“Ambition is a minatory thing, especially when imperiled.”

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Ernest hadn’t slept last night - he’d been perusing the archives through the early morning, and he doubted he could’ve, anyway, given Thistleverve’s unceasing racket - but he was made of stronger stuff than to be daunted by a singular all-nighter. Even his elderly grandfather, alive for twenty years over a century, could stay awake for a mere forty hours. The trait was fairly clearly a net positive - in this case, it allowed him to plan forward and gather information.

For example, he’d originally expected - and had based a plan involving smuggling operations around the idea - that departure from the city would necessitate rigorous inspection of his person, his belongings, his motives, and whatever other criteria the guards had in mind. It was not an unfounded assumption; he’d gone through such a rigmarole to enter the city, and he knew that the larger cities in the Duchy of Gravehill employed such measures, both for good reason. Why would it be any different upon exit?

Asking around a bit before the sun’s rise had been enlightening.

“Ah, leaving so soon? The migraines from Her Laments got to ye so early?” the old shopkeeper chuckled, resting his knobby hands on the wooden counter in front of him after just opening the shop. “Regardless, nay. Ye needn’t worry about outbound inspections. They’re only cursory.”

“You’re sure?” Ernest asked, wary.

“Aye. The guards don’t have the time for it. Why? Did ye steal a maiden’s knickers?” he cackled at his own joke. Then he seemingly realized something, putting a more focused gaze on Ernest and cupping his chin. “Though, maybe…”

Ernest walked out of the shop, hearing a bell jingle with the slam of the door.

A few other sources had told him much the same - though, they hadn’t babbled the same drivel as the shopkeeper afterward - and he saw no trace of deceit in any of their responses, although he wasn’t an inquisitor of any sort. What else was there to say? Trusting evidence gathered from several, varied sources was not fallacious in the slightest, even if Ernest personally thought that only taking note of importations and ingresses was slightly imprudent. On the other hand, though, Thistleverve received and sent out so many travelers that even screening all entries likely taxed their available manpower - doing the same for exits would be unfeasible. It made sense when put in that light.

And it wasn’t as if he was enraged or appalled that the guards would allow him to sneak away with his contraband. In fact, he was quite relieved at this stroke of serendipity.

“Halt,” commanded one of the guards - all of which were members of the Thorned Cavaliers, Thistleverve’s military force - as Ernest strode towards the main gate of the city, a sack of tomes slung over his shoulder. The man rubbed his eyes with a gloved hand, clearly exhausted and waiting for someone to relieve him of his shift. “State your business.”

“I intend to depart from Thistleverve,” Ernest nodded.

“Very well. What is in the bag?”

“Some books I have procured under the orders of my master.” It never hurt to keep stories as consistent as possible, after all. Ernest brought the sack out in front of him, undoing the simple knot keeping it bound and revealing some hard-backed, unmarked volumes. The guard gave it a cursory glance - likely for the sake of regulation, as Ernest could tell he wasn’t paying much attention at all - and the mage tied the bag back up a few seconds later.

“You are clear to egress.”

It was exactly as they said it would be. Ernest smothered a twinge of disbelief that it would be so easy.

“I am grateful.”

The guard waved him to leave, yawning.

Of course, Ernest didn’t stride through the thirty foot tall gate of wood, steel, magic, and more, given that it was closed - opening and shutting it for every traveler was much too arduous, not to mention a security risk. Instead, another guard opened a more reasonably sized door to the left of the main gate, one still sturdy enough to ward off any monster, and the mage left through there. It slowly shut behind him with a dull thud.

Ernest stepped onto the brown-red, brick-laid path leading out from Thistleverve - which split into a few directions, but never anywhere specific, simply petering out into dirt eventually - and intently strode away from the city, surrounded by the lush, windy plain that Thistleverve was built within. After about five minutes, the Maiden’s Laments began to decrease in volume with every step, and by ten, they retreated into the low drone that had been such a nuisance on the way in. Now, with the comforting weight of forbidden knowledge on his shoulder, and with the harrowing experience of nearly ten hours of constant clamor to compare, it was almost a blissful noise akin to the pattering of rain. He continued walking along the road, eventually losing sight of Thistleverve among the leaves of the forest, with the rising sun dappling the stone beneath his feet.

Ernest couldn’t help but push out a weary, relieved sigh at the fact that things - unexpectedly - hadn’t gone completely wrong. Even that pessimistic train of thought, though, was incapable of overshadowing the satisfaction tingling in the back of his mind. The fact that he would soon fully imbibe the knowledge in his pilfered tomes was enough to cause a multitude of such feelings. According to his admittedly vague estimates, it would be in five months at the latest - and that was after he added six weeks to account for the likely occurrence of longer missions from Escutcheon. It was enough to invoke a swell of contentment within his breast.

All that was left was to extract the material benefits of this escapade. Ernest smiled.

“HALT! FIEND!”

And then he snapped his head around, seeing a party of ten Thorned Cavaliers chasing after him on horseback.

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Ernest sprinted through the forest, disabling his cooling bounded field - in case any of them had a mild talent for sensing unhidden mana, in case lingering temperature shifts gave away his position, in case of anything - and fumbling to activate his invisibility relic, boots, and bracelet. The mugginess of the forest hit his unseen, silent, scentless form in full force, with the only thing to give away his presence being the disturbances made by his feet hitting the dirt.

Apparently, that was enough.

“OVER YONDER! HE HEADS EAST!”

He’d made a mistake. Perhaps it was his sloppy method of reconnaissance on the scriptorium, perhaps Charles had shown himself to be a liability, perhaps it was a cause of nearly caving in that peppy barmaid’s windpipe, or perhaps it had been a collection of things, both minor and major, that had led to this manhunt - the where, the when, the how, the why, none of it mattered. All that was in Ernest’s mind was how to escape from these pursuing hounds, preferably with the sack of tomes slung over his shoulder and certainly with his life.

The optimal way through such a situation was to nonviolently escape. Through a combination of running, hiding, and trickery, Ernest would cause the Thorned Cavaliers to lose his trail, and he would retreat to Escutcheon’s castle with nothing more than a scare. Fighting and killing, after all, would lead to an actual manhunt - a hefty bounty on his head, searching patrols out in the countryside, his likeness plastered all over Sunblotch, perhaps even in neighboring lands - which would ruin every single one of his plans for the future. Simple escape would lead to a lesser bloodthirst, to the point that he’d likely be forgotten after a week or two.

It was unlikely that he’d be able to skulk away. Ernest knew this, but he also knew that it was even more unlikely that he’d be able to defeat the ten warriors on his tail - his options were so terrible that he wasn’t willing to dedicate himself to either, lest everything crash and burn.

However, panting and breaching into a thinner cluster of trees, Ernest saw an opportunity ahead - one that could allow him to make the attempt of escape without being fully compromised upon failure. It came in the form of a large hill of stone, closely surrounded by trees and wrapped in vegetation - likely the former home of some burrowing monster, given the large holes that clearly led to tunnels all throughout it - and forming in his mind, upon seeing it, was the best plan he could come up with under the circumstances.

The question was fight or flight.

“HE IS GOING TO THE CAVES!”

But this potential stage allowed for leeway to alternate between the two options as needed, with reasonably optimal circumstances for both. There was no need to make a choice yet.

Ernest made his choice, dashing into the most accessible opening. It led to pure darkness, but he braved through it, feeling his way along the jagged stone wall and mentally recording every turn he made. The plan was to stumble his way through the tunnels until he exited through another of the exits - there were dozens visible from the outside - thus losing his pursuers. He continued to flounder his way through the dark caverns as quickly as possible.

It wasn’t working, though.

“TO THE LEFT!” voiced an echoing shout, followed by the reverberating pattern of quick footsteps. If Ernest stopped moving, they’d be on him within half a minute, likely less. His course of action had turned out worse than if he’d continued running through the forest - they could still track him through these tunnels, albeit not as quickly as before, while his drastically slowed pace in such darkness actually put them on a superior track to intercept him.

They were simply better in every way, physically speaking. He was having difficulty figuring out how to turn this situation on its head.

“GO, VLUDIAN!” a man shouted, sounding nearer than before.

Ernest gritted his teeth. They were rapidly gaining on him - they’d been gaining on him ever since the chase had begun - and of course they were. They were warriors, mighty wielders of prana, while he was a mage, whose strengths lay in the mind rather than the body. He needed to slow them down… except that he didn’t have anything to do so. So, he had to go for the next best thing:

Speeding up.

To that end, Ernest fumbled at the pouch hooked to his belt while walking blindly, eventually coming away with the nugget of slime core he’d purchased the other day. Pulsing his mana into the material caused it to light up with a sickly, putrid green glow, illuminating about six feet around the mage in every direction, as a command from him excepted it from his invisibility relic’s effects. Slime core was an exceedingly common, cheap alchemical substance with a variety of properties, one made from distilling the actual fluid of slimes’ bodies into a solid form that wouldn’t evaporate. The shopkeeper had been selling them as souvenirs and ear protection for fools like Ernest.

And how thankful he was for being a fool now. Ernest began to sprint as fast as he could, no longer bothering to feel his way along the walls now that he could actually see. The voices of his pursuers somewhat faded, though they were still present.

Lighting up his surroundings was technically a risk, but it was clear that his pursuers could track him even without any luminosity to potentially see - and undoubtedly they had already lit their own torches, thus making their way through these tunnels much swifter than he. It would speed up his pace without providing much benefit to the Thorned Cavaliers, and that was the best he could do in his circumstances.

It still wasn’t good enough, though. Ernest had managed a good head start in the forest, but, with the guards’ speed and experience, that gap had been severely lessened. Tracking the would-be prisoner had become more difficult in the cave - he continually wracked his brains on how they were tracking him at all, for that matter - presumably making them stop for a bit at every crossroads to decipher which path he’d taken, but they were still gaining on him with their speed being multiple times his own. The mage was beginning to flag from exhaustion.

“UP FRONT! MAKE HASTE!”

Ernest clenched his jaw and kept pushing. The craggy, jagged stone walls of the tunnels were only vaguely lit by his meager light, blurring with his desperate run - he sprinted just as his father had trained into him, so many years ago, and Ernest suppressed the fury-tinged recollection of that training’s accursed outcome - but, in his rush, Ernest only noticed that the walls had given way to the inky darkness of a larger cavern too late.

Galloping into a mound of fur shoved all of the air out of Ernest’s lungs with a rough exhale, but it was silenced by his boots’ enchantments, along with the thump he made when falling to the ground. The nugget of slime core, though, wrenched from the mage’s hands, skittered and clattered along the ground, doubtlessly alerting his would-be captors.

But, considering how the six foot radius of the slime core’s glow couldn’t even reach the top of the slumbering beast’s torso, Ernest suspected that they wouldn’t be his most immediately pressing issue. The hulking mass of fur and - from what he felt upon impact - rock solid muscle shifted, startling the fugitive from his stupor. Ernest scampered backwards, dragging his bag along the floor with him.

He held as still as physically possible, holding his breath despite his noise-dampening boots. A noise like a blade against a grindstone permeated the air as the thing rose, dragging its paws against the stone floor.

It appeared that this was not the ‘former’ burrow of a monster.

The slime core on the cold stone floor was still glowing with that putrid green light, making the creature seem like it crawled out of a sewer despite its fur being an unblemished, pure white. Its four legs flexed and rippled as it slowly stood, revealing clawed feet as large as Ernest’s torso, with talons sharp as swords. A stubby, thick tail shortly swished before disappearing from view as the monster turned around, placing its head right above the makeshift torch and revealing its pale, eyeless, noseless, earless visage. It had less of a face and more of a gaping maw protruding from its neck, one as tall as Ernest and twice as wide, with terrifying teeth and long whiskers that sagged to the ground.

The mage realized that the Grottognaw - he’d vaguely heard of such an abomination before - knew where he was. It had immediately turned to his exact location upon waking up; the fact was obvious. With no ears, no eyes, no nose, along with the facts that it lived underground and had whiskers, it could only mean that it sensed through vibrations, which made sense for a monstrous deviation of a mole. Ernest had no equipment to protect against such a sense. It could probably feel his racing heart from a cavern away.

Luckily, his pursuers saw fit to distract the beast at that moment with their own entrance.

The sound of steel greaves pounding against stone with harsh footsteps filled the air - but there wasn’t the clatter of ill-fitting armor, showing that the soldiers possessed quality, personalized equipment. The warm glow of orange torchlight preceded the warriors’ arrival, illuminating the cavern near the entrance, and finally, the ten Thorned Cavaliers themselves entered. Their armor was of a silvery metal, with designs of curling roses and thorns embellished across the breastplate in gold. In contrast to the harsh angles and protrusions of some other armatures Ernest had seen, theirs was smooth and flowing. They did not wear helmets.

Of course, Ernest didn’t see any of this. He had begun running before they arrived, having felt his way against the wall for a tunnel before making his escape. The creature had ignored him, likely being less mindlessly aggressive than other monsters and knowing full well that the incoming soldiers would make for a proper meal. It couldn’t afford to allow them an easy hit while it munched on Ernest’s corpse.

Or perhaps it wasn’t carnivorous at all. Perhaps it knew that Ernest was not looking for a fight, and was letting him go in order to face those that it knew were a threat…?

“NO! MALIKEOS!”

It was unlikely, though. Ernest winced at the squelching, crunching noise he heard, feeling pity for the poor soul behind him - but not enough to turn himself in, or to feel any regret for this outcome. The only thing he felt was relief. The mage reached for his pouch and pulled out another nugget of slime core.

He possessed two ears, after all. Of course he’d bought two of them. His pursuers, in turn, had apparently sent out a contingent of two in order to not lose Ernest’s trail.

“VLUDIAN! FRAUBLAST! AFTER HIM! LEAVE A TRAIL FOR US!”

And, unfortunately, Ernest’s head start was pitiful compared to what it had previously been, especially for the damned seasoned tracker this group of warriors apparently had in their midst.

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Ernest stumbled his way through the tunnel, trying to catch his breath. He clutched his light source with a sweaty, shaking hand, glancing behind him to see pure blackness.

The darkness at the end of the lengthy tunnel was breached by orange torchlight, within which were the silhouettes of two sprinting men.

“SURRENDER! I’LL REMOVE YOUR HEAD FROM YOUR SHOULDERS QUICKLY, MALEFACTOR!”

Ernest doubled his pace. He’d managed to elude his would-be captors thus far, but he was slowing, they were quickening, his mana was draining, and an exit was nowhere in sight.

Soon, he’d have to make a final stand.

Ernest kept sprinting, turning left at one crossroads, right at another, middle at the next, and reaching the last while running on fumes. His breath came out in ragged gasps, his sides burned like open wounds, his clothes were drenched in sweat, and his mouth was completely dry. Even the cool air of the tunnels hadn’t staved off his exhaustion. Bile threatened to rise from his throat.

Continuing as he had would get him nowhere - he was at the end of his rope - but fighting was out of the question in such a state. He’d need to recover as best he could before anything like that. Ernest needed to get creative, and a crossroads with four possible pathways and a fifth one hidden to the left, a couple paces back, was the perfect spot to attempt such a thing.

He had about fifteen seconds, likely less, before they caught up to him, and the best he could do was attempt to capitalize on his vague guess of how they’d been tracking him, that being by sensing the miniscule remnants of residual mana. Ernest had no real talent in sensing mana, even after growing his soul with years of magical experience, but he supposed that some of his illicit tomes might have been marinating in high-mana environments and thus harbored noticeable traces. Pumping mana into his slime core would have exacerbated the effect, although that then begged the question as to why they’d needed to pause at every crossroads for the same amount of time to track him after he’d activated it.

It was ambiguous at best, but it was the best he had. Not doing anything would lead to his definite capture - at least this gave him a chance.

Ernest pumped more mana into the nugget of slime core, making it glow a bright, toxic green rather than the more muted color of waste. Walking a bit into the fifth pathway, the one to the side away from the others, he wound his arm back and hurled the light source as hard as he could into the dark tunnel, watching as it hit the ground further down the path. It silently shattered - not like glass; it more so suddenly burst to sand-sized particles - and extinguished, presumably releasing all of its mana.

Ernest huddled himself in an alcove to the right, waiting. He hid the sack of tomes behind him, hoping that his fatigued body would slightly dampen the mana emanating from them - next to the bomb of energy that was the destroyed slime core, whose mana had hopefully already diffused out into the branching tunnels, it wouldn’t be noticed. It was the best he could do. His pursuers, quick as ever, were heralded at the bend in the tunnel with blazing torchlight, which came into view even before Ernest had made it to his hiding place. After the torchlight came the soldiers themselves. It was the first time Ernest had been able to inspect them.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

They looked fairly similar. Same armor, same build, though one was slightly taller than the other, same skin tone - lightly tanned, but not brown - same full beard, albeit in differing colors of black and brown, and so on. Perhaps they were brothers - it was irrelevant either way. Their speed was much more noticeable, though, in that it was much, much slower than Ernest knew they were capable of. A mild jog for them was five times faster than his fastest sprint, so why were they only going double his maximum velocity?

The question of why he hadn’t been caught yet had been plaguing Ernest’s weary mind ever since he’d entered the cave, and he’d figured that it was because they were pausing for a while at each crossroads to trace his location - but that didn’t seem to be it. He wondered if they were taking the chase seriously at all, or if there was something going on that he wasn’t aware of.

Although, it seemed like he was about to find out.

“Stop,” the one at the front commanded, passing the surprisingly small torch back to the other soldier. Ernest, looking carefully, noticed two similar torches poking out of the satchel on the man’s waist, with three on the other man’s. The Thorned Cavaliers were well-prepared.

The man waded forwards, closing his eyes and holding his arms out like a weaker, younger undead - a zombie. He first walked to the rightmost tunnel, right past Ernest, making the mage’s heart threaten to burst from his chest. Then the guard made his way left, sticking his arms into the gate of each path, eventually ending up at the decoy path.

“Here. The air is less certain, though. Go.”

The second man burst into action, handing the torch - clearly made with some measure of alchemy, as it wasn’t extinguished from the sheer speeds he moved - off to the other man, who had carved an arrow pointing to the path with a long dagger. They swiftly sprinted at velocities befitting their statuses as warriors into the tunnel, sending a wind back at the hiding fugitive.

Ernest’s eyes widened in surprise, then in jubilation, then in realization. He jumped up, finding a newfound energy coursing through him even with that meager rest, before he ran into the right-middle pathway of the crossroads.

He understood now. They weren’t tracking him through anything physical, like a hypothetical layer of dust in the caves that he was kicking up, or anything magical, like residual mana - no, they were tracking him through the vague disturbances in the air currents and subterranean winds he left through his mere existence. Thus, they could move at their proper speeds early in any tunnel runs, but they would slow down at the later ends, near the crossroads, in order to not fully remove the traces of his presence. He had absolutely no clue how it worked - the caves’ wind systems should have made air current disturbances negligible, if not nonexistent, and he hadn’t thought they would linger either way - but he figured he could research such trifles later. He suspected it had something to do with wind spirits - sylphs - but that was neither here nor there.

Ernest felt a grin worm its way onto his face. He had a chance, now, even if the obliteration of his last light source had reduced him to stumbling along the walls again.

Of course, his invisibility relic chose that moment to malfunction and deactivate - not that it revealed his wretched form to himself, anyway, considering the utter darkness of the cave. It might have been because he’d overengineered the thing, or perhaps it had been due to the fact that he was unfamiliar with invoking such effects as invisibility, or perhaps it had been a simple mistake on his part - it didn’t really matter. The outcome was the same.

But he hadn’t done everything wrong.

A part of his overengineering was a failsafe that would go through each component of the relic, attempt one of a couple adjustments he had programmed it with, and then draw heavily on his mana reserves to reboot the entire thing. This would occur once every minute, and every time it happened, the invisibility would last for about thirty seconds before, presumably, the components shifted back to their malfunctioning state and the cycle began anew. He’d turned the relic off for now, so as to not completely drain him of his mana, but he could always turn it back on and squeeze out the use from those short periods of activity.

Nonetheless, he hopefully wouldn’t need it. Why would he? The Thorned Cavaliers had been thrown off his trail.

He continued running.

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“...blasted… rapscall… useless…!” echoed the faded, enraged screams of the guards, far behind him. “...there…!”

Ernest willed himself to move faster, sprinting despite the complete lack of visibility. He could deal with some bruises from blindly running into walls - but he could not, most definitely not, deal with being caught and either imprisoned or executed. He hastened, dragging his hand along the wall to orient himself and collecting a fair amount of cuts that he hoped wouldn’t fester.

It seemed his pursuers had ended up finding the traces of his presence again, whether through a stroke of fortune - misfortune, more accurately - in an interconnecting tunnel or by doubling back and tracking him again. Ernest resisted the urge to curse in frustration, not that he could spare the breath to do so.

This was the final stretch.

There were no more second chances, and there was no room left for trickery. If he couldn’t make it out of the caves before they caught up to him, the only available option was battle.

…Although, it was uncomfortably likely that he’d have to fight even if he escaped, given that catching him would be even easier out in the open.

Ernest hoped it wouldn’t come to that. His force wand and shield-projecting glove wouldn’t do much for him without tremendous luck and optimal circumstances, if that was the case, and the cavaliers would show no mercy if he meaningfully resisted.

He continued running.

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Ernest saw natural light after a bit, and it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on. It curved around a tunnel’s corner, beckoning to him, and following it led to a larger cavern with a ceiling made completely of deep green vines. Sunlight peeked through the gaps, illuminating how the vegetation crept into cracks in the walls, curled in loops on the floor, and dangled from the roof, with swirling motes of dust to complement it all. It was fairly picturesque. The mage climbed the drooping ropes, having to tie the sack of tomes to his feet in order to make his way up while still possessing them. The increase in weight made his arms burn. Eventually, Ernest managed to wiggle his way through an opening in the vegetative mesh before flopping out on top of it. He gasped for breath, spread out on his back, and blankly gazed at the forest’s canopy.

Ernest had gone far from the original hill of stone. Now, he had absolutely no clue where he was, and he supposed that it didn’t matter - either way, he’d have to get as far away from this place as possible, as soon as possible, as quickly as possible. He believed there was approximately a minute before the soldiers tracked him to the surface.

He hoped to find a stream or some other body of water. He could go into it and completely lose his pursuers; after all, how would they track him through water? Without mermaid blood, they couldn’t. From there, he could last about a day and a half with the provisions in his satchels - hopefully enough time to find a trail, and therefore eventually a settlement, and orient himself on his map.

Clambering over the web of vines, Ernest found his way to dirt and flora, grimacing at the wobbliness in his legs upon standing up. It didn’t stop him from finding south on his compass and running in that direction, happy that, at the very least, his boots and bracelet still functioned as intended.

He presumed he was still in the same half of Sunblotch - not an unfounded assumption for obvious reasons - and in the middle of the viscounty was the Vegetal River Basin, which ran to the River Bruxtull. Those waterways were not particularly large, but they were still fairly present - at the very least, going south, given Thistleverve’s general location, gave him a higher chance of encountering a body of water.

If Ernest couldn’t find a way to completely, utterly throw off his pursuers, he was dead. It was as simple as that. A stream was his best chance at doing so.

He continued running.

.[].[].[].

Ernest further huddled himself into the alcove the gnarled, old tree provided at its base - perhaps some creature’s former burrow - in an attempt to minimize his presence. Catching his breath and glancing around nervously, he primed himself to reactivate his invisibility relic, a thick, drooping necklace, at the optimal time. His unfavorable, loathsome position - and wasn’t he being put in more and more of those, recently? - made its use a probable necessity, somewhere down the line.

He’d done as best he could, in choosing the location of his final stand. The dirt in this location was dry and light brown rather than moist, rich, and soft, unlike most of Sunblotch, making it difficult to differentiate his footsteps from the natural state of the forest. At the very least, he wouldn’t need to worry about the soldiers being immediately led to his position through his tracks, especially with the vegetation being so abundant. The site’s trees were all wide, tall, and somewhat wrinkled, hindering visibility, with drooping flora and a darker, dim atmosphere from the oppressive canopy contributing to that.

It was certainly better than a cramped cave.

The Thorned Cavaliers had caught up to him. Vludian, the air-sensor from before, was likely up to his trickery again - but, in the caves, his abilities had seemed much more substantial than they actually were. The man was capable of tracking Ernest in terms of his general direction, but it was evident that his abilities were somewhat limited beyond that. They’d even fanned out into two search parties upon reaching their guess of where he’d run to - practically a verbal admission of Vludian’s inability to further track him down.

A crunch like a boot against wood reverberated through the forest, followed by a rustling crash - likely a collapsed tree. It only sped up the beating of Ernest’s heart, because judging by the origin of the racket, the cavaliers were about a hundred feet behind him. Ponderous analysis wouldn’t save him - he needed to concentrate.

Ernest closed his eyes and focused his hearing. The soldiers’ armors, heavy builds, and stomping walks were impossible to properly mute within the jungle, and so they didn’t bother trying. It left him with what he hoped was an accurate gauge of their proximity to his position - in the case of the one whose patrol would intercept Ernest, perhaps eighty feet away. He pulled the force wand out from the hidden pocket of his pouch, as unassuming as ever - simply a stick of iron with a button and turnable gear near where one’s thumb would be - while the glove, thick and leathery, always wrapped his right hand. Ernest had tested the equipment out before - he knew their powers and limitations - but he’d never used them in actual combat.

He’d soon have to, he suspected.

A thump like a mallet against stone rang out, making Ernest jump in place with his wound-up nerves. It was only through pure willpower that he didn’t peek his head around the tree.

The guards were stepping up their search.

Yes, battle was likely, and hiding and pacifism was no longer something to be placed above all else. With the presumed death of Malikeos to the Grottognaw, the same effect as if he’d strangled the man with his own two hands had been achieved, leaving much less reason to avoid combat at all costs. Pure guile was unlikely to succeed again, too - for with the knowledge that Ernest was capable of both invisibility and deceit, the cavaliers would be much more careful in checking around for him. Those factors combined to make battle a viable, if unfavorable, option, but nonetheless one that was likely to occur. It was better to be prepared than to be caught unaware.

Hopefully it would amount to something, in the end.

The sound of heavy boots coming down, accompanied by the muted crack of crushed twigs and the rustle of jostled flora, reached Ernest’s ears more distinctly than ever before. A few more thumps resounded with them. With the pace of the guards’ sweep, and with the likely occurrence of them sensing something off and thus taking longer to search… Ernest assumed - very, very roughly - that he had about a minute and twenty seconds before they reached him. He kickstarted his invisibility relic’s minute-long self-repair at what was a minute and ten seconds in his estimates, feeling a noticeable drain on his mana reserves. It would grant him thirty seconds of concealment before fizzling out again, and it was better to be early than be caught with his pants down.

The noises of the guard scouring the forest grew nearer, along with their footsteps, causing the mage’s heart to beat wilder and wilder with every second that the invisibility relic was deactivated. Anxious and wracked with nerves, Ernest fell back on a bad habit of his - imagining various scenarios and courses of action, with what would happen, how things could go wrong, what he could do, and more.

In this case, though, it wasn’t so bad. It culminated in him realizing that, with their methodical pace, the approaching cavalier would linger in his line of sight for approximately forty seconds. He also recalled that his force wand possessed enough power to tear a small gouge out of a solid stone wall.

A plan formed in his mind, and a course of action was decided.

Ernest’s invisibility took effect, and five seconds later, the guard came into view, perhaps forty feet to the right. Luckily, it was Fraublast. His silvery greaves pounded into the dry dirt with every step, disturbing insects and crumpling flora, while an armored arm chopped up the vegetation in his path with a long, menacing machete. His dark brown eyes, nearly hidden beneath a thick, furrowed brow, lingered for a second or two wherever they looked. Widely built and tall, he seemed to be the size of the trees himself, taking up a portion of the meager light that filtered through the forest’s canopy.

Ernest stayed still, waiting.

The cavalier was methodical in his search. He’d walk around, inspecting every indentation, anything that looked even slightly out of place, swinging around his arms - and therefore his sword - as much as possible all the while, aiming for those spots of interest. It was an apt strategy to find an invisible foe, covering as much room as possible while searching for the disturbances left by their presence. If Ernest was permanently invisible, it would have made his chances of escape merely likely, rather than completely assured.

With less than thirty seconds of the effect, it became mostly implausible.

The warrior ventured to his left first, sweeping a leg out to uproot a bush while slicing his blade in the direction of a small boulder, through a small indentation in its side. He then cut through a clump of vegetation that Ernest had previously crawled under, further going to stomp at a spot beneath a series of hanging vines before swinging an arm down to thwack the base of a tree. The movement produced one of the resounding thumps that had haunted the vicinity ever since the cavaliers had entered, leaving a dent in the bark. The warrior completed the dance by thrusting his machete into a large tree hollow.

All of this occurred within three seconds, and he’d closed a decent portion of the space between the two of them in that time. He could have gone even faster, if he so wished, Ernest knew.

The hiding mage slowly stood up, making sure not to shift his feet at all - it would disturb the dirt, alerting the nearby hound. He extended his right hand out, which wielded both the shield-projecting glove and the force wand, his stance loosely similar to that of a fencer. Fraublast grew closer, continuing his strange, flowing motions, weaving from right to left and touching upon anywhere he deemed to be worthy of suspicion.

Worrying was the fact that the majority of those were spots Ernest had actually crossed through or contemplated hiding in - his state of exhaustion and of temporary invisibility had left only the most mediocre, paltry positions as viable options, after all. Fraublast had found a lead on his target’s location, even if, going by his obvious frustration, he hadn’t noticed it yet. Ernest needed to act fast and pounce before he did. Thankfully, the cavalier obliged in that by coming close enough to the mage.

Ernest aimed, careful as could be, for the one spot that would preemptively end the fight. The warrior continued his wheeling and searching, thwacking another tree’s stump and slicing at a large fern. His furrowed brow didn’t have even a drop of sweat on it, while Ernest was still huffing, puffing, and trembling from the weakness in his legs. After kneeing a tree, carving a gouge in a boulder, and dicing up some vines, the armored, barrel-chested man stopped to kick at an expansive clump of foliage.

Ernest turned the wand’s gear, making it capable of discharging, before he pressed the small, circular button right below the cog. From the iron rod’s tip, a small, spherical mass of invisible force quickly formed, rocketing at Fraublast’s left eye. It crossed the distance faster than Ernest could even see, colliding with its target and making his head snap back with such whiplash that the mage almost winced.

Instead, he ground his molars in an unfamiliar mix of frustration and hatred.

That wasn’t the intended outcome. Ideally, the man would have collapsed, lifeless, like a block of wood - but instead, it seemed his damned superhuman instincts had acted up at the last second, tilting his chin down. The ball of force had harshly impacted the edge of his skull, right at the eyebrow.

It only popped an eye, rather than barreling through the orbital cavity and reducing the brain to pulp.

Fraublast howled in agony, covering both of his eyes and dropping his machete. While he did fall to the ground, it wasn’t like a block of wood - it was more in the manner of a writhing, agonized wretch nursing a grievous injury. He couldn’t even curl up into a ball, thanks to the rigidity of his armor.

Ernest couldn’t even imagine the man’s anguish. The nature of warriors was to strengthen their physiques and become more attuned to the flesh through prana, the body’s energy - and so, thanks to that heightened connection, they felt every wound and laceration on a much higher scale. They were supposed to endure literal torture in order to acclimate to such pain, as it was the only option - imbibing nerve-deadening potions or something to that effect would dull their fighting ability.

Either Fraublast had foregone that part of his training, or the agony was just that great.

“VLUDIAN!” he shrieked. Ernest jumped into action, quickly crossing the ten feet between him and Fraublast. With the man’s thrashing feet and general convulsions, there was no way to get close without being injured - and with the man cravenly clamping his palms over his eyes, there was no path to a killing blow. At the very least, he was incapacitated.

Ernest doubted the man was so fervent as to pursue him for miles in such a state.

The wand’s three second cool-down finished, and just in time, because Vludian showed his face. He bounded through the forest from the right in his haste to arrive, literally knocking over trees and trampling everything in his path - and his entrance finished with him literally jumping through a tree, sending out a shower of splinters, to stand in front of Fraublast. He warily gazed at his surroundings.

Ernest had about eighteen seconds of invisibility left. He retreated to a better position.

“How did this occur?” the man questioned, crouching down to grab his companion by the shoulders while still glancing around. “Concentrate, Fraublast! What happened? Where is this foe?”

Fraublast shook his head, shakily murmuring something about not knowing before reverting to indecipherable moaning.

Vludian straightened himself and began prowling the vicinity, checking behind bushes and trees and everything in between with utmost speed. Ernest couldn’t even follow his movements; he needed to wait for the man to pause. After a second or two, he did, and the mage clicked the wand’s button, weaving together another ball of force and sending it barreling towards Vludian’s face. It seemed that the soldier’s instincts alerted him of its approach, though, what with him wrenching his head away at the last second. Ernest cursed, quickly scrambling away from his position behind a large tree.

Another failure, although the mage hadn’t really expected anything.

Ten seconds left.

Vludian launched himself at the thick tree that Ernest had hid behind, felling it with a few hefty, clean swings of his machete. It collapsed with a dull roar, colliding against two other trees, creating a new series of groans and cracks and scaring away the wildlife that hadn’t already abandoned the area. Ernest couldn’t blame the animals - he was scared himself, and he knew that such demoralization was the point of the exaggerated, needless maneuver. The intimidating warrior stood on top of the large stump as if it were a podium, bathed in bright sunlight from the gaping hole opened in the forest’s canopy. He continued gazing around, searching for signs of Ernest’s presence.

Five seconds.

Ernest, furiously wracking his brain, finalized the mental details of his plan. It was a mediocre course of action, scraped together from the scraps of opportunity that his circumstances afforded, but it was all he had - even still, the mage would die if it failed. The thought of being so close to death heightened his sense of existence, stretching his nerves taut. He hated it.

If only he’d been more careful. Now, he was reaping what he’d sown.

Ernest fired off the next attack, from behind a boulder to the left. The warrior dodged it all the same. Evidently, he was prepared to retaliate this time around, and he bounded towards the rock, eyes fierce and face drawn in a scowl. He reared his sword back…

And ran into the invisible shield projected by Ernest’s glove at his full speed, a velocity enough to crash through any obstacle, with all the force being redirected into his body. It shattered the wall, but not before he bounced back, heavily dazed, perhaps injured, looking up at the sky.

Zero seconds.

Ernest, fully visible, jumped out from behind the boulder and quickly reached Vludian’s fallen form. The man was blinking erratically and sluggishly, hand nursing a dent in his breastplate, with a quickly forming bruise on his forehead. After a couple more blinks, he recovered, face snapping up to face the mage, and with his blade still in hand, he propelled it to strike his enemy -

Ernest discharged his wand right into the man’s eye, carving a path through his orbital cavity right into the brain. The warrior immediately dropped limp, blood spurting from his skull, but his nearly aborted movement continued, launching the machete at the mage’s face, deeply slicing across it diagonally. It too spurted blood, and the machete came away with a thin sheen of it across the edge before clattering against the boulder and sliding to the dirt.

Across Ernest’s face, an ugly laceration formed, starting at the rightmost part of the chin, stretching across the nose, and finishing at the left temple. He closed his left eye, not wanting blood to get in it, while the right eye’s bright amber iris switched from anxiety, to disbelief, to wariness.

It ended with utmost relief. He almost couldn’t believe he’d done it. He’d expected to come out of it an amputee - this paltry injury was literally a best-case scenario.

The mage could ignore the cut. Doing so was a natural ability of any mage worth their salt, and even Ernest, a mere mage of the third level, could do so. While warriors’ souls grew closer entwined with their flesh, eventually suppressed by the rampant prana of their physiques, mages were the opposite - their souls grew beyond their bodies, alive and thriving even as their physicality withered and wilted. Ernest merely disassociated himself from the pain, pilfered Vludian’s supplies - he didn’t dare to attempt finishing off Fraublast, and the man, anyway, would be a good distraction for the other Thorned Cavaliers, when they eventually arrived - and limped away into the sunset, sloppily bandaging himself all the while.

The blood gushing from the wound had dripped down and stained Ernest’s teeth, so wide was his relieved smile.

He continued walking.

.[].[].[].

After wading through warm streams for hours, trying to lose any potential pursuers, Ernest eventually reached the limits of his ability.

Exhaustion wracked his body. He could ignore the burning pain in his thighs and calves, and the cuts in his hands, and the bruises across his body from running into cavern walls, and the unseemly laceration stretching across his visage, yes. Fatigue, however, was a different beast, unable to be simply disassociated - and all of that was just his body’s sense of enervation. The fact that he possessed less than a quarter of his usual mana reserves only compounded against everything else.

He was truly running on fumes, at this point.

The mage staggered up a particularly lonesome, tall hill, one with no trees - only bushes and a few hollowed logs. It exposed the night sky in its entirety - he’d been walking for over twelve hours, and night had fallen - black as pitch with shining motes of light interposed all throughout. Ernest stared at it, contemplative, bandages stained red.

He did not regret his actions. Perhaps he regretted their outcome - of course he lamented that he hadn’t been more careful, that the chase had occurred at all - but never would he bemoan their execution or necessity. His beliefs were not so fragile and unsound as to crumple and shatter at the first hint of adversity; these were premeditated choices of his, whose nature he had long since reconciled. Even if he were wracked with guilt that tore at his heart and curled like a serpent within his gut, he would have done it all again.

It was not a choice, not really; it was an obligation. Cursed as he was, Ernest would do anything to escape the touch of oblivion, and magical knowledge was the only path to doing so - to the point that the sack of tomes slung over his shoulder was more comforting than the embrace of his own mother. He’d have deceived a thousand unwitting accomplices, massacred a thousand Thorned Cavaliers, and abandoned his useless honor a thousand times to acquire it again.

Family, friends, justice, comfort, what did it matter if he was destined to die before the age of thirty? He’d give it all up to ensure his existence. Amends could be made when his goals had been accomplished.

No amount of moralizing would placate his ambition.

Ernest sighed, rubbing at his heavy eyelids and shuffling the sack of tomes to be carried with left hand - the right was getting tired. The mage made to continue hiking through the rainforest, and after three wobbly steps, he collapsed face down in the dirt, unconscious from sheer exhaustion.

The stars twinkled above him, watching.