448 348 – Bone and Muck

I came up near a tree trunk, ducking just as the riding lizard’s tail lash struck the same.

he taunted.

[You have struck your target with a YELLOW critical for double damage.]

Nothing came flying off him, but there was a deep cut in his side.

he activated.

historical

Swish, swish, swish, went his claws as [Wild Dance] kept me well out of harm’s way.

I told him.

He fell back before Heart’s Defender, and lunged in. It seems so predictable, in hindsight. Even while my weapon was disappearing into my inventory, my empty hand came back, the fingers extending, splaying.

I caught his neck, my talons curving into the side, spraying him, myself, the entire glen with his blood. My Might was five, my Strength a six, and [Slayer of Beasts] added two on top of it. Sixteen base damage, as much as my yellow critical without the ability.

.....

Grasping his neck with my other hand, I hefted him, swung him against the nearest tree trunk.

he demanded, as his neck broke.

I sent, as he died.

“You’ve seen who I am. What I’m capable of.” I said in the direction of the surrounding bushes. “You know I can sense where you are. This isn’t even a contest; just go away.”

one said, coming from behind and to the left of me.

chanted the other three.

I pleaded with them.

said the one to my right front.

The woods kept it from being perfect, but they took up positions as close to the corners of a square as they dared. One would lunge in, then another, feint after feint after feint...

Feint skill is resisted by Resolve. Although most of my skill points in that statistic were specific to Resist Fear, and a smattering of other troublesome emotions, I didn’t find their tactics so dangerous. Did I take wounds, get pulled off my feet not once, but twice? Yes, yes, these things also happened.

But take notice, kind reader, that I am writing my memoirs, and they are not.

In the end, the remaining two reverted to savagery, to blind attacks that left them open.

It was wasteful, but I downed as much meat as my multiple stomachs could contain. For all the effort required, there were pitiful and few adaptions that I hadn’t gotten from other animals. If they could acquire magic from eating the dead, it was an ability magical in nature, and not natural.

I was drenched in reptilian blood. It covered my scales, and seeped underneath. It was in my ears, my nose, my eyes.

There was no help for it, I turned east away from the setting sun. In the alkali stream between Bone Lake and the Muck, I washed away...

said a crayfish.

I admitted.

she said.

I remembered being about the size of my current thumb. The near-constant fear and hunger. I said.

She pounced on a piece of flesh, curling around it as though it might attempt an escape.

I reached out, grasped it in my bare hand. I asked it.

It rolled its eyes, sending me nothing but panicked instincts.

she admitted.

The fish, of a size birth-me would have been afraid of, crunched and crumbled in my grasp, dying in a flash of pain and surprise.

It took about forty five minutes, moving around rocks to make her a castle of stacked rocks.

I said.

I said.

I was able to use the Shroud spell to gather some of the darkness around me, as I worked my way from wooded grove to wooded grove. Whether it was the focus needed to maintain the spell, or my nose scenting everything through a haze of blood, or just snoozing while standing with a full belly, I became aware of the enemy scout just barely before we were in striking distance of each other.

He paused there in shock, yellow eyes expanding as he realized what he was seeing.

[You have scored a RED critical...]

It wasn’t surprising, since he wasn’t defending himself. I swept forward, Heart’s Defender blinking in from my inventory, extending into the center of his chest. Parallel and just to the side of his breastbone, sliding effortlessly between his ribs.

The weight of my charge carried us both against a tree trunk, forcing my sword out through his back.

His eyes focused, for just an instant. “I’ve told them.” he said, “My group. Your location is now known to us. Demon...”

And then, without even a soul spill, he was no longer there.

I... it didn’t feel victorious, standing there in the dark, over the body of an adolescent. Over some child who just didn’t stand a chance. Thinking of it in those terms, a tightness in my chest began, trying to make me vomit.

There was no time for such foolishness. I hastened southward, just making the edge of the next grove as other scouts closed in from the left and right, bearing torches. There was muttering and exclamations and the usual stuff that goes from finding the body of a fellow soldier.

One of them rushed to the edge of their grove, fired an arrow into mine. It passed just over my right shoulder blade. It was almost as if...

The second arrow struck my left buttock, and stuck there. He could see me! Through the darkness, that archer could see me!

I fled deeper south through my grove, somehow avoiding getting hamstrung further.

In spite of the best first aid I could give myself, the hobgoblins hounded my trail of blood. I fled to the south-east, across the river, as planned.

My System locked my legs.

[You have detected a trap. Focus on this message to highlight or disarm...]

I chose to highlight it; it was some other hunter’s fox trap, much like the larger bear traps, but made on a scale for killing rabbits or crippling foxes. Normally, I would spring the traps.

Not that I object to traps; I just find the indiscriminate harming of creatures in a world where some of them are sentient... Okay, I guess I object to the principles of traps, if not to the specific use in controlled circumstances.

At any case, I stepped around and continued generally south-east. There was no surprised yet rewarding scream from behind me, so I figured that my pursuers had also found the trap.

But, well before the moon crested (it was a waning third of itself that night), I found myself looping around back onto my trail. I was just too tired to continue, and although I was only taking a point of damage every half hour from bleeding, I was getting close to half health. If I didn’t turn the tables on my pursuers now, I might not have the energy later.

Worse, they might find me after I collapsed, or settled in for sleep.

And then I remembered where I was. The hydra generally hung out on the western end of the Muck, and we were in the northeastern fringe. I could just go forward from here, across my own trail, which I did, and...

I reached the swampland known as the Muck around midnight; though not full, there was enough moonlight for my pursuers to see me, just before I dove beneath the waves and activated [Titanic Swimming].

It was a repeat of the dusty run of a few days ago; I had evolutions for breathing muddy water, and triggered them to start. Through the water, over occasional mounds of silt, I fled, always returning to the painful, choking water.

It was worse going for them, and they gave up the chase slightly before dawn.

I don’t know the species name off the top of my head. It’s one of those partially see-through ones that infest the Muck.