The party had stopped at the edge of a large, open clearing, at least a hundred metres across. He wasn't sure exactly how big it was, because Lady Renske's manor blocked his view. Or at least, he assumed there was a manor in there.
In his mind, he'd been imagining a large, plantation-style building, maybe with a hedge surrounding it and some imposing wrought iron gates. Instead, he saw what could only be described as a landed thundercloud. A vaguely circular blob of dark mist sat hunched in the middle of the clearing, the ominous substance expanding and shifting like the lungs of a mountain-sized creature. Slight currents were visible, the entire mass rotating like a tornado in slow motion. Occasionally, more concrete tendrils of the hazy darkness would lazily stretch outwards before breaking apart into fine particles and being reabsorbed into the whole.
The mists obscured any detail of the interior, forming an opaque wall after just a few metres. Even the nearby trees leaned away as if trying to keep as much distance between them. Symon suspected they would have uprooted themselves and fled, if it were possible.
It didn't make any perceptible noise, and the rest of the forest was quiet too. That had been true for the last couple minutes of walking, without the usual chirping of birds or the occasional distant sounds of monsters fighting one another.
"Any ideas what this is?" Symon asked. It was certainly ominous, but it didn't appear to be doing anything. It certainly didn't explain why those who entered it never came back.
Aslan shook his head. "No, but it seems safe enough to approach as long as we do not make contact with it. The nearby plants appear unharmed."
"Agreed, let's get a little closer." The quartet — plus Keelgrave — did so, walking down the gentle slope and stopping a few metres from the mists.
"Hmm..." Symon started, trying to spot something he might have missed. All he saw was the black fog; a few metres of worsening visibility before it quickly dropped to nothing.
Symon supposed that made sense. It must have been here for at least two decades, so it probably wouldn't have lasted that long if someone had to keep charging it. There were a lot of probablies and maybies there, but Symon was hardly a magic expert. The others were barely any better. It sounded logical to him, but without a proper magical education, a reasonable-sounding guess was the best they were likely to get. Even Keelgrave, for all his experience, had been a guerrilla fighter and pirate. He certainly hadn't gone to any magical academies.
Aslan and Atabek were peering around the outskirts of the mist, but Safiya was intently staring directly into it.
"See something?" Symon asked.
She glanced over at him before pointing inward. "Flower," she said, the deeply accented word coming out more like 'flooweer'.
Symon looked again in the direction she was pointing, but he still saw only darkness. Then again, her eyes were much better than his. Everyone else looked but had a similar result, so Aslan quizzed her for more information. After a quick back and forth, he filled Symon in.
"There are black flowers in the mist," he said. "Just a few at first, but they grow more common deeper in. The mist obscures even her vision after that."
"Black flowers — the same black as the mist?"
"Yes, an identical colour," he confirmed after checking with Safiya.
Symon scratched his chin as he looked over at Atabek. He seemed completely lost by the exchange. Well, no help there. "Hmm, maybe the flowers eat the mist?" Symon said, thinking back to his primary school 'science experiment' where they watered plants with dyed water.
"Perhaps," Aslan said, but Symon could tell he wasn't convinced. Or, more accurately, he wasn't convinced it was useful information.
After another minute of wracking his memories for anything useful — something that felt a little easier to do, thanks to his improved Intelligence — he figured that he wasn't going to pull some random tidbit out of nowhere that would solve this mystery for him
"Well, I think I'm just going to touch it," Symon said.
"Is that wise?" Aslan asked. His tone made it clear how he would have answered his own question.
"No, but it's not like it will instantly kill me, and I've got a full vessel. Maybe tie a rope around me just in case?" It looked, for all the world, like dark fog, but Symon wasn't going to make it more risky than he had to. Not when he'd been warned about the manor so many times.
As it turned out, the Dumosans were a practiced hand at creating rope harnesses. They lived on a giant, raised plateau, so it was an important skill for dealing with the rapid elevation changes. Before long, they'd tied off some ropes wrapped around and under his armpits, making him look like one of those kids on a leash. The effect was only further compounded by how much larger Atabek was. More accurately, Symon had tied the knots under their guidance, but his surprisingly nimble fingers meant their instructions only ever had to be repeated once.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
A little embarrassment is a small price to pay for the added safety, Symon told himself. He mostly believed it.
"Alright, I'm good to go. Everyone ready?" he asked. Mostly, this was directed toward Atabek. He'd be the one using his prodigious strength to haul Symon back in an emergency.
The group all nodded, and Symon took a deep breath to prepare himself. Slowly, he approached the mist. There was no clear demarcation where it began, not when it was continually shifting in and out. There were the occasional strands of mist that poked out and were reabsorbed, further complicating the matter.
Regardless, Symon steadily walked up to the mist. On a sudden whim, he attempted to shift his thread up into the mist, but it refused to budge from the grass at his feet. That meant that the mist wasn't a valid target for draining — it wasn't alive.
Well, that's a good sign.
Quickly, he swiped a hand through the inky substance and took a step back, just in case it reacted. Nothing happened, though, save for him introducing an eddy into the mist that rapidly filled in. It felt like he'd swiped his hand through empty air, and nothing more.
He looked back at the others. "Didn't seem to do anything." They nodded, but continued to stare at him intently.
When he inspected his hand more closely, he found it lightly dusted with a black coating. His first instinct was to slap at it or try to blow it off, like when you're surprised by an insect crawling on you, but he resisted the urge. His vessel hadn't sent out any vitality, meaning the dust wasn't harming him. It made his hand feel a little warm, but that slowly faded until he decided to brush it off.
"It seems okay, just a little warm. I'm going to try something else," Symon said, seeing their hesitant looks aimed his way. He wasn't a fan of being a human guinea pig either, but figuring out the mystery of the manor would be his best chance at quick power. It had some connection to the dungeon, and he needed to find it. He wouldn't be able to catch up to those who'd spent a lifetime benefitting from the ledger without taking a few risks. Plus, now that he'd seen the roiling black sphere out in the woods, he wasn't sure he'd be able to get much sleep until he knew what it was.
Once more, he turned back to the mist, this time stepping fully into it. It passed over him and caressed his skin, but he felt nothing but a faint warmth. He looked back to the others and gave them a thumbs up, just so they knew not to pull him back. Atabek returned the gesture.
After a few more seconds of this, Symon returned to his friends.
His eyes were a bit watery, but a few rapid blinks cleared them up. He'd gotten a little in his throat — uncomfortably reminding him of swallowing sand — but it didn't cause him any issues after coughing it out. Still, his vessel had remained full.
"I feel fine," Symon said. "It's oddly warm, but it didn't hurt me. We should probably tie some come cloth around our mouths, though."
After a quick search through their packs to find some spare handkerchiefs and such that they could use as masks, the group was finally ready to delve into the unknown. Symon had taken off his rope harness and walked in first, Safiya following directly behind him. By the time he'd walked in far enough that she could enter without being drained, she was only barely visible to his senses, the mists clouding out most of the outside world. It felt like he was in a dark tunnel, while she stood at the entrance.
His sight might have been muddied, but his hearing wasn't. When he heard her sudden yelp of pain, he immediately turned back, taking a wide angle back to pop out of the mists a safe distance. He half expected it to close in on him before he made it, but he emerged unscathed. It really did just seem like creepy, slightly warm fog to him.
Obviously, that wasn't true for the others. Safiya was wincing and cradling an arm, while Atabek crouched down next to her as he inspected it with a concerned look on his face. Aslan explained what happened as Symon approached, or at least as much as he understood.
"The second she touched the mist, she jumped back as if struck," Aslan supplied.
"Odd... let me take a look before I kill all the grass here." By levelling up Seize, he'd increased its maximum range. It had more than doubled since first coming to Brackstead, growing dangerously fast. One might think this would allow him a larger grace period before the thread had no option but to attach to his friends. This wasn't necessarily wrong, but it was important to remember that the speed of draining also increased. It wasn't enough to completely negate the added safety net, but it still greatly reduced it.
With that in mind, Symon didn't waste any time before crouching down side-by-side with Atabek and inspecting her arm. The back of her right hand was blistered slightly, uncomfortably reminding him of his recent burns. He poured a single unit of vitality directly into the wound. Immediately, the red inflammation subsided, and the large blisters shrunk, although they didn't disappear completely. Her hand still had some of the black particles on it, looking like she'd dipped it in a bucket of ash.
"Water, please," Symon called out as he pushed another unit of vitality into the wound. This time, the blisters vanished completely. When Aslan passed a water skin — already unstoppered — over his shoulder, Symon quickly cleaned the substance off her hand.
I need to be more careful with that... what if the wound had healed over it and trapped it under her skin?
Mostly satisfied, Symon stepped back. Safiya let out a sigh of relief as she flexed her fingers. Curiously, Atabek seemed even more relieved than she was. Symon figured he'd felt helpless.
Just what the hell is this stuff?
It was slightly gritty like ash, and clung to the skin, but had seemed completely harmless to Symon — if a bit annoying to get in his eyes. In contrast, Safiya's hand had looked like it had been splashed with acid or held in a fire.
Aslan gave him a good look up and down, his investigation turning up nothing. "You still appear unharmed... what was different between you?" Aslan asked. Before he could get a reply, he reached out with a single finger and quickly dragged it through the mist.
His reaction was immediate, letting out a wince as he yanked his hand back. "Like the sting of a Burrow Bee," he said, shaking off his hand. He then used it to wave Symon off when he made to move over and heal. "No need, I was in there for less than Safiya."
True to his words, Symon noticed that the finger was only slightly swollen, without any of the blistering Safiya had experienced. Even still, Aslan had only made contact with the mist for a fraction of a second, so the substance worked impressively fast.
Experimentally, Symon swung his hand through the mist too, but once again experienced nothing beyond a slight warmth.
If he was going to go investigate the manor, he'd be doing it alone.
Well, Keelgrave's here, but that's almost worse.