(TLO) Chapter 62: Another Way To Go (Patreon)

Not long after, Seth’s fingers began tingling where they touched the core. It was a soft sensation, the soft prickling of a million tiny needles too small to even be felt. It reminded him of the first time he’d touched electricity, when Jonathan had manifested it somehow for the briefest of moments during one of his many projects. The sensation drew his attention from his writing and he looked at the core.

Then he waited, curious for what would happen next.

The sensation spread to all his fingers in a slow gait and he wrapped his entire hand around the core. It replied in kind so that the sensation wrapped his hand. It spread throughout the hand so that it felt as if he was holding a ball of electricity within his grasp. It fascinated him to great lengths.

The blizzard continued to thunder beyond the safety of his shelter but he ignored it. It was forgotten now, as was the hunger in his stomach. He forced his grip around the core, tightened it so that the bones in his hand seemed to quake. The feeling deepened but went no further than his palm. It did not spread to his wrist; it did not go beyond.

Still in a dance with curiosity, he moved the core to his right hand.

Nothing happened.

He frowned at this, then he took it back in his left. There the tingle resumed. He tossed the core lightly and caught it in the same hand. When he wasn’t touching it there was no sensation, not a flicker, not a residue.

His interest was lost quite quickly after that. Chances were the core was reacting to his left hand. Why? He had no idea and was not inclined to dwell on it. The only difference he could note between his left and right arm was that there had once been a time when his left arm hadn’t worked so well. That and the fact that Jabari had fixed it somehow. Had Jabari done something special to the arm to fix it? The answer was obvious: Yes. Jabari had fixed what even gold mages had failed to fix, so clearly it was something special. The question was if whatever Jabari had done was the reason only his left hand responded to the core in this way.

The booming of the blizzard outside his shelter came back to his attention, and he rolled the core into a corner of the room. All interest in its runes and the sensation it brought was gone from him.

After that he sat in his room for a time long enough that he did not count the minutes or the seconds, the hours or the nanoseconds. He did not track time. He did not seek entertainment. He watched the fire as he waited, listened to the wood crackle as it died even in death. If wood could feel pain, humans would be its greatest enemies. He watched the fire undulate before him, its warm glow cast the space in soft shadows he did not attend.

After an hour and a minute which in truth was a time uncounted the fire before him began dying. Its flames dimmed to nothing but embers and darkness crawled into the room from its corners. If he asked his minds, they would tell him he’d been sitting and staring for long enough to be half a day. He knew this fairly and did not ask them. So he told himself he’d been sitting for an hour and a minute as he got to his feet and set to making another fire where the one before it had just died.

In a short amount of time as it would take a boy of sixteen to cast nineteen blows as fast as he could, he had another flame started. The wood would continue to curse him but only if it had ever had any sentience.

The smoke that rose from the new fire stung his nose gently. It smelled of spices the likes of which his mother used to use in the kitchen. He took a deep breath of it before scolding himself. In the breath he smelled not just spices but something akin to perfume and a mild panic held him. He wondered if he had unwittingly poisoned himself and his minds ran through the list of plants and poisons in nature Clint had taught him as he hurried to what remained of his stack of twigs and sticks.

Hurriedly he picked them, each one after the other, singled them out as a farmer would his good crops from the bad. Clint had taught them to identify their poisons by sight and smell so he put his lessons to use. Each one he put to his nose, close enough that the smell would tease his sense but far enough that he would not inhale too much. It did not touch his nose nor graze against it. This technique made it difficult to decipher but it was the safest. Whatever smell he did not remember, he left to his minds to identify.

“Anything?” he asked, dropping the last piece in the new pile he had created.

Nothing, one of his minds responded. There was no notification, though.

He nodded. The last time he’d been poisoned during the healer’s lesson he had been notified. Still, what if he was too weak to notice.

There’s been no notification for the past few days, another mind told him before he could ask what he wanted to. Only when we killed the reia beast.

That was good.

Still, Seth worried. If it was not poison, what was it? His last two years in the seminary had since taught him that new smells were rarely ever favorable.

“Could we have plucked a branch from a mother brooch?” he asked.

Fear embraced his minds for the briefest moment before they shook it off like smoke from their clothes.

Clint had spoken very minutely on mother brooches. According to him they tended to be the plant rulers of whatever forest they found themselves in. As the only registered sentient plant life categorized as monsters, it was known to hold grudges.

We have no idea, his minds answered.

He didn’t blame them. They’d only seen a mother brooch once during their travels with Jabari. That they had not seen any other since then, neither had they been given an accurate description, made it impossible to know. They wouldn’t even know what to begin looking out for.

Still, for the sake of caution, he stamped out the new fire. The scent from it had suffused the entire space, but there was nothing he could do about that. Certain what had been a kindled flame was now nothing but ash and dirt, he eased into a corner and sat there. His thoughts chose then to resume their bickering.

Their new subject was on the taste of fire. Apparently, hot was not an acceptable taste. One felt it would taste of ash and dirt. Another felt it would depend on what it burnt. One suggested it would taste like the sun and was battered down for it. There were other options that passed his thoughts as they bickered. There was the taste of paper. The taste of ginger. The taste of rot, but spicy. Even the taste of blood was not out of the list of possibilities.

He sat in the darkness moments longer, listening to the sounds of madness as the sky waged war on the earth with strikes of lightning and roars of thunder and spears of ice and snow. And when his stomach rumbled too loudly to be ignored it filled him with a sense of dread.

His minds grew silent at the sound. In it was a dreaded expectation.

He turned his head to the spot that had once held fire, saw nothing in the dark, then turned it to the pile of wood. It had not poisoned him then, perhaps it would not poison him now. With a deep sigh, he got to his feet and wandered his shelter, shivering terribly from the blizzard’s chill.

He picked wood from his stack, each one counted slowly as he shivered. He walked back to the place for his fire and cleared the dirt with his hand. It was cold to the touch, almost numbing. Then he set to making a fire. Each thing he did slowly and systematically, with the order of someone who’d done this too many times to count.

When fire blazed and light returned to the room, he gave a deeper sigh, squatted by the flame. His stomach rumbled again and the smell of itchy spice filled the room. He waited patiently and no notification came alive. He felt his minds’ patient satisfaction at that. But it was not all.

They were waiting for him, this he knew. But what they sought of him could kill him.

If we don’t, a mind thought, then we’ll die, regardless.

“Dying this way might be worse… more excruciating.”

Freezing to death is another way to go.

But we doubt there is much worse than starving to death.

Seth doubted it, too.

From the sticks he had, he could make a spit. He had a fire going and a hungry stomach. There would be no spice as there was no need for one. All that was left was what would be eaten.

He turned his attention to a corner of the room, looked at what was left of the reia beast and got up.

“Let’s get on with this then.”

His knife suffered in the task that followed. with quick strokes and strained muscles, he cut up the creature. He peeled meat from bone where he could and ignored the tricky parts. Where a butcher would break bones he found he did not have the muscle strength to emulate, so those, too, he left alone.

He punctured a hole as best he could through strips of meat as large as his fist and as small as strips of bacon, dusted them of dirt and snow, spitted them, and set them to roasting over the fire.

It took over thirty minutes before they released a smell he deemed acceptable of something sufficiently roasted.

His mouth watered as he picked one from over the flame. Hunger was a great motivation and it warred with his fear so that he found himself staring at the piece of meat longer than his minds liked.

When hunger won its battle, he took a tentative bite, chewed a number of times he counted, then swallowed. It tasted better than he’d feared so he took another bite. When he was done with that piece of meat, he sat and waited.

This was the moment of truth.

In his fear and anxiety, it wasn’t a while before his minds spoke up.

See.

Told you the souled do it too, another offered.

We had nothing to fear… total confidence in our—

—Oops…

Seth pressed his eyes shut and sighed. He really had to stop listening to his minds sometimes. He’d always feared they’d get him killed. It was the same minds that had advised he attack a snake capable of swallowing him whole when he didn’t have to. The same ones that had once asked him to find the priests’ rooms simply to steal from them when stealing from the older boys had begun to seem too easy.

“I swear I knew you’d all get me killed someday,” he muttered. “I just didn’t think it would be locked away in a blizzard.”

In our defense, one returned. We don’t really feel anything.

Seth scowled at it and opened his eyes. “Neither did we at the healer’s room.”

Hovering before him in black embers and the color of shadows was a notification so clear it was unmistakable.

[You Have Been Poisoned].

He buried his face in his hands and let the worry go through him. He really had to stop listening to his minds.