Hat's Entertainment!: A Humorous High Fantasy (Hat Trick Book 2) by Luke Chmilenko & G. D. Penman

Author:Luke Chmilenko & G. D. Penman [Chmilenko, Luke & Penman, G. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Podium Publishing
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

CONCERNING THE MAKING OF AN OMELET

If wizards had rules, and we fundamentally do not, then the first of them would have been this. Do not look back. If you have been given the opportunity to run away from something cataclysmic that you may or may not have caused, keep on running.

Alas, I had not yet imparted that vital lesson to dear Cygni, so when she heard the crack, she stopped running and turned back to look.

This was an error in judgment.

The menhir had split lengthwise like a very professionally but incorrectly cracked egg. The stone was in the process of falling neatly apart in two opposite directions, and the contents, the ridiculous amounts of Quintessence that had been flung into the spell of stasis that should have been coming out in the kind of explosion usually only observed through telescopes in the younger regions of the night sky, should have been consuming us.

Yet, as the spell unraveled before our eyes, there was no catastrophic explosion, not even the traditional flash of blinding light. Quite the opposite, in fact. All of the Scrynium and Quintessence had been putting out a fairly healthy glow up until this point in proceedings, but now . . . now there was only darkness.

I do not speak of the kind of darkness that most people are accustomed to. The absence of light, the drawing of blinds and the snuffing of candles. This was an older darkness, the primeval, primordial darkness that may have retreated when creation came into being, but which has always lingered there just beyond our perception. We catch glimpses of it sometimes in places like this, deep beneath the surface of the world where the sun’s warmth has never touched, but this true, deepest darkness that now unfolded before us is usually reserved only for the eyes of the dead. Or me, when I’m taken off somebody’s head.

Cygni’s guts churned at the sight of it, and I was thankful that she had not stopped to rest and eat as I’d often chided her to, as in all likelihood anything that she had consumed would now have been fleeing out of her body through every orifice at high speeds. It was only through the impressive discipline that ruled every part of her that we were able to sidestep the issue of running away in urine-soaked trousers.

Had I the physical capability to void my contents, I likely would have too. Perhaps there were some unforeseen benefits to being a hat after all.

I feel quite certain that Cygni was trying to speak in that moment, just as I was trying to corral my thoughts into something rational, but all that escaped her was a gentle grunt. An exhalation born not of terror, as you might have expected, but instead from a complete abandonment of all control over her bodily functions. Were I not here to keep things turning over, I suspect her heart would have stopped at the sight of the Thing before us.

At the center of all that spilling liquid darkness, there stood a figure.

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