Terrestrial Magic

THE LAST TIME I’D SEEN my parents in person was the day I left the country for graduate school. They’d stood side by side, and I knew they were holding hands behind their backs even though I couldn’t see it. They hadn’t wanted me to know. They’d wanted me to see their support and not their worry.

Most of the time, I looked back on that memory with rueful exasperation. Sure, their only daughter was leaving to study the creatures that tore the world asunder, and they couldn’t help but worry. Still, the first time I’d ventured on my own beyond the perimeter back home, I’d almost been eaten by an amphibious lizard. That was the place I was moving away from, to live in one of the more stable regions left in the world. In light of that, my parents’ concern felt like a massive overreaction—most days, anyway.

But today wasn’t most days. Today, I even felt a bit of guilt. I wasn’t in any excessive danger or anything, but...well. They wouldn’t approve of what I was doing. And they definitely wouldn’t approve of my enjoying it.

And I was more than enjoying it.

Our pick-up hurtled down the deserted cobblestone road, old stone walls enclosing us on both sides, and my heart raced with anticipation. A force of lukewarm air blew across my skin from the open window. I leaned into it from my place in the passenger seat, practically tasting freedom on the wind. Knowing there was a whole world of wonder out there for me to experience.

I couldn’t regret this. I couldn’t wait for this. Because if the report was real, there would be a chimera at the end of this road trip. One of only a handful ever encountered in modern times, and the only one seen in Europe. No matter how much my parents might wish I’d leave the tracking of infamous animals to someone else, I couldn’t see myself doing anything but. Not when I lived for this, for that moment of discovery.

A short, squat tower came into view ahead of us—the tomb of Cecilia Metella, an ancient Roman noblewoman. We were a ten-minute drive out from the safety zone in Rome, traveling down the ancient Appian Way, and this was where the chimera sighting had been reported. The air in the vehicle practically crackled with energy. I knew the guys—Tony driving, and the other two in the back of the pick-up—were every bit as alert as I was. Any second, we might find a sign of the animal, a trace of its passage.

A whiff of smoke in the air caught my attention. I scanned the landscape, searching for the source. Our view of the tower shifted as we drew closer, revealing a mass of plant life behind it, leaves blackened and steaming. Just the sort of thing I’d expect from a fire-breathing animal.

The doubts I’d harbored in the back of my mind, wondering if maybe this was some sort of mistake, dissipated into nothing. This was it. It was confirmation that we really had a new legendary animal—a new legimal—in the vicinity. Because there was only one other animal in the area that could set trees on fire, and those fires burned from inside the base of a single tree. They didn’t look like this, the leaves and branches singed while the trunks remained mostly untouched.

I heard Carter’s voice, through the glassless window separating the enclosed space in the front of the pick-up from the open cargo in the back. He was calling the Fire Corps, which was a good idea. The flames were already out, but the corps still needed to be aware of a new fire hazard. The Boom—the event that brought legimals back into the world—had made all of us more conscientious about animals that ignited trees on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, Tony didn’t even bother to slow down. I may have been the only scientist here, but that didn’t mean the guys on my field team needed my help to follow a trail of scorched greenery. Between Tony at the wheel, Carter on watch, and the third guy...well, the third guy wasn’t important. In any case, I left them to handle it, instead familiarizing myself with the look of the chimera’s trail. How often did the animal set fire to the surrounding area? How much distance did each burst of flames cover?

I lost myself in the details, jotting down notes as each new thought occurred to me. But every now and again, the reality of what we were doing hit me, and I marveled. This was really happening, wasn’t it? We were really tracking a chimera.

Suddenly, Carter yelled, “Stop the car!”

Tony hit the brakes hard enough that I felt like I’d fly out of the pick-up. I turned to look through the back window and check on the other two guys. Both of them had landed in less than dignified heaps against the tailgate, but at least they were still in the car.

“What?” Tony asked, frenzied. “What is it?” His normally tan skin was turning a little pale, the eyes beneath his mop of curly hair panicked. I looked around, trying to spot whatever Carter had, my mind running through the scenarios we might be dealing with.

Carter picked himself up and crouched by us, calm where Tony was frantic. “There,” he said, pointing past me and Tony through the missing window, to a large reptile near the road. A lizard, scales colored in deep blues and reds, probably about the size of the steering wheel. From this distance, I might have noticed the coloring but assumed it came from the flowers growing along the side of the road.

Good on Carter for spotting it, but then, we counted on him for that. A Korean-American guy who’d lived in Europe for only a bit longer than I had, Carter was a freelance nature photographer. We were lucky to be one of his regular gigs.

His eyes stayed locked on the new animal, while I spent the next few minutes assessing it, running through the possibilities of what it could be. I was already surprised by what it wasn’t—specifically, it wasn’t one of the five local terrestrial legimals we already knew about. What were we dealing with here?

A medium-sized lizard, the standard four legs. The coloration was its most distinct feature, red-orange on its back, blue covering the tail and peeking out on its underside. A few protrusions of bone trailed to the back of its head, vaguely resembling a small rooster’s comb. Something about that description tugged at my memory, something familiar—and then it came to me, like a punch in the gut.

Oh, shit.

There was one animal, spotted a few times in the Mediterranean area since the Boom, that matched this description. Mentions of its physical appearance varied in ancient and medieval sources, from a snake to a snake/rooster hybrid. But they all agreed it was deadly, and modern sources concurred.

We were dealing with a basilisk.

The cold touch of fear spread through me, because I was absolutely not prepared for this. Chimeras had a ferocious reputation, sure, but not like this. We were prepared to deal with a chimera. But a basilisk? A basilisk was a living, breathing death ray.

“We’re tracking down a fearsome legimal,” Tony said, a question in his voice instead of his usual irritation, “and you’re bothering me about a lizard?”

Luca—the extraneous third guy—leaned forward, catching my attention with his movement. “Is that...?” He was an athletic looking young guy, dark hair, brown skin. He and Tony made up the Italian half of our current field team, while Carter and I made up the American half.

“Yeah,” Carter answered him.

“Oh.”

Maybe I could give Luca the benefit of the doubt and assume he knew what he was looking at, despite his lack of experience in anything remotely biological. But that would be ridiculous. “A basilisk,” I said.

Tony turned to me. “Basilisk?” he asked, the pitch of his voice rising. “As in, kill you with one glance?”

“That bit is a little exaggerated,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. Tony didn’t look convinced. I wasn’t lying, but then a basilisk didn’t need to kill with a glance. Considering how deadly the creature was already, it’d be superfluous.

I did a mental gauging of the distance between us and the animal. We were closer than I would have chosen to be, if we were intentionally going to watch it. Still, we were far enough away that we weren’t in immediate danger. That was good, at least. I didn’t like suddenly finding myself in close proximity to a basilisk, but it wasn’t a fast animal, and we were out of range of its fumes. Carter would know immediately if the animal made a move towards us, and we’d be able to back away. As long as we weren’t acting aggressively, it shouldn’t attack.

I relaxed, a little. We were okay for now, and we could get out if the situation looked like it would worsen. I’d been in worse positions, when I was way less prepared for them.

But now that I could think about other issues besides our safety, this whole thing started feeling wrong. There were five local legimals of the terrestrial variety in this area. The chimera made six. And now with the basilisk? It’d been about three decades since the Boom. Five species over the course of three decades, and now two more appeared within the span of a few days?

I checked my notes, hoping I hadn’t missed some mention of a freaking basilisk in the area. No sightings reported, which was fair enough,...