When I woke up the next morning, I was sitting at the burned out fireplace. In my hand was a quill and my entire left arm was filled with scripts that appeared to be chained together. An excited Riala sat by my side, a wide smile on her face “Do one more!”
“Uhm... guys? What are we doing?” I said.
“Tomar? Good Morning! Miles did something awesome!”
“Did he now...”
It was a little creepy to wake up in the middle of whatever this was, but it’s not like I hadn’t expected Miles to do some tests while I was asleep. We hadn’t specifically talked about it, but we had both heavily implied it. As long as I can trust him not to do something stupid...
I looked at my arm again. All of the scripts but one were exceedingly simple. The only thing they seemed to do was modify the force of the output, though there was also a sigil I didn’t recognize.
“What does this do?” I asked.
‘Hold out your arm and activate it,’ Miles said expectantly.
After putting down the quill I picked up a blue stone and put it onto the first script, which was the designated input. The script activated, the stone dissolved, and a stream of water shot up from my palm. I didn’t understand what was so special about it, until the stream suddenly changed directions. It hopped around us in arcs, as it was pushed again and again by the chained scripts. Once it had circled around us twice, it shot into the air and then into the cliff face behind us with a high pitched noise, creating a hole in the surface. One of half a dozen holes, indicating that this had not been the first test.
“Huh,” I said in a daze as I looked at my arm again. “You figured out an entirely new way to use scripts in one night?”
The sun hadn’t even risen above the horizon yet, so I had only been asleep for about five hours. I didn’t know what exactly I had expected, but this was definitely more than that.
‘I had the idea just after you nodded off. The difficult part was finding a way to suspend script execution before changing the trajectory. It’s fascinating, I’ve never used Omega like this before!’
As I listened to Miles’ explanations, I saw that Riala’s much smaller arm was filled with the same scripts. “It’s so pretty!” she said as she activated them as well and followed the water stream with her head. Due to the limited amount of space on her arm, however, it couldn’t hold nearly as many scripts. The water didn’t hop around as long as with the version on my arm, and instead of shooting into the rock, it just dropped down. Seeing Riala try to catch the water with her mouth made for a funny display though.
“Should we get going?” I asked.
‘Sounds good.’
“Okay!”
After gathering our things we continued moving westwards. Our plan was to walk around the town, obscured by the forest, and eventually head towards Cerus. We had first traveled south and then turned west. It was a little difficult to judge distance and direction in the woods, but based on the sun’s movement, we were on the right track, and Miles did his best to calculate and estimate how far we had come based on our movement.
“Did you have an idea for our mana problem?”
‘Kind of, though I have to admit that last night’s experiment distracted me a little,’ Miles said apologetically.
“It is pretty,” I said with a chuckle.
Apparently Riala had been woken just a couple of minutes before me, when the first water stream crashed into the cliff face. She was immediately enamored by the new “magic” Miles had shown her. The fact that she wasn’t actually talking to me had apparently not disturbed her in the slightest. On the contrary, at one point she commented “Miles is nice!”
By this point we had been in the Wildlands for over ten hours and hadn’t encountered a single beast yet. Even though I was trying to not let my guard down too much, it was difficult to not start thinking about this as a nice stroll through nature. Plants we had never seen, the occasional bunny or deer, and of course all the trees around us. It was serene and beautiful enough that I had to wonder how terrifying the outside world could truly be. Although I did scratch my leg on a low-hanging branch.
All my internal joking came to a sudden halt when we came across a trail of blood, directly crossing our path. We didn’t see anything, but the blood was still fresh.
‘Could be something other than a beast, right?’
“What, you think a deer hunted a bunny?”
‘Another predator I mean. And picture that I just rolled my eyes at you.’
“I’ve never heard of anything but beasts that hunt animals.”
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Miles told me about a few creatures that he had expected to live in these woods, but most of them I had never heard of. Granted, my life experience was limited, but from books I had at least learned about deers, boars, and other species. If there were animals that hunted other animals, I probably would’ve heard or read about them.
‘A beast then... We should probably get going in that case.’
“Right,” I said and we continued our journey with renewed vigilance. Maybe the beasts just weren’t as active east of Alarna, because now, in the south, we saw more signs of them. Scratched up trees, more blood trails, and even bones. Meanwhile, Miles muttered some nonsense about being curious what it would be like to script on an animal's or a beast’s body, but I forbade him to pursue that idea.
“Don’t.”
‘I just said I was curious! Not like I would actually try to do it.’
“... just don’t.”
About fourteen hours after we left town we caught our first glimpse of a beast. It was standing on a clearing, a few dozen meters away. As soon as we saw it, Riala and I ducked behind a tree. It was upwind from us, so it would hopefully not smell us, but it was looking around, as if searching for something.
I kept glancing at it from behind the tree and after one or two minutes it finally walked away. Luckily, neither in our direction, nor the one we were headed in.
Seeing a beast in broad daylight, outside of a life or death situation, was interesting. It didn’t look like a monster. It seemed more like just another animal roaming the forest. Even with its black fur and impressive size.
‘Definitely looks like a wolf,’ Miles said. One of the animals he had mentioned earlier. ‘Are there other kinds of beasts?’
“I’m not sure. I’ve heard about different sizes, but nothing about what exactly they looked like. I guess people don’t pay close attention while running for their lives.”
“What did Miles ask?” Riala said.
I repeated what we were talking about and she joined the conversation. “Sis told me a story about a beast that didn’t look like a dog once! She said it’s much bigger and much heftier than normal beasts!”
“How did she know about that beast?”
“Hm... I don’t remember.”
If Riala was right, there was at least one more kind of beast. Since we had only seen three with our own eyes so far, it probably made sense that we hadn’t encountered every kind that existed yet. Even bigger though... I thought. The script we both kept at the ready on at least one of our hands at all times had proved powerful. I could only hope that it would be enough, should we ever face something even more dangerous than the beasts from before.
We kept quietly making conversation as we moved along.
***
A group of soldiers and agents from Alarna were desperately fighting a huge beast that towered over all of them. It had snuck up to a soldier and killed her before the others had even been able to react. Most of the combatants weren’t used to fighting this deep into the woods and were visibly struggling with the trees all around them, obscuring their view and making it difficult to attack.
“Ahhh!” a soldier screamed as the beast got a hit in from a blind spot and slammed him into a tree. However, Captain Lera used this opportunity to land a devastating hit on the beast’s head. As it staggered, all Fighters converged on it. Spears and daggers stabbed into the beast in a frenzy, until it finally fell and died. In this fight alone, the group had lost two soldiers and one agent, leaving only three of each.
“This is madness!” a soldier said while resting against a tree. “This was the third category five just today! We should get out of here!”
“We can’t go back yet,” an agent said. “The High Priest wants these children back in Alarna at any cost.”
“You think he’d rather see you dead than come back without them!?”
“Of course. Is the king not the same? We’re chasing these criminals for the benefit of our people after all.”
He was about to retort something, when the captain put himself between the two. “Soldier, your personal feelings don’t matter here. We’re on a mission and we’re going to complete it. If you think differently, I’m happy to cut you down for insubordination right here and now. Let’s finish up here.” At this, everybody became quiet and started preparing simple graves for their fallen comrades, before they continued tracking their targets.
Captain Lera was aware that this mission had turned out to be unexpectedly challenging, but he couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome. Not only did he rarely get to go outside town anymore these days, encountering multiple category fives in quick succession was like a dream come true for him. He was a man who loved the art of fighting, but rarely had the chance to go up against worthy enemies. He would use this opportunity to its fullest, as long as there was even a remote chance that they would be able to finish their mission.
A few minutes after they had resumed their travels, the group found a clearing with a burned out campfire. On the trees were signs that someone had drawn on them and then erased the artwork, while the cliff face behind the campfire had several round holes in it, which immediately reminded the captain of the wounds on the two dead beasts he had examined in town.
“This is where they spent the night,” the captain mused. “And they’re practicing.”
The holes were several meters up the cliff face and looked like they had been punched into the stone horizontally. Back then, the boy had shot streams of water from the water source on ground level. To create these holes, that high up, he must’ve learned a new trick.
“Are they really able to create water? I don’t mean to question the king and the High Priest, but... it seems bizarre,” a soldier said.
“They are able to do that and more. I’ve felt their attacks myself. I was essentially defeated twice and they weren’t even trying to actively hurt me.”
While the captain hadn’t been injured badly, these scripture attacks had proved dangerous. He had only been knocked out for a moment both times, but that amount of time would’ve been enough to easily kill him.
“Wait, what? That’s the first I’m hearing of this!” a female agent said. “They’ve beaten you!? I’d rather fight another cat five than you! How are we supposed to bring them in?”
“They’re children and they don’t mean harm. All we need are numbers. Looking at this though, the sooner we get to them, the better our chances,” the captain said while pointing at the holes. He then walked on, the group following after him.
“Maybe I should be happy that I didn’t keep following him that night...” the agent mumbled to herself as she trudged after the others.