We have seen some religions, usually those built on a decentralized structure -most of which are the pagan religions one sees in Alberion and some parts of the Circle- adopt the Eight as demonic figures, devil-icons if you will. They enter the world and corrupt it with their particular sins. Lust, gluttony, avarice... the qualities that the Eight embody are ones that are nigh-universally despised, and as such, perfect for the creation of evil figures.
-The Necromancer's Notes, Vol 33, Observation Wing
***
If there was one thing Aoife hated, Maioran soon learned, it was druids.
He didn't know this at first, couldn't gleam it by looking at her. Druidic religions dominated the northern part of Castillera, and for every church of the Luminous Doctrine he saw in a town, the gilded sun displayed proudly, there was a sacred grove walled off, with the symbol of the Great World Tree burnt into the door. Aoife hadn't scoffed at these.
But there was something about today that was different.
"Magnus, you awake?" Tieoran asked. His younger brother sat on Maioran's bed in the early hours of dawn, his tail thumping over Maioran's legs, filling the inn room with a haphazard beat.
"Yes, Tieoran, I'm awake." Magnus, at the moment, was staring up at the ceiling, exasperated and annoyed. And for good reason. Everyone was trying to sleep, but Tieoran was talking at a hundred miles an hour, not giving a hoot about anyone else's energy levels, and generally being overly energetic and frenzied. Magnus, like Finn and Callan and Aoife and Invidia, was trying to sleep. And Magnus, like the rest of them, wasn't able to sleep, mostly because of Maioran's little brother's incessant chatting.
"What are all those people in robes doing outside?" Tieoran asked.
Magnus groaned. "This is the last question I'll answer, Tieo. I need to get some sleep."
"But it's light out!"
"Barely," Magnus snapped. "Anyway, what kind of robes do you see? Hood shape, anything. I need some more details."
"Well, hoods are pointed, and they looked like they were covered with feathers," Tieoran said.
Aoife groaned. "Great," she grumbled under her breath. "We have to deal with those idiots again."
"What idiots?" Tieoran asked.
Magnus half sat up and fixed a glare on Callan. "You know, this is your fault we can't sleep. If you hadn't decided to get him all riled up on a midnight run, we wouldn't have to deal with him!" he snarled in a semi-soft whisper. Callan had taken Tieoran out for a midnight run around the city, and Maioran had decided to tag along. However, instead of ending up like Maioran and Callan, with some sore muscles and a desire to find the nearest bed and collapse into it, Tieoran was full of energy, bursting with it. Just bloody fantastic.
"Druids," Aoife said. She spat the word out like a curse. Even in the dim light, Maioran could see the sorceress's normally serene face twist into an ugly sneer. "Stupid druids."
"What do you have against druids?" Tieoran asked.
"They're idiots. And they're so idiotic that they think they're geniuses. Do you know how many times I've been lectured on magic from these imbeciles? 'You need a circle of ash and rowan to cast your spells, and you need to burn these herbs to cleanse your powers, and you have to make these offerings to the Goddess in order to get what you want.' Give me a break!" Aoife let out a long sigh. "They're taking pagan rituals and saying they do magic with them. And they don't. None of their magic works. At least, it's not sorcery."
"Oh," Tieoran said. "They lecture you on magic?"
"Yes. My teacher was the Necromancer Eva Leonastael, and I'm at the part of my journey where I must find my own pupil," Aoife said. "I don't need some upstart idiot who didn't outgrow the childhood play-pretend phase to lecture me on how to do my craft. That's all these people are. Overgrown children who play dress-up as wizards," she snapped. "And either tacky wizards, or ones that looked like they had spent the last fifteen minutes rolling around in the undergrowth. Feathers aren't magical. Berries aren't magical. Random twigs from certain trees cut down during the full moon aren't magical." Maio had heard enough.
"Tieoran," Maioran said, "why don't you go to bed. You can talk to Aoife, talk to everyone, really, in the morning, when we're all awake and no one's giving you dirty looks like they want to strangle you."
"Oh, okay," Tieoran said. He slid across Maioran's bed, sat in his own, and collapsed instantly. Within a few minutes, Tieoran was snoring, fast asleep. And, thankfully, they weren't the loud, obnoxious snores that kept everyone else awake, but the gentle kind that were barely more than a breath.
Maioran loved his brother, loved him to death, but sometimes Tieoran was difficult. He loved him anyway, and would fight to the death to protect his little brother. And, to be perfectly honest, half the time, the troubles and issues that Tieoran managed to get himself into were mostly his fault. Maioran didn't care.
As his little brother snored next to him, Maioran joined him in sleep.
***
The seven of them sat at one of the tables in the inn, bleary-eyed and still foggy from sleep. Tieoran had done a number on them all, constantly chatting for what must have been an hour. However, as everyone sipped their beverages of choice (a weak tea for Maioran), they began to slowly wake up.
"Why would druids be here?" Tieoran asked.
"An autumn ritual," Magnus said. "I don't know the significance of the date, but they're going to build a wicker house for evil spirits and burn it down to the ground."
"Huh," Maioran said. Sure, he went to church, but half the time he didn't really pay attention. He was too busy trying to communicate with his friends a few pews away, to meet up and swim when they got out of church. But that was home, that was a long time away. Here was colder, now was more serious. The scar across his little brother's eye proved it.
He felt guilty when he saw that scar. It was a sign, a testament that he had failed to protect his brother. Plus, Mom would tan his hide for letting Tieoran get hurt. That would be disastrous and painful to say the least. Their mother had nearly lost it when she learned they were setting out, and only could be placated when Maioran promised to take care of his little brother and make sure he was safe.
It would be impossible to hide his scar. But Maioran would deal with that when it came up.
Aoife was acting strange. For one thing, she refused to join them at their table, and was pressed up against the wall, stealing furtive glances out the window. That would have drawn attenton from the other patrons of the inn if there were any. The seven of them were all that their innkeeper had. "Tieoran, did you see anyone with antlers outside last night? Or rather, a man in a headdress that had big antlers on it? With little ornaments hanging off?" She stared at them with her one normal eye. Only when they were out in the wilderness did she remove her eye patch.
"No, I didn't," Tieoran said. "Why do you ask? Do you know them?"
"Unfortunately so," Aoife said. "Magnus and I had a run-in with a man named Rowan. Fitting, seeing as that's a sacred tree in his religion. He was a priest of a coven, and decided to try and hex me. You see, he used to be a cunning man for the village I was staying at. However, I soon began to apply my skills. Instead of conjuring 'graceful air spirits' to move a boulder, I blasted it apart. No, wait, it had the right chemical composition to be reduced to a very potent fertilizing ash."
"You were trying to discredit his religion?" Tieoran asked.
"What? No!" Aoife frowned. "I had nothing against his religion. However, he didn't claim to be a high priest. He claimed to be a high priest and a sorcerer, and was a rather unpleasant fellow. It would be like a priest not only advocating prayer, but actively forbidding everything else. God often works through the hands of surgeons as well as miracles and holy men." She sighed. "Plus, his impersonation of a practitioner of the mystical arts was doing some severe brand damage. It's charlatans like him that prevent us from being respected."
"Is it?" Magnus asked. "Maybe it might be the fact that you're trying to spy on a druid through a window. And not too well."
"Oh, shut up Magnus," Aoife said. She looked. "Aw, blood and bones. I see him," she said.
"What now? Are you going to confront him?" Maioran asked.
"Why in the world would I do that?" she asked. "There's nothing that he did that I need to confront him over now. But I want to avoid as much conflict as I can." She pulled a strand of her brilliant copper hair. "Well, this should help disguise me." She sighed and closed her eyes.
Black flowed up the strands of hair, choking the voluminous red and turning her head dark as night sky. "Now, am I unrecognizable?" she asked Magnus.
"No. Your eyebrows," he said. "And the eye patch."
"Oh, right. Huh, forgot those," she muttered, wiping over them with her thumb. As her finger passed over them, they became dark as coal. A wave, and her eye patch turned into a bandage across her eye. "There we go. Can't hide that eye with magic, so I'll just change the covering."
"There's no way they'll see through your disguise, right?" Callan asked.
"These people believe you can dispel illusions and see the future by gazing into a silver polished mirror in full moonlight. They have no clue about the real workings of the aetheric world. They have no idea about bonds and sensations and principles and motivations," she said. When Callan stared at her with a blank, vacuous look on his face, she rolled her eyes. "They won't. Most magic they do is ritual in nature, not based in aetheric theory."
"So, what's the plan now that you're disguised?" Callan asked. "We get out of here as soon as we can," she explained. "I want us to get to Saefel Caeld as soon as possible."
"What's in Saefel Caeld?" Tieoran asked. "Why are we going there?"
"There's someone there we have to find. We have to protect them," Aoife said. "Trust me on this. I'll explain everything later, to your full satisfaction. Alright?" Tieoran nodded. "Good. Now finish up your breakfast and we can get out of here without too much-"
The door opened and a figure stepped in, wearing an elaborate headset with a towering pair of deer antlers.
"-trouble. Well, hello there," Aoife said, adopting a smile so cheery and bright it had to be fake. She was probably hoping that the man -Rowan- didn't notice her. Her red hair was distinctive, and she looked like a completely different person with her dark locks instead of the bright copper.
"Well, if it isn't Aoife Corvain, the Crow Whore," Rowan snapped. His headdress, Maioran had to admit, was kind of impressive. It seemed to be made out of a leather helmet embossed with decorative knotwork, and dozens of multicolored threads wove rainbow webs between the points of the antlers. Small trinkets dangled from the intersections of the web, glittering any time he moved his head, rattling and dancing with every nod or furtive glance aside. "Have you come to disrupt another or our ceremonies?" His face was obscured, concealed behind dangling wooden medallions and thick strands of dyed plant fabric. Two of the medallions, however, had painted eyes on them, giving the impression that Rowan was looking at them.
"No," Aoife said. "Go. I'm here on my own business, alright?"
"Yes, fine," he said. "However, I'll have you know that my powers have increased, and now I am to be referred to as-"
"Oh, not this tripe again," Aoife said. "For the hundredth time, you're not a real sorcerer. You don't have the mark of one."
"Excuse me?" Rowan glared at her, looming over Aoife. "Take that back!"
"No," she spat.
His hand rose, as if to strike her, but that didn't happen. Instead, there was a sharp crack, a flash of light, and the druidic annoyance flew out of the door, headdress tumbling away.
Rowan wasn't terribly impressive-looking. He had a rust-colored beard and a face with the consistency of worn-through leather. He was older, maybe in his fifties, though his voice didn't betray that fact at all. The booming baritone he had projected from behind his mask seemed so out of character.
He got up, scrambling to dust off his robes, and grabbed his precious deer horn headdress. "You'll pay for that," he snapped. "Trust me, you will pay for that!" he snarled. He lunged at her.
There was another white flash, another sharp snap, but this time he wasn't stopped. Maioran saw something around him, barely there, like the flicker of a black, lightless flame. Magic! But Aoife said that he wasn't a sorcerer. So what could it be? Where could it have come from?
Well, he knew what it was in a moment. Another white flash touched him and rolled off of him. Somehow, the druid was unharmed. He crashed into Aoife, sending her sprawling.
Immediately, Callan, Finn, and Magnus rose and charged him. Maioran was about to jump the table before he saw Finn recoil, howling. "He's cursed! He's warded! Don't touch him!"
Maioran had talked to Aoife a bit about wards. From what he knew, they were a type of enchantment placed on something or someone, to protect them or harm someone who touched them. If Rowan was warded, someone else was doing it.
"Tieo, come with me," Maioran said. "We need to find a sorcerer."
"Don't we have one?" Tieoran asked, pointing to Aoife. Magnus and Finn, meanwhile, were trying to keep the druid back with two chairs. However, where the man touched the chairs, smoke hemorrhaged out of the wood. That was worrying, to say the least. Whatever that ward was, the dark flames did not look nice and friendly.
He grabbed his brother and ran out the door with a half-formed plan assembling itself in his mind. "Grab some water," he ordered. "When I point her out, freeze their face with it."
"What?" Tieoran asked.
"Freeze. Them. In. The. Head. It's not hard to grasp," Maioran said. Tieoran nodded and dashed to the side of the building, pushing through a few people dressed in robes. Maioran hoped his plan worked.
"Tieo," he said, "get ready."
"You have a plan?" his little brother asked.
"Yes, well, kind of." Maioran stared at the crowd of people, before picking up a pebble off the ground. 'I'll throw this at her, alright? You get his face, then."
"Don't tell Mom," Tieoran said. "If she finds out we attacked someone-"
"They're attacking our friend," Maioran said. "Where's the water?" Tieoran lifted his cloak, and Maioran saw the liquid swimming in the air, suspended and concealed under the fabric. Perfect. Now, time to flush out the quarry.
"He's dead!" Maioran shouted. "They killed Rowan!"
The reactions of the people around them were mixed. Some swooned in horror, others seethed with anger. But one person stood out. One person who was still somehow connected to Rowan, who knew that he was still alive. He scanned the area for the sorcerer.
Or, in this case, the sorceress.
Immediately, when she made eye contact with him, he could tell she was a sorceress. She had a hood on, but Maioran could see her eyes clearly when she fixed a look of confusion at his face.
And he clearly saw that one of her eyes was black. Not that the iris was black, but the whites of the eye had been stained dark, as if it was made of polished jet (with a blue ring -the black didn't wash away the color of her iris). It was only one eye, but for one eye, it was enough. Maioran hurled the pebble at her.
It bounced off her stomach, and her eyes narrowed in anger. She brought her hand up, making a strange gesture with her hand. Cruelly bright light gathered around it, shining like something unearthly. Maioran gulped. This was going to hurt.
And then Tieoran froze her face. One moment, her hand shone with foul light, the next, her hand and everything from her nose up was encased in a giant block of ice. It was surprisingly quiet too. There wasn't any loud sounds that Tieoran made. Just the faint crackle of ice freezing, and the dull thump as she toppled over, alive, but her head now encased in a lump of frost.
Then people started screaming. They screamed, they cried out, they ran. You know, what townspeople do when two young fish-men decide to assault a poor, innocent lady on a religions pilgrimage (who may or may not have been trying to hex them into the after life. Or blow them to smithereens. It was a toss-up). It may not have been an everyday situation, but it seemed like a common, if somewhat impractical, and definitely useless, strategy for encountering freaky things. At the moment, the woman was hissing in pain. Maioran was the victim of Tieoran's freezing powers once. Where the ice touched his skin, it felt cold enough to burn.
"Oh... oh no, oh no, oh no. Mom's going to kill us, Mom's going to kill us, Mom's going to kill us," Tieoran said, pacing. Not this again. Once he started to worry about something, Tieoran would work himself into a full-blown panic attack over it. Fortunately, Maioran knew how to stop that from happening. "We just hit a lady, we just hit a lady, we just hit a lady. Oh, Mom's going to kill us, Mom's going to-"
"TIEO!" His little brother jumped. "Relax. Mom's not going to beat you. He looked at the woman, whose legs scrambled at the ground. "You protected me from an evil sorceress's curse. I don't think Mom's going to fret too much."
There was a thud as the high priest was thrown out of the inn, into the gravel street. The dark flames were gone, and now the man was sprawled out, bloody and unconscious. "You got the sorcerer?" Magnus asked.
"We got her all pinned down and frozen in place," Maioran said proudly. He turned around. "See, she's not all that tough now-" She was supposed to be on the ground. But somehow, one hand pinned to her face, she managed to get up. Even through the ice, Maioran could see her eyes burn with hatred. "Oh, blood and thor-"
That cruel otherworldly light shone through the ice for a heartbeat. Then, in another heartbeat, it exploded. "RUN!" he heard Aoife shout.
He did. "Tieo! Run!" His brother stared at the woman, her hood a charred mess of burning fabric. "Run!" His brother was spellbound by the light that shone from her hand.
Something cruelly bright flew at his brother. It would be death, MAioran knew. He ran, fighting his instincts, towards his brother.
He tackled Tieoran as the light nearly hit them. But, suddenly, Maioran's shoulder slammed into a wall of earth. "What the..." He looked up. Somehow, a wall of stone and gravel had risen and intercepted the spell. It was magic. And not the magic of Magnus's cane or Tieoran's salts, or Callan's tentacle thorn things.
Aoife saved them.
The sorceress stepped out of the inn. "Leave them alone. It's me you're after," she said. "Don't involve a third party. You know how that ends, when the uninitiated interfere with our affairs," she said to the sorceress.
"Well, that makes it easier," the sorceress said. Maioran chose this time to get out of there, dragging his little brother to safety. "Come on!" he hissed to his brother.
"It's... it's a wizard duel There are so few I've read about! I need to write this down!" Tieoran said. "Get me something to write with!"
"Write with?" Maioran asked. "What do you need to... no. You're not writing this down." That dream of Tieoran's, that urge to discover magic and write about it and categorize it and study it... Maioran would fight for that dream, the dream that kept his brother alive. However, when that dream would get him blown to cinders by a stray conjuration... no. Out of the question. Maioran loved his brother too much to have him incinerated or petrified in an observational study.
He practically threw Tieoran into the doorway of the inn, before hopping in himself. "You're going ot do the smart thing and stay behind cover," he ordered his little brother.
"Aw... fine," Tieoran said with a pout. Callan, who was peeking out from the other end of the door, chuckled and rolled his eyes. He was a man of his word, the Calixa. Callan had looked after Tieoran like the Tethyd was his own little brother. Actually, it was better than that. Callan had enough distance to push Tieo past his limits, to not cave into sympathetic cries that twenty push-ups was too much for him to do. Maioran might last a little bit by telling himself it was for his brother's good, but he would cave, sooner or later. Callan wouldn't. Callan didn't. And Callan hadn't yet.
There was a sharp crack, and the three of them stared out at the sorceresses. "So, why did you send this chump after me?" Aoife asked, kicking Rowan softly. The unconscious druid stirred, but remained deaf to the world.
"He mentioned you," the sorceress said. "And since I was looking for you, it didn't take long to find you with the hatred and shame he had in his heart. A few bonds copied and twisted, and I led him straight to you."
"You were looking for me?" Aoife asked. "I'm almost flattered."
"You shouldn't be. I was only trying to find you so I could kill you." The woman held a hand up. "And if that fish-brat hadn't frozen me, your druid friend would have finished the bloody job for me."
The evil sorceress thrust her hand out, and a blast of that dark flame burst out and screamed through the air, a crescent of death. It crashed on a shield of white light, an egg of pristine luminescence that surrounded Aoife. "Polluted flame. How original," Aoife said. Wherever the foul flame touched, it clung to like an oily stain, dark, sooty tongues of flame licking the air as the fire burned on wood, gravel, and stone. It was a clearly unnatural flame.
"I prefer to think of it as paying homage to a classic," the sorceress said. She smiled, and another tongue of black, oily polluted fire danced above her hand. She smiled and threw it at Aoife, stepping back.
This time, the crescent of fire she cast out warped, twisted, coiled around itself, becoming a chain of flame, speeding towards Aoife like an unholy arrow. Aoife frowned, brought up her white shield again, before lashing out. Her hand moved, and a portion of the white effulgence twisted off, its own lash, coiling around the whip of polluted flame. "Now," Aoife said, "you face the consequences of dealing with me."
"What? Dealing with a spoiled brat from Danaa Talisia? Easy!"
Aoife chuckled. "You are ill-informed." She held her hands out and changed. Well, she didn't really change but something shifted. Something radical changed in the air about Aoife Corvain. "I am Aoife, of House Corvain, Lady of Ravens. My master was the Necromancer, slayer of monsters and dragons." Aoife gave off an aura, one terrifyingly powerful, one of charisma and charm, one of imperious beauty and judicious, great, and horrifying power. She was regal, an iron-hard, unyielding ruler, and the laws of nature and the universe were her subjects.
The other sorceress looked frightened. She should be.
Aoife whirled about, hands outstretched. Around her, the grass darkened and withered as thin lines of water, the life-water of every blade of grass, spun into the air, a disc of clear liquid. The chunks of ice that the sorceress had blasted off melted and sped through the air. "Playing fire patrol, are we?" the sorceress taunted, but her jab rang hollow. She was frightened.
Aoife gathered the water into a ball, running her hands over it, making it spin faster and faster. Every time her finger breached the surface of the ball, it added a flash of colored light into the water. At this point, the rogue sorceress was getting desperate. She threw wave after wave of foul polluted flame at Aoife, only to have it break against that luminous white shield the way a fearsome tide breaks against an unyielding shore.
The evil sorceress, however, was making progress. The nebulous white light, translucent though it was, was changing. The polluted flame clung to it, and it was doing something to the light. The only word Maioran could think of was infesting. Thin cords of dark grey wormed their way through the shield, appearing for all the world to look like worms or some unholy parasite. The ball of water in Aoife's hands, meanwhile, spun so fast that it seemed to stay still, to vibrate in her hands.
The sorceress released another blast of fire, but this time, Aoife didn't weather it. She didn't succumb to it either. She didn't evade it, or redirect it.
No, she destroyed it.
One second, her shield was spotty and grey, parasitized by corrupted fire. The next, it was gone, and a wave of light and sound rushed from her, throwing dust and gravel and pieces of desiccated plant life into the air. Withering in the light, the flames vanished and the sorceress was sent sprawling.
"Now, see," Aoife said, imperious, radiant. "I assume you were behind Rowan calling me 'crow whore,' were you not? You know of my noble lineage, of the moniker I chose. Yet, for the life of me, I don't think I've ever heard of you."
"It's not like you'd associate with those of Blackened Enlightenment, silver-blind," the murderous sorceress snapped as she got up.
"Oh, I know of plenty. I know of Haema Rin, of Salazashar, of Murgana Sidhe-consort. But you, I don't recognize." Aoife advanced. "Why are you seeking me out? Speak!"
"Over my dead body," the sorceress snarled. Her hands twisted in claws, and she threw some invisible sorcery at Aoife, who merely waved her hand. It didn't look like much, but a second later, a few barrels behind Aoife liquefied. That would have been nasty on human flesh.
"Well, that's perfectly reasonable," Aoife said. "I can arrange for that." Her hand cracked out, as if she was snapping a whip; a second later, green fire, brilliant emerald in hue, gathered around her hand, trailing off behind her in glowing verdant coils.
"You... you can't kill me!" Aoife's opponent stammered out, both her mundane and her freaky eye wide. "You need me alive if you want to find out anything!"
"You forgot what I just said," Aoife said dryly. "I'm trained by the Necromancer. Not a necromancer, the Necromancer. And what do necromancers do? What's their specialty?" Raising the dead. Even from this distance, Maioran could see the other sorceress gulp. Good. She should be afraid.
The rogue sorceress lashed out with something, a dark nebulous mist that seethed and swarmed like something alive. Aoife backstepped and her green flame met the shadowy mist in a clash of brilliant light.
Aoife struck again, whipping her hands about, spinning around, weaving a flurry of invisible blows about her. It would have looked ridiculous had it not had an effect; somehow, she moved the air, stirring up a column of dust and debris that surrounded the other sorceress. The column solidified into a sphere of whirling dirt and wind, tightening and shrinking. It had to be mighty uncomfortable in there.
And then, with a bang, the dust exploded outward. Maioran thought he saw the flash of fire within the dust cloud, but he couldn't be sure. And he couldn't see now, because all the grit and dirt that Aoife's wind cage had spun up around it was now out and thrown into the air, an obscuring dust cloud their rogue enchantress was using to escape.
And then, the dust was sucked back onto the ground. Instead of drifting aimless through the air, it was forced back to the earth from whence it came. And there, once the veil of earth was parted, stood the sorceress, back turned, attempting to flee.
"No, no, no," Aoife chided her, snapping her hand forward, pantomiming a whip. The woman fell, and was dragged back by an ankle, pointing straight out. "Trying to run like a coward? Every other foul creature I dispatched had the guts to face their deaths with dignity and some modicum of courage. Either way, I'm not done with you," Aoife said as the woman finally slowed to a stop.
The rogue sorceress began to rise. "Why don't you strike me down now?"
"And slay a fallen opponent? You have no honor in you, do you?" Aoife waited for her to rise. "Now, would you be so kind as to tell me who sent you after me? No? Very well then." There was a crack of lightning, brilliant blue, connecting the two of them, before the rogue flew backwards, tumbling like a rag doll. "Let's try this again," Aoife said.
"No!" The rogue sorceress grabbed something out of her dress. Maioran couldn't make it out. It looked like a dagger of some kind, but with an oversized pommel. She drew it, raised it above her head, and drove it into the ground before Aoife could do anything.
Cracks formed in the ground, spiderwebbing out, glowing with blinding white light. The sorceress ran away. "Deal with him!" she cackled.
That was when Maioran heard the music.
There was no other word for the unearthly sounds, because no sounds, no words on earth had been written or spoken to describe it. There was no recognizable melody, no complimentary harmony, only tones in strange clusters and modulations, shifting and changing and warping. Maioran couldn't tell what instrument would have made those sounds, for none existed. And then, in a flash of insight, the Tethyd realized what they were.
They were the sounds of another world.
With a howl, something burst through the cracks, a creature made of light and fury. It towered over Aoife, a good three stories tall, looking like some foul beast dredged up from the lands nightmares were born at. It had a face like a lion, except a lion's mouth didn't unhinge at the jaw like a snake, and a lion had teeth, instead of tuber-like growths. The mane of the lion swam as if it was underwater, rocked back and forth by an invisible current. A ribcage, wrapped in what looked like a scaled hide stretched taut across the bone, led down to a mass of legs, as if it melded into a centipede, and wings like that of an eagle stretched out from its back.
And it was made entirely of light.
"I'll grab the sorceress!" Invidia shouted, leaping out the door and taking off in a dead sprint.
"Don't burn her! She might be carrying something, and I don't want you destroying it!" Aoife shouted, before a luminous tentacle lashed next to her.
A tentacle swung at Invidia, and she ducked it, whirling with the grace of a dancer. She didn't bother attacking the otherworldly monstrosity; her goal was the sorceress. She ran, and she changed.
One moment, she was solid, dressed in her cloak. The next, she dissolved into amber light, a spindly, tall form composed of what looked like living lightning, hunched over on all fours. Her overly long forearms propelled her forward through the air, and she looked for all the world like a gigantic spider, crackling and sparking with galvanic force. So that was what an Erinyan could do.
Maioran's attention was turned back to Aoife. She was doing something to the beast, though she didn't move. Light swirled in her hands, cupped and held aloft, and Maioran could hear that otherworldly sound again. She was... sucking it back into the other realm it came from, maybe? It was shrinking, after all. Maioran knew a bit about magic, as his brother needed a study buddy, and Maioran was the only one around, but that had to do with magical salts, not freakish creatures from another dimension.
The thing roared, a sound that shook Maioran's bones, and he felt Tieoran grab his arm, frightened. Maioran grabbed Tieoran's arm, also frightened. It wasn't like Maioran was manly, but a massive beast from another plane of existence would scare anybody.
Invidia reached the sorceress, towering over her, and in one swift moment, dove through her. The massive form compressed into a serpentine bolt of horizontal thunder, sped through the enchantress, and right out the other side, expanding again into the beast of thunder and lightning. The sorceress convulsed and then fell, dead.
The beast shuddered and condensed, but instead of a single bolt of lightning, it became Invidia. Her frame still crackled with a stray arc of electricity here or there, but she was flesh and blood again. She grabbed the sorceress and ducked out of the way, eyes trained on the beast.
It was much smaller now, Aoife's height. For a moment, it retained its form, before dissolving into mist. Something drifted out, a warm, soft glowing orb, gently bobbing towards Aoife.
She cradled it in her arms. "Be calm, spirit," she told it. "She cannot hurt you anymore. I'll take you home now." With that she clutched it close to herself, and it faded away. Then, she stared contemptibly at the dagger, and pointed at it.
It exploded.
Small shards of metal dropped down, before evaporating into gas. Wow. Aoife really didn't like that thing. "Invidia! You have her body?" The former Ranger nodded, dragging the dead corpse over to Aoife. "Thank you," Aoife said.
Then, she began to rummage through the corpse as the rest of her group began to slwoly move away from their cover. Tieoran rushed towards Aoife, doubtless wanting to ask her how she did every spell so he could write it down. "Aha!" She pulled out a letter. "Well, that's the seal of the Avaricious Eye," Aoife said. "A cult of Kazalibad." She waved her hand over the wax seal and bowed her head. Smiling, satisfied there wasn't anything wrong, she opened it. "It's a reseal, meant to go to someone else." She read the letter.
And as she read the letter, her eyes grew more and more concerned. "Well, this is not good. Not good at all. Haema Rin is in Saefel Caeld. And he has learned some powerful magic." She stared at the letter. "And it looks like he's planning on assassinating our target." Aoife folded the letter up. "Grab your gear. We're hitting the road in a few minutes."
As they walked away, it was hard to hear, as other townspeople, and some of the druids, were peeking out, but Maioran heard what Aoife had muttered under her breath.
"I pray we get there before that girl dies."
Maioran hurried to get ready. He didn't know who they were saving, who they were trying to protect. But all Maioran knew was someone, some girl, was in trouble. Whoever she was, Maioran didn't want her hurt.
They were on the road again. Hopefully, they'd reach their destination before it was too late.