Wraithwood Botanist

"Then she got away?"

He looked away, then shook his head again.

"So she’s dead?"

He meowed.

"Then… how?"

Kline looked up and pointed at me with a paw.

"I didn’t… Wait… Kira?"

Kline meowed and jumped out of the flap, clearly annoyed.

"Kira…" I whispered.

Kira separated from my chest.

"Did you kill a human?" I asked.

She nodded.

I frowned, feeling deep anxiety about the fact that my soul guardian had left my body and killed someone without my permission.

Kira huffed, reading my thoughts.

"Was she… trying to kill me?" I asked.

She lifted both her hands and then pointed at the sword as if to say, "Obviously. The fuck you think she was here to do? Have tea?"

"Oh… that’s wild. You protected me in my sleep… like… a guardian."

Kira rolled her eyes.

"No… I’m not trying to be… look. Thank you…"

Kira’s lips curled into a smirk, and she flicked her hair like a diva, turning around dramatically. Then she burst into soul force, sucking back into my chest, escaping while the praise was hot.

I laughed this… sharp, chew toy laugh, then crashed onto my bed, cackling like a maniac. My soul guardian killed someone while I was sleeping. She was a guardian—a real fucking guardian. What a trip.

In that grim and twisted state of fascination, I didn’t think about the fact that Lysan, a woman that I had met, fought, thought about—worried about—and felt anxiety for, suddenly died. It was something that was subtle and started to eat at me in the days ahead, so I went to look for her corpse, but I never found it or signs of struggle.

Kira and Kline had hidden the body without the slightest trace, keeping her death in a state of limbo that was hard to believe, like getting a letter that a loved one died in war but never seeing the body yourself.

She was just… gone.

That was hard to process, but it was still… liberating in a sense. So I pushed on.

So did the others. The lurvine felt inferior for not catching wind of Lysan, so they began taking turns during the night patrolling the area outside the home.

Kline kept training, likely increasing his mana sense and soul-sight skills in addition to whatever madness he was cooking up.

As for me, I took one bad hike and experienced the true danger of winter. Poison from the plants seeped into the snow, and it got into my boots, transforming my ankles into cankles. If I didn’t have Diktyo water, I would’ve lost my feet.

"Now I know why people die…" I hissed, pulling off a sock and drinking more water. "So much for highlighting."

The highlighting meant nothing when the Oracle couldn’t identify plants. So I said, "Lithco, give me a skill that’ll let me sense poison like Kline does."

A skill popped up. It read:

"Name Poison Sense

Grade: Platinum

Description: You’ve known about this spell for almost six months, living in a forest that’s nearly 50% poisonous biota, but it still took almost losing your feet to read this? It’s a miracle you’re still alive. But since you are, let’s talk about it.

Poison Sense is a fourth-tier spell that augments your senses and makes you particularly sensitive to poisons. This includes creating specific sensations when you touch, taste, or smell poisons and helping your brain catalog certain plants visually as well.

Some poisons are immediately identifiable, but for those that aren’t, they become enhanced once you identify them as poisonous and your brain remembers them. Since you have a book that identifies poisons on sight, this is a spell that can rapidly increase your ability to sense poisons in land, water, air, and snow.

Note: This spell is a general spell and also helps you catalog certain spores as poison, albeit less effectively."

"I’ll take it," I said. "Now teach me."

Lithco arrived in Lithco fashion, as usual, then we waited until the swelling in my ankles toned down, and we set to work.

Enhancing my senses was strangely familiar, as Mental Shielding enhanced all of them in strange and terrible ways—but it was still uncomfortable knowing it was real. I could smell the earthy wood in the room and the smell of metal and dirty clothes. The pelt I made for the door smelled awful, and I was suddenly worried about rot from my untreated floors.

I now knew why Kline was so judgmental when I didn’t Purify in the mornings, and I had a lot more respect for him.

Over the next few days, I tested it, walking in the snow, sensing poisons, and even tasting them if Kline deemed it safe—holding Diktyo water present, of course.

Touching it made my finger tingle, and tasting it made my tongue numb. It was aggressively declaring something was poison—and that was concerning. I wondered what alcohol would taste like.

Kline wasn’t a fan of the skill. He felt like I stole yet another job from him, so he continued to train in secret, preparing for the day he would prove he was the big man on campus. It was funny at first, but he kept pushing himself, coming home each day more tired than the last, plowing through the torok meat I gave him, then eating the quarry he killed during his hunts before I cleansed or cooked it.

It concerned me, but not enough to raise alarms. Life was easy at my current power level and location. So I just trusted Kline would be alright and fell into a comfortable routine.

A few weeks later, a blizzard hit, halting the hikes and activities for the rest of winter.

It was a bad one, too. As the winds howled and blew snow through the flap, we found ourselves barricaded in the tree house, shaking for warmth.

The lurvines returned indoors, taking turns becoming their full size to block the door with their bodies. Sina was in her first evolution form, blocking the fireplace, and every alchemy heating array I had was on full blast.

It wasn’t a joke. Every time I dumped my pee bucket, it would freeze mid-air before crashing to the ground in icicles. But it was warm inside, and we ate well, regardless.

It was a strange experience.

Once the howling winds and shaking branches subsided, we kept inside, cozying up for a month of indoor isolation.

I went stir-crazy the first week but soon came to enjoy it. Every day was a new opportunity for training, threading, reading, and cooking, and I got all the cuddles I wanted from eight fluffy animals. I got to know each of them intimately. It was comfortable, and I soon fell in love with it.

And yet…

A lingering thread of loneliness hit me, and before long, I was calling Lithco into my room just to read me a physical copy of A History of the Jacksmore War by Jackala Treoan, which I picked up for a silver.

"Bloody and broken, the troops staggered through the Jacksa Delta, loading up their boats before the wraiths finished them off," he read. "Those who survived the mist suffered a bleak winter that year, losing all but one platoon to the beasts and blighted snow. Upon the next Harvest, when the Bramble opened and reinforcements arrived, the beleaguered survivors recounted how a single attack turned the tides and ruined them all. It was an arrow. A single arrow streaked across the river during the great battle, shattering the Kana mountains in a plume of volcanic ash that blotted out the landscape. Swarms of corrupted beasts emerged from that gorge, crazed and unconcerned with life as they ripped through the soldiers. The survivors recounted it in great detail, but once they finished, they fell into deep silences that never truly ended. The only voice that remained was Jacksmore the Little, who said, "Brave the Ravine and pray, for the Demon of the Kana preys upon that harrowed pass."

"Kana’s demon," I whispered in wonder. "Are those mountains named after Yakana?"

Lithco put the book in his lap. "No. It’s quite the opposite. In Elandan, the language of the time, ’Ya’ was the word for ’demon.’"

"Demon of Kana…" I whispered.

"Precisely. To this day, we don’t know what Yakana’s real name was. We only know of his spirit, the human guide who appears under the effects of Lumidra spores. He has taken the form of an archer in the past with eerily similar characteristics described in history books. That’s why we speak about him as the same person."

"Oh…" I whispered.

"I’m sure you now realize how strange it is for Yakana to choose you," Lithco said, staring upward as if to see through the ceiling and beyond the universe. "And why people would be wary of you if they found out. Take a look at Harrowed Pass sometime. You’ll see."

I nodded and laid down, staring at the ceiling as Kline hopped onto the bed and snuggled.

"Yakana…" I whispered. "What happened to him?"

"God, you’re like a child. We have all winter to read this book, yet you want to jump to the ending?"

I shot him a stink eye. "Do you think I’d read something like this for fun? I hated the Iliad. I don’t even like violent movies. This sucks."

"So you really wanna skip?" he asked dryly.

I folded my arms like a child. "No. I’ll wait."

"Good. Then I’ll take my leave. Make sure to think about the spells you want. A year’s a short time to practice for high-level spells."

"Okay…" I said, trailing off as he disappeared. I opened my guide and then groaned as I read between the two epic spell options I narrowed it down to. They were too large, like soulmancy, and I felt that I could spend the rest of my life on one and would fail if I chose both. So I pushed it off, promising myself that I would consider it seriously during the springtime when my training started up again.

I then closed the guide, staring into dead space, thinking about Yakana until I drifted into sleep.

That night, I had dreams of community and war, wondering what drove Yakana to stand up to a goliath army—wondering if that would be my fate, too.

2.

A servant led Hadrian through an elaborate ballroom with his father. They had just finished dinner with the Melhan family before a room full of guests, seeding the illusion that they were on good terms despite the rot festering under the surface.

Brexton had sold the Melhan information that Hadrian killed Jas and saved Mira, and the full story about what happened, or at least the part Hadrian knew of it.

It was now time to discuss.

"Thank you," Hadrian said to the maid as she ushered him and Typhus into an ornate guest room. Reasan Melhan sat at the table with his wife, Leeka; Typhus sat beside Hadrian. The maid served tea. Then they stared at each other in silence until Leeka’s anger boiled over.