Detects Phantasm

The magical lab was in a serviceable state. Two of the work desks had been removed, along with the burned armoire. The bookcases were set along the walls, though accusing in their emptiness, and the rugs were put into storage. What equipment was salvageable was stored away, except for the watersilver reliquary that Jodah had woven earlier that day. This last was still mounted on the bench, the bit of finger still hung in its wire suspension.

Jodah took two steps forward, then halted. There was something wrong in the room.

He took a moment to clear his mind, empty it of the polite babbling of the dinner party and the worries about plagues and rogue soldiers. There was something definitely amiss in the room.

It was nothing noticeable. Everything was in its place. Even if, in his absence, guards or herbalists had broken into the room and searched it, being careful to put things back near where they were, it was still perfect. Too perfect. There was something about the room itself.

Jodah stood there, letting his mind relax. It wasn’t something that was there as much as something that was not there. At least not fully.

Jodah caught a bit of motion with the corner of his eye. Not much, just a flicker by one of the bookcases— something trying very hard not to be seen.

Jodah turned toward the flicker slowly, acting as if he had not seen it, but his eyes, now locked onto the flickering shimmer in the air, betrayed him. The creature standing there let out a batlike screech and sprung, manifesting as it dived across a desk toward him.

Jodah ducked behind the work desk, and the creature smashed into a line of retorts, sending out a fountain of glass shards. As Jodah crouched down, he reached into his mind and mentally gripped a hot, glowing oval of white mana, pulled instantly from his memories of the broad plains.

When he reappeared from behind the worktable, Jodah was bearing a luminous sword.

His opponent had materialized in part for the attack, and now its body was splashed with fluids and powders and shards from the retorts. It was bipedal and partially clear, as if made of green-glazed glass, and parts of it flickered out of Jodah’s vision. Its arms and legs were oversized for its body, and its head, a whitened, fanged skull, was huge in comparison to both. Its hands ended in boneless, coiled, dual tentacles.

It was a phantasm, a creature made of equal parts magical energy and incoherent hatred— a bad dream brought to life.

***

The Shattered Alliance, Chapter 8