Writathon project: Duskbound Chapters 23-25 (Patreon)

Crescent Hill was a spiritual site dedicated to Morgus, God of Nature and the Hunt, that had been abandoned by almost everyone a decade ago. Velik didn’t necessarily think that was his fault, but he knew it wasn’t a coincidence that people had stopped coming out to Crescent Hill once the monsters showed up. Only the most fanatical hunters still came out to leave offerings or pray.

He hadn’t really expected Sildra to be one of them, but now that he thought about it, that did explain why she’d been so insistent on risking her life gathering [Moonsilk Blossoms]. It was a religious thing. That wasn’t something he remembered her being interested in when they were kids, but people changed and the whole area had undergone a lot of dramatic upheavals in the last decade.

Velik wasn’t terribly religious himself. No god had ever come to back him up when he was in trouble, and he was too busy to do stuff like spend an entire night harvesting flowers to leave next to a random rock some people had decided was holy. Morgus was probably the god whose values most closely aligned with Velik’s, but he didn’t spend a lot of time musing about his spiritual relationship with an absentee deity. If Morgus wanted something, Velik was sure he’d hear about it. Until then, he didn’t worry about it.

The shrine itself was a simple stone arch placed at the top of a hill, naturally formed in some way that wasn’t immediately apparent to Velik. It was a rough, three-foot-thick hoop of stone that rose ten feet into the air. Five men could walk through it at the same time without trouble. Moss grew across its surface and hung down from the top of the arch, pale green and fuzzy in the moonlight.

It was an unusual enough sight that he could understand why some people might think it was divinely inspired, but Velik had seen plenty of equally strange things out in the wild lands beyond the frontier. This one didn’t particularly speak to him. But I guess Sildra sees it differently.

She approached the arch with Gorm trailing behind her by a few feet and began placing the [Moonsilk Blossoms] on the ground around the twin bases. Velik watched with a frown from the bough of a pine tree growing at the base of the hill, unnoticed by either of the other people there.

At first, it seemed like she was just spreading handfuls carelessly, but with each one she tossed out, the pattern became clearer. Somehow, seemingly by sheer coincidence, the petals were drifting down to form a mirror of the arch, a flowery shadow cast by the light of the moon. Soon, the baskets and bags of [Moonsilk Blossoms] were empty, and Sildra stood atop a Crescent Hill adorned in luminous white flowers.

That was when Velik got his first sign that a god was watching, and more, that he approved. The reflected moonlight off the scattered petals grew so bright that the entire hill lit up like it was the middle of the day. Hundreds or thousands of strands of moonlight rose up, obscuring the top of the hill and forcing Gorm back. He scrambled out of the way, slipped on something, and tumbled down the hill to collapse in a heap at the base.

Velik watched anxiously, wondering the whole time if he needed to jump in and pull Sildra out of whatever was happening. After thirty seconds, the light dimmed to reveal his childhood friend standing whole and unharmed beneath the arch. Small arcs of moonlight were dancing across her skin, leaving a trail of white dots that slowly faded.

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “It’s done.”

“What’s done?” Gorm asked, sitting upright and scowling at her while he prodded a tender lump that had appeared on his head.

“The offering to Morgus, of course. He has accepted it and given me his blessing.”

“That’s… uh… that’s fantastic. What does his blessing mean?”

“It means I’m no longer a [Seamstress],” she said.

Velik’s breath caught. A divinely granted class change?

Gorm must have been thinking the same thing, because he scrambled to his feet. Velik couldn’t see the look on his face, but it was easy to imagine. “He gave you a unique class?”

Sildra laughed. “No, nothing like that. I am simply a [Druid] now. It’s what I asked for, and Morgus saw fit to grant my prayer.”

Velik had only a vague idea what the class did, beyond that it was some sort of nature priest. He supposed it fit well with a god known for his mastery over the wild lands, but as far as any sort of specific class abilities, he couldn’t even begin to guess.

“So, what? You can talk to trees and animals now?”

“Someday, maybe.” She trailed off with a frown, then shook her head and refocused her eyes down the hill. “I’m sorry. It’s a lot to sort through. Let’s head back home for now.”

The two left shortly after that, with Gorm trudging through the brush, shoving it aside where he could or hacking a path when he needed to. Sildra practically floated along behind him, her hands reaching out to caress tree trunks and leaves.

When Velik looked at her through the lens of [Predator’s Visage], he saw something that wasn’t a threat, but which was still dangerous. In a way, she reminded him of a pup – weak now, but growing into a powerful wolf in the near future. Whatever it was a [Druid] did, he didn’t want to be on the receiving end of it once she’d grown into the class. Gorm hadn’t made it seem that powerful, but Velik was guessing he was missing a few key points.

“What’re you going to do now?” Gorm asked at one point when they stopped for a break. Despite the way being clear of monsters, they’d walked or run a lot of miles for one night already. Gorm had enough points in physical to hold up, but Sildra was a different story. She’d been hanging on by her fingertips before, and now that the drive to complete her class change was missing, she was quickly growing tired.

“Whatever Morgus wants me to do. Right now, his desire is that I help cleanse the wild lands near the frontier of this monster infestation.”

“Druids can hunt monsters? I thought you were supposed to be peaceful,” Gorm said.

“Some druids are healers. I don’t think that’s what I’ll be doing.”

Gorm made a show of looking around. “Well, you’re not going to be gaining any levels like this.”

Velik rolled his eyes and started to circle around behind the pair. There were three monsters sneaking up behind them, probably not too strong for Gorm to handle on his own, but Velik wasn’t going to find out.

“No, that’s fine,” Sildra told her bodyguard. “I need time to read about what my class can do so I can figure out what I should do with it. I suspect…”

“You suspect what?”

She glanced up through the boughs of the trees. “I think my path will be tied to the moon. I’m just not sure how, yet.”

“I’m sure it’ll come to you,” Gorm said. “Ready to start walking again?”

“Yes, I think so. We’re only a few miles from Deshir. Let’s try to make it back in one push.”

“Easier said than done. If we were coming in from the north, it’d be one thing, but the brush is so much thicker from this side.”

“There should be a trail somewhere nearby,” she said.

“And good luck finding it.”

Unable to argue, Sildra simply shrugged and motioned for Gorm to lead the way. Vellik finished his ambush of the three monsters stalking them, wiped his spear on the fur of the least-bloodied corpse, and silently drifted along behind them. He was careful to keep them within the range of his senses, even if he didn’t maintain visual contact at all times. Any monsters that he sensed nearby met the same unfortunate fate, that of a quick death with his spear pinning them to the ground.

The pair broke free from the tree line with bare minutes to spare before the sun came up. As soon as Deshir was in sight, Velik broke off and darted away at a much faster speed than he’d been going all night. No longer constrained trying to keep his presence hidden—even though he knew both of his charges suspected he’d been lurking around them—he was able to go for quick kills without the need for subterfuge.

Pushing his physical stat for all he could get from it, he arrived back home in less than an hour. By that point, the sun was up and he’d lost [Duskbound], but it didn’t matter. The only thing he had left to do was get some rest before he returned to the deep wood in the evening.

He puttered around his rough little cave for an hour to wind down, got his bag packed and double-checked everything, then laid down and closed his eyes. He tried to sleep, but it escaped him. Instead, he spent an hour wondering about Sildra and her new class, if he could expect to run into her regularly if she was going to be a moon [Druid], whatever that meant. Presumably, she’d be on a similar schedule to him.

He couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe if she didn’t live in Deshir, it’d be easier to decide. He still hadn’t found any answers when sleep finally caught up with him.

Chapter 24

The arrow struck the scalehound’s flank, but instead of biting deep, it shattered into pieces. The monster, undeterred, continued its menacing stalk toward Jensen. Another arrow materialized, already set to his bow string, and he took a moment to steady his breathing before he released it. This one was aimed for the scalehound’s eye, but it simply turned its head and took the shot to the shoulder instead. That attack had no more effect than the first one.

“Gods above and below! What level is this thing?” he swore. He didn’t want to pull on the bracer’s magic any deeper than he already was, but he just couldn’t hurt the scalehound with basic arrows. Exhausting the bracer was a concern for later.

Concentrating, he shaped another arrow out of pure magic, this one heavy with a [Sharp] enchantment. At the same time, he called on his bow to imbue the shot with [Accuracy] and [Resilience]. His belt already gave him a strong bonus to physical, but it had an active effect to temporarily boost that even further. Finally, the ring on his left index finger added a layer of [Edge of Winter], coating the tip of the arrow in razor-sharp ice.

If that didn’t finally get through this thing’s scaly hide, nothing would. Perhaps sensing danger, the scalehound lurched into an ungainly, lopsided run. It closed the distance from fifty feet to ten in less than a second, then Jensen released the arrow. It jumped from the string to the scalehound’s eye so fast that he couldn’t see its path with his eyes, not even with the [Perceptive] enchantment on his hat boosting his already impressively-fortified mental.

[You have slain a burnished scalehound (level 24).]

The shaft vibrated in place, more than halfway buried in the monster’s skull now. Jensen felt the tension drain out of him and he let out a relieved sigh. The monster’s momentum had carried it the rest of the way after its death, and its corpse was sprawled out at Jensen’s feet. “That was a close one.”

“But you held steady and made the shot,” Torwin told him. “I knew you could do it.”

I’m glad one of us did.

“Do you think there are any more nearby?” he asked.

“No,” his master said with a shake of his head. “I took care of the rest.”

What ‘rest?!’

Jensen looked around wildly, his eyes flicking from corpse to corpse. Most of them were half-hidden beneath the brush or behind trees, and he knew there were a few he couldn’t see, but he counted nine more scalehounds, each one dead from a single arrow somewhere in its body.

How does he do it? His bow would break from the force needed to throw an arrow that fast, and I know he’s just buying the ammunition from local fletchers. There are no enchantments in play here. They should have shattered on impact.

Jensen already knew what answer he’d get. Torwin would just laugh and cite skills, then get cagey about exactly just how many skills he had merged together to fill those six slots he’d unlocked. Considering the man’s prolific career as a monster hunter, Jensen had no doubt the number could be classified as ‘a lot.’

“I meant more like, ‘Will there be more monsters of the same level nearby?’” Jensen said, trying to inject some eagerness in his voice. That wasn’t what he’d meant at all, but he didn’t want his master thinking he was weak. It wasn’t that he was afraid of encountering more monsters, just that he was concerned about running out of the magic he needed to actually hurt the damn things.

"Oh, I'm sure they’ll get stronger the farther out we go. Civilization is what keeps monster levels low. When you get out into places like this, the monsters just keep killing each other and stacking on levels. As far as I can tell, the only reason these towns even still exist is because of the Black Fang. Without his presence, those towns would have been overrun a long time ago, and there’s nothing out here worth fighting to keep, so the government would just abandon the frontier.”

“Abandoning this place might be the right decision,” Jensen said. “The townsfolk should head south while they still have their lives. No matter how many monsters we kill, more just keep coming. And they’re getting stronger.”

Torwin nodded along. “You’re right, of course. Right now, we’re doing exactly what the Black Fang has been doing for the last decade. We’re stalling things, reacting to monsters as we find them instead of solving the root problem. There will always be more monsters, sure, but there shouldn’t be so many, not so fast. Something is accelerating their population growth, and we need to figure out what that is and stop it.”

“And so we’re going to this old dungeon that was broken fifty years ago or whenever.”

“Right again,” Torwin said. “Now, does your gear need a bit longer to recharge or are you ready to proceed?”

“No, I’m good for a few more fights, at least. Though with the amount of magic I’m using just to put an arrow into these things, I’m going to be about worthless by the time the sun goes down.”

“That’s easily remedied. You just need to locate vulnerabilities, like you did with that one you shot in the eye. That’s an obvious spot on most monsters, but it’s not always viable. There are some signs that’ll tell you where scales or fur are thinner, and of course, it pays to study what your predecessors wrote down about the monsters they hunted. Why, I remember once…”

Jensen had long since grown used to taking in Torwin’s lectures while they scouted or fought. He still hated it, though, as the old man’s voice inevitably drew in more monsters. Once, Jensen had tried to raise that point, but his master had just laughed and started a new lecture on the topic of working his way out of a disadvantageous position, such as an ambush.

Overhead, the sun slowly sank toward the tree tops in the western sky.

  *

As interesting as it was to see what the area’s new [Druid] would do, Velik had already spent too much time on Sildra already. He had his own leads to chase down, which meant gathering a few thousand more decarmas and purchasing something that would let him get a read on mana levels. It was an awfully expensive tool just to test a theory, but Velik didn’t have a better idea.

If he was right about monsters showing up where mana was the thickest, then hopefully he could find those spots, figure out why mana was thicker there, and fix it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the funds to afford any sort of mana-sensing gear that could be useful at the moment, not unless he could find a way to measure mana over miles and miles of wild forests using nothing but his sense of touch.

It seemed easier to just save up for something that would better suit his purposes.

A month ago, he would have thought differently, but discovering how much quicker decarmas stacked up when he was fighting monsters five or more levels above his own had changed his sense of scale. It had taken years to save up the fifty thousand decarmas for his spear, but at the rate he was going now, he was confident he could buy another one in four months or less.

Not to say that the spear wasn’t worth it. [Shape Shifting] alone is an excellent enchantment. Having [Bleeding], [Sharp], and [Mending] on it as well is almost too good. If only it didn’t have this stupid name, ‘Blood Seeker.’ Did the system come up with that or…?

Regardless of how it had been named, it was an excellent weapon that Velik fully expected to use for the rest of his life. It could assume any shape he needed, repaired itself when damaged, and was optimized to stab holes into monsters and make them bleed profusely, no matter how shallow the wound was. It was practically the perfect weapon.

His cowl, by comparison, was relatively weak. That he’d purchased from a merchant on a caravan a year before, mostly by trading a lot of furs and other rare natural treasures he’d picked up in the forest. It had [Night Vision] on it, which was worthless to him, but it also contained [Perceptive], which increased his mental stat’s impact on his senses, and [Resilient], which helped him deal with things like night screamers and nosy guild hunters trying to use skills on him.

The boots he’d bought from the system store as well, mostly because he kept wearing through his and wanted footwear enchanted with [Mending]. That they also had [Silent] and [Strider] to help him walk long distances quickly and quietly was just a nice bonus. He could only hope that when he did finally pick up a piece of gear that let him sense mana, it would also have a few other useful abilities.

Maybe something that gives a large boost to mystic would be useful once I free up the skill slot that [Stealth] is in. Some of those skills looked downright useful, but not enough to start investing free points into mystic. If I could make up the difference in the low stat with gear, though, it might be worth it.

Velik hadn’t given it a lot of thought before, mostly because he’d expected it would be many years before he had enough decarmas saved up again, and even now, he had to restock his used potions before he truly started looking at new pieces of gear. But the decision suddenly seemed a lot closer than it had a month ago, and he idly perused the system store while he ran north, just to get an idea of what was available and how much it would cost him.

I wonder, though. If level 30 to 35 monsters are dropping decarmas this fast, what about level 40 or 50? Oh, the things I could do with that kind of money.

So lost in thought was he, dreaming of belts, rings, amulets, bracers, gloves, and the like, that he almost didn’t realize there was someone nearby until he was only a few hundred feet away from them. Startled out of his daydreaming, he came to a halt and crouched down, only to scowl in annoyance when he recognized the voices.

Those two, again?!

Chapter 25

Velik very nearly turned back on the spot when he heard Torwin’s voice drifting through the trees ahead of him. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the old hunter, not in the least because of the man’s obviously high level. [Predator’s Visage] was unwavering in its conviction that Torwin would crush him if it came to a fight.

It wasn’t even that Velik thought the old monster hunter was going to attack him, not after that conversation they’d had. It had been a different story when he was getting chased through the woods, but now he just didn’t want to answer any more prying questions about his personal life. There was also the fact that the apprentice had almost shot him purely due to bad aim, which Velik wasn’t quite up to forgiving him for just yet.

 So, he kept his distance, even going so far as to travel a mile off to the side just to make sure they didn’t cross paths. Despite that, every few minutes Velik would catch a bit of conversation, just enough to let him know he was still moving more-or-less in parallel with the two hunters.

Damn it. They’re going to the old dungeon, too.

Velik’s plan had been to start in that area, hunting monsters until he could pick up his new piece of gear, then working his way out looking for pockets of dense mana. There were no other landmarks out in the deep wood, not that he knew of, anyway, so it didn’t make much sense for Torwin to be heading anywhere else. If Velik wanted to go there, he either needed to speed up, or he needed to wait a few days and go in after the others left.

There was another reason to turn back, though. If the professionals were out here, that meant nobody was patrolling around the towns. For the moment, the monsters weren’t yet strong enough to pose a real threat to the watch, but all it would take was one elite coming by and forming a small horde. Without him or Torwin there to prevent that, he might return in a few weeks, only to find there was nothing left to protect.

At the same time, he’d been trying to wait out the storm for months, and it was only growing worse. If he turned back now, he could maybe push back the monsters until winter. After that, it was anybody’s guess. Perhaps the monster hunters’ fee would be money well spent and they’d take care of the problem.

If we’re both working on it independently, that’s a better chance for one of us to figure out what the problem is and eliminate it. The towns will survive.

He wasn’t sure he really believed that, but he didn’t trust that Torwin could find a solution. After all, Velik had been looking for one for years without a single lead until he’d stumbled across that champion elite. Torwin was just going to look at some empty ruins and a big hole in the ground.

Deciding that he didn’t really need to start out at the dungeon, especially when he still had a few days of hunting monsters in the deep wood ahead of him, Velik shifted to a more north-east course for an hour to put another ten miles or so between himself and the other hunters, then corrected straight north. Now he’d be a good thirty miles or more from the dungeon by the time he stopped.

That didn’t mean the monsters stopped showing up, of course. Even without going out of his way, he still found a swarm of wasps, each the size of his fist and level 18 or 19, a stoat that had grown to be six-feet-long and covered with metallic fur, a pack of ebonfur worgs, all level 25 or better, and a single hookfin sky swimmer, level 31.

That was a fight, with the floating fish darting through the air and harrying him in a running battle that lasted almost half an hour. It weighed half a ton and had a mouth big enough to swallow him whole, but was agile enough to slip through trees without so much as rustling the leaves. That, combined with its natural magic that let it spit out jets of pressurized water, made it a tough opponent, one that didn’t die until Velik managed to shape the tip of his spear into a giant fishhook after jabbing it into the monster’s mouth, then hauled it down to the ground to crush its skull with repeated stomps.

Ugh, it’s a good thing these boots repair themselves, he thought with a grimace as he pulled his foot free of the monster’s skull. Brain matter and black ichor coated the leather, but it would dry and fall off as the boots worked their magic. He ignored the mess, confirmed the kill notification, and kept on walking.

Even moving at top speed, it wasn’t a one-day trip back to the deep wood. Though he bypassed most of the monsters unless they were directly in his way, Verik couldn’t get there in under three, and even his stamina was nearing its limits from the hard run. He hadn’t stopped to sleep, not wanting to take the time to find safe holes to rest in.

When he finally got to an area where most of the monsters seemed to be in the mid-to-high thirties, it was around noon. Velik spent an hour locating a den, baited out the monster nesting in it, and killed it a hundred feet away. Then he cleaned out the mess left inside, mostly old, gnawed upon bones and waste better left unidentified, dragged some shrubbery he ripped straight out the ground in front of the entrance, and closed his eyes to sleep.

  *

[You have slain a burrow skinder (level 36).]

Velik checked his decarma total. Seven thousand. Getting closer.

  *

[You have slain a noxious stag (level 34).]

[You have slain a bile-heart doe (level 33).]

Nine thousand. Almost there.

  *

[You have slain a black-tongue giant salamander (level 38).]

[Spear Warden has advanced to rank 6.]

Oh, perfect! I was wondering if that was going to show up soon. And… ninety-five hundred. Not quite there.

  *

Five days after he arrived in the area, Velik finally crossed the threshold he was aiming for. With ten thousand decarmas, he could purchase an item the system store described as a mana compass, which he’d found when he’d switched tactics from gear to utility items. He was actually a bit chagrined that it had taken him so long to think of that, but as soon as he had, he’d found exactly what he needed, and at a far more reasonable price.

With a bit of melancholy, he watched as his hard-earned wealth vanished. A moment later, an ornate compass appeared in front of him. It floated in place for a second until he plucked it out of the air to examine the strange device.

Normal compasses weren’t something Velik really needed. It was easy enough to navigate by the sun or the stars, and besides, compasses were an expense he didn’t need. So, he wasn’t sure exactly what they were supposed to look like, but he was guessing it was nothing like the thing in his hand.

It was round, about two inches across and a quarter-inch thick. That part seemed normal enough, but from there, things started to get weird. It was made out of brass, he thought, but with little squiggly lines carved in a circle on its backside and filled with some sort of glittering white stone. In the center of the circle was a wide, flat ruby that seemed to glow with its own light.

Its face was even more strange. It reminded him of a clock he’d seen in the mayor of Deshir’s house as a child, with numbers inscribed in a circle that long black arrows pointed at as they spun in slow circles, over and over again. He’d stared at it for hours when he’d first gotten back after the incident while the adults kept him waiting so they could argue about what to do.

The mana compass looked like that, except Velik didn’t recognize any of the six symbols arranged around the center arrow, which itself was more of a flat, red triangle. The whole thing was under glass, and little red and blue sparks chased each other around the symbols as the arrow flickered back and forth while he examined it.

I… have no idea how to use this. Okay, that’s fine. I’ll just have to figure it out. This thing probably does a bunch of stuff that’s more advanced than what I need. If I point it at where I know the monsters are stronger, and assume that means more mana, I can tell which symbol means ‘mana ahead.’ Then I just follow the arrow and we’re set.

It wasn’t that easy, but Velik wasn’t about to give up so soon after spending such an exorbitant amount of decarmas on the mana compass. He messed around with it for the rest of the day, trying to see if he could correlate any of the symbols with monsters, or mana, or the cardinal directions.

Eventually, he was forced to concede defeat. The compass’s system descriptions were useless—[A device designed to detect and measure the density and distance of various types of mana]—and whatever the little symbols meant, he couldn’t figure them out. The compass was functionally useless to him unless he could find someone to show him how it worked.

He could think of one person who might know, but asking for help irked Velik. It could be a moot point, anyway, since the hunter duo was probably already long gone from the dungeon. With no other options besides going back to the towns, Velik set out in that direction anyway. He wasn’t sure if he hoped Torwin would still be there or not, but he wasn’t one to shy away from doing what needed to be done just because it was unpleasant.

Two days later, he reached the ruins of the old dungeon, as empty and foreboding as they’d always been.