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1.7
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The road back to Pineskeep was tense.
There was a nervous energy in the air as many of the guards who had been present reflected on the battle. Most of them hadn’t done more than just provide support, or chase down the Beast as it fled, wounded. But for many of them, that had been the first time any of them had seen a creature like them.
For Basil, that too had been the first time.
Even now he still shivered at the thought.
The Beast’s rage and hunger. His own fear, a cold iron grip in his heart. The surprise he felt at seeing Mr. Ghoti fighting the monster with Hemlock’s help, and the relief of seeing the Captain’s arrival and the beast’s retreat. All those emotions and more swirled inside him. Fighting for dominance.
As it turns out, existential terror made for great inspiration.
There was just something so… fresh about the experience.
Basil couldn't say whether he’d go through it a second time or not, but running away from the Mana Beast and then witnessing the fight was enough to make his muse start to stir as the artistic urge swelled within him with new ideas and images he could put to the canvas. New colors to explore.
Red, like the feathers.
Blue, the color of mana.
‘Silver. I’m gonna need some silver paint.’ Basil realized belatedly. Normally he’d use white when he wanted to draw clouds or stars in the night sky, but the tone he used didn’t quite fit with the human’s armor. And he would be painting him the next time he worked up the energy to put his brush to a canvas.
He hadn’t felt this good about a possible painting in…
How long again?
‘Maybe the time we had that forest fire?’ That must have been three decades ago, when that freak lightning storm was passing through the forest and lit a whole swath of it on fire. So many beautiful tones of orange and ash grey.
It stoked his creativity for years.
This?
This had the potential to push him to new heights. The tension, the horror, the crisis of his people when faced with an enemy they thought long since banished from their lands, alongside the arrival of a mysterious stranger with unknown powers who seemed capable of fighting them.
Had he been an author of some sort, this would be a gold mine.
Instead, he’d have to content himself with drawing and sketching this for decades to come.
‘If we survive, that is.’ He amended glumly.
The atmosphere wasn’t exactly hopeful, many volunteers like himself didn’t choose to be part of the guard. They were terrified about the prospect of having to fight something that could kill them by just being near them. And Basil could understand why, he ran away from the Mana Beast as soon as it arrived.
He survived, and he now had a new outlook on his art.
But not everyone had come away from it with such a positive outlook.
Even now he saw a few groups huddled closer, eyes flitting over their shoulders as if expecting an ambush. Even though the main group was now marching back to the village, a force of a dozen strong shouldn’t have been this… fearful for their own lives. Not within their Clan’s territory.
Fear was… a novelty.
Something you experienced when you didn’t understand the world.
Most elves moved past it after sometime. There was nothing to fear in their homeland, no animal they couldn’t avoid, no rival they couldn’t defend themselves from, as deep in the Greenhold as they were, many of his peers never thought they’d see the day where their lives would be threatened.
But it was here.
And he could see it in their eyes, the uncertainty. Basil probably wore the same look, though probably not for the same reason. For while the threat of the Beasts loomed over their heads, the fear and uncertainty some of them showed was aimed not at the forest around them, but at the small group trailing behind them.
The adult elf known for being all but a hermit.
And the human who kept pace with him.
Ghoti had quickly attracted the attention of his fellows. Not all of it good.
He could hear them. The whispered conversations, the unsaid words. The looks of suspicion as their bodies recoiled at the mere presence of the stranger. Basil could still feel the bruises on his arms from when he’d helped wrestle down a particularly aggressive guard who’d tried to strike at the human while he was unconscious.
It had been a close call, and the Captain took his word on Ghoti being a friend remarkably well.
Aside from the sneezing.
“I’m just saying, a road or two would make walking a lot easier, you know?”
“I doubt we’d use them all that much. Deployments such as these are rare.”
“Yeah, yeah. You don’t need something until you need it. Heard that one before.”
Basil snorted back a laugh.
The other reason for all the attention is that the two of them wouldn’t stop interrupting the somber atmosphere with their conversations. It was as frustrating as it was amusing, and Basil, while contemplative, appreciated the break from the tense silence.
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The human just didn’t seem to care.
“You think they still have some of those rations?”
Composed, serene Hemlock, shivered in place. Giving his companion a look of bewilderment.
“I assure you, my friend, you can do a lot better than that gruel.”
Basil agreed silently. Rations tasted bland as it was.
“I dunno, I thought they were pretty tasty.”
‘Another unnerving fact about humans to the list. They have terrible taste in food.’ Basil found his steps slowing down as he tried to keep track of their conversation, which seemed to bounce around randomly as human and elf found different things to chit chat about. It made for good background noise, and he found the weight on his shoulders lightened as he kept pace.
“Oi, Basil! Back me up in this, you think the rations are good right?”
The young elf gave him an even, emotionless look.
“I find them to be rancid, Mr. Ghoti.”
The human clutched his heart. Or well… clutched the part of his chestplate which likely covered his heart.
“Woe is me, the only one with working tastebuds.”
Basil let out an over dramatic sigh.
“You humans are really strange. Even your heart is in the wrong side.”
There was a pause.
“Wait wh-”
The young elf chuckled. He couldn’t help it!
It was fun, messing with the human.
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The most boring part of any job was the wait to get a task done.
Having spent the last few decades bouncing around various works and crafts, Jasmine knew that there would always be a lull of sorts, and that expecting immediate results was the behavior or an impertinent child who knew not the value of patience and determination, the values of the brave warriors and kings who made the Greenhold a reality.
Which is why, in an ironic turn of events, her lack of patience was legendary amongst the villagers.
Truthfully, she should have amended this part of her behavior a long time ago, but found part of herself rebelled against the thought of settling for anything other than a perfectly applicable and practical solution to one’s problems. You just had to work hard enough and be good enough at what you did.
And wherever she went, Jasmine succeeded.
She’d been a painter.
She’d work the fields and tended to cattle.
She’d completed her apprenticeship under the Head of Spellcrafting at the tender age of 70, while many of her seniors had yet to look past the basics of mana and its application in everyday life.
And, of course, she’d learnt to strategize under the watch of Captain Aspen.
So, when she was selected from amongst the latest batch of apprentices by the governor, Jasmine thought this was it. She was on the fast track to putting her skills to the test and dealing with actual, real problems and not just the silly games that most of her brethren seemed interested in.
This wasn’t a hobby.
This wasn’t a game.
This was her job, her life that she was dedicating to building something for herself.
But the time never came. She’d been stuck in this position for almost a decade, laboring over the whims of a bureaucrat crushed by the weight of his own ambition with no willingness to stand up for himself and do things without the express permission of some other far removed Nobleman in their carved towers.
And for what?
Because he wanted to leave? To move away to the Capital?
An even more meaningless life, even farther away from real problems. A senseless competition if there ever was one. And she had a front seat to watch it all unfold, the pettiness of her fellow elves.
Now?
Now they were at risk.
If the reports coming in from the Guards’ office was anything to go by, there was a very real threat of Mana Beasts, more than one, growing and becoming an issue for their village, and the thought of her superior doing nothing as he always had spurred her into reckless action, sending the Captain herself in confidence.
She was the one who acted.
She was the one who obtained the priceless intel they were acting on now.
Yet she was the one left outside the meeting room as her puffed up bureaucrat of a boss conversed with the other Heads of the village, devising plans she wasn’t privy to, if they could even get past their own bickering to get something done.
Standing outside dutifully, Jasmine could feel it.
There was tension in the air.
Something was happening out there, something none of them could have foreseen. Two Beasts in such a short time, so far away from the frontier? That wasn’t a coincidence. And the more time they wasted waiting for help, or for the enemy to come to them, the harder it would be to fight them off.
‘Calm down, you’re spiraling.’
She took a deep breath, awareness spreading as the mana-rich air of the village filled her chest, its comforting warmth dulled by the erratic flow of the air across the village. Abuzz with activity, news of the Mana Beasts had quickly spread once the Governor contacted the other Heads of the village.
Loose lips.
A lackadaisical approach to what should have been a crisis.
The flow of mana seemed to reflect that. Rippling in places, frustratingly still in others. Jasmine had a particular talent for divining how others felt by how mana flowed around their bodies, and with practice had learnt to spread that awareness far beyond most of her fellow elves' ability to perceive the world.
It was just another source of stress to her.
But also a point of pride.
Which is why the strange feeling she was getting seemed all that much ominous.
‘What is that?’
The flow of mana was hard to read at times, but it had never grown quite as turbulent, not just around her clansmen, but as if the entirety of the forest was twitching in place nervously, all life experiencing the same anxious anticipation. A pressure that built and built around them all, climbing higher and higher towards its breaking point.
Before bursting.
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The silence broke with a terrible roar, the wretched sound echoing on her ears as the ground shook beneath her feet, the mana scalding her skin as drew back her awareness, the vision of a massive creature and a trail of fire bursting through the treeline all too fresh on her mind as horns echoed in the distance.
An alarm.
Jasmine pressed her hand against the side of the wall, wood shifting and changing to form a window. Smoke and fire spread through the trees, the village rumbled as a massive figure dragged its way out of the ground in the distance, massive tusks digging into the earth as flames spread from its fur to the buildings around it.
She swallowed dry, the feeling of mana unbearably warm.
‘Mana Beast.’
As tall as the trees they carved their buildings into. She could feel her awareness dimming as the beast’s dominion spread and the currents of mana in the air stilled.
It roared once more.
And pandemonium followed.