Very few things ever pissed Janet off – her abysmal financial and social position precluded her from having luxuries such as having strong feelings about stuff.
Now, though, she was incensed. She had just tripped on a fucking exposed root that was just lying there like it was royalty or something.
Damn trees; the inanimate things had zero respect. Here she was trying to quietly and peacefully flee from her home town in the dead of night, when a gnarly, crooked root impeded her stride and broke her reverie.
Yes, Janet was angry that a root had jostled her out of her weirdly calming jumble of thoughts.
Now, one could be excused for assuming that a girl who had just escaped a painful, grueling and horrific experience would be glad to be rid of the fetters of the town that had visited those same horrors upon her. She was. Janet was not a thoughtless ingrate. The reason she was so invested in her distraction was everything else that came along with the gratitude.
To begin with, Janet was confused that she had escaped at all, grateful that she had, afraid that it was all a dream, and fearful that a beast would strike at her from the dark now that she was no longer inside the security of guarded town walls. Most important of all, she was just numb from all the emotions fighting for center spot inside her head.
Spheres! A goddess – and not one of the weaker and middling ones like War, or the patron god of travelers and the lost, or one of the dozens of gods who professed to watch over little girls – had descended and saved her sorry excuse for a life.
Oh, and then the Goddess of Life had suddenly disappeared, as if a god acting perturbed just before hightailing it wasn’t enough to scare the living shit out of even the most powerful mortal out there.
Left stranded in the middle of a sea of corpses, her wrist throbbing with the sting of a new tattoo and once more keenly aware of her fragility, Janet had done the most reasonable thing left to her. She had begun with cursing out loud into the darkness for a few minutes. Or had it been an hour?
That had let her arrive at the next phase of her plan, which involved sobbing despondently into her palms, all alone there in the darkness of the cave.
After purging herself of all her emotions and feeling perky as a freshly wrung-out bar towel, Janet had gathered her wits enough to realize that Gaia must have branded her with a tattoo for a reason.
Of course, like most things done by the immensely powerful, there was no user’s manual in sight. Not even a piddling terms-of-use.
So, like a toddler, Janet had decided to use the ‘shake till something comes out’ method on the tattoo. It was a magical construct, so Janet had demanded that the wreath-shaped dark green mark reveal its secrets. She had shouted insults, commands, and eventually tear-filled entreaties at it.
People shouted out the names of spells all the time before blasting the objects of their ire with fireballs and bursts of wind. Janet thought that shouting “Please reveal your secrets and I’ll keep you forever clean and lotioned up” at the tattoo would work in a similar way.
The tattoo had expectedly remained there, perfectly inanimate and magically dead.
It was only after a frantic, futile, and utterly fruitless fifteen minutes that Janet had regained her wits and had recalled how the goddess had made her new dagger change form – wordlessly. In other words, by means of thought.
Thus inspired, Janet had begun thinking at the magical marking. It was similar to all the shouting she had been doing, just internal and wordless, and directed at the tattoo.
At first, that too had proved fruitless. Then, almost by accident, the desperate, heartfelt wish that the tattoo swallowed her if only to allow her an escape from the terrible fate of her life had borne fruit.
She had not been swallowed – that would have been ludicrous, and would have perhaps broken a rule or twelve of magic. Magic was powerful, but operated under rigidly strict rules.
What had ended up happening instead was Janet’s awareness, as she chose to call the collective of her thoughts, sensations, perceptions and feelings, was drawn into the runes.
At first, she did think that she had been drawn into the tattoo. The fact that she felt disembodied had however cleared that confusion away. Suddenly not feeling the breeze against one’s skin or the cloying scent of blood in the air was quite jarring.
So, Janet took a look around.
What her ‘sight’ revealed was that she was inside of a space, separate from the rest of the world for it felt contained within itself. The space’s edges were ill-defined to Janet’s senses. There was no wall or embankment. The only indication that she had reached them was the fact that her perception could not go any further.
The space was lit in a soothing light green – apparently, Gaia had a theme, and it was a lovely green. There was no indication as to where the light came from, but Janet was fast learning to stop asking how magic worked. In that way lay madness.
As for what was inside the space? Floating around as if by magic – ha! – was a bundle of clothes, a belt and a waterskin.
The goddess had heeded Janet’s last request before her abrupt departure, leaving her a change of clothes. They consisted of an emerald jacket with a hood trimmed with snow-colored fur, a forest-green pair of pants, a shirt that was almost white but had some hint of green on the collar and the ends of its long sleeves, and a sturdy and rough-looking pair of boots that still looked snug as a mother’s hug.
Currently, as Janet stared bloody murder at the offending root, she was garbed head to toe in her new clothes. Yes, they were new. Would a bona-fide goddess have any reason to give her newly minted fresh-faced servant used or worn clothes? Certainly not.
Oh, and there was also the matter of a mission. It looked as if in exchange for her services, the goddess required something from Janet, though the specifics of what that was remained unclear. The only indication of a mission, and the reason why Janet had decided to leave Lakewood in the eastward direction was a piece of paper that Gaia had left stuffed in her jacket pocket. It had a single word written on it in sublime calligraphy – Lycanhold.
Seeing as Janet was directionless, scared, and on the run, the simple clue as to where she might be needed was more than welcome. Lycanhold was more than half a continent away, but at least it was something.
The small detail took a frantic scamper into the cold, lonely night and transformed it into the intentional beginning of a purpose-filled journey. A divinely ordained journey, at that.
Janet was still scared, and definitely confused when it came to many things that had happened to her – and because of her – in the past night, but at least she had an inkling of where to go next. That, at least, spurred her on.
The warm sentiment, however, was lost to Janet as she absolutely lost her marbles. The tree root, the unassuming, likely dead part of a tree just protruding stoically onto Janet’s path, was yet another reminder of how unprepared and inexperienced she was in the new, dangerous world she had found herself in.
She had tripped on a root, likely scuffing her new pair of boots.
What if that had been the tail of a slumbering beast? Or a tripwire set by trappers in search of dumb prey? There was no question that she would have been supremely fucked. The acceptance of that simple fact revealed once more to Janet her lacking experience in jungle travel, her lacking spatial awareness, and restoked her lingering fears.
To alleviate her fright, and maybe to blow off some steam, Janet drew her dagger from its sheath.
Her new weapon was yet another contributor to her dilemma. The weapon was a damn artifact, or at least a very high-rank enchanted weapon, but in her inexperienced fingers, it might as well have been a hunk of iron – which is what it appeared as. In the goddess’ hands it was whatever she needed of it. In Janet’s, it appeared as an old, rusted and chipped iron dagger.
Well, the weapon was out, and without a second’s thought Janet began hacking wildly at the hard tree-organ. Due to her nonexistent strength and the bluntness of the dagger, she had to spend a total of ten minutes at the effort before the offending piece of wood was completely reduced to splinters and chips.
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In the aftermath Janet was tired, sweating profusely, had accrued bruises on her palms, and her stomach had revved up its attempts to communicate its emptiness.
No matter. As Janet turned away from her site of tree-murder, she was sporting a smile. Trembling fingers slid her dagger back into its sheath after wiping it off on the slightly moist undergrowth. In her steps there was a slight pump – almost a suppressed jump of carefree joy in the motion of her feet as she went on her merry way.
She did not care if the little act had created a little too much noise in the silence of the jungle slowly clearing up as dawn came, or whether her unnecessary expenditure of her meagre energy reserves would imperil her long journey ahead. No, Janet was joyful that as powerless as she was in solving most of the questions on this new chapter of her life, she had some power over something.
Power over an inanimate, defenseless root, but power nonetheless.
Janet had languished in the bottommost rung of society for far too long. She had lived on the verge of starvation, at the mercy of the elements, and helpless against everything and everyone, including her own abilities. No longer.
As she stepped through yet another tangle of roots, this time she paid attention, avoiding each root with a clumsy attempt at grace. She did not trip at the first, or any of the ten trees after that. By the time the sun was directly above her head, she had mastered the art of evading pesky roots and poorly-positioned branches.
Her clothes did not even snag on stray tree parts!
Yes, she was inexperienced and would likely face certain death on multiple occasions in this journey to her goddess-commanded destination, but she was not powerless anymore. At the very least, she was no longer totally helpless.
Unnoticed by her, the trembling of her arms had completely disappeared. Even the bruises that should have resulted from her ill-conceived attempt at logging had slowly healed over. Once more, her palms were back to their pristine state, with no indication of injury or scar.
The sun in the sky was almost done with its trip across the daytime sky. Shadows stretched longer, drawing in the jungle’s trapped heat. Gradually, the cold of night was beginning to once again lay itself upon the forested land, and the noises of rodents and other tiny animals could be heard every so often as they scuttled from their hiding places to look for food now that the sun’s heat would not bake them in their own skins.
Like a slumbering reptile emerging from hibernation, the jungle slowly came awake; and everything about it hinted to Janet at its immense hunger and unfettered bloodlust.
In her journey, Janet had stuck to obscure paths and less obvious routes through the trees. Her intention had been to avoid any well-trafficked paths where other people could spot her. She had also walked nonstop without any breaks.
Janet’s strategy had been a success. She had made her way into the depths of the jungle, and it was unlikely that even the most ardent search party could find clue of her whereabouts now. She had a feeling that even she was well and truly lost, but that was of no import. Her intention had been to get away, and that she had.
With the sun going down, though, came the issue of sleeping arrangements. If she had a choice she would continue her journey eastwards, even through the night, exhaustion be damned. But the sun, her primary means of navigation, was gone.
There was also the issue of the countless predators that emerged when the night came around to think about, most of which were magnitudes more powerful than the scrawny, underfed, and frail little girl with zero combat experience that she was.
Before Janet could come up with a plan, she was forced to leap headfirst into action. In front of her and to the side, she heard the ominous, elongated creak of a piece of wood under strain. Fearing the worst, Janet dropped into a crouch, eyes keenly searching for any sign of movement in the dusky twilight of the thick woods.
Nothing was in sight and the shadows barely moved. The catch, however, was that predators began their nightly prowls for food when the light began to disappear. Even worse, only large predators climbed trees. If she was not careful, Janet was in for a mauling and a likely death by slow, gory, painfully disgusting digestion.
Janet was fully aware that her tracking skills were nonexistent, and though she had acquired an affinity with shadow, that was still ineffective as a weapon as far as she could tell. Thus, the very clear possibility of danger had to be taken seriously despite every sign to the contrary.
With amateurish deftness and a ton of delusional bravery, Janet silently unsheathed her dagger and held it in a backhanded grip, just like the exhibition fighters did in the arenas she had often snuck into. It was time to kick ass.
Like a pro, she also silenced her breath. Janet had once read that some beasts could hunt by detecting the presence of exhaled gases in the air, so the precaution was deemed necessary. She remained cognizant of the fact that she’d survive even if she accidentally suffocated from lack of air, but was also keen not to fall unconscious, as that would subject her to even more peril.
A stray memory of times Janet had had to scurry beneath arena floorboards to hide from bullies and angry spectators from whom she’d snatched food popped into Janet’s head, helping her hatch an impromptu plan of action. During those trying times, she had been forced to hold her breath almost to the point of suffocation in her reticence to breath in the dust that gradually accumulated under the ill-maintained stands.
The discomfort of a slow, self-inflicted suffocation aside, the exercise had revealed a grand advantage of her [Talent]. It came with a lot of downsides, like the prerequisite for injury before activation, but with its activation, its greatest gift was activated – an unparalleled tracking ability. After all, nobody, not even the goddess herself, could fully obscure their soul.
Or perhaps they could but maintained that there was no need since nobody else could see souls. Janet’s ravenous side however, came well-equipped to track down its food.
Squaring her shoulders in readiness for the dizziness and pain to come, Janet dove into her plan without a shred of hesitation.
With a mind divided between keeping herself awake and searching for the threat, Janet held her breath, and stifled the painful, incessant impulse to inhale. Her lungs burnt with the lack of air and her eyes began to water, but Janet kept her mind focused to the course.
Slowly, the world of the living fell into the background, in its place arising in Janet’s perception a landscape of abstract figures and shapes that wavered with every pulse of Janet’s distracted attention.
Almost everything blended together in an indecipherable cacophony she could not hope to understand, and did not try to. This exercise was solely for tracking purposes, not the deciphering of arcane mysteries. So, Janet sifted through the mire of indistinct impressions and sights in search for her pursuer.
No need for understanding, just manual perusal of what looked even mildly threatening.
Janet spotted something. Towards the left of her ‘field of vision’, she discovered a rather average-looking white ball of energy bobbing away merrily as it slowly made its way in her direction. To her surprise though, it was flanked by two larger, colored souls which somehow had managed to camouflage themselves behind the weakest member of their ill-intentioned cabal.
In an instant, Janet understood that as was the fate of an amateur like herself, she had fallen into an ambush. To make matters worse, she was certain she could not win in a fight against the weakest of the pack, let alone all three at once.
Her bravado evaporated in an instant, replaced by the jarring awareness of her weakness, and an even sharper focus on her environment as she turned away from the approaching trio and hoofed it. Without regard for the fast-cooling night, she tore off her cumbersome jacket and dismissed it back into the circle of runes. She needed all the speed she could get.
Next, she willed some of her leftover soul matter to empower her leg muscles so she could run even faster. Such empowerment was wasteful in terms of resources and would hit her with a backlash of disproportionate fatigue the moment she stopped to rest, but at least she would have escaped her latest iteration of near-certain death.
The dagger was sheathed on the go, and promptly affixed to the belt on her pants. It would have been easier to stuff it into the spatial storage tattoo, but she still had not found a way to will the dagger to do anything. Not lengthen, not take another form, not even light up its runes so she could absorb the souls she knew were stashed within.
These thoughts and more running roughshod inside her head, she missed a sharp turn and ran headlong into a tree, earning herself a headache and a broken nose. Both would easily heal on their own given time, but that was the least of her problems. Behind her were the hunters, hot on the pursuit. Janet had not made much effort to remain stealthy in her frenzied escape.
Rapid footfalls sounded from the path she had just cut through the undergrowth, differentiated into three distinct cadences, confirming that her scouting had been correct. Three beasts were fast at her heels.
To any other girl in fabulous, divinely crafted pants, the setback would have been the final act in a story that ends in an ignoble death as any other. For Janet, though, who had grown up scrounging for scraps and stealing when she failed to gather enough, climbing to get away was second nature.
One foot was placed on a protruding root as the fingers of her right arm found a crack on the rough bark that had cost Janet her head start. She stopped to confirm that it was firm enough to support her weight before beginning her ascent.
Astonishingly, the boots had excellent grip, for which Janet thanked her lucky stars. It would have been more accurate to thank the goddess, but time was of the essence. She’d be sure to do that later.
Feet were placed where arms had been as Janet chewed up the tree’s remarkable height in speed that rivalled a monkey. By the time the three spotted canids arrived at the bottom of the tree, she was already safely ensconced in the middle branches of the tall tree, and in possession of a vantage good enough to spot any other approaching predators.
Janet was safe, for now.
Most canids never hunted in trees, much preferring to patrol the ground where their expert stealth and explosive speed served them best. As long as she remained by the trunk, safely ensconces in the gently swaying branches that would creak at any pressure exerted on their lengths, she would be spared the first-time experience of becoming a hound’s meal.
It was only when her back hit the trunk, her legs hanging to either side of a branch, that she realized she had not slept the night before, and would likely not sleep at all while in the jungle. Danger lurked around every second tree, and Janet sure as Hell was not going to die a nameless death at the hand of beasts.
If only Marius’s [Talent] would kick in, then she’d have a means of fighting back without having to get injured first.
The problem with declarations of intent, faith, and idle wishes, of course, is that events rarely respected the opinions of the weak or the powerless. The truth remained that Janet was exhausted and sleep-deprived, and she felt herself quickly losing awareness as the powerful lure of sleep drew her close and claimed her.
She had exerted her soul way too much in the past day, and it appeared like even she was not immune to the ruthless call of restful slumber.
In less time than it had taken her to climb to her height, Janet was fast asleep and completely insensate.
Asleep in a tree’s branches, within a jungle filled with hungry beasts, in the company three hungry hounds prowling around the tree’s roots like a dragon around its hoard.