The Spell Realm (8 page)

He couldn’t wait to see her again.

Chapter 11: Blaise

“What is it?” Ara asked, seeing what must have been an alert expression on Blaise’s face.

“I am not sure,” Blaise replied. “I heard an animal of some kind. It was growling.”

“What kind of animal?”

Blaise listened closer. He didn’t hear a growl again, but now he heard something heavy moving through the forest. “I think there is more than one creature.”

She frowned, looking disturbed.

“They must be quite large,” Blaise said, closing his eyes to better focus on his hearing. “I can hear their footsteps. It almost seems like they’re trying to tread lightly, but their bulk hits branches and bushes, giving them away.”

Opening his eyes, he saw the girl standing there, her face pale. “We need to wake the others,” she said urgently.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, but if it’s anything from the Dark Woods, we need to prepare immediately.”

They hurried back toward the tents, approaching Kostya first. As soon as Ara explained the situation, he ordered all the rest to be woken up. Only Maya, Esther, and Gala were allowed to sleep uninterrupted.

“How far away would you say were the noises you heard?” Kostya asked Blaise, his voice tense.

Blaise thought about it. “About half a mile away, I think.”

“What? There is no way you can hear that far,” Shram said derisively. “Are you sure you didn’t fall asleep and dream the whole thing?”

“We were both awake,” Ara said sharply, looking at Shram with annoyance. “And he could hear that far because he did a spell to enhance his hearing. And be glad that he did. If there is even the slightest possibility that there is something from the Dark Woods here, this close to the village . . .”

The other men nodded. “She’s right,” a blond man said. “We have to check this out, and if it’s a threat, deal with it.”

“You don’t have to come, Blaise,” Kostya said, apparently reaching a decision. “This might be dangerous.”

“I want to come,” Blaise said. “But we should leave someone behind to guard that tent.” He pointed at where Gala and the old women were sleeping.

“Yes, and we need to make sure someone can warn the village, should something go wrong with our hunt,” Ara added.

“Then it’s settled,” Kostya said, ordering four of his men to stay behind. The rest gathered their weapons and quietly headed in the direction of the noise.

Letting the hunters walk ahead, Blaise spoke the words of the shielding spell again, casting a protective bubble around the tent. It wouldn’t last long, but it was better than nothing.

Then he hurried to catch up with the others, looking through his spell cards on the way. He was not prepared for encounters with wild creatures, but he was sure he could improvise.

As they got closer to the source of the noise, Blaise held up his finger, warning the hunters to be careful. “I can only hear one of them now,” he whispered to Kostya. “Maybe the other ones left?”

“Let’s see what we’re up against,” Kostya whispered. “How far is it?”

“Not far now. It sounds like it’s heading in our direction.”

The hunters got their bows ready.

Two minutes later, a powerful roar split the air. Blaise felt a chill skitter down his spine. Whatever this creature was, it sounded big and vicious.

It was also running straight at them.

The hunters spread out in a semi-circle and drew back the strings of their arrows. They looked scared, but determined.

And then the creature was upon them.

Bursting through the bushes, it was a blur of dark fur, claws, and teeth, with small yellow eyes that had some kind of a reflective sheen.

It was also massive. For a second, Blaise thought it was a bear—but the creature was even larger, with a thick tail, long pointed snout, and movements reminiscent of a jackal or a fox.

The archers released their arrows.

Only two reached their target, and the hide of the beast seemed too thick for the arrows to penetrate. One of the arrows fell harmlessly to the ground, while the other one got lodged in the creature’s massive paw.

The sound it made was hair-raising. And before anyone could react, the thing jumped onto a nearby tree, making a leap over the stunned hunters’ heads, and disappeared into the forest.

“We must go after it,” Kostya yelled, apparently emboldened by their success. Before Blaise could object, the hunters took off at a run, forcing him to sprint after them to keep up.

“What was that?” Blaise managed to ask, catching up to Ara. He had no idea how the hunters were able to move so quickly through the dark forest. Even with his enhanced vision, he found it difficult to keep such a fast pace.

“It’s a bearwolf,” she panted in response, ducking to avoid a low-hanging branch.

“A bearwolf? Do you mean a wolf-bear hybrid? I didn’t know those things still existed.” Blaise remembered the old stories about the sorcerer who had done experiments on living creatures. Augusta had been obsessed with those tales at some point, using them as an example of the dangers of hubris in sorcery.

“Oh, they exist,” Ara muttered, breathing heavily from the run. “The Dark Woods swarm with them. I think a couple of those things got there at some point, and they bred like rabbits. That’s partially why so few people get through those forests—that and all those poisonous plants.”

“How did you and the others get through it, then?” Blaise jumped over a thick tree root, barely managing to stay upright as his foot sank into a hidden hole. Yanking it out, he hurried after Ara, who continued running at a breakneck pace.

“Long story,” she panted, apparently reaching the limits of her endurance. He could see beads of sweat glistening on her forehead.

At that moment, they reached a large clearing. Bursting through the bushes, they stopped abruptly when they reached the middle.

The other hunters were already there, standing frozen in place.

The creature they followed was not running anymore. It had turned to face them, standing its ground on the other end of the meadow.

And all around the edges of the clearing, Blaise could see more of its kind standing in a circle around the hunters, their yellow eyes gleaming in the moonlight.

The bearwolf had led them to an ambush.

* * *

The cool, rational part of Blaise involuntarily admired the creature’s intelligence. This was long-term planning in action. Like its more commonplace wolf relatives, bearwolves apparently hunted in packs—and were quite good at coordinating their actions.

They also seemed to know how to hunt humans.

“We are so dead,” Ara whispered, standing next to him. Blaise could hear the fear and resignation in her voice, and some of his own shock faded.

The archers were frantically preparing to release their arrows, their hands shaking, but Blaise could see the lack of hope on their faces. All around them, he could hear low, furious growling and see the reflective sheen in the creatures’ small yellow eyes.

At most, they had seconds before the bearwolves attacked.

His heart pounding, Blaise grabbed his Interpreter Stone and began reaching for his spell cards. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Shram pulling out a long knife.

“What are you doing?” one of the men hissed at him.

“I’m going to die on my own terms,” the scarred man gritted out, gripping the knife tightly and starting forward. Before he could take more than a few steps, there was a blur of motion, and Shram was on the ground, a large snarling mass on top of him.

“No!” Ara let out a shrill scream just as Blaise loaded a card into his Stone, releasing the fireball he prepared earlier.

The flash of light was so bright, it hurt Blaise’s enhanced vision. However, it appeared to hurt the beast more, singing its fur. With a roar, the bearwolf jumped off Shram, rolling on the ground in pain.

It was a big creature, Blaise noted with that cool part of his mind. Bigger than the rest. Perhaps it was the alpha of this pack. His hands shaking, Blaise desperately searched his cards again. There was nothing he’d be able to write in time. He only had moments to improvise something else, before the creatures would recuperate and attack in full force. “Buy me a little time,” he barked at Kostya, beginning to chant the shield spell.

At Kostya’s command, the archers released their arrows. Many hit their targets, but as before, few penetrated the animals’ thick hide. Maddened, the bearwolves sprang at them, and at that moment, Blaise’s shield spell manifested. Instead of reaching the hunters, the beasts’ massive bulk hit the shimmering wall of the protective bubble Blaise had managed to erect.

“How long is this going to hold?” Kostya asked, his voice tight with anxiety. Two of the men were dragging Shram away from the bubble’s edge. He looked to be in bad shape, his arm ripped to shreds.

“Not long,” Blaise said tensely. “I have an idea, but I need to concentrate.”

This idea hinged on a lot of assumptions. The biggest one was that an illusion spell designed for human beings would work on these animal hybrids. Blaise thought it might, just because many of these spells were initially tested on animals, but there was no guarantee.

His other assumption was that these creatures were indeed like wolves in their behavior.

Frantically writing his spell, Blaise could hear the creatures attacking the bubble over and over again, growing more maddened with every attempt. He knew he had almost no time, as pressure applied to the spell bubble tended to weaken it faster. It was as though the creatures knew it too, because they kept pouncing, clawing at the invisible wall.

His hands slippery with sweat, Blaise loaded the spell as soon as it was done. Then he looked up, waiting to see if it worked.

Visibly, nothing had changed about himself and his companions. However, the bearwolves stopped attacking the bubble. Instead, they appeared confused, their thick tails swinging from side to side.

At that moment, the bubble shimmer began to fade as the shield spell ran its course. If Blaise’s illusion spell didn’t work correctly, they would all be at the creatures’ mercy.

“What’s happening?” Kostya asked, sounding fearful.

“I used an illusion spell,” Blaise explained quietly. “If I did it right, they should see us as a rival pack of bearwolves. Essentially, they see what we see, a mirror image of their own selves. And they hear us growling instead of talking.”

“So what now?” Ara whispered, her entire body trembling.

“Now we need to threaten them into leaving us alone,” Blaise replied, hoping that his idea would work. It might’ve been effective with wolves, but he didn’t know if it would be with these creatures.

“All right,” Kostya said, immediately understanding the task in front of them. “Let’s all spread out and walk toward them. Show no fear.”

They all slowly started forward, two of the men in the back supporting Shram.

The bearwolves snarled threateningly as the humans began to approach. The alpha of the pack—the one who had attacked Shram before—took a step toward them, letting out a loud growl. As the hunters continued moving forward, however, the creature slowly began to retreat, apparently intimidated by the approaching ‘pack.’ Blaise had purposefully used the alpha’s own image for the illusion, making all of the human ‘bearwolves’ as large as the pack’s leader. There were also nine humans, including Blaise, versus eight bearwolves.

Still, the animals seemed hesitant to leave. The one thing Blaise hadn’t been able to do with the spell was mask the people’s real scent. While the animals saw and heard others of their own kind, they undoubtedly still smelled humans in the vicinity and were loath to give up their prey.

Blaise and the hunters needed to do something more aggressive before the illusion spell began wearing off.

“Start screaming,” Blaise told the others. “Scream as loudly as you can—as if your life depends on it. Because it does.” And he let out a war-like yell, which he hoped would sound like a powerful roar to the animals’ ears. The hunters joined in, their voices mingling in a furious cacophony of sound.

The bearwolves took a step back . . . one, then another. Blaise could see their ears twitching and their tails swinging in displeasure from side to side. He continued screaming, even though his throat was sore and his ears were ringing.

And just when he was sure the plan would fail, the bearwolf leader let out a loud growl and turned around, disappearing into the bushes. The rest of the pack followed, and Blaise could hear them running through the forest to the east—back toward the Dark Woods.

The hunters and Blaise stopped screaming. Shaking in the aftermath, they looked at the now-empty meadow with stunned expressions on their faces.

The hunters could hardly believe they survived—and Blaise knew exactly how they felt.

* * *

After everyone had a chance to calm down a bit, Blaise walked over to Shram—the only one who had been wounded during this encounter. The scarred man was sitting on the ground, clutching his torn arm. Blaise could see blood seeping out of the wound despite a makeshift bandage of someone’s shirt pressed against it.