So that was my first real exposure to what a Thaumaturge was. Outside of academic knowledge, and the parlour tricks I’d seen from Morlo before then, my understanding was a shade limited. Knowledge did not bring contentment here, not in the slightest. Maybe it would have if the Thaumaturge in question hadn’t been laughing like a madman the whole time he used his powers.

  Morlo the Great and Terrible did not stick around long after throwing a few more fireballs; fire more to be exact. I didn’t believe that number was coincidental, for each one struck an undead behemoth directly and killed only those shamblers most near to them as a result. Probably, another hundred or so ended up joining the big ones in oblivion. I wouldn’t have felt pity even if undead could feel pain, but the sight of watching it still struck a nerve.

  Burning. Something about burning, I don’t know. Even to this day, after seeing people mangled in more inventive ways than I ever hoped to more times than I could count, there’s just…Something about burning. I shiver writing about it now, and I shivered all the more seeing it happen back then.

  “Well, that’s that taken care of.” Morlo sounded as cheery as ever, despite the devastation. Perhaps because of it. I found it hard to look at the mad bastard, fearful that to do so might somehow invite that ferocious violence he’d just demonstrated to me.

  “You…Fucking fuck.” I was inarticulate, but I’d wager that you would be too. There are no words to describe the sight of a Thaumaturge in action.

  Granted, if you happen to be knowledgeable of them then you’ll know, from my descriptions, that Morlo was far from a typical specimen. More on that later…

  “What now?” Vara asked, not seeming as stunned as me somehow. Thick-skin did Vara have, I’d seen it in the Dungeon and I was seeing it again now. Morlo seemed to see it too, because he eyed her somewhat appreciatively as he responded. Unless he was just ogling her, which was possible.

  “Now we move on,” the Thaumaturge replied, and started gesturing his horse to do just that.

  Finally, my brain started working enough for the proper questions to reach me. Bit late, I had to say, but better late than never eh? Unless you die in ignorance of course.

  “Wait, that’s it? What…What were we even doing here? Why are we leaving, even, if you can just destroy the undead?”

  Morlo didn’t reply, and neither did Vara. Just kept riding on, forcing me after them to repeat my questions in hope of an answer. God, I was easily manipulated. It was pathetic.

  “I can’t do that forever,” Morlo explained, “magic is dangerous when used in large quantities and I don’t know how many undead will be coming tomorrow, or the day after. You saw the numbers were increased today, yes?”

  I swallowed, and nodded. Yes, I bloody had. Three times as many behemoths, maybe four times the small shamblers.

  “So…We’re still leaving.” My heart sank. For a few moments there I’d let myself believe things might go back to normal, that I might get to stay. Morlo seemed to know it. More than that, he seemed to relish dashing those hopes.

  “Oh yes, leaving as quick as we can now that this little detour’s done. Come, double-quick!”

  We rode for some time longer, the three of us, while I let the blistering throb of what had happened run through my thoughts. My arm was sore, somehow. Maybe the unexpected force of sword hits from horseback had done a number on the joints, or maybe it was just some phantom fear. I was distracted, thoughts scattered. ‘Locked inside myself’, I would later come to call it. Nothing special there, half the people you see dragged into a killing affair get like that.

  It wasn’t until another hour had passed that my thoughts had settled enough for me to ask a non-stupid question, if only just the one.

  “What did you come back for, then?” I frowned, “if it was so dangerous at Sheppleberry even for you? I doubt you were just feeling charitable on the villagers.”

  Morlo eyed me with a twinkle in his gaze, and glanced towards Vara. Everything clicked for me at once.

  “It was my condition for coming with him,” the girl replied testily. She seemed even more sick of me than usual, somehow. Of course that spurred my pricked ego into confronting her.

  “Do you have something you’d like to say?!” I snapped, confident that she’d lock up as people always did when pushed on a subtle slight.

  Except I’d misjudged things of course. We weren’t in Sheppleberry anymore, and all the popularity and weight of reputation I’d spent years building up meant fuck-all now. Vara just exploded into a response faster than I could process the change.

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  “Yes, actually, there is. I was asked to run off with a mad Thaumaturge just like you, and I chose to bargain for the safety of my people before accepting. You didn’t even try, did you? It didn’t occur to you that you might attend to the well-being of anyone other than yourself. You didn’t think about any of them when you were fleeing the town, and that didn’t change when you were given the ability to save them.”

  I tried to retort, but couldn’t. My mouth was moving but not making any sound, tongue lying fat and useless between dry lips. She’d scored a good point there and she hadn’t even made any great exertion in doing so.

  We kept riding for the rest of the night, and much of the following day. I didn’t think to ask about that either until we’d already come to finally stop sometime around noon.

  “It’s safer under our circumstances,” Morlo told me, “we’re more likely to be attacked come nightfall.”

  Being reminded that I was still getting chased by hordes of shamblers did nothing to comfort me, but Vara seemed rather pleased at the fact. In hindsight she was probably just enjoying the sight of me freaking out.

  We kept moving still, never slowing down. Travel by horse is actually more exhausting than you might think—not as tiring as walking of course, certainly not by distance, but eight hours holding yourself upright and guiding an animal with your legs was a great deal more taxing than sitting in a comfortable carriage. I could see then why older men tended to purchase such vehicles.

  My sudden appreciation for the difficulties of age aside, we were also moving farther from Sheppleberry than Vara had ever gone before. She surprised me on the second day by bringing her horse over beside mine and asking me about it.

  “Have you ever been around these parts?” Vara’s voice sounded…not uncertain as much as reluctant, I could hear how she loathed to defer to me in anything. It made me nice and smug as I replied.

  “Oh yeah, lots of times,” I grinned, “we’re about thirty miles from Sheppleberry now. This region is called greywood if I remember right.”

  “That’s not very helpful,” she shot back. I glared at her.

  “Well if you don’t want to be told anything you could’ve just—”

  —”No,” Vara replied, “I…Sorry, please continue.” She did that thing with her eyes, making them all big and wet and I suddenly forgot my anger.

  God, it was pathetic how easily manipulated I was back then. I could kill an undead behemoth but not say no to a girl while my cock was half-hard.

  “Right, well…No harm done.” I cleared my throat to continue, while Vara held my gaze. She must’ve been so smug on the inside, or maybe she was just tired of needing to use tricks like this as a way of navigating around the fragile pride of men. I can hardly blame her either way.

  “This whole area is used to run wagons,” I explained, “it’s flat ground and easily maneuvered so merchants love it.”

  “Doesn’t that mean we’re luring a bunch of undead through a heavily trafficked road after us?” Vara asked.

  I paused, gave that a few moments of thought and then went cold.

  “Are we turning this pass into a death trap!?” I called ahead, glaring daggers at Morlo. I don’t know why, it wasn’t like I’d been brimming with concern for human life before now. Probably, I just felt worse about getting merchants killed than peasants. They were my people after all.

  “Yes,” Morlo replied. I waited for him to say more. He didn’t. I stared at him, and he didn’t so much as glance back my way. It shouldn’t have been surprising, such total indifference, but I wasn’t yet familiar with Thaumaturges or how they were. It isn’t just bigotry that has everyone hating them.

  “And can you do something about that?” I snapped, regretting it instantly as the Thaumaturge levelled that too-frosty gaze on me and seemed to stab it right through my chest.

  “No, I can’t. You could have though. By finding the undead and letting them kill you right away, so they stop tearing the world apart in search.”

  He was right of course, and unfair. The risks to me, the guarantee of death, were not at all comparable to the risks he would face as a Thaumaturge able to destroy entire formations of warriors by himself. But I was in no state to point that out, and wouldn’t have risked his anger by doing so even if I had been. We kept riding, and soon it was day again. I was starting to find my nerves settling down, at least. In my head the undead had been some irresistible force, able to find me no matter where I went or how far it was from them. Ridiculous, I know now, but as a boy I hadn’t the experience to understand the limits of such creatures.

  It wasn’t until we’d stopped for the third time that Morlo finally broke his silence with me. He’d only spoken with Vara a few times, leaving me to keep my own company between her hostility and his disinterest, and so it came as quite a surprise when he suddenly planted himself down beside me to speak one morning.

  “Vara told me you were the idiot who touched the stone seal inside the Dungeon.”

  I had actually forgotten about that, believe it or not. Something about the frenzied way everything had happened at once lately left such things hard to access in my thoughts. Pushed them back from the front of my mind and made them hard to grasp.

  “That’s…Right,” I nodded, stiffening and suppressing a tremble. Morlo had a way of looking at you when he was genuinely curious that felt unnerving beyond words. It was the sort of look I imagined him giving some specimen in a laboratory, seeming to peel away the skin and study you from inside and out.

  “Tell me about it, everything,” he ordered. It took me a few moments to gather my bearings enough for that. There was so much to tell, so many details and so little way of knowing which would be relevant. I started talking, just let the words fall out, certain all the while that I’d be interrupted and told to cut out some irrelevant details but never was. All of it seemed relevant to Morlo, and he sat there patiently listening for long minutes until I was finally finished.

  By the time I finished, I’d actually gotten into a sort of rhythm. Talking about the vision I saw, as well as just the collapse and the physical facts of the thing. I wasn’t sure why, it just felt…right, somehow.

  This was because Morlo had used magic to make me unknowingly open up about it of course, which was highly illegal and grounds to see him publicly hanged. I did not know this, and would have been a lot less friendly with the insane fuck if I had. Instead I was treated to the Thaumaturge nodding slowly and making a show of deep thought.

  “...So what does it mean?” I asked him at last, not liking the wait one bit. Morlo’s eyes narrowed, and he took his sweet time in answering.

  “...I have no idea,” he said at last.

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