Feiya followed her fox familiar’s nine white tails over the rocks and up the flank of a rocky butte. The night’s cold still clung to the hollows of the land, but she didn’t mind it. After years in Irrisen’s snowy woods, the chill comforted her. Cold, she understood. These too bright plains with too few trees, however, were pure mystery to her.
Daji looked over his shoulder, cocking his head a little. She had to laugh.
“Yes, my friend, I’m complaining to myself. Numeria, fascinating as it is, is a hard place.”
He almost seemed to bob his head, then went back to bounding along over the rocks and lichens that formed the skin of this gray land. Feiya found his mood infectious. After all, Numeria had already been good to her. Her contact with a Kellid tribe had given her a lead on the most promising shrine to Desna yet. A shrine built by hermits… in a cave near the top of this butte, far from any caravan routes or villages, shrouded in mystery… It all reminded her so much of the place where she believed the goddess had first called her to a life of magic
No, she was glad she had come here. She was ready to learn more about the deity who had transformed her from a scared girl to a powerful witch.
The butte grew steeper as she and the fox walked, a few dead trees clawing out between the rocks as if straining for moisture. Feiya felt herself walking more carefully, listening harder. Someone up on the summit might hear her approaching, and the trail’s hairpin turns meant blind curve after blind curve. She found herself moving her staff to the ready position, even though she heard nothing besides the wind and a distant hawk.
“Daji,” she whispered, trusting her gut. She slipped between two large boulders and felt glad for their protection. “The shrine is set in the cliffs near the butte’s summit. It’s not far now. You up to scouting it out?”
He sat down at her feet and fixed his golden eyes on her face. The hairs on Feiya’s arms tingled. Sometimes it was easy to think of Daji as a simple animal—a very special, nine-tailed animal, but an animal nonetheless. But at this moment, she could feel a wisdom emanating from his vulpine form, a wisdom older and deeper than any being, human or animal.
The world flashed white, and then her eyes adjusted, viewing the landscape in a new register of colors—the shadows more purple, the rocks more yellow. The world widened, too, her new eyes set farther apart than the ones in her own face. Daji’s eyes. The fox glanced up at Feiya’s body, quiet and senseless for the duration of the spell. She didn’t want to share Daji’s senses for more than a minute; these boulders were only a temporary shelter while she looked through her familiar’s eyes.
The fox spun around and leaped over a cluster of rocks. The lightness of his body made jumping pure joy. Feiya wished she could urge him to run even faster, just to feel his paws in motion.
He skidded to a stop, an acrid stench so powerful it was like a hand shoving his muzzle backward. His eyes watered a little at the biting stink of it. Some kind of craft sat blocking the trail, its metal flanks nearly blinding in the morning sun. The burning smell came off it in waves.
A sound whipped Daji’s head around—a sound so slight, Feiya would have never heard it with her own ears. The fox shrank beneath the nearest boulder, his heart pounding. The stinking craft had so overwhelmed him he hadn’t even noticed the horrifying creature emerging from the cliff wall above him.
Illustration by Valeriya Lutfullina. The witch is one of four classes making their second edition debut in the Pathfinder Advanced Player’s Guide, available July 30, 2020.
Feiya snapped her senses back into her own body. What in all Golarion had Daji just seen? She closed her eyes, drawing up her memory and trying to reacclimate to her human perspective. It was huge, she knew that. As big or probably bigger than a bear. The memory of Daji’s fear made her shiver, and she pushed it away, trying to force the jumbled images, scents, and sounds into some semblance of understanding.
But it was nothing she had ever seen or even heard of—some kind a giant insect or land lobster. She frowned, thinking harder. There’d been something strange about its legs, those spiky, lumpy, terrifying legs.
She wished she dared risk sharing Daji’s senses again, but it was too big a risk.
Which reminded her. Daji hadn’t come back yet.
Feiya lowered herself into a crouch and crept through the field of fallen boulders. Here on the north flank of the butte, she could see the strange craft, its sides a jumble of angles and colors she couldn’t begin to describe. It emanated a sense of alien power that reminded her of the few bits of skymetal she’d been lucky enough to inspect in her travels. Ancient, otherworldly stuff, it had made her skin tingle and her stomach prickle. Her eyes watered, looking at this new thing. She didn’t know what it was, but she felt certain it came from somewhere beyond her own sky.
Rocks clattered, and she pressed herself into the dirt. Boulders blocked her view, but she could hear rocks rattle, shift, and grind as something massive made its way down the cliff face.
A flick of white in the corner of her eye made her turn her head. Daji stared out at her from beneath a rock, curled as small as he could. She had never seen him look so worried.
Then one of the creature’s forelegs moved into view, and Feiya had to clamp her hand over her mouth to stifle her startled inhalation. The thing was bigger than she’d been able to see from Daji’s one quick glimpse. Its pointed foreleg drove into the ground mere feet from her head, shaking the rocks around her.
She followed the greenish armor of the leg up to a joint segment, up again, the leg widening, thicker than she was now, and—
An eye.
An enormous round orange eye, staring down at her.
The leg lifted and then slammed into the ground again. The boulders around Feiya shifted under the impact and she rolled into the trail, away from their crushing weight. Daji raced to her side.
She was exposed now, but she could see the beast in its entirety. Twice as big as a bear, its shell like an evil green mockery of a lobster’s. Giant, clacking pincers. And on its back, pink, swollen blisters, each one pulsing, beating, throbbing around a human brain.
Throbbing like a heart still pumping life into someone’s suffering soul.
She didn’t think twice. One of her oldest spells sprang into her mind, and she launched it with her full strength of will and concentration, energy pouring out of her palm and slamming into one of the pustules on the creature’s back. The power stirred a surge of dark glee in her heart, and she laughed, the laughter spurring her ray’s power longer and harder. The pustule exploded. A shriek filled Feiya’s mind, its words unfathomable but its rage palpable. Her mind faltered at the strength of the creature’s horrible anger.
The creature twitched a pincer and Feiya felt herself fly through the air, gripped by an invisible claw. For a second, she hovered above the ground, staring down at the alien monster whose magic held her tight.
Then she soared sideways into the trunk of a dead tree and slid down it, her head spinning, the air knocked out of her. Someplace in the distance, Daji growled. Feiya could only stare up at the horrible creature walking toward her, its shell nearly blotting out the sky, its remaining brains pulsing harder than ever.
There was only one way that her brain wouldn’t soon occupy another grotesque pustule on the creature’s back.
Feiya glanced toward her familiar, who now stood just behind the approaching horror, his tails splayed wide, ears back and teeth bared. “Yes, Daji,” she whispered as her fingers twitched, the magical force of a terrible curse forming around them. “I was thinking the same thing.”
About the Author
Wendy N. Wagner is the author of two Pathfinder tie-in novels (Skinwalkers and Starspawn), as well as the SF thriller An Oath of Dogs. The author of over 40 short stories, she is also the Managing/Senior editor of Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her very understanding family. You can keep up with her at winniewoohoo.com.
About Iconic Encounters
Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.
