5 – God’s Forsaken, Brood-Fondling, Mana Stealer

As the liminal void space faded, Ren floated momentarily in a sea of darkness before, in a rush of light, the unfocused picture of the glade reappeared.

He opened his eyes. In the dappled, midafternoon light, he found his hand still pressed to the jutting stone obelisk. The magenta light that had filled the pillar had dimmed noticeably, yet, even so, the pulsing energy still emanated out in waves, as if the unseen energy had shifted into tactile focus.

He looked up at the light peeking through the towering canopy, practically unchanged from the last time he’d been there. “So, all that took, like, a few minutes, I guess? Good to know. Oh!” Ren glanced down at his forearms, seeing that the familiar lines of ornate ink had returned. He let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, thank goodness. We’re good, Julie.” The glade was silent.

The pain of the claw wound had faded to a dull ache. While it had not healed entirely, the refinement process had greatly accelerated his recovery. Three long scabs were all that remained of the deep cuts.

“Alright, let’s see if this dash thing works.” Carefully, Ren placed the Masumi bottle on some spongy moss next to his previously discarded blood-stained shirt and pulled the bokken free from his belt. The now-innate knowledge of his skills filling his mind, he focused on a tree on the left side of the clearing, roughly ten paces away. He tightly gripped the hilt of the sparring sword, its wooden blade held to the side, parallel with the ground. He took a step.

This time, rather than losing his balance and nearly stumbling, energy filled his chest like a raw current. He appeared in front of the tree, blade arcing. THWACK! It hammered into the rough bark, gouging it, before the training sword went flying off to the side from the kickback of force.

“Ow!” Ren shook his hands as a tingling spread through them and up his arms. It felt like, well, like he had just smacked a hard tree with a bokken.

“Now, that… that is what I’m talking about.” Adrenaline flowed through him, leaving exhilaration in its wake. “Whatever this place is—some crazy, VR, drug-induced, psychosis—I’m here for it.” He retrieved the training sword from where it lay several feet away.

“Now, what about those other ones?” He focused on the three other skills he had chosen, intimate knowledge of how they functioned filling his mind. He used Insight on the carpet of thick, green moss.

An approximation of the Juliette voice echoed in his head: “[This is moss.]”

“Still just as helpful, Julie. Thanks. Man, I feel great.” He was energized, stronger, faster. The hours in the starscape space had done wonders to calm his ragged nerves, allowing him to shift from panic back to the familiar comfort of disciplined analysis. Though he thought he should feel nervous, or anxious, or something, instead he was exhilarated.

He thought about Brooklyn, his shop, his star. “Badger first, then we’re going to find a way out of this place and get back home.” He placed the training sword back in his belt as he retrieved the sake bottle and, no longer needing it as a bandage, pulled his torn, crimson-stained T-shirt back over his head.

As he turned to retrace his steps back toward the obelisk, a faint rustle sounded from across the clearing thirty strides away. Ren whipped around, coiling his body as his hand slid to the hilt of the sparring sword. The undergrowth shifted as one of the strangest looking people Ren had ever seen appeared through the thick brush, stepping lithely into the glade.

The person, he couldn’t tell if they were male or female, had to be at least six inches shorter than him, completely bald, and ghostly pale. Intricate violet tattoos covered most of their exposed skin, starting from their head and weaving down under their brown leather tunic before reappearing on each exposed white arm. They carried an ornate bow strapped across their back next to what had to have been a quiver holding several long black arrows, plus a short, curved sheath hung at their waist.

Their eyes focused on the dark stone pillar at the center of the clearing before shifting to lock on Ren. They froze. The silence of the glade grew heavy, like a velvet blanket draping over the space. The strange-looking person slowly moved a hand toward the hilt of their weapon as they spoke.

“Who are you? And what are you doing by the nexus?” Their voice was high and clear—So… female then? with almost a—Middle Eastern?—accent.

“Uhh… hi.” Ren straightened and raised his hands, one palm out and the other displaying the ornate sake bottle. “My name’s Ren. I don’t want any trouble. And I don’t know what a nexus is. I’m… I’m not from around here.”

The person, woman, whistled, three quick sharp notes, not removing her hand from the weapon. “I ask again: What are you doing by the nexus? How did you even find it?” She flicked her head, gesturing toward the obsidian pillar.

“And I say again: I don’t know what a nexus is. Would you believe me if I said I just, kind of, woke up nearby? I stumbled on this place by accident. Listen, I was just leaving, so…” He started to back away.

“Wait,” she commanded, not loudly, but with some unseen force. Ren paused.

A soft fluttering of wings sounded from overhead as a stunning black hawk flew through the trees to land on the shoulder of the woman. As it gently spread its wings, slowing its descent, it revealed feathers whose underside shimmered a rich, iridescent indigo.

The hawk’s eyes joined the woman’s in examining him, its gaze was no less piercing. The moment stretched for a breath, then two. The bird let out a quick series of notes, not the trilling notes of a song, but clean and forceful. The woman whistled a single note in apparent reply, her tattoos glowing briefly.

“You are refined? And the mana is…” She shut her eyes for a moment. “Fresh, raw. You consumed the nexus?”

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“I…” Ren looked behind him, judging the distance to the trees at the edge of the clearing. He sighed, his mind made up. I’ve been doing that a lot lately and made up his mind. “Maybe? I honestly don’t really know. Like I said, I woke up nearby and was attacked, unprovoked mind you, by some kind of huge freaking badger.”

The verbal dam broken, words uncharacteristically flowed out of him.

“So, what you do you do when a giant skunk comes at you with claws the size of framing nails? You try not to die, right? I fought it, and got in a couple of lucky hits. It ran, and so did I, in the opposite direction of course. Then I felt this weird buzzing energy, kind of like electricity. Do you feel it? I don’t feel it anymore, but I think it’s still here. I found this rock thing, I guess it’s apparently called a nexus, and it kind of hypnotized me, maybe? Then I got mentally teleported to some crazy cosmic wasteland with my old cooking instructor of all people, and now I’m back here.”

He was breathing hard.

“Honestly, I could really use some information. I just want to exact petty revenge on a certain weasel, and then find a way back to Brooklyn.”

“You…” She tilted her head, the hawk mirroring the movement. “You are quite strange. I—”

“I swear!” A deep, gruff voice rang out from the same direction the woman had come from. “These Kanati don’t have the decency to wait. Zooming through. The undergrowth. Like it’s. Not. Even. There!” The words were punctuated by the frenetic shaking of the brush as a tall, dark-haired man wearing ornate chainmail, interspersed with stray twigs, burst into the glade. He appeared to be younger than Ren—Maybe twenty-two?—with a large battleaxe strapped to his back next to a large pack snagging on a thorned vine.

He was immediately followed by another woman who looked roughly the same age. Her long golden hair was tied back, and she wore a thick leather tunic over a tan linen shirt with fitted, thick-clothed pants. She was carrying a quarterstaff, intricately carved at the top with what looked like a large crystal set into the tip.

The bald woman looked over at the pair before taking two small steps to the side away from them. The hawk chirped a single note.

“Ah,” the man continued. “Found you, and”—like the woman, his eyes drifted to the stone pillar, a wide grin spreading across his face—“there it is. Ah, it’s beautiful. A work of art, a gift from the divine itself, it—” His gaze shifted to Ren. “Who in heaven’s blazes are you?”

“I feel like I’ve been asked that a lot lately.” Ren’s hands were still held up in what he hoped appeared to be a very nonthreatening posture. He waved the empty one. “Hi, I, uh, I just met your friend.”

“He has used the pillar. He is refined,” the bald woman said simply.