Summoner school 3, p.16
Summoner School 3, page 16
“Shall we?” I asked Mike and looked at the door. “Release it on three?”
“Too late,” the tree-man laughed and held his hands up. “I’m pretty sure that Sarya’s fire did the trick. I’m just glad that she has so much control. This place is basically matchsticks.”
“Kaylens are the best at controlling their magic,” she called from inside the cabin. “A simple welding job is almost beneath my abilities.”
“We’re so glad that you deigned to help us, your majesty,” I teased and winked at the haughty woman.
“You’re welcome,” Sarya said and flipped her ponytail back.
I rolled my eyes playfully and then stepped aside to let Mike through the door. The hinge was fixed for the moment, but I wanted to use it as little as possible. I glanced at the woods one more time to see nothing but shadows and then jammed the door into place.
The locking mechanism on the handle worked perfectly, and it was brass, so it didn’t rust. Most of the metal had a green patina over it, but the gnome workmanship still did its job. The second that I clicked the lock into place, a large brass bar slid over the slab of wood to barricade it even more, and I let out a sigh of relief that whoever had lived in the cabin before had been just as worried about safety.
“How’s the search for furniture?” I asked and turned to the girls.
“There’s not much here,” Atlesia said with a shrug. “Of course, my eyes aren’t as good as Sarya’s in the dark.”
“Mine are,” Mike said and stepped closer to what looked like a cabinet covered in papers. “I think whoever lived here must have been a researcher. There are a lot of notes about animals.”
The tree-man had to stoop a little so that he’d fit inside the cabin. The roof was only an inch above my head, and I was almost half a foot shorter than my tall roommate. But Mike still managed to move with grace as his long limbs tugged open the cabinet.
“Maybe we can use it to find one of the beebears,” I said as a ray of hope opened in front of me. “That way this hunt won’t be a complete waste.”
“I did find those mushrooms that I was looking for,” the tree-man pointed out and then pulled out a kerosene lantern. “Sarya, do you think you could help me with this?”
“Of course,” the redheaded elf said and lit the lantern.
Warm, buttery light filled the small cabin, and I blinked as my eyes adjusted. There was a small couch up against the far wall with cushions that had been used so much they were almost pancakes. A small kitchen sink and brass stove stood to my left, and there was a shorter cabinet that had some pots and pans.
A hallway branched off from the main room, and I walked over to find a bathroom with a gnome-sized shower and a bedroom with a bed that could easily fit Mike. The giant mattress told me all that I needed to know about the researcher that had lived there, especially with all of the extra blankets piled on a chest to the right of the door. Whoever it was preferred sleep to hanging out on the couch, though there were plenty of half-finished orreries and unidentifiable devices scattered around the living room floor.
“Not too shabby,” I said and studied a picture on the wall.
The drawing looked like it was a replica of the map that Tins had given me, and I wondered if the occupant of the cabin had been the original cartographer. It would explain the similarities in the notes and the drawings of beebears on the leather. I took a deep breath of the musty air and then decided to go try and find anything that could help us track down the beebears.
Another howl erupted into the chilly night air, and all four of us tensed like the creature was right outside of our door. It did sound like it was closer than before, but what set my teeth on edge was the answering calls that came from our left and right. The wolves must’ve sniffed us out, because their baleful calls continued to inch nearer with every howl.
“That sounds like a banehound,” Sarya whispered as she snuck closer to the front windows.
The shutters covered most of the glass, but there was a sliver in the middle and around the bottom that was just big enough for someone to look out of. I would put money on them being designed like that so that the researcher would be able to see what was in his front yard, but my stomach still did a flip as I knelt down to peer into the night.
“Banehounds are like, super rare,” Atlesia said as she and Mike looked out of the other window. “It’s probably just regular wolves. No big deal. We can take a pack of regular wolves.”
The flower nymph talked so fast that it was hard to make out her words, but there was no way to deny the panicked tone that laced her voice. My own stomach churned as another howl pierced the air, but I kept a reassuring smile on my lips so that the girls wouldn’t realize how freaked out I was getting. Atlesia’s grip on the bottom of the windowsill was so strong that her pale green fingers had almost turned white, but the bubbly woman forced herself to return my grin.
“I don’t know,” Mike said as he looked through the slit in the middle of the shudders. “I’ve heard plenty of wolves before. They hunt in the mountains and forests in winter. They’re never a problem for us because they don’t like to eat tree-people, but they scare off the rabbits and other small animals. I’d know the sound of one of their howls, and that wasn’t a wolf.”
I racked my brain for a description of the banehound. It was one of the thousands of animals that I’d read about over the last few months, but most of them had blurred together. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as pictures of different monsters scrolled through my memory like an old microfiche.
“They’re shadow creatures, right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Sarya said.
“I remember reading something about them, but the book said that they’re really rare,” I said and then took another peek through the shudders. “Of course, we’re in the gnome world, so we’re bound to see animals that we can’t find anywhere else. It’s not like everyone comes here on vacation.”
“What? You don’t want to spend all your time around bogs and the smell of decay?” the redheaded elf teased and then squatted down next to me. “And here I thought this was the perfect vacation spot.”
“I live to please,” I chuckled and then went silent as another howl erupted into the night. “What else do you guys know about the banehounds? I just remember that they’re rare and have something to do with shadows.”
“Banehounds are elder wolves,” Mike said as if he was reciting directly from a textbook. “They are the same size as a regular wolf, but with an extra set of eyes that allows them to see through the night better than their lesser relatives. Some say that they can see through enchantments, and that they have a direct link to the old gods of the dark. They are resistant to necrotic damage and almost always hunt in packs of three. Banehounds have a thick hide that protects them from most melee attacks, and they have tusks like a boar while still maintaining the sharp canines of a predator.”
“Great,” I said as my leg started to bounce. “Did that book say anything about how fast they are?”
The tree-man scowled and stared into space as if he was bringing up a mental image of the textbook. The leaves on the top of Mike’s head started to shake in frustration as a scowl crawled across his dark, bark-like skin. He finally let out an irritated sigh and shrugged like he had given up.
“No idea,” he said. “The mental image is fuzzy. I wrote them off as our shadow creatures the second that I read about them because they can’t float. I’m afraid I didn’t read anything else about them.”
“That’s fine,” I said with a shrug. “We’ll just assume that they move faster than regular wolves, and that we need to be very careful. As long as we stay inside, then we should be fine.”
“If they don’t break down the door,” Atlesia said with a pointed stare at the weak slab of wood. “That bar is only going to do so much.”
“True,” I said and then reached into my pocket for the black onyx that Tins had given me. “A shadow creature should be fine in black onyx, right?”
“I don’t see why not,” Sarya said with a suspicious look at the stone. “You’re not thinking of trying to capture one, are you? We’d have to kill all three of them.”
“Which wouldn’t be hard to do with all of us,” I pointed out.
“I do have some sleep bombs,” Mike said in an excited tone. “And those light bombs that I was working on.”
“I can use the glow from the spores for my will-o’-wisp,” I said and stood. “If they’re shadow creatures, then they’re bound to be susceptible to the light. Even if they can see through the hallucinations.”
A low growl rolled through the clearing and vibrated the door on its hinges. The sound rattled my bones, and every hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I turned back to the slit in between the shutters and then swore under my breath as the banehound stepped out into the light from a crescent moon.
There was just enough of the silvery moonlight to show that the textbooks had been very wrong about how big it was. I’d seen a normal wolf at a traveling fair once, and it had come up to my waist. The creature in front of us was tall enough to look Mike directly in the eyes, and each of its paws was as big as the tree-man’s hands.
“That’s a lot bigger than I was expecting,” I said as the banehound took another step forward.
A howl sounded off to the right, but it was further away like the other banehound had retraced our steps into the bog. The third wolf-like monster responded from the left like it was near the base of the mountains, and I wondered what it had sniffed out. The one right in front of the cabin growled suspiciously as it stalked forward, but it didn’t call out to its friends, either.
The creature had four slanted blue eyes that glowed in the darkness of the forest. The two on the bottom were closer to where a normal wolf’s eyes would be, like a predator that wanted to see what was right in front of it, but the second set were a little wider as if it could see what was on either side of it, too.
“I don’t think we should fight that,” Atlesia whispered and took a step away from the window. “It’s too big. Even the jackalope was only the size of a normal dog. That thing is as big as Mike.”
“Bigger,” my roommate said and gripped one of the sleeping bombs in his large hand. “But at least its buddies sound like they’re hunting somewhere else.”
“I don’t think it’s going to call for help, either,” Sarya said and clutched the windowsill. “It reminds me of one of my father’s hunting dogs. It always wanted the kill for itself, and it relished in the screams of its prey.”
“Everyone take a deep breath,” I said with a reassuring smile. “It’s going to be fine. We fought the will-o’-wisp and survived, so we can take out one banehound.”
I sounded more confident than I felt at the moment, but the others had all started to panic, and the banehound sniffed the air like it could smell their fear. Its jaw fell open to reveal large canine teeth and a long tongue that dripped with a greenish drool. The grass beneath its feet started to sizzle like the saliva was acidic, and another shiver ran through me as the creature looked directly at the windows like it could see through them.
The wolf-like monster reminded me of a story that my grandmother had told me about direwolves. They were supposedly everywhere back in the day, like fairies and giants, but they’d disappeared and been replaced with wolves. The old woman had a friend of a friend who’d actually seen one on her property, but my grandfather said that it was nonsense, and I’d agreed with him.
Now I wasn’t so sure that the friend of a friend hadn’t just seen one of these banehounds. Every muscle in my body was tense as the wolf-like creature took another tentative step forward, and its form shifted like it was made out of shadows. I was sure that the monster in front of me was the reason that the council had said that the shadow creatures had come from the forest, but I would take the hooded figure and his minions over the fanged menace in front of me any day.
“I think it’s using a fear spell on us,” Sarya said and took a ragged breath. “Caros once used one on me when I was younger, and I almost ran over the edge of a cliff trying to get away from him. Father grounded him for a month. I’ve never felt as scared as I did that day. At least, not until this exact moment.”
“A fear spell?” I asked through the fog in my head.
Every ounce of my being wanted to turn tail and run as far away from the banehound as fast as humanly possible. The green saliva still dripped onto the grass, and a breeze wound through the trees to ruffle the cloud of black smoke that the monster seemed to be made out of. There was a solid form underneath, and I latched onto that fact like a lifeline as my body fought between fight and flight.
“I think Sarya is right,” Mike said.
“It doesn’t need that to make me want to run,” Atlesia said and bounced on the balls of her feet. “I’m ready to go just looking at it.”
“Just breathe deep,” I said and demonstrated it in hopes that we’d all be able to think through the fog of warning bells going off in our heads. “Atlesia, are you really going to let an overgrown dog chase you away?”
“No,” the flower nymph whimpered and then balled her hands into fists. “No. I’m not.”
“What’s the plan?” Mike asked as he looked through the shutters.
I looked around the room at the small furniture. Atlesia was right, there wasn’t enough to barricade the door and windows, and the wood wouldn’t be able to withstand a direct hit from the banehound. I tapped my foot as I went through every scenario in rapid succession, but there was really only one choice.
“We’re going to have to fight it,” I said after a few seconds of silence.
A growl came from the edge of the porch as if the banehound had understood what I said. My stomach did a nauseating flip as I realized how close the creature had managed to get while we were talking. Its eyes were locked on the window where I was, and there was an intelligence there that reminded me that this creature was one of the ancients.
“I can use my fireballs,” Sarya whispered as if that would keep the wolf-like monster from hearing.
“Good,” I said. “Mike, you know what to do. I’ll need your assistance with the spores. Atlesia, do you think that you could help?”
I nodded toward the door and tapped a finger to my forehead to let them know that the creature was smart enough to pick up on what we were talking about. It would make communication harder than the fights with the jackalope or the will-o’-wisp, but we were a good team, and I had faith that we could defeat the banehound without explicitly saying what we were about to do.
“I got this,” the flower nymph said with a stubborn set of her shoulders. “I’m not letting some big dog scare me into retreating.”
“Good,” I said with a relieved smile. “We need to do this before its friends realize that it’s in trouble.”
The banehound sneezed and threw acidic drool all over the front porch. I peeked out to see that the wolf-like monster had stepped back into the small clearing, and it let out another sneeze as if it was mocking our plan to try and kill it. There was a hungry look in its eyes as if it had been a long time since the creature had eaten, but I had no intention of ending up on the menu.
I pressed my face against the shutter and stepped to the side until I could see what the drool had done to the front porch. The banehound was definitely smarter than a normal wolf, because those two sneezes had done just enough damage that the ancient boards would probably crumble the second that we stepped onto them. I sighed and looked at the others, ran a hand through my hair, and then nodded to myself.
“Be careful when you go outside,” I said. “Keep an eye on the boards that were hit with the acidic saliva from when the Banehound sneezed. Sarya, Mike, you know what to do. I’ll be ready with my own weapons. Atlesia, you still have those seeds and roots?”
“Roots?” the flower nymph asked, and then her eyes widened in shock. “Are you sure?”
“It’ll be helpful,” I said. “Especially if its friends come to join the fun.”
“Okay,” she said and pulled out the small vial with the corpse flower roots. “I’ll do what I can.”
“This is either going to be amazing, or we’re all going to die,” Mike said.
The excited movement of his leaves matched the nervous energy flowing through me, and I knew that my roommate was just as pumped as I was. A fight with a banehound was infinitely more exciting than one with a beebear, though we’d still try to find one in the morning for the girls. But I could do infinitely more with a shadow wolf, and no one in the underground arena had ever used one before. Tins would probably shit a brick when we came back victorious, and I wanted to see the look of shock on the gnome’s face when we told the story.
“Are we ready?” I asked and reached for the locking mechanism on the door.
Another growl loud enough to shake my bones came from the banehound as if it was answering my question, but everyone still gave me nods of approval. The fear spell that the wolf-like monster used had been renewed, and my hand shook as I clicked the lock open. It took all of my self-control not to just run as the bar slammed back and the door creaked open in protest.
I reached into my pocket for the diamond that held the will-o’-wisp. The pixie-like monster was a pain in the ass to summon because she always fought the mental link that formed, and I burned through mana like crazy, but there were still a few of the butterscotch-shaped stones full of mana to throw into the mix so that I wouldn’t turn into a mummy while I tried to control her. The banehound might be able to see through the hallucinations, but the extra light from the will-o’-wisp’s wings should blind the overgrown wolf long enough for my creature to slash through the smoky body with its claws.
