The first time Sieva felt genuine fear towards another person had been when his father had killed the wanderer during that particularly harsh winter. The way he looked at their victim had been passive, aloof, almost like the way one would look at a pile of berries about to be picked, except berries didn’t scream or beg you for mercy.
It was the first time he had seen not his father, but the beginnings of the man who would eventually become Sintel, the third mad king of Prithia and ruler of the Salt Swarm. Perhaps that was the start of his transformation, because before that day his memories of his father were mostly those of a good man. Weathered and bitter from the hard lives they led, but kind and loving nonetheless.
The fear he had felt towards Sintel that day on the lake was more akin to the fear one showed towards a hurricane or tsunami. It was equal parts the awe of witnessing a force of nature many times the might of any kingdom of man, and dread at the realization that the being in front of him would heed no plea, take no bargain. Dread that Sintel would simply take what was wanted, and that he had no hope but to resign himself to the uncaring whims of this pure force of nature.
The fear he now feels as he beholds Caltomarra is different from the other two cases. It is not the indifference of a hunter, nor the uncaring destruction by a new god. Instead, it is pure, focused malevolence, targeting him and only him as it slithers its way through his pores and into the core of his very being. At that moment, it feels like Caltomarra’s intentions are for him and him alone.
‘Hm… orc, and a young one at that. A shame that my son found you first, otherwise I’d snatch you up in an instant. Are you sure you won’t consider working on my side?’
He almost agrees out of instinct. Deep down, there is a primal desire to submit to the sheer power of Caltomarra’s presence. She feels like a more sentient version of Sintel, and it is a constant struggle trying to convince himself that fighting back against this person is even possible.
His voice comes out subdued, the normal deep, growling intonation faltering into something higher, pitched upwards due to an almost hyperventilating diaphragm.
‘G-go… fuck yourself…’
Suddenly the entire right side of his body is pinned against the cliff wall behind him, and Caltomarra is frighteningly close, enough so that he is able to see the pulsating veins on the arm currently holding him in place. One of her fingernails scrapes over the back of his hand, and it leaves a trail of icy numbness behind.
‘Shame, really. Your knucklebones have such nice curvatures. You would have made a wonderful ingredient. It’s really so infuriatingly hard to find a fully sentient orc nowadays.’
Her sun hat blocks out the sky, and now he’s staring directly into her eyes. Her irises are unnaturally white, almost like the ivory walls of the Kepian capital. When next to the blackness of her pupils, they almost seem to glow, drawing his own vision inwards. The sounds of wind and wildlife fade, and his world is now only her voice.
‘Tell me, orcling. Did you know your parents? Were they sane like you, or is your mind just a lucky byproduct? Are you truly conscious? Or is it just a facade from some more esoteric aspect of one of your dead sea gods? As much as I don’t want to believe it, I’m leaning more towards the latter. I’ve never even met an orc with a fully functioning sense of self, much less a-’
Caltomarra’s inquiry is cut short by the sound of glass shattering, and her grip on him suddenly falters. He drops to the floor like a sack of flour, and is promptly ignored as she turns around to look at Gibet.
Her back is filled with pieces of glass shrapnel, all dripping with some sort of foul green liquid. Drops that fall on the floor sizzle, producing a very strong smell of sulfur. Before his very eyes, the flesh on her back seems to start sliding off, as if it were made of viscous sludge. Muscle, skin, and ligaments all form together into a growing pile of viscera on the floor.
Despite missing a multitude of muscles needed to move, Caltomarra is still able to do so, her exposed shoulder bones getting pulled along by tendons that no longer exist. She clasps her hands and folds them beneath her chin, giggling like an excited school girl even as the corrosion of her flesh starts spreading to the rest of her body.
‘Oh, Gibby! Was that a necrosis bomb you used just now?! Ohhhhh, I’m so proud! I can’t believe you’ve moved up to brewing class one potions at your age!’
The melting quickens, and Caltomarra’s body starts to sink downwards as her spine loses the structural integrity needed to stand upright.
‘Right then! Not much time left, so listen up buster! I know how excited you are for my little homecoming visit, but mommy’s a busy little bee with lots of important appointments to make! I know you get lonely out here on your own, so I’ve gone ahead and hired some friends to keep you company! In fact, I think you’ve already met two of them!’
Assassins. That’s who that man that attacked Lily and him was. Judging from the blood soaked alleyway he pulled Gibet and Bedivere out of, the same thing probably happened to them as well.
It’s his first time having his life actively targeted with intent, and he would have started to panic over it had Caltomarra not been right in front of him. She drops a large rucksack from the insides of her dress (not sure how she fits something that big under her dress, and he doesn’t want to contemplate it).
‘Now don’t think I’m going to just leave you alone with nothing to entertain them! You’re the heir to house Tudor after all, so show them some proper hospitality!’
At this point, Caltomarra is more liquid than solid, her entire lower body having melted down into a rancid puddle. What remains of her chest and head stay solid barely long enough to gurgle out a few last words.
‘One of them’s actually headed over right now! Make meee…e…. pppproouddddddd……’
For some time, he simply stares at the puddle, unable to comprehend how badly their situation had escalated. Bedivere is still unconscious, and Lily had disintegrated after making that copy of him, so he isn’t even sure if she’s alive.
Off in the distance, he hears the faint sound of a wood flute.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
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Gibet kneels down next to the rucksack, trying his best to get it open through his spinning vision. He hears the flute play in the distance, and it makes his chest throb.
He knows this instrument, but even more so, he knows this song. It was etched into his very soul as a young child, when Caltomarra had taken him to accompany the rest of the Tudor bannerman during the battle of Hakobyan’s gulf.
Caltomarra had sat him down on a vantage point and made him watch as Ellah the Wood Witch devastated an entire rebel ship fleet with a flute and a bag of seeds. She had even given him smell and sight enhancement potions so that he could sit there, mesmerized at every death.
‘Do you see, Gibby? Do you see how there are gods that live among us? How to someone like her, a city’s worth of people might as well be the same as an ant? Smell the death, son. Smell it and remember it.’
A nail painfully digs itself into his chin, and then his whole world was Caltomarra’s softly smiling face.
‘Mommy’s even stronger than her, Gibby. Mommy could wipe her off the face of this continent with the same effort you use to wipe the filth out of your eyes when you wake up in the morning, so if you want to kill mommy, make sure you can deal with her first, ok?’
It had seemed like an impossible task, still seems like one in fact, but now Ellah was coming to kill him, so he shoves his fear into the backburner and looks inside the rucksack.
A set of brand new alchemical tools and a bunch of ingredients. But these weren’t the standard everyday items he was so used to working with. No, he couldn’t see a single ingredient here that wasn’t class one. Sure, he knew what most of them were, but he had never worked with most of these in his life. Evidently, Caltomarra had finally decided that it was time to give him some hands-on training at it.
Though his mind is blank, his body moves out of instinct, grabbing what materials he needed in preparation to set up a makeshift brewery.
The canyon they were currently in was too tight. He needed to go higher, gain ventilation lest he ends up choking Bedivere and Sieva with the fumes. He drags the rucksack over to the canyon wall. It’s too heavy to carry up, and the walls are too smooth to climb.
He’s about to turn back and think of some other way when he feels a shaky hand grab onto his shoulder. Sieva stands behind him, wordlessly staring at him in equal parts fear, determination, and surprisingly anger. He gets lifted into a sloppy piggyback, the rucksack hanging off of Sieva’s front. He climbs upwards silently.
When they get out of the canyon, he sees her figure, still a small black line against the horizon. The flutesong rings through the air clearly, almost as if it was being played directly in front of him.
‘Hey Gibet?’
‘Hm?’
‘Compared to that duel against Nawy that I keep hearing Lily gush about, how much more fucked would you say our situation is?’
‘...Instinctively? I’d say we have no chance.’
He directs Sieva over to a small outcropping of rocks. Once he’s set down, he has him rip their clothing into sheets, which then are tied to them and the rock, keeping them attached to the boulders.
‘Analytically? Maybe a coin flip based on how well I can brew what I’m about to try.’
Sieva asks a follow up, but it fades out into the background as he looks at the ingredients in the rucksack. His hands shake, mostly out of fear, but deep down there is also a small part of him trembling in excitement at what he’s about to try and pull out of his ass.
Ellah was a relatively famous figure in Kepia, especially in the latter days of the war. This was actually a hidden blessing, because it meant that her abilities were very well known. Per the matriarch’s words, knowing the nature of the enemy’s abilities was half the battle.
‘Don’t just assume you can win if you know their abilities, you idiot. The fact that they’re famous just means that they’re strong enough to win battles even with enemies having prior knowledge of their abilities.’
That was also the matriarch’s words, ones spoken right after the prior, in fact, and Ellah was a rather good example of the sentiment.
Originally, she was just a no-name practitioner of wind magic, using music as her medium instead of a more traditional wand or staff. Maybe not even a decade ago, she was reportedly making a living harvesting rare ingredients in the vast, underground prehistoric settlements at the base of the continental lift.
The stories of how she acquired her current powers are as varied as the number of clouds in the sky, but they all agree that one day she ventured too deep underground and encountered something… more, and that she had returned to the surface with a newfound ability to literally grow plants out of her body.
The things she could grow were completely unique to her, and were not plants that have ever been cataloged anywhere else in Kepia. They varied from bulbs filled with corrosive acid to flowers that spit out plumes of fire, and Ellah could grow hundreds in the span of minutes.
Combined with her mediocre but sufficient proficiency in wind magic, and she could blow her plants into the air towards enemies while they were still seedlings before growing them in midair into a literal plant based artillery barrage.
The flute suddenly pitches higher, startling him out of his thoughts. The wind also noticeably picks up.
Right, it was do or die.
There’s no way he can win against Ellah, but he doesn’t have to. He just needs to distract her artillery for long enough that they can all escape back to the academy. Granted, that requires running towards Ellah, but hopefully what he’s planning will create enough chaos that she won’t be able to pick them out.
‘Sieva, can you do me a favor?’
‘Don’t think I can afford not to in this situation.’
‘I’m probably going to be too weak to move after what I’m about to do. Do you think you can carry Bedivere and I back to the academy after?’
‘Fucking hell… Yeah, I’ll try my best…’
‘Good. Use the canyons as cover. Leave the rucksack if you have to.’
He starts pulling out the ingredients that he needed.
If Ellah plans to bomb them all to dust, then he could send his own artillery barrage right back at her. Sure, it won’t beat her, but it would cause enough chaos to let them escape.
He needed two things; something to act as artillery and something to actually launch it.
He pulls out an Arelith root and begins grinding it down into powder. Each time the pestle mashes into the root, small bursts of wind escape from the root. The gusts eventually form into a small tornado around him, kicking up dust and small plants.
Eventually, it starts to pull up rocks and even small trees and cacti. He has Sieva continue grinding the root for him, while he reaches back into the pack.
Now for the actual potion. He recites the rules he has known since childhood.
‘Ingredient, catalyst, stabilizer.’
The fundamental requirements for a potion remain the same, no matter if he is making a cold remedy or a mythical class two potion.
For the ingredient, a Fusiona pedal , rumored to originate from an asteroid that struck the planet eons ago. The pedals have a soft glow to them, and its dark blue leaves vaguely remind him of the night sky. It’s lighter than air, and he has to guide it into the brewing stand with gentle motions, any wind from his arms moving being enough to make it flutter away from his grasp.
For the catalyst, high grade alchemical water with alkahest, the legendary universal solvent. Make sure not to touch it, lest it dissolves him along with the Fusiona.
For the stabilizer, bark from a Nexus Tree, only found in the root caves deep beneath the underground shrine of Wispgarden. Bind the very earth into the potion. Unchanging, unmoveable, eternal.
He suddenly feels a pull, and opens his eyes. The bottle of Moon Mimic stares back at him, and he has to resist getting pulled in by its gravity. The tornado above him dips noticeable towards the bottle in his hands, in danger of collapsing.
He quickly takes the bottom and holds it up to the sky. Agitating the potion with his magic feels like trying to paddle a boat through an ocean of honey. The more mana he uses, the greater the resistance. Ever so slowly, the solution starts to vaporize, getting pulled up into the tornado above him.
He’s barely conscious by the time the entire potion is gone, and collapses into Sieva, who supports him into a sitting position. Slowly, the debris inside the tornado start to clump together, forming small pieces, then medium ones, then big ones. Despite this, the increased weight does not make them fall to the ground. Instead, the tornado continues to spin, creating a miniature asteroid field surrounding them.
The plant barrage from Ellah was almost upon them. With the last of his strength, Gibet flings the powdered Arelith root into the air, directing it with all the mana he had left. The gust of wind that follows is more like a hurricane, and it blows his asteroid field towards Elllah’s plant barrage. There is a period of silence as the two fields head towards one another.
Then one of the flower buds touches a rock and explodes, and suddenly the ground is shaking and he is getting carried by Sieva. The walls of the canyon pass his vision, and he hears constant explosions and the sound of rocks falling and almost crushing them.
At some point, some sort of liquid splashes onto his forehead from the sky. It burns his skin on contact, and he screams until he passes out.