(TLO) Chapter 61: Peace And Silence (Patreon)

You sure this is the right choice?

Seth ignored his minds’ bickering as he rested against the tree. It had been three days since he’d been lured into the nest and survived. Three days since he’d been outsmarted by a snow hare. He’d been hunting ever since, gathering what measly portions he could get his hands on. He made meals of pheasants and snakes, rodents and the occasional pests. He’d eaten a handful of crickets he’d found nested at the root of a tree once. Today he was hungry, still, but he wasn’t starved. This was as best a time to claim his cores for the test.

He checked his swords again, the action repetitive. The sword on his right had a circular metal guard. He shook it and was glad to find it stayed. He repeated the action with the sword on the left. Its bar shaped guard rattled against the entrance of its sheath and held firm. The sword at his back was without guard, a straight length with a slight curve from point to hilt with no hindrance. It would be easy to cut himself with it if he wasn’t careful.

He took a deep breath, a touch of anxiety in his heart. He’d lost count of how many times he’d checked on his weapons since leaving his shelter this morning. But it calmed him each time, so he continued to perform the action. In the past two hours it had become something of a ritual, useless though it was beginning to seem.

His minds alerted him to a reia beast prowling in the snow a few trees ahead of him and he thanked his minds. It was something feline, like the first one he had encountered. But while the first had been malnourished and odd, this one proved healthy.

“One at a time,” Seth mumbled, as he stepped out from behind the tree. If his calculations were right, this far out was basically the outskirts of the nest.

Free from the cover of the tree, he made a mad dash for the creature. His intention was a hit and run tactic. He might’ve killed one a few days ago but he still had no cores to his name. So this time he would hurry. He would bring death and then take the corpse for himself. After all, he needed time to bisect the creature and get its heart.

Ever wondered what the other monsters look like? A piece of his mind asked as he ran.

He had an answer but focused on his quarry. Distractions would prove deadly.

The reia beast’s ears twitched as he trampled upon the snow, awareness of his presence evident in the single involuntary act. It lifted its head and turned its attention to him. There was a hesitant pause before its next action, a touch of indecisiveness before it acted. Then the moment was gone. It turned its head skywards and opened its mouth.

It was all the hesitation Seth needed.

Whatever sound it had intended to make never left its maw. Seth’s hand reached for his hunting knife and sent it flying. It cut through the distance and buried itself in the beast’s long neck so that it made a whimper and a groan as it fell back.

In seconds he was on the struggling beast.

It moved quickly for something with a knife in its neck, scurrying along the snow to avoid a downward slash from his sword, staining it crimson with drops of its blood. It picked itself up, evading another cut as he pulled his sword from the snow and struck again. It evaded a third attack, dashed back, trailing crimson blood along its path. Seth chased after it.

It made a sound that could’ve been a snarl but came out as a gurgle and Seth was glad to know it wouldn’t be making any loud noises. The last thing he needed was for it to have reinforcements.

He moved after it again, cornered it quickly. He drove it around with cuts and slashes, harrying it with thrusts and feints it avoided or deflected.

Harming it wasn’t the priority right now, he simply needed to get it as far away from the nest as possible. The beast adhered to his plan like a stubborn partner in a particularly daring waltz.

The blood dripping from its neck was like a steady timer, the more of it lost the better. But Seth could feel a timer of his own. Only a few slashes in and his muscles were already growing sore.

Perhaps we should start doing our daily quests before we sleep, one of his minds suggested as he darted around a tree so he could follow the beast.

“I don’t think,” he parried an attack, “that’s,” he drew his sword in the air, cutting a triangular shape with three slashes to fend off the beast, “a viable idea.”

He stepped back, avoiding a pounce, pulled his sword back, and thrust it forward. The creature backed up quickly but not fast enough and he buried an inch of steel in its side.

In the next few minutes the fight dwindled into an oppression. Seth scored cuts and stabs, drawing blood and enforcing damage. The reia beast struggled with each one. Its attacks overextended. Its evasions were a step too short and a second too slow. Ultimately, it led to its defeat.

First, Seth took its eyes. He parried a weak blow, staggered the beast back, then stepped into its space. He brought his sword high and cut down to take its head. It backed away fast, but a moment too late. His sword failed to take its head as planned but he drew a vertical line along its left eye and the beast whimpered something painful as it flailed away, blood trailing from the blinded eye. It left an obvious blind spot and Seth capitalized on it, attacking it from the left until he cut a deep gash in its side.

There was no decisive blow with which he ended the fight. In truth, he merely tired the creature out, stacking damages upon each other until the beast simply gave out.

Minutes later, he stood above it panting like a child who’d just fought an adult, knowing he would not be claiming more than one core today. His body simply didn’t have the strength for it.

The reia beast lay in the snow, staining a large patch of it crimson. It watched him through its remaining functioning eye. Its torso heaved in slow, labored breaths as he approached it.

Seth stood before it for the shortest time then he ended its life with a stab to the heart and no remorse.

……………………………….

Seth dragged the corpse of the beast behind him, walking a great distance in the snow as its fall grew heavier. Around him the low hanging branches of trees were beginning to sway in the wind, undulating choristers at the order of their choir master.

Through his journey, each fragment of his mind kept themselves on tasks. Ensuring they were not soon to be ambushed was important. Ensuring they were not being followed, even more so.

It was a long while before Seth got to his shelter. Its exterior was smoother than it had been when he’d built it, a result of his daily paid attention to it. He had smoothened it out in the past days, stacking snow on it for layering and patting it down with his hands every chance he got. The size of the entrance allowed him passage but the reia beast was too large for it, not malleable enough. So he took out his hunting knife from its neck as the snow fall grew into a threat of a blizzard and went to cutting.

He made a butcher’s work of the animal, slow and incompetent in his weakness. First, he skinned it, rending skin from muscle. With a hunting knife and a chill in his bones the job was laborious. After this, he went to the cutting. He marked it down with the knife, tore through flesh and muscles till he hit bone. He did this with each limb and the creatures neck. Then he severed the bones with his swords. Apparently, the draw proved a proper butchering technique, not that it was surprising.

When he had only its torso left, he took it inside.

While inside, protected from the brewing blizzard, the limbs left outside worried him. He should’ve cut up the beast a good distance from his shelter. What if the blood drew other creatures to him? What if he was left to deal with a predator? He worried of the snake he’d seen in the earlier days of the test. His mind had marked its burrow and he’d stayed clear of it ever since. But it didn’t mean it would not seek prey in farther lands than where it made its hole. Territory, after all, was always expandable.

Go get it, a piece of his mind advised.

“In that storm?” he asked, not wanting to leave.

Would you rather fight after the storm?

“It might not be that bad. And what if the smell draws them all the way inside?”

And what if the blizzard goes on for more than a day and a night?

“What?”

You heard us, it replied. Bring them in. It’s better than leaving them out.

“You’re not saying—”

It’s been a tough test, the mind interrupted him softly, hesitantly. Let’s not make it any tougher because of things as petty as disgust.

“Is it even safe?” he wondered.

The souled do it.

“We’re not souled, though.”

Seth’s shoulders shrugged as the nonchalance of his minds suffused him. It can’t be that bad.

With a resigned sigh, he braced the growing storm, dragging limb after limb into his shelter. When all parts of the animal were securely within his shelter and his minds had ceased their bickering, he went to work on the torso.

Cutting it up was the easy part. He was only met with a challenge when he got to the rib cage. Its milky white color was stained a dark yellow and it was blackening like iron in some parts.

Decay? A piece of his mind asked.

He had no idea, so he shrugged.

Breaking the ribs was difficult. He’s shelter was not large enough for him to execute a proper draw so he was forced to saw at it with his hunting knife. The blizzard grew to full blast outside as he labored at the rib cage, a rondo of hate as lightning flickered and thunder roared. Its cold and enforced darkness forced him to take a break from his task to light a fire before resuming.

It seemed like hours before he successfully got to the heart. He ignored the shapes and lines around it and bisected it gently, anxious with every cut. He did not expect a fragment, but there had been times when reia beasts had often offered one. But the general way to gain fragments was from soul beasts, and those were rare in the world. The only time they could be found in mass was during a small crack or, as most people liked to term it, a fissure; a hole in the world where they pooled out in numbers.

At the center of the reia beast’s heart he found nothing but a core. It was a pale yellow with signs and symbols all around it, linked by veins of pale red. He knew they were runes but didn’t know enough to decipher their purposes. In truth, he knew nothing. The seminary only taught the seminarians runes after they were souled for reasons unknown to him, or any of his brothers for that matter.

We were expecting more, his minds thought as he held the core up to the light.

It wasn’t a large thing, no larger than his hand. It was perhaps half its size. He turned it in the light, surveyed every inch of it. It was stained in blood that slid from it very slowly, its viscosity higher than was usual.

“Yup,” Seth agreed with his minds. “It’s quite anti-climactic.”

Ooh! That’s cool.

Seth’s attention moved away from the core in his hand and panned down to the ground where he somehow knew his minds attention had been arrested. There rested a blob of crimson blood that shined in the light of his fire. He watched it with a cocked brow. It was like a dome on the ground, unabsorbed by the dirt as the others had been.

It simply rested there, like jelly.

“Definitely does not look safe.”

It’s probably just dense with reia from being so close to the core. It gets better farther from it.

“And you know this how?”

The others seem normal to us.

Seth looked to the carcass and frowned. His grip on the core tightened slowly as his mind wandered to his newly set traps caught in the blizzard outside. It annoyed him that he would go again without anything caught in his traps. All he wanted was enough meat to fill his stomach, nutrients were a forgone alternative now. At some point he’d even given up on meat and sought out fruits, only to find all the trees barren.

Outside the blizzard raged on, blared and blasted. The winds whistled, and his shelter trembled. He pulled his mind from the sounds outside, he tried not to think of his shelter crumbling under the weight of the storm. He busied himself with the runes on the core. In his left hand he held it to the light and traced it in his mind. With his right hand, he drew each one in the sand. The lines he drew were not straight, his symbols more crooked than any symbol had any right to be. It reminded him that he hadn’t truly written anything in over two years. For this, he didn’t blame himself. Writing was a part of civilization the seminary proved to care nothing for.

He continued for a moment longer than he could remember, and for a while uncounted and unattended, the runes and the line in the sand was all he knew.

Oddly enough, his minds found peace and silence in it. A peace and silence that did not last.