(TLO) Chapter 90: Quick Step (Patreon)

Seth woke up with a fatigue in his mind but not his body. Reverend Anthony had been driving his brothers hard since they’d left the seminary, pushing them to use their skills beyond what any of the other Reverends ever had. It was as if he was bound to learn all of their skills. But he knew better. This was the inevitable path to Iron. The real question was why the man had barely afforded him any attention.

He’d attained a new skill a few days ago when he completed his daily quest. It was a movement skill, one that allowed him cover a good distance. Each time he activated it he felt the breeze in his hair and the world warped as he moved. With it he could cover near twenty steps with a single step. Although, he’d expected it to have a better name than [Quick Step].

For the past three days he’d been using [Quick Draw] and [Quick Step] as many times as his body allowed him, which, compared to his brothers’ skills, was a lot. Each time he would draw, and slash, and cut at the trees around him, but none of them would fall. They would carry the barest mark of each strike yet remain sturdy, barely even trembling. It was enough to dampen anyone’s spirit. But he’d gone through worse years ago at the hand of a man he refused to name.

Through it all, the only time Anthony had ever afforded him any attention was the first time he’d used [Quick Step]. It had drawn the man’s attention momentarily as he cut a distance of ten paces in one step. This, he had discovered, was the max distance it could carry him in a single step. Then the man had lost interest. So he’d spent the remaining days trying to chain the effect, forcing a second step at the end of the first. It was tasking, annoying even, but he felt a step closer to achieving it each time.

Now…

Something’s wrong, one of his minds whispered, the thought eerily terrified.

Seth gave his attention to it almost immediately. “What’s it?”

The mist, another answered. It’s thicker.

This time he moved his attention to his surroundings. They were right. he raised his hand, held it out in front of his face. It was there but he couldn’t see it beyond the mist. A touch of panic set in and he scowled. What had Anthony done this time? None of the priests had ever taken them this far out. They’d taken them places but never this deep into the mist.

He turned hurriedly at the sound of something moving and his scowl regressed into a frown. He wasn’t the only one out here. The mist hid more than just his hand.

Quietly, he focused his attention to sound, listening as he tried to calm his heart, silence it so it would not distract him. In the growing silence he heard the sound of himself breathing and ceased that too. When his world fell to silence, he heard it.

It was a subtle scurrying of feet, rampant and hurried. It reminded him of someone running, perhaps more than one person. Had Anthony dropped each of them off too close to each other. If so, what exactly did he expect from them? Were they supposed to face each other with their skills? In a mist this thick?

We think we’re getting something wrong, one of his minds trembled.

Seth’s attention did not leave his sense of sound. “What do you mean?” he whispered.

Those are too many feet.

Seth’s brows furrowed in confusion. Too many feet? How many students were there? In his curiosity he counted them. At first he counted four pairs, an accurate enough number. Then four became six and he paused. Then there were eight. Worse, their cadence was ever growing, making it harder to decipher exactly how many. He was counting in sets of two as every human walks with a synergy between their feet. The trick was to watch for the cadence, the unity between every two. But something was out of place, something he couldn’t quite understand.

Comprehension dawned on him a moment after and he paled.

The cadence was not between the sound of two feet. It was impossible. Or was it? What if it wasn’t his brothers around him. what if there were others? The unity was too controlled. He counted at least four pairs working in eerie harmony.

Four pairs, his mind pointed out. Eight legs.

“Shite!” Seth hissed. He’d miscalculated. There were eight legs working in tandem but more than eight legs around him. His next words, he said for the sake of his survival. “Track them! Find it!”

He had barely completed his command when his minds sent his attention flying to his left. He did not hesitate, did not disobey. He dived to his left like the starving after food.

As he soared through the mist, his minds cataloged two creatures closing in on him. Now that he was sure what surrounded him was not human, he knew what they were. He had not seen much of them in a considerable while, but he’d faced them more than enough times to know them. His hand hit the dirt as he landed, wrapped around a piece of smooth stick, cold to the touch as he rolled back to his feet.

He came up in a squat, the piece of stick held to his side in one hand. With his other hand he reached for its hilt and all his minds fell to silence just before he touched it. It filled him with a dreary cold as it wrapped around the hilt.

He took a calming breath, and while he whispered his next words, they roared in his head as his mind marked his targets, grey eyes darting from side to side, seeing nothing in a greyer mist.

“[Quick Draw]”

He felt a burst of power course through him, cold and icy, not what he’d expected from reia. It filled a part of him, spreading upwards, some of it went down but ended just above his waist. The sensation reminded him of an injection, the way the contents of the syringe spread through the vein in the beginning at the first pump. But the path it followed did not feel like veins. Each branching path felt wider, more pronounced. And everywhere it went energy screamed like cold euphoria. Its path spread through his arms, into his hands but did not rise past his neck.

He felt the touch of a notification that never came alive as the sword left its sheathe. The sound was an old friend. The hiss of metal called forth for the sake of carnage. The promise of blood on cold steel. He knew it without thought.

A spider as tall as eight feet and as wide as nine scurried into life, bursting through the mist. A long, slightly curved blade took its head from its body in one blow then returned to its sheathe.

One down, he moved to the next threat. It was a few feet away, closing in fast, massive hairy legs scurrying after him. He did not run. He crouched lower, hands still on his sword, and took a deep breath. He activated another skill.

“[Quick Step]”

Another burst of power filled him, grown from just above his navel. This time the little that went upwards died just below his heart. The rest of it spread downward and filled his legs, and his feet.

He split through the distance in a single step, cut through the mist like a drawn blade. He covered ten paces, maybe eleven, drawing out the skill as far as he could. Where he stopped he felt the world close in before him. But he was prepared, his hand already on his hilt. He felt the power that filled his legs draw back, pull upward and into a point above his navel and he called his skill to bear. He took no breath for this one, wasted no time. He invoked it with a baleful whisper, like a child with a particularly nasty secret, one they had never wanted to keep.

“[Quick Draw]”

An explosion of power shot up from the same spot, filled his hands, and without conscious effort, he unsheathed the sword. It came free with glee and the arachnid dropped like a puppet with no strings. He felt the splash of wet liquid, warm against his shoulder as it seeped through his cassock. He frowned at the thought of staining it but did not hesitate.

He turned again, following the sound of scurrying feet and activated [Quick Step]. He covered another distance not far enough to meet the nearest enemy, stopped, and activated it again. As he cut through the mist a second time, the blood—because that was all the liquid had any right to be—made contact with his shoulder, and pain filled him like the sting of acid. He came to a halt in front of his new quarry and a notification came to life in front of him, halting his actions.

[You Have Been Poisoned].

The moment of hesitation gave his new opponent the time it needed to strike, and it took it. Its massive leg as long as he was tall, but no doubt more powerful than he was, swiped at him and he brought the sheathed sword up at the last moment. It was a perfect block but the force of the blow sent him flying to the side farther than ten paces.

He hit the ground and came up in a roll, hands shaking from the impact. Still tracking the movements of everything his minds had catalogued before going quiet, he activated [Quick Step] once more.

His legs carried him forward, into battle.