Then again, he told himself, the chances of being freed from Crystellum had been even less, and here he stood a free man of a noble household.
Nothing of note happened over the following hour, save for the almost complete disappearance of light and the gradual decline of the already freezing temperature. This wasn’t a problem, however, for the moment it became impossible to see with the naked eye, Alistar had activated his newly-learned ocular technique, the advanced alteration spell that Haussen Scuff had termed the night cat’s eyes, evidently structured around the feline ability to see quite clearly in the dark. During the process of getting the hang of the technique, Alistar had learned that the spell wasn’t meant to grant total vision in the absence of light, for even now he would only be able to see his hands at arm’s length were he within the blackness of his unlit room. The true purpose of the spell, at least in its basic iteration, was to enhance the sensitivity of one’s eyes so that they were more receptive to dimmer sources of light, such as the half-moon that currently bathed the silent forest in its cool, apathetic luminescence from far overhead.
Maintaining the spell, he continued on into the wilderness as quietly as possible, his left hand grasping at the hilt of his short sword where it remained in case of an emergency. The reason he had opted for the shorter blade instead of a longsword was that he had been worried that the latter’s longer reach might have brought him difficulties when using it in an area so congested with trees. His thoughts gradually changed as he crept forward, a growing chill beginning to fester in his limbs with each careful step.
He was now nearly a thousand paces away from the county walls, where the occasional hoots of unseen owls reached his ears, a periodic breeze ruffling the forest floor while causing the dead limbs of countless trees to creak in an eerie manner.
Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea, he thought, heartbeat quickening as he proceeded onward in the relative silence. If something did happen to him, then there wouldn’t be any possibility of outside rescue. Kaila’s in a worse position, he told himself, and she can’t even defend herself. Besides, the entire point of this endeavour was to harden his resolve as a warrior, to grow accustomed to taking lives with sword in hand.
Giving his head a shake, he stopped to meditate for a couple of minutes before proceeding onward. It was a few minutes after he resumed walking that he sensed a sizeable life signal several hundred paces ahead of him. Detecting this, he knelt down behind a tree and slowly drew his short sword, lamenting over the fact that he had never practiced archery as it would have come in handy on such an outing.
Not one to overlook the value of taking extra precautions, Alistar gathered a good deal of water—about enough to fill one of the large troughs that the horses back at the estate’s stables drank from—and separated it into fifty spikes that were reminiscent of the giant nails used in the construction of larger buildings within the county. These spikes were bigger, however, each the size of a man’s forearm with sharp, pointed tips. Taking a deep breath, he removed three of his limiters to ensure that things went as smoothly as possible in regards to the manipulation of his magics, making sure to suppress his heavy aura to the best of his ability as he continued to press forward with a distracting, tickling feeling in his gut. Once he had carefully arranged the spikes in the air before him, he took his time applying a basic reinforcement spell to each and every one of them in increments of five, not wanting to take any unnecessary risks when he still wasn’t sure what sort of creature lay ahead of him.
Ever since his first days in Distan, Alistar had studied the flora and fauna that were typical in this region of the Tall Mountains in great detail, having memorized every known species of all of the local life forms to the point that their names, physical attributes, average lifespans and much more would immediately come to mind if he were to lay his eyes on them.
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I wonder what it is, he thought as he began to creep closer, the compact mass of hardened icicles now floating silently at his back. Judging by the strength of its life force, it was likely a larger animal, possibly a cervine creature like an elk or buck. Sensing that its aura was rapidly waning, he began to suspect that the unknown animal was critically injured, though he couldn’t tell for sure as it was obscured from his vision by the many trees and shrubs that stood between them. Proceeding forward at a cautionary pace, he kept his eyes moving at all times, constantly on the lookout for any other animals. If the creature in question was indeed injured then it had clearly been done by some sort of predator.
Only once he was fifty paces away from the fast-fading life signal did Alistar lay eyes on the beast.
A long-toothed wolf?
Recognizing it immediately from several sketches that he’d studied in the past, Alistar heightened his guard and redoubled his efforts of scanning the surroundings. Wolves travelled in packs, so it was very likely that there were others in the area.
No, he thought solemnly, aren’t wolves supposed to be very loyal? If it was left here, then…
Sure enough, after taking a closer look he saw that the wolf wasn’t sleeping or resting up, but rather that it couldn’t move. Two of its legs had been lopped off, clean cuts that had left the severed stumps perfectly level. The wolf was in the midst of licking its wounds with weak movements of its head when it sensed his approach, continuing on as he drew closer with careful steps.
It’s almost dead, he realized, noting the large amount of blood on the frozen ground, still warm enough in some places to have remained in liquid form.
Seeing the beast in such a state, Alistar hesitated to walk any farther. While the purpose of his trip was to temper his mind in an effort to grow accustomed to killing, he felt a surging sense of uneasiness at the idea of slaughtering a helpless animal, even if it was a powerful predator. He had anticipated a desperate fight, a struggle he’d believed necessary to further his personal growth as a warrior, but as he stared into the frightened eyes of the ever-weakening wolf he suddenly found himself pitying the thing.
Whimpering as it tried in vain to tend to its wounds, the wolf tried to back away from him only to collapse after a momentary exertion, a loud yelp escaping its throat that tugged harder at his heartstrings. He suddenly felt the desire to attempt to heal it, though he forced himself to cast this thought from his mind, feeling ashamed at the fickleness of his resolve. He’d come to hunt animals, not heal them.
This is why I’m here, he thought, recognizing the weakness within his good-natured heart. If I can’t even kill a half-dead animal, how can I ever hope to defend myself against another person?
Just as Alistar was about to step forward to stain his soul with inevitable action, he was seized by a sudden sense of wrongness, as if a sharp blade were hovering a hair’s breadth away from his neck.
The creaking of the lifeless trees, the whimpering of the injured wolf, the windblown shuffling of half-decomposed leaves and fallen pine needles; amidst this backdrop the subtle sound of a snapping twig rang through Alistar’s ears like the loud bells of the cathedral before Sunday mass. Possessed by the same instincts that had propelled his legs forward when he’d stumbled across the giant moss snake that had devoured Bertrand all those years ago, Alistar turned tail and fled as fast as he could, feeling as if any moment an unknown predator might emerge from the darkness and steal away his life. Thirty strides in, an ear-piercing, soul-shaking yelp rang throughout the forest, cut off abruptly as if someone had covered the wolf’s mouth with a pillow in order to smother its anguished cry midway through.
For the first time in a long while, Alistar began to panic. Why can’t I sense anything? There was only one animal that was native to the Tall Mountains that possessed the ability to mask its aura, he realized with dread.
Disoriented from the danger, he lost hold of his ocular alteration spell and clipped a tree in passing, panting heavily as he gained stability after a precarious stumble. It took all of his mental fortitude to rely on his meditations in the middle of his frantic flight, a process that nearly failed when he realized that he’d absentmindedly lost control over the icicles that had been floating behind him up until moments ago. They had fallen at some point into his sprint, so he no longer had an array of cautionary projectiles to rely on in case he fell further into the current crisis.