Chapter Four

In the end, I had to burn Tery.

Half a day of rain had turned the soil around my humble homestead into a swampy morass. Digging a proper grave in that mess would take days, if it were even possible with my body still as exhausted as it was. As much as I wanted to bury her next to her mother, I couldn’t spare the time to recuperate, or allow the ground to dry. Not without risk.

While there was no reason for the Assessors to come snooping around the farm any further, the same did not extend to any number of locals or nobility. If the Assessors had announced their presence or their actions, either before or after, then some of the local militia would be expected at the homestead, eager to trample on my corpse and burn what remained of my possessions and land, just to be sure. If the Assessors hadn’t, then the same militia might come to see if I’d survived the attack at Erinsburg, once the destruction there was discovered. Considering the ‘new look’ I was sporting, the latter would be just as troublesome.

In time I’d be able to contend with armed men. For now, as before, going unnoticed was what would keep me alive.

I'd stacked what dry wood I could find and then trashed everything inside the house once the rain had abated. Torn up as it was, the building quickly took flame, its light silhouetting my departure as I fled into the nearby woods half a mile distant.

Even if my nearest neighbor rushed to my aid, the building would be cinders before they could hope to put a dent in the conflagration.

My daughter was as safe as I could make her.

I fled through the woods for over an hour, moving at as steady a clip as the moonlight allowed. Only once I was certain that no one had seen me, that there was no foolish hero in pursuit of a brigand arsonist, did I allow my pace to slow. I knew these woods, the forested peaks, and valleys that gave the county of Greenhill its name. I’d hunted here for much of my adult life, and for the interim, they would remain my hunting grounds, albeit for a considerably different reason.

I set a handful of traps as I made my way through the trees in search of a proper campsite. At a glance, they seemed typical enough, snares, leg-holds, and deadfalls, but an experienced hunter could see the difference at a glance. Most traps were designed to kill; a pelt was a pelt after all. Mine were not. They were designed to wound.

It was unseemly, but an animal dead in the middle of the night was a waste. I needed them alive, however briefly, if they’d be worth anything at all.

***

A whiplike snap startled me from a fitful slumber, while the accompanying cry of startled pain helped to center my mind. I’d never been a particularly light sleeper, which had been how the Assessors had so taken me without a fight, but even my heavy eyes were opened by the sound of a wounded animal.

The forager caught in my trap was bigger than I’d expected, bigger than the trap had been intended to catch. A fully-grown, and particularly angry boar. The absurdly overweight, tusked animal had gorged itself for the last time, then gotten itself stuck in its attempt to retreat.

Its end was mercifully swift, a single sharp thrust of my dagger-point through the back of its neck. Though I fed on its life, I didn't want, or need its pain.

There will be worse blood on my hands before this is all over. I thought grimly, as I stared down at the dead animal. Then my mind drifted to Terynia, curled up in the same position, and my hand tightened around the dirk as it’s opposite pressed to the back of the beast's head.

Taking its soul felt easy, like moving a piece of gossamer silk through cool dawn air. Violet energy, visible only to me, emerged from the creature’s wound, flowing like a river directed by each motion of my hand. Twice I circled it in the air, then drew it close to myself, my glasses updating me on the sudden increase in power.

+22 Soul Energy

Maximum Soul Reserve increased by +2. Now 231

I smiled at the increase. The larger my reserve grew, the more complicated, and thus more powerful, the enchantments I could bestow. So long as I continued to draw souls, I wouldn’t backslide or atrophy as I had before.

That said, there was a limit to how far I could grow. The larger my pool, the more souls I needed to expand it, akin to adding additional weight to a muscle in training. And just as with a muscle, sadly, there were certain plateaus. Eventually, the souls of beasts, birds and other creatures of the forest would not be capable of supporting my growing reserve. I'd need something bigger, more dangerous and morally dubious.

As Vikos loved to explain, Devil-Marks were double-edged. As the mark's power grew, the challenges it invited and insisted upon grew ever larger still.

“Let us see if you have any friends nearby, hmm?” I smiled down at the beast, patting the side of its tusked visage. “Don’t go anywhere though, I expect I’ll be hungry when I return."

***

Indeed I was, but it was a good hunger, the hunger of a hard days work.

Sitting in front of a crackling fire with a hunk of roast boar in hand, I contemplated the day’s events.

My traps had proven decidedly effective, no doubt in part because I was technically poaching. The particular section of the forest had been off limits for the better part of the year, as part of some lordling dispute over territory, which left it positively flush with animals too stupid to fear humans, let alone avoid even the most basic of traps.

It had been to my benefit. Over the course of the day, I had managed to slay and consume enough creatures that my reserve now sat at 207/242. For a day of hunting, it was solid growth, growth that would be expanded upon once I finished spending the accumulated energy.

The question, as it had so often been during my youth, was what to make. And what I could afford.

My spectacles helped with the latter.

From the moment the mark had begun whispering the knowledge required to use it, I had been able to confirm with nothing more than a thought whether or not an enchantment I had in mind was within my power, or whether it would be in the future should I advance my mark.

Unfortunately, the uncanny knowledge had always been rather vague on the cost. As such, one of the final enchantments I’d laid upon the glasses, before abandoning my mark, had been the ability to determine the cost of a prospective enchantment on a particular vessel. I needed only to consider the option, and the glasses would fill in the details.

Enchanted Sword +1 – 500 SR

I didn’t even know why I bothered to consider the option. An enchanted sword had been one of the first things I’d wanted as a young man, and I could have rattled off its cost with or without the glasses.

In truth, it would be a rather useless investment, at least in the short term. My sword or my dagger, both pierced flesh as readily as any enchanted blade. A magical weapon would do a better job against armor, true, but I was no fighter. For the foreseeable future, if I had to contend with a man in anything thicker than a quilted jerkin I’d be better off retreating.

No, my tools of bloodshed were adequate for the task at hand. What I needed was something to speed up my gathering. A magical trap, perhaps, or some kind of dominating birdcall? Neither seemed particularly interesting, but as I stared at the small numbers still floating over the sword, a thought occurred.

A tracker, perhaps? The glasses wouldn’t work as a focus, I knew. The more enchantments that were layered upon an individual item, the more costly each became in turn. My spectacles had been made at the height of my, admittedly limited, former power. To consider enchanting them further would require I exceed that old peak, and even then the glasses themselves were quickly nearing the enchantment limit provided by their excellent craftsmanship.

My compass, however, that could work.

Certain types of Devil-Mark magic were what traditional casters referred to as sympathetic. I knew from experience that it was a complicated, and difficult term to nail down in theory, but in practice, it meant that using the right components could increase the potency, or decrease the cost of a spell. Using the hair of a victim made it easier to curse them, using a picture of a city could increase the range of teleportation.

Enchanting a compass to help it find something? That certainly qualified.

Whatever impartial arbiter of Devil-Mark magical rules existed, he appeared to agree with me, as the cost on his glasses flickered, shivering between a high and low number, before settling on the latter.

Compass of Animal Detection – 190 SR

It was a small victory amidst a sea of recent defeats, but I smiled all the same.

The process of enchanting the compass itself was easy, especially when compared to the struggle that had produced my single-use Ring of Regeneration. When I wasn’t half dead or constructing items that strained the limits of what I had ever attempted, using my power was actually rather refreshing.

"I'd forgotten how good you felt," I said to no one but the devil on my brow. It was true enough, for a decade I had denied the mark even as it called to me in my sleep, even as it simmered in intimate moments. Touching that power again felt like rediscovering an arm I'd lost, or a sixth sense I'd gone without.

Pity that it was such a poor replacement for a daughter.