6 - First blood

Hub

CW: Graphic violence

I took a deep breath through my mouth and nose, letting my nerves gather the chemicals on the air. The smells of the forest were hard to parse, but… There! It felt like trying to pick out a particular instrument in a work of music, sifting through each of the disparate parts in turn until I recognized the shape I was looking for. Quietly, I followed the gradient until I was sure the source was near and peered from the shadows toward my prey. They almost blended in, but in the dark I could see a group of rabbits nestled in a burrow among the gnarled roots of a tree.

I took a deep breath, readying my improvised spear as I took cover behind a bush. They’re just a few feet away, all I have to do is stick one of them..! I pounced, using my whole body to concentrate power into the weapon. Responding to the sudden movement, the rabbits bolted to attention, but they were too late - their choice of nesting place meant that their only escape was through a narrow opening that led straight to me.

When I had gone hunting once in my past life, I had access to modern tools, the time to prepare traps… and most importantly, I knew I could just go home and nuke something in the microwave if everything went wrong. I hadn’t expected it to shake me up so badly, but as I sat by the fire that Brask built while I was out, troublesome emotions burbled beneath the surface. Mercifully, I hadn’t gotten too much blood in my fur; that certainly wouldn’t have helped my mental state. Raaf, by contrast, had gotten his hands dirty skinning the carcass with my knife, and was now roasting it on a spit as the fire cast dancing shadows through the trees.

The food looked nearly finished when Raaf went tense. I approached, beginning to ask him what was wrong, but then I felt it too - the instinctive danger-sense that had warned me twice before when my life was in peril, set off this time by a rancid odor on the breeze. I scrambled to grab my blade from where Raaf had laid it, taking an unsteady stance between him and the threat. Brask, seeing our reaction, drew his sword and brought it to bear in the same direction. “You smell something?”

I retched. “Yeah, it’s like rotten fish..!”

“Probably goblins. Smelled the food. They’re pack hunters; there’ll be at least five, but they’ll run if we even out the numbers.” Brask briefed us in a hurried whisper. “Just try and stay safe until I can do that.”

As he finished speaking, I heard footsteps approaching, and shortly after, eight small, green humanoids burst from the treeline, clothed scarcely in pelts and brandishing crude stone clubs. Two went after Brask, and three each went after myself and Raaf. Raaf backpedaled, wildly swinging a burning log from the firepit, while Brask swung his sword with a burst of magical vigor, cleaving one of his enemies in half and leaving the other with a lethal gash across its torso.

Distracted by Brask’s show of force, I realized too late that one of my foes was readying an attack. I managed to dodge, but my footing was disrupted, and a second goblin capitalized by delivering a crushing blow to my stomach, knocking me on my back. The third saw Brask goring its comrades and barked an order in unfamiliar, snarling words, evidently instructing two of each of the remaining groups to focus on overwhelming Brask instead.

As I wheezed to catch my breath, the third goblin stood over me, winding up a swing and muttering more strange words with a smirk on its face. I gathered my strength and rolled to the side as the club smashed into the earth beside my head, then kicked its torso with all my might to buy myself time to get back up.

Now surrounded, Brask let out a roar as he cleaved through two enemies, the surge of magic leaving his left arm limp. Though he was battered, after two of his assailants left to fight Brask, Raaf was able to get a tree between himself and the one remaining goblin, and was currently running in circles. My remaining attacker wound up its weapon, but I lunged quickly to bury my dagger in its stomach.

Before I could run to help Raaf, Brask shouted a frantic order. “Lily! Don’t let it get back up!” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the goblin that Brask hadn’t quite cut in two shakily rising to its feet. I looked down at the one I had just stabbed, and was met by its eyes still staring into mine despite the growing pool of blood around its body. My skin crawling, I stomped on its throat as hard as I could, and its eyes finally glazed over.

Brask was using his remaining arm to drag the corpses into a pile after I had helped him take out the three remaining goblins. “What the hell are thralls doing this far south?”

“Sorry, thralls?”

“They’re the Eternal Doctrine’s fodder, they bind demons to monsters with fast breeding cycles so they can build up their numbers quickly.” Brask began to pace. “If the Empire finds out about this… And so close to Millstone, do they know about..? No, that’s impossible. Maybe they went rogue? That’s supposed to be impossible, too, but…” He paused, then turned to me. “Lily, I need to talk to you about something.”

After finding a secluded area away from Raaf, Brask continued. “Lily, you probably know some of this, but… Abilities like the one I have are called Heroics, after the Heroes that first had them. Nowadays, they’re usually either inherited from your parents or harvested from a Celestial. Even if both parents are carriers, though, the strength gets cut in half every generation.” He took a deep breath. “This isn’t widely known, but if someone dies suddenly enough… It doesn’t really matter whether they’re a Celestial. Their Heroic will latch onto the nearest person either way, that’s how Imperial nobles pass them down intact.”

“…So you mean I would have one from when my masters got blown up?”

“Yeah. We don’t get the same intuition that Heroes and Celestials do, so most people never realize when they take a Heroic like that. Beastfolk don’t have much ancestral magic, so the Empire just assumes that anyone with strong magic is a murderer.” Brask broke eye contact. “I didn’t want that to happen to you, but when I saw you get hurt, and when I think about war on the horizon… I feel like the benefits outweigh the risks.”

The next morning, Brask and I returned to a clearing we searched yesterday, marked by a rock formation in the center. The sun was low, and the taste of the night still lingered on the air. Raaf had expressed some unease at being left alone, but I reassured him that we wouldn’t be gone for long. At least, I hoped I wouldn’t be gone for long.

I really don’t want to risk this. I’m supposed to have some special power of my own, what if it comes out? At the same time, though, it would draw way too much suspicion if I were to refuse - what reason could I possibly claim to have against learning something when I can just decide not to use it if it doesn’t suit me? I took a deep breath. I’ll just play along, for now. If worse comes to worst and this outs me, I’ll have more tools to get away. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

“That’s good enough. You were with the Errith family, so that means you probably have Opal’s Heroic. I only know the basics secondhand, but…” Brask grabbed a stick from the ground and offered it to me. “I had a friend called Karil who had Opal’s Heroic, he told me he would imagine things as if they were a part of his body. Can you try that?”

I closed my eyes and focused, bending my internal body map to include the foreign object. After a moment of concerted effort, it felt like the stick was a dry sponge drawing water from my hands. As it filled, though, it was as if I had moved my leg for the first time in hours, setting off a wave of painful pins and needles. I yelped in disgust and let go, feeling my essence recede back into me. “Eugh! Fuck!” I shook off the goosebumps. “Please tell me it’s not supposed to feel like that!?”

Brask’s hopeful expression melted. “What? No, it’s… At least he never mentioned anything like that, though I guess… Oh! I think I get it, uh-” Brask patted the rock in the middle of the clearing. “Try this?”

“…Fine.” Reluctantly, I put my palms to the rock and focused again. Gradually, my senses crept outwards once more, and though I braced myself in anticipation, the pins and needles never came. Instead, it was refreshingly cool, if a little claustrophobic. As I filled the furthest edges, I could faintly feel the warmth of the sun above and the wriggling of bugs underneath. “Whoa..!”

I felt Brask put his hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah…” I opened my eyes to see lines of white magic forming a glowing fractal web of what looked like nerves or blood vessels suffusing the boulder. “This is much more comfortable.”

“That’s good. I thought the stick would be easier for you to move since it’s more pliable, but I didn’t realize until it was too late that I was basically asking you to connect to a corpse…”

“That makes sense, it definitely felt dead.” I paused for a moment, watching the veins pulse along with my heartbeat. Impulsive mischief spread across my face. “Can I move this?”

I split my attention as Brask spoke, using all my might to impose my will on the stone. “Probably not today, it’ll take a lot of…” Brask paused when he heard the rock begin to rumble, a crack snaking down the side between my hands. “…Energy.”

I turned to ask Brask what happened, but my body kept moving beyond where I intended to stop. The boulder fell away from my mind the moment my hands left its surface, and the rest of my senses departed soon after as I landed in the grass.

I regained consciousness at camp, squinting against the glare of the sun overhead. “Y’have a nice nap, Lily?” Raaf was sitting beside my bedroll while Brask packed our camp supplies away in the cart. Raaf’s voice softened when he spoke again, his eyes fixed on something in the grass. “I had trouble sleeping after all that excitement last night, too.”

“Whuh? No, I was…” I hesitated before saying anything more to allow my groggy mind to consider the situation. Brask went through a lot of cloak-and-dagger to keep my magic a secret from Raaf, but why? It’s not like I’ll be able to hide it from him if I’m using it for anything, and if he might have an ability from his former captors, he deserves to know. “Actually, Brask was teaching me about magic. Apparently because my captors died so suddenly, I got their Heroic.”

Raaf’s eyes went wide. “Lily! You’re kidding, what can you do?”

“Ha, ha… Not much yet.” I put my palm against the soil and tried to extend my senses into it, but my progress was sluggish, and my magical nerves glowed faintly. Regardless, Raaf’s attention was rapt. “I can connect to objects and move them around. I tried to move a big rock, but obviously, it didn’t end well.”

“Lily, my dear. You almost broke it in half.” Brask approached, having finished packing. His expression was distant. “Certainly not what you were going for, but nonetheless impressive for your first time. Gather your belongings, we need to get to Barrel before sunset.”