Vraxious- The Forsaken Lands

  Vrax slipped between two thick stands of man's bane, careful to only touch the bark of the ashen trees and not any of the deadly branches that sloped down from the trunk. Dripping a malignant red acid onto the marshy soil below with a barely perceptible hiss. He paused, one hand still on the tree's trunk, adjusting so that he could shelter under the tree's branches and look out at the trail ahead.

  Small winding brooks trailed along the edges of a long-forsaken road. The ground around it an even split between marshy puddles and small islands teeming with life. The road itself had a vibrant orange moss with an intense firelike glow to it, helpfully lighting the area around the road. The willows and other plants here so dense that the sun only streamed to the marsh below in desperate beams. Almost all of those beams had some of the ever-present wildlife fighting for the sun's attention.

  He saw a small lizard be pounced upon by what might once have been a fox but now looked more like an undead made of plants. Beautiful purple flowers sprouted from an eye and wrapped around the head like a glowing mane. Vrax paused and fired off an [Identify] [Infested fox tier 0]. Oh, it really was a fox at some point and must have eaten something it really shouldn’t have. He watched cautiously as it lay in the ray of sun, and the flowers sprouting from it began to grow up and outward, overtaking the body in a matter of minutes and rooting it to the ground in the sun's rays.

  In the span of five minutes, the fox was fully transformed into a gently flowing flower sculpture. Previously hidden vines now using its bones as trellising for its form. Impossibly vivid purples and reds dotted Vraxes' vision, calling him closer. He took half a step from cover, reaching toward the flawless flowers in the distance. Before stabbing himself in the thigh with his quill, snapping him back to reality.

  Vrax started scribbling some notes as quietly as he could. His own blood slightly splattered onto the page, using the vivid red to moor him in the here and now. I could just sum this up as don’t touch the fucking glowing purple flowers.

  Vrax silently slid from under the Man’s Bane. Heading to one of the islands on the far side of the road away from the disconcertingly hypnotic flowers. He very pointedly looked everywhere but at the alluring sculpture. As much as he wanted to identify what it actually was. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  Shit like that is part of why people have such a hard time here. Growing up on the edges of the forest, I had real-world examples drilled into my head of the haunting beauty that would call you to your doom. Some poor fucker with no idea what to expect might have just wandered over to that and ended up as a new sculpture. I swear the first change I’m making to my [Core] isn’t strength or speed. It’s goddamn mental resistance. I refuse to get mind-fucked into some random monster’s orchard.

  Vrax continued on from island to island, pausing often in the muck to peer ahead. He had at least a half day’s journey to get to the old fort. Vrax paused at one of the early landmarks in his map. An ancient fallen tower had scattered carriage-sized stones across the road. Uneven moss-covered surfaces sticking from the ground like the fingers of a stone giant felled long ago. The brooks here converged to a large, shallow pond that overtook the road before trailing off into clear, streaming brooks again in the distance. Vrax froze; something was wrong here.

  It's too quiet—way too fucking quiet. Where are the birds…? Shit, where is anything? I don’t even see any bugs, normal or system-bound, fluttering about.

  Vrax climbed slowly halfway up one of the large stones. Hands sinking silently into the wet moss coating them, he pulled himself tight, just his eyes cresting the edge, and focused on his enhanced hearing. At first only the beating of his heart was palpable along with the trickle of the brooks. There had to be something here; nowhere was this devoid of life in this part of the forest. Something existentially threatening had either just passed through or was still lurking about. Vrax tuned out the sounds of water and of his own slowly climbing pulse. There on the edges of his hearing. The slightest hoot of an owl?

  Vrax peered in the direction the sound came from. Flicker grass carpeted this portion of the forest, gently undulating from green to purple in the slight breeze. One of the few kinds of plants that was stunningly gorgeous and also harmless here. Past the grass he could see the slightest flutter of dark feathers in the canopy of one of the willow trees. That seemed to stop right as he glanced its way.

  His gaze traced farther along the thin treeline, looking for more signs of motion. A sudden sound ripped his head back to the pond in front of him. The owl he had seen in the distance was suddenly in the pond ahead of him, submerged up to its chest, looking directly at him. “The hell?” Vrax froze, looking over the owl. Black downy feathers with highlights of purple and cold black eyes that he swore had no end to their depths. Vrax blinked, trying to clear the uneasy sensation the owl’s gaze caused. The owl was now less than three strides from him on the edge of the pond just below his perch.

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  Holy shit, not an owl, not an owl, not a fucking owl. That's a goddamned Glimmer.

  With an effort of will and absolute caution, Vrax kept his gaze on the glimmer, keeping it locked in place. He knew he couldn’t blink, or it would be free to move again. He pulled his spear out and slowly climbed down towards the monster. A flash of pain hit him as Mana swirled from the creature without it moving an inch, signifying it was using a skill. One of the nearby stones had whipped through the air, catching his side. Vrax hurried forward with a grunt of pain; he could see clods of dirt and other stones rising in the air around him. If that thing made him blink before he got to it, he was unequivocally dead.

  Vrax halfway sidestepped a large clod of dirt that almost obscured his view. It flew past his shoulder, and he spun under a massive log that flew at him ponderously from behind. Losing sight of the glimmer for the briefest moment. Vrax screamed as searing pain sprang from his chest. He was face-to-face with it now. It was frozen once again. The illusory appearance dropped. Black pools for eyes and a gangly humanoid body more bone and sinew than anything else. Pallor-grey-purple skin and wicked clawed hands more like daggers than any normal appendage. Its claws had sunk the barest hint into his chest, reaching for his heart before he had stopped it with a glance again.

  Vrax mercilessly shoved his spear-tip into the unblinking eye of his opponent. The distinct popping noise echoed across the mostly silent glade. leveraging the haft to push as far as he could into the skull and then swirl. The clods of forest detritus crashed to the ground all around them, and the Glimmer slumped like a puppet with its strings cut. Vrax felt the explosion of essence entering his body.

  [Glimmer Tier-1](lvl 4) Slain

  [Excess Essence Lost]

  Vrax embraced the familiar surge as his essence overflowed, slightly healing his wounds as it dissipated from him. He was already as full up as he could be without accepting a class. Any he had gained for quite a while now had been wasted. Vrax panted heavily, stabbing the glimmer in the other eye just to make damned sure it was dead even if the system had already said so. Glimmers were deadly, moving faster than they had any right to be able to. The glaring weakness of being perceived immobilizing their physical form made them very reasonable to deal with in a party as long as they didn’t get the drop on you.

  I fell for a goddamn owl illusion? shit…. That was way too close. Why is there a glimmer all the way out here? We are only a few hours from the town. The fucker was worth a lot of essence for his level too!

  Vrax tended to the partially healed scrapes covering his sternum as quickly as he could. Having bleeding wounds out here was as good as ringing a dinner bell for some of the monsters. He threw some now bloodied gauze into the pond, letting it drift to the bottom. And dusted the scrapes with a coagulant he had borrowed from the infirmary.

  Vrax quickly began harvesting the valuable parts from the glimmer, mainly its claws and heart. Mages paid a pretty penny for glimmer parts. Apparently they had some very unique magical properties that lent well to stabilizing portals and other dimensional magic. He needed to hurry; that scuffle had been fairly loud, and whatever had scared everything else away could still be nearby. The glimmer was dangerous, sure, but it wasn’t anything special in the food chain of the forsaken lands. The nearby animals and monsters certainly wouldn’t have all fled the area from it.

  Finished with his grizzly task, Vrax continued deeper into the woods, leaving the relatively open route the road provided out of caution. The sun reached the midday point in his travel. So far he hadn’t had any other excitement except for skirting a few predators prowling along the treetops. As long as he didn’t move too quickly near them, he was practically invisible from above in his mottled cloak among the midday shadows. A haunting, melodious song called out from the direction of the road a dozen strides past the treeline he was creeping through. Vrax froze, slightly shifting into the cover of a nearby berry bush. The reptilian predators above Vrax locked up in fear themselves. Confused eyes swinging towards something he couldn’t see on the road.

  A familiar growl rumbled out to challenge the still unseen source of the haunting melody. Vrax tried to pierce through the brush with his gaze and see what the [Forsaken wolf] was hunting. He only caught the slight flash of the green-black wolf’s fur as it dashed by down the road. Followed shortly by another five pack members. Vrax could hunt [Forsaken wolves] it just usually wasn’t worth it. They were strong, fast, and durable compared to a normal wolf, and they had minor nature magic. He would have to set traps and lures for the better part of a day to take down a pack this size, and it would still be incredibly dangerous. Also, their carcasses weren’t worth much.

  Curiosity getting the better of him Vrax crept farther towards the road to see the hunt taking place. He wasn’t familiar with whatever was still making that oddly comforting call. But odds are in a direct fight with six wolves, it was probably lunch. The wolves were spiraling around the base of a tree that had defeated the ruins of the road. Sprouting straight through the center of the ancient brickwork and growing taller and wider than any of its sun-starved neighbors.

  Wrapped halfway up the tree's trunk, its tail loosely spiraled around branches, was a massive serpent. Scales of the deepest crystalline emerald chimed against each other as it shifted. Long fangs of an almost ethereally clear bone a stride long lashed out and plucked one of the circling wolves from the ground. Drawing itself back to the top of the tree momentarily to swallow its still-writhing prey whole. Vrax used [Identify] on instinct. [??? Tier-2] [Lvl 88]

  Hell no, curiosity satiated moving the fuck along.

  Vrax swung wide into overgrown shrubbery. going even farther from the road. His feet began sinking several inches not into mud but into months' worth of cast-off leaves and flower petals loosely piled across the ground, carpeting everything. Around him were thin, white-barked trees topped in pink and golden blossoms. He paused for a moment to climb one of the trees. From the top he could just make out the edges of the abandoned fort and the landmark that was the nearby waterfall.