The Night.
The Bone Wastes of Gehenna.
I had trudged through that hideous place for months. Cracking my teeth on bones to suck out the marrow, the only sustenance available.
Massive grey worms with stinking mouths burst from the ground, to swallow you whole.
Lightning fast barghests with flaming eyes cackled with laughter as they stalked you in the dark, they liked to watch you bleed… taunting you from the shadows of night.
When the wind picked up you would choke on clouds of ground up bones. Falling ash from distant volcanic mountain ranges, too far to even see would drift overhead.
And the sun... Burning all things that moved during the day, the night sky freezing in its absence… You would clutch your frost bitten fingers together for warmth, nothing to burn for your fire in the desolate waste. You could only move at dawn or dusk.
Gehenna was apparently a well known place, around the multiverse. Not technically part of the Eligere... Definitely not part of Earth... But somewhere else a different dimension altogether. 'I didn't even know there was a multiverse before the Eligere.'
Your Codex would give you a Goal or Quest and a portal would open, it had many layers and its own local denizens.
It was a hell scape of fiery pits and ash clogged mountains, the Bone Wastes were just one of the terrors held within that dimension. I expect many Delegati candidates turned down the Goals related to Gehenna… even travelling there was too dangerous...
The camp was silent, they looked at me with changed eyes. Before I was a wild man with no clothes on, placing tribal totems left and right… Now I was someone else, I despaired... I hoped I hadn’t shown them I was too different, they might toss me to the side.
sweat poured off me, nervously. 'Bugger. I should have chosen my words better'
A warm hand settled on my shoulder. Indaya smiled bright in the rippling light of the shelter, only lit by my totem’s blue-green floating points of light and motes of gold.
He had sneaked back in, he had somehow caught a large possum like creature that was shivering with fear in his hands. The cuts on his hands and arms were healing, as he stepped into range of my new totem. 'The possum must have put up a fight...'
He passed the possum thing to Abu, “You are strong and have suffered much, the trial was hard.” He flashed me another big smile.
“You have me now, my brother.” He clapped my shoulder and walked back out into the dark. Delia had passed him a quiver made of cloth and lizard scales shimmering with runes and full of Lizardmen arrows, Paula had given him a bamboo water bottle with a cloth carrying strap, they were all working hard.
I must not fall behind.
“I will help… I will heal… I will fetch…” I trailed off then a spark of my determination flared, bolstered by Indaya’s easy trust.
“We cannot fail here, you do not know the consequences.” I warned, waving Indaya off. My courage was waning, speaking was still hard on me.
He nodded and left, grabbing Keisuke who I saw standing at the entrance way.
Keisuke bowed.
I suddenly felt exhausted, all my energy drained. The vast amount of social interaction today had sapped my strength faster than fighting a swamp troll while knee deep in mud. I peered into the Ethereal Sea looking for spirits, hoping to see a glimpse of Kraas’vub but not seeing anything. It was a long shot, the Sea was infinitely vast... 'I might never find him again.'
I motioned to the others and tucked myself into a corner, my back up against the roots of our jack fruit tree.
I slept fitfully.
I woke a few times through the night, there was one small scuffle during Paula’s watch.
A python as long as a bus, crept up on her. She was embarrassed the massive thing had gotten so close unseen, she was on watch outside the door when it slithered over the top of the roots to grab her from above.
She was surprisingly uninjured, luckily her improvised wooden shield took the brunt of the initial strike. The finger length wickedly curved rows of teeth getting trapped by the wood, she was only bruised.
Keisuke was able to cut the ambush predator apart while it was wrapped around her torso, constricting the life out of her.
The other time was when Abu finally finished removing Jack’s withdrawal symptoms, the ritual lasting long into the night. She cried out and the poor possum creature screamed. Abu quickly killed the possum, snapping its neck with distaste. Jack collapsed exhausted, Abu following shortly after.
Her face was peaceful, resting soundly and no longer sweating.
Magic making the weeks of withdrawal pains a triviality... Her ‘curse’ was lifted for now.
I had asked the others for last watch, I wanted to pre cast my tusked totems. My raptor totem had vanished off my necklace while I slept, resetting as a new day came.
I cast the chosen totems five times in a row. It was a risky play for the group but we had our plan, hashed out and refined through the night while we traded off sleep and scouting.
Abu would do any emergency healing. The rest would be taken care of by my [Infused Lizards Retreat Totem] once we got back to our new shelter. I would also have a [Knotted Wounds Totem] prepared by the time the ambush went off, to do some focused healing. I would place my pre-cast totem and cast my [Knotted Wounds Totem] at the same time I deployed my first charm, freeing up a slot on my necklace.
I thought a [Carved Heart Totem] would be too dangerous to get right, the timings were going to be too tight.
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We had decided I would be fifty meters back from the ambush to get the maximum range out of my totem radius, I would have the time to store a last resort.
There were a few minutes spare before I had to wake the others, so I grabbed the square of scales from the lizards tail I had cut off and scratched the small ritual circle for the [Find Familiar] spell. It was a surprisingly cheap Cassa investment for a very powerful utility spell, and I hoped to get it to level fifty one day. Kraas’vub said the sub spell was amazing.
[Find Familiar Tier 1 (Level 42)]
Call out through a physical medium, you summon a familiar. A spirit will take a form as influenced by the type of your chosen medium. Your familiar will obey all your orders.
You may choose to share the senses of your familiar, while looking through your familiars eyes gain any unique senses of your familiar, range of 30 meters.
Only one familiar can be used at a time.
Cast as a Ritual
Duration: until dismissed
10: Familiar has increased intelligence while operating alone.
20: Double range of shared senses to 60 meters
30: Influence your Familiar’s form upon summoning, must conform somewhat to your chosen medium
40: You can place your familiar in a pocket dimension, summon or dismiss your familiar at will.
It was an incredible spell for scouting, your familiar could sneak into all sorts of places a human couldn’t. And with my level bonuses even operate on its own initiative.
As the ritual finished I felt the choice to change the form of my familiar. I pictured a smallish lizard, with dark brown and tan mottled scales and a vivid blue tongue. It would be 45 centimetres long and as fat around as my wrist. It would have amber eyes with circular pupils set in a triangular head with toothless serrated jaws.
I couldn’t make a rat or a bird with the scales of a lizard, but I might be able push for a snake. But I wanted a compact and speedy lizard, small with a strong dash and powerful senses. It was what we needed.
I willed the spell to complete guiding the mana and my mental image into the small ritual circle that I had formed in front of me, there was a hiss and a small cloud of smoke that smelled of incense puffed upwards.
A lizard exactly like the one I pictured appeared.
It looked up at me with intelligent eyes and it’s vivid blue tongue flickered out tasting my scent on the air. Amber eyes fixed on my own blue, and I spoke.
“I think your name should be Grub, what do you think?.” It blinked and nodded its head, scuttling up my arm with sharp grasping claws, settling across my bare shoulders. I stood and started rousing the others, we needed to move.
The Lizardmen would be gearing up and the scouts hadn’t found the trail to their village. ‘Better to be early than late to our own ambush.’
I nudged Indaya with a stick, his eyes shot open and he slapped the stick away and rolled up in one smooth motion. He frowned but quickly broke into a chuckling smile.
Him and the other scouts had come back a few times through the night, with a better idea of the lay of the land. After I collapsed the others had managed to find the dead Lizardman that Oleksiy had managed to counter ambush, ‘Even his little cheap knife.’
They had collected him and the dead lizards, readying them for my psychological warfare campaign.
Oleksiy, Paula, Tobias, Indaya and Dee had readied a decoy base by coming back and forth during the night, while Keisuke and Elina kept a close watch for beasties.
With Oleksiy’s skills in trapping and Indaya’s hunting knowledge Tobias and Dee had make a death trap.
My job was to facilitate the strike teams retreat, my totems at the ready. Grub would cling to Oleksiy as my eyes and ears, when he gave me the signal I would release my [Spirits Masked Totem] giving the strike team a stealth boost as they picked out targets.
They would turn and run and I would keep ahead of them, dropping totems to maximise the radius. Using Grub to track my teams position.
We moved out each carrying an armful of items, we stopped in the clearing and I started hauling corpses into positions.
Delia’s ability to make cloth and rope could not be understated. Humans had been making rope for 30000 years, I personally thought it was perhaps one of the cornerstones of human civilisation. To be able to whip some up with magic was a boon I would thank Delia for, for the rest of my life.
While I made a psychopaths playground in the clearing, the others under Indaya’s instructions erased our tracks and started making false trails through the undergrowth.
I used a branch that looked like an oar to make wide lines in the dirt, they were in the rough shape of a magic circle with nonsense runes and glyphs placed randomly around the circumference.
I balanced the heads of the monitor lizards on chest high stakes arranged in a plus sign all facing the centre, where I had lay out the dead hunter. Whom we had stripped of anything useful, he had a quality knife made of obsidian and a quiver of metal tipped arrows.
I had asked Keisuke to cut off their head and open up its chest. The head was on a long stake taller than the others right in the middle of the circle, standing above the body which I laid out. Its arms and legs spread, like a twisted Vitruvian man.
The stake punched into the ground through the body’s heart. Making a bizarre scene that would have twisted my stomach if I didn’t think it were necessary, it would draw the Lizardmen right to us. Practical for our situation but it didn’t feel good.
I had hauled up the pack of monitor lizard’s bodies around the tree line of the clearing. Finally blood and organs were haphazardly thrown around the outside of the circle, in a last minute scramble. I was sweating with hard, bloody work as the others returned.
We gathered in the clearing just as dawn began to break, the others minus Paula, Delia and Tobias looked on at my artful masterpiece.
“Fucking hell man… this is fucked up.” Jack pointed out. Her face green and set in a grimace.
I nodded “Sorry… But we need them... Angry.”
“Tak, they will rage. Lose focus, this will make them predictable.” Oleksiy agreed.
“Come, we are ready.”
We headed off Oleksiy and Indaya directing us into our positions.
The trap was in place, the massacre in the clearing lead along a winding path. The trail ended in a small glade sheltered by a jauntily angled tree, growing up through a collection of granite boulders. We had purposefully make a mess of covering our tracks, trying to lead the Lizardmen to the hollow on the lee side of the small boulder covered embankment.
About a kilometre in the opposite direction to our jack fruit tree.
We had decided to abandon the original shelter, it was just too close to the clearing. I guess it was a blind spot for me, the others were right... And trusting my totems to hide our jack fruit tree wouldn't work for long.
Thankfully Keisuke had found a small river last night, he had climbed a tall tree and looked over the canopy spotting it a few kilometres away in a break between the trees.
Following the river he found that it had carved a ravine into the ground around five or six kilometres uphill, towards a towering mountain range in the distance. There was a pool at the base of a waterfall surrounded by high walls eroded into the stone of the ravine, it would make a good fortress.
Tobias and Delia were on the way there now, Paula would be their security guard. They were going to get a start on tunnelling a cave into the base of the walls of the ravine, while the rest of us lay in ambush.
Covering our rear from Lizardman pursuit.
The waterfall would mask our presence, covering up most sounds, scents and the smoke of any fires we started. The jack fruit tree we would leave behind as a backup shelter.
I didn’t fail to notice Tobias not wanting to participate in the ambush… He was making his earth abilities too useful to spare.
As the morning passed I lay in wait Abu next to me, the others hidden around the ambush site around fifty meters ahead of us.
My vision was constantly shifting between my own surroundings, the wildlife was abundant in the Jungle and I’d rather not get attacked, the Ethereal Sea looking for traces of the spirit I saw yesterday, and Grubs’ perspective. He was clenching on to one of the straps of Oleksiy’s [The Farmer’s Bag], his claws dug into the magical material.
Through his ears I listened, I tasted the smells in the air with his bright blue forked tongue. I hadn’t used the senses of a familiar for a while, and for the first hour or so I was feeling disoriented.
A lizard saw the world very differently from a human and the experience was jarring. But I had done it before and tried to relax my mind into it.
Everyone was tense. We needed to give Tobias enough time to carve out a decent cave, and we needed to bloody the Lizardmen.
The ambush at our arrival still stung, was it part of Potestas’ game to arrange our meeting in that spot?
Had we arrived right in the path of the hunters by coincidence?
Or had Potestas created the Lizardmen just as it had remade our younger bodies? I had no answers, just emotions, and they were on the angry side.
We wanted a win, Abu had very nearly died in the first ten seconds of arriving to Potestas.
He shouldn’t have had to suffer through years of combat and hardship alone in the Eligere just to die to an arrow.
The inference I made was obvious as well. If we were hunted and nearly killed right out of the gates, so too were the other disparate groups of the human Delegati that were representing our species. I hoped enough survived to unite our advance.
A few hours into the day, came the first sign of action, a hissing caucus of roars. They had found their butchered friends. Abu tapped my shoulder Oleksiy had stressed the importance of noise discipline, and I swapped my sight over to Grubs. The ambushers were set.
The trap was baited we just needed to see what might bite.