noct
patreon
329. Escape
🕑 Added 2025-03-11 14:00:07 +0000 UTCThe stone closed in. The gap closed. Ike kicked again, with all his force this time, and drew his Hungry Sword at the same time. The gap ahead narrowed down to a pinprick, no wider than Wisp’s thread. They hurtled toward solid stone.
Ike hammered the Hungry Sword into the mountain. To his surprise, it came to life like it never had before. Its teeth blurred, they churned so fast. It chewed into the mountain with voracity, like a beast starved. Stone dust flew, and rock shattered. The thin layer of rock that had closed over them broke apart, and they burst through, flying up onto solid land.
Ike stumbled a few steps, then fell onto his butt and sat there for a moment, just sucking air and recovering. Wisp laid flat on his shoulder, panting. Both of them were gray with stone dust, completely coated in the stuff. Exhausted, they sat in silence, unable to say anything if they wanted to.
“Phew! That was close,” Mag said, fluttering down beside them. He landed in a nearby tree and peered over his shoulder, adjusting scales and feathers alike with his beak.
“Oh, now you show back up,” Ike said in between gasping, shaking his head at the bird.
“Fuckin’ birds,” Wisp muttered in sympathy.
Mag hopped, turning to look at him. “I couldn’t have carried both of you and escaped! Don’t blame me.”
Ike laughed. He wasn’t actually blaming Mag. Not only did he know that the bird couldn’t have carried him and flown at top speed, but he relished the opportunity to grow even faster. He’d been trying to break through his top speed recently, but hadn’t found the inspiration to do so… until this mountain race. Now, he felt as though he’d unlocked the secret to push his limits even further out. Speed up until he injured himself, heal it with Body Reforging, then push his newly reforged body to its even further limits. If not for his overpowered healing skill, he never could have developed it. So I guess it’s all thanks to that Salamander I killed way, way back, which inspired me to form Body Reforging Art, which allowed me to undertake this kind of insane training.
No matter what it was, it all came together in the end. The foundations he’d painstakingly built from the start were still paying dividends today. He no longer needed to hunt so ravenously to progress, now that he could simply absorb mana and manually develop his own skills, but if it hadn’t been for his hunting right from the beginning, he never could have reached this point. It was insane to think about, and yet, completely true. His smallest, most ephemeral-seeming gains had led to some of the most powerful skills he had now.
He gestured Mag closer. “Come here. Let me pat your head.”
“No! You’ll ruin my perfectly arranged head feathers,” Mag replied, jerking back.
“Just give in and let him pat your head. He’s got a thing for head-patting,” Wisp piped up from Ike’s shoulder. She flipped back upright and hopped off, regaining her usual form. “We’re both unlucky enough to be small, which gives humans the insatiable desire to pat our heads. There’s nothing we can do about it but give in and be head-patted.”
“I’m just a kid! I’ll get bigger!” Mag puffed up his feathers and hopped in place fiercely.
Wisp shook her head in mock mourning. “Even worse. Appearing childlike only increases the desire to head pat.”
Mag froze. He settled down, reeling his feathers in and standing proudly. “Hmph. Childlike, me? Who?”
“Mag, you got those backward. It should be ‘who, me?’” Wisp corrected him.
“Are you two done?” Ike asked, chuckling. He stood. The raw edge where the mountain had been cut stood just to his side, still sealed shut. All the puppets were dead, lost within the mountain. On top of that, the mountain had been freed of its puppetization. It was confused, that was the only reason it had attacked. When they came back, he could try talking to it again. Maybe it could explain who it had thought he was. He was itching to know: who did he remind it of?
…But I’m not itching enough to hop back in there and get squashed for real, this time. Ike stood. First, they’d go find that skill the ants had given them the hints to. Then, once he had the skill and he’d mastered the King, he’d come back here and ask the mountain what it had meant. He set off, and Wisp and Mag followed after him.
The forest on either side of the line where the mountain had split was completely disjointed. Whatever had cut the mountain in two had done it so long ago that entirely separate forests had grown on either side of the gap. It was strange to see a stand of aspens up against a pine forest, or a scrubby patch of vines and bushes up against a knot of hardwoods.
The floor shook, and with a rumble, the gap ground open once more. Ike watched it crawl apart, a bit curious. The mountain could clearly close it, so why did it not? Was it something it could only do temporarily? Or maybe it left the gap open deliberately, as a reminder of whatever had wounded it in the first place?
Yeah, I’ll just add those to ‘things to ask the mountain when it’s not trying to kill me,’ Ike thought to himself, chuckling a bit. He shook his head and stared ahead. Right now, the trees blocked the way, but somewhere out there, the crystal shards marked the spot where he’d find his next skill. The place where that man had delivered the body into the earth. The place the ants had shown him.
They came up to a cliff. Ike paused for a moment, taking the chance to look over the land. And there it was, in the distance. The crystal shards, curling up out of the land like a broken egg. The crystals, glimmering along their edges. The barren land stretched between him and the curling shards, with nothing to break the emptiness. Nothing but jagged rock and low scrub.
“There it is,” Ike murmured.
“That’s where we’re going? Neat. I’d love to build a web there,” Wisp commented.
Mag shuddered. “It feels wrong. I don’t like it.”
“Everything feels wrong here. It’s Brightbriar’s territory,” Ike replied. He hopped down the cliff, racing toward the crystals, and somehow, he felt… racing toward his destiny.
Comments
PoeticSaint
Tftc!
