Vacant Throne

Izsha and Dasca took off without Alyssa needing to say a word. Fela chased after on foot, trailing slightly behind. They charged through the tunnel of shed skin. Even the normally smooth Izsha was bouncing up and down enough that Alyssa had to keep her head down to avoid hitting the top. She wasn’t sure just how tough the shed skin actually was. It might shatter if she hit it. But, at the same time, it might shatter her neck.

Or skull.

At least there weren’t any low-hanging obstacles. No stalactites like what might be found in a natural cave. No rebar or supports that would be in something humans had tunneled out. That lack of worry let her concentrate on what lay ahead.

The tunnel was quickly coming to an end. The draken made short work despite its impressive length. With the translucent walls, the end of the tunnel didn’t open up into a bright white light. Her eyes were already adjusted for the outside world.

Musca stood alone on one of the islands of the marsh. Its head whipped back and forth as if it knew that something was out here but just couldn’t find where that something was. Which, in Alyssa’s opinion, significantly reduced the chance that the apophis was around. Glancing over her shoulder as Izsha headed toward Musca, she couldn’t see how such a large thing could possibly hide among the relatively flat terrain. Unless, of course, the apophis could turn invisible. Alyssa wouldn’t be surprised, but she could hope that it wasn’t possible.

“Musca!” Alyssa shouted as they drew near. Her cards were in hand, ready to Fractal Lock a giant snake at the first sign of the thing. After having seen its skin, she doubted that anything else in her repertoire would help with the sole exception of an Annihilator. “Are you alright? You made a noise.”

The draken, naturally, could not respond. Alyssa still hadn’t gotten around to figuring out a way to properly communicate with them. But, after one last look around, Musca lowered its head and used its teeth to pick something up off the ground.

An axe. Not a battle axe. It clearly hadn’t been designed for fighting. The haft was made from worn wood while the head looked to be half-rusted iron. A tree-cutting axe. One large enough that Alyssa doubted a human could have wielded it. Even lifting it might have been a bit of an ordeal. Should someone actually manage to use it properly, they probably could have felled a decently sized tree in only a single hit.

She had seen another axe before. Not so long ago, even. It was quite similar to the one that Rokien possessed, though this one looked far more worn and not nearly as well taken-care of. Depending on how long it had been sitting in the marsh, that might be a recent change.

This was decent evidence toward Rokien’s brother being alive. Worrik. That had been his name. And… if he was alive…

“Good job, Musca. This might be just what we needed.”

At Alyssa’s praise, the draken preened a little. It stood a little taller, shooting a smug look at Alyssa. The very thought that she had gotten used to the draken enough to decide what looks were smug and what were not, was somewhat amusing.

“The snake might not have much scent, but Fela, draken, can you pick up anything from this? Any smells left behind that we could follow?”

Fela stepped forward and tried to take it from Musca’s mouth. Musca put up a token fight. Really, Alyssa watched with a small frown on her face. Musca looked like a dog right after playing fetch that was still in a playful mood but fought back for whatever reason dogs did. Which was all the more amusing when she considered that Fela was the more dog-like of the two.

“Alright,” Alyssa said. “You did good, but you’ve got to hand it over.”

With one last refusal, Musca opened its mouth. Fela staggered back slightly, shooting the draken a glare. But she didn’t say anything until after she took a long sniff of the axe’s haft. Immediately, she made a face. “Smells like draken slobber.”

Alyssa sighed. “Anything else? Any hint of minotaur on it?”

As she spoke, Izsha stepped forward, sniffing at the axe while it was still in Fela’s hands.

“Maybe a little,” Fela said as she started prowling around the area. Every so often, she would stop and survey the area with her nose.

Dasca was the first to notice something, making a loud chirping sound to draw the attention of the others.

“You’re right,” Fela said as she walked over to Dasca. “It’s faint, but there is something here. A day or two old, maybe? It just has that… ground-like smell to it. Like a cow.”

“Can we follow it?”

“At least for a while. Walking through the water must have made the smell even weaker. If the minotaur dove in fully for any length of time, it might get tough. But we can try. I think it leads further south,” she said, walking all the way around the small island. When she got back to her starting spot, she nodded. “Yeah. It is definitely stronger in this direction, but only just a tiny bit. Might not have noticed with the burning bodies still lingering around the land.”

“Try not to remind me,” Alyssa said, feeling a small churn in her stomach at the though.

“Why not? If I have to smell it constantly, you should at least have to suffer with the knowledge.”

Alyssa didn’t say anything, choosing to simply shake her head and breathe through her mouth as Fela hopped back on Dasca.

“We’ll have to go slow. The trail is too faint to rush through it.”

“Lead the way. And Musca. You did good, but please stick with the group. If that thing,” Alyssa paused to throw a thumb over her shoulder at the giant snake skin, “showed up and decided it didn’t like you, it would just eat you whole.”

Slow was an understatement. Alyssa didn’t know why Fela bothered to climb back on Dasca at all. A toddler waddled faster than they were following this trail. Alyssa wasn’t about to complain. She knew that they were doing their best. But at the rate they were moving, an apophis and a minotaur could easily stroll away without breaking a sweat.

There had to be a way to speed this up.

The first thing that popped into Alyssa’s mind was Tineye. The sensory enhancement spell could help Fela track the faint trail far better than she was. Of that, Alyssa was certain. There were drawbacks to it. Prolonged use could form dependencies, lessening the natural, unaided senses. But Fela shouldn’t need to use it for that long. Just long enough for her to find a stronger segment of the trail to follow with her natural nose.

“I know you don’t like human magic,” Alyssa said. “But there is a spell that might help us follow this path a little better.” If only there was a spell that simply highlighted specific scents.

“It isn’t that I don’t like it, I just don’t like using human magic,” Fela said, somewhat absentmindedly as she kept smelling at the air.

“Is that really an important distinction to make?”

“If you cast a spell on me, I’ll happily accept it.”

“This is one you’ll have to cast on your own, unfortunately.” Smiling at Fela’s flattened ears, Alyssa continued. “It’s called Tineye,” she said, holding up the card. She had made several upon first finding out about the spell, but had only ever used one. That one experience had really turned her off the idea of using more. Which reminds me… Her eyes flicked up to Fela’s still flattened ears. “You’ll probably want something to keep your ears flat against your head as much as possible. I’ve a bandanna that might work.”

As Alyssa started digging through her satchel, Fela paused her sniffing to press her paws up against her ears. “What is this spell going to do to me,” she asked, worry coming through clear in her tone.

“Nothing. At least nothing physical. But you’re going to be able to smell, see, feel, taste, and hear things a whole lot better. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could suddenly hear the heartbeat of everything around you.”

Relief crossed Fela’s features. Her hands dropped from her head back to her side. “Oh? Is that all? I hear your heartbeats all the time when we’re close enough.”

“In that case, I think you’ll really want this,” Alyssa said, holding out a square of cloth. A black with white-patterned bandanna from her home. She quickly rolled it up into a thin strip and motioned for Fela to come closer. Dasca complied, letting Alyssa wrap it tightly around Fela’s head, pinning her ears closed enough that hopefully she wouldn’t go crazy from the noise.

That still left her other senses, but there wasn’t much that Alyssa could do about all them.

Fela started to scratch at the bandanna. Alyssa had to swat her hands away. “Trust me. You’ll be happier with it there. Probably…” Shaking her head, she held out the spell card once more. “Here. Tineye. You know how to use spells.”

“You sound weird. And it feels weird,” Fela said, using both paws to grab the piece of paper. “Tineye.”

The moment she spoke, the flames from Fela’s eyes leaped in size and volume, turning into an outright inferno. Bright red embers started sparking off from the main column of fire. The red against black of her eyes turned a far more vibrant shade of red, making Alyssa wonder if her own eyes had changed at all while using the spell.

“Wow,” she said. But the moment she did, she twisted her face into a pained grimace and clapped her paws to her ears.

“Told you,” Alyssa whispered so quietly that she may as well have been mouthing the words.

Even despite that, Fela whipped her head toward Alyssa. She stared for a moment before whipping her head away, staring at something else. From there, she moved on, looking around as fast as was physically possible with her paws over her ears.

“Do you smell the trail?” Alyssa asked in that same quiet whisper.

Fela jerked as if startled, but didn’t stare this time. “Do I?” she said in her own whisper. “I smell everything. The draken had sausages for lunch!”

“You gave them those sausages.”

“Ah yeah. That explains why I smell the same.”

Alyssa gave the hellhound a look, half expecting her to laugh at her joke. But no laugh came. Which made some amount of sense. Laughing at the moment would probably be excruciatingly painful. Keeping her voice quiet, Alyssa tried to get Fela back on track. “It might be hard with everything you’re sensing right now, but try to focus in on the minotaur’s scent if at all possible.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I can smell it. It smells so strong that I would have expected the minotaur to be standing right behind me or something.” After giving one suspicious glance straight behind her, Fela shook her head. “But that obviously isn’t the case. Okay! Dasca! Head straight at a decent speed. I’ll tell you when to turn!”

Dasca let out a small trill of acknowledgment, forcing out a wince from Fela.

“And try not to make too much noise,” she said, keeping her paws clamped over her ears. The bandanna really wasn’t doing anything at this point.

But Dasca still started moving. Slowly at first, maybe trying to keep from making too much noise with its movements. When Fela didn’t protest after a few moments, Dasca started picking up the pace. Izsha kept up while Musca trailed just behind. With Izsha right next to Dasca, Alyssa could see the way Fela had her teeth permanently grit together. Her eyes were squeezed shut as well. With the way Tineye increased tactile senses too, she was probably feeling the wind against her skin as needles poking her over and over again.

“You don’t need to push yourself too much,” Alyssa whispered, hoping that Fela wasn’t causing herself harm on account of Alyssa’s desire to move faster. This time, Fela didn’t whip her gaze over to Alyssa. The hellhound just sniffed at the air, keeping her eyes closed and her paws pressed against her ears.

Alyssa decided to keep quiet for the moment. As they got closer and the scent grew more intense, she would insist that Fela turn the spell off. For now, she leaned into the movements of Izsha as Dasca and the other draken picked up the pace even more.

They kept going for a half an hour. Every few minutes, Fela would speak up. “Gradual turn to the left until I say so.” “Wait, too far.” “Okay. Right just a hair then straighten out.” And so on and so forth. Alyssa had been doing her best to keep track of exactly where they were in relation to Illuna, but having already been moving away from the city for a few hours and now the winding and weaving path that Fela was leading them on was making it a bit more difficult than it should have been. There were no real paths or landmarks down here as far as Alyssa was aware. There weren’t any towns until well after the marsh. The roads all went wide to avoid the little rivers. Wagons handled them fairly poorly, it seemed.

Alyssa wasn’t too worried about getting lost out in the middle of nowhere. First of all, Fela and the draken could probably follow their scent all the way back to the city without even needing Tineye. If that failed, a Message to Irulon for a bright flare in the sky would probably work once night fell.

Besides that, she was also trying to spy ahead of them. With her binoculars, she should be able to spot a giant snake well before they actually came across it. But so far, she was coming up empty handed. She had already asked both Brakkt and Rokien as well as had consulted the guild’s book of monsters. An apophis was not a shapeshifter according to all three sources. None mentioned it being able to tunnel either, so Alyssa was fully expecting to be able to see it somewhere.

But even with its size, mountains and even hills were larger. Even a forest would help occlude its form from a distance. In this marshy area, it could easily hide with its body half under the water of the rivery areas. In fact, couldn’t reptiles hold their breath for extended periods of time? It could probably find any lake or river and completely submerge for as long as was needed to hide. Which would probably obscure it from Fela’s sense of smell even more than usual.

Two hours after had them still following the trail. Fela’s arms were down at her sides, no longer keeping her ears pressed flat against her head. The bandanna was still there and doing its job, so she must have gotten used to it enough to stand the extra senses with only that as protection. Her eyes were open, but just barely. They looked closed, but she must have been squinting because some small flames escaped from the corners of her eyes.

They were about out of the marsh at this point. Or rather, the land was still wet, but the little rivers were smaller, more like streams than rivers, and the islands were a whole lot larger. There were still almost no trees around but lots of other smaller plants. With how flat the land was, it gave her a crystal clear view of everything except what they were actually looking for.

“We are headed in the right direction, right?” Alyssa asked, still keeping her voice as quiet as possible.

“The smell is way stronger now than it was earlier. And I didn’t even think that was possible. An hour ago, it smelled like we were right on top of them. Now, we’re like… inside them?”

“And you are following the right smell, right? Didn’t get confused with the overwhelming senses?”

Fela opened her eyes fully to shoot a glare at Alyssa. “Please,” she said dismissively. “I know my way around tracking by scent. And… phew.” She waved a hand in front of her face, gagging a bit as she closed her eyes. “I think we just passed a plotting ground from one of them, if you understand what I mean. A recent one too. Been smelling it coming for a while, but wasn’t ready for that.”

Alyssa grimaced, glad she hadn’t activated the spell as well. She had been thinking about it, but…

Movement in the distance stalled her thoughts. “Did you—” she started, only to get interrupted by Fela.

“I think that hill just moved.”

A hill moving was definitely what Alyssa had seen. Except… “That’s no hill,” she said, voice serious as she pulled out her spell cards, making sure that Fractal Lock was right at the top. Fela, naturally, did not understand her little joke. If only Kasita had been here.

Then again, she probably shouldn’t be making jokes in a situation like this. If she was just a little too slow, that thing could swallow all three of them whole. Or simply roll over them if it wasn’t hungry. The nerves must be getting to her.

Still, Fractal Lock should work…

Hopefully she wouldn’t need to use it. She was sure they could just talk this out if given the opportunity.

A thought struck her. On thing she had neglected to ask Brakkt or Rokien and had simply assumed…

Could an apophis speak? Draken couldn’t. And the harpy she had encountered outside Teneville hadn’t seemed to speak. But Pho the honey bee and Rokien with his bovine head could speak despite neither of them having human-like mouths.

Talking things out could be a whole lot more difficult if it couldn’t talk back.

The draken had slowed to a stop entirely of their own accord. Even Musca seemed a bit cowed by the size of the thing. It was still a good deal off in the distance, but… if it was long enough, it could probably loop back around, getting right in their faces while appearing to be off in the distance.

Alyssa started looking around, feeling far more threatened by the thought of the unknown rather than the part of the snake in the distance. “Get us away from these river segments,” Alyssa said, pointing forward. The canals were smaller now than they had been a distance ago, but she couldn’t tell exactly how much room the apophis would need to stay hidden.

“Something is coming. I can feel the ground through Dasca.”

“Stay calm. Don’t panic. Don’t act aggressive. But try to figure out from which direction.”

“Uh… I… think there isn’t much need for that.”

Alyssa whipped her head toward Fela, only to stop and gaze upward.

Green-hazel slit pupils stared down at her, each at least as big as her arm was long. A thin tongue flicked out from a head the size of a minivan, cracking the air as it darted up and down to taste the air. But it froze halfway back in. It froze completely solid. And not just the tongue, but the entire snake.

It took Alyssa to realize what happened. She glanced down at the deck of cards in her hand, knowing that if she counted, it would be missing one Fractal Lock.

“Oops.”