Runesight

24 - I don't like mushrooms

--- Turste ---

He remembered a fleeting consciousness, but that didn't matter. He remembered vaguely the sense that something was near, something he could eat, something he could become just like so long ago with the ferien but somehow so much worse.

He grasped onto it with the desperation of the mad, though he couldn't be mad, could he? He couldn't remember being mad, he couldn't remember much of anything. Except the beautiful sight of a ferien hunting.

He drew himself to his feet and was dimly surprised to find there were four of them. Some weren't as...real as he'd hoped, he didn't feel real. His mind was still a mess even as something in this body fought him with the valiance of a falling ferien. It even had a similar form to his beloved beasts.

He fought against the creature, finding it weak in the bounds of this world. Slowly as the daylight came and went and another creature visited with kind, worried words, he won against the beast he'd been sharing it with.

His mind still wasn't working quite right, but he could finally see, he could finally think. After a long time he wondered, do I have a name? Fire. Something with fire, or ash. Like the devastating winters of his homeland. The second winter, fire, and ash, all three named after an angry god of volcanoes.

He pondered this for many days until eventually he had it. His name meant Warrior of the Flames.

And now, it seemed like he was made out of wood.

How long had it been?

--- Fora ---

The village of Beial moved.

It wasn't a particularly interesting town, founded by an eccentric shifter and a determined lot of monster tamers. After three hundred years, Beial didn't move as much as before, but it still migrated between four particularly nice spots every five years or so.

The people had little to no say in where the city went, all those monster tamers were long dead by now after all and the mountain didn't really listen to anyone else. It wasn't a popular idea to build things on top of giant migratory spiders, but the people of Beial were just weird like that.

Besides, their mountain had only sat down and crushed another village one time.

The idea of moving to Beial and literally dropping off the map was increasingly tempting as I made my way onto the beach of deadly poison. In fact, I thought I could see the 'mountain' from here! It hadn't been there in most of my memories after all.

My lungs didn't like the sandfrost any more than last time, I could probably do some sort of dimensional shenanigans to filter the air but I was soooo close to figuring out the spell. Just a couple more days to perfect it and then I could go back to normal.

So, because I didn't want to wait three more days to get on with Geneseri, I simply suffered.

I examined the beach for the zombie, the scent of sandfrost was almost overwhelming this time, but I could still detect the underlying rot. "Jeref!" I called out, wondering if it would be worse this time. It might be. I hoped it wasn't. I didn't want to have to tell Niun that his undead zombie was dying.

Everyone said that was impossible but sparks, with my luck I was surprised it had lasted this long.

I made a very unladylike noise as something tackled me from behind, knocking the air out of my chest. Sharp splintering claws dug into my back and I got a face full of sand. Half my body was laying on top of a patch of mushrooms when my mind finally caught up to the assault.