CHAPTER 11: FIRST BLOOD

Typical following a night wherein his life was flipped upside down, Dan didn’t make it far.

Despite knowing that others would be coveting his family’s riches, he’d long-since let his guard down after a day unaccosted. He hadn’t once considered that others might be waiting around the family’s reputable formations.

A foolish mistake that eclipsed others in its lethality.

Thwang!

Dan’s ears twitched, and the book he’d been reading dropped to the forest floor. He followed, and unintentionally gave the earth a solid whiff – one he regretted – when a sliver of wind ruffled his hair.

Someone had been aiming low, and Dan almost turned a shot to the shin into something fatal. He shivered and pushed himself into a roll, leaving the wet paperback behind, and ducked behind a tree.

His searching gaze caught to an arrow stuck in the foot of a solid oak by an inch, and his eyes narrowed.

“Who are you? What do you want?!”

His words echoed in the night. For a long few seconds, Dan waited for an answer.

Thwang.

Dan’s feet were glued to the ground. Only his ears twitched as the whistle of an arrow approached. His eyes narrowed, he twisted and grabbed at the air.

“Phew.”

A bright smile crossed a pair of crooked lips, and Dan pinched a bit harder, splitting the arrow into twine. It had been a bit risky, and the arrowhead itself was mere inches from piercing the chest of his travelling robes, but Dan wasn’t a mortal anymore.

He was at the peak of the Channel Building stage. He was effectively at the latter-end of the introductory phase to immortal cultivation, even if his practice time had been too little to fully realize what that meant.

Mortal weaponry like bows and arrows weren’t as actively threatening as they might have been before he’d broken his mortality.

Dan’s ears caught rustling before his eyes did. He turned at once, just as the blurry figure of a burly man, running at an imposing pace, leapt into a tackle.

His attacker flew, their arms stretched to grasp Dan’s upper body and their shoulder poised to crush his sternum.

It was pure reflex, Dan would later think to make himself feel better, that he pushed against the human projectile with every scrap of force. It was panic that lead to his mustering of strength too far beyond the mortal man’s capability to resist. The next moments stuck to his memory more than any should, and forever would he curse the world too-explicitly revealed to him by the glow of the moon.

A veritable spray of flesh, blood, and brittle fragments of bone burst from Dan’s hands in a crackle of breaks and a splatter of reds amongst thickly matted grass.

A shoulder, neck, and lower jaw disintegrated, wrought from forces beyond the means of an individual stricken with mortality.

Shock inundated Dan’s psyche. He stood frozen, eyes unerringly stricken to the remnants of what had been a living, breathing, attacking-

He ran, Magical Beasts left amidst dirt and grime.

…

Light subtly inundated the forest through the thick foliage by the time Dan stopped and pulled out the travel map he’d stolen from home. Any other concerns had been buried far, far down in his list of things to think about.

It was easy to think that he had to leave and even easier to do so. It was harder to point to another location, harder still to figure out where he was, and outright impossible to ignore the muddled brown and red stains on the cuffs of his robes.

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He hadn’t come across a stream despite his pace. A statistical improbability made reality. The very same reality that, combined with knowing from where he left, made it relatively easy to know where he was.

In a forest scrawling with rivers, subordinate streams and enclaves, the very thin line he had run was the only one wherein he might not have run into water. Even as inexperienced as he was with a map, Dan could easily see that he had unknowingly walked thirst strait, one of the most well-trodden shortcuts across Bluewood Forest, a place known not for its perfectly brown wood but rather for its subsidiary relationship with the Blue Ice Palace.

It was a happy accident, unknowingly born of chasing the path of least resistance, wherein problematic foliage and greenery had already long been cleared before.

As to where that path-

“Hey, kid. What are you doing out here?”

-led?

Despite himself, Dan flinched and automatically stepped back. His head turned quickly, and he found the inquisitive gaze – or was that something else? – of a poorly dressed teenager staring his way.

They too, were alone. The path cut through the woods suddenly seemed far too narrow, too tight and restrictive. The tall and burgeoning greenery that lined the path, unharried by first-degree travel and its details hidden beneath the shade of tree-cover and the extremities of morning, was more threatening than it had been mere moments ago.

The two matched eyes. Seconds passed like this in silence.

After internally berating himself for both lacking in his awareness and also for his own part in the awkward atmosphere, Dan gathered his courage.

“Hi. I’m Dan. Who are you?”

Even he knew that was stilted, but he willed himself not to wilt.

With quirked lips, the older boy gave a short, flimsy wave. “Clint, but that’s not important. You shouldn’t be alone out here. It’s way too dangerous for a kid. Where’s your companions?”

Something spoke strongly of weariness in the back of Dan’s mind, and he subconsciously sneered. It seemed the older boy saw something in his eyes, because he backed away quickly.

“Hey, hey- relax! Why do I feel like you’re going to bite my head off, huh?”

Dan forcibly relaxed, and damn did he have to will himself, but he spoke through muchly gritted teeth.

“I won’t. Just don’t stop me, okay?”

Dan had places to be. Places he could be. A very terribly long list. A list that, in short, contained anywhere but from whence he came. The last thing he needed right now was someone thinking they could help him, and if he trusted his instincts, then that wasn’t like to be the case anyway.

Dan shook his head and sighed, but he didn’t relax. He couldn’t relax. His dad – a fearsome immortal – might be dead, much of his family was most certainly dead, and he’d already been attacked once.

“Come on kid, it’s not safe out here.”

Dan saw the boy’s eyes dart to his rucksack before returning to his own. A moment that the other boy thought he’d missed, it seemed, but he didn’t. He immediately felt vindicated in his shortness.

Clint smoothly approached on long legs that beggared Dan an awareness that he would soon be approaching puberty. Legs that allowed a pace, it seemed, that he increasingly needed.

“Come on kid, let’s take you home.”

Dan stepped back reproachfully, but the older boy’s hand still landed on his shoulder. Right besides, coincidentally, where he rest his rucksack.

Now that he thought about it directly, the indentation of the chest was all too obvious through the hemp melded to its sides… and who wouldn’t be curious about a chest?

It was a convenient mystery box to anyone that thought they could steal it from him. Tales positively lauded of the profundity of treasures and their ability to change the fates of those lucky enough to find them.

Dan shook his head and smiled at the silly thought. He’d barely resisted the urge to open it too, the first time, and he hadn’t the last time.

“Forget it.”

Dan swiped his hand past his shoulder, knocking off the older boy’s grip with only a slight resistance, and continued his trek. By the map, he was at least halfway to Ice Demon Ridge. Another location aptly named after their overlords that didn’t properly convey the details.

The snapping of dried brush heralded Clint’s mad rush for his back. A mere step away by the time the noise made it obvious, he might have been caught unaware if he weren’t still paying attention.

Did he really seem that easy of a target?

Dan didn’t bother with initiating a physical confrontation with the envious little treasure seeker. He merely stepped aside at the last moment and watched the older boy tumble.

Indeed, he stood there and stared at the rapidly reddening face of a boy half-again his age and twice his size, alone, in the very midst of Bluewood Forest. A boy that had already proven that his intent wouldn’t align with Dan’s own.

A few days ago, a situation like this would have terrified him. A few days ago, Dan was still an ordinary mortal, immortal prospects or not.

Now? He sniffed reproachfully and continued on his way.

Clint reached for Dan as he walked by, but a soft flick of the wrist sent the older boy spinning in circles before falling through the unrepentant limbs of a stray blackberry bush.

Dan winced at the resultant shrill scream, but it didn’t feel like something that wasn’t deserved.

…

He wasn’t bothered again. As a bonus, Clint’s appearance made it very clear that he was like to be significantly closer to Ice Demon Cliffs, his destination, than Dan had originally guessed.

After more than half a day of travel, the woods grew sparse. The shade finally receded under the glare of a sun at the verge of announcing midday, and at once, Dan made it out of Bluewood Forest. After the initial hiccups, it was a relatively uneventful passage. That said, some memories were better when hidden deeper than others, where even subconscious thought was not to linger.