159, 1/2

Wrath filled Erick’s brain and chest and forearms like he was being stabbed by knives made of ice.

He sat up in his chair. He was inside his yurt. Poi sat upon his own bed, to the side, looking away from Erick, seeming as if he had failed to do something important.

With a level voice, Erick told Poi, “I need you to tell me why you look guilty.”

Teressa was outside, sitting in her large chair on the front porch. At Erick’s tone, she whipped her head around and got up. In a second, she was inside the yurt. Jane followed her inside with a suddenly concerned look upon her face. Nirzir was still inside the yurt, but she was just reading. When she heard the tension in Erick’s voice it hit her like the sudden breaking of glass; she had no idea what was going on, but she was worried.

Poi breathed. He said, “You never spoke to me about your talk with Linxel and you offered the man confidentiality, which he took and you honored, so I had no way to tell you that I thought it was a very, very bad idea to have a break in your conversation with that man.”

There were other words Poi was not saying, but Erick could guess at those. Perhaps, he knew that there were face stealers among Green Grass, for the Mind Mages would certainly know of all that. It’s just that the Mind Mages were also sworn to never reveal what they know to others.

Erick felt crushed in an entirely new way. “You should have just told me, Poi.”

“I cannot.” He softly said, “I cannot tell you what goes on in the minds of others, or what I think might happen, based on that knowledge.” A bit stronger, he said, “Confidentiality is sacred. Even you know this. I had to pretend like I saw nothing.” Poi said, “But I can say that based on what you are seeing now, that the individual confidentiality you promised Linxel is no longer applicable, for even if his face has not been stolen, Linxel might be soul fucked. Perhaps this is some ploy? Someone wants you to attack the potential face stealer and show that your promise of non-violence is a lie. Perhaps, at the very least, they want you to show that you will break confidentiality whenever it suits you.”

Erick already knew everything that Poi was saying, but sometimes the words needed to be said for the others in the area. Jane certainly heard what he was saying; she focused on a smaller part of Poi’s words, though.

Jane looked at Erick, her words filled with dangerous undertones, “The warlord you met was Hunted?”

Erick quickly explained to everyone, “His soul was dark blue and now it is sky blue, and [Telepathy] returns static. He might have had a traumatizing recent event, but I don’t think so.” Erick’s gaze shifted back to the Ophiel still floating near the Twin Rocks, still only a stone’s throw from the yurt of the man in question. “When I last saw Linxel, with the dark blue soul, he spoke of how he did not want to uncover the face stealers in his midst, for there were dragons in there too, for sure. I spoke of how I would help him and other True Traveler clans to counter-Hunt those evils, and then he said he would need some time to talk to some people. And now… He does not want my help to counter-Hunt. He is moving to block my attempt to join in the debates at Ooloraptoor. And now, [Telepathy] to Linxel returns static, and his soul is a different color and—” Erick stopped talking. He was repeating himself.

Jane said, “They had to know you would see something.”

Nirzir rapidly said, “Surely they knew. Just like with the Headmaster, Erick’s known abilities are highly documented. Everyone knows you have all the normal mana sensing abilities and others besides, and dragons are not stupid unless they’re near other dragons. Whoever did this had to know you would see something.”

Teressa stared daggers at nothing in particular, then she turned and asked, “Could someone be using hostages against this guy? One of his family members killed and the other held under danger, in order to make him change his mind? I would think a warlord would be hardened against such soul shifts, but it could happen.”

… That was a very good point.

Now that a few minutes had passed, and he had talked to everyone else, he had gained some perspective on the situation. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as it appeared to be? Maybe? Erick breathed deep, then let it all go. He was glad he had taken a moment. Now, he knew what he needed to do.

Jane saw his sudden resolve. She said, “Be subtle, dad. But be vicious.”

“That is the new plan. Thank you, everyone.” Erick added, “Be on the watch for some sort of nearby attack. Ophiel is already on high alert.”

With hard-edged feathers and narrowed eyes, Ophiel fluffed himself upon the perch. Every Ophiel everywhere whistled a dangerous guitar thrum; He was ready for shit to hit the fan. Everyone else began to get ready, too. Conjured armor and weapons. Spellworks of various kinds.

Nirzir’s white skin turned pearlescent, as she tentatively asked, “What should I do?”

“I would like you on anti-attack protocol.” Erick said, “Don’t expend power trying to destroy; try to preserve all the life you can.”

Nirzir looked suddenly relieved. She nodded.

“And one last thing, just to check.” Erick looked to Poi. “Would the Mind Mages ever be willing to forgo their silence and help end this worldwide threat of face stealers and Hunters?”

Everyone looked to Poi.

Poi said, “I have been told that we tried that. Historically. It did not work out for us.”

“I wish to be briefed on that later.”

Poi paused, then he slowly nodded.

Erick turned his gaze back toward Clan Green Grass.

– – – –

Barely five minutes had passed since Erick had first seen that Linxel was gone.

‘Linxel’ had vanished into his yurt three minutes ago. A few clansmen hung out on Linxel’s porch, sitting by the entrance to the warlord’s yurt. Those clansmen now looked Ophiel’s way, wondering why he was still here. Had any of those people been replaced since Erick was last here? Maybe.

Erick’s three Ophiel and his chairs and perch remained where they were. His half-feathered lightform self had remained ‘standing’ on the ground beside his chair, unmoving since Linxel’s public proclamation.

And what an announcement that had been!

Clan Green Grass was a clan of several smaller groups that all traveled separately; just like Clan Pale Cow. This particular group of people camped out at Twin Rocks numbered around 200, which was an average number. According to Erick’s oversight of their whole compound, about half of the people were outside of their yurts, doing something. Eating, cooking, milking cows, making leather goods; whatever. Most of those people were now watching Erick and Linxel’s yurt. About twenty of those people were looking at Erick with disguised hate in their eyes, wishing for him to go away.

Some people noticed that each Ophiel held spiky silver shields around their tiny sunforms, and they knew what they were seeing; Erick could tell by the quiet panic happening in their eyes and in their hearts.

Erick flexed Ophiel’s lightform and his feathered avatar took a single step forward, toward Clan Green Grass. A few people subtly panicked, but no one did anything besides watch. A few more people came out of yurts here and there, for they heard something happening, and they needed to see. Erick took ten steps toward Green Grass, and then he stopped.

He had an Ophiel turn off their [Greater Lightwalk] and turn on their [Physical Domain], and then Erick quietly spoke through the nearest three kilometers of space, “I am searching for someone. Please pay no mind to the light that shows up around you.”

Many onlookers instantly ducked back into their yurts.

A [Cascade Imaging] blossomed in the air above—

A dark blot of shadows came out of Linxel’s yurt and erased the spell as it was forming, as the imposter burst out of his yurt, running toward Ophiel as he called out, “Go away, Erick! You are not wanted here! Shadeling puppeteer! Master of Shades! Sword of Melemizargo!” He stopped twenty meters from Erick’s avatar, saying, “I give you the chance to leave now, before we come down on you like the righteous hand of Sumtir!”

Ah.

It was going to be like that, eh?

An Ophiel in the sky cast a spell.

Far above, a star appeared. Abyss swelled. Tendrils of light and shadow danced down from darkened heavens, at the same time Erick’s avatar solidified into something more. The pressure of solid light crashed out of him, like a contained [Force Wave], cracking the ground, scattering dirt as Erick remained standing in the air above a widening crater.

‘Linxel’ did not like this.

The fake warlord cast a dangerous magic at Erick, but Extreme Light from the Star above stripped the man’s spell from the air before whatever it was got a meter from Linxel’s apoplectic form. Linxel tried again, and failed again. He tried to summon armor, and a weapon, and all his power broke away like so much scattered magic. He did not try to run, though.

Other people tried to blip away, but [Teleport] failed. Others tried to fight against the thing in the sky with ineffectual [Dispel]s, like Linxel had done against Erick’s [Cascade Imaging], but not a single person spent enough mana to overcome the Star, and the Star was already pulling far, far ahead of what anyone here was capable of breaking. Others tried [Ward]s to protect themselves from the staring abyss above. Some prepared for melee, but their conjured weapons broke as they were cast.

Extreme Light broke every attempt at magic, for all was under Erick’s power, if not his Domain as well, and all resources were sucked away by the growing abyss above. Some people got the bright idea to simply physically run, but for those people, Ophiel merely appeared in front of them and blipped them back into the center of town, into a suddenly-prepared holding tank of [Quick Wall]s, shaped into a bowl. There were some minor issues when someone tried to cast a spell to get out of the tank, and the [Luminosity] anti-magic spellwork of [Undertow Star] ate away at Erick’s own [Force Walls], but Erick patched up those problems quick enough. No one escaped.

Into this mess, Erick cast a [Cascade Imaging] large enough to cover all of Clan Green Grass, with the Imaging sized to the full kilometer spread of the clan. White mist began to appear on the edges of all surfaces, but the map was too big; it would take minutes to come into existence. Erick had time, now, though.

Some cows started to freak out. Erick didn’t need to deal with the cows, for some level-headed cowherds were calming them down with calm voices and commanding presences.

Erick’s voice was an airy thing that dominated the world, overriding all other voices, “Here is what happened, for those of you not in the know: Linxel met with me. We discussed the culling of face stealers among your people, and among your allies. And then he asked me for three hours to think about it. I assume he went to some other people in the meantime, to speak of what we spoke about.

“Normally, I would not speak of what happened behind a Privacy for I honor the idea of confidentiality. But now, Linxel, if this person who looks like Linxel even is Linxel anymore, has decided not to counter-Hunt the face stealers among your people. If this was all that had happened, I would have gone away. But as you can guess, something else has happened.” Erick said, “Linxel’s soul was dark blue not three hours ago, and now it is sky blue. This could mean a few different things, but when I tried to contact him through [Telepathy], all I got was static.”

A good twenty people gasped. Many others fell silent in contemplation. For some, panic started to give way to cold realization. For others, their panic only heightened.

Erick had hundreds of eyes and several mana senses open and active across all of Clan Green Grass by now. He watched a few people try to contact Linxel, or other people, but their spells were canceled by the [Undertow Star] in the sky. They gasped as they met static, too. That… could be a problem.

Before too much of a misunderstanding could take place, Erick added, “You’re all under a suppression effect right now, so those [Telepathy]s you tried will meet with static. When I am done with my investigation of what has happened here, then I will retract that suppression, and you can resume normal operations. At that time, we will all know what happened to Linxel, and if other people here were involved in what happened to him. Speaking of which, it looks like the map is finally populating.”

Erick had also cast normal Imagings far outside of this place, looking for more tracers from Linxel, but this map here might give specific, interesting information, which was why he layered it across the whole of Clan Green Grass. As the second white star in the sky finally began punching a map out of the mist rising out of Green Grass, it was only a matter of time before it began shifting parts of it to blue, to show the locations of Linxel’s DNA.

Erick already had a suspicion which people were fake, and which were real, based upon their reactions to his proclamation, but actual proof would go a long way toward a proper outcome to the day’s shit show. Of those who had tried to run, all ten of which were now all contained in a see-through area of solid Force in the center of the clan, all had looks of terrible realization upon their faces, as though all of their crimes were finally coming for them. Some of the smarter ones did not run, though. There were undoubtedly some face stealers hiding among the rest of the clansmen, and Erick could not forget ‘Linxel’ himself.

From twenty meters away, the warlord stared at Erick’s avatar, looking down his nose, saying nothing because he could not speak; he had tried at first, but Erick’s [Physical Domain] prevented him. He did not smile. He did not try to move, or to fight. He just watched as Erick did what Erick wanted to do. Linxel certainly looked vindicated, though.

Linxel looked a bit more blue than before, too. His skin was already dark blue, like his soul used to be, but now a cerulean glow began to rise up from his skin.

All around the clan, the same cerulean glow began to overlay the white map of the area.

Erick said, “If you look around you, some of you might see a blue glow. This is where Linxel has recently been. This blue glow is a track. As expected, your leader gets around your land. This is normal.” Ophiels flew through the clan, letting Erick see what he needed to see. He saw a lot. “Some of you have marks on your faces and hands. If you shook his hand recently, or if he spit on you, then that would explain some of these sights. But I doubt Linxel went around spitting on people, now did he!”

One man, who was eighty, was already looking at his wife, who was likely also 80, but who had blue all upon her hands and on a stripe down her face. And a little bit in her hair. The wife stared at her husband as he stared at her, his eyes going wide, her eyes narrowing.

This was not the only pairing to be subject to such an event.

Not many people were marked in blue like this. Maybe only thirty or forty people in the whole clan. But they were clearly blue, and in an odd, splashing sort of way. Some markings were old, and a dimmer sort of blue. Some were very recent, and bright, bright blue.

Erick discarded the idea that there were orgies happening among Green Grass rather quickly, though.

There was no blue upon the lips that wasn’t already on the whole face. There were no beds covered in blue except for Linxel’s own (along with most of his yurt, but that was to be expected). Mostly, though, there was nothing that indicated that these blue markings were anything but blood splatter, and on a level that Erick did not expect to find.

Yes; people in these sorts of places sparred with swords and other weapons all the time. Some blood was to be expected. But not this much. Not this recent, or in such quantity, though.

Erick was rapidly arriving at an odd conclusion…

“You know…” Erick had arrived at the center of the camp, at the people he had contained behind [Force Walls]. “I doubt all these people here were extremely sexually active with Linxel in the past few hours. Just look at them. They’re covered in Linxel’s markers. So the only explanation is that they got a lot of Linxel’s blood on them. And why would that happen? Do training exercises around here often result in one’s leader getting most of his blood put on the outside? Doubtful. I saw no Blood Magic books in Linxel’s yurt, so I doubt he’s a Blood Mage.”

All ten people who tried to run, who Erick contained inside [Force Wall]s, were practically glowing blue. Some of them almost fully.

Many people in the clan had come out when Erick’s calm voice gave no hint of true violence. Many people were actually outraged that Linxel didn’t want to do a proper face stealer search, though Erick had cut off many of those conversations when he extended his silencing into the clan.

Erick relaxed his silence, now.

The mooing of cows returned, first, though he kept those kinda quiet. He had kept an eye on the cows, too, and some of them were blue, but that was to be expected since everyone worked with the cows. None of them had blood splatter on them, though. (Wouldn’t that be odd if the face stealers hid as cows before they Hunted their targets? That’s a pretty sinister way to Hunt, but it would probably work rather well.)

Erick waited for people to start talking.

Still, no one spoke.

Erick asked the people in the pen, for the benefit of those outside, “Did you attack Linxel as a group? Did you meet him somewhere, and then kill him in an ambush?”

No one spoke.

He didn’t really need them to speak, though, at least not for his own proof. When he started speaking he saw the truth of what had happened in their intakes of breath, and in their thrumming hearts, and in the micro expressions of their faces. He did need them to speak for the benefit of everyone else, though.

The person wearing Linxel’s body had followed Erick into the center of the clan, and now he spoke for everyone else, “You poor delusional man. Fighting the Shades really fucked you up, didn’t it.”

Erick ignored the liar and began lightly plucking samples from every single person inside the Walled space. No one in the immediate area noticed the small bits of light that touched the back of a leg, or the side of a thigh; not when light and shadow was twisting down from above, and the Health and Mana of everyone in the entire clan was being stripped away. Most people were long since empty of Resources, by now, so it was much less scary than it had been, but it was still easy to hide his sample-taking among the twisting light.

He took some time to look around, too, to see what effect his words were having on Clan Green Grass. A few people had completely moved on from the drama happening around Erick and ‘Linxel’. They were consumed with the problem staring them in the face: the blue markers they saw upon the faces and hands of their loved ones.

An old man asked his old wife, “Where were you an hour ago?”

To which the old wife replied, “I’m a Healer, you dolt! People were injured in training! That’s probably all the archmage’s blood magic is pointing at.”

The old man frowned. “But that’s Linxel’s marker upon you. And no one has been able to touch him in combat in a long time. The only time he’s ever suffered a loss was that one time when he took on twenty people at… once…”

The old woman said nothing.

The old man stepped away from his wife, his eyes going wide as the full situation registered. Erick could practically read the guy’s mind. ‘Why isn’t she defending herself more’. ‘There has to be an explanation’. ‘Why isn’t she telling me the truth?’.

The old man whispered, “But we talk telepathically every night… Except when we didn’t for a whole month. You had headaches, you said… that was almost three years ago.”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

The old woman said nothing. She didn’t have to.

One of three people asked the fourth person in their group, “I saw you go with Toizag to the river but I didn’t think anything of it. You still hate him, don’t you?”

To which the fourth person replied, “I made up with him.”

And then another person in the group said, “But that doesn’t explain why Linxel’s blue is on your face. And on your knife. It looks like smeared blood. It looks like [Cleanse]d blood splatter.”

The fourth person said nothing.

The rest of their group backed away from the fourth.

All around the clan, variations of a scene played out.

And then a woman, middle-aged, probably a mother, walked away from her yurt and headed toward the Walled space in the center of camp. She headed straight for one of the people inside, who was younger; her son, based on looks.

Outwardly, Linxel was the picture of calm professionalism. Inwardly, he was panicking.

The woman stood on one side of the transparent Wall and asked her blue-marked son, “You went with Kuli somewhere an hour ago, didn’t you?” When the son said nothing, the mother turned to the left, asking a young man also inside the Walled space, “Kuli… Where did you take my son?”

The son blurted out, “You don’t believe the mad archmage, do you, mom! It’s me! We spoke through [Telepathy] just last week!”

Kuli, the other boy, completely straight-faced, said, “We broke into Linxel’s yurt while he was away to steal his spare armor and we wore it. It’s fucken’ embarrassing! But we ain’t no face stealers.”

“Yeah!” The son said, “That’s what we did!”

The mother gave a serious nod; she believed her kid. She turned toward Erick’s avatar, and said, “You heard the boys. Please let them go.”

Erick said, “While I was doing this, here, I checked for markers for every one of the people in this pen.” He conjured a thousand kilometer map of the greater area onto the ground outside of the pen, large enough for everyone to see. Then he conjured an image of the place he had found. It was a trio of rocks, the size of the Twin Rocks, near a different river to the west. Erick suspected it was called Three Rocks, though he did not know. “Can anyone tell me the significance of this place?”