Jil capped the last canteen full of spring water and pointed up a mossy slope. More climbing. Wendalces was an endless crucible of low mountains and valleys. Traversing it would be enough without the creatures attacking them along the way.
The last two weeks passed like a boot camp for Tim, Chris and at least one patient familiar. Starting with retrieving their frung’suq, Thron helped Tim evolve a Skinning skill. Jil followed that by practicing his Trap skill and making cages. At night, they took him and Chris hunting for wolf-like creatures called toiga. Picture earth wolves as skinny and shorter distant cousins of this planet’s toiga. The fact their species sounded like tigers from Brooklyn made their scrappiness fit.
Normally Tim preferred the fear of running for his life in the safety of a movie theater, or at home, with popcorn and peanut M&M’s warm enough to taste melted chocolate with the crunch of buttery kernels. Here, he could feel his hair turning gray, and pinecone snacks gave him the runs. He kept his grateful spirit, though. Being alive was cool, sometimes. He and Chris wouldn’t have survived the first pack without help.
Unlike games separated by power cords, the woods of Wachamia came for your throat. Jil, Thron and Roz trained them to appreciate that, and to thank the gods of the pillar that they found people willing to help. He wouldn’t have made it a single night without them. This gratitude helped him focus on the finer details of his training.
Thron said with this morning’s frost, the first leaf could fall as soon as today. They had to find an inn and present their King’s decree that they be served. No more time for training, and the only way to the inn without being intercepted by assassins was climbing this mountain pass.
Roz scaled the rock wall without need of the unimpressive handholds he pointed Chris and Tim to observe. Like, yeah right, guy. Open air spread far beneath Chris’s bare feet at the ledge, giving Tim a doozy of vertigo. He rested a hand on his brother’s shoulder to keep both of them grounded.
The smooth rock wall below offered little interference before the next treetop or ledge to stop his fall, both of which would have a lethal impact. His Danger Sense didn’t reach far enough to confirm Thron’s warning about those lurking in the forest below. He believed him, and that it was too late to retreat. Tim was with a group, so his class evasion was invalidated, making them obvious targets to anyone with scout sight. Now it was a race to the safety of the inn and leveling up the XP they’d gained before the leaf fell.
Chris powered through his first handhold using a vine planting skill to increase his gripping wide fingers to latch on. They grew the same through his feet, which was why he swung off the ledge barefoot. Vibrant green tips flattened against the wind, then draped over his hands and feet to suction into the stone with surprising grace. He and their lizard friend got along well together. Not that Tim was jealous.
He inched closer to the edge. His stomach bottomed out with a glance locking on the distance—
Eyes on the prize.
Dryfu flew into sight and snapped a wing at the small ledge where Tim needed to reach his hand. “Flee this danger.”
“You’ve practiced this enough,” Thron said from behind Jil. With his weight, he was last. Tim didn’t want to ruin anything that would cause either to fall. That doubled his fear, and his confidence leaked with it.
“You can do it,” Jil said.
Of course. This is what people do here… Good ol’ Planet of the Apes.
I wish you were an Ape.
Tim choked back a snort and stretched his arm like Roz had. Okay, no more jokes.
In a way, he was kind of like an ape. His natural habitat bonus allowed them to move as a group without slowing too much. He was going against that here. He needed to reconnect with that gifting, somehow. And his investment in Dexterity and Flee. With Dexterity’s high score across his status on his mind, and Flee his most relevant skill, he resisted reminders of the Level 1 next to his class and skills.
Connect by changing direction. Stop stalling.
Tim considered life alone in retreat, how quickly the toiga would get him. He couldn’t flee from them forever; their stamina and hunting skills would overwhelm him.
Even if he managed to escape them and the countryside gaining more hunters by the minute, he didn’t have the money to level up. These friends offered to front their first leveling until they could pay them back.
Ultimately, the choice was his, and responsibility for his death, his as well.
Rachel would want him to be safe, though at this point he’d been playing it safe for far too long. In the end, that was the enemy he fled. I choose not to be a mopey security guard, hiding in the shadows from any chance of light or reward.
Don’t tell me, Dryfu thought back, hovering with a stern slit of eyes leveled at him. Do it.
Tim reached. His fingers clutched the edge and the familiar grit he’d learned to loathe and love. Surprising strength lifted him over the gap. His foot landed well into the sweet spot arch of the next divot foothold. He pressed his chest to the wall and smeared his cheek against its grimy surface. XP tingled in his arms and legs, rewarding his effort, tantalizing him with more.
Tim hitched onto the momentum of Flee and his Ranger instincts, successfully catching one ledge with minimal adjustment and swinging his foot to the next safe landing.
The last part before the walkway where Roz and Chris waited required him to twist to face the drop off. He assessed the root Chris had grabbed and measured the distance to the next landing.
A white hawk screeched and took wing from the a nearby slit in the rock, flying at Tim’s face. His heart jumped, but thankfully his feet didn’t.
He lunged wide of the hawk and caught the root. The unexpected thrust carried him back on the return swing, forcing him to hold on. He kicked for the foothold he’d been on originally, and it broke apart. Chunks of rock fell into the embrace of gravity and an inevitable path down the cliff face.
The root gave, dropping Tim a half dozen feet before it caught again. Tim’s hands slipped down the slick vine. He wrapped his legs around the lower portion and pinched the vine between his feet, stopping his fall.
Dryfu buoyed some of his weight by flying up under his boot heel. tested its hold in the packed soil and pulled himself to the landing.
“I’m good,” Tim told them, though his hope barely filled in at 30% of what it could be. What if those were his last words? Wouldn’t that be fitting?
No. He was good. Tim gripped the vine and pulled. A small crevice nearby could help. He stretched, missed, pulled, and caught a toe on the next try. His heart cursed him from its sinking flutter.
Chris extended his staff and once Tim reached up to catch the tip, his brother and Roz pulled him up.
“Works one hundred percent, thirty percent of the time,” Tim said, uncaring that he’d misquoted the classic.
“Rawr,” Chris said, “look out ladies.”
“Nice work,” Jil said. She took one step and leaped, root be damned, and landed in a burst of speed. The narrow walkway left no room to back up, and she collided with Tim. Not enough to knock them over, but his arm found her waist, and her hand gripped around his back. Neither seemed to mind.
Then Thron’s approach ended the potentially mutual flirting. Tim didn’t know what to think of how forward Jil was. She tested him all day and into the night, but then in a flash she could be so soft and feminine in the most alluring ways.
Tim rushed pulling himself up by the vine and slipped. His face planted in cool mud and his toe found a hold to keep him from falling back. Two tries to regain his grip finally ended in a third.
“You, okay?”
“Yeah.” Stupid level one hands. “You can keep going.”
The walkway climbed through slick terrain carved by rock and loose footing, but the worst appeared to be behind them.
“Tell me more about the jewel cracking,” Tim said, once he was confident the question wouldn’t be tossed aside by their vigilance. His mind was hungry for wisdom of this world, fearing a lack would doom him as much as the cliff they scaled.
“After the crack was discovered, the FOJ met to determine if Wachamia was to blame.”
“The trial put their nivelador on the stand, but in the end, Wachamia and their nivelador were released with little more than a slap on the hand,” Jil said.
“Do you believe that was unjust?” Tim asked.
“In the almost two thousand years we’ve had the stone, we’ve never seen a splinter like this,” Thron said. “Sure, it was likely to happen eventually, but the evidence thrown out showed enough clues about misrepresented leveling services. Not only did the punishment not fit the crime, but the rogue leveling is still ongoing.”
“And we’re not leaving until we figure out how to stop it,” Roz said. He was always the first to scale the slopes. He extended his bow staff to Chris to help him up the last few yards to the nearest ridge.
“Well,” Jil picked up. “We’ll certainly try.” She and Roz sometimes butted heads on plans, both being more rogues than team members. “We have to win the hunt. Once we have the jewel we can utilize our new strength to uncover the many layers of their deception. I want their pound of flesh as much as you.”
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Roz relented with a silent turning of his attention to their path.
Tim knew all about the helpless feeling of watching those in power abuse their assets to keep their asses on top. If he could help her, Roz and Thron get their pound of flesh, he sure would.
“Under FOJ rules,” Jil added for Tim’s interest and sake, “actions against the jewel by the host nation is the highest crime. This would include execution of the nivelador and their president, though they’d pay a thousand Presidential Coins to keep their nivelador. Frinon has been their nivelador for over forty-two years. Second longest tenure to Xiloth in Kiper. If he’s killed, all his inns and their acolytes take a 90% reduction in power. Wachamia would rather go to war than start over in their leveling inns.”
“What did they do?” Tim asked.
“Stationed FOJ reps at Wachamia’s inns to ensure levels were not being granted during the pact.” Jil said, scorn on the edge of pact. “We’re here for the inns Wachamia hid from the court. Find those and we learn how the jewel cracked and where the rogue leveling gets involved.”
Tim dug a hand into muddy soil to grip a root, then pulled himself to the ledge with the rest. A magenta sky bled into red clouds converging in greater density over a section of the forest below. “That look odd to you?” Tim asked Jil.
She stared at the sky. “What?”
“How they’re roiling over like a spool?” Tim clarified.
Jil shook her head. “What’re you talking about?”
“The clouds.”
Jil checked again then looked him in the eye with curious wonder. “There are none.” Her lips broke into a mischievous grin. “Keep listening.”
Tim tuned into the crackle of light coruscating inside the clouds. The second time, it trailed down into the trees. By the third time, the lightning flashed throughout the forest, exposing the source of the power beneath ground. A robed figure holding something in their hands over their heart.
It looked up. Eyes set in a different glow, red. Pissed off and hot.
Pressure burst in his nostrils, spraying flecks of crimson on his clothes. Confirmed on his hand, and the rock in a splatter of crimson.
“Tim?” Jill’s hand landed on his shoulder with a concerned grip.
A spike of pain in his gut sent him sideways and spewing chunks into a crevice in the rocks.
Jil helped and Thron took over, lifting him away from the lookout and carried him in all his humiliation to a cave nearby.
“I saw…” Tim started, the vision cloudy as his access to vocabulary. “… a magician cast a spell.”
“You did well.” Thron gave him a mouthful of water to rinse and another for thirst. “Good, lad. Now rest.”
Rest was not a word he’d use for that night. He spent darkness into the early morning in fits of heaving, and flashes of shivering and sweating. To Jil’s credit, she hung with him the whole night. She made him a wolf blanket to keep him warm and stroked his hair to sooth him between bouts. No questions or judgment. As much as he wanted to catch the one with the red eyes, he could do little more than ruin their cave in utter stench.
“Such is the cost of learning great magic,” Dryfu told him. How about some good news?
“Oh, hit me with it, maestro,” Tim said, fighting delirium.
Protection, Hunting, and Danger Sense have evolved a new skill: Magic Hunt.
Good news could lift one’s spirit. Too bad his stomach punched inward soon after, and he was right back into it.
Eventually, that round of organ moaning died with Tim’s face on the ground and vomit mud packed along his jaw. Couldn’t use Magic Hunt to get me some Charmin and a day spa, could I?
Relax kid, even this will pass.
Stop calling me kid, grasshopper.
I’ve lived three of your lifetimes. I’ll call you whatever I want.
Tim laughed it off and rolled to his back like a triangular wheel. “Jimmie Crack Corn, and I don’t care…” he sang, though he knew Dryfu was right. This would pass. And when it did, he would teach ol’ Violet Eyes for every minute of this taunting.
Surprisingly, that was the last round before Tim found rest. He woke naked in a blanket with a headache that could bend metal.
“Tough night, huh bro?” Chris asked. He had the remnant of woodspell in his eyes, a shading in the whites of his eyes that closer inspection showed as many black veins. Still, he looked strong. Alive. As though whatever he’d been up to had energized him. “I took your clothes and washed them in the river. I hope you don’t mind. Roughen it n’all.”
“All good. Thank you.” Tim kept the blanket tight over his shoulders to preserve the heat inside.
“Did you see anything down there?”
“Just more work on my Vine Healing skill. Picking up other small things like using vines to wring out your clothes and beating them with my staff. Roz is a wizard in his own right. Dude’s like Bruce Lee with his bow and that nun-chuck bladed looking thing he calls a sunchime. Isn’t that cute?” he asked within earshot of Roz.
“He loves to tease. Wait ‘til he sees the triple x in strength it gains in the sunlight. He’ll call me friend then, won’t he? I might write about our brother’s quarrel to name my next sun song.”
“I’m glad you two are getting along so well,” Tim said. “And I’ll be sure to get you a well-lit position when we go to battle.”
Roz’s tongue shot out and caught a fly off his brow. “’D be much obliged.” He tipped his imaginary cowboy hat.
“You, too with this?” Tim asked, chuckling.
Roz parted his hands in innocence. “Come on Sooha. Not one American Cowboy joke?”
“Sooha?” Tim asked.
“Shit,” Chris cursed. A sense of guilt rippled along his skin. Pre-Vignyia, Tim would have figured out his brother’s hand had just been caught in the jar. Ranger Tim sensed something wholly other underneath his brother’s surface. Intuition on a magic carpet ride, if even only faintly. The potential within that wisp of power stripped any anger at what Chris might be guilty of.
Then a smile broke and Chris said, “Stick up,” he pointed upward, then at Tim, “your ass,” he whispered. Made a face as though poked and happy. Naughty boy. “S-U-H, for his, and-A for the A word,” he said and winked.
“How much time do you have in that brain of yours?”
Chris considered that with a comical upward glance. “As much as could be expected.”
“Well hasn’t this family vacation worn its welcome?” Tim laughed to himself. Suha. “Cheers for that, brutha.”
Jil appeared at the doorway in her hunting gear of the sleeveless cloak, hood pulled up to show the toiga’s skull. “Ready to walk?”
Honestly, he felt ready to call it a weekend, but at her sight, a new drive lived within him. He’d follow it with her to the ends of this world. His brother too if he decided to behave himself.
“Somebody couldn’t manage to forage any ollo root,” she said.
“I could have if it weren’t for teaching your brother his ABC’s.” Roz’s Rhet Dragon tongue tumbled over the English.
“Sure, brag about getting the first three letters of our alphabet right while I learn to eat and heal through wood,” Chris said. “Totally the same.”
Despite the aching in his back and legs biting at him to curl into a ball, he led the group down at a steady pace. His natural habitat allowed them to navigate quickly down the rough paths streaked with mud patches and eroded drop offs. The noise they made in their descent, namely from Thron, but they were all guilty, drew a pack of heavy four-legged beasts. Twelve total, closing on a hundred feet as they neared the bottom of the path.
Don’t get too cocky. Your habitat bonus doesn’t include advanced fighting yet.
While Tim had managed to descend the hill, fighting took on another level of difficulty. “Company,” Tim said, pointing to their right. “Twelve,” he added, and made the basic shape with his hands and outstretched arms. Then padded to show how low to the ground, about waist high.
“Might be demoxes,” Thron said.
Roz pulled the string to untie his sunchime. “Those’re good trading. Let’s take em on.”
Jil checked back with Tim.
His stomach felt like cracked earth ready to collapse, but he steeled against that and took out his knife and nodded.
She took off for a tree and leapt onto its trunk, then started climbing for a bough fit for sniping. Tim would try and keep the fight near and underneath.
Thron rubbed his fist into his palm. “We have your back, ranger. Stay on top of them and watch for their tusks and their bite. Bash and stab them down.”
The first squealed at the sight of their group. It tucked its head and charged at Thron. He waited for the last second, then slammed a fist down into the beast’s head. The demox whined and its spine cracked. Thron whipped it into a rock, ending its suffering. Two more broke through the bushes on their side, followed by three on Roz’s, forcing them to split their effort. Tim gripped his dagger, blade down and eased his stance. Dexterity was his friend, even with his gut threatening punishment at sudden movements.
Thron came around from his whip throw and booted the farthest one in the gut. The beast’s weight must have ranged from a hundred to a buck thirty. Thron’s kick jolted the beast’s oblong belly and knocked it sidelong, but he wasn’t quick enough to do anything with the other two.
A crossbow bolt hit one in the back but didn’t stop it.
Dryfu flew toward that one, swooping low for his trademark shot in the junk.
Tim juked left, selling hard. A cramp seized his left side. The demox lowered its head to ready a thrust of its foot long single tusk. Tim almost didn’t make it back to his right. The tusk thrust at his thigh. Tim yanked that leg back and spun in a downward strike. He stabbed the demox just wide of spine. His cramp stitched down into his left leg. The tusk planted up into his thigh. Tim fell into its backside. He struggled retrieving the blade, then the twisting jerked it free, and he lost it. The demox side stepped and whined quite literally like a stuck pig. It lowered its head and started to turn, but roared as the twist ran through its injured back.
Chris’s eyes turned to sand clouds and he ran wide of the action to get around to Tim, staff growing a green bud at its knot bulb at the top. Tim didn’t have time for healing. He crawled for the dagger. The demox snorted and charged. Too quickly and covered the dagger. Tim had no choice but to make a fist, juke left. The demox didn’t bite. It charged for center mass and lowered its tusk to drive it into Tim’s chest. He returned to balance and changed strategy. Instead of a hook into its jaw he decided on a cross upper cut and swung for his life. His fist cracked the hardness of stone and the give of tendons. Something popped. The punch recalled days of kickboxing and how he popped the bag, often transitioning into a combo uppercut. He hadn’t hit it hard enough to stop the demox, but he slowed it enough shove his elbow into its front. It fought back to regain ground, but its tight quick breaths suggested the beast couldn’t breathe. Tim rose from his knees and kicked the beast onto its side, doubling its difficulty to breathe by planting his heel where he saw it heaving. He grabbed his knife, pressed the beast down with his full weight and stabbed his blade into its throat.
You fought well, he told it.
Chris tapped his staff to Tim’s thigh, ingesting vines into the wound to sew his fibers together.
Three more charged out of the bush behind him. Jogey leapt off his shoulder, claws spread across all four paws. Its squeal blended cuteness with furry. That alien moan roared and its prey seemed to slow. Thron swept the legs out from one. Jogey took a tusk into its gut, but the claw strike to the demox’s eye cut it short of driving through. It tumbled over. Chris shouted and swung his staff down into the guilty beast’s head.
Tim’s thigh restored strength as the vines stitched him together, enough for him to get up and defend before the charging demox could thrust. He let the beast’s momentum bring it closer, and twisted to plunge his blade deep into its face. Its abrupt whine ended as the tip reached its brain. Tim let go before it broke his wrist.
Dryfu swatted a demox in the eye before it could gouge Chris in the leg. The extra second afforded by its recoil allowed Jil to land an arrow through its ribs and Thron to finish it with a kick up into its throat. The sudden force jerked its head upward to crack its neck.
Tim retrieved his knife and finished off another demox side by side with Roz and his sunchime into one’s forehead.
Chris hurried to the aid of his familiar, and Thron gathered the corpses.
Tim felt the tingle of XP coursing through his fingers into his forearms. More close quarters fighting experience put into storage for the leveler jewel. He flexed his right hand to relief the aching across his knuckles.
“Sense any other threats?” Jil asked from ten feet above. The tree cover was too thick to see far from her or his position.
He sent out a web into the forest but didn’t ping off anything he could tell would pose danger. “We’re good.”
On their way toward where Tim felt the power emitting last night, Chris healed the group. Tim found plants and herbs to aid in his Healing skill and ease his magic poison. He foraged barks and thin branches of trees Chris could chew on to regain his magical stamina.
And Tim thought Chris was strange before he went full panda.
That would have taken the cake for the day had they not reached where ol Red Eyes had crapped all over some magical chamber hidden in the ground.
Their new friend wasn’t home and hadn’t bothered to clean up before he left. A remnant of power lingered like a mist that clouded Tim’s senses even to recognize if he were alone or in his group. It smelled of a campfire washed over with saltwater and motor oil. But the sight was even more peculiar.