BT II - Chapter 28 (Patreon)

Unending grass swayed back and forth.  Micah couldn’t see more than an arm’s length in front of him, his vision terminating in chutes of vegetation as thick as his thumb that rose high above his head into the night sky.  He reached out with his left hand, pushing grass out of his way as he slid his shoulder into the gap and barged into the wall of plant-matter.

A solitary gust of wind blew through the plains, sending the grass flowing in uneven waves as the world rustled around Micah.  He paused for a second, face screwing up into a frown as stalks slapped gently against his face.  Although his group was sheltered beneath the surface of the Grass Sea, the Sea itself was an expansive and featureless prairie.  Without any features to break up weather patterns, it was notorious for terrible windstorms and squalls that would swallow up entire caravans.

Another gust shook the grass.  The stalks brushed together, creating an almost static-like sound.  Then the wind began to truly howl, sending the grass around Micah dancing and turning the hiss of the stalks brushing together into a cacophony.  Plants brushed against him, scratching the Maarikava armor like dozens of tiny claws.

The wind increased, and in a matter of seconds the sound was like a waterfall, a constant crash of noise as the thick blades of grass whipped Micah across the neck and face, stinging skin wherever it was exposed.  Behind him, Drekt shouted something that Micah couldn’t quite make out.  A moment later, he felt a tug around his waist as the knotted up rope made from the Pontiff’s bedsheets pulled at him.

Micah dropped to one knee.  The dirt was dry and powdery beneath him, but now that he was closer to the ground, the wind didn’t rattle him nearly as much.  A hand touched his ankle, and he looked back to see Drekt pulling himself out of the grass as the big warrior followed the sheets to Micah.

“Once the wind dies down we should probably check our bearings again!”  Drekt yelled, his voice barely comprehensible over the crash of the wind as it shook the sea of plants around them.  “We’ve held off longer than we should have already.”

Micah grimaced, but he nodded back.  Drekt was right.  Any enthusiasm he’d had for traveling through the Grass Sea had faded within the first couple hours of travel.  There was no way to check their bearings during the day, and even at night unless they constantly verified their course, Micah would find them heading in the wrong direction more often than not.

Of course, getting lost didn’t even take into account the headache of constantly pushing through the thick grass, barely able to see where they were going, let alone being able to keep tabs on the rest of the group or watch out for threats.  Leeka had thought to tie them all together with the bedsheets they’d scavenged from the dungeon.  It was a good idea, and kept them from getting separated in the unending grass, but at the same time it didn’t address any of the other problems on their trek.

The only bright point in the entire journey was how effective plant weave was in the Grass Sea.  It only took a couple seconds to bend the massive grass stalks to his will, creating a clearing and a handful of grass huts.  The temptation to use the spell continuously was strong, but Micah didn’t want to carve a clearly visible path through the Grass Sea.  He had no idea how long it would take for the fields of grass to grow back, but leaving a trail for all of his enemies and the third prince’s minions to follow didn’t seem like the best idea.

Drekt tapped him on the shoulder and Micah looked up.  The grass above him blotted out the sky but it wasn’t blowing back and forth nearly as much.  More importantly, the sound of the wind, which had been overwhelming, had calmed to the point where Micah could hear himself think.

Micah crawled to his feet, muttering the words to flight as he waited for the windstorm to subside.  A minute later he was in the air, flying just above the top of the grass as Drekt fed sheets to him.  Micah looked up at the night sky.  There were some clouds but not enough to obstruct his view of the stars.  He concentrated, willing the Ageless Folio to record what he saw.

In the distance, Micah made out a disturbance in the grass.  Something or somethings were pushing it aside as they traveled through the vegetation, trampling it underfoot.  The ripple moved slowly through the grass, roughly toward Micah and his party in the now quiet moonlight.  He squinted at it, making sure to add its location and general direction to the Folio as well.

They’d only been in the Grass Sea for two nights and a day, but he was already sick of wandering lost.  No matter how high he flew, Micah couldn’t find the glitter of the Amghul river or the sorts of clearings that might betray the location of Swiftwater or a caravan.  He couldn’t help but worry that they would be stuck, zigzagging through the prairie for weeks if not months before they happened to run into anything helpful.

He reached down, grasping the sheets tied around his waist and tugged once.  Micah closed his eyes, releasing the portion of flight that kept him motionless in the air as Drekt reeled him in.  The second his feet touched the flaky soil, Micah crowded in close to Drekt, summoning the Ancient Folio and flipping it open to the pages showing the star map.

Micah willed the Folio into solidity, letting Drekt page through it as he held up one of the fist sized glowing chunks of quartz.  Drekt’s mouth moved wordlessly as he calculated their trajectory.

“I saw something out there,” Micah offered, shifting the magelight slightly so that Drekt would have a better angle as he inspected the Folio.  “I couldn’t make out what it was, but it might have been a caravan.”

“There are dozens of other things it could be,” Drekt replied sourly.  “Plus Jakint is the closest of the coastal cities, and I doubt that they will be sending out a trading expedition anytime soon.  It might be from one of Jakint’s smaller neighbors, but we both know the odds of that aren’t great.  If I were a betting man, I’d put down attunement that it was the Pontiff himself.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s actually another reason to chase it,” Micah responded, reaching down to change the Ancient Folio’s page so that it showed the sketch of the Grass Sea that highlighted the disturbance’s location.

Drekt looked down at the book for four seconds in total silence before finally locking eyes with Micah, indecision warring with skepticism on his face.

“Come on Drekt,” Micah pled quietly.  “You and I might be able to take another month or so wandering through the grass, but both of us know that this is wearing on everyone.  Between the wind storms, inability to see the sky, and general blindness, I’d be surprised if Eris and Esther could last two weeks.”

He pursed his lips, a half smile pulling at the corner of his mouth before he finished the thought.

“Which of course means that Trevor will only last a week.  Think of Trevor Drekt.  We’re going to take a risk sometime or we’ll just be lost in the Grass Sea for months.  It might as well be now.”

“Fine,” Drekt relented.  “We need to change directions anyway.  We’re supposed to be heading southwest, and at some point we ended up traveling southeast.  Your disturbance is more or less on the way.”

Micah nodded, closing the Ancient Folio and letting it dematerialize.  He clapped Drekt on the bicep before leaning past his friend.

“Course change everyone!”  He shouted.  “I spotted something that might be a caravan in the general direction of the Amghul river.  With any luck we’ll be able to link up with them and hitch a ride to Swiftwater.”

The rest of the party let loose a general weary cheer.  Micah couldn’t see them.  Hells, he could barely see Drekt, but after the disorienting noise and fury of the windstorm, he suspected they were just as desperate as he was for any sort of respite from the unending but dangerous monotony of the Grass Sea.

“That way,” Drekt said, pointing past Micah and into the unending field of swaying plants.  “And try to walk as straight as possible I guess.  It probably won’t do any good without a spell or blessing to guide you, but I don’t really know what else we can do given our lack of options.”

Micah turned away, reaching with his left arm to push the grass out of his path.  He walked a couple of steps, pausing for a second when he reached the end of the sheet so that Drekt could catch up.  Then he set out once again.

Twenty minutes and another shorter wind squall later, they were stopped again.  Micah bit his tongue, swallowing any complaints over the frequency of their delays.  It made travel slow, but any time they walked more than thirty minutes, they were almost guaranteed to be off course.  As frustrating as constant stoppages were, Micah would rather travel slowly in the right direction than sprint in the wrong one.

As soon as he finished casting flight, Micah soared above the top of the grass, once again focusing on the mostly clear night sky in order to memorize the position of the stars.  He smiled wryly at the pale moon, idly wondering how he would have managed if the Ancient Folio had a limited number of pages.  Honestly, the ability to perfectly record anything Micah focused on was a fairly powerful blessing on its own, even without the bonuses it provided to his learning skills.

He chuckled.  Sometimes he liked to think back on the morning of the day when he turned sixteen for the first time.  He’d been so upset that his Mythic blessing was a ‘bust.’  It really only took a moment to think about the thought and care that Mursa must have put into crafting it so that he could organically gain enough power to fight off the Durgh invasion.

In the years since, he’d encountered a couple of other Mythic blessings.  They were impressive, sure.  The ability to duplicate oneself dozens of times, to animate and control shadows, or to animate stone carvings to use as minions, every time Micah ran into a new ability of that caliber he couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy.  Still, if someone offered him a trade, there’s no way he would take it.  The Ancient Folio combined with his control over the element of Time was simply too useful in too many different ways for him to give it up for almost anything.

Micah rotated in the air, transferring his gaze from the night sky to the rippling fields of plant life.  He still couldn’t see the Amghul river or anything resembling Swiftwater on the horizon, but at the same time, he was trying to find unfamiliar objects via moonlight.

Sighing, he shifted in the air, looking for the channels of moving grass that he had suspected was a caravan in his last flight.  Micah frowned, moving the sheets tied around his waist as he spun in the air until he was parallel to the surface of the grass.

A rustle to his left drew Micah’s attention.  Two ripples in the grass, about fifteen paces apart, were racing toward the strung out line of their convoy.  Before his mind finished processing what was happening, another furrow appeared in the grass to his right, moving at a full sprint toward the party.

“We’re under attack!”  Micah screamed, motioning with his right hand as he cast plant weave.  The spell took so much more mana than he was used to, but it made sense.  There was a world of difference between the Grass Sea and a handful of roots.

The plants bent to his will, spinning themselves into a waist-high barrier.  More importantly, he cleared a circle with a radius of about thirty paces.  There wouldn’t be any way to conceal the spell’s results from anyone else capable of flying after the fact, but that was a concern for another day.

Three lizards burst into the open.  Each of them was between twelve and twenty paces long and covered in mottled greenish yellow scales.  They froze, thick tails flicking uncertainly as their beady eyes darted around.

Before the reptiles could acclimate themselves to being in the open away from the omnipresent grass, Micah heaved his spear at one of them.  It didn’t even think to look up or dodge, and the enchanted blade punched through the scales of its meaty neck, pinning the dying lizard to the dry soil.

It twitched once, tail thrashing up into the air before slamming into the grass matted dirt.  The thump of scaled limb onto ground served as a signal.  The moment of indecision as the two sides eyed each other ended in a flash as the remaining two lizards sprang toward the party.

Drekt and Trevor raced out to meet them.  Trevor dropped to the ground just in front of the lizard, sliding the last pace or so while thrusting upward with his spear.  Drekt simply leapt into the air, using his impressive body attribute to leap over the lizard’s snapping jaws and land on its back.  Then he brought his cleaver down, gashing through the monster’s armored scales and taking a huge chunk out of its back.

The lizard reared back, unseating Drekt from its back and bellowing in pain.  Micah’s head whipped to the right as movement in the grass drew his attention.  Another three furrows appeared in the grass, all of them charging toward the clearing.

He began reciting the words to binding vines, eyes tracking the rapid approach even as he reached up and touched one of the Maarikava fangs embedded in his armor’s shoulder.  The spell finished when the charging opponents were about fifteen paces outside the clearing, drawing a chorus of angry squeals and grunts.

Then Micah poured mana into the tooth, activating the binding that contained the river kraken’s soul.  Below him, Eris and Esther had joined the fray, assisting Trevor while the trio of new monsters struggled futilely against the vines holding them in place.  He didn’t have any idea how strong the lizards were, but the spell was strong and had enough vegetation to fuel it.  It might not be able to strangle them, but the newcomers would be held in place long enough.

Golden mist flowed from his shoulder, creating a massive cloud that hovered just above the surface of the Grass Sea.  Micah grunted, pushing more mana into the enchantment and focusing on the mental image of the river kraken.

The energy coalesced, transforming itself from a formless bank of golden light and into the shape of the monster he’d defeated in the jungle.  It floated for a second before following Micah’s mental instructions.

It exploded into motion, tentacles darting down into the grass a fraction of a second behind Micah releasing binding vines.  Before the lizards could escape, the kraken plucked them from the grass, lifting the wriggling creatures effortlessly into the air.

The monsters bit and gnashed at the tentacles holding them, but the kraken didn’t show any reaction.  Almost in slow motion it brought one of the lizards to its beak, shearing through scales and muscle and spraying the grass below with blood.

Micah dove back into the clearing, leaving the three trapped monsters to his summon as he retrieved his spear from the downed lizard.  The creature Drekt was fighting was covered in wounds.  At least four arrows stuck out of its scales, oozing blood, while another two lay in the dry dirt, broken and useless.

Before Micah could intervene, Telivern arrived at a full gallop, ramming its sharp horns into the lizard’s side and shredding flesh and scales.  The monster spun its head to snap at the stag, exposing its neck just long enough for Drekt to cut it open with a double-handed slash from his cleaver.

On the other side of the clearing, the girls and Trevor were handling the remaining monster fairly easily.  One of them would bait the creature while the other two would stab and nick away at it.  None of them had any injuries while the lizard was covered in dozens if not hundreds of stabs and cuts.  It was only a matter of time before blood loss led to it running out of stamina and making the sort of final mistake that would let one of them land a fatal blow.

Micah reached down, rapping his fingers around the haft of his spear and pulling it out of the dead lizard before returning to the sky.  His companions had their battles well in hand, and it was time to see if the river kraken needed any more mana or help.

Two of the lizards in its grasp were dead, still clutched in its grasp but with fatal gashes ripped out of them by the kraken’s beak.  The third, it held up in the night sky, squeezing with its tentacle.  The animal struggled frantically, but the kraken drew another chunk of mana from Micah, reinforcing its limb.  With a crunch and a pulse of golden light, the monster went still, hanging limply.

The kraken let go of the crushed lizard, letting it drop into the field of grass below.  A second later it dropped the remaining two, and Micah reached up toward the fang that held its enchantment, preparing himself to dismiss the summon.

Just as his fingers touched the smooth ivory, one of the kraken’s tentacles dove into the grass once more.  The glowing gold appendage snaked through the sea, grasping something and pulling it from the swayin field of grass.

Micah squinted, trying to make out what his summon had retrieved.  When he’d invested mana into the spirit, he’d instructed it mentally to attack everything other than his party.  At the time, he didn't know exactly what shape the new attackers were going to take.  Whatever it was, it wriggled in the kraken’s grasp, much smaller than any of the lizards.

“Hold!”  Micah shoted, reinforcing his words with a touch to the fang on his shoulder, changing the kraken’s orders with a tiny flare of magic.  It stopped moving, giving Micah a chance to fly closer.

A short man, heavily tanned and covered in tattoos struggled in the spirit’s grasp, feet kicking the empty air as he stared up at the flying creature in horror.  The second Micah approached, he ceased his struggles, gazing hopefully at the flying man.

“You have captured Garrat, yes yes?”  The man said hopefully, his voice thick with an accent that Micah couldn’t quite place.  “But you slew a pack of Grass Monitors and you haven’t killed Garrat yet. You're a powerful caster, yes yes?  Garrat is hardly strong enough to provide experience to one such as you.  Maybe he can find a way to help instead?”

Micah peered closer at the man.  Garrat was covered in sprawling blue tattoos marking his tanned and calloused skin.  A small mustache marked his face as he grinned cheerfully up at Micah.

“I don’t suppose you know the way to Swiftwater Garrat?”  Micah asked.  “We’re a bit lost right now, and we’re hoping to make contact with some of the nomad tribes.”

“Swiftwater!”  Garrat brightened noticeably.  “Garrat is a scout and pathfinder from Swiftwater.  He was sent to track the Grass Monitor packs.  They’ve grown in number and now they endanger travel between the four tribes.  Garrat can take you to Swiftwater, yes yes.”

“Thank the Sixteen,”  Micah sighed, touching a finger to the Kraken’s enchantment and directing it to set the small man into the clearing created by plant weave.  “I thought we were going to be stuck out here forever.”