Faith… didn’t know where she was going. She knew that in her heart, but part of her was still in denial. When she had wandered into the furthest village in the north, where the spores of the forest stung at her lungs and the wind started to be infected by the creeping cold of the coming winter, the people there had asked her why she was there. They did not take kindly to those of the faiths it looked like, or rather they were too deep into their own traditions. Nominally this land was under the rule of the Jackalopes, only a few hundred miles removed from the capital, but the banners of the horned rabbit did not flap under the small stone cottages.
In another time, another life, she would have considered this the perfect opportunity to preach. To bring in more to the flock of the Golden Promise, not yet infected by the lies of their brethren of the Orthodox Atomic Priesthood. But the very idea of that tasted sour in her mouth now, she could not bear to even consider it without a cold shudder down her spine. The smell of ash and charred flesh, the phantom sight and heat of rising flames, and the confused knot of emotions eating away at her heart.
So when asked why she was here, she simply said. “To learn the secrets of the forest.”
They had tried to stop her. Talk her out of it. Though it was evident her presence was not appreciated and merely tolerated at the best of times, the people were not heartless enough to simply abandon her to what they must have seen as a doomed fate.
“Come stay with us for a while!”
“Don’t you know there’s nothing there?”
“What a foolish girl…”
She knew it was stupid. But it wasn’t as though anything else in the bomb-blasted world made any sense… she ended up accepting a gas mask and lodging for the night with a local Dox ranching family at the closest point to the great forest anyone dared to settle. Even then, this place was usually abandoned when the spores were at their worst in late spring or early autumn, according to the old patriarch of the farmhouse. She broke bread with them, sang their children the old songs she was taught, thanked them for their hospitality, and left before dawn. Not anticipating to ever see another day, not knowing where exactly she was going besides north.
While she was a small twig, one of the masses of orphans under the care of the Church, they had told stories to her about the before times. Before the First Judgement, the End of the World. In ancient times they said mankind was created from two beings, perfect and free of sin. There were two trees they were forbidden from touching in the pristine garden where life was created under the watchful eyes of God. The Tree of Knowledge, and the Tree of Life. They would eat from the first tree and be banished from the garden, and the other tree would become poison to them. So that when they were replanted by the angels at the end of the world they would form an impenetrable barrier around the secrets of Heaven.
She continued to walk, as the sparse margins of small saplings and little puffballs gave way to towering giants of wood and spore. Simultaneously full of and devoid of life, the silence was truly uncanny. At first, there were bones, animals that had wandered too deep and suffocated to death, perhaps looking for a meal during the lean times when the spores were gone only to be too slow in evacuating once the blooms began in earnest. Soon even those stopped, as those who went this far either had means of dealing with the toxin or would have perished long before.
The air was getting thick now. While before she could afford to take off her mask for periods of rest, now she could barely keep it off long enough to choke down food and water. Thank God her mutations allowed her to persist on very little but sunlight and fluids, preserving her ability to traverse further in without needing to stop more. If not for that she may have burned through her resources by the third or fourth day of camping, especially with no ability to light a fire, having been adamantly warned of the flammability of the spores. And this was when the spores were thinning, she could not imagine what it was like when they were at their thickest. The locals had folktales of furred men in these woods, giant insects, and monstrous creatures. The Forest Kin, the Sasquatch and their servants. It was a foolish notion she thought, now that she could see the true potential of these toxic woods. Surely nothing could live this.
Funny, the way the world always finds a way to prove her wrong.
For not long after she had that thought she stumbled across a great coiled… thing… at the base of the tree. Bone-white chitin, a serpentine body, and hundreds of razor-tipped legs. She remembered in the Holy Book they spoke of a serpent in the garden, who had tempted the First Woman into partaking in forbidden fruit.
This did not seem like the sort of demon who was a tempter. The venom that dripped from its maw was quite literal, especially seeing how it dribbled onto a stone below and left gouges in its wake where rock was eaten away. Thankfully it seemed dead asleep, and did not seem liable to wake any time soon. So long as she was careful enough, she should be capable of slipping away without issue…
So focused was she on the slumbering predator before her, she failed to notice as her foot landed squarely on a branch. Snapping loudly and echoing throughout the empty forest. She winced and opened one eye slowly at a time, perhaps the thing wouldn’t be roused so easily?
The great coil before her spun into action, sluggishly at first and then at a terrible speed. Compound eyes spun into activity while great antennae extended from the tip of its flat head. All of its sensory organs fixed onto her, and she felt cold dread itch up her spine. Shit.
With a skittering roar it lunged after her, and with barely a fraction of a second to react she ungracefully rolled out of the way. A stray trail of acid spun onto her face, ironically not being able to outpace the healing capabilities of her body, but very distinctly doing damage to her mask. The thing she needed to breathe.
She could worry about that later, however, as a massive tail covered with razor-tipped legs swung towards her while she was still largely prone. She avoided the brunt of it by a hair yet again, but she got a foot severed in the process. Channeling her Si downwards to regenerate the flesh, she felt her reserves drain dangerously. It wasn’t as though there wasn’t ambient Si in the environment to recharge, but the fungi were gobbling it up too quickly. With how hungry her mutation was, and how little was going back in her system, she could not afford any more scrapes like that if she wanted to survive.
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Repeating a silent prayer in her mind over and over, she quickly picked herself up and sprinted away as fast as possible. Hearing the great long insect chasing after her shortly behind, slowed down only by its bulk needing to navigate around the dense foliage. And even then only barely, it was after all far more adapted to this place than she was. She continued to pray over and over as she ran, begging the God of the Golden Promise for salvation, so that she may live on this earth a bit longer before the Second Judgement.
As it happens her prayers would be answered.
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When they left the village of the Hurn tribe, or whatever weird pronunciation they used, Cobalt could not help but feel a certain heaviness upon her. It had been easy to ignore it until now, so filled with pettier concerns as they were. But now that they had been walking a couple of days in the dense, eerily silent forest, creeping feelings of doubt were worming their way through her traitorous mind. Her ‘plan’ was in truth more a series of half-baked ideas that had the vague possibility of coming up with results than anything worth the title. She had no idea what she was doing, yet clearly, John was deferring to her judgement. And why wouldn’t he really? For as long as they had known each other they were never truly equals, her rank and cultivation alone meant she was easily well above his level even without considering the status her blood father bought. She could probably count on one finger the number of individuals truly born to Cultivators with strength worthy the title after all. Not that it mattered now of course, the only reason she had not admitted her current feelings was the fact that doing so would probably hurt their morale in a way she did not have the emotional intelligence to deal with.
And for the matter of strength… if it came down to it she had no doubt she could beat John in a fight. But she had to admit his rate of growth was downright shocking. If her count was correct he had four mutations right now and with two more he would have caught up to her, who had been in the world of cultivators for almost as long as she could walk. There was also the matter of the fact he had apparently split open during his final trial upon ascending to the Mutant Realm, a fact as far as she knew had been taken to the grave by the Elders of the Lead Cave and Magni. It did not quite fit the patterns of a regular Mutation, in fact, John himself seemed barely cognizant of the apparent event, but even so, it spoke interesting things about his potential. He was truly blessed by the heavens and spirits it seemed, and it drew to her attention just how much she had allowed her cultivation to stagnate. She still loved a good fight, don’t get her wrong, but in truth, she hadn’t been pursuing strength for a good long while. Even now she wasn’t exactly envious of the boy who seemed too uncaring of the parasite lodged in his body and the damage he regularly took on to achieve his goals. Impulsive, self-destructive and stubborn to a fault. In other words, he was the true essence of a Cultivator.
And that was exactly why she could not let John Zhou Aurelium lose his faith in her, not yet at least. The type of person he was, he could either carve out a legend like Cunningham who had reached the Aberrant Realm within months of emerging from a Citadel to the charred wasteland. Or he could just as, and probably more, easily walk straight into doom unflinching at the consequences. If she had let herself behind up to now she had to change that, even if that meant becoming more like… like her father.
Despite everything the old man was right. She was soft, wasn’t she?
Thankfully she was no longer alone in this task as well, for Gorekin had proven even more eager to leave the forest than perhaps even she was. He had led them across the forest down secret migration paths his people made, eagerly asking them questions about the human world almost as often as he would answer their questions about things like hunting, foraging and generally surviving in these woods. He would have made a fantastic teacher, certainly if he had applied his passion to the details of Cultivation he would have easily been better than most Core Disciples she knew. That innocent passion about all things that to her were mundane as well as the detail in which he broke down everything from which roots or fungal pods were best to eat or where to find the elusive great insects that his people hunted for meat were a lovely change of pace. Something that made her think perhaps he could also serve as a voice of reason to draw John, or even her, back when they would make a mistake too far.
“Ooh! So that what gun do!” She heard Gorekin say beside her as they stopped for a short break. The tall beast-man digging a well in a large root to collect water as John seemed to relay some form of explanation on human weapons. “Very interest! Shoot little stone yes? Wonder what that feel like?”
Cobalt felt her skin ripple at that. Maybe it was too much to expect him to be another voice of reason after all…
“I mean… well… I think I can replicate that right now actually. I don’t have such a good grip on my psychic control yet but if I ask Artos… alright we can do it!” John all-too-cheerily piped up.
“NOBODY IS SHOOTING ANYONE!” She insisted loudly with a hiss. Making sure to flare her colours aggressively to ensure her point was made. “CAN YOU EVEN HEAL FROM THAT GOREKIN?”
“I have Forest Blessing, I will be like you! You heal fast yes?” Gorekin suggested.
“YOU ONLY JUST GOT THAT! YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE ANY MUTATIONS!” She re-iterated.
Gorekin shrugged. “Forest-Kin flesh not so… water like… as human. Change not so much even at strongest. Is natural way of things.”
She sighed, putting her face into her claws and resting the blades against her scales. “I don’t care if you can recover from it, or if you are kracking bulletproof already, I just th-”
She stopped in her tracks, her ears picking up something moving in the distance. Clearly, Gorekin picked it up too, given how he and all his hairs stiffened, his body seeming to puff up one and a half times its original volume. John, still the least perceptive of their crew, looked around in confusion but also seemed to prepare for imminent battle.
It was long, and it was fast. Not quite as massive as a Mauler and certainly not as fast as the strongest of them got, but more agile with what seemed to be a worm-like body with hundreds of legs. It was chasing something too, something much smaller. Her nose caught the scent of acrid poison laced with some sort of acid and with it something else. An unmistakably tantalising smell, sweeter than the rarest fruit and spiced with what she now knew to be the taste of complete fear…
“There’s something big running towards us, long with many legs, and both fast and capable of navigating the trees. And it’s chasing a human, I am certain of it.” She reported, wiping away the saliva from the edge of her mouth and forcing some of the more concerning thoughts out of her mind.
“What do we do?” John asked.
She prepared her camouflage, altering her skin and drawing power through her hairs weaved through her robe to blend in perfectly with the background. Utilising her keen senses to make a map of all the shades and textures around her so that she may remain hidden even in movement, the perfect ambush predator. “If it is chasing only one prey it won’t be prepared to take on more. I can feel it is a strong Spirit Beast, but if we take it by surprise it shouldn’t stand a chance. Gorekin, can you also prepare an ambush?”
Gorekin looked at the spears he had taken for the journey, sturdy things closer to sharpened trees than any mortal weapon. “Should be no problem.”
“Alright, at this rate we have maybe thirty seconds before they arrive on our location, but I doubt whoever the thing is chasing would last that long.” She surmised, tasting the wind for estimations.
“Which means we will take the ambush to them!” John surmised.
Though they probably couldn’t see her, she nodded in response and licked her fangs. It had been quite a while since she had a proper hunt after all.