Nyxpera

The 28th of Mounichion

The Year 4631 in the Era of Mortals

Seven days since they’d left Myriatos and the traveling was no easier for Arche. There was no defined path between the village and the city, and the way was treacherous. Tess, Helwan, and Basil took turns leading him through the forest and helping him keep his footing over the many exposed roots, a task more easily said than done. Needless to say, he was having a miserable time.

It didn’t help that he tired quickly while walking, his Stamina draining faster than usual. He could only attribute it to not being fully recovered, despite a full Health bar, though he had no status debuff to explain the change other than his Mana Scarring, which didn’t mention Stamina. All in all, it made for a lesson in patience, which is to say that Arche spent much of those seven days in near-constant frustration.

“Ow, fuck!”

Arche pushed himself off the forest floor and onto his knees, wrenching his foot free from the grasping clutches of a twisted root patch. An arm hooked beneath his and helped him to his feet.

“It’s all right,” Tess said next to him. “We’ll take it slow.”

“No,” Arche growled, already angry. “I’m not going to slow us down.”

“Arche.” Tess’s voice held a warning in it.

“It’s a three-month trip. I won’t be the reason it turned into four.”

“It will take a lot longer than that if you keep pushing yourself beyond your limits. Need I remind you that you’re not in charge, here?”

Arche hesitated, then nodded, wiping dirt from the linen cloth that obscured his eyes. In truth, he had forgotten. He’d gotten used to being the one others looked to for answers. The one to divvy out decisions and make the mistakes. He’d completely forgotten that, as a mercantile trip, this was under Tess’s jurisdiction. He was attending out of personal motivation, nothing more.

“I’m sorry, Tess. Bad habit. I’ll try to break it.”

“Try instead not to break yourself. You’re still recovering.”

Another surge of anger threatened to burst out of his chest. He had to fight to keep it down.

“Can we just keep going, please?”

Tess intertwined her arm with his and continued to guide him forward. He didn’t know if she’d noticed his second rise in anger but, given how annoyingly astute she could be, he’d be surprised if she hadn’t. It’d been two weeks, a full ten days, since his body had been broken by the wall. Though his vitals had recovered, other things were not the same. His legs hurt all the time, his breath caught in his chest far more than it should have, and his Mana Scars were ever-present, making any Mana usage difficult.

He’d tried to work through it, practicing his manipulation technique and extending his Psychic awareness, but channeling Mana was like trying to push tar through a syringe. The Mana simply didn’t react the way it should. It fought his every suggestion, resisted his every pull. Even doing simple things that used to be a kind of meditation for him, like reinforcing his mental walls, became an uphill battle requiring all of his attention.

His Psychic ability fared little better. Due to the Mana cost, it was difficult to throw out a web of consciousness and hold onto it for any period of time. He could feel the minds of his companions within about ten paces, but anything farther than that was ephemeral and slipped from his grasp.

Cora scouted ahead, often staying beyond the limits of his awareness. She didn’t often speak to him when she was with the group, but Arche could tell by her occasional huff that she was almost as frustrated by his disabilities as he was. Basil stayed near the front, his armor clinking with every step. Helwan stayed toward the middle, near Arche, always ready to lend a hand or distract with some anecdotal story. Tess hardly left Arche’s side, often choosing to be his guide as he tripped and stumbled his way through the forest. Their final traveling companion, Efterpi, stayed at the back. She was always just at the limits of Arche’s awareness, close enough that he knew she was there, but far enough away that he still doubted it. He didn’t know the extent of her capabilities, but if she felt comfortable enough in them to guard their aft, he was in no condition to argue.

Arche’s boot collided with another tree root and he stumbled, biting back another curse as pain ricocheted up his leg. At the same time, Cora returned.

“What have you found?” Tess asked, instantly alert.

Cora’s duty was to scout ahead and return once each hour to make contact. It had only been about thirty minutes since her last report.

“Haemoak,” Cora said. “Four kilometers northeast of our position. If we continue the course, we’ll run across its territory.”

“Malaka,” Tess swore. “How long will it take to go around?”

“Two days, maybe three, depending on how much territory it’s claimed.”

“What’s a haemoak?” Arche asked.

“A carnivorous tree,” Helwan explained. “Pretty uncommon, but very dangerous. They lure in prey with sweet scents and then capture them with vines, sucking the blood from their victims. The older ones can also infect the corpses with fungal spores, animating undead thralls that actively hunt out new prey to bring to the haemoak.”

“What the fuck? Necromantic plants that hunt people?”

“It will waylay us,” Cora said, ignoring Arche as she made her report to Tess, “but we should be safe, so long as we go around.”

“Do we need to be concerned about thralls?” Tess asked.

“I didn’t see any, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. I was lucky. Spotted some vine tendrils shortly after the scent changed. I left before they came after me.”

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“We should move as though it has thralls, then. You should stay close to the group until we’re out of danger.”

“Understood.”

“Are these haemoaks mobile?” Arche asked. “Do we need to worry about them chasing us down?”

“No.” Cora finally addressed him directly. “Not other than its vines. That’s what it has thralls for. Mostly it just lures its prey into reach. If we stay out of its territory, we should be fine.”

“Great, fantastic,” Arche said, feeling like the situation was anything but great or fantastic.

“Helwan, take him,” Tess said, waiting until the satyr grabbed Arche’s arm before she let go. “Cora, show me the path we should take.”

There was a quiet intensity to their travel. No one spoke much as they walked, everyone doing their best to remain quiet. Even Helwan had ceased his storytelling, making the march seem that much more endless. Every cracked twig sent shivers down Arche’s spine. Every crunched leaf was an act of personal betrayal.

They traveled like this, in a constant state of heightened awareness, for five hours before Tess called a halt. Arche’s nerves were fried from trying to pay attention to every sound in the forest. For the umpteenth time, he cursed the loss of his vision. He was helpless, unable to fight or keep watch, or even plan out their next steps. He knew nothing about the threat other than what they’d told him. Could do nothing other than slow them down as they made their way around the perilous perimeter of the creature’s territory.

When they stopped for camp, Arche sat by a small fire Basil made while the rest unpacked sleeping rolls or, in the women’s case, set up small tents. Arche crossed his legs, feeling the heat from the fire warm him as he held the Tridory in his lap. He’d taken his senses for granted. His sight especially, now that he could no longer rely on it. Without it, he was little better than the stumbling human Lyssa had found in the woods all those weeks ago. A child waiting to be slaughtered.

“Basil,” Arche said. “I need your help with something.”

“Of course,” the young guard said, at his side at once. “What is it?”

Arche stood, using the Tridory to balance himself.

“I need you to hit me.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

“It doesn’t have to be hard.”

“Why do you want me to hit you?”

Arche paused. He hadn’t quite thought that far ahead.

“Because I need to prove something to myself. Now, go on and hit me!”

Basil’s fist connected with Arche’s cheek and he tumbled to the ground, completely disoriented.

“Ow,” Arche muttered, checking his vitals to find that, indeed, the punch had shaved off a couple points of Health.

He pushed himself to his feet, trying to get a sense of the world around him. He did his best to fix his surroundings in his mind. With a breath, and a gentle touch at his cheek, he extended his consciousness outward using his Psychic trait. The Mana flowed like a glacier, thick and heavy. He felt Basil standing a couple paces away from him and focused on the presence of consciousness. He made no effort to enter Basil’s mind, that wasn’t the point. Instead, he focused on Basil’s position. Trying to affix Basil into the hazy mental image he had concocted of his surroundings.

“Again.”

“Arche, I’m not sure what you’re trying to accomplish, but—”

“Again!”

Basil moved closer. Arche heard the ground shift slightly as the guard took a step forward. Then a gauntleted fist impacted his shoulder, knocking him back a step. Arche’s mental picture swerved and ran together like an oil painting in a rainstorm, completely disorienting him. The Mana flowed sluggishly through him, resisting his efforts to use it as he forced it to trickle through his damaged pathways.

“Again.”

“Arche! What are you doing?” Tess snarled.

“Training. Basil, hit me.”

Tess stepped between them.

“Basil, go.”

She grabbed Arche by the front of his shirt and pushed him back. After several unsteady steps, each one of which sent pain shooting up his legs, his back hit a tree.

“What, by Phlegethon’s ashes, are you doing?” she hissed.

“Training.”

“Don’t give me that. I know you’re frustrated, but hurting yourself is only going to prolong your recovery. What were you thinking?”

Anger boiled up in him, filling his throat until his hands shook from it.

“I can’t be this helpless forever, Tess. I have to learn how to manage it.”

“And getting bloodied is the proper way to do that?”

A finger traced his cheek, wiping away a trickle of blood from a cut Arche hadn’t noticed. His own hand went up and found hers.

“Every surprise disorients me to the point I can barely stand. Most times, I can’t. Basil hitting me adds a level of disorientation and pain I’m likely to expect from any fight we get into, especially out here in the Sylv. Haemoaks aren’t the only dangerous things around here. I refuse to be a liability. I won’t have anyone else get hurt trying to protect me.”

Tess hissed in frustration.

“Malaka. That’s not how that works. You don’t get to decide that.”

“I have to do something, Tess. Something. I can’t just…not.”

The words stuttered and died on his lips. He wasn’t even sure what he was trying to tell her. What he was trying to tell himself. There was this desperate need inside of him. To not be a burden, to not be useless. To not be as he was.

“You are recovering. You had something dear taken from you. No one is expecting you to be fine with that. No one is expecting you to move on. It’s all right to let others take care of you. You don’t always have to be the one who saves everyone.”

Arche clenched his teeth.

“You don’t get it. I don’t know how to make you understand.”

“I don’t,” she agreed, “but I’m trying. Help me help you make sense of it.”

He let out an exasperated sigh.

“Since I came to Tartarus, I’ve been good at one thing: fighting. For better or worse, that’s the truth of it. I don’t know anything. Anything. All of my knowledge is completely irrelevant to whatever is going on at any given time and the rest of it, I don’t even fucking remember. The one thing, the one thing that I’ve been good at is fighting. Without my eyes, I can’t fight, and if I can’t fight, I can’t do anything, and if I can’t do anything, then what the fuck is the point of me? I need to be useful again. I need to do something. Anything.”

Her hand cupped his cheek.

“Oh, Arche.”

Her pity oozed over him.

“Don’t. Please don’t.”

“You are not useless. And your worth is not in your combat ability. You have suffered and sacrificed, but you don’t have to bear that burden alone. If you truly want to train, I will help you, but not like this. I owe my life to you twice over, Arche. Don’t think I’ve forgotten. Don’t belittle the man—” her voice caught, strained with strange emotion. “The man I owe so much to.”

Arche let his head hang forward, feeling tired and raw and hungry. Tess’s forehead pressed against his own as she held his arms. The only lifeline he had.

“I think I’ve had enough for one night,” he said. “Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”