44 – A Cloud Hawk

Jonny woke up in the middle of the night, and at first, he did not realize why. Then, he heard the sound of limping footsteps in the snow, and immediately sat up. The moon was high in the sky, shining down on Igrette’s form as she trudged back through the pillars toward the center of the mana well, sword in hand dyed red with blood.

“A bear was sniffing around nearby,” she said quietly. “I took care of it, you can go back to sleep.”

Jonny watched her climb back onto the stone table and start her healing meditation again, then lay back down. His sleep the rest of the night was much less restful, and he woke up right at dawn, still half-groggy. Igrette was still healing herself when he sat up, and he stared at her blankly for a minute or so before realizing that he needed to go to the bathroom.

He left the circle to do his business, and when he finished, he was much more awake. The memory of waking up that night came back to him, and he glanced back toward the stone circle, then walked further out in the direction of where they had killed the deer. That was the direction Igrette had been coming back from, and it made sense that the bear would have been there, if it was scavenging for food.

He saw the corpse through the trees long before he arrived, but he didn’t realize that’s what he was seeing at first. It just looked like a blob of pure darkness between the trees, and it was so large that he couldn’t believe it was the bear at first.

Even collapsed and lying on the ground, it was more than twice as tall as he was, and its head was large enough to swallow him whole if it wanted to. There were no obvious wounds at first, but as he circled around it, he noticed that there were blood icicles hanging from its throat, and when he looked closer, he saw that its neck had been cut. It was not a clean beheading, but it looked like Igrette had severed its windpipe and major arteries and left it to die. In its final death throes, it seemed to have taken out two trees, which, now that he thought about it, was probably what woke him up.

Even after so long, he could still sense residual mana in its body, slowly leaking into the atmosphere. It had to have been at least third layer to still have so much mana left this long after it died. He walked a bit further until he reached one of its paws, and reached his hand out. It wasn’t even as big as a single one of the bear’s toe pads, and the claws were long enough to cut right through his arm. And Igrette had killed it in a single strike, probably without even using any mana.

He was once again filled with awe for how powerful she was, even in her injured state. At the same time he felt excited. He was going to be able to do this one day. Perhaps not with a sword like her, but he would be able to effortlessly defeat beasts the size of buses.

He walked further, then stopped when he heard a strange noise from the other side of the bear. It sounded like crunching, but it wasn’t the crunch of something chewing, nor was it the crunch of footsteps in the frozen snow. He walked cautiously around the bear, peaking around its rear end toward where the corpses of the deer lay, then froze.

There was another magic beast there. It was a bird that was bigger than he was, and as he watched, it bent down, stabbing its beak into the frozen corpse and wrenching a chunk of meat free, crushing it and swallowing it. At that moment, it seemed to notice him too, and it paused its movements as well, staring at him with bright yellow eyes.

It had bluish gray feathers, and looked more than big enough to carry Jonny off if it tried. Jonny prepared for a fight, because he knew that a magic beast that close to a mana well was bound to become aggressive. Especially in winter time when most of them were looking to form layers on their cores.

However, rather than attacking him, or even trying to scare him off, it took a cautious step to the side grabbing the antlers of one of the severed deer heads with its talons, then flapped its wings, shooting upward with a gust of wind far stronger than it should have, blowing snow up and into his face. He watched it fly away, deer head in tow, and as it got further, it also got hazier and hazier, a cloud of mist forming around it.

“A cloud hawk.”

Jonny jumped in surprise, and turned to find Igrette standing behind him, watching the hawk fly away.

“They usually aren’t scavengers, but no creature would pass up this much free meat.”

Jonny nodded. Now that she had said its name, he remembered her talking about them a few months back, when they were on the way to Jonny’s layer formation ritual. She had said they were one of few magic beasts smart enough not to be aggressive toward humans.

“The fact that you didn’t notice it means that you need to work on your mana sensitivity,” continued Igrette. “Even if you weren’t paying much attention, it should be impossible for you not to notice another living creature in such close proximity. We’ll add that to your training plan. Mana sensitivity is an essential survival technique.”

“Okay,” said Jonny.

Being able to sense living things from far away sounded pretty cool, so he didn’t have a problem with that. Unless it was something like internal gravity magic…

“I’ll get some meat for breakfast from the bear,” Igrette said. “Go start harvesting the deer antlers while I do. Glass deer antlers are lightweight and valuable. If y– we can hold onto them until we get to civilization, they’ll be good to have.”

Jonny didn’t miss her slip of the tongue, but chose to ignore it, nodding and drawing his knife to go cut the antlers away.

As soon as he touched the antlers, he understood immediately why they were called glass deer. The antlers were clear and smooth like polished glass, though they felt to him like they were probably a bit more durable. Actually, he had experienced their durability firsthand when he was on the back of the lone doe. Real glass would have broken if he gripped them that hard.

As Igrette said, they were very lightweight, and after successfully removing the first one, Jonny learned that it was because they were hollow. They were a little unwieldy, though, and when he finished collecting them all, it took two trips to get them back to the stone circle.

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When he returned, Igrette already had meat cooking in the fire, and she was slumped against one of the pillars, looking up at the sky. Jonny sat down across the fire from her, turning the meat slightly before leaning back against the stone table. He didn’t say anything at first, just watching the meat and occasionally glancing around until he remembered the question that he had asked the previous night and not gotten an answer.

“Are all mana wells like this?” he asked.

“Hmm?” asked Igrette.

“With the stone pillars and table and stuff?”

“Oh. Yes, for the most part. In this part of the world, at least. No one knows exactly who built them. Well, maybe some historians or archaeologists have some guesses, but I’ve never heard them. They’re thousands of years older than the Antarian empire, and I haven’t heard of anyone who was able to decode the language carved into the stones.”