[Spirit Imbibed: Salien’s Blood]

[Belch]

ACTIVATED

Effect: {COMBUSTION}

Duration: 1 Minute

Fire.

Building up in my stomach, bubbling away amidst the marrowless bones of the wolf-feast.

Running up my throat and throbbing against my chubby cheeks.

Then streaming from my mouth in a geyser.

The plant she-fiend drops me instantly, her head engulfed by the gout that’s erupting out my mouth. Even when I hit the ground it doesn’t stop. I move forward slowly, edging towards her like a tiny, floofy dragon, while my firestorm burns away her cackling smile.

Her screams of pain fill the sky now, and amidst her cries I hear Swiftrunner howl a battlecry of victory.

My fire fades, I puff out a little cloud of smoke, and then stand and watch her burn.

My stomach churns. Her face crisps and the vine-covered bark begins to twist and drip to her feet. Her scythes fly to her head to scratch at the crisping skin.

“HOW!” she roars – the sound fracturing my eardrums with its intensity.

You have gained the following Core Skills:

Belchomestry (LVL I)

I look down at the sagging form of Aethel, who regards me with a bloody, toothy smile.

And with a little hiccup! I reply, “Belchomestry.”

The giant lets out a raucous laugh.

“Damn RIGHT, wee yin!”

Seneca recovers her poise and brandishes her scythes again, looking through charred eyes at both of us.

When she leaps this time, her smile has dropped.

“DIE, VERMIN!”

She’d probably have sliced me apart then and there if a certain white wolf didn’t smash into her side and send her rolling across the blasted plain.

“I…Swifty!?”

He stands proud, head a little scratched up, but still battle-ready and willing. A true testament to his people.

And in his lips he holds my sword.

“I told you,” he says through a muffled shout. “I may not be on the same level as the Lightborn, but I am Swiftrunner – Master of the Headbut!”

He tosses my blade to me as Seneca rises with unrestrained fury.

He looks right at her as she flies towards him.

“And you shall be treating our kind with more respect!”

She’s so fixated on him that, when my strike comes, she doesn’t even feel it until she’s rolling down the hill, nothing but a torso and a pair of scything talons covered in dirt.

And she looks up to see my scimitar in my mouth, gleaming bright against the backdrop of the slowly rising sun.

[Swallow Strike]

{CRITICAL HIT!}

Hey! That’s new!

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Swiftrunner takes one look at her wobbling legs and merely pushes them aside with his front paw. They fall, evaporate into dust, and the next thing we hear are the sounds of the plant-assassin’s bestial screaming as she thrashes around in the dirt beneath us.

“VERMIN!” she screams. “INFIDELS! MONGREL TRASH! YOU ARE BUT SCRAPS OF MEAT, GOOD FOR NOTHING BUT DECOMPOSITION!”

“Aye, aye,” Aethel mutters, waving away the girl’s yelps with his massive hand. “Ye talk a big game, wee lass. But when it comes ta the Lightborn and his associates, well, ye haven’t got a leg tae stand on!”

Aethel finds this joke far funnier than any normal human should, and, looking down at the thrashing Seedling’s body at the foot of the hill, growing more furious by the second, I know this is the time to finish the job.

But I sway, trapped between a need for sleep and a need to do my duty.

Which is killing, right?

My wounds gush. My body feels heavy. The sword in my mouth…dull.

I let myself fall.

“Raziel!”

Swiftrunner rushes to my aid and hoists me up on his back. The softness of his fur is appreciated, but as I let one leg loll down the side of his body I feel the soft, wet stickiness of an open wound cut into him, too.

He winces. He tries to hide it, but I know he’s in pain, too.

“You’ll be ok,” he says. “You’ll be ok. You’ll be…”

“Swifty…” I say, trying to keep my eyelids propped open. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“For…for almost…you know…”

He shakes his proud, blood-spattered mane. “That wasn’t you, Little Brother. I know it.”

‘Still…” I say with an inaudible chuckle. “Don’t put it in the stories…”

Aethel watches us with curious eyes, his own wounds laying him low.

“Ah didnae really suspect,” he whispered. “The Lightborn – a wee Corgi dug – being guided by a wolf on his path. But, well, here ye are. Not only a swordsman, but a Belchometrist ta boot!”

Aethel hands Swiftrunner two of vials he produces from his almost empty sack as the screams from the maniacal girl below grow louder by the second.

“DON’T. THINK. YOU’VE. WON!”

Something drops from her mouth. I see it, plain as day. Something small, like a shining green pearl.

Something I’ve seen before.

“Take these,” Aethel says, forcing both potions into Swiftrunner’s beaten pack. “Take ‘em and get outta here. Yer more use ta the world than this old goat ever was.”

He says this with a touch of sorrow that doesn’t become him. This guy – this mountain of flesh and muscle, powered by booze and a badass attitude – he’s actually feeling melancholic?

Then I notice one other bottle he holds in his hands.

[Snoop]

Substance Identified: Philter of Recall

Effect: INSTANTANEOUS TRANSPORTATION

Location: Forest of Haven (Glenheim outskirts)

“Was saving it fer a rainy day,” he says quietly as our eyes meet. “But ye’ll be safe there. Safer than anywhere round these parts. Far fae the Darkseed. Far fae Deshaan's lands, and closer ta the Greycloak’s castle ta boot.”

My eyes widen. This guy’s just full of surprises, huh?

“How do you know..?”

He snorts, as though the answer is obvious. “How do I know where yer goin? Part a’ my job, wee yin. Us Belchometrist’s got an ear ta the ground. It’s oor business ta know things aboot this earth, when we’re no gettin’ wasted on her juices that is, hah!”

His joviality in the face of what is rising from the foot of the hill is admirable.

What remains of the girl’s charred face is her devilish grin and a set of blank voids where her eyes once were. Her torso rises up before us, attached to a pair of thick, thorn-covered pincers that pierce what remains of the decimated ground as she begins charging towards us with renewed tenacity.

Swiftrunner and I share a knowing look at our wounds as our companion steps forward massively, interposing himself between us and the girl’s path of destruction.

“C…come with us,” I cough, sputtering blood across Swiftrunner’s neck as he begins to sag under my weight.

The giant man doesn’t look back. He stands tall and stares down the rampaging monster even as he must know he doesn’t stand a chance.

“Ah belong here, wee man,” he says to me. “I’ll defend the blood o’ this earth till ma dying breath. That’s whit a Belchometrist’s made fer.”

He holds the Recall potion in one hand above us.

In the other shines another bottle of Salien Blood.

“I’ll tell ye this,” he says. “Ye say a Corgi like you ain’t made fer this crap. Probably true. Nature didn’t build ye fer this. But y’know what the funniest thing about us mortals is?”

The mutated Seneca’s newly sharpened scythes flash through the air towards us.

“No matter what nature throws at us, we adapt.”

In that moment he throws down the Recall potion and I feel its milky warmth flow over me. Swiftrunner must feel the same way – for both our paws are stuck it seems in the air. Around us a grey-white bubble instantly forms and coats us in what feels like sticky wet gruel.

I feel my form dissolving into nothing, and I let out a tiny bark at Aethel’s smiling face just before Seneca’s claws reach for his throat-

“DIIIIIE!!”

And then…

The hard snapping of branches beneath me. My body tumbling through brambles and leaves and finally landing with a heavy thud on the floor of yet another forest.

I breathe in what little air I can as Swiftrunner falls beside me, barely cognizant himself.

But then I feel something – something I haven’t felt for what seems like an age: a fire warming my body nearby, touching my nose and bringing a small semblance of life back into me.

Only then do I hear the sounds of footsteps approaching from all around me. Not paws. Not the heavy footsteps of humans nor the clumsy skittering of the Greenskins.

These steps were light. Stealthy.

My eyes dart around to prospect my new surroundings.

[Snoop]

Unknown Presence: 10ft

5ft

3ft

“N’gusta Ar’kevisth!”

“Melk’alior Fashusth!”

In my little pool of blood I start to feel weightless again. Finally, my body gives out. I let myself go just as the shadows of those speaking these strangely angelic words begin to approach, their feet light, their voices lowered to hushed whispers.

I try to look up at them, hoping against all hopes that they at the very least don’t like the taste of dog.

But in truth, the only thing I can think about right now has nothing to do with me at all.

“A…Aethel..” I murmur.

And before it’s lights out for me again, a small, hoarse voice scratches out a word I understand:

“Lightborn.”