The sea drakes grew massive in this time, and soon took to taking down ships for their precious metals on board. While these beasts killed thousands in their hunting of ships, their existence contributed to the continued survival of the exiles at sea. For fifty years, the sea drakes were the only means the survivors of the Flood had to restock on their supply of metal, and crews of ships quickly began to specialize in hunting the beast.

  -Lidian’s Manual to Magical Fauna, 283rd ed

  —

  Kole swore internally just as his mind put the pieces together of what he was really seeing.

  Kole originally thought the person in the center had black hair, but once the head moved and the hair trailed behind it like a mist did he realize what it was.

  Voidling! Which means he can see me like Zale.

  Once that first hurdle was tackled, his mind placed the rest of the crazy tapestry together. What he’d initially thought to be a few stacked sacks was actually the body of a giant spider, the torso of the voidling ending where the spider body began. The body of the spider was covered in bristly hairs, much different from the smooth and slender legs of the giant mage slayers.

  Kole froze, as if that would make the monstrous man lose track of him. The man reached into the sack, staring past the guard at Kole and began to eat handfuls of the sacks contents until the guard turned to leave, satisfied.

  Every instinct told Kole to run, but if the voidling wanted to alert the guard to Kole’s presence, he would have already. Then Kole noticed the irons, one attached to each of the eight legs, locking them to the ground, with another around the neck. Each was etched with runes, and the pale white flesh around the metal had been rubbed raw turning black, and black wisps leaked from the wounds up into the air.

  The guard left, and Kole stood there waiting, uncertain what to do.

  “Come here,” the spider man whispered, and Kole found himself obeying though not due to any magic.

  At least, he was pretty sure it wasn’t magic.

  “What are you?” Kole found himself asking.

  “A monster,” the voidling said, smiling mournfully. “Though some of your kind likely thought I was always a monster.”

  The creature spoke with a refined, well educated voice, and Kole imagined if he closed his eyes he could picture this man giving a lecture at the academy.

  “What happened?” Kole asked.

  “Would that I knew, but alas, I do not,” the monster said. “I was in the void, and then I wasn’t. I was awake, then asleep, and then—” he paused, gesturing at his lower body “—this.”

  “Are you the source of the Spatial block?” Kole asked.

  “Oh, is that what this was?” the voidling asked, looking back at his spider body and lifting a leg as if to get a better view. “Likely so.”

  “Could you stop it? End the blocking?” Kole asked, finally having a glimmer of hope that they’d return home.

  “Alas, I cannot,” the voidling said, dousing the small hope for an instant. “But, you could.”

  “How?!” Kole asked, barely containing a shout.

  “Simple really,” the voidling said in a very amiable tone. “Kill me.”

  “What? No! I can’t!” Kole said.

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  The voidling started to laugh quietly to himself, trying to keep the volume low.

  “Of course, I finally meet the one human who won’t try to kill me,” he said with some mirth.

  “My friend’s half voidling—sort of—I can’t kill you. You're a person,” Kole said, feeling the need to explain himself.

  “While I am fascinated to learn about this friend of yours, I really must insist you kill me,” the voidling said. “Don’t worry though, you will just be killing this shell. I will return to the void and rejoin the cycle of rebirth.”

  Kole found himself walking closer to the man as they spoke in an effort to keep his voice down, and now he could reach out and touch him if he just extended a hand.

  “Take that dagger, and stick it here,” he said, touching his heart.

  Kole wrestled with the decision.

  Can I do this? He wants me to. And doing so will let us get home.

  He tried to work himself up to it.

  “I’m Kole,” he said, extending a hand, his body once more acting and leaving his mind to catch up.

  “I’m Dorian,” the voiding—Dorian—said, shaking Kole’s hand.

  At the contact, Kole’s invisibility spell ended.

  Kole pulled out his belt knife, and tried to work himself up to it.

  “One question, if you would afford me the courtesy,” Dorian said, holding up a finger. “When you say your friend is a half voidling, do you mean part of her body is a voidling like me, or she is of mixed breed.”

  “The second one,” Kole said.

  “Hmmm, I’d like to have met her, but, alas,” Dorian said, guiding Kole’s hand with the knife up to his chest. “I can go slightly incorporeal before the runes in the collar kick in. It should make the stab easier.”

  Before Kole could ask for more time or back out, Dorian let out a scream of pain and turned partially to black mist.

  “Grink!” Kole cursed, borrowing one of Rakin's in the heat of the moment.

  He thrust the dagger forward just in time for Dorian to reappear, the dagger wedged firmly in his chest.

  “Run,” Dorian said with his last breath, before collapsing in the dirt.

  Kole spun around to see that six ant men were blocking the door. If this had been an adventure book, Kole would simply slash a hole in the side of the tent and run, but Kole was certain he’d not be able to get the knife out of Dorian’s chest before the ants got to him, let alone flee with it.

  Instead, Kole cast a spell. Sending the mental construct out into the Arcane Realm, Kole extended a hand in front of him, and thunder erupted from his hand, sending all six of the guards flying out the tent flap along with everything else on the entrance half of the tent. One of the glass fire orbs shattered where it hit the ground, and the fire inside flew around the tent like a crazed bird trying to escape a home. Every time it hit the wall, the canvas lit, until the whole thing was ablaze.

  Kole didn’t stop to watch, and ran out through the opening his spell made. All around him, he could see the camp mobilizing. The six soldier ants that had come for him all lay dead, their green insides leaking out through the cracks that covered their carapaces.

  Note to self, Thunderwave works really well on giant ant people Kole thought, trying not to think about the fact he’d just killed seven beings in under a minute—real live, not dungeon generated people.

  Kole used his enhanced invisibility once more, vanishing into thin air just as reinforcements came around the corner to investigate. The tent he’d just left burned, and the flying entity of fire continued on from tent to tent, lighting three more aflame before winking out of existence.

  The camp descended into chaos as all the soldier ants tried to either fight the flames, or find the intruder, and Kole took advantage of that to make for the ramparts. From the inside, the mounds of earth had an easy gentle slope, and Kole sprinted up one, stopping only long enough at the top to not leap off the edge. He slid down the smooth surface, and ran towards the bridge, clutching his satchel to his side.

  The fire fighting efforts were not going so well, as the light of the flame grew. More flame spirits had escaped, and were taking up the effort of their liberator to burn the tents of those that had held them captive. By the time Kole made it to the bridge a quarter of the camp burned. As Kole watched, a dust cloud gathered, billowing up on an unfelt wind, covering the whole camp in a moment, and then it all condensed onto the flames, smothering them out in a matter of seconds.

  Soldier ants came running out of the gate behind Kole, and those on the bridge moved to block access to it.

  “Krit and krool,” Kole cursed, again borrowing one of Rakin’s curses.

  He ran straight for the bridge, and when he was a few paces out, dropped his Invisibility, casting Thunderwave. The two guards jumped back at his sudden appearance out of nowhere, and then flew back as the force of his spell hit them. They crashed into the bridge, their carapaces, weakened by the spell, breaking open, and their insides poured out over the bridge.

  Kole had to fight back the urge to vomit as the memory of the smell from the dormitory returned to him once more. The way clear before him, Kole turned invisible one last time, and vanished into plains.

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