Morrígan darted across the Square towards the Low Road. A whirlwind of fire crossed her path, but she felt no heat as it passed. It collided with another pair of beadhbhs, wrapping around their bodies as they shrieked and burned. The smell of charring flesh flashed through Morrígan’s nostrils.
Most of the villagers had fled the Square, and only the mages remained to fight the beadhbhs. The Geomancers formed a line in front of the retreating villagers. They hefted their slings, armed with tiny pebbles. As Morrigan watched, the pebbles flew from the slings with vicious accuracy, splitting beadhbh skulls.
“Let none flee!” roared Colonel Eodadh. He too wielded a sling and sprayed a shower of stones over another group of beadhbhs. The beadhbhs moved to escape, but the mages had spread to route them out.
As the last bird fell to a bolt of fire, the colonel called another strange order. The mages dropped their weapons and scattered to tend to the wounded.
A dozen wounded bodies littered the Square, though the charred and broken corpses of the beadhbhs vastly outnumbered them.
Not far from where she stood, a Geomancer placed his hands over the wound of a moaning villager; his stomach had been split open from corner to corner, his entrails spilled out on the stone.
“Sir! There’s not much I can do for him here!”
The colonel appeared beside Morrígan as she stared at the wounded man, bile rising in her throat. His guts glistened purple and blue in the light of the bonfire, his blood thick and dark.
“Green-cloak, can your hold keep him alive for a little longer?”
“Yes, sir,” said the Geomancer.
The colonel nodded. Morrígan thought he was about to tell the Geomancer to give up, but instead he turned and called out to the other Geomancers. They stopped what they were doing and darted to their commander’s side. Amongst the wounded villagers, one man lay next to the centre wall, a white cloth covering his face—the man Morrígan had seen fall when the beadhbhs first attacked.
He was a labourer from the Mahon fields. Gods, would more have joined him if I hadn’t warned the mages?
“Green-cloaks!” cried the colonel. “Take him up to the healer’s house at the end of the High Road. Berrían, you help Niall keep him stable.”
“Aye!” said Berrían. He knelt and helped the first Geomancer tend to the wounded man. They were using magic to stop the bleeding, but they could do little to close the wound. The mass of purple innards, although exposed, still seemed intact. The injured man gasped for a breath he couldn’t catch, his eyes rolling to the back of his skull.
Then his body rose from the ground upon cobblestones that arranged themselves like a bed, suspending him in the air. The colonel gave another order, and the two mages sprinted out of the Square with the wounded man. Morrígan followed.
She wasn’t particularly fast, but she was just able to keep up with the mages. Every so often, she caught a glimpse of Berrían and the Geomancer Niall as they rubbed at the villager’s wound.
Morrígan ran ahead of them when they reached the house. The door was unlocked, and she pushed her way through into the clinic at the back.
“Here,” she said, pulling a bed out from the wall. It was set upon wheels, and the two Geomancers spun it under the floating bed of stone. With a sweep of a Niall’s hand, the stones rolled away, and the wounded man landed softly onto the bed.
“Where’s your uncle?” asked Berrían, rolling up his sleeves.
Instead of answering, Morrígan went across the room and pushed open the door to Yarlaith’s study, now vacant.
“Yarlaith!” she called, but only an eerie draught replied.
“Never mind!” cried Niall. “Where does he keep the papaver oil?”
“There.” Morrígan pointed. “Beside that yellow bottle.”
“What’s going on here?” roared Yarlaith’s voice from the study, though Morrígan was sure it had been empty seconds ago.
The healer pushed his way past Berrían and Niall and waved his arms widely over the man’s wound. In an instant, the dark snakes of the man’s intestines slithered back into his belly.
Yarlaith produced a needle and thread from the sleeve of his cloak, and masterfully sewed the man’s skin closed in seconds. Morrígan watched in awe as he went about his work, cleaning the wound with fluid strokes of alcohol and spirits.
“He will stay with me for the night,” said Yarlaith, firmly, gesturing towards the open door. The battlemages took the hint and thanked him before leaving.
Only when he and Morrígan were alone did the gravity of the situation dawn across the healer’s face.
“Morry, are you hurt? Are you okay?”
Morrígan nodded, but her mind was in another place.
“This wasn’t normal what happened tonight,” he said. “It shouldn’t be taken lightly. Are you sure you’re alright? Do you want to get some rest?”
“No,” she said, surprising herself with a smile. “I want to learn magic.”
Where were you, when the Great Tower fell,
In the Shadow of Simian Sin?
The mountains roared, the air went still,
And the Earth shook from within.
Where were you, when the Great Lord stood,
In the wreckage of its remnants?
He forbade us to leave the that terrible place,
And with that He sealed our Penance.
Excerpt from The Fall, AC 157
Chapter 6:
The Seventh School
Winter rolled over Alabach in the form of a snowstorm, but being so close to the Eternal Sea, the Clifflands only suffered hail and winds. Still, these carried a biting chill that came creeping across the ground, leaving ice in the cracks of the stone troll that still loomed outside Roseán.
The colonel’s orders cut through the silence of the onlooking villagers. His nine Geomancers split into two groups, positioning themselves either side of the troll. The villagers whispered all around Morrígan, but her gaze remained fixed on the stone beast. It stood on two muscular legs as thick as tree trunks, twenty feet tall. Its head sat on a stump of a neck, agony etched upon its petrified face. Stone lips protruded and curled out from its mouth, exposing cracked, crooked teeth. Nostrils flaring and eyes bulging, it still seemed to be alive under the stone.
