Magical rain pattered sparks all over Yann’s skin, but it wasn’t rain. It fizzed and prickled in a sheet moving over his arms, shoulders, face, and head.

  The sheet traveled from one side of his body to the other before it swept away across the countryside.

  The Watchmen looked around. They stood on the ground. The barn was gone.

  Vidal stood there with them. He must have been downstairs in the barn when it vanished.

  At least everyone in the Watch still had their weapons, but Rien’s waterbuck also disappeared along with the Watchmen’s blankets and all the other goods they’d been using while they stayed here.

  Marine stood nearby looking all around her and down at her hands and dress. Then her eyes lifted and she made eye contact with Yann. She was back—but for how long?

  Eliska looked down at her hands, too. “Our magic is gone again.” She sighed. “I really wish it wouldn’t do that.”

  “Any idea where we are this time?” Yvan asked.

  “It looks like we’re in the same Island.” Eliska squinted at the horizon. “Or a different version of it.”

  The group surveyed the area. The same combination of ditches, hills, and the contour of the horizon all looked the same.

  Different species of trees and bushes grew in different places than before. This Island wasn’t as lush—and it wasn’t a crisp autumn day anymore.

  This country was hotter, more arid, and the vegetation had to struggle harder to survive.

  Tough scrub grass grew in clumps where fresh green fields used to carpet the terrain. No one would build a barn full of hay here.

  “I guess we might as well move on,” Yvan decided. “There’s nothing here.”

  No one said a word. He headed off toward the west. It was as good a direction as any.

  The group getting smaller sobered everyone and made them all more serious. Marine didn’t joke around to try to cheer everyone up.

  Yann, Anríq, and Eliska walked together the way they usually did. Marine joined them for some reason.

  Yann found himself adjusting his position so she could walk next to Eliska. Eliska usually walked between the two boys.

  Now he made room for Marine there, too. The two boys walked on the outside with the two girls inside. It just made sense for them to arrange themselves that way.

  Yvan and Niyazi went in front. Niyazi took Omer’s place as Yvan’s senior Watchmen. Neils followed them and Yann heard Neils talking to them on the way.

  Vidal brought up the rear with Rien behind the three in front. That was the whole Watch—five men.

  The group’s size chilled Yann to the bone. Omer’s and Barsali’s loss confirmed something Yann kept hidden from himself all this time. Everyone here was going to die.

  He somehow tricked himself into thinking everyone in the group would make it out of this alive. He fooled himself into thinking the Watch would keep dodging bullets until some opportunity gave them the chance to escape from this disaster.

  Not even Wesh’s death brought home the simple inevitable fact. They wouldn’t make it out—because there was no way out.

  Yann would have to watch each of these people die—probably in horrific ways. Nothing would save them because they couldn’t be saved.

  The Coil would continue to collapse on itself. The instability would get worse.

  He would have to let these people go one after the other. Then he would never see them again. Could he really do that?

  He didn’t know where his father was going—and it didn’t even really matter anymore. Nowhere would be any safer than any other.

  Another sheet of wild magic could overtake the group and restore Anríq’s and Eliska’s magic—and rob Marine of her sanity again. Was that really worth it? Was any of this really worth it?

  Yann had spent the days of Eliska’s recovery fashioning another staff for her. She kept it with her this time instead of throwing it away when she lost her magic.

  Yvan headed across the countryside toward some hills in the distance. The trip took hours.

  When they got there, they spotted a good-sized town on the horizon. “It looks bigger than Middleborough,” Neils remarked.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t go there,” Niyazi suggested. “Maybe we should hold off. I don’t want to put those people in danger the next time the Voyant comes after us.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Yvan looked around at the bleak countryside. “The alternative is staying out here.”

  “We’ve lived in the open before,” Rien pointed out.

  “We don’t know if we’d be putting them in danger or not,” Neils added. “They might need the Watch. We might be able to do them some good.”

  “They don’t need a bunch of Watchmen who are being hunting by the Voyant,” Yvan decided. “I’m with Niyazi. Let’s find a place to camp.”

  “I saw a thicker cluster of trees over there.” Neils pointed behind him to the south. “We might find water there.”

  “Let’s go check it out.” Yvan waved everyone to head off in that direction.

  The minute everyone turned away from the town, the landscape in front of them started to morph and change.

  It didn’t implode or collapse nor did any Darklings come out to attack the party or each other.

  The trees in the distance grew, shrank, and twisted in bizarre shapes. Hills undulated out of position.

  Spikes of rock sprouted from flat fields, contorted into rubbery, surreal pictures of different creatures, and then sank back into the soil.

  None of these changes put the Watch in danger. The ground didn’t quake or fracture.

  The grass around the Watchmen’s feet came alive, slithered over Yann’s ankles, and then fell away.

  Fragments of grass stems ejected out of the mat of vegetation underfoot, soared around in flocks, changed into what might have been insects or maybe tiny buzzing machines, and then dove back into the grass where they came from.

  The Watchmen looked all around them trying to understand what was happening. The instability kept spreading. The clouds of stuff flying around got thicker, but still none of it put the travelers in danger.

  Yann looked everywhere trying to see something coming to attack the party, but nothing did come. None of these strange shapes or objects ever formed into Darklings. Why not?

  Just then, the Voyant appeared out of nowhere. He wasn’t there before.

  His golden halo burst out of thin air and blazed to life a hundred yards away to the south.

  The instability followed him in a wave coming from the north and moving west.

  Yvan’s arm shot out and he pointed. “He’s going for the town! The town is in danger! Come on!”

  He took off sprinting across the countryside. Everyone followed him. The instability definitely got worse with every yard of terrain the Voyant covered.

  The instability escalated getting closer to the town. Yann couldn’t stop to see if the instability faded after the Voyant passed by.

  The Watchmen dove in front of the Voyant and everyone pivoted backward to confront him. Yann raised his glaive.

  He didn’t know what he would do with it against such a powerful wizard. Marine already tried that.

  The Voyant’s expression didn’t change when the Watchmen blocked his path. Did he even see the men standing in front of him?

  The radiant golden beams shooting out of his halo merged with all the debris and flying particles around him.

  His presence tore up the landscape more than ever. A vortex of chaos surrounded his halo. Yann couldn’t even really see anything solid around the Voyant’s halo. He blurred reality close to him.

  Sections of the landscape erupted out of position outside that rim of chaos. Rock, vegetation, weird creatures, the shapes of Darklings and other monsters, and even people’s faces appeared in a sea of random stuff all growing, morphing, twisting, writhing, and dropping away to nothing.

  None of that stuff attacked the Watch—but the Voyant didn’t stop, either.

  He migrated ever closer to the town taking his wave of chaos with him.

  Rien charged him first, swung his broken sword in a downward chop, and hacked straight into the Voyant’s halo.

  The Voyant didn’t even look at Rien. The strike blasted Rien away and he hurtled backward.

  Niyazi, Anríq, Yvan, and Vidal all rushed the Voyant at the same time. Anríq hacked his axe down into the halo at the same time Vidal and Niyazi attacked with their own axes.

  The landscape itself reacted, but it still didn’t counterattack—not really.

  A sudden upheaval in the bedrock right next to the Voyant hurled Vidal and Anríq out of place. It pitched them into a sea of living grass that tumbled both men outside of weapons range.

  Another cloud of grass stems blasted out of the scrub at the Watchmen’s feet, took wing, and changed into some kind of tiny whizzing insects.

  They surrounded Yvan and Niyazi. Millions of the things snatched the two Watchmen by their uniforms and sent them cartwheeling out of the way.

  The Voyant kept floating toward the town in the distance. The mayhem and destruction around him kept building. When would the landscape explode and take the Watchmen with it?

  Yann lunged forward to join the fight and defend his fellow Watchmen, but Eliska grabbed him and held him back. “Don’t!” she yelled over the noise. “You can’t defeat him that way!”

  Anríq must have been thinking the same thing. He got to his feet, but he didn’t attack the Voyant again.

  The other Watchmen didn’t get the message. Rien, Yvan, Niyazi, Neils, and Vidal all closed on the Voyant at the same time.

  He never even looked at them when they raised their weapons. Now Yann knew the Voyant didn’t see them. He only saw the town in the distance.

  The Watchmen all struck at the same instant and an explosion went off. It hurled the Watchmen away, but the same blast caught the four young people in the same tempest.

  An almighty force slapped Yann backward and he rolled across the ground.

  He somersaulted onto his stomach and immediately pushed himself onto all fours. He scrambled to grab his glaive while he checked to see where he was.

  The blast threw him farther than he realized. He found himself only a dozen yards in front of the town’s outer wall.

  The other Watchmen picked themselves up, too, but none of them was in any danger anymore.

  Yann didn’t see the Voyant anymore, but the wave of instability still hovered there the same distance from the town. The wave didn’t move.

  The landscape, vegetation, grass, and everything else kept seething in rippling patterns of living things, morphing into the shapes of Darklings, and then changing into something else a few seconds later.

  “Why doesn’t it come any closer?” Rien husked.

  Eliska clambered to her feet and the others all got up. Yann didn’t want to take his eyes off the wall of chaos in the distance. It wasn’t nearly distant enough.

  The Watchmen closed together watching it. Yann waited, but it always stayed over there the same distance away.

  The worst chaos drifted a little farther sideways to the east and then back toward the west where it had been before. It swept across the countryside and even receded a little before it returned to the same position.

  “I don’t like this at all,” Niyazi muttered. “It could overtake us anytime. We wouldn’t be able to stop it.”

  “We can’t stop him, either,” Eliska pointed out.

  “Why doesn’t he just take what he wants if he’s so powerful?” Rien asked. “What is he waiting for?”

  Just then, a deep, booming voice rumbled across the area from behind the party. “Don’t come any closer! Take another step and we’ll open fire!”

  End of Chapter 27.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

  I post new chapters of The Corrupted Coil series on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday PST.

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