Chapter 50: Situation in flux

It's much harder to learn how to use multiple types of Ichor when under stress, but in the end, you will learn more in a shorter period than if you learn it in a classroom. If you survive, that is.

-Wrend

Wrend approached the paladin with both hands raised to shoulder level, so the soldier knew he bore no weapons. Leenda had landed at the top of the ridge and stood near the trees, a black shape against a larger, blacker mass. If he hadn’t known what to look for, he wouldn’t have seen her. Her red hair helped.

“Hail, paladin,” Wrend said.

He slowed to let the paladin approach, planning to explain that he needed to leave camp. The paladin should let him by; barring specific orders to do otherwise, they let demigods come and go as they pleased.

The paladin held a bow with an arrow knocked, and wore a sword at the side. As always, a hooded and masked leather coif covered its head, although its eyes glinted through the holes in that lifeless way of all paladins. Its ring mail rattled as it approached, coming down the hill at a measured pace, stopping about twenty feet away. It raised the bow, but didn’t draw.

“Who are you?” it said.

Its voice rasped like that of most paladins, an expected product of a slowly rotting throat. When the body decomposed enough—even despite the embalming efforts of the priests—the paladin would lose its hard-earned ability to speak.

Two other paladins approached, one from each side, both with bows raised. It was normal protocol.

He kept his hands up and rotated to the side so they could see the tree-branch emblems embroidered down his shirtsleeve.

“I’m Wrend, son of Athanaric, demigod.”

Saying it like that—declaring it with such confidence—gave him pause as he remembered who he was and what the Master needed of him. Really, he shouldn’t do this. But he wasn’t about to stop now, with Leenda waiting for him up the hill. It wasn’t entirely the desire to taste her lips that drew him, but more and more as he’d walked through the tents behind her, it was the Master’s refusal to release him from the proving. It frustrated Wrend. Angered him. Made him want to rebel.

The sound of wood snapping made him look up the hill just as Leenda started to move to the left, along the top of the ridge. The trees just past her shifted, cracked, and swayed against the starry sky. A dark shape emerged from the trees and started after Leenda. It could only be one thing.

Somehow, the Master had known to wait there for Leenda.

Wrend’s stomach lurched. He was discovered. The Master knew. The scales tipped back in favor of obedience.

The paladins didn’t seem to notice. The two others had stopped thirty feet to the right and left, and had drawn their bows.

“We’ve been instructed to not let you leave,” the one near him said. “Orders directly from the Master.”

At a previous time, Wrend would’ve turned back. But things had changed, and his indecision lasted only as long as it took to focus on his discernment, bind Thew to his legs, and start forward. The paladins wouldn’t harm him. They wouldn’t shoot unless they had specific orders to do so, and Wrend couldn’t see that happening; the Master valued him too much. They might try to stop him, but they’d fail because they wouldn’t catch him.

He bolted past them. First, he'd lied to the Master. Now he'd deliberately disobeyed orders. But what did he have to lose? The proving put his life at risk anyway. And besides, the Master was here; he already knew what was going on, and retreating would do Wrend no good.

The paladin he’d spoken with shouted. The two on the sides started after him, but he lost sight of them as he bounded up the hill, past the clumps of prickly sagebrush, his attention split between ensuring his feet found good landing spots, binding Thew to his legs, and watching the pursuit ahead. Leenda seemed so small and quick, and the Master so huge and lumbering. He didn’t gain ground on her, but stayed only a short ways behind, taking fewer but larger steps.

Wrend wouldn’t catch them. He’d only first used Thew to run faster earlier that day—although it seemed like weeks had passed. This time it came easier, and each stride carried him further, but Leenda and the Master had the benefit of Flux, and ran too fast along the top of the ridge in front of the trees, already far to his left and extending the gap every instant.

The green waves of Thew emanated from his belly, from where his food digested. He could discern them easily, even in the night, for they weren’t affected by light or the lack thereof. But he wanted the Flux. He needed to harvest and use it, or he would never catch them. He shifted the focus of his discernment, similar to changing the focus of his eyes from a distant object to a nearby one.

And that did it.

The white waves he’d only barely sensed before leapt to life before him, rolling out from his body in fast, short bursts. He pulled them back in, harvesting them. They filled his soul differently than Thew did: whereas Thew made it feel like his veins swelled, the Flux made his skin crawl. Neither sensation was exactly physical. It existed on a plane other than his body, but it was real, nonetheless.

He’d nearly reached the top of the ridge when he bound the Flux to his body. He had no idea how to use it, and where he should bind it to, so he attached it to as much of his body as he could. In the process, he almost lost his grip on Thew, and for a moment the binding of Flux completely failed.

Ahead, Leenda disappeared around the edge of the trees. The Master roared, reaching out and grabbing a tree to pull him around the corner. The tree bent and cracked, but didn't break. In a moment, the pursuit passed beyond Wrend’s sight.

As his foot came down in one of his longer strides, he bound and applied the Flux in a burst. At the effort, the Thew slipped from his grasp and his legs weakened. Pushed by the Flux, his body flew forward. His head flopped backward—he hadn't been ready for such a thrust—and he lost control of the application. The binding failed. But it was too late, anyway. He’d pushed too hard in a manner he couldn’t control. His arms and legs flailed. He crashed into a bush of sagebrush.

He’d seen it coming, thought to leap over it. Instead, the bush grabbed his legs and feet, tripping him. He flailed, unable to catch himself, and careened face-first into another bush. The leaves and branches tore at his face and clothes.

When he came to a stop only a second later—with his back twisted awkwardly, his arms tangled, and his thighs smarting from where they’d hit the sagebrush—he just lay there for several seconds, smelling the pungent sage, cursing his fool attempts at heroics, and hoping he hadn’t landed in a bush of poison sage. If he had, he’d be dead in just a minute.