Chapter 011

Everything is a weapon in the right hands.

The first step was the easiest.

The Illwrought turned its piggy eyes to him and was immediately beaned with a bag of nails. It gave a rattling squeal and its flesh rippled across its back.

“C’mon! Fresh meat, right here!”

Harker’s first assumption about the creature was immediately proven correct. Unlike the more wolf-like creatures in the woods, this Illwrought had only one tactic. It charged.

Stupid beast.

“Hup!” Harker leapt to the side aisle, barely ahead of twisted tusks. The Illwrought wasn’t so nimble. It careened wholesale through the front of the shop. Wood splintered and cut stone cracked. The beast bellowed in its flat, breathless voice and flailed its tusks through a shelf of fabric and coiled rope.

Harker ran, a queasy laugh bubbling out of his chest. The Illwrought gave chase, slamming down the aisles and forcing the bolted wooden shelves to bend and groan. Each crash loosened the bolted shelves, toppling barrels and crates atop the creature and tearing its stitched flesh apart. It wasn’t enough to kill the thing, but it was an excellent distraction.

Harker slashed as he ran, slicing through burlap sacks of sawdust and flour. They dumped their contents in his wake, coating the floor and the Illwrought alike with gritty particles that the beast’s passage churned into powdered clouds.

This thing doesn’t tire! Harker’s legs were burning and his lungs felt clogged with an accumulation of flour. I’m not made for this!

A tusk caught him, sweeping his right leg aside. He fell, rolling onto the ground—and threw his blade.

He didn’t look, but luck was on his side. The knife sunk into the thing’s snout, lodging into an oozing nostril and forcing its head up. The Illwrought squealed, slamming its shoulder and jaw into where Harker had fallen.

It missed, but only barely.

Harker stumbled to his feet, hands pawing at the ground for balance. The Illwrought lumbered to its chicken feet, tusks scoring stone and wood alike. It charged again, tearing down the straight aisle, scattering dust into a streaming fog. It was fast in a straight line, but Harker slipped to the side, forcing the beast to claw at the stone floor as it tried to follow—it floundered, slipping in sawdust, and crashed into the exterior wall.

Directly into a rack of farming implements.

Ichor poured from its pierced hide, worsening as the thing fought to free itself from sickle, scythe, and heavy rakes. Harker backed away, coughing through his grin.

He reached into his pack. “Stay.”

The boar’s red eyes flashed—its flesh twisted—and the entire pack was torn from his hands.

“What—how?!” Harker backed up as the thing yanked itself free of the wall. Ichor poured in dark rivulets down its flanks until the wounds were plugged up with large, bent tusks. “That’s not fair at all.”

Harker’s skin tightened and he scrambled back as the beast’s flesh twisted again. He leapt over the thick counter—and Garon’s corpse—just as hurled tusks tore through wood and stone. He landed with a pained grunt, mere feet away from the sharpened tip of stained bone.

“It has a Talent?”

Harker risked a look over the counter. It stood in the empty aisle, bent low as its spike-riddled sides heaved. The boar hacked and more dark fluid splashed from its maw…as did a welling light. Blue-green Water swirled behind its teeth, sloshing into an orb atop its dry tongue.

His stomach dropped. Two Talents.

My pack! It was just beyond the counter, through the gap studded by tusks. Harker threw himself forward, seizing it—and the firestarter within.

A simple, wondrous device. Useable by anyone.

Just add Water.

He hurled the firestarter into the Illwrought’s open mouth, splashing through the blue-green orb of gathering Talent. Instantly, the device activated, the small spout on its side releasing a gout of yellow flame.

Directly into the sawdust and flour in the air. It was more than enough.

The world exploded.

Harker had curled into a ball behind Garon’s reinforced counter, but not even he expected the sheer cacophony that rattled his bones. Pressure and heat slammed into him like a fallen tree even as what felt like claws tore at the walls. Fast as it had arrived, it vanished, leaving him in a daze dominated by a sharp ringing. It filled the space between his ears, eliminating thought until it too faded away.

What remained was a queasy silence. He stood up, wobbling a bit, and couldn’t believe his eyes.

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The entire front of Garen’s shop was gone.

The outermost wall was blown out, bricks and wooden paneling scattered across the street. The side walls were cracked but remained standing, though the same couldn’t be said for the shelving. The timber racks and the goods on them were shattered and burning, chunks of debris that was all but unrecognizable. Even the foundations were scoured, with only the twisted remnants of metal brackets. In the center, a scorched smear of carbonized flesh. All that remained of the dire Illwrought.

Suspend enough dust in the air and a single spark would lead to ruin. His mother had drilled the warning into him after the Old Mill had exploded. Harker swallowed. It was one thing to know what happened to the Old Mill and the apprentices inside…it was quite another to experience it firsthand.