Mark of the Fool

“Stop,” Alex called as his summoned army reached the forest’s edge.

The aeld tree shed a green-golden light in a clearing ahead. It was alone, unguarded, and an old windmill rose behind it. Gwyllain had been right. Something was wrong with the sapling. Alex had done some reading on aeld trees after the asrai had offered to bring him one: the spiritual plants projected their feelings into the air.

And this tree?

Fear, panic and pain emanated from it. He felt for the young sapling.

“Well, you see the tree, Alex!” Gwyllain said, his voice frayed with panic. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll be taking that offer to fly away now—”

“I wouldn’t,” Alex said.

“Eh?”

“Look.”

The young wizard pointed to the windmill.

His enhanced senses took in the moonlight streaming through the archway leading into the mill, the cracks in the ancient stone, and a window high above. He couldn’t see very far inside, but there was movement in the dark.

Lots of movement.

“That mill’s full of monsters,” he said. “And I get the feeling the birds have something to do with them.”

Alex glanced at the flock, which had been growing with every passing heartbeat, circling the canopy. There was something unnatural in the way they were gathering.

“Oh by the fae lords,” the asrai cried, his ears going stiff as his scales paled. “…if the birds are being controlled…oh no, they’re going to eat me!”

He tried to fly away using Alex’s potion, but the young wizard caught him by the shoulder.

“You separate from me and they’ll kill you,” Alex said. “They’re waiting for one of three things, I think: for those birds to build up, for us to come out from under the tree cover, or for us to run. We do that, and they’ll attack.”

“Wh-what do we do then, ooooh I should’ve listened to that pixie! Should’ve listened to their cousin’s cousin! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, they’re going to eat us! The birds are going to peck out our eyes and—”

“I’m not gonna let that happen,” Alex said. “You stay close to me, and I won’t let ‘em hurt you. You’re the one that led me here, right?” He smiled at the little fae. “I’d be a pretty shitty guy if I let you die after you went through all this trouble.”

He used his training to make his voice as soothing and confident as he could. Some of Gwyllain’s tension seemed to ease.

“Y-you sure?” the fae asked.

“I’m sure,” Alex said, being careful not to say ‘I promise’. Making a promise or pact—even by accident—wouldn’t be the best idea with a fae. What would happen if he promised ‘You won’t be hurt’ then something terrible happened?

He didn’t think that fae pact magic would accept, ‘But it was an accident!’ as an excuse.

“Right,” he said, taking a loop of rope from his bag. “This is going to sound strange, but I want to bind you to me.”

Gwyllain gave him a horrified look.

“No, no, no, not like that!” the wizard said quickly. “If you’re tied to me, I can keep you safe and watch out for you. I don’t want us getting separated if those birds swarm us.”

Gwyllain gave the rope a dubious look. “O-okay, if it’ll keep me from being pecked to death.”

Glad no one else was around to hear their conversation, Alex had his Wizard’s Hands loop the rope around his waist and tie the little asrai to himself.

“Now, let’s force their hand and not let any more of those birds gather.”

Gwyllain gave him a frightened look. “You’re going to have to move quickly if you want the tree. T-they’ll attack us the minute we step into the open.”

“Who said anything about us going out there?” Alex asked. “They’re going to come to us.”

He switched to one of the tongues of the celestials. “Taraneas, I want you to start webbing up the canopy above and around us. I want a wall of silk that nothing’s going to get through, even something as small as a sparrow.”

The taraneas chittered and sprayed their webs into the trees.

He switched to the tongue of water elementals. “Water and ice elementals, turn everything around us into ice. Ground. Leaves. Tree trunks. All of it.”

The water and ice elementals bubbled and cracked, spraying their surroundings and freezing it over. He had his other monsters gather inside the frozen area, ready to attack anything that breached its perimeter. To his air elementals and elemental beetle swarms, he gave them orders to hover nearby…poised to fly to the windmill with a single command.

Then, he switched to the tongue of earth elementals.

“Alright my underground friends, I‘ve got a…special job for you.”

“This is strange…” the younger of the two hags said.

“What is?” the elder sister asked.

They crouched by the windmill’s uppermost window, claws out and magics ready. Watching the forest and clearing below, they waited for their enemy to step into the moonlight.

Every heartbeat brought more birds, tilting the odds to their favour. Many of their avian servants were day-flyers—unable to see well at night—and so the best time to strike would be when the enemy stepped from the dark treeline.

But he never did.

Even as their flock grew—and they knew he could see it—he just stayed. Was he planning to run?

The elder hag frowned.

They were missing something.

Then she realised her sister hadn’t answered her. “What is strange?” she asked again, her voice filled with impatience.

“I remember this one…” the younger said. “His clay companion was dangerous, but—of all those who killed my servants—he seemed least deadly. I thought he would be an easy kill…he was not this difficult to ambush before; my even crich-tulagh dragged him beneath the water.”

She scratched her chin. “His senses were not so sharp…and the creatures he conjured not so—”

“Many.”

Both hags startled as their ‘ally’ slithered from the dark and joined them in peering out the window.

“They are many. And they are coordinated like an army. Do not dismiss this one,” it growled, its claws biting into the window frame. “I have some of my forces in the forest, hiding and ready to strike from behind. The Hive-queen will attack the big, clay thing when they step out. While it is occupied, we kill the master.”

“Soon, we will have enough birds to pluck out his eyes and drive him from the woods,” the elder hag said. “But…why is he not moving? I sense no mana and I see no spells being cast. Time favours us, so why…”

“Sister!”

“What is it?” the elder asked.

“Some of my birds are caught in a spider’s web!”

The elder growled. “So he is trying to lure us in…clever, but he cannot gain the aeld tree unless he steps out.”

“He might send that big clay thing out to get it for him,” the Hunter said.

“If he does,” the younger said. “Then he is a fool. Pulling the tree from the ground with such violence will only do it more harm. We have buried it well and deep.”

“It does not matter either way,” the Hunter growled. “When his clay soldier goes out, my Hive-queen will attack it. Then we can kill the man while he is undefended. I will go down to the lower floor and be ready. You two prepare your magics.”

The Hunter loped away, climbing down the inside of the windmill. After he was gone, the elder sister scratched her cheek. Something was still wrong.

She looked down.

Now the enemy’s monsters were spraying water in front of him then freezing it. How would he or his golem cross to get the tree? She glanced at the aeld sapling, which wobbled a little in the wind. Would he send his flying creatures to get it?

Her eyes focused on the hovering monsters, just barely visible at the edge of the trees…like they were waiting. They did not look strong enough to carry the sapling, let alone uproot it, so then—

“Sister! Look! The tree is moving!”

“The wind blows it, yes but—”

“No, you fool, look!”

The elder hag looked down and gasped.

Her sister was wrong. The tree wasn’t moving.

The soil beneath it was.

Earth bubbled and shifted around the roots of the aeld tree, shaking the sapling back and forth. Then it rose as though an invisible hand was raising it by its branches…

Her eyes grew wide.

Or something was pushing it up from below!

The earth swelled like a bubble around the tree’s roots and then it glided toward the forest. That was why he was staying hidden in the trees!

He had a way to make the aeld sapling come to him!

“Sister, make haste! We must strike!”

Gathering their mana, their claws began to arc with lightning.

“Attack!” the younger hag screamed at their servants.

They sent lightning into the forest as their birds fell from the sky.

Alex felt the mana just before he saw the flash of light.

“Gwyllain! We’re moving behind the trees!”

‘Claygon!’ he thought. ‘Get between us and this tree! Charge your fire-gems.’

Whooooooooom!

“Wha—” the asrai shouted as Alex leapt behind a large oak and the golem surged forward, standing between them and the tree trunk

Crackle!

Boom!

For an instant, night was as bright as noon.

Lightning arced from the windmill, crackling through the air and slamming into the wood.

The asrai screamed.

Wood blackened and splintered.

Steam shot through the air.

Then the lightning faded.

Alex and Gwyllain were alright, as was Claygon, but the trunk had a smoking hole in it and fire was licking up the bark.

The young wizard peered out.

He swore.

Some of his water and ice elementals had been hit and blasted back to their home planes. His army was down by half a dozen little soldiers.

“Steady!” he said, drinking another potion of haste. “Cover your eyes, Gwyllain, here they come!”

Birds swooped from the sky as monsters boiled from the windmill: beast goblins, venom walkers, silence-spiders…and then the big, shambling crich-tulaghs.

There. The enemy had engaged.

“Claygon, fire at those monsters, then go and stop those big plant bastards in their tracks!”

The golem moved forward, cracking the ice and stomping past the aeld tree as it glided along.

Whooooosh!

Claygon discharged the fire-beams in his palms, strafing the incoming horde of monsters. The fire-gem in his head fired on the window where the lightning had come from.

There were cries of alarm, and something dove away from the window.

Booom!

Flame exploded through the monsters and roared into the window, blackening the stone. Beast-goblins and venom walkers burned, but the crich-tulaghs—soaked with water—shambled forward through clouds of steam. They piled onto Claygon, whipping him with their vines and body slamming him. His fists struck back, pulping plant matter.

Birds hit the taraneas’ webs, which bound them to the canopy, but some veered around, coming in low, screeching and shooting toward the wizard and asrai. Alex brought up all his force spells—Wizard’s Hands, forceballs, deflective rectangles, and forceshield—then raised his arms in the Cleansing Movements.

As the birds pecked and clawed, he blocked and gently deflected, his arms blurring. Wizard’s Hands seized wings and feathers, throwing them into the spiderwebs.

There.

The enemy was engaged.

“Now!” he roared, pointing at the windmill. “Elemental beetles, there’ll be cloth sacks in there. Go in, find them, tear them open and spread the dust around! Elementals, find any crack you can in the stone and blow the dust with everything you’ve got!”

Beetles surged past the birds and toward the windmill, followed by air elementals. Elemental beetles poured into the archway, while air elementals pushed their forms against cracks along the outside of the old mill, funnelling air into the structure. Sacks were chewed open, spilling flour into the air.

Things were going well.

If he—

A slight shift in the shadows barely saved his and Gwyllain’s lives.

He soared into the air…

…just as a silent monstrosity crashed into the trees.