Anríq worked on Eliska for a long time. He finished with her pelvis, worked his way down her legs, and then told her to turn onto her stomach.

  She obeyed him without a word and Yann finally let go of her hand.

  Anríq started working on her spine again starting at her tailbone. She pretended not to notice how intimately he was touching her. It didn’t mean anything—and yet it meant everything.

  His magic tried to soften all the armored tension that kept her locked up inside herself all these years. He made her relax a little bit, but he couldn’t tear down the barriers.

  When he finished, he sat back, folded his arms on his knees, buried his face in his arms, and fell asleep.

  Yann’s hand came to rest on Eliska’s back. “Try to sit up and eat something. You need to build up your strength.”

  She peeled herself off the floor and sat up. When she did, she noticed for the first time where she was. She’d been so busy feeling sorry for herself that she didn’t notice before.

  The group sat in the hayloft of a barn somewhere. Daylight streamed through gaps in the roof boards and through a wide bay at the end of the loft.

  The men had laid a large piece of sheet metal on the floorboards and built their fire on top of that to protect the floor.

  A massive hay rick full of hay covered half the loft. The men built their fire closer to the open bay so they didn’t put the hay in danger.

  Neils, Niyazi, Rien, Vidal, and Yvan sat crosslegged around the fire the same way they sat around the fire out in the wild Layers.

  Yann handed Eliska her old wooden bowl full of meat shaved off the carcass of some animal roasting on the spit.

  The men had constructed the spit out of pieces of metal this time. Where did they get it? She was too grateful to ask.

  A pad of folded blankets made a bed under Eliska where she’d been lying just a few minutes ago.

  She mumbled, “Thank you,” to anyone and everyone who might have had something to do with giving her this food—and to anyone and everyone who might have had anything to do with saving her life.

  Anríq didn’t hear her—or maybe he did. He kept his head down and didn’t rejoin the group.

  She bent over her bowl, picked up a piece of the juicy meat, and put it in her mouth. She chewed it while she looked around the loft one more time.

  She froze when she saw Marine lying to one side with her eyes closed. A dirty woolen blanket covered her from the neck down.

  Yann read Eliska’s mind. “She’s going to be okay. She got hurt by the Darklings, too. Anríq has been working on her in between working on you. She’s been asleep for a few days, but he says she’ll recover the same way you will.”

  Eliska swallowed the food in her mouth. “I didn’t see her during the fight.”

  “None of us did,” Niyazi replied. “No one realized she got hurt until we landed in this Island.”

  “Where are we? How did we get here?”

  “We don’t know where we are because none of us can use your Coil projection,” Yann told her. “We just landed here—about three miles from here. We carried both of you overland until we found this barn.”

  “Are we…..?”

  Eliska faltered when she realized what he just said. The Watch carried her and Marine three miles overland trying to find somewhere safe for them to recover.

  Did Anríq carry Eliska…or one of the others? She didn’t dare to ask.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Are we near a town or anything?” She glanced around the loft. “Are we on some farmer’s land? Is that why we’re here?”

  “This is the only building we’ve seen in this Island,” Yvan told her. “The only building. We were lucky to find this.”

  Yann broke the silence by getting to his feet. He picked up a second bowl—the one the men used to serve Marine.

  Neils deposited a portion of the food into it. Yann carried it around Eliska’s bed and laid his hand on Anríq’s shoulder. “Eat something,” Yann told him. “You need it.”

  Anríq dragged his head up with an effort. He struggled to open his eyes, but he took the bowl, bowed over it, and started eating.

  “At least we know a few more things about the Voyant now,” Vidal remarked. “We know he’s looking for a person.”

  “He’s looking for someone magical,” Rien added. “Someone with the power to defeat him—so it can’t be any of us.”

  “It could be Eliska,” Neils pointed out.

  “Then why send the Darklings to attack Middleborough?” Yvan countered. “That’s the whole reason we discounted Eliska in the first place. Wesh said the Guardian Templars detected the Voyant coming after Middleborough two years before Eliska ever went there.”

  “If I’m the one, maybe I should leave,” Eliska suggested. “I don’t want to put you in more danger…..”

  “No!” Yvan snapped. “You aren’t going anywhere.”

  “You have to stay, Eliska,” Neils insisted. “At least with us you would have some protection. You can’t go out there and face him alone.”

  “You saved Barsali’s life once already—and all the rest of us,” Yvan went on. “We would have died that very first day without you. Every day we’ve been alive out here we owe to you.”

  She didn’t want to listen to all of them talk about how great she was, so she changed the subject. “Who else would the Voyant want? Anríq is the only other magic-user here and we know the Voyant isn’t after him.”

  “It doesn’t matter who or what the Voyant is after,” Yvan interjected. “You’re staying with us and that’s final.”

  No one said anything for a minute. Eliska didn’t feel like eating all of a sudden. The thought of eating anything made her want to puke.

  “We also know that these Voyant Mendicats come in pairs,” Yann finally added. “Or that they can come in pairs.”

  “Maybe the thing he wants is that purple glowing thing you mentioned,” Vidal suggested.

  “How can it be when we don’t have it?” Rien pointed out. “We would know if we had something like that.”

  “There is one other possible explanation for what we saw in that tunnel,” Eliska blurted out.

  Everyone turned around to look at her. “What explanation is that?” Yann asked.

  “There might be a lot of these Voyants running around. There might be dozens of them. Maybe those pictures we saw weren’t Voyants past, but they’re actually portraits of Voyants who are currently still alive. They might have a whole order like the Guardian Templars or the Chivalric Order of Custodians. They might all be working together to combine their magic to control the Coil for their own ends. We might only know about one because we’ve only seen one.”

  “Then why did Brother Matherus think the Voyant was hunting someone to stop them from taking his place?” Yvan asked.

  “Marine told me that Wesh’s order was behind on current events and that they got a lot of things wrong. They didn’t even believe the Voyant was real or that he had the power to control the Coil. Wesh only found that out for certain after he joined us. It’s possible Marine’s order got a few things wrong, too. Maybe the Voyant isn’t looking for the person to kill them to stop them from replacing him. Maybe he’s trying to recruit the person to join their order.”

  “Then whoever he recruited would have to be an extremely powerful magic-user,” Niyazi pointed out. “Who do we know who’s more powerful than you?”

  Eliska tried her best to shrug that away. “Maybe the person doesn’t have to be a magic-user at all. Maybe that purple glowing thing gives the person the power—or maybe the order has another way to bestow that golden halo on the person and then they become as powerful as all the other Voyants.”

  “Are you seriously suggesting that an imp could become a magic-user?!” Neils countered. “That’s impossible!”

  “I would have thought so, too, but how else do you explain it? The Voyant went after Middleborough when I wasn’t there—which means whatever he wanted was in Middleborough. Then Darklings destroyed the town and only imps survived—and yet the Voyant is still coming after you. Therefore, he must be after you even though you’re imps. I don’t see any other explanation.”

  All the Watchmen looked at each other. “But….if any of us could become a magic-user powerful enough to defeat the Voyant…..”

  “He wouldn’t give you the power so you could defeat him,” Eliska corrected. “He would give you the power so you could join him. You would become the Voyant—which is exactly what Brother Matherus said he would do.”

  Neils’s hand flew to his head. “My God! Do you mean any of us could become a magic-user—even Rien here?!”

  “Shut the hell up!” Rien fired back. “The Voyant doesn’t want me. That’s stupid.”

  Some of the others laughed.

  Eliska bent over her bowl thinking everything over. She really, really didn’t want to be the one the Voyant wanted….but wasn’t she just thinking a few short minutes ago that she would make any sacrifice to help these men?

  Why not this, too? Why not turn herself over to the Voyant if it made him leave the Watch alone?

  The men of the Watch would never let her do that. She didn’t even have to ask.

  That was their real strength. Each of them would die to protect her, too—a worthless, filthy, wretched Coil rat. Even Rien who hated everything related to the Coil would die to protect her. She already knew that.

  End of Chapter 25.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

  I post new chapters of The Corrupted Coil series on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday PST.

  Don't want to wait to read the rest of the book? You can purchase the completed book, the whole The Corrupted Coil Series, and the rest of Theo ’Manns work at Theo Mann’s Amazon Author Page.

  Read Tales From the Coil: The Calling for free!

  Get these episodes delivered to your inbox before anyone else sees them. Find out how on Patreon at .

  Thank you for reading and thank you for your support!