Chapter 16: Power Without a Price

Subject: Inis Location: Unknown

Humid air. A thick blanket of fog clung to the towering jungle trees. Vitanark trees were the tallest among them, piercing the oppressive white film and soaring out of sight.

Even the brightest of Lokken’s moons, full on this night, couldn’t penetrate this deep through the fog. Day or night, this place was difficult to traverse.

Inis’s senses were keen, even if the environment fought her each step through the fertile soil. Her awareness of the creatures stalking her was heightened. A frenzied energy gripped her.

“What is this feeling?” she inquired, her breath briefly forcing back the fog before her voice was swallowed up. “It’s like I can understand so much more than what’s actually there.”

“There” was a better word for it than “here”. Inis wasn’t supposed to be here. It wasn’t safe, but she was here.

I would have left Adventide without ever seeing the Vitanarks...

Vitanarks were among the tallest trees in Shroud, maybe even the world. The “Rushe” species grew dense reddish bark that was hard to pierce. Their branches only began developing midway to the top of the tree’s thick segmented trunks, and she couldn’t see that far up in all this fog.

While Inis was captivated by what little of the Vitanarks she could see, something crept up from behind.

The untethered scientist spun and ducked to avoid the boney nails of a grasping swamp-green claw. It was attached to a long jagged and boney arm. Having missed its mark, it retreated back into the obscuring haze.

A high-pitched clicking sound surrounded Inis. Not long after, three more grasping hands reached out from different directions. Inis was ready with a barrage of Viradarts. They cleaved through the fog.

She paused to listen for impacts, following up with a second barrage. This time, she concentrated her attack on where she knew the enemy would be.

The clicking stopped.

Through her virasense, Inis could perceive a collapsed form on the ground. Whatever manner of blightbeast it was, it was dead. She wandered forward until she could see the space where her attacker had been with her eyes.

The creature had already begun dematerializing, so she was unable to see what it looked like with her natural sight. Virasense was immensely useful, but it was not a complete substitute for eyes or any other sensory organs.

What was more, Inis didn’t much trust that her manic passion wasn’t influencing what her virasense was picking up. Especially right now, she wanted to see the blightbeast with her eyes.

“It is fine,” Inis attempted to persuade herself to ease her prickling frustrations.

She retrieved the dull gray blightseed. Malformed spikes were a sign of a low saturation level. This was a miserable claim for any seeker, save for the freshest Initiates. But it quelled Inis’s irritation.

“I’ll find another and dissect it live,” she pledged. Her eyes never left the seed until it disappeared safely into her pocket.

The plan seemed reasonable. Inis was already traipsing around a Rippling Umbra festerfont alone. Comparatively, most things seemed reasonable when she had already come this far.

Subject: Inis Location: Unknown

The fog was a perpetual environmental hazard. There were cliffs somewhere within the festerfont, but Inis didn’t think to purchase a detailed map of a festerfont she didn’t believe she would ever be stupid enough to enter.

The entire region was twisted in on itself like the land couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. Inis could relate.

Come to think of it… how did I even get here? Where is my satchel?!

She remembered waking up just as night had fallen. She also recalled packing to leave camp with twice the usual number of respite shards. Those shards were tucked safely in her right pocket.

There was another item in the satchel, but Inis didn’t know why she would ever think to bring it.

A valuable combination spell encyclopedia and meta-analysis thesis called Sol: Coercing Payment. Too precious to lose, too dangerous to make use of.

Oh, that’s right. Tucked away beyond the first layer, Inis remembered.

She waded through aquamarine-tinged undergrowth, avoiding a tree without slowing down. The temperate climate here allowed for a greater diversity of flora and fungi. A sudden thought on this forced Inis to stop in place.

“Did the jungle become a festerfont? Or, did the festerfont’s unnatural energies trigger the development of a jungle where there wouldn’t normally be one?”

Someone out there probably knew the answer. While Inis was definitely interested in finding that answer, she encountered a welcome distraction. Or, rather, it encountered her. That same creature from before, evident from the sound of the clicking.

It wasn’t close, but she couldn’t pinpoint the direction with her ears.

Why no ambush this time? Is that not your only trick?

Confirming with her virasense, Inis was overjoyed to discover there wasn’t just one of them, but a whole pack.

So, you think you have the upper hand?

Her augmented virasenses were a better companion to precision than eyesight. Half of the pack was dead by the time she made that discovery.

An intoxicated laugh escaped Inis’s lungs while she nearly danced with every series of spells cast.

This was fun, letting loose with her newfound power.

By the time it was over, and the clicking faded away, Inis had already forgotten to dissect her last kill. Instead, a bounty of blightseeds was the prize for this most recent hunt.

She dismissed her former pledge by reasoning that it wasn’t safe to dissect a blightbeast in all of this fog.

Scientist, seeker, student, dropout, false merchant, and orphan. All at once. It was hard not to be each one of these things, just as it was hard not to become something more in this forge of passion.

Is this the compulsion of a Blight Seeker? Is this what drives them to brave festerfonts day after day? It can’t be the pay.

Inis hadn’t even brought her headset on this excursion, so she couldn’t record any findings even if she made them. That was a first.

Subject: Inis Location: Unknown

Everything was a great deal easier for Inis right now. She couldn’t remember ever being able to reach out so far with her virasense. However, Inis’s ability to maintain this expanded radius of awareness waxed and waned with her level of focus.

She could reach out and almost get the tactile sensation of touching the plants around her, sliding her fingers across the bark of the different tree species that grew together in obscurity.

Inis was a scientist by intent, but not by accreditation. No matter how hard she tried, she found new reasons to doubt the progress she made. Right now, she hated herself because something had only just occurred.

The organisms under the influence of a festerfont, not the blightbeasts but actual living things, were unnatural by association with the tainted land.

She knelt down and grasped a clump of grass, uprooting the small reddish stalks with ease. Inis peered closer. She couldn’t find anything amiss.

Many insects and smaller mammals lived in festerfonts. However, enough of an ecosystem was disrupted by the Blight that all that remained must somehow make concessions to continue to thrive in an ecosystem deprived of that diversity.

Perhaps it was easier for Inis to observe this now that her virasenses were heightened. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

Only now did Inis realize that her virasense radius had shrunk as a result of her inattention. She reached out again with invisible tendrils of vira energy, dragging obscured places closer.

There was a pack of small Chorth to Inis’s left. She strode toward them, and they scampered off. She didn’t give chase, not at the pace they could travel, when she was also trying to avoid tumbling off the jungle’s cliffs to her death.

Chorth wasn’t the name of a blightbeast. It referred to something the Guild called a “taxonomic Root”. Every creature Inis had encountered in the Outskirts layer of this jungle festerfont fell into this Root.

It was more difficult to determine a blightbeast’s variant from virasense alone.

There were three taxonomic Roots used by the Guild to classify blightbeasts. Approximately thirty years ago, each Root had been split into three “Stems” to further categorize the contained blightbeasts. Some Stems were further subdivided, but this Inis hadn’t memorized these distinctions yet.

“Chorth” contained creatures that resemble mammals, reptiles, and many more living creatures. They were the second most common Root. Initiates typically fought their weaker forms during their earliest hunts.

“Arth”, another Root, included blightbeasts that looked like insects, arachnids, and crustaceans. Inis rarely encountered this seed because they were often found in places too dangerous for her to be. This was one such place.

“Botan” was the rarest Root, at least in The Shrouded Theocracy. These looked like plants or fungi. Perhaps these were more common elsewhere, but Inis wouldn’t know where to look to find that out.

Inis discovered another pack of Chorth near her. She slowly approached. They didn’t seem to have sensed her presence. Each step brought the creatures closer.

The pack split off in separate directions, and Inis realized she had been pursuing them to the edge of a steep cliff. Even though she had avoided chasing after the last pack for this very reason, she had been hyper-focused on watching the enemy. She had ignored the grayscale representation of the terrain in the background of her virasense.

The seething balls of blight energy were more tantalizing. Inis’s foe seemed to know that. It was using her desires against her.

“Intelligent,” she growled. “But how much of that intelligence relies on your master?”

Inis was referring to the festerfont itself, of course. Occasionally, land-based Chorth, the “Elfirmant” Stem, would have pack leaders. Sometimes, they would even defer to the tactics of larger Elfirmant, but that coordination was all an illusion.

I was only able to be manipulated like this because I allowed myself to let go. I need to somehow stifle this flame, reclaim some composure and discipline.

Even though she knew this illusion was orchestrated by the festerfont itself, there were still too many missing pieces. With only one life to give, Inis needed to be more careful.

You are careful, a voice seemed to counter. But now you are adjusting to strength. Forgive yourself some growing pains.

The voice was familiar, but also somehow mismatched at the same time. The warm light in the cold was Inis’s mentor, but she was using someone else’s words.

No one is perfect, the voice went on. You haven’t only been climbing pillars toward these achievements, you’ve been building scaffolding around these ideals to catch you when you misstep. And even when you fall a ways back down, the work you’ve put in helps you to get back to where you were, faster and more efficiently.

This sounded more like something her mentor would say to comfort her when she believed she had thrown away her efforts in an instant.

Inis used to take such a liking to that sort of figurative language that would make her feel like she was an explorer. Somewhere after parting ways, the work became just that: work.

Magical prowess is one such pillar, but you neglected to its perilous heights. Instead, you worked hard to reform aspects of your character. This has changed, and it is a good thing.

What Inis was experiencing wasn’t really a voice, nor was it a pattern of thought she had conscious control over. It was a feeling, the kind that must be the result of her continuous struggles. Repeated often and for a long enough time, actions molded the mind.

The progress you’ve made in other areas will safeguard your journey of mastery of magical energy and all it can do for you. Don’t resist this power just because you might need to make a few mistakes along the way.

Inis walked up to the edge of the cliff until she could actually see the steep drop with her eyes. More accurately, what she actually saw was the end of solid ground and a vast expanse of fog beyond.

She sucked in a deep breath and exhaled, casting a powerful Virawind Drift spell straight ahead. The spell forced back the fog, traveling a long way away until it exposed the trunks of the Vitanarks growing in darkness up from the concealed jungle far below. This was the direction she needed to travel to go deeper into the festerfont.

“I won’t refuse progress,” Inis declared, leaping off the cliff’s edge.