Donal MacLaughlin looked up at the shaggy, misshapen creature from the flat of his back. A low rumble sounded from the otherworldly foe that felled him, its body backlit by the late afternoon sun. Donal dug his elbows and feet into the sodden turf, scrambling in vain to maintain the distance between them. The creature swung its webbed hand. He rolled to his left and glimpsed the spear knocked from his hand. It lay to his right, on the other side of his opponent.
He waited for the creature to commit to another move. It raised a foot and brought it down toward Donal’s head. He rolled himself onto his hands and knees and crawled toward his spear. The creature’s other foot came down on his left hand as he reached for its handle. Donal yelled and looked behind himself as he kicked his attacker’s other shin. The creature did not budge or even cry out. Donal scanned the field for options. One found him.
“Lía?rit teine!”
A ball of fire erupted from the hand of his brother, Finn. The projectile flew toward the monster and burst against its cheek, knocking its target backward. The beast’s hands covered its face, preventing it from seeing the thrust of Donal’s spear into its abdomen.
“These fuath are tough little melters, you know?” Finn asked, helping his younger brother to his feet. He gave Donal’s left hand a cursory examination. “Nothing’s broken. Take a breath to shake it off but don’t faff around. They still double our number.” Finn slapped his brother’s back and sprinted toward a red-headed whirlwind swinging both sword and staff one hundred yards from the spot where Donal stood.
Finn was always sprinting after Siobhan MacSweeney these days.
Three fuath now surrounded her, dancing around the limit of her weapons’ reach. She glimpsed Finn charging toward her and maneuvered herself so that the creatures stood between them. She dropped the head of her staff—now emitting a soft, golden glow—until it hit the ground and then raised it high.
“Frém ina áitt.”
The ground under the fuath on the right split. Several roots and vines emerged through the crack and ensnared the creature. Siobhan swung her staff in a wide, looping motion at the other two fuath.
“Torann nert!” she shouted.
A short strand of blue light flickered above the staff head. Within the span of a gull’s wingbeat a boom erupted from the staff. A concussive wave radiated forward, knocking the two unbound creatures airborne. Siobhan ran to the pair and drove her sword into the chest of the fuath on her right. In a single motion she withdrew her sword and struck the other in the head as it sat up. The blue light faded from the staff as she turned back toward the cries of her entrapped foe.
Finn had caught up with the action and dispatched the hairy humanoid creature with a single swing. Satisfied that the beast wouldn’t rise, he picked up a section of vine and smiled. “I think you just volunteered to trim the garden next time,” he said.
Siobhan’s eye roll was strong enough to swing her head from left to right. If she was amused, her reaction was too subtle to see from the other side of the meadow. She looked back at Donal and jabbed her fists into her hips. Donal could read her next thoughts from any distance. “Ah here, we woke you from your nap,” she yelled at him.
“I wasn’t sleeping," Donal yelled back. "I was studying your tactics, learning to be a better warrior." He stretched his smile wide enough for the pair on the other side of the field to see.
Siobhan started walking in his direction. “There’s at least two more skulking about,” she said. “Can we trouble you to go after them while we try to find the tomb and close the door on them? Don’t come back and join us until you’re sure you’ve gotten every last one of ‘em.”
Donal scoffed. “Even if I am sure, not going anywhere near that place until you two are out of it,” he said. “I still can’t get that image from last week out of my head.”
“Oi!” Finn yelled. “Wind your neck in. You were supposed to be heading to Niall’s.”
Siobhan’s shoulders sank. “I can’t for the life of me imagine why they don’t allow the three of us to handle things by ourselves more often,” she said.
Finn shook his head and scowled at Donal.
“G’way with that,” Donal said, pointing his spear at Finn. “Don’t act like I’m always at fault.”
“We’re all at fault,” Siobhan said. “Myself included. When it’s just the three of us, we wind up acting like siblings and…” She bounced a finger between herself and Finn. “Y’know, us. Spending most of our time taking the piss out of each other. So I will ask again, can you go track down the last few before they hurt someone?”
“Fine, fine,” Donal said, rubbing the back of his head. “Did you see where they went while I was down?”
“They ran downhill, " Finn said. “Toward town. Best of luck!”
The pair ran up the gentle slope to a stone structure protruding from the ground. Two stout pillars five feet apart supported a wide flagstone cover. The three stones formed a doorway which led to a court tomb below. Finn and Siobhan would descend the earthen ramp to find the otherworldly portal from which these fuath entered Tyrconnell.
Unfortunately, several of these tombs dotted the landscape around Killybóthar. The one ahead of them was the fourth they had visited today. Donal’s arms and legs lost the snap in their movement around midday. If the portal wasn’t in this tomb the three of them would trudge back into town for the night only to wake up tomorrow and face however many more fuath slipped into their world while they slept.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
The sliver of hope Donal clung to was that none of the fuath they had fought today were so densely located around a tomb as this group had been. This has to be it, he thought.
He turned away from his comrades and squinted at the landscape below him. Finn’s hint on locating the escaped fuath was as helpful as a broken spade handle; all paths from here led downhill and toward town. He walked south until he reached the road at the edge of the meadow.
Donal dropped to a knee to check the dried and dusty road for tracks, more hopeful than confident in the traces of knowledge gleaned from the tracking lessons provided by his friend, Maeve. All he could see were indecipherable swipes on the ground. He shook his head to free the back of his mind from darkening thoughts. When in doubt, follow the road, he thought. Forward he went.
He couldn’t see the harbor but the gull calls heard among the tree-creeper and sparrow songs were unmistakable. Donal lost himself in the avian soundscape for a quarter of a mile before a less pleasing sound shook him from his trance. A bull snort sounded from the field ahead on his left. The field was obscured by a thicket along the road. A cow bellowed moments later. Another joined in. Donal jogged toward the commotion. When a third cow bellowed, he set into a run.
Donal stopped ten yards from the field’s boundary and set his spear’s handle in the dirt to steady himself as he gulped for air. The blackthorn and ferns were backstopped by a loosely organized pile of stones that once passed for a fence. He found a spot where the treeline thinned and eased himself over the stones. He crept from under the tree cover toward the open field, uneager to learn which side a bull would take in a fight between human and fuath.
Two mature oak trees stood in the middle of the field. To the left of them, Donal saw the bull facing an agitator obscured by the massive tree trunks. The bull scraped its hoof against the ground, lowered its shoulders and charged. One of the fuath leaped from behind the trees as it dodged the animal. The second creature had no such luck. A thud sounded behind the trees, followed by wheezes and hissing.
The first fuath hid from the bull as it surveyed its surroundings. It noticed a dwelling on the opposite side of the road. Two small children watched the events in the field unfold with bewildered expressions on their faces.
A soft yellow light overtook the fuath’s eyes and soon spread across its body as if it had stepped from the shadow into direct sunlight. The clumpy mane behind its head that once resembled seaweed transformed into a long, flowing head of charcoal-colored hair which reflected just a hint of green. The tattered rags that hung from its torso spread into a green linen dress with gold trim. Its oddly shaped musculature now took the form of a pale, lovely woman no older than thirty. It bounded from the tree through the hedge and onto the road.
You scheming little shitehawk, Donal thought.
He sprinted for the road, swinging the iron head of his bident spear to ease his passage through the copse. The fuath waved its arms until it gained the children’s attention. It said nothing but opened its arms in the manner of a welcoming embrace. Two hundred yards up the road, the younger child slipped out of their older sibling's grasp and ran toward the fuath’s friendly visage.
Donald’s heart hammered against his chest as hard as his feet pounded the road. He was within twenty yards of the creature and shifted his body and slid to a stop with his left foot forward. Donal flung his left arm forward, and pulled it back to his body, drawing as much energy from the otherworldly plan of Mag Mon as he could contain. He stepped into his throw and hurled his spear at the fuath. It struck true, hitting the middle of its upper back.
The creature, still in human form, grabbed its chest before it fell to the ground, leaving the young boy and Donal facing each other with no obstruction. Donal opened his right palm and felt it warm as he called his weapon. A red gem at the base of the bident head glowed, causing the spear to wiggle until it was free of its target. The weapon flew back toward Donal’s hand in a wobbly trajectory. He stepped to the side and knocked it to the ground with his left elbow.
Still can’t get this to work like the last one, Donal thought. I need to talk to Gavin.
The boy stood frozen on the road. The color drained from his face. A greenish tint crept up from his neck until it reached his eyes. He dropped to all fours and retched until the entirety of his last meal fell upon the road.
Donal picked up his weapon and held its point against the ground, approaching the boy with minced steps. “Are you alright, lad?” he asked the boy.
“Stay away from him!” his older sister yelled as she sprinted towards him. “Da! Come quick!”
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Donal said. “My friends and I have been chasing these… creatures.”
The older sister had caught up with her brother and stood between him and Donal. “The only creatures I see are the one over there that got stomped by my bull and the one in front of me that killed that poor woman that wanted to save us!”
Donal dropped his spear and raised his open hands. “That’s not what happened,” he said. “This lady is not—”
“What’s all this then?” shouted a man approaching from the house. He carried a spear and a pitchfork and handed the latter to his daughter once he reached his children. He stood a few inches taller than Donal and his build was an impressive result from a lifetime of manual labor. “What are you doing here, fella?”
“These things were running from the tombs and heading for town,” Donal said. “I needed to hunt them down before anyone got hurt.”
“Aside from the lady you killed?” the daughter said. “He did it, Da! Then he made his spear fly back to him.”
The father squished his face and turned back to look at his daughter. “He what?”
“I’m telling you that this is not a person,” Donal said. “My brother calls it a ‘fuath.’” He pointed to the field. “It’s the same as the one your bull gored and trampled over there.”
The father stood and craned his neck toward the field. “Watch him,” he told his daughter. He took a few more steps and studied the broken form near the trees in the middle of the field. “I’m supposed to believe that’s a fuath? That they’re real?”
The daughter shrieked and pointed to the ground. “What’s happening?”
The lifeless form on the ground darkened and returned to its normal form—gnarled mane, misshapen torso and all.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Nothing!” Donal said. “Lass, I’ve been trying to tell you this wasn’t a woman. It was coming for you and your brother.”
The father scratched his temple as his eyes shifted from Donal to the fuath. “Where did you say you were from?” he asked.
“I didn’t.” Donal said. “I’m from Ards Beg, up by Gortahork.”
“If I were you, I’d get your friends and head back there. Now.”
“But we did nothing wrong!” Donal said. “I saved your little ones and you’re treating me like I’m the monster!”
“Maybe it all happened as you say,” the father said. “Maybe it didn’t. Fuath aren’t supposed to be real and spears don’t fly unless they’re thrown. I think it’s best that you leave now.”
“Fine,” Donal said. “One last night at the inn and we’ll be gone in the morning.”
“Do they not teach you the meaning of the word ‘now’ up north?” the father asked. “If this concludes your business here as you say, go you on home.” He jabbed his spear toward the road behind Donal.
Donal looked at each member of the family. Seeing no dissension or uncertainty on their faces, he snatched the spear from the ground and turned back for the tomb. “You’re welcome,” he said over his shoulder, unable to hide his disdain. “Always glad to be of service.”
