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Salt and Blood - Chapter 19
🕑 Added 2024-09-24 01:44:22 +0000 UTC<< Chapter 18 | Table of Contents | Chapter 20 >>
1.19 - First Harvest
I got utterly scammed out of my first corpse. Arcane blood from an injured Thunderhawk I stumbled upon in the mountains. Merchant saw a dumb kid and took advantage. His shop was the first to burn when I returned home from my inaugural voyage.
-Quoted from Cyl, the Pyrelord of Fairfallow
Rose didn’t understand what he was telling her to do. They needed to find a way to escape the convergence. The antlers were stunning. More beautiful than anything she had ever laid eyes on, but lugging them along would only slow them down. Despite her confusion, she decided to follow his instructions.
Maybe he knew something she didn’t.
“Good girl. Now, head over to the corpse. You’ve got a trait, right? There’s a subtle tug of magic when it activates. The tide at work. You’ll get a similar feeling from any potent magical parts of a monster. That stag was a powerful beast, so I’m sure it has plenty of bits worth taking but we don’t have the time to do a full harvest. Just focus on the antlers. Don’t try to physically take them, but tug on that thread of magic once you feel it. The tide will handle the rest,” he explained.
He had to take regular pauses while delivering the speech. His condition was growing worse with every passing moment. The rational part of her mind was screaming at her to treat his wound, but she didn’t want to find herself staring down the barrel of Trent’s pistol if she continued to ignore his instructions.
Her steps were slow and wary as she made her way towards the huge body of the stag. It hadn’t moved an inch since she watched the life fade from its eyes, but even so Rose was on guard against any sudden revival.
It was difficult to focus on the task she’d been set with such worries flitting about in the forefront of her mind. Closing her eyes helped. So did leaning on her new trait. It had been the most useful by far, already showing its worth in a variety of situations.
Trent had said she would recognise the feeling. He had said physical touch wasn’t the way to go about harvesting the antlers, but laying a hand on them gave her a focal point to work from.
Rose thought back to the odd feeling of her surroundings and inconsequential thoughts melting away as she’d aimed the flintlock pistol at the monstrous stag. Trent was right. It had been rather magical. A novel experience for a backwater bumpkin like her, who had only been expected to excel in fishing– or herding doori.
A minute passed. All she could feel was the intensity of her focus. There was nothing in her mind except a determination to harvest the glittering crystal antlers, which she could see clear as day in her mind despite her eyes being glued shut.
There!
So subtle she might have dismissed it if not for the assistance of her trait, Rose caught a murmuring wave of magic floating in the air before her. And she pulled.
Skill up!
Focus 11 > 12
It felt like tugging the end from a ball of yarn. It just kept coming, with no end in sight and no sign she was actually doing the right thing. It felt right though, which was more important in her opinion.
It snapped, sending a puff of energy through her body in a tingling wave.
She didn’t have time to worry if she had made a mistake, because a roaring crash of waves echoed through her mind and she opened her eyes to a whorl of the tide unlike any she had seen before.
You are attempting to harvest a treasure!
WARNING!
Your associated skill levels are too low to guarantee a successful harvest of [Crystal Antlers 43]
A failed harvest may cause damage to the treasure, proceed anyway?
[YES][NO]
It feels like a waste to choose yes. Trent could probably do this better than I, but he can’t even move without coughing up blood. Shit. A failed harvest is better than nothing, I guess? I don’t even understand what’s happening. Rose was overcome with warring emotions.
On one hand she was ecstatic to have succeeded in her task. Not only that, but it had opened a whole new world of possibilities to her.
It felt as though she discovered something more miraculous and exciting about this vast, magical world with every week she spent adventuring. However, she was disappointed at the prospect of failure and her inability to aid her companion.
There wasn’t much she could do. She mentally selected yes and the already shimmering crystal antlers exploded with radiance reminiscent of the midday sun, blinding her for almost twenty seconds. That can’t have been healthy.
While unable to see anything, Rose had time to contemplate which skills the tide considered when deciding if she would be able to harvest the antlers or not. Butchery was the only one of her skills she thought might be relevant and it was only level six, so the warning was understandable.
The light faded and Rose’s brow furrowed when she looked at the corpse of the stag. The antlers had vanished and it seemed to be deteriorating at a visible rate now. The moss around the body was far more vibrant than the rest of the forest floor. Scary.
Attempting to harvest [Crystal Antlers 43]...
Harvest failed!
[Crystal Antlers 43] have been damaged.
Attempting to harvest [Crystal Antlers 39]...
Harvest failed!
[Crystal Antlers 39] have been damaged.
Attempting to harvest [Crystal Antlers 33]...
Harvest success!
[Crystal Antlers 33] obtained!
“What in the world?” she muttered under her breath, but somehow Trent still caught her surprise. Just faint already, stubborn bastard!
She didn’t mean it of course. His ability to push through an injury that would’ve seen the folk back home crippled for life or dead while also guiding her through her first harvest and being so keenly aware of his surroundings was unbelievable.
Rose wondered why such a talented man had been raiding with a run-of-the-mill pirate crew near a small kingdom like Derridas. She could ask him after she treated his wound. Which was her priority now that she had harvested the antlers, just as he’d asked.
This time she didn’t wait for his permission and sprinted back to the fire the moment she wrapped her knuckles around the handle of the fallen cutlass.
***
“Fuck! Your hands are a little shaky, Rose. Might want to work on getting a dexterity skill or something similar,” said Trent. To his credit, it was the first complaint she’d received during the entire course of the shoddy treatment she had been giving his wounds.
It was hard not to turn her head when the vile aroma of his burning flesh crawled its way into her nostrils like an insidious plague. If it was just a one and done procedure it would’ve been easy, but to properly cauterise it and prevent infection she had to repeatedly hold the red hot blade against his shoulder until the bleeding stopped and the wound was sealed.
The puncture in his chest was less stressful to deal with. Just the fact he hadn’t bled out already was proof it had missed his lung.
She tore off a strip of her shirt and after cleaning the wound as best she could, bandaged it tightly. He would have to rely on his own tenacity to fully heal. Luckily for the plucky pirate he had buckets of the stuff.
“Alright, let’s keep moving. I don’t want to stick around and turn into prey for whatever sniffs out the rest of that,” he said while nodding his head in the direction of the stag’s corpse.
It had already half disintegrated but his fears were valid. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled every time she looked into the shadowy depths of the forest. It was more blue than it had been when they entered.
“You need to get some rest soon. We should head back to the campsite. It won’t be too late to explore once you’ve had a night’s sleep at the very least.”
“No. It will be too late by then. We need to keep going. I can smell the path.”
What? He’s too strange. “Smell? Are you sure that isn’t just your soiled britches?” she quipped. If she was being honest with herself she needed the rest as well. That fight had taken the pep right out of her step. “We won’t get out by heading further inland, let’s just sleep and figure out our next move in the morning.”
“Ah. This is why people die hunting for treasure in convergences all the time. You’re misunderstanding the fundamental laws of this place. We aren’t in our world anymore. Direction operates under… alternate guidelines. Trust me on this, Rose. We have to go deeper.”
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