Chương 37: Blight Ascendant

Cian seemed to ripple, like a stone thrown in a still pond, but otherwise looked bored.

"See? Totally fine." He's a projection! Miriam realized. Like Eoin had been when they first met. She didn't take the time to ruminate more on that revelation, as the owner of that claw didn't seem to stop to wonder why his attack had done no damage. Before her was a giant tropical bird - nearly twice her height. In Marybel's marketplaces she had seen exotic avians, bright and loud with riotous colors and breathtaking wingspans, but never anything this big. And never with teeth.

It was mostly a rich, dark blue, with an umber breast plumage. At the end of each wing were talons similar to the larger, more powerful ones down below, making it seem a little bat-like as it lunged forward. Its eyes were still and black, the cold look of an instinctive hunter. Miriam hurled the oar spear as hard as she could.

The bird had gotten too close without her noticing, and if she tried to hold on to the weapon those claws and that impressive wingspan would rend her apart before she got within striking distance of its body. As always she was surprised to see how much power her new body had, and the spear streaked through the air like a bullet, piercing the left wing and continuing on straight through. The bird monster shrieked, but Miriam could tell it wasn't that badly hurt. A wing was not going to be lethal.

All Miriam had done was buy a few seconds while the monster recoiled. Seconds she used to run.

"That's a poor strategy," Cian said, floating effortlessly beside her.

"You're never going to beat one of those on foot."

"No," Miriam said, panting.

"But maybe I can find somewhere to hide." Cian snorted.

"Miriam, I think you need to re-evaluate your instincts a little." Miriam clambered over fallen trees and through vines, trying her best to stay ahead of the crashing behind her as the giant bird tore through the jungle in pursuit. She was again surprised by the feats of agility of which her body was proving capable. Vaulting over rocks or fallen trees was as easy as taking a step.

She seemed to instinctively know how to move through this terrain, twisting and even flipping in the air once to clear a particularly choked section of vine.

"You got that dryad thing going pretty well," Cian admitted.

"But you're heading away from the bald spot."

"I think escaping a vicious predator takes precedence," Miriam said in between deep breaths.

"That's what I mean," the boy said, floating next to her in a lounge position, as if he were a boat being tugged behind a larger vessel.

"You're looking at this all wrong. Maybe before you got your fórsa natures you were weak, and frail. Maybe you had to hide and rely on tricks and traps and cleverness to survive. Not anymore." Miriam gave him a look and nearly stumbled. The bird was gaining. Of course Cian was right. She had been a woman living on the frontier. Her father had always drilled it into her head the risks she faced that her brothers did not.

Whatever's out there, be it man or beast - it's going to be stronger than you without really trying. That's a shame, it really is, but it's the way the world works. So you gotta be clever. Be the rabbit, not the bear. She had even been the rabbit when hunting Giant Jim. Throughout her life she relied on her smarts to keep her alive in dangerous situations all over the world, knowing that when it came to strength she could never compete.

Being the rabbit had allowed her to survive eighty years when so many others had died. Cian put an illusory hand on her shoulder.

"Miriam. You are the predator now." She skidded to a stop and the bird leaped over her, gliding through an opening in the canopy to crouch against a large, spindly tree, panting and snarling. It would pounce any second. Cian was right. Miriam had already done things she would never have imagined in the Realms Above. Even this chase was proof of that. No man she'd ever met would have been able to keep up with her. She had even injured Ultán, a Fifth Ring fórsa manipulator.

It was one of the things she had yearned for before leaving the Golden Swamp - power. And she had it. Now was she going to use it, or would she insist on being the rabbit?

"How can I use Blight?" Miriam asked through gritted teeth.

"It destroys all my other manifestations."

"The other manifestations create. Blight can never create - well, not directly. It can only destroy. So spears, ropes, lashings - none of that will work. Think - have you ever used Blight successfully before?" Cian spoke rapidly, one eye on the bird, which was ready to spring. When I killed Solas, she thought grimly.

"Yes. His body just… rotted, in front of me."

"That's the way," the boy said with a grin.

"For now, don't try to shape Blight. Infect it." The bird lunged forward in a tight spiral, claws forward and spinning like a drill. This was a killing blow, Miriam saw, but… she found herself not worried. It seemed to be moving slower than it really should be given the power the bird used - slowly enough for her to take a quick lunge to the right, slapping the feathers of one wing as it spun by.

The bright plumage instantly darkened as she poured Blight into it, accompanied by a weak spray of water and dying plant life. The bird shrieked, plucking desperately at those diseased feathers. Once it had torn them all loose there was a rather ungraceful-looking bald spot, but her infliction didn't seem to make it to the flesh. The bird leaped again, this time better tracking her as it moved, and it was able to score a vicious slash at her while she was knocked to the side, unable to apply another hit.

Miriam gasped at the pain in her back, trying to remind herself that her body should repair supernaturally quickly. Her hand being split open the day she met Róise and Cormac had only lasted an hour or so.

"I got lucky that first hit," she said.

"It's more nimble than me." Cian hummed, then nodded.

"Yeah. We'll probably have to work on that. But I can't think of any better plans. Blight has no physical manifestations. You can't make a knife out of it or anything to throw. It can only be transferred fórsa to fórsa. Kind of like a venereal disease!" He chortled at his own joke. Miriam dodged the bird again, this time too deep in thought to try a counterattack. Fórsa to fórsa struck a chord with her. She had actually done this before - when she had manipulated the wood lashed to Ultan's arm.

Could she use her unique triple nature to do the same with Blight?

"What are you thinking, Miriam?" Cian asked. He had an excited, engaged expression, like seeing something really novel. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"This," Miriam said, creating a wooden stake in one hand - really one thick, hard, sharpened vine. She over-filled it with fórsa to try to get it to last longer, so it was an almost triangular lump of soggy plant matter in her hand. This time as the bird raced towards her, Miriam threw it as hard as she could at the beast's chest. It slammed into the bright plumage, not sharp by the time it reached its target, but just sort of splatting into the feathers.

Miriam concentrated the fórsa connection she still maintained to the manifestation and poured more Blight into it. The feathers along the bird's breast rotted away instantly, leaving another large bare spot. At least this time Miriam had not had to get within its range to strike a blow. She began to fashion another stake, this time trying a new way to weave the Blight into it - for the first time taking an active hand in trying to manipulate the dark lake at the center of her heart.

"Miriam?" Cian said, his voice a little taunting.

"What are you doing now? I think with this method you could probably distract it enough to get away." Miriam found herself grinning as she limbered up her shoulders for another throw.

"This is something that would be hard to improve on without an actual target. So I'm taking this opportunity."

"To do what?" She laughed, relishing in a sudden freedom from fear.

"To train! If I'm going to get out of Cianán's Walk and make my way to the Tenth Ring, I can't waste a second." The boy grinned wide.

"That's what I like to hear!" ✧✧✧ Not too far from where Miriam carried out her experiments on the bird monster - but at the same time incredibly distant - Róise struggled with a different kind of beast. It looked like a large cat with tentacles, each of which had a stinger as sharp as a knife on each tip. Its eyes were a haunting shade of red.

"I never expected to find something this strong in the First Ring," Róise said, dancing out of the way of two quick strikes.

"You're not in the First Ring anymore, girl," the boy Cian said. He lounged on a tree branch a few feet away, observing the combat with interest. He wore a dark yellow vest and yellow pants, his chest adorned with silver necklaces and amber stones.

"You're in Cianán's Walk."

"I'm worried about Miriam and Maitiú," she said, slicing a hefty chunk off one tentacle. It flopped to the ground, disabled and weighing the cat-thing down.

"They couldn't handle threats like this."

"They aren't facing threats like this," the boy said languidly.

"That wouldn't really be fair would it?"

"And Cormac," Róise said.

"I'm confident he could luck himself out of anything, but if he got stuck in direct combat…" Cian shrugged.

"He needs to learn to stand on his own two feet. You won't always be there to cover for him." Róise plunged her knife deep into the beast's heart, staining her white shirt with blood. She stood and looked at the boy with steely eyes.

"Yes, I will."

"Huh," Cian said, smiling wryly.

"I guess we'll see." ✧✧✧ Back at the beach, Cian knelt down next to the sodden man cowering in the wreckage of the boat, his red pants not even a little bit wet from the effort.

"Look, man. It sounds like you didn't come here of your own choice, and that is a real shame. But if you're worried about not dying, then you need to get off this beach and follow me. Things get real dicey in the jungle at night. If you can just get past the first little bit, you'll be safe at the bald spot. I promise." A deep sigh sounded from inside the boat's wreckage.

"Well. I guess there's only so much a man can wallow in his own self-pity, isn't there?" Cian shrugged.

"I have found many men seem to have no limit when it comes to self-pity. Are you one of those?" Maitiú stood.

"No. No, I'm not." He shook off the wet sand, then closed his eyes and breathed as deeply as he could. In his right hand he manifested a lariat with a hard tip. He had never been much of a scrapper, but in those moments when he'd been forced into a fight, this was the weapon he'd found the most skill with. It used many of the same skills he'd honed to perfection sailing the Iounil Sea most of his life. He nodded.

"Sorry about that, boy. You caught me at a bad time. It's true I shouldn't be here, and it's true I think I'm going to die. But no point in just wallowing in the sand waiting for it to happen."

"Hear hear!" Cian crowed, clapping loudly.

"And if I see that gods-damned Captain again, I'm putting this through his gods-damned neck." The boy shrugged.

"I'm not one to judge." ✧✧✧"Man, that Maitiú guy really hates you," Cian said to Cormac, only twenty minutes away from the first bald spot. Cormac was caught in the vines of a carnivorous plant, slowly being drawn into a maw of alarmingly sharp spikes.

"I would hope he'd be over it by now," Cormac said, casually spinning some golden threads through his fingers.

"I can barely remember why he's upset." Cian stretched, leaning against nothing at all. He wore very bright yellow, and honestly such a lack of fashion sense was more than a little distracting.

"Apparantly you tricked him and his friends into joining your crew, paid them nothing, and steered them towards certain doom."

"Well, okay," Cormac said.

"But we talked about that yesterday. He's still mad about it?"

"Uh, yeah," the boy said. He gestured to the plant.

"You going to do something to get out of that?"

"I'm doing it, " Cormac said, in the same tone a child would take on being asked to clean their room - for the fourth time. In the same breath a large, hostile looking insect landed just above where the vines had hold of Cormac's left arm. It was like a fiery red preying mantis with teeth that seemed anatomically questionable. It looked like it was used to getting a few free bites in before the carnivorous plant ate its fill.

Just as the insect reared back to bite, an enormous bat thundered out of the canopy, snatching up the mantis in its mouth and slamming into the vines. Cormac hefted his body up by the arm stuck in the vine and punched the bat straight into the mouth of the plant with his left. The plant shuddered, the bat thrashing in the teeth that had not quite closed, and redeployed its vines to deal with the unexpected invader. Cormac dropped easily to his feet.

"This safe spot's not too far now, right?" Cian shook his head.

"I'm starting to see Maitiú's point." ✧✧✧ On the beach, Cian knelt down in the wet sand next to the man who, upon waking, had sat down in the water, seemingly perplexed.

"You okay, man? You were out for quite a while, and I have to be honest, some weird stuff was happening while you were asleep." The man sighed, then seemed startled at the involuntary gesture, as if it was the first time he had ever done it. The voice that came out of his throat was windy, creaky, like it also had never before been used.

"I feel… things I am not used to feeling."

"Uh huh." Cian rubbed his chin. He looked down in surprise at his clothes, which started off a dark blue, then faded to green, yellow, orange, then finally red.

"Seems like you've been through something most people won't understand." The man continued as if Cian were not there.

"I feel… joy. I am being in a way I have never been. I find this… wondrous. I also… feel hate. I hate the people who did this to me, though I'm not sure why I should, since I am feeling such joy about it too. And I'm feeling… an overwhelming greed. I don't know what it is that I want from this place, but I want it intensely." Cian also sighed.

"I gotta be honest, mate. Lots of things I've never seen before with your group. And before today I thought I had literally seen everything." The man looked at Cian.

"My group?"

"Yeah. Miriam, Cormac, Róise, Maitiú? Those names ring a bell?" The man nodded, still looking confused.

"They do, but I am not sure why. On hearing them I feel those emotions raging again, but I do not have any memories as to why." The boy shook his head.

"This is going to be tough. Ok. We need to get you to a bald spot, quickly. You're way behind the others and it gets dangerous out here at night. Everything else can wait until you're in a safe place." The man looked back out towards the water.

"That way feels safe to me."

"That's a one-way gate, unfortunately. You sail in, you don't sail out." Cian stood, offering his hand to the man.

"Do you have a name?" The man accepted the boy's hand and stood, shaky at first, but then quickly steadied himself.

"I feel like I have had several. But none seem right anymore."

"You want to just choose one, then?" The man considered. His skin was like nothing Cian had ever seen. Miriam's skin evoked a sense of rich lacquered wood, but it was in the way of dryads who more or less looked as a group like they had come out of the tropics. This man's skin was wood. Not like a golem or automaton, but actual flesh carved from lumber. Cian could feel it when the man had taken his hand - it was rough, like the skin of a weather-worn sailor, but it was indeed flesh.

Even up close though, he seemed like just some unusual Sidhe.

"I don't know if I'll stay this way," the man said.

"But for the moment, call me Sol." The boy smiled, rubbing his hands together eagerly.

"Well, Sol. Welcome to Cianán's Walk."