Wraithwood Botanist

Suddenly, she heard a cry from a torok behind her. It sent shivers down her spine just hearing it. The last time the Melhans ran into one, it killed half their team, including a member of the bloodline.

We’re gonna die, Lysan thought.

But they didn’t.

Something remarkable followed. A pack of random adventurers showed up in her divination pulse. Mira blew right past them, but they would serve a purpose.

Or so she thought.

Two seconds after she cleared the screaming adventurers, the torok caught up. There was a series of screams followed by a sickening crunch and the sound of shaking trees as the torok killed them; then, the torok continued running.

Useless! she internally screamed.

It was over.

She barely even spared the next person running a second thought.

And that was almost a mistake.

The next person who flew into the clearing was Jas, the Melhan reserve from the base camp, and she almost passed him by—but he forced himself forward.

"Run east!" Jas screamed. "There’s another torok to the south. You need to go around!"

Lysan’s mind spun, and she turned. "No! Take Kal! I’ll buy time!"

Jas had a split second to decide what to do and decided to follow his superior’s orders. He flew back as Lysan threw Kal to him and then rushed forward to meet the torok head-on.

Lysan didn’t want to sacrifice her life for Kal of all people. But something about Hallard sacrificing himself filled her with a sense of duty and also reminded her that if Kal survived, then Mira would suffer for killing Hallard. So she pushed forward to face the torok.

It charged at her. One of its eyes was closed behind its calcified face, and it was glistening with blood and water on the left side of its body.

She must have hit it… Lysan thought. That same water arrow shattered her barrier despite her being an elite amongst elites. But… how…?

Mira had barely survived an attack against them, but she shattered Lysan’s barrier as if it were made of tempered glass, then severely injured a third evolution torok. That core of hers had to be special. The raw power she had was staggering, and the speed at which she learned an acceleration spell that kept up with their attacks was equally astonishing. If she survived this harvest, she would become a force that only the likes of Hadrian and the adult bloodlines could rival.

That was a pathetic last thought before the torok caught up. She created twenty massive wind blades, hemorrhaging her mana reserves.

Nothing else would damage it.

2.

Things rapidly changed for Kline and me when Lysan turned and rushed toward the torok, and another man, who I would later know as Jas, flew in from the east, grabbed Kal, and returned east. Now, he was running back, and I found myself keeping ahead of him.

Turned out, that was the best option. I could see another torok between us and the base camp, and there was a group of people fighting it without dying immediately.

Our only option was to go far around—and that was a serious problem.

Kline had used dozens of Warp Steps in rapid succession, and he was breaking down.

"Take a break!" I yelled to Kline. "You’re overheating."

Kline didn’t listen; he just kept running, only compromising by stopping his warp steps.

"Kline…"

I watched in horror as Jas closed the distance. Even if he didn’t attack us, the torok would eventually catch us. We were running out of time.

Jas got closer and closer.

Ten seconds. Nine… Eight… Seven…

Time was ticking down, and Kline was getting weaker and weaker. We were in fate’s hands.

And the reaper relented.

In a miracle beyond my greatest hopes, Sina entered my Wood Wide Web.

There you are! I cried.

I had left Sina behind when I rushed off to trigger the freeters and never returned. And unlike me, she couldn’t see a mile ahead, and I didn’t know how powerful her sense of smell was. I could imagine her rushing toward the freeters and finding everyone gone, then running around aimlessly as she tried to find our scent. But somehow, she found us after going north.

"Sina is coming!" I shouted to Kline. "She’s coming from the north!"

Kline acted immediately, turning north and rushing away. To our horror, Jas followed us instead of continuing east to go around the torok.

"Just go!" I screamed breathlessly as I watched Jas’s soul chase after me. "Save Kal!"

Yet he kept rushing toward us. It was getting close. Five seconds. Four seconds. Three seconds.

Kline warped in the front, resetting the time we had. His body trembled, but he earned the time, and the countdown resumed again. Five… Four… three…

"Wait!" Jas screamed. "I don’t want to hurt you!"

My heart fluttered, and my stomach sank. I didn’t believe it.

"Please cure him!" Jas cried. "I know you can! You wouldn’t be alive right now if you couldn’t!"

Now, I believed it.

Kal must have been sick. That’s why the two souls were always linked under Wood Wide Web—Lysan, and now Jas was holding Kal in her arms.

But that didn’t change anything.

"Your family tried to kill me!" I screamed back. Then Kline warped ahead to give us space.

"We apologize!" Jas cried.

"I’m sure you do!"

Jas grunted. "If you don’t, I’ll rob you of it!"

"Proof you’re lying, you crazy fuck!"

"Fine!" Jas paused for a second. Then I felt a crazed gust of wind crash through the trees and Kline barely dodged in time to avoid a wind blade. The blade was like an unstoppable saw that rushed forward, tearing through a tree like a hot blade through butter.

We’re dead… I thought in horror.

My world slowed.

My mind swam.

My life flashed before my eyes as I heard Jas get nearer. Then, as we were cresting over a hill, Sina flew over the other end, fur ablaze with blue flames.

Words cannot express how majestic she looked right then, streaking across the sky like a meteorite as she flew at Jas. Before she even passed my vision, I saw a blast of dragon fire fly over me. I could feel the flames, scorching hot even above me, and Jas screamed as the fire rained down on him.

He wasn’t hit. I heard him dodge. But I could tell he was panicking. Kal was still in his hands, so there was no doubt about that.

Kline stopped and turned around, collapsing slightly and pushing himself up.

Sina didn’t hold back, blowing fire in all directions as Jas flew backward, staring us down. He was faster, but he was hesitant to fight against Sina. So he backed up slowly as she growled.

"Just give me some Diktyo water," Jas said. "You can throw it over. Then you’ll be a hero. Think about it. You, Mira Hill, saved a member of the legacies. We would owe you."

"He’ll claim I tried to kill him," I said. "Then I would have serious problems."

"And I’ll do the same if you don’t help him," Jas said. "You can’t run much further. So, which would you rather have? Kal claiming you taught him a legend, but then sparing him when it mattered? Or Kal dying and me saying that you killed him in cold blood?"

My heart pounded like a distant drum, taking me deep into the recesses of my mind. It was a good proposition—if he were telling the truth.

I glanced at Kal for the first time and saw him wheezing, face and neck swollen from some poison or another. I didn’t know what happened to him, but I couldn’t help but think of my first week, when I was infected with a poison that couldn’t be cleansed with Diktyo and stepped through poison with bare feet, limping for miles as I fought to stay alive.

"Let me ask you a question," I said. "Why’d you come running for Kal? I suggest you don’t lie because I know full damn well you didn’t randomly run right into us, then decide to take the long way ’round for no damn reason."

Jas grimaced and turned away. "What happened didn’t matter. Say someone did warn me—would that change my offer?"

I scoffed. "And offer that you may rescind."

"Unless we make a soul pact," he said.

"That’d require me to get right up close to you."

"I’ll leave Kal under the care of your enemies. If I kill you, they kill him."

"Fuck," I whispered. It was a good offer. I had already confined myself to the fate that the Melhans would know what I did. So, it only made sense to frame things better. If I made a soul pact that required him to sing my praises, claiming that I heroically decided to spare him for blah, blah, blah, the shit that the legacies cared about, that would be great.

But.

"You know, that’s a real good deal—if you had any weight," I thought.

He furrowed his brow.

"Look, I shouldn’t need to tell you this, but kids are a reflection of their environment. And that’s mostly their parents. The simple fact is, 90% of people who fall victim to drugs come from families where the parents party and drink and neglect them or live in an area where there’s a lot of other kids that fall in those conditions. Whether that’s their fault or their parent’s fault or anyone else’s fault is irrelevant. The simple fact is, kids reflect their environment—and that kid’s a fucking monster."

Jas turned away.

"See? You know. And I know because I got super drunk the other night and bribed all sorts of people with expensive shit, and people told a whole lot of bleak stories about that kid. What he does with his free time. What he does during harvests. The number of people he kills or has executed. The way he bullies people. And that’s not behavior that my parents would allow."

"And yet you’re killing people," Jas snapped back. He looked at Kline. "That beast’s been killing people all week under your orders, right? Would your family approve?"

"No. It’s going to break their heart. But they’ll forgive me once they learn who we killed." I looked at Kline and laughed. "I’m going to make that list public, and you’ll see only three things on that list that we killed people for: fires, sexual assault, and conspiracies. And while I haven’t heard about assaults, there’ve been dozens of people who found a rare plant and started killing their crew to monopolize it. Those are the people who we killed. That’s it. And I don’t think that’s unreasonable—killing monsters." I looked at Kal. "Or letting them die."

Jas smirked threateningly. "And you’ll die for it?"

"If you attack me, I’ll attack him nonstop." I looked at Kal. "Now I suggest you scurry off. Unless you want him to die."

It may sound reckless to go this route, but there was a torok between us and base camp, and Kal looked like he would croak at any moment. I would risk it. If I announced that I fucked up an entire legacy party, they would think twice before attacking me next year—when I was far stronger.

Jas’s lip curled, face twitching and ugly from creased lines from snarling. Then he turned and ran away.

I stumbled back against a tree and took deep breaths before pulling out mana syrup and Diktyo water with shaking hands and turned to Kline. "Drink up, little buddy."

I opened them and used a levisphere to release the liquid because I couldn’t hold it. Kline lapped it up and then Sina and Kline surrounded me as I used my water bladder’s straw to drink Diktyo water.

Five minutes later, when I was breathing normally, I turned to Sina, who had curled next to me like a small dog, and laughed. "You’re a queen."

She turned away.

"Thank you," I said. "For coming back."

She glanced at me and then away. How amusing she was.

"Just give me a second." I activated Wood Wide Web, hoping for good news, but I found none. There was another torok in a standoff with something with a powerful soul and another peculiar sight that left me uneasy.

How strange… I thought. A powerful soul next to a weak soul… Don’t tell me…

The most powerful soul of the harvest nestled next to the weakest—there was only one combination that matched that signature.

Tyler…

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Author’s Note: By virtue of democracy, I’m taking off standard weekends. There were almost a thousand votes, probably more by the time this autoposts, and there was no close contest. This week has already gone through Saturday, so I’m taking off tomorrow and then starting the normal week on Monday!