A Skybeast?

Damien spoke in her mind while she continued on her way. After the creature stole her food, she’d been forced to hunt for another meal. She caught, skinned, gutted, and spit-roasted one of the smaller forest rodents. She only cooked it for a little while, being too hungry to wait any longer. The inner parts were unpleasantly raw.

As she followed the river, Damien finally roused.

“It was huge,” she said simply.

Hmmm. That’s strange. Well, as long as you don’t provoke it, it shouldn’t bother you.

“But what if it decides to bother me?”

Then kill it.

Taken slightly aback at the bloodthirst, Yuriko remained silent.

Damien didn’t comment any further and she continued on her wandering. As she expected, there was indeed a waterfall upriver. The cliff was ten paces high and the water fell from five and seven paces. The river actually split at this point. The waterfalls were merely one of the tributaries that fed into it.

Just below the waterfalls was a small basin. The bottom was sandy, at least from what she could see through the churning water. There were a few rocks underneath the falls, but they were probably too slippery to stand on.

“A shower and bath…” she said dreamily.

For the past Season, she’d bathed in the stream. It was too shallow to immerse herself completely, and she didn’t want to go to the deeper river to bathe. Perhaps another river lizard would interrupt her, or another predator.

She almost couldn’t bear it. She dumped her gear in the bushes, stripped her clothes off and dipped her toes in the water.

“Coooold!” she moaned. But it was better than nothing.

She waded into the pond, her toes digging into the sandy bottom. The water reached up to her hips but was deeper in the middle and closer to the falls. She slipped under the waterfall. The feel of dirt and sweat washing away was so blissful that she almost swooned. She scooped up a handful of sand to scrub her skin with.

Afterwards, she scrubbed her clothes in the water. For her delicate underclothing, she simply soaked it and wrung them out, before hanging them on a clothesline she strung up between the trees. For the forceweave clothing, it was simpler. She just held them against the waterfall. The fabric was naturally resistant to staining in the first place, but there were spots where congealed blood had stuck to.

It was close to dusk by the time she was done.

“Maybe I should make my new home here.” It would certainly be convenient. After a while, she shook her head. “No, I think I should head deeper inland.”

She also needed to prepare herself for Body Forging. She needed to train until she reached a point when she couldn’t improve anymore, then activate the technique. Well, she could get that done easily over the coming weeks, though she needed to eat a lot to support her body’s needs.

She relaxed near the waterfalls until nightfall. There was ample shelter around. Rocky overhangs, broad-leafed trees and a sheltering willow tree. Any of those would work. She chose the willow which was just seventy paces from the falls. The leaves hung down like a curtain and acted as a windbreaker. Near the trunk, there was enough room that she could stand easily.

She dug a small fire pit, traced runescript to control both the heat and smoke, then placed her stew pot on top of it. Bits of dried meat, tubers, and wild onions went into the pot. She meditated while waiting for dinner, focusing on her Animus cap expansion exercise. She got a bit more proficient with it after a few days, succeeding in the balancing act about half the time. She still didn’t notice an improvement, but it was only a matter of time.

The next day, she moved on. If she wanted to get to her training cap, she needed meat. The large beasts just weren’t around. She headed generally northwest, hoping to reach the grasslands. As wonderful as the falls were for bathing, she couldn’t remain idle.

She’d taken to wearing her forceweave jacket again, which acted as a raincoat. It felt a bit tight now over the shoulders and her arms, and she couldn’t latch it completely close. Still, the hood served to keep the rain off her eyes.

She travelled at a leisurely pace, making sure to forage and hunt at the same time. She estimated that the grassland had been at least twenty leagues from the treehouse. At her current pace, she walked a couple of leagues a day, though that wasn’t on a straight line.

After ten days, she finally noticed a change with her Animus cap. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she gained an extra lumen.

“Just thirty-four lumens more.”

She also hadn’t caught sight of the Skybeast again. In her wanderings, she imagined what it would be like to battle something that massive. If her Plasma Caster still worked she’d probably start with sniping at it to get attention. Then when it came down for her, she’d jump and cling to its back and start stabbing.

Of course, only if it didn’t have any ranged attacks of its own. For that matter, she wasn’t sure if her Caster could even hurt that thing.

“Don’t you have any techniques to use for ranged weapons?” she complained.

Yes, I do. Actually.

Yuriko’s eyes widened. “Teach me!”

Just keep doing what you’re doing.

“Huh, which is?” Her training list had over a dozen entries, which one did Damien mean?

Animus blade.

“How will that turn into a ranged attack?”

You’ll see.

Yuriko rolled her eyes, but she knew enough about the voice in her head not to press for answers. Damien never answered when he thought she wasn’t ready for it yet.

The past few days, her Anima flare had expanded by half an inch. From ten inches, she needed to extend to a pace beyond her skin. That was nearly a fourfold increase from what she needed to reach Journeyman. With the rate of her progress, it would take nearly three years to reach that point.

Honestly, that was quite fast. She’d be a Knight when she turned seventeen. Though that was only if progress remained smooth. She didn’t think it would. Constant flaring still created a lot of cracks in her Anima, and it was incredibly easy to receive distilled Chaos here. Why, half of her needs had been spat out by Fri’Avgi as the artefact cleared up her Chaos pollution.

As for Fri’Avgi, Yuriko still hadn’t summoned it. Damien kept reminding her not to, but for her part, there just wasn't a need to. She hadn’t encountered anything that she needed to use the greatsword for. Maybe if the Skybeast attacked.

It took a couple of weeks to find herself in the grasslands. In the intervening rains, the trampled grass had sprung back up. The spire was clearly visible though, and she figured she could just head in that direction. Still, the grass was taller than she was, and there was no way to tell what was hidden within. Plus, she wouldn’t have any kind of shelter.

The forest extended down south, and she thought she saw it eventually extend westward. The hills up north looked to be at least hundreds of longstrides away. There was nothing for it but to cross here. Maybe she could cut the grass in front of her down? She’d probably have to. It was nearly impenetrable.

With a sigh, she flared her Anima and formed the blade. She didn’t need to swing that hard as the blade was razor sharp. It was a bit frustrating, actually, since she couldn’t see where she was headed. But the spire towered over the land, and as long as she kept to its general direction, she shouldn’t get lost.

When she looked back, the trail curved ever so slightly to the right, enough that she couldn’t see where the grassland ended and where the forest began. With a shrug, she continued cutting her trail. Since she had the Animus blade out, her Anima was flared. The grass bent away from the flames, though they sprung back as soon as she passed.

She could feel every blade of grass that touched her Anima. She could feel the springiness, she could feel the dust that would probably irritate her if it touched her skin. The edges of the grass were sharp. And resilient. She reached out to one, somehow instinctively letting it pass her Anima flames. When she ran her finger across it, she felt it bite into her skin. It didn’t draw blood.

She rubbed her finger against her pants to get the dust off and mentally adjusted her Anima to keep pushing the grass away.

“Should I stop cutting?”

If she did, she’d lose a trail that was easy to follow back to the forest. On the other hand, if she kept cutting, anything that came across her path could easily follow it to her.

She cut the grass close to the base and let her Anima push them away. After an hour, she jumped up to get her head over the grass and checked her bearings. She had diverted a few degrees to the north. She corrected her path and carried on. Towards noon, she stopped and reconsidered her choice. She hadn’t encountered anything living so far. She didn’t have many provisions and her Anima had several strain cracks that needed to be repaired.

She cut down a wide circle where she could sit and rest. Smoked meat was her lunch, along with a bit of water from the canteen. That was another thing she had to consider, and from the looks of it, she needed to return to the forest and better prepare herself for the trek. Once she was rested, she followed her trail back.

It took her a couple of weeks to gather enough provisions. She smoked enough meat to feed her for three weeks. Hopefully, it shouldn’t take that long to cross, or find food out there. As for water, with Damien’s help, she managed to convert her melter canteen to a condenser. It was a matter of changing a couple of runescript words on the metal. From gathering heat to dispersing it.

It wasn’t as efficient as a real condenser canteen, which meant the canteen filled up completely in three hours instead of one. She could live with that. Without it, she would have needed to carry quite a bit of water, not to mention find or make enough containers for them.

Hmmm, it suddenly occurred to her that she could have filled a strand of Animus with cold Intent and that would have probably been enough to condense water out of the air. Well, that also meant she had to keep it up until then. Much easier to have the process handled by runescript rather than her will.

It took this long to do it since with the abundance of potable water, she didn’t need to. Of course, back when she first came to the plane, she was too disoriented and panicky to think of it. Not to mention she didn’t know which runescript word had to be changed. Damien was a veritable dictionary, as long as she could force him to focus on it, anyway.

She made a few woven baskets that she attached to her backpack to hold the majority of her meals. She also made a walking stick with a sharpened end, a walking spear essentially, just so she had something long to poke things with. And she could use it as a perch. Her balance was good enough that she could stick it into the ground and balance on the unsharpened end. A better idea than jumping up and down to get a view.

So with that, she resumed her trek across the grasslands. The journey was dull and monotonous. Nothing changed, nothing attacked her and she didn't see anything other than tall grass. Her Anima had expanded an inch and a half, and her rate of progress was at twelve inches. She had worked to extend her Animus blade that far too. It was half the length of her side-blade, but progress was progress.

The Chaos pollution in her Anima had dwindled to a few measly motes. But even as Fri’Avgi cleansed it, more appeared. Maybe it was the plane? The ambient Chaos levels were pretty high, after all. Well, better to leave the artefact to its job.

Huh, half the Season of Earth had come and gone already. For a moment, she felt a spark of anxiety, but she quashed it down. She was having an adventure. Yeah. If she was back home now, then it would probably be time for midterms. Ick.

Chaos, she’d have to catch up on a lot of material by the time she returned to Rumiga. Half the term, gone.

An itch that she didn’t know she had was gone. The desire to travel, to see strange wonderful things. She was out here now, far earlier than she expected to be. Of course it was terrifying, but it was equally exhilarating. When she joined Vagaris would she see scenes like this for the rest of her life?

What about family? Not her Da, and brothers, but family as in a… erm, forget it. Mum and Da met while they were in Vagaris, though. Hmmm.

The next time she stood on the tip of her lookout spear, she finally saw something other than grass. It was a dark shape out in the distance, maybe a couple of longstrides south? Maybe more if it was big. It was out of her current route but it was a very welcome break.

She took her bearings and proceeded to the shape. She repeated her visual checks every five minutes or so, but it wasn’t until half an hour later that she finally saw it clearly. It was an obelisk. Made of obsidian, she thought, or something equally black.

Six paces around the obelisk were bare of grass. In fact, the ground around it wasn’t dirt, but stone. A solid slab that was probably sunk deep into the ground. The monument was narrow, about twice as wide as she was on one side. It was three times her height and had four sides. It had a mirror finish. It was also filled with carvings.

Yuriko touched the stone. Despite the noonday sun, it was cool to the touch. However, it only remained so for a moment. The next thing she knew, she felt her Animus drawn from her finger and into the stone. Runescript lines lit up, and she blacked out. Her body remained standing, frozen in the act of touching the stone.

The winds howled and her Anima flare subsided.