54 – Back in the wild

Ishrin gently opened his eyes to the sound of voices. He had been busy absorbing the last of the energies from his cultivation ritual, pushing himself to the middle of Tier 3 in the process, and regaining some of his shrinking lead on Tiers that he had lost when he absorbed the energies. Even though he would never admit it out loud, the process had been very similar to active meditation, furthering his cultivation. He had been properly cultivating for the first time in a very long time, and although he was loathe to admit it to himself, the foundation of his power felt much more solid as a result.

A servant led them to the main room to have breakfast, past the inner garden with its bright light and lush vegetation. There was a pillar above the small indoors waterfall, the epitome of opulence. Ishrin took a good look at the words etched in the stone of the pillar, using a spell to enhance his eyesight and be able to read the faded letters. Time had not been kind to them, and the owner of the house had not seemed to value the writing as much as the pillar itself.

“Lithos mirat, sed eios animum vacuo manet.” He muttered, letting the words roll on his tongue. They tasted dusty, ancient, and powerful.

As they re-entered the manor, the smell of dust and spices took the place of the fresh and verdant smell of plant matter. They were walking in formation behind the servant, as if they were heading to battle, armored up and vigilant. The talks of last night were fresh in their memory, informing their movement and weighing on their minds. Both Melina and Lisette walked like coiled springs, their nonchalant act was thin and flimsy, easily seen through.

Lucius did not grace them with their presence at breakfast, which they didn’t mind. The less they saw the despicable person the better, for each member of the party had their own reasons to hate him. They all revolved around the same theme, but they were colored by each member’s different experience and emotional attachment to the matter. To Ishrin, what Lucius was doing to the pixies was enough to warrant death, like judgement being delivered to a sinner. To the others, he could not say.

It was after breakfast that their host made an appearance again, dressed in jewels and expensive silken clothes dyed in a deep crimson that reminded them of the blood on his clothes the other night. He led them to the door of the compound, still amicable but threatening in his demeanor. He offered them supplies and directions for their travels, which they took without much fanfare, choosing to carry them around without showing Ishrin’s inventory skill. There was a magical spell rumored to be able to replicate some of his skill’s functions, available at Tier 6, but it was extremely rare in this corner of the universe, and none of them wanted to give the impression that they were more than they let on. Although their undercover act had plenty of holes, they still stuck to it as much as they could. They could not know what Lucius knew about them already, and the less new information about them they gave him, the better.

It didn’t matter much, in the end, Ishrin mused. He had plans to deal with the asshole before the day was even over, if he could spare the time, but the girls didn’t need to be made aware of that. From the moment he had begun making plans, he had chosen not to get them involved in the whole business until it was over.

Lucius bid them farewell one last time, his white and sharp teeth gleaming in the lamplight of the city. There was a thin veil of sunlight penetrating the smoke, close to the manor, but it was weak enough that the lamps could still give the world an orange tint despite it.

“Taiival will be waiting for you outside the forest, just follow the path and reach the plains.” He said.

Ishrin nodded.

“I trust that you will be more than capable of defending the cargo and see it delivered to Semiluminal without issues. That puts me at ease.”

“Of course we will,” Ishrin said in a tired voice. “No need to keep using these silly veiled threats. We are professionals.”

“You know chess, right?” Lucius said, looking at each of the three dead in the eye. The game was still on, it seemed.

Ishrin suppressed a sigh of annoyance. If the lizard-man wanted to play the game, then he would indulge him for now. But in his mind, he was already tasting the sweet retribution that was coming later that night. Even as Lucius spoke, he wondered idly if perhaps thoughts of revenge and extracting pleasure from inflicting pain upon others were wrong, morally wrong, pulling him perilously close to being the very same as the people he hated, as the person he used to be. But then he imagined the tiny, broken forms of the many pixies this man had brutalized to extract their precious, expensive dust, and he steeled himself.

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Lucius spoke slowly. “Everybody, you see, who wants power… they think they need to be the most powerful piece on the board. The truth is: it doesn’t matter if you are the king or the rook, the queen or a pawn. If you want to have real power, you need to stop trying to be a piece of the game. If you want real power, you need to be the player. And the player does not appear on the board.” He said.

Ishrin’s eyes narrowed as he mulled it over. To the outside, he appeared to be thinking about what had been said, trying to gleam the meaning of the strange metaphor. Inside, he wondered if perhaps the regent of this shithole had figured out what Ishrin wanted to do with him. He shrugged internally.

Lucius had definitely hinted at something Ishrin knew to be true. To win, one had to stop playing by the same rules. And he didn’t intend to confront Lucius by any normal rule, when he eventually came back to kill him.

“What was that?” Melina asked.

Ishrin just shrugged.

They left the city soon after. With the supplies, they didn’t need to waste time searching for merchants willing to take their coin without trying to scam them, and their mood was sour enough that none of them wanted to protract their stay in the city any longer than strictly necessary. They let the supplies vanish inside Ishrin’s inventory as soon as they were out of view, freeing up some weight. None of them were worried about the possible contents of said supplies: they wouldn’t be using them and the nature of the inventory skill meant that any tracking or delayed activation trap would simply not spring as long as the stuff was stored.

Later, when they went to dump all the generously offered supplies in a secluded section of the forest, they learned that they had done the right thing. The stuff was poisoned, explosive and had no less than three tracking formations on it. But thanks to Ishrin’s storage, it had been sitting in frozen time together with truly gigantic amounts of food, enough water to fill a small lake, and weapons of any size and form. Plus, of course, all the wreckage and debris they had gathered from the mountain astral realm before escaping, several monster cores and an assortment of random things that—had the others seen it—would have had them wonder if Ishrin was a kleptomaniac, other than a hoarder.

Which he probably was, given that he could now open his inventory several centimeters away from his skin, no matter where it was relative to his body and ignoring walls and solid materials. The only thing he could not use it for was killing people, the mana cost too high to even scoop up the first layer of skin, let alone gut someone or carefully relieving them of their brain. A cost that went up the higher someone was in Tiers, sadly. But there were other interesting ways his inventory could be used, he was sure of it. It just didn’t seem to like being used for combat, which had him constantly on the lookout for strange and original strategies that were far enough removed from the idea of combat that they weren’t blocked, while still providing utility in a fight. So far, not much luck. Again, as soon as he had even the slightest intention of being mischievous with the use of the skill, the mana cost shot up to unsustainability.

They chatted as they walked. The mood was light, and the atmosphere was pleasant. Even Lisette joined in the conversation, and the three shared some laughs together for the first time in what felt like ages. It had only been a few days since the incident, but to all of them the days had felt like weeks so full of activities they had been, and with a sour mood that made them feel longer as well.

There were scars, though. Ishrin tried his best to avoid his thoughts spiraling towards what he was missing, but sometimes he just couldn’t help but remember what he had lost. Every time he thought about Liù his mood soured and turned into a downward spiral, dragging the rest of his thoughts down with it. The environment did not help.

The forest outside Obscuria seemed to wrap around them with its dark and gloomy arms, responding to their quickly deteriorating mood, and a thick mist plunged everything in grey. Dead trees surrounded them with their knotty branches of dark, almost black wood, and far away monsters howled, and their cries echoed in the valley.

Ishrin readied his telekinesis, bringing out not one but three heavy steel balls that held no resemblance to his training steel ball, save for their shape and material. They were heavier, bigger and nastier, and they whistled in the air under his control menacingly. The concentration required to keep them afloat grounded him as he scanned the forest.

“Unpleasant.” Ishrin said.

“Yes. It is wet and cold and uncomfortable.” Lisette said.

“Did it rain yesterday?” Melina asked, lifting her boots and noticing the mud that had stuck to them. “The whole path is like a creek now!”

“Look at that!” Ishrin cried out, commanding the girls to halt and pointing at the distance.

Amidst the trees in the distance, the mist was lit by a faint blue light that gave it a strange and ethereal hue. It seemed to move, to dance about and come towards them at great speed, but none of the three could see what it was.

Ishrin could feel it, though, through his power to control and feel energy and magic. If he got close enough, perhaps he could even disrupt it from a distance, even though acting with his will upon magic or energy was much harder than moving physical objects. There was a reason why spells were invented in the first place, and it was to offload the burden of control from the mind to a structure of pure mana.

“At the ready,” Ishrin said, tracking the thing with his senses.