I had felt nothing from them dying either, not a single thing. Oh, sure, it was a bit squishy and gross, but their deaths specifically did not resonate with me. I had killed them and had feelings relating to killing them and what had happened when I did, but their being dead did not thrill me, nor did it make me feel Ill.

It was like there was a blank spot when it came to their deaths. A hole where nothing existed. They had been alive, then they were dead, and then I buried them, the middle step was blank.

I decided to bury that fear, too, deep down with my feelings. Right now, I needed to keep my head in the game, I needed to keep pulling the life mana out of the grass in my gut wound and mouth to try and fix my mangled body so I didn’t die at an inopportune time or as my instinct suggested, at all.

I walked down the path that seemed to mark the border of the corruption, checking for a way inward toward the source of the taint I could feel in the ground.

Feel, but not see.

I knew it was there, knowing there was mana, I supposed, just dark mana. I was getting tired of the word Tenebra, and it sounded like an academic term. Like whoever had coined it got bullied about it and decided to give it an overly obscure name to compensate for it.

Whatever practicing the dark magic did to mana, it was here, in the ground and trees and grass, but I couldn’t see it.

That is odd, or at least I think it is. [Magi] can be used to sense mana. Just like any of my other sense skills, I should be able to feel it right.

A wet rock didn’t suddenly stop showing up in [Sense Stone]; a plant's roots were in the ground, but it still showed up in [Verdant Senses].

I focused on the ground and checked myself while I was at it. There was something there, I knew it was there, I just made sure to keep checking on it, check on the parts I could see, to see if it changed.

After about twenty minutes, I ducked into a bush and hid. I could see, deeper in, moving shapes coming towards me in the dim forest.

I watched the Gremlins come out, six of them two spears, one short blade, one with two blades, one with a sling, and one with a bow. A little hunting party, they were one more than the last one, and while they had less range, they were still more pointy sticks that could and would gore me.

They were leaving, though I had no clue why they were heading out in such numbers.

Is it possible they caught on? That they picked up on me being out there? I hope not, but I honestly think that might work out better for me.

I obviously can’t just fight my way through an entire camp, more leaving means less fighting when I get there. A win, so long as I make sure to finish it quickly.

I waited and hid as best as I could, crouched down in a root hole surrounded by bushes that I [Control Growth] into giving me better cover. As they came towards me, I held my breath and brought my spade close, covering most of my head in profile, as if I were hiding behind the shovel like it was its own tree.

I pulled a little dirt over me to try to better hide my scent in case they had good senses or a tracking skill.

When the voices came close enough to distinguish grunts in their skittery tongue, I thought I was ready. Then I remembered that I had left tracks.

I had left tracks leading right to me, I had covered myself in the dirt but not gotten rid of my footprints. On the path, it was well-tread, the likelihood of someone picking out my footsteps on the path was negligible, but just off the path? Off the path where my footsteps depressed into the soft, tainted ground? My footsteps would lead them right back to my hiding spot.

It was just shy of twenty feet.

I tried to reach out with my [Aura of Renewal] and attempted to shift the soil around and uncompress it with light use of [Displace Dirt]. I reached out through my aura with my mind and used my skill. And it snapped back towards me before it finished, the mana from both the Aura and the skill snapping back, slamming back into me like a rock from a great sling. I doubled over as I lost my breath.

I almost gasped, almost sucked my breath back in, all the while, the loose mana slammed around inside me, stinging and burning, lost in my hurt body, making my wounds kick up a fuss despite Selly’s skill.

I heard them getting closer and decided it was worth the risk of moving. I let my shovel down, shimmied out to the halfway point and extended my [Aura of Soil].

It screamed from the backlash of the failed skill combo, it brought a tear to my eye, but with a light wheeze, I got it out and brute forced the soil to fix itself. The effort of it, pushing it through my shocked body, made it hard, I almost fumbled it at a range, despite my familiarity, it burned so bad I almost contemplated speaking the skill out loud.

It seemed like a good idea for a second, but the seconds passed, and I rained the part of my brain that just wanted to avoid pain back in with the knowledge that if I could hear the approaching Gremlins, they could hear me.

I pushed myself back, whimpering ever so slightly as I pulled at my shoulder wound, but I managed to get most of the way there when I heard a common enough sound that I picked it up despite the gap in language.

It was a ‘Hold on, did you hear that?’ followed by everyone stopping to listen.

I stopped dead until I heard them start sauntering off to wherever they were headed. Sweat beat down from my brow. I didn’t breathe, I didn’t think, I didn’t even think of breathing. My instinct was right there whispering in my ear.

I could hear it whisper not in words but knowledge, in animal Wisdom.

‘Do not move, [Hunters] are close, the hidden fox lives, the bold fox becomes dinner.’

Using everything I had at the moment, my instinct said ‘slowly,’ I got the last few feet back, fixed the dirt and shrubs and pulled my shovel back into place.

Not one breath.

I had no idea how to sneak, no idea how to hide. But my instinct believed it did, so I followed its lead, as uncomfortable as it made me. I sat there and waited and waited.

They moved slowly, on guard, whispering slightly, giving me the only idea where they were. I swivelled my ears to better know where they were, listening to either side of the tree I hid behind.

I heard a few of them stop being cautious, their shrill notes giving the rest a chuckle. And I started to relax when an arrow barely skimmed over me, depressed into the ground in the hole as I was, the arrow only came within one foot of me. I stopped my sigh of relief and focused back on the conversation as another arrow came back a bit farther out and landed closer to my feet. It Thudded into the dirt, and I recognized what might happen before it did.

I scooted forward and out of the way as an arrow pounded into the ground where my hip would have been, then scooted back into the tree.

My heart thudded in my ears, narrowing my focus on the twang of the bow, on the bow being drawn.

All I could think about was where the next shot would be coming in. I had my shovel shielding my head again. The bow twanged at the same time one of them spoke up and clapped right next to the twang.

The shot went wide.

I was trying not to sweat, not to give myself away.

Foxes don’t sweat, right? That’s why their noise is wet, and they pant. See body, no need to sweat, no need to give off any odour and get ganked by them, no sweat required. No sweating.

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I sweated a little anyway, but the gremlin with a bow yowled, and the others made a noise that sounded a lot like cajoling.

There was a bit of scuffing as the noises moved past.

My lungs only got a reprieve after they passed out of earshot.

“Too close, way too close,” I said aloud.

“I’ll say,” Selly said a bit tersely, “why did you go out? And what was with the jerking?”

“My footprints, I needed to cover my footprints. And I messed up covering my footprints the first time. Wow, that is a unique kind of pain.” I told her hollowly.

“And my skill didn’t block it out?” she asked, obviously confused.

“No, it was like the skill… exploded back into me? I suppose that’s what happens when you mess around with mana. Gods, but that still stings.”

I reached for my mana, and it stung me like the sting of a wasp, a zapping fire zinging through me.

I looked down as I cussed while I looked myself over.

There was mana where there wasn’t supposed to be mana. I reached for it again, and the mana in my body contracted, moving ever so slightly, and pulled against the loose mana. I let go again.

It was like a magical piece of shrapnel, or an arrow, pulling against the muscles it was forced between.

I got up regardless of it and kept going down next to the path. There was nothing to it. I might be able to pull it out, but it would rip me the hell up to get rid of it. It should blend back into me at some point.

I made my way down towards the ever more nauseating point down the path until I came upon a ruin and a camp.

Peeking out from the brush, I spotted the lake some few hundred feet away, the bush was not cut back except right around the camp.

The river, just spottable from my position, was partially blocked by a makeshift dam. The bank of the lake was pressed up to account for the intended rise of the lake, but next to it rose up a ramshackle wooden palisade centred around an old mossy pillar.

It took my mind far too long to figure out what the pillar was. It was part of the old aquifer, a riser that would have pulled up water and fed it into the aqueduct and eventually poured down and into old Moarn. I could see the old place where a water wheel would have spun a shaft through a set of stones, each with a foot-ish diameter hole through it, the wood long rotted away.

I could even see the places where a screw or bucket chain would have been mounted.

Those ugly vermin were using old stuff to taint the land, just like with the big dam at the end of the valley. I knew people that helped maintain those, and the vermin were messing with them.

I started looking for patroles and found none, so I approached the wall and listened.

I picked up on quite a few, at least a dozen of voices near me, and as I went around, I picked up something like two and a half dozen of them in the camp.

Far too many to deal with head-on, even if I got the drop on most of them, I would still miss out on getting some of them. Then I would get swarmed and die, and while that would fix some of my issues, but after one revive, there was no way they would make a mistake, I would go in chains and wake up a prisoner, just like before.

There also might be extra undead I couldn’t hear, it wasn’t like they talked or yelled or stomped around or did much of anything. There could be thirty of them standing perfectly still in there, and I would have no idea. If I wanted to figure out the who, what and where of the camp, I needed my skills, but I had messed that up, reaching for my skills actively hurt me, so I pulled back into the brush, hid and sighed.

“Selly, I don’t know how to tell you this… But I don’t think I can get in. There are too many of them, I can't feel around with my skills, I’m wounded and can’t fight right even if I was uninjured, with all the bad mojo going on, I can’t imagine anyone but a [Necromancer] being in there to oversee it. I think this might be over my head.”

“Saphine, lady of long leg and fuzzy ear, ye glowy-eyed grudge maker with one name and little imagination, most of that is solvable,” She told me smugly.

I crossed my eyes to glare at her.

“Oh yeah? Do enlighten me, little miss I’m afraid of birds. Do I charge in like you did earlier today? Because you were walking a fine line between being just fast enough to spook us into running and Anna whipping up a fireball to reduce you to ash. DO tell me how I’m wrong again.” I told her, my tone getting increasingly prissy as her voice struck a nerve that hadn’t settled.

“Well, for starters, break it up into problems. You can’t use your skills, why?”

“Because my skill backfired back when I hid my tracks, using mana at all hurts, and skills use mana, I would have to mess myself up even more, to just use a skill,” I spat.

She just nodded, “OK, can you fix it? And or will it go away on its own?” She asked leadingly.

“I… Well, yes, I think I could fix it, and it should go away on its own, but I have no idea how long that will take.”

“But you can fix it!” She told me, grinning with tiny pointy teeth in a shit-eating grin.

I glared at her. I started to think of plucking her stupid wings to get my anger across but tamped that down. Was I having a bad day? Yes. Was I feeling bad about being a bit of a failure who couldn’t do anything on my own and was incapable of picking up any valuable skills other than simple labour? Yes. Was I being hard on myself? Maybe. And was it being made worse by Selly being a little shit while I was in pain? Yes.

But she wasn’t to blame for my pain, she wasn’t the cause of my bad day, even if she did kick it off. She was an earache, a true pain in my neck, but that didn’t make her wrong, nor did it make me justified in my distaste for her at the moment.

SO. I took that anger and put it right next to my fears down below, let them make friends with one another, stoke each other deep down. I could use it later, let it out in a helpful way, throw myself into something and make myself useful instead of pissing it away by yelling at Selly.

It would get me nothing, well, it would get me a bunch of stuff, but it was all negative.

“Selly, I’m not having a good time right now, please don’t actively try and make it worse,” I told her with only a little gritting of teeth.

I could see her go to rebut the nickname and stop. She nodded.

“Sorry, I’ve been making myself a pain all day. I’ll get on with it,” she told me, in a half-hearted apology, but even half hearted, it was still an apology, and considering how stubborn she was, I would take it.

“Lay it out plainly, I’m a moron, so give it all to me instead of being cheeky, and I won't hold it against you.”

She nodded, “Aye, to avert a grudge, I shall,” she told me without the haughtiness she usually had.

“You have a few problems, but ye are lookin’ at all of this in the wrong way; your gut wound is a bit better off now. Do you think you could fix your shoulder? You can’t use your skills right now, but you could fix it; ye’ are down on yourself and don’t think you can fight the whole camp, but you don’t need to. You just have to get in and out with my queen to succeed, or with however many more prisoners there are. I was chasing you, and you were coming up with ideas, you were given a direction, and you found your way here, but you’ve been ignoring that.” She told me emphatically, gesturing with both arms intermittently to keep contact with me.

“You’ve been fightin' straightforward like as if you’re some [Hero] of yore who can take on the world just by having a smidge of an idea, some gumption and running at their foe with a magic sword. You threw away your best weapon, your head, and you’ve been going sideways ever since. Get what you can fixed, and put your head into it after. I’m sure there’s a way to do it, but coming up with a plan at a low only leads to bad plans. Strength at arms, pales before the strength of minds, a fell blade shatters before the keen edge of whit, both need one another, but the blade will never find its mark without the keen eye of a [Swordsman] behind it. It is so with all things: fix what you can now, sharpen your mind before deciding on any path toward or away from this foul place.”

She said it like she was a [Sage], dispersing wisdom to a pupil like I was a particularly thick pupil that required a prophetic bit of insight. All she was missing was a beard she could stroke. And she had managed to say it without insulting or sounding demeaning.

I had never seen a woman [Sage], now that I thought about it, nor had I heard about one.

I wonder if you need a beard for that; imagine that it would need to be based on a skill; maybe it was a beard-stroking skill. [Beard Stroker] or something. [Sages Tic]? Or maybe [Whiskers of Wisdom]. I should see if Anna knows anything about it.

Gods, I wish she had come with me, I have a feeling this would be a lot easier with her. She would know what to do.

I thought on Selly's advice, running it through my head a few times.

Could I fix my shoulder? At least enough to get a light grip? Would that have a significant impact on my ability?

It would probably help with movement a little, I still had both legs, but one arm being dead weight definitely threw me off a little. I also couldn’t get the best out of my hits. I wasn’t Balanced anymore. I was Dexterity focused right now, Even if I wanted to get back to balance, I needed to remember that I couldn’t get the full effect of my Strength.

That was another thing I had been doing, using my shovel like I had Strength. I should have probably been focusing on making use of my Dexterous body while I had it, slashing with the blade, cutting if I could.

I checked my wound next.

I was a little better, not that I felt for it, it felt like my wounds were less… Wounded? My gut wound had stopped bleeding, and the strike to my back, too. The Arrow wounds felt better, not in the way the others did, but like parts of them had fixed themselves ever so slightly.

The gut wound was the most healed; I had dropped the makeshift bundle of chewed leaves back during the ambush, and I had spat out the grass after getting all the life mana out of it, but it was significantly better than how it had been. It had puckered a little, like a wound trying to close, leaving a thinner gash. I could feel that it had also gotten shallower, the narrower part where the tip had cut me was healed.

So, if I pulled out the arrows, could I get it healed up? The arrows are certainly thinner than the blade of the spear, and it looks like it healed equally from all sides of the wound. It should work, I could probably get my arm working soon-ish.

What about my mana? How would I do it?

They were small, sharp little clumps of excited mana, buzzing around inside me like shards of porcelain.

Could I blunt them a little? Round out the sharpest edges so I could work on returning them to my mana pool or push them out? If I could round them out, it would undoubtedly hurt less, reducing it from torturous to just painful or uncomfortable.

I could probably work with that. It wouldn’t be so bad. Probably.

“I think I can do that, but I need distance and a break.. and a hole for me to crawl into and get on with this.”