Chapter 4-2

“Animals retrieved,” Anjanette said, dumping the bodies on the floor of their inn room. Leonas fretted at the read stain spreading out onto the carpet. “Damn, that goat is heavy.”

“Why do you smell like hay?” asked Milly.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

Leonas had already prepared the rune circle, sketching it in chalk on the stone floor of the washroom. The stone made it much easier to draw a circle on. Milly gazed at it with unbridled enthusiasm, taking in all the small details that she recognized from the drawings of epic fantasy. Somehow they looked much less precise and beautiful in real life.

“All right, knife,” ordered Leonas. Anjanette cheerfully produced a butcher’s knife from her bag. Leonas didn’t know why, and was scared to ask, but Anjanette always seemed to have any sort of weapon you could ask for handy.

He held up the chicken first and sliced it quickly across the stomach. Its entrails spilled out onto the spell circle with a wet plop. Immediately Milly rushed from the room and the sound of vomiting could be heard from not far away.

“Hey! I said I didn’t want to pay for that carpet!” Leonas yelled, only partly in jest. Milly responded by hacking out another spray of vomit.

Anjanette scoffed. “For a ‘battle librarian’, she sure can’t take the sight of blood.”

Leonas shrugged and pulled the cut wide open, shaking it to get all the guts out. He moved on to the cat, and then the goat, which proved the hardest of the three. Lifting it up while keeping the hooves out of the way of the blood proved to be difficult indeed. Finally, there was a nice collection of steaming animal guts in the circle, and the bathroom looked like a murder scene.

“You know, I’m not like Miss Squeamish over here, but I really would appreciate a less messy way to do this,” admitted Anjanette.

“Suck it up, princess.” Leonas turned to shout behind him. “Hey Milly, can you get me paper and a quill.”

“Sure thing,” she muttered. A clammy hand offered both to him, moments before she rushed back to the main room to empty the remaining contents of her stomach.

Leonas placed his hands at the mouth of the circle. Anjanette was still, knowing that the ritual required silence. Even Milly quieted down in the throes of her sickness. Leonas began to recite, in a voice that was his and not his. “Great demon lords, I appeal to you, grant your power to a mere mortal. I call upon the house of Iziam, keeper of secrets and lies, he who can see the shape of time and space. I offer to you these beasts and their slaughter in exchange for knowledge. Please, O great one, tell me the locations of the seven shards of the Lightblade.”

A wind coursed through the room, snuffing out the torches and leaving only the faintly glowing spell circle as a light source. The temperature plummeted. The taps and toilet ran without control, spilling over onto the ground.

Leonas jerkily peered through the entrails of the animals, scanning them carefully, capturing every detail. Using their blood as ink he wrote on the parchment. His motions were awkward and alien, as if he were a puppet. Finally, he jerked awake, and everything returned to normal. The animal remains and their bodies were gone, snatched up by Hell.

“And after all that, what did you get?” asked Anjnaette, as soon as any one of them had the presence to speak again.

Leonas, still shivering, held up the piece of parchment, lines written across it in fine cursive. The blood sparkled.

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