Free Chaosmage by Stephen Aryan Page A

first time to gauge their reaction. Tammy watched him with a calm expression, unperturbed by the news. He glanced around the room, passing over the priests before pausing briefly on the axe at Balfruss’s waist. Rees narrowed his eyes and looked Balfruss up and down, his gaze lingering on his hands, the axe again and finally his face. Balfruss saw Tammy tense, but thankfully Rees didn’t seem to recognise him and returned to his food.
    â€œMy information is weeks out of date, but what I can tell you will still be of some use. Once fear took hold in the city, people started banding together to protect themselves. There were eight camps, five were controlled by criminal gangs, two were independent and we had a garrison. There will be fewer camps now, but your best chance of surviving the first night is to try and get into one of the independent bases, if they’ll have you.”
    â€œWho’s killing them?” asked Tammy.
    Rees took a deep breath and shook his head. “It changes. Friends sometimes, enemies on other nights. Sometimes the dead come back to steal away the living.”
    It sounded like the ravings of a madman or a story meant to scare children, but no one was laughing. Rees spoke so matter - of - factly it was unnerving. The haunted look in the Captain’s eyes told Balfruss he’d been in the city and seen these terrors for himself. Normally people would be quick to shy away from such an unsettling figure, but the guards were drawn to Rees because he’d faced the darkness and survived to tell them the story.
    â€œWhat happened to your garrison in the city?” asked Tammy.
    â€œWe were overrun in the night,” said Rees. “The guards on duty didn’t cry out because they saw familiar faces in the crowd. Friends who’d gone missing that we thought were dead or had fled the city. Our relief soon turned to surprise and horror when they tried to kill us.”
    Tammy was puzzled, but kept driving forward with questions. “Why? Why kill you?”
    â€œThey offered us a choice first.” The tone of Rees’s voice told Balfruss it wasn’t much of a choice. “To come with them and be reborn. They kept talking about the ‘joining’ or the ‘blending’. Something like that. When we refused they said it would happen anyway.”
    â€œDid you ever capture one of them alive?” asked Balfruss, drawing every eye in the room.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWas it some kind of disease? Did they have any marks or strange bruises on their skin?” Balfruss wasn’t sure if magic was involved or not, but he needed to eliminate the obvious. There were blood parasites that could drive a person insane and make them want to drink blood to spread the disease. Others affected the brain, creating visions that slowly affected the victim until they couldn’t tell the real world from illusion. The First People and the tribes in the endless jungle had encountered and cured many unusual diseases which they’d taught him about. So far the symptoms didn’t sound familiar, but he’d need to see one of those affected to be sure.
    Rees shook his head. “They seemed normal. Healthy, in fact. They were just different,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “We killed friends and strangers and in the morning all of the bodies were gone. The next night many of those we killed came back again. It happened the same way on the second night and on the third we were outnumbered. We fled the city and didn’t stop running until we reached this garrison. I went into Voechenka with a hundred men and came back with six. After receiving my report the Queen ordered the city quarantined. Now we do all we can to keep everyone inside. My orders are to shoot anyone on sight, no questions asked, in case they’ve been changed. I’d like to believe you can help those who are left, but I don’t see how.”
    Balfruss thought that