In the past three hundred years, Lowmont Lake has divided Desyov in two and is coming closer and closer to dividing its remnant part from the rest of Orard entirely. Without the dragon mountains guarding the pass, it would have happened already. If they guard our borders, is it not right that we should provide for their needs?
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Orard’s lands were the highest by far, even its flatlands further from sea level than any part of Almas. It was also the least fragmented, retaining land connections between the majority of its continents.
Not every land connection included a transit connection, but in the case of the eastern side of Lowmont Lake and the approach to the Oriad proper, the first town north of Muegvygh’s territory included transit connections that would take them all the way to the outer forests.
It was expensive, going through three outposts, two towns, and six relays to arrive, but neither Jair nor Qahrvirna were concerned about money.
The Oriad arrival platform was atop a cleared hill with crumbled fortifications and a makeshift barrier of trees torn up and thrown around it. Beyond, the looming trees and low fog obscured the darkened land beyond. If it were daytime, Jair could have climbed the barrier and looked out over the endless hills of green, everything beneath concealed by the jungle canopy. In the dark, their world became small and close.
The flash of mana as they landed was enough to drive any monsters nearby into an excited frenzy, recognizing the arrival of potential food.
Transit stations had occasionally been attempted deeper in, but they never lasted long enough to be worth the effort. Even this one was sustained mainly by its proximity to the vampire clans rather than its usefulness to visitors.
Jair and Qahrvirna climbed out through the surrounding fence, which took several minutes due to its haphazard nature, and immediately encountered a small army of nocturnal predators who’d been trying to find their own way over or through.
“Stay back.” Qahrvirna’s eyes blazed bright enough to cast the scene in red light, crimson imprints lighting up across her arms as she went into battle mode.
Jair stayed back, leaning on his staff.
Three minutes later, Qahrvirna was licking the blood off her fingernails and eying the mixed pile of monster remnants to assess their value as alchemical components.
“It’s been a while since I traveled with a full vampire witch. Always a joy to watch you work. But could you hold back a bit for the easier fights? I'm still training this form and the movement isn't up to my standards. I’d like some proper combat practice."
"How close to dying should I let you get before stepping in?" Qahrvirna grinned. "And what kind of stepping in do you want? If you're looking for an upgrade..."
"I like my soul the way it is, thank you. Just pretend I'm a trainee you're escorting for practice purposes, and we should be fine."
Qahrvirna scoffed. "I would never take a trainee that deep. By the time anyone reaches me, they've survived at least three levels of training. I'm there to handle unexpected contingencies, not babysit."
"Then babysit whenever it won't significantly increase our travel time, and step in when things are going to cause a notable delay."
"In a rush now, are we?" She finished her component harvesting and stood. “May as well get underway.”
"I need to reach Eythron, but I also need to be in a position to negotiate with him. If all I have to show him is a product of desperation, he'll throw me out. I need to be viable as an apprentice, and right now I'd last less than a half second."
"I thought you were already his apprentice. What else would his hold over you be?"
"He is my mentor. That doesn't mean I'm his apprentice. He hasn't met me in this version of myself, much as you hadn't."
"That sounds like the excuse of a fugitive," Qahrvirna said thoughtfully.
"I'm wandering the Oriad with a vampire witch, searching for the Forest-Mad mageblade."
“It’s not your current state I’m questioning. But why can you not use your existing relationship? With me, with Eythron… even in a weakened form, surely you didn’t do anything that unforgivable?”
“Prying into my past already? We haven’t even known each other a full day.”
“With so many impressive titles up front, you can hardly fault a girl for being curious. And it sounds to me like you’re admitting that Eythron has no claim on you whatsoever.”
“He’s the only person who can reasonably be expected to help in my current circumstance.”
“And yet you’d hide your past from him even in such seeming desperation?”
Jair shrugged. “I’ll discuss it with him when the time is right. Until then, it’s irrelevant.”
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Having someone like Qahrvirna along simplified his trip to the extreme. The best he could currently manage wouldn’t be enough to survive here alone. He could always revert the past week and retry every time he died, but it was far more beneficial to get as far as he could and learn as much about the situation as possible rather than repeating the first section indefinitely until he got lucky.
His staff’s light glinted off something in the trees, and he slowed.
“There’s a nest of octide up ahead. I’m going after them. Watch for anything else interfering.” He withdrew Maelstrom, the silver light drowning out the glow of his staff as it illuminated the thick foliage and glared off the low-lying fog.
Qahrvirna shielded her eyes against the sudden glare. “I can see why you need Eythron’s help, that weapon’s leaking power like a dying jackal.”
“Just kill anything bigger that gets attracted to the commotion.” Jair advanced at a slow jog, adding the noise of trompling and shoving his way past underbrush to the light of his sword.
It made him quite a dramatic target.
The octides lurking overhead in the trees didn’t need a second invitation. They didn’t normally hunt at night, but two of the younger ones scuttled down the trunks and toward him, awakened by the brightness and deceived by the false dawn.
Long and carapaced in faceted green, this pair no longer than Jair was tall, each octide vaguely resembled a centipede in shape, but with only eight legs per side and longer segments between each pair.
Their legs were long enough to rear up and slash at his arms and torso, but with the added reach of Maelstrom he could keep them at bay easily. Every time sword met octide limb, said limb quickly found itself severed.
One or two octides, especially these young ones, weren’t enough to pose a threat to him. The real challenge was their numbers.
As he finished off the first two, more began dropping from the trees above or scuttling down as they roused and ran to the source of the commotion.
Many of these were larger than the forerunners, and much faster. Even sluggish from their hibernation, Jair couldn’t quite move fast enough to keep up with all of them and strike back at the same time.
The occasional hit he did sneak in was devastating, but he spent most of his time evading and retreating.
His arms ached from the strenuous workout, blood burning with adrenaline as he fought for his life.
Qahrvirna watched from a perch on a tree branch, as Jair circled in his retreat. “You sure you don’t want help?”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I’ve got this.”
As the octide nest finished emptying, the amount of oversized crawlers trying to chomp down on him steadied out, then began to drop. Jair hadn’t actually used Maelstrom in a proper fight like this yet, and the outcome was eye-opening.
He was retreating out of habit, as though these enemies were something that posed a threat to him. But…
He stopped backing up and swung Maelstrom in a steady sweep, crouching to spin with the momentum of the heavy blade.
Octide pieces flew in all directions, the nearest monsters helpless before the enhanced weapon. Jair stepped forward, reversed his spin, and recalled Maelstrom back to his other hand.
This was the fighting style he’d practiced until it was fully intuitive, recalling his sword from hand to hand so fast it almost felt as though he held two copies, seamlessly transitioning from one slash to the next without ever losing momentum. Not needing to deal with the reset part of each attack sequence made for an incredibly rapid strike sequence.
Regularly he tried to use his various unfinished imprints from sheer reflex, but even the brief dissonance of them not activating wasn’t enough to slow his rhythm as he began to fall into the flow of combat.
The largest octide rushed forward to interpose itself between him and its younger relatives. This one was thicker than Jair’s body and twice as long, rearing up to tower over him and slash out with legs longer than Maelstrom’s reach.
His normal reforged sword wouldn’t cut through an octide’s shell easily, requiring four or five hits to crack it, and then strikes at weak points to pierce through.
Maelstrom ignored their crystal chitin as though it were no tougher than tree bark.
The master octide clicked and hissed as it went from sixteen legs to thirteen in a split second. It rushed at Jair bodily, no longer trying to slash at him from a distance.
Jair stepped into the attack, bringing Maelstrom down in a two-handed diagonal slash that bisected the creature before it could take more than a single step in his direction.
Jair was laughing. He jumped over its falling pieces and ran at the next biggest monster.
The remnants of the octide swarm scattered before him, reversing course and fleeing from the reach of Maelstrom’s glow.
He ran after the fleeing creatures, cutting down any that he caught. Several of them split off in different directions and he couldn’t catch them all before they disappeared into the dark jungle.
He returned to Qahrvirna’s tree to discover she’d dropped down and was deftly peeling the carapace off the deceased octides.
“Never one to give up a potential ingredient, are you?”
“Waste is waste. Can’t look a gift octide in the eye. Speaking of…” She finished with the current octide, stacking its shell with the others beside her, then took down her bag and began removing the creatures’ eyestalks with a pair of curved scissors. They were very short eyestalks, each capable of retreating into a hole in the shell. Each octide had six eyes, positioned three each across the front and back of the crawly creatures, which allowed them to reverse direction without warning.
Jair dismissed Maelstrom and searched for where he’d dropped his staff. It continued to emit its normal glow, illuminated at the top and down the sides, but as long as he didn’t hold it the mana crystal would run down very quickly.
Mana was most efficient when used by a person, internally. Soulspells were the purest expression of magic, requiring so little energy that even an untrained manabody could activate one in any environment with even a little ambient mana. Doing so untrained would be incredibly uncomfortable, and could result in magical or emotional trauma, but it was still mechanically possible. The biggest drawback to soulspells was that everyone could unlock exactly one, with no way to change it.
Imprinted spells were more versatile and energy-efficient than constructs, though limited to four to ten slots depending on how well a person utilized their available imprint spaces—hands, arms, shoulders. Some added augments onto the chest and back, though augmenting imprints tended to also increase interference potential with any lower compatibility.
Similarly, active mana was more powerful than passive mana. Power channeled through a manabody into a construct lasted significantly longer than an equal quantity of crystalized mana.
After retrieving his staff, he helped himself to another of Qahrvirna’s tools and joined in her material harvesting. “We shouldn’t stay here long, the commotion will probably attract something bigger and hungrier.”
Qahrvirna dismissed his concerns. “Nothing to fear. There’s plenty of fresh octide here to go around, we can slip away the moment something shows up.”
Jair gestured behind her. “Then we better get slipping.” He tapped his forehead and summoned Maelstrom, the silver light glaring off an oversized pair of solid green eyes looming behind the crouching vampire.
Qahrvirna winced against the sudden brightness but didn’t let it slow her as she jumped to her feet, dropping her tools and raising bare arms alight with glowing imprints. She cursed vehemently and jumped at the thing. Its eyes were already shifting from solid color to an opaque veneer over a sharply yellow inner glow deep within.
The venix was a mystical predator that stalked the Oriad, and not one Jair had encountered very often. He was unsure if there were multiple of them, or if it was just the same one traveling in each reincarnation.
Either way, it was trouble.
The massive bird stepped into the light, body beginning to emit a green-fire glow from every feather. It was vaguely vulture-shaped, walking with the low-ducked neck and slow deliberation, but this creature had more interest in living prey than that already dead. Its shoulders were broad, wings triple-jointed and folded against its chest with long-fingered claws on the tips of each wing.
It stood easily twice as tall as Jair and Qahrvirna, even hunched as it was.
The only good part about this encounter was that the venix would be restricted in its movements by the surrounding trees. If they’d been in the open, Jair would already be reverting time. Between its flexible wings and scything beak, the venix was a true terror in the open.
Qahrvirna cast a sizzling bolt spell from one hand as she lunged at the creature’s chest, her other hand raised with a glasslike shield only visible where the light reflected from it. The venix's sharp beak opened and it pecked down at her, at an angle to sever her head clear from her body. Instead, its beak bounced sharply off the shield she held with a loud crack.
Jair ran forward, a few steps behind Qahrvirna, and hurled Maelstrom in a spinning throw at the monstrous bird.
His few days of practice weren’t enough to more than slice a few feathers off the left wing. Better than nothing. He recalled Maelstrom to his hand and threw it again in time with his footsteps, shearing off a second handful of feathers.
“Hey!” Qahrvirna’s magic attack struck it a second time. It wasn’t enough to distract it. It had quickly determined which of the two was the bigger threat.
The venix swung its beak around to him, open and descending. He recalled Maelstrom once again, interposing the tip between his body and the bird monster.
Its momentum carried it straight into Maelstrom hard, driving its own skull down onto the blade so fast that it sliced up through the top of its head.
But, like so many of the most powerful creatures, being killed wasn’t enough to stop it. It still retained enough presence of soul to bite down, severing Jair’s arm midway between wrist and elbow, then it stumbled back with a strangled hissing sound as it choked on the sword driven through the top of its head.
Jair’s immediate reflex was to twist his manabody to hold in his lifebody’s functions, forming quick channels to keep blood flowing back where it belonged rather than leaking all over the place.
His second reflex, already underway even while he wrestled his manabody into the unfamiliar shape, was to rush forward at the creature as it retreated.
He recalled Maelstrom to his still-functional hand, slashed a wing that the venix tried to interpose, then the other wing as it desperately clawed at him to fend him off.
Qahrvirna fired another pulse of magic into its chest, staggering it.
Jair followed up with a heavy slash that sheared its head clean off its neck.
Its body glowed even brighter, the disconnected pieces remaining in their approximate locations as it threw back its head and burst into green-black flame.
Jair threw Maelstrom at its head in one last-ditch effort, but he was too slow to rescue his severed hand. The entire venix immolated in a brilliant flash, leaving nothing but ashes and a couple handfuls of severed feathers behind.
“Nicely done!” Qahrvirna lunged at the feathers, gathering them up greedily. “These things are incredibly rare.”
“Just remember who got them for you. Start a tab for me. I’ll probably be needing some specific potions.” Jair turned his attention to his arm, ensuring the connection had been stabilized.
Using his manabody like this would permanently scar it. He’d never be able to cast with that arm again, even if he found a replacement hand and fused it in. Right now, things like that didn’t matter. Once he reverted time it would be as though the injury never happened. It was just a hand, and he was here for information. No need to end the loop early over it.
Qahrvirna finished scooping handfuls of venix-ashes into a bag, then turned to Jair with a slow look of realization. “You just killed a venix.”
“Not the first time, won’t be the last.”
“And you lost your hand doing it.”
Jair chuckled. “Not the first time, unlikely to be the last.”
“You do like being mysterious. Do you want a bandage or… something?”
“I’ve got it handled.”
Qahrvirna stared at the exposed loops of blood running through unseen channels, flowing out from his arm and back in, mesmerized.
“Not for you,” Jair chided.
She licked her lips and nodded, tearing her attention away. “I thought you’d die for sure. I’ve only fought one of those twice before, and both times I had to retreat.”
“Maelstrom is unparalleled.”
“And it’s still in a damaged state.” She shivered in anticipation, breath hissing in between grinning fangs. “I’m starting to see why you’re willing to sell anything to see it through to perfection.”
Jair tapped his arm against his forehead, returning Maelstrom to his soul, then picked up the discarded tools and passed them to Qahrvirna. “As tempting as it is to stick around to grab some more octide shells, I’d rather be a long way away before this thing wakes up.”
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