Jedit

Chapter 17

Vampire!

Even the Tyrant of Tirras, with many black deeds writ against his name, was appalled by the frightening site. A vampire infested this palace like a monstrous rat within its walls. And he'd lived here for days and not known! Could have been drained like a chicken as he napped!

A long while the vampire fed like a leech from the victim's throat. Unable to move, the woodswoman gibbered in fright. Her mouth and tongue quivered as she uttered some prayer. Two trickles of red ran down her neck as the vampire sucked her heart's blood. The two legionnaires stood stock still, backs straight, eyes fixed on the chamber's smoky ceiling. Gradually the victim stopped shaking and wilted, drained white as a mushroom. Wiping a red mouth delicately with a finger, the vampire signaled the legionnaires to remove the corpse. Grabbing the dead weight, they hustled it away into a tunnel.

Hunkered behind the stones, with only one eye showing, Johan broke a cold sweat. Then he trembled as the wizened fiend called in a raspy voice, "I know you are there, Emperor Johan. I expected you to follow eventually. You came seeking wisdom, after all. You shall have it. Come. Come out."

Terror gripped Johan. His only thought was to flee. Yet he could not. Feet, hands, head, even his jaw and eyeballs were fixed fast, frozen in place where he knelt behind boulders. Paralyzed, he saw the wizened vampire shuffle to his side. Sallow skin, wrinkled bare skull, even red veins outlined in pointed ears and thin eyelids were all visible in the guttering light of the ring of fire. The musky snake odor of the vampire mingled with the curdled whale-meat stench of the giant horror, odors so rank Johan wanted to gag.

Gently the vampire reached out a thin fingernail that curled like a fishhook, just as sharp. The finger caught the outer rim of Johan's ear and tugged. Split, the ear bled, so Johan felt warm drops splash on his neck.

Stepping around to face the mage, the shriveled fiend smiled, a ghastly sight given dry lips and needle teeth. Then the smile reddened. The vampire grew taller. Sprouted dark hair. Gained a curved form. Lost its sallow pallor to a golden glow.

Facing Johan was Lady Shauku, austere, blue-eyed, glossy-haired, and beautiful.

Gently the lady touched a finger to Johan's ear, then touched his blood to her moist lips. "Tasty. But I have better plans for you, my dear Emperor. You see, I have ambition too. Schemes far too vast for your petty mind to encompass.

"Such a fool." The beautiful vampire chuckled, a sound like branches scraping in the wind. "All those days spent studying, and what did you team? Nothing, I'll wager."

Johan's eyes bugged. Yes, his studies had definitely gone awry, but he never grasped how or why. For one, die wild hallucinations had distracted him, making him doubt everything he saw. Yet no matter how much he read, it still seemed familiar!

Seeming to read his thoughts, the vampire said, "Poor deluded Johan. The more you read, the less you learned. Wonder why? Those books contain nothing, Johan. Many are blank, bought and sold to be scratched with a quill. Some are shop or city ledgers, some dreary family histories. The last lord of this castle was illiterate but wished to appear well-read, so collected trash to fill, a library. And you, dear Johan, pored over each empty or useless volume as if to unlock the secrets of creation!"

Despite his frozen state, the wizard shivered with rage and shame. How could he be so completely deluded?

More chuckling from the beautiful, evil creature. "Don't blame me, my dear Emperor. You gulled yourself. You wished to read of cat warriors, so I offered you a book, and a string of arcana painted across your shoulders, and a dose of hellbore. That tome had a plain calf cover, but you, pitifully eager, imagined it was bound in tiger hide. Daily you pored over page after blank page, imagining you sopped up great stores of knowledge, when really you only mulled facts already planted in your own mind. Oh, how I laughed each evening to hear you spout enlightened babble and gawk like a rustic at hallucinations. Oh, such amusement!"

Stepping back, Lady Shauku tilted her pretty head, then pointed to the writhing horror. "And now, dear guest, you finally discover a source of new knowledge-no hallucination-yet you can't comprehend it. How sad. Let me explain. That celestial being came from beyond the stars. I own it. From it I leech unworldly secrets such as no wizard on Dominaria ever conceived!

"So shall I treat you, Johan. You'll stay here alongside the horror while I whittle away your mind. Thanks to these deluding glyphs, you are long down the path of becoming my thrall. One day soon I shall release you into the world to become Emperor of all Jamuraa, my brainless puppet. Then shall I rule as the real empress!"

Chuckling like a saw biting wood, the vampire plucked up a fragment of amber crystal. Gently Shauku pressed the broken shell against the wizard's back. "Much have I learned from yon creature, good Johan, spells you'll never know. Here's a sample."

Pinned on his knees, helpless, Johan shuddered as the very air flushed amber.

"Spirits of sea and sky!" bleated Adira Strongheart.

Led by three reluctant kobolds, pirates and pine warriors emerged from a cleft in a wall to see the hideous "crying horror" writhing in eternal torment. Eyes bulged and rolled, tentacles lashed, mouths full of jagged teeth champed and clashed, tongues lolled. A gigantic cobbled-together mistake, it was rooted like a tree stump amid golden shattered crystals and a ring of coals that gave a dim red glow.

"Blood of the martyrs," breathed Murdoch. "Where does it start and end?"

"It's not a horse, sergeant," said Adira, "but it's obviously a living thing."

"So's a turnip," said Simone. "Does that thing think?"

Adira just shook her head. "Who could say?"

"Even if it could," put in Jasmine, "Shauku's torture may have driven it mad."

"Good for us," returned the practical ex-soldier. "Hurt breeds hate. That thing must loathe Shauku. We need all the allies we can scrape up."

"Good luck enlisting it," said Simone the Siren.

"But what is it?" Like most, Whistledove felt a combined pity and disgust. "Why the ring of fire?"

"To mask the stink?" asked Simone. Everyone's eyes were bloodshot and irritated by the pall of smoke wafting along the ceiling.

"So it can't grow,'' said a kobold.

"Grow how?" asked Adira.

"Like a plant. It makes little sprouts, but Shauku saws them off." People shuddered.

"So the fire keeps the roots from spreading," mused Heath.

Even as they watched, another quartet of kobolds dragged a log into the chamber, dumped it in the fiery trench, then went away. No other people were evident. "How big would the beast grow, given free rein?"

"Big," said a kobold.

Adira Strongheart's reduced Circle of Seven crouched in darkness and stared, pondering how to proceed. As did Magfire, her brother Taurion, the scout Kyenou, and four other woods warriors. The three kobolds were restrained by ropes around their necks lest they dash off and alert legionnaires or Lady Shauku herself. The two pixies Sacred Tree and Peaceflower perched on rocks, wary of queer newcomers.

Nearing the huge cavern, the party had been joined by five fire sprites. Long as a man's hand, naked and yellow with glaring black eyes, the fairies rode the air on wings of pure flame, hot as coals from a forge. One in passing frizzled Adira's chestnut curls. The sprites didn't whistle or sing like their wood brethren but simply tagged along like fireflies. The kobold Dog Ears or Prince explained that fire sprites were common in the Blue Mountains, and a pack of fire sprites had been shifted here along with the kobolds. They cast a pleasant yellow glow, so the adventurers ignored them, aside from watching their hats and hair.

As sudden as a thunderclap, a tiger's roar shook the walls and jarred human ears. The crying horror snapped and flailed helplessly. Pixies and fire sprites vaulted into the air to hover near the smoky ceiling.

"That's Jedit!" snapped Adira. "Where the hell-Where did he go?"

No one had seen the tiger slink off. One of the pixies flittered and jabbered. Hurriedly, lurking behind jumbled rocks where possible, the party skirted the hazy cavern. Magfire designated pickets while the pirates split to circle the trapped monster. Then stopped cold in their tracks.

Whereas so far they'd seen only broken fragments of amber glass, now they beheld a giant crystal intact, six-sided, half as tall as a man. The tiger Jedit Ojanen wrestled the crystal as if mad, making the thing rock like a ship at sea. Black claws skittered and screeked over the glasslike surface, unable to score it. What mostly stunned the adventurers was the shadow tumbling inside the crystal.

"Strike me blind!" piped Adira. "Johan!"

Trapped within the amber cube crouched Johan, Tyrant of Tirras, Emperor of the Northern Realms, and prisoner of Lady Shauku. Onlookers gawked. Jedit Ojanen, raging, bunched his mighty thighs and slammed into the crystal as if to tear it open. Talons skittered off harmlessly. Still the tiger hammered, mindless with fury.

"Heath! Hit him! With your bow!" barked Adira. When the part-elf balked, the pirate chief snatched away the thick bow, wound up with two hands, and whacked Jedit hard across the muzzle. Stunned, the tiger backpedaled and made to leap. Adira had drawn her black sword. "Stand fast, Stripes, or I'll fillet you like a hake! I may anyway! What's the idea of caterwauling like a banshee? Would you bring Shauku and every last legionnaire in these hills down on our heads?"

"I'll kill him!" Frothing at the mouth, Jedit had barely regained his senses. Rubbing his nose, he growled, "I'll crack this egg and suck the meat! This despot killed my father! I'll render him dead and rotten with his bones scattered for vultures!"

"Belay that bilge!" Adira didn't lower her sword. "This poxy bastard owes me half a crew and a tenth the population of Palmyra! We've all suffered at his bloody hands! Now settle down, or I'll lop off a limb and you can limp three-legged the rest of your misbegotten life!"

Throughout the show, Johan sat with arms around his knees, for he was cramped inside the crystal. He watched the clustered comrades coolly as a basilisk. In a pause, his voice came faint and tinny as if piped through a keyhole.

"Children, control your impulses. I'm safe. You can't crack this crystal any more than I."

"We'll see," snapped Adira. "Murdoch, strike."

"Aye, milady." Black sword in hand, the ex-soldier wound up two-handed, slung his blade high, and crashed it atop the crystal. The sword bounced off and almost wrenched from Murdoch's hand.

"As expected," asked Adira, "but we must essay everything, and simplest things first. Johan, tell us how to free you, so we can kill you."

"Gladly," called the archmage in a fine bout of sarcasm. "If only I knew."

Simone the Siren snorted. "We finally find our archenemy helpless as a hung goose, and we can't lay a hand on him!"

"Speaking of confinement." Murdoch was used to keeping his head in dangerous country. "If Jedit's cry does summon Shauku, we might all get smothered by amber."

"Too true," said Adira. Magfire had put out pickets, but now the pirate chief sent Heath and Murdoch to explore for more boltholes. The pirate queen sheathed her black sword. "What now? Can we roll this blighter through the tunnels and crack him out later? Will it even fit?"

"Why free him at all?" asked Jasmine Boreal. "Wouldn't it better serve the world to find a deep cleft and roll him into it?"

"So does a simple mind squander a valuable resource for spite," sneered the mage inside his amber cage.

"Who's simple?" retorted the druid. "Who's painted 'round with runes of enslavement?"

"Stifle your blather," chided the prisoner. "However loathsome, it's best we work together to stop Shauku."

Adira Strongheart waved a hand. "Shauku is nothing to us."

"Beg to differ!" bristled Magfire. "My people seek to unseat and punish Shauku! Don't count on our aid unless you also fight Shauku!"

Adira Strongheart didn't argue. Idly she drew a dagger and picked at a joint in the crystal. The keen blade left no mark. "How do you breathe in there?"

"I have no idea."

"How did she trap you? Do these crystals unlatch like bird cages, or did she shove you inside like a finger into a soap bubble?"

Johan shook his horned head. "I know not. I was spellbound."

"Spellbound? The master of deceit, overthrown by a greater liar?" Idly Adira tapped the crystal. "I wonder if this surface would take paint or pitch. We could black this crystal all over, smear it with dirt, then roll it into a dark comer for a hundred years."

The pirate queen was rewarded as Johan's eyes widened. Rapidly he said, "Did you know Shauku is a vampire?"

Consternation struck the heroes of Palmyra and Arboria. Magfire swore bitter oaths. Adira and the rest listened raptly as Johan described how Shauku shed her disguise and bled a woodswoman. Then Johan pressed his case.

"Clearly Shauku is the greater danger. But I have a suggestion to undermine her power."

"And free yourself?" asked Adira.

"Hush," demanded Magfire. "Let him talk. He's not my enemy, though I agree he's a rat. Shauku preys upon my people like a giant leech. I want her head on a pike. Johan is your problem."

"This is how you aid allies?" snarled Adira. "I pity your enemies."

"Gentle women," soothed Taurion, "surely we can find middle ground where both Johan and Shauku are rendered dead or impotent."

"Yes, stop spatting!" chided Jasmine Boreal, large violet eyes aflame. "You quibble like two lovers on a honeymoon! It profits nothing and grates on the ear! Punish those who deserve it!"

Chastised, Adira and Magfire settled for glaring. Taurion prompted Johan, "Go on."

Confined, Johan squirmed on his rump. "This patchwork monster possesses great and unknown magics, for it fell from the stars. Shauku found the beast and taps its knowledge and spells. No surprise. Some wizards in Dominaria spend all their time accumulating new sources of magic to tap. To pin it in one place, Shauku rooted it here. The monster grows like a plant, you see, propagating by sending out shoots that take root. Thus Shauku orders the kobolds to maintain the ring of fire to confine it. Now, see the amber crystals scattered about? These crystals are like eggs."

"Eggs?" asked several people.

"Exactly. An egg contains both the substance of a bird, the yolk, and the food it needs to grow, the white. The crystals are the same. Inside is a jot of meat or wood that becomes a beast, and the amber fluid to sustain it. There's more. The monster is somewhat like a plant, but too a hive beast like a colony of bees, where separate minds and bodies cooperate to survive."

"How know you this?" asked Magfire.

Silent a moment, Johan finally confessed, "I saw its dreams."

"What?"

"Shauku communes with the monster by wrapping in a robe and napping," explained the mage. "Her dream coat lets the wearer absorb errant thoughts. I donned the coat and dreamt of the beast's foreign world in the sky."

"That can backfire," put in Jasmine. "Even insane, the monster might still possess unimaginable magics to fry your brain like an egg, or do worse."

"World in the sky?" Magfire, down-to-earth and edgy, hissed in exasperation. "Do you claim this ugly twitchy blotch fell from the Glitter Moon?"

"Never mind its origins! We waste time!" Adira was aware the vampire might arrive any time. "Why speak of all this?"

"The beast has no food," said Johan simply. "It starves."

"Sad," said Adira, "but so what?"

"If you extinguish the fires and give the beast food, it might regain its strength. Then it, not we, could lash out and punish Shauku!"

Adira and Magfire looked blank. Taurion, Heath, and Jasmine squinted.

"Think!" admonished Johan. "Any plan Shauku pursues discommodes us! To scotch her plans can only help your cause! Or will you fight Shauku and her legionnaires with your ragtag misfits?"

"We might fight the horror too!" retorted Adira. "Who knows what happens if it's loose? It might kill Shauku. It might kill all of us, or turn us into jellyfish, or pull the mountain down on our heads!"

Yet Adira Strongheart looked at her battered crew. She'd lost Virgil and Peregrine. Sister Wilemina had a broken arm. And none of them, she guessed, despite their bravery, could win against a single schooled and skillful Akron Legionnaire, let alone fifty.

Finally Adira said, "I hate to agree, but Johan's course makes sense. As Murdoch said, we need allies. Best we set this massive monster free to strike at its enemy. We'll have enough fighting to satisfy, I judge. Very well, Johan, how?"

"Look around," said the trapped wizard. "At the walls. Disregard the rubble. See how the walls join at odd angles? See the hints of six-sided tunnels, same as these crystals? These walls are made of no material found in Dominaria."

"So what?" asked Adira.

"I see it." Taurion's brown eyes went wide. He pointed through the haze at facets stippled along the walls, six-sided edges like a gigantic honeycomb. Until now, the adventurers had been too busy to notice.

"Exactly," said Johan with a tone of triumph. "When the monster fell from the stars, it crashed right on this spot."

"It makes sense." Magfire crept down a tilted tunnel with six sides. "Our tribe fled this place because of a great disaster three-score years ago. These queer tunnels…"

"The ruins built atop this hill are more than sixty years old!" countered Adira. Her hands and face were lit with her cold blue glow, giving her a ghostly pallor.

"I know that!" snapped Magfire. "The castle dates to shortly after the glaciers receded. It was obviously built on a crater. What I say is, sixty years ago the lord living in the castle must have delved into the ruins and unleashed the ancient horror that drove him from the castle and my people from the forest!"

"Could be," conceded Taurion. "I look forward to putting the question to our tribal historians."

Adira wanted to spit, tired of crotchety forestfolk and their moldy traditions. She stroked a hand along a wall that felt smooth as marble but warm as wood. By matching Johan's observations to the kobolds, the freedom fighters had learned that six-sided tunnels honeycombed the hill deep under the sky-monster's chamber. The kobolds had pointed out one descent, but just in case, Jedit led two kobolds by leashes like war dogs.

The explorers were the pirates Jedit, Adira, Simone, Murdoch, Heath, and Jasmine, and the pine warriors Magfire, Taurion, Kyenou, and three others. The tunnels were a fractured jumble canted at a bizarre angle, as if a large apartment house had been picked up and dumped on end. Skidding and sliding down the tunnels, the adventurers found their leg muscles trembling in protest.

Adira said, "I still don't understand. Do you claim these tunnels once flew through the sky?"

"Fell from the sky," corrected Taurion. "Yes. The crying horror or its eggs were in a sky-ship that sailed through the heavens and wrecked here, same as your sea-ship beached on rocks."

Adira conceded, "Anything is possible. It explains why these passages are so dreadfully canted. 1 thought they'd suffered a groundquake. But why six sided? Who builds a giant honeycomb but giant bees?"

"The crying horror bears features of both animal and plant," said Taurion. "Why not the habits of an insect?"

"The spuzzem!" Adira halted with one black boot braced on the edge of a portal. "Recall how it layers moss on its victims? Perhaps it's some spider webbing! Perhaps it's a giant insect too, let loose from these ruins!"

The thought jolted them, but they pressed on. Time was short.

Jasmine said, "This place reminds me of the stone sarcophagi of the ancients. In northern climes, frost heaves push them upward and out of the soil. Country folk think underground demons seek elbow room."

"That's it," muttered Simone. "Tell us a jolly bedtime story to soothe our nerves. But how could glass crystals survive such a crash?"

Taurion peered everywhere by the light of a torch as they took one fork after another. "Recall how tough the crystals are. Neither tiger claws nor a steel blade could sunder them. So it's possible some are intact."

Adira blinked. "How do we crack them to feed the horror?"

A voice squeaked, "Water."

Everyone looked at the kobold on Jedit's leash. The gray-purple cad looked sheepish. "Sometimes we fetch big golden boxes for Yellow Lady. She shoos us away. She thinks we don't know, but we do. Water makes them break."

"Water." Taurion rubbed his beard, nodding. "Yes. If the sky-ship crashes like a shooting star, anything alive must die. But the crystals can't be shattered, so they'd lie in the ground intact. Forever, unless something intervened. The first rainfall would make the crystals crack, so the horror could grow freely."

"Like cactuses that sit for years inert," said Jasmine, "then flourish on a handful of rain."

"Grow how much?" asked Jedit.

No one knew. In the lead, Taurion came to a triple fork and hesitated. Jedit braced both paws across a tunnel, gave a mighty sniff, and announced, "The spuzzem passed this way not long ago."

"Ohhh!" said half a dozen. Yet with a collective shrug, and no other choice, they passed on.

The tiger crept along comfortably on two feet or all fours as needed. The humans stumbled behind, heads bowed, ankles and calves throbbing from the treacherous tilted footing. Gray-stone tunnels intersected at odd angles, as if the original inhabitants had crawled on every surface like ants. Not every passage was tunnels. They found several six-sided rooms full of nothing identifiable. One room held miles of spun floss like spider webbing. Another sported gadgets like lead water pipes all jumbled and crumbling. One held big empty vats oddly spaced. One held hundreds of cells, each big enough to hold a man. In a few holes they found desiccated husks like cocoons. Every room only confused them further.

"Tar and blisters," muttered Adira. "This building has more holes than a sponge and holds just as little! If we don't find- Ulp!"

Jedit halted so suddenly that Adira trod on his tail. In garish torchlight, the tiger's eyes glowed, and his whiskers twitched. Signaling to wait, the man-beast crept ahead without a sound. Adira and others watched his striped back slither over a threshold where the passage forked and angled down.

In a moment he returned, striped face peeking over the edge, curled claws beckoning.

This room was larger, fifty feet across, but still six-sided, with each wall broken into facets like a fly's eye and several holes leading to more tunnels. More gadgets and junk projected from the walls: crumbling pipes, a stonelike trough big enough to bathe in, a bed of points like stalactites. Yet what took the explorers' breath away were amber crystals that sparkled in torchlight like jewels-thirty or more as big as bushel baskets.

"Right then!" Adira broke the spell. "Everyone fetch a jewel, or crystal, and let's breeze out of-"

"Adira…" Jasmine swayed on her feet. "I… feel…"

The woods mage pitched on her face as if shot by an arrow. In the gaping hole behind her, a ghastly green headless body loomed from darkness.

"The spuzzem!" bleated Magfire. "Kill it!"

Yet the alien monster had already attacked, invisibly and silently. Victims dropped like tenpins. The two kobolds crumpled first. Jedit Ojanen took a flying leap but crashed on his belly, out cold. Heath wavered and crumpled to his knees, pitching his torch away lest he bum himself. Others staggered and succumbed.

Succumbed to what? wondered Adira. Sleep? Fighting panic, she studied the approaching enemy wildly for a clue on how to assault it.

The green beast walked with a stiff up-and-down motion like an upright insect. The limbs were smooth as plant stems. The feet and truncated arms bore backward hooves. A tail with veins like a maple leaf jutted behind. Most alarming, the thing had no head, just a rounded dome atop its moss-green body. Lack of a head made it seem a slimy headless corpse seeking revenge on the living.

Adira Strongheart got fresh worries as the spuzzem's queer backward hooves shot streams of cobweb. Magfire squawled as gunk struck her hair and face. Clawing only tied their hands with gummy strands. Adira dodged but was slapped by a ropy cobweb. Repelled, she swiped at it. The stuff tore easily but stuck like honey. As Adira wrenched glop from her chin, she stumbled, clumsy as a cow, and went to one knee, struggling to keep her torch high.

Panic swelled in her bosom until Adira felt as if she were a sparrow trapped by a hawk. Why clumsy? Struggling with gummy strands by spitting firelight, she misjudged the floor and flopped on her bottom. Weakly she cursed and resisted the urge to cry.

Clumsy. Fearful. Dizzy. Despairing. Why?

Adira's head swam as if drunk. Her brain felt muzzy as the cobwebs in her hair. Part of her wanted to He down and nap. Yet horrid images swirled in her skull. Ghastly visions of desiccated corpses gutted and hung in cocoons from the ceiling. Bodies dried like peat, eyes sunken into black pits, cheeks drawn so tight teeth showed through skin, ribs and breastbones jutting starkly, hair fallen out or reduced to stringy fuzz. Adira saw herself worse than dead, swaddled in a cocoon, unable to move, barely able to breath, knowing she was food stored for the nightmarish Spuzzem. A fiend that attacked with strands of webbing, but something fiercer, a gnawing assault on the mind.

Weak as a blind kitten, Adira felt more slimy rope slap her ear. The pirate queen didn't bother to mop it off, just struggled to think. She was still awake and fighting while others had collapsed. Jasmine, closest to the fiend, had dropped right away. Heath had staggered and dropped his torch. Murdoch had flopped. Simone had almost stayed on her feet.

Shaking her head, trying to claw back to full consciousness, Adira went over details again. Why did some of her crew collapse but others only wobbled? Sleepy, sinking, Adira knew she'd collapse and set her hair on "Fire!" snorted the pirate queen. Cranking her eyes open,

Adira confirmed her suspicion. No one had been touched, but people without torches had collapsed immediately. People with torches only staggered, unless they dropped their fire, whereupon they blacked out. And hadn't the spuzzem killed those lovers in the dark?

"Fire keeps off… poisonous vapors… like those that suffocate dwarves in mines! Magfire… uhh! Simone… Wave your torch before your face!"

Heedless of igniting her wild curls, Adira lifted her torch and almost singed her eyebrows. Breathing smoke, sniffling and coughing, Adira found her head cleared. Through rippling flames she saw the spuzzem stump toward Simone, who crawled blind as a mole.

Adira jiggled her torch to make it flare. Fire was life here, same as if they still froze on those cruel wave-swept rocks. Shouting to encourage her crew, Adira scurried across the tilted floor to Simone. Jamming her head against Simone's black curls, Adira sheltered both behind the protecting flames. Woozy, Simone fought against stupor.

"Simone!" Adira shouted across five inches. "Wake up! We'll die if we don't attack!"

"Kyenou! Ply fire! Get up! Stay together!" From another side, Magfire goaded her scout. Magfire squatted over one woodsman and tore off shreds of his woolen shirt, then wadded the shreds around Kyenou's odd double-ended spear. Igniting the rags, she and Kyenou advanced on trembling legs against a lifelong terror.

From their side, Adira and Simone attacked. The lieutenant's face shone from the heat of the torch, but her eyes bulged with anger. Stepping carefully, Simone tore off Jasmine's blue skirt and spiked it on her black sword blade. Together Adira and Simone crabbed four-legged toward the spuzzem.

The creature swiveled slowly as four desperate people advanced with fire. Adira laughed grimly as the spuzzem back-stepped on plant-stem legs.

She barked, "Stick it!"

Magfire and Simone rammed spear and sword into the spuzzem's torso, easy as puncturing a cactus. Fire scorched, stinking like burned cabbage. The spuzzem's body proved no denser than a flower. Simone and Kyenou sliced away a flap like green leather with an inner core of white cottony threads.

"Fire its insides!" called Adira and Magfire together. Makeshift torches were shoved into the body cavity. White threads sizzled and charred black. Smoke spewed from the spuzzem's vegetable body. The women punished the monster with steel and fire. The spuzzem's supple arms thrashed weakly. Chitinous hooves drummed on the floor.

"That's deuced odd!" Adira twisted her black sword from the monster's body. "It's changing?"

Indeed. Rather than grow weaker, the spuzzem kicked and flailed with more animation, as if feeling pain for the first time. Knees grew supple. Arms elongated and sprouted hands, then fingers. The green body deepened to brown. From the smooth hump of charred torso popped a head with black curly hair.

Kyenou and Simone jumped back, their attack forgotten. Adira felt queasy and knew her face blanched.

In killing a monster, they'd killed a man.

A naked brown-skinned man wore tight black curls. Blue tattoos swirled across his chest and shoulders and thighs. His nose was flat, his teeth strong and white, his eyes dark and fierce. All four women knew they faced a warrior.

A dying warrior. His belly was torn open. Hideous burned gashes leaked a red river. He bit his tongue in agony, yet his face was oddly stoic.

Choking on blood, the brown man stared straight at his killers, or saviors, and gasped a warning in old-fashioned words. "Never… eat… food… crying gods…"

A death rattle escaped his red-smeared mouth, and the man sagged.

The four warrior women stood with bloodstained hands and dripping weapons, wondering what they'd done.

"I don't understand," mewed Simone the Siren. "He was the spuzzem?"

"An Old One." Magfire's voice rang hollow in the underground chamber. "Ancient people from legend who inhabited this forest when it was jungle. He lived a lifetime under the sun, it's plain, and went without clothes because it was hot. But that's thousands of generations."

"Cursed," Adira whispered. "By the crying god. To live forever as a spuzzem."

Groans broke their reverie as Jedit, Heath, and others roused. Slowly they shuffled up to stare at the time-lost warrior. Jedit Ojanen, not even human, gave the most profound lament.

"Imagine what he could have taught us."

Adira Strongheart mopped tears and sweat and cobwebs from her face with filthy hands. "So the wind blows. Magfire, your forest is rid of the spuzzem. Now let's hoist these crystals and take our fight to Shauku. And Johan."