I set the beef down and I took my poker from my bag.
Scanning the forest east to west, it was a few moments before I saw it. There, maybe fifty meters away and deeper into the forest, was an animal.
“What the hell is that?” I whispered.
It looked like a deer, but it was too far away for me to be sure. Tall, with skinny legs and a coat marked by snow. But, its fur had a golden hue to it as though sunlight were spreading over its hair.
Two words sprang into my mind.
Meat.
Elementals.
I hadn’t expected to come here hunting large game; I didn’t have a bow, nor could I shoot arrows out of my ass. All had was my fire spells and my poker, neither of which were suited to hunting.
But I had to try. Not only would this deer reward me with an elemental or two, but if I could take a big lump of meat back to camp, I’d be a hero. Kinda.
“Stay here,” I told Roddie.
Siddel had taught me ways to creep up on an animal. First, you had to clear your mind. Calm your body down. A person’s body gave off waves of emotion even if you couldn’t feel it yourself, and animals were perceptive of them. They could feel your tension. Their refined senses could detect the beating of an adrenaline-fueled pulse.
My hours and hours of stance training had refined my mindfulness now, and I found it easy to slip into a state of concentration. Relaxed, but without surges of excitement or flutters of nerves.
I crept forward in the hunter’s way, the way Siddel had shown me. Kneeling so that I was almost level with the ground. Head hunched. I scanned the ground in front of me every few feet, gently picking away loose twigs and other debris that might snap or crunch. Out here, the quietest sounds could act as great alarms blaring out to nearby prey.
The golden deer had its back to me, and it was focused on the ground, its mouth against the floor. Maybe it had uncovered a patch of grass or weeds.
This meant I could get to within ten feet of it. There, I stayed still and took stock.
I could hrr-chare this thing with three seconds of stances, but that would be a waste of precious elementals. Or, I could rush it, plunge the poker into its neck and bring it down and hold it tight while it struggled.
I figured my stance training had made me strong enough for that; if I could hold some of the stances in the levita spell, I could hold a mortally-wounded deer. I just had to stay clear of its legs while it kicked.
Before I could choose, the forest decided for me.
Four white creatures sprang up from the ground and surrounded the deer. What these things were, I had no idea.
They looked like lizards, with snow-white scales and hands with three claws on each. Their eyes were wine-red, and their snarling mouths revealed rows of tiny, needle-like teeth.
Nothing to worry about in the forest? Yeah, right!
Luckily, these creatures were barely taller than my knee. I guessed that to a seasoned hunter who could fire arrows from his palm, they wouldn’t have presented much of a threat. To a guy who’d come here to snare a hare or two, and maybe a fox, they were a little more dangerous.
As much as I was pissed they were going to take my kill, I knew nothing about these things. I didn’t know how they fought, and I didn’t know what I would be getting into if I joined the competition for the deer.
Damn it. All that lovely, golden essence gone. No meat for the clan. I’d have to leave, maybe find a hare or two in my snares, and that was that.
Or…
Maybe this was a world where you had to take what you needed. I needed better magic if I was going to survive, and I needed elementals so I could experiment. A guy who ran from things survived, but he didn’t get stronger. To grow your muscles, you had to hurt them first. Maybe to become a better survivor, I had to risk hurting myself.
Okay. I would only do this if I was sure I had a plan.
I didn’t have long to make it. The deer was skittering around now, turning this way and that, seeing one of the snow lizards every direction it turned.
The lizards closed in, claws tensed.
No sense me using my poker here; one poker versus four sets of claws? A mismatch.
But there was something. Looking at the lizards, studying them, the thing that stuck out most was their scales. Ice white, and with mists of cold seeping off them.
The hellcats had fire on their paws, and they had given me a fire elemental. These lizard guys must be the opposite; if I killed them, they would give me ice elementals.
It stood to reason that if ice or cold was at their core, then they would be susceptible to its opposite.
As the lizards closed in on the deer and were ready to strike, I carefully got to my knees.
I’d need to stand up into work my spell. As soon as I did, they would see me. I had no room for mistakes in my cycle.
Clear mind.
Remember the stances.
Focus.
I got to my feet. I completed the first stance of my spell, forming my arm into a backward C.
The lizard looking in my direction noticed me now. It let out a growl and tore away from the deer and toward me, while its three friends leaped at the deer.
Not much distance between us. No time.
I complete another stance. Then a third.
It closed the gap.
I lifted my foot, pressed the front against the back of my knee and held the fourth stances. Energy trembled through me.
It was six feet away now. Ready to leap.
Hrr-chare, whispered the voice in my ear.
Stance five. Stance six.
I felt it then; that unmistakable build-up of power, that blend of words and energy.
The lizard jumped, claws outstretched, wine-red eyes fixed on me.
“Hrr-Chare!”
I shot the fireball from my palm. It sailed forth, the flames crackling, and it surged toward the lizard and then to its right, to where I’d aimed the spell.
The ball of flames smashed into three lizards just as they converged on the deer, digging their claws into its body. Flames burned over their scales, scorched their icy bodies and spread over them from head to toe, engulfing them.
They screamed now. They were animalistic screams, full of pain and hard to listen to, the sound spreading way beyond us and all through the forest.
Pain seared down my face as the lizard hit me and tore its claws down my cheeks.
I grabbed my poker from the ground and I swung it, connecting with the lizard as if it was a baseball. It smashed into the ground and onto its back, wheezing. Wasting no time, I hit it again and again, beating it with my poker and sending sprays of blood over the ground.
Satisfied that it was dead, I turned my attention to the forest ahead.
The three lizards were a charred mess now, their bodies still and blackened, steam rising from them. Good; I was right. A fire spell hurt creatures of the ice elemental.
The deer was hobbling away, scampering on wounded legs. One of the lizards must have tried to disable it. Blood streamed from wounds on its side.
It was no problem for me to get close to it in that state, and I took a deep breath, held my poker tight, and ran it through its throat. One deep, clean stab ended its life.
Then I collapsed onto the ground.
My face burned with pain, deer blood coated my hand and wrist, but most importantly, the smell of charred lizard was hanging in the air.
I let my breaths catch up with me, I let my pulse settle, and I savored the fact that I was still alive, that I had won. Every day in the wilds was a battle to survive, and I had just emerged from one victorious.
CHAPTER 20 – Remains
My face was wet with blood, so I wiped it with my sleeve and took a handful of ice and held it against my cheek. It stung like hell at first, before the ice bestowed it with a glorious numbness. I held my overcoat sleeve against the wound and stayed like that for five minutes until the blood stopped.
While I waited, a message ap
peared in front of me.
[Fire] discipline improved by 8%!
Rank: Grey 22.00%
Wow, my [Fire] rank had gone from 14% to 22%. That was the biggest jump yet! I already knew that the longer I held my stances and the more elementals I fed into the spell, the more my rank increased when I cast it.
This told me something new; the consequences of my spells spell fed into my rewards for using them. One fireball had taken out three ice lizards, and this had given me a hefty rank increase. That meant that ranking up a spell discipline wasn’t just about working hard; I’d improve quicker if I worked smartly.
When my face stopped bleeding, I went to each corpse and took their elementals, placing each pile of elemental ash into my bag. After I did, I waited to see what I had gained.
[Ice] elementals received x4
[Speed] elementals received x1
The ice was no surprise, since the lizards’ fiery deaths had confirmed my suspicions about their nature. I wasn’t right a lot of the time, but damn it felt good when I was.
But the deer? I didn’t know what I had expected. I guessed speed made sense. Deer weren’t strong or dangerous, so they had to be quick to stay alive.
It was a little bit of an anti-climax. The deer’s fur, although now coated in blood, had a golden hue to it, and I’d expected something more special. Oh well; at least I had new elementals, and I could take the deer back to camp and Mardak could butcher it.
The only shame was that I had scorched the lizard guys to hell. Four sources of extra meat gone, not to mention that maybe one of the clan tanners or crafters could have done something with the scales.
Despite my victory, I was presented with a problem. The bag Kaleb had given me was magic and could hold way more than it should have been able to, but magic had limits. The opening of the bag was eight inches across, and I couldn’t stuff a whole damn deer into it.
I hadn’t expected to be able to kill something as large as a deer. I wouldn’t have been able to if the lizards hadn’t wounded it first. As such, I hadn’t brought a butcher knife with me. Also, I didn’t own a butcher knife. I was no master hunter.
The way I saw it, I could leave the deer here, then grab Harrien and Malin and have them help me cut it up and take it back to camp. The problem was, leaving a fresh kill in a barren forest was like opening a dining hall for lone wolves and putting a sign outside saying Come Get Your Free Meat. I’d be lucky if there were even any bones left by the time we got back.
The only thing I could do was drag it through the forest so it was a little closer to camp and then bury it. If I piled enough snow on top, it’d keep the deer meat fresh for longer, and it should smother the smell.
My next problem was that I didn’t have a map. I’d headed north from camp and I knew my way home, but there was no telling if I could find this exact location again.
So, what was a place in the forest that I knew well? One that the clan knew, too?
Ah, yeah. I remembered the place.
Three hours later, I had dragged the deer south and then east a little, until I found the spot. It would have been an area of the forest just like the rest, were it not for the tinge of sadness I felt when I saw it, and were it not for the flowers and little twine figurines that had been left in remembrance.
There, in a place I had stood not too long ago under worse circumstances, I placed the deer carcass on the Runenmer’s rune, and I piled mounds and mounds of snow on top of it.
It looked disguised enough, but I piled even more snow on top to be sure. Finished, I headed back to the fire where I had left Roddie. I checked my snares and found three dead hares, four broken snares, and five that were completely undisturbed.
The hares, at least, fit in my inventory bag. And not only that.
I knew the score by now. I knew how this world worked. A little, anyway.
Everything was worth killing, even hares.
[Mapping] elemental received x2
[Sight] elementals received x1
This was interesting. Interesting, and exciting.
Not just because I had learned of yet two more new elemental types.
Not just because collecting elementals was becoming one of my purposes in this new life.
No. My dead hares had taught me something new. Namely, two of the same creature could give different kinds of elementals. Not always, since this had never happened to me before, but sometimes.
Now, I needed to get back to camp, tell them about the deer, and start working on my magic.
Actually, phrasing it like that made me sound like a kid trying to be a stage magician. “Go away, Mom! I’m working on my magic!”
So, I wasn’t going to work on my magic. I was going to…uh…labor on my spells.
Anyway, the ice lizards had given me an idea, and I was eager to try it out.
CHAPTER 21 – A Different Stance
“Let’s get moving, Roddie,” I said. My buddy gave an excited yip in reply, and I got to my feet.
When I turned around, I saw a sheep standing behind me.
Not just a sheep, though. Not the normal kind, that’d be too easy for this world.
This was a sheep standing upright on its hind legs. Its wool coat had grown so thick that it formed an eight-inch-thick bulge all around it, from ass to head. Its face was almost hidden by the sheer mass of its wool.
“Ain’t seen you around here ‘fore now,” it said.
I almost fell over in shock. The only thing that kept me upright was the damage that falling on my ass would do to my reputation. If I couldn’t handle talking sheep, what could I?
“Mind if I get warm?” he said.
He walked over to the fire and sat near it.
“Careful you don’t catch. You look pretty, uh flammable,” I said.
The sheep stuck one of his front legs - or arms in this case – deep into his wool, so much that half his arm disappeared. After screwing his face up a little and rummaging around, he brought out a clay pipe and leather sack. He began stuffing tobacco into it.
“Come. Sit. Gab with me for a while,” he said.
A saying came to mind; when a sheep asks you to talk, you listen to what he has to say.
It wasn’t an old saying. I had just made it up.
Roddie circled our wooly friend, and after a few curious sniffs, he wagged his tail. The sheep put his pipe between his lips and stroked Roddie with a free hand.
And that made me realize something else; this sheep had hands!
I joined him by the fire, sitting opposite him.
“Got a name?” he asked.
“Isaac.”
“Isaac the what?”
“Sorry?”
“The something. Always gotta be Something, the Something.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“They call me Dud the Unsheared. Or maybe they would. Most folks who get close enough to learn my name don’t live long enough to spread it.”
I gripped my poker now. “Is that a threat?”
“Threat? We’re two travelers sharing the heat. Pipe?”
“No, thanks.”
“Most folks, they see a sheep who can speak English, they think one of two things. Depends on their kinda life. One, they size him up and think how much meat’s clingin’ to his bones. If that’s not what crosses their minds, then they think somethin’ else. Greedier thoughts. Ones like, hey! A talkin’ sheep. That’ll fetch me a goddamn mountain of gold.”
“People want to eat you, or sell you.”
“That’s the size of it. You ain’t any different.”
“I don’t want to eat you,” I said. Though, I’d be lying if I hadn’t wondered what kind of elementals I’d get from Dud the Unsheared.
“I don’ mean that. I mean, you’re in as much trouble as me. Oh, I seen the circle on ya head. I know what that entails, bucko. But I see ya skin, too. You’re human. There are folks out there who’ll look at a human, and they’ll think one of two things. What can I get f
rom his flesh, and how much gold could he get me?”
“Cannibals?”
“Nah,” said Dud, breathing out a plume of honey-scented tobacco smoke. “As far as I hear it, human flesh tastes like crap. I’m talking elementals. There are places out there where you look in the fields, and you see pastures full of buck-naked men and women scampering around. Chewin’ on the grass. Getting herded when the times right.”
“Like sheep.”
“Like sheep,” said Dud, sighing.
I had so many questions for this, quite frankly, weird specimen of nature. Too many to even think about. I grasped hold of the first one.
“How can you speak English?”
“You’re new here?”
I shook my head. I was lying, but no sense telling Dud the Unsheared how green I was.
“Friend, no point askin’ why a sheep can speak English. Not when there are places out there where a man can speak Sheep.”
This was the first person – sheep – I’d met who spoke fluent English. It was an opportunity to learn something about this place. I just didn’t want to ask too many questions that would give away how naïve I was about the place. Some people’s true nature only comes out when they see a mark they can use.
I just had to be careful in how I phrased my questions.
“You from a portal, or born here?” I asked.
“Nagaia born and bred. Met a few portalers in my time, though. Nice folks, some of ‘em. Others, they’re so on edge you gotta make sure nothin sharp’s in their hands before you get too close.”
Interesting. Gaia was a Greek word for Earth, and Na meant no in Kartum. No-Earth? So the only thing that told me was this place wasn’t Earth. But then again, if you’re not something, why put the thing you’re not, in your name?
If I wanted to distance myself from being called, say, Bob, I wouldn’t go around telling people my name is No-Bob.
Then again, the na and gaia parts might be coincidence. Maybe Nagaia was a word wholly on its own.
What else did I want to ask Dud?
“So you can speak English, fine. But where’d you learn it?” I said.
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 17
