By the time Sophie got up, Jacob was somehow still awake and felt only the barest bit tired. His arm was fully grown back, though the Forsaken was well on his way back to True Undeath, skin greyed and black veins standing out. The monster in the half-undeads stomach was starting to wake up, sending him on edge. As the werewolf got up, she wrinkled her nose. “Damn, you reek of Death Essence, Jacob,” she said as the Forsaken’s cheeks greyed even further in embarrassment. Taking another sniff, she almost gagged. “Just… go find something to eat. I’ll be waiting.” Embarrassedly, Jacob grabbed the bandolier of rifle cartridges and set off to get food.
It was now nighttime if the lack of light beams said anything, and the Forsaken instinctually felt safer. Underneath the canopy, day or night meant little, but ‘true’ nighttime still felt somehow more comforting. Slowly going into a crouch, Jacob began using Life Sense in the hope of discovering food. However, the forest seemed to be devoid of anything other than trees and other assorted plants. Can they smell me? Jacob wondered. The wind was blowing towards his back, so it was possible the Death Essence he was unintentionally releasing was scaring off any potential game. Turning around, Jacob started in the opposite direction, reasoning they couldn’t smell him downwind. And yet still, the Forsaken found nothing but a slowly emptier stomach.
Where are they? Jacob wondered, panning the rifle around. Something seemed off. In a forest this thick, there was no way there wasn’t at least a rabbit around. Or a rabbit equivalent. But the woods were as devoid of life as Jacob’s True Undead form, which was rapidly coming back. “Where are they…” the Forsaken muttered before his Life Sense started up. The fact that it was omnidirectional made detecting exactly where that life was becoming difficult to place. Still, it grew to near-overwhelming levels, which was made even more concerning by Jacobs undead instincts were screaming one thing.
Run.
Breaking, Jacob turned and pulled up his map, hoping to make it back to Sophie before something – something bad – happened to him. Life Sense screamed ever stronger, growing oppressing and overwhelming, until Jacob stood stuck in place, clutching his head as a dribble of blood tricked out of his nose, hissing in pain as a presence materialized in front of him.
It had the appearance of a woman similar to Sophie, with the same sharp features and pointed ears. The main difference, however, was her light green skin and eyes glowing a slightly darker shade of emerald. A wooden rapier and a pistol made of a strange greenish-brown crystal hung at her side. Looking over at Jacob, she scowled. “Yet another undead come to feed on my subjects…” she muttered, giving the Forsaken a once-over. “A weak one as well…”
At that last part, a flash of anger streaked through Jacob, though less than when he’d attacked Sophie. “I literally just got here a day or two ago,” he protested, and the woman snorted. “Then how did you get so far into the forest?” she asked. Jacob paused at that. Do I tell her about the Heretic Portal? Mistaking his confusion for defeat, the woman continued talking.
“You do realize it’s nothing personal. But undead are parasites. Your bodies don’t decompose after death. Your saliva corrupts the living into more parasites. Every part of your body is inimical to life, especially to the life in my forest. So. You have three days to leave this place, or I have you incinerated and your werewolf ally returned to her Pack. Do you understand?” Jacob gritted his fangs in frustration. This… woman was talking to him like he was a child. “Can I at least get your name?” he asked, annoyed. “I’d like to know the name of my extorter before they twist my arm.”
The woman’s eyes widened in shock and then narrowed in anger. “That’s no way to talk to a god undead,” she snarled. “Especially one as weak as you.”
I’m not weak. “Yeah?” Jacob asked. “Well, maybe you should judge someone by who they are, not what they are. I’m not giving you respect just because you’re more powerful than me or because you don’t like me. So what if you can smite me? That doesn't earn you my respect. What does earn you my respect is treating me like a sapient being.” The entire time, the goddess’s expression kept switching from shock to rage and back again. “You… you dare…” she whispered. “You dare tell a god what to do?” Arcs of green lightning began to arc around her as Jacob stepped back, claws fingering the trigger of the carbine. “You will pay for your insolence, heretic, she spat.”
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Feat Gained!
[Heretic I]
You have rebelled against a local deity, enraging them with profanity and blasphemy. You are now marked as a Heretic: a rebel and a dissenter against the will of the gods themselves.
Effects: All Gods, God-worshipping Users, and other Heretics will automatically know you are a Heretic when you come within 30 feet of them, for good or ill. Celestial and Infernal Skills used to twist your favor and opinion up to Rank I do not affect you. Unless manually turned off by their controller, all God-based traps and wardings will go off on you automatically when you come within their detection radius.
Well… shit.
The lightning continued to build up as Life Sense grew stronger and stronger. It’s Life Essence, Jacob realized. And I just might be incinerated by it. Rausing the carbine, the god simply laughed. “You think that your puny weapon can kill a god? I’ve faced off with Arch-Litches and won undead. You’re reckoning is NOW!” With that, one of the lightning bolts rocketed toward Jacob, blasting into his chest. The god laughed cruelly as a strange, warm feeling pooled through the Forsakens body, his heart beating like a drum as he gasped. Jacob collapsed to the ground as he heard the god walking forward. “How are you not ash already?” he heard her mutter in shock as Jacob shook, slowly getting to his feet, swaying as he felt a feeling like being full. “I’m… not… fully dead…” he said sluggishly. “I’m a… Forsaken.” The God’s face became an expression of shock before becoming suspicious. ‘Well then… Forsaken. Get out of my forest within the next three days before I try to find some other way to kill you that doesn’t involve Life Essence.” Motioning Jacob away, the Forsaken quickly moved, only slowing down once Life Sense reached non-painful levels. Using his Map to get back to Sophie, she looked up, eyebrows raising in surprise.
“How’d you feed without getting gore on your shirt?” she asked, confused.
Jacob’s cheeks greyed. “I… met a god and… talked back to it.”
“WHAT!”
====--------====
“So,” Sophie said, glaring at Jacob. “You met the god of this forest, talked back to it, somehow weren’t killed, and now we have to get out of the forest in the next three days… and you’re now an identifiable Heretic. Is that correct?”
Jacob felt both embarrassed and annoyed. On the one hand, he’d pretty much insulted someone in their own house. On the other hand, they’d insulted him first. “That’s… pretty much it,” he said. Sophie rolled her yellow-irised eyes. “That’s pretty much it? Oh, for the sake of Myst, we’re royally fucked.” Looking over at Jacob’s almost-human appearance, she sighed. “At least you probably won’t have to feed for a week or two.” Jacob scowled at that. “Don’t jinx me,” he replied. “For all we know, your old Packs on our tail, and they’ll rip me apart. Then, I’ll go back into True Undeath and be back at square one.” The werewolf grimaced at that. “I can see why that would be bad,” she replied. “But we’re almost at the edge of the forest, and they never travel that far.” She spat into the bushes. “I’m a woman, but half of them are Grade-A pussies. They act all big and tough when they're in the Shunted mine, but they jump at every shadow if any of them are more than a mile or two from the den.”
She must have a lot of pent-up anger, Jacob thought warily. “Well… we can put all that behind us now,” he replied. “Once we get out of this forest, we’ll be in the Southern Borderlands, right?” Sophie nodded, and Jacob continued. “What’s it like?” he asked. The werewolf shrugged. “Lawless in between settlements and outposts. Most of it is hills and forest, though a good chunk in the middle is desert, with lots of prairies surrounding it. It’s actually quite populated, but the Borderlands are so big that everyone is spread out enough to seem deserted.”
Jacob quickly pulled up his map, revealing rough, unicolor areas had popped up around the outline that was the Southern Borderlands. The bright yellow for ‘desert’ was indeed in the center, with a reddish-brown organic shape surrounding it that looked somewhat like an amoeba eating another microbe. It was roughly the size of an envelope when Jacob zoomed out to the max, which meant that this world he’d found himself in was either much bigger than Earth or it followed different rules. Closing his map, he looked up through the trees, seeing dots of sunlight coming through the trees. “It’s daytime,” he said.
Sophie grunted at that. “Then we best get moving,” she said.