When I wake up the next morning, the first thing I do is to go to check on my hide. It’s still on the rack, now completely dry. Testing its stretch with a hand, I frown a little in confusion as I feel its flexibility. Although I’d done lots of stretching before going into my meditative trance, the hide hadn’t been quite dry so I was expecting to feel some stiffness. But no.
The slight scrape of a claw behind me alerts me to the presence of someone else. Turning around, I see River has followed me in, the entrance no doubt at least as awkward for him as for me.
I had seen that you were poking at this hide with a stick at regular intervals, so continued doing it while you were unconscious. Was that the right thing to do? he asks uncertainly.
My eyebrows rise a little in surprise. I hadn’t realised he’d seen me, certainly not enough to realise that I was using the stick on the hide regularly. That he did seems to have worked in my favour this time. I’ll have to remember that he’s more observant than I’d anticipated. Perhaps I should have realised that he would have good observation skills – he’s survived in a more dangerous forest area a lot longer than me. It’s a miracle how I’ve managed to stay alive this long, as often as I’ve found my head in the clouds while travelling through the forest, I think to myself ruefully.
“Thanks for doing that, it’s perfect,” I answer, realising that he’s still anxiously anticipating my response. “I was a bit worried that it would be ruined when I heard just how long I’d been meditating. What else happened while I was…away?”
River gives his equivalent of a shrug, nerves playing across the Bond.
Nothing much different from usual. That first day we were all worried about you, but apart from a bit of bleeding, you didn’t seem to be distressed or hurt, though the sensations we received over the Bond were a little strange. After trying to rouse you a few times without success and then monitoring your state for a while, we went hunting as usual.
I was uncertain about leaving you here without all of us considering how vulnerable you clearly were, but Bastet convinced me that you would prefer us to continue advancing. We made sure to leave you with at least two of us at all times to guard you, though, he finished, looking at me anxiously. Even without saying it over the Bond, I feel that he’s seeking reassurance.
“That sounds like a good compromise,” I tell him a little soothingly – it’s much as I’d expected, actually. Though there is one thing that makes me a little surprised. “Wait, what do you mean by ‘Bastet convinced’ you? Could you speak to each other?”
Yes. Shortly after you fell unconscious, we discovered that we could communicate with each other even as we do with you. It has certainly simplified things! That’s interesting, indicating that I ranked up Dominate while in the soul space. In fact, I probably ranked it up by reaching the soul space. And it also proves that I don’t have to be aware of the change for it to take effect, though I had suspected that already.
Still, I’m glad of it – I wouldn’t have wanted my absence to mean that my Bound were thrown into chaos. Kalanthia might have been able to help them communicate between each other; whether she would have been willing to do so would have been another question. At least it didn’t come up.
On that note, I wonder how my Bound are doing: it’s been a while since I checked on their progress to the next level.
Bound – Companion – ‘Bastet’
Progress to Tier 3: 2%
Bound – Dominate – ‘River’
Progress to Tier 2: 71%
Bound – Tame – ‘Sirocco’
Progress to Tier 2: 59%
Bound – Dominate – ‘Fenrir’
Progress to Tier 2: 51%
Bound – Dominate – ‘Persephone’
Progress to Tier 3: 20%
Bound – Dominate – ‘Hades’
Progress to Tier 3: 21%
To my pleasure, I see that all of them have made progress, even those who are already in Tier two. Obviously, theirs is a lot slower – two or three percent in comparison to the others making ten to twenty percent progress. River is almost in the home stretch, his progress sitting at seventy-one percent.
“Have you guys run out of Energy-Hearts?” I ask, suddenly remembering that they’re all in my Inventory and inaccessible to anyone but me.
Fenrir still has his, but the rest of us need more, River confirms. I sigh in annoyance – I feel the pressure of time enough that I’m frustrated at losing these few days. It is no issue, River continues, perhaps feeling my self-castigation at not leaving them a small store before accidentally going unconscious.
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Not that I would have known that I needed to – it was accidental, after all. But it’s probably a good idea for me to leave a small pile of them in the corner of my alcove so they can help themselves. Not all of them – that way if something happens or a creature manages to steal them, we’ll still have some more in my Inventory.
“I’ll put a few in the alcove so this doesn’t happen again,” I voice my thoughts to River.
That’s probably a good idea, but honestly, it doesn’t matter too much. Bastet explained that we need to do plenty of hunting as well as absorbing Energy Hearts to prepare for Evolution.
“Oh?” I ask, interested. “Did she explain why?” It’s good that Bastet is offering some direction. Her own Evolution went very well, according to Kalanthia, so if she can help the others to achieve similar results, that would be excellent.
I didn’t entirely understand what she told us, River admits, but apparently the Energy from the Hearts is different from the Energy from hunting and we need at least twice as much of the latter as the former when starting the Evolution process.
Interesting. Kalanthia has been very careful about what kind of Energy Lathani has access too – she’d said it was something about laying the right kinds of foundations. I wonder if this is linked.
“So what are your plans for the day?” I ask. “Hunting again?”
Sparring first. We continued it while you were absent, but were a bit more cautious about it, not wanting to cause an injury which we could not heal without you. Then yes, the majority of us will probably go hunting. Unless you have other preferences? I shake my head.
“No, that sounds good. In fact, I’ll come and join you for sparring now. After so long meditating, I could really do with some physical exercise!”
*****
By the time I get back to my hide, the sun is more than halfway to its zenith and my body is feeling pleasantly tired. I was also pleased to see the progress of my Bound when it came to sparring – both River and Bastet got the better of me and it was a close run with Hades. I’m clearly going to have to up my game to not be overtaken by them. Once I have my armour, I’m fully intending on testing it out by going on a hunt.
Persephone is a bit slower, her midsection starting to show some faint lumps – the eggs I guess. She’s therefore being more cautious and protective. Actually, it was fortunate that she only took part in two spars since I could see that Hades was unable to concentrate on his own battles while she was fighting.
As for Sirocco and Fenrir, they’ve both progressed too, but their strengths don’t yet allow them to overcome mine, particularly since my reach with most of my weapons permits me to keep them at bay without risking injury to myself. Though it was a lot closer when I used my knife.
Thanks to working with all my weapons, I’ve gained a level in each of my related Skills. And that means I’ve ranked up in Blunt Weaponry.
Congratulations!
You have advanced a Skill past Beginner: Blunt Weaponry is now at Novice 1. Due to focussing on technique, you finally appear to be a little better than a rakshi swinging a stick. Your blows land with more accuracy and thereby cause more damage. To help you with this, you have gained access to a new effect. By concentrating on a target, see areas which are particularly vulnerable to blunt damage. The longer you have been exchanging blows with a target, the more obvious the areas become. In addition to this new effect, your previous benefit is enhanced: gain 10% to the effects of Strength (Power : Endurance = 4 : 1) when using a weapon which principally deals blunt damage to a target.
Close message? Y/N
That should be useful, I decide. I’ll have to explore how it works, but if it does something like give me a sense of which areas to target, that would be great. I start wondering whether my other weapon Skills might give me something similar on rank-up to Novice. It would be pretty cool if I could glance at an enemy and work out exactly which weapon would be the best to use.
Closing the message, I lean my tanning rack down so it’s forming the hypotenuse of a triangle. Working on the knots I’ve tied to hold the hide onto the rack, I give up after a short while: all the work that’s gone into making the hide flexible has meant that the knots have pulled impossibly tight. Resigning myself to cutting the cord, I decide that I might as well put the bits to one side: I’m going to need to make more pitch at some point and the bits of fibre would be perfect for that purpose.
Detaching the hide from the rack, I send my magic into it. As suspected, a good portion of the mana I’ve saturated it with before has vanished – three days is definitely too long for all the magic to stick around. Still, I sense that only about a quarter of the magic has been lost, proving that this hide has a much slower rate of mana loss than anything else I’ve experimented with so far.
It takes a bit of time to refill, but by using Heavy Meditation, I find that my mana regenerates significantly faster than I would naturally. And my natural regeneration isn’t anything to sniff at besides. I suddenly realise that I could have made my job a lot easier earlier – and saved the cord – if I had used magic to remove the hide from the frame. Unfortunately, I didn’t think of it at the time.
Once it is saturated again, I drop back into Light Meditation – I need to remember to stay in that state as much as possible. Not only because it offers me more Energy absorption and a clearer mind in the present, but also because the description so clearly highlighted the need to practise in order to gain more benefits.
Exploring the tanned hide, I’m interested in noticing the differences between the original hide, the hide soaked with brain-soup, and the hide now. Not being a biologist or chemist, I can’t say exactly what’s happened on a scientific level. However, what I can see is that it’s different. The oils which had soaked into the hide before have now become part of it on a different level, the fibres of the hide coated and protected by them.
I cut off a small piece of the hide for later reference, and then try to grow the tanned hide to replace the piece I cut off.
It’s hard, very hard. Much more difficult than simply regrowing the hide before it had tanned. But hard doesn’t mean impossible. I have to try to replicate the changed fibres as well as the oils that saturate them, and generating all of that new material takes probably four times the mana that simply regrowing the hide had. And regrowing the hide had already been mana heavy.
In short, just to replace the small corner of hide I cut off, I have to empty my mana pool twice in quick succession. Despite my mana pool growing, it seems like I need even more. For now, it looks like using a single tanned hide and simply growing it to have a never-ending source of material may not be sustainable. Tanning with magic, however, might be a possibility.
And of course, I am currently dealing with a Tier two ‘nere’ hide, a beast whose skin was armoured enough to repel most attacks, and magical enough to hide itself almost perfectly. Possibly creating a simple buckskin equivalent with paranax hide wouldn’t require nearly as much mana.
For now, though, I want to complete the tanning process and make my new material waterproof. That, of course, means smoking it.