Light from the explosion sears into my eyes, then fades, leaving a ghostly after-image. With a groan, the infernal scorpion-machine crashes to the ground. Pieces of it scatter. Its massive tail coming to rest in broken segments. A burning claw, sheared off from the main structure by the explosive force of our assault, cartwheels through the air then lands about fifty feet away. Zel whoops out a cheer. It’s infectious. Soon we are all giving out a victory cry. The cheers die down. They’re all looking at me. Waiting for me to say something. Just like that, I realize they trust me. It’s a pretty heady feeling — commanding my first victory.
I turn back to them, give a confident grin. “Way to kick some serious ass!” I’m trying not to gush. I want to gush. I’m feeling a bit manic about it. But I’ve got to keep it together — for me as much as for the rest of our little band of rebels. “Now let’s see what we can salvage. Be careful — some Drivers might still be alive. Plus that whole thing is one ginormous hazard.”
Mottle and I move forward, taking point while keeping everyone in sight. It’s not hard with my expanded senses through both Mottle and omnis scienta. What’s tough is keeping all my sensory input straight. Especially with the occluding effect of mists combining with fires and after-explosions. It’s like running through a lit-up cloud. I’m also grappling with more than a little bit of worry. Those flashes in our mist cloud will be visible all around Knife Lake. That gigantic scorpion machine went down hard. I’m pretty sure every critter in the vicinity, every devil sitting watch at Overseer Tower will have heard and seen the noise and light. I’m pretty certain we just kicked a hornet’s nest of the absolute worst sort. I don’t want to wait around long enough for the swarm to arrive.
We come upon the wreckage. Fires are still flickering, though the largest are out. I hop up onto a leg, then climb and glide to the platform. It’s a mess of twisted metal and broken machinery. There’s not much left of the Drivers — those poor devils who operated this monstrosity before we ripped it to pieces. I see what looks like an arm hanging from a twisted railing. There’s some bits of horn and teeth embedded in a crevice. I open up a panel that isn’t jammed, retrieve some ammunition, and toss it to Theri. I find a rifle that’s still in decent shape laying on warped deck plates. I hand it to her as well. I’ve got my own rifle from the Poachers’ Cave. Haven’t needed it yet since my magic’s been going so strong. My energetic vessel’s still over halfway full even though I really unloaded on these devils. Am I up to my parents level of badassery yet? Probably not. But getting close.
I must’ve paused for a second because Theri is standing beside me, tapping me on the shoulder. “What’re we going to do with those?” she asks, pointing to six large glowing bulbs arranged in groups of three along the scorpion’s flanks. They’re connected by a tubular apparatus to the scorpion’s tail. I focus my mage’s sight. My eyes swirl with light as I detect numerous flashes of wisp-energy emanating from the barrels. They are newly-captured wisps. Raw, primal spirits. Not yet bound to worbs or forced into various foul forms by Lords of Hell or Form Makers.
I walk up to one set of bulbs. They’re more like vats than anything else. Containers filled with some kind of foul magical fluid that stuns the wisps into submission. “Lunen Svert Umbra!” I shout, calling forth my moonshadow blade, then slice open the vats one-by-one with three quick strokes. The ugly fluid spills out. It stinks something god-awful. Even worse than the sulfur air of Hell. Wisps, stunned by the fluid, plop to the ground. I hop-glide over to the scorpion’s other side — slicing open the other three vats. More wisps and blobs of slimy fluid spill out onto the ground.
The wisps pulse on the sand — reminding me of stranded jellyfish. There are scores. Perhaps eighty in all. Though I feel compelled to draw them into my name-curse, to protect them, these wisps are still free. It somehow seems wrong for me to take them now. I turn to my companions, my hesitance playing across my face. “Do you think I should take these wisps? I don’t know how else to keep them safe. Devils will eventually find them. Devour them. Turn them into awful beings.”
They stare back at me. Zaya is smiling. There’s a mischievious joy in her eyes. “Or will they?” the faerie says, then points to Mottle.
I raise a hand to touch the muscular, cloak-like body of Mottle. “You weren’t made into something so terrible. Can I believe a devil gave you this form? There must be something still living in Hell. A natural being of a sort who’s able to shape wisps into creatures that aren’t so horrific. I suppose if we found one…” I’m speaking my thoughts out loud. The more I think about it, the more Mottle doesn’t add up to what I know about Hell. There must be some kind of under-current I’ve missed. Of course, the Memory Draught might’ve blasted that key bit of Hell-lore right out of my noggin.
Theri looks at me — glancing between Mottle and Zaya. “No Form Maker or Hell Lord shaped Mottle from a wisp. If so, he almost certainly would’ve betrayed you by now to survive because a Devil would’ve made it a requirement of the form. It is not the nature of Devils to craft a being to…” she seems at a loss for words for a moment. She thinks, then says. “They wouldn’t shape a being to cooperate. To even be capable of benevolent cooperation.”
I pat my Mottle helmet-head. “If not a devil, then who shaped you?”
Mottle quivers, then sends a flickering thought through our physical connection. Answer is with us already.
Zaya flies up overhead. She is smiling, a serene expression on her face.
“There’s a myth among the Blue Devils,” Zel says as he watches the smiling Zaya begin to sing. “That long ago Hell’s nature-spirits forced evil beings into forms that required cooperation to survive. It is for this reason that they were sent to Hell in the first place. To unlearn the lonely evil of selfishness. Of course, for most spirits, it took ages along with many deaths and reformings of their wisps to learn this lesson. Hell was then seen as a prison to reform them. Literally. Again and again. But that was before Asmodeus came. And he has forbidden all to speak of those times. Yet we, the enslaved, in secret, have kept this knowledge as stories. It is a defiance.”
I’m hearing Zel’s words blend with Zaya’s song. My mind makes a leap. “Nature spirits? You’re talking about Zaya! She’s a faerie. One of the last. Did she shape Mottle?”
Mottle quivers again. Zel and Theri grin at me. Zaya reaches the apogee of her flight. She hovers over the wisps. Her song touches them. I can see its vibrations as gentle threads of magic reaching out to the wisps. They break from their slime-induced torpor, swirl together in a group, then rise up behind her.
“I will keep them tonight,” she says. “They are not yet ready for form. But once they’ve recovered, I will clothe them — each according to their nature.”
Like the wisps flopping on the ground before Zaya’s magic roused them, I’m stunned. I watch as they swirl gloriously above Zaya’s head like some cloud of will-o-wisps from Dungeons and Dragons. “How?” I want to say more but I can’t. Was finding Zaya also part of my parents plan — of my plan before I got broken up into now-me and Mirror Specter me? It’s just too much to be coincidence. If we planned for me to link up with Zaya before sending me to Hell, then we are serious geniuses. “Right.” I’m getting my thoughts together. Still — I can’t quite pull my heart out of my throat. “Well, this is an amazing development and I’ve got about a thousand questions. But each new thing we do somehow ends up making more light and noise.” I look at the swirling cloud of wisps. “Zaya, can you ask them to stop doing that. To stay low to the ground and, well, wisp about normally?”
Zaya actually laughs at my request. “Of course,” she says. She sings a few notes in a language I can’t quite understand but somehow seems familiar to me. The wisps drift back down to the ground, hovering just a few feet up, meandering about more. They’re still circling Zaya. Just less obviously.
“So I think our priorities just changed in a big way. Cyda’s still important. But he’s not our only giveaway any longer. We just now gave ourselves away. Big time. So our next move should be to get out of here quick. Then find a safe place to hide so Zaya can do her work.” I turn to Zaya. “How long will it take you to shape one wisp?”
Zaya rubs her chin. “It only takes a few moments. Problem is, I need to conjure a bolt of spiritual force. That can be taxing. Without help, I might manage about ten before I need to rest a while. Maybe ten a day.”
“Ten a day? It’s going to take a long time to change these wisps, then.” I pause. “Hold on, you said — without help. How would you get help? Other Vila? Are there other Vila?”
My question seems to sadden Zaya. “I don’t know any other living Vila,” she says. The momentary cloud over her face quickly passes. “But I do know that a human mage can use their curse-magic to give a Vila energy for a transformation. So you can help me!”
This is also an amazing development. “OK. Hopefully, I can help you do a lot more.”
She shrugs. “It depends on the size of your reserves. Your reserves are quite large.”
I glance down at my name-curse casting off sparks of wisp-energy. Tell me about it. “So it looks like we have another plan. Find shelter in these wisp fields, hide out, and help Zaya transform as many of these wisps as possible.” They seem ready to spring up. To get a move on. But I’ve just had a thought — a possible modification to our new plan. “Hold on. I just had a brainwave,” I say to them, then turn back to Zaya. “Can you gather every wisp that can hear your voice?”
Zaya thinks about this for a minute. “As long as I can see them, as long as they can hear my voice, I should be able to call them to me.”
“OK. New plan.” I look out into the mists and see more lights bobbing in the Hell night. They go on as far as my vision can resolve. Further out, the mists take on a general glow that seems to dance and sway. Those are wisps too even though I can’t make them out individually. “We move out through the Wisp Fields in that direction.” I wave toward where the wisps seem thickest. “I’ll take point. Zel, you go right. Theri, you take the left. Our job is to keep our eyes open for shelter, to avoid any contact with other devils. We’re looking for a big cave or crevice that’s unoccupied.”
Zel and Theri tilt their horns — a devil gesture of affirmation.
I turn to Zaya. “I don’t want you to worry about any of that. You just call as many wisps as you can. We’ll take them to our shelter, transform them, and then Overseer Tower will really have some trouble on their hands.”
Everyone now has a shit-eating grin on their face. I seriously have a shit eating grin on my face.
Zel mimics me and gives a thumbs up. He does my best to imitate my voice and says — “Let’s do this.” It’s cute. I laugh. But his imitation of me is way too squeaky. With that, we are off, moving through the Wisp Fields of Knife Lake. The steamy mist condenses over my body, over Mottle’s form as we walk. His body supporting mine, aiding each step through the broken lands surrounding that stinking, fetid water. Thank the gods the wind is blowing toward the lake and not away. It’s still hot as, well, Hell. But Mottle is cooling me. So I’m just sweating profusely. At least it’s not fucking daytime. I force myself to drink more water, gulping down the strange licorice tasting Perrier.
Zel and Theri form up. Both their heads are on a swivel. One thing’s certain about the devils — they are freaking crazy hyper-vigilant. Not really a surprise considering the horrific shit popping up all over the place here in Hell. Zaya flies overhead, singing out. She’s loud enough to catch what wisps we pass close by. But I can tell she’s also trying not to attract attention. Solid move. We cut through the night. After a couple hours, I find a crevice that looks interesting. By now, Zaya has added about another forty wisps to our host. That’s a friggin lot of wisps. I hop up to inspect the crevice. It’s empty but too shallow for my taste. Plus no cave at the back. Besides, I want to gather more wisps before we stop.
I glance at horologium. It’s 9:21 PM Hell time. Still way too early to stop. So we continue on, cutting through the night, gathering a larger and larger following of the ghostly wisps. Steadily, the mist begins to fade and thin. The overhead cover breaks and I can again clearly see Overseer Tower. It’s all lit up with wicked green and purple lights. The product or result of whatever infernal magic is used to enslave wisps, to force them into devil’s worbs. Overseer is closer now. Despite the heat, I shudder. I glance at my wrist again. It’s 10:17 and our wisp entourage has grown to around one hundred and forty. The bouncing, glowing orbs are tough to count. I call a halt.
I point up toward the wicked tower that is Overseer. “It’s starting to get too open for my liking. How about we cut back toward the hills?” I motion to the land rise — visible as a long, dark shadow — to our left. “We’re more likely to find a suitable cave or crevice there. It’ll also hide us from watching eyes.”
Keeping low and using whatever scraps of mist remain to conceal our growing numbers, we swiftly climb back into the hills and away from the wisp fields.
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
(Looking for another chapter? Find it in the Helkey Table of Contents.)
Scribbler’s Fantastical Workshop 
robertscribbler
/ December 29, 2021There will be edits…
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