Mimic Arcanist [Chapter 9]

Hey peeps!

Here is chapter 9. Lots of things revealed here!

Shami

CHAPTER NINE

THE MIDNIGHT DEPTHS

The half-rotted corpse slashed me across the left shoulder and part of my chest. Its claws sliced through my flesh as easily as it slashed through the fabric of my robes and shirt. I caught my breath and stumbled backward, the injury pulsing with sharp pain that lanced through my body.

I had felt this before…

Shaken, I fell backward and hit the ground in a sitting position, my right hand over the injury. This was exactly the kind of pain I felt when Death Lord Deimos had hit me with his trident. The memories of that terrible event flashed in my mind, stealing my ability to breathe.

The shambling corpse came forward, its glowing eyes fixed on me.

What did it want?

“Back off, fiend.”

Ashlyn—who had run up close, though I hadn’t seen it—held up her hand, her face fixed in a hard-set glare. A blast of lightning shot from her palm and struck the undead monster. The raw power crackled over the body, the goo of its bizarre flesh falling off its skeletal body and hitting the ground with an odd gloop sound.

“Are you okay, Gray?” Ashlyn ran to my side. When the corpse continued to stumble forward, she half-stepped over me, shielding me from the monster. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle this.”

She evoked another blast of lightning, this one a bit brighter than before. Ashlyn was already making improvements in her magic, and we had only just begun schooling.

I needed to be more like her.

Ashlyn struck the corpse creature, and more of its outsides splashed to the ground. But that only slowed its pace. With another groan, this one bordering on enraged, the monster flung itself at Ashlyn. The corpse crashed into her, and they both tumbled to the ground. Ash from the fire puffed into the air like a black fog.

Ecrib came crashing forward. Typhoon dragons weren’t the most graceful mystical creatures when on land, so Ecrib ran like a lumbering adolescent elephant, the fins on his legs practically getting in his way. Then Ecrib crunched his fangs down on the corpse and tossed it off of his arcanist.

Ashlyn leapt back to her feet, just as shaken as I was. She almost couldn’t get her footing. Her dragon eldrin stayed close to her, offering his shoulder to help steady her footing.

The monster got back up, its seaweed insides spilling across the ground.

Twain ran into my lap, half-startling me. I flinched, my heart pounding, but I settled once I realized my eldrin was close.

“What’re you doing?” Twain yelled. “Get up! We have to do something.”

“R-Right.”

I closed my eyes and searched for nearby threads of magic. What could Twain transform into? It was difficult to sense things. Everyone was so far away.

And the corpse…

It was magical, but…

Its thread of magic wasn’t right. It wasn’t like all the others threads, that were solid and led to a source. This creature had magic that seemed to come from… nowhere? When I tried to tug the thread—so that Twain could transform into it—it was like tugging on a rope that had been cut. Nothing happened. There was no “source” for Twain to assume the shape of.

What was going on?

Instead of dwelling on that, I focused on Ecrib.

Twain bubbled, and his orange fur shifted into blue scales. He meowed as his skull contorted into a dragon-like shape. I managed to push him off my lap before he swelled up into his new giant size. But Twain was tired. He wouldn’t be able to maintain his typhoon dragon shape for long.

I held up my hand and evoked lightning. The blast of power hit the corpse’s leg and the femur cracked. Then the monster’s leg broke, and it toppled over. Once on the ground, it moaned and crawled forward, diggings its bone claws into the blackened dirt.

It headed toward me, its glowing eyes flickering.

What was this?

I finally managed to stand. “Crush its skull,” I commanded Twain.

With a slight frown, Twain lunged. In his new typhoon dragon form, he managed to bite down on the head of the monster and crush the creature’s dome. The moment the skull cracked open, a scream and a sigh exploded out of its body.

The monster’s mouth fell open, its body went completely limp, and the glow of its frightening eyes vanished.

Then the corpse’s body melted away. The bones. The seaweed. Everything. It all turned into a bluish-white goop that liquefied faster than ice caught in a bonfire. Wisps of steam sailed off into the air, leaving nothing behind.

The corpse had just… vanished.

Twain shook and then reverted back to his orange kitten form. His sapphire scales disappeared as he shrank down. Then he shook out his whole body and turned to me with his eyes narrowed.

“I didn’t like that at all,” he said. “Do you know what that tasted like? Of course you don’t. Youweren’t the one to get a mouthful of grave-creature.” Twain rubbed at his tongue with one of his front paws. “Next time,” he said between rubs, “I’m ordering you to shove death down your throat, got it?”

I just stood there, my shoulder bleeding, the pain intense. I wanted to joke around with Twain, but I found it difficult to breathe. Something still wasn’t right. Although the monster had disappeared, I still felt like it was nearby. The presence of the monster lingered in the air.

Ashlyn shook her head. Her eldrin gently bumped her with his head. She rubbed Ecrib’s horns, and it seemed to soothe her.

“Thank you,” she whispered to her dragon.

Ecrib snorted as he nodded once.

Twain walked over to me, his nose in the air, his ears laid back. When he reached my feet, his fur was puffed out. He looked like an angry potato. “Did you hear what I said?” Then Twain tilted his head. His two-colored eyes landed on my injury. “Gray? Are you still bleeding?”

I kept my right hand pressed over the injury, but blood still flowed out from between my fingers. After gulping down some air, I managed to shake my head. “Something is still nearby,” I whispered. “We have to find it.”

“Are you okay?”

“We have to find it,” I repeated.

I ran my left hand through my hair as I forced myself to walk forward. The trees in the area were already warped from the occult ore soaking through the ground, but it seemed the further I went along, the more they became twisted and saggy. The trunks drooped, and the leaves hung heavy on the branches.

It was like they were dying.

Water soaked the earth beneath my feet. I walked through puddles and patches of mud, my footing unsteady. Why was there so much water here? We weren’t close to the river, and I hadn’t seen a pond or a lake.

“Gray? Gray!”

Ashlyn, and Ecrib rushed to my side, Twain in Ashlyn’s arms. She handed me my eldrin, but I refused to remove my right hand from my shoulder. Instead, I took Twain with my other arm, a little awkward, but still. Twain snuggled against my chest and quietly purred.

“What’s going on?” Ashlyn asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But something is nearby.”

“How can you tell? I don’t sense anything.” She turned to her dragon. “Do you feel it?”

Ecrib scoffed. “The nature of magic isn’t something I’m familiar with, but the water here… The water here is salted, like the ocean. Furthermore, the water doesn’t smell of algae or seagrass.”

“What does that mean?” Twain asked.

“It means the water came from the Midnight Depths.”

When it was obvious that Twain didn’t know what that meant, Ashlyn sighed.

“The Midnight Depths are the places in the ocean that are so deep, the light never reaches there.” Ashlyn straightened her blonde hair. “No plants grow when there’s no light. Ecrib is saying this water came from the deepest part of the ocean.”

Twain sarcastically glanced around the forest. Then he narrowed his eyes. “And what delivery service does this area use? Because I want in.”

“This is serious,” Ecrib growled, his scales flared.

Twain hid in my arms. “Well, I was kindaserious,” he muttered. “How did water from the Midnight Depths get all the here?”

I ignored his question. Instead, I stepped forward, determined to find the source of my anxiety. Something was here. I just had to find it. The problem was—I didn’t know what I was looking for. Another corpse? More ocean water?

Something.

I leaned over, scanning the water-soaked ground as I went. Ashlyn and he typhoon dragon followed close behind, neither saying a word. I appreciated their presence considering the mounting levels of dread.

Then I spotted it!

A small speck of silver at the base of a rotted tree. The branches hung so low, they created a curtain that almost blocked my view of the shimmering silver.

I rushed through the swamp-like environment, hurrying as fast as my legs would take me. The mud got so thick near the dead tree, that when I lifted my right foot, my boot was left behind. I didn’t care. I kept trudging forward until I eventually lost my left boot. Who needed boots, anyway?

“This place is scaring me,” Twain whispered. He snuggled close to me, his eyes wide.

After taking a deep breath, I pushed some of the branches aside and stepped closer to the trunk. The silver glittered, even though no light was shining here. The afternoon sun couldn’t pierce through the thick canopy of leaves.

With slow steps, I made my way over. Then I knelt next to the strange object.

It was the size of my pinkie, and half-buried in the mud. The silver had lines across it, like it had once belonged to a large object with a picture etched across it. Was this a puzzle piece?

No.

I set Twain down next to me. He arched his back and practically hissed at the swamp around us.

With my breath held, I reached for the sliver of silver. Right before I touched it, I jerked my hand away. The object had rizzel magic on it. I recognized the tendrils of magic. As a mimic arcanist, my innate ability was to sense magic, after all—I trusted my assessment more than any book or professor at Astra Academy.

This was a fragment from the Gates of Crossing.

But not any gate.

This was the gate used to open a pathway to the abyssal hells.

When I had destroyed the gate, pieces of it went shooting off in all directions. They had shot off with such force, they broke through the walls of the Academy. And they had traveled far. At least, from what I could remember.

This realization shook me. I stood, my heart hammering. I removed my right hand from my shoulder. My injury… it was still bleeding. Arcanists healed quickly due to the magic flowing through their body. Why wasn’t I healing now? Was it because that corpse had come stumbling out of the abyssal hells?

I turned on my heel, my eyes on the water all around the tree.

This ocean water…

It was from the abyssal hells, too.

The fragment was somehow summoning it all here with rizzel teleportation magic.

Ashlyn and Ecrib pushed aside the low-hanging branches and walked over to me. They had moved slowly enough that Ashlyn had managed to keep her boots.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

I pointed to the glittering bit of silver. “That’s a fragment from the Gates of Crossing. Not a normal gate. It’s from the gate that led to the abyssal hells.”

Ashlyn’s eyes went wide, her eyebrows shooting to her hairline. Her eldrin flashed his fangs and flared his scales for a second time. With a glare, he stared down the tiny metal fragment. Twain leaned against my leg and stared up at me with a frown.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“Very,” I muttered.

I wasn’t wrong. I knew. And if we didn’t remove the fragment, more disgusting creatures would show up in this area.

Some perhaps bigger and more powerful than the shambling corpse.