As Yore and Anthony reached the area that they had met, they saw three Mantises leaping from tree top to tree top. Both Yore and Anthony crouched in the brush. They hadn’t been spotted it seemed.

Anthony tapped Yore’s shoulder and Yore looked at him. Anthony gestured for three up high and one or two down on the ground and waved them back.

Yore shook his head and silently gestured that he had the three up top and Anthony should take the two down below.

Anthony gave him an unhappy glare, but eventually nodded in agreement.

Yore burst into action, launching three blood iron daggers out of his cloak, making it appear like he threw them. All three found their marks with crunches as they pierced the chest carapaces on the three Mantises leaping between trees. One slammed into a tree with a screech and hit the ground with a loud crunch. The other two missed the trees they were jumping to and skidded across the ground.

Yore started focusing on poisoning their blood as the two that skidded got to their feet and reoriented themselves. However, Yore couldn’t poison the blood of the one that slammed into the tree. It must have died on impact. Yore picked up his spear and started to run to the two that were recovering from their falls.

Two Mantis heads popped up out of the brush to look at their fallen brethren and saw Yore moving to intercept. They took off to flank him before he reached the others. That was when Anthony popped out of the bush in front of one of them, swinging his Mantis claw like a baseball bat on the rushing Mantis, cleaving it from shoulder to side, immediately killing it with a loud crunch as the claw cleaved through its carapace.

The second ground Mantis turned to where its brethren was just cleaved in two and leaped at Anthony, claws primed and ready to stab him.

Anthony continued his momentum from the swing to whirl around and bolted at the second ground Mantis. He ducked low and to the side as it stabbed straight down at him and he cleaved its leg off with a swing of his claw weapon.

As the Mantis landed from its leap, it fell and rolled where it missed its leg to land on. It got up, holding itself up on its claws now that it couldn’t stand on its legs.

Anthony smiled at the beast, knowing that he had it, now that it needed to use its claws to stand.

The Mantis screeched at Anthony as he rushed it, Anthony holding his claw in the air, ready to skewer the Mantis. The Mantis tried to raise its claws to fight back and collapsed instead. Anthony plunged his claw into the base of the neck of the creature, stomped on one of its claws, let go of his claw, grabbed the creature's other claw, and then proceeded to curbstomp its skull. Each stomp was answered with a loud cracking sound until a final crunch rang out as its head caved in.

Anthony pulled his claw out of the neck of the creature and began to move in Yore’s direction. As he did, he watched as Yore twirled his spear with a Mantis stuck on the end around and flung it off at the second Mantis he was engaged with, both the corpse and the living one falling to the ground in a heap from the impact. Yore then plunged his spear in the chest of the incapacitated Mantis, finishing it off.

Anthony slowed his pace as he reached Yore. “Where is the fifth one?” Anthony asked as he reached him.

“It died on impact from hitting the tree and falling to the ground.”

“Are you sure?” Anthony asked worriedly.

Just then, the Mantises started to break down into smoke. As they did, most of the smoke gathered on Yore, and Anthony quickly stepped back, shocked. Then, scrunching his face from the putrid smell, Anthony looked down and saw that the smoke from one of the Mantises was gathering in his pocket, where he still had one of the gems that Yore had handed him. Anthony pulled the gem out and dropped it as he fell to the ground vomiting from the foul odor.

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Yore looked at Anthony with pity as he endured the smell himself. The smoke was much more concentrated on Yore being that four out of the five creature’s smoke was gathering on him as his body absorbed the smoke.

After all of the smoke was gone, Yore approached Anthony. “Are you alright? That stuff is god awful!”

Anthony finally recovered and looked back at the stone that he had dropped. Now it had a cloudy swirl to the obsidian of the stone. He picked it up and held it up to Yore.

“It is a lot more difficult to avoid that stuff when you are carrying these,” Anthony said, holding up the gem.

“Yeah it is!” Yore agreed. “I’ve never had any on me before this, so that was a new experience.”

They both looked at the gem inquisitively.

“I wonder what’s up with it,” Yore wondered aloud.

“It feels strange,” Anthony replied. “My hand is tingly holding it. It’s almost like we charged it with that smoke like a battery or something. I kind of like it.”

Anthony gripped the stone a little harder, enjoying the sensation. Then, abruptly the swirls began leaking out of the gem in the form of smoke. It slowly gathered around the stone and then began to move towards Anthony’s face.

“Well shit!” Anthony exclaimed as the smoke proceeded to enter his nostrils, and mouth.

Yore quickly stepped back, afraid to be in the splash zone if Anthony hurled out more jerky.

Anthony dropped to the ground, gem still in hand, and began dry heaving, as there was nothing left in his stomach. After a moment, smoke stopped coming out of the gem and Anthony was able to recover. The gem, now back to its matte obsidian appearance.

“Are you alright?” Yore asked Anthony, concerned for him.

“Yeah. Surprisingly so. I actually feel great aside from puking my guts out. These gems that you’ve found are both the best and worst thing I have felt since we arrived. What the hell are they?”

“I don’t know, but that looked pretty awful. You can keep that.”

“We should check these corpses for more.”

“Really? I wouldn’t think you’d want to go through something like that again.”

“No, but it is kind of worth it. I’m not hungry anymore and I feel pretty refreshed. It’s really miserable at first, but after that it’s great. What about yours? Didn’t you say you had more of those stones? I saw the smoke gathering to you too. You should try one.”

“No thanks, you didn’t make that look all that fun.”

“Your loss. You said that we could split these right? I’ll take the ones from the two I killed.”

Anthony hurried off to where he killed his Mantises. While he did, Yore looked in his satchel and saw that one of the two gems he still had on him had a smoky swirl to it. The other one was matte obsidian. Yore must have directly absorbed the smoke from the three he killed and the other one Anthony had killed must have been absorbed by the gem.

Yore then turned and collected the gems from the three that he killed and the weapons he had thrown at them. Anthony then came back to him.

“It seems like when you kill these things, they leave empty gems and killing more charge the gems you already have. Fascinating! Want to hunt some more down? We tore through that group of five pretty easily.”

“Let’s slow down a bit. You’re a little over excited, like you’re hopped up on something. The last thing we need is for one of us to get relaxed and get one of us killed.”

“I think you’re right. I’ve never been high before, but if this is what it feels like, I understand why people do drugs.”

“Sure, but drugs also cripple and kill people. Maybe ingesting monsters isn’t the healthiest thing for the body.”

Yore was concerned. He felt replenished like Anthony, but definitely didn’t feel high when he absorbed the smoke. Maybe his body processed it differently. Maybe it was because he absorbed it directly instead of from a gem. He wasn’t sure what to think of it or why the experience was different. But he was glad that Anthony hadn’t noticed that he was absorbing the smoke directly and asking questions about it.

“It feels pretty healthy, but I get the point. Especially about getting relaxed. My friends died to these things the other day and now I’m the one taking it too lightly. Thanks Yore. Let’s go back to my camp and take a bit. I want this to wear off before we fight again.”

“Sounds like a plan. You should probably have something to eat again so that you have something else to throw up the next time you go huffing monster smoke.”

Anthony let out a guttural laugh that echoed out.

“That wasn’t that funny. We should get going,” Yore said as he was looking around.

Then there was a loud screech that rang out in the woods.

“Shit!” Anthony exclaimed.

“Here they come,” Yore said, preparing for combat.