Against the Warlock

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It wasn’t dark; neither was it light.  A perpetual half-light afflicted this patch of jungle.  The trees were more gnarled, the paths more treacherous, and the animals too quiet, those that had not fled.  Animals weren’t affected by the First Language like humans, but they could still sense when something about their environment was wrong.

Even knowing these changes were only perceived, Lun-Go shivered.  Her grey-white wrappings over leather armor seemed scant protection against the looming, threatening sense.  No matter how she told herself it was imaginary, a magus’ story spoken into her hindbrain, the trees remained stubbornly twisted and the path remained determinedly perilous.

Nor was Nebah handling the effects much better than Lun-Go.  His dark brow was twisted, he clutched the golden button that was supposed to help keep him from responding to Suggestion so its design imprinted on his palm, and he muttered a counter-story in the First Language, but affecting oneself with Suggestion was far harder than affecting others.  No magus he knew was as powerful as the one lurking at the center of this perceived distortion.

Spoken into their imaginations, the nightmare appeared from nowhere.  A monstrous, orange-flecked creature with too many limbs and unnatural proportions, it scuttled at the mercenary pair with exaggerated claws and fangs extended.

“It’s not real,” Nebah declared.  The way he eyed the monster suggested he had not convinced himself.  “Awareness should break the Suggestion.  Hold your ground.  It’s.  Not.  Real.”

Lun-Go drew her scimitar and a parrying dagger.  “I’m trying!  You’re the magus – can’t you do something about this?”

“Only if the Suggesting magus can hear me,” Nebah protested.

The monster closed, and Lun-Go felt it slavering in her face.  She flung herself to the side and parried a clawed limb that showed no wound from her blade.  “We can sure hear him!”

“…Good point.”  Nebah pulled his broad shoulders back, the whites of his eyes flashed, and his deep, sonorous voice boomed through the twilit jungle in the First Language, attempting to weave his story into his opponent’s.  He couldn’t directly counter his opponent’s Suggestions, but he could make his own.  To begin, he Suggested an origin for the monster attacking them.  Only a small change to how the three of them – Lun-Go, Nebah, and their adversary – imagined it, but it made the nightmare mortal.

If it was mortal, as Lun-Go now believed, she could kill it.  Dodging the lash of a clawed, venomous tongue, she sprinted aside, forcing it to scuttle after her.  She ran two steps up a termite mound and leapt, twisting in the air.  Her scimitar flashed as she flew, striking the monster’s center of mass and cutting deep through its surface – Skin?  Chitin?  Scales?  She couldn’t tell – before she landed on the opposite side and whirled.

It thrashed, and whined like a deflating air bladder, before collapsing.  When it fell, the ground shook, and Lun-Go stumbled.

Nebah helped her to her feet.  His brocade robes were sweat-stained, despite his attempts at composure.  “What would have happened?” Lung-Go asked.  “If that thing struck me?”

“From how you interacted with it, I suspect you would have died.  The Suggestion of injury would have been enough to stop your heart.”  Nebah eyed the monster, which had not faded to either of them.  “If I’d realized how talented this magus is, I would’ve demanded a higher payment.”  Not that the village had more to pay two foreign mercenaries.

The pair continued towards the blight’s source.  Trees loomed closer, the path grew narrower, and thorny vines snarled the way.  Telling herself again that they weren’t real, Lun-Go went to brush them aside, and the thorns pricked her skin, drawing blood.  She licked at the blood, and it tasted real.  “If this is all Suggestion, how can I be bleeding?  My brain can’t convince my skin to break.”

Nebah used his staff to push the vines aside as Lun-Go drew her scimitar again and began hacking.  “Either the story is detailed enough to Suggest the taste, feel, and appearance of blood to us from that interaction despite it not being there, or the vines are real.  I don’t imagine the locals groomed this path recently.”

“I hate magi,” Lun-Go grumbled.  “I’m going to stab this one with a very real sword.”

Past the vines, several real or Suggested snakes, and a patch of quicksand that might be Suggested but would still entrap and suffocate them, the pair reached a treehouse.  A ragged, naked boy sat cross-legged at the tree’s base, his eyes closed and his voice rasping in the First Language.

Lun-Go and Nebah stared at him.  “A boy?” Lun-Go demanded.  “A boy is the powerful magus, or is this an illusion, too?”

Nebah said a few words in the First Language and hesitated.  “I…this is how he sees himself.  If it is the result of magic, it is beyond any even in myth.”

The boy scrambled to his feet.  “No!  You can’t be here!  Go away!”  He said it in his native tongue, and then reverted to the First Language.  “You are not here you are not here you are not here.”

These Suggestions were too at odds with reality to take hold, and Lun-go and Nebah remained present.  Lun-Go grimaced and sheathed her scimitar.

“What are you doing?” Nebah demanded.  He gestured at the boy.  “Finish this.  No matter how great a storyteller he is, he can’t Suggest your sword away.”

Lun-Go shook her head.  “If the villagers want some kid dead, they can do it themselves.”

Nebah folded his arms.  “He’s dangerous, Lun-Go.  He killed villagers trying to approach, and almost us.”

Lun-Go ignored him.  She crouched down before the boy, who was still spinning a story in the First Language, a constant narrative that was responsible for the perception of twilight, the ominous trees, and everything else that distinguished this region of jungle from the rest for those who could hear him speaking.  “He reminds me of me,” she murmured.

“That – oh.”  Nebah sighed.  “A defense mechanism?”

Holding the boy’s eyes, Lun-Go nodded.  “He thinks he needs it.”  She held out her hands to the boy, who flinched away from her but didn’t break eye contact, and never stopped narrating.  “What happened to you?”

The boy didn’t answer directly, but the scene changed around the trio, replaced by a different part of the jungle.  It was night, and smoke drifted on the air.  Lun-Go and Nebah could taste that smoke, feel pain both physical and emotional, hear violence, but it was…patchy.  As multisensory as the boy’s First Language descriptions were, he was trying to tell the story with them as him.  It was too unrealistic, the perceptions deteriorating as their foreminds contradicted the hindbrains.

When the story finished, the boy stopped speaking and looked down at the ground.  All of his previous Suggestions faded, so the jungle reverted to normal, the daylight returned, and the places where thorns had pricked Lun-Go were only sore, not bloody.

“I understand,” Lun-go told the boy.  Though she had not been able to make out the details, she had experienced enough of the boy’s story.  She stood up and drew her scimitar.  “I’m going to go kill those villagers.”

Nebah put a hand on her arm.  “What would that solve?”

Lun-Go glared.  “He needed them, and they turned him away.”

“He needs them no less now.  They will never be there for him if you kill them.”

Shaking off Nebah’s hand, Lun-Go stalked across the clearing before lowering her sword.  She refused to meet Nebah’s eyes, but she knelt before the boy.  “What’s your name?”

“Amesh.”

“Do you want to go home, Amesh?”

Amesh shrank inward.  “I can’t.”

“You can with us,” Nebah said.

“And if they still won’t accept you, I will stab them, and then you can come with us,” Lung-Go added, and Nebah sighed.

Amesh looked between Nebah and Lun-Go before he gave a slow nod.  Keeping behind Lun-Go, he followed her and Nebah back to the village.

People gathered upon spotting Nebah and Lun-Go.  Obvious foreigners, they attracted attention.  Lun-Go sank closer to the ground, like a slinking panther, while Nebah straightened his back and raised his chin.  Amesh tailed further and further behind them.

Buna, the village elder, greeted them.  “We are most grateful to you for freeing us from the danger that menaced us.  Truly, you are powerful.”

A gracious nod incorporating all Nebah’s regal heritage answered her, and then the villagers spotted Amesh.  They pointed and drew back from him, or perhaps from Lun-Go’s glare, which promised blades.

Buna sucked in her lips.  “You brought him here?”

Lun-Go began to snarl a response, but Nebah preempted her, his voice projecting calm and reassurance without relying upon Suggestion.  “He belongs here, Elder.  He is a powerful magus, not an evil warlock.  Your village should be grateful to have one with such a gift for storytelling.”

“He killed people!” Buna protested.

“He created a sanctuary for himself when you did not provide it.  I doubt he could separate reality from Suggestion any more than you could.”  Nebah rubbed his thumb across his button.  “All children create imaginary worlds, Elder.  Wonderful lands, sometimes, or terrible, but always a place of retreat.  The difference is that Amesh spoke his into being in all your minds.”

“This is well for you; you are also a powerful magus.  What shall happen to us when you leave?”

Nebah regarded the Elder.  “I think that depends upon you.”  He turned away from the village in a ripple of stiff brocade.  “Lun-Go, we’re leaving.”

“Leaving?  But you didn’t fulfill the task!” Buna protested.

Pausing, Nebah dug in his robes and tossed a pouch of tarnished coins and uncut jewels at Buna’s feet.  There would be other work.  “Do better this time, Elder,” he Suggested.

With a final, threatening glare, Lun-Go followed Nebah out of the village.  “Do you think he’ll be alright?” she asked.  “Maybe we should have brought him with us.”

“Amesh?” Nebah asked.  “Yes, I think so.  Although he will need to refine his storytelling when the conviction of youth fades.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

They nearly reached the savannah before Nebah answered; Jomindei towered, snowcapped, in the distance through the diminishing foliage.  “He won’t end up like you, Lun-Go.”

Lun-Go froze.  “You can’t know that.”

Nebah smiled.  “Maybe not.  But didn’t you notice?  Magic like Amesh’s is not the only use of the First Language.”

Then, Lun-Go smiled too, and the two mercenaries continued toward their next adventure.

Thank you for reading Lloyd Earickson’s short story, Against the Warlock, an IGC Publishing original story. If you enjoyed the story, please consider leaving a comment or review in the discussion below the story. Be sure to follow IGCPublishing.com for updates, more information, and other freely available stories.

If you want to know more about the writing process for this story and how it came to be, please read the author’s note and release post.

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