Alex’s breathing accelerated as he stared down the hulking beast, his own panting sounding in concert with the monster’s slow, predatory exhales. Heart drumming against his ribcage, he pulled on his internal reservoir, intending to employ his exercises: but stopped. He was nearly dry, and even with all his power, this was not the time to be distracting himself. The creature took a measured step forward, jagged claws digging into the topsoil as it began to lower its head - almost as if to bow, but Alex thought differently. There was intelligence behind those eyes, but none of it seemed respectful.
He dragged the assorted stories of his childhood to the forefront of his memory, momentarily surprised by how easy it was. His father had spent little time describing the Feirwolf, but it was clearly more of a concern for the mercantile classes: this was a monster they had spoken about often. Natural Augmenters, Alex thought, not daring to turn his eyes away from the creature’s own to inspect its musculature. Bronze-to-Silver ranked, as a rule.
It would look to fight up close, then, probably beginning with a pounce. Part of him was relieved to recognise that: all he really had was a dagger, and that wouldn’t do anything to a monstrous Evoker or Imbuer. The rest of him grappled with his rapid heartbeat, the pins and needles spreading throughout his arms, and the numbness of his fingers. A physically augmented giant wolf wasn’t exactly good news.
Ellie let out a muted snore, and with that, the starting pistol was fired. The Feirwolf launched at him with terrifying speed, unhinging its jaw as it opened its maw wide. Alex drew every scrap of power from his internal reservoir, forcing it to cycle his body as quickly as possible. It was far from enough for saturation, and lacking any aspects, but he didn’t have time for any imbuing anyway. The leftover power in the dagger would have to be enough.
Alex brought the dagger in front of him, intent on piercing the wolf’s head before it landed on him. A thought intruded on his panic. That’s not going to work. In the scant moments since it had pounced, its path through the air had slowed ever so slightly - fast enough to be an immediate danger, but slow enough for his thoughts to process the moment. He could almost see what the creature intended.
Abandoning his plan, Alex threw his body to the side, dodging the Feirwolf’s leap by an inch and landing on his knees. It arrived softly on the ground, whipping around to face him, and he could see a moment of puzzlement in the creature’s menacing green eyes. That was good. Thinking quickly, it occurred to him that he’d thrown himself in the opposite direction to Ellie, landing closer to the Waystation than before. That was his first priority: keeping the beast from Ellie’s side.
The moment the creature prepared to pounce again, he could feel it. A vague sensation of energy flowing into the monster’s hind legs was little to go on, but it filled the strange part of his mind that had told him to dodge - an action which had undoubtedly saved his life. Grasping hold of the nascent sense, he gripped the burning dagger with both hands, bringing it to rest between him and the Feirwolf.
There was no chance he could win in a straight up fight. The monster had thirty pounds on him, easily, and Alex’s pseudo-augmentation wouldn’t hold up to a proper Augmenter - monster or otherwise. He would have to be tricky. The wolf leapt into the air yet again, repeating its earlier maneuver, and an unsteady smile appeared on Alex’s trembling features. He knew what was coming this time.
He threw himself to the left, this time with greater control. The creature’s hulking form passed him in the air, and with a yell of exertion, Alex swung the dagger towards its hindquarters, scoring a long, shallow cut against its flank. A smattering of blood struck his face, uncomfortably hot, and steam began to flow from the wound: fire-attuned energy boiling the vital essence on contact. He’d actually wounded a Feirwolf. Definitely Bronze-rank, Alex thought, stepping back from the pained beast.
Freshly wounded, the wolf lost some of its earlier bestial confidence, though now letting out a constant low growl. He could see the anger burning in its eyes. His energy-sense alerted him to the monster channeling once more, though this time in the forelimbs, and Alex grimaced. It was changing up its tactics. He’d hoped for a few more predictable moves than this.
Rather than leap into the air, the Feirwolf took a soft step toward him. Alex matched the forward movement with an equal step backwards, but not before the monster stepped up again. Running wasn’t an option, and the beast was undoubtedly faster than him: it’d be a head-on attack, then. No use continuing to back up. His ears vaguely picked up the sound of stirring around him, the other refugees no doubt awoken by the Feirwolf’s earlier howl, but somehow he knew the creature wasn’t going to turn tail and run. He dimly registered a light appearing within the Waystation before the wolf struck.
Closing the distance in three rapid steps, the monster lunged at him, sawed teeth bared. Alex swung the dagger, praying for a clean hit, but the wolf abandoned its motion: its advance paused, Alex overswung his dagger and hit nothing but air. There was nothing between him and the beast anymore. With a violent exhale, the Feirwolf pounced yet again, knocking Alex to the ground and pinning him with its augmented forelimbs. That’s it, then, he thought, panic setting in as a wad of thick saliva dripped atop his chin. I’m dead.
The wolf’s teeth darted in toward his neck, intent on finishing the bout, before a jet of superheated flame struck its wounded side. The weight pinning him to the ground vanished, and he watched as the beast slammed into the ground barely a foot away, howling in rage and misery. There wasn’t any time to think about it.
Swinging his shoulder over, Alex straddled the beast, noting the spreading augmentation beginning to saturate its body. He had seconds at most. He stabbed at the monster with the dagger in his right hand, piercing the creature’s right shoulder and eliciting yet another howl: this one filled with a savage pain. A grin appeared on his face, and he stabbed again, and again. With each wound, steam billowed from the beast, until eventually the dagger expended the last of his energy. Alex kept stabbing, long after the aggrieved howling ceased to respond.
***
Rough, powerful hands locked onto Alex’s elbow. He muscles screamed with exertion, and he fought the restraint, intent on delivering yet another wound to the terrifying beast. His protestations were like the fists of a toddler to the overwhelming force, however, and a modicum of sanity returned to the young man. He paused, gasping, and took in the sight before him.
The Feirwolf was dead. Long dead, by the look of it. The creature’s pelt had been shredded by Alex’s thorough ministrations, the strange silver colouring coated in a foul mixture of fresh and dried blood. Organs and musculature were exposed, the eyes were damaged beyond identification, and the sheer weight of gore was enough to snap Alex from his murderous reverie. With this, sound returned to the world.
“Come on, lad. Get up.” a man said, pulling on his stilled arm. He registered the unwavering strength in the grip, his inability to fight off the alien hold, but relaxed everything but the hand grasping his dagger. Despite his overwhelming desire to collapse, he let the man haul him up, though his eyes never left the ravaged form of the Feirwolf. A cacophony had erupted around him, fear and excitement in equal exclamation, but he put them all to the side. He was still alive.
“Move yer arse, lad. Get inside. Come on. You too, girl.”
It wasn’t until two of the guards arrived that he shook off his stupor, the pair reaching down to lift the corpse of the beast. It’s someone else’s problem now, he thought, taking note of his still accelerated breathing. He fought against his heart’s insistence to gulp down air, regulating the pattern of inhale-exhale as best he could manage. It’s dead. The damn thing is dead. Still, his eyes followed the two men as they hauled the corpse around the back of the Waystation, not leaving his quarry until they disappeared from view. Then, his awareness returned.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Looking around, he caught a range of expressions from the other refugees. Fear and horror burned bright in the eyes of many, following his every movement with the posture of a deer ready to bolt. Others seemed wary but accepting, focusing on the dagger gripped tightly in his right hand and seeming to follow every drop of blood that slid across its surface. A rare few seemed gleeful, excited in the wake of the carnage, and though their eyes remained glued to his dagger he suspected it was for a very different reason than most.
He saw Ellie trailing behind them at a slow pace, a complex mixture of uncertainty, pride and wariness in her own eyes. Sweat dripped rapidly from her small form, all the more noticeable under the lighting of the Waystation. She shot him a weak smile, before lowering her head and staring down at the ground.
Finally, Alex turned his attention to the man dragging him along. He was surprised to see the figure of the landlord, a resigned smile filling the place of his earlier frown. The man’s bulk was even more impressive up close, and smaller scars ran the length of his forearm that had been previously imperceptible at a distance. The weathered Gold-rank plate still hung from his neck, though now flecked with drying blood. Probably his fault. What does he want?
He pulled Alex through the Waystation’s entryway, where yet another guard greeted him with an approving smirk. A dip of his brow was the only indication Alex gave of his confusion: he had no idea what was happening. His limbs still trembled with a mixture of exertion and lingering terror, but within moments, the aging landlord dropped him in a sturdy wooden chair in the center of the room.
“Still with me, lad?”
Alex met his eyes with a nod, taking a second to absorb his new surroundings. The landlord had dragged him into the tavern portion of the Waystation, he noted, occupied by a mixture of wooden tables and chairs all set-up fairly close to the small, polished bar in the corner. Embers burned in the fireplace, while someone unfamiliar to him dashed around and lit the remaining lanterns. It was warm, well-lit, and if he had any luck remaining, safe. His body immediately began to relax.
“Good. Don’t you pass out on me, now. Yer not done yet.”
Not done yet? Alex thought, furrowing his brow at the man. What was he talking about? Surely they didn’t expect him to take on any more monsters tonight? His grip tightened again around the dagger, and his eyes swivelled around the small windows in the Waystation. The landlord began to chuckle, shaking his head.
“No more fightin’. You don’t mean to leave yer spoils to rot, do ye?”
“Spoils?” Alex whispered, confusion evident in his tone. It wasn’t like the wolf’s pelt would be seeing any use.
The landlord’s eyebrows rose, before his resigned smile turned amused. “Aye, spoils. The beast’s energy,” he said, nodding his head toward a wooden door at the rear of the tavern. “You never heard of harvesting yer kill before?”
Alex shook his head, and the older man grunted.
“Right. Well, then, come with me. Before your spirit gives out, eh?”
The man began to walk toward the door. Alex’s body screamed at him to stay still, to rest, to give his battered limbs a chance to recover - it felt like the simple act of standing up would be enough to break his legs, and what little energy remained begged for sleep, but he was curious. ‘Harvesting’ a monster wasn’t something he’d ever heard of before. With plenty of groaning and grumbling, he lifted himself off the chair, stumbling behind the man into the room beyond.
It was more accurately described as a small shed, he realised. Shelves and cupboards lined the walls, revealing all manner of scattered tools, but his attention was quickly drawn the centre of the room. Laid out on the floor was the broken carcass of the Feirwolf, leaking blood and viscera onto the wooden boards, and Alex cringed at the sight. He’d gone somewhat overboard in his desperation to kill the beast. Still, the landlord didn’t seem that bothered, even with the mess.
“Not often you see a young lad like yourself take on a Feirwolf and win,” he said, chuckling to himself. “Did it myself, back in my day, but we’re a rare lot. ‘Specially so at your level. You’re Iron-rank, eh?”
Alex nodded, and the man grunted, inclining his head toward the corpse.
“Well, go on. Stick your hand on the beast. A Bronze-rank monster like that’ll be a good harvest for you.”
Staggering over to the fallen monster, he dropped to his knees and inspected it again up close. He counted at least thirty individual stab wounds, each blackened at the edges from the residual fire-aspected energy he’d imbued into the dagger, with the earliest holes torn through the pelt blackening the silvery hue the most. It was probably dead after the third or fourth, he realised, a strange feeling catching in his throat. I couldn’t stop.
“Get on with it lad. Goin’ overboard on yer first kill is normal. I ain’t got all day to play teacher.”
Alex swallowed, dismissing the feeling and reaching out to place his hand atop the Feirwolf’s corpse. Soft, silken fur greeted his touch, where not matted from quickly congealing blood, and he sensed a faint presence within the beast. It was a startlingly familiar feeling, and he reflexively began to draw on it.
“Oh?” the landlord said, letting out a bark-like chuckle. “Someone’s worked with crystals. Aye, just like that, lad. Pull it in and cycle it ‘til it’s purified.”
The quintessence within the monster was responsive, more so than any of the lesser-ranked crystals he’d ever worked with, but it also possessed a highly aggressive nature. He pulled on the corpse’s remnant energy, and the feral quintessence rushed to meet the challenge. Almost immediately, he was overcome. This was a far more potent source of power than he was used to handling. His mind and years of practice sprang into action, working quickly to identify the constituent aspects.
A lot of death-aspected quintessence, he thought, working to rip apart the surge energy as he cycled it throughout his system. Lunar aspect, too. The quintessence had its own will, just the same as any raw quintessence he’d handled in the past, but the complex mixture of energies was much more forceful than that of a simple light crystal. It possessed a sliver of the monster’s original consciousness, the desire to hunt, tear, rip and kill, the hunger and unrelenting need for murder. It didn’t feel natural, like his own hunger. It was a vicious, starved energy.
Underneath, he caught flashes of desperation and pain. The monster’s desire to escape from his blade, the agony of its blood flash-boiling under the heat of the knife, the surging desire to survive that was denied by every unrelenting stab. He felt the Feirwolf’s surety of its demise, and the resulting despair. Flashes and echoes, but it was there. He cycled the energy through his system with greater focus.
All quintessence contained the will of the living being that produced it, or if appropriately stored, the natural inclinations of its primary aspect. All children learned that the first requirement for filling their internal reservoir was to strip this will from the power, folding the purified aspected energy into their own neutral source of power. When aspected energy met neutral energy, it lost form, and became malleable for the user. Attempting to wield quintessence with a will of its own was a recipe for disaster.
There was a marked difference between absorbing the ambient energy of the world incrementally and rapidly cycling the dissipating quintessence within a corpse, however. He had to be faster, exert a greater degree of control over the energy, and most importantly, deny it from accessing his internal reservoir until it was stripped of any foreign intent. Were it not for years of practice doing just that, it would have been impossible for him. Even now, it was a distinct challenge.
In exchange, however, he could feel the dramatic difference in quantity. This was more energy than he’d be able to absorb from the environment in a month, and as the first streams of purified quintessence flowed into his internal reservoir he felt the metaphorical “walls” begin to expand. It took only a few moments for his reservoir to refill, and then the energy pushed against him.
It was a distinctly alarming experience, but there was nothing he could do. Short of expelling the remaining quintessence cycling through his body, an act with potentially disastrous effects, he was forced to keep adding to his reservoir. As more power flowed into his core, he became convinced that it would be too much - that he would be overwhelmed - and that a swift death followed. Curiously, however, it simply continued to expand.
After a seemingly endless amount of time, something changed. His reservoir stopped growing, and instead, the energies within became turbulent; violent, like a storm in the ocean. He felt a tearing pain as his own quintessence clashed, fighting for space within a fixed vessel, until the storm reached its climax and the energies merged.
Exhausted, injured, and utterly drained, Alex passed out on the spot.