Chapter 21: 21. Certain Earth

Excerpt from Yenna Bookbinder’s ‘The Travelling Mage’s Almanac.’

“Of all the events to take place on this expedition, the last thing I expected was to be charging directly into a swarm of beasts. I calm my frayed nerves and persistent fears by telling myself that it’s a great proving ground for new spells and techniques, but I live with the knowledge that this will not be the last time I am thrown directly into the cooking fire. I only hope that, next time, I shall not make the same mistakes.”

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Eone and Yenna tore around the corner of a building, its front windows shattered and its door destroyed. A pair of yolm were facing off with a few beasts, one of them slicing artlessly at the creatures with an axe, the other waving a length of wood to little effect. The beasts themselves were surprisingly varied, though all typical of what mages called ‘beastkind’—twisted reflections of natural creatures. Snarling at the swinging axe was an oversized wolf with deep red fur, and duelling with the plank of wood was a massive beetle with a spear-like horn.

“Yenna, I need you to tell me what to expect, how to deal with these creatures—or just deal with them yourself. Let’s go!” Eone charged forward and Yenna watched as the captain lowered her head, her sword-horn becoming a deadly weapon as she slammed into the side of the giant beetle. The yolm with the wooden board was equally surprised, but quickly gathered his wits—he turned to help his partner by waving his makeshift weapon at the wolf.

Finding herself flat footed with her own kind of shock, Yenna took a moment to accelerate her thoughts. She didn’t tax herself unduly—rather than splitting her attention, Yenna used this extra time to identify the creatures. 

The beetle was largely a non-issue—it was a ‘maximised’ creature, a regular living creature made many times larger by magical accident. Making a creature larger like this didn’t do much for a beast, as it typically introduced many new problems of its own—one such problem was that a beetle’s armour wasn’t meant to be this large or heavy, and the creature couldn’t react in time to Eone’s charge. The captain had this one under control, so Yenna turned her gaze to the wolf.

The red fur and great size indicated that the wolf was slightly element-touched—specifically, fire-touched. A classification that might have had new revelations with the idea of the six colours, an element-touched creature possessed some qualities associated with a corresponding element, such as the ability to resist flames or even emit them. However, the deep red of its fur gave Yenna pause. Her basic magical sense also registered it as something different from flame. 

“That one should– no, maybe… ?” The mage began to say something, but she didn’t want to risk giving out faulty information. Eone looked up from her struggle with the beetle to listen, but Yenna shut her mouth—better to withhold her thoughts than cause issues by getting a half-answer out.

While Yenna considered the facts, the man with the axe continued his flailing, warding the beast away. The wolf moved with a certain glimmer of intelligence, clearly understanding that if it tried to attack it would receive an axe-strike for its troubles. Instead, it continued to feint and dart around until the axe-wielding yolm stumbled. The man looked behind him instinctively to see what his foot was caught on, leaving a huge opening. As if sensing its chance, the wolf began to inhale. Yenna gasped in surprise and began to split her focus on multiple spells.

The first was to alter and shift her magical armour. Running forward with her thoughts accelerated felt like trying to wade through a dense swamp, but Yenna needed to close the gap—pulling the layer of magic off of herself, she cast it out like a net between the pair and the lupine beast, changing its protection to deflect an expected gout of flame. Allowing her mind to return to regular timescale, the events played out slightly differently than expected.

The wolf puffed up and began to exhale just as a shimmering field of red light appeared before it. Unperturbed, the beast blew out a gout of steam, superheated water blasting through the flameproof field. To Yenna’s great relief the magical shield seemed to act as a filter, removing the heat—the two men were simply doused with water. As the steam-breathing beast took a moment to process what had happened, the pair of men swung in. The one with the axe hit it right on the head, and the beast collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

Yenna began to trot over, noting Eone had finished up with the beetle. The creature’s bodies started to decay away, dissolving as the magic that supported their unnatural forms dissipated into the air¹. The captain looked over at the men, double-checking they were okay, before turning to Yenna with a surprisingly unpleasant look. The mage faltered in her steps, her victorious mood souring.

“What the heck was that? Why didn’t you warn us it could do that?” Eone looked angry, sheathing her sword as she walked towards Yenna.

“W-Well, I… I wasn’t entirely sure as to the properties of the beast, so I didn’t want to say anything without being certain, and the fellows are quite alright despite it being slightly off, so–”

“Mage Yenna.” Eone put a hand on the kesh’s shoulder, and Yenna suddenly felt her size and frailty—the captain was quite a lot bigger than her, in many senses. “I know you’re not a fighter, but I need you… I need you to show some confidence. Now, I don’t know much about magic, but you got lucky here.”

The captain gestured towards the two men. Both were drenched from head to toe, but not too much worse for wear. Yenna frowned for a moment, before realising what she meant.

“I… I did get lucky. If I’d suspected it were going to expel water, I might have filtered out the water and not the heat, and they would be…” Yenna gulped. Her back leg quivered, and an arc of lightning coursed down one of her arms—she needed to stabilise herself. Fortunately for her, Eone seemed to realise her own posture, and began to soften.

“We can’t take second chances, or cut the bare minimum on something like this, Yenna. You need to pull out all the stops—lives are on the line! I don’t want you to hold back information—even the smallest scrap could help. If you told me it had something like that, I could have taken it down first. Have some confidence that our associates and I will be able to use it! Now, are you ready to do this properly?”

Yenna breathed out a deep sigh and calmed her nerves. She had to do this, or she would never be able to live with herself. A feeling of resolve welled up from inside, and Yenna met Eone’s eyes. The captain gave her a comforting smile, and Yenna nodded. 

“I’m ready. Let’s go.”

The pair headed off. Eone bid the men to head towards the expedition crew, while Yenna began preparing a new bevy of spells. Foremost was a more serious magical sight spell—concentrating the spell into a bubble over one of her eyes, she expended some resources to stabilise it. The version of this spell she had cast during her duel with Lumale had been a temporary measure, designed to last no longer than the duration of the fight—this would stay until Yenna dissipated it. Taking a look around, she saw something quite curious.

“Captain, actually, wait a moment. This might be– is important.” Yenna galloped over to the spot where the wolf-beast had been. A crystalline shard, like a sliver of deep blue ice, lay on the ground where it had fallen. Yenna picked it up and turned it over, inspecting it with both her normal sight and magical sight.

“Well, what is it?” Eone peered down at it. “It’s quite pretty.”

“This is a water crystal. They form in certain elementally-charged locations, as well as from elementals themselves. That wolf really should have breathed out fire, but it had this influencing its form.” Yenna puzzled over it for a moment, not noticing as Eone pulled a second crystal out of her pocket.

“I gotta admit, I thought this was just a fun li’l curio. It fell outta the beetle. What’s this mean, then?” The crystal in Eone’s huge hand was another deep blue shard, nearly identical.

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“I need more data.” Yenna felt a bit silly saying she was unsure after that big talk about being confident in one’s answers, but it was true. “Our sample size is too small—we’ll have to find more beasts to confirm my hypothesis. I suspect there may be either a nearby zone of concentrated elemental energy, or a powerful water elemental. Depending on which it is, we would need a different approach.”

“If you’ve got an idea, we better prove it!” Eone’s ears perked up, and she turned her head—Yenna ducked the sword-horn, despite it being nowhere near her. “I hear fighting over that way—let’s go!”

The pair ran once more, Yenna keeping pace with Eone as they went around several corners. Yenna kept an eye out—her magical sight revealed several people hiding safely indoors, but there didn’t seem to be anyone out on the street. A rather horrible thought occurred to her.

“In an attack, would there not be those injured and, erm, dead, lying around?” The area certainly seemed to have come under attack, with buildings damaged and debris strewn all around. Yenna was reluctant to think of casualties, but it was an unavoidable observation. “Could the beast-march have taken them somewhere?”

Eone thought about it for a moment. “Wouldn’t be the first time, but every pack’s different. If they’re being taken somewhere, then they’ve got a reason for it. We need to find them, fast!”

Yenna gave a nod. She looked into the distance with her magical sight, for all the good it did—things began to blur together in the rather psychedelic vision that was the magical realm. Still, there was some concentration of people, or at least magic, at the centre of the town. Relaying that to Eone, they both changed direction and headed towards it.

On the way, they came across another group in distress. Several yolm were being protected by a spear-wielding guard, who was doing their best fending off a small menagerie of beasts. A bright-blue panther-like creature seemed to slide around the spear like it was made of water, while a spike-covered lizard kept distracting the guard with fierce hissing and rattling. Overhead, a pair of birds with brilliant plumage swooped at the crowd—it was all they could do to duck, and use their horns to give the beasts pause in committing to a proper dive.

“Yenna, advice!” Eone began to charge, and the mage accelerated her thoughts. Assessing the situation, she began to prepare spells.

“Concentrate on the big cat! I’ll slow it down—look for an object floating inside it and strike!” 

Raising her hands, Yenna released a spell directly at the panther. It resembled a net made of light, passing through Eone harmlessly before tangling up the cat. The creature jiggled and writhed, altering its form to try and get free to no avail. The beast attempted to become completely liquid, the enchanted net preventing its transformation. Eone descended upon it and slashed her scimitar straight through the monster—there was a sound like glass breaking, and the creature exploded into blue goop.

The guard looked relieved, and began to point his spear towards the lizard, faltering as Yenna shouted at him. “Don’t attack it! That’s a thornflinger—striking it causes spikes to blast out of its body. Captain, can you lure it away from them? A few taps won’t be a problem.”

Eone gave a nod and carefully slapped the beast’s tail with the flat of her blade. The thornflinger span around as though personally offended, rattling its spines and snapping at her with sharp teeth. Yenna nodded—she needed the crowd to be able to get out of there first, but they couldn’t leave with the birds harassing them. 

With her thoughts sped up, she was able to carefully inspect them, and notice how truly odd they were. One bird had no less than six wings, and the other had two heads that shrieked in unison. Their rainbow-coloured plumage was impossibly vivid, and seemed to shift even as Yenna looked at it in slow-motion. The mage identified them as having been mutated by particularly chaotic energies—which was a problem in and of itself—meaning they would have unpredictable reactions to direct magical intervention.

Approaching the comfortable limits of her thought acceleration, Yenna quickly wove a spell to knock them out of the air. Scooping a large rock up from the ground, Yenna took careful aim and used a blast of Joy-empowered wind to knock one out of the sky. Her jaw dropped as the rock rather savagely blasted the bird over another building—Yenna had rather underestimated the strength of the spell. Still, it had worked—retrieving a few more stones, she attempted to repeat her feat. The two-headed bird saw it coming, dipping as the inaccurate shot went wide. It changed target, now dive-bombing for Yenna. She braced herself to take a hit, even with her magical shielding, before something else entirely took it out of the sky.

The bird landed on the ground with a thud several paces away from Yenna, a massive knife sticking out of its rapidly decaying form. She looked up to see where the blade had come from, and saw Narasanha, the four-armed bodyguard. One of her lower limbs was held across her stomach, over a wound that slowly oozed dark blood—the other three still filled with weaponry, except for the hand that had just thrown that blade.

“Yenna! The lizard?” Eone cried out, and Yenna turned back around—the captain was carefully keeping the beast at arm’s length. The crowd had run off, and the area was clear.

“Captain, when I say run, you need to get away from it as fast as possible.” Yenna focused, concentrating power in one of her rings. “This might– this will get rough.”

Eone nodded, awaiting her signal. Yenna let out a breath, and thought about the colour of Certainty. There were many things she was certain about—she was certain that magic was the solution to all of her problems, as much as it tended to be the cause of it. She was certain that Eone would trust her enough to move when she said to move, even if she didn’t know exactly what would happen. She was certain that she would be able to command the Certainty of earth and defeat this beast, before it could threaten anyone else!

“Now, run!” Yenna lifted both arms and spread them out wide. No enchanted phrases or arcane gestures followed, just a shout of determination backed by a charge of magic. Eone did exactly as ordered and immediately disengaged from the thornflinger—though she did earn a couple of small needles to her back as the beast sensed its chance. The spiky lizard was caught entirely off-guard as the ground beneath its feet rumbled and parted, a wide pit of earth suddenly forming and causing it to drop. With another shout, and a grunt of effort, Yenna forced both of her hands together—the weight of the earth resisted her pull. With a resounding clap, the pit snapped shut and crushed the beast inside. A rough tangle of earth had formed where the street had been, and Yenna felt a sudden weariness pass through her.

“That was incredible!” Eone carefully picked her way through the churned earth. “But there’s no time for that. Narasanha, you’re bleeding!”

The stoic bodyguard nodded. “We have a problem. Mage, do these mean anything to you?”

Reaching into a pouch at her side, Narasanha pulled out a handful of clinking crystals, the very same kind they had found on the other beasts. Yenna’s eyes widened—the amount couldn’t be a coincidence.

“It’s true, then. They’re being controlled by a water elemental.”

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¹ - Magical beasts that are formed of magic, or from natural animals being altered heavily by magic, have their bodies slowly replaced with matter consistent with conjured objects. If the magic binding them fails or falls apart, they slowly start to rot apart. If a magical beast is destroyed, especially one that has been heavily altered, the magic within them is released quite quickly and their bodies dissolve to nearly nothing.

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