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Chapter 26: Hunted
🕑 Added 2024-05-24 10:21:24 +0000 UTCThey were all pretty on edge when they left the next morning, but they didn’t spot any more monstrous Malequint. In fact, the reef seemed calmer than ever.
It still took them another three days to reach the edge of the massive maze, where the corals started to become smaller again, small enough that they could just hop over them.
They still kept going until they were well clear of the reef. Unfortunately, the sandy cloudbed they found themselves on sloped down.
“Why do I feel like we’re right back where we started?” Rylan asked, studying the bare slope as they took a water break.
“I think the odds of that are very slim, actually,” Tamina dryly replied.
“I honestly wouldn’t care,” Soren confessed. “I’m just happy to be out of that spirit-forsaken maze! Whose idea was it to enter that, again?”
“The armadon’s,” Rylan and Tamina said practically in sync.
Rylan glanced at her with a smile, and she returned it, shaking her head.
Soren let out a sigh. “Right. Fair enough.”
To be honest, Rylan didn’t really feel like they were back where they started. After all, over the nine days they’d spent in the reef, he’d managed to bring the mana capacity of his Knife-Throwing Skill up to 0.9!
At some point, he’d asked Tamina if she was still expanding the mana capacity of her Skills, and despite her Contract, she’d actually been able to answer. According to what she explained, there were limits to the use of expanding the mana capacity of Skills, as Mana Pools were limited as well, and it was important to keep a reserve to refill your Mana Shell with too.
A more important result of their practice, perhaps—even if it didn’t feel as momentous—was that his throwing had gotten much steadier. He could now reliably get the spin right for all of his knives over various distances, both for half-spin and full-spin throws.
Moving targets were still a little hit-and-miss, but he’d practised even that, with Tamina and Soren taking turns tossing up thick crab shells for him to hit mid-fog.
“Come on, we better get moving,” Tamina said, breaking Rylan out of his reverie. “We can cover more distance now that we’re out here, but we’ll have a harder time finding shelter, and it’ll be dark soon.”
With a sigh, Rylan took the backpack from Soren—Tamina still never carried it, due to her shield—and they set off again.
Tamina’s words turned out to be prophetic, as their surroundings rapidly darkened while they were still walking down a mostly bare slope. In fact, it grew dark so fast that Rylan was a little worried some giant Malequint was moving overhead.
Annoying as the reef had been to navigate, now that they were out in the open, Rylan found himself missing the protection offered by its towering corals.
He missed the constant buzz of life as well. His slightly elevated breathing sounded unnaturally loud to his own ears, and he twitched at every little sound that pervaded the oppressive silence that surrounded them.
Particularly, the persistent clicking noises he kept hearing behind them.
He clearly wasn’t the only one who was hearing it, as Tamina kept glancing around and seemed to be picking up the pace. It didn’t help his already shot nerves when a thick drop of some kind of liquid splashed down on his head
“Fog, something’s drooling on us!” he hissed at his companions.
“What, really?” Soren replied in alarm.
“No there isn’t, you gullbrains,” Tamina said with a sigh, as more drops of liquid splashed down all around them. “It’s raining. This happens sometimes in the cloudsea.”
Oh. Right.
Rain was something Rylan had in fact heard about, even if he’d never experienced it before. Of the so-called ‘weathers’ that were said to occur down in the cloudsea, it was pretty much the mildest.
He looked up at the dark fog above him, blinking when a drop of cold water hit him square in the eye.
“Let’s keep moving,” Tamina spoke tersely. “I think something may be following us; let’s hope the rain throws it off our scent.”
Rylan and Soren shared a glance, then quickly picked up the pace.
The rain soon started to come down harder, and the sound of the drops of water hitting the sand around them rose to a constant drum. Despite this, Rylan’s sharp ears still picked up the occasional clicking noise. What is making that sound?
Seconds later, Rylan spotted a hazy shape form from the corner of his eyes, but when he turned to look, it was gone.
“We’re being hunted,” Tamina hissed as she accelerated to a jog. “Keep your eyes peeled!”
Rylan unsheathed one of his knives as they accelerated, hunching his shoulders to make himself smaller, and glancing every which way. The rain didn’t exactly improve the visibility, but now that he was looking for them, he still noticed more shapes swimming around them, darting in and out of view.
Disconcertingly large shapes, clearly no mere fogfish.
Then, out of nowhere, one of the shapes came straight at them from the front.
Tamina lifted her shield, but the creature nimbly dodged around her, letting out a high-pitched trill that sounded not unlike the shrill laughter Miss Amberleaf would let out when Master Gullfeather made one of his lame jokes.
The moment Rylan recognised it for what it was, all of the tension bled out of him and he blew out a breath, which quickly turned to relieved laughter when he saw Tamina’s perturbed face.
The cloudphin circled around, then did a backflip as it passed by in front of them. Soren and Rylan politely cheered it on, whooping and whistling at the friendly creature.
Apparently, their enthusiastic approval was enough for more of the curious pod that had been circling them to dare to come closer and reveal themselves.
Rylan quickly put down the backpack, opened it up, and dug in for some treats.
Cloudphins were naturally kind and curious creatures, and many of them were quite used to humans, and loved to show off for scraps of food around cloudships and near beaches.
“Watch out, Tammi,” Soren said teasingly as one of the cloudphins drifted closer to her, rolling over on its back to get a better look at her. “I think that one’s got your scent! You’ll never escape it now!”
“Very funny,” Tammi replied grumpily, but Rylan could see the corners of her mouth twitching up as she hung back her shield and gingerly reached out her right hand to touch its snout.
Rylan managed to fish out some leftover calamari from their lunch, and lobbed a small piece at one of the smaller cloudphins as it came by, the rain drumming on its soft, rubbery skin.
They’d caught quite a big squid that morning, and he doubted they’d be able to finish all of it that evening anyway.
His offering flew in a gentle arc through the floaty fog, and the young cloudphin gladly snatched it up. The pod’s excitement immediately seemed to double, and Rylan soon had impatient cloudphins pushing their cold noses into his back and neck to hurry him up as he tried to keep doling out small portions through his laughter.
He'd seen cloudphins from a distance, and even tossed one some snails from a pier before, but those experiences paled in comparison to being surrounded by the marvellous beings.
“Hold on,” Soren said excitedly. “What if we tried to like, ride these cloudphins out of here? They’re supposed to be pretty smart, right? They might know to bring us to an island, or even just a ship!”
Tamina shook her head. “They can’t hold our weight. If we befriended a fogwhale that might work, but these? No shot. Hey, don’t feed them all of our dinner, all right?”
Rylan rolled his eyes. “Relax. We’ve got plenty.”
“What about that one?” Soren asked, pointing up ahead. “He looks pretty big.”
At that moment, the cloudphins around Rylan moved aside as a particularly intimidating specimen languidly approached him.
Suddenly, a shiver shot up Rylan’s spine at the strangest sensation, like something brushing over his spirit.
His eyes widened as they flicked between those of the slowly approaching cloudphin. “Hey, quick question: if we can sense Malequints, does that mean they can sense us, too?”
Tamina and Soren shared a glance.
“Ethereon shields us from detection, up to a point, through our Mana Shells,” Soren replied carefully. “But Quinthar with high enough Perception can sense other Quinthar, so theoretically... Why do you ask?”
Rylan swallowed. “Well, I think I’m looking at one, and I think it knows what I am... What should I do?”
Tamina subtly shifted her stance, moving one hand towards her sword, but Soren lifted a hand at her.
“Calm down,” he commanded. “Contrary to what some people believe, Malequints are not inherently evil. And cloudphins are not known to attack humans, ever.”
“You sure you want to risk that?” Tamina asked.
“Are you sure you want to risk angering it?”
Her mouth drew into a thin line, but she visibly relaxed her posture. “Forget what I said about dinner, Ry. Just give it all the damn calamari it wants.”
Rylan had no intention of withholding the cloudphin anything. However, it didn’t seem too interested in the last piece of calamari he was holding out on fingers he was trying and failing to keep from shaking.
It was just looking at him with its intelligent, curious eyes as it slowly drifted closer. Rylan held his breath as it closed the last few inches. Then, finally it rolled over sideways, and gently took the piece of fried squid off his hand. Only when it proceeded to push its snout into Rylan’s hand in a clear demand to be petted, did he finally let out the breath he was holding.
“So, you think it could carry us?” Soren said in a subdued tone of voice.
“That one... maybe,” Tamina replied softly. “But it could lift one of us at most.”
Rylan couldn’t help but frown as he nervously rubbed the curious Malequint’s snout. Just one of us? And then what? There’s no way to send help back to here; we still have no idea where we are!
Still, if that person made it out of here alive, that meant at least one of them did. Before he could give the idea any real consideration, however, a school of fogfish came swimming by.
The swarm of fish quickly changed course in an impressive display of synchronicity, but it was too little too late. The cloudphins immediately started letting out excited trills and clicking noises, as they— including the big Malequint—darted after the fish.
As quickly as they had appeared, the friendly creatures were gone, leaving the three of them standing there on the bare sand in the dark fog, with cold rain drumming on their heads.
Tamina let out a barely audible sigh. “Come on. We’d best keep moving.”
They ended up finding a massive spiralling shell, and after making triple sure it was empty, promptly decided to spend the night in it. The rain had yet to let up, so it was nice to have some waterproof shelter overhead.
In fact, the pitter-patter of the rain hitting their roof for the night was kind of nice, soothing.
The banter over their dinner was pretty light-hearted, yet Rylan felt there was a kind of morose undertone to their interactions. He wasn’t sure, but he figured it was probably because they’d finally made it out of the reef, only to spend several hours walking down.
Back when they’d just landed, some part of him had expected they’d only have to walk for a few hours before they found an island. They’d been here for almost two weeks now, and there was no telling how they were even oriented compared to their landing spot, let alone if they were any closer to seeing the sky again.
The thought was depressing, so he buried it by throwing himself into his training, planning to use up most of his Mana Pool to start like had become his norm.
It would refill during the night anyway.
With the expansion of his overcharge capacity, he went through his mana faster, which meant he could actually train less. To compensate, he pushed his limits a little further with each throw, making sure he properly strained his Skill before he ran out.
He started out as always, slowly pushing mana into his Skill, causing the glow around his chef’s knife to brighten further and further, until the mana concentrated around its edge started to shimmer and waver. When he’d pushed in a little over 0.9 points of mana, and he could feel the Skill had reached its limit, he threw it at the thick crab’s shell he’d found nearby.
The blade buried itself to the hilt in the thick chitin with an audible thwack.
He glanced at where Soren and Tamina were doing their usual practice with the reeds, and then—ignoring the brief pang of jealousy—took the shorter paring knife out of his belt, opting for an underhanded full-spin throw this time.
A little later, as he filled up his fifth blade for the night, however, his concentration was broken by a cool voice in his ear, speaking to him unbidden.
《Mana capacity threshold has been achieved,》Ethereon announced.《Rank-Up conditions met. Applying Augmentation: Overcharge, to Skill: Knife-Throwing. Do you accept?》
Author's note:
Did you see it coming? Be honest. ;)
