Book 4: Chapter 31: Glory for the Ghosts
Victor looked through his piles of monster trophies, allowing his instinct to guide his hand as he pulled specimen after specimen out of his dimensional container and stacked them together on the sandy ground of the waste. At the bottom of the pile was the cultist crown, and he knew, in his gut, that his ancestors in the Spirit Plane—or Ghost Lands, as Tenecoalt called that otherworldly realm—would appreciate it as an offering. He wondered about that; would they like it for its Energy, or would they consume the spirit lurking within? At this point, nothing would surprise him.
Dawn was just brightening the eastern horizon, and most of the hunters were still sleeping off their excessive drinking from the night before. There had been no partying for Victor and Valla; they’d spent most of the evening in the tent working on assignments from Tes. Victor shook his head and grinned as he recalled the conversation that had spurred those hours of study.
“Tes,” he’d asked, watching the woman, now small enough to comfortably sit in one of Valla’s plush chairs, “How do you keep changing your size so easily?”
“Oh? You’ve noticed?” she laughed.
“Yes! When I’m . . . bigger and running through the waste, you’re my height. When we stop to talk, and I’m my usual size, you’re my height. When you need to sit in a comfortable chair built for a much smaller person, you seem to fit just fine. What gives?”
Tes wrinkled her nose and shifted so she could pull her legs up under her, leaning against one heavily cushioned arm of the chair. She gave Victor a long, penetrating look and asked, “Are you wanting to sit in small chairs, or are you worried about dwarfing the people you’ve known, afraid you’ll grow more distant in their hearts due to your size disparity?”
Victor glanced at Valla, still peering intently at a spell pattern she was trying to duplicate, and then his ears popped, and he turned back to Tes—she’d cast her privacy spell, perhaps to spare his feelings. “I guess so. Everyone I knew before I came to this world was pretty much human-sized. I think it would be cool to fit in anywhere I went . . .”
“Well, I can’t help you with that—fitting in anywhere, I mean. The spell I have requires very Energy-dense flesh and is able, with the expenditure of enormous amounts of Energy, to make me nearly any size smaller than originally but not larger. I suppose I could modify it to do so, but the expense . . .” she trailed off, clearly trying to envision the idea.
“Would it work on me?” Victor felt hope in his chest and was surprised by it—he’d thought he’d come to terms with his largeness.
“I think so; your titan ancestry, your bloodline, has begun to manifest quite significantly in your physical form. I’m not sure you have the Energy to alter yourself by much, but if you study the spell, you should be able to accomplish much as you grow in power. I believe your inspiration-attuned Energy would be a good fit for the magic.”
“Would you teach me?” Victor leaned forward, going so far as to scoot over the rug, so he sat closer to Tes’s chair.
“This is ancient magic, Victor. Many of my kin would be quite cross with me for sharing it, assuming you could master the pattern—it’s quite complex.” Something about the crooked grin on Tes’s face and the way she leaned forward to match his posture told Victor she wasn’t worried about what her kin might think.
“So, will you?” he pressed.
“I will. Tonight, I’ll give you a tenth of the pattern. Prove to me that you can master that much, and I’ll give you more.”
Victor chuckled as he stacked a long rib bone from the night brute prince onto the pile. He’d been up all night studying the wild, twisting, shifting pattern that Tes had drawn out for him on a piece of magical parchment. She’d said the most challenging part of the pattern would be forcing his Energy into it, but Victor knew he could master his Energy—his will was strong enough. No, for him, the hard part was comprehending the insane complexity of it and then trying to force his clumsy fingers to recreate parts of it.
Still, Victor knew he’d get it eventually, especially if he could manage to make a few more levels and boost his intelligence and dexterity a bit more. When he thought of Tes and remembered the glimpse she’d given him of her dragon form, he could only imagine the kind of Energy that went into shrinking that massive body into a petite woman; he didn’t need anything so severe, just the ability to shave off a foot or two when he wanted to exist among his smaller friends more comfortably.
He heard footsteps crunching in the sand behind him and turned to see Valla approaching. She looked past him to the pile of monster organs and bones and said, “Quite an expensive offering.”
“My ancestors battle in the Ghost Lands, and these are the least of the scraps I can offer,” Victor said before he even realized he was speaking. Were those his words? Were they the words of Tenecoalt? Was he human or Quinametzin? “I’m starting to think like one of them,” he said, deciding it had been him, but with ideas that were new to his conscious mind.
“Well, you’ve advanced your bloodline a lot. It makes sense. There’s nothing wrong with learning and gaining new ideas and ideals, though. I think it’s wonderful that you can connect yourself so viscerally to your ancestors.”
“Well, let’s say I have a lot more respect for you, I mean the Ardeni and Shadeni, and your reverence for your ancestors.”
Valla smiled and stepped forward, reaching up to rest one of her small, blue hands on his arm above his elbow. “Are you ready?”
“Thank you, Vormor,” Cayle said, then turned to the crowd and continued, “As I said, it’s a fire-blood, and you’ll be wise to note the risk; with a wyrm this age, you’re likely to see breath attacks, and blood that will ignite materials short of epic. I won’t stop any of you!” she added, holding up her hand, “but you’ve been warned. If you don’t have significant resistance to flames, you’d be wise to employ ranged attacks.”
“And stay the fuck out of my way!” Vormor bellowed, and Victor’s heart leaped in his chest—had that man just said fuck?
“Holy shit,” he said, and Tes turned to him with a grin.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “He didn’t use the same word you’re so fond of; it’s an uncommon curse in the Vesh tongue, and the System translated it similarly to the one from your homeland.”
“Hah! I don’t care; it’s nice to hear another foul mouth.”
“Enough said, we’ll leave the wagons and attendants here, and we hunters will move out in ten minutes!” Cayle called, then quickly added, “I’ll be watching participation, and so will the other members of the Spears. No one has any looting rights until the battle is done, and I’ve awarded merits! Naturally, if you perish, your portion will be split among the survivors; there are no benefits paid to families on this hunt—use that information to inform your level of caution.” With that, Cayle hopped down from her crate, and Tes turned to Victor and Valla.
“You’ll stay by me, Valla. I know your Lightning Strike isn’t your best attack yet, but you’ll get some good hits in—I’ll help you. Victor, I suggest you avoid the beast’s maw, but I think your resistances will be sufficient to deal with the smoldering nature of its blood. Don’t hold back.”
“Doesn’t he need to worry about the other hunters? Will they be using area attacks?”
“Naturally; stay on your toes, Victor.”
“I will,” he said, resting a hand on Lifedrinker, where she lay nestled against his side. Tes led them away from the main group of hunters up a rocky hillside on the south side of the gully that supposedly wound its way to where the wyrm was roaming.
“I can feel it,” she said when they were away, standing high, back to the rising sun and facing down the meandering pathway through low, stone, and scrub-covered hills toward a distant rocky canyon. “He’s old and angry, too big ever to sate his hunger in these lands. Stymied by his nature, he cannot find a way to progress. Wyrms aren’t terribly clever, even old ones like him, and he’ll respond with insane, frenzied attacks when he’s set upon by the hunters. Victor, you should unleash everything you have near his midsection. Try to spill as much of his guts as you can. Lifedrinker will be able to part his lower scales, though you’ll need to use all your might.
“Avoid the thick ridges on his back; if you thought the night brute prince’s bones were hard, those would give you a new level of understanding of the word. Still, if you can do enough damage, those very scales will be a part of your prize; you can bet on it, and with them, I can help you craft armor that will eclipse what you lost two days ago.”
“Shit!” Victor said, slapping a hand on his leather-clad chest. He was wearing one of the fringed and beaded vests Tellen’s people had gifted him. “I was supposed to buy one of these Degh’s old armor!” He gestured to the hunters below.
“Forget it,” Tes waved a hand dismissively. “Nothing you could buy from these men and women would be much use against an ancient wyrm. Better to not let it bite you.” She paused, considered for a moment, and added, “Or sting you with its tail.”
“Sting me?” Victor groaned.
“Oh yes. This type of wyrm has a barbed tail with venom that will ignite your blood. Literally.” While Victor let those words sink in, the other hunters began to ride, fly, and run forth, streaming over the hillsides with whoops, hollers, and jolts of Energy that lit up the gray shadows of early morning. “Let’s go!” Tes said, and then she was running over the hilltops, suddenly much larger than before. Valla cloaked herself in lightning and wind and sped after her, and Victor grinned, watching them go.
He unslung Lifedrinker and held her up so the morning sun flashed along her silvery edge and said, “Time to go to work, beautiful. I’ll be careful not to crack your handle again. I’ll find a perfect spot to let you sink your teeth into this old bastard.”
With that, he started to jog and gathered his Energy to cast Inspiring Presence. He whooped and laughed as the shadows fell away, and he saw the perfect path to run along. He checked his Sovereign Will boost to ensure it was still on his vitality and strength, where he’d kept it for days on end, no longer very fatigued or bothered by the constant use of the spell.
If he had to guess, he felt he was damn close to advancing the spell, so easy had it become for him to keep it going. Catching himself thinking that way, he wondered if his inspiration-attuned Energy was giving him the insight. He laughed and shrugged, shouting into the sky, “Does it matter if I’m right?”
Tes and Valla were small figures on the next hill, a solid mile ahead of him, and he decided it was time to quit messing around. He gathered up his rage and cast Berserk. When his body stretched and bunched with corded muscles, Victor roared, squatted his huge, powerful legs, and launched himself toward the next hill, soaring hundreds of feet over the blasted hillside to smash into the loose, dusty gravel on the next slope. Again, he laughed, turned to the bright, red-tinted sun, and howled, brandishing Lifedrinker to the baleful orb, seeking its blessing as he turned and charged up to the hill’s crest.
Tes and Valla were no longer distant figures, and Victor, for the first time, managed to pass by Tes as he leaped again, soaring through the air to smash into the next hillside with a tremendous roar. The thrill of the chase didn’t matter to him at the moment; he wasn’t trying to catch Tes, he was rushing toward a mighty enemy, and there were weaklings ahead of him still, people bent on stealing his glory, and the glory he meant to win for his ancestors in the Ghost Lands.
