BT II - Chapter 13 (Patreon)

A monkey chittered angrily at Micah, glaring at him as it clung to a branch.  He glanced up from the muddy footprint he was inspecting to look at the angry ball of fur.  Briefly, Micah considered bringing it down with a spell and actually having a cooked meal, but quickly he rejected the idea.  The prints in the soil were fresh, and smoke might bring unwanted attention.  If he was going to find his mysterious neighbor and make a good impression, the time to do so was now.

He lifted the fern that the track was hiding under to get another look.  Micah hardly had the tools or experience with tracking that Ravi did, but he’d spent a fair amount of time outside of Basil’s Cove hunting big game in his third and fourth timelines.  It wasn’t enough for his status sheet to record the knowledge as an official skill, but he could tell that his quarry was barefoot and running from the way the ball of their feet sank into the wet dirt.

The monkey screamed again.  Pacing Micah, it jumped from branch to branch above him screeching in alarm every time he stopped to check for more tracks.  Once again, Micah wondered what the annoying animal would taste like roasted, but he quickly returned to his primary concern, looking for broken branches and disturbed vegetation that might yield him another footprint.

Micah found another marking, a smear where his target had slipped in the mud just beneath a dead and rotting tree that hadn’t yet fallen.  He reached down and touched the dirt, frowning as he tried to make sense of the print.  There were toe marks, and a nearby indentation from a palm where they had fallen, so he knew the results were from a person.  At the same time, their tumble had ruined the tracks, leaving him a bit lost.

Then the monkey abruptly went silent.  Micah frowned, looking up just in time to see a flash of orange as a figure poked out from behind a tree and fire an arrow at him.

He jerked his head to the side, letting the projectile zip past his face even as he mouthed the words to haste.  His spell went off, and Micah sprang into motion just as his opponent fired another arrow.  This time, he didn’t even bother to dodge, letting it shatter against his new armor as he kicked the tall woman in the stomach, doubling her over from the force of the blow.

Before she could react, Micah slammed his shoulder into her, knocking the woman to the ground and pinning her to the muddy soil with his left hand while he held the knife he’d picked up by the river to her throat with his right.

She stared up at him, eyes wild and chest heaving as she tried to struggle out of Micah’s grasp.  Whoever she was, she was strong, clearly the beneficiary of a physical combat class, but her struggles were far from enough to unseat Micah.  He pressed the knife down, drawing a bead of blood on her neck as the edge broke through her ochre skin.

“Wait!” The woman interjected, going still as soon as she realized that she wasn’t breaking free of Micah’s grasp anytime soon.  “You’re not from the Roktoll tribe.  I didn’t mean to shoot you!”

“You did a pretty good job of shooting me for someone who didn’t mean to,” Micah responded dryly, not moving from her chest.

“No, I tried to shoot you,” she tried again frantically, Adam’s Apple bobbing under the knife to her throat.  “I just didn’t realize that you weren’t with the Roktoll ambush party.  I was out gathering mirage hawk tailfeathers for fletching when a couple of their warriors dropped from the trees.  I thought I had lost them by fording the Amghul River, but then Jakaw told me that someone was following me.  So, I started thinking, maybe one of the arrows that hit me was a tracer.”

“I understood probably ninety percent of the words you’re saying,” Micah remarked, stepping off of the woman and offering her a hand, “but it all makes zero sense to me.  Slow down and re-explain what’s happening like I just washed up on shore this morning.”

“Oh, thank you,” she took his hand in hers, engulfing Micah’s smaller limb in hers as she stood up.  She winced slightly as she came to her full height, almost a head taller than Micah, favoring her right side. A quick glance confirmed the shaft of an arrow buried in the leather armor of her left flank, a modest amount of blood staining her outfit.

“My name is Leeka by the way,” she continued cheerfully, ignoring her wound.  “The little one glaring at you from the bora tree is Jakaw.  He’s not much use in a fight, but it’s almost impossible to traverse the jungle without a stripe-tail leading the way.”

Warily, Micah turned from the injured woman.  Behind him, the monkey that had been screaming at him earlier crouched on a tree branch, its grey tail ringed in bands of black.  It bared its teeth at him, chittering angrily at Micah.

“Micah,” he replied, reaching toward the wound on Leeka’s side.  “Here, let me help you with that, and then we can talk.  It hurts just to look at an injury like that, and it’ll end up distracting me if I don’t do something about it.”

She began to say something, but whatever it was, the words disappeared as Micah decisively ripped the arrow out of her side.  Blood splashed over her armor as she gasped, eyes wide with pain.  A second later, augmented mending knit Leeka’s flesh back together.  If it weren’t for the stains and the hole in her armor, it would have been impossible to tell that she’d ever been hurt.

Leeka patted her side, sticking a finger into the arrowhole before she gaped down at Micah.

“Wait.”  She took a step back, looking around the undergrowth as if trying to spot something.  “You’re a male.  Why are you out in the jungle?  Is your escort nearby?”

Micah reached up with his left hand, spreading his palm out so he could massage his temples while the woman stepped pat him, craning her neck as she searched their surroundings.

“Yes,” he answered, trying to keep himself from being short with her.  “I am a male, and I have no idea why that would matter to you.  I would like to reiterate that I have no idea what is going on.  You’re going to need to explain things to me like I’m a child.  Preferably sooner rather than later.”

“You’re a spellcaster,” the way Leeka said the sentence, it clearly had some sort of extra meaning for her.  “Men either use magic or go into a trade.  Women become hunters or warriors.  That’s simply the way of things, everyone knows that.”

Micah paused, unsure how exactly to respond to her statement.  Before he could put his thoughts together and come up with a proper reply, Jakaw started chattering angrily from its perch in a nearby tree.

Leeka’s eyes widened, and she grabbed the arrow that had been lodged in her side until recently from the jungle floor.  She brought it to her hose, sniffing deeply before throwing it aside with a curse.

“Rancid Para fruit!”  Leeka spat on the ground, throwing the mangled arrow to the side as she lunged for her bow.  “The Roktoll did use a tracer.  Jakaw says there are at least four of them.”

Leeka drew an arrow from the quiver at her waist, knocking it as she crouched next to a nearby tree.  The arrow itself was almost as long as Micah’s forearm, topped in a glinting steel arrowhead imprinted with the same wave-like pattern from the knife he’d recovered by the river.

“What the-” Micah began, frowning as he looked from the discarded arrow to Leeka’s kneeling form.

“Run Micah!”  She whispered urgently.  “When they shot me, the arrow was coated in Rancid Para fruit.  Humans can barely smell it, but the Roktoll’s stripe-tails will be able to smell me from tens of thousands of paces away.  Even with the source removed, they’ll still be able to track me from a thousand or so paces.”

“I’m not sure that will be necessary,” Micah replied, walking behind a nearby tree as he cast foresight.

“I don’t care if it’s necessary,” Leeka hissed back.  “I’m sure you think that you have some magic that can help in a situation like this, but if the Roktoll see that there’s a male here, they will target you first.  Without warriors to guard you, they’ll stick you full of arrows before you can manage to cast a single spell.”

“No,” the woman continued, taking and holding a deep breath before exhaling it back out.  “I got you into this.  The Roktoll never would have known you existed if it wasn’t for me.  I might not be able to defeat four huntresses and warriors, but can keep them occupied long enough for you to find your escorts.  It’s the least I can do after that inhospitable welcome.”

Briefly she flashed him a pained smile.  Jakaw went completely silent.  Simultaneously, all expression slipped from Leeka’s face as her face became a mask of concentration.

She popped up from her bush, firing an air at a flash of orange flitting from tree to tree toward the two of them.  The arrow missed, burying itself into bark.

Before it landed, Leek was already in motion, activating a martial art or a blessing to move incredibly rapidly from her hiding place to a waist high log.  She vaulted it, landing in a crouch just ahead of another two arrows that lodged themselves into the decaying wood.

“Fuck this,” Micah said quietly, shaking his head.

He stepped out from behind the tree, already mouthing the incantation to explosive thicket.  In front of him, two tall orange women clad in leathers were charging toward Leeka’s hiding spot.  One had a hatchet in her right hand, and a wicker shield coated in some sort of dark resin in her left.  The other held a spear in one hand, and the same sort of woven shield in her left.

An arrow flashed toward Micah, its flight path heralded by a beam of rainbow light from foresight.  He jerked his head back, his agility attribute on full display as he let the projectile pass by, close enough that the wind from its passage kissed his skin.

Then he was moving.  Between Micah’s attributes and haste, he was sure his movements were practically a blur.  Still one of the archers managed to fire an admirably accurate shot that should have hit him in the chest.  Instead, Micah tracked its movements, foresight letting him bat the wooden rod out of the air with casual grace, like he was playing some sort of game for children.

The two women charging toward Leeka halted their momentum just in time to meet Micah.  Behind him, explosive thicket caused a huge portion of the jungle floor to transform into a thresher.  Tree roots, sharpened to razor edges by Micah’s magic, lunged upward all but shredding one of the two archers.

Micah bent backward at his waist, letting a spear thrust pass just over his head.  The attack seemed clumsy, almost as if it were moving in slow motion.  Of course, that was hardly the case.  From the warrior’s stance to the way her entire body flowed into the strike, it was clear that she had an agility in the high teens as well as years of practice with her weapon.

It hardly mattered.  Micah wouldn’t have had much trouble fighting the woman even without the enchantments that layered his body.  His left arm blurred upward, grabbing the weapon by its haft and ripping it from the woman’s hands.

Her eyes widened in surprise, but before she could react, Micah slammed the knife into her chest.  It was an inelegant attack, little more than a punch from a hand holding a dagger, but given the gap between their attributes, it was more than enough.

Ribs snapped like kindling under Micah’s fist, and he left the blade buried in her, instead whirling the spear he had appropriated into a two handed grip.  The wooden butt of the weapon slammed into the side of her head, knocking whatever fight might have remained out of the injured woman.

Another arrow whirred toward MIcah even as the remaining hatchet warrior charged toward him, shield held in a guard position as she prepared her axe for a killing blow.

He hopped backward, letting the arrow pass harmlessly between them.  The woman tried to follow, but a dizzying display of thrusts forced her back on the defensive.

The moment she brought her shield up to protect her face from Micah’s dancing spear strokes, he spun the weapon in a low arc, shattering her left knee.  Even as she collapsed, Micah spun, launching a quintet of air knives in rapid succession at the tree he thought the remaining archer was hiding behind.

Wood chips exploded from the bark as the low level spells peppered his assailant.  Amidst the flurry of air magic, a strangled scream confirmed that one of his attacks had hit home.

An orange woman clad in furs, staggered out into the open, loosely holding a bow in her right hand as she clutched a bleeding gash on her bicep with her left.  Before she could say or do anything, Leeka popped up from cover, planting an arrow in the other archer’s throat.

A pinprick of pain brought Micah’s hand to his neck where he found a small needle with fletching made from delicate brown feathers sticking from his skin.  Almost immediately, nausea and dizziness began to assault him.

At his feet, the sole surviving Roktoll fighter slid another needle into a hollow tube before putting the weapon to her lips.

Micah didn’t give her a chance.  He threw the spear with enough force that it buried itself almost two arm’s lengths deep in the woman’s chest, killing her instantly.

Distantly he heard Leeka shouting his name.  Her voice seemed strangely quiet and distant, almost like she was trying to attract his attention from the other end of a long tunnel.

He ignored her, struggling to focus over his growing headache as he cast panacea.  The woman’s hand touched his shoulder just as the spell washed over him, cleansing Micah’s system of the powerful poison he’d just been shot with.

“Micah!”  Gods was Leeka loud.  She had him by both shoulders, shaking him slightly while she screamed.  “They used bleeding venom.  You need to stay calm Micah.  One of them must have the antidote.  Just don’t move while I look for it.  Physical activity will make it move through your system faster, and there’s no curing the venom once it reaches your heart.”

He reached up, wiping his face.  Blood from his nose and open mouth covered his forearm.  With a shake of his head, micah removed one of her hands from his shoulder and stepped backward.

“I’ll be fine, Leeka.  I managed to purge it from my system in time.”

“Are you sure?”  She asked, hovering over him as she tried to inspect Micah closer.  “I think you’re looking pale, but I’ve never met a pink person before.  Your eyes aren’t dilated right now, but I don’t even know what to look for.  Maybe the bleeding venom’s symptoms are different for you?”

“Don’t worry about it,”  he said, a quick check of his status sheet drawing a grimace.  He’d only been afflicted with the poison for a matter of seconds, and already he was missing almost four hundred hit points.  “I’m not in a hurry to repeat that experience, but I have a spell that can treat most poisons and diseases.”

“Wait.”  Leeka looked from Micah to the two dead warriors on the jungle floor.  “You’re not just a spellcaster.  You overpowered the ambush party with physical force.  That’s something only a woman can do.”

“And your skin isn’t lilac like a male’s,” she mused out loud, taking a step back from Micah to ponder his disheveled appearance.  “Maybe-”

She paused.  A moment later, her face broke into a broad smile, the spark of an epiphany lighting her eyes.

“By the Sixteen no,” Micah said, shaking his head.  “Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.  Obviously there are some major cultural differences between your people and mine.  I just want to find someone I can talk to about purchasing weapons, traveling supplies, and pointing the way to Jakint for me.”

“It’s so simple Micah!”  She jumped up and down gleefully.  “Your skin isn’t colored like a male or a female, and you have the abilities of both males and females.  That must mean that you’re both male, and female!”

She smiled happily down at him, clearly ecstatic that she had cracked his enigma.  Behind him, Jakaw cackled from a tree branch, clearly taking pleasure in Micah’s distress.

“Just take me to your village,” Micah replied, putting his head in the palm of his hand as he tried to massage away a headache that had nothing to do with his recent brush with poison.