‘My plants,’ Theo thought as he stood there gaping in the midst of the crowd of villagers. His plants were gone. He’d grown to love those plants. Now he didn’t even have a single seed to replant. It was egotistical to think of his own barely grown greenery when every villager standing around him had just lost two years worth of work, but so what? They didn’t care about his plants either. He didn’t mind being a bit egotistical.

  When the bright light of the giant magic circle had gone, nothing but dust and desolation remained in the air. Brook Town hadn’t just been destroyed, it had been wiped from the surface of the world. Nothing remained but a well-trodden ground and a well-maintained tree standing by its lonesome where the town square had stood only moments before.

  The villagers wailed in sorry sadness as all their belongings, all their things and all their memories had just… gone.

  A sudden shift to his side caught his attention and his head turned to face Wen. She still stared at the brown patches of dirt where buildings and streets had once been, though there was no sadness welling up in her eyes. There was a lot of anger, though. She turned to face Theo with a frown and an unusual determination. She looked to be considering something, but then she turned away again.

  “Where is he?” she asked, her voice sounding like a frown. “Where’s Whittlebutt, that traitor?”

  The villagers roused, looking around for the man who just then had stood in front of them. They collectively found him slinking away towards the well-laden cart of trader de Santas. Two men were already sitting on it, one of them being the trader himself, while the other wore a black, roughspun cloak with a hood covering his face in shadow. The cart then rolled away before the crowd of villagers could react, pulled by powerful animals that would go faster and longer than the upset villagers would. They didn’t follow. They knew when they had already lost.

  “That fucker!” Wen yelled after him with her fist raised high. “Just leavin’ us all hangin’ like this! That traitor planned this all along!”

  “We don’t know that,” said a calming voice, one belonging to Willam. He stepped towards her and made her lower her fist peacefully.

  “Damn right I do! Theo here overheard him talkin’ with that thief of a peddler back at the Barge! The ‘mayor’ has been emptying out his villa for days in preparation for this! De Santas gave the man coins after buying all our belongings for scraps! They’ve been stealing from us for a long time, I’ll bet, waiting for this day when our town fell under!”

  “Is that true?” Willam asked, lifting his head to face Theo.

  Theo nodded in response. It still hadn’t quite sunk in that the entire town was gone. How was that even possible? Who commanded such powerful magic that a town could be razed in an instant, leaving nothing behind? Who had decided that Brook Town wasn’t good enough?

  Willam’s head lowered in dejected consternation. “I see,” he said, and more villagers mirrored his actions. He turned to watch the carriage scurry away in the general direction of Ercheat, sending puffs of dusty sand clouds from the road into the air. It was now a road leading to nothing.

  Quietly, villagers started turning in the same direction, then scuffled and shuffled slowly away from the empty site.

  “Where you goin’?” Wen asked, her voice still hanging on to a booming ferocity.

  “It takes days to walk to the nearest town. From there, everyone will be spread out to every corner of the continent in search of a place to settle,” Willam explained.

  “Hell nah! We stay. We build Brook Town anew! We all know that we really would’ve made it if it wasn’t for him.”

  Only a few frowns turned to face Wen in response to her call to action. Most of those few turned back around and continued walking away.

  “We can’t just start a town from nothing, Wen. You know we need a royal decree or a god-given deed. The latter is unobtainable, the former is… Even if we can get it, it’ll take a long time.” Willam turned to walk away with the rest of his people, his family also amongst them.

  Theo gazed in the direction of where the village had stood. The dust was settling now and any trace of magic was long gone.

  “Willam! Have faith. Everyone, please join me. I can’t… I can’t let the Barge just die like this!”

  Wen wept. Droplets of clean, salty tears were starting to gently caress her puffy, rosy cheeks, leaving trails of less-dirty skin in their wakes. The slight dirt on her face was absorbed by the tears, making those that fell from the edge of her chin a slight greyish colour.

  “I’m sorry, Wen. We all are, but… We can’t stay here.”

  “What’s that?” Theo asked. He pointed in the direction of the dissipating cloud of dust and debris where he saw a slight shimmer.

  Wen turned, as did Willam.

  “I don’t see nothin’,” Wen said.

  Willam agreed and once more started walking away, deciding he wouldn’t stop for these two’s petty attempts at ruining the rest of his life. He would much rather stay, but there was nothing to stay behind for. It had all gone. He and his family had to find somewhere new, somewhere with resources to build a new home where they could work to repay said resources.

  “That glimmer?” Theo asked, then started jogging toward the remnants of Brook Town.

  Wen stood confusedly behind him, wondering whether she should follow her new friend or give up like the rest of her people and join their exodus. For the Barge’s sake, for her father’s sake, she would never give up. The Barge meant too much to her. She darted after Theo with a slight spark of hope being all that drove her forward.

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  Behind her, Willam couldn’t help but turn towards them again. He looked at his friends, the only ones who’d never treated him any differently. He then looked at the villagers, his people for the past two years. His parents turned to face him with expectant eyes. He stepped back. One step, then two. His father’s round face turned a shade of red whilst his mother nodded a single time, approving of his decision. Just before his father’s disappointed fist was raised in the air to yell at Willam, his mother started pulling the short man away with a gentle smile. She patted him on his burly back, a trick that always calmed his temper. Willam then rushed after Wen and Theo.

  Even through the low-laying dust-up, that shimmer Theo could see was visible, and even grew brighter the closer he got. Without buildings in his way, he didn’t bother running through the once-streets of Brook Town, and he soon found himself running straight through where the Barge had stood. There truly was nothing left except padded dirt. The backyard and all its tools and items were firmly vanished. His plants among them.

  He approached the town square tree, the majestic thing the only thing of note remaining. The brickwork around it was gone, however. Theo dashed past it, heading straight for where the mayor’s villa had once stood. There Theo stopped in front of the shimmering thing that hovered above the ground about a metre up. It was nothing but sparkly sigils, a lot like the squirrel incisor he’d found when Chaste had saved his life. He still had the incisor in his pocket along with his World Primer. He never went anywhere without them, and he was glad he hadn’t. What would’ve happened to it if it had remained in his room?

  While similar to the sparkly symbols of the incisor, this thing had far more glowing symbols fluttering around it. There were so many, in fact, that Theo couldn’t clearly see the item behind them. It was nearly blinding so close to it.

  Wen approached him and started looking around. Finding nothing, she then eyed Theo with a hard-to-read expression.

  “What? You can’t see this?” Theo asked.

  “See what? A whole lotta nothin’?”

  Willam was quickly catching up to them, just passing the tree. Theo reached out to touch the plentiful sigils, each one being the same exact symbol, he then noticed. As his hands touched the glow, something appeared within his hand, something firm. He grabbed it and pulled it out, the glow quickly disappearing from sight.

  “The fuck is that?” Wen asked, now seeing the thing grasped in her friend’s hand.

  Theo wasn’t sure himself, but he quickly found out.

  Item: Town Deed (Arcana’s signature).

  “It’s-”

  “And what’s that hole?” she continued before he could explain. She pointed towards where the approximate centre of the villa would’ve been.

  Theo could barely see the hole himself when he looked in the direction she pointed. The entire area was a dark brown plane of padded dirt, making the man-sized hole in the middle of it difficult to see from where they were standing. He shrugged and followed behind towards it, tucking the Town Deed into his pocket for now.

  There seemed to have been a narrow and steep staircase leaning down the slope of dirt, but as with everything seemingly connected to the town, it had vanished. For some reason, Theo was designated scout by the two others despite it being Wen that found the hole in the first place. Something about chivalry? Also Willam was too large.

  Theo slid down after checking that the sloping dirt was firm enough for him to likely be able to climb back up it. It didn’t go far down, luckily, and some of the midday sunlight reached inside, lighting the small cave-like structure.

  One wall was nothing but stone while another seemed to be just compacted dirt. The area within was circular in shape and surprisingly, there was furniture there. How it had evaded the devastation, Theo couldn’t say, but he snuck closer to it while looking around. The stone wall turned from a solid, dusty grey to a brownish grey about halfway. No one seemed to remain down here. It was too small an area for anyone to hide, especially considering the only place to hide was under that table.

  Theo reached it and checked the things littering its sturdy surface. It was actually the sturdiest, most well-built table he’d seen in this world. It was likely imported goods, not locally crafted. Was that why it hadn’t disappeared? Did only things with an economic connection to the town vanish? He’d have to ask later. Theo felt it was time he told Wen and Willam about himself. Things were turning weird and a serious conversation would provide them all some clarity.

  Among the rubble on the table Theo found several documents and ledgers, finding the mayor’s name scribbled on quite a few of them along with some mentions of de Santas. A few notable words popped out as Theo skimmed the documents. ‘Corpses’, ‘sickness’ and ‘plague’. Whoever had his office down here sounded like a swell guy. Theo figured it was a man not just from the hard-to-read handwriting, but also by the oddly modern-esque picture framed inside a nice, wooden picture frame.

  Three men stood as friends, smiling at the camera or whatever contraption had taken the picture. The picture wasn’t at all tarnished, so Devin Whittlebutt and de Santas were clearly depicted along with a third man donning a black cloak. His face was pale and his eyes were dark, his cheeks gaunt as if he hadn’t eaten well in years. Still, he smiled at the camera with a sense of camaraderie with his fellow subjects.

  “You alright down there?” Wen shouted down into the hole from above.

  “Aye-, I mean, yes!” Theo responded, almost responding back in Wen’s thicker accent. “I’m coming back up.”

  Theo then took most of the loose documents from the table and shoved them down his shirt, making sure it was tucked firmly into his trousers before he headed back up the slope. He shoved his hands and fingers deep into the firm dirt, getting a solid handle before he pulled himself up gradually. He had grown familiar with dirt over the past several days, so this was nothing for him anymore. To think he used to be an indoor city boy less than a week ago. His sickness hadn’t helped, but he quite liked staying indoors. What had he even been doing there? He honestly couldn’t remember.

  Willam stretched his arm down for Theo to grasp, which he did. The strong, tall man then pulled Theo up with barely any effort, then lowered him back onto the ground since he had pulled him way too high up into the air. Theo reached the ground with a dampened fwump.

  “What did you find?” asked Wen, looking straight towards Theo’s oddly crumpled shirt.

  Theo withdrew the documents from the shirt bank and showed them to his friends. “The mayor and the trader must’ve been colluding with a third person all this time. Judging by what I’ve read, he was concocting some sort of sickness or plague. How, I don’t know,” he explained.

  “Necromancy!” Wen exclaimed in a hushed voice. “It’s gotta be! Look, there’s a ledger of corpses and coin! De Santas must’ve brought them here along with ‘is goods!”

  “You shouldn’t just jump to necromancy like that,” Willam countered, though his brows furrowed deeply as he looked at the same kind of documents.

  “What would necromancy have to do with a plague?” Theo asked.

  “Necromancy is said to be able to spread sickness and rot from corpses. Necromancy is very rare magic, so I wouldn’t know anything specific, but… Do you think this might be why the soil doesn’t grow crops as it should?” the farmer asked the tavern keeper.

  “It sure as hell smells like it. Damn that mayor and his schemes. If I could reach ’im right now I’d-”

  Theo shut the certainly violent and morbid language out as he and Willam waited for the furious woman to simmer down. Three days later, or at least it felt like it, she stopped her cascade of curses and bloody promises.

  “What was that thing you took from the air earlier?” she then asked, interrupting Theo and Willam’s rather pleasant conversation all things considered.

  “A Town Deed from Arcana,” Theo answered as he took the deed out of his pocket.

  “A fuckin’ what!”