Source: hdwallbox.com

The Wishing Map is a full-length fantasy that is being posted episodically at this site. To read the previous episode click here. To read it from the start, click here.

After many desperate days, Gina, wielding a sword with a mind of its own, has been called to face a monstrous Questing Beast.

She managed to get to her feet, despite the broadsword’s thrashing. She reached over her shoulder, slid out the heavy blade, and brought it down in front of her. The moment she did, it began tugging her down the stairs as firmly as if there were a fish at the other end (or was she the fish?). Her first impulse was to call to her brother Zack, but then she remembered that he wasn’t allowed to help.

She reached the grinding shed a minute later. The sword guided her to the back of the millhouse where a canal led under the waterwheel, and then urged her along the riverside to the night-gray turf where B’frona’s family members were buried.

The sword stopped moving. The double moon was casting its characteristic glow, and Gina could easily see across the river to the edge of the Light Forest. There was nothing there, no Questing Beast, no—

Yes, there was.

Something had come out of the woods and was moving toward her. Her heart froze, her throat tightened; she had to will herself to breathe. Her feet were glued to the sod, her hands were stitched to her sides. The sword—why wasn’t it moving? Now, after bullying and pushing her all the way across Frenga, when she’d finally found the Beast, it had frozen up. It was a coward! “No, G,” she told herself, “it’s a sword. You have to use it, to make it fight.”

Without realizing it, she’d assumed the stance swordmaster Buigor had shown her, then brought the blade to chin-height and peered past it: the creature was nearing the opposite side of the river. Would it cross? But wait, it was no larger than a dog. Then again, wolves were no larger than dogs. Still, it was nothing compared to the sort of movie monster she’d imagined.

She got up the courage to move forward. The River Rennou at this point was no more than fifteen feet across; she could clearly make out the Beast’s form.

She wished she hadn’t. It might only be the size of a dog, but it was nothing like a dog, or anything else she’d ever seen. Its spongy flesh was divided into thick purple platelets from between which dripped puce-striped pus. Its malformed head, with chillingly humanoid eyes made up most of its body. And its tubular snout, from which emanated a torturous wheeze, was lined with hundreds of razorblade teeth. Worst of all, it was covered with barbed tentacles which constantly extended and retracted, searching for something…

To drag into its mouth!

φ

Thoughts: Evil does not seek to create. Its purpose is to corrupt, to turn what has already been created into a mockery of itself.

To read the next episode, click here.