Update Finalizing

ETA: 2 Days

Interim Growth

+25 points to Intelligence from frequent studying.

Galloping horses made for a fine sight in the early afternoon, when bellies ached for fine food and fine wine, though he found himself displeased with wine since his recent debacle. A lively crowd formed around him, as it had every day since the unofficial races began. Racing meant betting, and betting was where fortunes were won and lost in a heartbeat.

The race was a brief one, due to the shortness of the track. The fastest horse sprinted ahead of the others, losing ground near the end as its incredible speed began to give way to exhaustion. It prevailed nonetheless, and angry mutters were heard from those who lost their bets.

“That fuckin’ cwicwrot’s won every race today,” Uhtric complained. “Thought it’d lose some speed at some point.”

There were similar murmurings among the crowd that had gathered, as there always were. A horse known for its speed, as the cwicwrot was, made easy use of the track they were able to build in such a short fashion.

“When’s the track expandin’?” Uhtric asked.

“When we get the people to build it. You offering to do it?” Alden asked in turn.

“No.”

More than once Alden had taken it upon himself to hammer wooden stakes into the ground, slowly developing the outline of what the track would one day be. He would have finished it, if not for the intensive studying that preoccupied his nights and the baronly duties that occupied his days.

“Which breed is the tall one?” Dayan asked, shoving his way to the front. The Chanat had shown great interest in the new horses, most of all in the massive storocc, which, despite its thinner frame, towered over even the Alden’s own destrier.

“It’s a storocc,” Alden replied.

“Storocc,” Dayan repeated, savoring the name on his tongue. “It is a fine horse. Not so fast as that, ah, cwicwrot, but a better horse to ride, I think. Better endurance. I think I shall claim it as my own.”

People turned to Dayan, expecting him to explain himself. When he did not, Uhtric spoke.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

There was an accusation there, one even Dayan could hear, and when he turned to Uhtric he squared his shoulders up, inflating himself. To smaller men he must have been an imposing figure, as the crowd, Uhtric included, cowered back a step or two. Seeing them cower must have increased his confidence, as Dayan suddenly turned his attention up and away from them and toward Alden.

“It is time, I think, that I must challenge you,” Dayan said. A part of him was all confidence, to utter such words. And yet another, equal, part looked up at Alden and saw his giant frame, remembered the quickness he had shown in sparring with other men, and knew fear.

“Tomorrow,” Alden said dismissively.

“Today,” Dayan countered.

“Tomorrow.”

There was a pause as the warrior thought, pride and fear battling it out within. The pride he had was as a warrior of the Bloody Grass, a tribe ruled exclusively by powerful warriors. And it was that pride that forced him now to challenge Alden before all. Or, more precisely, before his fellow warriors.

In the end, fear won out. “Tomorrow is better. I hope that you…do not hold back, when the time comes.”

Dayan left as quickly as he’d come, gazing longingly at the storocc. He was followed by a smattering of Chanat warriors, who would fan the flames of his pride and anger before the fight.

“What was that about, milord?” Uhtric asked, still trembling.

“Cultural difficulties.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“It means that the Chanat want a powerful ruler,” he replied. “More specifically, they want a warrior.”

“But they’ve already seen what you can do.”

“Some have, certainly. Others haven’t, and don’t believe. They want a fight. A show. Something to entertain themselves, no different than these races.”

Uhtric nodded. “He’ll lose.”

“That he will,” Alden agreed. From all reports, Dayan had doubled his daily spear training, performing a session in the early mornings and then again before nightfall, and had added basic physical training on top. He was serious about the challenge, fearful as he was to issue it. “But let’s not dwell on such things. Let’s go see the horses.”

The racing stables, constructed for the very purpose of separating the racing horses from the more common breeds, was a large building with ten horse pens, of which five sat occupied. Three hosted the racing horses gifted to him by Count Stowgardyn, another hosted the Chanat’s fastest horse, and the last hosted a horse most of his people had expected the least.

“As fine as ever,” Uhtric said of the three gifted horses, patting the storocc. “Shame they’re all stallions. Half-breeds ain’t worth as much.”

If ever there was an amusing statement, it was that one. “I have a solution in mind,” Alden said.

Uhtric stopped his patting of the storocc. “Got somethin’ to do with that lame horse?”

In the fifth pen was a horse greatly unlike the others. Most would have expected The Great One, as Alden’s destier had come to be known, even if the Great One was cumbersomely heavy. It was the lord’s horse, after all. Instead, to their amusement, and to the concern and wonder of the astute, the fifth horse was but an old, haggard thing a hair’s length towards death.

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“When we returned from Stowgardyn the poor thing could barely walk,” Alden said, opening the horse’s pen. “Now look at it.”

Uhtric regarded the horse in silence, making his best attempt at understanding. In the end understanding was beyond him, though Alden did not fault him for it. Few would understand what Alden had done. “What’d you do to him, milord?”

“You remember how I used to be? A year ago?” Alden asked.

“I do.”

“Back then I wasn’t much different than any other soldier. Worse than most, even, except for my magic. And then, with my magic, I changed myself.”

“So ya changed the horse with magic?” Uhtric asked.

“I did, and I plan to do it again. Just not in the same manner.”

“What d’ya mean, milord?”

Alden glided a hand over the old horse’s bony ribs, stopping when the feeling of the animal’s heartbeat was strongest. “I’ve been studying some strange theories,” he said, pouring his magic into the horse, “and I’ve come across a very interesting one just recently. Do you know what it is that determines what someone looks like? How tall they will be, how smart, the shape of their ears or the color of their hair and eyes?”

“Parentage,” Uhtric said. “Most people look like they’s parents.”

“But what is it, exactly, that parents are passing on to their children? Do you know?”

“Can’t say I do, milord.”

Within the horse, Alden’s magic touched its innards; there were hard muscles and harder bones, spongy tendons and ligaments, the stomach which was filled with feed and the heart which beat with a raw stubbornness. And within them all, deeper, smaller, were the cells, the building blocks of the horse. And within the cells…

“DNA. That’s the short name for it, at least. The longer name I haven’t memorized yet. But it's what determines what we’ll be as we grow. The basic outline, at least. And if I change the DNA of this horse then all those changes will be passed down to its children, and to their children, on and on. Permanent. What I did to myself before–changing my size, my muscles–all of that would have ended with me. That’s what’s different now.”

Uhtric listened with constrained understanding, perhaps believing less than half of what he’d heard. Notions such as these were preposterous even to those learned in the ways of magic; Uhtric, being as common a man as they came, did not possess the teeth needed to gnaw on the fruit of knowledge placed before him.

“Better to show you,” Alden said, his mana already grasping at the horse's DNA.

Warning

Mana is being depleted at a vast rate.

-450 mana/second.

Current Mana: 3995

Carefully, he changed the structure of the DNA, starting first in the hooves of its back legs and crawling upward at a spider’s pace.

Warning

Mana is being depleted at a vast rate.

-450 mana/second.

Current Mana: 2645

His magic weaved from cell to cell, doing its work. Oddities arose one after another as Alden scanned the DNA, which had more variability than he’d first expected. A difference here, another there. Minor, useless differences which did not slow his pace.

Current Mana: 1295

Pausing at the top of the leg, Alden sucked in a gasp of air. What he had failed to mention to Uhtric was that this was his first attempt at such a magic, and, likewise, he had failed to foresee how steep the drain would be on his reserves and focus. In less than ten seconds he had reached only the top of the horse’s hind legs, just before the femurs connected to the hips.

As he breathed, and his mana slowly regained its reserves, the horse began to make a noise. A soft sound, at first, something like irritation, then, after a second, a deep, gruff discomfort.

Then the horse was shrieking.

The horse’s legs, which, despite the horse’s age, had been long and sturdy, now began to droop down, the bones bending unnaturally. Continuing its mad shrieking, the horse thrashed about its pen, smashing itself into the pen’s gates with its front legs trying to escape whatever was inflicting such pain.

In his shock, Alden’s mind stopped in its tracks, then began the process of dissecting what had gone wrong. His changes, or else the oddities he ignored. In either case, he failed, and a veil of anger took him. A veil that was pierced by a horrid smell that twisted his stomach and brought that day's breakfast back up into his mouth. He looked down.

Where there were meant to be legs was instead a pile of liquefied flesh and bone. Blood ran freely from the gooey pile, pooling beneath the layer of hay upon the floor. There was a splattering sound in the direction Uhtric had run off to, and a groan.

The putrid smell of liquefied flesh filled his nostrils further as he crouched; horrible as the sensation was, his body and mind ignored it as they acted on instinct. With a touch of his hand the horse was unconscious, and with another the bleeding was stopped. Carving out the corrupted flesh, Alden began the quick process of healing, followed by the slightly longer process of restoring what he had destroyed in his arrogance.

When all was done he stepped out of the pen to see Uhtric leaning over a bale of hay, the ground in front of him covered in a greenish brown vomit.

“Take the horses out of their pens,” Alden commanded. “And get me a brush and some water. Anything to clean with.”

He cleaned the pen himself, refusing entrance into the stables to anyone else until he was done. The smell was no problem; turning off his ability to smell with magic was a simple trick, and he scrubbed away at the foul liquid without hesitation. Once warm blood and flesh, it had gone cold, like a drink chilled with ice, and when he pulled his hands away he saw that they were stained red.

The brush smacked hard against the stable’s wall, the result of him throwing it in his rage. Why did I do that? It was the only one he had, and now he had to lumber his way to the other side of the stable to pick it up. Just more work for myself.

Always more work. He had thought, with the help of the Book of Infinite Knowledge, that he could speed up his plans. He had read the book night after night in preparation, and today, of all days, he felt that he knew enough to make the changes. Simple changes, he thought. At worst they would do nothing. At best…

When he was finished with the cleaning he sat up against the pen’s hard wooden wall. His fingers ached from clenching the brush and the knees of his pants were still soaked in a mix of blood and soap and water. The pants would need to be burned, he imagined. Out of rage, if not necessity. As if it mattered. The only thing that mattered was the horse’s wellbeing, and the future of his plans. DNA. A powerful tool, if only he could master it. Until then, it was only a dangerous one.

He opened the Book again and began to re-read the section on DNA, scouring it for where he had been led astray. When minutes passed and he hadn’t yet found it, he heard a knocking on the stable’s door.

“Are you done, milord?” Uhtric yelled.

Sighing, Alden pushed himself to his feet. Keeping the Book open in his vision, he went to the door and opened it.

“Are you done, milord?” Uhtric repeated.

“Bring the horses back in. I have work to do.”

Alden walked past him and past the horses, past the field and up the hill into town, and then up further to his manor, reading all the while.