Altered

Deep in the woods, on a dark and misty night, a group of tall, slender, hooded beings wended—one by one, on individual paths, with spells to prevent their tracking—towards a mountain that jutted straight out of the ground with steep sides, as if just this mountain peak had been lifted up. The top was still rounded, still like it should look if it had never been lifted at all. Caen had been tracking them for some time, looking for where their paths led, looking for answers. Tonight he caught a stronger trail, a youngling that had failed to cover their trail as fully as others. The trail wrapped around the base of the steep walls of rock. In spots it got weaker as a rudimentary spell to prevent tracking was used. The youngling applied it frequently. They must have been aware of their lack of skill. After almost an hour there was a feeling, and then a sound, and then an eruption of chanting as a spirit reached around a bend. Screams came from the soul, not the body. It yearned to be free. Caen held back against the wall, a tree shielding him. The soul reached out for him like all lives in Noc Thui did. This one belonged to him, to his world, to a place before this group of elves had gone dark. He’d found them. He held tight, not breathing, while the soul was trapped in some hideous spell. His gut tightened as his fingers bore into stone. Steady, he reminded himself. He couldn’t tear down the mountain in rage. He couldn’t make himself known until he was ready. They’d escaped him for too long, taken too long to find. He would hold himself back and find where they kept their souls to free it later. Caen waited. The howls of their pestilence dwindled and the dark elves completed their final ceremony, individuals taking off on unremarkable trails. Caen shifted his skin into stone and blended completely into the walls of the mountain, so deep even his eyes were swirls of moss on stone. When the youngling passed, recklessly taking a near identical trail out as he took in, Caen let himself breathe. In the far distance dawn was breaking. Caen entered the cave through stone. The altar stood stained in blood, remnants left as an offering to their god, the one they’d made, the one they’d chosen above—instead—of Caen. A chicken’s head lay at the center. He approached, picking it up and looking at the salts caked into its eyes. A night howled. A shiver ran up his spine as wind whipped through his short brown hair. He’d found them. The body of the human they’d sacrificed lay on the ground, an ashen mirror of what it had once been. Though he could bring someone back from the dead with relative ease, the dark elves had found a way to bind the soul they took into their magic. Since they’d risen, since their god had risen, Caen had known he had to stop them, stop the chaos that followed their paths. He studied the chicken head. Blood dripped down his hand, wrist, and forearm. He was about to move toward a dry, congealed powder mixture that reminded him of thicker seasoning mixes when he heard a crunch in the woods. Caen turned to see the barrel of a long gun pointed straight at him. A man stood on the end, his hair tousled in near black curls that were even darker than Caen’s own hair. His shirt was tight against broad muscular shoulders and arms. He wore jeans and cowboy boots and a glare that sent a chill racing down Caen’s spine. Not much scared him, but this man had nothing to lose. “Step away from the altar,” the man said, his voice rolling as he spoke. Caen glanced at the chicken head, its beak crossed, and set it down slowly. He raised his hands so the man could see them. His ears were visible, rounded and human-like—not pointed like a dark elf. That didn’t make him safe, but it made him slightly less dangerous for Caen to be facing at this moment. He wasn’t prepared to fight off a den of elves. “Easy,” Caen said, trying to sound soft and comforting. The man continued to face him down the barrel of his gun. “What are you doing out here?” He knew better than to lie to someone like the man in front of him, and yet he couldn’t share the whole truth. He went with something humans could relate to, in case he’d run into an unfortunately out of their element person: “Investigating a disturbance in the area and a missing persons case. I have reason to believe they’re related. What are you doing here?” “Same. But I wasn’t holding a dead chicken.” “That you weren’t.” An unexpected shiver ran through Caen. He looked more closely at the man. Caen was a god. He could have whatever he wanted, and he wanted this being to share with him. And yet…he withheld his power, his ability to get what he wanted. instead, he tried reason: “Why don’t you set that gun down and we can talk. Starting with how you know about this place.” He glanced at the stone altar. They were deep in the woods, behind a mountain thought to be haunted. It wasn’t likely he stumbled across the place casually. “I know there’s people doing magic in these woods. Why don’t I keep the gun up and we can talk.” “What kind of magic? What kind of people?” What do you know? Caen had his hands up, but he had other magic. He could use his magic to create some animal to protect him. “I’m still working that out,” he said. “Maybe people like you.” He nudged the gun towards Caen, but his hand was subtly off the trigger, enough that he had control of the weapon. “No, not like me. Some of them are Wiccan, but this magic is something else. Magic leaves imprints.” He had to be certain he’d found the dark elves he’d been looking for. “Show me.” “You want me to show you a spell? The man nodded. “I want you to show me what traces their magic left.” Caen turned toward the alter as a curious wind whistled through the clearing. The air wrapped around Caen and left a chill on his shoulders and settled deep inside him, threatening. The man with the gun stood stoically—it hadn’t come from him. Despite the obvious threat, Caen pressed on. He lifted the chicken head again and showed it to the man. “This chicken is one sign. Wiccans don’t use chickens, even when they do blood magic. It’s messy, impractical, and weak for how the magic works. Some Wiccans might use it to throw others off, but not for a bigger spell. I can feel the magnitude of what they did here. There are also fae—though most of the blood fae are in other realms and in hiding—and then there are vampires. They don’t use human blood because it drives them crazy. They prefer animals.” He wiped a sooty paste off the altar, some of it mixed with the blood of the chicken. “This is not Wiccan that I know of. It has…” he sniffed it, lightly so whatever it was didn’t enter his body. “Hints of herbs I would expect most vampires to avoid.” “And which of those do human sacrifices?” Caen knew in that moment this man knew very little about magic, even if he knew it existed. He wasn’t the enemy. He would have known the answer to that question, a question no one but a human—or someone raised human—would ask. “All of them.” The man didn’t falter. He stood strong, the gun still lifted. His arms had to be burning, but he showed no signs of faltering. “I’d consider yourself lucky if, from that list, you came across a vampire instead of the others.” The man made a face, a damning face that marked him as barely aware of magic. He jabbed his gun towards the table. “Which one would flay a man open and pin his organs to the forest floor and leave him to die?” “Why don’t you tell me?” Caen asked. He transported the two of them to a cell in his Skye palace, a sandstone palace that hid his godly endeavors in Noc Thui. Most Sylemese knew of Noc Thui as a place that existed, but they didn’t know many of the Wiccans that had made Sylem home were in fact something else, from somewhere else. Caen was god of Noc Thui and he’d evacuated most of his persecuted witches a long time ago. They fit in well among those who used plants and blood to make spells—they could disguise their magic among the rituals of plant processing. If he could move him, Caen could trust him. He still had his mind; he wasn’t subjected to the dark elves’ god. Here, he stepped back and cocked his gun. “Touch me again…” “We’re going to have to talk about what you know and how you know it.” Caen sat on a bench near the wall. “You saw the ceremony, which means you were there. Which means you either were part of it or they let you leave. Either way, you are the most dangerous person in the room until proven otherwise.” He wasn’t escaping, and he’d been easily trapped, which made Caen suspect he wasn’t dangerous. However, his arm wavered, the gun unsteady for a blink. “I saw the aftermath of the ceremony. When I found my dad.” “Your dad?” Caen studied him. A victim, then, but it didn’t explain why they let him live. “Did they kill him?” “Yes So I’m out here to see if I can find whoever did it.” Caen had been lonely for too long, and his heart beat with anew resolve: to protect however he’d just met. “Work with me.” Let me guard you. “How do I know you’re not one of them?” “You don’t.” But if he was, the man wouldn’t be alive. Unless there was something about him. The gun fell, the safety back on. “Let me go and I’ll work with you.” Caen waved his hand. The cell door opened. “Forgive me for not transporting you back to the woods. I’ll transport us near, but they might have ways to tell if we transport too closely.” He held out his hand. Though the door was open symbolically, they would have to move to the man’s realm by magic. “How about my house? Show me what to do.” Caen folded his arms. What he usually did was use his god powers. An idea hit him: What if they’d left him alive because he was too powerful? Caen raised an eyebrow. “Imagine where you want to go clearly, and imagine us there.” The man closed his eyes. He didn’t reach for Caen, didn’t touch him, and yet the two of them were suddenly inside a farmhouse, a large blue couch consuming the living room. A god. He’d found not only the dark elves, but he’d found another god. “You need wards,” Caen said. A god could go through their own wards, but there were they could do to protect the place. Did he know he was a god? He didn’t act like it. He did nothing of note, seemed to know little of magic. Was he somehow hidden here, and they’d stumbled across him? They must have known, must have had plans for him. They might have killed his father to force an ascension, or in hopes the son would be more cooperative with their plans. If they’d killed a god, though…what they were creating might be more dangerous than Caen was prepared to face alone. Whispers in the night might tell him more. He’d have to go back to the woods, back to where his competition lurked in shadows and behind hoods. He could lose everything here. “I’ve got things to keep others out,” The man said. He finally set his gun down. “I’m not telling you where they are.” “Magic things?” Caen asked. He hesitated again. Caen offered his hand. “I’m Caen.” “Liam.’ “If we’re going to work together, we need to establish some trust.” He focused, moving his hands through air to create something worth the risk of being felt by those in the area. A beastly animal formed, something akin to a fox or a dog or a bear but none of those.  He tempered the sharpness, the fierceness, and gave it fur and muscle to fill its form out from angles and bones. He gave it black eyes that wouldn’t glow in the night. This was a predator, a protector. Liam looked at it, eyes wide. “What’s that?” Caen grinned. “The magic ability or the creature?” “The creature.” “Something new. A guard creature bound to you.” “To guard me for you or myself?” “For yourself,” Caen promised. It was only his word, but he hoped his tone carried the truth of it. He went to the animal’s side and petted it. “It won’t harm me unless I become a threat to you.” Liam stepped closer, and so Caen stepped back. He put his hand firmly on his animal’s head. He ran his hands through its fur and claimed it with the scent of his hand. “How long have you been following them?” “I’ve been looking for them for close to thirty years. Following…I wouldn’t say I’ve been following them. Until tonight I wasn’t sure I’d found them.” Caen didn’t want to talk about his failure. He went over to the couch and flopped onto it. “Do you have a guest room or can I stay here?” “I have a guest house.” “A whole house?” The god-hood, the tendrils of who was lurking beneath the surface of human naivety, shimmered. “It’s a vacation house we rent out sometimes. You think this mountain had anything to do with this?” The mountain. “It might.” You might, more. “It’s haunted enough.” Liam nodded slowly, his world turning in on itself. He handled it well enough. “You can have the house for 300 a week so long as you’re helping me figure this thing out.” “300 a week?” Caen pulled some paper from his wallet, leftover from the dinner he’d had in the realm. He stood and handed 600 over. “Two weeks. To start. You don’t charge enough, by the way. Unless I’m about to be disappointed by a glorified shed.” A god would never have a glorified shed. He would have a small palace, humble enough because he’d yet to discover himself, but nothing near a rundown shed. “It’s cause you’re helping,” he said, his accent curling around the word cause. “And the typical rate?” He ducked his head the slightest bit, but then he raised it and smiled half his lip cocking up. “200 a night.” Own your confidence young god. “That’s three nights right there. You’ll get the rest tomorrow.” He stretched, tired from the long night stalking trails in the woods, of allowing one of his kind to be sacrificed and used and held hostage from passing into Death. “Do I need a key?” “Code is 3423. It’s on the door.” Caen picked Liam’s gun up and handed it to him. “You should sleep with this.” “If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” As if on cue, a wind whipped through the panes, shaking the house. A note, held high, rang out. The earth shook. Caen laughed, though the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He had to get the wards up now. “Sleep well, Liam. We start in the morning.” Your god training and our mission. “The woods are alive tonight.”