Without his ever being actively thoughtful about the fact, two months passed in the Ancient Glade. If he’d stopped to think about it, Ulric would have called them months because two complete cycles of the Vardan trio of moons, often in their crescent phases, had occurred. The three were of varying sizes, the largest about half again as large as Luna on old dead Earth, the other two about as large, with the smallest just shy, fitting neatly in the silhouette of its sisters. Such things were not in the Reforged man’s thoughts.
Right now, his only thought was for the arrow in his fingers, and the prey that was stooping down to eat of the lush vegetation of the glade.
*PING*
Ulric's head rose at the unexpected sound. His grip on the bowstring relaxed and the powerful recurved stave flexed back to its original two-meter length, his shooting posture ruined. Without hesitation he called the Akashic link to his attention and viewed it, noting that it now required barely a thought to summon it.
[Status]
The deer-like animal he'd been about to impale with an arrow noticed the motion just a few paces away and leapt from its head-down eating position in an eyeblink, an incredible burst of strength carrying it eight meters in a single bound, which then lengthened into a flash of green and yellow furred speed, carrying it away through the trees, bleeting its warning call to the rest of the herd. Eleven more of the creatures similarly bolted, vanishing in mere moments.
Annoyed, the hunting man snorted, clearing his nostrils, but he wasn’t angry. It mattered little. The creatures would return soon enough, his glade was too rich with food, too light on predators for them to resist, and he had plenty of stores to last until his next kill. He'd slipped to within a scant five or six meters of this one, close enough to have impaled it with his spear had he wanted to try. A clean bowshot prevented any clown fiestas from getting him hurt though, so that was always the play.
This marked the first time he'd managed to close the distance without so much as a warning snort from the herd. Which was, he smirked, what feat that had triggered the Akashic notification that broke its concentration and cost him the hunt, or, probably. Damned inconvenient, but that’s how things worked on Varda sometimes.
Ulric had grown in the time lost weeks since his arrival. He'd gained two ranks in the title associated with mastery of this forest ecosystem, the most recent one just now.
Inscribed there was a noticeable difference from when he'd first arrived, with significant boosts to his stats and reflected his relative comfort with life in the wild clearing in which he’d cultivated a home. In part, he was stronger here than he could be elsewhere, thanks to Vardan strangeness.
In his prior life, Ulric had spent considerable time in the wilderness in his younger days, hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, etc. He had oft imagined lost himself in fantasy, as if he were in the place of the pioneers of the pre-collapse, before ruinous consumption had wrought its heinous work on the world, instead of roaming the crippled scrub that passed for his world’s wilds. But never had he had to live in it. There had proven to be an incredible gap between theory and experience, especially without technology to make up the difference. The basic skills he had were lacking, practiced but never mastered. The instinctive understanding for the flow of nature and the movements of its creatures had never been developed well enough to compete with those creatures for the bounty of the land. Things had changed.
Weeks of living and surviving in this forest had shown him which things he'd been doing that were wrong. Mistakes he made were punished, while sound judgments were rewarded. The wildlife, which had flocked to the land with the absence of the monster that had depleted it of life, had been able instructors in his deficiencies. Failure after failure, like a whetstone across his mind, had brought those skills up to a fine polish.
He returned to his camp, now fortified with a circumference of chest height interwoven branch walls called hurdles, reinforced by sturdy poles [Stone Walled] into place in increments. Sharpened stakes driven at forty-five degrees jutted from the hurdles to discourage passers-through from trying to force the issue. Hidden pitfall traps marked by yellow flowers with red stripes, a plant only he would know to be possessed of a rather aggressive contact poison, served to defend his homestead from critters patrolling his wall.
Ulric’s eyes grew distant as he contemplated the barrier. That there, that had been one of Varda’s more unforgiving lessons.
----------------------------------------One Vardan Month Earlier--------------------------------
The beam of magically focused water he’d been using to carve a gear out of the bizarrely hard wood he called Steelwood fell away to forceful mist and disappeared, along with his concentration. Something had ticked in his brain, had disrupted his concentration. Irritated he stood up and stretched, body slightly stiff from an extended crouch. He’d had aspirations to a hand drill, but that meant making gears. Carving the wood to produce them would take ages so he was trying to cheat and practice magic at the same time. After a few failed tries he had gotten the hang of limiting his magic output to a low, steady, supply that turned the surprisingly destructive [Hydrocutter] into a precise cutting tool, just as he had intended it to be on its original wizardly theory crafting. The project had gotten sidelined by other, more pressing tasks, but he was finally finding himself ahead of the game enough to set about climbing another branch of the Valin, Varda’s designation for human, tech tree.
It was slow, exacting work. A single maladjustment would turn the cutting stream to ruin the piece, as a half dozen failures could attest. Eventually, he’d settled on a round blank with a slightly smaller diameter inner blank to serve as a template, both of these scribed onto the Steelwood plank, then he’d use magic for cutting the teeth. The half-finished gear at his feet was coming along nicely, the product of a half hour’s care and a third of his mana.
A glance around camp revealed nothing untoward. He shrugged to himself. Sometimes he got a little jumpy for no reason, being alone in the wild did that to a man. Wolves were moving into the forest floor, along with many other creatures. Knee-high monitor lizards with a chameleon camouflage and razor-bladed tongue, a variety of deer-like monsters, rabbitish creatures, some type of weasel, and a host of others.
The glade was starting to come alive with life. It gladdened Ulric’s heart, the Gigabear, the near rabidly aggressive monster that had claimed the forest primeval had been what made the divine tree bearing terrain around him into a green desert. Absence of the insane thing was starting to be noticed and, as a wise man had once said, life was finding a way.
He shuddered when he recalled the savage wilderness he had witnessed far above in the canopy. He had made that climb yesterday as a physical test, all the time Ulric was discovering new limits to his physicality and breaking them soon after, and to scout that hidden forest above the forest. But. A few hours of creeping cautiously demonstrated that he was wildly unprepared for the panoply of wyrd monsters calling that arboreal domain home. A shudder when he recalled a dozen ultra lethal variants of animals almost familiar to him passed down his spine. He wasn’t ready to challenge that place, but he was growing almost comfortable in his glade and the surrounding wood.
He bent down, ready to resume his work. A series of howls, not so distant, sent prickles up his arms and he jerked upright again. Eyes scanning towards the sound he became aware of another sound, like low thunder. The piece of wood at his feet was vibrating. Confusion was replaced by sudden realization, and Ulric stood, despair painting his features because he was certain he was too late to abort this fresh hell.
“Oh shit, Oh fuck, Oh Sweet Watcher’s Tits may they hang in glory, not this.” He prayed aloud.
His call to the Impossible’s glories went unheeded. Doom came. Faster than all reason. A rush of green and yellow bodies, antlered like pronghorns and similar in shape, if a bit larger, poured over the nearest hill and down into the glade. They were insanely fast. He had only a minute, no more. Ulric scrambled to get to his spear, no time for anything else, his half-completed bow, tied and clamped while glues dried, would have been useless against this horde anyway.
Cursing himself for a half-wit he started concentrating on his mana, pulling towards the strength of the stone beneath himself, mana wavered and then snapped to Terra and he dragged the rock upwards to form a barrier. He was struggling desperately not to lose the spell as the rush of green monster antelope bore down on him. Knee-high came the semicircular wall, thunderous sound roaring now in his ears from the approaching hoofbeats. Thigh high, and he knew he wasn’t going to make it, he was too slow, the rock was rising too fucking slow. Waist high and they were upon him.
Thirty bodies moving fast as a car hurtled into his camp, heads lowered, driven by panic to flee the wolve creatures behind them. Ulric got his spear up as they came on. Maybe the wall saved him. Maybe the threat of the spear did. Certainly, the Forest Lord hide he’d made into a jerkin played a critical part, even if only for its smell, the odor being that of death itself to the creatures who got whiff. The tide parted around him so fast he could barely follow, he heard destruction as they trampled his camp. Barely a second into the stampede and, as he was glancing to the side at the devastation, one of the fuckers jumped the wall, an act of mindless desperation to flee, it wasn’t even looking at him.
Ulric had just enough time to curse before a glancing impact threw him viciously to the ground. Searing pain lanced along his side. He heard a loud series of cracks and was present enough to be afraid his ribs had been broken, a death sentence. He had no idea where his spear had gone. Thundering beats of hooves pounded down around him for a mere moment and then were passed, retreating to fade rapidly into the distance. Mixed into those bodies Ulric had seen some type of black wolf-like beasts, snapping at the heels of the antelope creatures, driving them. Nothing stopped, the single-minded prey fled, followed by single-minded predators, none wanting to be caught where the smell of the old terror was thick, if fading.
It was over, as suddenly as it had begun.
Ulric lay curled up around his side, his hand over warm, wet heat. Moaning softly as he rolled over onto his back, he brought his hand up to confirm the blood running down his arm from his painted hand. Terrified but determined to know he looked down at his body to see his jerkin was slashed from a place horrifyingly close to his liver to under his right nipple and on around to beneath his armpit. Shaking hands pulled up the hide clothing to reveal already bruising flesh and a weeping red hooking wound, a thin line scored through the Forest Lord leather to print itself in blood on his side. The jerkin itself was unharmed. Glancing, a shallow flesh wound, not fatal. His ribs on gentle probing, weren’t broken, just bruised badly enough to be a constant source of pain.
Panting from fear, relief, adrenaline, and nearly in tears Ulric simply lay there breathing and grateful to be alive. Nothing returned to eat him, the smell of ancient terror was still sufficient to deter anything from inspecting the wreckage of what had been his camp. His title might also have played a role, it compelled creatures to avoid him if possible. That made hunting more challenging but also helped to keep him free of critters up to no good. Ulric climbed slowly, gingerly to his feet and surveyed the spot along the ancient tree fall that was becoming his homestead, was taking shape as something more than a camp. It was shattered. One small mercy, over next to the scattered contents of his root bin lay the corpse of one of the green and yellow bastards, obviously dead, its leg kicking in twitches. It had broken its neck when a horn caught a bark ridge in the dead giant and its momentum was seized entirely by its spinal column.
Turning his head to the side he saw his half-finished gear lying just outside the impromptu spell-woven wall of rock. It was bent, chipped, and broken by beating hooves.
“YOU HAVE GOT TO BE JOKING!!” Ulric screamed furiously into the evening air of the glade. The forest answered him with silence.
------------------------------------------------Present Day--------------------------------------------
Ulric came back to himself from reliving the ruin of his old camp. Lessons learned, he thought, looking at the spiked wooden barrier.
It had been a bare six weeks after the death of the Forest Lord. His shelter had been smashed, his bed turned into splinters. He'd been nearly killed when one of the things had tried to gore him on its way through, ripping a wound across his ribs that had only fully healed a few weeks ago, a wound only kept from killing him by the durability of the hide he’d worn. Both the smokers were ruined and had to be rebuilt, likewise his root bin. The only saving grace there was that the animal that had stepped through his root bin had snagged itself, broken both its front legs and smashed its head into the ground hard enough to crush its own skull on the rocks near his water hole. That meant he had two dead deer to eat, which, you know, small miracles.
He'd moved his camp back to the torn roots then, to protect his water supply. The animals would have their own known water sources, springs abounded in the rocky highland terrain and a rainy season a month-long had shown him where the watersheds ran. Trailing animals and birds, predators and prey alike, he'd learned a great deal about how this forest hid its secrets.
The answer, as he had suspected early but dared not confirm, lay in the canopy. It was dense. An ecosystem all unto its own. The trees started to limb out about two-thirds of their height from the ground, the lower branches as massive as the largest redwoods of his world. From these arboreal highways sprang a verdant world completely unlike the shaded ground. Interconnected branches ran between trees, oak-sized paths from one level of the canopy to the next. He'd climbed up, once his wounds had healed sufficiently to avoid opening them or greatly aggravating the sprained rib muscles and bruised ribs. It hadn't been especially difficult, with the large crevices in the bark of those giants and the rough texture providing hand and foot holds aplenty. Once up in the canopy, he'd been able to observe the myriad species of plants and animals that made the true forest home. As before, on his first survey, he was forced to come face to face with the reality that he wasn’t in Kansas anymore. The canopy played by different rules than old Earth. Harder ones.
There were giant birds, with beaks similar to toucans. They didn't eat fruit though, instead they preferred to snap down what looked like a badger sized squirrel with webbed arms that glided from tree to tree. The squirrel badgers ate a giant bean that grew from a massive wrapping vine. The bean proved to be excellent once boiled, fruity and packed with oils. There were several species of snake, ranging from the constrictor type about two meters in diameter at its widest coils to a thirty meter long venom spitter whose streams left smoking bark where they touched. He'd seen a hawk-like bird the size of a German shepherd get hit by that venom and break up in mid-flight like Styrofoam in gasoline, just liquifying.
As before, his second investigation convinced the Ancient Glade Native and Destroyer of the Forest Lord that he was ill-prepared to face the environment on high and he returned to the relatively barren, but vastly safer, forest floor, and his own rich glade. To contend with one of those creatures, he was confident he could manage. But to face them on their own terms, to try to out compete them up in their canopy home, he doubted it would take long for some innocent seeming slip up to get him eaten. Better to lure one down to him, to take it on the sly and bugger off out from that mad house with his quarry before anything else sniffed him out.
His Giga-bear meat proved life-saving. It was rich with fats, marbled to perfection. Even smoked and dry it was packed with nutrition. He had enough to weather the first months of his stay, long enough to learn. The Autumn season progressed steadily, air turning cooler. Those cold rains had forced him to completely rethink his shelter.
Ulric started a more permanent project, using fire, magical and otherwise, and [Hydrocutter] he methodically dug into the tremendous mass of trunk that bisected the glade. Fire to weaken and char, water to carve into segments, although that was costly from a mana perspective, and an axe with a head made of split bear pelvis bone to chop out the ridiculously durable wood of the felled titan tree. Work proceeded quickly, but it was grueling.
Why it took three weeks for him to figure out that, if the hardest thing he had on hand was bear bones, then he should be shaping bear bone tools using bear bone hammers/chisels, Ulric had no idea, other than he was a moron. Still, slow as he was betimes, he did learn.
Teeth made awls, sail needles, and even some fish hooks, although he hadn't seen any bodies of water that would support fish. Claws he made into a set of spiked leather caestus. Not because he planned to fist fight any animals, but because it seemed fun and sometimes fun projects helped break up what could be anxiety inducing tedium. Coupled with the Forest Lord's hide clothes he probably appeared to be a junior Forest Lord to much of the animal life.
Thanks to his Destroyer of the Forest Lord title, and crude leather garments, if they’d avoided him before, the stray deer avoided him at all costs now. He'd seen more sign of the wolve things. Direwolves maybe, he wasn’t a biologist. A pack of those Pleistocene wolf-like creatures chasing a gigantic stag with fractal leaf shaped horns, like recurving ferns once came close to where he’d sat in a modest five meter sapling, skid to a halt at the sight of him and run howling away before he made any move of aggression.
That made hunting things harder, but he'd accept that over having to fight off more predators for territory. That all the predators would fear him was a failure of imagination on his part, as he learned soon after.
Days passed quickly. Ulric was kept busy by his assorted tasks. The first few of these was spent in food preservation and camp tasks, with a big investment of his time foraging around the immediate vicinity of the glade. Forage was good, but time consuming. Various plants proved edible and Ulric had finally achieved some semblance of a normal diet. That was a process, however, it took most of six weeks living in the glade to suss out which things could be eaten, about two dozen, and which could not, legion.
Further investigation of the limitless verdure of the clearing revealed that his glade, this pocket of verdancy buried beneath that staggering canopy, runneth over with bounty, even more than before. By the fast-running creeks he found a cat-tail like tall water reed whose stalks were every bit good as celery, with crisp and nutritious. Others, a woody stem with thin needlelike leaves, had strong flavor reminiscent of thyme. Still another, with thin stalks and short fernlike leaves taste almost identical to parsley. Anything that could be harvested and planted near his shelter was, cultivated in small beds dug with a carved shovel. That backbreaking work took him three days, only viable because of his vigor.
For every botanical gift, however, was a reciprocal curse. Most were simply too bitter or acidic to eat, even where they produced no obvious toxic effect from his tests. Some were marginal but too much of which would induce cramps, or, as one that had elicited little to no immediate response, but taught him to wait far longer before ingesting larger quantities, induced a nausea and diarrhea, unlike anything he'd ever experienced. He avoided that one furthermore. Three he strongly suspected induced cardiac symptoms, although he'd not ever eaten enough to confirm it. Two he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, contained a potent paralytic. He'd been unable to walk following those tests and had struggled to breathe deeply the rest of the day. It was mildly terrifying, testing these things. But it was the only way he could secure enough food to last through what was sure to be a soon-to-arrive winter season.
Given that most herbs, shoots, mushrooms, and roots proved to be either noxious to the point of inedibility or highly toxic, often both, only the rigor of his testing methodology saved him from a rather uncomfortable death in the wilds. His persistence, some might have called it insanity, was rewarded.
It was with great relief that Ulric discovered analogues to Earthly spices, most especially the presence of a grassy plant that tasted of cilantro, a broad-leafed flowering plant whose fleshy seed pods carried a distinct flavor that was tangy like garlic, and long green stalked herb that he found to be nearly identical in form and flavor to onion. There was another, a deathly spicy herbaceous plant that he still wasn’t convinced wasn’t toxic, so potent was its fiery burn. A woody shrub produced cinnamon or its analogue when the bark was peeled. Not the bark, the wood itself, he had to grind the shrub to season his food with it. Altogether, the hermit wizard was able to cook meals that could almost pass for some avant-garde eatery, heavy on the protein, fruits, and ruffage, light on the starches.
Fruit, thankfully, almost exclusively, was always safe to eat. Five varieties of berry came into season for his harvesting, each deliciously sweet. Apple-mango, lemony pineapple, he put on weight from all the sugars in his diet from that point on.
Small animals were returning to the glade, their signs becoming evident on the local plant life. Once, as Ulric picked some of his favorite tubers, the pale starchy things being remarkably close to potatoes when boiled, he was attacked by a small horned rabbit with enlarged hind claws. It had shot from cover at incredible speed. Ulric had had his knife out already and the Forest Lord bone, sharpened to razor edge, parted the thing’s head and left shoulder cleanly down its body, so aggressively had it thrown itself at him, horn lowered to spike his chest. The hide, of course, was ruined. Its horn was inferior to his current tool and, at least on this specimen, too small to spark a use to Ulric’s mind. It roasted up just fine though. Other things were showing themselves on his foraging trips, though he only ran into them once he began to practice proper stalking technique and learned attentiveness to the wind direction. His hide clothes smelled of the old super predator and everything ran immediately when they caught whiff of him.
So it was that Ulric Einar found himself losing his caution. Varda, of course, obliged him with a lesson.
A day not unlike many others found him stalking a [Bladefern Elk]. Strong creatures, built along the same lines as the name he’d dubbed them, but with razored antlers with frond shaped protrusions, and a tendency to either run or try to slash predators to ribbons. He’d sighted it in the predawn light, as it had crested a small rise on the southern end of the glade. Keeping the strong Westerly wind in his face, Ulric angled around where he’d seen the thing alternately grazing and browsing. He still had plenty of Gigabear meat but he didn’t want to pass up any opportunities to expand his larder. Never can tell when hard times might come a calling.
As he crested a small rise, in a crouch so low he’d have never managed it in the Before, he saw that the magnificent beast was turned away from him, its flexible lips pulling away at the lowest succulent leaves of a sapling of one of the trees he called [Steelwood] for its incredibly hard, dense, material. Slowly, to avoid alerting the dark brown and mottled silver-grey buck, at least thirteen hands high at the shoulder, Ulric took up a throwing spear in his right hand, it’s glassresin blade immaculately sharp. These half-length spears had proven ideal to take game at medium to short ranges, powered by his strong shoulders. He could hit his target seven in ten throws, good enough to be worth the effort. He couldn’t wait until his bow was finished, the work-in-progress laminated recurve stave sat only half finished in his camp.
Slowly, ever so slowly, his arm drew back.
A deep, throaty growl, distantly to his left, sent the Bladefern Elk’s head up and it swiftly darted ahead, a tremendous four-meter leap carrying it into its incredible flight. At the same time, Ulric’s turning head caught the source of the sound. Some kind of wolf, broad shoulders, shaggy fur, a head too large compared to most wolves he’d seen in documentary, the things were nearly extinct in his old world. This one was alive and well. It was big, its shoulder blades cresting Ulric’s chest and it looked to have at least fifty kilos on top of his own solid eighty.
Baleful yellow-green eyes stared into his, feral. Its growl deepened, and it snarled, sharp pointed teeth flashing. It would attack, Ulric was sure. The beast wanted his territory, his life, he could feel it. Ulric’s hackles rose, and he felt a deep anger as his hand tightened on the throwing spear. Want wasn’t going to mean shit, Ulric decided. This critter had cost him a fresh meat dinner and nominated itself as nexties.
The once engineer let fly, just as the large animal gathered itself and the spear buried halfway along its haft in the matted fur, just behind its front left shoulder. A roar of pain preceded its retaliatory charge, fangs bared. A scant fourteen meters separated the two and, claws digging deeply into the soft litter below, the animal was almost upon him.
Ulric had not been idle, had not wasted the dark evenings spent in his shelter. He drew on his core, forcing the latent energy to his command, his mind already forging it under his will to the shape he had practiced nightly for the last three days, a beam of concentrated water propelled at a pressure sufficient to carve even Forest Lord bone. As the beast’s body left the earth, propelled like a living missile toward him, Ulric’s hands pushed forwards, cupped together as if giving CPR, and a beam of water intercepted the Fellwolf.
His high-pressure [Hydrocutter] could pierce metal. This spell, powered by Ulric’s core, dove through the beast’s head and exited the back side, blowing red and grey matter out behind it. Momentum carried the corpse past Ulric, to crash into the dirt and roll to a stop.
The breath he’d been holding he released in a slow hiss, his tightened body relaxing. His heart jackhammered inside his chest at the close call. He raised his estimation of the power of magic. His best throw had proven insufficient to land a killing blow, even with good placement. This working of Aquae though? Complete destruction of the creature’s head. Ulric’s mouth dropped open as his eyes took in the large trunk, well large unless you compared it to one of the Elder trees in the surrounding forest, of a tree behind where the wolf had been when he’d struck it. There was a large rough tear in the wood. Ulric walked slowly and put his finger into the bore, it went in, all the way to the second knuckle. All that from a mere half-second’s flow of power. His power. He had willed this destruction and, lo and behold, commanded the elements to smite his enemy.
He had to admit, magic was pretty fucking amazing.
A budding smile died a swift death when he examined the Fellwolf corpse. A mouthful of jagged, ripping teeth, head as big as Ulric’s torso. Oversized claws that looked like a badger’s. The spear had torn a clean hole in the furry hid and penetrated deep into its innards. One lung had been torn and Ulric thought it probably had destroyed what looked like a liver. And that had slowed it barely at all. It sure as hell hadn’t stopped the thing from leaping at him hard enough to knock his ass to the ground where those teeth could get at his head. And it had gotten to within an easy stone’s throw to him without his having any clue. If it hadn’t growled he might never have known it was there. Fuck.
Arrogance. Pure and simple. He’d thought himself the only predator of note now that the old monster was gone. How wrong he was. That was the kind of mistake you make once, Ulric resolved to himself. A second time and it was likely Varda would see the end of Ulric Einar’s adventure. Ulric resolved himself with the mantra that had come to dominate his days: Get better, get stronger, learn more. A mantra of success that the man chanted to himself.
What Ulric had not experienced, outside of a few initial bouts of neurosis and near meltdowns there at the beginning, was loneliness. Ulric had never been a great people person. Not that he was some kind of nonfunctionally introverted psycho who hated everyone. He was calm, easygoing, witty, and demonstrated a rare interest in listening to the people to which he talked, instead of just waiting for his turn to talk. To the point that he sometimes felt that they were unnerved by the fact that he was intently listening to them, and felt self-conscious about it.
It wasn't that he was bad at being around people. He just didn't enjoy being around people. Ulric had what might be the smallest social battery of any functional adult he'd ever met. It had always been like that, even with family. He'd be good for around half an hour and then he wanted to be alone for a few hours. Eight continuous hours of social exposure was like Kryptonite, he felt drained and exhausted. Out here, isolated for what had to be more than two months according to his old reckoning of things, he'd never felt the lack of human contact. If someone showed up he'd probably be excited at the change but, without a doubt, if they hung around for long he'd find a reason to slip off into the wood for a few hours. Not for the first time, Ulric considered the high likelihood that he was somewhere on the spectrum.
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Eh. The trees weren't complaining.
-------------------------------------------Two Weeks Later---------------------------------
The trees were complaining, leaves loosening to fall to the forest floor, sighing in ever colder winds, the canopy above groaning as cool wood fibers on scales that beggared his imagination shifted stiffly in those breezes. In response to the infinitesimally shorter spans of sunlight allotted them, Ulric thought he heard sap draining from the behemoth arbors in the quiet moments. When the monsoon season ended, it brought a significant drop in temperature that was now becoming decidedly crisp.
Doubtless, the trees didn’t care for it.
They also didn't care for the frost that had come these last two nights and were making their displeasure known with a rapid shift from verdure to auric glory. Sunrise that day would go down as the most beautiful, poignant, moment of Ulric's life to that moment. Red gold light, filtering through emerald and gilt branches. A sharp morning air, still, that brought out awareness of one's entire body. Heavy silence, unbroken yet by the wildlings of the canopy. It was one of those moments that lived ever on in your mind, that had become the ultimate expression of fall in Ulric's mind forever more.
Soon enough the spell was broken by birds crying and various creatures stirring. Ulric had left camp an hour prior to dawn, to find a position in a low, Ha! branch in the nearest bower. Low was relative, of course, even the least of those massive branches was a near half kilometer up. The greatest heights might be anything up to a kilometer, maybe more. He had failed to bring home meat the day before. Today he hoped to down something prodigious.
His dried Forest Lord meat was down to around a paltry few kilos of jerky from its original six hundred kilo bounty. He hunted fresh game whenever possible and, lately had improved enough to make a kill once every three or four days. Four of the Bolt Deer, his name for the small green and yellow deer-like creatures, a bit more long prong horn antelope really, but he’d already committed to a name in his head, that had stampeded his camp, had been taken, each dressing for around fifty kilos. Their meat, already preserved, was in his buried stockpile, what he hadn't eaten fresh. A single Bladefern Elk, the moose sized elk that had the fractalized recurve horns, had yielded him nearly four hundred fifty kilos of meat, most of which had also gone to the smokers, but as much of which as he could manage, he’d cooked fresh and eaten heartily. It sounded like a great deal of food, and it was!
However, Ulric's current diet was extremely game dependent and he'd calculated a few weeks ago that his natural caloric needs were consuming about eight kilograms of meat daily, partly to build up a fat reserve, which had filled out a bit his former rabbit lean frame. Given his lack of data, he couldn't make projections about the availability of prey during what was probably going to be a cold winter on the forest plateau. He didn't even have a way to determine, with any certainty, how long the days were or how long the seasons would last. The probability of this world having the exact same seasonal durations as Earth were remote. His instincts were telling him winter would be brutally frigid and longer than on Earth.
Towards that end, food preservation and wood processing were tasks on which he was spending substantial time. It had turned out that his original plan of traveling in a leap frog manner from one camp to the next had been made in gross ignorance of how difficult it was to survive in the ancient glade. The post stampede reconstruction of his camp, the rainy season making travel unwise, the creation of his Forest Lord bone tools, identification of edible plants, learning to control mana, exploring the canopy, everything took far, far longer than Ulric had anticipated. There had been so much to learn. Mistakes to make and then correct. Bad habits to unlearn and replace with good ones.
The Akashic record had acknowledged his improvement within his status, so it felt good to know that progress had been made. But he had dramatically failed to effect travel away from his starting camp.
Sitting in his hidden nook between two branches Ulric had an arrow affixed to the bow, a light tension on the string. The composite bowstave had proved its power many times, driving glass-resin tipped arrows through all the living targets he'd hit. Fletchings had come from dog sized toothed birds killed by [Windscythe]. The long wing feathers kept the arrows flying true for farther than Ulric had the skill to aim. He was currently using a hollowed tooth arrowhead, loaded with a few grams of liquid consisting of paralytic and cardiotoxic plant extract. He was hunting in the canopy today, and he had immense respect for the monsters that roamed these twisting bark pathways, hence the poisoned arrow. Better to be safe and have his most dangerous tools at the ready.
Since his aim today was something big, he would want to switch to a broad head arrow when his prey was close enough and have two or three arrows available for quick follow-up shots. He'd practiced these for several hours, daily, in the previous two weeks and felt good about getting three arrows onto a basket-ball sized target thirty meters away within around five seconds.
Ulric's back muscles had grown noticeably stronger pulling that heavy bow so many times, from both sides. He'd long since decided that if you were going to learn to do things from scratch, learn to do them ambidextrously. He was definitely favoring a left-handed shooter's posture but was trying to break that predilection to build a balanced skill.
Various large birds flitted from highway wide branch to highway wide branch, some hunting sloth like critters that hid in the nooks of bark when they saw them coming. Others were cracking head sized nuts in their beaks, a display of radical crushing power.
Suddenly several birds went still before taking to the sky with a sound that was remarkably similar to a helicopter. Ulric froze, breath held. He felt a heavy cloak of threat pressing down on the layers of forest before him. He saw nothing.
Crashing foliage, cracking limbs, and an explosion of motion heralded a massive bovine form. Built like a crimson brahma bull but with horns made of polished onyx, the animal tossed its head as it broke free of the aerial thicket into the open. Even as its massive haunches cleared the last of the limbs, cloven hooves gouging the bark beneath, it was pursued by a living shadow, one that disappeared into darkness beneath one normal sized tree in this canopy jungle only to appear from another. The creature manifested completely as it leapt to the Crimson Bull's back, jaws locking onto its victim's spine.
A panther twice as large as a Bengal tiger, shoulders rippling beneath pitch black fur, had buried its foreclaws into the bull and was biting down viciously, canines piercing deeply into the flesh, down into bone.
The Shadow Panther broke the bull's back with a sound like a sledgehammer on stone tile. The report could be felt through Ulric's feet. Hind legs went dead and the predator swiftly repositioned to take a new hold on the bull's throat, crushing it easily.
It had taken mere moments, from sighting of the massive horns to the killing bite. Ulric was stunned by the incredible ferocity of the attack. If this thing had ambushed him, rather than the Forest Lord, there was little chance he'd have lived long enough to do much other than scream. The Forest Lord had been so large, so powerful, so without fear that it had hunted with no urgency. The Shadow Panther had none of this overconfidence. It killed with lightning aggression. An overwhelming yet graceful strike at full speed from its foe's blind spot. The way a veteran warrior killed.
Ulric never even considered taking a shot at the panther. The Crimson Bull was a mighty enough beast that he'd have probably avoided risking its attention. About five levels of "fuck that" above the bull stood the panther. No, Ulric was going to continue pretending he was the bark of the tree and hope the Shadow Panther ate well enough to sleep for a few years, never finding out that Ulric existed.
Fate was a fickle thing though. As the Shadow Panther opened the bull's belly, spilling entrails, ripping at soft flesh a twelve meter long Venom Bolt Viper rushed out from an overhead vaulting limb, fifteen meters above. The viper had an almost navy-blue color with blood red diamonds running in alternating rows along its spine. It paused only long enough to direct a stream of smoking venom towards the panther. Even distracted by fresh prey and in the middle of a mouthful of meat, the panther was insanely quick, leaping into the air hind legs pivoting around to place it in line with the viper.
The viper followed the jet of venom downwards having expected to land a crippling blow against an unguarded competitor. The massive cat was already leaping, claws outstretched to meet it in mid-air. They collided and fell atop brush, crushing it with their weight and shattering it with the violence of their struggle. The Venom bolt Viper was wrapping its lower third around the panther, but couldn't bite down and deliver a mouthful of dripping fangs into it because the Shadow Panther's claws had locked into the scales on the back of its neck and were dragging the head to point vertically into the air. The two rolled, revealing a bleeding ragged would along the cat's rear left leg, where it had failed to clear the venom bolt completely. That leg was clearly without much strength, but the rest of the animal was making up for it. Roaring panther calls were mirrored by a Mac truck air brake hiss from the snake.
Locked as they were in their conflict, Ulric decided the better part of valor was to be honored and began to slip away, quietly as he could manage.
Just as he was about to make his escape, nine large Viking's of more than merely human appearance tore shouting into the rough barked causeway, hefting weapons that ranged from a massive battle axe with a bit sized for the tree trunk below, half a meter wide, to a broad two meter curving great scimitar, to a three meter long shaft terminating in a barb tipped trident clearly coated with some substance.
The warriors were definitely aiming to kill both panther and snake while they were locked together, advancing with cautious purpose on the intertwined monstrosities.
Ulric, frozen, rapt at the sight of people, not exactly human, some of them, but people, couldn’t help but watch.
The panther released its hold on the ribs of the snake's trunk to bite at a man, apparently human as far as Ulric was able to see. The man had tried to swing his two-handed scimitar into the panther's neck but the creature shifted, taking a glancing blow that removed an ear and the fur on the side of its head. The counter bite caught his arms at the forearms and tore messily through them, sword tumbling to the canopy floor.
Ah, well. One less person for dinner then, Ulric mused morbidly. He might have gone slightly odd in the head from isolation.
Momentary distraction cost the panther though, its monster foe bit it in the abdomen, delivering sizzling toxin into its guts. The panther howled, and started biting the snake violently all about its mid-section, ignoring the remaining tormenters. Two of the hunters, also human, tried to circle around the viper's back, one drawing back a silvery black bow, the other readying a vicious looking spear to throw.
The Viper once again lived up to its name, turning its head, low and parallel to the ground, faster than Ulric would have thought possible wrapped around the cat as it was, and launched a stream into the would-be ambushers. Venom took both in the upper chest and head. Both immediately started to scream but voices were quickly choked off as throats dissolved.
Nine hunters was down to six fighting members, in as many seconds. Still, numbers had achieved something. The barbed trident stabbed forwards, driven by a hulking man shaped creature who appeared to have a man's body and limbs but the shaggy head of a wolf. Over two and a half meters tall, this creature drove the trident deeply into the snake's neck just behind its head pinning it do the underlying bark, large claw tipped hands gripped that weapon’s haft and Ulric could see the bulging musculature of the forearms rippling beneath a slightly shaggy fur that ran along the backs of the man-beast’s arms.
While the panther bit viciously into the snake's chest, breaking ribs like kindling, a blue-green skinned humanoid with obvious tusked lower incisors swung the massive axe into its head. The skull cracked loudly, crimson blood splashed as axe buried deeply in a killing blow.
While their algae colored compatriot tried to extract his snagged axe from the slain panther, two more humans with round shields strapped to their backs and one handed, broad bladed swords went to work on the pinned viper, cutting behind the trident to behead it while the Wolven headed beast-man held it down with all his apparently terrible strength. The last of the group, also apparently a male human, tall, bearded, with gray hair pulled back into a pony tail was standing with his boot on a pale skinned shape.
Ulric's plans had shifted drastically as these events unfolded. Silent retreat turned into shocked stillness, seeing, for the first time in over two months other sentient creatures. Stillness turned to murderous intent as his eyes slid over a naked, bound shape strung between two poles. A long-haired youth, a juvenile humanoid by the size, blond haired, wide slanted eyes, and badly beaten. The face had a shape that was almost Mongolian but forehead was slightly too high and chin too sharp, from what he could see beneath the crusted blood. The ears were a hand long and pointed. One ear appeared notched, as if with a knife, recently. The hunters had been hauling what could only be a badly injured Elven child, or that’s what appeared to be going on, and Ulric felt his blood turn to acid. They had almost certainly been the cause of the child's wounds, if the none too gentle boot on the child's back were any indication.
It had always seemed like an obvious truth to Ulric: those who hurt children earned misfortune. Misfortune being a euphemism for a prompt, painful, if possible, killing upon sight. Here, he had witnessed his first opportunity at civilized company. And it was fucking ruined by a bunch of child hurting assholes.
*PING*
Another distraction, Ulric dismissed it, too caught up in the moment to worry about Varda’s nonsense. There would be time later, when these were sorted.
Cold certainty burned away the unnecessary.
Could he kill them all with a single spell? [Core Capacitor] and [Flame Crash] were a brutal combination, but it would be his only chance, then he’d be weakened by his exhaustion. Ulric decided against it. Better to pick his targets, take the certain kills.
Well. At least he knew who got to taste his envenomed arrow.
The bow bent swiftly, fletching reached Ulric's ear in a mere moment, breath steadied and exhaled quietly, Ulric's fingers relaxed and the arrow loosed. The string slapped with a dull thud, furred muffler doing its job and cutting the sound. Eyes on the battle now well in hand, the man standing on the Elven child never saw the arrow that landed between his shoulder blades. He fell without sound, a puppet with strings cut, fletches from the arrow that killed him brushed his face just before he hit the ground, an arrow buried in the titan tree substrate of this outcrop of hidden forest.
Ulric figured he had one, maybe two more shots before the Not-Vikings figured out somebody was shooting at them and decided that the men with the shields were going to give him more trouble than anyone else still fighting. He drew two arrows from his quiver, stabbing one into the trunk and fixing the other to his bow string.
Another smooth draw, arrow trained on the space where the head would be when the swordsman on the left raised his weapon for another two-handed swing, breathe in, hold, sigh, release. The man dropped as his head rocked forward, glass-resin tip exploding halfway out of his forehead.
His partner jerked around, missing his swing on the nearly expired viper, and called out in a high-pitched screech "There's more of the fucking knife ears out there!"
The Wolven beastman keeping the snake pinned snarled at him "Then get this godsdamned snake dead and get yourself after him. Else I'll pin you next."
Ulric was drawing his third arrow when the swordsman's next stroke severed the snake's head. The Ogrish man had freed his axe in the mean-time, searching around at the call of "knife ears" and managed to spot Ulric just as he released. This closest Viking locked eyes with Ulric, grimacing as he heard the loosed arrow bury itself in the swordsman's chest behind him. The man gave a strangled yell as it punched into the holstered shield, vibrating agonizingly in his body.
The swordsman, dropped to a knee when the arrow hit. Hurt but not dead, Ulric had missed the heart. Definitely lung shot though. The man cried out again as he broke off the arrow and grasped his fallen sword, staggering to his feet. The wolfish Beastman, pulled the trident free of the dead snake and pushed the swordsman forward yelling something in a language Ulric couldn't decipher.
"Die here, bloody, Bastard knife ears friend!" the large muscular humanoid clarified in broken speech as he sprinted toward Ulric axe held two handed to cover his chest from any incoming arrows. He was fast, probably a five second forty meter sprint time.
Quick for a big boy.
Ulric had been around sixty meters from the scene of the beast struggle hiding in a branch three meters above the thicket he'd been watching. The axe wielder would reach him in about six or seven seconds and that massive axe head would make a shot on a moving target difficult. Ulric decided he had better options. He shouldered the bow, string tight on his chest, put his hands out and drew up his will, focusing on his enemy's torso.
"Burn, you child abusing fuck."
[Flame Crash]
Fire slammed into the Ogre-man's axehead and exploded into a three meter conflagration around him, rolling outward. Black smoke rising and a mournful cry made Ulric smile grimly. He watched as the Ogre-man stumbled blindly forward, axe having fallen from melted hands. The blue-green face had been incinerated, replaced by blackened flesh nearly falling from skull and he made it only a few steps before he fell, breath bubbling out of charred lungs. The body burned steadily less than ten meters away from Ulric's branch.
The charging Wolven beast-man and his unwounded companion pulled up at the sight of potent magic unleashed on his former ally.
Ulric had not waited for them, they were inside the range of his Caelum spell, and it that had sliced Steelwood, would do the same to Viking mail. The Viking under it too.
[Windscythe]
Nearly invisible, the crescent shaped blade a half meter wide neatly clipped the head from the twin hatchet bearing warrior, only to shatter on the shaft of the trident born by the Wolf headed man, who was faster than his companion.
The dead warrior dropped, and then there were two.
The swordsman stopped as well, yelling desperately.
"Knife ears hired a battle-mage! We can't fight him, I can't fight him with this arrow in me. Abyss below, Sigfur's over there bleeding out o' his arms."
Seeing the usefulness of his remaining ally was coming to an end, the Beastman stabbed his trident down, planting it in the wood below, took the terrified man's head in his massive hands and jerked it savagely to face backwards, cursing in some strange guttural language all the while.
Ulric had dropped down now from his branch. He had been afraid that the two remaining foes would somehow get to the child and use it, he couldn't tell a gender from all the bindings and the awkward position, as a hostage.
When he saw the Beastman kill his last fighting man he took it as a sign that the battle was at its end. He was shown the error of his thoughts when the Beastman ripped his former comrade's throat open and took a handful of blood, wiping it across his muzzle in dripping streaks before throwing the corpse aside like trash. Probably not what somebody who was about to surrender would do. Probably more like a declaration of intent to fight to bloody death.
Ulric's blood was pounding in his head. Adrenaline. Fear. Anger. Excitement.
Excitement?
He'd always been told that violence was never the answer by his society. Which was confusing because the forebears of that same society shot college students protesting war, fire-hosed, beat and sicked dogs on its own people just for demanding equal rights under law in their own country, kicked in the doors of citizens in their own houses while they slept and gunned them down without warning, assassinated entire villages with remote bombs in foreign lands, and killed tens of thousands to protect the interests of a wealthy few.
They had engineered the crippling of his world for promises of endless wealth and used violence to keep everyone in line while they did it, right up until the Collapse.
It had been a funny old world like that.
Upon studying how his world had arrived at the point it had when he reached a rebellious adolescence, Ulric had always suspected, deep down, that violence was indeed the answer to many problems. Furthermore, that if those problems weren't resolved, then it was because not enough violence had been applied. It had always been just a feeling. He'd chalked it up to a healthy misanthropy.
But now, feeling again the sheer energy running through him, the life flowing through his veins as he followed his heart's desire, he arrived at a conclusion that, mostly, human governments had been, for essentially all of time, full of shit.
They'd lied to protect their control. They'd force fed people nonsense to dull their minds while the ones in charge did whatever they wanted. Well, that was enough of that shit. Ulric was a free man in a strange, wild, land where there were no gods and no masters, and these child abusing fuckers were dead men.
The combatants locked eyes, separated by a distance of fifty meters. Blood dripped from the Beastman's muzzle. His towering two and a half meter frame was layered with muscle, hands that would shame an NBA center, and an ease of movement that spoke to incredible athleticism. The trident the creature held was three meters long, certainly a daunting weapon when wielded by a warrior of such power. A leather and metal scale cuirass covered the Beastman's chest, leaving arms mostly bare. Legs were covered to the knee by thick leather Fauld, a sort of armored skirt with metal plates riveted to leather strips. Knee high boots had a metal shin guard. All in all, the Wolven marauder made for an impressively dangerous foe.
Ulric stood in his normal hunting attire. Forest Lord leather vest and matched knee length overcoat, loose pants underneath. His feet were covered by soft Bolt Deer moccasins stuffed with leaves for insulation. His only weapons were a long bow and long bone belt knife. He was only about two meters tall, nearly thirty kilos lighter, and his shaggy dark hair an unkempt mess. Not exactly a heroic image. Not that Hero was a title he'd ever be vying for. He'd settle for Alive, pretty much all the time.
The Beastman called across the clearing, voice booming with a hint of growl, "How are you called, Hireling of the Knife Ears? Know you your doom today, I am Graus, lieutenant of Pack Leader Vars. Elf Bane. What name you carry, battlemage mercenary?"
A duel? Ulric was curious now. He'd lived every day in this place with his life at risk, danger was as much a part of this world as the earth beneath your feet. Fear never went away, it was healthy. It was also something he'd reconciled himself to. It no longer served as a barrier to his choices, just a barometer for how stupid the thing he was doing at the moment was. Did that mean he was scared to duel a giant wolf dude with a spear? Of course. But, the trick was, he wasn’t going to duel this man shaped creature. Ulric was going to kill him.
He'd play along for now and sucker punch the Child Harmer when it was convenient.
"I am Ulric Einar, Twice Borne of Earth, Native of the Ancient Glade. Forest Lord's bane." his voice carried clearly across the distance.
The Beastman seemed confused by the first part of the introduction, having no clue what in the hells an "Urth" might be, but that last part sunk home.
"You slew the old terror?" he asked.
There was the skepticism there, and just a hint of respect.
The many times blooded warrior had felt no lie in the statement.
"I did.” Ulric shouted, his voice rough from disuse, “It was the first foe I defeated on this world. And it won't be the last, until I've threshed this land of fools. Like the ones who hurt children."
His dig struck true, and the Wolf headed giant of a warrior snarled.
If the shoe, fits you bastard, Ulric thought.
He was getting tired of this. Either they were going to try to kill each other fair and square or he was going to start slinging arrows.
Ulric knew he couldn’t afford to do this slowly. Between the clash of monsters and this little dance with child abusers, there was blood all over the place. Moans of pain had signaled injury, a siren song for scavengers, the opportunists would be along soon and they’d be primed to kill anything that stayed behind. Leading the bestial warrior into the thickets was a nonstarter, who knows what he’d do, probably go snatch the kid. Ulric had to make a move and make it soon; the elevated forest was far more treacherous than the one below.
The Beastman nodded its head in salute and took up the trident to begin battle. This foe was worthy, a hunter of the ancient terror. It had slain his fellows with little effort, with bow and powerful Thaumaturgy alike. There were worse songs to have sung to one's pups than that their sire fell to the Forest Lord's bane in even combat.
Ulric was pretty sure the ball was about to drop. It had only been a moment but he could see the monstrous humanoid making for something suspiciously similar to a sling in its belt. Fuck. Can’t let that happen Einar, he told himself. Staying back was right out, he couldn’t take a chance getting hit by a rock or metal ball bearing thrown by such an incredibly powerful creature. Midrange no good either, he’d end up spitted on those barbed tines.
He slid his right hand over the left, channeling frigid cold to create his [Ice Blade], a meter long blade of crystalline air and water reinforced to steel strength through Infrig.
Thoughts racing Ulric’s mind churned out the realization that he had to take the initiative, apply pressure, and use what remained of his magic, a tactic forming in his mind to get past the armor in which the barbaric warrior was encased. First though, there was the incredible reach of the large creature and its trident. He had a rough plan for dealing with that trident, getting inside its reach, and hoped it would work.
Almost like a gong had sounded the start of the fight, both combatants abruptly closed the distance, each trying to prevent the other from using some unknown ranged skill. Ulric struck out with his right hand channeling the power of Caelum from twenty meters away.
Godsdamnit he was a friggin geek, not a soldier! Too late to regret that now Einar, you stepped in it, now you gotta finish.
The large creature was clearly stronger than him, if the size of that trident and the way he’d pinned the viper was any indication, so Ulric couldn’t let anything hit directly. Gotta fucking distract him. Pocket sand!
[Windscythe]
The dense blue air sliced through the space between them and was intercepted by the head of the trident. His hardened air magic shattered on contact, the spell’s mana coming apart to Ulric’s senses. The Beastman didn't blink as air shards bounced off its armor, its experience in armed combat vastly superior.
Piss, Ulric cursed, continuing to close in. That ruled out his Infrig spell in melee, that trident was made of something that was breaking his magic, somehow. As they closed Ulric felt a detached sense of cool reason, different from the hot rage of his initial confrontation. Now that he’d confirmed the metal weapon's ability to shatter his [Ice Blade] if they met directly, his intuition shifted to find another tactic as the enemy moved into striking distance. For him, not for Ulric.
Four meters apart and the Beastman pulled back his trident for a lunge to spit Ulric. Damn it, he'd never be able to close the distance between them. At least, not by playing fair. Which was a stupid fucking idea to begin with. It wasn't exactly fair that the Beastman got to be a great wolf bastard with a huge spear to begin with.
On impulse, Ulric threw the [Ice Blade], the meter or so of hardened frozen razor flying for its face and, before the beast Viking could swing its blade and disperse it, pulled at Incendere.
[Flame Crash]
A weak fireball intercepted the flung frost brand just as the trident reached forward to pierce it, the two spells colliding which carried them forward with their original momentum. Fire met ice, flashed to vapor. A heavy cloud of steam poured over the Beastman's form causing him to roar his pain, flesh burned by roiling fog.
Ulric had never stopped moving forward, nor had he stopped channeling mana into an [Overcharge]. When the trident struck empty air, instead of the frozen blade, he took advantage and jumped as high as he could, which, thanks to a certain large bosomed Impossible, was about two meters vertical.
To his credit, the warrior knew he'd been had and turned rapidly pulling trident back to ready to intercept a weapon, even though his vision was clouded by the heat of the now dispersed steam. Rotating his body like a high jumper Ulric cleared the Beast-man, landing roughly on all fours behind his foe but rolling forward under the warrior's guard, even as the Wolven form readied itself to counter attack.
Betting that biology knew best, Ulric reached forward, underneath the haft of that polearm, placed his left hand on the metal of the armored cuirass just under the beast-man's right collar bone and his right hand on the left side above where the floating ribs were as the warrior turned.
Mandatory safety meetings on using defibrillators to the rescue. The safety officers never stopped bitching about the things. They'd been very clear about it. Wouldn't stop talking about it. Only use the thing if you were certain the heart had already stopped. Because if it hadn't and you hit them with those paddles at those points, it damn sure would.
[Voltaic Grip]
[Overcharge]'d Ceraun ripped across the meridians of the beast-man's heart, stopping it instantly.
The Beastman was a hardened bastard. He knew he was dead. He also knew he didn't have to go alone. Lashing out the warrior used the haft of the spear to batter Ulric in the chest, launching him backwards to land on his back, lip cut and bleeding and eye blacked. As he lay there, the Wolven drew back the spear to impale him.
Ulric rolled quickly to stand and stomped a foot, pulling the last of his mana, this time focused to terra.
[Stone Wall]
Liquid stone rose up behind the beast-man solidifying around the butt of the trident and locking the weapon in place.
A few aborted attempts to stab him stole the remaining strength from the dying warrior and he released the shaft, dropping to his knees with a hand over his chest. He looked like he wanted to say something. He died before he could, falling over onto his side. Could have fallen asleep if you didn't know any better. Probably a more painless end than he deserved, but Ulric had to admit that he couldn't bring himself to hate the creature completely.
Disgust. Anger. No hate. Not yet, hatred was born of familiarity. Give it time.
Ulric felt a rush of…achievement. Fulfillment. Victory soared through his veins, like a rolling flame. Gods he was never so alive than that moment. Ulric's heart thrummed within his breast and his body vibrated with adrenaline, power, and some unknown sensation. His foes, enemies who dared to trespass on his domain, challengers to his will, were dead at his hands and he was exultant. He’d saved the abused child from their tormenters.
*PING*
Heat suffused Ulric's core before pouring through his bones and radiating into his flesh. He was almost dizzy for a moment before the wave of sensation faded, leaving behind a humming in his body and soul. Suddenly, Ulric felt like he had become, all at once, more. It was as if he cast a greater shadow into the world, a deepening imprint, like he exhibited greater gravity around himself. A sense of strength, greater than any he'd ever known suffused his body, weighing against the edges of mana exhaustion that even now weighed on him. A tickle of predatory anger briefly spiked and vanished.
Ulric snorted. He should've seen that one coming. Seemed like the Akashic record sort of just let you figure shit out on your own until you did something great. Or terrible. Sighing Ulric willed the status to his sight.
[Status]
Jarring. Stunning. His flabbers were gasted.
Ulric dismissed the ghostly image and called it again, to be certain. Not so much text from the Akashic, and, yet, a change most profound.
"Oh my!" Ulric whispered.
This was unexpected. Very unexpected. And definitely a boon to his plans going forward. Ulric had been immersed in the wilderness of the glade for months. He'd hunted, fought, built, rebuilt, and learned at a pace unsustainable to his previous life. Mana pulsed in his bones, filling his body in a cycle of hot and cold that, once disturbing, now seemed a second heartbeat. He didn't even notice his core's rhythm unless he concentrated on it. But now, some threshold had been crossed, and he was no longer simply a resident of the glade but its master. The wash of strength he'd felt must have been all of those stats suddenly being added to his own, some influx from a source that he still did not understand. Later, he'd have to think about this later, for now, he couldn't afford to just sit around and wool gather.
A second change. Probably the source of the first bell he’d disregarded, just when he made up his mind that he was going to have to kill the first sapient folk he’d met since the Watcher’s nifty little magic trick to bring him here.
The trait he examined was…interesting. More than a bit alarming, but definitely interesting. Was this why he felt so completely fine with all of this? More Akashic fuckery to worry about, but later was when he could do that.
Looking down at the body before him Ulric felt, not regret, more like completion. A slight shift in perspective, compared to what whispers of a distant world might have called a murder. Here, Ulric had battled with a sentient creature who'd fought and died giving all they had in single combat. As much as he'd detested these raiders that contempt faded somewhat for the Beastman at his feet. Them that had trespassed were dead, the challenge met. Death evened most scores in his eyes. Whew lads, had he evened some scores today.
His blood had stopped its surging rush, and he no longer felt his heart beating like a war drum timing his movements to some kind of fierce song. Mana exhaustion was stalking around the edges of his thoughts, his nose and lip were still bleeding, and his face felt like he’d face planted into a steel pipe. And, also, he’d just killed a bunch of folk, partly from ambush. Who’d had it coming, so that made it better. Quite a bit better, really.
Ulric had to make some choices, and quickly. The screams of the guy with his arms bitten off had silenced at some point. Shouts of pain, battle, and dying would attract predators. There were nine dead men and two dead titans, along with a fallen bull scattered across the destroyed thicket.
Not to forget the catalyst for this little drama, there was also the battered and bound elf child.
He was too tired to butcher the monsters, not even if it meant losing their cores, which he tended to collect on the basis that if anything in this strange fairy tale of a world was of value beyond eating, the nexus of power that permitted living beings to wield power overwhelming probably was. He'd have to carry the child down the tree to camp, there was no way he was staying in the endless cage match that was the canopy, but he could afford a minute or two to strip the corpses of the most useful items.
Ulric had decided he would haul the Wolven Beastman back to camp for burial. He'd fought bravely, both against the monsters and against Ulric. He'd also killed the coward, so it couldn't be said he'd done no good with himself. But, if he were being honest with himself, those were just the Reforged man putting lipstick on a pig. In truth, leader of this band was wearing a rather interesting armor, crafted of metal plates, careful, methodical, skilled construction which Ulric could maybe use for ideas and, just maybe, reverse engineer to improve his own lot. That magic breaking trident was most definitely coming as well.
Decisions made and priorities sorted, Ulric stuffed the trident and that great scimitar into the fallen Viking's belt. The child turned out to be a boy, and he was unconscious. His slight form was little in the way of burden, especially since being secured to those poles would allow him to be packed like a hitchhiker's knapsack. After making sure the kid was breathing and confirming that he'd probably stay that way, Ulric took the dead Viking's collar in right hand, hoisted the child in left and made steady way to the trunk that would take him back to his camp, grateful indeed for the extra oomph granted by his Lord bonus.
It took nearly two hours, travel slowed greatly by burdens, mana exhaustion, and extreme caution. Ulric refused to be ambushed like that Shadow Panther, taken while bathing in victory. You weren't victorious until you lived to next sunrise.
Climbing down the tree posed a problem until Ulric realized he could just push the corpse out of the tree and collect it and the weapons at the bottom. Not like it'd complain about the rough handling. The child he cut free of the pole, it was too long, too clumsy to climb with, so he secured the juvenile elf with some of those bindings, cutting them and making some loops to tie him to Ulric's bowstave. If anything happened, it would be far harder for the child to fall free this way. The climb was, other than the sweating, uneventful.
Back at camp, Ulric put the child inside his shelter, checking the boy's breathing again and satisfying himself that there was little he could actually do. Camp chores were attended to and Ulric bathed himself by the rock pool, strigil raking dirt, sweat, and dried blood from his skin. He'd gotten a significant amount on him from the child and from the spatters that had covered the Beastman from the slaughter of the Venom Bolt Viper.
At last, twinned suns slipping down behind the enveloping canopy around his glade, Ulric was able to find a moment to sit down for a rest.
Which is precisely when the child woke with a shrill scream filling his glade.
