My blade of ice whistled through the air before easily slicing through the faceless humanoid form rushing towards me. As soon as I had struck my foe, the magic which kept the monster together fractured. Its edges began to fray as it began to slowly dissipate into nothingness and the energy that flowed through it dispersed in the light wind. The afternoon light illuminated the shimmering fragments as they completely disappeared. Another of the arcane constructs that I needed to destroy was only a few feet away and coming at me at a sprint. Like the others, it wore gray robes with a dark hood and had dimly glowing white eyes with no irises or pupils, though I had seen others with no face at all. The figures were sometimes transparent, especially if the sunlight hit them, so the name Aurora and the other guardians had taken to calling them was apt.
I had been worried a little about not having a guardian of my own when I had to fight, but I was not going to leave this mess for my two of my friends to deal with alone. Aurora’s magic was still flowing through me and when wielded properly her skills could easily dispatch a shade in a single blow. Swinging my blade upward into a ready position, I prepared to push forward and then cut down the shade, but a ball of flame shot past me. The burning orb crashed into the apparition's shoulder and consumed a considerable portion of its upper torso. Staggered by the impact, the shade buckled forward and dissipated before it even hit the ground. Sarah hands were still moving as she finished casting the spell and flashed me a quick smile before motioning behind her with a tilt of her head. My gaze followed where she indicated and I saw Dan with his glowing translucent broadsword facing off against two more shades.
The shades' short knives performed poorly against swords, but the shades had no fear of death and would immediately seize any opportunity to slice into your flesh if you were careless. As I approached the melee, I checked that my deflection ward was still in place and ready to at least slow, if not stop, a blade. My lack of a guardian meant I had to rely on only my own personal healing and protection magic. Sarah and Dan could fall back on their guardian’s protection without worry for most injuries, but serious wounds were still a risk.
The shade to Dan's left darted forward to strike, but I intercepted with a slice of my blade, and the arm of the shade came clean off. Dan immediately refocused on the shade to his right and narrowly dodged a knife thrown directly at his head. Dan charged the now unarmed shade and cleaved its torso while it scrambled to pull another blade. Dan's sword cut easily across the hooded figure but even as it began to dissipate its arm shot forward and drove the newly drawn knife into Dan's left arm.
"Shit," Dan spat, "these things are relentless." With the last of the shades dispatched, Dan let the magic holding his sword together disperse and his now freed hand shot to his other arm.
"Let me see," I stabbed my ice sword into the rapidly crumbling remains of the penultimate shade and walked over to inspect Dan's injury.
"Aurora, I'm fine." Dan mumbled. I hesitated at the name and then forcefully pushed the topic out of my mind. My friend needed my help.
"I need to make sure." I said as I gently pulled his hand away from his arm. The injury was visible through a brand-new slice in Dan's shirt, but thankfully the blade had not broken his skin. The magic defenses provided by Chromos had spared him a vicious injury. "Yeah, you are right, it is fine. Although, judging from how red it is, that bruise is going to be huge."
"It certainly feels that way. I'm just glad I don't have a knife stuck through my bicep." Dan flexed his arm slowly and winced.
“Oh, cheer up Dan. At least there weren’t dozens of them like last week,” Sarah said. There were a lot more shades on our first visit and they had nearly overwhelmed the three of us.
Wait no, not us. I had to remind myself that I was not there. Remembering events before last Friday always made me feel a bit strange so I just dropped that thread of thought completely.
“Chromos’s protection worked way better then, too,” he grumbled.
"Laura, should we check upstream where we saw those ghosts last week?" Sarah asked, emphasizing my name and I gave her a brief smile.
"Yeah. Hopefully we will find something," I said, looking further down the creek.
The three of us walked as close as we could to the bank of Thread Creek and looked out over the water. Sarah broke the silence, “I'm glad we didn't do this at night. I can’t believe we fought at night last week."
"It is not like you had a choice. Thankfully, there were only four this time," I mused aloud, "I wonder if four is all they had left. Maybe we really did deplete their forces."
"Chromos says that we're unlikely to find anything here at the edge of the creek since natural waterways disperse magic." Dan relayed from the guardian inside his head.
"Aren't ghosts made of magic? Does that mean the water ‘dispersed’ them?" Sarah asked.
Dan's face screwed up just before he began to speak, "Free floating or residual magic will be dispersed, but magic bound to an object or entity is much sturdier. It would take many years for it to be eroded and only if it was devoid of sources to sustain itself." Dan's voice took on a strange gravelly quality that sounded very forced. After a brief pause Dan continued in his normal tone, "Chromos, I've already asked you to warn me before you do that. Stop it." Dan attempted to sigh but began coughing instead. Sarah suppressed a laugh.
"The first wave of the shades last week came from here," I stated as I took a few steps deeper into the tree line.
"Corona says she senses something off in that direction, but we should finish looking around here first since it will be a bit of a hike," Sarah said.
"What about the second group of shades? Didn't they show up closer to where we left our bikes?" Dan asked, pointing back the direction from which we had just come. Dan headed away from the creek's bank, stepping carefully to avoid slipping in the mud. Sarah and I followed, and I only barely avoided face-planting directly into the mud because Sarah grabbed my arm and steadied me.
"Thanks," I mumbled sheepishly.
Sarah and I found Dan leaning against a tall tree near the creek's edge and looking intently at the ground.
"There's something here for sure," Dan spoke in a near whisper,"Chromos says to look at the ground here but focus your eyes as if you were looking past it."
I did as recommended and after concentrating for about a minute, I was making no progress. My concentration was broken by Sarah suddenly gasping. "What the hell?" Sarah yelped. I was about to give up and ask what Sarah saw as a flash of energy arced across my vision and immediately I could see what Dan and Sarah could. Below us about ten feet down was a humanoid shape glowing a sickly green. My eyes drifted back in the direction of the tree line, and I saw multiple other shapes. There were dozens of bodies buried below us. I pushed my sight further and deeper and saw the bodies were stacked in a haphazard pile several feet deep and along the entire bank of Thread Creek up to the tree line. I did not even want to make an estimate of how many there were.
As soon as I realized what I was looking at I slammed my eyes shut. I tried as hard as I could to cut off my weird new extrasensory perception and managed with a strange pushing sensation. I breathed out slowly and peeked down at the ground below me with a single eye. I could only see the grass. I let out a long sigh of relief.
"It is a mass grave," I whispered.
"This is so fucked up. Does that mean Jessica, Jordan, and Will were all killed, buried here, and turned into those things?" Dan wondered aloud with a slight wavering in his voice.
No one spoke for a while.
"The bodies beneath us have been twisted and torn in a great variety of ways, none of which are necessary for making shades. I believe there is more to our enemy than just simple shade production." Sarah's voice cut into the silence, but it had a subtle shift in tone and cadence indicating that Corona was speaking through her.
"We should check out whatever Corona saw further down the creek. Could there be another clearing?" Sarah asked as she averted her eyes from the gruesome sight.
“There may be further shades,” I said uneasily.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Dan said with a smile. My eyes lingered on his injured arm and I did not return the smile.
The three of us headed deeper into the woods while staying close to the river. Sarah was insistent on pushing us forward faster, but when she got too far ahead Dan would touch her shoulder and motion back at me. I was struggling to keep up because of the dense undergrowth of the forest. There were many small bushes, trees, and many of them had thorns which kept snagging on my clothes. Even small trees growing close together gave me significant difficulty. Somehow my friends were just barreling through with no issues at all. Eventually, I grew frustrated and formed a crude ice machete with magic which I used to quickly carve a path through the forest.
Fifteen minutes later we arrived at the edge of a small clearing. Dan darted behind a tree and held up a single hand as he looked back to Sarah and me. I moved as silently as I could and peered around the tree. In the clearing we had just stumbled upon there was a cluster of large white orbs. Each sphere was several feet across, had a texture similar to a giant ball of yarn, and glistened in the fading afternoon light.
"What the hell are those?" Sarah whispered to me.
"I have no idea," I replied as quietly as I could.
Dan motioned behind Sarah and me, so I began to back away. Once we were behind another tree about ten feet further back Dan whispered, "I think those are giant eggs or maybe cocoons."
"Those must be for some huge spiders," Sarah wondered aloud. "Or maybe moths?"
Not sure what to make of the giant white globes in the clearing, I simply shrugged and said, "Do either of you sense more shades? I do not." Both Sarah and Dan looked more intently at the clearing and then at the ground beneath the clearing.
"There certainly are more bodies here," Dan groaned and then continued, "But I don't see any shades. And Chromos says there are no large concentrations of magic."
"Corona agrees," Sarah exhaled with relief.
"Shall we?" Dan motioned towards the clearing, and we slowly crept into the open space. I was still tense and worrying that this was an ambush. Nothing stopped our advance and nothing jumped out at us. As we got closer to the collection of white balls it was clear that something had already broken or torn them apart. Even intact these would have had more of an oblong shape instead of being perfect spheres.
"Well, if they were eggs, they'd already hatched," Dan said while looking intently at the closest spheroid. He walked over to the nearby trees, retrieved a long stick, and prodded at the strange objects. The first folded in easily when prodded and surface folded in like it was a sheet of thick fabric. When Dan pulled the stick away a long clear thread of goo trailed from it.
"Gross. They're sticky?" Sarah said.
"Well, if this is spider or moth silk then these have to be worth, like, hundreds of dollars. Each." Dan mused as he moved his hand holding the stick in a fist under his chin.
"What?" I asked incredulously.
"Well, raw silk in huge quantities like this is really hard to come by. You have to farm it from thousands of caterpillars which are called silkworms, boil it to remove the sticky gum, dye it, spin it, and then weave it. I bet these threads are also huge." Dan seemed like he was reciting something.
"Why do you, a football player, know so much about silk?" Sarah barely held back a laugh and she lightly punched him in his uninjured shoulder.
"One of my relatives is really into silk clothing, but the stuff is so expensive. I got bored one time and looked up why." Dan said.
"Careful, people are going to think you're a nerd." Sarah had a big grin on her face.
"It was like two years ago, I don't know much else about it." Dan said defensively.
“Neeerrrd,” Sarah jeered.
"Should we do something with these piles of silk then?" I wondered aloud. I copied what I had done in the previous clearing, trying to see past the blobs of silk lying on the ground. As I focused the white spheres began to glow a faint yellow as the enhanced sight took effect. I did not look down. I did not need to see any more corpses today. I let the magic release, and the spheres slowly resumed their previous appearance.
"They seem to be vaguely magical at least." I said motioning at the pile of silk.
"Corona, do you think some magic silk clothing might be useful?" Sarah said and then the dam finally broke and she was seized by a fit of giggles.
Sarah's laughter stopped abruptly as Corona dutifully responded, "It may be protective against certain kinds of magic. I would recommend testing it before use, however." As Corona finished speaking Sarah's chortles returned.
"Unfortunately, I doubt anyone would be able to make things from raw silk here in town or even in Michigan for that matter." Dan looked a bit disappointed. "Magic clothes do sound cool."
"I wasn't really looking forward to carrying these all the way back to your house on a bike. They look heavy." Sarah chortled.
"I doubt anyone is going to find them out here." I motioned around the clearing, "We are in the middle of nowhere. We could come back with a truck and a wheelbarrow if we decide we need them."
"We'll need to be on the lookout for giant magical spiders or moths now on top of the ghosts trying to stab us with knives." Sarah looked suddenly frustrated before continuing, "Well tonight was kind of a bust. No new clues or any idea what these monsters are doing here."
"Considering how many of shades we destroyed last week and today, their forces are likely massively weakened." Chromos's version of Dan's voice said. Dan's face screwed up in frustration again.
"Chromos, please let me know first before you do that," Dan said with frustration. "Let's just go home."
After another short hike through the forest, we mounted our bikes and headed back towards the town of Thread Creek.
"I guess I need to do some research on mythological giant silk monsters," I thought aloud as the night began to fall.