Crysalis: Merrill's Tale

Wahoooommmm!

I dropped my arms. I did a quick grab at my belt then held my arms straight out to the side, threw my head back and shouted, “Azazeelazney!” at the top of my voice, more than loud enough to cover the faint sounds of tiny glass balls breaking on either side of me. I was standing in the edge of the village, where they’d cleared away most of the native fungus down to the bare rock. But their housekeeping wasn’t as good as it should be. There were enough bits and bobs of dried shroom lying about for my purposes. I appreciated their lack of housekeeping skills.

A tiny flame leaped up to my right.

Another leaped up to my left, grew taller, flickering and growing bright in the dimness of the fluorescent fungus.

“Evil!” shouted Frad, rattling his pendant or all he was worth. What can I say, the man had a one-track mind. “The fire leaps from her fingers and does her bidding. She is evil and must be consigned to the Pit! Take her, good people!”

The good people didn’t seem in much of a hurry to take me at all. In fact, they seemed a lot more interested in taking a walk, preferably in the opposite direction. Most of them began to retreat, as if they’d remembered a collective and very important appointment way off on the other side of town. Which was about ten meters, in my quick estimate.

But Frad and his two bullyboys, one still involved in his knuckle-cracking hobby, came straight at me.

I did the only logical thing one could possibly do.

I grabbed my table, turned around and ran.

Wahoommmm!

The deep reverberating explosion echoed through the tiny village, bouncing off the tumbled stone walls, screamed up into the cavern overhead, hit the top then bounced back down, redoubled and retripled. Without a doubt, the loudest sound any of these people had ever heard. The very rock below our feet trembled and shook.

I breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief.

Finally. The boys were off their scrawny asses and on the job.

I chanced a glance over my shoulder—I’m far too experienced to stop when being chased by an angry mob; years of experience, to be honest—and saw that most of the villagers had done the sensible thing when faced with loud noises and quaking ground: they’d fallen to their knees, hands over ears. Quaking in fear is always a good sign in my dangerous line of work.

Well now, this was more like it.

Then I saw the three big guys were still coming for me. Sure, they looked a little stunned, but that wasn’t going to deter them from a potential a*s-whipping, with mine being the a*s involved.

I folded up the table in four flicks and stuck it in a pocket of my robe, all while I was running for the outskirts of the village. I know; dexterous, you’re thinking, but actually it was more due to years, too many years, of practice. Running for your life as often as I have gives you some mad skills.

World was so small it barely had skirts, much less outskirts, so it didn’t take me long to reach the open areas. Beyond and beside me stretched fields of turnips, their leafy greens barely knee-high, interspersed with shallow cesspits and pools. I had to watch my step in the dimness. This village depended on the pale greenish yellow light of fluoro-fungus, so no bright light. They were so far off the grid they probably had to import dirt.

I could hear the pounding of bare feet on rock behind me, even feel the slight vibration beneath my boot soles.