Chapter Thirty-Six: One with Nature
Val was absolutely elated with Tom’s new skill, perhaps even more so than he was, which was saying something. Tom couldn’t help but take his pack in and out of his storage space at every opportunity to rummage through it for something he didn’t necessarily need, at least not right away.
He found that the spatial storage inside his wisp was roughly the size of a closet. It was tall enough to hold his spear upright with room to spare. That, in and of itself, was a boon. Carrying the long length of metal as he traversed through tangled undergrowth, and around or over or under deadfall, could be exceedingly frustrating at times.
Tom was even more excited to continue to learn woodscraft from Val now. He knew that for all he had learned yesterday, many of the lessons were but cursory introductions. He wanted to know all of it, as much as she could teach, and become as though he had been born to the life. And Hunter-Gatherer made it all ten times easier.
Now, as they moved, he could feel things in front of him. It was odd and disconcerting, at first, but he quickly adjusted. He was staggered by just how much life there was out here though, just how much he had been missing.
He hadn’t realised before, how often some small creature would be cowering in the undergrowth, holding themselves perfectly still, until he passed by. How every single tree, every bush, was home to their own individual, thriving ecosystems of insects and birds and other critters.
Even more amazing was the fact that larger creatures; boar and wolves, badgers, like the one that had attacked him before, big cats, stags, all manner of things - all humming with mana that resonated loudly against Tom’s new sense - would also often shrink away into the forest as they approached.
Tom had begun to think of all the creatures of the Deep as aggressive, wild monsters that would attack on sight, and it caused a fundamental shift in his perspective to see many of them retreat at the merest hint of humans, content to live their life without conflict.
Life out here in the Deep was dangerous, certainly, but that was only one small facet of it. As Tom began to peel back the veil with his new sense, he also began to truly appreciate the complexity of it, the beauty of it all.
For the next fortnight, Val pushed him increasingly hard. Every day, she would test him on his knowledge, honing his skills. She had him try to evade Smitten or Scorn, and then try to catch them. She had him try to sneak up as close as possible to a doe drinking at a stream before it noticed him. She made him climb trees and escarpments, dig holes and fill them, ford streams, and wriggle on his belly through undergrowth.
She explained the likely routes a beast would take through the forest, different ones for different creatures, and the best ways to come upon them unawares, or to lure them into traps.
Every evening, she made him set out both their wardpoles around whichever shelter they had either chosen, or built, and watched him like a hawk as he did so. The placement of them didn’t need to be exact. They only needed to be placed in a rough circle around them. After channelling a little mana into them, they would create a ring that would drive attention away from them, subtly steering any passing beasts from walking between them too.
If they were placed too far apart though, there might be gaps. Val assured him it was better to get into the habit of doing it right, every single time he needed to, so that it became an ingrained habit. All it took was one forgotten pole, or one set just too far apart, for you to wake up halfway down some monster’s gullet.
He learned, little by little, drinking in her knowledge. He was no master woodsman, not by any means, but she seemed satisfied with how quickly he learned. She was quick to correct and just as quick to praise, and Tom found himself slowly coming out of his shell. As he learned their craft his confidence grew. As he spent more time in the Deep, his memories of Wayrest became a distant thing, and he healed. Slowly, but he did heal.
He found that Hunter-Gather even helped him during combat. One afternoon, he noticed a large snake lying in wait on the forest floor as they approached. He relayed this to Val, and she made a simple ‘it’s all yours’ gesture at him, and promptly melted back into the forest.
He and Sesame had a brief exchange via their bond. They split, circling apart as they approached the snake. It must have been well over ten metres long, the entire length of it radiating against Tom’s new sense.
As they each rounded a different side of a tree, the snake chose its moment to strike. Tom felt it coil itself, readying for the ambush. Even more concerningly, he felt the mana in its body condense near its head a mere second before it lashed out at Sesame, and sent the bear a warning.
Sesame immediately roared, filling the air with sharp, black stone just before the snake attacked. It found its strike taking it straight through the withering cloud, and its jaw, unhinged to deliver its venom, was lacerated beyond repair.
The rest of the fight, if you could call it that, was brief. The snake had been blinded in one eye by a shard of rock, and could no longer bite them with a jaw that wouldn’t hinge open properly. That such a large snake was not built for constricting was testament to the size of its regular prey. Tom had no doubt its venom was potent.
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And so their fights went, becoming ever more fluid as Tom began to learn to judge when a beast was about to use some kind of ability. It was frustrating, in a way, not being able to tell the kind or quality of them, but even a second’s warning that they were about to use one often turned their fights incredibly lopsided.
At one stage, while Val was teaching Tom some better methods for trap construction, they were set upon by a flock of shadow or dark attuned birds.
Not even Smitten had picked up their approach with his sensitive ears, but Tom managed to give them just enough warning that they weren’t caught completely flat footed. Individually, the birds weren’t particularly tough, or strong, but they were numerous, and incredibly difficult to pin down.
Each seemed to make mirages of themselves, shadows that split and turned and twisted out from the real birds, spiralling and diving in unpredictable patterns. Although Tom’s new sense told him which were false, as the copies felt much ‘thinner’, it was still near impossible to keep track of them. The discrepancy between what his eyes saw as real and his new sense told him was false was disorienting. Sesame’s roar managed to topple one or two from the sky, and Tom placed Agony on one, but he was helpless to do much more.
It was then that he saw Val in action for the first time. Smitten positioned herself at Val’s back, her barks keeping the birds from blindsiding her. Then she went to work.
She took a deep breath and began blowing slowly through her mouth. Liquid, sickly green and so thin it was almost gaseous, sprayed into the flock.
The birds dropped from the sky like stones, feathers crisping and melting, bodies withering away. She turned her head as they tried to scatter, enveloping almost the entire lot of them.
Scorn mopped up the rest. Tom had to admit he had been curious as to what the little familiar could do. So far, he seemed to just be a decoration for Val’s shoulder, sitting there looking cute and grumpy. He had rarely been so wrong.
The smoky grey tom hissed, and as he did, razor thin green lines sprayed from his mouth in whisper thin beams. Unerring, they sizzled through the air, striking down every last one of their would-be ambushers.
Tom was a bit shaken by the encounter. He hadn’t had the deficiencies in his skillset shoved in his face quite so blatantly as this before. He said as much to Val.
“You’re never going to be able to deal with every situation, Tom. You’ve only got so many skills to go around. Besides, there’s always uplifts. Maybe you’ll get offered something that’ll help.”
Tom resolved to choose it if he did. The helplessness he felt… it reminded him of ‘training’ with his father. The feeling that no matter what he did, he couldn’t win, couldn’t make a difference to the outcome of the situation. He refused to feel that way again.
He wasn’t completely unhappy with the situation though. He had noticed the approaching flock in the first place, where it had escaped the notice of either of Val’s familiars. He had a feeling that if he were to meet something like the shadowy panther again, he would not have anywhere near so much trouble.
As they began to move on Tom noticed thin cuts taken out of trees almost a hundred paces away. It took him a moment to realise they were from Scorn’s beam attack. He gave the cat a shocked glance, and got the smuggest look he’d ever seen in return. He made a mental note to try not to annoy him again. The cat could cut him in half as easy as breathing.
Near the end of their second week in the woods, Val stopped abruptly as they scoured about, beckoning him over. She pointed to a deep imprint in the ground as he caught up with her.
“What would you call that?” she asked.
The print was large, but not enormous. Tom could see the imprints of its heel, and four clawed digits, clearly in the soil. Whatever had left it was both big and heavy. He cast about for more prints, and found a few not far off. He looked around again, saw broken branches, picked out a larger scratch left on a trunk, and gauged their height.
Tom revised his estimate upwards. The creature that had left this was easily bigger than the boar he had seen at the start of his last Reaping. Bigger, even, than the moss golem he had seen on his very first one. There was only one thing it could be, and if the size didn’t give it away, the shape of the print definitely did.
“Drake,” Tom replied, and Val nodded at him. “Big, but not as big as I’ve heard that they can get.”
“It’s only a juvenile, I think. An adult drake would be pushing down trees and crushing the undergrowth. Can you sense anything?”
A thoughtful frown captured Tom’s face, and he focused on his new sense. Using it was difficult to describe, but he could flex and focus it, much like one could with sight or hearing. He stared at the prints left in the ground, the broken branches, the rip in the trunk, all around them too, trying to sift some out of place sense of life from the regular ones of the forest around them.
After a while, he thought he caught something. Just the merest wisp. He thought it felt strange, both old and vital at the same time. He could have been misinterpreting it though, he was still new to using Hunter-Gatherer after all, and he had only the faintest trace to go by.
“I’m not sure, but I think so,” he told Val. “I get a feeling of something with massive life-force, but it also feels …ancient. I’m not sure if that really makes any sense, sorry.”
Val shrugged. “It might be related to the drake, and it might not be. Just seemed a good chance to try your skill. Remember it though, the impression could prove useful.”
“Okay,” Tom assented, then, “How long are we going to track it for?”
“What do you mean?” she asked him with a quizzical look.
“Well, we’re quite a ways east and north now, definitely over a week away from Corin’s. How long do we need to track it to know it’s no longer a danger?”
“I first picked up its sign not a few days from Corin’s. It might very well wander off and not come back for a decade, you’re right. But would you rather deal with it now, or then? I promise you, it’ll be a lot bigger.”
“When you say ‘you’..?”
“I mean you, Tom. ‘How long are we going to track it for?’ you ask. We’re going to track it until we find it. And then you are going to kill it.”
She grinned at him as if she’d told some grand joke, but Tom knew she was deadly serious.
He was beginning to hate her sense of humour.