“You wish for me to activate the talisman?”
“Yes. Just do it before I find you a fanny pack and Crocs.”
I reach beneath my chest straps and retrieve the old talisman of my chieftain line—an obsidian shard set in bone and iron. I hold it to my forehead, close my eyes, and whisper the shaping words in Old Tongue.
Heat coils down my arms. The illusion spreads over me like a second skin, wrapping my flesh in false shape.
When I open my eyes, the mirror shows somethingelse.
A human man. Bare-chested still—compromise—with muscles like boulders and a jaw cut from statues. My eyes remain my own, glowing faintly gold, and the spear… it shifts, becomes a walking stick to human eyes. Still deadly.
I turn to Olivia.
She’s staring.
Mouth slightly open.
“…You didn’t think to dothisfirst?” she asks, voice cracking just a bit.
“It requires energy. And the illusion only lasts a few hours.”
“Well.” She clears her throat. “You look… stupid hot.”
“Hot?”
“Never mind.”
This “farmers’ market” is not what I expect.
When Olivia first speaks of it, I imagine a trading pit, something akin to the Harvest Holds of my homeland—men and women yelling, bartering livestock for grain, children scampering beneath the legs of stoic guards. Blood, sweat, sun.
But here in Walnut Falls, it is a scattering of quaint tents in a tidy square, all pastel colors and chalkboard signs. No warriors.No beasts of burden. Just baskets of fruit, pots of flowers, and elders with too much time on their hands.
Beneath it all, the stench coils.
The Vorfaluka has passed this way.
I feel it before I see it—an unnatural chill seeping up from a storm drain tucked near the edge of the lot. Olivia is talking to a woman selling hand-knit scarves. The woman glances at me, eyes widening slightly, but doesn’t flinch. Instead, she whispers something to Olivia that makes her laugh.
Strange.
I crouch by the grate, careful not to draw too much attention. The iron bars are rusted, but the space below is vast—black and yawning, breathing cold air like a dying god’s exhale.
There. Along the edge. A trace smear of blackened blood. Old, but not ancient. The creature is close.
I rise slowly.
“You okay?” Olivia calls, weaving through a cluster of old men arguing over cucumbers.
“There’s a taint here,” I say.
She gives me a look. “Could younotsay it like that?”
“The creature passed this way. Beneath.”
She glances at the drain, then back at me. “It’s probably using the sewer system.”
I nod.
