When the mayor of Morhelm opened his front door, Cheis of Veraleigh was standing directly in front of his face nine inches from his nose. This was an experience competitive with strong coffee for awakening its participant, and the mayor recovered from it rather well, all things considered. She accepted his stammered greeting with a dismissive wave and stomped inside before he could object. The mayor gulped nervously before noticing that she was wearing a pleasant smile.

They exchanged greetings and other obligations, which were strained at first but quickly became more relaxed as the mayor realized that she was not about to devour or otherwise meaningfully interact with his soul. Cheis of Veraleigh had that effect on people who survived the first thirty seconds in her presence. The mayor was astonished she had answered his summons but nevertheless extremely grateful; the village did not produce enough crops to suffer the loss of even one of its fields lightly.

"It's the strangest thing," he related, "but it's definitely not natural. If nothing grew, the soil might be bad, or the water too brackish, but..."

"But everything dies the morning you go to harvest it." Cheis had read the letter with great skepticism, and was thoroughly familiar with its claims.

"Yes!" The mayor mopped his bald, sweating head with a cloth. "It doesn't matter how long we wait -- every plant will be green and healthy the day before, and black and brittle the next morning. And it only happens when we go to harvest it. How could that be possible? Plants can't sense the future."

"Curses can." Cheis' eyes wandered around the mayor's small house, alighting on various things like curious birds: a plate here, a square of brightly-colored fabric there. "You'd better show me to the location as soon as possible."

"Yes, of course." The mayor rose, reaching for his walking stick. "Do you have assistants? Tools? I can provide-"

Cheis shrugged, cutting his sentence short as though with a scythe. She did not elaborate.

The two of them made quick strides to the farm in question, just as mud-spattered and grim as the rest of the village. Cheis stood for long moments at the edge of the indicated field, watching the motions of birds and animals. The mayor had many questions, but also had a healthy respect for the privacy of people renowned for laying waste to battlefields with the magics of death. Silence prevailed for many minutes.

Finally, Cheis bent down and scooped out a small hole in the mud, pressing against the walls of her endeavor with her fingers until a few drops of water accumulated at its base. Whispering softly, she collected them in her palm, then traced a rune atop them. The droplets of water expanded into a bubble which defied gravity as though it were merely a suggestion, floating between the ring of her thumb and forefinger. The mayor stared, his jaw dropping open. "I thought only people with the Blue Gift could do that."

Cheis shrugged. "You can drown in water." Holding the bubble to her eye, she spoke a single word which seemed to reverberate, scattering over the mayor's consciousness like a drumbeat. He heard it clearly, but found that he could not remember its sounds. The lens encircled by Cheis' fingers scattered prismatic light like a soap bubble.

After a moment, she let her hands drop, the water evaporating as she turned to face the mayor. He blanched at the sight of her expression. "You need to evacuate."

"What? Why? Is there really a curse?" His heart, never reliable at the best of times, was hammering in his chest at this unexpected turn of events.

Cheis nodded grimly. "It's not what you think. Whoever owns that farm did not pick a good spot to plant their crops. There's a Shul artifact buried out there."

The mayor had not eaten breakfast. His guts, unfortified by any sort of food since yesterday evening, twisted vigorously. "I, um... you're serious. Oh, gods, what do we do?"

"You run. You get everybody out of here, and you don't stop to do anything stupid like argue or pack." Cheis turned back to the farm, rolling up her sleeves and looking critically at its dimensions. "You might have an hour. Maybe two." Without another word, she strode away, leaving the mayor gulping like a landed fish.

***

The first order of business, as always, was the proper state of mind. A more hermetically-inclined sorcerer might have done some chanting, possibly lighting some candles with specific scents, while visualizing very specific geometric constructs and probably imbibing a mind-altering substance or two. Cheis of Veraleigh spat on her hands and decided she was going to destroy a Shul artifact, which had much the same effect.

For the next few hours, she stomped about in the field, crushing plants underfoot and dragging a large stick to and fro through the mud in what appeared at first to be an aimless fashion. Eventually, it became clear that large runes were taking shape, describing a complex circular pattern of linked and fractal polygons with spidery lettering along each side. An eagle or other airborne observer would have been capable of discerning the proper dimensions of each shape, but to anyone on the ground it merely looked like a series of chaotic ruts in the earth. The effort involved was immense, the precision exacting, and the scale daunting in the extreme. Cheis, a farmer's daughter herself, was no stranger to hard work.

Finally, as the sun neared its zenith, she stopped and surveyed her handiwork. She took a moment to stretch, grunting as her back groaned, then sighed and looked around. The mayor's cottage at the center of the village was currently playing host to a middling-size mob, full of angry farmers shouting about opinions that had little basis and less import. She had hoped they would be cleared out by now, but there was nothing for it; the runes wouldn't last long.

Stomping to the center of the structure, she spoke six words with measured cadence. To a layperson, nothing of great interest happened at first, but a fellow spellcaster gazing upon the site through a divining lens would have seen her great engine of geomantic energy begin to turn, like huge wheels in a clock tower, as the structures she had spent the morning constructing activated. Other mages might have spent months planning, triple-checking details, and running careful experiments before performing such an enchantment. Cheis coughed, accidentally let out a fart, and looked around guiltily for witnesses before returning her gaze to the center of the runic circle.

Eventually, it became clear that a patch of mud there was beginning to rotate slowly, as though a burrowing animal were making tight circles beneath the earth in that spot. Cheis stepped closer, hawk-eyed but keeping a careful distance, as the square box emerged from the mud. A large rune engraved on the surface burned her eyes like the sun.

If the mayor of Morhelm had been a slightly better public speaker -- or, perhaps, at least gotten to eat his breakfast -- the discussion at the center of town might have gone better. If even one of the other inhabitants of the town had had any education whatsoever, and might perhaps have known any of the history of the Shul empire or what befell it, they might have been slightly more receptive to his concerns. If any of them had been civic-minded rather than fiercely independent and largely suspicious of both local and municipal government, they might have obeyed him even in the absence of understanding. But this was not Temurin, nor was it Ciel-Upon-The-Sea. This was Morhelm, a nothing of a town in the middle of nowhere, and it was the last and final refuge of desolate souls with more determination than sense.

Cheis approached the box carefully, her hands spread wide as her fingers formed complex poses. Her left thumb touched the second knuckle of her ring finger as her middle finger extended straight up at a precise angle of thirteen degrees, while her first and last fingers crooked like claws. The index finger of her right hand traced an ellipsoid in the air, her right thumb brushed across the left side of her middle finger at a scrupulously exact pace, and her breath caught in her throat as she prepared to begin her first incantation. It would have doubtlessly been extremely impressive had not a large rock chosen that exact moment to sail through the air and slam directly into the back of her head.

The man who threw the rock, a fugitive criminal from Meres who would rather have died than give up his last chance at a free life in Morhelm, did not have time to regret his mistake. The box erupted in a cascade of searing energy as Cheis's concentration lapsed, blackening the earth for a hundred yards in every direction. The air took on a distinctly metallic taste as the nearest dozen people, the rock-thrower among them, died without a sound.

Cheis of Veraleigh, who had twice survived drinking poison and once defeated a ghost by biting it, was made of sufficiently stern material to survive the initial blast, though most of her protective enchantments were stripped away. Cursing, she fought through the dizziness and pain, forming the symbols in her mind as she continued her chanting. Behind her, the fortunate among Morhelm's citizens were dying in confusion and great pain; the unfortunate were succumbing to madness first, laughing and weeping from suppurating eyes as they tore at each other with bleeding nails and fingers of sloughing bone. Greenish light surrounded her as the box's energies began to recede, shrinking beneath the onslaught of her sorcery.

The struggle was long. The sun seemed to hang in the air for far longer than a day as she fought, cursing and weeping with exertion and frustration, against the thing inside the box. Eventually, however, it was no match for her. Drawing a final rune upon its blisteringly-hot surface with her finger, she sealed the flow of energies, severing the conduit between the box's contents and the place from which it came. The box went dark, and she collapsed across it, unconscious.

Around her, Morhelm was a charnel. Though not all of its inhabitants were yet dead, they would be within an hour at most. Those who did not succumb to their wounds would shrivel and blacken, along with all the other living matter within about a half-mile. Plants, animals, and insects all twisted around themselves and died; some of the wildlife would try to escape, but not terribly far. By the time the sun edged below the western horizon, the only thing alive in the sepulcher that had once been Morhelm was the battered figure of Cheis of Veraleigh, who would not be awakening any time soon. The less said about what she dreamed, the better.