Chương 60: On to Domhain

Three Bad Birds pursued Miriam through the jungle. The same brand of monster she had faced when she'd first arrived in Cianán's Walk. At first she had thought it would be easy - she'd even taken the time to think of an appropriately dismissive name for the species - but then two more showed up. They had never hunted her in packs before, in all the time she'd been training in the jungle. They'd always been rather single-minded and dumb, constantly charging in lieu of smarter tactics.

But now these three seemed to be planning and coordinating together, two on one side and the third on the other, attempting to herd her towards what she guessed would be a dead end in the jungle. To be fair, she was luring them somewhere too. She knew the jungle outside of Láthair Maol very well at this point. In her training she had often found a certain clearing in the foliage to be a convenient place to fight monsters.

There, she benefited from open ground where her increased speed and movement techniques gave her an advantage, at least with creatures like the Bad Birds who most often attacked with the elegance of enraged bulls. Nearing the edge of the clearing, Miriam activated Vine Leap and tumbled into the air. In the center of the clearing was a large boulder which she would land on and use to reverse her course, meeting the Bad Birds just as they emerged from the jungle.

She had used this combination several times during her training and they had never once seen it coming. There was no boulder. The clearing had changed somehow - instead of a pleasant little field of short grass with a stone center, it was chock full of stalagmites. That wasn't possible - one, because this clearing had not been this way just yesterday, and two because stalagmites couldn't possibly form outside a cave. Had she gotten confused? Was this not her clearing?

It was whatever was happening to Cian, she realized. The island must have been an even more inhospitable place before he began adjusting himself. It was reverting to its former shape. None of which really mattered as she was hurtling towards a field of jagged rock spears. Miriam had worked too hard to let something like this throw her. She flipped in the air as she'd planned, but instead of alighting on a smooth boulder, she activated another Vine Leap and poured twice as much fórsa into it.

Vines choked the spaces between the stalagmites and she launched back towards her pursuers, just as she planned. Which were not there. The enormous weight of a giant bird slammed into her from the side mid-flight and she shot towards the far tree-line like a bullet. Miriam gasped as her back made contact with a tree, knocking the wind out of her. They're so much smarter! She thought desperately.

Domhain was supposed to be a leisurely walk in the jungle compared to what awaited them, but it was turning into a much more fraught battle. She forced herself to her feet, trying to reorient her expectations as to what sort of fight this was going to be. They're going to flank me! Miriam Vine Leap ed again, just in time to dodge the razor-sharp talon that seemed to come out of nowhere chewed through the tree she'd landed against. A second Bad Bird roared at her, beating its wings to take off after her.

She had to thin the numbers. Where was the third one? The one who had slammed into her was closing the distance as well, using its wings to get its own sort of Vine Leap effect. Miriam grinned to herself. Well. They might be smarter than they had been. But they weren't stronger - still only First Ring. And, they weren't facing a tangled-fórsa mess anymore. She was a River Adept. Miriam clocked the one charging at her and activated Raging Current.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Fórsa techniques don't have to be literal," Cian had explained.

"A Water technique doesn't have to create water. It just needs to obey the nature of water. Creating the actual thing is often a waste of fórsa. Raging Current is an attack that a River Adept can use to apply kinetic force to a target - like being at the mercy of raging rapids."

"It's a shove," Miriam had said, unimpressed.

"Just a shove, from a distance."

"I think you'll find it's a little better than that." Miriam's fórsa thundered into the Bad Bird with the fury of a whitewater river. A shove for a shove, Miriam thought wickedly, as the bird was pushed towards the ground with tremendous power. Except she had a better idea than just pushing the bird into a tree. The sharp stalagmites perforated the bird's body in five places with seemingly little resistance. Blood rushed away from the body as if a hose were being turned on it.

The bird died instantly with little more than a guttural squawk. Two to go. She landed smoothly after her leap, and instantly looked for where the third ambush would come from. It turned out to be from above, as the third Bad Bird descended from the sky at her. Perhaps the clearing had been a poor idea after all. Miriam knelt down as if trying to protect herself from the bird, but then thrust herself upright, shouting as she activated Rising Tree.

"It seems pretty self-explanatory," Cian had teased.

"You use your Life fórsa to make a tree. But you do it fast. You do it sharp. And with all the fórsa you have? You do it big." A trunk thicker than her torso burst from the earth below her. The top was a brutally sharp spear, though it still sported many thick branches which unfolded underneath, one of which smacked Miriam in the face on the way up. But she didn't care about that - she only cared about momentum and commitment. The momentum the bird had as it dove towards her was immense.

The commitment the bird had made to the attack was total. Just like its already fallen brother, it found itself skewered, blood dripping down the branches lke rain. One more. The last bird landed beside her, but did not charge. It eyed her warily, as if it had taken her measure and found a true threat. Before, the bird might have run, but even as smart as it was it now seemed to have a malevolence that made her death more inviting than preserving its own life.

It would not give Miriam a weapon in the form of overextending its own power. It would wait for its moment. She locked eyes on it, waiting for its strike. It made some light attacks with its wing talons, testing the waters. This time Miriam used no technique at all, but instead called upon the combat training she had been working on with Cormac. She blocked the claw just behind the sharp talon with her forearm and the force barely moved her. The bird backed away, circling, looking for a weak point.

Miriam shouted "Come on! I don't have time for this!" but the bird maintained its distance, its dark eyes flitting around her as it waited for its chance. Fine. She leaped towards the bird in a burst of speed - no techniques, just with the power of her dryad body. One wing talon hung in front of her face for a fraction of a second before she grabbed it, wrestling it down to the ground. She activated a technique she'd invented herself; her study of medicine in the Realms Above far outpaced even what Cian knew.

Miriam activated Gangrenous Necrosis. The talon immediately began to rot, the feathers blackening and pus spewing from the wing as the flesh there died. Miriam released the wing and whirled to claw her hand into the bird's chest, quickly activating a second technique: Liquefactive Necrosis. The Bad Bird gurgled painfully as its lungs filled with fluid, the tissue breaking down to mush inside its chest. It slumped pitifully onto the ground, twitching in misery as it expired.

"Oh gods!" Cian had exclaimed in horror.

"I've never been more impressed and disgusted at the same time." Miriam breathed deeply for a moment, then smiled. In spite of the truly awful infliction she had just delivered, and the dire circumstances in which she had found herself, actually letting her power loose was a thrill. She was having fun. Wait… suddenly she couldn't breathe! Was it spores from her technique blowing back on her somehow? Based on how Cian had explained it, that shouldn't even be possible. Her whole body was on fire.

Then she realized what this was. She wove the fórsa into her Water mesh. Miriam had been tempted to spread it among all three, but intuitively she thought that would be the wrong thing to do. If she needed density, she couldn't thin it out, and Water was the one she'd woven the most. She wove her needle at blinding speeds, pulling the threads taut, making a much denser fabric. She didn't have to do her entire skin - she and Cian had been working on that already.

It was just the last few cinches that pulled the whole tapestry together. When it was done Miriam panted on the ground, laughing softly to herself.

"Finally!" She flexed her hands and felt the new quality of her power. Everyone had thought she had a lot of fórsa before? This was magnitudes more. A newly-minted Second stood up quickly and began to dash her way to Domhain.