Gentleman’s Guide to Fantastic Beasts 30

Gentleman’s Guide to Fantastic Beasts 30

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by Sivantic.

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Ruin.

Death.

Disaster.

We flew above lands that should’ve been safe, even at the cost of abandoning so many others, yet all we saw was destruction and despair.

The last fortified city that we entered was already dead, the disease had taken its course, but now it was different.

Screams and shouts and roars echoed from the road below. The caravan that the young man, Jacob, had come from was easily found in its death throes. The ground was covered in blood and bodies, bodies that were torn and given many wounds, and was slathered in ebon sludge. I watched one as we passed, empowering my eyes to look at it from above, and watched the living disease seep into wounds and disappear.

Meanwhile, everyone else watched the fighting.

Mothers and father and older siblings tried to fight against the monsters, only to be ripped apart and their bodies defiled. The creatures vomited or bleed the living sludge from their bodies, and it seeped from every pore. They roared and screamed, but after my dissection I knew that their minds were no more, that most of it was eaten away, and that they were nothing more than vessels for infection that would soon die filled with now-dormant disease.

They were led by those who reacted differently to the disease, the ones who searched for children and who carefully applied trace amounts to the child, and made the convulse and shake into unconsciousness.

Some awoke with a roar and ran off to join the feral horde, but other children… other children stayed deep asleep and they carried them with gentleness.

I could only wonder if those who retained their minds could be saved, but that was beside the point for now.

I made Cornelius descend into the furor below to do what I could.

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Interlude: Djet’Is

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The creature that we found, the monster in this land enrobed in plenty, was more terrible than any I encountered in the Great Desert. They wore the faces of family and kin, they took their bodies and turned them into ravenous monsters, and they took the strong and turned them into other creatures filled with hate and spite. I shuddered at the thought of father or any of the council being infested by the creature, their gaze turning yellow and their skin rippling with ebony veins just beneath the skin.

This infestation could not be allowed to reach the As’Kari.

I took comfort in the knowledge that even the carriers of this creature would not be able to survive the expanse between these lands and the nearest oasis.

Still, I wouldn’t wish this plague upon any person.

“I found carriers who retain their intellect.” Will spoke to me softly. It was always frightening when he did. It was in moments such as these that I remembered that he took apart the greatest beasts of the Desert with only the slightest hint of effort. With a flick of his wrist, with a twitch of the threads that he called upon, monsters that killed hundreds of warriors were torn asunder. “Lead Gale and Knight Averi in capturing one. Here.”

He gave me a length of the thread that he used, but it was thick and more than enough to bind a man. No. His power coursed though it was like a raging sand river. When I connected the two ends, I was sure that nothing would be able to escape.

“I will deal with the rest of the creatures.” Those words were simply followed by a myriad of spikes, the same that he used to hold massive creatures against a wall or slab of stone, coming forth from the cloak that he wore. Three dozen flowed outward and formed a circle around his flying home and mount. I realized what he meant to do to those who were no more than bodies meant to spread disease, as they suddenly grew white hot. “I’ll be attending to at least a hundred wounded, but if you need my aid, call upon me and don’t risk yourself.”

Cornelius suddenly stopped, and the funerary pins, glowing white hot and with his threads linked at their dull ends, surged forward.

I knew that each would find their mark. That they would pierce through and burn all that they touched. That as Cornelius descended hundreds would perish at a mere thought… and for a moment I wondered if I had any right to ask him to kill for the As’Kari. Such power, such might, would’ve allowed us to conquer the whole Desert, but would anyone have truly have joined us, if we unleashed such might upon them? Would anyone have become our brothers and sisters in truth, and not just slaves of fear, waiting for the day they learn the art themselves and turn it against us?

That question rang in my head for a long time, until Will looked at me through the mask that he wore.

For a second, I saw his eyes in the tinted lenses of his mask.

“There are children in danger, Djet’Is. Please, save them, too.”

With those words uttered, I felt my body move and I seized both the forest-warrior and the apprentice that Will took under his wing.

“What—

“Where—

“We go to overcome the wise infested and save the children they are trying to steal.” With those words uttered, I leapt off Cornelius with Averi under my arm and Gale upon my shoulder.

I looked upon a verdant hell.

Soldiers lay on the side of the road or against trees. Many sported wounds that showed they took measures before being taken by the disease. In the corner of my vision, there was a family in a wagon where a father lay at the foot of the wagon with his dagger in his stomach and family dead behind him. Those infested with the black, living tar were writhing, bleeding, and clawing at their faces in pain and horror as they convulsed with their bones and bodies breaking because of seizures.

When they were overtaken by the sludge, they tore at their own bodies with their own hands, as they sought to make more spaces for their masters to surge out of the body from.

I wreathed myself in fire, and strengthened my skin, knowing that I would be able to turn away all but the finest of magical blades and weapons… yet I still felt poorly armed for what I looked upon. I wished to be clad in living armor that turned my flame into a pure white inferno that turned sand to glass, which nothing could pierce short of another of my caliber wearing a similar armor. It was a weapon that only my father should have, but without it I felt unsure of the simple task of dispatching a single creature from the forest that should be beneath me.

I was afraid, and even though I summoned the courage to move forward, I took heart in Will’s actions.

His weapons streaked between the trees and the skies. They killed the infected with singular strikes straight through the skull and until their stomachs. Each falling, white-hot star immolated the creatures from within when they fell, and when they arose, they were pure and unmarred. A glance behind me showed that layers of empowered cloth formed around Cornelius, turning the mount and its rider into a flying fortress with unstoppable spears.

Such strength should be with the As’Kari now and always, a part of my mind whispered to me, but I ignored it.

The task at hand mattered more.

I crashed through the tree line, singing leaves and branched in my wake and I tossed back my two passengers to fend for themselves, and my foes looked upon my arrival with wide, yellow eyes and bestial eyes.

I took hold of one’s skull and burned through it completed, and with a twist of my ankle and body brought my leg through the skull of another.

The one farthest from me moved to seize a child, but both Averi and Gale moved in tandem shortly after my landing, and an arrow and sword wreathed in flame immolated the creature.

For a second, I thought that I erred and that none were spared for study, until one of the children infested looked at me with yellow eyes and ran… while the other bodies surged towards us.

I prepared myself, only for Will’s funerary nails to surge from the sky and kill the infested bodies, and leave the path clear for the single, infected child running.

My heart cried out and told me that I should’ve spared him the suffering when he is already doing so much, but I silenced it and surged after the newly-born creature with Gale and Averi engaging against the infected adults that came after us.

Regret will wait until later.

Now, I had to do my duty and hope that there was a cure.

…

I hardly understood those who lived in the forest, but it was apparent to me that the young man we’d rescued felt nothing but despair as he looked upon what happened to his people. He wailed, he screamed and he knelt and pounded the ground before the bodies and piles of ashes that remained. Though his body was weak, it seemed that he still had some semblance of a spirit within him, even if it seemed as though it was ready to break.

I brought the child, recently infested, to Will and already he was prepared with tinctures and concoctions that I recognized from the desert. The various herbs and tinctures that he used were strongly scented and stung when applied, but none could deny their efficacy. We produced all that we could, even growing plants in pots and carrying them with us, despite their great weight and hunger for water. That a warrior’s limb could be saved, or that an infection from a wound could be destroyed and spare the life of a warrior, was all that mattered.

Still, I was unsure if any of it would work against the living disease.

“Thank you, Djet’Is.” His thanks were low, and he floated the child his way. It snarled and screamed and strained against its bindings. Scratches from where its skin tore were more black than red. It took all that I had not to behead it with the edge of my hand. Already, its eyes were glowing in the dim light cast by the great tree of light. He looked upon the creature, and it was cowed in his presence as he scorched the very air in his presence, filling the air with the scent of burning air, as he cleansed his presence with fire and examined his patient. “You may go now.”

I stayed, even though I was dismissed, and a sigh left his lips before he went silent and focused on his work.

I needed to know if it could be done.

Clear came forth from one his suitcases and so did thin pipettes of glass with the smallest of pointed metal tubes at the end. I’d seen them before in his most involved experiments involving the venom of the strongest creatures. They were like the fangs of snakes, hollow within and containing whatever he desired within… or whatever he extracted. It depended whether he pulled or pushed the simple mechanism that capped one end of the hollow cylinder and its point.

Dozens of these things flowed out from his luggage and I was apprehensive as he bound the creature completely and utterly from head to toe, save for locations where the numerous needles sank into flesh… and began to pull out the dark sludge from within.

“You’re trying to pull the poison out?” I realized what he was attempting to do and spoke. He nodded at my words. It was like a warrior trying to extract poison or venom from a wound with their mouth to prevent death. Sometimes, it worked… if there was not enough of the deadly substance within. And, in the case of this living disease, we knew not how much needed to remain in the body. What if it would simply increase in amount? “Will that work?”

“The only other option is to find something that the creature will perish to from within. Poisons to fight poisons without killing.” Will spoke sharply, and the tools began to fill with the brackish, thick liquid. Once filed they were taken apart and their contents fed to his flame, before once more returning to withdraw the disease from the infected child. Slowly, but surely, as more and more was withdrawn from the creature its struggling began to subside in the full-body binding that will imposed upon it. He seemed to stand straighter for a second, until going still. “No!”

He once told me that he felt what the objects he controlled touched, which gave him precision beyond compare.

Now, I realized, that was a curse as the bindings came off the child and we both looked upon eyes bereft of life… even as the body still breathed. Blood issued forth from the ears and nose and eyes of the child.

Red blood, but still tainted by the disease.

Will spoke after laying the body to rest in purifying flame.

“Withdrawal works, but the sludge itself keeps its host alive somehow.” Will spoke softly and shouldered all the blame without a hint of wavering from the burden. The body burned and Will continued to watch as he cleansed his tools and discarded the tainted bindings to the flame. “The creature isn’t a disease. It’s some sort of living parasite. A creature that the host can no longer live without after they are possessed, because the spaces left behind will become wounds.”

If he were anyone else, I would’ve offered words of compassion.

Instead, I had only one thing to ask.

“What next?”

As I expected, he nodded and picked himself up from his failure. The blame still remained, and he would never forget this, but he chose to move forward.

“A means to pacify or control the creature. It has intellect. It strategizes, adapts, and can speak. The people they take know how feign being people, that means it can recall and it knows how to act around others. This thing, whatever it is, is a monster that I will dissect, learn of, and master.” Will spoke softly, but every word was a bloodsworn oath. I knew that he would stop at nothing to do as he said. “Just like all the others.”

Had anyone else said such words in the face of what we now faced, I would’ve scoffed.

When Will spoke, however, I could only nod.