It was only when he heard a trill of birdsong that he realised he hadn’t seen any signs of animals in over a month. Since he’d arrived in Aerth, come to think of it. There had been that one distant, indistinct animal call at the moment he ‘awoke’ and then… nothing. Not a hint.
He wasn’t counting Jamie, for obvious reasons.
The bird’s tweeting was unlike anything he’d heard before. It was a single long, warbling note with a quality like a slide whistle that was being pulled rapidly, almost like an alarm. The sound seemed to bounce around the linden grove they were walking through, leaving Lucas in a disoriented state as he turned this way and that, his head on a swivel, trying to pinpoint its source.
Taking pity on him, Valerie placed a hand on his shoulder to still him, then pointed. He followed her gesture, squinting up into the foliage. When he saw it, he had to rub his eyes to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.
From the strange birdsong, he’d been expecting something exotic like a parrot. Not a bit of him had imagined a garish red reptilian thing about the size of an adult goose with leathery, near-translucent wings, a ridged spine, a tail with a set of fin-like protrusions at its end, and an arrow-shaped head at the end of a long, snake-like neck. Perched high in a tree with its tail coiled around a branch to keep balance, its neck was coiling and uncoiling in time with the sliding note it was making, its mouth wide open with a three-forked tongue flicking back and forth. Its head was swaying about, but he couldn’t see where it was looking.
Lucas stared at it for a long moment, gobsmacked. Then he looked at Valerie seriously and asked, “What the hell is that thing?”
“It’s a merax; a species of wyrm,” Valerie said. “They’re scavengers with the magical ability to sense death from great distances. Entirely harmless to living people. This specimen is fairly large, so it must have been doing well for itself recently.”
“Harmless on its own,” Wick said. “But they can be ravenous as beasts if you get caught on your own against a flock of them, I hear.”
“There’s no official record of a merax attack on a living person.”
“I’m sure that’s the case,” Wick said. “Doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. Common folk might not all have fancy records and books, but that doesn’t mean the stories they pass down don’t have truth to them.”
Valerie nodded to concede the point. “It’s very rare that a group of merax will encounter the opportunity to feed on a human, but given their known behaviour, I can’t discount the idea that they might try it.” She looked at Lucas from the corner of her eyes. “Be careful not to fall asleep alone beneath a linden tree.”
Lucas couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. Did Valerie do jokes? “So is there something dead nearby, and that’s why it’s making that noise?”
“It’s entirely possible.”
A shiver went down Lucas’ spine. “Creepy. I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved that it’s not a baby dragon, to be honest.”
“They share common genes,” Valerie said. “In the same way that a domestic cat is from the same genetic family as a tiger.”
“So there are dragons here?”
“In many different varieties, yes.”
“What kind of dragons are we talking about? Human-level intelligent and hoarding gold? Fire-breathing flying lizards? Magical nukes?”
“All of the above,” Wick said.
“Technically, what people colloquially refer to as dragons encompasses a variety of different species. Some are more intelligent than others, but this works on an individual level and correlates with mana capacity,” Valerie said. “You can have five dragons hatched in a clutch, and only one of them become self-aware while the other four are mindless animals.”
“Are there people who ride on them?” Lucas asked.
Valerie narrowed her eyes at him. “There have been cases of warriors bonding with dragons and using them as mounts, yes. A rare thing, but it has happened.”
Lucas nodded thoughtfully. He was totally going to be a dragon rider someday. “Good to know.” He turned his gaze back to the merax, which was still trilling its sliding note. Weird as it looked, it was still a beautiful creature, and there was something to be said for finding a goddamn living thing in this place. “I’m guessing we’ve seen basically no animals around because of the Blight?”
“Your guess would be correct, yes,” Valerie said. “Animals feel its effects more keenly than we do, and flee from it. It’s another factor in why the population has been pushed so far south. Livestock goes mad otherwise.”
“Once heard of a farmer’s family who got eaten alive by a herd of cows that suddenly gained a taste for human flesh,” Wick said.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if that tale was true,” Valerie said.
Wick glowered at nothing.
“So we can expect to see more animals further south?” Lucas asked.
“We can,” Valerie said. “In fact, we should have seen a lot more by now.”
“Can I expect to be as weirded out by them as I am by this one?” Lucas asked, pointing at the merax, which still hadn’t stopped its endless note. Did it ever pause for breath? What had set it off in the first place?
“Aerth has many animals you’ll be familiar with from your world,” Valerie said. “And just as many you won’t be. Some will ring similar to mythological creatures from Earth; others will be outside your imagination.”
“Fair enough.” Lucas pursed his lips. “Anything we’ll be able to hunt?”
“Not any species of wyrm,” Valerie warned. “But yes, there will be plenty of animals to hunt for food. That was always the plan.”
Lucas’ shoulders slumped in relief. “Thank fuck for that. I’m not sure how much longer I can take chewing on jerky for every meal.”
They left the linden grove and the merax behind, its cry following them for a surprisingly long time. The very next day, they got their opportunity to hunt.
They were trekking along a meadow parallel to a slow-moving river when Valerie called a halt and approached the riverbank, Lucas obligingly flattening the grass for her with floramancy. She crouched down and inspected the mud with shrewd eyes. When Lucas followed, it was immediately obvious what had attracted her attention: the hoofprints were about the size of a tennis ball with a small triangular spike missing at the tip, trailing in two lines from the water to the edge of the grass. When he looked closer, he saw that some of the grass had been flattened from the creature’s passing.
“I’ve never seen tracks like that,” Lucas said. Then added, “Not that I’ve seen a lot of tracks or anything. Always been a city boy, me.”
“It’s an alber, I believe. A fairly large one,” Valerie said. She looked at Lucas over her shoulder. “Alber are a lean boar-like species with a pale hide and white antlers. Their meat is comparable to pork, but tougher, and a well-butchered adult would yield a day or two of meals for the three of us if we use everything. Do you wish to hunt it?”
“I’d literally take any meat at this point, so yes,” Lucas said. He frowned. “Actually killing an animal for myself… This is gonna suck, but I guess it has to be done.”
“I can hunt it myself while you wait nearby, if you like,” Valerie offered.
Lucas shook his head. “Can’t be getting all squeamish about hunting if I’m in a medieval world. Gonna have to learn. Besides, I always felt a bit guilty about eating meat. Remind me to tell you some time about industrial farming practises back on Earth. It’ll make your toes curl.“
“I’m somewhat familiar. Lady Aarya found it barbaric, apparently, though she never went into much detail.”
“Sounds like her,” Lucas said with a sad smile. “Alright, let’s do this.”
It turned out tracking wasn’t a particularly exciting task, for the most part. The lion’s share of their time was spent following the vaguely southbound hoofprints the alber had made through the meadows and into a forested area. Valerie showed him how to gauge how old the tracks were—observing how mud at the edge of the track was positioned and how much had fallen in was the primary method, apparently, as well as checking the colour of the mud, depending on knowledge of recent weather to guesstimate when it was made. Jamie’s senses made the task easier.
Lucas’ floramancy had some utility here too, seeking out any plant detritus in the tracks. Pyromancy, however, turned out to be the more useful of the two magics he was currently practising: his heat sense let him see tiny hints of the animal’s lingering body heat, and it got marginally brighter as they followed the trail.
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All things considered, they concluded the tracks had been made that same morning and upped their pace to catch up. The forest they ended up in a mile or so away from the river was mildly overgrown with brambles and gorse, but luckily the animal followed one of the narrow paths beaten by creatures repeatedly making their way through the forest, so following wasn’t so treacherous. It did make tracking a little harder with seemingly multiple animals using this route, but Lucas’ heat sense saved them from losing the trail.
And there was birdsong. Buzzing insects. Barks and calls and other animal noises. It was objectively quiet and peaceful, barely any noise at all, but to him it was cacophonous when he’d spent so long hearing nothing but wind whispering through foliage. The countryside in Steffonshire, he now realised, was a horribly lonely place in comparison, so lacking in life.
Valerie kept up a running commentary as they walked, teaching Lucas about this or that, pointing out plant species and what animal a sound belonged to and giving little anecdotes and stories about the area. It was as she was doing this that he noticed something curious about her teaching style.
“That purple-leafed plant that looks like a cannabis plant down there is a hazemary,” she said, pointing at a plant that did indeed look like a purple version of a cannabis plant. “It doesn’t have the intoxicating effects of cannabis, however, being rather more traditionally toxic: it’ll make you ill like you ate a bad mushroom.”
“How much do you know about Earth?” he asked. It seemed like every tidbit of information she gave him included a comparison to a concept familiar to him. It was obviously deliberate.
“I have educated myself in a wide variety of Earth concepts, as members of the Order are supposed to.” Her brows furrowed, and she looked away as they moved on. “Skycloaks are seen as general sources of knowledge, these days. Many forget that one of our primary remits is to help you acclimate to Aerth. It’s… less common than it should be, for members of our Order to bother.”
“So you learned a bunch of stuff about Earth to make it easier to explain things to me?”
“Once, that wouldn’t have been seen as unusual. It used to be our purpose.”
“You’re the only Skycloak I’ve ever met who could tell a single fact about Earth. Not that I’ve spoken to a lot,” Wick said, following behind them. “Some would have called it a waste of time.”
“Evidently, it wasn’t,” Valerie said.
As they closed in on their quarry, the tracks getting brighter to his heat sense, Valerie had him switch back to his floramancy.
“While my personal instruction will be based entirely on theoretical knowledge and won’t be able to take you to great heights, I do know enough about the bow and arrow to be confident I can get you started,” she said. “And from there, the Great Star should allow you to refine the skill yourself.”
That made enough sense. “Sure. So, you know how to make a bow?”
“Yes, but we’re not going to need something particularly complicated for the task at hand.”
“You want me to shoot the alber myself?”
“It’s best we get you practising on living targets as soon as possible.”
“Feel like I should try stationary targets first.”
“There’s nothing saying you can’t practise as we move,” Valerie said.
With his pure mana hanging in a bubble around him, he soon gathered up a few promising sticks. They didn’t need to be super strong or elastic, since he could just fiddle with their properties with floramancy anyway. But there were limits, so he did have to be at least a little discerning.
The bow string was more complicated, but Valerie helped him weave some plant fibres into something serviceable. Attaching the string to the two limbs of the stick was the real hard part with his whole fire hand situation, and it took some cheating with his floramancy to get it done.
It made for a bow that was far stronger than it had any right to be when infused with his mana, but when he tried to switch to his pyromancy to give his firehand better dexterity it would inevitably burn through the string. The same problem was true of the wooden arrows he made. Wielding a bow and arrow started to look like it wouldn’t be possible after all.
Wick, who had been quiet throughout Lucas and Valerie’s impromptu crafting session, heaved out a sigh. His breastplate dispersed into opalescent light, revealing a glittering diamond-like string running diagonally over his barrel chest. It was tight enough that it left behind a deep line in his light brown tunic when he lifted it up and over his head.
The string, of course, was attached to a familiar limb with two pieces of smooth, sand-coloured wood twining around each other. He held the bow out to Lucas with a conflicted expression.
“This is Rena’s bow,” Lucas said.
“It is,” Wick said stiffly.
“I’m… not sure I feel right using this.”
“You’re not the one who killed her.” He pointedly didn’t look at Valerie.
“She’s not soulbonded to it anymore,” Valerie said. “There’s nothing about it that makes it inherently hers.”
“Would you be okay with it if someone killed you and used your sword?”
“You didn’t kill her.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.” Valerie cocked her head to the side. “Celestra is thousands of years old. Countless warriors have wielded it before me, though I admit I’ve never heard of someone soulbonding it. I would want it to continue being used to protect people.”
Wick scoffed.
“How did this even survive?” Lucas asked. He’d assumed it had been vaporised along with its wielder.
“It’s a Duskbow, the famous weapon of the Duskpoole Rangers. I knew these had magical protections, but I didn’t think that would be enough for it to survive me, so I didn’t bother looking for it.” She looked at Wick. “Why keep this hidden?”
“I intend to bring it to her loved ones,” Wick said.
“She had none. Her family perished in the fall of Duskpoole,” Valerie said. “Unless you think her dogs would appreciate a shortbow?”
Wick’s nostrils flared. “I believe it would do her no insult to allow Lucas to use this. She seemed to like him well enough when she didn’t know his true identity. However, I’m going to do everything I can to ensure it falls into the hands of someone who will appreciate the sentimental value of it.”
“That’s fine,” Lucas rushed to say before Valerie could reply. “I’ll get my own bow at some point, right?”
“We’ll get you something much more powerful to soulbond with,” Valerie agreed.
With that matter tentatively settled, they continued their hunt. They moved slower now, as Lucas fashioned worthy sticks into arrows, improving his design via trial and error and some instruction from Valerie. The Gift guided him, refining how he fletched pieces of bark into fins, balanced the weight of the arrows, and improved the aerodynamics of the points. And floramancy meant he could replicate his better attempts with precision.
The same problem as with the old bow still persisted, however, and the only solution was to focus on his floramancy to keep feeding mana to his arrows so his firehand wouldn’t set the wood aflame. The lag between his brain and his hand made it a horribly vexing endeavour, but there was nothing else to be done for it.
He took aim at random trees as they walked. The glittering jewel string of the Duskbow felt icy cold to his fiery touch, but it didn’t snap. Drawing it was harder than expected; he had to put serious effort into moving it at all, and he couldn’t hold it drawn for more than a second or two unless he slowed his mana, which was problematic when his firehand would only loose the string half a second after he commanded it to.
Gauging where to aim was a less stressful matter, thankfully. Within the range of his plant sense, measuring the direction his wooden arrow would fly in was simple enough. His firehand still handicapped him, but he could generally hit his targets with consistency if they were less than a dozen or so metres away from him, which wasn’t a range to scoff at, and if the wind didn’t change the course of his shot.
With his firehand in play he probably wasn’t going to be hitting ten bullseyes out of ten or shooting moving targets anytime soon, but the small success offset the demotivational setbacks that had been battering at him thus far.
Still, the improvement he saw wasn’t as substantial as he would have liked by the time Jamie’s sudden attention alerted him that they were closing in on their quarry. He consoled himself with the knowledge that he’d literally only just gotten started. He’d improve.
They caught up to the alber just before noon, and Valerie’s quick description hadn’t done justice to how weird the thing looked. Being told about a skinny pig-thing with antlers didn’t prepare him for seeing it.
It was resting in a clearing with its legs folded beneath it, its head bowed. The prongs at the end of its curling antlers looked viciously sharp, and the tusks sticking out the side of its short, stumpy snout promised a bad time for anyone who pissed the ugly thing off. From the slow rise and fall of its lean brown torso, it appeared to be asleep, at least.
“So how are we doing this?” Lucas whispered. “That thing’s huge.”
Valerie hadn’t mentioned its size. For some reason, when she’d said antlers he’d pictured a creature closer in statue to a small deer than a small moose.
Valerie just looked at him, then let her eyes trail down to the bow slung over Lucas’ shoulder.
“What if I miss?” he hissed, because he was fairly sure he would. Weird as the creature was, he was very much looking forward to eating it. Letting it get away didn’t sound appealing. “Hell, the arrow might not penetrate even if I hit it!”
In response, Valerie touched her hand to her heart and drew her great white sword. It started to glow, and she raised an eyebrow at him.
With a sigh, Lucas lifted his bow. Drawing a sharpened wooden arrow from his crappy quiver, he nocked it on the string. He took in a deep breath as he drew the string back so his drawing hand was by his cheek and the arm gripping the bow was out straight so he was staring down the shaft of the arrow. Keeping both of his eyes open, he positioned the tip of the arrow so it was pointed at the alber as best he could. Couldn’t rely on floramancy when aiming at a living target, but his practice had won him some ability to guess how an arrow would fly. Lucas breathed in, steeling himself, readying his firehand to release.
It was quite the surprise when a long silver arrow sprouted just below the alber’s neck, striking with enough force to send it sprawling to the ground. Another quickly followed, hitting barely an inch from the first. The two arrows vanished with a puff of mist, and dark blue ichor burst from the now-open wound in a fountain of gore. The alber let out a wheezing squeal and scrambled uncoordinated to its feet. Wide, feverish eyes darted about in search of whoever had dared attack it. But it seemed dizzy, stumbling all over the place, and getting worse as more blood spurted from its wound. Just as quickly as its rage had risen, the creature drained of strength. Its legs crumbled and it toppled back onto its side, drawing in rattling, raspy breaths. In moments, it was still. Dead.
Lucas stared.
“In case it wasn’t already obvious,” he said. “That wasn’t me.”
“So it would seem,” Valerie said, starting forward into the clearing. She stared in the direction the arrows had come from. Lucas made to follow her, but Wick stepped in front of him with an arm held out to block his way. “I am Captain Valerie Vayon of the Order of Five. I would ask you to show yourself, Stranger!”
Lucas didn’t know what or who he had been expecting to step out of the forest, but it certainly wasn’t a girl who couldn't have been older than fifteen clad in a grey fur pelt and holding a bow taller than she was.