Elder

Isme Blackwell played her flashlight off the walls of the warehouse. It was empty except for the racks, which stood like steel skeletons shadowed in the darkness. The place was perfectly silent, making her sneakered footfalls uncomfortably loud to her ears. The air was extraordinarily chilly against her exposed arms, making the hairs stand on end. Something was definitely here. She could feel it.

She switched the flashlight from her left hand to her right, then turned the left palm up, fingers curled slightly. “Vedora”, she muttered quietly, almost under her breath, and a small orb of fairy fire formed in her hand.

The purplish-teal orb offered almost no additional illumination. Instead, it served as more of a beacon, a wayfinder of sorts, that would guide her to pools of otherworldly energy.

Isme pivoted slowly where she stood, watching the fairy fire carefully. It pulsed and flickered gently but was otherwise nonreactive.

“Fuck,” she breathed. “I know you’re here.” She turned again, her eyes closed. She let her breathing fall into a slow, steady rhythm, and just allowed her mind to go still.

A dank, redolent odor wafted to her on a breeze so still that it almost wasn’t even there. She opened her eyes and turned in the direction the smell had come from. The beam of her flashlight exposed a low entryway, wide enough, she suspected, to allow two forklifts to pass through side by side. A maintenance bay? she wondered. The space beyond the doorway was shrouded in an inky darkness, and her flashlight exposed only a narrow wedge of the room beyond. It looked smaller than the massive space of the main warehouse and so might make an ideal lair for the creature she was hunting.

Isme took a tentative step toward the maintenance bay, and then another. The fairy fire in her hand flickered, wisps of orange shooting through the purple-teal of the small flame.

“There you are,” she murmured to herself. Her voice was quiet, almost inaudible, but she knew the thing might still be able to hear it, if it was indeed in that room. It was a calculated risk. It was always better to draw an Elder to you, where possible, to pull it out of its comfort zone. Pretending you were trying to sneak up on one was often the best way to pique its interest. And so she played the part.

Ismerelda Blackwell, the thing hissed into her mind. It felt like an ice-cold dagger had been plunged into her left eye, and she sucked in her breath through her teeth in response to the pain. Her eyes flicked down to the ward transcribed on the inner side of her forearm, and she was reassured to see it pulsing faintly with a low, white light. So long as the ward held, the Elder could do little more than speak into her mind. If it failed, however…

Isme suppressed a shudder at the thought. She’d heard stories about what an Elder could do to a witch’s mind if allowed access. Madness didn’t even begin to describe it.

She wasn’t surprised that the thing knew her name. Elders were a special kind of otherworldly creature, once human but long ago twisted by their headlong pursuit of power. Elders were a sort of ancestor to modern-day witches. Indeed, their power was drawn from the very same elements as most covens. But the way an Elder applied its power was very different.

She stood in the doorway of the maintenance bay now, and her flashlight provided barely any illumination at all. She played it around the room anyway, but the shadows ate away at the edges of the light. The fairy fire was fairly pulsating with orange vibrancy now, feeding on the Otherworldly energy of the Elder and the nest it had created for itself here.

Ismerelda Blackwell, it spoke into her mind again. I know why you have come. Do you? She could almost feel the creature’s attempts to unravel her mind, almost sense its mental talons trying to rip apart her sanity. She stood firm, though, in spite of the danger it represented. That ice-cold dagger behind her eye wasn’t as strong this time, and she allowed herself the barest hint of a smile.

If the Elder was trying to attack her psychically, it meant it was still here in this room somewhere. The cloying darkness was part of its defenses, blinding pursuers, making it nigh impossible to follow. The Elder could have fled, could have run before she had even gotten here, but instead it had chosen to stay. To take a stand.

So, it was still here. Somewhere. Isme’s flashlight was only of limited usefulness in here, dampened as it was by the spiritual ichor in the room. The fairy fire would have to guide her now. The greater the orange tempest of the flame, the closer she would be to finding the Elder.

Isme took a step into the room. Then another. She could feel the thing somewhere nearby, though she didn’t know if it was because of her own talents or because of the Elder’s own latent psychic energy. Probably it was both.

Isme glanced behind her, and already the doorway was occluded by the inky blackness the Elder was creating. She had a moment of panic, where a fleeting fear skittered across her mind that the doorway might no longer be there, that she might be trapped in here with this thing. But she quickly banished the thought. Elders didn’t have that kind of power.

She turned her attention forward again. The fire in her palm was a roiling tempest of orange flame now, and she knew the Elder was very close. She tilted her head, listening. She held her breath and listened. And there it was. A click so quiet that it almost wasn’t even there.

Isme rounded on the sound, raising her left hand over her head. The fairy fire leaped upward, and Isme had just enough time to see the Elder rushing at her before it leaped and was on her. She thought, This isn’t right. Elders don’t attack physically.

And then the creature’s long fingers plunged into her skull, buried themselves deep into her brain, and she was taken somewhere else.