Jeff Grubb - The Last Guardian

“Did we get it?” she demanded, still in a half-crouch, expecting a new assault at any moment.

Khadgar pointed to the edge of what was until seconds before the end of the row of shelves. Now the entire lower floor was a ruins of shattered cases and ruined volumes. Reaching out of the tattered wreckage was a muscular, mangled arm made of dull flame and twisted shadow. Its iron claws were already red with rust, and warm blood was already pooling on the floor. Its outstretched hand was a mere foot from where Khadgar splayed himself.

“Got it,” said Garona, sliding the knife back into sheath beneath her blouse.

“You should have listened,” said Khadgar, choking on the dust. “Should have gotten Medivh.”

“It would have sliced you open before I got up two flights of stairs,” said the half-orc. “And then who would be left to explain things to the Old Man?”

Khadgar nodded, and then a thought furrowed his brow. “The Magus. Did he hear this?”

Garona nodded in agreement. “He should have come down. We made enough noise here to wake the dead.”

“No,” said Khadgar, heading for the entrance to the library. “What if there was more than one demon? Come on!”

Without thinking, Garona drew her knife and followed the human out of the room.

They found Medivh sitting in his laboratory, at the same workbench that Khadgar had left him no more than an hour previously. Now the golden instrument he was working on was in twisted pieces, and an iron hammer rested at one side of the bench.

Medivh started when Khadgar burst into the room, followed closely by Garona. The apprentice wondered, had he been dozing through all this?

“Master! There is a demon in the tower!” blurted Khadgar.

“A demon, again?” said Medivh wearily, rubbing one eye with the flat of his palm. “It was a demon the first time. The last time it was an orc.”

“Your student is correct,” said Garona. “I was in the library with him when it attacked. Large creature, bestial, but cunning. Made of fire and darkness, and its wounds burned and smoked.”

“It was probably nothing more than another vision,” said Medivh, turning back to his work. He picked up a mangled piece of the device and looked at it, as if seeing it for the first time. “They happen here, the visions. I think Moroes warned you about them.”

“It was not a vision, Master,” said Khadgar. “It was a demon, of the type you fought at Stormwind Keep. Something has gotten past the wards and attacked us.”

Medivh’s gray brows arched in suspicion. “Something get past my wards again? Ridiculous.” He closed his eyes and traced a symbol in the air, “No. Nothing is amiss. None of the wards are tripped. You are here. Cook is in the kitchen, and Moroes is in the hall outside the library right now.”

Khadgar and Garona exchanged a glance. Khadgar said, “Then you should come at once, Master.”

“Must I?” said Medivh. “I have other things to worry about, of this I’m sure.”

“Come and see,” said Khadgar.

“We believe the beast to be dead,” said Garona. “But we don’t want to risk the lives of your servants on our beliefs.”

Medivh looked at the smashed device, shook his head, and set it down. He seemed irritated by it. “As you wish. Apprentices are not supposed to be this much trouble.”

By the time they reached the library, however, Moroes was standing there, dustpan and broom in hand, surveying the damage. He looked up, slightly lost, as the two mages and the half-orc entered.

“Congratulations,” said Medivh, the lines of his frown cutting deeply across his face. “I think it’s a bigger mess now than when you first arrived. At least then I had shelving. Where is this supposed demon?”

Khadgar walked over to where the demon’s hand had jutted out, but now all that remained was one of the bookcases pressed flat on the floor. Even the blood was missing.

“It was here,” said Garona, looking as surprised as Khadgar. “It came in, and attacked us.” She grasped the edge of the case, trying to pry it up, but the massive oak was too heavy for her. After she struggled a moment, she said, “We both saw it.”

“You saw a vision,” said Medivh sternly. “Didn’t Moroes warn you about this?”

“Ayep,” confirmed Moroes. “I did at that.” He tapped the sides of his blinders for effect.

“Master, it did attack us,” said Khadgar. “We damaged it with our own spells. The Emissary here wounded it, twice.”

“Hmmph,” grunted the Magus. “More likely you overreacted when you saw it, and did most of the damage yourselves. These are fresh scratches on the table. From the demon?”

“He had iron claws,” said Khadgar.

“Or perhaps from your own mystic bolts, flung around like beads at a Stormwind streetfair?” Medivh shook his head.

“My knife bit into something hard and leathery,” said Garona.

“No doubt some of the books themselves,” said the Magus. “No, were there a demon, its body would still be here. Unless someone cleaned it up. Moroes, do you happen to have a demon in your dustbin?”

“Don’t believe so,” said the castellan. “I could check.”

“Don’t worry, but leave your tools for these two.” To the younger mage and the half-orc he said, “I expect you to get along. In light of this, you two get to straighten up the library. Young Trust, you have betrayed your name, and so must make restitution now.”

Garona would not relent, “But I saw—”

“You saw a phantom,” interrupted Medivh in an authoritative tone, his brows knitted. “You saw a piece of somewhere else. It would not have harmed you. It never does. Your friend here,” and he motioned at Khadgar, “tends to see demons where there are none. That worries me a bit. Perhaps you can try not to see any when you are cleaning up. Until you do, I am not to be disturbed!”

And with that, he was gone. Moroes laid the broom and dustpan on the floor and followed him.

Khadgar looked around at the debris of the room. More than just a broom would be needed here. Cases were toppled and in a couple places shattered entirely, and books were flung randomly about, some with their spines broken and their covers torn. Could it have been a timelost vision?”

“This was no illusion that attacked us,” said Garona moodily.

“I know,” said Khadgar.

“So why doesn’t he see it?” asked the half-orc.

“That I don’t know,” said the apprentice. “And I worry about finding out the answer.”

It took only several days to put the library back in proper order. Most of the scattered books were at least near to where they needed to be, and the rarer, more magical, and trapped volumes were on the upper balcony and had been untouched by the fracas. Rebuilding some of the cases took time, however, and Garona and Khadgar turned the empty stables into a makeshift carpentry shop, and they tried to restore (and in some cases replace) the shattered cases.

Of the demon, there was no trace, save for the damage wrought. The claw marks remained in the table, and the pages of The Lineage of Azeroth’s Kings were badly mangled and torn, as if by massive jaws. Yet there was no body, no blood, no remains to drop at Medivh’s feet.

“Maybe it was rescued,” suggested Garona.

“It was pretty dead when we left it,” responded Khadgar, at the time trying to remember if he had put epic poetry on the shelf above or below romantic epics.

“Something rescued the body,” said Garona. “The same person who popped it in here would have popped him out.”

“And the blood as well,” reminded Khadgar.

“And blood as well,” repeated the half-orc. “Perhaps it was a tidy demon.”