Hot Obsidian

Q: But a fairy body is similar to a human body. Is it not an imitation of human shape, one of the signs of the darkness? And what about fairy larvae that can live in any dead creatures, including humans, feeding on decaying flesh?

A: Neither of those facts proves anything unless another fact, the most important, is present: imitation of human behaviour. No fairy imitates a crying child to lure a wanderer into its lair. No fairy uses human empathy as bait.

Fairies are dangerous, magically active animals you should be wary of but no, they are not dark creatures, not the children of the night.

“Tome of Dark Creatures” by Helga-Vlada and Sereg, Appendix 2

Firaskian walls followed the same protocols as temporary field perimeters did: they were divided into five segments, each segment had its own leader, a high-ranked Crimson Guardian. Aven Zarbot’s segment was the most important one of the five: she was in charge of the city gates. That circumstance made her a chief battlemage in Firaska but only in times of peace. If an emergency were to happen, like a massive invasion of dark creatures, the Elder Rule would make the oldest, most experienced Crimson Guardian – Sarien Sarra, a fragile old lady with grey hair and devastating magical powers – the head of the Firaskian mage army.

As Aven was walking through Firaskian alleys in the middle of the night in a company of five other mages, she couldn’t stop wondering whether the time to enforce the Elder Rule was now…

“Do you know those boys, Aven?” asked Sarien Sarra in her usual tone: cold, spiky, making everyone feel like a child caught with their hand in a cookie jar. Zarbot wrinkled her nose as she heard the question. Couldn’t help it. Luckily for her, it was dark enough, so no one noticed anything.

“I saw them enter the city in a company of eight other Lifekeepers and talked to their leader. He said that they were on a mission and wanted to hire a Transvolo mage in Firaska and jump to Torgor,” reported Aven. “For some reason, they decided to stay in the city, though. They earned the trust of one of the college magisters, visited the college library, and trained with the young mages. That was unexpected but not suspicious. Young Lifekeepers often travel together and share their experience with everyone who wants to learn, it’s their tradition. Magister Sharlou spoke well of them, so did the college swordmasters…”

“What kind of magic did the boys use to kill the morok?” Sarien interrupted her.

“It was killed with an ordinary sword,” said Aven.

The other mages exchanged puzzled looks behind Aven’s back. The rest of the way, everyone kept silent…

Lots of warm Lihts floating under the ceiling of a detention room filled it with enough light to keep all the night horrors at bay and enough warmth to make it cosy. Bala and Kosta shared that room with several sleeping citizens that had been caught by the guards in the streets after the curfew. What those people did was not a crime and the detention they got was only for their safety because of all the dark creatures prowling around, so the room did not look like a prison cell and the cots there were clean and comfortable.

The morok’s head had indeed allowed Bala and Kosta to enter Firaska at night but it had also alarmed the whole Crimson Guard. There would be questions, lots of them. Tired as they were, the boys were too worried to sleep now.

Kosta walked up to a sink in the corner of the room, grabbed a bar of soap and began scrubbing the dried blood from his hands, hair, face and clothes. The water turned crimson-red; there seemed to be no end to the bloody filth no matter how hard Kosta tried to wash it away.

Bala, feeling sad and useless, sat on his cot, and hid his face in his hands. A swarm of questions he couldn’t answer tortured him. He could make neither heads nor tails of the situation. What kind of disease Kosta had? Why did it pass after the morok had died? Why was Kosta immune to the morok’s horror magic? Who was that boy after all…

For the first time in his life, Bala regretted not having been reading more. The only things he could remember about moroks were a snippet of one of Kangassk Magesta’s incoherent lectures and a couple of his teammates’ bedtime stories.

He knew that moroks were dangerous magical creatures of a dark kind, because they preyed specifically on humans. He knew that the magic they used was not “spells” but rather a limited set of patterns. They knew a few illusion tricks – they used those to fake human appearance – and could spread waves of horror-inducing magic. An ordinary person could resist one such wave at best. Bala could not do even that: the very first wave had paralyzed him. But Kosta… Kosta stood his ground like a breakwater, through all three…

When Aven and Sarien arrived at the detention station, a couple of young Crimson Guardians woke up everyone in the room and escorted them away, leaving Bala and Kosta alone. They were going to be questioned, that was as clear as day, so they prepared themselves. Kosta, now scrubbed clean of most of the bloody filth, hastily combed his hair with his fingers in a feeble attempt to look nice. Bala did his best to put on a brave face; he was the “adult” here, after all, and needed to look like one.

Seeing the “adult” warrior the Crimson Guardians had told her about, the “adult” who in fact was just a teenager scared out of his wits, Sarien got suspicious, to say the least. But learning that this boy wasn’t even the one who had killed the morok and that the younger one – a twelve-year-old! – had done it, made the old mage almost furious. Was Aven Zarbot that incompetent? Obviously, those kids were not the ones who had killed the monster! But who did it then? And why did that person decide to hide? That seemed worthy of Sarien's attention.

“I heard, my dears, that you had killed a morok,” said Sarien sweetly, like a loving grandma would, while her battlemage companions inconspicuously spread around the room, keeping an eye on the boys’ every movement.

“Not we,” said Bala, a shame in his eyes, “Kosta did. To protect me. He is the true warrior here.”

“You?” Sarra gave the younger Lifekeeper a long look, with a very convincing surprised expression on her face. The kid’s clothes were still splattered with blood even though he had tried his best to wash it away.

“Yes,” he nodded with quiet dignity.

“Oh how interesting!” almost cooed Sarien and sat at a cot next to Kosta’s. “I feel that you are telling the truth, my sweet. But it’s all so very puzzling! The morok was killed with a simple sword. It’s so rare! You see how old I am and I’ve seen that done only once in my whole life. Thirteen years ago. I was leading a team of young mages through the Firaskian forest and we met a whole pack of moroks: four ancient monsters hunting together! Their illusion was extremely convincing: they pretended to be a family – wife, husband, two kids – and played their parts so well that it took us long enough to recognize the trap. By the time we did that, we were doomed. My companions were no battle Seven, and a single mage, even a mage of my calibre, was no match for a morok pack. A young woman saved us that day and she, too, like you say you did, killed the moroks with only a sword. Only her sword had a handguard, unlike yours, and was not a katana. But that woman was immune to the horror magic, just like you must be if you’re indeed a morok-slayer. She had raven-black hair, black eyes, and – I never forget a face, my dear! – she even looked somewhat like you.” Sarien looked Kosta in the eye, a silent question in her gaze. “Well, what else? The woman was wounded in the fight and I treated her wounds; it was the least I could do to repay her. That encounter left her four claw marks on her right shoulder. She didn’t say much about herself, not even her name, but she mentioned that she was from the No Man’s Land.”