As I trudged along throughout the day, I was once again left more or less unscathed. While I did have to spook away another small pack of coyotes, and one arctic fox got a little too defensive over my intrusion into its territory, but all things considered, it wasn’t too terribly difficult.
My second night passed similarly to the first, with the odd attack I had to fend off, but nothing too horrifically strong passed by. The broken sleep was definitely starting to get to me some – I was always a light sleeper, but the constant adrenaline jolts every thirty minutes while I was trying to sleep made it far worse.
I did wonder about the fact I was having such an easy time, though. Even with the powerful glowing magic of the mountains, and the overall sense of nature that this place had, the trail was still hiked in the summers, even if only by those truly dedicated to the sport, and that created a strong contrast between it and the magic of the idyll-flume. There was still an un-disturbed serenity, but it was somewhat tamed, and by the third day, I’d started to pick out the odd signs of human passing – small areas that had been cleared of trees for people to set up tents or spatial storage, mounds where the snow had mixed with the ash of what had once been a fire, and even once the odd nutritional potion vial – labeled with the mark of Agnes’ shop.
I collected that one, since littering was a scourge on both the earth and the soul, and as far as I was concerned, letting others litter without helping was nearly as bad as littering yourself.
As noon was drawing closer on the third day, I noticed something that flitted at the edge of my senses. It was different than the shade-coyotes, who had some sort of veiling technique, or more likely, a natural spell that they could use to slip my senses aside.
This felt more… Deliberate.
For a flicker that was so short it was hard for me to be sure that it was there at all, I felt a mana signature, about third gate. I wasn’t able to analyze where in third gate it was, but I got a touch of the composition, and it was absolutely glowing with abnegation mana. There were other things mixed in – knowledge, desolation, time, and a surprising amount of solar – but it was strongly abnegation focused.
The moment I sensed it, however, it retreated, out of the range of my senses. I empowered my Analyze Spells and stretched out to follow it, but the creature was fast, faster than I expected, and managed to keep out of my range, even as I expanded it.
The first time it happened, I thought little of it. Maybe something had gotten curious, but I’d simply spooked it off.
But then it happened again, only a few minutes later, and I frowned.
It was… possible… that I was skirting through its territory, and it was simply keeping an eye on me, so I didn’t want to push too hard and drive it to attack.
But in case it was something a little more sinister, I kept my mana tensed and ready, prepared for a fight.
When I got the peeks five more times in the next hour, I was confident I wasn’t just wandering through something’s territory, and was really tempted to divert off of the path. The path was such an obvious spot for an ambush that if I was to stay on it, I’d be begging for an attack. Even predators knew enough to follow deer trails, after all.
But going off the path would mean more than just losing sight of where I needed to go. That was no big deal, in the end, since I could use my Sense Directionality spell to steer me back on course.
No, the trouble was that the trail had footing. It was slick, coated in a layer of ice that had a bit of powdery snow atop, but my cleats were able to mostly handle that. The wilderness didn’t even have the somewhat compacted lanes of snow, though, just wilds. Pitfalls could become a real hazard, and I’d have far less guarantee that anything would be able to hold my weight.
I was a decent combat mage, a decent survival mage, and a decent scout. But I wasn’t an expert in any of those things, and trying to pretend I was would just end with me failing the challenge.
Reluctantly, I pressed forward, and after another half an hour, I triggered the ambush that was lying in wait for me.
Two large cats entered the range of my spatial sense, larger than any housecat, but still smaller than the coyotes. Their mana was a match for what I’d been feeling, and now that they’d gotten close enough for me to see, I could get a good read on their actual strength as well. Middle of third gate, I’d guess.
The cats flanked me on either side, which meant there had to be something ahead of me. But what?
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
I focused my mana senses and allowed myself to slip into the power of my Placid Mind spell, mentally turning over every speck of snow until…
There!
My senses locked onto something. It was veiling itself, and doing it well, but my senses were strong.
The creature felt somewhat like the mana of Aput, the glacier dragon, but it had far more death in it, and a far heavier emphasis on desolation. It was strong, slightly ahead of the cat creatures, but not quite on the level of the estragon or drakes that I’d fought.
The moment the snow where the creature was hiding started to shift, I unleashed my Briarthreads and cast Pinpoint Boneshard, setting it to spin in two, slightly offset pentagons around me – one at my head, and one at my torso. The other three, I kept hovering over my head, ready to attack.
Edgar’s mana filled the air, and I launched a Pinpoint Boneshard at each of my enemies. The cats both glowed with power, and a bolt of gray light launched from their bodies, striking the bones in mid-air. I could feel the magic on them dissolve away, and the bones fell to the forest floor.
The shard I launched at the creature emerging from the snow seemed to sink in, but it struck a core of something hard. As I frantically recast the spell, recalling my offensive bones, the creature ahead of me released a powerful cone of ice-white destruction, tinged with streaks of black. It resembled the breath attack of a dragon, but more focused on light than fire, and it carried an air of danger. I teleported behind the mass of snow, leaving an an image where I’d been, and lashed out with briarthreads.
As it ripped apart snow, I got my first look at the creature underneath. It resembled some sort of… Crystal.
The size of my entire torso, it looked like it was ringed in an outer shell of quartz, with an interior made of lapis lazuli flecked with silver.
It was very pretty, but annoyingly hard to damage, even as I brought a series of three bones down on top of it. When nothing happened, I drew them back and Foxstepped to the side, certain that it would unleash another one of its beam attacks.
At least, I tried to foxstep out of the way.
A pair of gray bolts hammered into my body, and my spirit fuzzed for a moment, embroiled with a chaotic energy unlike anything I’d ever experienced. With my spirit so interconnected with my body, I felt my strength fluctuate for a second, the pools of energy still there, but thrown into equal chaos. I stumbled and almost fell, and if it weren’t for Ikki’s training, as well as the grips on my shoes, I would have fallen for sure, and likely tumbled off of the path and into who knows what.
As it was, I barely managed to get my feet under me long enough to dodge the beam of crackling white and black light that the living rock emitted, then forced my mana and energy back into order.
The crystal-thing created a vortex of spinning white and black light over its head and threw it at me, and I foxstepped behind it. The spell was draining, my spirit still somewhat out of order, but as I appeared, the disorientation in my magic faded.
I took in a sharp breath and overcharged my mana, then hammered into the crystal from either side with bones and briars, but it did little more than knock more snow off, and scratch the thick, quartzlike layer.
As it struck, however, I realized something about the lapis and silver buried beneath the crystal.
It wasn’t a stone at all.
It was flowing and moving in an almost oozelike manner. I’d never seen an ooze before, they’re far more common out to the east, but I thought I might be dealing with one that had somehow crawled its way into this thick shell. Or maybe it had grown it somehow?
Whatever the reason, I barely managed to skid out of the way of several more of the cat’s bolts, and Foxstep away from another beam.
That beam had been weaker… Was it running low on mana?
I ducked a crescent that the crystal emitted, then felt a pair of binding spells land on me. Gray magic wrapped around my body, weighing me down, not unlike my own Fungal Lock spell. I tore through it with my somewhat enhanced strength, then threw a triple lock onto the crystal ooze creature.
I’d initially held back because I didn’t think it would work. Honestly, the only reason I’d thrown it then was because I was thinking about the Fungal Lock already.
But to my surprise, the veins of ethereal mycelium began to wind their way through the crystalline shell around the ooze, latching onto the squishy contents within and draining its energy.
And it drained a lot. Shimmering light shot through the Fungal Lock, and the mushrooms began to multiply, even without me pumping more mana in. It tried to unleash another one of its rippling crescents, but it was eaten away before it could even form properly.
My attention was pulled away from the crystal as the cats released real attacks for the first time, rather than just playing support to the ooze. One of them released a stream of fire that felt distinctly like pure solar magic. In fact, I could even name the exact spell – flamethrower! An infamous first gate offensive fire spell.
As I teleported several feet up and onto the sturdy branch of a tree, I spotted the second attack, a wave of condensed light that shimmered many colors, like the auroras that could dot the sky.
I frowned. That attack had felt a lot like the wintery mana that many creatures around here possessed. It was closest to the aura bear I’d seen on my first day, but it wasn’t an exact match.
Interesting.
Then one of the cats teleported onto the tree, only a few feet from me, and released a burst of three of those strange gray darts. I leapt off the tree, and only managed to not crash and break my legs by teleporting mid-jump to land several feet back, away from any of the three enemy combatants.
These things could steal spells?! No wonder they were content to just hit me with those bolts and let the crystal wear me down.
It also explained the cause of my earlier Foxstep costing so much. I thought my mana and energy had just been disoriented and chaotic, but the cat had been skimming a spell off of me.
My theory was only confirmed as the one that had teleported into the tree began to scale down manually, and the other released a bolt of sharpened ice at me.
I dodged to the side, snapping out with Fungal Locks.
Then a massive crash ripped through the trail.