Chapter Nineteen: The Hare and the Hound

Three weeks since Tom had lost track of time. He had been heading south and west as best he could, but couldn't always say how much one way or the other while fleeing for his life.

It didn't matter. He would either reach the village rings, or he would run across one of the trade roads leading to Wayrest. And then he would be safe.

The issue lay in the two weeks or so it would take him to do so. And in the past three or so weeks so far.

He was slightly faster than the orcs, travelling by himself, with his Idealist constitution, and his ability to subsist off poisonous substances from his Sweet Suffering skill.

The orcs had the advantage of numbers though, around ten to twelve of them, by Tom's best guess, and he could not shake them. No matter how hard he ran they would find his trail and catch up when he slept.

The balance between them was precarious, and Tom's margin of error grew thinner and thinner. He knew, sooner or later he would not be able to find a sufficient hiding place. Or they would catch him on the move and run him down. Or he would run headlong into a mana beast and it would delay him long enough or injure him enough that he would be easy pickings. Or it would kill him outright.

He could die any number of ways, and he was growing too exhausted to account for them all properly. He needed to change the playing field. Needed to do something, while he still had the strength to.

His mind began to spin through possibilities. During his flight, he had come to a slow realisation about himself - he enjoyed the Deep. It felt an almost guilty admission, given how many citizens had died here over the years, given how deeply everyone feared it. It was the primal fear of the unknown, of shadows under boughs, of animals sounding in the night, of predator and prey, and it was not unfounded, by any means.

But Tom had always lived on a knife’s edge. Wondering whether each day would be the day his father beat him too hard and killed him. Or if his mother would take a little too long to heal him, and leave him crippled. The pervasive threat that if he never manifested, he was as good as dead.

Out here, in the Deep Green, by himself, he had found a strange measure of peace. He had finally manifested. Not one, but two Ideals. With them, he could survive out here. With them, he had found he enjoyed surviving. At least this kind of survival was on his terms, down to his strength and cunning. It was reliable, in a way.

But Tom was tired of running. Tired of hiding. Tired of being hunted like an animal. He had finally manifested. It was his city at stake. This was his forest. This was a Reaping, and orcs were monsters.

He would cull them, or die trying.

A strange, high ringing started at the back of his head. Tom’s vision blurred, and he lurched forward, unsteady. The ringing reached a crescendo, and he clasped his hands over his ears, sure that blood was running through his fingers. Just when it became unbearable, it stopped. His vision snapped back into focus at the same time that his balance returned, and it was like surfacing from underwater.

His wisp blinked and bobbed. Between it’s pink core and black limning, dark brown striations began to glow softly.

Ideal manifested.

Ideal Three (Classic): Survival.

Skill One (Classic): Survival of the Fittest (Ritual (Familiar)).

Mana cost: Extreme.

Cooldown: Extreme.

Requirements: Fifty life essence, five hunger essence, five sleep essence, five cold essence, five blood essence and one wild essence. Five aspect essence.

When summoned: Familiar can make extreme or heavy damage physical attacks. Familiar’s physical attacks have a minor damage bleed over time effect. Familiar has an attack that deals moderate magic damage up to short range and low damage up to moderate range. Moderate cooldown on ranged attack.

When subsumed: Caster gains increased toughness, strength, and their physical attacks gain a trivial bleed over time effect. Extreme buff to caster’s sense of smell.

Tom stopped in his tracks.

A fall, he thought, stunned. I’ve done it. I can’t believe I’ve done it. My first ritual too, and a familiar at that. I wonder what it is.

There was no way he’d be summoning it any time soon. Gathering essence would require either killing correctly aspected mana-beasts and harvesting them, or seeking out territory the right type of essence had imprinted on. He didn’t have time for either.

He’d collected a handful of life essence before the attack, it being common in the Deep Green, but it had been taken from him by the orcs. Hunger and blood essence were less common, and he’d surely be able to buy some back in Wayrest. It was the wrong season for cold essence though, and he’d never heard of sleep essence. The familiar would have to wait for now.

Tom would have preferred a more immediately useful skill, but the benefits of a third Ideal were miraculous enough. He took a breath, feeling the new strength flooding his limbs. Just in time for his mad plan. For a moment he considered going back to simply fleeing, but something in him warred against it.

No. He would be the hunter.

~~~~~~~~~~

On a quiet, overcast afternoon Tom sat in the boughs of a massive fir tree. He was obscured by leaves, poised, silent.

He had spent the morning trailing all through the woods in this area, winding back and forth, before doubling back and finding his perch.

Low light permeated the area like a fog. The air felt close, muggy. A stream gurgled away nearby. Leaves rustled in a low breeze.

No birds called, though. No critters scurried in the brush. Tom listened carefully, for the noises he knew would approach. And then he caught them.

A low grunt. Nothing. Twigs cracking. Branches being pushed aside, pushed past. Nothing. Footsteps.

Tom's pulse began to climb. Tom's heart was hammering in his chest. He focused on his breathing, deep and even. He closed his eyes briefly, trying his best to centre himself.

This plan is madness. I can’t do it. I’ll be killed out of hand, he thought.

But he had to. He’d be killed sooner or later anyway. At least this way, it would be on his own terms. At least this way, he gave himself a chance.

And so he waited, breathing steadily.

Soon, he caught a brief glimpse of an orc through the branches around him. A male, big and muscled, wearing some crude hide trousers, ragged at the knee, and carrying a Wayrest-made spear. Blood red skin cast brown in the murky light. It picked its way carefully across the ground below, scanning about itself as it went.

Tom went completely rigid. He strained his ears for the sounds of other orcs, and several more floated to him from a ways off. He had noticed this pattern when he had hidden from them during the pursuit previously.

If the trail was clear, the orcs would pick up speed, gathering closer together, running in a pack. When the trail was less clear, or they lost it altogether, the orcs spread out, moved slower, searching carefully so as not to lose him.

Just like he wanted.

The orc passed beneath him and continued on, slowly scanning the ground as it went. Tom counted to thirty, and then silently climbed down the tree. Carefully, he took stock of his surroundings.

There were no other orcs behind him. From his perch in the tree, he gathered that they had spread out in a long line when they’d found his muddled trail. He waited for another count of thirty to make sure. Then he stalked onwards.

He placed every foot carefully. Even now, after weeks in the forest as an Idealist, Tom couldn’t help but marvel. His balance was better. His perception was better. His fine muscle control was better. He moved like a ghost. Within a minute, he had caught up to the orc.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

It was still moving, scanning, moving. Tom followed it a little longer, angling up behind it, close as he dared, trying to determine how close the next orcs in the line were, and how long he should wait to strike.

Far enough, he decided. Long enough.

He could see the muscles in its neck working as its head swivelled back and forth. Could smell its rank musk as he followed in its wake. Could hear the sound of polished wood sliding over rough skin as it shuffled its grip on its stolen spear.

Rage suddenly flared in Tom, and he tamped it down. They were murderers, and yet you didn’t call a hound a murderer for killing a hare. It was their nature. They were monsters. And Tom was here to reap them.

“Hush.” he breathed, then, “Agony.”

The orc jerked upright, the muscles in its shoulders and back tensing. Tiny arcs of pink lightning flickered and snaked about its body, but it gave no cry, raised no shout, uttered not even the smallest whimper. Tom stepped forward, slashing through the back of its knee. He took a half-step, kicking down into the injured leg's calf, then, as the orc collapsed forward, he stabbed through the base of its skull.

It twitched once. Tom grabbed its shoulder and gently lowered it to the ground.

Quickly, he wiped his sword on its other leg and sheathed it. He noted a Wayrest-made breastplate at its side, with a hide sewn to the back of it to make a crude satchel. He wiggled the strap out from under the corpse and threw it over his shoulder. Lastly, he grabbed the spear from where it had fallen. He pulled a cloth from his pocket, carefully unfolded it, and began wiping down the spearhead.

While he worked, he kept his head cocked, listening for the other orcs, for any sound that he had given himself away. Nothing came. Oddly enough, now that he had enacted his mad plan, he felt calm: his mind was clear, his hands steady, his breathing even. He felt like a stone dropped into a still pond: committed, moving, but not frantic, not panicking. By the time he had finished with the spearhead he had picked out another orc. He dropped the cloth on the first orc’s body.

Tom stalked through to gloom again. Several minutes, this time. Almost too long. His Hush had come off cooldown minutes ago. He heard a muffled grunt ahead, higher pitched than expected. A female, then. He crept closer.

He rounded a tree, and the orc was snuffing at the base of an oak several feet away. Its long, spindly limbs began to dig between some roots, its slitted nostrils flaring.

Tom grinned. He had buried several small scraps of cloth cut from his clothes in likely looking hiding places around the area. The orc had found one.

He tensed his legs, twisted his torso, and cocked the spear.

“Hush,” he breathed again, and, “Agony,” once more. And he let the spear fly not a moment after.

The spear wasn’t meant for throwing, being far too long and heavy. It was supposed to be for holding a line against monsters far bigger than a man. The orc wasn’t far away though, and Tom’s Idealist constitution made up the difference. The head punched into its shoulder before the shaft dragged the orc forward with its weight. Pink lightning flickered around the wound, licking at the spear’s shaft. The orc’s mouth opened, chest heaving, but no sound escaped. Tom melted back into the forest.

He spent the next several hours waiting in the same tree he had first dropped from, nervously reading translated snatches of orcish from his wisp, hoping that his plan would work.

The orcs were furious when they found their two dead comrades. Tom felt grim satisfaction as they confirmed that the poison he’d wiped on the spearhead had finished the second orc off.

The pack just about went into a frenzy, before the massive lead orc trooped out of the gloom and restored order. That was unexpected. Tom hadn’t accounted for the leader being with them, not having seen it with them until now. His guts turned to slushy ice. If he’d tried to attack the leader, things would have gone differently.

Eventually, the orcs decided that he had followed the nearby stream, using it to mask his scent. They moved off, half on either side of it, searching for where he had left the stream to continue his flight.

Tom breathed a sigh of relief. He dropped from the tree, and continued on.

~~~~~~~~~~

Two days later, Tom found his next opportunity. He was working his way through a rare, true clearing in the forest, filled with chest-high grass, when he heard a low hum coming from the centre.

Tom approached cautiously. A few more metres into the clearing black shapes began zipping past overhead, accompanied by a painful sounding whine.

Wasps, he thought. Shit.

He could resist whatever horrific venom they surely had, but even his Idealist body would give out under thousands of stings. Each of the wasps was as big as his thumb. Pure black. The clearing was a couple of hundred feet across, and even in the small portion he was standing in, several wasps flew over him every minute.

The hive must be massive… Tom pondered, as wasps zinged back and forth overhead. An idea began to form in his mind.

He circled around the centre of the clearing, noting, as he got closer, the massive hive growing out of the stump of a tree, like a boil the size of a man growing out of a child. He got as close as he dared, noting its position and fixing it in his head, so he could remember where it was when it was obscured by the grass again.

After, he worked his way to the opposite side, and into the trees. He spent a few hours scouting the area, working out his best pathway, noting a few hazards and hiding places. In a glade another couple hundred metres from the clearing a small spring burbled away happily.

Tom hadn’t heard any pursuit from the orcs since his ambush, but he figured they must be on his trail again. He felt he had some time up his sleeve though, and for his next plan to work, he had to wait here anyway, so he set to gathering as many long, straight branches as he could find.

He selected ten of the sturdiest and discarded the rest. He whittled an end of each of them into a crude point, then cross-hatched a groove into the point, about an inch deep. It made them a rough spear of the kind that boys sometimes used to spear fish in the river at Wayrest. Tom was hoping to spear much bigger fish than them, though.

Tom spent the next hour turning out his pocket. He found a flat rock, and ground every poisonous thing he had gathered over the last several weeks into a paste. He left the rock out in the sun next to the pool that the spring formed and took the opportunity to clean himself.

As he stripped off his clothes, he noticed something with a shock. Solid black lines, a quarter-inch thick, curving in whorls, flowing and curling, ending in jagged tips like teeth, and starting again, climbed from his left foot to his hip.

My ritual tattoo! Tom concluded. I completely forgot.

Doesn’t look awful, he thought, twisting his leg back and forth to look at it.

Whenever an Idealist manifested a ritual skill, they always got an accompanying tattoo. It was where the ritual form was summoned from and subsumed into, whether that was a familiar or spell or item. To activate them, they first had to be fed their ritual components. From then, they could be summoned or subsumed back into the tattoo as many times as the caster liked, but if the ritual form was fully disrupted, say by a familiar being killed, or a spellform or weapon being broken, the ritual components would need to be fed to the tattoo again. If the limb was lost, or the tattoo damaged, it would slowly crawl onto an undamaged part of the body, restoring functionality.

Tom felt wonderful after bathing in the pool. It was the first time in two months he’d been this clean. Before he put his clothes back on, he wrapped a scrap of cloth around his hand and scooped up the almost-dry paste. Another quarter hour, and he had crammed it all into the notches at the top of each spear. Then, he swam to the bottom of the pool, half again as deep as he was tall, and wedged them into the silty bottom as best he could.

Tom had absolutely no idea how soluble the paste he made was. No idea how quickly it would wash away. No idea if the spears would stay wedged where they were. No idea if his timing would prove anywhere near close enough. But he had nothing better to do for the moment, and another orc or two injured or possibly killed was better than none.

He unpicked the animal hide stitched to the back of the breastplate he’d taken from the orc while he waited to dry. The crude bag contained some rope, a handful of dried meat, which he had already eaten, and a waterskin, which he refilled. Some other animal bones and unidentifiable tufts or fur he’d already discarded. There were also a handful of glimmering gem-like stones. They were soft, almost oily looking, in yellows and browns and greens, with a scattering of others. Essences, though from what type of creatures, or of which elements, he couldn’t say. Not of any use to him at the moment, but he kept them anyway.

Once done and dry, Tom dressed himself, buckling on his sword and strapping on his breastplate. It was a little too big, but he felt safer for it all the same. That done, he wound the rope around his waist and searched out three big stones from around the spring, the largest he could comfortably throw.

Then he returned to the clearing to wait.