The Changing (4 page)

"This is not a social call," Borrik began. "We are here for one purpose, and one purpose alone. Split up, scour every inn and tavern in the city for any word of Lord Seth’s whereabouts. Do not seek out those you know, not even if they were once your family. I will go to the palace to see if they have heard word of the battle, or have had any news or sign of our master's whereabouts. Feel free to gather supplies and feed yourself, but return here in two hours’ time for we will not be staying within the castle."

Reaching inside his armor Borrik grasped a pouch tied to his clothing. Tugging it free he removed it  and handed it to one of his soldiers. Borrik was a priest in his soul, a soldier at heart, and the will to lead others ran through every fiber of his being. Handing over the coins and trinkets he had scourged from the dead upon the battlefield this very morning, he wondered which part of him had allowed him to rob the dead.

"Split it amongst yourselves. Buy only what we need," Borrik commanded.

Turning on his heel Borrik began to stride through the streets thick with the bodies of the homeless as well as livestock and beasts of burden. The giant of a wolf man, clad in black menacing armor, did not have a hard time negotiating the streets for man and beast alike cleared a wide path for him to stride down the center of the cobbled roads. Entering the gate, his men likewise searched every inch of every street within the city over the next two hours, stopping frequently to ask of Lord Seth.

Two hours later, Borrik passed back beneath the southern gate of Raven's Hold to find all of his men awaiting his arrival. None of them had news of Lord Seth, but each carried a pack or a sack loaded with goods. Borrik hoped one of them had bought some soap. His enhanced canine sense of smell had located his troops long before his eyes had. Those in Raven's Hold had seen a wolf man before, or at least some of them had, but Borrik could not hope to enter any other human town or city reeking of dried blood and gore, along with sweat and who knew what else. Their physical appearance alone was enough to frighten most people; they did not also need to deter them with their stench.

Needing speak no command, Borrik sped off around the keep, circling around to the north. He raced his troops the few remaining miles between the castle and the ancient forest where only days ago hundreds of wolves had been gathered to create his troops. Making the tree line he slowed his pace and sought out a small clearing beneath the immense trees suitable for a good night's sleep. Having no need of tents or blankets, all those who followed him simply found a spot upon the ground, and digging into their packs they each passed around various foodstuffs they had purchased. Everyone including Borrik ate their fill, and only minutes after posting guards to keep watch, Borrik and the rest of his pack slumbered upon the cool ground swallowed by the darkness of the night. High in the trees above them, two pairs of golden eyes watched from the branches, lending to the night the sound of their soft purrs.

* * * * *

Garret rode near the front of the procession of king’s advisors and councilors in a terrible mood. He looked at no one and spoke to no one, simply riding along in silence. The members of the king’s court had left the battlefield before the common troops could even break camp. Having been given orders those troops on foot would follow soon enough, and with any luck would arrive back at the castle city of Valdadore a few days behind those on mounts. Garret could only imagine what loomed ahead. He knew Borrik and Seth’s other troops had fled the battlefield to seek out his brother, but Garret would not likely be spared the courtesy to do the same. He knew a new king would be chosen, and several other positions would need to be filled too, but the politics were beyond him. Garret focused on the few tasks that he himself would need to take care of. First and foremost, he would need to give the news to Sasha of her fallen husband Sirus and explain to the poor woman that it was Seth that had ultimately killed the man she loved. When and if Garret survived delivering that particular news, he would need to approach whomever was chosen as the new king to see about Seth’s pay and lands that he had been endowed on becoming a lord and member of the king's court. The money and deed for the land Garret would then send to his father with news of the battle, though Garret knew not if he should lend his father any hope that Seth may yet live. It was a daunting task, one that Garret mulled over time and again, lost in his own miserable thoughts as he rode mindlessly north with the king's men.

Chapter 3

Trial and Error

Seth stood poised to strike down another of the large, pale bats. Crossbow in hand he took aim at one and, closing his eyes, squeezed the trigger. Within a fraction of a second Seth heard the bolt sail through the air to reach its target with a screech and a thump. Opening his eyes, Seth witnessed the creature plummet the last few feet before striking the ground with a crack and a splat.

"Oops," Seth said.

Realizing this was not perhaps the best use of his resources, he decided to take a different approach. Seth had already studied a good portion of the bat's intricate aura and believed he had a sound understanding of how the swirling maelstrom worked to create life. Reaching out with his mind Seth isolated the life force of one of the great bats. Carefully seeking among the building blocks of its life, Seth delicately grasped with his mind just one small portion of its aura; one single, small pattern swirling within the creature’s spark of life. Giving it a slight tug, he separated that portion from the greater whole of the bat's inner life. As he had hoped, the creature plunged from the ceiling and Seth managed to catch it, using his tunic as a makeshift net. He acted quickly to subdue the beast, but the act was in vain, for as he pinned its wings to the ground with his knees he realized that the creature no longer had an aura of life within it. Whatever it was that he had removed was apparently crucial for survival. This, it seemed, was not going to be an easy task.

Seth made a mental note of the failure and, reaching out again, singled out his next target. This time he located a piece of the puzzle of the bat’s life far from the first he had removed. Giving this piece a pull, he removed it from the bat, and though the beast still clung to the ceiling, he could see its spark of life swiftly failing. Hurriedly Seth snapped the small swirling pattern back into place and watched as the creature recovered, although now it would not live nearly as long as its brethren. Seth delved into the same creature again, this time trying a different tactic. On the two previous failures Seth had tried to remove one of the smaller patterns that worked to bind the larger pieces together. This time, however, Seth grasped one of the larger patterns. Plucking it away he watched as the small creature began to squirm and squeal as its flesh-covered wings began to wither, disappearing altogether within its body. In a panic the malformed bat released its hold upon the stone ceiling and plummeted down towards the floor below. Seth was so thrilled with his success he nearly failed in catching the creature as it fell.

Landing in his makeshift net, Seth attempted to wrap the beast, but biting and snarling, even without wings the beast thwarted his every effort. Instead Seth simply let it tumble to the ground tangled within his tunic. Having two missing appendages the poor creature thrashed about on the ground, kicking its little legs and wriggling this way and that as if in the throes of a seizure. Seth was both shocked and appalled at the poor creatures condition, but there was no help for it. Trying to concentrate over the creature’s incessant squawking and squealing Seth took a mental note of the alteration and which pattern it pertained to, then compared it to his mental image of the human aura. Noticing a definite similarity, Seth set about performing his next test.

The whole purpose of Seth’s experiment was simple. He needed to save Sara. Stating it was easy enough, but pulling it off would be difficult. Seth knew that he could simply siphon the life from one of the bats and then pour that life into Sara, but the melding of the two could leave her forever physically changed in unspeakable ways. Seth knew he could water down the method, so to speak, by pouring into Sara the bat's life force then adding to it the many life spans of man he himself held until the physical effects were all but unnoticeable. But he was afraid that if he increased the ratio of human to bat too far then the bat's incredible healing ability would be lost to the human side of her being. So instead Seth ventured on another course. If he could alter the bat to physically resemble humanity, but retain its natural abilities, he could then increase the ratio of bat to human life within Sara, allowing her to heal quickly but remain physically unchanged. Seth knew it would not be a fast process, and he did not have near enough of the bats to act as subjects to work out the finer details of how the auras were fashioned to work together as a whole. So instead Seth hoped he could work out their major differences, and maybe later fine tune his art.

Seth next began to separate a part of his life force equal to that of the bat’s own life, then thinking better of it, he sent the portion he had separated into Sara to join her life. Then Seth removed the same portion from the woman he loved once again. feared that seeing as his aura had an added piece above and beyond Sara’s, he might inadvertently lend the creature magical abilities of his own, so instead he used a portion of Sara’s life force. Holding the small portion of Sara in his mind, Seth compared it to the life force of the creature before him. The similarities were vast, but so too were the differences. Seth noted that the larger pieces of both auras nearly perfectly mimicked one another, although the intricate details between them were quite different. Seth postulated that where the pattern had been on the bat to create its wings should be where the arms were located on a human's aura. This decided, Seth removed what he believed to be the arm pattern of Sara’s aura within him, and carefully, tediously, placed it where before had been the bat's wing pattern. Finally, much to Seth’s relief, the creature stopped its wailing for a moment as new appendages sprouted from its shoulders.

Seth watched in both horror and wonder as the limbs began to take form. First small nubs pressed out from the bat's flesh, stretching and pulling the skin of the creature as they elongated. Even as Seth was sure the newly forming bones would rupture through the skin, the flesh began to elongate and swell around the newly forming bones and muscle. Within seconds tiny hands sprouted at the ends of the arms, and together each bone, muscle and the flesh swelled and grew until it was finally proportionate to the bat's small body. The change completed, the bat began its squawking again and oddly managed to raise itself to its feet with the new floppy limbs. Unsure how to use the appendages, however, the creature ran around the stone room aimlessly, flapping its new human-like arms from the shoulder, hoping to take flight. Seth could not help but smirk at the sight, finding it more than a little amusing, but this was serious work and Seth again turned his gaze upon the creature's aura.

There were entirely too many large pieces of the greater puzzle to make the process an easy one. It was not as if the creature had a piece for legs, another for arms, another for shoulders, another for feet, one for a head, another for a neck, and that was it. Seth had simply gotten lucky amongst the myriad swirling patterns. So his next choice was no easier than the first. Seth made some assumptions, however, looking at the aura with his newly gained knowledge. The auras were a tangled mass of interwoven patterns and connections, but Seth knew there had to be a logical order to the mass as a whole if only he could find the right perspective. So looking to where the pattern of the arms had been, Seth deduced that all the smaller patterns that had linked it must have something to do with the way the arms connected to the body. Not so much as the physical connection of the arm in the socket of the shoulder, but also ligaments and tendons, muscles, veins, arteries and nerves. Comparing the human to the bat, the human had to have close to a hundred of these small patterns that had connected the arm pattern to the whole, whereas the bat had only two dozen. Now Seth pitied the beast, realizing the poor creature’s misfortune. Seth had given the creature arms but no proper way of controlling them.

Seth had to get to the details of the transformation. The bat would likely need at least some of the human traits to make the arms usable, but would also need to retain some of its own connections in order to properly supply blood and such to the limbs considering that the two life forms’ circulatory systems were likely vastly different. So Seth went about comparing each individual pattern that had connected the arms to discover nothing of use. Fortunately he had another approach already in place, although it had not worked out so well for the bat's predecessor. One by one Seth stripped each of the connective patterns from the portion of Sara’s aura and placed it where he thought it should go within the bat's own aura, connecting the pattern of the arms with another pattern within its aura. If it had no effect, Seth simply removed it and placed it somewhere else in the same vicinity. If the placement had a negative effect he quickly removed it and tried again. After all, having veins on the outside of the body connecting your arm and torso wasn’t the most attractive feature one could have. So Seth worked placing and moving intricate pattern after intricate pattern for over an hour until he believed he had accomplished his goal. The once bat now moved his new arms with intent, flexing muscles, bending the elbow, clutching his small hands into fists and again relaxing his fingers, discovering his new appendages in earnest. It was a huge improvement over the creature flapping its dead limbs from the shoulder. Seth all the while made mental notes of each of his failures and successes before attempting another major change of the creature.

Through working out the interconnectivity of the patterns within both the human and bat auras, Seth had been able to make some other discoveries. He now could distinguish between patterns of muscle, tendon, ligament, bone and blood vessel, though plugging them into the right places still proved difficult. It was time to tackle the next big alteration, so using this knowledge, Seth looked for a pattern that was connected by all the above, hoping he could next distinguish the legs. Searching with his magical vision and his memory alike, Seth sifted through the bat’s aura once more. Locating another large pattern that met his criteria he gave it a tug. As the pattern snapped out of place, the bat creature collapsed, ceasing all sound and movement as its head began to shrivel and disappear. Seth snapped the piece back into place as quickly as he was able, but it was too late. The beast had already expired.