“Again,” she said, voice rasping.
“You sure about that?” Hunter asked, skeptical. She looked paper-pale, her breathing shallow. By his count, she’d been hit by the curse six or seven times already.
“Just do it.”
“Alright,” Hunter shrugged. “It’s your funeral.”
Hunter circled behind the Bramble Blight and yanked the burlap sack off its gnarled head. The creature twitched violently, its crimson eyes flaring with rage. Wasting no time, it threw a blood curse at the first living thing in its sight – Fawkes. She reeled as the magic hit her, but went straight back to cycling.
“Are you sure it’s not feeling pain or anything?” Hunter asked as he severed the vines in the hogtied Bramble Blight’s limbs for what felt like the umpteenth time.
“Ask it yourself, if you’re so worried,” Fawkes grumbled. “It was your idea in the first place.”
Hunter said nothing – he just braced himself and stepped in front of the creature long enough for it to blast him with its blood curse as well. Then, calmly, he replaced the burlap sack over its head and went back to cycling his Essence.
It had been his idea.
Cheesing their way back into the Blood Grove had been a piece of cake. They simply severed the jugular-like vines of two of the three Bramble Blights that had been standing at the invisible border that separated them from the rest of the Weald. The creatures couldn’t reach out and fight back. All they could do was stand there and bleed their crimson sap until they keeled over.
The last of the three creatures, they’d kept alive. They’d crippled its gnarled limbs, bound them with rope, and covered its head with a burlap sack.
Hunter hadn’t felt too good with himself about that. For all he knew, the Bramble Blights could have been sentient. Fawkes assured him that they were just a bunch of roots and sticks animated by magic, but he had a gnawing suspicion she wasn’t entirely sure herself.
As far as ways to train went, it was an unconventional but effective one. They’d take turns, one getting hit with a curse while the other kept watch for any signs of more Blights approaching from deeper inside the grove. Fawkes had insisted they’d be safe as long as they stayed near the treeline’s edge, and so far, nothing had disturbed them. The grove remained quiet, its eerie stillness adding an unsettling backdrop to their grim practice.
Cheesing the Blights had earned two points in Opportunist. It now sat at 16, and the critical hit chance and damage bonuses it granted were starting to feel very substantial. Apart from that, he kept working on his Essence Purge and Reinforced Channels, which had increased to 9 and 13 respectively.
He’d also gotten a big bag of crafting materials from the remains of the Blights – hearts, eyes, vines, brambles, thorns. They should be enough to raise his Craft Spirit Charm all the way to 25, and then some.
Not bad for a morning’s work.
Fawkes had managed to learn how to replicate the effects of the Essence Purge Ability too. That had huge implications – so big that Hunter could scarcely wrap his mind around. He couldn’t be sure, of course, but the conclusion he kept circling back to was this: the System wasn’t the source of his abilities. Instead, it seemed to be a tool – a framework to record, quantify, gamify, and perhaps refine what was already there.
Oddly enough, the simple act of theorizing this had triggered a notification:
He still had no clear understanding of what Insight truly was or how it functioned. All he knew was that it was vital to his class and had a direct impact on his mystical abilities. Early on, when he’d first entered Elderpyre, gaining Insight had occasionally unlocked new Abilities – though that hadn’t happened in quite some time. Why that was the case, he couldn’t even begin to guess.
“That’s enough for today,” Fawkes said. She looked sick. Repeatedly getting hit by curses and then force-purging them out of her system had taken quite a toll on her. “Finish the creature and let’s get out of here.”
He did – though slicing through the creature’s jugular vine earned him no point in Opportunist. There was a limit to how many freebies the System was willing to grant him, it looked like. He quickly carved out the essence, heart and eyes, as well as a few other parts, and they left the Blood Grove.
“Back to where we set up camp yesterday?” he asked.
Fawkes just nodded and trudged on. She was too spent to talk.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like shite,” she said. “But it’s a good thing. It’d been a while since this old dog learned a new trick.”
“You think the others back at the Training Grounds will be able to learn how to purge as well?”
“Not as fast as I did. But yes, maybe – as long as we find another way to curse them.” She wiped her brow with the back of her hand, blinking sweat from her eyes. “If only we could throw a rope around a Blight and drag it all the way back there… Wouldn’t it be a grand thing?”
“The look on Wroth’s face would be worth the effort.” Hunter chuckled.
“I know, right?”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
They spent the rest of the way in weary silence; the only one that had any energy left was Fyodor. Once the excitement of the skirmish had worn off, he’d spent the rest of the last few hours napping.
By midday, they stopped at the same spot they’d set up camp the previous night. Fawkes insisted they shouldn’t be anywhere near the Blood Grove past dusk, and that little clearing was as good a place as any.
“I’ll close my eyes for a spell,” Fawkes said, pulling a bedroll seemingly out of thin air and laying it out on the ground. She shot him a tired glance. “You head over to your side of things and get some rest too. The mutt and your ravens can keep watch.”
That’s exactly what he did—though rest, in his case, was subjective. He spent the better part of an hour zoning out while doing stretches and running a few laps around the Happy Motel’s courtyard. Afterward, he grabbed a quick lunch. His mind was exhausted, but his body ached for movement.
When Hunter returned to Elderpyre, Fawkes was still asleep. Fyodor lay sprawled beside her, his big head resting protectively on her chest. Hunter knelt down and instinctively checked her breathing – a paranoid habit he’d picked up as a child. Back then, his mother would collapse on the couch after pulling back-to-back shifts at work. Things had gotten even worse when she’d started shooting up.
The steady rise and fall of Fawkes’s chest reassured him, though the old unease never fully left. He didn’t have the heart to wake her up, so he decided to let her rest a bit more. God knew she needed it. With a faint smile, he reached over and gave Fyodor’s ears a playful tussle, which the direwolf accepted with a contented huff. Then, settling down as quietly as he could, he reached into his backpack and fished out the sap-stained burlap bag of Bramble Blight parts he’d gathered earlier.
It was time to put them to use.
Hunter hadn’t touched his Craft Spirit Charm Ability in quite a while. So far, he only knew how to create two things; Corpse Hair Knots, which were charms that provided one-off protection against harmful magic, and Bone Charms. Those were a way to use the latent power contained in bones, essences, and other monster parts to reproduce unique effects.
His only attempt to make one had so far been only a partial success. The so-called Wasting Ancient Bone Charm of Warped Flesh turned his skin as tough as a low-dweller’s, but also afflicted him with a damage-over-time effect. He wasn’t going to admit it out loud, but Fawkes had been right to confiscate it. That damn thing was unreliable to say in the least.
Of course, that wasn’t unexpected. At the time, his Ability was only at 1. With his current 10, he expected to be able to do better. Armored skin wasn’t a bad bad thing to have in a scrap, so he set off to recreate the Bone Charm – without the drawbacks of his previous attempt, hopefully.
For starters, he’d need a clean surface to draw his transmutation circle on. Fawkes had given him a tarp to lay under his bedroll during rainy nights. It was clean, sturdy, and big enough to suit his needs. He pulled it out from his backpack, smoothed it on the ground, and got to work.
First, he gathered the tools and materials he’d need, laying them out neatly on the tarp before him; a carving knife, an Ancient Bone, an Essence of a Low-Dweller, a few pieces of Warped Flesh. Biggs and Wedge, who’d been perching on a nearby tree, landed next to the tarp, curious. He paid them no heed. His attention was fixed on his work. This time, everything had to be just right.
Hunter drew the knife across his forearm, wincing slightly as the blade bit into his skin. Thumbs were a nightmare to heal – he’d learned that lesson the hard way. He had no idea why people in films did that. It was stupid. The crimson blood pooled quickly, and he mixed it with the Essence of a Low-Dweller. The grim, wispy substance had the consistency of cotton candy.
He dipped his fingers into the resulting mixture and began finger-painting a circle onto the tarp, the lines glistening faintly in the afternoon light. Once the base was complete, he moved on to the intricate symbols and runes that would bring the transmutation to life. The sigils flowed from his hands as if on instinct.
Hunter had no idea what any of the strange sigils and runes actually meant, didn’t even pretend to understand their origin. Their purpose, however, came to him naturally, as if they were ingrained in his very being. He figured it had something to do with the pact he’d made with Lord Herne.
As he finished drawing the last of the runes, Hunter felt the transmutation circle come alive with power, and a kind of supernatural clarity filled his mind. He savored every moment of it. It was almost intoxicating.
Next came the carving part. He picked up the small, wickedly sharp carving knife and the Ancient Bone. Its surface felt dense and slightly porous beneath his fingers. He turned it over in his hands, studying it carefully before beginning to etch fine lines and symbols into its surface. In his mind’s eye, he could see the ur-shape – the pure, ideal form the bone was meant to take. All he had to do was replicate it in the physical world.
The process was slow but satisfying. He worked methodically, shaving off slivers of bone here and there, scraping away imperfections and slowly coaxing the material into the form he envisioned. Precision was everything, and there was no room for error. This went beyond simple craftsmanship. This was the closest Hunter had ever come to experiencing the art of creating art.
When he was finally sure the bone was as close to its ideal shape as it would get, he set it down and reached for the pieces of Warped Flesh. He closed his eyes and let his mind reach for the remnants of Essence that still resided within them, carefully extracting them and using them to infuse the carved bone. Once drained of their Essence, the pieces of dry low-dweller flesh all but dematerialized.
This time, the bone absorbed the Essence of no fewer than seven pieces of Warped Flesh before it felt full to the brim – two more than in Hunter’s previous attempt. He could feel it pulsing with power, thrumming in sync with his own heartbeat. This was the moment that would make or break the crafting process. Hunter summoned the energies of the transmutation circle, draining it dry to seal up the Essence in the bone. The mystic sigil on the back of his hand came alive, burning hot and cold at the same time.
This time, it all felt right.
It all felt as it should be.
With a final surge of Essence, Hunter completed the crafting.
Hunter picked up the charm and examined it. It was every bit as horrible-looking as the previous iteration. The surface of the bone had turned tan, rough, and blotchy, like actual low-dweller skin. Still, he couldn’t suppress a wide smile.
“It’s quite a feeling, isn’t it?” Fawkes asked.
Hunter spun around, startled. Fawkes was still lying on her bedroll, but her eyes were wide open, fixed on him and his handiwork.
“How long have you been awake?” he asked, surprised. He hadn’t even heard her stir.
“Long enough. Don’t get so alarmed – it’s not like I caught you with your willy in your hand. Just tell me you did a better job this time.”
Hunter handed the bone charm to her. She hesitated for a bit, but took it.
“Critical success,” he said. “I’m not sure exactly what that means yet, but yes – I did a better job this time.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” She handed him the bone charm back with a lop-sided grin.
“Now make more.”
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