Cory Herndon - The Fifth Dawn

The elf girl heard a shriek, and felt the heavy footsteps of the giant glimmer rat charging into the thicket behind her. A low drone almost out of the range of even Glissa’s sharp ears told her the wasps were following closely behind. She risked a look back over her shoulder.

One of the wasps was buzzing and dive-bombing the rat, which swatted at the mammoth insect with its cable-tail. The hulking rodent couldn’t seem to score a hit, but kept the insect at bay without slowing its own charge into the brush. The other wasps were heading straight for Glissa, but the thick undergrowth was slowing them down. Their thin wings, already straining to keep their heavy bodies in the air, were too wide to slip easily through the thick undergrowth.

Glissa couldn’t risk her own growth spell in the middle of the thicket; she could end up impaled on a tree. But she didn’t need magic. She knew this forest better than anyone. She could make it through. But where would they end up?

When she turned back, Slobad was gone.

“Slobad?” the elf girl hissed into the darkened woods. “Slobad, this isn’t fu-hey, back off!” One wasp had gotten close enough that Glissa had to swat at it with her sword, but the creature sluggishly avoided the blade. “Slobad, where are you?”

Another wasp moved in too close and Glissa whirled, slashing backward furiously and feeling the sword tip connect with a thin metal exoskeleton. The wasp shrieked-Glissa was surprised to hear the voice of an insect, she hadn’t realized they had them-and turned in mid-air, crashing back the way it had come like a drunken goblin. Half of a translucent silver wing fluttered to the forest floor. There, it joined a severed stinger six inches long that twitched as it pumped wasp venom into the ground.

The other wasps swarmed on their fleeing cousin, stinging the defenseless insect repeatedly. The savaged creature dropped onto its back, kicking spasmodically as its kin tore it to pieces with powerful mandibles. One of the wasps, the smallest, couldn’t get to the cannibal feast-twice, the other wasps batted the runt away with legs and wings-so it turned and continued to chase Glissa, followed closely by the rat, which gave the insect feeding frenzy a wide berth.

“Up here!” came Slobad’s voice up ahead, about twenty feet in the air if her ears weren’t lying. Glissa kept running and craned her neck to see where Slobad had found refuge.

He stood upside down on the bottom of a tree branch, his arms crossed and the worn satchel hanging awkwardly from his armpit.

“How-?”

“Just run up that tree! Trust me! Straight up! Meet you there, huh?” And with that, Slobad turned-still upside down-and ran toward a wide Tangle tree trunk directly in Glissa’s path. The tree was ancient, and had no low-hanging spikes for leverage. Her claws would be useless in the bark of a tree that age, hardened and weathered by centuries of moonlight.

But she trusted Slobad and her eyes. Claws would not be needed.

Glissa reached the tree in seconds, swatting blindly with her sword but never feeling contact with the giant beasts she knew were right on her tail. She kicked out with a flying leap, extended one foot parallel to the tree trunk, and hoped she hadn’t been hallucinating.

Her foot found solid purchase and gave no resistance as she pulled it loose, brought up her other foot, made firm contact with the tree trunk, lifted that foot …

If she hadn’t been running for her life, Glissa would have slapped her own forehead. She was using a climbing spell. Or rather, one was affecting both of them. Glissa looked over her shoulder and saw the ground like a wall receding in the distance. Her horizontal had gone vertical.

The wasps finished off their cousin’s corpse, and now four of them buzzed lazily around the base of the tree, but their wings couldn’t lift them clear of the ground. One still dive-bombed the rat, which had been forced to slow its pace and fight back.

All giant creatures. All obviously subjected to growth magic. Glissa had seen no mage, and the creatures had materialized seemingly out of nowhere. And now she was running easily along narrow, spiky limbs and boughs that should never have supported her weight. Stranger still, so was Slobad. Suddenly, it all clicked.

“Slobad, wait up! I think I know what’s happening!”

The goblin skidded to a halt when he saw Glissa had lost their pursuers. “Yeah?” he asked as Glissa bounced off a springy tree spike, somersaulted, and landed in a crouch on a small, flat terrace. “Slobad thinks it’s all that elf-magic floating around back there.”

“It’s all the magic floating around after the-” Glissa stopped. “What did you just say?”

“Elf-magic. So thick back there Slobad could smell it, huh?” the goblin continued. “Was going to tell you, but didn’t want to slow down.”

“Right,” Glissa nodded, casting her eyes about the forest canopy lest a giant beetle or wall of spiky thorns pop up out of nowhere and take them by surprise. “You can, uh, smell magic, Slobad? I didn’t think you and magic got along.”

“Know how elf magic smells, huh?” Slobad said, wrinkling his nose with distaste.

“How does it smell?” Glissa asked.

“Like rotten moss mixed with rat dung,” he said. “Sorry, but true.”

“Huh,” Glissa said. “Never noticed that. Do you know anything about mana? The elemental forces that give magic its energy?”

“Like blast powder and a fire tube?” Slobad asked, arching a spiky eyebrow.

“Sort of. Mana’s more like the ingredients for a good stew. You can make a stew out of almost anything, but to make something good, you’ve got to use the right vegetables and meat.”

“So different magic needs different meat, huh?” Slobad said. He began to turn his foot on one toe like a nervous student.

“And I’m attuned to Tangle magic because this is my home. And that moon, it’s made of pure green mana.”

“So why don’t all the monsters go there?” Slobad asked, jerking a thumb upward in the general direction of the dazzling emerald orb.

“The lacuna,” Glissa said. “The moon had to burn right through the surface to get out.” She gazed back down through the thick trees and saw the slow-moving wasps and the shambling rat buzzing around below them, unable to resist their instincts but equally unable to actually reach their prey.

“So the magic burned into the ground, huh?” Slobad said.

“To put it simply. That much energy floating loose, it’s trying to coalesce. To take shape before it dissipates.” Glissa began pacing, and took two steps up the side of the tree, deep in thought. “But there’s no intelligence behind it, so the spells aren’t entirely taking sha-oooOOF!” Glissa’s feet slipped as though on ice, and she dropped three feet back to the terrace, landing on her rear. She shook her head to clear the ringing.

“See what I mean?” Glissa muttered. She hung her head between her knees and rubbed either side of her temple. “Its centered on that big hole in the ground.”

No one answered.

“Slobad?” Glissa asked, head still between her knees. “What do you think? Does that make sense?”

“Oh yes,” a gruff voice said calmly, “That makes perfect sense. You’ll have to tell us all about it.”

That wasn’t Slobad.

Glissa placed one hand on her sword hilt and drew her blade as she leaped to her feet, ready to strike in the direction of the voice. At least, that was the plan, but her attack was over before it started. Glissa only made it into a crouch, and her sword never cleared its sheath. The elf girl was eye-to-blade-tip with three swords, all pointed at her throat. Glissa followed one silver blade up its three-foot length, where it ended in a familiar golden-filigreed hilt. The hilt was in the hand of a tall elf. Slobad was scooting backward, apparently hoping the warriors had not yet seen him, which the elf girl could already tell was pointless. Glissa couldn’t hold back a smile as she raised her hands.