“Wake up. C’mon, wake up and see the sunrise with me.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s beautiful, now let’s go.”
Jason knew better than to argue with Maya. He got up and followed her out of the tent. Her face lit up when she saw the bright pinks and oranges of the sky. “Wow.”
“What’s so pretty about light scattered by air?”
“You need to get out of your own head once in a while and learn to enjoy things. Just look at all the colors. It’s amazing!” She ran toward their fire pit and, without warning, ignited a blast of fire to match the colors of the rising sun.
Jason shook his head. Maya was often prone to impulsive uses of her fire magic. He assumed that was why she had such a talent for it. They had made a great team since they had met. Her command of fire was instrumental to his work in metallurgy.
He summoned a wind-up humanoid silver golem with a smooth ball-bearing for a head from his workshop. After he left the University Arcana, Jason had sealed off a piece of his family’s manor house. Then he converted it into his own private workshop, accessible only by magic. He also warded it so only his magic could get someone in. Thus, he and Maya were the only people who had ever seen the inside of it. Just the way he liked it.
He cranked the gears and it sprung to life. “Spread the embers of last night’s fire out so they cool faster,” he commanded. The tiny silver man gave him a salute and set about doing as he was commanded.
“They aren’t hurt when they do that, right?” Maya asked.
Jason shook his head. “The spells I used to make them don’t cause them to feel pain.”
“Good, I don’t mind them serving you if it makes them happy, but I couldn’t live with myself if I let you hurt those precious little guys.”
The silver golem let out a small yelp of appreciation, but Jason just shook his head. He had long given up on trying to convince Maya that his inventions weren’t sentient, but she insisted on projecting feelings onto them. They broke down the rest of their camp, Maya talking to her little silver friend while they did so.
After they had finished, and Jason had dismissed his tiny golem back to his workshop, they set out down the road. They were headed to a tiny village that had strange reports coming out of it. First, the farms around it had started growing food that rotted on the stalk, the people were buying a suspicious amount of poison, and then, suddenly, all communication stopped. Merchants started disappearing around the village, and none of the locals had been seen during the last harvest season. For a village that subsisted on farmers selling their crops in the nearby town’s market, that wasn’t just suspicious, it was concerning.
The farms they passed on their way looked completely abandoned. The fields hadn’t been sown or tilled, and it was already early summer. When they got to the village proper, the scene was even more unsettling. The streets were eerily quiet, to the point that you could hear your own breathing. When they reached the center of the abandoned town, Jason conjured up a glowing orb of soft blue light and sent it down a well that sat in the middle of the square. Upon examination of the water contained within, Jason noted something interesting. “Maya,” he called, “come look at this.”
Maya jogged over from where she had been examining a crumbling building. “What is it?”
“How long do you suppose it would take for all these buildings to be in the shape they’re in?”
“Through natural weathering? At least a decade.”
“Look at the well.”
Maya looked down the deep well. The soft blue light illuminated its crystal-clear surface. “I don’t see anything.”
“Exactly. There’s no trace of moss, algae, anything that normally grows in a damp environment like the bottom of a disused well. The well itself is perfectly intact, and, yet, the buildings around it are in a state of disarray.” Jason summoned a bucket and used a spell to float it down toward the water’s surface. He filled the bucket half way and it floated back up to him. He cupped his hand and drank from the bucket. “There’s iodine in this water.”
“That building I was just looking at… it doesn’t have the right markings.” Jason looked at Maya curiously until she continued. “I’ve seen a lot of abandoned buildings in my day. I’ve even slept in one or two. When a building crumbles because of abandonment, there’s a certain amount of weathering on it. These building don’t have that. They were torn down, and recently by the looks of things.”
“So, we have an intact well whose drinking water is still safe, buildings that have been torn down to look like they’re abandoned, and rats as far as the eye can see. What does all that add up to?”
“It adds up to some very unfriendly locals. I think I hear music.” Maya ran off before Jason could respond. Without hesitation, he followed her. Maya followed her ears to the edge of town, where a building that was once a small tavern stood. There were a number of hastily built additions that made the tavern look lopsided. Jason inspected the components of the additions and was able to match nearly all of them to the deconstructed buildings they had seen on their way here. Before he could point this out, however, Maya was already in the tavern. It hosted enough people to populate a small town.
When Maya entered, with Jason trailing after her, the music that had been playing stopped immediately, and all the patrons glared at the two newcomers. Jason and Maya looked at each of them in turn while they made their way to the bar, where the barman greeted them with a curt nod and a grunt. “What’s going on with the town? We find the streets lined with buildings that have clearly been taken down. Then we come here, and it looks like you’re the scrapper whose been stealing stone and wood off your neighbors’ homes.”
“How else were we supposed to fit everyone in here?” the barman said.
“Oh? Do you all live here then?”
Another curt nod.
“What made you all want to move in to the local inn?”
“What’s it to strangers like you? Why don’t you just go back where you came from?”
“Trust me, that’s not going to work on her,” Jason said. “I’ve tried.”
Maya glared at him over her shoulder, then turned back to the barman. “What’d ’ya say to me buying your most expensive drink, and the two of us talking about what happened to your sweet little town?” Maya took out a gold coin and slid it over toward the barman. He looked at it longingly, but Maya kept her finger on it. The barman looked up at her and then back to the coin. He reached for it, but she slid it away before he could take it. “First the story, and the drink.”
The barman sighed. “If you really want to know that bad, I’ll tell ya. Not ‘ere though. These folk don’t need to relive what they’ve already been through. That coin will buy you the last room I got left that isn’t occupied. We’ll talk there.” Maya looked at him expectantly. “And I’ll bring you a drink as well.”
She nodded and smiled. “Lead the way good sir!”
The barman called to the serving girl, and she led them up two flights of stairs to a small room with a slanted ceiling. In any other house it would’ve been the attic, but with an entire town’s population living in the inn, it was a spare room, just in case. “Sandy will be with you when he gets done downstairs,” the girl said before walking out the door.
“I guess Sandy is the name of the barman,” Maya said. “Funny I only now realize that neither of us asked.”
“There’s something going on with this town. The way the buildings had been torn down, the rats everywhere, and did you see the way the townspeople looked at us?”
“I’ve never seen so many people glare at me at once, even back in Antorn.” Maya sat down on the bed. “Still, I saw something else behind all the glares. It was like a kind of… fear, I guess.”
“What would make an entire town so afraid that they would all huddle in the inn?”
“If yar asking anybody that question, I’ll give ya the answer.” The barman was standing in the doorway holding a clay mug. He walked over to Maya and handed it to her. She took a big gulp and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Wow. Is that spiced rum? All the way out here?”
“It’s from me own personal storage.” The barman looked a measure more pleased at Maya’s compliment. “Now, ya were askin’ ‘bout the townsfolk and why they all be so frightened. Well, a while back, we had a nobleman who owned this town. At least, he owned the land under it. He was kind enough to not claim much of what other people built with their own hands. But, alas, one day, he fell ill from unknown causes. If ya ask me, I think his chef got something wrong in a wild boar or somethin’. Anyway, afterward, he died.”
“I mean, I suppose an unexplained illness is odd, but not that scary. Certainly not enough to have you all huddled in here.”
“I ain’t done. When they buried him in the family cemetery, he changed. He woke up, clawed his way out of his coffin, and started shambling around the manor biting people. Most of them died, but not all stayed dead. Some of them rose up and started doing his bidding like mindless slaves.”
“So not much of a change from when he was alive?” Jason smirked.
“Shh!” Maya scolded.
“This was different me boy. Many of the locals worked for his family in that manor. Almost anyone downstairs had a friend or family member who never came out of that house again.”
“Then how did all of you hear about it?”
“Ya can’t have near a tird of the town go missin’ and not have the others no about it. Are ye daft? When we realized what had happened, we decided that it be much safer if we kept each other company. That way, when those things come for us, we’ll all be ready.”
“Has anything come out of the manor since then?”
“If it has, we haven’t seen it. We try to avoid going outside as much as possible. Some of the men go out to hunt for food, at least three of the women to go draw water from the well. That’s about it. None of them have said anything about those horrible monsters being around.”
“I see,” Jason said. “Where is this manor?”
“It should be about a mile down the road you came in on. You’ll see the from gates. There’s a statue of a lion on either side of it.”
“Thank you, sir, you’ve been a great help.” Jason moved toward the door and Sandy followed him. When Sandy left, Jason locked the door behind him.
“What are you thinking?” Maya asked.
“I think we need to take a look at this manor.”