I woke up back in my body, disoriented, with the otter beside me, urgently handing me my bow. We were once again in the cave. An ethereal light shimmered on the walls, only to fade and be replaced by the dawn sun coming through the waterfall. A soft chime reverberated through me. There was a popup on my Status:
Congratulations. You have collected enough silverlight to choose a path. |
I didn’t have time to look though, as the otter pulled me to standing and shoved me toward the cave’s exit.
“Hey, I’m still naked!” I swung around to at least grab my clothes and armor. It was then that I noticed that my spear, flint knife, and the brown feather vaned arrows were all missing. The rest of my stuff I managed to bundle up before running outside.
The otter pulled me along—she was stronger than she looked—and the two of us hiked up the hill twenty or thirty yards before she stopped to look back toward the Glen. I used the time to dress, put on my armor, and string the bow.
I didn’t have time to check them out properly, but both seemed different compared to before the spirit journey. The wood was smoother, straighter, and more resilient, and the metal shinier. Is it the effect of the… silverlight? My gear was exposed to it as much as I was.
The answer would have to wait, because the otter started off again, this time heading toward the top of the cliff, where the devil vines lived. I pulled her back to warn her about the danger. I wasn’t sure how we’d handle them without my spear.
She pulled the magic dagger from her pocket and wriggled her brows at me.
Okay, that’s adorable, but still… the little sneaker must’ve grabbed it the first thing after waking up from the spirit journey. I stared at her. “Really?”
She must’ve understood the incredulity in my voice, because she stared back, intent.
I shrugged. “Okay, then it’s your job to protect us.”
The otter’s eyes sparkled. She led the way up the hill, the dagger held between her paws. It looked clumsy, but she hadn’t let me down yet.
The top of the falls was as minty as last time. The only movement was the stream, and the only noise, the roar of the falls. I watched carefully, and noticed a bunch of small movements throughout the area—the barbed, pink-flowered vines slowly retreating into the tops of the trees.
The otter raised the dagger high and chirped. Any of the devil vines too slow to withdraw suddenly pulled away and disappeared.
She looked back at me, pleased with herself. From her expression, it was as if she were saying, “See, I did it.”
I nodded. “How could I have doubted you?”
She gestured to my bow and pointed me to the cliff’s edge. It was now apparently my turn.
I licked my lips and crept to the edge. Mist clung to the water below, and the Glen glowed with dawn light. From downstream, a white-tailed buck approached, sniffing at the ground as if it were tracking something.
It…he was enormous, easily 400 pounds, the largest deer I’d ever seen in a lifetime of hunting. Instead of a rack of antlers though, there was a single point emerging from his head, like he was some kind of unideer. When the buck stretched his head up to lick at one of the low-hanging branches, the leaves turned pale with ice. The air fogged around his lone antler.
The buck pawed the forest floor to scrape a patch of the surface clear. Then, he urinated to mark it as his territory and claim the Glen as his own.
The otter gnashed her teeth and hit me in the shoulder with the dagger’s pommel. She gestured at my bow, and signed, “Go, go, go. Hunt.”
I bit my lip, thinking. He was at least sixty yards away, and I definitely wouldn’t trust a thirty-pound draw to take down an animal of that size at that distance. Even if he got closer, I’d also have to shoot him from the side to have a chance at hitting the heart or lungs. That was the only way to be sure of a kill.
The buck sniffed around the Glen, and I realized he was lingering in the places where I’d sat and worked. He was tracking me, probably from downstream where I’d hung out by the beaver dam. Maybe from even earlier than that—from the thicket I’d found. Suddenly, I was very glad I hadn’t run into him earlier.
At this point, he was underneath us, peering at the entrance of the cave. It was a terrible shot, all skull and spine, and the arrow was bound to deflect off his bones. Even the otter seemed to realize it, and she stopped nudging me with the dagger’s pommel.
The buck disappeared. He’d leapt into the cave, which meant he was on my trail for sure and would eventually follow us up the hill.
Damn it. I should’ve taken the shot earlier. It wouldn’t have been perfect, but still better than facing an angry buck head on.
We needed to move and fast. “Follow me,” I gestured and forded into the stream, my bow held above me to keep it dry.
Needless to say, the otter was at home in the water, and she reached the far bank well before me. Her head quirked, her expression saying, “Okay, we’re here. Now what?”
I was drenched from the chest down, my armor dripping. It jingled as I ran upstream along the bank. I touched the ground, intentionally leaving a scent trail for the buck to follow. The otter followed behind and chirped in confusion when I forded the river again after thirty yards.
The current was a little easier to manage, but not by much. I tried to move as fast as I could, as safely as I could. I didn’t know how much time we had until the buck crested the top of the cliff.
There was a section of the bank covered in bushes. I nestled between them and readied to draw my bow. My heart was beating hard, but I focused on melding my heart with the land. I felt Meliune’s Blessing threatening to engage, but shrugged it off. I would do this my way, fully aware of what I did.
The time seemed endless, but I was calm above the storm of my emotions. Ready.
I heard the sound of ice cracking. The buck didn’t ford the stream like we had. He aimed his antler at the water and froze the surface, so that he could walk across. My plan had been to shoot him as he followed our trail along the far bank, and then again as he emerged from the water. But here he was, already in profile and in a precarious position.
I rose from my crouch, drew the bow, found my target, and released. It all happened in the space of four heartbeats. The arrow flew just as the buck stepped, his foreleg moving out of the way and allowing the arrow to penetrate his upper thorax.
The buck started, and his instinct to bound away lost him his footing. He slipped from the path of ice and went tumbling into the water and over the cliff’s edge.
The otter shot from the bushes and into the water to swim after him. When she reached the waterfall, she dove over the side, absolutely fearless. I chose to take the safer path and shoved the greenery out of my way as I hurried down the hillside.
The buck thrashed in the pool, but the otter didn’t let him escape. I’d seen her control the water, but not so much all at once. She’d surrounded him with it and pulled him down. Sections froze, but she willed the ice away. The water was both her home and weapon, and the buck couldn’t freeze it fast enough to disarm her. Bleeding and drowning, it was a horrible way to die.
The thrashing eventually stopped, and the pool stilled. The otter pulled herself from the water, huffing and puffing. She lay back on the ground, exhausted. There was blood on her fur, but none of it was hers.
I dove into the pool to pull the buck to the water’s edge. There was no way I was strong enough to bring it ashore, so I called to the otter to get her attention. “Out,” I gestured. “We eat.”
The otter sat up and rubbed her face. She lifted her paw, and the water responded by rising and depositing the buck onto the ground. There was still blood contaminating the pool, so she gestured once more, and the water cleared.
Not quite done, she lifted her paw a third time, and the water soaking the buck’s fur gathered into a ball, which she threw across the Glen at the place the buck had marked as his territory. That wasn’t enough, so she caused a wave to rise from the pool and had it wash the ground. Apparently, the Glen was hers and hers alone.
She fell back, her eyes closed. I pulled myself out of the pool and plopped down beside her, feeling worn out but pleased. It wasn’t exactly how I’d planned my first hunt to go, but damn he was the biggest buck I’d ever taken down.
I’d better get him skinned, butchered, and smoked. The day would warm up quickly, and the longer I waited, the more time bacteria had to grow on the carcass. I’d hate for all that meat to spoil.
“Ah, could I borrow the dagger back? I don’t have any more knives.”
The otter turned on her side to face away from me and pretended to sleep. I knew she was pretending, because I didn’t hear her woob woob woob.
“Please. I only need it for a day. Not even a day, a half day.”
Actually, I could dress the deer in half an hour, but she didn’t need to know that.
“We could have a barbecue. It’s the best food in the world. The way the meat chars and fat crackles. I could eat it every day.” I mimed along with the words, and really hammed it up—smacking my lips and slurping and licking my fingers.
I made enough of a scene that the otter finally gave up on pretending to sleep. She looked over her shoulder at me, and soon her eyes turned starry. A bit of saliva hung from her mouth.
I explained that I needed the dagger to dress the deer, and would give it back at the end of the day. She’d get half the meat in exchange.
After a moment’s hesitation, the otter pulled the dagger from her pocket. She gazed at it forlornly, and then covered her eyes before handing it to me.
Tool in hand, I moved over to the buck and knelt beside him. “Thank you. Your sacrifice will sustain our bodies and our lives. Be easy and move onto your next life.”
I began by finding the joints and cutting away the lower legs. There wasn’t much meat on them, but they’d be useful for sinew. Plus they were in the way, and it was already hard enough dressing the deer on the ground rather than hanging it from a tree.
Next, I made a small incision between the hindquarters. I stuck a couple of fingers in there, then pulled the hide and abdominal wall away from the deer’s guts. Now that I wouldn’t accidentally puncture any of the inner organs, I ran the knife up along the deer’s belly, opening him up.
The intestines and stomach spilled out. I reached inside and cut the areas where the inner organs attached to the cavity. Almost done.
All that was left was to carve away where the rest of the gastrointestinal tract was connected. Once it was detached, I was able to pull the organs out in one go.
I saved the kidneys, liver, and heart and set them aside on a clean patch of stone. The rest of the innards weren’t particularly appetizing or immediately useful. I carried them away, outside the Glen’s boundary, so they wouldn’t attract scavengers to the Glen.
When I got back, the otter was standing where I’d put the organs. She had a black marble in her paws.
Is that what I think it is? Never thought I’d see a monster core for real. I guess those cultivation stories weren’t just mindless entertainment after all.
The otter sighed, clearly tired, but she waved me over. She brought out her dowel and used it to sketch a series of animals, plants, and fish. In some she drew little circles—representing the monster cores—while others didn’t have them. Then she drew a picture of herself with one of the cores in her paws. She pretended to destroy it and immediately added muscles onto the drawing.
“Oh, that’s interesting. Some creatures have the cores and some don’t, but if you get a hold of one and destroy it, you gain in power.”
The otter nodded. She then drew herself again, this time eating the monster core. Even more muscles were added. An almost absurd amount.
“Ah, if you eat the core, you gain even more power.”
The otter nodded, but then added fangs to the image and a horn growing from the head. She laid the lines down thick and heavy, and the drawing’s eyes became angrier and angrier.
I swallowed. “Okay… not what I expected. If you eat the core, you turn into a monster?”
The otter drew a picture of me walking along a path, and I came to a fork in the road. Taking the left path, she had me breaking monster cores and growing slowly in strength. To the right, I absorbed the whole monster core and became a monster myself over time.
Then, just to make things more complicated, she had the road fork time and time again.
“So you don’t become a monster immediately. It’s something that builds up over time. It’s a risk you take choosing the faster path, and you get to choose every time you collect a monster core.”
The otter put the dowel away and pulled a stone from her pocket. She smashed the monster core with it. The fragments were black, like coal, but dotted with glimmers of silver. The black parts began to foam and boil until they disappeared completely. All that was left were four slivers of silver.
The otter took two for herself and put the other two in my hand. They dissolved, and I felt a cool air blow through me.
I saw a new notification:
12 silverlight gathered. |
So, a person grew in power absorbing silverlight. They grew even more powerful by absorbing both silverlight and the darker stuff around it, but then they risked turning into a monster.
It was the classic dilemma, wasn’t it? Either build up a good foundation slowly, or grow fast and risk going out of control. Or walk a hybrid path between the two. I knew what I preferred—solid foundations made strong houses—but I could see how a shortcut would be incredibly tempting when your life was on the line.
Not that any of that was an issue at the moment. I still had a deer to skin and quarter, and then a notification to check out—a promising notification indeed.
