Ryn of Avonside

One week later, we stood bored on a river barge as the current carried us along. The plains were still out there to either side of us, but around the river — sometimes for a dozen or more miles — was a thriving wetland. With the plains being so unrelentingly flat out here, the river sometimes resembled a very thin lake with all sorts of islands and tributaries snaking in.

The trees around here were the kind that had big thick branches that reached out over the water in most places. It looked like they could only barely hold their tough, gnarled boughs up.

Now that I was looking, I could also see that a few trees had leaves that were showing hints of yellow. We really were heading into an extended autumn. I wonder how the flora and fauna of the ring had adapted to the much longer seasons. Did the trees have a more efficient dormancy period, or were they able to continue metabolising somehow? Water retention must be very tough as the cold air dried everything out. I'd have to get Cat to ask Dr. Rivas about it.

Grace was leaning against the railing beside me while we watched the riverbank pass by. Suddenly, she twitched and squinted out into the trees.

“What is it?” I asked, following the direction of her gaze.

“I feel something,” she said. “Magically speaking. Do you feel that?”

I began to say that no, I couldn't, but as I concentrated on my magical senses, I really did feel something off.

Waving a hand, I signalled the others, motioning to the riverbanks. The hair on my arms was standing upright now as my subconscious screamed that something was wrong.

Unable to stand here idly staring anymore, I raised a hand and pulsed out my radar spell. Waves of invisible magic swept over the surrounding landscape, collecting information. When they reached the maximum range of my spell, they doubled back and delivered their information to me.

On a physical level, nothing felt out of the ordinary. A herd of deer was stopping for a drink of water down a small swampy tributary just up ahead, and the local birds were busy doing bird things. In fact, the only attention directed at us right then were two otters hiding in the reeds at the water's edge.

A surprised braying cry went up from the direction of the deer, and it was joined by a whole chorus of similar, pained animal screams. Every other animal went quiet… leaving only the wind, weakening calls of pain, and an awful cracking, sundering sound. The whole gruesome cacophony was over in four or five seconds, leaving the wetlands deathly silent.

Apprehensively, I raised my hand and pulsed out my radar spell again. When the return came, the otters were hiding under the water, and every single deer was dead. I didn't have the best view of things that weren't alive, so it was difficult to tell, but it seemed like the deer had been torn apart. Pieces of them were scattered in all directions, leaving their watering hole covered in blood. Except the heads. Every single head was missing.

“U-uh,” I said, horrified. “There was a herd of deer drinking from a tributary of the river, about thirty yards beyond the treeline. Between my first and second scan, something killed them all and ate their heads.”

“What?” Grace gasped. She drew one of her big pistols and flipped the revolver chamber out to the side. Three canisters of magic came out of her bandolier, and she slotted them into the chamber, then snapped it shut. The magic she chose looked vaguely silvery, with a little oxidation to it.

I flinched when a radar pulse spell that I hadn't cast washed over me, but I quickly realised that Eilian had followed my lead. The obrec woman stood a couple of yards down the ship, hand raised and face hard with concentration.

The pulse came back to her, and she grimaced as she saw the same thing I had. “Jarrig’s balls, it's carnage out there.”

“No sign of what did it, though,” I replied, trying to peer out through the riverside vegetation with my mage sight. It was no use. I couldn't see through the magic of the trees themselves.

Eilian grunted in agreement. “No sign at all. That's downright creepy.”

We were on edge for an entire day of travel while we kept a wary eye on the riverbanks. The captain of the barge put us as close to the middle of the river as he could after we relayed what all the noise had been about. The poor boatmen weren’t used to any of this magic stuff, and it was very evident how scared and uncomfortable they were.

Unlike the last few evenings on the river, we didn't stop and anchor to the bank that night. Stopping felt like a bad idea, and since a mage mark wasn't smart enough to stick to a moving vehicle, we couldn't go into the grove. To help keep us from running aground in the dark, Eilian and I took turns casting light spells out in front so the captain could see.

Near the end of the day following that night, we came to the next town. I think we were all glad to see the sturdy wooden walls and high watchtowers of the Ghraiga military that evening. Maybe it was stupid, considering how nasty the mysterious deer-killer had been. I mean, would a guard or soldier have any more luck than a helpless animal?

The town was larger than Agoshin, but not by much. We quickly found an inn — or taberna as they called them around here — and hopped over into my grove. Then, and only then, did we breathe a sigh of relief.@@novelbin@@

“I'm going to go have a bath,” Jenna declared, her voice shaking with released tension. She and the other two non-knights were halfway up the ramp into the Stormpine when we heard a fluttering from above us. Instinctively, Eilian and I threw extra shields up over our companions.

Catherine, robes fluttering and snapping as she fell, swooped down from higher in my large coniferous home, and with a graceful running landing, came to a stop in front of me. “Ryn! Are you okay? You didn't come back last night. Why?”

I held off from answering to briefly hug her, then with a hand on her shoulder I started us towards the entrance into my tree. “We ran into some sort of mysterious danger and we didn't want to risk the barge by tying up to the shore for the night.”

“Mysterious danger? That's ominous. What kind of mysterious?” Asked the small, bookish girl.

“The kind that slaughters a whole herd of deer in one or two seconds, then disappears,” answered Grace with a shudder. “Both red and gold here couldn't see it with their spells.”

“Red and gold? What does— ah, Ryn and Eilian. Which spell did it evade?” Cat asked, very obviously slipping into analysis mode.

“The radar pulse one,” I said as we stepped through the gate and into the tree. “I'll explain more once we've had a bath and some food.”

By the time the bath was done and dinner was cooked, the whole gang joined us on the glass balcony.

“Wow, that is really creepy,” Melody murmured, staring wide-eyed at her half-eaten roast vegetables. “If this were a movie, I'd be loving the scares.”

“But it is not a moo-vee,” Esra interjected. “My instincts tell me that this is a beast — a monster of some kind. Tell me, dear daughter, did you focus any of your attention on the sky?”

I stared at her for like, four whole seconds, then looked over to Eilian. She looked just as chagrined as I felt. “No… neither of us did.”

Esra grunted without any recrimination in her tone. “A quick aerial attack could explain why you did not see the perpetrator of this attack. There are flying creatures with magic that are vicious and quick enough to act in the stated time frame. The missing heads is the real clue, but alas, such a specific detail rules out… well, every single creature that I know of.”

“So… if I understand right, you're saying there's monsters that are fast, stealthy, and strong enough to do this, but they wouldn't just take the heads?” Grace asked.

Esra nodded and picked up a mug of tea that a bun had just deposited in front of her. Idly, she reached out and gave the little waiter a long, scratching nose rub.

“I'm not so sure that anything could've moved that fast, Esra,” I said, reaching up to try and untangle a knot in my hair that was perpetually tugging at my scalp. “The radar should've sensed it flying in or leaving. The time between pulses was way too short.”

My mage mother placed the tea down on the table and crossed her arms.“Well then, what would you suggest happened? Did the deer explode themselves?”

“Is phase shifting a thing?” Melody asked, tilting her head a little.

Esra eyed her. “Phase… shifting? I am not familiar with the term.”

Melody, suddenly very animated, grabbed a coaster off the table. “So, it's a fantasy and sci-fi thing, right? Basically. If the top of this coaster was reality, and the deer were in that area, then something could be on the underside—” she flipped the coaster upside down. “The monster could be running along the underside, functionally not existing to our senses, even magic ones. Then, when it gets to where its prey is, it pops through the boundary into our world, kills the deer and eats their heads because it's a sicko like that, then pops back into the underside of the coaster.”

Esra, with a look of impatient indulgence, shook her head. “That is not a thing that happe—”

“It is a thing,” Eilian interrupted quietly. “Gods do it. They have access to this… this other place. I was fortunate enough to meet Gosbari during my travels as a vagabond. She explained that some gods can access a… a Sideways space. Supposedly, mortals could find a way in there too, but the magic of the Ring is ‘too thin and fractured’, whatever that means.”

“A god ate the deers’ heads,” Esra said in a deadpan, disbelieving voice. Then, she frowned and pulled a thick book out of her robes. Pages flipped, until she landed on one and tapped it with a finger. “Depending on the god and if they have an origin plane… I know there are several planes that focus on the cerebral like we do with plants. But then, why didn't it attack you on the boat? If it can… phase, as Melody puts it, why go for the deer? Gah, if we understood more about the gods, this would be easier.”

“Unfortunately, the gods aren't known for being particularly talkative or cooperative,” Eilian said dryly. “My small interaction with Gosbari certainly left me with more questions than answers, and she's one of the kinder, less enigmatic deities from my people's pantheon.”

“Indeed,” Esra said with a small chuckle. “A god who is willing to answer any questions is rare indeed.”

The two Ring-native mages laughed, and Mer began to join in when Grace cleared her throat. “What if… what if we did have a god who was willing to answer questions?”