NOVEL NEXT Chapter Thirteen – The Forest
The Real World...
It didn’t take me long to clamber down the mountain. I wasn’t in a hurry, enjoying the sensations of life, getting used to being truly physical, and all the limitations of it.
No more rebirths, for one. I had this one life left now, and I wasn’t going to let anything take it away without one hell of a fight… even if I was once again retracing the leveling grind.
The Curse gave me all the Karma I needed. If it had the power to instantly turn a human girl into a Hag, it had all the Karma I needed to gain what I wanted.
Of course, circumstances were very different this time. I wasn’t in a dreamscape where the Curse was trying to kill me over and over and erase me when I didn’t want to die anymore.
That said, as I was coming down, I was looking over everything for things that might be useful. There had been no herbs or other reagents in the dreamscape, but now, now I could take advantage of rune chemistry, and start making things.
I’d have to make an Investing Diagram to start the process. I also needed to find an adequate temporary home for the soul of my sword, trembling in my heart and eager to be released into the real world.
Finding water wouldn’t be hard, but my Vajra was already up, and Diamond would soon follow.
It would take time for me to build up my supplies, but time I had plenty of.
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The bright moon was riding high in the sky, and the dark moon was just a dark shadow occluding some stars on the horizon.
I closed my eyes and let Renewal wash over me.
It was like an invisible wave of spiritual power, washing over me and through me, the pulse and breath of the living world flowing through me.
Everybody in a magical world had a Renewal time. It was the time when magic surged and peaked within and outside you. It was the time where you resisted long-term magical effects, where your mind and soul were cleansed and able to receive magic again, where x/day abilities started over once again.
Very importantly, it was where you could push all those incremental increase levers, and get stronger.
For most people, this was dawn. Evil folk preferred dusk, or the dark of night when Shoul was high, about 3 AM. Midnight, or Highmoon, when Sylune was high and bright, was the time of Silver Magic, and also popular to the adventurous sort.
I took my Monk Level, and this time grabbed my Wave-Skating Steps early. Based on my AB of +10, a +30 increase to my Movement Rate would be greatly appreciated.
I spent two hours in Meditation to calm myself down and re-center the changes to me, then in the dark of the night beneath the scattered trees, I continued on my way.
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The spear came right out of the tree. It was like as not a perfect ambush attack, aiming right for the throat, coming right through the wood as if it were a door, not a perfectly fine oak.
I nudged myself three inches left as I reached up, grabbing the living wood of the shaft, twisting to center myself to it, and kicked up.
The barked hand holding onto it had just emerged from the tree when my foot hit the hardwood like a chopping axe, and hacked the livewood haft in two instantly.
The woman’s face on the trunk was emerging, her skin of bark and hair of moss and leaves, fingers like finely carved twigs. Her somewhat crude lips parted in a cry of pain as the spear was broken. I stepped forward into her lunge and drove my fist into her midsection.
Her flesh was rootlike, but it seemed she still breathed somehow, as it woofed out of her when I hit her. My other hand grabbed her extended arm, and I threw her over and past me like she weighed half what I did.
She cried out, a strangely wispy sound as she smashed into a rock, not another tree she could slip into, and fell to the leaf-covered floor of the forest, stunned.
I relieved her of the two halves of the spear with a tap of my foot, noting the magically reinforced wooden spearhead. She could probably mend the thing, so I didn’t confiscate it. I did crouch over her, staring at her remarkably organic, human-like eyes as they began to clear.
She met my eyes, and froze as she saw my spread hands, the black nails looking particularly cruel right at the moment.
“I’m looking for some information,” I stated in fluent Fey, and she blinked.
“Murderer! Killer! Forestfoe! Greensl-ouch!” she began to rant at me defiantly, and I thorked her forehead impassively.
The back of her skull bounced off the rock behind her, and her eyes revolved a few times.
“Mind those hands,” I said in a flat, undisturbed voice, bearing down on her. The sharp edges of her fingers stilled. “Whether or not I need to kill you is up to you. If you attack me, I will kill you promptly, respecting your desire to do battle and suffer the negative consequences thereof. As you attacked me, I am allowed repayment for the inconvenience.
“I am looking for some information. Are you going to answer me, or do I kill you?”
I think the absolutely casual attitude I had towards her unnerved her more than anything. She stiffened and didn’t try anything, staring at my hands, the finger that had idly hit like a club on her forehead. “What do you want to know, Hagspawn?” she hissed.
I thorked her forehead again, her skull bounced and her eyes rolled. It took a bit longer for her eyes to clear.
“Hagspawn are the male children of Hags, usually by ogres or hill Jotuns, perhaps minotaurs. You will notice that I am not male, nor of any kind of Jotun or Tauren blood. Calling me a Hagspawn is like calling you a satyr.” Her mouth parted, then clamped shut as I curled my fingers again. “First of all, why are you calling me a murderer? I’ve been awake all of twenty hours in this life, and the only thing I’ve killed is some wolves who found themselves on the wrong side of the lunch menu.”
Her eyes fixed on me. “You killed Trualli and Woomasa! You ate them!”
I didn’t even blink. “No, I didn’t, because like I said, I’ve only been out here twenty hours, and only met you and some overgrown lupines. Now the Hagborn that preceded me might have killed them, but she’s pretty much dead now, this stupid curse of a skin condition is all that’s left of her, and I’ll be rid of it soon enough.” She wanted to say something more, and I lifted my fingers. She clamped up.
“Now, then, where exactly am I right now?”
Her verdant eyes studied mine, but I think I was really unsettling her. After all, I wasn’t acting like a frenzied berserker or something, my tone was quite neutral and apathetic, like I was talking down to a child… and it was totally obvious that she wasn’t my match.
“You are in the Sidhete,” she admitted unwillingly. “The great forest of the Sidhedatol elves. They are aware of your crime and will hunt you down!”
“Since I’ve committed no crime, that’s going to be pretty hard,” I replied, filing the name away. I didn’t know any Elvish, and I couldn’t learn it unless I was exposed to it, so oh well. I did wonder what kind of the many kinds of elves they might be. “Secondly, is there a large Hag coven nearby? I’m thinking my Hagmother is there, and it’s high time I fed her to the Land.”
She blinked, and actually looked confused for a moment.
“I’m a Hagchild. That’s a Forsaken, non-magical daughter of a Hag,” I supplied helpfully, voice as flat as ever. “I’ll never be a Hag, I’ll never be a witch, wield magic, summon fiends, administer curses, or do any of the many wickedly fun things Hags are capable of. On the other hand, I very, very much want to kill my Hagmother, and all my aunties and grandmothers of that ilk.
“Since you want to kill me, and I doubt you care which of us kills the other, why don’t you point me in the right direction, and I’ll be about my business, and you can go back to sunbathing and standing in puddles.”
My eyes narrowed icily. The cajoling, wasn’t.
She seemed to be considering that, and seemed to think that actually sounded like a good idea. Wicked appreciation for death either way glinted in her eyes.
“And yes, yes, you can spread word to all your fey friends that I’m on the way there. If they attack me based on what you said, I’m sure I’ll just kill them all, and you’ll be the one responsible for killing them. I suggest you send a bunch of folk you don’t like, maybe Unseelie Court or something, to be rendered down into mulch.”
She swallowed, an interesting thing to see. My complete apathy over what was going to literally be a fey execution squad clearly was impressing her.
“That way.” I followed her pointing arm, noted it down in my Visual File as an absolute direction indicator. “Two mountains over. There is a stream that comes down from the north. Past the waterfall is a valley warded by illusions and servants of the Hags. Their coven lies within.”
“Oh, goooooood,” I drew the word out. “You might want to keep your involvement in this on the sly. They might just win and wonder who sent me to them and all, you know.”
Her eyes sparked again, with a ripple of fear. Being on the bad side of a Hag wasn’t a thing to be happy about.
“And no, I won’t tell them a dryad sent me. I don’t share information with things I’m about to feed to the Land.”
She wriggled slightly, but didn’t move otherwise. “You shall die, by the forest or the Hags, it makes no difference!”
“Continue thinking that if it helps you sleep at night.” I rose and got off her, starting down the hill. She watched my feet gliding over the ground as if I was skating, leaving no trailsign behind me. “Hagmom’s waiting to die. Ta.”
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The scarred human girl disappeared from view remarkably quickly, for all her golden hair should have stood out in the green and brown. Salixa did not move for a few minutes, lost in thought despite herself.
The girl spoke Fey fluently, with tones of dominance and power, inflections that were as dangerous and threatening as those curled black nails.
The berserk thing that had clawed her way through the forest, slaughtering anything that got in her way, was definitely not the same thing.
Trualli and Woomasa had set out to kill the Hag-blood, and instead fallen into her claws and been consumed. The whole forest wept for their deaths. The nymph and the sylph had been true treasures of the forest.
Killed by the blood of a Hag. Salixa looked after the departing girl, who moved so uncannily, so smoothly, and whose gangly limbs struck with such terrible force and precision.
Hags killing Hags. The forest would only be better for it.
Letting certain parties know that there was a human girl wandering around, a perfect victim, would be equal parts disposing of the unwanted and tormenting the unlucky.
Her smile faded as she recalled those blue eyes, who seemed to be thirsting for her to do just that, to send trouble her way, and the dryad shuddered despite herself.
Perhaps she would wait a few more minutes, just to be on the safe side, although the plants about her reported that the girl was long gone…