In perfect silence, in velvet darkness, in quiet stillness, the spirit slumbered. It dreamed strange, alien dreams that even its creators would have no ability to understand, and it waited with the patience of a seed in the parched desert. Time passed, and the darkness changed, and the silence changed, and the dreams changed, and the spirit still waited, curled in on itself. Then, from somewhere beyond the darkness, a spark of will flickered like the lightning before a storm. From that spark, power dripped, then trickled, then surged in a torrent. The dreams broke and faded, the darkness retreated, the stillness became bright, growing awareness. Simple perception became sensation, became the spirit’s mind, uncoiling from itself, spreading and catching more of the power sheeting down onto it.

That awareness grew, slowly at first, but with the inexorable power of the tree that shifts the boulder. The consciousness the spirit had only understood certain things - its creators had worked carefully to ensure that this was so. When fragments of a different awareness, one the spirit could find no anchor for within itself, surged through on the tide of magic that fed it, the spirit did not, could not understand. Those fragments of another mind wound and spiraled around its own like creepers and vines across the trunks of a rising forest.  Still, the spirit unfolded from itself, spreading, flowing outward, feeling out the world to every side. This wasn’t where the spirit had been made, it knew that at least. This place seemed warmer, the soil was different, the air felt more acrid against its senses. Like moss spreading over a fallen tree, the spirit flowed outward from its anchor, its mind sending deep roots into the world. It gathered more power, more magic, more raw energy into itself and grew, and grew, and grew; a mighty oak rising from rich, dark earth.

The power that had awoken it began to flicker and fade, consumed by the spirit’s growing presence. Still the strange pieces of another awareness clung to it, and still the spirit could make no sense of that other presence. It understood that a sacrifice had been offered, enough to bring it out of dormancy, to bind and seal it to this place. But there was more behind that power, something so strong that it nearly tore the spirit’s mind apart from within, and the spirit did not even understand it enough to defend itself, the creepers for a moment threatening to throttle the giant tree they wrapped around. Then, a voice, a lance of power and command. The other awareness vanished, crumbling like ash. 

[i]The Shaman binds and guides you[/i], that voice whispered through the spirit’s mind, [i]The Shaman has returned you.The Shaman gives you purpose. Hear me three times, O Spirit.This place is sacred, for I say it is so. Make this place your home, and destroy those who trespass.[/i]

The spirit understood. With a burst of power, its awareness touched the plants to every side, wrapped around the fungus in the soil, the roots, the bulbs and rhizomes. It would need a form to defend this place, and the life here would do. Guided by the Shaman’s commands, the spirit could already feel interlopers, and it would need to deal with them swiftly. The spirit guided the life it touched, wove bones of wood and stone and metal, wrapped it in the green flesh of living plants, bound together with soil and the strange, flat coverings it swept up. Satisfied, the spirit flowed into the form it made for itself, and rose with the sound of a landslide. It stood, and in its eyes, blue will-o’-the-wisp fires burst and danced.

The intruders had retreated, the spirit felt them flee, stumbling over their own feet, further into a tall dwelling it had no words for. It felt satisfied at that, though more permanent measures would doubtless be necessary soon. With no intruders to deal with, the spirit turned its attention to its new home. It knew this place was sacred; the Shaman had said so. But sacred places should be wild - and this place was anything but. The spirit could feel soil below, but there was some kind of strange, black surface covering the ground. It took several steps, trying to find a break in the strange, easy covering, then moved in another direction. The black surface seemed to stretch for the whole of what it now knew to be its domain, separating the spirit from the soil below. It let out a low, deep cry, raised one arm to hammer down at the ground and break through the dark barrier, when something caught its attention.

The spirit turned its body up, its head turning skyward. Its eyes flared, two points of blue light burning in hollow woven-wooden sockets. It had only the barest moment to understand the demon-toad hurtling out of the sky toward it, and had only barely begun to straighten when Lefylyn hammered into the spirit like a tiny meteor, rocking the both of them back.

The spirit howled, and started swatting at itself, deceptively fast movements chasing the little fire demon. It knew, also, that there were other trespassers approaching - but it would have to deal with its own problems first….


——

“I’ll call you back, Sol,” Morgan said. She hung up her phone and slid it back into her inner jacket pocket, one eyebrow raised at Lefylyn’s entrance. 

“I’m impressed” she said, standing up from the hood of her car and turning to Beth, “Fire from the sky [i]and[/i] frogs. God only managed them one at a time. Pardon me a moment.”

Morgan walked around to the still-open driver’s door and leaned in. Mandy, the company’s half-Faerie “research assistant,” lay curled in the passenger seat, her eyes closed, snoring softly. Morgan sighed, but she couldn’t blame the girl. At almost any other time, Morgan very likely would have tucked her into a blanket and let her rest, but this would have to be the exception. She reached across and nudged Mandy’s shoulder with her hand, giving the Fae girl a little shake. Mandy rolled over, yawned, but stayed resolutely asleep, one hand flopping next to her head, tossing a lock of dark hair across her face. Morgan sighed, and gave Mandy another jostle, to precisely the same effect.

Outside, the spirit’s low roar shook the air again, and Morgan could feel the irritation in that sound. She glanced out the windshield, and saw the little fire-toad still hopping over the guardian spirit’s body, increasingly frantic. Gold fire surrounded the spirit, but didn’t seem to be burning away at the body it had made - if anything, the spirit’s form seemed to be curing in the heat, like timber drying in the summer. Each hop Lefylyn made left a little dark crater where it landed, but Morgan couldn’t tell at all if the creature’s antics were actually harming the guardian. She was just about to lean back toward Mandy when one of the guardian’s hands moved so quickly that she felt the [i]whum[/i] even inside the car, followed by a crack like a tree falling. The spirit’s arm came up from its torso, and its fist burned with reddish-golden light from between fingers like ancient, twisted roots. With another deep roar, the spirit leaned back and whipped its arm through a hard, fast arc, sending the little fire-toad arced through the air like a cannonball, all four of its limbs flailing.

The guardian watched Lefylyn fly away into the darkness, and Morgan thought it looked smug. Then it turned its attention to the gathering knot of P&H investigators, an started stomping toward them. Morgan looked back down at Mandy and blew out a long, slow breath. They’d need her knowledge, the information she’d absorbed from the company archives - and Mandy would need to be able to run if things got worse. Morgan flexed her fingers, felt the knuckles pop, and leaned further into the car, bracing one knee on the driver’s seat.

With infinite care, she leaned over to Mandy, coming so near she could breathe her faint, wild scent. Close enough that the girl’s mind, strange and alien and beguiling, brushed against her own senses in ways she couldn’t ignore. Close enough that she could feel the hidden turnings of the girl’s desires, feel pieces of her that she wondered if the Fae girl even knew she had. So close that she could feel every live wire of Mandy’s subconscious, the things she barely admitted to herself, the things part of her wished someone else knew. Morgan leaned closer, her lips brushing against Mandy’s ear, and she spoke so softly the words were nothing but breath and heat. Inside her, Morgan let the barest spark, the most infinitesimal part of herself flow out with those words, a charged, silken promise caressing the currents of the Fae girl’s mind.

Mandy shot awake so quickly she hit her head on the car’s ceiling. Morgan had pulled away by then, her lips tilted in a playful smile.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, her voice almost more of a purr, “But I think you’ll want to be awake for the next part. You’ll either need to run, or tell the rest of us what to do.” She climbed backward out of the car, stood, and looked over the roof. The other PHI members, tired and in various states of grump, looked back.

“Right,” Morgan said, “Emma, Beth - you need more information about…whatever this is?” She looked at the spirit, and even her eyes widened a little at how close it had gotten, “I…mm. I can handle that.”

“Rob, Jacob,” she pointed at the pair, “We’ll need to deal with this thing quickly, before it destroys too much more property.” She looked at Rob’s makeshift molotovs, “Be careful with those, but I think you have the right idea. Keep it distracted, try to damage it while we figure out a way to…dismiss it. I don’t know how practical destroying it is going to be but…well. I expect you’ll have ideas.”

“Right,” Morgan said, “Now, I shan’t be any time at all.” She gave them all a sunny smile then turned, kicked off the ground, and bolted toward the spirit.

Her long legs ate up the ground in long, smooth strides, her boots thudding on the asphalt. This was [i]not[/i] a good plan - but every other plan she could think of would have put one of the mortals - or, more-mortals, at least - in the creature’s path. They wouldn’t heal the way she did, and if they died, the hole they left in the world would be her fault. So she ran, and gathered her will around herself, feeling her senses wrap around her right arm, waiting to be sent through memory and time. Her hand tingled, and she rolled her fingers. Ahead, the guardian finally looked down and saw Morgan racing toward it. The spirit threw its head back with a bone-rattling bellow, then launched itself into its own run toward Morgan, huge legs sending it leaping over cars.

The world went sharp in Morgan’s vision, her eyes following the huge creature. This close, she could see it was still growing, still manifesting itself - vines and roots and branches still spun together, swelling, bark forming like skin. The huge creature took a step toward Morgan and reared back, one arm in the air, and she saw spines of hard, pale wood erupt from the creature’s fist as it struck straight down toward her. Morgan threw herself to one side and the fist crashed into the asphalt less than a meter away from her, leaving a coffin-sized hole in the parking lot and throwing chips of blacktop in every direction. Morgan rolled back to her feet and darted toward the creature, sliding between its legs like a baseball runner.

It reared the spike-covered fist back again and bent in a way that would be impossible if it really had a skeleton, pounding the fist back toward the asphalt like a falling mountain.This time, Morgan hooked one hand around its leg and kicked off the ground, pushing her up from her slide a split-second before the creature’s fist tore another enormous crater in the blacktop. Chips of asphalt flew up and tore at her jacket, several slicing completely through the light silk and thumping against her skin. Pain bloomed through her mind, but Morgan had no time for it. She stepped around to the creature’s side, opposite the spike-fist, swallowed, then rammed her right arm deep between a pair of heavy, heaving roots. Her fingers searched inside for something to hold onto, and after a frantic moment, wrapped around something that felt like a branch - but one that grew under her fingers. She took a deep breath, saw the creature start to straighten again, and released the will she’d been holding into the creature.

For a moment, nothing happened. She could feel no past, not even a present, from the creature. Then, from where she touched it, lines of heatless blue fire erupted, spreading over the creatures body, but they didn’t consume it. Instead, they outlined whorls, arcs, circles, like Pictish tattoos picked out in icy blue flame. The creature threw its head back, its jaw opened, and it screamed, sparks of blue fire erupting from its mouth and spraying into the night sky. Morgan was about to pull her arm back, but even as the blue fire wrapped around the leg where she was standing, she felt the flickers of her power spread through the creature, like minnows in a stream. She felt them reach into the construct, into its thoughts, and, at the last, into its own past. She closed her eyes and let the images collect, each one like someone else’s memory.

[i]

A dark sky under a heavy and pale moon, figures mantled in grey and blue and white standing in a stone circle. Their hands are warm from the way they had grasped first each other, then how they had restrained the figure on the altar in the centre of the circle. Blood stains a mirror-bright blade, ons along channels in the altar to a bowl of carved stone. Runes of power are etched into it, and in the center of the bowl is another stone, this one smooth and black and marked with deep, carved sigils. Blood flows into the bowl, onto the stone, and low, rhythmic chanting fills the ear, each syllable pulsing with power.

A bright day some years later, the formless spirit spread latent over a patch of thick forest. The stone circle has fallen, the altar cracked under the weight of too many winters. The chanters come no more, have not come for many years, but the spirit still waits, still watches. Buried under a dozen feet of peat moss and fallen logs, the black stone crackles with power.

Another dark night. Lances of bright light spear the sky, obscuring the stars. In the distance, a city’s lights turn down one after another, leaving the countryside in darkness except for the searchlights. Shrieks piece the night, nightmare whistles of machines even more deadly than the spirit. Fire blooms in the city, dull red and orange light touching the forest glade only lightly. Then one of the hellish, shrill whistles stops overhead, and a moment later there is an impact, then a ripping, then a tearing. The glade is torn to shreds and tatters. The black stone is hurled into the darkness…

It is many years later. A pale hand, shaking with excitement, palms the black stone. The carved lines cast strange shadows that seem to have nothing to do with the late-afternoon sunlight. There is a voice, distant and not understood. The stone is in the man’s pocket. The man is walking.

The stone is handed from one hand to another. More words, but even less understanding. There are two other things, each secreted in a pocket. 

The stone is placed in a circle.

There is blood.

There is power.

[/i]

Morgan gasped as the last images tore through her mind, settling indelibly into her memory. She shook her head, her mind muddled with the swirling after-effects of the spirit’s past. How much time had passed? She looked up, saw the creature also stunned - but only for an instant. Morgan unwrapped her hands from the creature and took a staggering step away, nothing like her usual grace her her step. The spirit looked down at her and seemed to grow, its shoulders broadening, its arms getting longer, its hands more broad. It roared again, this time sounding like a freight train in an avalanche, campfire sparks of indigo light cascading out into the night. Before Morgan could recover, the creature twisted, one arm raised, and brought that arm around in a sweep so fast Morgan would have sworn it left after-images in the air.

The impact was something irresistible, something primordial; like being hit with the very idea of place and time and will and a dozen speeding city busses. It wasn’t something Morgan could have blocked and it came so fast there had been no time to dodge it. She felt her ribs tighten as the blow crushed the wind out of her, felt her arms and legs tug at their sockets as she was lifted into the air and thrown bodily away from the creature, flying back the way she had come in the first place. The lights of the parking lot tumbled crazily in her vision as she sailed through the air like a line drive at Wrigley Field. Her coat flapped around her in the endless moments of weightlessness as she began to fall, and her mind focused on the snap and pop of fabric, feeling the tug and release as the wind grabbed her.

Then the ground rushed up to meet her and Morgan felt the asphalt bite into her hands and arms, felt her knees smash into the blacktop, rolling across the rough surface in a flopping, loose tangle of arms and legs and expensively-tailored silk. Several hours that fit into a a few seconds passed as she careened to a stop, gasping first to get back the breath that had been knocked out of her, then with the pain of a growing list of complaints as her body turned in its damage report. She groaned and knew that nothing was broken or permanently out of place, but she also knew that she’d certainly have an impressive collection of lacerations and bruises at the end of the night. 

Her vision finally cleared, the drunken whirls of light in her eyes resolving into the burning sodium lamps above, and of the blue-white fire crawling along the creature. She realized with a start that she’d been flung only a few feet away from her car and the other investigators, which would at least make communication easy - right after she figured out how to breathe normally again. The spirit, now twenty meters away, hunched and turned its bulk to look first at Morgan, then at the ruined Garden Center. It screamed again, and took one lumbering step toward the investigators, hands bunching into colossal fists.

Morgan coughed and rolled over. She tried to push herself to a sitting position but her arm gave out and she flopped back onto the asphalt, her head spinning again. She groaned and sucked in a few quick breaths, then managed to roll into a position where she could pull her phone out of its case. It was shattered, of course, crushed when she’d landed on it, but getting that hard brick of glass and metal away from her ribs felt wonderful. She tossed it aside, tilted her head toward Emma and Beth.

“Druidic…spirit,” she managed to croak, “Summoned by sacrifice a thousand years ago. Brought here by someone recent. Blood magic, bound to a stone - should still be nearby somewhere.” Morgan coughed, and wiped blood away from her mouth, “I don’t mean to be dreadfully dull, but I think I’m going to lie here for a moment, if you’ll excuse me.”