Chapter 3
He felt for the wishing coin in his pocket.
The time for its use would come.
But not yet.
He still needed the magic of his master.
Even if it meant he was a slave.
But one day he would be his own again.
His bond would break and he would be allowed to rest.
Blessed he would live out his life in a forest cottage. Then he could retire.
And he would pursue his happiness, only to find its very shortness.
As all mortals are cursed to do.
Why live at all if life is striven between.
Never happy or miserable when one wants to be.
His mind returned to the present and he found no contentment in his circumstances.
Gask was the first to see the thing.
The creature’s flesh roiled as it advanced, many-limbed and clambering. Even at a distance it stank of burning mold. Its wings feathered outward like lichen clinging to rot.
He made the hand-sign of an incantation and murmured the mantra beneath his breath. Otherworldly light washed over his blade, cloaking it in glamour, as though he wielded a sliver of heaven. It smelled of mountain air. There are gnostic and outer gods. He prayed to one of the inner, worldly ones.
They were about to clash when the sky split.
Delphos had condescended to cast a spell.
A lightning bolt cracked the firmament open. From the rent poured silver water—cold, bright, impossible—spilling into the road and surging around the dracora’s ankles. The beast dissolved as the flood touched it, fading into specks of light like a dying universe scattered into the mud.
The mud was not yet dead.
The stench of burning mold filled their noses.
Even the Nose was sneezing.
Gask felt weaker with its casting.
His energies were tied to Delphos.
The muck rose, its wings extending, demonic in their shape.
It caped the sky and draped over the sun.
And it towered over and gazed down upon them as a black idol would from a mountaintop.
This creature had not yet been felled.
It had a message yet to convey.
‘Hello, brother. I know what you plan.’
It spoke as a mushroom might speak.
From the back of one’s mind, as though conducive through bone.
Indescribably.
‘Turn back and flail not toward another failure.’
‘Stay to your studies, your distractions. Your beetle gathering and star gazing.’
‘I have done no wrong. And you’ve done worse still, which is nothing at all.’’
It was silent for a while after these words.
‘Visit me in my fortress. I would speak face to face.’
With that the Dracora waved its wings and mounted a gust of wind. Flying off in seconds.
Delphos emerged from his wagon car.
‘Nihloth always was a wordy one.’
Nice