Chapter 6

The Illusionist

New characters in this chapter and others:

Mandara

Maddy’s Sword, called the Spirit Eater, enchanted and able to cancel Magic spells, can change sizes with its mistress, speaks in her mind, but doesn’t always obey her

Druj

Evil spirit, appears to be part goat and part woman, can use strong Magic, can use fire that can not be put out even by Magic

Binne

Faerie Princess, the Illusionist, appears to be a young woman with a curvy figure and breasts, has fine long blond hair, pale skin and is a bit under five feet tall

I needed to duck to get through the eight foot high doorway of the store. The Sword dragged along the rock surface of the floor as I entered and scratched a groove into the floor. There was a spark as the tip of the Sword contacted and canceled something, and the illusion of an empty store vanished to be replaced by the reality of a store with merchandise on counters and shelves down both sides of the store. The counter that appeared to have been in the center of the store had been pushed to one side, leaving a wide aisle for us to advance into the store, which appeared to be about forty feet deep. There was a doorway at the back of the store. It lead to the back where merchandise could be stored and other things could be done. In the bright lights of the store, we could see no one else in the front part.

“Let’s move to the back part of the store,” I told my two Demons and started forward. They hesitated to follow me.

“Something wrong?” I asked, stopping and turning my head to look down at them.

“Your Sword ... it canceled the spell on the store,” Cassius said in a frightened voice.

“And?” I asked.

“The Sword is enchanted. There is no way to know what it will do or who it will attack,” he continued, still in a frightened voice.

“I have control of the Sword. It won’t do anything that I don’t want it to,” I told him confidently, before turning back to continue down the wide aisle of the store. I had gone about half way or twenty feet or so when something appeared in the doorway to the back of the store. I had never seen anything like it before.

What had appeared looked to be a mix of two or more creatures. The lower part appeared to be that of a goat standing on its two hind legs. It had hooves instead of feet and its legs were covered in hair or fur. The middle section of the creature appeared to be that of a naked female human with large breasts and two arms ending in human hands. The problem, of course, was that there were wings, large dark colored wings like those of an Eagle, sprouting from the back of the body.

Atop the short human neck was the head of a large goat of some type. It had long thick horns projecting from the top of the head. The horns were a dark color and at least eighteen inches long and splayed to the right and left some. The hair on the goat’s face was also a dark color, and its eyes glowed a bright red. It was a good six feet tall.

“Oh no!” Bob wailed in misery. “That’s a Druj, one of Ahriman’s Daevas,” he finished in despair. I wasn’t listening with more than half an ear to this, as the Sword had come to life with the appearance of the creature. The Druj, or whatever it was, had started to cast a spell as soon as it appeared, but I wasn’t sure what to do against something like that. I didn’t get the chance to do anything, however.

Less than two seconds after the creature appeared, the Sword, that I thought I was in control of, had assumed a life of its own. It flew through the air separating us, dragging me with it. As it neared the creature, the blade encountered a ward which it smashed right through canceling it, before diving to spear the creature in the chest between its breasts. It pierced completely through it before stopping. The creature let out a loud wail of agony before its body collapsed to the floor, a shriveled mass of goo. The Sword, however, was now alive, as it had never been before, and it glowed with a golden light.

“No-no-no, it can’t be,” Cassius moaned in fear from behind me. “It just can’t be. That Sword is Mandara, the Spirit Eater. No wonder it tried to control us and make us do things,” he continued in misery.

In the meantime, I was staring at the Sword, which now seemed to have a life of its own. It was then that something whispered in my mind.

“Don’t worry Little Dragon Witch. I will protect you. It has been long since I have consumed an enemy, and I had grown weak. Now, I am revitalized, and we shall go forward together and consume all of your enemies. You are safe for now though,” It whispered in my mind, to my shock and amazement, but the Sword said nothing further.

Now that the Sword, Mandara, was quiet again, there were questions that I needed answers too before we went any further to find the Illusionist. Turning to the two minor Demons, I started in, but both Bob and Cassius didn’t look ready to answer any questions, mine or any others. My first one went to Bob.

“Who or what was this creature, this Druj, as you called it?” I demanded. Bob stared at me in dismay for many seconds before answering me, and then only when I turned toward him with the Sword in my hand.

“The Druj are the spawn of the Whore Jeb. They are evil spirits who carry out the work of Ahriman. They are very powerful and use a consuming fire that can’t be put out, even by Magic,” Bob told me, but in a very quiet voice, as if he suspected that the Druj wasn’t really dead.

“And who is this Ahriman?” I demanded next.

“He is the master of and the creator of evil and chaos in the universe. He is the one who creates trouble of all kinds. The Druj and the other Daevas carry out his orders,” Bob told me in an even quieter voice, just above a whisper.

“Other Daevas?” I asked.

“There are more evil spirits than just the Druj. There are the Aka Manah and the Aeshma. They each have different types of evil that they create,” Bob finished in a whiny voice, while looking around to see if one or more of these evil spirits had appeared here.

“Why would they be involved in kidnapping Al?” I asked.

“To create trouble and dissension. To block you from what you need to do. Someone or something must have asked them for help in doing that,” Bob told me, but he was shaking with fear. I then turned to Cassius.

“You said earlier that the building holding the sword had burned down and even Magic couldn’t put out the fire. Could a Druj have started the fire?” I asked, to a shocked look from him.

“We ... we never even considered that. Why hadn’t we?” he asked in a voice full of wonder. “We had never even considered it, thinking that it was the fight that started the fire. Why?” he asked in an unsure voice.

“Could the other Daevas have had something to do with it?” I asked, but both Demons looked confused by the question. Had they been spelled and could the spell still in effect this long after the fire, I wondered? It would have required someone or something very powerful to cast a spell that lasted that long. There were other questions that still needed answering, however.

“What do you know about the Sword? You called it Mandara,” I demanded next, waving the Sword.

“What does it matter, we are all doomed!” Cassius wailed in misery. “If the Druj don’t destroy us, then Mandara will. It is the Spirit Eater. It sucks the life out of anything that it pierces. It stole the spirit of the Druj in an instant and controls it. It will do the same to us,” he wailed in fear.

“It seems to be quiet for now, but you are right. It told me that it would devour my enemies,” I told him, to an even more shocked look from him.

“It spoke to you?” he asked in fear.

“Yes, it spoke in my mind after destroying the Druj,” I told him. Both minor Demons looked even worse on hearing this.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It only speaks to the one who will be its Master or Mistress. You must be even more powerful than we had feared,” Cassius whined in awe and fear.

“I don’t feel any different than I did before this,” I told them, but I had another question.

“Where did this Sword come from?” I asked.

“Mandara was forged by a great Dwarf smith with the help of an unknown Wizard from a piece of rock that fell from the sky. It is said to be his greatest creation. This was done long ago when the Dragons were still young and ruled all of the worlds. It is a very ancient and powerful Sword. Even many of the Dragons of old feared it. It disappeared during the War of Revolt. We never realized that the sword that we had captured was Mandara,” Cassius told me in a terrified voice.

I had been distracted by these questions for a number of minutes, I now realized, and turned back to the doorway to the back of the store. The height of this opening was closer to that of a normal door – so it was about 6’-6’’ tall. At my current 12 feet of height, I would need to bend almost in half to get through it. That was unacceptable.

I also couldn’t trust the two Demons to search the area by themselves. The only solution seemed to be to return to my normal size for the search. I again sheathed the Sword. The elevator ride this time was slower and easier. However, I still held on to the now short form of the Sword, rather than attaching it to my backpack.

“Let’s move into the back room and see what is there,” I told them before remembering the goo that had been the Druj on the floor and in the way.

“Do either of you know a spell to remove what is left of the Druj?” I asked them. They both looked at me in shock at this but didn’t answer.

“Well do you or not?” I demanded in a grouchy voice. “If I need to remove it, you may not like the sound of my voice, or the words that come out of my mouth,” I told them. They both cringed on hearing this.

“There is a spell for removing unwanted material. It requires a lot of Magic to cast it,” Cassius told me after a number of seconds.

“Is your Magic rationed?” I demanded.

“No, but the spell requires a lot of effort,” he whined.

“Tell me the spell, and I’ll cast it,” I demanded in anger, but I realized it could be dangerous to use an unknown spell. Cassius, however, appeared to be in shock by my suggestion.

“You ... you want me to reveal the spell?” he asked in fear.

“Either reveal it or use it yourself,” I told him, giving him little choice.

Cassius looked distraught for a short time before beginning to cast the spell. Shortly the remains of the Druj vanished, and I stepped through the doorway into the back room of the store. It was lined with rows of shelves containing merchandise for the store. Some of the shelves held more items than others. Toward the back of the area, the shelves thinned out, and there was an open area that may have been used for receiving and separating merchandise, though there was no rear exit that I could see.

As I approached this area, a large bed became visible on the right side of the room; I could see on the floor that several rows of shelves had been removed to make way for it. There was a figure on the bed. It appeared to be a young girl, but I wasn’t going to take that as truth until I had checked everything about the area and the bed very carefully.

Opening my Magic senses, I probed the area around the bed with them and found a strong ward around the bed, but there was another spell within the ward. I didn’t recognize it, and decided that I needed more information before going further.

“There is a ward around the bed, and a second spell inside the ward,” I told Bob and Cassius, as we carefully approached the bed. It was easy to see through the ward and the other spell. What we saw surprised me.

Lying on the bed was a young woman. She was definitely a woman and not a girl or a child. The curves of her figure and the breasts proclaimed that she was indeed a woman, if only one shortly out of her teens. She was lying on her back, and her eyes were closed. She was lying partly on her fine long blond hair, but part of her hair ran down either side of her face and extended down over her breasts to nearly her waist. Her skin, what was visible of it, was rather pale, but her chest rose and fell in a regular rhythm. She appeared to be just short of 5’-0’’ tall. She was dressed in multiple overlapping layers of a rather diaphanous material, but it did nothing to hide her figure.

“Can you sense the spell inside the ward?” I asked the two Demons.

“Yes, it’s a spell cast by the Druj, so is the ward,” Cassius told me. “The Druj have powerful Magic. I don’t think you will be able to get to or wake the Fey,” he finished.