Bloody Dawn Chapter Ten: Sensation

Bloody Dawn Chapter Ten: Sensation

It took just over an hour for the salve to purge the last of the sandscale venom from Sesames system. Once he was cured, and fully healed from sleeping, Tom woke him up, and the party carried on.

Darius explained that the sandscales were notorious for the lethality of their toxins in Horizon, but also quite rare. They used the venom to coat arrows and daggers, and reserved them for hunting the most dangerous threats in the Grounds.

The rest of the group recovered their mood relatively quickly. They had spent three weeks fighting their way through the Deep, and endured the siege of Wayrest prior, so the Proving Grounds, while an entirely new kind of danger, were not impossible for them to adapt to.

Rosa was still uncharacteristically quiet. Tom knew she was worried about her parents, but he could sense her dislike of Darius too. She seemed to have settled on ignoring the latter, and throwing herself into training her control skill to avoid thinking of the former.

Now that they were once again on the move, Tom revisited his musings on Hunter-Gatherer. He had noticed the lizard a second earlier than the previous attacks. He had obviously caught something through Hunter-Gatherer, but with the adrenaline and chaos of the subsequent fight, his impressions had been muddied.

He thought back, carefully picking at his memory. As they had been riding, he had been sweeping the area with the skill. It was locked to his field of view, even though the sense was separate. All he had been able to feel through it was the usual background tones of the grass, with the regular, intermittent flashes from small animals as they moved about.This chapter is updated by nov(e)(l)biin.com

Then something had changed. He frowned, remembering. For a moment, it felt like something was condensing. No coalescing.

It reminded Tom of when he had happened to catch a wood essence forming in the Deep. He and Val had been tracking a boar through rough terrain, and they had stopped to try and figure out the best way forward. As they were pondered in the middle of the dense brush and trees, he just so happened to be pointing in the right direction to catch a small eddy forming in the ambient mana.

Normally, Hunter-Gatherer couldnt detect ambient mana, as it was below the threshold for concentration for the skill. This eddy had stirred it up though, concentrating it. Within a few seconds, the eddy steadily increased in strength, and an essence formed in its middle.

What he had felt when the lizard attacked was similar, yet different. As with the essence, he had felt something concentrating, but it felt like it was both life and mana.

It made no sense. How did a living being diffuse its life-force? By its very nature as a corporeal creature, it should be contained to its form.

Tom continued to think on it, but unfortunately made no headway. He instead turned his full attention back to scanning with the skill. Hopefully the next time there was an attack, he would be able to glean more information.

They rode for a few more hours, until the sun was high in the sky, beating down upon them directly. It made Tom feel exposed. He had become used to having a canopy sheltering him.

The road through the Grounds played odd tricks on the mind. The unchanging landscape of dancing grass made minutes seem like hours, then hours seem like moments. Only the slow passage of the sun as it crawled its way across the heavens was a reliable indicator of time.

Tom was riding near the front of the column, behind Eli now, when the sun was reaching its peak. He was just about to call a consensus on lunch when he noticed an irregularity with Hunter-Gatherer.

Ahead of them, in the grass, there was a strange area registering to his mana-sense. The area was large, and the mana within it almost perfectly spread. It almost felt like there was just more grass in the area than there should be.

Tom noted it as unusual, but ultimately it was unremarkable. But just as he was about to turn his attention elsewhere, the patch of mana stirred.

He watched closely as the mana in the patch of grass began to coalesce. His attention was fully recaptured.

It was like an essence forming, except that within the large patch of grass several eddies had formed instead of one. Each of them were drawing mana towards a central point.

As they gathered, Tom noticed something even more unusual. Life was being drawn in as well. His earlier assumption had been right.

He watched intently as the mana drew in towards a central point, seemingly ferrying the life along with it, all condensing into forms that were growing more and more tangible and defined by the moment.

Tom frowned. It was almost like

He shook himself, abandoning the thought. Sprites! Up ahead! At least five! he called.

Everyone snapped into action, drawing weapons and readying skills. Tom could see through Sus and Sol as the forms of the sprites coalesced in the tall grass. As they emerged from the plains onto the road before them, the rest of the groups mounts adjusted to meet them.

They were grass sprites, from the looks of them. They were incredibly tall and thin, with many short, spindly legs branching from the very bottoms of their torsos, and varying numbers of long, whip-like arms. Each was composed of long, fair strips of sere brown material, which gleamed alternately in strokes of beige light.

Tom quickly found himself thinking about the sprites manifestations. They were highly unusual.

In the Deep, he had seen several sprites, of all different varieties, manifest. Although sprites were, by nature, more energy than substance, they still did have a corporeal aspect to them.

They were not regular beasts, however. They did not eat or sleep. They were ambient mana, tied to the environment, given sentience once it reached a high enough density. When inactive, they would go dormant, their mana spreading into the environment slightly.

Every time one woke, the mana in the area would stir and flow towards its corporeal shell. That shell always appeared to be filled with their life force, which Tom could sense through his skill. The mana would rush in and fill it like a container.

Here, he had felt both the mana and the life-force rush inwards. Was it because the grass sprites were particularly incorporeal?

No the more he thought about it, the more he thought that was the wrong conclusion. The lizard attack had felt similar. It was as though the creatures here in the Proving Grounds were dispersing their life force using their mana, spreading it out around them.

Toms guts told him he was on the right track. He was still not sure why the creatures here would do this, though, but he was fairly sure he was correct. Perhaps it was to avoid detection, or to detect prey, or both. Maybe they even subsisted partially off the mana, or life force of the grass. He couldnt say.

What he was sure of was that he would have a much easier time detecting any ambushes now that he knew what to look for. He just had to keep a particular eye out for any eddies or swirls in the mana. Any attack would be preceded by an area jumping above the ambient levels, and into Hunter-Gatherers sensation range. He just had to be quick enough to catch it.

The satisfaction of understanding, of a problematic knot teased out, warmed him. And just like that, his wisp pulsed brown.

Tom blinked. He had not expected to get an uplift. Hed keep it to himself, though. Rosa would go on about how he was always trying to upstage her. Hed save the information to hassle her with later.

He pulled over his wisp.

Uplift threshold reached.

Skill Three (Consummate): Hunter-Gatherer (Passive (Sensory)).

Can sense nearby life force in the casters field of view. Can sense nearby concentrations of mana in the casters field of view. Allows caster access to an inventory in the casters World Wisp. Generates and places naturally occurring, mana-infused objects into the casters wisp inventory at random intervals.

Uplift Option One:

Can sense nearby life force in the casters aura range. Can sense nearby concentrations of mana in the casters aura range. Allows caster access to an inventory in the casters World Wisp. Generates and places naturally occurring, mana-infused objects into the casters wisp inventory at random intervals. Caster can manually deposit existing, naturally occurring, mana-infused objects they can sense within their aura range into their inventory.

Uplift Option Two:

Can sense nearby life force in the casters field of view. Can sense nearby concentrations of mana in the casters field of view. Allows caster access to an inventory in the casters World Wisp. Generates and places naturally occurring, mana-infused objects into the casters wisp inventory at random intervals. Casters sensitivity to both life-force and mana is increased.

Uplift Option Three:

Can sense nearby life force in the casters field of view. Can sense nearby concentrations of mana in the casters field of view. Allows caster access to a large inventory in the casters World Wisp. Generates and places naturally occurring, mana-infused objects into the casters wisp inventory at random intervals.

Toms choice was easy. He selected option two.

His life and mana sense was limited to his field of view, but it was stronger the closer an object was to him, dropping off the further away it was. Still, he could sense the life and mana of things far further out than his aura range. He would much rather that than to sense things everywhere around him. He could simply turn to take in more information, and he had his familiars to provide other information about potential threats to his sides or behind.

He had to admit that being able to grab objects like natural treasures and essences and put them in his inventory with his mind, once hed sensed them, would be very useful. Currently, he left many things he sensed untouched. It was not worth it to constantly be deviating from his path. Knowing that there were objects that he was leaving behind rankled against his sensibilities though.

Oh well, he thought. Hed just have to deal with it a bit longer. If he could get the uplift offered again later, perhaps without the aura range limitation, he would consider it.

The third option, the larger inventory space in his wisp, would be nice, but ultimately wasnt a consideration. He had a massive amount of storage between his wisp and his ring already. Though more was always good, it was also greedy, in this case.

Happy with his selection, Tom turned back to the road, and the grass, and eager to put his newfound sensitivity through its paces.