The fog creature let out a soft moaning sound, which seemed to come from both very far away and just nearby. As a swirl opened in its face, in a strange imitation of a mouth, I wondered; what did fog creatures eat? It started moving towards me, raising its translucent hands out in front, and I decided I was not that curious.
I spun on my heel and ran. I could see the imp some distance ahead of me, meaning it had started fleeing well before I had. So much for loyalty. Then again, I had not exactly struck up a conversation before running myself.
We rushed through swamp water, weaving between the occasional clusters of trees, the flying imp was unbothered by the muddy water, while my splashing loudly proclaimed our location to anything curious. All the while it felt like something was just behind me, ready to attack. I could hear the moaning of the fog creature, though it was very hard to judge the distance by the sound it made. I did not look back, that seemed like a very foolish thing to do while running.
**
Eventually my stamina ran out and I stumbled over to a drier looking patch of ground and slumped down on it, as I looked back at where we had come from. I could not see anything behind us, which I hoped meant the creature was gone.
"Well, the ... thing, seems to be gone." The imp chimed in, sounding more hopeful than assertive, something I could sympathize with. I was not sure if I was happy about the lack of life in the swamp or not, the stillness was frightening in its own way, though it was very preferable to actually being attacked. After a few minutes of panting and no fog creature in sight I relaxed somewhat. Having no better plan and being rested enough to move, I picked a direction in the swamp and trudged on, my path poorly lit by moonlight.
Sloshing through the swamp without any idea of what direction we were truly moving in was mentally draining, and being soaked through did not help. At least the smell of the pens was not as big of a deal anymore, while I would not call myself clean by any stretch, splashing through a swamp was an actual improvement in that respect.
Judging time was hard with only a moon above to go by, but by the feel of it, I guessed we had spent more than an hour walking when the swamp to the front and right of us gave way to a steep hill, with water flowing down it in a clear rivulet. I scrambled up the side of the slope as the imp lazily flew ahead. The sight that met me at the top left me stunned for a moment.
The moonlight lit on a stream into which a small waterfall fell, the fall came down off a low rising mountain, which had been obscured by the hill and the distance as it rose some hundred meters away. At the top of the hill where I stood, the stream opened up into an almost circular pool before running down into the swamp below. There was a thick mat of strange, thin, grass covering the hill, and a multitude of flowers sat at the waters edge. Two majestic trees rose to either side of the stream near the edge of the pool, thick roots occasionally visible in the water as they broke through the bed.
While the mountain was not very high, it stretched off into the distance as far as I could see, which admittedly was not very far in the current light. The sound of the waterfall, though powerful, seemed muffled, which I assumed was an effect of the thickly growing trees closer to it.
As I looked down at the pool of water, I was surprised that I was not thirsty, while I had eaten some fruit and that would have helped, I had not actually drunk anything during all the time that I had been hungry. Should I not have felt thirsty as well? Even now, I could clearly eat again, not quite hungry, but getting there. But I was not thirsty at all.
I bent down over the water and took a sip using my hand. It felt refreshing and cold, but no surge of previously suppressed thirst emerged. That made me quite worried, one possibility was that I did not need water anymore, or maybe just less of it, for some reason. The other possibility, and the far more dangerous one, was that I did not feel thirst anymore.
On that thought I started drinking from the pool, but it only took a few mouthfuls until I had to run over to the side and throw up a cascade of water. I stared down at the puddle I had left on the ground, wondering just what was going on? Would I ever get answers to all my questions?
With a sigh I went back to the pool of water and started to undress, I would get clean and wash my clothes.
I would do my best to never think of that bath and washing for the rest of my life, safe to say, it took a long time. Another mystery reared its head though, I found that I had dried blood in my ears, and probably remnants around my eyes as well, though that was harder to tell.
Having cleaned off and with a feeling of being a bit more optimistic than the situation warranted, I spread out my now decidedly threadbare clothes near the pool to dry. I sat down on a smooth stone to let myself dry off. At least I could rejoice that it was not autumn yet, though even so I seemed to be very unbothered by being wet and naked at night, to my mind it should have been colder. I looked around as I remembered the imp, but seeing it nowhere I shrugged and tried to relax, though a spike of pain in my head put an end to that plan.
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As I rubbed my temples yet again and hoped that this pain would be over soon, I remembered that I had no weapons anymore. I started a new hunt for stones near the stream, where many of them were worn smooth. I thought about how my enchanted stones had harmlessly flown through the fog creature, how exactly would I fight something like that?
I decidedly ignored the question as I sat down cross legged to enchant new weapons once more.
You have created 41 Stone of Fire Burst!
Experience gained: 13
As the light of dawn started to color the horizon I held the last enchanted stone and sighed. I had failed a few times earlier in the night, but that had soon stopped, and with it apparently any experience from enchanting.
The crazy imp had not shown up during any of my cleaning or enchanting, I wondered if the creature had just used me as a way to get out of the compound and now it was off doing whatever imps did, to my annoyance I had to fight off the urge to start searching for Zackary. When had I started to think of the imp as Zackary anyway?
I was starting to get tired, though I did feel that sleeping near the pool was too exposed and while cleaning and enchanting certainly had made me vulnerable had anything dangerous shown up, lying down to sleep would take that to another level.
My clothes had dried some, but far from completely. Seeing no better option right now, I got dressed, with the intent of finding a safe place to rest. To my frustration I had enchanted more Stones of Fire Burst than I could carry in my pockets, while I could have some in my hands, moving through a swamp or a forest with both hands occupied seemed a foolish idea.
It was with some regret that I left a few of the stones behind as I started walking towards the waterfall, I really should have thought through my capacity for carrying them before I spent the time enchanting, especially considering the lack of experience gained at the end.
I put my regrets, minor as they were, aside as I picked my way amongst the stones near the stream where the passage was easier. The grass was more uncomfortable on my bare feet than the stones, surprisingly. The grass would occasionally cut through skin, by now I left small patches of blood behind, something that did not strike me as the best of practices, but for the lack of good options I kept going.
I picked the direction I did in the hope that anything other than swampland would show me a way out of both the swamp and the forest, and hopefully orient me enough that I could find my way back to Logate.
The waterfall fell into another large pool before running off toward where I had washed and bathed earlier, it was not a very high fall, but the closer I got, the more strange I felt that it was; that the sound of the fall did not get louder as I moved. Then all of a sudden I felt Mana in the air and stopped, there was a thin barrier in front of me, stretching to the sides and upward as far as Sense the Flow could discern, which was admittedly not very far.
My goal had been to use the side of the mountain to orient myself and walking toward the waterfall had offered easier footing, my plan did not include potentially finding a magical creature which would no doubt disapprove at being disturbed. I changed my path away from the waterfall, though still toward the mountainside and kept going.
While I was not exactly worried, the missing imp grated on me in a way I could not define. We had no need to form a familiar bond if it would just run off, though I supposed it was a way for it to get a free meal so to speak. Here or not, I assumed the imp would drain away some of my Mana. I did start to wonder if I could break the bond somehow, a thought that was accompanied by another flash of pain in my head. I groggily considered if the imp was the cause of all this, but no, that was not possible, Zackary was too kind and caring to cause me any pain.
It did not take me too long to reach the mountainside and then start to move further away from the waterfall along it. I was wracking my brain trying to recall if anyone had ever spoken about a mountain near Logate, but considering I had barely heard anyone talk about the swamp it was not strange that I drew a blank on the subject.
**
I had walked for quite some time, along dry and solid ground which made a very welcome change of pace, I did keep cutting my feet every now and then but it was bearable.
"There you are! You just left me!"
I could not help but grin as I heard the imp scream behind me with indignation, I shrugged and replied while it had still not caught up to me.
"I had no idea where you were, for all that I knew you had been eaten by something nasty." I could just imagine the expression on its face and grinned even wider, maybe I did like the creature after all.
"And if I got eaten, you would just walk away, not even trying to avenge me?!" I considered that for a moment.
"Pretty much, yes." I blinked as flashes of light danced before my eyes, causing me to stumble.
With flapping wings the imp came to hover in front of my face, almost nose to nose. I flinched back from it, and rubbed at my chest as a memory of dark eyes and pain came to me. The imp looked confused by whatever it saw in my expression, but soon rallied.
"You care that little for me?" There was a tinge of hurt in the question, which made me consider how I would phrase a reply a bit more carefully, though not too much.
"Yes. You have been my familiar for less than half a day and so far, neither of us have shown much care for the other, did you think I would suddenly love you? You can be amusing, but you have not been very useful. Further, you have also shown quite clearly you value your own hide far more than mine, so what exactly is your problem?" I rubbed my temples as my head throbbed, I was far too harsh on Zackary, I should not hurt its feelings for so trivial a reason.
The imp blinked in surprise, apparently my answer was not what it had expected.
"I see, maybe this was a bad idea then!" It huffed out and I rolled my eyes.
"We are connected by the bond, that does not magically make us care about each other, that is something that might come in time, with actual effort."
For a moment the imp's light blue color gave way to a flash of red.
"But it should have made you care!" The shout rang loudly and the imp's face transformed into one of shocked regret. Apparently there was more to the familiar bond than I had been aware. The question from the Order did not mention that, though admittedly it did not explain the familiar bond at all. But regardless, the imp was a manipulative little monster and I was seriously regretting agreeing to have anything to do with it.
I shoved the creature aside and started stumbling forward, as my head spun, I needed sleep.
"Go away, and stay away!" I shouted, with all the anger I felt, as the pain in my head rose to incredible levels and my vision swam worse than ever, I hated the imp. It was so very nice to me, what would I do without Zackary?