Hide beside the river if you wish to die undisturbed. Only we are fool enough to approach what all of nature knows to avoid.
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Jair stared at the strangely mutated octide.
The octide stared at Jair.
The remaining octides began to keep their distance now, retreating back up into the trees or backing away to watch from outside the circle of Maelstrom’s glow. Apparently the excessive quantity of flame was more intimidating than a guy merely slicing them to pieces with a glowing sword.
“Hello?” Jair asked, then immediately felt silly. Talking to an octide. Who did that? “You gonna just stand there, or what?”
“Are you talking to an octide?” Qahrvirna called over from her tree. “You know they can’t talk back.”
The strange octide’s upper body turned toward Qahrvirna’s voice, then back to Jair. Its legs shifted on the ground, tapping as it swayed to one side, then back.
Jair backed toward Qahrvirna.
The octide didn’t follow.
“I’m very confused by what’s going on here,” he admitted. “Are you familiar with darkflame?”
“Of course I am.”
“What does it do?”
“Kill people like me, obviously. Which is why I’d prefer you keep it over there.” She made little shooing motions with her knife.
“And in your experience, darkflame doesn’t ever resurrect them as different-colored zombie versions of themselves?”
“Why would it do that, that’s ridiculous.”
Jair pointed at the octide.
The other octides had begun moving forward by now, warily circling the intruder in their midst—which, Jair now noticed, had also grown larger than the others of its age in addition to changing color. They seemed disinclined to interact with it at all, either with curiosity or hostility, parting around it as they moved to surround Jair.
For its part, the green octide just stood there, looking even more confused than Jair felt.
Qahrvirna hopped out of the growing circle, swinging up to perch on a tree branch well out of reach.
The standard octides closed in, slow and cautious.
It’d been a minute, allowing Jair’s manabody to recover the tiniest bit, so he activated Darkflame.
The octides immediately stopped approaching. The nearest ones backed away, those behind them skittering aside to let them retreat.
“Looks like vampires aren’t the only things scared of fire, huh Qahri? You have more in common with these crawlies than I’d have guessed.”
“Very funny,” she said, unamused. “You planning to stand there being a torch until we run out of starlight?”
“You’re a lot less aggressive when there’s fire involved, huh…” Jair swung the fiery blade casually at the nearest octide, which skittered backwards. He lunged, and successfully stabbed it through the chest. Darkflame flared up, immolating the creature.
The octides who’d fled before the sword while darkflame was active turned, hunger once again overriding terror. Caution accompanied it, now, but though they hesitated they still advanced.
The green resurrected octide had no such hesitation. It charged through its more standard brethren straight at Jair, hissing with fury.
“Oho, so you don’t like me now. Interesting.” He met the monster with a swift stab.
Maelstrom seemed to pass straight through it harmlessly, as though it were illusion. Jair stumbled, caught off guard by the complete lack of resistance. He turned it into a controlled fall, throwing himself out of the charging creature’s path.
The standard octides joined in, rushing at Jair while still giving the green one as much of a wide berth as was possible when they were all chasing the same small target.
He activated darkflame, and they retreated. All but the green one. It continued to slash at him with its forelegs, skittering away and then toward him again in quick strikes that he struggled to keep up with.
Maelstrom didn’t seem able to touch it. The sword went right through it, but the creature’s claws certainly weren’t intangible. It finally got a claw into his arm and tore a deep gouge. Jair waved his flaming sword through the creature, but it simply couldn’t make contact. Like some strange inverse of Bladewalk techniques, two tangible objects unable to interact.
“Qahri, could you be a dear and toss my staff over?” Jair backed away from the ghostly mutant octide, using his injured arm to block its attacks since his main weapon was suddenly useless against it.
Qahrvirna tossed the staff, but it fell short. Jair ran over to it and set about whacking the mutant octide with as much force as he could muster. He held it and Maelstrom together, the darkflame keeping the other octides at bay while he dealt with the anomalous one.
Darkflame provided a very convenient way to slow down the encounter and give himself time to catch up with their greater numbers.
As the bizarre battle continued, the swarm began to break up. With hisses and clicking they finally decided it wasn’t worth the effort. They retreated up their trees into the interwoven nest above, glaring down at him.
All but the green one, which had gotten in its head that Jair was its sole focus of existing and he needed to be subsequently torn apart and devoured. Typical octide attitude.
Jair’s lack of cutting ability made the fight stupidly longer than it needed to be.
“I don’t suppose I could borrow your sword?”
“What’re you offering?”
“Some anomalous octide shell?”
“Mmmm… tempting.”
Jair backtracked again, blocking two claws with the staff, another with his arm, but the fourth hit.
The octide simply had too many limbs for him to manage against in a straight fight without the ability to use magic or Maelstrom. Its leg stabbed into his shoulder, just beside the collarbone, and tore free a chunk of his flesh.
“Qahri, a little help?”
“Put out that fire of yours and I’ll take care of it for you.”
Jair dismissed Maelstrom. Darkness fell immediately, the near-daylight brilliance of Maelstrom’s silver and darkflame glow replaced by the dull light of Jair’s staff.
Qahrvirna’s eyes glowed red in the dark as she darted forward, a blur of motion.
The mutant octide raised four legs to strike at Jair, then Qahrvirna was in front of it, sword in one hand, knife in the other, slicing upward to sever all four limbs at once as she ran straight into its body and bit down on the exposed stomach.
Jair winced. Of all the things he’d want to bite, sickly-green octide stomach was not one of them.
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Vampires… he’d never understand them.
The octide retreated, and Qahrvirna went with it. She brought both arms around and stabbed both sword and knife through its back, ignoring the fact that the sword was long enough it went through her own stomach in the process.
Then she staggered backwards, gagging. She gave a wordless snarl of disgust and moved in a blur, slicing the octide into so many pieces so fast it seemed to simply fall apart between one moment and the next.
Qahrvirna doubled over. Blood ran down her side from an octide slash, more oozed out of her stomach where she’d stabbed herself. She choked and spit out something pale and greenish, chest heaving, then looked around wildly.
Her eyes landed on Jair and she was already stepping forward when he summoned Maelstrom between them.
“No biting, remember?” The darkflame remained active despite having been stored in his soul for a time.
The vampire snorted and bared her teeth at him with a feral hiss, then spun away. She grabbed the nearest tree in her bare hands and climbed up it in a blur. She’d left her weapons behind, but she didn’t need them.
The octide nest above exploded into chaos.
Jair left her to it. He was more interested in finding out what had happened to the mutant octide she’d killed.
The front half of its body had been diced thoroughly, but the back half was largely untouched. He prodded at it with Maelstrom’s tip, and the flesh reacted exactly as one would expect when prodded with a sword, slicing open readily.
Whatever bizarre interaction was going on here to render it immune to Maelstrom, it had ended when the creature died.
He de-shelled the creature and retrieved its salvageable eyes, then started harvesting the other octides he’d killed. He glanced up at the trees now and then for any sign of the venix, but so far he saw nothing to indicate its presence.
Occasionally, an octide or three would fall from the overhead battle, usually torn apart into chunks and drained of what little blood they contained. Jair continued to salvage whatever alchemical ingredients could be had from the pieces.
Finally, the forest fell silent. The last octides lay unmoving.
Qahrvirna dropped down from above, wiping her lips with a sheepish expression. “You’re right, I should definitely save you for a special occasion. Something like this… it would be such a waste.”
“Yeah, I told you I don’t like it when ladies rush.” He dismissed Maelstrom and stood up, gesturing at the neatly stacked octide shells. “Add it to my tab.”
She collected the shells, dropping them into her soulspace, and tucked the eyes away in her bag. “You sure Eythron gets first dibs? I could use an assistant of your caliber.”
Jair smiled. “I made a promise to Eythron and I will fulfill it, but if we go on a few detours on the way he doesn’t have to know.”
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Unfortunately for the sake of experimentation, the local octides were fully decimated. They hung around another hour in case the venix decided to show itself, but eventually Qahrvirna declared that they’d wasted enough time and they should either kill something or get walking.
Since there was nothing to kill, they got walking.
Jair took out a handful of viper squirrels with darkflame out of curiosity, but they didn’t even consume the effect, just burst into flame the moment the sword came close while Maelstrom continued to burn with black-green fire.
The hours of walking felt interminable. Why would nothing attack them the one day he actually wanted them to?
He traced and re-traced his imprints to the extent that even Qahrvirna started giving him odd looks, but he couldn’t help it. He had a whole new power to explore and test and nothing was attacking him. True, they usually were only attacked once or twice per day, and the octide nest probably had a decently large territory given how many there were, but only the fact that he’d have to walk through two more days of nothing to get back to it prevented him from reverting right then and there.
Finally, a vylix pounced on Qahrvirna’s back, ran headfirst into her Unseen Shield, and Jair jumped on its back in turn. Maelstrom flared into silver light and green-black flame, then stabbed down into the feline's exposed back.
Qahrvirna yelped as the creature incinerated right on top of her, but though the back of her dress got a bit scorched her body was untouched.
She patted herself down in confusion. "I'm... alive?"
"Venix fire can burn selectively. I didn't choose to attack you, so neither did Maelstrom." Jair stared down at the pile of ashes that had been the vylix. It was just an ordinary one, not greater, so it didn't even give Maelstrom any additional tail-spike upgrades. "This is going to take a lot longer than I thought."
The rest of the day they encountered only a small pair of octides out roaming, which Jair killed one after the other. The first fell to the ground as ashes as normal, but the second burned out and reconstituted, again with the oddly colored tint to its shell.
Qahrvirna stared at it with a look of disgust. "What is that thing?"
The octide looked at Jair with a look of complete blankness.
Jair shrugged. "You'd know better than me, last time we had one you tried to eat it."
She scowled. "I would never."
"You definitely did. Guess you were hungrier after crossing the dragon pass than you let on, huh? Maybe that means you can leave me alone longer than five seconds."
"Never. You're far too interesting to give up on so quickly." She sidled closer.
Jair moved away, toward the green octide. "What is your secret, little thing? What is it that darkflame does when mixed with brobeg essence?"
He reached out a hand and cautiously touched the octide on the head. It was cool and solid against his fingers.
It didn't appear to have noticed his approach or touch.
He tapped it a couple times.
It didn't react.
He took a step back and very slowly prodded at one of its legs with Maelstrom's tip. The sword passed straight through it, like it was a ghost.
The octide didn't respond to the sword's presence or the attempt at poking it.
"Does it only fight when there are more of its kind around?" Jair wondered. He stepped closer and smacked the mutant octide across its stomach with the back of his hand.
No reaction.
He took out his staff and started thwacking it more aggressively.
It simply stood.
He put away his weapons and stared blankly at the blankly staring creature. It returned his gaze with more emptiness than he'd have thought possible.
"If you're going to kiss, hurry up," Qahrvirna called. "I want a turn."
"To kiss the octide?"
She made a disgusted face. "I don't kiss antimagic things, thank you. It's bad for my complexion."
Jair stopped, then turned to the vampire. "Antimagic, you say?"
She waved a hand up and down at the octide revenant. "Every piece of it is saturated in antimagic. If you were able to kill it, I'd love to have its shell. Grind it up and it'll be a perfect emergency neutralizer."
"Can I borrow your sword? Mine seems to be having performance issues."
She grinned and tossed it over.
Jair caught it and turned back to the mysterious creature. He stabbed the octide through the front, avoiding hitting any of its eyes so Qahrvirna could have them.
Even as he systematically killed the creature, it remained nonresponsive, right up until it simply fell dead with as little fanfare as it had stood while alive.
"Is a soulsword passing through an antimagic item an ordinary interaction?" Jair asked. "I've never had this problem before."
He'd fought the dragon plenty of times, and though dragons absorbed all magic in their vicinity, it had done nothing to Maelstrom and he'd still been able to cut it. Same with the brobegs. They had innate antimagic, but it didn't prevent a soulsword's blade from carving them apart.
Disgruntled that the octide hadn't provided any great insights, Jair helped Qahrvirna finish harvesting it for ingredients while rejecting her every advance.
They resumed walking and found nothing more that night before they set up camp to sleep for the day.
The following night, they got lucky and crossed the trail of a herd of wild bulbix. Jair eagerly chased them down with high hopes of learning something interesting. And interesting he got.
The first bulbix he incinerated reconstituted as a green version immediately. It stood without moving for a time, while Jair examined it. Then he moved on to the next bulbix, and that's when things got chaotic.
The moment his sword collided with the bulbix, before the flame could flare up, the first revenant charged at him. The second bulbix burst into flame, turned to ash, and immediately revived. But instead of standing around, it promptly turned and attacked the first. Jair stared as the two massive cow-things each tried to push the other over, one trying desperately to kill Jair, the other trying to kill its opponent.
They were very evenly matched. Jair instinctively jumped into the fight to protect 'his' bulbix, but hitting something this big with his staff wasn't effective.
It did effectively get Jair into its attack range, though, and he quickly found that while a bulbix may pose no threat to a hungry dragon, that much weight and aggression could do a significant amount of damage to a squishy human.
He’d perhaps gotten a little carried away in his excitement for testing his new power.
The aggressive bulbix gored and trampled him quite thoroughly.
Jair didn't even have a chance to see how the fight ended before he had to revert or let his soul start to dissolve.
His brief timefall was uneventful. The ledge he’d been using continued to grow stronger and clearer, much harder to miss even though it was only a few days back.
As soon as he arrived in the past, Jair double checked Maelstrom's status to be sure there was no accidental bulbix soul in Maelstrom's makeup. Though he wasn't entirely sure it would be a bad thing if it had... those horns were dangerous.
But, no, as expected, the integrity percentage remained where it had been, at 25%. Nothing he'd killed in the previous loop had been strong enough for its soul to survive the transfer.
He practically bounced as he walked beside Qahrvirna through the night. Two more nights of walking, and he could try the octide nest again—this time with a better idea of what to look for.
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