Eight 4.7: The Gloominess of Forgotten Memories I (Patreon)

I dodged, rolling to my left to put distance between me and the thing that Sklein had become. Hard-earned training kept me going, turning me toward the hillside leading up to the top of the Glen’s waterfall. About halfway there, the dark creature’s Spitter talent kicked in, and a tree behind me rattled as something thunked into its trunk. I started counting.

At three seconds, he shot at me again, the missile whizzing like an angry bee flying past. I kept counting.

In the meantime, Ikfael’s javelins had whooshed at Sklein, piercing his torso one after the other, but the creature hadn’t collapsed. The natural toughness from becoming dark meant that they hadn’t penetrated deeply.

She dissipated Knight Otter and flowed into the pool. Then another stone javelin emerged from the earth. This time, it carried a Spiral Pierce and multiplied as Ikfael cast Thousand Arrows. The Glen sounded like a shooting range as the javelins machine-gunned into Sklein.

While the dark creature stumbled, he still didn’t fall even with his “chest” pin-cushioned. Was his core not located there? Had the transformation shifted it up or down?

As Ikfael had begun her attacks, the silver wolf pack ravaged the lesser undead. The ones stuck on the spikes were easy prey, their limbs torn from their bodies, but the soldier was tougher. His training lingered after death, and Moonlight’s illusions were useless; the undead relentlessly pursued the living without regard to their senses.

About then, I’d just made it to the top of the waterfall and ducked as a splinter of bone whizzed past me. It’d been three seconds in between shots. I kept counting.

The soldier that Ikfael had drowned rose from the stream. Now there were two of them on the field, so a handful of Moonlight’s pack peeled off to harass the newcomer and lead him away from the main action. In fact… lets get them all away from Sklein, I thought. A single splinter could prove lethal to a wolf.

I ducked again as Yuki carried the message to Mouser who yipped down below. I heard a splinter whizz by, as well as the sounds of the wolves acknowledging the instruction and them moving away. Still three seconds, I thought, but no sign of what the obscure talent does.

Dog’s Agility continued to flow through me, but I was the spell’s master, and I moved when I wanted to. My spells were mine to command—Lightning Arrow , then Spiral Pierce.

I popped up, drew, and shot at Sklein, aiming above where his heart would’ve been. A beat later, I repeated the motion, shooting the area below the heart. That second arrow banged into the beak already damaged by Ikfael’s attacks, causing it to shatter, splinters sent flying.

Sklein still didn’t collapse. All the electricity from my Lightning Arrows had done was to cause the dark creature to stutter for a second or two. Wasted mana that, but it had to be tried.

The next time I popped up to shoot, I drilled a Spiral Pierce arrow into Sklein’s throat to no result. I did, however, see that Knight Otter had reformed behind him, and she sent her spear piercing through one of the spider-leg joints. A quick Cat’s Claw from her, and she sliced through, causing Sklein to stumble.

A fifth leg began to grow from his torso, and he righted himself, turning to face Knight Otter. A splinter shot from his ruined beak, blowing a hole through the water sculpture.

Gods damn it, I thought. Being dark is such a cheat.

As Knight Otter re-filled her torso with more water, Yuki’s qi brightened within me to grab my attention. ‘Mouser says the wolves took down a soldier and found more than one core.’

What? How is that— No, never mind. How many and where?

‘In addition to the primary in the chest Four secondaries at the hips and shoulders.’

Another leg began to emerge from Sklein, which freed up one of the others to swipe at Knight Otter. Which hips? I thought, but there was no way to know. We’d just have to attack all of them. But first, the easier targets.

I yelled out what I’d learned, so that Ikfael knew as well. She must’ve had the same idea as me too, because over the course of the next few seconds, a collection of Spiral Pierce arrows and javelins sprouted from the dark creature’s shoulders. The actual location of the cores turned out to be about two inches down from the clavicle and two inches in from the side body.

The loss of them sent Sklein staggering, and darklight leaked from the holes, the coal-dust-like energy swirling around him—swirling but not dissipating. When Sklein spit his next splinter, the darklight went with it. The splinter shot through Knight Otter again, but the darklight clung to the sculpture. The water lost cohesion like it’d been unceremoniously spilled out of a pail.

Alarm rang through me. Concern, anger, and something else too... a feeling of losing something I hadn’t known I’d had. Ikfael! I thought, and then my consciousness whooshed down toward Sklein. Behind me, my body fell to the ground, disappearing behind the cliff’s edge.

The last thing I heard was Yuki’s cry, ‘Ollie/Eight!’

###

Darkness enveloped me, permeated by a lingering sense of dislocation. A moment of panic followed—the last thing I’d seen was Knight Otter falling. My own body too.

Is she all right? Am I? Where’s Yuki? Yuki? I can’t feel you inside me. There were too many unanswered questions crowding my head. My breath started to come fast.

Even after all these years, my fears had never gone entirely away. I’d just gotten better at recognizing them, of setting them aside so that I could get the work done. Whenever I’d felt incapable or overwhelmed, I’d focused on what was within my control. So, lost in the dark, I pushed past my fears to put away the questions and properly examine the situation. There’d be no solutions without information.

First, I checked my Status phone:

Conditions
Occupied (Evolving*), Out of Body

This certainly didn’t feel like an out-of-body experience. A cool, damp air blew across my skin; it flowed into and out of my lungs as I brought my rough breathing under control. I also noticed there were no other sounds besides that, but I could smell my sweat and the scent of the woods on me. The weight of my armor was missing and so were my weapons and my pack. Even my arming jacket was gone. All I had were the clothes I’d worn underneath.

When I opened my spirit eyes, the dark turned all-encompassing bright. Everything and everywhere was a density of spirit that made it impossible to tell where I was. There were walls of some kind, but the details were lost in the brightness. It hurt my eyes so much, I became dizzy like never before, and I had to close them or else risk falling.

The darkness surrounded me again, so I switched tack to try casting Night Eyes instead. The runes took longer to bring to mind than I liked, since the spell wasn’t one I’d used often. The need just wasn’t there thanks to my spirit eyes, and I’d only learned it because I was a magic hoarder. On the rare occasions when I had used the spell, Yuki had been there to jog my memory or cast it for me.

When the mana clicked into place, the spell worked! A tunnel came into view. The walls were made of limestone and, behind me, just about fifteen yards away, looked to be the exit. The closer I came to it, though, the more my belly sank. There was the impression that I was doing something I’d regret.

Yet it really was the exit. I could see the Glen—a weird distorted view of my home, but it was my home, and I sensed that as long as I stepped out of the tunnel into that open space, I’d be back there. Something in me knew it to be true.

Was the impression that it’d be a mistake a trick? A way to delay my return to the battle? The source of the feeling wasn’t Taoism-Sensei or my intuition either. It was more ineffable than either of those things.

Throughout, a sense of urgency had been running through me, one that I did my best to control. Hurrying wouldn’t help nor would shallow thinking. If I was being affected by a spirit- or consciousness-altering ability of some kind, then the situation demanded deep focus and critical examination.

I briefly opened my spirit eyes to be surrounded by brightness once again. This time, though, I leaned against the tunnel wall and forced them to stay open until I noticed how the exit was less dense than the wall, like maybe it was a permeable boundary.

An idea that’d been percolating popped into my head. Maybe I’m inside someone’s or something’s spirit? Except the experience was unlike any of my previous spirit journeys—not the ones with Ikfael, the Deer God, or even when I’d gone wandering in my sleep. I could cast spells and use my Status camera. There was no silver cord no matter how hard I looked, and when I tried to reach into my chest to pull out a weapon, my hand ran into my shirt. What next to try?

“Hello,” I whispered, and that was another differentiator—I could speak. So if not a spirit journey, then a dream or delusion? My Night Eyes a hallucination, as was me looking at my Status and seeing I was out of my body? How else could I describe the weird blend of experiences?

This isn’t helping, I thought as I closed my spirit eyes. I need to pick a direction—out or in. Unless that sense of knowledge was an illusion too. No, wait, there’s one more thing to check.

I brought Hollow Night to mind, the spell wrapping around to hide me from the universe. In the past, it had let me escape the grip of some of my opponents’ spells, but when I popped back into “reality,” my circumstances hadn’t changed. The limestone tunnel, my sweat-stained clothes, the exit—everything was the same. Well, it’d been a long shot.

It really did seem like I had to decide on a direction to go. My head and heart told me to get back to the battle to defend myself and the Glen, yet when I took a step in that direction, I experienced the feeling of regret again, as well as a subtle sense of… sorrow. Like, like I was abandoning something important—something so important it ran all the way through me.

In my previous life, I’d almost drowned in sorrow, so I knew to my core what my own sorrow felt like. That was me urging me to head downward—the sensation emerging from the depths of my soul.

It wasn’t lost on me that before I’d appeared in this place, I’d seen Ikfael attacked, which was then shortly followed by a sense of loss. Her blessing was still active inside—I didn’t need to check my Status to know it—but putting all the clues together, I had to wonder if my leaving would somehow endanger her.

Well, I couldn’t take that chance, so I turned right around to walk back into the tunnel.

If you lived long enough, you learned to trust your instincts. Either that, or you learned not to trust them. In my case, I had learned to trust them, and I also trusted Leilu and Moonlight to defend me and the Glen in my stead. Those two excelled at leading prey around in circles; I put my faith in them.

Whatever this place was, I committed to my decision and began to jog downward. After about a minute Night Eyes ran out, and I had to recast the spell. In the meantime, the tunnel had steadily descended in a nearly straight line. While the walls looked just like the kind I’d found in the caves under the escarpment to the west of the Glen, there were no stalagmites, stalactites, or branching paths. There weren’t any rocks, ripples, or pockets in the ground either. This place was like the idea of a tunnel rather than the real thing, and depending on how far it extended, I’d run out of mana before I reach the end.

So when the timer for Night Eyes ran out next, I let the spell lapse and infused my eyes with qi instead. The difference was nearly literally day and night. The darkness poured in, but not completely—I vaguely discerned the outlines of my hands in front of my face, as well as the open space in front of me versus the tunnel walls.

There was nothing on the ground to catch unwary feet, so I kept going like that for several minutes, mostly to make sure I didn’t encounter any surprises. Then, I steadily picked up speed, moving from a jog to the ground-eating lope hunters used for traveling long distances.

The tunnel continued on and on, and I kept my hands up in front in case I ran into anything, my head forward fighting to see what was ahead. Doubt ate at the corners of my thoughts. Fear too, for that matter, but I ran through both.

I was just starting to consider casting Dog’s Agility when I noticed a slight rumbling in the distance. Up ahead, I spotted a variation in the darkness. Bringing my breathing back under control, by habit I tried to slip into the land but bounced right back out. Dummy, I thought. There’s no land here to become one with. Still, I padded forward carefully.

The tunnel opened into a wide-open space the boundaries of which were beyond my qi-enchanted eyes. The sound of rock grinding against rock became clearer. Urgently I brought Night Eyes to mind, stumbling only a little in making the mental image perfect, and the cavern lit up. From where the sound originated, high up in the wall of a cavern nearly fifty yards across, a giant snake corkscrewed through the stone from right to left. The body looked to be at least ten yards in diameter and covered in a pattern of gray and white scales.

For a moment, my mind blanked. I’d heard about the monsters that lived under the escarpment and hoped I’d never encounter one. They were creatures of legend in the village. Not nightmare, fortunately. People were apparently too insignificant a source of power for them to pursue, so in the rare times they’d come to the surface, they hadn’t bothered with the village. The last time was something like three hundred years ago.

The hunters’ guidance on the creatures was simple: don’t poke the snake if you encounter one. Stay hidden and let it go on its way. My talents provided me with another option, my Status camera.

Error
Not a valid talent vessel.

Okay, this confirms the experience isn’t real, but let’s not take any chances, just in case. I crouched small against the wall, cast my Camouflage, and tore my eyes away from the snake to let them rove over the rest of the room.

A pool of water occupied half the space, the surface rippling from the snake’s passage. Still no stalagmites and stalactites, though. It was just a big, empty room shaped like an upside-down bowl. Except… faintly at the edge of my hearing, under the sound of rumbling rocks, I could’ve sworn I heard the sound of someone… hyperventilating?

The lights went out as the timer on Night Eyes elapsed. I opened my spirit eyes, and once again was engulfed by brightness. There were more variations in my view thanks to the distances of the various walls, as well as a spike in the density, about where the closest edge of the pool had stood.

I felt inward to gauge my magical reserves—I practically never worried about qi these days, but my body power and mana tanks were at about half full each. A Scentless Hunter and Night Eyes would eat about eight points’ worth of mana, dropping to me about twenty left. Not great but not bad either, so I went ahead to cast the spells.

All that had taken only a second or two of consideration, yet it was enough for the giant snake to finally disappear from view, its tail vanishing into the rock and not leaving any trace of its passage. Up where it’d been, the rock face was unmarred. Moments later, the noise of rocks grinding together faded, and the sound of someone hyperventilating became clearer.

I crept forward, and the air was instantly chillier inside the cavern, as if I’d walked into an icebox. There was a pressure too, like the walls and ceiling were pushing in on me. Goosebumps rose all along my arms; I felt the heat draining from my body.

Conditions
Occupied (Evolving*), Out of Body, Influenced (8)

I… what? The only time I’d been Influenced before was in Knight Ithia’s presence. There must a powerful creature nearby—high silvered if the condition’s rank was to be trusted.

Oftentimes conditions had ranks, but I’d never seen one as high as eight. Was it a synchronicity? A symbol inherent to this dream-like experience? Was I supposed to be traveling through my own spirit? The questions only grew, and all I could do was keep searching for leads to unravel the mystery.

At about halfway to where the spike in spirit density had been, I had to fight to keep my teeth from chattering. Night Eyes still didn’t reveal anything, though. Maybe whatever was causing the spike was in the water?

I moved faster, then. The giant snake didn’t look like it was coming back, and there were too many uncertainties regarding the impact the cold would have on… my spirit, my psyche? Who knew? Not me.

At the pool’s edge, my spells ran out again. I could still hear the… woman, it sounded like a woman out-of-control panting. She was nearby—not in the water like I’d thought, but along the edge just a couple of steps away. Up close, the density of spirit hurt too much to look at directly. Ah, I smelled the acrid stink of fear.

Gritting my teeth at the waste, I cast Night Eyes, but there really was nothing there. My Status camera didn’t reveal anything either, so I reached out… and touched an elbow. Instantly, a young woman was revealed to be standing in front of me.

The first thing I noticed were her eyes—they were blue like cornflowers. They looked right through me, though, staring at the water behind me. I might as well have been a ghost. The rest of her face was twisted in fear.

I turned to glance back, and my training kicked in—I leapt to the side, turning to get my hands up in front of me, ready to defend myself. The… the giant snake that had suddenly appeared in the water just as suddenly disappeared from view, as did the young woman.

I waited a breath, but didn’t hear anything approaching—only the young woman’s panting breaths. The cavern was otherwise as still as before. A suspicion niggled at the back of my head. It had been there before, but without any evidence, I’d discounted it. Now though…

I cautiously came up behind where the young woman had been and touched where her shoulder ought to be. Instantly, she reappeared once again, and before us both was the stonewater serpent—the great being who slept under the Glen, waking only once year on the summer solstice to gaze at the stars. Click, and this time my camera worked:

??? (Spirit of the Land, Stonewater Serpent, Silvered)
Talents: *Denied*

The serpent’s body rose about twenty feet from the water, her eyes locked on the young woman—the woman who had long, black hair hanging down her back, braided in the pattern of Voorhei’s hunters. Click.

Ikiira the Lodge Master (Human)
Talents: One With Water, Promising Start, A Hoarder in the Making

A sigh left me, the air frosting. This… this was the moment when Ikfael had sacrificed herself to save her village from the forest spirits’ curse. Sklein’s talent, The Gloominess of Forgotten Memories, had somehow trapped her in this moment, and I’d somehow tagged along.