Chapter 144 - 145
Then again, he told himself, the chances of being freed from Crystellum had been even less, and here he stood a free man of a noble household.
Nothing of note happened over the following hour, save for the almost complete disappearance of light and the gradual decline of the already freezing temperature. This wasn’t a problem, however, for the moment it became impossible to see with the naked eye, Alistar had activated his newly-learned ocular technique, the advanced alteration spell that Haussen Scuff had termed the night cat’s eyes, evidently structured around the feline ability to see quite clearly in the dark. During the process of getting the hang of the technique, Alistar had learned that the spell wasn’t meant to grant total vision in the absence of light, for even now he would only be able to see his hands at arm’s length were he within the blackness of his unlit room. The true purpose of the spell, at least in its basic iteration, was to enhance the sensitivity of one’s eyes so that they were more receptive to dimmer sources of light, such as the half-moon that currently bathed the silent forest in its cool, apathetic luminescence from far overhead.
Maintaining the spell, he continued on into the wilderness as quietly as possible, his left hand grasping at the hilt of his short sword where it remained in case of an emergency. The reason he had opted for the shorter blade instead of a longsword was that he had been worried that the latter’s longer reach might have brought him difficulties when using it in an area so congested with trees. His thoughts gradually changed as he crept forward, a growing chill beginning to fester in his limbs with each careful step.
He was now nearly a thousand paces away from the county walls, where the occasional hoots of unseen owls reached his ears, a periodic breeze ruffling the forest floor while causing the dead limbs of countless trees to creak in an eerie manner.
Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea, he thought, heartbeat quickening as he proceeded onward in the relative silence. If something did happen to him, then there wouldn’t be any possibility of outside rescue. Kaila’s in a worse position, he told himself, and she can’t even defend herself. Besides, the entire point of this endeavour was to harden his resolve as a warrior, to grow accustomed to taking lives with sword in hand.
Giving his head a shake, he stopped to meditate for a couple of minutes before proceeding onward. It was a few minutes after he resumed walking that he sensed a sizeable life signal several hundred paces ahead of him. Detecting this, he knelt down behind a tree and slowly drew his short sword, lamenting over the fact that he had never practiced archery as it would have come in handy on such an outing.
Not one to overlook the value of taking extra precautions, Alistar gathered a good deal of water—about enough to fill one of the large troughs that the horses back at the estate’s stables drank from—and separated it into fifty spikes that were reminiscent of the giant nails used in the construction of larger buildings within the county. These spikes were bigger, however, each the size of a man’s forearm with sharp, pointed tips. Taking a deep breath, he removed three of his limiters to ensure that things went as smoothly as possible in regards to the manipulation of his magics, making sure to suppress his heavy aura to the best of his ability as he continued to press forward with a distracting, tickling feeling in his gut. Once he had carefully arranged the spikes in the air before him, he took his time applying a basic reinforcement spell to each and every one of them in increments of five, not wanting to take any unnecessary risks when he still wasn’t sure what sort of creature lay ahead of him.
Ever since his first days in Distan, Alistar had studied the flora and fauna that were typical in this region of the Tall Mountains in great detail, having memorized every known species of all of the local life forms to the point that their names, physical attributes, average lifespans and much more would immediately come to mind if he were to lay his eyes on them.
I wonder what it is, he thought as he began to creep closer, the compact mass of hardened icicles now floating silently at his back. Judging by the strength of its life force, it was likely a larger animal, possibly a cervine creature like an elk or buck. Sensing that its aura was rapidly waning, he began to suspect that the unknown animal was critically injured, though he couldn’t tell for sure as it was obscured from his vision by the many trees and shrubs that stood between them. Proceeding forward at a cautionary pace, he kept his eyes moving at all times, constantly on the lookout for any other animals. If the creature in question was indeed injured then it had clearly been done by some sort of predator.
Only once he was fifty paces away from the fast-fading life signal did Alistar lay eyes on the beast.