Dirt soaking into the back of my overcoat, I struggle against the mass of purple scales and teeth pressing down on me. I manage to catch the teeth of the boiling python on my quarterstaff as it leaps at me. I lay kicking and writhing in the mud, the only thing separating me from sharp, clamping teeth a piece of wood the width of my thumb. I hear the others around me, Halford’s team, struggling with the real monster, the alpha boiling python that he has taken out a contract to excise. The snake pressing me into the mud of the swamp weighs over two-hundred pounds and its deep violet scales make it near invisible in the gloom of the early morning.
I try to breathe, but the inhalation causes my strength to slip for the barest moment. The snake crashing down upon me juts forward before I stop it once more. The weight of the monster pushes me down into the mud, and foul-smelling water pours into the pit my body digs, washing over my face and stinging my eyes. I feel the monster thrash through the bog water that clouds my vision; the sting of its serrated teeth raking over my fingers makes me lose my breath. Water washes into my mouth, flooding my throat. Panic takes over me as I look up at green, slitted eyes made murky and more sinister through choking water and bubbles of life-saving air. The water pooling over me becomes cloudy with the violent coughs I choke out. My strength leaves me entirely. The boiling python crashes down on me, sinking its teeth into my collarbone.
“You were supposed to watch the rear!” I hear my brother shouting, the first sensation that lets me know I’m not dead. The next sensation is a vomiting stream of bog water and stomach acid pumping out of me and into the blood-stained mud around me. Tears mix with the water on my face and specs of imaginary light dance in my vision as another convulsion overcomes me. A hand pats my back, and a stab of healing energy pours into me, painfully wringing my lungs like a dish rag, expelling the last of the water. I take my first, coughing breath.
“There, there,” Bali says as she rubs my back. The woman, the oldest of Halfin’s team at twenty-two, wears a strained smile on her face as she kneels in the mud next to me. Bali’s skin is the smooth complexion of sandstone, and curly chestnut hair frames her strong, aquiline features. Bali is an earthspeaker, one of the descendent races of Exeter–like humans–which were native to the far-off mountain range of Y’ll’atakan. The earthspeakers have a rocky complexion to their skin that leads to some backwater peoples thinking they are animated stone, like a golem. Bali’s smiling face, like warm sandstone, belies the stress I read in the set of her shoulders. The patchy leather armor Bali wears is torn in several places; red spots from recent wounds stain the green, cloth robes she sports over the armor.
“Thank…you…” I manage to spit out between the dry heaving my stomach is intent to suffer. I wipe away the tears, spittle, and muddy water on my face with the cleanest part of my sleeve I can find, leaving a long streak of mud behind. I look down at myself, the traveler’s armor--nothing more than a few strategically placed pads of leather over a colorful red and white blouse and pants--has ripped over my shoulder and is so thoroughly consumed by the mud I can’t tell the colors anymore.
“Can you stand?” Bali asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s try.” Bali offers me her hand. With the assistance I just manage to make it to my feet in time to see my brother Halford deck his friend Kapin in the mouth, sending him splashing into the muddy water of the bog.
Halford, older than me by three years at nineteen, sneers at Kapin, who is coming up from the watery puddle he has been knocked into, while sharp breaths shake his muscular shoulders with each inhale. Halford is a big man at nearly six and a half feet tall. Of all the Devardem children, he most takes after our father with his broad shoulders, prominent chin, and mane of shaggy blonde hair that refuses to ever be conquered. He wears no armor, never has, and the sturdy mix of colorful cloth he does wear is the cleanest out of the entire adventuring party. He stares Kapin down as he looms over him, but Kapin is no pushover and returns the glare with youthful defiance.
Though not quite as big as Halford, Kapin still stands well over six foot when his boots aren’t sinking into mud, and the reams of muscle around his arms and shoulders make it seem he might be able to wrestle a bear. The mop of brown hair on his head blends into the mud that covers him as he sits in the water.
“I’m sorry,” Kapin says through gritted teeth.
“Do you think sorry cuts it!” Halford yells down at him. “My sister almost died because you couldn’t do your job correctly!” Halford points a long finger to where I struggle to keep my feet, leaning into Bali.
“Which is why you shouldn’t bring her,” Kapin says as he climbs back to his feet, barely suppressed anger coating his words. “She almost died to a rank zero monster. I have been telling you that she is more of a liability than anything.” He looks over to me and lets his eyes roam over my dirty and exhausted body. “Sorry to say it Charlie, but it’s true.”
I can’t find any words to say back.
“What did you say!” Halford takes a dangerous step forward.
“That’s enough of that.” Jellian, an elven man whose alabaster features and platinum blonde hair clashed horribly with the filth coating him and the sturdy ring-mail he wears, steps between the two and raises his hands. Unlike most of the elven men whom I have met in my life, Jellian chooses to wear a beard, which, of course, is immaculate--the platinum blonde of his hair bleeding to a metallic silver on his chin. The man’s red eyes, housed in a face as sharp as a sword, never seem to cease in their darting about, but when they do, and when they concentrate on me, I find it hard to breathe. “Your battle fevers are still hot. Both of you. Any kind of productive conversation will need to wait until well after we have returned to the hostel and washed ourselves of this filth.”
Halford thumbs his nose over Jellian’s head but turns and snatches the extravagant longsword he left standing in the mud. As he flips the sword up out of the mud, a simple hand gesture from Halford causes the blade to disappear in a wash of golden embers that vanish into the acrid air. Halford makes certain to kick the carcass of the alpha boiling python, a bisected purple snake whose sheer size puts to shame the one I had been struggling with in the mud. Remembering the snake, I look around, seeing several of the rank zero monsters laying dead in the mud about us--cut to ribbons or violently burned. I run my fingers across my collarbone where the snake had dug its teeth into my skin, finding skin where there should have been a bloody wound. I look to Bali, who gives my shoulders a squeeze.
“How are you, Charlie?” Halford asks as he trudges over to me.
“Not good,” I reply, trying to smile but failing to do a convincing job.
“You up to doing a little bit of work?”
“That’s what I’m here for.” I sigh, the thought of the truth in that rings a depressing chord through my spirit.
A year ago, when our eldest brother Corinth sent sets of essentia to our family to raise at least our parents and Halford to the first magical rank, Halford had gone ahead and taken those three essentia and sold them in the nearest city, Vale. With the money he procured from that he had bought himself his own set of essentia that he chose to pick out rather than have our brother make the decision. Halford chose the Power, Swift, and Blade Essentia to integrate into his soul, which led to his manifesting the Avatar Conflux as a result. Unlike the essentia, the palm-sized pyramids of condensed and attributed magic, that our brother Corinth had sent, none of the essentia that Halford ended up choosing were particularly rare or expensive: comparatively expensive at least, one would still easily pay for a house and a lease on a small spot of land anywhere in Lord Timmian’s domain.
With the leftover coin he had purchased essentia for his best friend, Kapin: Fire, Forge and Power, which had left him with the Magma Conflux. With the last of the coin that still remained, the pair had purchased the most basic components of an adventurer’s kit and set their sights on forming an adventuring party of their own, something they had dreamed of doing for years since Corinth first set off on his own journey through the ranks of the magical professionals.
Rank one, the most basic tier that separates normal people from those endowed with awesome magical abilities, could be attained by anyone who undertook the ritual to integrate three of any essentia into their souls. As a result, a fourth essentia will manifest a confluence of the first three that represents the most powerful and truthful aspects of the soul. As the name might imply, rank one magicians gained one magical power attributed to each of the essentia they have taken in. For instance, the power Halford has attained from his Power Essentia is an extreme passive increase of the man’s strength, which allows him to swing around his massive sword as if it weighed no more than a feather. The abilities that manifested are different for each person. Unlike Halford, the power that manifested from Kapin’s Power Essentia allows him to increase his durability to something that approaches the hardness of stone for brief periods of time.
There are other benefits of attaining even the first rank of magical potency, such as a refinement of the body toward a more idealized form. The magical folk are a very fit and good-looking bunch. Rank one also increases a magician’s constitution, protecting them from most diseases, and even increasing their longevity. From what I have heard, the magicians of the higher ranks like my brother Corinth are basically perfect, beautiful beings that can live for hundreds or even thousands of years.
After the letter that had delivered my own Gold Essentia, Corinth never wrote to the family again. With the man having roamed continents away over the span of his career, getting any news about what had happened to him is all but impossible. For an entire year I stewed, waiting to hear any news of my eldest brother, and though I secretly hated myself for it, waiting for the day that I would have been delivered a full suite of essentia so that I could join the vaunted magical community. That letter has never come, and I am still stuck at zero rank, essentially no different from an average person.
I kneel in front of the beheaded corpse of the alpha boiling python and run my fingers over the smooth black scales. I look down the length of the creature, at least twenty feet of coiled muscle on the land and who knows how much more resting beneath the water of the bog. The potential of magic vibrates through my fingers, and I trigger the magic of my only ability.
The corpse of the snake dissolves into a cloud of pink light that rises into the air, converging to create four distinct motes of fluffy pink energy which spin for a moment. The pink clouds smell exactly like the Sweetpears I picked off the trees back home, and solidify, shooting at my head. I raise my hands, trying to catch the objects that the pink smoke transformed into even as they hurtle at me like projectiles.
The easiest to catch is a heavy pile of folded leather, the black scales of the alpha boiling python, clean of any mud and wrapped into twenty-pound bundles with heavy twine. A paper wrapped package of python meat crashes into the parcel of snake leather I hold in my arms, and surprising myself, I manage to catch it. Out of the corner of my eyes, a wicked and elongated fang spins over itself as it flies through the air at my head. I yelp and wince as the snake fang soars at me, closing my eyes against the inevitable impact. Something hard and pointy bounces off my skull.
“Tits and honey,” I swear, rubbing the spot on my forehead where I had been hit.
I open my eyes to see Halford standing there, the deadly serpent fang clasped between his fingers, its flight having been arrested just before hitting me. Glancing down for whatever had hit me in the head, I spy a shimmering light peeking out of the mud at my feet. Unloading the leather and snake meat package I held on Halford, I bend down and pull the glowing object out of the mud.
“It’s an essentia,” I marvel as I hold up the mud-covered pyramid to catch the orange light of the rising sun. I manage to scrape off some of the mud that covers the condensed magic in my hand and turn it over in my fingers, lost in a trance at the green light that the essentia gives off.
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“It sure is,” Kapin says as he moves to pluck the essentia out of my fingers. I bring it close to my chest and held it tight.
“Don’t you have other things that you need to take care of first?” Halford says as he bends down and picks another tied bundle of black snake leather up from the mud. In the divot through the mud that marks where the body of the snake had once been, bundles of snake leather, snake meat, and even a few bulging coin pouches are set out at even intervals.
The one power that my Gold Essentia has gifted to me when I integrated it into my soul is the ability to break down dead monsters into usable parts. As I understand it, monsters are innately magical creatures, formed out of the ambient magic that permeates the world. That allows my power to disassemble them after they die and the ego that animated them fades. It is not a wholly unique power, but it was one that adventuring parties covet for its ability to extract lingering magic out of the corpses of dead monsters, sometimes converting it into usable magic items. Where the coin purses that always seemed to accompany any use of the power come from, I didn’t know, perhaps it is a quirk of the Gold Essentia.
Over the course of the past four months since Halford convinced me to tag along with his young group of green adventurers, I have transformed the bodies of dozens of monsters into magical and mundane components. As I stare at the shining essentia that I hold, I realize that it was the first time one has ever come from my power. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that the alpha boiling python had been a rank one monster.
“That will fetch a fair bit of coin,” Halford says, looking at the essentia I hold.
“Yeah…”
“We could use that right about now with this contest that’s coming up. After this job it’s clear that we all could use some better armor. Jellian’s dagger couldn’t even scratch the big snake. Looks like it’s about time to upgrade his and Bali’s weapons to something magical.” Halford looks to the puddle of mud and water where I had been pressed on by the boiling python. The quarterstaff that I had used more as a walking stick than any real weapon jutted out of the water at odd angles.
“I’m not diving in there,” Kapin says from the edge of the water where the party’s small island of mud meets the larger bog. Where the tail of the alpha python had disappeared into the water several bundles of black leather float at the surface.
“What about everything down there that doesn’t float?” Bali asks, stepping up next to Kapin.
“Wouldn’t want to eat any of the meat down there if there is any. Don’t suppose you would want to eat boggy meat either.”
“I was thinking more about the potential for there to be a purse of coin down at the bottom.”
Kapin grunts his reply.
“The longer we wait the more likely it is to sink into the mud and be lost forever,” Bali says.
“You go and get it then.”
“I can’t swim.”
“Bullshit, you swam yesterday when we had to skip between those two islands,” Kapin says.
“No. No I didn’t.” Bali looks around and catches sight of Jellian scrounging around in the mud, searching for something. “I think that Jellian might need my medical attention,” she says. “Good luck with your treasure hunting.” She jogs off, her boots spraying spurts of mud as she makes her way over to Jellian.
Kapin looks over to where me and Halford stand looking on.
“I still have to break down the rest of these monsters,” I say, turning to search for a snake corpse.
“I can’t swim either,” Halford says as he turns and starts carrying the bundles of snake meat and leather toward a copse of long-rooted bog trees where the party’s packs have been discarded before the battle.
“You don’t lie to me, Halford Devardem. I’ve known you since before you could even toddle in a straight line!” Kapin shouts at his friend.
“Everyone has to have their shortcomings, even me,” Halford flashes his friend a smile comprised of perfectly white and almost luminescent teeth. “Perhaps mine is that I can’t swim, at least today anyway.”
Kapin turns away from Halford and spits into the mud. He grumbles something under his breath and stares at the acrid water that laps at the muddy shore. With a groan he trudges into the water. “Better be a lot of coin.”
By the time the party makes it in sight of the road each and every one of us are dragging our feet through peaty detritus. We stop for a moment before leaving the cover of the trees, dropping our bulging packs in the driest place we can find, and one at a time, following Bali over behind a large bush where the woman invokes her water essentia to drown us in enough lukewarm water to get most of the filth off. I can tell among the party who had been too shy to strip down for their own shower from the earthspeaker woman; I certainly hadn’t been, I much more enjoy the creeping chill that comes along with a drowning torrent of water to the itchiness of bog mud rubbing into my skin beneath the heavier patches of hard leather.
The rays of sunlight that began working on drying out the party when we finally climb up a slope to the road feels like the warmth of heaven. The only one who doesn’t seem to enjoy the sun’s drying rays was Bali, who keeps her head wrapped in a linen bonnet.
“Have you counted it yet?” I ask, sidling up to my brother as the party marches down the road back toward Westgrove.
“Not yet,” Halford says. He readjusts the double pack he wears on his back that holds more than half of the party’s supplies and loot, eliciting a clinking sound from the topmost one. “It has to be a lot though. I looked through a few of the pouches before packing them up, thinking that it might be a good idea to sort the copper and bronze from the iron. You won’t believe it until you see for yourself, but we found a few silvers in some of the coin pouches you disenchanted the alpha boiling python into.”
“Silver!” The word almost knocks me off my feet. “That’s insane.”
“Do you remember how much this contract was for?” Halford asks.
“No.” I answer my brother’s smug smile by pushing him and opening a side pouch on one of the packs he is hauling. I pull free a folded piece of paper and open it to reveal the job contract Halford has managed get ahold of. “Cow-killer monsters have infested a swampy area that borders several ranches owned and operated by the Novisk family North of Westgrove. Reward of fifteen silver has been offered for proof of culling the monsters. Rank One.”
“Fifteen silver,” Halford repeats. “Never had money like that before. Well, maybe between me selling off those essentia and getting the correct ones. Add to that the at least five silver that I found in those pouches, and we are looking at maybe finally getting kitted out more than a bunch of hicks from the backwoods.”
“Halford, we are hicks from the backwoods.”
Halford frowns and adjusts the pack on his back once more. Together the packs weigh more than two of me put together, but with the strength granted by Halford’s Power Essentia it is a trivial burden. “I won’t be for much longer.”
I lapse into silence as I walk next to my brother. The huge man has a determination in his eyes as he stares ahead that I can’t help but admire. I can barely remember our eldest brother anymore, he left home when I was still so little, but I always imagine that he and Halford have the same eyes.
The road South toward Westgrove winds through the soft rise and fall of the hills that make up most of the land in the far southwest of the Kingdom of Gale. I breath in air that smells of dirt and grass, letting the tension that had been building in my shoulders melt away. A man in a wagon pulled by a shaggy-haired pony passes our group going the other way. He idles off the road for a while, talking with Bali, and trades them a few loaves of bread and a jam made from oranges for a handful of copper pennies.
“Speaking of essentia,” I say, licking the last bits of orange jam off my fingers.
“Speaking of essentia?” Halford repeats.
“Earlier, we were talking about them.”
“Earlier, as in three hours ago I think I mentioned them,” Halford says as he wraps some bread in a checkered napkin to stow away.
“Right. Since we were talking about them, I thought that I might want to try out that one that we found,” I say as nonchalantly as I can manage.
Halford stops dead in his tracks and looks back at me. “Try out? The green-glowing one that you disenchanted from the alpha snake, the one that Jellian identified as being the Snake Essentia; that one?”
“Yeah, that one. I was thinking that I might want to go ahead and integrate that one. It looked way different from the Gold Essentia that Corinth sent me. That one didn’t glow at all. I do like green a lot.”
“Charlene, you don’t want a Snake Essentia. Integrating essentia is the kind of choice that you can never take back. It is a really big deal which essentia you end up bonding with your soul, your very soul Charlene. Besides, who knows what kind of power you might awaken with a Snake Essentia. I know the powers that people awaken are specific to them and individualized, but I can’t imagine a snake power being anything flattering. I once saw a man who had taken in the Rat Essentia and it had given him a prehensile tail that was six feet long. Animal based essentia do that sometimes, change your body. You don’t want to end up with a forked tongue or something.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I think that might be interesting. Think how fancy I would look if I got a few snake scales here and there and if those mixed with my gold essentia somehow and were golden.”
“You want snake scales?”
“Just a few, like maybe around the eyes and hands. I bet Halli Mason would just spit if I came around shiny like a horse in new shoes.”
Halford shakes his head and fails to keep himself from laughing. “You haven’t really given me a reason for it. The best way to use essentia is to align them with what you want to do in life. Mostly, the powers that come are made for fighting or defending yourself, but you only need to look at Dad to see how useful they could be if chosen carefully. How many more rows of trees did he manage to plant this last summer? Sixteen?”
“I think that’s right,” I admit.
“You see, that is how valuable these powers are. Just by having the bare-bone abilities attained at rank one he will out compete all of the other farmers in Lord Tammian’s territory by a wide margin. Corinth finally remembered that he had a family and sent enough coin to tide the family over for a few years, but the essentia he sent were worth all of that and more. He specifically selected the essentia he sent dad to give him the Green Conflux. Say what you will about him, but Corinth at least cared enough to do that.”
“Never said anything against him,” I say. “That’s all you.”
“Well…either way. Wait for him to send the other two.”
“Weren’t you the one that convinced mom to let you go off to be an adventurer because we haven't heard from him in over a year now? She only agreed because she thought you might be able to get more information about him if you joined some big guild.”
“No one let me do anything,” Halford says. “I was always going to be an adventurer. Unlike Corinth, I’ll make sure to help our family out with whatever coin I can make.”
“Also,” I go on, “you sold the ones he sent you. If you think that it’s so important for me to wait for whatever Corinth has in mind for me then how come you went off and sold them?”
Halford snorts. “That’s because Corinth wants me to be a farmer. Of course, he still thought of me as some kid who wanted to take over the orchard from dad when he grew up. He couldn’t have sent me the right ones, because he didn’t know me.”
“Not to mention that you wanted to get your friend all powered up too,” I say under my breath.
“Yeah, I did want to do that. Me and Kapin know what we want. Wasn’t going to leave him behind when I went off to make something important of myself.”
“Yet it’s a bad idea for me to do the same thing now all of a sudden?”
“The difference between Kapin, me, and you, is that me and Kapin know what we want to make of our lives. We were always going to forge our own way, with our own strength. We’ve known what essentia we wanted since we were twelve. Spent enough time in the Westgrove library to pick them out. What is it that you want to do with yourself, Charlene? Can you answer that?”
I glance away down the road. A sign that announces a fork in the road that will bring us to Westgrove in the next few hours hangs loose, swaying in the breeze, all but a single nail having come loose. I wind a lock of my springy orange hair around my finger.
“No,” I finally say. “I don’t know. It’s not the kind of thing I think about a lot.”
“You’re seventeen now, Charlene. It’s long past time that you figured out what you are going to do with yourself. If you don’t want to do anything more than sit around the family house as dad starts to make himself wealthy off the luxury of pear trees, then that is fine. You’ll likely be in real pretty dresses soon, I know mom wants to get herself a shiny new house, maybe built on the hill overlooking the orchards. If that is what you want to do though, you should definitely wait for Corinth to send the rest of whatever he has cooked up for you. He started with a Gold Essentia, must be something special.”
“Maybe,” I say, scuffing my boot in the dirt of the road. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good.”
“Just don’t go selling that essentia until I have some time to think it over. Even if you do think a Snake Essentia is weird.”
“I think all the animal essentia are weird, except maybe eagle.”
“Alright. Well, even if you think it’s weird, can you promise me that you won’t get rid of it for a few days at least.” I tried to put an arm around my brother, but barely managed to touch his far shoulder.
He laughs again and returned the hug. “Sure thing.”