Page 11 of The Withering Wood

Not because she cared about its wellbeing. She hardly knew the creature. But it had proven helpful, bringing them food and somehow sensing the runic curse. She needed its aid. That was all.

Cerise tracked the beast’s paw prints to a wide clearing of blackened aspens, branches drooping with the depression of their decay, where the bear charged toward a heavily cloaked figure. The short and stocky silhouette stood beside a splinter of Azkanix’s bone, feet planted firmly outside of the necrosis. Even at this distance, Cerise noted a hammer and long chisel in the figure’s hands, glinting in the fading light.

Cerise’s heart hardened as her pace quickened.

This was the monster amplifying Azkanix’s curse.

And the bear charged at him without a thought. Without assessing what other weapons or magics the necromancer had in his disposal.

The necromancer turned his gaze to the bear, cold and calm.

The beast would perish from its recklessness.

Cerise sucked in a rallying breath and, ignoring the wrenching of the muscles and tendons around her knee, dashed after the bear, Beloved’s axes ready to slice through the necromancer’s neck.

A flash of sickly green and molten red broke through the forest from their right as soon as the bear ran past.

A beast, about half the size of the bear, with six off-white husks as long as her forearm and black eyes that glistened with hellfire chased after the bear. Its leathery body, pockmarked with bristles, had long gashes through it which glowed in two colors: the same necromantic green as that around Azkanix’s bones, and that of angry, fresh flowing lava.

A lichboar.

She hadn’t seen one of those monsters since her service in the Undead Wars, where necromancers used them to source fonts of power in the earth where the veil between this world and the Lich God’s was thinner, making their magic both easier to wield and more powerful. They were also used in battle; the sharp, elongated tusks goring through her comrades’ stomachs as easy as Eirwen cut through fish bellies the night prior.

Cerise’s abdomen clenched at the memories.

Summoning her last remnants of stamina and strength, Cerise urged her legs to move faster. The bear was now trapped between the necromancer and his lichboar, the monster gaining on the bear due to its otherworldly magic and the bear’s exhaustion.

The bear skidded in its tracks, seeming to hear the boar grunting and squealing behind it. Snow tufted around the bear as it stopped, swung on its haunches and lifted a front paw to whack against the boar’s face. The boar ducked beneath the blow and whipped its head to gouge the bear with its tusks. The bear rolled to the side, but not quick enough to avoid a gash tearing open on a hind leg.

It roared again, standing to its full height despite the wound, spittle flying from its terrifying jaws.

The necromancer approached, tools discarded for a damaged staff. Made of metal and stone and studded with luminescent gems, strange effigies of sticks, fur, and hair hung from it. Putrid green and purple necromantic energies pulsed through the hole in the center of the staff’s head. But the bear was focused on the lichboar, which tossed its blood-coated tusks over and over, giving the lumbering bear no spare second to look elsewhere.

“Behind you!” Cerise shouted, breaking both the bear and lichboar’s attention.

The bear glanced back toward the necromancer as the lichboar swung its head to Cerise, lowering its too large skull down as it prepared to charge her.

Heartbeat pulsing in her ears, focus pinpointing, she steadied Beloved in her hands and braced herself for impact.

“Threxilon, no! Get the beast,” the necromancer shouted.

With a growling huff, the lichboar ground an irritated hoof over the snow then switched directions, charging back at the bear.

Cerise grit her teeth and ran after it, swinging Beloved’s axe at the back of the lichboar’s skull. Threxilon ducked, perhaps sensing the change in air or hearing the whoosh of the blade, yet Beloved still clipped its ear, sheering off the bristled, pointed tip. The boar squealed with pain as droplets of blood sprayed, hissing on the snow as it melted through.

The bear swiped at Threxilon in its dazed hesitation, its powerful paw raking against Threxilon’s face, sending the creature sprawling. Cerise darted around the bear’s back, where the necromancer, who’d been summoning a green haze through his staff, flit his gaze toward the wounded familiar. In that moment of distraction, Cerise leveled Beloved’s dagger tip at the necromancer’s bearded throat.

He paused, at first tensing as the blade nicked his skin, sticky red running through his scraggly facial hair. He lowered his staff, the cloying magic around it dissipating. Threxilon staggered to its feet, staring at the group, and the necromancer’s body relaxed, leveling a cool, disgusted look up at Cerise.

Teeth still grinding together, forcing herself to take steady breaths, Cerise took in the necromancer’s visage. A dwarf, she stood over three heads taller than him. His skin had the typical ashen hue of the living who used too much necromancy, slowly killing their own life force. His scruffy, braided beard was a shade lighter than his wiry, brown, greasy hair. His hazel eyes shone with hatred. When he sneered, revealing his stained, yellow teeth, his dry lips cracked, a thin line of blood running down his mouth.

Cerise couldn’t help but return the grimace of disgust.

“What are you doing to my forest?” she growled, a sound mimicked by the bear beside her. Its body vibrated with suppressed rage. Snarling, lips peeled back and fangs bared, it looked ready to tear the necromancer’s head off.

The necromancer appraised her in turn, roving his eyes over her body from head to toe and a sickly feeling like worms crawling over her skin cascaded through Cerise. He scoffed, as if she wasn’t worth his time.

The lichboar suddenly dashed toward its masters’ side, a bright lime light bursting from the staff.