Fallen Mage Regressor

Mal rushed to the woman lying on the ground. Her limbs were flaccid, and her chest had stilled to a perfect stop. He kneeled down next to her and brought his ear next to her nose.

The faintest breath tickled his skin.

Still breathing, still alive.

He reached into his satchel and pulled out the ingredients he knew that he'd need. There were cuts and scrapes across her hand and wrist. He didn't see any vines poking at the tip of her mouth. He was willing to take a bet that she'd managed to dodge the spores and seeds.

Based off of the deep divots driven into the ground, Philo had gone unconscious at some point and Lusia had been dragging him away. How she managed to cover so much ground so quickly was something that Mal was still trying to figure out, but he figured that he'd ask her when she woke up.

He swept aside her bangs and found an angry red welt right on her forehead.

A concussion, then.

His limbs moved on autopilot. Now, more than ever, he was thankful for Cassandra's training. If this had happened before he'd met her, he would have been useless.

He pulled out elder root and put it into his mortar, then took off shavings from the root and put it inside of the bowl. He ground down said shavings, grabbed a flask and poured a little bit of water into the mix.

It was amazing how versatile elder root was. For certain types of injuries, it was all that was required to bring someone back—and thankfully, a concussion was one of them. He brought the mixture to her lips and tilted the bowl up. The liquid flowed into her mouth and Mal waited.

A cough.

Her eyes slowly opened and looked over at him. "Master?"

"Hey," he said. "How are you feeling?"

She coughed. "Bad."

"Good, that means that you're not dying. Probably."

She wiped some of the spittle off the edge of her mouth, then pushed herself up. Mal instinctively stepped forward to steady her before he stopped and took a step back. She fully stood up, then brushed off her maid dress.

"We need to find Philo," she said.

"What happened?" Mal said. "Do you know which direction he went?"

She turned her head and looked off deeper into the forest. "That way."

A beat of silence.

"We were being chased by something," she said. "A creature with rotting flesh and exposed bone. It hit Philo with something and he went unconscious. I grabbed his collar and attempted to flee." She shook her head. "I was unsuccessful."

Holam stepped forward. "Why didn't it take you?"

"I don't know."

Mal knew. If the elven witchcraft teacher was right and everybody had a certain affinity toward certain types of mana, then Lusia would almost certainly be under light.

Mal didn't know much about light-type mana. It was one of those third-order combination types of mana, the sort that took an immense amount of effort to grow and obtain. It doesn't come about naturally except at the tops of the highest mountains, but Mal was willing to bet that it was absolute poison for a withering-type creature.

And of course, he didn't say a single bit of this to anyone else.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "We need to get after Philo."

"The draconid?" Holam sniffed. "It was his people who got us into this mess."

Rolam took a step away from his brother and looked at him in shock. "How could you suggest that?"

Holam looked at his brother like he was looking at a stranger. "How could I not? He's a draconid."

"He's my friend, you dishonorable fool!"

Holam narrowed his eyes. "Watch your tone."

At that, Rolam's clamped his mouth shut.

The two stared at each other: Holam with that look of disapproval, and Rolam like a wide-eyed rabbit.

Mal turned around. Lusia turned to follow him.

"Where are you going?" Holam said.

"I have no interest in your whatever petty conflict is occurring," Mal said without turning around. "A member of my circle is in danger."

Mal continued walking, Lusia's quiet footsteps just behind him. A beat later, two more sets of footsteps joined the sound.

There were a few grumbles, but no more conversation.

Good, I'll need them for this.

They went deeper into an unclaimed section of the surrounding land. The trees started to stretch up unnaturally, not to the level of the elder oak, but at least double the size of normal oak. Mal noticed the fog.

"What's up with all this fog?" Rolam muttered. "It's like we're back in that other place again."

Holam frowned. "This is an older section of land, the farmers don't touch it, and for good reason."

Mal saw no fog. He was starting to draw uncomfortable correlations with another event that had occurred.

[Familiar?]

"No, I'm not," he whispered. "Shut up."

A bundle of confused images hit Mal like a carriage. An excited babble, like a toddler frantically trying to show off their newest project or creation. It was a picture of the elder oak forest, the one with trees reaching up to the sun. Familiarity? A distant relation. Two pictures of the two brothers, Holam and Rolam.

"I get it, I get it." Mal rubbed his temples. "You know each other."

Was there some kind of inter-plant communication network? Did they send messages via pollen and spores? That actually sounded strangely plausible. Also, Mal needed to look into seeing if he could do that via his own plants.

[Creature. Two creatures. Looking?]

"Yes," he said, "we are."

A shift from behind. "Mal? Who are you talking to?"

"Nobody. The trees. Shut up."

[Show you!]

A golden light flickered out of the corner of Mal's vision. He did an abrupt pivot, and the others stopped.

Except for Lusia, of course, who followed behind him without a word.

"Honored leader, where are you going?" Rolam said.

"After Philo. Keep up."

"But your maid said that he went in that other direction," Holam said.

"And obviously, the creature turned a corner to throw us off. Keep up."

"You said keep up twice."

Mal didn't deign to respond to that particular statement.

He marched onward, and the glow stayed just in the distance, leading him ever forward. They kept on moving, and then the light was snuffed out, out of nowhere. Mal froze.

"Did the fog get thicker?" Rolam said. He waved the air in front of his face with his open palm. "I can barely see my own fingers."

Mal shut his eyes and paid attention to the weird voice in his head. "Where's the light?

No response.

There was a jolt in his system that came from nowhere—similar to the feeling of the spores coming up his throat.

A wind whistled through the trees, and the wood turned a black, flaking, rotten sort of shade of color. The black spread in the form of veins, like there was something growing on the bark.

Mal took a single step back. "Be on your guard."

"Be on my guard for what? I can't even see anything." Rolam said.

Lusia shut her eyes. "Vision isn't strictly necessary."

Holam frowned and shut his own eyes. "She's right, brother." His ears twitched. "Especially with our senses, we don't need to rely on sight."

Mal was really hoping that they would be able to back up their boasts with actual action, otherwise this would turn ugly fast.

Something writhed and twisted in the tree lines—a creature with thick, broad shoulders, hunched over, vines spreading out between its skin and out of its mouth.

Then Mal recognized it.

Philo clambered out of the trees. His eyes were wide and terrified, and the vines growing out from between his scales twisted in Mal's direction.

Philo screamed, the noise muffled and nearly unnoticed with the vine trapped in his throat. Rolam, Holam, and Lusia all looked over in his direction.

"Mal, you can see through the fog?" Rolam said.

"I can."

"How does he look?"

"Not good."

Mal narrowed his eyes. The wither-type mana was densely packed around Philo. The man was practically a dispensary for the stuff. It was more than had been on the other two half-dead people that Mal had put down earlier.

He's the host, Mal thought. That's the only thing that explains him being the center of this whole mess. It must have realized that having a Dracanid as a place to stay would be the right move.

Mal clenched his fists. If he didn't figure out a way to remove this thing from Philo, and quickly, then Philo would end up with his insides hollowed out and his body turned into a living receptacle for whatever unholy abomination was inhabiting him.

The trees gave one last groan. The smell of rotting flesh wafted through the air. Lusia's nose twitched. Rolam reached up and pinched his nostrils.

All at once, Mal felt his instincts screaming at him to jump back.

A split second later, dozens of blackened vines ripped out of the ground and wrapped around his arms, then pulled him into the dirt.

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