Chapter Eighteen: Hide n Seek

Chapter Eighteen: Hide n Seek

It was a heavy burden. He was alone, and still over a months travel from Wayrest if his best guess was correct. Any number of dangers lay between him and safety, not least an undetermined amount of orcs that may or may not still be hunting him..

He was an Idealist though, at long last, and he was no stranger to suffering. He would prove he could carry this burden. If he failed, Wayrest would fall.

He considered what to do next. He was confident he could find enough food to survive out here, now that eating poisonous things was no issue for him. Water was never a problem. He was less confident about defending himself from the creatures of the Deep, but he had a sword, at least, and his new skills should help him fight, or allow him to escape when he couldnt.

I can move much faster now too, without anyone slowing me down, he thought, and immediately felt guilty.

Maybe I'll find some other survivors. If I do, I'll help get them out of here alive, he added, as if the addendum could balance a cosmic scale of such things.

Ive got no idea if the orcs have just carried on now that they caught the soldier, or whether theyre still hunting. They could be ages behind me, or just in front of me now, he realised.

There was nothing for it but to get started. Before he did, he sent a command to his wisp, Status.

Ideal One (Classic):Suffering.

Skill One (Classic):Agony (Active):

Mana cost: Low.

Cooldown: Short.

Range: Moderate duration.

Damage: Low.

Damage over time: Moderate.

Inflict pain on target. Damage is typeless.

Skill Two (Classic): Sweet Suffering (Passive).

Debuffs and poisons are negated, and instead give an equal and opposite buff. Buffs last for as long as any debuffs would have. Immune to disease and damage-over-time effects.

Ideal Two (Classic):Silence.

Skill One (Classic): Hush (Active).

Mana cost: Moderate.

Cooldown: Moderate.

Range: Medium.

Duration: Moderate.

Apply Silence debuff to target. Puts caster to sleep if self-targeted.

He pondered over his status for a while, considering how he could use his new skills and how they would affect him and his fighting style.

He tried to remember some more wisp commands. After some fumbling, he got the right one.

He began a massive yawn, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and almost fell from the tree when he heard soft, guttural growls from below him.

Sweat began to prickle his neck as he strained his ears. He thought he could hear faint footsteps in the undergrowth. Sounds that could just as easily have been some small animal going about its nightly routine suddenly took on a much more sinister note.

He sat for what felt like an hour, straining with all his might to pick apart the sounds of the forest. His newly strengthened Idealist senses snatched confused fragments of noise from all around. Unused to the new strength of his hearing, he couldn't tell from how far away they were exactly.

A low sound like a heavy gauge saw being dragged through wood came floating up from below. Ice water sluiced through Tom's gut.

Orc laughter! he thought, jerking and almost falling from the tree.

He began to slowly bend around the branch he was perched on, peering through the night to try and see the forest floor. Between the light and the intervening branches it was more or less impossible. He thought he saw shapes stalking through the murk, but it could have just been his brain conjuring movement to match the sounds.

He sat, listening, with frayed and ragged nerves, until the sun came up the next morning. There were no orcs below, and Tom hadn't heard so much as another whisper of one for all the hours he'd sat awake.

He tried his best to work out his knots and cramps before slowly descending from the tree. Bird call sang through the air as green light tilted through the canopy.

He lit upon the ground, dropping the last few feet with a soft crunch. He stretched like a cat, savouring the feel of earth under his feet.

He oriented himself south and west again, and began to move, but immediately stuttered to a halt.

Footprints he thought. Far too large for a human, with clear divots from claws at the tip of each toe, they stood crisp in the soft loam at the foot of an elm.

Heading west. They've tracked me, he realised.

Tom immediately started directly south. He needed to get as much of a head start as he could before they realised they'd lost the trail and doubled back.

Again, he ran.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tom was pursued, a hare to a pack of hounds. He spent the next two weeks running, hiding in mean, meagre little holes, and running some more.

He lost count of the number of times he was almost caught. Twice, an orc came so close to where he was hiding he could have reached out and goosed them.

Once, he was spotted as he crossed a stream and only evaded them because he fell into a hole covered by dead fall. The orc hunting party knew he couldn't have outrun them, and were searching the area inch by inch, until they were driven off by a titanic, earth-aligned bear and its adolescent cubs. Tom gratefully took the distraction provided by its earthshaking roars to flee once again. Within a day though, they had circled back and found his trail.

The orcs were not the only danger. Tom also ran into several mana beasts as he fled. One afternoon, he was chased for an hour by a troop of monkeys that howled fire down at him as they swung around in the treetops.

He blitzed straight past an earth sprite, only escaping due to them taking much longer than a wood sprite to coalesce.

An injured, half starved tiger with green fur ambushed him with a disorienting snarl that made his vision blur. Tom was forced to waste precious time killing it as the sound of orcish howls behind him grew steadily louder.

His nerves were worn paper thin. He caught snatches of sleep where he could and gobbled down whatever slightly edible looking things he found as he ran.

The orcs were relentless. Over and over, Tom avoided being run down by the pursuit. He made it three weeks before he could no longer rely on his estimation of time. The days and nights began to blur.

His life became three simple facts:

He was hunted.

He was evading capture by the finest of margins.

And sooner or later, he would slip.