“…therefore, it can be assumed that magic is a generalized concept. Anything else you want to know?” – I asked the people while we sat around the campfire.
Chris, Robert and Greg, who had some experience, decided that the actual hunting would be left for late evening and early morning, so meanwhile we prepared to prepare the camp and scout the surroundings. But as I was constantly being bombarded by questions, for now we only set up a fire and brought over the gear.
“Um,” – Max raised his hand: “You said generalized. What do you mean?”
I sighed and shared what I had read about: “Now, t is important to remember that all terms and categories that I am going to mention, are somewhat recent and only limited to British and by extension, Western cultural sphere. It would work also somewhere in northeast US, but I would advise against directly using common dictionary translations anywhere else. Now, there are two basic ways for human magic. Wizardry is highly precise, efficient and cost-effective, but places high demand on wizard’s intellect and calculation abilities. Sorcery is somewhat chaotic, difficult to analyze and categorize, but also something that is purely dependent on innate talent. Witchcraft and druids are similar, as they are almost always manipulating external powers. However, the combination of innate disposition and required level of education puts them somewhere between wizards and sorcerers. Of course,.”
“How does it actually work?” – asked Oscar, who had been fidgeting all the time, apparently being torn between his feelings of curiosity and suspicion.
I scratched my chin, trying to explain the general idea: “Well, magic energy can be detected by trained magicians, and if haphazardly discharged, also produces detectable effects like ionization of surrounding air and emission of electromagnetic and other waves. Magicians, be it wizards or sorcerers or others, somehow absorb, store and manipulate it. You can imagine that as electric charges, with magicians being computers and the world being virtual space.
Oscar interjected: “You sure find up-to-date analogies.”
“There are troll communities ordering stuff from Amazon, you know?” – I shrugged, and continued: “So, ordinary beings can’t affect the world beyond basic physics, or if we use computer analogy, they are basic users. Magicians and supernatural beings have various levels of ‘access’ to manipulate the world – from advanced users to admins. Then, there are things like gods that can act as ‘server owners’, all kinds of hackers, viruses and unknown errors that are difficult to explain. Is it understandable?”
“Sure, but…” – nodded Chris, but what he wanted to say was interrupted by Dolores: “So, how does all that explain what is going on with the world now? Some kind of hacking attack?”
I nodded: “Could be said so. Or a bunch of servers being connected together while ignoring their compatibility.”
“Erm,” – Oscar raised his voice: “What about, as you said, my eyes? They feel kind of sore recently, but my eyesight keeps getting better all the time. It’s like a constant itch, irritating, impossible to get used to. Is it sorcery?”
“Well… If we return to the ‘world is a server’ analogy, the current system crash is causing some people to move between user groups. Sure, you might awaken to some kind of sorcery, or gain a miracle ability. It is not a really unique thing – some of the stories about ‘abilities appearing after an accident’ originate from a similar phenomenon. Congratulations, you may become a superhero.” – I decided not to mention the possibility of his body or sanity collapsing due to the ‘compatibility errors’.
The talks continued into late afternoon, with people being really curious about myself. I managed to build up a story of me discovering that I was able to get stronger than others, and somehow ended up living for centuries in seclusion deep in norwegian mountains. Until the last century, when German invasion during World War II forced me out into the wide world. Not that it mattered much – I could have claimed myself to be an einherjar from Vingólf hall of Valhalla, and they would likely think that it is possible. From their perspective, in the situation where the magic is real, wizards exist and the world itself is going down the drain – an immortal bellicose alcoholic hero would change nothing much.
I kept answering all of their questions, timely coming up with appropriate answers mostly thanks to my cognition unlimited by the inconvenience of having to rely on a squishy, 60-percent-fat-content thing called brain. Even when asked about something I had no idea about, I managed to prepare the answers that would not be regarded as wrong even if some details were proven incorrect. For that, I always left some leeway for interpretation. Neutral affirmations, no direct denials, active use of referrals and name-droppings – such linguistic artistry kept reminding me of my father. Now that I think about it, diplomat’s work never ended, even during casual ‘dinners with friends’. Back when I was a teen, I had thought that his talking was easy. But it took surprising effort to replicate.
Soon, it was time to move out.
***
“I suppose, it’s dead?” – Greg sounded unsure as he used his second spear to poke a somewhat smelly hill of flesh, that just a few minutes before had felled whole trees on its path as it rampaged around. The gigantic head had become an unrecognizable mess leaking blood, brain and other fluids, but was still almost the size of a washing machine.
Max grumbled: “Fuck, who said ‘those’re bear marks on trees’, if not Vic, we would’ve been stomped into a fucking pile of mud.”
I cringed at the nickname he gave me. Well, I did notice a rapidly approaching mass of active life forms and managed to guide everyone away in time, but really, ‘Vic’? At least nobody mentioned that the bolt shot from my crossbow only left a long and bloody, but uselessly shallow line across the flank of the beast. What stopped the animal, were a dozen or so alternating rounds of buckshot and slugs pumped into it by Chris, Peter, Robert, Oscar and Andrea. Or the arrow that stuck in its neck, shot with surprising skill by Dolores. The spears thrown by Greg and Mike didn’t pierce deep enough and Max missed his shot. Considering how fast everything happened, it was pure luck that all the shooting scared off the rest of the herd, so they left their wounded companion alone.
“Damn, others said the giant boars here were four feet, which is big, but not out of norm!” – Chris defended himself: “Six feet is bullshit, it can’t be real! Dolores, you’re biologist, right, what is this thing?”
Miss Dolores, who had spaced out in adrenaline stupor while gripping her longbow until her knuckles turned white, snapped out of it and stiffly turned towards the carcass.
“I’m clinical histologist, you know.” – she protested, but came closer. She bent to look at the huge head, but almost lost her balance as the smell hit her. Well, not to mention the natural animal scent that had never seen shampoo, there was also blood and who knows what else around.
“Hmm, looks like a pig to me.” – Dolores shrugged, but added: “Except that it’s the size of adult Indian rhino, and it got spikes instead of, err, bristles. It’s as if an animal was directly magnified. Oh, I totally don’t want to see what parasites it can carry”. Now that turned everyone slightly green in face.
“That’s all nice, but let’s get moving” – Robert clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention: “With all the racket, I doubt we’ll get a second one today, so let’s leave it for tomorrow. But see these dark clouds above? We gotta get the dressing done before it rains or something. The Castlehill reservoir over there used to be 94 acres half a year ago, now it has tripled – without any rain, by the way. I don’t want to be so close to the shore if it actually decides to rain.”
What followed, was a rather nasty operation of using a winch to hang up the almost three-ton carcass, bleeding it dry, skinning and carving out the meat. Chris and Robert were quite far-sighted and brought the equipment for vacuum packaging and several boxes with dry ice. As it turned out, the van also had special fittings on the roof, so having enough space was not an issue.
“Does it smell of storm?” – wondered Andrea while swiftly packing the meat.
Peter, hands bloody and without the usual elegance of the master of the sword, carefully sniffed and winced immediately: “I only smell guts.”
I tried to separate the smells around us. Bitter smoke with tiny particles of ash and oxides…acidic smell of earth and sand…complex oils, mixtures of phenols and other hydrocarbons coming from trees and grasses…massive cloud of pungent smells from the mutant boar… sour smell of human bodies and gunpowder and somewhere there, a sharp tingle of ozone under everything else. I looked around – it felt like usual approaching storm with heavy rain clouds and all. However, the disordered flashes caused by what I guessed were the subatomic particles such as the full energy range of photons from radio waves to gamma radiation, that I could sense all the time and what I had gotten used to ignore – caused now such an intense “radio noise” that I really wondered if it would soon cause visual phenomena like aurora borealis or St. Elmo’s fires. That could be the reason behind the smell, as the excited energies could easily start with ionizing the air. Well, I could not influence anything on such scale, so I shrugged and returned to chopping the meat.
The sharp knife cut through the sinews and connecting tissues, separating the meat and bones, while I analyzed what I had heard in physics lessons back in high school. Electrical current splitting oxygen molecules into separate atoms that reform into ozone? At the same time, surrounding gases get ionized – somehow it felt that school level explanations oversimplified things too much. Hmm, ozone in upper atmosphere is created through the effect of photons, or sunlight, so it just needs energy. I have seen overflowing concentrated magic cause air glow, which should be caused by ionization. If I consider that I can not feel or see magic because it is in different dimension parallel, but separate to the life energy that I can see but others can not, then the distortions are caused by the instability in space? Is this linked to geographic changes going on?
All sort of thoughts ran through my mind while I finished my part of the work. Everyone was smelly and tired, so after a quick trip to the lake only me and Greg remained awake as we sat outside the tent. Me, because I did not need to sleep. Greg because he drew the short straw and got the first shift for the night watch.
“Hmm, is God, and the angels, you know…real?” – Greg asked in whisper, after the last person in the tent stopped tossing and rolling.
I thought for a moment, before replying: “It depends on the way you define them. But I would say, that being careful of any unfamiliar entity would be the best course of action.”
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged, as I shared some common ‘wizard school level’ knowledge: “Defining gods, faith-based entities, angels, demons and so on has been a major headache for wizards, sages, priests, shamans and everyone else for millenia. And such questions have often been met with… unpleasant reactions from the other side.”
After that, Greg stayed silent, gazing into the fire with empty eyes until his shift came to an end. Next was Max, who was curious about reincarnation. As I was unsure about the topic of souls, despite having personal experience on the matter, I described him multiple ways of memory and mind transfers I had read about. So, one-by-one in six hours I had personally counselled five people – Greg, Max, Peter, Andrea and Chris. Oscar spent his hour staring at me through the fire between us and visibly relaxed when Dolores came to get her early morning coffee.
Except that the morning could only be recognized by time – thick dark clouds covered the sky. Automatically and unneeded, emerged the memory of an encyclopedia for children I had read when I was seven, and gave the name for these clouds – cumulonimbus. I sighed at the sight above – it had been clear sky for months, and any sudden changes were guaranteed to be unnatural. While the thing with my memory was convenient and did not cause any distraction or confusion, it still felt…boring? It was becoming harder to indulge in nostalgia or rethink old ideas. New things became rare, as everything was being rapidly evaluated according to prior knowledge and then repeatedly replayed within the mind until it was understood as much as possible.
Fifth of May…it was mentioned during the global discussion in Akadem. Was it not the actual astronomical date of Beltane? But everyone agreed that any real risk was only on the 1st, because it was dependent on psychic resonance among sentient population…
As more people woke up and groggily gathered around the campfire while complaining about how dark it was, I became increasingly confident that the “no real risk this day” was on its way of joining the lottery jackpot wins, airplane crashes and other examples of negligible-probability events that still manage to happen.
The first earthquake happened when everyone was munching their sandwiches and I was going to suggest to drop the morning hunt and retreat to the relative safety of the city. A kettle of coffee dropped into fire, the suddenly dimmed flames brought further confusion into the situation. Trees shook and swayed as the earth heaved under our feet, while deep rumbles echoed from the direction of the nearby mountains.
“Fecking shite!” – shouted Chris, as his speech degraded into a series of difficult to understand Scots while he strived to defend his family jewels from the sudden blitzkrieg of the scalding coffee.
The rising dust made people stop swearing and start coughing and also obscured the vision. But when the earth finally stopped shaking, the uniform darkness of the cloud-shrouded dawn was slowly replaced by irregular flashes of light and dancing grotesque shadows. The tops of the trees glowed with what I could assume were St. Elmo’s fire. And the airspace above, all the way until the thick layer of clouds, was full of aurora-like multicoloured swirls. But that was way too low altitude for actual auroras – for all I know, these could be all sorts of ionized-air and Cherenkov radiations with a plethora of ball lightnings mixed in. Something heavy crashed in the nearby mountains, snapping everyone out of bewildered stupor.
It took record time to bundle up the gear and pile everything into the van. I threw my bag in, and dropped a bundle of camping canvas on top. I stepped aside to let Mike through. I used the opportunity to check my silver Mentor’s watch. Odd, it showed no ‘urgent contact’ or ‘return’ or any other notifications it could apparently show. Was the current situation locally confined?
—
As if earlier events were not enough, the hard facts were rubbed into our faces just in a few minutes of driving. As we were leaving the craggy valley that had once used to be a picturesque valley of Glen Devon, we saw a half-destroyed piece of what looked like a castle rampart made of huge stone blocks, dangerously leaning over the road. What looked like polished surface at first turned out to be vitrified after being melted by enormous heat. Max found an analogy with pre-Christian Scottish vitrified forts, but it appeared to have way too thick molten layer to be one of those and had a definitely more advanced architectural style reminiscing of 14th century.
The next obvious sign that things were becoming uncontrollable were missing human settlements where some of them used to be. And one village was present, but lacked any people. As the people became more anxious, the curiosity stops ended and driving speed increased. The periodic earthquakes intensified and the auroras in the sky increased in brightness and density. At one point, we say how a big lump of rocks, earth, trees and whatever usually came with that emerged from a flashing light and dropped from the height of tens of meters. That explained where the tower came from and what could be the source of the occasional rumbling that rolled through the surroundings.
Some of the towns and villages we passed through were almost unaffected, with bewildered inhabitants crowding together, gossiping about the weird weather phenomena and shaking ground. Some, on the other hand, were almost deserted, and even I could not feel or sense any humans remaining. And in some… people had changed. In one place, I was sure that there were now much more trees than before. And certainly, trees were not supposed to glow with the energies I had come to associate with sentient creatures. Gradually, even when I did not share my observations with the others, everyone grew tense and barely spoke. The short, nervous exchanges centered around families and close ones, and the actions they were expected to take.
With a click, Chris drew everyone’s attention as he loaded a shell into his semiautomatic.
“Trees, buildings… better get ready for some real shite comin’ down?” – he grunted.
In moments, his example was followed by all gun-owners in the van. The rest looked somewhat helplessly at their crossbows, bows and spears.
—
“Bridge” – noted Robert, as a moment of relatively steady light revealed the silhouette of the Fourth Bridge. He stepped on brakes, bringing the van to a stop.
“And draugar.” – I felt the characteristic energy silhouettes moving in the fog, aimlessly wandering on the shore and the adjacent streets.
Next, I had to spend a while, explaining what are draugar from the non-fairytale point of view. Water-logged super-strong zombies – cripple their limbs, blow up the heads, ram with the corner of the bus’ frame. The explanation went well while the fog hid the splattering dead. When we drove closer, however, I heard more new and inventive Scottish English swearing than ever before. At least, nobody started shooting – and only because the windows were in the way. Otherwise our group would have gotten quite a few ruptured eardrums, the fact that was being slowly, and in very graphic ways explained by Chris. Apparently, as an ex-police, he had way better resistance to stress than others.
As we had to cross the bridge next, we were discussing the suitable route while looking in the same direction. That is why, when the earthquake, like none before, hit, we also so how across the water, from the point on our far left, rose a blinding ray that crossed the sky in the diagonal direction to the right.
After a few seconds, the ray dispersed, forming a series of distorted rainbows under the light of auroras. And then, after almost fifty seconds, deafening thunder shook our surroundings. Was it… shockwave? I imagined the local map, trying to guess where was the source. The approximate distance was easy – even without my memory upgrade, I knew from school that the lightning distance could be calculated by counting the interval between lightning and thunder and then dividing the number by three to get the distance in kilometers. That gave the result of around sixteen and half kilometers. And the direction was… Edinburgh or the sea near it? That did not sound very good.
“What the fuck?” – Oscar was the one who reacted most: “Was it sound barrier? And plasma? Don’t tell me that it was just a spout of water!”.
“Water is neutral molecule,” – Robert responded, adjusted his glasses and elaborated: “It would need to break into ions first, which is doubtful… but the air around it…Hmm, should be possible, if we assume gigantic pressure and heat generated from friction.”
—
The bridge had somehow survived all the quakes, and we managed to cross it without much trouble. Just a few startled gasps due to ominous creaking of damaged structures and a muffled “scunner!” when something huge and winged silently flew over us. Fortunately, that bus-sized UFO creature slipped back into the rolling fog before we had the bad luck of closely observing its phenotypic characteristics. The intense, keening, ambient sounds from unknown sources blended with the disorderly flickering lights and shadows to create a Hollywood-worthy ambience for our road that led us on through the murky haze.
With a sharp crack, something hit the uncovered corner of the roof. Before we could stop and check, a sharp splinter of stone lodged itself into the windscreen, spreading a web of cracks throughout the glass. After a short moment of silence, the rain of stone shards peppered the car.
“Jobby. Hide and meat a’ gonna get ruin’d.” – grumbled Max, as he leaned forward between the seats, squinting to see the road ahead.
Greg looked up, seemingly observing through the steel roof panel all the boxes of meat and the huge hide of the boar that had been strapped to it: “Actually, that pelt felt pretty tough, so who knows.”
The rain, or rather the hail of stones stopped as suddenly as it started. And we caught a glimpse of a corpse of a man, or perhaps a humanoid wearing some kind of metal coat-of-plates armor, hanging from the light post that it had been impaled on. Afterwards, half of the road was ruined by something that had burst from below and left a ten-meters wide pit behind – apparently, random appearances were not limited to above ground. The more weird things popped up, the less people cared about satisfying their curiosity and the more they were anxious to reach the city.
“Flippin’ donger!” – shouted Robert, when something pierced the window and continued towards his chest.
I managed to backhand the object from the side, deflecting it into the side window, and managed to do that in time only because I had felt odd life energies at front and focused to try to understand them. A brief second while the object collided with the van’s frame was enough for me to identify it as a short and thin spear crafted from dark, almost black wood and… flint head. The edges of the spearhead could not withstand the collision and the resulting shrapnel bit into Rob’s cheek, eliciting the violent-tongued reaction.
Not waiting for attackers to turn the minivan into a paleolithic pin cushion, I jumped out of the van, a man-long partizan already taking shape in my hand. Ignoring the distorted door hinges that could not withstand my speed and force, I looked around. The back door creaked, and Chris rolled out of the van with his shotgun at the ready. In front, human-shaped bodies that had odd, smoky energy pattern, were rushing towards us while holding spears and stone axes.
I did not run to meet them, instead opting to cover the others, as that was the most sensible way to keep everything in sight and avoid surprises like a flanking attack… Within a second, the first attacker had reached me, and tried to stab me with its spear. It was a pretty nice move, except that the attacker was something that resembled a dried-out mummy. I had seen plenty of similar ones back in the ruined battlemage city, but these were different.
They were fast, surprisingly so for something that had muscles made of jerky. At least triple the speed of an ordinary human, which meant that it was not a simple possession or manipulation of some random dead body. Recognizing that the jab did not succeed, the attacking mummy tried to sweep its spear sideways like an experienced staff fighter. The spear shaft whistled as it cut through the air at me, but I, unconcerned, put out a rigid block with the shaft of the partizan. And I was surprised, when that blow actually made me move three steps to the side as I lost my balance. The strike had enough kinetic energy to move my few hundred kilograms of mass – that was a good reminder that strength could not beat the physics.
Just as the mummy tried to move back the spear to try to continue with another well-placed jab, I moved forward and flipped my polearm to strike upwards with the butt of the shaft, aiming to catch it and fling aside – a dehydrated mummified body could not weight more than ten kilograms, right? The mummy reacted instantly, moving sideways, but I continued my approach and landed a strike with my left hand that was already covered with deep burgundy-coloured armored glove. Again, the mummy did not fly back like a light dry corpse should do, and neither did it shatter into dust and brittle bone fragments.
Somehow, it felt as if I had hit a rubber dummy, with the force behind my blow dissipating as the mummy shook and was simply pushed back. However, that was my chance and with a push of energy, the shaft in my hand extended into a sharp needle point.With a short fencer’s step forward and a shift of my hips, the distance between us was closed and the needle tip pierced into the mummy’s abdomen, where it rapidly took the shape of a large hook, preventing the enemy from getting away.
Just as I was going to forcefully sing the resulting abhorrent lollipop at another mummy that attempted to run past me and attack the van, a clear twang sounded and a short, stocky crossbow bolt pierced it’s hip, causing it to lose balance and fall down.
“Hakuna Matata, mazafaka!” – Mike announced his first hit. In just a few moments, he had managed to climb on top of the van with his large, modern, carbon fiber crossbow.
“Idiot! Keep shooting, it’s crawling!” – Oscar had also gotten out of the van, gripping his rifle. I saw his pupils blinking in the light coming from within the car. He raised the gun and shot, his eyes flashing for the brief moment he spent aiming. A mummy that had been trying to approach from the shadows of the roadside shrubs with a stone throwing axe at the ready, fell as the back of its skull exploded in shrapnel. A spark of energy that I felt both added a few extra millimeters to my hair length and confirmed the kill.
The mummy with pierced hip rolled once, and bent down to push off the ground for a rapid leap or accelerated rush. But got nailed to the ground with the bladed end of my partizan. I shrugged, and manipulated the energy within the partizan to fold the blade, trapping the second one as well. Now I had two flailing mummies stuck to the opposite ends of my polearm. At least only the first one could stretch its hands trying to grab me, as the second one was stuck through its back.
Because I had blocked the first two attacking mummies, the rest of our group had enough time to prepare. Dolores, who only had her bow, stayed inside the van, sorting the ammunition. Next to her, covering the open windows, stayed Andrea armed with hunting rifle. The rest of the people took cover behind opened doors, and Greg even threw some glow sticks towards the back and sides of the road, where the van lights did not reach. Chris and Oscar had fired some shots at some of the mummies that got into the headlight, but while Oscar could see and shoot the mummies even in dark, Chris was forced to wait until they approached. The delay resulted in another window smashed by a thrown stone axe and a serious dent in the door that had barely stopped a spear.
Just some seconds later, came the next wave of attacks.
“Left!” – I shouted, sensing the approaching energies from that direction. I ran past the van, holding the double-ended mummy lollipop in one hand. Chris, who was crouching at that spot, silently swore, looking at that scene.
These attacking… things were definitely not mindless undead driven by simple instincts or simple set of necromantic manipulation. Five of them approached quickly, with a set of sticks that turned out to be primitive spear-throwers in their bony hands. Combined with the mummies’ powerful strength and surprising dexterity, these darts that were further accelerated through the lever principle, were likely to pierce right through the van.
Luckily, they had no idea about firearms, and three of them got their posture ruined by slugs and buckshots before they could finish their throws. One of the darts hit the boar hide that Mike had been using as cover and another missed when Chris professionally rolled away. The unlucky one was Max, as his shoulder was slightly nicked by a spear that was thrown from another direction from behind some bushes. Because of the inability to repeat the throws, the remaining mummies tried to retreat, but one got its skull crushed by a buckshot, which added up to the already concerning length of my hair. I was starting to get worried that if the things continued that way, I would pretty soon end up simply buried in a heap of hair.
I rushed there, trying to stop the last one from getting away. I utilized the moment to stretch out the shaft of the partizan in my hands. When I felt it was long enough, I raised it vertically up. As the first, still lively (if that could be said about dried-out corpse) mummy was stuck to the ground, I raised by boot and brought it down. Different from the chest, the head placed firmly against the ground could not resist and was crushed. The dissipating energies showed that these mummies were similar to most undead, unable to function without head. A brief second of concentration allowed to return the shaft into original shape, untangling it from the body. Partizan was flipped around and the same thing was repeated again – crunch. I forcefully stepped in the ground, exerting my full strength until the asphalt cracked and propelled myself right to the fleeing mummy and with a short wrist flip of the partizan, swept the head off its shoulders.
A few cracks, claps and bangs from different firearms later, the mummies that were too damaged to run away.got picked off from safe distance. Now the remaining ones preferred to stay far off direct sight, behind the trees. The silence stretched painfully, until Andrea dropped her double barrel. Oscar slid down, his back against the side of the van, his rifle jumping in his shaking hands, a trickle of pinkish tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. The rest, except for Chris and Mike showed signs of hyperventilation and continued to stare into the shaking, uneven shadows of the forest.
“Now, now, nooow. Let’s calm down.” – slowly and calmly said Chris, standing up and reloading. The combination of soothing voice and metallic click awakened the others and let them relax their grip.
“So, what the unholy god-cursed piece of hellish devil’s shit was that?” – Greg did not go easy on that.
Dolores and Max appeared curious as they approached the mummies that I had taken out.
I assumed they were afraid of me since they looked wary, but then Dolores pointed at my feet: “Could you make sure you don’t bring anything extra into the car?”.
I looked down – some tar-like goo had pushed out of the crushed skulls, sticking to my boots like a nasty clump of jelly. Wonderful.
“Mind to cut one open? The usual Y-cut like in the movies? Tenth of an inch in, if possible” – she asked, showing the distance between her thumb and index finger.
I shrugged, and with a few moves of my partizan, made the required cut, keeping it around half a centimeter deep. The dry, tanned leather-like skin covered the dark bones.
“Curious, flexible bones, and reddish in colour?” – Dolores seemed to be puzzled: “Calcium was washed out? And look, ribs don’t fit each other, as if they came from different-sized people. No organs, but a bunch of pieces of what, some kind of stone?”
Max bent down, to have a better look, using his mobile phone as a flashlight: “That’s jadeite. And look, those are flints along the bones, I think. Some kind of support for the bones? But how the fuck did it move?”
I shrugged again: “Magic.”
Max scratched his chin: “Well, that is clearly bog-preserved body, look at the colour – it comes from iron and minerals dissolved in acidic water.”
Dolores nodded: “That would explain flexible bones – acid would wash out the calcium. But the different sized bones?”
Max used his free hand to point at the hip of the mummy: “I think these are stitches. I have heard about finds of ‘Frankenstein mummies’ on Outer Hebrides, northwest off the coast. But those were from Bronze Age, I think. And didn’t move either. These here,” – he used his boot to poke the leg of the mummy next to him and continued: “These here used flint spears and there are axes too. So, Stone Age, most probably Neolith. At least 3700 years old, if not more.”
Peter, who had approached not long ago, asked curiously: “How much ‘more’, it might be?”
Max cocked his head to the side, thinking for a moment: “12 000? I’m not really good with that old stuff, it has been a while since last exams where I needed that trivia.”
I summed things up: “So, stone age mummies, similar to Bronze Age ones from opposite side of Scotland, appear here?”
Max nodded: “While obviously being unhappy about all the changes they had missed.”
“And where did they come from? If there are more ahead, it might be deadly.” – Chris pointed out.
Robert spoke up: “Isn’t there the Stone Age site nearby, actually?”
Max clicked his fingers: “Exactly! Cramond! But it is off to the left from here.”
I looked there, thinking about what was in that direction.
Then I asked: “Near the sea?”
Several people replied affirmatively. It seemed obvious that something quite nasty originating from the sea, was be bent on causing trouble.on land. The ray that had caused shockwaves a while ago was rapidly gaining higher chances of being some kind of massive attack.
—
By the time we crossed what should be River Almond, we faced another inexplicable change in local geography – the road that used to be flat, was now clearly leading upwards. And despite the poor visibility due to overgrown vegetation, I could sense some unidentifiable beings lurking where there there used to be homes, stores and other businesses. Although the area had ended up mostly abandoned over the last months, I remembered sensing some humans in the area when we passed by just a day before. Not anymore.
We reached the highest point of the road without problems, and we finally saw Edinburgh. At a distance below us, churned restless grey fog, completely covering the low-storied suburbs. From where we stood, we could count at least a dozen house fires that could not be hidden by the blanket of murky mist, and heard muffled thumping sounds coming from the distance. Far away, the massive Castle Hill rose above the layer of fog, surrounded by the occasional church and memorial spires, tops of the monuments and a few highest reaching building floors. Except that it was now vastly different from before.
Once the center of the old town and the location for most of the important governmental structures including the famous castle, Castle Hill had been literally ground clean.
The earlier ray had obviously come from the sea, going vertically up along the Royal Mile, before it stuck the Castle. Where just a few hours ago stood buildings and people lived, now only bedrock remained, still hot enough to distort the air above it. Everything and everyone on the path of superpressurised and superheated water jet had disintegrated into dust and turned into the indistinguishable particles in the fog that had been blown away and spread out from the line of the attack.
Circle of Shards 
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