Chương 2: The Tooth

⟨ [Creature Identified] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── — NEARBY ENTITY DETECTED — NAME: Unknown CLASS: Wizard LEVEL: 3 STR: 3 AGI: 4 END: 4 INT: 10 PER: 5 CHA: 6 — SKILLS — Binding Theory: Active Arcane Reading: Active Basic Warding: Active — NOTE — Consumption of this entity would result in approximately 3 level gains. This would be the single largest XP event currently available in this location. Do not eat this entity. Do not eat this entity. Do not eat this entity.

Brother Fenwick had, in his thirty-one years of life, never considered himself an observant creature. But proximity, it turned out, was a remarkable teacher. The thing holding him had the hero's shape. That much was visible. Tall. Broad across the shoulders. Built for it. He may have been the hero, once, before he turned into this.

A jacket of heavy black hide covered most of its torso, stiff and scarred, scored with damage that told a long story, creased and darkened in places where something had hit it repeatedly, and the hide had held. Rigid plates were strapped to the forearms and elbows, dark and scratched, the same strange material as the padding covering both knees. No kingdom Fenwick had ever studied produced armor like this. The jacket had done its job in most places. In one place, at the neck, it had not.

Something had torn through it once, ragged and deep, the wound long settled into itself, drawn in and hardened, the edges dark and dry. A full month of death sat on everything else. The skin had gone a pale, yellowed grey, pulling tight across the cheekbones and loose everywhere else, the texture wrong in a way that Fenwick's eyes kept trying to correct and couldn't. The jacket was torn at one shoulder, stiff with old damage in several places, and the fabric beneath was darker in ways Fenwick chose not to examine.

The jeans were a strange, heavy cloth, riveted at the seams with small metal tacks, another thing no kingdom made. One boot remained. The other foot was bare. No chest movement. His stillness was absolute, in a way that living things never quite managed, even in sleep. He simply stood, and the standing had nothing behind it. The eyes were missing. An orb of light where the sockets stood empty. The mouth was open. The tongue sat wrong inside it.

Grey and thick, too large for the space it occupied, listing to one side with the indifference of something that had stopped caring. One tooth at the front had canted sideways at an angle teeth did not go, the root barely holding, the kind of damage that suggested its owner had at some point attempted to eat something that did not agree to be eaten. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. It shifted slightly when the jaw moved. Just slightly. Then it fell.

It made a very small sound on the marble floor. In the absolute silence of the Church of the Eternal Summoning, with fifteen clergy and one zombie and one guinea pig suspended in a single moment, that sound was enormous. Fenwick's body then made a quiet and firm decision entirely without his input. Pop. Pop. Pop. Three small pellets fell to the marble floor in quick succession, bouncing once before coming to rest somewhere near the hero's left foot. The creature's head dropped. It looked at the pellets.

It dropped Fenwick. Fenwick landed badly, on one shoulder, and lay still for a moment on the cold marble with his eyes closed and his white paw pressed flat against the floor. Above him, dimly, he was aware of the hero still standing. Still present. Still smelling the way it smelled. He opened one eye. The hero was looking at the pellets. Fenwick closed his eye again.

Around him, fifteen members of the Order of the Eternal Flame stood exactly where they had stood for the past several minutes, casting implements in hand, and did absolutely nothing. Ability had never been the problem. Every ordained member of the Order carried a stillness rod, a short implement of pale wood etched with binding runes, capable of freezing a target in place with a single focused cast. Fifteen stillness rods had been drawn during the chaos of the summoning, raised, pointed, and then held there.

The kind of stillness that comes not from magic but from forty years of doctrine that said the hero was coming and the hero would be magnificent, and you did not cast binding spells on the chosen one. Even if the chosen one was doing what this one was doing. Even when it picked up Brother Fenwick. Even when. Nibbles the Venerable watched Brother Fenwick hit the floor. He watched the hero look at the pellets. He looked at fifteen stillness rods, raised and trembling, going nowhere.

He looked at the tooth on the marble. He clasped his paws together. He breathed.

"Cast," said Nibbles. Fifteen rods fired as one. The blue light came from everywhere simultaneously, clean and cold and absolutely without mercy, converging on the hero from fifteen directions at once. The sound it made was not a crack or a boom but something between them, a sound that lived in the chest rather than the ears, and then it was done. The hero stood in a column of soft blue light, perfectly still. Every muscle. Every joint.

Every pale, yellowed grey, catastrophically-scented inch of it, locked in place with fifteen times the magical force the situation had technically required. A thin curl of smoke rose from the top of its head. Brother Aldous looked at his stillness rod. Then at the hero.

"Was that," said Sister Marvella, in a very small voice, "too much?" Nobody answered. Nibbles studied the hero carefully. It was not moving. It was, as far as he could determine, entirely incapable of moving. It stood with one arm slightly extended, fingers open, in the exact position it had been in when it dropped Brother Fenwick, and it would likely remain in that position for several hours.

"It is fine," said Nibbles.

"Are we sure?"

"We are sure."

"It isn't — I mean — the prophecy—""The prophecy," said Nibbles, with the tone he reserved for administrative crises, "can wait." He stepped down from his step stool with great dignity. He crossed the marble floor, his robes trailing behind him, and stopped beside Brother Fenwick. Fenwick had not moved. He was still on his side, white paw flat on the floor, one eye open and one eye closed, staring at a small region of marble approximately four inches from his nose.

"Brother Fenwick," said Nibbles.

"Yes, High Priest."

"Are you injured?" A pause.

"No, High Priest."

"Good." Another pause.

"High Priest."

"Yes."

"I'm going to need a moment."

"Take your moment." A shorter pause.

"Brother Fenwick."

"Yes, High Priest."

"Pick up the tooth." Fenwick opened both eyes. He looked at the tooth on the marble. He looked at Nibbles. Nibbles was already looking up at the frozen hero. Fenwick picked up the tooth and used the moment to gather the pellets and hide his shame. Nibbles stood beside him, pointedly ignoring the brother's second task and looking up at the frozen hero. The blue light played across the silver symbols of his robes, casting strange shadows across the floor. The candles continued burning.

The stained-glass windows still threw their colors across the marble. The church was exactly as it had been an hour ago, four centuries old and full of faith and cedar smoke. Everything else was entirely different. Above the hero's head, the glowing screen had gone quiet. A single image sat at its center. Two figures, rendered in simple glowing lines. One large. One very small, horizontal, on the floor. Nibbles looked at it for a long moment.

In forty years of service, he had never once wondered if the prophecy had made a mistake. He was wondering now. [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ──────────────────────────── [Entry 2] Day 1 in the fantasy realm. Fifteen simultaneous freeze spells. He is fine. I think he is fine. The small wizard is on the floor.