Chapter 2

The orange glow of the Shadoweve moon peeked through the forest canopy, illuminating a robed figure standing motionless in the silence, an open tome in one hand and an amulet glowing sapphire in the other. The figure snapped the book closed, replacing it in the leather satchel hanging at his side, and hid the amulet away in a pocket under his violet robe. The figure resumed his journey.

The small path was carpeted with crunching leaves and surrounded by a thick layer of fog slithering low across the ground. Distant unearthly sounds echoed their way through the trees, and several times the man saw movement and shapes in the corners of his vision. Occasionally a spectral form would drift near him, some seeming to follow him. For each one the robed figure glanced he paused to study from beneath his large-eyed owl mask.

Meric Olyver was fascinated to see up close in real life the specters he had only studied about in books. Only during the three nights of Shadoweve each year were the barriers between the material realm and spiritual realm thin enough for these departed spirits and spectral creatures to manifest in the world of the living. Most were creeping echoes of small tragedies – a man murdered in his sleep by bandits on the road, a wife seeking revenge for her own murder, a man executed for a crime he didn’t commit, two children looking for their long-deceased parents. Primal intensities often anchored many sad souls to the material realm, preventing them from journeying beyond unless they somehow found peace.

There were specters of the other races of Alathon too - he saw dwarves, elves, and even some trolls. And then there were beings from races Meric had never seen, but thought he might recognize from brief references in the books found in the deepest corners of the Ravenaar library. He knew that some were malevolent, dangerous, and fully aware of being in the material realm. Of course, Meric wouldn’t put himself near such potentially dangerous phenomena if it weren’t for the protection of the blessings instilled in the mask he wore. Seeing these spirits was fascinating, but that wasn’t why he was here.

Meric emerged into a clearing and stole a quick glance at the wisps of clouds reaching across the sky like fingers gripping the world. He paused in the center of the glowing meadow and slipped the book and amulet from his satchel to continue his ritual.

The silence was suddenly interrupted by a panicked shout. Meric looked around, craning to identify its source. He saw a man erupting from the opposite edge of the forest at full sprint, headed directly toward him. He was armed with a broadsword at his side, a faded blue cloak trailing him, and since the man was completely without a mask Meric could see his face was painted with a terrified look. Suddenly the man began shouting, “Hey! Go! Run! Go!”

Meric’s head swiveled as he watched the man race past him. A shuffling sound drew Meric’s attention back to the forest line where the man had emerged, and he saw there were now three hunched silhouetted figures, each carrying large weapons, and trotting toward him. Meric didn’t wait to discover who or what they were, he turned to race after the stranger.

It became almost immediately clear that he wasn’t as athletic as the stranger, as after crossing the meadow and reentering the forest it wasn’t long until he lost the man. Meric stopped, gasping for breath, and removed his mask to scan the area with wide eyes. A pale amber fog snaked across the forest floor, glowing from the moonlight and slithering between the gray trees. There was no sign of the fleeing man. Coming to a large dead tree perched on the edge of a steep creek embankment, Meric turned his hooded head back to the direction he came. Immediately he saw the creatures – dusty gray dirt and leaves made up what could be called their skin, with large areas of exposed skeletons made of branch and stick. Their eye sockets glowed a sickly green and searched the murky woods for their prey.

Meric jumped over the edge of the creek embankment and flattened his body against the creek bed wall under a tangle of large roots. He held his breath as he heard his pursuers shuffle past him above.

His eyes followed the length of the thick roots above him, reaching up and down the embankment, along the creek, finally to where they interwove with a mass of other tentacle-like roots directly under the massive old tree. As softly as one could on the crunching fall leaves, Meric walked over to the mass, and began to attempt to scale the roots back up the embankment.

As he crested the top of the root tangle, his foot slipped, and his entire body slid into the tangled mass. His jaw hammered into a root on his way down, and his fall was abruptly halted as he collapsed onto an uneven surface. When he through wincing, he saw that he was in a hollow under the tree, and all around him were thick roots curving and winding. Directly in front of him, with his back against a wall of earth, was the fleeing man, frozen in place with a startled look on his face. He had fallen into the stranger’s hiding spot.

The stranger gaped. “Oh no. I thought you were… I’ve never been this close to something like this before. How did you get… Was it quick? Did you suffer?”

Meric scrunched his face. “What? What do you…” His eyes widened. “Wait, no, I’m not dead.”

The stranger paused, a befuddled expression spreading across his face. “What? What do you mean?”

“I’m not a spirit, I’m just out here doing research.”

The stranger suddenly sprung over to Meric and smacked his face. “Oh great goddess you are material!”

Meric rubbed his cheek, and for a brief moment the two shocked adventurers stared at each other, before finally bursting with laughter. The stranger gestured wildly as words exploded from him. “This is great! You’re alive!”

“I agree.”

“I’m sorry about hitting you!”

“It’s ok I guess.”

“I mean, someone out in the woods by themselves so close to Shadoweve. You should be careful!”

“Apparently. But you have monsters chasing you.”

“Oh yes!” The stranger rubbed his shoulder. “Those spirits got a good hit on me, knocked me on my ass, but I recovered and took off running.” The stranger paused, then thrust out his hand. “My name’s Ander Flint.”

Meric shook his hand. “Meric Olyver. Pleased to meet you.”

Ander sat back and began rummaging through his rucksack. “Well Meric, welcome to the weirdest day of my life. Out in the woods just a few days before Shadoweve. I mean I knew it was going to be creepy, but I never imagined it would be quite like this. And those massive spirits came out of nowhere!”

Meric shook his head. “Oh no those weren’t spirits. I got a decent look at them, they’re definitely some kind of material creature.”

Ander slowly turned to Meric, then threw his arms up. “Are you serious?! I could’ve just fought back this whole time?!”

“I suppose. They’re certainly solid. Either way we should probably be quiet or they’re going to fin–”

The roots behind Meric exploded as a large gray arm snatched him and threw him backward out of the hollow.

Meric skidded across the leaf-covered ground and thudded into a tree. Blunt pain blossomed across his body, rattling his bones and most certainly bruising his back. His joints creaked as he sat up onto his arms, when suddenly a massive hammer arced through the air down toward his body. He rolled just in time for the hammer to slam into the dirt behind him, exploding dry leaves up into the air, showering them both with orange debris.

Meric got to his feet and stumbled backward a few steps. No! Get away! His brain was a torrent of wild feelings and instincts. The creature lifted its hammer and turned for another attack. Spells! Meric suddenly remembered he was a wizard. But he had never done this before. He’d never actually cast a spell in an actual fight. In the silent courtyard at the academy in Ravenaar, against a lifeless practice dummy, he had managed to call forth the primal cosmic energies of the universe and form them into a fireball. But this was considerably more chaotic. The creature twisted its unnatural body and reared the hammer, leaning into a horizontal swipe.

I can do this. He lifted his hands to face each other, spread his fingers, and incanted.

Nothing happened.

The creature’s enormous hammer slammed into his torso and sent him flying backward. He had enough awareness while he was midair to feel that he most likely had a cracked rib, and the bruising on his front now probably matched the bruising on his back. At least as far as he could tell from the feeling of it, it wasn’t like he had a lot of experience with such things. Or any, really. It was a small mercy that his landing spot was in a leafy bush, throwing orange and brown leaves into the air. Through the gently drifting leaves raining down around him he saw the creature shuffling toward him, relentless in its violent pursuit.

Meric fumbled out of the bush in a pained panic. He clamored to his feet and blindly ran in the opposite direction of the monster. It was only a few feet before he crossed the shallow creek and came to the embankment. This was supposed to be a purely academic outing. The other two creatures were trying to claw at Ander several yards to his left. He heard Ander shout something but it’s meaning didn’t register in his panicked mind.

Meric Splashed down the creek toward Ander, who was now diving off the massive dangling roots of the dead oak over the reach of the two other creatures. Before he had a chance to see the outcome of Ander’s daring, and frankly impressive, aerobatics, Meric’s own pursuer stomped into the creek in front of him.

He was stopped in his tracks, and his mind raced through all the various spells in his knowledge. He could remember the magic words, the specific hand and finger motions, the exact body postures. He knew exactly what to conjure and how to conjure it. But what he had for so long silently feared had actually happened – he was unable to cast spells in a real-world situation. But spells weren’t the only things at his disposal.

Meric deftly unbuckled his satchel and thrust his hand inside, sliding past the various trinkets, instruments, and containers, and grasped the cloth-wrapped object he needed. His hand flew from the bag, tossing the cloth aside, just as the creature began pacing toward him. His arm shook as he brought the small glass orb to his mouth. It was filled with a rust-colored liquid, even though there was no obvious opening, and a blocky angular script was written around the container’s equator. Meric had never been happier that he had splurged and bought the really expensive inferno bomb, that at the time he was sure he wouldn’t need. Meric shouted the magic language and the liquid in the container emanated a soft glow and dull warmth.

He flung his arm out, launching the potion in a crooked arc through the air. But instead of impacting the creature as intended, it soared past it, striking the embankment behind and to its left. In an instant the glass shattered, the potion erupted in a fiery explosion, and a large portion of the embankment flew outward. The explosion dislodged a large rock, sending it to fly through the air to collide directly with the creature’s back, which until that point was unfazed and still shuffling toward Meric. Upon impact, the creature’s form collapsed into tiny pieces, and it was no more.

Meric gaped in astonishment. Well, I suppose that works too.

Ander was momentarily frozen with shock. He had just watched Meric suddenly ripped out of their root shelter, and then two of those monstrous pursuers, their eye and mouth holes glowing a sickly green, appeared and began thrusting their clawed arms and sharp weapons into the newly formed opening.

Ander’s instincts kicked in before he was even aware that he was twisting and dodging the creatures’ strikes. He grabbed his own sword, but the root shelter was too confining, and he couldn’t fully release his weapon from its sheath. Another of the monster’s jabs embedded its spear into the dirt behind him. Ander stepped onto it and used it to launch himself up between the roots above him, then climbed up on the base of the tree at the top of the embankment.

Before he had a chance to draw his weapon to finally strike back, one of the creatures began grabbing large rocks from the creek and hurling them up at him, and the other began jerking the tree’s roots. If it was trying to pull itself up it was failing, but the dead tree did begin tilting perilously downward over the embankment.

Ander dove off the roots, twisting over the creatures, and landed behind them on the lower ground of the other side of the creek. He stood up and threw his hands in the air, astonished he actually landed that desperate move. He saw that Meric’s view of the stunt was blocked by a creature standing in front of him in the creek, and suddenly Ander wished there were more people around to have seen it, for surely he wouldn’t ever be able to replicate it. How often did one have large monsters to dive over?

The creatures turned to face him, each picking up their large weapons, one an oversized spear and the other a too-wide sword. It didn’t matter though, these weren’t spirits or specters immune to his steel as he previously thought they were. It was time for the one thing Ander was truly good at. He squared his stance, drew his sword, and gripped it with both hands in front of him.

“It’s time you learned the grave mistake you made tonight.”

Both creatures took one simultaneous step forward, when suddenly there was an explosion to their left. Ander’s focus broke and he saw the third creature, which had been chasing Meric, suddenly collapse into tiny pieces. He returned his gaze to his own attackers just in time to see the large dead oak tree tumble off the embankment directly onto the two remaining creatures, crushing them into oblivion.

The forest was silent again. Ander looked over at Meric with a dumbfounded expression, who was reflecting the same look on his own face.