The next few days saw the grasslands that Idelle glimpsed here and there from atop hills fade slowly from green into dusty browns and yellows. Even staying near the mountains, where the empty creeks waiting for the yearly snowmelt had carved gullies that squirmed out from the mountain like oversized feelers, Idelle could feel the way the air had grown dry and still as she continued to pick her way south. She knew she must be getting close to her destination, especially after she noticed one day that the intensity of the magic permeating the air and land around her had grown noticeably brighter at some point.

Despite that, she didn’t hurry to break away from the mountains. She could feel herself growing stronger with every passing day as she fed on the beasts she found lurking among the hills. The improvements weren’t as rapid as they had been for her first few kills, but she didn’t know when her next chance to freely hunt like this might be, so she intended to make the best of it.

In the worst case, she decided would simply overshoot her destination and work her way back up north. It would make for all the more confusion if something changed and someone decided to track her down.

The prey she found shifted as well. She hadn’t seen one of her wolf “friends” in several days, and predators had grown rarer. Instead, vicious oversized elk and deer had become the most common, and even a wild horse at one point.

She was thankful for the change, as it had become apparent that feeding repeatedly on the same types of beasts did less and less for her with each hunt.

But despite the placid natures of their original species, who almost always fled immediately if she caught a glimpse of them, the magic variants of herbivores were aggressive and deadly.

Without teeth or claws, they resorted instead to charging her to gore her with their antlers or simply attempting to trample her beneath great beefy legs and bodies. And more than once she was knocked over by crushing kicks to her chest while trying to circle around from in front of an angry creature. There was simply no way for her to do anything but avoid the blows, the animals were too massive and heavy, and she was certain that the kicks had cracked her ribs on at least one occasion.

As much as she appreciated her ability to heal at unreasonable speeds from injuries, she did not want to see how well the ability worked on a crushed hand, or worse yet a broken skull.

There were stranger and rarer animals among those inflicted with the curse as well. She’d been under the impression that the animals effected were large and often predators, but here small rodents (well, relative to those she’d fought before they were small, some were as large as more ordinary wolves after the effects of the magic), snakes like the one she’d seen some days ago, and even birds could be found reeking of the sweet smell that she’d learned to associate with magic beasts.

There was another immediate advantage to the variety, as it proved an excellent teacher when it came to her ability to fight. She was quickly growing accustomed to the ways she needed to adapt to each new threat; be that focusing on evasion and staying at a distance for larger creatures, mixing in violent kicks and stomps against oversized rodents as they tried to tear at her legs with their teeth, or even just swatting a bird out of the air with her open palm as it tried to claw at her face and eyes.

That last one left several painful gouges on her hand, much to her annoyance. She hoped she didn’t run into an entire flock, or she’d have no confidence in her ability to escape without more serious injuries. It simply didn’t seem possible to guard her face and head against that many without a proper helmet or something, and she held little faith in her ever-more-tattered gambeson to hold up long even if they just went for the rest of her body.

Idelle doubted they could kill her, at least not without numbers that would probably entail a beast wave, but it was a painful reminder that simply being physically strong wasn’t enough on its own. Maybe if she got fast and skilled enough to kill anything that came close in a single hit before it could reach her, but she was a long ways away from that. No, was such a thing ever possible?

She thought back to Ivar, who she’d never seen take a single hit from a practice sword, even while outnumbered, and whose sword had always been unerringly able to kiss an attackers throat or tap above their heart in demonstrations. Yeah. Maybe him.

Cateline had said he had disappeared as well. If the man was working with Cecilia, there was a chance that she might end up having to fight him some day.

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She shivered at the thought, something that didn’t seem to happen due to cold anymore. She’d just have to hope it didn’t come to that. Or at least practice running away. If she used body enhancement, she could probably outrun him. Probably. She’d never actually seen him run, or take more than the small measured steps necessary to barely graze past a swing.

A few days after the bird, Idelle found something else strange. She’d caught the scent of a great cat, a mountain lion, with only the hint of sweetness to it. She suspected that meant it had only recently changed, a guess that was reinforced when she locked eyes with it a minute later across a rocky gully filled with scree and saw that it was barely larger than she was.

The cat had hissed at her, and started to circle, a tactic she had grown familiar with by now. But when she plopped down her pack and started to lope across the rocks toward it, intending to kill it quickly in case of any complications, rather than the normal (sometimes hesitant) aggression it hissed again before suddenly turning away from her. With a quick bound of coiled haunches, it was out of the ditch and disappeared into the undergrowth.

The sight was so unexpected that she hesitated for a moment before sprinting after it, the scrubby bushes layering the hill scraping against her legs as she tore through them in a burst of speed.

Idelle caught up with it a minute later, the animal quickly turning back when it realized her pursuit. It hissed at her again, and she examined it closely. It was definitely cursed, even if it was recent, even with its size set aside it clearly had more magic than normal pulsing through it.

She carefully stepped closer, expecting it to attack this time, but to her shock it pulled back further from her — whimpering and pressing itself to the ground as if it was trying to look smaller. A few more strides brought her within pouncing distance, but there was no sudden bite or bounding flash of the claws.

It looked afraid, nothing more.

She gave it a long look, annoyed but also strangely gratified by the reaction. “What, am I supposed to be the bad guy here? Or are you some weird extra smart magical beast?”

The beast only whimpered and pressed itself lower into the dirt, showing no signs of understanding.

Idelle raised her sword, about to slice into the creatures neck to give it a quick death, but something in her hesitated at the sight. Why bother? She’d fed on a larger mountain lion than this a few days ago, and the thing was clearly terrified.

She supposed even a little power was still power, but…

No. Just kill it.

There was a gleaming arc of metal and a momentary spurt of red, and Idelle let out a long breath. There was no point in hesitating. She’d killed dozens of magic beasts since she’d left Wyrlet, there was no point in feeling pity for this one, right? Besides, even if it was afraid of her right now, it might wander out of the mountains and hurt someone later.

Yeah, that was a good enough reason.

She leaned in to feed, catching only a momentary glimpse of her impassive face reflected in the corpse’s yellow eyes before her jaws clamped down on the cut she’d opened in its neck.

After she finishing feeding, Idelle gave the beast’s body a long look. She hadn’t gained almost any strength from it after all. Why had it acted so deferential?

She thought back to the griffin, and the way it had seemed like an untouchable overlord as it flew past, and the fact that powerful monsters like that would apparently drive lesser magic beasts out of their territory over time.

Her eyes instinctively fell to her own body, despite her lack of need for real vision when using her magic sight. Idelle's magic pulsed in her chest, a rough ball in her heart that spun off strands of all sizes through her blood. It was strong, no doubt about that, and when she really looked closely she realized that she could feel further energy coiled up inside her heart; hidden by the pulsing outer layers.

Was it as simple as that, she wondered? Beings with lots of magic were scary to those with less? That would be an easy and comfortable explanation, for sure.

Idelle hoped there wasn’t something more. The idea that her hunting might have changed her in some fundamental way that the magic beasts could detect left her with a knot of worry that refused to quite unravel, even as she moved on from the encounter.

In the end, she decided to start making her way down towards Hudbria, or at least the safer and more settled plains away from the mountain range if it turned out she’d misjudged the distance. She was approaching a bottleneck in how much she could gain from feeding, and surely there would be opportunities to practice hunting or dueling back among people. There were always a need for warm bodies to help cull beasts, for better or for worse.

And if her renewed anxieties about the nature of her power refused to die down, maybe she could find some more insight into that as well. There must be a library or something at the academy, maybe there would be records or stories of someone with similar abilities?

The thought of spending hours slowly reading through books to try and find a passing mention of an apparently obscure power made her face fall, but she’d cross that bridge if she came to it.