The Shining Blades (D&D X-Files)

4. A Sorcerer's Apprentice

"It's got meeee!" Rock wailed, as the shadowy fifteen-foot phantom seized her in scythe-long claws and dragged her into the air.

The two adventurers certainly had not expected to encounter such bizarre resistance. Only minutes earlier, they had emerged from a wooded stand to stand before an open area of fields and hillocks. To the west, a treeless ridge jutted against the inky evening sky. A red glow outlined its ominous form. Not the sun, for that had long set: instead, an ominous red hue lit the only feature on its jagged edge—an abortive black silhouette, a broken finger pointed towards the sky. The husk of a mill. The grave of a witch.

Between them and their ultimate destination, a farmhouse and a shed sat upon a rise, with fields of tended crops nearest them. The fields were arranged in patchwork quilts of seeds and soil. Spaced evenly throughout these, perhaps fifty feet apart from each other, tall scarecrows built from sticks and hay stood as silent sentinels.

Behind the two travelers, the phantom bullies had remained apace, flinging the occasional stone and taunt. "Go on up then, old witch!" continued their repetitious chant.

"Do you see anything about this that strikes you as...unusual?" Alexis had said, considering the fields before them.

"I see a lot of pumpkins that aren't being made into pies," Rock had scowled.

"Do catfolk eat pumpkin?"

"You have no idea," Rock had returned, licking her lips.

However, as soon as the catfolk had taken her first eager step towards a collection of cultivars, the nearest scarecrow had come to life. Wrenching its spindly legs from the dirt, it fell towards Rock with a speed belying its shaky makeshift assemblage. The catfolk froze in momentary surprise, and this was all the opportunity the scarecrow needed to lift her up in its cobbled claws.

This is what had elicited the loud hopeless yowl. Alexis was momentary reminded of his childhood home of Greatwater, where alley cats would detail their despondency outside locked tavern entrances. But this was no simple alley cat, and she was in danger of more than a discomforting drizzling downpour.

"Witch! Witch!" This time the boys screamed in earnest. Their false bravado finally broken, their figures fled back into the enveloping shadows of the forest, where they were lost to time and memory.

Alexis's left hand flew to his book bag; while he could easily resummon his eldritch magic, the bonfire had been a stationary target, and it had not held a hostage in its grasp. Alexis feared he was just as likely to strike his newest friend as he was the fiend.

The dilemma quickly resolved itself, however, when the animated scarecrow simply walked to the edge of the pumpkin field and deposited Rock unceremoniously in the brush. It then returned to its original location, where it had held vigil for at least the past decade.

Rock stood up, blinked, and brushed herself off. "Well, that's another of my nine lives gone."

"Oh? How many do you have left?"

"Lucky for me, I can't count."

Alexis replaced the flap on his satchel. "To be fair, I don't think you were actually in any real danger. Look at this field. Look at these crops. Mad Maub has been dead for ten years, yet someone still tends to them, planting seeds, pulling weeds, and harvesting when the time is right." He pointed to the steadfast scarecrows. "This is how she did it. We saw from the incident in town that she is (or was) very skilled at animating lifeless objects. An array of pumpkins. An entire bonfire. I think a small squadron of automated scarecrows to help her work the fields each season, protect the crops, and carefully remove any hungry wildlife would be well within her powers."