Liam set down the oblong box in the snow and gave Orion a stern glare.
“There’s a whole procedure here. Align the sun with the moon. Get your tongue in the proper position...It’s more complicated than it looks, give me a second.”
“What is?” Ril asked curiously.
“He is setting up the tent we are going to be sleeping in. We just bought it.” Gael informed him. He seemed rather proud of that fact.
“It's going to be glorious!” Orion threw up her hands in a stretch, letting out an enticing sigh in the process. “A real bed! I honestly can’t wait.”
Ril stared hard at the oblong box. It looked vaguely like a flat topped chest except that it had no visible hinges or openings of any sort. In fact, the box looked completely solid, though it seemed to be covered in cloth. Or made of some sort of fabric. Liam was struggling with its weight and it left deep furrows in the snow as Liam dragged it around to orient it properly.
“A tent,” Ril stated skeptically. “It doesn’t look a whole lot like a tent.”
“Well,” Liam said slowly. He reached into his pack and started placing various knicknacks onto the ‘tent’. “You remember the wheel?”
Ril nodded slowly, not sure what the other man was getting at.
“Remember back when it was square?” Liam found whatever it was he was looking for and raised it up to the light. A green gem glittered softly in the firelight. “And all of a sudden the wheel went round?”
“Ahuh...”
Liam cleared off the various knicknacks from the ‘tent’ and placed the green gem in the center. The gen began to glow softly. Emitting regular pulses.
“Well...here we got the newest square wheel!” Liam gestured grandly to the unassuming fabric covered box.
“Sure...” Ril said after a moment, “How does it work?”
Liam paused his fiddling with the green gem for a moment and frowned thoughtfully. Then he brightened, as if he had solved some difficult puzzle.
“We have an empty space over here.” He gestured towards a spot in front of him that was cleared of snow. “And a full space in here,” He gestured to the ‘tent’ box. “and actually the empty space gets filled by the full stuff. Right? That’s how it goes.”
“Science!” Orion cheered happily.
Liam nodded sagely, waving his hands in vague circles. “It’s one of the...it's one of the driving forces of the universe, really.”
“If you say so.” Ril stated. Just as he finished speaking the gem on top of the tent box pulsed one last time, brighter than ever.
“Got it. Alright now the instructions say take a couple of steps back...” Liam said as he did just that, waving at the others to do the same even though none of them were even remotely close to the ‘tent’. “And it should, uhh. appear.”
The green gem sunk into the chest as if it was melting. The dark fibers absorbing the liquified green gem with ease. When it was eclipsed by the fabric the ‘tent’ exploded outwards.
Wide sheets of white fabric ballooned out of the box, a dry roar of fabric on fabric filling the space. The sheets flew upwards and outwards as they were forced out of the tiny space that they had been crammed into. A particularly industrious roll of fabric clocked Liam in the face and sent him tumbling backwards as the ‘tent’ unfurled. Clearly he hadn’t taken enough steps back.
Directly after the fabrics, came ropes. Ropes and stakes. The hardened steel spikes ricocheted out of the upheaval, dragging behind them snaking lengths of rope that whipped through the air with far more violence than any inanimate object had any right to display. The stakes swerved through the air, homing into the ground with disconcerting precision and disappearing under the surface of the snowy ground with dull thumps.
There was a moment of unsteady silence where it looked as if the mound of fabric and rope would collapse, then all the ropes tightened. Multitudinous creaks enveloped the party as they watched, stupefied, at the result.
Before them, proudly stood a nearly twelve foot tall pyramid of cloth and rope.
“A tent!” cried Liam who was covered in snow but grinning madly. “Tada!”
The first person to move was Delilah, who simply sniffed haughtily and stepped into the tent, as if a tent appearing out of practically nothing was a daily occurrence that was to be expected. She disappeared under the tent flap without a thought. That seemed to break the others out of their trance and they all rushed to the entrance and piled into the tent.
“Space magic.” Zed whispered as he stared into the tent in wonder. “I didn’t think I would ever see such a thing in person.”
The inside of the tent was cozy. The heavy fabric that composed the walls kept back the winter air. In the very center of the space, a solid pillar of green crystal held up the ceiling, around which several chairs were arrayed. Oddly enough, the chairs themselves seemed to be made of thick tawny colored rope rather than wood or some other more sensible material.
At the far corners of the room, where the ceiling was low, was where the beds were located. At least a dozen small futons lined the edges of the tent. Each bed was modest, with white sheets and only a small singular pillow, but was easily leagues better than sleeping in a bag on the hard ground.
Delilah had already claimed one particular bed and was in the process of pulling a curtain around the piece of furniture. She was having trouble as the piece of fabric didn’t seem to want to detach from the wall where it was bound, and so Gael rushed across the tent to give her a hand.
Ril slowly stepped into the tent. The floor was made of the same canvas as the walls, and slightly spongy, as if the snow underneath was getting compressed by his weight.
“Alright everyone grab a bed. There should be more than enough for everyone.” Gael said, after he had detached the makeship curtain from the wall for Delilah. “We will set up watches during the night. With so many of us there shouldn’t be any problems. Also...let’s make every effort to draw the fighting away from this tent. It would be, ahem, unfortunate if we broke this tent on our first adventure.”
Ril chose a bed next to Zed and sat in wonder on one of the rope chairs in the center of the tent. It creaked loudly as he put his weight into it, but seemed to hold. The tent was so tall that he didn’t even need to crouch all that much except around the edges.
“I have so many questions.” Ril said in awe as he looked into the pearlescent crystal pillar that supported the entire structure.
“It’s amazing.” Zed murmured, touching the pillar with hesitant fingers.
“What’s there not to understand?” Orion said flippantly then gestured to the entire space. “New wheel.”
“You know that doesn’t explain anything.” Ril retorted scathingly, “no offense, Liam.”
“None taken.” Liam replied calmly without turning around.
“Can you store things in this tent while it is in its box form?” began Ril.
“Would it gain weight when you do that, or is it always the same?” Zed added quickly.
“Yeah, and what happens if the box is damaged, does the damage carry over to the tent or are they two separate things,” Ril continued.
“or if the gem or this crystal pillar is damaged?” Zed pointed at the support pillar.
“Would it explode? Do nothing? Break?” Ril finished in a huff.
Liam shrugged, but it was Gael who answered. “Right, well that was terrifying. Let’s not test out any of those. We are going to leave this tent the same way we find it. And make sure to leave anything inside when we pack it up. All in all, this tent should last us for a very long time if we take care of it. That understood? Right well, the journey has been relatively easy so far, but by tomorrow we should arrive at the mountains.” Gael gave both Ril and Zed a pointed nod, “That is when we are really going to get our money’s worth out of you two, so be prepared.”
Both Ril and Zed nodded. Their primary purpose was assisting the fellowship in navigation the treacherous peaks in and around Menteridge. Both to avoid powder beasts and to arrive quickly and safely in the first place.
“Good, if that is all, then I will take first watch, followed by Ril, Liam, Orion, and finally Zed.” Gael finished up, picking up one of the rope chairs and dragging it outside of the tent.
“Great!” Orion declared, “Let’s play some poker.”
She had pulled out a set of cards and chips from somewhere and was rapidly arranging them on the floor, every once in a while giving Ril and Zed eager looks.
Ril glanced at Zed, “That sounds like a spectacularly bad idea. I’m going to sleep.”
Orion’s face fell, “Why not? It’ll be fun. Tell you what. We can play a couple of practice rounds then we can play with real money.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.” Ril replied, unbuckling his leather armor and organizing his pack neatly at the side of his chosen bed.
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“Come on, please!”
Ril sighed, feeling a growing tension in his temples.
They eventually agreed to play with the insistent woman and where handily fleeced of the few coins that they were willing to put on the table. The result itself wasn’t surprising considering, but what was surprising was that Ril felt a strange disturbance in the air with Discern every once in a while during his playthrough with Orion.
Zed also felt the strange disturbance and they concluded that Orion was cheating somehow. Likely the same way she was able to stab the birds from afar earlier in the day. They didn’t press the issue since neither was particularly invested in the game and where itching to get to sleep after a long day of marching on a line of ice.
Regardless, they soon wrapped up, and went to sleep.
Ril’s shift came and went, with little of interest cropping up during the night. In fact, the barren expanse of snow was so dark and unchanging that he felt at times that their tent was floating in a sea of darkness, with nothing but the stars to keep him company.
He returned to bed after waking Liam and slept dreamlessly for the rest of the night.
* * *
A haunting cackle woke Ril abruptly from his peaceful sleep.
He jumped to his feet, his blankets falling to his feet as he unsheathed his sword and blearily scanned the inside of the tent for danger. Nothing struck him as dangerous, the tent was exactly as he remembered it being last night. The only difference was that all of the others were awake and also scanning the tent.
Zed poked his head through the front flap, “Oh good, you guys are awake, I think we have a problem.”
“And girls...” Orion muttered darkly as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
They all quickly armed and armored themselves and exited the tent. It was just before dawn. The snows were dark in the predawn light that was just now cresting over the horizon. The orange glow was not nearly bright enough to discern what, if anything was wrong.
Another peal of haunting cackling burst the pregnant silence. Goosebumps rose to attention all over Ril’s arms and back. An involuntary shiver wracked his frame as a sense of deep rooted fear settled over his bones. The others seemed just as affected.
“Fear effect. Get ready. Delilah.” Gael grimly said, drawing his wand.
Another cackle wracked the silence.
This time, the others didn’t even flinch. A gentle glow surrounding Delilah’s frame seemed to repel the darkness. Lending a sense of comfort and strength that wasn’t there before.
Unfortunately this effect seemed to have overlooked Ril.
He keeled over, tears welling in his eyes as his muscles twitched spasmodically. A fear so primal that its type had long since been forgotten ripped through Ril’s mind. Leaving him gasping and senseless. It tore through all conscious thought like a rabid wolf and left nothing but echoing fear behind.
Idly, he noticed a quickly growing spot of warmth spread down his thigh.
Ril fell face first into the snow, which elicited a strained gasp from his lips. The icy snow pulled him slightly out of his catatonia. He raised his head jerkily only to glimpse for the first time their assailants.
Emerging from the darkness, half a dozen pairs of glowing orange eyes slinked over the snow. The powder beasts were four legged and hunched. Dog-like but mutated. Their shoulders broad and tall and the maws deeper, with short back legs and mangy black fur. Periodically the creatures let out horror inducing crackles that seemed to echo off of Ril’s very bones.
Vaguely, Ril noticed Gael shouting something and the others of the party preparing for battle, but he could do nothing. His entire being was locked, eyes unblinking and frozen, on the stalking forms of the beasts.
Another shiver wracked his frame.
The beasts stalked closer. Their laughter, infectious and insidious, crawled into his ears like worms. Wriggling and leaving eggs of ice cold fear to pupate underneath his skin.
Suddenly, a spot of warmth appeared. It manifested on his back and spread quickly over his shoulders and down his arms. The warmth burned, the temperature rising until it could only be called fire. The fire enveloped Ril’s arms, and cradled his legs, pushing back the tremors, strengthening and reinforcing the frightened limbs.
It was when the fire was about to cocoon Ril’s head that he heard a voice. It scraped past his meager mental defenses with a primordial rage. It tore and burned. Ravaging the magical fear with impunity but somehow leaving Ril’s own thoughts alone.
[Mangy curs. Know your place.] Sin hissed, and suddenly the fear was gone, nothing but calm rationality in its place.
Ril felt a moment of pure relief flow through him as he heard Sin’s rough voice penetrate his mind.
Before he could revel in the freedom, a concussive blast knocked him back. He tumbled ass over teakettle, but rolled into the motion in order to retain his balance. He landed in a ready position with his sword drawn less than three meters from where he was a moment before. He immediately took stock of the situation.
The fire that he felt originate from Sin was not fire at all, rather liquid shadow. The inky substance coated Ril’s form in a cocoon of boiling translucent liquid. Little tendrils of the darkness rising in mesmerizing synchrony over his back and arms before falling back and restarting the motion.
Before him the Fellowship and Zed were fighting the Horror Hyenas, because that is what they were. Ril remembered now learning about the terrifying creatures back in Sela from Siorraid. Their laughter brought an intense feeling of horror to any who heard them. Ril distinctly remembering that according to Siorraid, it was practically impossible to fight them without some form of fear reducing ability. Luckily, it seemed that Delilah had one and the others were coping fairly well with the Hyena’s mental attack.
Gael had begun the fight by unleashing a salvo of enhanced projectiles directly at the lead hyena and the shockwave of stone and force and been what had displaced Ril. This forced the fighting away from the tent and allowed Liam to charge into the fray with his roar to attract the powder beast’s attention.
Zed rushed over to Ril.
“Are you okay?” Zed rushed, his eyes frantic.
Ril assessed the situation. “Fine,” he replied curtly, “Protect Delilah. Go!” practically pushing the taller man towards the mostly defenseless woman who was the only reason the others were all still standing in the first place.
Zed didn’t even bother giving an affirmative, rushing over to Delilah in a dead sprint. Mid charge he pulled out his bow off of his back and began to nail the closest hyenas in the eyes and mouths. They let out pained whimpers and retreated, silver blood leaking around the arrow shafts.
Ril let his focus wander from Zed and Delilah. Zed would do his job, of that Ril had little doubt, but there were other areas in the fight where he was needed. Gael had retreated after his initial blast, choosing to stand in front of Delilah rather than unleash hell upon the beasts.
That wouldn’t do.
Ril summoned Darkness, and the element came. Black claws of inky darkness coalesced at his feet. They sunk deep into the snow, providing Ril leverage, as he blasted forwards, accelerating far faster than he could normally.
Practically gliding over the surface of the snow, Ril slammed into a hyena that was about to rip into Gael. The two went tumbling away. Mid flight, Ril slammed his shortsword into the beast's side, but only managed to craze the monster before he was forcibly separated by a direct collision with the ground.
He rolled, unleashing a wave of semi-transparent darkness to disperse the snow. Before his gaze settled onto Gael’s shocked expression.
“We’ll protect her!” Ril shouted at Gael, “help Orion! We can’t harm them.”
Gael recovered remarkably quickly, before he whipped his wand out and dug a grave for the Hyena that Ril had stunned.
A mournful wail echoed as the monster was perforated by thirteen burning stars. Its body twitched once before laying still in a shallow crater of torn stone and snow. A pool of dark silver blood intermixing with the snow and dirt beneath it.
Good, Ril thought, now to keep the two eliminators alive long enough for them to kill the hyenas.
Ril dashed over to Orion who was being cornered against the old broken caravan by two particularly vicious creatures. One who had scars all over its shoulders lashed forwards sinking his teeth into Orion's arm. She gritted her teeth, barely reacting to the injury, before she stabbed down with her other hand.
Her dagger whistled through the air before its blade disappeared with a wet thunk. A jet of silver blood erupted from the battle-scarred hyena’s eye as it let out a pained howl. It let go of her arm and waddled backwards in that awkward way dogs do while shaking its head as blood spurted fittfully from its damaged eye.
The other hyena didn’t hesitate, the moment that the battle-scarred hyena stepped back, it rushed forward and lashed out. Before its teeth could find purchase on Orion in a lethal manner Ril intervened. He didn’t have the strength to pull the monster back, or the killing power to stop it before it completed its attack, so he did the one thing that would guarantee Orion’s safety.
He jumped into the hyena’s jaws.
His spine snapped with a sickening pop as his clone was disemboweled by the slavering powder beast. Droplets of silver blood flew through the air as the hyena snapped its neck back and forth, further snapping and popping the bones in Ril’s clone.
Ril wheezed, as his eyes bugged out from the pain, but Saddie had trained him to push through far worse agony. Darkness edged into his vision, but he ignored it, instead he severed his connection with his clone and summoned another one at his side. Immediately the pain became an afterthought as both he and his clone leapt at the feasting monster.
A wide slash drew its attention from its meal that was quickly turning to ash, and a quick lunge drew a line of blood across its foreleg. The hyena cackled, a wave of mind altering sound washing over Ril’s shadowy mantle as Sin hissed in response. Ril hesitated, a moment of indecision faltering his step as he worried that the fear would return. The hyena let loose another cackle then lunged forwards.
Perfect,
Ril fell back, open fear in his eyes as he backpedaled, swiping furiously with his shortsword to keep the monster at bay. This only seemed to enrage the hyena even further as it charged at him blindly, lashing out with both claws and teeth, but no matter how it attacked it couldn’t seem to latch on to either Ril or his clone.
Suddenly, a fountain of silver blood jettisoned from a deep puncture in the beasts throat. It let out a wet gurgle before it collapsed onto the wet snow.
Ril looked up to find Orion clasping her injured forearm and looking at him with a mixture of annoyance and exhaustion. At her feet lay the corpse of the battle-scarred hyena, both its eyes permanently removed as well as deep punctures carved into its shoulders. For whatever reason, it also seemed as if the beast had been hamstrung.
All in all, the battle scarred hyena now more resembled mince meat than beast.
Ril nodded at the other woman then pointed her urgently towards the raging battle that was occurring between Liam and the remaining three hyenas. The beasts snarled and yipped in a frenzy, climbing over the absolute unit of a man as their claws and teeth sunk into his flesh. Surprisingly their attacks managed to hurt Liam. Thin bloody scratches covered his torso and back, with several deeper teeth marks visible on his hip and shoulder.
Orion tsked, but lifted up her dagger and began laboriously stabbing into the mass of powder beast flesh. They yipped in pain, and tumbled off of Liam who only used the opportunity to grab them and pull them back in. Holding on to them tight with his bear-like embrace.
A blast of concentrated power ripped across the clearing. The mass of writhing powder beasts was blown apart, some in several pieces. Liam recovered first from Gael’s blast and belly flopped onto the two remaining beasts, his meaty arms holding the large beasts in place.
Several more puncture wounds manifested around the weak spots of the hyenas and another blast of force shook the land.
Within moments, the remaining hyenas went still.
Liam collapsed into the snow, his chest heaving. Amazingly, none of his injuries actually seemed dangerous, mostly annoying and painful but nothing that hit a critical organ or artery.
“Whoo!” Liam called into the morning sky, punching the air in a halfhearted fist pump.
Smiles appeared all around as the group relaxed from the brief if brutal engagement.
Ril turned to Orion and pulled out a wad of herbs and bark from his pack.
“How would you rate your pain,” Ril asked Orion, handing her a particular herb that would soothe her pain, as he searched for a bandage.
Orion groaned, “Zero stars, would not recommend.”
Ril smiled, if Orion was cracking jokes then she couldn’t be hurt that badly.