With an unknown beast, Timothy couldn’t accurately detect it with his standard charms but if he didn’t find the beast before it found him this wasn’t going to end well. That meant it was time to break out the nonstandard charms.

A pressed juvenile sunflower encased in a thin layer of hardened tree sap hanging from his belt on a string woven from the same plant’s fibers lit up with a delicate tracing of densely written runes. Not one of his best works, but an important one nevertheless. Young sunflowers follow the sun. It doesn’t last as they grow older, but for a time they follow the light. Take that symbol and coat it in a thin layer of artificial amber encapsulating something from the target and you get a simple but powerful seeking charm.

Unfortunately, amber isn’t the easiest thing to make. Add that the charm can only really seek one thing and it’s usually just not worth the cost. Not that he was complaining. Playing with both amber and sunflowers had opened up some truly novel lines for exploration.

That and the prototype he’d kept around was still situationally useful. Looking closely at the almost transparent, orange-tinted amber would reveal the runes weren’t carved into the surface, but beneath it. Each was filled with a rather distinct sanguine color.

The blood of three dozen species mixed together and processed to remove the original races of its owners and leave only the potent lifeforce within and what was trapped in amber was also what the charm would seek.

Pouring his will into the charm the surrounding world both faded away and lit up like the light of the sun filtered through green glass. He couldn’t see two feet in front of him, but he could see something 30 feet away in the same direction. A massive pillar of lifeforce condensing from a net beneath the ground to rise into a bushier net far above his head. A tree of course. This was why this was far from his first choice for searching. A thrown rock, devoid of lifeforce could fly right at him right now and he would see nothing. At the same time, the sheer amount of life that filled the jungle was enough to make what he could see hopelessly jumbled together.

Hopeless was the wrong term, but certainly not useful as it was so he would change it.

The spell was driven by his supplied willpower but controlled by the meaning and pre-tuned mana stored in the charm. Normally that would be that. But he’d made the damn thing after all. It was his meaning that was stored, and while that couldn’t be modified completely without destroying the device, the manifestation could be adjusted.

So adjust he did. Raising the band of detection up to a level that should hide anything below high tier two. A dangerous thing to do if this beast had minions, but he wouldn’t keep it going long. With that tuning the world faded away, leaving only the strongest sources of life still visible.

The thinner roots, branches and leaves faded from his sight, leaving a forest of poles behind. The massive trunks of the forest giants, despite not fitting clearly into the tiered ladder of strength still stood out clearly to his sight. He glanced down for a moment. The thin green cloud of grass and bushes that had covered the jungle floor had disappeared entirely, leaving him staring down into an endless abyss. If there was life down there in the planet's center, then it was too far for his simple eyes to see.

He grimaced, dragging his eyes away. He never had believed that old hoagie about gazing into the abyss and it would gaze back but that didn’t make the view pleasant. Hight’s weren’t one of his fears, but the sheer emptiness below was horrifying on a completely different level.

He redirected his attention, beginning to quarter the available terrain. First glancing across the grounds, ignoring a flickering light a mile or so back that strutted lackadaisically away from him. Probably a hog considering its movements, but he wouldn’t swear to it. The shape looked like a bond fire walking on half-seen, half-imagined spindles of sparks. Like with the tree’s around him the thinner limbs disappeared easily, leaving the torso as a moving bonfire.

Still, it was too far away and not moving in his direction. It wasn’t his target. Holding on to the trunk, his lack of physical sight made even turning in place freaky, he scanned the ground below and around him and found nothing.

Was he wrong? Did he sense something else entirely? Or maybe it was weaker than he’d thought and was creeping up on his blind ass at this very moment! He bit back a few select curses, refusing to give in to panic or defeat.

He’d sensed something, second-guessing himself now served no purpose. If he kept a close watch and found nothing, that was a good thing. Maybe near 300 bodies moving in concert had scared it off.

He could hope at least. He slowly moved his body in a circle, eyes wide but not staring. Allowing his peripheral vision to pick up motion rather than attempting to detect something by sight. When the world was so different from how he normally saw it there was no point.

And that peripheral vision saved him. Or at least this image. A flicker of motion at the corner of his eye came directly for him. He flung himself sideways, off the branch and rapidly falling towards the jungle floor shivering inside as a massive, bright living flame carved a chunk from the tethered lifeforce of the trunk behind him.

Idiot! He cursed himself, deactivating the life sight as he fell. Always check above you as well!

As the physical world grew out from the living flames of the beneath he took a good look at his attacker, before adjusting his belief in his own weight, a projection didn’t have any unless he forced it to, a necessity for selling a fake image as the real deal but a habit that he couldn’t afford at the moment, and flinging himself to another branch with a flick of his Hog bone staff.

A glance was enough and he grimaced. A narrow brown muzzle that looked almost like a bill on top of a four-legged furred body and a long slender ringed tail. It stretched nearly 12 feet in length but most of that was the articulated tail that was even now flicking back and forth angrily. A gods-be-damned trash bandit. Or the new world's mutated, giant, angry version of one at least. They didn’t have the black-ringed eyes of the raccoons he grew up with, but they were related. Then again that was about all the two had in common. It was larger than Timothy, heavier and while they would scavenge dead bodies or trash like a raccoon, they also had no problem creating those corpses themselves to start with.

Considering even the base level prey animal of the forest, the hog, was a dangerous creature in its own right it was no surprise that nothing yet living was a simple harmless herbivore. Much less the omnivore that was leaping after him.

Another slight gesture redirected him to a higher branch out of the beast's trajectory, but dodging would only get him so far. Another small gesture cleanly cut loose a twig, even if it boggled the mind to call a wrist-thick outcropping with a leaf the size of his upper body a twig. He snapped the improvised projectile around and launched it with considerable velocity at the overgrown raccoon, it frequently didn’t work but flinging something physical was a much cheaper option than trying to force something magical through its aura.

The overly long tail snapped upwards, swinging the rest of the beast's body around like a lasso, neatly dodging his projectile. Without his will following staying attached to the twig, defeating the purpose of using a twig in the first place, its course couldn’t be redirected. It sailed by to strike a tree with a great deal of noise but little effect.

He wasn’t going to hit the thing by throwing sticks or stones. At least not without some serious trickery to hide what he was planning. Plan B then. A gesture redirected his flight again, never allowing his body to actually land on a branch he was neatly kept aloft by the slightest pulses. Of course, an image didn’t care if it was painted on the sky or on the ground, he should have been able to levitate. It didn’t quite work that way. If it was just an image he could manage it easily, but when he fully embodied that image to this extent? No, it wasn’t so easy to ignore a lifetime of expectations. Bodies didn’t float, they fell. It was a basic bit of belief that he still got hung up on. He was stuck with bobbing about like a tetherball. But that should be enough.

The beast springboarded off a tree trunk and lunged right back at him, tail working to move its body fully six feet in any given direction while midair. There was something wrong here. It shouldn’t be able to move that much. He would figure it out eventually, but that eventually wouldn’t be mid-fight!

Quickly making a decision he flicked up rather than sideways, flinging his body down towards the jungle floor below. He was no tree whisperer to make a trap out of the towering forest giants, not without causing more damage than he was willing to do without cause at least, but the ground was a different matter entirely. He spared merely a glance to see the ever more angry giant raccoon redirect its leap off of a single leaf (what the fuck?) and rapidly approach him from behind.

Speed wasn’t really his forte, but needs must. A gesture and a fetish made from the preserved hand of a prairie dog turned the earth beneath him into a 7 feet wide patch of spikes, another gesture right before he made impact redirected his body sideways, touching the ground outside the improvised spike trap for a brief moment before lofting himself back into the air.

He wasn’t fast enough to keep this gag alive on the ground and he couldn’t afford to let the beast get a strike in. Partially because it would disrupt his projection, but mostly because it might just abandon the annoying image and track down the rest of the hunting group.

He glanced back and let out a few pointless expletives as the raccoon, its tail devoid of its characteristic rings, made contact with the sharp ends of dirt-turned-stone spikes and lept back into the air after Timothy, catching up rapidly.

Resigning himself to the waste, he smashed his will against the beast, not fully penetrating its aura, but enough to drain away some of its momentum, storing it in the spiritual representation of the staff later. The distance between them had decreased to about 10 feet, but it the situation was rapidly reversing itself.

With a frustrated snarl, the beast's tail snapped forward, flinging a shotgun pattern of the suddenly reacquired rings. What he’d thought were merely distinct black colorations were clearly more than that, and he was about to find out how much more. It was too close, and they were moving too fast to dodge more than a sprinkling of them. Instinct snapped his aura out from his skin, hardened and prepared to stop them before any damage they dealt could give the game away. Damage that didn’t occur. The rings snapped around him, burning themselves into his aura giving him the image the raccoon's tail used to boast. And with the stripes came massive weight.

He suddenly had a thousand pounds of weight grinding down on him, no wonder the damn thing could move around in the air like a figure skater on ice. It could adjust exactly where and what its weight was at any time, a simple enough magic that he almost felt bad for the beast. Perfect balance wasn’t much compared to being a motion battery like the hogs or commanding the earth like the prairie dogs.

He was glad he hadn’t thought it too loudly though. When you combine that with massively increasing an opponent's weight it becomes an entirely different thing. It took entirely more effort than it should have to redirect his path to one of the larger branches above.

He had a moment or three, losing its own weight meant the raccoon fell towards the ground floating a bit like a feather, devoid of momentum or anything to leap from.

He forced his trained will against the bands and with a flex of determination shattered one of them. The beast's mana was dense and potent, much more than he could bring to bear at the moment, but its willpower was the willpower of a beast. Powerful in context and with a hunter's focus on the prize, certainly better than a baseline human, but he was so much more than baseline. The first ring shattered, and several more followed it in succession but rather than feeling elated he grimaced. He could break free, but that wasn’t going to help him much right now. There were over fifty rings left on him and at two or three a second this just wasn’t going to cut it.

The beast's rings reappeared on its tail as soon as Timothy broke them and he used that to his advantage, increasing his speed towards the ground until, at last, it made contact and redirected itself back up into the air with incredible speed.

Playing for time, he again forced his will against it to drain away its momentum. Trying to leave it floating in the air again. It paused in hid air for a moment, then flung a rock he’d missed from its front claws, using it much like it did its tail to redirect momentum and put it in range of the tree trunk Timothy was standing on. Transitioning from leaping to climbing without an increase rather than a loss of speed.

Timothy hesitated for a moment, palming a specific stone card in a pocket on his belt, but with a shake of his head, he switched to a small essence glass bottle filled with mosquito wings. Sure he had some massive spells stored for emergencies, but none of them were things he was willing to cast casually. Either they would be difficult, expensive or time-consuming to recast or they would leave him curled up in bed recovering afterwards. Neither was worth risking when he wouldn’t be able to recover the body and all they needed was to delay the beast.

Still, with his own mobility greatly reduced while the beast's speed was unrestrained he was left with a single simple option.

Attack!

Grabbing another twig he flung it down, snapping out an illusion that multiplied the projectile into a volley of them, overloading the beast's ability to judge what was coming, and thus its ability to dodge. Then moving the invisible real projectile behind the illusions then slammed it into the beast's robust aura, pitting his will against his and feeling the growing headache that such a direct fight caused. Headache or no, he broke through drove the shaft of wood into the meaty flesh of its front left lower shoulder.

Not a killing wound, right as he made contact a ring from the tail snapped up to the limb in question and increased weight wasn’t all it did. Increased density prevented the chunk of wood from driving all the way through, but it was deep enough to slow it down, and that’s all he really needed. Smelling of blood and slow it wouldn’t be running around looking for difficult prey. If it did then it deserved what would happen.

It would be the meal of something bigger and nastier. That was the way of the jungle.

A fact that Timothy focused on a little too long because wounded or not the beast was too pissed off to stop now. It bounded the rest of the way up the trunk and lunged at Timothy, who, his head aching and supply of enchantments rather low, wasn’t willing to continue this charade.

With a derisive smile and a peace sign, he began to fade out.

Then the beast's claws made contact with his illusion, shattering it. Timothy froze up and nearly blacked out in agony as those four claws impressed themselves on his mind and spirit. Twitching and releasing a strangled scream Timothy couldn’t hold back the nausea caused by a combination of backlash and the rushed return of his awareness. Unable to hold it in, he half-rolled, half-fell sideways, still encumbered by magically enhanced weight (although not the full thousand pounds or he wouldn’t still be alive), on the scrying platform to vomit off the side. The motion became another choked scream as his chest hit the floor. Nausea fought with pain and whichever came out on top was immaterial as Timothy definitely lost. His simple robes were wet and slick beneath him and merely touching his chest to the floor left him crying and sobbing.

It lingered for a moment, but he was no fresh-faced boy on his first hunt. Forcing his mind out of the swirling clouds of blood and pain he, with great difficulty, forced his body to roll over. Feeling looking down at his chest to see four deep groves shredding his upper chest and a malignant color of the beast's aura fighting with his own to keep the wounds open. He couldn’t see his rib bones, but that might be because of all the blood. Already he felt his body getting colder with blood loss and the possible onset of shock. He didn’t have much time. Reaching over he snagged one of Jenney’s potions, hesitating briefly before gritting his teeth and activating it. Still, with his own aura already heavily inundated with foreign intent, even the partial meaning left behind by Jenney could be a problem. He couldn’t afford to go hog wild. He poured a portion of the potion over the wounds in his chest, waiting as the bleeding slowed dramatically but the wounds themselves didn’t close.

It would have to be enough. He couldn’t move easily beneath his own increased weight and heavy moments would break open the tiny amount of healing the potion accomplished. So time to audible. Grabbing a blank card and pen from his ever-present belt he carved a quick message.

“Please Deliver to Ma Mason ASAP. Message: Please join me in my tower. I found something that would even impress uncle Mathew.”

His being wounded like this could destroy his carefully crafted image, not to mention possibly causing a panic. No, he couldn't just scream for help. But Uncle Mathew was long dead, had a bad car crash and bled to death before they could pry him out of the wreckage, and his name had become a family emergency code.

He quickly aborted a snort as it moved his chest muscles and turned agony into hellacious-I'm-going-to-die agony. He had to wait several seconds for it to die down enough for him to think clearly again. How sad was this? Beaten, bleeding and calling for his mommy.

All from a mutated Racoon.

What the hell just happened?