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Kernstalion2 - 1: A new goal
🕑 Added 2021-05-02 19:13:13 +0000 UTC** Note from the author **
My proofreader hasn't had the chance to read this yet, so you might find some errors. I'll put up the edited version as soon as I get it.
** -- **
Chapter 1: A new goal
"Do you think he will stop pouting soon?"
"Leave him be. He just heard that a massive amount of his people died."
I tried to ignore Haltir and Laurel and their barely suppressed whispers as I stared out across the sea far below. A chilly breeze carried a silty scent up the mountain, rustling the leaves of the few trees that grew this high. There were a few birds flying low across the water far away, barely more than specs, and everything had a tranquil feeling to it.
It's like nothing happened, I thought.
I wasn't sure if I should be angry or upset, but I definitely was. Usually, things ended up fine! I tried to figure out when everything went to shit and if I could have done things differently, and I replayed the last months through my mind. When I reached the conclusion of the big battle, I snorted. I could probably have done a thousand things differently, but would it have changed the result? Recalling the dozens of pings my status had been throwing my way, I called it up, hoping for some good news.
An odd black screen with blood-red lines of text hovered across the small representation of myself and the status information.
> A dangerous error is occurring to the system aura
> Protocols running to prevent overload
> Interrupting any external mana constructs
> … … …
A thousand or so lines with just dots scrolled by in an instant until something else popped up.
> .. ….. ...
> External influence prevented catastrophic system overload
> Protocols shut down normal operations resumed
As soon as I had read the last of the lines, the screen vanished, and I was staring at my own muscular four-armed body. Before I could even think about what the message before had meant, bars beside my status values began filling bright green before emptying. They repeated in quick succession and lasted for a while, showing I had gained many things since last looking. With every emptied bar, the bone-deep weariness I had felt before dissolved, and soon I felt rested and filled with energy as if I had slept for a whole week.
Taking a quick look at the values, I was happy to see at least something had gained from all of the things that had happened.
> 31/33: Muscle mass
> 03/120: Fat
> 30/40: Coordination
> 29/30: Stamina
> 06/30: Learning rate
> 421/444: Knowledge
> 04/30: Beauty
> 01/60: Grooming
> 07/60: Well spoken
Everything had increased or stayed the same, everything but grooming. Lifting my arm, I sniffed it and shuddered from the stink.
Well, I guess that one is fair, I decided, as my mood slightly improved.
Looking past the status window, I saw the caked layer of blood and filth covering my arm. I needed to clean up before the monsters found me by my smell!
About to close the window, I noticed a few more lines stood in the regular message area at the bottom of the window.
> You've drawn in an elemental entity in a container of an opposite element
> Vengeful spirit time duration reduced to ten minutes
> You've gained one karma for destroying a demonic spirit
> You've gained one karma for destroying a demonic spirit
> You've gained one karma for destroying a demonic spirit
The lines continued for a while, and ignoring the messages about the Vengeful Spirit, I looked at the long line of karma gains.
That's what those chimes were as I killed the demons?
My curiosity was growing as I did a quick count. Only thirty-four...? It felt like so many more, I thought. Somehow it saddened me that there weren't more. It had felt like such a massive battle... My mind drifted off to the moment that I had asked Rathica to close the portal, and for a moment, I let the sadness take hold. Sorrow overflowed my mind as it conjured the image of millions of confused souls of little children, parents, and others as they rushed through the void only to be locked from safety as the portal closed.
For minutes I let myself wallow in it, only to feel the sadness slowly wither and disappear with the onset of deep, burning anger and the desire for vengeance. I couldn't pinpoint where the feeling came from, but I knew it had to be from Rathica. Although I had always had trouble with injustice in my life, the powerful emotions that rushed through me now, washing away the sadness, were far more than I had ever felt before. A vague image began appearing in my mind as the emotions that ran rampant seemed to locate a target for their vengeance. Then, slowly a trio of shapes emerged, snapping into clarity when I recognized them. The figures of Preyatar, Cinderage, and Lischen stared at me, and immediately a rush of anger came from deep inside me.
They aren't fully responsible, I growled to myself, trying to reason with my own emotions. It mattered nothing, my anger and fury retorted. Had these three helped and acted in concord with Rathica, none of this would have happened. For an instant, I wanted to push back that they were Deities; they had no control over what they were and how they acted. Then my mind and my emotions merged back into a single thing, me, and I knew what I had to do. I needed to get the human souls back from the trio of evil deities and punish them for all the death they had cost.
As soon as I realized it, clarity returned to my mind with jarring shock, and I blinked.
Thats nice and all... and how am I supposed to do that? I thought as I probed the deeply rooted seed of vengeance in my mind. There was no response, and as I stared out across the water, I felt frustrated, the normal kind this time.
"Fuck it!" I shouted, feeling pleased when the two who had been muttering behind me fell silent.
I took a deep breath, and slowly my normal optimism began to exert itself. Those deities would have to wait, and no matter how horrible it was, so had the human souls they held captive. It was time to find a place to create a new home for those we did manage to save. As I had a say in where it was, I could make it somewhere Eli would love! Sea and water, forests and nature, that's what we needed. The loss of earth and so many people would have to be dealt with some other time.
And perhaps by someone else, a small part of me thought as it thought of the vengeance that so easily had glossed over the sorrow.
I turned around and saw the other two look at me. Haltir's face was emotionless and hard to read, but Laurel looked at me with sympathy. I snorted.
"Don't give me that look! We need to find a place to build a massive, awesome city."
Haltir barked out a laugh. "That's better. I was afraid I would have to thump some sense into you! You can go wallow in self-pity some other time - now it's time for action!"
A badly hidden worry on Haltir’s face belied his rough words.
I forced a grin while ignoring the heavy look on Laurel's face, and walking towards the sparse forest that grew on the mountain behind us. It became thicker as it went further down, but it was nothing compared to the Howling Forest. Only small clusters of trees stood together, separated by meters of the rocky mountainside.
"Let's go and see if we can find a spot to set up camp. Then we need to figure out how we get food."
The others trailed after me, whispering something between each other that I couldn't hear. Then Laurel jogged until she walked beside me. She looked at me and seemed to struggle with what she wanted to say.
"Spit it out!" I said, immediately startled by the aggressiveness of my own words and the irritation accompanied by them. Laurel seemed less shocked than me and just smirked.
"By Elrin's smelly arse, you're walking away as if you know where you're going and what you're doing. Do you?"
"Of course I don't!" I said, shaking my head while pointing back across my shoulder. "But we can't very well go down there, making this the only other way to go."
"Do you even know where you are?" Laurel retorted, gazing deep into my eyes as if she was searching for something.
I shrugged.
Laurel nodded and barked a laugh. "I thought as much. You are heading off, heedless of the danger we are in! You're so like-" Laurel fell silent, and her eyes unfocused. I barely made out a whispered name, and then her eyes snapped back to mine. She frowned at me, wagging a finger in the air.
Who's Kelnis, I thought as she began talking.
"These are the Shallow Gale mountains, the least hospitable, most dangerous mountains in the whole Gramanite empire! Demons from the Bloodsea crawl in here through the rivers to devour the chaos entities from the Swamps of Despair it borders, that move this way to feast on the Rot Shrooms in the Living Rot Forest on the eastern slopes!"
Laurel looked at me, seeming to expect that the names she just spouted should mean something to me. Seeing as they didn't I raised an eyebrow.
"Not a Grablon, remember?"
Haltir moved to the other side of me. "Don't act the fool, Est! You know she is trying to warn you!"
I grimaced as the worried look on Haltir's face deepened. He was right, though. The sorrow and pain might have left me faster than they came, I was still angry and feeling helpless. Luckily I wasn't stupid enough to forget what was important, and I stopped and turned to Laurel.
"Alright. So what do you suggest we do?" I said, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice and only partially succeeding.
Laurel's eyes widened a bit, as if she was surprised I listened at all, then she grinned. "I suggest that I tell both of you what I remember about the areas in these mountains, and then we can think of the best way to go forward?"
I felt a surge of annoyance at the idea of having to sit and wait but shoved it away. There was no reason to rush, I told myself. Not anymore. I looked around and saw a group of boulders not too far away. "Alright. Let's see what teacher Laurel can tell us," I said, moving towards the boulders.
Ten minutes later, Haltir and I were staring at her, and I was more than a little happy Laurel stopped me from rushing off without thinking.
"You're telling me they look like stones…?" I muttered, gazing at the stone and gravel at my feet, slightly afraid a pack of a dozen fist-sized rock spiders would rush us and begin chewing up our limbs.
"Don't worry, Glare Spiders are a much darker grey than this, and you can recognize them by the slightly triangular shape," Laurel said, picking up a stone and tossing it my way.
I snatched it out of the air and hurled it away while shaking my head. "So let's see if I get this right. Except for these large tree's every other type of vegetation secretes demonic poison, while demons lurk in any stream and puddle. Worse, every cave is filled with floating chaos-poisoned mushrooms that, in my case, will kill me within five minutes of infecting me, and now you're telling me the stones we walk on might eat our feet?"
Laurel barked a laugh, but I saw Haltir stare at her in dismay.
"And I thought the Howling Forest was bad," the older soldier muttered.
"There are far more dangerous things here," Laurel said, staring up the mountain. "At the top of the mountains, there are packs of Ulgrin. Be happy those don't come down here…"
"And what are those?" I asked, wondering after all she had told me how come she only mentioned these now.
"Grey, three-meter high heads with arms and legs attached to them. Some say they used to be the heads of the giants that were destroyed by an angry Deity from long ago…."
I swallowed as my overactive imagination pictured ugly leathery heads with stubby teeth that tried to eat you whole as they waggled towards you. "So, why don't they come down here?"
Laurel shrugged. "Nobody knows. The Emperor's army ones captured one and brought it down, but it died before the mages could examine it."
An emperor? I thought, as I tried to recall what I even remembered about the grablons. Then I remembered something I had learned long ago. "Did it suffocate?"
"How did you know?" Laurel looked at me in surprise.
"The higher you go, the thinner the air becomes. Perhaps they can't breathe the oxygen-rich air down here…" my voice petered off as I saw the others stare at me as if I was crazy.
"I get the feeling the mages back in the capital are going to be very interested in the knowledge your people are going to bring us," Laurel finally said. Then she pushed herself up. "Now, how about we go and see if we can find something edible before we starve?"
"Wait, there's something edible here?" I said, getting up and thinking of all the gruesome things I'd just been told.
"Not a lot, and it doesn't look like it at first glance, but yes, there is. We need to head slightly further in the mountains, towards the areas with small shrubs."
I nodded and got up, turning around and looking at the trees around us. Hearing about the many different ways I could gruesomely die here had somehow had a calming effect on me, and my mind had started working normally again.
"Alright, but I need to make something first. It's open ground here, sort of, and I don't feel like walking all the time."
Laurel's eyes widened as she followed my gaze.
"If you do it as fast as with those burning cat things, I guess we will be fine if we stay here slightly longer," she said.
I nodded and moved towards the closest tree when my foot stopped mid-air. Wait. Cats? I turned around and looked at Laurel with raised eyebrows. "You have cats here?"
Haltir shook his head and interrupted anything Laurel could say. "Boy, you get distracted faster than those young ones they used to send to my squad! I'm hungry! Get those things finished so we can start looking for food. You can talk about those milk-sucklers later!"
I gawked at Haltir before nodding and turning to the tree. Milksucklers? I decided I didn't know half as much about this world as I thought I did, which wasn't that much, to begin with.
Turning my attention back to the task at hand, I looked at the nearest tree. Like the others, it looked like a pine, but I realized what I had thought were needles were small hollow tubes. Looking at them for a moment, I turned to Laurel.
"Do I have to be careful of these hollow needles?"
"No, those suck up the demon blood from the rains or nearby corpses. They won't hurt you unless you actually touch them."
Great, so don't touch the bloodsucking trees, I thought, deciding to keep my hands away from the needles or whatever they were. I put my hand on the rugged bark, far away from any branch, and cast Soften Wood.
A high-pitched scream came from the pine cone-like things hanging high above me, and looking up, I saw thousands of the things with small eyes glare at me above one centimeter wide mouths with more of the needles as teeth.
A burst of laughter came from behind, and I angrily swirled around to Laurel howling with laughter. She kept pointing at me and mimicking my shocked face. Angry, I stepped away from the tree, afraid the pinecones did a dive bomb on me.
"What the fuck, Laurel?"
"Sh..ould, a've… ur, face!" Laurel barely managed to say between bursts of laughter.
It took her a minute to calm down, and then she grinned at me. "Feel better now?"
"Why the hell would this make me feel better?" I almost shouted back.
"Well. I feel better," she said, grinning at me widely.
Haltir stood beside her, looking at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. He didn't say anything, though, but one of the corners of his mouth kept tugging up.
Weirdos! I sighed and turned to the tree.
"So I guess they can't hurt us?" I said, pointing at the pinecone-shaped small demon vegetation.
"No! Torpel Trees and their seeds are only dangerous to people without demon-poison resistance," Laurel said, moving towards me and slapping me on the shoulder. "My mother always told me that to deal with strong emotions, you need others just as strong to wash them away! Unless you'd prefer me to make you cry, this was the best I could come up with!"
Covered by the wide smile and the bluster, I suddenly recognized the pain deep in Laurel's eyes. I snorted, then barked a laugh and walked back to the tree.
"Fine! But two can play this game... just make sure you're ready for payback!"
Laurel laughed loudly. "Give it your best try!"
I decided I would, but that could wait for when we weren't in a life-threatening situation. I put my hand on the tree and softened it up more. The pine cones began screaming again, and they rose in pitch as I chopped the tree down. When it fell, the screaming became so high that I felt my ears reverberate. The tree slammed into the ground, causing a small quake, I suddenly worried about something I should have worried about much earlier.
"Won't anything hear this and come?" I shouted above the screaming, turning to Laurel.
Laurel shook her head, moving towards the top of the downed tree. "Nothing will come! These things only scream if they are mating, which is the only time they are actually dangerous, or if something very dangerous is nearby. The creatures in these mountains have learned to stay away, making the area around them some of the safest there are in these woods. It must be why Rathica brought us here."
Laurel reached some of the pinecones and stomped on them, causing them to stop screaming. Watching her for a few seconds, I turned to the tree and began chopping it into the sizes I needed.
--
A few hours later, I inspected the four wooden statues that lay crouched on their legs before me.
"He keeps making these weird things," Laurel whispered to Haltir.
"These are mountain goats," I said, moving around them to change a few small things. It had cost more time than I had wanted, but I had decided to make them as good as I could with the limited time.
Placing my hands on the first of the goats, I tried to draw in a Vengeful Spirit. I didn't find anything nearby that responded and had to search for almost a minute.
I wonder what determines if I can or can't find something fast, I thought as I remembered how fast the spirits had come in the Howling Forest.
A spirit finally entered the goat, and it cracked and groaned as it rose on its long but sturdy legs. The wood didn't change, showing that whatever Vengeful Spirit had entered wasn't anything special. The body still had some details, though, as I had tried to make it a bit more lifelike. It was much more muscular than the goats I knew, with an upper-body almost as thick as that of a pony and its most prominent features were two massive canines in its upper jaw that protruded down its chin, giving it a huge overbite.
"Earth must have been a voracious place, and this one of its top predators," Haltir muttered as he moved forward to examine the goat. The saddle area I had made was roughly at Haltirs shoulder height, and I had made two wooden notches to make climbing in easy.
"Aye. Everybody feared these demonic sabertooth goats!" I said with a grin.
"Demon?" Haltir hissed as he stepped back.
"Bah, your jokes aren't as good as mine," Laurel said as she moved towards the goat and inspected its back, while Haltir scowled at me. "Are we supposed to ride these Sabertooth Goats?"
"They can act as mounts or guards, but they only last for an hour or two, and I'll need a few minutes to make them move again when they stop."
Laurel climbed atop the Sabertooth Goat that just stood there.
"At least you gave it a saddle this time," she said, inspecting the handles I had made on the goat's neck. "Now, if only we had a rope..."
I nodded while drawing the second and third Vengeful Spirit into the other two statues. Some minutes later, I climbed on the third one while Laurel and Haltir experimented with how to get the mounts to move around.
Forcing the mount sideways, I looked at Laurel. "You take the lead."
"Sure," Laurel said, forcing her Saber Goat along the mountainside towards the denser forest in the distance.
Padding my own mounts wooden neck, I remembered my first horse Random, and Barry the bear. I hope these three will last a bit longer, I thought as I followed after Laurel.
