Cadence’s breath burned in her throat and chest as she slid behind the gnarled shape of a fallen tree, dirt and dead leaves flying up around her. She did her best to suppress a little whimper, and curled up to hide in the twisted boughs of the downed tree even as the ground shook underneath her. Through the dim light of the barrens, she could see the shape of the monster that was chasing her. She could hear its breathing, like a great bellows heaving the smell of rotten eggs into the surrounding air. And she could hear the little snorts that interrupted those breaths.
It knew she was hiding nearby. It was trying to sniff out her scent.
Cadence clamped her hands over her mouth to smother another whimper, and she heard the giant monster take a couple steps forward as it searched for her. One of those steps brought it within view of her hiding place, and she had to choke down a scream before she gave away her position.
Easily twelve feet tall, it was built only vaguely like a human, with two arms and two legs, but its proportions were all wrong. It was like an unbaked clay statue that had been left in the sun and started to melt before it hardened. It was corpulent, its gross grayish-pink skin stretched over fat that didn’t quite move right, like it was made of mud instead of flesh. Its torso was too long and its legs too short, giving it an almost bell-like silhouette ruined only by its two giant arms, which were so long they practically dragged on the ground, and were thicker around than most of the trees in the barrens. Most horrifying of all was its face. Somewhere between a boar and a person, two massive teeth protruding from its deformed lower jaw, almost high enough to interfere with its beady eyes.
In all her life, Cadence had never heard of anything like this monster. Her mother had told her about all sorts of magical creatures she had fought in the forest, but they had all borne a resemblance to the animals they had been before some quirk in the ambient magic had transformed them. Bears that wore blizzards as fur, wolves that raced through the woods and breathed wildfires, boars whose bristles were rigid thorns. But whatever this thing was, it looks nothing like any animal.
Was this what happened to people who stayed immersed in dark magic of the grove for too long? Cadence didn’t know, but for once, she didn’t care. She could deal with wondering about the monster for the rest of her life if it would just go away and let her keep running! She felt as much as saw the giant take a couple more steps, and she prayed to any archetype that was paying attention that it would just go a little farther. If she could just get behind it, she could run back the way she came, and hope she made it out of the barrens before it caught up.
It wouldn’t follow her out of the barrens, right? She had to hope not. There was no way such a massive monster would be a mystery if it could leave the darkened grove.
The giant took a couple more steps past her hiding place, and Cadence started to relax. Any moment now, she’d be able to bolt for freedo-
“Found you.” The brutish voice was barely intelligible, pitched so deep that Cadence felt it in her bones more than her ears. A massive, four fingered hand reached down and grabbed one of the larger branches of the dead tree, and in a casual motion, tossed aside the teenager’s hiding place like it weighed little more than a bale of hay.
Now exposed, Cadence just curled up tighter. It felt like every muscle in her body had seized up. Tears streaked her cheeks. She knew she couldn’t run, not anymore. Those freakishly long arms would snatch her up as soon as she moved. “P-please… please…” she whimpered, knowing the begging didn’t make any difference, knowing she was about to die.
“I’m hungry,” the same tectonic voice rumbled, the tone almost lazy. “Little snack sound good.” Another of those plow-sized hands reached down towards her, and Cadence closed her eyes tight, refusing to look the monster in the eye as it killed her.
And then… nothing happened. Cadence whimpered in fear.
And still, nothing happened.
“Hrrrgh… whuh?”
At the sound of the monster’s confusion, Cadence couldn’t help but slowly peek through her eyelids, feeling like a child trying to hide from a nightmare but unable to force herself to do anything more.
She saw the hand, four thick fingers spread towards her, but it was still a few feet away. Instead of moving forward to grab her, the massive, inhuman hand was struggling against a rope looped around its wrist. She had no idea where it had come from, or how anyone could have bound the giant so quickly. The rope fully circled the thing’s thick wrist twice over, and was tied back neatly on itself, so that the giant’s struggle just pulled the rope tighter.
A sharp crack drew Cadence’s gaze to the other end of the rope, which was apparently tied to one of the larger trees nearby. Somehow, despite the rope's ordinary appearance, the massive monster was unable to snap it, and instead, his struggles had begun to crack the tree it was tied to. The giant paused for a moment, and Cadence could practically hear the monster trying to figure out what was happening. Despite its terrifying size and appearance, Cadence suspected it was a bit dull, but it had managed to puzzle out that further attempts to pull its hand free would send a tree collapsing down onto itself.
Eyes wide, Cadence slowly uncurled, getting to her knees. The giant was distracted now and seemed to have forgotten about her while it tried to break the rope binding its arm. She knew she should run, but she just… couldn’t. Fear had stolen all of her energy, and her legs trembled even as she tried to rise onto them.
“Well, that was a close one. Sorry about that.”
Cadence jumped in place and fell back to the ground as she tried to spin around towards the voice that had suddenly spoken behind her.
Instead of another monster, she saw a startlingly plain-looking man. His skin was a couple shades darker than Cadence’s own, as much from the sun as his blood. His hair and eyes were the same muddy shade of unremarkable brown common to those in the heartlands, and his clothing was simple and functional, similar to Cadence’s own, with a ragged cloak pulled over his shoulders. The only exceptional thing about him was his height. Even had she been standing, he would've towered over her.
Despite his ordinary looks, the man looked up at the increasingly angry monster without a flicker of fear. “Ogres…” he muttered to himself derisively.
His eyes never quite seemed to focus anywhere, drifting over her, then the monster, then the barrens surrounding them, then the tree the rope was tied to. It was disconcerting when he spoke, still not bothering to look at her. “Would you mind just getting behind me a little bit?” His words were still casual and conversational, as if they were talking in the middle of town. “I’d understand if you tried to run, but I would ask you not to. The magic around here is fond of getting people lost.”
“Magic can do that?” Cadence asked, wide eyed.
“Magic can do anything. It’s magic.” The giant roared again, and the man’s eyes flicked back to Cadence for a moment. “Behind me? Please?” He asked again.
Cadence blinked and nodded shakily. Her legs still felt weak when she got to her feet, but she managed to scamper behind the man.
Once she was securely behind him, he nodded. “Thanks. Just keep your distance, this shouldn’t take long.”
His steps were as casual as his voice as the man started towards the monster. He made a small gesture with one hand, and the ropes binding the giant’s arm suddenly released it, the tidy knot simply coming undone like a trick knot. The giant staggered with an earth shaking step, then lifted a finger to scratch the back of its head. It examined its wrist suspiciously, then shrugged and turned back around, only to see the strange man standing between it and Cadence.
That only seemed to confuse it more, but it eventually growled approval. “Good. ‘Nother snack. Bigger too. Heh heh.”
The man watched the giant’s performance placidly. “Sorry big guy,” he finally responded, sounding oddly cheerful. “Unfortunately, my story will have a grander end than some ogre’s maw.”
Cadence had never heard of an ogre before, but she could see the giant’s face slowly darken as it processed that response. It didn’t bother with another word and simply bellowed in rage and rumbled towards the man.
Cadence’s heart leaped into her throat as the man didn’t even try to dodge away from the charge. Only once the monster was only a few feet away did one hand finally move, throwing something Cadence couldn’t see at the ground, and she was suddenly blinded by a brilliant flash of light. She made a noise of discomfort and lifted a hand to her eyes - but based on the rumbling around her, the attack had been significantly more discomforting for the ogre.
The monster hadn’t fully recovered from the shocking flash before the man darted forward. Though she was sure such a weapon hadn’t been anywhere on his person earlier, he now held a massive sword. It was unlike the short swords she had seen around town, or even the dangerous brass swords many of the caravan guards that came through twice a year carried. It was nearly as long as Cadence was tall, though the last foot of the blade was wrapped in leather and boasted a curved crossguard, like a second hilt. Spaced along the remainder of the blade were three bright blue gems.
The man tapped the bottom most gem, which began glowing with its own light, before he pivoted in place, bracing the blade with his second arm on that odd extended hilt. A smooth, economical motion swung the blade of the massive sword at the monster’s leg with all the force of the man’s body - which should’ve still been entirely insufficient against the corpulent giant’s thick skin and massive limbs. Despite that, the sword buried itself deeply into the monster's leg like an axe being swung into a tree, and Cadence swore she could hear the grind of the steel against bone as the man smoothly pulled the sword free and dodged back from the roaring ogre’s swinging arm.
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Cadence knew that the power of gifts, once they leveled up, could allow someone to break the limits of a normal person. Her mother was an Initiate, having leveled up both her gift of the hunter and gift of the bear twice. Despite being little taller than Cadence, she had seen Ryme lift bales of hay with little effort, hit a bramble-spawn with an arrow from across the town square, and catch sight of troublesome children in complete darkness. Still, Cadence had never seen anything like the display the mysterious man put on as he fought the hungry giant.
Every swing of his elaborate sword cut another furrow in the monster’s grayish-pink skin, each cut bleeding with thick, off-red blood that ran slowly, like molasses. The giant’s own attacks were sluggish in comparison, and never seemed to get close to the man. In fact, more often than not, they just gave him another chance to punish the horrifying monster.
Cadence only knew of one person in the region who was higher level than her mother - a woman a few villages away who had visited following a ferocious storm that had knocked over several homes and a barn and left a dozen people injured. She had been an Adept with the gifts of the animist, the carpenter, and the scribe. She had the energy of vague power that was supposed to be unique to higher leveled people, but her gifts had been meant to help people, not to hurt them.
The man who had saved her lacked the same feeling of almost humming magic that had hung around that Adept, but there was no doubt he was as far beyond Ryme as Ryme was above Cadence, and his gifts were clearly specialized into this sort of combat.
Still, even his amazing speed and skill had limits. Either that, or he had underestimated the ogre. The man dodged a clumsy swipe and took a risk on an overhead chop that looked like it could cleave completely through the giant’s arm, only to realize at the last moment that the ogre had feinted. Its other fist shot through the air after he had committed to the attack and slammed straight into the swordsman, sending him flying through the air. He hit a twisted tree trunk with a whoof of expelled air, while his magnificent sword went flying through the air.
Cadence let out a cry as the man fell to the ground, clearly dazed. The giant gave a grunt and chuckled, the sound only made more sinister by the ominous woods, then lowered his head and rumbled forward in a charge at the fallen stranger. The massive figure was hunched forward, beady eyes focused hungrily on the fallen man, and had no chance to see the sudden movement of the rope from the opening moments of the fight when it suddenly moved once more. This time, the enchanted line didn’t go for an arm. It wrapped itself around the monster’s thick neck three times before tying itself off in a noose large enough for even the corpulent monstrosity.
The monster had too much momentum to stop its charge, and the rope immediately reached its limit. It stretched with a quivering tension, but proved to be as implausibly durable as before. The darkened grove echoed with a pair of loud cracks - one as the giant’s own momentum snapped its neck, and another as the tree the rope was anchored to finally gave out. Cadence looked on, stunned, as half of the tree fell onto the already dying giant, crushing even its massive bulk to the ground.
The falling tree broke the imposing ceiling of entangled foliage overhead, and a shaft of startlingly bright sunlight shined down on the tableau of the fallen giant. It let Cadence see with perfect clarity as the man staggered to his feet, and she could swear his eyes were a deep yellow, rather than the brown they had been before. He surveyed the giant, then made a pair of sharp gestures. The first made the rope untie itself from the giant’s neck, and Cadence was horrified to see the monster still moving weakly as the rope slid away like an oversized snake to curl up at the man’s side. What would it take to kill the thing?
The second motion answered Cadence’s unspoken question with a pillar of brilliant lightning that crashed into the ogre out of nowhere. The violent explosion of sound and light was finally too much for Cadence. The force of it threw her back in a tumble, and everything went black.
#
Cadence awoke with a start, blinking against the stinging sunlight in her eyes.
Suddenly everything that had happened came rushing back to her, and she sat up in a panic, her heart racing a mile a minute as she wildly looked around.
She was sitting in a patch of sunlight, her back rested against a large boulder. Next to her was the man who had come to her rescue, calmly eyeing her while chewing on an apple. There was no sign of the darkened barrens or the oppressive, twisted trees or the monster that had chased her through the lightless stretch of woods.
“W-where is it?” Cadence asked, turning to the odd man. Something occurred to the girl, and her eyes narrowed. “And is that my apple?”
The man stared at her mildly as he finished eating. His muddy brown eyes (hadn’t they been yellow before?) drifted to the fallen tree, and betrayed a flicker of satisfaction. “It’s gone now,” he said simply. His voice was soft, but steady. His eyes slid back to her, and he wore a hint of a grin on his face. “I hope you don’t mind, but I found the apple while I was rifling through your pack for something to heal you with, and our big friend reminded me that a snack did, in fact, sound good.”
Cadence looked around more carefully for a moment before she found her pack, lying on the ground a few feet away, next to her hatchet and quiver of useless arrows. Her tools to defend herself. Not that they had done any good. “Wait…” She asked, turning back to the man. “Heal me?”
The man frowned, and looked at the ground. The sheepish motion made him look very different from the commanding figure that had stared down the ogre without a moment’s hesitation. “Yes. I needed to finish it off before it got back up, but I didn’t think of how close you were. Some of the splinters from the tree tore you up a little bit.” He gestured a vague hand at Cadence, and she looked to find that he was right. Her pants and shirt had gained a few more significant tears, and even the side of her leather vest had been carved open to display the bare skin of her ribs.
Cadence frowned, looking herself over, but besides the cosmetic damage to her clothes. “The glintcaps?” She asked.
“Mmm.”
Cadence narrowed her eyes. She knew there was no way the glintcaps could’ve fully healed all of the damage she had taken.
Before she could ask any further questions about it though, the man pushed himself to his feet. The motion was oddly fluid, and Cadence blinked for a moment, thinking her eyes had played a trick on her. She heard that could happen to someone who took a blow to the head. But no, it was simply how he moved, a combination of economy of motion and superhuman coordination, the same traits she had observed during his fight.
Cadence asked the question she had been wondering since she first saw the man. “Who are you?”
“I’m Storyteller,” he said simply. Apparently feeling no further need to explain himself, he shaded his eyes and looked up at the sky. Already, the bright blue sky was fading to a brilliant orange as the sun made its way to the horizon. “You’re from… Felisen? That's the closest village, right?”
“Yes,” Cadence replied, more curious than ever where he had come from if he wasn’t sure of that. “I’m Cadence.”
“Are you feeling up to walking now? I suspect we won’t reach your village before nightfall, but the hunters there have no doubt noticed your absence by now and will be searching for you. “
The very idea of her mother’s anger had Cadence jumping to her feet in alarm. Of course, she immediately realized how bad of an idea that was and braced herself for a wave of nausea. But… none came.
Whatever this “Storyteller” had done to heal her, it had worked even better than glintcaps. She would need to figure out what that was, somehow. She squinted as she looked at the increasingly enigmatic man, but she found herself trusting him anyway. “Yeah,” she finally responded. “I can walk. Let me grab my bag.”
#
The pair made good time, and before long, they were walking along the same paths through the vernal forest that Cadence had taken to get to the barrens before Cadence realized that she was following Storyteller rather than the other way around. “Hey.” After nearly an hour walking in silence, her voice sounded loud in her own ears. Storyteller turned an inquisitive look over his shoulder in reply. “How do you know where you’re going? I’ve never seen you around here before.”
“It’s a gift,” he said simply, his steps never slowing.
Cadence narrowed her eyes at the brief answer. Fine. If that was how he wanted it, she could play the quiet game too.
She continued following him in silence, her eyes taking in the woods as she walked. As beautiful as ever, the setting sun and the beautiful colors of twilight only made the forest more enchanting. She only paused once, as she recognized a familiar series of scuffs in the dirt and underbrush. Her little fight with the bramble-spawn seemed inconsequential after the monster of the barrens. The… ogre, Storyteller had called it. Whatever that meant. She almost opened her mouth to ask, then remembered his last answer and forced it closed. Biting down her questions felt unnatural, but she didn’t want to give the mysterious man the satisfaction of another half-answer.
As they walked, Cadence began to notice the looks Storyteller was giving her over his shoulder. At first, she crossed her arms over her chest uncomfortably when she noticed the looks, making sure her vest stayed closed over her ripped and sweat-soaked shirt. But she quickly realized they weren’t those kinds of looks. He seemed curious more than anything else. That curiosity grew over the miles into true puzzlement. Twilight was well on its way to full darkness when they reached the side of the little brook where Cadence had taken lunch.
“How are you okay?” He asked bluntly.
Cadence pulled up short, and blinked in confusion at the question. “Uhm… what?”
“How are you okay?” He repeated, looking her over. His eyes had narrowed suspiciously. “We’ve come, what, eight miles? With a few to go? So you’ve walked probably close to twenty miles today, in addition to your sprint to get away from the ogre before I could get to you. And then you were knocked out. But you’re keeping up with my pace.”
Cadence’s brows slowly knitted together, and she cast a look back up the trail. Had she really come that far? She was only pretty sure he was right on the distances, but he was definitely right that she had been fast walking this whole time to keep up with the taller man’s brisk pace, yet she wasn’t even winded. In fact, she felt as good as she had when she set out that morning. How was that possible?
A look of shocked realization crossed his face, and he asked in a careful, quiet voice, “Cadence… Which way is north?”
Cadence instantly pointed to her side. She even turned her body a little bit, to make sure her arm was pointed just right.
“How did you know that? He asked in that same cautious tone.
Cadence opened her mouth to reply sarcastically. The sun was setting to her right, it wasn’t exactly hard to find north. But… she hadn’t even thought about the sun. She had just known, without even thinking about it. “I… I don’t know.” She finally answered.
Storyteller looked more closely at Cadence, and she suddenly realized his full attention was focused on her for the first time. Previously, he had seemed almost perpetually distracted, his eyes endlessly roaming about. Even when he had fought the ogre, he hadn’t seemed this intense. They didn’t seem very muddy or unremarkable anymore, either. They were a warm, comforting brown, like the drinking chocolate her mother would make once or twice a winter, after a long hunt.
“Cadence.” His voice was as soft as ever, but it seemed to make the air shiver in an odd way, as if trembling with some unseen tension. “Check your attributes.”
“What?”
“It’s easy. Just concentrate. Think about wanting to see your attributes.”
“I… I don’t know what you- oh.” Cadence trailed off as even considering the request caused words to simply appear, as if they were floating in the air in front of her.
Cadence of Felisen
Level: Pre-Novice
Gifts:
Gift of the Wanderer - +3 to Stamina and Awareness
Accept another gift to reach Novice Level
Attributes:
Strength: 4
Resilience: 4
Stamina: 9 (6+3)
Coordination: 6
Speed: 5
Will: 5
Knowledge: 4
Focus: 4
Awareness: 9 (6+3)
Charm: 5
Somehow, Cadence had received her first gift.
She opened her mouth, and of course, that was when she heard her mother’s voice, calling her name in the distance.