Chapter 10

It was all Caleb could do to avert his eyes. His muscles refused to obey him. Was this what the boggarts and the others had felt when he’d released his Presence? Dread? Their bodies failing them?

Fenryr stalked closer, prowling down the mountainside like a leopard, eyes affixed on him. And it wasn’t alone. Smaller wolves slunk alongside Fenryr. Three, five, eight of them, maybe more. They couldn’t have been half the size of the boss – were they puppies? No, no, that wasn’t it at all. They were full-grown. Just how large was Fenryr? The massive slate-grey wolf must’ve been the size of an eighteen-wheeler.

There was still a lot of distance between the two. Caleb was right at the mountain’s base, Fenryr nearly at the peak. He could run. He had to run. He couldn’t kill that wolf. Not yet.

But his body still refused to yield to him. Try as he might, it was like he’d been turned to stone.

A few of the smaller – well, normal-sized – wolves started to run, bounding down the mountainside. They’d be upon him in only a minute or two. They wouldn’t have been a problem on their own, but under the oppressive weight of Fenryr’s Presence was another story entirely. And if they kept him here long enough for the boss to get involved… He had to do something.

Caleb’s spirit arms grew from his back. He hadn’t even realized they’d faded away earlier. His body might not be listening to him at the moment, but his mind still was.

One of his clawed arms reached down and did the only thing he thought to try. He stabbed himself in the thigh.

Lucid pain flooded through his mind. It was like chains had been thrown off of him. He shuddered in an inhaling gasp of breath, felt his shoulders heave, and took a step back.

I need to look more into Presence and its effects. It seems like it’s almost a manifestation of willpower and emotion. I could feel Fenryr’s hunger as it stared at me. Like I was just a piece of meat. I wonder what the others felt from my Presence. Adrenaline?

Being able to incapacitate my enemies without laying a finger on them would make every fight a cakewalk. He grinned and chuckled to himself. And a bit boring.

I don’t know exactly how everything works, but I’d be willing to bet that increasing my Presence stat will help me to resist others as well as make mine more effective. It is my class’s second-highest stat for leveling up, after all.

One of the wolves was nearing him, about five hundred feet out and closing fast. Caleb could run, but even with his superhuman speed, he wouldn’t outrun it.

He reached down and picked up a small rock, about the size of a baseball, and tossed it once, catching it in his hand. Then he had the thought to try something. Having no idea if it would work, Caleb imagined one of his spirit arms overlapping his real arm. Perhaps their power would be combined.

As soon as he imagined it, the spirit arm moved, covering his real arm like a translucent sleeve of pure energy. Like armor. He could still see his real arm – it just now had an extra layer over the top of it, half an inch to an inch wider around it.

That got him thinking about all of the different ways in which the skill could be used. He’d been simple-minded before, content with just creating extra fists. That worked well enough, but the skill was called ‘Spirit Self’, not ‘Spirit Fists’ – there was certainly more that he could do with it. He just needed to get more creative.

Hypotheses for another time. Right now…

Caleb grinned, wrapping his fingers around the rock, reared his arm, surrounded by the glowing energy, backward, then threw. The stone blurred in the air, whistling as it streaked toward the charging wolf. It cracked into its forehead, broke completely through with ease, and exploded into the mountain with a resounding crack. It died instantly.

Despite the distance between Caleb and his kill, the energy still rushed toward him, entering into his back as he was already turning and running.

***

He only stopped running once he could no longer hear the howls. There was a small rocky crevice that he squeezed himself into, pressing his body through a thin crack too wide for any of the wolves to fit through.

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Inside was a small cave, no larger than his old apartment. The walls were rough and jagged, the ceiling low. It could’ve been a nice place to do a little bouldering before, unfortunately, climbing even the most difficult routes wouldn’t prove a challenge now. Oh well, he had new challenges to face. Bigger ones.

The only light in the cave was a sliver that came from the entrance, a crack of yellow painting the dark rock and giving just enough to see by. The sun would be going down in a few hours, and he didn’t want to hunt at night, not so near that terrifying wolf.