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"Eidolon" Chapter One Sneak Peek

Writer's picture: Hannah MossHannah Moss

THIS WORK IS THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF THE AUTHOR, H.H. MOSS, AND IS SUBJECT TO COPYRIGHT.


Stew was far from Conri’s favorite food. He only really cared for it when done properly, simmering over a low fire for many hours until even the poorest quality meat softened, and the flavor of the broth seeped into every bite. The stew he’d been made to eat that morning certainly had a seeping flavor, overwhelmingly salty to preserve it in the bottle they’d packed alongside the hard tack. No amount of watered-down ale could ease the taste.

Still, it had certainly tasted better that morning than it did just then. Avery passed over a flask, and Conri hesitated before taking a swig of the burning liquor and swishing it around in his mouth.

“Gods, Avery, I’ll never understand how you enjoy this stuff,” Conri spat, his eyes watering.

“Better’n vomit, though,” Avery laughed, slapping Conri on the back. “Take another swig, lad. You may need it.”

Conri grimaced, but glanced past Avery to the newly unsealed catacombs, and drank some more. The gaping maw where Art had finally smashed through reeked of undead. A putrid, yellowish liquid dripped down the stones, smelling of rot and feces. The gaunts pacing those corridors had been there for a few centuries at least.

“Are you certain this is the place, wizard? It’s not exactly paved in silver,” Art griped.

“No, I’m not certain,” Conri chuckled. “Still, this is the best lead we’ve got.” He stepped over the rubble, and his boots sank a whole three inches in the slime. Crinkling his nose against the stench, he shoved his focus stone back into his pocket and unsheathed his sword.

Avery and Art hesitated, their eyes glassy in the dim light. The single mage light floating between them hardly reached ten feet down what Conri surmised had been a volcanic tunnel in ancient times. He’d expected Art’s hesitancy. A pickaxe, camping gear, and trade tools were a poor match against undead, after all. Avery’s hesitation, however, surprised him.

“It’s just gaunts, man,” Conri said with a raised eyebrow. “You’ve hunted vampiric lords before. It’s why I hired you.”

Avery bristled, running his free hand down his greasy salt and pepper beard. “Certain or not of what we’ll find here, wizard, doesn’t matter. Are you certain that you’ve dispelled the curse?”

Conri gave the hunter a wane smile. “I wasn’t until just now. Why do you think I stepped in first?” That was all that needed to be said. The two hired men joined him in the muck and went on alert, ready to move onward. Conri turned left and led the way, following the trail that only his eyes could see. Thin, silvery veins swirled through the rot on the floor, a biproduct of decaying magic. Less than one percent of the population could see it, and less than half of the sighted could follow the supernatural sense to wield its source.

In truth, Conri still felt uneasy. He had prepared for months to dispel the legendary curse set into those ruins. Every wizard who’d investigated in the past had failed to return. Yet when they had reached the sealed entrance, it had merely been a forgetting spell. Formidable if given enough power, but easily dispelled once weakened.

He flitted anxiously through reasons that the “curse” of legend had been so weakened. The caster could have died, but considering the curse had originated prior to their country’s history books, he would have thought the caster was long gone. There was a slim chance that it hadn’t been the curse, and that the actual curse was placed much farther in the mountain. Yet the after images of magic decay had lined every wall.

It all came back to Conri’s hypothesis, and the reason for his expedition. Magic was fading from the land, growing weaker, its source increasingly rare. At first it had seemed like a sharp increase in sighted children, a shift the Wizardry Administration had celebrated. Conri, however, believed that the decay of magic had increased to such an extent that even those with lesser sight were beginning to see it.

“Gaunts!” Avery called in warning, stepping past Conri. Down the sloped tunnel, two forms shifted, outlined in silver to Conri’s eyes. They didn’t have a chance to stand before Avery dispatched them with his small crossbow. “I’ll have to draw my blade eventually,” he chuckled, loading another silver-lined bolt, “but this is the straightest path we’ve had in all of the dungeons, caves, and shithouses so far. I wouldn’t mind if it stayed like this.”

Conri pressed more energy into the floating mage light, and warily walked forward, keeping an eye out for more silvered outlines. When he was certain that he saw none, he bent down to inspect the newly re-dead corpses. They were surprisingly fresh, perhaps fifty years old. One had an oiled satchel, and Conri pried it open to find a journal.

“That’s a guild symbol, on their rings,” Art spoke up in his quiet voice. “An old merchant’s ring. It used to be common to rob graves for things to sell, before the guild began requiring proof of sources.”

“They starved to death,” Conri said, reading the last entry of the journal.

“Is there a name in there?” Avery asked, pulling rings from the gaunts’ fingers. “The widows might still be alive. The guild can return these at least.”

“Gordon Frit,” Conri answered, raising the journal for Avery to see. “They must’ve had a warding spell that wasn’t strong enough.”

The letters on that final page were increasingly frantic and illegible, the final writings of a man near death. “I am Gordon Frit, merchant. I am Gordon Frit merchant. I am Gordon Frit Gordon Frit Gordon Frit GORDON FRIT STOP FORGETTING Need to remember! Somebody else here. I’m Gordon. Gordon Frit. I forgot again. Gordon. Gor….”

Avery closed his eyes for a moment, then handed the five collected rings to Art and raised his knife solemnly, carving a symbol of blessing on the gaunts’ hairless, greenish-grey scalps. Then he cleaned the knife on Gordon’s shirt before sheathing it and standing.

“Let’s keep moving.”

They continued down the long tunnel, which gradually changed from natural-looking formations to visibly cut stone. Occasional indents on the wall showed where cremated bones had been entombed, covered with silver-lined plates. The men occasionally passed undead so old that the bones snapped when the reanimated bodies tried to attack. Scratched writing on the walls reflected the journal entry: people trying to remember, while their minds were torn from them and undead hunted them. The further down they walked, the more layers of writing could be seen. The sludge at their feet grew viscous, sucking at their every step.

Art stopped them twice, requiring them to eat and drink. He might not be a fighter, but Art was in the business of keeping people alive all the same. True guides were rare. Art was a mountain and ruins guide with the kind of information that couldn’t be learned from encyclopedias. Too many travelers died from not preparing enough food and water, losing their way, getting caught in harsh weather, or pushing themselves to exhaustion. In that, Conri was grateful for him, even if the foods served were preserved with enough salt to overpower even the smell of that tunnel.

“I don’t like this,” Avery said after a long length of quiet. “There are too few undead for this amount of refuse, and we haven’t come across so much as a single turn.”

“It’s been turning gradually,” Conri replied grimly. “It’s a little more visible in the patterns of magic decay. We should rest. We’re getting close.” He blinked his eyes, struggling to make out the path as silvery decay misted his vision in every direction. He closed his left hand on the focus stone in his pocket, clearing the mist from view. “Very close.”

#

They didn’t camp for long. The tunnel reeked too much to sleep, even after they cleared a patch of ground and set wards for fresher air. The men took turns closing their eyes and dozing before coming to a silent consensus and packing up.

By the time the path leveled off and widened, Conri was thoroughly exhausted. He’d grown stronger in the previous months, for sure, and had always been fit, but the slope and sludge put strain on his ankles and calves. Moreover, the trek up the mountain beforehand had taken its toll, and it took effort to keep his head from swimming.

Then the walls fell away abruptly, the tunnel letting out into an open space. The men stopped, staring out into the darkness, each using senses and knowledge the others lacked.

“Undead,” Avery whispered. “This is where they are. But they smell old, perhaps older than those we saw on the way down.”

“Dead air past this point,” Art warned. “Old runes kept the tunnel somewhat ventilated, I think, but we need masks from here.”

“Wait here one moment.” Conri took a deep breath. He stepped forward, past the edge of the mage light. Avery cursed at him quietly, but didn’t dare follow.

The path was clear to Conri. The silvery outlines solidified in the presence of live magic, its power humming and raising the hairs on Conri’s arms. He cut down a few gaunts, each one slow and decayed, before reaching his destination. On a small platform, a short pedestal with source lines held a large focus.

Conri placed his palm over the stone, and pulled at the source. Iridescent and gold threads flickered into view around his hand, and Conri whispered his orders. Within seconds, light exploded from the stand, streaking over the floor and up the walls. Enough mage lights appeared across the ceiling that it may as well have been daylight. Conri shielded his eyes, blinded after being underground so long. He stepped back, blinking, a cool breeze brushing his arm as an air purifying spell spurred awake.

His boot came down with a harsh crunch. Conri froze, and looked down to see the charred bones of the dead wizard, focus stone still in hand. “Oh, fuck.”

“Drop!” Avery bellowed, and a silver bolt hissed through the air seconds after Conri flung himself down and rolled. Screeching tore at Conri’s ears as he pressed up and away, barely avoiding the flaming blade of the wraith.

“Keep the bloody gaunts off me while I handle this one!” Avery commanded as he raced forward. He had handed off the crossbow to Art, who was already out of sight. In its place he wielded a mace with silvered spikes, far more effective against armor than the sheathed short sword.

Conri regained his footing and bolted away from the armored wraith, sparing only a moment to gaze in awe at the sword made of solidified fire. What he would give to study the ancient runes that made up the blade… his life wasn’t on that list. Trusting Avery, he turned to scan the room and readied his sword.

In a scene that would haunt his sleep for years to come, hundreds of gaunts were crawling across the floor. Rotten flesh sagged and slid loose and bones cracked as the most ancient of them tried to move. Only a few were fresh enough to actually fight, but the others could still grab or bite if he let them, and the residual necromantic goo sucking at his feet was guaranteed sepsis for open wounds.

He began methodically sweeping back and forth, slashing at the nearest undead and building a ring around Avery’s fight. It was less reminiscent of previous undead encounters, and more of fighting a horde of rats, where one would be at his heel no matter how quickly he slashed. It took all of his effort to focus and not look back at the screeching monstrosity. Avery had yelled in pain more than once, but still held his own.

“A conduit! Wizard!” Art shouted from somewhere near the wall, and a silver bolt struck the nearest gaunt. “The wraith must have a conduit close by!”

Conri stabbed his blade into a walking gaunt’s chest, and when it wouldn’t come free he dropped the hilt and grabbed his focus. When he looked back, he saw what Art had; the wraith’s armor repaired itself where Avery had damaged it, the metal melting and solidifying again.

The conduit had to be close, for the wraith to hide its presence from him so thoroughly. At least seven gaunts around his feet had signs they were wizards in life, with burns where the wraith had cut them down. Conri followed the lines of magic, the gold threads lacing through the floors and walls, following the source to a tapestry on the far wall. A portion of the tapestry seemed darker, where the silver decay was drifting away and not piling up. A door.

“Hang in there, Avery! Shout if it tries to follow me,” Conri yelled, sprinting forward. He wove around bodies, lifting his feet high and kicking off skulls to avoid piles of muck. Just before he reached the tapestry, Avery’s shout was cut off by the wraith’s blood curdling scream. Good, Conri thought, flinging himself through the tapestry into another corridor. The wraith’s anger meant he was on the right track.

Few sighted people could sense the gold and iridescent threads of magic, the first step towards becoming a wizard. Conri had only met one other who could actually see them in his lifetime. Judging on the relative cleanliness of the corridor beyond the tapestry, Conri guessed that few had ever had the chance to discover it. The ooze that had been there had long since dried, like sticky amber reflecting the new mage light he summoned.

The threads of magic drew short no more than ten paces in, wrapping around something round in the padded dirt. Conri dropped down urgently and tore at the ground. The screeches of the wraith were drawing closer, interlaced with metal striking metal and Avery’s shouts. Conri’s nails bled as he dug, but he kept going, following the wavering image of the threads down and down. He drew a dagger to chip away where layers of ooze had solidified, until it hit something solid.

He cleared the top of the obsidian orb, brushing away dirt and hurriedly speaking the incantation before bringing his focus stone down hard. Sparks flew where the two stones hit, and air rushed around him as the golden threads snapped, their ends torn and wound into the focus.

Metal crashed in the other room, followed by a short silence. Conri stood and pushed aside the tapestry to see Avery, bloody but whole, standing over the wraith’s empty armor. On the opposite side of the hall, Art was already unpacking his medical kit. Gaunts lay forgotten, the false life draining from them with the death of their master. It was the first time Conri had seen them created from a wraith instead of being held by individual curses. Avery began whooping with laughter, cheering on Art for his improved aim since they’d first met.

“Well, Conri? Did you find the source of magic back there?” Avery called cheerfully.

“Not quite the source, but I’ll be able to fill my supply after I turn off the lights!” Conri yelled back across the chamber with a sad smile. How long can it last, though? He was about to step out when a sound caught his attention. He spun, staring into the space behind him.

“You coming?” Avery called as he limped towards Art.

“Go on, I’m just going to check something out first.” He waved, and let the tapestry fall. The corridor behind it was short, but branched off with small nooks and holes. He followed the sound around a corner, and bent down to look into one of the nooks.

A terrified, starved woman looked back out at him. They watched each other, neither moving, not believing what the other was seeing.

“You have to hide!” The woman hissed suddenly, wrapping her arms around bruised legs and loose-fitting, dirty trousers. “There’s something out there! It’s not safe.”

“It’s okay,” Conri said in a soft voice. “How long have you been—”

“I don’t know.” The young woman shook her head and scrabbled further into the shadows. “I don’t know who I am, or how long it’s been, or what is out there, but… just….”

“It’s gone. The wraith is gone.” Conri put away his focus and showed his empty hands. “I promise you’re safe now.”

She met his eyes. Tears streamed down her face as she crawled forward and shakily placed a palm on his cheek as though still not believing he was real. Then her eyes rolled back and the she fell limp in Conri’s arms.



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