaughter you when I escape this prison!”

It was a tongue like she had never encountered in Kodra; deep and hoarse, gritty.

Shit. Did someone get trapped inside there?

No, she realized immediately—it was the warthog.

Her infinite tongues skill was… translating the warthog.

“Has it worked? Has the curse been captured?” came Mort’s voice from above. He had been one of the chosen drotlings to work on the ropes, and he looked sweaty and exhausted as he bent over the side of the rooftop.

“It sure has been,” Akemi answered with an exhausted laugh, goosebumps running up her skin. “And he’s very pissed about it.”