Chapter Thirty-One: A Walk through the Woods

After Tom and Sesame had healed, they headed back out into the Deep. Val gave him a grin that might've been proud.

“Way I see it, you’ve still got two more skills to manifest. Good luck,” she said sternly, as she sent them on their way.

And so Tom and Sesame spent another week, camping out at night, and ranging the Deep during the day.

They fought more monsters, and overcame each challenge. Only twice more did they require healing from Val, and even then, they probably could have managed without. Tom was learning to rely more on the buffs provided by Sweet Suffering, and he’d even begun to try out some of the alchemical concoctions provided by Bubbles.

The potions, or poisons, more accurately, that he had provided Tom, were a marvel. One sent strength surging through Tom’s limbs, so great that he even managed to out-wrestle Sesame. Another drew his vision to a pinpoint. He could see the veins on a leaf far up in the canopy in the meagre dawn light. Luckily, he hadn’t taken that one before a fight, and the effects only lasted a few minutes.

The first time they needed Val was after a tense battle with an enormous tortoise. Tom had thought it would be easy, at first, but the thing was capable of incredible bursts of speed over short distances, and its snapping jaws could reach much further than he anticipated. To top it off, it was rock-attuned, and its shell was near impenetrable. In the end, the pair traded off who kept its attention, and eventually it collapsed after the built up damage from Agony became too much.

The second instance was a particularly desperate fight against a badger. The irascible thing was only marginally larger than a normal badger, but had some kind of rage and speed abilities. Tom ended up covered head to toe in lacerations, and Sesame was utterly exhausted, if not heavily injured, due to being unable to keep up with the explosive speed of the creature.

It was there that Grit truly proved its worth for the first time. The longer the fight dragged on, and the more wounds that accumulated, the tougher Tom became. As he became more sluggish from blood loss, he found that the rending claws of the badger also had a harder and harder time actually wounding him. Misery, Echo and Whisper all put in work wearing the badger down, every bit of damage it dealt to Tom being repaid in kind. Eventually, Hush gave Sesame a chance to clip it with his roar. The massive bear then pinned the thing to the ground by one of its legs, and the fight was swiftly finished.

Tom was steadily becoming more comfortable as an Idealist. It took a drastic change in mindset to start truly relying on one’s skills, and the best way to force yourself to rely on them was by fighting.

Tom learned to accept damage if it meant being able to land a solid strike in return, sure in the knowledge that he could heal from most wounds, and that any damage he took would only result in more damage to his opponent, and end the fight quicker anyway.

Where there was the possibility of being outright killed or severely wounded from one or two attacks, he learned patience, learned to trust in Agony’s damage over time, and Hush to provide him with a respite if needed.

When an enemy was particularly quick or agile, like the badger or the shadowy panther, he used a combination of Misery and Hush to level the field.

The greatest benefit of all, however ,came from increased coordination with his familiar. As Sesame’s intelligence settled and grew, and as they fought more battles together, their teamwork became increasingly fluid.

Each could act as a bulwark, taking damage to give the other an opportunity to attack. Sesame was excellent at controlling space with his roar, and heavy physical attacks. Both of them learned to trust the other’s abilities, stepping in to help when needed, waiting when it was right as well.

The only downside to the period of training was that Tom manifested no more skills. He was incredibly eager to round out his skillset, and put in place solid plans for future growth. Of Whisper Shield, Val said simply, “More defence is always good,” and, after some prodding, expounded, “skills with extra effects up front can be a double-edged sword.”

By that she was referring to skill upgrades. Each time a skill was uplifted beyond Complete, several skill upgrades became available to choose from. For each skill, at each uplift from Consummate to Flawless, an Idealist could choose one upgrade from their available options.

For skills like Whisper Shield, they could often sprout an unreliable variety of options. Good in some ways, but potentially not if you just wanted to make its effects stronger, and weren’t offered the chance to due to more esoteric branching effects. Skills like Grit had more pros than cons. It was simple, so simply choosing to make it more powerful would always be an option, and it would always have some kind of extra effect offered as well.

It gave Tom plenty to think about in his downtime. It drove his eagerness to manifest the rest of his skills to a fever pitch. He had to counsel himself to patience over and over, but he was also wryly amused with himself. He had spent so many years desperately hoping to manifest even one Ideal, and now that he had three, he was fretting for a couple of skills.

Eventually, once Val decided to end their excursion. As Tom and Sesame ambled along through a relatively clear patch of forest, after having fought off some pesky grass sprites not an hour before, his wisp pulsed at him.

Stay put, Val sent through their party link. Coming to meet you. Won’t be long.

True to her word, she found the pair sitting in a small clearing not an hour later. Sesame was sprawled on the grass, making contented little sounds as Tom scratched behind his ears. He raised a hand in greeting as she slipped out of the tree line. Sesame gave a disgruntled snort at having his scratches interrupted; Smitten trotted over with high steps and big grin, obviously having figured a use for Tom’s newly free hand.

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“Hello,” Val greeted him, “Sorry to cut your training short. The Scriber will be along in the next fortnight, and we need a trip to Corin’s Grove before then to resupply.”

Tom nodded his enthusiastic agreement. His light mail hauberk was slowly getting tatty from all his fighting, and he wanted to pick up some treats for Sesa, too. The big lump deserved some goodies for all his stalwart efforts protecting Tom.

Tom knew some Idealists treated their familiars merely as tools, treating them much as they did their mindless wisps. Before summoning one, he had no idea what to think. Now that he had spent so much time with Sesame, he knew them to be wrong. Those Idealists thought their familiars weren’t ‘real’ per se, and although their physical body was a construct, the intelligence driving them seemed real enough to Tom. Sesame had plenty of his own wee quirks, and such things would be redundant in an unfeeling intelligence.

They left with Val moments later, and within a few days, were back at her oak. There, they packed a few things to sell or give to the village, including a few purely beneficial herbs Tom had found on his small journey. As it happened, Val had also skinned the boar that Tom had fought. She thought it would make for good leather, given the regenerative attunements it had.

Whilst travelling, he took any opportunity to nibble at any edible looking things along the way, and while a great deal of them were poisonous, many didn’t trigger Sweet Suffering at all. Of those that fell in that category, any that seemed unusual went into his pack, as carefully stowed as he could manage. Some, he felt the beneficial effects of, even if he couldn’t identify them due to them not being categorised as debuffing him by Sweet Suffering.

On one occasion, as they were walking, he noticed a very faint green light poking from a tree trunk at dusk. Cautious, he investigated, and found a small cache of softly glowing nuts. He took them all, grinning and sending a small thanks to whichever industrious squirrel had stashed them. He ate one, and found himself suddenly bursting with energy. The rest he carefully tucked away, now sure they had some kind of stamina replenishment function to them.

Another day, at dawn, he had woken and found a patch of small white flowers blooming outside the small hollow they had slept in, in the slight frost that had formed overnight. Many of them he and Sesame had inadvertently crushed by standing on, but he still managed to gather a handful. He ate one, curious, and found a strange cold seeping into his limbs. When they’d run into a fight with a large snake a few hours later, his first couple of attacks with his spear had left a patina of frost spreading from the wounds, slowing the serpent down.

Tom found himself wishing he knew more of woodscraft. The more time he spent in the Deep, the more he was growing to like it. If he was more knowledgeable, he was sure there would be innumerable treasures to find, for any bold or unlucky enough to be out here. He especially wished he had not trampled so many of the little white flowers.

Already he was becoming increasingly proficient in moving silently, in finding the easiest paths, in building his instincts for danger or opportunity. Without being hunted by orcs, he had the time to truly apply himself to adapting to life out here, instead of simply eking out an existence, and hoping each day that he would live to see the next.

The biggest difference in him was psychological. As he grew more confident in his skills, the pervasive fear that filled him on his Reapings ebbed away. He trusted himself to be able to overcome all but the most extreme monsters out here, and if he ran into any of them, he was sure he could escape. Having Sesame close at all times, watching his back, and Val always lurking nearby, made a huge difference too. He found he trusted them both unconditionally.

Perhaps the most startling thing, more so than him enjoying the Deep, was that he was not resentful at having been sent here. He thought of Wayrest often, sure, but he felt no ill will towards the Council. In fact, he came to understand them more, in a perverse way.

Only those who lived on the knife’s edge, every day, could truly appreciate how desperate their existence was. Not just as individuals, or even speaking of Wayrest as a whole, but humanity in general. Certainly, everyone knew there were monsters abound in the wilds, and that was why most chose to live in fortified cities. But once you made that choice, you had another: to either think of yourself as a coward, living in fear of what was outside, or to downplay the severity of the situation to yourself.

It went without saying that most people chose the latter. Tom couldn’t blame them, either, the choice being that, or a perpetually anxious existence. Especially for the grand majority of people, without magic to protect themselves.

No, the Council was merely scared. Scared of their safe little world becoming any more unsafe than it already was. Tom didn’t think they’d truly believed him, but neither were they complete fools. Those who were didn’t tend to survive long in such a world. No, they would wait, and try to find evidence of the orcs out here, but they wouldn’t upend their cosy fantasy until they did.

Tom also found himself without any resentment for his parents. Thinking of his father produced only disappointment, but having stood up to him had freed him, as if he’d put down a titanic weight that he hadn’t realised he’d been carrying. Next to the freedom from that struggle, his father seemed a small creature in his eyes - pitiful, pathetic.

His mother was a different story. His thoughts on her were much the same as always. A strange mix of gratitude and confusion. The mix had been sown in his heart’s soil for years, and love, proper love, could not grow in such an environment, though he did love her still. He thought he understood, since putting down his burden, how she must have been carrying a similar one. One that his father had been adding to, ever so gradually, so slowly you didn’t notice, over decades. She would have had no energy left to stand up to him, much less to save her son. Still, he had some small hope she would free herself of him too.

He thought of Ella and Gad with sadness, sad that he had such a horrific death, and so young, and that Ella was now without her brother, and had the entire hopes of a noble House to carry. He knew the stress of that all too well. What he didn’t feel, any longer, was guilt. At most he felt frustration, that he hadn’t manifested slightly earlier, that some turn of chance hadn’t occurred to see Gad escape alive with him, but he no longer blamed himself.

Most of all, he thought of Rosa. Rosa, the fiery scion of House Raventos, who was the only person who was ever kind to him. Of course, she was often mean just like the others, but it didn’t carry the same sting. He knew, for her part, it was purely teasing, unlike the barbs of the rest of his peers. He hoped to see her again, someday. He smiled as he thought of it. She would make fun of him for his Ideals, and in the next breath be joyful to see him alive. It was a pleasant daydream.

Overall, he was content. Life had taken him in an unexpected direction, but he was not unhappy with it. He didn’t care if people believed him anathema for his Ideals. He knew his heart was true. And he could always leave, just pack up and go, travelling to distant lands as he’d always dreamed of.

First, though, he had work to do. He was not yet finished training, and he needed to be fluid with his Ideals, before he thought of anything else. Once he was done, he would get to work.

If Wayrest needed proof of orcs in the Deep, he would bring it to them.