White sand stretched in all directions, tinted vaguely purple by the reflected light of the rolling thunderclouds above. It was exactly the same as the view Bull had seen the day before, and the day before, and before, and before, and before.
For what must be the thousandth time, he checked his compass against both Lu’s coded instructions, and the terrain information the sect had been able to gather prior to the original rescue mission.
And for what must be the thousandth time, everything seemed to line up despite it clearly not doing so in reality.
I’ve been heading northwest consistently, according to the compass. And my own sense of direction agrees… So why have I not hit the swamp? Even if I got the exact angle wrong, I should have observed some change in scenery, the ground becoming more or less solid or the sand changing colour. Mountains or rocky outcroppings or something.
But no, everything was exactly the same is it had been when he had bid the Junk Dog clansmen farewell, and headed off on his own with his stolen two-wheeled cart. Said cart was now entirely out of fuel, and he was debating between continuing to carry it and just leaving it for the desert to claim.
Lu liked to complain about not having any physical materials to help him with his steam-wagons. It would be nice to bring him a gift, but right now it’s weighing me down.
Reluctantly, Bull placed the small vehicle down on the sand. It almost looked sad, somehow, like it knew it was being abandoned.
“Sorry, cart-thing. Looks like you’re on your own.”
Two days later he came across the thing again, sitting right in his path, ever so slightly buried.
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I am going fucking insane, Bull thought, looking at the skeleton caked in dried gore. It was the same one he had made yesterday; a long white wolf-headed thing that had dropped out of the sky and tried to bite him in half. It hadn’t worked out for the beast; he was now wearing a cloak of white fur over his torn-to-shit green outfit, a bundle of hide with various meats secured tightly to his side.
But still, it was the exact same skeleton. So going in random directions doesn’t work either.
He wasn’t entirely sure how long he had been out here. A mortal could go about a month without food, and he hadn’t weakened much before being gifted a sack of meat, so it had definitely been less than that. But as for the exact number, he couldn’t say; every time he tried to focus on it, count the number of times he had slept or even just get his brain to spit out an answer by instinct, his mind seemed to slip to the side. Get distracted by an idle thought or a novel marking in the sand.
So whatever I’m being affected by, it’s not just forcing me to go in circles. It’s making me to lose track of other things as well. Mental attack or illusion or Heart Demon, if I don’t break free soon I’m fucked. Water wasn’t a problem; he knew a combat spell that could make more as a side effect. But food would be a serious issue eventually; he couldn’t count on stumbling into new wildlife every few days.
But how do I break it? I don’t know any mental arts, and my skill with illusions tops out at parlour tricks. Maybe he could invent something? Anchoring Distortion had a lot of forms that could break apart different effects, maybe…
He shook his head. Maybe if I had the boosted acuity of a cultivator, I could do something. As a mortal, it takes all my effort just to cast the spells I already know. Inventing an illusion-breaking art from basically scratch? He knew his limits.
…But it’s not as if I have anything better to do. The desert stretched out, a monochrome field lit by dancing sparks far overhead.
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I’m travelling on an exact pathway. I can deviate a little bit, but thirty metres or so seems to be the limit. The marks he made by dragging his feet weren’t exactly precise, but they did well enough to show him where he had already been. Can’t go backwards either, for whatever reason.
Bull wasn’t much for puzzles, but it seemed he would need to solve this one if he wanted to live. Or at least not be captured again; I can’t think of anyone who could have cast this on me other than that mindreading creep. For all I know he’s watching me go in circles with a grin on his face, just out of sight.
Picturing it set his blood boiling, so he pushed the image away in favour of focusing on the problem. Can’t escape by altering my course, even now that I’ve noticed it. An anti-illusion art might work, but everything I’ve tried so far just gives me a bad headache. What does that leave?
His first instinct was to brute force it, maybe try extending his Path into wherever the hostile art had latched on and let it burn the thing off. Another option would be similar but more drastic; locate where it was clinging to his mind, and damage his soul in the corresponding place to cut it out. I might be a mortal, but this world elevates a person’s soul – it should be connected to my mind enough for damage to propagate.
…But that would be a last-ditch option. Like cutting away a Heart Demon, getting rid of the spell by that method would diminish his soul. And the soul is hard to heal. No, I’ll leave that one as a desperation play – besides, I actually have to find the thing first.
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The meat ran out. He found a sort of shrimp-thing scavenging the now picked-clean bones, and ate that as well. Every moment he focused on his Path, concentrating rage and vengeance down into a searing mantra that filled every corner of his self. For what must have been days, he sat in meditation, barely noticing the sand growing hotter under him.
And yet, he couldn’t escape. Even when he was certain he was shrouded completely, in a state even greater than the one that caused the mindreader’s arts to bounce off, he still couldn’t move away from the path. I can feel it, something clinging to the memory of Lu’s message like a leech, drawing the tiniest amount of qi out of my body to feed itself. If I had some sort of mental attack, or defense, or..!
He clenched his fists until the bones threatened to snap, and roared into the sky.
Damaging one’s soul was not hard, but neither was it easy. Doing it naturally required a certain type of self-hatred which was rather rare, and which was not available as a solution; even in this situation, Bull could not twist his mind into that particular shape. Which left the much more widespread option: using a tool.
The necessary enchantments weren’t considered unorthodox themselves, though employing them as weapons of war was. But very few cultivators broke that taboo; by the time damaging a soul was necessary to defeat an opponent, the realms would be high enough that soul-damaging spells were on the table. And those were too widespread to become unorthodox, no matter what the holy men wanted.
No, soul-cutting enchantments had only one purpose in the modern day, one that Bull was all too familiar with: the removal of a Heart Demon. He had insisted on doing it himself all those years ago, and that experience was paying dividends now.
There was a perverse sort of fairness in that, Bull thought.
Well, no, what he actually thought was… Fuck. Fuck! Come on you little shit, bind! Bind! He clutched the sharpest tooth he had scavenged, a savage knife of enamel the length of his thumb, and attempted to enchant it as sweat poured down his temples.
Recalling the forms had not been hard – he would never forget them, never – but his paltry mortal sense was only barely capable of holding them in the proper shape. Argh! Bind, you-! I’ve done this before, I know it works! Just stick already!
It took multiple hours of effort, his embryonic spirit gradually pressing the structure of the tooth into the correct shape more by bloody-minded force of will than anything, but in the end Bull was holding a weapon that would have him expelled instantly if he ever attempted to use it on another person.
Good thing I’m using it on myself, then.
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There was not much pain, if he was honest with himself. But it felt like there was, like there should have been – cutting away a chunk of his spirit should have felt vile, unnatural. But no, there was just a sort of disconcerting emptiness, like prodding a section of gum where a tooth had been the day before.
He couldn’t remember exactly what he had cut away, which he supposed was proof it had worked. But he could remember things about it, around it, like the fact that it was a location he was heading towards. Now, I just need to get to a place I don’t remember, taking a path I don’t remember, starting from wherever the fuck I am – which is probably near the Junk Pit, but who knows which fucking side. If he was in the southeast, then going northwest would just put him right back where he started. And it is northwest, I’m certain. He had a clear memory of the Dog confirming his directions in a broken sprawl of language, though his half of the dialog was entirely absent.
…Well, nothing to do but get on it. At least I’ll be going in a straight line. He took a few steps, then a few more, looking back to eye the line marking his previous path with suspicion. Then he took a few more, crossing the point where the line should have suddenly been in front of him again, and smirked. There we go. Wasn’t worried at all.
He made sure he was pointed in the right direction, and set off.
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He fought a small family of the wolf-snake-dragon things about three days later – and being able to actually count the days again was luxurious – four of them, none longer than his arm. He cooked one with a fire art and dried the rest with the same; they tasted alright, not as good as the bigger one had. But it was entirely possible this would need to hold him for the next few weeks, so he took everything, even the bones.
Breaking Tide wasn’t a particularly good movement art for travelling – it was built more for combat; a quick burst to dodge, like a Stuttering Step that couldn’t be disrupted by spacial arts in exchange for being less than instant. But it was faster than just running, and with the circuit providing limitless qi he would be a fool not to take advantage.
But concerningly, things were starting to get hot. He was able to block out the worst of it with a shield, but as the horizon line danced under the shimmer of heat distortion, Bull couldn’t help but wince every time his feet touched the ground. Can’t run the shield and Breaking Tide at full power together, not for more than an hour. I’ll have to either go slower, or suffer a little… Healing spells are expensive, so slower it is.
But the heat didn’t only affect him; over the next days, he started to run into corpses. None of the flying things, but rather fat tubule animals that stuck out half-buried in the sand, their tooth-lined circular maws gaping as they dried out.
I suppose this is the local version of a mole. Or maybe an earthworm is more appropriate? They must have baked alive in the hot sand – it’s like an oven now. Much hotter and my shield will fail… I suppose I could encase myself in ice, but better to just move rather than speculate.
He cut some pre-dried meat off the corpses, and went on.
The next day, he started to feel something. A pulse of qi, coming rhythmically from behind and to his right. He was wary, and sped up – but the combination of the heat and air pressure threatened to pop his shield. Assuming it takes a second to get the shield up again… That’s potentially a lot of damage. Do I keep trying to outrun what’s following me, or do I turn and fight?
Stupid question. If he ran, he’d be tired whenever his pursuer managed to catch up. Better to get it over with. Maybe it’ll be friendly, hah! The joke made him smile, just a little.
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The man was short, but wide. He had bulging muscles wrapped in scar tissue, and mid-length black hair that fell in spikes around a scruffy beard. His eyes were close together, sunk into the front of a misshapen head on a too-long, too-narrow neck.
He had a flowing cloak of long bird fur, wrapped around tattered green fabric that attempted to cover his entire body. He had a hat of the same green, a double-tailed thing with bells on the ends.
He was very familiar, but Stingy wasn’t fooled.
“That isn’t Lu, Cobo.” Her nostrils flared as she scented the air. No smell at all. “But I think it must be someone from the same clan.” The man shimmered, heat deflecting off his body. Her stomach cried out for her to pounce on the meat walking towards her.
Cobo made a nonsense sound that echoed out of the barrel.
“Yeah, maybe.” She cocked her head, and pushed down her instincts – for the moment. “I guess we’ll just have to ask.”