The twins might have laid there five minutes, or maybe an hour. Who knew? What was time in the face of their bone deep—spirit deep—exhaustion? All that mattered was the damp pine needles beneath his back, the golden sun peering down at them from on high, and the endless stretch of Oroneiros as it dominated everything beneath the sky.
Perhaps it was just his imagination, but Kosta imagined the spectral peak looked a little less hazy now. It eluded him still, barely distinct except for a faded outline, but the hints of colors seemed brighter. More vivid, as if someone had breathed life into the suggestion of the mount.
It was all that kept Kosta awake. He raked his eyes over it again and again, seeking every detail that could be discerned.
He laid there for a time, but one final tweet crackled and shattered the silence. Kosta groaned, but pulled himself to his feet through one last great effort. Every muscle ached terribly, worn down by the day’s events. He hadn’t suffered any serious wounds, but he’d been beaten and bruised. Blood speckled his knees, palms, and back where he’d fallen upon the hard phaetra.
Kosta could take comfort in the fact that these light injuries would vanish with a good night’s sleep. His most precious blessing was his ability to create, but the Demiurge’s touch eight years ago had stirred his power. It allowed him to more fluidly manifest his dreams and soul into the world as magic, and it would act upon his desires.
He may not possess Clymere’s practiced skill at self-healing or specialize in restoration like Ademia, but he would shed injuries quickly enough.
A groan spilled from his lips as he lumbered down into the ravine again. Kosta took a moment to secure his pack (and checked that his precious phaetra was still intact) and exhaled in relief when he saw that his tools were still in good condition.
They were a little chipped thanks to his reckless use of power, but hadn’t shattered. The uncontrolled torrent had damaged the apeironic bronze embossing that allowed him to channel his power through the hammer more easily.
It was still functional, though. That was most important. Kosta would just have to head to the smithy to make it beautiful again. He had the skill to fix his tools in a pinch, but he would accept nothing but the best when it came to their restoration (which he certainly wasn’t).
Clymere had pulled herself to kneel in the meantime. Her tanned face was despondent as she clutched a little pile of ash and bone between her hands, smoke curling off its remnants in wisps.
It was all that was left of Sparky. Kosta muttered a quick thanks to the reanimated bird. He doubted that any intelligent thought passed through its (his) head, but the reanimated creature had still helped them.
“You look like shit.”
“Hey! I’m mourning here!” Clymere snapped. She wiped her dripping nose against her linen-draped shoulder. Gross. Then again, it wasn’t any nastier than the messy stew of smashed entrails, pools of blood, and bits of scrapped bone and connective tissue pasted onto Clymere and the rocks, trees, and dirt all around. Kosta stepped very, very carefully. She sniffed the air and wrinkled her nose. “You’re not wrong, though. I do look like shit. Probably smell like it too.”
“That’s being generous.”
She ignored that and whispered something to Sparky’s remnants. A tiny cinder burned within the ashes, but even her best efforts couldn’t stoke another flame. There was simply nothing left to rekindle. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
“Well?” Clymere demanded. “Aren’t you going to say something?”
Say what? To the bird?
Kosta cleared his throat. “Uh, thank you for your sacrifice, Sparky. You were a good soldier. You’ll be missed.”
Clymere snorted, held her palms up high, and scattered the ashes to the wind with a breath. She watched them disperse for a moment, then shook her head and glared down at the remains of the manticore. “Hells! A manticore this close? Heads are going to roll for this, Kosta. Either someone screwed up on our sweep last month or it was driven here very recently. Headsman Linus is going to throw a fit either way. Our patrols shouldn’t have missed this.”
He circled around the steaming stew of broken manticore. Most of it was buried beneath the enormous pillar of stone that he’d toppled, but enough was revealed to see the gauntness of its face, the way that its ribs poked and jutted against its taut skin, and the ragged quality of its tawny fur to realize that it was in deathly poor shape.
If not… well, Kosta realized that they’d be resting in its belly rather than discussing the oddness of its presence.
“It was injured,” he observed. Kosta gave its side a solid kick for good measure. It felt good to vent a little of that fear and anger that still bubbled within him. “A missing foreleg and those arrows in its side.”
“Their magic is internally focused. Little external expression, but those bastards heal fast. Those arrows must have been pretty fresh. As for the foreleg…” Clymere crouched just in front of the manticore. She wasn’t half as bothered by the gore and goop as Kosta was, although he couldn’t be sure if that was a result of her experience or just from already being covered in the stuff.
“Huh, that’s a clean cut. Partially, anyways. Not as smooth as a magical blade, but it wasn’t just a monster that did this. I’d wager it ran into something nasty that crippled it, then someone else took off the rest with a lucky slash. But it must have had some serious strength behind it. I doubt a random hunter could have pulled that off.”
She rose, then wrenched her spear from the manticore’s face with a grunt. Steaming blood gushed forth like a waterfall, though soon reduced to a trickle. Clymere leaned heavily on her spear, treating it more like a walking stick than a weapon. She paused to clean it with a cloth from her pack, then turned another glance down to their ruined foe.
Kosta refused to look at the gaping hole left in its face.
“It’s too bad the tail was ruined,” Clymere said idly. “Their venom is worth a fortune.”
“Sorry, next time I’ll try to aim more precisely at the giant monster about to eat you,” Kosta said as he rolled his eyes. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
Clymere grinned and tapped the stone pillar with the butt of her spear. “That was a good trick. I wish you’d have escaped while you had the chance, though.”
“You wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t leave you anymore than you would leave me.”
They both smiled at that, and Kosta wrapped Clymere in a one-armed hug (on her cleaner side, he didn’t want to get painted in the black-red blood) as she passed, then wrinkled his nose. Ugh, she smelled awful! Hopefully Clymere wouldn’t be too offended when he kept his distance on the way back.
Kosta was hardly pristine himself. He was suddenly aware of the ash clinging to him, little specks of monster blood across his face and bare arms, and the tiny shards of phaetra embedded into his exposed skin. A shower sounded divine.
The perks of civilization. Transpoietic arrays and the miracles that could be worked with them made life bearable.
Clymere turned her eyes to the sun. It had just begun to set, casting sections of the great forests in darkness as it shifted to new angles. Traveling through the night was unavoidable now, but if they hurried they might make it back to town before dawn.
Kosta doubted that they’d encounter another monster like the manticore this near the town, but passing through the mountains past dusk was treacherous enough. Clymere could offer light, but he’d feel better back in the safety of the foothills.
“We have to investigate before we leave,” Clymere resolved. “Let’s see if we can find anything useful. I’ll report to the militia first thing, but I don’t want any scavengers to come by and misplace anything.”
Kosta nodded. They left the manticore and walked over to its lair. He nearly gagged as the sickly saccharine scent of decomposition blended with the foul reek of the manticore’s own musk, meals, and waste. Clymere kept her composure, but even her nose was wrinkled in disgust.
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“They normally ‘mark’ the edges of their territory. I guess this one didn’t venture too often from its lair. Ugh, that’s foul!”
He nodded, then frowned as a new worry popped into his head. “Is there any risk of a mate coming by?”
“Too young,” Clymere dismissed. “That manticore was probably only five or six years old. They don’t seek out mates until they’re fifteen. There’s too much risk of another manticore taking offense and devouring them if they aren’t fully grown. Like I said, we found a baby.”
He just shook his head, hoping that he’d never find out how terrible they would be when fully grown. With any luck he’d never find out.
“I found some human bones a bit farther out in the clearing. The remains of those poor bastards is what tipped me off… I guess the manticore was a sloppy eater. We’ll find worse in there.” Clymere warned as she pointed her spear's tip into the dark cave. It blazed with light, fed by what little magic she still possessed, and proved her words true.
The cave was shallow. It only reached back perhaps ten or fifteen feet. The manticore would’ve occupied quite a bit of the space, and it certainly wouldn’t accommodate it for long once it grew to full size. But the cave’s ceiling was low and its walls were wide. It was perfect for a creature like the manticore, which would have preferred to feel safe and protected in its wounded state.
But what left Kosta sick to his stomach were the bodies.
Dozens of bone piles littered the rear portions, stacked high in some macabre arrangement of art. Most had been snapped in half so that the manticore could suck and slurp the marrow from them. Not a scrap of skin or meat could be seen on the majority of the bones. The manticore had been starving and let nothing go to waste.
He recognized deer skulls, a lion’s tattered remains with a stinking hairball the size of Kosta’s head next to it, and a dozen other large inhabitants of the mountains. The manticore must have scoured this region clean of anything it could still catch or ambush. There were plenty of smaller creatures such as rabbits, stoats, and fish. None of them would have offered more than a small bite for the beast.
Kosta shuddered as he recalled its unhinged jaws and those cruel teeth. Aretans above, the teeth…
But worst of all were the remains of several humans, likely lone travelers or prospectors who made the mistake of wandering down into the valley. Several white skulls were scattered around, misplaced by the manticore’s shifting, but several were well-armored and still left in the corner. The manticore had slashed their protective garments to ribbons and devoured quite a bit of them, but it had saved portions of their flesh for later.
It was no surprise to Kosta. Monsters tended to be attracted to the awakened, magic-infused flesh of humans, cunning beasts, or other monsters. What they lacked in quantity they made up for in quality. For creatures of magic, the physical meal was only secondary. It would nourish, but never sate.
His eyes locked upon the mostly intact bodies nearest to them. They were a grisly sight of bare bone and tattered flesh, reduced to so little by the manticore’s fanged tongue. Kosta couldn’t stand to look at the nightmarish corpses for long, but even a glance allowed him to make out the symbol of a blood-stained white griffin emblazoned upon the remains of their light cloth armor.
Kosta’s blood froze in his veins. “Clymere, look! That symbol!”
She’d been examining the scattered bones, perhaps searching for any missing travelers or caravans that had been reported, but her jaw tightened at the sight of them. “Hesperians! Damn it all.”
“This far east?” Kosta cast a look behind him as if more of the raiders might slip out of the trees and come screaming down the ravine. It felt safe with the manticore dead, but now he couldn’t be so sure. "Past Phylax?"
“Scouts,” Clymere said after checking their equipment from afar. “I’d wager they’ve only been down in this pit for a few days. The manticore was trying to stretch its meal out. This place is isolated enough that it wouldn’t run into travelers often.”
“They must have put up quite a fight,” Kosta said, recalling the numerous injuries borne by the manticore. The Hesperians unsettled him, but he could only be grateful for their presence. Otherwise… well, that didn’t bear thinking about. “Can you see any weapons down there?”
Clymere swept her spear across the cave. The flame-tipped blade light focused into a radiant beam that illuminated everything down to the darkest recesses. How long had it been since the little burrow had been exposed to purifying light such as this? Kosta imagined the manticore’s foul nature and the corruption it had sunk into the stones being swept away by Clymere’s flame.
He spotted a glimmer near the Hesperian corpses. “There, see?”
“Damn it all,” Clymere repeated with a forlorn expression. She handed her precious spear to Kosta, who took it dully. “Feed this whatever you can to keep the light up. I have to recover these. I’ll need evidence for Headsman Linus.”
“Better you than me.”
Kosta took the spear. It felt wrong in his hands, clearly the tool of another. He imagined that Clymere would feel the same if he handed her his chisel and hammer. Even the pattern etched into the bronze shaft by the flow of Clymere’s magic was far removed from his own orderly lines and delicate wisps. Her spear shaft was left with the mark of fire, all overlapping and flowing together toward the tip.
“Believe me, if it wasn’t my job and if I wasn’t already filthy, I’d probably toss you down there. But it is my job, and I’m already a disgusting mess of monster guts, so I figured I’d spare you this time.”
Kosta snorted. “Much appreciated.”
She stared into the cave for a moment, shuddered, and then crawled down into its reeking depths. “I hate this! I hate this so much!”
“You’re doing great.”
“Give me some light, will you?”
Kosta had little to spare, but he was able to scrounge up just enough focus to set the speartip the slightest bit ablaze. Her spear resisted his power and fought him the entire while. His magic normally flowed even and steady, but now it felt like the metal was simply devouring the majority of it.
Only the slightest bit of his power actually made it to its destination, the rest consumed by the sacred bronze, and the fire he conjured was delicate and flickering like a candle.
Clymere offered no complaint as she set to her grisly task. She wrenched the glimmer that he’d seen out of the bone pile first: a large ax that had clearly been designed to chop necks, not wood. While of unfamiliar make, the edge of its head’s blade was coated with dark, poor-grade apeironic bronze. Only a single line of the divine material connected the grip to the ax’s blade.
It was a fine weapon nonetheless, even if Clymere’s spear was a masterwork in comparison.
She lobbed it up near the mouth of the cave with a grunt. It clattered against the stone, but would be easy enough for Clymere to recover on her way back. Thankfully, Clymere took some precaution to make sure it didn’t strike anywhere near Kosta’s feet.
Clymere set to her next task swiftly. She pulled a knife from her belt and efficiently cut away any visible remnants of the Hesperian’s symbols or insignias. Each tattered piece of cloth offered more evidence to her case, although Kosta doubted that Headsman Linus would question anything offered by his star pupil for more than a moment.
It only took her a few seconds to scramble back up the bloody rocks. She hacked and coughed the moment she escaped, doubling over to expel the foul air. Clymere’s skin paled to a hue somewhere between waxy and sallow, and she appeared almost like a walking corpse herself as she crawled out into the late afternoon sun.
Kosta would’ve been worried that she’d been seriously injured during their battle if it weren’t for her immediately stepping past him and wretching all over a little pile of blooming phaetra. He wrinkled his nose. That cluster could wait for next year.
“Go get any phaetra you need,” Clymere rasped. She reached out expectantly with her open hand and propped herself up with her spear as Kosta silently passed it back. “The militia will have people cart it back, but it’ll be weeks or more before you get your due. As a partner, you’ll receive a cut of the manticore’s sale—not that there’s much left of it—and whatever bounty Headsman Linus deems it worthy of. The quartermasters are going to have a field day with this!”
Kosta had never considered himself to be an especially greedy person, but his eyes widened in delight as he caught the gist of her statement. Phaetra. Bounty. Money. The time he would save…
Clymere laughed tiredly. “Imagining Argyropolis already, huh?”
He just smiled. “And what will you do?”
“Grab some spines. Cut off a bit of the monster’s mane. Stow that ax away. Prepare my case. Set myself on fire to get this stench off me. The usual.”
Kosta stepped away just to be safe. “I think I prefer my job.”
“I thought so. I’ll see you soon.”
“We should be quick,” Kosta glanced up to the sun burning overhead. “Time is against us.”
Clymere nodded, and Kosta set forth on his own task. As he felt Clymere’s skin purified by her flame just behind him, Kosta set his eyes on the manticore as its empty eyes stared out over the blooming field of lustrous phaetra which it had turned into a killing field.
It had died. They had lived.
The raw, visceral struggle wasn’t the normal beauty that Kosta appreciated, but after living through a true life-or-death battle, he knew that this would be a day carved into his very spirit. They’d fought creatures of the wild before, but nothing so formidable. Nothing that had threatened them.
And just like that, burning inspiration struck him. A new idea, a new moment to preserve forever in its purest state. His hands itched, and he pulled out a lump of clay to begin fashioning as a reference while he stepped out into the blooming red fields of phaetra.
Kosta’s thoughts fled far from this bloody ravine and even farther from the manticore even as he took the finest pickings of phaetra for himself. All he could think about was his next work!
They’d excised something from the world today. It might have been a foul, destructive thing that took far more than it could ever give, but there was a gaping hole where the manticore once existed.
It was only right that Kosta balanced that loss with something new. Something beautiful.
He couldn’t return to his workshop soon enough!