Ravenspell Book 1: Of Mice and Magic by David Farland Page B

leaping three feet into the air. “Hyaaah!” He plunged his spear deep into the raccoon’s snout,
    The raccoon let out a startled cry, blinked, and stepped back a pace.
    Ben suddenly remembered something his neighbor, Mrs. Pumpernickle, had said last winter. She’d said that she’d gone out on the porch one night, and a big raccoon had been in the garbage. She tried to drive it away, but it had merely growled and snapped at her.
    As the raccoon squared off, Ben realized that this was probably the same monster.
    The raccoon laughed. “A spunky one, eh? You don’t scare me. I eat live scorpions as treats and wash ’em down with glue!”
    He was stalking toward Ben when a dark shadow dropped from the top of the pine tree.
    “Owl,” Ben shouted, imagining that he’d have to fight two predators at once. Things couldn’t get worse.
    But what twisted through the air was no owl. Ben could sense something powerful and malevolent rushing toward him. It came with the force of a bullet, but wriggled like a bat.
    Time seemed to stop, and Ben watched it draw near in slow motion. Its thick orange fur glowed sullenly by Ben’s magic light, as if revealing some inner fire. Its enormous ears, so translucent that one could see the veins, were each fully six times as long as its pug-nosed head. Its yellow teeth were as sharp as nails. The ear studs and magical symbols tattooed onto its ears lent the creature a terrifying sense of power. It was, by far, the most hideous creature that Ben had ever seen.
    He couldn’t have been more frightened if he saw the devil himself winging his way out of the underworld.
    The bat landed next to Ben and stood with the tiny claws of its wings hooked to the ground, then twisted its head around to look at the raccoon. It bared its teeth and hissed.
    “Your Mage- esty,” the raccoon cried. It dropped its head low, bowing and backing off a step. “I didn’t mean to—is he a friend of yours?—I mean forgive me, I, uh—”
    “Get out of here,” the bat said, “before I make you beg me to chew your own tail off.”
    The raccoon shouted and bolted around the side of the house so fast that the only thing left of him was his stink and a couple of hairs that floated in the wind.
    The bat chuckled, low and dangerously.
    Ben was horrified. His hands felt weak. It took all of his effort to grip his spear. He suspected that normal weapons were worthless against this monster.
    “Well done,” the creature hissed. “You showed courage and initiative.”
    Ben’s eyes grew wide. “What are you? Some kind of weird bat?”
    “Some might call me a bat, but I prefer to think of myself as a Dusky Seraph,” the bat said.
    “Oh,” Ben said. “Do you have a name?”
“My friends call me Nightwing.”
    Ben heard a sucking sound and noticed a horrible fat tick with its head buried in the bat’s armpit. The tick pulled its head out. “I didn’t know you had friends. I thought you said that the world was divided into accomplices and victims. ”
    “Quiet,” Nightwing said, and the tick’s proboscis suddenly cinched tight, as if an invisible string were wrapped around it. Muffled screams came from the now-closed proboscis.
    The bat hobbled around Ben, stalking on tiny paws, using his wings to balance. “Impressive,” Nightwing said. “Very impressive. A jumping mouse, but strangely dressed. Or are you more than you seem?”
    “I’m a human,” Ben said proudly. “Or I was. Until I got turned into a mouse.”
    Quick as thought, Nightwing reached out and put a claw around Ben’s shoulder. “Well, then, you and I have something in common!”
    Ben eyed the bat distrustfully.
    The bat peered hard at Ben, and then squinted skyward as if he longed to seek the shelter of the shadowed pines. The rising sun seemed a threat. The bat smiled and drooped his ears. Suddenly he seemed smaller and not so menacing as he squinted at Ben like a kindly, half-blind old man. “For you see, I too was once a human. A man